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FOR __ COMPLETE SHAKESPEARE ****\n["Small Print" V.12.08.93]\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM         \nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS  \nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE    \nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS      \nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED             \nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY  \nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>> \n\n\n1609\n\nTHE SONNETS\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\n                     1\n  From fairest creatures we desire increase,\n  That thereby beauty\'s rose might never die,\n  But as the riper should by time decease,\n  His tender heir might bear his memory:\n  But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,\n  Feed\'st thy light\'s flame with self-substantial fuel,\n  Making a famine where abundance lies,\n  Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:\n  Thou that art now the world\'s fresh ornament,\n  And only herald to the gaudy spring,\n  Within thine own bud buriest thy content,\n  And tender churl mak\'st waste in niggarding:\n    Pity the world, or else this glutton be,\n    To eat the world\'s due, by the grave and thee.\n\n\n                     2\n  When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,\n  And dig deep trenches in thy beauty\'s field,\n  Thy youth\'s proud livery so gazed on now,\n  Will be a tattered weed of small worth held:  \n  Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,\n  Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;\n  To say within thine own deep sunken eyes,\n  Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.\n  How much more praise deserved thy beauty\'s use,\n  If thou couldst answer \'This fair child of mine\n  Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse\'\n  Proving his beauty by succession thine.\n    This were to be new made when thou art old,\n    And see thy blood warm when thou feel\'st it cold.\n\n\n                     3\n  Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,\n  Now is the time that face should form another,\n  Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,\n  Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.\n  For where is she so fair whose uneared womb\n  Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?\n  Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,\n  Of his self-love to stop posterity?  \n  Thou art thy mother\'s glass and she in thee\n  Calls back the lovely April of her prime,\n  So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,\n  Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.\n    But if thou live remembered not to be,\n    Die single and thine image dies with thee.\n\n\n                     4\n  Unthrifty loveliness why dost thou spend,\n  Upon thy self thy beauty\'s legacy?\n  Nature\'s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,\n  And being frank she lends to those are free:\n  Then beauteous niggard why dost thou abuse,\n  The bounteous largess given thee to give?\n  Profitless usurer why dost thou use\n  So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?\n  For having traffic with thy self alone,\n  Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive,\n  Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,\n  What acceptable audit canst thou leave?  \n    Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,\n    Which used lives th\' executor to be.\n\n\n                     5\n  Those hours that with gentle work did frame\n  The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell\n  Will play the tyrants to the very same,\n  And that unfair which fairly doth excel:\n  For never-resting time leads summer on\n  To hideous winter and confounds him there,\n  Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,\n  Beauty o\'er-snowed and bareness every where:\n  Then were not summer\'s distillation left\n  A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,\n  Beauty\'s effect with beauty were bereft,\n  Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.\n    But flowers distilled though they with winter meet,\n    Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.\n\n\n                     6  \n  Then let not winter\'s ragged hand deface,\n  In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled:\n  Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place,\n  With beauty\'s treasure ere it be self-killed:\n  That use is not forbidden usury,\n  Which happies those that pay the willing loan;\n  That\'s for thy self to breed another thee,\n  Or ten times happier be it ten for one,\n  Ten times thy self were happier than thou art,\n  If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:\n  Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,\n  Leaving thee living in posterity?\n    Be not self-willed for thou art much too fair,\n    To be death\'s conquest and make worms thine heir.\n\n\n                     7\n  Lo in the orient when the gracious light\n  Lifts up his burning head, each under eye\n  Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,\n  Serving with looks his sacred majesty,  \n  And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,\n  Resembling strong youth in his middle age,\n  Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,\n  Attending on his golden pilgrimage:\n  But when from highmost pitch with weary car,\n  Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,\n  The eyes (fore duteous) now converted are\n  From his low tract and look another way:\n    So thou, thy self out-going in thy noon:\n    Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.\n\n\n                     8\n  Music to hear, why hear\'st thou music sadly?\n  Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:\n  Why lov\'st thou that which thou receiv\'st not gladly,\n  Or else receiv\'st with pleasure thine annoy?\n  If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,\n  By unions married do offend thine ear,\n  They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds\n  In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear:  \n  Mark how one string sweet husband to another,\n  Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;\n  Resembling sire, and child, and happy mother,\n  Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:\n    Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,\n    Sings this to thee, \'Thou single wilt prove none\'.\n\n\n                     9\n  Is it for fear to wet a widow\'s eye,\n  That thou consum\'st thy self in single life?\n  Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,\n  The world will wail thee like a makeless wife,\n  The world will be thy widow and still weep,\n  That thou no form of thee hast left behind,\n  When every private widow well may keep,\n  By children\'s eyes, her husband\'s shape in mind:\n  Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend\n  Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;\n  But beauty\'s waste hath in the world an end,\n  And kept unused the user so destroys it:  \n    No love toward others in that bosom sits\n    That on himself such murd\'rous shame commits.\n\n\n                     10\n  For shame deny that thou bear\'st love to any\n  Who for thy self art so unprovident.\n  Grant if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,\n  But that thou none lov\'st is most evident:\n  For thou art so possessed with murd\'rous hate,\n  That \'gainst thy self thou stick\'st not to conspire,\n  Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate\n  Which to repair should be thy chief desire:\n  O change thy thought, that I may change my mind,\n  Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?\n  Be as thy presence is gracious and kind,\n  Or to thy self at least kind-hearted prove,\n    Make thee another self for love of me,\n    That beauty still may live in thine or thee.\n\n\n                     11  \n  As fast as thou shalt wane so fast thou grow\'st,\n  In one of thine, from that which thou departest,\n  And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow\'st,\n  Thou mayst call thine, when thou from youth convertest,\n  Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase,\n  Without this folly, age, and cold decay,\n  If all were minded so, the times should cease,\n  And threescore year would make the world away:\n  Let those whom nature hath not made for store,\n  Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:\n  Look whom she best endowed, she gave thee more;\n  Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:\n    She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby,\n    Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.\n\n\n                     12\n  When I do count the clock that tells the time,\n  And see the brave day sunk in hideous night,\n  When I behold the violet past prime,\n  And sable curls all silvered o\'er with white:  \n  When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,\n  Which erst from heat did canopy the herd\n  And summer\'s green all girded up in sheaves\n  Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard:\n  Then of thy beauty do I question make\n  That thou among the wastes of time must go,\n  Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,\n  And die as fast as they see others grow,\n    And nothing \'gainst Time\'s scythe can make defence\n    Save breed to brave him, when he takes thee hence.\n\n\n                     13\n  O that you were your self, but love you are\n  No longer yours, than you your self here live,\n  Against this coming end you should prepare,\n  And your sweet semblance to some other give.\n  So should that beauty which you hold in lease\n  Find no determination, then you were\n  Your self again after your self\'s decease,\n  When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.  \n  Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,\n  Which husbandry in honour might uphold,\n  Against the stormy gusts of winter\'s day\n  And barren rage of death\'s eternal cold?\n    O none but unthrifts, dear my love you know,\n    You had a father, let your son say so.\n\n\n                     14\n  Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,\n  And yet methinks I have astronomy,\n  But not to tell of good, or evil luck,\n  Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons\' quality,\n  Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell;\n  Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,\n  Or say with princes if it shall go well\n  By oft predict that I in heaven find.\n  But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,\n  And constant stars in them I read such art\n  As truth and beauty shall together thrive\n  If from thy self, to store thou wouldst convert:  \n    Or else of thee this I prognosticate,\n    Thy end is truth\'s and beauty\'s doom and date.\n\n\n                     15\n  When I consider every thing that grows\n  Holds in perfection but a little moment.\n  That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows\n  Whereon the stars in secret influence comment.\n  When I perceive that men as plants increase,\n  Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky:\n  Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,\n  And wear their brave state out of memory.\n  Then the conceit of this inconstant stay,\n  Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,\n  Where wasteful time debateth with decay\n  To change your day of youth to sullied night,\n    And all in war with Time for love of you,\n    As he takes from you, I engraft you new.\n\n\n                     16  \n  But wherefore do not you a mightier way\n  Make war upon this bloody tyrant Time?\n  And fortify your self in your decay\n  With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?\n  Now stand you on the top of happy hours,\n  And many maiden gardens yet unset,\n  With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers,\n  Much liker than your painted counterfeit:\n  So should the lines of life that life repair\n  Which this (Time\'s pencil) or my pupil pen\n  Neither in inward worth nor outward fair\n  Can make you live your self in eyes of men.\n    To give away your self, keeps your self still,\n    And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.\n\n\n                     17\n  Who will believe my verse in time to come\n  If it were filled with your most high deserts?\n  Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb\n  Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:  \n  If I could write the beauty of your eyes,\n  And in fresh numbers number all your graces,\n  The age to come would say this poet lies,\n  Such heavenly touches ne\'er touched earthly faces.\n  So should my papers (yellowed with their age)\n  Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,\n  And your true rights be termed a poet\'s rage,\n  And stretched metre of an antique song.\n    But were some child of yours alive that time,\n    You should live twice in it, and in my rhyme.\n\n\n                     18\n  Shall I compare thee to a summer\'s day?\n  Thou art more lovely and more temperate:\n  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,\n  And summer\'s lease hath all too short a date:\n  Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,\n  And often is his gold complexion dimmed,\n  And every fair from fair sometime declines,\n  By chance, or nature\'s changing course untrimmed:  \n  But thy eternal summer shall not fade,\n  Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow\'st,\n  Nor shall death brag thou wand\'rest in his shade,\n  When in eternal lines to time thou grow\'st,\n    So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,\n    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.\n\n\n                     19\n  Devouring Time blunt thou the lion\'s paws,\n  And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,\n  Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger\'s jaws,\n  And burn the long-lived phoenix, in her blood,\n  Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet\'st,\n  And do whate\'er thou wilt swift-footed Time\n  To the wide world and all her fading sweets:\n  But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,\n  O carve not with thy hours my love\'s fair brow,\n  Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,\n  Him in thy course untainted do allow,\n  For beauty\'s pattern to succeeding men.  \n    Yet do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,\n    My love shall in my verse ever live young.\n\n\n                     20\n  A woman\'s face with nature\'s own hand painted,\n  Hast thou the master mistress of my passion,\n  A woman\'s gentle heart but not acquainted\n  With shifting change as is false women\'s fashion,\n  An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling:\n  Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth,\n  A man in hue all hues in his controlling,\n  Which steals men\'s eyes and women\'s souls amazeth.\n  And for a woman wert thou first created,\n  Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,\n  And by addition me of thee defeated,\n  By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.\n    But since she pricked thee out for women\'s pleasure,\n    Mine be thy love and thy love\'s use their treasure.\n\n\n                     21  \n  So is it not with me as with that muse,\n  Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,\n  Who heaven it self for ornament doth use,\n  And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,\n  Making a couplement of proud compare\n  With sun and moon, with earth and sea\'s rich gems:\n  With April\'s first-born flowers and all things rare,\n  That heaven\'s air in this huge rondure hems.\n  O let me true in love but truly write,\n  And then believe me, my love is as fair,\n  As any mother\'s child, though not so bright\n  As those gold candles fixed in heaven\'s air:\n    Let them say more that like of hearsay well,\n    I will not praise that purpose not to sell.\n\n\n                     22\n  My glass shall not persuade me I am old,\n  So long as youth and thou are of one date,\n  But when in thee time\'s furrows I behold,\n  Then look I death my days should expiate.  \n  For all that beauty that doth cover thee,\n  Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,\n  Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me,\n  How can I then be elder than thou art?\n  O therefore love be of thyself so wary,\n  As I not for my self, but for thee will,\n  Bearing thy heart which I will keep so chary\n  As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.\n    Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,\n    Thou gav\'st me thine not to give back again.\n\n\n                     23\n  As an unperfect actor on the stage,\n  Who with his fear is put beside his part,\n  Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,\n  Whose strength\'s abundance weakens his own heart;\n  So I for fear of trust, forget to say,\n  The perfect ceremony of love\'s rite,\n  And in mine own love\'s strength seem to decay,\n  O\'ercharged with burthen of mine own love\'s might:  \n  O let my looks be then the eloquence,\n  And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,\n  Who plead for love, and look for recompense,\n  More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.\n    O learn to read what silent love hath writ,\n    To hear with eyes belongs to love\'s fine wit.\n\n\n                     24\n  Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled,\n  Thy beauty\'s form in table of my heart,\n  My body is the frame wherein \'tis held,\n  And perspective it is best painter\'s art.\n  For through the painter must you see his skill,\n  To find where your true image pictured lies,\n  Which in my bosom\'s shop is hanging still,\n  That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes:\n  Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done,\n  Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me\n  Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun\n  Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;  \n    Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,\n    They draw but what they see, know not the heart.\n\n\n                     25\n  Let those who are in favour with their stars,\n  Of public honour and proud titles boast,\n  Whilst I whom fortune of such triumph bars\n  Unlooked for joy in that I honour most;\n  Great princes\' favourites their fair leaves spread,\n  But as the marigold at the sun\'s eye,\n  And in themselves their pride lies buried,\n  For at a frown they in their glory die.\n  The painful warrior famoused for fight,\n  After a thousand victories once foiled,\n  Is from the book of honour razed quite,\n  And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:\n    Then happy I that love and am beloved\n    Where I may not remove nor be removed.\n\n\n                     26  \n  Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage\n  Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit;\n  To thee I send this written embassage\n  To witness duty, not to show my wit.\n  Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine\n  May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it;\n  But that I hope some good conceit of thine\n  In thy soul\'s thought (all naked) will bestow it:\n  Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,\n  Points on me graciously with fair aspect,\n  And puts apparel on my tattered loving,\n  To show me worthy of thy sweet respect,\n    Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee,\n    Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.\n\n\n                     27\n  Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,\n  The dear respose for limbs with travel tired,\n  But then begins a journey in my head\n  To work my mind, when body\'s work\'s expired.  \n  For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)\n  Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,\n  And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,\n  Looking on darkness which the blind do see.\n  Save that my soul\'s imaginary sight\n  Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,\n  Which like a jewel (hung in ghastly night)\n  Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.\n    Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,\n    For thee, and for my self, no quiet find.\n\n\n                     28\n  How can I then return in happy plight\n  That am debarred the benefit of rest?\n  When day\'s oppression is not eased by night,\n  But day by night and night by day oppressed.\n  And each (though enemies to either\'s reign)\n  Do in consent shake hands to torture me,\n  The one by toil, the other to complain\n  How far I toil, still farther off from thee.  \n  I tell the day to please him thou art bright,\n  And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:\n  So flatter I the swart-complexioned night,\n  When sparkling stars twire not thou gild\'st the even.\n    But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,\n    And night doth nightly make grief\'s length seem stronger\n\n\n                     29\n  When in disgrace with Fortune and men\'s eyes,\n  I all alone beweep my outcast state,\n  And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,\n  And look upon my self and curse my fate,\n  Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,\n  Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,\n  Desiring this man\'s art, and that man\'s scope,\n  With what I most enjoy contented least,\n  Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,\n  Haply I think on thee, and then my state,\n  (Like to the lark at break of day arising\n  From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven\'s gate,  \n    For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,\n    That then I scorn to change my state with kings.\n\n\n                     30\n  When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,\n  I summon up remembrance of things past,\n  I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,\n  And with old woes new wail my dear time\'s waste:\n  Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow)\n  For precious friends hid in death\'s dateless night,\n  And weep afresh love\'s long since cancelled woe,\n  And moan th\' expense of many a vanished sight.\n  Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,\n  And heavily from woe to woe tell o\'er\n  The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,\n  Which I new pay as if not paid before.\n    But if the while I think on thee (dear friend)\n    All losses are restored, and sorrows end.\n\n\n                     31  \n  Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,\n  Which I by lacking have supposed dead,\n  And there reigns love and all love\'s loving parts,\n  And all those friends which I thought buried.\n  How many a holy and obsequious tear\n  Hath dear religious love stol\'n from mine eye,\n  As interest of the dead, which now appear,\n  But things removed that hidden in thee lie.\n  Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,\n  Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,\n  Who all their parts of me to thee did give,\n  That due of many, now is thine alone.\n    Their images I loved, I view in thee,\n    And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.\n\n\n                     32\n  If thou survive my well-contented day,\n  When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover\n  And shalt by fortune once more re-survey\n  These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover:  \n  Compare them with the bett\'ring of the time,\n  And though they be outstripped by every pen,\n  Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,\n  Exceeded by the height of happier men.\n  O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought,\n  \'Had my friend\'s Muse grown with this growing age,\n  A dearer birth than this his love had brought\n  To march in ranks of better equipage:\n    But since he died and poets better prove,\n    Theirs for their style I\'ll read, his for his love\'.\n\n\n                     33\n  Full many a glorious morning have I seen,\n  Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,\n  Kissing with golden face the meadows green;\n  Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy:\n  Anon permit the basest clouds to ride,\n  With ugly rack on his celestial face,\n  And from the forlorn world his visage hide\n  Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:  \n  Even so my sun one early morn did shine,\n  With all triumphant splendour on my brow,\n  But out alack, he was but one hour mine,\n  The region cloud hath masked him from me now.\n    Yet him for this, my love no whit disdaineth,\n    Suns of the world may stain, when heaven\'s sun staineth.\n\n\n                     34\n  Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,\n  And make me travel forth without my cloak,\n  To let base clouds o\'ertake me in my way,\n  Hiding thy brav\'ry in their rotten smoke?\n  \'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,\n  To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,\n  For no man well of such a salve can speak,\n  That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:\n  Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief,\n  Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss,\n  Th\' offender\'s sorrow lends but weak relief\n  To him that bears the strong offence\'s cross.  \n    Ah but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,\n    And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.\n\n\n                     35\n  No more be grieved at that which thou hast done,\n  Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,\n  Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,\n  And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.\n  All men make faults, and even I in this,\n  Authorizing thy trespass with compare,\n  My self corrupting salving thy amiss,\n  Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are:\n  For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,\n  Thy adverse party is thy advocate,\n  And \'gainst my self a lawful plea commence:\n  Such civil war is in my love and hate,\n    That I an accessary needs must be,\n    To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.\n\n\n                     36  \n  Let me confess that we two must be twain,\n  Although our undivided loves are one:\n  So shall those blots that do with me remain,\n  Without thy help, by me be borne alone.\n  In our two loves there is but one respect,\n  Though in our lives a separable spite,\n  Which though it alter not love\'s sole effect,\n  Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love\'s delight.\n  I may not evermore acknowledge thee,\n  Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,\n  Nor thou with public kindness honour me,\n  Unless thou take that honour from thy name:\n    But do not so, I love thee in such sort,\n    As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.\n\n\n                     37\n  As a decrepit father takes delight,\n  To see his active child do deeds of youth,\n  So I, made lame by Fortune\'s dearest spite\n  Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.  \n  For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,\n  Or any of these all, or all, or more\n  Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit,\n  I make my love engrafted to this store:\n  So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,\n  Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give,\n  That I in thy abundance am sufficed,\n  And by a part of all thy glory live:\n    Look what is best, that best I wish in thee,\n    This wish I have, then ten times happy me.\n\n\n                     38\n  How can my muse want subject to invent\n  While thou dost breathe that pour\'st into my verse,\n  Thine own sweet argument, too excellent,\n  For every vulgar paper to rehearse?\n  O give thy self the thanks if aught in me,\n  Worthy perusal stand against thy sight,\n  For who\'s so dumb that cannot write to thee,\n  When thou thy self dost give invention light?  \n  Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth\n  Than those old nine which rhymers invocate,\n  And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth\n  Eternal numbers to outlive long date.\n    If my slight muse do please these curious days,\n    The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.\n\n\n                     39\n  O how thy worth with manners may I sing,\n  When thou art all the better part of me?\n  What can mine own praise to mine own self bring:\n  And what is\'t but mine own when I praise thee?\n  Even for this, let us divided live,\n  And our dear love lose name of single one,\n  That by this separation I may give:\n  That due to thee which thou deserv\'st alone:\n  O absence what a torment wouldst thou prove,\n  Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave,\n  To entertain the time with thoughts of love,\n  Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive.  \n    And that thou teachest how to make one twain,\n    By praising him here who doth hence remain.\n\n\n                     40\n  Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all,\n  What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?\n  No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call,\n  All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more:\n  Then if for my love, thou my love receivest,\n  I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest,\n  But yet be blamed, if thou thy self deceivest\n  By wilful taste of what thy self refusest.\n  I do forgive thy robbery gentle thief\n  Although thou steal thee all my poverty:\n  And yet love knows it is a greater grief\n  To bear greater wrong, than hate\'s known injury.\n    Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,\n    Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.\n\n\n                     41  \n  Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,\n  When I am sometime absent from thy heart,\n  Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits,\n  For still temptation follows where thou art.\n  Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,\n  Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed.\n  And when a woman woos, what woman\'s son,\n  Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed?\n  Ay me, but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,\n  And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,\n  Who lead thee in their riot even there\n  Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:\n    Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,\n    Thine by thy beauty being false to me.\n\n\n                     42\n  That thou hast her it is not all my grief,\n  And yet it may be said I loved her dearly,\n  That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,\n  A loss in love that touches me more nearly.  \n  Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye,\n  Thou dost love her, because thou know\'st I love her,\n  And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,\n  Suff\'ring my friend for my sake to approve her.\n  If I lose thee, my loss is my love\'s gain,\n  And losing her, my friend hath found that loss,\n  Both find each other, and I lose both twain,\n  And both for my sake lay on me this cross,\n    But here\'s the joy, my friend and I are one,\n    Sweet flattery, then she loves but me alone.\n\n\n                     43\n  When most I wink then do mine eyes best see,\n  For all the day they view things unrespected,\n  But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,\n  And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.\n  Then thou whose shadow shadows doth make bright\n  How would thy shadow\'s form, form happy show,\n  To the clear day with thy much clearer light,\n  When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!  \n  How would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made,\n  By looking on thee in the living day,\n  When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade,\n  Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!\n    All days are nights to see till I see thee,\n    And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.\n\n\n                     44\n  If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,\n  Injurious distance should not stop my way,\n  For then despite of space I would be brought,\n  From limits far remote, where thou dost stay,\n  No matter then although my foot did stand\n  Upon the farthest earth removed from thee,\n  For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,\n  As soon as think the place where he would be.\n  But ah, thought kills me that I am not thought\n  To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,\n  But that so much of earth and water wrought,\n  I must attend, time\'s leisure with my moan.  \n    Receiving nought by elements so slow,\n    But heavy tears, badges of either\'s woe.\n\n\n                     45\n  The other two, slight air, and purging fire,\n  Are both with thee, wherever I abide,\n  The first my thought, the other my desire,\n  These present-absent with swift motion slide.\n  For when these quicker elements are gone\n  In tender embassy of love to thee,\n  My life being made of four, with two alone,\n  Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy.\n  Until life\'s composition be recured,\n  By those swift messengers returned from thee,\n  Who even but now come back again assured,\n  Of thy fair health, recounting it to me.\n    This told, I joy, but then no longer glad,\n    I send them back again and straight grow sad.\n\n\n                     46  \n  Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,\n  How to divide the conquest of thy sight,\n  Mine eye, my heart thy picture\'s sight would bar,\n  My heart, mine eye the freedom of that right,\n  My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,\n  (A closet never pierced with crystal eyes)\n  But the defendant doth that plea deny,\n  And says in him thy fair appearance lies.\n  To side this title is impanelled\n  A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,\n  And by their verdict is determined\n  The clear eye\'s moiety, and the dear heart\'s part.\n    As thus, mine eye\'s due is thy outward part,\n    And my heart\'s right, thy inward love of heart.\n\n\n                     47\n  Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,\n  And each doth good turns now unto the other,\n  When that mine eye is famished for a look,\n  Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother;  \n  With my love\'s picture then my eye doth feast,\n  And to the painted banquet bids my heart:\n  Another time mine eye is my heart\'s guest,\n  And in his thoughts of love doth share a part.\n  So either by thy picture or my love,\n  Thy self away, art present still with me,\n  For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,\n  And I am still with them, and they with thee.\n    Or if they sleep, thy picture in my sight\n    Awakes my heart, to heart\'s and eye\'s delight.\n\n\n                     48\n  How careful was I when I took my way,\n  Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,\n  That to my use it might unused stay\n  From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!\n  But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,\n  Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,\n  Thou best of dearest, and mine only care,\n  Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.  \n  Thee have I not locked up in any chest,\n  Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,\n  Within the gentle closure of my breast,\n  From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part,\n    And even thence thou wilt be stol\'n I fear,\n    For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.\n\n\n                     49\n  Against that time (if ever that time come)\n  When I shall see thee frown on my defects,\n  When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,\n  Called to that audit by advised respects,\n  Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,\n  And scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye,\n  When love converted from the thing it was\n  Shall reasons find of settled gravity;\n  Against that time do I ensconce me here\n  Within the knowledge of mine own desert,\n  And this my hand, against my self uprear,\n  To guard the lawful reasons on thy part,  \n    To leave poor me, thou hast the strength of laws,\n    Since why to love, I can allege no cause.\n\n\n                     50\n  How heavy do I journey on the way,\n  When what I seek (my weary travel\'s end)\n  Doth teach that case and that repose to say\n  \'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.\'\n  The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,\n  Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,\n  As if by some instinct the wretch did know\n  His rider loved not speed being made from thee:\n  The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,\n  That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,\n  Which heavily he answers with a groan,\n  More sharp to me than spurring to his side,\n    For that same groan doth put this in my mind,\n    My grief lies onward and my joy behind.\n\n\n                     51  \n  Thus can my love excuse the slow offence,\n  Of my dull bearer, when from thee I speed,\n  From where thou art, why should I haste me thence?\n  Till I return of posting is no need.\n  O what excuse will my poor beast then find,\n  When swift extremity can seem but slow?\n  Then should I spur though mounted on the wind,\n  In winged speed no motion shall I know,\n  Then can no horse with my desire keep pace,\n  Therefore desire (of perfect\'st love being made)\n  Shall neigh (no dull flesh) in his fiery race,\n  But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade,\n    Since from thee going, he went wilful-slow,\n    Towards thee I\'ll run, and give him leave to go.\n\n\n                     52\n  So am I as the rich whose blessed key,\n  Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,\n  The which he will not every hour survey,\n  For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.  \n  Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,\n  Since seldom coming in that long year set,\n  Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,\n  Or captain jewels in the carcanet.\n  So is the time that keeps you as my chest\n  Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,\n  To make some special instant special-blest,\n  By new unfolding his imprisoned pride.\n    Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope,\n    Being had to triumph, being lacked to hope.\n\n\n                     53\n  What is your substance, whereof are you made,\n  That millions of strange shadows on you tend?\n  Since every one, hath every one, one shade,\n  And you but one, can every shadow lend:\n  Describe Adonis and the counterfeit,\n  Is poorly imitated after you,\n  On Helen\'s cheek all art of beauty set,\n  And you in Grecian tires are painted new:  \n  Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,\n  The one doth shadow of your beauty show,\n  The other as your bounty doth appear,\n  And you in every blessed shape we know.\n    In all external grace you have some part,\n    But you like none, none you for constant heart.\n\n\n                     54\n  O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,\n  By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!\n  The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem\n  For that sweet odour, which doth in it live:\n  The canker blooms have full as deep a dye,\n  As the perfumed tincture of the roses,\n  Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,\n  When summer\'s breath their masked buds discloses:\n  But for their virtue only is their show,\n  They live unwooed, and unrespected fade,\n  Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so,\n  Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:  \n    And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,\n    When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.\n\n\n                     55\n  Not marble, nor the gilded monuments\n  Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,\n  But you shall shine more bright in these contents\n  Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.\n  When wasteful war shall statues overturn,\n  And broils root out the work of masonry,\n  Nor Mars his sword, nor war\'s quick fire shall burn:\n  The living record of your memory.\n  \'Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity\n  Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room,\n  Even in the eyes of all posterity\n  That wear this world out to the ending doom.\n    So till the judgment that your self arise,\n    You live in this, and dwell in lovers\' eyes.\n\n\n                     56  \n  Sweet love renew thy force, be it not said\n  Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,\n  Which but to-day by feeding is allayed,\n  To-morrow sharpened in his former might.\n  So love be thou, although to-day thou fill\n  Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,\n  To-morrow see again, and do not kill\n  The spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness:\n  Let this sad interim like the ocean be\n  Which parts the shore, where two contracted new,\n  Come daily to the banks, that when they see:\n  Return of love, more blest may be the view.\n    Or call it winter, which being full of care,\n    Makes summer\'s welcome, thrice more wished, more rare.\n\n\n                     57\n  Being your slave what should I do but tend,\n  Upon the hours, and times of your desire?\n  I have no precious time at all to spend;\n  Nor services to do till you require.  \n  Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,\n  Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you,\n  Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,\n  When you have bid your servant once adieu.\n  Nor dare I question with my jealous thought,\n  Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,\n  But like a sad slave stay and think of nought\n  Save where you are, how happy you make those.\n    So true a fool is love, that in your will,\n    (Though you do any thing) he thinks no ill.\n\n\n                     58\n  That god forbid, that made me first your slave,\n  I should in thought control your times of pleasure,\n  Or at your hand th\' account of hours to crave,\n  Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure.\n  O let me suffer (being at your beck)\n  Th\' imprisoned absence of your liberty,\n  And patience tame to sufferance bide each check,\n  Without accusing you of injury.  \n  Be where you list, your charter is so strong,\n  That you your self may privilage your time\n  To what you will, to you it doth belong,\n  Your self to pardon of self-doing crime.\n    I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,\n    Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.\n\n\n                     59\n  If there be nothing new, but that which is,\n  Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,\n  Which labouring for invention bear amis\n  The second burthen of a former child!\n  O that record could with a backward look,\n  Even of five hundred courses of the sun,\n  Show me your image in some antique book,\n  Since mind at first in character was done.\n  That I might see what the old world could say,\n  To this composed wonder of your frame,\n  Whether we are mended, or whether better they,\n  Or whether revolution be the same.  \n    O sure I am the wits of former days,\n    To subjects worse have given admiring praise.\n\n\n                     60\n  Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,\n  So do our minutes hasten to their end,\n  Each changing place with that which goes before,\n  In sequent toil all forwards do contend.\n  Nativity once in the main of light,\n  Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,\n  Crooked eclipses \'gainst his glory fight,\n  And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound.\n  Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,\n  And delves the parallels in beauty\'s brow,\n  Feeds on the rarities of nature\'s truth,\n  And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.\n    And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand\n    Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.\n\n\n                     61  \n  Is it thy will, thy image should keep open\n  My heavy eyelids to the weary night?\n  Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,\n  While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?\n  Is it thy spirit that thou send\'st from thee\n  So far from home into my deeds to pry,\n  To find out shames and idle hours in me,\n  The scope and tenure of thy jealousy?\n  O no, thy love though much, is not so great,\n  It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,\n  Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,\n  To play the watchman ever for thy sake.\n    For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,\n    From me far off, with others all too near.\n\n\n                     62\n  Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,\n  And all my soul, and all my every part;\n  And for this sin there is no remedy,\n  It is so grounded inward in my heart.  \n  Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,\n  No shape so true, no truth of such account,\n  And for my self mine own worth do define,\n  As I all other in all worths surmount.\n  But when my glass shows me my self indeed\n  beated and chopt with tanned antiquity,\n  Mine own self-love quite contrary I read:\n  Self, so self-loving were iniquity.\n    \'Tis thee (my self) that for my self I praise,\n    Painting my age with beauty of thy days.\n\n\n                     63\n  Against my love shall be as I am now\n  With Time\'s injurious hand crushed and o\'erworn,\n  When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow\n  With lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn\n  Hath travelled on to age\'s steepy night,\n  And all those beauties whereof now he\'s king\n  Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,\n  Stealing away the treasure of his spring:  \n  For such a time do I now fortify\n  Against confounding age\'s cruel knife,\n  That he shall never cut from memory\n  My sweet love\'s beauty, though my lover\'s life.\n    His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,\n    And they shall live, and he in them still green.\n\n\n                     64\n  When I have seen by Time\'s fell hand defaced\n  The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age,\n  When sometime lofty towers I see down-rased,\n  And brass eternal slave to mortal rage.\n  When I have seen the hungry ocean gain\n  Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,\n  And the firm soil win of the watery main,\n  Increasing store with loss, and loss with store.\n  When I have seen such interchange of State,\n  Or state it self confounded, to decay,\n  Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate\n  That Time will come and take my love away.  \n    This thought is as a death which cannot choose\n    But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.\n\n\n                     65\n  Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,\n  But sad mortality o\'ersways their power,\n  How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,\n  Whose action is no stronger than a flower?\n  O how shall summer\'s honey breath hold out,\n  Against the wrackful siege of batt\'ring days,\n  When rocks impregnable are not so stout,\n  Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?\n  O fearful meditation, where alack,\n  Shall Time\'s best jewel from Time\'s chest lie hid?\n  Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,\n  Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?\n    O none, unless this miracle have might,\n    That in black ink my love may still shine bright.\n\n\n                     66  \n  Tired with all these for restful death I cry,\n  As to behold desert a beggar born,\n  And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,\n  And purest faith unhappily forsworn,\n  And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,\n  And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,\n  And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,\n  And strength by limping sway disabled\n  And art made tongue-tied by authority,\n  And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,\n  And simple truth miscalled simplicity,\n  And captive good attending captain ill.\n    Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,\n    Save that to die, I leave my love alone.\n\n\n                     67\n  Ah wherefore with infection should he live,\n  And with his presence grace impiety,\n  That sin by him advantage should achieve,\n  And lace it self with his society?  \n  Why should false painting imitate his cheek,\n  And steal dead seeming of his living hue?\n  Why should poor beauty indirectly seek,\n  Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?\n  Why should he live, now nature bankrupt is,\n  Beggared of blood to blush through lively veins,\n  For she hath no exchequer now but his,\n  And proud of many, lives upon his gains?\n    O him she stores, to show what wealth she had,\n    In days long since, before these last so bad.\n\n\n                     68\n  Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,\n  When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,\n  Before these bastard signs of fair were born,\n  Or durst inhabit on a living brow:\n  Before the golden tresses of the dead,\n  The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,\n  To live a second life on second head,\n  Ere beauty\'s dead fleece made another gay:  \n  In him those holy antique hours are seen,\n  Without all ornament, it self and true,\n  Making no summer of another\'s green,\n  Robbing no old to dress his beauty new,\n    And him as for a map doth Nature store,\n    To show false Art what beauty was of yore.\n\n\n                     69\n  Those parts of thee that the world\'s eye doth view,\n  Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend:\n  All tongues (the voice of souls) give thee that due,\n  Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.\n  Thy outward thus with outward praise is crowned,\n  But those same tongues that give thee so thine own,\n  In other accents do this praise confound\n  By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.\n  They look into the beauty of thy mind,\n  And that in guess they measure by thy deeds,\n  Then churls their thoughts (although their eyes were kind)\n  To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds:  \n    But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,\n    The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.\n\n\n                     70\n  That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,\n  For slander\'s mark was ever yet the fair,\n  The ornament of beauty is suspect,\n  A crow that flies in heaven\'s sweetest air.\n  So thou be good, slander doth but approve,\n  Thy worth the greater being wooed of time,\n  For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,\n  And thou present\'st a pure unstained prime.\n  Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days,\n  Either not assailed, or victor being charged,\n  Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,\n  To tie up envy, evermore enlarged,\n    If some suspect of ill masked not thy show,\n    Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.\n\n\n                     71  \n  No longer mourn for me when I am dead,\n  Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell\n  Give warning to the world that I am fled\n  From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:\n  Nay if you read this line, remember not,\n  The hand that writ it, for I love you so,\n  That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,\n  If thinking on me then should make you woe.\n  O if (I say) you look upon this verse,\n  When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay,\n  Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;\n  But let your love even with my life decay.\n    Lest the wise world should look into your moan,\n    And mock you with me after I am gone.\n\n\n                     72\n  O lest the world should task you to recite,\n  What merit lived in me that you should love\n  After my death (dear love) forget me quite,\n  For you in me can nothing worthy prove.  \n  Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,\n  To do more for me than mine own desert,\n  And hang more praise upon deceased I,\n  Than niggard truth would willingly impart:\n  O lest your true love may seem false in this,\n  That you for love speak well of me untrue,\n  My name be buried where my body is,\n  And live no more to shame nor me, nor you.\n    For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,\n    And so should you, to love things nothing worth.\n\n\n                     73\n  That time of year thou mayst in me behold,\n  When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang\n  Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,\n  Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.\n  In me thou seest the twilight of such day,\n  As after sunset fadeth in the west,\n  Which by and by black night doth take away,\n  Death\'s second self that seals up all in rest.  \n  In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,\n  That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,\n  As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,\n  Consumed with that which it was nourished by.\n    This thou perceiv\'st, which makes thy love more strong,\n    To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.\n\n\n                     74\n  But be contented when that fell arrest,\n  Without all bail shall carry me away,\n  My life hath in this line some interest,\n  Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.\n  When thou reviewest this, thou dost review,\n  The very part was consecrate to thee,\n  The earth can have but earth, which is his due,\n  My spirit is thine the better part of me,\n  So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,\n  The prey of worms, my body being dead,\n  The coward conquest of a wretch\'s knife,\n  Too base of thee to be remembered,  \n    The worth of that, is that which it contains,\n    And that is this, and this with thee remains.\n\n\n                     75\n  So are you to my thoughts as food to life,\n  Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground;\n  And for the peace of you I hold such strife\n  As \'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.\n  Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon\n  Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,\n  Now counting best to be with you alone,\n  Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure,\n  Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,\n  And by and by clean starved for a look,\n  Possessing or pursuing no delight\n  Save what is had, or must from you be took.\n    Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,\n    Or gluttoning on all, or all away.\n\n\n                     76  \n  Why is my verse so barren of new pride?\n  So far from variation or quick change?\n  Why with the time do I not glance aside\n  To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?\n  Why write I still all one, ever the same,\n  And keep invention in a noted weed,\n  That every word doth almost tell my name,\n  Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?\n  O know sweet love I always write of you,\n  And you and love are still my argument:\n  So all my best is dressing old words new,\n  Spending again what is already spent:\n    For as the sun is daily new and old,\n    So is my love still telling what is told.\n\n\n                     77\n  Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,\n  Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste,\n  These vacant leaves thy mind\'s imprint will bear,\n  And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.  \n  The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show,\n  Of mouthed graves will give thee memory,\n  Thou by thy dial\'s shady stealth mayst know,\n  Time\'s thievish progress to eternity.\n  Look what thy memory cannot contain,\n  Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find\n  Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,\n  To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.\n    These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,\n    Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.\n\n\n                     78\n  So oft have I invoked thee for my muse,\n  And found such fair assistance in my verse,\n  As every alien pen hath got my use,\n  And under thee their poesy disperse.\n  Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing,\n  And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,\n  Have added feathers to the learned\'s wing,\n  And given grace a double majesty.\n  Yet be most proud of that which I compile,\n  Whose influence is thine, and born of thee,\n  In others\' works thou dost but mend the style,\n  And arts with thy sweet graces graced be.\n    But thou art all my art, and dost advance\n    As high as learning, my rude ignorance.\n\n\n                     79\n  Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,\n  My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,\n  But now my gracious numbers are decayed,\n  And my sick muse doth give an other place.\n  I grant (sweet love) thy lovely argument\n  Deserves the travail of a worthier pen,\n  Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent,\n  He robs thee of, and pays it thee again,\n  He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word,\n  From thy behaviour, beauty doth he give\n  And found it in thy cheek: he can afford\n  No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live.  \n    Then thank him not for that which he doth say,\n    Since what he owes thee, thou thy self dost pay.\n\n\n                     80\n  O how I faint when I of you do write,\n  Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,\n  And in the praise thereof spends all his might,\n  To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.\n  But since your worth (wide as the ocean is)\n  The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,\n  My saucy bark (inferior far to his)\n  On your broad main doth wilfully appear.\n  Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,\n  Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride,\n  Or (being wrecked) I am a worthless boat,\n  He of tall building, and of goodly pride.\n    Then if he thrive and I be cast away,\n    The worst was this, my love was my decay.\n\n\n                     81  \n  Or I shall live your epitaph to make,\n  Or you survive when I in earth am rotten,\n  From hence your memory death cannot take,\n  Although in me each part will be forgotten.\n  Your name from hence immortal life shall have,\n  Though I (once gone) to all the world must die,\n  The earth can yield me but a common grave,\n  When you entombed in men\'s eyes shall lie,\n  Your monument shall be my gentle verse,\n  Which eyes not yet created shall o\'er-read,\n  And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,\n  When all the breathers of this world are dead,\n    You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen)\n    Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.\n\n\n                     82\n  I grant thou wert not married to my muse,\n  And therefore mayst without attaint o\'erlook\n  The dedicated words which writers use\n  Of their fair subject, blessing every book.  \n  Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,\n  Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,\n  And therefore art enforced to seek anew,\n  Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.\n  And do so love, yet when they have devised,\n  What strained touches rhetoric can lend,\n  Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathized,\n  In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend.\n    And their gross painting might be better used,\n    Where cheeks need blood, in thee it is abused.\n\n\n                     83\n  I never saw that you did painting need,\n  And therefore to your fair no painting set,\n  I found (or thought I found) you did exceed,\n  That barren tender of a poet\'s debt:\n  And therefore have I slept in your report,\n  That you your self being extant well might show,\n  How far a modern quill doth come too short,\n  Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.  \n  This silence for my sin you did impute,\n  Which shall be most my glory being dumb,\n  For I impair not beauty being mute,\n  When others would give life, and bring a tomb.\n    There lives more life in one of your fair eyes,\n    Than both your poets can in praise devise.\n\n\n                     84\n  Who is it that says most, which can say more,\n  Than this rich praise, that you alone, are you?\n  In whose confine immured is the store,\n  Which should example where your equal grew.\n  Lean penury within that pen doth dwell,\n  That to his subject lends not some small glory,\n  But he that writes of you, if he can tell,\n  That you are you, so dignifies his story.\n  Let him but copy what in you is writ,\n  Not making worse what nature made so clear,\n  And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,\n  Making his style admired every where.  \n    You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,\n    Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.\n\n\n                     85\n  My tongue-tied muse in manners holds her still,\n  While comments of your praise richly compiled,\n  Reserve their character with golden quill,\n  And precious phrase by all the Muses filed.\n  I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words,\n  And like unlettered clerk still cry Amen,\n  To every hymn that able spirit affords,\n  In polished form of well refined pen.\n  Hearing you praised, I say \'tis so, \'tis true,\n  And to the most of praise add something more,\n  But that is in my thought, whose love to you\n  (Though words come hindmost) holds his rank before,\n    Then others, for the breath of words respect,\n    Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.\n\n\n                     86  \n  Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,\n  Bound for the prize of (all too precious) you,\n  That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,\n  Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?\n  Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,\n  Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?\n  No, neither he, nor his compeers by night\n  Giving him aid, my verse astonished.\n  He nor that affable familiar ghost\n  Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,\n  As victors of my silence cannot boast,\n  I was not sick of any fear from thence.\n    But when your countenance filled up his line,\n    Then lacked I matter, that enfeebled mine.\n\n\n                     87\n  Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,\n  And like enough thou know\'st thy estimate,\n  The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing:\n  My bonds in thee are all determinate.  \n  For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,\n  And for that riches where is my deserving?\n  The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,\n  And so my patent back again is swerving.\n  Thy self thou gav\'st, thy own worth then not knowing,\n  Or me to whom thou gav\'st it, else mistaking,\n  So thy great gift upon misprision growing,\n  Comes home again, on better judgement making.\n    Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,\n    In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.\n\n\n                     88\n  When thou shalt be disposed to set me light,\n  And place my merit in the eye of scorn,\n  Upon thy side, against my self I\'ll fight,\n  And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn:\n  With mine own weakness being best acquainted,\n  Upon thy part I can set down a story\n  Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted:\n  That thou in losing me, shalt win much glory:  \n  And I by this will be a gainer too,\n  For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,\n  The injuries that to my self I do,\n  Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me.\n    Such is my love, to thee I so belong,\n    That for thy right, my self will bear all wrong.\n\n\n                     89\n  Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,\n  And I will comment upon that offence,\n  Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt:\n  Against thy reasons making no defence.\n  Thou canst not (love) disgrace me half so ill,\n  To set a form upon desired change,\n  As I\'ll my self disgrace, knowing thy will,\n  I will acquaintance strangle and look strange:\n  Be absent from thy walks and in my tongue,\n  Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,\n  Lest I (too much profane) should do it wronk:\n  And haply of our old acquaintance tell.  \n    For thee, against my self I\'ll vow debate,\n    For I must ne\'er love him whom thou dost hate.\n\n\n                     90\n  Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now,\n  Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross,\n  join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,\n  And do not drop in for an after-loss:\n  Ah do not, when my heart hath \'scaped this sorrow,\n  Come in the rearward of a conquered woe,\n  Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,\n  To linger out a purposed overthrow.\n  If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,\n  When other petty griefs have done their spite,\n  But in the onset come, so shall I taste\n  At first the very worst of fortune\'s might.\n    And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,\n    Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so.\n\n\n                     91  \n  Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,\n  Some in their wealth, some in their body\'s force,\n  Some in their garments though new-fangled ill:\n  Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse.\n  And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,\n  Wherein it finds a joy above the rest,\n  But these particulars are not my measure,\n  All these I better in one general best.\n  Thy love is better than high birth to me,\n  Richer than wealth, prouder than garments\' costs,\n  Of more delight than hawks and horses be:\n  And having thee, of all men\'s pride I boast.\n    Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take,\n    All this away, and me most wretchcd make.\n\n\n                     92\n  But do thy worst to steal thy self away,\n  For term of life thou art assured mine,\n  And life no longer than thy love will stay,\n  For it depends upon that love of thine.  \n  Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,\n  When in the least of them my life hath end,\n  I see, a better state to me belongs\n  Than that, which on thy humour doth depend.\n  Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind,\n  Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie,\n  O what a happy title do I find,\n  Happy to have thy love, happy to die!\n    But what\'s so blessed-fair that fears no blot?\n    Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.\n\n\n                     93\n  So shall I live, supposing thou art true,\n  Like a deceived husband, so love\'s face,\n  May still seem love to me, though altered new:\n  Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place.\n  For there can live no hatred in thine eye,\n  Therefore in that I cannot know thy change,\n  In many\'s looks, the false heart\'s history\n  Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange.  \n  But heaven in thy creation did decree,\n  That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell,\n  Whate\'er thy thoughts, or thy heart\'s workings be,\n  Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.\n    How like Eve\'s apple doth thy beauty grow,\n    If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show.\n\n\n                     94\n  They that have power to hurt, and will do none,\n  That do not do the thing, they most do show,\n  Who moving others, are themselves as stone,\n  Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:\n  They rightly do inherit heaven\'s graces,\n  And husband nature\'s riches from expense,\n  Tibey are the lords and owners of their faces,\n  Others, but stewards of their excellence:\n  The summer\'s flower is to the summer sweet,\n  Though to it self, it only live and die,\n  But if that flower with base infection meet,\n  The basest weed outbraves his dignity:  \n    For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds,\n    Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.\n\n\n                     95\n  How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,\n  Which like a canker in the fragrant rose,\n  Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!\n  O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!\n  That tongue that tells the story of thy days,\n  (Making lascivious comments on thy sport)\n  Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise,\n  Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.\n  O what a mansion have those vices got,\n  Which for their habitation chose out thee,\n  Where beauty\'s veil doth cover every blot,\n  And all things turns to fair, that eyes can see!\n    Take heed (dear heart) of this large privilege,\n    The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.\n\n\n                     96  \n  Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness,\n  Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport,\n  Both grace and faults are loved of more and less:\n  Thou mak\'st faults graces, that to thee resort:\n  As on the finger of a throned queen,\n  The basest jewel will be well esteemed:\n  So are those errors that in thee are seen,\n  To truths translated, and for true things deemed.\n  How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,\n  If like a lamb he could his looks translate!\n  How many gazers mightst thou lead away,\n  if thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state!\n    But do not so, I love thee in such sort,\n    As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.\n\n\n                     97\n  How like a winter hath my absence been\n  From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!\n  What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!\n  What old December\'s bareness everywhere!  \n  And yet this time removed was summer\'s time,\n  The teeming autumn big with rich increase,\n  Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,\n  Like widowed wombs after their lords\' decease:\n  Yet this abundant issue seemed to me\n  But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit,\n  For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,\n  And thou away, the very birds are mute.\n    Or if they sing, \'tis with so dull a cheer,\n    That leaves look pale, dreading the winter\'s near.\n\n\n                     98\n  From you have I been absent in the spring,\n  When proud-pied April (dressed in all his trim)\n  Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing:\n  That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.\n  Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell\n  Of different flowers in odour and in hue,\n  Could make me any summer\'s story tell:\n  Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:  \n  Nor did I wonder at the lily\'s white,\n  Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose,\n  They were but sweet, but figures of delight:\n  Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.\n    Yet seemed it winter still, and you away,\n    As with your shadow I with these did play.\n\n\n                     99\n  The forward violet thus did I chide,\n  Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,\n  If not from my love\'s breath? The purple pride\n  Which on thy soft check for complexion dwells,\n  In my love\'s veins thou hast too grossly dyed.\n  The lily I condemned for thy hand,\n  And buds of marjoram had stol\'n thy hair,\n  The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,\n  One blushing shame, another white despair:\n  A third nor red, nor white, had stol\'n of both,\n  And to his robbery had annexed thy breath,\n  But for his theft in pride of all his growth  \n  A vengeful canker eat him up to death.\n    More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,\n    But sweet, or colour it had stol\'n from thee.\n\n\n                     100\n  Where art thou Muse that thou forget\'st so long,\n  To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?\n  Spend\'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,\n  Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?\n  Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,\n  In gentle numbers time so idly spent,\n  Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,\n  And gives thy pen both skill and argument.\n  Rise resty Muse, my love\'s sweet face survey,\n  If time have any wrinkle graven there,\n  If any, be a satire to decay,\n  And make time\'s spoils despised everywhere.\n    Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life,\n    So thou prevent\'st his scythe, and crooked knife.\n\n  \n                     101\n  O truant Muse what shall be thy amends,\n  For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?\n  Both truth and beauty on my love depends:\n  So dost thou too, and therein dignified:\n  Make answer Muse, wilt thou not haply say,\n  \'Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,\n  Beauty no pencil, beauty\'s truth to lay:\n  But best is best, if never intermixed\'?\n  Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?\n  Excuse not silence so, for\'t lies in thee,\n  To make him much outlive a gilded tomb:\n  And to be praised of ages yet to be.\n    Then do thy office Muse, I teach thee how,\n    To make him seem long hence, as he shows now.\n\n\n                     102\n  My love is strengthened though more weak in seeming,\n  I love not less, though less the show appear,\n  That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming,  \n  The owner\'s tongue doth publish every where.\n  Our love was new, and then but in the spring,\n  When I was wont to greet it with my lays,\n  As Philomel in summer\'s front doth sing,\n  And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:\n  Not that the summer is less pleasant now\n  Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,\n  But that wild music burthens every bough,\n  And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.\n    Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue:\n    Because I would not dull you with my song.\n\n\n                     103\n  Alack what poverty my muse brings forth,\n  That having such a scope to show her pride,\n  The argument all bare is of more worth\n  Than when it hath my added praise beside.\n  O blame me not if I no more can write!\n  Look in your glass and there appears a face,\n  That over-goes my blunt invention quite,  \n  Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.\n  Were it not sinful then striving to mend,\n  To mar the subject that before was well?\n  For to no other pass my verses tend,\n  Than of your graces and your gifts to tell.\n    And more, much more than in my verse can sit,\n    Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.\n\n\n                     104\n  To me fair friend you never can be old,\n  For as you were when first your eye I eyed,\n  Such seems your beauty still: three winters cold,\n  Have from the forests shook three summers\' pride,\n  Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned,\n  In process of the seasons have I seen,\n  Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,\n  Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green.\n  Ah yet doth beauty like a dial hand,\n  Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived,\n  So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand  \n  Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.\n    For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred,\n    Ere you were born was beauty\'s summer dead.\n\n\n                     105\n  Let not my love be called idolatry,\n  Nor my beloved as an idol show,\n  Since all alike my songs and praises be\n  To one, of one, still such, and ever so.\n  Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,\n  Still constant in a wondrous excellence,\n  Therefore my verse to constancy confined,\n  One thing expressing, leaves out difference.\n  Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,\n  Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words,\n  And in this change is my invention spent,\n  Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.\n    Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone.\n    Which three till now, never kept seat in one.\n\n  \n                     106\n  When in the chronicle of wasted time,\n  I see descriptions of the fairest wights,\n  And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,\n  In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights,\n  Then in the blazon of sweet beauty\'s best,\n  Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,\n  I see their antique pen would have expressed,\n  Even such a beauty as you master now.\n  So all their praises are but prophecies\n  Of this our time, all you prefiguring,\n  And for they looked but with divining eyes,\n  They had not skill enough your worth to sing:\n    For we which now behold these present days,\n    Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.\n\n\n                     107\n  Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul,\n  Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,\n  Can yet the lease of my true love control,  \n  Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.\n  The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,\n  And the sad augurs mock their own presage,\n  Incertainties now crown themselves assured,\n  And peace proclaims olives of endless age.\n  Now with the drops of this most balmy time,\n  My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,\n  Since spite of him I\'ll live in this poor rhyme,\n  While he insults o\'er dull and speechless tribes.\n    And thou in this shalt find thy monument,\n    When tyrants\' crests and tombs of brass are spent.\n\n\n                     108\n  What\'s in the brain that ink may character,\n  Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit,\n  What\'s new to speak, what now to register,\n  That may express my love, or thy dear merit?\n  Nothing sweet boy, but yet like prayers divine,\n  I must each day say o\'er the very same,\n  Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,  \n  Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.\n  So that eternal love in love\'s fresh case,\n  Weighs not the dust and injury of age,\n  Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,\n  But makes antiquity for aye his page,\n    Finding the first conceit of love there bred,\n    Where time and outward form would show it dead.\n\n\n                     109\n  O never say that I was false of heart,\n  Though absence seemed my flame to qualify,\n  As easy might I from my self depart,\n  As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:\n  That is my home of love, if I have ranged,\n  Like him that travels I return again,\n  Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,\n  So that my self bring water for my stain,\n  Never believe though in my nature reigned,\n  All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,\n  That it could so preposterously be stained,  \n  To leave for nothing all thy sum of good:\n    For nothing this wide universe I call,\n    Save thou my rose, in it thou art my all.\n\n\n                     110\n  Alas \'tis true, I have gone here and there,\n  And made my self a motley to the view,\n  Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,\n  Made old offences of affections new.\n  Most true it is, that I have looked on truth\n  Askance and strangely: but by all above,\n  These blenches gave my heart another youth,\n  And worse essays proved thee my best of love.\n  Now all is done, have what shall have no end,\n  Mine appetite I never more will grind\n  On newer proof, to try an older friend,\n  A god in love, to whom I am confined.\n    Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,\n    Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.\n\n  \n                     111\n  O for my sake do you with Fortune chide,\n  The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,\n  That did not better for my life provide,\n  Than public means which public manners breeds.\n  Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,\n  And almost thence my nature is subdued\n  To what it works in, like the dyer\'s hand:\n  Pity me then, and wish I were renewed,\n  Whilst like a willing patient I will drink,\n  Potions of eisel \'gainst my strong infection,\n  No bitterness that I will bitter think,\n  Nor double penance to correct correction.\n    Pity me then dear friend, and I assure ye,\n    Even that your pity is enough to cure me.\n\n\n                     112\n  Your love and pity doth th\' impression fill,\n  Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow,\n  For what care I who calls me well or ill,  \n  So you o\'er-green my bad, my good allow?\n  You are my all the world, and I must strive,\n  To know my shames and praises from your tongue,\n  None else to me, nor I to none alive,\n  That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.\n  In so profound abysm I throw all care\n  Of others\' voices, that my adder\'s sense,\n  To critic and to flatterer stopped are:\n  Mark how with my neglect I do dispense.\n    You are so strongly in my purpose bred,\n    That all the world besides methinks are dead.\n\n\n                     113\n  Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,\n  And that which governs me to go about,\n  Doth part his function, and is partly blind,\n  Seems seeing, but effectually is out:\n  For it no form delivers to the heart\n  Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch,\n  Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,  \n  Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:\n  For if it see the rud\'st or gentlest sight,\n  The most sweet favour or deformed\'st creature,\n  The mountain, or the sea, the day, or night:\n  The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.\n    Incapable of more, replete with you,\n    My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.\n\n\n                     114\n  Or whether doth my mind being crowned with you\n  Drink up the monarch\'s plague this flattery?\n  Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true,\n  And that your love taught it this alchemy?\n  To make of monsters, and things indigest,\n  Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,\n  Creating every bad a perfect best\n  As fast as objects to his beams assemble:\n  O \'tis the first, \'tis flattery in my seeing,\n  And my great mind most kingly drinks it up,\n  Mine eye well knows what with his gust is \'greeing,  \n  And to his palate doth prepare the cup.\n    If it be poisoned, \'tis the lesser sin,\n    That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.\n\n\n                     115\n  Those lines that I before have writ do lie,\n  Even those that said I could not love you dearer,\n  Yet then my judgment knew no reason why,\n  My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer,\n  But reckoning time, whose millioned accidents\n  Creep in \'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,\n  Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp\'st intents,\n  Divert strong minds to the course of alt\'ring things:\n  Alas why fearing of time\'s tyranny,\n  Might I not then say \'Now I love you best,\'\n  When I was certain o\'er incertainty,\n  Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?\n    Love is a babe, then might I not say so\n    To give full growth to that which still doth grow.\n\n  \n                     116\n  Let me not to the marriage of true minds\n  Admit impediments, love is not love\n  Which alters when it alteration finds,\n  Or bends with the remover to remove.\n  O no, it is an ever-fixed mark\n  That looks on tempests and is never shaken;\n  It is the star to every wand\'ring bark,\n  Whose worth\'s unknown, although his height be taken.\n  Love\'s not Time\'s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks\n  Within his bending sickle\'s compass come,\n  Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,\n  But bears it out even to the edge of doom:\n    If this be error and upon me proved,\n    I never writ, nor no man ever loved.\n\n\n                     117\n  Accuse me thus, that I have scanted all,\n  Wherein I should your great deserts repay,\n  Forgot upon your dearest love to call,  \n  Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day,\n  That I have frequent been with unknown minds,\n  And given to time your own dear-purchased right,\n  That I have hoisted sail to all the winds\n  Which should transport me farthest from your sight.\n  Book both my wilfulness and errors down,\n  And on just proof surmise, accumulate,\n  Bring me within the level of your frown,\n  But shoot not at me in your wakened hate:\n    Since my appeal says I did strive to prove\n    The constancy and virtue of your love.\n\n\n                     118\n  Like as to make our appetite more keen\n  With eager compounds we our palate urge,\n  As to prevent our maladies unseen,\n  We sicken to shun sickness when we purge.\n  Even so being full of your ne\'er-cloying sweetness,\n  To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;\n  And sick of welfare found a kind of meetness,  \n  To be diseased ere that there was true needing.\n  Thus policy in love t\' anticipate\n  The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,\n  And brought to medicine a healthful state\n  Which rank of goodness would by ill be cured.\n    But thence I learn and find the lesson true,\n    Drugs poison him that so feil sick of you.\n\n\n                     119\n  What potions have I drunk of Siren tears\n  Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,\n  Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,\n  Still losing when I saw my self to win!\n  What wretched errors hath my heart committed,\n  Whilst it hath thought it self so blessed never!\n  How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted\n  In the distraction of this madding fever!\n  O benefit of ill, now I find true\n  That better is, by evil still made better.\n  And ruined love when it is built anew  \n  Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.\n    So I return rebuked to my content,\n    And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.\n\n\n                     120\n  That you were once unkind befriends me now,\n  And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,\n  Needs must I under my transgression bow,\n  Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.\n  For if you were by my unkindness shaken\n  As I by yours, y\'have passed a hell of time,\n  And I a tyrant have no leisure taken\n  To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.\n  O that our night of woe might have remembered\n  My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,\n  And soon to you, as you to me then tendered\n  The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!\n    But that your trespass now becomes a fee,\n    Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.\n\n  \n                     121\n  \'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,\n  When not to be, receives reproach of being,\n  And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed,\n  Not by our feeling, but by others\' seeing.\n  For why should others\' false adulterate eyes\n  Give salutation to my sportive blood?\n  Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,\n  Which in their wills count bad what I think good?\n  No, I am that I am, and they that level\n  At my abuses, reckon up their own,\n  I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;\n  By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown\n    Unless this general evil they maintain,\n    All men are bad and in their badness reign.\n\n\n                     122\n  Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain\n  Full charactered with lasting memory,\n  Which shall above that idle rank remain  \n  Beyond all date even to eternity.\n  Or at the least, so long as brain and heart\n  Have faculty by nature to subsist,\n  Till each to razed oblivion yield his part\n  Of thee, thy record never can be missed:\n  That poor retention could not so much hold,\n  Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score,\n  Therefore to give them from me was I bold,\n  To trust those tables that receive thee more:\n    To keep an adjunct to remember thee\n    Were to import forgetfulness in me.\n\n\n                     123\n  No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change,\n  Thy pyramids built up with newer might\n  To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,\n  They are but dressings Of a former sight:\n  Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire,\n  What thou dost foist upon us that is old,\n  And rather make them born to our desire,  \n  Than think that we before have heard them told:\n  Thy registers and thee I both defy,\n  Not wond\'ring at the present, nor the past,\n  For thy records, and what we see doth lie,\n  Made more or less by thy continual haste:\n    This I do vow and this shall ever be,\n    I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.\n\n\n                     124\n  If my dear love were but the child of state,\n  It might for Fortune\'s bastard be unfathered,\n  As subject to time\'s love or to time\'s hate,\n  Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.\n  No it was builded far from accident,\n  It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls\n  Under the blow of thralled discontent,\n  Whereto th\' inviting time our fashion calls:\n  It fears not policy that heretic,\n  Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,\n  But all alone stands hugely politic,  \n  That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.\n    To this I witness call the fools of time,\n    Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.\n\n\n                     125\n  Were\'t aught to me I bore the canopy,\n  With my extern the outward honouring,\n  Or laid great bases for eternity,\n  Which proves more short than waste or ruining?\n  Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour\n  Lose all, and more by paying too much rent\n  For compound sweet; forgoing simple savour,\n  Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent?\n  No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,\n  And take thou my oblation, poor but free,\n  Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art,\n  But mutual render, only me for thee.\n    Hence, thou suborned informer, a true soul\n    When most impeached, stands least in thy control.\n\n  \n                     126\n  O thou my lovely boy who in thy power,\n  Dost hold Time\'s fickle glass his fickle hour:\n  Who hast by waning grown, and therein show\'st,\n  Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow\'st.\n  If Nature (sovereign mistress over wrack)\n  As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,\n  She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill\n  May time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill.\n  Yet fear her O thou minion of her pleasure,\n  She may detain, but not still keep her treasure!\n    Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,\n    And her quietus is to render thee.\n\n\n                     127\n  In the old age black was not counted fair,\n  Or if it were it bore not beauty\'s name:\n  But now is black beauty\'s successive heir,\n  And beauty slandered with a bastard shame,\n  For since each hand hath put on nature\'s power,  \n  Fairing the foul with art\'s false borrowed face,\n  Sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower,\n  But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.\n  Therefore my mistress\' eyes are raven black,\n  Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem,\n  At such who not born fair no beauty lack,\n  Slandering creation with a false esteem,\n    Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,\n    That every tongue says beauty should look so.\n\n\n                     128\n  How oft when thou, my music, music play\'st,\n  Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds\n  With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway\'st\n  The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,\n  Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,\n  To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,\n  Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,\n  At the wood\'s boldness by thee blushing stand.\n  To be so tickled they would change their state  \n  And situation with those dancing chips,\n  O\'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,\n  Making dead wood more blest than living lips,\n    Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,\n    Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.\n\n\n                     129\n  Th\' expense of spirit in a waste of shame\n  Is lust in action, and till action, lust\n  Is perjured, murd\'rous, bloody full of blame,\n  Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,\n  Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,\n  Past reason hunted, and no sooner had\n  Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,\n  On purpose laid to make the taker mad.\n  Mad in pursuit and in possession so,\n  Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme,\n  A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe,\n  Before a joy proposed behind a dream.\n    All this the world well knows yet none knows well,  \n    To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.\n\n\n                     130\n  My mistress\' eyes are nothing like the sun,\n  Coral is far more red, than her lips red,\n  If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:\n  If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head:\n  I have seen roses damasked, red and white,\n  But no such roses see I in her cheeks,\n  And in some perfumes is there more delight,\n  Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.\n  I love to hear her speak, yet well I know,\n  That music hath a far more pleasing sound:\n  I grant I never saw a goddess go,\n  My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.\n    And yet by heaven I think my love as rare,\n    As any she belied with false compare.\n\n\n                     131\n  Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,  \n  As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;\n  For well thou know\'st to my dear doting heart\n  Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.\n  Yet in good faith some say that thee behold,\n  Thy face hath not the power to make love groan;\n  To say they err, I dare not be so bold,\n  Although I swear it to my self alone.\n  And to be sure that is not false I swear,\n  A thousand groans but thinking on thy face,\n  One on another\'s neck do witness bear\n  Thy black is fairest in my judgment\'s place.\n    In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,\n    And thence this slander as I think proceeds.\n\n\n                     132\n  Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me,\n  Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,\n  Have put on black, and loving mourners be,\n  Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.\n  And truly not the morning sun of heaven  \n  Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,\n  Nor that full star that ushers in the even\n  Doth half that glory to the sober west\n  As those two mourning eyes become thy face:\n  O let it then as well beseem thy heart\n  To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,\n  And suit thy pity like in every part.\n    Then will I swear beauty herself is black,\n    And all they foul that thy complexion lack.\n\n\n                     133\n  Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan\n  For that deep wound it gives my friend and me;\n  Is\'t not enough to torture me alone,\n  But slave to slavery my sweet\'st friend must be?\n  Me from my self thy cruel eye hath taken,\n  And my next self thou harder hast engrossed,\n  Of him, my self, and thee I am forsaken,\n  A torment thrice three-fold thus to be crossed:\n  Prison my heart in thy steel bosom\'s ward,  \n  But then my friend\'s heart let my poor heart bail,\n  Whoe\'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard,\n  Thou canst not then use rigour in my gaol.\n    And yet thou wilt, for I being pent in thee,\n    Perforce am thine and all that is in me.\n\n\n                     134\n  So now I have confessed that he is thine,\n  And I my self am mortgaged to thy will,\n  My self I\'ll forfeit, so that other mine,\n  Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still:\n  But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,\n  For thou art covetous, and he is kind,\n  He learned but surety-like to write for me,\n  Under that bond that him as fist doth bind.\n  The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,\n  Thou usurer that put\'st forth all to use,\n  And sue a friend, came debtor for my sake,\n  So him I lose through my unkind abuse.\n    Him have I lost, thou hast both him and me,  \n    He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.\n\n\n                     135\n  Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will,\n  And \'Will\' to boot, and \'Will\' in over-plus,\n  More than enough am I that vex thee still,\n  To thy sweet will making addition thus.\n  Wilt thou whose will is large and spacious,\n  Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?\n  Shall will in others seem right gracious,\n  And in my will no fair acceptance shine?\n  The sea all water, yet receives rain still,\n  And in abundance addeth to his store,\n  So thou being rich in will add to thy will\n  One will of mine to make thy large will more.\n    Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill,\n    Think all but one, and me in that one \'Will.\'\n\n\n                     136\n  If thy soul check thee that I come so near,  \n  Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy \'Will\',\n  And will thy soul knows is admitted there,\n  Thus far for love, my love-suit sweet fulfil.\n  \'Will\', will fulfil the treasure of thy love,\n  Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one,\n  In things of great receipt with case we prove,\n  Among a number one is reckoned none.\n  Then in the number let me pass untold,\n  Though in thy store\'s account I one must be,\n  For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold,\n  That nothing me, a something sweet to thee.\n    Make but my name thy love, and love that still,\n    And then thou lov\'st me for my name is Will.\n\n\n                     137\n  Thou blind fool Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,\n  That they behold and see not what they see?\n  They know what beauty is, see where it lies,\n  Yet what the best is, take the worst to be.\n  If eyes corrupt by over-partial looks,  \n  Be anchored in the bay where all men ride,\n  Why of eyes\' falsehood hast thou forged hooks,\n  Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied?\n  Why should my heart think that a several plot,\n  Which my heart knows the wide world\'s common place?\n  Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not\n  To put fair truth upon so foul a face?\n    In things right true my heart and eyes have erred,\n    And to this false plague are they now transferred.\n\n\n                     138\n  When my love swears that she is made of truth,\n  I do believe her though I know she lies,\n  That she might think me some untutored youth,\n  Unlearned in the world\'s false subtleties.\n  Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,\n  Although she knows my days are past the best,\n  Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue,\n  On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed:\n  But wherefore says she not she is unjust?  \n  And wherefore say not I that I am old?\n  O love\'s best habit is in seeming trust,\n  And age in love, loves not to have years told.\n    Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,\n    And in our faults by lies we flattered be.\n\n\n                     139\n  O call not me to justify the wrong,\n  That thy unkindness lays upon my heart,\n  Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue,\n  Use power with power, and slay me not by art,\n  Tell me thou lov\'st elsewhere; but in my sight,\n  Dear heart forbear to glance thine eye aside,\n  What need\'st thou wound with cunning when thy might\n  Is more than my o\'erpressed defence can bide?\n  Let me excuse thee, ah my love well knows,\n  Her pretty looks have been mine enemies,\n  And therefore from my face she turns my foes,\n  That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:\n    Yet do not so, but since I am near slain,  \n    Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.\n\n\n                     140\n  Be wise as thou art cruel, do not press\n  My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain:\n  Lest sorrow lend me words and words express,\n  The manner of my pity-wanting pain.\n  If I might teach thee wit better it were,\n  Though not to love, yet love to tell me so,\n  As testy sick men when their deaths be near,\n  No news but health from their physicians know.\n  For if I should despair I should grow mad,\n  And in my madness might speak ill of thee,\n  Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,\n  Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.\n    That I may not be so, nor thou belied,\n    Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.\n\n\n                     141\n  In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,  \n  For they in thee a thousand errors note,\n  But \'tis my heart that loves what they despise,\n  Who in despite of view is pleased to dote.\n  Nor are mine cars with thy tongue\'s tune delighted,\n  Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,\n  Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited\n  To any sensual feast with thee alone:\n  But my five wits, nor my five senses can\n  Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,\n  Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,\n  Thy proud heart\'s slave and vassal wretch to be:\n    Only my plague thus far I count my gain,\n    That she that makes me sin, awards me pain.\n\n\n                     142\n  Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,\n  Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving,\n  O but with mine, compare thou thine own state,\n  And thou shalt find it merits not reproving,\n  Or if it do, not from those lips of thine,  \n  That have profaned their scarlet ornaments,\n  And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine,\n  Robbed others\' beds\' revenues of their rents.\n  Be it lawful I love thee as thou lov\'st those,\n  Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee,\n  Root pity in thy heart that when it grows,\n  Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.\n    If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,\n    By self-example mayst thou be denied.\n\n\n                     143\n  Lo as a careful huswife runs to catch,\n  One of her feathered creatures broke away,\n  Sets down her babe and makes all swift dispatch\n  In pursuit of the thing she would have stay:\n  Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,\n  Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent,\n  To follow that which flies before her face:\n  Not prizing her poor infant\'s discontent;\n  So run\'st thou after that which flies from thee,  \n  Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind,\n  But if thou catch thy hope turn back to me:\n  And play the mother\'s part, kiss me, be kind.\n    So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,\n    If thou turn back and my loud crying still.\n\n\n                     144\n  Two loves I have of comfort and despair,\n  Which like two spirits do suggest me still,\n  The better angel is a man right fair:\n  The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.\n  To win me soon to hell my female evil,\n  Tempteth my better angel from my side,\n  And would corrupt my saint to be a devil:\n  Wooing his purity with her foul pride.\n  And whether that my angel be turned fiend,\n  Suspect I may, yet not directly tell,\n  But being both from me both to each friend,\n  I guess one angel in another\'s hell.\n    Yet this shall I ne\'er know but live in doubt,  \n    Till my bad angel fire my good one out.\n\n\n                     145\n  Those lips that Love\'s own hand did make,\n  Breathed forth the sound that said \'I hate\',\n  To me that languished for her sake:\n  But when she saw my woeful state,\n  Straight in her heart did mercy come,\n  Chiding that tongue that ever sweet,\n  Was used in giving gentle doom:\n  And taught it thus anew to greet:\n  \'I hate\' she altered with an end,\n  That followed it as gentle day,\n  Doth follow night who like a fiend\n  From heaven to hell is flown away.\n    \'I hate\', from hate away she threw,\n    And saved my life saying \'not you\'.\n\n\n                     146\n  Poor soul the centre of my sinful earth,  \n  My sinful earth these rebel powers array,\n  Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth\n  Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?\n  Why so large cost having so short a lease,\n  Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?\n  Shall worms inheritors of this excess\n  Eat up thy charge? is this thy body\'s end?\n  Then soul live thou upon thy servant\'s loss,\n  And let that pine to aggravate thy store;\n  Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;\n  Within be fed, without be rich no more,\n    So shall thou feed on death, that feeds on men,\n    And death once dead, there\'s no more dying then.\n\n\n                     147\n  My love is as a fever longing still,\n  For that which longer nurseth the disease,\n  Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,\n  Th\' uncertain sickly appetite to please:\n  My reason the physician to my love,  \n  Angry that his prescriptions are not kept\n  Hath left me, and I desperate now approve,\n  Desire is death, which physic did except.\n  Past cure I am, now reason is past care,\n  And frantic-mad with evermore unrest,\n  My thoughts and my discourse as mad men\'s are,\n  At random from the truth vainly expressed.\n    For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,\n    Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.\n\n\n                     148\n  O me! what eyes hath love put in my head,\n  Which have no correspondence with true sight,\n  Or if they have, where is my judgment fled,\n  That censures falsely what they see aright?\n  If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,\n  What means the world to say it is not so?\n  If it be not, then love doth well denote,\n  Love\'s eye is not so true as all men\'s: no,\n  How can it? O how can love\'s eye be true,  \n  That is so vexed with watching and with tears?\n  No marvel then though I mistake my view,\n  The sun it self sees not, till heaven clears.\n    O cunning love, with tears thou keep\'st me blind,\n    Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.\n\n\n                     149\n  Canst thou O cruel, say I love thee not,\n  When I against my self with thee partake?\n  Do I not think on thee when I forgot\n  Am of my self, all-tyrant, for thy sake?\n  Who hateth thee that I do call my friend,\n  On whom frown\'st thou that I do fawn upon,\n  Nay if thou lour\'st on me do I not spend\n  Revenge upon my self with present moan?\n  What merit do I in my self respect,\n  That is so proud thy service to despise,\n  When all my best doth worship thy defect,\n  Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?\n    But love hate on for now I know thy mind,  \n    Those that can see thou lov\'st, and I am blind.\n\n\n                     150\n  O from what power hast thou this powerful might,\n  With insufficiency my heart to sway,\n  To make me give the lie to my true sight,\n  And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?\n  Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,\n  That in the very refuse of thy deeds,\n  There is such strength and warrantise of skill,\n  That in my mind thy worst all best exceeds?\n  Who taught thee how to make me love thee more,\n  The more I hear and see just cause of hate?\n  O though I love what others do abhor,\n  With others thou shouldst not abhor my state.\n    If thy unworthiness raised love in me,\n    More worthy I to be beloved of thee.\n\n\n                     151\n  Love is too young to know what conscience is,  \n  Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?\n  Then gentle cheater urge not my amiss,\n  Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove.\n  For thou betraying me, I do betray\n  My nobler part to my gross body\'s treason,\n  My soul doth tell my body that he may,\n  Triumph in love, flesh stays no farther reason,\n  But rising at thy name doth point out thee,\n  As his triumphant prize, proud of this pride,\n  He is contented thy poor drudge to be,\n  To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.\n    No want of conscience hold it that I call,\n    Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall.\n\n\n                     152\n  In loving thee thou know\'st I am forsworn,\n  But thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing,\n  In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,\n  In vowing new hate after new love bearing:\n  But why of two oaths\' breach do I accuse thee,  \n  When I break twenty? I am perjured most,\n  For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee:\n  And all my honest faith in thee is lost.\n  For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness:\n  Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,\n  And to enlighten thee gave eyes to blindness,\n  Or made them swear against the thing they see.\n    For I have sworn thee fair: more perjured I,\n    To swear against the truth so foul a be.\n\n\n                     153\n  Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep,\n  A maid of Dian\'s this advantage found,\n  And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep\n  In a cold valley-fountain of that ground:\n  Which borrowed from this holy fire of Love,\n  A dateless lively heat still to endure,\n  And grew a seeting bath which yet men prove,\n  Against strange maladies a sovereign cure:\n  But at my mistress\' eye Love\'s brand new-fired,  \n  The boy for trial needs would touch my breast,\n  I sick withal the help of bath desired,\n  And thither hied a sad distempered guest.\n    But found no cure, the bath for my help lies,\n    Where Cupid got new fire; my mistress\' eyes.\n\n\n                     154\n  The little Love-god lying once asleep,\n  Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,\n  Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep,\n  Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand,\n  The fairest votary took up that fire,\n  Which many legions of true hearts had warmed,\n  And so the general of hot desire,\n  Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarmed.\n  This brand she quenched in a cool well by,\n  Which from Love\'s fire took heat perpetual,\n  Growing a bath and healthful remedy,\n  For men discased, but I my mistress\' thrall,\n    Came there for cure and this by that I prove,  \n    Love\'s fire heats water, water cools not love.\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1603\n\nALLS WELL THAT ENDS WELL\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  KING OF FRANCE\n  THE DUKE OF FLORENCE\n  BERTRAM, Count of Rousillon\n  LAFEU, an old lord\n  PAROLLES, a follower of Bertram\n  TWO FRENCH LORDS, serving with Bertram\n\n  STEWARD, Servant to the Countess of Rousillon\n  LAVACHE, a clown and Servant to the Countess of Rousillon\n  A PAGE, Servant to the Countess of Rousillon\n\n  COUNTESS OF ROUSILLON, mother to Bertram\n  HELENA, a gentlewoman protected by the Countess\n  A WIDOW OF FLORENCE.\n  DIANA, daughter to the Widow\n\n\n  VIOLENTA, neighbour and friend to the Widow\n  MARIANA, neighbour and friend to the Widow\n\n  Lords, Officers, Soldiers, etc., French and Florentine  \n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nRousillon; Paris; Florence; Marseilles\n\n\nACT I. SCENE 1.\nRousillon. The COUNT\'S palace\n\nEnter BERTRAM, the COUNTESS OF ROUSILLON, HELENA, and LAFEU, all in black\n\n  COUNTESS. In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband.\n  BERTRAM. And I in going, madam, weep o\'er my father\'s death anew;\n    but I must attend his Majesty\'s command, to whom I am now in\n    ward, evermore in subjection.\n  LAFEU. You shall find of the King a husband, madam; you, sir, a\n    father. He that so generally is at all times good must of\n    necessity hold his virtue to you, whose worthiness would stir it\n    up where it wanted, rather than lack it where there is such\n    abundance.\n  COUNTESS. What hope is there of his Majesty\'s amendment?\n  LAFEU. He hath abandon\'d his physicians, madam; under whose\n    practices he hath persecuted time with hope, and finds no other\n    advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time.\n  COUNTESS. This young gentlewoman had a father- O, that \'had,\' how\n    sad a passage \'tis!-whose skill was almost as great as his\n    honesty; had it stretch\'d so far, would have made nature  \n    immortal, and death should have play for lack of work. Would, for\n    the King\'s sake, he were living! I think it would be the death of\n    the King\'s disease.\n  LAFEU. How call\'d you the man you speak of, madam?\n  COUNTESS. He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his\n    great right to be so- Gerard de Narbon.\n  LAFEU. He was excellent indeed, madam; the King very lately spoke\n    of him admiringly and mourningly; he was skilful enough to have\n    liv\'d still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality.\n  BERTRAM. What is it, my good lord, the King languishes of?\n  LAFEU. A fistula, my lord.\n  BERTRAM. I heard not of it before.\n  LAFEU. I would it were not notorious. Was this gentlewoman the\n    daughter of Gerard de Narbon?\n  COUNTESS. His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to my\n    overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that her education\n    promises; her dispositions she inherits, which makes fair gifts\n    fairer; for where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities,\n    there commendations go with pity-they are virtues and traitors\n    too. In her they are the better for their simpleness; she derives  \n    her honesty, and achieves her goodness.\n  LAFEU. Your commendations, madam, get from her tears.\n  COUNTESS. \'Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in.\n    The remembrance of her father never approaches her heart but the\n    tyranny of her sorrows takes all livelihood from her cheek. No\n    more of this, Helena; go to, no more, lest it be rather thought\n    you affect a sorrow than to have-\n  HELENA. I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too.\n  LAFEU. Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead: excessive\n    grief the enemy to the living.\n  COUNTESS. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it\n    soon mortal.\n  BERTRAM. Madam, I desire your holy wishes.\n  LAFEU. How understand we that?\n  COUNTESS. Be thou blest, Bertram, and succeed thy father\n    In manners, as in shape! Thy blood and virtue\n    Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness\n    Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few,\n    Do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy\n    Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend  \n    Under thy own life\'s key; be check\'d for silence,\n    But never tax\'d for speech. What heaven more will,\n    That thee may furnish, and my prayers pluck down,\n    Fall on thy head! Farewell. My lord,\n    \'Tis an unseason\'d courtier; good my lord,\n    Advise him.\n  LAFEU. He cannot want the best\n    That shall attend his love.\n  COUNTESS. Heaven bless him! Farewell, Bertram.            Exit\n  BERTRAM. The best wishes that can be forg\'d in your thoughts be\n    servants to you!  [To HELENA]  Be comfortable to my mother, your\n    mistress, and make much of her.\n  LAFEU. Farewell, pretty lady; you must hold the credit of your\n    father.                             Exeunt BERTRAM and LAFEU\n  HELENA. O, were that all! I think not on my father;\n    And these great tears grace his remembrance more\n    Than those I shed for him. What was he like?\n    I have forgot him; my imagination\n    Carries no favour in\'t but Bertram\'s.\n    I am undone; there is no living, none,  \n    If Bertram be away. \'Twere all one\n    That I should love a bright particular star\n    And think to wed it, he is so above me.\n    In his bright radiance and collateral light\n    Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.\n    Th\' ambition in my love thus plagues itself:\n    The hind that would be mated by the lion\n    Must die for love. \'Twas pretty, though a plague,\n    To see him every hour; to sit and draw\n    His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,\n    In our heart\'s table-heart too capable\n    Of every line and trick of his sweet favour.\n    But now he\'s gone, and my idolatrous fancy\n    Must sanctify his relics. Who comes here?\n\n                       Enter PAROLLES\n\n    [Aside]  One that goes with him. I love him for his sake;\n    And yet I know him a notorious liar,\n    Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;  \n    Yet these fix\'d evils sit so fit in him\n    That they take place when virtue\'s steely bones\n    Looks bleak i\' th\' cold wind; withal, full oft we see\n    Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.\n  PAROLLES. Save you, fair queen!\n  HELENA. And you, monarch!\n  PAROLLES. No.\n  HELENA. And no.\n  PAROLLES. Are you meditating on virginity?\n  HELENA. Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you; let me ask you a\n    question. Man is enemy to virginity; how may we barricado it\n    against him?\n  PAROLLES. Keep him out.\n  HELENA. But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant in the\n    defence, yet is weak. Unfold to us some warlike resistance.\n  PAROLLES. There is none. Man, setting down before you, will\n    undermine you and blow you up.\n  HELENA. Bless our poor virginity from underminers and blowers-up!\n    Is there no military policy how virgins might blow up men?\n  PAROLLES. Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be blown  \n    up; marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves\n     made, you lose your city. It is not politic in the commonwealth\n    of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational\n    increase; and there was never virgin got till virginity was first\n    lost. That you were made of is metal to make virgins. Virginity\n    by being once lost may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it\n    is ever lost. \'Tis too cold a companion; away with\'t.\n  HELENA. I will stand for \'t a little, though therefore I die a\n    virgin.\n  PAROLLES. There\'s little can be said in \'t; \'tis against the rule\n    of nature. To speak on the part of virginity is to accuse your\n    mothers; which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs\n    himself is a virgin; virginity murders itself, and should be\n    buried in highways, out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate\n    offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a\n    cheese; consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with\n    feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud,\n    idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the\n    canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by\'t. Out with\'t.\n    Within ten year it will make itself ten, which is a goodly  \n    increase; and the principal itself not much the worse. Away\n    with\'t.\n  HELENA. How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?\n  PAROLLES. Let me see. Marry, ill to like him that ne\'er it likes.\n    \'Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept,\n    the less worth. Off with\'t while \'tis vendible; answer the time\n    of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of\n    fashion, richly suited but unsuitable; just like the brooch and\n    the toothpick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your\n    pie and your porridge than in your cheek. And your virginity,\n    your old virginity, is like one of our French wither\'d pears: it\n    looks ill, it eats drily; marry, \'tis a wither\'d pear; it was\n    formerly better; marry, yet \'tis a wither\'d pear. Will you\n    anything with it?\n  HELENA. Not my virginity yet.\n    There shall your master have a thousand loves,\n    A mother, and a mistress, and a friend,\n    A phoenix, captain, and an enemy,\n    A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign,\n    A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear;  \n    His humble ambition, proud humility,\n    His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet,\n    His faith, his sweet disaster; with a world\n    Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms\n    That blinking Cupid gossips. Now shall he-\n    I know not what he shall. God send him well!\n    The court\'s a learning-place, and he is one-\n  PAROLLES. What one, i\' faith?\n  HELENA. That I wish well. \'Tis pity-\n  PAROLLES. What\'s pity?\n  HELENA. That wishing well had not a body in\'t\n    Which might be felt; that we, the poorer born,\n    Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,\n    Might with effects of them follow our friends\n    And show what we alone must think, which never\n    Returns us thanks.\n\n                      Enter PAGE\n\n  PAGE. Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you.      Exit PAGE  \n  PAROLLES. Little Helen, farewell; if I can remember thee, I will\n    think of thee at court.\n  HELENA. Monsieur Parolles, you were born under a charitable star.\n  PAROLLES. Under Mars, I.\n  HELENA. I especially think, under Mars.\n  PAROLLES. Why under Man?\n  HELENA. The wars hath so kept you under that you must needs be born\n    under Mars.\n  PAROLLES. When he was predominant.\n  HELENA. When he was retrograde, I think, rather.\n  PAROLLES. Why think you so?\n  HELENA. You go so much backward when you fight.\n  PAROLLES. That\'s for advantage.\n  HELENA. So is running away, when fear proposes the safety: but the\n    composition that your valour and fear makes in you is a virtue of\n    a good wing, and I like the wear well.\n  PAROLLES. I am so full of business I cannot answer thee acutely. I\n    will return perfect courtier; in the which my instruction shall\n    serve to naturalize thee, so thou wilt be capable of a courtier\'s\n    counsel, and understand what advice shall thrust upon thee; else  \n    thou diest in thine unthankfulness, and thine ignorance makes\n    thee away. Farewell. When thou hast leisure, say thy prayers;\n    when thou hast none, remember thy friends. Get thee a good\n    husband and use him as he uses thee. So, farewell.\n Exit\n  HELENA. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,\n    Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky\n    Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull\n    Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.\n    What power is it which mounts my love so high,\n    That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?\n    The mightiest space in fortune nature brings\n    To join like likes, and kiss like native things.\n    Impossible be strange attempts to those\n    That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose\n    What hath been cannot be. Who ever strove\n    To show her merit that did miss her love?\n    The King\'s disease-my project may deceive me,\n    But my intents are fix\'d, and will not leave me.        Exit\n\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE 2.\nParis. The KING\'S palace\n\nFlourish of cornets. Enter the KING OF FRANCE, with letters,\nand divers ATTENDANTS\n\n  KING. The Florentines and Senoys are by th\' ears;\n    Have fought with equal fortune, and continue\n    A braving war.\n  FIRST LORD. So \'tis reported, sir.\n  KING. Nay, \'tis most credible. We here receive it,\n    A certainty, vouch\'d from our cousin Austria,\n    With caution, that the Florentine will move us\n    For speedy aid; wherein our dearest friend\n    Prejudicates the business, and would seem\n    To have us make denial.\n  FIRST LORD. His love and wisdom,\n    Approv\'d so to your Majesty, may plead\n    For amplest credence.\n  KING. He hath arm\'d our answer,\n    And Florence is denied before he comes;\n    Yet, for our gentlemen that mean to see  \n    The Tuscan service, freely have they leave\n    To stand on either part.\n  SECOND LORD. It well may serve\n    A nursery to our gentry, who are sick\n    For breathing and exploit.\n  KING. What\'s he comes here?\n\n              Enter BERTRAM, LAFEU, and PAROLLES\n\n  FIRST LORD. It is the Count Rousillon, my good lord,\n    Young Bertram.\n  KING. Youth, thou bear\'st thy father\'s face;\n    Frank nature, rather curious than in haste,\n    Hath well compos\'d thee. Thy father\'s moral parts\n    Mayst thou inherit too! Welcome to Paris.\n  BERTRAM. My thanks and duty are your Majesty\'s.\n  KING. I would I had that corporal soundness now,\n    As when thy father and myself in friendship\n    First tried our soldiership. He did look far\n    Into the service of the time, and was  \n    Discipled of the bravest. He lasted long;\n    But on us both did haggish age steal on,\n    And wore us out of act. It much repairs me\n    To talk of your good father. In his youth\n    He had the wit which I can well observe\n    To-day in our young lords; but they may jest\n    Till their own scorn return to them unnoted\n    Ere they can hide their levity in honour.\n    So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness\n    Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were,\n    His equal had awak\'d them; and his honour,\n    Clock to itself, knew the true minute when\n    Exception bid him speak, and at this time\n    His tongue obey\'d his hand. Who were below him\n    He us\'d as creatures of another place;\n    And bow\'d his eminent top to their low ranks,\n    Making them proud of his humility\n    In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man\n    Might be a copy to these younger times;\n    Which, followed well, would demonstrate them now  \n    But goers backward.\n  BERTRAM. His good remembrance, sir,\n    Lies richer in your thoughts than on his tomb;\n    So in approof lives not his epitaph\n    As in your royal speech.\n  KING. Would I were with him! He would always say-\n    Methinks I hear him now; his plausive words\n    He scatter\'d not in ears, but grafted them\n    To grow there, and to bear- \'Let me not live\'-\n    This his good melancholy oft began,\n    On the catastrophe and heel of pastime,\n    When it was out-\'Let me not live\' quoth he\n    \'After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff\n    Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses\n    All but new things disdain; whose judgments are\n    Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies\n    Expire before their fashions.\' This he wish\'d.\n    I, after him, do after him wish too,\n    Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home,\n    I quickly were dissolved from my hive,  \n    To give some labourers room.\n  SECOND LORD. You\'re loved, sir;\n    They that least lend it you shall lack you first.\n  KING. I fill a place, I know\'t. How long is\'t, Count,\n    Since the physician at your father\'s died?\n    He was much fam\'d.\n  BERTRAM. Some six months since, my lord.\n  KING. If he were living, I would try him yet-\n    Lend me an arm-the rest have worn me out\n    With several applications. Nature and sickness\n    Debate it at their leisure. Welcome, Count;\n    My son\'s no dearer.\n  BERTRAM. Thank your Majesty.                 Exeunt [Flourish]\n\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE 3.\nRousillon. The COUNT\'S palace\n\nEnter COUNTESS, STEWARD, and CLOWN\n\n  COUNTESS. I will now hear; what say you of this gentlewoman?\n  STEWARD. Madam, the care I have had to even your content I wish\n    might be found in the calendar of my past endeavours; for then we\n    wound our modesty, and make foul the clearness of our deservings,\n    when of ourselves we publish them.\n  COUNTESS. What does this knave here? Get you gone, sirrah. The\n    complaints I have heard of you I do not all believe; \'tis my\n    slowness that I do not, for I know you lack not folly to commit\n    them and have ability enough to make such knaveries yours.\n  CLOWN. \'Tis not unknown to you, madam, I am a poor fellow.\n  COUNTESS. Well, sir.\n  CLOWN. No, madam, \'tis not so well that I am poor, though many of\n    the rich are damn\'d; but if I may have your ladyship\'s good will\n    to go to the world, Isbel the woman and I will do as we may.\n  COUNTESS. Wilt thou needs be a beggar?\n  CLOWN. I do beg your good will in this case.\n  COUNTESS. In what case?  \n  CLOWN. In Isbel\'s case and mine own. Service is no heritage; and I\n    think I shall never have the blessing of God till I have issue o\'\n    my body; for they say bames are blessings.\n  COUNTESS. Tell me thy reason why thou wilt marry.\n  CLOWN. My poor body, madam, requires it. I am driven on by the\n    flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives.\n  COUNTESS. Is this all your worship\'s reason?\n  CLOWN. Faith, madam, I have other holy reasons, such as they are.\n  COUNTESS. May the world know them?\n  CLOWN. I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and all flesh\n    and blood are; and, indeed, I do marry that I may repent.\n  COUNTESS. Thy marriage, sooner than thy wickedness.\n  CLOWN. I am out o\' friends, madam, and I hope to have friends for\n    my wife\'s sake.\n  COUNTESS. Such friends are thine enemies, knave.\n  CLOWN. Y\'are shallow, madam-in great friends; for the knaves come\n    to do that for me which I am aweary of. He that ears my land\n    spares my team, and gives me leave to in the crop. If I be his\n    cuckold, he\'s my drudge. He that comforts my wife is the\n    cherisher of my flesh and blood; he that cherishes my flesh and  \n    blood loves my flesh and blood; he that loves my flesh and blood\n    is my friend; ergo, he that kisses my wife is my friend. If men\n    could be contented to be what they are, there were no fear in\n    marriage; for young Charbon the puritan and old Poysam the\n    papist, howsome\'er their hearts are sever\'d in religion, their\n    heads are both one; they may jowl horns together like any deer\n    i\' th\' herd.\n  COUNTESS. Wilt thou ever be a foul-mouth\'d and calumnious knave?\n  CLOWN. A prophet I, madam; and I speak the truth the next way:\n\n              For I the ballad will repeat,\n                Which men full true shall find:\n              Your marriage comes by destiny,\n                Your cuckoo sings by kind.\n\n  COUNTESS. Get you gone, sir; I\'ll talk with you more anon.\n  STEWARD. May it please you, madam, that he bid Helen come to you.\n    Of her I am to speak.\n  COUNTESS. Sirrah, tell my gentlewoman I would speak with her; Helen\n    I mean.  \n  CLOWN.  [Sings]\n\n               \'Was this fair face the cause\' quoth she\n                 \'Why the Grecians sacked Troy?\n               Fond done, done fond,\n                 Was this King Priam\'s joy?\'\n               With that she sighed as she stood,\n               With that she sighed as she stood,\n                 And gave this sentence then:\n               \'Among nine bad if one be good,\n               Among nine bad if one be good,\n                 There\'s yet one good in ten.\'\n\n  COUNTESS. What, one good in ten? You corrupt the song, sirrah.\n  CLOWN. One good woman in ten, madam, which is a purifying o\' th\'\n    song. Would God would serve the world so all the year! We\'d find\n    no fault with the tithe-woman, if I were the parson. One in ten,\n    quoth \'a! An we might have a good woman born before every blazing\n    star, or at an earthquake, \'twould mend the lottery well: a man\n    may draw his heart out ere \'a pluck one.\n  COUNTESS. You\'ll be gone, sir knave, and do as I command you.  \n  CLOWN. That man should be at woman\'s command, and yet no hurt done!\n    Though honesty be no puritan, yet it will do no hurt; it will\n    wear the surplice of humility over the black gown of a big heart.\n    I am going, forsooth. The business is for Helen to come hither.\n Exit\n  COUNTESS. Well, now.\n  STEWARD. I know, madam, you love your gentlewoman entirely.\n  COUNTESS. Faith I do. Her father bequeath\'d her to me; and she\n    herself, without other advantage, may lawfully make title to as\n    much love as she finds. There is more owing her than is paid; and\n    more shall be paid her than she\'ll demand.\n  STEWARD. Madam, I was very late more near her than I think she\n    wish\'d me. Alone she was, and did communicate to herself her own\n    words to her own ears; she thought, I dare vow for her, they\n    touch\'d not any stranger sense. Her matter was, she loved your\n    son. Fortune, she said, was no goddess, that had put such\n    difference betwixt their two estates; Love no god, that would not\n    extend his might only where qualities were level; Diana no queen\n    of virgins, that would suffer her poor knight surpris\'d without\n    rescue in the first assault, or ransom afterward. This she  \n    deliver\'d in the most bitter touch of sorrow that e\'er I heard\n    virgin exclaim in; which I held my duty speedily to acquaint you\n    withal; sithence, in the loss that may happen, it concerns you\n    something to know it.\n  COUNTESS. YOU have discharg\'d this honestly; keep it to yourself.\n    Many likelihoods inform\'d me of this before, which hung so\n    tott\'ring in the balance that I could neither believe nor\n    misdoubt. Pray you leave me. Stall this in your bosom; and I\n    thank you for your honest care. I will speak with you further\n    anon.                                           Exit STEWARD\n\n                            Enter HELENA\n\n    Even so it was with me when I was young.\n    If ever we are nature\'s, these are ours; this thorn\n    Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong;\n    Our blood to us, this to our blood is born.\n    It is the show and seal of nature\'s truth,\n    Where love\'s strong passion is impress\'d in youth.\n    By our remembrances of days foregone,  \n    Such were our faults, or then we thought them none.\n    Her eye is sick on\'t; I observe her now.\n  HELENA. What is your pleasure, madam?\n  COUNTESS. You know, Helen,\n    I am a mother to you.\n  HELENA. Mine honourable mistress.\n  COUNTESS. Nay, a mother.\n    Why not a mother? When I said \'a mother,\'\n    Methought you saw a serpent. What\'s in \'mother\'\n    That you start at it? I say I am your mother,\n    And put you in the catalogue of those\n    That were enwombed mine. \'Tis often seen\n    Adoption strives with nature, and choice breeds\n    A native slip to us from foreign seeds.\n    You ne\'er oppress\'d me with a mother\'s groan,\n    Yet I express to you a mother\'s care.\n    God\'s mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood\n    To say I am thy mother? What\'s the matter,\n    That this distempered messenger of wet,\n    The many-colour\'d Iris, rounds thine eye?  \n    Why, that you are my daughter?\n  HELENA. That I am not.\n  COUNTESS. I say I am your mother.\n  HELENA. Pardon, madam.\n    The Count Rousillon cannot be my brother:\n    I am from humble, he from honoured name;\n    No note upon my parents, his all noble.\n    My master, my dear lord he is; and I\n    His servant live, and will his vassal die.\n    He must not be my brother.\n  COUNTESS. Nor I your mother?\n  HELENA. You are my mother, madam; would you were-\n    So that my lord your son were not my brother-\n    Indeed my mother! Or were you both our mothers,\n    I care no more for than I do for heaven,\n    So I were not his sister. Can\'t no other,\n    But, I your daughter, he must be my brother?\n  COUNTESS. Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law.\n    God shield you mean it not! \'daughter\' and \'mother\'\n    So strive upon your pulse. What! pale again?  \n    My fear hath catch\'d your fondness. Now I see\n    The myst\'ry of your loneliness, and find\n    Your salt tears\' head. Now to all sense \'tis gross\n    You love my son; invention is asham\'d,\n    Against the proclamation of thy passion,\n    To say thou dost not. Therefore tell me true;\n    But tell me then, \'tis so; for, look, thy cheeks\n    Confess it, th\' one to th\' other; and thine eyes\n    See it so grossly shown in thy behaviours\n    That in their kind they speak it; only sin\n    And hellish obstinacy tie thy tongue,\n    That truth should be suspected. Speak, is\'t so?\n    If it be so, you have wound a goodly clew;\n    If it be not, forswear\'t; howe\'er, I charge thee,\n    As heaven shall work in me for thine avail,\n    To tell me truly.\n  HELENA. Good madam, pardon me.\n  COUNTESS. Do you love my son?\n  HELENA. Your pardon, noble mistress.\n  COUNTESS. Love you my son?  \n  HELENA. Do not you love him, madam?\n  COUNTESS. Go not about; my love hath in\'t a bond\n    Whereof the world takes note. Come, come, disclose\n    The state of your affection; for your passions\n    Have to the full appeach\'d.\n  HELENA. Then I confess,\n    Here on my knee, before high heaven and you,\n    That before you, and next unto high heaven,\n    I love your son.\n    My friends were poor, but honest; so\'s my love.\n    Be not offended, for it hurts not him\n    That he is lov\'d of me; I follow him not\n    By any token of presumptuous suit,\n    Nor would I have him till I do deserve him;\n    Yet never know how that desert should be.\n    I know I love in vain, strive against hope;\n    Yet in this captious and intenible sieve\n    I still pour in the waters of my love,\n    And lack not to lose still. Thus, Indian-like,\n    Religious in mine error, I adore  \n    The sun that looks upon his worshipper\n    But knows of him no more. My dearest madam,\n    Let not your hate encounter with my love,\n    For loving where you do; but if yourself,\n    Whose aged honour cites a virtuous youth,\n    Did ever in so true a flame of liking\n    Wish chastely and love dearly that your Dian\n    Was both herself and Love; O, then, give pity\n    To her whose state is such that cannot choose\n    But lend and give where she is sure to lose;\n    That seeks not to find that her search implies,\n    But, riddle-like, lives sweetly where she dies!\n  COUNTESS. Had you not lately an intent-speak truly-\n    To go to Paris?\n  HELENA. Madam, I had.\n  COUNTESS. Wherefore? Tell true.\n  HELENA. I will tell truth; by grace itself I swear.\n    You know my father left me some prescriptions\n    Of rare and prov\'d effects, such as his reading\n    And manifest experience had collected  \n    For general sovereignty; and that he will\'d me\n    In heedfull\'st reservation to bestow them,\n    As notes whose faculties inclusive were\n    More than they were in note. Amongst the rest\n    There is a remedy, approv\'d, set down,\n    To cure the desperate languishings whereof\n    The King is render\'d lost.\n  COUNTESS. This was your motive\n    For Paris, was it? Speak.\n  HELENA. My lord your son made me to think of this,\n    Else Paris, and the medicine, and the King,\n    Had from the conversation of my thoughts\n    Haply been absent then.\n  COUNTESS. But think you, Helen,\n    If you should tender your supposed aid,\n    He would receive it? He and his physicians\n    Are of a mind: he, that they cannot help him;\n    They, that they cannot help. How shall they credit\n    A poor unlearned virgin, when the schools,\n    Embowell\'d of their doctrine, have let off  \n    The danger to itself?\n  HELENA. There\'s something in\'t\n    More than my father\'s skill, which was the great\'st\n    Of his profession, that his good receipt\n    Shall for my legacy be sanctified\n    By th\' luckiest stars in heaven; and, would your honour\n    But give me leave to try success, I\'d venture\n    The well-lost life of mine on his Grace\'s cure.\n    By such a day and hour.\n  COUNTESS. Dost thou believe\'t?\n  HELENA. Ay, madam, knowingly.\n  COUNTESS. Why, Helen, thou shalt have my leave and love,\n    Means and attendants, and my loving greetings\n    To those of mine in court. I\'ll stay at home,\n    And pray God\'s blessing into thy attempt.\n    Be gone to-morrow; and be sure of this,\n    What I can help thee to thou shalt not miss.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 1.\nParis. The KING\'S palace\n\nFlourish of cornets. Enter the KING with divers young LORDS taking leave\nfor the Florentine war; BERTRAM and PAROLLES; ATTENDANTS\n\n  KING. Farewell, young lords; these war-like principles\n    Do not throw from you. And you, my lords, farewell;\n    Share the advice betwixt you; if both gain all,\n    The gift doth stretch itself as \'tis receiv\'d,\n    And is enough for both.\n  FIRST LORD. \'Tis our hope, sir,\n    After well-ent\'red soldiers, to return\n    And find your Grace in health.\n  KING. No, no, it cannot be; and yet my heart\n    Will not confess he owes the malady\n    That doth my life besiege. Farewell, young lords;\n    Whether I live or die, be you the sons\n    Of worthy Frenchmen; let higher Italy-\n    Those bated that inherit but the fall\n    Of the last monarchy-see that you come  \n    Not to woo honour, but to wed it; when\n    The bravest questant shrinks, find what you seek,\n    That fame may cry you aloud. I say farewell.\n  SECOND LORD. Health, at your bidding, serve your Majesty!\n  KING. Those girls of Italy, take heed of them;\n    They say our French lack language to deny,\n    If they demand; beware of being captives\n    Before you serve.\n    BOTH. Our hearts receive your warnings.\n  KING. Farewell.  [To ATTENDANTS]  Come hither to me.\n                                       The KING retires attended\n  FIRST LORD. O my sweet lord, that you will stay behind us!\n  PAROLLES. \'Tis not his fault, the spark.\n    SECOND LORD. O, \'tis brave wars!\n  PAROLLES. Most admirable! I have seen those wars.\n  BERTRAM. I am commanded here and kept a coil with\n    \'Too young\' and next year\' and "Tis too early.\'\n  PAROLLES. An thy mind stand to \'t, boy, steal away bravely.\n  BERTRAM. I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock,\n    Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry,  \n    Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn\n    But one to dance with. By heaven, I\'ll steal away.\n  FIRST LORD. There\'s honour in the theft.\n  PAROLLES. Commit it, Count.\n  SECOND LORD. I am your accessary; and so farewell.\n  BERTRAM. I grow to you, and our parting is a tortur\'d body.\n  FIRST LORD. Farewell, Captain.\n  SECOND LORD. Sweet Monsieur Parolles!\n  PAROLLES. Noble heroes, my sword and yours are kin. Good sparks and\n    lustrous, a word, good metals: you shall find in the regiment of\n    the Spinii one Captain Spurio, with his cicatrice, an emblem of\n    war, here on his sinister cheek; it was this very sword\n    entrench\'d it. Say to him I live; and observe his reports for me.\n  FIRST LORD. We shall, noble Captain.\n  PAROLLES. Mars dote on you for his novices!       Exeunt LORDS\n    What will ye do?\n\n                            Re-enter the KING\n\n  BERTRAM. Stay; the King!  \n  PAROLLES. Use a more spacious ceremony to the noble lords; you have\n    restrain\'d yourself within the list of too cold an adieu. Be more\n    expressive to them; for they wear themselves in the cap of the\n    time; there do muster true gait; eat, speak, and move, under the\n    influence of the most receiv\'d star; and though the devil lead\n    the measure, such are to be followed. After them, and take a more\n    dilated farewell.\n  BERTRAM. And I will do so.\n  PAROLLES. Worthy fellows; and like to prove most sinewy sword-men.\n                                     Exeunt BERTRAM and PAROLLES\n\n                              Enter LAFEU\n\n  LAFEU.  [Kneeling]  Pardon, my lord, for me and for my tidings.\n  KING. I\'ll fee thee to stand up.\n  LAFEU. Then here\'s a man stands that has brought his pardon.\n    I would you had kneel\'d, my lord, to ask me mercy;\n    And that at my bidding you could so stand up.\n  KING. I would I had; so I had broke thy pate,\n    And ask\'d thee mercy for\'t.  \n  LAFEU. Good faith, across!\n    But, my good lord, \'tis thus: will you be cur\'d\n    Of your infirmity?\n  KING. No.\n  LAFEU. O, will you eat\n    No grapes, my royal fox? Yes, but you will\n    My noble grapes, an if my royal fox\n    Could reach them: I have seen a medicine\n    That\'s able to breathe life into a stone,\n    Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary\n    With spritely fire and motion; whose simple touch\n    Is powerful to araise King Pepin, nay,\n    To give great Charlemain a pen in\'s hand\n    And write to her a love-line.\n  KING. What her is this?\n  LAFEU. Why, Doctor She! My lord, there\'s one arriv\'d,\n    If you will see her. Now, by my faith and honour,\n    If seriously I may convey my thoughts\n    In this my light deliverance, I have spoke\n    With one that in her sex, her years, profession,  \n    Wisdom, and constancy, hath amaz\'d me more\n    Than I dare blame my weakness. Will you see her,\n    For that is her demand, and know her business?\n    That done, laugh well at me.\n  KING. Now, good Lafeu,\n    Bring in the admiration, that we with the\n    May spend our wonder too, or take off thine\n    By wond\'ring how thou took\'st it.\n  LAFEU. Nay, I\'ll fit you,\n    And not be all day neither.                       Exit LAFEU\n  KING. Thus he his special nothing ever prologues.\n\n                   Re-enter LAFEU with HELENA\n\n  LAFEU. Nay, come your ways.\n  KING. This haste hath wings indeed.\n  LAFEU. Nay, come your ways;\n    This is his Majesty; say your mind to him.\n    A traitor you do look like; but such traitors\n    His Majesty seldom fears. I am Cressid\'s uncle,  \n    That dare leave two together. Fare you well.            Exit\n  KING. Now, fair one, does your business follow us?\n  HELENA. Ay, my good lord.\n    Gerard de Narbon was my father,\n    In what he did profess, well found.\n  KING. I knew him.\n  HELENA. The rather will I spare my praises towards him;\n    Knowing him is enough. On\'s bed of death\n    Many receipts he gave me; chiefly one,\n    Which, as the dearest issue of his practice,\n    And of his old experience th\' only darling,\n    He bade me store up as a triple eye,\n    Safer than mine own two, more dear. I have so:\n    And, hearing your high Majesty is touch\'d\n    With that malignant cause wherein the honour\n    Of my dear father\'s gift stands chief in power,\n    I come to tender it, and my appliance,\n    With all bound humbleness.\n  KING. We thank you, maiden;\n    But may not be so credulous of cure,  \n    When our most learned doctors leave us, and\n    The congregated college have concluded\n    That labouring art can never ransom nature\n    From her inaidable estate-I say we must not\n    So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope,\n    To prostitute our past-cure malady\n    To empirics; or to dissever so\n    Our great self and our credit to esteem\n    A senseless help, when help past sense we deem.\n  HELENA. My duty then shall pay me for my pains.\n    I will no more enforce mine office on you;\n    Humbly entreating from your royal thoughts\n    A modest one to bear me back again.\n  KING. I cannot give thee less, to be call\'d grateful.\n    Thou thought\'st to help me; and such thanks I give\n    As one near death to those that wish him live.\n    But what at full I know, thou know\'st no part;\n    I knowing all my peril, thou no art.\n  HELENA. What I can do can do no hurt to try,\n    Since you set up your rest \'gainst remedy.  \n    He that of greatest works is finisher\n    Oft does them by the weakest minister.\n    So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,\n    When judges have been babes. Great floods have flown\n    From simple sources, and great seas have dried\n    When miracles have by the greatest been denied.\n    Oft expectation fails, and most oft there\n    Where most it promises; and oft it hits\n    Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.\n  KING. I must not hear thee. Fare thee well, kind maid;\n    Thy pains, not us\'d, must by thyself be paid;\n    Proffers not took reap thanks for their reward.\n  HELENA. Inspired merit so by breath is barr\'d.\n    It is not so with Him that all things knows,\n    As \'tis with us that square our guess by shows;\n    But most it is presumption in us when\n    The help of heaven we count the act of men.\n    Dear sir, to my endeavours give consent;\n    Of heaven, not me, make an experiment.\n    I am not an impostor, that proclaim  \n    Myself against the level of mine aim;\n    But know I think, and think I know most sure,\n    My art is not past power nor you past cure.\n  KING. Art thou so confident? Within what space\n    Hop\'st thou my cure?\n  HELENA. The greatest Grace lending grace.\n    Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring\n    Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring,\n    Ere twice in murk and occidental damp\n    Moist Hesperus hath quench\'d his sleepy lamp,\n    Or four and twenty times the pilot\'s glass\n    Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass,\n    What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly,\n    Health shall live free, and sickness freely die.\n  KING. Upon thy certainty and confidence\n    What dar\'st thou venture?\n  HELENA. Tax of impudence,\n    A strumpet\'s boldness, a divulged shame,\n    Traduc\'d by odious ballads; my maiden\'s name\n    Sear\'d otherwise; ne worse of worst-extended  \n    With vilest torture let my life be ended.\n  KING. Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak\n    His powerful sound within an organ weak;\n    And what impossibility would slay\n    In common sense, sense saves another way.\n    Thy life is dear; for all that life can rate\n    Worth name of life in thee hath estimate:\n    Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, all\n    That happiness and prime can happy call.\n    Thou this to hazard needs must intimate\n    Skill infinite or monstrous desperate.\n    Sweet practiser, thy physic I will try,\n    That ministers thine own death if I die.\n  HELENA. If I break time, or flinch in property\n    Of what I spoke, unpitied let me die;\n    And well deserv\'d. Not helping, death\'s my fee;\n    But, if I help, what do you promise me?\n  KING. Make thy demand.\n  HELENA. But will you make it even?\n  KING. Ay, by my sceptre and my hopes of heaven.  \n  HELENA. Then shalt thou give me with thy kingly hand\n    What husband in thy power I will command.\n    Exempted be from me the arrogance\n    To choose from forth the royal blood of France,\n    My low and humble name to propagate\n    With any branch or image of thy state;\n    But such a one, thy vassal, whom I know\n    Is free for me to ask, thee to bestow.\n  KING. Here is my hand; the premises observ\'d,\n    Thy will by my performance shall be serv\'d.\n    So make the choice of thy own time, for I,\n    Thy resolv\'d patient, on thee still rely.\n    More should I question thee, and more I must,\n    Though more to know could not be more to trust,\n    From whence thou cam\'st, how tended on. But rest\n    Unquestion\'d welcome and undoubted blest.\n    Give me some help here, ho! If thou proceed\n    As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.\n                                              [Flourish. Exeunt]\n\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 2.\nRousillon. The COUNT\'S palace\n\nEnter COUNTESS and CLOWN\n\n  COUNTESS. Come on, sir; I shall now put you to the height of your\n    breeding.\n  CLOWN. I will show myself highly fed and lowly taught. I know my\n    business is but to the court.\n  COUNTESS. To the court! Why, what place make you special, when you\n    put off that with such contempt? But to the court!\n  CLOWN. Truly, madam, if God have lent a man any manners, he may\n    easily put it off at court. He that cannot make a leg, put off\'s\n    cap, kiss his hand, and say nothing, has neither leg, hands, lip,\n    nor cap; and indeed such a fellow, to say precisely, were not for\n    the court; but for me, I have an answer will serve all men.\n  COUNTESS. Marry, that\'s a bountiful answer that fits all questions.\n  CLOWN. It is like a barber\'s chair, that fits all buttocks-the pin\n    buttock, the quatch buttock, the brawn buttock, or any buttock.\n  COUNTESS. Will your answer serve fit to all questions?\n  CLOWN. As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as your\n    French crown for your taffety punk, as Tib\'s rush for Tom\'s\n    forefinger, as a pancake for Shrove Tuesday, a morris for Mayday,\n    as the nail to his hole, the cuckold to his horn, as a scolding\n    quean to a wrangling knave, as the nun\'s lip to the friar\'s\n    mouth; nay, as the pudding to his skin.\n  COUNTESS. Have you, I, say, an answer of such fitness for all\n    questions?\n  CLOWN. From below your duke to beneath your constable, it will fit\n    any question.\n  COUNTESS. It must be an answer of most monstrous size that must fit\n    all demands.\n  CLOWN. But a trifle neither, in good faith, if the learned should\n    speak truth of it. Here it is, and all that belongs to\'t. Ask me\n    if I am a courtier: it shall do you no harm to learn.\n  COUNTESS. To be young again, if we could, I will be a fool in\n    question, hoping to be the wiser by your answer. I pray you, sir,\n    are you a courtier?\n  CLOWN. O Lord, sir!-There\'s a simple putting off. More, more, a\n    hundred of them.\n  COUNTESS. Sir, I am a poor friend of yours, that loves you.\n  CLOWN. O Lord, sir!-Thick, thick; spare not me.  \n  COUNTESS. I think, sir, you can eat none of this homely meat.\n  CLOWN. O Lord, sir!-Nay, put me to\'t, I warrant you.\n  COUNTESS. You were lately whipp\'d, sir, as I think.\n  CLOWN. O Lord, sir!-Spare not me.\n  COUNTESS. Do you cry \'O Lord, sir!\' at your whipping, and \'spare\n    not me\'? Indeed your \'O Lord, sir!\' is very sequent to your\n    whipping. You would answer very well to a whipping, if you were\n    but bound to\'t.\n  CLOWN. I ne\'er had worse luck in my life in my \'O Lord, sir!\' I see\n    thing\'s may serve long, but not serve ever.\n  COUNTESS. I play the noble housewife with the time,\n    To entertain it so merrily with a fool.\n  CLOWN. O Lord, sir!-Why, there\'t serves well again.\n  COUNTESS. An end, sir! To your business: give Helen this,\n    And urge her to a present answer back;\n    Commend me to my kinsmen and my son. This is not much.\n  CLOWN. Not much commendation to them?\n  COUNTESS. Not much employment for you. You understand me?\n  CLOWN. Most fruitfully; I am there before my legs.\n  COUNTESS. Haste you again.                              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 3.\nParis. The KING\'S palace\n\nEnter BERTRAM, LAFEU, and PAROLLES\n\n  LAFEU. They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical\n    persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and\n    causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors,\n    ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge when we should submit\n    ourselves to an unknown fear.\n  PAROLLES. Why, \'tis the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot\n    out in our latter times.\n  BERTRAM. And so \'tis.\n  LAFEU. To be relinquish\'d of the artists-\n  PAROLLES. So I say-both of Galen and Paracelsus.\n  LAFEU. Of all the learned and authentic fellows-\n  PAROLLES. Right; so I say.\n  LAFEU. That gave him out incurable-\n  PAROLLES. Why, there \'tis; so say I too.\n  LAFEU. Not to be help\'d-\n  PAROLLES. Right; as \'twere a man assur\'d of a-\n  LAFEU. Uncertain life and sure death.  \n  PAROLLES. Just; you say well; so would I have said.\n  LAFEU. I may truly say it is a novelty to the world.\n  PAROLLES. It is indeed. If you will have it in showing, you shall\n    read it in what-do-ye-call\'t here.\n  LAFEU.  [Reading the ballad title]  \'A Showing of a Heavenly\n    Effect in an Earthly Actor.\'\n  PAROLLES. That\'s it; I would have said the very same.\n  LAFEU. Why, your dolphin is not lustier. \'Fore me, I speak in\n    respect-\n  PAROLLES. Nay, \'tis strange, \'tis very strange; that is the brief\n    and the tedious of it; and he\'s of a most facinerious spirit that\n    will not acknowledge it to be the-\n  LAFEU. Very hand of heaven.\n  PAROLLES. Ay; so I say.\n  LAFEU. In a most weak-\n  PAROLLES. And debile minister, great power, great transcendence;\n    which should, indeed, give us a further use to be made than alone\n    the recov\'ry of the King, as to be-\n  LAFEU. Generally thankful.\n  \n                 Enter KING, HELENA, and ATTENDANTS\n\n  PAROLLES. I would have said it; you say well. Here comes the King.\n  LAFEU. Lustig, as the Dutchman says. I\'ll like a maid the better,\n    whilst I have a tooth in my head. Why, he\'s able to lead her a\n    coranto.\n  PAROLLES. Mort du vinaigre! Is not this Helen?\n  LAFEU. \'Fore God, I think so.\n  KING. Go, call before me all the lords in court.\n                                               Exit an ATTENDANT\n    Sit, my preserver, by thy patient\'s side;\n    And with this healthful hand, whose banish\'d sense\n    Thou has repeal\'d, a second time receive\n    The confirmation of my promis\'d gift,\n    Which but attends thy naming.\n\n                     Enter three or four LORDS\n\n    Fair maid, send forth thine eye. This youthful parcel\n    Of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing,  \n    O\'er whom both sovereign power and father\'s voice\n    I have to use. Thy frank election make;\n    Thou hast power to choose, and they none to forsake.\n  HELENA. To each of you one fair and virtuous mistress\n    Fall, when love please. Marry, to each but one!\n  LAFEU. I\'d give bay Curtal and his furniture\n    My mouth no more were broken than these boys\',\n    And writ as little beard.\n  KING. Peruse them well.\n    Not one of those but had a noble father.\n  HELENA. Gentlemen,\n    Heaven hath through me restor\'d the King to health.\n  ALL. We understand it, and thank heaven for you.\n  HELENA. I am a simple maid, and therein wealthiest\n    That I protest I simply am a maid.\n    Please it your Majesty, I have done already.\n    The blushes in my cheeks thus whisper me:\n    \'We blush that thou shouldst choose; but, be refused,\n    Let the white death sit on thy cheek for ever,\n    We\'ll ne\'er come there again.\'  \n  KING. Make choice and see:\n    Who shuns thy love shuns all his love in me.\n  HELENA. Now, Dian, from thy altar do I fly,\n    And to imperial Love, that god most high,\n    Do my sighs stream. Sir, will you hear my suit?\n  FIRST LORD. And grant it.\n  HELENA. Thanks, sir; all the rest is mute.\n  LAFEU. I had rather be in this choice than throw ames-ace for my\n    life.\n  HELENA. The honour, sir, that flames in your fair eyes,\n    Before I speak, too threat\'ningly replies.\n    Love make your fortunes twenty times above\n    Her that so wishes, and her humble love!\n  SECOND LORD. No better, if you please.\n  HELENA. My wish receive,\n    Which great Love grant; and so I take my leave.\n  LAFEU. Do all they deny her? An they were sons of mine I\'d have\n    them whipt; or I would send them to th\' Turk to make eunuchs of.\n  HELENA. Be not afraid that I your hand should take;\n    I\'ll never do you wrong for your own sake.  \n    Blessing upon your vows; and in your bed\n    Find fairer fortune, if you ever wed!\n  LAFEU. These boys are boys of ice; they\'ll none have her.\n    Sure, they are bastards to the English; the French ne\'er got \'em.\n  HELENA. You are too young, too happy, and too good,\n    To make yourself a son out of my blood.\n  FOURTH LORD. Fair one, I think not so.\n  LAFEU. There\'s one grape yet; I am sure thy father drunk wine-but\n    if thou be\'st not an ass, I am a youth of fourteen; I have known\n    thee already.\n  HELENA.  [To BERTRAM]  I dare not say I take you; but I give\n    Me and my service, ever whilst I live,\n    Into your guiding power. This is the man.\n  KING. Why, then, young Bertram, take her; she\'s thy wife.\n  BERTRAM. My wife, my liege! I shall beseech your Highness,\n    In such a business give me leave to use\n    The help of mine own eyes.\n  KING. Know\'st thou not, Bertram,\n    What she has done for me?\n  BERTRAM. Yes, my good lord;  \n    But never hope to know why I should marry her.\n  KING. Thou know\'st she has rais\'d me from my sickly bed.\n  BERTRAM. But follows it, my lord, to bring me down\n    Must answer for your raising? I know her well:\n    She had her breeding at my father\'s charge.\n    A poor physician\'s daughter my wife! Disdain\n    Rather corrupt me ever!\n  KING. \'Tis only title thou disdain\'st in her, the which\n    I can build up. Strange is it that our bloods,\n    Of colour, weight, and heat, pour\'d all together,\n    Would quite confound distinction, yet stand off\n    In differences so mighty. If she be\n    All that is virtuous-save what thou dislik\'st,\n    A poor physician\'s daughter-thou dislik\'st\n    Of virtue for the name; but do not so.\n    From lowest place when virtuous things proceed,\n    The place is dignified by the doer\'s deed;\n    Where great additions swell\'s, and virtue none,\n    It is a dropsied honour. Good alone\n    Is good without a name. Vileness is so:  \n    The property by what it is should go,\n    Not by the title. She is young, wise, fair;\n    In these to nature she\'s immediate heir;\n    And these breed honour. That is honour\'s scorn\n    Which challenges itself as honour\'s born\n    And is not like the sire. Honours thrive\n    When rather from our acts we them derive\n    Than our fore-goers. The mere word\'s a slave,\n    Debauch\'d on every tomb, on every grave\n    A lying trophy; and as oft is dumb\n    Where dust and damn\'d oblivion is the tomb\n    Of honour\'d bones indeed. What should be said?\n    If thou canst like this creature as a maid,\n    I can create the rest. Virtue and she\n    Is her own dower; honour and wealth from me.\n  BERTRAM. I cannot love her, nor will strive to do \'t.\n  KING. Thou wrong\'st thyself, if thou shouldst strive to choose.\n  HELENA. That you are well restor\'d, my lord, I\'m glad.\n    Let the rest go.\n  KING. My honour\'s at the stake; which to defeat,  \n    I must produce my power. Here, take her hand,\n    Proud scornful boy, unworthy this good gift,\n    That dost in vile misprision shackle up\n    My love and her desert; that canst not dream\n    We, poising us in her defective scale,\n    Shall weigh thee to the beam; that wilt not know\n    It is in us to plant thine honour where\n    We please to have it grow. Check thy contempt;\n    Obey our will, which travails in thy good;\n    Believe not thy disdain, but presently\n    Do thine own fortunes that obedient right\n    Which both thy duty owes and our power claims;\n    Or I will throw thee from my care for ever\n    Into the staggers and the careless lapse\n    Of youth and ignorance; both my revenge and hate\n    Loosing upon thee in the name of justice,\n    Without all terms of pity. Speak; thine answer.\n  BERTRAM. Pardon, my gracious lord; for I submit\n    My fancy to your eyes. When I consider\n    What great creation and what dole of honour  \n    Flies where you bid it, I find that she which late\n    Was in my nobler thoughts most base is now\n    The praised of the King; who, so ennobled,\n    Is as \'twere born so.\n  KING. Take her by the hand,\n    And tell her she is thine; to whom I promise\n    A counterpoise, if not to thy estate\n    A balance more replete.\n  BERTRAM. I take her hand.\n  KING. Good fortune and the favour of the King\n    Smile upon this contract; whose ceremony\n    Shall seem expedient on the now-born brief,\n    And be perform\'d to-night. The solemn feast\n    Shall more attend upon the coming space,\n    Expecting absent friends. As thou lov\'st her,\n    Thy love\'s to me religious; else, does err.\n              Exeunt all but LAFEU and PAROLLES who stay behind,\n                                      commenting of this wedding\n  LAFEU. Do you hear, monsieur? A word with you.\n  PAROLLES. Your pleasure, sir?  \n  LAFEU. Your lord and master did well to make his recantation.\n  PAROLLES. Recantation! My Lord! my master!\n  LAFEU. Ay; is it not a language I speak?\n  PAROLLES. A most harsh one, and not to be understood without bloody\n    succeeding. My master!\n  LAFEU. Are you companion to the Count Rousillon?\n  PAROLLES. To any count; to all counts; to what is man.\n  LAFEU. To what is count\'s man: count\'s master is of another style.\n  PAROLLES. You are too old, sir; let it satisfy you, you are too\n    old.\n  LAFEU. I must tell thee, sirrah, I write man; to which title age\n    cannot bring thee.\n  PAROLLES. What I dare too well do, I dare not do.\n  LAFEU. I did think thee, for two ordinaries, to be a pretty wise\n    fellow; thou didst make tolerable vent of thy travel; it might\n    pass. Yet the scarfs and the bannerets about thee did manifoldly\n    dissuade me from believing thee a vessel of too great a burden. I\n    have now found thee; when I lose thee again I care not; yet art\n    thou good for nothing but taking up; and that thou\'rt scarce\n    worth.  \n  PAROLLES. Hadst thou not the privilege of antiquity upon thee-\n  LAFEU. Do not plunge thyself too far in anger, lest thou hasten thy\n    trial; which if-Lord have mercy on thee for a hen! So, my good\n    window of lattice, fare thee well; thy casement I need not open,\n    for I look through thee. Give me thy hand.\n  PAROLLES. My lord, you give me most egregious indignity.\n  LAFEU. Ay, with all my heart; and thou art worthy of it.\n  PAROLLES. I have not, my lord, deserv\'d it.\n  LAFEU. Yes, good faith, ev\'ry dram of it; and I will not bate thee\n    a scruple.\n  PAROLLES. Well, I shall be wiser.\n  LAFEU. Ev\'n as soon as thou canst, for thou hast to pull at a smack\n    o\' th\' contrary. If ever thou be\'st bound in thy scarf and\n    beaten, thou shalt find what it is to be proud of thy bondage. I\n    have a desire to hold my acquaintance with thee, or rather my\n    knowledge, that I may say in the default \'He is a man I know.\'\n  PAROLLES. My lord, you do me most insupportable vexation.\n  LAFEU. I would it were hell pains for thy sake, and my poor doing\n    eternal; for doing I am past, as I will by thee, in what motion\n    age will give me leave.                                 Exit  \n  PAROLLES. Well, thou hast a son shall take this disgrace off me:\n    scurvy, old, filthy, scurvy lord! Well, I must be patient; there\n    is no fettering of authority. I\'ll beat him, by my life, if I can\n    meet him with any convenience, an he were double and double a\n    lord. I\'ll have no more pity of his age than I would have of-\n    I\'ll beat him, and if I could but meet him again.\n\n                         Re-enter LAFEU\n\n  LAFEU. Sirrah, your lord and master\'s married; there\'s news for\n    you; you have a new mistress.\n  PAROLLES. I most unfeignedly beseech your lordship to make some\n    reservation of your wrongs. He is my good lord: whom I serve\n    above is my master.\n  LAFEU. Who? God?\n  PAROLLES. Ay, sir.\n  LAFEU. The devil it is that\'s thy master. Why dost thou garter up\n    thy arms o\' this fashion? Dost make hose of thy sleeves? Do other\n    servants so? Thou wert best set thy lower part where thy nose\n    stands. By mine honour, if I were but two hours younger, I\'d beat  \n    thee. Methink\'st thou art a general offence, and every man should\n    beat thee. I think thou wast created for men to breathe\n    themselves upon thee.\n  PAROLLES. This is hard and undeserved measure, my lord.\n  LAFEU. Go to, sir; you were beaten in Italy for picking a kernel\n    out of a pomegranate; you are a vagabond, and no true traveller;\n    you are more saucy with lords and honourable personages than the\n    commission of your birth and virtue gives you heraldry. You are\n    not worth another word, else I\'d call you knave. I leave you.\n Exit\n\n                           Enter BERTRAM\n\n  PAROLLES. Good, very, good, it is so then. Good, very good; let it\n    be conceal\'d awhile.\n  BERTRAM. Undone, and forfeited to cares for ever!\n  PAROLLES. What\'s the matter, sweetheart?\n  BERTRAM. Although before the solemn priest I have sworn,\n    I will not bed her.\n  PAROLLES. What, what, sweetheart?  \n  BERTRAM. O my Parolles, they have married me!\n    I\'ll to the Tuscan wars, and never bed her.\n  PAROLLES. France is a dog-hole, and it no more merits\n    The tread of a man\'s foot. To th\' wars!\n  BERTRAM. There\'s letters from my mother; what th\' import is I know\n    not yet.\n  PAROLLES. Ay, that would be known. To th\' wars, my boy, to th\'\n      wars!\n    He wears his honour in a box unseen\n    That hugs his kicky-wicky here at home,\n    Spending his manly marrow in her arms,\n    Which should sustain the bound and high curvet\n    Of Mars\'s fiery steed. To other regions!\n    France is a stable; we that dwell in\'t jades;\n    Therefore, to th\' war!\n  BERTRAM. It shall be so; I\'ll send her to my house,\n    Acquaint my mother with my hate to her,\n    And wherefore I am fled; write to the King\n    That which I durst not speak. His present gift\n    Shall furnish me to those Italian fields  \n    Where noble fellows strike. War is no strife\n    To the dark house and the detested wife.\n  PAROLLES. Will this capriccio hold in thee, art sure?\n  BERTRAM. Go with me to my chamber and advise me.\n    I\'ll send her straight away. To-morrow\n    I\'ll to the wars, she to her single sorrow.\n  PAROLLES. Why, these balls bound; there\'s noise in it. \'Tis hard:\n    A young man married is a man that\'s marr\'d.\n    Therefore away, and leave her bravely; go.\n    The King has done you wrong; but, hush, \'tis so.      Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 4.\nParis. The KING\'S palace\n\nEnter HELENA and CLOWN\n\n  HELENA. My mother greets me kindly; is she well?\n  CLOWN. She is not well, but yet she has her health; she\'s very\n    merry, but yet she is not well. But thanks be given, she\'s very\n    well, and wants nothing i\' th\' world; but yet she is not well.\n  HELENA. If she be very well, what does she ail that she\'s not very\n    well?\n  CLOWN. Truly, she\'s very well indeed, but for two things.\n  HELENA. What two things?\n  CLOWN. One, that she\'s not in heaven, whither God send her quickly!\n    The other, that she\'s in earth, from whence God send her quickly!\n\n                        Enter PAROLLES\n\n  PAROLLES. Bless you, my fortunate lady!\n  HELENA. I hope, sir, I have your good will to have mine own good\n    fortunes.\n  PAROLLES. You had my prayers to lead them on; and to keep them on,  \n    have them still. O, my knave, how does my old lady?\n  CLOWN. So that you had her wrinkles and I her money, I would she\n    did as you say.\n  PAROLLES. Why, I say nothing.\n  CLOWN. Marry, you are the wiser man; for many a man\'s tongue shakes\n    out his master\'s undoing. To say nothing, to do nothing, to know\n    nothing, and to have nothing, is to be a great part of your\n    title, which is within a very little of nothing.\n  PAROLLES. Away! th\'art a knave.\n  CLOWN. You should have said, sir, \'Before a knave th\'art a knave\';\n    that\'s \'Before me th\'art a knave.\' This had been truth, sir.\n  PAROLLES. Go to, thou art a witty fool; I have found thee.\n  CLOWN. Did you find me in yourself, sir, or were you taught to find\n    me? The search, sir, was profitable; and much fool may you find\n    in you, even to the world\'s pleasure and the increase of\n    laughter.\n  PAROLLES. A good knave, i\' faith, and well fed.\n    Madam, my lord will go away to-night:\n    A very serious business calls on him.\n    The great prerogative and rite of love,  \n    Which, as your due, time claims, he does acknowledge;\n    But puts it off to a compell\'d restraint;\n    Whose want, and whose delay, is strew\'d with sweets,\n    Which they distil now in the curbed time,\n    To make the coming hour o\'erflow with joy\n    And pleasure drown the brim.\n  HELENA. What\'s his else?\n  PAROLLES. That you will take your instant leave o\' th\' King,\n    And make this haste as your own good proceeding,\n    Strength\'ned with what apology you think\n    May make it probable need.\n  HELENA. What more commands he?\n  PAROLLES. That, having this obtain\'d, you presently\n    Attend his further pleasure.\n  HELENA. In everything I wait upon his will.\n  PAROLLES. I shall report it so.\n  HELENA. I pray you.                              Exit PAROLLES\n    Come, sirrah.                                         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 5.\nParis. The KING\'S palace\n\nEnter LAFEU and BERTRAM\n\n  LAFEU. But I hope your lordship thinks not him a soldier.\n  BERTRAM. Yes, my lord, and of very valiant approof.\n  LAFEU. You have it from his own deliverance.\n  BERTRAM. And by other warranted testimony.\n  LAFEU. Then my dial goes not true; I took this lark for a bunting.\n  BERTRAM. I do assure you, my lord, he is very great in knowledge,\n    and accordingly valiant.\n  LAFEU. I have then sinn\'d against his experience and transgress\'d\n    against his valour; and my state that way is dangerous, since I\n    cannot yet find in my heart to repent. Here he comes; I pray you\n    make us friends; I will pursue the amity\n\n                         Enter PAROLLES\n\n  PAROLLES.  [To BERTRAM]  These things shall be done, sir.\n  LAFEU. Pray you, sir, who\'s his tailor?\n  PAROLLES. Sir!  \n  LAFEU. O, I know him well. Ay, sir; he, sir, \'s a good workman, a\n    very good tailor.\n  BERTRAM.  [Aside to PAROLLES]  Is she gone to the King?\n  PAROLLES. She is.\n  BERTRAM. Will she away to-night?\n  PAROLLES. As you\'ll have her.\n  BERTRAM. I have writ my letters, casketed my treasure,\n    Given order for our horses; and to-night,\n    When I should take possession of the bride,\n    End ere I do begin.\n  LAFEU. A good traveller is something at the latter end of a dinner;\n    but one that lies three-thirds and uses a known truth to pass a\n    thousand nothings with, should be once heard and thrice beaten.\n    God save you, Captain.\n  BERTRAM. Is there any unkindness between my lord and you, monsieur?\n  PAROLLES. I know not how I have deserved to run into my lord\'s\n    displeasure.\n  LAFEU. You have made shift to run into \'t, boots and spurs and all,\n    like him that leapt into the custard; and out of it you\'ll run\n    again, rather than suffer question for your residence.  \n  BERTRAM. It may be you have mistaken him, my lord.\n  LAFEU. And shall do so ever, though I took him at\'s prayers.\n    Fare you well, my lord; and believe this of me: there can be no\n    kernal in this light nut; the soul of this man is his clothes;\n    trust him not in matter of heavy consequence; I have kept of them\n    tame, and know their natures. Farewell, monsieur; I have spoken\n    better of you than you have or will to deserve at my hand; but we\n    must do good against evil.                              Exit\n  PAROLLES. An idle lord, I swear.\n  BERTRAM. I think so.\n  PAROLLES. Why, do you not know him?\n  BERTRAM. Yes, I do know him well; and common speech\n    Gives him a worthy pass. Here comes my clog.\n\n                          Enter HELENA\n\n  HELENA. I have, sir, as I was commanded from you,\n    Spoke with the King, and have procur\'d his leave\n    For present parting; only he desires\n    Some private speech with you.  \n  BERTRAM. I shall obey his will.\n    You must not marvel, Helen, at my course,\n    Which holds not colour with the time, nor does\n    The ministration and required office\n    On my particular. Prepar\'d I was not\n    For such a business; therefore am I found\n    So much unsettled. This drives me to entreat you\n    That presently you take your way for home,\n    And rather muse than ask why I entreat you;\n    For my respects are better than they seem,\n    And my appointments have in them a need\n    Greater than shows itself at the first view\n    To you that know them not. This to my mother.\n                                               [Giving a letter]\n    \'Twill be two days ere I shall see you; so\n    I leave you to your wisdom.\n  HELENA. Sir, I can nothing say\n    But that I am your most obedient servant.\n  BERTRAM. Come, come, no more of that.\n  HELENA. And ever shall  \n    With true observance seek to eke out that\n    Wherein toward me my homely stars have fail\'d\n    To equal my great fortune.\n  BERTRAM. Let that go.\n    My haste is very great. Farewell; hie home.\n  HELENA. Pray, sir, your pardon.\n  BERTRAM. Well, what would you say?\n  HELENA. I am not worthy of the wealth I owe,\n    Nor dare I say \'tis mine, and yet it is;\n    But, like a timorous thief, most fain would steal\n    What law does vouch mine own.\n  BERTRAM. What would you have?\n  HELENA. Something; and scarce so much; nothing, indeed.\n    I would not tell you what I would, my lord.\n    Faith, yes:\n    Strangers and foes do sunder and not kiss.\n  BERTRAM. I pray you, stay not, but in haste to horse.\n  HELENA. I shall not break your bidding, good my lord.\n  BERTRAM. Where are my other men, monsieur?\n    Farewell!                                        Exit HELENA  \n    Go thou toward home, where I will never come\n    Whilst I can shake my sword or hear the drum.\n    Away, and for our flight.\n  PAROLLES. Bravely, coragio!                             Exeunt\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 1.\nFlorence. The DUKE\'s palace\n\n        Flourish. Enter the DUKE OF FLORENCE, attended; two\n               FRENCH LORDS, with a TROOP OF SOLDIERS\n\n  DUKE. So that, from point to point, now have you hear\n    The fundamental reasons of this war;\n    Whose great decision hath much blood let forth\n    And more thirsts after.\n  FIRST LORD. Holy seems the quarrel\n    Upon your Grace\'s part; black and fearful\n    On the opposer.\n  DUKE. Therefore we marvel much our cousin France\n    Would in so just a business shut his bosom\n    Against our borrowing prayers.\n  SECOND LORD. Good my lord,\n    The reasons of our state I cannot yield,\n    But like a common and an outward man\n    That the great figure of a council frames\n    By self-unable motion; therefore dare not\n    Say what I think of it, since I have found  \n    Myself in my incertain grounds to fail\n    As often as I guess\'d.\n  DUKE. Be it his pleasure.\n  FIRST LORD. But I am sure the younger of our nature,\n    That surfeit on their ease, will day by day\n    Come here for physic.\n  DUKE. Welcome shall they be\n    And all the honours that can fly from us\n    Shall on them settle. You know your places well;\n    When better fall, for your avails they fell.\n    To-morrow to th\' field. Flourish.                     Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 2.\nRousillon. The COUNT\'S palace\n\nEnter COUNTESS and CLOWN\n\n  COUNTESS. It hath happen\'d all as I would have had it, save that he\n    comes not along with her.\n  CLOWN. By my troth, I take my young lord to be a very melancholy\n    man.\n  COUNTESS. By what observance, I pray you?\n  CLOWN. Why, he will look upon his boot and sing; mend the ruff and\n    sing; ask questions and sing; pick his teeth and sing. I know a\n    man that had this trick of melancholy sold a goodly manor for a\n    song.\n  COUNTESS. Let me see what he writes, and when he means to come.\n                                              [Opening a letter]\n  CLOWN. I have no mind to Isbel since I was at court. Our old ling\n    and our Isbels o\' th\' country are nothing like your old ling and\n    your Isbels o\' th\' court. The brains of my Cupid\'s knock\'d out;\n    and I begin to love, as an old man loves money, with no stomach.\n  COUNTESS. What have we here?\n  CLOWN. E\'en that you have there.                          Exit  \n  COUNTESS.  [Reads]  \'I have sent you a daughter-in-law; she hath\n    recovered the King and undone me. I have wedded her, not bedded\n    her; and sworn to make the "not" eternal. You shall hear I am run\n    away; know it before the report come. If there be breadth enough\n    in the world, I will hold a long distance. My duty to you.\n                                           Your unfortunate son,\n                                                       BERTRAM.\'\n    This is not well, rash and unbridled boy,\n    To fly the favours of so good a king,\n    To pluck his indignation on thy head\n    By the misprizing of a maid too virtuous\n    For the contempt of empire.\n\n                           Re-enter CLOWN\n\n  CLOWN. O madam, yonder is heavy news within between two soldiers\n    and my young lady.\n  COUNTESS. What is the -matter?\n  CLOWN. Nay, there is some comfort in the news, some comfort; your\n    son will not be kill\'d so soon as I thought he would.  \n  COUNTESS. Why should he be kill\'d?\n  CLOWN. So say I, madam, if he run away, as I hear he does the\n    danger is in standing to \'t; that\'s the loss of men, though it be\n    the getting of children. Here they come will tell you more. For my\n    part, I only hear your son was run away.                Exit\n\n              Enter HELENA and the two FRENCH GENTLEMEN\n\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Save you, good madam.\n  HELENA. Madam, my lord is gone, for ever gone.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Do not say so.\n  COUNTESS. Think upon patience. Pray you, gentlemen-\n    I have felt so many quirks of joy and grief\n    That the first face of neither, on the start,\n    Can woman me unto \'t. Where is my son, I pray you?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Madam, he\'s gone to serve the Duke of Florence.\n    We met him thitherward; for thence we came,\n    And, after some dispatch in hand at court,\n    Thither we bend again.\n  HELENA. Look on this letter, madam; here\'s my passport.  \n    [Reads]  \'When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which\n    never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body\n    that I am father to, then call me husband; but in such a "then" I\n    write a "never."\n    This is a dreadful sentence.\n  COUNTESS. Brought you this letter, gentlemen?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Ay, madam;\n    And for the contents\' sake are sorry for our pains.\n  COUNTESS. I prithee, lady, have a better cheer;\n    If thou engrossest all the griefs are thine,\n    Thou robb\'st me of a moiety. He was my son;\n    But I do wash his name out of my blood,\n    And thou art all my child. Towards Florence is he?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Ay, madam.\n  COUNTESS. And to be a soldier?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Such is his noble purpose; and, believe \'t,\n    The Duke will lay upon him all the honour\n    That good convenience claims.\n  COUNTESS. Return you thither?\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Ay, madam, with the swiftest wing of speed.  \n  HELENA.  [Reads]  \'Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France.\'\n    \'Tis bitter.\n  COUNTESS. Find you that there?\n  HELENA. Ay, madam.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. \'Tis but the boldness of his hand haply, which\n    his heart was not consenting to.\n  COUNTESS. Nothing in France until he have no wife!\n    There\'s nothing here that is too good for him\n    But only she; and she deserves a lord\n    That twenty such rude boys might tend upon,\n    And call her hourly mistress. Who was with him?\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. A servant only, and a gentleman\n    Which I have sometime known.\n  COUNTESS. Parolles, was it not?\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Ay, my good lady, he.\n  COUNTESS. A very tainted fellow, and full of wickedness.\n    My son corrupts a well-derived nature\n    With his inducement.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Indeed, good lady,\n    The fellow has a deal of that too much  \n    Which holds him much to have.\n  COUNTESS. Y\'are welcome, gentlemen.\n    I will entreat you, when you see my son,\n    To tell him that his sword can never win\n    The honour that he loses. More I\'ll entreat you\n    Written to bear along.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. We serve you, madam,\n    In that and all your worthiest affairs.\n  COUNTESS. Not so, but as we change our courtesies.\n    Will you draw near?            Exeunt COUNTESS and GENTLEMEN\n  HELENA. \'Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France.\'\n    Nothing in France until he has no wife!\n    Thou shalt have none, Rousillon, none in France\n    Then hast thou all again. Poor lord! is\'t\n    That chase thee from thy country, and expose\n    Those tender limbs of thine to the event\n    Of the non-sparing war? And is it I\n    That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou\n    Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark\n    Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers,  \n    That ride upon the violent speed of fire,\n    Fly with false aim; move the still-piecing air,\n    That sings with piercing; do not touch my lord.\n    Whoever shoots at him, I set him there;\n    Whoever charges on his forward breast,\n    I am the caitiff that do hold him to\'t;\n    And though I kill him not, I am the cause\n    His death was so effected. Better \'twere\n    I met the ravin lion when he roar\'d\n    With sharp constraint of hunger; better \'twere\n    That all the miseries which nature owes\n    Were mine at once. No; come thou home, Rousillon,\n    Whence honour but of danger wins a scar,\n    As oft it loses all. I will be gone.\n    My being here it is that holds thee hence.\n    Shall I stay here to do \'t? No, no, although\n    The air of paradise did fan the house,\n    And angels offic\'d all. I will be gone,\n    That pitiful rumour may report my flight\n    To consolate thine ear. Come, night; end, day.  \n    For with the dark, poor thief, I\'ll steal away.         Exit\n\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 3.\nFlorence. Before the DUKE\'s palace\n\nFlourish. Enter the DUKE OF FLORENCE, BERTRAM, PAROLLES, SOLDIERS,\ndrum and trumpets\n\n  DUKE. The General of our Horse thou art; and we,\n    Great in our hope, lay our best love and credence\n    Upon thy promising fortune.\n  BERTRAM. Sir, it is\n    A charge too heavy for my strength; but yet\n    We\'ll strive to bear it for your worthy sake\n    To th\' extreme edge of hazard.\n  DUKE. Then go thou forth;\n    And Fortune play upon thy prosperous helm,\n    As thy auspicious mistress!\n  BERTRAM. This very day,\n    Great Mars, I put myself into thy file;\n    Make me but like my thoughts, and I shall prove\n    A lover of thy drum, hater of love.                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 4.\nRousillon. The COUNT\'S palace\n\nEnter COUNTESS and STEWARD\n\n  COUNTESS. Alas! and would you take the letter of her?\n    Might you not know she would do as she has done\n    By sending me a letter? Read it again.\n  STEWARD.  [Reads]  \'I am Saint Jaques\' pilgrim, thither gone.\n    Ambitious love hath so in me offended\n    That barefoot plod I the cold ground upon,\n    With sainted vow my faults to have amended.\n    Write, write, that from the bloody course of war\n    My dearest master, your dear son, may hie.\n    Bless him at home in peace, whilst I from far\n    His name with zealous fervour sanctify.\n    His taken labours bid him me forgive;\n    I, his despiteful Juno, sent him forth\n    From courtly friends, with camping foes to live,\n    Where death and danger dogs the heels of worth.\n    He is too good and fair for death and me;\n    Whom I myself embrace to set him free.\'  \n  COUNTESS. Ah, what sharp stings are in her mildest words!\n    Rinaldo, you did never lack advice so much\n    As letting her pass so; had I spoke with her,\n    I could have well diverted her intents,\n    Which thus she hath prevented.\n  STEWARD. Pardon me, madam;\n    If I had given you this at over-night,\n    She might have been o\'er ta\'en; and yet she writes\n    Pursuit would be but vain.\n  COUNTESS. What angel shall\n    Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive,\n    Unless her prayers, whom heaven delights to hear\n    And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath\n    Of greatest justice. Write, write, Rinaldo,\n    To this unworthy husband of his wife;\n    Let every word weigh heavy of her worth\n    That he does weigh too light. My greatest grief,\n    Though little he do feel it, set down sharply.\n    Dispatch the most convenient messenger.\n    When haply he shall hear that she is gone  \n    He will return; and hope I may that she,\n    Hearing so much, will speed her foot again,\n    Led hither by pure love. Which of them both\n    Is dearest to me I have no skill in sense\n    To make distinction. Provide this messenger.\n    My heart is heavy, and mine age is weak;\n    Grief would have tears, and sorrow bids me speak.     Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 5.\n\nWithout the walls of Florence\nA tucket afar off. Enter an old WIDOW OF FLORENCE, her daughter DIANA,\nVIOLENTA, and MARIANA, with other CITIZENS\n\n  WIDOW. Nay, come; for if they do approach the city we shall lose\n    all the sight.\n  DIANA. They say the French count has done most honourable service.\n  WIDOW. It is reported that he has taken their great\'st commander;\n    and that with his own hand he slew the Duke\'s brother.  [Tucket]\n    We have lost our labour; they are gone a contrary way. Hark! you\n    may know by their trumpets.\n  MARIANA. Come, let\'s return again, and suffice ourselves with the\n    report of it. Well, Diana, take heed of this French earl; the\n    honour of a maid is her name, and no legacy is so rich as\n    honesty.\n  WIDOW. I have told my neighbour how you have been solicited by a\n    gentleman his companion.\n  MARIANA. I know that knave, hang him! one Parolles; a filthy\n    officer he is in those suggestions for the young earl. Beware of  \n    them, Diana: their promises, enticements, oaths, tokens, and all\n    these engines of lust, are not the things they go under; many a\n    maid hath been seduced by them; and the misery is, example, that\n    so terrible shows in the wreck of maidenhood, cannot for all that\n    dissuade succession, but that they are limed with the twigs that\n    threatens them. I hope I need not to advise you further; but I\n    hope your own grace will keep you where you are, though there\n    were no further danger known but the modesty which is so lost.\n  DIANA. You shall not need to fear me.\n\n            Enter HELENA in the dress of a pilgrim\n\n  WIDOW. I hope so. Look, here comes a pilgrim. I know she will lie\n    at my house: thither they send one another. I\'ll question her.\n    God save you, pilgrim! Whither are bound?\n  HELENA. To Saint Jaques le Grand.\n    Where do the palmers lodge, I do beseech you?\n  WIDOW. At the Saint Francis here, beside the port.\n  HELENA. Is this the way?\n                                                  [A march afar]  \n  WIDOW. Ay, marry, is\'t. Hark you! They come this way.\n    If you will tarry, holy pilgrim,\n    But till the troops come by,\n    I will conduct you where you shall be lodg\'d;\n    The rather for I think I know your hostess\n    As ample as myself.\n  HELENA. Is it yourself?\n  WIDOW. If you shall please so, pilgrim.\n  HELENA. I thank you, and will stay upon your leisure.\n  WIDOW. You came, I think, from France?\n  HELENA. I did so.\n  WIDOW. Here you shall see a countryman of yours\n    That has done worthy service.\n  HELENA. His name, I pray you.\n  DIANA. The Count Rousillon. Know you such a one?\n  HELENA. But by the ear, that hears most nobly of him;\n    His face I know not.\n  DIANA. What some\'er he is,\n    He\'s bravely taken here. He stole from France,\n    As \'tis reported, for the King had married him  \n    Against his liking. Think you it is so?\n  HELENA. Ay, surely, mere the truth; I know his lady.\n  DIANA. There is a gentleman that serves the Count\n    Reports but coarsely of her.\n  HELENA. What\'s his name?\n  DIANA. Monsieur Parolles.\n  HELENA. O, I believe with him,\n    In argument of praise, or to the worth\n    Of the great Count himself, she is too mean\n    To have her name repeated; all her deserving\n    Is a reserved honesty, and that\n    I have not heard examin\'d.\n  DIANA. Alas, poor lady!\n    \'Tis a hard bondage to become the wife\n    Of a detesting lord.\n  WIDOW. I sweet, good creature, wheresoe\'er she is\n    Her heart weighs sadly. This young maid might do her\n    A shrewd turn, if she pleas\'d.\n  HELENA. How do you mean?\n    May be the amorous Count solicits her  \n    In the unlawful purpose.\n  WIDOW. He does, indeed;\n    And brokes with all that can in such a suit\n    Corrupt the tender honour of a maid;\n    But she is arm\'d for him, and keeps her guard\n    In honestest defence.\n\n    Enter, with drum and colours, BERTRAM, PAROLLES, and the\n                          whole ARMY\n\n  MARIANA. The gods forbid else!\n  WIDOW. So, now they come.\n    That is Antonio, the Duke\'s eldest son;\n    That, Escalus.\n  HELENA. Which is the Frenchman?\n  DIANA. He-\n    That with the plume; \'tis a most gallant fellow.\n    I would he lov\'d his wife; if he were honester\n    He were much goodlier. Is\'t not a handsome gentleman?\n  HELENA. I like him well.  \n  DIANA. \'Tis pity he is not honest. Yond\'s that same knave\n    That leads him to these places; were I his lady\n    I would poison that vile rascal.\n  HELENA. Which is he?\n  DIANA. That jack-an-apes with scarfs. Why is he melancholy?\n  HELENA. Perchance he\'s hurt i\' th\' battle.\n  PAROLLES. Lose our drum! well.\n  MARIANA. He\'s shrewdly vex\'d at something.\n    Look, he has spied us.\n  WIDOW. Marry, hang you!\n  MARIANA. And your courtesy, for a ring-carrier!\n                              Exeunt BERTRAM, PAROLLES, and ARMY\n  WIDOW. The troop is past. Come, pilgrim, I will bring you\n    Where you shall host. Of enjoin\'d penitents\n    There\'s four or five, to great Saint Jaques bound,\n    Already at my house.\n  HELENA. I humbly thank you.\n    Please it this matron and this gentle maid\n    To eat with us to-night; the charge and thanking\n    Shall be for me, and, to requite you further,  \n    I will bestow some precepts of this virgin,\n    Worthy the note.\n    BOTH. We\'ll take your offer kindly.                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 6.\nCamp before Florence\n\nEnter BERTRAM, and the two FRENCH LORDS\n\n  SECOND LORD. Nay, good my lord, put him to\'t; let him have his way.\n  FIRST LORD. If your lordship find him not a hiding, hold me no more\n    in your respect.\n  SECOND LORD. On my life, my lord, a bubble.\n  BERTRAM. Do you think I am so far deceived in him?\n  SECOND LORD. Believe it, my lord, in mine own direct knowledge,\n    without any malice, but to speak of him as my kinsman, he\'s a\n    most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly\n    promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality worthy your\n    lordship\'s entertainment.\n  FIRST LORD. It were fit you knew him; lest, reposing too far in his\n    virtue, which he hath not, he might at some great and trusty\n    business in a main danger fail you.\n  BERTRAM. I would I knew in what particular action to try him.\n  FIRST LORD. None better than to let him fetch off his drum, which\n    you hear him so confidently undertake to do.\n  SECOND LORD. I with a troop of Florentines will suddenly surprise  \n    him; such I will have whom I am sure he knows not from the enemy.\n    We will bind and hoodwink him so that he shall suppose no other\n    but that he is carried into the leaguer of the adversaries when\n    we bring him to our own tents. Be but your lordship present at\n    his examination; if he do not, for the promise of his life and in\n    the highest compulsion of base fear, offer to betray you and\n    deliver all the intelligence in his power against you, and that\n    with the divine forfeit of his soul upon oath, never trust my\n    judgment in anything.\n  FIRST LORD. O, for the love of laughter, let him fetch his drum; he\n    says he has a stratagem for\'t. When your lordship sees the bottom\n    of his success in\'t, and to what metal this counterfeit lump of\n    ore will be melted, if you give him not John Drum\'s\n    entertainment, your inclining cannot be removed. Here he comes.\n\n                      Enter PAROLLES\n\n  SECOND LORD. O, for the love of laughter, hinder not the honour of\n    his design; let him fetch off his drum in any hand.\n  BERTRAM. How now, monsieur! This drum sticks sorely in your  \n    disposition.\n  FIRST LORD. A pox on \'t; let it go; \'tis but a drum.\n  PAROLLES. But a drum! Is\'t but a drum? A drum so lost! There was\n    excellent command: to charge in with our horse upon our own\n    wings, and to rend our own soldiers!\n  FIRST LORD. That was not to be blam\'d in the command of the\n    service; it was a disaster of war that Caesar himself could not\n    have prevented, if he had been there to command.\n  BERTRAM. Well, we cannot greatly condemn our success.\n    Some dishonour we had in the loss of that drum; but it is not to\n    be recovered.\n  PAROLLES. It might have been recovered.\n  BERTRAM. It might, but it is not now.\n  PAROLLES. It is to be recovered. But that the merit of service is\n    seldom attributed to the true and exact performer, I would have\n    that drum or another, or \'hic jacet.\'\n  BERTRAM. Why, if you have a stomach, to\'t, monsieur. If you think\n    your mystery in stratagem can bring this instrument of honour\n    again into his native quarter, be magnanimous in the enterprise,\n    and go on; I will grace the attempt for a worthy exploit. If you  \n    speed well in it, the Duke shall both speak of it and extend to\n    you what further becomes his greatness, even to the utmost\n    syllable of our worthiness.\n  PAROLLES. By the hand of a soldier, I will undertake it.\n  BERTRAM. But you must not now slumber in it.\n  PAROLLES. I\'ll about it this evening; and I will presently pen\n    down my dilemmas, encourage myself in my certainty, put myself\n    into my mortal preparation; and by midnight look to hear further\n    from me.\n  BERTRAM. May I be bold to acquaint his Grace you are gone about it?\n  PAROLLES. I know not what the success will be, my lord, but the\n    attempt I vow.\n  BERTRAM. I know th\' art valiant; and, to the of thy soldiership,\n    will subscribe for thee. Farewell.\n  PAROLLES. I love not many words.                          Exit\n  SECOND LORD. No more than a fish loves water. Is not this a strange\n    fellow, my lord, that so confidently seems to undertake this\n    business, which he knows is not to be done; damns himself to do,\n    and dares better be damn\'d than to do \'t.\n  FIRST LORD. You do not know him, my lord, as we do. Certain it is  \n    that he will steal himself into a man\'s favour, and for a week\n    escape a great deal of discoveries; but when you find him out,\n    you have him ever after.\n  BERTRAM. Why, do you think he will make no deed at all of this that\n    so seriously he does address himself unto?\n  SECOND LORD. None in the world; but return with an invention, and\n    clap upon you two or three probable lies. But we have almost\n    emboss\'d him. You shall see his fall to-night; for indeed he is\n    not for your lordship\'s respect.\n  FIRST LORD. We\'ll make you some sport with the fox ere we case him.\n    He was first smok\'d by the old Lord Lafeu. When his disguise and\n    he is parted, tell me what a sprat you shall find him; which you\n    shall see this very night.\n  SECOND LORD. I must go look my twigs; he shall be caught.\n  BERTRAM. Your brother, he shall go along with me.\n  SECOND LORD. As\'t please your lordship. I\'ll leave you.   Exit\n  BERTRAM. Now will I lead you to the house, and show you\n    The lass I spoke of.\n  FIRST LORD. But you say she\'s honest.\n  BERTRAM. That\'s all the fault. I spoke with her but once,  \n    And found her wondrous cold; but I sent to her,\n    By this same coxcomb that we have i\' th\' wind,\n    Tokens and letters which she did re-send;\n    And this is all I have done. She\'s a fair creature;\n    Will you go see her?\n  FIRST LORD. With all my heart, my lord.                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 7.\nFlorence. The WIDOW\'S house\n\nEnter HELENA and WIDOW\n\n  HELENA. If you misdoubt me that I am not she,\n    I know not how I shall assure you further\n    But I shall lose the grounds I work upon.\n  WIDOW. Though my estate be fall\'n, I was well born,\n    Nothing acquainted with these businesses;\n    And would not put my reputation now\n    In any staining act.\n  HELENA. Nor would I wish you.\n  FIRST give me trust the Count he is my husband,\n    And what to your sworn counsel I have spoken\n    Is so from word to word; and then you cannot,\n    By the good aid that I of you shall borrow,\n    Err in bestowing it.\n  WIDOW. I should believe you;\n    For you have show\'d me that which well approves\n    Y\'are great in fortune.\n  HELENA. Take this purse of gold,  \n    And let me buy your friendly help thus far,\n    Which I will over-pay and pay again\n    When I have found it. The Count he woos your daughter\n    Lays down his wanton siege before her beauty,\n    Resolv\'d to carry her. Let her in fine consent,\n    As we\'ll direct her how \'tis best to bear it.\n    Now his important blood will nought deny\n    That she\'ll demand. A ring the County wears\n    That downward hath succeeded in his house\n    From son to son some four or five descents\n    Since the first father wore it. This ring he holds\n    In most rich choice; yet, in his idle fire,\n    To buy his will, it would not seem too dear,\n    Howe\'er repented after.\n  WIDOW. Now I see\n    The bottom of your purpose.\n  HELENA. You see it lawful then. It is no more\n    But that your daughter, ere she seems as won,\n    Desires this ring; appoints him an encounter;\n    In fine, delivers me to fill the time,  \n    Herself most chastely absent. After this,\n    To marry her, I\'ll add three thousand crowns\n    To what is pass\'d already.\n  WIDOW. I have yielded.\n    Instruct my daughter how she shall persever,\n    That time and place with this deceit so lawful\n    May prove coherent. Every night he comes\n    With musics of all sorts, and songs compos\'d\n    To her unworthiness. It nothing steads us\n    To chide him from our eaves, for he persists\n    As if his life lay on \'t.\n  HELENA. Why then to-night\n    Let us assay our plot; which, if it speed,\n    Is wicked meaning in a lawful deed,\n    And lawful meaning in a lawful act;\n    Where both not sin, and yet a sinful fact.\n    But let\'s about it.                                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 1.\nWithout the Florentine camp\n\nEnter SECOND FRENCH LORD with five or six other SOLDIERS in ambush\n\n  SECOND LORD. He can come no other way but by this hedge-corner.\n    When you sally upon him, speak what terrible language you will;\n    though you understand it not yourselves, no matter; for we must\n    not seem to understand him, unless some one among us, whom we\n    must produce for an interpreter.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Good captain, let me be th\' interpreter.\n  SECOND LORD. Art not acquainted with him? Knows he not thy voice?\n  FIRST SOLDIER. No, sir, I warrant you.\n  SECOND LORD. But what linsey-woolsey has thou to speak to us again?\n  FIRST SOLDIER. E\'en such as you speak to me.\n  SECOND LORD. He must think us some band of strangers i\' th\'\n    adversary\'s entertainment. Now he hath a smack of all\n    neighbouring languages, therefore we must every one be a man of\n    his own fancy; not to know what we speak one to another, so we\n    seem to know, is to know straight our purpose: choughs\' language,\n    gabble enough, and good enough. As for you, interpreter, you must  \n    seem very politic. But couch, ho! here he comes; to beguile two\n    hours in a sleep, and then to return and swear the lies he forges.\n\n                         Enter PAROLLES\n\n  PAROLLES. Ten o\'clock. Within these three hours \'twill be time\n    enough to go home. What shall I say I have done? It must be a\n    very plausive invention that carries it. They begin to smoke me;\n    and disgraces have of late knock\'d to often at my door. I find my\n    tongue is too foolhardy; but my heart hath the fear of Mars\n    before it, and of his creatures, not daring the reports of my\n    tongue.\n  SECOND LORD. This is the first truth that e\'er thine own tongue was\n    guilty of.\n  PAROLLES. What the devil should move me to undertake the recovery\n    of this drum, being not ignorant of the impossibility, and\n    knowing I had no such purpose? I must give myself some hurts, and\n    say I got them in exploit. Yet slight ones will not carry it.\n    They will say \'Came you off with so little?\' And great ones I\n    dare not give. Wherefore, what\'s the instance? Tongue, I must put  \n    you into a butterwoman\'s mouth, and buy myself another of\n    Bajazet\'s mule, if you prattle me into these perils.\n  SECOND LORD. Is it possible he should know what he is, and be that\n    he is?\n  PAROLLES. I would the cutting of my garments would serve the turn,\n    or the breaking of my Spanish sword.\n  SECOND LORD. We cannot afford you so.\n  PAROLLES. Or the baring of my beard; and to say it was in\n    stratagem.\n  SECOND LORD. \'Twould not do.\n  PAROLLES. Or to drown my clothes, and say I was stripp\'d.\n  SECOND LORD. Hardly serve.\n  PAROLLES. Though I swore I leap\'d from the window of the citadel-\n  SECOND LORD. How deep?\n  PAROLLES. Thirty fathom.\n  SECOND LORD. Three great oaths would scarce make that be believed.\n  PAROLLES. I would I had any drum of the enemy\'s; I would swear I\n    recover\'d it.\n  SECOND LORD. You shall hear one anon.          [Alarum within]\n  PAROLLES. A drum now of the enemy\'s!  \n  SECOND LORD. Throca movousus, cargo, cargo, cargo.\n  ALL. Cargo, cargo, cargo, villianda par corbo, cargo.\n  PAROLLES. O, ransom, ransom! Do not hide mine eyes.\n                                            [They blindfold him]\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Boskos thromuldo boskos.\n  PAROLLES. I know you are the Muskos\' regiment,\n    And I shall lose my life for want of language.\n    If there be here German, or Dane, Low Dutch,\n    Italian, or French, let him speak to me;\n    I\'ll discover that which shall undo the Florentine.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Boskos vauvado. I understand thee, and can speak thy\n    tongue. Kerely-bonto, sir, betake thee to thy faith, for\n    seventeen poniards are at thy bosom.\n  PAROLLES. O!\n  FIRST SOLDIER. O, pray, pray, pray! Manka revania dulche.\n  SECOND LORD. Oscorbidulchos volivorco.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. The General is content to spare thee yet;\n    And, hoodwink\'d as thou art, will lead thee on\n    To gather from thee. Haply thou mayst inform\n    Something to save thy life.  \n  PAROLLES. O, let me live,\n    And all the secrets of our camp I\'ll show,\n    Their force, their purposes. Nay, I\'ll speak that\n    Which you will wonder at.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. But wilt thou faithfully?\n  PAROLLES. If I do not, damn me.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Acordo linta.\n    Come on; thou art granted space.\n                   Exit, PAROLLES guarded. A short alarum within\n  SECOND LORD. Go, tell the Count Rousillon and my brother\n    We have caught the woodcock, and will keep him muffled\n    Till we do hear from them.\n  SECOND SOLDIER. Captain, I will.\n  SECOND LORD. \'A will betray us all unto ourselves-\n    Inform on that.\n  SECOND SOLDIER. So I will, sir.\n  SECOND LORD. Till then I\'ll keep him dark and safely lock\'d.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 2.\nFlorence. The WIDOW\'S house\n\nEnter BERTRAM and DIANA\n\n  BERTRAM. They told me that your name was Fontibell.\n  DIANA. No, my good lord, Diana.\n  BERTRAM. Titled goddess;\n    And worth it, with addition! But, fair soul,\n    In your fine frame hath love no quality?\n    If the quick fire of youth light not your mind,\n    You are no maiden, but a monument;\n    When you are dead, you should be such a one\n    As you are now, for you are cold and stern;\n    And now you should be as your mother was\n    When your sweet self was got.\n  DIANA. She then was honest.\n  BERTRAM. So should you be.\n  DIANA. No.\n    My mother did but duty; such, my lord,\n    As you owe to your wife.\n  BERTRAM. No more o\'that!  \n    I prithee do not strive against my vows.\n    I was compell\'d to her; but I love the\n    By love\'s own sweet constraint, and will for ever\n    Do thee all rights of service.\n  DIANA. Ay, so you serve us\n    Till we serve you; but when you have our roses\n    You barely leave our thorns to prick ourselves,\n    And mock us with our bareness.\n  BERTRAM. How have I sworn!\n  DIANA. \'Tis not the many oaths that makes the truth,\n    But the plain single vow that is vow\'d true.\n    What is not holy, that we swear not by,\n    But take the High\'st to witness. Then, pray you, tell me:\n    If I should swear by Jove\'s great attributes\n    I lov\'d you dearly, would you believe my oaths\n    When I did love you ill? This has no holding,\n    To swear by him whom I protest to love\n    That I will work against him. Therefore your oaths\n    Are words and poor conditions, but unseal\'d-\n    At least in my opinion.  \n  BERTRAM. Change it, change it;\n    Be not so holy-cruel. Love is holy;\n    And my integrity ne\'er knew the crafts\n    That you do charge men with. Stand no more off,\n    But give thyself unto my sick desires,\n    Who then recovers. Say thou art mine, and ever\n    My love as it begins shall so persever.\n  DIANA. I see that men make ropes in such a scarre\n    That we\'ll forsake ourselves. Give me that ring.\n  BERTRAM. I\'ll lend it thee, my dear, but have no power\n    To give it from me.\n  DIANA. Will you not, my lord?\n  BERTRAM. It is an honour \'longing to our house,\n    Bequeathed down from many ancestors;\n    Which were the greatest obloquy i\' th\' world\n    In me to lose.\n  DIANA. Mine honour\'s such a ring:\n    My chastity\'s the jewel of our house,\n    Bequeathed down from many ancestors;\n    Which were the greatest obloquy i\' th\' world  \n    In me to lose. Thus your own proper wisdom\n    Brings in the champion Honour on my part\n    Against your vain assault.\n  BERTRAM. Here, take my ring;\n    My house, mine honour, yea, my life, be thine,\n    And I\'ll be bid by thee.\n  DIANA. When midnight comes, knock at my chamber window;\n    I\'ll order take my mother shall not hear.\n    Now will I charge you in the band of truth,\n    When you have conquer\'d my yet maiden bed,\n    Remain there but an hour, nor speak to me:\n    My reasons are most strong; and you shall know them\n    When back again this ring shall be deliver\'d.\n    And on your finger in the night I\'ll put\n    Another ring, that what in time proceeds\n    May token to the future our past deeds.\n    Adieu till then; then fail not. You have won\n    A wife of me, though there my hope be done.\n  BERTRAM. A heaven on earth I have won by wooing thee.\n Exit  \n  DIANA. For which live long to thank both heaven and me!\n    You may so in the end.\n    My mother told me just how he would woo,\n    As if she sat in\'s heart; she says all men\n    Have the like oaths. He had sworn to marry me\n    When his wife\'s dead; therefore I\'ll lie with him\n    When I am buried. Since Frenchmen are so braid,\n    Marry that will, I live and die a maid.\n    Only, in this disguise, I think\'t no sin\n    To cozen him that would unjustly win.                   Exit\n\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 3.\nThe Florentine camp\n\nEnter the two FRENCH LORDS, and two or three SOLDIERS\n\n  SECOND LORD. You have not given him his mother\'s letter?\n  FIRST LORD. I have deliv\'red it an hour since. There is something\n    in\'t that stings his nature; for on the reading it he chang\'d\n    almost into another man.\n  SECOND LORD. He has much worthy blame laid upon him for shaking off\n    so good a wife and so sweet a lady.\n  FIRST LORD. Especially he hath incurred the everlasting displeasure\n    of the King, who had even tun\'d his bounty to sing happiness to\n    him. I will tell you a thing, but you shall let it dwell darkly\n    with you.\n  SECOND LORD. When you have spoken it, \'tis dead, and I am the grave\n    of it.\n  FIRST LORD. He hath perverted a young gentlewoman here in Florence,\n    of a most chaste renown; and this night he fleshes his will in\n    the spoil of her honour. He hath given her his monumental ring,\n    and thinks himself made in the unchaste composition.\n  SECOND LORD. Now, God delay our rebellion! As we are ourselves,  \n    what things are we!\n  FIRST LORD. Merely our own traitors. And as in the common course of\n    all treasons we still see them reveal themselves till they attain\n    to their abhorr\'d ends; so he that in this action contrives\n    against his own nobility, in his proper stream, o\'erflows\n    himself.\n  SECOND LORD. Is it not meant damnable in us to be trumpeters of our\n    unlawful intents? We shall not then have his company to-night?\n  FIRST LORD. Not till after midnight; for he is dieted to his hour.\n  SECOND LORD. That approaches apace. I would gladly have him see his\n    company anatomiz\'d, that he might take a measure of his own\n    judgments, wherein so curiously he had set this counterfeit.\n  FIRST LORD. We will not meddle with him till he come; for his\n    presence must be the whip of the other.\n  SECOND LORD. In the meantime, what hear you of these wars?\n  FIRST LORD. I hear there is an overture of peace.\n  SECOND LORD. Nay, I assure you, a peace concluded.\n  FIRST LORD. What will Count Rousillon do then? Will he travel\n    higher, or return again into France?\n  SECOND LORD. I perceive, by this demand, you are not altogether  \n    of his counsel.\n  FIRST LORD. Let it be forbid, sir! So should I be a great deal\n    of his act.\n  SECOND LORD. Sir, his wife, some two months since, fled from his\n    house. Her pretence is a pilgrimage to Saint Jaques le Grand;\n    which holy undertaking with most austere sanctimony she\n    accomplish\'d; and, there residing, the tenderness of her nature\n    became as a prey to her grief; in fine, made a groan of her last\n    breath, and now she sings in heaven.\n  FIRST LORD. How is this justified?\n  SECOND LORD. The stronger part of it by her own letters, which\n    makes her story true even to the point of her death. Her death\n    itself, which could not be her office to say is come, was\n    faithfully confirm\'d by the rector of the place.\n  FIRST LORD. Hath the Count all this intelligence?\n  SECOND LORD. Ay, and the particular confirmations, point from\n    point, to the full arming of the verity.\n  FIRST LORD. I am heartily sorry that he\'ll be glad of this.\n  SECOND LORD. How mightily sometimes we make us comforts of our\n    losses!  \n  FIRST LORD. And how mightily some other times we drown our gain in\n    tears! The great dignity that his valour hath here acquir\'d for\n    him shall at home be encount\'red with a shame as ample.\n  SECOND LORD. The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill\n    together. Our virtues would be proud if our faults whipt them\n    not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherish\'d by\n    our virtues.\n\n                      Enter a MESSENGER\n\n    How now? Where\'s your master?\n  SERVANT. He met the Duke in the street, sir; of whom he hath taken\n    a solemn leave. His lordship will next morning for France. The\n    Duke hath offered him letters of commendations to the King.\n  SECOND LORD. They shall be no more than needful there, if they were\n    more than they can commend.\n  FIRST LORD. They cannot be too sweet for the King\'s tartness.\n    Here\'s his lordship now.\n\n                        Enter BERTRAM  \n\n    How now, my lord, is\'t not after midnight?\n  BERTRAM. I have to-night dispatch\'d sixteen businesses, a month\'s\n    length apiece; by an abstract of success: I have congied with the\n    Duke, done my adieu with his nearest; buried a wife, mourn\'d for\n    her; writ to my lady mother I am returning; entertain\'d my\n    convoy; and between these main parcels of dispatch effected many\n    nicer needs. The last was the greatest, but that I have not ended\n    yet.\n  SECOND LORD. If the business be of any difficulty and this morning\n    your departure hence, it requires haste of your lordship.\n  BERTRAM. I mean the business is not ended, as fearing to hear of it\n    hereafter. But shall we have this dialogue between the Fool and\n    the Soldier? Come, bring forth this counterfeit module has\n    deceiv\'d me like a double-meaning prophesier.\n  SECOND LORD. Bring him forth.  [Exeunt SOLDIERS]  Has sat i\' th\'\n    stocks all night, poor gallant knave.\n  BERTRAM. No matter; his heels have deserv\'d it, in usurping his\n    spurs so long. How does he carry himself?\n  SECOND LORD. I have told your lordship already the stocks carry  \n    him. But to answer you as you would be understood: he weeps like\n    a wench that had shed her milk; he hath confess\'d himself to\n    Morgan, whom he supposes to be a friar, from the time of his\n    remembrance to this very instant disaster of his setting i\' th\'\n    stocks. And what think you he hath confess\'d?\n  BERTRAM. Nothing of me, has \'a?\n  SECOND LORD. His confession is taken, and it shall be read to his\n    face; if your lordship be in\'t, as I believe you are, you must\n    have the patience to hear it.\n\n                   Enter PAROLLES guarded, and\n                  FIRST SOLDIER as interpreter\n\n  BERTRAM. A plague upon him! muffled! He can say nothing of me.\n  SECOND LORD. Hush, hush! Hoodman comes. Portotartarossa.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. He calls for the tortures. What will you say without\n    \'em?\n  PAROLLES. I will confess what I know without constraint; if ye\n    pinch me like a pasty, I can say no more.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Bosko chimurcho.  \n  SECOND LORD. Boblibindo chicurmurco.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. YOU are a merciful general. Our General bids you\n    answer to what I shall ask you out of a note.\n  PAROLLES. And truly, as I hope to live.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. \'First demand of him how many horse the Duke is\n    strong.\' What say you to that?\n  PAROLLES. Five or six thousand; but very weak and unserviceable.\n    The troops are all scattered, and the commanders very poor\n    rogues, upon my reputation and credit, and as I hope to live.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Shall I set down your answer so?\n  PAROLLES. Do; I\'ll take the sacrament on \'t, how and which way you\n    will.\n  BERTRAM. All\'s one to him. What a past-saving slave is this!\n  SECOND LORD. Y\'are deceiv\'d, my lord; this is Monsieur Parolles,\n    the gallant militarist-that was his own phrase-that had the whole\n    theoric of war in the knot of his scarf, and the practice in the\n    chape of his dagger.\n  FIRST LORD. I will never trust a man again for keeping his sword\n    clean; nor believe he can have everything in him by wearing his\n    apparel neatly.  \n  FIRST SOLDIER. Well, that\'s set down.\n  PAROLLES. \'Five or six thousand horse\' I said-I will say true- \'or\n    thereabouts\' set down, for I\'ll speak truth.\n  SECOND LORD. He\'s very near the truth in this.\n  BERTRAM. But I con him no thanks for\'t in the nature he delivers it.\n  PAROLLES. \'Poor rogues\' I pray you say.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Well, that\'s set down.\n  PAROLLES. I humbly thank you, sir. A truth\'s a truth-the rogues are\n    marvellous poor.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. \'Demand of him of what strength they are a-foot.\'\n    What say you to that?\n  PAROLLES. By my troth, sir, if I were to live this present hour, I\n    will tell true. Let me see: Spurio, a hundred and fifty;\n    Sebastian, so many; Corambus, so many; Jaques, so many; Guiltian,\n    Cosmo, Lodowick, and Gratii, two hundred fifty each; mine own\n    company, Chitopher, Vaumond, Bentii, two hundred fifty each; so\n    that the muster-file, rotten and sound, upon my life, amounts not\n    to fifteen thousand poll; half of the which dare not shake the\n    snow from off their cassocks lest they shake themselves to\n    pieces.  \n  BERTRAM. What shall be done to him?\n  SECOND LORD. Nothing, but let him have thanks. Demand of him my\n    condition, and what credit I have with the Duke.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Well, that\'s set down. \'You shall demand of him\n    whether one Captain Dumain be i\' th\' camp, a Frenchman; what his\n    reputation is with the Duke, what his valour, honesty, expertness\n    in wars; or whether he thinks it were not possible, with\n    well-weighing sums of gold, to corrupt him to a revolt.\' What say\n    you to this? What do you know of it?\n  PAROLLES. I beseech you, let me answer to the particular of the\n    inter\'gatories. Demand them singly.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Do you know this Captain Dumain?\n  PAROLLES. I know him: \'a was a botcher\'s prentice in Paris, from\n    whence he was whipt for getting the shrieve\'s fool with child-a\n    dumb innocent that could not say him nay.\n  BERTRAM. Nay, by your leave, hold your hands; though I know his\n    brains are forfeit to the next tile that falls.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Well, is this captain in the Duke of Florence\'s\n    camp?\n  PAROLLES. Upon my knowledge, he is, and lousy.  \n  SECOND LORD. Nay, look not so upon me; we shall hear of your\n    lordship anon.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. What is his reputation with the Duke?\n  PAROLLES. The Duke knows him for no other but a poor officer of\n    mine; and writ to me this other day to turn him out o\' th\' band.\n    I think I have his letter in my pocket.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Marry, we\'ll search.\n  PAROLLES. In good sadness, I do not know; either it is there or it\n    is upon a file with the Duke\'s other letters in my tent.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Here \'tis; here\'s a paper. Shall I read it to you?\n  PAROLLES. I do not know if it be it or no.\n  BERTRAM. Our interpreter does it well.\n  SECOND LORD. Excellently.\n  FIRST SOLDIER.  [Reads]  \'Dian, the Count\'s a fool, and full of\n    gold.\'\n  PAROLLES. That is not the Duke\'s letter, sir; that is an\n    advertisement to a proper maid in Florence, one Diana, to take\n    heed of the allurement of one Count Rousillon, a foolish idle\n    boy, but for all that very ruttish. I pray you, sir, put it up\n    again.  \n  FIRST SOLDIER. Nay, I\'ll read it first by your favour.\n  PAROLLES. My meaning in\'t, I protest, was very honest in the behalf\n    of the maid; for I knew the young Count to be a dangerous and\n    lascivious boy, who is a whale to virginity, and devours up all\n    the fry it finds.\n  BERTRAM. Damnable both-sides rogue!\n  FIRST SOLDIER.                                         [Reads]\n    \'When he swears oaths, bid him drop gold, and take it;\n    After he scores, he never pays the score.\n    Half won is match well made; match, and well make it;\n    He ne\'er pays after-debts, take it before.\n    And say a soldier, Dian, told thee this:\n    Men are to mell with, boys are not to kiss;\n    For count of this, the Count\'s a fool, I know it,\n    Who pays before, but not when he does owe it.\n    Thine, as he vow\'d to thee in thine ear,\n                                                   PAROLLES.\'\n  BERTRAM. He shall be whipt through the army with this rhyme in\'s\n    forehead.\n  FIRST LORD. This is your devoted friend, sir, the manifold  \n    linguist, and the amnipotent soldier.\n  BERTRAM. I could endure anything before but a cat, and now he\'s a\n    cat to me.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. I perceive, sir, by our General\'s looks we shall be\n    fain to hang you.\n  PAROLLES. My life, sir, in any case! Not that I am afraid to die,\n    but that, my offences being many, I would repent out the\n    remainder of nature. Let me live, sir, in a dungeon, i\' th\'\n    stocks, or anywhere, so I may live.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. We\'ll see what may be done, so you confess freely;\n    therefore, once more to this Captain Dumain: you have answer\'d to\n    his reputation with the Duke, and to his valour; what is his\n    honesty?\n  PAROLLES. He will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister; for rapes\n    and ravishments he parallels Nessus. He professes not keeping of\n    oaths; in breaking \'em he is stronger than Hercules. He will lie,\n    sir, with such volubility that you would think truth were a fool.\n    Drunkenness is his best virtue, for he will be swine-drunk; and\n    in his sleep he does little harm, save to his bedclothes about\n    him; but they know his conditions and lay him in straw. I have  \n    but little more to say, sir, of his honesty. He has everything\n    that an honest man should not have; what an honest man should\n    have he has nothing.\n  SECOND LORD. I begin to love him for this.\n  BERTRAM. For this description of thine honesty? A pox upon him! For\n    me, he\'s more and more a cat.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. What say you to his expertness in war?\n  PAROLLES. Faith, sir, has led the drum before the English\n    tragedians-to belie him I will not-and more of his soldier-ship\n    I know not, except in that country he had the honour to be the\n    officer at a place there called Mile-end to instruct for the\n    doubling of files-I would do the man what honour I can-but of\n    this I am not certain.\n  SECOND LORD. He hath out-villain\'d villainy so far that the rarity\n    redeems him.\n  BERTRAM. A pox on him! he\'s a cat still.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. His qualities being at this poor price, I need not\n    to ask you if gold will corrupt him to revolt.\n  PAROLLES. Sir, for a cardecue he will sell the fee-simple of his\n    salvation, the inheritance of it; and cut th\' entail from all  \n    remainders and a perpetual succession for it perpetually.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. What\'s his brother, the other Captain Dumain?\n  FIRST LORD. Why does he ask him of me?\n  FIRST SOLDIER. What\'s he?\n  PAROLLES. E\'en a crow o\' th\' same nest; not altogether so great as\n    the first in goodness, but greater a great deal in evil. He\n    excels his brother for a coward; yet his brother is reputed one\n    of the best that is. In a retreat he outruns any lackey: marry,\n    in coming on he has the cramp.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. If your life be saved, will you undertake to betray\n    the Florentine?\n  PAROLLES. Ay, and the Captain of his Horse, Count Rousillon.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. I\'ll whisper with the General, and know his\n    pleasure.\n  PAROLLES.  [Aside]  I\'ll no more drumming. A plague of all drums!\n    Only to seem to deserve well, and to beguile the supposition of\n    that lascivious young boy the Count, have I run into this danger.\n    Yet who would have suspected an ambush where I was taken?\n  FIRST SOLDIER. There is no remedy, sir, but you must die.\n    The General says you that have so traitorously discover\'d the  \n    secrets of your army, and made such pestiferous reports of men\n    very nobly held, can serve the world for no honest use; therefore\n    you must die. Come, headsman, of with his head.\n  PAROLLES. O Lord, sir, let me live, or let me see my death!\n  FIRST SOLDIER. That shall you, and take your leave of all your\n    friends.  [Unmuffling him]  So look about you; know you any here?\n  BERTRAM. Good morrow, noble Captain.\n  FIRST LORD. God bless you, Captain Parolles.\n  SECOND LORD. God save you, noble Captain.\n  FIRST LORD. Captain, what greeting will you to my Lord Lafeu? I am\n    for France.\n  SECOND LORD. Good Captain, will you give me a copy of the sonnet\n    you writ to Diana in behalf of the Count Rousillon? An I were not\n    a very coward I\'d compel it of you; but fare you well.\n                                        Exeunt BERTRAM and LORDS\n  FIRST SOLDIER. You are undone, Captain, all but your scarf; that\n    has a knot on \'t yet.\n  PAROLLES. Who cannot be crush\'d with a plot?\n  FIRST SOLDIER. If you could find out a country where but women were\n    that had received so much shame, you might begin an impudent  \n    nation. Fare ye well, sir; I am for France too; we shall speak of\n    you there.                                Exit with SOLDIERS\n  PAROLLES. Yet am I thankful. If my heart were great,\n    \'Twould burst at this. Captain I\'ll be no more;\n    But I will eat, and drink, and sleep as soft\n    As captain shall. Simply the thing I am\n    Shall make me live. Who knows himself a braggart,\n    Let him fear this; for it will come to pass\n    That every braggart shall be found an ass.\n    Rust, sword; cool, blushes; and, Parolles, live\n    Safest in shame. Being fool\'d, by fool\'ry thrive.\n    There\'s place and means for every man alive.\n    I\'ll after them.                                        Exit\n\n\n\n\nACT IV SCENE 4.\nThe WIDOW\'S house\n\nEnter HELENA, WIDOW, and DIANA\n\n  HELENA. That you may well perceive I have not wrong\'d you!\n    One of the greatest in the Christian world\n    Shall be my surety; fore whose throne \'tis needful,\n    Ere I can perfect mine intents, to kneel.\n    Time was I did him a desired office,\n    Dear almost as his life; which gratitude\n    Through flinty Tartar\'s bosom would peep forth,\n    And answer \'Thanks.\' I duly am inform\'d\n    His Grace is at Marseilles, to which place\n    We have convenient convoy. You must know\n    I am supposed dead. The army breaking,\n    My husband hies him home; where, heaven aiding,\n    And by the leave of my good lord the King,\n    We\'ll be before our welcome.\n  WIDOW. Gentle madam,\n    You never had a servant to whose trust\n    Your business was more welcome.  \n  HELENA. Nor you, mistress,\n    Ever a friend whose thoughts more truly labour\n    To recompense your love. Doubt not but heaven\n    Hath brought me up to be your daughter\'s dower,\n    As it hath fated her to be my motive\n    And helper to a husband. But, O strange men!\n    That can such sweet use make of what they hate,\n    When saucy trusting of the cozen\'d thoughts\n    Defiles the pitchy night. So lust doth play\n    With what it loathes, for that which is away.\n    But more of this hereafter. You, Diana,\n    Under my poor instructions yet must suffer\n    Something in my behalf.\n  DIANA. Let death and honesty\n    Go with your impositions, I am yours\n    Upon your will to suffer.\n  HELENA. Yet, I pray you:\n    But with the word the time will bring on summer,\n    When briers shall have leaves as well as thorns\n    And be as sweet as sharp. We must away;  \n    Our waggon is prepar\'d, and time revives us.\n    All\'s Well that Ends Well. Still the fine\'s the crown.\n    Whate\'er the course, the end is the renown.           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT IV SCENE 5.\nRousillon. The COUNT\'S palace\n\nEnter COUNTESS, LAFEU, and CLOWN\n\n  LAFEU. No, no, no, son was misled with a snipt-taffeta fellow\n    there, whose villainous saffron would have made all the unbak\'d\n    and doughy youth of a nation in his colour. Your daughter-in-law\n    had been alive at this hour, and your son here at home, more\n    advanc\'d by the King than by that red-tail\'d humble-bee I speak\n    of.\n  COUNTESS. I would I had not known him. It was the death of the most\n    virtuous gentlewoman that ever nature had praise for creating. If\n    she had partaken of my flesh, and cost me the dearest groans of a\n    mother. I could not have owed her a more rooted love.\n  LAFEU. \'Twas a good lady, \'twas a good lady. We may pick a thousand\n    sallets ere we light on such another herb.\n  CLOWN. Indeed, sir, she was the sweet-marjoram of the sallet, or,\n    rather, the herb of grace.\n  LAFEU. They are not sallet-herbs, you knave; they are nose-herbs.\n  CLOWN. I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, sir; I have not much skill in\n    grass.  \n  LAFEU. Whether dost thou profess thyself-a knave or a fool?\n  CLOWN. A fool, sir, at a woman\'s service, and a knave at a man\'s.\n  LAFEU. Your distinction?\n  CLOWN. I would cozen the man of his wife, and do his service.\n  LAFEU. So you were a knave at his service, indeed.\n  CLOWN. And I would give his wife my bauble, sir, to do her service.\n  LAFEU. I will subscribe for thee; thou art both knave and fool.\n  CLOWN. At your service.\n  LAFEU. No, no, no.\n  CLOWN. Why, sir, if I cannot serve you, I can serve as great a\n    prince as you are.\n  LAFEU. Who\'s that? A Frenchman?\n  CLOWN. Faith, sir, \'a has an English name; but his fisnomy is more\n    hotter in France than there.\n  LAFEU. What prince is that?\n  CLOWN. The Black Prince, sir; alias, the Prince of Darkness; alias,\n    the devil.\n  LAFEU. Hold thee, there\'s my purse. I give thee not this to suggest\n    thee from thy master thou talk\'st of; serve him still.\n  CLOWN. I am a woodland fellow, sir, that always loved a great fire;  \n    and the master I speak of ever keeps a good fire. But, sure, he\n    is the prince of the world; let his nobility remain in\'s court. I\n    am for the house with the narrow gate, which I take to be too\n    little for pomp to enter. Some that humble themselves may; but\n    the many will be too chill and tender: and they\'ll be for the\n    flow\'ry way that leads to the broad gate and the great fire.\n  LAFEU. Go thy ways, I begin to be aweary of thee; and I tell thee\n    so before, because I would not fall out with thee. Go thy ways;\n    let my horses be well look\'d to, without any tricks.\n  CLOWN. If I put any tricks upon \'em, sir, they shall be jades\'\n    tricks, which are their own right by the law of nature.\n Exit\n  LAFEU. A shrewd knave, and an unhappy.\n  COUNTESS. So \'a is. My lord that\'s gone made himself much  sport\n    out of him. By his authority he remains here, which he thinks is\n    a patent for his sauciness; and indeed he has no pace, but runs\n    where he will.\n  LAFEU. I like him well; \'tis not amiss. And I was about to tell\n    you, since I heard of the good lady\'s death, and that my lord\n    your son was upon his return home, I moved the King my master to  \n    speak in the behalf of my daughter; which, in the minority of\n    them both, his Majesty out of a self-gracious remembrance did\n    first propose. His Highness hath promis\'d me to do it; and, to\n    stop up the displeasure he hath conceived against your son, there\n    is no fitter matter. How does your ladyship like it?\n  COUNTESS. With very much content, my lord; and I wish it happily\n    effected.\n  LAFEU. His Highness comes post from Marseilles, of as able body as\n    when he number\'d thirty; \'a will be here to-morrow, or I am\n    deceiv\'d by him that in such intelligence hath seldom fail\'d.\n  COUNTESS. It rejoices me that I hope I shall see him ere I die.\n    I have letters that my son will be here to-night. I shall beseech\n    your lordship to remain with me tal they meet together.\n  LAFEU. Madam, I was thinking with what manners I might safely be\n    admitted.\n  COUNTESS. You need but plead your honourable privilege.\n  LAFEU. Lady, of that I have made a bold charter; but, I thank my\n    God, it holds yet.\n\n                         Re-enter CLOWN  \n\n  CLOWN. O madam, yonder\'s my lord your son with a patch of velvet\n    on\'s face; whether there be a scar under \'t or no, the velvet\n    knows; but \'tis a goodly patch of velvet. His left cheek is a\n    cheek of two pile and a half, but his right cheek is worn bare.\n  LAFEU. A scar nobly got, or a noble scar, is a good liv\'ry of\n    honour; so belike is that.\n  CLOWN. But it is your carbonado\'d face.\n  LAFEU. Let us go see your son, I pray you;\n    I long to talk with the young noble soldier.\n  CLOWN. Faith, there\'s a dozen of \'em, with delicate fine hats, and\n    most courteous feathers, which bow the head and nod at every man.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 1.\nMarseilles. A street\n\nEnter HELENA, WIDOW, and DIANA, with two ATTENDANTS\n\n  HELENA. But this exceeding posting day and night\n    Must wear your spirits low; we cannot help it.\n    But since you have made the days and nights as one,\n    To wear your gentle limbs in my affairs,\n    Be bold you do so grow in my requital\n    As nothing can unroot you.\n\n                      Enter a GENTLEMAN\n\n    In happy time!\n    This man may help me to his Majesty\'s ear,\n    If he would spend his power. God save you, sir.\n  GENTLEMAN. And you.\n  HELENA. Sir, I have seen you in the court of France.\n  GENTLEMAN. I have been sometimes there.\n  HELENA. I do presume, sir, that you are not fall\'n\n    From the report that goes upon your goodness;  \n    And therefore, goaded with most sharp occasions,\n    Which lay nice manners by, I put you to\n    The use of your own virtues, for the which\n    I shall continue thankful.\n  GENTLEMAN. What\'s your will?\n  HELENA. That it will please you\n    To give this poor petition to the King;\n    And aid me with that store of power you have\n    To come into his presence.\n  GENTLEMAN. The King\'s not here.\n  HELENA. Not here, sir?\n  GENTLEMAN. Not indeed.\n    He hence remov\'d last night, and with more haste\n    Than is his use.\n  WIDOW. Lord, how we lose our pains!\n  HELENA. All\'s Well That Ends Well yet,\n    Though time seem so adverse and means unfit.\n    I do beseech you, whither is he gone?\n  GENTLEMAN. Marry, as I take it, to Rousillon;\n    Whither I am going.  \n  HELENA. I do beseech you, sir,\n    Since you are like to see the King before me,\n    Commend the paper to his gracious hand;\n    Which I presume shall render you no blame,\n    But rather make you thank your pains for it.\n    I will come after you with what good speed\n    Our means will make us means.\n  GENTLEMAN. This I\'ll do for you.\n  HELENA. And you shall find yourself to be well thank\'d,\n    Whate\'er falls more. We must to horse again;\n    Go, go, provide.                                      Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT V SCENE 2.\nRousillon. The inner court of the COUNT\'S palace\n\nEnter CLOWN and PAROLLES\n\n  PAROLLES. Good Monsieur Lavache, give my Lord Lafeu this letter. I\n    have ere now, sir, been better known to you, when I have held\n    familiarity with fresher clothes; but I am now, sir, muddied in\n    Fortune\'s mood, and smell somewhat strong of her strong\n    displeasure.\n  CLOWN. Truly, Fortune\'s displeasure is but sluttish, if it smell\n    so strongly as thou speak\'st of. I will henceforth eat no fish\n    of Fortune\'s butt\'ring. Prithee, allow the wind.\n  PAROLLES. Nay, you need not to stop your nose, sir; I spake but by\n    a metaphor.\n  CLOWN. Indeed, sir, if your metaphor stink, I will stop my nose; or\n    against any man\'s metaphor. Prithee, get thee further.\n  PAROLLES. Pray you, sir, deliver me this paper.\n  CLOWN. Foh! prithee stand away. A paper from Fortune\'s close-stool\n    to give to a nobleman! Look here he comes himself.\n\n                           Enter LAFEU  \n\n    Here is a pur of Fortune\'s, sir, or of Fortune\'s cat, but not\n    a musk-cat, that has fall\'n into the unclean fishpond of her\n    displeasure, and, as he says, is muddied withal. Pray you, sir,\n    use the carp as you may; for he looks like a poor, decayed,\n    ingenious, foolish, rascally knave. I do pity his distress\n    in my similes of comfort, and leave him to your lordship.\n Exit\n  PAROLLES. My lord, I am a man whom Fortune hath cruelly scratch\'d.\n  LAFEU. And what would you have me to do? \'Tis too late to pare her\n    nails now. Wherein have you played the knave with Fortune, that\n    she should scratch you, who of herself is a good lady and would\n    not have knaves thrive long under her? There\'s a cardecue for\n    you. Let the justices make you and Fortune friends; I am for\n    other business.\n  PAROLLES. I beseech your honour to hear me one single word.\n  LAFEU. You beg a single penny more; come, you shall ha\'t; save your\n    word.\n  PAROLLES. My name, my good lord, is Parolles.\n  LAFEU. You beg more than word then. Cox my passion! give me your  \n    hand. How does your drum?\n  PAROLLES. O my good lord, you were the first that found me.\n  LAFEU. Was I, in sooth? And I was the first that lost thee.\n  PAROLLES. It lies in you, my lord, to bring me in some grace, for\n    you did bring me out.\n  LAFEU. Out upon thee, knave! Dost thou put upon me at once both the\n    office of God and the devil? One brings the in grace, and the\n    other brings thee out.    [Trumpets sound]  The King\'s coming; I\n    know by his trumpets. Sirrah, inquire further after me; I had\n    talk of you last night. Though you are a fool and a knave, you\n    shall eat. Go to; follow.\n  PAROLLES. I praise God for you.                         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT V SCENE 3.\nRousillon. The COUNT\'S palace\n\nFlourish. Enter KING, COUNTESS, LAFEU, the two FRENCH LORDS, with ATTENDANTS\n\n  KING. We lost a jewel of her, and our esteem\n    Was made much poorer by it; but your son,\n    As mad in folly, lack\'d the sense to know\n    Her estimation home.\n  COUNTESS. \'Tis past, my liege;\n    And I beseech your Majesty to make it\n    Natural rebellion, done i\' th\' blaze of youth,\n    When oil and fire, too strong for reason\'s force,\n    O\'erbears it and burns on.\n  KING. My honour\'d lady,\n    I have forgiven and forgotten all;\n    Though my revenges were high bent upon him\n    And watch\'d the time to shoot.\n  LAFEU. This I must say-\n    But first, I beg my pardon: the young lord\n    Did to his Majesty, his mother, and his lady,  \n    Offence of mighty note; but to himself\n    The greatest wrong of all. He lost a wife\n    Whose beauty did astonish the survey\n    Of richest eyes; whose words all ears took captive;\n    Whose dear perfection hearts that scorn\'d to serve\n    Humbly call\'d mistress.\n  KING. Praising what is lost\n    Makes the remembrance dear. Well, call him hither;\n    We are reconcil\'d, and the first view shall kill\n    All repetition. Let him not ask our pardon;\n    The nature of his great offence is dead,\n    And deeper than oblivion do we bury\n    Th\' incensing relics of it; let him approach,\n    A stranger, no offender; and inform him\n    So \'tis our will he should.\n  GENTLEMAN. I shall, my liege.                 Exit GENTLEMAN\n  KING. What says he to your daughter? Have you spoke?\n  LAFEU. All that he is hath reference to your Highness.\n  KING. Then shall we have a match. I have letters sent me\n    That sets him high in fame.  \n\n                          Enter BERTRAM\n\n  LAFEU. He looks well on \'t.\n  KING. I am not a day of season,\n    For thou mayst see a sunshine and a hail\n    In me at once. But to the brightest beams\n    Distracted clouds give way; so stand thou forth;\n    The time is fair again.\n  BERTRAM. My high-repented blames,\n    Dear sovereign, pardon to me.\n  KING. All is whole;\n    Not one word more of the consumed time.\n    Let\'s take the instant by the forward top;\n    For we are old, and on our quick\'st decrees\n    Th\' inaudible and noiseless foot of Time\n    Steals ere we can effect them. You remember\n    The daughter of this lord?\n  BERTRAM. Admiringly, my liege. At first\n    I stuck my choice upon her, ere my heart  \n    Durst make too bold herald of my tongue;\n    Where the impression of mine eye infixing,\n    Contempt his scornful perspective did lend me,\n    Which warp\'d the line of every other favour,\n    Scorn\'d a fair colour or express\'d it stol\'n,\n    Extended or contracted all proportions\n    To a most hideous object. Thence it came\n    That she whom all men prais\'d, and whom myself,\n    Since I have lost, have lov\'d, was in mine eye\n    The dust that did offend it.\n  KING. Well excus\'d.\n    That thou didst love her, strikes some scores away\n    From the great compt; but love that comes too late,\n    Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried,\n    To the great sender turns a sour offence,\n    Crying \'That\'s good that\'s gone.\' Our rash faults\n    Make trivial price of serious things we have,\n    Not knowing them until we know their grave.\n    Oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust,\n    Destroy our friends, and after weep their dust;  \n    Our own love waking cries to see what\'s done,\n    While shameful hate sleeps out the afternoon.\n    Be this sweet Helen\'s knell. And now forget her.\n    Send forth your amorous token for fair Maudlin.\n    The main consents are had; and here we\'ll stay\n    To see our widower\'s second marriage-day.\n  COUNTESS. Which better than the first, O dear heaven, bless!\n    Or, ere they meet, in me, O nature, cesse!\n  LAFEU. Come on, my son, in whom my house\'s name\n    Must be digested; give a favour from you,\n    To sparkle in the spirits of my daughter,\n    That she may quickly come.\n                                          [BERTRAM gives a ring]\n    By my old beard,\n    And ev\'ry hair that\'s on \'t, Helen, that\'s dead,\n    Was a sweet creature; such a ring as this,\n    The last that e\'er I took her leave at court,\n    I saw upon her finger.\n  BERTRAM. Hers it was not.\n  KING. Now, pray you, let me see it; for mine eye,  \n    While I was speaking, oft was fasten\'d to\'t.\n    This ring was mine; and when I gave it Helen\n    I bade her, if her fortunes ever stood\n    Necessitied to help, that by this token\n    I would relieve her. Had you that craft to reave her\n    Of what should stead her most?\n  BERTRAM. My gracious sovereign,\n    Howe\'er it pleases you to take it so,\n    The ring was never hers.\n  COUNTESS. Son, on my life,\n    I have seen her wear it; and she reckon\'d it\n    At her life\'s rate.\n  LAFEU. I am sure I saw her wear it.\n  BERTRAM. You are deceiv\'d, my lord; she never saw it.\n    In Florence was it from a casement thrown me,\n    Wrapp\'d in a paper, which contain\'d the name\n    Of her that threw it. Noble she was, and thought\n    I stood engag\'d; but when I had subscrib\'d\n    To mine own fortune, and inform\'d her fully\n    I could not answer in that course of honour  \n    As she had made the overture, she ceas\'d,\n    In heavy satisfaction, and would never\n    Receive the ring again.\n  KING. Plutus himself,\n    That knows the tinct and multiplying med\'cine,\n    Hath not in nature\'s mystery more science\n    Than I have in this ring. \'Twas mine, \'twas Helen\'s,\n    Whoever gave it you. Then, if you know\n    That you are well acquainted with yourself,\n    Confess \'twas hers, and by what rough enforcement\n    You got it from her. She call\'d the saints to surety\n    That she would never put it from her finger\n    Unless she gave it to yourself in bed-\n    Where you have never come- or sent it us\n    Upon her great disaster.\n  BERTRAM. She never saw it.\n  KING. Thou speak\'st it falsely, as I love mine honour;\n    And mak\'st conjectural fears to come into me\n    Which I would fain shut out. If it should prove\n    That thou art so inhuman- \'twill not prove so.  \n    And yet I know not- thou didst hate her deadly,\n    And she is dead; which nothing, but to close\n    Her eyes myself, could win me to believe\n    More than to see this ring. Take him away.\n                                          [GUARDS seize BERTRAM]\n    My fore-past proofs, howe\'er the matter fall,\n    Shall tax my fears of little vanity,\n    Having vainly fear\'d too little. Away with him.\n    We\'ll sift this matter further.\n  BERTRAM. If you shall prove\n    This ring was ever hers, you shall as easy\n    Prove that I husbanded her bed in Florence,\n    Where she yet never was.                       Exit, guarded\n  KING. I am wrapp\'d in dismal thinkings.\n\n                        Enter a GENTLEMAN\n\n  GENTLEMAN. Gracious sovereign,\n    Whether I have been to blame or no, I know not:\n    Here\'s a petition from a Florentine,  \n    Who hath, for four or five removes, come short\n    To tender it herself. I undertook it,\n    Vanquish\'d thereto by the fair grace and speech\n    Of the poor suppliant, who by this, I know,\n    Is here attending; her business looks in her\n    With an importing visage; and she told me\n    In a sweet verbal brief it did concern\n    Your Highness with herself.\n  KING.  [Reads the letter]  \'Upon his many protestations to marry me\n    when his wife was dead, I blush to say it, he won me. Now is the\n    Count Rousillon a widower; his vows are forfeited to me, and my\n    honour\'s paid to him. He stole from Florence, taking no leave,\n    and I follow him to his country for justice. Grant it me, O King!\n    in you it best lies; otherwise a seducer flourishes, and a poor\n    maid is undone.\n                                                DIANA CAPILET.\'\n  LAFEU. I will buy me a son-in-law in a fair, and toll for this.\n    I\'ll none of him.\n  KING. The heavens have thought well on thee, Lafeu,\n    To bring forth this discov\'ry. Seek these suitors.  \n    Go speedily, and bring again the Count.\n                                               Exeunt ATTENDANTS\n    I am afeard the life of Helen, lady,\n    Was foully snatch\'d.\n  COUNTESS. Now, justice on the doers!\n\n                       Enter BERTRAM, guarded\n\n  KING. I wonder, sir, sith wives are monsters to you.\n    And that you fly them as you swear them lordship,\n    Yet you desire to marry.\n                                           Enter WIDOW and DIANA\n    What woman\'s that?\n  DIANA. I am, my lord, a wretched Florentine,\n    Derived from the ancient Capilet.\n    My suit, as I do understand, you know,\n    And therefore know how far I may be pitied.\n  WIDOW. I am her mother, sir, whose age and honour\n    Both suffer under this complaint we bring,\n    And both shall cease, without your remedy.  \n  KING. Come hither, Count; do you know these women?\n  BERTRAM. My lord, I neither can nor will deny\n    But that I know them. Do they charge me further?\n  DIANA. Why do you look so strange upon your wife?\n  BERTRAM. She\'s none of mine, my lord.\n  DIANA. If you shall marry,\n    You give away this hand, and that is mine;\n    You give away heaven\'s vows, and those are mine;\n    You give away myself, which is known mine;\n    For I by vow am so embodied yours\n    That she which marries you must marry me,\n    Either both or none.\n  LAFEU.  [To BERTRAM]  Your reputation comes too short for\n    my daughter; you are no husband for her.\n  BERTRAM. My lord, this is a fond and desp\'rate creature\n    Whom sometime I have laugh\'d with. Let your Highness\n    Lay a more noble thought upon mine honour\n    Than for to think that I would sink it here.\n  KING. Sir, for my thoughts, you have them ill to friend\n    Till your deeds gain them. Fairer prove your honour  \n    Than in my thought it lies!\n  DIANA. Good my lord,\n    Ask him upon his oath if he does think\n    He had not my virginity.\n  KING. What say\'st thou to her?\n  BERTRAM. She\'s impudent, my lord,\n    And was a common gamester to the camp.\n  DIANA. He does me wrong, my lord; if I were so\n    He might have bought me at a common price.\n    Do not believe him. o, behold this ring,\n    Whose high respect and rich validity\n    Did lack a parallel; yet, for all that,\n    He gave it to a commoner o\' th\' camp,\n    If I be one.\n  COUNTESS. He blushes, and \'tis it.\n    Of six preceding ancestors, that gem\n    Conferr\'d by testament to th\' sequent issue,\n    Hath it been ow\'d and worn. This is his wife:\n    That ring\'s a thousand proofs.\n  KING. Methought you said  \n    You saw one here in court could witness it.\n  DIANA. I did, my lord, but loath am to produce\n    So bad an instrument; his name\'s Parolles.\n  LAFEU. I saw the man to-day, if man he be.\n  KING. Find him, and bring him hither.        Exit an ATTENDANT\n  BERTRAM. What of him?\n    He\'s quoted for a most perfidious slave,\n    With all the spots o\' th\' world tax\'d and debauch\'d,\n    Whose nature sickens but to speak a truth.\n    Am I or that or this for what he\'ll utter\n    That will speak anything?\n  KING. She hath that ring of yours.\n  BERTRAM. I think she has. Certain it is I lik\'d her,\n    And boarded her i\' th\' wanton way of youth.\n    She knew her distance, and did angle for me,\n    Madding my eagerness with her restraint,\n    As all impediments in fancy\'s course\n    Are motives of more fancy; and, in fine,\n    Her infinite cunning with her modern grace\n    Subdu\'d me to her rate. She got the ring;  \n    And I had that which any inferior might\n    At market-price have bought.\n  DIANA. I must be patient.\n    You that have turn\'d off a first so noble wife\n    May justly diet me. I pray you yet-\n    Since you lack virtue, I will lose a husband-\n    Send for your ring, I will return it home,\n    And give me mine again.\n  BERTRAM. I have it not.\n  KING. What ring was yours, I pray you?\n  DIANA. Sir, much like\n    The same upon your finger.\n  KING. Know you this ring? This ring was his of late.\n  DIANA. And this was it I gave him, being abed.\n  KING. The story, then, goes false you threw it him\n    Out of a casement.\n  DIANA. I have spoke the truth.\n\n                       Enter PAROLLES\n  \n  BERTRAM. My lord, I do confess the ring was hers.\n  KING. You boggle shrewdly; every feather starts you.\n    Is this the man you speak of?\n  DIANA. Ay, my lord.\n  KING. Tell me, sirrah-but tell me true I charge you,\n    Not fearing the displeasure of your master,\n    Which, on your just proceeding, I\'ll keep off-\n    By him and by this woman here what know you?\n  PAROLLES. So please your Majesty, my master hath been an honourable\n    gentleman; tricks he hath had in him, which gentlemen have.\n  KING. Come, come, to th\' purpose. Did he love this woman?\n  PAROLLES. Faith, sir, he did love her; but how?\n  KING. How, I pray you?\n  PAROLLES. He did love her, sir, as a gentleman loves a woman.\n  KING. How is that?\n  PAROLLES. He lov\'d her, sir, and lov\'d her not.\n  KING. As thou art a knave and no knave.\n    What an equivocal companion is this!\n  PAROLLES. I am a poor man, and at your Majesty\'s command.\n  LAFEU. He\'s a good drum, my lord, but a naughty orator.  \n  DIANA. Do you know he promis\'d me marriage?\n  PAROLLES. Faith, I know more than I\'ll speak.\n  KING. But wilt thou not speak all thou know\'st?\n  PAROLLES. Yes, so please your Majesty. I did go between them, as I\n    said; but more than that, he loved her-for indeed he was mad for\n    her, and talk\'d of Satan, and of Limbo, and of Furies, and I know\n    not what. Yet I was in that credit with them at that time that I\n    knew of their going to bed; and of other motions, as promising\n    her marriage, and things which would derive me ill will to speak\n    of; therefore I will not speak what I know.\n  KING. Thou hast spoken all already, unless thou canst say they are\n    married; but thou art too fine in thy evidence; therefore stand\n    aside.\n    This ring, you say, was yours?\n  DIANA. Ay, my good lord.\n  KING. Where did you buy it? Or who gave it you?\n  DIANA. It was not given me, nor I did not buy it.\n  KING. Who lent it you?\n  DIANA. It was not lent me neither.\n  KING. Where did you find it then?  \n  DIANA. I found it not.\n  KING. If it were yours by none of all these ways,\n    How could you give it him?\n  DIANA. I never gave it him.\n  LAFEU. This woman\'s an easy glove, my lord; she goes of and on at\n    pleasure.\n  KING. This ring was mine, I gave it his first wife.\n  DIANA. It might be yours or hers, for aught I know.\n  KING. Take her away, I do not like her now;\n    To prison with her. And away with him.\n    Unless thou tell\'st me where thou hadst this ring,\n    Thou diest within this hour.\n  DIANA. I\'ll never tell you.\n  KING. Take her away.\n  DIANA. I\'ll put in bail, my liege.\n  KING. I think thee now some common customer.\n  DIANA. By Jove, if ever I knew man, \'twas you.\n  KING. Wherefore hast thou accus\'d him all this while?\n  DIANA. Because he\'s guilty, and he is not guilty.\n    He knows I am no maid, and he\'ll swear to\'t:  \n    I\'ll swear I am a maid, and he knows not.\n    Great King, I am no strumpet, by my life;\n    I am either maid, or else this old man\'s wife.\n                                             [Pointing to LAFEU]\n  KING. She does abuse our ears; to prison with her.\n  DIANA. Good mother, fetch my bail. Stay, royal sir;\n                                                      Exit WIDOW\n    The jeweller that owes the ring is sent for,\n    And he shall surety me. But for this lord\n    Who hath abus\'d me as he knows himself,\n    Though yet he never harm\'d me, here I quit him.\n    He knows himself my bed he hath defil\'d;\n    And at that time he got his wife with child.\n    Dead though she be, she feels her young one kick;\n    So there\'s my riddle: one that\'s dead is quick-\n    And now behold the meaning.\n\n                     Re-enter WIDOW with HELENA\n\n  KING. Is there no exorcist  \n    Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes?\n    Is\'t real that I see?\n  HELENA. No, my good lord;\n    \'Tis but the shadow of a wife you see,\n    The name and not the thing.\n  BERTRAM. Both, both; o, pardon!\n  HELENA. O, my good lord, when I was like this maid,\n    I found you wondrous kind. There is your ring,\n    And, look you, here\'s your letter. This it says:\n    \'When from my finger you can get this ring,\n    And are by me with child,\' etc. This is done.\n    Will you be mine now you are doubly won?\n  BERTRAM. If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly,\n    I\'ll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly.\n  HELENA. If it appear not plain, and prove untrue,\n    Deadly divorce step between me and you!\n    O my dear mother, do I see you living?\n  LAFEU. Mine eyes smell onions; I shall weep anon. [To PAROLLES]\n    Good Tom Drum, lend me a handkercher. So, I\n    thank thee. Wait on me home, I\'ll make sport with thee;  \n    let thy curtsies alone, they are scurvy ones.\n  KING. Let us from point to point this story know,\n    To make the even truth in pleasure flow.\n    [To DIANA]  If thou beest yet a fresh uncropped flower,\n    Choose thou thy husband, and I\'ll pay thy dower;\n    For I can guess that by thy honest aid\n    Thou kept\'st a wife herself, thyself a maid.-\n    Of that and all the progress, more and less,\n    Resolvedly more leisure shall express.\n    All yet seems well; and if it end so meet,\n    The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.       [Flourish]\n\nEPILOGUE\n                             EPILOGUE.\n\n  KING. The King\'s a beggar, now the play is done.\n    All is well ended if this suit be won,\n    That you express content; which we will pay\n    With strife to please you, day exceeding day.\n    Ours be your patience then, and yours our parts;\n    Your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts.\n                                                    Exeunt omnes\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1607\n\nTHE TRAGEDY OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\n  MARK ANTONY,         Triumvirs\n  OCTAVIUS CAESAR,         "\n  M. AEMILIUS LEPIDUS,     "\n  SEXTUS POMPEIUS,         "\n  DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS, friend to Antony\n  VENTIDIUS,             "    "   "\n  EROS,                  "    "   "\n  SCARUS,                "    "   "\n  DERCETAS,              "    "   "\n  DEMETRIUS,             "    "   "\n  PHILO,                 "    "   "\n  MAECENAS,   friend to Caesar\n  AGRIPPA,       "    "   "\n  DOLABELLA,     "    "   "\n  PROCULEIUS,    "    "   "\n  THYREUS,       "    "   "\n  GALLUS,        "    "   "\n  MENAS,      friend to Pompey\n  MENECRATES,    "    "    "\n  VARRIUS,       "    "    "  \n  TAURUS, Lieutenant-General to Caesar\n  CANIDIUS, Lieutenant-General to Antony\n  SILIUS, an Officer in Ventidius\'s army\n  EUPHRONIUS, an Ambassador from Antony to Caesar\n  ALEXAS,   attendant on Cleopatra\n  MARDIAN,      "     "      "\n  SELEUCUS,     "     "      "\n  DIOMEDES,     "     "      "\n  A SOOTHSAYER\n  A CLOWN\n\n  CLEOPATRA, Queen of Egypt\n  OCTAVIA, sister to Caesar and wife to Antony\n  CHARMIAN, lady attending on Cleopatra\n  IRAS,       "      "      "     "\n\n\n\n  Officers, Soldiers, Messengers, and Attendants\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nThe Roman Empire\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nAlexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace\n\nEnter DEMETRIUS and PHILO\n\n  PHILO. Nay, but this dotage of our general\'s\n    O\'erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes,\n    That o\'er the files and musters of the war\n    Have glow\'d like plated Mars, now bend, now turn,\n    The office and devotion of their view\n    Upon a tawny front. His captain\'s heart,\n    Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst\n    The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,\n    And is become the bellows and the fan\n    To cool a gipsy\'s lust.\n\n     Flourish. Enter ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, her LADIES, the train,\n                    with eunuchs fanning her\n\n    Look where they come!\n    Take but good note, and you shall see in him\n    The triple pillar of the world transform\'d  \n    Into a strumpet\'s fool. Behold and see.\n  CLEOPATRA. If it be love indeed, tell me how much.\n  ANTONY. There\'s beggary in the love that can be reckon\'d.\n  CLEOPATRA. I\'ll set a bourn how far to be belov\'d.\n  ANTONY. Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.\n\n                       Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. News, my good lord, from Rome.\n  ANTONY. Grates me the sum.\n  CLEOPATRA. Nay, hear them, Antony.\n    Fulvia perchance is angry; or who knows\n    If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent\n    His pow\'rful mandate to you: \'Do this or this;\n    Take in that kingdom and enfranchise that;\n    Perform\'t, or else we damn thee.\'\n  ANTONY. How, my love?\n  CLEOPATRA. Perchance? Nay, and most like,\n    You must not stay here longer; your dismission\n    Is come from Caesar; therefore hear it, Antony.  \n    Where\'s Fulvia\'s process? Caesar\'s I would say? Both?\n    Call in the messengers. As I am Egypt\'s Queen,\n    Thou blushest, Antony, and that blood of thine\n    Is Caesar\'s homager. Else so thy cheek pays shame\n    When shrill-tongu\'d Fulvia scolds. The messengers!\n  ANTONY. Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch\n    Of the rang\'d empire fall! Here is my space.\n    Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike\n    Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life\n    Is to do thus [emhracing], when such a mutual pair\n    And such a twain can do\'t, in which I bind,\n    On pain of punishment, the world to weet\n    We stand up peerless.\n  CLEOPATRA. Excellent falsehood!\n    Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her?\n    I\'ll seem the fool I am not. Antony\n    Will be himself.\n  ANTONY. But stirr\'d by Cleopatra.\n    Now for the love of Love and her soft hours,\n    Let\'s not confound the time with conference harsh;  \n    There\'s not a minute of our lives should stretch\n    Without some pleasure now. What sport to-night?\n  CLEOPATRA. Hear the ambassadors.\n  ANTONY. Fie, wrangling queen!\n    Whom everything becomes- to chide, to laugh,\n    To weep; whose every passion fully strives\n    To make itself in thee fair and admir\'d.\n    No messenger but thine, and all alone\n    To-night we\'ll wander through the streets and note\n    The qualities of people. Come, my queen;\n    Last night you did desire it. Speak not to us.\n                     Exeunt ANTONY and CLEOPATRA, with the train\n  DEMETRIUS. Is Caesar with Antonius priz\'d so slight?\n  PHILO. Sir, sometimes when he is not Antony,\n    He comes too short of that great property\n    Which still should go with Antony.\n  DEMETRIUS. I am full sorry\n    That he approves the common liar, who\n    Thus speaks of him at Rome; but I will hope\n    Of better deeds to-morrow. Rest you happy!            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nAlexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace\n\nEnter CHARMIAN, IRAS, ALEXAS, and a SOOTHSAYER\n\n  CHARMIAN. Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most anything Alexas, almost\n    most absolute Alexas, where\'s the soothsayer that you prais\'d so\n    to th\' Queen? O that I knew this husband, which you say must\n    charge his horns with garlands!\n  ALEXAS. Soothsayer!\n  SOOTHSAYER. Your will?\n  CHARMIAN. Is this the man? Is\'t you, sir, that know things?\n  SOOTHSAYER. In nature\'s infinite book of secrecy\n    A little I can read.\n  ALEXAS. Show him your hand.\n\n                       Enter ENOBARBUS\n\n  ENOBARBUS. Bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough\n    Cleopatra\'s health to drink.\n  CHARMIAN. Good, sir, give me good fortune.\n  SOOTHSAYER. I make not, but foresee.  \n  CHARMIAN. Pray, then, foresee me one.\n  SOOTHSAYER. You shall be yet far fairer than you are.\n  CHARMIAN. He means in flesh.\n  IRAS. No, you shall paint when you are old.\n  CHARMIAN. Wrinkles forbid!\n  ALEXAS. Vex not his prescience; be attentive.\n  CHARMIAN. Hush!\n  SOOTHSAYER. You shall be more beloving than beloved.\n  CHARMIAN. I had rather heat my liver with drinking.\n  ALEXAS. Nay, hear him.\n  CHARMIAN. Good now, some excellent fortune! Let me be married to\n    three kings in a forenoon, and widow them all. Let me have a\n    child at fifty, to whom Herod of Jewry may do homage. Find me to\n    marry me with Octavius Caesar, and companion me with my mistress.\n  SOOTHSAYER. You shall outlive the lady whom you serve.\n  CHARMIAN. O, excellent! I love long life better than figs.\n  SOOTHSAYER. You have seen and prov\'d a fairer former fortune\n    Than that which is to approach.\n  CHARMIAN. Then belike my children shall have no names.\n    Prithee, how many boys and wenches must I have?  \n  SOOTHSAYER. If every of your wishes had a womb,\n    And fertile every wish, a million.\n  CHARMIAN. Out, fool! I forgive thee for a witch.\n  ALEXAS. You think none but your sheets are privy to your wishes.\n  CHARMIAN. Nay, come, tell Iras hers.\n  ALEXAS. We\'ll know all our fortunes.\n  ENOBARBUS. Mine, and most of our fortunes, to-night, shall be-\n    drunk to bed.\n  IRAS. There\'s a palm presages chastity, if nothing else.\n  CHARMIAN. E\'en as the o\'erflowing Nilus presageth famine.\n  IRAS. Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay.\n  CHARMIAN. Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I\n    cannot scratch mine ear. Prithee, tell her but worky-day fortune.\n  SOOTHSAYER. Your fortunes are alike.\n  IRAS. But how, but how? Give me particulars.\n  SOOTHSAYER. I have said.\n  IRAS. Am I not an inch of fortune better than she?\n  CHARMIAN. Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I,\n    where would you choose it?\n  IRAS. Not in my husband\'s nose.  \n  CHARMIAN. Our worser thoughts heavens mend! Alexas- come, his\n    fortune, his fortune! O, let him marry a woman that cannot go,\n    sweet Isis, I beseech thee! And let her die too, and give him a\n    worse! And let worse follow worse, till the worst of all follow\n    him laughing to his grave, fiftyfold a cuckold! Good Isis, hear\n    me this prayer, though thou deny me a matter of more weight; good\n    Isis, I beseech thee!\n  IRAS. Amen. Dear goddess, hear that prayer of the people! For, as\n    it is a heartbreaking to see a handsome man loose-wiv\'d, so it is\n    a deadly sorrow to behold a foul knave uncuckolded. Therefore,\n    dear Isis, keep decorum, and fortune him accordingly!\n  CHARMIAN. Amen.\n  ALEXAS. Lo now, if it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold, they\n    would make themselves whores but they\'ld do\'t!\n\n                          Enter CLEOPATRA\n\n  ENOBARBUS. Hush! Here comes Antony.\n  CHARMIAN. Not he; the Queen.\n  CLEOPATRA. Saw you my lord?  \n  ENOBARBUS. No, lady.\n  CLEOPATRA. Was he not here?\n  CHARMIAN. No, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. He was dispos\'d to mirth; but on the sudden\n    A Roman thought hath struck him. Enobarbus!\n  ENOBARBUS. Madam?\n  CLEOPATRA. Seek him, and bring him hither. Where\'s Alexas?\n  ALEXAS. Here, at your service. My lord approaches.\n\n          Enter ANTONY, with a MESSENGER and attendants\n\n  CLEOPATRA. We will not look upon him. Go with us.\n                       Exeunt CLEOPATRA, ENOBARBUS, and the rest\n  MESSENGER. Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.\n  ANTONY. Against my brother Lucius?\n  MESSENGER. Ay.\n    But soon that war had end, and the time\'s state\n    Made friends of them, jointing their force \'gainst Caesar,\n    Whose better issue in the war from Italy\n    Upon the first encounter drave them.  \n  ANTONY. Well, what worst?\n  MESSENGER. The nature of bad news infects the teller.\n  ANTONY. When it concerns the fool or coward. On!\n    Things that are past are done with me. \'Tis thus:\n    Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death,\n    I hear him as he flatter\'d.\n  MESSENGER. Labienus-\n    This is stiff news- hath with his Parthian force\n    Extended Asia from Euphrates,\n    His conquering banner shook from Syria\n    To Lydia and to Ionia,\n    Whilst-\n  ANTONY. Antony, thou wouldst say.\n  MESSENGER. O, my lord!\n  ANTONY. Speak to me home; mince not the general tongue;\n    Name Cleopatra as she is call\'d in Rome.\n    Rail thou in Fulvia\'s phrase, and taunt my faults\n    With such full licence as both truth and malice\n    Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds\n    When our quick minds lie still, and our ills told us  \n    Is as our earing. Fare thee well awhile.\n  MESSENGER. At your noble pleasure.                        Exit\n  ANTONY. From Sicyon, ho, the news! Speak there!\n  FIRST ATTENDANT. The man from Sicyon- is there such an one?\n  SECOND ATTENDANT. He stays upon your will.\n  ANTONY. Let him appear.\n    These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,\n    Or lose myself in dotage.\n\n                 Enter another MESSENGER with a letter\n\n    What are you?\n  SECOND MESSENGER. Fulvia thy wife is dead.\n  ANTONY. Where died she?\n  SECOND MESSENGER. In Sicyon.\n    Her length of sickness, with what else more serious\n    Importeth thee to know, this bears.       [Gives the letter]\n  ANTONY. Forbear me.                             Exit MESSENGER\n    There\'s a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it.\n    What our contempts doth often hurl from us  \n    We wish it ours again; the present pleasure,\n    By revolution low\'ring, does become\n    The opposite of itself. She\'s good, being gone;\n    The hand could pluck her back that shov\'d her on.\n    I must from this enchanting queen break off.\n    Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,\n    My idleness doth hatch. How now, Enobarbus!\n\n                    Re-enter ENOBARBUS\n\n  ENOBARBUS. What\'s your pleasure, sir?\n  ANTONY. I must with haste from hence.\n  ENOBARBUS. Why, then we kill all our women. We see how mortal an\n    unkindness is to them; if they suffer our departure, death\'s the\n    word.\n  ANTONY. I must be gone.\n  ENOBARBUS. Under a compelling occasion, let women die. It were pity\n    to cast them away for nothing, though between them and a great\n    cause they should be esteemed nothing. Cleopatra, catching but\n    the least noise of this, dies instantly; I have seen her die  \n    twenty times upon far poorer moment. I do think there is mettle\n    in death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a\n    celerity in dying.\n  ANTONY. She is cunning past man\'s thought.\n  ENOBARBUS. Alack, sir, no! Her passions are made of nothing but the\n    finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters\n    sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than\n    almanacs can report. This cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she\n    makes a show\'r of rain as well as Jove.\n  ANTONY. Would I had never seen her!\n  ENOBARBUS. O Sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of\n    work, which not to have been blest withal would have discredited\n    your travel.\n  ANTONY. Fulvia is dead.\n  ENOBARBUS. Sir?\n  ANTONY. Fulvia is dead.\n  ENOBARBUS. Fulvia?\n  ANTONY. Dead.\n  ENOBARBUS. Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When it\n    pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a man from him, it  \n    shows to man the tailors of the earth; comforting therein that\n    when old robes are worn out there are members to make new. If\n    there were no more women but Fulvia, then had you indeed a cut,\n    and the case to be lamented. This grief is crown\'d with\n    consolation: your old smock brings forth a new petticoat; and\n    indeed the tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow.\n  ANTONY. The business she hath broached in the state\n    Cannot endure my absence.\n  ENOBARBUS. And the business you have broach\'d here cannot be\n    without you; especially that of Cleopatra\'s, which wholly depends\n    on your abode.\n  ANTONY. No more light answers. Let our officers\n    Have notice what we purpose. I shall break\n    The cause of our expedience to the Queen,\n    And get her leave to part. For not alone\n    The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches,\n    Do strongly speak to us; but the letters to\n    Of many our contriving friends in Rome\n    Petition us at home. Sextus Pompeius\n    Hath given the dare to Caesar, and commands  \n    The empire of the sea; our slippery people,\n    Whose love is never link\'d to the deserver\n    Till his deserts are past, begin to throw\n    Pompey the Great and all his dignities\n    Upon his son; who, high in name and power,\n    Higher than both in blood and life, stands up\n    For the main soldier; whose quality, going on,\n    The sides o\' th\' world may danger. Much is breeding\n    Which, like the courser\'s hair, hath yet but life\n    And not a serpent\'s poison. Say our pleasure,\n    To such whose place is under us, requires\n    Our quick remove from hence.\n  ENOBARBUS. I shall do\'t.                                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nAlexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace\n\nEnter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and ALEXAS\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Where is he?\n  CHARMIAN. I did not see him since.\n  CLEOPATRA. See where he is, who\'s with him, what he does.\n    I did not send you. If you find him sad,\n    Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report\n    That I am sudden sick. Quick, and return.        Exit ALEXAS\n  CHARMIAN. Madam, methinks, if you did love him dearly,\n    You do not hold the method to enforce\n    The like from him.\n  CLEOPATRA. What should I do I do not?\n  CHARMIAN. In each thing give him way; cross him in nothing.\n  CLEOPATRA. Thou teachest like a fool- the way to lose him.\n  CHARMIAN. Tempt him not so too far; I wish, forbear;\n    In time we hate that which we often fear.\n\n                            Enter ANTONY\n  \n    But here comes Antony.\n  CLEOPATRA. I am sick and sullen.\n  ANTONY. I am sorry to give breathing to my purpose-\n  CLEOPATRA. Help me away, dear Charmian; I shall fall.\n    It cannot be thus long; the sides of nature\n    Will not sustain it.\n  ANTONY. Now, my dearest queen-\n  CLEOPATRA. Pray you, stand farther from me.\n  ANTONY. What\'s the matter?\n  CLEOPATRA. I know by that same eye there\'s some good news.\n    What says the married woman? You may go.\n    Would she had never given you leave to come!\n    Let her not say \'tis I that keep you here-\n    I have no power upon you; hers you are.\n  ANTONY. The gods best know-\n  CLEOPATRA. O, never was there queen\n    So mightily betray\'d! Yet at the first\n    I saw the treasons planted.\n  ANTONY. Cleopatra-\n  CLEOPATRA. Why should I think you can be mine and true,  \n    Though you in swearing shake the throned gods,\n    Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness,\n    To be entangled with those mouth-made vows,\n    Which break themselves in swearing!\n  ANTONY. Most sweet queen-\n  CLEOPATRA. Nay, pray you seek no colour for your going,\n    But bid farewell, and go. When you sued staying,\n    Then was the time for words. No going then!\n    Eternity was in our lips and eyes,\n    Bliss in our brows\' bent, none our parts so poor\n    But was a race of heaven. They are so still,\n    Or thou, the greatest soldier of the world,\n    Art turn\'d the greatest liar.\n  ANTONY. How now, lady!\n  CLEOPATRA. I would I had thy inches. Thou shouldst know\n    There were a heart in Egypt.\n  ANTONY. Hear me, queen:\n    The strong necessity of time commands\n    Our services awhile; but my full heart\n    Remains in use with you. Our Italy  \n    Shines o\'er with civil swords: Sextus Pompeius\n    Makes his approaches to the port of Rome;\n    Equality of two domestic powers\n    Breed scrupulous faction; the hated, grown to strength,\n    Are newly grown to love. The condemn\'d Pompey,\n    Rich in his father\'s honour, creeps apace\n    Into the hearts of such as have not thrived\n    Upon the present state, whose numbers threaten;\n    And quietness, grown sick of rest, would purge\n    By any desperate change. My more particular,\n    And that which most with you should safe my going,\n    Is Fulvia\'s death.\n  CLEOPATRA. Though age from folly could not give me freedom,\n     It does from childishness. Can Fulvia die?\n  ANTONY. She\'s dead, my Queen.\n    Look here, and at thy sovereign leisure read\n    The garboils she awak\'d. At the last, best.\n    See when and where she died.\n  CLEOPATRA. O most false love!\n    Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill  \n    With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see,\n    In Fulvia\'s death how mine receiv\'d shall be.\n  ANTONY. Quarrel no more, but be prepar\'d to know\n    The purposes I bear; which are, or cease,\n    As you shall give th\' advice. By the fire\n    That quickens Nilus\' slime, I go from hence\n    Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war\n    As thou affects.\n  CLEOPATRA. Cut my lace, Charmian, come!\n    But let it be; I am quickly ill and well-\n    So Antony loves.\n  ANTONY. My precious queen, forbear,\n    And give true evidence to his love, which stands\n    An honourable trial.\n  CLEOPATRA. So Fulvia told me.\n    I prithee turn aside and weep for her;\n    Then bid adieu to me, and say the tears\n    Belong to Egypt. Good now, play one scene\n    Of excellent dissembling, and let it look\n    Like perfect honour.  \n  ANTONY. You\'ll heat my blood; no more.\n  CLEOPATRA. You can do better yet; but this is meetly.\n  ANTONY. Now, by my sword-\n  CLEOPATRA. And target. Still he mends;\n    But this is not the best. Look, prithee, Charmian,\n    How this Herculean Roman does become\n    The carriage of his chafe.\n  ANTONY. I\'ll leave you, lady.\n  CLEOPATRA. Courteous lord, one word.\n    Sir, you and I must part- but that\'s not it.\n    Sir, you and I have lov\'d- but there\'s not it.\n    That you know well. Something it is I would-\n    O, my oblivion is a very Antony,\n    And I am all forgotten!\n  ANTONY. But that your royalty\n    Holds idleness your subject, I should take you\n    For idleness itself.\n  CLEOPATRA. \'Tis sweating labour\n    To bear such idleness so near the heart\n    As Cleopatra this. But, sir, forgive me;  \n    Since my becomings kill me when they do not\n    Eye well to you. Your honour calls you hence;\n    Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly,\n    And all the gods go with you! Upon your sword\n    Sit laurel victory, and smooth success\n    Be strew\'d before your feet!\n  ANTONY. Let us go. Come.\n    Our separation so abides and flies\n    That thou, residing here, goes yet with me,\n    And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee.\n    Away!                                                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nRome. CAESAR\'S house\n\nEnter OCTAVIUS CAESAR, reading a letter; LEPIDUS, and their train\n\n  CAESAR. You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know,\n    It is not Caesar\'s natural vice to hate\n    Our great competitor. From Alexandria\n    This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes\n    The lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike\n    Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy\n    More womanly than he; hardly gave audience, or\n    Vouchsaf\'d to think he had partners. You shall find there\n    A man who is the abstract of all faults\n    That all men follow.\n  LEPIDUS. I must not think there are\n    Evils enow to darken all his goodness.\n    His faults, in him, seem as the spots of heaven,\n    More fiery by night\'s blackness; hereditary\n    Rather than purchas\'d; what he cannot change\n    Than what he chooses.  \n  CAESAR. You are too indulgent. Let\'s grant it is not\n    Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy,\n    To give a kingdom for a mirth, to sit\n    And keep the turn of tippling with a slave,\n    To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet\n    With knaves that smell of sweat. Say this becomes him-\n    As his composure must be rare indeed\n    Whom these things cannot blemish- yet must Antony\n    No way excuse his foils when we do bear\n    So great weight in his lightness. If he fill\'d\n    His vacancy with his voluptuousness,\n    Full surfeits and the dryness of his bones\n    Call on him for\'t! But to confound such time\n    That drums him from his sport and speaks as loud\n    As his own state and ours- \'tis to be chid\n    As we rate boys who, being mature in knowledge,\n    Pawn their experience to their present pleasure,\n    And so rebel to judgment.\n\n                   Enter a MESSENGER  \n\n  LEPIDUS. Here\'s more news.\n  MESSENGER. Thy biddings have been done; and every hour,\n    Most noble Caesar, shalt thou have report\n    How \'tis abroad. Pompey is strong at sea,\n    And it appears he is belov\'d of those\n    That only have fear\'d Caesar. To the ports\n    The discontents repair, and men\'s reports\n    Give him much wrong\'d.\n  CAESAR. I should have known no less.\n    It hath been taught us from the primal state\n    That he which is was wish\'d until he were;\n    And the ebb\'d man, ne\'er lov\'d till ne\'er worth love,\n    Comes dear\'d by being lack\'d. This common body,\n    Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,\n    Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide,\n    To rot itself with motion.\n  MESSENGER. Caesar, I bring thee word\n    Menecrates and Menas, famous pirates,\n    Make the sea serve them, which they ear and wound  \n    With keels of every kind. Many hot inroads\n    They make in Italy; the borders maritime\n    Lack blood to think on\'t, and flush youth revolt.\n    No vessel can peep forth but \'tis as soon\n    Taken as seen; for Pompey\'s name strikes more\n    Than could his war resisted.\n  CAESAR. Antony,\n    Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once\n    Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew\'st\n    Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel\n    Did famine follow; whom thou fought\'st against,\n    Though daintily brought up, with patience more\n    Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink\n    The stale of horses and the gilded puddle\n    Which beasts would cough at. Thy palate then did deign\n    The roughest berry on the rudest hedge;\n    Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets,\n    The barks of trees thou brows\'d. On the Alps\n    It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,\n    Which some did die to look on. And all this-  \n    It wounds thine honour that I speak it now-\n    Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek\n    So much as lank\'d not.\n  LEPIDUS. \'Tis pity of him.\n  CAESAR. Let his shames quickly\n    Drive him to Rome. \'Tis time we twain\n    Did show ourselves i\' th\' field; and to that end\n    Assemble we immediate council. Pompey\n    Thrives in our idleness.\n  LEPIDUS. To-morrow, Caesar,\n    I shall be furnish\'d to inform you rightly\n    Both what by sea and land I can be able\n    To front this present time.\n  CAESAR. Till which encounter\n    It is my business too. Farewell.\n  LEPIDUS. Farewell, my lord. What you shall know meantime\n    Of stirs abroad, I shall beseech you, sir,\n    To let me be partaker.\n  CAESAR. Doubt not, sir;\n    I knew it for my bond.                                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nAlexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace\n\nEnter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and MARDIAN\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Charmian!\n  CHARMIAN. Madam?\n  CLEOPATRA. Ha, ha!\n    Give me to drink mandragora.\n  CHARMIAN. Why, madam?\n  CLEOPATRA. That I might sleep out this great gap of time\n    My Antony is away.\n  CHARMIAN. You think of him too much.\n  CLEOPATRA. O, \'tis treason!\n  CHARMIAN. Madam, I trust, not so.\n  CLEOPATRA. Thou, eunuch Mardian!\n  MARDIAN. What\'s your Highness\' pleasure?\n  CLEOPATRA. Not now to hear thee sing; I take no pleasure\n    In aught an eunuch has. \'Tis well for thee\n    That, being unseminar\'d, thy freer thoughts\n    May not fly forth of Egypt. Hast thou affections?\n  MARDIAN. Yes, gracious madam.  \n  CLEOPATRA. Indeed?\n  MARDIAN. Not in deed, madam; for I can do nothing\n    But what indeed is honest to be done.\n    Yet have I fierce affections, and think\n    What Venus did with Mars.\n  CLEOPATRA. O Charmian,\n    Where think\'st thou he is now? Stands he or sits he?\n    Or does he walk? or is he on his horse?\n    O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!\n    Do bravely, horse; for wot\'st thou whom thou mov\'st?\n    The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm\n    And burgonet of men. He\'s speaking now,\n    Or murmuring \'Where\'s my serpent of old Nile?\'\n    For so he calls me. Now I feed myself\n    With most delicious poison. Think on me,\n    That am with Phoebus\' amorous pinches black,\n    And wrinkled deep in time? Broad-fronted Caesar,\n    When thou wast here above the ground, I was\n    A morsel for a monarch; and great Pompey\n    Would stand and make his eyes grow in my brow;  \n    There would he anchor his aspect and die\n    With looking on his life.\n\n                         Enter ALEXAS\n\n  ALEXAS. Sovereign of Egypt, hail!\n  CLEOPATRA. How much unlike art thou Mark Antony!\n    Yet, coming from him, that great med\'cine hath\n    With his tinct gilded thee.\n    How goes it with my brave Mark Antony?\n  ALEXAS. Last thing he did, dear Queen,\n    He kiss\'d- the last of many doubled kisses-\n    This orient pearl. His speech sticks in my heart.\n  CLEOPATRA. Mine ear must pluck it thence.\n  ALEXAS. \'Good friend,\' quoth he\n    \'Say the firm Roman to great Egypt sends\n    This treasure of an oyster; at whose foot,\n    To mend the petty present, I will piece\n    Her opulent throne with kingdoms. All the East,\n    Say thou, shall call her mistress.\' So he nodded,  \n    And soberly did mount an arm-gaunt steed,\n    Who neigh\'d so high that what I would have spoke\n    Was beastly dumb\'d by him.\n  CLEOPATRA. What, was he sad or merry?\n  ALEXAS. Like to the time o\' th\' year between the extremes\n    Of hot and cold; he was nor sad nor merry.\n  CLEOPATRA. O well-divided disposition! Note him,\n    Note him, good Charmian; \'tis the man; but note him!\n    He was not sad, for he would shine on those\n    That make their looks by his; he was not merry,\n    Which seem\'d to tell them his remembrance lay\n    In Egypt with his joy; but between both.\n    O heavenly mingle! Be\'st thou sad or merry,\n    The violence of either thee becomes,\n    So does it no man else. Met\'st thou my posts?\n  ALEXAS. Ay, madam, twenty several messengers.\n    Why do you send so thick?\n  CLEOPATRA. Who\'s born that day\n    When I forget to send to Antony\n    Shall die a beggar. Ink and paper, Charmian.  \n    Welcome, my good Alexas. Did I, Charmian,\n    Ever love Caesar so?\n  CHARMIAN. O that brave Caesar!\n  CLEOPATRA. Be chok\'d with such another emphasis!\n    Say \'the brave Antony.\'\n  CHARMIAN. The valiant Caesar!\n  CLEOPATRA. By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth\n    If thou with Caesar paragon again\n    My man of men.\n  CHARMIAN. By your most gracious pardon,\n    I sing but after you.\n  CLEOPATRA. My salad days,\n    When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,\n    To say as I said then. But come, away!\n    Get me ink and paper.\n    He shall have every day a several greeting,\n    Or I\'ll unpeople Egypt.                               Exeunt\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nMessina. POMPEY\'S house\n\nEnter POMPEY, MENECRATES, and MENAS, in warlike manner\n\n  POMPEY. If the great gods be just, they shall assist\n    The deeds of justest men.\n  MENECRATES. Know, worthy Pompey,\n    That what they do delay they not deny.\n  POMPEY. Whiles we are suitors to their throne, decays\n    The thing we sue for.\n  MENECRATES. We, ignorant of ourselves,\n    Beg often our own harms, which the wise pow\'rs\n    Deny us for our good; so find we profit\n    By losing of our prayers.\n  POMPEY. I shall do well.\n    The people love me, and the sea is mine;\n    My powers are crescent, and my auguring hope\n    Says it will come to th\' full. Mark Antony\n    In Egypt sits at dinner, and will make\n    No wars without doors. Caesar gets money where  \n    He loses hearts. Lepidus flatters both,\n    Of both is flatter\'d; but he neither loves,\n    Nor either cares for him.\n  MENAS. Caesar and Lepidus\n    Are in the field. A mighty strength they carry.\n  POMPEY. Where have you this? \'Tis false.\n  MENAS. From Silvius, sir.\n  POMPEY. He dreams. I know they are in Rome together,\n    Looking for Antony. But all the charms of love,\n    Salt Cleopatra, soften thy wan\'d lip!\n    Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both;\n    Tie up the libertine in a field of feasts,\n    Keep his brain fuming. Epicurean cooks\n    Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite,\n    That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour\n    Even till a Lethe\'d dullness-\n\n                       Enter VARRIUS\n\n    How now, Varrius!  \n  VARRIUS. This is most certain that I shall deliver:\n    Mark Antony is every hour in Rome\n    Expected. Since he went from Egypt \'tis\n    A space for farther travel.\n  POMPEY. I could have given less matter\n    A better ear. Menas, I did not think\n    This amorous surfeiter would have donn\'d his helm\n    For such a petty war; his soldiership\n    Is twice the other twain. But let us rear\n    The higher our opinion, that our stirring\n    Can from the lap of Egypt\'s widow pluck\n    The ne\'er-lust-wearied Antony.\n  MENAS. I cannot hope\n    Caesar and Antony shall well greet together.\n    His wife that\'s dead did trespasses to Caesar;\n    His brother warr\'d upon him; although, I think,\n    Not mov\'d by Antony.\n  POMPEY. I know not, Menas,\n    How lesser enmities may give way to greater.\n    Were\'t not that we stand up against them all,  \n    \'Twere pregnant they should square between themselves;\n    For they have entertained cause enough\n    To draw their swords. But how the fear of us\n    May cement their divisions, and bind up\n    The petty difference we yet not know.\n    Be\'t as our gods will have\'t! It only stands\n    Our lives upon to use our strongest hands.\n    Come, Menas.                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nRome. The house of LEPIDUS\n\nEnter ENOBARBUS and LEPIDUS\n\n  LEPIDUS. Good Enobarbus, \'tis a worthy deed,\n    And shall become you well, to entreat your captain\n    To soft and gentle speech.\n  ENOBARBUS. I shall entreat him\n    To answer like himself. If Caesar move him,\n    Let Antony look over Caesar\'s head\n    And speak as loud as Mars. By Jupiter,\n    Were I the wearer of Antonius\' beard,\n    I would not shave\'t to-day.\n  LEPIDUS. \'Tis not a time\n    For private stomaching.\n  ENOBARBUS. Every time\n    Serves for the matter that is then born in\'t.\n  LEPIDUS. But small to greater matters must give way.\n  ENOBARBUS. Not if the small come first.\n  LEPIDUS. Your speech is passion;\n    But pray you stir no embers up. Here comes  \n    The noble Antony.\n\n                Enter ANTONY and VENTIDIUS\n\n  ENOBARBUS. And yonder, Caesar.\n\n            Enter CAESAR, MAECENAS, and AGRIPPA\n\n  ANTONY. If we compose well here, to Parthia.\n    Hark, Ventidius.\n  CAESAR. I do not know, Maecenas. Ask Agrippa.\n  LEPIDUS. Noble friends,\n    That which combin\'d us was most great, and let not\n    A leaner action rend us. What\'s amiss,\n    May it be gently heard. When we debate\n    Our trivial difference loud, we do commit\n    Murder in healing wounds. Then, noble partners,\n    The rather for I earnestly beseech,\n    Touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms,\n    Nor curstness grow to th\' matter.  \n  ANTONY. \'Tis spoken well.\n    Were we before our arinies, and to fight,\n    I should do thus.                                 [Flourish]\n  CAESAR. Welcome to Rome.\n  ANTONY. Thank you.\n  CAESAR. Sit.\n  ANTONY. Sit, sir.\n  CAESAR. Nay, then.                                  [They sit]\n  ANTONY. I learn you take things ill which are not so,\n    Or being, concern you not.\n  CAESAR. I must be laugh\'d at\n    If, or for nothing or a little,\n    Should say myself offended, and with you\n    Chiefly i\' the world; more laugh\'d at that I should\n    Once name you derogately when to sound your name\n    It not concern\'d me.\n  ANTONY. My being in Egypt, Caesar,\n    What was\'t to you?\n  CAESAR. No more than my residing here at Rome\n    Might be to you in Egypt. Yet, if you there  \n    Did practise on my state, your being in Egypt\n    Might be my question.\n  ANTONY. How intend you- practis\'d?\n  CAESAR. You may be pleas\'d to catch at mine intent\n    By what did here befall me. Your wife and brother\n    Made wars upon me, and their contestation\n    Was theme for you; you were the word of war.\n  ANTONY. You do mistake your business; my brother never\n    Did urge me in his act. I did inquire it,\n    And have my learning from some true reports\n    That drew their swords with you. Did he not rather\n    Discredit my authority with yours,\n    And make the wars alike against my stomach,\n    Having alike your cause? Of this my letters\n    Before did satisfy you. If you\'ll patch a quarrel,\n    As matter whole you have not to make it with,\n    It must not be with this.\n  CAESAR. You praise yourself\n    By laying defects of judgment to me; but\n    You patch\'d up your excuses.  \n  ANTONY. Not so, not so;\n    I know you could not lack, I am certain on\'t,\n    Very necessity of this thought, that I,\n    Your partner in the cause \'gainst which he fought,\n    Could not with graceful eyes attend those wars\n    Which fronted mine own peace. As for my wife,\n    I would you had her spirit in such another!\n    The third o\' th\' world is yours, which with a snaffle\n    You may pace easy, but not such a wife.\n  ENOBARBUS. Would we had all such wives, that the men might go to\n    wars with the women!\n  ANTONY. So much uncurbable, her garboils, Caesar,\n    Made out of her impatience- which not wanted\n    Shrewdness of policy too- I grieving grant\n    Did you too much disquiet. For that you must\n    But say I could not help it.\n  CAESAR. I wrote to you\n    When rioting in Alexandria; you\n    Did pocket up my letters, and with taunts\n    Did gibe my missive out of audience.  \n  ANTONY. Sir,\n    He fell upon me ere admitted. Then\n    Three kings I had newly feasted, and did want\n    Of what I was i\' th\' morning; but next day\n    I told him of myself, which was as much\n    As to have ask\'d him pardon. Let this fellow\n    Be nothing of our strife; if we contend,\n    Out of our question wipe him.\n  CAESAR. You have broken\n    The article of your oath, which you shall never\n    Have tongue to charge me with.\n  LEPIDUS. Soft, Caesar!\n  ANTONY. No;\n    Lepidus, let him speak.\n    The honour is sacred which he talks on now,\n    Supposing that I lack\'d it. But on, Caesar:\n    The article of my oath-\n  CAESAR. To lend me arms and aid when I requir\'d them,\n    The which you both denied.\n  ANTONY. Neglected, rather;  \n    And then when poisoned hours had bound me up\n    From mine own knowledge. As nearly as I may,\n    I\'ll play the penitent to you; but mine honesty\n    Shall not make poor my greatness, nor my power\n    Work without it. Truth is, that Fulvia,\n    To have me out of Egypt, made wars here;\n    For which myself, the ignorant motive, do\n    So far ask pardon as befits mine honour\n    To stoop in such a case.\n  LEPIDUS. \'Tis noble spoken.\n  MAECENAS. If it might please you to enforce no further\n    The griefs between ye- to forget them quite\n    Were to remember that the present need\n    Speaks to atone you.\n  LEPIDUS. Worthily spoken, Maecenas.\n  ENOBARBUS. Or, if you borrow one another\'s love for the instant,\n    you may, when you hear no more words of Pompey, return it again.\n    You shall have time to wrangle in when you have nothing else to\n    do.\n  ANTONY. Thou art a soldier only. Speak no more.  \n  ENOBARBUS. That truth should be silent I had almost forgot.\n  ANTONY. You wrong this presence; therefore speak no more.\n  ENOBARBUS. Go to, then- your considerate stone!\n  CAESAR. I do not much dislike the matter, but\n    The manner of his speech; for\'t cannot be\n    We shall remain in friendship, our conditions\n    So diff\'ring in their acts. Yet if I knew\n    What hoop should hold us stanch, from edge to edge\n    O\' th\' world, I would pursue it.\n  AGRIPPA. Give me leave, Caesar.\n  CAESAR. Speak, Agrippa.\n  AGRIPPA. Thou hast a sister by the mother\'s side,\n    Admir\'d Octavia. Great Mark Antony\n    Is now a widower.\n  CAESAR. Say not so, Agrippa.\n    If Cleopatra heard you, your reproof\n    Were well deserv\'d of rashness.\n  ANTONY. I am not married, Caesar. Let me hear\n    Agrippa further speak.\n  AGRIPPA. To hold you in perpetual amity,  \n    To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts\n    With an unslipping knot, take Antony\n    Octavia to his wife; whose beauty claims\n    No worse a husband than the best of men;\n    Whose virtue and whose general graces speak\n    That which none else can utter. By this marriage\n    All little jealousies, which now seem great,\n    And all great fears, which now import their dangers,\n    Would then be nothing. Truths would be tales,\n    Where now half tales be truths. Her love to both\n    Would each to other, and all loves to both,\n    Draw after her. Pardon what I have spoke;\n    For \'tis a studied, not a present thought,\n    By duty ruminated.\n  ANTONY. Will Caesar speak?\n  CAESAR. Not till he hears how Antony is touch\'d\n    With what is spoke already.\n  ANTONY. What power is in Agrippa,\n    If I would say \'Agrippa, be it so,\'\n    To make this good?  \n  CAESAR. The power of Caesar, and\n    His power unto Octavia.\n  ANTONY. May I never\n    To this good purpose, that so fairly shows,\n    Dream of impediment! Let me have thy hand.\n    Further this act of grace; and from this hour\n    The heart of brothers govern in our loves\n    And sway our great designs!\n  CAESAR. There is my hand.\n    A sister I bequeath you, whom no brother\n    Did ever love so dearly. Let her live\n    To join our kingdoms and our hearts; and never\n    Fly off our loves again!\n  LEPIDUS. Happily, amen!\n  ANTONY. I did not think to draw my sword \'gainst Pompey;\n    For he hath laid strange courtesies and great\n    Of late upon me. I must thank him only,\n    Lest my remembrance suffer ill report;\n    At heel of that, defy him.\n  LEPIDUS. Time calls upon\'s.  \n    Of us must Pompey presently be sought,\n    Or else he seeks out us.\n  ANTONY. Where lies he?\n  CAESAR. About the Mount Misenum.\n  ANTONY. What is his strength by land?\n  CAESAR. Great and increasing; but by sea\n    He is an absolute master.\n  ANTONY. So is the fame.\n    Would we had spoke together! Haste we for it.\n    Yet, ere we put ourselves in arms, dispatch we\n    The business we have talk\'d of.\n  CAESAR. With most gladness;\n    And do invite you to my sister\'s view,\n    Whither straight I\'ll lead you.\n  ANTONY. Let us, Lepidus,\n    Not lack your company.\n  LEPIDUS. Noble Antony,\n    Not sickness should detain me.                    [Flourish]\n                     Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS, AGRIPPA, MAECENAS\n  MAECENAS. Welcome from Egypt, sir.  \n  ENOBARBUS. Half the heart of Caesar, worthy Maecenas! My honourable\n    friend, Agrippa!\n  AGRIPPA. Good Enobarbus!\n  MAECENAS. We have cause to be glad that matters are so well\n    digested. You stay\'d well by\'t in Egypt.\n  ENOBARBUS. Ay, sir; we did sleep day out of countenance and made\n    the night light with drinking.\n  MAECENAS. Eight wild boars roasted whole at a breakfast, and but\n    twelve persons there. Is this true?\n  ENOBARBUS. This was but as a fly by an eagle. We had much more\n    monstrous matter of feast, which worthily deserved noting.\n  MAECENAS. She\'s a most triumphant lady, if report be square to her.\n  ENOBARBUS. When she first met Mark Antony she purs\'d up his heart,\n    upon the river of Cydnus.\n  AGRIPPA. There she appear\'d indeed! Or my reporter devis\'d well for\n    her.\n  ENOBARBUS. I will tell you.\n    The barge she sat in, like a burnish\'d throne,\n    Burn\'d on the water. The poop was beaten gold;\n    Purple the sails, and so perfumed that  \n    The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,\n    Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made\n    The water which they beat to follow faster,\n    As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,\n    It beggar\'d all description. She did lie\n    In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold, of tissue,\n    O\'erpicturing that Venus where we see\n    The fancy out-work nature. On each side her\n    Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,\n    With divers-colour\'d fans, whose wind did seem\n    To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,\n    And what they undid did.\n  AGRIPPA. O, rare for Antony!\n  ENOBARBUS. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,\n    So many mermaids, tended her i\' th\' eyes,\n    And made their bends adornings. At the helm\n    A seeming mermaid steers. The silken tackle\n    Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands\n    That yarely frame the office. From the barge\n    A strange invisible perfume hits the sense  \n    Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast\n    Her people out upon her; and Antony,\n    Enthron\'d i\' th\' market-place, did sit alone,\n    Whistling to th\' air; which, but for vacancy,\n    Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,\n    And made a gap in nature.\n  AGRIPPA. Rare Egyptian!\n  ENOBARBUS. Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,\n    Invited her to supper. She replied\n    It should be better he became her guest;\n    Which she entreated. Our courteous Antony,\n    Whom ne\'er the word of \'No\' woman heard speak,\n    Being barber\'d ten times o\'er, goes to the feast,\n    And for his ordinary pays his heart\n    For what his eyes eat only.\n  AGRIPPA. Royal wench!\n    She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed.\n    He ploughed her, and she cropp\'d.\n  ENOBARBUS. I saw her once\n    Hop forty paces through the public street;  \n    And, having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,\n    That she did make defect perfection,\n    And, breathless, pow\'r breathe forth.\n  MAECENAS. Now Antony must leave her utterly.\n  ENOBARBUS. Never! He will not.\n    Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale\n    Her infinite variety. Other women cloy\n    The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry\n    Where most she satisfies; for vilest things\n    Become themselves in her, that the holy priests\n    Bless her when she is riggish.\n  MAECENAS. If beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle\n    The heart of Antony, Octavia is\n    A blessed lottery to him.\n  AGRIPPA. Let us go.\n    Good Enobarbus, make yourself my guest\n    Whilst you abide here.\n  ENOBARBUS. Humbly, sir, I thank you.                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nRome. CAESAR\'S house\n\nEnter ANTONY, CAESAR, OCTAVIA between them\n\n  ANTONY. The world and my great office will sometimes\n    Divide me from your bosom.\n  OCTAVIA. All which time\n    Before the gods my knee shall bow my prayers\n    To them for you.\n  ANTONY. Good night, sir. My Octavia,\n    Read not my blemishes in the world\'s report.\n    I have not kept my square; but that to come\n    Shall all be done by th\' rule. Good night, dear lady.\n  OCTAVIA. Good night, sir.\n  CAESAR. Good night.                  Exeunt CAESAR and OCTAVIA\n\n                        Enter SOOTHSAYER\n\n  ANTONY. Now, sirrah, you do wish yourself in Egypt?\n  SOOTHSAYER. Would I had never come from thence, nor you thither!\n  ANTONY. If you can- your reason.  \n  SOOTHSAYER. I see it in my motion, have it not in my tongue; but\n    yet hie you to Egypt again.\n  ANTONY. Say to me,\n    Whose fortunes shall rise higher, Caesar\'s or mine?\n  SOOTHSAYER. Caesar\'s.\n    Therefore, O Antony, stay not by his side.\n    Thy daemon, that thy spirit which keeps thee, is\n    Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,\n    Where Caesar\'s is not; but near him thy angel\n    Becomes a fear, as being o\'erpow\'r\'d. Therefore\n    Make space enough between you.\n  ANTONY. Speak this no more.\n  SOOTHSAYER. To none but thee; no more but when to thee.\n    If thou dost play with him at any game,\n    Thou art sure to lose; and of that natural luck\n    He beats thee \'gainst the odds. Thy lustre thickens\n    When he shines by. I say again, thy spirit\n    Is all afraid to govern thee near him;\n    But, he away, \'tis noble.\n  ANTONY. Get thee gone.  \n    Say to Ventidius I would speak with him.\n                                                 Exit SOOTHSAYER\n    He shall to Parthia.- Be it art or hap,\n    He hath spoken true. The very dice obey him;\n    And in our sports my better cunning faints\n    Under his chance. If we draw lots, he speeds;\n    His cocks do win the battle still of mine,\n    When it is all to nought, and his quails ever\n    Beat mine, inhoop\'d, at odds. I will to Egypt;\n    And though I make this marriage for my peace,\n    I\' th\' East my pleasure lies.\n\n                       Enter VENTIDIUS\n\n    O, come, Ventidius,\n    You must to Parthia. Your commission\'s ready;\n    Follow me and receive\'t.                              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nRome. A street\n\nEnter LEPIDUS, MAECENAS, and AGRIPPA\n\n  LEPIDUS. Trouble yourselves no further. Pray you hasten\n    Your generals after.\n  AGRIPPA. Sir, Mark Antony\n    Will e\'en but kiss Octavia, and we\'ll follow.\n  LEPIDUS. Till I shall see you in your soldier\'s dress,\n    Which will become you both, farewell.\n  MAECENAS. We shall,\n    As I conceive the journey, be at th\' Mount\n    Before you, Lepidus.\n  LEPIDUS. Your way is shorter;\n    My purposes do draw me much about.\n    You\'ll win two days upon me.\n  BOTH. Sir, good success!\n  LEPIDUS. Farewell.                                      Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nAlexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace\n\nEnter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and ALEXAS\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Give me some music- music, moody food\n    Of us that trade in love.\n  ALL. The music, ho!\n\n                    Enter MARDIAN the eunuch\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Let it alone! Let\'s to billiards. Come, Charmian.\n  CHARMIAN. My arm is sore; best play with Mardian.\n  CLEOPATRA. As well a woman with an eunuch play\'d\n    As with a woman. Come, you\'ll play with me, sir?\n  MARDIAN. As well as I can, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. And when good will is show\'d, though\'t come too short,\n    The actor may plead pardon. I\'ll none now.\n    Give me mine angle- we\'ll to th\' river. There,\n    My music playing far off, I will betray\n    Tawny-finn\'d fishes; my bended hook shall pierce\n    Their slimy jaws; and as I draw them up\n    I\'ll think them every one an Antony,\n    And say \'Ah ha! Y\'are caught.\'\n  CHARMIAN. \'Twas merry when\n    You wager\'d on your angling; when your diver\n    Did hang a salt fish on his hook, which he\n    With fervency drew up.\n  CLEOPATRA. That time? O times\n    I laughed him out of patience; and that night\n    I laugh\'d him into patience; and next morn,\n    Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed,\n    Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst\n    I wore his sword Philippan.\n\n                    Enter a MESSENGER\n\n    O! from Italy?\n    Ram thou thy fruitful tidings in mine ears,\n    That long time have been barren.\n  MESSENGER. Madam, madam-\n  CLEOPATRA. Antony\'s dead! If thou say so, villain,  \n    Thou kill\'st thy mistress; but well and free,\n    If thou so yield him, there is gold, and here\n    My bluest veins to kiss- a hand that kings\n    Have lipp\'d, and trembled kissing.\n  MESSENGER. First, madam, he is well.\n  CLEOPATRA. Why, there\'s more gold.\n    But, sirrah, mark, we use\n    To say the dead are well. Bring it to that,\n    The gold I give thee will I melt and pour\n    Down thy ill-uttering throat.\n  MESSENGER. Good madam, hear me.\n  CLEOPATRA. Well, go to, I will.\n    But there\'s no goodness in thy face. If Antony\n    Be free and healthful- why so tart a favour\n    To trumpet such good tidings? If not well,\n    Thou shouldst come like a Fury crown\'d with snakes,\n    Not like a formal man.\n  MESSENGER. Will\'t please you hear me?\n  CLEOPATRA. I have a mind to strike thee ere thou speak\'st.\n    Yet, if thou say Antony lives, is well,  \n    Or friends with Caesar, or not captive to him,\n    I\'ll set thee in a shower of gold, and hail\n    Rich pearls upon thee.\n  MESSENGER. Madam, he\'s well.\n  CLEOPATRA. Well said.\n  MESSENGER. And friends with Caesar.\n  CLEOPATRA. Th\'art an honest man.\n  MESSENGER. Caesar and he are greater friends than ever.\n  CLEOPATRA. Make thee a fortune from me.\n  MESSENGER. But yet, madam-\n  CLEOPATRA. I do not like \'but yet.\' It does allay\n    The good precedence; fie upon \'but yet\'!\n    \'But yet\' is as a gaoler to bring forth\n    Some monstrous malefactor. Prithee, friend,\n    Pour out the pack of matter to mine ear,\n    The good and bad together. He\'s friends with Caesar;\n    In state of health, thou say\'st; and, thou say\'st, free.\n  MESSENGER. Free, madam! No; I made no such report.\n    He\'s bound unto Octavia.\n  CLEOPATRA. For what good turn?  \n  MESSENGER. For the best turn i\' th\' bed.\n  CLEOPATRA. I am pale, Charmian.\n  MESSENGER. Madam, he\'s married to Octavia.\n  CLEOPATRA. The most infectious pestilence upon thee!\n                                              [Strikes him down]\n  MESSENGER. Good madam, patience.\n  CLEOPATRA. What say you? Hence,                  [Strikes him]\n    Horrible villain! or I\'ll spurn thine eyes\n    Like balls before me; I\'ll unhair thy head;\n                                     [She hales him up and down]\n    Thou shalt be whipp\'d with wire and stew\'d in brine,\n    Smarting in ling\'ring pickle.\n  MESSENGER. Gracious madam,\n    I that do bring the news made not the match.\n  CLEOPATRA. Say \'tis not so, a province I will give thee,\n    And make thy fortunes proud. The blow thou hadst\n    Shall make thy peace for moving me to rage;\n    And I will boot thee with what gift beside\n    Thy modesty can beg.\n  MESSENGER. He\'s married, madam.  \n  CLEOPATRA. Rogue, thou hast liv\'d too long.    [Draws a knife]\n  MESSENGER. Nay, then I\'ll run.\n    What mean you, madam? I have made no fault.             Exit\n  CHARMIAN. Good madam, keep yourself within yourself:\n    The man is innocent.\n  CLEOPATRA. Some innocents scape not the thunderbolt.\n    Melt Egypt into Nile! and kindly creatures\n    Turn all to serpents! Call the slave again.\n    Though I am mad, I will not bite him. Call!\n  CHARMIAN. He is afear\'d to come.\n  CLEOPATRA. I will not hurt him.\n    These hands do lack nobility, that they strike\n    A meaner than myself; since I myself\n    Have given myself the cause.\n\n                    Enter the MESSENGER again\n\n    Come hither, sir.\n    Though it be honest, it is never good\n    To bring bad news. Give to a gracious message  \n    An host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell\n    Themselves when they be felt.\n  MESSENGER. I have done my duty.\n  CLEOPATRA. Is he married?\n    I cannot hate thee worser than I do\n    If thou again say \'Yes.\'\n  MESSENGER. He\'s married, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. The gods confound thee! Dost thou hold there still?\n  MESSENGER. Should I lie, madam?\n  CLEOPATRA. O, I would thou didst,\n    So half my Egypt were submerg\'d and made\n    A cistern for scal\'d snakes! Go, get thee hence.\n    Hadst thou Narcissus in thy face, to me\n    Thou wouldst appear most ugly. He is married?\n  MESSENGER. I crave your Highness\' pardon.\n  CLEOPATRA. He is married?\n  MESSENGER. Take no offence that I would not offend you;\n    To punish me for what you make me do\n    Seems much unequal. He\'s married to Octavia.\n  CLEOPATRA. O, that his fault should make a knave of thee  \n    That art not what th\'art sure of! Get thee hence.\n    The merchandise which thou hast brought from Rome\n    Are all too dear for me. Lie they upon thy hand,\n    And be undone by \'em!                         Exit MESSENGER\n  CHARMIAN. Good your Highness, patience.\n  CLEOPATRA. In praising Antony I have disprais\'d Caesar.\n  CHARMIAN. Many times, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. I am paid for\'t now. Lead me from hence,\n    I faint. O Iras, Charmian! \'Tis no matter.\n    Go to the fellow, good Alexas; bid him\n    Report the feature of Octavia, her years,\n    Her inclination; let him not leave out\n    The colour of her hair. Bring me word quickly.\n                                                     Exit ALEXAS\n    Let him for ever go- let him not, Charmian-\n    Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon,\n    The other way\'s a Mars.                         [To MARDIAN]\n    Bid you Alexas\n    Bring me word how tall she is.- Pity me, Charmian,\n    But do not speak to me. Lead me to my chamber.        Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nNear Misenum\n\nFlourish. Enter POMPEY and MENAS at one door, with drum and trumpet;\nat another, CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS, ENOBARBUS, MAECENAS, AGRIPPA,\nwith soldiers marching\n\n  POMPEY. Your hostages I have, so have you mine;\n    And we shall talk before we fight.\n  CAESAR. Most meet\n    That first we come to words; and therefore have we\n    Our written purposes before us sent;\n    Which if thou hast considered, let us know\n    If \'twill tie up thy discontented sword\n    And carry back to Sicily much tall youth\n    That else must perish here.\n  POMPEY. To you all three,\n    The senators alone of this great world,\n    Chief factors for the gods: I do not know\n    Wherefore my father should revengers want,\n    Having a son and friends, since Julius Caesar,  \n    Who at Philippi the good Brutus ghosted,\n    There saw you labouring for him. What was\'t\n    That mov\'d pale Cassius to conspire? and what\n    Made the all-honour\'d honest Roman, Brutus,\n    With the arm\'d rest, courtiers of beauteous freedom,\n    To drench the Capitol, but that they would\n    Have one man but a man? And that is it\n    Hath made me rig my navy, at whose burden\n    The anger\'d ocean foams; with which I meant\n    To scourge th\' ingratitude that despiteful Rome\n    Cast on my noble father.\n  CAESAR. Take your time.\n  ANTONY. Thou canst not fear us, Pompey, with thy sails;\n    We\'ll speak with thee at sea; at land thou know\'st\n    How much we do o\'er-count thee.\n  POMPEY. At land, indeed,\n    Thou dost o\'er-count me of my father\'s house.\n    But since the cuckoo builds not for himself,\n    Remain in\'t as thou mayst.\n  LEPIDUS. Be pleas\'d to tell us-  \n    For this is from the present- how you take\n    The offers we have sent you.\n  CAESAR. There\'s the point.\n  ANTONY. Which do not be entreated to, but weigh\n    What it is worth embrac\'d.\n  CAESAR. And what may follow,\n    To try a larger fortune.\n  POMPEY. You have made me offer\n    Of Sicily, Sardinia; and I must\n    Rid all the sea of pirates; then to send\n    Measures of wheat to Rome; this \'greed upon,\n    To part with unhack\'d edges and bear back\n    Our targes undinted.\n  ALL. That\'s our offer.\n  POMPEY. Know, then,\n    I came before you here a man prepar\'d\n    To take this offer; but Mark Antony\n    Put me to some impatience. Though I lose\n    The praise of it by telling, you must know,\n    When Caesar and your brother were at blows,  \n    Your mother came to Sicily and did find\n    Her welcome friendly.\n  ANTONY. I have heard it, Pompey,\n    And am well studied for a liberal thanks\n    Which I do owe you.\n  POMPEY. Let me have your hand.\n    I did not think, sir, to have met you here.\n  ANTONY. The beds i\' th\' East are soft; and thanks to you,\n    That call\'d me timelier than my purpose hither;\n    For I have gained by\'t.\n  CAESAR. Since I saw you last\n    There is a change upon you.\n  POMPEY. Well, I know not\n    What counts harsh fortune casts upon my face;\n    But in my bosom shall she never come\n    To make my heart her vassal.\n  LEPIDUS. Well met here.\n  POMPEY. I hope so, Lepidus. Thus we are agreed.\n    I crave our composition may be written,\n    And seal\'d between us.  \n  CAESAR. That\'s the next to do.\n  POMPEY. We\'ll feast each other ere we part, and let\'s\n    Draw lots who shall begin.\n  ANTONY. That will I, Pompey.\n  POMPEY. No, Antony, take the lot;\n    But, first or last, your fine Egyptian cookery\n    Shall have the fame. I have heard that Julius Caesar\n    Grew fat with feasting there.\n  ANTONY. You have heard much.\n  POMPEY. I have fair meanings, sir.\n  ANTONY. And fair words to them.\n  POMPEY. Then so much have I heard;\n    And I have heard Apollodorus carried-\n  ENOBARBUS. No more of that! He did so.\n  POMPEY. What, I pray you?\n  ENOBARBUS. A certain queen to Caesar in a mattress.\n  POMPEY. I know thee now. How far\'st thou, soldier?\n  ENOBARBUS. Well;\n    And well am like to do, for I perceive\n    Four feasts are toward.  \n  POMPEY. Let me shake thy hand.\n    I never hated thee; I have seen thee fight,\n    When I have envied thy behaviour.\n  ENOBARBUS. Sir,\n    I never lov\'d you much; but I ha\' prais\'d ye\n    When you have well deserv\'d ten times as much\n    As I have said you did.\n  POMPEY. Enjoy thy plainness;\n    It nothing ill becomes thee.\n    Aboard my galley I invite you all.\n    Will you lead, lords?\n  ALL. Show\'s the way, sir.\n  POMPEY. Come.               Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS and MENAS\n  MENAS. [Aside] Thy father, Pompey, would ne\'er have made this\n    treaty.- You and I have known, sir.\n  ENOBARBUS. At sea, I think.\n  MENAS. We have, sir.\n  ENOBARBUS. You have done well by water.\n  MENAS. And you by land.\n  ENOBARBUS. I Will praise any man that will praise me; though it  \n    cannot be denied what I have done by land.\n  MENAS. Nor what I have done by water.\n  ENOBARBUS. Yes, something you can deny for your own safety: you\n    have been a great thief by sea.\n  MENAS. And you by land.\n  ENOBARBUS. There I deny my land service. But give me your hand,\n    Menas; if our eyes had authority, here they might take two\n    thieves kissing.\n  MENAS. All men\'s faces are true, whatsome\'er their hands are.\n  ENOBARBUS. But there is never a fair woman has a true face.\n  MENAS. No slander: they steal hearts.\n  ENOBARBUS. We came hither to fight with you.\n  MENAS. For my part, I am sorry it is turn\'d to a drinking.\n    Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune.\n  ENOBARBUS. If he do, sure he cannot weep\'t back again.\n  MENAS. Y\'have said, sir. We look\'d not for Mark Antony here. Pray\n    you, is he married to Cleopatra?\n  ENOBARBUS. Caesar\' sister is call\'d Octavia.\n  MENAS. True, sir; she was the wife of Caius Marcellus.\n  ENOBARBUS. But she is now the wife of Marcus Antonius.  \n  MENAS. Pray ye, sir?\n  ENOBARBUS. \'Tis true.\n  MENAS. Then is Caesar and he for ever knit together.\n  ENOBARBUS. If I were bound to divine of this unity, I would not\n    prophesy so.\n  MENAS. I think the policy of that purpose made more in the marriage\n    than the love of the parties.\n  ENOBARBUS. I think so too. But you shall find the band that seems\n    to tie their friendship together will be the very strangler of\n    their amity: Octavia is of a holy, cold, and still conversation.\n  MENAS. Who would not have his wife so?\n  ENOBARBUS. Not he that himself is not so; which is Mark Antony. He\n    will to his Egyptian dish again; then shall the sighs of Octavia\n    blow the fire up in Caesar, and, as I said before, that which is\n    the strength of their amity shall prove the immediate author of\n    their variance. Antony will use his affection where it is; he\n    married but his occasion here.\n  MENAS. And thus it may be. Come, sir, will you aboard? I have a\n    health for you.\n  ENOBARBUS. I shall take it, sir. We have us\'d our throats in Egypt.  \n  MENAS. Come, let\'s away.                                Exeunt\n\nACT_2|SC_7\n                           SCENE VII.\n             On board POMPEY\'S galley, off Misenum\n\n     Music plays. Enter two or three SERVANTS with a banquet\n\n  FIRST SERVANT. Here they\'ll be, man. Some o\' their plants are\n    ill-rooted already; the least wind i\' th\' world will blow them\n    down.\n  SECOND SERVANT. Lepidus is high-colour\'d.\n  FIRST SERVANT. They have made him drink alms-drink.\n  SECOND SERVANT. As they pinch one another by the disposition, he\n    cries out \'No more!\'; reconciles them to his entreaty and himself\n    to th\' drink.\n  FIRST SERVANT. But it raises the greater war between him and his\n    discretion.\n  SECOND SERVANT. Why, this it is to have a name in great men\'s\n    fellowship. I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service\n    as a partizan I could not heave.\n  FIRST SERVANT. To be call\'d into a huge sphere, and not to be seen\n    to move in\'t, are the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully\n    disaster the cheeks.\n  \n           A sennet sounded. Enter CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS,\n            POMPEY, AGRIPPA, MAECENAS, ENOBARBUS, MENAS,\n                         with other CAPTAINS\n\n  ANTONY. [To CAESAR] Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o\' th\'\n      Nile\n    By certain scales i\' th\' pyramid; they know\n    By th\' height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth\n    Or foison follow. The higher Nilus swells\n    The more it promises; as it ebbs, the seedsman\n    Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain,\n    And shortly comes to harvest.\n  LEPIDUS. Y\'have strange serpents there.\n  ANTONY. Ay, Lepidus.\n  LEPIDUS. Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the\n    operation of your sun; so is your crocodile.\n  ANTONY. They are so.\n  POMPEY. Sit- and some wine! A health to Lepidus!\n  LEPIDUS. I am not so well as I should be, but I\'ll ne\'er out.\n  ENOBARBUS. Not till you have slept. I fear me you\'ll be in till  \n    then.\n  LEPIDUS. Nay, certainly, I have heard the Ptolemies\' pyramises are\n    very goodly things. Without contradiction I have heard that.\n  MENAS. [Aside to POMPEY] Pompey, a word.\n  POMPEY. [Aside to MENAS] Say in mine ear; what is\'t?\n  MENAS. [Aside to POMPEY] Forsake thy seat, I do beseech thee,\n      Captain,\n    And hear me speak a word.\n  POMPEY. [ Whispers in\'s ear ] Forbear me till anon-\n    This wine for Lepidus!\n  LEPIDUS. What manner o\' thing is your crocodile?\n  ANTONY. It is shap\'d, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it\n    hath breadth; it is just so high as it is, and moves with it own\n    organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements\n    once out of it, it transmigrates.\n  LEPIDUS. What colour is it of?\n  ANTONY. Of it own colour too.\n  LEPIDUS. \'Tis a strange serpent.\n  ANTONY. \'Tis so. And the tears of it are wet.\n  CAESAR. Will this description satisfy him?  \n  ANTONY. With the health that Pompey gives him, else he is a very\n    epicure.\n  POMPEY. [Aside to MENAS] Go, hang, sir, hang! Tell me of that!\n      Away!\n    Do as I bid you.- Where\'s this cup I call\'d for?\n  MENAS. [Aside to POMPEY] If for the sake of merit thou wilt hear\n      me,\n    Rise from thy stool.\n  POMPEY. [Aside to MENAS] I think th\'art mad. [Rises and walks\n    aside] The matter?\n  MENAS. I have ever held my cap off to thy fortunes.\n  POMPEY. Thou hast serv\'d me with much faith. What\'s else to say?-\n    Be jolly, lords.\n  ANTONY. These quicksands, Lepidus,\n    Keep off them, for you sink.\n  MENAS. Wilt thou be lord of all the world?\n  POMPEY. What say\'st thou?\n  MENAS. Wilt thou be lord of the whole world? That\'s twice.\n  POMPEY. How should that be?\n  MENAS. But entertain it,  \n    And though you think me poor, I am the man\n    Will give thee all the world.\n  POMPEY. Hast thou drunk well?\n  MENAS. No, Pompey, I have kept me from the cup.\n    Thou art, if thou dar\'st be, the earthly Jove;\n    Whate\'er the ocean pales or sky inclips\n    Is thine, if thou wilt ha\'t.\n  POMPEY. Show me which way.\n  MENAS. These three world-sharers, these competitors,\n    Are in thy vessel. Let me cut the cable;\n    And when we are put off, fall to their throats.\n    All there is thine.\n  POMPEY. Ah, this thou shouldst have done,\n    And not have spoke on\'t. In me \'tis villainy:\n    In thee\'t had been good service. Thou must know\n    \'Tis not my profit that does lead mine honour:\n    Mine honour, it. Repent that e\'er thy tongue\n    Hath so betray\'d thine act. Being done unknown,\n    I should have found it afterwards well done,\n    But must condemn it now. Desist, and drink.  \n  MENAS. [Aside] For this,\n    I\'ll never follow thy pall\'d fortunes more.\n    Who seeks, and will not take when once \'tis offer\'d,\n    Shall never find it more.\n  POMPEY. This health to Lepidus!\n  ANTONY. Bear him ashore. I\'ll pledge it for him, Pompey.\n  ENOBARBUS. Here\'s to thee, Menas!\n  MENAS. Enobarbus, welcome!\n  POMPEY. Fill till the cup be hid.\n  ENOBARBUS. There\'s a strong fellow, Menas.\n               [Pointing to the servant who carries off LEPIDUS]\n  MENAS. Why?\n  ENOBARBUS. \'A bears the third part of the world, man; see\'st not?\n  MENAS. The third part, then, is drunk. Would it were all,\n    That it might go on wheels!\n  ENOBARBUS. Drink thou; increase the reels.\n  MENAS. Come.\n  POMPEY. This is not yet an Alexandrian feast.\n  ANTONY. It ripens towards it. Strike the vessels, ho!\n    Here\'s to Caesar!  \n  CAESAR. I could well forbear\'t.\n    It\'s monstrous labour when I wash my brain\n    And it grows fouler.\n  ANTONY. Be a child o\' th\' time.\n  CAESAR. Possess it, I\'ll make answer.\n    But I had rather fast from all four days\n    Than drink so much in one.\n  ENOBARBUS. [To ANTONY] Ha, my brave emperor!\n    Shall we dance now the Egyptian Bacchanals\n    And celebrate our drink?\n  POMPEY. Let\'s ha\'t, good soldier.\n  ANTONY. Come, let\'s all take hands,\n    Till that the conquering wine hath steep\'d our sense\n    In soft and delicate Lethe.\n  ENOBARBUS. All take hands.\n    Make battery to our ears with the loud music,\n    The while I\'ll place you; then the boy shall sing;\n    The holding every man shall bear as loud\n    As his strong sides can volley.\n               [Music plays. ENOBARBUS places them hand in hand]  \n\n                        THE SONG\n            Come, thou monarch of the vine,\n            Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne!\n            In thy fats our cares be drown\'d,\n            With thy grapes our hairs be crown\'d.\n            Cup us till the world go round,\n            Cup us till the world go round!\n\n  CAESAR. What would you more? Pompey, good night. Good brother,\n    Let me request you off; our graver business\n    Frowns at this levity. Gentle lords, let\'s part;\n    You see we have burnt our cheeks. Strong Enobarb\n    Is weaker than the wine, and mine own tongue\n    Splits what it speaks. The wild disguise hath almost\n    Antick\'d us all. What needs more words? Good night.\n    Good Antony, your hand.\n  POMPEY. I\'ll try you on the shore.\n  ANTONY. And shall, sir. Give\'s your hand.\n  POMPEY. O Antony,  \n    You have my father\'s house- but what? We are friends.\n    Come, down into the boat.\n  ENOBARBUS. Take heed you fall not.\n                              Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS and MENAS\n    Menas, I\'ll not on shore.\n  MENAS. No, to my cabin.\n    These drums! these trumpets, flutes! what!\n    Let Neptune hear we bid a loud farewell\n    To these great fellows. Sound and be hang\'d, sound out!\n                                  [Sound a flourish, with drums]\n  ENOBARBUS. Hoo! says \'a. There\'s my cap.\n  MENAS. Hoo! Noble Captain, come.                        Exeunt\nACT_3|SC_1\n                     ACT III. SCENE I.\n                     A plain in Syria\n\n       Enter VENTIDIUS, as it were in triumph, with SILIUS\n      and other Romans, OFFICERS and soldiers; the dead body\n                of PACORUS borne before him\n\n  VENTIDIUS. Now, darting Parthia, art thou struck, and now\n    Pleas\'d fortune does of Marcus Crassus\' death\n    Make me revenger. Bear the King\'s son\'s body\n    Before our army. Thy Pacorus, Orodes,\n    Pays this for Marcus Crassus.\n  SILIUS. Noble Ventidius,\n    Whilst yet with Parthian blood thy sword is warm\n    The fugitive Parthians follow; spur through Media,\n    Mesopotamia, and the shelters whither\n    The routed fly. So thy grand captain, Antony,\n    Shall set thee on triumphant chariots and\n    Put garlands on thy head.\n  VENTIDIUS. O Silius, Silius,\n    I have done enough. A lower place, note well,\n    May make too great an act; for learn this, Silius:  \n    Better to leave undone than by our deed\n    Acquire too high a fame when him we serve\'s away.\n    Caesar and Antony have ever won\n    More in their officer, than person. Sossius,\n    One of my place in Syria, his lieutenant,\n    For quick accumulation of renown,\n    Which he achiev\'d by th\' minute, lost his favour.\n    Who does i\' th\' wars more than his captain can\n    Becomes his captain\'s captain; and ambition,\n    The soldier\'s virtue, rather makes choice of loss\n    Than gain which darkens him.\n    I could do more to do Antonius good,\n    But \'twould offend him; and in his offence\n    Should my performance perish.\n  SILIUS. Thou hast, Ventidius, that\n    Without the which a soldier and his sword\n    Grants scarce distinction. Thou wilt write to Antony?\n  VENTIDIUS. I\'ll humbly signify what in his name,\n    That magical word of war, we have effected;\n    How, with his banners, and his well-paid ranks,  \n    The ne\'er-yet-beaten horse of Parthia\n    We have jaded out o\' th\' field.\n  SILIUS. Where is he now?\n  VENTIDIUS. He purposeth to Athens; whither, with what haste\n    The weight we must convey with\'s will permit,\n    We shall appear before him.- On, there; pass along.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_2\n                            SCENE II. Rome. CAESAR\'S house\n\n        Enter AGRIPPA at one door, ENOBARBUS at another\n\n  AGRIPPA. What, are the brothers parted?\n  ENOBARBUS. They have dispatch\'d with Pompey; he is gone;\n    The other three are sealing. Octavia weeps\n    To part from Rome; Caesar is sad; and Lepidus,\n    Since Pompey\'s feast, as Menas says, is troubled\n    With the green sickness.\n  AGRIPPA. \'Tis a noble Lepidus.\n  ENOBARBUS. A very fine one. O, how he loves Caesar!\n  AGRIPPA. Nay, but how dearly he adores Mark Antony!\n  ENOBARBUS. Caesar? Why he\'s the Jupiter of men.\n  AGRIPPA. What\'s Antony? The god of Jupiter.\n  ENOBARBUS. Spake you of Caesar? How! the nonpareil!\n  AGRIPPA. O, Antony! O thou Arabian bird!\n  ENOBARBUS. Would you praise Caesar, say \'Caesar\'- go no further.\n  AGRIPPA. Indeed, he plied them both with excellent praises.\n  ENOBARBUS. But he loves Caesar best. Yet he loves Antony.\n    Hoo! hearts, tongues, figures, scribes, bards, poets, cannot  \n    Think, speak, cast, write, sing, number- hoo!-\n    His love to Antony. But as for Caesar,\n    Kneel down, kneel down, and wonder.\n  AGRIPPA. Both he loves.\n  ENOBARBUS. They are his shards, and he their beetle. [Trumpets\n      within] So-\n    This is to horse. Adieu, noble Agrippa.\n  AGRIPPA. Good fortune, worthy soldier, and farewell.\n\n           Enter CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS, and OCTAVIA\n\n  ANTONY. No further, sir.\n  CAESAR. You take from me a great part of myself;\n    Use me well in\'t. Sister, prove such a wife\n    As my thoughts make thee, and as my farthest band\n    Shall pass on thy approof. Most noble Antony,\n    Let not the piece of virtue which is set\n    Betwixt us as the cement of our love\n    To keep it builded be the ram to batter\n    The fortress of it; for better might we  \n    Have lov\'d without this mean, if on both parts\n    This be not cherish\'d.\n  ANTONY. Make me not offended\n    In your distrust.\n  CAESAR. I have said.\n  ANTONY. You shall not find,\n    Though you be therein curious, the least cause\n    For what you seem to fear. So the gods keep you,\n    And make the hearts of Romans serve your ends!\n    We will here part.\n  CAESAR. Farewell, my dearest sister, fare thee well.\n    The elements be kind to thee and make\n    Thy spirits all of comfort! Fare thee well.\n  OCTAVIA. My noble brother!\n  ANTONY. The April\'s in her eyes. It is love\'s spring,\n    And these the showers to bring it on. Be cheerful.\n  OCTAVIA. Sir, look well to my husband\'s house; and-\n  CAESAR. What, Octavia?\n  OCTAVIA. I\'ll tell you in your ear.\n  ANTONY. Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can  \n    Her heart inform her tongue- the swan\'s down feather,\n    That stands upon the swell at the full of tide,\n    And neither way inclines.\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside to AGRIPPA] Will Caesar weep?\n  AGRIPPA. [Aside to ENOBARBUS] He has a cloud in\'s face.\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside to AGRIPPA] He were the worse for that, were he a\n      horse;\n    So is he, being a man.\n  AGRIPPA. [Aside to ENOBARBUS] Why, Enobarbus,\n    When Antony found Julius Caesar dead,\n    He cried almost to roaring; and he wept\n    When at Philippi he found Brutus slain.\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside to AGRIPPA] That year, indeed, he was troubled\n      with a rheum;\n    What willingly he did confound he wail\'d,\n    Believe\'t- till I weep too.\n  CAESAR. No, sweet Octavia,\n    You shall hear from me still; the time shall not\n    Out-go my thinking on you.\n  ANTONY. Come, sir, come;  \n    I\'ll wrestle with you in my strength of love.\n    Look, here I have you; thus I let you go,\n    And give you to the gods.\n  CAESAR. Adieu; be happy!\n  LEPIDUS. Let all the number of the stars give light\n    To thy fair way!\n  CAESAR. Farewell, farewell!                   [Kisses OCTAVIA]\n  ANTONY. Farewell!                       Trumpets sound. Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_3\n                          SCENE III.\n              Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace\n\n         Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and ALEXAS\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Where is the fellow?\n  ALEXAS. Half afeard to come.\n  CLEOPATRA. Go to, go to.\n\n                Enter the MESSENGER as before\n\n    Come hither, sir.\n  ALEXAS. Good Majesty,\n    Herod of Jewry dare not look upon you\n    But when you are well pleas\'d.\n  CLEOPATRA. That Herod\'s head\n    I\'ll have. But how, when Antony is gone,\n    Through whom I might command it? Come thou near.\n  MESSENGER. Most gracious Majesty!\n  CLEOPATRA. Didst thou behold Octavia?\n  MESSENGER. Ay, dread Queen.\n  CLEOPATRA. Where?  \n  MESSENGER. Madam, in Rome\n    I look\'d her in the face, and saw her led\n    Between her brother and Mark Antony.\n  CLEOPATRA. Is she as tall as me?\n  MESSENGER. She is not, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. Didst hear her speak? Is she shrill-tongu\'d or low?\n  MESSENGER. Madam, I heard her speak: she is low-voic\'d.\n  CLEOPATRA. That\'s not so good. He cannot like her long.\n  CHARMIAN. Like her? O Isis! \'tis impossible.\n  CLEOPATRA. I think so, Charmian. Dull of tongue and dwarfish!\n    What majesty is in her gait? Remember,\n    If e\'er thou look\'dst on majesty.\n  MESSENGER. She creeps.\n    Her motion and her station are as one;\n    She shows a body rather than a life,\n    A statue than a breather.\n  CLEOPATRA. Is this certain?\n  MESSENGER. Or I have no observance.\n  CHARMIAN. Three in Egypt\n    Cannot make better note.  \n  CLEOPATRA. He\'s very knowing;\n    I do perceive\'t. There\'s nothing in her yet.\n    The fellow has good judgment.\n  CHARMIAN. Excellent.\n  CLEOPATRA. Guess at her years, I prithee.\n  MESSENGER. Madam,\n    She was a widow.\n  CLEOPATRA. Widow? Charmian, hark!\n  MESSENGER. And I do think she\'s thirty.\n  CLEOPATRA. Bear\'st thou her face in mind? Is\'t long or round?\n  MESSENGER. Round even to faultiness.\n  CLEOPATRA. For the most part, too, they are foolish that are so.\n    Her hair, what colour?\n  MESSENGER. Brown, madam; and her forehead\n    As low as she would wish it.\n  CLEOPATRA. There\'s gold for thee.\n    Thou must not take my former sharpness ill.\n    I will employ thee back again; I find thee\n    Most fit for business. Go make thee ready;\n    Our letters are prepar\'d.                   Exeunt MESSENGER  \n  CHARMIAN. A proper man.\n  CLEOPATRA. Indeed, he is so. I repent me much\n    That so I harried him. Why, methinks, by him,\n    This creature\'s no such thing.\n  CHARMIAN. Nothing, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. The man hath seen some majesty, and should know.\n  CHARMIAN. Hath he seen majesty? Isis else defend,\n    And serving you so long!\n  CLEOPATRA. I have one thing more to ask him yet, good Charmian.\n    But \'tis no matter; thou shalt bring him to me\n    Where I will write. All may be well enough.\n  CHARMIAN. I warrant you, madam.                         Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_4\n                          SCENE IV.\n                  Athens. ANTONY\'S house\n\n                 Enter ANTONY and OCTAVIA\n\n  ANTONY. Nay, nay, Octavia, not only that-\n    That were excusable, that and thousands more\n    Of semblable import- but he hath wag\'d\n    New wars \'gainst Pompey; made his will, and read it\n    To public ear;\n    Spoke scandy of me; when perforce he could not\n    But pay me terms of honour, cold and sickly\n    He vented them, most narrow measure lent me;\n    When the best hint was given him, he not took\'t,\n    Or did it from his teeth.\n  OCTAVIA. O my good lord,\n    Believe not all; or if you must believe,\n    Stomach not all. A more unhappy lady,\n    If this division chance, ne\'er stood between,\n    Praying for both parts.\n    The good gods will mock me presently\n    When I shall pray \'O, bless my lord and husband!\'  \n    Undo that prayer by crying out as loud\n    \'O, bless my brother!\' Husband win, win brother,\n    Prays, and destroys the prayer; no mid-way\n    \'Twixt these extremes at all.\n  ANTONY. Gentle Octavia,\n    Let your best love draw to that point which seeks\n    Best to preserve it. If I lose mine honour,\n    I lose myself; better I were not yours\n    Than yours so branchless. But, as you requested,\n    Yourself shall go between\'s. The meantime, lady,\n    I\'ll raise the preparation of a war\n    Shall stain your brother. Make your soonest haste;\n    So your desires are yours.\n  OCTAVIA. Thanks to my lord.\n    The Jove of power make me, most weak, most weak,\n    Your reconciler! Wars \'twixt you twain would be\n    As if the world should cleave, and that slain men\n    Should solder up the rift.\n  ANTONY. When it appears to you where this begins,\n    Turn your displeasure that way, for our faults  \n    Can never be so equal that your love\n    Can equally move with them. Provide your going;\n    Choose your own company, and command what cost\n    Your heart has mind to.                               Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_5\n                           SCENE V.\n                   Athens. ANTONY\'S house\n\n             Enter ENOBARBUS and EROS, meeting\n\n  ENOBARBUS. How now, friend Eros!\n  EROS. There\'s strange news come, sir.\n  ENOBARBUS. What, man?\n  EROS. Caesar and Lepidus have made wars upon Pompey.\n  ENOBARBUS. This is old. What is the success?\n  EROS. Caesar, having made use of him in the wars \'gainst Pompey,\n    presently denied him rivality, would not let him partake in the\n    glory of the action; and not resting here, accuses him of letters\n    he had formerly wrote to Pompey; upon his own appeal, seizes him.\n    So the poor third is up, till death enlarge his confine.\n  ENOBARBUS. Then, world, thou hast a pair of chaps- no more;\n    And throw between them all the food thou hast,\n    They\'ll grind the one the other. Where\'s Antony?\n  EROS. He\'s walking in the garden- thus, and spurns\n    The rush that lies before him; cries \'Fool Lepidus!\'\n    And threats the throat of that his officer\n    That murd\'red Pompey.  \n  ENOBARBUS. Our great navy\'s rigg\'d.\n  EROS. For Italy and Caesar. More, Domitius:\n    My lord desires you presently; my news\n    I might have told hereafter.\n  ENOBARBUS. \'Twill be naught;\n    But let it be. Bring me to Antony.\n  EROS. Come, sir.                                        Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_6\n                          SCENE VI.\n                   Rome. CAESAR\'S house\n\n             Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, and MAECENAS\n\n  CAESAR. Contemning Rome, he has done all this and more\n    In Alexandria. Here\'s the manner of\'t:\n    I\' th\' market-place, on a tribunal silver\'d,\n    Cleopatra and himself in chairs of gold\n    Were publicly enthron\'d; at the feet sat\n    Caesarion, whom they call my father\'s son,\n    And all the unlawful issue that their lust\n    Since then hath made between them. Unto her\n    He gave the stablishment of Egypt; made her\n    Of lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia,\n    Absolute queen.\n  MAECENAS. This in the public eye?\n  CAESAR. I\' th\' common show-place, where they exercise.\n    His sons he there proclaim\'d the kings of kings:\n    Great Media, Parthia, and Armenia,\n    He gave to Alexander; to Ptolemy he assign\'d\n    Syria, Cilicia, and Phoenicia. She  \n    In th\' habiliments of the goddess Isis\n    That day appear\'d; and oft before gave audience,\n    As \'tis reported, so.\n  MAECENAS. Let Rome be thus\n    Inform\'d.\n  AGRIPPA. Who, queasy with his insolence\n    Already, will their good thoughts call from him.\n  CAESAR. The people knows it, and have now receiv\'d\n    His accusations.\n  AGRIPPA. Who does he accuse?\n  CAESAR. Caesar; and that, having in Sicily\n    Sextus Pompeius spoil\'d, we had not rated him\n    His part o\' th\' isle. Then does he say he lent me\n    Some shipping, unrestor\'d. Lastly, he frets\n    That Lepidus of the triumvirate\n    Should be depos\'d; and, being, that we detain\n    All his revenue.\n  AGRIPPA. Sir, this should be answer\'d.\n  CAESAR. \'Tis done already, and messenger gone.\n    I have told him Lepidus was grown too cruel,  \n    That he his high authority abus\'d,\n    And did deserve his change. For what I have conquer\'d\n    I grant him part; but then, in his Armenia\n    And other of his conquer\'d kingdoms,\n    Demand the like.\n  MAECENAS. He\'ll never yield to that.\n  CAESAR. Nor must not then be yielded to in this.\n\n                Enter OCTAVIA, with her train\n\n  OCTAVIA. Hail, Caesar, and my lord! hail, most dear Caesar!\n  CAESAR. That ever I should call thee cast-away!\n  OCTAVIA. You have not call\'d me so, nor have you cause.\n  CAESAR. Why have you stol\'n upon us thus? You come not\n    Like Caesar\'s sister. The wife of Antony\n    Should have an army for an usher, and\n    The neighs of horse to tell of her approach\n    Long ere she did appear. The trees by th\' way\n    Should have borne men, and expectation fainted,\n    Longing for what it had not. Nay, the dust  \n    Should have ascended to the roof of heaven,\n    Rais\'d by your populous troops. But you are come\n    A market-maid to Rome, and have prevented\n    The ostentation of our love, which left unshown\n    Is often left unlov\'d. We should have met you\n    By sea and land, supplying every stage\n    With an augmented greeting.\n  OCTAVIA. Good my lord,\n    To come thus was I not constrain\'d, but did it\n    On my free will. My lord, Mark Antony,\n    Hearing that you prepar\'d for war, acquainted\n    My grieved ear withal; whereon I begg\'d\n    His pardon for return.\n  CAESAR. Which soon he granted,\n    Being an obstruct \'tween his lust and him.\n  OCTAVIA. Do not say so, my lord.\n  CAESAR. I have eyes upon him,\n    And his affairs come to me on the wind.\n    Where is he now?\n  OCTAVIA. My lord, in Athens.  \n  CAESAR. No, my most wronged sister: Cleopatra\n    Hath nodded him to her. He hath given his empire\n    Up to a whore, who now are levying\n    The kings o\' th\' earth for war. He hath assembled\n    Bocchus, the king of Libya; Archelaus\n    Of Cappadocia; Philadelphos, king\n    Of Paphlagonia; the Thracian king, Adallas;\n    King Manchus of Arabia; King of Pont;\n    Herod of Jewry; Mithridates, king\n    Of Comagene; Polemon and Amyntas,\n    The kings of Mede and Lycaonia, with\n    More larger list of sceptres.\n  OCTAVIA. Ay me most wretched,\n    That have my heart parted betwixt two friends,\n    That does afflict each other!\n  CAESAR. Welcome hither.\n    Your letters did withhold our breaking forth,\n    Till we perceiv\'d both how you were wrong led\n    And we in negligent danger. Cheer your heart;\n    Be you not troubled with the time, which drives  \n    O\'er your content these strong necessities,\n    But let determin\'d things to destiny\n    Hold unbewail\'d their way. Welcome to Rome;\n    Nothing more dear to me. You are abus\'d\n    Beyond the mark of thought, and the high gods,\n    To do you justice, make their ministers\n    Of us and those that love you. Best of comfort,\n    And ever welcome to us.\n  AGRIPPA. Welcome, lady.\n  MAECENAS. Welcome, dear madam.\n    Each heart in Rome does love and pity you;\n    Only th\' adulterous Antony, most large\n    In his abominations, turns you off,\n    And gives his potent regiment to a trull\n    That noises it against us.\n  OCTAVIA. Is it so, sir?\n  CAESAR. Most certain. Sister, welcome. Pray you\n    Be ever known to patience. My dear\'st sister!         Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_7\n                          SCENE VII.\n                  ANTONY\'S camp near Actium\n\n                Enter CLEOPATRA and ENOBARBUS\n\n  CLEOPATRA. I will be even with thee, doubt it not.\n  ENOBARBUS. But why, why,\n  CLEOPATRA. Thou hast forspoke my being in these wars,\n    And say\'st it is not fit.\n  ENOBARBUS. Well, is it, is it?\n  CLEOPATRA. Is\'t not denounc\'d against us? Why should not we\n    Be there in person?\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside] Well, I could reply:\n    If we should serve with horse and mares together\n    The horse were merely lost; the mares would bear\n    A soldier and his horse.\n  CLEOPATRA. What is\'t you say?\n  ENOBARBUS. Your presence needs must puzzle Antony;\n    Take from his heart, take from his brain, from\'s time,\n    What should not then be spar\'d. He is already\n    Traduc\'d for levity; and \'tis said in Rome\n    That Photinus an eunuch and your maids  \n    Manage this war.\n  CLEOPATRA. Sink Rome, and their tongues rot\n    That speak against us! A charge we bear i\' th\' war,\n    And, as the president of my kingdom, will\n    Appear there for a man. Speak not against it;\n    I will not stay behind.\n\n                   Enter ANTONY and CANIDIUS\n\n  ENOBARBUS. Nay, I have done.\n    Here comes the Emperor.\n  ANTONY. Is it not strange, Canidius,\n    That from Tarentum and Brundusium\n    He could so quickly cut the Ionian sea,\n    And take in Toryne?- You have heard on\'t, sweet?\n  CLEOPATRA. Celerity is never more admir\'d\n    Than by the negligent.\n  ANTONY. A good rebuke,\n    Which might have well becom\'d the best of men\n    To taunt at slackness. Canidius, we  \n    Will fight with him by sea.\n  CLEOPATRA. By sea! What else?\n  CANIDIUS. Why will my lord do so?\n  ANTONY. For that he dares us to\'t.\n  ENOBARBUS. So hath my lord dar\'d him to single fight.\n  CANIDIUS. Ay, and to wage this battle at Pharsalia,\n    Where Caesar fought with Pompey. But these offers,\n    Which serve not for his vantage, he shakes off;\n    And so should you.\n  ENOBARBUS. Your ships are not well mann\'d;\n    Your mariners are muleteers, reapers, people\n    Ingross\'d by swift impress. In Caesar\'s fleet\n    Are those that often have \'gainst Pompey fought;\n    Their ships are yare; yours heavy. No disgrace\n    Shall fall you for refusing him at sea,\n    Being prepar\'d for land.\n  ANTONY. By sea, by sea.\n  ENOBARBUS. Most worthy sir, you therein throw away\n    The absolute soldiership you have by land;\n    Distract your army, which doth most consist  \n    Of war-mark\'d footmen; leave unexecuted\n    Your own renowned knowledge; quite forgo\n    The way which promises assurance; and\n    Give up yourself merely to chance and hazard\n    From firm security.\n  ANTONY. I\'ll fight at sea.\n  CLEOPATRA. I have sixty sails, Caesar none better.\n  ANTONY. Our overplus of shipping will we burn,\n    And, with the rest full-mann\'d, from th\' head of Actium\n    Beat th\' approaching Caesar. But if we fail,\n    We then can do\'t at land.\n\n                       Enter a MESSENGER\n\n    Thy business?\n  MESSENGER. The news is true, my lord: he is descried;\n    Caesar has taken Toryne.\n  ANTONY. Can he be there in person? \'Tis impossible-\n    Strange that his power should be. Canidius,\n    Our nineteen legions thou shalt hold by land,  \n    And our twelve thousand horse. We\'ll to our ship.\n    Away, my Thetis!\n\n                       Enter a SOLDIER\n\n    How now, worthy soldier?\n  SOLDIER. O noble Emperor, do not fight by sea;\n    Trust not to rotten planks. Do you misdoubt\n    This sword and these my wounds? Let th\' Egyptians\n    And the Phoenicians go a-ducking; we\n    Have us\'d to conquer standing on the earth\n    And fighting foot to foot.\n  ANTONY. Well, well- away.\n                         Exeunt ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, and ENOBARBUS\n  SOLDIER. By Hercules, I think I am i\' th\' right.\n  CANIDIUS. Soldier, thou art; but his whole action grows\n    Not in the power on\'t. So our leader\'s led,\n    And we are women\'s men.\n  SOLDIER. You keep by land\n    The legions and the horse whole, do you not?  \n  CANIDIUS. Marcus Octavius, Marcus Justeius,\n    Publicola, and Caelius are for sea;\n    But we keep whole by land. This speed of Caesar\'s\n    Carries beyond belief.\n  SOLDIER. While he was yet in Rome,\n    His power went out in such distractions as\n    Beguil\'d all spies.\n  CANIDIUS. Who\'s his lieutenant, hear you?\n  SOLDIER. They say one Taurus.\n  CANIDIUS. Well I know the man.\n\n                        Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. The Emperor calls Canidius.\n  CANIDIUS. With news the time\'s with labour and throes forth\n    Each minute some.                                     Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_8\n                          SCENE VIII.\n                      A plain near Actium\n\n             Enter CAESAR, with his army, marching\n\n  CAESAR. Taurus!\n  TAURUS. My lord?\n  CAESAR. Strike not by land; keep whole; provoke not battle\n    Till we have done at sea. Do not exceed\n    The prescript of this scroll. Our fortune lies\n    Upon this jump.                                       Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_9\n                           SCENE IX.\n                  Another part of the plain\n\n                  Enter ANTONY and ENOBARBUS\n\n  ANTONY. Set we our squadrons on yon side o\' th\' hill,\n    In eye of Caesar\'s battle; from which place\n    We may the number of the ships behold,\n    And so proceed accordingly.                           Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_10\n                           SCENE X.\n                 Another part of the plain\n\n        CANIDIUS marcheth with his land army one way\n        over the stage, and TAURUS, the Lieutenant of\n      CAESAR, the other way. After their going in is heard\n                   the noise of a sea-fight\n\n                    Alarum. Enter ENOBARBUS\n\n  ENOBARBUS. Naught, naught, all naught! I can behold no longer.\n    Th\' Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral,\n    With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder.\n    To see\'t mine eyes are blasted.\n\n                        Enter SCARUS\n\n  SCARUS. Gods and goddesses,\n    All the whole synod of them!\n  ENOBARBUS. What\'s thy passion?\n  SCARUS. The greater cantle of the world is lost\n    With very ignorance; we have kiss\'d away  \n    Kingdoms and provinces.\n  ENOBARBUS. How appears the fight?\n  SCARUS. On our side like the token\'d pestilence,\n    Where death is sure. Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt-\n    Whom leprosy o\'ertake!- i\' th\' midst o\' th\' fight,\n    When vantage like a pair of twins appear\'d,\n    Both as the same, or rather ours the elder-\n    The breese upon her, like a cow in June-\n    Hoists sails and flies.\n  ENOBARBUS. That I beheld;\n    Mine eyes did sicken at the sight and could not\n    Endure a further view.\n  SCARUS. She once being loof\'d,\n    The noble ruin of her magic, Antony,\n    Claps on his sea-wing, and, like a doting mallard,\n    Leaving the fight in height, flies after her.\n    I never saw an action of such shame;\n    Experience, manhood, honour, ne\'er before\n    Did violate so itself.\n  ENOBARBUS. Alack, alack!  \n\n                       Enter CANIDIUS\n\n  CANIDIUS. Our fortune on the sea is out of breath,\n    And sinks most lamentably. Had our general\n    Been what he knew himself, it had gone well.\n    O, he has given example for our flight\n    Most grossly by his own!\n  ENOBARBUS. Ay, are you thereabouts?\n    Why then, good night indeed.\n  CANIDIUS. Toward Peloponnesus are they fled.\n  SCARUS. \'Tis easy to\'t; and there I will attend\n    What further comes.\n  CANIDIUS. To Caesar will I render\n    My legions and my horse; six kings already\n    Show me the way of yielding.\n  ENOBARBUS. I\'ll yet follow\n    The wounded chance of Antony, though my reason\n    Sits in the wind against me.                          Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_11\n                         SCENE XI.\n              Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace\n\n               Enter ANTONY With attendants\n\n  ANTONY. Hark! the land bids me tread no more upon\'t;\n    It is asham\'d to bear me. Friends, come hither.\n    I am so lated in the world that I\n    Have lost my way for ever. I have a ship\n    Laden with gold; take that; divide it. Fly,\n    And make your peace with Caesar.\n  ALL. Fly? Not we!\n  ANTONY. I have fled myself, and have instructed cowards\n    To run and show their shoulders. Friends, be gone;\n    I have myself resolv\'d upon a course\n    Which has no need of you; be gone.\n    My treasure\'s in the harbour, take it. O,\n    I follow\'d that I blush to look upon.\n    My very hairs do mutiny; for the white\n    Reprove the brown for rashness, and they them\n    For fear and doting. Friends, be gone; you shall\n    Have letters from me to some friends that will  \n    Sweep your way for you. Pray you look not sad,\n    Nor make replies of loathness; take the hint\n    Which my despair proclaims. Let that be left\n    Which leaves itself. To the sea-side straight way.\n    I will possess you of that ship and treasure.\n    Leave me, I pray, a little; pray you now;\n    Nay, do so, for indeed I have lost command;\n    Therefore I pray you. I\'ll see you by and by.    [Sits down]\n\n            Enter CLEOPATRA, led by CHARMIAN and IRAS,\n                         EROS following\n\n  EROS. Nay, gentle madam, to him! Comfort him.\n  IRAS. Do, most dear Queen.\n  CHARMIAN. Do? Why, what else?\n  CLEOPATRA. Let me sit down. O Juno!\n  ANTONY. No, no, no, no, no.\n  EROS. See you here, sir?\n  ANTONY. O, fie, fie, fie!\n  CHARMIAN. Madam!  \n  IRAS. Madam, O good Empress!\n  EROS. Sir, sir!\n  ANTONY. Yes, my lord, yes. He at Philippi kept\n    His sword e\'en like a dancer, while I struck\n    The lean and wrinkled Cassius; and \'twas I\n    That the mad Brutus ended; he alone\n    Dealt on lieutenantry, and no practice had\n    In the brave squares of war. Yet now- no matter.\n  CLEOPATRA. Ah, stand by!\n  EROS. The Queen, my lord, the Queen!\n  IRAS. Go to him, madam, speak to him.\n    He is unqualitied with very shame.\n  CLEOPATRA. Well then, sustain me. O!\n EROS. Most noble sir, arise; the Queen approaches.\n    Her head\'s declin\'d, and death will seize her but\n    Your comfort makes the rescue.\n  ANTONY. I have offended reputation-\n    A most unnoble swerving.\n  EROS. Sir, the Queen.\n  ANTONY. O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt? See\n    How I convey my shame out of thine eyes  \n    By looking back what I have left behind\n    \'Stroy\'d in dishonour.\n  CLEOPATRA. O my lord, my lord,\n    Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought\n    You would have followed.\n  ANTONY. Egypt, thou knew\'st too well\n    My heart was to thy rudder tied by th\' strings,\n    And thou shouldst tow me after. O\'er my spirit\n    Thy full supremacy thou knew\'st, and that\n    Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods\n    Command me.\n  CLEOPATRA. O, my pardon!\n  ANTONY. Now I must\n    To the young man send humble treaties, dodge\n    And palter in the shifts of lowness, who\n    With half the bulk o\' th\' world play\'d as I pleas\'d,\n    Making and marring fortunes. You did know\n    How much you were my conqueror, and that\n    My sword, made weak by my affection, would\n    Obey it on all cause.  \n  CLEOPATRA. Pardon, pardon!\n  ANTONY. Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates\n    All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss;\n    Even this repays me.\n    We sent our schoolmaster; is \'a come back?\n    Love, I am full of lead. Some wine,\n    Within there, and our viands! Fortune knows\n    We scorn her most when most she offers blows.         Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_12\n                         SCENE XII.\n                   CAESAR\'S camp in Egypt\n\n   Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, DOLABELLA, THYREUS, with others\n\n  CAESAR. Let him appear that\'s come from Antony.\n    Know you him?\n  DOLABELLA. Caesar, \'tis his schoolmaster:\n    An argument that he is pluck\'d, when hither\n    He sends so poor a pinion of his wing,\n    Which had superfluous kings for messengers\n    Not many moons gone by.\n\n            Enter EUPHRONIUS, Ambassador from ANTONY\n\n  CAESAR. Approach, and speak.\n  EUPHRONIUS. Such as I am, I come from Antony.\n    I was of late as petty to his ends\n    As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf\n    To his grand sea.\n  CAESAR. Be\'t so. Declare thine office.\n  EUPHRONIUS. Lord of his fortunes he salutes thee, and  \n    Requires to live in Egypt; which not granted,\n    He lessens his requests and to thee sues\n    To let him breathe between the heavens and earth,\n    A private man in Athens. This for him.\n    Next, Cleopatra does confess thy greatness,\n    Submits her to thy might, and of thee craves\n    The circle of the Ptolemies for her heirs,\n    Now hazarded to thy grace.\n  CAESAR. For Antony,\n    I have no ears to his request. The Queen\n    Of audience nor desire shall fail, so she\n    From Egypt drive her all-disgraced friend,\n    Or take his life there. This if she perform,\n    She shall not sue unheard. So to them both.\n  EUPHRONIUS. Fortune pursue thee!\n  CAESAR. Bring him through the bands.           Exit EUPHRONIUS\n    [To THYREUS] To try thy eloquence, now \'tis time. Dispatch;\n    From Antony win Cleopatra. Promise,\n    And in our name, what she requires; add more,\n    From thine invention, offers. Women are not  \n    In their best fortunes strong; but want will perjure\n    The ne\'er-touch\'d vestal. Try thy cunning, Thyreus;\n    Make thine own edict for thy pains, which we\n    Will answer as a law.\n  THYREUS. Caesar, I go.\n  CAESAR. Observe how Antony becomes his flaw,\n    And what thou think\'st his very action speaks\n    In every power that moves.\n  THYREUS. Caesar, I shall.                               Exeunt\n\nACT_3|SC_13\n                           SCENE XIII.\n               Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace\n\n        Enter CLEOPATRA, ENOBARBUS, CHARMIAN, and IRAS\n\n  CLEOPATRA. What shall we do, Enobarbus?\n  ENOBARBUS. Think, and die.\n  CLEOPATRA. Is Antony or we in fault for this?\n  ENOBARBUS. Antony only, that would make his will\n    Lord of his reason. What though you fled\n    From that great face of war, whose several ranges\n    Frighted each other? Why should he follow?\n    The itch of his affection should not then\n    Have nick\'d his captainship, at such a point,\n    When half to half the world oppos\'d, he being\n    The mered question. \'Twas a shame no less\n    Than was his loss, to course your flying flags\n    And leave his navy gazing.\n  CLEOPATRA. Prithee, peace.\n\n          Enter EUPHRONIUS, the Ambassador; with ANTONY\n  \n  ANTONY. Is that his answer?\n  EUPHRONIUS. Ay, my lord.\n  ANTONY. The Queen shall then have courtesy, so she\n    Will yield us up.\n  EUPHRONIUS. He says so.\n  ANTONY. Let her know\'t.\n    To the boy Caesar send this grizzled head,\n    And he will fill thy wishes to the brim\n    With principalities.\n  CLEOPATRA. That head, my lord?\n  ANTONY. To him again. Tell him he wears the rose\n    Of youth upon him; from which the world should note\n    Something particular. His coin, ships, legions,\n    May be a coward\'s whose ministers would prevail\n    Under the service of a child as soon\n    As i\' th\' command of Caesar. I dare him therefore\n    To lay his gay comparisons apart,\n    And answer me declin\'d, sword against sword,\n    Ourselves alone. I\'ll write it. Follow me.\n                                    Exeunt ANTONY and EUPHRONIUS  \n  EUPHRONIUS. [Aside] Yes, like enough high-battled Caesar will\n    Unstate his happiness, and be stag\'d to th\' show\n    Against a sworder! I see men\'s judgments are\n    A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward\n    Do draw the inward quality after them,\n    To suffer all alike. That he should dream,\n    Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will\n    Answer his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdu\'d\n    His judgment too.\n\n                       Enter a SERVANT\n\n  SERVANT. A messenger from Caesar.\n  CLEOPATRA. What, no more ceremony? See, my women!\n    Against the blown rose may they stop their nose\n    That kneel\'d unto the buds. Admit him, sir.     Exit SERVANT\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside] Mine honesty and I begin to square.\n    The loyalty well held to fools does make\n    Our faith mere folly. Yet he that can endure\n    To follow with allegiance a fall\'n lord  \n    Does conquer him that did his master conquer,\n    And earns a place i\' th\' story.\n\n                       Enter THYREUS\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Caesar\'s will?\n  THYREUS. Hear it apart.\n  CLEOPATRA. None but friends: say boldly.\n  THYREUS. So, haply, are they friends to Antony.\n  ENOBARBUS. He needs as many, sir, as Caesar has,\n    Or needs not us. If Caesar please, our master\n    Will leap to be his friend. For us, you know\n    Whose he is we are, and that is Caesar\'s.\n  THYREUS. So.\n    Thus then, thou most renown\'d: Caesar entreats\n    Not to consider in what case thou stand\'st\n    Further than he is Caesar.\n  CLEOPATRA. Go on. Right royal!\n  THYREUS. He knows that you embrace not Antony\n    As you did love, but as you fear\'d him.  \n  CLEOPATRA. O!\n  THYREUS. The scars upon your honour, therefore, he\n    Does pity, as constrained blemishes,\n    Not as deserv\'d.\n  CLEOPATRA. He is a god, and knows\n    What is most right. Mine honour was not yielded,\n    But conquer\'d merely.\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside] To be sure of that,\n    I will ask Antony. Sir, sir, thou art so leaky\n    That we must leave thee to thy sinking, for\n    Thy dearest quit thee.                                  Exit\n  THYREUS. Shall I say to Caesar\n    What you require of him? For he partly begs\n    To be desir\'d to give. It much would please him\n    That of his fortunes you should make a staff\n    To lean upon. But it would warm his spirits\n    To hear from me you had left Antony,\n    And put yourself under his shroud,\n    The universal landlord.\n  CLEOPATRA. What\'s your name?  \n  THYREUS. My name is Thyreus.\n  CLEOPATRA. Most kind messenger,\n    Say to great Caesar this: in deputation\n    I kiss his conquring hand. Tell him I am prompt\n    To lay my crown at \'s feet, and there to kneel.\n    Tell him from his all-obeying breath I hear\n    The doom of Egypt.\n  THYREUS. \'Tis your noblest course.\n    Wisdom and fortune combating together,\n    If that the former dare but what it can,\n    No chance may shake it. Give me grace to lay\n    My duty on your hand.\n  CLEOPATRA. Your Caesar\'s father oft,\n    When he hath mus\'d of taking kingdoms in,\n    Bestow\'d his lips on that unworthy place,\n    As it rain\'d kisses.\n\n                Re-enter ANTONY and ENOBARBUS\n\n  ANTONY. Favours, by Jove that thunders!  \n    What art thou, fellow?\n  THYREUS. One that but performs\n    The bidding of the fullest man, and worthiest\n    To have command obey\'d.\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside] You will be whipt.\n  ANTONY. Approach there.- Ah, you kite!- Now, gods and devils!\n    Authority melts from me. Of late, when I cried \'Ho!\'\n    Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth\n    And cry \'Your will?\' Have you no ears? I am\n    Antony yet.\n\n                       Enter servants\n\n    Take hence this Jack and whip him.\n  ENOBARBUS. \'Tis better playing with a lion\'s whelp\n    Than with an old one dying.\n  ANTONY. Moon and stars!\n    Whip him. Were\'t twenty of the greatest tributaries\n    That do acknowledge Caesar, should I find them\n    So saucy with the hand of she here- what\'s her name  \n    Since she was Cleopatra? Whip him, fellows,\n    Till like a boy you see him cringe his face,\n    And whine aloud for mercy. Take him hence.\n  THYMUS. Mark Antony-\n  ANTONY. Tug him away. Being whipt,\n    Bring him again: the Jack of Caesar\'s shall\n    Bear us an errand to him.       Exeunt servants with THYREUS\n    You were half blasted ere I knew you. Ha!\n    Have I my pillow left unpress\'d in Rome,\n    Forborne the getting of a lawful race,\n    And by a gem of women, to be abus\'d\n    By one that looks on feeders?\n  CLEOPATRA. Good my lord-\n  ANTONY. You have been a boggler ever.\n    But when we in our viciousness grow hard-\n    O misery on\'t!- the wise gods seel our eyes,\n    In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us\n    Adore our errors, laugh at\'s while we strut\n    To our confusion.\n  CLEOPATRA. O, is\'t come to this?  \n  ANTONY. I found you as a morsel cold upon\n    Dead Caesar\'s trencher. Nay, you were a fragment\n    Of Cneius Pompey\'s, besides what hotter hours,\n    Unregist\'red in vulgar fame, you have\n    Luxuriously pick\'d out; for I am sure,\n    Though you can guess what temperance should be,\n    You know not what it is.\n  CLEOPATRA. Wherefore is this?\n  ANTONY. To let a fellow that will take rewards,\n    And say \'God quit you!\' be familiar with\n    My playfellow, your hand, this kingly seal\n    And plighter of high hearts! O that I were\n    Upon the hill of Basan to outroar\n    The horned herd! For I have savage cause,\n    And to proclaim it civilly were like\n    A halter\'d neck which does the hangman thank\n    For being yare about him.\n\n              Re-enter a SERVANT with THYREUS\n  \n    Is he whipt?\n  SERVANT. Soundly, my lord.\n  ANTONY. Cried he? and begg\'d \'a pardon?\n  SERVANT. He did ask favour.\n  ANTONY. If that thy father live, let him repent\n    Thou wast not made his daughter; and be thou sorry\n    To follow Caesar in his triumph, since\n    Thou hast been whipt for following him. Henceforth\n    The white hand of a lady fever thee!\n    Shake thou to look on\'t. Get thee back to Caesar;\n    Tell him thy entertainment; look thou say\n    He makes me angry with him; for he seems\n    Proud and disdainful, harping on what I am,\n    Not what he knew I was. He makes me angry;\n    And at this time most easy \'tis to do\'t,\n    When my good stars, that were my former guides,\n    Have empty left their orbs and shot their fires\n    Into th\' abysm of hell. If he mislike\n    My speech and what is done, tell him he has\n    Hipparchus, my enfranched bondman, whom  \n    He may at pleasure whip or hang or torture,\n    As he shall like, to quit me. Urge it thou.\n    Hence with thy stripes, be gone.                Exit THYREUS\n  CLEOPATRA. Have you done yet?\n  ANTONY. Alack, our terrene moon\n    Is now eclips\'d, and it portends alone\n    The fall of Antony.\n  CLEOPATRA. I must stay his time.\n  ANTONY. To flatter Caesar, would you mingle eyes\n    With one that ties his points?\n  CLEOPATRA. Not know me yet?\n  ANTONY. Cold-hearted toward me?\n  CLEOPATRA. Ah, dear, if I be so,\n    From my cold heart let heaven engender hail,\n    And poison it in the source, and the first stone\n    Drop in my neck; as it determines, so\n    Dissolve my life! The next Caesarion smite!\n    Till by degrees the memory of my womb,\n    Together with my brave Egyptians all,\n    By the discandying of this pelleted storm,  \n    Lie graveless, till the flies and gnats of Nile\n    Have buried them for prey.\n  ANTONY. I am satisfied.\n    Caesar sits down in Alexandria, where\n    I will oppose his fate. Our force by land\n    Hath nobly held; our sever\'d navy to\n    Have knit again, and fleet, threat\'ning most sea-like.\n    Where hast thou been, my heart? Dost thou hear, lady?\n    If from the field I shall return once more\n    To kiss these lips, I will appear in blood.\n    I and my sword will earn our chronicle.\n    There\'s hope in\'t yet.\n  CLEOPATRA. That\'s my brave lord!\n  ANTONY. I will be treble-sinew\'d, hearted, breath\'d,\n    And fight maliciously. For when mine hours\n    Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives\n    Of me for jests; but now I\'ll set my teeth,\n    And send to darkness all that stop me. Come,\n    Let\'s have one other gaudy night. Call to me\n    All my sad captains; fill our bowls once more;  \n    Let\'s mock the midnight bell.\n  CLEOPATRA. It is my birthday.\n    I had thought t\'have held it poor; but since my lord\n    Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.\n  ANTONY. We will yet do well.\n  CLEOPATRA. Call all his noble captains to my lord.\n  ANTONY. Do so, we\'ll speak to them; and to-night I\'ll force\n    The wine peep through their scars. Come on, my queen,\n    There\'s sap in\'t yet. The next time I do fight\n    I\'ll make death love me; for I will contend\n    Even with his pestilent scythe.     Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS\n  ENOBARBUS. Now he\'ll outstare the lightning. To be furious\n    Is to be frighted out of fear, and in that mood\n    The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still\n    A diminution in our captain\'s brain\n    Restores his heart. When valour preys on reason,\n    It eats the sword it fights with. I will seek\n    Some way to leave him.                                  Exit\n\nACT_4|SC_1\n                      ACT IV. SCENE I.\n              CAESAR\'S camp before Alexandria\n\n      Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, and MAECENAS, with his army;\n                 CAESAR reading a letter\n\n  CAESAR. He calls me boy, and chides as he had power\n    To beat me out of Egypt. My messenger\n    He hath whipt with rods; dares me to personal combat,\n    Caesar to Antony. Let the old ruffian know\n    I have many other ways to die, meantime\n    Laugh at his challenge.\n  MAECENAS. Caesar must think\n    When one so great begins to rage, he\'s hunted\n    Even to falling. Give him no breath, but now\n    Make boot of his distraction. Never anger\n    Made good guard for itself.\n  CAESAR. Let our best heads\n    Know that to-morrow the last of many battles\n    We mean to fight. Within our files there are\n    Of those that serv\'d Mark Antony but late\n    Enough to fetch him in. See it done;  \n    And feast the army; we have store to do\'t,\n    And they have earn\'d the waste. Poor Antony!          Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_2\n                          SCENE II.\n               Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'s palace\n\n      Enter ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, ENOBARBUS, CHARMIAN, IRAS,\n                     ALEXAS, with others\n\n  ANTONY. He will not fight with me, Domitius?\n  ENOBARBUS. No.\n  ANTONY. Why should he not?\n  ENOBARBUS. He thinks, being twenty times of better fortune,\n    He is twenty men to one.\n  ANTONY. To-morrow, soldier,\n    By sea and land I\'ll fight. Or I will live,\n    Or bathe my dying honour in the blood\n    Shall make it live again. Woo\'t thou fight well?\n  ENOBARBUS. I\'ll strike, and cry \'Take all.\'\n  ANTONY. Well said; come on.\n    Call forth my household servants; let\'s to-night\n    Be bounteous at our meal.\n\n                Enter three or four servitors\n  \n    Give me thy hand,\n    Thou has been rightly honest. So hast thou;\n    Thou, and thou, and thou. You have serv\'d me well,\n    And kings have been your fellows.\n  CLEOPATRA. [Aside to ENOBARBUS] What means this?\n  ENOBARBUS. [Aside to CLEOPATRA] \'Tis one of those odd tricks which\n      sorrow shoots\n    Out of the mind.\n  ANTONY. And thou art honest too.\n    I wish I could be made so many men,\n    And all of you clapp\'d up together in\n    An Antony, that I might do you service\n    So good as you have done.\n  SERVANT. The gods forbid!\n  ANTONY. Well, my good fellows, wait on me to-night.\n    Scant not my cups, and make as much of me\n    As when mine empire was your fellow too,\n    And suffer\'d my command.\n  CLEOPATRA. [Aside to ENOBARBUS] What does he mean?\n    ENOBARBUS. [Aside to CLEOPATRA] To make his followers weep.  \n  ANTONY. Tend me to-night;\n    May be it is the period of your duty.\n    Haply you shall not see me more; or if,\n    A mangled shadow. Perchance to-morrow\n    You\'ll serve another master. I look on you\n    As one that takes his leave. Mine honest friends,\n    I turn you not away; but, like a master\n    Married to your good service, stay till death.\n    Tend me to-night two hours, I ask no more,\n    And the gods yield you for\'t!\n  ENOBARBUS. What mean you, sir,\n    To give them this discomfort? Look, they weep;\n    And I, an ass, am onion-ey\'d. For shame!\n    Transform us not to women.\n  ANTONY. Ho, ho, ho!\n    Now the witch take me if I meant it thus!\n    Grace grow where those drops fall! My hearty friends,\n    You take me in too dolorous a sense;\n    For I spake to you for your comfort, did desire you\n    To burn this night with torches. Know, my hearts,  \n    I hope well of to-morrow, and will lead you\n    Where rather I\'ll expect victorious life\n    Than death and honour. Let\'s to supper, come,\n    And drown consideration.                              Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_3\n                          SCENE III.\n             Alexandria. Before CLEOPATRA\'s palace\n\n                 Enter a company of soldiers\n\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Brother, good night. To-morrow is the day.\n  SECOND SOLDIER. It will determine one way. Fare you well.\n    Heard you of nothing strange about the streets?\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Nothing. What news?\n  SECOND SOLDIER. Belike \'tis but a rumour. Good night to you.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Well, sir, good night.\n                                      [They meet other soldiers]\n  SECOND SOLDIER. Soldiers, have careful watch.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. And you. Good night, good night.\n                [The two companies separate and place themselves\n                                   in every corner of the stage]\n  SECOND SOLDIER. Here we. And if to-morrow\n    Our navy thrive, I have an absolute hope\n    Our landmen will stand up.\n  THIRD SOLDIER. \'Tis a brave army,\n    And full of purpose.\n                      [Music of the hautboys is under the stage]  \n  SECOND SOLDIER. Peace, what noise?\n  THIRD SOLDIER. List, list!\n  SECOND SOLDIER. Hark!\n  THIRD SOLDIER. Music i\' th\' air.\n  FOURTH SOLDIER. Under the earth.\n  THIRD SOLDIER. It signs well, does it not?\n  FOURTH SOLDIER. No.\n  THIRD SOLDIER. Peace, I say!\n    What should this mean?\n  SECOND SOLDIER. \'Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony lov\'d,\n    Now leaves him.\n  THIRD SOLDIER. Walk; let\'s see if other watchmen\n    Do hear what we do.\n  SECOND SOLDIER. How now, masters!\n  SOLDIERS. [Speaking together] How now!\n    How now! Do you hear this?\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Ay; is\'t not strange?\n  THIRD SOLDIER. Do you hear, masters? Do you hear?\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Follow the noise so far as we have quarter;\n    Let\'s see how it will give off.  \n  SOLDIERS. Content. \'Tis strange.                        Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_4\n                           SCENE IV.\n               Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'s palace\n\n         Enter ANTONY and CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS,\n                          with others\n\n  ANTONY. Eros! mine armour, Eros!\n  CLEOPATRA. Sleep a little.\n  ANTONY. No, my chuck. Eros! Come, mine armour, Eros!\n\n                   Enter EROS with armour\n\n    Come, good fellow, put mine iron on.\n    If fortune be not ours to-day, it is\n    Because we brave her. Come.\n  CLEOPATRA. Nay, I\'ll help too.\n    What\'s this for?\n  ANTONY. Ah, let be, let be! Thou art\n    The armourer of my heart. False, false; this, this.\n  CLEOPATRA. Sooth, la, I\'ll help. Thus it must be.\n  ANTONY. Well, well;\n    We shall thrive now. Seest thou, my good fellow?  \n    Go put on thy defences.\n  EROS. Briefly, sir.\n  CLEOPATRA. Is not this buckled well?\n  ANTONY. Rarely, rarely!\n    He that unbuckles this, till we do please\n    To daff\'t for our repose, shall hear a storm.\n    Thou fumblest, Eros, and my queen\'s a squire\n    More tight at this than thou. Dispatch. O love,\n    That thou couldst see my wars to-day, and knew\'st\n    The royal occupation! Thou shouldst see\n    A workman in\'t.\n\n                   Enter an armed SOLDIER\n\n    Good-morrow to thee. Welcome.\n    Thou look\'st like him that knows a warlike charge.\n    To business that we love we rise betime,\n    And go to\'t with delight.\n  SOLDIER. A thousand, sir,\n    Early though\'t be, have on their riveted trim,  \n    And at the port expect you.\n                            [Shout. Flourish of trumpets within]\n\n                 Enter CAPTAINS and soldiers\n\n  CAPTAIN. The morn is fair. Good morrow, General.\n  ALL. Good morrow, General.\n  ANTONY. \'Tis well blown, lads.\n    This morning, like the spirit of a youth\n    That means to be of note, begins betimes.\n    So, so. Come, give me that. This way. Well said.\n    Fare thee well, dame, whate\'er becomes of me.\n    This is a soldier\'s kiss. Rebukeable,\n    And worthy shameful check it were, to stand\n    On more mechanic compliment; I\'ll leave thee\n    Now like a man of steel. You that will fight,\n    Follow me close; I\'ll bring you to\'t. Adieu.\n                      Exeunt ANTONY, EROS, CAPTAINS and soldiers\n  CHARMIAN. Please you retire to your chamber?\n  CLEOPATRA. Lead me.\n    He goes forth gallantly. That he and Caesar might\n    Determine this great war in single fight!\n    Then, Antony- but now. Well, on.                      Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_5\n                          SCENE V.\n                  Alexandria. ANTONY\'S camp\n\n        Trumpets sound. Enter ANTONY and EROS, a SOLDIER\n                       meeting them\n\n  SOLDIER. The gods make this a happy day to Antony!\n  ANTONY. Would thou and those thy scars had once prevail\'d\n    To make me fight at land!\n  SOLDIER. Hadst thou done so,\n    The kings that have revolted, and the soldier\n    That has this morning left thee, would have still\n    Followed thy heels.\n  ANTONY. Who\'s gone this morning?\n  SOLDIER. Who?\n    One ever near thee. Call for Enobarbus,\n    He shall not hear thee; or from Caesar\'s camp\n    Say \'I am none of thine.\'\n  ANTONY. What say\'st thou?\n  SOLDIER. Sir,\n    He is with Caesar.\n  EROS. Sir, his chests and treasure  \n    He has not with him.\n  ANTONY. Is he gone?\n  SOLDIER. Most certain.\n  ANTONY. Go, Eros, send his treasure after; do it;\n    Detain no jot, I charge thee. Write to him-\n    I will subscribe- gentle adieus and greetings;\n    Say that I wish he never find more cause\n    To change a master. O, my fortunes have\n    Corrupted honest men! Dispatch. Enobarbus!            Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_6\n                         SCENE VI.\n                 Alexandria. CAESAR\'S camp\n\n       Flourish. Enter AGRIPPA, CAESAR, With DOLABELLA\n                       and ENOBARBUS\n\n  CAESAR. Go forth, Agrippa, and begin the fight.\n    Our will is Antony be took alive;\n    Make it so known.\n  AGRIPPA. Caesar, I shall.                                 Exit\n  CAESAR. The time of universal peace is near.\n    Prove this a prosp\'rous day, the three-nook\'d world\n    Shall bear the olive freely.\n\n                     Enter A MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. Antony\n    Is come into the field.\n  CAESAR. Go charge Agrippa\n    Plant those that have revolted in the vant,\n    That Antony may seem to spend his fury\n    Upon himself.                       Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS  \n  ENOBARBUS. Alexas did revolt and went to Jewry on\n    Affairs of Antony; there did dissuade\n    Great Herod to incline himself to Caesar\n    And leave his master Antony. For this pains\n    Casaer hath hang\'d him. Canidius and the rest\n    That fell away have entertainment, but\n    No honourable trust. I have done ill,\n    Of which I do accuse myself so sorely\n    That I will joy no more.\n\n                  Enter a SOLDIER of CAESAR\'S\n\n  SOLDIER. Enobarbus, Antony\n    Hath after thee sent all thy treasure, with\n    His bounty overplus. The messenger\n    Came on my guard, and at thy tent is now\n    Unloading of his mules.\n  ENOBARBUS. I give it you.\n  SOLDIER. Mock not, Enobarbus.\n    I tell you true. Best you saf\'d the bringer  \n    Out of the host. I must attend mine office,\n    Or would have done\'t myself. Your emperor\n    Continues still a Jove.                                 Exit\n  ENOBARBUS. I am alone the villain of the earth,\n    And feel I am so most. O Antony,\n    Thou mine of bounty, how wouldst thou have paid\n    My better service, when my turpitude\n    Thou dost so crown with gold! This blows my heart.\n    If swift thought break it not, a swifter mean\n    Shall outstrike thought; but thought will do\'t, I feel.\n    I fight against thee? No! I will go seek\n    Some ditch wherein to die; the foul\'st best fits\n    My latter part of life.                                 Exit\n\nACT_4|SC_7\n                          SCENE VII.\n             Field of battle between the camps\n\n         Alarum. Drums and trumpets. Enter AGRIPPA\n                        and others\n\n  AGRIPPA. Retire. We have engag\'d ourselves too far.\n    Caesar himself has work, and our oppression\n    Exceeds what we expected.                             Exeunt\n\n          Alarums. Enter ANTONY, and SCARUS wounded\n\n  SCARUS. O my brave Emperor, this is fought indeed!\n    Had we done so at first, we had droven them home\n    With clouts about their heads.\n  ANTONY. Thou bleed\'st apace.\n  SCARUS. I had a wound here that was like a T,\n    But now \'tis made an H.\n  ANTONY. They do retire.\n  SCARUS. We\'ll beat\'em into bench-holes. I have yet\n    Room for six scotches more.\n  \n                        Enter EROS\n\n  EROS. They are beaten, sir, and our advantage serves\n    For a fair victory.\n  SCARUS. Let us score their backs\n    And snatch \'em up, as we take hares, behind.\n    \'Tis sport to maul a runner.\n  ANTONY. I will reward thee\n    Once for thy sprightly comfort, and tenfold\n    For thy good valour. Come thee on.\n    SCARUS. I\'ll halt after.                              Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_8\n                         SCENE VIII.\n               Under the walls of Alexandria\n\n        Alarum. Enter ANTONY, again in a march; SCARUS\n                        with others\n\n  ANTONY. We have beat him to his camp. Run one before\n    And let the Queen know of our gests. To-morrow,\n    Before the sun shall see\'s, we\'ll spill the blood\n    That has to-day escap\'d. I thank you all;\n    For doughty-handed are you, and have fought\n    Not as you serv\'d the cause, but as\'t had been\n    Each man\'s like mine; you have shown all Hectors.\n    Enter the city, clip your wives, your friends,\n    Tell them your feats; whilst they with joyful tears\n    Wash the congealment from your wounds and kiss\n    The honour\'d gashes whole.\n\n                 Enter CLEOPATRA, attended\n\n    [To SCARUS] Give me thy hand-\n    To this great fairy I\'ll commend thy acts,  \n    Make her thanks bless thee. O thou day o\' th\' world,\n    Chain mine arm\'d neck. Leap thou, attire and all,\n    Through proof of harness to my heart, and there\n    Ride on the pants triumphing.\n  CLEOPATRA. Lord of lords!\n    O infinite virtue, com\'st thou smiling from\n    The world\'s great snare uncaught?\n  ANTONY. Mine nightingale,\n    We have beat them to their beds. What, girl! though grey\n    Do something mingle with our younger brown, yet ha\' we\n    A brain that nourishes our nerves, and can\n    Get goal for goal of youth. Behold this man;\n    Commend unto his lips thy favouring hand-\n    Kiss it, my warrior- he hath fought to-day\n    As if a god in hate of mankind had\n    Destroyed in such a shape.\n  CLEOPATRA. I\'ll give thee, friend,\n    An armour all of gold; it was a king\'s.\n  ANTONY. He has deserv\'d it, were it carbuncled\n    Like holy Phoebus\' car. Give me thy hand.  \n    Through Alexandria make a jolly march;\n    Bear our hack\'d targets like the men that owe them.\n    Had our great palace the capacity\n    To camp this host, we all would sup together,\n    And drink carouses to the next day\'s fate,\n    Which promises royal peril. Trumpeters,\n    With brazen din blast you the city\'s ear;\n    Make mingle with our rattling tabourines,\n    That heaven and earth may strike their sounds together\n    Applauding our approach.                              Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_9\n                         SCENE IX.\n                      CAESAR\'S camp\n\n      Enter a CENTURION and his company; ENOBARBUS follows\n\n  CENTURION. If we be not reliev\'d within this hour,\n    We must return to th\' court of guard. The night\n    Is shiny, and they say we shall embattle\n    By th\' second hour i\' th\' morn.\n  FIRST WATCH. This last day was\n    A shrewd one to\'s.\n  ENOBARBUS. O, bear me witness, night-\n  SECOND WATCH. What man is this?\n  FIRST WATCH. Stand close and list him.\n  ENOBARBUS. Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon,\n    When men revolted shall upon record\n    Bear hateful memory, poor Enobarbus did\n    Before thy face repent!\n  CENTURION. Enobarbus?\n  SECOND WATCH. Peace!\n    Hark further.\n  ENOBARBUS. O sovereign mistress of true melancholy,  \n    The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me,\n    That life, a very rebel to my will,\n    May hang no longer on me. Throw my heart\n    Against the flint and hardness of my fault,\n    Which, being dried with grief, will break to powder,\n    And finish all foul thoughts. O Antony,\n    Nobler than my revolt is infamous,\n    Forgive me in thine own particular,\n    But let the world rank me in register\n    A master-leaver and a fugitive!\n    O Antony! O Antony!                                   [Dies]\n  FIRST WATCH. Let\'s speak to him.\n  CENTURION. Let\'s hear him, for the things he speaks\n    May concern Caesar.\n  SECOND WATCH. Let\'s do so. But he sleeps.\n  CENTURION. Swoons rather; for so bad a prayer as his\n    Was never yet for sleep.\n  FIRST WATCH. Go we to him.\n  SECOND WATCH. Awake, sir, awake; speak to us.\n  FIRST WATCH. Hear you, sir?  \n  CENTURION. The hand of death hath raught him.\n    [Drums afar off ] Hark! the drums\n    Demurely wake the sleepers. Let us bear him\n    To th\' court of guard; he is of note. Our hour\n    Is fully out.\n  SECOND WATCH. Come on, then;\n    He may recover yet.                     Exeunt with the body\n\nACT_4|SC_10\n                          SCENE X.\n                    Between the two camps\n\n            Enter ANTONY and SCARUS, with their army\n\n  ANTONY. Their preparation is to-day by sea;\n    We please them not by land.\n  SCARUS. For both, my lord.\n  ANTONY. I would they\'d fight i\' th\' fire or i\' th\' air;\n    We\'d fight there too. But this it is, our foot\n    Upon the hills adjoining to the city\n    Shall stay with us- Order for sea is given;\n    They have put forth the haven-\n    Where their appointment we may best discover\n    And look on their endeavour.                          Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_11\n                         SCENE XI.\n                    Between the camps\n\n                Enter CAESAR and his army\n\n  CAESAR. But being charg\'d, we will be still by land,\n    Which, as I take\'t, we shall; for his best force\n    Is forth to man his galleys. To the vales,\n    And hold our best advantage.                          Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_12\n                         SCENE XII.\n                  A hill near Alexandria\n\n                  Enter ANTONY and SCARUS\n\n  ANTONY. Yet they are not join\'d. Where yond pine does stand\n    I shall discover all. I\'ll bring thee word\n    Straight how \'tis like to go.                           Exit\n  SCARUS. Swallows have built\n    In Cleopatra\'s sails their nests. The augurers\n    Say they know not, they cannot tell; look grimly,\n    And dare not speak their knowledge. Antony\n    Is valiant and dejected; and by starts\n    His fretted fortunes give him hope and fear\n    Of what he has and has not.\n                            [Alarum afar off, as at a sea-fight]\n\n                      Re-enter ANTONY\n\n  ANTONY. All is lost!\n    This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me.\n    My fleet hath yielded to the foe, and yonder  \n    They cast their caps up and carouse together\n    Like friends long lost. Triple-turn\'d whore! \'tis thou\n    Hast sold me to this novice; and my heart\n    Makes only wars on thee. Bid them all fly;\n    For when I am reveng\'d upon my charm,\n    I have done all. Bid them all fly; begone.       Exit SCARUS\n    O sun, thy uprise shall I see no more!\n    Fortune and Antony part here; even here\n    Do we shake hands. All come to this? The hearts\n    That spaniel\'d me at heels, to whom I gave\n    Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets\n    On blossoming Caesar; and this pine is bark\'d\n    That overtopp\'d them all. Betray\'d I am.\n    O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm-\n    Whose eye beck\'d forth my wars and call\'d them home,\n    Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end-\n    Like a right gypsy hath at fast and loose\n    Beguil\'d me to the very heart of loss.\n    What, Eros, Eros!\n  \n                      Enter CLEOPATRA\n\n    Ah, thou spell! Avaunt!\n  CLEOPATRA. Why is my lord enrag\'d against his love?\n  ANTONY. Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving\n    And blemish Caesar\'s triumph. Let him take thee\n    And hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians;\n    Follow his chariot, like the greatest spot\n    Of all thy sex; most monster-like, be shown\n    For poor\'st diminutives, for doits, and let\n    Patient Octavia plough thy visage up\n    With her prepared nails.                      Exit CLEOPATRA\n    \'Tis well th\'art gone,\n    If it be well to live; but better \'twere\n    Thou fell\'st into my fury, for one death\n    Might have prevented many. Eros, ho!\n    The shirt of Nessus is upon me; teach me,\n    Alcides, thou mine ancestor, thy rage;\n    Let me lodge Lichas on the horns o\' th\' moon,\n    And with those hands that grasp\'d the heaviest club\n    Subdue my worthiest self. The witch shall die.\n    To the young Roman boy she hath sold me, and I fall\n    Under this plot. She dies for\'t. Eros, ho!              Exit\n\nACT_4|SC_13\n                          SCENE XIII.\n               Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'s palace\n\n      Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and MARDIAN\n\n  CLEOPATRA. Help me, my women. O, he is more mad\n    Than Telamon for his shield; the boar of Thessaly\n    Was never so emboss\'d.\n  CHARMIAN. To th\'monument!\n    There lock yourself, and send him word you are dead.\n    The soul and body rive not more in parting\n    Than greatness going off.\n  CLEOPATRA. To th\' monument!\n    Mardian, go tell him I have slain myself;\n    Say that the last I spoke was \'Antony\'\n    And word it, prithee, piteously. Hence, Mardian,\n    And bring me how he takes my death. To th\' monument!\n                                                          Exeunt\n\nACT_4|SC_14\n                          SCENE XIV.\n                     CLEOPATRA\'S palace\n\n                   Enter ANTONY and EROS\n\n  ANTONY. Eros, thou yet behold\'st me?\n  EROS. Ay, noble lord.\n  ANTONY. Sometime we see a cloud that\'s dragonish;\n    A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,\n    A tower\'d citadel, a pendent rock,\n    A forked mountain, or blue promontory\n    With trees upon\'t that nod unto the world\n    And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs;\n    They are black vesper\'s pageants.\n  EROS. Ay, my lord.\n  ANTONY. That which is now a horse, even with a thought\n    The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct,\n    As water is in water.\n  EROS. It does, my lord.\n  ANTONY. My good knave Eros, now thy captain is\n    Even such a body. Here I am Antony;\n    Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave.  \n    I made these wars for Egypt; and the Queen-\n    Whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine,\n    Which, whilst it was mine, had annex\'d unto\'t\n    A million moe, now lost- she, Eros, has\n    Pack\'d cards with Caesar, and false-play\'d my glory\n    Unto an enemy\'s triumph.\n    Nay, weep not, gentle Eros; there is left us\n    Ourselves to end ourselves.\n\n                         Enter MARDIAN\n\n    O, thy vile lady!\n    She has robb\'d me of my sword.\n  MARDIAN. No, Antony;\n    My mistress lov\'d thee, and her fortunes mingled\n    With thine entirely.\n  ANTONY. Hence, saucy eunuch; peace!\n    She hath betray\'d me, and shall die the death.\n  MARDIAN. Death of one person can be paid but once,\n    And that she has discharg\'d. What thou wouldst do  \n    Is done unto thy hand. The last she spake\n    Was \'Antony! most noble Antony!\'\n    Then in the midst a tearing groan did break\n    The name of Antony; it was divided\n    Between her heart and lips. She rend\'red life,\n    Thy name so buried in her.\n  ANTONY. Dead then?\n  MARDIAN. Dead.\n  ANTONY. Unarm, Eros; the long day\'s task is done,\n    And we must sleep. That thou depart\'st hence safe\n    Does pay thy labour richly. Go.                 Exit MARDIAN\n    Off, pluck off!\n    The sevenfold shield of Ajax cannot keep\n    The battery from my heart. O, cleave, my sides!\n    Heart, once be stronger than thy continent,\n    Crack thy frail case. Apace, Eros, apace.-\n    No more a soldier. Bruised pieces, go;\n    You have been nobly borne.- From me awhile.        Exit EROS\n    I will o\'ertake thee, Cleopatra, and\n    Weep for my pardon. So it must be, for now  \n    All length is torture. Since the torch is out,\n    Lie down, and stray no farther. Now all labour\n    Mars what it does; yea, very force entangles\n    Itself with strength. Seal then, and all is done.\n    Eros!- I come, my queen.- Eros!- Stay for me;\n    Where souls do couch on flowers, we\'ll hand in hand,\n    And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze.\n    Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,\n    And all the haunt be ours.- Come, Eros, Eros!\n\n                       Re-enter EROS\n\n  EROS. What would my lord?\n  ANTONY. Since Cleopatra died,\n    I have liv\'d in such dishonour that the gods\n    Detest my baseness. I, that with my sword\n    Quarter\'d the world, and o\'er green Neptune\'s back\n    With ships made cities, condemn myself to lack\n    The courage of a woman; less noble mind\n    Than she which by her death our Caesar tells  \n    \'I am conqueror of myself.\' Thou art sworn, Eros,\n    That, when the exigent should come- which now\n    Is come indeed- when I should see behind me\n    Th\' inevitable prosecution of\n    Disgrace and horror, that, on my command,\n    Thou then wouldst kill me. Do\'t; the time is come.\n    Thou strik\'st not me; \'tis Caesar thou defeat\'st.\n    Put colour in thy cheek.\n  EROS. The gods withhold me!\n    Shall I do that which all the Parthian darts,\n    Though enemy, lost aim and could not?\n  ANTONY. Eros,\n    Wouldst thou be window\'d in great Rome and see\n    Thy master thus with pleach\'d arms, bending down\n    His corrigible neck, his face subdu\'d\n    To penetrative shame, whilst the wheel\'d seat\n    Of fortunate Caesar, drawn before him, branded\n    His baseness that ensued?\n  EROS. I would not see\'t.\n  ANTONY. Come, then; for with a wound I must be cur\'d.  \n    Draw that thy honest sword, which thou hast worn\n    Most useful for thy country.\n  EROS. O, sir, pardon me!\n  ANTONY. When I did make thee free, swor\'st thou not then\n    To do this when I bade thee? Do it at once,\n    Or thy precedent services are all\n    But accidents unpurpos\'d. Draw, and come.\n  EROS. Turn from me then that noble countenance,\n    Wherein the worship of the whole world lies.\n  ANTONY. Lo thee!                            [Turning from him]\n  EROS. My sword is drawn.\n  ANTONY. Then let it do at once\n    The thing why thou hast drawn it.\n  EROS. My dear master,\n    My captain and my emperor, let me say,\n    Before I strike this bloody stroke, farewell.\n  ANTONY. \'Tis said, man; and farewell.\n  EROS. Farewell, great chief. Shall I strike now?\n  ANTONY. Now, Eros.\n  EROS. Why, there then! Thus do I escape the sorrow  \n    Of Antony\'s death.                            [Kills himself\n  ANTONY. Thrice nobler than myself!\n    Thou teachest me, O valiant Eros, what\n    I should, and thou couldst not. My queen and Eros\n    Have, by their brave instruction, got upon me\n    A nobleness in record. But I will be\n    A bridegroom in my death, and run into\'t\n    As to a lover\'s bed. Come, then; and, Eros,\n    Thy master dies thy scholar. To do thus\n                                          [Falling on his sword]\n    I learn\'d of thee. How? not dead? not dead?-\n    The guard, ho! O, dispatch me!\n\n                  Enter DERCETAS and a guard\n\n  FIRST GUARD. What\'s the noise?\n  ANTONY. I have done my work ill, friends. O, make an end\n    Of what I have begun.\n  SECOND GUARD. The star is fall\'n.\n  FIRST GUARD. And time is at his period.  \n  ALL. Alas, and woe!\n  ANTONY. Let him that loves me, strike me dead.\n  FIRST GUARD. Not I.\n  SECOND GUARD. Nor I.\n  THIRD GUARD. Nor any one.                         Exeunt guard\n  DERCETAS. Thy death and fortunes bid thy followers fly.\n    This sword but shown to Caesar, with this tidings,\n    Shall enter me with him.\n\n                       Enter DIOMEDES\n\n  DIOMEDES. Where\'s Antony?\n  DERCETAS. There, Diomed, there.\n  DIOMEDES. Lives he?\n    Wilt thou not answer, man?                     Exit DERCETAS\n  ANTONY. Art thou there, Diomed? Draw thy sword and give me\n    Sufficing strokes for death.\n  DIOMEDES. Most absolute lord,\n    My mistress Cleopatra sent me to thee.\n  ANTONY. When did she send thee?  \n  DIOMEDES. Now, my lord.\n  ANTONY. Where is she?\n  DIOMEDES. Lock\'d in her monument. She had a prophesying fear\n    Of what hath come to pass; for when she saw-\n    Which never shall be found- you did suspect\n    She had dispos\'d with Caesar, and that your rage\n    Would not be purg\'d, she sent you word she was dead;\n    But fearing since how it might work, hath sent\n    Me to proclaim the truth; and I am come,\n    I dread, too late.\n  ANTONY. Too late, good Diomed. Call my guard, I prithee.\n  DIOMEDES. What, ho! the Emperor\'s guard! The guard, what ho!\n    Come, your lord calls!\n\n             Enter four or five of the guard of ANTONY\n\n  ANTONY. Bear me, good friends, where Cleopatra bides;\n    \'Tis the last service that I shall command you.\n  FIRST GUARD. Woe, woe are we, sir, you may not live to wear\n    All your true followers out.  \n  ALL. Most heavy day!\n  ANTONY. Nay, good my fellows, do not please sharp fate\n    To grace it with your sorrows. Bid that welcome\n    Which comes to punish us, and we punish it,\n    Seeming to bear it lightly. Take me up.\n    I have led you oft; carry me now, good friends,\n    And have my thanks for all.           Exeunt, hearing ANTONY\nACT_4|SC_15\n                         SCENE XV.\n                   Alexandria. A monument\n\n      Enter CLEOPATRA and her maids aloft, with CHARMIAN\n                         and IRAS\n\n  CLEOPATRA. O Charmian, I will never go from hence!\n  CHARMIAN. Be comforted, dear madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. No, I will not.\n    All strange and terrible events are welcome,\n    But comforts we despise; our size of sorrow,\n    Proportion\'d to our cause, must be as great\n    As that which makes it.\n\n                   Enter DIOMEDES, below\n\n    How now! Is he dead?\n  DIOMEDES. His death\'s upon him, but not dead.\n    Look out o\' th\' other side your monument;\n    His guard have brought him thither.\n\n            Enter, below, ANTONY, borne by the guard  \n\n  CLEOPATRA. O sun,\n    Burn the great sphere thou mov\'st in! Darkling stand\n    The varying shore o\' th\' world. O Antony,\n    Antony, Antony! Help, Charmian; help, Iras, help;\n    Help, friends below! Let\'s draw him hither.\n  ANTONY. Peace!\n    Not Caesar\'s valour hath o\'erthrown Antony,\n    But Antony\'s hath triumph\'d on itself.\n  CLEOPATRA. So it should be, that none but Antony\n    Should conquer Antony; but woe \'tis so!\n  ANTONY. I am dying, Egypt, dying; only\n    I here importune death awhile, until\n    Of many thousand kisses the poor last\n    I lay upon thy lips.\n  CLEOPATRA. I dare not, dear.\n    Dear my lord, pardon! I dare not,\n    Lest I be taken. Not th\' imperious show\n    Of the full-fortun\'d Caesar ever shall\n    Be brooch\'d with me. If knife, drugs, serpents, have  \n    Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe.\n    Your wife Octavia, with her modest eyes\n    And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour\n    Demuring upon me. But come, come, Antony-\n    Help me, my women- we must draw thee up;\n    Assist, good friends.\n  ANTONY. O, quick, or I am gone.\n  CLEOPATRA. Here\'s sport indeed! How heavy weighs my lord!\n    Our strength is all gone into heaviness;\n    That makes the weight. Had I great Juno\'s power,\n    The strong-wing\'d Mercury should fetch thee up,\n    And set thee by Jove\'s side. Yet come a little.\n    Wishers were ever fools. O come, come,\n                          [They heave ANTONY aloft to CLEOPATRA]\n    And welcome, welcome! Die where thou hast liv\'d.\n    Quicken with kissing. Had my lips that power,\n    Thus would I wear them out.\n  ALL. A heavy sight!\n  ANTONY. I am dying, Egypt, dying.\n    Give me some wine, and let me speak a little.  \n  CLEOPATRA. No, let me speak; and let me rail so high\n    That the false huswife Fortune break her wheel,\n    Provok\'d by my offence.\n  ANTONY. One word, sweet queen:\n    Of Caesar seek your honour, with your safety. O!\n  CLEOPATRA. They do not go together.\n  ANTONY. Gentle, hear me:\n    None about Caesar trust but Proculeius.\n  CLEOPATRA. My resolution and my hands I\'ll trust;\n    None about Caesar\n  ANTONY. The miserable change now at my end\n    Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts\n    In feeding them with those my former fortunes\n    Wherein I liv\'d the greatest prince o\' th\' world,\n    The noblest; and do now not basely die,\n    Not cowardly put off my helmet to\n    My countryman- a Roman by a Roman\n    Valiantly vanquish\'d. Now my spirit is going\n    I can no more.\n  CLEOPATRA. Noblest of men, woo\'t die?  \n    Hast thou no care of me? Shall I abide\n    In this dull world, which in thy absence is\n    No better than a sty? O, see, my women,        [Antony dies]\n    The crown o\' th\' earth doth melt. My lord!\n    O, wither\'d is the garland of the war,\n    The soldier\'s pole is fall\'n! Young boys and girls\n    Are level now with men. The odds is gone,\n    And there is nothing left remarkable\n    Beneath the visiting moon.                          [Swoons]\n  CHARMIAN. O, quietness, lady!\n  IRAS. She\'s dead too, our sovereign.\n  CHARMIAN. Lady!\n  IRAS. Madam!\n  CHARMIAN. O madam, madam, madam!\n  IRAS. Royal Egypt, Empress!\n  CHARMIAN. Peace, peace, Iras!\n  CLEOPATRA. No more but e\'en a woman, and commanded\n    By such poor passion as the maid that milks\n    And does the meanest chares. It were for me\n    To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods;  \n    To tell them that this world did equal theirs\n    Till they had stol\'n our jewel. All\'s but nought;\n    Patience is sottish, and impatience does\n    Become a dog that\'s mad. Then is it sin\n    To rush into the secret house of death\n    Ere death dare come to us? How do you, women?\n    What, what! good cheer! Why, how now, Charmian!\n    My noble girls! Ah, women, women, look,\n    Our lamp is spent, it\'s out! Good sirs, take heart.\n    We\'ll bury him; and then, what\'s brave, what\'s noble,\n    Let\'s do it after the high Roman fashion,\n    And make death proud to take us. Come, away;\n    This case of that huge spirit now is cold.\n    Ah, women, women! Come; we have no friend\n    But resolution and the briefest end.\n                   Exeunt; those above hearing off ANTONY\'S body\n\nACT_5|SC_1\n                       ACT V. SCENE I.\n                  Alexandria. CAESAR\'S camp\n\n      Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, DOLABELLA, MAECENAS, GALLUS,\n          PROCULEIUS, and others, his Council of War\n\n  CAESAR. Go to him, Dolabella, bid him yield;\n    Being so frustrate, tell him he mocks\n    The pauses that he makes.\n  DOLABELLA. Caesar, I shall.                               Exit\n\n             Enter DERCETAS With the sword of ANTONY\n\n  CAESAR. Wherefore is that? And what art thou that dar\'st\n    Appear thus to us?\n  DERCETAS. I am call\'d Dercetas;\n    Mark Antony I serv\'d, who best was worthy\n    Best to be serv\'d. Whilst he stood up and spoke,\n    He was my master, and I wore my life\n    To spend upon his haters. If thou please\n    To take me to thee, as I was to him\n    I\'ll be to Caesar; if thou pleasest not,  \n    I yield thee up my life.\n  CAESAR. What is\'t thou say\'st?\n  DERCETAS. I say, O Caesar, Antony is dead.\n  CAESAR. The breaking of so great a thing should make\n    A greater crack. The round world\n    Should have shook lions into civil streets,\n    And citizens to their dens. The death of Antony\n    Is not a single doom; in the name lay\n    A moiety of the world.\n  DERCETAS. He is dead, Caesar,\n    Not by a public minister of justice,\n    Nor by a hired knife; but that self hand\n    Which writ his honour in the acts it did\n    Hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it,\n    Splitted the heart. This is his sword;\n    I robb\'d his wound of it; behold it stain\'d\n    With his most noble blood.\n  CAESAR. Look you sad, friends?\n    The gods rebuke me, but it is tidings\n    To wash the eyes of kings.  \n  AGRIPPA. And strange it is\n    That nature must compel us to lament\n    Our most persisted deeds.\n  MAECENAS. His taints and honours\n    Wag\'d equal with him.\n  AGRIPPA. A rarer spirit never\n    Did steer humanity. But you gods will give us\n    Some faults to make us men. Caesar is touch\'d.\n  MAECENAS. When such a spacious mirror\'s set before him,\n    He needs must see himself.\n  CAESAR. O Antony,\n    I have follow\'d thee to this! But we do lance\n    Diseases in our bodies. I must perforce\n    Have shown to thee such a declining day\n    Or look on thine; we could not stall together\n    In the whole world. But yet let me lament,\n    With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts,\n    That thou, my brother, my competitor\n    In top of all design, my mate in empire,\n    Friend and companion in the front of war,  \n    The arm of mine own body, and the heart\n    Where mine his thoughts did kindle- that our stars,\n    Unreconciliable, should divide\n    Our equalness to this. Hear me, good friends-\n\n                    Enter an EGYPTIAN\n\n    But I will tell you at some meeter season.\n    The business of this man looks out of him;\n    We\'ll hear him what he says. Whence are you?\n  EGYPTIAN. A poor Egyptian, yet the Queen, my mistress,\n    Confin\'d in all she has, her monument,\n    Of thy intents desires instruction,\n    That she preparedly may frame herself\n    To th\' way she\'s forc\'d to.\n  CAESAR. Bid her have good heart.\n    She soon shall know of us, by some of ours,\n    How honourable and how kindly we\n    Determine for her; for Caesar cannot learn\n    To be ungentle.  \n  EGYPTIAN. So the gods preserve thee!                      Exit\n  CAESAR. Come hither, Proculeius. Go and say\n    We purpose her no shame. Give her what comforts\n    The quality of her passion shall require,\n    Lest, in her greatness, by some mortal stroke\n    She do defeat us; for her life in Rome\n    Would be eternal in our triumph. Go,\n    And with your speediest bring us what she says,\n    And how you find her.\n  PROCULEIUS. Caesar, I shall.                              Exit\n  CAESAR. Gallus, go you along.                      Exit GALLUS\n    Where\'s Dolabella, to second Proculeius?\n  ALL. Dolabella!\n  CAESAR. Let him alone, for I remember now\n    How he\'s employ\'d; he shall in time be ready.\n    Go with me to my tent, where you shall see\n    How hardly I was drawn into this war,\n    How calm and gentle I proceeded still\n    In all my writings. Go with me, and see\n    What I can show in this.                              Exeunt\n\nACT_5|SC_2\n                         SCENE II.\n                Alexandria. The monument\n\n      Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and MARDIAN\n\n  CLEOPATRA. My desolation does begin to make\n    A better life. \'Tis paltry to be Caesar:\n    Not being Fortune, he\'s but Fortune\'s knave,\n    A minister of her will; and it is great\n    To do that thing that ends all other deeds,\n    Which shackles accidents and bolts up change,\n    Which sleeps, and never palates more the dug,\n    The beggar\'s nurse and Caesar\'s.\n\n       Enter, to the gates of the monument, PROCULEIUS, GALLUS,\n                          and soldiers\n\n  PROCULEIUS. Caesar sends greetings to the Queen of Egypt,\n    And bids thee study on what fair demands\n    Thou mean\'st to have him grant thee.\n  CLEOPATRA. What\'s thy name?\n  PROCULEIUS. My name is Proculeius.  \n  CLEOPATRA. Antony\n    Did tell me of you, bade me trust you; but\n    I do not greatly care to be deceiv\'d,\n    That have no use for trusting. If your master\n    Would have a queen his beggar, you must tell him\n    That majesty, to keep decorum, must\n    No less beg than a kingdom. If he please\n    To give me conquer\'d Egypt for my son,\n    He gives me so much of mine own as I\n    Will kneel to him with thanks.\n  PROCULEIUS. Be of good cheer;\n    Y\'are fall\'n into a princely hand; fear nothing.\n    Make your full reference freely to my lord,\n    Who is so full of grace that it flows over\n    On all that need. Let me report to him\n    Your sweet dependency, and you shall find\n    A conqueror that will pray in aid for kindness\n    Where he for grace is kneel\'d to.\n  CLEOPATRA. Pray you tell him\n    I am his fortune\'s vassal and I send him  \n    The greatness he has got. I hourly learn\n    A doctrine of obedience, and would gladly\n    Look him i\' th\' face.\n  PROCULEIUS. This I\'ll report, dear lady.\n    Have comfort, for I know your plight is pitied\n    Of him that caus\'d it.\n  GALLUS. You see how easily she may be surpris\'d.\n\n      Here PROCULEIUS and two of the guard ascend the\n       monument by a ladder placed against a window,\n       and come behind CLEOPATRA. Some of the guard\n                unbar and open the gates\n\n    Guard her till Caesar come.                             Exit\n  IRAS. Royal Queen!\n  CHARMIAN. O Cleopatra! thou art taken, Queen!\n  CLEOPATRA. Quick, quick, good hands.        [Drawing a dagger]\n  PROCULEIUS. Hold, worthy lady, hold,             [Disarms her]\n    Do not yourself such wrong, who are in this\n    Reliev\'d, but not betray\'d.  \n  CLEOPATRA. What, of death too,\n    That rids our dogs of languish?\n  PROCULEIUS. Cleopatra,\n    Do not abuse my master\'s bounty by\n    Th\' undoing of yourself. Let the world see\n    His nobleness well acted, which your death\n    Will never let come forth.\n  CLEOPATRA. Where art thou, death?\n    Come hither, come! Come, come, and take a queen\n    Worth many babes and beggars!\n  PROCULEIUS. O, temperance, lady!\n  CLEOPATRA. Sir, I will eat no meat; I\'ll not drink, sir;\n    If idle talk will once be necessary,\n    I\'ll not sleep neither. This mortal house I\'ll ruin,\n    Do Caesar what he can. Know, sir, that I\n    Will not wait pinion\'d at your master\'s court,\n    Nor once be chastis\'d with the sober eye\n    Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up,\n    And show me to the shouting varletry\n    Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt  \n    Be gentle grave unto me! Rather on Nilus\' mud\n    Lay me stark-nak\'d, and let the water-flies\n    Blow me into abhorring! Rather make\n    My country\'s high pyramides my gibbet,\n    And hang me up in chains!\n  PROCULEIUS. You do extend\n    These thoughts of horror further than you shall\n    Find cause in Caesar.\n\n                      Enter DOLABELLA\n\n  DOLABELLA. Proculeius,\n    What thou hast done thy master Caesar knows,\n    And he hath sent for thee. For the Queen,\n    I\'ll take her to my guard.\n  PROCULEIUS. So, Dolabella,\n    It shall content me best. Be gentle to her.\n    [To CLEOPATRA] To Caesar I will speak what you shall please,\n    If you\'ll employ me to him.\n  CLEOPATRA. Say I would die.  \n                                  Exeunt PROCULEIUS and soldiers\n  DOLABELLA. Most noble Empress, you have heard of me?\n  CLEOPATRA. I cannot tell.\n  DOLABELLA. Assuredly you know me.\n  CLEOPATRA. No matter, sir, what I have heard or known.\n    You laugh when boys or women tell their dreams;\n    Is\'t not your trick?\n  DOLABELLA. I understand not, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. I dreamt there was an Emperor Antony-\n    O, such another sleep, that I might see\n    But such another man!\n  DOLABELLA. If it might please ye-\n  CLEOPATRA. His face was as the heav\'ns, and therein stuck\n    A sun and moon, which kept their course and lighted\n    The little O, the earth.\n  DOLABELLA. Most sovereign creature-\n  CLEOPATRA. His legs bestrid the ocean; his rear\'d arm\n    Crested the world. His voice was propertied\n    As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;\n    But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,  \n    He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,\n    There was no winter in\'t; an autumn \'twas\n    That grew the more by reaping. His delights\n    Were dolphin-like: they show\'d his back above\n    The element they liv\'d in. In his livery\n    Walk\'d crowns and crownets; realms and islands were\n    As plates dropp\'d from his pocket.\n  DOLABELLA. Cleopatra-\n  CLEOPATRA. Think you there was or might be such a man\n    As this I dreamt of?\n  DOLABELLA. Gentle madam, no.\n  CLEOPATRA. You lie, up to the hearing of the gods.\n    But if there be nor ever were one such,\n    It\'s past the size of drearning. Nature wants stuff\n    To vie strange forms with fancy; yet t\' imagine\n    An Antony were nature\'s piece \'gainst fancy,\n    Condemning shadows quite.\n  DOLABELLA. Hear me, good madam.\n    Your loss is, as yourself, great; and you bear it\n    As answering to the weight. Would I might never  \n    O\'ertake pursu\'d success, but I do feel,\n    By the rebound of yours, a grief that smites\n    My very heart at root.\n  CLEOPATRA. I thank you, sir.\n    Know you what Caesar means to do with me?\n  DOLABELLA. I am loath to tell you what I would you knew.\n  CLEOPATRA. Nay, pray you, sir.\n  DOLABELLA. Though he be honourable-\n  CLEOPATRA. He\'ll lead me, then, in triumph?\n  DOLABELLA. Madam, he will. I know\'t.                [Flourish]\n                              [Within: \'Make way there-Caesar!\']\n\n       Enter CAESAR; GALLUS, PROCULEIUS, MAECENAS, SELEUCUS,\n                     and others of his train\n\n  CAESAR. Which is the Queen of Egypt?\n  DOLABELLA. It is the Emperor, madam.        [CLEOPATPA kneels]\n  CAESAR. Arise, you shall not kneel.\n    I pray you, rise; rise, Egypt.\n  CLEOPATRA. Sir, the gods  \n    Will have it thus; my master and my lord\n    I must obey.\n  CAESAR. Take to you no hard thoughts.\n    The record of what injuries you did us,\n    Though written in our flesh, we shall remember\n    As things but done by chance.\n  CLEOPATRA. Sole sir o\' th\' world,\n    I cannot project mine own cause so well\n    To make it clear, but do confess I have\n    Been laden with like frailties which before\n    Have often sham\'d our sex.\n  CAESAR. Cleopatra, know\n    We will extenuate rather than enforce.\n    If you apply yourself to our intents-\n    Which towards you are most gentle- you shall find\n    A benefit in this change; but if you seek\n    To lay on me a cruelty by taking\n    Antony\'s course, you shall bereave yourself\n    Of my good purposes, and put your children\n    To that destruction which I\'ll guard them from,  \n    If thereon you rely. I\'ll take my leave.\n  CLEOPATRA. And may, through all the world. \'Tis yours, and we,\n    Your scutcheons and your signs of conquest, shall\n    Hang in what place you please. Here, my good lord.\n  CAESAR. You shall advise me in all for Cleopatra.\n  CLEOPATRA. This is the brief of money, plate, and jewels,\n    I am possess\'d of. \'Tis exactly valued,\n    Not petty things admitted. Where\'s Seleucus?\n  SELEUCUS. Here, madam.\n  CLEOPATRA. This is my treasurer; let him speak, my lord,\n    Upon his peril, that I have reserv\'d\n    To myself nothing. Speak the truth, Seleucus.\n  SELEUCUS. Madam,\n    I had rather seal my lips than to my peril\n    Speak that which is not.\n  CLEOPATRA. What have I kept back?\n  SELEUCUS. Enough to purchase what you have made known.\n  CAESAR. Nay, blush not, Cleopatra; I approve\n    Your wisdom in the deed.\n  CLEOPATRA. See, Caesar! O, behold,  \n    How pomp is followed! Mine will now be yours;\n    And, should we shift estates, yours would be mine.\n    The ingratitude of this Seleucus does\n    Even make me wild. O slave, of no more trust\n    Than love that\'s hir\'d! What, goest thou back? Thou shalt\n    Go back, I warrant thee; but I\'ll catch thine eyes\n    Though they had wings. Slave, soulless villain, dog!\n    O rarely base!\n  CAESAR. Good Queen, let us entreat you.\n  CLEOPATRA. O Caesar, what a wounding shame is this,\n    That thou vouchsafing here to visit me,\n    Doing the honour of thy lordliness\n    To one so meek, that mine own servant should\n    Parcel the sum of my disgraces by\n    Addition of his envy! Say, good Caesar,\n    That I some lady trifles have reserv\'d,\n    Immoment toys, things of such dignity\n    As we greet modern friends withal; and say\n    Some nobler token I have kept apart\n    For Livia and Octavia, to induce  \n    Their mediation- must I be unfolded\n    With one that I have bred? The gods! It smites me\n    Beneath the fall I have. [To SELEUCUS] Prithee go hence;\n    Or I shall show the cinders of my spirits\n    Through th\' ashes of my chance. Wert thou a man,\n    Thou wouldst have mercy on me.\n  CAESAR. Forbear, Seleucus.                       Exit SELEUCUS\n  CLEOPATRA. Be it known that we, the greatest, are misthought\n    For things that others do; and when we fall\n    We answer others\' merits in our name,\n    Are therefore to be pitied.\n  CAESAR. Cleopatra,\n    Not what you have reserv\'d, nor what acknowledg\'d,\n    Put we i\' th\' roll of conquest. Still be\'t yours,\n    Bestow it at your pleasure; and believe\n    Caesar\'s no merchant, to make prize with you\n    Of things that merchants sold. Therefore be cheer\'d;\n    Make not your thoughts your prisons. No, dear Queen;\n    For we intend so to dispose you as\n    Yourself shall give us counsel. Feed and sleep.  \n    Our care and pity is so much upon you\n    That we remain your friend; and so, adieu.\n  CLEOPATRA. My master and my lord!\n  CAESAR. Not so. Adieu.\n                           Flourish. Exeunt CAESAR and his train\n  CLEOPATRA. He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not\n    Be noble to myself. But hark thee, Charmian!\n                                             [Whispers CHARMIAN]\n  IRAS. Finish, good lady; the bright day is done,\n    And we are for the dark.\n  CLEOPATRA. Hie thee again.\n    I have spoke already, and it is provided;\n    Go put it to the haste.\n  CHARMIAN. Madam, I will.\n\n                      Re-enter DOLABELLA\n\n  DOLABELLA. Where\'s the Queen?\n  CHARMIAN. Behold, sir.                                    Exit\n  CLEOPATRA. Dolabella!  \n  DOLABELLA. Madam, as thereto sworn by your command,\n    Which my love makes religion to obey,\n    I tell you this: Caesar through Syria\n    Intends his journey, and within three days\n    You with your children will he send before.\n    Make your best use of this; I have perform\'d\n    Your pleasure and my promise.\n  CLEOPATRA. Dolabella,\n    I shall remain your debtor.\n  DOLABELLA. I your servant.\n    Adieu, good Queen; I must attend on Caesar.\n  CLEOPATRA. Farewell, and thanks.                Exit DOLABELLA\n    Now, Iras, what think\'st thou?\n    Thou an Egyptian puppet shall be shown\n    In Rome as well as I. Mechanic slaves,\n    With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall\n    Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths,\n    Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded,\n    And forc\'d to drink their vapour.\n  IRAS. The gods forbid!  \n  CLEOPATRA. Nay, \'tis most certain, Iras. Saucy lictors\n    Will catch at us like strumpets, and scald rhymers\n    Ballad us out o\' tune; the quick comedians\n    Extemporally will stage us, and present\n    Our Alexandrian revels; Antony\n    Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see\n    Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness\n    I\' th\' posture of a whore.\n  IRAS. O the good gods!\n  CLEOPATRA. Nay, that\'s certain.\n  IRAS. I\'ll never see\'t, for I am sure mine nails\n    Are stronger than mine eyes.\n  CLEOPATRA. Why, that\'s the way\n    To fool their preparation and to conquer\n    Their most absurd intents.\n\n                      Enter CHARMIAN\n\n    Now, Charmian!\n    Show me, my women, like a queen. Go fetch  \n    My best attires. I am again for Cydnus,\n    To meet Mark Antony. Sirrah, Iras, go.\n    Now, noble Charmian, we\'ll dispatch indeed;\n    And when thou hast done this chare, I\'ll give thee leave\n    To play till doomsday. Bring our crown and all.\n                                       Exit IRAS. A noise within\n    Wherefore\'s this noise?\n\n                     Enter a GUARDSMAN\n\n  GUARDSMAN. Here is a rural fellow\n    That will not be denied your Highness\' presence.\n    He brings you figs.\n  CLEOPATRA. Let him come in.                     Exit GUARDSMAN\n    What poor an instrument\n    May do a noble deed! He brings me liberty.\n    My resolution\'s plac\'d, and I have nothing\n    Of woman in me. Now from head to foot\n    I am marble-constant; now the fleeting moon\n    No planet is of mine.  \n\n          Re-enter GUARDSMAN and CLOWN, with a basket\n\n  GUARDSMAN. This is the man.\n  CLEOPATRA. Avoid, and leave him.                Exit GUARDSMAN\n    Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there\n    That kills and pains not?\n  CLOWN. Truly, I have him. But I would not be the party that should\n    desire you to touch him, for his biting is immortal; those that\n    do die of it do seldom or never recover.\n  CLEOPATRA. Remember\'st thou any that have died on\'t?\n  CLOWN. Very many, men and women too. I heard of one of them no\n    longer than yesterday: a very honest woman, but something given\n    to lie, as a woman should not do but in the way of honesty; how\n    she died of the biting of it, what pain she felt- truly she makes\n    a very good report o\' th\' worm. But he that will believe all that\n    they say shall never be saved by half that they do. But this is\n    most falliable, the worm\'s an odd worm.\n  CLEOPATRA. Get thee hence; farewell.\n  CLOWN. I wish you all joy of the worm.  \n                                          [Sets down the basket]\n  CLEOPATRA. Farewell.\n  CLOWN. You must think this, look you, that the worm will do his\n    kind.\n  CLEOPATRA. Ay, ay; farewell.\n  CLOWN. Look you, the worm is not to be trusted but in the keeping\n    of wise people; for indeed there is no goodness in the worm.\n  CLEOPATRA. Take thou no care; it shall be heeded.\n  CLOWN. Very good. Give it nothing, I pray you, for it is not worth\n    the feeding.\n  CLEOPATRA. Will it eat me?\n  CLOWN. You must not think I am so simple but I know the devil\n    himself will not eat a woman. I know that a woman is a dish for\n    the gods, if the devil dress her not. But truly, these same\n    whoreson devils do the gods great harm in their women, for in\n    every ten that they make the devils mar five.\n  CLEOPATRA. Well, get thee gone; farewell.\n  CLOWN. Yes, forsooth. I wish you joy o\' th\' worm.         Exit\n\n             Re-enter IRAS, with a robe, crown, &c.  \n\n  CLEOPATRA. Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have\n    Immortal longings in me. Now no more\n    The juice of Egypt\'s grape shall moist this lip.\n    Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear\n    Antony call. I see him rouse himself\n    To praise my noble act. I hear him mock\n    The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men\n    To excuse their after wrath. Husband, I come.\n    Now to that name my courage prove my title!\n    I am fire and air; my other elements\n    I give to baser life. So, have you done?\n    Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips.\n    Farewell, kind Charmian. Iras, long farewell.\n                              [Kisses them. IRAS falls and dies]\n    Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?\n    If thus thou and nature can so gently part,\n    The stroke of death is as a lover\'s pinch,\n    Which hurts and is desir\'d. Dost thou lie still?\n    If thou vanishest, thou tell\'st the world  \n    It is not worth leave-taking.\n  CHARMIAN. Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain, that I may say\n    The gods themselves do weep.\n  CLEOPATRA. This proves me base.\n    If she first meet the curled Antony,\n    He\'ll make demand of her, and spend that kiss\n    Which is my heaven to have. Come, thou mortal wretch,\n                    [To an asp, which she applies to her breast]\n    With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate\n    Of life at once untie. Poor venomous fool,\n    Be angry and dispatch. O couldst thou speak,\n    That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass\n    Unpolicied!\n  CHARMIAN. O Eastern star!\n  CLEOPATRA. Peace, peace!\n    Dost thou not see my baby at my breast\n    That sucks the nurse asleep?\n  CHARMIAN. O, break! O, break!\n  CLEOPATRA. As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle-\n    O Antony! Nay, I will take thee too:  \n                               [Applying another asp to her arm]\n    What should I stay-                                   [Dies]\n  CHARMIAN. In this vile world? So, fare thee well.\n    Now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies\n    A lass unparallel\'d. Downy windows, close;\n    And golden Phoebus never be beheld\n    Of eyes again so royal! Your crown\'s awry;\n    I\'ll mend it and then play-\n\n                  Enter the guard, rushing in\n\n  FIRST GUARD. Where\'s the Queen?\n  CHARMIAN. Speak softly, wake her not.\n  FIRST GUARD. Caesar hath sent-\n  CHARMIAN. Too slow a messenger.               [Applies an asp]\n    O, come apace, dispatch. I partly feel thee.\n  FIRST GUARD. Approach, ho! All\'s not well: Caesar\'s beguil\'d.\n  SECOND GUARD. There\'s Dolabella sent from Caesar; call him.\n  FIRST GUARD. What work is here! Charmian, is this well done?\n  CHARMIAN. It is well done, and fitting for a princes  \n    Descended of so many royal kings.\n    Ah, soldier!                                 [CHARMIAN dies]\n\n                      Re-enter DOLABELLA\n\n  DOLABELLA. How goes it here?\n  SECOND GUARD. All dead.\n  DOLABELLA. Caesar, thy thoughts\n    Touch their effects in this. Thyself art coming\n    To see perform\'d the dreaded act which thou\n    So sought\'st to hinder.\n                      [Within: \'A way there, a way for Caesar!\']\n\n              Re-enter CAESAR and all his train\n\n  DOLABELLA. O sir, you are too sure an augurer:\n    That you did fear is done.\n  CAESAR. Bravest at the last,\n    She levell\'d at our purposes, and being royal,\n    Took her own way. The manner of their deaths?  \n    I do not see them bleed.\n  DOLABELLA. Who was last with them?\n  FIRST GUARD. A simple countryman that brought her figs.\n    This was his basket.\n  CAESAR. Poison\'d then.\n  FIRST GUARD. O Caesar,\n    This Charmian liv\'d but now; she stood and spake.\n    I found her trimming up the diadem\n    On her dead mistress. Tremblingly she stood,\n    And on the sudden dropp\'d.\n  CAESAR. O noble weakness!\n    If they had swallow\'d poison \'twould appear\n    By external swelling; but she looks like sleep,\n    As she would catch another Antony\n    In her strong toil of grace.\n  DOLABELLA. Here on her breast\n    There is a vent of blood, and something blown;\n    The like is on her arm.\n  FIRST GUARD. This is an aspic\'s trail; and these fig-leaves\n    Have slime upon them, such as th\' aspic leaves  \n    Upon the caves of Nile.\n  CAESAR. Most probable\n    That so she died; for her physician tells me\n    She hath pursu\'d conclusions infinite\n    Of easy ways to die. Take up her bed,\n    And bear her women from the monument.\n    She shall be buried by her Antony;\n    No grave upon the earth shall clip in it\n    A pair so famous. High events as these\n    Strike those that make them; and their story is\n    No less in pity than his glory which\n    Brought them to be lamented. Our army shall\n    In solemn show attend this funeral,\n    And then to Rome. Come, Dolabella, see\n    High order in this great solemnity.                   Exeunt\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1601\n\nAS YOU LIKE IT\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE.\n\n  DUKE, living in exile\n  FREDERICK, his brother, and usurper of his dominions\n  AMIENS, lord attending on the banished Duke\n  JAQUES,   "      "       "  "     "      "\n  LE BEAU, a courtier attending upon Frederick\n  CHARLES, wrestler to Frederick\n  OLIVER, son of Sir Rowland de Boys\n  JAQUES,   "   "  "    "     "  "\n  ORLANDO,  "   "  "    "     "  "\n  ADAM,   servant to Oliver\n  DENNIS,     "     "   "\n  TOUCHSTONE, the court jester\n  SIR OLIVER MARTEXT, a vicar\n  CORIN,    shepherd\n  SILVIUS,     "\n  WILLIAM, a country fellow, in love with Audrey\n  A person representing HYMEN\n\n  ROSALIND, daughter to the banished Duke\n  CELIA, daughter to Frederick\n  PHEBE, a shepherdes  \n  AUDREY, a country wench\n\n  Lords, Pages, Foresters, and Attendants\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nOLIVER\'S house; FREDERICK\'S court; and the Forest of Arden\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nOrchard of OLIVER\'S house\n\nEnter ORLANDO and ADAM\n\n  ORLANDO. As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed\n    me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou say\'st,\n    charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well; and there\n    begins my sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and\n    report speaks goldenly of his profit. For my part, he keeps me\n    rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at\n    home unkept; for call you that keeping for a gentleman of my\n    birth that differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are\n    bred better; for, besides that they are fair with their feeding,\n    they are taught their manage, and to that end riders dearly\n    hir\'d; but I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth; for\n    the which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him\n    as I. Besides this nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the\n    something that nature gave me his countenance seems to take from\n    me. He lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a\n    brother, and as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my\n    education. This is it, Adam, that grieves me; and the spirit of  \n    my father, which I think is within me, begins to mutiny against\n    this servitude. I will no longer endure it, though yet I know no\n    wise remedy how to avoid it.\n\n                           Enter OLIVER\n\n  ADAM. Yonder comes my master, your brother.\n  ORLANDO. Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me\n    up.                                           [ADAM retires]\n  OLIVER. Now, sir! what make you here?\n  ORLANDO. Nothing; I am not taught to make any thing.\n  OLIVER. What mar you then, sir?\n  ORLANDO. Marry, sir, I am helping you to mar that which God made, a\n    poor unworthy brother of yours, with idleness.\n  OLIVER. Marry, sir, be better employed, and be nought awhile.\n  ORLANDO. Shall I keep your hogs, and eat husks with them? What\n    prodigal portion have I spent that I should come to such penury?\n  OLIVER. Know you where you are, sir?\n  ORLANDO. O, sir, very well; here in your orchard.\n  OLIVER. Know you before whom, sir?  \n  ORLANDO. Ay, better than him I am before knows me. I know you are\n    my eldest brother; and in the gentle condition of blood, you\n    should so know me. The courtesy of nations allows you my better\n    in that you are the first-born; but the same tradition takes not\n    away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us. I have as\n    much of my father in me as you, albeit I confess your coming\n    before me is nearer to his reverence.\n  OLIVER. What, boy!                               [Strikes him]\n  ORLANDO. Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this.\n  OLIVER. Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain?\n  ORLANDO. I am no villain; I am the youngest son of Sir Rowland de\n    Boys. He was my father; and he is thrice a villain that says such\n    a father begot villains. Wert thou not my brother, I would not\n    take this hand from thy throat till this other had pull\'d out thy\n    tongue for saying so. Thou has rail\'d on thyself.\n  ADAM. [Coming forward] Sweet masters, be patient; for your father\'s\n    remembrance, be at accord.\n  OLIVER. Let me go, I say.\n  ORLANDO. I will not, till I please; you shall hear me. My father\n    charg\'d you in his will to give me good education: you have  \n    train\'d me like a peasant, obscuring and hiding from me all\n    gentleman-like qualities. The spirit of my father grows strong in\n    me, and I will no longer endure it; therefore allow me such\n    exercises as may become a gentleman, or give me the poor\n    allottery my father left me by testament; with that I will go buy\n    my fortunes.\n  OLIVER. And what wilt thou do? Beg, when that is spent? Well, sir,\n    get you in. I will not long be troubled with you; you shall have\n    some part of your will. I pray you leave me.\n  ORLANDO. I no further offend you than becomes me for my good.\n  OLIVER. Get you with him, you old dog.\n  ADAM. Is \'old dog\' my reward? Most true, I have lost my teeth in\n    your service. God be with my old master! He would not have spoke\n    such a word.\n                                         Exeunt ORLANDO and ADAM\n  OLIVER. Is it even so? Begin you to grow upon me? I will physic\n    your rankness, and yet give no thousand crowns neither. Holla,\n    Dennis!\n\n                          Enter DENNIS  \n\n  DENNIS. Calls your worship?\n  OLIVER. not Charles, the Duke\'s wrestler, here to speak with me?\n  DENNIS. So please you, he is here at the door and importunes access\n    to you.\n  OLIVER. Call him in. [Exit DENNIS] \'Twill be a good way; and\n    to-morrow the wrestling is.\n\n                          Enter CHARLES\n\n  CHARLES. Good morrow to your worship.\n  OLIVER. Good Monsieur Charles! What\'s the new news at the new\n    court?\n  CHARLES. There\'s no news at the court, sir, but the old news; that\n    is, the old Duke is banished by his younger brother the new Duke;\n    and three or four loving lords have put themselves into voluntary\n    exile with him, whose lands and revenues enrich the new Duke;\n    therefore he gives them good leave to wander.\n  OLIVER. Can you tell if Rosalind, the Duke\'s daughter, be banished\n    with her father?  \n  CHARLES. O, no; for the Duke\'s daughter, her cousin, so loves her,\n    being ever from their cradles bred together, that she would have\n    followed her exile, or have died to stay behind her. She is at\n    the court, and no less beloved of her uncle than his own\n    daughter; and never two ladies loved as they do.\n  OLIVER. Where will the old Duke live?\n  CHARLES. They say he is already in the Forest of Arden, and a many\n    merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood\n    of England. They say many young gentlemen flock to him every day,\n    and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.\n  OLIVER. What, you wrestle to-morrow before the new Duke?\n  CHARLES. Marry, do I, sir; and I came to acquaint you with a\n    matter. I am given, sir, secretly to understand that your younger\n    brother, Orlando, hath a disposition to come in disguis\'d against\n    me to try a fall. To-morrow, sir, I wrestle for my credit; and he\n    that escapes me without some broken limb shall acquit him well.\n    Your brother is but young and tender; and, for your love, I would\n    be loath to foil him, as I must, for my own honour, if he come\n    in; therefore, out of my love to you, I came hither to acquaint\n    you withal, that either you might stay him from his intendment,  \n    or brook such disgrace well as he shall run into, in that it is\n    thing of his own search and altogether against my will.\n  OLIVER. Charles, I thank thee for thy love to me, which thou shalt\n    find I will most kindly requite. I had myself notice of my\n    brother\'s purpose herein, and have by underhand means laboured to\n    dissuade him from it; but he is resolute. I\'ll tell thee,\n    Charles, it is the stubbornest young fellow of France; full of\n    ambition, an envious emulator of every man\'s good parts, a secret\n    and villainous contriver against me his natural brother.\n    Therefore use thy discretion: I had as lief thou didst break his\n    neck as his finger. And thou wert best look to\'t; for if thou\n    dost him any slight disgrace, or if he do not mightily grace\n    himself on thee, he will practise against thee by poison, entrap\n    thee by some treacherous device, and never leave thee till he\n    hath ta\'en thy life by some indirect means or other; for, I\n    assure thee, and almost with tears I speak it, there is not one\n    so young and so villainous this day living. I speak but brotherly\n    of him; but should I anatomize him to thee as he is, I must blush\n    and weep, and thou must look pale and wonder.\n  CHARLES. I am heartily glad I came hither to you. If he come  \n    to-morrow I\'ll give him his payment. If ever he go alone again,\n    I\'ll never wrestle for prize more. And so, God keep your worship!\n Exit\n  OLIVER. Farewell, good Charles. Now will I stir this gamester. I\n    hope I shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why,\n    hates nothing more than he. Yet he\'s gentle; never school\'d and\n    yet learned; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly\n    beloved; and, indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and\n    especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am\n    altogether misprised. But it shall not be so long; this wrestler\n    shall clear all. Nothing remains but that I kindle the boy\n    thither, which now I\'ll go about.                       Exit\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nA lawn before the DUKE\'S palace\n\nEnter ROSALIND and CELIA\n\n  CELIA. I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry.\n  ROSALIND. Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of; and\n    would you yet I were merrier? Unless you could teach me to forget\n    a banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any\n    extraordinary pleasure.\n  CELIA. Herein I see thou lov\'st me not with the full weight that I\n    love thee. If my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy\n    uncle, the Duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me, I\n    could have taught my love to take thy father for mine; so wouldst\n    thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteously temper\'d\n    as mine is to thee.\n  ROSALIND. Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to\n    rejoice in yours.\n  CELIA. You know my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to\n    have; and, truly, when he dies thou shalt be his heir; for what\n    he hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render thee\n    again in affection. By mine honour, I will; and when I break that  \n    oath, let me turn monster; therefore, my sweet Rose, my dear\n    Rose, be merry.\n  ROSALIND. From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports.\n    Let me see; what think you of falling in love?\n  CELIA. Marry, I prithee, do, to make sport withal; but love no man\n    in good earnest, nor no further in sport neither than with safety\n    of a pure blush thou mayst in honour come off again.\n  ROSALIND. What shall be our sport, then?\n  CELIA. Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her\n    wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.\n  ROSALIND. I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightily\n    misplaced; and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her\n    gifts to women.\n  CELIA. \'Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce makes\n    honest; and those that she makes honest she makes very\n    ill-favouredly.\n  ROSALIND. Nay; now thou goest from Fortune\'s office to Nature\'s:\n    Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of\n    Nature.\n  \n                         Enter TOUCHSTONE\n\n  CELIA. No; when Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by\n    Fortune fall into the fire? Though Nature hath given us wit to\n    flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut off\n    the argument?\n  ROSALIND. Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature, when\n    Fortune makes Nature\'s natural the cutter-off of Nature\'s wit.\n  CELIA. Peradventure this is not Fortune\'s work neither, but\n    Nature\'s, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of\n    such goddesses, and hath sent this natural for our whetstone; for\n    always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits. How\n    now, wit! Whither wander you?\n  TOUCHSTONE. Mistress, you must come away to your father.\n  CELIA. Were you made the messenger?\n  TOUCHSTONE. No, by mine honour; but I was bid to come for you.\n  ROSALIND. Where learned you that oath, fool?\n  TOUCHSTONE. Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they were\n    good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught.\n    Now I\'ll stand to it, the pancakes were naught and the mustard  \n    was good, and yet was not the knight forsworn.\n  CELIA. How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge?\n  ROSALIND. Ay, marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear\n    by your beards that I am a knave.\n  CELIA. By our beards, if we had them, thou art.\n  TOUCHSTONE. By my knavery, if I had it, then I were. But if you\n    swear by that that not, you are not forsworn; no more was this\n    knight, swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he\n    had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those pancackes or\n    that mustard.\n  CELIA. Prithee, who is\'t that thou mean\'st?\n  TOUCHSTONE. One that old Frederick, your father, loves.\n  CELIA. My father\'s love is enough to honour him. Enough, speak no\n    more of him; you\'ll be whipt for taxation one of these days.\n  TOUCHSTONE. The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise\n    men do foolishly.\n  CELIA. By my troth, thou sayest true; for since the little wit that\n    fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have\n    makes a great show. Here comes Monsieur Le Beau.  \n\n                           Enter LE BEAU\n\n  ROSALIND. With his mouth full of news.\n  CELIA. Which he will put on us as pigeons feed their young.\n  ROSALIND. Then shall we be news-cramm\'d.\n  CELIA. All the better; we shall be the more marketable. Bon jour,\n    Monsieur Le Beau. What\'s the news?\n  LE BEAU. Fair Princess, you have lost much good sport.\n  CELIA. Sport! of what colour?\n  LE BEAU. What colour, madam? How shall I answer you?\n  ROSALIND. As wit and fortune will.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Or as the Destinies decrees.\n  CELIA. Well said; that was laid on with a trowel.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Nay, if I keep not my rank-\n  ROSALIND. Thou losest thy old smell.\n  LE BEAU. You amaze me, ladies. I would have told you of good\n    wrestling, which you have lost the sight of.\n  ROSALIND. Yet tell us the manner of the wrestling.\n  LE BEAU. I will tell you the beginning, and, if it please your  \n    ladyships, you may see the end; for the best is yet to do; and\n    here, where you are, they are coming to perform it.\n  CELIA. Well, the beginning, that is dead and buried.\n  LE BEAU. There comes an old man and his three sons-\n  CELIA. I could match this beginning with an old tale.\n  LE BEAU. Three proper young men, of excellent growth and presence.\n  ROSALIND. With bills on their necks: \'Be it known unto all men by\n    these presents\'-\n  LE BEAU. The eldest of the three wrestled with Charles, the Duke\'s\n    wrestler; which Charles in a moment threw him, and broke three of\n    his ribs, that there is little hope of life in him. So he serv\'d\n    the second, and so the third. Yonder they lie; the poor old man,\n    their father, making such pitiful dole over them that all the\n    beholders take his part with weeping.\n  ROSALIND. Alas!\n  TOUCHSTONE. But what is the sport, monsieur, that the ladies have\n    lost?\n  LE BEAU. Why, this that I speak of.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Thus men may grow wiser every day. It is the first time\n    that ever I heard breaking of ribs was sport for ladies.  \n  CELIA. Or I, I promise thee.\n  ROSALIND. But is there any else longs to see this broken music in\n    his sides? Is there yet another dotes upon rib-breaking? Shall we\n    see this wrestling, cousin?\n  LE BEAU. You must, if you stay here; for here is the place\n    appointed for the wrestling, and they are ready to perform it.\n  CELIA. Yonder, sure, they are coming. Let us now stay and see it.\n\n           Flourish. Enter DUKE FREDERICK, LORDS, ORLANDO,\n                     CHARLES, and ATTENDANTS\n\n  FREDERICK. Come on; since the youth will not be entreated, his own\n    peril on his forwardness.\n  ROSALIND. Is yonder the man?\n  LE BEAU. Even he, madam.\n  CELIA. Alas, he is too young; yet he looks successfully.\n  FREDERICK. How now, daughter and cousin! Are you crept hither to\n    see the wrestling?\n  ROSALIND. Ay, my liege; so please you give us leave.\n  FREDERICK. You will take little delight in it, I can tell you,  \n    there is such odds in the man. In pity of the challenger\'s youth\n    I would fain dissuade him, but he will not be entreated. Speak to\n    him, ladies; see if you can move him.\n  CELIA. Call him hither, good Monsieur Le Beau.\n  FREDERICK. Do so; I\'ll not be by.\n                                     [DUKE FREDERICK goes apart]\n  LE BEAU. Monsieur the Challenger, the Princess calls for you.\n  ORLANDO. I attend them with all respect and duty.\n  ROSALIND. Young man, have you challeng\'d Charles the wrestler?\n  ORLANDO. No, fair Princess; he is the general challenger. I come\n    but in, as others do, to try with him the strength of my youth.\n  CELIA. Young gentleman, your spirits are too bold for your years.\n    You have seen cruel proof of this man\'s strength; if you saw\n    yourself with your eyes, or knew yourself with your judgment, the\n    fear of your adventure would counsel you to a more equal\n    enterprise. We pray you, for your own sake, to embrace your own\n    safety and give over this attempt.\n  ROSALIND. Do, young sir; your reputation shall not therefore be\n    misprised: we will make it our suit to the Duke that the\n    wrestling might not go forward.  \n  ORLANDO. I beseech you, punish me not with your hard thoughts,\n    wherein I confess me much guilty to deny so fair and excellent\n    ladies any thing. But let your fair eyes and gentle wishes go\n    with me to my trial; wherein if I be foil\'d there is but one\n    sham\'d that was never gracious; if kill\'d, but one dead that is\n    willing to be so. I shall do my friends no wrong, for I have none\n    to lament me; the world no injury, for in it I have nothing; only\n    in the world I fill up a place, which may be better supplied when\n    I have made it empty.\n  ROSALIND. The little strength that I have, I would it were with\n    you.\n  CELIA. And mine to eke out hers.\n  ROSALIND. Fare you well. Pray heaven I be deceiv\'d in you!\n  CELIA. Your heart\'s desires be with you!\n  CHARLES. Come, where is this young gallant that is so desirous to\n    lie with his mother earth?\n  ORLANDO. Ready, sir; but his will hath in it a more modest working.\n  FREDERICK. You shall try but one fall.\n  CHARLES. No, I warrant your Grace, you shall not entreat him to a\n    second, that have so mightily persuaded him from a first.  \n  ORLANDO. You mean to mock me after; you should not have mock\'d me\n    before; but come your ways.\n  ROSALIND. Now, Hercules be thy speed, young man!\n  CELIA. I would I were invisible, to catch the strong fellow by the\n    leg.                                          [They wrestle]\n  ROSALIND. O excellent young man!\n  CELIA. If I had a thunderbolt in mine eye, I can tell who should\n    down.\n                                      [CHARLES is thrown. Shout]\n  FREDERICK. No more, no more.\n  ORLANDO. Yes, I beseech your Grace; I am not yet well breath\'d.\n  FREDERICK. How dost thou, Charles?\n  LE BEAU. He cannot speak, my lord.\n  FREDERICK. Bear him away. What is thy name, young man?\n  ORLANDO. Orlando, my liege; the youngest son of Sir Rowland de\n    Boys.\n  FREDERICK. I would thou hadst been son to some man else.\n    The world esteem\'d thy father honourable,\n    But I did find him still mine enemy.\n    Thou shouldst have better pleas\'d me with this deed,  \n    Hadst thou descended from another house.\n    But fare thee well; thou art a gallant youth;\n    I would thou hadst told me of another father.\n                                 Exeunt DUKE, train, and LE BEAU\n  CELIA. Were I my father, coz, would I do this?\n  ORLANDO. I am more proud to be Sir Rowland\'s son,\n    His youngest son- and would not change that calling\n    To be adopted heir to Frederick.\n  ROSALIND. My father lov\'d Sir Rowland as his soul,\n    And all the world was of my father\'s mind;\n    Had I before known this young man his son,\n    I should have given him tears unto entreaties\n    Ere he should thus have ventur\'d.\n  CELIA. Gentle cousin,\n    Let us go thank him, and encourage him;\n    My father\'s rough and envious disposition\n    Sticks me at heart. Sir, you have well deserv\'d;\n    If you do keep your promises in love\n    But justly as you have exceeded all promise,\n    Your mistress shall be happy.  \n  ROSALIND. Gentleman,        [Giving him a chain from her neck]\n    Wear this for me; one out of suits with fortune,\n    That could give more, but that her hand lacks means.\n    Shall we go, coz?\n  CELIA. Ay. Fare you well, fair gentleman.\n  ORLANDO. Can I not say \'I thank you\'? My better parts\n    Are all thrown down; and that which here stands up\n    Is but a quintain, a mere lifeless block.\n  ROSALIND. He calls us back. My pride fell with my fortunes;\n    I\'ll ask him what he would. Did you call, sir?\n    Sir, you have wrestled well, and overthrown\n    More than your enemies.\n  CELIA. Will you go, coz?\n  ROSALIND. Have with you. Fare you well.\n                                       Exeunt ROSALIND and CELIA\n  ORLANDO. What passion hangs these weights upon my tongue?\n    I cannot speak to her, yet she urg\'d conference.\n    O poor Orlando, thou art overthrown!\n    Or Charles or something weaker masters thee.\n  \n                      Re-enter LE BEAU\n\n  LE BEAU. Good sir, I do in friendship counsel you\n    To leave this place. Albeit you have deserv\'d\n    High commendation, true applause, and love,\n    Yet such is now the Duke\'s condition\n    That he misconstrues all that you have done.\n    The Duke is humorous; what he is, indeed,\n    More suits you to conceive than I to speak of.\n  ORLANDO. I thank you, sir; and pray you tell me this:\n    Which of the two was daughter of the Duke\n    That here was at the wrestling?\n  LE BEAU. Neither his daughter, if we judge by manners;\n    But yet, indeed, the smaller is his daughter;\n    The other is daughter to the banish\'d Duke,\n    And here detain\'d by her usurping uncle,\n    To keep his daughter company; whose loves\n    Are dearer than the natural bond of sisters.\n    But I can tell you that of late this Duke\n    Hath ta\'en displeasure \'gainst his gentle niece,  \n    Grounded upon no other argument\n    But that the people praise her for her virtues\n    And pity her for her good father\'s sake;\n    And, on my life, his malice \'gainst the lady\n    Will suddenly break forth. Sir, fare you well.\n    Hereafter, in a better world than this,\n    I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.\n  ORLANDO. I rest much bounden to you; fare you well.\n                                                    Exit LE BEAU\n    Thus must I from the smoke into the smother;\n    From tyrant Duke unto a tyrant brother.\n    But heavenly Rosalind!                                  Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nThe DUKE\'s palace\n\nEnter CELIA and ROSALIND\n\n  CELIA. Why, cousin! why, Rosalind! Cupid have mercy!\n    Not a word?\n  ROSALIND. Not one to throw at a dog.\n  CELIA. No, thy words are too precious to be cast away upon curs;\n    throw some of them at me; come, lame me with reasons.\n  ROSALIND. Then there were two cousins laid up, when the one should\n    be lam\'d with reasons and the other mad without any.\n  CELIA. But is all this for your father?\n  ROSALIND. No, some of it is for my child\'s father. O, how full of\n    briers is this working-day world!\n  CELIA. They are but burs, cousin, thrown upon thee in holiday\n    foolery; if we walk not in the trodden paths, our very petticoats\n    will catch them.\n  ROSALIND. I could shake them off my coat: these burs are in my\n    heart.\n  CELIA. Hem them away.\n  ROSALIND. I would try, if I could cry \'hem\' and have him.  \n  CELIA. Come, come, wrestle with thy affections.\n  ROSALIND. O, they take the part of a better wrestler than myself.\n  CELIA. O, a good wish upon you! You will try in time, in despite of\n    a fall. But, turning these jests out of service, let us talk in\n    good earnest. Is it possible, on such a sudden, you should fall\n    into so strong a liking with old Sir Rowland\'s youngest son?\n  ROSALIND. The Duke my father lov\'d his father dearly.\n  CELIA. Doth it therefore ensue that you should love his son dearly?\n    By this kind of chase I should hate him, for my father hated his\n    father dearly; yet I hate not Orlando.\n  ROSALIND. No, faith, hate him not, for my sake.\n  CELIA. Why should I not? Doth he not deserve well?\n\n                    Enter DUKE FREDERICK, with LORDS\n\n  ROSALIND. Let me love him for that; and do you love him because I\n    do. Look, here comes the Duke.\n  CELIA. With his eyes full of anger.\n  FREDERICK. Mistress, dispatch you with your safest haste,\n    And get you from our court.  \n  ROSALIND. Me, uncle?\n  FREDERICK. You, cousin.\n    Within these ten days if that thou beest found\n    So near our public court as twenty miles,\n    Thou diest for it.\n  ROSALIND. I do beseech your Grace,\n    Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me.\n    If with myself I hold intelligence,\n    Or have acquaintance with mine own desires;\n    If that I do not dream, or be not frantic-\n    As I do trust I am not- then, dear uncle,\n    Never so much as in a thought unborn\n    Did I offend your Highness.\n  FREDERICK. Thus do all traitors;\n    If their purgation did consist in words,\n    They are as innocent as grace itself.\n    Let it suffice thee that I trust thee not.\n  ROSALIND. Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor.\n    Tell me whereon the likelihood depends.\n  FREDERICK. Thou art thy father\'s daughter; there\'s enough.  \n  ROSALIND. SO was I when your Highness took his dukedom;\n    So was I when your Highness banish\'d him.\n    Treason is not inherited, my lord;\n    Or, if we did derive it from our friends,\n    What\'s that to me? My father was no traitor.\n    Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much\n    To think my poverty is treacherous.\n  CELIA. Dear sovereign, hear me speak.\n  FREDERICK. Ay, Celia; we stay\'d her for your sake,\n    Else had she with her father rang\'d along.\n  CELIA. I did not then entreat to have her stay;\n    It was your pleasure, and your own remorse;\n    I was too young that time to value her,\n    But now I know her. If she be a traitor,\n    Why so am I: we still have slept together,\n    Rose at an instant, learn\'d, play\'d, eat together;\n    And wheresoe\'er we went, like Juno\'s swans,\n    Still we went coupled and inseparable.\n  FREDERICK. She is too subtle for thee; and her smoothness,\n    Her very silence and her patience,  \n    Speak to the people, and they pity her.\n    Thou art a fool. She robs thee of thy name;\n    And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous\n    When she is gone. Then open not thy lips.\n    Firm and irrevocable is my doom\n    Which I have pass\'d upon her; she is banish\'d.\n  CELIA. Pronounce that sentence, then, on me, my liege;\n    I cannot live out of her company.\n  FREDERICK. You are a fool. You, niece, provide yourself.\n    If you outstay the time, upon mine honour,\n    And in the greatness of my word, you die.\n                                           Exeunt DUKE and LORDS\n  CELIA. O my poor Rosalind! Whither wilt thou go?\n    Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine.\n    I charge thee be not thou more griev\'d than I am.\n  ROSALIND. I have more cause.\n  CELIA. Thou hast not, cousin.\n    Prithee be cheerful. Know\'st thou not the Duke\n    Hath banish\'d me, his daughter?\n  ROSALIND. That he hath not.  \n  CELIA. No, hath not? Rosalind lacks, then, the love\n    Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one.\n    Shall we be sund\'red? Shall we part, sweet girl?\n    No; let my father seek another heir.\n    Therefore devise with me how we may fly,\n    Whither to go, and what to bear with us;\n    And do not seek to take your charge upon you,\n    To bear your griefs yourself, and leave me out;\n    For, by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale,\n    Say what thou canst, I\'ll go along with thee.\n  ROSALIND. Why, whither shall we go?\n  CELIA. To seek my uncle in the Forest of Arden.\n  ROSALIND. Alas, what danger will it be to us,\n    Maids as we are, to travel forth so far!\n    Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.\n  CELIA. I\'ll put myself in poor and mean attire,\n    And with a kind of umber smirch my face;\n    The like do you; so shall we pass along,\n    And never stir assailants.\n  ROSALIND. Were it not better,  \n    Because that I am more than common tall,\n    That I did suit me all points like a man?\n    A gallant curtle-axe upon my thigh,\n    A boar spear in my hand; and- in my heart\n    Lie there what hidden woman\'s fear there will-\n    We\'ll have a swashing and a martial outside,\n    As many other mannish cowards have\n    That do outface it with their semblances.\n  CELIA. What shall I call thee when thou art a man?\n  ROSALIND. I\'ll have no worse a name than Jove\'s own page,\n    And therefore look you call me Ganymede.\n    But what will you be call\'d?\n  CELIA. Something that hath a reference to my state:\n    No longer Celia, but Aliena.\n  ROSALIND. But, cousin, what if we assay\'d to steal\n    The clownish fool out of your father\'s court?\n    Would he not be a comfort to our travel?\n  CELIA. He\'ll go along o\'er the wide world with me;\n    Leave me alone to woo him. Let\'s away,\n    And get our jewels and our wealth together;  \n    Devise the fittest time and safest way\n    To hide us from pursuit that will be made\n    After my flight. Now go we in content\n    To liberty, and not to banishment.                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nThe Forest of Arden\n\nEnter DUKE SENIOR, AMIENS, and two or three LORDS, like foresters\n\n  DUKE SENIOR. Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,\n    Hath not old custom made this life more sweet\n    Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods\n    More free from peril than the envious court?\n    Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,\n    The seasons\' difference; as the icy fang\n    And churlish chiding of the winter\'s wind,\n    Which when it bites and blows upon my body,\n    Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say\n    \'This is no flattery; these are counsellors\n    That feelingly persuade me what I am.\'\n    Sweet are the uses of adversity,\n    Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,\n    Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;\n    And this our life, exempt from public haunt,\n    Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,  \n    Sermons in stones, and good in everything.\n    I would not change it.\n  AMIENS. Happy is your Grace,\n    That can translate the stubbornness of fortune\n    Into so quiet and so sweet a style.\n  DUKE SENIOR. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?\n    And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,\n    Being native burghers of this desert city,\n    Should, in their own confines, with forked heads\n    Have their round haunches gor\'d.\n  FIRST LORD. Indeed, my lord,\n    The melancholy Jaques grieves at that;\n    And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp\n    Than doth your brother that hath banish\'d you.\n    To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself\n    Did steal behind him as he lay along\n    Under an oak whose antique root peeps out\n    Upon the brook that brawls along this wood!\n    To the which place a poor sequest\'red stag,\n    That from the hunter\'s aim had ta\'en a hurt,  \n    Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord,\n    The wretched animal heav\'d forth such groans\n    That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat\n    Almost to bursting; and the big round tears\n    Cours\'d one another down his innocent nose\n    In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,\n    Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,\n    Stood on th\' extremest verge of the swift brook,\n    Augmenting it with tears.\n  DUKE SENIOR. But what said Jaques?\n    Did he not moralize this spectacle?\n  FIRST LORD. O, yes, into a thousand similes.\n    First, for his weeping into the needless stream:\n    \'Poor deer,\' quoth he \'thou mak\'st a testament\n    As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more\n    To that which had too much.\' Then, being there alone,\n    Left and abandoned of his velvet friends:\n    \'\'Tis right\'; quoth he \'thus misery doth part\n    The flux of company.\' Anon, a careless herd,\n    Full of the pasture, jumps along by him  \n    And never stays to greet him. \'Ay,\' quoth Jaques\n    \'Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;\n    \'Tis just the fashion. Wherefore do you look\n    Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?\'\n    Thus most invectively he pierceth through\n    The body of the country, city, court,\n    Yea, and of this our life; swearing that we\n    Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what\'s worse,\n    To fright the animals, and to kill them up\n    In their assign\'d and native dwelling-place.\n  DUKE SENIOR. And did you leave him in this contemplation?\n  SECOND LORD. We did, my lord, weeping and commenting\n    Upon the sobbing deer.\n  DUKE SENIOR. Show me the place;\n    I love to cope him in these sullen fits,\n    For then he\'s full of matter.\n  FIRST LORD. I\'ll bring you to him straight.             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe DUKE\'S palace\n\nEnter DUKE FREDERICK, with LORDS\n\n  FREDERICK. Can it be possible that no man saw them?\n    It cannot be; some villains of my court\n    Are of consent and sufferance in this.\n  FIRST LORD. I cannot hear of any that did see her.\n    The ladies, her attendants of her chamber,\n    Saw her abed, and in the morning early\n    They found the bed untreasur\'d of their mistress.\n  SECOND LORD. My lord, the roynish clown, at whom so oft\n    Your Grace was wont to laugh, is also missing.\n    Hisperia, the Princess\' gentlewoman,\n    Confesses that she secretly o\'erheard\n    Your daughter and her cousin much commend\n    The parts and graces of the wrestler\n    That did but lately foil the sinewy Charles;\n    And she believes, wherever they are gone,\n    That youth is surely in their company.\n  FREDERICK. Send to his brother; fetch that gallant hither.  \n    If he be absent, bring his brother to me;\n    I\'ll make him find him. Do this suddenly;\n    And let not search and inquisition quail\n    To bring again these foolish runaways.                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nBefore OLIVER\'S house\n\nEnter ORLANDO and ADAM, meeting\n\n  ORLANDO. Who\'s there?\n  ADAM. What, my young master? O my gentle master!\n    O my sweet master! O you memory\n    Of old Sir Rowland! Why, what make you here?\n    Why are you virtuous? Why do people love you?\n    And wherefore are you gentle, strong, and valiant?\n    Why would you be so fond to overcome\n    The bonny prizer of the humorous Duke?\n    Your praise is come too swiftly home before you.\n    Know you not, master, to some kind of men\n    Their graces serve them but as enemies?\n    No more do yours. Your virtues, gentle master,\n    Are sanctified and holy traitors to you.\n    O, what a world is this, when what is comely\n    Envenoms him that bears it!\n  ORLANDO. Why, what\'s the matter?\n  ADAM. O unhappy youth!  \n    Come not within these doors; within this roof\n    The enemy of all your graces lives.\n    Your brother- no, no brother; yet the son-\n    Yet not the son; I will not call him son\n    Of him I was about to call his father-\n    Hath heard your praises; and this night he means\n    To burn the lodging where you use to lie,\n    And you within it. If he fail of that,\n    He will have other means to cut you off;\n    I overheard him and his practices.\n    This is no place; this house is but a butchery;\n    Abhor it, fear it, do not enter it.\n  ORLANDO. Why, whither, Adam, wouldst thou have me go?\n  ADAM. No matter whither, so you come not here.\n  ORLANDO. What, wouldst thou have me go and beg my food,\n    Or with a base and boist\'rous sword enforce\n    A thievish living on the common road?\n    This I must do, or know not what to do;\n    Yet this I will not do, do how I can.\n    I rather will subject me to the malice  \n    Of a diverted blood and bloody brother.\n  ADAM. But do not so. I have five hundred crowns,\n    The thrifty hire I sav\'d under your father,\n    Which I did store to be my foster-nurse,\n    When service should in my old limbs lie lame,\n    And unregarded age in corners thrown.\n    Take that, and He that doth the ravens feed,\n    Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,\n    Be comfort to my age! Here is the gold;\n    All this I give you. Let me be your servant;\n    Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;\n    For in my youth I never did apply\n    Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood,\n    Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo\n    The means of weakness and debility;\n    Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,\n    Frosty, but kindly. Let me go with you;\n    I\'ll do the service of a younger man\n    In all your business and necessities.\n  ORLANDO. O good old man, how well in thee appears  \n    The constant service of the antique world,\n    When service sweat for duty, not for meed!\n    Thou art not for the fashion of these times,\n    Where none will sweat but for promotion,\n    And having that do choke their service up\n    Even with the having; it is not so with thee.\n    But, poor old man, thou prun\'st a rotten tree\n    That cannot so much as a blossom yield\n    In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry.\n    But come thy ways, we\'ll go along together,\n    And ere we have thy youthful wages spent\n    We\'ll light upon some settled low content.\n  ADAM. Master, go on; and I will follow the\n    To the last gasp, with truth and loyalty.\n    From seventeen years till now almost four-score\n    Here lived I, but now live here no more.\n    At seventeen years many their fortunes seek,\n    But at fourscore it is too late a week;\n    Yet fortune cannot recompense me better\n    Than to die well and not my master\'s debtor.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nThe Forest of Arden\n\nEnter ROSALIND for GANYMEDE, CELIA for ALIENA, and CLOWN alias TOUCHSTONE\n\n  ROSALIND. O Jupiter, how weary are my spirits!\n  TOUCHSTONE. I Care not for my spirits, if my legs were not weary.\n  ROSALIND. I could find in my heart to disgrace my man\'s apparel,\n    and to cry like a woman; but I must comfort the weaker vessel, as\n    doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat;\n    therefore, courage, good Aliena.\n  CELIA. I pray you bear with me; I cannot go no further.\n  TOUCHSTONE. For my part, I had rather bear with you than bear you;\n    yet I should bear no cross if I did bear you; for I think you\n    have no money in your purse.\n  ROSALIND. Well,. this is the Forest of Arden.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I; when I was at\n    home I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.\n\n                        Enter CORIN and SILVIUS\n  \n  ROSALIND. Ay, be so, good Touchstone. Look you, who comes here, a\n    young man and an old in solemn talk.\n  CORIN. That is the way to make her scorn you still.\n  SILVIUS. O Corin, that thou knew\'st how I do love her!\n  CORIN. I partly guess; for I have lov\'d ere now.\n  SILVIUS. No, Corin, being old, thou canst not guess,\n    Though in thy youth thou wast as true a lover\n    As ever sigh\'d upon a midnight pillow.\n    But if thy love were ever like to mine,\n    As sure I think did never man love so,\n    How many actions most ridiculous\n    Hast thou been drawn to by thy fantasy?\n  CORIN. Into a thousand that I have forgotten.\n  SILVIUS. O, thou didst then never love so heartily!\n    If thou rememb\'rest not the slightest folly\n    That ever love did make thee run into,\n    Thou hast not lov\'d;\n    Or if thou hast not sat as I do now,\n    Wearing thy hearer in thy mistress\' praise,\n    Thou hast not lov\'d;  \n    Or if thou hast not broke from company\n    Abruptly, as my passion now makes me,\n    Thou hast not lov\'d.\n    O Phebe, Phebe, Phebe!                          Exit Silvius\n  ROSALIND. Alas, poor shepherd! searching of thy wound,\n    I have by hard adventure found mine own.\n  TOUCHSTONE. And I mine. I remember, when I was in love, I broke my\n    sword upon a stone, and bid him take that for coming a-night to\n    Jane Smile; and I remember the kissing of her batler, and the\n    cow\'s dugs that her pretty chopt hands had milk\'d; and I remember\n    the wooing of  peascod instead of her; from whom I took two cods,\n    and giving her them again, said with weeping tears \'Wear these\n    for my sake.\' We that are true lovers run into strange capers;\n    but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal\n    in folly.\n  ROSALIND. Thou speak\'st wiser than thou art ware of.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Nay, I shall ne\'er be ware of mine own wit till I break\n    my shins against it.\n  ROSALIND. Jove, Jove! this shepherd\'s passion\n    Is much upon my fashion.  \n  TOUCHSTONE. And mine; but it grows something stale with me.\n  CELIA. I pray you, one of you question yond man\n    If he for gold will give us any food;\n    I faint almost to death.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Holla, you clown!\n  ROSALIND. Peace, fool; he\'s not thy Ensman.\n  CORIN. Who calls?\n  TOUCHSTONE. Your betters, sir.\n  CORIN. Else are they very wretched.\n  ROSALIND. Peace, I say. Good even to you, friend.\n  CORIN. And to you, gentle sir, and to you all.\n  ROSALIND. I prithee, shepherd, if that love or gold\n    Can in this desert place buy entertainment,\n    Bring us where we may rest ourselves and feed.\n    Here\'s a young maid with travel much oppress\'d,\n    And faints for succour.\n  CORIN. Fair sir, I pity her,\n    And wish, for her sake more than for mine own,\n    My fortunes were more able to relieve her;\n    But I am shepherd to another man,  \n    And do not shear the fleeces that I graze.\n    My master is of churlish disposition,\n    And little recks to find the way to heaven\n    By doing deeds of hospitality.\n    Besides, his cote, his flocks, and bounds of feed,\n    Are now on sale; and at our sheepcote now,\n    By reason of his absence, there is nothing\n    That you will feed on; but what is, come see,\n    And in my voice most welcome shall you be.\n  ROSALIND. What is he that shall buy his flock and pasture?\n  CORIN. That young swain that you saw here but erewhile,\n    That little cares for buying any thing.\n  ROSALIND. I pray thee, if it stand with honesty,\n    Buy thou the cottage, pasture, and the flock,\n    And thou shalt have to pay for it of us.\n  CELIA. And we will mend thy wages. I like this place,\n    And willingly could waste my time in it.\n  CORIN. Assuredly the thing is to be sold.\n    Go with me; if you like upon report\n    The soil, the profit, and this kind of life,  \n    I will your very faithful feeder be,\n    And buy it with your gold right suddenly.             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nAnother part of the forest\n\nEnter AMIENS, JAQUES, and OTHERS\n\n                       SONG\n  AMIENS.    Under the greenwood tree\n               Who loves to lie with me,\n               And turn his merry note\n               Unto the sweet bird\'s throat,\n             Come hither, come hither, come hither.\n               Here shall he see\n               No enemy\n             But winter and rough weather.\n\n  JAQUES. More, more, I prithee, more.\n  AMIENS. It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jaques.\n  JAQUES. I thank it. More, I prithee, more. I can suck melancholy\n    out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs. More, I prithee, more.\n  AMIENS. My voice is ragged; I know I cannot please you.\n  JAQUES. I do not desire you to please me; I do desire you to sing.\n    Come, more; another stanzo. Call you \'em stanzos?  \n  AMIENS. What you will, Monsieur Jaques.\n  JAQUES. Nay, I care not for their names; they owe me nothing. Will\n    you sing?\n  AMIENS. More at your request than to please myself.\n  JAQUES. Well then, if ever I thank any man, I\'ll thank you; but\n    that they call compliment is like th\' encounter of two dog-apes;\n    and when a man thanks me heartily, methinks have given him a\n    penny, and he renders me the beggarly thanks. Come, sing; and you\n    that will not, hold your tongues.\n  AMIENS. Well, I\'ll end the song. Sirs, cover the while; the Duke\n    will drink under this tree. He hath been all this day to look\n    you.\n  JAQUES. And I have been all this day to avoid him. He is to\n    disputable for my company. I think of as many matters as he; but\n    I give heaven thanks, and make no boast of them. Come, warble,\n    come.\n\n                       SONG\n              [All together here]\n  \n           Who doth ambition shun,\n           And loves to live i\' th\' sun,\n           Seeking the food he eats,\n           And pleas\'d with what he gets,\n         Come hither, come hither, come hither.\n           Here shall he see\n           No enemy\n           But winter and rough weather.\n\n  JAQUES. I\'ll give you a verse to this note that I made yesterday in\n    despite of my invention.\n  AMIENS. And I\'ll sing it.\n  JAQUES. Thus it goes:\n\n             If it do come to pass\n             That any man turn ass,\n             Leaving his wealth and ease\n             A stubborn will to please,\n           Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame;\n             Here shall he see  \n             Gross fools as he,\n             An if he will come to me.\n\n  AMIENS. What\'s that \'ducdame\'?\n  JAQUES. \'Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle. I\'ll\n    go sleep, if I can; if I cannot, I\'ll rail against all the\n    first-born of Egypt.\n  AMIENS. And I\'ll go seek the Duke; his banquet is prepar\'d.\n                                                Exeunt severally\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nThe forest\n\nEnter ORLANDO and ADAM\n\n  ADAM. Dear master, I can go no further. O, I die for food! Here lie\n    I down, and measure out my grave. Farewell, kind master.\n  ORLANDO. Why, how now, Adam! No greater heart in thee? Live a\n    little; comfort a little; cheer thyself a little. If this uncouth\n    forest yield anything savage, I will either be food for it or\n    bring it for food to thee. Thy conceit is nearer death than thy\n    powers. For my sake be comfortable; hold death awhile at the\n    arm\'s end. I will here be with the presently; and if I bring thee\n    not something to eat, I will give thee leave to die; but if thou\n    diest before I come, thou art a mocker of my labour. Well said!\n    thou look\'st cheerly; and I\'ll be with thee quickly. Yet thou\n    liest in the bleak air. Come, I will bear thee to some shelter;\n    and thou shalt not die for lack of a dinner, if there live\n    anything in this desert. Cheerly, good Adam!          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\nThe forest\n\nA table set out. Enter DUKE SENIOR, AMIENS, and LORDS, like outlaws\n\n  DUKE SENIOR. I think he be transform\'d into a beast;\n    For I can nowhere find him like a man.\n  FIRST LORD. My lord, he is but even now gone hence;\n    Here was he merry, hearing of a song.\n  DUKE SENIOR. If he, compact of jars, grow musical,\n    We shall have shortly discord in the spheres.\n    Go seek him; tell him I would speak with him.\n\n                         Enter JAQUES\n\n  FIRST LORD. He saves my labour by his own approach.\n  DUKE SENIOR. Why, how now, monsieur! what a life is this,\n    That your poor friends must woo your company?\n    What, you look merrily!\n  JAQUES. A fool, a fool! I met a fool i\' th\' forest,\n    A motley fool. A miserable world!  \n    As I do live by food, I met a fool,\n    Who laid him down and bask\'d him in the sun,\n    And rail\'d on Lady Fortune in good terms,\n    In good set terms- and yet a motley fool.\n    \'Good morrow, fool,\' quoth I; \'No, sir,\' quoth he,\n    \'Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune.\'\n    And then he drew a dial from his poke,\n    And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,\n    Says very wisely, \'It is ten o\'clock;\n    Thus we may see,\' quoth he, \'how the world wags;\n    \'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine;\n    And after one hour more \'twill be eleven;\n    And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,\n    And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;\n    And thereby hangs a tale.\' When I did hear\n    The motley fool thus moral on the time,\n    My lungs began to crow like chanticleer\n    That fools should be so deep contemplative;\n    And I did laugh sans intermission\n    An hour by his dial. O noble fool!  \n    A worthy fool! Motley\'s the only wear.\n  DUKE SENIOR. What fool is this?\n  JAQUES. O worthy fool! One that hath been a courtier,\n    And says, if ladies be but young and fair,\n    They have the gift to know it; and in his brain,\n    Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit\n    After a voyage, he hath strange places cramm\'d\n    With observation, the which he vents\n    In mangled forms. O that I were a fool!\n    I am ambitious for a motley coat.\n  DUKE SENIOR. Thou shalt have one.\n  JAQUES. It is my only suit,\n    Provided that you weed your better judgments\n    Of all opinion that grows rank in them\n    That I am wise. I must have liberty\n    Withal, as large a charter as the wind,\n    To blow on whom I please, for so fools have;\n    And they that are most galled with my folly,\n    They most must laugh. And why, sir, must they so?\n    The why is plain as way to parish church:  \n    He that a fool doth very wisely hit\n    Doth very foolishly, although he smart,\n    Not to seem senseless of the bob; if not,\n    The wise man\'s folly is anatomiz\'d\n    Even by the squand\'ring glances of the fool.\n    Invest me in my motley; give me leave\n    To speak my mind, and I will through and through\n    Cleanse the foul body of th\' infected world,\n    If they will patiently receive my medicine.\n  DUKE SENIOR. Fie on thee! I can tell what thou wouldst do.\n  JAQUES. What, for a counter, would I do but good?\n  DUKE SENIOR. Most Mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin;\n    For thou thyself hast been a libertine,\n    As sensual as the brutish sting itself;\n    And all th\' embossed sores and headed evils\n    That thou with license of free foot hast caught\n    Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world.\n  JAQUES. Why, who cries out on pride\n    That can therein tax any private party?\n    Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea,  \n    Till that the wearer\'s very means do ebb?\n    What woman in the city do I name\n    When that I say the city-woman bears\n    The cost of princes on unworthy shoulders?\n    Who can come in and say that I mean her,\n    When such a one as she such is her neighbour?\n    Or what is he of basest function\n    That says his bravery is not on my cost,\n    Thinking that I mean him, but therein suits\n    His folly to the mettle of my speech?\n    There then! how then? what then? Let me see wherein\n    My tongue hath wrong\'d him: if it do him right,\n    Then he hath wrong\'d himself; if he be free,\n    Why then my taxing like a wild-goose flies,\n    Unclaim\'d of any man. But who comes here?\n\n             Enter ORLANDO with his sword drawn\n\n  ORLANDO. Forbear, and eat no more.\n  JAQUES. Why, I have eat none yet.  \n  ORLANDO. Nor shalt not, till necessity be serv\'d.\n  JAQUES. Of what kind should this cock come of?\n  DUKE SENIOR. Art thou thus bolden\'d, man, by thy distress?\n    Or else a rude despiser of good manners,\n    That in civility thou seem\'st so empty?\n  ORLANDO. You touch\'d my vein at first: the thorny point\n    Of bare distress hath ta\'en from me the show\n    Of smooth civility; yet arn I inland bred,\n    And know some nurture. But forbear, I say;\n    He dies that touches any of this fruit\n    Till I and my affairs are answered.\n  JAQUES. An you will not be answer\'d with reason, I must die.\n  DUKE SENIOR. What would you have? Your gentleness shall force\n    More than your force move us to gentleness.\n  ORLANDO. I almost die for food, and let me have it.\n  DUKE SENIOR. Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table.\n  ORLANDO. Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you;\n    I thought that all things had been savage here,\n    And therefore put I on the countenance\n    Of stern commandment. But whate\'er you are  \n    That in this desert inaccessible,\n    Under the shade of melancholy boughs,\n    Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time;\n    If ever you have look\'d on better days,\n    If ever been where bells have knoll\'d to church,\n    If ever sat at any good man\'s feast,\n    If ever from your eyelids wip\'d a tear,\n    And know what \'tis to pity and be pitied,\n    Let gentleness my strong enforcement be;\n    In the which hope I blush, and hide my sword.\n  DUKE SENIOR. True is it that we have seen better days,\n    And have with holy bell been knoll\'d to church,\n    And sat at good men\'s feasts, and wip\'d our eyes\n    Of drops that sacred pity hath engend\'red;\n    And therefore sit you down in gentleness,\n    And take upon command what help we have\n    That to your wanting may be minist\'red.\n  ORLANDO. Then but forbear your food a little while,\n    Whiles, like a doe, I go to find my fawn,\n    And give it food. There is an old poor man  \n    Who after me hath many a weary step\n    Limp\'d in pure love; till he be first suffic\'d,\n    Oppress\'d with two weak evils, age and hunger,\n    I will not touch a bit.\n  DUKE SENIOR. Go find him out.\n    And we will nothing waste till you return.\n  ORLANDO. I thank ye; and be blest for your good comfort!\n Exit\n  DUKE SENIOR. Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:\n    This wide and universal theatre\n    Presents more woeful pageants than the scene\n    Wherein we play in.\n  JAQUES. All the world\'s a stage,\n    And all the men and women merely players;\n    They have their exits and their entrances;\n    And one man in his time plays many parts,\n    His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,\n    Mewling and puking in the nurse\'s arms;\n    Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel\n    And shining morning face, creeping like snail  \n    Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,\n    Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad\n    Made to his mistress\' eyebrow. Then a soldier,\n    Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,\n    Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,\n    Seeking the bubble reputation\n    Even in the cannon\'s mouth. And then the justice,\n    In fair round belly with good capon lin\'d,\n    With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,\n    Full of wise saws and modern instances;\n    And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts\n    Into the lean and slipper\'d pantaloon,\n    With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,\n    His youthful hose, well sav\'d, a world too wide\n    For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,\n    Turning again toward childish treble, pipes\n    And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,\n    That ends this strange eventful history,\n    Is second childishness and mere oblivion;\n    Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.  \n\n                  Re-enter ORLANDO with ADAM\n\n  DUKE SENIOR. Welcome. Set down your venerable burden.\n    And let him feed.\n  ORLANDO. I thank you most for him.\n  ADAM. So had you need;\n    I scarce can speak to thank you for myself.\n  DUKE SENIOR. Welcome; fall to. I will not trouble you\n    As yet to question you about your fortunes.\n    Give us some music; and, good cousin, sing.\n\n                         SONG\n            Blow, blow, thou winter wind,\n            Thou art not so unkind\n              As man\'s ingratitude;\n            Thy tooth is not so keen,\n            Because thou art not seen,\n              Although thy breath be rude.\n    Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly.  \n    Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.\n            Then, heigh-ho, the holly!\n              This life is most jolly.\n\n            Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,\n            That dost not bite so nigh\n              As benefits forgot;\n            Though thou the waters warp,\n            Thy sting is not so sharp\n              As friend rememb\'red not.\n    Heigh-ho! sing, &c.\n\n  DUKE SENIOR. If that you were the good Sir Rowland\'s son,\n    As you have whisper\'d faithfully you were,\n    And as mine eye doth his effigies witness\n    Most truly limn\'d and living in your face,\n    Be truly welcome hither. I am the Duke\n    That lov\'d your father. The residue of your fortune,\n    Go to my cave and tell me. Good old man,\n    Thou art right welcome as thy master is.  \n    Support him by the arm. Give me your hand,\n    And let me all your fortunes understand.              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nThe palace\n\nEnter DUKE FREDERICK, OLIVER, and LORDS\n\n  FREDERICK. Not see him since! Sir, sir, that cannot be.\n    But were I not the better part made mercy,\n    I should not seek an absent argument\n    Of my revenge, thou present. But look to it:\n    Find out thy brother wheresoe\'er he is;\n    Seek him with candle; bring him dead or living\n    Within this twelvemonth, or turn thou no more\n    To seek a living in our territory.\n    Thy lands and all things that thou dost call thine\n    Worth seizure do we seize into our hands,\n    Till thou canst quit thee by thy brother\'s mouth\n    Of what we think against thee.\n  OLIVER. O that your Highness knew my heart in this!\n    I never lov\'d my brother in my life.\n  FREDERICK. More villain thou. Well, push him out of doors;\n    And let my officers of such a nature\n    Make an extent upon his house and lands.  \n    Do this expediently, and turn him going.              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe forest\n\nEnter ORLANDO, with a paper\n\n  ORLANDO. Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love;\n    And thou, thrice-crowned Queen of Night, survey\n    With thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above,\n    Thy huntress\' name that my full life doth sway.\n    O Rosalind! these trees shall be my books,\n    And in their barks my thoughts I\'ll character,\n    That every eye which in this forest looks\n    Shall see thy virtue witness\'d every where.\n    Run, run, Orlando; carve on every tree,\n    The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she.             Exit\n\n                     Enter CORIN and TOUCHSTONE\n\n  CORIN. And how like you this shepherd\'s life, Master Touchstone?\n  TOUCHSTONE. Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good\n    life; but in respect that it is a shepherd\'s life, it is nought.\n    In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in  \n    respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in\n    respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect\n    it is not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life,\n    look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no more plenty\n    in it, it goes much against my stomach. Hast any philosophy in\n    thee, shepherd?\n  CORIN. No more but that I know the more one sickens the worse at\n    ease he is; and that he that wants money, means, and content, is\n    without three good friends; that the property of rain is to wet,\n    and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep; and that a\n    great cause of the night is lack of the sun; that he that hath\n    learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding,\n    or comes of a very dull kindred.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Such a one is a natural philosopher. Wast ever in\n    court, shepherd?\n  CORIN. No, truly.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Then thou art damn\'d.\n  CORIN. Nay, I hope.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Truly, thou art damn\'d, like an ill-roasted egg, all on\n    one side.  \n  CORIN. For not being at court? Your reason.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Why, if thou never wast at court thou never saw\'st good\n    manners; if thou never saw\'st good manners, then thy manners must\n    be wicked; and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation. Thou art\n    in a parlous state, shepherd.\n  CORIN. Not a whit, Touchstone. Those that are good manners at the\n    court are as ridiculous in the country as the behaviour of the\n    country is most mockable at the court. You told me you salute not\n    at the court, but you kiss your hands; that courtesy would be\n    uncleanly if courtiers were shepherds.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Instance, briefly; come, instance.\n  CORIN. Why, we are still handling our ewes; and their fells, you\n    know, are greasy.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Why, do not your courtier\'s hands sweat? And is not the\n    grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man? Shallow,\n    shallow. A better instance, I say; come.\n  CORIN. Besides, our hands are hard.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow again. A\n    more sounder instance; come.\n  CORIN. And they are often tarr\'d over with the surgery of our  \n    sheep; and would you have us kiss tar? The courtier\'s hands are\n    perfum\'d with civet.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Most shallow man! thou worm\'s meat in respect of a good\n    piece of flesh indeed! Learn of the wise, and perpend: civet is\n    of a baser birth than tar- the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend\n    the instance, shepherd.\n  CORIN. You have too courtly a wit for me; I\'ll rest.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Wilt thou rest damn\'d? God help thee, shallow man! God\n    make incision in thee! thou art raw.\n  CORIN. Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I\n    wear; owe no man hate, envy no man\'s happiness; glad of other\n    men\'s good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my pride is\n    to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.\n  TOUCHSTONE. That is another simple sin in you: to bring the ewes\n    and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the\n    copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether, and to betray\n    a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to crooked-pated, old, cuckoldly ram,\n    out of all reasonable match. If thou beest not damn\'d for this,\n    the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how\n    thou shouldst scape.  \n  CORIN. Here comes young Master Ganymede, my new mistress\'s brother.\n\n                  Enter ROSALIND, reading a paper\n\n  ROSALIND.   \'From the east to western Inde,\n              No jewel is like Rosalinde.\n              Her worth, being mounted on the wind,\n              Through all the world bears Rosalinde.\n              All the pictures fairest lin\'d\n              Are but black to Rosalinde.\n              Let no face be kept in mind\n              But the fair of Rosalinde.\'\n  TOUCHSTONE. I\'ll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners, and\n    suppers, and sleeping hours, excepted. It is the right\n    butter-women\'s rank to market.\n  ROSALIND. Out, fool!\n  TOUCHSTONE.   For a taste:\n                If a hart do lack a hind,\n                Let him seek out Rosalinde.\n                If the cat will after kind,  \n                So be sure will Rosalinde.\n                Winter garments must be lin\'d,\n                So must slender Rosalinde.\n                They that reap must sheaf and bind,\n                Then to cart with Rosalinde.\n                Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,\n                Such a nut is Rosalinde.\n                He that sweetest rose will find\n                Must find love\'s prick and Rosalinde.\n    This is the very false gallop of verses; why do you infect\n    yourself with them?\n  ROSALIND. Peace, you dull fool! I found them on a tree.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit.\n  ROSALIND. I\'ll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a\n    medlar. Then it will be the earliest fruit i\' th\' country; for\n    you\'ll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that\'s the right\n    virtue of the medlar.\n  TOUCHSTONE. You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest\n    judge.\n  \n                      Enter CELIA, with a writing\n\n  ROSALIND. Peace!\n    Here comes my sister, reading; stand aside.\n  CELIA.   \'Why should this a desert be?\n             For it is unpeopled? No;\n           Tongues I\'ll hang on every tree\n             That shall civil sayings show.\n           Some, how brief the life of man\n             Runs his erring pilgrimage,\n           That the streching of a span\n             Buckles in his sum of age;\n           Some, of violated vows\n             \'Twixt the souls of friend and friend;\n           But upon the fairest boughs,\n             Or at every sentence end,\n           Will I Rosalinda write,\n             Teaching all that read to know\n           The quintessence of every sprite\n             Heaven would in little show.  \n           Therefore heaven Nature charg\'d\n             That one body should be fill\'d\n           With all graces wide-enlarg\'d.\n             Nature presently distill\'d\n           Helen\'s cheek, but not her heart,\n             Cleopatra\'s majesty,\n           Atalanta\'s better part,\n             Sad Lucretia\'s modesty.\n           Thus Rosalinde of many parts\n             By heavenly synod was devis\'d,\n           Of many faces, eyes, and hearts,\n             To have the touches dearest priz\'d.\n           Heaven would that she these gifts should have,\n           And I to live and die her slave.\'\n  ROSALIND. O most gentle pulpiter! What tedious homily of love have\n    you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried \'Have\n    patience, good people.\'\n  CELIA. How now! Back, friends; shepherd, go off a little; go with\n    him, sirrah.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Come, shepherd, let us make an honourable retreat;  \n    though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.\n                                     Exeunt CORIN and TOUCHSTONE\n  CELIA. Didst thou hear these verses?\n  ROSALIND. O, yes, I heard them all, and more too; for some of them\n    had in them more feet than the verses would bear.\n  CELIA. That\'s no matter; the feet might bear the verses.\n  ROSALIND. Ay, but the feet were lame, and could not bear themselves\n    without the verse, and therefore stood lamely in the verse.\n  CELIA. But didst thou hear without wondering how thy name should be\n    hang\'d and carved upon these trees?\n  ROSALIND. I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before you\n    came; for look here what I found on a palm-tree. I was never so\n    berhym\'d since Pythagoras\' time that I was an Irish rat, which I\n    can hardly remember.\n  CELIA. Trow you who hath done this?\n  ROSALIND. Is it a man?\n  CELIA. And a chain, that you once wore, about his neck.\n    Change you colour?\n  ROSALIND. I prithee, who?\n  CELIA. O Lord, Lord! it is a hard matter for friends to meet; but  \n    mountains may be remov\'d with earthquakes, and so encounter.\n  ROSALIND. Nay, but who is it?\n  CELIA. Is it possible?\n  ROSALIND. Nay, I prithee now, with most petitionary vehemence, tell\n    me who it is.\n  CELIA. O wonderful, wonderful, most wonderful wonderful, and yet\n    again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!\n  ROSALIND. Good my complexion! dost thou think, though I am\n    caparison\'d like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my\n    disposition? One inch of delay more is a South Sea of discovery.\n    I prithee tell me who is it quickly, and speak apace. I would\n    thou could\'st stammer, that thou mightst pour this conceal\'d man\n    out of thy mouth, as wine comes out of narrow-mouth\'d bottle-\n    either too much at once or none at all. I prithee take the cork\n    out of thy mouth that I may drink thy tidings.\n  CELIA. So you may put a man in your belly.\n  ROSALIND. Is he of God\'s making? What manner of man?\n    Is his head worth a hat or his chin worth a beard?\n  CELIA. Nay, he hath but a little beard.\n  ROSALIND. Why, God will send more if the man will be thankful. Let  \n    me stay the growth of his beard, if thou delay me not the\n    knowledge of his chin.\n  CELIA. It is young Orlando, that tripp\'d up the wrestler\'s heels\n    and your heart both in an instant.\n  ROSALIND. Nay, but the devil take mocking! Speak sad brow and true\n    maid.\n  CELIA. I\' faith, coz, \'tis he.\n  ROSALIND. Orlando?\n  CELIA. Orlando.\n  ROSALIND. Alas the day! what shall I do with my doublet and hose?\n    What did he when thou saw\'st him? What said he? How look\'d he?\n    Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where\n    remains he? How parted he with thee? And when shalt thou see him\n    again? Answer me in one word.\n  CELIA. You must borrow me Gargantua\'s mouth first; \'tis a word too\n    great for any mouth of this age\'s size. To say ay and no to these\n    particulars is more than to answer in a catechism.\n  ROSALIND. But doth he know that I am in this forest, and in man\'s\n    apparel? Looks he as freshly as he did the day he wrestled?\n  CELIA. It is as easy to count atomies as to resolve the  \n    propositions of a lover; but take a taste of my finding him, and\n    relish it with good observance. I found him under a tree, like a\n    dropp\'d acorn.\n  ROSALIND. It may well be call\'d Jove\'s tree, when it drops forth\n    such fruit.\n  CELIA. Give me audience, good madam.\n  ROSALIND. Proceed.\n  CELIA. There lay he, stretch\'d along like a wounded knight.\n  ROSALIND. Though it be pity to see such a sight, it well becomes\n    the ground.\n  CELIA. Cry \'Holla\' to thy tongue, I prithee; it curvets\n    unseasonably. He was furnish\'d like a hunter.\n  ROSALIND. O, ominous! he comes to kill my heart.\n  CELIA. I would sing my song without a burden; thou bring\'st me out\n    of tune.\n  ROSALIND. Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak.\n    Sweet, say on.\n  CELIA. You bring me out. Soft! comes he not here?\n\n                   Enter ORLANDO and JAQUES  \n\n  ROSALIND. \'Tis he; slink by, and note him.\n  JAQUES. I thank you for your company; but, good faith, I had as\n    lief have been myself alone.\n  ORLANDO. And so had I; but yet, for fashion sake, I thank you too\n    for your society.\n  JAQUES. God buy you; let\'s meet as little as we can.\n  ORLANDO. I do desire we may be better strangers.\n  JAQUES. I pray you mar no more trees with writing love songs in\n    their barks.\n  ORLANDO. I pray you mar no more of my verses with reading them\n    ill-favouredly.\n  JAQUES. Rosalind is your love\'s name?\n  ORLANDO. Yes, just.\n  JAQUES. I do not like her name.\n  ORLANDO. There was no thought of pleasing you when she was\n    christen\'d.\n  JAQUES. What stature is she of?\n  ORLANDO. Just as high as my heart.\n  JAQUES. You are full of pretty answers. Have you not been  \n    acquainted with goldsmiths\' wives, and conn\'d them out of rings?\n  ORLANDO. Not so; but I answer you right painted cloth, from whence\n    you have studied your questions.\n  JAQUES. You have a nimble wit; I think \'twas made of Atalanta\'s\n    heels. Will you sit down with me? and we two will rail against\n    our mistress the world, and all our misery.\n  ORLANDO. I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against\n    whom I know most faults.\n  JAQUES. The worst fault you have is to be in love.\n  ORLANDO. \'Tis a fault I will not change for your best virtue. I am\n    weary of you.\n  JAQUES. By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you.\n  ORLANDO. He is drown\'d in the brook; look but in, and you shall see\n    him.\n  JAQUES. There I shall see mine own figure.\n  ORLANDO. Which I take to be either a fool or a cipher.\n  JAQUES. I\'ll tarry no longer with you; farewell, good Signior Love.\n  ORLANDO. I am glad of your departure; adieu, good Monsieur\n    Melancholy.\n                                                     Exit JAQUES  \n  ROSALIND. [Aside to CELIA] I will speak to him like a saucy lackey,\n    and under that habit play the knave with him.- Do you hear,\n    forester?\n  ORLANDO. Very well; what would you?\n  ROSALIND. I pray you, what is\'t o\'clock?\n  ORLANDO. You should ask me what time o\' day; there\'s no clock in\n    the forest.\n  ROSALIND. Then there is no true lover in the forest, else sighing\n    every minute and groaning every hour would detect the lazy foot\n    of Time as well as a clock.\n  ORLANDO. And why not the swift foot of Time? Had not that been as\n    proper?\n  ROSALIND. By no means, sir. Time travels in divers paces with\n    divers persons. I\'ll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time\n    trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still\n    withal.\n  ORLANDO. I prithee, who doth he trot withal?\n  ROSALIND. Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the\n    contract of her marriage and the day it is solemniz\'d; if the\n    interim be but a se\'nnight, Time\'s pace is so hard that it seems  \n    the length of seven year.\n  ORLANDO. Who ambles Time withal?\n  ROSALIND. With a priest that lacks Latin and a rich man that hath\n    not the gout; for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study,\n    and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain; the one\n    lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning, the other\n    knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury. These Time ambles\n    withal.\n  ORLANDO. Who doth he gallop withal?\n  ROSALIND. With a thief to the gallows; for though he go as softly\n    as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there.\n  ORLANDO. Who stays it still withal?\n  ROSALIND. With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term\n    and term, and then they perceive not how Time moves.\n  ORLANDO. Where dwell you, pretty youth?\n  ROSALIND. With this shepherdess, my sister; here in the skirts of\n    the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat.\n  ORLANDO. Are you native of this place?\n  ROSALIND. As the coney that you see dwell where she is kindled.\n  ORLANDO. Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in  \n    so removed a dwelling.\n  ROSALIND. I have been told so of many; but indeed an old religious\n    uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland\n    man; one that knew courtship too well, for there he fell in love.\n    I have heard him read many lectures against it; and I thank God I\n    am not a woman, to be touch\'d with so many giddy offences as he\n    hath generally tax\'d their whole sex withal.\n  ORLANDO. Can you remember any of the principal evils that he laid\n    to the charge of women?\n  ROSALIND. There were none principal; they were all like one another\n    as halfpence are; every one fault seeming monstrous till his\n    fellow-fault came to match it.\n  ORLANDO. I prithee recount some of them.\n  ROSALIND. No; I will not cast away my physic but on those that are\n    sick. There is a man haunts the forest that abuses our young\n    plants with carving \'Rosalind\' on their barks; hangs odes upon\n    hawthorns and elegies on brambles; all, forsooth, deifying the\n    name of Rosalind. If I could meet that fancy-monger, I would give\n    him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love\n    upon him.  \n  ORLANDO. I am he that is so love-shak\'d; I pray you tell me your\n    remedy.\n  ROSALIND. There is none of my uncle\'s marks upon you; he taught me\n    how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes I am sure you\n    are not prisoner.\n  ORLANDO. What were his marks?\n  ROSALIND. A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye and sunken,\n    which you have not; an unquestionable spirit, which you have not;\n    a beard neglected, which you have not; but I pardon you for that,\n    for simply your having in beard is a younger brother\'s revenue.\n    Then your hose should be ungarter\'d, your bonnet unbanded, your\n    sleeve unbutton\'d, your shoe untied, and every thing about you\n    demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such man; you\n    are rather point-device in your accoutrements, as loving yourself\n    than seeming the lover of any other.\n  ORLANDO. Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love.\n  ROSALIND. Me believe it! You may as soon make her that you love\n    believe it; which, I warrant, she is apter to do than to confess\n    she does. That is one of the points in the which women still give\n    the lie to their consciences. But, in good sooth, are you he that  \n    hangs the verses on the trees wherein Rosalind is so admired?\n  ORLANDO. I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I\n    am that he, that unfortunate he.\n  ROSALIND. But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?\n  ORLANDO. Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.\n  ROSALIND. Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as\n    well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why\n    they are not so punish\'d and cured is that the lunacy is so\n    ordinary that the whippers are in love too. Yet I profess curing\n    it by counsel.\n  ORLANDO. Did you ever cure any so?\n  ROSALIND. Yes, one; and in this manner. He was to imagine me his\n    love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me; at which\n    time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate,\n    changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish,\n    shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles; for every\n    passion something and for no passion truly anything, as boys and\n    women are for the most part cattle of this colour; would now like\n    him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now\n    weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his  \n    mad humour of love to a living humour of madness; which was, to\n    forswear the full stream of the world and to live in a nook\n    merely monastic. And thus I cur\'d him; and this way will I take\n    upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep\'s heart,\n    that there shall not be one spot of love in \'t.\n  ORLANDO. I would not be cured, youth.\n  ROSALIND. I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind, and\n    come every day to my cote and woo me.\n  ORLANDO. Now, by the faith of my love, I will. Tell me where it is.\n  ROSALIND. Go with me to it, and I\'ll show it you; and, by the way,\n    you shall tell me where in the forest you live. Will you go?\n  ORLANDO. With all my heart, good youth.\n  ROSALIND. Nay, you must call me Rosalind. Come, sister, will you\n    go?                                                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nThe forest\n\nEnter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY; JAQUES behind\n\n  TOUCHSTONE. Come apace, good Audrey; I will fetch up your goats,\n    Audrey. And how, Audrey, am I the man yet? Doth my simple feature\n    content you?\n  AUDREY. Your features! Lord warrant us! What features?\n  TOUCHSTONE. I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most\n    capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths.\n  JAQUES. [Aside] O knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than Jove in a\n    thatch\'d house!\n  TOUCHSTONE. When a man\'s verses cannot be understood, nor a man\'s\n    good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it\n    strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.\n    Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.\n  AUDREY. I do not know what \'poetical\' is. Is it honest in deed and\n    word? Is it a true thing?\n  TOUCHSTONE. No, truly; for the truest poetry is the most feigning,\n    and lovers are given to poetry; and what they swear in poetry may\n    be said as lovers they do feign.  \n  AUDREY. Do you wish, then, that the gods had made me poetical?\n  TOUCHSTONE. I do, truly, for thou swear\'st to me thou art honest;\n    now, if thou wert a poet, I might have some hope thou didst\n    feign.\n  AUDREY. Would you not have me honest?\n  TOUCHSTONE. No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favour\'d; for honesty\n    coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar.\n  JAQUES. [Aside] A material fool!\n  AUDREY. Well, I am not fair; and therefore I pray the gods make me\n    honest.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Truly, and to cast away honesty upon a foul slut were\n    to put good meat into an unclean dish.\n  AUDREY. I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am foul.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Well, praised be the gods for thy foulness;\n    sluttishness may come hereafter. But be it as it may be, I will\n    marry thee; and to that end I have been with Sir Oliver Martext,\n    the vicar of the next village, who hath promis\'d to meet me in\n    this place of the forest, and to couple us.\n  JAQUES. [Aside] I would fain see this meeting.\n  AUDREY. Well, the gods give us joy!  \n  TOUCHSTONE. Amen. A man may, if he were of a fearful heart, stagger\n    in this attempt; for here we have no temple but the wood, no\n    assembly but horn-beasts. But what though? Courage! As horns are\n    odious, they are necessary. It is said: \'Many a man knows no end\n    of his goods.\' Right! Many a man has good horns and knows no end\n    of them. Well, that is the dowry of his wife; \'tis none of his\n    own getting. Horns? Even so. Poor men alone? No, no; the noblest\n    deer hath them as huge as the rascal. Is the single man therefore\n    blessed? No; as a wall\'d town is more worthier than a village, so\n    is the forehead of a married man more honourable than the bare\n    brow of a bachelor; and by how much defence is better than no\n    skill, by so much is horn more precious than to want. Here comes\n    Sir Oliver.\n\n                       Enter SIR OLIVER MARTEXT\n\n    Sir Oliver Martext, you are well met. Will you dispatch us here\n    under this tree, or shall we go with you to your chapel?\n  MARTEXT. Is there none here to give the woman?\n  TOUCHSTONE. I will not take her on gift of any man.  \n  MARTEXT. Truly, she must be given, or the marriage is not lawful.\n  JAQUES. [Discovering himself] Proceed, proceed; I\'ll give her.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Good even, good Master What-ye-call\'t; how do you, sir?\n    You are very well met. Goddild you for your last company. I am\n    very glad to see you. Even a toy in hand here, sir. Nay; pray be\n    cover\'d.\n  JAQUES. Will you be married, motley?\n  TOUCHSTONE. As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb, and\n    the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires; and as pigeons\n    bill, so wedlock would be nibbling.\n  JAQUES. And will you, being a man of your breeding, be married\n    under a bush, like a beggar? Get you to church and have a good\n    priest that can tell you what marriage is; this fellow will but\n    join you together as they join wainscot; then one of you will\n    prove a shrunk panel, and like green timber warp, warp.\n  TOUCHSTONE. [Aside] I am not in the mind but I were better to be\n    married of him than of another; for he is not like to marry me\n    well; and not being well married, it will be a good excuse for me\n    hereafter to leave my wife.\n  JAQUES. Go thou with me, and let me counsel thee.  \n  TOUCHSTONE. Come, sweet Audrey;\n    We must be married or we must live in bawdry.\n    Farewell, good Master Oliver. Not-\n               O sweet Oliver,\n               O brave Oliver,\n           Leave me not behind thee.\n    But-\n                 Wind away,\n               Begone, I say,\n           I will not to wedding with thee.\n                           Exeunt JAQUES, TOUCHSTONE, and AUDREY\n  MARTEXT. \'Tis no matter; ne\'er a fantastical knave of them all\n    shall flout me out of my calling.                       Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nThe forest\n\nEnter ROSALIND and CELIA\n\n  ROSALIND. Never talk to me; I will weep.\n  CELIA. Do, I prithee; but yet have the grace to consider that tears\n    do not become a man.\n  ROSALIND. But have I not cause to weep?\n  CELIA. As good cause as one would desire; therefore weep.\n  ROSALIND. His very hair is of the dissembling colour.\n  CELIA. Something browner than Judas\'s.\n    Marry, his kisses are Judas\'s own children.\n  ROSALIND. I\' faith, his hair is of a good colour.\n  CELIA. An excellent colour: your chestnut was ever the only colour.\n  ROSALIND. And his kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of\n    holy bread.\n  CELIA. He hath bought a pair of cast lips of Diana. A nun of\n    winter\'s sisterhood kisses not more religiously; the very ice of\n    chastity is in them.\n  ROSALIND. But why did he swear he would come this morning, and\n    comes not?\n  CELIA. Nay, certainly, there is no truth in him.  \n  ROSALIND. Do you think so?\n  CELIA. Yes; I think he is not a pick-purse nor a horse-stealer; but\n    for his verity in love, I do think him as concave as covered\n    goblet or a worm-eaten nut.\n  ROSALIND. Not true in love?\n  CELIA. Yes, when he is in; but I think he is not in.\n  ROSALIND. You have heard him swear downright he was.\n  CELIA. \'Was\' is not \'is\'; besides, the oath of a lover is no\n    stronger than the word of a tapster; they are both the confirmer\n    of false reckonings. He attends here in the forest on the Duke,\n    your father.\n  ROSALIND. I met the Duke yesterday, and had much question with him.\n    He asked me of what parentage I was; I told him, of as good as\n    he; so he laugh\'d and let me go. But what talk we of fathers when\n    there is such a man as Orlando?\n  CELIA. O, that\'s a brave man! He writes brave verses, speaks brave\n    words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely, quite\n    traverse, athwart the heart of his lover; as a puny tilter, that\n    spurs his horse but on one side, breaks his staff like a noble\n    goose. But all\'s brave that youth mounts and folly guides. Who  \n    comes here?\n\n                         Enter CORIN\n\n  CORIN. Mistress and master, you have oft enquired\n    After the shepherd that complain\'d of love,\n    Who you saw sitting by me on the turf,\n    Praising the proud disdainful shepherdess\n    That was his mistress.\n  CELIA. Well, and what of him?\n  CORIN. If you will see a pageant truly play\'d\n    Between the pale complexion of true love\n    And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain,\n    Go hence a little, and I shall conduct you,\n    If you will mark it.\n  ROSALIND. O, come, let us remove!\n    The sight of lovers feedeth those in love.\n    Bring us to this sight, and you shall say\n    I\'ll prove a busy actor in their play.                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nAnother part of the forest\n\nEnter SILVIUS and PHEBE\n\n  SILVIUS. Sweet Phebe, do not scorn me; do not, Phebe.\n    Say that you love me not; but say not so\n    In bitterness. The common executioner,\n    Whose heart th\' accustom\'d sight of death makes hard,\n    Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck\n    But first begs pardon. Will you sterner be\n    Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops?\n\n          Enter ROSALIND, CELIA, and CORIN, at a distance\n\n  PHEBE. I would not be thy executioner;\n    I fly thee, for I would not injure thee.\n    Thou tell\'st me there is murder in mine eye.\n    \'Tis pretty, sure, and very probable,\n    That eyes, that are the frail\'st and softest things,\n    Who shut their coward gates on atomies,\n    Should be call\'d tyrants, butchers, murderers!  \n    Now I do frown on thee with all my heart;\n    And if mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee.\n    Now counterfeit to swoon; why, now fall down;\n    Or, if thou canst not, O, for shame, for shame,\n    Lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers.\n    Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee.\n    Scratch thee but with a pin, and there remains\n    Some scar of it; lean upon a rush,\n    The cicatrice and capable impressure\n    Thy palm some moment keeps; but now mine eyes,\n    Which I have darted at thee, hurt thee not;\n    Nor, I am sure, there is not force in eyes\n    That can do hurt.\n  SILVIUS. O dear Phebe,\n    If ever- as that ever may be near-\n    You meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy,\n    Then shall you know the wounds invisible\n    That love\'s keen arrows make.\n  PHEBE. But till that time\n    Come not thou near me; and when that time comes,  \n    Afflict me with thy mocks, pity me not;\n    As till that time I shall not pity thee.\n  ROSALIND. [Advancing] And why, I pray you? Who might be your\n      mother,\n    That you insult, exult, and all at once,\n    Over the wretched? What though you have no beauty-\n    As, by my faith, I see no more in you\n    Than without candle may go dark to bed-\n    Must you be therefore proud and pitiless?\n    Why, what means this? Why do you look on me?\n    I see no more in you than in the ordinary\n    Of nature\'s sale-work. \'Od\'s my little life,\n    I think she means to tangle my eyes too!\n    No faith, proud mistress, hope not after it;\n    \'Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair,\n    Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream,\n    That can entame my spirits to your worship.\n    You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her,\n    Like foggy south, puffing with wind and rain?\n    You are a thousand times a properer man  \n    Than she a woman. \'Tis such fools as you\n    That makes the world full of ill-favour\'d children.\n    \'Tis not her glass, but you, that flatters her;\n    And out of you she sees herself more proper\n    Than any of her lineaments can show her.\n    But, mistress, know yourself. Down on your knees,\n    And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man\'s love;\n    For I must tell you friendly in your ear:\n    Sell when you can; you are not for all markets.\n    Cry the man mercy, love him, take his offer;\n    Foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer.\n    So take her to thee, shepherd. Fare you well.\n  PHEBE. Sweet youth, I pray you chide a year together;\n    I had rather hear you chide than this man woo.\n  ROSALIND. He\'s fall\'n in love with your foulness, and she\'ll fall\n    in love with my anger. If it be so, as fast as she answers thee\n    with frowning looks, I\'ll sauce her with bitter words. Why look\n    you so upon me?\n  PHEBE. For no ill will I bear you.\n  ROSALIND. I pray you do not fall in love with me,  \n    For I am falser than vows made in wine;\n    Besides, I like you not. If you will know my house,\n    \'Tis at the tuft of olives here hard by.\n    Will you go, sister? Shepherd, ply her hard.\n    Come, sister. Shepherdess, look on him better,\n    And be not proud; though all the world could see,\n    None could be so abus\'d in sight as he.\n    Come, to our flock.        Exeunt ROSALIND, CELIA, and CORIN\n  PHEBE. Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might:\n    \'Who ever lov\'d that lov\'d not at first sight?\'\n  SILVIUS. Sweet Phebe.\n  PHEBE. Ha! what say\'st thou, Silvius?\n  SILVIUS. Sweet Phebe, pity me.\n  PHEBE. Why, I arn sorry for thee, gentle Silvius.\n  SILVIUS. Wherever sorrow is, relief would be.\n    If you do sorrow at my grief in love,\n    By giving love, your sorrow and my grief\n    Were both extermin\'d.\n  PHEBE. Thou hast my love; is not that neighbourly?\n  SILVIUS. I would have you.  \n  PHEBE. Why, that were covetousness.\n    Silvius, the time was that I hated thee;\n    And yet it is not that I bear thee love;\n    But since that thou canst talk of love so well,\n    Thy company, which erst was irksome to me,\n    I will endure; and I\'ll employ thee too.\n    But do not look for further recompense\n    Than thine own gladness that thou art employ\'d.\n  SILVIUS. So holy and so perfect is my love,\n    And I in such a poverty of grace,\n    That I shall think it a most plenteous crop\n    To glean the broken ears after the man\n    That the main harvest reaps; loose now and then\n    A scatt\'red smile, and that I\'ll live upon.\n  PHEBE. Know\'st thou the youth that spoke to me erewhile?\n  SILVIUS. Not very well; but I have met him oft;\n    And he hath bought the cottage and the bounds\n    That the old carlot once was master of.\n  PHEBE. Think not I love him, though I ask for him;\n    \'Tis but a peevish boy; yet he talks well.  \n    But what care I for words? Yet words do well\n    When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.\n    It is a pretty youth- not very pretty;\n    But, sure, he\'s proud; and yet his pride becomes him.\n    He\'ll make a proper man. The best thing in him\n    Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue\n    Did make offence, his eye did heal it up.\n    He is not very tall; yet for his years he\'s tall;\n    His leg is but so-so; and yet \'tis well.\n    There was a pretty redness in his lip,\n    A little riper and more lusty red\n    Than that mix\'d in his cheek; \'twas just the difference\n    Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask.\n    There be some women, Silvius, had they mark\'d him\n    In parcels as I did, would have gone near\n    To fall in love with him; but, for my part,\n    I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet\n    I have more cause to hate him than to love him;\n    For what had he to do to chide at me?\n    He said mine eyes were black, and my hair black,  \n    And, now I am rememb\'red, scorn\'d at me.\n    I marvel why I answer\'d not again;\n    But that\'s all one: omittance is no quittance.\n    I\'ll write to him a very taunting letter,\n    And thou shalt bear it; wilt thou, Silvius?\n  SILVIUS. Phebe, with all my heart.\n  PHEBE. I\'ll write it straight;\n    The matter\'s in my head and in my heart;\n    I will be bitter with him and passing short.\n    Go with me, Silvius.                                  Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nThe forest\n\nEnter ROSALIND, CELIA, and JAQUES\n\n  JAQUES. I prithee, pretty youth, let me be better acquainted with\n    thee.\n  ROSALIND. They say you are a melancholy fellow.\n  JAQUES. I am so; I do love it better than laughing.\n  ROSALIND. Those that are in extremity of either are abominable\n    fellows, and betray themselves to every modern censure worse than\n    drunkards.\n  JAQUES. Why, \'tis good to be sad and say nothing.\n  ROSALIND. Why then, \'tis good to be a post.\n  JAQUES. I have neither the scholar\'s melancholy, which is\n    emulation; nor the musician\'s, which is fantastical; nor the\n    courtier\'s, which is proud; nor the soldier\'s, which is\n    ambitious; nor the lawyer\'s, which is politic; nor the lady\'s,\n    which is nice; nor the lover\'s, which is all these; but it is a\n    melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted\n    from many objects, and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my\n    travels; in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous  \n    sadness.\n  ROSALIND. A traveller! By my faith, you have great reason to be\n    sad. I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men\'s; then\n    to have seen much and to have nothing is to have rich eyes and\n    poor hands.\n  JAQUES. Yes, I have gain\'d my experience.\n\n                        Enter ORLANDO\n\n  ROSALIND. And your experience makes you sad. I had rather have a\n    fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad- and to\n    travel for it too.\n  ORLANDO. Good day, and happiness, dear Rosalind!\n  JAQUES. Nay, then, God buy you, an you talk in blank verse.\n  ROSALIND. Farewell, Monsieur Traveller; look you lisp and wear\n    strange suits, disable all the benefits of your own country, be\n    out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making\n    you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think you have\n    swam in a gondola. [Exit JAQUES] Why, how now, Orlando! where\n    have you been all this while? You a lover! An you serve me such  \n    another trick, never come in my sight more.\n  ORLANDO. My fair Rosalind, I come within an hour of my promise.\n  ROSALIND. Break an hour\'s promise in love! He that will divide a\n    minute into a thousand parts, and break but a part of the\n    thousand part of a minute in the affairs of love, it may be said\n    of him that Cupid hath clapp\'d him o\' th\' shoulder, but I\'ll\n    warrant him heart-whole.\n  ORLANDO. Pardon me, dear Rosalind.\n  ROSALIND. Nay, an you be so tardy, come no more in my sight. I had\n    as lief be woo\'d of a snail.\n  ORLANDO. Of a snail!\n  ROSALIND. Ay, of a snail; for though he comes slowly, he carries\n    his house on his head- a better jointure, I think, than you make\n    a woman; besides, he brings his destiny with him.\n  ORLANDO. What\'s that?\n  ROSALIND. Why, horns; which such as you are fain to be beholding to\n    your wives for; but he comes armed in his fortune, and prevents\n    the slander of his wife.\n  ORLANDO. Virtue is no horn-maker; and my Rosalind is virtuous.\n  ROSALIND. And I am your Rosalind.  \n  CELIA. It pleases him to call you so; but he hath a Rosalind of a\n    better leer than you.\n  ROSALIND. Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in a holiday humour,\n    and like enough to consent. What would you say to me now, an I\n    were your very very Rosalind?\n  ORLANDO. I would kiss before I spoke.\n  ROSALIND. Nay, you were better speak first; and when you were\n    gravell\'d for lack of matter, you might take occasion to kiss.\n    Very good orators, when they are out, they will spit; and for\n    lovers lacking- God warn us!- matter, the cleanliest shift is to\n    kiss.\n  ORLANDO. How if the kiss be denied?\n  ROSALIND. Then she puts you to entreaty, and there begins new\n    matter.\n  ORLANDO. Who could be out, being before his beloved mistress?\n  ROSALIND. Marry, that should you, if I were your mistress; or I\n    should think my honesty ranker than my wit.\n  ORLANDO. What, of my suit?\n  ROSALIND. Not out of your apparel, and yet out of your suit.\n    Am not I your Rosalind?  \n  ORLANDO. I take some joy to say you are, because I would be talking\n    of her.\n  ROSALIND. Well, in her person, I say I will not have you.\n  ORLANDO. Then, in mine own person, I die.\n  ROSALIND. No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is almost six\n    thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any man\n    died in his own person, videlicet, in a love-cause. Troilus had\n    his brains dash\'d out with a Grecian club; yet he did what he\n    could to die before, and he is one of the patterns of love.\n    Leander, he would have liv\'d many a fair year, though Hero had\n    turn\'d nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer night; for,\n    good youth, he went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont, and,\n    being taken with the cramp, was drown\'d; and the foolish\n    chroniclers of that age found it was- Hero of Sestos. But these\n    are all lies: men have died from time to time, and worms have\n    eaten them, but not for love.\n  ORLANDO. I would not have my right Rosalind of this mind; for, I\n    protest, her frown might kill me.\n  ROSALIND. By this hand, it will not kill a fly. But come, now I\n    will be your Rosalind in a more coming-on disposition; and ask me  \n    what you will, I will grant it.\n  ORLANDO. Then love me, Rosalind.\n  ROSALIND. Yes, faith, will I, Fridays and Saturdays, and all.\n  ORLANDO. And wilt thou have me?\n  ROSALIND. Ay, and twenty such.\n  ORLANDO. What sayest thou?\n  ROSALIND. Are you not good?\n  ORLANDO. I hope so.\n  ROSALIND. Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing? Come,\n    sister, you shall be the priest, and marry us. Give me your hand,\n    Orlando. What do you say, sister?\n  ORLANDO. Pray thee, marry us.\n  CELIA. I cannot say the words.\n  ROSALIND. You must begin \'Will you, Orlando\'-\n  CELIA. Go to. Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosalind?\n  ORLANDO. I will.\n  ROSALIND. Ay, but when?\n  ORLANDO. Why, now; as fast as she can marry us.\n  ROSALIND. Then you must say \'I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.\'\n  ORLANDO. I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.  \n  ROSALIND. I might ask you for your commission; but- I do take thee,\n    Orlando, for my husband. There\'s a girl goes before the priest;\n    and, certainly, a woman\'s thought runs before her actions.\n  ORLANDO. So do all thoughts; they are wing\'d.\n  ROSALIND. Now tell me how long you would have her, after you have\n    possess\'d her.\n  ORLANDO. For ever and a day.\n  ROSALIND. Say \'a day\' without the \'ever.\' No, no, Orlando; men are\n    April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when\n    they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. I will\n    be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen,\n    more clamorous than a parrot against rain, more new-fangled than\n    an ape, more giddy in my desires than a monkey. I will weep for\n    nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you\n    are dispos\'d to be merry; I will laugh like a hyen, and that when\n    thou are inclin\'d to sleep.\n  ORLANDO. But will my Rosalind do so?\n  ROSALIND. By my life, she will do as I do.\n  ORLANDO. O, but she is wise.\n  ROSALIND. Or else she could not have the wit to do this. The wiser,  \n    the waywarder. Make the doors upon a woman\'s wit, and it will out\n    at the casement; shut that, and \'twill out at the key-hole; stop\n    that, \'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.\n  ORLANDO. A man that had a wife with such a wit, he might say \'Wit,\n    whither wilt?\' ROSALIND. Nay, you might keep that check for it, till you met your\n    wife\'s wit going to your neighbour\'s bed.\n  ORLANDO. And what wit could wit have to excuse that?\n  ROSALIND. Marry, to say she came to seek you there. You shall never\n    take her without her answer, unless you take her without her\n    tongue. O, that woman that cannot make her fault her husband\'s\n    occasion, let her never nurse her child herself, for she will\n    breed it like a fool!\n  ORLANDO. For these two hours, Rosalind, I will leave thee.\n  ROSALIND. Alas, dear love, I cannot lack thee two hours!\n  ORLANDO. I must attend the Duke at dinner; by two o\'clock I will be\n    with thee again.\n  ROSALIND. Ay, go your ways, go your ways. I knew what you would\n    prove; my friends told me as much, and I thought no less. That\n    flattering tongue of yours won me. \'Tis but one cast away, and  \n    so, come death! Two o\'clock is your hour?\n  ORLANDO. Ay, sweet Rosalind.\n  ROSALIND. By my troth, and in good earnest, and so God mend me, and\n    by all pretty oaths that are not dangerous, if you break one jot\n    of your promise, or come one minute behind your hour, I will\n    think you the most pathetical break-promise, and the most hollow\n    lover, and the most unworthy of her you call Rosalind, that may\n    be chosen out of the gross band of the unfaithful. Therefore\n    beware my censure, and keep your promise.\n  ORLANDO. With no less religion than if thou wert indeed my\n    Rosalind; so, adieu.\n  ROSALIND. Well, Time is the old justice that examines all such\n    offenders, and let Time try. Adieu.             Exit ORLANDO\n  CELIA. You have simply misus\'d our sex in your love-prate. We must\n    have your doublet and hose pluck\'d over your head, and show the\n    world what the bird hath done to her own nest.\n  ROSALIND. O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst\n    know how many fathom deep I am in love! But it cannot be sounded;\n    my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.\n  CELIA. Or rather, bottomless; that as fast as you pour affection  \n    in, it runs out.\n  ROSALIND. No; that same wicked bastard of Venus, that was begot of\n    thought, conceiv\'d of spleen, and born of madness; that blind\n    rascally boy, that abuses every one\'s eyes, because his own are\n    out- let him be judge how deep I am in love. I\'ll tell thee,\n    Aliena, I cannot be out of the sight of Orlando. I\'ll go find a\n    shadow, and sigh till he come.\n  CELIA. And I\'ll sleep.                                  Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe forest\n\n        Enter JAQUES and LORDS, in the habit of foresters\n\n  JAQUES. Which is he that killed the deer?\n  LORD. Sir, it was I.\n  JAQUES. Let\'s present him to the Duke, like a Roman conqueror; and\n    it would do well to set the deer\'s horns upon his head for a\n    branch of victory. Have you no song, forester, for this purpose?\n  LORD. Yes, sir.\n  JAQUES. Sing it; \'tis no matter how it be in tune, so it make noise\n    enough.\n\n                    SONG.\n\n      What shall he have that kill\'d the deer?\n      His leather skin and horns to wear.\n                              [The rest shall hear this burden:]\n           Then sing him home.\n\n      Take thou no scorn to wear the horn;  \n      It was a crest ere thou wast born.\n           Thy father\'s father wore it;\n           And thy father bore it.\n      The horn, the horn, the lusty horn,\n      Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nThe forest\n\nEnter ROSALIND and CELIA\n\n  ROSALIND. How say you now? Is it not past two o\'clock?\n    And here much Orlando!\n  CELIA. I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain, he hath\n    ta\'en his bow and arrows, and is gone forth- to sleep. Look, who\n    comes here.\n\n                      Enter SILVIUS\n\n  SILVIUS. My errand is to you, fair youth;\n    My gentle Phebe did bid me give you this.\n    I know not the contents; but, as I guess\n    By the stern brow and waspish action\n    Which she did use as she was writing of it,\n    It bears an angry tenour. Pardon me,\n    I am but as a guiltless messenger.\n  ROSALIND. Patience herself would startle at this letter,\n    And play the swaggerer. Bear this, bear all.\n    She says I am not fair, that I lack manners;  \n    She calls me proud, and that she could not love me,\n    Were man as rare as Phoenix. \'Od\'s my will!\n    Her love is not the hare that I do hunt;\n    Why writes she so to me? Well, shepherd, well,\n    This is a letter of your own device.\n  SILVIUS. No, I protest, I know not the contents;\n    Phebe did write it.\n  ROSALIND. Come, come, you are a fool,\n    And turn\'d into the extremity of love.\n    I saw her hand; she has a leathern hand,\n    A freestone-colour\'d hand; I verily did think\n    That her old gloves were on, but \'twas her hands;\n    She has a huswife\'s hand- but that\'s no matter.\n    I say she never did invent this letter:\n    This is a man\'s invention, and his hand.\n  SILVIUS. Sure, it is hers.\n  ROSALIND. Why, \'tis a boisterous and a cruel style;\n    A style for challengers. Why, she defies me,\n    Like Turk to Christian. Women\'s gentle brain\n    Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention,  \n    Such Ethiope words, blacker in their effect\n    Than in their countenance. Will you hear the letter?\n  SILVIUS. So please you, for I never heard it yet;\n    Yet heard too much of Phebe\'s cruelty.\n  ROSALIND. She Phebes me: mark how the tyrant writes.\n                                                         [Reads]\n\n            \'Art thou god to shepherd turn\'d,\n            That a maiden\'s heart hath burn\'d?\'\n\n    Can a woman rail thus?\n  SILVIUS. Call you this railing?\n  ROSALIND. \'Why, thy godhead laid apart,\n             Warr\'st thou with a woman\'s heart?\'\n\n    Did you ever hear such railing?\n\n            \'Whiles the eye of man did woo me,\n            That could do no vengeance to me.\'\n  \n    Meaning me a beast.\n\n            \'If the scorn of your bright eyne\n            Have power to raise such love in mine,\n            Alack, in me what strange effect\n            Would they work in mild aspect!\n            Whiles you chid me, I did love;\n            How then might your prayers move!\n            He that brings this love to the\n            Little knows this love in me;\n            And by him seal up thy mind,\n            Whether that thy youth and kind\n            Will the faithful offer take\n            Of me and all that I can make;\n            Or else by him my love deny,\n            And then I\'ll study how to die.\'\n  SILVIUS. Call you this chiding?\n  CELIA. Alas, poor shepherd!\n  ROSALIND. Do you pity him? No, he deserves no pity. Wilt thou love\n    such a woman? What, to make thee an instrument, and play false  \n    strains upon thee! Not to be endur\'d! Well, go your way to her,\n    for I see love hath made thee tame snake, and say this to her-\n    that if she love me, I charge her to love thee; if she will not,\n    I will never have her unless thou entreat for her. If you be a\n    true lover, hence, and not a word; for here comes more company.\n                                                    Exit SILVIUS\n\n                         Enter OLIVER\n\n  OLIVER. Good morrow, fair ones; pray you, if you know,\n    Where in the purlieus of this forest stands\n    A sheep-cote fenc\'d about with olive trees?\n  CELIA. West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom.\n    The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream\n    Left on your right hand brings you to the place.\n    But at this hour the house doth keep itself;\n    There\'s none within.\n  OLIVER. If that an eye may profit by a tongue,\n    Then should I know you by description-\n    Such garments, and such years: \'The boy is fair,  \n    Of female favour, and bestows himself\n    Like a ripe sister; the woman low,\n    And browner than her brother.\' Are not you\n    The owner of the house I did inquire for?\n  CELIA. It is no boast, being ask\'d, to say we are.\n  OLIVER. Orlando doth commend him to you both;\n    And to that youth he calls his Rosalind\n    He sends this bloody napkin. Are you he?\n  ROSALIND. I am. What must we understand by this?\n  OLIVER. Some of my shame; if you will know of me\n    What man I am, and how, and why, and where,\n    This handkercher was stain\'d.\n  CELIA. I pray you, tell it.\n  OLIVER. When last the young Orlando parted from you,\n    He left a promise to return again\n    Within an hour; and, pacing through the forest,\n    Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy,\n    Lo, what befell! He threw his eye aside,\n    And mark what object did present itself.\n    Under an oak, whose boughs were moss\'d with age,  \n    And high top bald with dry antiquity,\n    A wretched ragged man, o\'ergrown with hair,\n    Lay sleeping on his back. About his neck\n    A green and gilded snake had wreath\'d itself,\n    Who with her head nimble in threats approach\'d\n    The opening of his mouth; but suddenly,\n    Seeing Orlando, it unlink\'d itself,\n    And with indented glides did slip away\n    Into a bush; under which bush\'s shade\n    A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,\n    Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch,\n    When that the sleeping man should stir; for \'tis\n    The royal disposition of that beast\n    To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.\n    This seen, Orlando did approach the man,\n    And found it was his brother, his elder brother.\n  CELIA. O, I have heard him speak of that same brother;\n    And he did render him the most unnatural\n    That liv\'d amongst men.\n  OLIVER. And well he might so do,  \n    For well I know he was unnatural.\n  ROSALIND. But, to Orlando: did he leave him there,\n    Food to the suck\'d and hungry lioness?\n  OLIVER. Twice did he turn his back, and purpos\'d so;\n    But kindness, nobler ever than revenge,\n    And nature, stronger than his just occasion,\n    Made him give battle to the lioness,\n    Who quickly fell before him; in which hurtling\n    From miserable slumber I awak\'d.\n  CELIA. Are you his brother?\n  ROSALIND. Was\'t you he rescu\'d?\n  CELIA. Was\'t you that did so oft contrive to kill him?\n  OLIVER. \'Twas I; but \'tis not I. I do not shame\n    To tell you what I was, since my conversion\n    So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.\n  ROSALIND. But for the bloody napkin?\n  OLIVER. By and by.\n    When from the first to last, betwixt us two,\n    Tears our recountments had most kindly bath\'d,\n    As how I came into that desert place-  \n    In brief, he led me to the gentle Duke,\n    Who gave me fresh array and entertainment,\n    Committing me unto my brother\'s love;\n    Who led me instantly unto his cave,\n    There stripp\'d himself, and here upon his arm\n    The lioness had torn some flesh away,\n    Which all this while had bled; and now he fainted,\n    And cried, in fainting, upon Rosalind.\n    Brief, I recover\'d him, bound up his wound,\n    And, after some small space, being strong at heart,\n    He sent me hither, stranger as I am,\n    To tell this story, that you might excuse\n    His broken promise, and to give this napkin,\n    Dy\'d in his blood, unto the shepherd youth\n    That he in sport doth call his Rosalind.\n                                               [ROSALIND swoons]\n  CELIA. Why, how now, Ganymede! sweet Ganymede!\n  OLIVER. Many will swoon when they do look on blood.\n  CELIA. There is more in it. Cousin Ganymede!\n  OLIVER. Look, he recovers.  \n  ROSALIND. I would I were at home.\n  CELIA. We\'ll lead you thither.\n    I pray you, will you take him by the arm?\n  OLIVER. Be of good cheer, youth. You a man!\n    You lack a man\'s heart.\n  ROSALIND. I do so, I confess it. Ah, sirrah, a body would think\n    this was well counterfeited. I pray you tell your brother how\n    well I counterfeited. Heigh-ho!\n  OLIVER. This was not counterfeit; there is too great testimony in\n    your complexion that it was a passion of earnest.\n  ROSALIND. Counterfeit, I assure you.\n  OLIVER. Well then, take a good heart and counterfeit to be a man.\n  ROSALIND. So I do; but, i\' faith, I should have been a woman by\n    right.\n  CELIA. Come, you look paler and paler; pray you draw homewards.\n    Good sir, go with us.\n  OLIVER. That will I, for I must bear answer back\n    How you excuse my brother, Rosalind.\n  ROSALIND. I shall devise something; but, I pray you, commend my\n    counterfeiting to him. Will you go?                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nThe forest\n\nEnter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY\n\n  TOUCHSTONE. We shall find a time, Audrey; patience, gentle Audrey.\n  AUDREY. Faith, the priest was good enough, for all the old\n    gentleman\'s saying.\n  TOUCHSTONE. A most wicked Sir Oliver, Audrey, a most vile Martext.\n    But, Audrey, there is a youth here in the forest lays claim to\n    you.\n  AUDREY. Ay, I know who \'tis; he hath no interest in me in the\n    world; here comes the man you mean.\n\n                         Enter WILLIAM\n\n  TOUCHSTONE. It is meat and drink to me to see a clown. By my troth,\n    we that have good wits have much to answer for: we shall be\n    flouting; we cannot hold.\n  WILLIAM. Good ev\'n, Audrey.\n  AUDREY. God ye good ev\'n, William.\n  WILLIAM. And good ev\'n to you, sir.  \n  TOUCHSTONE. Good ev\'n, gentle friend. Cover thy head, cover thy\n    head; nay, prithee be cover\'d. How old are you, friend?\n  WILLIAM. Five and twenty, sir.\n  TOUCHSTONE. A ripe age. Is thy name William?\n  WILLIAM. William, sir.\n  TOUCHSTONE. A fair name. Wast born i\' th\' forest here?\n  WILLIAM. Ay, sir, I thank God.\n  TOUCHSTONE. \'Thank God.\' A good answer.\n    Art rich?\n  WILLIAM. Faith, sir, so so.\n  TOUCHSTONE. \'So so\' is good, very good, very excellent good; and\n    yet it is not; it is but so so. Art thou wise?\n  WILLIAM. Ay, sir, I have a pretty wit.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Why, thou say\'st well. I do now remember a saying: \'The\n    fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be\n    a fool.\' The heathen philosopher, when he had a desire to eat a\n    grape, would open his lips when he put it into his mouth; meaning\n    thereby that grapes were made to eat and lips to open. You do\n    love this maid?\n  WILLIAM. I do, sir.  \n  TOUCHSTONE. Give me your hand. Art thou learned?\n  WILLIAM. No, sir.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Then learn this of me: to have is to have; for it is a\n    figure in rhetoric that drink, being pour\'d out of cup into a\n    glass, by filling the one doth empty the other; for all your\n    writers do consent that ipse is he; now, you are not ipse, for I\n    am he.\n  WILLIAM. Which he, sir?\n  TOUCHSTONE. He, sir, that must marry this woman. Therefore, you\n    clown, abandon- which is in the vulgar leave- the society- which\n    in the boorish is company- of this female- which in the common is\n    woman- which together is: abandon the society of this female; or,\n    clown, thou perishest; or, to thy better understanding, diest;\n    or, to wit, I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy life into\n    death, thy liberty into bondage. I will deal in poison with thee,\n    or in bastinado, or in steel; I will bandy with thee in faction;\n    will o\'er-run thee with policy; I will kill thee a hundred and\n    fifty ways; therefore tremble and depart.\n  AUDREY. Do, good William.\n  WILLIAM. God rest you merry, sir.                         Exit  \n\n                          Enter CORIN\n\n  CORIN. Our master and mistress seeks you; come away, away.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Trip, Audrey, trip, Audrey. I attend, I attend.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe forest\n\nEnter ORLANDO and OLIVER\n\n  ORLANDO. Is\'t possible that on so little acquaintance you should\n    like her? that but seeing you should love her? and loving woo?\n    and, wooing, she should grant? and will you persever to enjoy\n    her?\n  OLIVER. Neither call the giddiness of it in question, the poverty\n    of her, the small acquaintance, my sudden wooing, nor her sudden\n    consenting; but say with me, I love Aliena; say with her that she\n    loves me; consent with both that we may enjoy each other. It\n    shall be to your good; for my father\'s house and all the revenue\n    that was old Sir Rowland\'s will I estate upon you, and here live\n    and die a shepherd.\n  ORLANDO. You have my consent. Let your wedding be to-morrow.\n    Thither will I invite the Duke and all\'s contented followers. Go\n    you and prepare Aliena; for, look you, here comes my Rosalind.\n\n                        Enter ROSALIND\n  \n  ROSALIND. God save you, brother.\n  OLIVER. And you, fair sister.                             Exit\n  ROSALIND. O, my dear Orlando, how it grieves me to see thee wear\n    thy heart in a scarf!\n  ORLANDO. It is my arm.\n  ROSALIND. I thought thy heart had been wounded with the claws of a\n    lion.\n  ORLANDO. Wounded it is, but with the eyes of a lady.\n  ROSALIND. Did your brother tell you how I counterfeited to swoon\n    when he show\'d me your handkercher?\n  ORLANDO. Ay, and greater wonders than that.\n  ROSALIND. O, I know where you are. Nay, \'tis true. There was never\n    any thing so sudden but the fight of two rams and Caesar\'s\n    thrasonical brag of \'I came, saw, and overcame.\' For your brother\n    and my sister no sooner met but they look\'d; no sooner look\'d but\n    they lov\'d; no sooner lov\'d but they sigh\'d; no sooner sigh\'d but\n    they ask\'d one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but\n    they sought the remedy- and in these degrees have they made pair\n    of stairs to marriage, which they will climb incontinent, or else\n    be incontinent before marriage. They are in the very wrath of  \n    love, and they will together. Clubs cannot part them.\n  ORLANDO. They shall be married to-morrow; and I will bid the Duke\n    to the nuptial. But, O, how bitter a thing it is to look into\n    happiness through another man\'s eyes! By so much the more shall I\n    to-morrow be at the height of heart-heaviness, by how much I\n    shall think my brother happy in having what he wishes for.\n  ROSALIND. Why, then, to-morrow I cannot serve your turn for\n    Rosalind?\n  ORLANDO. I can live no longer by thinking.\n  ROSALIND. I will weary you, then, no longer with idle talking. Know\n    of me then- for now I speak to some purpose- that I know you are\n    a gentleman of good conceit. I speak not this that you should\n    bear a good opinion of my knowledge, insomuch I say I know you\n    are; neither do I labour for a greater esteem than may in some\n    little measure draw a belief from you, to do yourself good, and\n    not to grace me. Believe then, if you please, that I can do\n    strange things. I have, since I was three year old, convers\'d\n    with a magician, most profound in his art and yet not damnable.\n    If you do love Rosalind so near the heart as your gesture cries\n    it out, when your brother marries Aliena shall you marry her. I  \n    know into what straits of fortune she is driven; and it is not\n    impossible to me, if it appear not inconvenient to you, to set\n    her before your eyes to-morrow, human as she is, and without any\n    danger.\n  ORLANDO. Speak\'st thou in sober meanings?\n  ROSALIND. By my life, I do; which I tender dearly, though I say I\n    am a magician. Therefore put you in your best array, bid your\n    friends; for if you will be married to-morrow, you shall; and to\n    Rosalind, if you will.\n\n                     Enter SILVIUS and PHEBE\n\n    Look, here comes a lover of mine, and a lover of hers.\n  PHEBE. Youth, you have done me much ungentleness\n    To show the letter that I writ to you.\n  ROSALIND. I care not if I have. It is my study\n    To seem despiteful and ungentle to you.\n    You are there follow\'d by a faithful shepherd;\n    Look upon him, love him; he worships you.\n  PHEBE. Good shepherd, tell this youth what \'tis to love.  \n  SILVIUS. It is to be all made of sighs and tears;\n    And so am I for Phebe.\n  PHEBE. And I for Ganymede.\n  ORLANDO. And I for Rosalind.\n  ROSALIND. And I for no woman.\n  SILVIUS. It is to be all made of faith and service;\n    And so am I for Phebe.\n  PHEBE. And I for Ganymede.\n  ORLANDO. And I for Rosalind.\n  ROSALIND. And I for no woman.\n  SILVIUS. It is to be all made of fantasy,\n    All made of passion, and all made of wishes;\n    All adoration, duty, and observance,\n    All humbleness, all patience, and impatience,\n    All purity, all trial, all obedience;\n    And so am I for Phebe.\n  PHEBE. And so am I for Ganymede.\n  ORLANDO. And so am I for Rosalind.\n  ROSALIND. And so am I for no woman.\n  PHEBE. If this be so, why blame you me to love you?  \n  SILVIUS. If this be so, why blame you me to love you?\n  ORLANDO. If this be so, why blame you me to love you?\n  ROSALIND. Why do you speak too, \'Why blame you me to love you?\'\n  ORLANDO. To her that is not here, nor doth not hear.\n  ROSALIND. Pray you, no more of this; \'tis like the howling of Irish\n    wolves against the moon. [To SILVIUS] I will help you if I can.\n    [To PHEBE] I would love you if I could.- To-morrow meet me all\n    together. [ To PHEBE ] I will marry you if ever I marry woman,\n    and I\'ll be married to-morrow. [To ORLANDO] I will satisfy you if\n    ever I satisfied man, and you shall be married to-morrow. [To\n    Silvius] I will content you if what pleases you contents you, and\n    you shall be married to-morrow. [To ORLANDO] As you love\n    Rosalind, meet. [To SILVIUS] As you love Phebe, meet;- and as I\n    love no woman, I\'ll meet. So, fare you well; I have left you\n    commands.\n  SILVIUS. I\'ll not fail, if I live.\n  PHEBE. Nor I.\n  ORLANDO. Nor I.                                         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nThe forest\n\nEnter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY\n\n  TOUCHSTONE. To-morrow is the joyful day, Audre\'y; to-morrow will we\n    be married.\n  AUDREY. I do desire it with all my heart; and I hope it is no\n    dishonest desire to desire to be a woman of the world. Here come\n    two of the banish\'d Duke\'s pages.\n\n                            Enter two PAGES\n\n  FIRST PAGE. Well met, honest gentleman.\n  TOUCHSTONE. By my troth, well met. Come sit, sit, and a song.\n  SECOND PAGE. We are for you; sit i\' th\' middle.\n  FIRST PAGE. Shall we clap into\'t roundly, without hawking, or\n    spitting, or saying we are hoarse, which are the only prologues\n    to a bad voice?\n  SECOND PAGE. I\'faith, i\'faith; and both in a tune, like two gipsies\n    on a horse.\n  \n                      SONG.\n        It was a lover and his lass,\n          With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,\n        That o\'er the green corn-field did pass\n          In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,\n        When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding.\n        Sweet lovers love the spring.\n\n        Between the acres of the rye,\n          With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,\n        These pretty country folks would lie,\n          In the spring time, &c.\n\n        This carol they began that hour,\n          With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,\n        How that a life was but a flower,\n          In the spring time, &c.\n\n        And therefore take the present time,\n          With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,  \n        For love is crowned with the prime,\n          In the spring time, &c.\n\n  TOUCHSTONE. Truly, young gentlemen, though there was no great\n    matter in the ditty, yet the note was very untuneable.\n  FIRST PAGE. YOU are deceiv\'d, sir; we kept time, we lost not our\n    time.\n  TOUCHSTONE. By my troth, yes; I count it but time lost to hear such\n    a foolish song. God buy you; and God mend your voices. Come,\n    Audrey.                                               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nThe forest\n\nEnter DUKE SENIOR, AMIENS, JAQUES, ORLANDO, OLIVER, and CELIA\n\n  DUKE SENIOR. Dost thou believe, Orlando, that the boy\n    Can do all this that he hath promised?\n  ORLANDO. I sometimes do believe and sometimes do not:\n    As those that fear they hope, and know they fear.\n\n               Enter ROSALIND, SILVIUS, and PHEBE\n\n  ROSALIND. Patience once more, whiles our compact is urg\'d:\n    You say, if I bring in your Rosalind,\n    You will bestow her on Orlando here?\n  DUKE SENIOR. That would I, had I kingdoms to give with her.\n  ROSALIND. And you say you will have her when I bring her?\n  ORLANDO. That would I, were I of all kingdoms king.\n  ROSALIND. You say you\'ll marry me, if I be willing?\n  PHEBE. That will I, should I die the hour after.\n  ROSALIND. But if you do refuse to marry me,  \n    You\'ll give yourself to this most faithful shepherd?\n  PHEBE. So is the bargain.\n  ROSALIND. You say that you\'ll have Phebe, if she will?\n  SILVIUS. Though to have her and death were both one thing.\n  ROSALIND. I have promis\'d to make all this matter even.\n    Keep you your word, O Duke, to give your daughter;\n    You yours, Orlando, to receive his daughter;\n    Keep your word, Phebe, that you\'ll marry me,\n    Or else, refusing me, to wed this shepherd;\n    Keep your word, Silvius, that you\'ll marry her\n    If she refuse me; and from hence I go,\n    To make these doubts all even.\n                                       Exeunt ROSALIND and CELIA\n  DUKE SENIOR. I do remember in this shepherd boy\n    Some lively touches of my daughter\'s favour.\n  ORLANDO. My lord, the first time that I ever saw him\n    Methought he was a brother to your daughter.\n    But, my good lord, this boy is forest-born,\n    And hath been tutor\'d in the rudiments\n    Of many desperate studies by his uncle,  \n    Whom he reports to be a great magician,\n    Obscured in the circle of this forest.\n\n                    Enter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY\n\n  JAQUES. There is, sure, another flood toward, and these couples are\n    coming to the ark. Here comes a pair of very strange beasts which\n    in all tongues are call\'d fools.\n  TOUCHSTONE. Salutation and greeting to you all!\n  JAQUES. Good my lord, bid him welcome. This is the motley-minded\n    gentleman that I have so often met in the forest. He hath been a\n     courtier, he swears.\n  TOUCHSTONE. If any man doubt that, let him put me to my purgation.\n    I have trod a measure; I have flatt\'red a lady; I have been\n    politic with my friend, smooth with mine enemy; I have undone\n    three tailors; I have had four quarrels, and like to have fought\n    one.\n  JAQUES. And how was that ta\'en up?\n  TOUCHSTONE. Faith, we met, and found the quarrel was upon the\n    seventh cause.  \n  JAQUES. How seventh cause? Good my lord, like this fellow.\n  DUKE SENIOR. I like him very well.\n  TOUCHSTONE. God \'ild you, sir; I desire you of the like. I press in\n    here, sir, amongst the rest of the country copulatives, to swear\n    and to forswear, according as marriage binds and blood breaks. A\n    poor virgin, sir, an ill-favour\'d thing, sir, but mine own; a\n    poor humour of mine, sir, to take that that man else will. Rich\n    honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house; as your pearl\n    in your foul oyster.\n  DUKE SENIOR. By my faith, he is very swift and sententious.\n  TOUCHSTONE. According to the fool\'s bolt, sir, and such dulcet\n    diseases.\n  JAQUES. But, for the seventh cause: how did you find the quarrel on\n    the seventh cause?\n  TOUCHSTONE. Upon a lie seven times removed- bear your body more\n    seeming, Audrey- as thus, sir. I did dislike the cut of a certain\n    courtier\'s beard; he sent me word, if I said his beard was not\n    cut well, he was in the mind it was. This is call\'d the Retort\n    Courteous. If I sent him word again it was not well cut, he would\n    send me word he cut it to please himself. This is call\'d the Quip  \n    Modest. If again it was not well cut, he disabled my judgment.\n    This is call\'d the Reply Churlish. If again it was not well cut,\n    he would answer I spake not true. This is call\'d the Reproof\n    Valiant. If again it was not well cut, he would say I lie. This\n    is call\'d the Countercheck Quarrelsome. And so to the Lie\n    Circumstantial and the Lie Direct.\n  JAQUES. And how oft did you say his beard was not well cut?\n  TOUCHSTONE. I durst go no further than the Lie Circumstantial, nor\n    he durst not give me the Lie Direct; and so we measur\'d swords\n    and parted.\n  JAQUES. Can you nominate in order now the degrees of the lie?\n  TOUCHSTONE. O, sir, we quarrel in print by the book, as you have\n    books for good manners. I will name you the degrees. The first,\n    the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the\n    Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the\n    Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance;\n    the seventh, the Lie Direct. All these you may avoid but the Lie\n    Direct; and you may avoid that too with an If. I knew when seven\n    justices could not take up a quarrel; but when the parties were\n    met themselves, one of them thought but of an If, as: \'If you  \n    said so, then I said so.\' And they shook hands, and swore\n    brothers. Your If is the only peace-maker; much virtue in If.\n  JAQUES. Is not this a rare fellow, my lord?\n    He\'s as good at any thing, and yet a fool.\n  DUKE SENIOR. He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the\n    presentation of that he shoots his wit:\n\n          Enter HYMEN, ROSALIND, and CELIA. Still MUSIC\n\n    HYMEN.    Then is there mirth in heaven,\n              When earthly things made even\n                Atone together.\n              Good Duke, receive thy daughter;\n              Hymen from heaven brought her,\n                Yea, brought her hither,\n              That thou mightst join her hand with his,\n              Whose heart within his bosom is.\n  ROSALIND. [To DUKE] To you I give myself, for I am yours.\n    [To ORLANDO] To you I give myself, for I am yours.\n  DUKE SENIOR. If there be truth in sight, you are my daughter.  \n  ORLANDO. If there be truth in sight, you are my Rosalind.\n  PHEBE. If sight and shape be true,\n    Why then, my love adieu!\n  ROSALIND. I\'ll have no father, if you be not he;\n    I\'ll have no husband, if you be not he;\n    Nor ne\'er wed woman, if you be not she.\n  HYMEN.    Peace, ho! I bar confusion;\n            \'Tis I must make conclusion\n              Of these most strange events.\n            Here\'s eight that must take hands\n            To join in Hymen\'s bands,\n              If truth holds true contents.\n            You and you no cross shall part;\n            You and you are heart in heart;\n            You to his love must accord,\n            Or have a woman to your lord;\n            You and you are sure together,\n            As the winter to foul weather.\n            Whiles a wedlock-hymn we sing,\n            Feed yourselves with questioning,  \n            That reason wonder may diminish,\n            How thus we met, and these things finish.\n\n                       SONG\n            Wedding is great Juno\'s crown;\n              O blessed bond of board and bed!\n            \'Tis Hymen peoples every town;\n              High wedlock then be honoured.\n            Honour, high honour, and renown,\n            To Hymen, god of every town!\n\n  DUKE SENIOR. O my dear niece, welcome thou art to me!\n    Even daughter, welcome in no less degree.\n  PHEBE. I will not eat my word, now thou art mine;\n    Thy faith my fancy to thee doth combine.\n\n                 Enter JAQUES de BOYS\n\n  JAQUES de BOYS. Let me have audience for a word or two.\n    I am the second son of old Sir Rowland,  \n    That bring these tidings to this fair assembly.\n    Duke Frederick, hearing how that every day\n    Men of great worth resorted to this forest,\n    Address\'d a mighty power; which were on foot,\n    In his own conduct, purposely to take\n    His brother here, and put him to the sword;\n    And to the skirts of this wild wood he came,\n    Where, meeting with an old religious man,\n    After some question with him, was converted\n    Both from his enterprise and from the world;\n    His crown bequeathing to his banish\'d brother,\n    And all their lands restor\'d to them again\n    That were with him exil\'d. This to be true\n    I do engage my life.\n  DUKE SENIOR. Welcome, young man.\n    Thou offer\'st fairly to thy brothers\' wedding:\n    To one, his lands withheld; and to the other,\n    A land itself at large, a potent dukedom.\n    First, in this forest let us do those ends\n    That here were well begun and well begot;  \n    And after, every of this happy number,\n    That have endur\'d shrewd days and nights with us,\n    Shall share the good of our returned fortune,\n    According to the measure of their states.\n    Meantime, forget this new-fall\'n dignity,\n    And fall into our rustic revelry.\n    Play, music; and you brides and bridegrooms all,\n    With measure heap\'d in joy, to th\' measures fall.\n  JAQUES. Sir, by your patience. If I heard you rightly,\n    The Duke hath put on a religious life,\n    And thrown into neglect the pompous court.\n  JAQUES DE BOYS. He hath.\n  JAQUES. To him will I. Out of these convertites\n    There is much matter to be heard and learn\'d.\n    [To DUKE] You to your former honour I bequeath;\n    Your patience and your virtue well deserves it.\n    [To ORLANDO] You to a love that your true faith doth merit;\n    [To OLIVER] You to your land, and love, and great allies\n    [To SILVIUS] You to a long and well-deserved bed;\n    [To TOUCHSTONE] And you to wrangling; for thy loving voyage  \n    Is but for two months victuall\'d.- So to your pleasures;\n    I am for other than for dancing measures.\n  DUKE SENIOR. Stay, Jaques, stay.\n  JAQUES. To see no pastime I. What you would have\n    I\'ll stay to know at your abandon\'d cave.               Exit\n  DUKE SENIOR. Proceed, proceed. We will begin these rites,\n    As we do trust they\'ll end, in true delights.    [A dance] Exeunt\n\nEPILOGUE\n                           EPILOGUE.\n  ROSALIND. It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but\n    it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue. If it\n    be true that good wine needs no bush, \'tis true that a good play\n    needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine they do use good bushes; and\n    good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a\n    case am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue, nor cannot\n    insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play! I am not\n    furnish\'d like a beggar; therefore to beg will not become me. My\n    way is to conjure you; and I\'ll begin with the women. I charge\n    you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of\n    this play as please you; and I charge you, O men, for the love\n    you bear to women- as I perceive by your simp\'ring none of you\n    hates them- that between you and the women the play may please.\n    If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that\n    pleas\'d me, complexions that lik\'d me, and breaths that I defied\n    not; and, I am sure, as many as have good beards, or good faces,\n    or sweet breaths, will, for my kind offer, when I make curtsy,\n    bid me farewell.\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n\n\n1593\n\nTHE COMEDY OF ERRORS\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\nSOLINUS, Duke of Ephesus\nAEGEON, a merchant of Syracuse\n\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS twin brothers and sons to\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE Aegion and Aemelia\n\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS twin brothers, and attendants on\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE the two Antipholuses\n\nBALTHAZAR, a merchant\nANGELO, a goldsmith\nFIRST MERCHANT, friend to Antipholus of Syracuse\nSECOND MERCHANT, to whom Angelo is a debtor\nPINCH, a schoolmaster\n\nAEMILIA, wife to AEgeon; an abbess at Ephesus\nADRIANA, wife to Antipholus of Ephesus\nLUCIANA, her sister\nLUCE, servant to Adriana\n\nA COURTEZAN\n\nGaoler, Officers, Attendants\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nEphesus\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\nTHE COMEDY OF ERRORS\n\nACT I. SCENE 1\n\nA hall in the DUKE\'S palace\n\nEnter the DUKE OF EPHESUS, AEGEON, the Merchant\nof Syracuse, GAOLER, OFFICERS, and other ATTENDANTS\n\nAEGEON. Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall,\n  And by the doom of death end woes and all.\nDUKE. Merchant of Syracuse, plead no more;\n  I am not partial to infringe our laws.\n  The enmity and discord which of late\n  Sprung from the rancorous outrage of your duke\n  To merchants, our well-dealing countrymen,\n  Who, wanting guilders to redeem their lives,\n  Have seal\'d his rigorous statutes with their bloods,\n  Excludes all pity from our threat\'ning looks.\n  For, since the mortal and intestine jars\n  \'Twixt thy seditious countrymen and us,\n  It hath in solemn synods been decreed,\n  Both by the Syracusians and ourselves,\n  To admit no traffic to our adverse towns;\n  Nay, more: if any born at Ephesus\n  Be seen at any Syracusian marts and fairs;\n  Again, if any Syracusian born\n  Come to the bay of Ephesus-he dies,\n  His goods confiscate to the Duke\'s dispose,\n  Unless a thousand marks be levied,\n  To quit the penalty and to ransom him.\n  Thy substance, valued at the highest rate,\n  Cannot amount unto a hundred marks;\n  Therefore by law thou art condemn\'d to die.\nAEGEON. Yet this my comfort: when your words are done,\n  My woes end likewise with the evening sun.\nDUKE. Well, Syracusian, say in brief the cause\n  Why thou departed\'st from thy native home,\n  And for what cause thou cam\'st to Ephesus.\nAEGEON. A heavier task could not have been impos\'d\n  Than I to speak my griefs unspeakable;\n  Yet, that the world may witness that my end\n  Was wrought by nature, not by vile offence,\n  I\'ll utter what my sorrow gives me leave.\n  In Syracuse was I born, and wed\n  Unto a woman, happy but for me,\n  And by me, had not our hap been bad.\n  With her I liv\'d in joy; our wealth increas\'d\n  By prosperous voyages I often made\n  To Epidamnum; till my factor\'s death,\n  And the great care of goods at random left,\n  Drew me from kind embracements of my spouse:\n  From whom my absence was not six months old,\n  Before herself, almost at fainting under\n  The pleasing punishment that women bear,\n  Had made provision for her following me,\n  And soon and safe arrived where I was.\n  There had she not been long but she became\n  A joyful mother of two goodly sons;\n  And, which was strange, the one so like the other\n  As could not be disdnguish\'d but by names.\n  That very hour, and in the self-same inn,\n  A mean woman was delivered\n  Of such a burden, male twins, both alike.\n  Those, for their parents were exceeding poor,\n  I bought, and brought up to attend my sons.\n  My wife, not meanly proud of two such boys,\n  Made daily motions for our home return;\n  Unwilling, I agreed. Alas! too soon\n  We came aboard.\n  A league from Epidamnum had we sail\'d\n  Before the always-wind-obeying deep\n  Gave any tragic instance of our harm:\n  But longer did we not retain much hope,\n  For what obscured light the heavens did grant\n  Did but convey unto our fearful minds\n  A doubtful warrant of immediate death;\n  Which though myself would gladly have embrac\'d,\n  Yet the incessant weepings of my wife,\n  Weeping before for what she saw must come,\n  And piteous plainings of the pretty babes,\n  That mourn\'d for fashion, ignorant what to fear,\n  Forc\'d me to seek delays for them and me.\n  And this it was, for other means was none:\n  The sailors sought for safety by our boat,\n  And left the ship, then sinking-ripe, to us;\n  My wife, more careful for the latter-born,\n  Had fast\'ned him unto a small spare mast,\n  Such as sea-faring men provide for storms;\n  To him one of the other twins was bound,\n  Whilst I had been like heedful of the other.\n  The children thus dispos\'d, my wife and I,\n  Fixing our eyes on whom our care was fix\'d,\n  Fast\'ned ourselves at either end the mast,\n  And, floating straight, obedient to the stream,\n  Was carried towards Corinth, as we thought.\n  At length the sun, gazing upon the earth,\n  Dispers\'d those vapours that offended us;\n  And, by the benefit of his wished light,\n  The seas wax\'d calm, and we discovered\n  Two ships from far making amain to us-\n  Of Corinth that, of Epidaurus this.\n  But ere they came-O, let me say no more!\n  Gather the sequel by that went before.\nDUKE. Nay, forward, old man, do not break off so;\n  For we may pity, though not pardon thee.\nAEGEON. O, had the gods done so, I had not now\n  Worthily term\'d them merciless to us!\n  For, ere the ships could meet by twice five leagues,\n  We were encount\'red by a mighty rock,\n  Which being violently borne upon,\n  Our helpful ship was splitted in the midst;\n  So that, in this unjust divorce of us,\n  Fortune had left to both of us alike\n  What to delight in, what to sorrow for.\n  Her part, poor soul, seeming as burdened\n  With lesser weight, but not with lesser woe,\n  Was carried with more speed before the wind;\n  And in our sight they three were taken up\n  By fishermen of Corinth, as we thought.\n  At length another ship had seiz\'d on us;\n  And, knowing whom it was their hap to save,\n  Gave healthful welcome to their ship-wreck\'d guests,\n  And would have reft the fishers of their prey,\n  Had not their bark been very slow of sail;\n  And therefore homeward did they bend their course.\n  Thus have you heard me sever\'d from my bliss,\n  That by misfortunes was my life prolong\'d,\n  To tell sad stories of my own mishaps.\nDUKE. And, for the sake of them thou sorrowest for,\n  Do me the favour to dilate at full\n  What have befall\'n of them and thee till now.\nAEGEON. My youngest boy, and yet my eldest care,\n  At eighteen years became inquisitive\n  After his brother, and importun\'d me\n  That his attendant-so his case was like,\n  Reft of his brother, but retain\'d his name-\n  Might bear him company in the quest of him;\n  Whom whilst I laboured of a love to see,\n  I hazarded the loss of whom I lov\'d.\n  Five summers have I spent in farthest Greece,\n  Roaming clean through the bounds of Asia,\n  And, coasting homeward, came to Ephesus;\n  Hopeless to find, yet loath to leave unsought\n  Or that or any place that harbours men.\n  But here must end the story of my life;\n  And happy were I in my timely death,\n  Could all my travels warrant me they live.\nDUKE. Hapless, Aegeon, whom the fates have mark\'d\n  To bear the extremity of dire mishap!\n  Now, trust me, were it not against our laws,\n  Against my crown, my oath, my dignity,\n  Which princes, would they, may not disannul,\n  My soul should sue as advocate for thee.\n  But though thou art adjudged to the death,\n  And passed sentence may not be recall\'d\n  But to our honour\'s great disparagement,\n  Yet will I favour thee in what I can.\n  Therefore, merchant, I\'ll limit thee this day\n  To seek thy help by beneficial hap.\n  Try all the friends thou hast in Ephesus;\n  Beg thou, or borrow, to make up the sum,\n  And live; if no, then thou art doom\'d to die.\n  Gaoler, take him to thy custody.\nGAOLER. I will, my lord.\nAEGEON. Hopeless and helpless doth Aegeon wend,\n  But to procrastinate his lifeless end.\n<Exeunt\n\n\nSCENE 2\n\nThe mart\n\nEnter ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE, DROMIO OF SYRACUSE, and FIRST MERCHANT\n\nFIRST MERCHANT. Therefore, give out you are of Epidamnum,\n  Lest that your goods too soon be confiscate.\n  This very day a Syracusian merchant\n  Is apprehended for arrival here;\n  And, not being able to buy out his life,\n  According to the statute of the town,\n  Dies ere the weary sun set in the west.\n  There is your money that I had to keep.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Go bear it to the Centaur, where we host.\n  And stay there, Dromio, till I come to thee.\n  Within this hour it will be dinner-time;\n  Till that, I\'ll view the manners of the town,\n  Peruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings,\n  And then return and sleep within mine inn;\n  For with long travel I am stiff and weary.\n  Get thee away.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Many a man would take you at your word,\n  And go indeed, having so good a mean.\n<Exit\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. A trusty villain, sir, that very oft,\n  When I am dull with care and melancholy,\n  Lightens my humour with his merry jests.\n  What, will you walk with me about the town,\n  And then go to my inn and dine with me?\nFIRST MERCHANT. I am invited, sir, to certain merchants,\n  Of whom I hope to make much benefit;\n  I crave your pardon. Soon at five o\'clock,\n  Please you, I\'ll meet with you upon the mart,\n  And afterward consort you till bed time.\n  My present business calls me from you now.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Farewell till then. I will go lose myself,\n  And wander up and down to view the city.\nFIRST MERCHANT. Sir, I commend you to your own content.\n<Exit FIRST MERCHANT\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. He that commends me to mine own content\n  Commends me to the thing I cannot get.\n  I to the world am like a drop of water\n  That in the ocean seeks another drop,\n  Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,\n  Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.\n  So I, to find a mother and a brother,\n  In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.\n\nEnter DROMIO OF EPHESUS\n\n  Here comes the almanac of my true date.\n  What now? How chance thou art return\'d so soon?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Return\'d so soon! rather approach\'d too late.\n  The capon burns, the pig falls from the spit;\n  The clock hath strucken twelve upon the bell-\n  My mistress made it one upon my cheek;\n  She is so hot because the meat is cold,\n  The meat is cold because you come not home,\n  You come not home because you have no stomach,\n  You have no stomach, having broke your fast;\n  But we, that know what \'tis to fast and pray,\n  Are penitent for your default to-day.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Stop in your wind, sir; tell me this, I pray:\n  Where have you left the money that I gave you?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. O-Sixpence that I had a Wednesday last\n  To pay the saddler for my mistress\' crupper?\n  The saddler had it, sir; I kept it not.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I am not in a sportive humour now;\n  Tell me, and dally not, where is the money?\n  We being strangers here, how dar\'st thou trust\n  So great a charge from thine own custody?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. I pray you jest, sir, as you sit at dinner.\n  I from my mistress come to you in post;\n  If I return, I shall be post indeed,\n  For she will score your fault upon my pate.\n  Methinks your maw, like mine, should be your clock,\n  And strike you home without a messenger.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Come, Dromio, come, these jests are out of season;\n  Reserve them till a merrier hour than this.\n  Where is the gold I gave in charge to thee?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. To me, sir? Why, you gave no gold to me.\n  ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Come on, sir knave, have done your foolishness,\n  And tell me how thou hast dispos\'d thy charge.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. My charge was but to fetch you from the mart\n  Home to your house, the Phoenix, sir, to dinner.\n  My mistress and her sister stays for you.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Now, as I am a Christian, answer me\n  In what safe place you have bestow\'d my money,\n  Or I shall break that merry sconce of yours,\n  That stands on tricks when I am undispos\'d.\n  Where is the thousand marks thou hadst of me?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. I have some marks of yours upon my pate,\n  Some of my mistress\' marks upon my shoulders,\n  But not a thousand marks between you both.\n  If I should pay your worship those again,\n  Perchance you will not bear them patiently.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thy mistress\' marks! What mistress, slave, hast thou?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Your worship\'s wife, my mistress at the Phoenix;\n  She that doth fast till you come home to dinner,\n  And prays that you will hie you home to dinner.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What, wilt thou flout me thus unto my face,\n  Being forbid? There, take you that, sir knave.\n[Beats him]\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. What mean you, sir? For God\'s sake hold your hands!\n  Nay, an you will not, sir, I\'ll take my heels.\n<Exit\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Upon my life, by some device or other\n  The villain is o\'erraught of all my money.\n  They say this town is full of cozenage;\n  As, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,\n  Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,\n  Soul-killing witches that deform the body,\n  Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,\n  And many such-like liberties of sin;\n  If it prove so, I will be gone the sooner.\n  I\'ll to the Centaur to go seek this slave.\n  I greatly fear my money is not safe.\n<Exit\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\nACT Il. SCENE 1\n\nThe house of ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS\n\nEnter ADRIANA, wife to ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS, with LUCIANA, her sister\n\nADRIANA. Neither my husband nor the slave return\'d\n  That in such haste I sent to seek his master!\n  Sure, Luciana, it is two o\'clock.\nLUCIANA. Perhaps some merchant hath invited him,\n  And from the mart he\'s somewhere gone to dinner;\n  Good sister, let us dine, and never fret.\n  A man is master of his liberty;\n  Time is their master, and when they see time,\n  They\'ll go or come. If so, be patient, sister.\nADRIANA. Why should their liberty than ours be more?\nLUCIANA. Because their business still lies out o\' door.\nADRIANA. Look when I serve him so, he takes it ill.\nLUCIANA. O, know he is the bridle of your will.\nADRIANA. There\'s none but asses will be bridled so.\nLUCIANA. Why, headstrong liberty is lash\'d with woe.\n  There\'s nothing situate under heaven\'s eye\n  But hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky.\n  The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls,\n  Are their males\' subjects, and at their controls.\n  Man, more divine, the master of all these,\n  Lord of the wide world and wild wat\'ry seas,\n  Indu\'d with intellectual sense and souls,\n  Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls,\n  Are masters to their females, and their lords;\n  Then let your will attend on their accords.\nADRIANA. This servitude makes you to keep unwed.\nLUCIANA. Not this, but troubles of the marriage-bed.\nADRIANA. But, were you wedded, you would bear some sway.\nLUCIANA. Ere I learn love, I\'ll practise to obey.\nADRIANA. How if your husband start some other where?\nLUCIANA. Till he come home again, I would forbear.\nADRIANA. Patience unmov\'d! no marvel though she pause:\n  They can be meek that have no other cause.\n  A wretched soul, bruis\'d with adversity,\n  We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;\n  But were we burd\'ned with like weight of pain,\n  As much, or more, we should ourselves complain.\n  So thou, that hast no unkind mate to grieve thee,\n  With urging helpless patience would relieve me;\n  But if thou live to see like right bereft,\n  This fool-begg\'d patience in thee will be left.\nLUCIANA. Well, I will marry one day, but to try.\n  Here comes your man, now is your husband nigh.\n\nEnter DROMIO OF EPHESUS\n\nADRIANA. Say, is your tardy master now at hand?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, he\'s at two hands with me, and that my two\n  ears can witness.\nADRIANA. Say, didst thou speak with him? Know\'st thou his mind?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Ay, ay, he told his mind upon mine ear.\n  Beshrew his hand, I scarce could understand it.\nLUCIANA. Spake he so doubtfully thou could\'st not feel his meaning?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, he struck so plainly I could to\n  well feel his blows; and withal so doubtfully that I could\n  scarce understand them.\nADRIANA. But say, I prithee, is he coming home?\n  It seems he hath great care to please his wife.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Why, mistress, sure my master is horn-mad.\nADRIANA. Horn-mad, thou villain!\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. I mean not cuckold-mad;\n  But, sure, he is stark mad.\n  When I desir\'d him to come home to dinner,\n  He ask\'d me for a thousand marks in gold.\n  "Tis dinner time\' quoth I; \'My gold!\' quoth he.\n  \'Your meat doth burn\' quoth I; \'My gold!\' quoth he.\n  \'Will you come home?\' quoth I; \'My gold!\' quoth he.\n  \'Where is the thousand marks I gave thee, villain?\'\n  \'The pig\' quoth I \'is burn\'d\'; \'My gold!\' quoth he.\n  \'My mistress, sir,\' quoth I; \'Hang up thy mistress;\n  I know not thy mistress; out on thy mistress.\'\nLUCIANA. Quoth who?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Quoth my master.\n  \'I know\' quoth he \'no house, no wife, no mistress.\'\n  So that my errand, due unto my tongue,\n  I thank him, I bare home upon my shoulders;\n  For, in conclusion, he did beat me there.\nADRIANA. Go back again, thou slave, and fetch him home.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Go back again, and be new beaten home?\n  For God\'s sake, send some other messenger.\nADRIANA. Back, slave, or I will break thy pate across.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. And he will bless that cross with other beating;\n  Between you I shall have a holy head.\nADRIANA. Hence, prating peasant! Fetch thy master home.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Am I so round with you, as you with me,\n  That like a football you do spurn me thus?\n  You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither;\n  If I last in this service, you must case me in leather.\n<Exit\nLUCIANA. Fie, how impatience loureth in your face!\nADRIANA. His company must do his minions grace,\n  Whilst I at home starve for a merry look.\n  Hath homely age th\' alluring beauty took\n  From my poor cheek? Then he hath wasted it.\n  Are my discourses dull? Barren my wit?\n  If voluble and sharp discourse be marr\'d,\n  Unkindness blunts it more than marble hard.\n  Do their gay vestments his affections bait?\n  That\'s not my fault; he\'s master of my state.\n  What ruins are in me that can be found\n  By him not ruin\'d? Then is he the ground\n  Of my defeatures. My decayed fair\n  A sunny look of his would soon repair.\n  But, too unruly deer, he breaks the pale,\n  And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale.\nLUCIANA. Self-harming jealousy! fie, beat it hence.\nADRIANA. Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense.\n  I know his eye doth homage otherwhere;\n  Or else what lets it but he would be here?\n  Sister, you know he promis\'d me a chain;\n  Would that alone a love he would detain,\n  So he would keep fair quarter with his bed!\n  I see the jewel best enamelled\n  Will lose his beauty; yet the gold bides still\n  That others touch and, often touching, will\n  Where gold; and no man that hath a name\n  By falsehood and corruption doth it shame.\n  Since that my beauty cannot please his eye,\n  I\'ll weep what\'s left away, and weeping die.\nLUCIANA. How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!\n<Exeunt\n\n\nSCENE 2\n\nThe mart\n\nEnter ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE\n\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. The gold I gave to Dromio is laid up\n  Safe at the Centaur, and the heedful slave\n  Is wand\'red forth in care to seek me out.\n  By computation and mine host\'s report\n  I could not speak with Dromio since at first\n  I sent him from the mart. See, here he comes.\n\nEnter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE\n\n  How now, sir, is your merry humour alter\'d?\n  As you love strokes, so jest with me again.\n  You know no Centaur! You receiv\'d no gold!\n  Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner!\n  My house was at the Phoenix! Wast thou mad,\n  That thus so madly thou didst answer me?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. What answer, sir? When spake I such a word?\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Even now, even here, not half an hour since.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I did not see you since you sent me hence,\n  Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Villain, thou didst deny the gold\'s receipt,\n  And told\'st me of a mistress and a dinner;\n  For which, I hope, thou felt\'st I was displeas\'d.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I am glad to see you in this merry vein.\n  What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth?\n  Think\'st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that.\n[Beating him]\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Hold, sir, for God\'s sake! Now your jest is earnest.\n  Upon what bargain do you give it me?\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Because that I familiarly sometimes\n  Do use you for my fool and chat with you,\n  Your sauciness will jest upon my love,\n  And make a common of my serious hours.\n  When the sun shines let foolish gnats make sport,\n  But creep in crannies when he hides his beams.\n  If you will jest with me, know my aspect,\n  And fashion your demeanour to my looks,\n  Or I will beat this method in your sconce.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Sconce, call you it? So you would\n  leave battering, I had rather have it a head. An you use\n  these blows long, I must get a sconce for my head, and\n  insconce it too; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders.\n  But I pray, sir, why am I beaten?\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Dost thou not know?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Shall I tell you why?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say\n  every why hath a wherefore.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, first for flouting me; and then wherefore,\n  For urging it the second time to me.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,\n  When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason?\n  Well, sir, I thank you.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thank me, sir! for what?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, for this something that you gave\n  me for nothing.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I\'ll make you amends next, to\n  give you nothing for something. But say, sir, is it dinnertime?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, sir; I think the meat wants that I have.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. In good time, sir, what\'s that?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Basting.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Well, sir, then \'twill be dry.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. If it be, sir, I pray you eat none of it.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Your reason?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me\n  another dry basting.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Well, sir, learn to jest in good time;\n  there\'s a time for all things.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I durst have denied that, before you\n  were so choleric.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. By what rule, sir?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the\n  plain bald pate of Father Time himself.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Let\'s hear it.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. There\'s no time for a man to recover\n  his hair that grows bald by nature.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. May he not do it by fine and recovery?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and\n  recover the lost hair of another man.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why is Time such a niggard of\n  hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Because it is a blessing that he bestows\n  on beasts, and what he hath scanted men in hair he hath\n  given them in wit.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, but there\'s many a man\n  hath more hair than wit.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Not a man of those but he hath the\n  wit to lose his hair.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, thou didst conclude hairy\n  men plain dealers without wit.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. The plainer dealer, the sooner lost;\n  yet he loseth it in a kind of jollity.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. For what reason?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. For two; and sound ones too.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Nay, not sound I pray you.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Sure ones, then.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Certain ones, then.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Name them.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. The one, to save the money that he spends in\n  tiring; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his\n  porridge.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. You would all this time have prov\'d there\n  is no time for all things.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, and did, sir; namely, no time to recover\n  hair lost by nature.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. But your reason was not substantial, why\n  there is no time to recover.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald,\n  and therefore to the world\'s end will have bald followers.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I knew \'t\'would be a bald conclusion. But,\n  soft, who wafts us yonder?\n\nEnter ADRIANA and LUCIANA\n\nADRIANA. Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown.\n  Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects;\n  I am not Adriana, nor thy wife.\n  The time was once when thou unurg\'d wouldst vow\n  That never words were music to thine ear,\n  That never object pleasing in thine eye,\n  That never touch well welcome to thy hand,\n  That never meat sweet-savour\'d in thy taste,\n  Unless I spake, or look\'d, or touch\'d, or carv\'d to thee.\n  How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,\n  That thou art then estranged from thyself?\n  Thyself I call it, being strange to me,\n  That, undividable, incorporate,\n  Am better than thy dear self\'s better part.\n  Ah, do not tear away thyself from me;\n  For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall\n  A drop of water in the breaking gulf,\n  And take unmingled thence that drop again\n  Without addition or diminishing,\n  As take from me thyself, and not me too.\n  How dearly would it touch thee to the quick,\n  Should\'st thou but hear I were licentious,\n  And that this body, consecrate to thee,\n  By ruffian lust should be contaminate!\n  Wouldst thou not spit at me and spurn at me,\n  And hurl the name of husband in my face,\n  And tear the stain\'d skin off my harlot-brow,\n  And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring,\n  And break it with a deep-divorcing vow?\n  I know thou canst, and therefore see thou do it.\n  I am possess\'d with an adulterate blot;\n  My blood is mingled with the crime of lust;\n  For if we two be one, and thou play false,\n  I do digest the poison of thy flesh,\n  Being strumpeted by thy contagion.\n  Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed;\n  I live dis-stain\'d, thou undishonoured.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not:\n  In Ephesus I am but two hours old,\n  As strange unto your town as to your talk,\n  Who, every word by all my wit being scann\'d,\n  Wants wit in all one word to understand.\nLUCIANA. Fie, brother, how the world is chang\'d with you!\n  When were you wont to use my sister thus?\n  She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. By Dromio?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. By me?\nADRIANA. By thee; and this thou didst return from him-\n  That he did buffet thee, and in his blows\n  Denied my house for his, me for his wife.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman?\n  What is the course and drift of your compact?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I, Sir? I never saw her till this time.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Villain, thou liest; for even her very words\n  Didst thou deliver to me on the mart.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I never spake with her in all my life.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. How can she thus, then, call us by our names,\n  Unless it be by inspiration?\nADRIANA. How ill agrees it with your gravity\n  To counterfeit thus grossly with your slave,\n  Abetting him to thwart me in my mood!\n  Be it my wrong you are from me exempt,\n  But wrong not that wrong with a more contempt.\n  Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine;\n  Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,\n  Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state,\n  Makes me with thy strength to communicate.\n  If aught possess thee from me, it is dross,\n  Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss;\n  Who all, for want of pruning, with intrusion\n  Infect thy sap, and live on thy confusion.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme.\n  What, was I married to her in my dream?\n  Or sleep I now, and think I hear all this?\n  What error drives our eyes and ears amiss?\n  Until I know this sure uncertainty,\n  I\'ll entertain the offer\'d fallacy.\nLUCIANA. Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O, for my beads! I cross me for sinner.\n  This is the fairy land. O spite of spites!\n  We talk with goblins, owls, and sprites.\n  If we obey them not, this will ensue:\n  They\'ll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue.\nLUCIANA. Why prat\'st thou to thyself, and answer\'st not?\n  Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot!\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I am transformed, master, am not I?\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I think thou art in mind, and so am I.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thou hast thine own form.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, I am an ape.\nLUCIANA. If thou art chang\'d to aught, \'tis to an ass.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. \'Tis true; she rides me, and I long for grass.\n  \'Tis so, I am an ass; else it could never be\n  But I should know her as well as she knows me.\nADRIANA. Come, come, no longer will I be a fool,\n  To put the finger in the eye and weep,\n  Whilst man and master laughs my woes to scorn.\n  Come, sir, to dinner. Dromio, keep the gate.\n  Husband, I\'ll dine above with you to-day,\n  And shrive you of a thousand idle pranks.\n  Sirrah, if any ask you for your master,\n  Say he dines forth, and let no creature enter.\n  Come, sister. Dromio, play the porter well.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?\n  Sleeping or waking, mad or well-advis\'d?\n  Known unto these, and to myself disguis\'d!\n  I\'ll say as they say, and persever so,\n  And in this mist at all adventures go.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, shall I be porter at the gate?\nADRIANA. Ay; and let none enter, lest I break your pate.\nLUCIANA. Come, come, Antipholus, we dine too late.\n<Exeunt\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 1\n\nBefore the house of ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS\n\nEnter ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS, DROMIO OF EPHESUS, ANGELO, and BALTHAZAR\n\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Good Signior Angelo, you must excuse us all;\n  My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours.\n  Say that I linger\'d with you at your shop\n  To see the making of her carcanet,\n  And that to-morrow you will bring it home.\n  But here\'s a villain that would face me down\n  He met me on the mart, and that I beat him,\n  And charg\'d him with a thousand marks in gold,\n  And that I did deny my wife and house.\n  Thou drunkard, thou, what didst thou mean by this?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Say what you will, sir, but I know what I know.\n  That you beat me at the mart I have your hand to show;\n  If the skin were parchment, and the blows you gave were ink,\n  Your own handwriting would tell you what I think.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I think thou art an ass.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Marry, so it doth appear\n  By the wrongs I suffer and the blows I bear.\n  I should kick, being kick\'d; and being at that pass,\n  You would keep from my heels, and beware of an ass.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Y\'are sad, Signior Balthazar; pray God our cheer\n  May answer my good will and your good welcome here.\nBALTHAZAR. I hold your dainties cheap, sir, and your welcome dear.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. O, Signior Balthazar, either at flesh or fish,\n  A table full of welcome makes scarce one dainty dish.\nBALTHAZAR. Good meat, sir, is common; that every churl affords.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And welcome more common; for that\'s nothing\n  but words.\nBALTHAZAR. Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Ay, to a niggardly host and more sparing guest.\n  But though my cates be mean, take them in good part;\n  Better cheer may you have, but not with better heart.\n  But, soft, my door is lock\'d; go bid them let us in.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Maud, Bridget, Marian, Cicely, Gillian, Ginn!\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. [Within] Mome, malt-horse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch!\n  Either get thee from the door, or sit down at the hatch.\n  Dost thou conjure for wenches, that thou call\'st for such store,\n  When one is one too many? Go get thee from the door.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. What patch is made our porter?\n  My master stays in the street.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  Let him walk from whence he came,\n    lest he catch cold on\'s feet.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Who talks within there? Ho, open the door!\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  Right, sir; I\'ll tell you when,\n    an you\'ll tell me wherefore.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Wherefore? For my dinner;\n    I have not din\'d to-day.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  Nor to-day here you must not;\n    come again when you may.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. What art thou that keep\'st me out\n    from the house I owe?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  The porter for this time,\n    sir, and my name is Dromio.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. O Villain, thou hast stol\'n both mine\n    office and my name!\n  The one ne\'er got me credit, the other mickle blame.\n  If thou hadst been Dromio to-day in my place,\n  Thou wouldst have chang\'d thy face for a name, or thy name for an ass.\n\nEnter LUCE, within\n\nLUCE.  [Within]  What a coil is there, Dromio? Who are those at the gate?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Let my master in, Luce.\nLUCE.  [Within]  Faith, no, he comes too late;\n  And so tell your master.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. O Lord, I must laugh!\n  Have at you with a proverb: Shall I set in my staff?\nLUCE.  [Within]  Have at you with another: that\'s-when? can you tell?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  If thy name be called Luce\n    -Luce, thou hast answer\'d him well.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Do you hear, you minion? You\'ll let us in, I hope?\nLUCE.  [Within]  I thought to have ask\'d you.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  And you said no.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. SO, Come, help: well struck! there was blow for blow.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Thou baggage, let me in.\nLUCE.  [Within]  Can you tell for whose sake?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Master, knock the door hard.\nLUCE.  [Within]  Let him knock till it ache.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. You\'ll cry for this, minion, if beat the door down.\nLUCE.  [Within] What needs all that, and a pair of stocks in the town?\n\nEnter ADRIANA, within\n\nADRIANA.  [Within]  Who is that at the door, that keeps all this noise?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  By my troth, your town is\n    troubled with unruly boys.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Are you there, wife? You might\n    have come before.\nADRIANA.  [Within]  Your wife, sir knave! Go get you from the door.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. If YOU went in pain, master, this \'knave\' would go sore.\nANGELO. Here is neither cheer, sir, nor welcome; we would fain have either.\nBALTHAZAR. In debating which was best, we shall part with neither.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. They stand at the door, master; bid them welcome hither.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. There is something in the wind, that we cannot get in.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. You would say so, master, if your garments were thin.\n  Your cake here is warm within; you stand here in the cold;\n  It would make a man mad as a buck to be so bought and sold.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Go fetch me something; I\'ll break ope the gate.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  Break any breaking here,\n    and I\'ll break your knave\'s pate.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. A man may break a word with you,\n    sir; and words are but wind;\n  Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  It seems thou want\'st breaking;\n    out upon thee, hind!\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Here\'s too much \'out upon thee!\' pray thee let me in.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  Ay, when fowls have no\n    feathers and fish have no fin.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Well, I\'ll break in; go borrow me a crow.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. A crow without feather? Master, mean you so?\n  For a fish without a fin, there\'s a fowl without a feather;\n  If a crow help us in, sirrah, we\'ll pluck a crow together.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Go get thee gone; fetch me an iron crow.\nBALTHAZAR. Have patience, sir; O, let it not be so!\n  Herein you war against your reputation,\n  And draw within the compass of suspect\n  Th\' unviolated honour of your wife.\n  Once this-your long experience of her wisdom,\n  Her sober virtue, years, and modesty,\n  Plead on her part some cause to you unknown;\n  And doubt not, sir, but she will well excuse\n  Why at this time the doors are made against you.\n  Be rul\'d by me: depart in patience,\n  And let us to the Tiger all to dinner;\n  And, about evening, come yourself alone\n  To know the reason of this strange restraint.\n  If by strong hand you offer to break in\n  Now in the stirring passage of the day,\n  A vulgar comment will be made of it,\n  And that supposed by the common rout\n  Against your yet ungalled estimation\n  That may with foul intrusion enter in\n  And dwell upon your grave when you are dead;\n  For slander lives upon succession,\n  For ever hous\'d where it gets possession.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. You have prevail\'d. I will depart in quiet,\n  And in despite of mirth mean to be merry.\n  I know a wench of excellent discourse,\n  Pretty and witty; wild, and yet, too, gentle;\n  There will we dine. This woman that I mean,\n  My wife-but, I protest, without desert-\n  Hath oftentimes upbraided me withal;\n  To her will we to dinner.  [To ANGELO]  Get you home\n  And fetch the chain; by this I know \'tis made.\n  Bring it, I pray you, to the Porpentine;\n  For there\'s the house. That chain will I bestow-\n  Be it for nothing but to spite my wife-\n  Upon mine hostess there; good sir, make haste.\n  Since mine own doors refuse to entertain me,\n  I\'ll knock elsewhere, to see if they\'ll disdain me.\nANGELO. I\'ll meet you at that place some hour hence.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Do so; this jest shall cost me some expense.\n<Exeunt\n\n\nSCENE 2\n\nBefore the house of ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS\n\nEnter LUCIANA with ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE\n\nLUCIANA. And may it be that you have quite forgot\n  A husband\'s office? Shall, Antipholus,\n  Even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot?\n  Shall love, in building, grow so ruinous?\n  If you did wed my sister for her wealth,\n  Then for her wealth\'s sake use her with more kindness;\n  Or, if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth;\n  Muffle your false love with some show of blindness;\n  Let not my sister read it in your eye;\n  Be not thy tongue thy own shame\'s orator;\n  Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty;\n  Apparel vice like virtue\'s harbinger;\n  Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted;\n  Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint;\n  Be secret-false. What need she be acquainted?\n  What simple thief brags of his own attaint?\n  \'Tis double wrong to truant with your bed\n  And let her read it in thy looks at board;\n  Shame hath a bastard fame, well managed;\n  Ill deeds is doubled with an evil word.\n  Alas, poor women! make us but believe,\n  Being compact of credit, that you love us;\n  Though others have the arm, show us the sleeve;\n  We in your motion turn, and you may move us.\n  Then, gentle brother, get you in again;\n  Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife.\n  \'Tis holy sport to be a little vain\n  When the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Sweet mistress-what your name is else, I know not,\n  Nor by what wonder you do hit of mine-\n  Less in your knowledge and your grace you show not\n  Than our earth\'s wonder-more than earth, divine.\n  Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak;\n  Lay open to my earthy-gross conceit,\n  Smoth\'red in errors, feeble, shallow, weak,\n  The folded meaning of your words\' deceit.\n  Against my soul\'s pure truth why labour you\n  To make it wander in an unknown field?\n  Are you a god? Would you create me new?\n  Transform me, then, and to your pow\'r I\'ll yield.\n  But if that I am I, then well I know\n  Your weeping sister is no wife of mine,\n  Nor to her bed no homage do I owe;\n  Far more, far more, to you do I decline.\n  O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,\n  To drown me in thy sister\'s flood of tears.\n  Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote;\n  Spread o\'er the silver waves thy golden hairs,\n  And as a bed I\'ll take them, and there he;\n  And in that glorious supposition think\n  He gains by death that hath such means to die.\n  Let Love, being light, be drowned if she sink.\nLUCIANA. What, are you mad, that you do reason so?\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Not mad, but mated; how, I do not know.\nLUCIANA. It is a fault that springeth from your eye.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by.\nLUCIANA. Gaze where you should, and that will clear your sight.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night.\nLUCIANA. Why call you me love? Call my sister so.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thy sister\'s sister.\nLUCIANA. That\'s my sister.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. No;\n  It is thyself, mine own self\'s better part;\n  Mine eye\'s clear eye, my dear heart\'s dearer heart,\n  My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope\'s aim,\n  My sole earth\'s heaven, and my heaven\'s claim.\nLUCIANA. All this my sister is, or else should be.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Call thyself sister, sweet, for I am thee;\n  Thee will I love, and with thee lead my life;\n  Thou hast no husband yet, nor I no wife.\n  Give me thy hand.\nLUCIANA. O, soft, sir, hold you still;\n  I\'ll fetch my sister to get her good will.\n<Exit LUCIANA\n\nEnter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.\n\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, how now, Dromio! Where run\'st thou\n  so fast?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Do you know me, sir? Am I Dromio?\n  Am I your man? Am I myself?\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thou art Dromio, thou art my\n  man, thou art thyself.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I am an ass, I am a woman\'s man, and besides\n  myself.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What woman\'s man, and how besides thyself?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due\n  to a woman-one that claims me, one that haunts me, one\n  that will have me.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What claim lays she to thee?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, such claim as you would\n  lay to your horse; and she would have me as a beast: not\n  that, I being a beast, she would have me; but that she,\n  being a very beastly creature, lays claim to me.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What is she?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. A very reverent body; ay, such a one\n  as a man may not speak of without he say \'Sir-reverence.\'\n  I have but lean luck in the match, and yet is she a\n  wondrous fat marriage.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. How dost thou mean a fat marriage?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, she\'s the kitchen-wench,\n  and all grease; and I know not what use to put her to but\n  to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light.\n  I warrant, her rags and the tallow in them will burn\n  Poland winter. If she lives till doomsday, she\'ll burn\n  week longer than the whole world.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What complexion is she of?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Swart, like my shoe; but her face\n  nothing like so clean kept; for why, she sweats, a man may\n  go over shoes in the grime of it.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. That\'s a fault that water will mend.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, sir, \'tis in grain; Noah\'s flood\n  could not do it.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What\'s her name?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Nell, sir; but her name and three\n  quarters, that\'s an ell and three quarters, will not measure\n  her from hip to hip.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Then she bears some breadth?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No longer from head to foot than\n  from hip to hip: she is spherical, like a globe; I could find\n  out countries in her.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. In what part of her body stands Ireland?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, in her buttocks; I found it out by\n  the bogs.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where Scotland?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I found it by the barrenness, hard in\n  the palm of the hand.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where France?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. In her forehead, arm\'d and reverted,\n  making war against her heir.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where England?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I look\'d for the chalky cliffs, but I\n  could find no whiteness in them; but I guess it stood in her\n  chin, by the salt rheum that ran between France and it.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where Spain?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Faith, I saw it not, but I felt it hot in\n  her breath.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where America, the Indies?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O, sir, upon her nose, an o\'er embellished with\n  rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect to the\n  hot breath of Spain; who sent whole armadoes of caracks to be\n  ballast at her nose.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O, Sir, I did not look so low. To\n  conclude: this drudge or diviner laid claim to me; call\'d me\n  Dromio; swore I was assur\'d to her; told me what privy\n  marks I had about me, as, the mark of my shoulder, the\n  mole in my neck, the great wart on my left arm, that I,\n  amaz\'d, ran from her as a witch.\n  And, I think, if my breast had not been made of faith,\n    and my heart of steel,\n  She had transform\'d me to a curtal dog, and made me turn i\' th\' wheel.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Go hie thee presently post to the road;\n  An if the wind blow any way from shore,\n  I will not harbour in this town to-night.\n  If any bark put forth, come to the mart,\n  Where I will walk till thou return to me.\n  If every one knows us, and we know none,\n  \'Tis time, I think, to trudge, pack and be gone.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. As from a bear a man would run for life,\n  So fly I from her that would be my wife.\n<Exit\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. There\'s none but witches do inhabit here,\n  And therefore \'tis high time that I were hence.\n  She that doth call me husband, even my soul\n  Doth for a wife abhor. But her fair sister,\n  Possess\'d with such a gentle sovereign grace,\n  Of such enchanting presence and discourse,\n  Hath almost made me traitor to myself;\n  But, lest myself be guilty to self-wrong,\n  I\'ll stop mine ears against the mermaid\'s song.\n\nEnter ANGELO with the chain\n\nANGELO. Master Antipholus!\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Ay, that\'s my name.\nANGELO. I know it well, sir. Lo, here is the chain.\n  I thought to have ta\'en you at the Porpentine;\n  The chain unfinish\'d made me stay thus long.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What is your will that I shall do with this?\nANGELO. What please yourself, sir; I have made it for you.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Made it for me, sir! I bespoke it not.\nANGELO. Not once nor twice, but twenty times you have.\n  Go home with it, and please your wife withal;\n  And soon at supper-time I\'ll visit you,\n  And then receive my money for the chain.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I pray you, sir, receive the money now,\n  For fear you ne\'er see chain nor money more.\nANGELO. You are a merry man, sir; fare you well.\n<Exit\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What I should think of this cannot tell:\n  But this I think, there\'s no man is so vain\n  That would refuse so fair an offer\'d chain.\n  I see a man here needs not live by shifts,\n  When in the streets he meets such golden gifts.\n  I\'ll to the mart, and there for Dromio stay;\n  If any ship put out, then straight away.\n<Exit\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 1\n\nA public place\n\nEnter SECOND MERCHANT, ANGELO, and an OFFICER\n\nSECOND MERCHANT. You know since Pentecost the sum is due,\n  And since I have not much importun\'d you;\n  Nor now I had not, but that I am bound\n  To Persia, and want guilders for my voyage.\n  Therefore make present satisfaction,\n  Or I\'ll attach you by this officer.\nANGELO. Even just the sum that I do owe to you\n  Is growing to me by Antipholus;\n  And in the instant that I met with you\n  He had of me a chain; at five o\'clock\n  I shall receive the money for the same.\n  Pleaseth you walk with me down to his house,\n  I will discharge my bond, and thank you too.\n\nEnter ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS, and DROMIO OF EPHESUS, from the COURTEZAN\'S\n\nOFFICER. That labour may you save; see where he comes.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. While I go to the goldsmith\'s house, go thou\n  And buy a rope\'s end; that will I bestow\n  Among my wife and her confederates,\n  For locking me out of my doors by day.\n  But, soft, I see the goldsmith. Get thee gone;\n  Buy thou a rope, and bring it home to me.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. I buy a thousand pound a year; I buy a rope.\n<Exit DROMIO\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. A man is well holp up that trusts to you!\n  I promised your presence and the chain;\n  But neither chain nor goldsmith came to me.\n  Belike you thought our love would last too long,\n  If it were chain\'d together, and therefore came not.\nANGELO. Saving your merry humour, here\'s the note\n  How much your chain weighs to the utmost carat,\n  The fineness of the gold, and chargeful fashion,\n  Which doth amount to three odd ducats more\n  Than I stand debted to this gentleman.\n  I pray you see him presently discharg\'d,\n  For he is bound to sea, and stays but for it.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I am not furnish\'d with the present money;\n  Besides, I have some business in the town.\n  Good signior, take the stranger to my house,\n  And with you take the chain, and bid my wife\n  Disburse the sum on the receipt thereof.\n  Perchance I will be there as soon as you.\nANGELO. Then you will bring the chain to her yourself?\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. No; bear it with you, lest I come not time enough.\nANGELO. Well, sir, I will. Have you the chain about you?\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. An if I have not, sir, I hope you have;\n  Or else you may return without your money.\nANGELO. Nay, come, I pray you, sir, give me the chain;\n  Both wind and tide stays for this gentleman,\n  And I, to blame, have held him here too long.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Good Lord! you use this dalliance to excuse\n  Your breach of promise to the Porpentine;\n  I should have chid you for not bringing it,\n  But, like a shrew, you first begin to brawl.\nSECOND MERCHANT. The hour steals on; I pray you, sir, dispatch.\nANGELO. You hear how he importunes me-the chain!\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Why, give it to my wife, and fetch your money.\nANGELO. Come, come, you know I gave it you even now.\n  Either send the chain or send by me some token.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Fie, now you run this humour out of breath!\n  Come, where\'s the chain? I pray you let me see it.\nSECOND MERCHANT. My business cannot brook this dalliance.\n  Good sir, say whe\'r you\'ll answer me or no;\n  If not, I\'ll leave him to the officer.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I answer you! What should I answer you?\nANGELO. The money that you owe me for the chain.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I owe you none till I receive the chain.\nANGELO. You know I gave it you half an hour since.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. You gave me none; you wrong me much to say so.\nANGELO. You wrong me more, sir, in denying it.\n  Consider how it stands upon my credit.\nSECOND MERCHANT. Well, officer, arrest him at my suit.\nOFFICER. I do; and charge you in the Duke\'s name to obey me.\nANGELO. This touches me in reputation.\n  Either consent to pay this sum for me,\n  Or I attach you by this officer.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Consent to pay thee that I never had!\n  Arrest me, foolish fellow, if thou dar\'st.\nANGELO. Here is thy fee; arrest him, officer.\n  I would not spare my brother in this case,\n  If he should scorn me so apparently.\nOFFICER. I do arrest you, sir; you hear the suit.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I do obey thee till I give thee bail.\n  But, sirrah, you shall buy this sport as dear\n  As all the metal in your shop will answer.\nANGELO. Sir, sir, I shall have law in Ephesus,\n  To your notorious shame, I doubt it not.\n\nEnter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE, from the bay\n\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, there\'s a bark of Epidamnum\n  That stays but till her owner comes aboard,\n  And then, sir, she bears away. Our fraughtage, sir,\n  I have convey\'d aboard; and I have bought\n  The oil, the balsamum, and aqua-vitx.\n  The ship is in her trim; the merry wind\n  Blows fair from land; they stay for nought at an\n  But for their owner, master, and yourself.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. How now! a madman? Why, thou peevish sheep,\n  What ship of Epidamnum stays for me?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. A ship you sent me to, to hire waftage.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. THOU drunken slave! I sent the for a rope;\n  And told thee to what purpose and what end.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. YOU sent me for a rope\'s end as soon-\n  You sent me to the bay, sir, for a bark.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I Will debate this matter at more leisure,\n  And teach your ears to list me with more heed.\n  To Adriana, villain, hie thee straight;\n  Give her this key, and tell her in the desk\n  That\'s cover\'d o\'er with Turkish tapestry\n  There is a purse of ducats; let her send it.\n  Tell her I am arrested in the street,\n  And that shall bail me; hie thee, slave, be gone.\n  On, officer, to prison till it come.\n<Exeunt all but DROMIO\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. To Adriana! that is where we din\'d,\n  Where Dowsabel did claim me for her husband.\n  She is too big, I hope, for me to compass.\n  Thither I must, although against my will,\n  For servants must their masters\' minds fulfil.\n<Exit\n\n\nSCENE 2\n\nThe house of ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS\n\nEnter ADRIANA and LUCIANA\n\nADRIANA. Ah, Luciana, did he tempt thee so?\n  Might\'st thou perceive austerely in his eye\n  That he did plead in earnest? Yea or no?\n  Look\'d he or red or pale, or sad or merrily?\n  What observation mad\'st thou in this case\n  Of his heart\'s meteors tilting in his face?\nLUCIANA. First he denied you had in him no right.\nADRIANA. He meant he did me none-the more my spite.\nLUCIANA. Then swore he that he was a stranger here.\nADRIANA. And true he swore, though yet forsworn he were.\nLUCIANA. Then pleaded I for you.\nADRIANA. And what said he?\nLUCIANA. That love I begg\'d for you he begg\'d of me.\nADRIANA. With what persuasion did he tempt thy love?\nLUCIANA. With words that in an honest suit might move.\n  First he did praise my beauty, then my speech.\nADRIANA. Didst speak him fair?\nLUCIANA. Have patience, I beseech.\nADRIANA. I cannot, nor I will not hold me still;\n  My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will.\n  He is deformed, crooked, old, and sere,\n  Ill-fac\'d, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere;\n  Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind;\n  Stigmatical in making, worse in mind.\nLUCIANA. Who would be jealous then of such a one?\n  No evil lost is wail\'d when it is gone.\nADRIANA. Ah, but I think him better than I say,\n  And yet would herein others\' eyes were worse.\n  Far from her nest the lapwing cries away;\n  My heart prays for him, though my tongue do curse.\n\nEnter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.\n\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Here go-the desk, the purse. Sweet\n  now, make haste.\nLUCIANA. How hast thou lost thy breath?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. By running fast.\nADRIANA. Where is thy master, Dromio? Is he well?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, he\'s in Tartar limbo, worse than hell.\n  A devil in an everlasting garment hath him;\n  One whose hard heart is button\'d up with steel;\n  A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough;\n  A wolf, nay worse, a fellow all in buff;\n  A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that countermands\n  The passages of alleys, creeks, and narrow lands;\n  A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry-foot well;\n  One that, before the Judgment, carries poor souls to hell.\nADRIANA. Why, man, what is the matter?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I do not know the matter; he is rested on the case.\nADRIANA. What, is he arrested? Tell me, at whose suit?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I know not at whose suit he is arrested well;\n  But he\'s in a suit of buff which \'rested him, that can I tell.\n  Will you send him, mistress, redemption, the money in his desk?\nADRIANA. Go fetch it, sister.  [Exit LUCIANA]  This I wonder at:\n  Thus he unknown to me should be in debt.\n  Tell me, was he arrested on a band?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. on a band, but on a stronger thing,\n  A chain, a chain. Do you not hear it ring?\nADRIANA. What, the chain?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, no, the bell; \'tis time that I were gone.\n  It was two ere I left him, and now the clock strikes one.\nADRIANA. The hours come back! That did I never hear.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O yes. If any hour meet a sergeant,\n    \'a turns back for very fear.\nADRIANA. As if Time were in debt! How fondly dost thou reason!\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Time is a very bankrupt, and owes\n    more than he\'s worth to season.\n  Nay, he\'s a thief too: have you not heard men say\n  That Time comes stealing on by night and day?\n  If \'a be in debt and theft, and a sergeant in the way,\n  Hath he not reason to turn back an hour in a day?\n\nRe-enter LUCIANA with a purse\n\nADRIANA. Go, Dromio, there\'s the money; bear it straight,\n  And bring thy master home immediately.\n  Come, sister; I am press\'d down with conceit-\n  Conceit, my comfort and my injury.\n<Exeunt\n\n\nSCENE 3\n\nThe mart\n\nEnter ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE\n\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. There\'s not a man I meet but doth salute me\n  As if I were their well-acquainted friend;\n  And every one doth call me by my name.\n  Some tender money to me, some invite me,\n  Some other give me thanks for kindnesses,\n  Some offer me commodities to buy;\n  Even now a tailor call\'d me in his shop,\n  And show\'d me silks that he had bought for me,\n  And therewithal took measure of my body.\n  Sure, these are but imaginary wiles,\n  And Lapland sorcerers inhabit here.\n\nEnter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE\n\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, here\'s the gold you sent me\n  for. What, have you got the picture of old Adam new-apparell\'d?\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What gold is this? What Adam dost thou mean?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Not that Adam that kept the Paradise,\n  but that Adam that keeps the prison; he that goes in the\n  calf\'s skin that was kill\'d for the Prodigal; he that came behind\n  you, sir, like an evil angel, and bid you forsake your liberty.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I understand thee not.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No? Why, \'tis a plain case: he that\n  went, like a bass-viol, in a case of leather; the man, sir,\n  that, when gentlemen are tired, gives them a sob, and rest\n  them; he, sir, that takes pity on decayed men, and give\n  them suits of durance; he that sets up his rest to do more\n  exploits with his mace than a morris-pike.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What, thou mean\'st an officer?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Ay, sir, the sergeant of the band;\n  that brings any man to answer it that breaks his band; on\n  that thinks a man always going to bed, and says \'God give\n  you good rest!\'\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Well, sir, there rest in your foolery. Is\n  there any ship puts forth to-night? May we be gone?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Why, sir, I brought you word an\n  hour since that the bark Expedition put forth to-night; and\n  then were you hind\'red by the sergeant, to tarry for the\n  boy Delay. Here are the angels that you sent for to deliver you.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. The fellow is distract, and so am I;\n  And here we wander in illusions.\n  Some blessed power deliver us from hence!\n\nEnter a COURTEZAN\n\nCOURTEZAN. Well met, well met, Master Antipholus.\n  I see, sir, you have found the goldsmith now.\n  Is that the chain you promis\'d me to-day?\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Satan, avoid! I charge thee, tempt me not.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, is this Mistress Satan?\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. It is the devil.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Nay, she is worse, she is the devil\'s\n  dam, and here she comes in the habit of a light wench; and\n  thereof comes that the wenches say \'God damn me!\' That\'s\n  as much to say \'God make me a light wench!\' It is written\n  they appear to men like angels of light; light is an effect\n  of fire, and fire will burn; ergo, light wenches will burn.\n  Come not near her.\nCOURTEZAN. Your man and you are marvellous merry, sir.\n  Will you go with me? We\'ll mend our dinner here.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, if you do, expect spoon-meat,\n  or bespeak a long spoon.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, Dromio?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, he must have a long spoon\n  that must eat with the devil.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Avoid then, fiend! What tell\'st thou me of supping?\n  Thou art, as you are all, a sorceress;\n  I conjure thee to leave me and be gone.\nCOURTEZAN. Give me the ring of mine you had at dinner,\n  Or, for my diamond, the chain you promis\'d,\n  And I\'ll be gone, sir, and not trouble you.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Some devils ask but the parings of one\'s nail,\n  A rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin,\n  A nut, a cherry-stone;\n  But she, more covetous, would have a chain.\n  Master, be wise; an if you give it her,\n  The devil will shake her chain, and fright us with it.\nCOURTEZAN. I pray you, sir, my ring, or else the chain;\n  I hope you do not mean to cheat me so.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Avaunt, thou witch! Come, Dromio, let us go.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. \'Fly pride\' says the peacock. Mistress, that you know.\n<Exeunt ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE and DROMIO OF SYRACUSE\nCOURTEZAN. Now, out of doubt, Antipholus is mad,\n  Else would he never so demean himself.\n  A ring he hath of mine worth forty ducats,\n  And for the same he promis\'d me a chain;\n  Both one and other he denies me now.\n  The reason that I gather he is mad,\n  Besides this present instance of his rage,\n  Is a mad tale he told to-day at dinner\n  Of his own doors being shut against his entrance.\n  Belike his wife, acquainted with his fits,\n  On purpose shut the doors against his way.\n  My way is now to hie home to his house,\n  And tell his wife that, being lunatic,\n  He rush\'d into my house and took perforce\n  My ring away. This course I fittest choose,\n  For forty ducats is too much to lose.\n<Exit\n\n\nSCENE 4\n\nA street\n\nEnter ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS with the OFFICER\n\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Fear me not, man; I will not break away.\n  I\'ll give thee, ere I leave thee, so much money,\n  To warrant thee, as I am \'rested for.\n  My wife is in a wayward mood to-day,\n  And will not lightly trust the messenger.\n  That I should be attach\'d in Ephesus,\n  I tell you \'twill sound harshly in her cars.\n\nEnter DROMIO OF EPHESUS, with a rope\'s-end\n\n  Here comes my man; I think he brings the money.\n  How now, sir! Have you that I sent you for?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Here\'s that, I warrant you, will pay them all.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. But where\'s the money?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Why, sir, I gave the money for the rope.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Five hundred ducats, villain, for rope?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. I\'ll serve you, sir, five hundred at the rate.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. To what end did I bid thee hie thee home?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. To a rope\'s-end, sir; and to that end am I\n  return\'d.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And to that end, sir, I will welcome you.\n[Beating him]\nOFFICER. Good sir, be patient.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, \'tis for me to be patient; I am in\n  adversity.\nOFFICER. Good now, hold thy tongue.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, rather persuade him to hold his hands.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Thou whoreson, senseless villain!\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. I would I were senseless, sir, that I\n  might not feel your blows.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Thou art sensible in nothing but\n  blows, and so is an ass.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. I am an ass indeed; you may prove it\n  by my long \'ears. I have served him from the hour of my\n  nativity to this instant, and have nothing at his hands for\n  my service but blows. When I am cold he heats me with\n  beating; when I am warm he cools me with beating. I am\n  wak\'d with it when I sleep; rais\'d with it when I sit; driven\n  out of doors with it when I go from home; welcom\'d home\n  with it when I return; nay, I bear it on my shoulders as\n  beggar wont her brat; and I think, when he hath lam\'d me,\n  I shall beg with it from door to door.\n\nEnter ADRIANA, LUCIANA, the COURTEZAN, and a SCHOOLMASTER\ncall\'d PINCH\n\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Come, go along; my wife is coming yonder.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Mistress, \'respice finem,\' respect your end; or\n  rather, to prophesy like the parrot, \'Beware the rope\'s-end.\'\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Wilt thou still talk?\n[Beating him]\nCOURTEZAN. How say you now? Is not your husband mad?\nADRIANA. His incivility confirms no less.\n  Good Doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer:\n  Establish him in his true sense again,\n  And I will please you what you will demand.\nLUCIANA. Alas, how fiery and how sharp he looks!\nCOURTEZAN. Mark how he trembles in his ecstasy.\nPINCH. Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. There is my hand, and let it feel your ear.\n[Striking him]\nPINCH. I charge thee, Satan, hous\'d within this man,\n  To yield possession to my holy prayers,\n  And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight.\n  I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Peace, doting wizard, peace! I am not mad.\nADRIANA. O, that thou wert not, poor distressed soul!\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. You minion, you, are these your customers?\n  Did this companion with the saffron face\n  Revel and feast it at my house to-day,\n  Whilst upon me the guilty doors were shut,\n  And I denied to enter in my house?\nADRIANA. O husband, God doth know you din\'d at home,\n  Where would you had remain\'d until this time,\n  Free from these slanders and this open shame!\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Din\'d at home! Thou villain, what sayest thou?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Sir, Sooth to say, you did not dine at home.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Were not my doors lock\'d up and I shut out?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Perdie, your doors were lock\'d and you shut out.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And did not she herself revile me there?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Sans fable, she herself revil\'d you there.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Did not her kitchen-maid rail, taunt, and scorn me?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Certes, she did; the kitchen-vestal scorn\'d you.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And did not I in rage depart from thence?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. In verity, you did. My bones bear witness,\n  That since have felt the vigour of his rage.\nADRIANA. Is\'t good to soothe him in these contraries?\nPINCH. It is no shame; the fellow finds his vein,\n  And, yielding to him, humours well his frenzy.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Thou hast suborn\'d the goldsmith to arrest me.\nADRIANA. Alas, I sent you money to redeem you,\n  By Dromio here, who came in haste for it.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Money by me! Heart and goodwill you might,\n  But surely, master, not a rag of money.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Went\'st not thou to her for purse of ducats?\nADRIANA. He came to me, and I deliver\'d it.\nLUCIANA. And I am witness with her that she did.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. God and the rope-maker bear me witness\n  That I was sent for nothing but a rope!\nPINCH. Mistress, both man and master is possess\'d;\n  I know it by their pale and deadly looks.\n  They must be bound, and laid in some dark room.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Say, wherefore didst thou lock me forth to-day?\n  And why dost thou deny the bag of gold?\nADRIANA. I did not, gentle husband, lock thee forth.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. And, gentle master, I receiv\'d no gold;\n  But I confess, sir, that we were lock\'d out.\nADRIANA. Dissembling villain, thou speak\'st false in both.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Dissembling harlot, thou art false in all,\n  And art confederate with a damned pack\n  To make a loathsome abject scorn of me;\n  But with these nails I\'ll pluck out these false eyes\n  That would behold in me this shameful sport.\nADRIANA. O, bind him, bind him; let him not come near me.\nPINCH. More company! The fiend is strong within him.\n\nEnter three or four, and offer to bind him. He strives\n\nLUCIANA. Ay me, poor man, how pale and wan he looks!\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. What, will you murder me? Thou gaoler, thou,\n  I am thy prisoner. Wilt thou suffer them\n  To make a rescue?\nOFFICER. Masters, let him go;\n  He is my prisoner, and you shall not have him.\nPINCH. Go bind this man, for he is frantic too.\n[They bind DROMIO]\nADRIANA. What wilt thou do, thou peevish officer?\n  Hast thou delight to see a wretched man\n  Do outrage and displeasure to himself?\nOFFICER. He is my prisoner; if I let him go,\n  The debt he owes will be requir\'d of me.\nADRIANA. I will discharge thee ere I go from thee;\n  Bear me forthwith unto his creditor,\n  And, knowing how the debt grows, I will pay it.\n  Good Master Doctor, see him safe convey\'d\n  Home to my house. O most unhappy day!\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. O most unhappy strumpet!\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Master, I am here ent\'red in bond for you.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Out on thee, villian! Wherefore\n  dost thou mad me?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Will you be bound for nothing?\n  Be mad, good master; cry \'The devil!\'\nLUCIANA. God help, poor souls, how idly do they talk!\nADRIANA. Go bear him hence. Sister, go you with me.\n<Exeunt all but ADRIANA, LUCIANA, OFFICERS, and COURTEZAN\n  Say now, whose suit is he arrested at?\nOFFICER. One Angelo, a goldsmith; do you know him?\nADRIANA. I know the man. What is the sum he owes?\nOFFICER. Two hundred ducats.\nADRIANA. Say, how grows it due?\nOFFICER. Due for a chain your husband had of him.\nADRIANA. He did bespeak a chain for me, but had it not.\nCOURTEZAN. When as your husband, all in rage, to-day\n  Came to my house, and took away my ring-\n  The ring I saw upon his finger now-\n  Straight after did I meet him with a chain.\nADRIANA. It may be so, but I did never see it.\n  Come, gaoler, bring me where the goldsmith is;\n  I long to know the truth hereof at large.\n\nEnter ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE, with his rapier drawn, and\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE.\n\nLUCIANA. God, for thy mercy! they are loose again.\nADRIANA. And come with naked swords.\n  Let\'s call more help to have them bound again.\nOFFICER. Away, they\'ll kill us!\n<Exeunt all but ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE and\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE as fast as may be, frighted\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I see these witches are afraid of swords.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. She that would be your wife now ran from you.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Come to the Centaur; fetch our stuff from thence.\n  I long that we were safe and sound aboard.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Faith, stay here this night; they will\n  surely do us no harm; you saw they speak us fair, give us\n  gold; methinks they are such a gentle nation that, but for\n  the mountain of mad flesh that claims marriage of me,\n  could find in my heart to stay here still and turn witch.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I will not stay to-night for all the town;\n  Therefore away, to get our stuff aboard.\n<Exeunt\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 1\n\nA street before a priory\n\nEnter SECOND MERCHANT and ANGELO\n\nANGELO. I am sorry, sir, that I have hind\'red you;\n  But I protest he had the chain of me,\n  Though most dishonestly he doth deny it.\nSECOND MERCHANT. How is the man esteem\'d here in the city?\nANGELO. Of very reverend reputation, sir,\n  Of credit infinite, highly belov\'d,\n  Second to none that lives here in the city;\n  His word might bear my wealth at any time.\nSECOND MERCHANT. Speak softly; yonder, as I think, he walks.\n\nEnter ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE and DROMIO OF SYRACUSE\n\nANGELO. \'Tis so; and that self chain about his neck\n  Which he forswore most monstrously to have.\n  Good sir, draw near to me, I\'ll speak to him.\n  Signior Andpholus, I wonder much\n  That you would put me to this shame and trouble;\n  And, not without some scandal to yourself,\n  With circumstance and oaths so to deny\n  This chain, which now you wear so openly.\n  Beside the charge, the shame, imprisonment,\n  You have done wrong to this my honest friend;\n  Who, but for staying on our controversy,\n  Had hoisted sail and put to sea to-day.\n  This chain you had of me; can you deny it?\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I think I had; I never did deny it.\nSECOND MERCHANT. Yes, that you did, sir, and forswore it too.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Who heard me to deny it or forswear it?\nSECOND MERCHANT. These ears of mine, thou know\'st, did hear thee.\n  Fie on thee, wretch! \'tis pity that thou liv\'st\n  To walk where any honest men resort.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thou art a villain to impeach me thus;\n  I\'ll prove mine honour and mine honesty\n  Against thee presently, if thou dar\'st stand.\nSECOND MERCHANT. I dare, and do defy thee for a villain.\n[They draw]\n\nEnter ADRIANA, LUCIANA, the COURTEZAN, and OTHERS\n\nADRIANA. Hold, hurt him not, for God\'s sake! He is mad.\n  Some get within him, take his sword away;\n  Bind Dromio too, and bear them to my house.\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Run, master, run; for God\'s sake take a house.\n  This is some priory. In, or we are spoil\'d.\n<Exeunt ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE and DROMIO OF SYRACUSE to the priory\n\nEnter the LADY ABBESS\n\nABBESS. Be quiet, people. Wherefore throng you hither?\nADRIANA. To fetch my poor distracted husband hence.\n  Let us come in, that we may bind him fast,\n  And bear him home for his recovery.\nANGELO. I knew he was not in his perfect wits.\nSECOND MERCHANT. I am sorry now that I did draw on him.\nABBESS. How long hath this possession held the man?\nADRIANA. This week he hath been heavy, sour, sad,\n  And much different from the man he was;\n  But till this afternoon his passion\n  Ne\'er brake into extremity of rage.\nABBESS. Hath he not lost much wealth by wreck of sea?\n  Buried some dear friend? Hath not else his eye\n  Stray\'d his affection in unlawful love?\n  A sin prevailing much in youthful men\n  Who give their eyes the liberty of gazing.\n  Which of these sorrows is he subject to?\nADRIANA. To none of these, except it be the last;\n  Namely, some love that drew him oft from home.\nABBESS. You should for that have reprehended him.\nADRIANA. Why, so I did.\nABBESS. Ay, but not rough enough.\nADRIANA. As roughly as my modesty would let me.\nABBESS. Haply in private.\nADRIANA. And in assemblies too.\nABBESS. Ay, but not enough.\nADRIANA. It was the copy of our conference.\n  In bed, he slept not for my urging it;\n  At board, he fed not for my urging it;\n  Alone, it was the subject of my theme;\n  In company, I often glanced it;\n  Still did I tell him it was vile and bad.\nABBESS. And thereof came it that the man was mad.\n  The venom clamours of a jealous woman\n  Poisons more deadly than a mad dog\'s tooth.\n  It seems his sleeps were hind\'red by thy railing,\n  And thereof comes it that his head is light.\n  Thou say\'st his meat was sauc\'d with thy upbraidings:\n  Unquiet meals make ill digestions;\n  Thereof the raging fire of fever bred;\n  And what\'s a fever but a fit of madness?\n  Thou say\'st his sports were hind\'red by thy brawls.\n  Sweet recreation barr\'d, what doth ensue\n  But moody and dull melancholy,\n  Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair,\n  And at her heels a huge infectious troop\n  Of pale distemperatures and foes to life?\n  In food, in sport, and life-preserving rest,\n  To be disturb\'d would mad or man or beast.\n  The consequence is, then, thy jealous fits\n  Hath scar\'d thy husband from the use of wits.\nLUCIANA. She never reprehended him but mildly,\n  When he demean\'d himself rough, rude, and wildly.\n  Why bear you these rebukes, and answer not?\nADRIANA. She did betray me to my own reproof.\n  Good people, enter, and lay hold on him.\nABBESS. No, not a creature enters in my house.\nADRIANA. Then let your servants bring my husband forth.\nABBESS. Neither; he took this place for sanctuary,\n  And it shall privilege him from your hands\n  Till I have brought him to his wits again,\n  Or lose my labour in assaying it.\nADRIANA. I will attend my husband, be his nurse,\n  Diet his sickness, for it is my office,\n  And will have no attorney but myself;\n  And therefore let me have him home with me.\nABBESS. Be patient; for I will not let him stir\n  Till I have us\'d the approved means I have,\n  With wholesome syrups, drugs, and holy prayers,\n  To make of him a formal man again.\n  It is a branch and parcel of mine oath,\n  A charitable duty of my order;\n  Therefore depart, and leave him here with me.\nADRIANA. I will not hence and leave my husband here;\n  And ill it doth beseem your holiness\n  To separate the husband and the wife.\nABBESS. Be quiet, and depart; thou shalt not have him.\n<Exit\nLUCIANA. Complain unto the Duke of this indignity.\nADRIANA. Come, go; I will fall prostrate at his feet,\n  And never rise until my tears and prayers\n  Have won his Grace to come in person hither\n  And take perforce my husband from the Abbess.\nSECOND MERCHANT. By this, I think, the dial points at five;\n  Anon, I\'m sure, the Duke himself in person\n  Comes this way to the melancholy vale,\n  The place of death and sorry execution,\n  Behind the ditches of the abbey here.\nANGELO. Upon what cause?\nSECOND MERCHANT. To see a reverend Syracusian merchant,\n  Who put unluckily into this bay\n  Against the laws and statutes of this town,\n  Beheaded publicly for his offence.\nANGELO. See where they come; we will behold his death.\nLUCIANA. Kneel to the Duke before he pass the abbey.\n\nEnter the DUKE, attended; AEGEON, bareheaded;\nwith the HEADSMAN and other OFFICERS\n\nDUKE. Yet once again proclaim it publicly,\n  If any friend will pay the sum for him,\n  He shall not die; so much we tender him.\nADRIANA. Justice, most sacred Duke, against the Abbess!\nDUKE. She is a virtuous and a reverend lady;\n  It cannot be that she hath done thee wrong.\nADRIANA. May it please your Grace, Antipholus, my husband,\n  Who I made lord of me and all I had\n  At your important letters-this ill day\n  A most outrageous fit of madness took him,\n  That desp\'rately he hurried through the street,\n  With him his bondman all as mad as he,\n  Doing displeasure to the citizens\n  By rushing in their houses, bearing thence\n  Rings, jewels, anything his rage did like.\n  Once did I get him bound and sent him home,\n  Whilst to take order for the wrongs I went,\n  That here and there his fury had committed.\n  Anon, I wot not by what strong escape,\n  He broke from those that had the guard of him,\n  And with his mad attendant and himself,\n  Each one with ireful passion, with drawn swords,\n  Met us again and, madly bent on us,\n  Chas\'d us away; till, raising of more aid,\n  We came again to bind them. Then they fled\n  Into this abbey, whither we pursu\'d them;\n  And here the Abbess shuts the gates on us,\n  And will not suffer us to fetch him out,\n  Nor send him forth that we may bear him hence.\n  Therefore, most gracious Duke, with thy command\n  Let him be brought forth and borne hence for help.\nDUKE. Long since thy husband serv\'d me in my wars,\n  And I to thee engag\'d a prince\'s word,\n  When thou didst make him master of thy bed,\n  To do him all the grace and good I could.\n  Go, some of you, knock at the abbey gate,\n  And bid the Lady Abbess come to me,\n  I will determine this before I stir.\n\nEnter a MESSENGER\n\nMESSENGER. O mistress, mistress, shift and save yourself!\n  My master and his man are both broke loose,\n  Beaten the maids a-row and bound the doctor,\n  Whose beard they have sing\'d off with brands of fire;\n  And ever, as it blaz\'d, they threw on him\n  Great pails of puddled mire to quench the hair.\n  My master preaches patience to him, and the while\n  His man with scissors nicks him like a fool;\n  And sure, unless you send some present help,\n  Between them they will kill the conjurer.\nADRIANA. Peace, fool! thy master and his man are here,\n  And that is false thou dost report to us.\nMESSENGER. Mistress, upon my life, I tell you true;\n  I have not breath\'d almost since I did see it.\n  He cries for you, and vows, if he can take you,\n  To scorch your face, and to disfigure you.\n[Cry within]\n  Hark, hark, I hear him, mistress; fly, be gone!\nDUKE. Come, stand by me; fear nothing. Guard with halberds.\nADRIANA. Ay me, it is my husband! Witness you\n  That he is borne about invisible.\n  Even now we hous\'d him in the abbey here,\n  And now he\'s there, past thought of human reason.\n\nEnter ANTIPHOLUS OFEPHESUS and DROMIO OFEPHESUS\n\nANTIPHOLUS OFEPHESUS. Justice, most gracious Duke; O, grant me justice!\n  Even for the service that long since I did thee,\n  When I bestrid thee in the wars, and took\n  Deep scars to save thy life; even for the blood\n  That then I lost for thee, now grant me justice.\nAEGEON. Unless the fear of death doth make me dote,\n  I see my son Antipholus, and Dromio.\nANTIPHOLUS OFEPHESUS. Justice, sweet Prince, against that woman there!\n  She whom thou gav\'st to me to be my wife,\n  That hath abused and dishonoured me\n  Even in the strength and height of injury.\n  Beyond imagination is the wrong\n  That she this day hath shameless thrown on me.\nDUKE. Discover how, and thou shalt find me just.\nANTIPHOLUS OFEPHESUS. This day, great Duke, she shut the doors upon me,\n  While she with harlots feasted in my house.\nDUKE. A grievous fault. Say, woman, didst thou so?\nADRIANA. No, my good lord. Myself, he, and my sister,\n  To-day did dine together. So befall my soul\n  As this is false he burdens me withal!\nLUCIANA. Ne\'er may I look on day nor sleep on night\n  But she tells to your Highness simple truth!\nANGELO. O peflur\'d woman! They are both forsworn.\n  In this the madman justly chargeth them.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. My liege, I am advised what I say;\n  Neither disturbed with the effect of wine,\n  Nor heady-rash, provok\'d with raging ire,\n  Albeit my wrongs might make one wiser mad.\n  This woman lock\'d me out this day from dinner;\n  That goldsmith there, were he not pack\'d with her,\n  Could witness it, for he was with me then;\n  Who parted with me to go fetch a chain,\n  Promising to bring it to the Porpentine,\n  Where Balthazar and I did dine together.\n  Our dinner done, and he not coming thither,\n  I went to seek him. In the street I met him,\n  And in his company that gentleman.\n  There did this perjur\'d goldsmith swear me down\n  That I this day of him receiv\'d the chain,\n  Which, God he knows, I saw not; for the which\n  He did arrest me with an officer.\n  I did obey, and sent my peasant home\n  For certain ducats; he with none return\'d.\n  Then fairly I bespoke the officer\n  To go in person with me to my house.\n  By th\' way we met my wife, her sister, and a rabble more\n  Of vile confederates. Along with them\n  They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-fac\'d villain,\n  A mere anatomy, a mountebank,\n  A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller,\n  A needy, hollow-ey\'d, sharp-looking wretch,\n  A living dead man. This pernicious slave,\n  Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer,\n  And gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,\n  And with no face, as \'twere, outfacing me,\n  Cries out I was possess\'d. Then all together\n  They fell upon me, bound me, bore me thence,\n  And in a dark and dankish vault at home\n  There left me and my man, both bound together;\n  Till, gnawing with my teeth my bonds in sunder,\n  I gain\'d my freedom, and immediately\n  Ran hither to your Grace; whom I beseech\n  To give me ample satisfaction\n  For these deep shames and great indignities.\nANGELO. My lord, in truth, thus far I witness with him,\n  That he din\'d not at home, but was lock\'d out.\nDUKE. But had he such a chain of thee, or no?\nANGELO. He had, my lord, and when he ran in here,\n  These people saw the chain about his neck.\nSECOND MERCHANT. Besides, I will be sworn these ears of mine\n  Heard you confess you had the chain of him,\n  After you first forswore it on the mart;\n  And thereupon I drew my sword on you,\n  And then you fled into this abbey here,\n  From whence, I think, you are come by miracle.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I never came within these abbey walls,\n  Nor ever didst thou draw thy sword on me;\n  I never saw the chain, so help me Heaven!\n  And this is false you burden me withal.\nDUKE. Why, what an intricate impeach is this!\n  I think you all have drunk of Circe\'s cup.\n  If here you hous\'d him, here he would have been;\n  If he were mad, he would not plead so coldly.\n  You say he din\'d at home: the goldsmith here\n  Denies that saying. Sirrah, what say you?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Sir, he din\'d with her there, at the Porpentine.\nCOURTEZAN. He did; and from my finger snatch\'d that ring.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. \'Tis true, my liege; this ring I had of her.\nDUKE. Saw\'st thou him enter at the abbey here?\nCOURTEZAN. As sure, my liege, as I do see your Grace.\nDUKE. Why, this is strange. Go call the Abbess hither.\n  I think you are all mated or stark mad.\n<Exit one to the ABBESS\nAEGEON. Most mighty Duke, vouchsafe me speak a word:\n  Haply I see a friend will save my life\n  And pay the sum that may deliver me.\nDUKE. Speak freely, Syracusian, what thou wilt.\nAEGEON. Is not your name, sir, call\'d Antipholus?\n  And is not that your bondman Dromio?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Within this hour I was his bondman, sir,\n  But he, I thank him, gnaw\'d in two my cords\n  Now am I Dromio and his man unbound.\nAEGEON. I am sure you both of you remember me.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Ourselves we do remember, sir, by you;\n  For lately we were bound as you are now.\n  You are not Pinch\'s patient, are you, sir?\nAEGEON. Why look you strange on me? You know me well.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I never saw you in my life till now.\nAEGEON. O! grief hath chang\'d me since you saw me last;\n  And careful hours with time\'s deformed hand\n  Have written strange defeatures in my face.\n  But tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice?\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Neither.\nAEGEON. Dromio, nor thou?\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. No, trust me, sir, nor I.\nAEGEON. I am sure thou dost.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Ay, sir, but I am sure I do not; and\n  whatsoever a man denies, you are now bound to believe him.\nAEGEON. Not know my voice! O time\'s extremity,\n  Hast thou so crack\'d and splitted my poor tongue\n  In seven short years that here my only son\n  Knows not my feeble key of untun\'d cares?\n  Though now this grained face of mine be hid\n  In sap-consuming winter\'s drizzled snow,\n  And all the conduits of my blood froze up,\n  Yet hath my night of life some memory,\n  My wasting lamps some fading glimmer left,\n  My dull deaf ears a little use to hear;\n  All these old witnesses-I cannot err-\n  Tell me thou art my son Antipholus.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I never saw my father in my life.\nAEGEON. But seven years since, in Syracuse, boy,\n  Thou know\'st we parted; but perhaps, my son,\n  Thou sham\'st to acknowledge me in misery.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. The Duke and all that know me in\n  the city Can witness with me that it is not so:\n  I ne\'er saw Syracuse in my life.\nDUKE. I tell thee, Syracusian, twenty years\n  Have I been patron to Antipholus,\n  During which time he ne\'er saw Syracuse.\n  I see thy age and dangers make thee dote.\n\nRe-enter the ABBESS, with ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE and DROMIO OF SYRACUSE\n\nABBESS. Most mighty Duke, behold a man much wrong\'d.\n[All gather to see them]\nADRIANA. I see two husbands, or mine eyes deceive me.\nDUKE. One of these men is genius to the other;\n  And so of these. Which is the natural man,\n  And which the spirit? Who deciphers them?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I, sir, am Dromio; command him away.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. I, Sir, am Dromio; pray let me stay.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Aegeon, art thou not? or else his\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O, my old master! who hath bound\nABBESS. Whoever bound him, I will loose his bonds,\n  And gain a husband by his liberty.\n  Speak, old Aegeon, if thou be\'st the man\n  That hadst a wife once call\'d Aemilia,\n  That bore thee at a burden two fair sons.\n  O, if thou be\'st the same Aegeon, speak,\n  And speak unto the same Aemilia!\nAEGEON. If I dream not, thou art Aemilia.\n  If thou art she, tell me where is that son\n  That floated with thee on the fatal raft?\nABBESS. By men of Epidamnum he and I\n  And the twin Dromio, all were taken up;\n  But by and by rude fishermen of Corinth\n  By force took Dromio and my son from them,\n  And me they left with those of Epidamnum.\n  What then became of them I cannot tell;\n  I to this fortune that you see me in.\nDUKE. Why, here begins his morning story right.\n  These two Antipholus\', these two so like,\n  And these two Dromios, one in semblance-\n  Besides her urging of her wreck at sea-\n  These are the parents to these children,\n  Which accidentally are met together.\n  Antipholus, thou cam\'st from Corinth first?\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. No, sir, not I; I came from Syracuse.\nDUKE. Stay, stand apart; I know not which is which.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I came from Corinth, my most gracious lord.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. And I with him.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Brought to this town by that most famous warrior,\n  Duke Menaphon, your most renowned uncle.\nADRIANA. Which of you two did dine with me to-day?\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I, gentle mistress.\nADRIANA. And are not you my husband?\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. No; I say nay to that.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. And so do I, yet did she call me so;\n  And this fair gentlewoman, her sister here,\n  Did call me brother.  [To LUCIANA]  What I told you then,\n  I hope I shall have leisure to make good;\n  If this be not a dream I see and hear.\nANGELO. That is the chain, sir, which you had of me.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I think it be, sir; I deny it not.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And you, sir, for this chain arrested me.\nANGELO. I think I did, sir; I deny it not.\nADRIANA. I sent you money, sir, to be your bail,\n  By Dromio; but I think he brought it not.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. No, none by me.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. This purse of ducats I receiv\'d from you,\n  And Dromio my man did bring them me.\n  I see we still did meet each other\'s man,\n  And I was ta\'en for him, and he for me,\n  And thereupon these ERRORS are arose.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. These ducats pawn I for my father here.\nDUKE. It shall not need; thy father hath his life.\nCOURTEZAN. Sir, I must have that diamond from you.\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. There, take it; and much thanks for my\n  good cheer.\nABBESS. Renowned Duke, vouchsafe to take the pains\n  To go with us into the abbey here,\n  And hear at large discoursed all our fortunes;\n  And all that are assembled in this place\n  That by this sympathized one day\'s error\n  Have suffer\'d wrong, go keep us company,\n  And we shall make full satisfaction.\n  Thirty-three years have I but gone in travail\n  Of you, my sons; and till this present hour\n  My heavy burden ne\'er delivered.\n  The Duke, my husband, and my children both,\n  And you the calendars of their nativity,\n  Go to a gossips\' feast, and go with me;\n  After so long grief, such nativity!\nDUKE. With all my heart, I\'ll gossip at this feast.\n<Exeunt all but ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE, ANTIPHOLUS OF\nEPHESUS, DROMIO OF SYRACUSE, and DROMIO OF EPHESUS\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, shall I fetch your stuff from shipboard?\nANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Dromio, what stuff of mine hast thou embark\'d?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Your goods that lay at host, sir, in the Centaur.\nANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. He speaks to me. I am your master, Dromio.\n  Come, go with us; we\'ll look to that anon.\n  Embrace thy brother there; rejoice with him.\n<Exeunt ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE and ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. There is a fat friend at your master\'s house,\n  That kitchen\'d me for you to-day at dinner;\n  She now shall be my sister, not my wife.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother;\n  I see by you I am a sweet-fac\'d youth.\n  Will you walk in to see their gossiping?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Not I, sir; you are my elder.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. That\'s a question; how shall we try it?\nDROMIO OF SYRACUSE. We\'ll draw cuts for the senior; till then,\n    lead thou first.\nDROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, then, thus:\n  We came into the world like brother and brother,\n  And now let\'s go hand in hand, not one before another.\n<Exeunt\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1608\n\nTHE TRAGEDY OF CORIOLANUS\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  CAIUS MARCIUS, afterwards CAIUS MARCIUS CORIOLANUS\n\n    Generals against the Volscians\n  TITUS LARTIUS\n  COMINIUS\n\n  MENENIUS AGRIPPA, friend to Coriolanus\n\n    Tribunes of the People\n  SICINIUS VELUTUS\n  JUNIUS BRUTUS\n\n  YOUNG MARCIUS, son to Coriolanus\n  A ROMAN HERALD\n  NICANOR, a Roman\n  TULLUS AUFIDIUS, General of the Volscians\n  LIEUTENANT, to Aufidius\n  CONSPIRATORS, With Aufidius\n  ADRIAN, a Volscian\n  A CITIZEN of Antium  \n  TWO VOLSCIAN GUARDS\n\n  VOLUMNIA, mother to Coriolanus\n  VIRGILIA, wife to Coriolanus\n  VALERIA, friend to Virgilia\n  GENTLEWOMAN attending on Virgilia\n\n  Roman and Volscian Senators, Patricians, Aediles, Lictors,\n    Soldiers, Citizens, Messengers, Servants to Aufidius, and other\n    Attendants\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nRome and the neighbourhood; Corioli and the neighbourhood; Antium\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nRome. A street\n\nEnter a company of mutinous citizens, with staves, clubs, and other weapons\n\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Before we proceed any further, hear me speak.\n  ALL. Speak, speak.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. YOU are all resolv\'d rather to die than to famish?\n  ALL. Resolv\'d, resolv\'d.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. First, you know Caius Marcius is chief enemy to the\n    people.\n  ALL. We know\'t, we know\'t.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Let us kill him, and we\'ll have corn at our own\n    price. Is\'t a verdict?\n  ALL. No more talking on\'t; let it be done. Away, away!\n  SECOND CITIZEN. One word, good citizens.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good.\n    What authority surfeits on would relieve us; if they would yield\n    us but the superfluity while it were wholesome, we might guess\n    they relieved us humanely; but they think we are too dear. The\n    leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an  \n    inventory to particularize their abundance; our sufferance is a\n    gain to them. Let us revenge this with our pikes ere we become\n    rakes; for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not in\n    thirst for revenge.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Against him first; he\'s a very dog to the\n    commonalty.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Consider you what services he has done for his\n    country?\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Very well, and could be content to give him good\n    report for\'t but that he pays himself with being proud.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Nay, but speak not maliciously.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. I say unto you, what he hath done famously he did it\n    to that end; though soft-conscienc\'d men can be content to say it\n    was for his country, he did it to please his mother and to be\n    partly proud, which he is, even to the altitude of his virtue.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. What he cannot help in his nature you account a\n    vice in him. You must in no way say he is covetous.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. If I must not, I need not be barren of accusations;\n    he hath faults, with surplus, to tire in repetition.  [Shouts  \n    within]  What shouts are these? The other side o\' th\' city is\n    risen. Why stay we prating here? To th\' Capitol!\n  ALL. Come, come.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Soft! who comes here?\n\n                       Enter MENENIUS AGRIPPA\n\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Worthy Menenius Agrippa; one that hath always lov\'d\n    the people.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. He\'s one honest enough; would all the rest were so!\n  MENENIUS. What work\'s, my countrymen, in hand? Where go you\n    With bats and clubs? The matter? Speak, I pray you.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Our business is not unknown to th\' Senate; they have\n    had inkling this fortnight what we intend to do, which now we\'ll\n    show \'em in deeds. They say poor suitors have strong breaths;\n    they shall know we have strong arms too.\n  MENENIUS. Why, masters, my good friends, mine honest neighbours,\n    Will you undo yourselves?\n  FIRST CITIZEN. We cannot, sir; we are undone already.\n  MENENIUS. I tell you, friends, most charitable care  \n    Have the patricians of you. For your wants,\n    Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well\n    Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them\n    Against the Roman state; whose course will on\n    The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs\n    Of more strong link asunder than can ever\n    Appear in your impediment. For the dearth,\n    The gods, not the patricians, make it, and\n    Your knees to them, not arms, must help. Alack,\n    You are transported by calamity\n    Thither where more attends you; and you slander\n    The helms o\' th\' state, who care for you like fathers,\n    When you curse them as enemies.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Care for us! True, indeed! They ne\'er car\'d for us\n    yet. Suffer us to famish, and their storehouses cramm\'d with\n    grain; make edicts for usury, to support usurers; repeal daily\n    any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more\n    piercing statutes daily to chain up and restrain the poor. If the\n    wars eat us not up, they will; and there\'s all the love they bear\n    us.  \n  MENENIUS. Either you must\n    Confess yourselves wondrous malicious,\n    Or be accus\'d of folly. I shall tell you\n    A pretty tale. It may be you have heard it;\n    But, since it serves my purpose, I will venture\n    To stale\'t a little more.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Well, I\'ll hear it, sir; yet you must not think to\n    fob off our disgrace with a tale. But, an\'t please you, deliver.\n  MENENIUS. There was a time when all the body\'s members\n    Rebell\'d against the belly; thus accus\'d it:\n    That only like a gulf it did remain\n    I\' th\' midst o\' th\' body, idle and unactive,\n    Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing\n    Like labour with the rest; where th\' other instruments\n    Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,\n    And, mutually participate, did minister\n    Unto the appetite and affection common\n    Of the whole body. The belly answer\'d-\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Well, sir, what answer made the belly?\n  MENENIUS. Sir, I shall tell you. With a kind of smile,  \n    Which ne\'er came from the lungs, but even thus-\n    For look you, I may make the belly smile\n    As well as speak- it tauntingly replied\n    To th\' discontented members, the mutinous parts\n    That envied his receipt; even so most fitly\n    As you malign our senators for that\n    They are not such as you.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Your belly\'s answer- What?\n    The kingly crowned head, the vigilant eye,\n    The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier,\n    Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter,\n    With other muniments and petty helps\n    Is this our fabric, if that they-\n  MENENIUS. What then?\n    Fore me, this fellow speaks! What then? What then?\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Should by the cormorant belly be restrain\'d,\n    Who is the sink o\' th\' body-\n  MENENIUS. Well, what then?\n  FIRST CITIZEN. The former agents, if they did complain,\n    What could the belly answer?  \n  MENENIUS. I will tell you;\n    If you\'ll bestow a small- of what you have little-\n    Patience awhile, you\'st hear the belly\'s answer.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Y\'are long about it.\n  MENENIUS. Note me this, good friend:\n    Your most grave belly was deliberate,\n    Not rash like his accusers, and thus answered.\n    \'True is it, my incorporate friends,\' quoth he\n    \'That I receive the general food at first\n    Which you do live upon; and fit it is,\n    Because I am the storehouse and the shop\n    Of the whole body. But, if you do remember,\n    I send it through the rivers of your blood,\n    Even to the court, the heart, to th\' seat o\' th\' brain;\n    And, through the cranks and offices of man,\n    The strongest nerves and small inferior veins\n    From me receive that natural competency\n    Whereby they live. And though that all at once\n    You, my good friends\'- this says the belly; mark me.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Ay, sir; well, well.  \n  MENENIUS. \'Though all at once cannot\n    See what I do deliver out to each,\n    Yet I can make my audit up, that all\n    From me do back receive the flour of all,\n    And leave me but the bran.\' What say you to\' t?\n  FIRST CITIZEN. It was an answer. How apply you this?\n  MENENIUS. The senators of Rome are this good belly,\n    And you the mutinous members; for, examine\n    Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly\n    Touching the weal o\' th\' common, you shall find\n    No public benefit which you receive\n    But it proceeds or comes from them to you,\n    And no way from yourselves. What do you think,\n    You, the great toe of this assembly?\n  FIRST CITIZEN. I the great toe? Why the great toe?\n  MENENIUS. For that, being one o\' th\' lowest, basest, poorest,\n    Of this most wise rebellion, thou goest foremost.\n    Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run,\n    Lead\'st first to win some vantage.\n    But make you ready your stiff bats and clubs.  \n    Rome and her rats are at the point of battle;\n    The one side must have bale.\n\n                      Enter CAIUS MARCIUS\n\n    Hail, noble Marcius!\n  MARCIUS. Thanks. What\'s the matter, you dissentious rogues\n    That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,\n    Make yourselves scabs?\n  FIRST CITIZEN. We have ever your good word.\n  MARCIUS. He that will give good words to thee will flatter\n    Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs,\n    That like nor peace nor war? The one affrights you,\n    The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you,\n    Where he should find you lions, finds you hares;\n    Where foxes, geese; you are no surer, no,\n    Than is the coal of fire upon the ice\n    Or hailstone in the sun. Your virtue is\n    To make him worthy whose offence subdues him,\n    And curse that justice did it. Who deserves greatness  \n    Deserves your hate; and your affections are\n    A sick man\'s appetite, who desires most that\n    Which would increase his evil. He that depends\n    Upon your favours swims with fins of lead,\n    And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?\n    With every minute you do change a mind\n    And call him noble that was now your hate,\n    Him vile that was your garland. What\'s the matter\n    That in these several places of the city\n    You cry against the noble Senate, who,\n    Under the gods, keep you in awe, which else\n    Would feed on one another? What\'s their seeking?\n  MENENIUS. For corn at their own rates, whereof they say\n    The city is well stor\'d.\n  MARCIUS. Hang \'em! They say!\n    They\'ll sit by th\' fire and presume to know\n    What\'s done i\' th\' Capitol, who\'s like to rise,\n    Who thrives and who declines; side factions, and give out\n    Conjectural marriages, making parties strong,\n    And feebling such as stand not in their liking  \n    Below their cobbled shoes. They say there\'s grain enough!\n    Would the nobility lay aside their ruth\n    And let me use my sword, I\'d make a quarry\n    With thousands of these quarter\'d slaves, as high\n    As I could pick my lance.\n  MENENIUS. Nay, these are almost thoroughly persuaded;\n    For though abundantly they lack discretion,\n    Yet are they passing cowardly. But, I beseech you,\n    What says the other troop?\n  MARCIUS. They are dissolv\'d. Hang \'em!\n    They said they were an-hungry; sigh\'d forth proverbs-\n    That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat,\n    That meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not\n    Corn for the rich men only. With these shreds\n    They vented their complainings; which being answer\'d,\n    And a petition granted them- a strange one,\n    To break the heart of generosity\n    And make bold power look pale- they threw their caps\n    As they would hang them on the horns o\' th\' moon,\n    Shouting their emulation.  \n  MENENIUS. What is granted them?\n  MARCIUS. Five tribunes, to defend their vulgar wisdoms,\n    Of their own choice. One\'s Junius Brutus-\n    Sicinius Velutus, and I know not. \'Sdeath!\n    The rabble should have first unroof\'d the city\n    Ere so prevail\'d with me; it will in time\n    Win upon power and throw forth greater themes\n    For insurrection\'s arguing.\n  MENENIUS. This is strange.\n  MARCIUS. Go get you home, you fragments.\n\n                     Enter a MESSENGER, hastily\n\n  MESSENGER. Where\'s Caius Marcius?\n  MARCIUS. Here. What\'s the matter?\n  MESSENGER. The news is, sir, the Volsces are in arms.\n  MARCIUS. I am glad on\'t; then we shall ha\' means to vent\n    Our musty superfluity. See, our best elders.\n\n         Enter COMINIUS, TITUS LARTIUS, with other SENATORS;  \n                  JUNIUS BRUTUS and SICINIUS VELUTUS\n\n  FIRST SENATOR. Marcius, \'tis true that you have lately told us:\n    The Volsces are in arms.\n  MARCIUS. They have a leader,\n    Tullus Aufidius, that will put you to\'t.\n    I sin in envying his nobility;\n    And were I anything but what I am,\n    I would wish me only he.\n  COMINIUS. You have fought together?\n  MARCIUS. Were half to half the world by th\' ears, and he\n    Upon my party, I\'d revolt, to make\n    Only my wars with him. He is a lion\n    That I am proud to hunt.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Then, worthy Marcius,\n    Attend upon Cominius to these wars.\n  COMINIUS. It is your former promise.\n  MARCIUS. Sir, it is;\n    And I am constant. Titus Lartius, thou\n    Shalt see me once more strike at Tullus\' face.  \n    What, art thou stiff? Stand\'st out?\n  LARTIUS. No, Caius Marcius;\n    I\'ll lean upon one crutch and fight with t\'other\n    Ere stay behind this business.\n  MENENIUS. O, true bred!\n  FIRST SENATOR. Your company to th\' Capitol; where, I know,\n    Our greatest friends attend us.\n  LARTIUS.  [To COMINIUS]  Lead you on.\n    [To MARCIUS]  Follow Cominius; we must follow you;\n    Right worthy you priority.\n  COMINIUS. Noble Marcius!\n  FIRST SENATOR.  [To the Citizens]  Hence to your homes; be gone.\n  MARCIUS. Nay, let them follow.\n    The Volsces have much corn: take these rats thither\n    To gnaw their garners. Worshipful mutineers,\n    Your valour puts well forth; pray follow.\n         Ciitzens steal away. Exeunt all but SICINIUS and BRUTUS\n  SICINIUS. Was ever man so proud as is this Marcius?\n  BRUTUS. He has no equal.\n  SICINIUS. When we were chosen tribunes for the people-  \n  BRUTUS. Mark\'d you his lip and eyes?\n  SICINIUS. Nay, but his taunts!\n  BRUTUS. Being mov\'d, he will not spare to gird the gods.\n  SICINIUS. Bemock the modest moon.\n  BRUTUS. The present wars devour him! He is grown\n    Too proud to be so valiant.\n  SICINIUS. Such a nature,\n    Tickled with good success, disdains the shadow\n    Which he treads on at noon. But I do wonder\n    His insolence can brook to be commanded\n    Under Cominius.\n  BRUTUS. Fame, at the which he aims-\n    In whom already he is well grac\'d- cannot\n    Better be held nor more attain\'d than by\n    A place below the first; for what miscarries\n    Shall be the general\'s fault, though he perform\n    To th\' utmost of a man, and giddy censure\n    Will then cry out of Marcius \'O, if he\n    Had borne the business!\'\n  SICINIUS. Besides, if things go well,  \n    Opinion, that so sticks on Marcius, shall\n    Of his demerits rob Cominius.\n  BRUTUS. Come.\n    Half all Cominius\' honours are to Marcius,\n    Though Marcius earn\'d them not; and all his faults\n    To Marcius shall be honours, though indeed\n    In aught he merit not.\n  SICINIUS. Let\'s hence and hear\n    How the dispatch is made, and in what fashion,\n    More than his singularity, he goes\n    Upon this present action.\n  BRUTUS. Let\'s along.                                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nCorioli. The Senate House.\n\nEnter TULLUS AUFIDIUS with SENATORS of Corioli\n\n  FIRST SENATOR. So, your opinion is, Aufidius,\n    That they of Rome are ent\'red in our counsels\n    And know how we proceed.\n  AUFIDIUS. Is it not yours?\n    What ever have been thought on in this state\n    That could be brought to bodily act ere Rome\n    Had circumvention? \'Tis not four days gone\n    Since I heard thence; these are the words- I think\n    I have the letter here;.yes, here it is:\n    [Reads]  \'They have press\'d a power, but it is not known\n    Whether for east or west. The dearth is great;\n    The people mutinous; and it is rumour\'d,\n    Cominius, Marcius your old enemy,\n    Who is of Rome worse hated than of you,\n    And Titus Lartius, a most valiant Roman,\n    These three lead on this preparation\n    Whither \'tis bent. Most likely \'tis for you;  \n    Consider of it.\'\n  FIRST SENATOR. Our army\'s in the field;\n    We never yet made doubt but Rome was ready\n    To answer us.\n  AUFIDIUS. Nor did you think it folly\n    To keep your great pretences veil\'d till when\n    They needs must show themselves; which in the hatching,\n    It seem\'d, appear\'d to Rome. By the discovery\n    We shall be short\'ned in our aim, which was\n    To take in many towns ere almost Rome\n    Should know we were afoot.\n  SECOND SENATOR. Noble Aufidius,\n    Take your commission; hie you to your bands;\n    Let us alone to guard Corioli.\n    If they set down before\'s, for the remove\n    Bring up your army; but I think you\'ll find\n    Th\' have not prepar\'d for us.\n  AUFIDIUS. O, doubt not that!\n    I speak from certainties. Nay more,\n    Some parcels of their power are forth already,  \n    And only hitherward. I leave your honours.\n    If we and Caius Marcius chance to meet,\n    \'Tis sworn between us we shall ever strike\n    Till one can do no more.\n  ALL. The gods assist you!\n  AUFIDIUS. And keep your honours safe!\n  FIRST SENATOR. Farewell.\n  SECOND SENATOR. Farewell.\n  ALL. Farewell.                                           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nRome. MARCIUS\' house\n\nEnter VOLUMNIA and VIRGILIA, mother and wife to MARCIUS;\nthey set them down on two low stools and sew\n\n  VOLUMNIA. I pray you, daughter, sing, or express yourself in a more\n    comfortable sort. If my son were my husband, I should freelier\n    rejoice in that absence wherein he won honour than in the\n    embracements of his bed where he would show most love. When yet\n    he was but tender-bodied, and the only son of my womb; when youth\n    with comeliness pluck\'d all gaze his way; when, for a day of\n    kings\' entreaties, a mother should not sell him an hour from her\n    beholding; I, considering how honour would become such a person-\n    that it was no better than picture-like to hang by th\' wall, if\n    renown made it not stir- was pleas\'d to let him seek danger where\n    he was to find fame. To a cruel war I sent him, from whence he\n    return\'d his brows bound with oak. I tell thee, daughter, I\n    sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child than\n    now in first seeing he had proved himself a man.\n  VIRGILIA. But had he died in the business, madam, how then?\n  VOLUMNIA. Then his good report should have been my son; I therein  \n    would have found issue. Hear me profess sincerely: had I a dozen\n    sons, each in my love alike, and none less dear than thine and my\n    good Marcius, I had rather had eleven die nobly for their country\n    than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.\n\n                        Enter a GENTLEWOMAN\n\n  GENTLEWOMAN. Madam, the Lady Valeria is come to visit you.\n  VIRGILIA. Beseech you give me leave to retire myself.\n  VOLUMNIA. Indeed you shall not.\n    Methinks I hear hither your husband\'s drum;\n    See him pluck Aufidius down by th\' hair;\n    As children from a bear, the Volsces shunning him.\n    Methinks I see him stamp thus, and call thus:\n    \'Come on, you cowards! You were got in fear,\n    Though you were born in Rome.\' His bloody brow\n    With his mail\'d hand then wiping, forth he goes,\n    Like to a harvest-man that\'s task\'d to mow\n    Or all or lose his hire.\n  VIRGILIA. His bloody brow? O Jupiter, no blood!  \n  VOLUMNIA. Away, you fool! It more becomes a man\n    Than gilt his trophy. The breasts of Hecuba,\n    When she did suckle Hector, look\'d not lovelier\n    Than Hector\'s forehead when it spit forth blood\n    At Grecian sword, contemning. Tell Valeria\n    We are fit to bid her welcome.              Exit GENTLEWOMAN\n  VIRGILIA. Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius!\n  VOLUMNIA. He\'ll beat Aufidius\' head below his knee\n    And tread upon his neck.\n\n         Re-enter GENTLEWOMAN, With VALERIA and an usher\n\n  VALERIA. My ladies both, good day to you.\n  VOLUMNIA. Sweet madam!\n  VIRGILIA. I am glad to see your ladyship.\n  VALERIA. How do you both? You are manifest housekeepers. What are\n    you sewing here? A fine spot, in good faith. How does your little\n    son?\n  VIRGILIA. I thank your ladyship; well, good madam.\n  VOLUMNIA. He had rather see the swords and hear a drum than look  \n    upon his schoolmaster.\n  VALERIA. O\' my word, the father\'s son! I\'ll swear \'tis a very\n    pretty boy. O\' my troth, I look\'d upon him a Wednesday half an\n    hour together; has such a confirm\'d countenance! I saw him run\n    after a gilded butterfly; and when he caught it he let it go\n    again, and after it again, and over and over he comes, and up\n    again, catch\'d it again; or whether his fall enrag\'d him, or how\n    \'twas, he did so set his teeth and tear it. O, I warrant, how he\n    mammock\'d it!\n  VOLUMNIA. One on\'s father\'s moods.\n  VALERIA. Indeed, la, \'tis a noble child.\n  VIRGILIA. A crack, madam.\n  VALERIA. Come, lay aside your stitchery; I must have you play the\n    idle huswife with me this afternoon.\n  VIRGILIA. No, good madam; I will not out of doors.\n  VALERIA. Not out of doors!\n  VOLUMNIA. She shall, she shall.\n  VIRGILIA. Indeed, no, by your patience; I\'ll not over the threshold\n    till my lord return from the wars.\n  VALERIA. Fie, you confine yourself most unreasonably; come, you  \n    must go visit the good lady that lies in.\n  VIRGILIA. I will wish her speedy strength, and visit her with my\n    prayers; but I cannot go thither.\n  VOLUMNIA. Why, I pray you?\n  VIRGILIA. \'Tis not to save labour, nor that I want love.\n  VALERIA. You would be another Penelope; yet they say all the yarn\n    she spun in Ulysses\' absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths.\n    Come, I would your cambric were sensible as your finger, that you\n    might leave pricking it for pity. Come, you shall go with us.\n  VIRGILIA. No, good madam, pardon me; indeed I will not forth.\n  VALERIA. In truth, la, go with me; and I\'ll tell you excellent news\n    of your husband.\n  VIRGILIA. O, good madam, there can be none yet.\n  VALERIA. Verily, I do not jest with you; there came news from him\n    last night.\n  VIRGILIA. Indeed, madam?\n  VALERIA. In earnest, it\'s true; I heard a senator speak it. Thus it\n    is: the Volsces have an army forth; against whom Cominius the\n    general is gone, with one part of our Roman power. Your lord and\n    Titus Lartius are set down before their city Corioli; they  \n    nothing doubt prevailing and to make it brief wars. This is true,\n    on mine honour; and so, I pray, go with us.\n  VIRGILIA. Give me excuse, good madam; I will obey you in everything\n    hereafter.\n  VOLUMNIA. Let her alone, lady; as she is now, she will but disease\n    our better mirth.\n  VALERIA. In troth, I think she would. Fare you well, then. Come,\n    good sweet lady. Prithee, Virgilia, turn thy solemness out o\'\n    door and go along with us.\n  VIRGILIA. No, at a word, madam; indeed I must not. I wish you much\n    mirth.\n  VALERIA. Well then, farewell.                           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nBefore Corioli\n\nEnter MARCIUS, TITUS LARTIUS, with drum and colours,\nwith CAPTAINS and soldiers. To them a MESSENGER\n\n  MARCIUS. Yonder comes news; a wager- they have met.\n  LARTIUS. My horse to yours- no.\n  MARCIUS. \'Tis done.\n  LARTIUS. Agreed.\n  MARCIUS. Say, has our general met the enemy?\n  MESSENGER. They lie in view, but have not spoke as yet.\n  LARTIUS. So, the good horse is mine.\n  MARCIUS. I\'ll buy him of you.\n  LARTIUS. No, I\'ll nor sell nor give him; lend you him I will\n    For half a hundred years. Summon the town.\n  MARCIUS. How far off lie these armies?\n  MESSENGER. Within this mile and half.\n  MARCIUS. Then shall we hear their \'larum, and they ours.\n    Now, Mars, I prithee, make us quick in work,\n    That we with smoking swords may march from hence\n    To help our fielded friends! Come, blow thy blast.  \n\n          They sound a parley. Enter two SENATORS with others,\n                      on the walls of Corioli\n\n    Tullus Aufidius, is he within your walls?\n  FIRST SENATOR. No, nor a man that fears you less than he:\n    That\'s lesser than a little.  [Drum afar off]  Hark, our drums\n    Are bringing forth our youth. We\'ll break our walls\n    Rather than they shall pound us up; our gates,\n    Which yet seem shut, we have but pinn\'d with rushes;\n    They\'ll open of themselves.  [Alarum far off]  Hark you far off!\n    There is Aufidius. List what work he makes\n    Amongst your cloven army.\n  MARCIUS. O, they are at it!\n  LARTIUS. Their noise be our instruction. Ladders, ho!\n\n                   Enter the army of the Volsces\n\n  MARCIUS. They fear us not, but issue forth their city.\n    Now put your shields before your hearts, and fight  \n    With hearts more proof than shields. Advance, brave Titus.\n    They do disdain us much beyond our thoughts,\n    Which makes me sweat with wrath. Come on, my fellows.\n    He that retires, I\'ll take him for a Volsce,\n    And he shall feel mine edge.\n\n          Alarum. The Romans are beat back to their trenches.\n                      Re-enter MARCIUS, cursing\n\n  MARCIUS. All the contagion of the south light on you,\n    You shames of Rome! you herd of- Boils and plagues\n    Plaster you o\'er, that you may be abhorr\'d\n    Farther than seen, and one infect another\n    Against the wind a mile! You souls of geese\n    That bear the shapes of men, how have you run\n    From slaves that apes would beat! Pluto and hell!\n    All hurt behind! Backs red, and faces pale\n    With flight and agued fear! Mend and charge home,\n    Or, by the fires of heaven, I\'ll leave the foe\n    And make my wars on you. Look to\'t. Come on;  \n    If you\'ll stand fast we\'ll beat them to their wives,\n    As they us to our trenches. Follow me.\n\n         Another alarum. The Volsces fly, and MARCIUS follows\n                          them to the gates\n\n    So, now the gates are ope; now prove good seconds;\n    \'Tis for the followers fortune widens them,\n    Not for the fliers. Mark me, and do the like.\n\n                    [MARCIUS enters the gates]\n\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Fool-hardiness; not I.\n  SECOND SOLDIER. Not I.                    [MARCIUS is shut in]\n  FIRST SOLDIER. See, they have shut him in.\n  ALL. To th\' pot, I warrant him.             [Alarum continues]\n\n                      Re-enter TITUS LARTIUS\n\n  LARTIUS. What is become of Marcius?  \n  ALL. Slain, sir, doubtless.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Following the fliers at the very heels,\n    With them he enters; who, upon the sudden,\n    Clapp\'d to their gates. He is himself alone,\n    To answer all the city.\n  LARTIUS. O noble fellow!\n    Who sensibly outdares his senseless sword,\n    And when it bows stand\'st up. Thou art left, Marcius;\n    A carbuncle entire, as big as thou art,\n    Were not so rich a jewel. Thou wast a soldier\n    Even to Cato\'s wish, not fierce and terrible\n    Only in strokes; but with thy grim looks and\n    The thunder-like percussion of thy sounds\n    Thou mad\'st thine enemies shake, as if the world\n    Were feverous and did tremble.\n\n          Re-enter MARCIUS, bleeding, assaulted by the enemy\n\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Look, sir.\n  LARTIUS. O, \'tis Marcius!  \n    Let\'s fetch him off, or make remain alike.\n                            [They fight, and all enter the city]\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nWithin Corioli. A street\n\nEnter certain Romans, with spoils\n\n  FIRST ROMAN. This will I carry to Rome.\n  SECOND ROMAN. And I this.\n  THIRD ROMAN. A murrain on \'t! I took this for silver.\n                               [Alarum continues still afar off]\n\n          Enter MARCIUS and TITUS LARTIUS With a trumpeter\n\n  MARCIUS. See here these movers that do prize their hours\n    At a crack\'d drachma! Cushions, leaden spoons,\n    Irons of a doit, doublets that hangmen would\n    Bury with those that wore them, these base slaves,\n    Ere yet the fight be done, pack up. Down with them!\n                                                Exeunt pillagers\n    And hark, what noise the general makes! To him!\n    There is the man of my soul\'s hate, Aufidius,\n    Piercing our Romans; then, valiant Titus, take\n    Convenient numbers to make good the city;  \n    Whilst I, with those that have the spirit, will haste\n    To help Cominius.\n  LARTIUS. Worthy sir, thou bleed\'st;\n    Thy exercise hath been too violent\n    For a second course of fight.\n  MARCIUS. Sir, praise me not;\n    My work hath yet not warm\'d me. Fare you well;\n    The blood I drop is rather physical\n    Than dangerous to me. To Aufidius thus\n    I will appear, and fight.\n  LARTIUS. Now the fair goddess, Fortune,\n    Fall deep in love with thee, and her great charms\n    Misguide thy opposers\' swords! Bold gentleman,\n    Prosperity be thy page!\n  MARCIUS. Thy friend no less\n    Than those she placeth highest! So farewell.\n  LARTIUS. Thou worthiest Marcius!                  Exit MARCIUS\n    Go sound thy trumpet in the market-place;\n    Call thither all the officers o\' th\' town,\n    Where they shall know our mind. Away!                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nNear the camp of COMINIUS\n\nEnter COMINIUS, as it were in retire, with soldiers\n\n  COMINIUS. Breathe you, my friends. Well fought; we are come off\n    Like Romans, neither foolish in our stands\n    Nor cowardly in retire. Believe me, sirs,\n    We shall be charg\'d again. Whiles we have struck,\n    By interims and conveying gusts we have heard\n    The charges of our friends. The Roman gods,\n    Lead their successes as we wish our own,\n    That both our powers, with smiling fronts encount\'ring,\n    May give you thankful sacrifice!\n\n                         Enter A MESSENGER\n\n    Thy news?\n  MESSENGER. The citizens of Corioli have issued\n    And given to Lartius and to Marcius battle;\n    I saw our party to their trenches driven,\n    And then I came away.  \n  COMINIUS. Though thou speak\'st truth,\n    Methinks thou speak\'st not well. How long is\'t since?\n  MESSENGER. Above an hour, my lord.\n  COMINIUS. \'Tis not a mile; briefly we heard their drums.\n    How couldst thou in a mile confound an hour,\n    And bring thy news so late?\n  MESSENGER. Spies of the Volsces\n    Held me in chase, that I was forc\'d to wheel\n    Three or four miles about; else had I, sir,\n    Half an hour since brought my report.\n\n                           Enter MARCIUS\n\n  COMINIUS. Who\'s yonder\n    That does appear as he were flay\'d? O gods!\n    He has the stamp of Marcius, and I have\n    Before-time seen him thus.\n  MARCIUS. Come I too late?\n  COMINIUS. The shepherd knows not thunder from a tabor\n    More than I know the sound of Marcius\' tongue  \n    From every meaner man.\n  MARCIUS. Come I too late?\n  COMINIUS. Ay, if you come not in the blood of others,\n    But mantled in your own.\n  MARCIUS. O! let me clip ye\n    In arms as sound as when I woo\'d, in heart\n    As merry as when our nuptial day was done,\n    And tapers burn\'d to bedward.\n  COMINIUS. Flower of warriors,\n    How is\'t with Titus Lartius?\n  MARCIUS. As with a man busied about decrees:\n    Condemning some to death and some to exile;\n    Ransoming him or pitying, threat\'ning th\' other;\n    Holding Corioli in the name of Rome\n    Even like a fawning greyhound in the leash,\n    To let him slip at will.\n  COMINIUS. Where is that slave\n    Which told me they had beat you to your trenches?\n    Where is he? Call him hither.\n  MARCIUS. Let him alone;  \n    He did inform the truth. But for our gentlemen,\n    The common file- a plague! tribunes for them!\n    The mouse ne\'er shunn\'d the cat as they did budge\n    From rascals worse than they.\n  COMINIUS. But how prevail\'d you?\n  MARCIUS. Will the time serve to tell? I do not think.\n    Where is the enemy? Are you lords o\' th\' field?\n    If not, why cease you till you are so?\n  COMINIUS. Marcius,\n    We have at disadvantage fought, and did\n    Retire to win our purpose.\n  MARCIUS. How lies their battle? Know you on which side\n    They have plac\'d their men of trust?\n  COMINIUS. As I guess, Marcius,\n    Their bands i\' th\' vaward are the Antiates,\n    Of their best trust; o\'er them Aufidius,\n    Their very heart of hope.\n  MARCIUS. I do beseech you,\n    By all the battles wherein we have fought,\n    By th\' blood we have shed together, by th\' vows  \n    We have made to endure friends, that you directly\n    Set me against Aufidius and his Antiates;\n    And that you not delay the present, but,\n    Filling the air with swords advanc\'d and darts,\n    We prove this very hour.\n  COMINIUS. Though I could wish\n    You were conducted to a gentle bath\n    And balms applied to you, yet dare I never\n    Deny your asking: take your choice of those\n    That best can aid your action.\n  MARCIUS. Those are they\n    That most are willing. If any such be here-\n    As it were sin to doubt- that love this painting\n    Wherein you see me smear\'d; if any fear\n    Lesser his person than an ill report;\n    If any think brave death outweighs bad life\n    And that his country\'s dearer than himself;\n    Let him alone, or so many so minded,\n    Wave thus to express his disposition,\n    And follow Marcius.           [They all shout and wave their  \n       swords, take him up in their arms and cast up their caps]\n    O, me alone! Make you a sword of me?\n    If these shows be not outward, which of you\n    But is four Volsces? None of you but is\n    Able to bear against the great Aufidius\n    A shield as hard as his. A certain number,\n    Though thanks to all, must I select from all; the rest\n    Shall bear the business in some other fight,\n    As cause will be obey\'d. Please you to march;\n    And four shall quickly draw out my command,\n    Which men are best inclin\'d.\n  COMINIUS. March on, my fellows;\n    Make good this ostentation, and you shall\n    Divide in all with us.                                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\nThe gates of Corioli\n\nTITUS LARTIUS, having set a guard upon Corioli, going with drum and trumpet\ntoward COMINIUS and CAIUS MARCIUS, enters with a LIEUTENANT, other soldiers,\nand a scout\n\n  LARTIUS. So, let the ports be guarded; keep your duties\n    As I have set them down. If I do send, dispatch\n    Those centuries to our aid; the rest will serve\n    For a short holding. If we lose the field\n    We cannot keep the town.\n  LIEUTENANT. Fear not our care, sir.\n  LARTIUS. Hence, and shut your gates upon\'s.\n    Our guider, come; to th\' Roman camp conduct us.       Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VIII.\nA field of battle between the Roman and the Volscian camps\n\nAlarum, as in battle. Enter MARCIUS and AUFIDIUS at several doors\n\n  MARCIUS. I\'ll fight with none but thee, for I do hate thee\n    Worse than a promise-breaker.\n  AUFIDIUS. We hate alike:\n    Not Afric owns a serpent I abhor\n    More than thy fame and envy. Fix thy foot.\n  MARCIUS. Let the first budger die the other\'s slave,\n    And the gods doom him after!\n  AUFIDIUS. If I fly, Marcius,\n    Halloa me like a hare.\n  MARCIUS. Within these three hours, Tullus,\n    Alone I fought in your Corioli walls,\n    And made what work I pleas\'d. \'Tis not my blood\n    Wherein thou seest me mask\'d. For thy revenge\n    Wrench up thy power to th\' highest.\n  AUFIDIUS. Wert thou the Hector\n    That was the whip of your bragg\'d progeny,  \n    Thou shouldst not scape me here.\n\n       Here they fight, and certain Volsces come in the aid\n        of AUFIDIUS. MARCIUS fights till they be driven in\n                             breathless\n\n    Officious, and not valiant, you have sham\'d me\n    In your condemned seconds.                            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IX.\nThe Roman camp\n\nFlourish. Alarum. A retreat is sounded. Enter, at one door,\nCOMINIUS with the Romans; at another door, MARCIUS, with his arm in a scarf\n\n  COMINIUS. If I should tell thee o\'er this thy day\'s work,\n    Thou\'t not believe thy deeds; but I\'ll report it\n    Where senators shall mingle tears with smiles;\n    Where great patricians shall attend, and shrug,\n    I\' th\' end admire; where ladies shall be frighted\n    And, gladly quak\'d, hear more; where the dull tribunes,\n    That with the fusty plebeians hate thine honours,\n    Shall say against their hearts \'We thank the gods\n    Our Rome hath such a soldier.\'\n    Yet cam\'st thou to a morsel of this feast,\n    Having fully din\'d before.\n\n         Enter TITUS LARTIUS, with his power, from the pursuit\n\n  LARTIUS. O General,  \n    Here is the steed, we the caparison.\n    Hadst thou beheld-\n  MARCIUS. Pray now, no more; my mother,\n    Who has a charter to extol her blood,\n    When she does praise me grieves me. I have done\n    As you have done- that\'s what I can; induc\'d\n    As you have been- that\'s for my country.\n    He that has but effected his good will\n    Hath overta\'en mine act.\n  COMINIUS. You shall not be\n    The grave of your deserving; Rome must know\n    The value of her own. \'Twere a concealment\n    Worse than a theft, no less than a traducement,\n    To hide your doings and to silence that\n    Which, to the spire and top of praises vouch\'d,\n    Would seem but modest. Therefore, I beseech you,\n    In sign of what you are, not to reward\n    What you have done, before our army hear me.\n  MARCIUS. I have some wounds upon me, and they smart\n    To hear themselves rememb\'red.  \n  COMINIUS. Should they not,\n    Well might they fester \'gainst ingratitude\n    And tent themselves with death. Of all the horses-\n    Whereof we have ta\'en good, and good store- of all\n    The treasure in this field achiev\'d and city,\n    We render you the tenth; to be ta\'en forth\n    Before the common distribution at\n    Your only choice.\n  MARCIUS. I thank you, General,\n    But cannot make my heart consent to take\n    A bribe to pay my sword. I do refuse it,\n    And stand upon my common part with those\n    That have beheld the doing.\n\n           A long flourish. They all cry \'Marcius, Marcius!\'\n   cast up their caps and lances. COMINIUS and LARTIUS stand bare\n\n    May these same instruments which you profane\n    Never sound more! When drums and trumpets shall\n    I\' th\' field prove flatterers, let courts and cities be  \n    Made all of false-fac\'d soothing. When steel grows\n    Soft as the parasite\'s silk, let him be made\n    An overture for th\' wars. No more, I say.\n    For that I have not wash\'d my nose that bled,\n    Or foil\'d some debile wretch, which without note\n    Here\'s many else have done, you shout me forth\n    In acclamations hyperbolical,\n    As if I lov\'d my little should be dieted\n    In praises sauc\'d with lies.\n  COMINIUS. Too modest are you;\n    More cruel to your good report than grateful\n    To us that give you truly. By your patience,\n    If \'gainst yourself you be incens\'d, we\'ll put you-\n    Like one that means his proper harm- in manacles,\n    Then reason safely with you. Therefore be it known,\n    As to us, to all the world, that Caius Marcius\n    Wears this war\'s garland; in token of the which,\n    My noble steed, known to the camp, I give him,\n    With all his trim belonging; and from this time,\n    For what he did before Corioli, can him  \n    With all th\' applause-and clamour of the host,\n    Caius Marcius Coriolanus.\n    Bear th\' addition nobly ever!\n                           [Flourish. Trumpets sound, and drums]\n  ALL. Caius Marcius Coriolanus!\n  CORIOLANUS. I will go wash;\n    And when my face is fair you shall perceive\n    Whether I blush or no. Howbeit, I thank you;\n    I mean to stride your steed, and at all times\n    To undercrest your good addition\n    To th\' fairness of my power.\n  COMINIUS. So, to our tent;\n    Where, ere we do repose us, we will write\n    To Rome of our success. You, Titus Lartius,\n    Must to Corioli back. Send us to Rome\n    The best, with whom we may articulate\n    For their own good and ours.\n  LARTIUS. I shall, my lord.\n  CORIOLANUS. The gods begin to mock me. I, that now\n    Refus\'d most princely gifts, am bound to beg  \n    Of my Lord General.\n  COMINIUS. Take\'t- \'tis yours; what is\'t?\n  CORIOLANUS. I sometime lay here in Corioli\n    At a poor man\'s house; he us\'d me kindly.\n    He cried to me; I saw him prisoner;\n    But then Aufidius was within my view,\n    And wrath o\'erwhelm\'d my pity. I request you\n    To give my poor host freedom.\n  COMINIUS. O, well begg\'d!\n    Were he the butcher of my son, he should\n    Be free as is the wind. Deliver him, Titus.\n  LARTIUS. Marcius, his name?\n  CORIOLANUS. By Jupiter, forgot!\n    I am weary; yea, my memory is tir\'d.\n    Have we no wine here?\n  COMINIUS. Go we to our tent.\n    The blood upon your visage dries; \'tis time\n    It should be look\'d to. Come.                         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE X.\nThe camp of the Volsces\n\nA flourish. Cornets. Enter TULLUS AUFIDIUS bloody, with two or three soldiers\n\n  AUFIDIUS. The town is ta\'en.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. \'Twill be deliver\'d back on good condition.\n  AUFIDIUS. Condition!\n    I would I were a Roman; for I cannot,\n    Being a Volsce, be that I am. Condition?\n    What good condition can a treaty find\n    I\' th\' part that is at mercy? Five times, Marcius,\n    I have fought with thee; so often hast thou beat me;\n    And wouldst do so, I think, should we encounter\n    As often as we eat. By th\' elements,\n    If e\'er again I meet him beard to beard,\n    He\'s mine or I am his. Mine emulation\n    Hath not that honour in\'t it had; for where\n    I thought to crush him in an equal force,\n    True sword to sword, I\'ll potch at him some way,\n    Or wrath or craft may get him.  \n  FIRST SOLDIER. He\'s the devil.\n  AUFIDIUS. Bolder, though not so subtle. My valour\'s poison\'d\n    With only suff\'ring stain by him; for him\n    Shall fly out of itself. Nor sleep nor sanctuary,\n    Being naked, sick, nor fane nor Capitol,\n    The prayers of priests nor times of sacrifice,\n    Embarquements all of fury, shall lift up\n    Their rotten privilege and custom \'gainst\n    My hate to Marcius. Where I find him, were it\n    At home, upon my brother\'s guard, even there,\n    Against the hospitable canon, would I\n    Wash my fierce hand in\'s heart. Go you to th\' city;\n    Learn how \'tis held, and what they are that must\n    Be hostages for Rome.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Will not you go?\n  AUFIDIUS. I am attended at the cypress grove; I pray you-\n    \'Tis south the city mills- bring me word thither\n    How the world goes, that to the pace of it\n    I may spur on my journey.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. I shall, sir.                            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nRome. A public place\n\nEnter MENENIUS, with the two Tribunes of the people, SICINIUS and BRUTUS\n\n  MENENIUS. The augurer tells me we shall have news tonight.\n  BRUTUS. Good or bad?\n  MENENIUS. Not according to the prayer of the people, for they love\n    not Marcius.\n  SICINIUS. Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.\n  MENENIUS. Pray you, who does the wolf love?\n  SICINIUS. The lamb.\n  MENENIUS. Ay, to devour him, as the hungry plebeians would the\n    noble Marcius.\n  BRUTUS. He\'s a lamb indeed, that baes like a bear.\n  MENENIUS. He\'s a bear indeed, that lives fike a lamb. You two are\n    old men; tell me one thing that I shall ask you.\n  BOTH TRIBUNES. Well, sir.\n  MENENIUS. In what enormity is Marcius poor in that you two have not\n    in abundance?\n  BRUTUS. He\'s poor in no one fault, but stor\'d with all.  \n  SICINIUS. Especially in pride.\n  BRUTUS. And topping all others in boasting.\n  MENENIUS. This is strange now. Do you two know how you are censured\n    here in the city- I mean of us o\' th\' right-hand file? Do you?\n  BOTH TRIBUNES. Why, how are we censur\'d?\n  MENENIUS. Because you talk of pride now- will you not be angry?\n  BOTH TRIBUNES. Well, well, sir, well.\n  MENENIUS. Why, \'tis no great matter; for a very little thief of\n    occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience. Give your\n    dispositions the reins, and be angry at your pleasures- at the\n    least, if you take it as a pleasure to you in being so. You blame\n    Marcius for being proud?\n  BRUTUS. We do it not alone, sir.\n  MENENIUS. I know you can do very little alone; for your helps are\n    many, or else your actions would grow wondrous single: your\n    abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone. You talk of\n    pride. O that you could turn your eyes toward the napes of your\n    necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves! O\n    that you could!\n  BOTH TRIBUNES. What then, sir?  \n  MENENIUS. Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting,\n    proud, violent, testy magistrates-alias fools- as any in Rome.\n  SICINIUS. Menenius, you are known well enough too.\n  MENENIUS. I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves\n    a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in\'t; said to\n    be something imperfect in favouring the first complaint, hasty\n    and tinder-like upon too trivial motion; one that converses more\n    with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the\n    morning. What I think I utter, and spend my malice in my breath.\n    Meeting two such wealsmen as you are- I cannot call you\n    Lycurguses- if the drink you give me touch my palate adversely, I\n    make a crooked face at it. I cannot say your worships have\n    deliver\'d the matter well, when I find the ass in compound with\n    the major part of your syllables; and though I must be content to\n    bear with those that say you are reverend grave men, yet they lie\n    deadly that tell you you have good faces. If you see this in the\n    map of my microcosm, follows it that I am known well enough too?\n    What harm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this\n    character, if I be known well enough too?\n  BRUTUS. Come, sir, come, we know you well enough.  \n  MENENIUS. You know neither me, yourselves, nor any thing. You are\n    ambitious for poor knaves\' caps and legs; you wear out a good\n    wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and\n    a fosset-seller, and then rejourn the controversy of threepence\n    to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a matter\n    between party and party, if you chance to be pinch\'d with the\n    colic, you make faces like mummers, set up the bloody flag\n    against all patience, and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss\n    the controversy bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing. All\n    the peace you make in their cause is calling both the parties\n    knaves. You are a pair of strange ones.\n  BRUTUS. Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter giber\n    for the table than a necessary bencher in the Capitol.\n  MENENIUS. Our very priests must become mockers, if they shall\n    encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak\n    best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your\n    beards; and your beards deserve not so honourable a grave as to\n    stuff a botcher\'s cushion or to be entomb\'d in an ass\'s\n    pack-saddle. Yet you must be saying Marcius is proud; who, in a\n    cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion;  \n    though peradventure some of the best of \'em were hereditary\n    hangmen. God-den to your worships. More of your conversation\n    would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly\n    plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave of you.\n                                  [BRUTUS and SICINIUS go aside]\n\n               Enter VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, and VALERIA\n\n    How now, my as fair as noble ladies- and the moon, were she\n    earthly, no nobler- whither do you follow your eyes so fast?\n  VOLUMNIA. Honourable Menenius, my boy Marcius approaches; for the\n    love of Juno, let\'s go.\n  MENENIUS. Ha! Marcius coming home?\n  VOLUMNIA. Ay, worthy Menenius, and with most prosperous\n    approbation.\n  MENENIUS. Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee. Hoo!\n    Marcius coming home!\n  VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA. Nay, \'tis true.\n  VOLUMNIA. Look, here\'s a letter from him; the state hath another,\n    his wife another; and I think there\'s one at home for you.  \n  MENENIUS. I will make my very house reel to-night. A letter for me?\n  VIRGILIA. Yes, certain, there\'s a letter for you; I saw\'t.\n  MENENIUS. A letter for me! It gives me an estate of seven years\'\n    health; in which time I will make a lip at the physician. The\n    most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic and, to\n    this preservative, of no better report than a horse-drench. Is he\n    not wounded? He was wont to come home wounded.\n  VIRGILIA. O, no, no, no.\n  VOLUMNIA. O, he is wounded, I thank the gods for\'t.\n  MENENIUS. So do I too, if it be not too much. Brings a victory in\n    his pocket? The wounds become him.\n  VOLUMNIA. On\'s brows, Menenius, he comes the third time home with\n    the oaken garland.\n  MENENIUS. Has he disciplin\'d Aufidius soundly?\n  VOLUMNIA. Titus Lartius writes they fought together, but Aufidius\n    got off.\n  MENENIUS. And \'twas time for him too, I\'ll warrant him that; an he\n    had stay\'d by him, I would not have been so fidius\'d for all the\n    chests in Corioli and the gold that\'s in them. Is the Senate\n    possess\'d of this?  \n  VOLUMNIA. Good ladies, let\'s go. Yes, yes, yes: the Senate has\n    letters from the general, wherein he gives my son the whole name\n    of the war; he hath in this action outdone his former deeds\n    doubly.\n  VALERIA. In troth, there\'s wondrous things spoke of him.\n  MENENIUS. Wondrous! Ay, I warrant you, and not without his true\n    purchasing.\n  VIRGILIA. The gods grant them true!\n  VOLUMNIA. True! pow, waw.\n  MENENIUS. True! I\'ll be sworn they are true. Where is he wounded?\n    [To the TRIBUNES]  God save your good worships! Marcius is coming\n    home; he has more cause to be proud. Where is he wounded?\n  VOLUMNIA. I\' th\' shoulder and i\' th\' left arm; there will be large\n    cicatrices to show the people when he shall stand for his place.\n    He received in the repulse of Tarquin seven hurts i\' th\' body.\n  MENENIUS. One i\' th\' neck and two i\' th\' thigh- there\'s nine that I\n    know.\n  VOLUMNIA. He had before this last expedition twenty-five wounds\n    upon him.\n  MENENIUS. Now it\'s twenty-seven; every gash was an enemy\'s grave.  \n    [A shout and flourish]  Hark! the trumpets.\n  VOLUMNIA. These are the ushers of Marcius. Before him he carries\n      noise, and behind him he leaves tears;\n    Death, that dark spirit, in\'s nervy arm doth lie,\n    Which, being advanc\'d, declines, and then men die.\n\n            A sennet. Trumpets sound. Enter COMINIUS the\n              GENERAL, and TITUS LARTIUS; between them,\n           CORIOLANUS, crown\'d with an oaken garland; with\n                   CAPTAINS and soldiers and a HERALD\n\n  HERALD. Know, Rome, that all alone Marcius did fight\n    Within Corioli gates, where he hath won,\n    With fame, a name to Caius Marcius; these\n    In honour follows Coriolanus.\n    Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!             [Flourish]\n  ALL. Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!\n  CORIOLANUS. No more of this, it does offend my heart.\n    Pray now, no more.\n  COMINIUS. Look, sir, your mother!  \n  CORIOLANUS. O,\n    You have, I know, petition\'d all the gods\n    For my prosperity!                                  [Kneels]\n  VOLUMNIA. Nay, my good soldier, up;\n    My gentle Marcius, worthy Caius, and\n    By deed-achieving honour newly nam\'d-\n    What is it? Coriolanus must I can thee?\n    But, O, thy wife!\n  CORIOLANUS. My gracious silence, hail!\n    Wouldst thou have laugh\'d had I come coffin\'d home,\n    That weep\'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,\n    Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear,\n    And mothers that lack sons.\n  MENENIUS. Now the gods crown thee!\n  CORIOLANUS. And live you yet?  [To VALERIA]  O my sweet lady,\n    pardon.\n  VOLUMNIA. I know not where to turn.\n    O, welcome home! And welcome, General.\n    And y\'are welcome all.\n  MENENIUS. A hundred thousand welcomes. I could weep  \n    And I could laugh; I am light and heavy. Welcome!\n    A curse begin at very root on\'s heart\n    That is not glad to see thee! You are three\n    That Rome should dote on; yet, by the faith of men,\n    We have some old crab trees here at home that will not\n    Be grafted to your relish. Yet welcome, warriors.\n    We call a nettle but a nettle, and\n    The faults of fools but folly.\n  COMINIUS. Ever right.\n  CORIOLANUS. Menenius ever, ever.\n  HERALD. Give way there, and go on.\n  CORIOLANUS.  [To his wife and mother]  Your hand, and yours.\n    Ere in our own house I do shade my head,\n    The good patricians must be visited;\n    From whom I have receiv\'d not only greetings,\n    But with them change of honours.\n  VOLUMNIA. I have lived\n    To see inherited my very wishes,\n    And the buildings of my fancy; only\n    There\'s one thing wanting, which I doubt not but  \n    Our Rome will cast upon thee.\n  CORIOLANUS. Know, good mother,\n    I had rather be their servant in my way\n    Than sway with them in theirs.\n  COMINIUS. On, to the Capitol.\n                 [Flourish. Cornets. Exeunt in state, as before]\n\n                BRUTUS and SICINIUS come forward\n\n  BRUTUS. All tongues speak of him and the bleared sights\n    Are spectacled to see him. Your prattling nurse\n    Into a rapture lets her baby cry\n    While she chats him; the kitchen malkin pins\n    Her richest lockram \'bout her reechy neck,\n    Clamb\'ring the walls to eye him; stalls, bulks, windows,\n    Are smother\'d up, leads fill\'d and ridges hors\'d\n    With variable complexions, all agreeing\n    In earnestness to see him. Seld-shown flamens\n    Do press among the popular throngs and puff\n    To win a vulgar station; our veil\'d dames  \n    Commit the war of white and damask in\n    Their nicely gawded cheeks to th\' wanton spoil\n    Of Phoebus\' burning kisses. Such a pother,\n    As if that whatsoever god who leads him\n    Were slily crept into his human powers,\n    And gave him graceful posture.\n  SICINIUS. On the sudden\n    I warrant him consul.\n  BRUTUS. Then our office may\n    During his power go sleep.\n  SICINIUS. He cannot temp\'rately transport his honours\n    From where he should begin and end, but will\n    Lose those he hath won.\n  BRUTUS. In that there\'s comfort.\n  SICINIUS. Doubt not\n    The commoners, for whom we stand, but they\n    Upon their ancient malice will forget\n    With the least cause these his new honours; which\n    That he will give them make I as little question\n    As he is proud to do\'t.  \n  BRUTUS. I heard him swear,\n    Were he to stand for consul, never would he\n    Appear i\' th\' market-place, nor on him put\n    The napless vesture of humility;\n    Nor, showing, as the manner is, his wounds\n    To th\' people, beg their stinking breaths.\n  SICINIUS. \'Tis right.\n  BRUTUS. It was his word. O, he would miss it rather\n    Than carry it but by the suit of the gentry to him\n    And the desire of the nobles.\n  SICINIUS. I wish no better\n    Than have him hold that purpose, and to put it\n    In execution.\n  BRUTUS. \'Tis most like he will.\n  SICINIUS. It shall be to him then as our good wills:\n    A sure destruction.\n  BRUTUS. So it must fall out\n    To him or our authorities. For an end,\n    We must suggest the people in what hatred\n    He still hath held them; that to\'s power he would  \n    Have made them mules, silenc\'d their pleaders, and\n    Dispropertied their freedoms; holding them\n    In human action and capacity\n    Of no more soul nor fitness for the world\n    Than camels in their war, who have their provand\n    Only for bearing burdens, and sore blows\n    For sinking under them.\n  SICINIUS. This, as you say, suggested\n    At some time when his soaring insolence\n    Shall touch the people- which time shall not want,\n    If he be put upon\'t, and that\'s as easy\n    As to set dogs on sheep- will be his fire\n    To kindle their dry stubble; and their blaze\n    Shall darken him for ever.\n\n                           Enter A MESSENGER\n\n  BRUTUS. What\'s the matter?\n  MESSENGER. You are sent for to the Capitol. \'Tis thought\n    That Marcius shall be consul.  \n    I have seen the dumb men throng to see him and\n    The blind to hear him speak; matrons flung gloves,\n    Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers,\n    Upon him as he pass\'d; the nobles bended\n    As to Jove\'s statue, and the commons made\n    A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts.\n    I never saw the like.\n  BRUTUS. Let\'s to the Capitol,\n    And carry with us ears and eyes for th\' time,\n    But hearts for the event.\n  SICINIUS. Have with you.                                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nRome. The Capitol\n\nEnter two OFFICERS, to lay cushions, as it were in the Capitol\n\n  FIRST OFFICER. Come, come, they are almost here. How many stand for\n    consulships?\n  SECOND OFFICER. Three, they say; but \'tis thought of every one\n    Coriolanus will carry it.\n  FIRST OFFICER. That\'s a brave fellow; but he\'s vengeance proud and\n    loves not the common people.\n  SECOND OFFICER. Faith, there have been many great men that have\n    flatter\'d the people, who ne\'er loved them; and there be many\n    that they have loved, they know not wherefore; so that, if they\n    love they know not why, they hate upon no better a ground.\n    Therefore, for Coriolanus neither to care whether they love or\n    hate him manifests the true knowledge he has in their\n    disposition, and out of his noble carelessness lets them plainly\n    see\'t.\n  FIRST OFFICER. If he did not care whether he had their love or no,\n    he waved indifferently \'twixt doing them neither good nor harm;  \n    but he seeks their hate with greater devotion than they can\n    render it him, and leaves nothing undone that may fully discover\n    him their opposite. Now to seem to affect the malice and\n    displeasure of the people is as bad as that which he dislikes- to\n    flatter them for their love.\n  SECOND OFFICER. He hath deserved worthily of his country; and his\n    ascent is not by such easy degrees as those who, having been\n    supple and courteous to the people, bonneted, without any further\n    deed to have them at all, into their estimation and report; but\n    he hath so planted his honours in their eyes and his actions in\n    their hearts that for their tongues to be silent and not confess\n    so much were a kind of ingrateful injury; to report otherwise\n    were a malice that, giving itself the lie, would pluck reproof\n    and rebuke from every car that heard it.\n  FIRST OFFICER. No more of him; he\'s a worthy man. Make way, they\n    are coming.\n\n         A sennet. Enter the PATRICIANS and the TRIBUNES\n         OF THE PEOPLE, LICTORS before them; CORIOLANUS,\n            MENENIUS, COMINIUS the Consul. SICINIUS and  \n               BRUTUS take their places by themselves.\n                         CORIOLANUS stands\n\n  MENENIUS. Having determin\'d of the Volsces, and\n    To send for Titus Lartius, it remains,\n    As the main point of this our after-meeting,\n    To gratify his noble service that\n    Hath thus stood for his country. Therefore please you,\n    Most reverend and grave elders, to desire\n    The present consul and last general\n    In our well-found successes to report\n    A little of that worthy work perform\'d\n    By Caius Marcius Coriolanus; whom\n    We met here both to thank and to remember\n    With honours like himself.                 [CORIOLANUS sits]\n  FIRST SENATOR. Speak, good Cominius.\n    Leave nothing out for length, and make us think\n    Rather our state\'s defective for requital\n    Than we to stretch it out. Masters o\' th\' people,\n    We do request your kindest ears; and, after,  \n    Your loving motion toward the common body,\n    To yield what passes here.\n  SICINIUS. We are convented\n    Upon a pleasing treaty, and have hearts\n    Inclinable to honour and advance\n    The theme of our assembly.\n  BRUTUS. Which the rather\n    We shall be bless\'d to do, if he remember\n    A kinder value of the people than\n    He hath hereto priz\'d them at.\n  MENENIUS. That\'s off, that\'s off;\n    I would you rather had been silent. Please you\n    To hear Cominius speak?\n  BRUTUS. Most willingly.\n    But yet my caution was more pertinent\n    Than the rebuke you give it.\n  MENENIUS. He loves your people;\n    But tie him not to be their bedfellow.\n    Worthy Cominius, speak.\n                       [CORIOLANUS rises, and offers to go away]  \n    Nay, keep your place.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Sit, Coriolanus, never shame to hear\n    What you have nobly done.\n  CORIOLANUS. Your Honours\' pardon.\n    I had rather have my wounds to heal again\n    Than hear say how I got them.\n  BRUTUS. Sir, I hope\n    My words disbench\'d you not.\n  CORIOLANUS. No, sir; yet oft,\n    When blows have made me stay, I fled from words.\n    You sooth\'d not, therefore hurt not. But your people,\n    I love them as they weigh-\n  MENENIUS. Pray now, sit down.\n  CORIOLANUS. I had rather have one scratch my head i\' th\' sun\n    When the alarum were struck than idly sit\n    To hear my nothings monster\'d.                          Exit\n  MENENIUS. Masters of the people,\n    Your multiplying spawn how can he flatter-\n    That\'s thousand to one good one- when you now see\n    He had rather venture all his limbs for honour  \n    Than one on\'s ears to hear it? Proceed, Cominius.\n  COMINIUS. I shall lack voice; the deeds of Coriolanus\n    Should not be utter\'d feebly. It is held\n    That valour is the chiefest virtue and\n    Most dignifies the haver. If it be,\n    The man I speak of cannot in the world\n    Be singly counterpois\'d. At sixteen years,\n    When Tarquin made a head for Rome, he fought\n    Beyond the mark of others; our then Dictator,\n    Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight\n    When with his Amazonian chin he drove\n    The bristled lips before him; he bestrid\n    An o\'erpress\'d Roman and i\' th\' consul\'s view\n    Slew three opposers; Tarquin\'s self he met,\n    And struck him on his knee. In that day\'s feats,\n    When he might act the woman in the scene,\n    He prov\'d best man i\' th\' field, and for his meed\n    Was brow-bound with the oak. His pupil age\n    Man-ent\'red thus, he waxed like a sea,\n    And in the brunt of seventeen battles since  \n    He lurch\'d all swords of the garland. For this last,\n    Before and in Corioli, let me say\n    I cannot speak him home. He stopp\'d the fliers,\n    And by his rare example made the coward\n    Turn terror into sport; as weeds before\n    A vessel under sail, so men obey\'d\n    And fell below his stem. His sword, death\'s stamp,\n    Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot\n    He was a thing of blood, whose every motion\n    Was tim\'d with dying cries. Alone he ent\'red\n    The mortal gate of th\' city, which he painted\n    With shunless destiny; aidless came off,\n    And with a sudden re-enforcement struck\n    Corioli like a planet. Now all\'s his.\n    When by and by the din of war \'gan pierce\n    His ready sense, then straight his doubled spirit\n    Re-quick\'ned what in flesh was fatigate,\n    And to the battle came he; where he did\n    Run reeking o\'er the lives of men, as if\n    \'Twere a perpetual spoil; and till we call\'d  \n    Both field and city ours he never stood\n    To ease his breast with panting.\n  MENENIUS. Worthy man!\n  FIRST SENATOR. He cannot but with measure fit the honours\n    Which we devise him.\n  COMINIUS. Our spoils he kick\'d at,\n    And look\'d upon things precious as they were\n    The common muck of the world. He covets less\n    Than misery itself would give, rewards\n    His deeds with doing them, and is content\n    To spend the time to end it.\n  MENENIUS. He\'s right noble;\n    Let him be call\'d for.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Call Coriolanus.\n    OFFICER. He doth appear.\n\n                            Re-enter CORIOLANUS\n\n  MENENIUS. The Senate, Coriolanus, are well pleas\'d\n    To make thee consul.  \n  CORIOLANUS. I do owe them still\n    My life and services.\n  MENENIUS. It then remains\n    That you do speak to the people.\n  CORIOLANUS. I do beseech you\n    Let me o\'erleap that custom; for I cannot\n    Put on the gown, stand naked, and entreat them\n    For my wounds\' sake to give their suffrage. Please you\n    That I may pass this doing.\n  SICINIUS. Sir, the people\n    Must have their voices; neither will they bate\n    One jot of ceremony.\n  MENENIUS. Put them not to\'t.\n    Pray you go fit you to the custom, and\n    Take to you, as your predecessors have,\n    Your honour with your form.\n  CORIOLANUS. It is a part\n    That I shall blush in acting, and might well\n    Be taken from the people.\n  BRUTUS. Mark you that?  \n  CORIOLANUS. To brag unto them \'Thus I did, and thus!\'\n    Show them th\' unaching scars which I should hide,\n    As if I had receiv\'d them for the hire\n    Of their breath only!\n  MENENIUS. Do not stand upon\'t.\n    We recommend to you, Tribunes of the People,\n    Our purpose to them; and to our noble consul\n    Wish we all joy and honour.\n  SENATORS. To Coriolanus come all joy and honour!\n                             [Flourish. Cornets. Then exeunt all\n                                        but SICINIUS and BRUTUS]\n  BRUTUS. You see how he intends to use the people.\n  SICINIUS. May they perceive\'s intent! He will require them\n    As if he did contemn what he requested\n    Should be in them to give.\n  BRUTUS. Come, we\'ll inform them\n    Of our proceedings here. On th\' market-place\n    I know they do attend us.                             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nRome. The Forum\n\nEnter seven or eight citizens\n\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to\n    deny him.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. We may, sir, if we will.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a\n    power that we have no power to do; for if he show us his wounds\n    and tell us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into those\n    wounds and speak for them; so, if he tell us his noble deeds, we\n    must also tell him our noble acceptance of them. Ingratitude is\n    monstrous, and for the multitude to be ingrateful were to make a\n    monster of the multitude; of the which we being members should\n    bring ourselves to be monstrous members.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. And to make us no better thought of, a little help\n    will serve; for once we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck\n    not to call us the many-headed multitude.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. We have been call\'d so of many; not that our heads\n    are some brown, some black, some abram, some bald, but that our\n    wits are so diversely colour\'d; and truly I think if all our wits  \n    were to issue out of one skull, they would fly east, west, north,\n    south, and their consent of one direct way should be at once to\n    all the points o\' th\' compass.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Think you so? Which way do you judge my wit would\n    fly?\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Nay, your wit will not so soon out as another man\'s\n    will- \'tis strongly wedg\'d up in a block-head; but if it were at\n    liberty \'twould sure southward.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Why that way?\n  THIRD CITIZEN. To lose itself in a fog; where being three parts\n   melted away with rotten dews, the fourth would return for\n    conscience\' sake, to help to get thee a wife.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. YOU are never without your tricks; you may, you\n    may.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Are you all resolv\'d to give your voices? But that\'s\n    no matter, the greater part carries it. I say, if he would\n    incline to the people, there was never a worthier man.\n\n                Enter CORIOLANUS, in a gown of humility,\n                               with MENENIUS  \n\n    Here he comes, and in the gown of humility. Mark his behaviour.\n    We are not to stay all together, but to come by him where he\n    stands, by ones, by twos, and by threes. He\'s to make his\n    requests by particulars, wherein every one of us has a single\n    honour, in giving him our own voices with our own tongues;\n    therefore follow me, and I\'ll direct you how you shall go by him.\n  ALL. Content, content.                         Exeunt citizens\n  MENENIUS. O sir, you are not right; have you not known\n    The worthiest men have done\'t?\n  CORIOLANUS. What must I say?\n    \'I pray, sir\'- Plague upon\'t! I cannot bring\n    My tongue to such a pace. \'Look, sir, my wounds\n    I got them in my country\'s service, when\n    Some certain of your brethren roar\'d and ran\n    From th\' noise of our own drums.\'\n  MENENIUS. O me, the gods!\n    You must not speak of that. You must desire them\n    To think upon you.\n  CORIOLANUS. Think upon me? Hang \'em!  \n    I would they would forget me, like the virtues\n    Which our divines lose by \'em.\n  MENENIUS. You\'ll mar all.\n    I\'ll leave you. Pray you speak to \'em, I pray you,\n    In wholesome manner.                                    Exit\n\n                       Re-enter three of the citizens\n\n  CORIOLANUS. Bid them wash their faces\n    And keep their teeth clean. So, here comes a brace.\n    You know the cause, sir, of my standing here.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. We do, sir; tell us what hath brought you to\'t.\n  CORIOLANUS. Mine own desert.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Your own desert?\n  CORIOLANUS. Ay, not mine own desire.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. How, not your own desire?\n  CORIOLANUS. No, sir, \'twas never my desire yet to trouble the poor\n    with begging.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. YOU MUST think, if we give you anything, we hope to\n    gain by you.  \n  CORIOLANUS. Well then, I pray, your price o\' th\' consulship?\n  FIRST CITIZEN. The price is to ask it kindly.\n  CORIOLANUS. Kindly, sir, I pray let me ha\'t. I have wounds to show\n    you, which shall be yours in private. Your good voice, sir; what\n    say you?\n  SECOND CITIZEN. You shall ha\' it, worthy sir.\n  CORIOLANUS. A match, sir. There\'s in all two worthy voices begg\'d.\n    I have your alms. Adieu.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. But this is something odd.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. An \'twere to give again- but \'tis no matter.\n                                       Exeunt the three citizens\n\n                      Re-enter two other citizens\n\n  CORIOLANUS. Pray you now, if it may stand with the tune of your\n    voices that I may be consul, I have here the customary gown.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. You have deserved nobly of your country, and you\n    have not deserved nobly.\n  CORIOLANUS. Your enigma?\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. You have been a scourge to her enemies; you have  \n    been a rod to her friends. You have not indeed loved the common\n    people.\n  CORIOLANUS. You should account me the more virtuous, that I have\n    not been common in my love. I will, sir, flatter my sworn\n    brother, the people, to earn a dearer estimation of them; \'tis a\n    condition they account gentle; and since the wisdom of their\n    choice is rather to have my hat than my heart, I will practise\n    the insinuating nod and be off to them most counterfeitly. That\n    is, sir, I will counterfeit the bewitchment of some popular man\n    and give it bountiful to the desirers. Therefore, beseech you I\n    may be consul.\n  FIFTH CITIZEN. We hope to find you our friend; and therefore give\n    you our voices heartily.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. You have received many wounds for your country.\n  CORIOLANUS. I will not seal your knowledge with showing them. I\n    will make much of your voices, and so trouble you no farther.\n  BOTH CITIZENS. The gods give you joy, sir, heartily!\n                                                 Exeunt citizens\n  CORIOLANUS. Most sweet voices!\n    Better it is to die, better to starve,  \n    Than crave the hire which first we do deserve.\n    Why in this wolvish toge should I stand here\n    To beg of Hob and Dick that do appear\n    Their needless vouches? Custom calls me to\'t.\n    What custom wills, in all things should we do\'t,\n    The dust on antique time would lie unswept,\n    And mountainous error be too highly heap\'d\n    For truth to o\'erpeer. Rather than fool it so,\n    Let the high office and the honour go\n    To one that would do thus. I am half through:\n    The one part suffered, the other will I do.\n\n                      Re-enter three citizens more\n\n    Here come moe voices.\n    Your voices. For your voices I have fought;\n    Watch\'d for your voices; for your voices bear\n    Of wounds two dozen odd; battles thrice six\n    I have seen and heard of; for your voices have\n    Done many things, some less, some more. Your voices?  \n    Indeed, I would be consul.\n  SIXTH CITIZEN. He has done nobly, and cannot go without any honest\n    man\'s voice.\n  SEVENTH CITIZEN. Therefore let him be consul. The gods give him\n    joy, and make him good friend to the people!\n  ALL. Amen, amen. God save thee, noble consul!\n                                                 Exeunt citizens\n  CORIOLANUS. Worthy voices!\n\n             Re-enter MENENIUS with BRUTUS and SICINIUS\n\n  MENENIUS. You have stood your limitation, and the tribunes\n    Endue you with the people\'s voice. Remains\n    That, in th\' official marks invested, you\n    Anon do meet the Senate.\n  CORIOLANUS. Is this done?\n  SICINIUS. The custom of request you have discharg\'d.\n    The people do admit you, and are summon\'d\n    To meet anon, upon your approbation.\n  CORIOLANUS. Where? At the Senate House?  \n  SICINIUS. There, Coriolanus.\n  CORIOLANUS. May I change these garments?\n  SICINIUS. You may, sir.\n  CORIOLANUS. That I\'ll straight do, and, knowing myself again,\n    Repair to th\' Senate House.\n  MENENIUS. I\'ll keep you company. Will you along?\n  BRUTUS. We stay here for the people.\n  SICINIUS. Fare you well.\n                                  Exeunt CORIOLANUS and MENENIUS\n    He has it now; and by his looks methinks\n    \'Tis warm at\'s heart.\n  BRUTUS. With a proud heart he wore\n    His humble weeds. Will you dismiss the people?\n\n                            Re-enter citizens\n\n  SICINIUS. How now, my masters! Have you chose this man?\n  FIRST CITIZEN. He has our voices, sir.\n  BRUTUS. We pray the gods he may deserve your loves.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Amen, sir. To my poor unworthy notice,  \n    He mock\'d us when he begg\'d our voices.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Certainly;\n    He flouted us downright.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. No, \'tis his kind of speech- he did not mock us.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Not one amongst us, save yourself, but says\n    He us\'d us scornfully. He should have show\'d us\n    His marks of merit, wounds receiv\'d for\'s country.\n  SICINIUS. Why, so he did, I am sure.\n  ALL. No, no; no man saw \'em.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. He said he had wounds which he could show in\n      private,\n    And with his hat, thus waving it in scorn,\n    \'I would be consul,\' says he; \'aged custom\n    But by your voices will not so permit me;\n    Your voices therefore.\' When we granted that,\n    Here was \'I thank you for your voices. Thank you,\n    Your most sweet voices. Now you have left your voices,\n    I have no further with you.\' Was not this mockery?\n  SICINIUS. Why either were you ignorant to see\'t,\n    Or, seeing it, of such childish friendliness  \n    To yield your voices?\n  BRUTUS. Could you not have told him-\n    As you were lesson\'d- when he had no power\n    But was a petty servant to the state,\n    He was your enemy; ever spake against\n    Your liberties and the charters that you bear\n    I\' th\' body of the weal; and now, arriving\n    A place of potency and sway o\' th\' state,\n    If he should still malignantly remain\n    Fast foe to th\' plebeii, your voices might\n    Be curses to yourselves? You should have said\n    That as his worthy deeds did claim no less\n    Than what he stood for, so his gracious nature\n    Would think upon you for your voices, and\n    Translate his malice towards you into love,\n    Standing your friendly lord.\n  SICINIUS. Thus to have said,\n    As you were fore-advis\'d, had touch\'d his spirit\n    And tried his inclination; from him pluck\'d\n    Either his gracious promise, which you might,  \n    As cause had call\'d you up, have held him to;\n    Or else it would have gall\'d his surly nature,\n    Which easily endures not article\n    Tying him to aught. So, putting him to rage,\n    You should have ta\'en th\' advantage of his choler\n    And pass\'d him unelected.\n  BRUTUS. Did you perceive\n    He did solicit you in free contempt\n    When he did need your loves; and do you think\n    That his contempt shall not be bruising to you\n    When he hath power to crush? Why, had your bodies\n    No heart among you? Or had you tongues to cry\n    Against the rectorship of judgment?\n  SICINIUS. Have you\n    Ere now denied the asker, and now again,\n    Of him that did not ask but mock, bestow\n    Your su\'d-for tongues?\n  THIRD CITIZEN. He\'s not confirm\'d: we may deny him yet.\n  SECOND CITIZENS. And will deny him;\n    I\'ll have five hundred voices of that sound.  \n  FIRST CITIZEN. I twice five hundred, and their friends to piece\n    \'em.\n  BRUTUS. Get you hence instantly, and tell those friends\n    They have chose a consul that will from them take\n    Their liberties, make them of no more voice\n    Than dogs, that are as often beat for barking\n    As therefore kept to do so.\n  SICINIUS. Let them assemble;\n    And, on a safer judgment, all revoke\n    Your ignorant election. Enforce his pride\n    And his old hate unto you; besides, forget not\n    With what contempt he wore the humble weed;\n    How in his suit he scorn\'d you; but your loves,\n    Thinking upon his services, took from you\n    Th\' apprehension of his present portance,\n    Which, most gibingly, ungravely, he did fashion\n    After the inveterate hate he bears you.\n  BRUTUS. Lay\n    A fault on us, your tribunes, that we labour\'d,\n    No impediment between, but that you must  \n    Cast your election on him.\n  SICINIUS. Say you chose him\n    More after our commandment than as guided\n    By your own true affections; and that your minds,\n    Pre-occupied with what you rather must do\n    Than what you should, made you against the grain\n    To voice him consul. Lay the fault on us.\n  BRUTUS. Ay, spare us not. Say we read lectures to you,\n    How youngly he began to serve his country,\n    How long continued; and what stock he springs of-\n    The noble house o\' th\' Marcians; from whence came\n    That Ancus Marcius, Numa\'s daughter\'s son,\n    Who, after great Hostilius, here was king;\n    Of the same house Publius and Quintus were,\n    That our best water brought by conduits hither;\n    And Censorinus, nobly named so,\n    Twice being by the people chosen censor,\n    Was his great ancestor.\n  SICINIUS. One thus descended,\n    That hath beside well in his person wrought  \n    To be set high in place, we did commend\n    To your remembrances; but you have found,\n    Scaling his present bearing with his past,\n    That he\'s your fixed enemy, and revoke\n    Your sudden approbation.\n  BRUTUS. Say you ne\'er had done\'t-\n    Harp on that still- but by our putting on;\n    And presently, when you have drawn your number,\n    Repair to th\' Capitol.\n  CITIZENS. will will so; almost all\n    Repent in their election.                   Exeunt plebeians\n  BRUTUS. Let them go on;\n    This mutiny were better put in hazard\n    Than stay, past doubt, for greater.\n    If, as his nature is, he fall in rage\n    With their refusal, both observe and answer\n    The vantage of his anger.\n  SICINIUS. To th\' Capitol, come.\n    We will be there before the stream o\' th\' people;\n    And this shall seem, as partly \'tis, their own,  \n    Which we have goaded onward.                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nRome. A street\n\nCornets. Enter CORIOLANUS, MENENIUS, all the GENTRY, COMINIUS,\nTITUS LARTIUS, and other SENATORS\n\n  CORIOLANUS. Tullus Aufidius, then, had made new head?\n  LARTIUS. He had, my lord; and that it was which caus\'d\n    Our swifter composition.\n  CORIOLANUS. So then the Volsces stand but as at first,\n    Ready, when time shall prompt them, to make road\n    Upon\'s again.\n  COMINIUS. They are worn, Lord Consul, so\n    That we shall hardly in our ages see\n    Their banners wave again.\n  CORIOLANUS. Saw you Aufidius?\n  LARTIUS. On safeguard he came to me, and did curse\n    Against the Volsces, for they had so vilely\n    Yielded the town. He is retir\'d to Antium.\n  CORIOLANUS. Spoke he of me?\n  LARTIUS. He did, my lord.\n  CORIOLANUS. How? What?  \n  LARTIUS. How often he had met you, sword to sword;\n    That of all things upon the earth he hated\n    Your person most; that he would pawn his fortunes\n    To hopeless restitution, so he might\n    Be call\'d your vanquisher.\n  CORIOLANUS. At Antium lives he?\n  LARTIUS. At Antium.\n  CORIOLANUS. I wish I had a cause to seek him there,\n    To oppose his hatred fully. Welcome home.\n\n                       Enter SICINIUS and BRUTUS\n\n    Behold, these are the tribunes of the people,\n    The tongues o\' th\' common mouth. I do despise them,\n    For they do prank them in authority,\n    Against all noble sufferance.\n  SICINIUS. Pass no further.\n  CORIOLANUS. Ha! What is that?\n  BRUTUS. It will be dangerous to go on- no further.\n  CORIOLANUS. What makes this change?  \n  MENENIUS. The matter?\n  COMINIUS. Hath he not pass\'d the noble and the common?\n  BRUTUS. Cominius, no.\n  CORIOLANUS. Have I had children\'s voices?\n  FIRST SENATOR. Tribunes, give way: he shall to th\' market-place.\n  BRUTUS. The people are incens\'d against him.\n  SICINIUS. Stop,\n    Or all will fall in broil.\n  CORIOLANUS. Are these your herd?\n    Must these have voices, that can yield them now\n    And straight disclaim their tongues? What are your offices?\n    You being their mouths, why rule you not their teeth?\n    Have you not set them on?\n  MENENIUS. Be calm, be calm.\n  CORIOLANUS. It is a purpos\'d thing, and grows by plot,\n    To curb the will of the nobility;\n    Suffer\'t, and live with such as cannot rule\n    Nor ever will be rul\'d.\n  BRUTUS. Call\'t not a plot.\n    The people cry you mock\'d them; and of late,  \n    When corn was given them gratis, you repin\'d;\n    Scandal\'d the suppliants for the people, call\'d them\n    Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness.\n  CORIOLANUS. Why, this was known before.\n  BRUTUS. Not to them all.\n  CORIOLANUS. Have you inform\'d them sithence?\n  BRUTUS. How? I inform them!\n  COMINIUS. You are like to do such business.\n  BRUTUS. Not unlike\n    Each way to better yours.\n  CORIOLANUS. Why then should I be consul? By yond clouds,\n    Let me deserve so ill as you, and make me\n    Your fellow tribune.\n  SICINIUS. You show too much of that\n    For which the people stir; if you will pass\n    To where you are bound, you must enquire your way,\n    Which you are out of, with a gentler spirit,\n    Or never be so noble as a consul,\n    Nor yoke with him for tribune.\n  MENENIUS. Let\'s be calm.  \n  COMINIUS. The people are abus\'d; set on. This palt\'ring\n    Becomes not Rome; nor has Coriolanus\n    Deserved this so dishonour\'d rub, laid falsely\n    I\' th\' plain way of his merit.\n  CORIOLANUS. Tell me of corn!\n    This was my speech, and I will speak\'t again-\n  MENENIUS. Not now, not now.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Not in this heat, sir, now.\n  CORIOLANUS. Now, as I live, I will.\n    My nobler friends, I crave their pardons.\n    For the mutable, rank-scented meiny, let them\n    Regard me as I do not flatter, and\n    Therein behold themselves. I say again,\n    In soothing them we nourish \'gainst our Senate\n    The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,\n    Which we ourselves have plough\'d for, sow\'d, and scatter\'d,\n    By mingling them with us, the honour\'d number,\n    Who lack not virtue, no, nor power, but that\n    Which they have given to beggars.\n  MENENIUS. Well, no more.  \n  FIRST SENATOR. No more words, we beseech you.\n  CORIOLANUS. How? no more!\n    As for my country I have shed my blood,\n    Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs\n    Coin words till their decay against those measles\n    Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought\n    The very way to catch them.\n  BRUTUS. You speak o\' th\' people\n    As if you were a god, to punish; not\n    A man of their infirmity.\n  SICINIUS. \'Twere well\n    We let the people know\'t.\n  MENENIUS. What, what? his choler?\n  CORIOLANUS. Choler!\n    Were I as patient as the midnight sleep,\n    By Jove, \'twould be my mind!\n  SICINIUS. It is a mind\n    That shall remain a poison where it is,\n    Not poison any further.\n  CORIOLANUS. Shall remain!  \n    Hear you this Triton of the minnows? Mark you\n    His absolute \'shall\'?\n  COMINIUS. \'Twas from the canon.\n  CORIOLANUS. \'Shall\'!\n    O good but most unwise patricians! Why,\n    You grave but reckless senators, have you thus\n    Given Hydra here to choose an officer\n    That with his peremptory \'shall,\' being but\n    The horn and noise o\' th\' monster\'s, wants not spirit\n    To say he\'ll turn your current in a ditch,\n    And make your channel his? If he have power,\n    Then vail your ignorance; if none, awake\n    Your dangerous lenity. If you are learn\'d,\n    Be not as common fools; if you are not,\n    Let them have cushions by you. You are plebeians,\n    If they be senators; and they are no less,\n    When, both your voices blended, the great\'st taste\n    Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate;\n    And such a one as he, who puts his \'shall,\'\n    His popular \'shall,\' against a graver bench  \n    Than ever frown\'d in Greece. By Jove himself,\n    It makes the consuls base; and my soul aches\n    To know, when two authorities are up,\n    Neither supreme, how soon confusion\n    May enter \'twixt the gap of both and take\n    The one by th\' other.\n  COMINIUS. Well, on to th\' market-place.\n  CORIOLANUS. Whoever gave that counsel to give forth\n    The corn o\' th\' storehouse gratis, as \'twas us\'d\n    Sometime in Greece-\n  MENENIUS. Well, well, no more of that.\n  CORIOLANUS. Though there the people had more absolute pow\'r-\n    I say they nourish\'d disobedience, fed\n    The ruin of the state.\n  BRUTUS. Why shall the people give\n    One that speaks thus their voice?\n  CORIOLANUS. I\'ll give my reasons,\n    More worthier than their voices. They know the corn\n    Was not our recompense, resting well assur\'d\n    They ne\'er did service for\'t; being press\'d to th\' war  \n    Even when the navel of the state was touch\'d,\n    They would not thread the gates. This kind of service\n    Did not deserve corn gratis. Being i\' th\' war,\n    Their mutinies and revolts, wherein they show\'d\n    Most valour, spoke not for them. Th\' accusation\n    Which they have often made against the Senate,\n    All cause unborn, could never be the native\n    Of our so frank donation. Well, what then?\n    How shall this bosom multiplied digest\n    The Senate\'s courtesy? Let deeds express\n    What\'s like to be their words: \'We did request it;\n    We are the greater poll, and in true fear\n    They gave us our demands.\' Thus we debase\n    The nature of our seats, and make the rabble\n    Call our cares fears; which will in time\n    Break ope the locks o\' th\' Senate and bring in\n    The crows to peck the eagles.\n  MENENIUS. Come, enough.\n  BRUTUS. Enough, with over measure.\n  CORIOLANUS. No, take more.  \n    What may be sworn by, both divine and human,\n    Seal what I end withal! This double worship,\n    Where one part does disdain with cause, the other\n    Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom,\n    Cannot conclude but by the yea and no\n    Of general ignorance- it must omit\n    Real necessities, and give way the while\n    To unstable slightness. Purpose so barr\'d, it follows\n    Nothing is done to purpose. Therefore, beseech you-\n    You that will be less fearful than discreet;\n    That love the fundamental part of state\n    More than you doubt the change on\'t; that prefer\n    A noble life before a long, and wish\n    To jump a body with a dangerous physic\n    That\'s sure of death without it- at once pluck out\n    The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick\n    The sweet which is their poison. Your dishonour\n    Mangles true judgment, and bereaves the state\n    Of that integrity which should become\'t,\n    Not having the power to do the good it would,  \n    For th\' ill which doth control\'t.\n  BRUTUS. Has said enough.\n  SICINIUS. Has spoken like a traitor and shall answer\n    As traitors do.\n  CORIOLANUS. Thou wretch, despite o\'erwhelm thee!\n    What should the people do with these bald tribunes,\n    On whom depending, their obedience fails\n    To the greater bench? In a rebellion,\n    When what\'s not meet, but what must be, was law,\n    Then were they chosen; in a better hour\n    Let what is meet be said it must be meet,\n    And throw their power i\' th\' dust.\n  BRUTUS. Manifest treason!\n  SICINIUS. This a consul? No.\n  BRUTUS. The aediles, ho!\n\n                           Enter an AEDILE\n\n    Let him be apprehended.\n  SICINIUS. Go call the people,  [Exit AEDILE]  in whose name myself  \n    Attach thee as a traitorous innovator,\n    A foe to th\' public weal. Obey, I charge thee,\n    And follow to thine answer.\n  CORIOLANUS. Hence, old goat!\n  PATRICIANS. We\'ll surety him.\n  COMINIUS. Ag\'d sir, hands off.\n  CORIOLANUS. Hence, rotten thing! or I shall shake thy bones\n    Out of thy garments.\n  SICINIUS. Help, ye citizens!\n\n              Enter a rabble of plebeians, with the AEDILES\n\n  MENENIUS. On both sides more respect.\n  SICINIUS. Here\'s he that would take from you all your power.\n  BRUTUS. Seize him, aediles.\n    PLEBEIANS. Down with him! down with him!\n  SECOND SENATOR. Weapons, weapons, weapons!\n                              [They all bustle about CORIOLANUS]\n  ALL. Tribunes! patricians! citizens! What, ho! Sicinius!\n    Brutus! Coriolanus! Citizens!  \n  PATRICIANS. Peace, peace, peace; stay, hold, peace!\n  MENENIUS. What is about to be? I am out of breath;\n    Confusion\'s near; I cannot speak. You tribunes\n    To th\' people- Coriolanus, patience!\n    Speak, good Sicinius.\n  SICINIUS. Hear me, people; peace!\n  PLEBEIANS. Let\'s hear our tribune. Peace! Speak, speak, speak.\n  SICINIUS. You are at point to lose your liberties.\n    Marcius would have all from you; Marcius,\n    Whom late you have nam\'d for consul.\n  MENENIUS. Fie, fie, fie!\n    This is the way to kindle, not to quench.\n  FIRST SENATOR. To unbuild the city, and to lay all flat.\n  SICINIUS. What is the city but the people?\n  PLEBEIANS. True,\n    The people are the city.\n  BRUTUS. By the consent of all we were establish\'d\n    The people\'s magistrates.\n  PLEBEIANS. You so remain.\n  MENENIUS. And so are like to do.  \n  COMINIUS. That is the way to lay the city flat,\n    To bring the roof to the foundation,\n    And bury all which yet distinctly ranges\n    In heaps and piles of ruin.\n  SICINIUS. This deserves death.\n  BRUTUS. Or let us stand to our authority\n    Or let us lose it. We do here pronounce,\n    Upon the part o\' th\' people, in whose power\n    We were elected theirs: Marcius is worthy\n    Of present death.\n  SICINIUS. Therefore lay hold of him;\n    Bear him to th\' rock Tarpeian, and from thence\n    Into destruction cast him.\n  BRUTUS. AEdiles, seize him.\n  PLEBEIANS. Yield, Marcius, yield.\n  MENENIUS. Hear me one word; beseech you, Tribunes,\n    Hear me but a word.\n  AEDILES. Peace, peace!\n  MENENIUS. Be that you seem, truly your country\'s friend,\n    And temp\'rately proceed to what you would  \n    Thus violently redress.\n  BRUTUS. Sir, those cold ways,\n    That seem like prudent helps, are very poisonous\n    Where the disease is violent. Lay hands upon him\n    And bear him to the rock.\n                                    [CORIOLANUS draws his sword]\n  CORIOLANUS. No: I\'ll die here.\n    There\'s some among you have beheld me fighting;\n    Come, try upon yourselves what you have seen me.\n  MENENIUS. Down with that sword! Tribunes, withdraw awhile.\n  BRUTUS. Lay hands upon him.\n  MENENIUS. Help Marcius, help,\n    You that be noble; help him, young and old.\n  PLEBEIANS. Down with him, down with him!\n                      [In this mutiny the TRIBUNES, the AEDILES,\n                                     and the people are beat in]\n  MENENIUS. Go, get you to your house; be gone, away.\n    All will be nought else.\n  SECOND SENATOR. Get you gone.\n  CORIOLANUS. Stand fast;  \n    We have as many friends as enemies.\n  MENENIUS. Shall it be put to that?\n  FIRST SENATOR. The gods forbid!\n    I prithee, noble friend, home to thy house;\n    Leave us to cure this cause.\n  MENENIUS. For \'tis a sore upon us\n    You cannot tent yourself; be gone, beseech you.\n  COMINIUS. Come, sir, along with us.\n  CORIOLANUS. I would they were barbarians, as they are,\n    Though in Rome litter\'d; not Romans, as they are not,\n    Though calved i\' th\' porch o\' th\' Capitol.\n  MENENIUS. Be gone.\n    Put not your worthy rage into your tongue;\n    One time will owe another.\n  CORIOLANUS. On fair ground\n    I could beat forty of them.\n  MENENIUS. I could myself\n    Take up a brace o\' th\' best of them; yea, the two tribunes.\n  COMINIUS. But now \'tis odds beyond arithmetic,\n    And manhood is call\'d foolery when it stands  \n    Against a falling fabric. Will you hence,\n    Before the tag return? whose rage doth rend\n    Like interrupted waters, and o\'erbear\n    What they are us\'d to bear.\n  MENENIUS. Pray you be gone.\n    I\'ll try whether my old wit be in request\n    With those that have but little; this must be patch\'d\n    With cloth of any colour.\n  COMINIUS. Nay, come away.\n                     Exeunt CORIOLANUS and COMINIUS, with others\n  PATRICIANS. This man has marr\'d his fortune.\n  MENENIUS. His nature is too noble for the world:\n    He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,\n    Or Jove for\'s power to thunder. His heart\'s his mouth;\n    What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent;\n    And, being angry, does forget that ever\n    He heard the name of death.                 [A noise within]\n    Here\'s goodly work!\n  PATRICIANS. I would they were a-bed.\n  MENENIUS. I would they were in Tiber.  \n    What the vengeance, could he not speak \'em fair?\n\n            Re-enter BRUTUS and SICINIUS, the rabble again\n\n  SICINIUS. Where is this viper\n    That would depopulate the city and\n    Be every man himself?\n  MENENIUS. You worthy Tribunes-\n  SICINIUS. He shall be thrown down the Tarpeian rock\n    With rigorous hands; he hath resisted law,\n    And therefore law shall scorn him further trial\n    Than the severity of the public power,\n    Which he so sets at nought.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. He shall well know\n    The noble tribunes are the people\'s mouths,\n    And we their hands.\n  PLEBEIANS. He shall, sure on\'t.\n  MENENIUS. Sir, sir-\n  SICINIUS. Peace!\n  MENENIUS. Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt  \n    With modest warrant.\n  SICINIUS. Sir, how comes\'t that you\n    Have holp to make this rescue?\n  MENENIUS. Hear me speak.\n    As I do know the consul\'s worthiness,\n    So can I name his faults.\n  SICINIUS. Consul! What consul?\n  MENENIUS. The consul Coriolanus.\n  BRUTUS. He consul!\n  PLEBEIANS. No, no, no, no, no.\n  MENENIUS. If, by the tribunes\' leave, and yours, good people,\n    I may be heard, I would crave a word or two;\n    The which shall turn you to no further harm\n    Than so much loss of time.\n  SICINIUS. Speak briefly, then,\n    For we are peremptory to dispatch\n    This viperous traitor; to eject him hence\n    Were but one danger, and to keep him here\n    Our certain death; therefore it is decreed\n    He dies to-night.  \n  MENENIUS. Now the good gods forbid\n    That our renowned Rome, whose gratitude\n    Towards her deserved children is enroll\'d\n    In Jove\'s own book, like an unnatural dam\n    Should now eat up her own!\n  SICINIUS. He\'s a disease that must be cut away.\n  MENENIUS. O, he\'s a limb that has but a disease-\n    Mortal, to cut it off: to cure it, easy.\n    What has he done to Rome that\'s worthy death?\n    Killing our enemies, the blood he hath lost-\n    Which I dare vouch is more than that he hath\n    By many an ounce- he dropt it for his country;\n    And what is left, to lose it by his country\n    Were to us all that do\'t and suffer it\n    A brand to th\' end o\' th\' world.\n  SICINIUS. This is clean kam.\n  BRUTUS. Merely awry. When he did love his country,\n    It honour\'d him.\n  SICINIUS. The service of the foot,\n    Being once gangren\'d, is not then respected  \n    For what before it was.\n  BRUTUS. We\'ll hear no more.\n    Pursue him to his house and pluck him thence,\n    Lest his infection, being of catching nature,\n    Spread further.\n  MENENIUS. One word more, one word\n    This tiger-footed rage, when it shall find\n    The harm of unscann\'d swiftness, will, too late,\n    Tie leaden pounds to\'s heels. Proceed by process,\n    Lest parties- as he is belov\'d- break out,\n    And sack great Rome with Romans.\n  BRUTUS. If it were so-\n  SICINIUS. What do ye talk?\n    Have we not had a taste of his obedience-\n    Our aediles smote, ourselves resisted? Come!\n  MENENIUS. Consider this: he has been bred i\' th\' wars\n    Since \'a could draw a sword, and is ill school\'d\n    In bolted language; meal and bran together\n    He throws without distinction. Give me leave,\n    I\'ll go to him and undertake to bring him  \n    Where he shall answer by a lawful form,\n    In peace, to his utmost peril.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Noble Tribunes,\n    It is the humane way; the other course\n    Will prove too bloody, and the end of it\n    Unknown to the beginning.\n  SICINIUS. Noble Menenius,\n    Be you then as the people\'s officer.\n    Masters, lay down your weapons.\n  BRUTUS. Go not home.\n  SICINIUS. Meet on the market-place. We\'ll attend you there;\n    Where, if you bring not Marcius, we\'ll proceed\n    In our first way.\n  MENENIUS. I\'ll bring him to you.\n    [To the SENATORS]  Let me desire your company; he must come,\n    Or what is worst will follow.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Pray you let\'s to him.                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nRome. The house of CORIOLANUS\n\nEnter CORIOLANUS with NOBLES\n\n  CORIOLANUS. Let them pull all about mine ears, present me\n    Death on the wheel or at wild horses\' heels;\n    Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock,\n    That the precipitation might down stretch\n    Below the beam of sight; yet will I still\n    Be thus to them.\n  FIRST PATRICIAN. You do the nobler.\n  CORIOLANUS. I muse my mother\n    Does not approve me further, who was wont\n    To call them woollen vassals, things created\n    To buy and sell with groats; to show bare heads\n    In congregations, to yawn, be still, and wonder,\n    When one but of my ordinance stood up\n    To speak of peace or war.\n\n                          Enter VOLUMNIA\n  \n    I talk of you:\n    Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me\n    False to my nature? Rather say I play\n    The man I am.\n  VOLUMNIA. O, sir, sir, sir,\n    I would have had you put your power well on\n    Before you had worn it out.\n  CORIOLANUS. Let go.\n  VOLUMNIA. You might have been enough the man you are\n    With striving less to be so; lesser had been\n    The thwartings of your dispositions, if\n    You had not show\'d them how ye were dispos\'d,\n    Ere they lack\'d power to cross you.\n  CORIOLANUS. Let them hang.\n  VOLUMNIA. Ay, and burn too.\n\n                    Enter MENENIUS with the SENATORS\n\n  MENENIUS. Come, come, you have been too rough, something too rough;\n    You must return and mend it.  \n  FIRST SENATOR. There\'s no remedy,\n    Unless, by not so doing, our good city\n    Cleave in the midst and perish.\n  VOLUMNIA. Pray be counsell\'d;\n    I have a heart as little apt as yours,\n    But yet a brain that leads my use of anger\n    To better vantage.\n  MENENIUS. Well said, noble woman!\n    Before he should thus stoop to th\' herd, but that\n    The violent fit o\' th\' time craves it as physic\n    For the whole state, I would put mine armour on,\n    Which I can scarcely bear.\n  CORIOLANUS. What must I do?\n  MENENIUS. Return to th\' tribunes.\n  CORIOLANUS. Well, what then, what then?\n  MENENIUS. Repent what you have spoke.\n  CORIOLANUS. For them! I cannot do it to the gods;\n    Must I then do\'t to them?\n  VOLUMNIA. You are too absolute;\n    Though therein you can never be too noble  \n    But when extremities speak. I have heard you say\n    Honour and policy, like unsever\'d friends,\n    I\' th\' war do grow together; grant that, and tell me\n    In peace what each of them by th\' other lose\n    That they combine not there.\n  CORIOLANUS. Tush, tush!\n  MENENIUS. A good demand.\n  VOLUMNIA. If it be honour in your wars to seem\n    The same you are not, which for your best ends\n    You adopt your policy, how is it less or worse\n    That it shall hold companionship in peace\n    With honour as in war; since that to both\n    It stands in like request?\n  CORIOLANUS. Why force you this?\n  VOLUMNIA. Because that now it lies you on to speak\n    To th\' people, not by your own instruction,\n    Nor by th\' matter which your heart prompts you,\n    But with such words that are but roted in\n    Your tongue, though but bastards and syllables\n    Of no allowance to your bosom\'s truth.  \n    Now, this no more dishonours you at all\n    Than to take in a town with gentle words,\n    Which else would put you to your fortune and\n    The hazard of much blood.\n    I would dissemble with my nature where\n    My fortunes and my friends at stake requir\'d\n    I should do so in honour. I am in this\n    Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles;\n    And you will rather show our general louts\n    How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon \'em\n    For the inheritance of their loves and safeguard\n    Of what that want might ruin.\n  MENENIUS. Noble lady!\n    Come, go with us, speak fair; you may salve so,\n    Not what is dangerous present, but the los\n    Of what is past.\n  VOLUMNIA. I prithee now, My son,\n    Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand;\n    And thus far having stretch\'d it- here be with them-\n    Thy knee bussing the stones- for in such busines  \n    Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th\' ignorant\n    More learned than the ears- waving thy head,\n    Which often thus correcting thy-stout heart,\n    Now humble as the ripest mulberry\n    That will not hold the handling. Or say to them\n    Thou art their soldier and, being bred in broils,\n    Hast not the soft way which, thou dost confess,\n    Were fit for thee to use, as they to claim,\n    In asking their good loves; but thou wilt frame\n    Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far\n    As thou hast power and person.\n  MENENIUS. This but done\n    Even as she speaks, why, their hearts were yours;\n    For they have pardons, being ask\'d, as free\n    As words to little purpose.\n  VOLUMNIA. Prithee now,\n    Go, and be rul\'d; although I know thou hadst rather\n    Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf\n    Than flatter him in a bower.\n  \n                           Enter COMINIUS\n\n    Here is Cominius.\n  COMINIUS. I have been i\' th\' market-place; and, sir, \'tis fit\n    You make strong party, or defend yourself\n    By calmness or by absence; all\'s in anger.\n  MENENIUS. Only fair speech.\n  COMINIUS. I think \'twill serve, if he\n    Can thereto frame his spirit.\n  VOLUMNIA. He must and will.\n    Prithee now, say you will, and go about it.\n  CORIOLANUS. Must I go show them my unbarb\'d sconce? Must I\n    With my base tongue give to my noble heart\n    A lie that it must bear? Well, I will do\'t;\n    Yet, were there but this single plot to lose,\n    This mould of Marcius, they to dust should grind it,\n    And throw\'t against the wind. To th\' market-place!\n    You have put me now to such a part which never\n    I shall discharge to th\' life.\n  COMINIUS. Come, come, we\'ll prompt you.  \n  VOLUMNIA. I prithee now, sweet son, as thou hast said\n    My praises made thee first a soldier, so,\n    To have my praise for this, perform a part\n    Thou hast not done before.\n  CORIOLANUS. Well, I must do\'t.\n    Away, my disposition, and possess me\n    Some harlot\'s spirit! My throat of war be turn\'d,\n    Which quier\'d with my drum, into a pipe\n    Small as an eunuch or the virgin voice\n    That babies lulls asleep! The smiles of knaves\n    Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys\' tears take up\n    The glasses of my sight! A beggar\'s tongue\n    Make motion through my lips, and my arm\'d knees,\n    Who bow\'d but in my stirrup, bend like his\n    That hath receiv\'d an alms! I will not do\'t,\n    Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth,\n    And by my body\'s action teach my mind\n    A most inherent baseness.\n  VOLUMNIA. At thy choice, then.\n    To beg of thee, it is my more dishonour  \n    Than thou of them. Come all to ruin. Let\n    Thy mother rather feel thy pride than fear\n    Thy dangerous stoutness; for I mock at death\n    With as big heart as thou. Do as thou list.\n    Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck\'dst it from me;\n    But owe thy pride thyself.\n  CORIOLANUS. Pray be content.\n    Mother, I am going to the market-place;\n    Chide me no more. I\'ll mountebank their loves,\n    Cog their hearts from them, and come home belov\'d\n    Of all the trades in Rome. Look, I am going.\n    Commend me to my wife. I\'ll return consul,\n    Or never trust to what my tongue can do\n    I\' th\' way of flattery further.\n  VOLUMNIA. Do your will.                                   Exit\n  COMINIUS. Away! The tribunes do attend you. Arm yourself\n    To answer mildly; for they are prepar\'d\n    With accusations, as I hear, more strong\n    Than are upon you yet.\n  CORIOLANUS. The word is \'mildly.\' Pray you let us go.  \n    Let them accuse me by invention; I\n    Will answer in mine honour.\n  MENENIUS. Ay, but mildly.\n  CORIOLANUS. Well, mildly be it then- mildly.            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nRome. The Forum\n\nEnter SICINIUS and BRUTUS\n\n  BRUTUS. In this point charge him home, that he affects\n    Tyrannical power. If he evade us there,\n    Enforce him with his envy to the people,\n    And that the spoil got on the Antiates\n    Was ne\'er distributed.\n\n                           Enter an AEDILE\n\n    What, will he come?\n  AEDILE. He\'s coming.\n  BRUTUS. How accompanied?\n  AEDILE. With old Menenius, and those senators\n    That always favour\'d him.\n  SICINIUS. Have you a catalogue\n    Of all the voices that we have procur\'d,\n    Set down by th\' poll?\n  AEDILE. I have; \'tis ready.  \n  SICINIUS. Have you corrected them by tribes?\n  AEDILE. I have.\n  SICINIUS. Assemble presently the people hither;\n    And when they hear me say \'It shall be so\n    I\' th\' right and strength o\' th\' commons\' be it either\n    For death, for fine, or banishment, then let them,\n    If I say fine, cry \'Fine!\'- if death, cry \'Death!\'\n    Insisting on the old prerogative\n    And power i\' th\' truth o\' th\' cause.\n  AEDILE. I shall inform them.\n  BRUTUS. And when such time they have begun to cry,\n    Let them not cease, but with a din confus\'d\n    Enforce the present execution\n    Of what we chance to sentence.\n  AEDILE. Very well.\n  SICINIUS. Make them be strong, and ready for this hint,\n    When we shall hap to give\'t them.\n  BRUTUS. Go about it.                               Exit AEDILE\n    Put him to choler straight. He hath been us\'d\n    Ever to conquer, and to have his worth  \n    Of contradiction; being once chaf\'d, he cannot\n    Be rein\'d again to temperance; then he speaks\n    What\'s in his heart, and that is there which looks\n    With us to break his neck.\n\n          Enter CORIOLANUS, MENENIUS and COMINIUS, with others\n\n  SICINIUS. Well, here he comes.\n  MENENIUS. Calmly, I do beseech you.\n  CORIOLANUS. Ay, as an ostler, that for th\' poorest piece\n    Will bear the knave by th\' volume. Th\' honour\'d gods\n    Keep Rome in safety, and the chairs of justice\n    Supplied with worthy men! plant love among\'s!\n    Throng our large temples with the shows of peace,\n    And not our streets with war!\n  FIRST SENATOR. Amen, amen!\n  MENENIUS. A noble wish.\n\n                  Re-enter the.AEDILE,with the plebeians\n  \n  SICINIUS. Draw near, ye people.\n  AEDILE. List to your tribunes. Audience! peace, I say!\n  CORIOLANUS. First, hear me speak.\n  BOTH TRIBUNES. Well, say. Peace, ho!\n  CORIOLANUS. Shall I be charg\'d no further than this present?\n    Must all determine here?\n  SICINIUS. I do demand,\n    If you submit you to the people\'s voices,\n    Allow their officers, and are content\n    To suffer lawful censure for such faults\n    As shall be prov\'d upon you.\n  CORIOLANUS. I am content.\n  MENENIUS. Lo, citizens, he says he is content.\n    The warlike service he has done, consider; think\n    Upon the wounds his body bears, which show\n    Like graves i\' th\' holy churchyard.\n  CORIOLANUS. Scratches with briers,\n    Scars to move laughter only.\n  MENENIUS. Consider further,\n    That when he speaks not like a citizen,  \n    You find him like a soldier; do not take\n    His rougher accents for malicious sounds,\n    But, as I say, such as become a soldier\n    Rather than envy you.\n  COMINIUS. Well, well! No more.\n  CORIOLANUS. What is the matter,\n    That being pass\'d for consul with full voice,\n    I am so dishonour\'d that the very hour\n    You take it off again?\n  SICINIUS. Answer to us.\n  CORIOLANUS. Say then; \'tis true, I ought so.\n  SICINIUS. We charge you that you have contriv\'d to take\n    From Rome all season\'d office, and to wind\n    Yourself into a power tyrannical;\n    For which you are a traitor to the people.\n  CORIOLANUS. How- traitor?\n  MENENIUS. Nay, temperately! Your promise.\n  CORIOLANUS. The fires i\' th\' lowest hell fold in the people!\n    Call me their traitor! Thou injurious tribune!\n    Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,  \n    In thy hands clutch\'d as many millions, in\n    Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say\n    \'Thou liest\' unto thee with a voice as free\n    As I do pray the gods.\n  SICINIUS. Mark you this, people?\n  PLEBEIANS. To th\' rock, to th\' rock, with him!\n  SICINIUS. Peace!\n    We need not put new matter to his charge.\n    What you have seen him do and heard him speak,\n    Beating your officers, cursing yourselves,\n    Opposing laws with strokes, and here defying\n    Those whose great power must try him- even this,\n    So criminal and in such capital kind,\n    Deserves th\' extremest death.\n  BRUTUS. But since he hath\n    Serv\'d well for Rome-\n  CORIOLANUS. What do you prate of service?\n  BRUTUS. I talk of that that know it.\n  CORIOLANUS. You!\n  MENENIUS. Is this the promise that you made your mother?  \n  COMINIUS. Know, I pray you-\n  CORIOLANUS. I\'ll know no further.\n    Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death,\n    Vagabond exile, flaying, pent to linger\n    But with a grain a day, I would not buy\n    Their mercy at the price of one fair word,\n    Nor check my courage for what they can give,\n    To have\'t with saying \'Good morrow.\'\n  SICINIUS. For that he has-\n    As much as in him lies- from time to time\n    Envied against the people, seeking means\n    To pluck away their power; as now at last\n    Given hostile strokes, and that not in the presence\n    Of dreaded justice, but on the ministers\n    That do distribute it- in the name o\' th\' people,\n    And in the power of us the tribunes, we,\n    Ev\'n from this instant, banish him our city,\n    In peril of precipitation\n    From off the rock Tarpeian, never more\n    To enter our Rome gates. I\' th\' people\'s name,  \n    I say it shall be so.\n  PLEBEIANS. It shall be so, it shall be so! Let him away!\n    He\'s banish\'d, and it shall be so.\n  COMINIUS. Hear me, my masters and my common friends-\n  SICINIUS. He\'s sentenc\'d; no more hearing.\n  COMINIUS. Let me speak.\n    I have been consul, and can show for Rome\n    Her enemies\' marks upon me. I do love\n    My country\'s good with a respect more tender,\n    More holy and profound, than mine own life,\n    My dear wife\'s estimate, her womb\'s increase\n    And treasure of my loins. Then if I would\n    Speak that-\n  SICINIUS. We know your drift. Speak what?\n  BRUTUS. There\'s no more to be said, but he is banish\'d,\n    As enemy to the people and his country.\n    It shall be so.\n  PLEBEIANS. It shall be so, it shall be so.\n  CORIOLANUS. YOU common cry of curs, whose breath I hate\n    As reek o\' th\' rotten fens, whose loves I prize  \n    As the dead carcasses of unburied men\n    That do corrupt my air- I banish you.\n    And here remain with your uncertainty!\n    Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts;\n    Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,\n    Fan you into despair! Have the power still\n    To banish your defenders, till at length\n    Your ignorance- which finds not till it feels,\n    Making but reservation of yourselves\n    Still your own foes- deliver you\n    As most abated captives to some nation\n    That won you without blows! Despising\n    For you the city, thus I turn my back;\n    There is a world elsewhere.\n                                              Exeunt CORIOLANUS,\n                   COMINIUS, MENENIUS, with the other PATRICIANS\n  AEDILE. The people\'s enemy is gone, is gone!\n                        [They all shout and throw up their caps]\n  PLEBEIANS. Our enemy is banish\'d, he is gone! Hoo-oo!\n  SICINIUS. Go see him out at gates, and follow him,  \n    As he hath follow\'d you, with all despite;\n    Give him deserv\'d vexation. Let a guard\n    Attend us through the city.\n  PLEBEIANS. Come, come, let\'s see him out at gates; come!\n    The gods preserve our noble tribunes! Come.           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nRome. Before a gate of the city\n\nEnter CORIOLANUS, VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, MENENIUS, COMINIUS,\nwith the young NOBILITY of Rome\n\n  CORIOLANUS. Come, leave your tears; a brief farewell. The beast\n    With many heads butts me away. Nay, mother,\n    Where is your ancient courage? You were us\'d\n    To say extremities was the trier of spirits;\n    That common chances common men could bear;\n    That when the sea was calm all boats alike\n    Show\'d mastership in floating; fortune\'s blows,\n    When most struck home, being gentle wounded craves\n    A noble cunning. You were us\'d to load me\n    With precepts that would make invincible\n    The heart that conn\'d them.\n  VIRGILIA. O heavens! O heavens!\n  CORIOLANUS. Nay, I prithee, woman-\n  VOLUMNIA. Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome,\n    And occupations perish!\n  CORIOLANUS. What, what, what!  \n    I shall be lov\'d when I am lack\'d. Nay, mother,\n    Resume that spirit when you were wont to say,\n    If you had been the wife of Hercules,\n    Six of his labours you\'d have done, and sav\'d\n    Your husband so much sweat. Cominius,\n    Droop not; adieu. Farewell, my wife, my mother.\n    I\'ll do well yet. Thou old and true Menenius,\n    Thy tears are salter than a younger man\'s\n    And venomous to thine eyes. My sometime General,\n    I have seen thee stern, and thou hast oft beheld\n    Heart-hard\'ning spectacles; tell these sad women\n    \'Tis fond to wail inevitable strokes,\n    As \'tis to laugh at \'em. My mother, you wot well\n    My hazards still have been your solace; and\n    Believe\'t not lightly- though I go alone,\n    Like to a lonely dragon, that his fen\n    Makes fear\'d and talk\'d of more than seen- your son\n    Will or exceed the common or be caught\n    With cautelous baits and practice.\n  VOLUMNIA. My first son,  \n    Whither wilt thou go? Take good Cominius\n    With thee awhile; determine on some course\n    More than a wild exposture to each chance\n    That starts i\' th\' way before thee.\n  VIRGILIA. O the gods!\n  COMINIUS. I\'ll follow thee a month, devise with the\n    Where thou shalt rest, that thou mayst hear of us,\n    And we of thee; so, if the time thrust forth\n    A cause for thy repeal, we shall not send\n    O\'er the vast world to seek a single man,\n    And lose advantage, which doth ever cool\n    I\' th\' absence of the needer.\n  CORIOLANUS. Fare ye well;\n    Thou hast years upon thee, and thou art too full\n    Of the wars\' surfeits to go rove with one\n    That\'s yet unbruis\'d; bring me but out at gate.\n    Come, my sweet wife, my dearest mother, and\n    My friends of noble touch; when I am forth,\n    Bid me farewell, and smile. I pray you come.\n    While I remain above the ground you shall  \n    Hear from me still, and never of me aught\n    But what is like me formerly.\n  MENENIUS. That\'s worthily\n    As any ear can hear. Come, let\'s not weep.\n    If I could shake off but one seven years\n    From these old arms and legs, by the good gods,\n    I\'d with thee every foot.\n  CORIOLANUS. Give me thy hand.\n    Come.                                                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nRome. A street near the gate\n\nEnter the two Tribunes, SICINIUS and BRUTUS with the AEDILE\n\n  SICINIUS. Bid them all home; he\'s gone, and we\'ll no further.\n    The nobility are vex\'d, whom we see have sided\n    In his behalf.\n  BRUTUS. Now we have shown our power,\n    Let us seem humbler after it is done\n    Than when it was a-doing.\n  SICINIUS. Bid them home.\n    Say their great enemy is gone, and they\n    Stand in their ancient strength.\n  BRUTUS. Dismiss them home.                         Exit AEDILE\n    Here comes his mother.\n\n                   Enter VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, and MENENIUS\n\n  SICINIUS. Let\'s not meet her.\n  BRUTUS. Why?  \n  SICINIUS. They say she\'s mad.\n  BRUTUS. They have ta\'en note of us; keep on your way.\n  VOLUMNIA. O, Y\'are well met; th\' hoarded plague o\' th\' gods\n    Requite your love!\n  MENENIUS. Peace, peace, be not so loud.\n  VOLUMNIA. If that I could for weeping, you should hear-\n    Nay, and you shall hear some.  [To BRUTUS] Will you be gone?\n  VIRGILIA.  [To SICINIUS]  You shall stay too. I would I had the\n      power\n    To say so to my husband.\n  SICINIUS. Are you mankind?\n  VOLUMNIA. Ay, fool; is that a shame? Note but this, fool:\n    Was not a man my father? Hadst thou foxship\n    To banish him that struck more blows for Rome\n    Than thou hast spoken words?\n  SICINIUS. O blessed heavens!\n  VOLUMNIA. Moe noble blows than ever thou wise words;\n    And for Rome\'s good. I\'ll tell thee what- yet go!\n    Nay, but thou shalt stay too. I would my son\n    Were in Arabia, and thy tribe before him,  \n    His good sword in his hand.\n  SICINIUS. What then?\n  VIRGILIA. What then!\n    He\'d make an end of thy posterity.\n  VOLUMNIA. Bastards and all.\n    Good man, the wounds that he does bear for Rome!\n  MENENIUS. Come, come, peace.\n  SICINIUS. I would he had continued to his country\n    As he began, and not unknit himself\n    The noble knot he made.\n  BRUTUS. I would he had.\n  VOLUMNIA. \'I would he had!\' \'Twas you incens\'d the rabble-\n    Cats that can judge as fitly of his worth\n    As I can of those mysteries which heaven\n    Will not have earth to know.\n  BRUTUS. Pray, let\'s go.\n  VOLUMNIA. Now, pray, sir, get you gone;\n    You have done a brave deed. Ere you go, hear this:\n    As far as doth the Capitol exceed\n    The meanest house in Rome, so far my son-  \n    This lady\'s husband here, this, do you see?-\n    Whom you have banish\'d does exceed you an.\n  BRUTUS. Well, well, we\'ll leave you.\n  SICINIUS. Why stay we to be baited\n    With one that wants her wits?                Exeunt TRIBUNES\n  VOLUMNIA. Take my prayers with you.\n    I would the gods had nothing else to do\n    But to confirm my curses. Could I meet \'em\n    But once a day, it would unclog my heart\n    Of what lies heavy to\'t.\n  MENENIUS. You have told them home,\n    And, by my troth, you have cause. You\'ll sup with me?\n  VOLUMNIA. Anger\'s my meat; I sup upon myself,\n    And so shall starve with feeding. Come, let\'s go.\n    Leave this faint puling and lament as I do,\n    In anger, Juno-like. Come, come, come.\n                                    Exeunt VOLUMNIA and VIRGILIA\n  MENENIUS. Fie, fie, fie!                                  Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nA highway between Rome and Antium\n\nEnter a ROMAN and a VOLSCE, meeting\n\n  ROMAN. I know you well, sir, and you know me; your name, I think,\n    is Adrian.\n  VOLSCE. It is so, sir. Truly, I have forgot you.\n  ROMAN. I am a Roman; and my services are, as you are, against \'em.\n    Know you me yet?\n  VOLSCE. Nicanor? No!\n  ROMAN. The same, sir.\n  VOLSCE. YOU had more beard when I last saw you, but your favour is\n    well appear\'d by your tongue. What\'s the news in Rome? I have a\n    note from the Volscian state, to find you out there. You have\n    well saved me a day\'s journey.\n  ROMAN. There hath been in Rome strange insurrections: the people\n    against the senators, patricians, and nobles.\n  VOLSCE. Hath been! Is it ended, then? Our state thinks not so; they\n    are in a most warlike preparation, and hope to come upon them in\n    the heat of their division.\n  ROMAN. The main blaze of it is past, but a small thing would make  \n    it flame again; for the nobles receive so to heart the banishment\n    of that worthy Coriolanus that they are in a ripe aptness to take\n    all power from the people, and to pluck from them their tribunes\n    for ever. This lies glowing, I can tell you, and is almost mature\n    for the violent breaking out.\n  VOLSCE. Coriolanus banish\'d!\n  ROMAN. Banish\'d, sir.\n  VOLSCE. You will be welcome with this intelligence, Nicanor.\n  ROMAN. The day serves well for them now. I have heard it said the\n    fittest time to corrupt a man\'s wife is when she\'s fall\'n out\n    with her husband. Your noble Tullus Aufidius will appear well in\n    these wars, his great opposer, Coriolanus, being now in no\n    request of his country.\n  VOLSCE. He cannot choose. I am most fortunate thus accidentally to\n    encounter you; you have ended my business, and I will merrily\n    accompany you home.\n  ROMAN. I shall between this and supper tell you most strange things\n    from Rome, all tending to the good of their adversaries. Have you\n    an army ready, say you?\n  VOLSCE. A most royal one: the centurions and their charges,  \n    distinctly billeted, already in th\' entertainment, and to be on\n    foot at an hour\'s warning.\n  ROMAN. I am joyful to hear of their readiness, and am the man, I\n    think, that shall set them in present action. So, sir, heartily\n    well met, and most glad of your company.\n  VOLSCE. You take my part from me, sir. I have the most cause to be\n    glad of yours.\n  ROMAN. Well, let us go together.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nAntium. Before AUFIDIUS\' house\n\nEnter CORIOLANUS, in mean apparel, disguis\'d and muffled\n\n  CORIOLANUS. A goodly city is this Antium. City,\n    \'Tis I that made thy widows: many an heir\n    Of these fair edifices fore my wars\n    Have I heard groan and drop. Then know me not.\n    Lest that thy wives with spits and boys with stones,\n    In puny battle slay me.\n\n                           Enter A CITIZEN\n\n    Save you, sir.\n  CITIZEN. And you.\n  CORIOLANUS. Direct me, if it be your will,\n    Where great Aufidius lies. Is he in Antium?\n  CITIZEN. He is, and feasts the nobles of the state\n    At his house this night.\n  CORIOLANUS. Which is his house, beseech you?\n  CITIZEN. This here before you.  \n  CORIOLANUS. Thank you, sir; farewell.             Exit CITIZEN\n    O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn,\n    Whose double bosoms seems to wear one heart,\n    Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal and exercise\n    Are still together, who twin, as \'twere, in love,\n    Unseparable, shall within this hour,\n    On a dissension of a doit, break out\n    To bitterest enmity; so fellest foes,\n    Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep\n    To take the one the other, by some chance,\n    Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends\n    And interjoin their issues. So with me:\n    My birthplace hate I, and my love\'s upon\n    This enemy town. I\'ll enter. If he slay me,\n    He does fair justice: if he give me way,\n    I\'ll do his country service.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nAntium. AUFIDIUS\' house\n\nMusic plays. Enter A SERVINGMAN\n\n  FIRST SERVANT. Wine, wine, wine! What service is here! I think our\n    fellows are asleep.                                     Exit\n\n                     Enter another SERVINGMAN\n\n  SECOND SERVANT.Where\'s Cotus? My master calls for him.\n    Cotus!                                                  Exit\n\n                       Enter CORIOLANUS\n\n  CORIOLANUS. A goodly house. The feast smells well, but I\n    Appear not like a guest.\n\n                 Re-enter the first SERVINGMAN\n\n  FIRST SERVANT. What would you have, friend?\n    Whence are you? Here\'s no place for you: pray go to the door.  \n Exit\n  CORIOLANUS. I have deserv\'d no better entertainment\n    In being Coriolanus.\n\n                   Re-enter second SERVINGMAN\n\n  SECOND SERVANT. Whence are you, sir? Has the porter his eyes in his\n    head that he gives entrance to such companions? Pray get you out.\n  CORIOLANUS. Away!\n  SECOND SERVANT. Away? Get you away.\n  CORIOLANUS. Now th\' art troublesome.\n  SECOND SERVANT. Are you so brave? I\'ll have you talk\'d with anon.\n\n          Enter a third SERVINGMAN. The first meets him\n\n  THIRD SERVANT. What fellow\'s this?\n  FIRST SERVANT. A strange one as ever I look\'d on. I cannot get him\n    out o\' th\' house. Prithee call my master to him.\n  THIRD SERVANT. What have you to do here, fellow? Pray you avoid the\n    house.  \n  CORIOLANUS. Let me but stand- I will not hurt your hearth.\n  THIRD SERVANT. What are you?\n  CORIOLANUS. A gentleman.\n  THIRD SERVANT. A marv\'llous poor one.\n  CORIOLANUS. True, so I am.\n  THIRD SERVANT. Pray you, poor gentleman, take up some other\n    station; here\'s no place for you. Pray you avoid. Come.\n  CORIOLANUS. Follow your function, go and batten on cold bits.\n                                      [Pushes him away from him]\n  THIRD SERVANT. What, you will not? Prithee tell my master what a\n    strange guest he has here.\n  SECOND SERVANT. And I shall.                              Exit\n  THIRD SERVANT. Where dwell\'st thou?\n  CORIOLANUS. Under the canopy.\n  THIRD SERVANT. Under the canopy?\n  CORIOLANUS. Ay.\n  THIRD SERVANT. Where\'s that?\n  CORIOLANUS. I\' th\' city of kites and crows.\n  THIRD SERVANT. I\' th\' city of kites and crows!\n    What an ass it is! Then thou dwell\'st with daws too?  \n  CORIOLANUS. No, I serve not thy master.\n  THIRD SERVANT. How, sir! Do you meddle with my master?\n  CORIOLANUS. Ay; \'tis an honester service than to meddle with thy\n    mistress. Thou prat\'st and prat\'st; serve with thy trencher;\n    hence!                                      [Beats him away]\n\n             Enter AUFIDIUS with the second SERVINGMAN\n\n  AUFIDIUS. Where is this fellow?\n  SECOND SERVANT. Here, sir; I\'d have beaten him like a dog, but for\n    disturbing the lords within.\n  AUFIDIUS. Whence com\'st thou? What wouldst thou? Thy name?\n    Why speak\'st not? Speak, man. What\'s thy name?\n  CORIOLANUS.  [Unmuffling]  If, Tullus,\n    Not yet thou know\'st me, and, seeing me, dost not\n    Think me for the man I am, necessity\n    Commands me name myself.\n  AUFIDIUS. What is thy name?\n  CORIOLANUS. A name unmusical to the Volscians\' ears,\n    And harsh in sound to thine.  \n  AUFIDIUS. Say, what\'s thy name?\n    Thou has a grim appearance, and thy face\n    Bears a command in\'t; though thy tackle\'s torn,\n    Thou show\'st a noble vessel. What\'s thy name?\n  CORIOLANUS. Prepare thy brow to frown- know\'st thou me yet?\n  AUFIDIUS. I know thee not. Thy name?\n  CORIOLANUS. My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done\n    To thee particularly, and to all the Volsces,\n    Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may\n    My surname, Coriolanus. The painful service,\n    The extreme dangers, and the drops of blood\n    Shed for my thankless country, are requited\n    But with that surname- a good memory\n    And witness of the malice and displeasure\n    Which thou shouldst bear me. Only that name remains;\n    The cruelty and envy of the people,\n    Permitted by our dastard nobles, who\n    Have all forsook me, hath devour\'d the rest,\n    An suffer\'d me by th\' voice of slaves to be\n    Whoop\'d out of Rome. Now this extremity  \n    Hath brought me to thy hearth; not out of hope,\n    Mistake me not, to save my life; for if\n    I had fear\'d death, of all the men i\' th\' world\n    I would have \'voided thee; but in mere spite,\n    To be full quit of those my banishers,\n    Stand I before thee here. Then if thou hast\n    A heart of wreak in thee, that wilt revenge\n    Thine own particular wrongs and stop those maims\n    Of shame seen through thy country, speed thee straight\n    And make my misery serve thy turn. So use it\n    That my revengeful services may prove\n    As benefits to thee; for I will fight\n    Against my cank\'red country with the spleen\n    Of all the under fiends. But if so be\n    Thou dar\'st not this, and that to prove more fortunes\n    Th\'art tir\'d, then, in a word, I also am\n    Longer to live most weary, and present\n    My throat to thee and to thy ancient malice;\n    Which not to cut would show thee but a fool,\n    Since I have ever followed thee with hate,  \n    Drawn tuns of blood out of thy country\'s breast,\n    And cannot live but to thy shame, unless\n    It be to do thee service.\n  AUFIDIUS. O Marcius, Marcius!\n    Each word thou hast spoke hath weeded from my heart\n    A root of ancient envy. If Jupiter\n    Should from yond cloud speak divine things,\n    And say \'\'Tis true,\' I\'d not believe them more\n    Than thee, all noble Marcius. Let me twine\n    Mine arms about that body, where against\n    My grained ash an hundred times hath broke\n    And scarr\'d the moon with splinters; here I clip\n    The anvil of my sword, and do contest\n    As hotly and as nobly with thy love\n    As ever in ambitious strength I did\n    Contend against thy valour. Know thou first,\n    I lov\'d the maid I married; never man\n    Sigh\'d truer breath; but that I see thee here,\n    Thou noble thing, more dances my rapt heart\n    Than when I first my wedded mistress saw  \n    Bestride my threshold. Why, thou Mars, I tell the\n    We have a power on foot, and I had purpose\n    Once more to hew thy target from thy brawn,\n    Or lose mine arm for\'t. Thou hast beat me out\n    Twelve several times, and I have nightly since\n    Dreamt of encounters \'twixt thyself and me-\n    We have been down together in my sleep,\n    Unbuckling helms, fisting each other\'s throat-\n    And wak\'d half dead with nothing. Worthy Marcius,\n    Had we no other quarrel else to Rome but that\n    Thou art thence banish\'d, we would muster all\n    From twelve to seventy, and, pouring war\n    Into the bowels of ungrateful Rome,\n    Like a bold flood o\'erbeat. O, come, go in,\n    And take our friendly senators by th\' hands,\n    Who now are here, taking their leaves of me\n    Who am prepar\'d against your territories,\n    Though not for Rome itself.\n  CORIOLANUS. You bless me, gods!\n  AUFIDIUS. Therefore, most. absolute sir, if thou wilt have  \n    The leading of thine own revenges, take\n    Th\' one half of my commission, and set down-\n    As best thou art experienc\'d, since thou know\'st\n    Thy country\'s strength and weakness- thine own ways,\n    Whether to knock against the gates of Rome,\n    Or rudely visit them in parts remote\n    To fright them ere destroy. But come in;\n    Let me commend thee first to those that shall\n    Say yea to thy desires. A thousand welcomes!\n    And more a friend than e\'er an enemy;\n    Yet, Marcius, that was much. Your hand; most welcome!\n                                  Exeunt CORIOLANUS and AUFIDIUS\n\n                    The two SERVINGMEN come forward\n\n  FIRST SERVANT. Here\'s a strange alteration!\n  SECOND SERVANT. By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with\n    a cudgel; and yet my mind gave me his clothes made a false report\n    of him.\n  FIRST SERVANT. What an arm he has! He turn\'d me about with his  \n    finger and his thumb, as one would set up a top.\n  SECOND SERVANT. Nay, I knew by his face that there was something in\n    him; he had, sir, a kind of face, methought- I cannot tell how to\n    term it.\n  FIRST SERVANT. He had so, looking as it were- Would I were hang\'d,\n    but I thought there was more in him than I could think.\n  SECOND SERVANT. So did I, I\'ll be sworn. He is simply the rarest\n    man i\' th\' world.\n  FIRST SERVANT. I think he is; but a greater soldier than he you wot\n    on.\n  SECOND SERVANT. Who, my master?\n  FIRST SERVANT. Nay, it\'s no matter for that.\n  SECOND SERVANT. Worth six on him.\n  FIRST SERVANT. Nay, not so neither; but I take him to be the\n    greater soldier.\n  SECOND SERVANT. Faith, look you, one cannot tell how to say that;\n    for the defence of a town our general is excellent.\n  FIRST SERVANT. Ay, and for an assault too.\n\n                       Re-enter the third SERVINGMAN  \n\n  THIRD SERVANT. O slaves, I can tell you news- news, you rascals!\n  BOTH. What, what, what? Let\'s partake.\n  THIRD SERVANT. I would not be a Roman, of all nations;\n    I had as lief be a condemn\'d man.\n  BOTH. Wherefore? wherefore?\n  THIRD SERVANT. Why, here\'s he that was wont to thwack our general-\n    Caius Marcius.\n  FIRST SERVANT. Why do you say \'thwack our general\'?\n  THIRD SERVANT. I do not say \'thwack our general,\' but he was always\n    good enough for him.\n  SECOND SERVANT. Come, we are fellows and friends. He was ever too\n    hard for him, I have heard him say so himself.\n  FIRST SERVANT. He was too hard for him directly, to say the troth\n    on\'t; before Corioli he scotch\'d him and notch\'d him like a\n    carbonado.\n  SECOND SERVANT. An he had been cannibally given, he might have\n    broil\'d and eaten him too.\n  FIRST SERVANT. But more of thy news!\n  THIRD SERVANT. Why, he is so made on here within as if he were son  \n    and heir to Mars; set at upper end o\' th\' table; no question\n    asked him by any of the senators but they stand bald before him.\n    Our general himself makes a mistress of him, sanctifies himself\n    with\'s hand, and turns up the white o\' th\' eye to his discourse.\n    But the bottom of the news is, our general is cut i\' th\' middle\n    and but one half of what he was yesterday, for the other has half\n    by the entreaty and grant of the whole table. He\'ll go, he says,\n    and sowl the porter of Rome gates by th\' ears; he will mow all\n    down before him, and leave his passage poll\'d.\n  SECOND SERVANT. And he\'s as like to do\'t as any man I can imagine.\n  THIRD SERVANT. Do\'t! He will do\'t; for look you, sir, he has as\n    many friends as enemies; which friends, sir, as it were, durst\n    not- look you, sir- show themselves, as we term it, his friends,\n    whilst he\'s in directitude.\n  FIRST SERVANT. Directitude? What\'s that?\n  THIRD SERVANT. But when they shall see, sir, his crest up again and\n    the man in blood, they will out of their burrows, like conies\n    after rain, and revel an with him.\n  FIRST SERVANT. But when goes this forward?\n  THIRD SERVANT. To-morrow, to-day, presently. You shall have the  \n    drum struck up this afternoon; \'tis as it were parcel of their\n    feast, and to be executed ere they wipe their lips.\n  SECOND SERVANT. Why, then we shall have a stirring world again.\n    This peace is nothing but to rust iron, increase tailors, and\n    breed ballad-makers.\n  FIRST SERVANT. Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as\n    day does night; it\'s spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent.\n    Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mull\'d, deaf, sleepy,\n    insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war\'s a\n    destroyer of men.\n  SECOND SERVANT. \'Tis so; and as war in some sort may be said to be\n    a ravisher, so it cannot be denied but peace is a great maker of\n    cuckolds.\n  FIRST SERVANT. Ay, and it makes men hate one another.\n  THIRD SERVANT. Reason: because they then less need one another. The\n    wars for my money. I hope to see Romans as cheap as Volscians.\n    They are rising, they are rising.\n  BOTH. In, in, in, in!                                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nRome. A public place\n\nEnter the two Tribunes, SICINIUS and BRUTUS\n\n  SICINIUS. We hear not of him, neither need we fear him.\n    His remedies are tame. The present peace\n    And quietness of the people, which before\n    Were in wild hurry, here do make his friends\n    Blush that the world goes well; who rather had,\n    Though they themselves did suffer by\'t, behold\n    Dissentious numbers pest\'ring streets than see\n    Our tradesmen singing in their shops, and going\n    About their functions friendly.\n\n                          Enter MENENIUS\n\n  BRUTUS. We stood to\'t in good time. Is this Menenius?\n  SICINIUS. \'Tis he, \'tis he. O, he is grown most kind\n    Of late. Hail, sir!\n  MENENIUS. Hail to you both!\n  SICINIUS. Your Coriolanus is not much miss\'d  \n    But with his friends. The commonwealth doth stand,\n    And so would do, were he more angry at it.\n  MENENIUS. All\'s well, and might have been much better\n    He could have temporiz\'d.\n  SICINIUS. Where is he, hear you?\n  MENENIUS. Nay, I hear nothing; his mother and his wife\n    Hear nothing from him.\n\n                     Enter three or four citizens\n\n  CITIZENS. The gods preserve you both!\n  SICINIUS. God-den, our neighbours.\n  BRUTUS. God-den to you all, god-den to you an.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Ourselves, our wives, and children, on our knees\n    Are bound to pray for you both.\n  SICINIUS. Live and thrive!\n  BRUTUS. Farewell, kind neighbours; we wish\'d Coriolanus\n    Had lov\'d you as we did.\n  CITIZENS. Now the gods keep you!\n  BOTH TRIBUNES. Farewell, farewell.             Exeunt citizens  \n  SICINIUS. This is a happier and more comely time\n    Than when these fellows ran about the streets\n    Crying confusion.\n  BRUTUS. Caius Marcius was\n    A worthy officer i\' the war, but insolent,\n    O\'ercome with pride, ambitious past all thinking,\n    Self-loving-\n  SICINIUS. And affecting one sole throne,\n    Without assistance.\n  MENENIUS. I think not so.\n  SICINIUS. We should by this, to all our lamentation,\n    If he had gone forth consul, found it so.\n  BRUTUS. The gods have well prevented it, and Rome\n    Sits safe and still without him.\n\n                             Enter an AEDILE\n\n  AEDILE. Worthy tribunes,\n    There is a slave, whom we have put in prison,\n    Reports the Volsces with several powers  \n    Are ent\'red in the Roman territories,\n    And with the deepest malice of the war\n    Destroy what lies before \'em.\n  MENENIUS. \'Tis Aufidius,\n    Who, hearing of our Marcius\' banishment,\n    Thrusts forth his horns again into the world,\n    Which were inshell\'d when Marcius stood for Rome,\n    And durst not once peep out.\n  SICINIUS. Come, what talk you of Marcius?\n  BRUTUS. Go see this rumourer whipp\'d. It cannot be\n    The Volsces dare break with us.\n  MENENIUS. Cannot be!\n    We have record that very well it can;\n    And three examples of the like hath been\n    Within my age. But reason with the fellow\n    Before you punish him, where he heard this,\n    Lest you shall chance to whip your information\n    And beat the messenger who bids beware\n    Of what is to be dreaded.\n  SICINIUS. Tell not me.  \n    I know this cannot be.\n  BRUTUS. Not Possible.\n\n                           Enter A MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. The nobles in great earnestness are going\n    All to the Senate House; some news is come\n    That turns their countenances.\n  SICINIUS. \'Tis this slave-\n    Go whip him fore the people\'s eyes- his raising,\n    Nothing but his report.\n  MESSENGER. Yes, worthy sir,\n    The slave\'s report is seconded, and more,\n    More fearful, is deliver\'d.\n  SICINIUS. What more fearful?\n  MESSENGER. It is spoke freely out of many mouths-\n    How probable I do not know- that Marcius,\n    Join\'d with Aufidius, leads a power \'gainst Rome,\n    And vows revenge as spacious as between\n    The young\'st and oldest thing.  \n  SICINIUS. This is most likely!\n  BRUTUS. Rais\'d only that the weaker sort may wish\n    Good Marcius home again.\n  SICINIUS. The very trick on \'t.\n  MENENIUS. This is unlikely.\n    He and Aufidius can no more atone\n    Than violent\'st contrariety.\n\n                      Enter a second MESSENGER\n\n  SECOND MESSENGER. You are sent for to the Senate.\n    A fearful army, led by Caius Marcius\n    Associated with Aufidius, rages\n    Upon our territories, and have already\n    O\'erborne their way, consum\'d with fire and took\n    What lay before them.\n\n                            Enter COMINIUS\n\n  COMINIUS. O, you have made good work!  \n  MENENIUS. What news? what news?\n  COMINIUS. You have holp to ravish your own daughters and\n    To melt the city leads upon your pates,\n    To see your wives dishonour\'d to your noses-\n  MENENIUS. What\'s the news? What\'s the news?\n  COMINIUS. Your temples burned in their cement, and\n    Your franchises, whereon you stood, confin\'d\n    Into an auger\'s bore.\n  MENENIUS. Pray now, your news?\n    You have made fair work, I fear me. Pray, your news.\n    If Marcius should be join\'d wi\' th\' Volscians-\n  COMINIUS. If!\n    He is their god; he leads them like a thing\n    Made by some other deity than Nature,\n    That shapes man better; and they follow him\n    Against us brats with no less confidence\n    Than boys pursuing summer butterflies,\n    Or butchers killing flies.\n  MENENIUS. You have made good work,\n    You and your apron men; you that stood so much  \n    Upon the voice of occupation and\n    The breath of garlic-eaters!\n  COMINIUS. He\'ll shake\n    Your Rome about your ears.\n  MENENIUS. As Hercules\n    Did shake down mellow fruit. You have made fair work!\n  BRUTUS. But is this true, sir?\n  COMINIUS. Ay; and you\'ll look pale\n    Before you find it other. All the regions\n    Do smilingly revolt, and who resists\n    Are mock\'d for valiant ignorance,\n    And perish constant fools. Who is\'t can blame him?\n    Your enemies and his find something in him.\n  MENENIUS. We are all undone unless\n    The noble man have mercy.\n  COMINIUS. Who shall ask it?\n    The tribunes cannot do\'t for shame; the people\n    Deserve such pity of him as the wolf\n    Does of the shepherds; for his best friends, if they\n    Should say \'Be good to Rome\'- they charg\'d him even  \n    As those should do that had deserv\'d his hate,\n    And therein show\'d fike enemies.\n  MENENIUS. \'Tis true;\n    If he were putting to my house the brand\n    That should consume it, I have not the face\n    To say \'Beseech you, cease.\' You have made fair hands,\n    You and your crafts! You have crafted fair!\n  COMINIUS. You have brought\n    A trembling upon Rome, such as was never\n    S\' incapable of help.\n  BOTH TRIBUNES. Say not we brought it.\n  MENENIUS. How! Was\'t we? We lov\'d him, but, like beasts\n    And cowardly nobles, gave way unto your clusters,\n    Who did hoot him out o\' th\' city.\n  COMINIUS. But I fear\n    They\'ll roar him in again. Tullus Aufidius,\n    The second name of men, obeys his points\n    As if he were his officer. Desperation\n    Is all the policy, strength, and defence,\n    That Rome can make against them.  \n\n                       Enter a troop of citizens\n\n  MENENIUS. Here comes the clusters.\n    And is Aufidius with him? You are they\n    That made the air unwholesome when you cast\n    Your stinking greasy caps in hooting at\n    Coriolanus\' exile. Now he\'s coming,\n    And not a hair upon a soldier\'s head\n    Which will not prove a whip; as many coxcombs\n    As you threw caps up will he tumble down,\n    And pay you for your voices. \'Tis no matter;\n    If he could burn us all into one coal\n    We have deserv\'d it.\n  PLEBEIANS. Faith, we hear fearful news.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. For mine own part,\n    When I said banish him, I said \'twas pity.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. And so did I.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. And so did I; and, to say the truth, so did very\n    many of us. That we did, we did for the best; and though we  \n    willingly consented to his banishment, yet it was against our\n    will.\n  COMINIUS. Y\'are goodly things, you voices!\n  MENENIUS. You have made\n    Good work, you and your cry! Shall\'s to the Capitol?\n  COMINIUS. O, ay, what else?\n                                    Exeunt COMINIUS and MENENIUS\n  SICINIUS. Go, masters, get you be not dismay\'d;\n    These are a side that would be glad to have\n    This true which they so seem to fear. Go home,\n    And show no sign of fear.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. The gods be good to us! Come, masters, let\'s home. I\n    ever said we were i\' th\' wrong when we banish\'d him.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. So did we all. But come, let\'s home.\n                                                 Exeunt citizens\n  BRUTUS. I do not like this news.\n  SICINIUS. Nor I.\n  BRUTUS. Let\'s to the Capitol. Would half my wealth\n    Would buy this for a lie!\n  SICINIUS. Pray let\'s go.                                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\nA camp at a short distance from Rome\n\nEnter AUFIDIUS with his LIEUTENANT\n\n  AUFIDIUS. Do they still fly to th\' Roman?\n  LIEUTENANT. I do not know what witchcraft\'s in him, but\n    Your soldiers use him as the grace fore meat,\n    Their talk at table, and their thanks at end;\n    And you are dark\'ned in this action, sir,\n    Even by your own.\n  AUFIDIUS. I cannot help it now,\n    Unless by using means I lame the foot\n    Of our design. He bears himself more proudlier,\n    Even to my person, than I thought he would\n    When first I did embrace him; yet his nature\n    In that\'s no changeling, and I must excuse\n    What cannot be amended.\n  LIEUTENANT. Yet I wish, sir-\n    I mean, for your particular- you had not\n    Join\'d in commission with him, but either\n    Had borne the action of yourself, or else  \n    To him had left it solely.\n  AUFIDIUS. I understand thee well; and be thou sure,\n    When he shall come to his account, he knows not\n    What I can urge against him. Although it seems,\n    And so he thinks, and is no less apparent\n    To th\' vulgar eye, that he bears all things fairly\n    And shows good husbandry for the Volscian state,\n    Fights dragon-like, and does achieve as soon\n    As draw his sword; yet he hath left undone\n    That which shall break his neck or hazard mine\n    Whene\'er we come to our account.\n  LIEUTENANT. Sir, I beseech you, think you he\'ll carry Rome?\n  AUFIDIUS. All places yield to him ere he sits down,\n    And the nobility of Rome are his;\n    The senators and patricians love him too.\n    The tribunes are no soldiers, and their people\n    Will be as rash in the repeal as hasty\n    To expel him thence. I think he\'ll be to Rome\n    As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it\n    By sovereignty of nature. First he was  \n    A noble servant to them, but he could not\n    Carry his honours even. Whether \'twas pride,\n    Which out of daily fortune ever taints\n    The happy man; whether defect of judgment,\n    To fail in the disposing of those chances\n    Which he was lord of; or whether nature,\n    Not to be other than one thing, not moving\n    From th\' casque to th\' cushion, but commanding peace\n    Even with the same austerity and garb\n    As he controll\'d the war; but one of these-\n    As he hath spices of them all- not all,\n    For I dare so far free him- made him fear\'d,\n    So hated, and so banish\'d. But he has a merit\n    To choke it in the utt\'rance. So our virtues\n    Lie in th\' interpretation of the time;\n    And power, unto itself most commendable,\n    Hath not a tomb so evident as a chair\n    T\' extol what it hath done.\n    One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail;\n    Rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail.  \n    Come, let\'s away. When, Caius, Rome is thine,\n    Thou art poor\'st of all; then shortly art thou mine.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nRome. A public place\n\nEnter MENENIUS, COMINIUS, SICINIUS and BRUTUS, the two Tribunes, with others\n\n  MENENIUS. No, I\'ll not go. You hear what he hath said\n    Which was sometime his general, who lov\'d him\n    In a most dear particular. He call\'d me father;\n    But what o\' that? Go, you that banish\'d him:\n    A mile before his tent fall down, and knee\n    The way into his mercy. Nay, if he coy\'d\n    To hear Cominius speak, I\'ll keep at home.\n  COMINIUS. He would not seem to know me.\n  MENENIUS. Do you hear?\n  COMINIUS. Yet one time he did call me by my name.\n    I urg\'d our old acquaintance, and the drops\n    That we have bled together. \'Coriolanus\'\n    He would not answer to; forbid all names;\n    He was a kind of nothing, titleless,\n    Till he had forg\'d himself a name i\' th\' fire\n    Of burning Rome.  \n  MENENIUS. Why, so! You have made good work.\n    A pair of tribunes that have wrack\'d for Rome\n    To make coals cheap- a noble memory!\n  COMINIUS. I minded him how royal \'twas to pardon\n    When it was less expected; he replied,\n    It was a bare petition of a state\n    To one whom they had punish\'d.\n  MENENIUS. Very well.\n    Could he say less?\n  COMINIUS. I offer\'d to awaken his regard\n    For\'s private friends; his answer to me was,\n    He could not stay to pick them in a pile\n    Of noisome musty chaff. He said \'twas folly,\n    For one poor grain or two, to leave unburnt\n    And still to nose th\' offence.\n  MENENIUS. For one poor grain or two!\n    I am one of those. His mother, wife, his child,\n    And this brave fellow too- we are the grains:\n    You are the musty chaff, and you are smelt\n    Above the moon. We must be burnt for you.  \n  SICINIUS. Nay, pray be patient; if you refuse your aid\n    In this so never-needed help, yet do not\n    Upbraid\'s with our distress. But sure, if you\n    Would be your country\'s pleader, your good tongue,\n    More than the instant army we can make,\n    Might stop our countryman.\n  MENENIUS. No; I\'ll not meddle.\n  SICINIUS. Pray you go to him.\n  MENENIUS. What should I do?\n  BRUTUS. Only make trial what your love can do\n    For Rome, towards Marcius.\n  MENENIUS. Well, and say that Marcius\n    Return me, as Cominius is return\'d,\n    Unheard- what then?\n    But as a discontented friend, grief-shot\n    With his unkindness? Say\'t be so?\n  SICINIUS. Yet your good will\n    Must have that thanks from Rome after the measure\n    As you intended well.\n  MENENIUS. I\'ll undertake\'t;  \n    I think he\'ll hear me. Yet to bite his lip\n    And hum at good Cominius much unhearts me.\n    He was not taken well: he had not din\'d;\n    The veins unfill\'d, our blood is cold, and then\n    We pout upon the morning, are unapt\n    To give or to forgive; but when we have stuff\'d\n    These pipes and these conveyances of our blood\n    With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls\n    Than in our priest-like fasts. Therefore I\'ll watch him\n    Till he be dieted to my request,\n    And then I\'ll set upon him.\n  BRUTUS. You know the very road into his kindness\n    And cannot lose your way.\n  MENENIUS. Good faith, I\'ll prove him,\n    Speed how it will. I shall ere long have knowledge\n    Of my success.                                          Exit\n  COMINIUS. He\'ll never hear him.\n  SICINIUS. Not?\n  COMINIUS. I tell you he does sit in gold, his eye\n    Red as \'twould burn Rome, and his injury  \n    The gaoler to his pity. I kneel\'d before him;\n    \'Twas very faintly he said \'Rise\'; dismiss\'d me\n    Thus with his speechless hand. What he would do,\n    He sent in writing after me; what he would not,\n    Bound with an oath to yield to his conditions;\n    So that all hope is vain,\n    Unless his noble mother and his wife,\n    Who, as I hear, mean to solicit him\n    For mercy to his country. Therefore let\'s hence,\n    And with our fair entreaties haste them on.           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe Volscian camp before Rome\n\nEnter MENENIUS to the WATCH on guard\n\n  FIRST WATCH. Stay. Whence are you?\n  SECOND WATCH. Stand, and go back.\n  MENENIUS. You guard like men, \'tis well; but, by your leave,\n    I am an officer of state and come\n    To speak with Coriolanus.\n  FIRST WATCH. From whence?\n  MENENIUS. From Rome.\n  FIRST WATCH. YOU may not pass; you must return. Our general\n    Will no more hear from thence.\n  SECOND WATCH. You\'ll see your Rome embrac\'d with fire before\n    You\'ll speak with Coriolanus.\n  MENENIUS. Good my friends,\n    If you have heard your general talk of Rome\n    And of his friends there, it is lots to blanks\n    My name hath touch\'d your ears: it is Menenius.\n  FIRST WATCH. Be it so; go back. The virtue of your name\n    Is not here passable.  \n  MENENIUS. I tell thee, fellow,\n    Thy general is my lover. I have been\n    The book of his good acts whence men have read\n    His fame unparallel\'d haply amplified;\n    For I have ever verified my friends-\n    Of whom he\'s chief- with all the size that verity\n    Would without lapsing suffer. Nay, sometimes,\n    Like to a bowl upon a subtle ground,\n    I have tumbled past the throw, and in his praise\n    Have almost stamp\'d the leasing; therefore, fellow,\n    I must have leave to pass.\n  FIRST WATCH. Faith, sir, if you had told as many lies in his behalf\n    as you have uttered words in your own, you should not pass here;\n    no, though it were as virtuous to lie as to live chastely.\n    Therefore go back.\n  MENENIUS. Prithee, fellow, remember my name is Menenius, always\n    factionary on the party of your general.\n  SECOND WATCH. Howsoever you have been his liar, as you say you\n    have, I am one that, telling true under him, must say you cannot\n    pass. Therefore go back.  \n  MENENIUS. Has he din\'d, canst thou tell? For I would not speak with\n    him till after dinner.\n  FIRST WATCH. You are a Roman, are you?\n  MENENIUS. I am as thy general is.\n  FIRST WATCH. Then you should hate Rome, as he does. Can you, when\n    you have push\'d out your gates the very defender of them, and in\n    a violent popular ignorance given your enemy your shield, think\n    to front his revenges with the easy groans of old women, the\n    virginal palms of your daughters, or with the palsied\n    intercession of such a decay\'d dotant as you seem to be? Can you\n    think to blow out the intended fire your city is ready to flame\n    in with such weak breath as this? No, you are deceiv\'d; therefore\n    back to Rome and prepare for your execution. You are condemn\'d;\n    our general has sworn you out of reprieve and pardon.\n  MENENIUS. Sirrah, if thy captain knew I were here, he would use me\n    with estimation.\n  FIRST WATCH. Come, my captain knows you not.\n  MENENIUS. I mean thy general.\n  FIRST WATCH. My general cares not for you. Back, I say; go, lest I\n    let forth your half pint of blood. Back- that\'s the utmost of  \n    your having. Back.\n  MENENIUS. Nay, but fellow, fellow-\n\n                      Enter CORIOLANUS with AUFIDIUS\n\n  CORIOLANUS. What\'s the matter?\n  MENENIUS. Now, you companion, I\'ll say an errand for you; you shall\n    know now that I am in estimation; you shall perceive that a Jack\n    guardant cannot office me from my son Coriolanus. Guess but by my\n    entertainment with him if thou stand\'st not i\' th\' state of\n    hanging, or of some death more long in spectatorship and crueller\n    in suffering; behold now presently, and swoon for what\'s to come\n    upon thee. The glorious gods sit in hourly synod about thy\n    particular prosperity, and love thee no worse than thy old father\n    Menenius does! O my son! my son! thou art preparing fire for us;\n    look thee, here\'s water to quench it. I was hardly moved to come\n    to thee; but being assured none but myself could move thee, I\n    have been blown out of your gates with sighs, and conjure thee to\n    pardon Rome and thy petitionary countrymen. The good gods assuage\n    thy wrath, and turn the dregs of it upon this varlet here; this,  \n    who, like a block, hath denied my access to thee.\n  CORIOLANUS. Away!\n  MENENIUS. How! away!\n  CORIOLANUS. Wife, mother, child, I know not. My affairs\n    Are servanted to others. Though I owe\n    My revenge properly, my remission lies\n    In Volscian breasts. That we have been familiar,\n    Ingrate forgetfulness shall poison rather\n    Than pity note how much. Therefore be gone.\n    Mine ears against your suits are stronger than\n    Your gates against my force. Yet, for I lov\'d thee,\n    Take this along; I writ it for thy sake     [Gives a letter]\n    And would have sent it. Another word, Menenius,\n    I will not hear thee speak. This man, Aufidius,\n    Was my belov\'d in Rome; yet thou behold\'st.\n  AUFIDIUS. You keep a constant temper.\n                                  Exeunt CORIOLANUS and Aufidius\n  FIRST WATCH. Now, sir, is your name Menenius?\n  SECOND WATCH. \'Tis a spell, you see, of much power! You know the\n    way home again.  \n  FIRST WATCH. Do you hear how we are shent for keeping your\n    greatness back?\n  SECOND WATCH. What cause, do you think, I have to swoon?\n  MENENIUS. I neither care for th\' world nor your general; for such\n    things as you, I can scarce think there\'s any, y\'are so slight.\n    He that hath a will to die by himself fears it not from another.\n    Let your general do his worst. For you, be that you are, long;\n    and your misery increase with your age! I say to you, as I was\n    said to: Away!                                          Exit\n  FIRST WATCH. A noble fellow, I warrant him.\n  SECOND WATCH. The worthy fellow is our general; he\'s the rock, the\n    oak not to be wind-shaken.                            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nThe tent of CORIOLANUS\n\nEnter CORIOLANUS, AUFIDIUS, and others\n\n  CORIOLANUS. We will before the walls of Rome to-morrow\n    Set down our host. My partner in this action,\n    You must report to th\' Volscian lords how plainly\n    I have borne this business.\n  AUFIDIUS. Only their ends\n    You have respected; stopp\'d your ears against\n    The general suit of Rome; never admitted\n    A private whisper- no, not with such friends\n    That thought them sure of you.\n  CORIOLANUS. This last old man,\n    Whom with crack\'d heart I have sent to Rome,\n    Lov\'d me above the measure of a father;\n    Nay, godded me indeed. Their latest refuge\n    Was to send him; for whose old love I have-\n    Though I show\'d sourly to him- once more offer\'d\n    The first conditions, which they did refuse\n    And cannot now accept. To grace him only,  \n    That thought he could do more, a very little\n    I have yielded to; fresh embassies and suits,\n    Nor from the state nor private friends, hereafter\n    Will I lend ear to.  [Shout within]  Ha! what shout is this?\n    Shall I be tempted to infringe my vow\n    In the same time \'tis made? I will not.\n\n       Enter, in mourning habits, VIRGILIA, VOLUMNIA, VALERIA,\n                   YOUNG MARCIUS, with attendants\n\n    My wife comes foremost, then the honour\'d mould\n    Wherein this trunk was fram\'d, and in her hand\n    The grandchild to her blood. But out, affection!\n    All bond and privilege of nature, break!\n    Let it be virtuous to be obstinate.\n    What is that curtsy worth? or those doves\' eyes,\n    Which can make gods forsworn? I melt, and am not\n    Of stronger earth than others. My mother bows,\n    As if Olympus to a molehill should\n    In supplication nod; and my young boy  \n    Hath an aspect of intercession which\n    Great nature cries \'Deny not.\' Let the Volsces\n    Plough Rome and harrow Italy; I\'ll never\n    Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand\n    As if a man were author of himself\n    And knew no other kin.\n  VIRGILIA. My lord and husband!\n  CORIOLANUS. These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome.\n  VIRGILIA. The sorrow that delivers us thus chang\'d\n    Makes you think so.\n  CORIOLANUS. Like a dull actor now\n    I have forgot my part and I am out,\n    Even to a full disgrace. Best of my flesh,\n    Forgive my tyranny; but do not say,\n    For that, \'Forgive our Romans.\' O, a kiss\n    Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!\n    Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss\n    I carried from thee, dear, and my true lip\n    Hath virgin\'d it e\'er since. You gods! I prate,\n    And the most noble mother of the world  \n    Leave unsaluted. Sink, my knee, i\' th\' earth;       [Kneels]\n    Of thy deep duty more impression show\n    Than that of common sons.\n  VOLUMNIA. O, stand up blest!\n    Whilst with no softer cushion than the flint\n    I kneel before thee, and unproperly\n    Show duty, as mistaken all this while\n    Between the child and parent.                       [Kneels]\n  CORIOLANUS. What\'s this?\n    Your knees to me, to your corrected son?\n    Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach\n    Fillip the stars; then let the mutinous winds\n    Strike the proud cedars \'gainst the fiery sun,\n    Murd\'ring impossibility, to make\n    What cannot be slight work.\n  VOLUMNIA. Thou art my warrior;\n    I holp to frame thee. Do you know this lady?\n  CORIOLANUS. The noble sister of Publicola,\n    The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle\n    That\'s curdied by the frost from purest snow,  \n    And hangs on Dian\'s temple- dear Valeria!\n  VOLUMNIA. This is a poor epitome of yours,\n    Which by th\' interpretation of full time\n    May show like all yourself.\n  CORIOLANUS. The god of soldiers,\n    With the consent of supreme Jove, inform\n    Thy thoughts with nobleness, that thou mayst prove\n    To shame unvulnerable, and stick i\' th\' wars\n    Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw,\n    And saving those that eye thee!\n  VOLUMNIA. Your knee, sirrah.\n  CORIOLANUS. That\'s my brave boy.\n  VOLUMNIA. Even he, your wife, this lady, and myself,\n    Are suitors to you.\n  CORIOLANUS. I beseech you, peace!\n    Or, if you\'d ask, remember this before:\n    The thing I have forsworn to grant may never\n    Be held by you denials. Do not bid me\n    Dismiss my soldiers, or capitulate\n    Again with Rome\'s mechanics. Tell me not  \n    Wherein I seem unnatural; desire not\n    T\'allay my rages and revenges with\n    Your colder reasons.\n  VOLUMNIA. O, no more, no more!\n    You have said you will not grant us any thing-\n    For we have nothing else to ask but that\n    Which you deny already; yet we will ask,\n    That, if you fail in our request, the blame\n    May hang upon your hardness; therefore hear us.\n  CORIOLANUS. Aufidius, and you Volsces, mark; for we\'ll\n    Hear nought from Rome in private. Your request?\n  VOLUMNIA. Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment\n    And state of bodies would bewray what life\n    We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself\n    How more unfortunate than all living women\n    Are we come hither; since that thy sight, which should\n    Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with comforts,\n    Constrains them weep and shake with fear and sorrow,\n    Making the mother, wife, and child, to see\n    The son, the husband, and the father, tearing  \n    His country\'s bowels out. And to poor we\n    Thine enmity\'s most capital: thou bar\'st us\n    Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort\n    That all but we enjoy. For how can we,\n    Alas, how can we for our country pray,\n    Whereto we are bound, together with thy victory,\n    Whereto we are bound? Alack, or we must lose\n    The country, our dear nurse, or else thy person,\n    Our comfort in the country. We must find\n    An evident calamity, though we had\n    Our wish, which side should win; for either thou\n    Must as a foreign recreant be led\n    With manacles through our streets, or else\n    Triumphantly tread on thy country\'s ruin,\n    And bear the palm for having bravely shed\n    Thy wife and children\'s blood. For myself, son,\n    I purpose not to wait on fortune till\n    These wars determine; if I can not persuade thee\n    Rather to show a noble grace to both parts\n    Than seek the end of one, thou shalt no sooner  \n    March to assault thy country than to tread-\n    Trust to\'t, thou shalt not- on thy mother\'s womb\n    That brought thee to this world.\n  VIRGILIA. Ay, and mine,\n    That brought you forth this boy to keep your name\n    Living to time.\n  BOY. \'A shall not tread on me!\n    I\'ll run away till I am bigger, but then I\'ll fight.\n  CORIOLANUS. Not of a woman\'s tenderness to be\n    Requires nor child nor woman\'s face to see.\n    I have sat too long.                                [Rising]\n  VOLUMNIA. Nay, go not from us thus.\n    If it were so that our request did tend\n    To save the Romans, thereby to destroy\n    The Volsces whom you serve, you might condemn us\n    As poisonous of your honour. No, our suit\n    Is that you reconcile them: while the Volsces\n    May say \'This mercy we have show\'d,\' the Romans\n    \'This we receiv\'d,\' and each in either side\n    Give the all-hail to thee, and cry \'Be blest  \n    For making up this peace!\' Thou know\'st, great son,\n    The end of war\'s uncertain; but this certain,\n    That, if thou conquer Rome, the benefit\n    Which thou shalt thereby reap is such a name\n    Whose repetition will be dogg\'d with curses;\n    Whose chronicle thus writ: \'The man was noble,\n    But with his last attempt he wip\'d it out,\n    Destroy\'d his country, and his name remains\n    To th\' ensuing age abhorr\'d.\' Speak to me, son.\n    Thou hast affected the fine strains of honour,\n    To imitate the graces of the gods,\n    To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o\' th\' air,\n    And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt\n    That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak?\n    Think\'st thou it honourable for a noble man\n    Still to remember wrongs? Daughter, speak you:\n    He cares not for your weeping. Speak thou, boy;\n    Perhaps thy childishness will move him more\n    Than can our reasons. There\'s no man in the world\n    More bound to\'s mother, yet here he lets me prate  \n    Like one i\' th\' stocks. Thou hast never in thy life\n    Show\'d thy dear mother any courtesy,\n    When she, poor hen, fond of no second brood,\n    Has cluck\'d thee to the wars, and safely home\n    Loaden with honour. Say my request\'s unjust,\n    And spurn me back; but if it he not so,\n    Thou art not honest, and the gods will plague thee,\n    That thou restrain\'st from me the duty which\n    To a mother\'s part belongs. He turns away.\n    Down, ladies; let us shame him with our knees.\n    To his surname Coriolanus \'longs more pride\n    Than pity to our prayers. Down. An end;\n    This is the last. So we will home to Rome,\n    And die among our neighbours. Nay, behold\'s!\n    This boy, that cannot tell what he would have\n    But kneels and holds up hands for fellowship,\n    Does reason our petition with more strength\n    Than thou hast to deny\'t. Come, let us go.\n    This fellow had a Volscian to his mother;\n    His wife is in Corioli, and his child  \n    Like him by chance. Yet give us our dispatch.\n    I am hush\'d until our city be afire,\n    And then I\'ll speak a little.\n                              [He holds her by the hand, silent]\n  CORIOLANUS. O mother, mother!\n    What have you done? Behold, the heavens do ope,\n    The gods look down, and this unnatural scene\n    They laugh at. O my mother, mother! O!\n    You have won a happy victory to Rome;\n    But for your son- believe it, O, believe it!-\n    Most dangerously you have with him prevail\'d,\n    If not most mortal to him. But let it come.\n    Aufidius, though I cannot make true wars,\n    I\'ll frame convenient peace. Now, good Aufidius,\n    Were you in my stead, would you have heard\n    A mother less, or granted less, Aufidius?\n  AUFIDIUS. I was mov\'d withal.\n  CORIOLANUS. I dare be sworn you were!\n    And, sir, it is no little thing to make\n    Mine eyes to sweat compassion. But, good sir,  \n    What peace you\'fl make, advise me. For my part,\n    I\'ll not to Rome, I\'ll back with you; and pray you\n    Stand to me in this cause. O mother! wife!\n  AUFIDIUS.  [Aside]  I am glad thou hast set thy mercy and thy\n      honour\n    At difference in thee. Out of that I\'ll work\n    Myself a former fortune.\n  CORIOLANUS.  [To the ladies]  Ay, by and by;\n    But we will drink together; and you shall bear\n    A better witness back than words, which we,\n    On like conditions, will have counter-seal\'d.\n    Come, enter with us. Ladies, you deserve\n    To have a temple built you. All the swords\n    In Italy, and her confederate arms,\n    Could not have made this peace.                       Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nRome. A public place\n\nEnter MENENIUS and SICINIUS\n\n  MENENIUS. See you yond coign o\' th\' Capitol, yond cornerstone?\n  SICINIUS. Why, what of that?\n  MENENIUS. If it be possible for you to displace it with your little\n    finger, there is some hope the ladies of Rome, especially his\n    mother, may prevail with him. But I say there is no hope in\'t;\n    our throats are sentenc\'d, and stay upon execution.\n  SICINIUS. Is\'t possible that so short a time can alter the\n    condition of a man?\n  MENENIUS. There is differency between a grub and a butterfly; yet\n    your butterfly was a grub. This Marcius is grown from man to\n    dragon; he has wings, he\'s more than a creeping thing.\n  SICINIUS. He lov\'d his mother dearly.\n  MENENIUS. So did he me; and he no more remembers his mother now\n    than an eight-year-old horse. The tartness of his face sours ripe\n    grapes; when he walks, he moves like an engine and the ground\n    shrinks before his treading. He is able to pierce a corslet with\n    his eye, talks like a knell, and his hum is a battery. He sits in  \n    his state as a thing made for Alexander. What he bids be done is\n    finish\'d with his bidding. He wants nothing of a god but\n    eternity, and a heaven to throne in.\n  SICINIUS. Yes- mercy, if you report him truly.\n  MENENIUS. I paint him in the character. Mark what mercy his mother\n    shall bring from him. There is no more mercy in him than there is\n    milk in a male tiger; that shall our poor city find. And all this\n    is \'long of you.\n  SICINIUS. The gods be good unto us!\n  MENENIUS. No, in such a case the gods will not be good unto us.\n    When we banish\'d him we respected not them; and, he returning to\n    break our necks, they respect not us.\n\n                           Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. Sir, if you\'d save your life, fly to your house.\n    The plebeians have got your fellow tribune\n    And hale him up and down; all swearing if\n    The Roman ladies bring not comfort home\n    They\'ll give him death by inches.  \n\n                         Enter another MESSENGER\n\n  SICINIUS. What\'s the news?\n  SECOND MESSENGER. Good news, good news! The ladies have prevail\'d,\n    The Volscians are dislodg\'d, and Marcius gone.\n    A merrier day did never yet greet Rome,\n    No, not th\' expulsion of the Tarquins.\n  SICINIUS. Friend,\n    Art thou certain this is true? Is\'t most certain?\n  SECOND MESSENGER. As certain as I know the sun is fire.\n    Where have you lurk\'d, that you make doubt of it?\n    Ne\'er through an arch so hurried the blown tide\n    As the recomforted through th\' gates. Why, hark you!\n                  [Trumpets, hautboys, drums beat, all together]\n    The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries, and fifes,\n    Tabors and cymbals, and the shouting Romans,\n    Make the sun dance. Hark you!               [A shout within]\n  MENENIUS. This is good news.\n    I will go meet the ladies. This Volumnia  \n    Is worth of consuls, senators, patricians,\n    A city full; of tribunes such as you,\n    A sea and land full. You have pray\'d well to-day:\n    This morning for ten thousand of your throats\n    I\'d not have given a doit. Hark, how they joy!\n                                   [Sound still with the shouts]\n  SICINIUS. First, the gods bless you for your tidings; next,\n    Accept my thankfulness.\n  SECOND MESSENGER. Sir, we have all\n    Great cause to give great thanks.\n  SICINIUS. They are near the city?\n  MESSENGER. Almost at point to enter.\n  SICINIUS. We\'ll meet them,\n    And help the joy.                                     Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nRome. A street near the gate\n\nEnter two SENATORS With VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, VALERIA, passing over the stage,\n\'With other LORDS\n\n  FIRST SENATOR. Behold our patroness, the life of Rome!\n    Call all your tribes together, praise the gods,\n    And make triumphant fires; strew flowers before them.\n    Unshout the noise that banish\'d Marcius,\n    Repeal him with the welcome of his mother;\n  ALL. Welcome, ladies, welcome!\n                    [A flourish with drums and trumpets. Exeunt]\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nCorioli. A public place\n\nEnter TULLUS AUFIDIUS with attendents\n\n  AUFIDIUS. Go tell the lords o\' th\' city I am here;\n    Deliver them this paper\' having read it,\n    Bid them repair to th\' market-place, where I,\n    Even in theirs and in the commons\' ears,\n    Will vouch the truth of it. Him I accuse\n    The city ports by this hath enter\'d and\n    Intends t\' appear before the people, hoping\n    To purge himself with words. Dispatch.\n                                               Exeunt attendants\n\n           Enter three or four CONSPIRATORS of AUFIDIUS\' faction\n\n    Most welcome!\n  FIRST CONSPIRATOR. How is it with our general?\n  AUFIDIUS. Even so\n    As with a man by his own alms empoison\'d,\n    And with his charity slain.  \n  SECOND CONSPIRATOR. Most noble sir,\n    If you do hold the same intent wherein\n    You wish\'d us parties, we\'ll deliver you\n    Of your great danger.\n  AUFIDIUS. Sir, I cannot tell;\n    We must proceed as we do find the people.\n  THIRD CONSPIRATOR. The people will remain uncertain whilst\n    \'Twixt you there\'s difference; but the fall of either\n    Makes the survivor heir of all.\n  AUFIDIUS. I know it;\n    And my pretext to strike at him admits\n    A good construction. I rais\'d him, and I pawn\'d\n    Mine honour for his truth; who being so heighten\'d,\n    He watered his new plants with dews of flattery,\n    Seducing so my friends; and to this end\n    He bow\'d his nature, never known before\n    But to be rough, unswayable, and free.\n  THIRD CONSPIRATOR. Sir, his stoutness\n    When he did stand for consul, which he lost\n    By lack of stooping-  \n  AUFIDIUS. That I would have spoken of.\n    Being banish\'d for\'t, he came unto my hearth,\n    Presented to my knife his throat. I took him;\n    Made him joint-servant with me; gave him way\n    In all his own desires; nay, let him choose\n    Out of my files, his projects to accomplish,\n    My best and freshest men; serv\'d his designments\n    In mine own person; holp to reap the fame\n    Which he did end all his, and took some pride\n    To do myself this wrong. Till, at the last,\n    I seem\'d his follower, not partner; and\n    He wag\'d me with his countenance as if\n    I had been mercenary.\n  FIRST CONSPIRATOR. So he did, my lord.\n    The army marvell\'d at it; and, in the last,\n    When he had carried Rome and that we look\'d\n    For no less spoil than glory-\n  AUFIDIUS. There was it;\n    For which my sinews shall be stretch\'d upon him.\n    At a few drops of women\'s rheum, which are  \n    As cheap as lies, he sold the blood and labour\n    Of our great action; therefore shall he die,\n    And I\'ll renew me in his fall. But, hark!\n                                                      [Drums and\n                trumpets sound, with great shouts of the people]\n  FIRST CONSPIRATOR. Your native town you enter\'d like a post,\n    And had no welcomes home; but he returns\n    Splitting the air with noise.\n  SECOND CONSPIRATOR. And patient fools,\n    Whose children he hath slain, their base throats tear\n    With giving him glory.\n  THIRD CONSPIRATOR. Therefore, at your vantage,\n    Ere he express himself or move the people\n    With what he would say, let him feel your sword,\n    Which we will second. When he lies along,\n    After your way his tale pronounc\'d shall bury\n    His reasons with his body.\n  AUFIDIUS. Say no more:\n    Here come the lords.\n  \n                     Enter the LORDS of the city\n\n  LORDS. You are most welcome home.\n  AUFIDIUS. I have not deserv\'d it.\n    But, worthy lords, have you with heed perused\n    What I have written to you?\n  LORDS. We have.\n  FIRST LORD. And grieve to hear\'t.\n    What faults he made before the last, I think\n    Might have found easy fines; but there to end\n    Where he was to begin, and give away\n    The benefit of our levies, answering us\n    With our own charge, making a treaty where\n    There was a yielding- this admits no excuse.\n  AUFIDIUS. He approaches; you shall hear him.\n\n            Enter CORIOLANUS, marching with drum and colours;\n                      the commoners being with him\n\n  CORIOLANUS. Hail, lords! I am return\'d your soldier;  \n    No more infected with my country\'s love\n    Than when I parted hence, but still subsisting\n    Under your great command. You are to know\n    That prosperously I have attempted, and\n    With bloody passage led your wars even to\n    The gates of Rome. Our spoils we have brought home\n    Doth more than counterpoise a full third part\n    The charges of the action. We have made peace\n    With no less honour to the Antiates\n    Than shame to th\' Romans; and we here deliver,\n    Subscrib\'d by th\' consuls and patricians,\n    Together with the seal o\' th\' Senate, what\n    We have compounded on.\n  AUFIDIUS. Read it not, noble lords;\n    But tell the traitor in the highest degree\n    He hath abus\'d your powers.\n  CORIOLANUS. Traitor! How now?\n  AUFIDIUS. Ay, traitor, Marcius.\n  CORIOLANUS. Marcius!\n  AUFIDIUS. Ay, Marcius, Caius Marcius! Dost thou think  \n    I\'ll grace thee with that robbery, thy stol\'n name\n    Coriolanus, in Corioli?\n    You lords and heads o\' th\' state, perfidiously\n    He has betray\'d your business and given up,\n    For certain drops of salt, your city Rome-\n    I say your city- to his wife and mother;\n    Breaking his oath and resolution like\n    A twist of rotten silk; never admitting\n    Counsel o\' th\' war; but at his nurse\'s tears\n    He whin\'d and roar\'d away your victory,\n    That pages blush\'d at him, and men of heart\n    Look\'d wond\'ring each at others.\n  CORIOLANUS. Hear\'st thou, Mars?\n  AUFIDIUS. Name not the god, thou boy of tears-\n  CORIOLANUS. Ha!\n  AUFIDIUS. -no more.\n  CORIOLANUS. Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart\n    Too great for what contains it. \'Boy\'! O slave!\n    Pardon me, lords, \'tis the first time that ever\n    I was forc\'d to scold. Your judgments, my grave lords,  \n    Must give this cur the lie; and his own notion-\n    Who wears my stripes impress\'d upon him, that\n    Must bear my beating to his grave- shall join\n    To thrust the lie unto him.\n  FIRST LORD. Peace, both, and hear me speak.\n  CORIOLANUS. Cut me to pieces, Volsces; men and lads,\n    Stain all your edges on me. \'Boy\'! False hound!\n    If you have writ your annals true, \'tis there\n    That, like an eagle in a dove-cote, I\n    Flutter\'d your Volscians in Corioli.\n    Alone I did it. \'Boy\'!\n  AUFIDIUS. Why, noble lords,\n    Will you be put in mind of his blind fortune,\n    Which was your shame, by this unholy braggart,\n    Fore your own eyes and ears?\n  CONSPIRATORS. Let him die for\'t.\n  ALL THE PEOPLE. Tear him to pieces. Do it presently. He kill\'d my\n    son. My daughter. He kill\'d my cousin Marcus. He kill\'d my\n    father.\n  SECOND LORD. Peace, ho! No outrage- peace!  \n    The man is noble, and his fame folds in\n    This orb o\' th\' earth. His last offences to us\n    Shall have judicious hearing. Stand, Aufidius,\n    And trouble not the peace.\n  CORIOLANUS. O that I had him,\n    With six Aufidiuses, or more- his tribe,\n    To use my lawful sword!\n  AUFIDIUS. Insolent villain!\n  CONSPIRATORS. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him!\n           [The CONSPIRATORS draw and kill CORIOLANUS,who falls.\n                                         AUFIDIUS stands on him]\n  LORDS. Hold, hold, hold, hold!\n  AUFIDIUS. My noble masters, hear me speak.\n  FIRST LORD. O Tullus!\n  SECOND LORD. Thou hast done a deed whereat valour will weep.\n  THIRD LORD. Tread not upon him. Masters all, be quiet;\n    Put up your swords.\n  AUFIDIUS. My lords, when you shall know- as in this rage,\n    Provok\'d by him, you cannot- the great danger\n    Which this man\'s life did owe you, you\'ll rejoice  \n    That he is thus cut off. Please it your honours\n    To call me to your Senate, I\'ll deliver\n    Myself your loyal servant, or endure\n    Your heaviest censure.\n  FIRST LORD. Bear from hence his body,\n    And mourn you for him. Let him be regarded\n    As the most noble corse that ever herald\n    Did follow to his um.\n  SECOND LORD. His own impatience\n    Takes from Aufidius a great part of blame.\n    Let\'s make the best of it.\n  AUFIDIUS. My rage is gone,\n    And I am struck with sorrow. Take him up.\n    Help, three o\' th\' chiefest soldiers; I\'ll be one.\n    Beat thou the drum, that it speak mournfully;\n    Trail your steel pikes. Though in this city he\n    Hath widowed and unchilded many a one,\n    Which to this hour bewail the injury,\n    Yet he shall have a noble memory.\n    Assist.               Exeunt, bearing the body of CORIOLANUS  \n                                          [A dead march sounded]\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1609\n\nCYMBELINE\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  CYMBELINE, King of Britain\n  CLOTEN, son to the Queen by a former husband\n  POSTHUMUS LEONATUS, a gentleman, husband to Imogen\n  BELARIUS, a banished lord, disguised under the name of Morgan\n\n  GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS, sons to Cymbeline, disguised under the\n            names of POLYDORE and CADWAL, supposed sons to Belarius\n  PHILARIO, Italian, friend to Posthumus\n  IACHIMO,  Italian, friend to Philario\n  A FRENCH GENTLEMAN, friend to Philario\n  CAIUS LUCIUS, General of the Roman Forces\n  A ROMAN CAPTAIN\n  TWO BRITISH CAPTAINS\n  PISANIO, servant to Posthumus\n  CORNELIUS, a physician\n  TWO LORDS of Cymbeline\'s court\n  TWO GENTLEMEN of the same\n  TWO GAOLERS\n\n  QUEEN, wife to Cymbeline  \n  IMOGEN, daughter to Cymbeline by a former queen\n  HELEN, a lady attending on Imogen\n\n  APPARITIONS\n\n  Lords, Ladies, Roman Senators, Tribunes, a Soothsayer, a\n    Dutch Gentleman, a Spanish Gentleman, Musicians, Officers,\n    Captains, Soldiers, Messengers, and Attendants\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nBritain; Italy\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nBritain. The garden of CYMBELINE\'S palace\n\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. You do not meet a man but frowns; our bloods\n    No more obey the heavens than our courtiers\n    Still seem as does the King\'s.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. But what\'s the matter?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. His daughter, and the heir of\'s kingdom, whom\n    He purpos\'d to his wife\'s sole son- a widow\n    That late he married- hath referr\'d herself\n    Unto a poor but worthy gentleman. She\'s wedded;\n    Her husband banish\'d; she imprison\'d. All\n    Is outward sorrow, though I think the King\n    Be touch\'d at very heart.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. None but the King?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. He that hath lost her too. So is the Queen,\n    That most desir\'d the match. But not a courtier,\n    Although they wear their faces to the bent\n    Of the King\'s looks, hath a heart that is not\n    Glad at the thing they scowl at.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. And why so?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. He that hath miss\'d the Princess is a thing  \n    Too bad for bad report; and he that hath her-\n    I mean that married her, alack, good man!\n    And therefore banish\'d- is a creature such\n    As, to seek through the regions of the earth\n    For one his like, there would be something failing\n    In him that should compare. I do not think\n    So fair an outward and such stuff within\n    Endows a man but he.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. You speak him far.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. I do extend him, sir, within himself;\n    Crush him together rather than unfold\n    His measure duly.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. What\'s his name and birth?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. I cannot delve him to the root; his father\n    Was call\'d Sicilius, who did join his honour\n    Against the Romans with Cassibelan,\n    But had his titles by Tenantius, whom\n    He serv\'d with glory and admir\'d success,\n    So gain\'d the sur-addition Leonatus;\n    And had, besides this gentleman in question,  \n    Two other sons, who, in the wars o\' th\' time,\n    Died with their swords in hand; for which their father,\n    Then old and fond of issue, took such sorrow\n    That he quit being; and his gentle lady,\n    Big of this gentleman, our theme, deceas\'d\n    As he was born. The King he takes the babe\n    To his protection, calls him Posthumus Leonatus,\n    Breeds him and makes him of his bed-chamber,\n    Puts to him all the learnings that his time\n    Could make him the receiver of; which he took,\n    As we do air, fast as \'twas minist\'red,\n    And in\'s spring became a harvest, liv\'d in court-\n    Which rare it is to do- most prais\'d, most lov\'d,\n    A sample to the youngest; to th\' more mature\n    A glass that feated them; and to the graver\n    A child that guided dotards. To his mistress,\n    For whom he now is banish\'d- her own price\n    Proclaims how she esteem\'d him and his virtue;\n    By her election may be truly read\n    What kind of man he is.  \n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. I honour him\n    Even out of your report. But pray you tell me,\n    Is she sole child to th\' King?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. His only child.\n    He had two sons- if this be worth your hearing,\n    Mark it- the eldest of them at three years old,\n    I\' th\' swathing clothes the other, from their nursery\n    Were stol\'n; and to this hour no guess in knowledge\n    Which way they went.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. How long is this ago?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Some twenty years.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. That a king\'s children should be so convey\'d,\n    So slackly guarded, and the search so slow\n    That could not trace them!\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Howsoe\'er \'tis strange,\n    Or that the negligence may well be laugh\'d at,\n    Yet is it true, sir.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. I do well believe you.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. We must forbear; here comes the gentleman,\n    The Queen, and Princess.                              Exeunt  \n\n              Enter the QUEEN, POSTHUMUS, and IMOGEN\n\n  QUEEN. No, be assur\'d you shall not find me, daughter,\n    After the slander of most stepmothers,\n    Evil-ey\'d unto you. You\'re my prisoner, but\n    Your gaoler shall deliver you the keys\n    That lock up your restraint. For you, Posthumus,\n    So soon as I can win th\' offended King,\n    I will be known your advocate. Marry, yet\n    The fire of rage is in him, and \'twere good\n    You lean\'d unto his sentence with what patience\n    Your wisdom may inform you.\n  POSTHUMUS. Please your Highness,\n    I will from hence to-day.\n  QUEEN. You know the peril.\n    I\'ll fetch a turn about the garden, pitying\n    The pangs of barr\'d affections, though the King\n    Hath charg\'d you should not speak together.             Exit\n  IMOGEN. O dissembling courtesy! How fine this tyrant  \n    Can tickle where she wounds! My dearest husband,\n    I something fear my father\'s wrath, but nothing-\n    Always reserv\'d my holy duty- what\n    His rage can do on me. You must be gone;\n    And I shall here abide the hourly shot\n    Of angry eyes, not comforted to live\n    But that there is this jewel in the world\n    That I may see again.\n  POSTHUMUS. My queen! my mistress!\n    O lady, weep no more, lest I give cause\n    To be suspected of more tenderness\n    Than doth become a man. I will remain\n    The loyal\'st husband that did e\'er plight troth;\n    My residence in Rome at one Philario\'s,\n    Who to my father was a friend, to me\n    Known but by letter; thither write, my queen,\n    And with mine eyes I\'ll drink the words you send,\n    Though ink be made of gall.\n\n                     Re-enter QUEEN  \n\n  QUEEN. Be brief, I pray you.\n    If the King come, I shall incur I know not\n    How much of his displeasure. [Aside] Yet I\'ll move him\n    To walk this way. I never do him wrong\n    But he does buy my injuries, to be friends;\n    Pays dear for my offences.                              Exit\n  POSTHUMUS. Should we be taking leave\n    As long a term as yet we have to live,\n    The loathness to depart would grow. Adieu!\n  IMOGEN. Nay, stay a little.\n    Were you but riding forth to air yourself,\n    Such parting were too petty. Look here, love:\n    This diamond was my mother\'s; take it, heart;\n    But keep it till you woo another wife,\n    When Imogen is dead.\n  POSTHUMUS. How, how? Another?\n    You gentle gods, give me but this I have,\n    And sear up my embracements from a next\n    With bonds of death! Remain, remain thou here  \n                                              [Puts on the ring]\n    While sense can keep it on. And, sweetest, fairest,\n    As I my poor self did exchange for you,\n    To your so infinite loss, so in our trifles\n    I still win of you. For my sake wear this;\n    It is a manacle of love; I\'ll place it\n    Upon this fairest prisoner.     [Puts a bracelet on her arm]\n  IMOGEN. O the gods!\n    When shall we see again?\n\n                  Enter CYMBELINE and LORDS\n\n  POSTHUMUS. Alack, the King!\n  CYMBELINE. Thou basest thing, avoid; hence from my sight\n    If after this command thou fraught the court\n    With thy unworthiness, thou diest. Away!\n    Thou\'rt poison to my blood.\n  POSTHUMUS. The gods protect you,\n    And bless the good remainders of the court!\n    I am gone.                                              Exit  \n  IMOGEN. There cannot be a pinch in death\n    More sharp than this is.\n  CYMBELINE. O disloyal thing,\n    That shouldst repair my youth, thou heap\'st\n    A year\'s age on me!\n  IMOGEN. I beseech you, sir,\n    Harm not yourself with your vexation.\n    I am senseless of your wrath; a touch more rare\n    Subdues all pangs, all fears.\n  CYMBELINE. Past grace? obedience?\n  IMOGEN. Past hope, and in despair; that way past grace.\n  CYMBELINE. That mightst have had the sole son of my queen!\n  IMOGEN. O blessed that I might not! I chose an eagle,\n    And did avoid a puttock.\n  CYMBELINE. Thou took\'st a beggar, wouldst have made my throne\n    A seat for baseness.\n  IMOGEN. No; I rather added\n    A lustre to it.\n  CYMBELINE. O thou vile one!\n  IMOGEN. Sir,  \n    It is your fault that I have lov\'d Posthumus.\n    You bred him as my playfellow, and he is\n    A man worth any woman; overbuys me\n    Almost the sum he pays.\n  CYMBELINE. What, art thou mad?\n  IMOGEN. Almost, sir. Heaven restore me! Would I were\n    A neat-herd\'s daughter, and my Leonatus\n    Our neighbour shepherd\'s son!\n\n                          Re-enter QUEEN\n\n  CYMBELINE. Thou foolish thing!\n    [To the QUEEN] They were again together. You have done\n    Not after our command. Away with her,\n    And pen her up.\n  QUEEN. Beseech your patience.- Peace,\n    Dear lady daughter, peace!- Sweet sovereign,\n    Leave us to ourselves, and make yourself some comfort\n    Out of your best advice.\n  CYMBELINE. Nay, let her languish  \n    A drop of blood a day and, being aged,\n    Die of this folly.                          Exit, with LORDS\n\n                          Enter PISANIO\n\n  QUEEN. Fie! you must give way.\n    Here is your servant. How now, sir! What news?\n  PISANIO. My lord your son drew on my master.\n  QUEEN. Ha!\n    No harm, I trust, is done?\n  PISANIO. There might have been,\n    But that my master rather play\'d than fought,\n    And had no help of anger; they were parted\n    By gentlemen at hand.\n  QUEEN. I am very glad on\'t.\n  IMOGEN. Your son\'s my father\'s friend; he takes his part\n    To draw upon an exile! O brave sir!\n    I would they were in Afric both together;\n    Myself by with a needle, that I might prick\n    The goer-back. Why came you from your master?  \n  PISANIO. On his command. He would not suffer me\n    To bring him to the haven; left these notes\n    Of what commands I should be subject to,\n    When\'t pleas\'d you to employ me.\n  QUEEN. This hath been\n    Your faithful servant. I dare lay mine honour\n    He will remain so.\n  PISANIO. I humbly thank your Highness.\n  QUEEN. Pray walk awhile.\n  IMOGEN. About some half-hour hence,\n    Pray you speak with me. You shall at least\n    Go see my lord aboard. For this time leave me.        Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nBritain. A public place\n\nEnter CLOTEN and two LORDS\n\n  FIRST LORD. Sir, I would advise you to shift a shirt; the violence\n    of action hath made you reek as a sacrifice. Where air comes out,\n    air comes in; there\'s none abroad so wholesome as that you vent.\n  CLOTEN. If my shirt were bloody, then to shift it. Have I hurt him?\n  SECOND LORD. [Aside] No, faith; not so much as his patience.\n  FIRST LORD. Hurt him! His body\'s a passable carcass if he be not\n    hurt. It is a throughfare for steel if it be not hurt.\n  SECOND LORD. [Aside] His steel was in debt; it went o\' th\' back\n    side the town.\n  CLOTEN. The villain would not stand me.\n  SECOND LORD. [Aside] No; but he fled forward still, toward your\n    face.\n  FIRST LORD. Stand you? You have land enough of your own; but he\n    added to your having, gave you some ground.\n  SECOND LORD. [Aside] As many inches as you have oceans.\n    Puppies!\n  CLOTEN. I would they had not come between us.  \n  SECOND LORD. [Aside] So would I, till you had measur\'d how long a\n    fool you were upon the ground.\n  CLOTEN. And that she should love this fellow, and refuse me!\n  SECOND LORD. [Aside] If it be a sin to make a true election, she is\n    damn\'d.\n  FIRST LORD. Sir, as I told you always, her beauty and her brain go\n    not together; she\'s a good sign, but I have seen small reflection\n    of her wit.\n  SECOND LORD. [Aside] She shines not upon fools, lest the reflection\n    should hurt her.\n  CLOTEN. Come, I\'ll to my chamber. Would there had been some hurt\n    done!\n  SECOND LORD. [Aside] I wish not so; unless it had been the fall of\n    an ass, which is no great hurt.\n  CLOTEN. You\'ll go with us?\n  FIRST LORD. I\'ll attend your lordship.\n  CLOTEN. Nay, come, let\'s go together.\n  SECOND LORD. Well, my lord.                             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nBritain. CYMBELINE\'S palace\n\nEnter IMOGEN and PISANIO\n\n  IMOGEN. I would thou grew\'st unto the shores o\' th\' haven,\n    And questioned\'st every sail; if he should write,\n    And I not have it, \'twere a paper lost,\n    As offer\'d mercy is. What was the last\n    That he spake to thee?\n  PISANIO. It was: his queen, his queen!\n  IMOGEN. Then wav\'d his handkerchief?\n  PISANIO. And kiss\'d it, madam.\n  IMOGEN. Senseless linen, happier therein than I!\n    And that was all?\n  PISANIO. No, madam; for so long\n    As he could make me with his eye, or care\n    Distinguish him from others, he did keep\n    The deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief,\n    Still waving, as the fits and stirs of\'s mind\n    Could best express how slow his soul sail\'d on,\n    How swift his ship.  \n  IMOGEN. Thou shouldst have made him\n    As little as a crow, or less, ere left\n    To after-eye him.\n  PISANIO. Madam, so I did.\n  IMOGEN. I would have broke mine eyestrings, crack\'d them but\n    To look upon him, till the diminution\n    Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle;\n    Nay, followed him till he had melted from\n    The smallness of a gnat to air, and then\n    Have turn\'d mine eye and wept. But, good Pisanio,\n    When shall we hear from him?\n  PISANIO. Be assur\'d, madam,\n    With his next vantage.\n  IMOGEN. I did not take my leave of him, but had\n    Most pretty things to say. Ere I could tell him\n    How I would think on him at certain hours\n    Such thoughts and such; or I could make him swear\n    The shes of Italy should not betray\n    Mine interest and his honour; or have charg\'d him,\n    At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight,  \n    T\' encounter me with orisons, for then\n    I am in heaven for him; or ere I could\n    Give him that parting kiss which I had set\n    Betwixt two charming words, comes in my father,\n    And like the tyrannous breathing of the north\n    Shakes all our buds from growing.\n\n                        Enter a LADY\n\n  LADY. The Queen, madam,\n    Desires your Highness\' company.\n  IMOGEN. Those things I bid you do, get them dispatch\'d.\n    I will attend the Queen.\n  PISANIO. Madam, I shall.                                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nRome. PHILARIO\'S house\n\nEnter PHILARIO, IACHIMO, a FRENCHMAN, a DUTCHMAN, and a SPANIARD\n\n  IACHIMO. Believe it, sir, I have seen him in Britain. He was then\n    of a crescent note, expected to prove so worthy as since he hath\n    been allowed the name of. But I could then have look\'d on him\n    without the help of admiration, though the catalogue of his\n    endowments had been tabled by his side, and I to peruse him by\n    items.\n  PHILARIO. You speak of him when he was less furnish\'d than now he\n    is with that which makes him both without and within.\n  FRENCHMAN. I have seen him in France; we had very many there could\n    behold the sun with as firm eyes as he.\n  IACHIMO. This matter of marrying his king\'s daughter, wherein he\n    must be weighed rather by her value than his own, words him, I\n    doubt not, a great deal from the matter.\n  FRENCHMAN. And then his banishment.\n  IACHIMO. Ay, and the approbation of those that weep this lamentable\n    divorce under her colours are wonderfully to extend him, be it\n    but to fortify her judgment, which else an easy battery might lay  \n    flat, for taking a beggar, without less quality. But how comes it\n    he is to sojourn with you? How creeps acquaintance?\n  PHILARIO. His father and I were soldiers together, to whom I have\n    been often bound for no less than my life.\n\n                       Enter POSTHUMUS\n\n    Here comes the Briton. Let him be so entertained amongst you as\n    suits with gentlemen of your knowing to a stranger of his\n    quality. I beseech you all be better known to this gentleman,\n    whom I commend to you as a noble friend of mine. How worthy he is\n    I will leave to appear hereafter, rather than story him in his\n    own hearing.\n  FRENCHMAN. Sir, we have known together in Orleans.\n  POSTHUMUS. Since when I have been debtor to you for courtesies,\n    which I will be ever to pay and yet pay still.\n  FRENCHMAN. Sir, you o\'errate my poor kindness. I was glad I did\n    atone my countryman and you; it had been pity you should have\n    been put together with so mortal a purpose as then each bore,\n    upon importance of so slight and trivial a nature.  \n  POSTHUMUS. By your pardon, sir. I was then a young traveller;\n    rather shunn\'d to go even with what I heard than in my every\n    action to be guided by others\' experiences; but upon my mended\n    judgment- if I offend not to say it is mended- my quarrel was not\n    altogether slight.\n  FRENCHMAN. Faith, yes, to be put to the arbitrement of swords, and\n    by such two that would by all likelihood have confounded one the\n    other or have fall\'n both.\n  IACHIMO. Can we, with manners, ask what was the difference?\n  FRENCHMAN. Safely, I think. \'Twas a contention in public, which\n    may, without contradiction, suffer the report. It was much like\n    an argument that fell out last night, where each of us fell in\n    praise of our country mistresses; this gentleman at that time\n    vouching- and upon warrant of bloody affirmation- his to be more\n    fair, virtuous, wise, chaste, constant, qualified, and less\n    attemptable, than any the rarest of our ladies in France.\n  IACHIMO. That lady is not now living, or this gentleman\'s opinion,\n    by this, worn out.\n  POSTHUMUS. She holds her virtue still, and I my mind.\n  IACHIMO. You must not so far prefer her fore ours of Italy.  \n  POSTHUMUS. Being so far provok\'d as I was in France, I would abate\n    her nothing, though I profess myself her adorer, not her friend.\n  IACHIMO. As fair and as good- a kind of hand-in-hand comparison-\n    had been something too fair and too good for any lady in Britain.\n    If she went before others I have seen as that diamond of yours\n    outlustres many I have beheld, I could not but believe she\n    excelled many; but I have not seen the most precious diamond that\n    is, nor you the lady.\n  POSTHUMUS. I prais\'d her as I rated her. So do I my stone.\n  IACHIMO. What do you esteem it at?\n  POSTHUMUS. More than the world enjoys.\n  IACHIMO. Either your unparagon\'d mistress is dead, or she\'s\n    outpriz\'d by a trifle.\n  POSTHUMUS. You are mistaken: the one may be sold or given, if there\n    were wealth enough for the purchase or merit for the gift; the\n    other is not a thing for sale, and only the gift of the gods.\n  IACHIMO. Which the gods have given you?\n  POSTHUMUS. Which by their graces I will keep.\n  IACHIMO. You may wear her in title yours; but you know strange fowl\n    light upon neighbouring ponds. Your ring may be stol\'n too. So  \n    your brace of unprizable estimations, the one is but frail and\n    the other casual; a cunning thief, or a that-way-accomplish\'d\n    courtier, would hazard the winning both of first and last.\n  POSTHUMUS. Your Italy contains none so accomplish\'d a courtier to\n    convince the honour of my mistress, if in the holding or loss of\n    that you term her frail. I do nothing doubt you have store of\n    thieves; notwithstanding, I fear not my ring.\n  PHILARIO. Let us leave here, gentlemen.\n  POSTHUMUS. Sir, with all my heart. This worthy signior, I thank\n    him, makes no stranger of me; we are familiar at first.\n  IACHIMO. With five times so much conversation I should get ground\n    of your fair mistress; make her go back even to the yielding, had\n    I admittance and opportunity to friend.\n  POSTHUMUS. No, no.\n  IACHIMO. I dare thereupon pawn the moiety of my estate to your\n    ring, which, in my opinion, o\'ervalues it something. But I make\n    my wager rather against your confidence than her reputation; and,\n    to bar your offence herein too, I durst attempt it against any\n    lady in the world.\n  POSTHUMUS. You are a great deal abus\'d in too bold a persuasion,  \n    and I doubt not you sustain what y\'are worthy of by your attempt.\n  IACHIMO. What\'s that?\n  POSTHUMUS. A repulse; though your attempt, as you call it, deserve\n    more- a punishment too.\n  PHILARIO. Gentlemen, enough of this. It came in too suddenly; let\n    it die as it was born, and I pray you be better acquainted.\n  IACHIMO. Would I had put my estate and my neighbour\'s on th\'\n    approbation of what I have spoke!\n  POSTHUMUS. What lady would you choose to assail?\n  IACHIMO. Yours, whom in constancy you think stands so safe. I will\n    lay you ten thousand ducats to your ring that, commend me to the\n    court where your lady is, with no more advantage than the\n    opportunity of a second conference, and I will bring from thence\n    that honour of hers which you imagine so reserv\'d.\n  POSTHUMUS. I will wage against your gold, gold to it. My ring I\n    hold dear as my finger; \'tis part of it.\n  IACHIMO. You are a friend, and therein the wiser. If you buy\n    ladies\' flesh at a million a dram, you cannot preserve it from\n    tainting. But I see you have some religion in you, that you fear.\n  POSTHUMUS. This is but a custom in your tongue; you bear a graver  \n    purpose, I hope.\n  IACHIMO. I am the master of my speeches, and would undergo what\'s\n    spoken, I swear.\n  POSTHUMUS. Will you? I Shall but lend my diamond till your return.\n    Let there be covenants drawn between\'s. My mistress exceeds in\n    goodness the hugeness of your unworthy thinking. I dare you to\n    this match: here\'s my ring.\n  PHILARIO. I will have it no lay.\n  IACHIMO. By the gods, it is one. If I bring you no sufficient\n    testimony that I have enjoy\'d the dearest bodily part of your\n    mistress, my ten thousand ducats are yours; so is your diamond\n    too. If I come off, and leave her in such honour as you have\n    trust in, she your jewel, this your jewel, and my gold are yours-\n    provided I have your commendation for my more free entertainment.\n  POSTHUMUS. I embrace these conditions; let us have articles betwixt\n    us. Only, thus far you shall answer: if you make your voyage upon\n    her, and give me directly to understand you have prevail\'d, I am\n    no further your enemy- she is not worth our debate; if she remain\n    unseduc\'d, you not making it appear otherwise, for your ill\n    opinion and th\' assault you have made to her chastity you shall  \n    answer me with your sword.\n  IACHIMO. Your hand- a covenant! We will have these things set down\n    by lawful counsel, and straight away for Britain, lest the\n    bargain should catch cold and starve. I will fetch my gold and\n    have our two wagers recorded.\n  POSTHUMUS. Agreed.                Exeunt POSTHUMUS and IACHIMO\n  FRENCHMAN. Will this hold, think you?\n  PHILARIO. Signior Iachimo will not from it. Pray let us follow \'em.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nBritain. CYMBELINE\'S palace\n\nEnter QUEEN, LADIES, and CORNELIUS\n\n  QUEEN. Whiles yet the dew\'s on ground, gather those flowers;\n    Make haste; who has the note of them?\n  LADY. I, madam.\n  QUEEN. Dispatch.                                 Exeunt LADIES\n    Now, Master Doctor, have you brought those drugs?\n  CORNELIUS. Pleaseth your Highness, ay. Here they are, madam.\n                                              [Presenting a box]\n    But I beseech your Grace, without offence-\n    My conscience bids me ask- wherefore you have\n    Commanded of me these most poisonous compounds\n    Which are the movers of a languishing death,\n    But, though slow, deadly?\n  QUEEN. I wonder, Doctor,\n    Thou ask\'st me such a question. Have I not been\n    Thy pupil long? Hast thou not learn\'d me how\n    To make perfumes? distil? preserve? yea, so\n    That our great king himself doth woo me oft  \n    For my confections? Having thus far proceeded-\n    Unless thou think\'st me devilish- is\'t not meet\n    That I did amplify my judgment in\n    Other conclusions? I will try the forces\n    Of these thy compounds on such creatures as\n    We count not worth the hanging- but none human-\n    To try the vigour of them, and apply\n    Allayments to their act, and by them gather\n    Their several virtues and effects.\n  CORNELIUS. Your Highness\n    Shall from this practice but make hard your heart;\n    Besides, the seeing these effects will be\n    Both noisome and infectious.\n  QUEEN. O, content thee.\n\n                        Enter PISANIO\n\n    [Aside] Here comes a flattering rascal; upon him\n    Will I first work. He\'s for his master,\n    An enemy to my son.- How now, Pisanio!  \n    Doctor, your service for this time is ended;\n    Take your own way.\n  CORNELIUS. [Aside] I do suspect you, madam;\n    But you shall do no harm.\n  QUEEN. [To PISANIO] Hark thee, a word.\n  CORNELIUS. [Aside] I do not like her. She doth think she has\n    Strange ling\'ring poisons. I do know her spirit,\n    And will not trust one of her malice with\n    A drug of such damn\'d nature. Those she has\n    Will stupefy and dull the sense awhile,\n    Which first perchance she\'ll prove on cats and dogs,\n    Then afterward up higher; but there is\n    No danger in what show of death it makes,\n    More than the locking up the spirits a time,\n    To be more fresh, reviving. She is fool\'d\n    With a most false effect; and I the truer\n    So to be false with her.\n  QUEEN. No further service, Doctor,\n    Until I send for thee.\n  CORNELIUS. I humbly take my leave.                        Exit  \n  QUEEN. Weeps she still, say\'st thou? Dost thou think in time\n    She will not quench, and let instructions enter\n    Where folly now possesses? Do thou work.\n    When thou shalt bring me word she loves my son,\n    I\'ll tell thee on the instant thou art then\n    As great as is thy master; greater, for\n    His fortunes all lie speechless, and his name\n    Is at last gasp. Return he cannot, nor\n    Continue where he is. To shift his being\n    Is to exchange one misery with another,\n    And every day that comes comes comes to\n    A day\'s work in him. What shalt thou expect\n    To be depender on a thing that leans,\n    Who cannot be new built, nor has no friends\n    So much as but to prop him?\n                  [The QUEEN drops the box. PISANIO takes it up]\n    Thou tak\'st up\n    Thou know\'st not what; but take it for thy labour.\n    It is a thing I made, which hath the King\n    Five times redeem\'d from death. I do not know  \n    What is more cordial. Nay, I prithee take it;\n    It is an earnest of a further good\n    That I mean to thee. Tell thy mistress how\n    The case stands with her; do\'t as from thyself.\n    Think what a chance thou changest on; but think\n    Thou hast thy mistress still; to boot, my son,\n    Who shall take notice of thee. I\'ll move the King\n    To any shape of thy preferment, such\n    As thou\'lt desire; and then myself, I chiefly,\n    That set thee on to this desert, am bound\n    To load thy merit richly. Call my women.\n    Think on my words.                              Exit PISANIO\n    A sly and constant knave,\n    Not to be shak\'d; the agent for his master,\n    And the remembrancer of her to hold\n    The hand-fast to her lord. I have given him that\n    Which, if he take, shall quite unpeople her\n    Of leigers for her sweet; and which she after,\n    Except she bend her humour, shall be assur\'d\n    To taste of too.  \n\n                   Re-enter PISANIO and LADIES\n\n    So, so. Well done, well done.\n    The violets, cowslips, and the primroses,\n    Bear to my closet. Fare thee well, Pisanio;\n    Think on my words.                   Exeunt QUEEN and LADIES\n  PISANIO. And shall do.\n    But when to my good lord I prove untrue\n    I\'ll choke myself- there\'s all I\'ll do for you.         Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nBritain. The palace\n\nEnter IMOGEN alone\n\n  IMOGEN. A father cruel and a step-dame false;\n    A foolish suitor to a wedded lady\n    That hath her husband banish\'d. O, that husband!\n    My supreme crown of grief! and those repeated\n    Vexations of it! Had I been thief-stol\'n,\n    As my two brothers, happy! but most miserable\n    Is the desire that\'s glorious. Blessed be those,\n    How mean soe\'er, that have their honest wills,\n    Which seasons comfort. Who may this be? Fie!\n\n                    Enter PISANIO and IACHIMO\n\n  PISANIO. Madam, a noble gentleman of Rome\n    Comes from my lord with letters.\n  IACHIMO. Change you, madam?\n    The worthy Leonatus is in safety,\n    And greets your Highness dearly.         [Presents a letter]  \n  IMOGEN. Thanks, good sir.\n    You\'re kindly welcome.\n  IACHIMO. [Aside] All of her that is out of door most rich!\n    If she be furnish\'d with a mind so rare,\n    She is alone th\' Arabian bird, and I\n    Have lost the wager. Boldness be my friend!\n    Arm me, audacity, from head to foot!\n    Or, like the Parthian, I shall flying fight;\n    Rather, directly fly.\n  IMOGEN. [Reads] \'He is one of the noblest note, to whose\n    kindnesses I am most infinitely tied. Reflect upon him\n    accordingly, as you value your trust.       LEONATUS.\'\n\n    So far I read aloud;\n    But even the very middle of my heart\n    Is warm\'d by th\' rest and takes it thankfully.\n    You are as welcome, worthy sir, as I\n    Have words to bid you; and shall find it so\n    In all that I can do.\n  IACHIMO. Thanks, fairest lady.  \n    What, are men mad? Hath nature given them eyes\n    To see this vaulted arch and the rich crop\n    Of sea and land, which can distinguish \'twixt\n    The fiery orbs above and the twinn\'d stones\n    Upon the number\'d beach, and can we not\n    Partition make with spectacles so precious\n    \'Twixt fair and foul?\n  IMOGEN. What makes your admiration?\n  IACHIMO. It cannot be i\' th\' eye, for apes and monkeys,\n    \'Twixt two such shes, would chatter this way and\n    Contemn with mows the other; nor i\' th\' judgment,\n    For idiots in this case of favour would\n    Be wisely definite; nor i\' th\' appetite;\n    Sluttery, to such neat excellence oppos\'d,\n    Should make desire vomit emptiness,\n    Not so allur\'d to feed.\n  IMOGEN. What is the matter, trow?\n  IACHIMO. The cloyed will-\n    That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub\n    Both fill\'d and running- ravening first the lamb,  \n    Longs after for the garbage.\n  IMOGEN. What, dear sir,\n    Thus raps you? Are you well?\n  IACHIMO. Thanks, madam; well.- Beseech you, sir,\n    Desire my man\'s abode where I did leave him.\n    He\'s strange and peevish.\n  PISANIO. I was going, sir,\n    To give him welcome.                                    Exit\n  IMOGEN. Continues well my lord? His health beseech you?\n  IACHIMO. Well, madam.\n  IMOGEN. Is he dispos\'d to mirth? I hope he is.\n  IACHIMO. Exceeding pleasant; none a stranger there\n    So merry and so gamesome. He is call\'d\n    The Britain reveller.\n  IMOGEN. When he was here\n    He did incline to sadness, and oft-times\n    Not knowing why.\n  IACHIMO. I never saw him sad.\n    There is a Frenchman his companion, one\n    An eminent monsieur that, it seems, much loves  \n    A Gallian girl at home. He furnaces\n    The thick sighs from him; whiles the jolly Briton-\n    Your lord, I mean- laughs from\'s free lungs, cries \'O,\n    Can my sides hold, to think that man- who knows\n    By history, report, or his own proof,\n    What woman is, yea, what she cannot choose\n    But must be- will\'s free hours languish for\n    Assured bondage?\'\n  IMOGEN. Will my lord say so?\n  IACHIMO. Ay, madam, with his eyes in flood with laughter.\n    It is a recreation to be by\n    And hear him mock the Frenchman. But heavens know\n    Some men are much to blame.\n  IMOGEN. Not he, I hope.\n  IACHIMO. Not he; but yet heaven\'s bounty towards him might\n    Be us\'d more thankfully. In himself, \'tis much;\n    In you, which I account his, beyond all talents.\n    Whilst I am bound to wonder, I am bound\n    To pity too.\n  IMOGEN. What do you pity, sir?  \n  IACHIMO. Two creatures heartily.\n  IMOGEN. Am I one, sir?\n    You look on me: what wreck discern you in me\n    Deserves your pity?\n  IACHIMO. Lamentable! What,\n    To hide me from the radiant sun and solace\n    I\' th\' dungeon by a snuff?\n  IMOGEN. I pray you, sir,\n    Deliver with more openness your answers\n    To my demands. Why do you pity me?\n  IACHIMO. That others do,\n    I was about to say, enjoy your- But\n    It is an office of the gods to venge it,\n    Not mine to speak on\'t.\n  IMOGEN. You do seem to know\n    Something of me, or what concerns me; pray you-\n    Since doubting things go ill often hurts more\n    Than to be sure they do; for certainties\n    Either are past remedies, or, timely knowing,\n    The remedy then born- discover to me  \n    What both you spur and stop.\n  IACHIMO. Had I this cheek\n    To bathe my lips upon; this hand, whose touch,\n    Whose every touch, would force the feeler\'s soul\n    To th\' oath of loyalty; this object, which\n    Takes prisoner the wild motion of mine eye,\n    Fixing it only here; should I, damn\'d then,\n    Slaver with lips as common as the stairs\n    That mount the Capitol; join gripes with hands\n    Made hard with hourly falsehood- falsehood as\n    With labour; then by-peeping in an eye\n    Base and illustrious as the smoky light\n    That\'s fed with stinking tallow- it were fit\n    That all the plagues of hell should at one time\n    Encounter such revolt.\n  IMOGEN. My lord, I fear,\n    Has forgot Britain.\n  IACHIMO. And himself. Not I\n    Inclin\'d to this intelligence pronounce\n    The beggary of his change; but \'tis your graces  \n    That from my mutest conscience to my tongue\n    Charms this report out.\n  IMOGEN. Let me hear no more.\n  IACHIMO. O dearest soul, your cause doth strike my heart\n    With pity that doth make me sick! A lady\n    So fair, and fasten\'d to an empery,\n    Would make the great\'st king double, to be partner\'d\n    With tomboys hir\'d with that self exhibition\n    Which your own coffers yield! with diseas\'d ventures\n    That play with all infirmities for gold\n    Which rottenness can lend nature! such boil\'d stuff\n    As well might poison poison! Be reveng\'d;\n    Or she that bore you was no queen, and you\n    Recoil from your great stock.\n  IMOGEN. Reveng\'d?\n    How should I be reveng\'d? If this be true-\n    As I have such a heart that both mine ears\n    Must not in haste abuse- if it be true,\n    How should I be reveng\'d?\n  IACHIMO. Should he make me  \n    Live like Diana\'s priest betwixt cold sheets,\n    Whiles he is vaulting variable ramps,\n    In your despite, upon your purse? Revenge it.\n    I dedicate myself to your sweet pleasure,\n    More noble than that runagate to your bed,\n    And will continue fast to your affection,\n    Still close as sure.\n  IMOGEN. What ho, Pisanio!\n  IACHIMO. Let me my service tender on your lips.\n  IMOGEN. Away! I do condemn mine ears that have\n    So long attended thee. If thou wert honourable,\n    Thou wouldst have told this tale for virtue, not\n    For such an end thou seek\'st, as base as strange.\n    Thou wrong\'st a gentleman who is as far\n    From thy report as thou from honour; and\n    Solicits here a lady that disdains\n    Thee and the devil alike.- What ho, Pisanio!-\n    The King my father shall be made acquainted\n    Of thy assault. If he shall think it fit\n    A saucy stranger in his court to mart  \n    As in a Romish stew, and to expound\n    His beastly mind to us, he hath a court\n    He little cares for, and a daughter who\n    He not respects at all.- What ho, Pisanio!\n  IACHIMO. O happy Leonatus! I may say\n    The credit that thy lady hath of thee\n    Deserves thy trust, and thy most perfect goodness\n    Her assur\'d credit. Blessed live you long,\n    A lady to the worthiest sir that ever\n    Country call\'d his! and you his mistress, only\n    For the most worthiest fit! Give me your pardon.\n    I have spoke this to know if your affiance\n    Were deeply rooted, and shall make your lord\n    That which he is new o\'er; and he is one\n    The truest manner\'d, such a holy witch\n    That he enchants societies into him,\n    Half all men\'s hearts are his.\n  IMOGEN. You make amends.\n  IACHIMO. He sits \'mongst men like a descended god:\n    He hath a kind of honour sets him of  \n    More than a mortal seeming. Be not angry,\n    Most mighty Princess, that I have adventur\'d\n    To try your taking of a false report, which hath\n    Honour\'d with confirmation your great judgment\n    In the election of a sir so rare,\n    Which you know cannot err. The love I bear him\n    Made me to fan you thus; but the gods made you,\n    Unlike all others, chaffless. Pray your pardon.\n  IMOGEN. All\'s well, sir; take my pow\'r i\' th\' court for yours.\n  IACHIMO. My humble thanks. I had almost forgot\n    T\' entreat your Grace but in a small request,\n    And yet of moment too, for it concerns\n    Your lord; myself and other noble friends\n    Are partners in the business.\n  IMOGEN. Pray what is\'t?\n  IACHIMO. Some dozen Romans of us, and your lord-\n    The best feather of our wing- have mingled sums\n    To buy a present for the Emperor;\n    Which I, the factor for the rest, have done\n    In France. \'Tis plate of rare device, and jewels  \n    Of rich and exquisite form, their values great;\n    And I am something curious, being strange,\n    To have them in safe stowage. May it please you\n    To take them in protection?\n  IMOGEN. Willingly;\n    And pawn mine honour for their safety. Since\n    My lord hath interest in them, I will keep them\n    In my bedchamber.\n  IACHIMO. They are in a trunk,\n    Attended by my men. I will make bold\n    To send them to you only for this night;\n    I must aboard to-morrow.\n  IMOGEN. O, no, no.\n  IACHIMO. Yes, I beseech; or I shall short my word\n    By length\'ning my return. From Gallia\n    I cross\'d the seas on purpose and on promise\n    To see your Grace.\n  IMOGEN. I thank you for your pains.\n    But not away to-morrow!\n  IACHIMO. O, I must, madam.  \n    Therefore I shall beseech you, if you please\n    To greet your lord with writing, do\'t to-night.\n    I have outstood my time, which is material\n    \'To th\' tender of our present.\n  IMOGEN. I will write.\n    Send your trunk to me; it shall safe be kept\n    And truly yielded you. You\'re very welcome.           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nBritain. Before CYMBELINE\'S palace\n\nEnter CLOTEN and the two LORDS\n\n  CLOTEN. Was there ever man had such luck! When I kiss\'d the jack,\n    upon an up-cast to be hit away! I had a hundred pound on\'t; and\n    then a whoreson jackanapes must take me up for swearing, as if I\n    borrowed mine oaths of him, and might not spend them at my\n    pleasure.\n  FIRST LORD. What got he by that? You have broke his pate with your\n    bowl.\n  SECOND LORD. [Aside] If his wit had been like him that broke it, it\n    would have run all out.\n  CLOTEN. When a gentleman is dispos\'d to swear, it is not for any\n    standers-by to curtail his oaths. Ha?\n  SECOND LORD. No, my lord; [Aside] nor crop the ears of them.\n  CLOTEN. Whoreson dog! I give him satisfaction? Would he had been\n    one of my rank!\n  SECOND LORD. [Aside] To have smell\'d like a fool.\n  CLOTEN. I am not vex\'d more at anything in th\' earth. A pox on\'t! I\n    had rather not be so noble as I am; they dare not fight with me,  \n    because of the Queen my mother. Every jackslave hath his bellyful\n    of fighting, and I must go up and down like a cock that nobody\n    can match.\n  SECOND LORD. [Aside] You are cock and capon too; and you crow,\n    cock, with your comb on.\n  CLOTEN. Sayest thou?\n  SECOND LORD. It is not fit your lordship should undertake every\n    companion that you give offence to.\n  CLOTEN. No, I know that; but it is fit I should commit offence to\n    my inferiors.\n  SECOND LORD. Ay, it is fit for your lordship only.\n  CLOTEN. Why, so I say.\n  FIRST LORD. Did you hear of a stranger that\'s come to court\n    to-night?\n  CLOTEN. A stranger, and I not known on\'t?\n  SECOND LORD. [Aside] He\'s a strange fellow himself, and knows it\n    not.\n  FIRST LORD. There\'s an Italian come, and, \'tis thought, one of\n    Leonatus\' friends.\n  CLOTEN. Leonatus? A banish\'d rascal; and he\'s another, whatsoever  \n    he be. Who told you of this stranger?\n  FIRST LORD. One of your lordship\'s pages.\n  CLOTEN. Is it fit I went to look upon him? Is there no derogation\n    in\'t?\n  SECOND LORD. You cannot derogate, my lord.\n  CLOTEN. Not easily, I think.\n  SECOND LORD. [Aside] You are a fool granted; therefore your issues,\n    being foolish, do not derogate.\n  CLOTEN. Come, I\'ll go see this Italian. What I have lost to-day at\n    bowls I\'ll win to-night of him. Come, go.\n  SECOND LORD. I\'ll attend your lordship.\n                                    Exeunt CLOTEN and FIRST LORD\n    That such a crafty devil as is his mother\n    Should yield the world this ass! A woman that\n    Bears all down with her brain; and this her son\n    Cannot take two from twenty, for his heart,\n    And leave eighteen. Alas, poor princess,\n    Thou divine Imogen, what thou endur\'st,\n    Betwixt a father by thy step-dame govern\'d,\n    A mother hourly coining plots, a wooer  \n    More hateful than the foul expulsion is\n    Of thy dear husband, than that horrid act\n    Of the divorce he\'d make! The heavens hold firm\n    The walls of thy dear honour, keep unshak\'d\n    That temple, thy fair mind, that thou mayst stand\n    T\' enjoy thy banish\'d lord and this great land!         Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nBritain. IMOGEN\'S bedchamber in CYMBELINE\'S palace; a trunk in one corner\n\nEnter IMOGEN in her bed, and a LADY attending\n\n  IMOGEN. Who\'s there? My woman? Helen?\n  LADY. Please you, madam.\n  IMOGEN. What hour is it?\n  LADY. Almost midnight, madam.\n  IMOGEN. I have read three hours then. Mine eyes are weak;\n    Fold down the leaf where I have left. To bed.\n    Take not away the taper, leave it burning;\n    And if thou canst awake by four o\' th\' clock,\n    I prithee call me. Sleep hath seiz\'d me wholly.    Exit LADY\n    To your protection I commend me, gods.\n    From fairies and the tempters of the night\n    Guard me, beseech ye!\n                          [Sleeps. IACHIMO comes from the trunk]\n  IACHIMO. The crickets sing, and man\'s o\'er-labour\'d sense\n    Repairs itself by rest. Our Tarquin thus\n    Did softly press the rushes ere he waken\'d  \n    The chastity he wounded. Cytherea,\n    How bravely thou becom\'st thy bed! fresh lily,\n    And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch!\n    But kiss; one kiss! Rubies unparagon\'d,\n    How dearly they do\'t! \'Tis her breathing that\n    Perfumes the chamber thus. The flame o\' th\' taper\n    Bows toward her and would under-peep her lids\n    To see th\' enclosed lights, now canopied\n    Under these windows white and azure, lac\'d\n    With blue of heaven\'s own tinct. But my design\n    To note the chamber. I will write all down:\n    Such and such pictures; there the window; such\n    Th\' adornment of her bed; the arras, figures-\n    Why, such and such; and the contents o\' th\' story.\n    Ah, but some natural notes about her body\n    Above ten thousand meaner movables\n    Would testify, t\' enrich mine inventory.\n    O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her!\n    And be her sense but as a monument,\n    Thus in a chapel lying! Come off, come off;  \n                                       [Taking off her bracelet]\n    As slippery as the Gordian knot was hard!\n    \'Tis mine; and this will witness outwardly,\n    As strongly as the conscience does within,\n    To th\' madding of her lord. On her left breast\n    A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops\n    I\' th\' bottom of a cowslip. Here\'s a voucher\n    Stronger than ever law could make; this secret\n    Will force him think I have pick\'d the lock and ta\'en\n    The treasure of her honour. No more. To what end?\n    Why should I write this down that\'s riveted,\n    Screw\'d to my memory? She hath been reading late\n    The tale of Tereus; here the leaf\'s turn\'d down\n    Where Philomel gave up. I have enough.\n    To th\' trunk again, and shut the spring of it.\n    Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawning\n    May bare the raven\'s eye! I lodge in fear;\n    Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here.  [Clock strikes]\n    One, two, three. Time, time!             Exit into the trunk\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nCYMBELINE\'S palace. An ante-chamber adjoining IMOGEN\'S apartments\n\nEnter CLOTEN and LORDS\n\n  FIRST LORD. Your lordship is the most patient man in loss, the most\n    coldest that ever turn\'d up ace.\n  CLOTEN. It would make any man cold to lose.\n  FIRST LORD. But not every man patient after the noble temper of\n    your lordship. You are most hot and furious when you win.\n  CLOTEN. Winning will put any man into courage. If I could get this\n    foolish Imogen, I should have gold enough. It\'s almost morning,\n    is\'t not?\n  FIRST LORD. Day, my lord.\n  CLOTEN. I would this music would come. I am advised to give her\n    music a mornings; they say it will penetrate.\n\n                       Enter musicians\n\n    Come on, tune. If you can penetrate her with your fingering, so.\n    We\'ll try with tongue too. If none will do, let her remain; but  \n    I\'ll never give o\'er. First, a very excellent good-conceited\n    thing; after, a wonderful sweet air, with admirable rich words to\n    it- and then let her consider.\n\n                 SONG\n\n      Hark, hark! the lark at heaven\'s gate sings,\n        And Phoebus \'gins arise,\n      His steeds to water at those springs\n        On chalic\'d flow\'rs that lies;\n      And winking Mary-buds begin\n        To ope their golden eyes.\n      With everything that pretty bin,\n        My lady sweet, arise;\n          Arise, arise!\n\n    So, get you gone. If this penetrate, I will consider your music\n    the better; if it do not, it is a vice in her ears which\n    horsehairs and calves\' guts, nor the voice of unpaved eunuch to\n    boot, can never amend.                      Exeunt musicians  \n\n                    Enter CYMBELINE and QUEEN\n\n  SECOND LORD. Here comes the King.\n  CLOTEN. I am glad I was up so late, for that\'s the reason I was up\n    so early. He cannot choose but take this service I have done\n    fatherly.- Good morrow to your Majesty and to my gracious mother.\n  CYMBELINE. Attend you here the door of our stern daughter?\n    Will she not forth?\n  CLOTEN. I have assail\'d her with musics, but she vouchsafes no\n    notice.\n  CYMBELINE. The exile of her minion is too new;\n    She hath not yet forgot him; some more time\n    Must wear the print of his remembrance out,\n    And then she\'s yours.\n  QUEEN. You are most bound to th\' King,\n    Who lets go by no vantages that may\n    Prefer you to his daughter. Frame yourself\n    To orderly soliciting, and be friended\n    With aptness of the season; make denials  \n    Increase your services; so seem as if\n    You were inspir\'d to do those duties which\n    You tender to her; that you in all obey her,\n    Save when command to your dismission tends,\n    And therein you are senseless.\n  CLOTEN. Senseless? Not so.\n\n                    Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. So like you, sir, ambassadors from Rome;\n    The one is Caius Lucius.\n  CYMBELINE. A worthy fellow,\n    Albeit he comes on angry purpose now;\n    But that\'s no fault of his. We must receive him\n    According to the honour of his sender;\n    And towards himself, his goodness forespent on us,\n    We must extend our notice. Our dear son,\n    When you have given good morning to your mistress,\n    Attend the Queen and us; we shall have need\n    T\' employ you towards this Roman. Come, our queen.  \n                                           Exeunt all but CLOTEN\n  CLOTEN. If she be up, I\'ll speak with her; if not,\n    Let her lie still and dream. By your leave, ho!     [Knocks]\n    I know her women are about her; what\n    If I do line one of their hands? \'Tis gold\n    Which buys admittance; oft it doth-yea, and makes\n    Diana\'s rangers false themselves, yield up\n    Their deer to th\' stand o\' th\' stealer; and \'tis gold\n    Which makes the true man kill\'d and saves the thief;\n    Nay, sometime hangs both thief and true man. What\n    Can it not do and undo? I will make\n    One of her women lawyer to me, for\n    I yet not understand the case myself.\n    By your leave.                                      [Knocks]\n\n                            Enter a LADY\n\n  LADY. Who\'s there that knocks?\n  CLOTEN. A gentleman.\n  LADY. No more?  \n  CLOTEN. Yes, and a gentlewoman\'s son.\n  LADY. That\'s more\n    Than some whose tailors are as dear as yours\n    Can justly boast of. What\'s your lordship\'s pleasure?\n  CLOTEN. Your lady\'s person; is she ready?\n  LADY. Ay,\n    To keep her chamber.\n  CLOTEN. There is gold for you; sell me your good report.\n  LADY. How? My good name? or to report of you\n    What I shall think is good? The Princess!\n\n                        Enter IMOGEN\n\n  CLOTEN. Good morrow, fairest sister. Your sweet hand.\n                                                       Exit LADY\n  IMOGEN. Good morrow, sir. You lay out too much pains\n    For purchasing but trouble. The thanks I give\n    Is telling you that I am poor of thanks,\n    And scarce can spare them.\n  CLOTEN. Still I swear I love you.  \n  IMOGEN. If you but said so, \'twere as deep with me.\n    If you swear still, your recompense is still\n    That I regard it not.\n  CLOTEN. This is no answer.\n  IMOGEN. But that you shall not say I yield, being silent,\n    I would not speak. I pray you spare me. Faith,\n    I shall unfold equal discourtesy\n    To your best kindness; one of your great knowing\n    Should learn, being taught, forbearance.\n  CLOTEN. To leave you in your madness \'twere my sin;\n    I will not.\n  IMOGEN. Fools are not mad folks.\n  CLOTEN. Do you call me fool?\n  IMOGEN. As I am mad, I do;\n    If you\'ll be patient, I\'ll no more be mad;\n    That cures us both. I am much sorry, sir,\n    You put me to forget a lady\'s manners\n    By being so verbal; and learn now, for all,\n    That I, which know my heart, do here pronounce,\n    By th\' very truth of it, I care not for you,  \n    And am so near the lack of charity\n    To accuse myself I hate you; which I had rather\n    You felt than make\'t my boast.\n  CLOTEN. You sin against\n    Obedience, which you owe your father. For\n    The contract you pretend with that base wretch,\n    One bred of alms and foster\'d with cold dishes,\n    With scraps o\' th\' court- it is no contract, none.\n    And though it be allowed in meaner parties-\n    Yet who than he more mean?- to knit their souls-\n    On whom there is no more dependency\n    But brats and beggary- in self-figur\'d knot,\n    Yet you are curb\'d from that enlargement by\n    The consequence o\' th\' crown, and must not foil\n    The precious note of it with a base slave,\n    A hilding for a livery, a squire\'s cloth,\n    A pantler- not so eminent!\n  IMOGEN. Profane fellow!\n    Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more\n    But what thou art besides, thou wert too base  \n    To be his groom. Thou wert dignified enough,\n    Even to the point of envy, if \'twere made\n    Comparative for your virtues to be styl\'d\n    The under-hangman of his kingdom, and hated\n    For being preferr\'d so well.\n  CLOTEN. The south fog rot him!\n  IMOGEN. He never can meet more mischance than come\n    To be but nam\'d of thee. His mean\'st garment\n    That ever hath but clipp\'d his body is dearer\n    In my respect than all the hairs above thee,\n    Were they all made such men. How now, Pisanio!\n\n                    Enter PISANIO\n\n  CLOTEN. \'His garments\'! Now the devil-\n  IMOGEN. To Dorothy my woman hie thee presently.\n  CLOTEN. \'His garment\'!\n  IMOGEN. I am sprited with a fool;\n    Frighted, and ang\'red worse. Go bid my woman\n    Search for a jewel that too casually  \n    Hath left mine arm. It was thy master\'s; shrew me,\n    If I would lose it for a revenue\n    Of any king\'s in Europe! I do think\n    I saw\'t this morning; confident I am\n    Last night \'twas on mine arm; I kiss\'d it.\n    I hope it be not gone to tell my lord\n    That I kiss aught but he.\n  PISANIO. \'Twill not be lost.\n  IMOGEN. I hope so. Go and search.                 Exit PISANIO\n  CLOTEN. You have abus\'d me.\n    \'His meanest garment\'!\n  IMOGEN. Ay, I said so, sir.\n    If you will make \'t an action, call witness to \'t.\n  CLOTEN. I will inform your father.\n  IMOGEN. Your mother too.\n    She\'s my good lady and will conceive, I hope,\n    But the worst of me. So I leave you, sir,\n    To th\' worst of discontent.                             Exit\n  CLOTEN. I\'ll be reveng\'d.\n    \'His mean\'st garment\'! Well.                            Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nRome. PHILARIO\'S house\n\nEnter POSTHUMUS and PHILARIO\n\n  POSTHUMUS. Fear it not, sir; I would I were so sure\n    To win the King as I am bold her honour\n    Will remain hers.\n  PHILARIO. What means do you make to him?\n  POSTHUMUS. Not any; but abide the change of time,\n    Quake in the present winter\'s state, and wish\n    That warmer days would come. In these fear\'d hopes\n    I barely gratify your love; they failing,\n    I must die much your debtor.\n  PHILARIO. Your very goodness and your company\n    O\'erpays all I can do. By this your king\n    Hath heard of great Augustus. Caius Lucius\n    Will do\'s commission throughly; and I think\n    He\'ll grant the tribute, send th\' arrearages,\n    Or look upon our Romans, whose remembrance\n    Is yet fresh in their grief.\n  POSTHUMUS. I do believe  \n    Statist though I am none, nor like to be,\n    That this will prove a war; and you shall hear\n    The legions now in Gallia sooner landed\n    In our not-fearing Britain than have tidings\n    Of any penny tribute paid. Our countrymen\n    Are men more order\'d than when Julius Caesar\n    Smil\'d at their lack of skill, but found their courage\n    Worthy his frowning at. Their discipline,\n    Now mingled with their courages, will make known\n    To their approvers they are people such\n    That mend upon the world.\n\n                      Enter IACHIMO\n\n  PHILARIO. See! Iachimo!\n  POSTHUMUS. The swiftest harts have posted you by land,\n    And winds of all the comers kiss\'d your sails,\n    To make your vessel nimble.\n  PHILARIO. Welcome, sir.\n  POSTHUMUS. I hope the briefness of your answer made  \n    The speediness of your return.\n  IACHIMO. Your lady\n    Is one of the fairest that I have look\'d upon.\n  POSTHUMUS. And therewithal the best; or let her beauty\n    Look through a casement to allure false hearts,\n    And be false with them.\n  IACHIMO. Here are letters for you.\n  POSTHUMUS. Their tenour good, I trust.\n  IACHIMO. \'Tis very like.\n  PHILARIO. Was Caius Lucius in the Britain court\n    When you were there?\n  IACHIMO. He was expected then,\n    But not approach\'d.\n  POSTHUMUS. All is well yet.\n    Sparkles this stone as it was wont, or is\'t not\n    Too dull for your good wearing?\n  IACHIMO. If I have lost it,\n    I should have lost the worth of it in gold.\n    I\'ll make a journey twice as far t\' enjoy\n    A second night of such sweet shortness which  \n    Was mine in Britain; for the ring is won.\n  POSTHUMUS. The stone\'s too hard to come by.\n  IACHIMO. Not a whit,\n    Your lady being so easy.\n  POSTHUMUS. Make not, sir,\n    Your loss your sport. I hope you know that we\n    Must not continue friends.\n  IACHIMO. Good sir, we must,\n    If you keep covenant. Had I not brought\n    The knowledge of your mistress home, I grant\n    We were to question farther; but I now\n    Profess myself the winner of her honour,\n    Together with your ring; and not the wronger\n    Of her or you, having proceeded but\n    By both your wills.\n  POSTHUMUS. If you can make\'t apparent\n    That you have tasted her in bed, my hand\n    And ring is yours. If not, the foul opinion\n    You had of her pure honour gains or loses\n    Your sword or mine, or masterless leaves both  \n    To who shall find them.\n  IACHIMO. Sir, my circumstances,\n    Being so near the truth as I will make them,\n    Must first induce you to believe- whose strength\n    I will confirm with oath; which I doubt not\n    You\'ll give me leave to spare when you shall find\n    You need it not.\n  POSTHUMUS. Proceed.\n  IACHIMO. First, her bedchamber,\n    Where I confess I slept not, but profess\n    Had that was well worth watching-it was hang\'d\n    With tapestry of silk and silver; the story,\n    Proud Cleopatra when she met her Roman\n    And Cydnus swell\'d above the banks, or for\n    The press of boats or pride. A piece of work\n    So bravely done, so rich, that it did strive\n    In workmanship and value; which I wonder\'d\n    Could be so rarely and exactly wrought,\n    Since the true life on\'t was-\n  POSTHUMUS. This is true;  \n    And this you might have heard of here, by me\n    Or by some other.\n  IACHIMO. More particulars\n    Must justify my knowledge.\n  POSTHUMUS. So they must,\n    Or do your honour injury.\n  IACHIMO. The chimney\n    Is south the chamber, and the chimneypiece\n    Chaste Dian bathing. Never saw I figures\n    So likely to report themselves. The cutter\n    Was as another nature, dumb; outwent her,\n    Motion and breath left out.\n  POSTHUMUS. This is a thing\n    Which you might from relation likewise reap,\n    Being, as it is, much spoke of.\n  IACHIMO. The roof o\' th\' chamber\n    With golden cherubins is fretted; her andirons-\n    I had forgot them- were two winking Cupids\n    Of silver, each on one foot standing, nicely\n    Depending on their brands.  \n  POSTHUMUS. This is her honour!\n    Let it be granted you have seen all this, and praise\n    Be given to your remembrance; the description\n    Of what is in her chamber nothing saves\n    The wager you have laid.\n  IACHIMO. Then, if you can,                [Shows the bracelet]\n    Be pale. I beg but leave to air this jewel. See!\n    And now \'tis up again. It must be married\n    To that your diamond; I\'ll keep them.\n  POSTHUMUS. Jove!\n    Once more let me behold it. Is it that\n    Which I left with her?\n  IACHIMO. Sir- I thank her- that.\n    She stripp\'d it from her arm; I see her yet;\n    Her pretty action did outsell her gift,\n    And yet enrich\'d it too. She gave it me, and said\n    She priz\'d it once.\n  POSTHUMUS. May be she pluck\'d it of\n    To send it me.\n  IACHIMO. She writes so to you, doth she?  \n  POSTHUMUS. O, no, no, no! \'tis true. Here, take this too;\n                                                [Gives the ring]\n    It is a basilisk unto mine eye,\n    Kills me to look on\'t. Let there be no honour\n    Where there is beauty; truth where semblance; love\n    Where there\'s another man. The vows of women\n    Of no more bondage be to where they are made\n    Than they are to their virtues, which is nothing.\n    O, above measure false!\n  PHILARIO. Have patience, sir,\n    And take your ring again; \'tis not yet won.\n    It may be probable she lost it, or\n    Who knows if one her women, being corrupted\n    Hath stol\'n it from her?\n  POSTHUMUS. Very true;\n    And so I hope he came by\'t. Back my ring.\n    Render to me some corporal sign about her,\n    More evident than this; for this was stol\'n.\n  IACHIMO. By Jupiter, I had it from her arm!\n  POSTHUMUS. Hark you, he swears; by Jupiter he swears.  \n    \'Tis true- nay, keep the ring, \'tis true. I am sure\n    She would not lose it. Her attendants are\n    All sworn and honourable- they induc\'d to steal it!\n    And by a stranger! No, he hath enjoy\'d her.\n    The cognizance of her incontinency\n    Is this: she hath bought the name of whore thus dearly.\n    There, take thy hire; and all the fiends of hell\n    Divide themselves between you!\n  PHILARIO. Sir, be patient;\n    This is not strong enough to be believ\'d\n    Of one persuaded well of.\n  POSTHUMUS. Never talk on\'t;\n    She hath been colted by him.\n  IACHIMO. If you seek\n    For further satisfying, under her breast-\n    Worthy the pressing- lies a mole, right proud\n    Of that most delicate lodging. By my life,\n    I kiss\'d it; and it gave me present hunger\n    To feed again, though full. You do remember\n    This stain upon her?  \n  POSTHUMUS. Ay, and it doth confirm\n    Another stain, as big as hell can hold,\n    Were there no more but it.\n  IACHIMO. Will you hear more?\n  POSTHUMUS. Spare your arithmetic; never count the turns.\n    Once, and a million!\n  IACHIMO. I\'ll be sworn-\n  POSTHUMUS. No swearing.\n    If you will swear you have not done\'t, you lie;\n    And I will kill thee if thou dost deny\n    Thou\'st made me cuckold.\n  IACHIMO. I\'ll deny nothing.\n  POSTHUMUS. O that I had her here to tear her limb-meal!\n    I will go there and do\'t, i\' th\' court, before\n    Her father. I\'ll do something-                          Exit\n  PHILARIO. Quite besides\n    The government of patience! You have won.\n    Let\'s follow him and pervert the present wrath\n    He hath against himself.\n  IACHIMO. With all my heart.                             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nRome. Another room in PHILARIO\'S house\n\nEnter POSTHUMUS\n\n  POSTHUMUS. Is there no way for men to be, but women\n    Must be half-workers? We are all bastards,\n    And that most venerable man which I\n    Did call my father was I know not where\n    When I was stamp\'d. Some coiner with his tools\n    Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seem\'d\n    The Dian of that time. So doth my wife\n    The nonpareil of this. O, vengeance, vengeance!\n    Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain\'d,\n    And pray\'d me oft forbearance; did it with\n    A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on\'t\n    Might well have warm\'d old Saturn; that I thought her\n    As chaste as unsunn\'d snow. O, all the devils!\n    This yellow Iachimo in an hour- was\'t not?\n    Or less!- at first? Perchance he spoke not, but,\n    Like a full-acorn\'d boar, a German one,\n    Cried \'O!\' and mounted; found no opposition  \n    But what he look\'d for should oppose and she\n    Should from encounter guard. Could I find out\n    The woman\'s part in me! For there\'s no motion\n    That tends to vice in man but I affirm\n    It is the woman\'s part. Be it lying, note it,\n    The woman\'s; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers;\n    Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;\n    Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,\n    Nice longing, slanders, mutability,\n    All faults that man may name, nay, that hell knows,\n    Why, hers, in part or all; but rather all;\n    For even to vice\n    They are not constant, but are changing still\n    One vice but of a minute old for one\n    Not half so old as that. I\'ll write against them,\n    Detest them, curse them. Yet \'tis greater skill\n    In a true hate to pray they have their will:\n    The very devils cannot plague them better.              Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nBritain. A hall in CYMBELINE\'S palace\n\nEnter in state, CYMBELINE, QUEEN, CLOTEN, and LORDS at one door,\nand at another CAIUS LUCIUS and attendants\n\n  CYMBELINE. Now say, what would Augustus Caesar with us?\n  LUCIUS. When Julius Caesar- whose remembrance yet\n    Lives in men\'s eyes, and will to ears and tongues\n    Be theme and hearing ever- was in this Britain,\n    And conquer\'d it, Cassibelan, thine uncle,\n    Famous in Caesar\'s praises no whit less\n    Than in his feats deserving it, for him\n    And his succession granted Rome a tribute,\n    Yearly three thousand pounds, which by thee lately\n    Is left untender\'d.\n  QUEEN. And, to kill the marvel,\n    Shall be so ever.\n  CLOTEN. There be many Caesars\n    Ere such another Julius. Britain is\n    A world by itself, and we will nothing pay\n    For wearing our own noses.  \n  QUEEN. That opportunity,\n    Which then they had to take from \'s, to resume\n    We have again. Remember, sir, my liege,\n    The kings your ancestors, together with\n    The natural bravery of your isle, which stands\n    As Neptune\'s park, ribb\'d and pal\'d in\n    With rocks unscalable and roaring waters,\n    With sands that will not bear your enemies\' boats\n    But suck them up to th\' top-mast. A kind of conquest\n    Caesar made here; but made not here his brag\n    Of \'came, and saw, and overcame.\' With shame-\n    The first that ever touch\'d him- he was carried\n    From off our coast, twice beaten; and his shipping-\n    Poor ignorant baubles!- on our terrible seas,\n    Like egg-shells mov\'d upon their surges, crack\'d\n    As easily \'gainst our rocks; for joy whereof\n    The fam\'d Cassibelan, who was once at point-\n    O, giglot fortune!- to master Caesar\'s sword,\n    Made Lud\'s Town with rejoicing fires bright\n    And Britons strut with courage.  \n  CLOTEN. Come, there\'s no more tribute to be paid. Our kingdom is\n    stronger than it was at that time; and, as I said, there is no\n    moe such Caesars. Other of them may have crook\'d noses; but to\n    owe such straight arms, none.\n  CYMBELINE. Son, let your mother end.\n  CLOTEN. We have yet many among us can gripe as hard as Cassibelan.\n    I do not say I am one; but I have a hand. Why tribute? Why should\n    we pay tribute? If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket,\n    or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light;\n    else, sir, no more tribute, pray you now.\n  CYMBELINE. You must know,\n    Till the injurious Romans did extort\n    This tribute from us, we were free. Caesar\'s ambition-\n    Which swell\'d so much that it did almost stretch\n    The sides o\' th\' world- against all colour here\n    Did put the yoke upon\'s; which to shake of\n    Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon\n    Ourselves to be.\n  CLOTEN. We do.\n  CYMBELINE. Say then to Caesar,  \n    Our ancestor was that Mulmutius which\n    Ordain\'d our laws- whose use the sword of Caesar\n    Hath too much mangled; whose repair and franchise\n    Shall, by the power we hold, be our good deed,\n    Though Rome be therefore angry. Mulmutius made our laws,\n    Who was the first of Britain which did put\n    His brows within a golden crown, and call\'d\n    Himself a king.\n  LUCIUS. I am sorry, Cymbeline,\n    That I am to pronounce Augustus Caesar-\n    Caesar, that hath moe kings his servants than\n    Thyself domestic officers- thine enemy.\n    Receive it from me, then: war and confusion\n    In Caesar\'s name pronounce I \'gainst thee; look\n    For fury not to be resisted. Thus defied,\n    I thank thee for myself.\n  CYMBELINE. Thou art welcome, Caius.\n    Thy Caesar knighted me; my youth I spent\n    Much under him; of him I gather\'d honour,\n    Which he to seek of me again, perforce,  \n    Behoves me keep at utterance. I am perfect\n    That the Pannonians and Dalmatians for\n    Their liberties are now in arms, a precedent\n    Which not to read would show the Britons cold;\n    So Caesar shall not find them.\n  LUCIUS. Let proof speak.\n  CLOTEN. His majesty bids you welcome. Make pastime with us a day or\n    two, or longer. If you seek us afterwards in other terms, you\n    shall find us in our salt-water girdle. If you beat us out of it,\n    it is yours; if you fall in the adventure, our crows shall fare\n    the better for you; and there\'s an end.\n  LUCIUS. So, sir.\n  CYMBELINE. I know your master\'s pleasure, and he mine;\n    All the remain is, welcome.                           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nBritain. Another room in CYMBELINE\'S palace\n\nEnter PISANIO reading of a letter\n\n  PISANIO. How? of adultery? Wherefore write you not\n    What monsters her accuse? Leonatus!\n    O master, what a strange infection\n    Is fall\'n into thy ear! What false Italian-\n    As poisonous-tongu\'d as handed- hath prevail\'d\n    On thy too ready hearing? Disloyal? No.\n    She\'s punish\'d for her truth, and undergoes,\n    More goddess-like than wife-like, such assaults\n    As would take in some virtue. O my master!\n    Thy mind to her is now as low as were\n    Thy fortunes. How? that I should murder her?\n    Upon the love, and truth, and vows, which I\n    Have made to thy command? I, her? Her blood?\n    If it be so to do good service, never\n    Let me be counted serviceable. How look I\n    That I should seem to lack humanity\n    So much as this fact comes to? [Reads] \'Do\'t. The letter  \n    That I have sent her, by her own command\n    Shall give thee opportunity.\' O damn\'d paper,\n    Black as the ink that\'s on thee! Senseless bauble,\n    Art thou a fedary for this act, and look\'st\n    So virgin-like without? Lo, here she comes.\n\n                      Enter IMOGEN\n\n    I am ignorant in what I am commanded.\n  IMOGEN. How now, Pisanio!\n  PISANIO. Madam, here is a letter from my lord.\n  IMOGEN. Who? thy lord? That is my lord- Leonatus?\n    O, learn\'d indeed were that astronomer\n    That knew the stars as I his characters-\n    He\'d lay the future open. You good gods,\n    Let what is here contain\'d relish of love,\n    Of my lord\'s health, of his content; yet not\n    That we two are asunder- let that grieve him!\n    Some griefs are med\'cinable; that is one of them,\n    For it doth physic love- of his content,  \n    All but in that. Good wax, thy leave. Blest be\n    You bees that make these locks of counsel! Lovers\n    And men in dangerous bonds pray not alike;\n    Though forfeiters you cast in prison, yet\n    You clasp young Cupid\'s tables. Good news, gods!\n                                                         [Reads]\n    \'Justice and your father\'s wrath, should he take me in his\n    dominion, could not be so cruel to me as you, O the dearest of\n    creatures, would even renew me with your eyes. Take notice that I\n    am in Cambria, at Milford Haven. What your own love will out of\n    this advise you, follow. So he wishes you all happiness that\n    remains loyal to his vow, and your increasing in love\n                                            LEONATUS POSTHUMUS.\'\n\n    O for a horse with wings! Hear\'st thou, Pisanio?\n    He is at Milford Haven. Read, and tell me\n    How far \'tis thither. If one of mean affairs\n    May plod it in a week, why may not I\n    Glide thither in a day? Then, true Pisanio-\n    Who long\'st like me to see thy lord, who long\'st-  \n    O, let me \'bate!- but not like me, yet long\'st,\n    But in a fainter kind- O, not like me,\n    For mine\'s beyond beyond!-say, and speak thick-\n    Love\'s counsellor should fill the bores of hearing\n    To th\' smothering of the sense- how far it is\n    To this same blessed Milford. And by th\' way\n    Tell me how Wales was made so happy as\n    T\' inherit such a haven. But first of all,\n    How we may steal from hence; and for the gap\n    That we shall make in time from our hence-going\n    And our return, to excuse. But first, how get hence.\n    Why should excuse be born or ere begot?\n    We\'ll talk of that hereafter. Prithee speak,\n    How many score of miles may we well ride\n    \'Twixt hour and hour?\n  PISANIO. One score \'twixt sun and sun,\n    Madam, \'s enough for you, and too much too.\n  IMOGEN. Why, one that rode to\'s execution, man,\n    Could never go so slow. I have heard of riding wagers\n    Where horses have been nimbler than the sands  \n    That run i\' th\' clock\'s behalf. But this is fool\'ry.\n    Go bid my woman feign a sickness; say\n    She\'ll home to her father; and provide me presently\n    A riding suit, no costlier than would fit\n    A franklin\'s huswife.\n  PISANIO. Madam, you\'re best consider.\n  IMOGEN. I see before me, man. Nor here, nor here,\n    Nor what ensues, but have a fog in them\n    That I cannot look through. Away, I prithee;\n    Do as I bid thee. There\'s no more to say;\n    Accessible is none but Milford way.                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nWales. A mountainous country with a cave\n\nEnter from the cave BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, and ARVIRAGUS\n\n  BELARIUS. A goodly day not to keep house with such\n    Whose roof\'s as low as ours! Stoop, boys; this gate\n    Instructs you how t\' adore the heavens, and bows you\n    To a morning\'s holy office. The gates of monarchs\n    Are arch\'d so high that giants may jet through\n    And keep their impious turbans on without\n    Good morrow to the sun. Hail, thou fair heaven!\n    We house i\' th\' rock, yet use thee not so hardly\n    As prouder livers do.\n  GUIDERIUS. Hail, heaven!\n  ARVIRAGUS. Hail, heaven!\n  BELARIUS. Now for our mountain sport. Up to yond hill,\n    Your legs are young; I\'ll tread these flats. Consider,\n    When you above perceive me like a crow,\n    That it is place which lessens and sets off;\n    And you may then revolve what tales I have told you\n    Of courts, of princes, of the tricks in war.  \n    This service is not service so being done,\n    But being so allow\'d. To apprehend thus\n    Draws us a profit from all things we see,\n    And often to our comfort shall we find\n    The sharded beetle in a safer hold\n    Than is the full-wing\'d eagle. O, this life\n    Is nobler than attending for a check,\n    Richer than doing nothing for a bribe,\n    Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk:\n    Such gain the cap of him that makes him fine,\n    Yet keeps his book uncross\'d. No life to ours!\n  GUIDERIUS. Out of your proof you speak. We, poor unfledg\'d,\n    Have never wing\'d from view o\' th\' nest, nor know not\n    What air\'s from home. Haply this life is best,\n    If quiet life be best; sweeter to you\n    That have a sharper known; well corresponding\n    With your stiff age. But unto us it is\n    A cell of ignorance, travelling abed,\n    A prison for a debtor that not dares\n    To stride a limit.  \n  ARVIRAGUS. What should we speak of\n    When we are old as you? When we shall hear\n    The rain and wind beat dark December, how,\n    In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse.\n    The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing;\n    We are beastly: subtle as the fox for prey,\n    Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat.\n    Our valour is to chase what flies; our cage\n    We make a choir, as doth the prison\'d bird,\n    And sing our bondage freely.\n  BELARIUS. How you speak!\n    Did you but know the city\'s usuries,\n    And felt them knowingly- the art o\' th\' court,\n    As hard to leave as keep, whose top to climb\n    Is certain falling, or so slipp\'ry that\n    The fear\'s as bad as falling; the toil o\' th\' war,\n    A pain that only seems to seek out danger\n    I\' th\'name of fame and honour, which dies i\' th\'search,\n    And hath as oft a sland\'rous epitaph\n    As record of fair act; nay, many times,  \n    Doth ill deserve by doing well; what\'s worse-\n    Must curtsy at the censure. O, boys, this story\n    The world may read in me; my body\'s mark\'d\n    With Roman swords, and my report was once\n    first with the best of note. Cymbeline lov\'d me;\n    And when a soldier was the theme, my name\n    Was not far off. Then was I as a tree\n    Whose boughs did bend with fruit; but in one night\n    A storm, or robbery, call it what you will,\n    Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves,\n    And left me bare to weather.\n  GUIDERIUS. Uncertain favour!\n  BELARIUS. My fault being nothing- as I have told you oft-\n    But that two villains, whose false oaths prevail\'d\n    Before my perfect honour, swore to Cymbeline\n    I was confederate with the Romans. So\n    Follow\'d my banishment, and this twenty years\n    This rock and these demesnes have been my world,\n    Where I have liv\'d at honest freedom, paid\n    More pious debts to heaven than in all  \n    The fore-end of my time. But up to th\' mountains!\n    This is not hunters\' language. He that strikes\n    The venison first shall be the lord o\' th\' feast;\n    To him the other two shall minister;\n    And we will fear no poison, which attends\n    In place of greater state. I\'ll meet you in the valleys.\n                                  Exeunt GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS\n    How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature!\n    These boys know little they are sons to th\' King,\n    Nor Cymbeline dreams that they are alive.\n    They think they are mine; and though train\'d up thus meanly\n    I\' th\' cave wherein they bow, their thoughts do hit\n    The roofs of palaces, and nature prompts them\n    In simple and low things to prince it much\n    Beyond the trick of others. This Polydore,\n    The heir of Cymbeline and Britain, who\n    The King his father call\'d Guiderius- Jove!\n    When on my three-foot stool I sit and tell\n    The warlike feats I have done, his spirits fly out\n    Into my story; say \'Thus mine enemy fell,  \n    And thus I set my foot on\'s neck\'; even then\n    The princely blood flows in his cheek, he sweats,\n    Strains his young nerves, and puts himself in posture\n    That acts my words. The younger brother, Cadwal,\n    Once Arviragus, in as like a figure\n    Strikes life into my speech, and shows much more\n    His own conceiving. Hark, the game is rous\'d!\n    O Cymbeline, heaven and my conscience knows\n    Thou didst unjustly banish me! Whereon,\n    At three and two years old, I stole these babes,\n    Thinking to bar thee of succession as\n    Thou refts me of my lands. Euriphile,\n    Thou wast their nurse; they took thee for their mother,\n    And every day do honour to her grave.\n    Myself, Belarius, that am Morgan call\'d,\n    They take for natural father. The game is up.           Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nWales, near Milford Haven\n\nEnter PISANIO and IMOGEN\n\n  IMOGEN. Thou told\'st me, when we came from horse, the place\n    Was near at hand. Ne\'er long\'d my mother so\n    To see me first as I have now. Pisanio! Man!\n    Where is Posthumus? What is in thy mind\n    That makes thee stare thus? Wherefore breaks that sigh\n    From th\' inward of thee? One but painted thus\n    Would be interpreted a thing perplex\'d\n    Beyond self-explication. Put thyself\n    Into a haviour of less fear, ere wildness\n    Vanquish my staider senses. What\'s the matter?\n    Why tender\'st thou that paper to me with\n    A look untender! If\'t be summer news,\n    Smile to\'t before; if winterly, thou need\'st\n    But keep that count\'nance still. My husband\'s hand?\n    That drug-damn\'d Italy hath out-craftied him,\n    And he\'s at some hard point. Speak, man; thy tongue\n    May take off some extremity, which to read  \n    Would be even mortal to me.\n  PISANIO. Please you read,\n    And you shall find me, wretched man, a thing\n    The most disdain\'d of fortune.\n  IMOGEN. [Reads] \'Thy mistress, Pisanio, hath play\'d the strumpet in\n    my bed, the testimonies whereof lie bleeding in me. I speak not\n    out of weak surmises, but from proof as strong as my grief and as\n    certain as I expect my revenge. That part thou, Pisanio, must act\n    for me, if thy faith be not tainted with the breach of hers. Let\n    thine own hands take away her life; I shall give thee opportunity\n    at Milford Haven; she hath my letter for the purpose; where, if\n    thou fear to strike, and to make me certain it is done, thou art\n    the pander to her dishonour, and equally to me disloyal.\'\n  PISANIO. What shall I need to draw my sword? The paper\n    Hath cut her throat already. No, \'tis slander,\n    Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue\n    Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath\n    Rides on the posting winds and doth belie\n    All corners of the world. Kings, queens, and states,\n    Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave,  \n    This viperous slander enters. What cheer, madam?\n  IMOGEN. False to his bed? What is it to be false?\n    To lie in watch there, and to think on him?\n    To weep twixt clock and clock? If sleep charge nature,\n    To break it with a fearful dream of him,\n    And cry myself awake? That\'s false to\'s bed,\n    Is it?\n  PISANIO. Alas, good lady!\n  IMOGEN. I false! Thy conscience witness! Iachimo,\n    Thou didst accuse him of incontinency;\n    Thou then look\'dst like a villain; now, methinks,\n    Thy favour\'s good enough. Some jay of Italy,\n    Whose mother was her painting, hath betray\'d him.\n    Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion,\n    And for I am richer than to hang by th\' walls\n    I must be ripp\'d. To pieces with me! O,\n    Men\'s vows are women\'s traitors! All good seeming,\n    By thy revolt, O husband, shall be thought\n    Put on for villainy; not born where\'t grows,\n    But worn a bait for ladies.  \n  PISANIO. Good madam, hear me.\n  IMOGEN. True honest men being heard, like false Aeneas,\n    Were, in his time, thought false; and Sinon\'s weeping\n    Did scandal many a holy tear, took pity\n    From most true wretchedness. So thou, Posthumus,\n    Wilt lay the leaven on all proper men:\n    Goodly and gallant shall be false and perjur\'d\n    From thy great fail. Come, fellow, be thou honest;\n    Do thou thy master\'s bidding; when thou seest him,\n    A little witness my obedience. Look!\n    I draw the sword myself; take it, and hit\n    The innocent mansion of my love, my heart.\n    Fear not; \'tis empty of all things but grief;\n    Thy master is not there, who was indeed\n    The riches of it. Do his bidding; strike.\n    Thou mayst be valiant in a better cause,\n    But now thou seem\'st a coward.\n  PISANIO. Hence, vile instrument!\n    Thou shalt not damn my hand.\n  IMOGEN. Why, I must die;  \n    And if I do not by thy hand, thou art\n    No servant of thy master\'s. Against self-slaughter\n    There is a prohibition so divine\n    That cravens my weak hand. Come, here\'s my heart-\n    Something\'s afore\'t. Soft, soft! we\'ll no defence!-\n    Obedient as the scabbard. What is here?\n    The scriptures of the loyal Leonatus\n    All turn\'d to heresy? Away, away,\n    Corrupters of my faith! you shall no more\n    Be stomachers to my heart. Thus may poor fools\n    Believe false teachers; though those that are betray\'d\n    Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor\n    Stands in worse case of woe. And thou, Posthumus,\n    That didst set up my disobedience \'gainst the King\n    My father, and make me put into contempt the suits\n    Of princely fellows, shalt hereafter find\n    It is no act of common passage but\n    A strain of rareness; and I grieve myself\n    To think, when thou shalt be disedg\'d by her\n    That now thou tirest on, how thy memory  \n    Will then be pang\'d by me. Prithee dispatch.\n    The lamp entreats the butcher. Where\'s thy knife?\n    Thou art too slow to do thy master\'s bidding,\n    When I desire it too.\n  PISANIO. O gracious lady,\n    Since I receiv\'d command to do this busines\n    I have not slept one wink.\n  IMOGEN. Do\'t, and to bed then.\n  PISANIO. I\'ll wake mine eyeballs first.\n  IMOGEN. Wherefore then\n    Didst undertake it? Why hast thou abus\'d\n    So many miles with a pretence? This place?\n    Mine action and thine own? our horses\' labour?\n    The time inviting thee? the perturb\'d court,\n    For my being absent?- whereunto I never\n    Purpose return. Why hast thou gone so far\n    To be unbent when thou hast ta\'en thy stand,\n    Th\' elected deer before thee?\n  PISANIO. But to win time\n    To lose so bad employment, in the which  \n    I have consider\'d of a course. Good lady,\n    Hear me with patience.\n  IMOGEN. Talk thy tongue weary- speak.\n    I have heard I am a strumpet, and mine ear,\n    Therein false struck, can take no greater wound,\n    Nor tent to bottom that. But speak.\n  PISANIO. Then, madam,\n    I thought you would not back again.\n  IMOGEN. Most like-\n    Bringing me here to kill me.\n  PISANIO. Not so, neither;\n    But if I were as wise as honest, then\n    My purpose would prove well. It cannot be\n    But that my master is abus\'d. Some villain,\n    Ay, and singular in his art, hath done you both\n    This cursed injury.\n  IMOGEN. Some Roman courtezan!\n  PISANIO. No, on my life!\n    I\'ll give but notice you are dead, and send him\n    Some bloody sign of it, for \'tis commanded  \n    I should do so. You shall be miss\'d at court,\n    And that will well confirm it.\n  IMOGEN. Why, good fellow,\n    What shall I do the while? where bide? how live?\n    Or in my life what comfort, when I am\n    Dead to my husband?\n  PISANIO. If you\'ll back to th\' court-\n  IMOGEN. No court, no father, nor no more ado\n    With that harsh, noble, simple nothing-\n    That Cloten, whose love-suit hath been to me\n    As fearful as a siege.\n  PISANIO. If not at court,\n    Then not in Britain must you bide.\n  IMOGEN. Where then?\n    Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night,\n    Are they not but in Britain? I\' th\' world\'s volume\n    Our Britain seems as of it, but not in\'t;\n    In a great pool a swan\'s nest. Prithee think\n    There\'s livers out of Britain.\n  PISANIO. I am most glad  \n    You think of other place. Th\' ambassador,\n  LUCIUS the Roman, comes to Milford Haven\n    To-morrow. Now, if you could wear a mind\n    Dark as your fortune is, and but disguise\n    That which t\' appear itself must not yet be\n    But by self-danger, you should tread a course\n    Pretty and full of view; yea, happily, near\n    The residence of Posthumus; so nigh, at least,\n    That though his actions were not visible, yet\n    Report should render him hourly to your ear\n    As truly as he moves.\n  IMOGEN. O! for such means,\n    Though peril to my modesty, not death on\'t,\n    I would adventure.\n  PISANIO. Well then, here\'s the point:\n    You must forget to be a woman; change\n    Command into obedience; fear and niceness-\n    The handmaids of all women, or, more truly,\n    Woman it pretty self- into a waggish courage;\n    Ready in gibes, quick-answer\'d, saucy, and  \n    As quarrelous as the weasel. Nay, you must\n    Forget that rarest treasure of your cheek,\n    Exposing it- but, O, the harder heart!\n    Alack, no remedy!- to the greedy touch\n    Of common-kissing Titan, and forget\n    Your laboursome and dainty trims wherein\n    You made great Juno angry.\n  IMOGEN. Nay, be brief;\n    I see into thy end, and am almost\n    A man already.\n  PISANIO. First, make yourself but like one.\n    Fore-thinking this, I have already fit-\n    \'Tis in my cloak-bag- doublet, hat, hose, all\n    That answer to them. Would you, in their serving,\n    And with what imitation you can borrow\n    From youth of such a season, fore noble Lucius\n    Present yourself, desire his service, tell him\n    Wherein you\'re happy- which will make him know\n    If that his head have ear in music; doubtless\n    With joy he will embrace you; for he\'s honourable,  \n    And, doubling that, most holy. Your means abroad-\n    You have me, rich; and I will never fail\n    Beginning nor supplyment.\n  IMOGEN. Thou art all the comfort\n    The gods will diet me with. Prithee away!\n    There\'s more to be consider\'d; but we\'ll even\n    All that good time will give us. This attempt\n    I am soldier to, and will abide it with\n    A prince\'s courage. Away, I prithee.\n  PISANIO. Well, madam, we must take a short farewell,\n    Lest, being miss\'d, I be suspected of\n    Your carriage from the court. My noble mistress,\n    Here is a box; I had it from the Queen.\n    What\'s in\'t is precious. If you are sick at sea\n    Or stomach-qualm\'d at land, a dram of this\n    Will drive away distemper. To some shade,\n    And fit you to your manhood. May the gods\n    Direct you to the best!\n  IMOGEN. Amen. I thank thee.                   Exeunt severally\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nBritain. CYMBELINE\'S palace\n\nEnter CYMBELINE, QUEEN, CLOTEN, LUCIUS, and LORDS\n\n  CYMBELINE. Thus far; and so farewell.\n  LUCIUS. Thanks, royal sir.\n    My emperor hath wrote; I must from hence,\n    And am right sorry that I must report ye\n    My master\'s enemy.\n  CYMBELINE. Our subjects, sir,\n    Will not endure his yoke; and for ourself\n    To show less sovereignty than they, must needs\n    Appear unkinglike.\n  LUCIUS. So, sir. I desire of you\n    A conduct overland to Milford Haven.\n    Madam, all joy befall your Grace, and you!\n  CYMBELINE. My lords, you are appointed for that office;\n    The due of honour in no point omit.\n    So farewell, noble Lucius.\n  LUCIUS. Your hand, my lord.\n  CLOTEN. Receive it friendly; but from this time forth  \n    I wear it as your enemy.\n  LUCIUS. Sir, the event\n    Is yet to name the winner. Fare you well.\n  CYMBELINE. Leave not the worthy Lucius, good my lords,\n    Till he have cross\'d the Severn. Happiness!\n                                         Exeunt LUCIUS and LORDS\n  QUEEN. He goes hence frowning; but it honours us\n    That we have given him cause.\n  CLOTEN. \'Tis all the better;\n    Your valiant Britons have their wishes in it.\n  CYMBELINE. Lucius hath wrote already to the Emperor\n    How it goes here. It fits us therefore ripely\n    Our chariots and our horsemen be in readiness.\n    The pow\'rs that he already hath in Gallia\n    Will soon be drawn to head, from whence he moves\n    His war for Britain.\n  QUEEN. \'Tis not sleepy business,\n    But must be look\'d to speedily and strongly.\n  CYMBELINE. Our expectation that it would be thus\n    Hath made us forward. But, my gentle queen,  \n    Where is our daughter? She hath not appear\'d\n    Before the Roman, nor to us hath tender\'d\n    The duty of the day. She looks us like\n    A thing more made of malice than of duty;\n    We have noted it. Call her before us, for\n    We have been too slight in sufferance.      Exit a MESSENGER\n  QUEEN. Royal sir,\n    Since the exile of Posthumus, most retir\'d\n    Hath her life been; the cure whereof, my lord,\n    \'Tis time must do. Beseech your Majesty,\n    Forbear sharp speeches to her; she\'s a lady\n    So tender of rebukes that words are strokes,\n    And strokes death to her.\n\n                 Re-enter MESSENGER\n\n  CYMBELINE. Where is she, sir? How\n    Can her contempt be answer\'d?\n  MESSENGER. Please you, sir,\n    Her chambers are all lock\'d, and there\'s no answer  \n    That will be given to th\' loud of noise we make.\n  QUEEN. My lord, when last I went to visit her,\n    She pray\'d me to excuse her keeping close;\n    Whereto constrain\'d by her infirmity\n    She should that duty leave unpaid to you\n    Which daily she was bound to proffer. This\n    She wish\'d me to make known; but our great court\n    Made me to blame in memory.\n  CYMBELINE. Her doors lock\'d?\n    Not seen of late? Grant, heavens, that which I fear\n    Prove false!                                            Exit\n  QUEEN. Son, I say, follow the King.\n  CLOTEN. That man of hers, Pisanio, her old servant,\n    I have not seen these two days.\n  QUEEN. Go, look after.                             Exit CLOTEN\n    Pisanio, thou that stand\'st so for Posthumus!\n    He hath a drug of mine. I pray his absence\n    Proceed by swallowing that; for he believes\n    It is a thing most precious. But for her,\n    Where is she gone? Haply despair hath seiz\'d her;  \n    Or, wing\'d with fervour of her love, she\'s flown\n    To her desir\'d Posthumus. Gone she is\n    To death or to dishonour, and my end\n    Can make good use of either. She being down,\n    I have the placing of the British crown.\n\n                   Re-enter CLOTEN\n\n    How now, my son?\n  CLOTEN. \'Tis certain she is fled.\n    Go in and cheer the King. He rages; none\n    Dare come about him.\n  QUEEN. All the better. May\n    This night forestall him of the coming day!             Exit\n  CLOTEN. I love and hate her; for she\'s fair and royal,\n    And that she hath all courtly parts more exquisite\n    Than lady, ladies, woman. From every one\n    The best she hath, and she, of all compounded,\n    Outsells them all. I love her therefore; but\n    Disdaining me and throwing favours on  \n    The low Posthumus slanders so her judgment\n    That what\'s else rare is chok\'d; and in that point\n    I will conclude to hate her, nay, indeed,\n    To be reveng\'d upon her. For when fools\n    Shall-\n\n                    Enter PISANIO\n\n    Who is here? What, are you packing, sirrah?\n    Come hither. Ah, you precious pander! Villain,\n    Where is thy lady? In a word, or else\n    Thou art straightway with the fiends.\n  PISANIO. O good my lord!\n  CLOTEN. Where is thy lady? or, by Jupiter-\n    I will not ask again. Close villain,\n    I\'ll have this secret from thy heart, or rip\n    Thy heart to find it. Is she with Posthumus?\n    From whose so many weights of baseness cannot\n    A dram of worth be drawn.\n  PISANIO. Alas, my lord,  \n    How can she be with him? When was she miss\'d?\n    He is in Rome.\n  CLOTEN. Where is she, sir? Come nearer.\n    No farther halting! Satisfy me home\n    What is become of her.\n  PISANIO. O my all-worthy lord!\n  CLOTEN. All-worthy villain!\n    Discover where thy mistress is at once,\n    At the next word. No more of \'worthy lord\'!\n    Speak, or thy silence on the instant is\n    Thy condemnation and thy death.\n  PISANIO. Then, sir,\n    This paper is the history of my knowledge\n    Touching her flight.                   [Presenting a letter]\n  CLOTEN. Let\'s see\'t. I will pursue her\n    Even to Augustus\' throne.\n  PISANIO. [Aside] Or this or perish.\n    She\'s far enough; and what he learns by this\n    May prove his travel, not her danger.\n  CLOTEN. Humh!  \n  PISANIO. [Aside] I\'ll write to my lord she\'s dead. O Imogen,\n    Safe mayst thou wander, safe return again!\n  CLOTEN. Sirrah, is this letter true?\n  PISANIO. Sir, as I think.\n  CLOTEN. It is Posthumus\' hand; I know\'t. Sirrah, if thou wouldst\n    not be a villain, but do me true service, undergo those\n    employments wherein I should have cause to use thee with a\n    serious industry- that is, what villainy soe\'er I bid thee do, to\n    perform it directly and truly- I would think thee an honest man;\n    thou shouldst neither want my means for thy relief nor my voice\n    for thy preferment.\n  PISANIO. Well, my good lord.\n  CLOTEN. Wilt thou serve me? For since patiently and constantly thou\n    hast stuck to the bare fortune of that beggar Posthumus, thou\n    canst not, in the course of gratitude, but be a diligent follower\n    of mine. Wilt thou serve me?\n  PISANIO. Sir, I will.\n  CLOTEN. Give me thy hand; here\'s my purse. Hast any of thy late\n    master\'s garments in thy possession?\n  PISANIO. I have, my lord, at my lodging, the same suit he wore when  \n    he took leave of my lady and mistress.\n  CLOTEN. The first service thou dost me, fetch that suit hither. Let\n    it be thy first service; go.\n  PISANIO. I shall, my lord.                                Exit\n  CLOTEN. Meet thee at Milford Haven! I forgot to ask him one thing;\n    I\'ll remember\'t anon. Even there, thou villain Posthumus, will I\n    kill thee. I would these garments were come. She said upon a\n    time- the bitterness of it I now belch from my heart- that she\n    held the very garment of Posthumus in more respect than my noble\n    and natural person, together with the adornment of my qualities.\n    With that suit upon my back will I ravish her; first kill him,\n    and in her eyes. There shall she see my valour, which will then\n    be a torment to her contempt. He on the ground, my speech of\n    insultment ended on his dead body, and when my lust hath dined-\n    which, as I say, to vex her I will execute in the clothes that\n    she so prais\'d- to the court I\'ll knock her back, foot her home\n    again. She hath despis\'d me rejoicingly, and I\'ll be merry in my\n    revenge.\n\n                Re-enter PISANIO, with the clothes  \n\n    Be those the garments?\n  PISANIO. Ay, my noble lord.\n  CLOTEN. How long is\'t since she went to Milford Haven?\n  PISANIO. She can scarce be there yet.\n  CLOTEN. Bring this apparel to my chamber; that is the second thing\n    that I have commanded thee. The third is that thou wilt be a\n    voluntary mute to my design. Be but duteous and true, preferment\n    shall tender itself to thee. My revenge is now at Milford, would\n    I had wings to follow it! Come, and be true.            Exit\n  PISANIO. Thou bid\'st me to my loss; for true to thee\n    Were to prove false, which I will never be,\n    To him that is most true. To Milford go,\n    And find not her whom thou pursuest. Flow, flow,\n    You heavenly blessings, on her! This fool\'s speed\n    Be cross\'d with slowness! Labour be his meed!           Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nWales. Before the cave of BELARIUS\n\nEnter IMOGEN alone, in boy\'s clothes\n\n  IMOGEN. I see a man\'s life is a tedious one.\n    I have tir\'d myself, and for two nights together\n    Have made the ground my bed. I should be sick\n    But that my resolution helps me. Milford,\n    When from the mountain-top Pisanio show\'d thee,\n    Thou wast within a ken. O Jove! I think\n    Foundations fly the wretched; such, I mean,\n    Where they should be reliev\'d. Two beggars told me\n    I could not miss my way. Will poor folks lie,\n    That have afflictions on them, knowing \'tis\n    A punishment or trial? Yes; no wonder,\n    When rich ones scarce tell true. To lapse in fulness\n    Is sorer than to lie for need; and falsehood\n    Is worse in kings than beggars. My dear lord!\n    Thou art one o\' th\' false ones. Now I think on thee\n    My hunger\'s gone; but even before, I was\n    At point to sink for food. But what is this?  \n    Here is a path to\'t; \'tis some savage hold.\n    I were best not call; I dare not call. Yet famine,\n    Ere clean it o\'erthrow nature, makes it valiant.\n    Plenty and peace breeds cowards; hardness ever\n    Of hardiness is mother. Ho! who\'s here?\n    If anything that\'s civil, speak; if savage,\n    Take or lend. Ho! No answer? Then I\'ll enter.\n    Best draw my sword; and if mine enemy\n    But fear the sword, like me, he\'ll scarcely look on\'t.\n    Such a foe, good heavens!                 Exit into the cave\n\n            Enter BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, and ARVIRAGUS\n\n  BELARIUS. You, Polydore, have prov\'d best woodman and\n    Are master of the feast. Cadwal and I\n    Will play the cook and servant; \'tis our match.\n    The sweat of industry would dry and die\n    But for the end it works to. Come, our stomachs\n    Will make what\'s homely savoury; weariness\n    Can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth  \n    Finds the down pillow hard. Now, peace be here,\n    Poor house, that keep\'st thyself!\n  GUIDERIUS. I am thoroughly weary.\n  ARVIRAGUS. I am weak with toil, yet strong in appetite.\n  GUIDERIUS. There is cold meat i\' th\' cave; we\'ll browse on that\n    Whilst what we have kill\'d be cook\'d.\n  BELARIUS. [Looking into the cave] Stay, come not in.\n    But that it eats our victuals, I should think\n    Here were a fairy.\n  GUIDERIUS. What\'s the matter, sir?\n  BELARIUS.. By Jupiter, an angel! or, if not,\n    An earthly paragon! Behold divineness\n    No elder than a boy!\n\n                       Re-enter IMOGEN\n\n  IMOGEN. Good masters, harm me not.\n    Before I enter\'d here I call\'d, and thought\n    To have begg\'d or bought what I have took. Good troth,\n    I have stol\'n nought; nor would not though I had found  \n    Gold strew\'d i\' th\' floor. Here\'s money for my meat.\n    I would have left it on the board, so soon\n    As I had made my meal, and parted\n    With pray\'rs for the provider.\n  GUIDERIUS. Money, youth?\n  ARVIRAGUS. All gold and silver rather turn to dirt,\n    As \'tis no better reckon\'d but of those\n    Who worship dirty gods.\n  IMOGEN. I see you\'re angry.\n    Know, if you kill me for my fault, I should\n    Have died had I not made it.\n  BELARIUS. Whither bound?\n  IMOGEN. To Milford Haven.\n  BELARIUS. What\'s your name?\n  IMOGEN. Fidele, sir. I have a kinsman who\n    Is bound for Italy; he embark\'d at Milford;\n    To whom being going, almost spent with hunger,\n    I am fall\'n in this offence.\n  BELARIUS. Prithee, fair youth,\n    Think us no churls, nor measure our good minds  \n    By this rude place we live in. Well encounter\'d!\n    \'Tis almost night; you shall have better cheer\n    Ere you depart, and thanks to stay and eat it.\n    Boys, bid him welcome.\n  GUIDERIUS. Were you a woman, youth,\n    I should woo hard but be your groom. In honesty\n    I bid for you as I\'d buy.\n  ARVIRAGUS. I\'ll make\'t my comfort\n    He is a man. I\'ll love him as my brother;\n    And such a welcome as I\'d give to him\n    After long absence, such is yours. Most welcome!\n    Be sprightly, for you fall \'mongst friends.\n  IMOGEN. \'Mongst friends,\n    If brothers. [Aside] Would it had been so that they\n    Had been my father\'s sons! Then had my prize\n    Been less, and so more equal ballasting\n    To thee, Posthumus.\n  BELARIUS. He wrings at some distress.\n  GUIDERIUS. Would I could free\'t!\n  ARVIRAGUS. Or I, whate\'er it be,  \n    What pain it cost, what danger! Gods!\n  BELARIUS. [Whispering] Hark, boys.\n  IMOGEN. [Aside] Great men,\n    That had a court no bigger than this cave,\n    That did attend themselves, and had the virtue\n    Which their own conscience seal\'d them, laying by\n    That nothing-gift of differing multitudes,\n    Could not out-peer these twain. Pardon me, gods!\n    I\'d change my sex to be companion with them,\n    Since Leonatus\' false.\n  BELARIUS. It shall be so.\n    Boys, we\'ll go dress our hunt. Fair youth, come in.\n    Discourse is heavy, fasting; when we have supp\'d,\n    We\'ll mannerly demand thee of thy story,\n    So far as thou wilt speak it.\n  GUIDERIUS. Pray draw near.\n  ARVIRAGUS. The night to th\' owl and morn to th\' lark less welcome.\n  IMOGEN. Thanks, sir.\n  ARVIRAGUS. I pray draw near.                            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\nRome. A public place\n\nEnter two ROMAN SENATORS and TRIBUNES\n\n  FIRST SENATOR. This is the tenour of the Emperor\'s writ:\n    That since the common men are now in action\n    \'Gainst the Pannonians and Dalmatians,\n    And that the legions now in Gallia are\n    Full weak to undertake our wars against\n    The fall\'n-off Britons, that we do incite\n    The gentry to this business. He creates\n    Lucius proconsul; and to you, the tribunes,\n    For this immediate levy, he commands\n    His absolute commission. Long live Caesar!\n  TRIBUNE. Is Lucius general of the forces?\n  SECOND SENATOR. Ay.\n  TRIBUNE. Remaining now in Gallia?\n  FIRST SENATOR. With those legions\n    Which I have spoke of, whereunto your levy\n    Must be supplyant. The words of your commission\n    Will tie you to the numbers and the time  \n    Of their dispatch.\n  TRIBUNE. We will discharge our duty.                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nWales. Near the cave of BELARIUS\n\nEnter CLOTEN alone\n\n  CLOTEN. I am near to th\' place where they should meet, if Pisanio\n    have mapp\'d it truly. How fit his garments serve me! Why should\n    his mistress, who was made by him that made the tailor, not be\n    fit too? The rather- saving reverence of the word- for \'tis said\n    a woman\'s fitness comes by fits. Therein I must play the workman.\n    I dare speak it to myself, for it is not vain-glory for a man and\n    his glass to confer in his own chamber- I mean, the lines of my\n    body are as well drawn as his; no less young, more strong, not\n    beneath him in fortunes, beyond him in the advantage of the time,\n    above him in birth, alike conversant in general services, and\n    more remarkable in single oppositions. Yet this imperceiverant\n    thing loves him in my despite. What mortality is! Posthumus, thy\n    head, which now is growing upon thy shoulders, shall within this\n    hour be off; thy mistress enforced; thy garments cut to pieces\n    before her face; and all this done, spurn her home to her father,\n    who may, haply, be a little angry for my so rough usage; but my\n    mother, having power of his testiness, shall turn all into my  \n    commendations. My horse is tied up safe. Out, sword, and to a\n    sore purpose! Fortune, put them into my hand. This is the very\n    description of their meeting-place; and the fellow dares not\n    deceive me.                                             Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nWales. Before the cave of BELARIUS\n\nEnter, from the cave, BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, ARVIRAGUS, and IMOGEN\n\n  BELARIUS. [To IMOGEN] You are not well. Remain here in the cave;\n    We\'ll come to you after hunting.\n  ARVIRAGUS. [To IMOGEN] Brother, stay here.\n    Are we not brothers?\n  IMOGEN. So man and man should be;\n    But clay and clay differs in dignity,\n    Whose dust is both alike. I am very sick.\n  GUIDERIUS. Go you to hunting; I\'ll abide with him.\n  IMOGEN. So sick I am not, yet I am not well;\n    But not so citizen a wanton as\n    To seem to die ere sick. So please you, leave me;\n    Stick to your journal course. The breach of custom\n    Is breach of all. I am ill, but your being by me\n    Cannot amend me; society is no comfort\n    To one not sociable. I am not very sick,\n    Since I can reason of it. Pray you trust me here.  \n    I\'ll rob none but myself; and let me die,\n    Stealing so poorly.\n  GUIDERIUS. I love thee; I have spoke it.\n    How much the quantity, the weight as much\n    As I do love my father.\n  BELARIUS. What? how? how?\n  ARVIRAGUS. If it be sin to say so, sir, I yoke me\n    In my good brother\'s fault. I know not why\n    I love this youth, and I have heard you say\n    Love\'s reason\'s without reason. The bier at door,\n    And a demand who is\'t shall die, I\'d say\n    \'My father, not this youth.\'\n  BELARIUS. [Aside] O noble strain!\n    O worthiness of nature! breed of greatness!\n    Cowards father cowards and base things sire base.\n    Nature hath meal and bran, contempt and grace.\n    I\'m not their father; yet who this should be\n    Doth miracle itself, lov\'d before me.-\n    \'Tis the ninth hour o\' th\' morn.\n  ARVIRAGUS. Brother, farewell.  \n  IMOGEN. I wish ye sport.\n  ARVIRAGUS. Your health. [To BELARIUS] So please you, sir.\n  IMOGEN. [Aside] These are kind creatures. Gods, what lies I have\n      heard!\n    Our courtiers say all\'s savage but at court.\n    Experience, O, thou disprov\'st report!\n    Th\' imperious seas breed monsters; for the dish,\n    Poor tributary rivers as sweet fish.\n    I am sick still; heart-sick. Pisanio,\n    I\'ll now taste of thy drug.                  [Swallows some]\n  GUIDERIUS. I could not stir him.\n    He said he was gentle, but unfortunate;\n    Dishonestly afflicted, but yet honest.\n  ARVIRAGUS. Thus did he answer me; yet said hereafter\n    I might know more.\n  BELARIUS. To th\' field, to th\' field!\n    We\'ll leave you for this time. Go in and rest.\n  ARVIRAGUS. We\'ll not be long away.\n  BELARIUS. Pray be not sick,\n    For you must be our huswife.  \n  IMOGEN. Well, or ill,\n    I am bound to you.\n  BELARIUS. And shalt be ever.         Exit IMOGEN into the cave\n    This youth, howe\'er distress\'d, appears he hath had\n    Good ancestors.\n  ARVIRAGUS. How angel-like he sings!\n  GUIDERIUS. But his neat cookery! He cut our roots in characters,\n    And sauc\'d our broths as Juno had been sick,\n    And he her dieter.\n  ARVIRAGUS. Nobly he yokes\n    A smiling with a sigh, as if the sigh\n    Was that it was for not being such a smile;\n    The smile mocking the sigh that it would fly\n    From so divine a temple to commix\n    With winds that sailors rail at.\n  GUIDERIUS. I do note\n    That grief and patience, rooted in him both,\n    Mingle their spurs together.\n  ARVIRAGUS. Grow patience!\n    And let the stinking elder, grief, untwine  \n    His perishing root with the increasing vine!\n  BELARIUS. It is great morning. Come, away! Who\'s there?\n\n                      Enter CLOTEN\n\n  CLOTEN. I cannot find those runagates; that villain\n    Hath mock\'d me. I am faint.\n  BELARIUS. Those runagates?\n    Means he not us? I partly know him; \'tis\n    Cloten, the son o\' th\' Queen. I fear some ambush.\n    I saw him not these many years, and yet\n    I know \'tis he. We are held as outlaws. Hence!\n  GUIDERIUS. He is but one; you and my brother search\n    What companies are near. Pray you away;\n    Let me alone with him.         Exeunt BELARIUS and ARVIRAGUS\n  CLOTEN. Soft! What are you\n    That fly me thus? Some villain mountaineers?\n    I have heard of such. What slave art thou?\n  GUIDERIUS. A thing\n    More slavish did I ne\'er than answering  \n    \'A slave\' without a knock.\n  CLOTEN. Thou art a robber,\n    A law-breaker, a villain. Yield thee, thief.\n  GUIDERIUS. To who? To thee? What art thou? Have not I\n    An arm as big as thine, a heart as big?\n    Thy words, I grant, are bigger, for I wear not\n    My dagger in my mouth. Say what thou art;\n    Why I should yield to thee.\n  CLOTEN. Thou villain base,\n    Know\'st me not by my clothes?\n  GUIDERIUS. No, nor thy tailor, rascal,\n    Who is thy grandfather; he made those clothes,\n    Which, as it seems, make thee.\n  CLOTEN. Thou precious varlet,\n    My tailor made them not.\n  GUIDERIUS. Hence, then, and thank\n    The man that gave them thee. Thou art some fool;\n    I am loath to beat thee.\n  CLOTEN. Thou injurious thief,\n    Hear but my name, and tremble.  \n  GUIDERIUS. What\'s thy name?\n  CLOTEN. Cloten, thou villain.\n  GUIDERIUS. Cloten, thou double villain, be thy name,\n    I cannot tremble at it. Were it toad, or adder, spider,\n    \'Twould move me sooner.\n  CLOTEN. To thy further fear,\n    Nay, to thy mere confusion, thou shalt know\n    I am son to th\' Queen.\n  GUIDERIUS. I\'m sorry for\'t; not seeming\n    So worthy as thy birth.\n  CLOTEN. Art not afeard?\n  GUIDERIUS. Those that I reverence, those I fear- the wise:\n    At fools I laugh, not fear them.\n  CLOTEN. Die the death.\n    When I have slain thee with my proper hand,\n    I\'ll follow those that even now fled hence,\n    And on the gates of Lud\'s Town set your heads.\n    Yield, rustic mountaineer.                  Exeunt, fighting\n\n                Re-enter BELARIUS and ARVIRAGUS  \n\n  BELARIUS. No company\'s abroad.\n  ARVIRAGUS. None in the world; you did mistake him, sure.\n  BELARIUS. I cannot tell; long is it since I saw him,\n    But time hath nothing blurr\'d those lines of favour\n    Which then he wore; the snatches in his voice,\n    And burst of speaking, were as his. I am absolute\n    \'Twas very Cloten.\n  ARVIRAGUS. In this place we left them.\n    I wish my brother make good time with him,\n    You say he is so fell.\n  BELARIUS. Being scarce made up,\n    I mean to man, he had not apprehension\n    Or roaring terrors; for defect of judgment\n    Is oft the cease of fear.\n\n              Re-enter GUIDERIUS with CLOTEN\'S head\n\n    But, see, thy brother.\n  GUIDERIUS. This Cloten was a fool, an empty purse;  \n    There was no money in\'t. Not Hercules\n    Could have knock\'d out his brains, for he had none;\n    Yet I not doing this, the fool had borne\n    My head as I do his.\n  BELARIUS. What hast thou done?\n  GUIDERIUS. I am perfect what: cut off one Cloten\'s head,\n    Son to the Queen, after his own report;\n    Who call\'d me traitor, mountaineer, and swore\n    With his own single hand he\'d take us in,\n    Displace our heads where- thank the gods!- they grow,\n    And set them on Lud\'s Town.\n  BELARIUS. We are all undone.\n  GUIDERIUS. Why, worthy father, what have we to lose\n    But that he swore to take, our lives? The law\n    Protects not us; then why should we be tender\n    To let an arrogant piece of flesh threat us,\n    Play judge and executioner all himself,\n    For we do fear the law? What company\n    Discover you abroad?\n  BELARIUS. No single soul  \n    Can we set eye on, but in an safe reason\n    He must have some attendants. Though his humour\n    Was nothing but mutation- ay, and that\n    From one bad thing to worse- not frenzy, not\n    Absolute madness could so far have rav\'d,\n    To bring him here alone. Although perhaps\n    It may be heard at court that such as we\n    Cave here, hunt here, are outlaws, and in time\n    May make some stronger head- the which he hearing,\n    As it is like him, might break out and swear\n    He\'d fetch us in; yet is\'t not probable\n    To come alone, either he so undertaking\n    Or they so suffering. Then on good ground we fear,\n    If we do fear this body hath a tail\n    More perilous than the head.\n  ARVIRAGUS. Let ordinance\n    Come as the gods foresay it. Howsoe\'er,\n    My brother hath done well.\n  BELARIUS. I had no mind\n    To hunt this day; the boy Fidele\'s sickness  \n    Did make my way long forth.\n  GUIDERIUS. With his own sword,\n    Which he did wave against my throat, I have ta\'en\n    His head from him. I\'ll throw\'t into the creek\n    Behind our rock, and let it to the sea\n    And tell the fishes he\'s the Queen\'s son, Cloten.\n    That\'s all I reck.                                      Exit\n  BELARIUS. I fear\'twill be reveng\'d.\n    Would, Polydore, thou hadst not done\'t! though valour\n    Becomes thee well enough.\n  ARVIRAGUS. Would I had done\'t,\n    So the revenge alone pursu\'d me! Polydore,\n    I love thee brotherly, but envy much\n    Thou hast robb\'d me of this deed. I would revenges,\n    That possible strength might meet, would seek us through,\n    And put us to our answer.\n  BELARIUS. Well, \'tis done.\n    We\'ll hunt no more to-day, nor seek for danger\n    Where there\'s no profit. I prithee to our rock.\n    You and Fidele play the cooks; I\'ll stay  \n    Till hasty Polydore return, and bring him\n    To dinner presently.\n  ARVIRAGUS. Poor sick Fidele!\n    I\'ll willingly to him; to gain his colour\n    I\'d let a parish of such Cloten\'s blood,\n    And praise myself for charity.                          Exit\n  BELARIUS. O thou goddess,\n    Thou divine Nature, thou thyself thou blazon\'st\n    In these two princely boys! They are as gentle\n    As zephyrs blowing below the violet,\n    Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough,\n    Their royal blood enchaf\'d, as the rud\'st wind\n    That by the top doth take the mountain pine\n    And make him stoop to th\' vale. \'Tis wonder\n    That an invisible instinct should frame them\n    To royalty unlearn\'d, honour untaught,\n    Civility not seen from other, valour\n    That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop\n    As if it had been sow\'d. Yet still it\'s strange\n    What Cloten\'s being here to us portends,  \n    Or what his death will bring us.\n\n                    Re-enter GUIDERIUS\n\n  GUIDERIUS. Where\'s my brother?\n    I have sent Cloten\'s clotpoll down the stream,\n    In embassy to his mother; his body\'s hostage\n    For his return.                               [Solemn music]\n  BELARIUS. My ingenious instrument!\n    Hark, Polydore, it sounds. But what occasion\n    Hath Cadwal now to give it motion? Hark!\n  GUIDERIUS. Is he at home?\n  BELARIUS. He went hence even now.\n  GUIDERIUS. What does he mean? Since death of my dear\'st mother\n    It did not speak before. All solemn things\n    Should answer solemn accidents. The matter?\n    Triumphs for nothing and lamenting toys\n    Is jollity for apes and grief for boys.\n    Is Cadwal mad?\n  \n       Re-enter ARVIRAGUS, with IMOGEN as dead, bearing\n                         her in his arms\n\n  BELARIUS. Look, here he comes,\n    And brings the dire occasion in his arms\n    Of what we blame him for!\n  ARVIRAGUS. The bird is dead\n    That we have made so much on. I had rather\n    Have skipp\'d from sixteen years of age to sixty,\n    To have turn\'d my leaping time into a crutch,\n    Than have seen this.\n  GUIDERIUS. O sweetest, fairest lily!\n    My brother wears thee not the one half so well\n    As when thou grew\'st thyself.\n  BELARIUS. O melancholy!\n    Who ever yet could sound thy bottom? find\n    The ooze to show what coast thy sluggish crare\n    Might\'st easiliest harbour in? Thou blessed thing!\n    Jove knows what man thou mightst have made; but I,\n    Thou diedst, a most rare boy, of melancholy.  \n    How found you him?\n  ARVIRAGUS. Stark, as you see;\n    Thus smiling, as some fly had tickled slumber,\n    Not as death\'s dart, being laugh\'d at; his right cheek\n    Reposing on a cushion.\n  GUIDERIUS. Where?\n  ARVIRAGUS. O\' th\' floor;\n    His arms thus leagu\'d. I thought he slept, and put\n    My clouted brogues from off my feet, whose rudeness\n    Answer\'d my steps too loud.\n  GUIDERIUS. Why, he but sleeps.\n    If he be gone he\'ll make his grave a bed;\n    With female fairies will his tomb be haunted,\n    And worms will not come to thee.\n  ARVIRAGUS. With fairest flowers,\n    Whilst summer lasts and I live here, Fidele,\n    I\'ll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack\n    The flower that\'s like thy face, pale primrose; nor\n    The azur\'d hare-bell, like thy veins; no, nor\n    The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,  \n    Out-sweet\'ned not thy breath. The ruddock would,\n    With charitable bill- O bill, sore shaming\n    Those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie\n    Without a monument!- bring thee all this;\n    Yea, and furr\'d moss besides, when flow\'rs are none,\n    To winter-ground thy corse-\n  GUIDERIUS. Prithee have done,\n    And do not play in wench-like words with that\n    Which is so serious. Let us bury him,\n    And not protract with admiration what\n    Is now due debt. To th\' grave.\n  ARVIRAGUS. Say, where shall\'s lay him?\n  GUIDERIUS. By good Euriphile, our mother.\n  ARVIRAGUS. Be\'t so;\n    And let us, Polydore, though now our voices\n    Have got the mannish crack, sing him to th\' ground,\n    As once to our mother; use like note and words,\n    Save that Euriphile must be Fidele.\n  GUIDERIUS. Cadwal,\n    I cannot sing. I\'ll weep, and word it with thee;  \n    For notes of sorrow out of tune are worse\n    Than priests and fanes that lie.\n  ARVIRAGUS. We\'ll speak it, then.\n  BELARIUS. Great griefs, I see, med\'cine the less, for Cloten\n    Is quite forgot. He was a queen\'s son, boys;\n    And though he came our enemy, remember\n    He was paid for that. Though mean and mighty rotting\n    Together have one dust, yet reverence-\n    That angel of the world- doth make distinction\n    Of place \'tween high and low. Our foe was princely;\n    And though you took his life, as being our foe,\n    Yet bury him as a prince.\n  GUIDERIUS. Pray you fetch him hither.\n    Thersites\' body is as good as Ajax\',\n    When neither are alive.\n  ARVIRAGUS. If you\'ll go fetch him,\n    We\'ll say our song the whilst. Brother, begin.\n                                                   Exit BELARIUS\n  GUIDERIUS. Nay, Cadwal, we must lay his head to th\' East;\n    My father hath a reason for\'t.  \n  ARVIRAGUS. \'Tis true.\n  GUIDERIUS. Come on, then, and remove him.\n  ARVIRAGUS. So. Begin.\n\n                      SONG\n\n  GUIDERIUS. Fear no more the heat o\' th\' sun\n               Nor the furious winter\'s rages;\n             Thou thy worldly task hast done,\n               Home art gone, and ta\'en thy wages.\n             Golden lads and girls all must,\n             As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.\n\n  ARVIRAGUS. Fear no more the frown o\' th\' great;\n               Thou art past the tyrant\'s stroke.\n             Care no more to clothe and eat;\n               To thee the reed is as the oak.\n             The sceptre, learning, physic, must\n             All follow this and come to dust.\n  \n  GUIDERIUS. Fear no more the lightning flash,\n  ARVIRAGUS.   Nor th\' all-dreaded thunder-stone;\n  GUIDERIUS. Fear not slander, censure rash;\n  ARVIRAGUS.   Thou hast finish\'d joy and moan.\n  BOTH.      All lovers young, all lovers must\n             Consign to thee and come to dust.\n\n  GUIDERIUS. No exorciser harm thee!\n  ARVIRAGUS. Nor no witchcraft charm thee!\n  GUIDERIUS. Ghost unlaid forbear thee!\n  ARVIRAGUS. Nothing ill come near thee!\n  BOTH.      Quiet consummation have,\n             And renowned be thy grave!\n\n         Re-enter BELARIUS with the body of CLOTEN\n\n  GUIDERIUS. We have done our obsequies. Come, lay him down.\n  BELARIUS. Here\'s a few flowers; but \'bout midnight, more.\n    The herbs that have on them cold dew o\' th\' night\n    Are strewings fit\'st for graves. Upon their faces.  \n    You were as flow\'rs, now wither\'d. Even so\n    These herblets shall which we upon you strew.\n    Come on, away. Apart upon our knees.\n    The ground that gave them first has them again.\n    Their pleasures here are past, so is their pain.\n                                           Exeunt all but IMOGEN\n  IMOGEN. [Awaking] Yes, sir, to Milford Haven. Which is the way?\n    I thank you. By yond bush? Pray, how far thither?\n    \'Ods pittikins! can it be six mile yet?\n    I have gone all night. Faith, I\'ll lie down and sleep.\n    But, soft! no bedfellow. O gods and goddesses!\n                                               [Seeing the body]\n    These flow\'rs are like the pleasures of the world;\n    This bloody man, the care on\'t. I hope I dream;\n    For so I thought I was a cave-keeper,\n    And cook to honest creatures. But \'tis not so;\n    \'Twas but a bolt of nothing, shot at nothing,\n    Which the brain makes of fumes. Our very eyes\n    Are sometimes, like our judgments, blind. Good faith,\n    I tremble still with fear; but if there be  \n    Yet left in heaven as small a drop of pity\n    As a wren\'s eye, fear\'d gods, a part of it!\n    The dream\'s here still. Even when I wake it is\n    Without me, as within me; not imagin\'d, felt.\n    A headless man? The garments of Posthumus?\n    I know the shape of\'s leg; this is his hand,\n    His foot Mercurial, his Martial thigh,\n    The brawns of Hercules; but his Jovial face-\n    Murder in heaven! How! \'Tis gone. Pisanio,\n    All curses madded Hecuba gave the Greeks,\n    And mine to boot, be darted on thee! Thou,\n    Conspir\'d with that irregulous devil, Cloten,\n    Hath here cut off my lord. To write and read\n    Be henceforth treacherous! Damn\'d Pisanio\n    Hath with his forged letters- damn\'d Pisanio-\n    From this most bravest vessel of the world\n    Struck the main-top. O Posthumus! alas,\n    Where is thy head? Where\'s that? Ay me! where\'s that?\n    Pisanio might have kill\'d thee at the heart,\n    And left this head on. How should this be? Pisanio?  \n    \'Tis he and Cloten; malice and lucre in them\n    Have laid this woe here. O, \'tis pregnant, pregnant!\n    The drug he gave me, which he said was precious\n    And cordial to me, have I not found it\n    Murd\'rous to th\' senses? That confirms it home.\n    This is Pisanio\'s deed, and Cloten. O!\n    Give colour to my pale cheek with thy blood,\n    That we the horrider may seem to those\n    Which chance to find us. O, my lord, my lord!\n                                    [Falls fainting on the body]\n\n           Enter LUCIUS, CAPTAINS, and a SOOTHSAYER\n\n  CAPTAIN. To them the legions garrison\'d in Gallia,\n    After your will, have cross\'d the sea, attending\n    You here at Milford Haven; with your ships,\n    They are in readiness.\n  LUCIUS. But what from Rome?\n  CAPTAIN. The Senate hath stirr\'d up the confiners\n    And gentlemen of Italy, most willing spirits,  \n    That promise noble service; and they come\n    Under the conduct of bold Iachimo,\n    Sienna\'s brother.\n  LUCIUS. When expect you them?\n  CAPTAIN. With the next benefit o\' th\' wind.\n  LUCIUS. This forwardness\n    Makes our hopes fair. Command our present numbers\n    Be muster\'d; bid the captains look to\'t. Now, sir,\n    What have you dream\'d of late of this war\'s purpose?\n  SOOTHSAYER. Last night the very gods show\'d me a vision-\n    I fast and pray\'d for their intelligence- thus:\n    I saw Jove\'s bird, the Roman eagle, wing\'d\n    From the spongy south to this part of the west,\n    There vanish\'d in the sunbeams; which portends,\n    Unless my sins abuse my divination,\n    Success to th\' Roman host.\n  LUCIUS. Dream often so,\n    And never false. Soft, ho! what trunk is here\n    Without his top? The ruin speaks that sometime\n    It was a worthy building. How? a page?  \n    Or dead or sleeping on him? But dead, rather;\n    For nature doth abhor to make his bed\n    With the defunct, or sleep upon the dead.\n    Let\'s see the boy\'s face.\n  CAPTAIN. He\'s alive, my lord.\n  LUCIUS. He\'ll then instruct us of this body. Young one,\n    Inform us of thy fortunes; for it seems\n    They crave to be demanded. Who is this\n    Thou mak\'st thy bloody pillow? Or who was he\n    That, otherwise than noble nature did,\n    Hath alter\'d that good picture? What\'s thy interest\n    In this sad wreck? How came\'t? Who is\'t? What art thou?\n  IMOGEN. I am nothing; or if not,\n    Nothing to be were better. This was my master,\n    A very valiant Briton and a good,\n    That here by mountaineers lies slain. Alas!\n    There is no more such masters. I may wander\n    From east to occident; cry out for service;\n    Try many, all good; serve truly; never\n    Find such another master.  \n  LUCIUS. \'Lack, good youth!\n    Thou mov\'st no less with thy complaining than\n    Thy master in bleeding. Say his name, good friend.\n  IMOGEN. Richard du Champ. [Aside] If I do lie, and do\n    No harm by it, though the gods hear, I hope\n    They\'ll pardon it.- Say you, sir?\n  LUCIUS. Thy name?\n  IMOGEN. Fidele, sir.\n  LUCIUS. Thou dost approve thyself the very same;\n    Thy name well fits thy faith, thy faith thy name.\n    Wilt take thy chance with me? I will not say\n    Thou shalt be so well master\'d; but, be sure,\n    No less belov\'d. The Roman Emperor\'s letters,\n    Sent by a consul to me, should not sooner\n    Than thine own worth prefer thee. Go with me.\n  IMOGEN. I\'ll follow, sir. But first, an\'t please the gods,\n    I\'ll hide my master from the flies, as deep\n    As these poor pickaxes can dig; and when\n    With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha\' strew\'d his grave,\n    And on it said a century of prayers,  \n    Such as I can, twice o\'er, I\'ll weep and sigh;\n    And leaving so his service, follow you,\n    So please you entertain me.\n  LUCIUS. Ay, good youth;\n    And rather father thee than master thee.\n    My friends,\n    The boy hath taught us manly duties; let us\n    Find out the prettiest daisied plot we can,\n    And make him with our pikes and partisans\n    A grave. Come, arm him. Boy, he is preferr\'d\n    By thee to us; and he shall be interr\'d\n    As soldiers can. Be cheerful; wipe thine eyes.\n    Some falls are means the happier to arise.            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nBritain. CYMBELINE\'S palace\n\nEnter CYMBELINE, LORDS, PISANIO, and attendants\n\n  CYMBELINE. Again! and bring me word how \'tis with her.\n                                               Exit an attendant\n    A fever with the absence of her son;\n    A madness, of which her life\'s in danger. Heavens,\n    How deeply you at once do touch me! Imogen,\n    The great part of my comfort, gone; my queen\n    Upon a desperate bed, and in a time\n    When fearful wars point at me; her son gone,\n    So needful for this present. It strikes me past\n    The hope of comfort. But for thee, fellow,\n    Who needs must know of her departure and\n    Dost seem so ignorant, we\'ll enforce it from thee\n    By a sharp torture.\n  PISANIO. Sir, my life is yours;\n    I humbly set it at your will; but for my mistress,\n    I nothing know where she remains, why gone,\n    Nor when she purposes return. Beseech your Highness,  \n    Hold me your loyal servant.\n  LORD. Good my liege,\n    The day that she was missing he was here.\n    I dare be bound he\'s true and shall perform\n    All parts of his subjection loyally. For Cloten,\n    There wants no diligence in seeking him,\n    And will no doubt be found.\n  CYMBELINE. The time is troublesome.\n    [To PISANIO] We\'ll slip you for a season; but our jealousy\n    Does yet depend.\n  LORD. So please your Majesty,\n    The Roman legions, all from Gallia drawn,\n    Are landed on your coast, with a supply\n    Of Roman gentlemen by the Senate sent.\n  CYMBELINE. Now for the counsel of my son and queen!\n    I am amaz\'d with matter.\n  LORD. Good my liege,\n    Your preparation can affront no less\n    Than what you hear of. Come more, for more you\'re ready.\n    The want is but to put those pow\'rs in motion  \n    That long to move.\n  CYMBELINE. I thank you. Let\'s withdraw,\n    And meet the time as it seeks us. We fear not\n    What can from Italy annoy us; but\n    We grieve at chances here. Away!      Exeunt all but PISANIO\n  PISANIO. I heard no letter from my master since\n    I wrote him Imogen was slain. \'Tis strange.\n    Nor hear I from my mistress, who did promise\n    To yield me often tidings. Neither know\n    What is betid to Cloten, but remain\n    Perplex\'d in all. The heavens still must work.\n    Wherein I am false I am honest; not true, to be true.\n    These present wars shall find I love my country,\n    Even to the note o\' th\' King, or I\'ll fall in them.\n    All other doubts, by time let them be clear\'d:\n    Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer\'d.      Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nWales. Before the cave of BELARIUS\n\nEnter BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, and ARVIRAGUS\n\n  GUIDERIUS. The noise is round about us.\n  BELARIUS. Let us from it.\n  ARVIRAGUS. What pleasure, sir, find we in life, to lock it\n    From action and adventure?\n  GUIDERIUS. Nay, what hope\n    Have we in hiding us? This way the Romans\n    Must or for Britons slay us, or receive us\n    For barbarous and unnatural revolts\n    During their use, and slay us after.\n  BELARIUS. Sons,\n    We\'ll higher to the mountains; there secure us.\n    To the King\'s party there\'s no going. Newness\n    Of Cloten\'s death- we being not known, not muster\'d\n    Among the bands-may drive us to a render\n    Where we have liv\'d, and so extort from\'s that\n    Which we have done, whose answer would be death,\n    Drawn on with torture.  \n  GUIDERIUS. This is, sir, a doubt\n    In such a time nothing becoming you\n    Nor satisfying us.\n  ARVIRAGUS. It is not likely\n    That when they hear the Roman horses neigh,\n    Behold their quarter\'d fires, have both their eyes\n    And ears so cloy\'d importantly as now,\n    That they will waste their time upon our note,\n    To know from whence we are.\n  BELARIUS. O, I am known\n    Of many in the army. Many years,\n    Though Cloten then but young, you see, not wore him\n    From my remembrance. And, besides, the King\n    Hath not deserv\'d my service nor your loves,\n    Who find in my exile the want of breeding,\n    The certainty of this hard life; aye hopeless\n    To have the courtesy your cradle promis\'d,\n    But to be still hot summer\'s tanlings and\n    The shrinking slaves of winter.\n  GUIDERIUS. Than be so,  \n    Better to cease to be. Pray, sir, to th\' army.\n    I and my brother are not known; yourself\n    So out of thought, and thereto so o\'ergrown,\n    Cannot be questioned.\n  ARVIRAGUS. By this sun that shines,\n    I\'ll thither. What thing is\'t that I never\n    Did see man die! scarce ever look\'d on blood\n    But that of coward hares, hot goats, and venison!\n    Never bestrid a horse, save one that had\n    A rider like myself, who ne\'er wore rowel\n    Nor iron on his heel! I am asham\'d\n    To look upon the holy sun, to have\n    The benefit of his blest beams, remaining\n    So long a poor unknown.\n  GUIDERIUS. By heavens, I\'ll go!\n    If you will bless me, sir, and give me leave,\n    I\'ll take the better care; but if you will not,\n    The hazard therefore due fall on me by\n    The hands of Romans!\n  ARVIRAGUS. So say I. Amen.  \n  BELARIUS. No reason I, since of your lives you set\n    So slight a valuation, should reserve\n    My crack\'d one to more care. Have with you, boys!\n    If in your country wars you chance to die,\n    That is my bed too, lads, and there I\'ll lie.\n    Lead, lead. [Aside] The time seems long; their blood thinks scorn\n    Till it fly out and show them princes born.           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nBritain. The Roman camp\n\nEnter POSTHUMUS alone, with a bloody handkerchief\n\n  POSTHUMUS. Yea, bloody cloth, I\'ll keep thee; for I wish\'d\n    Thou shouldst be colour\'d thus. You married ones,\n    If each of you should take this course, how many\n    Must murder wives much better than themselves\n    For wrying but a little! O Pisanio!\n    Every good servant does not all commands;\n    No bond but to do just ones. Gods! if you\n    Should have ta\'en vengeance on my faults, I never\n    Had liv\'d to put on this; so had you saved\n    The noble Imogen to repent, and struck\n    Me, wretch more worth your vengeance. But alack,\n    You snatch some hence for little faults; that\'s love,\n    To have them fall no more. You some permit\n    To second ills with ills, each elder worse,\n    And make them dread it, to the doer\'s thrift.\n    But Imogen is your own. Do your best wills,\n    And make me blest to obey. I am brought hither  \n    Among th\' Italian gentry, and to fight\n    Against my lady\'s kingdom. \'Tis enough\n    That, Britain, I have kill\'d thy mistress; peace!\n    I\'ll give no wound to thee. Therefore, good heavens,\n    Hear patiently my purpose. I\'ll disrobe me\n    Of these Italian weeds, and suit myself\n    As does a Britain peasant. So I\'ll fight\n    Against the part I come with; so I\'ll die\n    For thee, O Imogen, even for whom my life\n    Is every breath a death. And thus unknown,\n    Pitied nor hated, to the face of peril\n    Myself I\'ll dedicate. Let me make men know\n    More valour in me than my habits show.\n    Gods, put the strength o\' th\' Leonati in me!\n    To shame the guise o\' th\' world, I will begin\n    The fashion- less without and more within.              Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nBritain. A field of battle between the British and Roman camps\n\nEnter LUCIUS, IACHIMO, and the Roman army at one door, and the British army\nat another, LEONATUS POSTHUMUS following like a poor soldier.\nThey march over and go out.  Alarums.  Then enter again, in skirmish,\nIACHIMO and POSTHUMUS.  He vanquisheth and disarmeth IACHIMO,\nand then leaves him\n\n  IACHIMO. The heaviness and guilt within my bosom\n    Takes off my manhood. I have belied a lady,\n    The Princess of this country, and the air on\'t\n    Revengingly enfeebles me; or could this carl,\n    A very drudge of nature\'s, have subdu\'d me\n    In my profession? Knighthoods and honours borne\n    As I wear mine are titles but of scorn.\n    If that thy gentry, Britain, go before\n    This lout as he exceeds our lords, the odds\n    Is that we scarce are men, and you are gods.            Exit\n\n    The battle continues; the BRITONS fly; CYMBELINE is taken.\n    Then enter to his rescue BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, and ARVIRAGUS  \n\n  BELARIUS. Stand, stand! We have th\' advantage of the ground;\n    The lane is guarded; nothing routs us but\n    The villainy of our fears.\n  GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS. Stand, stand, and fight!\n\n    Re-enter POSTHUMUS, and seconds the Britons; they rescue\n    CYMBELINE, and exeunt. Then re-enter LUCIUS and IACHIMO,\n                         with IMOGEN\n\n  LUCIUS. Away, boy, from the troops, and save thyself;\n    For friends kill friends, and the disorder\'s such\n    As war were hoodwink\'d.\n  IACHIMO. \'Tis their fresh supplies.\n  LUCIUS. It is a day turn\'d strangely. Or betimes\n    Let\'s reinforce or fly.                               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nAnother part of the field\n\nEnter POSTHUMUS and a Britain LORD\n\n  LORD. Cam\'st thou from where they made the stand?\n  POSTHUMUS. I did:\n    Though you, it seems, come from the fliers.\n  LORD. I did.\n  POSTHUMUS. No blame be to you, sir, for all was lost,\n    But that the heavens fought. The King himself\n    Of his wings destitute, the army broken,\n    And but the backs of Britons seen, an flying,\n    Through a strait lane- the enemy, full-hearted,\n    Lolling the tongue with slaught\'ring, having work\n    More plentiful than tools to do\'t, struck down\n    Some mortally, some slightly touch\'d, some falling\n    Merely through fear, that the strait pass was damm\'d\n    With dead men hurt behind, and cowards living\n    To die with length\'ned shame.\n  LORD. Where was this lane?\n  POSTHUMUS. Close by the battle, ditch\'d, and wall\'d with turf,  \n    Which gave advantage to an ancient soldier-\n    An honest one, I warrant, who deserv\'d\n    So long a breeding as his white beard came to,\n    In doing this for\'s country. Athwart the lane\n    He, with two striplings- lads more like to run\n    The country base than to commit such slaughter;\n    With faces fit for masks, or rather fairer\n    Than those for preservation cas\'d or shame-\n    Made good the passage, cried to those that fled\n    \'Our Britain\'s harts die flying, not our men.\n    To darkness fleet souls that fly backwards! Stand;\n    Or we are Romans and will give you that,\n    Like beasts, which you shun beastly, and may save\n    But to look back in frown. Stand, stand!\' These three,\n    Three thousand confident, in act as many-\n    For three performers are the file when all\n    The rest do nothing- with this word \'Stand, stand!\'\n    Accommodated by the place, more charming\n    With their own nobleness, which could have turn\'d\n    A distaff to a lance, gilded pale looks,  \n    Part shame, part spirit renew\'d; that some turn\'d coward\n    But by example- O, a sin in war\n    Damn\'d in the first beginners!- gan to look\n    The way that they did and to grin like lions\n    Upon the pikes o\' th\' hunters. Then began\n    A stop i\' th\' chaser, a retire; anon\n    A rout, confusion thick. Forthwith they fly,\n    Chickens, the way which they stoop\'d eagles; slaves,\n    The strides they victors made; and now our cowards,\n    Like fragments in hard voyages, became\n    The life o\' th\' need. Having found the back-door open\n    Of the unguarded hearts, heavens, how they wound!\n    Some slain before, some dying, some their friends\n    O\'erborne i\' th\' former wave. Ten chas\'d by one\n    Are now each one the slaughterman of twenty.\n    Those that would die or ere resist are grown\n    The mortal bugs o\' th\' field.\n  LORD. This was strange chance:\n    A narrow lane, an old man, and two boys.\n  POSTHUMUS. Nay, do not wonder at it; you are made  \n    Rather to wonder at the things you hear\n    Than to work any. Will you rhyme upon\'t,\n    And vent it for a mock\'ry? Here is one:\n    \'Two boys, an old man (twice a boy), a lane,\n    Preserv\'d the Britons, was the Romans\' bane.\'\n  LORD. Nay, be not angry, sir.\n  POSTHUMUS. \'Lack, to what end?\n    Who dares not stand his foe I\'ll be his friend;\n    For if he\'ll do as he is made to do,\n    I know he\'ll quickly fly my friendship too.\n    You have put me into rhyme.\n  LORD. Farewell; you\'re angry.                             Exit\n  POSTHUMUS. Still going? This is a lord! O noble misery,\n    To be i\' th\' field and ask \'What news?\' of me!\n    To-day how many would have given their honours\n    To have sav\'d their carcasses! took heel to do\'t,\n    And yet died too! I, in mine own woe charm\'d,\n    Could not find death where I did hear him groan,\n    Nor feel him where he struck. Being an ugly monster,\n    \'Tis strange he hides him in fresh cups, soft beds,  \n    Sweet words; or hath moe ministers than we\n    That draw his knives i\' th\' war. Well, I will find him;\n    For being now a favourer to the Briton,\n    No more a Briton, I have resum\'d again\n    The part I came in. Fight I will no more,\n    But yield me to the veriest hind that shall\n    Once touch my shoulder. Great the slaughter is\n    Here made by th\' Roman; great the answer be\n    Britons must take. For me, my ransom\'s death;\n    On either side I come to spend my breath,\n    Which neither here I\'ll keep nor bear again,\n    But end it by some means for Imogen.\n\n            Enter two BRITISH CAPTAINS and soldiers\n\n  FIRST CAPTAIN. Great Jupiter be prais\'d! Lucius is taken.\n    \'Tis thought the old man and his sons were angels.\n  SECOND CAPTAIN. There was a fourth man, in a silly habit,\n    That gave th\' affront with them.\n  FIRST CAPTAIN. So \'tis reported;  \n    But none of \'em can be found. Stand! who\'s there?\n  POSTHUMUS. A Roman,\n    Who had not now been drooping here if seconds\n    Had answer\'d him.\n  SECOND CAPTAIN. Lay hands on him; a dog!\n    A leg of Rome shall not return to tell\n    What crows have peck\'d them here. He brags his service,\n    As if he were of note. Bring him to th\' King.\n\n   Enter CYMBELINE, BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, ARVIRAGUS, PISANIO, and Roman\n   captives. The CAPTAINS present POSTHUMUS to CYMBELINE, who delivers\n            him over to a gaoler. Exeunt omnes\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nBritain. A prison\n\nEnter POSTHUMUS and two GAOLERS\n\n  FIRST GAOLER. You shall not now be stol\'n, you have locks upon you;\n    So graze as you find pasture.\n  SECOND GAOLER. Ay, or a stomach.                Exeunt GAOLERS\n  POSTHUMUS. Most welcome, bondage! for thou art a way,\n    I think, to liberty. Yet am I better\n    Than one that\'s sick o\' th\' gout, since he had rather\n    Groan so in perpetuity than be cur\'d\n    By th\' sure physician death, who is the key\n    T\' unbar these locks. My conscience, thou art fetter\'d\n    More than my shanks and wrists; you good gods, give me\n    The penitent instrument to pick that bolt,\n    Then, free for ever! Is\'t enough I am sorry?\n    So children temporal fathers do appease;\n    Gods are more full of mercy. Must I repent,\n    I cannot do it better than in gyves,\n    Desir\'d more than constrain\'d. To satisfy,\n    If of my freedom \'tis the main part, take  \n    No stricter render of me than my all.\n    I know you are more clement than vile men,\n    Who of their broken debtors take a third,\n    A sixth, a tenth, letting them thrive again\n    On their abatement; that\'s not my desire.\n    For Imogen\'s dear life take mine; and though\n    \'Tis not so dear, yet \'tis a life; you coin\'d it.\n    \'Tween man and man they weigh not every stamp;\n    Though light, take pieces for the figure\'s sake;\n    You rather mine, being yours. And so, great pow\'rs,\n    If you will take this audit, take this life,\n    And cancel these cold bonds. O Imogen!\n    I\'ll speak to thee in silence.                      [Sleeps]\n\n        Solemn music. Enter, as in an apparition, SICILIUS\n        LEONATUS, father to POSTHUMUS, an old man attired\n         like a warrior; leading in his hand an ancient\n          matron, his WIFE, and mother to POSTHUMUS, with\n        music before them. Then, after other music, follows\n           the two young LEONATI, brothers to POSTHUMUS,  \n              with wounds, as they died in the wars.\n          They circle POSTHUMUS round as he lies sleeping\n\n  SICILIUS. No more, thou thunder-master, show\n              Thy spite on mortal flies.\n            With Mars fall out, with Juno chide,\n              That thy adulteries\n                Rates and revenges.\n            Hath my poor boy done aught but well,\n              Whose face I never saw?\n            I died whilst in the womb he stay\'d\n              Attending nature\'s law;\n            Whose father then, as men report\n              Thou orphans\' father art,\n            Thou shouldst have been, and shielded him\n              From this earth-vexing smart.\n\n  MOTHER.   Lucina lent not me her aid,\n              But took me in my throes,\n            That from me was Posthumus ripp\'d,  \n              Came crying \'mongst his foes,\n                A thing of pity.\n\n  SICILIUS. Great Nature like his ancestry\n              Moulded the stuff so fair\n            That he deserv\'d the praise o\' th\' world\n              As great Sicilius\' heir.\n\n  FIRST BROTHER. When once he was mature for man,\n              In Britain where was he\n            That could stand up his parallel,\n              Or fruitful object be\n            In eye of Imogen, that best\n              Could deem his dignity?\n\n  MOTHER.   With marriage wherefore was he mock\'d,\n              To be exil\'d and thrown\n            From Leonati seat and cast\n            From her his dearest one,\n              Sweet Imogen?  \n\n  SICILIUS. Why did you suffer Iachimo,\n              Slight thing of Italy,\n            To taint his nobler heart and brain\n              With needless jealousy,\n            And to become the geck and scorn\n              O\' th\' other\'s villainy?\n\n  SECOND BROTHER. For this from stiller seats we came,\n              Our parents and us twain,\n            That, striking in our country\'s cause,\n              Fell bravely and were slain,\n            Our fealty and Tenantius\' right\n              With honour to maintain.\n\n  FIRST BROTHER. Like hardiment Posthumus hath\n              To Cymbeline perform\'d.\n            Then, Jupiter, thou king of gods,\n              Why hast thou thus adjourn\'d\n            The graces for his merits due,  \n              Being all to dolours turn\'d?\n\n  SICILIUS. Thy crystal window ope; look out;\n              No longer exercise\n            Upon a valiant race thy harsh\n              And potent injuries.\n\n  MOTHER.   Since, Jupiter, our son is good,\n              Take off his miseries.\n\n  SICILIUS. Peep through thy marble mansion. Help!\n              Or we poor ghosts will cry\n            To th\' shining synod of the rest\n              Against thy deity.\n\n  BROTHERS. Help, Jupiter! or we appeal,\n              And from thy justice fly.\n\n       JUPITER descends-in thunder and lightning, sitting\n       upon an eagle. He throws a thunderbolt. The GHOSTS  \n                     fall on their knees\n\n  JUPITER. No more, you petty spirits of region low,\n    Offend our hearing; hush! How dare you ghosts\n    Accuse the Thunderer whose bolt, you know,\n    Sky-planted, batters all rebelling coasts?\n    Poor shadows of Elysium, hence and rest\n    Upon your never-withering banks of flow\'rs.\n    Be not with mortal accidents opprest:\n    No care of yours it is; you know \'tis ours.\n    Whom best I love I cross; to make my gift,\n    The more delay\'d, delighted. Be content;\n    Your low-laid son our godhead will uplift;\n    His comforts thrive, his trials well are spent.\n    Our Jovial star reign\'d at his birth, and in\n    Our temple was he married. Rise and fade!\n    He shall be lord of Lady Imogen,\n    And happier much by his affliction made.\n    This tablet lay upon his breast, wherein\n    Our pleasure his full fortune doth confine;  \n    And so, away; no farther with your din\n    Express impatience, lest you stir up mine.\n    Mount, eagle, to my palace crystalline.            [Ascends]\n  SICILIUS. He came in thunder; his celestial breath\n    Was sulpherous to smell; the holy eagle\n    Stoop\'d as to foot us. His ascension is\n    More sweet than our blest fields. His royal bird\n    Prunes the immortal wing, and cloys his beak,\n    As when his god is pleas\'d.\n  ALL. Thanks, Jupiter!\n  SICILIUS. The marble pavement closes, he is enter\'d\n    His radiant roof. Away! and, to be blest,\n    Let us with care perform his great behest.   [GHOSTS vanish]\n\n  POSTHUMUS. [Waking] Sleep, thou has been a grandsire and begot\n    A father to me; and thou hast created\n    A mother and two brothers. But, O scorn,\n    Gone! They went hence so soon as they were born.\n    And so I am awake. Poor wretches, that depend\n    On greatness\' favour, dream as I have done;  \n    Wake and find nothing. But, alas, I swerve;\n    Many dream not to find, neither deserve,\n    And yet are steep\'d in favours; so am I,\n    That have this golden chance, and know not why.\n    What fairies haunt this ground? A book? O rare one!\n    Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment\n    Nobler than that it covers. Let thy effects\n    So follow to be most unlike our courtiers,\n    As good as promise.\n\n    [Reads] \'When as a lion\'s whelp shall, to himself unknown,\n    without seeking find, and be embrac\'d by a piece of tender air;\n    and when from a stately cedar shall be lopp\'d branches which,\n    being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old\n    stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries,\n    Britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty.\'\n\n    \'Tis still a dream, or else such stuff as madmen\n    Tongue, and brain not; either both or nothing,\n    Or senseless speaking, or a speaking such  \n    As sense cannot untie. Be what it is,\n    The action of my life is like it, which\n    I\'ll keep, if but for sympathy.\n\n                  Re-enter GAOLER\n\n  GAOLER. Come, sir, are you ready for death?\n  POSTHUMUS. Over-roasted rather; ready long ago.\n  GAOLER. Hanging is the word, sir; if you be ready for that, you are\n    well cook\'d.\n  POSTHUMUS. So, if I prove a good repast to the spectators, the dish\n    pays the shot.\n  GAOLER. A heavy reckoning for you, sir. But the comfort is, you\n    shall be called to no more payments, fear no more tavern bills,\n    which are often the sadness of parting, as the procuring of mirth.\n    You come in faint for want of meat, depart reeling with too much\n    drink; sorry that you have paid too much, and sorry that you are\n    paid too much; purse and brain both empty; the brain the heavier\n    for being too light, the purse too light, being drawn of\n    heaviness. O, of this contradiction you shall now be quit. O, the  \n    charity of a penny cord! It sums up thousands in a trice. You\n    have no true debitor and creditor but it; of what\'s past, is, and\n    to come, the discharge. Your neck, sir, is pen, book, and\n    counters; so the acquittance follows.\n  POSTHUMUS. I am merrier to die than thou art to live.\n  GAOLER. Indeed, sir, he that sleeps feels not the toothache. But a\n    man that were to sleep your sleep, and a hangman to help him to\n    bed, I think he would change places with his officer; for look\n    you, sir, you know not which way you shall go.\n  POSTHUMUS. Yes indeed do I, fellow.\n  GAOLER. Your death has eyes in\'s head, then; I have not seen him so\n    pictur\'d. You must either be directed by some that take upon them\n    to know, or to take upon yourself that which I am sure you do not\n    know, or jump the after-inquiry on your own peril. And how you\n    shall speed in your journey\'s end, I think you\'ll never return to\n    tell one.\n  POSTHUMUS. I tell thee, fellow, there are none want eyes to direct\n    them the way I am going, but such as wink and will not use them.\n  GAOLER. What an infinite mock is this, that a man should have the\n    best use of eyes to see the way of blindness! I am sure hanging\'s  \n    the way of winking.\n\n                        Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. Knock off his manacles; bring your prisoner to the King.\n  POSTHUMUS. Thou bring\'st good news: I am call\'d to be made free.\n  GAOLER. I\'ll be hang\'d then.\n  POSTHUMUS. Thou shalt be then freer than a gaoler; no bolts for the\n    dead.                         Exeunt POSTHUMUS and MESSENGER\n  GAOLER. Unless a man would marry a gallows and beget young gibbets,\n    I never saw one so prone. Yet, on my conscience, there are verier\n    knaves desire to live, for all he be a Roman; and there be some\n    of them too that die against their wills; so should I, if I were\n    one. I would we were all of one mind, and one mind good. O, there\n    were desolation of gaolers and gallowses! I speak against my\n    present profit, but my wish hath a preferment in\'t.     Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nBritain. CYMBELINE\'S tent\n\nEnter CYMBELINE, BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, ARVIRAGUS, PISANIO, LORDS,\nOFFICERS, and attendants\n\n  CYMBELINE. Stand by my side, you whom the gods have made\n    Preservers of my throne. Woe is my heart\n    That the poor soldier that so richly fought,\n    Whose rags sham\'d gilded arms, whose naked breast\n    Stepp\'d before targes of proof, cannot be found.\n    He shall be happy that can find him, if\n    Our grace can make him so.\n  BELARIUS. I never saw\n    Such noble fury in so poor a thing;\n    Such precious deeds in one that promis\'d nought\n    But beggary and poor looks.\n  CYMBELINE. No tidings of him?\n  PISANIO. He hath been search\'d among the dead and living,\n    But no trace of him.\n  CYMBELINE. To my grief, I am\n    The heir of his reward; [To BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, and ARVIRAGUS]  \n      which I will add\n    To you, the liver, heart, and brain, of Britain,\n    By whom I grant she lives. \'Tis now the time\n    To ask of whence you are. Report it.\n  BELARIUS. Sir,\n    In Cambria are we born, and gentlemen;\n    Further to boast were neither true nor modest,\n    Unless I add we are honest.\n  CYMBELINE. Bow your knees.\n    Arise my knights o\' th\' battle; I create you\n    Companions to our person, and will fit you\n    With dignities becoming your estates.\n\n             Enter CORNELIUS and LADIES\n\n    There\'s business in these faces. Why so sadly\n    Greet you our victory? You look like Romans,\n    And not o\' th\' court of Britain.\n  CORNELIUS. Hail, great King!\n    To sour your happiness I must report  \n    The Queen is dead.\n  CYMBELINE. Who worse than a physician\n    Would this report become? But I consider\n    By med\'cine\'life may be prolong\'d, yet death\n    Will seize the doctor too. How ended she?\n  CORNELIUS. With horror, madly dying, like her life;\n    Which, being cruel to the world, concluded\n    Most cruel to herself. What she confess\'d\n    I will report, so please you; these her women\n    Can trip me if I err, who with wet cheeks\n    Were present when she finish\'d.\n  CYMBELINE. Prithee say.\n  CORNELIUS. First, she confess\'d she never lov\'d you; only\n    Affected greatness got by you, not you;\n    Married your royalty, was wife to your place;\n    Abhorr\'d your person.\n  CYMBELINE. She alone knew this;\n    And but she spoke it dying, I would not\n    Believe her lips in opening it. Proceed.\n  CORNELIUS. Your daughter, whom she bore in hand to love  \n    With such integrity, she did confess\n    Was as a scorpion to her sight; whose life,\n    But that her flight prevented it, she had\n    Ta\'en off by poison.\n  CYMBELINE. O most delicate fiend!\n    Who is\'t can read a woman? Is there more?\n  CORNELIUS. More, sir, and worse. She did confess she had\n    For you a mortal mineral, which, being took,\n    Should by the minute feed on life, and ling\'ring,\n    By inches waste you. In which time she purpos\'d,\n    By watching, weeping, tendance, kissing, to\n    O\'ercome you with her show; and in time,\n    When she had fitted you with her craft, to work\n    Her son into th\' adoption of the crown;\n    But failing of her end by his strange absence,\n    Grew shameless-desperate, open\'d, in despite\n    Of heaven and men, her purposes, repented\n    The evils she hatch\'d were not effected; so,\n    Despairing, died.\n  CYMBELINE. Heard you all this, her women?  \n  LADY. We did, so please your Highness.\n  CYMBELINE. Mine eyes\n    Were not in fault, for she was beautiful;\n    Mine ears, that heard her flattery; nor my heart\n    That thought her like her seeming. It had been vicious\n    To have mistrusted her; yet, O my daughter!\n    That it was folly in me thou mayst say,\n    And prove it in thy feeling. Heaven mend all!\n\n         Enter LUCIUS, IACHIMO, the SOOTHSAYER, and other\n      Roman prisoners, guarded; POSTHUMUS behind, and IMOGEN\n\n    Thou com\'st not, Caius, now for tribute; that\n    The Britons have raz\'d out, though with the loss\n    Of many a bold one, whose kinsmen have made suit\n    That their good souls may be appeas\'d with slaughter\n    Of you their captives, which ourself have granted;\n    So think of your estate.\n  LUCIUS. Consider, sir, the chance of war. The day\n    Was yours by accident; had it gone with us,  \n    We should not, when the blood was cool, have threaten\'d\n    Our prisoners with the sword. But since the gods\n    Will have it thus, that nothing but our lives\n    May be call\'d ransom, let it come. Sufficeth\n    A Roman with a Roman\'s heart can suffer.\n    Augustus lives to think on\'t; and so much\n    For my peculiar care. This one thing only\n    I will entreat: my boy, a Briton born,\n    Let him be ransom\'d. Never master had\n    A page so kind, so duteous, diligent,\n    So tender over his occasions, true,\n    So feat, so nurse-like; let his virtue join\n    With my request, which I\'ll make bold your Highness\n    Cannot deny; he hath done no Briton harm\n    Though he have serv\'d a Roman. Save him, sir,\n    And spare no blood beside.\n  CYMBELINE. I have surely seen him;\n    His favour is familiar to me. Boy,\n    Thou hast look\'d thyself into my grace,\n    And art mine own. I know not why, wherefore  \n    To say \'Live, boy.\' Ne\'er thank thy master. Live;\n    And ask of Cymbeline what boon thou wilt,\n    Fitting my bounty and thy state, I\'ll give it;\n    Yea, though thou do demand a prisoner,\n    The noblest ta\'en.\n  IMOGEN. I humbly thank your Highness.\n  LUCIUS. I do not bid thee beg my life, good lad,\n    And yet I know thou wilt.\n  IMOGEN. No, no! Alack,\n    There\'s other work in hand. I see a thing\n    Bitter to me as death; your life, good master,\n    Must shuffle for itself.\n  LUCIUS. The boy disdains me,\n    He leaves me, scorns me. Briefly die their joys\n    That place them on the truth of girls and boys.\n    Why stands he so perplex\'d?\n  CYMBELINE. What wouldst thou, boy?\n    I love thee more and more; think more and more\n    What\'s best to ask. Know\'st him thou look\'st on? Speak,\n    Wilt have him live? Is he thy kin? thy friend?  \n  IMOGEN. He is a Roman, no more kin to me\n    Than I to your Highness; who, being born your vassal,\n    Am something nearer.\n  CYMBELINE. Wherefore ey\'st him so?\n  IMOGEN. I\'ll tell you, sir, in private, if you please\n    To give me hearing.\n  CYMBELINE. Ay, with all my heart,\n    And lend my best attention. What\'s thy name?\n  IMOGEN. Fidele, sir.\n  CYMBELINE. Thou\'rt my good youth, my page;\n    I\'ll be thy master. Walk with me; speak freely.\n                           [CYMBELINE and IMOGEN converse apart]\n  BELARIUS. Is not this boy reviv\'d from death?\n  ARVIRAGUS. One sand another\n    Not more resembles- that sweet rosy lad\n    Who died and was Fidele. What think you?\n  GUIDERIUS. The same dead thing alive.\n  BELARIUS. Peace, peace! see further. He eyes us not; forbear.\n    Creatures may be alike; were\'t he, I am sure\n    He would have spoke to us.  \n  GUIDERIUS. But we saw him dead.\n  BELARIUS. Be silent; let\'s see further.\n  PISANIO. [Aside] It is my mistress.\n    Since she is living, let the time run on\n    To good or bad.               [CYMBELINE and IMOGEN advance]\n  CYMBELINE. Come, stand thou by our side;\n    Make thy demand aloud. [To IACHIMO] Sir, step you forth;\n    Give answer to this boy, and do it freely,\n    Or, by our greatness and the grace of it,\n    Which is our honour, bitter torture shall\n    Winnow the truth from falsehood. On, speak to him.\n  IMOGEN. My boon is that this gentleman may render\n    Of whom he had this ring.\n  POSTHUMUS. [Aside] What\'s that to him?\n  CYMBELINE. That diamond upon your finger, say\n    How came it yours?\n  IACHIMO. Thou\'lt torture me to leave unspoken that\n    Which to be spoke would torture thee.\n  CYMBELINE. How? me?\n  IACHIMO. I am glad to be constrain\'d to utter that  \n    Which torments me to conceal. By villainy\n    I got this ring; \'twas Leonatus\' jewel,\n    Whom thou didst banish; and- which more may grieve thee,\n    As it doth me- a nobler sir ne\'er liv\'d\n    \'Twixt sky and ground. Wilt thou hear more, my lord?\n  CYMBELINE. All that belongs to this.\n  IACHIMO. That paragon, thy daughter,\n    For whom my heart drops blood and my false spirits\n    Quail to remember- Give me leave, I faint.\n  CYMBELINE. My daughter? What of her? Renew thy strength;\n    I had rather thou shouldst live while nature will\n    Than die ere I hear more. Strive, man, and speak.\n  IACHIMO. Upon a time- unhappy was the clock\n    That struck the hour!- was in Rome- accurs\'d\n    The mansion where!- \'twas at a feast- O, would\n    Our viands had been poison\'d, or at least\n    Those which I heav\'d to head!- the good Posthumus-\n    What should I say? he was too good to be\n    Where ill men were, and was the best of all\n    Amongst the rar\'st of good ones- sitting sadly  \n    Hearing us praise our loves of Italy\n    For beauty that made barren the swell\'d boast\n    Of him that best could speak; for feature, laming\n    The shrine of Venus or straight-pight Minerva,\n    Postures beyond brief nature; for condition,\n    A shop of all the qualities that man\n    Loves woman for; besides that hook of wiving,\n    Fairness which strikes the eye-\n  CYMBELINE. I stand on fire.\n    Come to the matter.\n  IACHIMO. All too soon I shall,\n    Unless thou wouldst grieve quickly. This Posthumus,\n    Most like a noble lord in love and one\n    That had a royal lover, took his hint;\n    And not dispraising whom we prais\'d- therein\n    He was as calm as virtue- he began\n    His mistress\' picture; which by his tongue being made,\n    And then a mind put in\'t, either our brags\n    Were crack\'d of kitchen trulls, or his description\n    Prov\'d us unspeaking sots.  \n  CYMBELINE. Nay, nay, to th\' purpose.\n  IACHIMO. Your daughter\'s chastity- there it begins.\n    He spake of her as Dian had hot dreams\n    And she alone were cold; whereat I, wretch,\n    Made scruple of his praise, and wager\'d with him\n    Pieces of gold \'gainst this which then he wore\n    Upon his honour\'d finger, to attain\n    In suit the place of\'s bed, and win this ring\n    By hers and mine adultery. He, true knight,\n    No lesser of her honour confident\n    Than I did truly find her, stakes this ring;\n    And would so, had it been a carbuncle\n    Of Phoebus\' wheel; and might so safely, had it\n    Been all the worth of\'s car. Away to Britain\n    Post I in this design. Well may you, sir,\n    Remember me at court, where I was taught\n    Of your chaste daughter the wide difference\n    \'Twixt amorous and villainous. Being thus quench\'d\n    Of hope, not longing, mine Italian brain\n    Gan in your duller Britain operate  \n    Most vilely; for my vantage, excellent;\n    And, to be brief, my practice so prevail\'d\n    That I return\'d with simular proof enough\n    To make the noble Leonatus mad,\n    By wounding his belief in her renown\n    With tokens thus and thus; averring notes\n    Of chamber-hanging, pictures, this her bracelet-\n    O cunning, how I got it!- nay, some marks\n    Of secret on her person, that he could not\n    But think her bond of chastity quite crack\'d,\n    I having ta\'en the forfeit. Whereupon-\n    Methinks I see him now-\n  POSTHUMUS. [Coming forward] Ay, so thou dost,\n    Italian fiend! Ay me, most credulous fool,\n    Egregious murderer, thief, anything\n    That\'s due to all the villains past, in being,\n    To come! O, give me cord, or knife, or poison,\n    Some upright justicer! Thou, King, send out\n    For torturers ingenious. It is I\n    That all th\' abhorred things o\' th\' earth amend  \n    By being worse than they. I am Posthumus,\n    That kill\'d thy daughter; villain-like, I lie-\n    That caus\'d a lesser villain than myself,\n    A sacrilegious thief, to do\'t. The temple\n    Of virtue was she; yea, and she herself.\n    Spit, and throw stones, cast mire upon me, set\n    The dogs o\' th\' street to bay me. Every villain\n    Be call\'d Posthumus Leonatus, and\n    Be villainy less than \'twas! O Imogen!\n    My queen, my life, my wife! O Imogen,\n    Imogen, Imogen!\n  IMOGEN. Peace, my lord. Hear, hear!\n  POSTHUMUS. Shall\'s have a play of this? Thou scornful page,\n    There lies thy part.                [Strikes her. She falls]\n  PISANIO. O gentlemen, help!\n    Mine and your mistress! O, my lord Posthumus!\n    You ne\'er kill\'d Imogen till now. Help, help!\n    Mine honour\'d lady!\n  CYMBELINE. Does the world go round?\n  POSTHUMUS. How comes these staggers on me?  \n  PISANIO. Wake, my mistress!\n  CYMBELINE. If this be so, the gods do mean to strike me\n    To death with mortal joy.\n  PISANIO. How fares my mistress?\n  IMOGEN. O, get thee from my sight;\n    Thou gav\'st me poison. Dangerous fellow, hence!\n    Breathe not where princes are.\n  CYMBELINE. The tune of Imogen!\n  PISANIO. Lady,\n    The gods throw stones of sulphur on me, if\n    That box I gave you was not thought by me\n    A precious thing! I had it from the Queen.\n  CYMBELINE. New matter still?\n  IMOGEN. It poison\'d me.\n  CORNELIUS. O gods!\n    I left out one thing which the Queen confess\'d,\n    Which must approve thee honest. \'If Pisanio\n    Have\' said she \'given his mistress that confection\n    Which I gave him for cordial, she is serv\'d\n    As I would serve a rat.\'  \n  CYMBELINE. What\'s this, Cornelius?\n  CORNELIUS. The Queen, sir, very oft importun\'d me\n    To temper poisons for her; still pretending\n    The satisfaction of her knowledge only\n    In killing creatures vile, as cats and dogs,\n    Of no esteem. I, dreading that her purpose\n    Was of more danger, did compound for her\n    A certain stuff, which, being ta\'en would cease\n    The present pow\'r of life, but in short time\n    All offices of nature should again\n    Do their due functions. Have you ta\'en of it?\n  IMOGEN. Most like I did, for I was dead.\n  BELARIUS. My boys,\n    There was our error.\n  GUIDERIUS. This is sure Fidele.\n  IMOGEN. Why did you throw your wedded lady from you?\n    Think that you are upon a rock, and now\n    Throw me again.                              [Embracing him]\n  POSTHUMUS. Hang there like fruit, my soul,\n    Till the tree die!  \n  CYMBELINE. How now, my flesh? my child?\n    What, mak\'st thou me a dullard in this act?\n    Wilt thou not speak to me?\n  IMOGEN. [Kneeling] Your blessing, sir.\n  BELARIUS. [To GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS] Though you did love this\n      youth, I blame ye not;\n    You had a motive for\'t.\n  CYMBELINE. My tears that fall\n    Prove holy water on thee! Imogen,\n    Thy mother\'s dead.\n  IMOGEN. I am sorry for\'t, my lord.\n  CYMBELINE. O, she was naught, and long of her it was\n    That we meet here so strangely; but her son\n    Is gone, we know not how nor where.\n  PISANIO. My lord,\n    Now fear is from me, I\'ll speak troth. Lord Cloten,\n    Upon my lady\'s missing, came to me\n    With his sword drawn, foam\'d at the mouth, and swore,\n    If I discover\'d not which way she was gone,\n    It was my instant death. By accident  \n    I had a feigned letter of my master\'s\n    Then in my pocket, which directed him\n    To seek her on the mountains near to Milford;\n    Where, in a frenzy, in my master\'s garments,\n    Which he enforc\'d from me, away he posts\n    With unchaste purpose, and with oath to violate\n    My lady\'s honour. What became of him\n    I further know not.\n  GUIDERIUS. Let me end the story:\n    I slew him there.\n  CYMBELINE. Marry, the gods forfend!\n    I would not thy good deeds should from my lips\n    Pluck a hard sentence. Prithee, valiant youth,\n    Deny\'t again.\n  GUIDERIUS. I have spoke it, and I did it.\n  CYMBELINE. He was a prince.\n  GUIDERIUS. A most incivil one. The wrongs he did me\n    Were nothing prince-like; for he did provoke me\n    With language that would make me spurn the sea,\n    If it could so roar to me. I cut off\'s head,  \n    And am right glad he is not standing here\n    To tell this tale of mine.\n  CYMBELINE. I am sorry for thee.\n    By thine own tongue thou art condemn\'d, and must\n    Endure our law. Thou\'rt dead.\n  IMOGEN. That headless man\n    I thought had been my lord.\n  CYMBELINE. Bind the offender,\n    And take him from our presence.\n  BELARIUS. Stay, sir King.\n    This man is better than the man he slew,\n    As well descended as thyself, and hath\n    More of thee merited than a band of Clotens\n    Had ever scar for. [To the guard] Let his arms alone;\n    They were not born for bondage.\n  CYMBELINE. Why, old soldier,\n    Wilt thou undo the worth thou art unpaid for\n    By tasting of our wrath? How of descent\n    As good as we?\n  ARVIRAGUS. In that he spake too far.  \n  CYMBELINE. And thou shalt die for\'t.\n  BELARIUS. We will die all three;\n    But I will prove that two on\'s are as good\n    As I have given out him. My sons, I must\n    For mine own part unfold a dangerous speech,\n    Though haply well for you.\n  ARVIRAGUS. Your danger\'s ours.\n  GUIDERIUS. And our good his.\n  BELARIUS. Have at it then by leave!\n    Thou hadst, great King, a subject who\n    Was call\'d Belarius.\n  CYMBELINE. What of him? He is\n    A banish\'d traitor.\n  BELARIUS. He it is that hath\n    Assum\'d this age; indeed a banish\'d man;\n    I know not how a traitor.\n  CYMBELINE. Take him hence,\n    The whole world shall not save him.\n  BELARIUS. Not too hot.\n    First pay me for the nursing of thy sons,  \n    And let it be confiscate all, so soon\n    As I have receiv\'d it.\n  CYMBELINE. Nursing of my sons?\n  BELARIUS. I am too blunt and saucy: here\'s my knee.\n    Ere I arise I will prefer my sons;\n    Then spare not the old father. Mighty sir,\n    These two young gentlemen that call me father,\n    And think they are my sons, are none of mine;\n    They are the issue of your loins, my liege,\n    And blood of your begetting.\n  CYMBELINE. How? my issue?\n  BELARIUS. So sure as you your father\'s. I, old Morgan,\n    Am that Belarius whom you sometime banish\'d.\n    Your pleasure was my mere offence, my punishment\n    Itself, and all my treason; that I suffer\'d\n    Was all the harm I did. These gentle princes-\n    For such and so they are- these twenty years\n    Have I train\'d up; those arts they have as\n    Could put into them. My breeding was, sir, as\n    Your Highness knows. Their nurse, Euriphile,  \n    Whom for the theft I wedded, stole these children\n    Upon my banishment; I mov\'d her to\'t,\n    Having receiv\'d the punishment before\n    For that which I did then. Beaten for loyalty\n    Excited me to treason. Their dear loss,\n    The more of you \'twas felt, the more it shap\'d\n    Unto my end of stealing them. But, gracious sir,\n    Here are your sons again, and I must lose\n    Two of the sweet\'st companions in the world.\n    The benediction of these covering heavens\n    Fall on their heads like dew! for they are worthy\n    To inlay heaven with stars.\n  CYMBELINE. Thou weep\'st and speak\'st.\n    The service that you three have done is more\n    Unlike than this thou tell\'st. I lost my children.\n    If these be they, I know not how to wish\n    A pair of worthier sons.\n  BELARIUS. Be pleas\'d awhile.\n    This gentleman, whom I call Polydore,\n    Most worthy prince, as yours, is true Guiderius;  \n    This gentleman, my Cadwal, Arviragus,\n    Your younger princely son; he, sir, was lapp\'d\n    In a most curious mantle, wrought by th\' hand\n    Of his queen mother, which for more probation\n    I can with ease produce.\n  CYMBELINE. Guiderius had\n    Upon his neck a mole, a sanguine star;\n    It was a mark of wonder.\n  BELARIUS. This is he,\n    Who hath upon him still that natural stamp.\n    It was wise nature\'s end in the donation,\n    To be his evidence now.\n  CYMBELINE. O, what am I?\n    A mother to the birth of three? Ne\'er mother\n    Rejoic\'d deliverance more. Blest pray you be,\n    That, after this strange starting from your orbs,\n    You may reign in them now! O Imogen,\n    Thou hast lost by this a kingdom.\n  IMOGEN. No, my lord;\n    I have got two worlds by\'t. O my gentle brothers,  \n    Have we thus met? O, never say hereafter\n    But I am truest speaker! You call\'d me brother,\n    When I was but your sister: I you brothers,\n    When we were so indeed.\n  CYMBELINE. Did you e\'er meet?\n  ARVIRAGUS. Ay, my good lord.\n  GUIDERIUS. And at first meeting lov\'d,\n    Continu\'d so until we thought he died.\n  CORNELIUS. By the Queen\'s dram she swallow\'d.\n  CYMBELINE. O rare instinct!\n    When shall I hear all through? This fierce abridgment\n    Hath to it circumstantial branches, which\n    Distinction should be rich in. Where? how liv\'d you?\n    And when came you to serve our Roman captive?\n    How parted with your brothers? how first met them?\n    Why fled you from the court? and whither? These,\n    And your three motives to the battle, with\n    I know not how much more, should be demanded,\n    And all the other by-dependences,\n    From chance to chance; but nor the time nor place  \n    Will serve our long interrogatories. See,\n    Posthumus anchors upon Imogen;\n    And she, like harmless lightning, throws her eye\n    On him, her brothers, me, her master, hitting\n    Each object with a joy; the counterchange\n    Is severally in all. Let\'s quit this ground,\n    And smoke the temple with our sacrifices.\n    [To BELARIUS] Thou art my brother; so we\'ll hold thee ever.\n  IMOGEN. You are my father too, and did relieve me\n    To see this gracious season.\n  CYMBELINE. All o\'erjoy\'d\n    Save these in bonds. Let them be joyful too,\n    For they shall taste our comfort.\n  IMOGEN. My good master,\n    I will yet do you service.\n  LUCIUS. Happy be you!\n  CYMBELINE. The forlorn soldier, that so nobly fought,\n    He would have well becom\'d this place and grac\'d\n    The thankings of a king.\n  POSTHUMUS. I am, sir,  \n    The soldier that did company these three\n    In poor beseeming; \'twas a fitment for\n    The purpose I then follow\'d. That I was he,\n    Speak, Iachimo. I had you down, and might\n    Have made you finish.\n  IACHIMO. [Kneeling] I am down again;\n    But now my heavy conscience sinks my knee,\n    As then your force did. Take that life, beseech you,\n    Which I so often owe; but your ring first,\n    And here the bracelet of the truest princess\n    That ever swore her faith.\n  POSTHUMUS. Kneel not to me.\n    The pow\'r that I have on you is to spare you;\n    The malice towards you to forgive you. Live,\n    And deal with others better.\n  CYMBELINE. Nobly doom\'d!\n    We\'ll learn our freeness of a son-in-law;\n    Pardon\'s the word to all.\n  ARVIRAGUS. You holp us, sir,\n    As you did mean indeed to be our brother;  \n    Joy\'d are we that you are.\n  POSTHUMUS. Your servant, Princes. Good my lord of Rome,\n    Call forth your soothsayer. As I slept, methought\n    Great Jupiter, upon his eagle back\'d,\n    Appear\'d to me, with other spritely shows\n    Of mine own kindred. When I wak\'d, I found\n    This label on my bosom; whose containing\n    Is so from sense in hardness that I can\n    Make no collection of it. Let him show\n    His skill in the construction.\n  LUCIUS. Philarmonus!\n  SOOTHSAYER. Here, my good lord.\n  LUCIUS. Read, and declare the meaning.\n  SOOTHSAYER. [Reads] \'When as a lion\'s whelp shall, to himself\n    unknown, without seeking find, and be embrac\'d by\n    a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall\n    be lopp\'d branches which, being dead many years, shall\n    after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow;\n    then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate\n    and flourish in peace and plenty.\'  \n    Thou, Leonatus, art the lion\'s whelp;\n    The fit and apt construction of thy name,\n    Being Leo-natus, doth import so much.\n    [To CYMBELINE] The piece of tender air, thy virtuous daughter,\n    Which we call \'mollis aer,\' and \'mollis aer\'\n    We term it \'mulier\'; which \'mulier\' I divine\n    Is this most constant wife, who even now\n    Answering the letter of the oracle,\n    Unknown to you, unsought, were clipp\'d about\n    With this most tender air.\n  CYMBELINE. This hath some seeming.\n  SOOTHSAYER. The lofty cedar, royal Cymbeline,\n    Personates thee; and thy lopp\'d branches point\n    Thy two sons forth, who, by Belarius stol\'n,\n    For many years thought dead, are now reviv\'d,\n    To the majestic cedar join\'d, whose issue\n    Promises Britain peace and plenty.\n  CYMBELINE. Well,\n    My peace we will begin. And, Caius Lucius,\n    Although the victor, we submit to Caesar  \n    And to the Roman empire, promising\n    To pay our wonted tribute, from the which\n    We were dissuaded by our wicked queen,\n    Whom heavens in justice, both on her and hers,\n    Have laid most heavy hand.\n  SOOTHSAYER. The fingers of the pow\'rs above do tune\n    The harmony of this peace. The vision\n    Which I made known to Lucius ere the stroke\n    Of yet this scarce-cold battle, at this instant\n    Is full accomplish\'d; for the Roman eagle,\n    From south to west on wing soaring aloft,\n    Lessen\'d herself and in the beams o\' th\' sun\n    So vanish\'d; which foreshow\'d our princely eagle,\n    Th\'imperial Caesar, Caesar, should again unite\n    His favour with the radiant Cymbeline,\n    Which shines here in the west.\n  CYMBELINE. Laud we the gods;\n    And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils\n    From our bless\'d altars. Publish we this peace\n    To all our subjects. Set we forward; let  \n    A Roman and a British ensign wave\n    Friendly together. So through Lud\'s Town march;\n    And in the temple of great Jupiter\n    Our peace we\'ll ratify; seal it with feasts.\n    Set on there! Never was a war did cease,\n    Ere bloody hands were wash\'d, with such a peace.      Exeunt\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1604\n\n\nTHE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK\n\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  Claudius, King of Denmark.\n  Marcellus, Officer.\n  Hamlet, son to the former, and nephew to the present king.\n  Polonius, Lord Chamberlain.\n  Horatio, friend to Hamlet.\n  Laertes, son to Polonius.\n  Voltemand, courtier.\n  Cornelius, courtier.\n  Rosencrantz, courtier.\n  Guildenstern, courtier.\n  Osric, courtier.\n  A Gentleman, courtier.\n  A Priest.\n  Marcellus, officer.\n  Bernardo, officer.\n  Francisco, a soldier\n  Reynaldo, servant to Polonius.\n  Players.\n  Two Clowns, gravediggers.\n  Fortinbras, Prince of Norway.  \n  A Norwegian Captain.\n  English Ambassadors.\n\n  Getrude, Queen of Denmark, mother to Hamlet.\n  Ophelia, daughter to Polonius.\n\n  Ghost of Hamlet\'s Father.\n\n  Lords, ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers, Attendants.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE.- Elsinore.\n\n\nACT I. Scene I.\nElsinore. A platform before the Castle.\n\nEnter two Sentinels-[first,] Francisco, [who paces up and down\nat his post; then] Bernardo, [who approaches him].\n\n  Ber. Who\'s there.?\n  Fran. Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.\n  Ber. Long live the King!\n  Fran. Bernardo?\n  Ber. He.\n  Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour.\n  Ber. \'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.\n  Fran. For this relief much thanks. \'Tis bitter cold,\n    And I am sick at heart.\n  Ber. Have you had quiet guard?\n  Fran. Not a mouse stirring.\n  Ber. Well, good night.\n    If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,\n    The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.\n\n                    Enter Horatio and Marcellus.  \n\n  Fran. I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who is there?\n  Hor. Friends to this ground.\n  Mar. And liegemen to the Dane.\n  Fran. Give you good night.\n  Mar. O, farewell, honest soldier.\n    Who hath reliev\'d you?\n  Fran. Bernardo hath my place.\n    Give you good night.                                   Exit.\n  Mar. Holla, Bernardo!\n  Ber. Say-\n    What, is Horatio there ?\n  Hor. A piece of him.\n  Ber. Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.\n  Mar. What, has this thing appear\'d again to-night?\n  Ber. I have seen nothing.\n  Mar. Horatio says \'tis but our fantasy,\n    And will not let belief take hold of him\n    Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us.\n    Therefore I have entreated him along,  \n    With us to watch the minutes of this night,\n    That, if again this apparition come,\n    He may approve our eyes and speak to it.\n  Hor. Tush, tush, \'twill not appear.\n  Ber. Sit down awhile,\n    And let us once again assail your ears,\n    That are so fortified against our story,\n    What we two nights have seen.\n  Hor. Well, sit we down,\n    And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.\n  Ber. Last night of all,\n    When yond same star that\'s westward from the pole\n    Had made his course t\' illume that part of heaven\n    Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,\n    The bell then beating one-\n\n                        Enter Ghost.\n\n  Mar. Peace! break thee off! Look where it comes again!\n  Ber. In the same figure, like the King that\'s dead.  \n  Mar. Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.\n  Ber. Looks it not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.\n  Hor. Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.\n  Ber. It would be spoke to.\n  Mar. Question it, Horatio.\n  Hor. What art thou that usurp\'st this time of night\n    Together with that fair and warlike form\n    In which the majesty of buried Denmark\n    Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee speak!\n  Mar. It is offended.\n  Ber. See, it stalks away!\n  Hor. Stay! Speak, speak! I charge thee speak!\n                                                     Exit Ghost.\n  Mar. \'Tis gone and will not answer.\n  Ber. How now, Horatio? You tremble and look pale.\n    Is not this something more than fantasy?\n    What think you on\'t?\n  Hor. Before my God, I might not this believe\n    Without the sensible and true avouch\n    Of mine own eyes.  \n  Mar. Is it not like the King?\n  Hor. As thou art to thyself.\n    Such was the very armour he had on\n    When he th\' ambitious Norway combated.\n    So frown\'d he once when, in an angry parle,\n    He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.\n    \'Tis strange.\n  Mar. Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,\n    With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.\n  Hor. In what particular thought to work I know not;\n    But, in the gross and scope of my opinion,\n    This bodes some strange eruption to our state.\n  Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me he that knows,\n    Why this same strict and most observant watch\n    So nightly toils the subject of the land,\n    And why such daily cast of brazen cannon\n    And foreign mart for implements of war;\n    Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task\n    Does not divide the Sunday from the week.\n    What might be toward, that this sweaty haste  \n    Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day?\n    Who is\'t that can inform me?\n  Hor. That can I.\n    At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,\n    Whose image even but now appear\'d to us,\n    Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,\n    Thereto prick\'d on by a most emulate pride,\n    Dar\'d to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet\n    (For so this side of our known world esteem\'d him)\n    Did slay this Fortinbras; who, by a seal\'d compact,\n    Well ratified by law and heraldry,\n    Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands\n    Which he stood seiz\'d of, to the conqueror;\n    Against the which a moiety competent\n    Was gaged by our king; which had return\'d\n    To the inheritance of Fortinbras,\n    Had he been vanquisher, as, by the same comart\n    And carriage of the article design\'d,\n    His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,\n    Of unimproved mettle hot and full,  \n    Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,\n    Shark\'d up a list of lawless resolutes,\n    For food and diet, to some enterprise\n    That hath a stomach in\'t; which is no other,\n    As it doth well appear unto our state,\n    But to recover of us, by strong hand\n    And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands\n    So by his father lost; and this, I take it,\n    Is the main motive of our preparations,\n    The source of this our watch, and the chief head\n    Of this post-haste and romage in the land.\n  Ber. I think it be no other but e\'en so.\n    Well may it sort that this portentous figure\n    Comes armed through our watch, so like the King\n    That was and is the question of these wars.\n  Hor. A mote it is to trouble the mind\'s eye.\n    In the most high and palmy state of Rome,\n    A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,\n    The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead\n    Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;  \n    As stars with trains of fire, and dews of blood,\n    Disasters in the sun; and the moist star\n    Upon whose influence Neptune\'s empire stands\n    Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.\n    And even the like precurse of fierce events,\n    As harbingers preceding still the fates\n    And prologue to the omen coming on,\n    Have heaven and earth together demonstrated\n    Unto our climature and countrymen.\n\n                      Enter Ghost again.\n\n    But soft! behold! Lo, where it comes again!\n    I\'ll cross it, though it blast me.- Stay illusion!\n                                               Spreads his arms.\n    If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,\n    Speak to me.\n    If there be any good thing to be done,\n    That may to thee do ease, and, race to me,\n    Speak to me.  \n    If thou art privy to thy country\'s fate,\n    Which happily foreknowing may avoid,\n    O, speak!\n    Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life\n    Extorted treasure in the womb of earth\n    (For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death),\n                                                 The cock crows.\n    Speak of it! Stay, and speak!- Stop it, Marcellus!\n  Mar. Shall I strike at it with my partisan?\n  Hor. Do, if it will not stand.\n  Ber. \'Tis here!\n  Hor. \'Tis here!\n  Mar. \'Tis gone!\n                                                     Exit Ghost.\n    We do it wrong, being so majestical,\n    To offer it the show of violence;\n    For it is as the air, invulnerable,\n    And our vain blows malicious mockery.\n  Ber. It was about to speak, when the cock crew.\n  Hor. And then it started, like a guilty thing  \n    Upon a fearful summons. I have heard\n    The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,\n    Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat\n    Awake the god of day; and at his warning,\n    Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,\n    Th\' extravagant and erring spirit hies\n    To his confine; and of the truth herein\n    This present object made probation.\n  Mar. It faded on the crowing of the cock.\n    Some say that ever, \'gainst that season comes\n    Wherein our Saviour\'s birth is celebrated,\n    The bird of dawning singeth all night long;\n    And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,\n    The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,\n    No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,\n    So hallow\'d and so gracious is the time.\n  Hor. So have I heard and do in part believe it.\n    But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,\n    Walks o\'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.\n    Break we our watch up; and by my advice  \n    Let us impart what we have seen to-night\n    Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,\n    This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.\n    Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,\n    As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?\n    Let\'s do\'t, I pray; and I this morning know\n    Where we shall find him most conveniently.           Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nElsinore. A room of state in the Castle.\n\nFlourish. [Enter Claudius, King of Denmark, Gertrude the Queen, Hamlet,\nPolonius, Laertes and his sister Ophelia, [Voltemand, Cornelius,]\nLords Attendant.\n\n  King. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother\'s death\n    The memory be green, and that it us befitted\n    To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom\n    To be contracted in one brow of woe,\n    Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature\n    That we with wisest sorrow think on him\n    Together with remembrance of ourselves.\n    Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,\n    Th\' imperial jointress to this warlike state,\n    Have we, as \'twere with a defeated joy,\n    With an auspicious, and a dropping eye,\n    With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,\n    In equal scale weighing delight and dole,\n    Taken to wife; nor have we herein barr\'d\n    Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone  \n    With this affair along. For all, our thanks.\n    Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,\n    Holding a weak supposal of our worth,\n    Or thinking by our late dear brother\'s death\n    Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,\n    Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,\n    He hath not fail\'d to pester us with message\n    Importing the surrender of those lands\n    Lost by his father, with all bands of law,\n    To our most valiant brother. So much for him.\n    Now for ourself and for this time of meeting.\n    Thus much the business is: we have here writ\n    To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,\n    Who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears\n    Of this his nephew\'s purpose, to suppress\n    His further gait herein, in that the levies,\n    The lists, and full proportions are all made\n    Out of his subject; and we here dispatch\n    You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand,\n    For bearers of this greeting to old Norway,  \n    Giving to you no further personal power\n    To business with the King, more than the scope\n    Of these dilated articles allow.            [Gives a paper.]\n    Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.\n  Cor., Volt. In that, and all things, will we show our duty.\n  King. We doubt it nothing. Heartily farewell.\n                                 Exeunt Voltemand and Cornelius.\n    And now, Laertes, what\'s the news with you?\n    You told us of some suit. What is\'t, Laertes?\n    You cannot speak of reason to the Dane\n    And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,\n    That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?\n    The head is not more native to the heart,\n    The hand more instrumental to the mouth,\n    Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.\n    What wouldst thou have, Laertes?\n  Laer. My dread lord,\n    Your leave and favour to return to France;\n    From whence though willingly I came to Denmark\n    To show my duty in your coronation,  \n    Yet now I must confess, that duty done,\n    My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France\n    And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.\n  King. Have you your father\'s leave? What says Polonius?\n  Pol. He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave\n    By laboursome petition, and at last\n    Upon his will I seal\'d my hard consent.\n    I do beseech you give him leave to go.\n  King. Take thy fair hour, Laertes. Time be thine,\n    And thy best graces spend it at thy will!\n    But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son-\n  Ham. [aside] A little more than kin, and less than kind!\n  King. How is it that the clouds still hang on you?\n  Ham. Not so, my lord. I am too much i\' th\' sun.\n  Queen. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,\n    And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.\n    Do not for ever with thy vailed lids\n    Seek for thy noble father in the dust.\n    Thou know\'st \'tis common. All that lives must die,\n    Passing through nature to eternity.  \n  Ham. Ay, madam, it is common.\n  Queen. If it be,\n    Why seems it so particular with thee?\n  Ham. Seems, madam, Nay, it is. I know not \'seems.\'\n    \'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,\n    Nor customary suits of solemn black,\n    Nor windy suspiration of forc\'d breath,\n    No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,\n    Nor the dejected havior of the visage,\n    Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,\n    \'That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,\n    For they are actions that a man might play;\n    But I have that within which passeth show-\n    These but the trappings and the suits of woe.\n  King. \'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,\n    To give these mourning duties to your father;\n    But you must know, your father lost a father;\n    That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound\n    In filial obligation for some term\n    To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever  \n    In obstinate condolement is a course\n    Of impious stubbornness. \'Tis unmanly grief;\n    It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,\n    A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,\n    An understanding simple and unschool\'d;\n    For what we know must be, and is as common\n    As any the most vulgar thing to sense,\n    Why should we in our peevish opposition\n    Take it to heart? Fie! \'tis a fault to heaven,\n    A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,\n    To reason most absurd, whose common theme\n    Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,\n    From the first corse till he that died to-day,\n    \'This must be so.\' We pray you throw to earth\n    This unprevailing woe, and think of us\n    As of a father; for let the world take note\n    You are the most immediate to our throne,\n    And with no less nobility of love\n    Than that which dearest father bears his son\n    Do I impart toward you. For your intent  \n    In going back to school in Wittenberg,\n    It is most retrograde to our desire;\n    And we beseech you, bend you to remain\n    Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,\n    Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.\n  Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.\n    I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.\n  Ham. I shall in all my best obey you, madam.\n  King. Why, \'tis a loving and a fair reply.\n    Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come.\n    This gentle and unforc\'d accord of Hamlet\n    Sits smiling to my heart; in grace whereof,\n    No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day\n    But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,\n    And the King\'s rouse the heaven shall bruit again,\n    Respeaking earthly thunder. Come away.\n                                Flourish. Exeunt all but Hamlet.\n  Ham. O that this too too solid flesh would melt,\n    Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!\n    Or that the Everlasting had not fix\'d  \n    His canon \'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!\n    How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable\n    Seem to me all the uses of this world!\n    Fie on\'t! ah, fie! \'Tis an unweeded garden\n    That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature\n    Possess it merely. That it should come to this!\n    But two months dead! Nay, not so much, not two.\n    So excellent a king, that was to this\n    Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother\n    That he might not beteem the winds of heaven\n    Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!\n    Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him\n    As if increase of appetite had grown\n    By what it fed on; and yet, within a month-\n    Let me not think on\'t! Frailty, thy name is woman!-\n    A little month, or ere those shoes were old\n    With which she followed my poor father\'s body\n    Like Niobe, all tears- why she, even she\n    (O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason\n    Would have mourn\'d longer) married with my uncle;  \n    My father\'s brother, but no more like my father\n    Than I to Hercules. Within a month,\n    Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears\n    Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,\n    She married. O, most wicked speed, to post\n    With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!\n    It is not, nor it cannot come to good.\n    But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue!\n\n          Enter Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo.\n\n  Hor. Hail to your lordship!\n  Ham. I am glad to see you well.\n    Horatio!- or I do forget myself.\n  Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.\n  Ham. Sir, my good friend- I\'ll change that name with you.\n    And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?\n    Marcellus?\n  Mar. My good lord!\n  Ham. I am very glad to see you.- [To Bernardo] Good even, sir.-  \n    But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?\n  Hor. A truant disposition, good my lord.\n  Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so,\n    Nor shall you do my ear that violence\n    To make it truster of your own report\n    Against yourself. I know you are no truant.\n    But what is your affair in Elsinore?\n    We\'ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.\n  Hor. My lord, I came to see your father\'s funeral.\n  Ham. I prithee do not mock me, fellow student.\n    I think it was to see my mother\'s wedding.\n  Hor. Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.\n  Ham. Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak\'d meats\n    Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.\n    Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven\n    Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!\n    My father- methinks I see my father.\n  Hor. O, where, my lord?\n  Ham. In my mind\'s eye, Horatio.\n  Hor. I saw him once. He was a goodly king.  \n  Ham. He was a man, take him for all in all.\n    I shall not look upon his like again.\n  Hor. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.\n  Ham. Saw? who?\n  Hor. My lord, the King your father.\n  Ham. The King my father?\n  Hor. Season your admiration for a while\n    With an attent ear, till I may deliver\n    Upon the witness of these gentlemen,\n    This marvel to you.\n  Ham. For God\'s love let me hear!\n  Hor. Two nights together had these gentlemen\n    (Marcellus and Bernardo) on their watch\n    In the dead vast and middle of the night\n    Been thus encount\'red. A figure like your father,\n    Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,\n    Appears before them and with solemn march\n    Goes slow and stately by them. Thrice he walk\'d\n    By their oppress\'d and fear-surprised eyes,\n    Within his truncheon\'s length; whilst they distill\'d  \n    Almost to jelly with the act of fear,\n    Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me\n    In dreadful secrecy impart they did,\n    And I with them the third night kept the watch;\n    Where, as they had deliver\'d, both in time,\n    Form of the thing, each word made true and good,\n    The apparition comes. I knew your father.\n    These hands are not more like.\n  Ham. But where was this?\n  Mar. My lord, upon the platform where we watch\'d.\n  Ham. Did you not speak to it?\n  Hor. My lord, I did;\n    But answer made it none. Yet once methought\n    It lifted up it head and did address\n    Itself to motion, like as it would speak;\n    But even then the morning cock crew loud,\n    And at the sound it shrunk in haste away\n    And vanish\'d from our sight.\n  Ham. \'Tis very strange.\n  Hor. As I do live, my honour\'d lord, \'tis true;  \n    And we did think it writ down in our duty\n    To let you know of it.\n  Ham. Indeed, indeed, sirs. But this troubles me.\n    Hold you the watch to-night?\n  Both [Mar. and Ber.] We do, my lord.\n  Ham. Arm\'d, say you?\n  Both. Arm\'d, my lord.\n  Ham. From top to toe?\n  Both. My lord, from head to foot.\n  Ham. Then saw you not his face?\n  Hor. O, yes, my lord! He wore his beaver up.\n  Ham. What, look\'d he frowningly.\n  Hor. A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.\n  Ham. Pale or red?\n  Hor. Nay, very pale.\n  Ham. And fix\'d his eyes upon you?\n  Hor. Most constantly.\n  Ham. I would I had been there.\n  Hor. It would have much amaz\'d you.\n  Ham. Very like, very like. Stay\'d it long?  \n  Hor. While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.\n  Both. Longer, longer.\n  Hor. Not when I saw\'t.\n  Ham. His beard was grizzled- no?\n  Hor. It was, as I have seen it in his life,\n    A sable silver\'d.\n  Ham. I will watch to-night.\n    Perchance \'twill walk again.\n  Hor. I warr\'nt it will.\n  Ham. If it assume my noble father\'s person,\n    I\'ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape\n    And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,\n    If you have hitherto conceal\'d this sight,\n    Let it be tenable in your silence still;\n    And whatsoever else shall hap to-night,\n    Give it an understanding but no tongue.\n    I will requite your loves. So, fare you well.\n    Upon the platform, \'twixt eleven and twelve,\n    I\'ll visit you.\n  All. Our duty to your honour.  \n  Ham. Your loves, as mine to you. Farewell.\n                                        Exeunt [all but Hamlet].\n    My father\'s spirit- in arms? All is not well.\n    I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come!\n    Till then sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise,\n    Though all the earth o\'erwhelm them, to men\'s eyes.\nExit.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nElsinore. A room in the house of Polonius.\n\nEnter Laertes and Ophelia.\n\n  Laer. My necessaries are embark\'d. Farewell.\n    And, sister, as the winds give benefit\n    And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,\n    But let me hear from you.\n  Oph. Do you doubt that?\n  Laer. For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour,\n    Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood;\n    A violet in the youth of primy nature,\n    Forward, not permanent- sweet, not lasting;\n    The perfume and suppliance of a minute;\n    No more.\n  Oph. No more but so?\n  Laer. Think it no more.\n    For nature crescent does not grow alone\n    In thews and bulk; but as this temple waxes,\n    The inward service of the mind and soul\n    Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,  \n    And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch\n    The virtue of his will; but you must fear,\n    His greatness weigh\'d, his will is not his own;\n    For he himself is subject to his birth.\n    He may not, as unvalued persons do,\n    Carve for himself, for on his choice depends\n    The safety and health of this whole state,\n    And therefore must his choice be circumscrib\'d\n    Unto the voice and yielding of that body\n    Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,\n    It fits your wisdom so far to believe it\n    As he in his particular act and place\n    May give his saying deed; which is no further\n    Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.\n    Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain\n    If with too credent ear you list his songs,\n    Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open\n    To his unmast\'red importunity.\n    Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,\n    And keep you in the rear of your affection,  \n    Out of the shot and danger of desire.\n    The chariest maid is prodigal enough\n    If she unmask her beauty to the moon.\n    Virtue itself scopes not calumnious strokes.\n    The canker galls the infants of the spring\n    Too oft before their buttons be disclos\'d,\n    And in the morn and liquid dew of youth\n    Contagious blastments are most imminent.\n    Be wary then; best safety lies in fear.\n    Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.\n  Oph. I shall th\' effect of this good lesson keep\n    As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,\n    Do not as some ungracious pastors do,\n    Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,\n    Whiles, like a puff\'d and reckless libertine,\n    Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads\n    And recks not his own rede.\n  Laer. O, fear me not!\n\n                       Enter Polonius.  \n\n    I stay too long. But here my father comes.\n    A double blessing is a double grace;\n    Occasion smiles upon a second leave.\n  Pol. Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame!\n    The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,\n    And you are stay\'d for. There- my blessing with thee!\n    And these few precepts in thy memory\n    Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,\n    Nor any unproportion\'d thought his act.\n    Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:\n    Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,\n    Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;\n    But do not dull thy palm with entertainment\n    Of each new-hatch\'d, unfledg\'d comrade. Beware\n    Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,\n    Bear\'t that th\' opposed may beware of thee.\n    Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;\n    Take each man\'s censure, but reserve thy judgment.\n    Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,  \n    But not express\'d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;\n    For the apparel oft proclaims the man,\n    And they in France of the best rank and station\n    Are most select and generous, chief in that.\n    Neither a borrower nor a lender be;\n    For loan oft loses both itself and friend,\n    And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.\n    This above all- to thine own self be true,\n    And it must follow, as the night the day,\n    Thou canst not then be false to any man.\n    Farewell. My blessing season this in thee!\n  Laer. Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.\n  Pol. The time invites you. Go, your servants tend.\n  Laer. Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well\n    What I have said to you.\n  Oph. \'Tis in my memory lock\'d,\n    And you yourself shall keep the key of it.\n  Laer. Farewell.                                          Exit.\n  Pol. What is\'t, Ophelia, he hath said to you?\n  Oph. So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.  \n  Pol. Marry, well bethought!\n    \'Tis told me he hath very oft of late\n    Given private time to you, and you yourself\n    Have of your audience been most free and bounteous.\n    If it be so- as so \'tis put on me,\n    And that in way of caution- I must tell you\n    You do not understand yourself so clearly\n    As it behooves my daughter and your honour.\n    What is between you? Give me up the truth.\n  Oph. He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders\n    Of his affection to me.\n  Pol. Affection? Pooh! You speak like a green girl,\n    Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.\n    Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?\n  Oph. I do not know, my lord, what I should think,\n  Pol. Marry, I will teach you! Think yourself a baby\n    That you have ta\'en these tenders for true pay,\n    Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly,\n    Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,\n    Running it thus) you\'ll tender me a fool.  \n  Oph. My lord, he hath importun\'d me with love\n    In honourable fashion.\n  Pol. Ay, fashion you may call it. Go to, go to!\n  Oph. And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,\n    With almost all the holy vows of heaven.\n  Pol. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks! I do know,\n    When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul\n    Lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter,\n    Giving more light than heat, extinct in both\n    Even in their promise, as it is a-making,\n    You must not take for fire. From this time\n    Be something scanter of your maiden presence.\n    Set your entreatments at a higher rate\n    Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,\n    Believe so much in him, that he is young,\n    And with a larger tether may he walk\n    Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,\n    Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,\n    Not of that dye which their investments show,\n    But mere implorators of unholy suits,  \n    Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,\n    The better to beguile. This is for all:\n    I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth\n    Have you so slander any moment leisure\n    As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.\n    Look to\'t, I charge you. Come your ways.\n  Oph. I shall obey, my lord.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nElsinore. The platform before the Castle.\n\nEnter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.\n\n  Ham. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.\n  Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air.\n  Ham. What hour now?\n  Hor. I think it lacks of twelve.\n  Mar. No, it is struck.\n  Hor. Indeed? I heard it not. It then draws near the season\n    Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.\n                   A flourish of trumpets, and two pieces go off.\n    What does this mean, my lord?\n  Ham. The King doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,\n    Keeps wassail, and the swagg\'ring upspring reels,\n    And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,\n    The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out\n    The triumph of his pledge.\n  Hor. Is it a custom?\n  Ham. Ay, marry, is\'t;\n    But to my mind, though I am native here  \n    And to the manner born, it is a custom\n    More honour\'d in the breach than the observance.\n    This heavy-headed revel east and west\n    Makes us traduc\'d and tax\'d of other nations;\n    They clip us drunkards and with swinish phrase\n    Soil our addition; and indeed it takes\n    From our achievements, though perform\'d at height,\n    The pith and marrow of our attribute.\n    So oft it chances in particular men\n    That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,\n    As in their birth,- wherein they are not guilty,\n    Since nature cannot choose his origin,-\n    By the o\'ergrowth of some complexion,\n    Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,\n    Or by some habit that too much o\'erleavens\n    The form of plausive manners, that these men\n    Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,\n    Being nature\'s livery, or fortune\'s star,\n    Their virtues else- be they as pure as grace,\n    As infinite as man may undergo-  \n    Shall in the general censure take corruption\n    From that particular fault. The dram of e\'il\n    Doth all the noble substance often dout To his own scandal.\n\n                         Enter Ghost.\n\n  Hor. Look, my lord, it comes!\n  Ham. Angels and ministers of grace defend us!\n    Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn\'d,\n    Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,\n    Be thy intents wicked or charitable,\n    Thou com\'st in such a questionable shape\n    That I will speak to thee. I\'ll call thee Hamlet,\n    King, father, royal Dane. O, answer me?\n    Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell\n    Why thy canoniz\'d bones, hearsed in death,\n    Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre\n    Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn\'d,\n    Hath op\'d his ponderous and marble jaws\n    To cast thee up again. What may this mean  \n    That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel,\n    Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon,\n    Making night hideous, and we fools of nature\n    So horridly to shake our disposition\n    With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?\n    Say, why is this? wherefore? What should we do?\n                                           Ghost beckons Hamlet.\n  Hor. It beckons you to go away with it,\n    As if it some impartment did desire\n    To you alone.\n  Mar. Look with what courteous action\n    It waves you to a more removed ground.\n    But do not go with it!\n  Hor. No, by no means!\n  Ham. It will not speak. Then will I follow it.\n  Hor. Do not, my lord!\n  Ham. Why, what should be the fear?\n    I do not set my life at a pin\'s fee;\n    And for my soul, what can it do to that,\n    Being a thing immortal as itself?  \n    It waves me forth again. I\'ll follow it.\n  Hor. What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,\n    Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff\n    That beetles o\'er his base into the sea,\n    And there assume some other, horrible form\n    Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason\n    And draw you into madness? Think of it.\n    The very place puts toys of desperation,\n    Without more motive, into every brain\n    That looks so many fadoms to the sea\n    And hears it roar beneath.\n  Ham. It waves me still.\n    Go on. I\'ll follow thee.\n  Mar. You shall not go, my lord.\n  Ham. Hold off your hands!\n  Hor. Be rul\'d. You shall not go.\n  Ham. My fate cries out\n    And makes each petty artire in this body\n    As hardy as the Nemean lion\'s nerve.\n                                                [Ghost beckons.]  \n    Still am I call\'d. Unhand me, gentlemen.\n    By heaven, I\'ll make a ghost of him that lets me!-\n    I say, away!- Go on. I\'ll follow thee.\n                                        Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet.\n  Hor. He waxes desperate with imagination.\n  Mar. Let\'s follow. \'Tis not fit thus to obey him.\n  Hor. Have after. To what issue wail this come?\n  Mar. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.\n  Hor. Heaven will direct it.\n  Mar. Nay, let\'s follow him.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene V.\nElsinore. The Castle. Another part of the fortifications.\n\nEnter Ghost and Hamlet.\n\n  Ham. Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak! I\'ll go no further.\n  Ghost. Mark me.\n  Ham. I will.\n  Ghost. My hour is almost come,\n    When I to sulph\'rous and tormenting flames\n    Must render up myself.\n  Ham. Alas, poor ghost!\n  Ghost. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing\n    To what I shall unfold.\n  Ham. Speak. I am bound to hear.\n  Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.\n  Ham. What?\n  Ghost. I am thy father\'s spirit,\n    Doom\'d for a certain term to walk the night,\n    And for the day confin\'d to fast in fires,\n    Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature\n    Are burnt and purg\'d away. But that I am forbid  \n    To tell the secrets of my prison house,\n    I could a tale unfold whose lightest word\n    Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,\n    Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,\n    Thy knotted and combined locks to part,\n    And each particular hair to stand an end\n    Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.\n    But this eternal blazon must not be\n    To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!\n    If thou didst ever thy dear father love-\n  Ham. O God!\n  Ghost. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murther.\n  Ham. Murther?\n  Ghost. Murther most foul, as in the best it is;\n    But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.\n  Ham. Haste me to know\'t, that I, with wings as swift\n    As meditation or the thoughts of love,\n    May sweep to my revenge.\n  Ghost. I find thee apt;\n    And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed  \n    That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,\n    Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear.\n    \'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,\n    A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark\n    Is by a forged process of my death\n    Rankly abus\'d. But know, thou noble youth,\n    The serpent that did sting thy father\'s life\n    Now wears his crown.\n  Ham. O my prophetic soul!\n    My uncle?\n  Ghost. Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,\n    With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts-\n    O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power\n    So to seduce!- won to his shameful lust\n    The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.\n    O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there,\n    From me, whose love was of that dignity\n    That it went hand in hand even with the vow\n    I made to her in marriage, and to decline\n    Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor  \n    To those of mine!\n    But virtue, as it never will be mov\'d,\n    Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,\n    So lust, though to a radiant angel link\'d,\n    Will sate itself in a celestial bed\n    And prey on garbage.\n    But soft! methinks I scent the morning air.\n    Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,\n    My custom always of the afternoon,\n    Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,\n    With juice of cursed hebona in a vial,\n    And in the porches of my ears did pour\n    The leperous distilment; whose effect\n    Holds such an enmity with blood of man\n    That swift as quicksilverr it courses through\n    The natural gates and alleys of the body,\n    And with a sudden vigour it doth posset\n    And curd, like eager droppings into milk,\n    The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine;\n    And a most instant tetter bark\'d about,  \n    Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust\n    All my smooth body.\n    Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother\'s hand\n    Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch\'d;\n    Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,\n    Unhous\'led, disappointed, unanel\'d,\n    No reckoning made, but sent to my account\n    With all my imperfections on my head.\n  Ham. O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!\n  Ghost. If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.\n    Let not the royal bed of Denmark be\n    A couch for luxury and damned incest.\n    But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,\n    Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive\n    Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven,\n    And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge\n    To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once.\n    The glowworm shows the matin to be near\n    And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.\n    Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me.                      Exit.  \n  Ham. O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?\n    And shall I couple hell? Hold, hold, my heart!\n    And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,\n    But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?\n    Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat\n    In this distracted globe. Remember thee?\n    Yea, from the table of my memory\n    I\'ll wipe away all trivial fond records,\n    All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past\n    That youth and observation copied there,\n    And thy commandment all alone shall live\n    Within the book and volume of my brain,\n    Unmix\'d with baser matter. Yes, by heaven!\n    O most pernicious woman!\n    O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!\n    My tables! Meet it is I set it down\n    That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;\n    At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark.        [Writes.]\n    So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word:\n    It is \'Adieu, adieu! Remember me.\'  \n    I have sworn\'t.\n  Hor. (within) My lord, my lord!\n\n                   Enter Horatio and Marcellus.\n\n  Mar. Lord Hamlet!\n  Hor. Heaven secure him!\n  Ham. So be it!\n  Mar. Illo, ho, ho, my lord!\n  Ham. Hillo, ho, ho, boy! Come, bird, come.\n  Mar. How is\'t, my noble lord?\n  Hor. What news, my lord?\n  Mar. O, wonderful!\n  Hor. Good my lord, tell it.\n  Ham. No, you will reveal it.\n  Hor. Not I, my lord, by heaven!\n  Mar. Nor I, my lord.\n  Ham. How say you then? Would heart of man once think it?\n    But you\'ll be secret?\n  Both. Ay, by heaven, my lord.  \n  Ham. There\'s neer a villain dwelling in all Denmark\n    But he\'s an arrant knave.\n  Hor. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave\n    To tell us this.\n  Ham. Why, right! You are in the right!\n    And so, without more circumstance at all,\n    I hold it fit that we shake hands and part;\n    You, as your business and desires shall point you,\n    For every man hath business and desire,\n    Such as it is; and for my own poor part,\n    Look you, I\'ll go pray.\n  Hor. These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.\n  Ham. I am sorry they offend you, heartily;\n    Yes, faith, heartily.\n  Hor. There\'s no offence, my lord.\n  Ham. Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,\n    And much offence too. Touching this vision here,\n    It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you.\n    For your desire to know what is between us,\n    O\'ermaster\'t as you may. And now, good friends,  \n    As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers,\n    Give me one poor request.\n  Hor. What is\'t, my lord? We will.\n  Ham. Never make known what you have seen to-night.\n  Both. My lord, we will not.\n  Ham. Nay, but swear\'t.\n  Hor. In faith,\n    My lord, not I.\n  Mar. Nor I, my lord- in faith.\n  Ham. Upon my sword.\n  Mar. We have sworn, my lord, already.\n  Ham. Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.\n\n                 Ghost cries under the stage.\n\n  Ghost. Swear.\n  Ham. Aha boy, say\'st thou so? Art thou there, truepenny?\n    Come on! You hear this fellow in the cellarage.\n    Consent to swear.\n  Hor. Propose the oath, my lord.  \n  Ham. Never to speak of this that you have seen.\n    Swear by my sword.\n  Ghost. [beneath] Swear.\n  Ham. Hic et ubique? Then we\'ll shift our ground.\n    Come hither, gentlemen,\n    And lay your hands again upon my sword.\n    Never to speak of this that you have heard:\n    Swear by my sword.\n  Ghost. [beneath] Swear by his sword.\n  Ham. Well said, old mole! Canst work i\' th\' earth so fast?\n    A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends."\n  Hor. O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!\n  Ham. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.\n    There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,\n    Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.\n    But come!\n    Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,\n    How strange or odd soe\'er I bear myself\n    (As I perchance hereafter shall think meet\n    To put an antic disposition on),  \n    That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,\n    With arms encumb\'red thus, or this head-shake,\n    Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,\n    As \'Well, well, we know,\' or \'We could, an if we would,\'\n    Or \'If we list to speak,\' or \'There be, an if they might,\'\n    Or such ambiguous giving out, to note\n    That you know aught of me- this is not to do,\n    So grace and mercy at your most need help you,\n    Swear.\n  Ghost. [beneath] Swear.\n                                                   [They swear.]\n  Ham. Rest, rest, perturbed spirit! So, gentlemen,\n    With all my love I do commend me to you;\n    And what so poor a man as Hamlet is\n    May do t\' express his love and friending to you,\n    God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;\n    And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.\n    The time is out of joint. O cursed spite\n    That ever I was born to set it right!\n    Nay, come, let\'s go together.  \n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nAct II. Scene I.\nElsinore. A room in the house of Polonius.\n\nEnter Polonius and Reynaldo.\n\n  Pol. Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.\n  Rey. I will, my lord.\n  Pol. You shall do marvell\'s wisely, good Reynaldo,\n    Before You visit him, to make inquire\n    Of his behaviour.\n  Rey. My lord, I did intend it.\n  Pol. Marry, well said, very well said. Look you, sir,\n    Enquire me first what Danskers are in Paris;\n    And how, and who, what means, and where they keep,\n    What company, at what expense; and finding\n    By this encompassment and drift of question\n    That they do know my son, come you more nearer\n    Than your particular demands will touch it.\n    Take you, as \'twere, some distant knowledge of him;\n    As thus, \'I know his father and his friends,\n    And in part him.\' Do you mark this, Reynaldo?\n  Rey. Ay, very well, my lord.  \n  Pol. \'And in part him, but,\' you may say, \'not well.\n    But if\'t be he I mean, he\'s very wild\n    Addicted so and so\'; and there put on him\n    What forgeries you please; marry, none so rank\n    As may dishonour him- take heed of that;\n    But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips\n    As are companions noted and most known\n    To youth and liberty.\n  Rey. As gaming, my lord.\n  Pol. Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling,\n    Drabbing. You may go so far.\n  Rey. My lord, that would dishonour him.\n  Pol. Faith, no, as you may season it in the charge.\n    You must not put another scandal on him,\n    That he is open to incontinency.\n    That\'s not my meaning. But breathe his faults so quaintly\n    That they may seem the taints of liberty,\n    The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,\n    A savageness in unreclaimed blood,\n    Of general assault.  \n  Rey. But, my good lord-\n  Pol. Wherefore should you do this?\n  Rey. Ay, my lord,\n    I would know that.\n  Pol. Marry, sir, here\'s my drift,\n    And I believe it is a fetch of warrant.\n    You laying these slight sullies on my son\n    As \'twere a thing a little soil\'d i\' th\' working,\n    Mark you,\n    Your party in converse, him you would sound,\n    Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes\n    The youth you breathe of guilty, be assur\'d\n    He closes with you in this consequence:\n    \'Good sir,\' or so, or \'friend,\' or \'gentleman\'-\n    According to the phrase or the addition\n    Of man and country-\n  Rey. Very good, my lord.\n  Pol. And then, sir, does \'a this- \'a does- What was I about to say?\n    By the mass, I was about to say something! Where did I leave?\n  Rey. At \'closes in the consequence,\' at \'friend or so,\' and  \n    gentleman.\'\n  Pol. At \'closes in the consequence\'- Ay, marry!\n    He closes thus: \'I know the gentleman.\n    I saw him yesterday, or t\'other day,\n    Or then, or then, with such or such; and, as you say,\n    There was \'a gaming; there o\'ertook in\'s rouse;\n    There falling out at tennis\'; or perchance,\n    \'I saw him enter such a house of sale,\'\n    Videlicet, a brothel, or so forth.\n    See you now-\n    Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth;\n    And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,\n    With windlasses and with assays of bias,\n    By indirections find directions out.\n    So, by my former lecture and advice,\n    Shall you my son. You have me, have you not\n  Rey. My lord, I have.\n  Pol. God b\' wi\' ye, fare ye well!\n  Rey. Good my lord!                                    [Going.]\n  Pol. Observe his inclination in yourself.  \n  Rey. I shall, my lord.\n  Pol. And let him ply his music.\n  Rey. Well, my lord.\n  Pol. Farewell!\n                                                  Exit Reynaldo.\n\n                       Enter Ophelia.\n\n    How now, Ophelia? What\'s the matter?\n  Oph. O my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted!\n  Pol. With what, i\' th\' name of God I\n  Oph. My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,\n    Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac\'d,\n    No hat upon his head, his stockings foul\'d,\n    Ungart\'red, and down-gyved to his ankle;\n    Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,\n    And with a look so piteous in purport\n    As if he had been loosed out of hell\n    To speak of horrors- he comes before me.\n  Pol. Mad for thy love?  \n  Oph. My lord, I do not know,\n    But truly I do fear it.\n  Pol. What said he?\n  Oph. He took me by the wrist and held me hard;\n    Then goes he to the length of all his arm,\n    And, with his other hand thus o\'er his brow,\n    He falls to such perusal of my face\n    As he would draw it. Long stay\'d he so.\n    At last, a little shaking of mine arm,\n    And thrice his head thus waving up and down,\n    He rais\'d a sigh so piteous and profound\n    As it did seem to shatter all his bulk\n    And end his being. That done, he lets me go,\n    And with his head over his shoulder turn\'d\n    He seem\'d to find his way without his eyes,\n    For out o\' doors he went without their help\n    And to the last bended their light on me.\n  Pol. Come, go with me. I will go seek the King.\n    This is the very ecstasy of love,\n    Whose violent property fordoes itself  \n    And leads the will to desperate undertakings\n    As oft as any passion under heaven\n    That does afflict our natures. I am sorry.\n    What, have you given him any hard words of late?\n  Oph. No, my good lord; but, as you did command,\n    I did repel his letters and denied\n    His access to me.\n  Pol. That hath made him mad.\n    I am sorry that with better heed and judgment\n    I had not quoted him. I fear\'d he did but trifle\n    And meant to wrack thee; but beshrew my jealousy!\n    By heaven, it is as proper to our age\n    To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions\n    As it is common for the younger sort\n    To lack discretion. Come, go we to the King.\n    This must be known; which, being kept close, might move\n    More grief to hide than hate to utter love.\n    Come.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\nScene II.\nElsinore. A room in the Castle.\n\nFlourish. [Enter King and Queen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, cum aliis.\n\n  King. Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.\n    Moreover that we much did long to see you,\n    The need we have to use you did provoke\n    Our hasty sending. Something have you heard\n    Of Hamlet\'s transformation. So I call it,\n    Sith nor th\' exterior nor the inward man\n    Resembles that it was. What it should be,\n    More than his father\'s death, that thus hath put him\n    So much from th\' understanding of himself,\n    I cannot dream of. I entreat you both\n    That, being of so young clays brought up with him,\n    And since so neighbour\'d to his youth and haviour,\n    That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court\n    Some little time; so by your companies\n    To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather\n    So much as from occasion you may glean,  \n    Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus\n    That, open\'d, lies within our remedy.\n  Queen. Good gentlemen, he hath much talk\'d of you,\n    And sure I am two men there are not living\n    To whom he more adheres. If it will please you\n    To show us so much gentry and good will\n    As to expend your time with us awhile\n    For the supply and profit of our hope,\n    Your visitation shall receive such thanks\n    As fits a king\'s remembrance.\n  Ros. Both your Majesties\n    Might, by the sovereign power you have of us,\n    Put your dread pleasures more into command\n    Than to entreaty.\n  Guil. But we both obey,\n    And here give up ourselves, in the full bent,\n    To lay our service freely at your feet,\n    To be commanded.\n  King. Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.\n  Queen. Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.  \n    And I beseech you instantly to visit\n    My too much changed son.- Go, some of you,\n    And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.\n  Guil. Heavens make our presence and our practices\n    Pleasant and helpful to him!\n  Queen. Ay, amen!\n                 Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, [with some\n                                                    Attendants].\n\n                         Enter Polonius.\n\n  Pol. Th\' ambassadors from Norway, my good lord,\n    Are joyfully return\'d.\n  King. Thou still hast been the father of good news.\n  Pol. Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good liege,\n    I hold my duty as I hold my soul,\n    Both to my God and to my gracious king;\n    And I do think- or else this brain of mine\n    Hunts not the trail of policy so sure\n    As it hath us\'d to do- that I have found  \n    The very cause of Hamlet\'s lunacy.\n  King. O, speak of that! That do I long to hear.\n  Pol. Give first admittance to th\' ambassadors.\n    My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.\n  King. Thyself do grace to them, and bring them in.\n                                                [Exit Polonius.]\n    He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found\n    The head and source of all your son\'s distemper.\n  Queen. I doubt it is no other but the main,\n    His father\'s death and our o\'erhasty marriage.\n  King. Well, we shall sift him.\n\n              Enter Polonius, Voltemand, and Cornelius.\n\n    Welcome, my good friends.\n    Say, Voltemand, what from our brother Norway?\n  Volt. Most fair return of greetings and desires.\n    Upon our first, he sent out to suppress\n    His nephew\'s levies; which to him appear\'d\n    To be a preparation \'gainst the Polack,  \n    But better look\'d into, he truly found\n    It was against your Highness; whereat griev\'d,\n    That so his sickness, age, and impotence\n    Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests\n    On Fortinbras; which he, in brief, obeys,\n    Receives rebuke from Norway, and, in fine,\n    Makes vow before his uncle never more\n    To give th\' assay of arms against your Majesty.\n    Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,\n    Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee\n    And his commission to employ those soldiers,\n    So levied as before, against the Polack;\n    With an entreaty, herein further shown,\n                                                [Gives a paper.]\n    That it might please you to give quiet pass\n    Through your dominions for this enterprise,\n    On such regards of safety and allowance\n    As therein are set down.\n  King. It likes us well;\n    And at our more consider\'d time we\'ll read,  \n    Answer, and think upon this business.\n    Meantime we thank you for your well-took labour.\n    Go to your rest; at night we\'ll feast together.\n    Most welcome home!                       Exeunt Ambassadors.\n  Pol. This business is well ended.\n    My liege, and madam, to expostulate\n    What majesty should be, what duty is,\n    Why day is day, night is night, and time is time.\n    Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time.\n    Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,\n    And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,\n    I will be brief. Your noble son is mad.\n    Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,\n    What is\'t but to be nothing else but mad?\n    But let that go.\n  Queen. More matter, with less art.\n  Pol. Madam, I swear I use no art at all.\n    That he is mad, \'tis true: \'tis true \'tis pity;\n    And pity \'tis \'tis true. A foolish figure!\n    But farewell it, for I will use no art.  \n    Mad let us grant him then. And now remains\n    That we find out the cause of this effect-\n    Or rather say, the cause of this defect,\n    For this effect defective comes by cause.\n    Thus it remains, and the remainder thus.\n    Perpend.\n    I have a daughter (have while she is mine),\n    Who in her duty and obedience, mark,\n    Hath given me this. Now gather, and surmise.\n                                             [Reads] the letter.\n    \'To the celestial, and my soul\'s idol, the most beautified\n      Ophelia,\'-\n\n    That\'s an ill phrase, a vile phrase; \'beautified\' is a vile\n      phrase.\n    But you shall hear. Thus:\n                                                        [Reads.]\n    \'In her excellent white bosom, these, &c.\'\n  Queen. Came this from Hamlet to her?\n  Pol. Good madam, stay awhile. I will be faithful.     [Reads.]  \n\n          \'Doubt thou the stars are fire;\n            Doubt that the sun doth move;\n          Doubt truth to be a liar;\n            But never doubt I love.\n      \'O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers; I have not art to\n    reckon my groans; but that I love thee best, O most best, believe\n    it. Adieu.\n      \'Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him,\n                                                          HAMLET.\'\n\n    This, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me;\n    And more above, hath his solicitings,\n    As they fell out by time, by means, and place,\n    All given to mine ear.\n  King. But how hath she\n    Receiv\'d his love?\n  Pol. What do you think of me?\n  King. As of a man faithful and honourable.\n  Pol. I would fain prove so. But what might you think,  \n    When I had seen this hot love on the wing\n    (As I perceiv\'d it, I must tell you that,\n    Before my daughter told me), what might you,\n    Or my dear Majesty your queen here, think,\n    If I had play\'d the desk or table book,\n    Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb,\n    Or look\'d upon this love with idle sight?\n    What might you think? No, I went round to work\n    And my young mistress thus I did bespeak:\n    \'Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star.\n    This must not be.\' And then I prescripts gave her,\n    That she should lock herself from his resort,\n    Admit no messengers, receive no tokens.\n    Which done, she took the fruits of my advice,\n    And he, repulsed, a short tale to make,\n    Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,\n    Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,\n    Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension,\n    Into the madness wherein now he raves,\n    And all we mourn for.  \n  King. Do you think \'tis this?\n  Queen. it may be, very like.\n  Pol. Hath there been such a time- I would fain know that-\n    That I have Positively said \'\'Tis so,\'\n    When it prov\'d otherwise.?\n  King. Not that I know.\n  Pol. [points to his head and shoulder] Take this from this, if this\n      be otherwise.\n    If circumstances lead me, I will find\n    Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed\n    Within the centre.\n  King. How may we try it further?\n  Pol. You know sometimes he walks four hours together\n    Here in the lobby.\n  Queen. So he does indeed.\n  Pol. At such a time I\'ll loose my daughter to him.\n    Be you and I behind an arras then.\n    Mark the encounter. If he love her not,\n    And he not from his reason fall\'n thereon\n    Let me be no assistant for a state,  \n    But keep a farm and carters.\n  King. We will try it.\n\n                 Enter Hamlet, reading on a book.\n\n  Queen. But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.\n  Pol. Away, I do beseech you, both away\n    I\'ll board him presently. O, give me leave.\n                       Exeunt King and Queen, [with Attendants].\n    How does my good Lord Hamlet?\n  Ham. Well, God-a-mercy.\n  Pol. Do you know me, my lord?\n  Ham. Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.\n  Pol. Not I, my lord.\n  Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man.\n  Pol. Honest, my lord?\n  Ham. Ay, sir. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man\n    pick\'d out of ten thousand.\n  Pol. That\'s very true, my lord.\n  Ham. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god  \n    kissing carrion- Have you a daughter?\n  Pol. I have, my lord.\n  Ham. Let her not walk i\' th\' sun. Conception is a blessing, but not\n    as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to\'t.\n  Pol. [aside] How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter. Yet\n    he knew me not at first. He said I was a fishmonger. He is far\n    gone, far gone! And truly in my youth I suff\'red much extremity\n    for love- very near this. I\'ll speak to him again.- What do you\n    read, my lord?\n  Ham. Words, words, words.\n  Pol. What is the matter, my lord?\n  Ham. Between who?\n  Pol. I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.\n  Ham. Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here that old men\n    have grey beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes\n    purging thick amber and plum-tree gum; and that they have a\n    plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams. All which,\n    sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it\n    not honesty to have it thus set down; for you yourself, sir,\n    should be old as I am if, like a crab, you could go backward.  \n  Pol. [aside] Though this be madness, yet there is a method in\'t.-\n   Will You walk out of the air, my lord?\n  Ham. Into my grave?\n  Pol. Indeed, that is out o\' th\' air. [Aside] How pregnant sometimes\n    his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which\n    reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I\n    will leave him and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between\n    him and my daughter.- My honourable lord, I will most humbly take\n    my leave of you.\n  Ham. You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more\n    willingly part withal- except my life, except my life, except my\n    life,\n\n                    Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.\n\n  Pol. Fare you well, my lord.\n  Ham. These tedious old fools!\n  Pol. You go to seek the Lord Hamlet. There he is.\n  Ros. [to Polonius] God save you, sir!\n                                                Exit [Polonius].  \n  Guil. My honour\'d lord!\n  Ros. My most dear lord!\n  Ham. My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah,\n    Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?\n  Ros. As the indifferent children of the earth.\n  Guil. Happy in that we are not over-happy.\n    On Fortune\'s cap we are not the very button.\n  Ham. Nor the soles of her shoe?\n  Ros. Neither, my lord.\n  Ham. Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her\n    favours?\n  Guil. Faith, her privates we.\n  Ham. In the secret parts of Fortune? O! most true! she is a\n    strumpet. What news ?\n  Ros. None, my lord, but that the world\'s grown honest.\n  Ham. Then is doomsday near! But your news is not true. Let me\n    question more in particular. What have you, my good friends,\n    deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison\n    hither?\n  Guil. Prison, my lord?  \n  Ham. Denmark\'s a prison.\n  Ros. Then is the world one.\n  Ham. A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and\n    dungeons, Denmark being one o\' th\' worst.\n  Ros. We think not so, my lord.\n  Ham. Why, then \'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good\n    or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.\n  Ros. Why, then your ambition makes it one. \'Tis too narrow for your\n    mind.\n  Ham. O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a\n    king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.\n  Guil. Which dreams indeed are ambition; for the very substance of\n    the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.\n  Ham. A dream itself is but a shadow.\n  Ros. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that\n    it is but a shadow\'s shadow.\n  Ham. Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretch\'d\n    heroes the beggars\' shadows. Shall we to th\' court? for, by my\n    fay, I cannot reason.\n  Both. We\'ll wait upon you.  \n  Ham. No such matter! I will not sort you with the rest of my\n    servants; for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most\n    dreadfully attended. But in the beaten way of friendship, what\n    make you at Elsinore?\n  Ros. To visit you, my lord; no other occasion.\n  Ham. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you;\n    and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were\n    you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free\n    visitation? Come, deal justly with me. Come, come! Nay, speak.\n  Guil. What should we say, my lord?\n  Ham. Why, anything- but to th\' purpose. You were sent for; and\n    there is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties\n    have not craft enough to colour. I know the good King and Queen\n    have sent for you.\n  Ros. To what end, my lord?\n  Ham. That you must teach me. But let me conjure you by the rights\n    of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the\n    obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a\n    better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with\n    me, whether you were sent for or no.  \n  Ros. [aside to Guildenstern] What say you?\n  Ham. [aside] Nay then, I have an eye of you.- If you love me, hold\n    not off.\n  Guil. My lord, we were sent for.\n  Ham. I will tell you why. So shall my anticipation prevent your\n    discovery, and your secrecy to the King and Queen moult no\n    feather. I have of late- but wherefore I know not- lost all my\n    mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so\n    heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth,\n    seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the\n    air, look you, this brave o\'erhanging firmament, this majestical\n    roof fretted with golden fire- why, it appeareth no other thing\n    to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a\n    piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in\n    faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in\n    action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the\n    beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what\n    is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me- no, nor woman\n    neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.\n  Ros. My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.  \n  Ham. Why did you laugh then, when I said \'Man delights not me\'?\n  Ros. To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten\n    entertainment the players shall receive from you. We coted them\n    on the way, and hither are they coming to offer you service.\n  Ham. He that plays the king shall be welcome- his Majesty shall\n    have tribute of me; the adventurous knight shall use his foil and\n    target; the lover shall not sigh gratis; the humorous man shall\n    end his part in peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose\n    lungs are tickle o\' th\' sere; and the lady shall say her mind\n    freely, or the blank verse shall halt fort. What players are\n    they?\n  Ros. Even those you were wont to take such delight in, the\n    tragedians of the city.\n  Ham. How chances it they travel? Their residence, both in\n    reputation and profit, was better both ways.\n  Ros. I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late\n    innovation.\n  Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the\n    city? Are they so follow\'d?\n  Ros. No indeed are they not.  \n  Ham. How comes it? Do they grow rusty?\n  Ros. Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace; but there is,\n    sir, an eyrie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top\n    of question and are most tyrannically clapp\'d fort. These are now\n    the fashion, and so berattle the common stages (so they call\n    them) that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills and\n    dare scarce come thither.\n  Ham. What, are they children? Who maintains \'em? How are they\n    escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can\n    sing? Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow\n    themselves to common players (as it is most like, if their means\n    are no better), their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim\n    against their own succession.\n  Ros. Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and the nation\n    holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy. There was, for a\n    while, no money bid for argument unless the poet and the player\n    went to cuffs in the question.\n  Ham. Is\'t possible?\n  Guil. O, there has been much throwing about of brains.\n  Ham. Do the boys carry it away?  \n  Ros. Ay, that they do, my lord- Hercules and his load too.\n  Ham. It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark, and\n    those that would make mows at him while my father lived give\n    twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in\n    little. \'Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if\n    philosophy could find it out.\n\n                     Flourish for the Players.\n\n  Guil. There are the players.\n  Ham. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come! Th\'\n    appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply\n    with you in this garb, lest my extent to the players (which I\n    tell you must show fairly outwards) should more appear like\n    entertainment than yours. You are welcome. But my uncle-father\n    and aunt-mother are deceiv\'d.\n  Guil. In what, my dear lord?\n  Ham. I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly I\n    know a hawk from a handsaw.\n  \n                            Enter Polonius.\n\n  Pol. Well be with you, gentlemen!\n  Ham. Hark you, Guildenstern- and you too- at each ear a hearer!\n    That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling\n    clouts.\n  Ros. Happily he\'s the second time come to them; for they say an old\n    man is twice a child.\n  Ham. I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players. Mark it.-\n   You say right, sir; a Monday morning; twas so indeed.\n  Pol. My lord, I have news to tell you.\n  Ham. My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in\n    Rome-\n  Pol. The actors are come hither, my lord.\n  Ham. Buzz, buzz!\n  Pol. Upon my honour-\n  Ham. Then came each actor on his ass-\n  Pol. The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy,\n    history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral,\n    tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral; scene  \n    individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor\n    Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are\n    the only men.\n  Ham. O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!\n  Pol. What treasure had he, my lord?\n  Ham. Why,\n\n         \'One fair daughter, and no more,\n           The which he loved passing well.\'\n\n  Pol. [aside] Still on my daughter.\n  Ham. Am I not i\' th\' right, old Jephthah?\n  Pol. If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I\n    love passing well.\n  Ham. Nay, that follows not.\n  Pol. What follows then, my lord?\n  Ham. Why,\n\n           \'As by lot, God wot,\'\n\n and then, you know,\n  \n           \'It came to pass, as most like it was.\'\n\n    The first row of the pious chanson will show you more; for look\n    where my abridgment comes.\n\n                     Enter four or five Players.\n\n    You are welcome, masters; welcome, all.- I am glad to see thee\n    well.- Welcome, good friends.- O, my old friend? Why, thy face is\n    valanc\'d since I saw thee last. Com\'st\' thou to\' beard me in\n    Denmark?- What, my young lady and mistress? By\'r Lady, your\n    ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the\n    altitude of a chopine. Pray God your voice, like a piece of\n    uncurrent gold, be not crack\'d within the ring.- Masters, you are\n    all welcome. We\'ll e\'en to\'t like French falconers, fly at\n    anything we see. We\'ll have a speech straight. Come, give us a\n    taste of your quality. Come, a passionate speech.\n  1. Play. What speech, my good lord?\n  Ham. I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted;\n    or if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleas\'d  \n    not the million, \'twas caviary to the general; but it was (as I\n    receiv\'d it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in\n    the top of mine) an excellent play, well digested in the scenes,\n    set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember one said\n    there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury,\n    nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of\n    affectation; but call\'d it an honest method, as wholesome as\n    sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in\'t\n    I chiefly lov\'d. \'Twas AEneas\' tale to Dido, and thereabout of it\n    especially where he speaks of Priam\'s slaughter. If it live in\n    your memory, begin at this line- let me see, let me see:\n\n         \'The rugged Pyrrhus, like th\' Hyrcanian beast-\'\n\n    \'Tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus:\n\n         \'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,\n         Black as his purpose, did the night resemble\n         When he lay couched in the ominous horse,\n         Hath now this dread and black complexion smear\'d  \n         With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot\n         Now is be total gules, horridly trick\'d\n         With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,\n         Bak\'d and impasted with the parching streets,\n         That lend a tyrannous and a damned light\n         To their lord\'s murther. Roasted in wrath and fire,\n         And thus o\'ersized with coagulate gore,\n         With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus\n         Old grandsire Priam seeks.\'\n\n    So, proceed you.\n  Pol. Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good\n     discretion.\n\n  1. Play. \'Anon he finds him,\n      Striking too short at Greeks. His antique sword,\n      Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,\n      Repugnant to command. Unequal match\'d,\n      Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide;\n      But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword  \n      Th\' unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,\n      Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top\n      Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash\n      Takes prisoner Pyrrhus\' ear. For lo! his sword,\n      Which was declining on the milky head\n      Of reverend Priam, seem\'d i\' th\' air to stick.\n      So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,\n      And, like a neutral to his will and matter,\n      Did nothing.\n      But, as we often see, against some storm,\n      A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,\n      The bold winds speechless, and the orb below\n      As hush as death- anon the dreadful thunder\n      Doth rend the region; so, after Pyrrhus\' pause,\n      Aroused vengeance sets him new awork;\n      And never did the Cyclops\' hammers fall\n      On Mars\'s armour, forg\'d for proof eterne,\n      With less remorse than Pyrrhus\' bleeding sword\n      Now falls on Priam.\n      Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods,  \n      In general synod take away her power;\n      Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,\n      And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,\n      As low as to the fiends!\n\n  Pol. This is too long.\n  Ham. It shall to the barber\'s, with your beard.- Prithee say on.\n    He\'s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps. Say on; come to\n    Hecuba.\n\n  1. Play. \'But who, O who, had seen the mobled queen-\'\n\n  Ham. \'The mobled queen\'?\n  Pol. That\'s good! \'Mobled queen\' is good.\n\n  1. Play. \'Run barefoot up and down, threat\'ning the flames\n      With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head\n      Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,\n      About her lank and all o\'erteemed loins,\n      A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up-  \n      Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep\'d\n      \'Gainst Fortune\'s state would treason have pronounc\'d.\n      But if the gods themselves did see her then,\n      When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport\n      In Mincing with his sword her husband\'s limbs,\n      The instant burst of clamour that she made\n      (Unless things mortal move them not at all)\n      Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven\n      And passion in the gods.\'\n\n  Pol. Look, whe\'r he has not turn\'d his colour, and has tears in\'s\n    eyes. Prithee no more!\n  Ham. \'Tis well. I\'ll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.-\n    Good my lord, will you see the players well bestow\'d? Do you\n    hear? Let them be well us\'d; for they are the abstract and brief\n    chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a\n    bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.\n  Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert.\n  Ham. God\'s bodykins, man, much better! Use every man after his\n    desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own  \n    honour and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in\n    your bounty. Take them in.\n  Pol. Come, sirs.\n  Ham. Follow him, friends. We\'ll hear a play to-morrow.\n                 Exeunt Polonius and Players [except the First].\n    Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play \'The Murther of\n    Gonzago\'?\n  1. Play. Ay, my lord.\n  Ham. We\'ll ha\'t to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a\n    speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down and\n    insert in\'t, could you not?\n  1. Play. Ay, my lord.\n  Ham. Very well. Follow that lord- and look you mock him not.\n                                            [Exit First Player.]\n    My good friends, I\'ll leave you till night. You are welcome to\n    Elsinore.\n  Ros. Good my lord!\n  Ham. Ay, so, God b\' wi\' ye!\n                            [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern\n    Now I am alone.  \n    O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!\n    Is it not monstrous that this player here,\n    But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,\n    Could force his soul so to his own conceit\n    That, from her working, all his visage wann\'d,\n    Tears in his eyes, distraction in\'s aspect,\n    A broken voice, and his whole function suiting\n    With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!\n    For Hecuba!\n    What\'s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,\n    That he should weep for her? What would he do,\n    Had he the motive and the cue for passion\n    That I have? He would drown the stage with tears\n    And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;\n    Make mad the guilty and appal the free,\n    Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed\n    The very faculties of eyes and ears.\n    Yet I,\n    A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak\n    Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,  \n    And can say nothing! No, not for a king,\n    Upon whose property and most dear life\n    A damn\'d defeat was made. Am I a coward?\n    Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?\n    Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?\n    Tweaks me by th\' nose? gives me the lie i\' th\' throat\n    As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this, ha?\n    \'Swounds, I should take it! for it cannot be\n    But I am pigeon-liver\'d and lack gall\n    To make oppression bitter, or ere this\n    I should have fatted all the region kites\n    With this slave\'s offal. Bloody bawdy villain!\n    Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!\n    O, vengeance!\n    Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,\n    That I, the son of a dear father murther\'d,\n    Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,\n    Must (like a whore) unpack my heart with words\n    And fall a-cursing like a very drab,\n    A scullion!  \n    Fie upon\'t! foh! About, my brain! Hum, I have heard\n    That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,\n    Have by the very cunning of the scene\n    Been struck so to the soul that presently\n    They have proclaim\'d their malefactions;\n    For murther, though it have no tongue, will speak\n    With most miraculous organ, I\'ll have these Players\n    Play something like the murther of my father\n    Before mine uncle. I\'ll observe his looks;\n    I\'ll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,\n    I know my course. The spirit that I have seen\n    May be a devil; and the devil hath power\n    T\' assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps\n    Out of my weakness and my melancholy,\n    As he is very potent with such spirits,\n    Abuses me to damn me. I\'ll have grounds\n    More relative than this. The play\'s the thing\n    Wherein I\'ll catch the conscience of the King.         Exit.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. Scene I.\nElsinore. A room in the Castle.\n\nEnter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Lords.\n\n  King. And can you by no drift of circumstance\n    Get from him why he puts on this confusion,\n    Grating so harshly all his days of quiet\n    With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?\n  Ros. He does confess he feels himself distracted,\n    But from what cause he will by no means speak.\n  Guil. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,\n    But with a crafty madness keeps aloof\n    When we would bring him on to some confession\n    Of his true state.\n  Queen. Did he receive you well?\n  Ros. Most like a gentleman.\n  Guil. But with much forcing of his disposition.\n  Ros. Niggard of question, but of our demands\n    Most free in his reply.\n  Queen. Did you assay him  \n    To any pastime?\n  Ros. Madam, it so fell out that certain players\n    We o\'erraught on the way. Of these we told him,\n    And there did seem in him a kind of joy\n    To hear of it. They are here about the court,\n    And, as I think, they have already order\n    This night to play before him.\n  Pol. \'Tis most true;\n    And he beseech\'d me to entreat your Majesties\n    To hear and see the matter.\n  King. With all my heart, and it doth much content me\n    To hear him so inclin\'d.\n    Good gentlemen, give him a further edge\n    And drive his purpose on to these delights.\n  Ros. We shall, my lord.\n                            Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.\n  King. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too;\n    For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,\n    That he, as \'twere by accident, may here\n    Affront Ophelia.  \n    Her father and myself (lawful espials)\n    Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen,\n    We may of their encounter frankly judge\n    And gather by him, as he is behav\'d,\n    If\'t be th\' affliction of his love, or no,\n    That thus he suffers for.\n  Queen. I shall obey you;\n    And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish\n    That your good beauties be the happy cause\n    Of Hamlet\'s wildness. So shall I hope your virtues\n    Will bring him to his wonted way again,\n    To both your honours.\n  Oph. Madam, I wish it may.\n                                                   [Exit Queen.]\n  Pol. Ophelia, walk you here.- Gracious, so please you,\n    We will bestow ourselves.- [To Ophelia] Read on this book,\n    That show of such an exercise may colour\n    Your loneliness.- We are oft to blame in this,\n    \'Tis too much prov\'d, that with devotion\'s visage\n    And pious action we do sugar o\'er  \n    The Devil himself.\n  King. [aside] O, \'tis too true!\n    How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!\n    The harlot\'s cheek, beautied with plast\'ring art,\n    Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it\n    Than is my deed to my most painted word.\n    O heavy burthen!\n  Pol. I hear him coming. Let\'s withdraw, my lord.\n                                      Exeunt King and Polonius].\n\n                           Enter Hamlet.\n\n  Ham. To be, or not to be- that is the question:\n    Whether \'tis nobler in the mind to suffer\n    The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune\n    Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,\n    And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep-\n    No more; and by a sleep to say we end\n    The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks\n    That flesh is heir to. \'Tis a consummation  \n    Devoutly to be wish\'d. To die- to sleep.\n    To sleep- perchance to dream: ay, there\'s the rub!\n    For in that sleep of death what dreams may come\n    When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,\n    Must give us pause. There\'s the respect\n    That makes calamity of so long life.\n    For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,\n    Th\' oppressor\'s wrong, the proud man\'s contumely,\n    The pangs of despis\'d love, the law\'s delay,\n    The insolence of office, and the spurns\n    That patient merit of th\' unworthy takes,\n    When he himself might his quietus make\n    With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,\n    To grunt and sweat under a weary life,\n    But that the dread of something after death-\n    The undiscover\'d country, from whose bourn\n    No traveller returns- puzzles the will,\n    And makes us rather bear those ills we have\n    Than fly to others that we know not of?\n    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,  \n    And thus the native hue of resolution\n    Is sicklied o\'er with the pale cast of thought,\n    And enterprises of great pith and moment\n    With this regard their currents turn awry\n    And lose the name of action.- Soft you now!\n    The fair Ophelia!- Nymph, in thy orisons\n    Be all my sins rememb\'red.\n  Oph. Good my lord,\n    How does your honour for this many a day?\n  Ham. I humbly thank you; well, well, well.\n  Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours\n    That I have longed long to re-deliver.\n    I pray you, now receive them.\n  Ham. No, not I!\n    I never gave you aught.\n  Oph. My honour\'d lord, you know right well you did,\n    And with them words of so sweet breath compos\'d\n    As made the things more rich. Their perfume lost,\n    Take these again; for to the noble mind\n    Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.  \n    There, my lord.\n  Ham. Ha, ha! Are you honest?\n  Oph. My lord?\n  Ham. Are you fair?\n  Oph. What means your lordship?\n  Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no\n    discourse to your beauty.\n  Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?\n  Ham. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform\n    honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can\n    translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox,\n    but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.\n  Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.\n  Ham. You should not have believ\'d me; for virtue cannot so\n    inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you\n    not.\n  Oph. I was the more deceived.\n  Ham. Get thee to a nunnery! Why wouldst thou be a breeder of\n    sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse\n    me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.  \n    I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my\n    beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give\n    them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I\n    do, crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all;\n    believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where\'s your\n    father?\n  Oph. At home, my lord.\n  Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool\n    nowhere but in\'s own house. Farewell.\n  Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens!\n  Ham. If thou dost marry, I\'ll give thee this plague for thy dowry:\n    be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape\n    calumny. Get thee to a nunnery. Go, farewell. Or if thou wilt\n    needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what\n    monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too.\n    Farewell.\n  Oph. O heavenly powers, restore him!\n  Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath\n    given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you\n    amble, and you lisp; you nickname God\'s creatures and make your  \n    wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I\'ll no more on\'t! it hath made\n    me mad. I say, we will have no moe marriages. Those that are\n    married already- all but one- shall live; the rest shall keep as\n    they are. To a nunnery, go.                            Exit.\n  Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o\'erthrown!\n    The courtier\'s, scholar\'s, soldier\'s, eye, tongue, sword,\n    Th\' expectancy and rose of the fair state,\n    The glass of fashion and the mould of form,\n    Th\' observ\'d of all observers- quite, quite down!\n    And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,\n    That suck\'d the honey of his music vows,\n    Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,\n    Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;\n    That unmatch\'d form and feature of blown youth\n    Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me\n    T\' have seen what I have seen, see what I see!\n\n                   Enter King and Polonius.\n\n  King. Love? his affections do not that way tend;  \n    Nor what he spake, though it lack\'d form a little,\n    Was not like madness. There\'s something in his soul\n    O\'er which his melancholy sits on brood;\n    And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose\n    Will be some danger; which for to prevent,\n    I have in quick determination\n    Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England\n    For the demand of our neglected tribute.\n    Haply the seas, and countries different,\n    With variable objects, shall expel\n    This something-settled matter in his heart,\n    Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus\n    From fashion of himself. What think you on\'t?\n  Pol. It shall do well. But yet do I believe\n    The origin and commencement of his grief\n    Sprung from neglected love.- How now, Ophelia?\n    You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said.\n    We heard it all.- My lord, do as you please;\n    But if you hold it fit, after the play\n    Let his queen mother all alone entreat him  \n    To show his grief. Let her be round with him;\n    And I\'ll be plac\'d so please you, in the ear\n    Of all their conference. If she find him not,\n    To England send him; or confine him where\n    Your wisdom best shall think.\n  King. It shall be so.\n    Madness in great ones must not unwatch\'d go.         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nElsinore. hall in the Castle.\n\nEnter Hamlet and three of the Players.\n\n  Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc\'d it to you,\n    trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our\n    players do, I had as live the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do\n    not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all\n    gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say)\n    whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a\n    temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the\n    soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to\n    tatters, to very rags, to split the cars of the groundlings, who\n    (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb\n    shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipp\'d for o\'erdoing\n    Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.\n  Player. I warrant your honour.\n  Ham. Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your\n    tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with\n    this special observance, that you o\'erstep not the modesty of\n    nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing,  \n    whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as\n    \'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show Virtue her own feature,\n    scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his\n    form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though\n    it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious\n    grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance\n    o\'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I\n    have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to\n    speak it profanely), that, neither having the accent of\n    Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so\n    strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature\'s\n    journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated\n    humanity so abominably.\n  Player. I hope we have reform\'d that indifferently with us, sir.\n  Ham. O, reform it altogether! And let those that play your clowns\n    speak no more than is set down for them. For there be of them\n    that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren\n    spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary\n    question of the play be then to be considered. That\'s villanous\n    and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go  \n    make you ready.\n                                                 Exeunt Players.\n\n            Enter Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.\n\n    How now, my lord? Will the King hear this piece of work?\n  Pol. And the Queen too, and that presently.\n  Ham. Bid the players make haste, [Exit Polonius.] Will you two\n    help to hasten them?\n  Both. We will, my lord.                       Exeunt they two.\n  Ham. What, ho, Horatio!\n\n                      Enter Horatio.\n\n  Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service.\n  Ham. Horatio, thou art e\'en as just a man\n    As e\'er my conversation cop\'d withal.\n  Hor. O, my dear lord!\n  Ham. Nay, do not think I flatter;\n    For what advancement may I hope from thee,  \n    That no revenue hast but thy good spirits\n    To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter\'d?\n    No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,\n    And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee\n    Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?\n    Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice\n    And could of men distinguish, her election\n    Hath scald thee for herself. For thou hast been\n    As one, in suff\'ring all, that suffers nothing;\n    A man that Fortune\'s buffets and rewards\n    Hast ta\'en with equal thanks; and blest are those\n    Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled\n    That they are not a pipe for Fortune\'s finger\n    To sound what stop she please. Give me that man\n    That is not passion\'s slave, and I will wear him\n    In my heart\'s core, ay, in my heart of heart,\n    As I do thee. Something too much of this I\n    There is a play to-night before the King.\n    One scene of it comes near the circumstance,\n    Which I have told thee, of my father\'s death.  \n    I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,\n    Even with the very comment of thy soul\n    Observe my uncle. If his occulted guilt\n    Do not itself unkennel in one speech,\n    It is a damned ghost that we have seen,\n    And my imaginations are as foul\n    As Vulcan\'s stithy. Give him heedful note;\n    For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,\n    And after we will both our judgments join\n    In censure of his seeming.\n  Hor. Well, my lord.\n    If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,\n    And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.\n\n    Sound a flourish. [Enter Trumpets and Kettledrums. Danish\n    march. [Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz,\n      Guildenstern, and other Lords attendant, with the Guard\n                       carrying torches.\n\n  Ham. They are coming to the play. I must be idle.  \n    Get you a place.\n  King. How fares our cousin Hamlet?\n  Ham. Excellent, i\' faith; of the chameleon\'s dish. I eat the air,\n    promise-cramm\'d. You cannot feed capons so.\n  King. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet. These words are not\n    mine.\n  Ham. No, nor mine now. [To Polonius] My lord, you play\'d once\n    i\' th\' university, you say?\n  Pol. That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.\n  Ham. What did you enact?\n  Pol. I did enact Julius Caesar; I was kill\'d i\' th\' Capitol; Brutus\n    kill\'d me.\n  Ham. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there. Be\n    the players ready.\n  Ros. Ay, my lord. They stay upon your patience.\n  Queen. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.\n  Ham. No, good mother. Here\'s metal more attractive.\n  Pol. [to the King] O, ho! do you mark that?\n  Ham. Lady, shall I lie in your lap?\n                                  [Sits down at Ophelia\'s feet.]  \n  Oph. No, my lord.\n  Ham. I mean, my head upon your lap?\n  Oph. Ay, my lord.\n  Ham. Do you think I meant country matters?\n  Oph. I think nothing, my lord.\n  Ham. That\'s a fair thought to lie between maids\' legs.\n  Oph. What is, my lord?\n  Ham. Nothing.\n  Oph. You are merry, my lord.\n  Ham. Who, I?\n  Oph. Ay, my lord.\n  Ham. O God, your only jig-maker! What should a man do but be merry?\n    For look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died\n    within \'s two hours.\n  Oph. Nay \'tis twice two months, my lord.\n  Ham. So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I\'ll have a\n    suit of sables. O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten\n    yet? Then there\'s hope a great man\'s memory may outlive his life\n    half a year. But, by\'r Lady, he must build churches then; or else\n    shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose  \n    epitaph is \'For O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot!\'\n\n               Hautboys play. The dumb show enters.\n\n    Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen embracing\n    him and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation\n    unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her\n    neck. He lays him down upon a bank of flowers. She, seeing\n    him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his\n    crown, kisses it, pours poison in the sleeper\'s ears, and\n    leaves him. The Queen returns, finds the King dead, and makes\n    passionate action. The Poisoner with some three or four Mutes,\n    comes in again, seem to condole with her. The dead body is\n    carried away. The Poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts; she\n    seems harsh and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts\n    his love.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n  Oph. What means this, my lord?\n  Ham. Marry, this is miching malhecho; it means mischief.  \n  Oph. Belike this show imports the argument of the play.\n\n                      Enter Prologue.\n\n  Ham. We shall know by this fellow. The players cannot keep counsel;\n    they\'ll tell all.\n  Oph. Will he tell us what this show meant?\n  Ham. Ay, or any show that you\'ll show him. Be not you asham\'d to\n    show, he\'ll not shame to tell you what it means.\n  Oph. You are naught, you are naught! I\'ll mark the play.\n\n    Pro. For us, and for our tragedy,\n      Here stooping to your clemency,\n      We beg your hearing patiently.                     [Exit.]\n\n  Ham. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?\n  Oph. \'Tis brief, my lord.\n  Ham. As woman\'s love.\n\n              Enter [two Players as] King and Queen.  \n\n    King. Full thirty times hath Phoebus\' cart gone round\n      Neptune\'s salt wash and Tellus\' orbed ground,\n      And thirty dozed moons with borrowed sheen\n      About the world have times twelve thirties been,\n      Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands,\n      Unite comutual in most sacred bands.\n    Queen. So many journeys may the sun and moon\n      Make us again count o\'er ere love be done!\n      But woe is me! you are so sick of late,\n      So far from cheer and from your former state.\n      That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,\n      Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must;\n      For women\'s fear and love holds quantity,\n      In neither aught, or in extremity.\n      Now what my love is, proof hath made you know;\n      And as my love is siz\'d, my fear is so.\n      Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;\n      Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.\n    King. Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;  \n      My operant powers their functions leave to do.\n      And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,\n      Honour\'d, belov\'d, and haply one as kind\n      For husband shalt thou-\n    Queen. O, confound the rest!\n      Such love must needs be treason in my breast.\n      When second husband let me be accurst!\n      None wed the second but who killed the first.\n\n  Ham. [aside] Wormwood, wormwood!\n\n    Queen. The instances that second marriage move\n      Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.\n      A second time I kill my husband dead\n      When second husband kisses me in bed.\n    King. I do believe you think what now you speak;\n      But what we do determine oft we break.\n      Purpose is but the slave to memory,\n      Of violent birth, but poor validity;\n      Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,  \n      But fill unshaken when they mellow be.\n      Most necessary \'tis that we forget\n      To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.\n      What to ourselves in passion we propose,\n      The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.\n      The violence of either grief or joy\n      Their own enactures with themselves destroy.\n      Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;\n      Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.\n      This world is not for aye, nor \'tis not strange\n      That even our loves should with our fortunes change;\n      For \'tis a question left us yet to prove,\n      Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.\n      The great man down, you mark his favourite flies,\n      The poor advanc\'d makes friends of enemies;\n      And hitherto doth love on fortune tend,\n      For who not needs shall never lack a friend,\n      And who in want a hollow friend doth try,\n      Directly seasons him his enemy.\n      But, orderly to end where I begun,  \n      Our wills and fates do so contrary run\n      That our devices still are overthrown;\n      Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.\n      So think thou wilt no second husband wed;\n      But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.\n    Queen. Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light,\n      Sport and repose lock from me day and night,\n      To desperation turn my trust and hope,\n      An anchor\'s cheer in prison be my scope,\n      Each opposite that blanks the face of joy\n      Meet what I would have well, and it destroy,\n      Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,\n      If, once a widow, ever I be wife!\n\n  Ham. If she should break it now!\n\n    King. \'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile.\n      My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile\n      The tedious day with sleep.\n    Queen. Sleep rock thy brain,  \n                                                    [He] sleeps.\n      And never come mischance between us twain!\nExit.\n\n  Ham. Madam, how like you this play?\n  Queen. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.\n  Ham. O, but she\'ll keep her word.\n  King. Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in\'t?\n  Ham. No, no! They do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i\' th\'\n    world.\n  King. What do you call the play?\n  Ham. \'The Mousetrap.\' Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the\n    image of a murther done in Vienna. Gonzago is the duke\'s name;\n    his wife, Baptista. You shall see anon. \'Tis a knavish piece of\n    work; but what o\' that? Your Majesty, and we that have free\n    souls, it touches us not. Let the gall\'d jade winch; our withers\n    are unwrung.\n\n                         Enter Lucianus.\n  \n    This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.\n  Oph. You are as good as a chorus, my lord.\n  Ham. I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see\n    the puppets dallying.\n  Oph. You are keen, my lord, you are keen.\n  Ham. It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.\n  Oph. Still better, and worse.\n  Ham. So you must take your husbands.- Begin, murtherer. Pox, leave\n    thy damnable faces, and begin! Come, the croaking raven doth\n    bellow for revenge.\n\n    Luc. Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;\n      Confederate season, else no creature seeing;\n      Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,\n      With Hecate\'s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,\n      Thy natural magic and dire property\n      On wholesome life usurp immediately.\n                                   Pours the poison in his ears.\n\n  Ham. He poisons him i\' th\' garden for\'s estate. His name\'s Gonzago.  \n    The story is extant, and written in very choice Italian. You\n    shall see anon how the murtherer gets the love of Gonzago\'s wife.\n  Oph. The King rises.\n  Ham. What, frighted with false fire?\n  Queen. How fares my lord?\n  Pol. Give o\'er the play.\n  King. Give me some light! Away!\n  All. Lights, lights, lights!\n                              Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio.\n  Ham.   Why, let the strucken deer go weep,\n          The hart ungalled play;\n         For some must watch, while some must sleep:\n          Thus runs the world away.\n    Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers- if the rest of my\n    fortunes turn Turk with me-with two Provincial roses on my raz\'d\n    shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?\n  Hor. Half a share.\n  Ham.   A whole one I!\n         For thou dost know, O Damon dear,\n           This realm dismantled was  \n         Of Jove himself; and now reigns here\n           A very, very- pajock.\n  Hor. You might have rhym\'d.\n  Ham. O good Horatio, I\'ll take the ghost\'s word for a thousand\n    pound! Didst perceive?\n  Hor. Very well, my lord.\n  Ham. Upon the talk of the poisoning?\n  Hor. I did very well note him.\n  Ham.   Aha! Come, some music! Come, the recorders!\n         For if the King like not the comedy,\n         Why then, belike he likes it not, perdy.\n    Come, some music!\n\n                Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.\n\n  Guil. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.\n  Ham. Sir, a whole history.\n  Guil. The King, sir-\n  Ham. Ay, sir, what of him?\n  Guil. Is in his retirement, marvellous distemper\'d.  \n  Ham. With drink, sir?\n  Guil. No, my lord; rather with choler.\n  Ham. Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to\n    the doctor; for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps\n    plunge him into far more choler.\n  Guil. Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start\n    not so wildly from my affair.\n  Ham. I am tame, sir; pronounce.\n  Guil. The Queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit\n    hath sent me to you.\n  Ham. You are welcome.\n  Guil. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed.\n    If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do\n    your mother\'s commandment; if not, your pardon and my return\n    shall be the end of my business.\n  Ham. Sir, I cannot.\n  Guil. What, my lord?\n  Ham. Make you a wholesome answer; my wit\'s diseas\'d. But, sir, such\n    answer is I can make, you shall command; or rather, as you say,\n    my mother. Therefore no more, but to the matter! My mother, you  \n    say-\n  Ros. Then thus she says: your behaviour hath struck her into\n    amazement and admiration.\n  Ham. O wonderful son, that can so stonish a mother! But is there no\n    sequel at the heels of this mother\'s admiration? Impart.\n  Ros. She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to bed.\n  Ham. We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any\n    further trade with us?\n  Ros. My lord, you once did love me.\n  Ham. And do still, by these pickers and stealers!\n  Ros. Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do surely\n    bar the door upon your own liberty, if you deny your griefs to\n    your friend.\n  Ham. Sir, I lack advancement.\n  Ros. How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself\n    for your succession in Denmark?\n  Ham. Ay, sir, but \'while the grass grows\'- the proverb is something\n    musty.\n\n                     Enter the Players with recorders.  \n\n    O, the recorders! Let me see one. To withdraw with you- why do\n    you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me\n    into a toil?\n  Guil. O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.\n  Ham. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?\n  Guil. My lord, I cannot.\n  Ham. I pray you.\n  Guil. Believe me, I cannot.\n  Ham. I do beseech you.\n  Guil. I know, no touch of it, my lord.\n  Ham. It is as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your\n    fingers and thumbs, give it breath with your mouth, and it will\n    discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.\n  Guil. But these cannot I command to any utt\'rance of harmony. I\n    have not the skill.\n  Ham. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You\n    would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would\n    pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my\n    lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music,  \n    excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it\n    speak. \'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be play\'d on than a\n    pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me,\n    you cannot play upon me.\n\n                        Enter Polonius.\n\n    God bless you, sir!\n  Pol. My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.\n  Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that\'s almost in shape of a camel?\n  Pol. By th\' mass, and \'tis like a camel indeed.\n  Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel.\n  Pol. It is back\'d like a weasel.\n  Ham. Or like a whale.\n  Pol. Very like a whale.\n  Ham. Then will I come to my mother by-and-by.- They fool me to the\n    top of my bent.- I will come by-and-by.\n  Pol. I will say so.                                      Exit.\n  Ham. \'By-and-by\' is easily said.- Leave me, friends.\n                                        [Exeunt all but Hamlet.]  \n    \'Tis now the very witching time of night,\n    When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out\n    Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood\n    And do such bitter business as the day\n    Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother!\n    O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever\n    The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom.\n    Let me be cruel, not unnatural;\n    I will speak daggers to her, but use none.\n    My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites-\n    How in my words somever she be shent,\n    To give them seals never, my soul, consent!             Exit.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nA room in the Castle.\n\nEnter King, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.\n\n  King. I like him not, nor stands it safe with us\n    To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you;\n    I your commission will forthwith dispatch,\n    And he to England shall along with you.\n    The terms of our estate may not endure\n    Hazard so near us as doth hourly grow\n    Out of his lunacies.\n  Guil. We will ourselves provide.\n    Most holy and religious fear it is\n    To keep those many many bodies safe\n    That live and feed upon your Majesty.\n  Ros. The single and peculiar life is bound\n    With all the strength and armour of the mind\n    To keep itself from noyance; but much more\n    That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests\n    The lives of many. The cesse of majesty\n    Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw  \n    What\'s near it with it. It is a massy wheel,\n    Fix\'d on the summit of the highest mount,\n    To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things\n    Are mortis\'d and adjoin\'d; which when it falls,\n    Each small annexment, petty consequence,\n    Attends the boist\'rous ruin. Never alone\n    Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.\n  King. Arm you, I pray you, to th\', speedy voyage;\n    For we will fetters put upon this fear,\n    Which now goes too free-footed.\n  Both. We will haste us.\n                                               Exeunt Gentlemen.\n\n                   Enter Polonius.\n\n  Pol. My lord, he\'s going to his mother\'s closet.\n    Behind the arras I\'ll convey myself\n    To hear the process. I\'ll warrant she\'ll tax him home;\n    And, as you said, and wisely was it said,\n    \'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,  \n    Since nature makes them partial, should o\'erhear\n    The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege.\n    I\'ll call upon you ere you go to bed\n    And tell you what I know.\n  King. Thanks, dear my lord.\n                                                Exit [Polonius].\n    O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;\n    It hath the primal eldest curse upon\'t,\n    A brother\'s murther! Pray can I not,\n    Though inclination be as sharp as will.\n    My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,\n    And, like a man to double business bound,\n    I stand in pause where I shall first begin,\n    And both neglect. What if this cursed hand\n    Were thicker than itself with brother\'s blood,\n    Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens\n    To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy\n    But to confront the visage of offence?\n    And what\'s in prayer but this twofold force,\n    To be forestalled ere we come to fall,  \n    Or pardon\'d being down? Then I\'ll look up;\n    My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer\n    Can serve my turn? \'Forgive me my foul murther\'?\n    That cannot be; since I am still possess\'d\n    Of those effects for which I did the murther-\n    My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.\n    May one be pardon\'d and retain th\' offence?\n    In the corrupted currents of this world\n    Offence\'s gilded hand may shove by justice,\n    And oft \'tis seen the wicked prize itself\n    Buys out the law; but \'tis not so above.\n    There is no shuffling; there the action lies\n    In his true nature, and we ourselves compell\'d,\n    Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,\n    To give in evidence. What then? What rests?\n    Try what repentance can. What can it not?\n    Yet what can it when one cannot repent?\n    O wretched state! O bosom black as death!\n    O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,\n    Art more engag\'d! Help, angels! Make assay.  \n    Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel,\n    Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!\n    All may be well.                                  He kneels.\n\n                         Enter Hamlet.\n\n  Ham. Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;\n    And now I\'ll do\'t. And so he goes to heaven,\n    And so am I reveng\'d. That would be scann\'d.\n    A villain kills my father; and for that,\n    I, his sole son, do this same villain send\n    To heaven.\n    Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge!\n    He took my father grossly, full of bread,\n    With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;\n    And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?\n    But in our circumstance and course of thought,\n    \'Tis heavy with him; and am I then reveng\'d,\n    To take him in the purging of his soul,\n    When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?  \n    No.\n    Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent.\n    When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage;\n    Or in th\' incestuous pleasure of his bed;\n    At gaming, swearing, or about some act\n    That has no relish of salvation in\'t-\n    Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,\n    And that his soul may be as damn\'d and black\n    As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.\n    This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.              Exit.\n  King. [rises] My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.\n    Words without thoughts never to heaven go.             Exit.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nThe Queen\'s closet.\n\nEnter Queen and Polonius.\n\n  Pol. He will come straight. Look you lay home to him.\n    Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,\n    And that your Grace hath screen\'d and stood between\n    Much heat and him. I\'ll silence me even here.\n    Pray you be round with him.\n  Ham. (within) Mother, mother, mother!\n  Queen. I\'ll warrant you; fear me not. Withdraw; I hear him coming.\n                              [Polonius hides behind the arras.]\n\n                          Enter Hamlet.\n\n  Ham. Now, mother, what\'s the matter?\n  Queen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.\n  Ham. Mother, you have my father much offended.\n  Queen. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.\n  Ham. Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.\n  Queen. Why, how now, Hamlet?  \n  Ham. What\'s the matter now?\n  Queen. Have you forgot me?\n  Ham. No, by the rood, not so!\n    You are the Queen, your husband\'s brother\'s wife,\n    And (would it were not so!) you are my mother.\n  Queen. Nay, then I\'ll set those to you that can speak.\n  Ham. Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge I\n    You go not till I set you up a glass\n    Where you may see the inmost part of you.\n  Queen. What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murther me?\n    Help, help, ho!\n  Pol. [behind] What, ho! help, help, help!\n  Ham. [draws] How now? a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!\n            [Makes a pass through the arras and] kills Polonius.\n  Pol. [behind] O, I am slain!\n  Queen. O me, what hast thou done?\n  Ham. Nay, I know not. Is it the King?\n  Queen. O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!\n  Ham. A bloody deed- almost as bad, good mother,\n    As kill a king, and marry with his brother.  \n  Queen. As kill a king?\n  Ham. Ay, lady, it was my word.\n                         [Lifts up the arras and sees Polonius.]\n    Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!\n    I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune.\n    Thou find\'st to be too busy is some danger.\n    Leave wringing of your hinds. Peace! sit you down\n    And let me wring your heart; for so I shall\n    If it be made of penetrable stuff;\n    If damned custom have not braz\'d it so\n    That it is proof and bulwark against sense.\n  Queen. What have I done that thou dar\'st wag thy tongue\n    In noise so rude against me?\n  Ham. Such an act\n    That blurs the grace and blush of modesty;\n    Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose\n    From the fair forehead of an innocent love,\n    And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows\n    As false as dicers\' oaths. O, such a deed\n    As from the body of contraction plucks  \n    The very soul, and sweet religion makes\n    A rhapsody of words! Heaven\'s face doth glow;\n    Yea, this solidity and compound mass,\n    With tristful visage, as against the doom,\n    Is thought-sick at the act.\n  Queen. Ay me, what act,\n    That roars so loud and thunders in the index?\n  Ham. Look here upon th\'s picture, and on this,\n    The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.\n    See what a grace was seated on this brow;\n    Hyperion\'s curls; the front of Jove himself;\n    An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;\n    A station like the herald Mercury\n    New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill:\n    A combination and a form indeed\n    Where every god did seem to set his seal\n    To give the world assurance of a man.\n    This was your husband. Look you now what follows.\n    Here is your husband, like a mildew\'d ear\n    Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?  \n    Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,\n    And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes\n    You cannot call it love; for at your age\n    The heyday in the blood is tame, it\'s humble,\n    And waits upon the judgment; and what judgment\n    Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,\n    Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense\n    Is apoplex\'d; for madness would not err,\n    Nor sense to ecstacy was ne\'er so thrall\'d\n    But it reserv\'d some quantity of choice\n    To serve in such a difference. What devil was\'t\n    That thus hath cozen\'d you at hoodman-blind?\n    Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,\n    Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,\n    Or but a sickly part of one true sense\n    Could not so mope.\n    O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,\n    If thou canst mutine in a matron\'s bones,\n    To flaming youth let virtue be as wax\n    And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame  \n    When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,\n    Since frost itself as actively doth burn,\n    And reason panders will.\n  Queen. O Hamlet, speak no more!\n    Thou turn\'st mine eyes into my very soul,\n    And there I see such black and grained spots\n    As will not leave their tinct.\n  Ham. Nay, but to live\n    In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,\n    Stew\'d in corruption, honeying and making love\n    Over the nasty sty!\n  Queen. O, speak to me no more!\n    These words like daggers enter in mine ears.\n    No more, sweet Hamlet!\n  Ham. A murtherer and a villain!\n    A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe\n    Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;\n    A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,\n    That from a shelf the precious diadem stole\n    And put it in his pocket!  \n  Queen. No more!\n\n                Enter the Ghost in his nightgown.\n\n  Ham. A king of shreds and patches!-\n    Save me and hover o\'er me with your wings,\n    You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?\n  Queen. Alas, he\'s mad!\n  Ham. Do you not come your tardy son to chide,\n    That, laps\'d in time and passion, lets go by\n    Th\' important acting of your dread command?\n    O, say!\n  Ghost. Do not forget. This visitation\n    Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.\n    But look, amazement on thy mother sits.\n    O, step between her and her fighting soul\n    Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.\n    Speak to her, Hamlet.\n  Ham. How is it with you, lady?\n  Queen. Alas, how is\'t with you,  \n    That you do bend your eye on vacancy,\n    And with th\' encorporal air do hold discourse?\n    Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;\n    And, as the sleeping soldiers in th\' alarm,\n    Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements,\n    Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,\n    Upon the beat and flame of thy distemper\n    Sprinkle cool patience! Whereon do you look?\n  Ham. On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares!\n    His form and cause conjoin\'d, preaching to stones,\n    Would make them capable.- Do not look upon me,\n    Lest with this piteous action you convert\n    My stern effects. Then what I have to do\n    Will want true colour- tears perchance for blood.\n  Queen. To whom do you speak this?\n  Ham. Do you see nothing there?\n  Queen. Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.\n  Ham. Nor did you nothing hear?\n  Queen. No, nothing but ourselves.\n  Ham. Why, look you there! Look how it steals away!  \n    My father, in his habit as he liv\'d!\n    Look where he goes even now out at the portal!\n                                                     Exit Ghost.\n  Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain.\n    This bodiless creation ecstasy\n    Is very cunning in.\n  Ham. Ecstasy?\n    My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time\n    And makes as healthful music. It is not madness\n    That I have utt\'red. Bring me to the test,\n    And I the matter will reword; which madness\n    Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,\n    Lay not that flattering unction to your soul\n    That not your trespass but my madness speaks.\n    It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,\n    Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,\n    Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;\n    Repent what\'s past; avoid what is to come;\n    And do not spread the compost on the weeds\n    To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;  \n    For in the fatness of these pursy times\n    Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg-\n    Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.\n  Queen. O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.\n  Ham. O, throw away the worser part of it,\n    And live the purer with the other half,\n    Good night- but go not to my uncle\'s bed.\n    Assume a virtue, if you have it not.\n    That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat\n    Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,\n    That to the use of actions fair and good\n    He likewise gives a frock or livery,\n    That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,\n    And that shall lend a kind of easiness\n    To the next abstinence; the next more easy;\n    For use almost can change the stamp of nature,\n    And either [master] the devil, or throw him out\n    With wondrous potency. Once more, good night;\n    And when you are desirous to be blest,\n    I\'ll blessing beg of you.- For this same lord,  \n    I do repent; but heaven hath pleas\'d it so,\n    To punish me with this, and this with me,\n    That I must be their scourge and minister.\n    I will bestow him, and will answer well\n    The death I gave him. So again, good night.\n    I must be cruel, only to be kind;\n    Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.\n    One word more, good lady.\n  Queen. What shall I do?\n  Ham. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:\n    Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed;\n    Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;\n    And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,\n    Or paddling in your neck with his damn\'d fingers,\n    Make you to ravel all this matter out,\n    That I essentially am not in madness,\n    But mad in craft. \'Twere good you let him know;\n    For who that\'s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,\n    Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib\n    Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?  \n    No, in despite of sense and secrecy,\n    Unpeg the basket on the house\'s top,\n    Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,\n    To try conclusions, in the basket creep\n    And break your own neck down.\n  Queen. Be thou assur\'d, if words be made of breath,\n    And breath of life, I have no life to breathe\n    What thou hast said to me.\n  Ham. I must to England; you know that?\n  Queen. Alack,\n    I had forgot! \'Tis so concluded on.\n  Ham. There\'s letters seal\'d; and my two schoolfellows,\n    Whom I will trust as I will adders fang\'d,\n    They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way\n    And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;\n    For \'tis the sport to have the enginer\n    Hoist with his own petar; and \'t shall go hard\n    But I will delve one yard below their mines\n    And blow them at the moon. O, \'tis most sweet\n    When in one line two crafts directly meet.  \n    This man shall set me packing.\n    I\'ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.-\n    Mother, good night.- Indeed, this counsellor\n    Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,\n    Who was in life a foolish peating knave.\n    Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.\n    Good night, mother.\n                  [Exit the Queen. Then] Exit Hamlet, tugging in\n                                                       Polonius.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. Scene I.\nElsinore. A room in the Castle.\n\nEnter King and Queen, with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.\n\n  King. There\'s matter in these sighs. These profound heaves\n    You must translate; \'tis fit we understand them.\n    Where is your son?\n  Queen. Bestow this place on us a little while.\n                          [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]\n    Ah, mine own lord, what have I seen to-night!\n  King. What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?\n  Queen. Mad as the sea and wind when both contend\n    Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit\n    Behind the arras hearing something stir,\n    Whips out his rapier, cries \'A rat, a rat!\'\n    And in this brainish apprehension kills\n    The unseen good old man.\n  King. O heavy deed!\n    It had been so with us, had we been there.\n    His liberty is full of threats to all-\n    To you yourself, to us, to every one.  \n    Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer\'d?\n    It will be laid to us, whose providence\n    Should have kept short, restrain\'d, and out of haunt\n    This mad young man. But so much was our love\n    We would not understand what was most fit,\n    But, like the owner of a foul disease,\n    To keep it from divulging, let it feed\n    Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?\n  Queen. To draw apart the body he hath kill\'d;\n    O\'er whom his very madness, like some ore\n    Among a mineral of metals base,\n    Shows itself pure. He weeps for what is done.\n  King. O Gertrude, come away!\n    The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch\n    But we will ship him hence; and this vile deed\n    We must with all our majesty and skill\n    Both countenance and excuse. Ho, Guildenstern!\n\n             Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.\n  \n    Friends both, go join you with some further aid.\n    Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,\n    And from his mother\'s closet hath he dragg\'d him.\n    Go seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body\n    Into the chapel. I pray you haste in this.\n                          Exeunt [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern].\n    Come, Gertrude, we\'ll call up our wisest friends\n    And let them know both what we mean to do\n    And what\'s untimely done. [So haply slander-]\n    Whose whisper o\'er the world\'s diameter,\n    As level as the cannon to his blank,\n    Transports his poisoned shot- may miss our name\n    And hit the woundless air.- O, come away!\n    My soul is full of discord and dismay.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nElsinore. A passage in the Castle.\n\nEnter Hamlet.\n\n  Ham. Safely stow\'d.\n  Gentlemen. (within) Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!\n  Ham. But soft! What noise? Who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come.\n\n               Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.\n\n  Ros. What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?\n  Ham. Compounded it with dust, whereto \'tis kin.\n  Ros. Tell us where \'tis, that we may take it thence\n    And bear it to the chapel.\n  Ham. Do not believe it.\n  Ros. Believe what?\n  Ham. That I can keep your counsel, and not mine own. Besides, to be\n    demanded of a sponge, what replication should be made by the son\n    of a king?\n  Ros. Take you me for a sponge, my lord?\n  Ham. Ay, sir; that soaks up the King\'s countenance, his rewards,  \n    his authorities. But such officers do the King best service in\n    the end. He keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw;\n    first mouth\'d, to be last Swallowed. When he needs what you have\n    glean\'d, it is but squeezing you and, sponge, you shall be dry\n    again.\n  Ros. I understand you not, my lord.\n  Ham. I am glad of it. A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.\n  Ros. My lord, you must tell us where the body is and go with us to\n    the King.\n  Ham. The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body.\n    The King is a thing-\n  Guil. A thing, my lord?\n  Ham. Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nElsinore. A room in the Castle.\n\nEnter King.\n\n  King. I have sent to seek him and to find the body.\n    How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!\n    Yet must not we put the strong law on him.\n    He\'s lov\'d of the distracted multitude,\n    Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes;\n    And where \'tis so, th\' offender\'s scourge is weigh\'d,\n    But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even,\n    This sudden sending him away must seem\n    Deliberate pause. Diseases desperate grown\n    By desperate appliance are reliev\'d,\n    Or not at all.\n\n                    Enter Rosencrantz.\n\n    How now O What hath befall\'n?\n  Ros. Where the dead body is bestow\'d, my lord,\n    We cannot get from him.  \n  King. But where is he?\n  Ros. Without, my lord; guarded, to know your pleasure.\n  King. Bring him before us.\n  Ros. Ho, Guildenstern! Bring in my lord.\n\n        Enter Hamlet and Guildenstern [with Attendants].\n\n  King. Now, Hamlet, where\'s Polonius?\n  Ham. At supper.\n  King. At supper? Where?\n  Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain\n    convocation of politic worms are e\'en at him. Your worm is your\n    only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and\n    we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar\n    is but variable service- two dishes, but to one table. That\'s the\n    end.\n  King. Alas, alas!\n  Ham. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat\n    of the fish that hath fed of that worm.\n  King. What dost thou mean by this?  \n  Ham. Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through\n    the guts of a beggar.\n  King. Where is Polonius?\n  Ham. In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not\n    there, seek him i\' th\' other place yourself. But indeed, if you\n    find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up\n    the stair, into the lobby.\n  King. Go seek him there. [To Attendants.]\n  Ham. He will stay till you come.\n                                            [Exeunt Attendants.]\n  King. Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,-\n    Which we do tender as we dearly grieve\n    For that which thou hast done,- must send thee hence\n    With fiery quickness. Therefore prepare thyself.\n    The bark is ready and the wind at help,\n    Th\' associates tend, and everything is bent\n    For England.\n  Ham. For England?\n  King. Ay, Hamlet.\n  Ham. Good.  \n  King. So is it, if thou knew\'st our purposes.\n  Ham. I see a cherub that sees them. But come, for England!\n    Farewell, dear mother.\n  King. Thy loving father, Hamlet.\n  Ham. My mother! Father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is\n    one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England!\nExit.\n  King. Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard.\n    Delay it not; I\'ll have him hence to-night.\n    Away! for everything is seal\'d and done\n    That else leans on th\' affair. Pray you make haste.\n                            Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern]\n    And, England, if my love thou hold\'st at aught,-\n    As my great power thereof may give thee sense,\n    Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red\n    After the Danish sword, and thy free awe\n    Pays homage to us,- thou mayst not coldly set\n    Our sovereign process, which imports at full,\n    By letters congruing to that effect,\n    The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England;  \n    For like the hectic in my blood he rages,\n    And thou must cure me. Till I know \'tis done,\n    Howe\'er my haps, my joys were ne\'er begun.             Exit.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nNear Elsinore.\n\nEnter Fortinbras with his Army over the stage.\n\n  For. Go, Captain, from me greet the Danish king.\n    Tell him that by his license Fortinbras\n    Craves the conveyance of a promis\'d march\n    Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.\n    if that his Majesty would aught with us,\n    We shall express our duty in his eye;\n    And let him know so.\n  Capt. I will do\'t, my lord.\n  For. Go softly on.\n                                   Exeunt [all but the Captain].\n\n       Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz, [Guildenstern,] and others.\n\n  Ham. Good sir, whose powers are these?\n  Capt. They are of Norway, sir.\n  Ham. How purpos\'d, sir, I pray you?\n  Capt. Against some part of Poland.  \n  Ham. Who commands them, sir?\n  Capt. The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.\n  Ham. Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,\n    Or for some frontier?\n  Capt. Truly to speak, and with no addition,\n    We go to gain a little patch of ground\n    That hath in it no profit but the name.\n    To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;\n    Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole\n    A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.\n  Ham. Why, then the Polack never will defend it.\n  Capt. Yes, it is already garrison\'d.\n  Ham. Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats\n    Will not debate the question of this straw.\n    This is th\' imposthume of much wealth and peace,\n    That inward breaks, and shows no cause without\n    Why the man dies.- I humbly thank you, sir.\n  Capt. God b\' wi\' you, sir.                             [Exit.]\n  Ros. Will\'t please you go, my lord?\n  Ham. I\'ll be with you straight. Go a little before.  \n                                        [Exeunt all but Hamlet.]\n    How all occasions do inform against me\n    And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,\n    If his chief good and market of his time\n    Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.\n    Sure he that made us with such large discourse,\n    Looking before and after, gave us not\n    That capability and godlike reason\n    To fust in us unus\'d. Now, whether it be\n    Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple\n    Of thinking too precisely on th\' event,-\n    A thought which, quarter\'d, hath but one part wisdom\n    And ever three parts coward,- I do not know\n    Why yet I live to say \'This thing\'s to do,\'\n    Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means\n    To do\'t. Examples gross as earth exhort me.\n    Witness this army of such mass and charge,\n    Led by a delicate and tender prince,\n    Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff\'d,\n    Makes mouths at the invisible event,  \n    Exposing what is mortal and unsure\n    To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,\n    Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great\n    Is not to stir without great argument,\n    But greatly to find quarrel in a straw\n    When honour\'s at the stake. How stand I then,\n    That have a father klll\'d, a mother stain\'d,\n    Excitements of my reason and my blood,\n    And let all sleep, while to my shame I see\n    The imminent death of twenty thousand men\n    That for a fantasy and trick of fame\n    Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot\n    Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,\n    Which is not tomb enough and continent\n    To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,\n    My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!            Exit.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nScene V.\nElsinore. A room in the Castle.\n\nEnter Horatio, Queen, and a Gentleman.\n\n  Queen. I will not speak with her.\n  Gent. She is importunate, indeed distract.\n    Her mood will needs be pitied.\n  Queen. What would she have?\n  Gent. She speaks much of her father; says she hears\n    There\'s tricks i\' th\' world, and hems, and beats her heart;\n    Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,\n    That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,\n    Yet the unshaped use of it doth move\n    The hearers to collection; they aim at it,\n    And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;\n    Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,\n    Indeed would make one think there might be thought,\n    Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.\n  Hor. \'Twere good she were spoken with; for she may strew\n    Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.\n  Queen. Let her come in.  \n                                               [Exit Gentleman.]\n    [Aside] To my sick soul (as sin\'s true nature is)\n    Each toy seems Prologue to some great amiss.\n    So full of artless jealousy is guilt\n    It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.\n\n                 Enter Ophelia distracted.\n\n  Oph. Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?\n  Queen. How now, Ophelia?\n  Oph. (sings)\n         How should I your true-love know\n           From another one?\n         By his cockle bat and\' staff\n           And his sandal shoon.\n\n  Queen. Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?\n  Oph. Say you? Nay, pray You mark.\n\n    (Sings) He is dead and gone, lady,  \n              He is dead and gone;\n            At his head a grass-green turf,\n              At his heels a stone.\n\n    O, ho!\n  Queen. Nay, but Ophelia-\n  Oph. Pray you mark.\n\n    (Sings) White his shroud as the mountain snow-\n\n                    Enter King.\n\n  Queen. Alas, look here, my lord!\n  Oph. (Sings)\n           Larded all with sweet flowers;\n         Which bewept to the grave did not go\n           With true-love showers.\n\n  King. How do you, pretty lady?\n  Oph. Well, God dild you! They say the owl was a baker\'s daughter.  \n    Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at\n    your table!\n  King. Conceit upon her father.\n  Oph. Pray let\'s have no words of this; but when they ask, you what\n    it means, say you this:\n\n    (Sings) To-morrow is Saint Valentine\'s day,\n              All in the morning bedtime,\n            And I a maid at your window,\n              To be your Valentine.\n\n            Then up he rose and donn\'d his clo\'es\n              And dupp\'d the chamber door,\n            Let in the maid, that out a maid\n              Never departed more.\n\n  King. Pretty Ophelia!\n  Oph. Indeed, la, without an oath, I\'ll make an end on\'t!\n\n    [Sings] By Gis and by Saint Charity,  \n              Alack, and fie for shame!\n            Young men will do\'t if they come to\'t\n              By Cock, they are to blame.\n\n            Quoth she, \'Before you tumbled me,\n              You promis\'d me to wed.\'\n\n    He answers:\n\n            \'So would I \'a\' done, by yonder sun,\n              An thou hadst not come to my bed.\'\n\n  King. How long hath she been thus?\n  Oph. I hope all will be well. We must be patient; but I cannot\n    choose but weep to think they would lay him i\' th\' cold ground.\n    My brother shall know of it; and so I thank you for your good\n    counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies. Good night, sweet\n    ladies. Good night, good night.                         Exit\n  King. Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.\n                                                 [Exit Horatio.]  \n    O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs\n    All from her father\'s death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,\n    When sorrows come, they come not single spies.\n    But in battalions! First, her father slain;\n    Next, Your son gone, and he most violent author\n    Of his own just remove; the people muddied,\n    Thick and and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers\n    For good Polonius\' death, and we have done but greenly\n    In hugger-mugger to inter him; Poor Ophelia\n    Divided from herself and her fair-judgment,\n    Without the which we are Pictures or mere beasts;\n    Last, and as such containing as all these,\n    Her brother is in secret come from France;\n    And wants not buzzers to infect his ear\n    Feeds on his wonder, keep, himself in clouds,\n    With pestilent speeches of his father\'s death,\n    Wherein necessity, of matter beggar\'d,\n    Will nothing stick Our person to arraign\n    In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,\n    Like to a murd\'ring piece, in many places  \n    Give, me superfluous death.                  A noise within.\n  Queen. Alack, what noise is this?\n  King. Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.\n\n                     Enter a Messenger.\n\n    What is the matter?\n  Mess. Save Yourself, my lord:\n    The ocean, overpeering of his list,\n    Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste\n    Than Young Laertes, in a riotous head,\n    O\'erbears Your offices. The rabble call him lord;\n    And, as the world were now but to begin,\n    Antiquity forgot, custom not known,\n    The ratifiers and props of every word,\n    They cry \'Choose we! Laertes shall be king!\'\n    Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,\n    \'Laertes shall be king! Laertes king!\'\n                                                 A noise within.\n  Queen. How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!  \n    O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!\n  King. The doors are broke.\n\n                    Enter Laertes with others.\n\n  Laer. Where is this king?- Sirs, staid you all without.\n  All. No, let\'s come in!\n  Laer. I pray you give me leave.\n  All. We will, we will!\n  Laer. I thank you. Keep the door.      [Exeunt his Followers.]\n    O thou vile king,\n    Give me my father!\n  Queen. Calmly, good Laertes.\n  Laer. That drop of blood that\'s calm proclaims me bastard;\n    Cries cuckold to my father; brands the harlot\n    Even here between the chaste unsmirched brows\n    Of my true mother.\n  King. What is the cause, Laertes,\n    That thy rebellion looks so giantlike?\n    Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.  \n    There\'s such divinity doth hedge a king\n    That treason can but peep to what it would,\n    Acts little of his will. Tell me, Laertes,\n    Why thou art thus incens\'d. Let him go, Gertrude.\n    Speak, man.\n  Laer. Where is my father?\n  King. Dead.\n  Queen. But not by him!\n  King. Let him demand his fill.\n  Laer. How came he dead? I\'ll not be juggled with:\n    To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil\n    Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!\n    I dare damnation. To this point I stand,\n    That both the world, I give to negligence,\n    Let come what comes; only I\'ll be reveng\'d\n    Most throughly for my father.\n  King. Who shall stay you?\n  Laer. My will, not all the world!\n    And for my means, I\'ll husband them so well\n    They shall go far with little.  \n  King. Good Laertes,\n    If you desire to know the certainty\n    Of your dear father\'s death, is\'t writ in Your revenge\n    That swoopstake you will draw both friend and foe,\n    Winner and loser?\n  Laer. None but his enemies.\n  King. Will you know them then?\n  Laer. To his good friends thus wide I\'ll ope my arms\n    And, like the kind life-rend\'ring pelican,\n    Repast them with my blood.\n  King. Why, now You speak\n    Like a good child and a true gentleman.\n    That I am guiltless of your father\'s death,\n    And am most sensibly in grief for it,\n    It shall as level to your judgment pierce\n    As day does to your eye.\n                              A noise within: \'Let her come in.\'\n  Laer. How now? What noise is that?\n\n                      Enter Ophelia.  \n\n    O heat, dry up my brains! Tears seven times salt\n    Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!\n    By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight\n    Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!\n    Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!\n    O heavens! is\'t possible a young maid\'s wits\n    Should be as mortal as an old man\'s life?\n    Nature is fine in love, and where \'tis fine,\n    It sends some precious instance of itself\n    After the thing it loves.\n\n  Oph. (sings)\n         They bore him barefac\'d on the bier\n           (Hey non nony, nony, hey nony)\n         And in his grave rain\'d many a tear.\n\n    Fare you well, my dove!\n  Laer. Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,\n    It could not move thus.  \n  Oph. You must sing \'A-down a-down, and you call him a-down-a.\' O,\n    how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward, that stole his\n    master\'s daughter.\n  Laer. This nothing\'s more than matter.\n  Oph. There\'s rosemary, that\'s for remembrance. Pray you, love,\n    remember. And there is pansies, that\'s for thoughts.\n  Laer. A document in madness! Thoughts and remembrance fitted.\n  Oph. There\'s fennel for you, and columbines. There\'s rue for you,\n    and here\'s some for me. We may call it herb of grace o\' Sundays.\n    O, you must wear your rue with a difference! There\'s a daisy. I\n    would give you some violets, but they wither\'d all when my father\n    died. They say he made a good end.\n\n    [Sings] For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.\n\n  Laer. Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,\n    She turns to favour and to prettiness.\n  Oph. (sings)\n         And will he not come again?\n         And will he not come again?\n           No, no, he is dead;  \n           Go to thy deathbed;\n         He never will come again.\n\n         His beard was as white as snow,\n         All flaxen was his poll.\n           He is gone, he is gone,\n           And we cast away moan.\n         God \'a\'mercy on his soul!\n\n    And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God b\' wi\', you.\nExit.\n  Laer. Do you see this, O God?\n  King. Laertes, I must commune with your grief,\n    Or you deny me right. Go but apart,\n    Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,\n    And they shall hear and judge \'twixt you and me.\n    If by direct or by collateral hand\n    They find us touch\'d, we will our kingdom give,\n    Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,\n    To you in satisfaction; but if not,  \n    Be you content to lend your patience to us,\n    And we shall jointly labour with your soul\n    To give it due content.\n  Laer. Let this be so.\n    His means of death, his obscure funeral-\n    No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o\'er his bones,\n    No noble rite nor formal ostentation,-\n    Cry to be heard, as \'twere from heaven to earth,\n    That I must call\'t in question.\n  King. So you shall;\n    And where th\' offence is let the great axe fall.\n    I pray you go with me.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nScene VI.\nElsinore. Another room in the Castle.\n\nEnter Horatio with an Attendant.\n\n  Hor. What are they that would speak with me?\n  Servant. Seafaring men, sir. They say they have letters for you.\n  Hor. Let them come in.\n                                               [Exit Attendant.]\n    I do not know from what part of the world\n    I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.\n\n                          Enter Sailors.\n\n  Sailor. God bless you, sir.\n  Hor. Let him bless thee too.\n  Sailor. \'A shall, sir, an\'t please him. There\'s a letter for you,\n    sir,- it comes from th\' ambassador that was bound for England- if\n    your name be Horatio, as I am let to know it is.\n  Hor. (reads the letter) \'Horatio, when thou shalt have overlook\'d\n    this, give these fellows some means to the King. They have\n    letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of  \n    very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too\n    slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour, and in the grapple I\n    boarded them. On the instant they got clear of our ship; so I\n    alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves\n    of mercy; but they knew what they did: I am to do a good turn for\n    them. Let the King have the letters I have sent, and repair thou\n    to me with as much speed as thou wouldst fly death. I have words\n    to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb; yet are they much too\n    light for the bore of the matter. These good fellows will bring\n    thee where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course\n    for England. Of them I have much to tell thee. Farewell.\n                            \'He that thou knowest thine, HAMLET.\'\n\n    Come, I will give you way for these your letters,\n    And do\'t the speedier that you may direct me\n    To him from whom you brought them.                   Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nScene VII.\nElsinore. Another room in the Castle.\n\nEnter King and Laertes.\n\n  King. Now must your conscience my acquittance seal,\n    And You must put me in your heart for friend,\n    Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,\n    That he which hath your noble father slain\n    Pursued my life.\n  Laer. It well appears. But tell me\n    Why you proceeded not against these feats\n    So crimeful and so capital in nature,\n    As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,\n    You mainly were stirr\'d up.\n  King. O, for two special reasons,\n    Which may to you, perhaps, seein much unsinew\'d,\n    But yet to me they are strong. The Queen his mother\n    Lives almost by his looks; and for myself,-\n    My virtue or my plague, be it either which,-\n    She\'s so conjunctive to my life and soul\n    That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,  \n    I could not but by her. The other motive\n    Why to a public count I might not go\n    Is the great love the general gender bear him,\n    Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,\n    Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,\n    Convert his gives to graces; so that my arrows,\n    Too slightly timber\'d for so loud a wind,\n    Would have reverted to my bow again,\n    And not where I had aim\'d them.\n  Laer. And so have I a noble father lost;\n    A sister driven into desp\'rate terms,\n    Whose worth, if praises may go back again,\n    Stood challenger on mount of all the age\n    For her perfections. But my revenge will come.\n  King. Break not your sleeps for that. You must not think\n    That we are made of stuff so flat and dull\n    That we can let our beard be shook with danger,\n    And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more.\n    I lov\'d your father, and we love ourself,\n    And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine-  \n\n                 Enter a Messenger with letters.\n\n    How now? What news?\n  Mess. Letters, my lord, from Hamlet:\n    This to your Majesty; this to the Queen.\n  King. From Hamlet? Who brought them?\n  Mess. Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not.\n    They were given me by Claudio; he receiv\'d them\n    Of him that brought them.\n  King. Laertes, you shall hear them.\n    Leave us.\n                                                 Exit Messenger.\n    [Reads]\'High and Mighty,-You shall know I am set naked on your\n    kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes;\n    when I shall (first asking your pardon thereunto) recount the\n    occasion of my sudden and more strange return.\n                                                     \'HAMLET.\'\n    What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?\n    Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?  \n  Laer. Know you the hand?\n  King. \'Tis Hamlet\'s character. \'Naked!\'\n    And in a postscript here, he says \'alone.\'\n    Can you advise me?\n  Laer. I am lost in it, my lord. But let him come!\n    It warms the very sickness in my heart\n    That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,\n    \'Thus didest thou.\'\n  King. If it be so, Laertes\n    (As how should it be so? how otherwise?),\n    Will you be rul\'d by me?\n  Laer. Ay my lord,\n    So you will not o\'errule me to a peace.\n  King. To thine own peace. If he be now return\'d\n    As checking at his voyage, and that he means\n    No more to undertake it, I will work him\n    To exploit now ripe in my device,\n    Under the which he shall not choose but fall;\n    And for his death no wind\n    But even his mother shall uncharge the practice  \n    And call it accident.\n  Laer. My lord, I will be rul\'d;\n    The rather, if you could devise it so\n    That I might be the organ.\n  King. It falls right.\n    You have been talk\'d of since your travel much,\n    And that in Hamlet\'s hearing, for a quality\n    Wherein they say you shine, Your sun of parts\n    Did not together pluck such envy from him\n    As did that one; and that, in my regard,\n    Of the unworthiest siege.\n  Laer. What part is that, my lord?\n  King. A very riband in the cap of youth-\n    Yet needfull too; for youth no less becomes\n    The light and careless livery that it wears\n    Thin settled age his sables and his weeds,\n    Importing health and graveness. Two months since\n    Here was a gentleman of Normandy.\n    I have seen myself, and serv\'d against, the French,\n    And they can well on horseback; but this gallant  \n    Had witchcraft in\'t. He grew unto his seat,\n    And to such wondrous doing brought his horse\n    As had he been incorps\'d and demi-natur\'d\n    With the brave beast. So far he topp\'d my thought\n    That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,\n    Come short of what he did.\n  Laer. A Norman was\'t?\n  King. A Norman.\n  Laer. Upon my life, Lamound.\n  King. The very same.\n  Laer. I know him well. He is the broach indeed\n    And gem of all the nation.\n  King. He made confession of you;\n    And gave you such a masterly report\n    For art and exercise in your defence,\n    And for your rapier most especially,\n    That he cried out \'twould be a sight indeed\n    If one could match you. The scrimers of their nation\n    He swore had neither motion, guard, nor eye,\n    If you oppos\'d them. Sir, this report of his  \n    Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy\n    That he could nothing do but wish and beg\n    Your sudden coming o\'er to play with you.\n    Now, out of this-\n  Laer. What out of this, my lord?\n  King. Laertes, was your father dear to you?\n    Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,\n    A face without a heart,\'\n  Laer. Why ask you this?\n  King. Not that I think you did not love your father;\n    But that I know love is begun by time,\n    And that I see, in passages of proof,\n    Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.\n    There lives within the very flame of love\n    A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;\n    And nothing is at a like goodness still;\n    For goodness, growing to a plurisy,\n    Dies in his own too-much. That we would do,\n    We should do when we would; for this \'would\' changes,\n    And hath abatements and delays as many  \n    As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;\n    And then this \'should\' is like a spendthrift sigh,\n    That hurts by easing. But to the quick o\' th\' ulcer!\n    Hamlet comes back. What would you undertake\n    To show yourself your father\'s son in deed\n    More than in words?\n  Laer. To cut his throat i\' th\' church!\n  King. No place indeed should murther sanctuarize;\n    Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes,\n    Will you do this? Keep close within your chamber.\n    Will return\'d shall know you are come home.\n    We\'ll put on those shall praise your excellence\n    And set a double varnish on the fame\n    The Frenchman gave you; bring you in fine together\n    And wager on your heads. He, being remiss,\n    Most generous, and free from all contriving,\n    Will not peruse the foils; so that with ease,\n    Or with a little shuffling, you may choose\n    A sword unbated, and, in a pass of practice,\n    Requite him for your father.  \n  Laer. I will do\'t!\n    And for that purpose I\'ll anoint my sword.\n    I bought an unction of a mountebank,\n    So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,\n    Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,\n    Collected from all simples that have virtue\n    Under the moon, can save the thing from death\n    This is but scratch\'d withal. I\'ll touch my point\n    With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,\n    It may be death.\n  King. Let\'s further think of this,\n    Weigh what convenience both of time and means\n    May fit us to our shape. If this should fall,\n    And that our drift look through our bad performance.\n    \'Twere better not assay\'d. Therefore this project\n    Should have a back or second, that might hold\n    If this did blast in proof. Soft! let me see.\n    We\'ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings-\n    I ha\'t!\n    When in your motion you are hot and dry-  \n    As make your bouts more violent to that end-\n    And that he calls for drink, I\'ll have prepar\'d him\n    A chalice for the nonce; whereon but sipping,\n    If he by chance escape your venom\'d stuck,\n    Our purpose may hold there.- But stay, what noise,\n\n                           Enter Queen.\n\n    How now, sweet queen?\n  Queen. One woe doth tread upon another\'s heel,\n    So fast they follow. Your sister\'s drown\'d, Laertes.\n  Laer. Drown\'d! O, where?\n  Queen. There is a willow grows aslant a brook,\n    That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.\n    There with fantastic garlands did she come\n    Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,\n    That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,\n    But our cold maids do dead men\'s fingers call them.\n    There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds\n    Clamb\'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,  \n    When down her weedy trophies and herself\n    Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide\n    And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;\n    Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes,\n    As one incapable of her own distress,\n    Or like a creature native and indued\n    Unto that element; but long it could not be\n    Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,\n    Pull\'d the poor wretch from her melodious lay\n    To muddy death.\n  Laer. Alas, then she is drown\'d?\n  Queen. Drown\'d, drown\'d.\n  Laer. Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,\n    And therefore I forbid my tears; but yet\n    It is our trick; nature her custom holds,\n    Let shame say what it will. When these are gone,\n    The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord.\n    I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze\n    But that this folly douts it.                          Exit.\n  King. Let\'s follow, Gertrude.  \n    How much I had to do to calm his rage I\n    Now fear I this will give it start again;\n    Therefore let\'s follow.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. Scene I.\nElsinore. A churchyard.\n\nEnter two Clowns, [with spades and pickaxes].\n\n  Clown. Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she wilfully\n    seeks her own salvation?\n  Other. I tell thee she is; therefore make her grave straight.\n    The crowner hath sate on her, and finds it Christian burial.\n  Clown. How can that be, unless she drown\'d herself in her own\n    defence?\n  Other. Why, \'tis found so.\n  Clown. It must be se offendendo; it cannot be else. For here lies\n    the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act; and an\n    act hath three branches-it is to act, to do, and to perform;\n    argal, she drown\'d herself wittingly.\n  Other. Nay, but hear you, Goodman Delver!\n  Clown. Give me leave. Here lies the water; good. Here stands the\n    man; good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is,\n    will he nill he, he goes- mark you that. But if the water come to\n    him and drown him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he that is not\n    guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.  \n  Other. But is this law?\n  Clown. Ay, marry, is\'t- crowner\'s quest law.\n  Other. Will you ha\' the truth an\'t? If this had not been a\n    gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o\' Christian burial.\n  Clown. Why, there thou say\'st! And the more pity that great folk\n    should have count\'nance in this world to drown or hang themselves\n    more than their even-Christen. Come, my spade! There is no\n    ancient gentlemen but gard\'ners, ditchers, and grave-makers. They\n    hold up Adam\'s profession.\n  Other. Was he a gentleman?\n  Clown. \'A was the first that ever bore arms.\n  Other. Why, he had none.\n  Clown. What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture?\n    The Scripture says Adam digg\'d. Could he dig without arms? I\'ll\n    put another question to thee. If thou answerest me not to the\n    purpose, confess thyself-\n  Other. Go to!\n  Clown. What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the\n    shipwright, or the carpenter?\n  Other. The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand  \n    tenants.\n  Clown. I like thy wit well, in good faith. The gallows does well.\n    But how does it well? It does well to those that do ill. Now,\n    thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the\n    church. Argal, the gallows may do well to thee. To\'t again, come!\n  Other. Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a\n    carpenter?\n  Clown. Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.\n  Other. Marry, now I can tell!\n  Clown. To\'t.\n  Other. Mass, I cannot tell.\n\n                 Enter Hamlet and Horatio afar off.\n\n  Clown. Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will\n    not mend his pace with beating; and when you are ask\'d this\n    question next, say \'a grave-maker.\' The houses he makes lasts\n    till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan; fetch me a stoup of\n    liquor.\n                                            [Exit Second Clown.]  \n\n                       [Clown digs and] sings.\n\n       In youth when I did love, did love,\n         Methought it was very sweet;\n       To contract- O- the time for- a- my behove,\n         O, methought there- a- was nothing- a- meet.\n\n  Ham. Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at\n    grave-making?\n  Hor. Custom hath made it in him a Property of easiness.\n  Ham. \'Tis e\'en so. The hand of little employment hath the daintier\n    sense.\n  Clown. (sings)\n         But age with his stealing steps\n           Hath clawed me in his clutch,\n         And hath shipped me intil the land,\n           As if I had never been such.\n                                            [Throws up a skull.]\n  \n  Ham. That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once. How the\n    knave jowls it to the ground,as if \'twere Cain\'s jawbone, that\n    did the first murther! This might be the pate of a Politician,\n    which this ass now o\'erreaches; one that would circumvent God,\n    might it not?\n  Hor. It might, my lord.\n  Ham. Or of a courtier, which could say \'Good morrow, sweet lord!\n    How dost thou, good lord?\' This might be my Lord Such-a-one, that\n    prais\'d my Lord Such-a-one\'s horse when he meant to beg it- might\n    it not?\n  Hor. Ay, my lord.\n  Ham. Why, e\'en so! and now my Lady Worm\'s, chapless, and knock\'d\n    about the mazzard with a sexton\'s spade. Here\'s fine revolution,\n    and we had the trick to see\'t. Did these bones cost no more the\n    breeding but to play at loggets with \'em? Mine ache to think\n    on\'t.\n  Clown. (Sings)\n         A pickaxe and a spade, a spade,\n           For and a shrouding sheet;\n         O, a Pit of clay for to be made  \n           For such a guest is meet.\n                                      Throws up [another skull].\n\n  Ham. There\'s another. Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer?\n    Where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures,\n    and his tricks? Why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock\n    him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him\n    of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in\'s time a\n    great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his\n    fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries. Is this the fine of\n    his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine\n    pate full of fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of\n    his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth\n    of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will\n    scarcely lie in this box; and must th\' inheritor himself have no\n    more, ha?\n  Hor. Not a jot more, my lord.\n  Ham. Is not parchment made of sheepskins?\n  Hor. Ay, my lord, And of calveskins too.\n  Ham. They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. I  \n    will speak to this fellow. Whose grave\'s this, sirrah?\n  Clown. Mine, sir.\n\n    [Sings] O, a pit of clay for to be made\n              For such a guest is meet.\n\n  Ham. I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in\'t.\n  Clown. You lie out on\'t, sir, and therefore \'tis not yours.\n    For my part, I do not lie in\'t, yet it is mine.\n  Ham. Thou dost lie in\'t, to be in\'t and say it is thine. \'Tis for\n    the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.\n  Clown. \'Tis a quick lie, sir; \'twill away again from me to you.\n  Ham. What man dost thou dig it for?\n  Clown. For no man, sir.\n  Ham. What woman then?\n  Clown. For none neither.\n  Ham. Who is to be buried in\'t?\n  Clown. One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she\'s dead.\n  Ham. How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or\n    equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, this three years\n    I have taken note of it, the age is grown so picked that the toe  \n    of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls\n    his kibe.- How long hast thou been a grave-maker?\n  Clown. Of all the days i\' th\' year, I came to\'t that day that our\n    last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.\n  Ham. How long is that since?\n  Clown. Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that. It was the\n    very day that young Hamlet was born- he that is mad, and sent\n    into England.\n  Ham. Ay, marry, why was be sent into England?\n  Clown. Why, because \'a was mad. \'A shall recover his wits there;\n    or, if \'a do not, \'tis no great matter there.\n  Ham. Why?\n  Clown. \'Twill not he seen in him there. There the men are as mad as\n    he.\n  Ham. How came he mad?\n  Clown. Very strangely, they say.\n  Ham. How strangely?\n  Clown. Faith, e\'en with losing his wits.\n  Ham. Upon what ground?\n  Clown. Why, here in Denmark. I have been sexton here, man and boy  \n    thirty years.\n  Ham. How long will a man lie i\' th\' earth ere he rot?\n  Clown. Faith, if \'a be not rotten before \'a die (as we have many\n    pocky corses now-a-days that will scarce hold the laying in, I\n    will last you some eight year or nine year. A tanner will last\n    you nine year.\n  Ham. Why he more than another?\n  Clown. Why, sir, his hide is so tann\'d with his trade that \'a will\n    keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of\n    your whoreson dead body. Here\'s a skull now. This skull hath lien\n    you i\' th\' earth three-and-twenty years.\n  Ham. Whose was it?\n  Clown. A whoreson, mad fellow\'s it was. Whose do you think it was?\n  Ham. Nay, I know not.\n  Clown. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! \'A pour\'d a flagon of\n    Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick\'s\n    skull, the King\'s jester.\n  Ham. This?\n  Clown. E\'en that.\n  Ham. Let me see. [Takes the skull.] Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him,  \n    Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He\n    hath borne me on his back a thousand tunes. And now how abhorred\n    in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those\n    lips that I have kiss\'d I know not how oft. Where be your gibes\n    now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that\n    were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your\n    own grinning? Quite chap- fall\'n? Now get you to my lady\'s\n    chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this\n    favour she must come. Make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio,\n    tell me one thing.\n  Hor. What\'s that, my lord?\n  Ham. Dost thou think Alexander look\'d o\' this fashion i\' th\' earth?\n  Hor. E\'en so.\n  Ham. And smelt so? Pah!\n                                          [Puts down the skull.]\n  Hor. E\'en so, my lord.\n  Ham. To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not\n    imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it\n    stopping a bunghole?\n  Hor. \'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.  \n  Ham. No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty\n    enough, and likelihood to lead it; as thus: Alexander died,\n    Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is\n    earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam (whereto he\n    was converted) might they not stop a beer barrel?\n    Imperious Caesar, dead and turn\'d to clay,\n    Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.\n    O, that that earth which kept the world in awe\n    Should patch a wall t\' expel the winter\'s flaw!\n    But soft! but soft! aside! Here comes the King-\n\n    Enter [priests with] a coffin [in funeral procession], King,\n             Queen, Laertes, with Lords attendant.]\n\n    The Queen, the courtiers. Who is this they follow?\n    And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken\n    The corse they follow did with desp\'rate hand\n    Fordo it own life. \'Twas of some estate.\n    Couch we awhile, and mark.\n                                         [Retires with Horatio.]  \n  Laer. What ceremony else?\n  Ham. That is Laertes,\n    A very noble youth. Mark.\n  Laer. What ceremony else?\n  Priest. Her obsequies have been as far enlarg\'d\n    As we have warranty. Her death was doubtful;\n    And, but that great command o\'ersways the order,\n    She should in ground unsanctified have lodg\'d\n    Till the last trumpet. For charitable prayers,\n    Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.\n    Yet here she is allow\'d her virgin crants,\n    Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home\n    Of bell and burial.\n  Laer. Must there no more be done?\n  Priest. No more be done.\n    We should profane the service of the dead\n    To sing a requiem and such rest to her\n    As to peace-parted souls.\n  Laer. Lay her i\' th\' earth;\n    And from her fair and unpolluted flesh  \n    May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,\n    A minist\'ring angel shall my sister be\n    When thou liest howling.\n  Ham. What, the fair Ophelia?\n  Queen. Sweets to the sweet! Farewell.\n                                             [Scatters flowers.]\n    I hop\'d thou shouldst have been my Hamlet\'s wife;\n    I thought thy bride-bed to have deck\'d, sweet maid,\n    And not have strew\'d thy grave.\n  Laer. O, treble woe\n    Fall ten times treble on that cursed head\n    Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense\n    Depriv\'d thee of! Hold off the earth awhile,\n    Till I have caught her once more in mine arms.\n                                             Leaps in the grave.\n    Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead\n    Till of this flat a mountain you have made\n    T\' o\'ertop old Pelion or the skyish head\n    Of blue Olympus.\n  Ham. [comes forward] What is he whose grief  \n    Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow\n    Conjures the wand\'ring stars, and makes them stand\n    Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,\n    Hamlet the Dane.                    [Leaps in after Laertes.\n  Laer. The devil take thy soul!\n                                            [Grapples with him].\n  Ham. Thou pray\'st not well.\n    I prithee take thy fingers from my throat;\n    For, though I am not splenitive and rash,\n    Yet have I in me something dangerous,\n    Which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy hand!\n  King. Pluck thein asunder.\n  Queen. Hamlet, Hamlet!\n  All. Gentlemen!\n  Hor. Good my lord, be quiet.\n             [The Attendants part them, and they come out of the\n                                                         grave.]\n  Ham. Why, I will fight with him upon this theme\n    Until my eyelids will no longer wag.\n  Queen. O my son, what theme?  \n  Ham. I lov\'d Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers\n    Could not (with all their quantity of love)\n    Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?\n  King. O, he is mad, Laertes.\n  Queen. For love of God, forbear him!\n  Ham. \'Swounds, show me what thou\'t do.\n    Woo\'t weep? woo\'t fight? woo\'t fast? woo\'t tear thyself?\n    Woo\'t drink up esill? eat a crocodile?\n    I\'ll do\'t. Dost thou come here to whine?\n    To outface me with leaping in her grave?\n    Be buried quick with her, and so will I.\n    And if thou prate of mountains, let them throw\n    Millions of acres on us, till our ground,\n    Singeing his pate against the burning zone,\n    Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou\'lt mouth,\n    I\'ll rant as well as thou.\n  Queen. This is mere madness;\n    And thus a while the fit will work on him.\n    Anon, as patient as the female dove\n    When that her golden couplets are disclos\'d,  \n    His silence will sit drooping.\n  Ham. Hear you, sir!\n    What is the reason that you use me thus?\n    I lov\'d you ever. But it is no matter.\n    Let Hercules himself do what he may,\n    The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.\nExit.\n  King. I pray thee, good Horatio, wait upon him.\n                                                   Exit Horatio.\n    [To Laertes] Strengthen your patience in our last night\'s speech.\n    We\'ll put the matter to the present push.-\n    Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.-\n    This grave shall have a living monument.\n    An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;\n    Till then in patience our proceeding be.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nElsinore. A hall in the Castle.\n\nEnter Hamlet and Horatio.\n\n  Ham. So much for this, sir; now shall you see the other.\n    You do remember all the circumstance?\n  Hor. Remember it, my lord!\n  Ham. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting\n    That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay\n    Worse than the mutinies in the bilboes. Rashly-\n    And prais\'d be rashness for it; let us know,\n    Our indiscretion sometime serves us well\n    When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us\n    There\'s a divinity that shapes our ends,\n    Rough-hew them how we will-\n  Hor. That is most certain.\n  Ham. Up from my cabin,\n    My sea-gown scarf\'d about me, in the dark\n    Grop\'d I to find out them; had my desire,\n    Finger\'d their packet, and in fine withdrew\n    To mine own room again; making so bold  \n    (My fears forgetting manners) to unseal\n    Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio\n    (O royal knavery!), an exact command,\n    Larded with many several sorts of reasons,\n    Importing Denmark\'s health, and England\'s too,\n    With, hoo! such bugs and goblins in my life-\n    That, on the supervise, no leisure bated,\n    No, not to stay the finding of the axe,\n    My head should be struck off.\n  Hor. Is\'t possible?\n  Ham. Here\'s the commission; read it at more leisure.\n    But wilt thou bear me how I did proceed?\n  Hor. I beseech you.\n  Ham. Being thus benetted round with villanies,\n    Or I could make a prologue to my brains,\n    They had begun the play. I sat me down;\n    Devis\'d a new commission; wrote it fair.\n    I once did hold it, as our statists do,\n    A baseness to write fair, and labour\'d much\n    How to forget that learning; but, sir, now  \n    It did me yeoman\'s service. Wilt thou know\n    Th\' effect of what I wrote?\n  Hor. Ay, good my lord.\n  Ham. An earnest conjuration from the King,\n    As England was his faithful tributary,\n    As love between them like the palm might flourish,\n    As peace should still her wheaten garland wear\n    And stand a comma \'tween their amities,\n    And many such-like as\'s of great charge,\n    That, on the view and knowing of these contents,\n    Without debatement further, more or less,\n    He should the bearers put to sudden death,\n    Not shriving time allow\'d.\n  Hor. How was this seal\'d?\n  Ham. Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.\n    I had my father\'s signet in my purse,\n    which was the model of that Danish seal;\n    Folded the writ up in the form of th\' other,\n    Subscrib\'d it, gave\'t th\' impression, plac\'d it safely,\n    The changeling never known. Now, the next day  \n    Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent\n    Thou know\'st already.\n  Hor. So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to\'t.\n  Ham. Why, man, they did make love to this employment!\n    They are not near my conscience; their defeat\n    Does by their own insinuation grow.\n    \'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes\n    Between the pass and fell incensed points\n    Of mighty opposites.\n  Hor. Why, what a king is this!\n  Ham. Does it not, thinks\'t thee, stand me now upon-\n    He that hath kill\'d my king, and whor\'d my mother;\n    Popp\'d in between th\' election and my hopes;\n    Thrown out his angle for my Proper life,\n    And with such coz\'nage- is\'t not perfect conscience\n    To quit him with this arm? And is\'t not to be damn\'d\n    To let this canker of our nature come\n    In further evil?\n  Hor. It must be shortly known to him from England\n    What is the issue of the business there.  \n  Ham. It will be short; the interim is mine,\n    And a man\'s life is no more than to say \'one.\'\n    But I am very sorry, good Horatio,\n    That to Laertes I forgot myself,\n    For by the image of my cause I see\n    The portraiture of his. I\'ll court his favours.\n    But sure the bravery of his grief did put me\n    Into a tow\'ring passion.\n  Hor. Peace! Who comes here?\n\n                 Enter young Osric, a courtier.\n\n  Osr. Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.\n  Ham. I humbly thank you, sir. [Aside to Horatio] Dost know this\n    waterfly?\n  Hor. [aside to Hamlet] No, my good lord.\n  Ham. [aside to Horatio] Thy state is the more gracious; for \'tis a\n    vice to know him. He hath much land, and fertile. Let a beast be\n    lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king\'s mess. \'Tis\n    a chough; but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt.  \n  Osr. Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I should impart\n    a thing to you from his Majesty.\n  Ham. I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of spirit. Put your\n    bonnet to his right use. \'Tis for the head.\n  Osr. I thank your lordship, it is very hot.\n  Ham. No, believe me, \'tis very cold; the wind is northerly.\n  Osr. It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.\n  Ham. But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my complexion.\n  Osr. Exceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry, as \'twere- I cannot\n    tell how. But, my lord, his Majesty bade me signify to you that\n    he has laid a great wager on your head. Sir, this is the matter-\n  Ham. I beseech you remember.\n                           [Hamlet moves him to put on his hat.]\n  Osr. Nay, good my lord; for mine ease, in good faith. Sir, here is\n    newly come to court Laertes; believe me, an absolute gentleman,\n    full of most excellent differences, of very soft society and\n    great showing. Indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is the card\n    or calendar of gentry; for you shall find in him the continent of\n    what part a gentleman would see.\n  Ham. Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you; though, I  \n    know, to divide him inventorially would dozy th\' arithmetic of\n    memory, and yet but yaw neither in respect of his quick sail.\n    But, in the verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great\n    article, and his infusion of such dearth and rareness as, to make\n    true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror, and who else\n    would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more.\n  Osr. Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him.\n  Ham. The concernancy, sir? Why do we wrap the gentleman in our more\n    rawer breath\n  Osr. Sir?\n  Hor [aside to Hamlet] Is\'t not possible to understand in another\n    tongue? You will do\'t, sir, really.\n  Ham. What imports the nomination of this gentleman\n  Osr. Of Laertes?\n  Hor. [aside] His purse is empty already. All\'s golden words are\n    spent.\n  Ham. Of him, sir.\n  Osr. I know you are not ignorant-\n  Ham. I would you did, sir; yet, in faith, if you did, it would not\n    much approve me. Well, sir?  \n  Osr. You are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes is-\n  Ham. I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with him in\n    excellence; but to know a man well were to know himself.\n  Osr. I mean, sir, for his weapon; but in the imputation laid on him\n    by them, in his meed he\'s unfellowed.\n  Ham. What\'s his weapon?\n  Osr. Rapier and dagger.\n  Ham. That\'s two of his weapons- but well.\n  Osr. The King, sir, hath wager\'d with him six Barbary horses;\n    against the which he has impon\'d, as I take it, six French\n    rapiers and poniards, with their assigns, as girdle, hangers, and\n    so. Three of the carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy,\n    very responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, and of\n    very liberal conceit.\n  Ham. What call you the carriages?\n  Hor. [aside to Hamlet] I knew you must be edified by the margent\n    ere you had done.\n  Osr. The carriages, sir, are the hangers.\n  Ham. The phrase would be more germane to the matter if we could\n    carry cannon by our sides. I would it might be hangers till then.  \n    But on! Six Barbary horses against six French swords, their\n    assigns, and three liberal-conceited carriages: that\'s the French\n    bet against the Danish. Why is this all impon\'d, as you call it?\n  Osr. The King, sir, hath laid that, in a dozen passes between\n    yourself and him, he shall not exceed you three hits; he hath\n    laid on twelve for nine, and it would come to immediate trial\n    if your lordship would vouchsafe the answer.\n  Ham. How if I answer no?\n  Osr. I mean, my lord, the opposition of your person in trial.\n  Ham. Sir, I will walk here in the hall. If it please his Majesty,\n    it is the breathing time of day with me. Let the foils be\n    brought, the gentleman willing, and the King hold his purpose,\n    I will win for him if I can; if not, I will gain nothing but my\n    shame and the odd hits.\n  Osr. Shall I redeliver you e\'en so?\n  Ham. To this effect, sir, after what flourish your nature will.\n  Osr. I commend my duty to your lordship.\n  Ham. Yours, yours. [Exit Osric.] He does well to commend it\n    himself; there are no tongues else for\'s turn.\n  Hor. This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head.  \n  Ham. He did comply with his dug before he suck\'d it. Thus has he,\n    and many more of the same bevy that I know the drossy age dotes\n    on, only got the tune of the time and outward habit of encounter-\n    a kind of yesty collection, which carries them through and\n    through the most fann\'d and winnowed opinions; and do but blow\n    them to their trial-the bubbles are out,\n\n                            Enter a Lord.\n\n  Lord. My lord, his Majesty commended him to you by young Osric, who\n    brings back to him, that you attend him in the hall. He sends to\n    know if your pleasure hold to play with Laertes, or that you will\n    take longer time.\n  Ham. I am constant to my purposes; they follow the King\'s pleasure.\n    If his fitness speaks, mine is ready; now or whensoever, provided\n    I be so able as now.\n  Lord. The King and Queen and all are coming down.\n  Ham. In happy time.\n  Lord. The Queen desires you to use some gentle entertainment to\n    Laertes before you fall to play.  \n  Ham. She well instructs me.\n                                                    [Exit Lord.]\n  Hor. You will lose this wager, my lord.\n  Ham. I do not think so. Since he went into France I have been in\n    continual practice. I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not\n    think how ill all\'s here about my heart. But it is no matter.\n  Hor. Nay, good my lord -\n  Ham. It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gaingiving as\n    would perhaps trouble a woman.\n  Hor. If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will forestall their\n    repair hither and say you are not fit.\n  Ham. Not a whit, we defy augury; there\'s a special providence in\n    the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, \'tis not to come\', if it be\n    not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come:\n    the readiness is all. Since no man knows aught of what he leaves,\n    what is\'t to leave betimes? Let be.\n\n    Enter King, Queen, Laertes, Osric, and Lords, with other\n              Attendants with foils and gauntlets.\n               A table and flagons of wine on it.  \n\n  King. Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.\n                    [The King puts Laertes\' hand into Hamlet\'s.]\n  Ham. Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong;\n    But pardon\'t, as you are a gentleman.\n    This presence knows,\n    And you must needs have heard, how I am punish\'d\n    With sore distraction. What I have done\n    That might your nature, honour, and exception\n    Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.\n    Was\'t Hamlet wrong\'d Laertes? Never Hamlet.\n    If Hamlet from himself be taken away,\n    And when he\'s not himself does wrong Laertes,\n    Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.\n    Who does it, then? His madness. If\'t be so,\n    Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong\'d;\n    His madness is poor Hamlet\'s enemy.\n    Sir, in this audience,\n    Let my disclaiming from a purpos\'d evil\n    Free me so far in your most generous thoughts  \n    That I have shot my arrow o\'er the house\n    And hurt my brother.\n  Laer. I am satisfied in nature,\n    Whose motive in this case should stir me most\n    To my revenge. But in my terms of honour\n    I stand aloof, and will no reconcilement\n    Till by some elder masters of known honour\n    I have a voice and precedent of peace\n    To keep my name ungor\'d. But till that time\n    I do receive your offer\'d love like love,\n    And will not wrong it.\n  Ham. I embrace it freely,\n    And will this brother\'s wager frankly play.\n    Give us the foils. Come on.\n  Laer. Come, one for me.\n  Ham. I\'ll be your foil, Laertes. In mine ignorance\n    Your skill shall, like a star i\' th\' darkest night,\n    Stick fiery off indeed.\n  Laer. You mock me, sir.\n  Ham. No, by this bad.  \n  King. Give them the foils, young Osric. Cousin Hamlet,\n    You know the wager?\n  Ham. Very well, my lord.\n    Your Grace has laid the odds o\' th\' weaker side.\n  King. I do not fear it, I have seen you both;\n    But since he is better\'d, we have therefore odds.\n  Laer. This is too heavy; let me see another.\n  Ham. This likes me well. These foils have all a length?\n                                                Prepare to play.\n  Osr. Ay, my good lord.\n  King. Set me the stoups of wine upon that table.\n    If Hamlet give the first or second hit,\n    Or quit in answer of the third exchange,\n    Let all the battlements their ordnance fire;\n    The King shall drink to Hamlet\'s better breath,\n    And in the cup an union shall he throw\n    Richer than that which four successive kings\n    In Denmark\'s crown have worn. Give me the cups;\n    And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,\n    The trumpet to the cannoneer without,  \n    The cannons to the heavens, the heaven to earth,\n    \'Now the King drinks to Hamlet.\' Come, begin.\n    And you the judges, bear a wary eye.\n  Ham. Come on, sir.\n  Laer. Come, my lord.                                They play.\n  Ham. One.\n  Laer. No.\n  Ham. Judgment!\n  Osr. A hit, a very palpable hit.\n  Laer. Well, again!\n  King. Stay, give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine;\n    Here\'s to thy health.\n               [Drum; trumpets sound; a piece goes off [within].\n    Give him the cup.\n  Ham. I\'ll play this bout first; set it by awhile.\n    Come. (They play.) Another hit. What say you?\n  Laer. A touch, a touch; I do confess\'t.\n  King. Our son shall win.\n  Queen. He\'s fat, and scant of breath.\n    Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows.  \n    The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.\n  Ham. Good madam!\n  King. Gertrude, do not drink.\n  Queen. I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me.          Drinks.\n  King. [aside] It is the poison\'d cup; it is too late.\n  Ham. I dare not drink yet, madam; by-and-by.\n  Queen. Come, let me wipe thy face.\n  Laer. My lord, I\'ll hit him now.\n  King. I do not think\'t.\n  Laer. [aside] And yet it is almost against my conscience.\n  Ham. Come for the third, Laertes! You but dally.\n    pray You Pass with your best violence;\n    I am afeard You make a wanton of me.\n  Laer. Say you so? Come on.                               Play.\n  Osr. Nothing neither way.\n  Laer. Have at you now!\n                [Laertes wounds Hamlet; then] in scuffling, they\n                    change rapiers, [and Hamlet wounds Laertes].\n  King. Part them! They are incens\'d.\n  Ham. Nay come! again!                         The Queen falls.  \n  Osr. Look to the Queen there, ho!\n  Hor. They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?\n  Osr. How is\'t, Laertes?\n  Laer. Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric.\n    I am justly kill\'d with mine own treachery.\n  Ham. How does the Queen?\n  King. She sounds to see them bleed.\n  Queen. No, no! the drink, the drink! O my dear Hamlet!\n    The drink, the drink! I am poison\'d.                 [Dies.]\n  Ham. O villany! Ho! let the door be lock\'d.\n    Treachery! Seek it out.\n                                                [Laertes falls.]\n  Laer. It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain;\n    No medicine in the world can do thee good.\n    In thee there is not half an hour of life.\n    The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,\n    Unbated and envenom\'d. The foul practice\n    Hath turn\'d itself on me. Lo, here I lie,\n    Never to rise again. Thy mother\'s poison\'d.\n    I can no more. The King, the King\'s to blame.  \n  Ham. The point envenom\'d too?\n    Then, venom, to thy work.                    Hurts the King.\n  All. Treason! treason!\n  King. O, yet defend me, friends! I am but hurt.\n  Ham. Here, thou incestuous, murd\'rous, damned Dane,\n    Drink off this potion! Is thy union here?\n    Follow my mother.                                 King dies.\n  Laer. He is justly serv\'d.\n    It is a poison temper\'d by himself.\n    Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.\n    Mine and my father\'s death come not upon thee,\n    Nor thine on me!                                       Dies.\n  Ham. Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.\n    I am dead, Horatio. Wretched queen, adieu!\n    You that look pale and tremble at this chance,\n    That are but mutes or audience to this act,\n    Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death,\n    Is strict in his arrest) O, I could tell you-\n    But let it be. Horatio, I am dead;\n    Thou liv\'st; report me and my cause aright  \n    To the unsatisfied.\n  Hor. Never believe it.\n    I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.\n    Here\'s yet some liquor left.\n  Ham. As th\'art a man,\n    Give me the cup. Let go! By heaven, I\'ll ha\'t.\n    O good Horatio, what a wounded name\n    (Things standing thus unknown) shall live behind me!\n    If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,\n    Absent thee from felicity awhile,\n    And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,\n    To tell my story.         [March afar off, and shot within.]\n    What warlike noise is this?\n  Osr. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland,\n    To the ambassadors of England gives\n    This warlike volley.\n  Ham. O, I die, Horatio!\n    The potent poison quite o\'ercrows my spirit.\n    I cannot live to hear the news from England,\n    But I do prophesy th\' election lights  \n    On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice.\n    So tell him, with th\' occurrents, more and less,\n    Which have solicited- the rest is silence.             Dies.\n  Hor. Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,\n    And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!\n                                                 [March within.]\n    Why does the drum come hither?\n\n    Enter Fortinbras and English Ambassadors, with Drum,\n                  Colours, and Attendants.\n\n  Fort. Where is this sight?\n  Hor. What is it you will see?\n    If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.\n  Fort. This quarry cries on havoc. O proud Death,\n    What feast is toward in thine eternal cell\n    That thou so many princes at a shot\n    So bloodily hast struck.\n  Ambassador. The sight is dismal;\n    And our affairs from England come too late.  \n    The ears are senseless that should give us bearing\n    To tell him his commandment is fulfill\'d\n    That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.\n    Where should We have our thanks?\n  Hor. Not from his mouth,\n    Had it th\' ability of life to thank you.\n    He never gave commandment for their death.\n    But since, so jump upon this bloody question,\n    You from the Polack wars, and you from England,\n    Are here arriv\'d, give order that these bodies\n    High on a stage be placed to the view;\n    And let me speak to the yet unknowing world\n    How these things came about. So shall You hear\n    Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts;\n    Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;\n    Of deaths put on by cunning and forc\'d cause;\n    And, in this upshot, purposes mistook\n    Fall\'n on th\' inventors\' heads. All this can I\n    Truly deliver.\n  Fort. Let us haste to hear it,  \n    And call the noblest to the audience.\n    For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune.\n    I have some rights of memory in this kingdom\n    Which now, to claim my vantage doth invite me.\n  Hor. Of that I shall have also cause to speak,\n    And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more.\n    But let this same be presently perform\'d,\n    Even while men\'s minds are wild, lest more mischance\n    On plots and errors happen.\n  Fort. Let four captains\n    Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage;\n    For he was likely, had he been put on,\n    To have prov\'d most royally; and for his passage\n    The soldiers\' music and the rites of war\n    Speak loudly for him.\n    Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this\n    Becomes the field but here shows much amiss.\n    Go, bid the soldiers shoot.\n            Exeunt marching; after the which a peal of ordnance\n                                                   are shot off.  \n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1598\n\nTHE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH\n\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  King Henry the Fourth.\n  Henry, Prince of Wales, son to the King.\n  Prince John of Lancaster, son to the King.\n  Earl of Westmoreland.\n  Sir Walter Blunt.\n  Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester.\n  Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland.\n  Henry Percy, surnamed Hotspur, his son.\n  Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March.\n  Richard Scroop, Archbishop of York.\n  Archibald, Earl of Douglas.\n  Owen Glendower.\n  Sir Richard Vernon.\n  Sir John Falstaff.\n  Sir Michael, a friend to the Archbishop of York.\n  Poins.\n  Gadshill\n  Peto.\n  Bardolph.\n  \n  Lady Percy, wife to Hotspur, and sister to Mortimer.\n  Lady Mortimer, daughter to Glendower, and wife to Mortimer.\n  Mistress Quickly, hostess of the Boar\'s Head in Eastcheap.\n\n  Lords, Officers, Sheriff, Vintner, Chamberlain, Drawers, two\n    Carriers, Travellers, and Attendants.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE.--England and Wales.\n\n\nACT I. Scene I.\nLondon. The Palace.\n\nEnter the King, Lord John of Lancaster, Earl of Westmoreland,\n[Sir Walter Blunt,] with others.\n\n  King. So shaken as we are, so wan with care,\n    Find we a time for frighted peace to pant\n    And breathe short-winded accents of new broils\n    To be commenc\'d in stronds afar remote.\n    No more the thirsty entrance of this soil\n    Shall daub her lips with her own children\'s blood.\n    No more shall trenching war channel her fields,\n    Nor Bruise her flow\'rets with the armed hoofs\n    Of hostile paces. Those opposed eyes\n    Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven,\n    All of one nature, of one substance bred,\n    Did lately meet in the intestine shock\n    And furious close of civil butchery,\n    Shall now in mutual well-beseeming ranks\n    March all one way and be no more oppos\'d\n    Against acquaintance, kindred, and allies.  \n    The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife,\n    No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends,\n    As far as to the sepulchre of Christ-\n    Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross\n    We are impressed and engag\'d to fight-\n    Forthwith a power of English shall we levy,\n    Whose arms were moulded in their mother\'s womb\n    To chase these pagans in those holy fields\n    Over whose acres walk\'d those blessed feet\n    Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail\'d\n    For our advantage on the bitter cross.\n    But this our purpose now is twelvemonth old,\n    And bootless \'tis to tell you we will go.\n    Therefore we meet not now. Then let me hear\n    Of you, my gentle cousin Westmoreland,\n    What yesternight our Council did decree\n    In forwarding this dear expedience.\n  West. My liege, this haste was hot in question\n    And many limits of the charge set down\n    But yesternight; when all athwart there came  \n    A post from Wales, loaden with heavy news;\n    Whose worst was that the noble Mortimer,\n    Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight\n    Against the irregular and wild Glendower,\n    Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken,\n    A thousand of his people butchered;\n    Upon whose dead corpse there was such misuse,\n    Such beastly shameless transformation,\n    By those Welshwomen done as may not be\n    Without much shame retold or spoken of.\n  King. It seems then that the tidings of this broil\n    Brake off our business for the Holy Land.\n  West. This, match\'d with other, did, my gracious lord;\n    For more uneven and unwelcome news\n    Came from the North, and thus it did import:\n    On Holy-rood Day the gallant Hotspur there,\n    Young Harry Percy, and brave Archibald,\n    That ever-valiant and approved Scot,\n    At Holmedon met,\n    Where they did spend a sad and bloody hour;  \n    As by discharge of their artillery\n    And shape of likelihood the news was told;\n    For he that brought them, in the very heat\n    And pride of their contention did take horse,\n    Uncertain of the issue any way.\n  King. Here is a dear, a true-industrious friend,\n    Sir Walter Blunt, new lighted from his horse,\n    Stain\'d with the variation of each soil\n    Betwixt that Holmedon and this seat of ours,\n    And he hath brought us smooth and welcome news.\n    The Earl of Douglas is discomfited;\n    Ten thousand bold Scots, two-and-twenty knights,\n    Balk\'d in their own blood did Sir Walter see\n    On Holmedon\'s plains. Of prisoners, Hotspur took\n    Mordake Earl of Fife and eldest son\n    To beaten Douglas, and the Earl of Athol,\n    Of Murray, Angus, and Menteith.\n    And is not this an honourable spoil?\n    A gallant prize? Ha, cousin, is it not?\n  West. In faith,  \n    It is a conquest for a prince to boast of.\n  King. Yea, there thou mak\'st me sad, and mak\'st me sin\n    In envy that my Lord Northumberland\n    Should be the father to so blest a son-\n    A son who is the theme of honour\'s tongue,\n    Amongst a grove the very straightest plant;\n    Who is sweet Fortune\'s minion and her pride;\n    Whilst I, by looking on the praise of him,\n    See riot and dishonour stain the brow\n    Of my young Harry. O that it could be prov\'d\n    That some night-tripping fairy had exchang\'d\n    In cradle clothes our children where they lay,\n    And call\'d mine Percy, his Plantagenet!\n    Then would I have his Harry, and he mine.\n    But let him from my thoughts. What think you, coz,\n    Of this young Percy\'s pride? The prisoners\n    Which he in this adventure hath surpris\'d\n    To his own use he keeps, and sends me word\n    I shall have none but Mordake Earl of Fife.\n  West. This is his uncle\'s teaching, this Worcester,  \n    Malevolent to you In all aspects,\n    Which makes him prune himself and bristle up\n    The crest of youth against your dignity.\n  King. But I have sent for him to answer this;\n    And for this cause awhile we must neglect\n    Our holy purpose to Jerusalem.\n    Cousin, on Wednesday next our council we\n    Will hold at Windsor. So inform the lords;\n    But come yourself with speed to us again;\n    For more is to be said and to be done\n    Than out of anger can be uttered.\n  West. I will my liege.                                 Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nLondon. An apartment of the Prince\'s.\n\nEnter Prince of Wales and Sir John Falstaff.\n\n  Fal. Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?\n  Prince. Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack, and\n    unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after\n    noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou\n    wouldest truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time\n    of the day, Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons,\n    and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping\n    houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in\n    flame-coloured taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so\n    superfluous to demand the time of the day.\n  Fal. Indeed you come near me now, Hal; for we that take purses go\n    by the moon And the seven stars, and not by Phoebus, he, that\n    wand\'ring knight so fair. And I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art\n    king, as, God save thy Grace-Majesty I should say, for grace thou\n    wilt have none-\n  Prince. What, none?\n  Fal. No, by my troth; not so much as will serve to be prologue to  \n    an egg and butter.\n  Prince. Well, how then? Come, roundly, roundly.\n  Fal. Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us that\n    are squires of the night\'s body be called thieves of the day\'s\n    beauty. Let us be Diana\'s Foresters, Gentlemen of the Shade,\n    Minions of the Moon; and let men say we be men of good\n    government, being governed as the sea is, by our noble and chaste\n    mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.\n  Prince. Thou sayest well, and it holds well too; for the fortune of\n    us that are the moon\'s men doth ebb and flow like the sea, being\n    governed, as the sea is, by the moon. As, for proof now: a purse\n    of gold most resolutely snatch\'d on Monday night and most\n    dissolutely spent on Tuesday morning; got with swearing \'Lay by,\'\n    and spent with crying \'Bring in\'; now ill as low an ebb as the\n    foot of the ladder, and by-and-by in as high a flow as the ridge\n    of the gallows.\n  Fal. By the Lord, thou say\'st true, lad- and is not my hostess of\n    the tavern a most sweet wench?\n  Prince. As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle- and is not\n    a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?  \n  Fal. How now, how now, mad wag? What, in thy quips and thy\n    quiddities? What a plague have I to do with a buff jerkin?\n  Prince. Why, what a pox have I to do with my hostess of the tavern?\n  Fal. Well, thou hast call\'d her to a reckoning many a time and oft.\n  Prince. Did I ever call for thee to pay thy part?\n  Fal. No; I\'ll give thee thy due, thou hast paid all there.\n  Prince. Yea, and elsewhere, so far as my coin would stretch; and\n    where it would not, I have used my credit.\n  Fal. Yea, and so us\'d it that, were it not here apparent that thou\n    art heir apparent- But I prithee, sweet wag, shall there be\n    gallows standing in England when thou art king? and resolution\n    thus fubb\'d as it is with the rusty curb of old father antic the\n    law? Do not thou, when thou art king, hang a thief.\n  Prince. No; thou shalt.\n  Fal. Shall I? O rare! By the Lord, I\'ll be a brave judge.\n  Prince. Thou judgest false already. I mean, thou shalt have the\n    hanging of the thieves and so become a rare hangman.\n  Fal. Well, Hal, well; and in some sort it jumps with my humour as\n    well as waiting in the court, I can tell you.\n  Prince. For obtaining of suits?  \n  Fal. Yea, for obtaining of suits, whereof the hangman hath no lean\n    wardrobe. \'Sblood, I am as melancholy as a gib-cat or a lugg\'d\n    bear.\n  Prince. Or an old lion, or a lover\'s lute.\n  Fal. Yea, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe.\n  Prince. What sayest thou to a hare, or the melancholy of Moor\n    Ditch?\n  Fal. Thou hast the most unsavoury similes, and art indeed the most\n    comparative, rascalliest, sweet young prince. But, Hal, I prithee\n    trouble me no more with vanity. I would to God thou and I knew\n    where a commodity of good names were to be bought. An old lord of\n    the Council rated me the other day in the street about you, sir,\n    but I mark\'d him not; and yet he talked very wisely, but I\n    regarded him not; and yet he talk\'d wisely, and in the street\n    too.\n  Prince. Thou didst well; for wisdom cries out in the streets, and\n    no man regards it.\n  Fal. O, thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able to\n    corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me, Hal- God\n    forgive thee for it! Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing; and  \n    now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of\n    the wicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it over!\n    By the Lord, an I do not, I am a villain! I\'ll be damn\'d for\n    never a king\'s son in Christendom.\n  Prince. Where shall we take a purse tomorrow, Jack?\n  Fal. Zounds, where thou wilt, lad! I\'ll make one. An I do not, call\n    me villain and baffle me.\n  Prince. I see a good amendment of life in thee- from praying to\n    purse-taking.\n  Fal. Why, Hal, \'tis my vocation, Hal. \'Tis no sin for a man to\n    labour in his vocation.\n\n                             Enter Poins.\n\n    Poins! Now shall we know if Gadshill have set a match. O, if men\n    were to be saved by merit, what hole in hell were hot enough for\n    him? This is the most omnipotent villain that ever cried \'Stand!\'\n    to a true man.\n  Prince. Good morrow, Ned.\n  Poins. Good morrow, sweet Hal. What says Monsieur Remorse? What  \n    says Sir John Sack and Sugar? Jack, how agrees the devil and thee\n    about thy soul, that thou soldest him on Good Friday last for a\n    cup of Madeira and a cold capon\'s leg?\n  Prince. Sir John stands to his word, the devil shall have his\n    bargain; for he was never yet a breaker of proverbs. He will give\n    the devil his due.\n  Poins. Then art thou damn\'d for keeping thy word with the devil.\n  Prince. Else he had been damn\'d for cozening the devil.\n  Poins. But, my lads, my lads, to-morrow morning, by four o\'clock\n    early, at Gadshill! There are pilgrims gong to Canterbury with\n    rich offerings, and traders riding to London with fat purses. I\n    have vizards for you all; you have horses for yourselves.\n    Gadshill lies to-night in Rochester. I have bespoke supper\n    to-morrow night in Eastcheap. We may do it as secure as sleep. If\n    you will go, I will stuff your purses full of crowns; if you will\n    not, tarry at home and be hang\'d!\n  Fal. Hear ye, Yedward: if I tarry at home and go not, I\'ll hang you\n    for going.\n  Poins. You will, chops?\n  Fal. Hal, wilt thou make one?  \n  Prince. Who, I rob? I a thief? Not I, by my faith.\n  Fal. There\'s neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee,\n    nor thou cam\'st not of the blood royal if thou darest not stand\n    for ten shillings.\n  Prince. Well then, once in my days I\'ll be a madcap.\n  Fal. Why, that\'s well said.\n  Prince. Well, come what will, I\'ll tarry at home.\n  Fal. By the Lord, I\'ll be a traitor then, when thou art king.\n  Prince. I care not.\n  Poins. Sir John, I prithee, leave the Prince and me alone. I will\n    lay him down such reasons for this adventure that he shall go.\n  Fal. Well, God give thee the spirit of persuasion and him the ears\n    of profiting, that what thou speakest may move and what he hears\n    may be believed, that the true prince may (for recreation sake)\n    prove a false thief; for the poor abuses of the time want\n    countenance. Farewell; you shall find me in Eastcheap.\n  Prince. Farewell, thou latter spring! farewell, All-hallown summer!\n                                                  Exit Falstaff.\n  Poins. Now, my good sweet honey lord, ride with us to-morrow. I\n    have a jest to execute that I cannot manage alone. Falstaff,  \n    Bardolph, Peto, and Gadshill shall rob those men that we have\n    already waylaid; yourself and I will not be there; and when they\n    have the booty, if you and I do not rob them, cut this head off\n    from my shoulders.\n  Prince. How shall we part with them in setting forth?\n  Poins. Why, we will set forth before or after them and appoint them\n    a place of meeting, wherein it is at our pleasure to fail; and\n    then will they adventure upon the exploit themselves; which they\n    shall have no sooner achieved, but we\'ll set upon them.\n  Prince. Yea, but \'tis like that they will know us by our horses, by\n    our habits, and by every other appointment, to be ourselves.\n  Poins. Tut! our horses they shall not see- I\'ll tie them in the\n    wood; our wizards we will change after we leave them; and,\n    sirrah, I have cases of buckram for the nonce, to immask our\n    noted outward garments.\n  Prince. Yea, but I doubt they will be too hard for us.\n  Poins. Well, for two of them, I know them to be as true-bred\n    cowards as ever turn\'d back; and for the third, if he fight\n    longer than he sees reason, I\'ll forswear arms. The virtue of\n    this jest will lie the incomprehensible lies that this same fat  \n    rogue will tell us when we meet at supper: how thirty, at least,\n    he fought with; what wards, what blows, what extremities he\n    endured; and in the reproof of this lies the jest.\n  Prince. Well, I\'ll go with thee. Provide us all things necessary\n    and meet me to-night in Eastcheap. There I\'ll sup. Farewell.\n  Poins. Farewell, my lord.                                Exit.\n  Prince. I know you all, and will awhile uphold\n    The unyok\'d humour of your idleness.\n    Yet herein will I imitate the sun,\n    Who doth permit the base contagious clouds\n    To smother up his beauty from the world,\n    That, when he please again to lie himself,\n    Being wanted, he may be more wond\'red at\n    By breaking through the foul and ugly mists\n    Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.\n    If all the year were playing holidays,\n    To sport would be as tedious as to work;\n    But when they seldom come, they wish\'d-for come,\n    And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.\n    So, when this loose behaviour I throw off  \n    And pay the debt I never promised,\n    By how much better than my word I am,\n    By so much shall I falsify men\'s hopes;\n    And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,\n    My reformation, glitt\'ring o\'er my fault,\n    Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes\n    Than that which hath no foil to set it off.\n    I\'ll so offend to make offence a skill,\n    Redeeming time when men think least I will.            Exit.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nLondon. The Palace.\n\nEnter the King, Northumberland, Worcester, Hotspur, Sir Walter Blunt,\nwith others.\n\n  King. My blood hath been too cold and temperate,\n    Unapt to stir at these indignities,\n    And you have found me, for accordingly\n    You tread upon my patience; but be sure\n    I will from henceforth rather be myself,\n    Mighty and to be fear\'d, than my condition,\n    Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down,\n    And therefore lost that title of respect\n    Which the proud soul ne\'er pays but to the proud.\n  Wor. Our house, my sovereign liege, little deserves\n    The scourge of greatness to be us\'d on it-\n    And that same greatness too which our own hands\n    Have holp to make so portly.\n  North. My lord-\n  King. Worcester, get thee gone; for I do see\n    Danger and disobedience in thine eye.  \n    O, sir, your presence is too bold and peremptory,\n    And majesty might never yet endure\n    The moody frontier of a servant brow.\n    Tou have good leave to leave us. When we need\n    \'Your use and counsel, we shall send for you.\n                                                 Exit Worcester.\n    You were about to speak.\n  North. Yea, my good lord.\n    Those prisoners in your Highness\' name demanded\n    Which Harry Percy here at Holmedon took,\n    Were, as he says, not with such strength denied\n    As is delivered to your Majesty.\n    Either envy, therefore, or misprision\n    Is guilty of this fault, and not my son.\n  Hot. My liege, I did deny no prisoners.\n    But I remember, when the fight was done,\n    When I was dry with rage and extreme toll,\n    Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,\n    Came there a certain lord, neat and trimly dress\'d,\n    Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin new reap\'d  \n    Show\'d like a stubble land at harvest home.\n    He was perfumed like a milliner,\n    And \'twixt his finger and his thumb he held\n    A pouncet box, which ever and anon\n    He gave his nose, and took\'t away again;\n    Who therewith angry, when it next came there,\n    Took it in snuff; and still he smil\'d and talk\'d;\n    And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,\n    He call\'d them untaught knaves, unmannerly,\n    To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse\n    Betwixt the wind and his nobility.\n    With many holiday and lady terms\n    He questioned me, amongst the rest demanded\n    My prisoners in your Majesty\'s behalf.\n    I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,\n    To be so pest\'red with a popingay,\n    Out of my grief and my impatience\n    Answer\'d neglectingly, I know not what-\n    He should, or he should not; for he made me mad\n    To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,  \n    And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman\n    Of guns and drums and wounds- God save the mark!-\n    And telling me the sovereignest thing on earth\n    Was parmacity for an inward bruise;\n    And that it was great pity, so it was,\n    This villanous saltpetre should be digg\'d\n    Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,\n    Which many a good tall fellow had destroy\'d\n    So cowardly; and but for these vile \'guns,\n    He would himself have been a soldier.\n    This bald unjointed chat of his, my lord,\n    I answered indirectly, as I said,\n    And I beseech you, let not his report\n    Come current for an accusation\n    Betwixt my love and your high majesty.\n  Blunt. The circumstance considered, good my lord,\n    Whate\'er Lord Harry Percy then had said\n    To such a person, and in such a place,\n    At such a time, with all the rest retold,\n    May reasonably die, and never rise  \n    To do him wrong, or any way impeach\n    What then he said, so he unsay it now.\n  King. Why, yet he doth deny his prisoners,\n    But with proviso and exception,\n    That we at our own charge shall ransom straight\n    His brother-in-law, the foolish Mortimer;\n    Who, on my soul, hath wilfully betray\'d\n    The lives of those that he did lead to fight\n    Against that great magician, damn\'d Glendower,\n    Whose daughter, as we hear, the Earl of March\n    Hath lately married. Shall our coffers, then,\n    Be emptied to redeem a traitor home?\n    Shall we buy treason? and indent with fears\n    When they have lost and forfeited themselves?\n    No, on the barren mountains let him starve!\n    For I shall never hold that man my friend\n    Whose tongue shall ask me for one penny cost\n    To ransom home revolted Mortimer.\n  Hot. Revolted Mortimer?\n    He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,  \n    But by the chance of war. To prove that true\n    Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds,\n    Those mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took\n    When on the gentle Severn\'s sedgy bank,\n    In single opposition hand to hand,\n    He did confound the best part of an hour\n    In changing hardiment with great Glendower.\n    Three times they breath\'d, and three times did they drink,\n    Upon agreement, of swift Severn\'s flood;\n    Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks,\n    Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds\n    And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank,\n    Bloodstained with these valiant cohabitants.\n    Never did base and rotten policy\n    Colour her working with such deadly wounds;\n    Nor never could the noble Mortimer\n    Receive so many, and all willingly.\n    Then let not him be slandered with revolt.\n  King. Thou dost belie him, Percy, thou dost belie him!\n    He never did encounter with Glendower.  \n    I tell thee\n    He durst as well have met the devil alone\n    As Owen Glendower for an enemy.\n    Art thou not asham\'d? But, sirrah, henceforth\n    Let me not hear you speak of Mortimer.\n    Send me your prisoners with the speediest means,\n    Or you shall hear in such a kind from me\n    As will displease you. My Lord Northumberland,\n    We license your departure with your son.-\n    Send us your prisoners, or you will hear of it.\n                                 Exeunt King, [Blunt, and Train]\n  Hot. An if the devil come and roar for them,\n    I will not send them. I will after straight\n    And tell him so; for I will else my heart,\n    Albeit I make a hazard of my head.\n  North. What, drunk with choler? Stay, and pause awhile.\n    Here comes your uncle.\n\n                          Enter Worcester.\n  \n  Hot. Speak of Mortimer?\n    Zounds, I will speak of him, and let my soul\n    Want mercy if I do not join with him!\n    Yea, on his part I\'ll empty all these veins,\n    And shed my dear blood drop by drop in the dust,\n    But I will lift the downtrod Mortimer\n    As high in the air as this unthankful king,\n    As this ingrate and cank\'red Bolingbroke.\n  North. Brother, the King hath made your nephew mad.\n  Wor. Who struck this heat up after I was gone?\n  Hot. He will (forsooth) have all my prisoners;\n    And when I urg\'d the ransom once again\n    Of my wive\'s brother, then his cheek look\'d pale,\n    And on my face he turn\'d an eye of death,\n    Trembling even at the name of Mortimer.\n  Wor. I cannot blame him. Was not he proclaim\'d\n    By Richard that dead is, the next of blood?\n  North. He was; I heard the proclamation.\n    And then it was when the unhappy King\n    (Whose wrongs in us God pardon!) did set forth  \n    Upon his Irish expedition;\n    From whence he intercepted did return\n    To be depos\'d, and shortly murdered.\n  Wor. And for whose death we in the world\'s wide mouth\n    Live scandaliz\'d and foully spoken of.\n  Hot. But soft, I pray you. Did King Richard then\n    Proclaim my brother Edmund Mortimer\n    Heir to the crown?\n  North. He did; myself did hear it.\n  Hot. Nay, then I cannot blame his cousin king,\n    That wish\'d him on the barren mountains starve.\n    But shall it be that you, that set the crown\n    Upon the head of this forgetful man,\n    And for his sake wear the detested blot\n    Of murtherous subornation- shall it be\n    That you a world of curses undergo,\n    Being the agents or base second means,\n    The cords, the ladder, or the hangman rather?\n    O, pardon me that I descend so low\n    To show the line and the predicament  \n    Wherein you range under this subtile king!\n    Shall it for shame be spoken in these days,\n    Or fill up chronicles in time to come,\n    That men of your nobility and power\n    Did gage them both in an unjust behalf\n    (As both of you, God pardon it! have done)\n    To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose,\n    And plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke?\n    And shall it in more shame be further spoken\n    That you are fool\'d, discarded, and shook off\n    By him for whom these shames ye underwent?\n    No! yet time serves wherein you may redeem\n    Your banish\'d honours and restore yourselves\n    Into the good thoughts of the world again;\n    Revenge the jeering and disdain\'d contempt\n    Of this proud king, who studies day and night\n    To answer all the debt he owes to you\n    Even with the bloody payment of your deaths.\n    Therefore I say-\n  Wor. Peace, cousin, say no more;  \n    And now, I will unclasp a secret book,\n    And to your quick-conceiving discontents\n    I\'ll read you matter deep and dangerous,\n    As full of peril and adventurous spirit\n    As to o\'erwalk a current roaring loud\n    On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.\n  Hot. If he fall in, good night, or sink or swim!\n    Send danger from the east unto the west,\n    So honour cross it from the north to south,\n    And let them grapple. O, the blood more stirs\n    To rouse a lion than to start a hare!\n  North. Imagination of some great exploit\n    Drives him beyond the bounds of patience.\n  Hot. By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap\n    To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac\'d moon,\n    Or dive into the bottom of the deep,\n    Where fadom line could never touch the ground,\n    And pluck up drowned honour by the locks,\n    So he that doth redeem her thence might wear\n    Without corrival all her dignities;  \n    But out upon this half-fac\'d fellowship!\n  Wor. He apprehends a world of figures here,\n    But not the form of what he should attend.\n    Good cousin, give me audience for a while.\n  Hot. I cry you mercy.\n  Wor. Those same noble Scots\n    That are your prisoners-\n  Hot. I\'ll keep them all.\n    By God, he shall not have a Scot of them!\n    No, if a Scot would save his soul, he shall not.\n    I\'ll keep them, by this hand!\n  Wor. You start away.\n    And lend no ear unto my purposes.\n    Those prisoners you shall keep.\n  Hot. Nay, I will! That is flat!\n    He said he would not ransom Mortimer,\n    Forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer,\n    But I will find him when he lies asleep,\n    And in his ear I\'ll holloa \'Mortimer.\'\n    Nay;  \n    I\'ll have a starling shall be taught to speak\n    Nothing but \'Mortimer,\' and give it him\n    To keep his anger still in motion.\n  Wor. Hear you, cousin, a word.\n  Hot. All studies here I solemnly defy\n    Save how to gall and pinch this Bolingbroke;\n    And that same sword-and-buckler Prince of Wales-\n    But that I think his father loves him not\n    And would be glad he met with some mischance,\n    I would have him poisoned with a pot of ale.\n  Wor. Farewell, kinsman. I will talk to you\n    When you are better temper\'d to attend.\n  North. Why, what a wasp-stung and impatient fool\n    Art thou to break into this woman\'s mood,\n    Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own!\n  Hot. Why, look you, I am whipp\'d and scourg\'d with rods,\n    Nettled, and stung with pismires when I hear\n    Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke.\n    In Richard\'s time- what do you call the place-\n    A plague upon it! it is in GIoucestershire-  \n    \'Twas where the madcap Duke his uncle kept-\n    His uncle York- where I first bow\'d my knee\n    Unto this king of smiles, this Bolingbroke-\n    \'S blood!\n    When you and he came back from Ravenspurgh-\n  North. At Berkeley Castle.\n  Hot. You say true.\n    Why, what a candy deal of courtesy\n    This fawning greyhound then did proffer me!\n    Look, \'when his infant fortune came to age,\'\n    And \'gentle Harry Percy,\' and \'kind cousin\'-\n    O, the devil take such cozeners!- God forgive me!\n    Good uncle, tell your tale, for I have done.\n  Wor. Nay, if you have not, to it again.\n    We will stay your leisure.\n  Hot. I have done, i\' faith.\n  Wor. Then once more to your Scottish prisoners.\n    Deliver them up without their ransom straight,\n    And make the Douglas\' son your only mean\n    For powers In Scotland; which, for divers reasons  \n    Which I shall send you written, be assur\'d\n    Will easily be granted. [To Northumberland] You, my lord,\n    Your son in Scotland being thus employ\'d,\n    Shall secretly into the bosom creep\n    Of that same noble prelate well-belov\'d,\n    The Archbishop.\n  Hot. Of York, is it not?\n  Wor. True; who bears hard\n    His brother\'s death at Bristow, the Lord Scroop.\n    I speak not this in estimation,\n    As what I think might be, but what I know\n    Is ruminated, plotted, and set down,\n    And only stays but to behold the face\n    Of that occasion that shall bring it on.\n  Hot. I smell it. Upon my life, it will do well.\n  North. Before the game is afoot thou still let\'st slip.\n  Hot. Why, it cannot choose but be a noble plot.\n    And then the power of Scotland and of York\n    To join with Mortimer, ha?\n  Wor. And so they shall.  \n  Hot. In faith, it is exceedingly well aim\'d.\n  Wor. And \'tis no little reason bids us speed,\n    To save our heads by raising of a head;\n    For, bear ourselves as even as we can,\n    The King will always think him in our debt,\n    And think we think ourselves unsatisfied,\n    Till he hath found a time to pay us home.\n    And see already how he doth begin\n    To make us strangers to his looks of love.\n  Hot. He does, he does! We\'ll be reveng\'d on him.\n  Wor. Cousin, farewell. No further go in this\n    Than I by letters shall direct your course.\n    When time is ripe, which will be suddenly,\n    I\'ll steal to Glendower and Lord Mortimer,\n    Where you and Douglas, and our pow\'rs at once,\n    As I will fashion it, shall happily meet,\n    To bear our fortunes in our own strong arms,\n    Which now we hold at much uncertainty.\n  North. Farewell, good brother. We shall thrive, I trust.\n  Hot. Uncle, adieu. O, let the hours be short  \n    Till fields and blows and groans applaud our sport!    Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. Scene I.\nRochester. An inn yard.\n\nEnter a Carrier with a lantern in his hand.\n\n  1. Car. Heigh-ho! an it be not four by the day, I\'ll be hang\'d.\n    Charles\' wain is over the new chimney, and yet our horse not\n    pack\'d.- What, ostler!\n  Ost. [within] Anon, anon.\n  1. Car. I prithee, Tom, beat Cut\'s saddle, put a few flocks in the\n    point. Poor jade is wrung in the withers out of all cess.\n\n                        Enter another Carrier.\n\n  2. Car. Peas and beans are as dank here as a dog, and that is the\n    next way to give poor jades the bots. This house is turned upside\n    down since Robin Ostler died.\n  1. Car. Poor fellow never joyed since the price of oats rose. It\n    was the death of him.\n  2. Car. I think this be the most villanous house in all London road\n    for fleas. I am stung like a tench.\n  1. Car. Like a tench I By the mass, there is ne\'er a king christen  \n    could be better bit than I have been since the first cock.\n  2. Car. Why, they will allow us ne\'er a jordan, and then we leak in\n    your chimney, and your chamber-lye breeds fleas like a loach.\n  1. Car. What, ostler! come away and be hang\'d! come away!\n  2. Car. I have a gammon of bacon and two razes of ginger, to be\n    delivered as far as Charing Cross.\n  1. Car. God\'s body! the turkeys in my pannier are quite starved.\n    What, ostler! A plague on thee! hast thou never an eye in thy\n    head? Canst not hear? An \'twere not as good deed as drink to\n    break the pate on thee, I am a very villain. Come, and be hang\'d!\n    Hast no faith in thee?\n\n                           Enter Gadshill.\n\n  Gads. Good morrow, carriers. What\'s o\'clock?\n  1. Car. I think it be two o\'clock.\n  Gads. I prithee lend me this lantern to see my gelding in the\n    stable.\n  1. Car. Nay, by God, soft! I know a trick worth two of that,\n    i\' faith.  \n  Gads. I pray thee lend me thine.\n  2. Car. Ay, when? canst tell? Lend me thy lantern, quoth he? Marry,\n    I\'ll see thee hang\'d first!\n  Gads. Sirrah carrier, what time do you mean to come to London?\n  2. Car. Time enough to go to bed with a candle, I warrant thee.\n    Come, neighbour Mugs, we\'ll call up the gentlemen. They will\n    along with company, for they have great charge.\n                                              Exeunt [Carriers].\n  Gads. What, ho! chamberlain!\n\n                            Enter Chamberlain.\n\n  Cham. At hand, quoth pickpurse.\n  Gads. That\'s even as fair as- \'at hand, quoth the chamberlain\'; for\n    thou variest no more from picking of purses than giving direction\n    doth from labouring: thou layest the plot how.\n  Cham. Good morrow, Master Gadshill. It holds current that I told\n    you yesternight. There\'s a franklin in the Wild of Kent hath\n    brought three hundred marks with him in gold. I heard him tell it\n    to one of his company last night at supper- a kind of auditor;  \n    one that hath abundance of charge too, God knows what. They are\n    up already and call for eggs and butter. They will away\n    presently.\n  Gads. Sirrah, if they meet not with Saint Nicholas\' clerks, I\'ll\n    give thee this neck.\n  Cham. No, I\'ll none of it. I pray thee keep that for the hangman;\n    for I know thou worshippest Saint Nicholas as truly as a man of\n    falsehood may.\n  Gads. What talkest thou to me of the hangman? If I hang, I\'ll make\n    a fat pair of gallows; for if I hang, old Sir John hangs with me,\n    and thou knowest he is no starveling. Tut! there are other\n    Troyans that thou dream\'st not of, the which for sport sake are\n    content to do the profession some grace; that would (if matters\n    should be look\'d into) for their own credit sake make all whole.\n    I am joined with no foot land-rakers, no long-staff sixpenny\n    strikers, none of these mad mustachio purple-hued maltworms; but\n    with nobility, and tranquillity, burgomasters and great oneyers,\n    such as can hold in, such as will strike sooner than speak, and\n    speak sooner than drink, and drink sooner than pray; and yet,\n    zounds, I lie; for they pray continually to their saint, the  \n    commonwealth, or rather, not pray to her, but prey on her, for\n    they ride up and down on her and make her their boots.\n  Cham. What, the commonwealth their boots? Will she hold out water\n    in foul way?\n  Gads. She will, she will! Justice hath liquor\'d her. We steal as in\n    a castle, cocksure. We have the receipt of fernseed, we walk\n    invisible.\n  Cham. Nay, by my faith, I think you are more beholding to the night\n    than to fernseed for your walking invisible.\n  Gads. Give me thy hand. Thou shalt have a share in our purchase, as\n    I and a true man.\n  Cham. Nay, rather let me have it, as you are a false thief.\n  Gads. Go to; \'homo\' is a common name to all men. Bid the ostler\n    bring my gelding out of the stable. Farewell, you muddy knave.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nThe highway near Gadshill.\n\nEnter Prince and Poins.\n\n  Poins. Come, shelter, shelter! I have remov\'d Falstaff\'s horse, and\n    he frets like a gumm\'d velvet.\n  Prince. Stand close.                        [They step aside.]\n\n                             Enter Falstaff.\n\n  Fal. Poins! Poins, and be hang\'d! Poins!\n  Prince. I comes forward I Peace, ye fat-kidney\'d rascal! What a\n    brawling dost thou keep!\n  Fal. Where\'s Poins, Hal?\n  Prince. He is walk\'d up to the top of the hill. I\'ll go seek him.\n                                                  [Steps aside.]\n  Fal. I am accurs\'d to rob in that thief\'s company. The rascal hath\n    removed my horse and tied him I know not where. If I travel but\n    four foot by the squire further afoot, I shall break my wind.\n    Well, I doubt not but to die a fair death for all this, if I\n    scape hanging for killing that rogue. I have forsworn his company  \n    hourly any time this two-and-twenty years, and yet I am bewitch\'d\n    with the rogue\'s company. If the rascal have not given me\n    medicines to make me love him, I\'ll be hang\'d. It could not be\n    else. I have drunk medicines. Poins! Hal! A plague upon you both!\n    Bardolph! Peto! I\'ll starve ere I\'ll rob a foot further. An\n    \'twere not as good a deed as drink to turn true man and to leave\n    these rogues, I am the veriest varlet that ever chewed with a\n    tooth. Eight yards of uneven ground is threescore and ten miles\n    afoot with me, and the stony-hearted villains know it well\n    enough. A plague upon it when thieves cannot be true one to\n    another! (They whistle.) Whew! A plague upon you all! Give me my\n    horse, you rogues! give me my horse and be hang\'d!\n  Prince. [comes forward] Peace, ye fat-guts! Lie down, lay thine ear\n    close to the ground, and list if thou canst hear the tread of\n    travellers.\n  Fal. Have you any levers to lift me up again, being down? \'Sblood,\n    I\'ll not bear mine own flesh so far afoot again for all the coin\n    in thy father\'s exchequer. What a plague mean ye to colt me thus?\n  Prince. Thou liest; thou art not colted, thou art uncolted.\n  Fal. I prithee, good Prince Hal, help me to my horse, good king\'s  \n    son.\n  Prince. Out, ye rogue! Shall I be your ostler?\n  Fal. Go hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent garters! If I be\n    ta\'en, I\'ll peach for this. An I have not ballads made on you\n    all, and sung to filthy tunes, let a cup of sack be my poison.\n    When a jest is so forward- and afoot too- I hate it.\n\n             Enter Gadshill, [Bardolph and Peto with him].\n\n  Gads. Stand!\n  Fal. So I do, against my will.\n  Poins. [comes fortward] O, \'tis our setter. I know his voice.\n    Bardolph, what news?\n  Bar. Case ye, case ye! On with your vizards! There\'s money of the\n    King\'s coming down the hill; \'tis going to the King\'s exchequer.\n  Fal. You lie, ye rogue! \'Tis going to the King\'s tavern.\n  Gads. There\'s enough to make us all.\n  Fal. To be hang\'d.\n  Prince. Sirs, you four shall front them in the narrow lane; Ned\n    Poins and I will walk lower. If they scape from your encounter,  \n    then they light on us.\n  Peto. How many be there of them?\n  Gads. Some eight or ten.\n  Fal. Zounds, will they not rob us?\n  Prince. What, a coward, Sir John Paunch?\n  Fal. Indeed, I am not John of Gaunt, your grandfather; but yet no\n    coward, Hal.\n  Prince. Well, we leave that to the proof.\n  Poins. Sirrah Jack, thy horse stands behind the hedge. When thou\n    need\'st him, there thou shalt find him. Farewell and stand fast.\n  Fal. Now cannot I strike him, if I should be hang\'d.\n  Prince. [aside to Poins] Ned, where are our disguises?\n  Poins. [aside to Prince] Here, hard by. Stand close.\n                                      [Exeunt Prince and Poins.]\n  Fal. Now, my masters, happy man be his dole, say I. Every man to\n    his business.\n\n                         Enter the Travellers.\n\n  Traveller. Come, neighbour.  \n    The boy shall lead our horses down the hill;\n    We\'ll walk afoot awhile and ease our legs.\n  Thieves. Stand!\n  Traveller. Jesus bless us!\n  Fal. Strike! down with them! cut the villains\' throats! Ah,\n    whoreson caterpillars! bacon-fed knaves! they hate us youth. Down\n    with them! fleece them!\n  Traveller. O, we are undone, both we and ours for ever!\n  Fal. Hang ye, gorbellied knaves, are ye undone? No, ye fat chuffs;\n    I would your store were here! On, bacons on! What, ye knaves!\n    young men must live. You are grandjurors, are ye? We\'ll jure ye,\n    faith!\n                            Here they rob and bind them. Exeunt.\n\n            Enter the Prince and Poins [in buckram suits].\n\n  Prince. The thieves have bound the true men. Now could thou and I\n    rob the thieves and go merrily to London, it would be argument\n    for a week, laughter for a month, and a good jest for ever.\n  Poins. Stand close! I hear them coming.  \n                                             [They stand aside.]\n\n                       Enter the Thieves again.\n\n  Fal. Come, my masters, let us share, and then to horse before day.\n    An the Prince and Poins be not two arrant cowards, there\'s no\n    equity stirring. There\'s no more valour in that Poins than in a\n    wild duck.\n\n        [As they are sharing, the Prince and Poins set upon\n        them. THey all run away, and Falstaff, after a blow or\n        two, runs awasy too, leaving the booty behind them.]\n\n  Prince. Your money!\n  Poins. Villains!\n\n  Prince. Got with much ease. Now merrily to horse.\n    The thieves are scattered, and possess\'d with fear\n    So strongly that they dare not meet each other.\n    Each takes his fellow for an officer.  \n    Away, good Ned. Falstaff sweats to death\n    And lards the lean earth as he walks along.\n    Were\'t not for laughing, I should pity him.\n  Poins. How the rogue roar\'d!                           Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nWarkworth Castle.\n\nEnter Hotspur solus, reading a letter.\n\n  Hot. \'But, for mine own part, my lord, I could be well contented to\n    be there, in respect of the love I bear your house.\' He could be\n    contented- why is he not then? In respect of the love he bears\n    our house! He shows in this he loves his own barn better than he\n    loves our house. Let me see some more. \'The purpose you undertake\n    is dangerous\'- Why, that\'s certain! \'Tis dangerous to take a\n    cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, out of\n    this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety. \'The purpose\n    you undertake is dangerous, the friends you have named uncertain,\n    the time itself unsorted, and your whole plot too light for the\n    counterpoise of so great an opposition.\' Say you so, say you so?\n    I say unto you again, you are a shallow, cowardly hind, and you\n    lie. What a lack-brain is this! By the Lord, our plot is a good\n    plot as ever was laid; our friends true and constant: a good\n    plot, good friends, and full of expectation; an excellent plot,\n    very good friends. What a frosty-spirited rogue is this! Why, my\n    Lord of York commends the plot and the general course of the  \n    action. Zounds, an I were now by this rascal, I could brain him\n    with his lady\'s fan. Is there not my father, my uncle, and\n    myself; Lord Edmund Mortimer, my Lord of York, and Owen\n    Glendower? Is there not, besides, the Douglas? Have I not all\n    their letters to meet me in arms by the ninth of the next month,\n    and are they not some of them set forward already? What a pagan\n    rascal is this! an infidel! Ha! you shall see now, in very\n    sincerity of fear and cold heart will he to the King and lay open\n    all our proceedings. O, I could divide myself and go to buffets\n    for moving such a dish of skim milk with so honourable an action!\n    Hang him, let him tell the King! we are prepared. I will set\n    forward to-night.\n\n                         Enter his Lady.\n\n    How now, Kate? I must leave you within these two hours.\n  Lady. O my good lord, why are you thus alone?\n    For what offence have I this fortnight been\n    A banish\'d woman from my Harry\'s bed,\n    Tell me, sweet lord, what is\'t that takes from thee  \n    Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?\n    Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth,\n    And start so often when thou sit\'st alone?\n    Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks\n    And given my treasures and my rights of thee\n    To thick-ey\'d musing and curs\'d melancholy?\n    In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch\'d,\n    And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars,\n    Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed,\n    Cry \'Courage! to the field!\' And thou hast talk\'d\n    Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tent,\n    Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets,\n    Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin,\n    Of prisoners\' ransom, and of soldiers slain,\n    And all the currents of a heady fight.\n    Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war,\n    And thus hath so bestirr\'d thee in thy sleep,\n    That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow\n    Like bubbles ill a late-disturbed stream,\n    And in thy face strange motions have appear\'d,  \n    Such as we see when men restrain their breath\n    On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these?\n    Some heavy business hath my lord in hand,\n    And I must know it, else he loves me not.\n  Hot. What, ho!\n\n                    [Enter a Servant.]\n\n    Is Gilliams with the packet gone?\n  Serv. He is, my lord, an hour ago.\n  Hot. Hath Butler brought those horses from the sheriff?\n  Serv. One horse, my lord, he brought even now.\n  Hot. What horse? A roan, a crop-ear, is it not?\n  Serv. It is, my lord.\n  Hot. That roan shall be my throne.\n    Well, I will back him straight. O esperance!\n    Bid Butler lead him forth into the park.\n                                                 [Exit Servant.]\n  Lady. But hear you, my lord.\n  Hot. What say\'st thou, my lady?  \n  Lady. What is it carries you away?\n  Hot. Why, my horse, my love- my horse!\n  Lady. Out, you mad-headed ape!\n    A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen\n    As you are toss\'d with. In faith,\n    I\'ll know your business, Harry; that I will!\n    I fear my brother Mortimer doth stir\n    About his title and hath sent for you\n    To line his enterprise; but if you go-\n  Hot. So far afoot, I shall be weary, love.\n  Lady. Come, come, you paraquito, answer me\n    Directly unto this question that I ask.\n    I\'ll break thy little finger, Harry,\n    An if thou wilt not tell my all things true.\n  Hot. Away.\n    Away, you trifler! Love? I love thee not;\n    I care not for thee, Kate. This is no world\n    To play with mammets and to tilt with lips.\n    We must have bloody noses and crack\'d crowns,\n    And pass them current too. Gods me, my horse!  \n    What say\'st thou, Kate? What wouldst thou have with me?\n  Lady. Do you not love me? do you not indeed?\n    Well, do not then; for since you love me not,\n    I will not love myself. Do you not love me?\n    Nay, tell me if you speak in jest or no.\n  Hot. Come, wilt thou see me ride?\n    And when I am a-horseback, I will swear\n    I love thee infinitely. But hark you. Kate:\n    I must not have you henceforth question me\n    Whither I go, nor reason whereabout.\n    Whither I must, I must; and to conclude,\n    This evening must I leave you, gentle Kate.\n    I know you wise; but yet no farther wise\n    Than Harry Percy\'s wife; constant you are,\n    But yet a woman; and for secrecy,\n    No lady closer, for I well believe\n    Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know,\n    And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate.\n  Lady. How? so far?\n  Hot. Not an inch further. But hark you, Kate:  \n    Whither I go, thither shall you go too;\n    To-day will I set forth, to-morrow you.\n    Will this content you, Kate,?\n  Lady. It must of force.                                Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nEastcheap. The Boar\'s Head Tavern.\n\nEnter Prince and Poins.\n\n  Prince. Ned, prithee come out of that fat-room and lend me thy hand\n    to laugh a little.\n  Poins. Where hast been, Hal?\n    Prince,. With three or four loggerheads amongst three or\n    fourscore hogsheads. I have sounded the very bass-string of\n    humility. Sirrah, I am sworn brother to a leash of drawers and\n    can call them all by their christen names, as Tom, Dick, and\n    Francis. They take it already upon their salvation that, though\n    I be but Prince of Wales, yet I am the king of courtesy; and tell\n    me flatly I am no proud Jack like Falstaff, but a Corinthian, a\n    lad of mettle, a good boy (by the Lord, so they call me!), and\n    when I am King of England I shall command all the good lads\n    Eastcheap. They call drinking deep, dying scarlet; and when\n    you breathe in your watering, they cry \'hem!\' and bid you play it\n    off. To conclude, I am so good a proficient in one quarter of an\n    hour that I can drink with any tinker in his own language during\n    my life. I tell thee, Ned, thou hast lost much honour that thou\n    wert not with me in this action. But, sweet Ned- to sweeten which  \n    name of Ned, I give thee this pennyworth of sugar, clapp\'d even\n    now into my hand by an under-skinker, one that never spake other\n    English in his life than \'Eight shillings and sixpence,\' and \'You\n    are welcome,\' with this shrill addition, \'Anon, anon, sir! Score\n    a pint of bastard in the Half-moon,\' or so- but, Ned, to drive\n    away the time till Falstaff come, I prithee do thou stand in some\n    by-room while I question my puny drawer to what end be gave me\n    the sugar; and do thou never leave calling \'Francis!\' that his\n    tale to me may be nothing but \'Anon!\' Step aside, and I\'ll show\n    thee a precedent.\n  Poins. Francis!\n  Prince. Thou art perfect.\n  Poins. Francis!                                  [Exit Poins.]\n\n                    Enter [Francis, a] Drawer.\n\n  Fran. Anon, anon, sir.- Look down into the Pomgarnet, Ralph.\n  Prince. Come hither, Francis.\n  Fran. My lord?\n  Prince. How long hast thou to serve, Francis?  \n  Fran. Forsooth, five years, and as much as to-\n  Poins. [within] Francis!\n  Fran. Anon, anon, sir.\n  Prince. Five year! by\'r Lady, a long lease for the clinking of\n    Pewter. But, Francis, darest thou be so valiant as to play the\n    coward with thy indenture and show it a fair pair of heels and\n    run from it?\n  Fran. O Lord, sir, I\'ll be sworn upon all the books in England I\n    could find in my heart-\n  Poins. [within] Francis!\n  Fran. Anon, sir.\n  Prince. How old art thou, Francis?\n  Fran. Let me see. About Michaelmas next I shall be-\n  Poins. [within] Francis!\n  Fran. Anon, sir. Pray stay a little, my lord.\n  Prince. Nay, but hark you, Francis. For the sugar thou gavest me-\n    \'twas a pennyworth, wast not?\n  Fran. O Lord! I would it had been two!\n  Prince. I will give thee for it a thousand pound. Ask me when thou\n    wilt, and, thou shalt have it.  \n  Poins. [within] Francis!\n  Fran. Anon, anon.\n  Prince. Anon, Francis? No, Francis; but to-morrow, Francis; or,\n    Francis, a Thursday; or indeed, Francis, when thou wilt. But\n    Francis-\n  Fran. My lord?\n  Prince. Wilt thou rob this leathern-jerkin, crystal-button,\n    not-pated, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddis-garter,\n    smooth-tongue, Spanish-pouch-\n  Fran. O Lord, sir, who do you mean?\n  Prince. Why then, your brown bastard is your only drink; for look\n    you, Francis, your white canvas doublet will sully. In Barbary,\n    sir, it cannot come to so much.\n  Fran. What, sir?\n  Poins. [within] Francis!\n  Prince. Away, you rogue! Dost thou not hear them call?\n              Here they both call him. The Drawer stands amazed,\n                                    not knowing which way to go.\n\n                         Enter Vintner.  \n\n  Vint. What, stand\'st thou still, and hear\'st such a calling? Look\n    to the guests within. [Exit Francis.] My lord, old Sir John, with\n    half-a-dozen more, are at the door. Shall I let them in?\n  Prince. Let them alone awhile, and then open the door.\n                                                  [Exit Vintner.]\n    Poins!\n  Poins. [within] Anon, anon, sir.\n\n                          Enter Poins.\n\n  Prince. Sirrah, Falstaff and the rest of the thieves are at the\n    door. Shall we be merry?\n  Poins. As merry as crickets, my lad. But hark ye; what cunning\n    match have you made with this jest of the drawer? Come, what\'s\n    the issue?\n  Prince. I am now of all humours that have showed themselves humours\n    since the old days of goodman Adam to the pupil age of this\n    present this twelve o\'clock at midnight.\n  \n                         [Enter Francis.]\n\n    What\'s o\'clock, Francis?\n  Fran. Anon, anon, sir.                                 [Exit.]\n  Prince. That ever this fellow should have fewer words than a\n    parrot, and yet the son of a woman! His industry is upstairs and\n    downstairs, his eloquence the parcel of a reckoning. I am not yet\n    of Percy\'s mind, the Hotspur of the North; he that kills me some\n    six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and\n    says to his wife, \'Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.\' \'O my\n    sweet Harry,\' says she, \'how many hast thou  kill\'d to-day?\'\n    \'Give my roan horse a drench,\' says he, and answers \'Some\n    fourteen,\' an hour after, \'a trifle, a trifle.\' I prithee call in\n    Falstaff. I\'ll play Percy, and that damn\'d brawn shall play Dame\n    Mortimer his wife. \'Rivo!\' says the drunkard. Call in ribs, call\n    in tallow.\n\n           Enter Falstaff, [Gadshill, Bardolph, and Peto;\n                   Francis follows with wine].\n  \n  Poins. Welcome, Jack. Where hast thou been?\n  Fal. A plague of all cowards, I say, and a vengeance too! Marry and\n    amen! Give me a cup of sack, boy. Ere I lead this life long, I\'ll\n    sew nether-stocks, and mend them and foot them too. A plague of\n    all cowards! Give me a cup of sack, rogue. Is there no virtue\n    extant?\n                                                    He drinketh.\n  Prince. Didst thou never see Titan kiss a dish of butter?\n    Pitiful-hearted butter, that melted at the sweet tale of the sun!\n    If thou didst, then behold that compound.\n  Fal. You rogue, here\'s lime in this sack too! There is nothing but\n    roguery to be found in villanous man. Yet a coward is worse than\n    a cup of sack with lime in it- a villanous coward! Go thy ways,\n    old Jack, die when thou wilt; if manhood, good manhood, be not\n    forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a shotten herring.\n    There lives not three good men unhang\'d in England; and one of\n    them is fat, and grows old. God help the while! A bad world, I\n    say. I would I were a weaver; I could sing psalms or anything. A\n    plague of all cowards I say still!\n  Prince. How now, woolsack? What mutter you?  \n  Fal. A king\'s son! If I do not beat thee out of thy kingdom with a\n    dagger of lath and drive all thy subjects afore thee like a flock\n    of wild geese, I\'ll never wear hair on my face more. You Prince\n    of Wales?\n  Prince. Why, you whoreson round man, what\'s the matter?\n  Fal. Are not you a coward? Answer me to that- and Poins there?\n  Poins. Zounds, ye fat paunch, an ye call me coward, by the\n    Lord, I\'ll stab thee.\n  Fal. I call thee coward? I\'ll see thee damn\'d ere I call thee\n    coward, but I would give a thousand pound I could run as fast as\n    thou canst. You are straight enough in the shoulders; you care\n    not who sees Your back. Call you that backing of your friends? A\n    plague upon such backing! Give me them that will face me. Give me\n    a cup of sack. I am a rogue if I drunk to-day.\n  Prince. O villain! thy lips are scarce wip\'d since thou drunk\'st\n    last.\n  Fal. All is one for that. (He drinketh.) A plague of all cowards\n    still say I.\n  Prince. What\'s the matter?\n  Fal. What\'s the matter? There be four of us here have ta\'en a  \n    thousand pound this day morning.\n  Prince. Where is it, Jack? Where is it?\n  Fal. Where is it, Taken from us it is. A hundred upon poor four of\n    us!\n  Prince. What, a hundred, man?\n  Fal. I am a rogue if I were not at half-sword with a dozen of them\n    two hours together. I have scap\'d by miracle. I am eight times\n    thrust through the doublet, four through the hose; my buckler cut\n    through and through; my sword hack\'d like a handsaw- ecce signum!\n    I never dealt better since I was a man. All would not do. A\n    plague of all cowards! Let them speak, If they speak more or less\n    than truth, they are villains and the sons of darkness.\n  Prince. Speak, sirs. How was it?\n  Gads. We four set upon some dozen-\n  Fal. Sixteen at least, my lord.\n  Gads. And bound them.\n  Peto. No, no, they were not bound.\n  Fal. You rogue, they were bound, every man of them, or I am a Jew\n    else- an Ebrew Jew.\n  Gads. As we were sharing, some six or seven fresh men sea upon us-  \n  Fal. And unbound the rest, and then come in the other.\n  Prince. What, fought you with them all?\n  Fal. All? I know not what you call all, but if I fought not with\n    fifty of them, I am a bunch of radish! If there were not two or\n    three and fifty upon poor old Jack, then am I no two-legg\'d\n    creature.\n  Prince. Pray God you have not murd\'red some of them.\n  Fal. Nay, that\'s past praying for. I have pepper\'d two of them. Two\n    I am sure I have paid, two rogues in buckram suits. I tell thee\n    what, Hal- if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse.\n    Thou knowest my old ward. Here I lay, and thus I bore my point.\n    Four rogues in buckram let drive at me.\n  Prince. What, four? Thou saidst but two even now.\n  Fal. Four, Hal. I told thee four.\n  Poins. Ay, ay, he said four.\n  Fal. These four came all afront and mainly thrust at me. I made me\n    no more ado but took all their seven points in my target, thus.\n  Prince. Seven? Why, there were but four even now.\n  Fal. In buckram?\n  Poins. Ay, four, in buckram suits.  \n  Fal. Seven, by these hilts, or I am a villain else.\n  Prince. [aside to Poins] Prithee let him alone. We shall have more\n    anon.\n  Fal. Dost thou hear me, Hal?\n  Prince. Ay, and mark thee too, Jack.\n  Fal. Do so, for it is worth the list\'ning to. These nine in buckram\n    that I told thee of-\n  Prince. So, two more already.\n  Fal. Their points being broken-\n  Poins. Down fell their hose.\n  Fal. Began to give me ground; but I followed me close, came in,\n    foot and hand, and with a thought seven of the eleven I paid.\n  Prince. O monstrous! Eleven buckram men grown out of two!\n  Fal. But, as the devil would have it, three misbegotten knaves in\n    Kendal green came at my back and let drive at me; for it was so\n    dark, Hal, that thou couldst not see thy hand.\n  Prince. These lies are like their father that begets them- gross as\n    a mountain, open, palpable. Why, thou clay-brain\'d guts, thou\n    knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch-\n  Fal. What, art thou mad? art thou mad? Is not the truth the truth?  \n  Prince. Why, how couldst thou know these men in Kendal green when\n    it was so dark thou couldst not see thy hand? Come, tell us your\n    reason. What sayest thou to this?\n  Poins. Come, your reason, Jack, your reason.\n  Fal. What, upon compulsion? Zounds, an I were at the strappado or\n    all the racks in the world, I would not tell you on compulsion.\n    Give you a reason on compulsion? If reasons were as plentiful as\n    blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I.\n  Prince. I\'ll be no longer guilty, of this sin; this sanguine\n    coward, this bed-presser, this horseback-breaker, this huge hill\n    of flesh-\n  Fal. \'Sblood, you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried\n    neat\'s-tongue, you bull\'s sizzle, you stockfish- O for breath to\n    utter what is like thee!- you tailor\'s yard, you sheath, you\n    bowcase, you vile standing tuck!\n  Prince. Well, breathe awhile, and then to it again; and when thou\n    hast tired thyself in base comparisons, hear me speak but this.\n  Poins. Mark, Jack.\n  Prince. We two saw you four set on four, and bound them and were\n    masters of their wealth. Mark now how a plain tale shall put you  \n    down. Then did we two set on you four and, with a word, outfac\'d\n    you from your prize, and have it; yea, and can show it you here\n    in the house. And, Falstaff, you carried your guts away as\n    nimbly, with as quick dexterity, and roar\'d for mercy, and still\n    run and roar\'d, as ever I heard bullcalf. What a slave art thou\n    to hack thy sword as thou hast done, and then say it was in\n    fight! What trick, what device, what starting hole canst thou now\n    find out to hide thee from this open and apparent shame?\n  Poins. Come, let\'s hear, Jack. What trick hast thou now?\n  Fal. By the Lord, I knew ye as well as he that made ye. Why, hear\n    you, my masters. Was it for me to kill the heir apparent? Should\n    I turn upon the true prince? Why, thou knowest I am as valiant as\n    Hercules; but beware instinct. The lion will not touch the true\n    prince. Instinct is a great matter. I was now a coward on\n    instinct. I shall think the better of myself, and thee, during my\n    life- I for a valiant lion, and thou for a true prince. But, by\n    the Lord, lads, I am glad you have the money. Hostess, clap to\n    the doors. Watch to-night, pray to-morrow. Gallants, lads, boys,\n    hearts of gold, all the titles of good fellowship come to you!\n    What, shall we be merry? Shall we have a play extempore?  \n  Prince. Content- and the argument shall be thy running away.\n  Fal. Ah, no more of that, Hal, an thou lovest me!\n\n                             Enter Hostess.\n\n  Host. O Jesu, my lord the Prince!\n  Prince. How now, my lady the hostess? What say\'st thou to me?\n  Host. Marry, my lord, there is a nobleman of the court at door\n    would speak with you. He says he comes from your father.\n  Prince. Give him as much as will make him a royal man, and send him\n    back again to my mother.\n  Fal. What manner of man is he?\n  Host. An old man.\n  Fal. What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight? Shall I give him\n    his answer?\n  Prince. Prithee do, Jack.\n  Fal. Faith, and I\'ll send him packing.\nExit.\n  Prince. Now, sirs. By\'r Lady, you fought fair; so did you, Peto; so\n    did you, Bardolph. You are lions too, you ran away upon instinct,  \n    you will not touch the true prince; no- fie!\n  Bard. Faith, I ran when I saw others run.\n  Prince. Tell me now in earnest, how came Falstaff\'s sword so\n    hack\'d?\n  Peto. Why, he hack\'d it with his dagger, and said he would swear\n    truth out of England but he would make you believe it was done in\n    fight, and persuaded us to do the like.\n  Bard. Yea, and to tickle our noses with speargrass to make them\n    bleed, and then to beslubber our garments with it and swear it\n    was the blood of true men. I did that I did not this seven year\n    before- I blush\'d to hear his monstrous devices.\n  Prince. O villain! thou stolest a cup of sack eighteen years ago\n    and wert taken with the manner, and ever since thou hast blush\'d\n    extempore. Thou hadst fire and sword on thy side, and yet thou\n    ran\'st away. What instinct hadst thou for it?\n  Bard. My lord, do you see these meteors? Do you behold these\n    exhalations?\n  Prince. I do.\n  Bard. What think you they portend?\n  Prince. Hot livers and cold purses.  \n  Bard. Choler, my lord, if rightly taken.\n  Prince. No, if rightly taken, halter.\n\n                         Enter Falstaff.\n\n    Here comes lean Jack; here comes bare-bone. How now, my sweet\n    creature of bombast? How long is\'t ago, Jack, since thou sawest\n    thine own knee?\n  Fal. My own knee? When I was about thy years, Hal, I was not an\n    eagle\'s talent in the waist; I could have crept into any\n    alderman\'s thumb-ring. A plague of sighing and grief! It blows a\n    man up like a bladder. There\'s villanous news abroad. Here was\n    Sir John Bracy from your father. You must to the court in the\n    morning. That same mad fellow of the North, Percy, and he of\n    Wales that gave Amamon the bastinado, and made Lucifer cuckold,\n    and swore the devil his true liegeman upon the cross of a Welsh\n    hook- what a plague call you him?\n  Poins. O, Glendower.\n  Fal. Owen, Owen- the same; and his son-in-law Mortimer, and old\n    Northumberland, and that sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that  \n    runs a-horseback up a hill perpendicular-\n  Prince. He that rides at high speed and with his pistol kills a\n    sparrow flying.\n  Fal. You have hit it.\n  Prince. So did he never the sparrow.\n  Fal. Well, that rascal hath good metal in him; he will not run.\n  Prince. Why, what a rascal art thou then, to praise him so for\n    running!\n  Fal. A-horseback, ye cuckoo! but afoot he will not budge a foot.\n  Prince. Yes, Jack, upon instinct.\n  Fal. I grant ye, upon instinct. Well, he is there too, and one\n    Mordake, and a thousand bluecaps more. Worcester is stol\'n away\n    to-night; thy father\'s beard is turn\'d white with the news; you\n    may buy land now as cheap as stinking mack\'rel.\n  Prince. Why then, it is like, if there come a hot June, and this\n    civil buffeting hold, we shall buy maidenheads as they buy\n    hobnails, by the hundreds.\n  Fal. By the mass, lad, thou sayest true; it is like we shall have\n    good trading that way. But tell me, Hal, art not thou horrible\n    afeard? Thou being heir apparent, could the world pick thee out  \n    three such enemies again as that fiend Douglas, that spirit\n    Percy, and that devil Glendower? Art thou not horribly afraid?\n    Doth not thy blood thrill at it?\n  Prince. Not a whit, i\' faith. I lack some of thy instinct.\n  Fal. Well, thou wilt be horribly chid to-morrow when thou comest to\n    thy father. If thou love file, practise an answer.\n  Prince. Do thou stand for my father and examine me upon the\n    particulars of my life.\n  Fal. Shall I? Content. This chair shall be my state, this dagger my\n    sceptre, and this cushion my, crown.\n  Prince. Thy state is taken for a join\'d-stool, thy golden sceptre\n    for a leaden dagger, and thy precious rich crown for a pitiful\n    bald crown.\n  Fal. Well, an the fire of grace be not quite out of thee, now shalt\n    thou be moved. Give me a cup of sack to make my eyes look red,\n    that it may be thought I have wept; for I must speak in passion,\n    and I will do it in King Cambyses\' vein.\n  Prince. Well, here is my leg.\n  Fal. And here is my speech. Stand aside, nobility.\n  Host. O Jesu, this is excellent sport, i\' faith!  \n  Fal. Weep not, sweet queen, for trickling tears are vain.\n  Host. O, the Father, how he holds his countenance!\n  Fal. For God\'s sake, lords, convey my tristful queen!\n    For tears do stop the floodgates of her eyes.\n  Host. O Jesu, he doth it as like one of these harlotry players as\n    ever I see!\n  Fal. Peace, good pintpot. Peace, good tickle-brain.- Harry, I do\n    not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also how thou\n    art accompanied. For though the camomile, the more it is trodden\n    on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the\n    sooner it wears. That thou art my son I have partly thy mother\'s\n    word, partly my own opinion, but chiefly a villanous trick of\n    thine eye and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip that doth\n    warrant me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the point: why,\n    being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of\n    heaven prove a micher and eat blackberries? A question not to be\n    ask\'d. Shall the son of England prove a thief and take purses? A\n    question to be ask\'d. There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast\n    often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name\n    of pitch. This pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile;  \n    so doth the company thou keepest. For, Harry, now I do not speak\n    to thee in drink, but in tears; not in pleasure, but in passion;\n    not in words only, but in woes also: and yet there is a virtuous\n    man whom I have often noted in thy company, but I know not  his\n    name.\n  Prince. What manner of man, an it like your Majesty?\n  Fal. A goodly portly man, i\' faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful\n    look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage; and, as I think,\n    his age some fifty, or, by\'r Lady, inclining to threescore; and\n    now I remember me, his name is Falstaff. If that man should be\n    lewdly, given, he deceiveth me; for, Harry, I see virtue in his\n    looks. If then the tree may be known by the fruit, as the fruit\n    by the tree, then, peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue in\n    that Falstaff. Him keep with, the rest banish. And tell me now,\n    thou naughty varlet, tell me where hast thou been this month?\n  Prince. Dost thou speak like a king? Do thou stand for me, and I\'ll\n    play my father.\n  Fal. Depose me? If thou dost it half so gravely, so majestically,\n    both in word and matter, hang me up by the heels for a\n    rabbit-sucker or a poulter\'s hare.  \n  Prince. Well, here I am set.\n  Fal. And here I stand. Judge, my masters.\n  Prince. Now, Harry, whence come you?\n  Fal. My noble lord, from Eastcheap.\n  Prince. The complaints I hear of thee are grievous.\n  Fal. \'Sblood, my lord, they are false! Nay, I\'ll tickle ye for a\n    young prince, i\' faith.\n  Prince. Swearest thou, ungracious boy? Henceforth ne\'er look on me.\n    Thou art violently carried away from grace. There is a devil\n    haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man; a tun of man is\n    thy companion. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours,\n    that bolting hutch of beastliness, that swoll\'n parcel of\n    dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuff\'d cloakbag of\n    guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly,\n    that reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that\n    vanity in years? Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink\n    it? wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it?\n    wherein cunning, but in craft? wherein crafty, but in villany?\n    wherein villanous, but in all things? wherein worthy, but in\n    nothing?  \n  Fal. I would your Grace would take me with you. Whom means your\n    Grace?\n  Prince. That villanous abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff,\n    that old white-bearded Satan.\n  Fal. My lord, the man I know.\n  Prince. I know thou dost.\n  Fal. But to say I know more harm in him than in myself were to say\n    more than I know. That he is old (the more the pity) his white\n    hairs do witness it; but that he is (saving your reverence) a\n    whoremaster, that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault,\n    God help the wicked! If to be old and merry be a sin, then many\n    an old host that I know is damn\'d. If to be fat be to be hated,\n    then Pharaoh\'s lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord.\n    Banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins; but for sweet Jack\n    Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack\n    Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being, as he is, old Jack\n    Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry\'s company, banish not him thy\n    Harry\'s company. Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world!\n  Prince. I do, I will.                      [A knocking heard.]\n                        [Exeunt Hostess, Francis, and Bardolph.]  \n\n                     Enter Bardolph, running.\n\n  Bard. O, my lord, my lord! the sheriff with a most monstrous watch\n    is at the door.\n  Fal. Out, ye rogue! Play out the play. I have much to say in the\n    behalf of that Falstaff.\n\n                       Enter the Hostess.\n\n  Host. O Jesu, my lord, my lord!\n  Prince. Heigh, heigh, the devil rides upon a fiddlestick!\n    What\'s the matter?\n  Host. The sheriff and all the watch are at the door. They are come\n    to search the house. Shall I let them in?\n  Fal. Dost thou hear, Hal? Never call a true piece of gold a\n    counterfeit. Thou art essentially mad without seeming so.\n  Prince. And thou a natural coward without instinct.\n  Fal. I deny your major. If you will deny the sheriff, so; if not,\n    let him enter. If I become not a cart as well as another man, a  \n    plague on my bringing up! I hope I shall as soon be strangled\n    with a halter as another.\n  Prince. Go hide thee behind the arras. The rest walk, up above.\n    Now, my masters, for a true face and good conscience.\n  Fal. Both which I have had; but their date is out, and therefore\n    I\'ll hide me.                                          Exit.\n  Prince. Call in the sheriff.\n                            [Exeunt Manent the Prince and Peto.]\n\n                    Enter Sheriff and the Carrier.\n\n    Now, Master Sheriff, what is your will with me?\n  Sher. First, pardon me, my lord. A hue and cry\n    Hath followed certain men unto this house.\n  Prince. What men?\n  Sher. One of them is well known, my gracious lord-\n    A gross fat man.\n  Carrier. As fat as butter.\n  Prince. The man, I do assure you, is not here,\n    For I myself at this time have employ\'d him.  \n    And, sheriff, I will engage my word to thee\n    That I will by to-morrow dinner time\n    Send him to answer thee, or any man,\n    For anything he shall be charg\'d withal;\n    And so let me entreat you leave the house.\n  Sher. I will, my lord. There are two gentlemen\n    Have in this robbery lost three hundred marks.\n  Prince. It may be so. If he have robb\'d these men,\n    He shall be answerable; and so farewell.\n  Sher. Good night, my noble lord.\n  Prince. I think it is good morrow, is it not?\n  Sher. Indeed, my lord, I think it be two o\'clock.\n                                            Exit [with Carrier].\n  Prince. This oily rascal is known as well as Paul\'s. Go call him\n    forth.\n  Peto. Falstaff! Fast asleep behind the arras, and snorting like a\n    horse.\n  Prince. Hark how hard he fetches breath. Search his pockets.\n            He searcheth his pockets and findeth certain papers.\n    What hast thou found?  \n  Peto. Nothing but papers, my lord.\n  Prince. Let\'s see whit they be. Read them.\n\n  Peto. [reads] \'Item. A capon. . . . . . . . . . . . .  ii s. ii d.\n                 Item, Sauce. . . . . . . . . . . . . .      iiii d.\n                 Item, Sack two gallons . . . . . . . . v s. viii d.\n                 Item, Anchovies and sack after supper.  ii s. vi d.\n                 Item, Bread. . . . . . . . . . . . . .          ob.\'\n\n  Prince. O monstrous! but one halfpennyworth of bread to this\n    intolerable deal of sack! What there is else, keep close; we\'ll\n    read it at more advantage. There let him sleep till day. I\'ll to\n    the court in the morning . We must all to the wars. and thy place\n    shall be honourable. I\'ll procure this fat rogue a charge of\n    foot; and I know, his death will be a march of twelve score. The\n    money shall be paid back again with advantage. Be with me betimes\n    in the morning, and so good morrow, Peto.\n  Peto. Good morrow, good my lord.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. Scene I.\nBangor. The Archdeacon\'s house.\n\nEnter Hotspur, Worcester, Lord Mortimer, Owen Glendower.\n\n  Mort. These promises are fair, the parties sure,\n    And our induction full of prosperous hope.\n  Hot. Lord Mortimer, and cousin Glendower,\n    Will you sit down?\n    And uncle Worcester. A plague upon it!\n    I have forgot the map.\n  Glend. No, here it is.\n    Sit, cousin Percy; sit, good cousin Hotspur,\n    For by that name as oft as Lancaster\n    Doth speak of you, his cheek looks pale, and with\n    A rising sigh he wisheth you in heaven.\n  Hot. And you in hell, as oft as he hears\n    Owen Glendower spoke of.\n  Glend. I cannot blame him. At my nativity\n    The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes\n    Of burning cressets, and at my birth\n    The frame and huge foundation of the earth  \n    Shak\'d like a coward.\n  Hot. Why, so it would have done at the same season, if your\n    mother\'s cat had but kitten\'d, though yourself had never been\n    born.\n  Glend. I say the earth did shake when I was born.\n  Hot. And I say the earth was not of my mind,\n    If you suppose as fearing you it shook.\n  Glend. The heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble.\n  Hot. O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire,\n    And not in fear of your nativity.\n    Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth\n    In strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth\n    Is with a kind of colic pinch\'d and vex\'d\n    By the imprisoning of unruly wind\n    Within her womb, which, for enlargement striving,\n    Shakes the old beldame earth and topples down\n    Steeples and mossgrown towers. At your birth\n    Our grandam earth, having this distemp\'rature,\n    In passion shook.\n  Glend. Cousin, of many men  \n    I do not bear these crossings. Give me leave\n    To tell you once again that at my birth\n    The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,\n    The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds\n    Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields.\n    These signs have mark\'d me extraordinary,\n    And all the courses of my life do show\n    I am not in the roll of common men.\n    Where is he living, clipp\'d in with the sea\n    That chides the banks of England, Scotland, Wales,\n    Which calls me pupil or hath read to me?\n    And bring him out that is but woman\'s son\n    Can trace me in the tedious ways of art\n    And hold me pace in deep experiments.\n  Hot. I think there\'s no man speaks better Welsh. I\'ll to dinner.\n  Mort. Peace, cousin Percy; you will make him mad.\n  Glend. I can call spirits from the vasty deep.\n  Hot. Why, so can I, or so can any man;\n    But will they come when you do call for them?\n  Glend. Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command the devil.  \n  Hot. And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil-\n    By telling truth. Tell truth and shame the devil.\n    If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither,\n    And I\'ll be sworn I have power to shame him hence.\n    O, while you live, tell truth and shame the devil!\n  Mort. Come, come, no more of this unprofitable chat.\n  Glend. Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head\n    Against my power; thrice from the banks of Wye\n    And sandy-bottom\'d Severn have I sent him\n    Bootless home and weather-beaten back.\n  Hot. Home without boots, and in foul weather too?\n    How scapes he agues, in the devil\'s name\n  Glend. Come, here\'s the map. Shall we divide our right\n    According to our threefold order ta\'en?\n  Mort. The Archdeacon hath divided it\n    Into three limits very equally.\n    England, from Trent and Severn hitherto,\n    By south and east is to my part assign\'d;\n    All westward, Wales beyond the Severn shore,\n    And all the fertile land within that bound,  \n    To Owen Glendower; and, dear coz, to you\n    The remnant northward lying off from Trent.\n    And our indentures tripartite are drawn;\n    Which being sealed interchangeably\n    (A business that this night may execute),\n    To-morrow, cousin Percy, you and I\n    And my good Lord of Worcester will set forth\n    To meet your father and the Scottish bower,\n    As is appointed us, at Shrewsbury.\n    My father Glendower is not ready yet,\n    Nor shall we need his help these fourteen days.\n    [To Glend.] Within that space you may have drawn together\n    Your tenants, friends, and neighbouring gentlemen.\n  Glend. A shorter time shall send me to you, lords;\n    And in my conduct shall your ladies come,\n    From whom you now must steal and take no leave,\n    For there will be a world of water shed\n    Upon the parting of your wives and you.\n  Hot. Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,\n    In quantity equals not one of yours.  \n    See how this river comes me cranking in\n    And cuts me from the best of all my land\n    A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.\n    I\'ll have the current ill this place damm\'d up,\n    And here the smug and sliver Trent shall run\n    In a new channel fair and evenly.\n    It shall not wind with such a deep indent\n    To rob me of so rich a bottom here.\n  Glend. Not wind? It shall, it must! You see it doth.\n  Mort. Yea, but\n    Mark how he bears his course, and runs me up\n    With like advantage on the other side,\n    Gelding the opposed continent as much\n    As on the other side it takes from you.\n  Wor. Yea, but a little charge will trench him here\n    And on this north side win this cape of land;\n    And then he runs straight and even.\n  Hot. I\'ll have it so. A little charge will do it.\n  Glend. I will not have it alt\'red.\n  Hot. Will not you?  \n  Glend. No, nor you shall not.\n  Hot. Who shall say me nay?\n  Glend. No, that will I.\n  Hot. Let me not understand you then; speak it in Welsh.\n  Glend. I can speak English, lord, as well as you;\n    For I was train\'d up in the English court,\n    Where, being but young, I framed to the harp\n    Many an English ditty lovely well,\n    And gave the tongue a helpful ornament-\n    A virtue that was never seen in you.\n  Hot. Marry,\n    And I am glad of it with all my heart!\n    I had rather be a kitten and cry mew\n    Than one of these same metre ballet-mongers.\n    I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn\'d\n    Or a dry wheel grate on the axletree,\n    And that would set my teeth nothing on edge,\n    Nothing so much as mincing poetry.\n    \'Tis like the forc\'d gait of a shuffling nag,\n  Glend. Come, you shall have Trent turn\'d.  \n  Hot. I do not care. I\'ll give thrice so much land\n    To any well-deserving friend;\n    But in the way of bargain, mark ye me,\n    I\'ll cavil on the ninth part of a hair\n    Are the indentures drawn? Shall we be gone?\n  Glend. The moon shines fair; you may away by night.\n    I\'ll haste the writer, and withal\n    Break with your wives of your departure hence.\n    I am afraid my daughter will run mad,\n    So much she doteth on her Mortimer.                    Exit.\n  Mort. Fie, cousin Percy! how you cross my father!\n  Hot. I cannot choose. Sometimes he angers me\n    With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant,\n    Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies,\n    And of a dragon and a finless fish,\n    A clip-wing\'d griffin and a moulten raven,\n    A couching lion and a ramping cat,\n    And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff\n    As puts me from my faith. I tell you what-\n    He held me last night at least nine hours  \n    In reckoning up the several devils\' names\n    That were his lackeys. I cried \'hum,\' and \'Well, go to!\'\n    But mark\'d him not a word. O, he is as tedious\n    As a tired horse, a railing wife;\n    Worse than a smoky house. I had rather live\n    With cheese and garlic in a windmill far\n    Than feed on cates and have him talk to me\n    In any summer house in Christendom).\n  Mort. In faith, he is a worthy gentleman,\n    Exceedingly well read, and profited\n    In strange concealments, valiant as a lion,\n    And wondrous affable, and as bountiful\n    As mines of India. Shall I tell you, cousin?\n    He holds your temper in a high respect\n    And curbs himself even of his natural scope\n    When you come \'cross his humour. Faith, he does.\n    I warrant you that man is not alive\n    Might so have tempted him as you have done\n    Without the taste of danger and reproof.\n    But do not use it oft, let me entreat you.  \n  Wor. In faith, my lord, you are too wilful-blame,\n    And since your coming hither have done enough\n    To put him quite besides his patience.\n    You must needs learn, lord, to amend this fault.\n    Though sometimes it show greatness, courage, blood-\n    And that\'s the dearest grace it renders you-\n    Yet oftentimes it doth present harsh rage,\n    Defect of manners, want of government,\n    Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain;\n    The least of which haunting a nobleman\n    Loseth men\'s hearts, and leaves behind a stain\n    Upon the beauty of all parts besides,\n    Beguiling them of commendation.\n  Hot. Well, I am school\'d. Good manners be your speed!\n    Here come our wives, and let us take our leave.\n\n            Enter Glendower with the Ladies.\n\n  Mort. This is the deadly spite that angers me-\n    My wife can speak no English, I no Welsh.  \n  Glend. My daughter weeps; she will not part with you;\n    She\'ll be a soldier too, she\'ll to the wars.\n  Mort. Good father, tell her that she and my aunt Percy\n    Shall follow in your conduct speedily.\n               Glendower speaks to her in Welsh, and she answers\n                                                him in the same.\n  Glend. She is desperate here. A peevish self-will\'d harlotry,\n    One that no persuasion can do good upon.\n                                       The Lady speaks in Welsh.\n  Mort. I understand thy looks. That pretty Welsh\n    Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens\n    I am too perfect in; and, but for shame,\n    In such a Barley should I answer thee.\n                                        The Lady again in Welsh.\n    I understand thy kisses, and thou mine,\n    And that\'s a feeling disputation.\n    But I will never be a truant, love,\n    Till I have learnt thy language: for thy tongue\n    Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penn\'d,\n    Sung by a fair queen in a summer\'s bow\'r,  \n    With ravishing division, to her lute.\n  Glend. Nay, if you melt, then will she run mad.\n                                 The Lady speaks again in Welsh.\n  Mort. O, I am ignorance itself in this!\n  Glend. She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down\n    And rest your gentle head upon her lap,\n    And she will sing the song that pleaseth you\n    And on your eyelids crown the god of sleep,\n    Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness,\n    Making such difference \'twixt wake and sleep\n    As is the difference betwixt day and night\n    The hour before the heavenly-harness\'d team\n    Begins his golden progress in the East.\n  Mort. With all my heart I\'ll sit and hear her sing.\n    By that time will our book, I think, be drawn.\n  Glend. Do so,\n    And those musicians that shall play to you\n    Hang in the air a thousand leagues from hence,\n    And straight they shall be here. Sit, and attend.\n  Hot. Come, Kate, thou art perfect in lying down. Come, quick,  \n    quick, that I may lay my head in thy lap.\n  Lady P. Go, ye giddy goose.\n                                                The music plays.\n  Hot. Now I perceive the devil understands Welsh;\n    And \'tis no marvel, be is so humorous.\n    By\'r Lady, he is a good musician.\n  Lady P. Then should you be nothing but musical; for you are\n    altogether govern\'d by humours. Lie still, ye thief, and hear the\n    lady sing in Welsh.\n  Hot. I had rather hear Lady, my brach, howl in Irish.\n  Lady P. Wouldst thou have thy head broken?\n  Hot. No.\n  Lady P. Then be still.\n  Hot. Neither! \'Tis a woman\'s fault.\n  Lady P. Now God help thee!\n  Hot. To the Welsh lady\'s bed.\n  Lady P. What\'s that?\n  Hot. Peace! she sings.\n                               Here the Lady sings a Welsh song.\n    Come, Kate, I\'ll have your song too.  \n  Lady P. Not mine, in good sooth.\n  Hot. Not yours, in good sooth? Heart! you swear like a\n    comfit-maker\'s wife. \'Not you, in good sooth!\' and \'as true as I\n    live!\' and \'as God shall mend me!\' and \'as sure as day!\'\n    And givest such sarcenet surety for thy oaths\n    As if thou ne\'er walk\'st further than Finsbury.\n    Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art,\n    A good mouth-filling oath; and leave \'in sooth\'\n    And such protest of pepper gingerbread\n    To velvet guards and Sunday citizens. Come, sing.\n  Lady P. I will not sing.\n  Hot. \'Tis the next way to turn tailor or be redbreast-teacher. An\n    the indentures be drawn, I\'ll away within these two hours; and so\n    come in when ye will.                                  Exit.\n  Glend. Come, come, Lord Mortimer. You are as slow\n    As hot Lord Percy is on fire to go.\n    By this our book is drawn; we\'ll but seal,\n    And then to horse immediately.\n  Mort. With all my heart.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nLondon. The Palace.\n\nEnter the King, Prince of Wales, and others.\n\n  King. Lords, give us leave. The Prince of Wales and I\n    Must have some private conference; but be near at hand,\n    For we shall presently have need of you.\n                                                   Exeunt Lords.\n    I know not whether God will have it so,\n    For some displeasing service I have done,\n    That, in his secret doom, out of my blood\n    He\'ll breed revengement and a scourge for me;\n    But thou dost in thy passages of life\n    Make me believe that thou art only mark\'d\n    For the hot vengeance and the rod of heaven\n    To punish my mistreadings. Tell me else,\n    Could such inordinate and low desires,\n    Such poor, such bare, such lewd, such mean attempts,\n    Such barren pleasures, rude society,\n    As thou art match\'d withal and grafted to,\n    Accompany the greatness of thy blood  \n    And hold their level with thy princely heart?\n  Prince. So please your Majesty, I would I could\n    Quit all offences with as clear excuse\n    As well as I am doubtless I can purge\n    Myself of many I am charged withal.\n    Yet such extenuation let me beg\n    As, in reproof of many tales devis\'d,\n    Which oft the ear of greatness needs must bear\n    By, smiling pickthanks and base newsmongers,\n    I may, for some things true wherein my youth\n    Hath faulty wand\'red and irregular,\n    And pardon on lily true submission.\n  King. God pardon thee! Yet let me wonder, Harry,\n    At thy affections, which do hold a wing,\n    Quite from the flight of all thy ancestors.\n    Thy place in Council thou hast rudely lost,\n    Which by thy younger brother is supplied,\n    And art almost an alien to the hearts\n    Of all the court and princes of my blood.\n    The hope and expectation of thy time  \n    Is ruin\'d, and the soul of every man\n    Prophetically do forethink thy fall.\n    Had I so lavish of my presence been,\n    So common-hackney\'d in the eyes of men,\n    So stale and cheap to vulgar company,\n    Opinion, that did help me to the crown,\n    Had still kept loyal to possession\n    And left me in reputeless banishment,\n    A fellow of no mark nor likelihood.\n    By being seldom seen, I could not stir\n    But, like a comet, I Was wond\'red at;\n    That men would tell their children, \'This is he!\'\n    Others would say, \'Where? Which is Bolingbroke?\'\n    And then I stole all courtesy from heaven,\n    And dress\'d myself in such humility\n    That I did pluck allegiance from men\'s hearts,\n    Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths\n    Even in the presence of the crowned King.\n    Thus did I keep my person fresh and new,\n    My presence, like a robe pontifical,  \n    Ne\'er seen but wond\'red at; and so my state,\n    Seldom but sumptuous, show\'d like a feast\n    And won by rareness such solemnity.\n    The skipping King, he ambled up and down\n    With shallow jesters and rash bavin wits,\n    Soon kindled and soon burnt; carded his state;\n    Mingled his royalty with cap\'ring fools;\n    Had his great name profaned with their scorns\n    And gave his countenance, against his name,\n    To laugh at gibing boys and stand the push\n    Of every beardless vain comparative;\n    Grew a companion to the common streets,\n    Enfeoff\'d himself to popularity;\n    That, being dally swallowed by men\'s eyes,\n    They surfeited with honey and began\n    To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little\n    More than a little is by much too much.\n    So, when he had occasion to be seen,\n    He was but as the cuckoo is in June,\n    Heard, not regarded- seen, but with such eyes  \n    As, sick and blunted with community,\n    Afford no extraordinary gaze,\n    Such as is bent on unlike majesty\n    When it shines seldom in admiring eyes;\n    But rather drows\'d and hung their eyelids down,\n    Slept in his face, and rend\'red such aspect\n    As cloudy men use to their adversaries,\n    Being with his presence glutted, gorg\'d, and full.\n    And in that very line, Harry, standest thou;\n    For thou hast lost thy princely privilege\n    With vile participation. Not an eye\n    But is aweary of thy common sight,\n    Save mine, which hath desir\'d to see thee more;\n    Which now doth that I would not have it do-\n    Make blind itself with foolish tenderness.\n  Prince. I shall hereafter, my thrice-gracious lord,\n    Be more myself.\n  King. For all the world,\n    As thou art to this hour, was Richard then\n    When I from France set foot at Ravenspurgh;  \n    And even as I was then is Percy now.\n    Now, by my sceptre, and my soul to boot,\n    He hath more worthy interest to the state\n    Than thou, the shadow of succession;\n    For of no right, nor colour like to right,\n    He doth fill fields with harness in the realm,\n    Turns head against the lion\'s armed jaws,\n    And, Being no more in debt to years than thou,\n    Leads ancient lords and reverend Bishops on\n    To bloody battles and to bruising arms.\n    What never-dying honour hath he got\n    Against renowmed Douglas! whose high deeds,\n    Whose hot incursions and great name in arms\n    Holds from all soldiers chief majority\n    And military title capital\n    Through all the kingdoms that acknowledge Christ.\n    Thrice hath this Hotspur, Mars in swathling clothes,\n    This infant warrior, in his enterprises\n    Discomfited great Douglas; ta\'en him once,\n    Enlarged him, and made a friend of him,  \n    To fill the mouth of deep defiance up\n    And shake the peace and safety of our throne.\n    And what say you to this? Percy, Northumberland,\n    The Archbishop\'s Grace of York, Douglas, Mortimer\n    Capitulate against us and are up.\n    But wherefore do I tell these news to thee\n    Why, Harry, do I tell thee of my foes,\n    Which art my nearest and dearest enemy\'\n    Thou that art like enough, through vassal fear,\n    Base inclination, and the start of spleen,\n    To fight against me under Percy\'s pay,\n    To dog his heels and curtsy at his frowns,\n    To show how much thou art degenerate.\n  Prince. Do not think so. You shall not find it so.\n    And God forgive them that so much have sway\'d\n    Your Majesty\'s good thoughts away from me!\n    I will redeem all this on Percy\'s head\n    And, in the closing of some glorious day,\n    Be bold to tell you that I am your son,\n    When I will wear a garment all of blood,  \n    And stain my favours in a bloody mask,\n    Which, wash\'d away, shall scour my shame with it.\n    And that shall be the day, whene\'er it lights,\n    That this same child of honour and renown,\n    This gallant Hotspur, this all-praised knight,\n    And your unthought of Harry chance to meet.\n    For every honour sitting on his helm,\n    Would they were multitudes, and on my head\n    My shames redoubled! For the time will come\n    That I shall make this Northern youth exchange\n    His glorious deeds for my indignities.\n    Percy is but my factor, good my lord,\n    To engross up glorious deeds on my behalf;\n    And I will call hall to so strict account\n    That he shall render every glory up,\n    Yea, even the slightest worship of his time,\n    Or I will tear the reckoning from his heart.\n    This in the name of God I promise here;\n    The which if he be pleas\'d I shall perform,\n    I do beseech your Majesty may salve  \n    The long-grown wounds of my intemperance.\n    If not, the end of life cancels all bands,\n    And I will die a hundred thousand deaths\n    Ere break the smallest parcel of this vow.\n  King. A hundred thousand rebels die in this!\n    Thou shalt have charge and sovereign trust herein.\n\n                        Enter Blunt.\n\n    How now, good Blunt? Thy looks are full of speed.\n  Blunt. So hath the business that I come to speak of.\n    Lord Mortimer of Scotland hath sent word\n    That Douglas and the English rebels met\n    The eleventh of this month at Shrewsbury.\n    A mighty and a fearful head they are,\n    If promises be kept oil every hand,\n    As ever off\'red foul play in a state.\n  King. The Earl of Westmoreland set forth to-day;\n    With him my son, Lord John of Lancaster;\n    For this advertisement is five days old.  \n    On Wednesday next, Harry, you shall set forward;\n    On Thursday we ourselves will march. Our meeting\n    Is Bridgenorth; and, Harry, you shall march\n    Through Gloucestershire; by which account,\n    Our business valued, some twelve days hence\n    Our general forces at Bridgenorth shall meet.\n    Our hands are full of business. Let\'s away.\n    Advantage feeds him fat while men delay.            Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nEastcheap. The Boar\'s Head Tavern.\n\nEnter Falstaff and Bardolph.\n\n  Fal. Bardolph, am I not fall\'n away vilely since this last action?\n    Do I not bate? Do I not dwindle? Why, my skin hangs about me like\n    an old lady\'s loose gown! I am withered like an old apple John.\n    Well, I\'ll repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some liking.\n    I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no\n    strength to repent. An I have not forgotten what the inside of a\n    church is made of, I am a peppercorn, a brewer\'s horse. The\n    inside of a church! Company, villanous company, hath been the\n    spoil of me.\n  Bard. Sir John, you are so fretful you cannot live long.\n  Fal. Why, there is it! Come, sing me a bawdy song; make me merry. I\n    was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be, virtuous\n    enough: swore little, dic\'d not above seven times a week, went to\n    a bawdy house not above once in a quarter- of an hour, paid money\n    that I borrowed- three or four times, lived well, and in good\n    compass; and now I live out of all order, out of all compass.\n  Bard. Why, you are so fat, Sir John, that you must needs be out of  \n    all compass- out of all reasonable compass, Sir John.\n  Fal. Do thou amend thy face, and I\'ll amend my life. Thou art our\n    admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the poop- but \'tis in the\n    nose of thee. Thou art the Knight of the Burning Lamp.\n  Bard. Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.\n  Fal. No, I\'ll be sworn. I make as good use of it as many a man doth\n    of a death\'s-head or a memento mori. I never see thy face but I\n    think upon hellfire and Dives that lived in purple; for there he\n    is in his robes, burning, burning. if thou wert any way given to\n    virtue, I would swear by thy face; my oath should be \'By this\n    fire, that\'s God\'s angel.\' But thou art altogether given over,\n    and wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter\n    darkness. When thou ran\'st up Gadshill in the night to catch my\n    horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus or a\n    ball of wildfire, there\'s no purchase in money. O, thou art a\n    perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! Thou hast saved\n    me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in\n    the night betwixt tavern and tavern; but the sack that thou hast\n    drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap at the dearest\n    chandler\'s in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours  \n    with fire any time this two-and-thirty years. God reward me for\n    it!\n  Bard. \'Sblood, I would my face were in your belly!\n  Fal. God-a-mercy! so should I be sure to be heart-burn\'d.\n\n                          Enter Hostess.\n\n    How now, Dame Partlet the hen? Have you enquir\'d yet who pick\'d\n    my pocket?\n  Host. Why, Sir John, what do you think, Sir John? Do you think I\n    keep thieves in my house? I have search\'d, I have enquired, so\n    has my husband, man by man, boy by boy, servant by servant. The\n    tithe of a hair was never lost in my house before.\n  Fal. Ye lie, hostess. Bardolph was shav\'d and lost many a hair, and\n    I\'ll be sworn my pocket was pick\'d. Go to, you are a woman, go!\n  Host. Who, I? No; I defy thee! God\'s light, I was never call\'d so\n    in mine own house before!\n  Fal. Go to, I know you well enough.\n  Host. No, Sir John; you do not know me, Sir John. I know you, Sir\n    John. You owe me money, Sir John, and now you pick a quarrel to  \n    beguile me of it. I bought you a dozen of shirts to your back.\n  Fal. Dowlas, filthy dowlas! I have given them away to bakers\'\n    wives; they have made bolters of them.\n  Host. Now, as I am a true woman, holland of eight shillings an ell.\n    You owe money here besides, Sir John, for your diet and\n    by-drinkings, and money lent you, four-and-twenty pound.\n  Fal. He had his part of it; let him pay.\n  Host. He? Alas, he is poor; he hath nothing.\n  Fal. How? Poor? Look upon his face. What call you rich? Let them\n    coin his nose, let them coin his cheeks. I\'ll not pay a denier.\n    What, will you make a younker of me? Shall I not take mine ease\n    in mine inn but I shall have my pocket pick\'d? I have lost a\n    seal-ring of my grandfather\'s worth forty mark.\n  Host. O Jesu, I have heard the Prince tell him, I know not how oft,\n    that that ring was copper!\n  Fal. How? the Prince is a Jack, a sneak-cup. \'Sblood, an he were\n    here, I would cudgel him like a dog if he would say so.\n\n      Enter the Prince [and Poins], marching; and Falstaff meets\n          them, playing upon his truncheon like a fife.  \n\n    How now, lad? Is the wind in that door, i\' faith? Must we all\n    march?\n  Bard. Yea, two and two, Newgate fashion.\n  Host. My lord, I pray you hear me.\n  Prince. What say\'st thou, Mistress Quickly? How doth thy husband?\n    I love him well; he is an honest man.\n  Host. Good my lord, hear me.\n  Fal. Prithee let her alone and list to me.\n  Prince. What say\'st thou, Jack?\n  Fal. The other night I fell asleep here behind the arras and had my\n    pocket pick\'d. This house is turn\'d bawdy house; they pick\n    pockets.\n  Prince. What didst thou lose, Jack?\n  Fal. Wilt thou believe me, Hal? Three or four bonds of forty pound\n    apiece and a seal-ring of my grandfather\'s.\n  Prince. A trifle, some eightpenny matter.\n  Host. So I told him, my lord, and I said I heard your Grace say so;\n    and, my lord, he speaks most vilely of you, like a foul-mouth\'d\n    man as he is, and said he would cudgel you.  \n  Prince. What! he did not?\n  Host. There\'s neither faith, truth, nor womanhood in me else.\n  Fal. There\'s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune, nor no\n    more truth in thee than in a drawn fox; and for woman-hood, Maid\n    Marian may be the deputy\'s wife of the ward to thee. Go, you\n    thing, go!\n  Host. Say, what thing? what thing?\n  Fal. What thing? Why, a thing to thank God on.\n  Host. I am no thing to thank God on, I would thou shouldst know it!\n    I am an honest man\'s wife, and, setting thy knight-hood aside,\n    thou art a knave to call me so.\n  Fal. Setting thy womanhood aside, thou art a beast to say\n    otherwise.\n  Host. Say, what beast, thou knave, thou?\n  Fal. What beast? Why, an otter.\n  Prince. An otter, Sir John? Why an otter?\n  Fal. Why, she\'s neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to\n    have her.\n  Host. Thou art an unjust man in saying so. Thou or any man knows\n    where to have me, thou knave, thou!  \n  Prince. Thou say\'st true, hostess, and he slanders thee most\n    grossly.\n  Host. So he doth you, my lord, and said this other day you ought\n    him a thousand pound.\n  Prince. Sirrah, do I owe you a thousand pound?\n  Fal. A thousand pound, Hal? A million! Thy love is worth a million;\n    thou owest me thy love.\n  Host. Nay, my lord, he call\'d you Jack and said he would cudgel\n    you.\n  Fal. Did I, Bardolph?\n  Bard. Indeed, Sir John, you said so.\n  Fal. Yea. if he said my ring was copper.\n  Prince. I say, \'tis copper. Darest thou be as good as thy word now?\n  Fal. Why, Hal, thou knowest, as thou art but man, I dare; but as\n    thou art Prince, I fear thee as I fear the roaring of the lion\'s\n    whelp.\n  Prince. And why not as the lion?\n  Fal. The King himself is to be feared as the lion. Dost thou think\n    I\'ll fear thee as I fear thy father? Nay, an I do, I pray God my\n    girdle break.  \n  Prince. O, if it should, how would thy guts fall about thy knees!\n    But, sirrah, there\'s no room for faith, truth, nor honesty in\n    this bosom of thine. It is all fill\'d up with guts and midriff.\n    Charge an honest woman with picking thy pocket? Why, thou\n    whoreson, impudent, emboss\'d rascal, if there were anything in\n    thy pocket but tavern reckonings, memorandums of bawdy houses,\n    and one poor pennyworth of sugar candy to make thee long-winded-\n    if thy pocket were enrich\'d with any other injuries but these, I\n    am a villain. And yet you will stand to it; you will not pocket\n    up wrong. Art thou not ashamed?\n  Fal. Dost thou hear, Hal? Thou knowest in the state of innocency\n    Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of\n    villany? Thou seest I have more flesh than another man, and\n    therefore more frailty. You confess then, you pick\'d my pocket?\n  Prince. It appears so by the story.\n  Fal. Hostess, I forgive thee. Go make ready breakfast. Love thy\n    husband, look to thy servants, cherish thy guests. Thou shalt\n    find me tractable to any honest reason. Thou seest I am pacified.\n    -Still?- Nay, prithee be gone. [Exit Hostess.] Now, Hal, to the\n    news at court. For the robbery, lad- how is that answered?  \n  Prince. O my sweet beef, I must still be good angel to thee.\n    The money is paid back again.\n  Fal. O, I do not like that paying back! \'Tis a double labour.\n  Prince. I am good friends with my father, and may do anything.\n  Fal. Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou doest, and do it\n    with unwash\'d hands too.\n  Bard. Do, my lord.\n  Prince. I have procured thee, Jack, a charge of foot.\n  Fal. I would it had been of horse. Where shall I find one that can\n    steal well? O for a fine thief of the age of two-and-twenty or\n    thereabouts! I am heinously unprovided. Well, God be thanked for\n    these rebels. They offend none but the virtuous. I laud them, I\n    praise them.\n  Prince. Bardolph!\n  Bard. My lord?\n  Prince. Go bear this letter to Lord John of Lancaster,\n    To my brother John; this to my Lord of Westmoreland.\n                                                [Exit Bardolph.]\n    Go, Poins, to horse, to horse; for thou and I\n    Have thirty miles to ride yet ere dinner time.  \n                                                   [Exit Poins.]\n    Jack, meet me to-morrow in the Temple Hall\n    At two o\'clock in the afternoon.\n    There shalt thou know thy charge. and there receive\n    Money and order for their furniture.\n    The land is burning; Percy stands on high;\n    And either they or we must lower lie.                [Exit.]\n  Fal. Rare words! brave world! Hostess, my breakfast, come.\n    O, I could wish this tavern were my drum!\nExit.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. Scene I.\nThe rebel camp near Shrewsbury.\n\nEnter Harry Hotspur, Worcester, and Douglas.\n\n  Hot. Well said, my noble Scot. If speaking truth\n    In this fine age were not thought flattery,\n    Such attribution should the Douglas have\n    As not a soldier of this season\'s stamp\n    Should go so general current through the world.\n    By God, I cannot flatter, I defy\n    The tongues of soothers! but a braver place\n    In my heart\'s love hath no man than yourself.\n    Nay, task me to my word; approve me, lord.\n  Doug. Thou art the king of honour.\n    No man so potent breathes upon the ground\n    But I will beard him.\n\n                     Enter one with letters.\n\n  Hot. Do so, and \'tis well.-\n    What letters hast thou there?- I can but thank you.  \n  Messenger. These letters come from your father.\n  Hot. Letters from him? Why comes he not himself?\n  Mess. He cannot come, my lord; he is grievous sick.\n  Hot. Zounds! how has he the leisure to be sick\n    In such a justling time? Who leads his power?\n    Under whose government come they along?\n  Mess. His letters bears his mind, not I, my lord.\n  Wor. I prithee tell me, doth he keep his bed?\n  Mess. He did, my lord, four days ere I set forth,\n    And at the time of my departure thence\n    He was much fear\'d by his physicians.\n  Wor. I would the state of time had first been whole\n    Ere he by sickness had been visited.\n    His health was never better worth than now.\n  Hot. Sick now? droop now? This sickness doth infect\n    The very lifeblood of our enterprise.\n    \'Tis catching hither, even to our camp.\n    He writes me here that inward sickness-\n    And that his friends by deputation could not\n    So soon be drawn; no did he think it meet  \n    To lay so dangerous and dear a trust\n    On any soul remov\'d but on his own.\n    Yet doth he give us bold advertisement,\n    That with our small conjunction we should on,\n    To see how fortune is dispos\'d to us;\n    For, as he writes, there is no quailing now,\n    Because the King is certainly possess\'d\n    Of all our purposes. What say you to it?\n  Wor. Your father\'s sickness is a maim to us.\n  Hot. A perilous gash, a very limb lopp\'d off.\n    And yet, in faith, it is not! His present want\n    Seems more than we shall find it. Were it good\n    To set the exact wealth of all our states\n    All at one cast? to set so rich a man\n    On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour?\n    It were not good; for therein should we read\n    The very bottom and the soul of hope,\n    The very list, the very utmost bound\n    Of all our fortunes.\n  Doug. Faith, and so we should;  \n    Where now remains a sweet reversion.\n    We may boldly spend upon the hope of what\n    Is to come in.\n    A comfort of retirement lives in this.\n  Hot. A rendezvous, a home to fly unto,\n    If that the devil and mischance look big\n    Upon the maidenhead of our affairs.\n  Wor. But yet I would your father had been here.\n    The quality and hair of our attempt\n    Brooks no division. It will be thought\n    By some that know not why he is away,\n    That wisdom, loyalty, and mere dislike\n    Of our proceedings kept the Earl from hence.\n    And think how such an apprehension\n    May turn the tide of fearful faction\n    And breed a kind of question in our cause.\n    For well you know we of the off\'ring side\n    Must keep aloof from strict arbitrement,\n    And stop all sight-holes, every loop from whence\n    The eye of reason may pry in upon us.  \n    This absence of your father\'s draws a curtain\n    That shows the ignorant a kind of fear\n    Before not dreamt of.\n  Hot. You strain too far.\n    I rather of his absence make this use:\n    It lends a lustre and more great opinion,\n    A larger dare to our great enterprise,\n    Than if the Earl were here; for men must think,\n    If we, without his help, can make a head\n    To push against a kingdom, with his help\n    We shall o\'erturn it topsy-turvy down.\n    Yet all goes well; yet all our joints are whole.\n  Doug. As heart can think. There is not such a word\n    Spoke of in Scotland as this term of fear.\n\n                 Enter Sir Richard Vernon.\n\n  Hot. My cousin Vernon! welcome, by my soul.\n  Ver. Pray God my news be worth a welcome, lord.\n    The Earl of Westmoreland, seven thousand strong,  \n    Is marching hitherwards; with him Prince John.\n  Hot. No harm. What more?\n  Ver. And further, I have learn\'d\n    The King himself in person is set forth,\n    Or hitherwards intended speedily,\n    With strong and mighty preparation.\n  Hot. He shall be welcome too. Where is his son,\n    The nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales,\n    And his comrades, that daff\'d the world aside\n    And bid it pass?\n  Ver. All furnish\'d, all in arms;\n    All plum\'d like estridges that with the wind\n    Bated like eagles having lately bath\'d;\n    Glittering in golden coats like images;\n    As full of spirit as the month of May\n    And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;\n    Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.\n    I saw young Harry with his beaver on\n    His cushes on his thighs, gallantly arm\'d,\n    Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury,  \n    And vaulted with such ease into his seat\n    As if an angel dropp\'d down from the clouds\n    To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus\n    And witch the world with noble horsemanship.\n  Hot. No more, no more! Worse than the sun in March,\n    This praise doth nourish agues. Let them come.\n    They come like sacrifices in their trim,\n    And to the fire-ey\'d maid of smoky war\n    All hot and bleeding Will we offer them.\n    The mailed Mars Shall on his altar sit\n    Up to the ears in blood. I am on fire\n    To hear this rich reprisal is so nigh,\n    And yet not ours. Come, let me taste my horse,\n    Who is to bear me like a thunderbolt\n    Against the bosom of the Prince of Wales.\n    Harry to Harry shall, hot horse to horse,\n    Meet, and ne\'er part till one drop down a corse.\n    that Glendower were come!\n  Ver. There is more news.\n    I learn\'d in Worcester, as I rode along,  \n    He cannot draw his power this fourteen days.\n  Doug. That\'s the worst tidings that I hear of yet.\n  Wor. Ay, by my faith, that bears a frosty sound.\n  Hot. What may the King\'s whole battle reach unto?\n  Ver. To thirty thousand.\n  Hot. Forty let it be.\n    My father and Glendower being both away,\n    The powers of us may serve so great a day.\n    Come, let us take a muster speedily.\n    Doomsday is near. Die all, die merrily.\n  Doug. Talk not of dying. I am out of fear\n    Of death or death\'s hand for this one half-year.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nA public road near Coventry.\n\nEnter Falstaff and Bardolph.\n\n  Fal. Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me a bottle of\n    sack. Our soldiers shall march through. We\'ll to Sutton Co\'fil\'\n    to-night.\n  Bard. Will you give me money, Captain?\n  Fal. Lay out, lay out.\n  Bald. This bottle makes an angel.\n  Fal. An if it do, take it for thy labour; an if it make twenty,\n    take them all; I\'ll answer the coinage. Bid my lieutenant Peto\n    meet me at town\'s end.\n  Bard. I Will, Captain. Farewell.                         Exit.\n  Fal. If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a sous\'d gurnet. I\n    have misused the King\'s press damnably. I have got in exchange of\n    a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I\n    press me none but good householders, yeomen\'s sons; inquire me\n    out contracted bachelors, such as had been ask\'d twice on the\n    banes- such a commodity of warm slaves as had as lieve hear the\n    devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a caliver worse than  \n    a struck fowl or a hurt wild duck. I press\'d me none but such\n    toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than\n    pins\' heads, and they have bought out their services; and now my\n    whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants,\n    gentlemen of companies- slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the\n    painted cloth, where the glutton\'s dogs licked his sores; and\n    such as indeed were never soldiers, but discarded unjust\n    serving-men, younger sons to Younger brothers, revolted tapsters,\n    and ostlers trade-fall\'n; the cankers of a calm world and a long\n    peace; ten times more dishonourable ragged than an old fac\'d\n    ancient; and such have I to fill up the rooms of them that have\n    bought out their services that you would think that I had a\n    hundred and fifty tattered Prodigals lately come from\n    swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me\n    on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets and\n    press\'d the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I\'ll\n    not march through Coventry with them, that\'s flat. Nay, and the\n    villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on;\n    for indeed I had the most of them out of prison. There\'s but a\n    shirt and a half in all my company; and the half-shirt is two  \n    napkins tack\'d together and thrown over the shoulders like a\n    herald\'s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth,\n    stol\'n from my host at Saint Alban\'s, or the red-nose innkeeper\n    of Daventry. But that\'s all one; they\'ll find linen enough on\n    every hedge.\n\n              Enter the Prince and the Lord of Westmoreland.\n\n  Prince. How now, blown Jack? How now, quilt?\n  Fal. What, Hal? How now, mad wag? What a devil dost thou in\n    Warwickshire? My good Lord of Westmoreland, I cry you mercy. I\n    thought your honour had already been at Shrewsbury.\n  West. Faith, Sir John, \'tis more than time that I were there, and\n    you too; but my powers are there already. The King, I can tell\n    you, looks for us all. We must away all, to-night.\n  Fal. Tut, never fear me. I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.\n  Prince. I think, to steal cream indeed, for thy theft hath already\n    made thee butter. But tell me, Jack, whose fellows are these that\n    come after?\n  Fal. Mine, Hal, mine.  \n  Prince. I did never see such pitiful rascals.\n  Fal. Tut, tut! good enough to toss; food for powder, food for\n    powder. They\'ll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal\n    men, mortal men.\n  West. Ay, but, Sir John, methinks they are exceeding poor and bare-\n    too beggarly.\n  Fal. Faith, for their poverty, I know, not where they had that; and\n    for their bareness, I am surd they never learn\'d that of me.\n  Prince. No, I\'ll be sworn, unless you call three fingers on the\n    ribs bare. But, sirrah, make haste. Percy \'s already in the\n    field.\nExit.\n  Fal. What, is the King encamp\'d?\n  West. He is, Sir John. I fear we shall stay too long.\n                                                         [Exit.]\n  Fal. Well,\n    To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast\n    Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.                  Exit.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nThe rebel camp near Shrewsbury.\n\nEnter Hotspur, Worcester, Douglas, Vernon.\n\n  Hot. We\'ll fight with him to-night.\n  Wor. It may not be.\n  Doug. You give him then advantage.\n  Ver. Not a whit.\n  Hot. Why say you so? Looks he no for supply?\n  Ver. So do we.\n  Hot. His is certain, ours \'s doubtful.\n  Wor. Good cousin, be advis\'d; stir not to-night.\n  Ver. Do not, my lord.\n  Doug. You do not counsel well.\n    You speak it out of fear and cold heart.\n  Ver. Do me no slander, Douglas. By my life-\n    And I dare well maintain it with my life-\n    If well-respected honour bid me on\n    I hold as little counsel with weak fear\n    As you, my lord, or any Scot that this day lives.\n    Let it be seen to-morrow in the battle  \n    Which of us fears.\n  Doug. Yea, or to-night.\n  Ver. Content.\n  Hot. To-night, say I.\n    Come, come, it may not be. I wonder much,\n    Being men of such great leading as you are,\n    That you foresee not what impediments\n    Drag back our expedition. Certain horse\n    Of my cousin Vernon\'s are not yet come up.\n    Your uncle Worcester\'s horse came but to-day;\n    And now their pride and mettle is asleep,\n    Their courage with hard labour tame and dull,\n    That not a horse is half the half of himself.\n  Hot. So are the horses of the enemy,\n    In general journey-bated and brought low.\n    The better part of ours are full of rest.\n  Wor. The number of the King exceedeth ours.\n    For God\'s sake, cousin, stay till all come in.\n\n              The trumpet sounds a parley.  \n\n                 Enter Sir Walter Blunt.\n\n  Blunt. I come with gracious offers from the King,\n    If you vouchsafe me hearing and respect.\n  Hot. Welcome, Sir Walter Blunt, and would to God\n    You were of our determination!\n    Some of us love you well; and even those some\n    Envy your great deservings and good name,\n    Because you are not of our quality,\n    But stand against us like an enemy.\n  Blunt. And God defend but still I should stand so,\n    So long as out of limit and true rule\n    You stand against anointed majesty!\n    But to my charge. The King hath sent to know\n    The nature of your griefs; and whereupon\n    You conjure from the breast of civil peace\n    Such bold hostility, teaching his duteous land\n    Audacious cruelty. If that the King\n    Have any way your good deserts forgot,  \n    Which he confesseth to be manifold,\n    He bids you name your griefs, and with all speed\n    You shall have your desires with interest,\n    And pardon absolute for yourself and these\n    Herein misled by your suggestion.\n  Hot. The King is kind; and well we know the King\n    Knows at what time to promise, when to pay.\n    My father and my uncle and myself\n    Did give him that same royalty he wears;\n    And when he was not six-and-twenty strong,\n    Sick in the world\'s regard, wretched and low,\n    A poor unminded outlaw sneaking home,\n    My father gave him welcome to the shore;\n    And when he heard him swear and vow to God\n    He came but to be Duke of Lancaster,\n    To sue his livery and beg his peace,\n    With tears of innocency and terms of zeal,\n    My father, in kind heart and pity mov\'d,\n    Swore him assistance, and performed it too.\n    Now, when the lords and barons of the realm  \n    Perceiv\'d Northumberland did lean to him,\n    The more and less came in with cap and knee;\n    Met him on boroughs, cities, villages,\n    Attended him on bridges, stood in lanes,\n    Laid gifts before him, proffer\'d him their oaths,\n    Give him their heirs as pages, followed him\n    Even at the heels in golden multitudes.\n    He presently, as greatness knows itself,\n    Steps me a little higher than his vow\n    Made to my father, while his blood was poor,\n    Upon the naked shore at Ravenspurgh;\n    And now, forsooth, takes on him to reform\n    Some certain edicts and some strait decrees\n    That lie too heavy on the commonwealth;\n    Cries out upon abuses, seems to weep\n    Over his country\'s wrongs; and by this face,\n    This seeming brow of justice, did he win\n    The hearts of all that he did angle for;\n    Proceeded further- cut me off the heads\n    Of all the favourites that the absent King  \n    In deputation left behind him here\n    When he was personal in the Irish war.\n    But. Tut! I came not to hear this.\n  Hot. Then to the point.\n    In short time after lie depos\'d the King;\n    Soon after that depriv\'d him of his life;\n    And in the neck of that task\'d the whole state;\n    To make that worse, suff\'red his kinsman March\n    (Who is, if every owner were well placid,\n    Indeed his king) to be engag\'d in Wales,\n    There without ransom to lie forfeited;\n    Disgrac\'d me in my happy victories,\n    Sought to entrap me by intelligence;\n    Rated mine uncle from the Council board;\n    In rage dismiss\'d my father from the court;\n    Broke an oath on oath, committed wrong on wrong;\n    And in conclusion drove us to seek out\n    This head of safety, and withal to pry\n    Into his title, the which we find\n    Too indirect for long continuance.  \n  Blunt. Shall I return this answer to the King?\n  Hot. Not so, Sir Walter. We\'ll withdraw awhile.\n    Go to the King; and let there be impawn\'d\n    Some surety for a safe return again,\n    And In the morning early shall mine uncle\n    Bring him our purposes; and so farewell.\n  Blunt. I would you would accept of grace and love.\n  Hot. And may be so we shall.\n  Blunt. Pray God you do.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nYork. The Archbishop\'s Palace.\n\nEnter the Archbishop of York and Sir Michael.\n\n  Arch. Hie, good Sir Michael; bear this sealed brief\n    With winged haste to the Lord Marshal;\n    This to my cousin Scroop; and all the rest\n    To whom they are directed. If you knew\n    How much they do import, you would make haste.\n  Sir M. My good lord,\n    I guess their tenour.\n  Arch. Like enough you do.\n    To-morrow, good Sir Michael, is a day\n    Wherein the fortune of ten thousand men\n    Must bide the touch; for, sir, at Shrewsbury,\n    As I am truly given to understand,\n    The King with mighty and quick-raised power\n    Meets with Lord Harry; and I fear, Sir Michael,\n    What with the sickness of Northumberland,\n    Whose power was in the first proportion,\n    And what with Owen Glendower\'s absence thence,  \n    Who with them was a rated sinew too\n    And comes not in, overrul\'d by prophecies-\n    I fear the power of Percy is too weak\n    To wage an instant trial with the King.\n  Sir M. Why, my good lord, you need not fear;\n    There is Douglas and Lord Mortimer.\n  Arch. No, Mortimer is not there.\n  Sir M. But there is Mordake, Vernon, Lord Harry Percy,\n    And there is my Lord of Worcester, and a head\n    Of gallant warriors, noble gentlemen.\n  Arch. And so there is; but yet the King hath drawn\n    The special head of all the land together-\n    The Prince of Wales, Lord John of Lancaster,\n    The noble Westmoreland and warlike Blunt,\n    And many moe corrivals and dear men\n    Of estimation and command in arms.\n  Sir M. Doubt not, my lord, they shall be well oppos\'d.\n  Arch. I hope no less, yet needful \'tis to fear;\n    And, to prevent the worst, Sir Michael, speed.\n    For if Lord Percy thrive not, ere the King  \n    Dismiss his power, he means to visit us,\n    For he hath heard of our confederacy,\n    And \'tis but wisdom to make strong against him.\n    Therefore make haste. I must go write again\n    To other friends; and so farewell, Sir Michael.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. Scene I.\nThe King\'s camp near Shrewsbury.\n\nEnter the King, Prince of Wales, Lord John of Lancaster, Sir Walter Blunt,\nFalstaff.\n\n  King. How bloodily the sun begins to peer\n    Above yon busky hill! The day looks pale\n    At his distemp\'rature.\n  Prince. The southern wind\n    Doth play the trumpet to his purposes\n    And by his hollow whistling in the leaves\n    Foretells a tempest and a blust\'ring day.\n  King. Theft with the losers let it sympathize,\n    For nothing can seem foul to those that win.\n\n     The trumpet sounds. Enter Worcester [and Vernon].\n\n    How, now, my Lord of Worcester? \'Tis not well\n    That you and I should meet upon such terms\n    As now we meet. You have deceiv\'d our trust\n    And made us doff our easy robes of peace  \n    To crush our old limbs in ungentle steel.\n    This is not well, my lord; this is not well.\n    What say you to it? Will you again unknit\n    This churlish knot of all-abhorred war,\n    And move in that obedient orb again\n    Where you did give a fair and natural light,\n    And be no more an exhal\'d meteor,\n    A prodigy of fear, and a portent\n    Of broached mischief to the unborn times?\n  Wor. Hear me, my liege.\n    For mine own part, I could be well content\n    To entertain the lag-end of my life\n    With quiet hours; for I do protest\n    I have not sought the day of this dislike.\n  King. You have not sought it! How comes it then,\n  Fal. Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.\n  Prince. Peace, chewet, peace!\n  Wor. It pleas\'d your Majesty to turn your looks\n    Of favour from myself and all our house;\n    And yet I must remember you, my lord,  \n    We were the first and dearest of your friends.\n    For you my staff of office did I break\n    In Richard\'s time, and posted day and night\n    To meet you on the way and kiss your hand\n    When yet you were in place and in account\n    Nothing so strong and fortunate as I.\n    It was myself, my brother, and his son\n    That brought you home and boldly did outdare\n    The dangers of the time. You swore to us,\n    And you did swear that oath at Doncaster,\n    That you did nothing purpose \'gainst the state,\n    Nor claim no further than your new-fall\'n right,\n    The seat of Gaunt, dukedom of Lancaster.\n    To this we swore our aid. But in short space\n    It it rain\'d down fortune show\'ring on your head,\n    And such a flood of greatness fell on you-\n    What with our help, what with the absent King,\n    What with the injuries of a wanton time,\n    The seeming sufferances that you had borne,\n    And the contrarious winds that held the King  \n    So long in his unlucky Irish wars\n    That all in England did repute him dead-\n    And from this swarm of fair advantages\n    You took occasion to be quickly woo\'d\n    To gripe the general sway into your hand;\n    Forgot your oath to us at Doncaster;\n    And, being fed by us, you us\'d us so\n    As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo\'s bird,\n    Useth the sparrow- did oppress our nest;\n    Grew, by our feeding to so great a bulk\n    That even our love thirst not come near your sight\n    For fear of swallowing; but with nimble wing\n    We were enforc\'d for safety sake to fly\n    Out of your sight and raise this present head;\n    Whereby we stand opposed by such means\n    As you yourself have forg\'d against yourself\n    By unkind usage, dangerous countenance,\n    And violation of all faith and troth\n    Sworn to tis in your younger enterprise.\n  King. These things, indeed, you have articulate,  \n    Proclaim\'d at market crosses, read in churches,\n    To face the garment of rebellion\n    With some fine colour that may please the eye\n    Of fickle changelings and poor discontents,\n    Which gape and rub the elbow at the news\n    Of hurlyburly innovation.\n    And never yet did insurrection want\n    Such water colours to impaint his cause,\n    Nor moody beggars, starving for a time\n    Of pell-mell havoc and confusion.\n  Prince. In both our armies there is many a soul\n    Shall pay full dearly for this encounter,\n    If once they join in trial. Tell your nephew\n    The Prince of Wales doth join with all the world\n    In praise of Henry Percy. By my hopes,\n    This present enterprise set off his head,\n    I do not think a braver gentleman,\n    More active-valiant or more valiant-young,\n    More daring or more bold, is now alive\n    To grace this latter age with noble deeds.  \n    For my part, I may speak it to my shame,\n    I have a truant been to chivalry;\n    And so I hear he doth account me too.\n    Yet this before my father\'s Majesty-\n    I am content that he shall take the odds\n    Of his great name and estimation,\n    And will to save the blood on either side,\n    Try fortune with him in a single fight.\n  King. And, Prince of Wales, so dare we venture thee,\n    Albeit considerations infinite\n    Do make against it. No, good Worcester, no!\n    We love our people well; even those we love\n    That are misled upon your cousin\'s part;\n    And, will they take the offer of our grace,\n    Both he, and they, and you, yea, every man\n    Shall be my friend again, and I\'ll be his.\n    So tell your cousin, and bring me word\n    What he will do. But if he will not yield,\n    Rebuke and dread correction wait on us,\n    And they shall do their office. So be gone.  \n    We will not now be troubled with reply.\n    We offer fair; take it advisedly.\n                                    Exit Worcester [with Vernon]\n  Prince. It will not be accepted, on my life.\n    The Douglas and the Hotspur both together\n    Are confident against the world in arms.\n  King. Hence, therefore, every leader to his charge;\n    For, on their answer, will we set on them,\n    And God befriend us as our cause is just!\n                                Exeunt. Manent Prince, Falstaff.\n  Fal. Hal, if thou see me down in the battle and bestride me, so!\n    \'Tis a point of friendship.\n  Prince. Nothing but a Colossus can do thee that friendship.\n    Say thy prayers, and farewell.\n  Fal. I would \'twere bedtime, Hal, and all well.\n  Prince. Why, thou owest God a death.\nExit.\n  Fal. \'Tis not due yet. I would be loath to pay him before his day.\n    What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well,\n    \'tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick  \n    me off when I come on? How then? Can honor set to a leg? No. Or\n    an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no\n    skill in surgery then? No. What is honour? A word. What is that\n    word honour? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died a\n    Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth be bear it? No. \'Tis\n    insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the\n    living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I\'ll\n    none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon- and so ends my catechism.\nExit.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nThe rebel camp.\n\nEnter Worcester and Sir Richard Vernon.\n\n  Wor. O no, my nephew must not know, Sir Richard,\n    The liberal and kind offer of the King.\n  Ver. \'Twere best he did.\n  Wor. Then are we all undone.\n    It is not possible, it cannot be\n    The King should keep his word in loving us.\n    He will suspect us still and find a time\n    To punish this offence in other faults.\n    Suspicion all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes;\n    For treason is but trusted like the fox\n    Who, ne\'er so tame, so cherish\'d and lock\'d up,\n    Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.\n    Look how we can, or sad or merrily,\n    Interpretation will misquote our looks,\n    And we shall feed like oxen at a stall,\n    The better cherish\'d, still the nearer death.\n    My nephew\'s trespass may be well forgot;  \n    It hath the excuse of youth and heat of blood,\n    And an adopted name of privilege-\n    A hare-brained Hotspur govern\'d by a spleen.\n    All his offences live upon my head\n    And on his father\'s. We did train him on;\n    And, his corruption being taken from us,\n    We, as the spring of all, shall pay for all.\n    Therefore, good cousin, let not Harry know,\n    In any case, the offer of the King.\n\n               Enter Hotspur [and Douglas].\n\n  Ver. Deliver what you will, I\'ll say \'tis so.\n    Here comes your cousin.\n  Hot. My uncle is return\'d.\n    Deliver up my Lord of Westmoreland.\n    Uncle, what news?\n  Wor. The King will bid you battle presently.\n  Doug. Defy him by the Lord Of Westmoreland.\n  Hot. Lord Douglas, go you and tell him so.  \n  Doug. Marry, and shall, and very willingly.\nExit.\n  Wor. There is no seeming mercy in the King.\n  Hot. Did you beg any, God forbid!\n  Wor. I told him gently of our grievances,\n    Of his oath-breaking; which he mended thus,\n    By now forswearing that he is forsworn.\n    He calls us rebels, traitors, aid will scourge\n    With haughty arms this hateful name in us.\n\n                       Enter Douglas.\n\n  Doug. Arm, gentlemen! to arms! for I have thrown\n    A brave defiance in King Henry\'s teeth,\n    And Westmoreland, that was engag\'d, did bear it;\n    Which cannot choose but bring him quickly on.\n  Wor. The Prince of Wales stepp\'d forth before the King\n    And, nephew, challeng\'d you to single fight.\n  Hot. O, would the quarrel lay upon our heads,\n    And that no man might draw short breath to-day  \n    But I and Harry Monmouth! Tell me, tell me,\n    How show\'d his tasking? Seem\'d it in contempt?\n    No, by my soul. I never in my life\n    Did hear a challenge urg\'d more modestly,\n    Unless a brother should a brother dare\n    To gentle exercise and proof of arms.\n    He gave you all the duties of a man;\n    Trimm\'d up your praises with a princely tongue;\n    Spoke your deservings like a chronicle;\n    Making you ever better than his praise\n    By still dispraising praise valued with you;\n    And, which became him like a prince indeed,\n    He made a blushing cital of himself,\n    And chid his truant youth with such a grace\n    As if lie mast\'red there a double spirit\n    Of teaching and of learning instantly.\n    There did he pause; but let me tell the world,\n    If he outlive the envy of this day,\n    England did never owe so sweet a hope,\n    So much misconstrued in his wantonness.  \n  Hot. Cousin, I think thou art enamoured\n    Upon his follies. Never did I hear\n    Of any prince so wild a libertine.\n    But be he as he will, yet once ere night\n    I will embrace him with a soldier\'s arm,\n    That he shall shrink under my courtesy.\n    Arm, arm with speed! and, fellows, soldiers, friends,\n    Better consider what you have to do\n    Than I, that have not well the gift of tongue,\n    Can lift your blood up with persuasion.\n\n                       Enter a Messenger.\n\n  Mess. My lord, here are letters for you.\n  Hot. I cannot read them now.-\n    O gentlemen, the time of life is short!\n    To spend that shortness basely were too long\n    If life did ride upon a dial\'s point,\n    Still ending at the arrival of an hour.\n    An if we live, we live to tread on kings;  \n    If die, brave death, when princes die with us!\n    Now for our consciences, the arms are fair,\n    When the intent of bearing them is just.\n\n                  Enter another Messenger.\n\n  Mess. My lord, prepare. The King comes on apace.\n  Hot. I thank him that he cuts me from my tale,\n    For I profess not talking. Only this-\n    Let each man do his best; and here draw I\n    A sword whose temper I intend to stain\n    With the best blood that I can meet withal\n    In the adventure of this perilous day.\n    Now, Esperance! Percy! and set on.\n    Sound all the lofty instruments of war,\n    And by that music let us all embrace;\n    For, heaven to earth, some of us never shall\n    A second time do such a courtesy.\n                          Here they embrace. The trumpets sound.\n                                                       [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nPlain between the camps.\n\nThe King enters with his Power.  Alarum to the battle.  Then enter Douglas\nand Sir Walter Blunt.\n\n  Blunt. What is thy name, that in the battle thus\n    Thou crossest me? What honour dost thou seek\n    Upon my head?\n  Doug. Know then my name is Douglas,\n    And I do haunt thee in the battle thus\n    Because some tell me that thou art a king.\n  Blunt. They tell thee true.\n  Doug. The Lord of Stafford dear to-day hath bought\n    Thy likeness; for instead of thee, King Harry,\n    This sword hath ended him. So shall it thee,\n    Unless thou yield thee as my prisoner.\n  Blunt. I was not born a yielder, thou proud Scot;\n    And thou shalt find a king that will revenge\n    Lord Stafford\'s death.\n\n    They fight. Douglas kills Blunt. Then enter Hotspur.  \n\n  Hot. O Douglas, hadst thou fought at Holmedon thus,\n    I never had triumph\'d upon a Scot.\n  Doug. All\'s done, all\'s won. Here breathless lies the King.\n  Hot. Where?\n  Doug. Here.\n  Hot. This, Douglas? No. I know this face full well.\n    A gallant knight he was, his name was Blunt;\n    Semblably furnish\'d like the King himself.\n  Doug. A fool go with thy soul, whither it goes!\n    A borrowed title hast thou bought too dear:\n    Why didst thou tell me that thou wert a king?\n  Hot. The King hath many marching in his coats.\n  Doug. Now, by my sword, I will kill all his coats;\n    I\'ll murder all his wardrop, piece by piece,\n    Until I meet the King.\n  Hot. Up and away!\n    Our soldiers stand full fairly for the day.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n  \n                 Alarum. Enter Falstaff solus.\n\n  Fal. Though I could scape shot-free at London, I fear the shot\n    here. Here\'s no scoring but upon the pate. Soft! who are you?\n    Sir Walter Blunt. There\'s honour for you! Here\'s no vanity! I am\n    as hot as molten lead, and as heavy too. God keep lead out of me!\n    I need no more weight than mine own bowels. I have led my\n    rag-of-muffins where they are pepper\'d. There\'s not three of my\n    hundred and fifty left alive; and they are for the town\'s end, to\n    beg during life. But who comes here?\n\n                         Enter the Prince.\n\n  Prince. What, stand\'st thou idle here? Lend me thy sword.\n    Many a nobleman lies stark and stiff\n    Under the hoofs of vaunting enemies,\n    Whose deaths are yet unreveng\'d. I prithee\n    Rend me thy sword.\n  Fal. O Hal, I prithee give me leave to breathe awhile. Turk Gregory\n    never did such deeds in arms as I have done this day. I have paid  \n    Percy; I have made him sure.\n  Prince. He is indeed, and living to kill thee.\n    I prithee lend me thy sword.\n  Fal. Nay, before God, Hal, if Percy be alive, thou get\'st not my\n    sword; but take my pistol, if thou wilt.\n  Prince. Give it me. What, is it in the case?\n  Fal. Ay, Hal. \'Tis hot, \'tis hot. There\'s that will sack a city.\n\n    The Prince draws it out and finds it to he a bottle of sack.\n\n    What, is it a time to jest and dally now?\n                              He throws the bottle at him. Exit.\n  Fal. Well, if Percy be alive, I\'ll pierce him. If he do come in my\n    way, so; if he do not, if I come in his willingly, let him make a\n    carbonado of me. I like not such grinning honour as Sir Walter\n    hath. Give me life; which if I can save, so; if not, honour comes\n    unlook\'d for, and there\'s an end.                      Exit.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nAnother part of the field.\n\nAlarum. Excursions. Enter the King, the Prince, Lord John of Lancaster,\nEarl of Westmoreland\n\n  King. I prithee,\n    Harry, withdraw thyself; thou bleedest too much.\n    Lord John of Lancaster, go you unto him.\n  John. Not I, my lord, unless I did bleed too.\n  Prince. I do beseech your Majesty make up,\n    Lest Your retirement do amaze your friends.\n  King. I will do so.\n    My Lord of Westmoreland, lead him to his tent.\n  West. Come, my lord, I\'ll lead you to your tent.\n  Prince. Lead me, my lord, I do not need your help;\n    And God forbid a shallow scratch should drive\n    The Prince of Wales from such a field as this,\n    Where stain\'d nobility lies trodden on,\n    And rebels\' arms triumph in massacres!\n  John. We breathe too long. Come, cousin Westmoreland,\n    Our duty this way lies. For God\'s sake, come.  \n                          [Exeunt Prince John and Westmoreland.]\n  Prince. By God, thou hast deceiv\'d me, Lancaster!\n    I did not think thee lord of such a spirit.\n    Before, I lov\'d thee as a brother, John;\n    But now, I do respect thee as my soul.\n  King. I saw him hold Lord Percy at the point\n    With lustier maintenance than I did look for\n    Of such an ungrown warrior.\n  Prince. O, this boy\n    Lends mettle to us all!                                Exit.\n\n                         Enter Douglas.\n\n  Doug. Another king? They grow like Hydra\'s heads.\n    I am the Douglas, fatal to all those\n    That wear those colours on them. What art thou\n    That counterfeit\'st the person of a king?\n  King. The King himself, who, Douglas, grieves at heart\n    So many of his shadows thou hast met,\n    And not the very King. I have two boys  \n    Seek Percy and thyself about the field;\n    But, seeing thou fall\'st on me so luckily,\n    I will assay thee. So defend thyself.\n  Doug. I fear thou art another counterfeit;\n    And yet, in faith, thou bearest thee like a king.\n    But mine I am sure thou art, whoe\'er thou be,\n    And thus I win thee.\n\n   They fight. The King being in danger, enter Prince of Wales.\n\n  Prince. Hold up thy head, vile Scot, or thou art like\n    Never to hold it up again! The spirits\n    Of valiant Shirley, Stafford, Blunt are in my arms.\n    It is the Prince of Wales that threatens thee,\n    Who never promiseth but he means to pay.\n                                     They fight. Douglas flieth.\n    Cheerly, my lord. How fares your Grace?\n    Sir Nicholas Gawsey hath for succour sent,\n    And so hath Clifton. I\'ll to Clifton straight.\n  King. Stay and breathe awhile.  \n    Thou hast redeem\'d thy lost opinion,\n    And show\'d thou mak\'st some tender of my life,\n    In this fair rescue thou hast brought to me.\n  Prince. O God! they did me too much injury\n    That ever said I heark\'ned for your death.\n    If it were so, I might have let alone\n    The insulting hand of Douglas over you,\n    Which would have been as speedy in your end\n    As all the poisonous potions in the world,\n    And sav\'d the treacherous labour of your son.\n  King. Make up to Clifton; I\'ll to Sir Nicholas Gawsey.\nExit.\n\n                      Enter Hotspur.\n\n  Hot. If I mistake not, thou art Harry Monmouth.\n  Prince. Thou speak\'st as if I would deny my name.\n  Hot. My name is Harry Percy.\n  Prince. Why, then I see\n    A very valiant rebel of the name.  \n    I am the Prince of Wales; and think not, Percy,\n    To share with me in glory any more.\n    Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere,\n    Nor can one England brook a double reign\n    Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales.\n  Hot. Nor shall it, Harry; for the hour is come\n    To end the one of us and would to God\n    Thy name in arms were now as great as mine!\n  Prince. I\'ll make it greater ere I part from thee,\n    And all the budding honours on thy crest\n    I\'ll crop to make a garland for my head.\n  Hot. I can no longer brook thy vanities.\n                                                     They fight.\n\n                      Enter Falstaff.\n\n  Fal. Well said, Hal! to it, Hal! Nay, you shall find no boy\'s play\n    here, I can tell you.\n\n   Enter Douglas. He fighteth with Falstaff, who falls down as if  \n      he were dead. [Exit Douglas.] The Prince killeth Percy.\n\n  Hot. O Harry, thou hast robb\'d me of my youth!\n    I better brook the loss of brittle life\n    Than those proud titles thou hast won of me.\n    They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my flesh.\n    But thoughts the slave, of life, and life time\'s fool,\n    And time, that takes survey of all the world,\n    Must have a stop. O, I could prophesy,\n    But that the earthy and cold hand of death\n    Lies on my tongue. No, Percy, thou art dust,\n    And food for-                                        [Dies.]\n  Prince. For worms, brave Percy. Fare thee well, great heart!\n    Ill-weav\'d ambition, how much art thou shrunk!\n    When that this body did contain a spirit,\n    A kingdom for it was too small a bound;\n    But now two paces of the vilest earth\n    Is room enough. This earth that bears thee dead\n    Bears not alive so stout a gentleman.\n    If thou wert sensible of courtesy,  \n    I should not make so dear a show of zeal.\n    But let my favours hide thy mangled face;\n    And, even in thy behalf, I\'ll thank myself\n    For doing these fair rites of tenderness.\n    Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heaven!\n    Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave,\n    But not rememb\'red in thy epitaph!\n                               He spieth Falstaff on the ground.\n    What, old acquaintance? Could not all this flesh\n    Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell!\n    I could have better spar\'d a better man.\n    O, I should have a heavy miss of thee\n    If I were much in love with vanity!\n    Death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day,\n    Though many dearer, in this bloody fray.\n    Embowell\'d will I see thee by-and-by;\n    Till then in blood by noble Percy lie.                 Exit.\n\n                     Falstaff riseth up.\n  \n  Fal. Embowell\'d? If thou embowel me to-day, I\'ll give you leave to\n    powder me and eat me too to-morrow. \'Sblood, \'twas time to\n    counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me scot and lot\n    too. Counterfeit? I lie; I am no counterfeit. To die is to be a\n    counterfeit; for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not\n    the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying when a man thereby\n    liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image\n    of life indeed. The better part of valour is discretion; in the\n    which better part I have saved my life. Zounds, I am afraid of\n    this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead. How if he should\n    counterfeit too, and rise? By my faith, I am afraid he would\n    prove the better counterfeit. Therefore I\'ll make him sure; yea,\n    and I\'ll swear I kill\'d him. Why may not he rise as well as I?\n    Nothing confutes me but eyes, and nobody sees me. Therefore,\n    sirrah [stabs him], with a new wound in your thigh, come you\n    along with me.\n\n   He takes up Hotspur on his hack. [Enter Prince, and John of\n                            Lancaster.\n  \n  Prince. Come, brother John; full bravely hast thou flesh\'d\n    Thy maiden sword.\n  John. But, soft! whom have we here?\n    Did you not tell me this fat man was dead?\n  Prince. I did; I saw him dead,\n    Breathless and bleeding on the ground. Art thou alive,\n    Or is it fantasy that plays upon our eyesight?\n    I prithee speak. We will not trust our eyes\n    Without our ears. Thou art not what thou seem\'st.\n  Fal. No, that\'s certain! I am not a double man; but if I be not\n    Jack Falstaff, then am I a Jack. There \'s Percy. If your father\n    will do me any honour, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy\n    himself. I look to be either earl or duke, I can assure you.\n  Prince. Why, Percy I kill\'d myself, and saw thee dead!\n  Fal. Didst thou? Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! I\n    grant you I was down, and out of breath, and so was he; but we\n    rose both at an instant and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury\n    clock. If I may be believ\'d, so; if not, let them that should\n    reward valour bear the sin upon their own heads. I\'ll take it\n    upon my death, I gave him this wound in the thigh. If the man  \n    were alive and would deny it, zounds! I would make him eat a\n    piece of my sword.\n  John. This is the strangest tale that ever I beard.\n  Prince. This is the strangest fellow, brother John.\n    Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back.\n    For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,\n    I\'ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.\n                                           A retreat is sounded.\n    The trumpet sounds retreat; the day is ours.\n    Come, brother, let\'s to the highest of the field,\n    To see what friends are living, who are dead.\n                          Exeunt [Prince Henry and Prince John].\n  Fal. I\'ll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, God\n    reward him! If I do grow great, I\'ll grow less; for I\'ll purge,\n    and leave sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should do.\n                                    Exit [bearing off the body].\n\n\n\n\nScene V.\nAnother part of the field.\n\nThe trumpets sound. [Enter the King, Prince of Wales, Lord John of Lancaster,\nEarl of Westmoreland, with Worcester and Vernon prisoners.\n\n  King. Thus ever did rebellion find rebuke.\n    Ill-spirited Worcester! did not we send grace,\n    Pardon, and terms of love to all of you?\n    And wouldst thou turn our offers contrary?\n    Misuse the tenour of thy kinsman\'s trust?\n    Three knights upon our party slain to-day,\n    A noble earl, and many a creature else\n    Had been alive this hour,\n    If like a Christian thou hadst truly borne\n    Betwixt our armies true intelligence.\n  Wor. What I have done my safety urg\'d me to;\n    And I embrace this fortune patiently,\n    Since not to be avoided it fails on me.\n  King. Bear Worcester to the death, and Vernon too;\n    Other offenders we will pause upon.  \n                         Exeunt Worcester and Vernon, [guarded].\n    How goes the field?\n  Prince. The noble Scot, Lord Douglas, when he saw\n    The fortune of the day quite turn\'d from him,\n    The Noble Percy slain and all his men\n    Upon the foot of fear, fled with the rest;\n    And falling from a hill,he was so bruis\'d\n    That the pursuers took him. At my tent\n    The Douglas is, and I beseech Your Grace\n    I may dispose of him.\n  King. With all my heart.\n  Prince. Then brother John of Lancaster, to you\n    This honourable bounty shall belong.\n    Go to the Douglas and deliver him\n    Up to his pleasure, ransomless and free.\n    His valour shown upon our crests today\n    Hath taught us how to cherish such high deeds,\n    Even in the bosom of our adversaries.\n  John. I thank your Grace for this high courtesy,\n    Which I shall give away immediately.  \n  King. Then this remains, that we divide our power.\n    You, son John, and my cousin Westmoreland,\n    Towards York shall bend you with your dearest speed\n    To meet Northumberland and the prelate Scroop,\n    Who, as we hear, are busily in arms.\n    Myself and you, son Harry, will towards Wales\n    To fight with Glendower and the Earl of March.\n    Rebellion in this laud shall lose his sway,\n    Meeting the check of such another day;\n    And since this business so fair is done,\n    Let us not leave till all our own be won.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1598\n\n\nSECOND PART OF KING HENRY IV\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  RUMOUR, the Presenter\n  KING HENRY THE FOURTH\n\n  HENRY, PRINCE OF WALES, afterwards HENRY\n  PRINCE JOHN OF LANCASTER\n  PRINCE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER\n  THOMAS, DUKE OF CLARENCE\n    Sons of Henry IV\n\n  EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND\n  SCROOP, ARCHBISHOP OF YORK\n  LORD MOWBRAY\n  LORD HASTINGS\n  LORD BARDOLPH\n  SIR JOHN COLVILLE\n  TRAVERS and MORTON, retainers of Northumberland\n    Opposites against King Henry IV\n\n  EARL OF WARWICK\n  EARL OF WESTMORELAND  \n  EARL OF SURREY\n  EARL OF KENT\n  GOWER\n  HARCOURT\n  BLUNT\n    Of the King\'s party\n\n  LORD CHIEF JUSTICE\n  SERVANT, to Lord Chief Justice\n\n  SIR JOHN FALSTAFF\n  EDWARD POINS\n  BARDOLPH\n  PISTOL\n  PETO\n    Irregular humourists\n\n  PAGE, to Falstaff\n\n  ROBERT SHALLOW and SILENCE, country Justices  \n  DAVY, servant to Shallow\n\n  FANG and SNARE, Sheriff\'s officers\n\n  RALPH MOULDY\n  SIMON SHADOW\n  THOMAS WART\n  FRANCIS FEEBLE\n  PETER BULLCALF\n    Country soldiers\n\n  FRANCIS, a drawer\n\n  LADY NORTHUMBERLAND\n  LADY PERCY, Percy\'s widow\n  HOSTESS QUICKLY, of the Boar\'s Head, Eastcheap\n  DOLL TEARSHEET\n\n  LORDS, Attendants, Porter, Drawers, Beadles, Grooms, Servants,\n    Speaker of the Epilogue  \n\n                       SCENE: England\n\nINDUCTION\n                         INDUCTION.\n           Warkworth. Before NORTHUMBERLAND\'S Castle\n\n            Enter RUMOUR, painted full of tongues\n\n  RUMOUR. Open your ears; for which of you will stop\n    The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?\n    I, from the orient to the drooping west,\n    Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold\n    The acts commenced on this ball of earth.\n    Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,\n    The which in every language I pronounce,\n    Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.\n    I speak of peace while covert emnity,\n    Under the smile of safety, wounds the world;\n    And who but Rumour, who but only I,\n    Make fearful musters and prepar\'d defence,\n    Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief,\n    Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war,\n    And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe\n    Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures,\n    And of so easy and so plain a stop  \n    That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,\n    The still-discordant wav\'ring multitude,\n    Can play upon it. But what need I thus\n    My well-known body to anatomize\n    Among my household? Why is Rumour here?\n    I run before King Harry\'s victory,\n    Who, in a bloody field by Shrewsbury,\n    Hath beaten down young Hotspur and his troops,\n    Quenching the flame of bold rebellion\n    Even with the rebels\' blood. But what mean I\n    To speak so true at first? My office is\n    To noise abroad that Harry Monmouth fell\n    Under the wrath of noble Hotspur\'s sword,\n    And that the King before the Douglas\' rage\n    Stoop\'d his anointed head as low as death.\n    This have I rumour\'d through the peasant towns\n    Between that royal field of Shrewsbury\n    And this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone,\n    Where Hotspur\'s father, old Northumberland,\n    Lies crafty-sick. The posts come tiring on,  \n    And not a man of them brings other news\n    Than they have learnt of me. From Rumour\'s tongues\n    They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs.\n Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nWarkworth. Before NORTHUMBERLAND\'S Castle\n\nEnter LORD BARDOLPH\n\n  LORD BARDOLPH. Who keeps the gate here, ho?\n\n                   The PORTER opens the gate\n\n    Where is the Earl?\n  PORTER. What shall I say you are?\n  LORD BARDOLPH. Tell thou the Earl\n    That the Lord Bardolph doth attend him here.\n  PORTER. His lordship is walk\'d forth into the orchard.\n    Please it your honour knock but at the gate,\n    And he himself will answer.\n\n                      Enter NORTHUMBERLAND\n\n  LORD BARDOLPH. Here comes the Earl.                Exit PORTER\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. What news, Lord Bardolph? Every minute now\n    Should be the father of some stratagem.  \n    The times are wild; contention, like a horse\n    Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose\n    And bears down all before him.\n  LORD BARDOLPH. Noble Earl,\n    I bring you certain news from Shrewsbury.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Good, an God will!\n  LORD BARDOLPH. As good as heart can wish.\n    The King is almost wounded to the death;\n    And, in the fortune of my lord your son,\n    Prince Harry slain outright; and both the Blunts\n    Kill\'d by the hand of Douglas; young Prince John,\n    And Westmoreland, and Stafford, fled the field;\n    And Harry Monmouth\'s brawn, the hulk Sir John,\n    Is prisoner to your son. O, such a day,\n    So fought, so followed, and so fairly won,\n    Came not till now to dignify the times,\n    Since Cxsar\'s fortunes!\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. How is this deriv\'d?\n    Saw you the field? Came you from Shrewsbury?\n  LORD BARDOLPH. I spake with one, my lord, that came from thence;  \n    A gentleman well bred and of good name,\n    That freely rend\'red me these news for true.\n\n                         Enter TRAVERS\n\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Here comes my servant Travers, whom I sent\n    On Tuesday last to listen after news.\n  LORD BARDOLPH. My lord, I over-rode him on the way;\n    And he is furnish\'d with no certainties\n    More than he haply may retail from me.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Now, Travers, what good tidings comes with you?\n  TRAVERS. My lord, Sir John Umfrevile turn\'d me back\n    With joyful tidings; and, being better hors\'d,\n    Out-rode me. After him came spurring hard\n    A gentleman, almost forspent with speed,\n    That stopp\'d by me to breathe his bloodied horse.\n    He ask\'d the way to Chester; and of him\n    I did demand what news from Shrewsbury.\n    He told me that rebellion had bad luck,\n    And that young Harry Percy\'s spur was cold.  \n    With that he gave his able horse the head\n    And, bending forward, struck his armed heels\n    Against the panting sides of his poor jade\n    Up to the rowel-head; and starting so,\n    He seem\'d in running to devour the way,\n    Staying no longer question.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Ha! Again:\n    Said he young Harry Percy\'s spur was cold?\n    Of Hotspur, Coldspur? that rebellion\n    Had met ill luck?\n  LORD BARDOLPH. My lord, I\'ll tell you what:\n    If my young lord your son have not the day,\n    Upon mine honour, for a silken point\n    I\'ll give my barony. Never talk of it.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Why should that gentleman that rode by Travers\n    Give then such instances of loss?\n  LORD BARDOLPH. Who- he?\n    He was some hilding fellow that had stol\'n\n    The horse he rode on and, upon my life,\n    Spoke at a venture. Look, here comes more news.  \n\n                        Enter Morton\n\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Yea, this man\'s brow, like to a title-leaf,\n    Foretells the nature of a tragic volume.\n    So looks the strand whereon the imperious flood\n    Hath left a witness\'d usurpation.\n    Say, Morton, didst thou come from Shrewsbury?\n  MORTON. I ran from Shrewsbury, my noble lord;\n    Where hateful death put on his ugliest mask\n    To fright our party.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. How doth my son and brother?\n    Thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek\n    Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.\n    Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,\n    So dull, so dread in look, so woe-begone,\n    Drew Priam\'s curtain in the dead of night\n    And would have told him half his Troy was burnt;\n    But Priam found the fire ere he his tongue,\n    And I my Percy\'s death ere thou report\'st it.  \n    This thou wouldst say: \'Your son did thus and thus;\n    Your brother thus; so fought the noble Douglas\'-\n    Stopping my greedy ear with their bold deeds;\n    But in the end, to stop my ear indeed,\n    Thou hast a sigh to blow away this praise,\n    Ending with \'Brother, son, and all, are dead.\'\n  MORTON. Douglas is living, and your brother, yet;\n    But for my lord your son-\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Why, he is dead.\n    See what a ready tongue suspicion hath!\n    He that but fears the thing he would not know\n    Hath by instinct knowledge from others\' eyes\n    That what he fear\'d is chanced. Yet speak, Morton;\n    Tell thou an earl his divination lies,\n    And I will take it as a sweet disgrace\n    And make thee rich for doing me such wrong.\n  MORTON. You are too great to be by me gainsaid;\n    Your spirit is too true, your fears too certain.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Yet, for all this, say not that Percy\'s dead.\n    I see a strange confession in thine eye;  \n    Thou shak\'st thy head, and hold\'st it fear or sin\n    To speak a truth. If he be slain, say so:\n    The tongue offends not that reports his death;\n    And he doth sin that doth belie the dead,\n    Not he which says the dead is not alive.\n    Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news\n    Hath but a losing office, and his tongue\n    Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,\n    Rememb\'red tolling a departing friend.\n  LORD BARDOLPH. I cannot think, my lord, your son is dead.\n  MORTON. I am sorry I should force you to believe\n    That which I would to God I had not seen;\n    But these mine eyes saw him in bloody state,\n    Rend\'ring faint quittance, wearied and out-breath\'d,\n    To Harry Monmouth, whose swift wrath beat down\n    The never-daunted Percy to the earth,\n    From whence with life he never more sprung up.\n    In few, his death- whose spirit lent a fire\n    Even to the dullest peasant in his camp-\n    Being bruited once, took fire and heat away  \n    From the best-temper\'d courage in his troops;\n    For from his metal was his party steeled;\n    Which once in him abated, an the rest\n    Turn\'d on themselves, like dull and heavy lead.\n    And as the thing that\'s heavy in itself\n    Upon enforcement flies with greatest speed,\n    So did our men, heavy in Hotspur\'s loss,\n    Lend to this weight such lightness with their fear\n    That arrows fled not swifter toward their aim\n    Than did our soldiers, aiming at their safety,\n    Fly from the field. Then was that noble Worcester\n    Too soon ta\'en prisoner; and that furious Scot,\n    The bloody Douglas, whose well-labouring sword\n    Had three times slain th\' appearance of the King,\n    Gan vail his stomach and did grace the shame\n    Of those that turn\'d their backs, and in his flight,\n    Stumbling in fear, was took. The sum of all\n    Is that the King hath won, and hath sent out\n    A speedy power to encounter you, my lord,\n    Under the conduct of young Lancaster  \n    And Westmoreland. This is the news at full.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. For this I shall have time enough to mourn.\n    In poison there is physic; and these news,\n    Having been well, that would have made me sick,\n    Being sick, have in some measure made me well;\n    And as the wretch whose fever-weak\'ned joints,\n    Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life,\n    Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire\n    Out of his keeper\'s arms, even so my limbs,\n    Weak\'ned with grief, being now enrag\'d with grief,\n    Are thrice themselves. Hence, therefore, thou nice crutch!\n    A scaly gauntlet now with joints of steel\n    Must glove this hand; and hence, thou sickly coif!\n    Thou art a guard too wanton for the head\n    Which princes, flesh\'d with conquest, aim to hit.\n    Now bind my brows with iron; and approach\n    The ragged\'st hour that time and spite dare bring\n    To frown upon th\' enrag\'d Northumberland!\n    Let heaven kiss earth! Now let not Nature\'s hand\n    Keep the wild flood confin\'d! Let order die!  \n    And let this world no longer be a stage\n    To feed contention in a ling\'ring act;\n    But let one spirit of the first-born Cain\n    Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set\n    On bloody courses, the rude scene may end\n    And darkness be the burier of the dead!\n  LORD BARDOLPH. This strained passion doth you wrong, my lord.\n  MORTON. Sweet Earl, divorce not wisdom from your honour.\n    The lives of all your loving complices\n    Lean on your health; the which, if you give o\'er\n    To stormy passion, must perforce decay.\n    You cast th\' event of war, my noble lord,\n    And summ\'d the account of chance before you said\n    \'Let us make head.\' It was your pre-surmise\n    That in the dole of blows your son might drop.\n    You knew he walk\'d o\'er perils on an edge,\n    More likely to fall in than to get o\'er;\n    You were advis\'d his flesh was capable\n    Of wounds and scars, and that his forward spirit\n    Would lift him where most trade of danger rang\'d;  \n    Yet did you say \'Go forth\'; and none of this,\n    Though strongly apprehended, could restrain\n    The stiff-borne action. What hath then befall\'n,\n    Or what hath this bold enterprise brought forth\n    More than that being which was like to be?\n  LORD BARDOLPH. We all that are engaged to this loss\n    Knew that we ventured on such dangerous seas\n    That if we wrought out life \'twas ten to one;\n    And yet we ventur\'d, for the gain propos\'d\n    Chok\'d the respect of likely peril fear\'d;\n    And since we are o\'erset, venture again.\n    Come, we will put forth, body and goods.\n  MORTON. \'Tis more than time. And, my most noble lord,\n    I hear for certain, and dare speak the truth:\n    The gentle Archbishop of York is up\n    With well-appointed pow\'rs. He is a man\n    Who with a double surety binds his followers.\n    My lord your son had only but the corpse,\n    But shadows and the shows of men, to fight;\n    For that same word \'rebellion\' did divide  \n    The action of their bodies from their souls;\n    And they did fight with queasiness, constrain\'d,\n    As men drink potions; that their weapons only\n    Seem\'d on our side, but for their spirits and souls\n    This word \'rebellion\'- it had froze them up,\n    As fish are in a pond. But now the Bishop\n    Turns insurrection to religion.\n    Suppos\'d sincere and holy in his thoughts,\n    He\'s follow\'d both with body and with mind;\n    And doth enlarge his rising with the blood\n    Of fair King Richard, scrap\'d from Pomfret stones;\n    Derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause;\n    Tells them he doth bestride a bleeding land,\n    Gasping for life under great Bolingbroke;\n    And more and less do flock to follow him.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. I knew of this before; but, to speak truth,\n    This present grief had wip\'d it from my mind.\n    Go in with me; and counsel every man\n    The aptest way for safety and revenge.\n    Get posts and letters, and make friends with speed-  \n    Never so few, and never yet more need.                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nLondon. A street\n\nEnter SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, with his PAGE bearing his sword and buckler\n\n  FALSTAFF. Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water?\n  PAGE. He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water; but\n    for the party that owed it, he might have moe diseases than he\n    knew for.\n  FALSTAFF. Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me. The brain of\n    this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything\n    that intends to laughter, more than I invent or is invented on\n    me. I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in\n    other men. I do here walk before thee like a sow that hath\n    overwhelm\'d all her litter but one. If the Prince put thee into\n    my service for any other reason than to set me off, why then I\n    have no judgment. Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to be\n    worn in my cap than to wait at my heels. I was never mann\'d with\n    an agate till now; but I will inset you neither in gold nor\n    silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your\n    master, for a jewel- the juvenal, the Prince your master, whose  \n    chin is not yet fledge. I will sooner have a beard grow in the\n    palm of my hand than he shall get one off his cheek; and yet he\n    will not stick to say his face is a face-royal. God may finish it\n    when he will, \'tis not a hair amiss yet. He may keep it still at\n    a face-royal, for a barber shall never earn sixpence out of it;\n    and yet he\'ll be crowing as if he had writ man ever since his\n    father was a bachelor. He may keep his own grace, but he\'s almost\n    out of mine, I can assure him. What said Master Dommelton about\n    the satin for my short cloak and my slops?\n  PAGE. He said, sir, you should procure him better assurance than\n    Bardolph. He would not take his band and yours; he liked not the\n    security.\n  FALSTAFF. Let him be damn\'d, like the Glutton; pray God his tongue\n    be hotter! A whoreson Achitophel! A rascal-yea-forsooth knave, to\n    bear a gentleman in hand, and then stand upon security! The\n    whoreson smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes, and\n    bunches of keys at their girdles; and if a man is through with\n    them in honest taking-up, then they must stand upon security. I\n    had as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth as offer to stop\n    it with security. I look\'d \'a should have sent me two and twenty  \n    yards of satin, as I am a true knight, and he sends me security.\n    Well, he may sleep in security; for he hath the horn of\n    abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it; and\n    yet cannot he see, though he have his own lanthorn to light him.\n    Where\'s Bardolph?\n  PAGE. He\'s gone into Smithfield to buy your worship horse.\n  FALSTAFF. I bought him in Paul\'s, and he\'ll buy me a horse in\n    Smithfield. An I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were\n    mann\'d, hors\'d, and wiv\'d.\n\n              Enter the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE and SERVANT\n\n  PAGE. Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the\n    Prince for striking him about Bardolph.\n  FALSTAFF. Wait close; I will not see him.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. What\'s he that goes there?\n  SERVANT. Falstaff, an\'t please your lordship.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. He that was in question for the robb\'ry?\n  SERVANT. He, my lord; but he hath since done good service at\n    Shrewsbury, and, as I hear, is now going with some charge to the  \n    Lord John of Lancaster.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. What, to York? Call him back again.\n  SERVANT. Sir John Falstaff!\n  FALSTAFF. Boy, tell him I am deaf.\n  PAGE. You must speak louder; my master is deaf.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. I am sure he is, to the hearing of anything good.\n    Go, pluck him by the elbow; I must speak with him.\n  SERVANT. Sir John!\n  FALSTAFF. What! a young knave, and begging! Is there not wars? Is\n    there not employment? Doth not the King lack subjects? Do not the\n    rebels need soldiers? Though it be a shame to be on any side but\n    one, it is worse shame to beg than to be on the worst side, were\n    it worse than the name of rebellion can tell how to make it.\n  SERVANT. You mistake me, sir.\n  FALSTAFF. Why, sir, did I say you were an honest man? Setting my\n    knighthood and my soldiership aside, I had lied in my throat if I\n    had said so.\n  SERVANT. I pray you, sir, then set your knighthood and your\n    soldiership aside; and give me leave to tell you you in your\n    throat, if you say I am any other than an honest man.  \n  FALSTAFF. I give thee leave to tell me so! I lay aside that which\n    grows to me! If thou get\'st any leave of me, hang me; if thou\n    tak\'st leave, thou wert better be hang\'d. You hunt counter.\n    Hence! Avaunt!\n  SERVANT. Sir, my lord would speak with you.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Sir John Falstaff, a word with you.\n  FALSTAFF. My good lord! God give your lordship good time of day. I\n    am glad to see your lordship abroad. I heard say your lordship\n    was sick; I hope your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your\n    lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack\n    of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I most\n    humbly beseech your lordship to have a reverend care of your\n    health.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to\n    Shrewsbury.\n  FALSTAFF. An\'t please your lordship, I hear his Majesty is return\'d\n    with some discomfort from Wales.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. I talk not of his Majesty. You would not come when I\n    sent for you.\n  FALSTAFF. And I hear, moreover, his Highness is fall\'n into this  \n    same whoreson apoplexy.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Well God mend him! I pray you let me speak with you.\n  FALSTAFF. This apoplexy, as I take it, is a kind of lethargy, an\'t\n    please your lordship, a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson\n    tingling.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. What tell you me of it? Be it as it is.\n  FALSTAFF. It hath it original from much grief, from study, and\n    perturbation of the brain. I have read the cause of his effects\n    in Galen; it is a kind of deafness.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. I think you are fall\'n into the disease, for you\n    hear not what I say to you.\n  FALSTAFF. Very well, my lord, very well. Rather an\'t please you, it\n    is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that\n    I am troubled withal.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. To punish you by the heels would amend the attention\n    of your ears; and I care not if I do become your physician.\n  FALSTAFF. I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient. Your\n    lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me in respect\n    of poverty; but how I should be your patient to follow your\n    prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or  \n    indeed a scruple itself.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. I sent for you, when there were matters against you\n    for your life, to come speak with me.\n  FALSTAFF. As I was then advis\'d by my learned counsel in the laws\n    of this land-service, I did not come.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great\n    infamy.\n  FALSTAFF. He that buckles himself in my belt cannot live in less.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Your means are very slender, and your waste is\n    great.\n  FALSTAFF. I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater\n    and my waist slenderer.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. You have misled the youthful Prince.\n  FALSTAFF. The young Prince hath misled me. I am the fellow with the\n    great belly, and he my dog.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, I am loath to gall a new-heal\'d wound. Your\n    day\'s service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your\n    night\'s exploit on Gadshill. You may thank th\' unquiet time for\n    your quiet o\'erposting that action.\n  FALSTAFF. My lord-  \n  CHIEF JUSTICE. But since all is well, keep it so: wake not a\n    sleeping wolf.\n  FALSTAFF. To wake a wolf is as bad as smell a fox.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt\n    out.\n  FALSTAFF. A wassail candle, my lord- all tallow; if I did say of\n    wax, my growth would approve the truth.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. There is not a white hair in your face but should\n    have his effect of gravity.\n  FALSTAFF. His effect of gravy, gravy,\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. You follow the young Prince up and down, like his\n    ill angel.\n  FALSTAFF. Not so, my lord. Your ill angel is light; but  hope he\n    that looks upon me will take me without weighing. And yet in some\n    respects, I grant, I cannot go- I cannot tell. Virtue is of so\n    little regard in these costermongers\' times that true valour is\n    turn\'d berod; pregnancy is made a tapster, and his quick wit\n    wasted in giving reckonings; all the other gifts appertinent to\n    man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a\n    gooseberry. You that are old consider not the capacities of us  \n    that are young; you do measure the heat of our livers with the\n    bitterness of your galls; and we that are in the vaward of our\n    youth, must confess, are wags too.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth,\n    that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have\n    you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a\n    decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken,\n    your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every\n    part about you blasted with antiquity? And will you yet call\n    yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!\n  FALSTAFF. My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the\n    afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly. For my\n    voice- I have lost it with hallooing and singing of anthems. To\n    approve my youth further, I will not. The truth is, I am only old\n    in judgment and understanding; and he that will caper with me for\n    a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him. For\n    the box of the ear that the Prince gave you- he gave it like a\n    rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have check\'d\n    him for it; and the young lion repents- marry, not in ashes and\n    sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.  \n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, God send the Prince a better companion!\n  FALSTAFF. God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my\n    hands of him.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, the King hath sever\'d you. I hear you are\n    going with Lord John of Lancaster against the Archbishop and the\n    Earl of Northumberland.\n  FALSTAFF. Yea; I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look you\n    pray, all you that kiss my Lady Peace at home, that our armies\n    join not in a hot day; for, by the Lord, I take but two shirts\n    out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily. If it be a\n    hot day, and I brandish anything but a bottle, I would I might\n    never spit white again. There is not a dangerous action can peep\n    out his head but I am thrust upon it. Well, I cannot last ever;\n    but it was alway yet the trick of our English nation, if they\n    have a good thing, to make it too common. If ye will needs say I\n    am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God my name\n    were not so terrible to the enemy as it is. I were better to be\n    eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with\n    perpetual motion.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, be honest, be honest; and God bless your  \n    expedition!\n  FALSTAFF. Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to furnish me\n    forth?\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to\n    bear crosses. Fare you well. Commend me to my cousin\n    Westmoreland.\n                                Exeunt CHIEF JUSTICE and SERVANT\n  FALSTAFF. If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. A man can no\n    more separate age and covetousness than \'a can part young limbs\n    and lechery; but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the\n    other; and so both the degrees prevent my curses. Boy!\n  PAGE. Sir?\n  FALSTAFF. What money is in my purse?\n  PAGE. Seven groats and two pence.\n  FALSTAFF. I can get no remedy against this consumption of the\n    purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease\n    is incurable. Go bear this letter to my Lord of Lancaster; this\n    to the Prince; this to the Earl of Westmoreland; and this to old\n    Mistress Ursula, whom I have weekly sworn to marry since I\n    perceiv\'d the first white hair of my chin. About it; you know  \n    where to find me.  [Exit PAGE]  A pox of this gout! or, a gout of\n    this pox! for the one or the other plays the rogue with my great\n    toe. \'Tis no matter if I do halt; I have the wars for my colour,\n    and my pension shall seem the more reasonable. A good wit will\n    make use of anything. I will turn diseases to commodity.\n Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nYork. The ARCHBISHOP\'S palace\n\nEnter the ARCHBISHOP, THOMAS MOWBRAY the EARL MARSHAL, LORD HASTINGS,\nand LORD BARDOLPH\n\n  ARCHBISHOP. Thus have you heard our cause and known our means;\n    And, my most noble friends, I pray you all\n    Speak plainly your opinions of our hopes-\n    And first, Lord Marshal, what say you to it?\n  MOWBRAY. I well allow the occasion of our amis;\n    But gladly would be better satisfied\n    How, in our means, we should advance ourselves\n    To look with forehead bold and big enough\n    Upon the power and puissance of the King.\n  HASTINGS. Our present musters grow upon the file\n    To five and twenty thousand men of choice;\n    And our supplies live largely in the hope\n    Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns\n    With an incensed fire of injuries.\n  LORD BARDOLPH. The question then, Lord Hastings, standeth thus:\n    Whether our present five and twenty thousand  \n    May hold up head without Northumberland?\n  HASTINGS. With him, we may.\n  LORD BARDOLPH. Yea, marry, there\'s the point;\n    But if without him we be thought too feeble,\n    My judgment is we should not step too far\n    Till we had his assistance by the hand;\n    For, in a theme so bloody-fac\'d as this,\n    Conjecture, expectation, and surmise\n    Of aids incertain, should not be admitted.\n  ARCHBISHOP. \'Tis very true, Lord Bardolph; for indeed\n    It was young Hotspur\'s case at Shrewsbury.\n  LORD BARDOLPH. It was, my lord; who lin\'d himself with hope,\n    Eating the air and promise of supply,\n    Flatt\'ring himself in project of a power\n    Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts;\n    And so, with great imagination\n    Proper to madmen, led his powers to death,\n    And, winking, leapt into destruction.\n  HASTINGS. But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt\n    To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope.  \n  LORD BARDOLPH. Yes, if this present quality of war-\n    Indeed the instant action, a cause on foot-\n    Lives so in hope, as in an early spring\n    We see th\' appearing buds; which to prove fruit\n    Hope gives not so much warrant, as despair\n    That frosts will bite them. When we mean to build,\n    We first survey the plot, then draw the model;\n    And when we see the figure of the house,\n    Then we must rate the cost of the erection;\n    Which if we find outweighs ability,\n    What do we then but draw anew the model\n    In fewer offices, or at least desist\n    To build at all? Much more, in this great work-\n    Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down\n    And set another up- should we survey\n    The plot of situation and the model,\n    Consent upon a sure foundation,\n    Question surveyors, know our own estate\n    How able such a work to undergo-\n    To weigh against his opposite; or else  \n    We fortify in paper and in figures,\n    Using the names of men instead of men;\n    Like one that draws the model of a house\n    Beyond his power to build it; who, half through,\n    Gives o\'er and leaves his part-created cost\n    A naked subject to the weeping clouds\n    And waste for churlish winter\'s tyranny.\n  HASTINGS. Grant that our hopes- yet likely of fair birth-\n    Should be still-born, and that we now possess\'d\n    The utmost man of expectation,\n    I think we are so a body strong enough,\n    Even as we are, to equal with the King.\n  LORD BARDOLPH. What, is the King but five and twenty thousand?\n  HASTINGS. To us no more; nay, not so much, Lord Bardolph;\n    For his divisions, as the times do brawl,\n    Are in three heads: one power against the French,\n    And one against Glendower; perforce a third\n    Must take up us. So is the unfirm King\n    In three divided; and his coffers sound\n    With hollow poverty and emptiness.  \n  ARCHBISHOP. That he should draw his several strengths together\n    And come against us in full puissance\n    Need not be dreaded.\n  HASTINGS. If he should do so,\n    He leaves his back unarm\'d, the French and Welsh\n    Baying at his heels. Never fear that.\n  LORD BARDOLPH. Who is it like should lead his forces hither?\n  HASTINGS. The Duke of Lancaster and Westmoreland;\n    Against the Welsh, himself and Harry Monmouth;\n    But who is substituted against the French\n    I have no certain notice.\n  ARCHBISHOP. Let us on,\n    And publish the occasion of our arms.\n    The commonwealth is sick of their own choice;\n    Their over-greedy love hath surfeited.\n    An habitation giddy and unsure\n    Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.\n    O thou fond many, with what loud applause\n    Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke\n    Before he was what thou wouldst have him be!  \n    And being now trimm\'d in thine own desires,\n    Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him\n    That thou provok\'st thyself to cast him up.\n    So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge\n    Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard;\n    And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up,\n    And howl\'st to find it. What trust is in these times?\n    They that, when Richard liv\'d, would have him die\n    Are now become enamour\'d on his grave.\n    Thou that threw\'st dust upon his goodly head,\n    When through proud London he came sighing on\n    After th\' admired heels of Bolingbroke,\n    Criest now \'O earth, yield us that king again,\n    And take thou this!\' O thoughts of men accurs\'d!\n    Past and to come seems best; things present, worst.\n  MOWBRAY. Shall we go draw our numbers, and set on?\n  HASTINGS. We are time\'s subjects, and time bids be gone.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nLondon. A street\n\nEnter HOSTESS with two officers, FANG and SNARE\n\n  HOSTESS. Master Fang, have you ent\'red the action?\n  FANG. It is ent\'red.\n  HOSTESS. Where\'s your yeoman? Is\'t a lusty yeoman? Will \'a stand\n    to\'t?\n  FANG. Sirrah, where\'s Snare?\n  HOSTESS. O Lord, ay! good Master Snare.\n  SNARE. Here, here.\n  FANG. Snare, we must arrest Sir John Falstaff.\n  HOSTESS. Yea, good Master Snare; I have ent\'red him and all.\n  SNARE. It may chance cost some of our lives, for he will stab.\n  HOSTESS. Alas the day! take heed of him; he stabb\'d me in mine own\n    house, and that most beastly. In good faith, \'a cares not what\n    mischief he does, if his weapon be out; he will foin like any\n    devil; he will spare neither man, woman, nor child.\n  FANG. If I can close with him, I care not for his thrust.\n  HOSTESS. No, nor I neither; I\'ll be at your elbow.\n  FANG. An I but fist him once; an \'a come but within my vice!  \n  HOSTESS. I am undone by his going; I warrant you, he\'s an\n    infinitive thing upon my score. Good Master Fang, hold him sure.\n    Good Master Snare, let him not scape. \'A comes continuantly to\n    Pie-corner- saving your manhoods- to buy a saddle; and he is\n    indited to dinner to the Lubber\'s Head in Lumbert Street, to\n    Master Smooth\'s the silkman. I pray you, since my exion is\n    ent\'red, and my case so openly known to the world, let him be\n    brought in to his answer. A hundred mark is a long one for a poor\n    lone woman to bear; and I have borne, and borne, and borne; and\n    have been fubb\'d off, and fubb\'d off, and fubb\'d off, from this\n    day to that day, that it is a shame to be thought on. There is no\n    honesty in such dealing; unless a woman should be made an ass and\n    a beast, to bear every knave\'s wrong.\n\n            Enter SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, PAGE, and BARDOLPH\n\n    Yonder he comes; and that arrant malmsey-nose knave, Bardolph,\n    with him. Do your offices, do your offices, Master Fang and\n    Master Snare; do me, do me, do me your offices.\n  FALSTAFF. How now! whose mare\'s dead? What\'s the matter?  \n  FANG. Sir John, I arrest you at the suit of Mistress Quickly.\n  FALSTAFF. Away, varlets! Draw, Bardolph. Cut me off the villian\'s\n    head. Throw the quean in the channel.\n  HOSTESS. Throw me in the channel! I\'ll throw thee in the channel.\n    Wilt thou? wilt thou? thou bastardly rogue! Murder, murder! Ah,\n    thou honeysuckle villain! wilt thou kill God\'s officers and the\n    King\'s? Ah, thou honey-seed rogue! thou art a honey-seed; a\n    man-queller and a woman-queller.\n  FALSTAFF. Keep them off, Bardolph.\n  FANG. A rescue! a rescue!\n  HOSTESS. Good people, bring a rescue or two. Thou wot, wot thou!\n    thou wot, wot ta? Do, do, thou rogue! do, thou hemp-seed!\n  PAGE. Away, you scullion! you rampallian! you fustilarian!\n    I\'ll tickle your catastrophe.\n\n              Enter the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE and his men\n\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. What is the matter? Keep the peace here, ho!\n  HOSTESS. Good my lord, be good to me. I beseech you, stand to me.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. How now, Sir John! what, are you brawling here?  \n    Doth this become your place, your time, and business?\n    You should have been well on your way to York.\n    Stand from him, fellow; wherefore hang\'st thou upon him?\n  HOSTESS. O My most worshipful lord, an\'t please your Grace, I am a\n    poor widow of Eastcheap, and he is arrested at my suit.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. For what sum?\n  HOSTESS. It is more than for some, my lord; it is for all- all I\n    have. He hath eaten me out of house and home; he hath put all my\n    substance into that fat belly of his. But I will have some of it\n    out again, or I will ride thee a nights like a mare.\n  FALSTAFF. I think I am as like to ride the mare, if I have any\n    vantage of ground to get up.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. How comes this, Sir John? Fie! What man of good\n    temper would endure this tempest of exclamation? Are you not\n    ashamed to enforce a poor widow to so rough a course to come by\n    her own?\n  FALSTAFF. What is the gross sum that I owe thee?\n  HOSTESS. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money\n    too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in\n    my Dolphin chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon  \n    Wednesday in Wheeson week, when the Prince broke thy head for\n    liking his father to singing-man of Windsor- thou didst swear to\n    me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my\n    lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the\n    butcher\'s wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? Coming\n    in to borrow a mess of vinegar, telling us she had a good dish of\n    prawns, whereby thou didst desire to eat some, whereby I told\n    thee they were ill for green wound? And didst thou not, when she\n    was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with\n    such poor people, saying that ere long they should call me madam?\n    And didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch the thirty\n    shillings? I put thee now to thy book-oath. Deny it, if thou\n    canst.\n  FALSTAFF. My lord, this is a poor mad soul, and she says up and\n    down the town that her eldest son is like you. She hath been in\n    good case, and, the truth is, poverty hath distracted her. But\n    for these foolish officers, I beseech you I may have redress\n    against them.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Sir John, Sir John, I am well acquainted with your\n    manner of wrenching the true cause the false way. It is not a  \n    confident brow, nor the throng of words that come with such more\n    than impudent sauciness from you, can thrust me from a level\n    consideration. You have, as it appears to me, practis\'d upon the\n    easy yielding spirit of this woman, and made her serve your uses\n    both in purse and in person.\n  HOSTESS. Yea, in truth, my lord.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Pray thee, peace. Pay her the debt you owe her, and\n    unpay the villainy you have done with her; the one you may do\n    with sterling money, and the other with current repentance.\n  FALSTAFF. My lord, I will not undergo this sneap without reply. You\n    call honourable boldness impudent sauciness; if a man will make\n    curtsy and say nothing, he is virtuous. No, my lord, my humble\n    duty rememb\'red, I will not be your suitor. I say to you I do\n    desire deliverance from these officers, being upon hasty\n    employment in the King\'s affairs.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. You speak as having power to do wrong; but answer in\n    th\' effect of your reputation, and satisfy the poor woman.\n  FALSTAFF. Come hither, hostess.\n\n                               Enter GOWER  \n\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Now, Master Gower, what news?\n  GOWER. The King, my lord, and Harry Prince of Wales\n    Are near at hand. The rest the paper tells. [Gives a letter]\n  FALSTAFF. As I am a gentleman!\n  HOSTESS. Faith, you said so before.\n  FALSTAFF. As I am a gentleman! Come, no more words of it.\n  HOSTESS. By this heavenly ground I tread on, I must be fain to pawn\n    both my plate and the tapestry of my dining-chambers.\n  FALSTAFF. Glasses, glasses, is the only drinking; and for thy\n    walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the Prodigal, or\n    the German hunting, in water-work, is worth a thousand of these\n    bed-hangers and these fly-bitten tapestries. Let it be ten pound,\n    if thou canst. Come, and \'twere not for thy humours, there\'s not\n    a better wench in England. Go, wash thy face, and draw the\n    action. Come, thou must not be in this humour with me; dost not\n    know me? Come, come, I know thou wast set on to this.\n  HOSTESS. Pray thee, Sir John, let it be but twenty nobles;\n    i\' faith, I am loath to pawn my plate, so God save me, la!\n  FALSTAFF. Let it alone; I\'ll make other shift. You\'ll be a fool  \n    still.\n  HOSTESS. Well, you shall have it, though I pawn my gown.\n    I hope you\'ll come to supper. you\'ll pay me all together?\n  FALSTAFF. Will I live?  [To BARDOLPH]  Go, with her, with her; hook\n    on, hook on.\n  HOSTESS. Will you have Doll Tearsheet meet you at supper?\n  FALSTAFF. No more words; let\'s have her.\n                          Exeunt HOSTESS, BARDOLPH, and OFFICERS\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. I have heard better news.\n  FALSTAFF. What\'s the news, my lord?\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Where lay the King to-night?\n  GOWER. At Basingstoke, my lord.\n  FALSTAFF. I hope, my lord, all\'s well. What is the news, my lord?\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Come all his forces back?\n  GOWER. No; fifteen hundred foot, five hundred horse,\n    Are march\'d up to my Lord of Lancaster,\n    Against Northumberland and the Archbishop.\n  FALSTAFF. Comes the King back from Wales, my noble lord?\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. You shall have letters of me presently.\n    Come, go along with me, good Master Gower.  \n  FALSTAFF. My lord!\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. What\'s the matter?\n  FALSTAFF. Master Gower, shall I entreat you with me to dinner?\n  GOWER. I must wait upon my good lord here, I thank you, good Sir\n    John.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Sir John, you loiter here too long, being you are to\n    take soldiers up in counties as you go.\n  FALSTAFF. Will you sup with me, Master Gower?\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. What foolish master taught you these manners, Sir\n    John?\n  FALSTAFF. Master Gower, if they become me not, he was a fool that\n    taught them me. This is the right fencing grace, my lord; tap for\n    tap, and so part fair.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Now, the Lord lighten thee! Thou art a great fool.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nLondon. Another street\n\nEnter PRINCE HENRY and POINS\n\n  PRINCE. Before God, I am exceeding weary.\n  POINS. Is\'t come to that? I had thought weariness durst not have\n    attach\'d one of so high blood.\n  PRINCE. Faith, it does me; though it discolours the complexion of\n    my greatness to acknowledge it. Doth it not show vilely in me to\n    desire small beer?\n  POINS. Why, a prince should not be so loosely studied as to\n    remember so weak a composition.\n  PRINCE. Belike then my appetite was not-princely got; for, by my\n    troth, I do now remember the poor creature, small beer. But\n    indeed these humble considerations make me out of love with my\n    greatness. What a disgrace is it to me to remember thy name, or\n    to know thy face to-morrow, or to take note how many pair of silk\n    stockings thou hast- viz., these, and those that were thy\n    peach-colour\'d ones- or to bear the inventory of thy shirts- as,\n    one for superfluity, and another for use! But that the\n    tennis-court-keeper knows better than I; for it is a low ebb of  \n    linen with thee when thou keepest not racket there; as thou hast\n    not done a great while, because the rest of thy low countries\n    have made a shift to eat up thy holland. And God knows whether\n    those that bawl out of the ruins of thy linen shall inherit his\n    kingdom; but the midwives say the children are not in the fault;\n    whereupon the world increases, and kindreds are mightily\n    strengthened.\n  POINS. How ill it follows, after you have laboured so hard, you\n    should talk so idly! Tell me, how many good young princes would\n    do so, their fathers being so sick as yours at this time is?\n  PRINCE. Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins?\n  POINS. Yes, faith; and let it be an excellent good thing.\n  PRINCE. It shall serve among wits of no higher breeding than thine.\n  POINS. Go to; I stand the push of your one thing that you will\n    tell.\n  PRINCE. Marry, I tell thee it is not meet that I should be sad, now\n    my father is sick; albeit I could tell to thee- as to one it\n    pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my friend- I could be\n    sad and sad indeed too.\n  POINS. Very hardly upon such a subject.  \n  PRINCE. By this hand, thou thinkest me as far in the devil\'s book\n    as thou and Falstaff for obduracy and persistency: let the end\n    try the man. But I tell thee my heart bleeds inwardly that my\n    father is so sick; and keeping such vile company as thou art hath\n    in reason taken from me all ostentation of sorrow.\n  POINS. The reason?\n  PRINCE. What wouldst thou think of me if I should weep?\n  POINS. I would think thee a most princely hypocrite.\n  PRINCE. It would be every man\'s thought; and thou art a blessed\n    fellow to think as every man thinks. Never a man\'s thought in the\n    world keeps the road-way better than thine. Every man would think\n    me an hypocrite indeed. And what accites your most worshipful\n    thought to think so?\n  POINS. Why, because you have been so lewd and so much engraffed to\n    Falstaff.\n  PRINCE. And to thee.\n  POINS. By this light, I am well spoke on; I can hear it with mine\n    own ears. The worst that they can say of me is that I am a second\n    brother and that I am a proper fellow of my hands; and those two\n    things, I confess, I cannot help. By the mass, here comes  \n    Bardolph.\n\n                         Enter BARDOLPH and PAGE\n\n  PRINCE. And the boy that I gave Falstaff. \'A had him from me\n    Christian; and look if the fat villain have not transform\'d him\n    ape.\n  BARDOLPH. God save your Grace!\n  PRINCE. And yours, most noble Bardolph!\n  POINS. Come, you virtuous ass, you bashful fool, must you be\n    blushing? Wherefore blush you now? What a maidenly man-at-arms\n    are you become! Is\'t such a matter to get a pottle-pot\'s\n    maidenhead?\n  PAGE. \'A calls me e\'en now, my lord, through a red lattice, and I\n    could discern no part of his face from the window. At last I\n    spied his eyes; and methought he had made two holes in the\n    alewife\'s new petticoat, and so peep\'d through.\n  PRINCE. Has not the boy profited?\n  BARDOLPH. Away, you whoreson upright rabbit, away!\n  PAGE. Away, you rascally Althaea\'s dream, away!  \n  PRINCE. Instruct us, boy; what dream, boy?\n  PAGE. Marry, my lord, Althaea dreamt she was delivered of a\n    firebrand; and therefore I call him her dream.\n  PRINCE. A crown\'s worth of good interpretation. There \'tis, boy.\n                                                [Giving a crown]\n  POINS. O that this blossom could be kept from cankers!\n    Well, there is sixpence to preserve thee.\n  BARDOLPH. An you do not make him be hang\'d among you, the gallows\n    shall have wrong.\n  PRINCE. And how doth thy master, Bardolph?\n  BARDOLPH. Well, my lord. He heard of your Grace\'s coming to town.\n    There\'s a letter for you.\n  POINS. Deliver\'d with good respect. And how doth the martlemas,\n    your master?\n  BARDOLPH. In bodily health, sir.\n  POINS. Marry, the immortal part needs a physician; but that moves\n    not him. Though that be sick, it dies not.\n  PRINCE. I do allow this well to be as familiar with me as my dog;\n    and he holds his place, for look you how he writes.\n  POINS.  [Reads]  \'John Falstaff, knight\'- Every man must know that  \n    as oft as he has occasion to name himself, even like those that\n    are kin to the King; for they never prick their finger but they\n    say \'There\'s some of the King\'s blood spilt.\' \'How comes that?\'\n    says he that takes upon him not to conceive. The answer is as\n    ready as a borrower\'s cap: \'I am the King\'s poor cousin, sir.\'\n  PRINCE. Nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from\n    Japhet. But the letter:  [Reads]  \'Sir John Falstaff, knight, to\n    the son of the King nearest his father, Harry Prince of Wales,\n    greeting.\'\n  POINS. Why, this is a certificate.\n  PRINCE. Peace!  [Reads]  \'I will imitate the honourable Romans in\n    brevity.\'-\n  POINS. He sure means brevity in breath, short-winded.\n  PRINCE.  [Reads]  \'I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I\n    leave thee. Be not too familiar with Poins; for he misuses thy\n    favours so much that he swears thou art to marry his sister Nell.\n    Repent at idle times as thou mayst, and so farewell.\n      Thine, by yea and no- which is as much as to say as\n        thou usest him- JACK FALSTAFF with my familiars,\n        JOHN with my brothers and sisters, and SIR JOHN with  \n        all Europe.\'\n  POINS. My lord, I\'ll steep this letter in sack and make him eat it.\n  PRINCE. That\'s to make him eat twenty of his words. But do you use\n    me thus, Ned? Must I marry your sister?\n  POINS. God send the wench no worse fortune! But I never said so.\n  PRINCE. Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits\n    of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us. Is your master here in\n    London?\n  BARDOLPH. Yea, my lord.\n  PRINCE. Where sups he? Doth the old boar feed in the old frank?\n  BARDOLPH. At the old place, my lord, in Eastcheap.\n  PRINCE. What company?\n  PAGE. Ephesians, my lord, of the old church.\n  PRINCE. Sup any women with him?\n  PAGE. None, my lord, but old Mistress Quickly and Mistress Doll\n    Tearsheet.\n  PRINCE. What pagan may that be?\n  PAGE. A proper gentlewoman, sir, and a kinswoman of my master\'s.\n  PRINCE. Even such kin as the parish heifers are to the town bull.\n    Shall we steal upon them, Ned, at supper?  \n  POINS. I am your shadow, my lord; I\'ll follow you.\n  PRINCE. Sirrah, you boy, and Bardolph, no word to your master that\n    I am yet come to town. There\'s for your silence.\n  BARDOLPH. I have no tongue, sir.\n  PAGE. And for mine, sir, I will govern it.\n  PRINCE. Fare you well; go.            Exeunt BARDOLPH and PAGE\n    This Doll Tearsheet should be some road.\n  POINS. I warrant you, as common as the way between Saint Albans and\n    London.\n  PRINCE. How might we see Falstaff bestow himself to-night in his\n    true colours, and not ourselves be seen?\n  POINS. Put on two leathern jerkins and aprons, and wait upon him at\n    his table as drawers.\n  PRINCE. From a god to a bull? A heavy descension! It was Jove\'s\n    case. From a prince to a prentice? A low transformation! That\n    shall be mine; for in everything the purpose must weigh with the\n    folly. Follow me, Ned.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nWarkworth. Before the castle\n\nEnter NORTHUMBERLAND, LADY NORTHUMBERLAND, and LADY PERCY\n\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. I pray thee, loving wife, and gentle daughter,\n    Give even way unto my rough affairs;\n    Put not you on the visage of the times\n    And be, like them, to Percy troublesome.\n  LADY NORTHUMBERLAND. I have given over, I will speak no more.\n    Do what you will; your wisdom be your guide.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Alas, sweet wife, my honour is at pawn;\n    And but my going nothing can redeem it.\n  LADY PERCY. O, yet, for God\'s sake, go not to these wars!\n    The time was, father, that you broke your word,\n    When you were more endear\'d to it than now;\n    When your own Percy, when my heart\'s dear Harry,\n    Threw many a northward look to see his father\n    Bring up his powers; but he did long in vain.\n    Who then persuaded you to stay at home?\n    There were two honours lost, yours and your son\'s.  \n    For yours, the God of heaven brighten it!\n    For his, it stuck upon him as the sun\n    In the grey vault of heaven; and by his light\n    Did all the chivalry of England move\n    To do brave acts. He was indeed the glass\n    Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.\n    He had no legs that practis\'d not his gait;\n    And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,\n    Became the accents of the valiant;\n    For those who could speak low and tardily\n    Would turn their own perfection to abuse\n    To seem like him: so that in speech, in gait,\n    In diet, in affections of delight,\n    In military rules, humours of blood,\n    He was the mark and glass, copy and book,\n    That fashion\'d others. And him- O wondrous him!\n    O miracle of men!- him did you leave-\n    Second to none, unseconded by you-\n    To look upon the hideous god of war\n    In disadvantage, to abide a field  \n    Where nothing but the sound of Hotspur\'s name\n    Did seem defensible. So you left him.\n    Never, O never, do his ghost the wrong\n    To hold your honour more precise and nice\n    With others than with him! Let them alone.\n    The Marshal and the Archbishop are strong.\n    Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers,\n    To-day might I, hanging on Hotspur\'s neck,\n    Have talk\'d of Monmouth\'s grave.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Beshrew your heart,\n    Fair daughter, you do draw my spirits from me\n    With new lamenting ancient oversights.\n    But I must go and meet with danger there,\n    Or it will seek me in another place,\n    And find me worse provided.\n  LADY NORTHUMBERLAND. O, fly to Scotland\n    Till that the nobles and the armed commons\n    Have of their puissance made a little taste.\n  LADY PERCY. If they get ground and vantage of the King,\n    Then join you with them, like a rib of steel,  \n    To make strength stronger; but, for all our loves,\n    First let them try themselves. So did your son;\n    He was so suff\'red; so came I a widow;\n    And never shall have length of life enough\n    To rain upon remembrance with mine eyes,\n    That it may grow and sprout as high as heaven,\n    For recordation to my noble husband.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Come, come, go in with me. \'Tis with my mind\n    As with the tide swell\'d up unto his height,\n    That makes a still-stand, running neither way.\n    Fain would I go to meet the Archbishop,\n    But many thousand reasons hold me back.\n    I will resolve for Scotland. There am I,\n    Till time and vantage crave my company.               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nLondon. The Boar\'s Head Tavern in Eastcheap\n\nEnter FRANCIS and another DRAWER\n\n  FRANCIS. What the devil hast thou brought there-apple-johns? Thou\n    knowest Sir John cannot endure an apple-john.\n  SECOND DRAWER. Mass, thou say\'st true. The Prince once set a dish\n    of apple-johns before him, and told him there were five more Sir\n    Johns; and, putting off his hat, said \'I will now take my leave\n    of these six dry, round, old, withered knights.\' It ang\'red him\n    to the heart; but he hath forgot that.\n  FRANCIS. Why, then, cover and set them down; and see if thou canst\n    find out Sneak\'s noise; Mistress Tearsheet would fain hear some\n    music.\n\n                        Enter third DRAWER\n\n  THIRD DRAWER. Dispatch! The room where they supp\'d is too hot;\n    they\'ll come in straight.\n  FRANCIS. Sirrah, here will be the Prince and Master Poins anon; and\n    they will put on two of our jerkins and aprons; and Sir John must  \n    not know of it. Bardolph hath brought word.\n  THIRD DRAWER. By the mass, here will be old uds; it will be an\n    excellent stratagem.\n  SECOND DRAWER. I\'ll see if I can find out Sneak.\n                                 Exeunt second and third DRAWERS\n\n                Enter HOSTESS and DOLL TEARSHEET\n\n  HOSTESS. I\' faith, sweetheart, methinks now you are in an excellent\n    good temperality. Your pulsidge beats as extraordinarily as heart\n    would desire; and your colour, I warrant you, is as red as any\n    rose, in good truth, la! But, i\' faith, you have drunk too much\n    canaries; and that\'s a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes\n    the blood ere one can say \'What\'s this?\' How do you now?\n  DOLL. Better than I was- hem.\n  HOSTESS. Why, that\'s well said; a good heart\'s worth gold.\n    Lo, here comes Sir John.\n\n                          Enter FALSTAFF\n  \n  FALSTAFF.  [Singing]  \'When Arthur first in court\'- Empty the\n    jordan.  [Exit FRANCIS]- [Singing]  \'And was a worthy king\'- How\n    now, Mistress Doll!\n  HOSTESS. Sick of a calm; yea, good faith.\n  FALSTAFF. So is all her sect; and they be once in a calm, they are\n    sick.\n  DOLL. A pox damn you, you muddy rascal! Is that all the comfort you\n    give me?\n  FALSTAFF. You make fat rascals, Mistress Doll.\n  DOLL. I make them! Gluttony and diseases make them: I make them\n    not.\n  FALSTAFF. If the cook help to make the gluttony, you help to make\n    the diseases, Doll. We catch of you, Doll, we catch of you; grant\n    that, my poor virtue, grant that.\n  DOLL. Yea, joy, our chains and our jewels.\n  FALSTAFF. \'Your brooches, pearls, and ouches.\' For to serve bravely\n    is to come halting off; you know, to come off the breach with his\n    pike bent bravely, and to surgery bravely; to venture upon the\n    charg\'d chambers bravely-\n  DOLL. Hang yourself, you muddy conger, hang yourself!  \n  HOSTESS. By my troth, this is the old fashion; you two never meet\n    but you fall to some discord. You are both, i\' good truth, as\n    rheumatic as two dry toasts; you cannot one bear with another\'s\n    confirmities. What the good-year! one must bear, and that must be\n    you. You are the weaker vessel, as as they say, the emptier\n    vessel.\n  DOLL. Can a weak empty vessel bear such a huge full hogs-head?\n    There\'s a whole merchant\'s venture of Bourdeaux stuff in him; you\n    have not seen a hulk better stuff\'d in the hold. Come, I\'ll be\n    friends with thee, Jack. Thou art going to the wars; and whether\n    I shall ever see thee again or no, there is nobody cares.\n\n                            Re-enter FRANCIS\n\n  FRANCIS. Sir, Ancient Pistol\'s below and would speak with you.\n  DOLL. Hang him, swaggering rascal! Let him not come hither; it is\n    the foul-mouth\'dst rogue in England.\n  HOSTESS. If he swagger, let him not come here. No, by my faith! I\n    must live among my neighbours; I\'ll no swaggerers. I am in good\n    name and fame with the very best. Shut the door. There comes no  \n    swaggerers here; I have not liv\'d all this while to have\n    swaggering now. Shut the door, I pray you.\n  FALSTAFF. Dost thou hear, hostess?\n  HOSTESS. Pray ye, pacify yourself, Sir John; there comes no\n    swaggerers here.\n  FALSTAFF. Dost thou hear? It is mine ancient.\n  HOSTESS. Tilly-fally, Sir John, ne\'er tell me; and your ancient\n    swagg\'rer comes not in my doors. I was before Master Tisick, the\n    debuty, t\' other day; and, as he said to me- \'twas no longer ago\n    than Wednesday last, i\' good faith!- \'Neighbour Quickly,\' says\n    he- Master Dumbe, our minister, was by then- \'Neighbour Quickly,\'\n    says he \'receive those that are civil, for\' said he \'you are in\n    an ill name.\' Now \'a said so, I can tell whereupon. \'For\' says he\n    \'you are an honest woman and well thought on, therefore take heed\n    what guests you receive. Receive\' says he \'no swaggering\n    companions.\' There comes none here. You would bless you to hear\n    what he said. No, I\'ll no swagg\'rers.\n  FALSTAFF. He\'s no swagg\'rer, hostess; a tame cheater, i\' faith; you\n    may stroke him as gently as a puppy greyhound. He\'ll not swagger\n    with a Barbary hen, if her feathers turn back in any show of  \n    resistance. Call him up, drawer.\n                                                    Exit FRANCIS\n  HOSTESS. Cheater, call you him? I will bar no honest man my house,\n    nor no cheater; but I do not love swaggering, by my troth. I am\n    the worse when one says \'swagger.\' Feel, masters, how I shake;\n    look you, I warrant you.\n  DOLL. So you do, hostess.\n  HOSTESS. Do I? Yea, in very truth, do I, an \'twere an aspen leaf. I\n    cannot abide swagg\'rers.\n\n                   Enter PISTOL, BARDOLPH, and PAGE\n\n  PISTOL. God save you, Sir John!\n  FALSTAFF. Welcome, Ancient Pistol. Here, Pistol, I charge you with\n    a cup of sack; do you discharge upon mine hostess.\n  PISTOL. I will discharge upon her, Sir John, with two bullets.\n  FALSTAFF. She is pistol-proof, sir; you shall not hardly offend\n    her.\n  HOSTESS. Come, I\'ll drink no proofs nor no bullets. I\'ll drink no\n    more than will do me good, for no man\'s pleasure, I.  \n  PISTOL. Then to you, Mistress Dorothy; I will charge you.\n  DOLL. Charge me! I scorn you, scurvy companion. What! you poor,\n    base, rascally, cheating, lack-linen mate! Away, you mouldy\n    rogue, away! I am meat for your master.\n  PISTOL. I know you, Mistress Dorothy.\n  DOLL. Away, you cut-purse rascal! you filthy bung, away! By this\n    wine, I\'ll thrust my knife in your mouldy chaps, an you play the\n    saucy cuttle with me. Away, you bottle-ale rascal! you\n    basket-hilt stale juggler, you! Since when, I pray you, sir?\n    God\'s light, with two points on your shoulder? Much!\n  PISTOL. God let me not live but I will murder your ruff for this.\n  FALSTAFF. No more, Pistol; I would not have you go off here.\n    Discharge yourself of our company, Pistol.\n  HOSTESS. No, good Captain Pistol; not here, sweet captain.\n  DOLL. Captain! Thou abominable damn\'d cheater, art thou not ashamed\n    to be called captain? An captains were of my mind, they would\n    truncheon you out, for taking their names upon you before you\n    have earn\'d them. You a captain! you slave, for what? For tearing\n    a poor whore\'s ruff in a bawdy-house? He a captain! hang him,\n    rogue! He lives upon mouldy stew\'d prunes and dried cakes. A  \n    captain! God\'s light, these villains will make the word as odious\n    as the word \'occupy\'; which was an excellent good word before it\n    was ill sorted. Therefore captains had need look to\'t.\n  BARDOLPH. Pray thee go down, good ancient.\n  FALSTAFF. Hark thee hither, Mistress Doll.\n  PISTOL. Not I! I tell thee what, Corporal Bardolph, I could tear\n    her; I\'ll be reveng\'d of her.\n  PAGE. Pray thee go down.\n  PISTOL. I\'ll see her damn\'d first; to Pluto\'s damn\'d lake, by this\n    hand, to th\' infernal deep, with Erebus and tortures vile also.\n    Hold hook and line, say I. Down, down, dogs! down, faitors! Have\n    we not Hiren here?\n  HOSTESS. Good Captain Peesel, be quiet; \'tis very late, i\' faith; I\n    beseek you now, aggravate your choler.\n  PISTOL. These be good humours, indeed! Shall packhorses,\n    And hollow pamper\'d jades of Asia,\n    Which cannot go but thirty mile a day,\n    Compare with Caesars, and with Cannibals,\n    And Troiant Greeks? Nay, rather damn them with\n    King Cerberus; and let the welkin roar.  \n    Shall we fall foul for toys?\n  HOSTESS. By my troth, Captain, these are very bitter words.\n  BARDOLPH. Be gone, good ancient; this will grow to a brawl anon.\n  PISTOL. Die men like dogs! Give crowns like pins! Have we not Hiren\n    here?\n  HOSTESS. O\' my word, Captain, there\'s none such here. What the\n    good-year! do you think I would deny her? For God\'s sake, be\n    quiet.\n  PISTOL. Then feed and be fat, my fair Calipolis.\n    Come, give\'s some sack.\n    \'Si fortune me tormente sperato me contento.\'\n    Fear we broadsides? No, let the fiend give fire.\n    Give me some sack; and, sweetheart, lie thou there.\n                                         [Laying down his sword]\n    Come we to full points here, and are etceteras nothings?\n  FALSTAFF. Pistol, I would be quiet.\n  PISTOL. Sweet knight, I kiss thy neaf. What! we have seen the seven\n    stars.\n  DOLL. For God\'s sake thrust him down stairs; I cannot endure such a\n    fustian rascal.  \n  PISTOL. Thrust him down stairs! Know we not Galloway nags?\n  FALSTAFF. Quoit him down, Bardolph, like a shove-groat shilling.\n    Nay, an \'a do nothing but speak nothing, \'a shall be nothing\n    here.\n  BARDOLPH. Come, get you down stairs.\n  PISTOL. What! shall we have incision? Shall we imbrue?\n                                        [Snatching up his sword]\n    Then death rock me asleep, abridge my doleful days!\n    Why, then, let grievous, ghastly, gaping wounds\n    Untwine the Sisters Three! Come, Atropos, I say!\n  HOSTESS. Here\'s goodly stuff toward!\n  FALSTAFF. Give me my rapier, boy.\n  DOLL. I pray thee, Jack, I pray thee, do not draw.\n  FALSTAFF. Get you down stairs.\n                                [Drawing and driving PISTOL out]\n  HOSTESS. Here\'s a goodly tumult! I\'ll forswear keeping house afore\n    I\'ll be in these tirrits and frights. So; murder, I warrant now.\n    Alas, alas! put up your naked weapons, put up your naked weapons.\n                                      Exeunt PISTOL and BARDOLPH\n  DOLL. I pray thee, Jack, be quiet; the rascal\'s gone. Ah, you  \n    whoreson little valiant villain, you!\n  HOSTESS. Are you not hurt i\' th\' groin? Methought \'a made a shrewd\n    thrust at your belly.\n\n                        Re-enter BARDOLPH\n\n  FALSTAFF. Have you turn\'d him out a doors?\n  BARDOLPH. Yea, sir. The rascal\'s drunk. You have hurt him, sir, i\'\n    th\' shoulder.\n  FALSTAFF. A rascal! to brave me!\n  DOLL. Ah, you sweet little rogue, you! Alas, poor ape, how thou\n    sweat\'st! Come, let me wipe thy face. Come on, you whoreson\n    chops. Ah, rogue! i\' faith, I love thee. Thou art as valorous as\n    Hector of Troy, worth five of Agamemnon, and ten times better\n    than the Nine Worthies. Ah, villain!\n  FALSTAFF. A rascally slave! I will toss the rogue in a blanket.\n  DOLL. Do, an thou dar\'st for thy heart. An thou dost, I\'ll canvass\n    thee between a pair of sheets.\n\n                          Enter musicians  \n\n  PAGE. The music is come, sir.\n  FALSTAFF. Let them play. Play, sirs. Sit on my knee, Don. A rascal\n    bragging slave! The rogue fled from me like quick-silver.\n  DOLL. I\' faith, and thou follow\'dst him like a church. Thou\n    whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig, when wilt thou leave\n    fighting a days and foining a nights, and begin to patch up thine\n    old body for heaven?\n\n       Enter, behind, PRINCE HENRY and POINS disguised as drawers\n\n  FALSTAFF. Peace, good Doll! Do not speak like a death\'s-head; do\n    not bid me remember mine end.\n  DOLL. Sirrah, what humour\'s the Prince of?\n  FALSTAFF. A good shallow young fellow. \'A would have made a good\n    pantler; \'a would ha\' chipp\'d bread well.\n  DOLL. They say Poins has a good wit.\n  FALSTAFF. He a good wit! hang him, baboon! His wit\'s as thick as\n    Tewksbury mustard; there\'s no more conceit in him than is in a\n    mallet.  \n  DOLL. Why does the Prince love him so, then?\n  FALSTAFF. Because their legs are both of a bigness, and \'a plays at\n    quoits well, and eats conger and fennel, and drinks off candles\'\n    ends for flap-dragons, and rides the wild mare with the boys, and\n    jumps upon join\'d-stools, and swears with a good grace, and wears\n    his boots very smooth, like unto the sign of the Leg, and breeds\n    no bate with telling of discreet stories; and such other gambol\n    faculties \'a has, that show a weak mind and an able body, for the\n    which the Prince admits him. For the Prince himself is such\n    another; the weight of a hair will turn the scales between their\n    avoirdupois.\n  PRINCE. Would not this nave of a wheel have his ears cut off?\n  POINS. Let\'s beat him before his whore.\n  PRINCE. Look whe\'er the wither\'d elder hath not his poll claw\'d\n    like a parrot.\n  POINS. Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive\n    performance?\n  FALSTAFF. Kiss me, Doll.\n  PRINCE. Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction! What says th\'\n    almanac to that?  \n  POINS. And look whether the fiery Trigon, his man, be not lisping\n    to his master\'s old tables, his note-book, his counsel-keeper.\n  FALSTAFF. Thou dost give me flattering busses.\n  DOLL. By my troth, I kiss thee with a most constant heart.\n  FALSTAFF. I am old, I am old.\n  DOLL. I love thee better than I love e\'er a scurvy young boy of\n    them all.\n  FALSTAFF. What stuff wilt have a kirtle of? I shall receive money a\n    Thursday. Shalt have a cap to-morrow. A merry song, come. \'A\n    grows late; we\'ll to bed. Thou\'t forget me when I am gone.\n  DOLL. By my troth, thou\'t set me a-weeping, an thou say\'st so.\n    Prove that ever I dress myself handsome till thy return. Well,\n    hearken a\' th\' end.\n  FALSTAFF. Some sack, Francis.\n  PRINCE & POINS. Anon, anon, sir.                   [Advancing]\n  FALSTAFF. Ha! a bastard son of the King\'s? And art thou not Poins\n    his brother?\n  PRINCE. Why, thou globe of sinful continents, what a life dost thou\n    lead!\n  FALSTAFF. A better than thou. I am a gentleman: thou art a drawer.  \n  PRINCE. Very true, sir, and I come to draw you out by the ears.\n  HOSTESS. O, the Lord preserve thy Grace! By my troth, welcome to\n    London. Now the Lord bless that sweet face of thine. O Jesu, are\n    you come from Wales?\n  FALSTAFF. Thou whoreson mad compound of majesty, by this light\n    flesh and corrupt blood, thou art welcome.\n                                    [Leaning his band upon DOLL]\n  DOLL. How, you fat fool! I scorn you.\n  POINS. My lord, he will drive you out of your revenge and turn all\n    to a merriment, if you take not the heat.\n  PRINCE. YOU whoreson candle-mine, you, how vilely did you speak of\n    me even now before this honest, virtuous, civil gentlewoman!\n  HOSTESS. God\'s blessing of your good heart! and so she is, by my\n    troth.\n  FALSTAFF. Didst thou hear me?\n  PRINCE. Yea; and you knew me, as you did when you ran away by\n    Gadshill. You knew I was at your back, and spoke it on purpose to\n    try my patience.\n  FALSTAFF. No, no, no; not so; I did not think thou wast within\n    hearing.  \n  PRINCE. I shall drive you then to confess the wilful abuse, and\n    then I know how to handle you.\n  FALSTAFF. No abuse, Hal, o\' mine honour; no abuse.\n  PRINCE. Not- to dispraise me, and call me pander, and\n    bread-chipper, and I know not what!\n  FALSTAFF. No abuse, Hal.\n  POINS. No abuse!\n  FALSTAFF. No abuse, Ned, i\' th\' world; honest Ned, none. I\n    disprais\'d him before the wicked- that the wicked might not fall\n    in love with thee; in which doing, I have done the part of a\n    careful friend and a true subject; and thy father is to give me\n    thanks for it. No abuse, Hal; none, Ned, none; no, faith, boys,\n    none.\n  PRINCE. See now, whether pure fear and entire cowardice doth not\n    make thee wrong this virtuous gentlewoman to close with us? Is\n    she of the wicked? Is thine hostess here of the wicked? Or is thy\n    boy of the wicked? Or honest Bardolph, whose zeal burns in his\n    nose, of the wicked?\n  POINS. Answer, thou dead elm, answer.\n  FALSTAFF. The fiend hath prick\'d down Bardolph irrecoverable; and  \n    his face is Lucifer\'s privy-kitchen, where he doth nothing but\n    roast malt-worms. For the boy- there is a good angel about him;\n    but the devil outbids him too.\n  PRINCE. For the women?\n  FALSTAFF. For one of them- she\'s in hell already, and burns poor\n    souls. For th\' other- I owe her money; and whether she be damn\'d\n    for that, I know not.\n  HOSTESS. No, I warrant you.\n  FALSTAFF. No, I think thou art not; I think thou art quit for that.\n    Marry, there is another indictment upon thee for suffering flesh\n    to be eaten in thy house, contrary to the law; for the which I\n    think thou wilt howl.\n  HOSTESS. All vict\'lers do so. What\'s a joint of mutton or two in a\n    whole Lent?\n  PRINCE. You, gentlewoman-\n  DOLL. What says your Grace?\n  FALSTAFF. His Grace says that which his flesh rebels against.\n                                               [Knocking within]\n  HOSTESS. Who knocks so loud at door? Look to th\' door there,\n    Francis.  \n\n                              Enter PETO\n\n  PRINCE. Peto, how now! What news?\n  PETO. The King your father is at Westminster;\n    And there are twenty weak and wearied posts\n    Come from the north; and as I came along\n    I met and overtook a dozen captains,\n    Bare-headed, sweating, knocking at the taverns,\n    And asking every one for Sir John Falstaff.\n  PRINCE. By heaven, Poins, I feel me much to blame\n    So idly to profane the precious time,\n    When tempest of commotion, like the south,\n    Borne with black vapour, doth begin to melt\n    And drop upon our bare unarmed heads.\n    Give me my sword and cloak. Falstaff, good night.\n\n                        Exeunt PRINCE, POINS, PETO, and BARDOLPH\n\n  FALSTAFF. Now comes in the sweetest morsel of the night, and we  \n    must hence, and leave it unpick\'d.  [Knocking within]  More\n    knocking at the door!\n\n                      Re-enter BARDOLPH\n\n    How now! What\'s the matter?\n  BARDOLPH. You must away to court, sir, presently;\n    A dozen captains stay at door for you.\n  FALSTAFF.  [To the PAGE]. Pay the musicians, sirrah.- Farewell,\n    hostess; farewell, Doll. You see, my good wenches, how men of\n    merit are sought after; the undeserver may sleep, when the man of\n    action is call\'d on. Farewell, good wenches. If I be not sent\n    away post, I will see you again ere I go.\n  DOLL. I cannot speak. If my heart be not ready to burst!\n    Well, sweet Jack, have a care of thyself.\n  FALSTAFF. Farewell, farewell.\n                                    Exeunt FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH\n  HOSTESS. Well, fare thee well. I have known thee these twenty-nine\n    years, come peascod-time; but an honester and truer-hearted man\n    -well fare thee well.  \n  BARDOLPH.  [ Within]  Mistress Tearsheet!\n  HOSTESS. What\'s the matter?\n  BARDOLPH.  [ Within]  Bid Mistress Tearsheet come to my master.\n  HOSTESS. O, run Doll, run, run, good Come.  [To BARDOLPH]  She\n    comes blubber\'d.- Yea, will you come, Doll?           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nWestminster. The palace\n\nEnter the KING in his nightgown, with a page\n\n  KING. Go call the Earls of Surrey and of Warwick;\n    But, ere they come, bid them o\'er-read these letters\n    And well consider of them. Make good speed.        Exit page\n    How many thousands of my poorest subjects\n    Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,\n    Nature\'s soft nurse, how have I frightened thee,\n    That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down,\n    And steep my senses in forgetfulness?\n    Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,\n    Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,\n    And hush\'d with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,\n    Than in the perfum\'d chambers of the great,\n    Under the canopies of costly state,\n    And lull\'d with sound of sweetest melody?\n    O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile\n    In loathsome beds, and leav\'st the kingly couch\n    A watch-case or a common \'larum-bell?  \n    Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast\n    Seal up the ship-boy\'s eyes, and rock his brains\n    In cradle of the rude imperious surge,\n    And in the visitation of the winds,\n    Who take the ruffian billows by the top,\n    Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them\n    With deafing clamour in the slippery clouds,\n    That with the hurly death itself awakes?\n    Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose\n    To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;\n    And in the calmest and most stillest night,\n    With all appliances and means to boot,\n    Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down!\n    Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.\n\n                    Enter WARWICK and Surrey\n\n  WARWICK. Many good morrows to your Majesty!\n  KING. Is it good morrow, lords?\n  WARWICK. \'Tis one o\'clock, and past.  \n  KING. Why then, good morrow to you all, my lords.\n    Have you read o\'er the letters that I sent you?\n  WARWICK. We have, my liege.\n  KING. Then you perceive the body of our kingdom\n    How foul it is; what rank diseases grow,\n    And with what danger, near the heart of it.\n  WARWICK. It is but as a body yet distempered;\n    Which to his former strength may be restored\n    With good advice and little medicine.\n    My Lord Northumberland will soon be cool\'d.\n  KING. O God! that one might read the book of fate,\n    And see the revolution of the times\n    Make mountains level, and the continent,\n    Weary of solid firmness, melt itself\n    Into the sea; and other times to see\n    The beachy girdle of the ocean\n    Too wide for Neptune\'s hips; how chances mock,\n    And changes fill the cup of alteration\n    With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,\n    The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,  \n    What perils past, what crosses to ensue,\n    Would shut the book and sit him down and die.\n    \'Tis not ten years gone\n    Since Richard and Northumberland, great friends,\n    Did feast together, and in two years after\n    Were they at wars. It is but eight years since\n    This Percy was the man nearest my soul;\n    Who like a brother toil\'d in my affairs\n    And laid his love and life under my foot;\n    Yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of Richard\n    Gave him defiance. But which of you was by-\n    [To WARWICK]  You, cousin Nevil, as I may remember-\n    When Richard, with his eye brim full of tears,\n    Then check\'d and rated by Northumberland,\n    Did speak these words, now prov\'d a prophecy?\n    \'Northumberland, thou ladder by the which\n    My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne\'-\n    Though then, God knows, I had no such intent\n    But that necessity so bow\'d the state\n    That I and greatness were compell\'d to kiss-  \n    \'The time shall come\'- thus did he follow it-\n    \'The time will come that foul sin, gathering head,\n    Shall break into corruption\' so went on,\n    Foretelling this same time\'s condition\n    And the division of our amity.\n  WARWICK. There is a history in all men\'s lives,\n    Figuring the natures of the times deceas\'d;\n    The which observ\'d, a man may prophesy,\n    With a near aim, of the main chance of things\n    As yet not come to life, who in their seeds\n    And weak beginning lie intreasured.\n    Such things become the hatch and brood of time;\n    And, by the necessary form of this,\n    King Richard might create a perfect guess\n    That great Northumberland, then false to him,\n    Would of that seed grow to a greater falseness;\n    Which should not find a ground to root upon\n    Unless on you.\n  KING. Are these things then necessities?\n    Then let us meet them like necessities;  \n    And that same word even now cries out on us.\n    They say the Bishop and Northumberland\n    Are fifty thousand strong.\n  WARWICK. It cannot be, my lord.\n    Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo,\n    The numbers of the feared. Please it your Grace\n    To go to bed. Upon my soul, my lord,\n    The powers that you already have sent forth\n    Shall bring this prize in very easily.\n    To comfort you the more, I have receiv\'d\n    A certain instance that Glendower is dead.\n    Your Majesty hath been this fortnight ill;\n    And these unseasoned hours perforce must ad\n    Unto your sickness.\n  KING. I will take your counsel.\n    And, were these inward wars once out of hand,\n    We would, dear lords, unto the Holy Land.            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nGloucestershire. Before Justice, SHALLOW\'S house\n\nEnter SHALLOW and SILENCE, meeting; MOULDY, SHADOW, WART, FEEBLE, BULLCALF,\nand servants behind\n\n  SHALLOW. Come on, come on, come on; give me your hand, sir; give me\n    your hand, sir. An early stirrer, by the rood! And how doth my\n    good cousin Silence?\n  SILENCE. Good morrow, good cousin Shallow.\n  SHALLOW. And how doth my cousin, your bed-fellow? and your fairest\n    daughter and mine, my god-daughter Ellen?\n  SILENCE. Alas, a black ousel, cousin Shallow!\n  SHALLOW. By yea and no, sir. I dare say my cousin William is become\n    a good scholar; he is at Oxford still, is he not?\n  SILENCE. Indeed, sir, to my cost.\n  SHALLOW. \'A must, then, to the Inns o\' Court shortly. I was once of\n    Clement\'s Inn; where I think they will talk of mad Shallow yet.\n  SILENCE. You were call\'d \'lusty Shallow\' then, cousin.\n  SHALLOW. By the mass, I was call\'d anything; and I would have done\n    anything indeed too, and roundly too. There was I, and little\n    John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes, and Francis  \n    Pickbone, and Will Squele a Cotsole man- you had not four such\n    swinge-bucklers in all the Inns of Court again. And I may say to\n    you we knew where the bona-robas were, and had the best of them\n    all at commandment. Then was Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, boy,\n    and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk.\n  SILENCE. This Sir John, cousin, that comes hither anon about\n    soldiers?\n  SHALLOW. The same Sir John, the very same. I see him break\n    Scoggin\'s head at the court gate, when \'a was a crack not thus\n    high; and the very same day did I fight with one Sampson\n    Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind Gray\'s Inn. Jesu, Jesu, the mad\n    days that I have spent! and to see how many of my old\n    acquaintance are dead!\n  SILENCE. We shall all follow, cousin.\n  SHALLOW. Certain, \'tis certain; very sure, very sure. Death, as the\n    Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. How a good yoke\n    of bullocks at Stamford fair?\n  SILENCE. By my troth, I was not there.\n  SHALLOW. Death is certain. Is old Double of your town living yet?\n  SILENCE. Dead, sir.  \n  SHALLOW. Jesu, Jesu, dead! drew a good bow; and dead! \'A shot a\n    fine shoot. John a Gaunt loved him well, and betted much money on\n    his head. Dead! \'A would have clapp\'d i\' th\' clout at twelve\n    score, and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen\n    and a half, that it would have done a man\'s heart good to see.\n    How a score of ewes now?\n  SILENCE. Thereafter as they be- a score of good ewes may be worth\n    ten pounds.\n  SHALLOW. And is old Double dead?\n\n                    Enter BARDOLPH, and one with him\n\n  SILENCE. Here come two of Sir John Falstaffs men, as I think.\n  SHALLOW. Good morrow, honest gentlemen.\n  BARDOLPH. I beseech you, which is Justice Shallow?\n  SHALLOW. I am Robert Shallow, sir, a poor esquire of this county,\n    and one of the King\'s justices of the peace. What is your good\n    pleasure with me?\n  BARDOLPH. My captain, sir, commends him to you; my captain, Sir\n    John Falstaff- a tall gentleman, by heaven, and a most gallant  \n    leader.\n  SHALLOW. He greets me well, sir; I knew him a good back-sword man.\n    How doth the good knight? May I ask how my lady his wife doth?\n  BARDOLPH. Sir, pardon; a soldier is better accommodated than with a\n    wife.\n  SHALLOW. It is well said, in faith, sir; and it is well said indeed\n    too. \'Better accommodated!\' It is good; yea, indeed, is it. Good\n    phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable.\n    \'Accommodated!\' It comes of accommodo. Very good; a good phrase.\n  BARDOLPH. Pardon, sir; I have heard the word. \'Phrase\' call you it?\n    By this day, I know not the phrase; but I will maintain the word\n    with my sword to be a soldier-like word, and a word of exceeding\n    good command, by heaven. Accommodated: that is, when a man is, as\n    they say, accommodated; or, when a man is being-whereby \'a may be\n    thought to be accommodated; which is an excellent thing.\n\n                              Enter FALSTAFF\n\n  SHALLOW. It is very just. Look, here comes good Sir John. Give me\n    your good hand, give me your worship\'s good hand. By my troth,  \n    you like well and bear your years very well. Welcome, good Sir\n    John.\n  FALSTAFF. I am glad to see you well, good Master Robert Shallow.\n    Master Surecard, as I think?\n  SHALLOW. No, Sir John; it is my cousin Silence, in commission with\n   me.\n  FALSTAFF. Good Master Silence, it well befits you should be of the\n    peace.\n  SILENCE. Your good worship is welcome.\n  FALSTAFF. Fie! this is hot weather. Gentlemen, have you provided me\n    here half a dozen sufficient men?\n  SHALLOW. Marry, have we, sir. Will you sit?\n  FALSTAFF. Let me see them, I beseech you.\n  SHALLOW. Where\'s the roll? Where\'s the roll? Where\'s the roll? Let\n    me see, let me see, let me see. So, so, so, so,- so, so- yea,\n    marry, sir. Rafe Mouldy! Let them appear as I call; let them do\n    so, let them do so. Let me see; where is Mouldy?\n  MOULDY. Here, an\'t please you.\n  SHALLOW. What think you, Sir John? A good-limb\'d fellow; young,\n    strong, and of good friends.  \n  FALSTAFF. Is thy name Mouldy?\n  MOULDY. Yea, an\'t please you.\n  FALSTAFF. \'Tis the more time thou wert us\'d.\n  SHALLOW. Ha, ha, ha! most excellent, i\' faith! Things that are\n    mouldy lack use. Very singular good! In faith, well said, Sir\n    John; very well said.\n  FALSTAFF. Prick him.\n  MOULDY. I was prick\'d well enough before, an you could have let me\n    alone. My old dame will be undone now for one to do her husbandry\n    and her drudgery. You need not to have prick\'d me; there are\n    other men fitter to go out than I.\n  FALSTAFF. Go to; peace, Mouldy; you shall go. Mouldy, it is time\n    you were spent.\n  MOULDY. Spent!\n  SHALLOW. Peace, fellow, peace; stand aside; know you where you are?\n    For th\' other, Sir John- let me see. Simon Shadow!\n  FALSTAFF. Yea, marry, let me have him to sit under. He\'s like to be\n    a cold soldier.\n  SHALLOW. Where\'s Shadow?\n  SHADOW. Here, sir.  \n  FALSTAFF. Shadow, whose son art thou?\n  SHADOW. My mother\'s son, sir.\n  FALSTAFF. Thy mother\'s son! Like enough; and thy father\'s shadow.\n    So the son of the female is the shadow of the male. It is often\n    so indeed; but much of the father\'s substance!\n  SHALLOW. Do you like him, Sir John?\n  FALSTAFF. Shadow will serve for summer. Prick him; for we have a\n    number of shadows fill up the muster-book.\n  SHALLOW. Thomas Wart!\n  FALSTAFF. Where\'s he?\n  WART. Here, sir.\n  FALSTAFF. Is thy name Wart?\n  WART. Yea, sir.\n  FALSTAFF. Thou art a very ragged wart.\n  SHALLOW. Shall I prick him, Sir John?\n  FALSTAFF. It were superfluous; for his apparel is built upon his\n    back, and the whole frame stands upon pins. Prick him no more.\n  SHALLOW. Ha, ha, ha! You can do it, sir; you can do it. I commend\n    you well. Francis Feeble!\n  FEEBLE. Here, sir.  \n  FALSTAFF. What trade art thou, Feeble?\n  FEEBLE. A woman\'s tailor, sir.\n  SHALLOW. Shall I prick him, sir?\n  FALSTAFF. You may; but if he had been a man\'s tailor, he\'d ha\'\n    prick\'d you. Wilt thou make as many holes in an enemy\'s battle as\n    thou hast done in a woman\'s petticoat?\n  FEEBLE. I will do my good will, sir; you can have no more.\n  FALSTAFF. Well said, good woman\'s tailor! well said, courageous\n    Feeble! Thou wilt be as valiant as the wrathful dove or most\n    magnanimous mouse. Prick the woman\'s tailor- well, Master\n    Shallow, deep, Master Shallow.\n  FEEBLE. I would Wart might have gone, sir.\n  FALSTAFF. I would thou wert a man\'s tailor, that thou mightst mend\n    him and make him fit to go. I cannot put him to a private\n    soldier, that is the leader of so many thousands. Let that\n    suffice, most forcible Feeble.\n  FEEBLE. It shall suffice, sir.\n  FALSTAFF. I am bound to thee, reverend Feeble. Who is next?\n  SHALLOW. Peter Bullcalf o\' th\' green!\n  FALSTAFF. Yea, marry, let\'s see Bullcalf.  \n  BULLCALF. Here, sir.\n  FALSTAFF. Fore God, a likely fellow! Come, prick me Bullcalf till\n    he roar again.\n  BULLCALF. O Lord! good my lord captain-\n  FALSTAFF. What, dost thou roar before thou art prick\'d?\n  BULLCALF. O Lord, sir! I am a diseased man.\n  FALSTAFF. What disease hast thou?\n  BULLCALF. A whoreson cold, sir, a cough, sir, which I caught with\n    ringing in the King\'s affairs upon his coronation day, sir.\n  FALSTAFF. Come, thou shalt go to the wars in a gown. We will have\n    away thy cold; and I will take such order that thy friends shall\n    ring for thee. Is here all?\n  SHALLOW. Here is two more call\'d than your number. You must have\n    but four here, sir; and so, I pray you, go in with me to dinner.\n  FALSTAFF. Come, I will go drink with you, but I cannot tarry\n    dinner. I am glad to see you, by my troth, Master Shallow.\n  SHALLOW. O, Sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in the\n    windmill in Saint George\'s Field?\n  FALSTAFF. No more of that, Master Shallow, no more of that.\n  SHALLOW. Ha, \'twas a merry night. And is Jane Nightwork alive?  \n  FALSTAFF. She lives, Master Shallow.\n  SHALLOW. She never could away with me.\n  FALSTAFF. Never, never; she would always say she could not abide\n    Master Shallow.\n  SHALLOW. By the mass, I could anger her to th\' heart. She was then\n    a bona-roba. Doth she hold her own well?\n  FALSTAFF. Old, old, Master Shallow.\n  SHALLOW. Nay, she must be old; she cannot choose but be old;\n    certain she\'s old; and had Robin Nightwork, by old Nightwork,\n    before I came to Clement\'s Inn.\n  SILENCE. That\'s fifty-five year ago.\n  SHALLOW. Ha, cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this\n    knight and I have seen! Ha, Sir John, said I well?\n  FALSTAFF. We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.\n  SHALLOW. That we have, that we have, that we have; in faith, Sir\n    John, we have. Our watchword was \'Hem, boys!\' Come, let\'s to\n    dinner; come, let\'s to dinner. Jesus, the days that we have seen!\n    Come, come.\n                                Exeunt FALSTAFF and the JUSTICES\n  BULLCALF. Good Master Corporate Bardolph, stand my friend; and  \n    here\'s four Harry ten shillings in French crowns for you. In very\n    truth, sir, I had as lief be hang\'d, sir, as go. And yet, for\n    mine own part, sir, I do not care; but rather because I am\n    unwilling and, for mine own part, have a desire to stay with my\n    friends; else, sir, I did not care for mine own part so much.\n  BARDOLPH. Go to; stand aside.\n  MOULDY. And, good Master Corporal Captain, for my old dame\'s sake,\n    stand my friend. She has nobody to do anything about her when I\n    am gone; and she is old, and cannot help herself. You shall have\n    forty, sir.\n  BARDOLPH. Go to; stand aside.\n  FEEBLE. By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God\n    a death. I\'ll ne\'er bear a base mind. An\'t be my destiny, so;\n    an\'t be not, so. No man\'s too good to serve \'s Prince; and, let\n    it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the\n    next.\n  BARDOLPH. Well said; th\'art a good fellow.\n  FEEBLE. Faith, I\'ll bear no base mind.\n\n                    Re-enter FALSTAFF and the JUSTICES  \n\n  FALSTAFF. Come, sir, which men shall I have?\n  SHALLOW. Four of which you please.\n  BARDOLPH. Sir, a word with you. I have three pound to free Mouldy\n    and Bullcalf.\n  FALSTAFF. Go to; well.\n  SHALLOW. Come, Sir John, which four will you have?\n  FALSTAFF. Do you choose for me.\n  SHALLOW. Marry, then- Mouldy, Bullcalf, Feeble, and Shadow.\n  FALSTAFF. Mouldy and Bullcalf: for you, Mouldy, stay at home till\n    you are past service; and for your part, Bullcalf, grow you come\n    unto it. I will none of you.\n  SHALLOW. Sir John, Sir John, do not yourself wrong. They are your\n    likeliest men, and I would have you serv\'d with the best.\n  FALSTAFF. Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to choose a man?\n    Care I for the limb, the thews, the stature, bulk, and big\n    assemblance of a man! Give me the spirit, Master Shallow. Here\'s\n    Wart; you see what a ragged appearance it is. \'A shall charge you\n    and discharge you with the motion of a pewterer\'s hammer, come\n    off and on swifter than he that gibbets on the brewer\'s bucket.  \n    And this same half-fac\'d fellow, Shadow- give me this man. He\n    presents no mark to the enemy; the foeman may with as great aim\n    level at the edge of a penknife. And, for a retreat- how swiftly\n    will this Feeble, the woman\'s tailor, run off! O, give me the\n    spare men, and spare me the great ones. Put me a caliver into\n    Wart\'s hand, Bardolph.\n  BARDOLPH. Hold, Wart. Traverse- thus, thus, thus.\n  FALSTAFF. Come, manage me your caliver. So- very well. Go to; very\n    good; exceeding good. O, give me always a little, lean, old,\n    chopt, bald shot. Well said, i\' faith, Wart; th\'art a good scab.\n    Hold, there\'s a tester for thee.\n  SHALLOW. He is not his craft\'s master, he doth not do it right. I\n    remember at Mile-end Green, when I lay at Clement\'s Inn- I was\n    then Sir Dagonet in Arthur\'s show- there was a little quiver\n    fellow, and \'a would manage you his piece thus; and \'a would\n    about and about, and come you in and come you in. \'Rah, tah,\n    tah!\' would \'a say; \'Bounce!\' would \'a say; and away again would\n    \'a go, and again would \'a come. I shall ne\'er see such a fellow.\n  FALSTAFF. These fellows will do well. Master Shallow, God keep you!\n    Master Silence, I will not use many words with you: Fare you  \n    well! Gentlemen both, I thank you. I must a dozen mile to-night.\n    Bardolph, give the soldiers coats.\n  SHALLOW. Sir John, the Lord bless you; God prosper your affairs;\n    God send us peace! At your return, visit our house; let our old\n    acquaintance be renewed. Peradventure I will with ye to the\n    court.\n  FALSTAFF. Fore God, would you would.\n  SHALLOW. Go to; I have spoke at a word. God keep you.\n  FALSTAFF. Fare you well, gentle gentlemen.  [Exeunt JUSTICES]  On,\n    Bardolph; lead the men away.  [Exeunt all but FALSTAFF]  As I\n    return, I will fetch off these justices. I do see the bottom of\n    justice Shallow. Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this\n    vice of lying! This same starv\'d justice hath done nothing but\n    prate to me of the wildness of his youth and the feats he hath\n    done about Turnbull Street; and every third word a lie, duer paid\n    to the hearer than the Turk\'s tribute. I do remember him at\n    Clement\'s Inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring.\n    When \'a was naked, he was for all the world like a fork\'d radish,\n    with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife. \'A was so\n    forlorn that his dimensions to any thick sight were invisible. \'A  \n    was the very genius of famine; yet lecherous as a monkey, and the\n    whores call\'d him mandrake. \'A came ever in the rearward of the\n    fashion, and sung those tunes to the overscutch\'d huswifes that\n    he heard the carmen whistle, and sware they were his fancies or\n    his good-nights. And now is this Vice\'s dagger become a squire,\n    and talks as familiarly of John a Gaunt as if he had been sworn\n    brother to him; and I\'ll be sworn \'a ne\'er saw him but once in\n    the Tiltyard; and then he burst his head for crowding among the\n    marshal\'s men. I saw it, and told John a Gaunt he beat his own\n    name; for you might have thrust him and all his apparel into an\n    eel-skin; the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a\n    court- and now has he land and beeves. Well, I\'ll be acquainted\n    with him if I return; and \'t shall go hard but I\'ll make him a\n    philosopher\'s two stones to me. If the young dace be a bait for\n    the old pike, I see no reason in the law of nature but I may snap\n    at him. Let time shape, and there an end.               Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nYorkshire. Within the Forest of Gaultree\n\nEnter the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, MOWBRAY, HASTINGS, and others\n\n  ARCHBISHOP. What is this forest call\'d\n  HASTINGS. \'Tis Gaultree Forest, an\'t shall please your Grace.\n  ARCHBISHOP. Here stand, my lords, and send discoverers forth\n    To know the numbers of our enemies.\n  HASTINGS. We have sent forth already.\n  ARCHBISHOP. \'Tis well done.\n    My friends and brethren in these great affairs,\n    I must acquaint you that I have receiv\'d\n    New-dated letters from Northumberland;\n    Their cold intent, tenour, and substance, thus:\n    Here doth he wish his person, with such powers\n    As might hold sortance with his quality,\n    The which he could not levy; whereupon\n    He is retir\'d, to ripe his growing fortunes,\n    To Scotland; and concludes in hearty prayers\n    That your attempts may overlive the hazard  \n    And fearful meeting of their opposite.\n  MOWBRAY. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground\n    And dash themselves to pieces.\n\n                          Enter A MESSENGER\n\n  HASTINGS. Now, what news?\n  MESSENGER. West of this forest, scarcely off a mile,\n    In goodly form comes on the enemy;\n    And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number\n    Upon or near the rate of thirty thousand.\n  MOWBRAY. The just proportion that we gave them out.\n    Let us sway on and face them in the field.\n\n                        Enter WESTMORELAND\n\n  ARCHBISHOP. What well-appointed leader fronts us here?\n  MOWBRAY. I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland.\n  WESTMORELAND. Health and fair greeting from our general,\n    The Prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster.  \n  ARCHBISHOP. Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in peace,\n    What doth concern your coming.\n  WESTMORELAND. Then, my lord,\n    Unto your Grace do I in chief address\n    The substance of my speech. If that rebellion\n    Came like itself, in base and abject routs,\n    Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags,\n    And countenanc\'d by boys and beggary-\n    I say, if damn\'d commotion so appear\'d\n    In his true, native, and most proper shape,\n    You, reverend father, and these noble lords,\n    Had not been here to dress the ugly form\n    Of base and bloody insurrection\n    With your fair honours. You, Lord Archbishop,\n    Whose see is by a civil peace maintain\'d,\n    Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch\'d,\n    Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor\'d,\n    Whose white investments figure innocence,\n    The dove, and very blessed spirit of peace-\n    Wherefore you do so ill translate yourself  \n    Out of the speech of peace, that bears such grace,\n    Into the harsh and boist\'rous tongue of war;\n    Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood,\n    Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine\n    To a loud trumpet and a point of war?\n  ARCHBISHOP. Wherefore do I this? So the question stands.\n    Briefly to this end: we are all diseas\'d\n    And with our surfeiting and wanton hours\n    Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,\n    And we must bleed for it; of which disease\n    Our late King, Richard, being infected, died.\n    But, my most noble Lord of Westmoreland,\n    I take not on me here as a physician;\n    Nor do I as an enemy to peace\n    Troop in the throngs of military men;\n    But rather show awhile like fearful war\n    To diet rank minds sick of happiness,\n    And purge th\' obstructions which begin to stop\n    Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.\n    I have in equal balance justly weigh\'d  \n    What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,\n    And find our griefs heavier than our offences.\n    We see which way the stream of time doth run\n    And are enforc\'d from our most quiet there\n    By the rough torrent of occasion;\n    And have the summary of all our griefs,\n    When time shall serve, to show in articles;\n    Which long ere this we offer\'d to the King,\n    And might by no suit gain our audience:\n    When we are wrong\'d, and would unfold our griefs,\n    We are denied access unto his person,\n    Even by those men that most have done us wrong.\n    The dangers of the days but newly gone,\n    Whose memory is written on the earth\n    With yet appearing blood, and the examples\n    Of every minute\'s instance, present now,\n    Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms;\n    Not to break peace, or any branch of it,\n    But to establish here a peace indeed,\n    Concurring both in name and quality.  \n  WESTMORELAND. When ever yet was your appeal denied;\n    Wherein have you been galled by the King;\n    What peer hath been suborn\'d to grate on you\n    That you should seal this lawless bloody book\n    Of forg\'d rebellion with a seal divine,\n    And consecrate commotion\'s bitter edge?\n  ARCHBISHOP. My brother general, the commonwealth,\n    To brother horn an household cruelty,\n    I make my quarrel in particular.\n  WESTMORELAND. There is no need of any such redress;\n    Or if there were, it not belongs to you.\n  MOWBRAY. Why not to him in part, and to us all\n    That feel the bruises of the days before,\n    And suffer the condition of these times\n    To lay a heavy and unequal hand\n    Upon our honours?\n  WESTMORELAND. O my good Lord Mowbray,\n    Construe the times to their necessities,\n    And you shall say, indeed, it is the time,\n    And not the King, that doth you injuries.  \n    Yet, for your part, it not appears to me,\n    Either from the King or in the present time,\n    That you should have an inch of any ground\n    To build a grief on. Were you not restor\'d\n    To all the Duke of Norfolk\'s signiories,\n    Your noble and right well-rememb\'red father\'s?\n  MOWBRAY. What thing, in honour, had my father lost\n    That need to be reviv\'d and breath\'d in me?\n    The King that lov\'d him, as the state stood then,\n    Was force perforce compell\'d to banish him,\n    And then that Henry Bolingbroke and he,\n    Being mounted and both roused in their seats,\n    Their neighing coursers daring of the spur,\n    Their armed staves in charge, their beavers down,\n    Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of steel,\n    And the loud trumpet blowing them together-\n    Then, then, when there was nothing could have stay\'d\n    My father from the breast of Bolingbroke,\n    O, when the King did throw his warder down-\n    His own life hung upon the staff he threw-  \n    Then threw he down himself, and all their lives\n    That by indictment and by dint of sword\n    Have since miscarried under Bolingbroke.\n  WESTMORELAND. You speak, Lord Mowbray, now you know not what.\n    The Earl of Hereford was reputed then\n    In England the most valiant gentleman.\n    Who knows on whom fortune would then have smil\'d?\n    But if your father had been victor there,\n    He ne\'er had borne it out of Coventry;\n    For all the country, in a general voice,\n    Cried hate upon him; and all their prayers and love\n    Were set on Hereford, whom they doted on,\n    And bless\'d and grac\'d indeed more than the King.\n    But this is mere digression from my purpose.\n    Here come I from our princely general\n    To know your griefs; to tell you from his Grace\n    That he will give you audience; and wherein\n    It shall appear that your demands are just,\n    You shall enjoy them, everything set off\n    That might so much as think you enemies.  \n  MOWBRAY. But he hath forc\'d us to compel this offer;\n    And it proceeds from policy, not love.\n  WESTMORELAND. Mowbray. you overween to take it so.\n    This offer comes from mercy, not from fear;\n    For, lo! within a ken our army lies-\n    Upon mine honour, all too confident\n    To give admittance to a thought of fear.\n    Our battle is more full of names than yours,\n    Our men more perfect in the use of arms,\n    Our armour all as strong, our cause the best;\n    Then reason will our hearts should be as good.\n    Say you not, then, our offer is compell\'d.\n  MOWBRAY. Well, by my will we shall admit no parley.\n  WESTMORELAND. That argues but the shame of your offence:\n    A rotten case abides no handling.\n  HASTINGS. Hath the Prince John a full commission,\n    In very ample virtue of his father,\n    To hear and absolutely to determine\n    Of what conditions we shall stand upon?\n  WESTMORELAND. That is intended in the general\'s name.  \n    I muse you make so slight a question.\n  ARCHBISHOP. Then take, my Lord of Westmoreland, this schedule,\n    For this contains our general grievances.\n    Each several article herein redress\'d,\n    All members of our cause, both here and hence,\n    That are insinewed to this action,\n    Acquitted by a true substantial form,\n    And present execution of our wills\n    To us and to our purposes confin\'d-\n    We come within our awful banks again,\n    And knit our powers to the arm of peace.\n  WESTMORELAND. This will I show the general. Please you, lords,\n    In sight of both our battles we may meet;\n    And either end in peace- which God so frame!-\n    Or to the place of diff\'rence call the swords\n    Which must decide it.\n  ARCHBISHOP. My lord, we will do so.          Exit WESTMORELAND\n  MOWBRAY. There is a thing within my bosom tells me\n    That no conditions of our peace can stand.\n  HASTINGS. Fear you not that: if we can make our peace  \n    Upon such large terms and so absolute\n    As our conditions shall consist upon,\n    Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.\n  MOWBRAY. Yea, but our valuation shall be such\n    That every slight and false-derived cause,\n    Yea, every idle, nice, and wanton reason,\n    Shall to the King taste of this action;\n    That, were our royal faiths martyrs in love,\n    We shall be winnow\'d with so rough a wind\n    That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff,\n    And good from bad find no partition.\n  ARCHBISHOP. No, no, my lord. Note this: the King is weary\n    Of dainty and such picking grievances;\n    For he hath found to end one doubt by death\n    Revives two greater in the heirs of life;\n    And therefore will he wipe his tables clean,\n    And keep no tell-tale to his memory\n    That may repeat and history his los\n    To new remembrance. For full well he knows\n    He cannot so precisely weed this land  \n    As his misdoubts present occasion:\n    His foes are so enrooted with his friends\n    That, plucking to unfix an enemy,\n    He doth unfasten so and shake a friend.\n    So that this land, like an offensive wife\n    That hath enrag\'d him on to offer strokes,\n    As he is striking, holds his infant up,\n    And hangs resolv\'d correction in the arm\n    That was uprear\'d to execution.\n  HASTINGS. Besides, the King hath wasted all his rods\n    On late offenders, that he now doth lack\n    The very instruments of chastisement;\n    So that his power, like to a fangless lion,\n    May offer, but not hold.\n  ARCHBISHOP. \'Tis very true;\n    And therefore be assur\'d, my good Lord Marshal,\n    If we do now make our atonement well,\n    Our peace will, like a broken limb united,\n    Grow stronger for the breaking.\n  MOWBRAY. Be it so.  \n    Here is return\'d my Lord of Westmoreland.\n\n                       Re-enter WESTMORELAND\n\n  WESTMORELAND. The Prince is here at hand. Pleaseth your lordship\n    To meet his Grace just distance \'tween our armies?\n  MOWBRAY. Your Grace of York, in God\'s name then, set forward.\n  ARCHBISHOP. Before, and greet his Grace. My lord, we come.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nAnother part of the forest\n\nEnter, from one side, MOWBRAY, attended; afterwards, the ARCHBISHOP,\nHASTINGS, and others; from the other side, PRINCE JOHN of LANCASTER,\nWESTMORELAND, OFFICERS, and others\n\n  PRINCE JOHN. You are well encount\'red here, my cousin Mowbray.\n    Good day to you, gentle Lord Archbishop;\n    And so to you, Lord Hastings, and to all.\n    My Lord of York, it better show\'d with you\n    When that your flock, assembled by the bell,\n    Encircled you to hear with reverence\n    Your exposition on the holy text\n    Than now to see you here an iron man,\n    Cheering a rout of rebels with your drum,\n    Turning the word to sword, and life to death.\n    That man that sits within a monarch\'s heart\n    And ripens in the sunshine of his favour,\n    Would he abuse the countenance of the king,\n    Alack, what mischiefs might he set abroach\n    In shadow of such greatness! With you, Lord Bishop,  \n    It is even so. Who hath not heard it spoken\n    How deep you were within the books of God?\n    To us the speaker in His parliament,\n    To us th\' imagin\'d voice of God himself,\n    The very opener and intelligencer\n    Between the grace, the sanctities of heaven,\n    And our dull workings. O, who shall believe\n    But you misuse the reverence of your place,\n    Employ the countenance and grace of heav\'n\n    As a false favourite doth his prince\'s name,\n    In deeds dishonourable? You have ta\'en up,\n    Under the counterfeited zeal of God,\n    The subjects of His substitute, my father,\n    And both against the peace of heaven and him\n    Have here up-swarm\'d them.\n  ARCHBISHOP. Good my Lord of Lancaster,\n    I am not here against your father\'s peace;\n    But, as I told my Lord of Westmoreland,\n    The time misord\'red doth, in common sense,\n    Crowd us and crush us to this monstrous form  \n    To hold our safety up. I sent your Grace\n    The parcels and particulars of our grief,\n    The which hath been with scorn shov\'d from the court,\n    Whereon this hydra son of war is born;\n    Whose dangerous eyes may well be charm\'d asleep\n    With grant of our most just and right desires;\n    And true obedience, of this madness cur\'d,\n    Stoop tamely to the foot of majesty.\n  MOWBRAY. If not, we ready are to try our fortunes\n    To the last man.\n  HASTINGS. And though we here fall down,\n    We have supplies to second our attempt.\n    If they miscarry, theirs shall second them;\n    And so success of mischief shall be born,\n    And heir from heir shall hold this quarrel up\n    Whiles England shall have generation.\n  PRINCE JOHN. YOU are too shallow, Hastings, much to shallow,\n    To sound the bottom of the after-times.\n  WESTMORELAND. Pleaseth your Grace to answer them directly\n    How far forth you do like their articles.  \n  PRINCE JOHN. I like them all and do allow them well;\n    And swear here, by the honour of my blood,\n    My father\'s purposes have been mistook;\n    And some about him have too lavishly\n    Wrested his meaning and authority.\n    My lord, these griefs shall be with speed redress\'d;\n    Upon my soul, they shall. If this may please you,\n    Discharge your powers unto their several counties,\n    As we will ours; and here, between the armies,\n    Let\'s drink together friendly and embrace,\n    That all their eyes may bear those tokens home\n    Of our restored love and amity.\n  ARCHBISHOP. I take your princely word for these redresses.\n  PRINCE JOHN. I give it you, and will maintain my word;\n    And thereupon I drink unto your Grace.\n  HASTINGS. Go, Captain, and deliver to the army\n    This news of peace. Let them have pay, and part.\n    I know it will please them. Hie thee, Captain.\n                                                    Exit Officer\n  ARCHBISHOP. To you, my noble Lord of Westmoreland.  \n  WESTMORELAND. I pledge your Grace; and if you knew what pains\n    I have bestow\'d to breed this present peace,\n    You would drink freely; but my love to ye\n    Shall show itself more openly hereafter.\n  ARCHBISHOP. I do not doubt you.\n  WESTMORELAND. I am glad of it.\n    Health to my lord and gentle cousin, Mowbray.\n  MOWBRAY. You wish me health in very happy season,\n    For I am on the sudden something ill.\n  ARCHBISHOP. Against ill chances men are ever merry;\n    But heaviness foreruns the good event.\n  WESTMORELAND. Therefore be merry, coz; since sudden sorrow\n    Serves to say thus, \'Some good thing comes to-morrow.\'\n  ARCHBISHOP. Believe me, I am passing light in spirit.\n  MOWBRAY. So much the worse, if your own rule be true.\n                                                 [Shouts within]\n  PRINCE JOHN. The word of peace is rend\'red. Hark, how they shout!\n  MOWBRAY. This had been cheerful after victory.\n  ARCHBISHOP. A peace is of the nature of a conquest;\n    For then both parties nobly are subdu\'d,  \n    And neither party loser.\n  PRINCE JOHN. Go, my lord,\n    And let our army be discharged too.\n                                               Exit WESTMORELAND\n    And, good my lord, so please you let our trains\n    March by us, that we may peruse the men\n    We should have cop\'d withal.\n  ARCHBISHOP. Go, good Lord Hastings,\n    And, ere they be dismiss\'d, let them march by.\n                                                   Exit HASTINGS\n  PRINCE JOHN. I trust, lords, we shall lie to-night together.\n\n                      Re-enter WESTMORELAND\n\n    Now, cousin, wherefore stands our army still?\n  WESTMORELAND. The leaders, having charge from you to stand,\n    Will not go off until they hear you speak.\n  PRINCE JOHN. They know their duties.\n\n                        Re-enter HASTINGS  \n\n  HASTINGS. My lord, our army is dispers\'d already.\n    Like youthful steers unyok\'d, they take their courses\n    East, west, north, south; or like a school broke up,\n    Each hurries toward his home and sporting-place.\n  WESTMORELAND. Good tidings, my Lord Hastings; for the which\n    I do arrest thee, traitor, of high treason;\n    And you, Lord Archbishop, and you, Lord Mowbray,\n    Of capital treason I attach you both.\n  MOWBRAY. Is this proceeding just and honourable?\n  WESTMORELAND. Is your assembly so?\n  ARCHBISHOP. Will you thus break your faith?\n  PRINCE JOHN. I pawn\'d thee none:\n    I promis\'d you redress of these same grievances\n    Whereof you did complain; which, by mine honour,\n    I will perform with a most Christian care.\n    But for you, rebels- look to taste the due\n    Meet for rebellion and such acts as yours.\n    Most shallowly did you these arms commence,\n    Fondly brought here, and foolishly sent hence.  \n    Strike up our drums, pursue the scatt\'red stray.\n    God, and not we, hath safely fought to-day.\n    Some guard these traitors to the block of death,\n    Treason\'s true bed and yielder-up of breath.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nAnother part of the forest\n\nAlarum; excursions. Enter FALSTAFF and COLVILLE, meeting\n\n  FALSTAFF. What\'s your name, sir? Of what condition are you, and of\n    what place, I pray?\n  COLVILLE. I am a knight sir; and my name is Colville of the Dale.\n  FALSTAFF. Well then, Colville is your name, a knight is your\n    degree, and your place the Dale. Colville shall still be your\n    name, a traitor your degree, and the dungeon your place- a place\n    deep enough; so shall you be still Colville of the Dale.\n  COLVILLE. Are not you Sir John Falstaff?\n  FALSTAFF. As good a man as he, sir, whoe\'er I am. Do you yield,\n    sir, or shall I sweat for you? If I do sweat, they are the drops\n    of thy lovers, and they weep for thy death; therefore rouse up\n    fear and trembling, and do observance to my mercy.\n  COLVILLE. I think you are Sir John Falstaff, and in that thought\n    yield me.\n  FALSTAFF. I have a whole school of tongues in this belly of mine;\n    and not a tongue of them all speaks any other word but my name.  \n    An I had but a belly of any indifferency, I were simply the most\n    active fellow in Europe. My womb, my womb, my womb undoes me.\n    Here comes our general.\n\n            Enter PRINCE JOHN OF LANCASTER, WESTMORELAND,\n                            BLUNT, and others\n\n  PRINCE JOHN. The heat is past; follow no further now.\n    Call in the powers, good cousin Westmoreland.\n                                               Exit WESTMORELAND\n    Now, Falstaff, where have you been all this while?\n    When everything is ended, then you come.\n    These tardy tricks of yours will, on my life,\n    One time or other break some gallows\' back.\n  FALSTAFF. I would be sorry, my lord, but it should be thus: I never\n    knew yet but rebuke and check was the reward of valour. Do you\n    think me a swallow, an arrow, or a bullet? Have I, in my poor and\n    old motion, the expedition of thought? I have speeded hither with\n    the very extremest inch of possibility; I have found\'red nine\n    score and odd posts; and here, travel tainted as I am, have, in  \n    my pure and immaculate valour, taken Sir John Colville of the\n    Dale,a most furious knight and valorous enemy. But what of that?\n    He saw me, and yielded; that I may justly say with the hook-nos\'d\n    fellow of Rome-I came, saw, and overcame.\n  PRINCE JOHN. It was more of his courtesy than your deserving.\n  FALSTAFF. I know not. Here he is, and here I yield him; and I\n    beseech your Grace, let it be book\'d with the rest of this day\'s\n    deeds; or, by the Lord, I will have it in a particular ballad\n    else, with mine own picture on the top on\'t, Colville kissing my\n    foot; to the which course if I be enforc\'d, if you do not all\n    show like gilt twopences to me, and I, in the clear sky of fame,\n    o\'ershine you as much as the full moon doth the cinders of the\n    element, which show like pins\' heads to her, believe not the word\n    of the noble. Therefore let me have right, and let desert mount.\n  PRINCE JOHN. Thine\'s too heavy to mount.\n  FALSTAFF. Let it shine, then.\n  PRINCE JOHN. Thine\'s too thick to shine.\n  FALSTAFF. Let it do something, my good lord, that may do me good,\n    and call it what you will.\n  PRINCE JOHN. Is thy name Colville?  \n  COLVILLE. It is, my lord.\n  PRINCE JOHN. A famous rebel art thou, Colville.\n  FALSTAFF. And a famous true subject took him.\n  COLVILLE. I am, my lord, but as my betters are\n    That led me hither. Had they been rul\'d by me,\n    You should have won them dearer than you have.\n  FALSTAFF. I know not how they sold themselves; but thou, like a\n    kind fellow, gavest thyself away gratis; and I thank thee for\n    thee.\n\n                       Re-enter WESTMORELAND\n\n  PRINCE JOHN. Now, have you left pursuit?\n  WESTMORELAND. Retreat is made, and execution stay\'d.\n  PRINCE JOHN. Send Colville, with his confederates,\n    To York, to present execution.\n    Blunt, lead him hence; and see you guard him sure.\n                                         Exeunt BLUNT and others\n    And now dispatch we toward the court, my lords.\n    I hear the King my father is sore sick.  \n    Our news shall go before us to his Majesty,\n    Which, cousin, you shall bear to comfort him\n    And we with sober speed will follow you.\n  FALSTAFF. My lord, I beseech you, give me leave to go through\n    Gloucestershire; and, when you come to court, stand my good lord,\n    pray, in your good report.\n  PRINCE JOHN. Fare you well, Falstaff. I, in my condition,\n    Shall better speak of you than you deserve.\n                                         Exeunt all but FALSTAFF\n  FALSTAFF. I would you had but the wit; \'twere better than your\n    dukedom. Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not\n    love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh- but that\'s no marvel;\n    he drinks no wine. There\'s never none of these demure boys come\n    to any proof; for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and\n    making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of male\n    green-sickness; and then, when they marry, they get wenches. They\n    are generally fools and cowards-which some of us should be too,\n    but for inflammation. A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold\n    operation in it. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all\n    the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it; makes it  \n    apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and\n    delectable shapes; which delivered o\'er to the voice, the tongue,\n    which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of\n    your excellent sherris is the warming of the blood; which before,\n    cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the\n    badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms it,\n    and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extremes. It\n    illumineth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the\n    rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital\n    commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their\n    captain, the heart, who, great and puff\'d up with this retinue,\n    doth any deed of courage- and this valour comes of sherris. So\n    that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets\n    it a-work; and learning, a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil\n    till sack commences it and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes\n    it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did\n    naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, sterile, and\n    bare land, manured, husbanded, and till\'d, with excellent\n    endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris,\n    that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons,  \n    the first humane principle I would teach them should be to\n    forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.\n\n                           Enter BARDOLPH\n\n    How now, Bardolph!\n  BARDOLPH. The army is discharged all and gone.\n  FALSTAFF. Let them go. I\'ll through Gloucestershire, and there will\n    I visit Master Robert Shallow, Esquire. I have him already\n    temp\'ring between my finger and my thumb, and shortly will I seal\n    with him. Come away.                                  Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nWestminster. The Jerusalem Chamber\n\nEnter the KING, PRINCE THOMAS OF CLARENCE, PRINCE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER,\nWARWICK, and others\n\n  KING. Now, lords, if God doth give successful end\n    To this debate that bleedeth at our doors,\n    We will our youth lead on to higher fields,\n    And draw no swords but what are sanctified.\n    Our navy is address\'d, our power connected,\n    Our substitutes in absence well invested,\n    And everything lies level to our wish.\n    Only we want a little personal strength;\n    And pause us till these rebels, now afoot,\n    Come underneath the yoke of government.\n  WARWICK. Both which we doubt not but your Majesty\n    Shall soon enjoy.\n  KING. Humphrey, my son of Gloucester,\n    Where is the Prince your brother?\n  PRINCE HUMPHREY. I think he\'s gone to hunt, my lord, at Windsor.\n  KING. And how accompanied?  \n  PRINCE HUMPHREY. I do not know, my lord.\n  KING. Is not his brother, Thomas of Clarence, with him?\n  PRINCE HUMPHREY. No, my good lord, he is in presence here.\n  CLARENCE. What would my lord and father?\n  KING. Nothing but well to thee, Thomas of Clarence.\n    How chance thou art not with the Prince thy brother?\n    He loves thee, and thou dost neglect him, Thomas.\n    Thou hast a better place in his affection\n    Than all thy brothers; cherish it, my boy,\n    And noble offices thou mayst effect\n    Of mediation, after I am dead,\n    Between his greatness and thy other brethren.\n    Therefore omit him not; blunt not his love,\n    Nor lose the good advantage of his grace\n    By seeming cold or careless of his will;\n    For he is gracious if he be observ\'d.\n    He hath a tear for pity and a hand\n    Open as day for melting charity;\n    Yet notwithstanding, being incens\'d, he is flint;\n    As humorous as winter, and as sudden  \n    As flaws congealed in the spring of day.\n    His temper, therefore, must be well observ\'d.\n    Chide him for faults, and do it reverently,\n    When you perceive his blood inclin\'d to mirth;\n    But, being moody, give him line and scope\n    Till that his passions, like a whale on ground,\n    Confound themselves with working. Learn this, Thomas,\n    And thou shalt prove a shelter to thy friends,\n    A hoop of gold to bind thy brothers in,\n    That the united vessel of their blood,\n    Mingled with venom of suggestion-\n    As, force perforce, the age will pour it in-\n    Shall never leak, though it do work as strong\n    As aconitum or rash gunpowder.\n  CLARENCE. I shall observe him with all care and love.\n  KING. Why art thou not at Windsor with him, Thomas?\n  CLARENCE. He is not there to-day; he dines in London.\n  KING. And how accompanied? Canst thou tell that?\n  CLARENCE. With Poins, and other his continual followers.\n  KING. Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds;  \n    And he, the noble image of my youth,\n    Is overspread with them; therefore my grief\n    Stretches itself beyond the hour of death.\n    The blood weeps from my heart when I do shape,\n    In forms imaginary, th\'unguided days\n    And rotten times that you shall look upon\n    When I am sleeping with my ancestors.\n    For when his headstrong riot hath no curb,\n    When rage and hot blood are his counsellors\n    When means and lavish manners meet together,\n    O, with what wings shall his affections fly\n    Towards fronting peril and oppos\'d decay!\n  WARWICK. My gracious lord, you look beyond him quite.\n    The Prince but studies his companions\n    Like a strange tongue, wherein, to gain the language,\n    \'Tis needful that the most immodest word\n    Be look\'d upon and learnt; which once attain\'d,\n    Your Highness knows, comes to no further use\n    But to be known and hated. So, like gross terms,\n    The Prince will, in the perfectness of time,  \n    Cast off his followers; and their memory\n    Shall as a pattern or a measure live\n    By which his Grace must mete the lives of other,\n    Turning past evils to advantages.\n  KING. \'Tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb\n    In the dead carrion.\n\n                      Enter WESTMORELAND\n\n    Who\'s here? Westmoreland?\n  WESTMORELAND. Health to my sovereign, and new happiness\n    Added to that that am to deliver!\n    Prince John, your son, doth kiss your Grace\'s hand.\n    Mowbray, the Bishop Scroop, Hastings, and all,\n    Are brought to the correction of your law.\n    There is not now a rebel\'s sword unsheath\'d,\n    But Peace puts forth her olive everywhere.\n    The manner how this action hath been borne\n    Here at more leisure may your Highness read,\n    With every course in his particular.  \n  KING. O Westmoreland, thou art a summer bird,\n    Which ever in the haunch of winter sings\n    The lifting up of day.\n\n                        Enter HARCOURT\n\n    Look here\'s more news.\n  HARCOURT. From enemies heaven keep your Majesty;\n    And, when they stand against you, may they fall\n    As those that I am come to tell you of!\n    The Earl Northumberland and the Lord Bardolph,\n    With a great power of English and of Scots,\n    Are by the shrieve of Yorkshire overthrown.\n    The manner and true order of the fight\n    This packet, please it you, contains at large.\n  KING. And wherefore should these good news make me sick?\n    Will Fortune never come with both hands full,\n    But write her fair words still in foulest letters?\n    She either gives a stomach and no food-\n    Such are the poor, in health- or else a feast,  \n    And takes away the stomach- such are the rich\n    That have abundance and enjoy it not.\n    I should rejoice now at this happy news;\n    And now my sight fails, and my brain is giddy.\n    O me! come near me now I am much ill.\n  PRINCE HUMPHREY. Comfort, your Majesty!\n  CLARENCE. O my royal father!\n  WESTMORELAND. My sovereign lord, cheer up yourself, look up.\n  WARWICK. Be patient, Princes; you do know these fits\n    Are with his Highness very ordinary.\n    Stand from him, give him air; he\'ll straight be well.\n  CLARENCE. No, no; he cannot long hold out these pangs.\n    Th\' incessant care and labour of his mind\n    Hath wrought the mure that should confine it in\n    So thin that life looks through, and will break out.\n  PRINCE HUMPHREY. The people fear me; for they do observe\n    Unfather\'d heirs and loathly births of nature.\n    The seasons change their manners, as the year\n    Had found some months asleep, and leapt them over.\n  CLARENCE. The river hath thrice flow\'d, no ebb between;  \n    And the old folk, Time\'s doting chronicles,\n    Say it did so a little time before\n    That our great grandsire, Edward, sick\'d and died.\n  WARWICK. Speak lower, Princes, for the King recovers.\n  PRINCE HUMPHREY. This apoplexy will certain be his end.\n  KING. I pray you take me up, and bear me hence\n    Into some other chamber. Softly, pray.                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nWestminster. Another chamber\n\nThe KING lying on a bed; CLARENCE, GLOUCESTER, WARWICK,\nand others in attendance\n\n  KING. Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends;\n    Unless some dull and favourable hand\n    Will whisper music to my weary spirit.\n  WARWICK. Call for the music in the other room.\n  KING. Set me the crown upon my pillow here.\n  CLARENCE. His eye is hollow, and he changes much.\n  WARWICK. Less noise! less noise!\n\n                        Enter PRINCE HENRY\n\n  PRINCE. Who saw the Duke of Clarence?\n  CLARENCE. I am here, brother, full of heaviness.\n  PRINCE. How now! Rain within doors, and none abroad!\n    How doth the King?\n  PRINCE HUMPHREY. Exceeding ill.\n  PRINCE. Heard he the good news yet? Tell it him.  \n  PRINCE HUMPHREY. He alt\'red much upon the hearing it.\n  PRINCE. If he be sick with joy, he\'ll recover without physic.\n  WARWICK. Not so much noise, my lords. Sweet Prince, speak low;\n    The King your father is dispos\'d to sleep.\n  CLARENCE. Let us withdraw into the other room.\n  WARWICK. Will\'t please your Grace to go along with us?\n  PRINCE. No; I will sit and watch here by the King.\n                                       Exeunt all but the PRINCE\n    Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow,\n    Being so troublesome a bedfellow?\n    O polish\'d perturbation! golden care!\n    That keep\'st the ports of slumber open wide\n    To many a watchful night! Sleep with it now!\n    Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet\n    As he whose brow with homely biggen bound\n    Snores out the watch of night. O majesty!\n    When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit\n    Like a rich armour worn in heat of day\n    That scald\'st with safety. By his gates of breath\n    There lies a downy feather which stirs not.  \n    Did he suspire, that light and weightless down\n    Perforce must move. My gracious lord! my father!\n    This sleep is sound indeed; this is a sleep\n    That from this golden rigol hath divorc\'d\n    So many English kings. Thy due from me\n    Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood\n    Which nature, love, and filial tenderness,\n    Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously.\n    My due from thee is this imperial crown,\n    Which, as immediate from thy place and blood,\n    Derives itself to me.  [Putting on the crown]  Lo where it sits-\n    Which God shall guard; and put the world\'s whole strength\n    Into one giant arm, it shall not force\n    This lineal honour from me. This from thee\n    Will I to mine leave as \'tis left to me.                Exit\n  KING. Warwick! Gloucester! Clarence!\n\n           Re-enter WARWICK, GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE\n\n  CLARENCE. Doth the King call?  \n  WARWICK. What would your Majesty? How fares your Grace?\n  KING. Why did you leave me here alone, my lords?\n  CLARENCE. We left the Prince my brother here, my liege,\n    Who undertook to sit and watch by you.\n  KING. The Prince of Wales! Where is he? Let me see him.\n    He is not here.\n  WARWICK. This door is open; he is gone this way.\n  PRINCE HUMPHREY. He came not through the chamber where we stay\'d.\n  KING. Where is the crown? Who took it from my pillow?\n  WARWICK. When we withdrew, my liege, we left it here.\n  KING. The Prince hath ta\'en it hence. Go, seek him out.\n    Is he so hasty that he doth suppose\n    My sleep my death?\n    Find him, my lord of Warwick; chide him hither.\n                                                    Exit WARWICK\n    This part of his conjoins with my disease\n    And helps to end me. See, sons, what things you are!\n    How quickly nature falls into revolt\n    When gold becomes her object!\n    For this the foolish over-careful fathers  \n    Have broke their sleep with thoughts,\n    Their brains with care, their bones with industry;\n    For this they have engrossed and pil\'d up\n    The cank\'red heaps of strange-achieved gold;\n    For this they have been thoughtful to invest\n    Their sons with arts and martial exercises;\n    When, like the bee, tolling from every flower\n    The virtuous sweets,\n    Our thighs with wax, our mouths with honey pack\'d,\n    We bring it to the hive, and, like the bees,\n    Are murd\'red for our pains. This bitter taste\n    Yields his engrossments to the ending father.\n\n                         Re-enter WARWICK\n\n    Now where is he that will not stay so long\n    Till his friend sickness hath determin\'d me?\n  WARWICK. My lord, I found the Prince in the next room,\n    Washing with kindly tears his gentle cheeks,\n    With such a deep demeanour in great sorrow,  \n    That tyranny, which never quaff\'d but blood,\n    Would, by beholding him, have wash\'d his knife\n    With gentle eye-drops. He is coming hither.\n  KING. But wherefore did he take away the crown?\n\n                        Re-enter PRINCE HENRY\n\n    Lo where he comes. Come hither to me, Harry.\n    Depart the chamber, leave us here alone.\n                          Exeunt all but the KING and the PRINCE\n  PRINCE. I never thought to hear you speak again.\n  KING. Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought.\n    I stay too long by thee, I weary thee.\n    Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair\n    That thou wilt needs invest thee with my honours\n    Before thy hour be ripe? O foolish youth!\n    Thou seek\'st the greatness that will overwhelm thee.\n    Stay but a little, for my cloud of dignity\n    Is held from falling with so weak a wind\n    That it will quickly drop; my day is dim.  \n    Thou hast stol\'n that which, after some few hours,\n    Were thine without offense; and at my death\n    Thou hast seal\'d up my expectation.\n    Thy life did manifest thou lov\'dst me not,\n    And thou wilt have me die assur\'d of it.\n    Thou hid\'st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts,\n    Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart,\n    To stab at half an hour of my life.\n    What, canst thou not forbear me half an hour?\n    Then get thee gone, and dig my grave thyself;\n    And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear\n    That thou art crowned, not that I am dead.\n    Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse\n    Be drops of balm to sanctify thy head;\n    Only compound me with forgotten dust;\n    Give that which gave thee life unto the worms.\n    Pluck down my officers, break my decrees;\n    For now a time is come to mock at form-\n    Harry the Fifth is crown\'d. Up, vanity:\n    Down, royal state. All you sage counsellors, hence.  \n    And to the English court assemble now,\n    From every region, apes of idleness.\n    Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum.\n    Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance,\n    Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit\n    The oldest sins the newest kind of ways?\n    Be happy, he will trouble you no more.\n    England shall double gild his treble guilt;\n    England shall give him office, honour, might;\n    For the fifth Harry from curb\'d license plucks\n    The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog\n    Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent.\n    O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows!\n    When that my care could not withhold thy riots,\n    What wilt thou do when riot is thy care?\n    O, thou wilt be a wilderness again.\n    Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!\n  PRINCE. O, pardon me, my liege! But for my tears,\n    The moist impediments unto my speech,\n    I had forestall\'d this dear and deep rebuke  \n    Ere you with grief had spoke and I had heard\n    The course of it so far. There is your crown,\n    And he that wears the crown immortally\n    Long guard it yours!  [Kneeling]  If I affect it more\n    Than as your honour and as your renown,\n    Let me no more from this obedience rise,\n    Which my most inward true and duteous spirit\n    Teacheth this prostrate and exterior bending!\n    God witness with me, when I here came in\n    And found no course of breath within your Majesty,\n    How cold it struck my heart! If I do feign,\n    O, let me in my present wildness die,\n    And never live to show th\' incredulous world\n    The noble change that I have purposed!\n    Coming to look on you, thinking you dead-\n    And dead almost, my liege, to think you were-\n    I spake unto this crown as having sense,\n    And thus upbraided it: \'The care on thee depending\n    Hath fed upon the body of my father;\n    Therefore thou best of gold art worst of gold.  \n    Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,\n    Preserving life in med\'cine potable;\n    But thou, most fine, most honour\'d, most renown\'d,\n    Hast eat thy bearer up.\' Thus, my most royal liege,\n    Accusing it, I put it on my head,\n    To try with it- as with an enemy\n    That had before my face murd\'red my father-\n    The quarrel of a true inheritor.\n    But if it did infect my blood with joy,\n    Or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride;\n    If any rebel or vain spirit of mine\n    Did with the least affection of a welcome\n    Give entertainment to the might of it,\n    Let God for ever keep it from my head,\n    And make me as the poorest vassal is,\n    That doth with awe and terror kneel to it!\n  KING. O my son,\n    God put it in thy mind to take it hence,\n    That thou mightst win the more thy father\'s love,\n    Pleading so wisely in excuse of it!  \n    Come hither, Harry; sit thou by my bed,\n    And hear, I think, the very latest counsel\n    That ever I shall breathe. God knows, my son,\n    By what by-paths and indirect crook\'d ways\n    I met this crown; and I myself know well\n    How troublesome it sat upon my head:\n    To thee it shall descend with better quiet,\n    Better opinion, better confirmation;\n    For all the soil of the achievement goes\n    With me into the earth. It seem\'d in me\n    But as an honour snatch\'d with boist\'rous hand;\n    And I had many living to upbraid\n    My gain of it by their assistances;\n    Which daily grew to quarrel and to bloodshed,\n    Wounding supposed peace. All these bold fears\n    Thou seest with peril I have answered;\n    For all my reign hath been but as a scene\n    Acting that argument. And now my death\n    Changes the mood; for what in me was purchas\'d\n    Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort;  \n    So thou the garland wear\'st successively.\n    Yet, though thou stand\'st more sure than I could do,\n    Thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green;\n    And all my friends, which thou must make thy friends,\n    Have but their stings and teeth newly ta\'en out;\n    By whose fell working I was first advanc\'d,\n    And by whose power I well might lodge a fear\n    To be again displac\'d; which to avoid,\n    I cut them off; and had a purpose now\n    To lead out many to the Holy Land,\n    Lest rest and lying still might make them look\n    Too near unto my state. Therefore, my Harry,\n    Be it thy course to busy giddy minds\n    With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out,\n    May waste the memory of the former days.\n    More would I, but my lungs are wasted so\n    That strength of speech is utterly denied me.\n    How I came by the crown, O God, forgive;\n    And grant it may with thee in true peace live!\n  PRINCE. My gracious liege,  \n    You won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me;\n    Then plain and right must my possession be;\n    Which I with more than with a common pain\n    \'Gainst all the world will rightfully maintain.\n\n       Enter PRINCE JOHN OF LANCASTER, WARWICK, LORDS, and others\n\n  KING. Look, look, here comes my John of Lancaster.\n  PRINCE JOHN. Health, peace, and happiness, to my royal father!\n  KING. Thou bring\'st me happiness and peace, son John;\n    But health, alack, with youthful wings is flown\n    From this bare wither\'d trunk. Upon thy sight\n    My worldly business makes a period.\n    Where is my Lord of Warwick?\n  PRINCE. My Lord of Warwick!\n  KING. Doth any name particular belong\n    Unto the lodging where I first did swoon?\n  WARWICK. \'Tis call\'d Jerusalem, my noble lord.\n  KING. Laud be to God! Even there my life must end.\n    It hath been prophesied to me many years,  \n    I should not die but in Jerusalem;\n    Which vainly I suppos\'d the Holy Land.\n    But bear me to that chamber; there I\'ll lie;\n    In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nGloucestershire. SHALLOW\'S house\n\nEnter SHALLOW, FALSTAFF, BARDOLPH, and PAGE\n\n  SHALLOW. By cock and pie, sir, you shall not away to-night.\n    What, Davy, I say!\n  FALSTAFF. You must excuse me, Master Robert Shallow.\n  SHALLOW. I will not excuse you; you shall not be excus\'d; excuses\n    shall not be admitted; there is no excuse shall serve; you shall\n    not be excus\'d. Why, Davy!\n\n                            Enter DAVY\n\n  DAVY. Here, sir.\n  SHALLOW. Davy, Davy, Davy, Davy; let me see, Davy; let me see,\n    Davy; let me see- yea, marry, William cook, bid him come hither.\n    Sir John, you shall not be excus\'d.\n  DAVY. Marry, sir, thus: those precepts cannot be served; and,\n    again, sir- shall we sow the headland with wheat?\n  SHALLOW. With red wheat, Davy. But for William cook- are there no\n    young pigeons?  \n  DAVY. Yes, sir. Here is now the smith\'s note for shoeing and\n    plough-irons.\n  SHALLOW. Let it be cast, and paid. Sir John, you shall not be\n    excused.\n  DAVY. Now, sir, a new link to the bucket must needs be had; and,\n    sir, do you mean to stop any of William\'s wages about the sack he\n    lost the other day at Hinckley fair?\n  SHALLOW. \'A shall answer it. Some pigeons, Davy, a couple of\n    short-legg\'d hens, a joint of mutton, and any pretty little tiny\n    kickshaws, tell William cook.\n  DAVY. Doth the man of war stay all night, sir?\n  SHALLOW. Yea, Davy; I will use him well. A friend i\' th\' court is\n    better than a penny in purse. Use his men well, Davy; for they\n    are arrant knaves and will backbite.\n  DAVY. No worse than they are backbitten, sir; for they have\n    marvellous foul linen.\n  SHALLOW. Well conceited, Davy- about thy business, Davy.\n  DAVY. I beseech you, sir, to countenance William Visor of Woncot\n    against Clement Perkes o\' th\' hill.\n  SHALLOW. There, is many complaints, Davy, against that Visor. That  \n    Visor is an arrant knave, on my knowledge.\n  DAVY. I grant your worship that he is a knave, sir; but yet God\n    forbid, sir, but a knave should have some countenance at his\n    friend\'s request. An honest man, sir, is able to speak for\n    himself, when a knave is not. I have serv\'d your worship truly,\n    sir, this eight years; an I cannot once or twice in a quarter\n    bear out a knave against an honest man, I have but a very little\n    credit with your worship. The knave is mine honest friend, sir;\n    therefore, I beseech you, let him be countenanc\'d.\n  SHALLOW. Go to; I say he shall have no wrong. Look about,\n  DAVY.  [Exit DAVY]  Where are you, Sir John? Come, come, come, off\n    with your boots. Give me your hand, Master Bardolph.\n  BARDOLPH. I am glad to see your worship.\n  SHALLOW. I thank thee with all my heart, kind Master Bardolph.\n    [To the PAGE]  And welcome, my tall fellow. Come, Sir John.\n  FALSTAFF. I\'ll follow you, good Master Robert Shallow.\n    [Exit SHALLOW]  Bardolph, look to our horses.  [Exeunt BARDOLPH\n    and PAGE]  If I were sawed into quantities, I should make four\n    dozen of such bearded hermits\' staves as Master Shallow. It is a\n    wonderful thing to see the semblable coherence of his men\'s  \n    spirits and his. They, by observing of him, do bear themselves\n    like foolish justices: he, by conversing with them, is turned\n    into a justice-like serving-man. Their spirits are so married in\n    conjunction with the participation of society that they flock\n    together in consent, like so many wild geese. If I had a suit to\n    Master Shallow, I would humour his men with the imputation of\n    being near their master; if to his men, I would curry with Master\n    Shallow that no man could better command his servants. It is\n    certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught,\n    as men take diseases, one of another; therefore let men take heed\n    of their company. I will devise matter enough out of this Shallow\n    to keep Prince Harry in continual laughter the wearing out of six\n    fashions, which is four terms, or two actions; and \'a shall laugh\n    without intervallums. O, it is much that a lie with a slight\n    oath, and a jest with a sad brow will do with a fellow that never\n    had the ache in his shoulders! O, you shall see him laugh till\n    his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up!\n  SHALLOW.  [Within]  Sir John!\n  FALSTAFF. I come, Master Shallow; I come, Master Shallow.\n Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nWestminster. The palace\n\nEnter, severally, WARWICK, and the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE\n\n  WARWICK. How now, my Lord Chief Justice; whither away?\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. How doth the King?\n  WARWICK. Exceeding well; his cares are now all ended.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. I hope, not dead.\n  WARWICK. He\'s walk\'d the way of nature;\n    And to our purposes he lives no more.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. I would his Majesty had call\'d me with him.\n    The service that I truly did his life\n    Hath left me open to all injuries.\n  WARWICK. Indeed, I think the young king loves you not.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. I know he doth not, and do arm myself\n    To welcome the condition of the time,\n    Which cannot look more hideously upon me\n    Than I have drawn it in my fantasy.\n\n              Enter LANCASTER, CLARENCE, GLOUCESTER,  \n                     WESTMORELAND, and others\n\n  WARWICK. Here comes the heavy issue of dead Harry.\n    O that the living Harry had the temper\n    Of he, the worst of these three gentlemen!\n    How many nobles then should hold their places\n    That must strike sail to spirits of vile sort!\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. O God, I fear all will be overturn\'d.\n  PRINCE JOHN. Good morrow, cousin Warwick, good morrow.\n  GLOUCESTER & CLARENCE. Good morrow, cousin.\n  PRINCE JOHN. We meet like men that had forgot to speak.\n  WARWICK. We do remember; but our argument\n    Is all too heavy to admit much talk.\n  PRINCE JOHN. Well, peace be with him that hath made us heavy!\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Peace be with us, lest we be heavier!\n  PRINCE HUMPHREY. O, good my lord, you have lost a friend indeed;\n    And I dare swear you borrow not that face\n    Of seeming sorrow- it is sure your own.\n  PRINCE JOHN. Though no man be assur\'d what grace to find,\n    You stand in coldest expectation.  \n    I am the sorrier; would \'twere otherwise.\n  CLARENCE. Well, you must now speak Sir John Falstaff fair;\n    Which swims against your stream of quality.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Sweet Princes, what I did, I did in honour,\n    Led by th\' impartial conduct of my soul;\n    And never shall you see that I will beg\n    A ragged and forestall\'d remission.\n    If truth and upright innocency fail me,\n    I\'ll to the King my master that is dead,\n    And tell him who hath sent me after him.\n  WARWICK. Here comes the Prince.\n\n            Enter KING HENRY THE FIFTH, attended\n\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Good morrow, and God save your Majesty!\n  KING. This new and gorgeous garment, majesty,\n    Sits not so easy on me as you think.\n    Brothers, you mix your sadness with some fear.\n    This is the English, not the Turkish court;\n    Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,  \n    But Harry Harry. Yet be sad, good brothers,\n    For, by my faith, it very well becomes you.\n    Sorrow so royally in you appears\n    That I will deeply put the fashion on,\n    And wear it in my heart. Why, then, be sad;\n    But entertain no more of it, good brothers,\n    Than a joint burden laid upon us all.\n    For me, by heaven, I bid you be assur\'d,\n    I\'ll be your father and your brother too;\n    Let me but bear your love, I\'ll bear your cares.\n    Yet weep that Harry\'s dead, and so will I;\n    But Harry lives that shall convert those tears\n    By number into hours of happiness.\n  BROTHERS. We hope no otherwise from your Majesty.\n  KING. You all look strangely on me; and you most.\n    You are, I think, assur\'d I love you not.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. I am assur\'d, if I be measur\'d rightly,\n    Your Majesty hath no just cause to hate me.\n  KING. No?\n    How might a prince of my great hopes forget  \n    So great indignities you laid upon me?\n    What, rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison,\n    Th\' immediate heir of England! Was this easy?\n    May this be wash\'d in Lethe and forgotten?\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. I then did use the person of your father;\n    The image of his power lay then in me;\n    And in th\' administration of his law,\n    Whiles I was busy for the commonwealth,\n    Your Highness pleased to forget my place,\n    The majesty and power of law and justice,\n    The image of the King whom I presented,\n    And struck me in my very seat of judgment;\n    Whereon, as an offender to your father,\n    I gave bold way to my authority\n    And did commit you. If the deed were ill,\n    Be you contented, wearing now the garland,\n    To have a son set your decrees at nought,\n    To pluck down justice from your awful bench,\n    To trip the course of law, and blunt the sword\n    That guards the peace and safety of your person;  \n    Nay, more, to spurn at your most royal image,\n    And mock your workings in a second body.\n    Question your royal thoughts, make the case yours;\n    Be now the father, and propose a son;\n    Hear your own dignity so much profan\'d,\n    See your most dreadful laws so loosely slighted,\n    Behold yourself so by a son disdain\'d;\n    And then imagine me taking your part\n    And, in your power, soft silencing your son.\n    After this cold considerance, sentence me;\n    And, as you are a king, speak in your state\n    What I have done that misbecame my place,\n    My person, or my liege\'s sovereignty.\n  KING. You are right, Justice, and you weigh this well;\n    Therefore still bear the balance and the sword;\n    And I do wish your honours may increase\n    Till you do live to see a son of mine\n    Offend you, and obey you, as I did.\n    So shall I live to speak my father\'s words:\n    \'Happy am I that have a man so bold  \n    That dares do justice on my proper son;\n    And not less happy, having such a son\n    That would deliver up his greatness so\n    Into the hands of justice.\' You did commit me;\n    For which I do commit into your hand\n    Th\' unstained sword that you have us\'d to bear;\n    With this remembrance- that you use the same\n    With the like bold, just, and impartial spirit\n    As you have done \'gainst me. There is my hand.\n    You shall be as a father to my youth;\n    My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear;\n    And I will stoop and humble my intents\n    To your well-practis\'d wise directions.\n    And, Princes all, believe me, I beseech you,\n    My father is gone wild into his grave,\n    For in his tomb lie my affections;\n    And with his spirits sadly I survive,\n    To mock the expectation of the world,\n    To frustrate prophecies, and to raze out\n    Rotten opinion, who hath writ me down  \n    After my seeming. The tide of blood in me\n    Hath proudly flow\'d in vanity till now.\n    Now doth it turn and ebb back to the sea,\n    Where it shall mingle with the state of floods,\n    And flow henceforth in formal majesty.\n    Now call we our high court of parliament;\n    And let us choose such limbs of noble counsel,\n    That the great body of our state may go\n    In equal rank with the best govern\'d nation;\n    That war, or peace, or both at once, may be\n    As things acquainted and familiar to us;\n    In which you, father, shall have foremost hand.\n    Our coronation done, we will accite,\n    As I before rememb\'red, all our state;\n    And- God consigning to my good intents-\n    No prince nor peer shall have just cause to say,\n    God shorten Harry\'s happy life one day.               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nGloucestershire. SHALLOW\'S orchard\n\nEnter FALSTAFF, SHALLOW, SILENCE, BARDOLPH, the PAGE, and DAVY\n\n  SHALLOW. Nay, you shall see my orchard, where, in an arbour, we\n    will eat a last year\'s pippin of mine own graffing, with a dish\n    of caraways, and so forth. Come, cousin Silence. And then to bed.\n  FALSTAFF. Fore God, you have here a goodly dwelling and rich.\n  SHALLOW. Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all, Sir John\n    -marry, good air. Spread, Davy, spread, Davy; well said, Davy.\n  FALSTAFF. This Davy serves you for good uses; he is your\n    serving-man and your husband.\n  SHALLOW. A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet, Sir\n    John. By the mass, I have drunk too much sack at supper. A good\n    varlet. Now sit down, now sit down; come, cousin.\n  SILENCE. Ah, sirrah! quoth-a- we shall               [Singing]\n\n              Do nothing but eat and make good cheer,\n              And praise God for the merry year;\n              When flesh is cheap and females dear,  \n              And lusty lads roam here and there,\n                  So merrily,\n                And ever among so merrily.\n\n  FALSTAFF. There\'s a merry heart! Good Master Silence, I\'ll give you\n    a health for that anon.\n  SHALLOW. Give Master Bardolph some wine, Davy.\n  DAVY. Sweet sir, sit; I\'ll be with you anon; most sweet sir, sit.\n    Master Page, good Master Page, sit. Proface! What you want in\n    meat, we\'ll have in drink. But you must bear; the heart\'s all.\n Exit\n  SHALLOW. Be merry, Master Bardolph; and, my little soldier there,\n    be merry.\n  SILENCE.  [Singing]\n\n         Be merry, be merry, my wife has all;\n         For women are shrews, both short and tall;\n         \'Tis merry in hall when beards wag an;\n           And welcome merry Shrove-tide.\n         Be merry, be merry.  \n\n  FALSTAFF. I did not think Master Silence had been a man of this\n    mettle.\n  SILENCE. Who, I? I have been merry twice and once ere now.\n\n                          Re-enter DAVY\n\n  DAVY.  [To BARDOLPH]  There\'s a dish of leather-coats for you.\n  SHALLOW. Davy!\n  DAVY. Your worship! I\'ll be with you straight.  [To BARDOLPH]\n    A cup of wine, sir?\n  SILENCE.  [Singing]\n\n         A cup of wine that\'s brisk and fine,\n         And drink unto the leman mine;\n           And a merry heart lives long-a.\n\n  FALSTAFF. Well said, Master Silence.\n  SILENCE. An we shall be merry, now comes in the sweet o\' th\' night.\n  FALSTAFF. Health and long life to you, Master Silence!  \n  SILENCE.  [Singing]\n\n         Fill the cup, and let it come,\n         I\'ll pledge you a mile to th\' bottom.\n\n  SHALLOW. Honest Bardolph, welcome; if thou want\'st anything and\n    wilt not call, beshrew thy heart. Welcome, my little tiny thief\n    and welcome indeed too. I\'ll drink to Master Bardolph, and to all\n    the cabileros about London.\n  DAVY. I hope to see London once ere I die.\n  BARDOLPH. An I might see you there, Davy!\n  SHALLOW. By the mass, you\'R crack a quart together- ha! will you\n    not, Master Bardolph?\n  BARDOLPH. Yea, sir, in a pottle-pot.\n  SHALLOW. By God\'s liggens, I thank thee. The knave will stick by\n    thee, I can assure thee that. \'A will not out, \'a; \'tis true\n    bred.\n  BARDOLPH. And I\'ll stick by him, sir.\n  SHALLOW. Why, there spoke a king. Lack nothing; be merry.\n    [One knocks at door]  Look who\'s at door there, ho! Who knocks?  \n                                                       Exit DAVY\n  FALSTAFF.  [To SILENCE, who has drunk a bumper]  Why, now you have\n    done me right.\n  SILENCE.  [Singing]\n\n         Do me right,\n         And dub me knight.\n           Samingo.\n\n    Is\'t not so?\n  FALSTAFF. \'Tis so.\n  SILENCE. Is\'t so? Why then, say an old man can do somewhat.\n\n                        Re-enter DAVY\n\n  DAVY. An\'t please your worship, there\'s one Pistol come from the\n    court with news.\n  FALSTAFF. From the court? Let him come in.\n\n                        Enter PISTOL  \n\n    How now, Pistol?\n  PISTOL. Sir John, God save you!\n  FALSTAFF. What wind blew you hither, Pistol?\n  PISTOL. Not the ill wind which blows no man to good. Sweet knight,\n    thou art now one of the greatest men in this realm.\n  SILENCE. By\'r lady, I think \'a be, but goodman Puff of Barson.\n  PISTOL. Puff!\n    Puff in thy teeth, most recreant coward base!\n    Sir John, I am thy Pistol and thy friend,\n    And helter-skelter have I rode to thee;\n    And tidings do I bring, and lucky joys,\n    And golden times, and happy news of price.\n  FALSTAFF. I pray thee now, deliver them like a man of this world.\n  PISTOL. A foutra for the world and worldlings base!\n    I speak of Africa and golden joys.\n  FALSTAFF. O base Assyrian knight, what is thy news?\n    Let King Cophetua know the truth thereof.\n  SILENCE.  [Singing]  And Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John.\n  PISTOL. Shall dunghill curs confront the Helicons?  \n    And shall good news be baffled?\n    Then, Pistol, lay thy head in Furies\' lap.\n  SHALLOW. Honest gentleman, I know not your breeding.\n  PISTOL. Why, then, lament therefore.\n  SHALLOW. Give me pardon, sir. If, sir, you come with news from the\n    court, I take it there\'s but two ways- either to utter them or\n    conceal them. I am, sir, under the King, in some authority.\n  PISTOL. Under which king, Bezonian? Speak, or die.\n  SHALLOW. Under King Harry.\n  PISTOL. Harry the Fourth- or Fifth?\n  SHALLOW. Harry the Fourth.\n  PISTOL. A foutra for thine office!\n    Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is King;\n    Harry the Fifth\'s the man. I speak the truth.\n    When Pistol lies, do this; and fig me, like\n    The bragging Spaniard.\n  FALSTAFF. What, is the old king dead?\n  PISTOL. As nail in door. The things I speak are just.\n  FALSTAFF. Away, Bardolph! saddle my horse. Master Robert Shallow,\n    choose what office thou wilt in the land, \'tis thine. Pistol, I  \n    will double-charge thee with dignities.\n  BARDOLPH. O joyful day!\n    I would not take a knighthood for my fortune.\n  PISTOL. What, I do bring good news?\n  FALSTAFF. Carry Master Silence to bed. Master Shallow, my Lord\n    Shallow, be what thou wilt- I am Fortune\'s steward. Get on thy\n    boots; we\'ll ride all night. O sweet Pistol! Away, Bardolph!\n    [Exit BARDOLPH]  Come, Pistol, utter more to me; and withal\n    devise something to do thyself good. Boot, boot, Master Shallow!\n    I know the young King is sick for me. Let us take any man\'s\n    horses: the laws of England are at my commandment. Blessed are\n    they that have been my friends; and woe to my Lord Chief Justice!\n  PISTOL. Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also!\n    \'Where is the life that late I led?\' say they.\n    Why, here it is; welcome these pleasant days!         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nLondon. A street\n\nEnter BEADLES, dragging in HOSTESS QUICKLY and DOLL TEARSHEET\n\n  HOSTESS. No, thou arrant knave; I would to God that I might die,\n    that I might have thee hang\'d. Thou hast drawn my shoulder out of\n    joint.\n  FIRST BEADLE. The constables have delivered her over to me; and she\n    shall have whipping-cheer enough, I warrant her. There hath been\n    a man or two lately kill\'d about her.\n  DOLL. Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie. Come on; I\'ll tell thee what,\n    thou damn\'d tripe-visag\'d rascal, an the child I now go with do\n    miscarry, thou wert better thou hadst struck thy mother, thou\n    paper-fac\'d villain.\n  HOSTESS. O the Lord, that Sir John were come! He would make this a\n    bloody day to somebody. But I pray God the fruit of her womb\n    miscarry!\n  FIRST BEADLE. If it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions again;\n    you have but eleven now. Come, I charge you both go with me; for\n    the man is dead that you and Pistol beat amongst you.  \n  DOLL. I\'ll tell you what, you thin man in a censer, I will have you\n    as soundly swing\'d for this- you blue-bottle rogue, you filthy\n    famish\'d correctioner, if you be not swing\'d, I\'ll forswear\n    half-kirtles.\n  FIRST BEADLE. Come, come, you she knight-errant, come.\n  HOSTESS. O God, that right should thus overcome might!\n    Well, of sufferance comes ease.\n  DOLL. Come, you rogue, come; bring me to a justice.\n  HOSTESS. Ay, come, you starv\'d bloodhound.\n  DOLL. Goodman death, goodman bones!\n  HOSTESS. Thou atomy, thou!\n  DOLL. Come, you thin thing! come, you rascal!\n  FIRST BEADLE. Very well.                                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nWestminster. Near the Abbey\n\nEnter GROOMS, strewing rushes\n\n  FIRST GROOM. More rushes, more rushes!\n  SECOND GROOM. The trumpets have sounded twice.\n  THIRD GROOM. \'Twill be two o\'clock ere they come from the\n    coronation. Dispatch, dispatch.                       Exeunt\n\n        Trumpets sound, and the KING and his train pass\n       over the stage. After them enter FALSTAFF, SHALLOW,\n                  PISTOL, BARDOLPH, and page\n\n  FALSTAFF. Stand here by me, Master Robert Shallow; I will make the\n    King do you grace. I will leer upon him, as \'a comes by; and do\n    but mark the countenance that he will give me.\n  PISTOL. God bless thy lungs, good knight!\n  FALSTAFF. Come here, Pistol; stand behind me.  [To SHALLOW]  O, if\n    I had had to have made new liveries, I would have bestowed the\n    thousand pound I borrowed of you. But \'tis no matter; this poor\n    show doth better; this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.  \n  SHALLOW. It doth so.\n  FALSTAFF. It shows my earnestness of affection-\n  SHALLOW. It doth so.\n  FALSTAFF. My devotion-\n  SHALLOW. It doth, it doth, it doth.\n  FALSTAFF. As it were, to ride day and night; and not to deliberate,\n    not to remember, not to have patience to shift me-\n  SHALLOW. It is best, certain.\n  FALSTAFF. But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with\n    desire to see him; thinking of nothing else, putting all affairs\n    else in oblivion, as if there were nothing else to be done but to\n    see him.\n  PISTOL. \'Tis \'semper idem\' for \'obsque hoc nihil est.\' \'Tis all in\n    every part.\n  SHALLOW. \'Tis so, indeed.\n  PISTOL. My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver\n    And make thee rage.\n    Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts,\n    Is in base durance and contagious prison;\n    Hal\'d thither  \n    By most mechanical and dirty hand.\n    Rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto\'s snake,\n    For Doll is in. Pistol speaks nought but truth.\n  FALSTAFF. I will deliver her.\n                         [Shouts,within, and the trumpets sound]\n  PISTOL. There roar\'d the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.\n\n        Enter the KING and his train, the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE\n                               among them\n\n  FALSTAFF. God save thy Grace, King Hal; my royal Hal!\n  PISTOL. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!\n  FALSTAFF. God save thee, my sweet boy!\n  KING. My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Have you your wits? Know you what \'tis you speak?\n  FALSTAFF. My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!\n  KING. I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers.\n    How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!\n    I have long dreamt of such a kind of man,\n    So surfeit-swell\'d, so old, and so profane;  \n    But being awak\'d, I do despise my dream.\n    Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;\n    Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape\n    For thee thrice wider than for other men-\n    Reply not to me with a fool-born jest;\n    Presume not that I am the thing I was,\n    For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,\n    That I have turn\'d away my former self;\n    So will I those that kept me company.\n    When thou dost hear I am as I have been,\n    Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,\n    The tutor and the feeder of my riots.\n    Till then I banish thee, on pain of death,\n    As I have done the rest of my misleaders,\n    Not to come near our person by ten mile.\n    For competence of life I will allow you,\n    That lack of means enforce you not to evils;\n    And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,\n    We will, according to your strengths and qualities,\n    Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,  \n    To see perform\'d the tenour of our word.\n    Set on.                        Exeunt the KING and his train\n  FALSTAFF. Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pounds.\n  SHALLOW. Yea, marry, Sir John; which I beseech you to let me have\n    home with me.\n  FALSTAFF. That can hardly be, Master Shallow. Do not you grieve at\n    this; I shall be sent for in private to him. Look you, he must\n    seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancements; I will be the\n    man yet that shall make you great.\n  SHALLOW. I cannot perceive how, unless you give me your doublet,\n    and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me\n    have five hundred of my thousand.\n  FALSTAFF. Sir, I will be as good as my word. This that you heard\n    was but a colour.\n  SHALLOW. A colour that I fear you will die in, Sir John.\n  FALSTAFF. Fear no colours; go with me to dinner. Come, Lieutenant\n    Pistol; come, Bardolph. I shall be sent for soon at night.\n\n            Re-enter PRINCE JOHN, the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE,\n                            with officers  \n\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet;\n    Take all his company along with him.\n  FALSTAFF. My lord, my lord-\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. I cannot now speak. I will hear you soon.\n    Take them away.\n  PISTOL. Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta.\n           Exeunt all but PRINCE JOHN and the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE\n  PRINCE JOHN. I like this fair proceeding of the King\'s.\n    He hath intent his wonted followers\n    Shall all be very well provided for;\n    But all are banish\'d till their conversations\n    Appear more wise and modest to the world.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. And so they are.\n  PRINCE JOHN. The King hath call\'d his parliament, my lord.\n  CHIEF JUSTICE. He hath.\n  PRINCE JOHN. I will lay odds that, ere this year expire,\n    We bear our civil swords and native fire\n    As far as France. I heard a bird so sing,\n    Whose music, to my thinking, pleas\'d the King.  \n    Come, will you hence?                                 Exeunt\n\nEPILOGUE\n                           EPILOGUE.\n\n  First my fear, then my curtsy, last my speech. My fear, is your\ndispleasure; my curtsy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons.\nIf you look for a good speech now, you undo me; for what I have to say\nis of mine own making; and what, indeed, I should say will, I doubt,\nprove mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture.\nBe it known to you, as it is very well, I was lately here in the end\nof a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it and to promise you\na better. I meant, indeed, to pay you with this; which if like an\nill venture it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle\ncreditors, lose. Here I promis\'d you I would be, and here I commit\nmy body to your mercies. Bate me some, and I will pay you some, and,\nas most debtors do, promise you infinitely; and so I kneel down before\nyou- but, indeed, to pray for the Queen.\n  If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to\nuse my legs? And yet that were but light payment-to dance out of\nyour debt. But a good conscience will make any possible\nsatisfaction, and so would I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven\nme. If the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with\nthe gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.\n  One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloy\'d with fat\nmeat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in\nit, and make you merry with fair Katherine of France; where, for\nanything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already \'a be\nkilled with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr and this\nis not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid\nyou good night.\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1599\n\nTHE LIFE OF KING HENRY THE FIFTH\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\n  CHORUS\n  KING HENRY THE FIFTH\n  DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, brother to the King\n  DUKE OF BEDFORD,       "     "  "    "\n  DUKE OF EXETER, Uncle to the King\n  DUKE OF YORK, cousin to the King\n  EARL OF SALISBURY\n  EARL OF WESTMORELAND\n  EARL OF WARWICK\n  ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY\n  BISHOP OF ELY\n\n  EARL OF CAMBRIDGE, conspirator against the King\n  LORD SCROOP,            "         "     "    "\n  SIR THOMAS GREY,        "         "     "    "\n  SIR THOMAS ERPINGHAM, officer in the King\'s army\n  GOWER,                  "      "  "    "     "\n  FLUELLEN,               "      "  "    "     "\n  MACMORRIS,              "      "  "    "     "\n  JAMY,                   "      "  "    "     "  \n\n  BATES,    soldier in the King\'s army\n  COURT,       "    "   "    "     "\n  WILLIAMS,    "    "   "    "     "\n  NYM,         "    "   "    "     "\n  BARDOLPH,    "    "   "    "     "\n  PISTOL,      "    "   "    "     "\n\n  BOY                               A HERALD\n\n  CHARLES THE SIXTH, King of France\n  LEWIS, the Dauphin                DUKE OF BURGUNDY\n  DUKE OF ORLEANS                   DUKE OF BRITAINE\n  DUKE OF BOURBON                   THE CONSTABLE OF FRANCE\n  RAMBURES, French Lord\n  GRANDPRE,    "    "\n  GOVERNOR OF HARFLEUR              MONTJOY, a French herald\n  AMBASSADORS to the King of England\n\n  ISABEL, Queen of France  \n  KATHERINE, daughter to Charles and Isabel\n  ALICE, a lady attending her\n  HOSTESS of the Boar\'s Head, Eastcheap; formerly Mrs. Quickly, now\n    married to Pistol\n\n  Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Messengers, Attendants\n\n\n                              SCENE:\n                        England and France\n\nPROLOGUE\n                            PROLOGUE.\n\n                          Enter CHORUS\n\n CHORUS. O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend\n   The brightest heaven of invention,\n   A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,\n   And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!\n   Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,\n   Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,\n   Leash\'d in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire,\n   Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,\n   The flat unraised spirits that hath dar\'d\n   On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth\n   So great an object. Can this cockpit hold\n   The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram\n   Within this wooden O the very casques\n   That did affright the air at Agincourt?\n   O, pardon! since a crooked figure may\n   Attest in little place a million;\n   And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,\n   On your imaginary forces work.\n   Suppose within the girdle of these walls  \n   Are now confin\'d two mighty monarchies,\n   Whose high upreared and abutting fronts\n   The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.\n   Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts:\n   Into a thousand parts divide one man,\n   And make imaginary puissance;\n   Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them\n   Printing their proud hoofs i\' th\' receiving earth;\n   For \'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,\n   Carry them here and there, jumping o\'er times,\n   Turning th\' accomplishment of many years\n   Into an hour-glass; for the which supply,\n   Admit me Chorus to this history;\n   Who prologue-like, your humble patience pray\n   Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.               Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nLondon. An ante-chamber in the KING\'S palace\n\nEnter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY and the BISHOP OF ELY\n\n CANTERBURY. My lord, I\'ll tell you: that self bill is urg\'d\n   Which in th\' eleventh year of the last king\'s reign\n   Was like, and had indeed against us pass\'d\n   But that the scambling and unquiet time\n   Did push it out of farther question.\n ELY. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?\n CANTERBURY. It must be thought on. If it pass against us,\n   We lose the better half of our possession;\n   For all the temporal lands which men devout\n   By testament have given to the church\n   Would they strip from us; being valu\'d thus-\n   As much as would maintain, to the King\'s honour,\n   Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,\n   Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;\n   And, to relief of lazars and weak age,\n   Of indigent faint souls, past corporal toil,\n   A hundred alms-houses right well supplied;\n   And to the coffers of the King, beside,\n   A thousand pounds by th\' year: thus runs the bill.\n ELY. This would drink deep.\n CANTERBURY. \'T would drink the cup and all.\n ELY. But what prevention?\n CANTERBURY. The King is full of grace and fair regard.\n ELY. And a true lover of the holy Church.\n CANTERBURY. The courses of his youth promis\'d it not.\n   The breath no sooner left his father\'s body  \n   But that his wildness, mortified in him,\n   Seem\'d to die too; yea, at that very moment,\n   Consideration like an angel came\n   And whipp\'d th\' offending Adam out of him,\n   Leaving his body as a paradise\n   T\'envelop and contain celestial spirits.\n   Never was such a sudden scholar made;\n   Never came reformation in a flood,\n   With such a heady currance, scouring faults;\n   Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulnes\n   So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,\n   As in this king.\n ELY. We are blessed in the change.\n CANTERBURY. Hear him but reason in divinity,\n   And, all-admiring, with an inward wish\n   You would desire the King were made a prelate;\n   Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,\n   You would say it hath been all in all his study;\n   List his discourse of war, and you shall hear\n   A fearful battle rend\'red you in music.\n   Turn him to any cause of policy,\n   The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,  \n   Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks,\n   The air, a charter\'d libertine, is still,\n   And the mute wonder lurketh in men\'s ears\n   To steal his sweet and honey\'d sentences;\n   So that the art and practic part of life\n   Must be the mistress to this theoric;\n   Which is a wonder how his Grace should glean it,\n   Since his addiction was to courses vain,\n   His companies unletter\'d, rude, and shallow,\n   His hours fill\'d up with riots, banquets, sports;\n   And never noted in him any study,\n   Any retirement, any sequestration\n   From open haunts and popularity.\n ELY. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,\n   And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best\n   Neighbour\'d by fruit of baser quality;\n   And so the Prince obscur\'d his contemplation\n   Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt,\n   Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,\n   Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.\n CANTERBURY. It must be so; for miracles are ceas\'d;\n   And therefore we must needs admit the means  \n   How things are perfected.\n ELY. But, my good lord,\n   How now for mitigation of this bill\n   Urg\'d by the Commons? Doth his Majesty\n   Incline to it, or no?\n CANTERBURY. He seems indifferent\n   Or rather swaying more upon our part\n   Than cherishing th\' exhibiters against us;\n   For I have made an offer to his Majesty-\n   Upon our spiritual convocation\n   And in regard of causes now in hand,\n   Which I have open\'d to his Grace at large,\n   As touching France- to give a greater sum\n   Than ever at one time the clergy yet\n   Did to his predecessors part withal.\n ELY. How did this offer seem receiv\'d, my lord?\n CANTERBURY. With good acceptance of his Majesty;\n   Save that there was not time enough to hear,\n   As I perceiv\'d his Grace would fain have done,\n   The severals and unhidden passages\n   Of his true tides to some certain dukedoms,\n   And generally to the crown and seat of France,\n   Deriv\'d from Edward, his great-grandfather.\n ELY. What was th\' impediment that broke this off?\n CANTERBURY. The French ambassador upon that instant\n   Crav\'d audience; and the hour, I think, is come  \n   To give him hearing: is it four o\'clock?\n ELY. It is.\n CANTERBURY. Then go we in, to know his embassy;\n   Which I could with a ready guess declare,\n   Before the Frenchman speak a word of it.\n ELY. I\'ll wait upon you, and I long to hear it.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nLondon. The Presence Chamber in the KING\'S palace\n\nEnter the KING, GLOUCESTER, BEDFORD, EXETER, WARWICK, WESTMORELAND,\nand attendants\n\n  KING HENRY. Where is my gracious Lord of Canterbury?\n  EXETER. Not here in presence.\n  KING HENRY. Send for him, good uncle.\n  WESTMORELAND. Shall we call in th\' ambassador, my liege?\n  KING HENRY. Not yet, my cousin; we would be resolv\'d,\n    Before we hear him, of some things of weight\n    That task our thoughts, concerning us and France.\n\n              Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY and\n                       the BISHOP OF ELY\n\n  CANTERBURY. God and his angels guard your sacred throne,\n    And make you long become it!\n  KING HENRY. Sure, we thank you.\n    My learned lord, we pray you to proceed,\n    And justly and religiously unfold  \n    Why the law Salique, that they have in France,\n    Or should or should not bar us in our claim;\n    And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord,\n    That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading,\n    Or nicely charge your understanding soul\n    With opening titles miscreate whose right\n    Suits not in native colours with the truth;\n    For God doth know how many, now in health,\n    Shall drop their blood in approbation\n    Of what your reverence shall incite us to.\n    Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,\n    How you awake our sleeping sword of war-\n    We charge you, in the name of God, take heed;\n    For never two such kingdoms did contend\n    Without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops\n    Are every one a woe, a sore complaint,\n    \'Gainst him whose wrongs gives edge unto the swords\n    That makes such waste in brief mortality.\n    Under this conjuration speak, my lord;\n    For we will hear, note, and believe in heart,  \n    That what you speak is in your conscience wash\'d\n    As pure as sin with baptism.\n  CANTERBURY. Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you peers,\n    That owe yourselves, your lives, and services,\n    To this imperial throne. There is no bar\n    To make against your Highness\' claim to France\n    But this, which they produce from Pharamond:\n    \'In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant\'-\n    \'No woman shall succeed in Salique land\';\n    Which Salique land the French unjustly gloze\n    To be the realm of France, and Pharamond\n    The founder of this law and female bar.\n    Yet their own authors faithfully affirm\n    That the land Salique is in Germany,\n    Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe;\n    Where Charles the Great, having subdu\'d the Saxons,\n    There left behind and settled certain French;\n    Who, holding in disdain the German women\n    For some dishonest manners of their life,\n    Establish\'d then this law: to wit, no female  \n    Should be inheritrix in Salique land;\n    Which Salique, as I said, \'twixt Elbe and Sala,\n    Is at this day in Germany call\'d Meisen.\n    Then doth it well appear the Salique law\n    Was not devised for the realm of France;\n    Nor did the French possess the Salique land\n    Until four hundred one and twenty years\n    After defunction of King Pharamond,\n    Idly suppos\'d the founder of this law;\n    Who died within the year of our redemption\n    Four hundred twenty-six; and Charles the Great\n    Subdu\'d the Saxons, and did seat the French\n    Beyond the river Sala, in the year\n    Eight hundred five. Besides, their writers say,\n    King Pepin, which deposed Childeric,\n    Did, as heir general, being descended\n    Of Blithild, which was daughter to King Clothair,\n    Make claim and title to the crown of France.\n    Hugh Capet also, who usurp\'d the crown\n    Of Charles the Duke of Lorraine, sole heir male  \n    Of the true line and stock of Charles the Great,\n    To find his title with some shows of truth-\n    Though in pure truth it was corrupt and naught-\n    Convey\'d himself as th\' heir to th\' Lady Lingare,\n    Daughter to Charlemain, who was the son\n    To Lewis the Emperor, and Lewis the son\n    Of Charles the Great. Also King Lewis the Tenth,\n    Who was sole heir to the usurper Capet,\n    Could not keep quiet in his conscience,\n    Wearing the crown of France, till satisfied\n    That fair Queen Isabel, his grandmother,\n    Was lineal of the Lady Ermengare,\n    Daughter to Charles the foresaid Duke of Lorraine;\n    By the which marriage the line of Charles the Great\n    Was re-united to the Crown of France.\n    So that, as clear as is the summer\'s sun,\n    King Pepin\'s title, and Hugh Capet\'s claim,\n    King Lewis his satisfaction, all appear\n    To hold in right and tide of the female;\n    So do the kings of France unto this day,  \n    Howbeit they would hold up this Salique law\n    To bar your Highness claiming from the female;\n    And rather choose to hide them in a net\n    Than amply to imbar their crooked tides\n    Usurp\'d from you and your progenitors.\n  KING HENRY. May I with right and conscience make this claim?\n  CANTERBURY. The sin upon my head, dread sovereign!\n    For in the book of Numbers is it writ,\n    When the man dies, let the inheritance\n    Descend unto the daughter. Gracious lord,\n    Stand for your own, unwind your bloody flag,\n    Look back into your mighty ancestors.\n    Go, my dread lord, to your great-grandsire\'s tomb,\n    From whom you claim; invoke his warlike spirit,\n    And your great-uncle\'s, Edward the Black Prince,\n    Who on the French ground play\'d a tragedy,\n    Making defeat on the fun power of France,\n    Whiles his most mighty father on a hill\n    Stood smiling to behold his lion\'s whelp\n    Forage in blood of French nobility.  \n    O noble English, that could entertain\n    With half their forces the full pride of France,\n    And let another half stand laughing by,\n    All out of work and cold for action!\n  ELY. Awake remembrance of these valiant dead,\n    And with your puissant arm renew their feats.\n    You are their heir; you sit upon their throne;\n    The blood and courage that renowned them\n    Runs in your veins; and my thrice-puissant liege\n    Is in the very May-morn of his youth,\n    Ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises.\n  EXETER. Your brother kings and monarchs of the earth\n    Do all expect that you should rouse yourself,\n    As did the former lions of your blood.\n  WESTMORELAND. They know your Grace hath cause and means and might-\n    So hath your Highness; never King of England\n    Had nobles richer and more loyal subjects,\n    Whose hearts have left their bodies here in England\n    And lie pavilion\'d in the fields of France.\n  CANTERBURY. O, let their bodies follow, my dear liege,  \n    With blood and sword and fire to win your right!\n    In aid whereof we of the spiritualty\n    Will raise your Highness such a mighty sum\n    As never did the clergy at one time\n    Bring in to any of your ancestors.\n  KING HENRY. We must not only arm t\' invade the French,\n    But lay down our proportions to defend\n    Against the Scot, who will make road upon us\n    With all advantages.\n  CANTERBURY. They of those marches, gracious sovereign,\n    Shall be a wall sufficient to defend\n    Our inland from the pilfering borderers.\n  KING HENRY. We do not mean the coursing snatchers only,\n    But fear the main intendment of the Scot,\n    Who hath been still a giddy neighbour to us;\n    For you shall read that my great-grandfather\n    Never went with his forces into France\n    But that the Scot on his unfurnish\'d kingdom\n    Came pouring, like the tide into a breach,\n    With ample and brim fulness of his force,  \n    Galling the gleaned land with hot assays,\n    Girdling with grievous siege castles and towns;\n    That England, being empty of defence,\n    Hath shook and trembled at th\' ill neighbourhood.\n  CANTERBURY. She hath been then more fear\'d than harm\'d, my liege;\n    For hear her but exampled by herself:\n    When all her chivalry hath been in France,\n    And she a mourning widow of her nobles,\n    She hath herself not only well defended\n    But taken and impounded as a stray\n    The King of Scots; whom she did send to France,\n    To fill King Edward\'s fame with prisoner kings,\n    And make her chronicle as rich with praise\n    As is the ooze and bottom of the sea\n    With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries.\n  WESTMORELAND. But there\'s a saying, very old and true:\n\n          \'If that you will France win,\n          Then with Scotland first begin.\'\n  \n    For once the eagle England being in prey,\n    To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot\n    Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs,\n    Playing the mouse in absence of the cat,\n    To tear and havoc more than she can eat.\n  EXETER. It follows, then, the cat must stay at home;\n    Yet that is but a crush\'d necessity,\n    Since we have locks to safeguard necessaries\n    And pretty traps to catch the petty thieves.\n    While that the armed hand doth fight abroad,\n    Th\' advised head defends itself at home;\n    For government, though high, and low, and lower,\n    Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,\n    Congreeing in a full and natural close,\n    Like music.\n  CANTERBURY. Therefore doth heaven divide\n    The state of man in divers functions,\n    Setting endeavour in continual motion;\n    To which is fixed as an aim or but\n    Obedience; for so work the honey bees,  \n    Creatures that by a rule in nature teach\n    The act of order to a peopled kingdom.\n    They have a king, and officers of sorts,\n    Where some like magistrates correct at home;\n    Others like merchants venture trade abroad;\n    Others like soldiers, armed in their stings,\n    Make boot upon the summer\'s velvet buds,\n    Which pillage they with merry march bring home\n    To the tent-royal of their emperor;\n    Who, busied in his majesty, surveys\n    The singing masons building roofs of gold,\n    The civil citizens kneading up the honey,\n    The poor mechanic porters crowding in\n    Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,\n    The sad-ey\'d justice, with his surly hum,\n    Delivering o\'er to executors pale\n    The lazy yawning drone. I this infer,\n    That many things, having full reference\n    To one consent, may work contrariously;\n    As many arrows loosed several ways  \n    Come to one mark, as many ways meet in one town,\n    As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea,\n    As many lines close in the dial\'s centre;\n    So many a thousand actions, once afoot,\n    End in one purpose, and be all well home\n    Without defeat. Therefore to France, my liege.\n    Divide your happy England into four;\n    Whereof take you one quarter into France,\n    And you withal shall make all Gallia shake.\n    If we, with thrice such powers left at home,\n    Cannot defend our own doors from the dog,\n    Let us be worried, and our nation lose\n    The name of hardiness and policy.\n  KING HENRY. Call in the messengers sent from the Dauphin.\n                                          Exeunt some attendants\n    Now are we well resolv\'d; and, by God\'s help\n    And yours, the noble sinews of our power,\n    France being ours, we\'ll bend it to our awe,\n    Or break it all to pieces; or there we\'ll sit,\n    Ruling in large and ample empery  \n    O\'er France and all her almost kingly dukedoms,\n    Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn,\n    Tombless, with no remembrance over them.\n    Either our history shall with full mouth\n    Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave,\n    Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,\n    Not worshipp\'d with a waxen epitaph.\n\n                  Enter AMBASSADORS of France\n\n    Now are we well prepar\'d to know the pleasure\n    Of our fair cousin Dauphin; for we hear\n    Your greeting is from him, not from the King.\n  AMBASSADOR. May\'t please your Majesty to give us leave\n    Freely to render what we have in charge;\n    Or shall we sparingly show you far of\n    The Dauphin\'s meaning and our embassy?\n  KING HENRY. We are no tyrant, but a Christian king,\n    Unto whose grace our passion is as subject\n    As are our wretches fett\'red in our prisons;  \n    Therefore with frank and with uncurbed plainness\n    Tell us the Dauphin\'s mind.\n  AMBASSADOR. Thus then, in few.\n    Your Highness, lately sending into France,\n    Did claim some certain dukedoms in the right\n    Of your great predecessor, King Edward the Third.\n    In answer of which claim, the Prince our master\n    Says that you savour too much of your youth,\n    And bids you be advis\'d there\'s nought in France\n    That can be with a nimble galliard won;\n    You cannot revel into dukedoms there.\n    He therefore sends you, meeter for your spirit,\n    This tun of treasure; and, in lieu of this,\n    Desires you let the dukedoms that you claim\n    Hear no more of you. This the Dauphin speaks.\n  KING HENRY. What treasure, uncle?\n  EXETER. Tennis-balls, my liege.\n  KING HENRY. We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;\n    His present and your pains we thank you for.\n    When we have match\'d our rackets to these balls,  \n    We will in France, by God\'s grace, play a set\n    Shall strike his father\'s crown into the hazard.\n    Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler\n    That all the courts of France will be disturb\'d\n    With chaces. And we understand him well,\n    How he comes o\'er us with our wilder days,\n    Not measuring what use we made of them.\n    We never valu\'d this poor seat of England;\n    And therefore, living hence, did give ourself\n    To barbarous licence; as \'tis ever common\n    That men are merriest when they are from home.\n    But tell the Dauphin I will keep my state,\n    Be like a king, and show my sail of greatness,\n    When I do rouse me in my throne of France;\n    For that I have laid by my majesty\n    And plodded like a man for working-days;\n    But I will rise there with so full a glory\n    That I will dazzle all the eyes of France,\n    Yea, strike the Dauphin blind to look on us.\n    And tell the pleasant Prince this mock of his  \n    Hath turn\'d his balls to gun-stones, and his soul\n    Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance\n    That shall fly with them; for many a thousand widows\n    Shall this his mock mock of their dear husbands;\n    Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down;\n    And some are yet ungotten and unborn\n    That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin\'s scorn.\n    But this lies all within the will of God,\n    To whom I do appeal; and in whose name,\n    Tell you the Dauphin, I am coming on,\n    To venge me as I may and to put forth\n    My rightful hand in a well-hallow\'d cause.\n    So get you hence in peace; and tell the Dauphin\n    His jest will savour but of shallow wit,\n    When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.\n    Convey them with safe conduct. Fare you well.\n                                              Exeunt AMBASSADORS\n  EXETER. This was a merry message.\n  KING HENRY. We hope to make the sender blush at it.\n    Therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour  \n    That may give furth\'rance to our expedition;\n    For we have now no thought in us but France,\n    Save those to God, that run before our business.\n    Therefore let our proportions for these wars\n    Be soon collected, and all things thought upon\n    That may with reasonable swiftness ad\n    More feathers to our wings; for, God before,\n    We\'ll chide this Dauphin at his father\'s door.\n    Therefore let every man now task his thought\n    That this fair action may on foot be brought.         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. PROLOGUE.\n\nFlourish. Enter CHORUS\n\n  CHORUS. Now all the youth of England are on fire,\n    And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;\n    Now thrive the armourers, and honour\'s thought\n    Reigns solely in the breast of every man;\n    They sell the pasture now to buy the horse,\n    Following the mirror of all Christian kings\n    With winged heels, as English Mercuries.\n    For now sits Expectation in the air,\n    And hides a sword from hilts unto the point\n    With crowns imperial, crowns, and coronets,\n    Promis\'d to Harry and his followers.\n    The French, advis\'d by good intelligence\n    Of this most dreadful preparation,\n    Shake in their fear and with pale policy\n    Seek to divert the English purposes.\n    O England! model to thy inward greatness,\n    Like little body with a mighty heart,\n    What mightst thou do that honour would thee do,  \n    Were all thy children kind and natural!\n    But see thy fault! France hath in thee found out\n    A nest of hollow bosoms, which he fills\n    With treacherous crowns; and three corrupted men-\n    One, Richard Earl of Cambridge, and the second,\n    Henry Lord Scroop of Masham, and the third,\n    Sir Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland,\n    Have, for the gilt of France- O guilt indeed!-\n    Confirm\'d conspiracy with fearful France;\n    And by their hands this grace of kings must die-\n    If hell and treason hold their promises,\n    Ere he take ship for France- and in Southampton.\n    Linger your patience on, and we\'ll digest\n    Th\' abuse of distance, force a play.\n    The sum is paid, the traitors are agreed,\n    The King is set from London, and the scene\n    Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton;\n    There is the play-house now, there must you sit,\n    And thence to France shall we convey you safe\n    And bring you back, charming the narrow seas  \n    To give you gentle pass; for, if we may,\n    We\'ll not offend one stomach with our play.\n    But, till the King come forth, and not till then,\n    Unto Southampton do we shift our scene.                 Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE I.\nLondon. Before the Boar\'s Head Tavern, Eastcheap\n\nEnter CORPORAL NYM and LIEUTENANT BARDOLPH\n\n  BARDOLPH. Well met, Corporal Nym.\n  NYM. Good morrow, Lieutenant Bardolph.\n  BARDOLPH. What, are Ancient Pistol and you friends yet?\n  NYM. For my part, I care not; I say little, but when time shall\n    serve, there shall be smiles- but that shall be as it may. I dare\n    not fight; but I will wink and hold out mine iron. It is a simple\n    one; but what though? It will toast cheese, and it will endure\n    cold as another man\'s sword will; and there\'s an end.\n  BARDOLPH. I will bestow a breakfast to make you friends; and we\'ll\n    be all three sworn brothers to France. Let\'t be so, good Corporal\n    Nym.\n  NYM. Faith, I will live so long as I may, that\'s the certain of it;\n    and when I cannot live any longer, I will do as I may. That is my\n    rest, that is the rendezvous of it.\n  BARDOLPH. It is certain, Corporal, that he is married to Nell\n    Quickly; and certainly she did you wrong, for you were\n    troth-plight to her.  \n  NYM. I cannot tell; things must be as they may. Men may sleep, and\n    they may have their throats about them at that time; and some say\n    knives have edges. It must be as it may; though patience be a\n    tired mare, yet she will plod. There must be conclusions. Well, I\n    cannot tell.\n\n                     Enter PISTOL and HOSTESS\n\n  BARDOLPH. Here comes Ancient Pistol and his wife. Good Corporal, be\n    patient here.\n  NYM. How now, mine host Pistol!\n  PISTOL. Base tike, call\'st thou me host?\n    Now by this hand, I swear I scorn the term;\n    Nor shall my Nell keep lodgers.\n  HOSTESS. No, by my troth, not long; for we cannot lodge and board a\n    dozen or fourteen gentlewomen that live honestly by the prick of\n    their needles, but it will be thought we keep a bawdy-house\n    straight. [Nym draws] O well-a-day, Lady, if he be not drawn! Now\n    we shall see wilful adultery and murder committed.\n  BARDOLPH. Good Lieutenant, good Corporal, offer nothing here.\n  NYM. Pish!  \n  PISTOL. Pish for thee, Iceland dog! thou prick-ear\'d cur of\n    Iceland!\n  HOSTESS. Good Corporal Nym, show thy valour, and put up your sword.\n  NYM. Will you shog off? I would have you solus.\n  PISTOL. \'Solus,\' egregious dog? O viper vile!\n    The \'solus\' in thy most mervailous face;\n    The \'solus\' in thy teeth, and in thy throat,\n    And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy;\n    And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth!\n    I do retort the \'solus\' in thy bowels;\n    For I can take, and Pistol\'s cock is up,\n    And flashing fire will follow.\n  NYM. I am not Barbason: you cannot conjure me. I have an humour to\n    knock you indifferently well. If you grow foul with me, Pistol, I\n    will scour you with my rapier, as I may, in fair terms; if you\n    would walk off I would prick your guts a little, in good terms,\n    as I may, and thaes the humour of it.\n  PISTOL. O braggart vile and damned furious wight!\n    The grave doth gape and doting death is near;\n    Therefore exhale.                             [PISTOL draws]  \n  BARDOLPH. Hear me, hear me what I say: he that strikes the first\n    stroke I\'ll run him up to the hilts, as I am a soldier.\n                                                         [Draws]\n  PISTOL. An oath of mickle might; and fury shall abate.\n                           [PISTOL and Nym sheathe their swords]\n    Give me thy fist, thy fore-foot to me give;\n    Thy spirits are most tall.\n  NYM. I will cut thy throat one time or other, in fair terms; that\n    is the humour of it.\n  PISTOL. \'Couple a gorge!\'\n    That is the word. I thee defy again.\n    O hound of Crete, think\'st thou my spouse to get?\n    No; to the spital go,\n    And from the powd\'ring tub of infamy\n    Fetch forth the lazar kite of Cressid\'s kind,\n    Doll Tearsheet she by name, and her espouse.\n    I have, and I will hold, the quondam Quickly\n    For the only she; and- pauca, there\'s enough.\n    Go to.\n  \n                        Enter the Boy\n\n  BOY. Mine host Pistol, you must come to my master; and your\n    hostess- he is very sick, and would to bed. Good Bardolph, put\n    thy face between his sheets, and do the office of a warming-pan.\n    Faith, he\'s very ill.\n  BARDOLPH. Away, you rogue.\n  HOSTESS. By my troth, he\'ll yield the crow a pudding one of these\n    days: the King has kill\'d his heart. Good husband, come home\n    presently.                            Exeunt HOSTESS and BOY\n  BARDOLPH. Come, shall I make you two friends? We must to France\n    together; why the devil should we keep knives to cut one\n    another\'s throats?\n  PISTOL. Let floods o\'erswell, and fiends for food howl on!\n  NYM. You\'ll pay me the eight shillings I won of you at betting?\n  PISTOL. Base is the slave that pays.\n  NYM. That now I will have; that\'s the humour of it.\n  PISTOL. As manhood shall compound: push home.\n                                           [PISTOL and Nym draw]\n  BARDOLPH. By this sword, he that makes the first thrust I\'ll kill  \n    him; by this sword, I will.\n  PISTOL. Sword is an oath, and oaths must have their course.\n                                            [Sheathes his sword]\n  BARDOLPH. Corporal Nym, an thou wilt be friends, be friends; an\n    thou wilt not, why then be enemies with me too. Prithee put up.\n  NYM. I shall have my eight shillings I won of you at betting?\n  PISTOL. A noble shalt thou have, and present pay;\n    And liquor likewise will I give to thee,\n    And friendship shall combine, and brotherhood.\n    I\'ll live by Nym and Nym shall live by me.\n    Is not this just? For I shall sutler be\n    Unto the camp, and profits will accrue.\n    Give me thy hand.\n  NYM. [Sheathing his sword] I shall have my noble?\n  PISTOL. In cash most justly paid.\n  NYM. [Shaking hands] Well, then, that\'s the humour of\'t.\n\n                       Re-enter HOSTESS\n\n  HOSTESS. As ever you come of women, come in quickly to Sir John.  \n    Ah, poor heart! he is so shak\'d of a burning quotidian tertian\n    that it is most lamentable to behold. Sweet men, come to him.\n  NYM. The King hath run bad humours on the knight; that\'s the even\n    of it.\n  PISTOL. Nym, thou hast spoke the right;\n    His heart is fracted and corroborate.\n  NYM. The King is a good king, but it must be as it may; he passes\n    some humours and careers.\n  PISTOL. Let us condole the knight; for, lambkins, we will live.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nSouthampton. A council-chamber\n\nEnter EXETER, BEDFORD, and WESTMORELAND\n\n  BEDFORD. Fore God, his Grace is bold, to trust these traitors.\n  EXETER. They shall be apprehended by and by.\n  WESTMORELAND. How smooth and even they do bear themselves,\n    As if allegiance in their bosoms sat,\n    Crowned with faith and constant loyalty!\n  BEDFORD. The King hath note of all that they intend,\n    By interception which they dream not of.\n  EXETER. Nay, but the man that was his bedfellow,\n    Whom he hath dull\'d and cloy\'d with gracious favours-\n    That he should, for a foreign purse, so sell\n    His sovereign\'s life to death and treachery!\n\n               Trumpets sound. Enter the KING, SCROOP,\n                  CAMBRIDGE, GREY, and attendants\n\n  KING HENRY. Now sits the wind fair, and we will aboard.\n    My Lord of Cambridge, and my kind Lord of Masham,  \n    And you, my gentle knight, give me your thoughts.\n    Think you not that the pow\'rs we bear with us\n    Will cut their passage through the force of France,\n    Doing the execution and the act\n    For which we have in head assembled them?\n  SCROOP. No doubt, my liege, if each man do his best.\n  KING HENRY. I doubt not that, since we are well persuaded\n    We carry not a heart with us from hence\n    That grows not in a fair consent with ours;\n    Nor leave not one behind that doth not wish\n    Success and conquest to attend on us.\n  CAMBRIDGE. Never was monarch better fear\'d and lov\'d\n    Than is your Majesty. There\'s not, I think, a subject\n    That sits in heart-grief and uneasines\n    Under the sweet shade of your government.\n  GREY. True: those that were your father\'s enemies\n    Have steep\'d their galls in honey, and do serve you\n    With hearts create of duty and of zeal.\n  KING HENRY. We therefore have great cause of thankfulness,\n    And shall forget the office of our hand  \n    Sooner than quittance of desert and merit\n    According to the weight and worthiness.\n  SCROOP. So service shall with steeled sinews toil,\n    And labour shall refresh itself with hope,\n    To do your Grace incessant services.\n  KING HENRY. We judge no less. Uncle of Exeter,\n    Enlarge the man committed yesterday\n    That rail\'d against our person. We consider\n    It was excess of wine that set him on;\n    And on his more advice we pardon him.\n  SCROOP. That\'s mercy, but too much security.\n    Let him be punish\'d, sovereign, lest example\n    Breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind.\n  KING HENRY. O, let us yet be merciful!\n  CAMBRIDGE. So may your Highness, and yet punish too.\n  GREY. Sir,\n    You show great mercy if you give him life,\n    After the taste of much correction.\n  KING HENRY. Alas, your too much love and care of me\n    Are heavy orisons \'gainst this poor wretch!  \n    If little faults proceeding on distemper\n    Shall not be wink\'d at, how shall we stretch our eye\n    When capital crimes, chew\'d, swallow\'d, and digested,\n    Appear before us? We\'ll yet enlarge that man,\n    Though Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, in their dear care\n    And tender preservation of our person,\n    Would have him punish\'d. And now to our French causes:\n    Who are the late commissioners?\n  CAMBRIDGE. I one, my lord.\n    Your Highness bade me ask for it to-day.\n  SCROOP. So did you me, my liege.\n  GREY. And I, my royal sovereign.\n  KING HENRY. Then, Richard Earl of Cambridge, there is yours;\n    There yours, Lord Scroop of Masham; and, Sir Knight,\n    Grey of Northumberland, this same is yours.\n    Read them, and know I know your worthiness.\n    My Lord of Westmoreland, and uncle Exeter,\n    We will aboard to-night. Why, how now, gentlemen?\n    What see you in those papers, that you lose\n    So much complexion? Look ye how they change!  \n    Their cheeks are paper. Why, what read you there\n    That have so cowarded and chas\'d your blood\n    Out of appearance?\n  CAMBRIDGE. I do confess my fault,\n    And do submit me to your Highness\' mercy.\n  GREY, SCROOP. To which we all appeal.\n  KING HENRY. The mercy that was quick in us but late\n   By your own counsel is suppress\'d and kill\'d.\n    You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy;\n    For your own reasons turn into your bosoms\n    As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.\n    See you, my princes and my noble peers,\n    These English monsters! My Lord of Cambridge here-\n    You know how apt our love was to accord\n    To furnish him with an appertinents\n    Belonging to his honour; and this man\n    Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspir\'d,\n    And sworn unto the practices of France\n    To kill us here in Hampton; to the which\n    This knight, no less for bounty bound to us  \n    Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But, O,\n    What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop, thou cruel,\n    Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature?\n    Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,\n    That knew\'st the very bottom of my soul,\n    That almost mightst have coin\'d me into gold,\n    Wouldst thou have practis\'d on me for thy use-\n    May it be possible that foreign hire\n    Could out of thee extract one spark of evil\n    That might annoy my finger? \'Tis so strange\n    That, though the truth of it stands off as gross\n    As black and white, my eye will scarcely see it.\n    Treason and murder ever kept together,\n    As two yoke-devils sworn to either\'s purpose,\n    Working so grossly in a natural cause\n    That admiration did not whoop at them;\n    But thou, \'gainst all proportion, didst bring in\n    Wonder to wait on treason and on murder;\n    And whatsoever cunning fiend it was\n    That wrought upon thee so preposterously  \n    Hath got the voice in hell for excellence;\n    And other devils that suggest by treasons\n    Do botch and bungle up damnation\n    With patches, colours, and with forms, being fetch\'d\n    From glist\'ring semblances of piety;\n    But he that temper\'d thee bade thee stand up,\n    Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason,\n    Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.\n    If that same demon that hath gull\'d thee thus\n    Should with his lion gait walk the whole world,\n    He might return to vasty Tartar back,\n    And tell the legions \'I can never win\n    A soul so easy as that Englishman\'s.\'\n    O, how hast thou with jealousy infected\n    The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?\n    Why, so didst thou. Seem they grave and learned?\n    Why, so didst thou. Come they of noble family?\n    Why, so didst thou. Seem they religious?\n    Why, so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet,\n    Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,  \n    Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,\n    Garnish\'d and deck\'d in modest complement,\n    Not working with the eye without the ear,\n    And but in purged judgment trusting neither?\n    Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem;\n    And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot\n    To mark the full-fraught man and best indued\n    With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;\n    For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like\n    Another fall of man. Their faults are open.\n    Arrest them to the answer of the law;\n    And God acquit them of their practices!\n  EXETER. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Richard Earl\n      of Cambridge.\n    I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Henry Lord Scroop\n      of Masham.\n    I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Thomas Grey,\n      knight, of Northumberland.\n  SCROOP. Our purposes God justly hath discover\'d,\n    And I repent my fault more than my death;  \n    Which I beseech your Highness to forgive,\n    Although my body pay the price of it.\n  CAMBRIDGE. For me, the gold of France did not seduce,\n    Although I did admit it as a motive\n    The sooner to effect what I intended;\n    But God be thanked for prevention,\n    Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice,\n    Beseeching God and you to pardon me.\n  GREY. Never did faithful subject more rejoice\n    At the discovery of most dangerous treason\n    Than I do at this hour joy o\'er myself,\n    Prevented from a damned enterprise.\n    My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.\n  KING HENRY. God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence.\n    You have conspir\'d against our royal person,\n    Join\'d with an enemy proclaim\'d, and from his coffers\n    Receiv\'d the golden earnest of our death;\n    Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,\n    His princes and his peers to servitude,\n    His subjects to oppression and contempt,  \n    And his whole kingdom into desolation.\n    Touching our person seek we no revenge;\n    But we our kingdom\'s safety must so tender,\n    Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws\n    We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence,\n    Poor miserable wretches, to your death;\n    The taste whereof God of his mercy give\n    You patience to endure, and true repentance\n    Of all your dear offences. Bear them hence.\n                     Exeunt CAMBRIDGE, SCROOP, and GREY, guarded\n    Now, lords, for France; the enterprise whereof\n    Shall be to you as us like glorious.\n    We doubt not of a fair and lucky war,\n    Since God so graciously hath brought to light\n    This dangerous treason, lurking in our way\n    To hinder our beginnings; we doubt not now\n    But every rub is smoothed on our way.\n    Then, forth, dear countrymen; let us deliver\n    Our puissance into the hand of God,\n    Putting it straight in expedition.  \n    Cheerly to sea; the signs of war advance;\n    No king of England, if not king of France!\n                                                Flourish. Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nEastcheap. Before the Boar\'s Head tavern\n\nEnter PISTOL, HOSTESS, NYM, BARDOLPH, and Boy\n\n  HOSTESS. Prithee, honey-sweet husband, let me bring thee to\n     Staines.\n  PISTOL. No; for my manly heart doth earn.\n    Bardolph, be blithe; Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins;\n    Boy, bristle thy courage up. For Falstaff he is dead,\n    And we must earn therefore.\n  BARDOLPH. Would I were with him, wheresome\'er he is, either in\n    heaven or in hell!\n  HOSTESS. Nay, sure, he\'s not in hell: he\'s in Arthur\'s bosom, if\n    ever man went to Arthur\'s bosom. \'A made a finer end, and went\n    away an it had been any christom child; \'a parted ev\'n just\n    between twelve and one, ev\'n at the turning o\' th\' tide; for\n    after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers,\n    and smile upon his fingers\' end, I knew there was but one way;\n    for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and \'a babbl\'d of green\n    fields. \'How now, Sir John!\' quoth I \'What, man, be o\' good\n    cheer.\' So \'a cried out \'God, God, God!\' three or four times. Now  \n    I, to comfort him, bid him \'a should not think of God; I hop\'d\n    there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet.\n    So \'a bade me lay more clothes on his feet; I put my hand into\n    the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I\n    felt to his knees, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold\n    as any stone.\n  NYM. They say he cried out of sack.\n  HOSTESS. Ay, that \'a did.\n  BARDOLPH. And of women.\n  HOSTESS. Nay, that \'a did not.\n  BOY. Yes, that \'a did, and said they were devils incarnate.\n  HOSTESS. \'A could never abide carnation; \'twas a colour he never\n    liked.\n  BOY. \'A said once the devil would have him about women.\n  HOSTESS. \'A did in some sort, indeed, handle women; but then he was\n    rheumatic, and talk\'d of the Whore of Babylon.\n  BOY. Do you not remember \'a saw a flea stick upon Bardolph\'s nose,\n    and \'a said it was a black soul burning in hell?\n  BARDOLPH. Well, the fuel is gone that maintain\'d that fire: that\'s\n    all the riches I got in his service.  \n  NYM. Shall we shog? The King will be gone from Southampton.\n  PISTOL. Come, let\'s away. My love, give me thy lips.\n    Look to my chattles and my moveables;\n    Let senses rule. The word is \'Pitch and Pay.\'\n    Trust none;\n    For oaths are straws, men\'s faiths are wafer-cakes,\n    And Holdfast is the only dog, my duck.\n    Therefore, Caveto be thy counsellor.\n    Go, clear thy crystals. Yoke-fellows in arms,\n    Let us to France, like horse-leeches, my boys,\n    To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck.\n  BOY. And that\'s but unwholesome food, they say.\n  PISTOL. Touch her soft mouth and march.\n  BARDOLPH. Farewell, hostess.                     [Kissing her]\n  NYM. I cannot kiss, that is the humour of it; but adieu.\n  PISTOL. Let housewifery appear; keep close, I thee command.\n  HOSTESS. Farewell; adieu.                               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nFrance. The KING\'S palace\n\nFlourish. Enter the FRENCH KING, the DAUPHIN, the DUKES OF BERRI\nand BRITAINE, the CONSTABLE, and others\n\n  FRENCH KING. Thus comes the English with full power upon us;\n    And more than carefully it us concerns\n    To answer royally in our defences.\n    Therefore the Dukes of Berri and of Britaine,\n    Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth,\n    And you, Prince Dauphin, with all swift dispatch,\n    To line and new repair our towns of war\n    With men of courage and with means defendant;\n    For England his approaches makes as fierce\n    As waters to the sucking of a gulf.\n    It fits us, then, to be as provident\n    As fear may teach us, out of late examples\n    Left by the fatal and neglected English\n    Upon our fields.\n  DAUPHIN. My most redoubted father,\n    It is most meet we arm us \'gainst the foe;  \n    For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom,\n    Though war nor no known quarrel were in question,\n    But that defences, musters, preparations,\n    Should be maintain\'d, assembled, and collected,\n    As were a war in expectation.\n    Therefore, I say, \'tis meet we all go forth\n    To view the sick and feeble parts of France;\n    And let us do it with no show of fear-\n    No, with no more than if we heard that England\n    Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance;\n    For, my good liege, she is so idly king\'d,\n    Her sceptre so fantastically borne\n    By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,\n    That fear attends her not.\n  CONSTABLE. O peace, Prince Dauphin!\n    You are too much mistaken in this king.\n    Question your Grace the late ambassadors\n    With what great state he heard their embassy,\n    How well supplied with noble counsellors,\n    How modest in exception, and withal  \n    How terrible in constant resolution,\n    And you shall find his vanities forespent\n    Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus,\n    Covering discretion with a coat of folly;\n    As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots\n    That shall first spring and be most delicate.\n  DAUPHIN. Well, \'tis not so, my Lord High Constable;\n    But though we think it so, it is no matter.\n    In cases of defence \'tis best to weigh\n    The enemy more mighty than he seems;\n    So the proportions of defence are fill\'d;\n    Which of a weak and niggardly projection\n    Doth like a miser spoil his coat with scanting\n    A little cloth.\n  FRENCH KING. Think we King Harry strong;\n    And, Princes, look you strongly arm to meet him.\n    The kindred of him hath been flesh\'d upon us;\n    And he is bred out of that bloody strain\n    That haunted us in our familiar paths.\n    Witness our too much memorable shame  \n    When Cressy battle fatally was struck,\n    And all our princes capdv\'d by the hand\n    Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales;\n    Whiles that his mountain sire- on mountain standing,\n    Up in the air, crown\'d with the golden sun-\n    Saw his heroical seed, and smil\'d to see him,\n    Mangle the work of nature, and deface\n    The patterns that by God and by French fathers\n    Had twenty years been made. This is a stern\n    Of that victorious stock; and let us fear\n    The native mightiness and fate of him.\n\n                      Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. Ambassadors from Harry King of England\n    Do crave admittance to your Majesty.\n  FRENCH KING. We\'ll give them present audience. Go and bring them.\n                              Exeunt MESSENGER and certain LORDS\n    You see this chase is hotly followed, friends.\n  DAUPHIN. Turn head and stop pursuit; for coward dogs  \n    Most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten\n    Runs far before them. Good my sovereign,\n    Take up the English short, and let them know\n    Of what a monarchy you are the head.\n    Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin\n    As self-neglecting.\n\n               Re-enter LORDS, with EXETER and train\n\n  FRENCH KING. From our brother of England?\n  EXETER. From him, and thus he greets your Majesty:\n    He wills you, in the name of God Almighty,\n    That you divest yourself, and lay apart\n    The borrowed glories that by gift of heaven,\n    By law of nature and of nations, \'longs\n    To him and to his heirs- namely, the crown,\n    And all wide-stretched honours that pertain,\n    By custom and the ordinance of times,\n    Unto the crown of France. That you may know\n    \'Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim,  \n    Pick\'d from the worm-holes of long-vanish\'d days,\n    Nor from the dust of old oblivion rak\'d,\n    He sends you this most memorable line,       [Gives a paper]\n    In every branch truly demonstrative;\n    Willing you overlook this pedigree.\n    And when you find him evenly deriv\'d\n    From his most fam\'d of famous ancestors,\n    Edward the Third, he bids you then resign\n    Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held\n    From him, the native and true challenger.\n  FRENCH KING. Or else what follows?\n  EXETER. Bloody constraint; for if you hide the crown\n    Even in your hearts, there will he rake for it.\n    Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,\n    In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,\n    That if requiring fail, he will compel;\n    And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,\n    Deliver up the crown; and to take mercy\n    On the poor souls for whom this hungry war\n    Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head  \n    Turning the widows\' tears, the orphans\' cries,\n    The dead men\'s blood, the privy maidens\' groans,\n    For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers,\n    That shall be swallowed in this controversy.\n    This is his claim, his threat\'ning, and my message;\n    Unless the Dauphin be in presence here,\n    To whom expressly I bring greeting too.\n  FRENCH KING. For us, we will consider of this further;\n    To-morrow shall you bear our full intent\n    Back to our brother of England.\n  DAUPHIN. For the Dauphin:\n    I stand here for him. What to him from England?\n  EXETER. Scorn and defiance, slight regard, contempt,\n    And anything that may not misbecome\n    The mighty sender, doth he prize you at.\n    Thus says my king: an if your father\'s Highness\n    Do not, in grant of all demands at large,\n    Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his Majesty,\n    He\'ll call you to so hot an answer of it\n    That caves and womby vaultages of France  \n    Shall chide your trespass and return your mock\n    In second accent of his ordinance.\n  DAUPHIN. Say, if my father render fair return,\n    It is against my will; for I desire\n    Nothing but odds with England. To that end,\n    As matching to his youth and vanity,\n    I did present him with the Paris balls.\n  EXETER. He\'ll make your Paris Louvre shake for it,\n    Were it the mistress court of mighty Europe;\n    And be assur\'d you\'ll find a difference,\n    As we his subjects have in wonder found,\n    Between the promise of his greener days\n    And these he masters now. Now he weighs time\n    Even to the utmost grain; that you shall read\n    In your own losses, if he stay in France.\n  FRENCH KING. To-morrow shall you know our mind at full.\n  EXETER. Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king\n    Come here himself to question our delay;\n    For he is footed in this land already.\n  FRENCH KING. You shall be soon dispatch\'d with fair conditions.  \n    A night is but small breath and little pause\n    To answer matters of this consequence.      Flourish. Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. PROLOGUE.\n\nFlourish. Enter CHORUS\n\n  CHORUS. Thus with imagin\'d wing our swift scene flies,\n    In motion of no less celerity\n    Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen\n    The well-appointed King at Hampton pier\n    Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet\n    With silken streamers the young Phorbus fanning.\n    Play with your fancies; and in them behold\n    Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing;\n    Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give\n    To sounds confus\'d; behold the threaden sails,\n    Borne with th\' invisible and creeping wind,\n    Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea,\n    Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think\n    You stand upon the rivage and behold\n    A city on th\' inconstant billows dancing;\n    For so appears this fleet majestical,\n    Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow!\n    Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy  \n    And leave your England as dead midnight still,\n    Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women,\n    Either past or not arriv\'d to pith and puissance;\n    For who is he whose chin is but enrich\'d\n    With one appearing hair that will not follow\n    These cull\'d and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?\n    Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege;\n    Behold the ordnance on their carriages,\n    With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.\n    Suppose th\' ambassador from the French comes back;\n    Tells Harry that the King doth offer him\n    Katherine his daughter, and with her to dowry\n    Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms.\n    The offer likes not; and the nimble gunner\n    With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,\n                                   [Alarum, and chambers go off]\n    And down goes an before them. Still be kind,\n    And eke out our performance with your mind.             Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE I.\nFrance. Before Harfleur\n\nAlarum. Enter the KING, EXETER, BEDFORD, GLOUCESTER,\nand soldiers with scaling-ladders\n\n  KING. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;\n    Or close the wall up with our English dead.\n    In peace there\'s nothing so becomes a man\n    As modest stillness and humility;\n    But when the blast of war blows in our ears,\n    Then imitate the action of the tiger:\n    Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,\n    Disguise fair nature with hard-favour\'d rage;\n    Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;\n    Let it pry through the portage of the head\n    Like the brass cannon: let the brow o\'erwhelm it\n    As fearfully as doth a galled rock\n    O\'erhang and jutty his confounded base,\n    Swill\'d with the wild and wasteful ocean.\n    Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide;\n    Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit  \n    To his full height. On, on, you noblest English,\n    Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof-\n    Fathers that like so many Alexanders\n    Have in these parts from morn till even fought,\n    And sheath\'d their swords for lack of argument.\n    Dishonour not your mothers; now attest\n    That those whom you call\'d fathers did beget you.\n    Be copy now to men of grosser blood,\n    And teach them how to war. And you, good yeomen,\n    Whose limbs were made in England, show us here\n    The mettle of your pasture; let us swear\n    That you are worth your breeding- which I doubt not;\n    For there is none of you so mean and base\n    That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.\n    I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,\n    Straining upon the start. The game\'s afoot:\n    Follow your spirit; and upon this charge\n    Cry \'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!\'\n                           [Exeunt. Alarum, and chambers go off]\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nBefore Harfleur\n\nEnter NYM, BARDOLPH, PISTOL, and BOY\n\n  BARDOLPH. On, on, on, on, on! to the breach, to the breach!\n  NYM. Pray thee, Corporal, stay; the knocks are too hot, and for\n    mine own part I have not a case of lives. The humour of it is too\n    hot; that is the very plain-song of it.\n  PISTOL. The plain-song is most just; for humours do abound:\n\n        Knocks go and come; God\'s vassals drop and die;\n                    And sword and shield\n                    In bloody field\n                 Doth win immortal fame.\n\n  BOY. Would I were in an alehouse in London! I wouid give all my\n    fame for a pot of ale and safety.\n  PISTOL. And I:\n\n               If wishes would prevail with me,\n               My purpose should not fail with me,\n                   But thither would I hie.  \n\n  BOY.             As duly, but not as truly,\n                   As bird doth sing on bough.\n\n                         Enter FLUELLEN\n\n  FLUELLEN. Up to the breach, you dogs!\n    Avaunt, you cullions!                 [Driving them forward]\n  PISTOL. Be merciful, great duke, to men of mould.\n    Abate thy rage, abate thy manly rage;\n    Abate thy rage, great duke.\n    Good bawcock, bate thy rage. Use lenity, sweet chuck.\n  NYM. These be good humours. Your honour wins bad humours.\n                                              Exeunt all but BOY\n  BOY. As young as I am, I have observ\'d these three swashers. I am\n    boy to them all three; but all they three, though they would\n    serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do\n    not amount to a man. For Bardolph, he is white-liver\'d and\n    red-fac\'d; by the means whereof \'a faces it out, but fights not.\n    For Pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the  \n    means whereof \'a breaks words and keeps whole weapons. For Nym,\n    he hath heard that men of few words are the best men, and\n    therefore he scorns to say his prayers lest \'a should be thought\n    a coward; but his few bad words are match\'d with as few good\n    deeds; for \'a never broke any man\'s head but his own, and that\n    was against a post when he was drunk. They will steal anything,\n    and call it purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-case, bore it twelve\n    leagues, and sold it for three halfpence. Nym and Bardolph are\n    sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais they stole a\n    fire-shovel; I knew by that piece of service the men would carry\n    coals. They would have me as familiar with men\'s pockets as their\n    gloves or their handkerchers; which makes much against my\n    manhood, if I should take from another\'s pocket to put into mine;\n    for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. I must leave them and\n    seek some better service; their villainy goes against my weak\n    stomach, and therefore I must cast it up.               Exit\n\n                 Re-enter FLUELLEN, GOWER following\n\n  GOWER. Captain Fluellen, you must come presently to the mines; the  \n    Duke of Gloucester would speak with you.\n  FLUELLEN. To the mines! Tell you the Duke it is not so good to come\n    to the mines; for, look you, the mines is not according to the\n    disciplines of the war; the concavities of it is not sufficient.\n    For, look you, th\' athversary- you may discuss unto the Duke,\n    look you- is digt himself four yard under the countermines; by\n    Cheshu, I think \'a will plow up all, if there is not better\n    directions.\n  GOWER. The Duke of Gloucester, to whom the order of the siege is\n    given, is altogether directed by an Irishman- a very vallant\n    gentleman, i\' faith.\n  FLUELLEN. It is Captain Macmorris, is it not?\n  GOWER. I think it be.\n  FLUELLEN. By Cheshu, he is an ass, as in the world: I will verify\n    as much in his beard; he has no more directions in the true\n    disciplines of the wars, look you, of the Roman disciplines, than\n    is a puppy-dog.\n\n                 Enter MACMORRIS and CAPTAIN JAMY\n  \n  GOWER. Here \'a comes; and the Scots captain, Captain Jamy, with\n    him.\n  FLUELLEN. Captain Jamy is a marvellous falorous gentleman, that is\n    certain, and of great expedition and knowledge in th\' aunchient\n    wars, upon my particular knowledge of his directions. By Cheshu,\n    he will maintain his argument as well as any military man in the\n    world, in the disciplines of the pristine wars of the Romans.\n  JAMY. I say gud day, Captain Fluellen.\n  FLUELLEN. God-den to your worship, good Captain James.\n  GOWER. How now, Captain Macmorris! Have you quit the mines? Have\n    the pioneers given o\'er?\n  MACMORRIS. By Chrish, la, tish ill done! The work ish give over,\n    the trompet sound the retreat. By my hand, I swear, and my\n    father\'s soul, the work ish ill done; it ish give over; I would\n    have blowed up the town, so Chrish save me, la, in an hour. O,\n    tish ill done, tish ill done; by my hand, tish ill done!\n  FLUELLEN. Captain Macmorris, I beseech you now, will you voutsafe\n    me, look you, a few disputations with you, as partly touching or\n    concerning the disciplines of the war, the Roman wars, in the way\n    of argument, look you, and friendly communication; partly to  \n    satisfy my opinion, and partly for the satisfaction, look you, of\n    my mind, as touching the direction of the military discipline,\n    that is the point.\n  JAMY. It sall be vary gud, gud feith, gud captains bath; and I sall\n    quit you with gud leve, as I may pick occasion; that sall I,\n    marry.\n  MACMORRIS. It is no time to discourse, so Chrish save me. The day\n    is hot, and the weather, and the wars, and the King, and the\n    Dukes; it is no time to discourse. The town is beseech\'d, and the\n    trumpet call us to the breach; and we talk and, be Chrish, do\n    nothing. \'Tis shame for us all, so God sa\' me, \'tis shame to\n    stand still; it is shame, by my hand; and there is throats to be\n    cut, and works to be done; and there ish nothing done, so Chrish\n    sa\' me, la.\n  JAMY. By the mess, ere theise eyes of mine take themselves to\n    slomber, ay\'ll de gud service, or I\'ll lig i\' th\' grund for it;\n    ay, or go to death. And I\'ll pay\'t as valorously as I may, that\n    sall I suerly do, that is the breff and the long. Marry, I wad\n    full fain heard some question \'tween you tway.\n  FLUELLEN. Captain Macmorris, I think, look you, under your  \n    correction, there is not many of your nation-\n  MACMORRIS. Of my nation? What ish my nation? Ish a villain, and a\n    bastard, and a knave, and a rascal. What ish my nation? Who talks\n    of my nation?\n  FLUELLEN. Look you, if you take the matter otherwise than is meant,\n    Captain Macmorris, peradventure I shall think you do not use me\n    with that affability as in discretion you ought to use me, look\n    you; being as good a man as yourself, both in the disciplines of\n    war and in the derivation of my birth, and in other\n    particularities.\n  MACMORRIS. I do not know you so good a man as myself; so\n    Chrish save me, I will cut off your head.\n  GOWER. Gentlemen both, you will mistake each other.\n  JAMY. Ah! that\'s a foul fault.              [A parley sounded]\n  GOWER. The town sounds a parley.\n  FLUELLEN. Captain Macmorris, when there is more better opportunity\n    to be required, look you, I will be so bold as to tell you I know\n    the disciplines of war; and there is an end.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nBefore the gates of Harfleur\n\nEnter the GOVERNOR and some citizens on the walls.  Enter the KING\nand all his train before the gates\n\n  KING HENRY. How yet resolves the Governor of the town?\n    This is the latest parle we will admit;\n    Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves\n    Or, like to men proud of destruction,\n    Defy us to our worst; for, as I am a soldier,\n    A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,\n    If I begin the batt\'ry once again,\n    I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur\n    Till in her ashes she lie buried.\n    The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,\n    And the flesh\'d soldier, rough and hard of heart,\n    In liberty of bloody hand shall range\n    With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass\n    Your fresh fair virgins and your flow\'ring infants.\n    What is it then to me if impious war,\n    Array\'d in flames, like to the prince of fiends,\n    Do, with his smirch\'d complexion, all fell feats  \n    Enlink\'d to waste and desolation?\n    What is\'t to me when you yourselves are cause,\n    If your pure maidens fall into the hand\n    Of hot and forcing violation?\n    What rein can hold licentious wickednes\n    When down the hill he holds his fierce career?\n    We may as bootless spend our vain command\n    Upon th\' enraged soldiers in their spoil,\n    As send precepts to the Leviathan\n    To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,\n    Take pity of your town and of your people\n    Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;\n    Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace\n    O\'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds\n    Of heady murder, spoil, and villainy.\n    If not- why, in a moment look to see\n    The blind and bloody with foul hand\n    Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;\n    Your fathers taken by the silver beards,\n    And their most reverend heads dash\'d to the walls;  \n    Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,\n    Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus\'d\n    Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry\n    At Herod\'s bloody-hunting slaughtermen.\n    What say you? Will you yield, and this avoid?\n    Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy\'d?\n  GOVERNOR. Our expectation hath this day an end:\n    The Dauphin, whom of succours we entreated,\n    Returns us that his powers are yet not ready\n    To raise so great a siege. Therefore, great King,\n    We yield our town and lives to thy soft mercy.\n    Enter our gates; dispose of us and ours;\n    For we no longer are defensible.\n  KING HENRY. Open your gates. [Exit GOVERNOR] Come, uncle Exeter,\n    Go you and enter Harfleur; there remain,\n    And fortify it strongly \'gainst the French;\n    Use mercy to them all. For us, dear uncle,\n    The winter coming on, and sickness growing\n    Upon our soldiers, we will retire to Calais.\n    To-night in Harfleur will we be your guest;  \n    To-morrow for the march are we addrest.\n               [Flourish. The KING and his train enter the town]\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nRouen. The FRENCH KING\'S palace\n\nEnter KATHERINE and ALICE\n\n  KATHERINE. Alice, tu as ete en Angleterre, et tu parles bien le\n    langage.\n  ALICE. Un peu, madame.\n  KATHERINE. Je te prie, m\'enseignez; il faut que j\'apprenne a\n    parler. Comment appelez-vous la main en Anglais?\n  ALICE. La main? Elle est appelee de hand.\n  KATHERINE. De hand. Et les doigts?\n  ALICE. Les doigts? Ma foi, j\'oublie les doigts; mais je me\n    souviendrai. Les doigts? Je pense qu\'ils sont appeles de fingres;\n    oui, de fingres.\n  KATHERINE. La main, de hand; les doigts, de fingres. Je pense que\n    je suis le bon ecolier; j\'ai gagne deux mots d\'Anglais vitement.\n    Comment appelez-vous les ongles?\n  ALICE. Les ongles? Nous les appelons de nails.\n  KATHERINE. De nails. Ecoutez; dites-moi si je parle bien: de hand,\n    de fingres, et de nails.\n  ALICE. C\'est bien dit, madame; il est fort bon Anglais.  \n  KATHERINE. Dites-moi l\'Anglais pour le bras.\n  ALICE. De arm, madame.\n  KATHERINE. Et le coude?\n  ALICE. D\'elbow.\n  KATHERINE. D\'elbow. Je m\'en fais la repetition de tous les mots que\n    vous m\'avez appris des a present.\n  ALICE. Il est trop difficile, madame, comme je pense.\n  KATHERINE. Excusez-moi, Alice; ecoutez: d\'hand, de fingre, de\n    nails, d\'arma, de bilbow.\n  ALICE. D\'elbow, madame.\n  KATHERINE. O Seigneur Dieu, je m\'en oublie! D\'elbow.\n    Comment appelez-vous le col?\n  ALICE. De nick, madame.\n  KATHERINE. De nick. Et le menton?\n  ALICE. De chin.\n  KATHERINE. De sin. Le col, de nick; le menton, de sin.\n  ALICE. Oui. Sauf votre honneur, en verite, vous prononcez les mots\n    aussi droit que les natifs d\'Angleterre.\n  KATHERINE. Je ne doute point d\'apprendre, par la grace de Dieu, et\n    en peu de temps.  \n  ALICE. N\'avez-vous pas deja oublie ce que je vous ai enseigne?\n  KATHERINE. Non, je reciterai a vous promptement: d\'hand, de fingre,\n    de mails-\n  ALICE. De nails, madame.\n  KATHERINE. De nails, de arm, de ilbow.\n  ALICE. Sauf votre honneur, d\'elbow.\n  KATHERINE. Ainsi dis-je; d\'elbow, de nick, et de sin. Comment\n    appelez-vous le pied et la robe?\n  ALICE. Le foot, madame; et le count.\n  KATHERINE. Le foot et le count. O Seigneur Dieu! ils sont mots de\n    son mauvais, corruptible, gros, et impudique, et non pour les\n    dames d\'honneur d\'user: je ne voudrais prononcer ces mots devant\n    les seigneurs de France pour tout le monde. Foh! le foot et le\n    count! Neanmoins, je reciterai une autre fois ma lecon ensemble:\n    d\'hand, de fingre, de nails, d\'arm, d\'elbow, de nick, de sin, de\n    foot, le count.\n  ALICE. Excellent, madame!\n  KATHERINE. C\'est assez pour une fois: allons-nous a diner.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nThe FRENCH KING\'S palace\n\nEnter the KING OF FRANCE, the DAUPHIN, DUKE OF BRITAINE,\nthe CONSTABLE OF FRANCE, and others\n\n  FRENCH KING. \'Tis certain he hath pass\'d the river Somme.\n  CONSTABLE. And if he be not fought withal, my lord,\n    Let us not live in France; let us quit an,\n    And give our vineyards to a barbarous people.\n  DAUPHIN. O Dieu vivant! Shall a few sprays of us,\n    The emptying of our fathers\' luxury,\n    Our scions, put in wild and savage stock,\n    Spirt up so suddenly into the clouds,\n    And overlook their grafters?\n  BRITAINE. Normans, but bastard Normans, Norman bastards!\n    Mort Dieu, ma vie! if they march along\n    Unfought withal, but I will sell my dukedom\n    To buy a slobb\'ry and a dirty farm\n    In that nook-shotten isle of Albion.\n  CONSTABLE. Dieu de batailles! where have they this mettle?\n    Is not their climate foggy, raw, and dull;  \n    On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale,\n    Killing their fruit with frowns? Can sodden water,\n    A drench for sur-rein\'d jades, their barley-broth,\n    Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat?\n    And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine,\n    Seem frosty? O, for honour of our land,\n    Let us not hang like roping icicles\n    Upon our houses\' thatch, whiles a more frosty people\n    Sweat drops of gallant youth in our rich fields-\n    Poor we call them in their native lords!\n  DAUPHIN. By faith and honour,\n    Our madams mock at us and plainly say\n    Our mettle is bred out, and they will give\n    Their bodies to the lust of English youth\n    To new-store France with bastard warriors.\n  BRITAINE. They bid us to the English dancing-schools\n    And teach lavoltas high and swift corantos,\n    Saying our grace is only in our heels\n    And that we are most lofty runaways.\n  FRENCH KING. Where is Montjoy the herald? Speed him hence;  \n    Let him greet England with our sharp defiance.\n    Up, Princes, and, with spirit of honour edged\n    More sharper than your swords, hie to the field:\n    Charles Delabreth, High Constable of France;\n    You Dukes of Orleans, Bourbon, and of Berri,\n    Alengon, Brabant, Bar, and Burgundy;\n    Jaques Chatillon, Rambures, Vaudemont,\n    Beaumont, Grandpre, Roussi, and Fauconbridge,\n    Foix, Lestrake, Bouciqualt, and Charolois;\n    High dukes, great princes, barons, lords, and knights,\n    For your great seats now quit you of great shames.\n    Bar Harry England, that sweeps through our land\n    With pennons painted in the blood of Harfleur.\n    Rush on his host as doth the melted snow\n    Upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat\n    The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon;\n    Go down upon him, you have power enough,\n    And in a captive chariot into Rouen\n    Bring him our prisoner.\n  CONSTABLE. This becomes the great.  \n    Sorry am I his numbers are so few,\n    His soldiers sick and famish\'d in their march;\n    For I am sure, when he shall see our army,\n    He\'ll drop his heart into the sink of fear,\n    And for achievement offer us his ransom.\n  FRENCH KING. Therefore, Lord Constable, haste on Montjoy,\n    And let him say to England that we send\n    To know what willing ransom he will give.\n    Prince Dauphin, you shall stay with us in Rouen.\n  DAUPHIN. Not so, I do beseech your Majesty.\n  FRENCH KING. Be patient, for you shall remain with us.\n    Now forth, Lord Constable and Princes all,\n    And quickly bring us word of England\'s fall.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nThe English camp in Picardy\n\nEnter CAPTAINS, English and Welsh, GOWER and FLUELLEN\n\n  GOWER. How now, Captain Fluellen! Come you from the bridge?\n  FLUELLEN. I assure you there is very excellent services committed\n    at the bridge.\n  GOWER. Is the Duke of Exeter safe?\n  FLUELLEN. The Duke of Exeter is as magnanimous as Agamemnon; and a\n    man that I love and honour with my soul, and my heart, and my\n    duty, and my live, and my living, and my uttermost power. He is\n    not- God be praised and blessed!- any hurt in the world, but\n    keeps the bridge most valiantly, with excellent discipline. There\n    is an aunchient Lieutenant there at the bridge- I think in my\n    very conscience he is as valiant a man as Mark Antony; and he is\n    man of no estimation in the world; but I did see him do as\n    gallant service.\n  GOWER. What do you call him?\n  FLUELLEN. He is call\'d Aunchient Pistol.\n  GOWER. I know him not.\n  \n                            Enter PISTOL\n\n  FLUELLEN. Here is the man.\n  PISTOL. Captain, I thee beseech to do me favours.\n    The Duke of Exeter doth love thee well.\n  FLUELLEN. Ay, I praise God; and I have merited some love at his\n    hands.\n  PISTOL. Bardolph, a soldier, firm and sound of heart,\n    And of buxom valour, hath by cruel fate\n    And giddy Fortune\'s furious fickle wheel,\n    That goddess blind,\n    That stands upon the rolling restless stone-\n  FLUELLEN. By your patience, Aunchient Pistol. Fortune is painted\n    blind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to signify to you that\n    Fortune is blind; and she is painted also with a wheel, to\n    signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning,\n    and inconstant, and mutability, and variation; and her foot, look\n    you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and\n    rolls. In good truth, the poet makes a most excellent description\n    of it: Fortune is an excellent moral.  \n  PISTOL. Fortune is Bardolph\'s foe, and frowns on him;\n    For he hath stol\'n a pax, and hanged must \'a be-\n    A damned death!\n    Let gallows gape for dog; let man go free,\n    And let not hemp his windpipe suffocate.\n    But Exeter hath given the doom of death\n    For pax of little price.\n    Therefore, go speak- the Duke will hear thy voice;\n    And let not Bardolph\'s vital thread be cut\n    With edge of penny cord and vile reproach.\n    Speak, Captain, for his life, and I will thee requite.\n  FLUELLEN. Aunchient Pistol, I do partly understand your meaning.\n  PISTOL. Why then, rejoice therefore.\n  FLUELLEN. Certainly, Aunchient, it is not a thing to rejoice at;\n    for if, look you, he were my brother, I would desire the Duke to\n    use his good pleasure, and put him to execution; for discipline\n    ought to be used.\n  PISTOL. Die and be damn\'d! and figo for thy friendship!\n  FLUELLEN. It is well.\n  PISTOL. The fig of Spain!                                 Exit  \n  FLUELLEN. Very good.\n  GOWER. Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal; I remember him\n    now- a bawd, a cutpurse.\n  FLUELLEN. I\'ll assure you, \'a utt\'red as prave words at the pridge\n    as you shall see in a summer\'s day. But it is very well; what he\n    has spoke to me, that is well, I warrant you, when time is serve.\n  GOWER. Why, \'tis a gull a fool a rogue, that now and then goes to\n    the wars to grace himself, at his return into London, under the\n    form of a soldier. And such fellows are perfect in the great\n    commanders\' names; and they will learn you by rote where services\n    were done- at such and such a sconce, at such a breach, at such a\n    convoy; who came off bravely, who was shot, who disgrac\'d, what\n    terms the enemy stood on; and this they con perfectly in the\n    phrase of war, which they trick up with new-tuned oaths; and what\n    a beard of the General\'s cut and a horrid suit of the camp will\n    do among foaming bottles and ale-wash\'d wits is wonderful to be\n    thought on. But you must learn to know such slanders of the age,\n    or else you may be marvellously mistook.\n  FLUELLEN. I tell you what, Captain Gower, I do perceive he is not\n    the man that he would gladly make show to the world he is; if I  \n    find a hole in his coat I will tell him my mind. [Drum within]\n    Hark you, the King is coming; and I must speak with him from the\n    pridge.\n\n         Drum and colours. Enter the KING and his poor soldiers,\n                          and GLOUCESTER\n\n    God pless your Majesty!\n  KING HENRY. How now, Fluellen! Cam\'st thou from the bridge?\n  FLUELLEN. Ay, so please your Majesty. The Duke of Exeter has very\n    gallantly maintain\'d the pridge; the French is gone off, look\n    you, and there is gallant and most prave passages. Marry, th\'\n    athversary was have possession of the pridge; but he is enforced\n    to retire, and the Duke of Exeter is master of the pridge; I can\n    tell your Majesty the Duke is a prave man.\n  KING HENRY. What men have you lost, Fluellen!\n  FLUELLEN. The perdition of th\' athversary hath been very great,\n    reasonable great; marry, for my part, I think the Duke hath lost\n    never a man, but one that is like to be executed for robbing a\n    church- one Bardolph, if your Majesty know the man; his face is  \n    all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o\' fire; and his\n    lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes\n    plue and sometimes red; but his nose is executed and his fire\'s\n    out.\n  KING HENRY. We would have all such offenders so cut off. And we\n    give express charge that in our marches through the country there\n    be nothing compell\'d from the villages, nothing taken but paid\n    for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful\n    language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom the\n    gentler gamester is the soonest winner.\n\n                        Tucket. Enter MONTJOY\n\n  MONTJOY. You know me by my habit.\n  KING HENRY. Well then, I know thee; what shall I know of thee?\n  MONTJOY. My master\'s mind.\n  KING HENRY. Unfold it.\n  MONTJOY. Thus says my king. Say thou to Harry of England: Though we\n    seem\'d dead we did but sleep; advantage is a better soldier than\n    rashness. Tell him we could have rebuk\'d him at Harfleur, but  \n    that we thought not good to bruise an injury till it were full\n    ripe. Now we speak upon our cue, and our voice is imperial:\n    England shall repent his folly, see his weakness, and admire our\n    sufferance. Bid him therefore consider of his ransom, which must\n    proportion the losses we have borne, the subjects we have lost,\n    the disgrace we have digested; which, in weight to re-answer, his\n    pettiness would bow under. For our losses his exchequer is too\n    poor; for th\' effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom\n    too faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own person kneeling\n    at our feet but a weak and worthless satisfaction. To this add\n    defiance; and tell him, for conclusion, he hath betrayed his\n    followers, whose condemnation is pronounc\'d. So far my king and\n    master; so much my office.\n  KING HENRY. What is thy name? I know thy quality.\n  MONTJOY. Montjoy.\n  KING HENRY. Thou dost thy office fairly. Turn thee back,\n    And tell thy king I do not seek him now,\n    But could be willing to march on to Calais\n    Without impeachment; for, to say the sooth-\n    Though \'tis no wisdom to confess so much  \n    Unto an enemy of craft and vantage-\n    My people are with sickness much enfeebled;\n    My numbers lessen\'d; and those few I have\n    Almost no better than so many French;\n    Who when they were in health, I tell thee, herald,\n    I thought upon one pair of English legs\n    Did march three Frenchmen. Yet forgive me, God,\n    That I do brag thus; this your air of France\n    Hath blown that vice in me; I must repent.\n    Go, therefore, tell thy master here I am;\n    My ransom is this frail and worthless trunk;\n    My army but a weak and sickly guard;\n    Yet, God before, tell him we will come on,\n    Though France himself and such another neighbour\n    Stand in our way. There\'s for thy labour, Montjoy.\n    Go, bid thy master well advise himself.\n    If we may pass, we will; if we be hind\'red,\n    We shall your tawny ground with your red blood\n    Discolour; and so, Montjoy, fare you well.\n    The sum of all our answer is but this:  \n    We would not seek a battle as we are;\n    Nor as we are, we say, we will not shun it.\n    So tell your master.\n  MONTJOY. I shall deliver so. Thanks to your Highness.     Exit\n  GLOUCESTER. I hope they will not come upon us now.\n  KING HENRY. We are in God\'s hand, brother, not in theirs.\n    March to the bridge, it now draws toward night;\n    Beyond the river we\'ll encamp ourselves,\n    And on to-morrow bid them march away.                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\nThe French camp near Agincourt\n\nEnter the CONSTABLE OF FRANCE, the LORD RAMBURES, the DUKE OF ORLEANS,\nthe DAUPHIN, with others\n\n  CONSTABLE. Tut! I have the best armour of the world.\n    Would it were day!\n  ORLEANS. You have an excellent armour; but let my horse have his\n    due.\n  CONSTABLE. It is the best horse of Europe.\n  ORLEANS. Will it never be morning?\n  DAUPHIN. My Lord of Orleans and my Lord High Constable, you talk of\n    horse and armour?\n  ORLEANS. You are as well provided of both as any prince in the\n    world.\n  DAUPHIN. What a long night is this! I will not change my horse with\n    any that treads but on four pasterns. Ca, ha! he bounds from the\n    earth as if his entrails were hairs; le cheval volant, the\n    Pegasus, chez les narines de feu! When I bestride him I soar, I\n    am a hawk. He trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it;\n    the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of  \n    Hermes.\n  ORLEANS. He\'s of the colour of the nutmeg.\n  DAUPHIN. And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for Perseus:\n    he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water\n    never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his\n    rider mounts him; he is indeed a horse, and all other jades you\n    may call beasts.\n  CONSTABLE. Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent\n    horse.\n  DAUPHIN. It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the\n    bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage.\n  ORLEANS. No more, cousin.\n  DAUPHIN. Nay, the man hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of\n    the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my\n    palfrey. It is a theme as fluent as the sea: turn the sands into\n    eloquent tongues, and my horse is argument for them all: \'tis a\n    subject for a sovereign to reason on, and for a sovereign\'s\n    sovereign to ride on; and for the world- familiar to us and\n    unknown- to lay apart their particular functions and wonder at\n    him. I once writ a sonnet in his praise and began thus: \'Wonder  \n    of nature\'-\n  ORLEANS. I have heard a sonnet begin so to one\'s mistress.\n  DAUPHIN. Then did they imitate that which I compos\'d to my courser;\n    for my horse is my mistress.\n  ORLEANS. Your mistress bears well.\n  DAUPHIN. Me well; which is the prescript praise and perfection of a\n    good and particular mistress.\n  CONSTABLE. Nay, for methought yesterday your mistress shrewdly\n    shook your back.\n  DAUPHIN. So perhaps did yours.\n  CONSTABLE. Mine was not bridled.\n  DAUPHIN. O, then belike she was old and gentle; and you rode like a\n    kern of Ireland, your French hose off and in your strait\n    strossers.\n  CONSTABLE. You have good judgment in horsemanship.\n  DAUPHIN. Be warn\'d by me, then: they that ride so, and ride not\n    warily, fall into foul bogs. I had rather have my horse to my\n    mistress.\n  CONSTABLE. I had as lief have my mistress a jade.\n  DAUPHIN. I tell thee, Constable, my mistress wears his own hair.  \n  CONSTABLE. I could make as true a boast as that, if I had a sow to\n    my mistress.\n  DAUPHIN. \'Le chien est retourne a son propre vomissement, et la\n    truie lavee au bourbier.\' Thou mak\'st use of anything.\n  CONSTABLE. Yet do I not use my horse for my mistress, or any such\n    proverb so little kin to the purpose.\n  RAMBURES. My Lord Constable, the armour that I saw in your tent\n    to-night- are those stars or suns upon it?\n  CONSTABLE. Stars, my lord.\n  DAUPHIN. Some of them will fall to-morrow, I hope.\n  CONSTABLE. And yet my sky shall not want.\n  DAUPHIN. That may be, for you bear a many superfluously, and \'twere\n    more honour some were away.\n  CONSTABLE. Ev\'n as your horse bears your praises, who would trot as\n    well were some of your brags dismounted.\n  DAUPHIN. Would I were able to load him with his desert! Will it\n    never be day? I will trot to-morrow a mile, and my way shall be\n    paved with English faces.\n  CONSTABLE. I will not say so, for fear I should be fac\'d out of my\n    way; but I would it were morning, for I would fain be about the  \n    ears of the English.\n  RAMBURES. Who will go to hazard with me for twenty prisoners?\n  CONSTABLE. You must first go yourself to hazard ere you have them.\n  DAUPHIN. \'Tis midnight; I\'ll go arm myself.               Exit\n  ORLEANS. The Dauphin longs for morning.\n  RAMBURES. He longs to eat the English.\n  CONSTABLE. I think he will eat all he kills.\n  ORLEANS. By the white hand of my lady, he\'s a gallant prince.\n  CONSTABLE. Swear by her foot, that she may tread out the oath.\n  ORLEANS. He is simply the most active gentleman of France.\n  CONSTABLE. Doing is activity, and he will still be doing.\n  ORLEANS. He never did harm that I heard of.\n  CONSTABLE. Nor will do none to-morrow: he will keep that good name\n    still.\n  ORLEANS. I know him to be valiant.\n  CONSTABLE. I was told that by one that knows him better than you.\n  ORLEANS. What\'s he?\n  CONSTABLE. Marry, he told me so himself; and he said he car\'d not\n    who knew it.\n  ORLEANS. He needs not; it is no hidden virtue in him.  \n  CONSTABLE. By my faith, sir, but it is; never anybody saw it but\n      his lackey.\n    \'Tis a hooded valour, and when it appears it will bate.\n  ORLEANS. Ill-wind never said well.\n  CONSTABLE. I will cap that proverb with \'There is flattery in\n    friendship.\'\n  ORLEANS. And I will take up that with \'Give the devil his due.\'\n  CONSTABLE. Well plac\'d! There stands your friend for the devil;\n    have at the very eye of that proverb with \'A pox of the devil!\'\n  ORLEANS. You are the better at proverbs by how much \'A fool\'s bolt\n    is soon shot.\'\n  CONSTABLE. You have shot over.\n  ORLEANS. \'Tis not the first time you were overshot.\n\n                          Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. My Lord High Constable, the English lie within fifteen\n    hundred paces of your tents.\n  CONSTABLE. Who hath measur\'d the ground?\n  MESSENGER. The Lord Grandpre.  \n  CONSTABLE. A valiant and most expert gentleman. Would it were day!\n    Alas, poor Harry of England! he longs not for the dawning as we\n    do.\n  ORLEANS. What a wretched and peevish fellow is this King of\n    England, to mope with his fat-brain\'d followers so far out of his\n    knowledge!\n  CONSTABLE. If the English had any apprehension, they would run\n    away.\n  ORLEANS. That they lack; for if their heads had any intellectual\n    armour, they could never wear such heavy head-pieces.\n  RAMBURES. That island of England breeds very valiant creatures;\n    their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.\n  ORLEANS. Foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a Russian\n    bear, and have their heads crush\'d like rotten apples! You may as\n    well say that\'s a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the\n    lip of a lion.\n  CONSTABLE. Just, just! and the men do sympathise with the mastiffs\n    in robustious and rough coming on, leaving their wits with their\n    wives; and then give them great meals of beef and iron and steel;\n    they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.  \n  ORLEANS. Ay, but these English are shrewdly out of beef.\n  CONSTABLE. Then shall we find to-morrow they have only stomachs to\n    eat, and none to fight. Now is it time to arm. Come, shall we\n    about it?\n  ORLEANS. It is now two o\'clock; but let me see- by ten\n    We shall have each a hundred Englishmen.              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. PROLOGUE.\n\nEnter CHORUS\n\n  CHORUS. Now entertain conjecture of a time\n    When creeping murmur and the poring dark\n    Fills the wide vessel of the universe.\n    From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night,\n    The hum of either army stilly sounds,\n    That the fix\'d sentinels almost receive\n    The secret whispers of each other\'s watch.\n    Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames\n    Each battle sees the other\'s umber\'d face;\n    Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs\n    Piercing the night\'s dull ear; and from the tents\n    The armourers accomplishing the knights,\n    With busy hammers closing rivets up,\n    Give dreadful note of preparation.\n    The country cocks do crow, the clocks do ton,\n    And the third hour of drowsy morning name.\n    Proud of their numbers and secure in soul,\n    The confident and over-lusty French  \n    Do the low-rated English play at dice;\n    And chide the cripple tardy-gaited night\n    Who like a foul and ugly witch doth limp\n    So tediously away. The poor condemned English,\n    Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires\n    Sit patiently and inly ruminate\n    The morning\'s danger; and their gesture sad\n    Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-worn coats\n    Presenteth them unto the gazing moon\n    So many horrid ghosts. O, now, who will behold\n    The royal captain of this ruin\'d band\n    Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent,\n    Let him cry \'Praise and glory on his head!\'\n    For forth he goes and visits all his host;\n    Bids them good morrow with a modest smile,\n    And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen.\n    Upon his royal face there is no note\n    How dread an army hath enrounded him;\n    Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour\n    Unto the weary and all-watched night;  \n    But freshly looks, and over-bears attaint\n    With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty;\n    That every wretch, pining and pale before,\n    Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks;\n    A largess universal, like the sun,\n    His liberal eye doth give to every one,\n    Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all\n    Behold, as may unworthiness define,\n    A little touch of Harry in the night.\n    And so our scene must to the battle fly;\n    Where- O for pity!- we shall much disgrace\n    With four or five most vile and ragged foils,\n    Right ill-dispos\'d in brawl ridiculous,\n    The name of Agincourt. Yet sit and see,\n    Minding true things by what their mock\'ries be.         Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE I.\nFrance. The English camp at Agincourt\n\nEnter the KING, BEDFORD, and GLOUCESTER\n\n  KING HENRY. Gloucester, \'tis true that we are in great danger;\n    The greater therefore should our courage be.\n    Good morrow, brother Bedford. God Almighty!\n    There is some soul of goodness in things evil,\n    Would men observingly distil it out;\n    For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,\n    Which is both healthful and good husbandry.\n    Besides, they are our outward consciences\n    And preachers to us all, admonishing\n    That we should dress us fairly for our end.\n    Thus may we gather honey from the weed,\n    And make a moral of the devil himself.\n\n                        Enter ERPINGHAM\n\n    Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham:\n    A good soft pillow for that good white head  \n    Were better than a churlish turf of France.\n  ERPINGHAM. Not so, my liege; this lodging likes me better,\n    Since I may say \'Now lie I like a king.\'\n  KING HENRY. \'Tis good for men to love their present pains\n    Upon example; so the spirit is eased;\n    And when the mind is quick\'ned, out of doubt\n    The organs, though defunct and dead before,\n    Break up their drowsy grave and newly move\n    With casted slough and fresh legerity.\n    Lend me thy cloak, Sir Thomas. Brothers both,\n    Commend me to the princes in our camp;\n    Do my good morrow to them, and anon\n    Desire them all to my pavilion.\n  GLOUCESTER. We shall, my liege.\n  ERPINGHAM. Shall I attend your Grace?\n  KING HENRY. No, my good knight:\n    Go with my brothers to my lords of England;\n    I and my bosom must debate awhile,\n    And then I would no other company.\n  ERPINGHAM. The Lord in heaven bless thee, noble Harry!  \n                                         Exeunt all but the KING\n  KING HENRY. God-a-mercy, old heart! thou speak\'st cheerfully.\n\n                          Enter PISTOL\n\n  PISTOL. Qui va la?\n  KING HENRY. A friend.\n  PISTOL. Discuss unto me: art thou officer,\n    Or art thou base, common, and popular?\n  KING HENRY. I am a gentleman of a company.\n  PISTOL. Trail\'st thou the puissant pike?\n  KING HENRY. Even so. What are you?\n  PISTOL. As good a gentleman as the Emperor.\n  KING HENRY. Then you are a better than the King.\n  PISTOL. The King\'s a bawcock and a heart of gold,\n    A lad of life, an imp of fame;\n    Of parents good, of fist most valiant.\n    I kiss his dirty shoe, and from heart-string\n    I love the lovely bully. What is thy name?\n  KING HENRY. Harry le Roy.  \n  PISTOL. Le Roy! a Cornish name; art thou of Cornish crew?\n  KING HENRY. No, I am a Welshman.\n  PISTOL. Know\'st thou Fluellen?\n  KING HENRY. Yes.\n  PISTOL. Tell him I\'ll knock his leek about his pate\n    Upon Saint Davy\'s day.\n  KING HENRY. Do not you wear your dagger in your cap that day, lest\n    he knock that about yours.\n  PISTOL. Art thou his friend?\n  KING HENRY. And his kinsman too.\n  PISTOL. The figo for thee, then!\n  KING HENRY. I thank you; God be with you!\n  PISTOL. My name is Pistol call\'d.                         Exit\n  KING HENRY. It sorts well with your fierceness.\n\n                    Enter FLUELLEN and GOWER\n\n  GOWER. Captain Fluellen!\n  FLUELLEN. So! in the name of Jesu Christ, speak fewer. It is the\n    greatest admiration in the universal world, when the true and  \n    aunchient prerogatifes and laws of the wars is not kept: if you\n    would take the pains but to examine the wars of Pompey the Great,\n    you shall find, I warrant you, that there is no tiddle-taddle nor\n    pibble-pabble in Pompey\'s camp; I warrant you, you shall find the\n    ceremonies of the wars, and the cares of it, and the forms of it,\n    and the sobriety of it, and the modesty of it, to be otherwise.\n  GOWER. Why, the enemy is loud; you hear him all night.\n  FLUELLEN. If the enemy is an ass, and a fool, and a prating\n    coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be\n    an ass, and a fool, and a prating coxcomb? In your own\n    conscience, now?\n  GOWER. I will speak lower.\n  FLUELLEN. I pray you and beseech you that you will.\n                                       Exeunt GOWER and FLUELLEN\n  KING HENRY. Though it appear a little out of fashion,\n    There is much care and valour in this Welshman.\n\n          Enter three soldiers: JOHN BATES, ALEXANDER COURT,\n                       and MICHAEL WILLIAMS\n  \n  COURT. Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which breaks\n    yonder?\n  BATES. I think it be; but we have no great cause to desire the\n    approach of day.\n  WILLIAMS. We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think we\n    shall never see the end of it. Who goes there?\n  KING HENRY. A friend.\n  WILLIAMS. Under what captain serve you?\n  KING HENRY. Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.\n  WILLIAMS. A good old commander and a most kind gentleman. I pray\n    you, what thinks he of our estate?\n  KING HENRY. Even as men wreck\'d upon a sand, that look to be wash\'d\n    off the next tide.\n  BATES. He hath not told his thought to the King?\n  KING HENRY. No; nor it is not meet he should. For though I speak it\n    to you, I think the King is but a man as I am: the violet smells\n    to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to\n    me; all his senses have but human conditions; his ceremonies laid\n    by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his\n    affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop,  \n    they stoop with the like wing. Therefore, when he sees reason of\n    fears, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish\n    as ours are; yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any\n    appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his\n    army.\n  BATES. He may show what outward courage he will; but I believe, as\n    cold a night as \'tis, he could wish himself in Thames up to the\n    neck; and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so\n    we were quit here.\n  KING HENRY. By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the King: I\n    think he would not wish himself anywhere but where he is.\n  BATES. Then I would he were here alone; so should he be sure to be\n    ransomed, and a many poor men\'s lives saved.\n  KING HENRY. I dare say you love him not so ill to wish him here\n    alone, howsoever you speak this, to feel other men\'s minds;\n    methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King\'s\n    company, his cause being just and his quarrel honourable.\n  WILLIAMS. That\'s more than we know.\n  BATES. Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough if\n    we know we are the King\'s subjects. If his cause be wrong, our  \n    obedience to the King wipes the crime of it out of us.\n  WILLIAMS. But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a\n    heavy reckoning to make when all those legs and arms and heads,\n    chopp\'d off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day\n    and cry all \'We died at such a place\'- some swearing, some crying\n    for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some\n    upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I\n    am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how\n    can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their\n    argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black\n    matter for the King that led them to it; who to disobey were\n    against all proportion of subjection.\n  KING HENRY. So, if a son that is by his father sent about\n    merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of\n    his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father\n    that sent him; or if a servant, under his master\'s command\n    transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in\n    many irreconcil\'d iniquities, you may call the business of the\n    master the author of the servant\'s damnation. But this is not so:\n    the King is not bound to answer the particular endings of his  \n    soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant;\n    for they purpose not their death when they purpose their\n    services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so\n    spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out\n    with all unspotted soldiers: some peradventure have on them the\n    guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling\n    virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars\n    their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace\n    with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law\n    and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men they\n    have no wings to fly from God: war is His beadle, war is His\n    vengeance; so that here men are punish\'d for before-breach of the\n    King\'s laws in now the King\'s quarrel. Where they feared the\n    death they have borne life away; and where they would be safe\n    they perish. Then if they die unprovided, no more is the King\n    guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those\n    impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject\'s\n    duty is the King\'s; but every subject\'s soul is his own.\n    Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man\n    in his bed- wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so,  \n    death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly\n    lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes\n    it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He\n    let him outlive that day to see His greatness, and to teach\n    others how they should prepare.\n  WILLIAMS. \'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon his\n    own head- the King is not to answer for it.\n  BATES. I do not desire he should answer for me, and yet I determine\n    to fight lustily for him.\n  KING HENRY. I myself heard the King say he would not be ransom\'d.\n  WILLIAMS. Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully; but when our\n    throats are cut he may be ransom\'d, and we ne\'er the wiser.\n  KING HENRY. If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.\n  WILLIAMS. You pay him then! That\'s a perilous shot out of an\n    elder-gun, that a poor and a private displeasure can do against a\n    monarch! You may as well go about to turn the sun to ice with\n    fanning in his face with a peacock\'s feather. You\'ll never trust\n    his word after! Come, \'tis a foolish saying.\n  KING HENRY. Your reproof is something too round; I should be angry\n    with you, if the time were convenient.  \n  WILLIAMS. Let it be a quarrel between us if you live.\n  KING HENRY. I embrace it.\n  WILLIAMS. How shall I know thee again?\n  KING HENRY. Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my\n    bonnet; then if ever thou dar\'st acknowledge it, I will make it\n    my quarrel.\n  WILLIAMS. Here\'s my glove; give me another of thine.\n  KING HENRY. There.\n  WILLIAMS. This will I also wear in my cap; if ever thou come to me\n    and say, after to-morrow, \'This is my glove,\' by this hand I will\n    take thee a box on the ear.\n  KING HENRY. If ever I live to see it, I will challenge it.\n  WILLIAMS. Thou dar\'st as well be hang\'d.\n  KING HENRY. Well, I will do it, though I take thee in the King\'s\n    company.\n  WILLIAMS. Keep thy word. Fare thee well.\n  BATES. Be friends, you English fools, be friends; we have\n    French quarrels enow, if you could tell how to reckon.\n  KING HENRY. Indeed, the French may lay twenty French crowns to one\n    they will beat us, for they bear them on their shoulders; but it  \n    is no English treason to cut French crowns, and to-morrow the\n    King himself will be a clipper.\n                                                 Exeunt soldiers\n    Upon the King! Let us our lives, our souls,\n    Our debts, our careful wives,\n    Our children, and our sins, lay on the King!\n    We must bear all. O hard condition,\n    Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath\n    Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel\n    But his own wringing! What infinite heart\'s ease\n    Must kings neglect that private men enjoy!\n    And what have kings that privates have not too,\n    Save ceremony- save general ceremony?\n    And what art thou, thou idol Ceremony?\n    What kind of god art thou, that suffer\'st more\n    Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?\n    What are thy rents? What are thy comings-in?\n    O Ceremony, show me but thy worth!\n    What is thy soul of adoration?\n    Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form,  \n    Creating awe and fear in other men?\n    Wherein thou art less happy being fear\'d\n    Than they in fearing.\n    What drink\'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,\n    But poison\'d flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,\n    And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!\n    Thinks thou the fiery fever will go out\n    With titles blown from adulation?\n    Will it give place to flexure and low bending?\n    Canst thou, when thou command\'st the beggar\'s knee,\n    Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,\n    That play\'st so subtly with a king\'s repose.\n    I am a king that find thee; and I know\n    \'Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball,\n    The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,\n    The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,\n    The farced tide running fore the king,\n    The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp\n    That beats upon the high shore of this world-\n    No, not all these, thrice gorgeous ceremony,  \n    Not all these, laid in bed majestical,\n    Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave\n    Who, with a body fill\'d and vacant mind,\n    Gets him to rest, cramm\'d with distressful bread;\n    Never sees horrid night, the child of hell;\n    But, like a lackey, from the rise to set\n    Sweats in the eye of Pheebus, and all night\n    Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn,\n    Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse;\n    And follows so the ever-running year\n    With profitable labour, to his grave.\n    And but for ceremony, such a wretch,\n    Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,\n    Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.\n    The slave, a member of the country\'s peace,\n    Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots\n    What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace\n    Whose hours the peasant best advantages.\n\n                       Enter ERPINGHAM  \n\n  ERPINGHAM. My lord, your nobles, jealous of your absence,\n    Seek through your camp to find you.\n  KING. Good old knight,\n    Collect them all together at my tent:\n    I\'ll be before thee.\n  ERPINGHAM. I shall do\'t, my lord.                         Exit\n  KING. O God of battles, steel my soldiers\' hearts,\n    Possess them not with fear! Take from them now\n    The sense of reck\'ning, if th\' opposed numbers\n    Pluck their hearts from them! Not to-day, O Lord,\n    O, not to-day, think not upon the fault\n    My father made in compassing the crown!\n    I Richard\'s body have interred new,\n    And on it have bestowed more contrite tears\n    Than from it issued forced drops of blood;\n    Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,\n    Who twice a day their wither\'d hands hold up\n    Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built\n    Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests  \n    Sing still for Richard\'s soul. More will I do;\n    Though all that I can do is nothing worth,\n    Since that my penitence comes after all,\n    Imploring pardon.\n\n                         Enter GLOUCESTER\n\n  GLOUCESTER. My liege!\n  KING HENRY. My brother Gloucester\'s voice? Ay;\n    I know thy errand, I will go with thee;\n    The day, my friends, and all things, stay for me.     Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe French camp\n\nEnter the DAUPHIN, ORLEANS, RAMBURES, and others\n\n  ORLEANS. The sun doth gild our armour; up, my lords!\n  DAUPHIN. Montez a cheval! My horse! Varlet, laquais! Ha!\n  ORLEANS. O brave spirit!\n  DAUPHIN. Via! Les eaux et la terre-\n  ORLEANS. Rien puis? L\'air et le feu.\n  DAUPHIN. Ciel! cousin Orleans.\n\n                        Enter CONSTABLE\n\n    Now, my Lord Constable!\n  CONSTABLE. Hark how our steeds for present service neigh!\n  DAUPHIN. Mount them, and make incision in their hides,\n    That their hot blood may spin in English eyes,\n    And dout them with superfluous courage, ha!\n  RAMBURES. What, will you have them weep our horses\' blood?\n    How shall we then behold their natural tears?\n  \n                        Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. The English are embattl\'d, you French peers.\n  CONSTABLE. To horse, you gallant Princes! straight to horse!\n    Do but behold yon poor and starved band,\n    And your fair show shall suck away their souls,\n    Leaving them but the shales and husks of men.\n    There is not work enough for all our hands;\n    Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins\n    To give each naked curtle-axe a stain\n    That our French gallants shall to-day draw out,\n    And sheathe for lack of sport. Let us but blow on them,\n    The vapour of our valour will o\'erturn them.\n    \'Tis positive \'gainst all exceptions, lords,\n    That our superfluous lackeys and our peasants-\n    Who in unnecessary action swarm\n    About our squares of battle- were enow\n    To purge this field of, such a hilding foe;\n    Though we upon this mountain\'s basis by\n    Took stand for idle speculation-  \n    But that our honours must not. What\'s to say?\n    A very little little let us do,\n    And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound\n    The tucket sonance and the note to mount;\n    For our approach shall so much dare the field\n    That England shall couch down in fear and yield.\n\n                        Enter GRANDPRE\n\n  GRANDPRE. Why do you stay so long, my lords of France?\n    Yond island carrions, desperate of their bones,\n    Ill-favouredly become the morning field;\n    Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,\n    And our air shakes them passing scornfully;\n    Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggar\'d host,\n    And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps.\n    The horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks\n    With torch-staves in their hand; and their poor jades\n    Lob down their heads, dropping the hides and hips,\n    The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes,  \n    And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal\'d bit\n    Lies foul with chaw\'d grass, still and motionless;\n    And their executors, the knavish crows,\n    Fly o\'er them, all impatient for their hour.\n    Description cannot suit itself in words\n    To demonstrate the life of such a battle\n    In life so lifeless as it shows itself.\n  CONSTABLE. They have said their prayers and they stay for death.\n  DAUPHIN. Shall we go send them dinners and fresh suits,\n    And give their fasting horses provender,\n    And after fight with them?\n  CONSTABLE. I stay but for my guidon. To the field!\n    I will the banner from a trumpet take,\n    And use it for my haste. Come, come, away!\n    The sun is high, and we outwear the day.              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nThe English camp\n\nEnter GLOUCESTER, BEDFORD, EXETER, ERPINGHAM, with all his host;\nSALISBURY and WESTMORELAND\n\n  GLOUCESTER. Where is the King?\n  BEDFORD. The King himself is rode to view their battle.\n  WESTMORELAND. Of fighting men they have full three-score thousand.\n  EXETER. There\'s five to one; besides, they all are fresh.\n  SALISBURY. God\'s arm strike with us! \'tis a fearful odds.\n    God bye you, Princes all; I\'ll to my charge.\n    If we no more meet till we meet in heaven,\n    Then joyfully, my noble Lord of Bedford,\n    My dear Lord Gloucester, and my good Lord Exeter,\n    And my kind kinsman- warriors all, adieu!\n  BEDFORD. Farewell, good Salisbury; and good luck go with thee!\n  EXETER. Farewell, kind lord. Fight valiantly to-day;\n    And yet I do thee wrong to mind thee of it,\n    For thou art fram\'d of the firm truth of valour.\n                                                  Exit SALISBURY\n  BEDFORD. He is as full of valour as of kindness;  \n    Princely in both.\n\n                            Enter the KING\n\n  WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here\n    But one ten thousand of those men in England\n    That do no work to-day!\n  KING. What\'s he that wishes so?\n    My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;\n    If we are mark\'d to die, we are enow\n    To do our country loss; and if to live,\n    The fewer men, the greater share of honour.\n    God\'s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.\n    By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,\n    Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;\n    It yearns me not if men my garments wear;\n    Such outward things dwell not in my desires.\n    But if it be a sin to covet honour,\n    I am the most offending soul alive.\n    No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.\n    God\'s peace! I would not lose so great an honour  \n    As one man more methinks would share from me\n    For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!\n    Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,\n    That he which hath no stomach to this fight,\n    Let him depart; his passport shall be made,\n    And crowns for convoy put into his purse;\n    We would not die in that man\'s company\n    That fears his fellowship to die with us.\n    This day is call\'d the feast of Crispian.\n    He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,\n    Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam\'d,\n    And rouse him at the name of Crispian.\n    He that shall live this day, and see old age,\n    Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,\n    And say \'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.\'\n    Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,\n    And say \'These wounds I had on Crispian\'s day.\'\n    Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,\n    But he\'ll remember, with advantages,\n    What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,  \n    Familiar in his mouth as household words-\n    Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,\n    Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-\n    Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb\'red.\n    This story shall the good man teach his son;\n    And Crispin Crispian shall ne\'er go by,\n    From this day to the ending of the world,\n    But we in it shall be remembered-\n    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;\n    For he to-day that sheds his blood with me\n    Shall be my brother; be he ne\'er so vile,\n    This day shall gentle his condition;\n    And gentlemen in England now-a-bed\n    Shall think themselves accurs\'d they were not here,\n    And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks\n    That fought with us upon Saint Crispin\'s day.\n\n                      Re-enter SALISBURY\n\n  SALISBURY. My sovereign lord, bestow yourself with speed:  \n    The French are bravely in their battles set,\n    And will with all expedience charge on us.\n  KING HENRY. All things are ready, if our minds be so.\n  WESTMORELAND. Perish the man whose mind is backward now!\n  KING HENRY. Thou dost not wish more help from England, coz?\n  WESTMORELAND. God\'s will, my liege! would you and I alone,\n    Without more help, could fight this royal battle!\n  KING HENRY. Why, now thou hast unwish\'d five thousand men;\n    Which likes me better than to wish us one.\n    You know your places. God be with you all!\n\n                     Tucket. Enter MONTJOY\n\n  MONTJOY. Once more I come to know of thee, King Harry,\n    If for thy ransom thou wilt now compound,\n    Before thy most assured overthrow;\n    For certainly thou art so near the gulf\n    Thou needs must be englutted. Besides, in mercy,\n    The constable desires thee thou wilt mind\n    Thy followers of repentance, that their souls  \n    May make a peaceful and a sweet retire\n    From off these fields, where, wretches, their poor bodies\n    Must lie and fester.\n  KING HENRY. Who hath sent thee now?\n  MONTJOY. The Constable of France.\n  KING HENRY. I pray thee bear my former answer back:\n    Bid them achieve me, and then sell my bones.\n    Good God! why should they mock poor fellows thus?\n    The man that once did sell the lion\'s skin\n    While the beast liv\'d was kill\'d with hunting him.\n    A many of our bodies shall no doubt\n    Find native graves; upon the which, I trust,\n    Shall witness live in brass of this day\'s work.\n    And those that leave their valiant bones in France,\n    Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills,\n    They shall be fam\'d; for there the sun shall greet them\n    And draw their honours reeking up to heaven,\n    Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime,\n    The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France.\n    Mark then abounding valour in our English,  \n    That, being dead, like to the bullet\'s grazing\n    Break out into a second course of mischief,\n    Killing in relapse of mortality.\n    Let me speak proudly: tell the Constable\n    We are but warriors for the working-day;\n    Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch\'d\n    With rainy marching in the painful field;\n    There\'s not a piece of feather in our host-\n    Good argument, I hope, we will not fly-\n    And time hath worn us into slovenry.\n    But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim;\n    And my poor soldiers tell me yet ere night\n    They\'ll be in fresher robes, or they will pluck\n    The gay new coats o\'er the French soldiers\' heads\n    And turn them out of service. If they do this-\n    As, if God please, they shall- my ransom then\n    Will soon be levied. Herald, save thou thy labour;\n    Come thou no more for ransom, gentle herald;\n    They shall have none, I swear, but these my joints;\n    Which if they have, as I will leave \'em them,  \n    Shall yield them little, tell the Constable.\n  MONTJOY. I shall, King Harry. And so fare thee well:\n    Thou never shalt hear herald any more.                  Exit\n  KING HENRY. I fear thou wilt once more come again for a ransom.\n\n                    Enter the DUKE OF YORK\n\n  YORK. My lord, most humbly on my knee I beg\n    The leading of the vaward.\n  KING HENRY. Take it, brave York. Now, soldiers, march away;\n    And how thou pleasest, God, dispose the day!          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nThe field of battle\n\nAlarum.  Excursions.  Enter FRENCH SOLDIER, PISTOL, and BOY\n\n  PISTOL. Yield, cur!\n  FRENCH SOLDIER. Je pense que vous etes le gentilhomme de bonne\n    qualite.\n  PISTOL. Cality! Calen o custure me! Art thou a gentleman?\n    What is thy name? Discuss.\n  FRENCH SOLDIER. O Seigneur Dieu!\n  PISTOL. O, Signieur Dew should be a gentleman.\n    Perpend my words, O Signieur Dew, and mark:\n    O Signieur Dew, thou diest on point of fox,\n    Except, O Signieur, thou do give to me\n    Egregious ransom.\n  FRENCH SOLDIER. O, prenez misericorde; ayez pitie de moi!\n  PISTOL. Moy shall not serve; I will have forty moys;\n    Or I will fetch thy rim out at thy throat\n    In drops of crimson blood.\n  FRENCH SOLDIER. Est-il impossible d\'echapper la force de ton bras?  \n  PISTOL. Brass, cur?\n    Thou damned and luxurious mountain-goat,\n    Offer\'st me brass?\n  FRENCH SOLDIER. O, pardonnez-moi!\n  PISTOL. Say\'st thou me so? Is that a ton of moys?\n    Come hither, boy; ask me this slave in French\n    What is his name.\n  BOY. Ecoutez: comment etes-vous appele?\n  FRENCH SOLDIER. Monsieur le Fer.\n  BOY. He says his name is Master Fer.\n  PISTOL. Master Fer! I\'ll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him-\n   discuss the same in French unto him.\n  BOY. I do not know the French for fer, and ferret, and firk.\n  PISTOL. Bid him prepare; for I will cut his throat.\n  FRENCH SOLDIER. Que dit-il, monsieur?\n  BOY. Il me commande a vous dire que vous faites vous pret; car ce\n    soldat ici est dispose tout a cette heure de couper votre gorge.\n  PISTOL. Owy, cuppele gorge, permafoy!\n    Peasant, unless thou give me crowns, brave crowns;\n    Or mangled shalt thou be by this my sword.  \n  FRENCH SOLDIER. O, je vous supplie, pour l\'amour de Dieu, me\n    pardonner! Je suis gentilhomme de bonne maison. Gardez ma vie, et\n    je vous donnerai deux cents ecus.\n  PISTOL. What are his words?\n  BOY. He prays you to save his life; he is a gentleman of a good\n    house, and for his ransom he will give you two hundred crowns.\n  PISTOL. Tell him my fury shall abate, and I\n    The crowns will take.\n  FRENCH SOLDIER. Petit monsieur, que dit-il?\n  BOY. Encore qu\'il est contre son jurement de pardonner aucun\n    prisonnier, neamnoins, pour les ecus que vous l\'avez promis, il\n    est content a vous donner la liberte, le franchisement.\n  FRENCH SOLDIER. Sur mes genoux je vous donne mille remercimens; et\n    je m\'estime heureux que je suis tombe entre les mains d\'un\n    chevalier, je pense, le plus brave, vaillant, et tres distingue\n    seigneur d\'Angleterre.\n  PISTOL. Expound unto me, boy.\n  BOY. He gives you, upon his knees, a thousand thanks; and he\n    esteems himself happy that he hath fall\'n into the hands of one-\n    as he thinks- the most brave, valorous, and thrice-worthy  \n    signieur of England.\n  PISTOL. As I suck blood, I will some mercy show.\n    Follow me.                                              Exit\n  BOY. Suivez-vous le grand capitaine.       Exit FRENCH SOLDIER\n    I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart; but\n    the saying is true- the empty vessel makes the greatest sound.\n    Bardolph and Nym had ten times more valour than this roaring\n    devil i\' th\' old play, that every one may pare his nails with a\n    wooden dagger; and they are both hang\'d; and so would this be, if\n    he durst steal anything adventurously. I must stay with the\n    lackeys, with the luggage of our camp. The French might have a\n    good prey of us, if he knew of it; for there is none to guard it\n    but boys.                                               Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nAnother part of the field of battle\n\nEnter CONSTABLE, ORLEANS, BOURBON, DAUPHIN, and RAMBURES\n\n  CONSTABLE. O diable!\n  ORLEANS. O Seigneur! le jour est perdu, tout est perdu!\n  DAUPHIN. Mort Dieu, ma vie! all is confounded, all!\n    Reproach and everlasting shame\n    Sits mocking in our plumes.                 [A short alarum]\n    O mechante fortune! Do not run away.\n  CONSTABLE. Why, an our ranks are broke.\n  DAUPHIN. O perdurable shame! Let\'s stab ourselves.\n    Be these the wretches that we play\'d at dice for?\n  ORLEANS. Is this the king we sent to for his ransom?\n  BOURBON. Shame, and eternal shame, nothing but shame!\n    Let us die in honour: once more back again;\n    And he that will not follow Bourbon now,\n    Let him go hence and, with his cap in hand\n    Like a base pander, hold the chamber-door\n    Whilst by a slave, no gender than my dog,  \n    His fairest daughter is contaminated.\n  CONSTABLE. Disorder, that hath spoil\'d us, friend us now!\n    Let us on heaps go offer up our lives.\n  ORLEANS. We are enow yet living in the field\n    To smother up the English in our throngs,\n    If any order might be thought upon.\n  BOURBON. The devil take order now! I\'ll to the throng.\n    Let life be short, else shame will be too long.       Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nAnother part of the field\n\nAlarum. Enter the KING and his train, with prisoners; EXETER, and others\n\n  KING HENRY. Well have we done, thrice-valiant countrymen;\n    But all\'s not done- yet keep the French the field.\n  EXETER. The Duke of York commends him to your Majesty.\n  KING HENRY. Lives he, good uncle? Thrice within this hour\n    I saw him down; thrice up again, and fighting;\n    From helmet to the spur all blood he was.\n  EXETER. In which array, brave soldier, doth he lie\n    Larding the plain; and by his bloody side,\n    Yoke-fellow to his honour-owing wounds,\n    The noble Earl of Suffolk also lies.\n    Suffolk first died; and York, all haggled over,\n    Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteeped,\n    And takes him by the beard, kisses the gashes\n    That bloodily did yawn upon his face,\n    He cries aloud \'Tarry, my cousin Suffolk.\n    My soul shall thine keep company to heaven;  \n    Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast;\n    As in this glorious and well-foughten field\n    We kept together in our chivalry.\'\n    Upon these words I came and cheer\'d him up;\n    He smil\'d me in the face, raught me his hand,\n    And, with a feeble grip, says \'Dear my lord,\n    Commend my service to my sovereign.\'\n    So did he turn, and over Suffolk\'s neck\n    He threw his wounded arm and kiss\'d his lips;\n    And so, espous\'d to death, with blood he seal\'d\n    A testament of noble-ending love.\n    The pretty and sweet manner of it forc\'d\n    Those waters from me which I would have stopp\'d;\n    But I had not so much of man in me,\n    And all my mother came into mine eyes\n    And gave me up to tears.\n  KING HENRY. I blame you not;\n    For, hearing this, I must perforce compound\n    With mistful eyes, or they will issue too.          [Alarum]\n    But hark! what new alarum is this same?  \n    The French have reinforc\'d their scatter\'d men.\n    Then every soldier kill his prisoners;\n    Give the word through.                                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\nAnother part of the field\n\nEnter FLUELLEN and GOWER\n\n  FLUELLEN. Kill the poys and the luggage! \'Tis expressly against the\n    law of arms; \'tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now, as\n    can be offert; in your conscience, now, is it not?\n  GOWER. \'Tis certain there\'s not a boy left alive; and the cowardly\n    rascals that ran from the battle ha\' done this slaughter;\n    besides, they have burned and carried away all that was in the\n    King\'s tent; wherefore the King most worthily hath caus\'d every\n    soldier to cut his prisoner\'s throat. O, \'tis a gallant King!\n  FLUELLEN. Ay, he was porn at Monmouth, Captain Gower. What call you\n    the town\'s name where Alexander the Pig was born?\n  GOWER. Alexander the Great.\n  FLUELLEN. Why, I pray you, is not \'pig\' great? The pig, or great,\n    or the mighty, or the huge, or the magnanimous, are all one\n    reckonings, save the phrase is a little variations.\n  GOWER. I think Alexander the Great was born in Macedon; his father\n    was called Philip of Macedon, as I take it.\n  FLUELLEN. I think it is in Macedon where Alexander is porn. I tell  \n    you, Captain, if you look in the maps of the \'orld, I warrant you\n    sall find, in the comparisons between Macedon and Monmouth, that\n    the situations, look you, is both alike. There is a river in\n    Macedon; and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth; it is\n    call\'d Wye at Monmouth, but it is out of my prains what is the\n    name of the other river; but \'tis all one, \'tis alike as my\n    fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both. If you\n    mark Alexander\'s life well, Harry of Monmouth\'s life is come\n    after it indifferent well; for there is figures in all things.\n    Alexander- God knows, and you know- in his rages, and his furies,\n    and his wraths, and his cholers, and his moods, and his\n    displeasures, and his indignations, and also being a little\n    intoxicates in his prains, did, in his ales and his angers, look\n    you, kill his best friend, Cleitus.\n  GOWER. Our king is not like him in that: he never kill\'d any of his\n    friends.\n  FLUELLEN. It is not well done, mark you now, to take the tales out\n    of my mouth ere it is made and finished. I speak but in the\n    figures and comparisons of it; as Alexander kill\'d his friend\n    Cleitus, being in his ales and his cups, so also Harry Monmouth,  \n    being in his right wits and his good judgments, turn\'d away the\n    fat knight with the great belly doublet; he was full of jests,\n    and gipes, and knaveries, and mocks; I have forgot his name.\n  GOWER. Sir John Falstaff.\n  FLUELLEN. That is he. I\'ll tell you there is good men porn at\n    Monmouth.\n  GOWER. Here comes his Majesty.\n\n            Alarum. Enter the KING, WARWICK, GLOUCESTER,\n            EXETER, and others, with prisoners. Flourish\n\n  KING HENRY. I was not angry since I came to France\n    Until this instant. Take a trumpet, herald,\n    Ride thou unto the horsemen on yond hill;\n    If they will fight with us, bid them come down\n    Or void the field; they do offend our sight.\n    If they\'ll do neither, we will come to them\n    And make them skirr away as swift as stones\n    Enforced from the old Assyrian slings;\n    Besides, we\'ll cut the throats of those we have,  \n    And not a man of them that we shall take\n    Shall taste our mercy. Go and tell them so.\n\n                      Enter MONTJOY\n\n  EXETER. Here comes the herald of the French, my liege.\n  GLOUCESTER. His eyes are humbler than they us\'d to be.\n  KING HENRY. How now! What means this, herald? know\'st thou not\n    That I have fin\'d these bones of mine for ransom?\n    Com\'st thou again for ransom?\n  MONTJOY. No, great King;\n    I come to thee for charitable licence,\n    That we may wander o\'er this bloody field\n    To book our dead, and then to bury them;\n    To sort our nobles from our common men;\n    For many of our princes- woe the while!-\n    Lie drown\'d and soak\'d in mercenary blood;\n    So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbs\n    In blood of princes; and their wounded steeds\n    Fret fetlock deep in gore, and with wild rage  \n    Yerk out their armed heels at their dead masters,\n    Killing them twice. O, give us leave, great King,\n    To view the field in safety, and dispose\n    Of their dead bodies!\n  KING HENRY. I tell thee truly, herald,\n    I know not if the day be ours or no;\n    For yet a many of your horsemen peer\n    And gallop o\'er the field.\n  MONTJOY. The day is yours.\n  KING HENRY. Praised be God, and not our strength, for it!\n    What is this castle call\'d that stands hard by?\n  MONTJOY. They call it Agincourt.\n  KING HENRY. Then call we this the field of Agincourt,\n    Fought on the day of Crispin Crispianus.\n  FLUELLEN. Your grandfather of famous memory, an\'t please your\n    Majesty, and your great-uncle Edward the Plack Prince of Wales,\n    as I have read in the chronicles, fought a most prave pattle here\n    in France.\n  KING HENRY. They did, Fluellen.\n  FLUELLEN. Your Majesty says very true; if your Majesties is  \n    rememb\'red of it, the Welshmen did good service in garden where\n    leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps; which your\n    Majesty know to this hour is an honourable badge of the service;\n    and I do believe your Majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek\n    upon Saint Tavy\'s day.\n  KING HENRY. I wear it for a memorable honour;\n    For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman.\n  FLUELLEN. All the water in Wye cannot wash your Majesty\'s Welsh\n    plood out of your pody, I can tell you that. Got pless it and\n    preserve it as long as it pleases his Grace and his Majesty too!\n  KING HENRY. Thanks, good my countryman.\n  FLUELLEN. By Jeshu, I am your Majesty\'s countryman, care not who\n    know it; I will confess it to all the \'orld: I need not be\n    asham\'d of your Majesty, praised be Got, so long as your Majesty\n    is an honest man.\n\n                       Enter WILLIAMS\n\n  KING HENRY. God keep me so! Our heralds go with him:\n    Bring me just notice of the numbers dead  \n    On both our parts. Call yonder fellow hither.\n                                     Exeunt heralds with MONTJOY\n  EXETER. Soldier, you must come to the King.\n  KING HENRY. Soldier, why wear\'st thou that glove in thy cap?\n  WILLIAMS. An\'t please your Majesty, \'tis the gage of one that I\n    should fight withal, if he be alive.\n  KING HENRY. An Englishman?\n  WILLIAMS. An\'t please your Majesty, a rascal that swagger\'d with me\n    last night; who, if \'a live and ever dare to challenge this\n    glove, I have sworn to take him a box o\' th\' ear; or if I can see\n    my glove in his cap- which he swore, as he was a soldier, he\n    would wear if alive- I will strike it out soundly.\n  KING HENRY. What think you, Captain Fluellen, is it fit this\n    soldier keep his oath?\n  FLUELLEN. He is a craven and a villain else, an\'t please your\n    Majesty, in my conscience.\n  KING HENRY. It may be his enemy is a gentlemen of great sort, quite\n    from the answer of his degree.\n  FLUELLEN. Though he be as good a gentleman as the Devil is, as\n    Lucifier and Belzebub himself, it is necessary, look your Grace,  \n    that he keep his vow and his oath; if he be perjur\'d, see you\n    now, his reputation is as arrant a villain and a Jacksauce as\n    ever his black shoe trod upon God\'s ground and his earth, in my\n    conscience, la.\n  KING HENRY. Then keep thy vow, sirrah, when thou meet\'st the\n    fellow.\n  WILLIAMS. So I Will, my liege, as I live.\n  KING HENRY. Who serv\'st thou under?\n  WILLIAMS. Under Captain Gower, my liege.\n  FLUELLEN. Gower is a good captain, and is good knowledge and\n    literatured in the wars.\n  KING HENRY. Call him hither to me, soldier.\n  WILLIAMS. I will, my liege.                               Exit\n  KING HENRY. Here, Fluellen; wear thou this favour for me, and stick\n    it in thy cap; when Alencon and myself were down together, I\n    pluck\'d this glove from his helm. If any man challenge this, he\n    is a friend to Alencon and an enemy to our person; if thou\n    encounter any such, apprehend him, an thou dost me love.\n  FLUELLEN. Your Grace does me as great honours as can be desir\'d in\n    the hearts of his subjects. I would fain see the man that has but  \n    two legs that shall find himself aggrief\'d at this glove, that is\n    all; but I would fain see it once, an please God of his grace\n    that I might see.\n  KING HENRY. Know\'st thou Gower?\n  FLUELLEN. He is my dear friend, an please you.\n  KING HENRY. Pray thee, go seek him, and bring him to my tent.\n  FLUELLEN. I will fetch him.                               Exit\n  KING HENRY. My Lord of Warwick and my brother Gloucester,\n    Follow Fluellen closely at the heels;\n    The glove which I have given him for a favour\n    May haply purchase him a box o\' th\' ear.\n    It is the soldier\'s: I, by bargain, should\n    Wear it myself. Follow, good cousin Warwick;\n    If that the soldier strike him, as I judge\n    By his blunt bearing he will keep his word,\n    Some sudden mischief may arise of it;\n    For I do know Fluellen valiant,\n    And touch\'d with choler, hot as gunpowder,\n    And quickly will return an injury;\n    Follow, and see there be no harm between them.  \n    Go you with me, uncle of Exeter.                      Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VIII.\nBefore KING HENRY\'S PAVILION\n\nEnter GOWER and WILLIAMS\n\n  WILLIAMS. I warrant it is to knight you, Captain.\n\n                         Enter FLUELLEN\n\n  FLUELLEN. God\'s will and his pleasure, Captain, I beseech you now,\n    come apace to the King: there is more good toward you\n    peradventure than is in your knowledge to dream of.\n  WILLIAMS. Sir, know you this glove?\n  FLUELLEN. Know the glove? I know the glove is a glove.\n  WILLIAMS. I know this; and thus I challenge it.  [Strikes him]\n  FLUELLEN. \'Sblood, an arrant traitor as any\'s in the universal\n    world, or in France, or in England!\n  GOWER. How now, sir! you villain!\n  WILLIAMS. Do you think I\'ll be forsworn?\n  FLUELLEN. Stand away, Captain Gower; I will give treason his\n    payment into plows, I warrant you.\n  WILLIAMS. I am no traitor.  \n  FLUELLEN. That\'s a lie in thy throat. I charge you in his Majesty\'s\n    name, apprehend him: he\'s a friend of the Duke Alencon\'s.\n\n                  Enter WARWICK and GLOUCESTER\n\n  WARWICK. How now! how now! what\'s the matter?\n  FLUELLEN. My Lord of Warwick, here is- praised be God for it!- a\n    most contagious treason come to light, look you, as you shall\n    desire in a summer\'s day. Here is his Majesty.\n\n                  Enter the KING and EXETER\n\n  KING HENRY. How now! what\'s the matter?\n  FLUELLEN. My liege, here is a villain and a traitor, that, look\n    your Grace, has struck the glove which your Majesty is take out\n    of the helmet of Alencon.\n  WILLIAMS. My liege, this was my glove: here is the fellow of it;\n    and he that I gave it to in change promis\'d to wear it in his\n    cap; I promis\'d to strike him if he did; I met this man with my\n    glove in his cap, and I have been as good as my word.  \n  FLUELLEN. Your Majesty hear now, saving your Majesty\'s manhood,\n    what an arrant, rascally, beggarly, lousy knave it is; I hope\n    your Majesty is pear me testimony and witness, and will\n    avouchment, that this is the glove of Alencon that your Majesty\n    is give me; in your conscience, now.\n  KING HENRY. Give me thy glove, soldier; look, here is the fellow of\n      it.\n    \'Twas I, indeed, thou promised\'st to strike,\n    And thou hast given me most bitter terms.\n  FLUELLEN. An please your Majesty, let his neck answer for it, if\n    there is any martial law in the world.\n  KING HENRY. How canst thou make me satisfaction?\n  WILLIAMS. All offences, my lord, come from the heart; never came\n    any from mine that might offend your Majesty.\n  KING HENRY. It was ourself thou didst abuse.\n  WILLIAMS. Your Majesty came not like yourself: you appear\'d to me\n    but as a common man; witness the night, your garments, your\n    lowliness; and what your Highness suffer\'d under that shape I\n    beseech you take it for your own fault, and not mine; for had you\n    been as I took you for, I made no offence; therefore, I beseech  \n    your Highness pardon me.\n  KING HENRY. Here, uncle Exeter, fill this glove with crowns,\n    And give it to this fellow. Keep it, fellow;\n    And wear it for an honour in thy cap\n    Till I do challenge it. Give him the crowns;\n    And, Captain, you must needs be friends with him.\n  FLUELLEN. By this day and this light, the fellow has mettle enough\n    in his belly: hold, there is twelve pence for you; and I pray you\n    to serve God, and keep you out of prawls, and prabbles, and\n    quarrels, and dissensions, and, I warrant you, it is the better\n    for you.\n  WILLIAMS. I will none of your money.\n  FLUELLEN. It is with a good will; I can tell you it will serve you\n    to mend your shoes. Come, wherefore should you be so pashful?\n    Your shoes is not so good. \'Tis a good silling, I warrant you, or\n    I will change it.\n\n                      Enter an ENGLISH HERALD\n\n  KING HENRY. Now, herald, are the dead numb\'red?  \n  HERALD. Here is the number of the slaught\'red French.\n                                                 [Gives a paper]\n  KING HENRY. What prisoners of good sort are taken, uncle?\n  EXETER. Charles Duke of Orleans, nephew to the King;\n    John Duke of Bourbon, and Lord Bouciqualt;\n    Of other lords and barons, knights and squires,\n    Full fifteen hundred, besides common men.\n  KING HENRY. This note doth tell me of ten thousand French\n    That in the field lie slain; of princes in this number,\n    And nobles bearing banners, there lie dead\n    One hundred twenty-six; added to these,\n    Of knights, esquires, and gallant gentlemen,\n    Eight thousand and four hundred; of the which\n    Five hundred were but yesterday dubb\'d knights.\n    So that, in these ten thousand they have lost,\n    There are but sixteen hundred mercenaries;\n    The rest are princes, barons, lords, knights, squires,\n    And gentlemen of blood and quality.\n    The names of those their nobles that lie dead:\n    Charles Delabreth, High Constable of France;  \n    Jaques of Chatillon, Admiral of France;\n    The master of the cross-bows, Lord Rambures;\n    Great Master of France, the brave Sir Guichard Dolphin;\n    John Duke of Alencon; Antony Duke of Brabant,\n    The brother to the Duke of Burgundy;\n    And Edward Duke of Bar. Of lusty earls,\n    Grandpre and Roussi, Fauconbridge and Foix,\n    Beaumont and Marle, Vaudemont and Lestrake.\n    Here was a royal fellowship of death!\n    Where is the number of our English dead?\n                                 [HERALD presents another paper]\n    Edward the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk,\n    Sir Richard Kikely, Davy Gam, Esquire;\n    None else of name; and of all other men\n    But five and twenty. O God, thy arm was here!\n    And not to us, but to thy arm alone,\n    Ascribe we all. When, without stratagem,\n    But in plain shock and even play of battle,\n    Was ever known so great and little los\n    On one part and on th\' other? Take it, God,  \n    For it is none but thine.\n  EXETER. \'Tis wonderful!\n  KING HENRY. Come, go we in procession to the village;\n    And be it death proclaimed through our host\n    To boast of this or take that praise from God\n    Which is his only.\n  FLUELLEN. Is it not lawful, an please your Majesty, to tell how\n    many is kill\'d?\n  KING HENRY. Yes, Captain; but with this acknowledgment,\n    That God fought for us.\n  FLUELLEN. Yes, my conscience, he did us great good.\n  KING HENRY. Do we all holy rites:\n    Let there be sung \'Non nobis\' and \'Te Deum\';\n    The dead with charity enclos\'d in clay-\n    And then to Calais; and to England then;\n    Where ne\'er from France arriv\'d more happy men.       Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. PROLOGUE.\n\nEnter CHORUS\n\n  CHORUS. Vouchsafe to those that have not read the story\n    That I may prompt them; and of such as have,\n    I humbly pray them to admit th\' excuse\n    Of time, of numbers, and due course of things,\n    Which cannot in their huge and proper life\n    Be here presented. Now we bear the King\n    Toward Calais. Grant him there. There seen,\n    Heave him away upon your winged thoughts\n    Athwart the sea. Behold, the English beach\n    Pales in the flood with men, with wives, and boys,\n    Whose shouts and claps out-voice the deep-mouth\'d sea,\n    Which, like a mighty whiffler, fore the King\n    Seems to prepare his way. So let him land,\n    And solemnly see him set on to London.\n    So swift a pace hath thought that even now\n    You may imagine him upon Blackheath;\n    Where that his lords desire him to have borne\n    His bruised helmet and his bended sword  \n    Before him through the city. He forbids it,\n    Being free from vainness and self-glorious pride;\n    Giving full trophy, signal, and ostent,\n    Quite from himself to God. But now behold\n    In the quick forge and working-house of thought,\n    How London doth pour out her citizens!\n    The mayor and all his brethren in best sort-\n    Like to the senators of th\' antique Rome,\n    With the plebeians swarming at their heels-\n    Go forth and fetch their conqu\'ring Caesar in;\n    As, by a lower but loving likelihood,\n    Were now the General of our gracious Empress-\n    As in good time he may- from Ireland coming,\n    Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,\n    How many would the peaceful city quit\n    To welcome him! Much more, and much more cause,\n    Did they this Harry. Now in London place him-\n    As yet the lamentation of the French\n    Invites the King of England\'s stay at home;\n    The Emperor\'s coming in behalf of France  \n    To order peace between them; and omit\n    All the occurrences, whatever chanc\'d,\n    Till Harry\'s back-return again to France.\n    There must we bring him; and myself have play\'d\n    The interim, by rememb\'ring you \'tis past.\n    Then brook abridgment; and your eyes advance,\n    After your thoughts, straight back again to France.     Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE I.\nFrance.  The English camp\n\nEnter FLUELLEN and GOWER\n\n  GOWER. Nay, that\'s right; but why wear you your leek to-day? Saint\n    Davy\'s day is past.\n  FLUELLEN. There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all\n    things. I will tell you, ass my friend, Captain Gower: the\n    rascally, scald, beggarly, lousy, pragging knave, Pistol- which\n    you and yourself and all the world know to be no petter than a\n    fellow, look you now, of no merits- he is come to me, and prings\n    me pread and salt yesterday, look you, and bid me eat my leek; it\n    was in a place where I could not breed no contendon with him; but\n    I will be so bold as to wear it in my cap till I see him once\n    again, and then I will tell him a little piece of my desires.\n\n                          Enter PISTOL\n\n  GOWER. Why, here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock.\n  FLUELLEN. \'Tis no matter for his swellings nor his turkey-cocks.\n    God pless you, Aunchient Pistol! you scurvy, lousy knave, God  \n    pless you!\n  PISTOL. Ha! art thou bedlam? Dost thou thirst, base Troyan,\n    To have me fold up Parca\'s fatal web?\n    Hence! I am qualmish at the smell of leek.\n  FLUELLEN. I peseech you heartily, scurvy, lousy knave, at my\n    desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, look you,\n    this leek; because, look you, you do not love it, nor your\n    affections, and your appetites, and your digestions, does not\n    agree with it, I would desire you to eat it.\n  PISTOL. Not for Cadwallader and all his goats.\n  FLUELLEN. There is one goat for you.  [Strikes him]  Will you be so\n    good, scald knave, as eat it?\n  PISTOL. Base Troyan, thou shalt die.\n  FLUELLEN. You say very true, scald knave- when God\'s will is. I\n    will desire you to live in the meantime, and eat your victuals;\n    come, there is sauce for it.  [Striking him again]  You call\'d me\n    yesterday mountain-squire; but I will make you to-day a squire of\n    low degree. I pray you fall to; if you can mock a leek, you can\n    eat a leek.\n  GOWER. Enough, Captain, you have astonish\'d him.  \n  FLUELLEN. I say I will make him eat some part of my leek, or I will\n    peat his pate four days. Bite, I pray you, it is good for your\n    green wound and your ploody coxcomb.\n  PISTOL. Must I bite?\n  FLUELLEN. Yes, certainly, and out of doubt, and out of question\n    too, and ambiguides.\n  PISTOL. By this leek, I will most horribly revenge- I eat and eat,\n    I swear-\n  FLUELLEN. Eat, I pray you; will you have some more sauce to your\n    leek? There is not enough leek to swear by.\n  PISTOL. Quiet thy cudgel: thou dost see I eat.\n  FLUELLEN. Much good do you, scald knave, heartily. Nay, pray you\n    throw none away; the skin is good for your broken coxcomb. When\n    you take occasions to see leeks hereafter, I pray you mock at\n    \'em; that is all.\n  PISTOL. Good.\n  FLUELLEN. Ay, leeks is good. Hold you, there is a groat to heal\n    your pate.\n  PISTOL. Me a groat!\n  FLUELLEN. Yes, verily and in truth, you shall take it; or I have  \n    another leek in my pocket which you shall eat.\n  PISTOL. I take thy groat in earnest of revenge.\n  FLUELLEN. If I owe you anything I will pay you in cudgels; you\n    shall be a woodmonger, and buy nothing of me but cudgels. God bye\n    you, and keep you, and heal your pate.\n Exit\n  PISTOL. All hell shall stir for this.\n  GOWER. Go, go: you are a couterfeit cowardly knave. Will you mock\n    at an ancient tradition, begun upon an honourable respect, and\n    worn as a memorable trophy of predeceased valour, and dare not\n    avouch in your deeds any of your words? I have seen you gleeking\n    and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice. You thought,\n    because he could not speak English in the native garb, he could\n    not therefore handle an English cudgel; you find it otherwise,\n    and henceforth let a Welsh correction teach you a good English\n    condition. Fare ye well.                                Exit\n  PISTOL. Doth Fortune play the huswife with me now?\n    News have I that my Nell is dead i\' th\' spital\n    Of malady of France;\n    And there my rendezvous is quite cut off.  \n    Old I do wax; and from my weary limbs\n    Honour is cudgell\'d. Well, bawd I\'ll turn,\n    And something lean to cutpurse of quick hand.\n    To England will I steal, and there I\'ll steal;\n    And patches will I get unto these cudgell\'d scars,\n    And swear I got them in the Gallia wars.                Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nFrance. The FRENCH KING\'S palace\n\nEnter at one door, KING HENRY, EXETER, BEDFORD, GLOUCESTER, WARWICK,\nWESTMORELAND, and other LORDS; at another, the FRENCH KING, QUEEN ISABEL,\nthe PRINCESS KATHERINE, ALICE, and other LADIES; the DUKE OF BURGUNDY,\nand his train\n\n  KING HENRY. Peace to this meeting, wherefore we are met!\n    Unto our brother France, and to our sister,\n    Health and fair time of day; joy and good wishes\n    To our most fair and princely cousin Katherine.\n    And, as a branch and member of this royalty,\n    By whom this great assembly is contriv\'d,\n    We do salute you, Duke of Burgundy.\n    And, princes French, and peers, health to you all!\n  FRENCH KING. Right joyous are we to behold your face,\n    Most worthy brother England; fairly met!\n    So are you, princes English, every one.\n  QUEEN ISABEL. So happy be the issue, brother England,\n    Of this good day and of this gracious meeting  \n    As we are now glad to behold your eyes-\n    Your eyes, which hitherto have home in them,\n    Against the French that met them in their bent,\n    The fatal balls of murdering basilisks;\n    The venom of such looks, we fairly hope,\n    Have lost their quality; and that this day\n    Shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.\n  KING HENRY. To cry amen to that, thus we appear.\n  QUEEN ISABEL. You English princes an, I do salute you.\n  BURGUNDY. My duty to you both, on equal love,\n    Great Kings of France and England! That I have labour\'d\n    With all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavours,\n    To bring your most imperial Majesties\n    Unto this bar and royal interview,\n    Your mightiness on both parts best can witness.\n    Since then my office hath so far prevail\'d\n    That face to face and royal eye to eye\n    You have congreeted, let it not disgrace me\n    If I demand, before this royal view,\n    What rub or what impediment there is  \n    Why that the naked, poor, and mangled Peace,\n    Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births,\n    Should not in this best garden of the world,\n    Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?\n    Alas, she hath from France too long been chas\'d!\n    And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,\n    Corrupting in it own fertility.\n    Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,\n    Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleach\'d,\n    Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,\n    Put forth disorder\'d twigs; her fallow leas\n    The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory,\n    Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts\n    That should deracinate such savagery;\n    The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth\n    The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,\n    Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,\n    Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems\n    But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,\n    Losing both beauty and utility.  \n    And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,\n    Defective in their natures, grow to wildness;\n    Even so our houses and ourselves and children\n    Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,\n    The sciences that should become our country;\n    But grow, like savages- as soldiers will,\n    That nothing do but meditate on blood-\n    To swearing and stern looks, diffus\'d attire,\n    And everything that seems unnatural.\n    Which to reduce into our former favout\n    You are assembled; and my speech entreats\n    That I may know the let why gentle Peace\n    Should not expel these inconveniences\n    And bless us with her former qualities.\n  KING HENRY. If, Duke of Burgundy, you would the peace\n    Whose want gives growth to th\' imperfections\n    Which you have cited, you must buy that peace\n    With full accord to all our just demands;\n    Whose tenours and particular effects\n    You have, enschedul\'d briefly, in your hands.  \n  BURGUNDY. The King hath heard them; to the which as yet\n    There is no answer made.\n  KING HENRY. Well then, the peace,\n    Which you before so urg\'d, lies in his answer.\n  FRENCH KING. I have but with a cursorary eye\n    O\'erglanced the articles; pleaseth your Grace\n    To appoint some of your council presently\n    To sit with us once more, with better heed\n    To re-survey them, we will suddenly\n    Pass our accept and peremptory answer.\n  KING HENRY. Brother, we shall. Go, uncle Exeter,\n    And brother Clarence, and you, brother Gloucester,\n    Warwick, and Huntington, go with the King;\n    And take with you free power to ratify,\n    Augment, or alter, as your wisdoms best\n    Shall see advantageable for our dignity,\n    Any thing in or out of our demands;\n    And we\'ll consign thereto. Will you, fair sister,\n    Go with the princes or stay here with us?\n  QUEEN ISABEL. Our gracious brother, I will go with them;  \n    Haply a woman\'s voice may do some good,\n    When articles too nicely urg\'d be stood on.\n  KING HENRY. Yet leave our cousin Katherine here with us;\n    She is our capital demand, compris\'d\n    Within the fore-rank of our articles.\n  QUEEN ISABEL. She hath good leave.\n                   Exeunt all but the KING, KATHERINE, and ALICE\n  KING HENRY. Fair Katherine, and most fair,\n    Will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms\n    Such as will enter at a lady\'s ear,\n    And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?\n  KATHERINE. Your Majesty shall mock me; I cannot speak your England.\n  KING HENRY. O fair Katherine, if you will love me soundly with your\n    French heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with\n    your English tongue. Do you like me, Kate?\n  KATHERINE. Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell vat is like me.\n  KING HENRY. An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an angel.\n  KATHERINE. Que dit-il? que je suis semblable a les anges?\n  ALICE. Oui, vraiment, sauf votre grace, ainsi dit-il.\n  KING HENRY. I said so, dear Katherine, and I must not blush to  \n    affirm it.\n  KATHERINE. O bon Dieu! les langues des hommes sont pleines de\n    tromperies.\n  KING HENRY. What says she, fair one? that the tongues of men are\n    full of deceits?\n  ALICE. Oui, dat de tongues of de mans is be full of deceits- dat is\n    de Princess.\n  KING HENRY. The Princess is the better English-woman. I\' faith,\n    Kate, my wooing is fit for thy understanding: I am glad thou\n    canst speak no better English; for if thou couldst, thou wouldst\n    find me such a plain king that thou wouldst think I had sold my\n    farm to buy my crown. I know no ways to mince it in love, but\n    directly to say \'I love you.\' Then, if you urge me farther than\n    to say \'Do you in faith?\' I wear out my suit. Give me your\n    answer; i\' faith, do; and so clap hands and a bargain. How say\n    you, lady?\n  KATHERINE. Sauf votre honneur, me understand well.\n  KING HENRY. Marry, if you would put me to verses or to dance for\n    your sake, Kate, why you undid me; for the one I have neither\n    words nor measure, and for the other I have no strength in  \n    measure, yet a reasonable measure in strength. If I could win a\n    lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armour\n    on my back, under the correction of bragging be it spoken, I\n    should quickly leap into wife. Or if I might buffet for my love,\n    or bound my horse for her favours, I could lay on like a butcher,\n    and sit like a jack-an-apes, never off. But, before God, Kate, I\n    cannot look greenly, nor gasp out my cloquence, nor I have no\n    cunning in protestation; only downright oaths, which I never use\n    till urg\'d, nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a\n    fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sunburning,\n    that never looks in his glass for love of anything he sees there,\n    let thine eye be thy cook. I speak to thee plain soldier. If thou\n    canst love me for this, take me; if not, to say to thee that I\n    shall die is true- but for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love\n    thee too. And while thou liv\'st, dear Kate, take a fellow of\n    plain and uncoined constancy; for he perforce must do thee right,\n    because he hath not the gift to woo in other places; for these\n    fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into\n    ladies\' favours, they do always reason themselves out again.\n    What! a speaker is but a prater: a rhyme is but a ballad. A good  \n    leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a black beard will\n    turn white; a curl\'d pate will grow bald; a fair face will\n    wither; a full eye will wax hollow. But a good heart, Kate, is\n    the sun and the moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon- for\n    it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly.\n    If thou would have such a one, take me; and take me, take a\n    soldier; take a soldier, take a king. And what say\'st thou, then,\n    to my love? Speak, my fair, and fairly, I pray thee.\n  KATHERINE. Is it possible dat I sould love de enemy of France?\n  KING HENRY. No, it is not possible you should love the enemy of\n    France, Kate, but in loving me you should love the friend of\n    France; for I love France so well that I will not part with a\n    village of it; I will have it all mine. And, Kate, when France is\n    mine and I am yours, then yours is France and you are mine.\n  KATHERINE. I cannot tell vat is dat.\n  KING HENRY. No, Kate? I will tell thee in French, which I am sure\n    will hang upon my tongue like a new-married wife about her\n    husband\'s neck, hardly to be shook off. Je quand sur le\n    possession de France, et quand vous avez le possession de moi-\n    let me see, what then? Saint Denis be my speed!- donc votre est  \n    France et vous etes mienne. It is as easy for me, Kate, to\n    conquer the kingdom as to speak so much more French: I shall\n    never move thee in French, unless it be to laugh at me.\n  KATHERINE. Sauf votre honneur, le Francais que vous parlez, il est\n    meilleur que l\'Anglais lequel je parle.\n  KING HENRY. No, faith, is\'t not, Kate; but thy speaking of my\n    tongue, and I thine, most truly falsely, must needs be granted to\n    be much at one. But, Kate, dost thou understand thus much\n    English- Canst thou love me?\n  KATHERINE. I cannot tell.\n  KING HENRY. Can any of your neighbours tell, Kate? I\'ll ask them.\n    Come, I know thou lovest me; and at night, when you come into\n    your closet, you\'ll question this gentlewoman about me; and I\n    know, Kate, you will to her dispraise those parts in me that you\n    love with your heart. But, good Kate, mock me mercifully; the\n    rather, gentle Princess, because I love thee cruelly. If ever\n    thou beest mine, Kate, as I have a saving faith within me tells\n    me thou shalt, I get thee with scambling, and thou must therefore\n    needs prove a good soldier-breeder. Shall not thou and I, between\n    Saint Denis and Saint George, compound a boy, half French, half  \n    English, that shall go to Constantinople and take the Turk by the\n    beard? Shall we not? What say\'st thou, my fair flower-de-luce?\n  KATHERINE. I do not know dat.\n  KING HENRY. No: \'tis hereafter to know, but now to promise; do but\n    now promise, Kate, you will endeavour for your French part of\n    such a boy; and for my English moiety take the word of a king and\n    a bachelor. How answer you, la plus belle Katherine du monde, mon\n   tres cher et divin deesse?\n  KATHERINE. Your Majestee ave fausse French enough to deceive de\n    most sage damoiselle dat is en France.\n  KING HENRY. Now, fie upon my false French! By mine honour, in true\n    English, I love thee, Kate; by which honour I dare not swear thou\n    lovest me; yet my blood begins to flatter me that thou dost,\n    notwithstanding the poor and untempering effect of my visage. Now\n    beshrew my father\'s ambition! He was thinking of civil wars when\n    he got me; therefore was I created with a stubborn outside, with\n    an aspect of iron, that when I come to woo ladies I fright them.\n    But, in faith, Kate, the elder I wax, the better I shall appear:\n    my comfort is, that old age, that in layer-up of beauty, can do\n    no more spoil upon my face; thou hast me, if thou hast me, at the  \n    worst; and thou shalt wear me, if thou wear me, better and\n    better. And therefore tell me, most fair Katherine, will you have\n    me? Put off your maiden blushes; avouch the thoughts of your\n    heart with the looks of an empress; take me by the hand and say\n    \'Harry of England, I am thine.\' Which word thou shalt no sooner\n    bless mine ear withal but I will tell thee aloud \'England is\n    thine, Ireland is thine, France is thine, and Henry Plantagenet\n    is thine\'; who, though I speak it before his face, if he be not\n    fellow with the best king, thou shalt find the best king of good\n    fellows. Come, your answer in broken music- for thy voice is\n    music and thy English broken; therefore, Queen of all, Katherine,\n    break thy mind to me in broken English, wilt thou have me?\n  KATHERINE. Dat is as it shall please de roi mon pere.\n  KING HENRY. Nay, it will please him well, Kate- it shall please\n    him, Kate.\n  KATHERINE. Den it sall also content me.\n  KING HENRY. Upon that I kiss your hand, and I can you my queen.\n  KATHERINE. Laissez, mon seigneur, laissez, laissez! Ma foi, je ne\n    veux point que vous abaissiez votre grandeur en baisant la main\n    d\'une, notre seigneur, indigne serviteur; excusez-moi, je vous  \n    supplie, mon tres puissant seigneur.\n  KING HENRY. Then I will kiss your lips, Kate.\n  KATHERINE. Les dames et demoiselles pour etre baisees devant leur\n    noces, il n\'est pas la coutume de France.\n  KING HENRY. Madame my interpreter, what says she?\n  ALICE. Dat it is not be de fashion pour le ladies of France- I\n    cannot tell vat is baiser en Anglish.\n  KING HENRY. To kiss.\n  ALICE. Your Majestee entendre bettre que moi.\n  KING HENRY. It is not a fashion for the maids in France to kiss\n    before they are married, would she say?\n  ALICE. Oui, vraiment.\n  KING HENRY. O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate,\n    you and I cannot be confin\'d within the weak list of a country\'s\n    fashion; we are the makers of manners, Kate; and the liberty that\n    follows our places stops the mouth of all find-faults- as I will\n    do yours for upholding the nice fashion of your country in\n    denying me a kiss; therefore, patiently and yielding.  [Kissing\n    her]  You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate: there is more\n    eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the  \n    French council; and they should sooner persuade Henry of England\n    than a general petition of monarchs. Here comes your father.\n\n             Enter the FRENCH POWER and the ENGLISH LORDS\n\n  BURGUNDY. God save your Majesty! My royal cousin,\n    Teach you our princess English?\n  KING HENRY. I would have her learn, my fair cousin, how perfectly I\n    love her; and that is good English.\n  BURGUNDY. Is she not apt?\n  KING HENRY. Our tongue is rough, coz, and my condition is not\n    smooth; so that, having neither the voice nor the heart of\n    flattery about me, I cannot so conjure up the spirit of love in\n    her that he will appear in his true likeness.\n  BURGUNDY. Pardon the frankness of my mirth, if I answer you for\n    that. If you would conjure in her, you must make a circle; if\n    conjure up love in her in his true likeness, he must appear naked\n    and blind. Can you blame her, then, being a maid yet ros\'d over\n    with the virgin crimson of modesty, if she deny the appearance of\n    a naked blind boy in her naked seeing self? It were, my lord, a  \n    hard condition for a maid to consign to.\n  KING HENRY. Yet they do wink and yield, as love is blind and\n    enforces.\n  BURGUNDY. They are then excus\'d, my lord, when they see not what\n    they do.\n  KING HENRY. Then, good my lord, teach your cousin to consent\n    winking.\n  BURGUNDY. I will wink on her to consent, my lord, if you will teach\n    her to know my meaning; for maids well summer\'d and warm kept are\n    like flies at Bartholomew-tide, blind, though they have their\n    eyes; and then they will endure handling, which before would not\n    abide looking on.\n  KING HENRY. This moral ties me over to time and a hot summer; and\n    so I shall catch the fly, your cousin, in the latter end, and she\n    must be blind too.\n  BURGUNDY. As love is, my lord, before it loves.\n  KING HENRY. It is so; and you may, some of you, thank love for my\n    blindness, who cannot see many a fair French city for one fair\n    French maid that stands in my way.\n  FRENCH KING. Yes, my lord, you see them perspectively, the cities  \n    turned into a maid; for they are all girdled with maiden walls\n    that war hath never ent\'red.\n  KING HENRY. Shall Kate be my wife?\n  FRENCH KING. So please you.\n  KING HENRY. I am content, so the maiden cities you talk of may wait\n    on her; so the maid that stood in the way for my wish shall show\n    me the way to my will.\n  FRENCH KING. We have consented to all terms of reason.\n  KING HENRY. Is\'t so, my lords of England?\n  WESTMORELAND. The king hath granted every article:\n    His daughter first; and then in sequel, all,\n    According to their firm proposed natures.\n  EXETER. Only he hath not yet subscribed this:\n      Where your Majesty demands that the King of France, having any\n    occasion to write for matter of grant, shall name your Highness\n    in this form and with this addition, in French, Notre tres cher\n    fils Henri, Roi d\'Angleterre, Heritier de France; and thus in\n    Latin, Praeclarissimus filius noster Henricus, Rex Angliae et\n    Haeres Franciae.\n  FRENCH KING. Nor this I have not, brother, so denied  \n    But our request shall make me let it pass.\n  KING HENRY. I pray you, then, in love and dear alliance,\n    Let that one article rank with the rest;\n    And thereupon give me your daughter.\n  FRENCH KING. Take her, fair son, and from her blood raise up\n    Issue to me; that the contending kingdoms\n    Of France and England, whose very shores look pale\n    With envy of each other\'s happiness,\n    May cease their hatred; and this dear conjunction\n    Plant neighbourhood and Christian-like accord\n    In their sweet bosoms, that never war advance\n    His bleeding sword \'twixt England and fair France.\n  LORDS. Amen!\n  KING HENRY. Now, welcome, Kate; and bear me witness all,\n    That here I kiss her as my sovereign queen.       [Floulish]\n  QUEEN ISABEL. God, the best maker of all marriages,\n    Combine your hearts in one, your realms in one!\n    As man and wife, being two, are one in love,\n    So be there \'twixt your kingdoms such a spousal\n    That never may ill office or fell jealousy,  \n    Which troubles oft the bed of blessed marriage,\n    Thrust in between the paction of these kingdoms,\n    To make divorce of their incorporate league;\n    That English may as French, French Englishmen,\n    Receive each other. God speak this Amen!\n  ALL. Amen!\n  KING HENRY. Prepare we for our marriage; on which day,\n    My Lord of Burgundy, we\'ll take your oath,\n    And all the peers\', for surety of our leagues.\n    Then shall I swear to Kate, and you to me,\n    And may our oaths well kept and prosp\'rous be!\n                                                  Sennet. Exeunt\n\nEPILOGUE\n                           EPILOGUE.\n\n                          Enter CHORUS\n\n  CHORUS. Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen,\n    Our bending author hath pursu\'d the story,\n    In little room confining mighty men,\n    Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.\n    Small time, but, in that small, most greatly lived\n    This star of England. Fortune made his sword;\n    By which the world\'s best garden he achieved,\n    And of it left his son imperial lord.\n    Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown\'d king\n    Of France and England, did this king succeed;\n    Whose state so many had the managing\n    That they lost France and made his England bleed;\n    Which oft our stage hath shown; and, for their sake,\n    In your fair minds let this acceptance take.            Exit\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1592\n\nTHE FIRST PART OF HENRY THE SIXTH\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  KING HENRY THE SIXTH\n  DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, uncle to the King, and Protector\n  DUKE OF BEDFORD, uncle to the King, and Regent of France\n  THOMAS BEAUFORT, DUKE OF EXETER, great-uncle to the king\n  HENRY BEAUFORT, great-uncle to the King, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER,\n     and afterwards CARDINAL\n  JOHN BEAUFORT, EARL OF SOMERSET, afterwards Duke\n  RICHARD PLANTAGENET, son of Richard late Earl of Cambridge,\n    afterwards DUKE OF YORK\n  EARL OF WARWICK\n  EARL OF SALISBURY\n  EARL OF SUFFOLK\n  LORD TALBOT, afterwards EARL OF SHREWSBURY\n  JOHN TALBOT, his son\n  EDMUND MORTIMER, EARL OF MARCH\n  SIR JOHN FASTOLFE\n  SIR WILLIAM LUCY\n  SIR WILLIAM GLANSDALE\n  SIR THOMAS GARGRAVE\n  MAYOR of LONDON  \n  WOODVILLE, Lieutenant of the Tower\n  VERNON, of the White Rose or York faction\n  BASSET, of the Red Rose or Lancaster faction\n  A LAWYER\n  GAOLERS, to Mortimer\n  CHARLES, Dauphin, and afterwards King of France\n  REIGNIER, DUKE OF ANJOU, and titular King of Naples\n  DUKE OF BURGUNDY\n  DUKE OF ALENCON\n  BASTARD OF ORLEANS\n  GOVERNOR OF PARIS\n  MASTER-GUNNER OF ORLEANS, and his SON\n  GENERAL OF THE FRENCH FORCES in Bordeaux\n  A FRENCH SERGEANT\n  A PORTER\n  AN OLD SHEPHERD, father to Joan la Pucelle\n  MARGARET, daughter to Reignier, afterwards married to\n    King Henry\n  COUNTESS OF AUVERGNE\n  JOAN LA PUCELLE, Commonly called JOAN OF ARC  \n\n  Lords, Warders of the Tower, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers,\n  Messengers, English and French Attendants. Fiends appearing\n    to La Pucelle\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nEngland and France\n\n\n\n\nThe First Part of King Henry the Sixth\n\n\nACT I. SCENE 1.\n\nWestminster Abbey\n\nDead March. Enter the funeral of KING HENRY THE FIFTH,\nattended on by the DUKE OF BEDFORD, Regent of France,\nthe DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, Protector, the DUKE OF EXETER,\nthe EARL OF WARWICK, the BISHOP OF WINCHESTER\n\n  BEDFORD. Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to\n    night! Comets, importing change of times and states,\n    Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky\n    And with them scourge the bad revolting stars\n    That have consented unto Henry\'s death!\n    King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long!\n    England ne\'er lost a king of so much worth.\n  GLOUCESTER. England ne\'er had a king until his time.\n    Virtue he had, deserving to command;\n    His brandish\'d sword did blind men with his beams;  \n    His arms spread wider than a dragon\'s wings;\n    His sparkling eyes, replete with wrathful fire,\n    More dazzled and drove back his enemies\n    Than mid-day sun fierce bent against their faces.\n    What should I say? His deeds exceed all speech:\n    He ne\'er lift up his hand but conquered.\n  EXETER. We mourn in black; why mourn we not in blood?\n    Henry is dead and never shall revive.\n    Upon a wooden coffin we attend;\n    And death\'s dishonourable victory\n    We with our stately presence glorify,\n    Like captives bound to a triumphant car.\n    What! shall we curse the planets of mishap\n    That plotted thus our glory\'s overthrow?\n    Or shall we think the subtle-witted French\n    Conjurers and sorcerers, that, afraid of him,\n    By magic verses have contriv\'d his end?\n  WINCHESTER. He was a king bless\'d of the King of kings;\n    Unto the French the dreadful judgment-day\n    So dreadful will not be as was his sight.  \n    The battles of the Lord of Hosts he fought;\n    The Church\'s prayers made him so prosperous.\n  GLOUCESTER. The Church! Where is it? Had not churchmen\n    pray\'d,\n    His thread of life had not so soon decay\'d.\n    None do you like but an effeminate prince,\n    Whom like a school-boy you may overawe.\n  WINCHESTER. Gloucester, whate\'er we like, thou art\n    Protector\n    And lookest to command the Prince and realm.\n    Thy wife is proud; she holdeth thee in awe\n    More than God or religious churchmen may.\n  GLOUCESTER. Name not religion, for thou lov\'st the flesh;\n    And ne\'er throughout the year to church thou go\'st,\n    Except it be to pray against thy foes.\n  BEDFORD. Cease, cease these jars and rest your minds in peace;\n    Let\'s to the altar. Heralds, wait on us.\n    Instead of gold, we\'ll offer up our arms,\n    Since arms avail not, now that Henry\'s dead.\n    Posterity, await for wretched years,  \n    When at their mothers\' moist\'ned eyes babes shall suck,\n    Our isle be made a nourish of salt tears,\n    And none but women left to wail the dead.\n  HENRY the Fifth, thy ghost I invocate:\n    Prosper this realm, keep it from civil broils,\n    Combat with adverse planets in the heavens.\n    A far more glorious star thy soul will make\n    Than Julius Caesar or bright\n\n                          Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. My honourable lords, health to you all!\n    Sad tidings bring I to you out of France,\n    Of loss, of slaughter, and discomfiture:\n    Guienne, Champagne, Rheims, Orleans,\n    Paris, Guysors, Poictiers, are all quite lost.\n  BEDFORD. What say\'st thou, man, before dead Henry\'s corse?\n    Speak softly, or the loss of those great towns\n    Will make him burst his lead and rise from death.\n  GLOUCESTER. Is Paris lost? Is Rouen yielded up?  \n    If Henry were recall\'d to life again,\n    These news would cause him once more yield the ghost.\n  EXETER. How were they lost? What treachery was us\'d?\n  MESSENGER. No treachery, but want of men and money.\n    Amongst the soldiers this is muttered\n    That here you maintain several factions;\n    And whilst a field should be dispatch\'d and fought,\n    You are disputing of your generals:\n    One would have ling\'ring wars, with little cost;\n    Another would fly swift, but wanteth wings;\n    A third thinks, without expense at all,\n    By guileful fair words peace may be obtain\'d.\n    Awake, awake, English nobility!\n    Let not sloth dim your honours, new-begot.\n    Cropp\'d are the flower-de-luces in your arms;\n    Of England\'s coat one half is cut away.\n  EXETER. Were our tears wanting to this funeral,\n    These tidings would call forth their flowing tides.\n  BEDFORD. Me they concern; Regent I am of France.\n    Give me my steeled coat; I\'ll fight for France.  \n    Away with these disgraceful wailing robes!\n    Wounds will I lend the French instead of eyes,\n    To weep their intermissive miseries.\n\n                   Enter a second MESSENGER\n\n  SECOND MESSENGER. Lords, view these letters full of bad\n    mischance.\n    France is revolted from the English quite,\n    Except some petty towns of no import.\n    The Dauphin Charles is crowned king in Rheims;\n    The Bastard of Orleans with him is join\'d;\n    Reignier, Duke of Anjou, doth take his part;\n    The Duke of Alencon flieth to his side.\n  EXETER. The Dauphin crowned king! all fly to him!\n    O, whither shall we fly from this reproach?\n  GLOUCESTER. We will not fly but to our enemies\' throats.\n    Bedford, if thou be slack I\'ll fight it out.\n  BEDFORD. Gloucester, why doubt\'st thou of my forwardness?\n    An army have I muster\'d in my thoughts,  \n    Wherewith already France is overrun.\n\n                   Enter a third MESSENGER\n\n  THIRD MESSENGER. My gracious lords, to add to your\n    laments,\n    Wherewith you now bedew King Henry\'s hearse,\n    I must inform you of a dismal fight\n    Betwixt the stout Lord Talbot and the French.\n  WINCHESTER. What! Wherein Talbot overcame? Is\'t so?\n  THIRD MESSENGER. O, no; wherein Lord Talbot was\n    o\'erthrown.\n    The circumstance I\'ll tell you more at large.\n    The tenth of August last this dreadful lord,\n    Retiring from the siege of Orleans,\n    Having full scarce six thousand in his troop,\n    By three and twenty thousand of the French\n    Was round encompassed and set upon.\n    No leisure had he to enrank his men;\n    He wanted pikes to set before his archers;  \n    Instead whereof sharp stakes pluck\'d out of hedges\n    They pitched in the ground confusedly\n    To keep the horsemen off from breaking in.\n    More than three hours the fight continued;\n    Where valiant Talbot, above human thought,\n    Enacted wonders with his sword and lance:\n    Hundreds he sent to hell, and none durst stand him;\n    Here, there, and everywhere, enrag\'d he slew\n    The French exclaim\'d the devil was in arms;\n    All the whole army stood agaz\'d on him.\n    His soldiers, spying his undaunted spirit,\n    \'A Talbot! a Talbot!\' cried out amain,\n    And rush\'d into the bowels of the battle.\n    Here had the conquest fully been seal\'d up\n    If Sir John Fastolfe had not play\'d the coward.\n    He, being in the vaward plac\'d behind\n    With purpose to relieve and follow them-\n    Cowardly fled, not having struck one stroke;\n    Hence grew the general wreck and massacre.\n    Enclosed were they with their enemies.  \n    A base Walloon, to win the Dauphin\'s grace,\n    Thrust Talbot with a spear into the back;\n    Whom all France, with their chief assembled strength,\n    Durst not presume to look once in the face.\n  BEDFORD. Is Talbot slain? Then I will slay myself,\n    For living idly here in pomp and ease,\n    Whilst such a worthy leader, wanting aid,\n    Unto his dastard foemen is betray\'d.\n  THIRD MESSENGER. O no, he lives, but is took prisoner,\n    And Lord Scales with him, and Lord Hungerford;\n    Most of the rest slaughter\'d or took likewise.\n  BEDFORD. His ransom there is none but I shall pay.\n    I\'ll hale the Dauphin headlong from his throne;\n    His crown shall be the ransom of my friend;\n    Four of their lords I\'ll change for one of ours.\n    Farewell, my masters; to my task will I;\n    Bonfires in France forthwith I am to make\n    To keep our great Saint George\'s feast withal.\n    Ten thousand soldiers with me I will take,\n    Whose bloody deeds shall make an Europe quake.  \n  THIRD MESSENGER. So you had need; for Orleans is besieg\'d;\n    The English army is grown weak and faint;\n    The Earl of Salisbury craveth supply\n    And hardly keeps his men from mutiny,\n    Since they, so few, watch such a multitude.\n  EXETER. Remember, lords, your oaths to Henry sworn,\n    Either to quell the Dauphin utterly,\n    Or bring him in obedience to your yoke.\n  BEDFORD. I do remember it, and here take my leave\n    To go about my preparation.                             Exit\n  GLOUCESTER. I\'ll to the Tower with all the haste I can\n    To view th\' artillery and munition;\n    And then I will proclaim young Henry king.              Exit\n  EXETER. To Eltham will I, where the young King is,\n    Being ordain\'d his special governor;\n    And for his safety there I\'ll best devise.              Exit\n  WINCHESTER.  [Aside]  Each hath his place and function to\n    attend:\n    I am left out; for me nothing remains.\n    But long I will not be Jack out of office.  \n    The King from Eltham I intend to steal,\n    And sit at chiefest stern of public weal.             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n                          SCENE 2.\n\n                  France. Before Orleans\n\n      Sound a flourish. Enter CHARLES THE DAUPHIN, ALENCON,\n           and REIGNIER, marching with drum and soldiers\n\n  CHARLES. Mars his true moving, even as in the heavens\n    So in the earth, to this day is not known.\n    Late did he shine upon the English side;\n    Now we are victors, upon us he smiles.\n    What towns of any moment but we have?\n    At pleasure here we lie near Orleans;\n    Otherwhiles the famish\'d English, like pale ghosts,\n    Faintly besiege us one hour in a month.\n  ALENCON. They want their porridge and their fat bull\n    beeves.\n    Either they must be dieted like mules\n    And have their provender tied to their mouths,\n    Or piteous they will look, like drowned mice.\n  REIGNIER. Let\'s raise the siege. Why live we idly here?\n    Talbot is taken, whom we wont to fear;  \n    Remaineth none but mad-brain\'d Salisbury,\n    And he may well in fretting spend his gall\n    Nor men nor money hath he to make war.\n  CHARLES. Sound, sound alarum; we will rush on them.\n    Now for the honour of the forlorn French!\n    Him I forgive my death that killeth me,\n    When he sees me go back one foot or flee.             Exeunt\n\n       Here alarum. They are beaten hack by the English, with\n         great loss. Re-enter CHARLES, ALENCON, and REIGNIER\n\n  CHARLES. Who ever saw the like? What men have I!\n    Dogs! cowards! dastards! I would ne\'er have fled\n    But that they left me midst my enemies.\n  REIGNIER. Salisbury is a desperate homicide;\n    He fighteth as one weary of his life.\n    The other lords, like lions wanting food,\n    Do rush upon us as their hungry prey.\n  ALENCON. Froissart, a countryman of ours, records\n    England all Olivers and Rowlands bred  \n    During the time Edward the Third did reign.\n    More truly now may this be verified;\n    For none but Samsons and Goliases\n    It sendeth forth to skirmish. One to ten!\n    Lean raw-bon\'d rascals! Who would e\'er suppose\n    They had such courage and audacity?\n  CHARLES. Let\'s leave this town; for they are hare-brain\'d\n    slaves,\n    And hunger will enforce them to be more eager.\n    Of old I know them; rather with their teeth\n    The walls they\'ll tear down than forsake the siege.\n  REIGNIER. I think by some odd gimmers or device\n    Their arms are set, like clocks, still to strike on;\n    Else ne\'er could they hold out so as they do.\n    By my consent, we\'ll even let them alone.\n  ALENCON. Be it so.\n\n                   Enter the BASTARD OF ORLEANS\n\n  BASTARD. Where\'s the Prince Dauphin? I have news for him.  \n  CHARLES. Bastard of Orleans, thrice welcome to us.\n  BASTARD. Methinks your looks are sad, your cheer appall\'d.\n    Hath the late overthrow wrought this offence?\n    Be not dismay\'d, for succour is at hand.\n    A holy maid hither with me I bring,\n    Which, by a vision sent to her from heaven,\n    Ordained is to raise this tedious siege\n    And drive the English forth the bounds of France.\n    The spirit of deep prophecy she hath,\n    Exceeding the nine sibyls of old Rome:\n    What\'s past and what\'s to come she can descry.\n    Speak, shall I call her in? Believe my words,\n    For they are certain and unfallible.\n  CHARLES. Go, call her in.                       [Exit BASTARD]\n    But first, to try her skill,\n    Reignier, stand thou as Dauphin in my place;\n    Question her proudly; let thy looks be stern;\n    By this means shall we sound what skill she hath.\n\n                  Re-enter the BASTARD OF ORLEANS with  \n                          JOAN LA PUCELLE\n\n  REIGNIER. Fair maid, is \'t thou wilt do these wondrous feats?\n  PUCELLE. Reignier, is \'t thou that thinkest to beguile me?\n    Where is the Dauphin? Come, come from behind;\n    I know thee well, though never seen before.\n    Be not amaz\'d, there\'s nothing hid from me.\n    In private will I talk with thee apart.\n    Stand back, you lords, and give us leave awhile.\n  REIGNIER. She takes upon her bravely at first dash.\n  PUCELLE. Dauphin, I am by birth a shepherd\'s daughter,\n    My wit untrain\'d in any kind of art.\n    Heaven and our Lady gracious hath it pleas\'d\n    To shine on my contemptible estate.\n    Lo, whilst I waited on my tender lambs\n    And to sun\'s parching heat display\'d my cheeks,\n    God\'s Mother deigned to appear to me,\n    And in a vision full of majesty\n    Will\'d me to leave my base vocation\n    And free my country from calamity  \n    Her aid she promis\'d and assur\'d success.\n    In complete glory she reveal\'d herself;\n    And whereas I was black and swart before,\n    With those clear rays which she infus\'d on me\n    That beauty am I bless\'d with which you may see.\n    Ask me what question thou canst possible,\n    And I will answer unpremeditated.\n    My courage try by combat if thou dar\'st,\n    And thou shalt find that I exceed my sex.\n    Resolve on this: thou shalt be fortunate\n    If thou receive me for thy warlike mate.\n  CHARLES. Thou hast astonish\'d me with thy high terms.\n    Only this proof I\'ll of thy valour make\n    In single combat thou shalt buckle with me;\n    And if thou vanquishest, thy words are true;\n    Otherwise I renounce all confidence.\n  PUCELLE. I am prepar\'d; here is my keen-edg\'d sword,\n    Deck\'d with five flower-de-luces on each side,\n    The which at Touraine, in Saint Katherine\'s churchyard,\n    Out of a great deal of old iron I chose forth.  \n  CHARLES. Then come, o\' God\'s name; I fear no woman.\n  PUCELLE. And while I live I\'ll ne\'er fly from a man.\n                 [Here they fight and JOAN LA PUCELLE overcomes]\n  CHARLES. Stay, stay thy hands; thou art an Amazon,\n    And fightest with the sword of Deborah.\n  PUCELLE. Christ\'s Mother helps me, else I were too weak.\n  CHARLES. Whoe\'er helps thee, \'tis thou that must help me.\n    Impatiently I burn with thy desire;\n    My heart and hands thou hast at once subdu\'d.\n    Excellent Pucelle, if thy name be so,\n    Let me thy servant and not sovereign be.\n    \'Tis the French Dauphin sueth to thee thus.\n  PUCELLE. I must not yield to any rites of love,\n    For my profession\'s sacred from above.\n    When I have chased all thy foes from hence,\n    Then will I think upon a recompense.\n  CHARLES. Meantime look gracious on thy prostrate thrall.\n  REIGNIER. My lord, methinks, is very long in talk.\n  ALENCON. Doubtless he shrives this woman to her smock;\n    Else ne\'er could he so long protract his speech.  \n  REIGNIER. Shall we disturb him, since he keeps no mean?\n  ALENCON. He may mean more than we poor men do know;\n    These women are shrewd tempters with their tongues.\n  REIGNIER. My lord, where are you? What devise you on?\n    Shall we give o\'er Orleans, or no?\n  PUCELLE. Why, no, I say; distrustful recreants!\n    Fight till the last gasp; I will be your guard.\n  CHARLES. What she says I\'ll confirm; we\'ll fight it out.\n  PUCELLE. Assign\'d am I to be the English scourge.\n    This night the siege assuredly I\'ll raise.\n    Expect Saint Martin\'s summer, halcyon days,\n    Since I have entered into these wars.\n    Glory is like a circle in the water,\n    Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself\n    Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.\n    With Henry\'s death the English circle ends;\n    Dispersed are the glories it included.\n    Now am I like that proud insulting ship\n    Which Caesar and his fortune bare at once.\n  CHARLES. Was Mahomet inspired with a dove?  \n    Thou with an eagle art inspired then.\n    Helen, the mother of great Constantine,\n    Nor yet Saint Philip\'s daughters were like thee.\n    Bright star of Venus, fall\'n down on the earth,\n    How may I reverently worship thee enough?\n  ALENCON. Leave off delays, and let us raise the siege.\n  REIGNIER. Woman, do what thou canst to save our honours;\n    Drive them from Orleans, and be immortaliz\'d.\n  CHARLES. Presently we\'ll try. Come, let\'s away about it.\n    No prophet will I trust if she prove false.           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n                          SCENE 3.\n\n                London. Before the Tower gates\n\n       Enter the DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, with his serving-men\n                       in blue coats\n\n  GLOUCESTER. I am come to survey the Tower this day;\n    Since Henry\'s death, I fear, there is conveyance.\n    Where be these warders that they wait not here?\n    Open the gates; \'tis Gloucester that calls.\n  FIRST WARDER.  [Within]  Who\'s there that knocks so\n    imperiously?\n  FIRST SERVING-MAN. It is the noble Duke of Gloucester.\n  SECOND WARDER.  [Within]  Whoe\'er he be, you may not be\n    let in.\n  FIRST SERVING-MAN. Villains, answer you so the Lord\n    Protector?\n  FIRST WARDER.  [Within]  The Lord protect him! so we\n    answer him.\n    We do no otherwise than we are will\'d.\n  GLOUCESTER. Who willed you, or whose will stands but  \n    mine?\n    There\'s none Protector of the realm but I.\n    Break up the gates, I\'ll be your warrantize.\n    Shall I be flouted thus by dunghill grooms?\n                  [GLOUCESTER\'S men rush at the Tower gates, and\n                         WOODVILLE the Lieutenant speaks within]\n  WOODVILLE.  [Within]  What noise is this? What traitors\n    have we here?\n  GLOUCESTER. Lieutenant, is it you whose voice I hear?\n    Open the gates; here\'s Gloucester that would enter.\n  WOODVILLE.  [Within]  Have patience, noble Duke, I may\n    not open;\n    The Cardinal of Winchester forbids.\n    From him I have express commandment\n    That thou nor none of thine shall be let in.\n  GLOUCESTER. Faint-hearted Woodville, prizest him fore me?\n    Arrogant Winchester, that haughty prelate\n    Whom Henry, our late sovereign, ne\'er could brook!\n    Thou art no friend to God or to the King.\n    Open the gates, or I\'ll shut thee out shortly.  \n  SERVING-MEN. Open the gates unto the Lord Protector,\n    Or we\'ll burst them open, if that you come not quickly.\n\n       Enter to the PROTECTOR at the Tower gates WINCHESTER\n                   and his men in tawny coats\n\n  WINCHESTER. How now, ambitious Humphry! What means\n    this?\n  GLOUCESTER. Peel\'d priest, dost thou command me to be\n    shut out?\n  WINCHESTER. I do, thou most usurping proditor,\n    And not Protector of the King or realm.\n  GLOUCESTER. Stand back, thou manifest conspirator,\n    Thou that contrived\'st to murder our dead lord;\n    Thou that giv\'st whores indulgences to sin.\n    I\'ll canvass thee in thy broad cardinal\'s hat,\n    If thou proceed in this thy insolence.\n  WINCHESTER. Nay, stand thou back; I will not budge a foot.\n    This be Damascus; be thou cursed Cain,\n    To slay thy brother Abel, if thou wilt.  \n  GLOUCESTER. I will not slay thee, but I\'ll drive thee back.\n    Thy scarlet robes as a child\'s bearing-cloth\n    I\'ll use to carry thee out of this place.\n  WINCHESTER. Do what thou dar\'st; I beard thee to thy face.\n  GLOUCESTER. What! am I dar\'d and bearded to my face?\n    Draw, men, for all this privileged place\n    Blue-coats to tawny-coats. Priest, beware your beard;\n    I mean to tug it, and to cuff you soundly;\n    Under my feet I stamp thy cardinal\'s hat;\n    In spite of Pope or dignities of church,\n    Here by the cheeks I\'ll drag thee up and down.\n  WINCHESTER. Gloucester, thou wilt answer this before the\n    Pope.\n  GLOUCESTER. Winchester goose! I cry \'A rope, a rope!\'\n    Now beat them hence; why do you let them stay?\n    Thee I\'ll chase hence, thou wolf in sheep\'s array.\n    Out, tawny-coats! Out, scarlet hypocrite!\n\n         Here GLOUCESTER\'S men beat out the CARDINAL\'S\n        men; and enter in the hurly burly the MAYOR OF  \n                  LONDON and his OFFICERS\n\n  MAYOR. Fie, lords! that you, being supreme magistrates,\n    Thus contumeliously should break the peace!\n  GLOUCESTER. Peace, Mayor! thou know\'st little of my wrongs:\n    Here\'s Beaufort, that regards nor God nor King,\n    Hath here distrain\'d the Tower to his use.\n  WINCHESTER. Here\'s Gloucester, a foe to citizens;\n    One that still motions war and never peace,\n    O\'ercharging your free purses with large fines;\n    That seeks to overthrow religion,\n    Because he is Protector of the realm,\n    And would have armour here out of the Tower,\n    To crown himself King and suppress the Prince.\n  GLOUCESTER. I Will not answer thee with words, but blows.\n                                      [Here they skirmish again]\n  MAYOR. Nought rests for me in this tumultuous strife\n    But to make open proclamation.\n    Come, officer, as loud as e\'er thou canst,\n    Cry.  \n  OFFICER.  [Cries]  All manner of men assembled here in arms\n    this day against God\'s peace and the King\'s, we charge\n    and command you, in his Highness\' name, to repair to\n    your several dwelling-places; and not to wear, handle, or\n    use, any sword, weapon, or dagger, henceforward, upon\n    pain of death.\n  GLOUCESTER. Cardinal, I\'ll be no breaker of the law;\n    But we shall meet and break our minds at large.\n  WINCHESTER. Gloucester, we\'ll meet to thy cost, be sure;\n    Thy heart-blood I will have for this day\'s work.\n  MAYOR. I\'ll call for clubs if you will not away.\n    This Cardinal\'s more haughty than the devil.\n  GLOUCESTER. Mayor, farewell; thou dost but what thou\n    mayst.\n  WINCHESTER. Abominable Gloucester, guard thy head,\n    For I intend to have it ere long.\n                    Exeunt, severally, GLOUCESTER and WINCHESTER\n                                             with their servants\n  MAYOR. See the coast clear\'d, and then we will depart.\n    Good God, these nobles should such stomachs bear!  \n    I myself fight not once in forty year.                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n                               SCENE 4.\n\n                        France. Before Orleans\n\n               Enter, on the walls, the MASTER-GUNNER\n                       OF ORLEANS and his BOY\n\n  MASTER-GUNNER. Sirrah, thou know\'st how Orleans is\n    besieg\'d,\n    And how the English have the suburbs won.\n  BOY. Father, I know; and oft have shot at them,\n    Howe\'er unfortunate I miss\'d my aim.\n  MASTER-GUNNER. But now thou shalt not. Be thou rul\'d\n    by me.\n    Chief master-gunner am I of this town;\n    Something I must do to procure me grace.\n    The Prince\'s espials have informed me\n    How the English, in the suburbs close intrench\'d,\n    Wont, through a secret grate of iron bars\n    In yonder tower, to overpeer the city,\n    And thence discover how with most advantage\n    They may vex us with shot or with assault.  \n    To intercept this inconvenience,\n    A piece of ordnance \'gainst it I have plac\'d;\n    And even these three days have I watch\'d\n    If I could see them. Now do thou watch,\n    For I can stay no longer.\n    If thou spy\'st any, run and bring me word;\n    And thou shalt find me at the Governor\'s.               Exit\n  BOY. Father, I warrant you; take you no care;\n    I\'ll never trouble you, if I may spy them.              Exit\n\n          Enter SALISBURY and TALBOT on the turrets, with\n            SIR WILLIAM GLANSDALE, SIR THOMAS GARGRAVE,\n                            and others\n\n  SALISBURY. Talbot, my life, my joy, again return\'d!\n    How wert thou handled being prisoner?\n    Or by what means got\'st thou to be releas\'d?\n    Discourse, I prithee, on this turret\'s top.\n  TALBOT. The Earl of Bedford had a prisoner\n    Call\'d the brave Lord Ponton de Santrailles;  \n    For him was I exchang\'d and ransomed.\n    But with a baser man of arms by far\n    Once, in contempt, they would have barter\'d me;\n    Which I disdaining scorn\'d, and craved death\n    Rather than I would be so vile esteem\'d.\n    In fine, redeem\'d I was as I desir\'d.\n    But, O! the treacherous Fastolfe wounds my heart\n    Whom with my bare fists I would execute,\n    If I now had him brought into my power.\n  SALISBURY. Yet tell\'st thou not how thou wert entertain\'d.\n  TALBOT. With scoffs, and scorns, and contumelious taunts,\n    In open market-place produc\'d they me\n    To be a public spectacle to all;\n    Here, said they, is the terror of the French,\n    The scarecrow that affrights our children so.\n    Then broke I from the officers that led me,\n    And with my nails digg\'d stones out of the ground\n    To hurl at the beholders of my shame;\n    My grisly countenance made others fly;\n    None durst come near for fear of sudden death.  \n    In iron walls they deem\'d me not secure;\n    So great fear of my name \'mongst them was spread\n    That they suppos\'d I could rend bars of steel\n    And spurn in pieces posts of adamant;\n    Wherefore a guard of chosen shot I had\n    That walk\'d about me every minute-while;\n    And if I did but stir out of my bed,\n    Ready they were to shoot me to the heart.\n\n                Enter the BOY with a linstock\n\n  SALISBURY. I grieve to hear what torments you endur\'d;\n    But we will be reveng\'d sufficiently.\n    Now it is supper-time in Orleans:\n    Here, through this grate, I count each one\n    And view the Frenchmen how they fortify.\n    Let us look in; the sight will much delight thee.\n    Sir Thomas Gargrave and Sir William Glansdale,\n    Let me have your express opinions\n    Where is best place to make our batt\'ry next.  \n  GARGRAVE. I think at the North Gate; for there stand lords.\n  GLANSDALE. And I here, at the bulwark of the bridge.\n  TALBOT. For aught I see, this city must be famish\'d,\n    Or with light skirmishes enfeebled.\n                     [Here they shoot and SALISBURY and GARGRAVE\n                                                      fall down]\n  SALISBURY. O Lord, have mercy on us, wretched sinners!\n  GARGRAVE. O Lord, have mercy on me, woeful man!\n  TALBOT. What chance is this that suddenly hath cross\'d us?\n    Speak, Salisbury; at least, if thou canst speak.\n    How far\'st thou, mirror of all martial men?\n    One of thy eyes and thy cheek\'s side struck off!\n    Accursed tower! accursed fatal hand\n    That hath contriv\'d this woeful tragedy!\n    In thirteen battles Salisbury o\'ercame;\n    Henry the Fifth he first train\'d to the wars;\n    Whilst any trump did sound or drum struck up,\n    His sword did ne\'er leave striking in the field.\n    Yet liv\'st thou, Salisbury? Though thy speech doth fail,\n    One eye thou hast to look to heaven for grace;  \n    The sun with one eye vieweth all the world.\n    Heaven, be thou gracious to none alive\n    If Salisbury wants mercy at thy hands!\n    Bear hence his body; I will help to bury it.\n    Sir Thomas Gargrave, hast thou any life?\n    Speak unto Talbot; nay, look up to him.\n    Salisbury, cheer thy spirit with this comfort,\n    Thou shalt not die whiles\n    He beckons with his hand and smiles on me,\n    As who should say \'When I am dead and gone,\n    Remember to avenge me on the French.\'\n    Plantagenet, I will; and like thee, Nero,\n    Play on the lute, beholding the towns burn.\n    Wretched shall France be only in my name.\n                  [Here an alarum, and it thunders and lightens]\n    What stir is this? What tumult\'s in the heavens?\n    Whence cometh this alarum and the noise?\n\n                          Enter a MESSENGER\n  \n  MESSENGER. My lord, my lord, the French have gather\'d\n    head\n    The Dauphin, with one Joan la Pucelle join\'d,\n    A holy prophetess new risen up,\n    Is come with a great power to raise the siege.\n                  [Here SALISBURY lifteth himself up and groans]\n  TALBOT. Hear, hear how dying Salisbury doth groan.\n    It irks his heart he cannot be reveng\'d.\n    Frenchmen, I\'ll be a Salisbury to you.\n    Pucelle or puzzel, dolphin or dogfish,\n    Your hearts I\'ll stamp out with my horse\'s heels\n    And make a quagmire of your mingled brains.\n    Convey me Salisbury into his tent,\n    And then we\'ll try what these dastard Frenchmen dare.\n                                                  Alarum. Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n                             SCENE 5.\n\n                          Before Orleans\n\n         Here an alarum again, and TALBOT pursueth the\n      DAUPHIN and driveth him. Then enter JOAN LA PUCELLE\n       driving Englishmen before her. Then enter TALBOT\n\n  TALBOT. Where is my strength, my valour, and my force?\n    Our English troops retire, I cannot stay them;\n    A woman clad in armour chaseth them.\n\n                          Enter LA PUCELLE\n\n    Here, here she comes. I\'ll have a bout with thee.\n    Devil or devil\'s dam, I\'ll conjure thee;\n    Blood will I draw on thee-thou art a witch\n    And straightway give thy soul to him thou serv\'st.\n  PUCELLE. Come, come, \'tis only I that must disgrace thee.\n                                               [Here they fight]\n  TALBOT. Heavens, can you suffer hell so to prevail?\n    My breast I\'ll burst with straining of my courage.  \n    And from my shoulders crack my arms asunder,\n    But I will chastise this high minded strumpet.\n                                              [They fight again]\n  PUCELLE. Talbot, farewell; thy hour is not yet come.\n    I must go victual Orleans forthwith.\n             [A short alarum; then enter the town with soldiers]\n    O\'ertake me if thou canst; I scorn thy strength.\n    Go, go, cheer up thy hungry starved men;\n    Help Salisbury to make his testament.\n    This day is ours, as many more shall be.                Exit\n  TALBOT. My thoughts are whirled like a potter\'s wheel;\n    I know not where I am nor what I do.\n    A witch by fear, not force, like Hannibal,\n    Drives back our troops and conquers as she lists.\n    So bees with smoke and doves with noisome stench\n    Are from their hives and houses driven away.\n    They call\'d us, for our fierceness, English dogs;\n    Now like to whelps we crying run away.\n                                                [A short alarum]\n    Hark, countrymen! Either renew the fight  \n    Or tear the lions out of England\'s coat;\n    Renounce your soil, give sheep in lions\' stead:\n    Sheep run not half so treacherous from the wolf,\n    Or horse or oxen from the leopard,\n    As you fly from your oft subdued slaves.\n                                 [Alarum. Here another skirmish]\n    It will not be-retire into your trenches.\n    You all consented unto Salisbury\'s death,\n    For none would strike a stroke in his revenge.\n    Pucelle is ent\'red into Orleans\n    In spite of us or aught that we could do.\n    O, would I were to die with Salisbury!\n    The shame hereof will make me hide my head.\n                                    Exit TALBOT. Alarum; retreat\n\n\n\n                             SCENE 6.\n\n                              ORLEANS\n\n        Flourish. Enter on the walls, LA PUCELLE, CHARLES,\n                REIGNIER, ALENCON, and soldiers\n\n  PUCELLE. Advance our waving colours on the walls;\n    Rescu\'d is Orleans from the English.\n    Thus Joan la Pucelle hath perform\'d her word.\n  CHARLES. Divinest creature, Astraea\'s daughter,\n    How shall I honour thee for this success?\n    Thy promises are like Adonis\' gardens,\n    That one day bloom\'d and fruitful were the next.\n    France, triumph in thy glorious prophetess.\n    Recover\'d is the town of Orleans.\n    More blessed hap did ne\'er befall our state.\n  REIGNIER. Why ring not out the bells aloud throughout the\n    town?\n    Dauphin, command the citizens make bonfires\n    And feast and banquet in the open streets\n    To celebrate the joy that God hath given us.  \n  ALENCON. All France will be replete with mirth and joy\n    When they shall hear how we have play\'d the men.\n  CHARLES. \'Tis Joan, not we, by whom the day is won;\n    For which I will divide my crown with her;\n    And all the priests and friars in my realm\n    Shall in procession sing her endless praise.\n    A statelier pyramis to her I\'ll rear\n    Than Rhodope\'s of Memphis ever was.\n    In memory of her, when she is dead,\n    Her ashes, in an urn more precious\n    Than the rich jewel\'d coffer of Darius,\n    Transported shall be at high festivals\n    Before the kings and queens of France.\n    No longer on Saint Denis will we cry,\n    But Joan la Pucelle shall be France\'s saint.\n    Come in, and let us banquet royally\n    After this golden day of victory. Flourish.           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 1.\n\nBefore Orleans\n\nEnter a FRENCH SERGEANT and two SENTINELS\n\n  SERGEANT. Sirs, take your places and be vigilant.\n    If any noise or soldier you perceive\n    Near to the walls, by some apparent sign\n    Let us have knowledge at the court of guard.\n  FIRST SENTINEL. Sergeant, you shall.           [Exit SERGEANT]\n    Thus are poor servitors,\n    When others sleep upon their quiet beds,\n    Constrain\'d to watch in darkness, rain, and cold.\n\n             Enter TALBOT, BEDFORD, BURGUNDY, and forces,\n          with scaling-ladders; their drums beating a dead\n                              march\n\n  TALBOT. Lord Regent, and redoubted Burgundy,\n    By whose approach the regions of Artois,\n    Wallon, and Picardy, are friends to us,  \n    This happy night the Frenchmen are secure,\n    Having all day carous\'d and banqueted;\n    Embrace we then this opportunity,\n    As fitting best to quittance their deceit,\n    Contriv\'d by art and baleful sorcery.\n  BEDFORD. Coward of France, how much he wrongs his fame,\n    Despairing of his own arm\'s fortitude,\n    To join with witches and the help of hell!\n  BURGUNDY. Traitors have never other company.\n    But what\'s that Pucelle whom they term so pure?\n  TALBOT. A maid, they say.\n  BEDFORD. A maid! and be so martial!\n  BURGUNDY. Pray God she prove not masculine ere long,\n    If underneath the standard of the French\n    She carry armour as she hath begun.\n  TALBOT. Well, let them practise and converse with spirits:\n    God is our fortress, in whose conquering name\n    Let us resolve to scale their flinty bulwarks.\n  BEDFORD. Ascend, brave Talbot; we will follow thee.\n  TALBOT. Not all together; better far, I guess,  \n    That we do make our entrance several ways;\n    That if it chance the one of us do fail\n    The other yet may rise against their force.\n  BEDFORD. Agreed; I\'ll to yond corner.\n  BURGUNDY. And I to this.\n  TALBOT. And here will Talbot mount or make his grave.\n    Now, Salisbury, for thee, and for the right\n    Of English Henry, shall this night appear\n    How much in duty I am bound to both.\n             [The English scale the walls and cry \'Saint George!\n                                                     a Talbot!\']\n    SENTINEL. Arm! arm! The enemy doth make assault.\n\n           The French leap o\'er the walls in their shirts.\n           Enter, several ways, BASTARD, ALENCON, REIGNIER,\n                     half ready and half unready\n\n  ALENCON. How now, my lords? What, all unready so?\n  BASTARD. Unready! Ay, and glad we \'scap\'d so well.\n  REIGNIER. \'Twas time, I trow, to wake and leave our beds,  \n    Hearing alarums at our chamber doors.\n  ALENCON. Of all exploits since first I follow\'d arms\n    Ne\'er heard I of a warlike enterprise\n    More venturous or desperate than this.\n  BASTARD. I think this Talbot be a fiend of hell.\n  REIGNIER. If not of hell, the heavens, sure, favour him\n  ALENCON. Here cometh Charles; I marvel how he sped.\n\n                    Enter CHARLES and LA PUCELLE\n\n  BASTARD. Tut! holy Joan was his defensive guard.\n  CHARLES. Is this thy cunning, thou deceitful dame?\n    Didst thou at first, to flatter us withal,\n    Make us partakers of a little gain\n    That now our loss might be ten times so much?\n  PUCELLE. Wherefore is Charles impatient with his friend?\n    At all times will you have my power alike?\n    Sleeping or waking, must I still prevail\n    Or will you blame and lay the fault on me?\n    Improvident soldiers! Had your watch been good  \n    This sudden mischief never could have fall\'n.\n  CHARLES. Duke of Alencon, this was your default\n    That, being captain of the watch to-night,\n    Did look no better to that weighty charge.\n  ALENCON. Had all your quarters been as safely kept\n    As that whereof I had the government,\n    We had not been thus shamefully surpris\'d.\n  BASTARD. Mine was secure.\n  REIGNIER. And so was mine, my lord.\n  CHARLES. And, for myself, most part of all this night,\n    Within her quarter and mine own precinct\n    I was employ\'d in passing to and fro\n    About relieving of the sentinels.\n    Then how or which way should they first break in?\n  PUCELLE. Question, my lords, no further of the case,\n    How or which way; \'tis sure they found some place\n    But weakly guarded, where the breach was made.\n    And now there rests no other shift but this\n    To gather our soldiers, scatter\'d and dispers\'d,\n    And lay new platforms to endamage them.  \n\n               Alarum. Enter an ENGLISH SOLDIER, crying\n            \'A Talbot! A Talbot!\' They fly, leaving their\n                           clothes behind\n\n  SOLDIER. I\'ll be so bold to take what they have left.\n    The cry of Talbot serves me for a sword;\n    For I have loaden me with many spoils,\n    Using no other weapon but his name.                     Exit\n\n\n\n\n                             SCENE 2.\n\n                      ORLEANS. Within the town\n\n            Enter TALBOT, BEDFORD, BURGUNDY, a CAPTAIN,\n                           and others\n\n  BEDFORD. The day begins to break, and night is fled\n    Whose pitchy mantle over-veil\'d the earth.\n    Here sound retreat and cease our hot pursuit.\n                                               [Retreat sounded]\n  TALBOT. Bring forth the body of old Salisbury\n    And here advance it in the market-place,\n    The middle centre of this cursed town.\n    Now have I paid my vow unto his soul;\n    For every drop of blood was drawn from him\n    There hath at least five Frenchmen died to-night.\n    And that hereafter ages may behold\n    What ruin happened in revenge of him,\n    Within their chiefest temple I\'ll erect\n    A tomb, wherein his corpse shall be interr\'d;\n    Upon the which, that every one may read,  \n    Shall be engrav\'d the sack of Orleans,\n    The treacherous manner of his mournful death,\n    And what a terror he had been to France.\n    But, lords, in all our bloody massacre,\n    I muse we met not with the Dauphin\'s grace,\n    His new-come champion, virtuous Joan of Arc,\n    Nor any of his false confederates.\n  BEDFORD. \'Tis thought, Lord Talbot, when the fight began,\n    Rous\'d on the sudden from their drowsy beds,\n    They did amongst the troops of armed men\n    Leap o\'er the walls for refuge in the field.\n  BURGUNDY. Myself, as far as I could well discern\n    For smoke and dusky vapours of the night,\n    Am sure I scar\'d the Dauphin and his trull,\n    When arm in arm they both came swiftly running,\n    Like to a pair of loving turtle-doves\n    That could not live asunder day or night.\n    After that things are set in order here,\n    We\'ll follow them with all the power we have.\n  \n                          Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. All hail, my lords! Which of this princely train\n    Call ye the warlike Talbot, for his acts\n    So much applauded through the realm of France?\n  TALBOT. Here is the Talbot; who would speak with him?\n  MESSENGER. The virtuous lady, Countess of Auvergne,\n    With modesty admiring thy renown,\n    By me entreats, great lord, thou wouldst vouchsafe\n    To visit her poor castle where she lies,\n    That she may boast she hath beheld the man\n    Whose glory fills the world with loud report.\n  BURGUNDY. Is it even so? Nay, then I see our wars\n    Will turn into a peaceful comic sport,\n    When ladies crave to be encount\'red with.\n    You may not, my lord, despise her gentle suit.\n  TALBOT. Ne\'er trust me then; for when a world of men\n    Could not prevail with all their oratory,\n    Yet hath a woman\'s kindness overrul\'d;\n    And therefore tell her I return great thanks  \n    And in submission will attend on her.\n    Will not your honours bear me company?\n  BEDFORD. No, truly; \'tis more than manners will;\n    And I have heard it said unbidden guests\n    Are often welcomest when they are gone.\n  TALBOT. Well then, alone, since there\'s no remedy,\n    I mean to prove this lady\'s courtesy.\n    Come hither, Captain.  [Whispers]   You perceive my mind?\n  CAPTAIN. I do, my lord, and mean accordingly.           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n                             SCENE 3.\n\n                      AUVERGNE. The Castle\n\n               Enter the COUNTESS and her PORTER\n\n  COUNTESS. Porter, remember what I gave in charge;\n    And when you have done so, bring the keys to me.\n  PORTER. Madam, I will.\n  COUNTESS. The plot is laid; if all things fall out right,\n    I shall as famous be by this exploit.\n    As Scythian Tomyris by Cyrus\' death.\n    Great is the rumour of this dreadful knight,\n    And his achievements of no less account.\n    Fain would mine eyes be witness with mine ears\n    To give their censure of these rare reports.\n\n    Enter MESSENGER and TALBOT.\n\n  MESSENGER. Madam, according as your ladyship desir\'d,\n    By message crav\'d, so is Lord Talbot come.\n  COUNTESS. And he is welcome. What! is this the man?  \n  MESSENGER. Madam, it is.\n  COUNTESS. Is this the scourge of France?\n    Is this Talbot, so much fear\'d abroad\n    That with his name the mothers still their babes?\n    I see report is fabulous and false.\n    I thought I should have seen some Hercules,\n    A second Hector, for his grim aspect\n    And large proportion of his strong-knit limbs.\n    Alas, this is a child, a silly dwarf!\n    It cannot be this weak and writhled shrimp\n    Should strike such terror to his enemies.\n  TALBOT. Madam, I have been bold to trouble you;\n    But since your ladyship is not at leisure,\n    I\'ll sort some other time to visit you.              [Going]\n  COUNTESS. What means he now? Go ask him whither he\n    goes.\n  MESSENGER. Stay, my Lord Talbot; for my lady craves\n    To know the cause of your abrupt departure.\n  TALBOT. Marry, for that she\'s in a wrong belief,\n    I go to certify her Talbot\'s here.  \n\n                      Re-enter PORTER With keys\n\n  COUNTESS. If thou be he, then art thou prisoner.\n  TALBOT. Prisoner! To whom?\n  COUNTESS. To me, blood-thirsty lord\n    And for that cause I train\'d thee to my house.\n    Long time thy shadow hath been thrall to me,\n    For in my gallery thy picture hangs;\n    But now the substance shall endure the like\n    And I will chain these legs and arms of thine\n    That hast by tyranny these many years\n    Wasted our country, slain our citizens,\n    And sent our sons and husbands captivate.\n  TALBOT. Ha, ha, ha!\n  COUNTESS. Laughest thou, wretch? Thy mirth shall turn to\n    moan.\n  TALBOT. I laugh to see your ladyship so fond\n    To think that you have aught but Talbot\'s shadow\n    Whereon to practise your severity.  \n  COUNTESS. Why, art not thou the man?\n  TALBOT. I am indeed.\n  COUNTESS. Then have I substance too.\n  TALBOT. No, no, I am but shadow of myself.\n    You are deceiv\'d, my substance is not here;\n    For what you see is but the smallest part\n    And least proportion of humanity.\n    I tell you, madam, were the whole frame here,\n    It is of such a spacious lofty pitch\n    Your roof were not sufficient to contain \'t.\n  COUNTESS. This is a riddling merchant for the nonce;\n    He will be here, and yet he is not here.\n    How can these contrarieties agree?\n  TALBOT. That will I show you presently.\n\n                   Winds his horn; drums strike up;\n                  a peal of ordnance. Enter soldiers\n\n    How say you, madam? Are you now persuaded\n    That Talbot is but shadow of himself?  \n    These are his substance, sinews, arms, and strength,\n    With which he yoketh your rebellious necks,\n    Razeth your cities, and subverts your towns,\n    And in a moment makes them desolate.\n  COUNTESS. Victorious Talbot! pardon my abuse.\n    I find thou art no less than fame hath bruited,\n    And more than may be gathered by thy shape.\n    Let my presumption not provoke thy wrath,\n    For I am sorry that with reverence\n    I did not entertain thee as thou art.\n  TALBOT. Be not dismay\'d, fair lady; nor misconster\n    The mind of Talbot as you did mistake\n    The outward composition of his body.\n    What you have done hath not offended me.\n    Nor other satisfaction do I crave\n    But only, with your patience, that we may\n    Taste of your wine and see what cates you have,\n    For soldiers\' stomachs always serve them well.\n  COUNTESS. With all my heart, and think me honoured\n    To feast so great a warrior in my house.              Exeunt  \n\n\n\n\n                            SCENE 4.\n\n                   London. The Temple garden\n\n         Enter the EARLS OF SOMERSET, SUFFOLK, and WARWICK;\n           RICHARD PLANTAGENET, VERNON, and another LAWYER\n\n  PLANTAGENET. Great lords and gentlemen, what means this\n    silence?\n    Dare no man answer in a case of truth?\n  SUFFOLK. Within the Temple Hall we were too loud;\n    The garden here is more convenient.\n  PLANTAGENET. Then say at once if I maintain\'d the truth;\n    Or else was wrangling Somerset in th\' error?\n  SUFFOLK. Faith, I have been a truant in the law\n    And never yet could frame my will to it;\n    And therefore frame the law unto my will.\n  SOMERSET. Judge you, my Lord of Warwick, then, between us.\n  WARWICK. Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch;\n    Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth;\n    Between two blades, which bears the better temper;\n    Between two horses, which doth bear him best;  \n    Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye\n    I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgment;\n    But in these nice sharp quillets of the law,\n    Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.\n  PLANTAGENET. Tut, tut, here is a mannerly forbearance:\n    The truth appears so naked on my side\n    That any purblind eye may find it out.\n  SOMERSET. And on my side it is so well apparell\'d,\n    So clear, so shining, and so evident,\n    That it will glimmer through a blind man\'s eye.\n  PLANTAGENET. Since you are tongue-tied and so loath to speak,\n    In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts.\n    Let him that is a true-born gentleman\n    And stands upon the honour of his birth,\n    If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,\n    From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.\n  SOMERSET. Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer,\n    But dare maintain the party of the truth,\n    Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.\n  WARWICK. I love no colours; and, without all colour  \n    Of base insinuating flattery,\n    I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.\n  SUFFOLK. I pluck this red rose with young Somerset,\n    And say withal I think he held the right.\n  VERNON. Stay, lords and gentlemen, and pluck no more\n    Till you conclude that he upon whose side\n    The fewest roses are cropp\'d from the tree\n    Shall yield the other in the right opinion.\n  SOMERSET. Good Master Vernon, it is well objected;\n    If I have fewest, I subscribe in silence.\n  PLANTAGENET. And I.\n  VERNON. Then, for the truth and plainness of the case,\n    I pluck this pale and maiden blossom here,\n    Giving my verdict on the white rose side.\n  SOMERSET. Prick not your finger as you pluck it off,\n    Lest, bleeding, you do paint the white rose red,\n    And fall on my side so, against your will.\n  VERNON. If I, my lord, for my opinion bleed,\n    Opinion shall be surgeon to my hurt\n    And keep me on the side where still I am.  \n  SOMERSET. Well, well, come on; who else?\n  LAWYER.  [To Somerset]  Unless my study and my books be\n    false,\n    The argument you held was wrong in you;\n    In sign whereof I pluck a white rose too.\n  PLANTAGENET. Now, Somerset, where is your argument?\n  SOMERSET. Here in my scabbard, meditating that\n    Shall dye your white rose in a bloody red.\n  PLANTAGENET. Meantime your cheeks do counterfeit our\n    roses;\n    For pale they look with fear, as witnessing\n    The truth on our side.\n  SOMERSET. No, Plantagenet,\n    \'Tis not for fear but anger that thy cheeks\n    Blush for pure shame to counterfeit our roses,\n    And yet thy tongue will not confess thy error.\n  PLANTAGENET. Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset?\n  SOMERSET. Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?\n  PLANTAGENET. Ay, sharp and piercing, to maintain his truth;\n    Whiles thy consuming canker eats his falsehood.  \n  SOMERSET. Well, I\'ll find friends to wear my bleeding roses,\n    That shall maintain what I have said is true,\n    Where false Plantagenet dare not be seen.\n  PLANTAGENET. Now, by this maiden blossom in my hand,\n    I scorn thee and thy fashion, peevish boy.\n  SUFFOLK. Turn not thy scorns this way, Plantagenet.\n  PLANTAGENET. Proud Pole, I will, and scorn both him and\n    thee.\n  SUFFOLK. I\'ll turn my part thereof into thy throat.\n  SOMERSET. Away, away, good William de la Pole!\n    We grace the yeoman by conversing with him.\n  WARWICK. Now, by God\'s will, thou wrong\'st him, Somerset;\n    His grandfather was Lionel Duke of Clarence,\n    Third son to the third Edward, King of England.\n    Spring crestless yeomen from so deep a root?\n  PLANTAGENET. He bears him on the place\'s privilege,\n    Or durst not for his craven heart say thus.\n  SOMERSET. By Him that made me, I\'ll maintain my words\n    On any plot of ground in Christendom.\n    Was not thy father, Richard Earl of Cambridge,  \n    For treason executed in our late king\'s days?\n    And by his treason stand\'st not thou attainted,\n    Corrupted, and exempt from ancient gentry?\n    His trespass yet lives guilty in thy blood;\n    And till thou be restor\'d thou art a yeoman.\n  PLANTAGENET. My father was attached, not attainted;\n    Condemn\'d to die for treason, but no traitor;\n    And that I\'ll prove on better men than Somerset,\n    Were growing time once ripened to my will.\n    For your partaker Pole, and you yourself,\n    I\'ll note you in my book of memory\n    To scourge you for this apprehension.\n    Look to it well, and say you are well warn\'d.\n  SOMERSET. Ay, thou shalt find us ready for thee still;\n    And know us by these colours for thy foes\n    For these my friends in spite of thee shall wear.\n  PLANTAGENET. And, by my soul, this pale and angry rose,\n    As cognizance of my blood-drinking hate,\n    Will I for ever, and my faction, wear,\n    Until it wither with me to my grave,  \n    Or flourish to the height of my degree.\n  SUFFOLK. Go forward, and be chok\'d with thy ambition!\n    And so farewell until I meet thee next.                 Exit\n  SOMERSET. Have with thee, Pole. Farewell, ambitious\n    Richard.                                                Exit\n  PLANTAGENET. How I am brav\'d, and must perforce endure\n    it!\n  WARWICK. This blot that they object against your house\n    Shall be wip\'d out in the next Parliament,\n    Call\'d for the truce of Winchester and Gloucester;\n    And if thou be not then created York,\n    I will not live to be accounted Warwick.\n    Meantime, in signal of my love to thee,\n    Against proud Somerset and William Pole,\n    Will I upon thy party wear this rose;\n    And here I prophesy: this brawl to-day,\n    Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden,\n    Shall send between the Red Rose and the White\n    A thousand souls to death and deadly night.\n  PLANTAGENET. Good Master Vernon, I am bound to you  \n    That you on my behalf would pluck a flower.\n  VERNON. In your behalf still will I wear the same.\n  LAWYER. And so will I.\n  PLANTAGENET. Thanks, gentle sir.\n    Come, let us four to dinner. I dare say\n    This quarrel will drink blood another day.            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n                             SCENE 5.\n\n                       The Tower of London\n\n         Enter MORTIMER, brought in a chair, and GAOLERS\n\n  MORTIMER. Kind keepers of my weak decaying age,\n    Let dying Mortimer here rest himself.\n    Even like a man new haled from the rack,\n    So fare my limbs with long imprisonment;\n    And these grey locks, the pursuivants of death,\n    Nestor-like aged in an age of care,\n    Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer.\n    These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent,\n    Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent;\n    Weak shoulders, overborne with burdening grief,\n    And pithless arms, like to a withered vine\n    That droops his sapless branches to the ground.\n    Yet are these feet, whose strengthless stay is numb,\n    Unable to support this lump of clay,\n    Swift-winged with desire to get a grave,\n    As witting I no other comfort have.  \n    But tell me, keeper, will my nephew come?\n  FIRST KEEPER. Richard Plantagenet, my lord, will come.\n    We sent unto the Temple, unto his chamber;\n    And answer was return\'d that he will come.\n  MORTIMER. Enough; my soul shall then be satisfied.\n    Poor gentleman! his wrong doth equal mine.\n    Since Henry Monmouth first began to reign,\n    Before whose glory I was great in arms,\n    This loathsome sequestration have I had;\n    And even since then hath Richard been obscur\'d,\n    Depriv\'d of honour and inheritance.\n    But now the arbitrator of despairs,\n    Just Death, kind umpire of men\'s miseries,\n    With sweet enlargement doth dismiss me hence.\n    I would his troubles likewise were expir\'d,\n    That so he might recover what was lost.\n\n                     Enter RICHARD PLANTAGENET\n\n  FIRST KEEPER. My lord, your loving nephew now is come.  \n  MORTIMER. Richard Plantagenet, my friend, is he come?\n  PLANTAGENET. Ay, noble uncle, thus ignobly us\'d,\n    Your nephew, late despised Richard, comes.\n  MORTIMER. Direct mine arms I may embrace his neck\n    And in his bosom spend my latter gasp.\n    O, tell me when my lips do touch his cheeks,\n    That I may kindly give one fainting kiss.\n    And now declare, sweet stem from York\'s great stock,\n    Why didst thou say of late thou wert despis\'d?\n  PLANTAGENET. First, lean thine aged back against mine arm;\n    And, in that ease, I\'ll tell thee my disease.\n    This day, in argument upon a case,\n    Some words there grew \'twixt Somerset and me;\n    Among which terms he us\'d his lavish tongue\n    And did upbraid me with my father\'s death;\n    Which obloquy set bars before my tongue,\n    Else with the like I had requited him.\n    Therefore, good uncle, for my father\'s sake,\n    In honour of a true Plantagenet,\n    And for alliance sake, declare the cause  \n    My father, Earl of Cambridge, lost his head.\n  MORTIMER. That cause, fair nephew, that imprison\'d me\n    And hath detain\'d me all my flow\'ring youth\n    Within a loathsome dungeon, there to pine,\n    Was cursed instrument of his decease.\n  PLANTAGENET. Discover more at large what cause that was,\n    For I am ignorant and cannot guess.\n  MORTIMER. I will, if that my fading breath permit\n    And death approach not ere my tale be done.\n    Henry the Fourth, grandfather to this king,\n    Depos\'d his nephew Richard, Edward\'s son,\n    The first-begotten and the lawful heir\n    Of Edward king, the third of that descent;\n    During whose reign the Percies of the north,\n    Finding his usurpation most unjust,\n    Endeavour\'d my advancement to the throne.\n    The reason mov\'d these warlike lords to this\n    Was, for that-young Richard thus remov\'d,\n    Leaving no heir begotten of his body-\n    I was the next by birth and parentage;  \n    For by my mother I derived am\n    From Lionel Duke of Clarence, third son\n    To King Edward the Third; whereas he\n    From John of Gaunt doth bring his pedigree,\n    Being but fourth of that heroic line.\n    But mark: as in this haughty great attempt\n    They laboured to plant the rightful heir,\n    I lost my liberty, and they their lives.\n    Long after this, when Henry the Fifth,\n    Succeeding his father Bolingbroke, did reign,\n    Thy father, Earl of Cambridge, then deriv\'d\n    From famous Edmund Langley, Duke of York,\n    Marrying my sister, that thy mother was,\n    Again, in pity of my hard distress,\n    Levied an army, weening to redeem\n    And have install\'d me in the diadem;\n    But, as the rest, so fell that noble earl,\n    And was beheaded. Thus the Mortimers,\n    In whom the title rested, were suppress\'d.\n  PLANTAGENET. Of Which, my lord, your honour is the last.  \n  MORTIMER. True; and thou seest that I no issue have,\n    And that my fainting words do warrant death.\n    Thou art my heir; the rest I wish thee gather;\n    But yet be wary in thy studious care.\n  PLANTAGENET. Thy grave admonishments prevail with me.\n    But yet methinks my father\'s execution\n    Was nothing less than bloody tyranny.\n  MORTIMER. With silence, nephew, be thou politic;\n    Strong fixed is the house of Lancaster\n    And like a mountain not to be remov\'d.\n    But now thy uncle is removing hence,\n    As princes do their courts when they are cloy\'d\n    With long continuance in a settled place.\n  PLANTAGENET. O uncle, would some part of my young years\n    Might but redeem the passage of your age!\n  MORTIMER. Thou dost then wrong me, as that slaughterer\n    doth\n    Which giveth many wounds when one will kill.\n    Mourn not, except thou sorrow for my good;\n    Only give order for my funeral.  \n    And so, farewell; and fair be all thy hopes,\n    And prosperous be thy life in peace and war!          [Dies]\n  PLANTAGENET. And peace, no war, befall thy parting soul!\n    In prison hast thou spent a pilgrimage,\n    And like a hermit overpass\'d thy days.\n    Well, I will lock his counsel in my breast;\n    And what I do imagine, let that rest.\n    Keepers, convey him hence; and I myself\n    Will see his burial better than his life.\n                Exeunt GAOLERS, hearing out the body of MORTIMER\n    Here dies the dusky torch of Mortimer,\n    Chok\'d with ambition of the meaner sort;\n    And for those wrongs, those bitter injuries,\n    Which Somerset hath offer\'d to my house,\n    I doubt not but with honour to redress;\n    And therefore haste I to the Parliament,\n    Either to be restored to my blood,\n    Or make my ill th\' advantage of my good.                Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 1.\n\nLondon. The Parliament House\n\nFlourish. Enter the KING, EXETER, GLOUCESTER, WARWICK, SOMERSET, and SUFFOLK;\nthe BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, RICHARD PLANTAGENET, and others.\nGLOUCESTER offers to put up a bill; WINCHESTER snatches it, and tears it\n\n  WINCHESTER. Com\'st thou with deep premeditated lines,\n    With written pamphlets studiously devis\'d?\n    Humphrey of Gloucester, if thou canst accuse\n    Or aught intend\'st to lay unto my charge,\n    Do it without invention, suddenly;\n    I with sudden and extemporal speech\n    Purpose to answer what thou canst object.\n  GLOUCESTER. Presumptuous priest, this place commands my\n    patience,\n    Or thou shouldst find thou hast dishonour\'d me.\n    Think not, although in writing I preferr\'d\n    The manner of thy vile outrageous crimes,  \n    That therefore I have forg\'d, or am not able\n    Verbatim to rehearse the method of my pen.\n    No, prelate; such is thy audacious wickedness,\n    Thy lewd, pestiferous, and dissentious pranks,\n    As very infants prattle of thy pride.\n    Thou art a most pernicious usurer;\n    Froward by nature, enemy to peace;\n    Lascivious, wanton, more than well beseems\n    A man of thy profession and degree;\n    And for thy treachery, what\'s more manifest\n    In that thou laid\'st a trap to take my life,\n    As well at London Bridge as at the Tower?\n    Beside, I fear me, if thy thoughts were sifted,\n    The King, thy sovereign, is not quite exempt\n    From envious malice of thy swelling heart.\n  WINCHESTER. Gloucester, I do defy thee. Lords, vouchsafe\n    To give me hearing what I shall reply.\n    If I were covetous, ambitious, or perverse,\n    As he will have me, how am I so poor?\n    Or how haps it I seek not to advance  \n    Or raise myself, but keep my wonted calling?\n    And for dissension, who preferreth peace\n    More than I do, except I be provok\'d?\n    No, my good lords, it is not that offends;\n    It is not that that incens\'d hath incens\'d the Duke:\n    It is because no one should sway but he;\n    No one but he should be about the King;\n    And that engenders thunder in his breast\n    And makes him roar these accusations forth.\n    But he shall know I am as good\n  GLOUCESTER. As good!\n    Thou bastard of my grandfather!\n  WINCHESTER. Ay, lordly sir; for what are you, I pray,\n    But one imperious in another\'s throne?\n  GLOUCESTER. Am I not Protector, saucy priest?\n  WINCHESTER. And am not I a prelate of the church?\n  GLOUCESTER. Yes, as an outlaw in a castle keeps,\n    And useth it to patronage his theft.\n  WINCHESTER. Unreverent Gloucester!\n  GLOUCESTER. Thou art reverend  \n    Touching thy spiritual function, not thy life.\n  WINCHESTER. Rome shall remedy this.\n  WARWICK. Roam thither then.\n  SOMERSET. My lord, it were your duty to forbear.\n  WARWICK. Ay, see the bishop be not overborne.\n  SOMERSET. Methinks my lord should be religious,\n    And know the office that belongs to such.\n  WARWICK. Methinks his lordship should be humbler;\n    It fitteth not a prelate so to plead.\n  SOMERSET. Yes, when his holy state is touch\'d so near.\n  WARWICK. State holy or unhallow\'d, what of that?\n    Is not his Grace Protector to the King?\n  PLANTAGENET.  [Aside]  Plantagenet, I see, must hold his\n    tongue,\n    Lest it be said \'Speak, sirrah, when you should;\n    Must your bold verdict enter talk with lords?\'\n    Else would I have a fling at Winchester.\n  KING HENRY. Uncles of Gloucester and of Winchester,\n    The special watchmen of our English weal,\n    I would prevail, if prayers might prevail  \n    To join your hearts in love and amity.\n    O, what a scandal is it to our crown\n    That two such noble peers as ye should jar!\n    Believe me, lords, my tender years can tell\n    Civil dissension is a viperous worm\n    That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth.\n                  [A noise within: \'Down with the tawny coats!\']\n    What tumult\'s this?\n  WARWICK. An uproar, I dare warrant,\n    Begun through malice of the Bishop\'s men.\n                              [A noise again: \'Stones! Stones!\']\n\n                Enter the MAYOR OF LONDON, attended\n\n  MAYOR. O, my good lords, and virtuous Henry,\n    Pity the city of London, pity us!\n    The Bishop and the Duke of Gloucester\'s men,\n    Forbidden late to carry any weapon,\n    Have fill\'d their pockets full of pebble stones\n    And, banding themselves in contrary parts,  \n    Do pelt so fast at one another\'s pate\n    That many have their giddy brains knock\'d out.\n    Our windows are broke down in every street,\n    And we for fear compell\'d to shut our shops.\n\n        Enter in skirmish, the retainers of GLOUCESTER and\n               WINCHESTER, with bloody pates\n\n  KING HENRY. We charge you, on allegiance to ourself,\n    To hold your slaught\'ring hands and keep the peace.\n    Pray, uncle Gloucester, mitigate this strife.\n  FIRST SERVING-MAN. Nay, if we be forbidden stones, we\'ll\n    fall to it with our teeth.\n  SECOND SERVING-MAN. Do what ye dare, we are as resolute.\n                                                [Skirmish again]\n  GLOUCESTER. You of my household, leave this peevish broil,\n    And set this unaccustom\'d fight aside.\n  THIRD SERVING-MAN. My lord, we know your Grace to be a\n    man\n    Just and upright, and for your royal birth  \n    Inferior to none but to his Majesty;\n    And ere that we will suffer such a prince,\n    So kind a father of the commonweal,\n    To be disgraced by an inkhorn mate,\n    We and our wives and children all will fight\n    And have our bodies slaught\'red by thy foes.\n  FIRST SERVING-MAN. Ay, and the very parings of our nails\n    Shall pitch a field when we are dead.          [Begin again]\n  GLOUCESTER. Stay, stay, I say!\n    And if you love me, as you say you do,\n    Let me persuade you to forbear awhile.\n  KING HENRY. O, how this discord doth afflict my soul!\n    Can you, my Lord of Winchester, behold\n    My sighs and tears and will not once relent?\n    Who should be pitiful, if you be not?\n    Or who should study to prefer a peace,\n    If holy churchmen take delight in broils?\n  WARWICK. Yield, my Lord Protector; yield, Winchester;\n    Except you mean with obstinate repulse\n    To slay your sovereign and destroy the realm.  \n    You see what mischief, and what murder too,\n    Hath been enacted through your enmity;\n    Then be at peace, except ye thirst for blood.\n  WINCHESTER. He shall submit, or I will never yield.\n  GLOUCESTER. Compassion on the King commands me stoop,\n    Or I would see his heart out ere the priest\n    Should ever get that privilege of me.\n  WARWICK. Behold, my Lord of Winchester, the Duke\n    Hath banish\'d moody discontented fury,\n    As by his smoothed brows it doth appear;\n    Why look you still so stem and tragical?\n  GLOUCESTER. Here, Winchester, I offer thee my hand.\n  KING HENRY. Fie, uncle Beaufort! I have heard you preach\n    That malice was a great and grievous sin;\n    And will not you maintain the thing you teach,\n    But prove a chief offender in the same?\n  WARWICK. Sweet King! The Bishop hath a kindly gird.\n    For shame, my Lord of Winchester, relent;\n    What, shall a child instruct you what to do?\n  WINCHESTER. Well, Duke of Gloucester, I will yield to thee;  \n    Love for thy love and hand for hand I give.\n  GLOUCESTER  [Aside]  Ay, but, I fear me, with a hollow\n    heart.\n    See here, my friends and loving countrymen:\n    This token serveth for a flag of truce\n    Betwixt ourselves and all our followers.\n    So help me God, as I dissemble not!\n  WINCHESTER  [Aside]  So help me God, as I intend it not!\n  KING HENRY. O loving uncle, kind Duke of Gloucester,\n    How joyful am I made by this contract!\n    Away, my masters! trouble us no more;\n    But join in friendship, as your lords have done.\n  FIRST SERVING-MAN. Content: I\'ll to the surgeon\'s.\n  SECOND SERVING-MAN. And so will I.\n  THIRD SERVING-MAN. And I will see what physic the tavern\n    affords.                         Exeunt servants, MAYOR, &C.\n  WARWICK. Accept this scroll, most gracious sovereign;\n    Which in the right of Richard Plantagenet\n    We do exhibit to your Majesty.\n  GLOUCESTER. Well urg\'d, my Lord of Warwick; for, sweet  \n    prince,\n    An if your Grace mark every circumstance,\n    You have great reason to do Richard right;\n    Especially for those occasions\n    At Eltham Place I told your Majesty.\n  KING HENRY. And those occasions, uncle, were of force;\n    Therefore, my loving lords, our pleasure is\n    That Richard be restored to his blood.\n  WARWICK. Let Richard be restored to his blood;\n    So shall his father\'s wrongs be recompens\'d.\n  WINCHESTER. As will the rest, so willeth Winchester.\n  KING HENRY. If Richard will be true, not that alone\n    But all the whole inheritance I give\n    That doth belong unto the house of York,\n    From whence you spring by lineal descent.\n  PLANTAGENET. Thy humble servant vows obedience\n    And humble service till the point of death.\n  KING HENRY. Stoop then and set your knee against my foot;\n    And in reguerdon of that duty done\n    I girt thee with the valiant sword of York.  \n    Rise, Richard, like a true Plantagenet,\n    And rise created princely Duke of York.\n  PLANTAGENET. And so thrive Richard as thy foes may fall!\n    And as my duty springs, so perish they\n    That grudge one thought against your Majesty!\n  ALL. Welcome, high Prince, the mighty Duke of York!\n  SOMERSET.  [Aside]  Perish, base Prince, ignoble Duke of\n    York!\n  GLOUCESTER. Now will it best avail your Majesty\n    To cross the seas and to be crown\'d in France:\n    The presence of a king engenders love\n    Amongst his subjects and his loyal friends,\n    As it disanimates his enemies.\n  KING HENRY. When Gloucester says the word, King Henry\n    goes;\n    For friendly counsel cuts off many foes.\n  GLOUCESTER. Your ships already are in readiness.\n                         Sennet. Flourish. Exeunt all but EXETER\n  EXETER. Ay, we may march in England or in France,\n    Not seeing what is likely to ensue.  \n    This late dissension grown betwixt the peers\n    Burns under feigned ashes of forg\'d love\n    And will at last break out into a flame;\n    As fest\'red members rot but by degree\n    Till bones and flesh and sinews fall away,\n    So will this base and envious discord breed.\n    And now I fear that fatal prophecy.\n    Which in the time of Henry nam\'d the Fifth\n    Was in the mouth of every sucking babe:\n    That Henry born at Monmouth should win all,\n    And Henry born at Windsor should lose all.\n    Which is so plain that Exeter doth wish\n    His days may finish ere that hapless time.              Exit\n\n\n\n\n                             SCENE 2.\n\n                      France. Before Rouen\n\n       Enter LA PUCELLE disguis\'d, with four soldiers dressed\n            like countrymen, with sacks upon their backs\n\n  PUCELLE. These are the city gates, the gates of Rouen,\n    Through which our policy must make a breach.\n    Take heed, be wary how you place your words;\n    Talk like the vulgar sort of market-men\n    That come to gather money for their corn.\n    If we have entrance, as I hope we shall,\n    And that we find the slothful watch but weak,\n    I\'ll by a sign give notice to our friends,\n    That Charles the Dauphin may encounter them.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Our sacks shall be a mean to sack the city,\n    And we be lords and rulers over Rouen;\n    Therefore we\'ll knock.                              [Knocks]\n  WATCH.  [Within]  Qui est la?\n  PUCELLE. Paysans, pauvres gens de France\n    Poor market-folks that come to sell their corn.  \n  WATCH. Enter, go in; the market-bell is rung.\n  PUCELLE. Now, Rouen, I\'ll shake thy bulwarks to the\n    ground.\n\n                               [LA PUCELLE, &c., enter the town]\n\n        Enter CHARLES, BASTARD, ALENCON, REIGNIER, and forces\n\n  CHARLES. Saint Denis bless this happy stratagem!\n    And once again we\'ll sleep secure in Rouen.\n  BASTARD. Here ent\'red Pucelle and her practisants;\n    Now she is there, how will she specify\n    Here is the best and safest passage in?\n  ALENCON. By thrusting out a torch from yonder tower;\n    Which once discern\'d shows that her meaning is\n    No way to that, for weakness, which she ent\'red.\n\n             Enter LA PUCELLE, on the top, thrusting out\n                         a torch burning\n  \n  PUCELLE. Behold, this is the happy wedding torch\n    That joineth Rouen unto her countrymen,\n    But burning fatal to the Talbotites.                    Exit\n  BASTARD. See, noble Charles, the beacon of our friend;\n    The burning torch in yonder turret stands.\n  CHARLES. Now shine it like a comet of revenge,\n    A prophet to the fall of all our foes!\n  ALENCON. Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends;\n    Enter, and cry \'The Dauphin!\' presently,\n    And then do execution on the watch. Alarum.           Exeunt\n\n              An alarum. Enter TALBOT in an excursion\n\n  TALBOT. France, thou shalt rue this treason with thy tears,\n    If Talbot but survive thy treachery.\n  PUCELLE, that witch, that damned sorceress,\n    Hath wrought this hellish mischief unawares,\n    That hardly we escap\'d the pride of France.             Exit\n\n        An alarum; excursions. BEDFORD brought in sick in  \n          a chair. Enter TALBOT and BURGUNDY without;\n         within, LA PUCELLE, CHARLES, BASTARD, ALENCON,\n                 and REIGNIER, on the walls\n\n  PUCELLE. Good morrow, gallants! Want ye corn for bread?\n    I think the Duke of Burgundy will fast\n    Before he\'ll buy again at such a rate.\n    \'Twas full of darnel-do you like the taste?\n  BURGUNDY. Scoff on, vile fiend and shameless courtezan.\n    I trust ere long to choke thee with thine own,\n    And make thee curse the harvest of that corn.\n  CHARLES. Your Grace may starve, perhaps, before that time.\n  BEDFORD. O, let no words, but deeds, revenge this treason!\n  PUCELLE. What you do, good grey beard? Break a\n    lance,\n    And run a tilt at death within a chair?\n  TALBOT. Foul fiend of France and hag of all despite,\n    Encompass\'d with thy lustful paramours,\n    Becomes it thee to taunt his valiant age\n    And twit with cowardice a man half dead?  \n    Damsel, I\'ll have a bout with you again,\n    Or else let Talbot perish with this shame.\n  PUCELLE. Are ye so hot, sir? Yet, Pucelle, hold thy peace;\n    If Talbot do but thunder, rain will follow.\n                 [The English party whisper together in council]\n    God speed the parliament! Who shall be the Speaker?\n  TALBOT. Dare ye come forth and meet us in the field?\n  PUCELLE. Belike your lordship takes us then for fools,\n    To try if that our own be ours or no.\n  TALBOT. I speak not to that railing Hecate,\n    But unto thee, Alencon, and the rest.\n    Will ye, like soldiers, come and fight it out?\n  ALENCON. Signior, no.\n  TALBOT. Signior, hang! Base muleteers of France!\n    Like peasant foot-boys do they keep the walls,\n    And dare not take up arms like gentlemen.\n  PUCELLE. Away, captains! Let\'s get us from the walls;\n    For Talbot means no goodness by his looks.\n    God b\'uy, my lord; we came but to tell you\n    That we are here.                      Exeunt from the walls  \n  TALBOT. And there will we be too, ere it be long,\n    Or else reproach be Talbot\'s greatest fame!\n    Vow, Burgundy, by honour of thy house,\n    Prick\'d on by public wrongs sustain\'d in France,\n    Either to get the town again or die;\n    And I, as sure as English Henry lives\n    And as his father here was conqueror,\n    As sure as in this late betrayed town\n    Great Coeur-de-lion\'s heart was buried\n    So sure I swear to get the town or die.\n  BURGUNDY. My vows are equal partners with thy vows.\n  TALBOT. But ere we go, regard this dying prince,\n    The valiant Duke of Bedford. Come, my lord,\n    We will bestow you in some better place,\n    Fitter for sickness and for crazy age.\n  BEDFORD. Lord Talbot, do not so dishonour me;\n    Here will I sit before the walls of Rouen,\n    And will be partner of your weal or woe.\n  BURGUNDY. Courageous Bedford, let us now persuade you.\n  BEDFORD. Not to be gone from hence; for once I read  \n    That stout Pendragon in his litter sick\n    Came to the field, and vanquished his foes.\n    Methinks I should revive the soldiers\' hearts,\n    Because I ever found them as myself.\n  TALBOT. Undaunted spirit in a dying breast!\n    Then be it so. Heavens keep old Bedford safe!\n    And now no more ado, brave Burgundy,\n    But gather we our forces out of hand\n    And set upon our boasting enemy.\n          Exeunt against the town all but BEDFORD and attendants\n\n           An alarum; excursions. Enter SIR JOHN FASTOLFE,\n                           and a CAPTAIN\n\n  CAPTAIN. Whither away, Sir John Fastolfe, in such haste?\n  FASTOLFE. Whither away? To save myself by flight:\n    We are like to have the overthrow again.\n  CAPTAIN. What! Will you and leave Lord Talbot?\n  FASTOLFE. Ay,\n    All the Talbots in the world, to save my life.          Exit  \n  CAPTAIN. Cowardly knight! ill fortune follow thee!\n                                              Exit into the town\n\n         Retreat; excursions. LA PUCELLE, ALENCON,\n                      and CHARLES fly\n\n  BEDFORD. Now, quiet soul, depart when heaven please,\n    For I have seen our enemies\' overthrow.\n    What is the trust or strength of foolish man?\n    They that of late were daring with their scoffs\n    Are glad and fain by flight to save themselves.\n            [BEDFORD dies and is carried in by two in his chair]\n\n          An alarum. Re-enter TALBOT, BURGUNDY, and the rest\n\n  TALBOT. Lost and recovered in a day again!\n    This is a double honour, Burgundy.\n    Yet heavens have glory for this victory!\n  BURGUNDY. Warlike and martial Talbot, Burgundy\n    Enshrines thee in his heart, and there erects  \n    Thy noble deeds as valour\'s monuments.\n  TALBOT. Thanks, gentle Duke. But where is Pucelle now?\n    I think her old familiar is asleep.\n    Now where\'s the Bastard\'s braves, and Charles his gleeks?\n    What, all amort? Rouen hangs her head for grief\n    That such a valiant company are fled.\n    Now will we take some order in the town,\n    Placing therein some expert officers;\n    And then depart to Paris to the King,\n    For there young Henry with his nobles lie.\n  BURGUNDY. What Lord Talbot pleaseth Burgundy.\n  TALBOT. But yet, before we go, let\'s not forget\n    The noble Duke of Bedford, late deceas\'d,\n    But see his exequies fulfill\'d in Rouen.\n    A braver soldier never couched lance,\n    A gentler heart did never sway in court;\n    But kings and mightiest potentates must die,\n    For that\'s the end of human misery.                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n                             SCENE 3.\n\n                      The plains near Rouen\n\n        Enter CHARLES, the BASTARD, ALENCON, LA PUCELLE,\n                          and forces\n\n  PUCELLE. Dismay not, Princes, at this accident,\n    Nor grieve that Rouen is so recovered.\n    Care is no cure, but rather corrosive,\n    For things that are not to be remedied.\n    Let frantic Talbot triumph for a while\n    And like a peacock sweep along his tail;\n    We\'ll pull his plumes and take away his train,\n    If Dauphin and the rest will be but rul\'d.\n  CHARLES. We have guided by thee hitherto,\n    And of thy cunning had no diffidence;\n    One sudden foil shall never breed distrust\n  BASTARD. Search out thy wit for secret policies,\n    And we will make thee famous through the world.\n    ALENCON. We\'ll set thy statue in some holy place,\n    And have thee reverenc\'d like a blessed saint.  \n    Employ thee, then, sweet virgin, for our good.\n  PUCELLE. Then thus it must be; this doth Joan devise:\n    By fair persuasions, mix\'d with sug\'red words,\n    We will entice the Duke of Burgundy\n    To leave the Talbot and to follow us.\n  CHARLES. Ay, marry, sweeting, if we could do that,\n    France were no place for Henry\'s warriors;\n    Nor should that nation boast it so with us,\n    But be extirped from our provinces.\n  ALENCON. For ever should they be expuls\'d from France,\n    And not have tide of an earldom here.\n  PUCELLE. Your honours shall perceive how I will work\n    To bring this matter to the wished end.\n                                          [Drum sounds afar off]\n    Hark! by the sound of drum you may perceive\n    Their powers are marching unto Paris-ward.\n\n          Here sound an English march. Enter, and pass over\n                at a distance, TALBOT and his forces\n  \n    There goes the Talbot, with his colours spread,\n    And all the troops of English after him.\n\n            French march. Enter the DUKE OF BURGUNDY and\n                         his forces\n\n    Now in the rearward comes the Duke and his.\n    Fortune in favour makes him lag behind.\n    Summon a parley; we will talk with him.\n                                       [Trumpets sound a parley]\n  CHARLES. A parley with the Duke of Burgundy!\n  BURGUNDY. Who craves a parley with the Burgundy?\n  PUCELLE. The princely Charles of France, thy countryman.\n  BURGUNDY. What say\'st thou, Charles? for I am marching\n    hence.\n  CHARLES. Speak, Pucelle, and enchant him with thy words.\n  PUCELLE. Brave Burgundy, undoubted hope of France!\n    Stay, let thy humble handmaid speak to thee.\n  BURGUNDY. Speak on; but be not over-tedious.\n  PUCELLE. Look on thy country, look on fertile France,  \n    And see the cities and the towns defac\'d\n    By wasting ruin of the cruel foe;\n    As looks the mother on her lowly babe\n    When death doth close his tender dying eyes,\n    See, see the pining malady of France;\n    Behold the wounds, the most unnatural wounds,\n    Which thou thyself hast given her woeful breast.\n    O, turn thy edged sword another way;\n    Strike those that hurt, and hurt not those that help!\n    One drop of blood drawn from thy country\'s bosom\n    Should grieve thee more than streams of foreign gore.\n    Return thee therefore with a flood of tears,\n    And wash away thy country\'s stained spots.\n  BURGUNDY. Either she hath bewitch\'d me with her words,\n    Or nature makes me suddenly relent.\n  PUCELLE. Besides, all French and France exclaims on thee,\n    Doubting thy birth and lawful progeny.\n    Who join\'st thou with but with a lordly nation\n    That will not trust thee but for profit\'s sake?\n    When Talbot hath set footing once in France,  \n    And fashion\'d thee that instrument of ill,\n    Who then but English Henry will be lord,\n    And thou be thrust out like a fugitive?\n    Call we to mind-and mark but this for proof:\n    Was not the Duke of Orleans thy foe?\n    And was he not in England prisoner?\n    But when they heard he was thine enemy\n    They set him free without his ransom paid,\n    In spite of Burgundy and all his friends.\n    See then, thou fight\'st against thy countrymen,\n    And join\'st with them will be thy slaughtermen.\n    Come, come, return; return, thou wandering lord;\n    Charles and the rest will take thee in their arms.\n  BURGUNDY. I am vanquished; these haughty words of hers\n    Have batt\'red me like roaring cannon-shot\n    And made me almost yield upon my knees.\n    Forgive me, country, and sweet countrymen\n    And, lords, accept this hearty kind embrace.\n    My forces and my power of men are yours;\n    So, farewell, Talbot; I\'ll no longer trust thee.  \n  PUCELLE. Done like a Frenchman-  [Aside]  turn and turn\n    again.\n  CHARLES. Welcome, brave Duke! Thy friendship makes us\n    fresh.\n  BASTARD. And doth beget new courage in our breasts.\n  ALENCON. Pucelle hath bravely play\'d her part in this,\n    And doth deserve a coronet of gold.\n  CHARLES. Now let us on, my lords, and join our powers,\n    And seek how we may prejudice the foe.                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n                          SCENE 4.\n\n                     Paris. The palace\n\n         Enter the KING, GLOUCESTER, WINCHESTER, YORK,\n             SUFFOLK, SOMERSET, WARWICK, EXETER,\n           VERNON, BASSET, and others. To them, with\n                     his soldiers, TALBOT\n\n  TALBOT. My gracious Prince, and honourable peers,\n    Hearing of your arrival in this realm,\n    I have awhile given truce unto my wars\n    To do my duty to my sovereign;\n    In sign whereof, this arm that hath reclaim\'d\n    To your obedience fifty fortresses,\n    Twelve cities, and seven walled towns of strength,\n    Beside five hundred prisoners of esteem,\n    Lets fall his sword before your Highness\' feet,\n    And with submissive loyalty of heart\n    Ascribes the glory of his conquest got\n    First to my God and next unto your Grace.           [Kneels]\n  KING HENRY. Is this the Lord Talbot, uncle Gloucester,  \n    That hath so long been resident in France?\n  GLOUCESTER. Yes, if it please your Majesty, my liege.\n  KING HENRY. Welcome, brave captain and victorious lord!\n    When I was young, as yet I am not old,\n    I do remember how my father said\n    A stouter champion never handled sword.\n    Long since we were resolved of your truth,\n    Your faithful service, and your toil in war;\n    Yet never have you tasted our reward,\n    Or been reguerdon\'d with so much as thanks,\n    Because till now we never saw your face.\n    Therefore stand up; and for these good deserts\n    We here create you Earl of Shrewsbury;\n    And in our coronation take your place.\n              Sennet. Flourish. Exeunt all but VERNON and BASSET\n  VERNON. Now, sir, to you, that were so hot at sea,\n    Disgracing of these colours that I wear\n    In honour of my noble Lord of York\n    Dar\'st thou maintain the former words thou spak\'st?\n  BASSET. Yes, sir; as well as you dare patronage  \n    The envious barking of your saucy tongue\n    Against my lord the Duke of Somerset.\n  VERNON. Sirrah, thy lord I honour as he is.\n  BASSET. Why, what is he? As good a man as York!\n  VERNON. Hark ye: not so. In witness, take ye that.\n                                                   [Strikes him]\n  BASSET. Villain, thou knowest the law of arms is such\n    That whoso draws a sword \'tis present death,\n    Or else this blow should broach thy dearest blood.\n    But I\'ll unto his Majesty and crave\n    I may have liberty to venge this wrong;\n    When thou shalt see I\'ll meet thee to thy cost.\n  VERNON. Well, miscreant, I\'ll be there as soon as you;\n    And, after, meet you sooner than you would.           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 1.\n\nPark. The palace\n\nEnter the KING, GLOUCESTER, WINCHESTER, YORK, SUFFOLK, SOMERSET, WARWICK,\nTALBOT, EXETER, the GOVERNOR OF PARIS, and others\n\n  GLOUCESTER. Lord Bishop, set the crown upon his head.\n  WINCHESTER. God save King Henry, of that name the Sixth!\n  GLOUCESTER. Now, Governor of Paris, take your oath\n                                               [GOVERNOR kneels]\n    That you elect no other king but him,\n    Esteem none friends but such as are his friends,\n    And none your foes but such as shall pretend\n    Malicious practices against his state.\n    This shall ye do, so help you righteous God!\n                                   Exeunt GOVERNOR and his train\n\n                    Enter SIR JOHN FASTOLFE\n\n  FASTOLFE. My gracious sovereign, as I rode from Calais,  \n    To haste unto your coronation,\n    A letter was deliver\'d to my hands,\n    Writ to your Grace from th\' Duke of Burgundy.\n  TALBOT. Shame to the Duke of Burgundy and thee!\n    I vow\'d, base knight, when I did meet thee next\n    To tear the Garter from thy craven\'s leg,  [Plucking it off]\n    Which I have done, because unworthily\n    Thou wast installed in that high degree.\n    Pardon me, princely Henry, and the rest:\n    This dastard, at the battle of Patay,\n    When but in all I was six thousand strong,\n    And that the French were almost ten to one,\n    Before we met or that a stroke was given,\n    Like to a trusty squire did run away;\n    In which assault we lost twelve hundred men;\n    Myself and divers gentlemen beside\n    Were there surpris\'d and taken prisoners.\n    Then judge, great lords, if I have done amiss,\n    Or whether that such cowards ought to wear\n    This ornament of knighthood-yea or no.  \n  GLOUCESTER. To say the truth, this fact was infamous\n    And ill beseeming any common man,\n    Much more a knight, a captain, and a leader.\n  TALBOT. When first this order was ordain\'d, my lords,\n    Knights of the Garter were of noble birth,\n    Valiant and virtuous, full of haughty courage,\n    Such as were grown to credit by the wars;\n    Not fearing death nor shrinking for distress,\n    But always resolute in most extremes.\n    He then that is not furnish\'d in this sort\n    Doth but usurp the sacred name of knight,\n    Profaning this most honourable order,\n    And should, if I were worthy to be judge,\n    Be quite degraded, like a hedge-born swain\n    That doth presume to boast of gentle blood.\n  KING HENRY. Stain to thy countrymen, thou hear\'st thy\n    doom.\n    Be packing, therefore, thou that wast a knight;\n    Henceforth we banish thee on pain of death.\n                                                   Exit FASTOLFE  \n    And now, my Lord Protector, view the letter\n    Sent from our uncle Duke of Burgundy.\n  GLOUCESTER.  [Viewing the superscription]  What means his\n    Grace, that he hath chang\'d his style?\n    No more but plain and bluntly \'To the King!\'\n    Hath he forgot he is his sovereign?\n    Or doth this churlish superscription\n    Pretend some alteration in good-will?\n    What\'s here?  [Reads]  \'I have, upon especial cause,\n    Mov\'d with compassion of my country\'s wreck,\n    Together with the pitiful complaints\n    Of such as your oppression feeds upon,\n    Forsaken your pernicious faction,\n    And join\'d with Charles, the rightful King of France.\'\n    O monstrous treachery! Can this be so\n    That in alliance, amity, and oaths,\n    There should be found such false dissembling guile?\n  KING HENRY. What! Doth my uncle Burgundy revolt?\n  GLOUCESTER. He doth, my lord, and is become your foe.\n  KING HENRY. Is that the worst this letter doth contain?  \n  GLOUCESTER. It is the worst, and all, my lord, he writes.\n  KING HENRY. Why then Lord Talbot there shall talk with\n    him\n    And give him chastisement for this abuse.\n    How say you, my lord, are you not content?\n  TALBOT. Content, my liege! Yes; but that I am prevented,\n    I should have begg\'d I might have been employ\'d.\n  KING HENRY. Then gather strength and march unto him\n    straight;\n    Let him perceive how ill we brook his treason.\n    And what offence it is to flout his friends.\n  TALBOT. I go, my lord, in heart desiring still\n    You may behold confusion of your foes.                  Exit\n\n                       Enter VERNON and BASSET\n\n  VERNON. Grant me the combat, gracious sovereign.\n  BASSET. And me, my lord, grant me the combat too.\n  YORK. This is my servant: hear him, noble Prince.\n  SOMERSET. And this is mine: sweet Henry, favour him.  \n  KING HENRY. Be patient, lords, and give them leave to speak.\n    Say, gentlemen, what makes you thus exclaim,\n    And wherefore crave you combat, or with whom?\n  VERNON. With him, my lord; for he hath done me wrong.\n  BASSET. And I with him; for he hath done me wrong.\n  KING HENRY. What is that wrong whereof you both\n    complain? First let me know, and then I\'ll answer you.\n  BASSET. Crossing the sea from England into France,\n    This fellow here, with envious carping tongue,\n    Upbraided me about the rose I wear,\n    Saying the sanguine colour of the leaves\n    Did represent my master\'s blushing cheeks\n    When stubbornly he did repugn the truth\n    About a certain question in the law\n    Argu\'d betwixt the Duke of York and him;\n    With other vile and ignominious terms\n    In confutation of which rude reproach\n    And in defence of my lord\'s worthiness,\n    I crave the benefit of law of arms.\n  VERNON. And that is my petition, noble lord;  \n    For though he seem with forged quaint conceit\n    To set a gloss upon his bold intent,\n    Yet know, my lord, I was provok\'d by him,\n    And he first took exceptions at this badge,\n    Pronouncing that the paleness of this flower\n    Bewray\'d the faintness of my master\'s heart.\n  YORK. Will not this malice, Somerset, be left?\n  SOMERSET. Your private grudge, my Lord of York, will out,\n    Though ne\'er so cunningly you smother it.\n  KING HENRY. Good Lord, what madness rules in brainsick\n    men, When for so slight and frivolous a cause\n    Such factious emulations shall arise!\n    Good cousins both, of York and Somerset,\n    Quiet yourselves, I pray, and be at peace.\n  YORK. Let this dissension first be tried by fight,\n    And then your Highness shall command a peace.\n  SOMERSET. The quarrel toucheth none but us alone;\n    Betwixt ourselves let us decide it then.\n  YORK. There is my pledge; accept it, Somerset.\n  VERNON. Nay, let it rest where it began at first.  \n  BASSET. Confirm it so, mine honourable lord.\n  GLOUCESTER. Confirm it so? Confounded be your strife;\n    And perish ye, with your audacious prate!\n    Presumptuous vassals, are you not asham\'d\n    With this immodest clamorous outrage\n    To trouble and disturb the King and us?\n    And you, my lords- methinks you do not well\n    To bear with their perverse objections,\n    Much less to take occasion from their mouths\n    To raise a mutiny betwixt yourselves.\n    Let me persuade you take a better course.\n  EXETER. It grieves his Highness. Good my lords, be friends.\n  KING HENRY. Come hither, you that would be combatants:\n    Henceforth I charge you, as you love our favour,\n    Quite to forget this quarrel and the cause.\n    And you, my lords, remember where we are:\n    In France, amongst a fickle wavering nation;\n    If they perceive dissension in our looks\n    And that within ourselves we disagree,\n    How will their grudging stomachs be provok\'d  \n    To wilful disobedience, and rebel!\n    Beside, what infamy will there arise\n    When foreign princes shall be certified\n    That for a toy, a thing of no regard,\n    King Henry\'s peers and chief nobility\n    Destroy\'d themselves and lost the realm of France!\n    O, think upon the conquest of my father,\n    My tender years; and let us not forgo\n    That for a trifle that was bought with blood!\n    Let me be umpire in this doubtful strife.\n    I see no reason, if I wear this rose,\n                                         [Putting on a red rose]\n    That any one should therefore be suspicious\n    I more incline to Somerset than York:\n    Both are my kinsmen, and I love them both.\n    As well they may upbraid me with my crown,\n    Because, forsooth, the King of Scots is crown\'d.\n    But your discretions better can persuade\n    Than I am able to instruct or teach;\n    And, therefore, as we hither came in peace,  \n    So let us still continue peace and love.\n    Cousin of York, we institute your Grace\n    To be our Regent in these parts of France.\n    And, good my Lord of Somerset, unite\n    Your troops of horsemen with his bands of foot;\n    And like true subjects, sons of your progenitors,\n    Go cheerfully together and digest\n    Your angry choler on your enemies.\n    Ourself, my Lord Protector, and the rest,\n    After some respite will return to Calais;\n    From thence to England, where I hope ere long\n    To be presented by your victories\n    With Charles, Alencon, and that traitorous rout.\n                         Flourish. Exeunt all but YORK, WARWICK,\n                                                  EXETER, VERNON\n  WARWICK. My Lord of York, I promise you, the King\n    Prettily, methought, did play the orator.\n  YORK. And so he did; but yet I like it not,\n    In that he wears the badge of Somerset.\n  WARWICK. Tush, that was but his fancy; blame him not;  \n    I dare presume, sweet prince, he thought no harm.\n  YORK. An if I wist he did-but let it rest;\n    Other affairs must now be managed.\n                                           Exeunt all but EXETER\n  EXETER. Well didst thou, Richard, to suppress thy voice;\n    For had the passions of thy heart burst out,\n    I fear we should have seen decipher\'d there\n    More rancorous spite, more furious raging broils,\n    Than yet can be imagin\'d or suppos\'d.\n    But howsoe\'er, no simple man that sees\n    This jarring discord of nobility,\n    This shouldering of each other in the court,\n    This factious bandying of their favourites,\n    But that it doth presage some ill event.\n    \'Tis much when sceptres are in children\'s hands;\n    But more when envy breeds unkind division:\n    There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.           Exit\n\n\n\n\n                               SCENE 2.\n\n                        France. Before Bordeaux\n\n                   Enter TALBOT, with trump and drum\n\n  TALBOT. Go to the gates of Bordeaux, trumpeter;\n    Summon their general unto the wall.\n\n             Trumpet sounds a parley. Enter, aloft, the\n                 GENERAL OF THE FRENCH, and others\n\n    English John Talbot, Captains, calls you forth,\n    Servant in arms to Harry King of England;\n    And thus he would open your city gates,\n    Be humble to us, call my sovereignvours\n    And do him homage as obedient subjects,\n    And I\'ll withdraw me and my bloody power;\n    But if you frown upon this proffer\'d peace,\n    You tempt the fury of my three attendants,\n    Lean famine, quartering steel, and climbing fire;\n    Who in a moment even with the earth  \n    Shall lay your stately and air braving towers,\n    If you forsake the offer of their love.\n  GENERAL OF THE FRENCH. Thou ominous and fearful owl of\n    death,\n    Our nation\'s terror and their bloody scourge!\n    The period of thy tyranny approacheth.\n    On us thou canst not enter but by death;\n    For, I protest, we are well fortified,\n    And strong enough to issue out and fight.\n    If thou retire, the Dauphin, well appointed,\n    Stands with the snares of war to tangle thee.\n    On either hand thee there are squadrons pitch\'d\n    To wall thee from the liberty of flight,\n    And no way canst thou turn thee for redress\n    But death doth front thee with apparent spoil\n    And pale destruction meets thee in the face.\n    Ten thousand French have ta\'en the sacrament\n    To rive their dangerous artillery\n    Upon no Christian soul but English Talbot.\n    Lo, there thou stand\'st, a breathing valiant man,  \n    Of an invincible unconquer\'d spirit!\n    This is the latest glory of thy praise\n    That I, thy enemy, due thee withal;\n    For ere the glass that now begins to run\n    Finish the process of his sandy hour,\n    These eyes that see thee now well coloured\n    Shall see thee withered, bloody, pale, and dead.\n                                                 [Drum afar off]\n    Hark! hark! The Dauphin\'s drum, a warning bell,\n    Sings heavy music to thy timorous soul;\n    And mine shall ring thy dire departure out.             Exit\n  TALBOT. He fables not; I hear the enemy.\n    Out, some light horsemen, and peruse their wings.\n    O, negligent and heedless discipline!\n    How are we park\'d and bounded in a pale\n    A little herd of England\'s timorous deer,\n    Maz\'d with a yelping kennel of French curs!\n    If we be English deer, be then in blood;\n    Not rascal-like to fall down with a pinch,\n    But rather, moody-mad and desperate stags,  \n    Turn on the bloody hounds with heads of steel\n    And make the cowards stand aloof at bay.\n    Sell every man his life as dear as mine,\n    And they shall find dear deer of us, my friends.\n    God and Saint George, Talbot and England\'s right,\n    Prosper our colours in this dangerous fight!          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n                          SCENE 3.\n\n                      Plains in Gascony\n\n        Enter YORK, with trumpet and many soldiers. A\n                   MESSENGER meets him\n\n  YORK. Are not the speedy scouts return\'d again\n    That dogg\'d the mighty army of the Dauphin?\n  MESSENGER. They are return\'d, my lord, and give it out\n    That he is march\'d to Bordeaux with his power\n    To fight with Talbot; as he march\'d along,\n    By your espials were discovered\n    Two mightier troops than that the Dauphin led,\n    Which join\'d with him and made their march for\n    Bordeaux.\n  YORK. A plague upon that villain Somerset\n    That thus delays my promised supply\n    Of horsemen that were levied for this siege!\n    Renowned Talbot doth expect my aid,\n    And I am louted by a traitor villain\n    And cannot help the noble chevalier.  \n    God comfort him in this necessity!\n    If he miscarry, farewell wars in France.\n\n                      Enter SIR WILLIAM LUCY\n\n  LUCY. Thou princely leader of our English strength,\n    Never so needful on the earth of France,\n    Spur to the rescue of the noble Talbot,\n    Who now is girdled with a waist of iron\n    And hemm\'d about with grim destruction.\n    To Bordeaux, warlike Duke! to Bordeaux, York!\n    Else, farewell Talbot, France, and England\'s honour.\n  YORK. O God, that Somerset, who in proud heart\n    Doth stop my cornets, were in Talbot\'s place!\n    So should we save a valiant gentleman\n    By forfeiting a traitor and a coward.\n    Mad ire and wrathful fury makes me weep\n    That thus we die while remiss traitors sleep.\n  LUCY. O, send some succour to the distress\'d lord!\n  YORK. He dies; we lose; I break my warlike word.  \n    We mourn: France smiles. We lose: they daily get-\n    All long of this vile traitor Somerset.\n  LUCY. Then God take mercy on brave Talbot\'s soul,\n    And on his son, young John, who two hours since\n    I met in travel toward his warlike father.\n    This seven years did not Talbot see his son;\n    And now they meet where both their lives are done.\n  YORK. Alas, what joy shall noble Talbot have\n    To bid his young son welcome to his grave?\n    Away! vexation almost stops my breath,\n    That sund\'red friends greet in the hour of death.\n    Lucy, farewell; no more my fortune can\n    But curse the cause I cannot aid the man.\n    Maine, Blois, Poictiers, and Tours, are won away\n    Long all of Somerset and his delay.         Exit with forces\n  LUCY. Thus, while the vulture of sedition\n    Feeds in the bosom of such great commanders,\n    Sleeping neglection doth betray to loss\n    The conquest of our scarce cold conqueror,\n    That ever-living man of memory,  \n    Henry the Fifth. Whiles they each other cross,\n    Lives, honours, lands, and all, hurry to loss.          Exit\n\n\n\n\n                             SCENE 4.\n\n                     Other plains of Gascony\n\n        Enter SOMERSET, With his forces; an OFFICER of\n                     TALBOT\'S with him\n\n  SOMERSET. It is too late; I cannot send them now.\n    This expedition was by York and Talbot\n    Too rashly plotted; all our general force\n    Might with a sally of the very town\n    Be buckled with. The over daring Talbot\n    Hath sullied all his gloss of former honour\n    By this unheedful, desperate, wild adventure.\n    York set him on to fight and die in shame.\n    That, Talbot dead, great York might bear the name.\n  OFFICER. Here is Sir William Lucy, who with me\n    Set from our o\'er-match\'d forces forth for aid.\n\n                       Enter SIR WILLIAM LUCY\n\n  SOMERSET. How now, Sir William! Whither were you sent?  \n  LUCY. Whither, my lord! From bought and sold Lord\n    Talbot,\n    Who, ring\'d about with bold adversity,\n    Cries out for noble York and Somerset\n    To beat assailing death from his weak legions;\n    And whiles the honourable captain there\n    Drops bloody sweat from his war-wearied limbs\n    And, in advantage ling\'ring, looks for rescue,\n    You, his false hopes, the trust of England\'s honour,\n    Keep off aloof with worthless emulation.\n    Let not your private discord keep away\n    The levied succours that should lend him aid,\n    While he, renowned noble gentleman,\n    Yield up his life unto a world of odds.\n    Orleans the Bastard, Charles, Burgundy,\n    Alencon, Reignier, compass him about,\n    And Talbot perisheth by your default.\n  SOMERSET. York set him on; York should have sent him aid.\n  LUCY. And York as fast upon your Grace exclaims,\n    Swearing that you withhold his levied host,  \n    Collected for this expedition.\n  SOMERSET. York lies; he might have sent and had the horse.\n    I owe him little duty and less love,\n    And take foul scorn to fawn on him by sending.\n  LUCY. The fraud of England, not the force of France,\n    Hath now entrapp\'d the noble minded Talbot.\n    Never to England shall he bear his life,\n    But dies betray\'d to fortune by your strife.\n  SOMERSET. Come, go; I will dispatch the horsemen straight;\n    Within six hours they will be at his aid.\n  LUCY. Too late comes rescue; he is ta\'en or slain,\n    For fly he could not if he would have fled;\n    And fly would Talbot never, though he might.\n  SOMERSET. If he be dead, brave Talbot, then, adieu!\n  LUCY. His fame lives in the world, his shame in you.       Exeunt\n\n\n                               SCENE 5.\n\n                   The English camp near Bordeaux\n\n                    Enter TALBOT and JOHN his son\n\n  TALBOT. O young John Talbot! I did send for thee\n    To tutor thee in stratagems of war,\n    That Talbot\'s name might be in thee reviv\'d\n    When sapless age and weak unable limbs\n    Should bring thy father to his drooping chair.\n    But, O malignant and ill-boding stars!\n    Now thou art come unto a feast of death,\n    A terrible and unavoided danger;\n    Therefore, dear boy, mount on my swiftest horse,\n    And I\'ll direct thee how thou shalt escape\n    By sudden flight. Come, dally not, be gone.\n  JOHN. Is my name Talbot, and am I your son?\n    And shall I fly? O, if you love my mother,\n    Dishonour not her honourable name,\n    To make a bastard and a slave of me!\n    The world will say he is not Talbot\'s blood  \n    That basely fled when noble Talbot stood.\n  TALBOT. Fly to revenge my death, if I be slain.\n  JOHN. He that flies so will ne\'er return again.\n  TALBOT. If we both stay, we both are sure to die.\n  JOHN. Then let me stay; and, father, do you fly.\n    Your loss is great, so your regard should be;\n    My worth unknown, no loss is known in me;\n    Upon my death the French can little boast;\n    In yours they will, in you all hopes are lost.\n    Flight cannot stain the honour you have won;\n    But mine it will, that no exploit have done;\n    You fled for vantage, every one will swear;\n    But if I bow, they\'ll say it was for fear.\n    There is no hope that ever I will stay\n    If the first hour I shrink and run away.\n    Here, on my knee, I beg mortality,\n    Rather than life preserv\'d with infamy.\n  TALBOT. Shall all thy mother\'s hopes lie in one tomb?\n  JOHN. Ay, rather than I\'ll shame my mother\'s womb.\n  TALBOT. Upon my blessing I command thee go.  \n  JOHN. To fight I will, but not to fly the foe.\n  TALBOT. Part of thy father may be sav\'d in thee.\n  JOHN. No part of him but will be shame in me.\n  TALBOT. Thou never hadst renown, nor canst not lose it.\n  JOHN. Yes, your renowned name; shall flight abuse it?\n  TALBOT. Thy father\'s charge shall clear thee from that stain.\n  JOHN. You cannot witness for me, being slain.\n    If death be so apparent, then both fly.\n  TALBOT. And leave my followers here to fight and die?\n    My age was never tainted with such shame.\n  JOHN. And shall my youth be guilty of such blame?\n    No more can I be severed from your side\n    Than can yourself yourself yourself in twain divide.\n    Stay, go, do what you will, the like do I;\n    For live I will not if my father die.\n  TALBOT. Then here I take my leave of thee, fair son,\n    Born to eclipse thy life this afternoon.\n    Come, side by side together live and die;\n    And soul with soul from France to heaven fly.         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n                             SCENE 6.\n\n                         A field of battle\n\n         Alarum: excursions wherein JOHN TALBOT is hemm\'d\n                  about, and TALBOT rescues him\n\n  TALBOT. Saint George and victory! Fight, soldiers, fight.\n    The Regent hath with Talbot broke his word\n    And left us to the rage of France his sword.\n    Where is John Talbot? Pause and take thy breath;\n    I gave thee life and rescu\'d thee from death.\n  JOHN. O, twice my father, twice am I thy son!\n    The life thou gav\'st me first was lost and done\n    Till with thy warlike sword, despite of fate,\n    To my determin\'d time thou gav\'st new date.\n  TALBOT. When from the Dauphin\'s crest thy sword struck\n    fire,\n    It warm\'d thy father\'s heart with proud desire\n    Of bold-fac\'d victory. Then leaden age,\n    Quicken\'d with youthful spleen and warlike rage,\n    Beat down Alencon, Orleans, Burgundy,  \n    And from the pride of Gallia rescued thee.\n    The ireful bastard Orleans, that drew blood\n    From thee, my boy, and had the maidenhood\n    Of thy first fight, I soon encountered\n    And, interchanging blows, I quickly shed\n    Some of his bastard blood; and in disgrace\n    Bespoke him thus: \'Contaminated, base,\n    And misbegotten blood I spill of thine,\n    Mean and right poor, for that pure blood of mine\n    Which thou didst force from Talbot, my brave boy.\'\n    Here purposing the Bastard to destroy,\n    Came in strong rescue. Speak, thy father\'s care;\n    Art thou not weary, John? How dost thou fare?\n    Wilt thou yet leave the battle, boy, and fly,\n    Now thou art seal\'d the son of chivalry?\n    Fly, to revenge my death when I am dead:\n    The help of one stands me in little stead.\n    O, too much folly is it, well I wot,\n    To hazard all our lives in one small boat!\n    If I to-day die not with Frenchmen\'s rage,  \n    To-morrow I shall die with mickle age.\n    By me they nothing gain an if I stay:\n    \'Tis but the short\'ning of my life one day.\n    In thee thy mother dies, our household\'s name,\n    My death\'s revenge, thy youth, and England\'s fame.\n    All these and more we hazard by thy stay;\n    All these are sav\'d if thou wilt fly away.\n  JOHN. The sword of Orleans hath not made me smart;\n    These words of yours draw life-blood from my heart.\n    On that advantage, bought with such a shame,\n    To save a paltry life and slay bright fame,\n    Before young Talbot from old Talbot fly,\n    The coward horse that bears me fall and die!\n    And like me to the peasant boys of France,\n    To be shame\'s scorn and subject of mischance!\n    Surely, by all the glory you have won,\n    An if I fly, I am not Talbot\'s son;\n    Then talk no more of flight, it is no boot;\n    If son to Talbot, die at Talbot\'s foot.\n  TALBOT. Then follow thou thy desp\'rate sire of Crete,  \n    Thou Icarus; thy life to me is sweet.\n    If thou wilt fight, fight by thy father\'s side;\n    And, commendable prov\'d, let\'s die in pride.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n                               SCENE 7.\n\n                      Another part of the field\n\n       Alarum; excursions. Enter old TALBOT led by a SERVANT\n\n  TALBOT. Where is my other life? Mine own is gone.\n    O, where\'s young Talbot? Where is valiant John?\n    Triumphant death, smear\'d with captivity,\n    Young Talbot\'s valour makes me smile at thee.\n    When he perceiv\'d me shrink and on my knee,\n    His bloody sword he brandish\'d over me,\n    And like a hungry lion did commence\n    Rough deeds of rage and stern impatience;\n    But when my angry guardant stood alone,\n    Tend\'ring my ruin and assail\'d of none,\n    Dizzy-ey\'d fury and great rage of heart\n    Suddenly made him from my side to start\n    Into the clust\'ring battle of the French;\n    And in that sea of blood my boy did drench\n    His overmounting spirit; and there died,\n    My Icarus, my blossom, in his pride.  \n\n         Enter soldiers, bearing the body of JOHN TALBOT\n\n  SERVANT. O my dear lord, lo where your son is borne!\n  TALBOT. Thou antic Death, which laugh\'st us here to scorn,\n    Anon, from thy insulting tyranny,\n    Coupled in bonds of perpetuity,\n    Two Talbots, winged through the lither sky,\n    In thy despite shall scape mortality.\n    O thou whose wounds become hard-favoured Death,\n    Speak to thy father ere thou yield thy breath!\n    Brave Death by speaking, whether he will or no;\n    Imagine him a Frenchman and thy foe.\n    Poor boy! he smiles, methinks, as who should say,\n    Had Death been French, then Death had died to-day.\n    Come, come, and lay him in his father\'s arms.\n    My spirit can no longer bear these harms.\n    Soldiers, adieu! I have what I would have,\n    Now my old arms are young John Talbot\'s grave.        [Dies]\n  \n            Enter CHARLES, ALENCON, BURGUNDY, BASTARD,\n                     LA PUCELLE, and forces\n\n  CHARLES. Had York and Somerset brought rescue in,\n    We should have found a bloody day of this.\n  BASTARD. How the young whelp of Talbot\'s, raging wood,\n    Did flesh his puny sword in Frenchmen\'s blood!\n  PUCELLE. Once I encount\'red him, and thus I said:\n    \'Thou maiden youth, be vanquish\'d by a maid.\'\n    But with a proud majestical high scorn\n    He answer\'d thus: \'Young Talbot was not born\n    To be the pillage of a giglot wench.\'\n    So, rushing in the bowels of the French,\n    He left me proudly, as unworthy fight.\n  BURGUNDY. Doubtless he would have made a noble knight.\n    See where he lies inhearsed in the arms\n    Of the most bloody nurser of his harms!\n  BASTARD. Hew them to pieces, hack their bones asunder,\n    Whose life was England\'s glory, Gallia\'s wonder.\n  CHARLES. O, no; forbear! For that which we have fled  \n    During the life, let us not wrong it dead.\n\n            Enter SIR WILLIAM Lucy, attended; a FRENCH\n                         HERALD preceding\n\n  LUCY. Herald, conduct me to the Dauphin\'s tent,\n    To know who hath obtain\'d the glory of the day.\n  CHARLES. On what submissive message art thou sent?\n  LUCY. Submission, Dauphin! \'Tis a mere French word:\n    We English warriors wot not what it means.\n    I come to know what prisoners thou hast ta\'en,\n    And to survey the bodies of the dead.\n  CHARLES. For prisoners ask\'st thou? Hell our prison is.\n    But tell me whom thou seek\'st.\n  LUCY. But where\'s the great Alcides of the field,\n    Valiant Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury,\n    Created for his rare success in arms\n    Great Earl of Washford, Waterford, and Valence,\n    Lord Talbot of Goodrig and Urchinfield,\n    Lord Strange of Blackmere, Lord Verdun of Alton,  \n    Lord Cromwell of Wingfield, Lord Furnival of Sheffield,\n    The thrice victorious Lord of Falconbridge,\n    Knight of the noble order of Saint George,\n    Worthy Saint Michael, and the Golden Fleece,\n    Great Marshal to Henry the Sixth\n    Of all his wars within the realm of France?\n  PUCELLE. Here\'s a silly-stately style indeed!\n    The Turk, that two and fifty kingdoms hath,\n    Writes not so tedious a style as this.\n    Him that thou magnifi\'st with all these tides,\n    Stinking and fly-blown lies here at our feet.\n  LUCY. Is Talbot slain-the Frenchmen\'s only scourge,\n    Your kingdom\'s terror and black Nemesis?\n    O, were mine eye-bans into bullets turn\'d,\n    That I in rage might shoot them at your faces!\n    O that I could but can these dead to life!\n    It were enough to fright the realm of France.\n    Were but his picture left amongst you here,\n    It would amaze the proudest of you all.\n    Give me their bodies, that I may bear them hence  \n    And give them burial as beseems their worth.\n  PUCELLE. I think this upstart is old Talbot\'s ghost,\n    He speaks with such a proud commanding spirit.\n    For God\'s sake, let him have them; to keep them here,\n    They would but stink, and putrefy the air.\n  CHARLES. Go, take their bodies hence.\n  LUCY. I\'ll bear them hence; but from their ashes shall be\n    rear\'d\n    A phoenix that shall make all France afeard.\n  CHARLES. So we be rid of them, do with them what thou\n    wilt.\n    And now to Paris in this conquering vein!\n    All will be ours, now bloody Talbot\'s slain.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 1.\n\nLondon. The palace\n\nSennet. Enter the KING, GLOUCESTER, and EXETER\n\n  KING HENRY. Have you perus\'d the letters from the Pope,\n    The Emperor, and the Earl of Armagnac?\n  GLOUCESTER. I have, my lord; and their intent is this:\n    They humbly sue unto your Excellence\n    To have a godly peace concluded of\n    Between the realms of England and of France.\n  KING HENRY. How doth your Grace affect their motion?\n  GLOUCESTER. Well, my good lord, and as the only means\n    To stop effusion of our Christian blood\n    And stablish quietness on every side.\n  KING HENRY. Ay, marry, uncle; for I always thought\n    It was both impious and unnatural\n    That such immanity and bloody strife\n    Should reign among professors of one faith.\n  GLOUCESTER. Beside, my lord, the sooner to effect\n    And surer bind this knot of amity,  \n    The Earl of Armagnac, near knit to Charles,\n    A man of great authority in France,\n    Proffers his only daughter to your Grace\n    In marriage, with a large and sumptuous dowry.\n  KING HENRY. Marriage, uncle! Alas, my years are young\n    And fitter is my study and my books\n    Than wanton dalliance with a paramour.\n    Yet call th\' ambassadors, and, as you please,\n    So let them have their answers every one.\n    I shall be well content with any choice\n    Tends to God\'s glory and my country\'s weal.\n\n                   Enter in Cardinal\'s habit\n        BEAUFORT, the PAPAL LEGATE, and two AMBASSADORS\n\n  EXETER. What! Is my Lord of Winchester install\'d\n    And call\'d unto a cardinal\'s degree?\n    Then I perceive that will be verified\n    Henry the Fifth did sometime prophesy:\n    \'If once he come to be a cardinal,  \n    He\'ll make his cap co-equal with the crown.\'\n  KING HENRY. My Lords Ambassadors, your several suits\n    Have been consider\'d and debated on.\n    Your purpose is both good and reasonable,\n    And therefore are we certainly resolv\'d\n    To draw conditions of a friendly peace,\n    Which by my Lord of Winchester we mean\n    Shall be transported presently to France.\n  GLOUCESTER. And for the proffer of my lord your master,\n    I have inform\'d his Highness so at large,\n    As, liking of the lady\'s virtuous gifts,\n    Her beauty, and the value of her dower,\n    He doth intend she shall be England\'s Queen.\n  KING HENRY.  [To AMBASSADOR]  In argument and proof of\n    which contract,\n    Bear her this jewel, pledge of my affection.\n    And so, my Lord Protector, see them guarded\n    And safely brought to Dover; where inshipp\'d,\n    Commit them to the fortune of the sea.\n  \n                        Exeunt all but WINCHESTER and the LEGATE\n  WINCHESTER. Stay, my Lord Legate; you shall first receive\n    The sum of money which I promised\n    Should be delivered to his Holiness\n    For clothing me in these grave ornaments.\n  LEGATE. I will attend upon your lordship\'s leisure.\n  WINCHESTER.  [Aside]  Now Winchester will not submit, I\n    trow,\n    Or be inferior to the proudest peer.\n    Humphrey of Gloucester, thou shalt well perceive\n    That neither in birth or for authority\n    The Bishop will be overborne by thee.\n    I\'ll either make thee stoop and bend thy knee,\n    Or sack this country with a mutiny.                   Exeunt\n\n\n                              SCENE 2.\n\n                       France. Plains in Anjou\n\n              Enter CHARLES, BURGUNDY, ALENCON, BASTARD,\n                   REIGNIER, LA PUCELLE, and forces\n\n  CHARLES. These news, my lords, may cheer our drooping\n    spirits:\n    \'Tis said the stout Parisians do revolt\n    And turn again unto the warlike French.\n  ALENCON. Then march to Paris, royal Charles of France,\n    And keep not back your powers in dalliance.\n  PUCELLE. Peace be amongst them, if they turn to us;\n    Else ruin combat with their palaces!\n\n                            Enter a SCOUT\n\n  SCOUT. Success unto our valiant general,\n    And happiness to his accomplices!\n  CHARLES. What tidings send our scouts? I prithee speak.\n  SCOUT. The English army, that divided was  \n    Into two parties, is now conjoin\'d in one,\n    And means to give you battle presently.\n  CHARLES. Somewhat too sudden, sirs, the warning is;\n    But we will presently provide for them.\n  BURGUNDY. I trust the ghost of Talbot is not there.\n    Now he is gone, my lord, you need not fear.\n  PUCELLE. Of all base passions fear is most accurs\'d.\n    Command the conquest, Charles, it shall be thine,\n    Let Henry fret and all the world repine.\n  CHARLES. Then on, my lords; and France be fortunate!\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n                            SCENE 3.\n\n                         Before Angiers\n\n              Alarum, excursions. Enter LA PUCELLE\n\n  PUCELLE. The Regent conquers and the Frenchmen fly.\n    Now help, ye charming spells and periapts;\n    And ye choice spirits that admonish me\n    And give me signs of future accidents;             [Thunder]\n    You speedy helpers that are substitutes\n    Under the lordly monarch of the north,\n    Appear and aid me in this enterprise!\n\n                          Enter FIENDS\n\n    This speedy and quick appearance argues proof\n    Of your accustom\'d diligence to me.\n    Now, ye familiar spirits that are cull\'d\n    Out of the powerful regions under earth,\n    Help me this once, that France may get the field.\n                                       [They walk and speak not]  \n    O, hold me not with silence over-long!\n    Where I was wont to feed you with my blood,\n    I\'ll lop a member off and give it you\n    In earnest of a further benefit,\n    So you do condescend to help me now.\n                                         [They hang their heads]\n    No hope to have redress? My body shall\n    Pay recompense, if you will grant my suit.\n                                        [They shake their heads]\n    Cannot my body nor blood sacrifice\n    Entreat you to your wonted furtherance?\n    Then take my soul-my body, soul, and all,\n    Before that England give the French the foil.\n                                                   [They depart]\n    See! they forsake me. Now the time is come\n    That France must vail her lofty-plumed crest\n    And let her head fall into England\'s lap.\n    My ancient incantations are too weak,\n    And hell too strong for me to buckle with.\n    Now, France, thy glory droopeth to the dust.            Exit  \n\n          Excursions. Enter French and English, fighting.\n         LA PUCELLE and YORK fight hand to hand; LA PUCELLE\n                    is taken. The French fly\n\n  YORK. Damsel of France, I think I have you fast.\n    Unchain your spirits now with spelling charms,\n    And try if they can gain your liberty.\n    A goodly prize, fit for the devil\'s grace!\n    See how the ugly witch doth bend her brows\n    As if, with Circe, she would change my shape!\n  PUCELLE. Chang\'d to a worser shape thou canst not be.\n  YORK. O, Charles the Dauphin is a proper man:\n    No shape but his can please your dainty eye.\n  PUCELLE. A plaguing mischief fight on Charles and thee!\n    And may ye both be suddenly surpris\'d\n    By bloody hands, in sleeping on your beds!\n  YORK. Fell banning hag; enchantress, hold thy tongue.\n  PUCELLE. I prithee give me leave to curse awhile.\n  YORK. Curse, miscreant, when thou comest to the stake.  \n                                                          Exeunt\n\n          Alarum. Enter SUFFOLK, with MARGARET in his hand\n\n  SUFFOLK. Be what thou wilt, thou art my prisoner.\n                                                  [Gazes on her]\n    O fairest beauty, do not fear nor fly!\n    For I will touch thee but with reverent hands;\n    I kiss these fingers for eternal peace,\n    And lay them gently on thy tender side.\n    Who art thou? Say, that I may honour thee.\n  MARGARET. Margaret my name, and daughter to a king,\n    The King of Naples-whosoe\'er thou art.\n  SUFFOLK. An earl I am, and Suffolk am I call\'d.\n    Be not offended, nature\'s miracle,\n    Thou art allotted to be ta\'en by me.\n    So doth the swan her downy cygnets save,\n    Keeping them prisoner underneath her wings.\n    Yet, if this servile usage once offend,\n    Go and be free again as Suffolk\'s friend.     [She is going]  \n    O, stay!  [Aside]  I have no power to let her pass;\n    My hand would free her, but my heart says no.\n    As plays the sun upon the glassy streams,\n    Twinkling another counterfeited beam,\n    So seems this gorgeous beauty to mine eyes.\n    Fain would I woo her, yet I dare not speak.\n    I\'ll call for pen and ink, and write my mind.\n    Fie, de la Pole! disable not thyself;\n    Hast not a tongue? Is she not here thy prisoner?\n    Wilt thou be daunted at a woman\'s sight?\n    Ay, beauty\'s princely majesty is such\n    Confounds the tongue and makes the senses rough.\n  MARGARET. Say, Earl of Suffolk, if thy name be so,\n    What ransom must I pay before I pass?\n    For I perceive I am thy prisoner.\n  SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  How canst thou tell she will deny thy\n    suit,\n    Before thou make a trial of her love?\n  MARGARET. Why speak\'st thou not? What ransom must I\n    pay?  \n  SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  She\'s beautiful, and therefore to be woo\'d;\n    She is a woman, therefore to be won.\n  MARGARET. Wilt thou accept of ransom-yea or no?\n  SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  Fond man, remember that thou hast a\n    wife;\n    Then how can Margaret be thy paramour?\n  MARGARET. I were best leave him, for he will not hear.\n  SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  There all is marr\'d; there lies a cooling\n    card.\n  MARGARET. He talks at random; sure, the man is mad.\n  SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  And yet a dispensation may be had.\n  MARGARET. And yet I would that you would answer me.\n  SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  I\'ll win this Lady Margaret. For whom?\n    Why, for my King! Tush, that\'s a wooden thing!\n  MARGARET. He talks of wood. It is some carpenter.\n  SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  Yet so my fancy may be satisfied,\n    And peace established between these realms.\n    But there remains a scruple in that too;\n    For though her father be the King of Naples,\n    Duke of Anjou and Maine, yet is he poor,  \n    And our nobility will scorn the match.\n  MARGARET. Hear ye, Captain-are you not at leisure?\n  SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  It shall be so, disdain they ne\'er so much.\n    Henry is youthful, and will quickly yield.\n    Madam, I have a secret to reveal.\n  MARGARET.  [Aside]  What though I be enthrall\'d? He seems\n    a knight,\n    And will not any way dishonour me.\n  SUFFOLK. Lady, vouchsafe to listen what I say.\n  MARGARET.  [Aside]  Perhaps I shall be rescu\'d by the French;\n    And then I need not crave his courtesy.\n  SUFFOLK. Sweet madam, give me hearing in a cause\n  MARGARET.  [Aside]  Tush! women have been captivate ere\n    now.\n  SUFFOLK. Lady, wherefore talk you so?\n  MARGARET. I cry you mercy, \'tis but quid for quo.\n  SUFFOLK. Say, gentle Princess, would you not suppose\n    Your bondage happy, to be made a queen?\n  MARGARET. To be a queen in bondage is more vile\n    Than is a slave in base servility;  \n    For princes should be free.\n  SUFFOLK. And so shall you,\n    If happy England\'s royal king be free.\n  MARGARET. Why, what concerns his freedom unto me?\n  SUFFOLK. I\'ll undertake to make thee Henry\'s queen,\n    To put a golden sceptre in thy hand\n    And set a precious crown upon thy head,\n    If thou wilt condescend to be my-\n  MARGARET. What?\n  SUFFOLK. His love.\n  MARGARET. I am unworthy to be Henry\'s wife.\n  SUFFOLK. No, gentle madam; I unworthy am\n    To woo so fair a dame to be his wife\n    And have no portion in the choice myself.\n    How say you, madam? Are ye so content?\n  MARGARET. An if my father please, I am content.\n  SUFFOLK. Then call our captains and our colours forth!\n    And, madam, at your father\'s castle walls\n    We\'ll crave a parley to confer with him.\n  \n           Sound a parley. Enter REIGNIER on the walls\n\n    See, Reignier, see, thy daughter prisoner!\n  REIGNIER. To whom?\n  SUFFOLK. To me.\n  REIGNIER. Suffolk, what remedy?\n    I am a soldier and unapt to weep\n    Or to exclaim on fortune\'s fickleness.\n  SUFFOLK. Yes, there is remedy enough, my lord.\n    Consent, and for thy honour give consent,\n    Thy daughter shall be wedded to my king,\n    Whom I with pain have woo\'d and won thereto;\n    And this her easy-held imprisonment\n    Hath gain\'d thy daughter princely liberty.\n  REIGNIER. Speaks Suffolk as he thinks?\n  SUFFOLK. Fair Margaret knows\n    That Suffolk doth not flatter, face, or feign.\n  REIGNIER. Upon thy princely warrant I descend\n    To give thee answer of thy just demand.\n                                    Exit REIGNIER from the walls  \n  SUFFOLK. And here I will expect thy coming.\n\n                Trumpets sound. Enter REIGNIER below\n\n  REIGNIER. Welcome, brave Earl, into our territories;\n    Command in Anjou what your Honour pleases.\n  SUFFOLK. Thanks, Reignier, happy for so sweet a child,\n    Fit to be made companion with a king.\n    What answer makes your Grace unto my suit?\n  REIGNIER. Since thou dost deign to woo her little worth\n    To be the princely bride of such a lord,\n    Upon condition I may quietly\n    Enjoy mine own, the country Maine and Anjou,\n    Free from oppression or the stroke of war,\n    My daughter shall be Henry\'s, if he please.\n  SUFFOLK. That is her ransom; I deliver her.\n    And those two counties I will undertake\n    Your Grace shall well and quietly enjoy.\n  REIGNIER. And I again, in Henry\'s royal name,\n    As deputy unto that gracious king,  \n    Give thee her hand for sign of plighted faith.\n  SUFFOLK. Reignier of France, I give thee kingly thanks,\n    Because this is in traffic of a king.\n    [Aside]  And yet, methinks, I could be well content\n    To be mine own attorney in this case.\n    I\'ll over then to England with this news,\n    And make this marriage to be solemniz\'d.\n    So, farewell, Reignier. Set this diamond safe\n    In golden palaces, as it becomes.\n  REIGNIER. I do embrace thee as I would embrace\n    The Christian prince, King Henry, were he here.\n  MARGARET. Farewell, my lord. Good wishes, praise, and\n    prayers,\n    Shall Suffolk ever have of Margaret.          [She is going]\n  SUFFOLK. Farewell, sweet madam. But hark you, Margaret\n    No princely commendations to my king?\n  MARGARET. Such commendations as becomes a maid,\n    A virgin, and his servant, say to him.\n  SUFFOLK. Words sweetly plac\'d and modestly directed.\n    But, madam, I must trouble you again  \n    No loving token to his Majesty?\n  MARGARET. Yes, my good lord: a pure unspotted heart,\n    Never yet taint with love, I send the King.\n  SUFFOLK. And this withal.                         [Kisses her]\n  MARGARET. That for thyself, I will not so presume\n    To send such peevish tokens to a king.\n                                    Exeunt REIGNIER and MARGARET\n  SUFFOLK. O, wert thou for myself! But, Suffolk, stay;\n    Thou mayst not wander in that labyrinth:\n    There Minotaurs and ugly treasons lurk.\n    Solicit Henry with her wondrous praise.\n    Bethink thee on her virtues that surmount,\n    And natural graces that extinguish art;\n    Repeat their semblance often on the seas,\n    That, when thou com\'st to kneel at Henry\'s feet,\n    Thou mayst bereave him of his wits with wonder.         Exit\n\n\n\n\n                               SCENE 4.\n\n                  Camp of the DUKE OF YORK in Anjou\n\n                   Enter YORK, WARWICK, and others\n  YORK. Bring forth that sorceress, condemn\'d to burn.\n\n              Enter LA PUCELLE, guarded, and a SHEPHERD\n\n  SHEPHERD. Ah, Joan, this kills thy father\'s heart outright!\n    Have I sought every country far and near,\n    And, now it is my chance to find thee out,\n    Must I behold thy timeless cruel death?\n    Ah, Joan, sweet daughter Joan, I\'ll die with thee!\n  PUCELLE. Decrepit miser! base ignoble wretch!\n    I am descended of a gentler blood;\n    Thou art no father nor no friend of mine.\n  SHEPHERD. Out, out! My lords, an please you, \'tis not so;\n    I did beget her, all the parish knows.\n    Her mother liveth yet, can testify\n    She was the first fruit of my bach\'lorship.\n  WARWICK. Graceless, wilt thou deny thy parentage?  \n  YORK. This argues what her kind of life hath been-\n    Wicked and vile; and so her death concludes.\n  SHEPHERD. Fie, Joan, that thou wilt be so obstacle!\n    God knows thou art a collop of my flesh;\n    And for thy sake have I shed many a tear.\n    Deny me not, I prithee, gentle Joan.\n  PUCELLE. Peasant, avaunt! You have suborn\'d this man\n    Of purpose to obscure my noble birth.\n  SHEPHERD. \'Tis true, I gave a noble to the priest\n    The morn that I was wedded to her mother.\n    Kneel down and take my blessing, good my girl.\n    Wilt thou not stoop? Now cursed be the time\n    Of thy nativity. I would the milk\n    Thy mother gave thee when thou suck\'dst her breast\n    Had been a little ratsbane for thy sake.\n    Or else, when thou didst keep my lambs afield,\n    I wish some ravenous wolf had eaten thee.\n    Dost thou deny thy father, cursed drab?\n    O, burn her, burn her! Hanging is too good.             Exit\n  YORK. Take her away; for she hath liv\'d too long,  \n    To fill the world with vicious qualities.\n  PUCELLE. First let me tell you whom you have condemn\'d:\n    Not me begotten of a shepherd swain,\n    But issued from the progeny of kings;\n    Virtuous and holy, chosen from above\n    By inspiration of celestial grace,\n    To work exceeding miracles on earth.\n    I never had to do with wicked spirits.\n    But you, that are polluted with your lusts,\n    Stain\'d with the guiltless blood of innocents,\n    Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices,\n    Because you want the grace that others have,\n    You judge it straight a thing impossible\n    To compass wonders but by help of devils.\n    No, misconceived! Joan of Arc hath been\n    A virgin from her tender infancy,\n    Chaste and immaculate in very thought;\n    Whose maiden blood, thus rigorously effus\'d,\n    Will cry for vengeance at the gates of heaven.\n  YORK. Ay, ay. Away with her to execution!  \n  WARWICK. And hark ye, sirs; because she is a maid,\n    Spare for no fagots, let there be enow.\n    Place barrels of pitch upon the fatal stake,\n    That so her torture may be shortened.\n  PUCELLE. Will nothing turn your unrelenting hearts?\n    Then, Joan, discover thine infirmity\n    That warranteth by law to be thy privilege:\n    I am with child, ye bloody homicides;\n    Murder not then the fruit within my womb,\n    Although ye hale me to a violent death.\n  YORK. Now heaven forfend! The holy maid with child!\n  WARWICK. The greatest miracle that e\'er ye wrought:\n    Is all your strict preciseness come to this?\n  YORK. She and the Dauphin have been juggling.\n    I did imagine what would be her refuge.\n  WARWICK. Well, go to; we\'ll have no bastards live;\n    Especially since Charles must father it.\n  PUCELLE. You are deceiv\'d; my child is none of his:\n    It was Alencon that enjoy\'d my love.\n  YORK. Alencon, that notorious Machiavel!  \n    It dies, an if it had a thousand lives.\n  PUCELLE. O, give me leave, I have deluded you.\n    \'Twas neither Charles nor yet the Duke I nam\'d,\n    But Reignier, King of Naples, that prevail\'d.\n  WARWICK. A married man! That\'s most intolerable.\n  YORK. Why, here\'s a girl! I think she knows not well\n    There were so many-whom she may accuse.\n  WARWICK. It\'s sign she hath been liberal and free.\n  YORK. And yet, forsooth, she is a virgin pure.\n    Strumpet, thy words condemn thy brat and thee.\n    Use no entreaty, for it is in vain.\n  PUCELLE. Then lead me hence-with whom I leave my\n    curse:\n    May never glorious sun reflex his beams\n    Upon the country where you make abode;\n    But darkness and the gloomy shade of death\n    Environ you, till mischief and despair\n    Drive you to break your necks or hang yourselves!\n                                                   Exit, guarded\n  YORK. Break thou in pieces and consume to ashes,  \n    Thou foul accursed minister of hell!\n\n               Enter CARDINAL BEAUFORT, attended\n\n  CARDINAL. Lord Regent, I do greet your Excellence\n    With letters of commission from the King.\n    For know, my lords, the states of Christendom,\n    Mov\'d with remorse of these outrageous broils,\n    Have earnestly implor\'d a general peace\n    Betwixt our nation and the aspiring French;\n    And here at hand the Dauphin and his train\n    Approacheth, to confer about some matter.\n  YORK. Is all our travail turn\'d to this effect?\n    After the slaughter of so many peers,\n    So many captains, gentlemen, and soldiers,\n    That in this quarrel have been overthrown\n    And sold their bodies for their country\'s benefit,\n    Shall we at last conclude effeminate peace?\n    Have we not lost most part of all the towns,\n    By treason, falsehood, and by treachery,  \n    Our great progenitors had conquered?\n    O Warwick, Warwick! I foresee with grief\n    The utter loss of all the realm of France.\n  WARWICK. Be patient, York. If we conclude a peace,\n    It shall be with such strict and severe covenants\n    As little shall the Frenchmen gain thereby.\n\n        Enter CHARLES, ALENCON, BASTARD, REIGNIER, and others\n\n  CHARLES. Since, lords of England, it is thus agreed\n    That peaceful truce shall be proclaim\'d in France,\n    We come to be informed by yourselves\n    What the conditions of that league must be.\n  YORK. Speak, Winchester; for boiling choler chokes\n    The hollow passage of my poison\'d voice,\n    By sight of these our baleful enemies.\n  CARDINAL. Charles, and the rest, it is enacted thus:\n    That, in regard King Henry gives consent,\n    Of mere compassion and of lenity,\n    To ease your country of distressful war,  \n    An suffer you to breathe in fruitful peace,\n    You shall become true liegemen to his crown;\n    And, Charles, upon condition thou wilt swear\n    To pay him tribute and submit thyself,\n    Thou shalt be plac\'d as viceroy under him,\n    And still enjoy thy regal dignity.\n  ALENCON. Must he be then as shadow of himself?\n    Adorn his temples with a coronet\n    And yet, in substance and authority,\n    Retain but privilege of a private man?\n    This proffer is absurd and reasonless.\n  CHARLES. \'Tis known already that I am possess\'d\n    With more than half the Gallian territories,\n    And therein reverenc\'d for their lawful king.\n    Shall I, for lucre of the rest unvanquish\'d,\n    Detract so much from that prerogative\n    As to be call\'d but viceroy of the whole?\n    No, Lord Ambassador; I\'ll rather keep\n    That which I have than, coveting for more,\n    Be cast from possibility of all.  \n  YORK. Insulting Charles! Hast thou by secret means\n    Us\'d intercession to obtain a league,\n    And now the matter grows to compromise\n    Stand\'st thou aloof upon comparison?\n    Either accept the title thou usurp\'st,\n    Of benefit proceeding from our king\n    And not of any challenge of desert,\n    Or we will plague thee with incessant wars.\n  REIGNIER.  [To CHARLES]  My lord, you do not well in\n    obstinacy\n    To cavil in the course of this contract.\n    If once it be neglected, ten to one\n    We shall not find like opportunity.\n  ALENCON.  [To CHARLES]  To say the truth, it is your policy\n    To save your subjects from such massacre\n    And ruthless slaughters as are daily seen\n    By our proceeding in hostility;\n    And therefore take this compact of a truce,\n    Although you break it when your pleasure serves.\n  WARWICK. How say\'st thou, Charles? Shall our condition  \n    stand?\n  CHARLES. It shall;\n    Only reserv\'d, you claim no interest\n    In any of our towns of garrison.\n  YORK. Then swear allegiance to his Majesty:\n    As thou art knight, never to disobey\n    Nor be rebellious to the crown of England\n    Thou, nor thy nobles, to the crown of England.\n                    [CHARLES and the rest give tokens of fealty]\n    So, now dismiss your army when ye please;\n    Hang up your ensigns, let your drums be still,\n    For here we entertain a solemn peace.                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n                              SCENE 5.\n\n                         London. The palace\n\n            Enter SUFFOLK, in conference with the KING,\n                     GLOUCESTER and EXETER\n\n  KING HENRY. Your wondrous rare description, noble Earl,\n    Of beauteous Margaret hath astonish\'d me.\n    Her virtues, graced with external gifts,\n    Do breed love\'s settled passions in my heart;\n    And like as rigour of tempestuous gusts\n    Provokes the mightiest hulk against the tide,\n    So am I driven by breath of her renown\n    Either to suffer shipwreck or arrive\n    Where I may have fruition of her love.\n  SUFFOLK. Tush, my good lord! This superficial tale\n    Is but a preface of her worthy praise.\n    The chief perfections of that lovely dame,\n    Had I sufficient skill to utter them,\n    Would make a volume of enticing lines,\n    Able to ravish any dull conceit;  \n    And, which is more, she is not so divine,\n    So full-replete with choice of all delights,\n    But with as humble lowliness of mind\n    She is content to be at your command\n    Command, I mean, of virtuous intents,\n    To love and honour Henry as her lord.\n  KING HENRY. And otherwise will Henry ne\'er presume.\n    Therefore, my Lord Protector, give consent\n    That Margaret may be England\'s royal Queen.\n  GLOUCESTER. So should I give consent to flatter sin.\n    You know, my lord, your Highness is betroth\'d\n    Unto another lady of esteem.\n    How shall we then dispense with that contract,\n    And not deface your honour with reproach?\n  SUFFOLK. As doth a ruler with unlawful oaths;\n    Or one that at a triumph, having vow\'d\n    To try his strength, forsaketh yet the lists\n    By reason of his adversary\'s odds:\n    A poor earl\'s daughter is unequal odds,\n    And therefore may be broke without offence.  \n  GLOUCESTER. Why, what, I pray, is Margaret more than\n    that?\n    Her father is no better than an earl,\n    Although in glorious titles he excel.\n  SUFFOLK. Yes, my lord, her father is a king,\n    The King of Naples and Jerusalem;\n    And of such great authority in France\n    As his alliance will confirm our peace,\n    And keep the Frenchmen in allegiance.\n  GLOUCESTER. And so the Earl of Armagnac may do,\n    Because he is near kinsman unto Charles.\n  EXETER. Beside, his wealth doth warrant a liberal dower;\n    Where Reignier sooner will receive than give.\n  SUFFOLK. A dow\'r, my lords! Disgrace not so your king,\n    That he should be so abject, base, and poor,\n    To choose for wealth and not for perfect love.\n    Henry is able to enrich his queen,\n    And not to seek a queen to make him rich.\n    So worthless peasants bargain for their wives,\n    As market-men for oxen, sheep, or horse.  \n    Marriage is a matter of more worth\n    Than to be dealt in by attorneyship;\n    Not whom we will, but whom his Grace affects,\n    Must be companion of his nuptial bed.\n    And therefore, lords, since he affects her most,\n    It most of all these reasons bindeth us\n    In our opinions she should be preferr\'d;\n    For what is wedlock forced but a hell,\n    An age of discord and continual strife?\n    Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss,\n    And is a pattern of celestial peace.\n    Whom should we match with Henry, being a king,\n    But Margaret, that is daughter to a king?\n    Her peerless feature, joined with her birth,\n    Approves her fit for none but for a king;\n    Her valiant courage and undaunted spirit,\n    More than in women commonly is seen,\n    Will answer our hope in issue of a king;\n    For Henry, son unto a conqueror,\n    Is likely to beget more conquerors,  \n    If with a lady of so high resolve\n    As is fair Margaret he be link\'d in love.\n    Then yield, my lords; and here conclude with me\n    That Margaret shall be Queen, and none but she.\n  KING HENRY. Whether it be through force of your report,\n    My noble Lord of Suffolk, or for that\n    My tender youth was never yet attaint\n    With any passion of inflaming love,\n    I cannot tell; but this I am assur\'d,\n    I feel such sharp dissension in my breast,\n    Such fierce alarums both of hope and fear,\n    As I am sick with working of my thoughts.\n    Take therefore shipping; post, my lord, to France;\n    Agree to any covenants; and procure\n    That Lady Margaret do vouchsafe to come\n    To cross the seas to England, and be crown\'d\n    King Henry\'s faithful and anointed queen.\n    For your expenses and sufficient charge,\n    Among the people gather up a tenth.\n    Be gone, I say; for till you do return  \n    I rest perplexed with a thousand cares.\n    And you, good uncle, banish all offence:\n    If you do censure me by what you were,\n    Not what you are, I know it will excuse\n    This sudden execution of my will.\n    And so conduct me where, from company,\n    I may revolve and ruminate my grief.                    Exit\n  GLOUCESTER. Ay, grief, I fear me, both at first and last.\n                                    Exeunt GLOUCESTER and EXETER\n  SUFFOLK. Thus Suffolk hath prevail\'d; and thus he goes,\n    As did the youthful Paris once to Greece,\n    With hope to find the like event in love\n    But prosper better than the Troyan did.\n    Margaret shall now be Queen, and rule the King;\n    But I will rule both her, the King, and realm.          Exit\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1591\n\nTHE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  KING HENRY THE SIXTH\n  HUMPHREY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, his uncle\n  CARDINAL BEAUFORT, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, great-uncle to the King\n  RICHARD PLANTAGENET, DUKE OF YORK\n  EDWARD and RICHARD, his sons\n  DUKE OF SOMERSET\n  DUKE OF SUFFOLK\n  DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM\n  LORD CLIFFORD\n  YOUNG CLIFFORD, his son\n  EARL OF SALISBURY\n  EARL OF WARWICK\n  LORD SCALES\n  LORD SAY\n  SIR HUMPHREY STAFFORD\n  WILLIAM STAFFORD, his brother\n  SIR JOHN STANLEY\n  VAUX\n  MATTHEW GOFFE\n  A LIEUTENANT, a SHIPMASTER, a MASTER\'S MATE, and WALTER WHITMORE  \n  TWO GENTLEMEN, prisoners with Suffolk\n  JOHN HUME and JOHN SOUTHWELL, two priests\n  ROGER BOLINGBROKE, a conjurer\n  A SPIRIT raised by him\n  THOMAS HORNER, an armourer\n  PETER, his man\n  CLERK OF CHATHAM\n  MAYOR OF SAINT ALBANS\n  SAUNDER SIMPCOX, an impostor\n  ALEXANDER IDEN, a Kentish gentleman\n  JACK CADE, a rebel\n  GEORGE BEVIS, JOHN HOLLAND, DICK THE BUTCHER, SMITH THE WEAVER,\n    MICHAEL, &c., followers of Cade\n  TWO MURDERERS\n\n  MARGARET, Queen to King Henry\n  ELEANOR, Duchess of Gloucester\n  MARGERY JOURDAIN, a witch\n  WIFE to SIMPCOX\n  \n  Lords, Ladies, and Attendants; Petitioners, Aldermen, a Herald,\n    a Beadle, a Sheriff, Officers, Citizens, Prentices, Falconers,\n    Guards, Soldiers, Messengers, &c.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nEngland\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nLondon. The palace\n\nFlourish of trumpets; then hautboys. Enter the KING, DUKE HUMPHREY\nOF GLOUCESTER, SALISBURY, WARWICK, and CARDINAL BEAUFORT, on the one side;\nthe QUEEN, SUFFOLK, YORK, SOMERSET, and BUCKINGHAM, on the other\n\n  SUFFOLK. As by your high imperial Majesty\n    I had in charge at my depart for France,\n    As procurator to your Excellence,\n    To marry Princess Margaret for your Grace;\n    So, in the famous ancient city Tours,\n    In presence of the Kings of France and Sicil,\n    The Dukes of Orleans, Calaber, Bretagne, and Alencon,\n    Seven earls, twelve barons, and twenty reverend bishops,\n    I have perform\'d my task, and was espous\'d;\n    And humbly now upon my bended knee,\n    In sight of England and her lordly peers,\n    Deliver up my title in the Queen\n    To your most gracious hands, that are the substance\n    Of that great shadow I did represent:  \n    The happiest gift that ever marquis gave,\n    The fairest queen that ever king receiv\'d.\n  KING HENRY. Suffolk, arise. Welcome, Queen Margaret:\n    I can express no kinder sign of love\n    Than this kind kiss. O Lord, that lends me life,\n    Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!\n    For thou hast given me in this beauteous face\n    A world of earthly blessings to my soul,\n    If sympathy of love unite our thoughts.\n  QUEEN. Great King of England, and my gracious lord,\n    The mutual conference that my mind hath had,\n    By day, by night, waking and in my dreams,\n    In courtly company or at my beads,\n    With you, mine alder-liefest sovereign,\n    Makes me the bolder to salute my king\n    With ruder terms, such as my wit affords\n    And over-joy of heart doth minister.\n  KING HENRY. Her sight did ravish, but her grace in speech,\n    Her words y-clad with wisdom\'s majesty,\n    Makes me from wond\'ring fall to weeping joys,  \n    Such is the fulness of my heart\'s content.\n    Lords, with one cheerful voice welcome my love.\n  ALL. [Kneeling] Long live Queen Margaret, England\'s happiness!\n  QUEEN. We thank you all.                            [Flourish]\n  SUFFOLK. My Lord Protector, so it please your Grace,\n    Here are the articles of contracted peace\n    Between our sovereign and the French King Charles,\n    For eighteen months concluded by consent.\n  GLOUCESTER. [Reads] \'Imprimis: It is agreed between the French King\n    Charles and William de la Pole, Marquess of Suffolk, ambassador\n    for Henry King of England, that the said Henry shall espouse the\n    Lady Margaret, daughter unto Reignier King of Naples, Sicilia,\n    and Jerusalem, and crown her Queen of England ere the thirtieth\n    of May next ensuing.\n      Item: That the duchy of Anjou and the county of Maine shall be\n    released and delivered to the King her father\'-\n                                           [Lets the paper fall]\n  KING HENRY. Uncle, how now!\n  GLOUCESTER. Pardon me, gracious lord;\n    Some sudden qualm hath struck me at the heart,  \n    And dimm\'d mine eyes, that I can read no further.\n  KING HENRY. Uncle of Winchester, I pray read on.\n  CARDINAL. [Reads] \'Item: It is further agreed between them that the\n    duchies of Anjou and Maine shall be released and delivered over\n    to the King her father, and she sent over of the King of\n    England\'s own proper cost and charges, without having any dowry.\'\n  KING HENRY. They please us well. Lord Marquess, kneel down.\n    We here create thee the first Duke of Suffolk,\n    And girt thee with the sword. Cousin of York,\n    We here discharge your Grace from being Regent\n    I\' th\' parts of France, till term of eighteen months\n    Be full expir\'d. Thanks, uncle Winchester,\n    Gloucester, York, Buckingham, Somerset,\n    Salisbury, and Warwick;\n    We thank you all for this great favour done\n    In entertainment to my princely queen.\n    Come, let us in, and with all speed provide\n    To see her coronation be perform\'d.\n                                 Exeunt KING, QUEEN, and SUFFOLK\n  GLOUCESTER. Brave peers of England, pillars of the state,  \n    To you Duke Humphrey must unload his grief\n    Your grief, the common grief of all the land.\n    What! did my brother Henry spend his youth,\n    His valour, coin, and people, in the wars?\n    Did he so often lodge in open field,\n    In winter\'s cold and summer\'s parching heat,\n    To conquer France, his true inheritance?\n    And did my brother Bedford toil his wits\n    To keep by policy what Henry got?\n    Have you yourselves, Somerset, Buckingham,\n    Brave York, Salisbury, and victorious Warwick,\n    Receiv\'d deep scars in France and Normandy?\n    Or hath mine uncle Beaufort and myself,\n    With all the learned Council of the realm,\n    Studied so long, sat in the Council House\n    Early and late, debating to and fro\n    How France and Frenchmen might be kept in awe?\n    And had his Highness in his infancy\n    Crowned in Paris, in despite of foes?\n    And shall these labours and these honours die?  \n    Shall Henry\'s conquest, Bedford\'s vigilance,\n    Your deeds of war, and all our counsel die?\n    O peers of England, shameful is this league!\n    Fatal this marriage, cancelling your fame,\n    Blotting your names from books of memory,\n    Razing the characters of your renown,\n    Defacing monuments of conquer\'d France,\n    Undoing all, as all had never been!\n  CARDINAL. Nephew, what means this passionate discourse,\n    This peroration with such circumstance?\n    For France, \'tis ours; and we will keep it still.\n  GLOUCESTER. Ay, uncle, we will keep it if we can;\n    But now it is impossible we should.\n    Suffolk, the new-made duke that rules the roast,\n    Hath given the duchy of Anjou and Maine\n    Unto the poor King Reignier, whose large style\n    Agrees not with the leanness of his purse.\n  SALISBURY. Now, by the death of Him that died for all,\n    These counties were the keys of Normandy!\n    But wherefore weeps Warwick, my valiant son?  \n  WARWICK. For grief that they are past recovery;\n    For were there hope to conquer them again\n    My sword should shed hot blood, mine eyes no tears.\n    Anjou and Maine! myself did win them both;\n    Those provinces these arms of mine did conquer;\n    And are the cities that I got with wounds\n    Deliver\'d up again with peaceful words?\n    Mort Dieu!\n  YORK. For Suffolk\'s duke, may he be suffocate,\n    That dims the honour of this warlike isle!\n    France should have torn and rent my very heart\n    Before I would have yielded to this league.\n    I never read but England\'s kings have had\n    Large sums of gold and dowries with their wives;\n    And our King Henry gives away his own\n    To match with her that brings no vantages.\n  GLOUCESTER. A proper jest, and never heard before,\n    That Suffolk should demand a whole fifteenth\n    For costs and charges in transporting her!\n    She should have stay\'d in France, and starv\'d in France,  \n    Before-\n  CARDINAL. My Lord of Gloucester, now ye grow too hot:\n    It was the pleasure of my lord the King.\n  GLOUCESTER. My Lord of Winchester, I know your mind;\n    \'Tis not my speeches that you do mislike,\n    But \'tis my presence that doth trouble ye.\n    Rancour will out: proud prelate, in thy face\n    I see thy fury; if I longer stay\n    We shall begin our ancient bickerings.\n    Lordings, farewell; and say, when I am gone,\n    I prophesied France will be lost ere long.              Exit\n  CARDINAL. So, there goes our Protector in a rage.\n    \'Tis known to you he is mine enemy;\n    Nay, more, an enemy unto you all,\n    And no great friend, I fear me, to the King.\n    Consider, lords, he is the next of blood\n    And heir apparent to the English crown.\n    Had Henry got an empire by his marriage\n    And all the wealthy kingdoms of the west,\n    There\'s reason he should be displeas\'d at it.  \n    Look to it, lords; let not his smoothing words\n    Bewitch your hearts; be wise and circumspect.\n    What though the common people favour him,\n    Calling him \'Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester,\'\n    Clapping their hands, and crying with loud voice\n    \'Jesu maintain your royal excellence!\'\n    With \'God preserve the good Duke Humphrey!\'\n    I fear me, lords, for all this flattering gloss,\n    He will be found a dangerous Protector.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Why should he then protect our sovereign,\n    He being of age to govern of himself?\n    Cousin of Somerset, join you with me,\n    And all together, with the Duke of Suffolk,\n    We\'ll quickly hoise Duke Humphrey from his seat.\n  CARDINAL. This weighty business will not brook delay;\n    I\'ll to the Duke of Suffolk presently.                  Exit\n  SOMERSET. Cousin of Buckingham, though Humphrey\'s pride\n    And greatness of his place be grief to us,\n    Yet let us watch the haughty cardinal;\n    His insolence is more intolerable  \n    Than all the princes in the land beside;\n    If Gloucester be displac\'d, he\'ll be Protector.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Or thou or I, Somerset, will be Protector,\n    Despite Duke Humphrey or the Cardinal.\n                                  Exeunt BUCKINGHAM and SOMERSET\n  SALISBURY. Pride went before, ambition follows him.\n    While these do labour for their own preferment,\n    Behoves it us to labour for the realm.\n    I never saw but Humphrey Duke of Gloucester\n    Did bear him like a noble gentleman.\n    Oft have I seen the haughty Cardinal-\n    More like a soldier than a man o\' th\' church,\n    As stout and proud as he were lord of all-\n    Swear like a ruffian and demean himself\n    Unlike the ruler of a commonweal.\n    Warwick my son, the comfort of my age,\n    Thy deeds, thy plainness, and thy housekeeping,\n    Hath won the greatest favour of the commons,\n    Excepting none but good Duke Humphrey.\n    And, brother York, thy acts in Ireland,  \n    In bringing them to civil discipline,\n    Thy late exploits done in the heart of France\n    When thou wert Regent for our sovereign,\n    Have made thee fear\'d and honour\'d of the people:\n    Join we together for the public good,\n    In what we can, to bridle and suppress\n    The pride of Suffolk and the Cardinal,\n    With Somerset\'s and Buckingham\'s ambition;\n    And, as we may, cherish Duke Humphrey\'s deeds\n    While they do tend the profit of the land.\n  WARWICK. So God help Warwick, as he loves the land\n    And common profit of his country!\n  YORK. And so says York- [Aside] for he hath greatest cause.\n  SALISBURY. Then let\'s make haste away and look unto the main.\n  WARWICK. Unto the main! O father, Maine is lost-\n    That Maine which by main force Warwick did win,\n    And would have kept so long as breath did last.\n    Main chance, father, you meant; but I meant Maine,\n    Which I will win from France, or else be slain.\n                                    Exeunt WARWICK and SALISBURY  \n  YORK. Anjou and Maine are given to the French;\n    Paris is lost; the state of Normandy\n    Stands on a tickle point now they are gone.\n    Suffolk concluded on the articles;\n    The peers agreed; and Henry was well pleas\'d\n    To changes two dukedoms for a duke\'s fair daughter.\n    I cannot blame them all: what is\'t to them?\n    \'Tis thine they give away, and not their own.\n    Pirates may make cheap pennyworths of their pillage,\n    And purchase friends, and give to courtezans,\n    Still revelling like lords till all be gone;\n    While as the silly owner of the goods\n    Weeps over them and wrings his hapless hands\n    And shakes his head and trembling stands aloof,\n    While all is shar\'d and all is borne away,\n    Ready to starve and dare not touch his own.\n    So York must sit and fret and bite his tongue,\n    While his own lands are bargain\'d for and sold.\n    Methinks the realms of England, France, and Ireland,\n    Bear that proportion to my flesh and blood  \n    As did the fatal brand Althaea burnt\n    Unto the prince\'s heart of Calydon.\n    Anjou and Maine both given unto the French!\n    Cold news for me, for I had hope of France,\n    Even as I have of fertile England\'s soil.\n    A day will come when York shall claim his own;\n    And therefore I will take the Nevils\' parts,\n    And make a show of love to proud Duke Humphrey,\n    And when I spy advantage, claim the crown,\n    For that\'s the golden mark I seek to hit.\n    Nor shall proud Lancaster usurp my right,\n    Nor hold the sceptre in his childish fist,\n    Nor wear the diadem upon his head,\n    Whose church-like humours fits not for a crown.\n    Then, York, be still awhile, till time do serve;\n    Watch thou and wake, when others be asleep,\n    To pry into the secrets of the state;\n    Till Henry, surfeiting in joys of love\n    With his new bride and England\'s dear-bought queen,\n    And Humphrey with the peers be fall\'n at jars;  \n    Then will I raise aloft the milk-white rose,\n    With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfum\'d,\n    And in my standard bear the arms of York,\n    To grapple with the house of Lancaster;\n    And force perforce I\'ll make him yield the crown,\n    Whose bookish rule hath pull\'d fair England down.       Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe DUKE OF GLOUCESTER\'S house\n\nEnter DUKE and his wife ELEANOR\n\n  DUCHESS. Why droops my lord, like over-ripen\'d corn\n    Hanging the head at Ceres\' plenteous load?\n    Why doth the great Duke Humphrey knit his brows,\n    As frowning at the favours of the world?\n    Why are thine eyes fix\'d to the sullen earth,\n    Gazing on that which seems to dim thy sight?\n    What see\'st thou there? King Henry\'s diadem,\n    Enchas\'d with all the honours of the world?\n    If so, gaze on, and grovel on thy face\n    Until thy head be circled with the same.\n    Put forth thy hand, reach at the glorious gold.\n    What, is\'t too short? I\'ll lengthen it with mine;\n    And having both together heav\'d it up,\n    We\'ll both together lift our heads to heaven,\n    And never more abase our sight so low\n    As to vouchsafe one glance unto the ground.\n  GLOUCESTER. O Nell, sweet Nell, if thou dost love thy lord,  \n    Banish the canker of ambitious thoughts!\n    And may that thought, when I imagine ill\n    Against my king and nephew, virtuous Henry,\n    Be my last breathing in this mortal world!\n    My troublous dreams this night doth make me sad.\n  DUCHESS. What dream\'d my lord? Tell me, and I\'ll requite it\n    With sweet rehearsal of my morning\'s dream.\n  GLOUCESTER. Methought this staff, mine office-badge in court,\n    Was broke in twain; by whom I have forgot,\n    But, as I think, it was by th\' Cardinal;\n    And on the pieces of the broken wand\n    Were plac\'d the heads of Edmund Duke of Somerset\n    And William de la Pole, first Duke of Suffolk.\n    This was my dream; what it doth bode God knows.\n  DUCHESS. Tut, this was nothing but an argument\n    That he that breaks a stick of Gloucester\'s grove\n    Shall lose his head for his presumption.\n    But list to me, my Humphrey, my sweet Duke:\n    Methought I sat in seat of majesty\n    In the cathedral church of Westminster,  \n    And in that chair where kings and queens were crown\'d;\n    Where Henry and Dame Margaret kneel\'d to me,\n    And on my head did set the diadem.\n  GLOUCESTER. Nay, Eleanor, then must I chide outright.\n    Presumptuous dame, ill-nurtur\'d Eleanor!\n    Art thou not second woman in the realm,\n    And the Protector\'s wife, belov\'d of him?\n    Hast thou not worldly pleasure at command\n    Above the reach or compass of thy thought?\n    And wilt thou still be hammering treachery\n    To tumble down thy husband and thyself\n    From top of honour to disgrace\'s feet?\n    Away from me, and let me hear no more!\n  DUCHESS. What, what, my lord! Are you so choleric\n    With Eleanor for telling but her dream?\n    Next time I\'ll keep my dreams unto myself\n    And not be check\'d.\n  GLOUCESTER. Nay, be not angry; I am pleas\'d again.\n\n                       Enter a MESSENGER  \n\n  MESSENGER. My Lord Protector, \'tis his Highness\' pleasure\n    You do prepare to ride unto Saint Albans,\n    Where as the King and Queen do mean to hawk.\n  GLOUCESTER. I go. Come, Nell, thou wilt ride with us?\n  DUCHESS. Yes, my good lord, I\'ll follow presently.\n                                 Exeunt GLOUCESTER and MESSENGER\n    Follow I must; I cannot go before,\n    While Gloucester bears this base and humble mind.\n    Were I a man, a duke, and next of blood,\n    I would remove these tedious stumbling-blocks\n    And smooth my way upon their headless necks;\n    And, being a woman, I will not be slack\n    To play my part in Fortune\'s pageant.\n    Where are you there, Sir John? Nay, fear not, man,\n    We are alone; here\'s none but thee and I.\n\n                           Enter HUME\n\n  HUME. Jesus preserve your royal Majesty!  \n  DUCHESS. What say\'st thou? Majesty! I am but Grace.\n  HUME. But, by the grace of God and Hume\'s advice,\n    Your Grace\'s title shall be multiplied.\n  DUCHESS. What say\'st thou, man? Hast thou as yet conferr\'d\n    With Margery Jourdain, the cunning witch of Eie,\n    With Roger Bolingbroke, the conjurer?\n    And will they undertake to do me good?\n  HUME. This they have promised, to show your Highness\n    A spirit rais\'d from depth of underground\n    That shall make answer to such questions\n    As by your Grace shall be propounded him\n  DUCHESS. It is enough; I\'ll think upon the questions;\n    When from Saint Albans we do make return\n    We\'ll see these things effected to the full.\n    Here, Hume, take this reward; make merry, man,\n    With thy confederates in this weighty cause.            Exit\n  HUME. Hume must make merry with the Duchess\' gold;\n    Marry, and shall. But, how now, Sir John Hume!\n    Seal up your lips and give no words but mum:\n    The business asketh silent secrecy.  \n    Dame Eleanor gives gold to bring the witch:\n    Gold cannot come amiss were she a devil.\n    Yet have I gold flies from another coast-\n    I dare not say from the rich Cardinal,\n    And from the great and new-made Duke of Suffolk;\n    Yet I do find it so; for, to be plain,\n    They, knowing Dame Eleanor\'s aspiring humour,\n    Have hired me to undermine the Duchess,\n    And buzz these conjurations in her brain.\n    They say \'A crafty knave does need no broker\';\n    Yet am I Suffolk and the Cardinal\'s broker.\n    Hume, if you take not heed, you shall go near\n    To call them both a pair of crafty knaves.\n    Well, so its stands; and thus, I fear, at last\n    Hume\'s knavery will be the Duchess\' wreck,\n    And her attainture will be Humphrey\'s fall\n    Sort how it will, I shall have gold for all.            Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter three or four PETITIONERS, PETER, the Armourer\'s man, being one\n\n  FIRST PETITIONER. My masters, let\'s stand close; my Lord Protector\n    will come this way by and by, and then we may deliver our\n    supplications in the quill.\n  SECOND PETITIONER. Marry, the Lord protect him, for he\'s a good\n    man, Jesu bless him!\n\n                       Enter SUFFOLK and QUEEN\n\n  FIRST PETITIONER. Here \'a comes, methinks, and the Queen with him.\n    I\'ll be the first, sure.\n  SECOND PETITIONER. Come back, fool; this is the Duke of Suffolk and\n    not my Lord Protector.\n  SUFFOLK. How now, fellow! Wouldst anything with me?\n  FIRST PETITIONER. I pray, my lord, pardon me; I took ye for my Lord\n    Protector.\n  QUEEN. [Reads] \'To my Lord Protector!\' Are your supplications to  \n    his lordship? Let me see them. What is thine?\n  FIRST PETITIONER. Mine is, an\'t please your Grace, against John\n    Goodman, my Lord Cardinal\'s man, for keeping my house and lands,\n    and wife and all, from me.\n  SUFFOLK. Thy wife too! That\'s some wrong indeed. What\'s yours?\n    What\'s here! [Reads] \'Against the Duke of Suffolk, for enclosing\n    the commons of Melford.\' How now, sir knave!\n  SECOND PETITIONER. Alas, sir, I am but a poor petitioner of our\n    whole township.\n  PETER. [Presenting his petition] Against my master, Thomas Horner,\n    for saying that the Duke of York was rightful heir to the crown.\n  QUEEN. What say\'st thou? Did the Duke of York say he was rightful\n    heir to the crown?\n  PETER. That my master was? No, forsooth. My master said that he\n    was, and that the King was an usurper.\n  SUFFOLK. Who is there? [Enter servant] Take this fellow in, and\n    send for his master with a pursuivant presently. We\'ll hear more\n    of your matter before the King.\n                                         Exit servant with PETER\n  QUEEN. And as for you, that love to be protected  \n    Under the wings of our Protector\'s grace,\n    Begin your suits anew, and sue to him.\n                                       [Tears the supplications]\n    Away, base cullions! Suffolk, let them go.\n  ALL. Come, let\'s be gone.                               Exeunt\n  QUEEN. My Lord of Suffolk, say, is this the guise,\n    Is this the fashions in the court of England?\n    Is this the government of Britain\'s isle,\n    And this the royalty of Albion\'s king?\n    What, shall King Henry be a pupil still,\n    Under the surly Gloucester\'s governance?\n    Am I a queen in title and in style,\n    And must be made a subject to a duke?\n    I tell thee, Pole, when in the city Tours\n    Thou ran\'st a tilt in honour of my love\n    And stol\'st away the ladies\' hearts of France,\n    I thought King Henry had resembled thee\n    In courage, courtship, and proportion;\n    But all his mind is bent to holiness,\n    To number Ave-Maries on his beads;  \n    His champions are the prophets and apostles;\n    His weapons, holy saws of sacred writ;\n    His study is his tilt-yard, and his loves\n    Are brazen images of canonized saints.\n    I would the college of the Cardinals\n    Would choose him Pope, and carry him to Rome,\n    And set the triple crown upon his head;\n    That were a state fit for his holiness.\n  SUFFOLK. Madam, be patient. As I was cause\n    Your Highness came to England, so will I\n    In England work your Grace\'s full content.\n  QUEEN. Beside the haughty Protector, have we Beaufort\n    The imperious churchman; Somerset, Buckingham,\n    And grumbling York; and not the least of these\n    But can do more in England than the King.\n  SUFFOLK. And he of these that can do most of all\n    Cannot do more in England than the Nevils;\n    Salisbury and Warwick are no simple peers.\n  QUEEN. Not all these lords do vex me half so much\n    As that proud dame, the Lord Protector\'s wife.  \n    She sweeps it through the court with troops of ladies,\n    More like an empress than Duke Humphrey\'s wife.\n    Strangers in court do take her for the Queen.\n    She bears a duke\'s revenues on her back,\n    And in her heart she scorns our poverty;\n    Shall I not live to be aveng\'d on her?\n    Contemptuous base-born callet as she is,\n    She vaunted \'mongst her minions t\' other day\n    The very train of her worst wearing gown\n    Was better worth than all my father\'s lands,\n    Till Suffolk gave two dukedoms for his daughter.\n  SUFFOLK. Madam, myself have lim\'d a bush for her,\n    And plac\'d a quire of such enticing birds\n    That she will light to listen to the lays,\n    And never mount to trouble you again.\n    So, let her rest. And, madam, list to me,\n    For I am bold to counsel you in this:\n    Although we fancy not the Cardinal,\n    Yet must we join with him and with the lords,\n    Till we have brought Duke Humphrey in disgrace.  \n    As for the Duke of York, this late complaint\n    Will make but little for his benefit.\n    So one by one we\'ll weed them all at last,\n    And you yourself shall steer the happy helm.\n\n          Sound a sennet. Enter the KING, DUKE HUMPHREY,\n     CARDINAL BEAUFORT, BUCKINGHAM, YORK, SOMERSET, SALISBURY,\n              WARWICK, and the DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER\n\n  KING HENRY. For my part, noble lords, I care not which:\n    Or Somerset or York, all\'s one to me.\n  YORK. If York have ill demean\'d himself in France,\n    Then let him be denay\'d the regentship.\n  SOMERSET. If Somerset be unworthy of the place,\n    Let York be Regent; I will yield to him.\n  WARWICK. Whether your Grace be worthy, yea or no,\n    Dispute not that; York is the worthier.\n  CARDINAL. Ambitious Warwick, let thy betters speak.\n  WARWICK. The Cardinal\'s not my better in the field.\n  BUCKINGHAM. All in this presence are thy betters, Warwick.  \n  WARWICK. Warwick may live to be the best of all.\n  SALISBURY. Peace, son! And show some reason, Buckingham,\n    Why Somerset should be preferr\'d in this.\n  QUEEN. Because the King, forsooth, will have it so.\n  GLOUCESTER. Madam, the King is old enough himself\n    To give his censure. These are no women\'s matters.\n  QUEEN. If he be old enough, what needs your Grace\n    To be Protector of his Excellence?\n  GLOUCESTER. Madam, I am Protector of the realm;\n    And at his pleasure will resign my place.\n  SUFFOLK. Resign it then, and leave thine insolence.\n    Since thou wert king- as who is king but thou?-\n    The commonwealth hath daily run to wrack,\n    The Dauphin hath prevail\'d beyond the seas,\n    And all the peers and nobles of the realm\n    Have been as bondmen to thy sovereignty.\n  CARDINAL. The commons hast thou rack\'d; the clergy\'s bags\n    Are lank and lean with thy extortions.\n  SOMERSET. Thy sumptuous buildings and thy wife\'s attire\n    Have cost a mass of public treasury.  \n  BUCKINGHAM. Thy cruelty in execution\n    Upon offenders hath exceeded law,\n    And left thee to the mercy of the law.\n  QUEEN. Thy sale of offices and towns in France,\n    If they were known, as the suspect is great,\n    Would make thee quickly hop without thy head.\n                  Exit GLOUCESTER. The QUEEN drops QUEEN her fan\n    Give me my fan. What, minion, can ye not?\n                        [She gives the DUCHESS a box on the ear]\n    I cry your mercy, madam; was it you?\n  DUCHESS. Was\'t I? Yea, I it was, proud Frenchwoman.\n    Could I come near your beauty with my nails,\n    I could set my ten commandments in your face.\n  KING HENRY. Sweet aunt, be quiet; \'twas against her will.\n  DUCHESS. Against her will, good King? Look to \'t in time;\n    She\'ll hamper thee and dandle thee like a baby.\n    Though in this place most master wear no breeches,\n    She shall not strike Dame Eleanor unreveng\'d.           Exit\n  BUCKINGHAM. Lord Cardinal, I will follow Eleanor,\n    And listen after Humphrey, how he proceeds.  \n    She\'s tickled now; her fume needs no spurs,\n    She\'ll gallop far enough to her destruction.            Exit\n\n                      Re-enter GLOUCESTER\n\n  GLOUCESTER. Now, lords, my choler being overblown\n    With walking once about the quadrangle,\n    I come to talk of commonwealth affairs.\n    As for your spiteful false objections,\n    Prove them, and I lie open to the law;\n    But God in mercy so deal with my soul\n    As I in duty love my king and country!\n    But to the matter that we have in hand:\n    I say, my sovereign, York is meetest man\n    To be your Regent in the realm of France.\n  SUFFOLK. Before we make election, give me leave\n    To show some reason, of no little force,\n    That York is most unmeet of any man.\n  YORK. I\'ll tell thee, Suffolk, why I am unmeet:\n    First, for I cannot flatter thee in pride;  \n    Next, if I be appointed for the place,\n    My Lord of Somerset will keep me here\n    Without discharge, money, or furniture,\n    Till France be won into the Dauphin\'s hands.\n    Last time I danc\'d attendance on his will\n    Till Paris was besieg\'d, famish\'d, and lost.\n  WARWICK. That can I witness; and a fouler fact\n    Did never traitor in the land commit.\n  SUFFOLK. Peace, headstrong Warwick!\n  WARWICK. Image of pride, why should I hold my peace?\n\n        Enter HORNER, the Armourer, and his man PETER, guarded\n\n  SUFFOLK. Because here is a man accus\'d of treason:\n    Pray God the Duke of York excuse himself!\n  YORK. Doth any one accuse York for a traitor?\n  KING HENRY. What mean\'st thou, Suffolk? Tell me, what are these?\n  SUFFOLK. Please it your Majesty, this is the man\n    That doth accuse his master of high treason;\n    His words were these: that Richard Duke of York  \n    Was rightful heir unto the English crown,\n    And that your Majesty was an usurper.\n  KING HENRY. Say, man, were these thy words?\n  HORNER. An\'t shall please your Majesty, I never said nor thought\n    any such matter. God is my witness, I am falsely accus\'d by the\n    villain.\n  PETER. [Holding up his hands] By these ten bones, my lords, he did\n    speak them to me in the garret one night, as we were scouring my\n    Lord of York\'s armour.\n  YORK. Base dunghill villain and mechanical,\n    I\'ll have thy head for this thy traitor\'s speech.\n    I do beseech your royal Majesty,\n    Let him have all the rigour of the law.\n  HORNER`. Alas, my lord, hang me if ever I spake the words. My\n    accuser is my prentice; and when I did correct him for his fault\n    the other day, he did vow upon his knees he would be even with\n    me. I have good witness of this; therefore I beseech your\n    Majesty, do not cast away an honest man for a villain\'s\n    accusation.\n  KING HENRY. Uncle, what shall we say to this in law?  \n  GLOUCESTER. This doom, my lord, if I may judge:\n    Let Somerset be Regent o\'er the French,\n    Because in York this breeds suspicion;\n    And let these have a day appointed them\n    For single combat in convenient place,\n    For he hath witness of his servant\'s malice.\n    This is the law, and this Duke Humphrey\'s doom.\n  SOMERSET. I humbly thank your royal Majesty.\n  HORNER. And I accept the combat willingly.\n  PETER. Alas, my lord, I cannot fight; for God\'s sake, pity my case!\n    The spite of man prevaileth against me. O Lord, have mercy upon\n    me, I shall never be able to fight a blow! O Lord, my heart!\n  GLOUCESTER. Sirrah, or you must fight or else be hang\'d.\n  KING HENRY. Away with them to prison; and the day of combat shall\n    be the last of the next month.\n    Come, Somerset, we\'ll see thee sent away.   Flourish. Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nLondon. The DUKE OF GLOUCESTER\'S garden\n\nEnter MARGERY JOURDAIN, the witch; the two priests, HUME and SOUTHWELL;\nand BOLINGBROKE\n\n  HUME. Come, my masters; the Duchess, I tell you, expects\n    performance of your promises.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Master Hume, we are therefore provided; will her\n    ladyship behold and hear our exorcisms?\n  HUME. Ay, what else? Fear you not her courage.\n  BOLINGBROKE. I have heard her reported to be a woman of an\n    invincible spirit; but it shall be convenient, Master Hume, that\n    you be by her aloft while we be busy below; and so I pray you go,\n    in God\'s name, and leave us. [Exit HUME] Mother Jourdain, be you\n    prostrate and grovel on the earth; John Southwell, read you; and\n    let us to our work.\n\n                 Enter DUCHESS aloft, followed by HUME\n\n  DUCHESS. Well said, my masters; and welcome all. To this gear, the\n    sooner the better.  \n  BOLINGBROKE. Patience, good lady; wizards know their times:\n    Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night,\n    The time of night when Troy was set on fire;\n    The time when screech-owls cry and ban-dogs howl,\n    And spirits walk and ghosts break up their graves-\n    That time best fits the work we have in hand.\n    Madam, sit you, and fear not: whom we raise\n    We will make fast within a hallow\'d verge.\n\n     [Here they do the ceremonies belonging, and make the circle;\n          BOLINGBROKE or SOUTHWELL reads: \'Conjuro te,\' &c.\n     It thunders and lightens terribly; then the SPIRIT riseth]\n\n  SPIRIT. Adsum.\n  MARGERY JOURDAIN. Asmath,\n    By the eternal God, whose name and power\n    Thou tremblest at, answer that I shall ask;\n    For till thou speak thou shalt not pass from hence.\n  SPIRIT. Ask what thou wilt; that I had said and done.\n  BOLINGBROKE. [Reads] \'First of the king: what shall of him become?\'  \n  SPIRIT. The Duke yet lives that Henry shall depose;\n    But him outlive, and die a violent death.\n             [As the SPIRIT speaks, SOUTHWELL writes the answer]\n  BOLINGBROKE. \'What fates await the Duke of Suffolk?\'\n  SPIRIT. By water shall he die and take his end.\n  BOLINGBROKE. \'What shall befall the Duke of Somerset?\'\n  SPIRIT. Let him shun castles:\n    Safer shall he be upon the sandy plains\n    Than where castles mounted stand.\n    Have done, for more I hardly can endure.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Descend to darkness and the burning lake;\n    False fiend, avoid!       Thunder and lightning. Exit SPIRIT\n\n               Enter the DUKE OF YORK and the DUKE OF\n                 BUCKINGHAM with guard, and break in\n\n  YORK. Lay hands upon these traitors and their trash.\n    Beldam, I think we watch\'d you at an inch.\n    What, madam, are you there? The King and commonweal\n    Are deeply indebted for this piece of pains;  \n    My Lord Protector will, I doubt it not,\n    See you well guerdon\'d for these good deserts.\n  DUCHESS. Not half so bad as thine to England\'s king,\n    Injurious Duke, that threatest where\'s no cause.\n  BUCKINGHAM. True, madam, none at all. What can you this?\n    Away with them! let them be clapp\'d up close,\n    And kept asunder. You, madam, shall with us.\n    Stafford, take her to thee.\n    We\'ll see your trinkets here all forthcoming.\n    All, away!\n                Exeunt, above, DUCHESS and HUME, guarded; below,\n                       WITCH, SOUTHWELL and BOLINGBROKE, guarded\n  YORK. Lord Buckingham, methinks you watch\'d her well.\n    A pretty plot, well chosen to build upon!\n    Now, pray, my lord, let\'s see the devil\'s writ.\n    What have we here?                                   [Reads]\n    \'The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose;\n    But him outlive, and die a violent death.\'\n    Why, this is just\n    \'Aio te, Aeacida, Romanos vincere posse.\'  \n    Well, to the rest:\n    \'Tell me what fate awaits the Duke of Suffolk?\'\n    \'By water shall he die and take his end.\'\n    \'What shall betide the Duke of Somerset?\'\n    \'Let him shun castles;\n    Safer shall he be upon the sandy plains\n    Than where castles mounted stand.\'\n    Come, come, my lords;\n    These oracles are hardly attain\'d,\n    And hardly understood.\n    The King is now in progress towards Saint Albans,\n    With him the husband of this lovely lady;\n    Thither go these news as fast as horse can carry them-\n    A sorry breakfast for my Lord Protector.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Your Grace shall give me leave, my Lord of York,\n    To be the post, in hope of his reward.\n  YORK. At your pleasure, my good lord.\n    Who\'s within there, ho?\n\n                       Enter a serving-man  \n\n    Invite my Lords of Salisbury and Warwick\n    To sup with me to-morrow night. Away!                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nSaint Albans\n\nEnter the KING, QUEEN, GLOUCESTER, CARDINAL, and SUFFOLK,\nwith Falconers halloing\n\n  QUEEN. Believe me, lords, for flying at the brook,\n    I saw not better sport these seven years\' day;\n    Yet, by your leave, the wind was very high,\n    And ten to one old Joan had not gone out.\n  KING HENRY. But what a point, my lord, your falcon made,\n    And what a pitch she flew above the rest!\n    To see how God in all His creatures works!\n    Yea, man and birds are fain of climbing high.\n  SUFFOLK. No marvel, an it like your Majesty,\n    My Lord Protector\'s hawks do tow\'r so well;\n    They know their master loves to be aloft,\n    And bears his thoughts above his falcon\'s pitch.\n  GLOUCESTER. My lord, \'tis but a base ignoble mind\n    That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.\n  CARDINAL. I thought as much; he would be above the clouds.\n  GLOUCESTER. Ay, my lord Cardinal, how think you by that?  \n    Were it not good your Grace could fly to heaven?\n  KING HENRY. The treasury of everlasting joy!\n  CARDINAL. Thy heaven is on earth; thine eyes and thoughts\n    Beat on a crown, the treasure of thy heart;\n    Pernicious Protector, dangerous peer,\n    That smooth\'st it so with King and commonweal.\n  GLOUCESTER. What, Cardinal, is your priesthood grown peremptory?\n    Tantaene animis coelestibus irae?\n    Churchmen so hot? Good uncle, hide such malice;\n    With such holiness can you do it?\n  SUFFOLK. No malice, sir; no more than well becomes\n    So good a quarrel and so bad a peer.\n  GLOUCESTER. As who, my lord?\n  SUFFOLK. Why, as you, my lord,\n    An\'t like your lordly Lord\'s Protectorship.\n  GLOUCESTER. Why, Suffolk, England knows thine insolence.\n  QUEEN. And thy ambition, Gloucester.\n  KING HENRY. I prithee, peace,\n    Good Queen, and whet not on these furious peers;\n    For blessed are the peacemakers on earth.  \n  CARDINAL. Let me be blessed for the peace I make\n    Against this proud Protector with my sword!\n  GLOUCESTER. [Aside to CARDINAL] Faith, holy uncle, would \'twere\n    come to that!\n  CARDINAL. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] Marry, when thou dar\'st.\n  GLOUCESTER. [Aside to CARDINAL] Make up no factious numbers for the\n      matter;\n    In thine own person answer thy abuse.\n  CARDINAL. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] Ay, where thou dar\'st not peep; an\n      if thou dar\'st,\n    This evening on the east side of the grove.\n  KING HENRY. How now, my lords!\n  CARDINAL. Believe me, cousin Gloucester,\n    Had not your man put up the fowl so suddenly,\n    We had had more sport. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] Come with thy\n      two-hand sword.\n  GLOUCESTER. True, uncle.\n  CARDINAL. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] Are ye advis\'d? The east side of\n    the grove?\n  GLOUCESTER. [Aside to CARDINAL] Cardinal, I am with you.  \n  KING HENRY. Why, how now, uncle Gloucester!\n  GLOUCESTER. Talking of hawking; nothing else, my lord.\n    [Aside to CARDINAL] Now, by God\'s Mother, priest,\n    I\'ll shave your crown for this,\n    Or all my fence shall fail.\n  CARDINAL. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] Medice, teipsum;\n    Protector, see to\'t well; protect yourself.\n  KING HENRY. The winds grow high; so do your stomachs, lords.\n    How irksome is this music to my heart!\n    When such strings jar, what hope of harmony?\n    I pray, my lords, let me compound this strife.\n\n         Enter a TOWNSMAN of Saint Albans, crying \'A miracle!\'\n\n  GLOUCESTER. What means this noise?\n    Fellow, what miracle dost thou proclaim?\n  TOWNSMAN. A miracle! A miracle!\n  SUFFOLK. Come to the King, and tell him what miracle.\n  TOWNSMAN. Forsooth, a blind man at Saint Albans shrine\n    Within this half hour hath receiv\'d his sight;  \n    A man that ne\'er saw in his life before.\n  KING HENRY. Now God be prais\'d that to believing souls\n    Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair!\n\n           Enter the MAYOR OF SAINT ALBANS and his brethren,\n               bearing Simpcox between two in a chair;\n                 his WIFE and a multitude following\n\n  CARDINAL. Here comes the townsmen on procession\n    To present your Highness with the man.\n  KING HENRY. Great is his comfort in this earthly vale,\n    Although by his sight his sin be multiplied.\n  GLOUCESTER. Stand by, my masters; bring him near the King;\n    His Highness\' pleasure is to talk with him.\n  KING HENRY. Good fellow, tell us here the circumstance,\n    That we for thee may glorify the Lord.\n    What, hast thou been long blind and now restor\'d?\n  SIMPCOX. Born blind, an\'t please your Grace.\n  WIFE. Ay indeed was he.\n  SUFFOLK. What woman is this?  \n  WIFE. His wife, an\'t like your worship.\n  GLOUCESTER. Hadst thou been his mother, thou couldst have better\n    told.\n  KING HENRY. Where wert thou born?\n  SIMPCOX. At Berwick in the north, an\'t like your Grace.\n  KING HENRY. Poor soul, God\'s goodness hath been great to thee.\n    Let never day nor night unhallowed pass,\n    But still remember what the Lord hath done.\n  QUEEN. Tell me, good fellow, cam\'st thou here by chance,\n    Or of devotion, to this holy shrine?\n  SIMPCOX. God knows, of pure devotion; being call\'d\n    A hundred times and oft\'ner, in my sleep,\n    By good Saint Alban, who said \'Simpcox, come,\n    Come, offer at my shrine, and I will help thee.\'\n  WIFE. Most true, forsooth; and many time and oft\n    Myself have heard a voice to call him so.\n  CARDINAL. What, art thou lame?\n  SIMPCOX. Ay, God Almighty help me!\n  SUFFOLK. How cam\'st thou so?\n  SIMPCOX. A fall off of a tree.  \n  WIFE. A plum tree, master.\n  GLOUCESTER. How long hast thou been blind?\n  SIMPCOX. O, born so, master!\n  GLOUCESTER. What, and wouldst climb a tree?\n  SIMPCOX. But that in all my life, when I was a youth.\n  WIFE. Too true; and bought his climbing very dear.\n  GLOUCESTER. Mass, thou lov\'dst plums well, that wouldst venture so.\n  SIMPCOX. Alas, good master, my wife desir\'d some damsons\n    And made me climb, With danger of my life.\n  GLOUCESTER. A subtle knave! But yet it shall not serve:\n    Let me see thine eyes; wink now; now open them;\n    In my opinion yet thou seest not well.\n  SIMPCOX. Yes, master, clear as day, I thank God and Saint Alban.\n  GLOUCESTER. Say\'st thou me so? What colour is this cloak of?\n  SIMPCOX. Red, master; red as blood.\n  GLOUCESTER. Why, that\'s well said. What colour is my gown of?\n  SIMPCOX. Black, forsooth; coal-black as jet.\n  KING HENRY. Why, then, thou know\'st what colour jet is of?\n  SUFFOLK. And yet, I think, jet did he never see.\n  GLOUCESTER. But cloaks and gowns before this day a many.  \n  WIFE. Never before this day in all his life.\n  GLOUCESTER. Tell me, sirrah, what\'s my name?\n  SIMPCOX. Alas, master, I know not.\n  GLOUCESTER. What\'s his name?\n  SIMPCOX. I know not.\n  GLOUCESTER. Nor his?\n  SIMPCOX. No, indeed, master.\n  GLOUCESTER. What\'s thine own name?\n  SIMPCOX. Saunder Simpcox, an if it please you, master.\n  GLOUCESTER. Then, Saunder, sit there, the lying\'st knave in\n    Christendom. If thou hadst been born blind, thou mightst as well\n    have known all our names as thus to name the several colours we\n    do wear. Sight may distinguish of colours; but suddenly to\n    nominate them all, it is impossible. My lords, Saint Alban here\n    hath done a miracle; and would ye not think his cunning to be\n    great that could restore this cripple to his legs again?\n  SIMPCOX. O master, that you could!\n  GLOUCESTER. My masters of Saint Albans, have you not beadles in\n    your town, and things call\'d whips?\n  MAYOR. Yes, my lord, if it please your Grace.  \n  GLOUCESTER. Then send for one presently.\n  MAYOR. Sirrah, go fetch the beadle hither straight.\n                                               Exit an attendant\n  GLOUCESTER. Now fetch me a stool hither by and by. [A stool\n    brought] Now, sirrah, if you mean to save yourself from whipping,\n    leap me over this stool and run away.\n  SIMPCOX. Alas, master, I am not able to stand alone!\n    You go about to torture me in vain.\n\n                         Enter a BEADLE with whips\n\n  GLOUCESTER. Well, sir, we must have you find your legs.\n    Sirrah beadle, whip him till he leap over that same stool.\n  BEADLE. I will, my lord. Come on, sirrah; off with your doublet\n    quickly.\n  SIMPCOX. Alas, master, what shall I do? I am not able to stand.\n\n           After the BEADLE hath hit him once, he leaps over\n           the stool and runs away; and they follow and cry\n                             \'A miracle!\'  \n\n  KING HENRY. O God, seest Thou this, and bearest so long?\n  QUEEN. It made me laugh to see the villain run.\n  GLOUCESTER. Follow the knave, and take this drab away.\n  WIFE. Alas, sir, we did it for pure need!\n  GLOUCESTER. Let them be whipp\'d through every market town till they\n    come to Berwick, from whence they came.\n                                 Exeunt MAYOR, BEADLE, WIFE, &c.\n  CARDINAL. Duke Humphrey has done a miracle to-day.\n  SUFFOLK. True; made the lame to leap and fly away.\n  GLOUCESTER. But you have done more miracles than I:\n    You made in a day, my lord, whole towns to fly.\n\n                         Enter BUCKINGHAM\n\n  KING HENRY. What tidings with our cousin Buckingham?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Such as my heart doth tremble to unfold:\n    A sort of naughty persons, lewdly bent,\n    Under the countenance and confederacy\n    Of Lady Eleanor, the Protector\'s wife,  \n    The ringleader and head of all this rout,\n    Have practis\'d dangerously against your state,\n    Dealing with witches and with conjurers,\n    Whom we have apprehended in the fact,\n    Raising up wicked spirits from under ground,\n    Demanding of King Henry\'s life and death\n    And other of your Highness\' Privy Council,\n    As more at large your Grace shall understand.\n  CARDINAL. And so, my Lord Protector, by this means\n    Your lady is forthcoming yet at London.\n    This news, I think, hath turn\'d your weapon\'s edge;\n    \'Tis like, my lord, you will not keep your hour.\n  GLOUCESTER. Ambitious churchman, leave to afflict my heart.\n    Sorrow and grief have vanquish\'d all my powers;\n    And, vanquish\'d as I am, I yield to the\n    Or to the meanest groom.\n  KING HENRY. O God, what mischiefs work the wicked ones,\n    Heaping confusion on their own heads thereby!\n  QUEEN. Gloucester, see here the tainture of thy nest;\n    And look thyself be faultless, thou wert best.  \n  GLOUCESTER. Madam, for myself, to heaven I do appeal\n    How I have lov\'d my King and commonweal;\n    And for my wife I know not how it stands.\n    Sorry I am to hear what I have heard.\n    Noble she is; but if she have forgot\n    Honour and virtue, and convers\'d with such\n    As, like to pitch, defile nobility,\n    I banish her my bed and company\n    And give her as a prey to law and shame,\n    That hath dishonoured Gloucester\'s honest name.\n  KING HENRY. Well, for this night we will repose us here.\n    To-morrow toward London back again\n    To look into this business thoroughly\n    And call these foul offenders to their answers,\n    And poise the cause in justice\' equal scales,\n    Whose beam stands sure, whose rightful cause prevails.\n                                                Flourish. Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nLondon. The DUKE OF YORK\'S garden\n\nEnter YORK, SALISBURY, and WARWICK\n\n  YORK. Now, my good Lords of Salisbury and Warwick,\n    Our simple supper ended, give me leave\n    In this close walk to satisfy myself\n    In craving your opinion of my tide,\n    Which is infallible, to England\'s crown.\n  SALISBURY. My lord, I long to hear it at full.\n  WARWICK. Sweet York, begin; and if thy claim be good,\n    The Nevils are thy subjects to command.\n  YORK. Then thus:\n    Edward the Third, my lords, had seven sons;\n    The first, Edward the Black Prince, Prince of Wales;\n    The second, William of Hatfield; and the third,\n    Lionel Duke of Clarence; next to whom\n    Was John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster;\n    The fifth was Edmund Langley, Duke of York;\n    The sixth was Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester;\n    William of Windsor was the seventh and last.  \n    Edward the Black Prince died before his father\n    And left behind him Richard, his only son,\n    Who, after Edward the Third\'s death, reign\'d as king\n    Till Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster,\n    The eldest son and heir of John of Gaunt,\n    Crown\'d by the name of Henry the Fourth,\n    Seiz\'d on the realm, depos\'d the rightful king,\n    Sent his poor queen to France, from whence she came.\n    And him to Pomfret, where, as all you know,\n    Harmless Richard was murdered traitorously.\n  WARWICK. Father, the Duke hath told the truth;\n    Thus got the house of Lancaster the crown.\n  YORK. Which now they hold by force, and not by right;\n    For Richard, the first son\'s heir, being dead,\n    The issue of the next son should have reign\'d.\n  SALISBURY. But William of Hatfield died without an heir.\n  YORK. The third son, Duke of Clarence, from whose line\n    I claim the crown, had issue Philippe, a daughter,\n    Who married Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March;\n    Edmund had issue, Roger Earl of March;  \n    Roger had issue, Edmund, Anne, and Eleanor.\n  SALISBURY. This Edmund, in the reign of Bolingbroke,\n    As I have read, laid claim unto the crown;\n    And, but for Owen Glendower, had been king,\n    Who kept him in captivity till he died.\n    But, to the rest.\n  YORK. His eldest sister, Anne,\n    My mother, being heir unto the crown,\n    Married Richard Earl of Cambridge, who was\n    To Edmund Langley, Edward the Third\'s fifth son, son.\n    By her I claim the kingdom: she was heir\n    To Roger Earl of March, who was the son\n    Of Edmund Mortimer, who married Philippe,\n    Sole daughter unto Lionel Duke of Clarence;\n    So, if the issue of the elder son\n    Succeed before the younger, I am King.\n  WARWICK. What plain proceedings is more plain than this?\n    Henry doth claim the crown from John of Gaunt,\n    The fourth son: York claims it from the third.\n    Till Lionel\'s issue fails, his should not reign.  \n    It fails not yet, but flourishes in thee\n    And in thy sons, fair slips of such a stock.\n    Then, father Salisbury, kneel we together,\n    And in this private plot be we the first\n    That shall salute our rightful sovereign\n    With honour of his birthright to the crown.\n  BOTH. Long live our sovereign Richard, England\'s King!\n  YORK. We thank you, lords. But I am not your king\n    Till I be crown\'d, and that my sword be stain\'d\n    With heart-blood of the house of Lancaster;\n    And that\'s not suddenly to be perform\'d,\n    But with advice and silent secrecy.\n    Do you as I do in these dangerous days:\n    Wink at the Duke of Suffolk\'s insolence,\n    At Beaufort\'s pride, at Somerset\'s ambition,\n    At Buckingham, and all the crew of them,\n    Till they have snar\'d the shepherd of the flock,\n    That virtuous prince, the good Duke Humphrey;\n    \'Tis that they seek; and they, in seeking that,\n    Shall find their deaths, if York can prophesy.  \n  SALISBURY. My lord, break we off; we know your mind at full.\n  WARWICK. My heart assures me that the Earl of Warwick\n    Shall one day make the Duke of York a king.\n  YORK. And, Nevil, this I do assure myself,\n    Richard shall live to make the Earl of Warwick\n    The greatest man in England but the King.             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nLondon. A hall of justice\n\nSound trumpets. Enter the KING and State: the QUEEN, GLOUCESTER, YORK,\nSUFFOLK, and SALISBURY, with guard, to banish the DUCHESS. Enter, guarded,\nthe DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER, MARGERY JOURDAIN, HUME, SOUTHWELL, and BOLINGBROKE\n\n  KING HENRY. Stand forth, Dame Eleanor Cobham, Gloucester\'s wife:\n    In sight of God and us, your guilt is great;\n    Receive the sentence of the law for sins\n    Such as by God\'s book are adjudg\'d to death.\n    You four, from hence to prison back again;\n    From thence unto the place of execution:\n    The witch in Smithfield shall be burnt to ashes,\n    And you three shall be strangled on the gallows.\n    You, madam, for you are more nobly born,\n    Despoiled of your honour in your life,\n    Shall, after three days\' open penance done,\n    Live in your country here in banishment\n    With Sir John Stanley in the Isle of Man.  \n  DUCHESS. Welcome is banishment; welcome were my death.\n  GLOUCESTER. Eleanor, the law, thou seest, hath judged thee.\n    I cannot justify whom the law condemns.\n             Exeunt the DUCHESS and the other prisoners, guarded\n    Mine eyes are full of tears, my heart of grief.\n    Ah, Humphrey, this dishonour in thine age\n    Will bring thy head with sorrow to the ground!\n    I beseech your Majesty give me leave to go;\n    Sorrow would solace, and mine age would ease.\n  KING HENRY. Stay, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester; ere thou go,\n    Give up thy staff; Henry will to himself\n    Protector be; and God shall be my hope,\n    My stay, my guide, and lantern to my feet.\n    And go in peace, Humphrey, no less belov\'d\n    Than when thou wert Protector to thy King.\n  QUEEN. I see no reason why a king of years\n    Should be to be protected like a child.\n    God and King Henry govern England\'s realm!\n    Give up your staff, sir, and the King his realm.\n  GLOUCESTER. My staff! Here, noble Henry, is my staff.  \n    As willingly do I the same resign\n    As ere thy father Henry made it mine;\n    And even as willingly at thy feet I leave it\n    As others would ambitiously receive it.\n    Farewell, good King; when I am dead and gone,\n    May honourable peace attend thy throne!                 Exit\n  QUEEN. Why, now is Henry King, and Margaret Queen,\n    And Humphrey Duke of Gloucester scarce himself,\n    That bears so shrewd a maim: two pulls at once-\n    His lady banish\'d and a limb lopp\'d off.\n    This staff of honour raught, there let it stand\n    Where it best fits to be, in Henry\'s hand.\n  SUFFOLK. Thus droops this lofty pine and hangs his sprays;\n    Thus Eleanor\'s pride dies in her youngest days.\n  YORK. Lords, let him go. Please it your Majesty,\n    This is the day appointed for the combat;\n    And ready are the appellant and defendant,\n    The armourer and his man, to enter the lists,\n    So please your Highness to behold the fight.\n  QUEEN. Ay, good my lord; for purposely therefore  \n    Left I the court, to see this quarrel tried.\n  KING HENRY. A God\'s name, see the lists and all things fit;\n    Here let them end it, and God defend the right!\n  YORK. I never saw a fellow worse bested,\n    Or more afraid to fight, than is the appellant,\n    The servant of his armourer, my lords.\n\n        Enter at one door, HORNER, the Armourer, and his\n         NEIGHBOURS, drinking to him so much that he is\n        drunk; and he enters with a drum before him and\n       his staff with a sand-bag fastened to it; and at the\n        other door PETER, his man, with a drum and sandbag,\n                  and PRENTICES drinking to him\n\n  FIRST NEIGHBOUR. Here, neighbour Horner, I drink to you in a cup of\n    sack; and fear not, neighbour, you shall do well enough.\n  SECOND NEIGHBOUR. And here, neighbour, here\'s a cup of charneco.\n  THIRD NEIGHBOUR. And here\'s a pot of good double beer, neighbour;\n    drink, and fear not your man.\n  HORNER. Let it come, i\' faith, and I\'ll pledge you all; and a fig  \n    for Peter!\n  FIRST PRENTICE. Here, Peter, I drink to thee; and be not afraid.\n  SECOND PRENTICE. Be merry, Peter, and fear not thy master: fight\n    for credit of the prentices.\n  PETER. I thank you all. Drink, and pray for me, I pray you; for I\n    think I have taken my last draught in this world. Here, Robin, an\n    if I die, I give thee my apron; and, Will, thou shalt have my\n    hammer; and here, Tom, take all the money that I have. O Lord\n    bless me, I pray God! for I am never able to deal with my master,\n    he hath learnt so much fence already.\n  SALISBURY. Come, leave your drinking and fall to blows.\n    Sirrah, what\'s thy name?\n  PETER. Peter, forsooth.\n  SALISBURY. Peter? What more?\n  PETER. Thump.\n  SALISBURY. Thump? Then see thou thump thy master well.\n  HORNER. Masters, I am come hither, as it were, upon my man\'s\n    instigation, to prove him a knave and myself an honest man; and\n    touching the Duke of York, I will take my death I never meant him\n    any ill, nor the King, nor the Queen; and therefore, Peter, have  \n    at thee with a down right blow!\n  YORK. Dispatch- this knave\'s tongue begins to double.\n    Sound, trumpets, alarum to the combatants!\n                 [Alarum. They fight and PETER strikes him down]\n  HORNER. Hold, Peter, hold! I confess, I confess treason.\n                                                          [Dies]\n  YORK. Take away his weapon. Fellow, thank God, and the good wine in\n    thy master\'s way.\n  PETER. O God, have I overcome mine enemies in this presence? O\n    Peter, thou hast prevail\'d in right!\n  KING HENRY. Go, take hence that traitor from our sight,\n    For by his death we do perceive his guilt;\n    And God in justice hath reveal\'d to us\n    The truth and innocence of this poor fellow,\n    Which he had thought to have murder\'d wrongfully.\n    Come, fellow, follow us for thy reward.\n                                        Sound a flourish. Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nLondon. A street\n\nEnter DUKE HUMPHREY and his men, in mourning cloaks\n\n  GLOUCESTER. Thus sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud,\n    And after summer evermore succeeds\n    Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold;\n    So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.\n    Sirs, what\'s o\'clock?\n  SERVING-MAN. Ten, my lord.\n  GLOUCESTER. Ten is the hour that was appointed me\n    To watch the coming of my punish\'d duchess.\n    Uneath may she endure the flinty streets\n    To tread them with her tender-feeling feet.\n    Sweet Nell, ill can thy noble mind abrook\n    The abject people gazing on thy face,\n    With envious looks, laughing at thy shame,\n    That erst did follow thy proud chariot wheels\n    When thou didst ride in triumph through the streets.\n    But, soft! I think she comes, and I\'ll prepare\n    My tear-stain\'d eyes to see her miseries.  \n\n          Enter the DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER in a white sheet,\n            and a taper burning in her hand, with SIR JOHN\n               STANLEY, the SHERIFF, and OFFICERS\n\n  SERVING-MAN. So please your Grace, we\'ll take her from the sheriff.\n  GLOUCESTER. No, stir not for your lives; let her pass by.\n  DUCHESS. Come you, my lord, to see my open shame?\n    Now thou dost penance too. Look how they gaze!\n    See how the giddy multitude do point\n    And nod their heads and throw their eyes on thee;\n    Ah, Gloucester, hide thee from their hateful looks,\n    And, in thy closet pent up, rue my shame\n    And ban thine enemies, both mine and thine!\n  GLOUCESTER. Be patient, gentle Nell; forget this grief.\n  DUCHESS. Ah, Gloucester, teach me to forget myself!\n    For whilst I think I am thy married wife\n    And thou a prince, Protector of this land,\n    Methinks I should not thus be led along,\n    Mail\'d up in shame, with papers on my back,  \n    And follow\'d with a rabble that rejoice\n    To see my tears and hear my deep-fet groans.\n    The ruthless flint doth cut my tender feet,\n    And when I start, the envious people laugh\n    And bid me be advised how I tread.\n    Ah, Humphrey, can I bear this shameful yoke?\n    Trowest thou that e\'er I\'ll look upon the world\n    Or count them happy that enjoy the sun?\n    No; dark shall be my light and night my day;\n    To think upon my pomp shall be my hell.\n    Sometimes I\'ll say I am Duke Humphrey\'s wife,\n    And he a prince, and ruler of the land;\n    Yet so he rul\'d, and such a prince he was,\n    As he stood by whilst I, his forlorn duchess,\n    Was made a wonder and a pointing-stock\n    To every idle rascal follower.\n    But be thou mild, and blush not at my shame,\n    Nor stir at nothing till the axe of death\n    Hang over thee, as sure it shortly will.\n    For Suffolk- he that can do all in all  \n    With her that hateth thee and hates us all-\n    And York, and impious Beaufort, that false priest,\n    Have all lim\'d bushes to betray thy wings,\n    And, fly thou how thou canst, they\'ll tangle thee.\n    But fear not thou until thy foot be snar\'d,\n    Nor never seek prevention of thy foes.\n  GLOUCESTER. Ah, Nell, forbear! Thou aimest all awry.\n    I must offend before I be attainted;\n    And had I twenty times so many foes,\n    And each of them had twenty times their power,\n    All these could not procure me any scathe\n    So long as I am loyal, true, and crimeless.\n    Wouldst have me rescue thee from this reproach?\n    Why, yet thy scandal were not wip\'d away,\n    But I in danger for the breach of law.\n    Thy greatest help is quiet, gentle Nell.\n    I pray thee sort thy heart to patience;\n    These few days\' wonder will be quickly worn.\n\n                          Enter a HERALD  \n\n  HERALD. I summon your Grace to his Majesty\'s Parliament,\n    Holden at Bury the first of this next month.\n  GLOUCESTER. And my consent ne\'er ask\'d herein before!\n    This is close dealing. Well, I will be there.    Exit HERALD\n    My Nell, I take my leave- and, master sheriff,\n    Let not her penance exceed the King\'s commission.\n  SHERIFF. An\'t please your Grace, here my commission stays;\n    And Sir John Stanley is appointed now\n    To take her with him to the Isle of Man.\n  GLOUCESTER. Must you, Sir John, protect my lady here?\n  STANLEY. So am I given in charge, may\'t please your Grace.\n  GLOUCESTER. Entreat her not the worse in that I pray\n    You use her well; the world may laugh again,\n    And I may live to do you kindness if\n    You do it her. And so, Sir John, farewell.\n  DUCHESS. What, gone, my lord, and bid me not farewell!\n  GLOUCESTER. Witness my tears, I cannot stay to speak.\n                                  Exeunt GLOUCESTER and servants\n  DUCHESS. Art thou gone too? All comfort go with thee!  \n    For none abides with me. My joy is death-\n    Death, at whose name I oft have been afeard,\n    Because I wish\'d this world\'s eternity.\n    Stanley, I prithee go, and take me hence;\n    I care not whither, for I beg no favour,\n    Only convey me where thou art commanded.\n  STANLEY. Why, madam, that is to the Isle of Man,\n    There to be us\'d according to your state.\n  DUCHESS. That\'s bad enough, for I am but reproach-\n    And shall I then be us\'d reproachfully?\n  STANLEY. Like to a duchess and Duke Humphrey\'s lady;\n    According to that state you shall be us\'d.\n  DUCHESS. Sheriff, farewell, and better than I fare,\n    Although thou hast been conduct of my shame.\n  SHERIFF. It is my office; and, madam, pardon me.\n  DUCHESS. Ay, ay, farewell; thy office is discharg\'d.\n    Come, Stanley, shall we go?\n  STANLEY. Madam, your penance done, throw off this sheet,\n    And go we to attire you for our journey.\n  DUCHESS. My shame will not be shifted with my sheet.  \n    No, it will hang upon my richest robes\n    And show itself, attire me how I can.\n    Go, lead the way; I long to see my prison.            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nThe Abbey at Bury St. Edmunds\n\nSound a sennet. Enter the KING, the QUEEN, CARDINAL, SUFFOLK, YORK,\nBUCKINGHAM, SALISBURY, and WARWICK, to the Parliament\n\n  KING HENRY. I muse my Lord of Gloucester is not come.\n    \'Tis not his wont to be the hindmost man,\n    Whate\'er occasion keeps him from us now.\n  QUEEN. Can you not see, or will ye not observe\n    The strangeness of his alter\'d countenance?\n    With what a majesty he bears himself;\n    How insolent of late he is become,\n    How proud, how peremptory, and unlike himself?\n    We know the time since he was mild and affable,\n    And if we did but glance a far-off look\n    Immediately he was upon his knee,\n    That all the court admir\'d him for submission.\n    But meet him now and be it in the morn,\n    When every one will give the time of day,\n    He knits his brow and shows an angry eye\n    And passeth by with stiff unbowed knee,  \n    Disdaining duty that to us belongs.\n    Small curs are not regarded when they grin,\n    But great men tremble when the lion roars,\n    And Humphrey is no little man in England.\n    First note that he is near you in descent,\n    And should you fall he is the next will mount;\n    Me seemeth, then, it is no policy-\n    Respecting what a rancorous mind he bears,\n    And his advantage following your decease-\n    That he should come about your royal person\n    Or be admitted to your Highness\' Council.\n    By flattery hath he won the commons\' hearts;\n    And when he please to make commotion,\n    \'Tis to be fear\'d they all will follow him.\n    Now \'tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;\n    Suffer them now, and they\'ll o\'ergrow the garden\n    And choke the herbs for want of husbandry.\n    The reverent care I bear unto my lord\n    Made me collect these dangers in the Duke.\n    If it be fond, can it a woman\'s fear;  \n    Which fear if better reasons can supplant,\n    I will subscribe, and say I wrong\'d the Duke.\n    My Lord of Suffolk, Buckingham, and York,\n    Reprove my allegation if you can,\n    Or else conclude my words effectual.\n  SUFFOLK. Well hath your Highness seen into this duke;\n    And had I first been put to speak my mind,\n    I think I should have told your Grace\'s tale.\n    The Duchess, by his subornation,\n    Upon my life, began her devilish practices;\n    Or if he were not privy to those faults,\n    Yet by reputing of his high descent-\n    As next the King he was successive heir-\n    And such high vaunts of his nobility,\n    Did instigate the bedlam brainsick Duchess\n    By wicked means to frame our sovereign\'s fall.\n    Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep,\n    And in his simple show he harbours treason.\n    The fox barks not when he would steal the lamb.\n    No, no, my sovereign, Gloucester is a man  \n    Unsounded yet, and full of deep deceit.\n  CARDINAL. Did he not, contrary to form of law,\n    Devise strange deaths for small offences done?\n  YORK. And did he not, in his protectorship,\n    Levy great sums of money through the realm\n    For soldiers\' pay in France, and never sent it?\n    By means whereof the towns each day revolted.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Tut, these are petty faults to faults unknown\n    Which time will bring to light in smooth Duke Humphrey.\n  KING HENRY. My lords, at once: the care you have of us,\n    To mow down thorns that would annoy our foot,\n    Is worthy praise; but shall I speak my conscience?\n    Our kinsman Gloucester is as innocent\n    From meaning treason to our royal person\n    As is the sucking lamb or harmless dove:\n    The Duke is virtuous, mild, and too well given\n    To dream on evil or to work my downfall.\n  QUEEN. Ah, what\'s more dangerous than this fond affiance?\n    Seems he a dove? His feathers are but borrow\'d,\n    For he\'s disposed as the hateful raven.  \n    Is he a lamb? His skin is surely lent him,\n    For he\'s inclin\'d as is the ravenous wolf.\n    Who cannot steal a shape that means deceit?\n    Take heed, my lord; the welfare of us all\n    Hangs on the cutting short that fraudful man.\n\n                          Enter SOMERSET\n\n  SOMERSET. All health unto my gracious sovereign!\n  KING HENRY. Welcome, Lord Somerset. What news from France?\n  SOMERSET. That all your interest in those territories\n    Is utterly bereft you; all is lost.\n  KING HENRY. Cold news, Lord Somerset; but God\'s will be done!\n  YORK. [Aside] Cold news for me; for I had hope of France\n    As firmly as I hope for fertile England.\n    Thus are my blossoms blasted in the bud,\n    And caterpillars eat my leaves away;\n    But I will remedy this gear ere long,\n    Or sell my title for a glorious grave.\n  \n                         Enter GLOUCESTER\n\n  GLOUCESTER. All happiness unto my lord the King!\n    Pardon, my liege, that I have stay\'d so long.\n  SUFFOLK. Nay, Gloucester, know that thou art come too soon,\n    Unless thou wert more loyal than thou art.\n    I do arrest thee of high treason here.\n  GLOUCESTER. Well, Suffolk, thou shalt not see me blush\n    Nor change my countenance for this arrest:\n    A heart unspotted is not easily daunted.\n    The purest spring is not so free from mud\n    As I am clear from treason to my sovereign.\n    Who can accuse me? Wherein am I guilty?\n  YORK. \'Tis thought, my lord, that you took bribes of France\n    And, being Protector, stay\'d the soldiers\' pay;\n    By means whereof his Highness hath lost France.\n  GLOUCESTER. Is it but thought so? What are they that think it?\n    I never robb\'d the soldiers of their pay\n    Nor ever had one penny bribe from France.\n    So help me God, as I have watch\'d the night-  \n    Ay, night by night- in studying good for England!\n    That doit that e\'er I wrested from the King,\n    Or any groat I hoarded to my use,\n    Be brought against me at my trial-day!\n    No; many a pound of mine own proper store,\n    Because I would not tax the needy commons,\n    Have I dispursed to the garrisons,\n    And never ask\'d for restitution.\n  CARDINAL. It serves you well, my lord, to say so much.\n  GLOUCESTER. I say no more than truth, so help me God!\n  YORK. In your protectorship you did devise\n    Strange tortures for offenders, never heard of,\n    That England was defam\'d by tyranny.\n  GLOUCESTER. Why, \'tis well known that whiles I was Protector\n    Pity was all the fault that was in me;\n    For I should melt at an offender\'s tears,\n    And lowly words were ransom for their fault.\n    Unless it were a bloody murderer,\n    Or foul felonious thief that fleec\'d poor passengers,\n    I never gave them condign punishment.  \n    Murder indeed, that bloody sin, I tortur\'d\n    Above the felon or what trespass else.\n  SUFFOLK. My lord, these faults are easy, quickly answer\'d;\n    But mightier crimes are laid unto your charge,\n    Whereof you cannot easily purge yourself.\n    I do arrest you in His Highness\' name,\n    And here commit you to my Lord Cardinal\n    To keep until your further time of trial.\n  KING HENRY. My Lord of Gloucester, \'tis my special hope\n    That you will clear yourself from all suspense.\n    My conscience tells me you are innocent.\n  GLOUCESTER. Ah, gracious lord, these days are dangerous!\n    Virtue is chok\'d with foul ambition,\n    And charity chas\'d hence by rancour\'s hand;\n    Foul subornation is predominant,\n    And equity exil\'d your Highness\' land.\n    I know their complot is to have my life;\n    And if my death might make this island happy\n    And prove the period of their tyranny,\n    I would expend it with all willingness.  \n    But mine is made the prologue to their play;\n    For thousands more that yet suspect no peril\n    Will not conclude their plotted tragedy.\n    Beaufort\'s red sparkling eyes blab his heart\'s malice,\n    And Suffolk\'s cloudy brow his stormy hate;\n    Sharp Buckingham unburdens with his tongue\n    The envious load that lies upon his heart;\n    And dogged York, that reaches at the moon,\n    Whose overweening arm I have pluck\'d back,\n    By false accuse doth level at my life.\n    And you, my sovereign lady, with the rest,\n    Causeless have laid disgraces on my head,\n    And with your best endeavour have stirr\'d up\n    My liefest liege to be mine enemy;\n    Ay, all of you have laid your heads together-\n    Myself had notice of your conventicles-\n    And all to make away my guiltless life.\n    I shall not want false witness to condemn me\n    Nor store of treasons to augment my guilt.\n    The ancient proverb will be well effected:  \n    \'A staff is quickly found to beat a dog.\'\n  CARDINAL. My liege, his railing is intolerable.\n    If those that care to keep your royal person\n    From treason\'s secret knife and traitor\'s rage\n    Be thus upbraided, chid, and rated at,\n    And the offender granted scope of speech,\n    \'Twill make them cool in zeal unto your Grace.\n  SUFFOLK. Hath he not twit our sovereign lady here\n    With ignominious words, though clerkly couch\'d,\n    As if she had suborned some to swear\n    False allegations to o\'erthrow his state?\n  QUEEN. But I can give the loser leave to chide.\n  GLOUCESTER. Far truer spoke than meant: I lose indeed.\n    Beshrew the winners, for they play\'d me false!\n    And well such losers may have leave to speak.\n  BUCKINGHAM. He\'ll wrest the sense, and hold us here all day.\n    Lord Cardinal, he is your prisoner.\n  CARDINAL. Sirs, take away the Duke, and guard him sure.\n  GLOUCESTER. Ah, thus King Henry throws away his crutch\n    Before his legs be firm to bear his body!  \n    Thus is the shepherd beaten from thy side,\n    And wolves are gnarling who shall gnaw thee first.\n    Ah, that my fear were false! ah, that it were!\n    For, good King Henry, thy decay I fear.        Exit, guarded\n  KING HENRY. My lords, what to your wisdoms seemeth best\n    Do or undo, as if ourself were here.\n  QUEEN. What, will your Highness leave the Parliament?\n  KING HENRY. Ay, Margaret; my heart is drown\'d with grief,\n    Whose flood begins to flow within mine eyes;\n    My body round engirt with misery-\n    For what\'s more miserable than discontent?\n    Ah, uncle Humphrey, in thy face I see\n    The map of honour, truth, and loyalty!\n    And yet, good Humphrey, is the hour to come\n    That e\'er I prov\'d thee false or fear\'d thy faith.\n    What louring star now envies thy estate\n    That these great lords, and Margaret our Queen,\n    Do seek subversion of thy harmless life?\n    Thou never didst them wrong, nor no man wrong;\n    And as the butcher takes away the calf,  \n    And binds the wretch, and beats it when it strays,\n    Bearing it to the bloody slaughter-house,\n    Even so, remorseless, have they borne him hence;\n    And as the dam runs lowing up and down,\n    Looking the way her harmless young one went,\n    And can do nought but wail her darling\'s loss,\n    Even so myself bewails good Gloucester\'s case\n    With sad unhelpful tears, and with dimm\'d eyes\n    Look after him, and cannot do him good,\n    So mighty are his vowed enemies.\n    His fortunes I will weep, and \'twixt each groan\n    Say \'Who\'s a traitor? Gloucester he is none.\'           Exit\n  QUEEN. Free lords, cold snow melts with the sun\'s hot beams:\n    Henry my lord is cold in great affairs,\n    Too full of foolish pity; and Gloucester\'s show\n    Beguiles him as the mournful crocodile\n    With sorrow snares relenting passengers;\n    Or as the snake, roll\'d in a flow\'ring bank,\n    With shining checker\'d slough, doth sting a child\n    That for the beauty thinks it excellent.  \n    Believe me, lords, were none more wise than I-\n    And yet herein I judge mine own wit good-\n    This Gloucester should be quickly rid the world\n    To rid us from the fear we have of him.\n  CARDINAL. That he should die is worthy policy;\n    But yet we want a colour for his death.\n    \'Tis meet he be condemn\'d by course of law.\n  SUFFOLK. But, in my mind, that were no policy:\n    The King will labour still to save his life;\n    The commons haply rise to save his life;\n    And yet we have but trivial argument,\n    More than mistrust, that shows him worthy death.\n  YORK. So that, by this, you would not have him die.\n  SUFFOLK. Ah, York, no man alive so fain as I!\n  YORK. \'Tis York that hath more reason for his death.\n    But, my Lord Cardinal, and you, my Lord of Suffolk,\n    Say as you think, and speak it from your souls:\n    Were\'t not all one an empty eagle were set\n    To guard the chicken from a hungry kite\n    As place Duke Humphrey for the King\'s Protector?  \n  QUEEN. So the poor chicken should be sure of death.\n  SUFFOLK. Madam, \'tis true; and were\'t not madness then\n    To make the fox surveyor of the fold?\n    Who being accus\'d a crafty murderer,\n    His guilt should be but idly posted over,\n    Because his purpose is not executed.\n    No; let him die, in that he is a fox,\n    By nature prov\'d an enemy to the flock,\n    Before his chaps be stain\'d with crimson blood,\n    As Humphrey, prov\'d by reasons, to my liege.\n    And do not stand on quillets how to slay him;\n    Be it by gins, by snares, by subtlety,\n    Sleeping or waking, \'tis no matter how,\n    So he be dead; for that is good deceit\n    Which mates him first that first intends deceit.\n  QUEEN. Thrice-noble Suffolk, \'tis resolutely spoke.\n  SUFFOLK. Not resolute, except so much were done,\n    For things are often spoke and seldom meant;\n    But that my heart accordeth with my tongue,\n    Seeing the deed is meritorious,  \n    And to preserve my sovereign from his foe,\n    Say but the word, and I will be his priest.\n  CARDINAL. But I would have him dead, my Lord of Suffolk,\n    Ere you can take due orders for a priest;\n    Say you consent and censure well the deed,\n    And I\'ll provide his executioner-\n    I tender so the safety of my liege.\n  SUFFOLK. Here is my hand the deed is worthy doing.\n  QUEEN. And so say I.\n  YORK. And I. And now we three have spoke it,\n    It skills not greatly who impugns our doom.\n\n                          Enter a POST\n\n  POST. Great lords, from Ireland am I come amain\n    To signify that rebels there are up\n    And put the Englishmen unto the sword.\n    Send succours, lords, and stop the rage betime,\n    Before the wound do grow uncurable;\n    For, being green, there is great hope of help.  \n  CARDINAL. A breach that craves a quick expedient stop!\n    What counsel give you in this weighty cause?\n  YORK. That Somerset be sent as Regent thither;\n    \'Tis meet that lucky ruler be employ\'d,\n    Witness the fortune he hath had in France.\n  SOMERSET. If York, with all his far-fet policy,\n    Had been the Regent there instead of me,\n    He never would have stay\'d in France so long.\n  YORK. No, not to lose it all as thou hast done.\n    I rather would have lost my life betimes\n    Than bring a burden of dishonour home\n    By staying there so long till all were lost.\n    Show me one scar character\'d on thy skin:\n    Men\'s flesh preserv\'d so whole do seldom win.\n  QUEEN. Nay then, this spark will prove a raging fire,\n    If wind and fuel be brought to feed it with;\n    No more, good York; sweet Somerset, be still.\n    Thy fortune, York, hadst thou been Regent there,\n    Might happily have prov\'d far worse than his.\n  YORK. What, worse than nought? Nay, then a shame take all!  \n  SOMERSET. And in the number, thee that wishest shame!\n  CARDINAL. My Lord of York, try what your fortune is.\n    Th\' uncivil kerns of Ireland are in arms\n    And temper clay with blood of Englishmen;\n    To Ireland will you lead a band of men,\n    Collected choicely, from each county some,\n    And try your hap against the Irishmen?\n  YORK. I will, my lord, so please his Majesty.\n  SUFFOLK. Why, our authority is his consent,\n    And what we do establish he confirms;\n    Then, noble York, take thou this task in hand.\n  YORK. I am content; provide me soldiers, lords,\n    Whiles I take order for mine own affairs.\n  SUFFOLK. A charge, Lord York, that I will see perform\'d.\n    But now return we to the false Duke Humphrey.\n  CARDINAL. No more of him; for I will deal with him\n    That henceforth he shall trouble us no more.\n    And so break off; the day is almost spent.\n    Lord Suffolk, you and I must talk of that event.\n  YORK. My Lord of Suffolk, within fourteen days  \n    At Bristol I expect my soldiers;\n    For there I\'ll ship them all for Ireland.\n  SUFFOLK. I\'ll see it truly done, my Lord of York.\n                                             Exeunt all but YORK\n  YORK. Now, York, or never, steel thy fearful thoughts\n    And change misdoubt to resolution;\n    Be that thou hop\'st to be; or what thou art\n    Resign to death- it is not worth th\' enjoying.\n    Let pale-fac\'d fear keep with the mean-born man\n    And find no harbour in a royal heart.\n    Faster than spring-time show\'rs comes thought on thought,\n    And not a thought but thinks on dignity.\n    My brain, more busy than the labouring spider,\n    Weaves tedious snares to trap mine enemies.\n    Well, nobles, well, \'tis politicly done\n    To send me packing with an host of men.\n    I fear me you but warm the starved snake,\n    Who, cherish\'d in your breasts, will sting your hearts.\n    \'Twas men I lack\'d, and you will give them me;\n    I take it kindly. Yet be well assur\'d  \n    You put sharp weapons in a madman\'s hands.\n    Whiles I in Ireland nourish a mighty band,\n    I will stir up in England some black storm\n    Shall blow ten thousand souls to heaven or hell;\n    And this fell tempest shall not cease to rage\n    Until the golden circuit on my head,\n    Like to the glorious sun\'s transparent beams,\n    Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw.\n    And for a minister of my intent\n    I have seduc\'d a headstrong Kentishman,\n    John Cade of Ashford,\n    To make commotion, as full well he can,\n    Under the tide of John Mortimer.\n    In Ireland have I seen this stubborn Cade\n    Oppose himself against a troop of kerns,\n    And fought so long tiff that his thighs with darts\n    Were almost like a sharp-quill\'d porpentine;\n    And in the end being rescu\'d, I have seen\n    Him caper upright like a wild Morisco,\n    Shaking the bloody darts as he his bells.  \n    Full often, like a shag-hair\'d crafty kern,\n    Hath he conversed with the enemy,\n    And undiscover\'d come to me again\n    And given me notice of their villainies.\n    This devil here shall be my substitute;\n    For that John Mortimer, which now is dead,\n    In face, in gait, in speech, he doth resemble.\n    By this I shall perceive the commons\' mind,\n    How they affect the house and claim of York.\n    Say he be taken, rack\'d, and tortured;\n    I know no pain they can inflict upon him\n    Will make him say I mov\'d him to those arms.\n    Say that he thrive, as \'tis great like he will,\n    Why, then from Ireland come I with my strength,\n    And reap the harvest which that rascal sow\'d;\n    For Humphrey being dead, as he shall be,\n    And Henry put apart, the next for me.                   Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nBury St. Edmunds. A room of state\n\nEnter two or three MURDERERS running over the stage,\nfrom the murder of DUKE HUMPHREY\n\n  FIRST MURDERER. Run to my Lord of Suffolk; let him know\n    We have dispatch\'d the Duke, as he commanded.\n  SECOND MURDERER. O that it were to do! What have we done?\n    Didst ever hear a man so penitent?\n\n                           Enter SUFFOLK\n\n  FIRST MURDERER. Here comes my lord.\n  SUFFOLK. Now, sirs, have you dispatch\'d this thing?\n  FIRST MURDERER. Ay, my good lord, he\'s dead.\n  SUFFOLK. Why, that\'s well said. Go, get you to my house;\n    I will reward you for this venturous deed.\n    The King and all the peers are here at hand.\n    Have you laid fair the bed? Is all things well,\n    According as I gave directions?\n  FIRST MURDERER. \'Tis, my good lord.  \n  SUFFOLK. Away! be gone.                       Exeunt MURDERERS\n\n             Sound trumpets. Enter the KING, the QUEEN,\n                CARDINAL, SOMERSET, with attendants\n\n  KING HENRY. Go call our uncle to our presence straight;\n    Say we intend to try his Grace to-day,\n    If he be guilty, as \'tis published.\n  SUFFOLK. I\'ll call him presently, my noble lord.          Exit\n  KING HENRY. Lords, take your places; and, I pray you all,\n    Proceed no straiter \'gainst our uncle Gloucester\n    Than from true evidence, of good esteem,\n    He be approv\'d in practice culpable.\n  QUEEN. God forbid any malice should prevail\n    That faultless may condemn a nobleman!\n    Pray God he may acquit him of suspicion!\n  KING HENRY. I thank thee, Meg; these words content me much.\n\n                           Re-enter SUFFOLK\n  \n    How now! Why look\'st thou pale? Why tremblest thou?\n    Where is our uncle? What\'s the matter, Suffolk?\n  SUFFOLK. Dead in his bed, my lord; Gloucester is dead.\n  QUEEN. Marry, God forfend!\n  CARDINAL. God\'s secret judgment! I did dream to-night\n    The Duke was dumb and could not speak a word.\n                                               [The KING swoons]\n  QUEEN. How fares my lord? Help, lords! The King is dead.\n  SOMERSET. Rear up his body; wring him by the nose.\n  QUEEN. Run, go, help, help! O Henry, ope thine eyes!\n  SUFFOLK. He doth revive again; madam, be patient.\n  KING. O heavenly God!\n  QUEEN. How fares my gracious lord?\n  SUFFOLK. Comfort, my sovereign! Gracious Henry, comfort!\n  KING HENRY. What, doth my Lord of Suffolk comfort me?\n    Came he right now to sing a raven\'s note,\n    Whose dismal tune bereft my vital pow\'rs;\n    And thinks he that the chirping of a wren,\n    By crying comfort from a hollow breast,\n    Can chase away the first conceived sound?  \n    Hide not thy poison with such sug\'red words;\n    Lay not thy hands on me; forbear, I say,\n    Their touch affrights me as a serpent\'s sting.\n    Thou baleful messenger, out of my sight!\n    Upon thy eye-balls murderous tyranny\n    Sits in grim majesty to fright the world.\n    Look not upon me, for thine eyes are wounding;\n    Yet do not go away; come, basilisk,\n    And kill the innocent gazer with thy sight;\n    For in the shade of death I shall find joy-\n    In life but double death,\'now Gloucester\'s dead.\n  QUEEN. Why do you rate my Lord of Suffolk thus?\n    Although the Duke was enemy to him,\n    Yet he most Christian-like laments his death;\n    And for myself- foe as he was to me-\n    Might liquid tears, or heart-offending groans,\n    Or blood-consuming sighs, recall his life,\n    I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans,\n    Look pale as primrose with blood-drinking sighs,\n    And all to have the noble Duke alive.  \n    What know I how the world may deem of me?\n    For it is known we were but hollow friends:\n    It may be judg\'d I made the Duke away;\n    So shall my name with slander\'s tongue be wounded,\n    And princes\' courts be fill\'d with my reproach.\n    This get I by his death. Ay me, unhappy!\n    To be a queen and crown\'d with infamy!\n  KING HENRY. Ah, woe is me for Gloucester, wretched man!\n  QUEEN. Be woe for me, more wretched than he is.\n    What, dost thou turn away, and hide thy face?\n    I am no loathsome leper- look on me.\n    What, art thou like the adder waxen deaf?\n    Be poisonous too, and kill thy forlorn Queen.\n    Is all thy comfort shut in Gloucester\'s tomb?\n    Why, then Dame Margaret was ne\'er thy joy.\n    Erect his statue and worship it,\n    And make my image but an alehouse sign.\n    Was I for this nigh wreck\'d upon the sea,\n    And twice by awkward wind from England\'s bank\n    Drove back again unto my native clime?  \n    What boded this but well-forewarning wind\n    Did seem to say \'Seek not a scorpion\'s nest,\n    Nor set no footing on this unkind shore\'?\n    What did I then but curs\'d the gentle gusts,\n    And he that loos\'d them forth their brazen caves;\n    And bid them blow towards England\'s blessed shore,\n    Or turn our stern upon a dreadful rock?\n    Yet Aeolus would not be a murderer,\n    But left that hateful office unto thee.\n    The pretty-vaulting sea refus\'d to drown me,\n    Knowing that thou wouldst have me drown\'d on shore\n    With tears as salt as sea through thy unkindness;\n    The splitting rocks cow\'r\'d in the sinking sands\n    And would not dash me with their ragged sides,\n    Because thy flinty heart, more hard than they,\n    Might in thy palace perish Margaret.\n    As far as I could ken thy chalky cliffs,\n    When from thy shore the tempest beat us back,\n    I stood upon the hatches in the storm;\n    And when the dusky sky began to rob  \n    My earnest-gaping sight of thy land\'s view,\n    I took a costly jewel from my neck-\n    A heart it was, bound in with diamonds-\n    And threw it towards thy land. The sea receiv\'d it;\n    And so I wish\'d thy body might my heart.\n    And even with this I lost fair England\'s view,\n    And bid mine eyes be packing with my heart,\n    And call\'d them blind and dusky spectacles\n    For losing ken of Albion\'s wished coast.\n    How often have I tempted Suffolk\'s tongue-\n    The agent of thy foul inconstancy-\n    To sit and witch me, as Ascanius did\n    When he to madding Dido would unfold\n    His father\'s acts commenc\'d in burning Troy!\n    Am I not witch\'d like her? Or thou not false like him?\n    Ay me, I can no more! Die, Margaret,\n    For Henry weeps that thou dost live so long.\n\n               Noise within. Enter WARWICK, SALISBURY,\n                          and many commons  \n\n  WARWICK. It is reported, mighty sovereign,\n    That good Duke Humphrey traitorously is murd\'red\n    By Suffolk and the Cardinal Beaufort\'s means.\n    The commons, like an angry hive of bees\n    That want their leader, scatter up and down\n    And care not who they sting in his revenge.\n    Myself have calm\'d their spleenful mutiny\n    Until they hear the order of his death.\n  KING HENRY. That he is dead, good Warwick, \'tis too true;\n    But how he died God knows, not Henry.\n    Enter his chamber, view his breathless corpse,\n    And comment then upon his sudden death.\n  WARWICK. That shall I do, my liege. Stay, Salisbury,\n    With the rude multitude till I return.                  Exit\n                                   Exit SALISBURY with the commons\n  KING HENRY. O Thou that judgest all things, stay my thoughts-\n    My thoughts that labour to persuade my soul\n    Some violent hands were laid on Humphrey\'s life!\n    If my suspect be false, forgive me, God;  \n    For judgment only doth belong to Thee.\n    Fain would I go to chafe his paly lips\n    With twenty thousand kisses and to drain\n    Upon his face an ocean of salt tears\n    To tell my love unto his dumb deaf trunk;\n    And with my fingers feel his hand un-feeling;\n    But all in vain are these mean obsequies;\n    And to survey his dead and earthy image,\n    What were it but to make my sorrow greater?\n\n               Bed put forth with the body. Enter WARWICK\n\n  WARWICK. Come hither, gracious sovereign, view this body.\n  KING HENRY. That is to see how deep my grave is made;\n    For with his soul fled all my worldly solace,\n    For, seeing him, I see my life in death.\n  WARWICK. As surely as my soul intends to live\n    With that dread King that took our state upon Him\n    To free us from his Father\'s wrathful curse,\n    I do believe that violent hands were laid  \n    Upon the life of this thrice-famed Duke.\n  SUFFOLK. A dreadful oath, sworn with a solemn tongue!\n    What instance gives Lord Warwick for his vow?\n  WARWICK. See how the blood is settled in his face.\n    Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost,\n    Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless,\n    Being all descended to the labouring heart,\n    Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,\n    Attracts the same for aidance \'gainst the enemy,\n    Which with the heart there cools, and ne\'er returneth\n    To blush and beautify the cheek again.\n    But see, his face is black and full of blood;\n    His eye-balls further out than when he liv\'d,\n    Staring full ghastly like a strangled man;\n    His hair uprear\'d, his nostrils stretch\'d with struggling;\n    His hands abroad display\'d, as one that grasp\'d\n    And tugg\'d for life, and was by strength subdu\'d.\n    Look, on the sheets his hair, you see, is sticking;\n    His well-proportion\'d beard made rough and rugged,\n    Like to the summer\'s corn by tempest lodged.  \n    It cannot be but he was murd\'red here:\n    The least of all these signs were probable.\n  SUFFOLK. Why, Warwick, who should do the Duke to death?\n    Myself and Beaufort had him in protection;\n    And we, I hope, sir, are no murderers.\n  WARWICK. But both of you were vow\'d Duke Humphrey\'s foes;\n    And you, forsooth, had the good Duke to keep.\n    \'Tis like you would not feast him like a friend;\n    And \'tis well seen he found an enemy.\n  QUEEN. Then you, belike, suspect these noblemen\n    As guilty of Duke Humphrey\'s timeless death.\n  WARWICK. Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh,\n    And sees fast by a butcher with an axe,\n    But will suspect \'twas he that made the slaughter?\n    Who finds the partridge in the puttock\'s nest\n    But may imagine how the bird was dead,\n    Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?\n    Even so suspicious is this tragedy.\n  QUEEN. Are you the butcher, Suffolk? Where\'s your knife?\n    Is Beaufort term\'d a kite? Where are his talons?  \n  SUFFOLK. I wear no knife to slaughter sleeping men;\n    But here\'s a vengeful sword, rusted with ease,\n    That shall be scoured in his rancorous heart\n    That slanders me with murder\'s crimson badge.\n    Say if thou dar\'st, proud Lord of Warwickshire,\n    That I am faulty in Duke Humphrey\'s death.\n                           Exeunt CARDINAL, SOMERSET, and others\n  WARWICK. What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?\n  QUEEN. He dares not calm his contumelious spirit,\n    Nor cease to be an arrogant controller,\n    Though Suffolk dare him twenty thousand times.\n  WARWICK. Madam, be still- with reverence may I say;\n    For every word you speak in his behalf\n    Is slander to your royal dignity.\n  SUFFOLK. Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanour,\n    If ever lady wrong\'d her lord so much,\n    Thy mother took into her blameful bed\n    Some stern untutor\'d churl, and noble stock\n    Was graft with crab-tree slip, whose fruit thou art,\n    And never of the Nevils\' noble race.  \n  WARWICK. But that the guilt of murder bucklers thee,\n    And I should rob the deathsman of his fee,\n    Quitting thee thereby of ten thousand shames,\n    And that my sovereign\'s presence makes me mild,\n    I would, false murd\'rous coward, on thy knee\n    Make thee beg pardon for thy passed speech\n    And say it was thy mother that thou meant\'st,\n    That thou thyself was born in bastardy;\n    And, after all this fearful homage done,\n    Give thee thy hire and send thy soul to hell,\n    Pernicious blood-sucker of sleeping men.\n  SUFFOLK. Thou shalt be waking while I shed thy blood,\n    If from this presence thou dar\'st go with me.\n  WARWICK. Away even now, or I will drag thee hence.\n    Unworthy though thou art, I\'ll cope with thee,\n    And do some service to Duke Humphrey\'s ghost.\n                                      Exeunt SUFFOLK and WARWICK\n  KING HENRY. What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?\n    Thrice is he arm\'d that hath his quarrel just;\n    And he but naked, though lock\'d up in steel,  \n    Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.\n                                                [A noise within]\n  QUEEN. What noise is this?\n\n       Re-enter SUFFOLK and WARWICK, with their weapons drawn\n\n  KING. Why, how now, lords, your wrathful weapons drawn\n    Here in our presence! Dare you be so bold?\n    Why, what tumultuous clamour have we here?\n  SUFFOLK. The trait\'rous Warwick, with the men of Bury,\n    Set all upon me, mighty sovereign.\n\n                        Re-enter SALISBURY\n\n  SALISBURY. [To the Commons within] Sirs, stand apart, the King\n      shall know your mind.\n    Dread lord, the commons send you word by me\n    Unless Lord Suffolk straight be done to death,\n    Or banished fair England\'s territories,\n    They will by violence tear him from your palace  \n    And torture him with grievous ling\'ring death.\n    They say by him the good Duke Humphrey died;\n    They say in him they fear your Highness\' death;\n    And mere instinct of love and loyalty,\n    Free from a stubborn opposite intent,\n    As being thought to contradict your liking,\n    Makes them thus forward in his banishment.\n    They say, in care of your most royal person,\n    That if your Highness should intend to sleep\n    And charge that no man should disturb your rest,\n    In pain of your dislike or pain of death,\n    Yet, notwithstanding such a strait edict,\n    Were there a serpent seen with forked tongue\n    That slily glided towards your Majesty,\n    It were but necessary you were wak\'d,\n    Lest, being suffer\'d in that harmful slumber,\n    The mortal worm might make the sleep eternal.\n    And therefore do they cry, though you forbid,\n    That they will guard you, whe\'er you will or no,\n    From such fell serpents as false Suffolk is;  \n    With whose envenomed and fatal sting\n    Your loving uncle, twenty times his worth,\n    They say, is shamefully bereft of life.\n  COMMONS. [Within] An answer from the King, my Lord of Salisbury!\n  SUFFOLK. \'Tis like the commons, rude unpolish\'d hinds,\n    Could send such message to their sovereign;\n    But you, my lord, were glad to be employ\'d,\n    To show how quaint an orator you are.\n    But all the honour Salisbury hath won\n    Is that he was the lord ambassador\n    Sent from a sort of tinkers to the King.\n  COMMONS. [Within] An answer from the King, or we will all break in!\n  KING HENRY. Go, Salisbury, and tell them all from me\n    I thank them for their tender loving care;\n    And had I not been cited so by them,\n    Yet did I purpose as they do entreat;\n    For sure my thoughts do hourly prophesy\n    Mischance unto my state by Suffolk\'s means.\n    And therefore by His Majesty I swear,\n    Whose far unworthy deputy I am,  \n    He shall not breathe infection in this air\n    But three days longer, on the pain of death.\n                                                  Exit SALISBURY\n  QUEEN. O Henry, let me plead for gentle Suffolk!\n  KING HENRY. Ungentle Queen, to call him gentle Suffolk!\n    No more, I say; if thou dost plead for him,\n    Thou wilt but add increase unto my wrath.\n    Had I but said, I would have kept my word;\n    But when I swear, it is irrevocable.\n    If after three days\' space thou here be\'st found\n    On any ground that I am ruler of,\n    The world shall not be ransom for thy life.\n    Come, Warwick, come, good Warwick, go with me;\n    I have great matters to impart to thee.\n                                Exeunt all but QUEEN and SUFFOLK\n  QUEEN. Mischance and sorrow go along with you!\n    Heart\'s discontent and sour affliction\n    Be playfellows to keep you company!\n    There\'s two of you; the devil make a third,\n    And threefold vengeance tend upon your steps!  \n  SUFFOLK. Cease, gentle Queen, these execrations,\n    And let thy Suffolk take his heavy leave.\n  QUEEN. Fie, coward woman and soft-hearted wretch,\n    Has thou not spirit to curse thine enemy?\n  SUFFOLK. A plague upon them! Wherefore should I curse them?\n    Would curses kill as doth the mandrake\'s groan,\n    I would invent as bitter searching terms,\n    As curst, as harsh, and horrible to hear,\n    Deliver\'d strongly through my fixed teeth,\n    With full as many signs of deadly hate,\n    As lean-fac\'d Envy in her loathsome cave.\n    My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words,\n    Mine eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint,\n    Mine hair be fix\'d an end, as one distract;\n    Ay, every joint should seem to curse and ban;\n    And even now my burden\'d heart would break,\n    Should I not curse them. Poison be their drink!\n    Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest that they taste!\n    Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress trees!\n    Their chiefest prospect murd\'ring basilisks!  \n    Their softest touch as smart as lizards\' stings!\n    Their music frightful as the serpent\'s hiss,\n    And boding screech-owls make the consort full!\n    all the foul terrors in dark-seated hell-\n  QUEEN. Enough, sweet Suffolk, thou torment\'st thyself;\n    And these dread curses, like the sun \'gainst glass,\n    Or like an overcharged gun, recoil,\n    And turns the force of them upon thyself.\n  SUFFOLK. You bade me ban, and will you bid me leave?\n    Now, by the ground that I am banish\'d from,\n    Well could I curse away a winter\'s night,\n    Though standing naked on a mountain top\n    Where biting cold would never let grass grow,\n    And think it but a minute spent in sport.\n  QUEEN. O, let me entreat thee cease! Give me thy hand,\n    That I may dew it with my mournful tears;\n    Nor let the rain of heaven wet this place\n    To wash away my woeful monuments.\n    O, could this kiss be printed in thy hand,\n    That thou might\'st think upon these by the seal,  \n    Through whom a thousand sighs are breath\'d for thee!\n    So, get thee gone, that I may know my grief;\n    \'Tis but surmis\'d whiles thou art standing by,\n    As one that surfeits thinking on a want.\n    I will repeal thee or, be well assur\'d,\n    Adventure to be banished myself;\n    And banished I am, if but from thee.\n    Go, speak not to me; even now be gone.\n    O, go not yet! Even thus two friends condemn\'d\n    Embrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves,\n    Loather a hundred times to part than die.\n    Yet now, farewell; and farewell life with thee!\n  SUFFOLK. Thus is poor Suffolk ten times banished,\n    Once by the King and three times thrice by thee,\n    \'Tis not the land I care for, wert thou thence;\n    A wilderness is populous enough,\n    So Suffolk had thy heavenly company;\n    For where thou art, there is the world itself,\n    With every several pleasure in the world;\n    And where thou art not, desolation.  \n    I can no more: Live thou to joy thy life;\n    Myself no joy in nought but that thou liv\'st.\n\n                           Enter VAUX\n\n  QUEEN. Whither goes Vaux so fast? What news, I prithee?\n  VAUX. To signify unto his Majesty\n    That Cardinal Beaufort is at point of death;\n    For suddenly a grievous sickness took him\n    That makes him gasp, and stare, and catch the air,\n    Blaspheming God, and cursing men on earth.\n    Sometime he talks as if Duke Humphrey\'s ghost\n    Were by his side; sometime he calls the King\n    And whispers to his pillow, as to him,\n    The secrets of his overcharged soul;\n    And I am sent to tell his Majesty\n    That even now he cries aloud for him.\n  QUEEN. Go tell this heavy message to the King.       Exit VAUX\n    Ay me! What is this world! What news are these!\n    But wherefore grieve I at an hour\'s poor loss,  \n    Omitting Suffolk\'s exile, my soul\'s treasure?\n    Why only, Suffolk, mourn I not for thee,\n    And with the southern clouds contend in tears-\n    Theirs for the earth\'s increase, mine for my sorrows?\n    Now get thee hence: the King, thou know\'st, is coming;\n    If thou be found by me; thou art but dead.\n  SUFFOLK. If I depart from thee I cannot live;\n    And in thy sight to die, what were it else\n    But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?\n    Here could I breathe my soul into the air,\n    As mild and gentle as the cradle-babe\n    Dying with mother\'s dug between its lips;\n    Where, from thy sight, I should be raging mad\n    And cry out for thee to close up mine eyes,\n    To have thee with thy lips to stop my mouth;\n    So shouldst thou either turn my flying soul,\n    Or I should breathe it so into thy body,\n    And then it liv\'d in sweet Elysium.\n    To die by thee were but to die in jest:\n    From thee to die were torture more than death.  \n    O, let me stay, befall what may befall!\n  QUEEN. Away! Though parting be a fretful corrosive,\n    It is applied to a deathful wound.\n    To France, sweet Suffolk. Let me hear from thee;\n    For whereso\'er thou art in this world\'s globe\n    I\'ll have an Iris that shall find thee out.\n  SUFFOLK. I go.\n  QUEEN. And take my heart with thee.           [She kisses him]\n  SUFFOLK. A jewel, lock\'d into the woefull\'st cask\n    That ever did contain a thing of worth.\n    Even as a splitted bark, so sunder we:\n    This way fall I to death.\n  QUEEN. This way for me.                       Exeunt severally\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nLondon. CARDINAL BEAUFORT\'S bedchamber\n\nEnter the KING, SALISBURY, and WARWICK, to the CARDINAL in bed\n\n  KING HENRY. How fares my lord? Speak, Beaufort, to thy sovereign.\n  CARDINAL. If thou be\'st Death I\'ll give thee England\'s treasure,\n    Enough to purchase such another island,\n    So thou wilt let me live and feel no pain.\n  KING HENRY. Ah, what a sign it is of evil life\n    Where death\'s approach is seen so terrible!\n  WARWICK. Beaufort, it is thy sovereign speaks to thee.\n  CARDINAL. Bring me unto my trial when you will.\n    Died he not in his bed? Where should he die?\n    Can I make men live, whe\'er they will or no?\n    O, torture me no more! I will confess.\n    Alive again? Then show me where he is;\n    I\'ll give a thousand pound to look upon him.\n    He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them.\n    Comb down his hair; look, look! it stands upright,\n    Like lime-twigs set to catch my winged soul!\n    Give me some drink; and bid the apothecary  \n    Bring the strong poison that I bought of him.\n  KING HENRY. O Thou eternal Mover of the heavens,\n    Look with a gentle eye upon this wretch!\n    O, beat away the busy meddling fiend\n    That lays strong siege unto this wretch\'s soul,\n    And from his bosom purge this black despair!\n  WARWICK. See how the pangs of death do make him grin\n  SALISBURY. Disturb him not, let him pass peaceably.\n  KING HENRY. Peace to his soul, if God\'s good pleasure be!\n    Lord Card\'nal, if thou think\'st on heaven\'s bliss,\n    Hold up thy hand, make signal of thy hope.\n    He dies, and makes no sign: O God, forgive him!\n  WARWICK. So bad a death argues a monstrous life.\n  KING HENRY. Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.\n    Close up his eyes, and draw the curtain close;\n    And let us all to meditation.                         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nThe coast of Kent\n\nAlarum.  Fight at sea.  Ordnance goes off.  Enter a LIEUTENANT,\na SHIPMASTER and his MATE, and WALTER WHITMORE, with sailors;\nSUFFOLK and other GENTLEMEN, as prisoners\n\n  LIEUTENANT. The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day\n    Is crept into the bosom of the sea;\n    And now loud-howling wolves arouse the jades\n    That drag the tragic melancholy night;\n    Who with their drowsy, slow, and flagging wings\n    Clip dead men\'s graves, and from their misty jaws\n    Breathe foul contagious darkness in the air.\n    Therefore bring forth the soldiers of our prize;\n    For, whilst our pinnace anchors in the Downs,\n    Here shall they make their ransom on the sand,\n    Or with their blood stain this discoloured shore.\n    Master, this prisoner freely give I thee;\n    And thou that art his mate make boot of this;\n    The other, Walter Whitmore, is thy share.  \n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. What is my ransom, master, let me know?\n  MASTER. A thousand crowns, or else lay down your head.\n  MATE. And so much shall you give, or off goes yours.\n  LIEUTENANT. What, think you much to pay two thousand crowns,\n    And bear the name and port of gentlemen?\n    Cut both the villains\' throats- for die you shall;\n    The lives of those which we have lost in fight\n    Be counterpois\'d with such a petty sum!\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. I\'ll give it, sir: and therefore spare my life.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. And so will I, and write home for it straight.\n  WHITMORE. I lost mine eye in laying the prize aboard,\n    [To SUFFOLK] And therefore, to revenge it, shalt thou die;\n    And so should these, if I might have my will.\n  LIEUTENANT. Be not so rash; take ransom, let him live.\n  SUFFOLK. Look on my George, I am a gentleman:\n    Rate me at what thou wilt, thou shalt be paid.\n  WHITMORE. And so am I: my name is Walter Whitmore.\n    How now! Why start\'st thou? What, doth death affright?\n  SUFFOLK. Thy name affrights me, in whose sound is death.\n    A cunning man did calculate my birth  \n    And told me that by water I should die;\n    Yet let not this make thee be bloody-minded;\n    Thy name is Gualtier, being rightly sounded.\n  WHITMORE. Gualtier or Walter, which it is I care not:\n    Never yet did base dishonour blur our name\n    But with our sword we wip\'d away the blot;\n    Therefore, when merchant-like I sell revenge,\n    Broke be my sword, my arms torn and defac\'d,\n    And I proclaim\'d a coward through the world.\n  SUFFOLK. Stay, Whitmore, for thy prisoner is a prince,\n    The Duke of Suffolk, William de la Pole.\n  WHITMORE. The Duke of Suffolk muffled up in rags?\n  SUFFOLK. Ay, but these rags are no part of the Duke:\n    Jove sometime went disguis\'d, and why not I?\n  LIEUTENANT. But Jove was never slain, as thou shalt be.\n  SUFFOLK. Obscure and lowly swain, King Henry\'s blood,\n    The honourable blood of Lancaster,\n    Must not be shed by such a jaded groom.\n    Hast thou not kiss\'d thy hand and held my stirrup,\n    Bareheaded plodded by my foot-cloth mule,  \n    And thought thee happy when I shook my head?\n    How often hast thou waited at my cup,\n    Fed from my trencher, kneel\'d down at the board,\n    When I have feasted with Queen Margaret?\n    Remember it, and let it make thee crestfall\'n,\n    Ay, and allay thus thy abortive pride,\n    How in our voiding-lobby hast thou stood\n    And duly waited for my coming forth.\n    This hand of mine hath writ in thy behalf,\n    And therefore shall it charm thy riotous tongue.\n  WHITMORE. Speak, Captain, shall I stab the forlorn swain?\n  LIEUTENANT. First let my words stab him, as he hath me.\n  SUFFOLK. Base slave, thy words are blunt, and so art thou.\n  LIEUTENANT. Convey him hence, and on our longboat\'s side\n    Strike off his head.\n  SUFFOLK. Thou dar\'st not, for thy own.\n  LIEUTENANT. Poole!\n  SUFFOLK. Poole?\n  LIEUTENANT. Ay, kennel, puddle, sink, whose filth and dirt\n    Troubles the silver spring where England drinks;  \n    Now will I dam up this thy yawning mouth\n    For swallowing the treasure of the realm.\n    Thy lips, that kiss\'d the Queen, shall sweep the ground;\n    And thou that smil\'dst at good Duke Humphrey\'s death\n    Against the senseless winds shalt grin in vain,\n    Who in contempt shall hiss at thee again;\n    And wedded be thou to the hags of hell\n    For daring to affy a mighty lord\n    Unto the daughter of a worthless king,\n    Having neither subject, wealth, nor diadem.\n    By devilish policy art thou grown great,\n    And, like ambitious Sylla, overgorg\'d\n    With gobbets of thy mother\'s bleeding heart.\n    By thee Anjou and Maine were sold to France;\n    The false revolting Normans thorough thee\n    Disdain to call us lord; and Picardy\n    Hath slain their governors, surpris\'d our forts,\n    And sent the ragged soldiers wounded home.\n    The princely Warwick, and the Nevils all,\n    Whose dreadful swords were never drawn in vain,  \n    As hating thee, are rising up in arms;\n    And now the house of York- thrust from the crown\n    By shameful murder of a guiltless king\n    And lofty proud encroaching tyranny-\n    Burns with revenging fire, whose hopeful colours\n    Advance our half-fac\'d sun, striving to shine,\n    Under the which is writ \'Invitis nubibus.\'\n    The commons here in Kent are up in arms;\n    And to conclude, reproach and beggary\n    Is crept into the palace of our King,\n    And all by thee. Away! convey him hence.\n  SUFFOLK. O that I were a god, to shoot forth thunder\n    Upon these paltry, servile, abject drudges!\n    Small things make base men proud: this villain here,\n    Being captain of a pinnace, threatens more\n    Than Bargulus, the strong Illyrian pirate.\n    Drones suck not eagles\' blood but rob beehives.\n    It is impossible that I should die\n    By such a lowly vassal as thyself.\n    Thy words move rage and not remorse in me.  \n    I go of message from the Queen to France:\n    I charge thee waft me safely cross the Channel.\n  LIEUTENANT. Walter-\n  WHITMORE. Come, Suffolk, I must waft thee to thy death.\n  SUFFOLK. Gelidus timor occupat artus: it is thee I fear.\n  WHITMORE. Thou shalt have cause to fear before I leave thee.\n    What, are ye daunted now? Now will ye stoop?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. My gracious lord, entreat him, speak him fair.\n  SUFFOLK. Suffolk\'s imperial tongue is stem and rough,\n    Us\'d to command, untaught to plead for favour.\n    Far be it we should honour such as these\n    With humble suit: no, rather let my head\n    Stoop to the block than these knees bow to any\n    Save to the God of heaven and to my king;\n    And sooner dance upon a bloody pole\n    Than stand uncover\'d to the vulgar groom.\n    True nobility is exempt from fear:\n    More can I bear than you dare execute.\n  LIEUTENANT. Hale him away, and let him talk no more.\n  SUFFOLK. Come, soldiers, show what cruelty ye can,  \n    That this my death may never be forgot-\n    Great men oft die by vile bezonians:\n    A Roman sworder and banditto slave\n    Murder\'d sweet Tully; Brutus\' bastard hand\n    Stabb\'d Julius Caesar; savage islanders\n    Pompey the Great; and Suffolk dies by pirates.\n                                        Exit WALTER with SUFFOLK\n  LIEUTENANT. And as for these, whose ransom we have set,\n    It is our pleasure one of them depart;\n    Therefore come you with us, and let him go.\n                              Exeunt all but the FIRST GENTLEMAN\n\n                Re-enter WHITMORE with SUFFOLK\'S body\n\n  WHITMORE. There let his head and lifeless body lie,\n    Until the Queen his mistress bury it.                   Exit\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. O barbarous and bloody spectacle!\n    His body will I bear unto the King.\n    If he revenge it not, yet will his friends;\n    So will the Queen, that living held him dear.  \n                                              Exit with the body\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nBlackheath\n\nEnter GEORGE BEVIS and JOHN HOLLAND\n\n  GEORGE. Come and get thee a sword, though made of a lath; they have\n    been up these two days.\n  JOHN. They have the more need to sleep now, then.\n  GEORGE. I tell thee Jack Cade the clothier means to dress the\n    commonwealth, and turn it, and set a new nap upon it.\n  JOHN. So he had need, for \'tis threadbare. Well, I say it was never\n    merry world in England since gentlemen came up.\n  GEORGE. O miserable age! Virtue is not regarded in handicraftsmen.\n  JOHN. The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons.\n  GEORGE. Nay, more, the King\'s Council are no good workmen.\n  JOHN. True; and yet it is said \'Labour in thy vocation\'; which is\n    as much to say as \'Let the magistrates be labouring men\'; and\n    therefore should we be magistrates.\n  GEORGE. Thou hast hit it; for there\'s no better sign of a brave\n    mind than a hard hand.\n  JOHN. I see them! I see them! There\'s Best\'s son, the tanner of\n    Wingham-  \n  GEORGE. He shall have the skins of our enemies to make dog\'s\n    leather of.\n  JOHN. And Dick the butcher-\n  GEORGE. Then is sin struck down, like an ox, and iniquity\'s throat\n    cut like a calf.\n  JOHN. And Smith the weaver-\n  GEORGE. Argo, their thread of life is spun.\n  JOHN. Come, come, let\'s fall in with them.\n\n                Drum. Enter CADE, DICK THE BUTCHER, SMITH\n             THE WEAVER, and a SAWYER, with infinite numbers\n\n  CADE. We John Cade, so term\'d of our supposed father-\n  DICK. [Aside] Or rather, of stealing a cade of herrings.\n  CADE. For our enemies shall fall before us, inspired with the\n    spirit of putting down kings and princes- command silence.\n  DICK. Silence!\n  CADE. My father was a Mortimer-\n  DICK. [Aside] He was an honest man and a good bricklayer.\n  CADE. My mother a Plantagenet-  \n  DICK. [Aside] I knew her well; she was a midwife.\n  CADE. My wife descended of the Lacies-\n  DICK. [Aside] She was, indeed, a pedlar\'s daughter, and sold many\n    laces.\n  SMITH. [Aside] But now of late, not able to travel with her furr\'d\n    pack, she washes bucks here at home.\n  CADE. Therefore am I of an honourable house.\n  DICK. [Aside] Ay, by my faith, the field is honourable, and there\n    was he born, under a hedge, for his father had never a house but\n    the cage.\n  CADE. Valiant I am.\n  SMITH. [Aside] \'A must needs; for beggary is valiant.\n  CADE. I am able to endure much.\n  DICK. [Aside] No question of that; for I have seen him whipt three\n    market days together.\n  CADE. I fear neither sword nor fire.\n  SMITH. [Aside] He need not fear the sword, for his coat is of\n    proof.\n  DICK. [Aside] But methinks he should stand in fear of fire, being\n    burnt i\' th\' hand for stealing of sheep.  \n  CADE. Be brave, then, for your captain is brave, and vows\n    reformation. There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves\n    sold for a penny; the three-hoop\'d pot shall have ten hoops; and\n    I will make it felony to drink small beer. All the realm shall be\n    in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass. And\n    when I am king- as king I will be\n  ALL. God save your Majesty!\n  CADE. I thank you, good people- there shall be no money; all shall\n    eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one\n    livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship me their\n    lord.\n  DICK. The first thing we do, let\'s kill all the lawyers.\n  CADE. Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that\n    of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? That\n    parchment, being scribbl\'d o\'er, should undo a man? Some say the\n    bee stings; but I say \'tis the bee\'s wax; for I did but seal once\n    to a thing, and I was never mine own man since. How now! Who\'s\n    there?\n\n              Enter some, bringing in the CLERK OF CHATHAM  \n\n  SMITH. The clerk of Chatham. He can write and read and cast\n    accompt.\n  CADE. O monstrous!\n  SMITH. We took him setting of boys\' copies.\n  CADE. Here\'s a villain!\n  SMITH. Has a book in his pocket with red letters in\'t.\n  CADE. Nay, then he is a conjurer.\n  DICK. Nay, he can make obligations and write court-hand.\n  CADE. I am sorry for\'t; the man is a proper man, of mine honour;\n    unless I find him guilty, he shall not die. Come hither, sirrah,\n    I must examine thee. What is thy name?\n  CLERK. Emmanuel.\n  DICK. They use to write it on the top of letters; \'twill go hard\n    with you.\n  CADE. Let me alone. Dost thou use to write thy name, or hast thou a\n    mark to thyself, like a honest plain-dealing man?\n  CLERK. Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up that I can\n    write my name.\n  ALL. He hath confess\'d. Away with him! He\'s a villain and a  \n    traitor.\n  CADE. Away with him, I say! Hang him with his pen and inkhorn about\n    his neck.                            Exit one with the CLERK\n\n                           Enter MICHAEL\n\n  MICHAEL. Where\'s our General?\n  CADE. Here I am, thou particular fellow.\n  MICHAEL. Fly, fly, fly! Sir Humphrey Stafford and his brother are\n    hard by, with the King\'s forces.\n  CADE. Stand, villain, stand, or I\'ll fell thee down. He shall be\n    encount\'red with a man as good as himself. He is but a knight,\n    is \'a?\n  MICHAEL. No.\n  CADE. To equal him, I will make myself a knight presently.\n    [Kneels] Rise up, Sir John Mortimer. [Rises] Now have at him!\n\n                Enter SIR HUMPHREY STAFFORD and WILLIAM\n                  his brother, with drum and soldiers\n  \n  STAFFORD. Rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent,\n    Mark\'d for the gallows, lay your weapons down;\n    Home to your cottages, forsake this groom;\n    The King is merciful if you revolt.\n  WILLIAM STAFFORD. But angry, wrathful, and inclin\'d to blood,\n    If you go forward; therefore yield or die.\n  CADE. As for these silken-coated slaves, I pass not;\n    It is to you, good people, that I speak,\n    O\'er whom, in time to come, I hope to reign;\n    For I am rightful heir unto the crown.\n  STAFFORD. Villain, thy father was a plasterer;\n    And thou thyself a shearman, art thou not?\n  CADE. And Adam was a gardener.\n  WILLIAM STAFFORD. And what of that?\n  CADE. Marry, this: Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March,\n    Married the Duke of Clarence\' daughter, did he not?\n  STAFFORD. Ay, sir.\n  CADE. By her he had two children at one birth.\n  WILLIAM STAFFORD. That\'s false.\n  CADE. Ay, there\'s the question; but I say \'tis true.  \n    The elder of them being put to nurse,\n    Was by a beggar-woman stol\'n away,\n    And, ignorant of his birth and parentage,\n    Became a bricklayer when he came to age.\n    His son am I; deny it if you can.\n  DICK. Nay, \'tis too true; therefore he shall be king.\n  SMITH. Sir, he made a chimney in my father\'s house, and the bricks\n    are alive at this day to testify it; therefore deny it not.\n  STAFFORD. And will you credit this base drudge\'s words\n    That speaks he knows not what?\n  ALL. Ay, marry, will we; therefore get ye gone.\n  WILLIAM STAFFORD. Jack Cade, the Duke of York hath taught you this.\n  CADE. [Aside] He lies, for I invented it myself- Go to, sirrah,\n    tell the King from me that for his father\'s sake, Henry the\n    Fifth, in whose time boys went to span-counter for French crowns,\n    I am content he shall reign; but I\'ll be Protector over him.\n  DICK. And furthermore, we\'ll have the Lord Say\'s head for selling\n    the dukedom of Maine.\n  CADE. And good reason; for thereby is England main\'d and fain to go\n    with a staff, but that my puissance holds it up. Fellow kings, I  \n    tell you that that Lord Say hath gelded the commonwealth and made\n    it an eunuch; and more than that, he can speak French, and\n    therefore he is a traitor.\n  STAFFORD. O gross and miserable ignorance!\n  CADE. Nay, answer if you can; the Frenchmen are our enemies. Go to,\n    then, I ask but this: can he that speaks with the tongue of an\n    enemy be a good counsellor, or no?\n  ALL. No, no; and therefore we\'ll have his head.\n  WILLIAM STAFFORD. Well, seeing gentle words will not prevail,\n    Assail them with the army of the King.\n  STAFFORD. Herald, away; and throughout every town\n    Proclaim them traitors that are up with Cade;\n    That those which fly before the battle ends\n    May, even in their wives\'and children\'s sight,\n    Be hang\'d up for example at their doors.\n    And you that be the King\'s friends, follow me.\n                           Exeunt the TWO STAFFORDS and soldiers\n  CADE. And you that love the commons follow me.\n    Now show yourselves men; \'tis for liberty.\n    We will not leave one lord, one gentleman;  \n    Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon,\n    For they are thrifty honest men and such\n    As would- but that they dare not- take our parts.\n  DICK. They are all in order, and march toward us.\n  CADE. But then are we in order when we are most out of order. Come,\n    march forward.                                        Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nAnother part of Blackheath\n\nAlarums to the fight, wherein both the STAFFORDS are slain.\nEnter CADE and the rest\n\n  CADE. Where\'s Dick, the butcher of Ashford?\n  DICK. Here, sir.\n  CADE. They fell before thee like sheep and oxen, and thou behavedst\n    thyself as if thou hadst been in thine own slaughter-house;\n    therefore thus will I reward thee- the Lent shall be as long\n    again as it is, and thou shalt have a licence to kill for a\n    hundred lacking one.\n  DICK. I desire no more.\n  CADE. And, to speak truth, thou deserv\'st no less. [Putting on SIR\n    HUMPHREY\'S brigandine] This monument of the victory will I bear,\n    and the bodies shall be dragged at my horse heels till I do come\n    to London, where we will have the mayor\'s sword borne before us.\n  DICK. If we mean to thrive and do good, break open the gaols and\n    let out the prisoners.\n  CADE. Fear not that, I warrant thee. Come, let\'s march towards\n    London.                                               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter the KING with a supplication, and the QUEEN with SUFFOLK\'S head;\nthe DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, and the LORD SAY\n\n  QUEEN. Oft have I heard that grief softens the mind\n    And makes it fearful and degenerate;\n    Think therefore on revenge and cease to weep.\n    But who can cease to weep, and look on this?\n    Here may his head lie on my throbbing breast;\n    But where\'s the body that I should embrace?\n  BUCKINGHAM. What answer makes your Grace to the rebels\'\n    supplication?\n  KING HENRY. I\'ll send some holy bishop to entreat;\n    For God forbid so many simple souls\n    Should perish by the sword! And I myself,\n    Rather than bloody war shall cut them short,\n    Will parley with Jack Cade their general.\n    But stay, I\'ll read it over once again.\n  QUEEN. Ah, barbarous villains! Hath this lovely face  \n    Rul\'d like a wandering planet over me,\n    And could it not enforce them to relent\n    That were unworthy to behold the same?\n  KING HENRY. Lord Say, Jack Cade hath sworn to have thy head.\n  SAY. Ay, but I hope your Highness shall have his.\n  KING HENRY. How now, madam!\n    Still lamenting and mourning for Suffolk\'s death?\n    I fear me, love, if that I had been dead,\n    Thou wouldst not have mourn\'d so much for me.\n  QUEEN. No, my love, I should not mourn, but die for thee.\n\n                        Enter A MESSENGER\n\n  KING HENRY. How now! What news? Why com\'st thou in such haste?\n  MESSENGER. The rebels are in Southwark; fly, my lord!\n    Jack Cade proclaims himself Lord Mortimer,\n    Descended from the Duke of Clarence\' house,\n    And calls your Grace usurper, openly,\n    And vows to crown himself in Westminster.\n    His army is a ragged multitude  \n    Of hinds and peasants, rude and merciless;\n    Sir Humphrey Stafford and his brother\'s death\n    Hath given them heart and courage to proceed.\n    All scholars, lawyers, courtiers, gentlemen,\n    They call false caterpillars and intend their death.\n  KING HENRY. O graceless men! they know not what they do.\n  BUCKINGHAM. My gracious lord, retire to Killingworth\n    Until a power be rais\'d to put them down.\n  QUEEN. Ah, were the Duke of Suffolk now alive,\n    These Kentish rebels would be soon appeas\'d!\n  KING HENRY. Lord Say, the traitors hate thee;\n    Therefore away with us to Killingworth.\n  SAY. So might your Grace\'s person be in danger.\n    The sight of me is odious in their eyes;\n    And therefore in this city will I stay\n    And live alone as secret as I may.\n\n                      Enter another MESSENGER\n\n  SECOND MESSENGER. Jack Cade hath gotten London Bridge.  \n    The citizens fly and forsake their houses;\n    The rascal people, thirsting after prey,\n    Join with the traitor; and they jointly swear\n    To spoil the city and your royal court.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Then linger not, my lord; away, take horse.\n  KING HENRY. Come Margaret; God, our hope, will succour us.\n  QUEEN. My hope is gone, now Suffolk is deceas\'d.\n  KING HENRY. [To LORD SAY] Farewell, my lord, trust not the Kentish\n    rebels.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Trust nobody, for fear you be betray\'d.\n  SAY. The trust I have is in mine innocence,\n    And therefore am I bold and resolute.                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nLondon. The Tower\n\nEnter LORD SCALES Upon the Tower, walking. Then enter two or three CITIZENS,\nbelow\n\n  SCALES. How now! Is Jack Cade slain?\n  FIRST CITIZEN. No, my lord, nor likely to be slain; for they have\n    won the bridge, killing all those that withstand them.\n    The Lord Mayor craves aid of your honour from the\n    Tower, to defend the city from the rebels.\n  SCALES. Such aid as I can spare you shall command,\n    But I am troubled here with them myself;\n    The rebels have assay\'d to win the Tower.\n    But get you to Smithfield, and gather head,\n    And thither I will send you Matthew Goffe;\n    Fight for your King, your country, and your lives;\n    And so, farewell, for I must hence again.             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nLondon. Cannon street\n\nEnter JACK CADE and the rest, and strikes his staff on London Stone\n\n  CADE. Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon\n    London Stone, I charge and command that, of the city\'s cost, the\n    pissing conduit run nothing but claret wine this first year of\n    our reign. And now henceforward it shall be treason for any that\n    calls me other than Lord Mortimer.\n\n                    Enter a SOLDIER, running\n\n  SOLDIER. Jack Cade! Jack Cade!\n  CADE. Knock him down there.                    [They kill him]\n  SMITH. If this fellow be wise, he\'ll never call ye Jack Cade more;\n    I think he hath a very fair warning.\n  DICK. My lord, there\'s an army gathered together in Smithfield.\n  CADE. Come then, let\'s go fight with them. But first go and set\n    London Bridge on fire; and, if you can, burn down the Tower too.\n    Come, let\'s away.                                     Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\nLondon. Smithfield\n\nAlarums. MATTHEW GOFFE is slain, and all the rest.  Then enter JACK CADE,\nwith his company\n\n  CADE. So, sirs. Now go some and pull down the Savoy; others to th\'\n    Inns of Court; down with them all.\n  DICK. I have a suit unto your lordship.\n  CADE. Be it a lordship, thou shalt have it for that word.\n  DICK. Only that the laws of England may come out of your mouth.\n  JOHN. [Aside] Mass, \'twill be sore law then; for he was thrust in\n    the mouth with a spear, and \'tis not whole yet.\n  SMITH. [Aside] Nay, John, it will be stinking law; for his breath\n    stinks with eating toasted cheese.\n  CADE. I have thought upon it; it shall be so. Away, burn all the\n    records of the realm. My mouth shall be the Parliament of\n    England.\n  JOHN. [Aside] Then we are like to have biting statutes, unless his\n    teeth be pull\'d out.\n  CADE. And henceforward all things shall be in common.\n  \n                          Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. My lord, a prize, a prize! Here\'s the Lord Say, which\n    sold the towns in France; he that made us pay one and twenty\n    fifteens, and one shining to the pound, the last subsidy.\n\n                Enter GEORGE BEVIS, with the LORD SAY\n\n  CADE. Well, he shall be beheaded for it ten times. Ah, thou say,\n    thou serge, nay, thou buckram lord! Now art thou within point\n    blank of our jurisdiction regal. What canst thou answer to my\n    Majesty for giving up of Normandy unto Mounsieur Basimecu the\n    Dauphin of France? Be it known unto thee by these presence, even\n    the presence of Lord Mortimer, that I am the besom that must\n    sweep the court clean of such filth as thou art. Thou hast most\n    traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a\n    grammar school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other\n    books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to\n    be us\'d, and, contrary to the King, his crown, and dignity, thou\n    hast built a paper-mill. It will be proved to thy face that thou  \n    hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and\n    such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear.\n    Thou hast appointed justices of peace, to call poor men before\n    them about matters they were not able to answer. Moreover, thou\n    hast put them in prison, and because they could not read, thou\n    hast hang\'d them, when, indeed, only for that cause they have\n    been most worthy to live. Thou dost ride in a foot-cloth, dost\n    thou not?\n  SAY. What of that?\n  CADE. Marry, thou ought\'st not to let thy horse wear a cloak, when\n    honester men than thou go in their hose and doublets.\n  DICK. And work in their shirt too, as myself, for example, that am\n    a butcher.\n  SAY. You men of Kent-\n  DICK. What say you of Kent?\n  SAY. Nothing but this: \'tis \'bona terra, mala gens.\'\n  CADE. Away with him, away with him! He speaks Latin.\n  SAY. Hear me but speak, and bear me where you will.\n    Kent, in the Commentaries Caesar writ,\n    Is term\'d the civil\'st place of all this isle.  \n    Sweet is the country, because full of riches;\n    The people liberal valiant, active, wealthy;\n    Which makes me hope you are not void of pity.\n    I sold not Maine, I lost not Normandy;\n    Yet, to recover them, would lose my life.\n    Justice with favour have I always done;\n    Pray\'rs and tears have mov\'d me, gifts could never.\n    When have I aught exacted at your hands,\n    But to maintain the King, the realm, and you?\n    Large gifts have I bestow\'d on learned clerks,\n    Because my book preferr\'d me to the King,\n    And seeing ignorance is the curse of God,\n    Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven,\n    Unless you be possess\'d with devilish spirits\n    You cannot but forbear to murder me.\n    This tongue hath parley\'d unto foreign kings\n    For your behoof.\n  CADE. Tut, when struck\'st thou one blow in the field?\n  SAY. Great men have reaching hands. Oft have I struck\n    Those that I never saw, and struck them dead.  \n  GEORGE. O monstrous coward! What, to come behind folks?\n  SAY. These cheeks are pale for watching for your good.\n  CADE. Give him a box o\' th\' ear, and that will make \'em red again.\n  SAY. Long sitting to determine poor men\'s causes\n    Hath made me full of sickness and diseases.\n  CADE. Ye shall have a hempen caudle then, and the help of hatchet.\n  DICK. Why dost thou quiver, man?\n  SAY. The palsy, and not fear, provokes me.\n  CADE. Nay, he nods at us, as who should say \'I\'ll be even with\n    you\'; I\'ll see if his head will stand steadier on a pole, or no.\n    Take him away, and behead him.\n  SAY. Tell me: wherein have I offended most?\n    Have I affected wealth or honour? Speak.\n    Are my chests fill\'d up with extorted gold?\n    Is my apparel sumptuous to behold?\n    Whom have I injur\'d, that ye seek my death?\n    These hands are free from guiltless bloodshedding,\n    This breast from harbouring foul deceitful thoughts.\n    O, let me live!\n  CADE. [Aside] I feel remorse in myself with his words; but I\'ll  \n    bridle it. He shall die, an it be but for pleading so well for\n    his life.- Away with him! He has a familiar under his tongue; he\n    speaks not o\' God\'s name. Go, take him away, I say, and strike\n    off his head presently, and then break into his son-in-law\'s\n    house, Sir James Cromer, and strike off his head, and bring them\n    both upon two poles hither.\n  ALL. It shall be done.\n  SAY. Ah, countrymen! if when you make your pray\'rs,\n    God should be so obdurate as yourselves,\n    How would it fare with your departed souls?\n    And therefore yet relent and save my life.\n  CADE. Away with him, and do as I command ye.  [Exeunt some with\n    LORD SAY]  The proudest peer in the realm shall not wear a head\n    on his shoulders, unless he pay me tribute; there shall not a\n    maid be married, but she shall pay to me her maidenhead ere they\n    have it. Men shall hold of me in capite; and we charge and\n    command that their wives be as free as heart can wish or tongue\n    can tell.\n  DICK. My lord, when shall we go to Cheapside, and take up\n    commodities upon our bills?  \n  CADE. Marry, presently.\n  ALL. O, brave!\n\n                      Re-enter one with the heads\n\n  CADE. But is not this braver? Let them kiss one another, for they\n    lov\'d well when they were alive. Now part them again, lest they\n    consult about the giving up of some more towns in France.\n    Soldiers, defer the spoil of the city until night; for with these\n    borne before us instead of maces will we ride through the\n    streets, and at every corner have them kiss. Away!     Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VIII.\nSouthwark\n\nAlarum and retreat. Enter again CADE and all his rabblement\n\n  CADE. Up Fish Street! down Saint Magnus\' Corner! Kill and knock\n    down! Throw them into Thames!               [Sound a parley]\n    What noise is this I hear? Dare any be so bold to sound retreat\n    or parley when I command them kill?\n\n            Enter BUCKINGHAM and old CLIFFORD, attended\n\n  BUCKINGHAM. Ay, here they be that dare and will disturb thee.\n    And therefore yet relent, and save my life.\n    Know, Cade, we come ambassadors from the King\n    Unto the commons whom thou hast misled;\n    And here pronounce free pardon to them all\n    That will forsake thee and go home in peace.\n  CLIFFORD. What say ye, countrymen? Will ye relent\n    And yield to mercy whilst \'tis offer\'d you,\n    Or let a rebel lead you to your deaths?\n    Who loves the King, and will embrace his pardon,  \n    Fling up his cap and say \'God save his Majesty!\'\n    Who hateth him and honours not his father,\n    Henry the Fifth, that made all France to quake,\n    Shake he his weapon at us and pass by.\n  ALL. God save the King! God save the King!\n  CADE. What, Buckingham and Clifford, are ye so brave?\n    And you, base peasants, do ye believe him? Will you needs be\n    hang\'d with your about your necks? Hath my sword therefore broke\n    through London gates, that you should leave me at the White Hart\n    in Southwark? I thought ye would never have given out these arms\n    till you had recovered your ancient freedom. But you are all\n    recreants and dastards, and delight to live in slavery to the\n    nobility. Let them break your backs with burdens, take your\n    houses over your heads, ravish your wives and daughters before\n    your faces. For me, I will make shift for one; and so God\'s curse\n    light upon you all!\n  ALL. We\'ll follow Cade, we\'ll follow Cade!\n  CLIFFORD. Is Cade the son of Henry the Fifth,\n    That thus you do exclaim you\'ll go with him?\n    Will he conduct you through the heart of France,  \n    And make the meanest of you earls and dukes?\n    Alas, he hath no home, no place to fly to;\n    Nor knows he how to live but by the spoil,\n    Unless by robbing of your friends and us.\n    Were\'t not a shame that whilst you live at jar\n    The fearful French, whom you late vanquished,\n    Should make a start o\'er seas and vanquish you?\n    Methinks already in this civil broil\n    I see them lording it in London streets,\n    Crying \'Villiago!\' unto all they meet.\n    Better ten thousand base-born Cades miscarry\n    Than you should stoop unto a Frenchman\'s mercy.\n    To France, to France, and get what you have lost;\n    Spare England, for it is your native coast.\n    Henry hath money; you are strong and manly.\n    God on our side, doubt not of victory.\n  ALL. A Clifford! a Clifford! We\'ll follow the King and Clifford.\n  CADE. Was ever feather so lightly blown to and fro as this\n    multitude? The name of Henry the Fifth hales them to an hundred\n    mischiefs, and makes them leave me desolate. I see them lay their  \n    heads together to surprise me. My sword make way for me for here\n    is no staying. In despite of the devils and hell, have through\n    the very middest of you! and heavens and honour be witness that\n    no want of resolution in me, but only my followers\' base and\n    ignominious treasons, makes me betake me to my heels.\n Exit\n  BUCKINGHAM. What, is he fled? Go some, and follow him;\n    And he that brings his head unto the King\n    Shall have a thousand crowns for his reward.\n                                             Exeunt some of them\n    Follow me, soldiers; we\'ll devise a mean\n    To reconcile you all unto the King.                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IX.\nKilling, worth Castle\n\nSound trumpets. Enter KING, QUEEN, and SOMERSET, on the terrace\n\n  KING HENRY. Was ever king that joy\'d an earthly throne\n    And could command no more content than I?\n    No sooner was I crept out of my cradle\n    But I was made a king, at nine months old.\n    Was never subject long\'d to be a King\n    As I do long and wish to be a subject.\n\n               Enter BUCKINGHAM and old CLIFFORD\n\n  BUCKINGHAM. Health and glad tidings to your Majesty!\n  KING HENRY. Why, Buckingham, is the traitor Cade surpris\'d?\n    Or is he but retir\'d to make him strong?\n\n     Enter, below, multitudes, with halters about their necks\n\n  CLIFFORD. He is fled, my lord, and all his powers do yield,  \n    And humbly thus, with halters on their necks,\n    Expect your Highness\' doom of life or death.\n  KING HENRY. Then, heaven, set ope thy everlasting gates,\n    To entertain my vows of thanks and praise!\n    Soldiers, this day have you redeem\'d your lives,\n    And show\'d how well you love your Prince and country.\n    Continue still in this so good a mind,\n    And Henry, though he be infortunate,\n    Assure yourselves, will never be unkind.\n    And so, with thanks and pardon to you all,\n    I do dismiss you to your several countries.\n  ALL. God save the King! God save the King!\n\n                     Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. Please it your Grace to be advertised\n    The Duke of York is newly come from Ireland\n    And with a puissant and a mighty power\n    Of gallowglasses and stout kerns\n    Is marching hitherward in proud array,  \n    And still proclaimeth, as he comes along,\n    His arms are only to remove from thee\n    The Duke of Somerset, whom he terms a traitor.\n  KING HENRY. Thus stands my state, \'twixt Cade and York distress\'d;\n    Like to a ship that, having scap\'d a tempest,\n    Is straightway calm\'d, and boarded with a pirate;\n    But now is Cade driven back, his men dispers\'d,\n    And now is York in arms to second him.\n    I pray thee, Buckingham, go and meet him\n    And ask him what\'s the reason of these arms.\n    Tell him I\'ll send Duke Edmund to the Tower-\n    And Somerset, we will commit thee thither\n    Until his army be dismiss\'d from him.\n  SOMERSET. My lord,\n    I\'ll yield myself to prison willingly,\n    Or unto death, to do my country good.\n  KING HENRY. In any case be not too rough in terms,\n    For he is fierce and cannot brook hard language.\n  BUCKINGHAM. I will, my lord, and doubt not so to deal\n    As all things shall redound unto your good.  \n  KING HENRY. Come, wife, let\'s in, and learn to govern better;\n    For yet may England curse my wretched reign.\n                                                Flourish. Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE X.\nKent. Iden\'s garden\n\nEnter CADE\n\n  CADE. Fie on ambitions! Fie on myself, that have a sword and yet am\n    ready to famish! These five days have I hid me in these woods and\n    durst not peep out, for all the country is laid for me; but now\n    am I so hungry that, if I might have a lease of my life for a\n    thousand years, I could stay no longer. Wherefore, on a brick\n    wall have I climb\'d into this garden, to see if I can eat grass\n    or pick a sallet another while, which is not amiss to cool a\n    man\'s stomach this hot weather. And I think this word \'sallet\'\n    was born to do me good; for many a time, but for a sallet, my\n    brain-pain had been cleft with a brown bill; and many a time,\n    when I have been dry, and bravely marching, it hath serv\'d me\n    instead of a quart-pot to drink in; and now the word \'sallet\'\n    must serve me to feed on.\n\n                             Enter IDEN\n\n  IDEN. Lord, who would live turmoiled in the court  \n    And may enjoy such quiet walks as these?\n    This small inheritance my father left me\n    Contenteth me, and worth a monarchy.\n    I seek not to wax great by others\' waning\n    Or gather wealth I care not with what envy;\n    Sufficeth that I have maintains my state,\n    And sends the poor well pleased from my gate.\n  CADE. Here\'s the lord of the soil come to seize me for a stray, for\n    entering his fee-simple without leave. Ah, villain, thou wilt\n    betray me, and get a thousand crowns of the King by carrying my\n    head to him; but I\'ll make thee eat iron like an ostrich and\n    swallow my sword like a great pin ere thou and I part.\n  IDEN. Why, rude companion, whatsoe\'er thou be,\n    I know thee not; why then should I betray thee?\n    Is\'t not enough to break into my garden\n    And like a thief to come to rob my grounds,\n    Climbing my walls in spite of me the owner,\n    But thou wilt brave me with these saucy terms?\n  CADE. Brave thee? Ay, by the best blood that ever was broach\'d, and\n    beard thee too. Look on me well: I have eat no meat these five  \n    days, yet come thou and thy five men and if I do not leave you\n    all as dead as a door-nail, I pray God I may never eat grass\n    more.\n  IDEN. Nay, it shall ne\'er be said, while England stands,\n    That Alexander Iden, an esquire of Kent,\n    Took odds to combat a poor famish\'d man.\n    Oppose thy steadfast-gazing eyes to mine;\n    See if thou canst outface me with thy looks;\n    Set limb to limb, and thou art far the lesser;\n    Thy hand is but a finger to my fist,\n    Thy leg a stick compared with this truncheon;\n    My foot shall fight with all the strength thou hast,\n    And if mine arm be heaved in the air,\n    Thy grave is digg\'d already in the earth.\n    As for words, whose greatness answers words,\n    Let this my sword report what speech forbears.\n  CADE. By my valour, the most complete champion that ever I heard!\n    Steel, if thou turn the edge, or cut not out the burly bon\'d\n    clown in chines of beef ere thou sleep in thy sheath, I beseech\n    God on my knees thou mayst be turn\'d to hobnails. [Here they  \n    fight; CADE falls] O, I am slain! famine and no other hath slain\n    me. Let ten thousand devils come against me, and give me but the\n    ten meals I have lost, and I\'d defy them all. Wither, garden, and\n    be henceforth a burying place to all that do dwell in this house,\n    because the unconquered soul of Cade is fled.\n  IDEN. Is\'t Cade that I have slain, that monstrous traitor?\n    Sword, I will hallow thee for this thy deed\n    And hang thee o\'er my tomb when I am dead.\n    Ne\'er shall this blood be wiped from thy point,\n    But thou shalt wear it as a herald\'s coat\n    To emblaze the honour that thy master got.\n  CADE. Iden, farewell; and be proud of thy victory. Tell Kent from\n    me she hath lost her best man, and exhort all the world to be\n    cowards; for I, that never feared any, am vanquished by famine,\n    not by valour.                                        [Dies]\n  IDEN. How much thou wrong\'st me, heaven be my judge.\n    Die, damned wretch, the curse of her that bare thee!\n    And as I thrust thy body in with my sword,\n    So wish I, I might thrust thy soul to hell.\n    Hence will I drag thee headlong by the heels  \n    Unto a dunghill, which shall be thy grave,\n    And there cut off thy most ungracious head,\n    Which I will bear in triumph to the King,\n    Leaving thy trunk for crows to feed upon.               Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nFields between Dartford and Blackheath\n\nEnter YORK, and his army of Irish, with drum and colours\n\n  YORK. From Ireland thus comes York to claim his right\n    And pluck the crown from feeble Henry\'s head:\n    Ring bells aloud, burn bonfires clear and bright,\n    To entertain great England\'s lawful king.\n    Ah, sancta majestas! who would not buy thee dear?\n    Let them obey that knows not how to rule;\n    This hand was made to handle nought but gold.\n    I cannot give due action to my words\n    Except a sword or sceptre balance it.\n    A sceptre shall it have, have I a soul\n    On which I\'ll toss the flower-de-luce of France.\n\n                         Enter BUCKINGHAM\n\n    [Aside] Whom have we here? Buckingham, to disturb me?\n    The King hath sent him, sure: I must dissemble.\n  BUCKINGHAM. York, if thou meanest well I greet thee well.  \n  YORK. Humphrey of Buckingham, I accept thy greeting.\n    Art thou a messenger, or come of pleasure?\n  BUCKINGHAM. A messenger from Henry, our dread liege,\n    To know the reason of these arms in peace;\n    Or why thou, being a subject as I am,\n    Against thy oath and true allegiance sworn,\n    Should raise so great a power without his leave,\n    Or dare to bring thy force so near the court.\n  YORK. [Aside] Scarce can I speak, my choler is so great.\n    O, I could hew up rocks and fight with flint,\n    I am so angry at these abject terms;\n    And now, like Ajax Telamonius,\n    On sheep or oxen could I spend my fury.\n    I am far better born than is the King,\n    More like a king, more kingly in my thoughts;\n    But I must make fair weather yet awhile,\n    Till Henry be more weak and I more strong.-\n    Buckingham, I prithee, pardon me\n    That I have given no answer all this while;\n    My mind was troubled with deep melancholy.  \n    The cause why I have brought this army hither\n    Is to remove proud Somerset from the King,\n    Seditious to his Grace and to the state.\n  BUCKINGHAM. That is too much presumption on thy part;\n    But if thy arms be to no other end,\n    The King hath yielded unto thy demand:\n    The Duke of Somerset is in the Tower.\n  YORK. Upon thine honour, is he prisoner?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Upon mine honour, he is prisoner.\n  YORK. Then, Buckingham, I do dismiss my pow\'rs.\n    Soldiers, I thank you all; disperse yourselves;\n    Meet me to-morrow in Saint George\'s field,\n    You shall have pay and everything you wish.\n    And let my sovereign, virtuous Henry,\n    Command my eldest son, nay, all my sons,\n    As pledges of my fealty and love.\n    I\'ll send them all as willing as I live:\n    Lands, goods, horse, armour, anything I have,\n    Is his to use, so Somerset may die.\n  BUCKINGHAM. York, I commend this kind submission.  \n    We twain will go into his Highness\' tent.\n\n                  Enter the KING, and attendants\n\n  KING HENRY. Buckingham, doth York intend no harm to us,\n    That thus he marcheth with thee arm in arm?\n  YORK. In all submission and humility\n    York doth present himself unto your Highness.\n  KING HENRY. Then what intends these forces thou dost bring?\n  YORK. To heave the traitor Somerset from hence,\n    And fight against that monstrous rebel Cade,\n    Who since I heard to be discomfited.\n\n                    Enter IDEN, with CADE\'s head\n\n  IDEN. If one so rude and of so mean condition\n    May pass into the presence of a king,\n    Lo, I present your Grace a traitor\'s head,\n    The head of Cade, whom I in combat slew.\n  KING HENRY. The head of Cade! Great God, how just art Thou!  \n    O, let me view his visage, being dead,\n    That living wrought me such exceeding trouble.\n    Tell me, my friend, art thou the man that slew him?\n  IDEN. I was, an\'t like your Majesty.\n  KING HENRY. How art thou call\'d? And what is thy degree?\n  IDEN. Alexander Iden, that\'s my name;\n    A poor esquire of Kent that loves his king.\n  BUCKINGHAM. So please it you, my lord, \'twere not amiss\n    He were created knight for his good service.\n  KING HENRY. Iden, kneel down. [He kneels] Rise up a knight.\n    We give thee for reward a thousand marks,\n    And will that thou thenceforth attend on us.\n  IDEN. May Iden live to merit such a bounty,\n    And never live but true unto his liege!\n\n                    Enter the QUEEN and SOMERSET\n\n  KING HENRY. See, Buckingham! Somerset comes with th\' Queen:\n    Go, bid her hide him quickly from the Duke.\n  QUEEN. For thousand Yorks he shall not hide his head,  \n    But boldly stand and front him to his face.\n  YORK. How now! Is Somerset at liberty?\n    Then, York, unloose thy long-imprisoned thoughts\n    And let thy tongue be equal with thy heart.\n    Shall I endure the sight of Somerset?\n    False king, why hast thou broken faith with me,\n    Knowing how hardly I can brook abuse?\n    King did I call thee? No, thou art not king;\n    Not fit to govern and rule multitudes,\n    Which dar\'st not, no, nor canst not rule a traitor.\n    That head of thine doth not become a crown;\n    Thy hand is made to grasp a palmer\'s staff,\n    And not to grace an awful princely sceptre.\n    That gold must round engirt these brows of mine,\n    Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles\' spear,\n    Is able with the change to kill and cure.\n    Here is a hand to hold a sceptre up,\n    And with the same to act controlling laws.\n    Give place. By heaven, thou shalt rule no more\n    O\'er him whom heaven created for thy ruler.  \n  SOMERSET. O monstrous traitor! I arrest thee, York,\n    Of capital treason \'gainst the King and crown.\n    Obey, audacious traitor; kneel for grace.\n  YORK. Wouldst have me kneel? First let me ask of these,\n    If they can brook I bow a knee to man.\n    Sirrah, call in my sons to be my bail:        Exit attendant\n    I know, ere thy will have me go to ward,\n    They\'ll pawn their swords for my enfranchisement.\n  QUEEN. Call hither Clifford; bid him come amain,\n    To say if that the bastard boys of York\n    Shall be the surety for their traitor father.\n                                                 Exit BUCKINGHAM\n  YORK. O blood-bespotted Neapolitan,\n    Outcast of Naples, England\'s bloody scourge!\n    The sons of York, thy betters in their birth,\n    Shall be their father\'s bail; and bane to those\n    That for my surety will refuse the boys!\n\n               Enter EDWARD and RICHARD PLANTAGENET\n  \n    See where they come: I\'ll warrant they\'ll make it good.\n\n                     Enter CLIFFORD and his SON\n\n  QUEEN. And here comes Clifford to deny their bail.\n  CLIFFORD. Health and all happiness to my lord the King!\n                                                        [Kneels]\n  YORK. I thank thee, Clifford. Say, what news with thee?\n    Nay, do not fright us with an angry look.\n    We are thy sovereign, Clifford, kneel again;\n    For thy mistaking so, we pardon thee.\n  CLIFFORD. This is my King, York, I do not mistake;\n    But thou mistakes me much to think I do.\n    To Bedlam with him! Is the man grown mad?\n  KING HENRY. Ay, Clifford; a bedlam and ambitious humour\n    Makes him oppose himself against his king.\n  CLIFFORD. He is a traitor; let him to the Tower,\n    And chop away that factious pate of his.\n  QUEEN. He is arrested, but will not obey;\n    His sons, he says, shall give their words for him.  \n  YORK. Will you not, sons?\n  EDWARD. Ay, noble father, if our words will serve.\n  RICHARD. And if words will not, then our weapons shall.\n  CLIFFORD. Why, what a brood of traitors have we here!\n  YORK. Look in a glass, and call thy image so:\n    I am thy king, and thou a false-heart traitor.\n    Call hither to the stake my two brave bears,\n    That with the very shaking of their chains\n    They may astonish these fell-lurking curs.\n    Bid Salisbury and Warwick come to me.\n\n               Enter the EARLS OF WARWICK and SALISBURY\n\n  CLIFFORD. Are these thy bears? We\'ll bait thy bears to death,\n    And manacle the berard in their chains,\n    If thou dar\'st bring them to the baiting-place.\n  RICHARD. Oft have I seen a hot o\'er weening cur\n    Run back and bite, because he was withheld;\n    Who, being suffer\'d, with the bear\'s fell paw,\n    Hath clapp\'d his tail between his legs and cried;  \n    And such a piece of service will you do,\n    If you oppose yourselves to match Lord Warwick.\n  CLIFFORD. Hence, heap of wrath, foul indigested lump,\n    As crooked in thy manners as thy shape!\n  YORK. Nay, we shall heat you thoroughly anon.\n  CLIFFORD. Take heed, lest by your heat you burn yourselves.\n  KING HENRY. Why, Warwick, hath thy knee forgot to bow?\n    Old Salisbury, shame to thy silver hair,\n    Thou mad misleader of thy brainsick son!\n    What, wilt thou on thy death-bed play the ruffian\n    And seek for sorrow with thy spectacles?\n    O, where is faith? O, where is loyalty?\n    If it be banish\'d from the frosty head,\n    Where shall it find a harbour in the earth?\n    Wilt thou go dig a grave to find out war\n    And shame thine honourable age with blood?\n    Why art thou old, and want\'st experience?\n    Or wherefore dost abuse it, if thou hast it?\n    For shame! In duty bend thy knee to me,\n    That bows unto the grave with mickle age.  \n  SALISBURY. My lord, I have considered with myself\n    The tide of this most renowned duke,\n    And in my conscience do repute his Grace\n    The rightful heir to England\'s royal seat.\n  KING HENRY. Hast thou not sworn allegiance unto me?\n  SALISBURY. I have.\n  KING HENRY. Canst thou dispense with heaven for such an oath?\n  SALISBURY. It is great sin to swear unto a sin;\n    But greater sin to keep a sinful oath.\n    Who can be bound by any solemn vow\n    To do a murd\'rous deed, to rob a man,\n    To force a spotless virgin\'s chastity,\n    To reave the orphan of his patrimony,\n    To wring the widow from her custom\'d right,\n    And have no other reason for this wrong\n    But that he was bound by a solemn oath?\n  QUEEN. A subtle traitor needs no sophister.\n  KING HENRY. Call Buckingham, and bid him arm himself.\n  YORK. Call Buckingham, and all the friends thou hast,\n    I am resolv\'d for death or dignity.  \n  CLIFFORD. The first I warrant thee, if dreams prove true.\n  WARWICK. You were best to go to bed and dream again\n    To keep thee from the tempest of the field.\n  CLIFFORD. I am resolv\'d to bear a greater storm\n    Than any thou canst conjure up to-day;\n    And that I\'ll write upon thy burgonet,\n    Might I but know thee by thy household badge.\n  WARWICK. Now, by my father\'s badge, old Nevil\'s crest,\n    The rampant bear chain\'d to the ragged staff,\n    This day I\'ll wear aloft my burgonet,\n    As on a mountain-top the cedar shows,\n    That keeps his leaves in spite of any storm,\n    Even to affright thee with the view thereof.\n  CLIFFORD. And from thy burgonet I\'ll rend thy bear\n    And tread it under foot with all contempt,\n    Despite the berard that protects the bear.\n  YOUNG CLIFFORD. And so to arms, victorious father,\n    To quell the rebels and their complices.\n  RICHARD. Fie! charity, for shame! Speak not in spite,\n    For you shall sup with Jesu Christ to-night.  \n  YOUNG CLIFFORD. Foul stigmatic, that\'s more than thou canst tell.\n  RICHARD. If not in heaven, you\'ll surely sup in hell.\n                                                Exeunt severally\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nSaint Albans\n\nAlarums to the battle. Enter WARWICK\n\n  WARWICK. Clifford of Cumberland, \'tis Warwick calls;\n    And if thou dost not hide thee from the bear,\n    Now, when the angry trumpet sounds alarum\n    And dead men\'s cries do fill the empty air,\n    Clifford, I say, come forth and fight with me.\n    Proud northern lord, Clifford of Cumberland,\n  WARWICK is hoarse with calling thee to arms.\n\n                          Enter YORK\n\n    How now, my noble lord! what, all a-foot?\n  YORK. The deadly-handed Clifford slew my steed;\n    But match to match I have encount\'red him,\n    And made a prey for carrion kites and crows\n    Even of the bonny beast he lov\'d so well.\n\n                      Enter OLD CLIFFORD  \n\n  WARWICK. Of one or both of us the time is come.\n  YORK. Hold, Warwick, seek thee out some other chase,\n    For I myself must hunt this deer to death.\n  WARWICK. Then, nobly, York; \'tis for a crown thou fight\'st.\n    As I intend, Clifford, to thrive to-day,\n    It grieves my soul to leave thee unassail\'d.            Exit\n  CLIFFORD. What seest thou in me, York? Why dost thou pause?\n  YORK. With thy brave bearing should I be in love\n    But that thou art so fast mine enemy.\n  CLIFFORD. Nor should thy prowess want praise and esteem\n    But that \'tis shown ignobly and in treason.\n  YORK. So let it help me now against thy sword,\n    As I in justice and true right express it!\n  CLIFFORD. My soul and body on the action both!\n  YORK. A dreadful lay! Address thee instantly.\n                                 [They fight and CLIFFORD falls]\n  CLIFFORD. La fin couronne les oeuvres.                  [Dies]\n  YORK. Thus war hath given thee peace, for thou art still.\n    Peace with his soul, heaven, if it be thy will!         Exit  \n\n                     Enter YOUNG CLIFFORD\n\n  YOUNG CLIFFORD. Shame and confusion! All is on the rout;\n    Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds\n    Where it should guard. O war, thou son of hell,\n    Whom angry heavens do make their minister,\n    Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part\n    Hot coals of vengeance! Let no soldier fly.\n    He that is truly dedicate to war\n    Hath no self-love; nor he that loves himself\n    Hath not essentially, but by circumstance,\n    The name of valour.                 [Sees his father\'s body]\n    O, let the vile world end\n    And the premised flames of the last day\n    Knit earth and heaven together!\n    Now let the general trumpet blow his blast,\n    Particularities and petty sounds\n    To cease! Wast thou ordain\'d, dear father,\n    To lose thy youth in peace and to achieve  \n    The silver livery of advised age,\n    And in thy reverence and thy chair-days thus\n    To die in ruffian battle? Even at this sight\n    My heart is turn\'d to stone; and while \'tis mine\n    It shall be stony. York not our old men spares;\n    No more will I their babes. Tears virginal\n    Shall be to me even as the dew to fire;\n    And beauty, that the tyrant oft reclaims,\n    Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax.\n    Henceforth I will not have to do with pity:\n    Meet I an infant of the house of York,\n    Into as many gobbets will I cut it\n    As wild Medea young Absyrtus did;\n    In cruelty will I seek out my fame.\n    Come, thou new ruin of old Clifford\'s house;\n    As did Aeneas old Anchises bear,\n    So bear I thee upon my manly shoulders;\n    But then Aeneas bare a living load,\n    Nothing so heavy as these woes of mine.\n                                              Exit with the body  \n\n       Enter RICHARD and SOMERSET to fight. SOMERSET is killed\n\n  RICHARD. So, lie thou there;\n    For underneath an alehouse\' paltry sign,\n    The Castle in Saint Albans, Somerset\n    Hath made the wizard famous in his death.\n    Sword, hold thy temper; heart, be wrathful still:\n    Priests pray for enemies, but princes kill.             Exit\n\n        Fight. Excursions. Enter KING, QUEEN, and others\n\n  QUEEN. Away, my lord! You are slow; for shame, away!\n  KING HENRY. Can we outrun the heavens? Good Margaret, stay.\n  QUEEN. What are you made of? You\'ll nor fight nor fly.\n    Now is it manhood, wisdom, and defence,\n    To give the enemy way, and to secure us\n    By what we can, which can no more but fly.\n                                               [Alarum afar off]\n    If you be ta\'en, we then should see the bottom  \n    Of all our fortunes; but if we haply scape-\n    As well we may, if not through your neglect-\n    We shall to London get, where you are lov\'d,\n    And where this breach now in our fortunes made\n    May readily be stopp\'d.\n\n                     Re-enter YOUNG CLIFFORD\n\n  YOUNG CLIFFORD. But that my heart\'s on future mischief set,\n    I would speak blasphemy ere bid you fly;\n    But fly you must; uncurable discomfit\n    Reigns in the hearts of all our present parts.\n    Away, for your relief! and we will live\n    To see their day and them our fortune give.\n    Away, my lord, away!                                  Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nFields near Saint Albans\n\nAlarum. Retreat. Enter YORK, RICHARD, WARWICK, and soldiers,\nwith drum and colours\n\n  YORK. Of Salisbury, who can report of him,\n    That winter lion, who in rage forgets\n    Aged contusions and all brush of time\n    And, like a gallant in the brow of youth,\n    Repairs him with occasion? This happy day\n    Is not itself, nor have we won one foot,\n    If Salisbury be lost.\n  RICHARD. My noble father,\n    Three times to-day I holp him to his horse,\n    Three times bestrid him, thrice I led him off,\n    Persuaded him from any further act;\n    But still where danger was, still there I met him;\n    And like rich hangings in a homely house,\n    So was his will in his old feeble body.\n    But, noble as he is, look where he comes.\n  \n                         Enter SALISBURY\n\n  SALISBURY. Now, by my sword, well hast thou fought to-day!\n    By th\' mass, so did we all. I thank you, Richard:\n    God knows how long it is I have to live,\n    And it hath pleas\'d Him that three times to-day\n    You have defended me from imminent death.\n    Well, lords, we have not got that which we have;\n    \'Tis not enough our foes are this time fled,\n    Being opposites of such repairing nature.\n  YORK. I know our safety is to follow them;\n    For, as I hear, the King is fled to London\n    To call a present court of Parliament.\n    Let us pursue him ere the writs go forth.\n    What says Lord Warwick? Shall we after them?\n  WARWICK. After them? Nay, before them, if we can.\n    Now, by my faith, lords, \'twas a glorious day:\n    Saint Albans\' battle, won by famous York,\n    Shall be eterniz\'d in all age to come.\n    Sound drum and trumpets and to London all;  \n    And more such days as these to us befall!             Exeunt\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1591\n\nTHE THIRD PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\n  KING HENRY THE SIXTH\n  EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES, his son\n  LEWIS XI, King of France           DUKE OF SOMERSET\n  DUKE OF EXETER                     EARL OF OXFORD\n  EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND             EARL OF WESTMORELAND\n  LORD CLIFFORD\n  RICHARD PLANTAGENET, DUKE OF YORK\n  EDWARD, EARL OF MARCH, afterwards KING EDWARD IV, his son\n  EDMUND, EARL OF RUTLAND, his son\n  GEORGE, afterwards DUKE OF CLARENCE, his son\n  RICHARD, afterwards DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, his son\n  DUKE OF NORFOLK                    MARQUIS OF MONTAGUE\n  EARL OF WARWICK                    EARL OF PEMBROKE\n  LORD HASTINGS                      LORD STAFFORD\n  SIR JOHN MORTIMER, uncle to the Duke of York\n  SIR HUGH MORTIMER, uncle to the Duke of York\n  HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND, a youth\n  LORD RIVERS, brother to Lady Grey\n  SIR WILLIAM STANLEY                SIR JOHN MONTGOMERY\n  SIR JOHN SOMERVILLE                TUTOR, to Rutland  \n  MAYOR OF YORK                      LIEUTENANT OF THE TOWER\n  A NOBLEMAN                         TWO KEEPERS\n  A HUNTSMAN\n  A SON that has killed his father\n  A FATHER that has killed his son\n\n  QUEEN MARGARET\n  LADY GREY, afterwards QUEEN to Edward IV\n  BONA, sister to the French Queen\n\n  Soldiers, Attendants, Messengers, Watchmen, etc.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nEngland and France\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nLondon. The Parliament House\n\nAlarum. Enter DUKE OF YORK, EDWARD, RICHARD, NORFOLK, MONTAGUE, WARWICK,\nand soldiers, with white roses in their hats\n\n  WARWICK. I wonder how the King escap\'d our hands.\n  YORK. While we pursu\'d the horsemen of the north,\n    He slily stole away and left his men;\n    Whereat the great Lord of Northumberland,\n    Whose warlike ears could never brook retreat,\n    Cheer\'d up the drooping army, and himself,\n    Lord Clifford, and Lord Stafford, all abreast,\n    Charg\'d our main battle\'s front, and, breaking in,\n    Were by the swords of common soldiers slain.\n  EDWARD. Lord Stafford\'s father, Duke of Buckingham,\n    Is either slain or wounded dangerous;\n    I cleft his beaver with a downright blow.\n    That this is true, father, behold his blood.\n  MONTAGUE. And, brother, here\'s the Earl of Wiltshire\'s blood,\n    Whom I encount\'red as the battles join\'d.  \n  RICHARD. Speak thou for me, and tell them what I did.\n                                 [Throwing down SOMERSET\'S head]\n  YORK. Richard hath best deserv\'d of all my sons.\n    But is your Grace dead, my Lord of Somerset?\n  NORFOLK. Such hope have all the line of John of Gaunt!\n  RICHARD. Thus do I hope to shake King Henry\'s head.\n  WARWICK. And so do I. Victorious Prince of York,\n    Before I see thee seated in that throne\n    Which now the house of Lancaster usurps,\n    I vow by heaven these eyes shall never close.\n    This is the palace of the fearful King,\n    And this the regal seat. Possess it, York;\n    For this is thine, and not King Henry\'s heirs\'.\n  YORK. Assist me then, sweet Warwick, and I will;\n    For hither we have broken in by force.\n  NORFOLK. We\'ll all assist you; he that flies shall die.\n  YORK. Thanks, gentle Norfolk. Stay by me, my lords;\n    And, soldiers, stay and lodge by me this night.\n                                                    [They go up]\n  WARWICK. And when the King comes, offer him no violence.  \n    Unless he seek to thrust you out perforce.\n  YORK. The Queen this day here holds her parliament,\n    But little thinks we shall be of her council.\n    By words or blows here let us win our right.\n  RICHARD. Arm\'d as we are, let\'s stay within this house.\n  WARWICK. The bloody parliament shall this be call\'d,\n    Unless Plantagenet, Duke of York, be King,\n    And bashful Henry depos\'d, whose cowardice\n    Hath made us by-words to our enemies.\n  YORK. Then leave me not, my lords; be resolute:\n    I mean to take possession of my right.\n  WARWICK. Neither the King, nor he that loves him best,\n    The proudest he that holds up Lancaster,\n    Dares stir a wing if Warwick shake his bells.\n    I\'ll plant Plantagenet, root him up who dares.\n    Resolve thee, Richard; claim the English crown.\n                                      [YORK occupies the throne]\n\n       Flourish. Enter KING HENRY, CLIFFORD, NORTHUMBERLAND,\n        WESTMORELAND, EXETER, and others, with red roses in  \n                            their hats\n\n  KING HENRY. My lords, look where the sturdy rebel sits,\n    Even in the chair of state! Belike he means,\n    Back\'d by the power of Warwick, that false peer,\n    To aspire unto the crown and reign as king.\n    Earl of Northumberland, he slew thy father;\n    And thine, Lord Clifford; and you both have vow\'d revenge\n    On him, his sons, his favourites, and his friends.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. If I be not, heavens be reveng\'d on me!\n  CLIFFORD. The hope thereof makes Clifford mourn in steel.\n  WESTMORELAND. What, shall we suffer this? Let\'s pluck him down;\n    My heart for anger burns; I cannot brook it.\n  KING HENRY. Be patient, gentle Earl of Westmoreland.\n  CLIFFORD. Patience is for poltroons such as he;\n    He durst not sit there had your father liv\'d.\n    My gracious lord, here in the parliament\n    Let us assail the family of York.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Well hast thou spoken, cousin; be it so.\n  KING HENRY. Ah, know you not the city favours them,  \n    And they have troops of soldiers at their beck?\n  EXETER. But when the Duke is slain they\'ll quickly fly.\n  KING HENRY. Far be the thought of this from Henry\'s heart,\n    To make a shambles of the parliament house!\n    Cousin of Exeter, frowns, words, and threats,\n    Shall be the war that Henry means to use.\n    Thou factious Duke of York, descend my throne\n    And kneel for grace and mercy at my feet;\n    I am thy sovereign.\n  YORK. I am thine.\n  EXETER. For shame, come down; he made thee Duke of York.\n  YORK. \'Twas my inheritance, as the earldom was.\n  EXETER. Thy father was a traitor to the crown.\n  WARWICK. Exeter, thou art a traitor to the crown\n    In following this usurping Henry.\n  CLIFFORD. Whom should he follow but his natural king?\n  WARWICK. True, Clifford; and that\'s Richard Duke of York.\n  KING HENRY. And shall I stand, and thou sit in my throne?\n  YORK. It must and shall be so; content thyself.\n  WARWICK. Be Duke of Lancaster; let him be King.  \n  WESTMORELAND. He is both King and Duke of Lancaster;\n    And that the Lord of Westmoreland shall maintain.\n  WARWICK. And Warwick shall disprove it. You forget\n    That we are those which chas\'d you from the field,\n    And slew your fathers, and with colours spread\n    March\'d through the city to the palace gates.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Yes, Warwick, I remember it to my grief;\n    And, by his soul, thou and thy house shall rue it.\n  WESTMORELAND. Plantagenet, of thee, and these thy sons,\n    Thy kinsmen, and thy friends, I\'ll have more lives\n    Than drops of blood were in my father\'s veins.\n  CLIFFORD. Urge it no more; lest that instead of words\n    I send thee, Warwick, such a messenger\n    As shall revenge his death before I stir.\n  WARWICK. Poor Clifford, how I scorn his worthless threats!\n  YORK. Will you we show our title to the crown?\n    If not, our swords shall plead it in the field.\n  KING HENRY. What title hast thou, traitor, to the crown?\n    Thy father was, as thou art, Duke of York;\n    Thy grandfather, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March:  \n    I am the son of Henry the Fifth,\n    Who made the Dauphin and the French to stoop,\n    And seiz\'d upon their towns and provinces.\n  WARWICK. Talk not of France, sith thou hast lost it all.\n  KING HENRY. The Lord Protector lost it, and not I:\n    When I was crown\'d, I was but nine months old.\n  RICHARD. You are old enough now, and yet methinks you lose.\n    Father, tear the crown from the usurper\'s head.\n  EDWARD. Sweet father, do so; set it on your head.\n  MONTAGUE. Good brother, as thou lov\'st and honourest arms,\n    Let\'s fight it out and not stand cavilling thus.\n  RICHARD. Sound drums and trumpets, and the King will fly.\n  YORK. Sons, peace!\n  KING HENRY. Peace thou! and give King Henry leave to speak.\n  WARWICK. Plantagenet shall speak first. Hear him, lords;\n    And be you silent and attentive too,\n    For he that interrupts him shall not live.\n  KING HENRY. Think\'st thou that I will leave my kingly throne,\n    Wherein my grandsire and my father sat?\n    No; first shall war unpeople this my realm;  \n    Ay, and their colours, often borne in France,\n    And now in England to our heart\'s great sorrow,\n    Shall be my winding-sheet. Why faint you, lords?\n    My title\'s good, and better far than his.\n  WARWICK. Prove it, Henry, and thou shalt be King.\n  KING HENRY. Henry the Fourth by conquest got the crown.\n  YORK. \'Twas by rebellion against his king.\n  KING HENRY. [Aside] I know not what to say; my title\'s weak.-\n    Tell me, may not a king adopt an heir?\n  YORK. What then?\n  KING HENRY. An if he may, then am I lawful King;\n    For Richard, in the view of many lords,\n    Resign\'d the crown to Henry the Fourth,\n    Whose heir my father was, and I am his.\n  YORK. He rose against him, being his sovereign,\n    And made him to resign his crown perforce.\n  WARWICK. Suppose, my lords, he did it unconstrain\'d,\n    Think you \'twere prejudicial to his crown?\n  EXETER. No; for he could not so resign his crown\n    But that the next heir should succeed and reign.  \n  KING HENRY. Art thou against us, Duke of Exeter?\n  EXETER. His is the right, and therefore pardon me.\n  YORK. Why whisper you, my lords, and answer not?\n  EXETER. My conscience tells me he is lawful King.\n  KING HENRY. [Aside] All will revolt from me, and turn to him.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Plantagenet, for all the claim thou lay\'st,\n    Think not that Henry shall be so depos\'d.\n  WARWICK. Depos\'d he shall be, in despite of all.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Thou art deceiv\'d. \'Tis not thy southern power\n    Of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, nor of Kent,\n    Which makes thee thus presumptuous and proud,\n    Can set the Duke up in despite of me.\n  CLIFFORD. King Henry, be thy title right or wrong,\n    Lord Clifford vows to fight in thy defence.\n    May that ground gape, and swallow me alive,\n    Where I shall kneel to him that slew my father!\n  KING HENRY. O Clifford, how thy words revive my heart!\n  YORK. Henry of Lancaster, resign thy crown.\n    What mutter you, or what conspire you, lords?\n  WARWICK. Do right unto this princely Duke of York;  \n    Or I will fill the house with armed men,\n    And over the chair of state, where now he sits,\n    Write up his title with usurping blood.\n                                [He stamps with his foot and the\n                                       soldiers show themselves]\n  KING HENRY. My Lord of Warwick, hear but one word:\n    Let me for this my life-time reign as king.\n  YORK. Confirm the crown to me and to mine heirs,\n    And thou shalt reign in quiet while thou liv\'st.\n  KING HENRY. I am content. Richard Plantagenet,\n    Enjoy the kingdom after my decease.\n  CLIFFORD. What wrong is this unto the Prince your son!\n  WARWICK. What good is this to England and himself!\n  WESTMORELAND. Base, fearful, and despairing Henry!\n  CLIFFORD. How hast thou injur\'d both thyself and or us!\n  WESTMORELAND. I cannot stay to hear these articles.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Nor I.\n  CLIFFORD. Come, cousin, let us tell the Queen these news.\n  WESTMORELAND. Farewell, faint-hearted and degenerate king,\n    In whose cold blood no spark of honour bides.  \n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Be thou a prey unto the house of York\n    And die in bands for this unmanly deed!\n  CLIFFORD. In dreadful war mayst thou be overcome,\n    Or live in peace abandon\'d and despis\'d!\n                                Exeunt NORTHUMBERLAND, CLIFFORD,\n                                                and WESTMORELAND\n  WARWICK. Turn this way, Henry, and regard them not.\n  EXETER. They seek revenge, and therefore will not yield.\n  KING HENRY. Ah, Exeter!\n  WARWICK. Why should you sigh, my lord?\n  KING HENRY. Not for myself, Lord Warwick, but my son,\n    Whom I unnaturally shall disinherit.\n    But be it as it may. [To YORK] I here entail\n    The crown to thee and to thine heirs for ever;\n    Conditionally, that here thou take an oath\n    To cease this civil war, and, whilst I live,\n    To honour me as thy king and sovereign,\n    And neither by treason nor hostility\n    To seek to put me down and reign thyself.\n  YORK. This oath I willingly take, and will perform.  \n                                        [Coming from the throne]\n  WARWICK. Long live King Henry! Plantagenet, embrace him.\n  KING HENRY. And long live thou, and these thy forward sons!\n  YORK. Now York and Lancaster are reconcil\'d.\n  EXETER. Accurs\'d be he that seeks to make them foes!\n                                   [Sennet. Here they come down]\n  YORK. Farewell, my gracious lord; I\'ll to my castle.\n  WARWICK. And I\'ll keep London with my soldiers.\n  NORFOLK. And I to Norfolk with my followers.\n  MONTAGUE. And I unto the sea, from whence I came.\n                                             Exeunt the YORKISTS\n  KING HENRY. And I, with grief and sorrow, to the court.\n\n            Enter QUEEN MARGARET and the PRINCE OF WALES\n\n  EXETER. Here comes the Queen, whose looks bewray her anger.\n    I\'ll steal away.\n  KING HENRY. Exeter, so will I.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Nay, go not from me; I will follow thee.\n  KING HENRY. Be patient, gentle queen, and I will stay.  \n  QUEEN MARGARET. Who can be patient in such extremes?\n    Ah, wretched man! Would I had died a maid,\n    And never seen thee, never borne thee son,\n    Seeing thou hast prov\'d so unnatural a father!\n    Hath he deserv\'d to lose his birthright thus?\n    Hadst thou but lov\'d him half so well as I,\n    Or felt that pain which I did for him once,\n    Or nourish\'d him as I did with my blood,\n    Thou wouldst have left thy dearest heart-blood there\n    Rather than have made that savage duke thine heir,\n    And disinherited thine only son.\n  PRINCE OF WALES. Father, you cannot disinherit me.\n    If you be King, why should not I succeed?\n  KING HENRY. Pardon me, Margaret; pardon me, sweet son.\n    The Earl of Warwick and the Duke enforc\'d me.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Enforc\'d thee! Art thou King and wilt be\n      forc\'d?\n    I shame to hear thee speak. Ah, timorous wretch!\n    Thou hast undone thyself, thy son, and me;\n    And giv\'n unto the house of York such head  \n    As thou shalt reign but by their sufferance.\n    To entail him and his heirs unto the crown,\n    What is it but to make thy sepulchre\n    And creep into it far before thy time?\n    Warwick is Chancellor and the lord of Calais;\n    Stern Falconbridge commands the narrow seas;\n    The Duke is made Protector of the realm;\n    And yet shalt thou be safe? Such safety finds\n    The trembling lamb environed with wolves.\n    Had I been there, which am a silly woman,\n    The soldiers should have toss\'d me on their pikes\n    Before I would have granted to that act.\n    But thou prefer\'st thy life before thine honour;\n    And seeing thou dost, I here divorce myself,\n    Both from thy table, Henry, and thy bed,\n    Until that act of parliament be repeal\'d\n    Whereby my son is disinherited.\n    The northern lords that have forsworn thy colours\n    Will follow mine, if once they see them spread;\n    And spread they shall be, to thy foul disgrace  \n    And utter ruin of the house of York.\n    Thus do I leave thee. Come, son, let\'s away;\n    Our army is ready; come, we\'ll after them.\n  KING HENRY. Stay, gentle Margaret, and hear me speak.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Thou hast spoke too much already; get thee gone.\n  KING HENRY. Gentle son Edward, thou wilt stay with me?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, to be murder\'d by his enemies.\n  PRINCE OF WALES. When I return with victory from the field\n    I\'ll see your Grace; till then I\'ll follow her.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Come, son, away; we may not linger thus.\n                            Exeunt QUEEN MARGARET and the PRINCE\n  KING HENRY. Poor queen! How love to me and to her son\n    Hath made her break out into terms of rage!\n    Reveng\'d may she be on that hateful Duke,\n    Whose haughty spirit, winged with desire,\n    Will cost my crown, and like an empty eagle\n    Tire on the flesh of me and of my son!\n    The loss of those three lords torments my heart.\n    I\'ll write unto them, and entreat them fair;\n    Come, cousin, you shall be the messenger.  \n  EXETER. And I, I hope, shall reconcile them all.        Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nSandal Castle, near Wakefield, in Yorkshire\n\nFlourish. Enter EDWARD, RICHARD, and MONTAGUE\n\n  RICHARD. Brother, though I be youngest, give me leave.\n  EDWARD. No, I can better play the orator.\n  MONTAGUE. But I have reasons strong and forcible.\n\n                     Enter the DUKE OF YORK\n\n  YORK. Why, how now, sons and brother! at a strife?\n    What is your quarrel? How began it first?\n  EDWARD. No quarrel, but a slight contention.\n  YORK. About what?\n  RICHARD. About that which concerns your Grace and us-\n    The crown of England, father, which is yours.\n  YORK. Mine, boy? Not till King Henry be dead.\n  RICHARD. Your right depends not on his life or death.\n  EDWARD. Now you are heir, therefore enjoy it now.\n    By giving the house of Lancaster leave to breathe,\n    It will outrun you, father, in the end.  \n  YORK. I took an oath that he should quietly reign.\n  EDWARD. But for a kingdom any oath may be broken:\n    I would break a thousand oaths to reign one year.\n  RICHARD. No; God forbid your Grace should be forsworn.\n  YORK. I shall be, if I claim by open war.\n  RICHARD. I\'ll prove the contrary, if you\'ll hear me speak.\n  YORK. Thou canst not, son; it is impossible.\n  RICHARD. An oath is of no moment, being not took\n    Before a true and lawful magistrate\n    That hath authority over him that swears.\n    Henry had none, but did usurp the place;\n    Then, seeing \'twas he that made you to depose,\n    Your oath, my lord, is vain and frivolous.\n    Therefore, to arms. And, father, do but think\n    How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown,\n    Within whose circuit is Elysium\n    And all that poets feign of bliss and joy.\n    Why do we linger thus? I cannot rest\n    Until the white rose that I wear be dy\'d\n    Even in the lukewarm blood of Henry\'s heart.  \n  YORK. Richard, enough; I will be King, or die.\n    Brother, thou shalt to London presently\n    And whet on Warwick to this enterprise.\n    Thou, Richard, shalt to the Duke of Norfolk\n    And tell him privily of our intent.\n    You, Edward, shall unto my Lord Cobham,\n    With whom the Kentishmen will willingly rise;\n    In them I trust, for they are soldiers,\n    Witty, courteous, liberal, full of spirit.\n    While you are thus employ\'d, what resteth more\n    But that I seek occasion how to rise,\n    And yet the King not privy to my drift,\n    Nor any of the house of Lancaster?\n\n                      Enter a MESSENGER\n\n    But, stay. What news? Why com\'st thou in such post?\n  MESSENGER. The Queen with all the northern earls and lords\n    Intend here to besiege you in your castle.\n    She is hard by with twenty thousand men;  \n    And therefore fortify your hold, my lord.\n  YORK. Ay, with my sword. What! think\'st thou that we fear them?\n    Edward and Richard, you shall stay with me;\n    My brother Montague shall post to London.\n    Let noble Warwick, Cobham, and the rest,\n    Whom we have left protectors of the King,\n    With pow\'rful policy strengthen themselves\n    And trust not simple Henry nor his oaths.\n  MONTAGUE. Brother, I go; I\'ll win them, fear it not.\n    And thus most humbly I do take my leave.                Exit\n\n              Enter SIR JOHN and SIR HUGH MORTIMER\n\n  YORK. Sir john and Sir Hugh Mortimer, mine uncles!\n    You are come to Sandal in a happy hour;\n    The army of the Queen mean to besiege us.\n  SIR JOHN. She shall not need; we\'ll meet her in the field.\n  YORK. What, with five thousand men?\n  RICHARD. Ay, with five hundred, father, for a need.\n    A woman\'s general; what should we fear?  \n                                              [A march afar off]\n  EDWARD. I hear their drums. Let\'s set our men in order,\n    And issue forth and bid them battle straight.\n  YORK. Five men to twenty! Though the odds be great,\n    I doubt not, uncle, of our victory.\n    Many a battle have I won in France,\n    When as the enemy hath been ten to one;\n    Why should I not now have the like success?           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nField of battle between Sandal Castle and Wakefield\n\nAlarum. Enter RUTLAND and his TUTOR\n\n  RUTLAND. Ah, whither shall I fly to scape their hands?\n    Ah, tutor, look where bloody Clifford comes!\n\n                  Enter CLIFFORD and soldiers\n\n  CLIFFORD. Chaplain, away! Thy priesthood saves thy life.\n    As for the brat of this accursed duke,\n    Whose father slew my father, he shall die.\n  TUTOR. And I, my lord, will bear him company.\n  CLIFFORD. Soldiers, away with him!\n  TUTOR. Ah, Clifford, murder not this innocent child,\n    Lest thou be hated both of God and man.\n                                    Exit, forced off by soldiers\n  CLIFFORD. How now, is he dead already? Or is it fear\n    That makes him close his eyes? I\'ll open them.\n  RUTLAND. So looks the pent-up lion o\'er the wretch\n    That trembles under his devouring paws;  \n    And so he walks, insulting o\'er his prey,\n    And so he comes, to rend his limbs asunder.\n    Ah, gentle Clifford, kill me with thy sword,\n    And not with such a cruel threat\'ning look!\n    Sweet Clifford, hear me speak before I die.\n    I am too mean a subject for thy wrath;\n    Be thou reveng\'d on men, and let me live.\n  CLIFFORD. In vain thou speak\'st, poor boy; my father\'s blood\n    Hath stopp\'d the passage where thy words should enter.\n  RUTLAND. Then let my father\'s blood open it again:\n    He is a man, and, Clifford, cope with him.\n  CLIFFORD. Had I thy brethren here, their lives and thine\n    Were not revenge sufficient for me;\n    No, if I digg\'d up thy forefathers\' graves\n    And hung their rotten coffins up in chains,\n    It could not slake mine ire nor ease my heart.\n    The sight of any of the house of York\n    Is as a fury to torment my soul;\n    And till I root out their accursed line\n    And leave not one alive, I live in hell.  \n    Therefore-\n  RUTLAND. O, let me pray before I take my death!\n    To thee I pray: sweet Clifford, pity me.\n  CLIFFORD. Such pity as my rapier\'s point affords.\n  RUTLAND. I never did thee harm; why wilt thou slay me?\n  CLIFFORD. Thy father hath.\n  RUTLAND. But \'twas ere I was born.\n    Thou hast one son; for his sake pity me,\n    Lest in revenge thereof, sith God is just,\n    He be as miserably slain as I.\n    Ah, let me live in prison all my days;\n    And when I give occasion of offence\n    Then let me die, for now thou hast no cause.\n  CLIFFORD. No cause!\n    Thy father slew my father; therefore, die.       [Stabs him]\n  RUTLAND. Di faciant laudis summa sit ista tuae!         [Dies]\n  CLIFFORD. Plantagenet, I come, Plantagenet;\n    And this thy son\'s blood cleaving to my blade\n    Shall rust upon my weapon, till thy blood,\n    Congeal\'d with this, do make me wipe off both.          Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nAnother part of the field\n\nAlarum. Enter the DUKE OF YORK\n\n  YORK. The army of the Queen hath got the field.\n    My uncles both are slain in rescuing me;\n    And all my followers to the eager foe\n    Turn back and fly, like ships before the wind,\n    Or lambs pursu\'d by hunger-starved wolves.\n    My sons- God knows what hath bechanced them;\n    But this I know- they have demean\'d themselves\n    Like men born to renown by life or death.\n    Three times did Richard make a lane to me,\n    And thrice cried \'Courage, father! fight it out.\'\n    And full as oft came Edward to my side\n    With purple falchion, painted to the hilt\n    In blood of those that had encount\'red him.\n    And when the hardiest warriors did retire,\n    Richard cried \'Charge, and give no foot of ground!\'\n    And cried \'A crown, or else a glorious tomb!\n    A sceptre, or an earthly sepulchre!\'  \n    With this we charg\'d again; but out alas!\n    We bodg\'d again; as I have seen a swan\n    With bootless labour swim against the tide\n    And spend her strength with over-matching waves.\n                                         [A short alarum within]\n    Ah, hark! The fatal followers do pursue,\n    And I am faint and cannot fly their fury;\n    And were I strong, I would not shun their fury.\n    The sands are numb\'red that make up my life;\n    Here must I stay, and here my life must end.\n\n         Enter QUEEN MARGARET, CLIFFORD, NORTHUMBERLAND,\n               the PRINCE OF WALES, and soldiers\n\n    Come, bloody Clifford, rough Northumberland,\n    I dare your quenchless fury to more rage;\n    I am your butt, and I abide your shot.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Yield to our mercy, proud Plantagenet.\n  CLIFFORD. Ay, to such mercy as his ruthless arm\n    With downright payment show\'d unto my father.  \n    Now Phaethon hath tumbled from his car,\n    And made an evening at the noontide prick.\n  YORK. My ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth\n    A bird that will revenge upon you all;\n    And in that hope I throw mine eyes to heaven,\n    Scorning whate\'er you can afflict me with.\n    Why come you not? What! multitudes, and fear?\n  CLIFFORD. So cowards fight when they can fly no further;\n    So doves do peck the falcon\'s piercing talons;\n    So desperate thieves, all hopeless of their lives,\n    Breathe out invectives \'gainst the officers.\n  YORK. O Clifford, but bethink thee once again,\n    And in thy thought o\'errun my former time;\n    And, if thou canst for blushing, view this face,\n    And bite thy tongue that slanders him with cowardice\n    Whose frown hath made thee faint and fly ere this!\n  CLIFFORD. I will not bandy with thee word for word,\n    But buckler with thee blows, twice two for one.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Hold, valiant Clifford; for a thousand causes\n    I would prolong awhile the traitor\'s life.  \n    Wrath makes him deaf; speak thou, Northumberland.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Hold, Clifford! do not honour him so much\n    To prick thy finger, though to wound his heart.\n    What valour were it, when a cur doth grin,\n    For one to thrust his hand between his teeth,\n    When he might spurn him with his foot away?\n    It is war\'s prize to take all vantages;\n    And ten to one is no impeach of valour.\n                         [They lay hands on YORK, who struggles]\n  CLIFFORD. Ay, ay, so strives the woodcock with the gin.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. So doth the cony struggle in the net.\n  YORK. So triumph thieves upon their conquer\'d booty;\n    So true men yield, with robbers so o\'er-match\'d.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. What would your Grace have done unto him now?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Brave warriors, Clifford and Northumberland,\n    Come, make him stand upon this molehill here\n    That raught at mountains with outstretched arms,\n    Yet parted but the shadow with his hand.\n    What, was it you that would be England\'s king?\n    Was\'t you that revell\'d in our parliament  \n    And made a preachment of your high descent?\n    Where are your mess of sons to back you now?\n    The wanton Edward and the lusty George?\n    And where\'s that valiant crook-back prodigy,\n    Dicky your boy, that with his grumbling voice\n    Was wont to cheer his dad in mutinies?\n    Or, with the rest, where is your darling Rutland?\n    Look, York: I stain\'d this napkin with the blood\n    That valiant Clifford with his rapier\'s point\n    Made issue from the bosom of the boy;\n    And if thine eyes can water for his death,\n    I give thee this to dry thy cheeks withal.\n    Alas, poor York! but that I hate thee deadly,\n    I should lament thy miserable state.\n    I prithee grieve to make me merry, York.\n    What, hath thy fiery heart so parch\'d thine entrails\n    That not a tear can fall for Rutland\'s death?\n    Why art thou patient, man? Thou shouldst be mad;\n    And I to make thee mad do mock thee thus.\n    Stamp, rave, and fret, that I may sing and dance.  \n    Thou wouldst be fee\'d, I see, to make me sport;\n    York cannot speak unless he wear a crown.\n    A crown for York!-and, lords, bow low to him.\n    Hold you his hands whilst I do set it on.\n                             [Putting a paper crown on his head]\n    Ay, marry, sir, now looks he like a king!\n    Ay, this is he that took King Henry\'s chair,\n    And this is he was his adopted heir.\n    But how is it that great Plantagenet\n    Is crown\'d so soon and broke his solemn oath?\n    As I bethink me, you should not be King\n    Till our King Henry had shook hands with death.\n    And will you pale your head in Henry\'s glory,\n    And rob his temples of the diadem,\n    Now in his life, against your holy oath?\n    O, \'tis a fault too too\n    Off with the crown and with the crown his head;\n    And, whilst we breathe, take time to do him dead.\n  CLIFFORD. That is my office, for my father\'s sake.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Nay, stay; let\'s hear the orisons he makes.  \n  YORK. She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France,\n    Whose tongue more poisons than the adder\'s tooth!\n    How ill-beseeming is it in thy sex\n    To triumph like an Amazonian trull\n    Upon their woes whom fortune captivates!\n    But that thy face is visard-like, unchanging,\n    Made impudent with use of evil deeds,\n    I would assay, proud queen, to make thee blush.\n    To tell thee whence thou cam\'st, of whom deriv\'d,\n    Were shame enough to shame thee, wert thou not shameless.\n    Thy father bears the type of King of Naples,\n    Of both the Sicils and Jerusalem,\n    Yet not so wealthy as an English yeoman.\n    Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult?\n    It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen;\n    Unless the adage must be verified,\n    That beggars mounted run their horse to death.\n    \'Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud;\n    But, God He knows, thy share thereof is small.\n    \'Tis virtue that doth make them most admir\'d;  \n    The contrary doth make thee wond\'red at.\n    \'Tis government that makes them seem divine;\n    The want thereof makes thee abominable.\n    Thou art as opposite to every good\n    As the Antipodes are unto us,\n    Or as the south to the septentrion.\n    O tiger\'s heart wrapp\'d in a woman\'s hide!\n    How couldst thou drain the life-blood of the child,\n    To bid the father wipe his eyes withal,\n    And yet be seen to bear a woman\'s face?\n    Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible:\n    Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless.\n    Bid\'st thou me rage? Why, now thou hast thy wish;\n    Wouldst have me weep? Why, now thou hast thy will;\n    For raging wind blows up incessant showers,\n    And when the rage allays, the rain begins.\n    These tears are my sweet Rutland\'s obsequies;\n    And every drop cries vengeance for his death\n    \'Gainst thee, fell Clifford, and thee, false Frenchwoman.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Beshrew me, but his passions move me so  \n    That hardly can I check my eyes from tears.\n  YORK. That face of his the hungry cannibals\n    Would not have touch\'d, would not have stain\'d with blood;\n    But you are more inhuman, more inexorable-\n    O, ten times more- than tigers of Hyrcania.\n    See, ruthless queen, a hapless father\'s tears.\n    This cloth thou dipp\'dst in blood of my sweet boy,\n    And I with tears do wash the blood away.\n    Keep thou the napkin, and go boast of this;\n    And if thou tell\'st the heavy story right,\n    Upon my soul, the hearers will shed tears;\n    Yea, even my foes will shed fast-falling tears\n    And say \'Alas, it was a piteous deed!\'\n    There, take the crown, and with the crown my curse;\n    And in thy need such comfort come to thee\n    As now I reap at thy too cruel hand!\n    Hard-hearted Clifford, take me from the world;\n    My soul to heaven, my blood upon your heads!\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Had he been slaughter-man to all my kin,\n    I should not for my life but weep with him,  \n    To see how inly sorrow gripes his soul.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. What, weeping-ripe, my Lord Northumberland?\n    Think but upon the wrong he did us all,\n    And that will quickly dry thy melting tears.\n  CLIFFORD. Here\'s for my oath, here\'s for my father\'s death.\n                                                  [Stabbing him]\n  QUEEN MARGARET. And here\'s to right our gentle-hearted king.\n                                                  [Stabbing him]\n  YORK. Open Thy gate of mercy, gracious God!\n    My soul flies through these wounds to seek out Thee.\n                                                          [Dies]\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Off with his head, and set it on York gates;\n    So York may overlook the town of York.\n                                                Flourish. Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nA plain near Mortimer\'s Cross in Herefordshire\n\nA march. Enter EDWARD, RICHARD, and their power\n\n  EDWARD. I wonder how our princely father scap\'d,\n    Or whether he be scap\'d away or no\n    From Clifford\'s and Northumberland\'s pursuit.\n    Had he been ta\'en, we should have heard the news;\n    Had he been slain, we should have heard the news;\n    Or had he scap\'d, methinks we should have heard\n    The happy tidings of his good escape.\n    How fares my brother? Why is he so sad?\n  RICHARD. I cannot joy until I be resolv\'d\n    Where our right valiant father is become.\n    I saw him in the battle range about,\n    And watch\'d him how he singled Clifford forth.\n    Methought he bore him in the thickest troop\n    As doth a lion in a herd of neat;\n    Or as a bear, encompass\'d round with dogs,\n    Who having pinch\'d a few and made them cry,\n    The rest stand all aloof and bark at him.  \n    So far\'d our father with his enemies;\n    So fled his enemies my warlike father.\n    Methinks \'tis prize enough to be his son.\n    See how the morning opes her golden gates\n    And takes her farewell of the glorious sun.\n    How well resembles it the prime of youth,\n    Trimm\'d like a younker prancing to his love!\n  EDWARD. Dazzle mine eyes, or do I see three suns?\n  RICHARD. Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun;\n    Not separated with the racking clouds,\n    But sever\'d in a pale clear-shining sky.\n    See, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss,\n    As if they vow\'d some league inviolable.\n    Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun.\n    In this the heaven figures some event.\n  EDWARD. \'Tis wondrous strange, the like yet never heard of.\n    I think it cites us, brother, to the field,\n    That we, the sons of brave Plantagenet,\n    Each one already blazing by our meeds,\n    Should notwithstanding join our lights together  \n    And overshine the earth, as this the world.\n    Whate\'er it bodes, henceforward will I bear\n    Upon my target three fair shining suns.\n  RICHARD. Nay, bear three daughters- by your leave I speak it,\n    You love the breeder better than the male.\n\n                 Enter a MESSENGER, blowing\n\n    But what art thou, whose heavy looks foretell\n    Some dreadful story hanging on thy tongue?\n  MESSENGER. Ah, one that was a woeful looker-on\n    When as the noble Duke of York was slain,\n    Your princely father and my loving lord!\n  EDWARD. O, speak no more! for I have heard too much.\n  RICHARD. Say how he died, for I will hear it all.\n  MESSENGER. Environed he was with many foes,\n    And stood against them as the hope of Troy\n    Against the Greeks that would have ent\'red Troy.\n    But Hercules himself must yield to odds;\n    And many strokes, though with a little axe,  \n    Hews down and fells the hardest-timber\'d oak.\n    By many hands your father was subdu\'d;\n    But only slaught\'red by the ireful arm\n    Of unrelenting Clifford and the Queen,\n    Who crown\'d the gracious Duke in high despite,\n    Laugh\'d in his face; and when with grief he wept,\n    The ruthless Queen gave him to dry his cheeks\n    A napkin steeped in the harmless blood\n    Of sweet young Rutland, by rough Clifford slain;\n    And after many scorns, many foul taunts,\n    They took his head, and on the gates of York\n    They set the same; and there it doth remain,\n    The saddest spectacle that e\'er I view\'d.\n  EDWARD. Sweet Duke of York, our prop to lean upon,\n    Now thou art gone, we have no staff, no stay.\n    O Clifford, boist\'rous Clifford, thou hast slain\n    The flow\'r of Europe for his chivalry;\n    And treacherously hast thou vanquish\'d him,\n    For hand to hand he would have vanquish\'d thee.\n    Now my soul\'s palace is become a prison.  \n    Ah, would she break from hence, that this my body\n    Might in the ground be closed up in rest!\n    For never henceforth shall I joy again;\n    Never, O never, shall I see more joy.\n  RICHARD. I cannot weep, for all my body\'s moisture\n    Scarce serves to quench my furnace-burning heart;\n    Nor can my tongue unload my heart\'s great burden,\n    For self-same wind that I should speak withal\n    Is kindling coals that fires all my breast,\n    And burns me up with flames that tears would quench.\n    To weep is to make less the depth of grief.\n    Tears then for babes; blows and revenge for me!\n    Richard, I bear thy name; I\'ll venge thy death,\n    Or die renowned by attempting it.\n  EDWARD. His name that valiant duke hath left with thee;\n    His dukedom and his chair with me is left.\n  RICHARD. Nay, if thou be that princely eagle\'s bird,\n    Show thy descent by gazing \'gainst the sun;\n    For chair and dukedom, throne and kingdom, say:\n    Either that is thine, or else thou wert not his.  \n\n         March. Enter WARWICK, MONTAGUE, and their army\n\n  WARWICK. How now, fair lords! What fare? What news abroad?\n  RICHARD. Great Lord of Warwick, if we should recount\n    Our baleful news and at each word\'s deliverance\n    Stab poinards in our flesh till all were told,\n    The words would add more anguish than the wounds.\n    O valiant lord, the Duke of York is slain!\n  EDWARD. O Warwick, Warwick! that Plantagenet\n    Which held thee dearly as his soul\'s redemption\n    Is by the stern Lord Clifford done to death.\n  WARWICK. Ten days ago I drown\'d these news in tears;\n    And now, to add more measure to your woes,\n    I come to tell you things sith then befall\'n.\n    After the bloody fray at Wakefield fought,\n    Where your brave father breath\'d his latest gasp,\n    Tidings, as swiftly as the posts could run,\n    Were brought me of your loss and his depart.\n    I, then in London, keeper of the King,  \n    Muster\'d my soldiers, gathered flocks of friends,\n    And very well appointed, as I thought,\n    March\'d toward Saint Albans to intercept the Queen,\n    Bearing the King in my behalf along;\n    For by my scouts I was advertised\n    That she was coming with a full intent\n    To dash our late decree in parliament\n    Touching King Henry\'s oath and your succession.\n    Short tale to make- we at Saint Albans met,\n    Our battles join\'d, and both sides fiercely fought;\n    But whether \'twas the coldness of the King,\n    Who look\'d full gently on his warlike queen,\n    That robb\'d my soldiers of their heated spleen,\n    Or whether \'twas report of her success,\n    Or more than common fear of Clifford\'s rigour,\n    Who thunders to his captives blood and death,\n    I cannot judge; but, to conclude with truth,\n    Their weapons like to lightning came and went:\n    Our soldiers\', like the night-owl\'s lazy flight\n    Or like an idle thresher with a flail,  \n    Fell gently down, as if they struck their friends.\n    I cheer\'d them up with justice of our cause,\n    With promise of high pay and great rewards,\n    But all in vain; they had no heart to fight,\n    And we in them no hope to win the day;\n    So that we fled: the King unto the Queen;\n    Lord George your brother, Norfolk, and myself,\n    In haste post-haste are come to join with you;\n    For in the marches here we heard you were\n    Making another head to fight again.\n  EDWARD. Where is the Duke of Norfolk, gentle Warwick?\n    And when came George from Burgundy to England?\n  WARWICK. Some six miles off the Duke is with the soldiers;\n    And for your brother, he was lately sent\n    From your kind aunt, Duchess of Burgundy,\n    With aid of soldiers to this needful war.\n  RICHARD. \'Twas odds, belike, when valiant Warwick fled.\n    Oft have I heard his praises in pursuit,\n    But ne\'er till now his scandal of retire.\n  WARWICK. Nor now my scandal, Richard, dost thou hear;  \n    For thou shalt know this strong right hand of mine\n    Can pluck the diadem from faint Henry\'s head\n    And wring the awful sceptre from his fist,\n    Were he as famous and as bold in war\n    As he is fam\'d for mildness, peace, and prayer.\n  RICHARD. I know it well, Lord Warwick; blame me not.\n    \'Tis love I bear thy glories makes me speak.\n    But in this troublous time what\'s to be done?\n    Shall we go throw away our coats of steel\n    And wrap our bodies in black mourning-gowns,\n    Numbering our Ave-Maries with our beads?\n    Or shall we on the helmets of our foes\n    Tell our devotion with revengeful arms?\n    If for the last, say \'Ay,\' and to it, lords.\n  WARWICK. Why, therefore Warwick came to seek you out;\n    And therefore comes my brother Montague.\n    Attend me, lords. The proud insulting Queen,\n    With Clifford and the haught Northumberland,\n    And of their feather many moe proud birds,\n    Have wrought the easy-melting King like wax.  \n    He swore consent to your succession,\n    His oath enrolled in the parliament;\n    And now to London all the crew are gone\n    To frustrate both his oath and what beside\n    May make against the house of Lancaster.\n    Their power, I think, is thirty thousand strong.\n    Now if the help of Norfolk and myself,\n    With all the friends that thou, brave Earl of March,\n    Amongst the loving Welshmen canst procure,\n    Will but amount to five and twenty thousand,\n    Why, Via! to London will we march amain,\n    And once again bestride our foaming steeds,\n    And once again cry \'Charge upon our foes!\'\n    But never once again turn back and fly.\n  RICHARD. Ay, now methinks I hear great Warwick speak.\n    Ne\'er may he live to see a sunshine day\n    That cries \'Retire!\' if Warwick bid him stay.\n  EDWARD. Lord Warwick, on thy shoulder will I lean;\n    And when thou fail\'st- as God forbid the hour!-\n    Must Edward fall, which peril heaven forfend.  \n  WARWICK. No longer Earl of March, but Duke of York;\n    The next degree is England\'s royal throne,\n    For King of England shalt thou be proclaim\'d\n    In every borough as we pass along;\n    And he that throws not up his cap for joy\n    Shall for the fault make forfeit of his head.\n    King Edward, valiant Richard, Montague,\n    Stay we no longer, dreaming of renown,\n    But sound the trumpets and about our task.\n  RICHARD. Then, Clifford, were thy heart as hard as steel,\n    As thou hast shown it flinty by thy deeds,\n    I come to pierce it or to give thee mine.\n  EDWARD. Then strike up drums. God and Saint George for us!\n\n                       Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  WARWICK. How now! what news?\n  MESSENGER. The Duke of Norfolk sends you word by me\n    The Queen is coming with a puissant host,\n    And craves your company for speedy counsel.  \n  WARWICK. Why, then it sorts; brave warriors, let\'s away.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nBefore York\n\nFlourish. Enter KING HENRY, QUEEN MARGARET, the PRINCE OF WALES, CLIFFORD,\nNORTHUMBERLAND, with drum and trumpets\n\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Welcome, my lord, to this brave town of York.\n    Yonder\'s the head of that arch-enemy\n    That sought to be encompass\'d with your crown.\n    Doth not the object cheer your heart, my lord?\n  KING HENRY. Ay, as the rocks cheer them that fear their wreck-\n    To see this sight, it irks my very soul.\n    Withhold revenge, dear God; \'tis not my fault,\n    Nor wittingly have I infring\'d my vow.\n  CLIFFORD. My gracious liege, this too much lenity\n    And harmful pity must be laid aside.\n    To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?\n    Not to the beast that would usurp their den.\n    Whose hand is that the forest bear doth lick?\n    Not his that spoils her young before her face.\n    Who scapes the lurking serpent\'s mortal sting?  \n    Not he that sets his foot upon her back,\n    The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on,\n    And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.\n    Ambitious York did level at thy crown,\n    Thou smiling while he knit his angry brows.\n    He, but a Duke, would have his son a king,\n    And raise his issue like a loving sire:\n    Thou, being a king, bless\'d with a goodly son,\n    Didst yield consent to disinherit him,\n    Which argued thee a most unloving father.\n    Unreasonable creatures feed their young;\n    And though man\'s face be fearful to their eyes,\n    Yet, in protection of their tender ones,\n    Who hath not seen them- even with those wings\n    Which sometime they have us\'d with fearful flight-\n    Make war with him that climb\'d unto their nest,\n    Offering their own lives in their young\'s defence\n    For shame, my liege, make them your precedent!\n    Were it not pity that this goodly boy\n    Should lose his birthright by his father\'s fault,  \n    And long hereafter say unto his child\n    \'What my great-grandfather and grandsire got\n    My careless father fondly gave away\'?\n    Ah, what a shame were this! Look on the boy;\n    And let his manly face, which promiseth\n    Successful fortune, steel thy melting heart\n    To hold thine own and leave thine own with him.\n  KING HENRY. Full well hath Clifford play\'d the orator,\n    Inferring arguments of mighty force.\n    But, Clifford, tell me, didst thou never hear\n    That things ill got had ever bad success?\n    And happy always was it for that son\n    Whose father for his hoarding went to hell?\n    I\'ll leave my son my virtuous deeds behind;\n    And would my father had left me no more!\n    For all the rest is held at such a rate\n    As brings a thousand-fold more care to keep\n    Than in possession any jot of pleasure.\n    Ah, cousin York! would thy best friends did know\n    How it doth grieve me that thy head is here!  \n  QUEEN MARGARET. My lord, cheer up your spirits; our foes are nigh,\n    And this soft courage makes your followers faint.\n    You promis\'d knighthood to our forward son:\n    Unsheathe your sword and dub him presently.\n    Edward, kneel down.\n  KING HENRY. Edward Plantagenet, arise a knight;\n    And learn this lesson: Draw thy sword in right.\n  PRINCE OF WALES. My gracious father, by your kingly leave,\n    I\'ll draw it as apparent to the crown,\n    And in that quarrel use it to the death.\n  CLIFFORD. Why, that is spoken like a toward prince.\n\n                      Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. Royal commanders, be in readiness;\n    For with a band of thirty thousand men\n    Comes Warwick, backing of the Duke of York,\n    And in the towns, as they do march along,\n    Proclaims him king, and many fly to him.\n    Darraign your battle, for they are at hand.  \n  CLIFFORD. I would your Highness would depart the field:\n    The Queen hath best success when you are absent.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, good my lord, and leave us to our fortune.\n  KING HENRY. Why, that\'s my fortune too; therefore I\'ll stay.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Be it with resolution, then, to fight.\n  PRINCE OF WALES. My royal father, cheer these noble lords,\n    And hearten those that fight in your defence.\n    Unsheathe your sword, good father; cry \'Saint George!\'\n\n         March. Enter EDWARD, GEORGE, RICHARD, WARWICK,\n                NORFOLK, MONTAGUE, and soldiers\n\n  EDWARD. Now, perjur\'d Henry, wilt thou kneel for grace\n    And set thy diadem upon my head,\n    Or bide the mortal fortune of the field?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Go rate thy minions, proud insulting boy.\n    Becomes it thee to be thus bold in terms\n    Before thy sovereign and thy lawful king?\n  EDWARD. I am his king, and he should bow his knee.\n    I was adopted heir by his consent:  \n    Since when, his oath is broke; for, as I hear,\n    You that are King, though he do wear the crown,\n    Have caus\'d him by new act of parliament\n    To blot out me and put his own son in.\n  CLIFFORD. And reason too:\n    Who should succeed the father but the son?\n  RICHARD. Are you there, butcher? O, I cannot speak!\n  CLIFFORD. Ay, crook-back, here I stand to answer thee,\n    Or any he, the proudest of thy sort.\n  RICHARD. \'Twas you that kill\'d young Rutland, was it not?\n  CLIFFORD. Ay, and old York, and yet not satisfied.\n  RICHARD. For God\'s sake, lords, give signal to the fight.\n  WARWICK. What say\'st thou, Henry? Wilt thou yield the crown?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Why, how now, long-tongu\'d Warwick! Dare you speak?\n    When you and I met at Saint Albans last\n    Your legs did better service than your hands.\n  WARWICK. Then \'twas my turn to fly, and now \'tis thine.\n  CLIFFORD. You said so much before, and yet you fled.\n  WARWICK. \'Twas not your valour, Clifford, drove me thence.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. No, nor your manhood that durst make you stay.  \n  RICHARD. Northumberland, I hold thee reverently.\n    Break off the parley; for scarce I can refrain\n    The execution of my big-swol\'n heart\n    Upon that Clifford, that cruel child-killer.\n  CLIFFORD. I slew thy father; call\'st thou him a child?\n  RICHARD. Ay, like a dastard and a treacherous coward,\n    As thou didst kill our tender brother Rutland;\n    But ere sunset I\'ll make thee curse the deed.\n  KING HENRY. Have done with words, my lords, and hear me speak.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Defy them then, or else hold close thy lips.\n  KING HENRY. I prithee give no limits to my tongue:\n    I am a king, and privileg\'d to speak.\n  CLIFFORD. My liege, the wound that bred this meeting here\n    Cannot be cur\'d by words; therefore be still.\n  RICHARD. Then, executioner, unsheathe thy sword.\n    By Him that made us all, I am resolv\'d\n    That Clifford\'s manhood lies upon his tongue.\n  EDWARD. Say, Henry, shall I have my right, or no?\n    A thousand men have broke their fasts to-day\n    That ne\'er shall dine unless thou yield the crown.  \n  WARWICK. If thou deny, their blood upon thy head;\n    For York in justice puts his armour on.\n  PRINCE OF WALES. If that be right which Warwick says is right,\n    There is no wrong, but every thing is right.\n  RICHARD. Whoever got thee, there thy mother stands;\n    For well I wot thou hast thy mother\'s tongue.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. But thou art neither like thy sire nor dam;\n    But like a foul misshapen stigmatic,\n    Mark\'d by the destinies to be avoided,\n    As venom toads or lizards\' dreadful stings.\n  RICHARD. Iron of Naples hid with English gilt,\n    Whose father bears the title of a king-\n    As if a channel should be call\'d the sea-\n    Sham\'st thou not, knowing whence thou art extraught,\n    To let thy tongue detect thy base-born heart?\n  EDWARD. A wisp of straw were worth a thousand crowns\n    To make this shameless callet know herself.\n    Helen of Greece was fairer far than thou,\n    Although thy husband may be Menelaus;\n    And ne\'er was Agamemmon\'s brother wrong\'d  \n    By that false woman as this king by thee.\n    His father revell\'d in the heart of France,\n    And tam\'d the King, and made the Dauphin stoop;\n    And had he match\'d according to his state,\n    He might have kept that glory to this day;\n    But when he took a beggar to his bed\n    And grac\'d thy poor sire with his bridal day,\n    Even then that sunshine brew\'d a show\'r for him\n    That wash\'d his father\'s fortunes forth of France\n    And heap\'d sedition on his crown at home.\n    For what hath broach\'d this tumult but thy pride?\n    Hadst thou been meek, our title still had slept;\n    And we, in pity of the gentle King,\n    Had slipp\'d our claim until another age.\n  GEORGE. But when we saw our sunshine made thy spring,\n    And that thy summer bred us no increase,\n    We set the axe to thy usurping root;\n    And though the edge hath something hit ourselves,\n    Yet know thou, since we have begun to strike,\n    We\'ll never leave till we have hewn thee down,  \n    Or bath\'d thy growing with our heated bloods.\n  EDWARD. And in this resolution I defy thee;\n    Not willing any longer conference,\n    Since thou deniest the gentle King to speak.\n    Sound trumpets; let our bloody colours wave,\n    And either victory or else a grave!\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Stay, Edward.\n  EDWARD. No, wrangling woman, we\'ll no longer stay;\n    These words will cost ten thousand lives this day.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nA field of battle between Towton and Saxton, in Yorkshire\n\nAlarum; excursions. Enter WARWICK\n\n  WARWICK. Forspent with toil, as runners with a race,\n    I lay me down a little while to breathe;\n    For strokes receiv\'d and many blows repaid\n    Have robb\'d my strong-knit sinews of their strength,\n    And spite of spite needs must I rest awhile.\n\n                     Enter EDWARD, running\n\n  EDWARD. Smile, gentle heaven, or strike, ungentle death;\n    For this world frowns, and Edward\'s sun is clouded.\n  WARWICK. How now, my lord. What hap? What hope of good?\n\n                         Enter GEORGE\n\n  GEORGE. Our hap is lost, our hope but sad despair;\n    Our ranks are broke, and ruin follows us.  \n    What counsel give you? Whither shall we fly?\n  EDWARD. Bootless is flight: they follow us with wings;\n    And weak we are, and cannot shun pursuit.\n\n                         Enter RICHARD\n\n  RICHARD. Ah, Warwick, why hast thou withdrawn thyself?\n    Thy brother\'s blood the thirsty earth hath drunk,\n    Broach\'d with the steely point of Clifford\'s lance;\n    And in the very pangs of death he cried,\n    Like to a dismal clangor heard from far,\n    \'Warwick, revenge! Brother, revenge my death.\'\n    So, underneath the belly of their steeds,\n    That stain\'d their fetlocks in his smoking blood,\n    The noble gentleman gave up the ghost.\n  WARWICK. Then let the earth be drunken with our blood.\n    I\'ll kill my horse, because I will not fly.\n    Why stand we like soft-hearted women here,\n    Wailing our losses, whiles the foe doth rage,\n    And look upon, as if the tragedy  \n    Were play\'d in jest by counterfeiting actors?\n    Here on my knee I vow to God above\n    I\'ll never pause again, never stand still,\n    Till either death hath clos\'d these eyes of mine\n    Or fortune given me measure of revenge.\n  EDWARD. O Warwick, I do bend my knee with thine,\n    And in this vow do chain my soul to thine!\n    And ere my knee rise from the earth\'s cold face\n    I throw my hands, mine eyes, my heart to Thee,\n    Thou setter-up and plucker-down of kings,\n    Beseeching Thee, if with Thy will it stands\n    That to my foes this body must be prey,\n    Yet that Thy brazen gates of heaven may ope\n    And give sweet passage to my sinful soul.\n    Now, lords, take leave until we meet again,\n    Where\'er it be, in heaven or in earth.\n  RICHARD. Brother, give me thy hand; and, gentle Warwick,\n    Let me embrace thee in my weary arms.\n    I that did never weep now melt with woe\n    That winter should cut off our spring-time so.  \n  WARWICK. Away, away! Once more, sweet lords, farewell.\n  GEORGE. Yet let us all together to our troops,\n    And give them leave to fly that will not stay,\n    And call them pillars that will stand to us;\n    And if we thrive, promise them such rewards\n    As victors wear at the Olympian games.\n    This may plant courage in their quailing breasts,\n    For yet is hope of life and victory.\n    Forslow no longer; make we hence amain.               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nAnother part of the field\n\nExcursions. Enter RICHARD and CLIFFORD\n\n  RICHARD. Now, Clifford, I have singled thee alone.\n    Suppose this arm is for the Duke of York,\n    And this for Rutland; both bound to revenge,\n    Wert thou environ\'d with a brazen wall.\n  CLIFFORD. Now, Richard, I am with thee here alone.\n    This is the hand that stabbed thy father York;\n    And this the hand that slew thy brother Rutland;\n    And here\'s the heart that triumphs in their death\n    And cheers these hands that slew thy sire and brother\n    To execute the like upon thyself;\n    And so, have at thee!                           [They fight]\n\n                 Enter WARWICK; CLIFFORD flies\n\n  RICHARD. Nay, Warwick, single out some other chase;\n    For I myself will hunt this wolf to death.            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nAnother part of the field\n\nAlarum. Enter KING HENRY alone\n\n  KING HENRY. This battle fares like to the morning\'s war,\n    When dying clouds contend with growing light,\n    What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,\n    Can neither call it perfect day nor night.\n    Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea\n    Forc\'d by the tide to combat with the wind;\n    Now sways it that way, like the selfsame sea\n    Forc\'d to retire by fury of the wind.\n    Sometime the flood prevails, and then the wind;\n    Now one the better, then another best;\n    Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast,\n    Yet neither conqueror nor conquered.\n    So is the equal poise of this fell war.\n    Here on this molehill will I sit me down.\n    To whom God will, there be the victory!\n    For Margaret my queen, and Clifford too,\n    Have chid me from the battle, swearing both  \n    They prosper best of all when I am thence.\n    Would I were dead, if God\'s good will were so!\n    For what is in this world but grief and woe?\n    O God! methinks it were a happy life\n    To be no better than a homely swain;\n    To sit upon a hill, as I do now,\n    To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,\n    Thereby to see the minutes how they run-\n    How many makes the hour full complete,\n    How many hours brings about the day,\n    How many days will finish up the year,\n    How many years a mortal man may live.\n    When this is known, then to divide the times-\n    So many hours must I tend my flock;\n    So many hours must I take my rest;\n    So many hours must I contemplate;\n    So many hours must I sport myself;\n    So many days my ewes have been with young;\n    So many weeks ere the poor fools will can;\n    So many years ere I shall shear the fleece:  \n    So minutes, hours, days, months, and years,\n    Pass\'d over to the end they were created,\n    Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.\n    Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely!\n    Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade\n    To shepherds looking on their silly sheep,\n    Than doth a rich embroider\'d canopy\n    To kings that fear their subjects\' treachery?\n    O yes, it doth; a thousand-fold it doth.\n    And to conclude: the shepherd\'s homely curds,\n    His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,\n    His wonted sleep under a fresh tree\'s shade,\n    All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,\n    Is far beyond a prince\'s delicates-\n    His viands sparkling in a golden cup,\n    His body couched in a curious bed,\n    When care, mistrust, and treason waits on him.\n\n       Alarum. Enter a son that hath kill\'d his Father, at\n       one door; and a FATHER that hath kill\'d his Son, at  \n                         another door\n\n  SON. Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.\n    This man whom hand to hand I slew in fight\n    May be possessed with some store of crowns;\n    And I, that haply take them from him now,\n    May yet ere night yield both my life and them\n    To some man else, as this dead man doth me.\n    Who\'s this? O God! It is my father\'s face,\n    Whom in this conflict I unwares have kill\'d.\n    O heavy times, begetting such events!\n    From London by the King was I press\'d forth;\n    My father, being the Earl of Warwick\'s man,\n    Came on the part of York, press\'d by his master;\n    And I, who at his hands receiv\'d my life,\n    Have by my hands of life bereaved him.\n    Pardon me, God, I knew not what I did.\n    And pardon, father, for I knew not thee.\n    My tears shall wipe away these bloody marks;\n    And no more words till they have flow\'d their fill.  \n  KING HENRY. O piteous spectacle! O bloody times!\n    Whiles lions war and battle for their dens,\n    Poor harmless lambs abide their enmity.\n    Weep, wretched man; I\'ll aid thee tear for tear;\n    And let our hearts and eyes, like civil war,\n    Be blind with tears and break o\'ercharg\'d with grief.\n\n               Enter FATHER, bearing of his SON\n\n  FATHER. Thou that so stoutly hath resisted me,\n    Give me thy gold, if thou hast any gold;\n    For I have bought it with an hundred blows.\n    But let me see. Is this our foeman\'s face?\n    Ah, no, no, no, no, it is mine only son!\n    Ah, boy, if any life be left in thee,\n    Throw up thine eye! See, see what show\'rs arise,\n    Blown with the windy tempest of my heart\n    Upon thy wounds, that kills mine eye and heart!\n    O, pity, God, this miserable age!\n    What stratagems, how fell, how butcherly,  \n    Erroneous, mutinous, and unnatural,\n    This deadly quarrel daily doth beget!\n    O boy, thy father gave thee life too soon,\n    And hath bereft thee of thy life too late!\n  KING HENRY. Woe above woe! grief more than common grief!\n    O that my death would stay these ruthful deeds!\n    O pity, pity, gentle heaven, pity!\n    The red rose and the white are on his face,\n    The fatal colours of our striving houses:\n    The one his purple blood right well resembles;\n    The other his pale cheeks, methinks, presenteth.\n    Wither one rose, and let the other flourish!\n    If you contend, a thousand lives must perish.\n  SON. How will my mother for a father\'s death\n    Take on with me, and ne\'er be satisfied!\n  FATHER. How will my wife for slaughter of my son\n    Shed seas of tears, and ne\'er be satisfied!\n  KING HENRY. How will the country for these woeful chances\n    Misthink the King, and not be satisfied!\n  SON. Was ever son so rued a father\'s death?  \n  FATHER. Was ever father so bemoan\'d his son?\n  KING HENRY. Was ever king so griev\'d for subjects\' woe?\n    Much is your sorrow; mine ten times so much.\n  SON. I\'ll bear thee hence, where I may weep my fill.\n                                              Exit with the body\n  FATHER. These arms of mine shall be thy winding-sheet;\n    My heart, sweet boy, shall be thy sepulchre,\n    For from my heart thine image ne\'er shall go;\n    My sighing breast shall be thy funeral bell;\n    And so obsequious will thy father be,\n    Even for the loss of thee, having no more,\n    As Priam was for all his valiant sons.\n    I\'ll bear thee hence; and let them fight that will,\n    For I have murdered where I should not kill.\n                                              Exit with the body\n  KING HENRY. Sad-hearted men, much overgone with care,\n    Here sits a king more woeful than you are.\n\n           Alarums, excursions. Enter QUEEN MARGARET,\n                  PRINCE OF WALES, and EXETER  \n\n  PRINCE OF WALES. Fly, father, fly; for all your friends are fled,\n    And Warwick rages like a chafed bull.\n    Away! for death doth hold us in pursuit.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Mount you, my lord; towards Berwick post amain.\n    Edward and Richard, like a brace of greyhounds\n    Having the fearful flying hare in sight,\n    With fiery eyes sparkling for very wrath,\n    And bloody steel grasp\'d in their ireful hands,\n    Are at our backs; and therefore hence amain.\n  EXETER. Away! for vengeance comes along with them.\n    Nay, stay not to expostulate; make speed;\n    Or else come after. I\'ll away before.\n  KING HENRY. Nay, take me with thee, good sweet Exeter.\n    Not that I fear to stay, but love to go\n    Whither the Queen intends. Forward; away!             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nAnother part of the field\n\nA loud alarum. Enter CLIFFORD, wounded\n\n  CLIFFORD. Here burns my candle out; ay, here it dies,\n    Which, whiles it lasted, gave King Henry light.\n    O Lancaster, I fear thy overthrow\n    More than my body\'s parting with my soul!\n    My love and fear glu\'d many friends to thee;\n    And, now I fall, thy tough commixture melts,\n    Impairing Henry, strength\'ning misproud York.\n    The common people swarm like summer flies;\n    And whither fly the gnats but to the sun?\n    And who shines now but Henry\'s enemies?\n    O Phoebus, hadst thou never given consent\n    That Phaethon should check thy fiery steeds,\n    Thy burning car never had scorch\'d the earth!\n    And, Henry, hadst thou sway\'d as kings should do,\n    Or as thy father and his father did,\n    Giving no ground unto the house of York,\n    They never then had sprung like summer flies;  \n    I and ten thousand in this luckless realm\n    Had left no mourning widows for our death;\n    And thou this day hadst kept thy chair in peace.\n    For what doth cherish weeds but gentle air?\n    And what makes robbers bold but too much lenity?\n    Bootless are plaints, and cureless are my wounds.\n    No way to fly, nor strength to hold out flight.\n    The foe is merciless and will not pity;\n    For at their hands I have deserv\'d no pity.\n    The air hath got into my deadly wounds,\n    And much effuse of blood doth make me faint.\n    Come, York and Richard, Warwick and the rest;\n    I stabb\'d your fathers\' bosoms: split my breast.\n                                                     [He faints]\n\n       Alarum and retreat. Enter EDWARD, GEORGE, RICHARD\n               MONTAGUE, WARWICK, and soldiers\n\n  EDWARD. Now breathe we, lords. Good fortune bids us pause\n    And smooth the frowns of war with peaceful looks.  \n    Some troops pursue the bloody-minded Queen\n    That led calm Henry, though he were a king,\n    As doth a sail, fill\'d with a fretting gust,\n    Command an argosy to stern the waves.\n    But think you, lords, that Clifford fled with them?\n  WARWICK. No, \'tis impossible he should escape;\n    For, though before his face I speak the words,\n    Your brother Richard mark\'d him for the grave;\n    And, whereso\'er he is, he\'s surely dead.\n                                     [CLIFFORD groans, and dies]\n  RICHARD. Whose soul is that which takes her heavy leave?\n    A deadly groan, like life and death\'s departing.\n    See who it is.\n  EDWARD. And now the battle\'s ended,\n    If friend or foe, let him be gently used.\n  RICHARD. Revoke that doom of mercy, for \'tis Clifford;\n    Who not contented that he lopp\'d the branch\n    In hewing Rutland when his leaves put forth,\n    But set his murd\'ring knife unto the root\n    From whence that tender spray did sweetly spring-  \n    I mean our princely father, Duke of York.\n  WARWICK. From off the gates of York fetch down the head,\n    Your father\'s head, which Clifford placed there;\n    Instead whereof let this supply the room.\n    Measure for measure must be answered.\n  EDWARD. Bring forth that fatal screech-owl to our house,\n    That nothing sung but death to us and ours.\n    Now death shall stop his dismal threat\'ning sound,\n    And his ill-boding tongue no more shall speak.\n  WARWICK. I think his understanding is bereft.\n    Speak, Clifford, dost thou know who speaks to thee?\n    Dark cloudy death o\'ershades his beams of life,\n    And he nor sees nor hears us what we say.\n  RICHARD. O, would he did! and so, perhaps, he doth.\n    \'Tis but his policy to counterfeit,\n    Because he would avoid such bitter taunts\n    Which in the time of death he gave our father.\n  GEORGE. If so thou think\'st, vex him with eager words.\n  RICHARD. Clifford, ask mercy and obtain no grace.\n  EDWARD. Clifford, repent in bootless penitence.  \n  WARWICK. Clifford, devise excuses for thy faults.\n  GEORGE. While we devise fell tortures for thy faults.\n  RICHARD. Thou didst love York, and I am son to York.\n  EDWARD. Thou pitied\'st Rutland, I will pity thee.\n  GEORGE. Where\'s Captain Margaret, to fence you now?\n  WARWICK. They mock thee, Clifford; swear as thou wast wont.\n  RICHARD. What, not an oath? Nay, then the world goes hard\n    When Clifford cannot spare his friends an oath.\n    I know by that he\'s dead; and by my soul,\n    If this right hand would buy two hours\' life,\n    That I in all despite might rail at him,\n    This hand should chop it off, and with the issuing blood\n    Stifle the villain whose unstanched thirst\n    York and young Rutland could not satisfy.\n  WARWICK. Ay, but he\'s dead. Off with the traitor\'s head,\n    And rear it in the place your father\'s stands.\n    And now to London with triumphant march,\n    There to be crowned England\'s royal King;\n    From whence shall Warwick cut the sea to France,\n    And ask the Lady Bona for thy queen.  \n    So shalt thou sinew both these lands together;\n    And, having France thy friend, thou shalt not dread\n    The scatt\'red foe that hopes to rise again;\n    For though they cannot greatly sting to hurt,\n    Yet look to have them buzz to offend thine ears.\n    First will I see the coronation;\n    And then to Brittany I\'ll cross the sea\n    To effect this marriage, so it please my lord.\n  EDWARD. Even as thou wilt, sweet Warwick, let it be;\n    For in thy shoulder do I build my seat,\n    And never will I undertake the thing\n    Wherein thy counsel and consent is wanting.\n    Richard, I will create thee Duke of Gloucester;\n    And George, of Clarence; Warwick, as ourself,\n    Shall do and undo as him pleaseth best.\n  RICHARD. Let me be Duke of Clarence, George of Gloucester;\n    For Gloucester\'s dukedom is too ominous.\n  WARWICK. Tut, that\'s a foolish observation.\n    Richard, be Duke of Gloucester. Now to London\n    To see these honours in possession.                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nA chase in the north of England\n\nEnter two KEEPERS, with cross-bows in their hands\n\n  FIRST KEEPER. Under this thick-grown brake we\'ll shroud ourselves,\n    For through this laund anon the deer will come;\n    And in this covert will we make our stand,\n    Culling the principal of all the deer.\n  SECOND KEEPER. I\'ll stay above the hill, so both may shoot.\n  FIRST KEEPER. That cannot be; the noise of thy cross-bow\n    Will scare the herd, and so my shoot is lost.\n    Here stand we both, and aim we at the best;\n    And, for the time shall not seem tedious,\n    I\'ll tell thee what befell me on a day\n    In this self-place where now we mean to stand.\n  SECOND KEEPER. Here comes a man; let\'s stay till he be past.\n\n        Enter KING HENRY, disguised, with a prayer-book\n\n  KING HENRY. From Scotland am I stol\'n, even of pure love,\n    To greet mine own land with my wishful sight.  \n    No, Harry, Harry, \'tis no land of thine;\n    Thy place is fill\'d, thy sceptre wrung from thee,\n    Thy balm wash\'d off wherewith thou wast anointed.\n    No bending knee will call thee Caesar now,\n    No humble suitors press to speak for right,\n    No, not a man comes for redress of thee;\n    For how can I help them and not myself?\n  FIRST KEEPER. Ay, here\'s a deer whose skin\'s a keeper\'s fee.\n    This is the quondam King; let\'s seize upon him.\n  KING HENRY. Let me embrace thee, sour adversity,\n    For wise men say it is the wisest course.\n  SECOND KEEPER. Why linger we? let us lay hands upon him.\n  FIRST KEEPER. Forbear awhile; we\'ll hear a little more.\n  KING HENRY. My Queen and son are gone to France for aid;\n    And, as I hear, the great commanding Warwick\n    Is thither gone to crave the French King\'s sister\n    To wife for Edward. If this news be true,\n    Poor queen and son, your labour is but lost;\n    For Warwick is a subtle orator,\n    And Lewis a prince soon won with moving words.  \n    By this account, then, Margaret may win him;\n    For she\'s a woman to be pitied much.\n    Her sighs will make a batt\'ry in his breast;\n    Her tears will pierce into a marble heart;\n    The tiger will be mild whiles she doth mourn;\n    And Nero will be tainted with remorse\n    To hear and see her plaints, her brinish tears.\n    Ay, but she\'s come to beg: Warwick, to give.\n    She, on his left side, craving aid for Henry:\n    He, on his right, asking a wife for Edward.\n    She weeps, and says her Henry is depos\'d:\n    He smiles, and says his Edward is install\'d;\n    That she, poor wretch, for grief can speak no more;\n    Whiles Warwick tells his title, smooths the wrong,\n    Inferreth arguments of mighty strength,\n    And in conclusion wins the King from her\n    With promise of his sister, and what else,\n    To strengthen and support King Edward\'s place.\n    O Margaret, thus \'twill be; and thou, poor soul,\n    Art then forsaken, as thou went\'st forlorn!  \n  SECOND KEEPER. Say, what art thou that talk\'st of kings and queens?\n  KING HENRY. More than I seem, and less than I was born to:\n    A man at least, for less I should not be;\n    And men may talk of kings, and why not I?\n  SECOND KEEPER. Ay, but thou talk\'st as if thou wert a king.\n  KING HENRY. Why, so I am- in mind; and that\'s enough.\n  SECOND KEEPER. But, if thou be a king, where is thy crown?\n  KING HENRY. My crown is in my heart, not on my head;\n    Not deck\'d with diamonds and Indian stones,\n    Not to be seen. My crown is call\'d content;\n    A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.\n  SECOND KEEPER. Well, if you be a king crown\'d with content,\n    Your crown content and you must be contented\n    To go along with us; for as we think,\n    You are the king King Edward hath depos\'d;\n    And we his subjects, sworn in all allegiance,\n    Will apprehend you as his enemy.\n  KING HENRY. But did you never swear, and break an oath?\n  SECOND KEEPER. No, never such an oath; nor will not now.\n  KING HENRY. Where did you dwell when I was King of England?  \n  SECOND KEEPER. Here in this country, where we now remain.\n  KING HENRY. I was anointed king at nine months old;\n    My father and my grandfather were kings;\n    And you were sworn true subjects unto me;\n    And tell me, then, have you not broke your oaths?\n  FIRST KEEPER. No;\n    For we were subjects but while you were king.\n  KING HENRY. Why, am I dead? Do I not breathe a man?\n    Ah, simple men, you know not what you swear!\n    Look, as I blow this feather from my face,\n    And as the air blows it to me again,\n    Obeying with my wind when I do blow,\n    And yielding to another when it blows,\n    Commanded always by the greater gust,\n    Such is the lightness of you common men.\n    But do not break your oaths; for of that sin\n    My mild entreaty shall not make you guilty.\n    Go where you will, the King shall be commanded;\n    And be you kings: command, and I\'ll obey.\n  FIRST KEEPER. We are true subjects to the King, King Edward.  \n  KING HENRY. So would you be again to Henry,\n    If he were seated as King Edward is.\n  FIRST KEEPER. We charge you, in God\'s name and the King\'s,\n    To go with us unto the officers.\n  KING HENRY. In God\'s name, lead; your King\'s name be obey\'d;\n    And what God will, that let your King perform;\n    And what he will, I humbly yield unto.                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter KING EDWARD, GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE, and LADY GREY\n\n  KING EDWARD. Brother of Gloucester, at Saint Albans\' field\n    This lady\'s husband, Sir Richard Grey, was slain,\n    His land then seiz\'d on by the conqueror.\n    Her suit is now to repossess those lands;\n    Which we in justice cannot well deny,\n    Because in quarrel of the house of York\n    The worthy gentleman did lose his life.\n  GLOUCESTER. Your Highness shall do well to grant her suit;\n    It were dishonour to deny it her.\n  KING EDWARD. It were no less; but yet I\'ll make a pause.\n  GLOUCESTER. [Aside to CLARENCE] Yea, is it so?\n    I see the lady hath a thing to grant,\n    Before the King will grant her humble suit.\n  CLARENCE. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] He knows the game; how true he\n    keeps the wind!\n  GLOUCESTER. [Aside to CLARENCE] Silence!\n  KING EDWARD. Widow, we will consider of your suit;  \n    And come some other time to know our mind.\n  LADY GREY. Right gracious lord, I cannot brook delay.\n    May it please your Highness to resolve me now;\n    And what your pleasure is shall satisfy me.\n  GLOUCESTER. [Aside] Ay, widow? Then I\'ll warrant you all your\n      lands,\n    An if what pleases him shall pleasure you.\n    Fight closer or, good faith, you\'ll catch a blow.\n  CLARENCE. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] I fear her not, unless she chance\n    to fall.\n  GLOUCESTER. [Aside to CLARENCE] God forbid that, for he\'ll take\n    vantages.\n  KING EDWARD. How many children hast thou, widow, tell me.\n  CLARENCE. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] I think he means to beg a child of\n    her.\n  GLOUCESTER. [Aside to CLARENCE] Nay, then whip me; he\'ll rather\n    give her two.\n  LADY GREY. Three, my most gracious lord.\n  GLOUCESTER. [Aside] You shall have four if you\'ll be rul\'d by him.\n  KING EDWARD. \'Twere pity they should lose their father\'s lands.  \n  LADY GREY. Be pitiful, dread lord, and grant it, then.\n  KING EDWARD. Lords, give us leave; I\'ll try this widow\'s wit.\n  GLOUCESTER. [Aside] Ay, good leave have you; for you will have\n      leave\n    Till youth take leave and leave you to the crutch.\n                              [GLOUCESTER and CLARENCE withdraw]\n  KING EDWARD. Now tell me, madam, do you love your children?\n  LADY GREY. Ay, full as dearly as I love myself.\n  KING EDWARD. And would you not do much to do them good?\n  LADY GREY. To do them good I would sustain some harm.\n  KING EDWARD. Then get your husband\'s lands, to do them good.\n  LADY GREY. Therefore I came unto your Majesty.\n  KING EDWARD. I\'ll tell you how these lands are to be got.\n  LADY GREY. So shall you bind me to your Highness\' service.\n  KING EDWARD. What service wilt thou do me if I give them?\n  LADY GREY. What you command that rests in me to do.\n  KING EDWARD. But you will take exceptions to my boon.\n  LADY GREY. No, gracious lord, except I cannot do it.\n  KING EDWARD. Ay, but thou canst do what I mean to ask.\n  LADY GREY. Why, then I will do what your Grace commands.  \n  GLOUCESTER. He plies her hard; and much rain wears the marble.\n  CLARENCE. As red as fire! Nay, then her wax must melt.\n  LADY GREY. Why stops my lord? Shall I not hear my task?\n  KING EDWARD. An easy task; \'tis but to love a king.\n  LADY GREY. That\'s soon perform\'d, because I am a subject.\n  KING EDWARD. Why, then, thy husband\'s lands I freely give thee.\n  LADY GREY. I take my leave with many thousand thanks.\n  GLOUCESTER. The match is made; she seals it with a curtsy.\n  KING EDWARD. But stay thee- \'tis the fruits of love I mean.\n  LADY GREY. The fruits of love I mean, my loving liege.\n  KING EDWARD. Ay, but, I fear me, in another sense.\n    What love, thinkst thou, I sue so much to get?\n  LADY GREY. My love till death, my humble thanks, my prayers;\n    That love which virtue begs and virtue grants.\n  KING EDWARD. No, by my troth, I did not mean such love.\n  LADY GREY. Why, then you mean not as I thought you did.\n  KING EDWARD. But now you partly may perceive my mind.\n  LADY GREY. My mind will never grant what I perceive\n    Your Highness aims at, if I aim aright.\n  KING EDWARD. To tell thee plain, I aim to lie with thee.  \n  LADY GREY. To tell you plain, I had rather lie in prison.\n  KING EDWARD. Why, then thou shalt not have thy husband\'s lands.\n  LADY GREY. Why, then mine honesty shall be my dower;\n    For by that loss I will not purchase them.\n  KING EDWARD. Therein thou wrong\'st thy children mightily.\n  LADY GREY. Herein your Highness wrongs both them and me.\n    But, mighty lord, this merry inclination\n    Accords not with the sadness of my suit.\n    Please you dismiss me, either with ay or no.\n  KING EDWARD. Ay, if thou wilt say ay to my request;\n    No, if thou dost say no to my demand.\n  LADY GREY. Then, no, my lord. My suit is at an end.\n  GLOUCESTER. The widow likes him not; she knits her brows.\n  CLARENCE. He is the bluntest wooer in Christendom.\n  KING EDWARD. [Aside] Her looks doth argue her replete with modesty;\n    Her words doth show her wit incomparable;\n    All her perfections challenge sovereignty.\n    One way or other, she is for a king;\n    And she shall be my love, or else my queen.\n    Say that King Edward take thee for his queen?  \n  LADY GREY. \'Tis better said than done, my gracious lord.\n    I am a subject fit to jest withal,\n    But far unfit to be a sovereign.\n  KING EDWARD. Sweet widow, by my state I swear to thee\n    I speak no more than what my soul intends;\n    And that is to enjoy thee for my love.\n  LADY GREY. And that is more than I will yield unto.\n    I know I am too mean to be your queen,\n    And yet too good to be your concubine.\n  KING EDWARD. You cavil, widow; I did mean my queen.\n  LADY GREY. \'Twill grieve your Grace my sons should call you father.\n  KING EDWARD.No more than when my daughters call thee mother.\n    Thou art a widow, and thou hast some children;\n    And, by God\'s Mother, I, being but a bachelor,\n    Have other some. Why, \'tis a happy thing\n    To be the father unto many sons.\n    Answer no more, for thou shalt be my queen.\n  GLOUCESTER. The ghostly father now hath done his shrift.\n  CLARENCE. When he was made a shriver, \'twas for shrift.\n  KING EDWARD. Brothers, you muse what chat we two have had.  \n  GLOUCESTER. The widow likes it not, for she looks very sad.\n  KING EDWARD. You\'d think it strange if I should marry her.\n  CLARENCE. To who, my lord?\n  KING EDWARD. Why, Clarence, to myself.\n  GLOUCESTER. That would be ten days\' wonder at the least.\n  CLARENCE. That\'s a day longer than a wonder lasts.\n  GLOUCESTER. By so much is the wonder in extremes.\n  KING EDWARD. Well, jest on, brothers; I can tell you both\n    Her suit is granted for her husband\'s lands.\n\n                       Enter a NOBLEMAN\n\n  NOBLEMAN. My gracious lord, Henry your foe is taken\n    And brought your prisoner to your palace gate.\n  KING EDWARD. See that he be convey\'d unto the Tower.\n    And go we, brothers, to the man that took him\n    To question of his apprehension.\n    Widow, go you along. Lords, use her honourably.\n                                       Exeunt all but GLOUCESTER\n  GLOUCESTER. Ay, Edward will use women honourably.  \n    Would he were wasted, marrow, bones, and all,\n    That from his loins no hopeful branch may spring\n    To cross me from the golden time I look for!\n    And yet, between my soul\'s desire and me-\n    The lustful Edward\'s title buried-\n    Is Clarence, Henry, and his son young Edward,\n    And all the unlook\'d for issue of their bodies,\n    To take their rooms ere I can place myself.\n    A cold premeditation for my purpose!\n    Why, then I do but dream on sovereignty;\n    Like one that stands upon a promontory\n    And spies a far-off shore where he would tread,\n    Wishing his foot were equal with his eye;\n    And chides the sea that sunders him from thence,\n    Saying he\'ll lade it dry to have his way-\n    So do I wish the crown, being so far off;\n    And so I chide the means that keeps me from it;\n    And so I say I\'ll cut the causes off,\n    Flattering me with impossibilities.\n    My eye\'s too quick, my heart o\'erweens too much,  \n    Unless my hand and strength could equal them.\n    Well, say there is no kingdom then for Richard;\n    What other pleasure can the world afford?\n    I\'ll make my heaven in a lady\'s lap,\n    And deck my body in gay ornaments,\n    And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks.\n    O miserable thought! and more unlikely\n    Than to accomplish twenty golden crowns.\n    Why, love forswore me in my mother\'s womb;\n    And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,\n    She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe\n    To shrink mine arm up like a wither\'d shrub\n    To make an envious mountain on my back,\n    Where sits deformity to mock my body;\n    To shape my legs of an unequal size;\n    To disproportion me in every part,\n    Like to a chaos, or an unlick\'d bear-whelp\n    That carries no impression like the dam.\n    And am I, then, a man to be belov\'d?\n    O monstrous fault to harbour such a thought!  \n    Then, since this earth affords no joy to me\n    But to command, to check, to o\'erbear such\n    As are of better person than myself,\n    I\'ll make my heaven to dream upon the crown,\n    And whiles I live t\' account this world but hell,\n    Until my misshap\'d trunk that bear this head\n    Be round impaled with a glorious crown.\n    And yet I know not how to get the crown,\n    For many lives stand between me and home;\n    And I- like one lost in a thorny wood\n    That rents the thorns and is rent with the thorns,\n    Seeking a way and straying from the way\n    Not knowing how to find the open air,\n    But toiling desperately to find it out-\n    Torment myself to catch the English crown;\n    And from that torment I will free myself\n    Or hew my way out with a bloody axe.\n    Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,\n    And cry \'Content!\' to that which grieves my heart,\n    And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,  \n    And frame my face to all occasions.\n    I\'ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall;\n    I\'ll slay more gazers than the basilisk;\n    I\'ll play the orator as well as Nestor,\n    Deceive more slily than Ulysses could,\n    And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.\n    I can add colours to the chameleon,\n    Change shapes with Protheus for advantages,\n    And set the murderous Machiavel to school.\n    Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?\n    Tut, were it farther off, I\'ll pluck it down.           Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nFrance.  The KING\'S palace\n\nFlourish.  Enter LEWIS the French King, his sister BONA,\nhis Admiral call\'d BOURBON; PRINCE EDWARD, QUEEN MARGARET,\nand the EARL of OXFORD.  LEWIS sits, and riseth up again\n\n  LEWIS. Fair Queen of England, worthy Margaret,\n    Sit down with us. It ill befits thy state\n    And birth that thou shouldst stand while Lewis doth sit.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. No, mighty King of France. Now Margaret\n    Must strike her sail and learn a while to serve\n    Where kings command. I was, I must confess,\n    Great Albion\'s Queen in former golden days;\n    But now mischance hath trod my title down\n    And with dishonour laid me on the ground,\n    Where I must take like seat unto my fortune,\n    And to my humble seat conform myself.\n  LEWIS. Why, say, fair Queen, whence springs this deep despair?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. From such a cause as fills mine eyes with tears\n    And stops my tongue, while heart is drown\'d in cares.  \n  LEWIS. Whate\'er it be, be thou still like thyself,\n    And sit thee by our side. [Seats her by him] Yield not thy neck\n    To fortune\'s yoke, but let thy dauntless mind\n    Still ride in triumph over all mischance.\n    Be plain, Queen Margaret, and tell thy grief;\n    It shall be eas\'d, if France can yield relief.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Those gracious words revive my drooping thoughts\n    And give my tongue-tied sorrows leave to speak.\n    Now therefore be it known to noble Lewis\n    That Henry, sole possessor of my love,\n    Is, of a king, become a banish\'d man,\n    And forc\'d to live in Scotland a forlorn;\n    While proud ambitious Edward Duke of York\n    Usurps the regal title and the seat\n    Of England\'s true-anointed lawful King.\n    This is the cause that I, poor Margaret,\n    With this my son, Prince Edward, Henry\'s heir,\n    Am come to crave thy just and lawful aid;\n    And if thou fail us, all our hope is done.\n    Scotland hath will to help, but cannot help;  \n    Our people and our peers are both misled,\n    Our treasure seiz\'d, our soldiers put to flight,\n    And, as thou seest, ourselves in heavy plight.\n  LEWIS. Renowned Queen, with patience calm the storm,\n    While we bethink a means to break it off.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. The more we stay, the stronger grows our foe.\n  LEWIS. The more I stay, the more I\'ll succour thee.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. O, but impatience waiteth on true sorrow.\n    And see where comes the breeder of my sorrow!\n\n                        Enter WARWICK\n\n  LEWIS. What\'s he approacheth boldly to our presence?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Our Earl of Warwick, Edward\'s greatest friend.\n  LEWIS. Welcome, brave Warwick! What brings thee to France?\n                                      [He descends. She ariseth]\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, now begins a second storm to rise;\n    For this is he that moves both wind and tide.\n  WARWICK. From worthy Edward, King of Albion,\n    My lord and sovereign, and thy vowed friend,  \n    I come, in kindness and unfeigned love,\n    First to do greetings to thy royal person,\n    And then to crave a league of amity,\n    And lastly to confirm that amity\n    With nuptial knot, if thou vouchsafe to grant\n    That virtuous Lady Bona, thy fair sister,\n    To England\'s King in lawful marriage.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside] If that go forward, Henry\'s hope is done.\n  WARWICK. [To BONA] And, gracious madam, in our king\'s behalf,\n    I am commanded, with your leave and favour,\n    Humbly to kiss your hand, and with my tongue\n    To tell the passion of my sovereign\'s heart;\n    Where fame, late ent\'ring at his heedful ears,\n    Hath plac\'d thy beauty\'s image and thy virtue.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. King Lewis and Lady Bona, hear me speak\n    Before you answer Warwick. His demand\n    Springs not from Edward\'s well-meant honest love,\n    But from deceit bred by necessity;\n    For how can tyrants safely govern home\n    Unless abroad they purchase great alliance?  \n    To prove him tyrant this reason may suffice,\n    That Henry liveth still; but were he dead,\n    Yet here Prince Edward stands, King Henry\'s son.\n    Look therefore, Lewis, that by this league and marriage\n    Thou draw not on thy danger and dishonour;\n    For though usurpers sway the rule a while\n    Yet heav\'ns are just, and time suppresseth wrongs.\n  WARWICK. Injurious Margaret!\n  PRINCE OF WALES. And why not Queen?\n  WARWICK. Because thy father Henry did usurp;\n    And thou no more art prince than she is queen.\n  OXFORD. Then Warwick disannuls great John of Gaunt,\n    Which did subdue the greatest part of Spain;\n    And, after John of Gaunt, Henry the Fourth,\n    Whose wisdom was a mirror to the wisest;\n    And, after that wise prince, Henry the Fifth,\n    Who by his prowess conquered all France.\n    From these our Henry lineally descends.\n  WARWICK. Oxford, how haps it in this smooth discourse\n    You told not how Henry the Sixth hath lost  \n    All that which Henry the Fifth had gotten?\n    Methinks these peers of France should smile at that.\n    But for the rest: you tell a pedigree\n    Of threescore and two years- a silly time\n    To make prescription for a kingdom\'s worth.\n  OXFORD. Why, Warwick, canst thou speak against thy liege,\n    Whom thou obeyed\'st thirty and six years,\n    And not betray thy treason with a blush?\n  WARWICK. Can Oxford that did ever fence the right\n    Now buckler falsehood with a pedigree?\n    For shame! Leave Henry, and call Edward king.\n  OXFORD. Call him my king by whose injurious doom\n    My elder brother, the Lord Aubrey Vere,\n    Was done to death; and more than so, my father,\n    Even in the downfall of his mellow\'d years,\n    When nature brought him to the door of death?\n    No, Warwick, no; while life upholds this arm,\n    This arm upholds the house of Lancaster.\n  WARWICK. And I the house of York.\n  LEWIS. Queen Margaret, Prince Edward, and Oxford,  \n    Vouchsafe at our request to stand aside\n    While I use further conference with Warwick.\n                                              [They stand aloof]\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Heavens grant that Warwick\'s words bewitch him not!\n  LEWIS. Now, Warwick, tell me, even upon thy conscience,\n    Is Edward your true king? for I were loath\n    To link with him that were not lawful chosen.\n  WARWICK. Thereon I pawn my credit and mine honour.\n  LEWIS. But is he gracious in the people\'s eye?\n  WARWICK. The more that Henry was unfortunate.\n  LEWIS. Then further: all dissembling set aside,\n    Tell me for truth the measure of his love\n    Unto our sister Bona.\n  WARWICK. Such it seems\n    As may beseem a monarch like himself.\n    Myself have often heard him say and swear\n    That this his love was an eternal plant\n    Whereof the root was fix\'d in virtue\'s ground,\n    The leaves and fruit maintain\'d with beauty\'s sun,\n    Exempt from envy, but not from disdain,  \n    Unless the Lady Bona quit his pain.\n  LEWIS. Now, sister, let us hear your firm resolve.\n  BONA. Your grant or your denial shall be mine.\n    [To WARWICK] Yet I confess that often ere this day,\n    When I have heard your king\'s desert recounted,\n    Mine ear hath tempted judgment to desire.\n  LEWIS. Then, Warwick, thus: our sister shall be Edward\'s.\n    And now forthwith shall articles be drawn\n    Touching the jointure that your king must make,\n    Which with her dowry shall be counterpois\'d.\n    Draw near, Queen Margaret, and be a witness\n    That Bona shall be wife to the English king.\n  PRINCE OF WALES. To Edward, but not to the English king.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Deceitful Warwick, it was thy device\n    By this alliance to make void my suit.\n    Before thy coming, Lewis was Henry\'s friend.\n  LEWIS. And still is friend to him and Margaret.\n    But if your title to the crown be weak,\n    As may appear by Edward\'s good success,\n    Then \'tis but reason that I be releas\'d  \n    From giving aid which late I promised.\n    Yet shall you have all kindness at my hand\n    That your estate requires and mine can yield.\n  WARWICK. Henry now lives in Scotland at his case,\n    Where having nothing, nothing can he lose.\n    And as for you yourself, our quondam queen,\n    You have a father able to maintain you,\n    And better \'twere you troubled him than France.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Peace, impudent and shameless Warwick,\n    Proud setter up and puller down of kings!\n    I will not hence till with my talk and tears,\n    Both full of truth, I make King Lewis behold\n    Thy sly conveyance and thy lord\'s false love;\n    For both of you are birds of self-same feather.\n                                    [POST blowing a horn within]\n  LEWIS. Warwick, this is some post to us or thee.\n\n                       Enter the POST\n\n  POST. My lord ambassador, these letters are for you,  \n    Sent from your brother, Marquis Montague.\n    These from our King unto your Majesty.\n    And, madam, these for you; from whom I know not.\n                                   [They all read their letters]\n  OXFORD. I like it well that our fair Queen and mistress\n    Smiles at her news, while Warwick frowns at his.\n  PRINCE OF WALES. Nay, mark how Lewis stamps as he were nettled.\n    I hope all\'s for the best.\n  LEWIS. Warwick, what are thy news? And yours, fair Queen?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Mine such as fill my heart with unhop\'d joys.\n  WARWICK. Mine, full of sorrow and heart\'s discontent.\n  LEWIS. What, has your king married the Lady Grey?\n    And now, to soothe your forgery and his,\n    Sends me a paper to persuade me patience?\n    Is this th\' alliance that he seeks with France?\n    Dare he presume to scorn us in this manner?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. I told your Majesty as much before.\n    This proveth Edward\'s love and Warwick\'s honesty.\n  WARWICK. King Lewis, I here protest in sight of heaven,\n    And by the hope I have of heavenly bliss,  \n    That I am clear from this misdeed of Edward\'s-\n    No more my king, for he dishonours me,\n    But most himself, if he could see his shame.\n    Did I forget that by the house of York\n    My father came untimely to his death?\n    Did I let pass th\' abuse done to my niece?\n    Did I impale him with the regal crown?\n    Did I put Henry from his native right?\n    And am I guerdon\'d at the last with shame?\n    Shame on himself! for my desert is honour;\n    And to repair my honour lost for him\n    I here renounce him and return to Henry.\n    My noble Queen, let former grudges pass,\n    And henceforth I am thy true servitor.\n    I will revenge his wrong to Lady Bona,\n    And replant Henry in his former state.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Warwick, these words have turn\'d my hate to love;\n    And I forgive and quite forget old faults,\n    And joy that thou becom\'st King Henry\'s friend.\n  WARWICK. So much his friend, ay, his unfeigned friend,  \n    That if King Lewis vouchsafe to furnish us\n    With some few bands of chosen soldiers,\n    I\'ll undertake to land them on our coast\n    And force the tyrant from his seat by war.\n    \'Tis not his new-made bride shall succour him;\n    And as for Clarence, as my letters tell me,\n    He\'s very likely now to fall from him\n    For matching more for wanton lust than honour\n    Or than for strength and safety of our country.\n  BONA. Dear brother, how shall Bona be reveng\'d\n    But by thy help to this distressed queen?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Renowned Prince, how shall poor Henry live\n    Unless thou rescue him from foul despair?\n  BONA. My quarrel and this English queen\'s are one.\n  WARWICK. And mine, fair Lady Bona, joins with yours.\n  LEWIS. And mine with hers, and thine, and Margaret\'s.\n    Therefore, at last, I firmly am resolv\'d\n    You shall have aid.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Let me give humble thanks for all at once.\n  LEWIS. Then, England\'s messenger, return in post  \n    And tell false Edward, thy supposed king,\n    That Lewis of France is sending over masquers\n    To revel it with him and his new bride.\n    Thou seest what\'s past; go fear thy king withal.\n  BONA. Tell him, in hope he\'ll prove a widower shortly,\n    I\'ll wear the willow-garland for his sake.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Tell him my mourning weeds are laid aside,\n    And I am ready to put armour on.\n  WARWICK. Tell him from me that he hath done me wrong,\n    And therefore I\'ll uncrown him ere\'t be long.\n    There\'s thy reward; be gone.                       Exit POST\n  LEWIS. But, Warwick,\n    Thou and Oxford, with five thousand men,\n    Shall cross the seas and bid false Edward battle:\n    And, as occasion serves, this noble Queen\n    And Prince shall follow with a fresh supply.\n    Yet, ere thou go, but answer me one doubt:\n    What pledge have we of thy firm loyalty?\n  WARWICK. This shall assure my constant loyalty:\n    That if our Queen and this young Prince agree,  \n    I\'ll join mine eldest daughter and my joy\n    To him forthwith in holy wedlock bands.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Yes, I agree, and thank you for your motion.\n    Son Edward, she is fair and virtuous,\n    Therefore delay not- give thy hand to Warwick;\n    And with thy hand thy faith irrevocable\n    That only Warwick\'s daughter shall be thine.\n  PRINCE OF WALES. Yes, I accept her, for she well deserves it;\n    And here, to pledge my vow, I give my hand.\n                                  [He gives his hand to WARWICK]\n  LEWIS. stay we now? These soldiers shall be levied;\n    And thou, Lord Bourbon, our High Admiral,\n    Shall waft them over with our royal fleet.\n    I long till Edward fall by war\'s mischance\n    For mocking marriage with a dame of France.\n                                          Exeunt all but WARWICK\n  WARWICK. I came from Edward as ambassador,\n    But I return his sworn and mortal foe.\n    Matter of marriage was the charge he gave me,\n    But dreadful war shall answer his demand.  \n    Had he none else to make a stale but me?\n    Then none but I shall turn his jest to sorrow.\n    I was the chief that rais\'d him to the crown,\n    And I\'ll be chief to bring him down again;\n    Not that I pity Henry\'s misery,\n    But seek revenge on Edward\'s mockery.                   Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE, SOMERSET, and MONTAGUE\n\n  GLOUCESTER. Now tell me, brother Clarence, what think you\n    Of this new marriage with the Lady Grey?\n    Hath not our brother made a worthy choice?\n  CLARENCE. Alas, you know \'tis far from hence to France!\n    How could he stay till Warwick made return?\n  SOMERSET. My lords, forbear this talk; here comes the King.\n\n           Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD, attended; LADY\n          GREY, as Queen; PEMBROKE, STAFFORD, HASTINGS,\n      and others. Four stand on one side, and four on the other\n\n  GLOUCESTER. And his well-chosen bride.\n  CLARENCE. I mind to tell him plainly what I think.\n  KING EDWARD. Now, brother of Clarence, how like you our choice\n    That you stand pensive as half malcontent?\n  CLARENCE. As well as Lewis of France or the Earl of Warwick,\n    Which are so weak of courage and in judgment  \n    That they\'ll take no offence at our abuse.\n  KING EDWARD. Suppose they take offence without a cause;\n    They are but Lewis and Warwick: I am Edward,\n    Your King and Warwick\'s and must have my will.\n  GLOUCESTER. And shall have your will, because our King.\n    Yet hasty marriage seldom proveth well.\n  KING EDWARD. Yea, brother Richard, are you offended too?\n  GLOUCESTER. Not I.\n    No, God forbid that I should wish them sever\'d\n    Whom God hath join\'d together; ay, and \'twere pity\n    To sunder them that yoke so well together.\n  KING EDWARD. Setting your scorns and your mislike aside,\n    Tell me some reason why the Lady Grey\n    Should not become my wife and England\'s Queen.\n    And you too, Somerset and Montague,\n    Speak freely what you think.\n  CLARENCE. Then this is mine opinion: that King Lewis\n    Becomes your enemy for mocking him\n    About the marriage of the Lady Bona.\n  GLOUCESTER. And Warwick, doing what you gave in charge,  \n    Is now dishonoured by this new marriage.\n  KING EDWARD. What if both Lewis and Warwick be appeas\'d\n    By such invention as I can devise?\n  MONTAGUE. Yet to have join\'d with France in such alliance\n    Would more have strength\'ned this our commonwealth\n    \'Gainst foreign storms than any home-bred marriage.\n  HASTINGS. Why, knows not Montague that of itself\n    England is safe, if true within itself?\n  MONTAGUE. But the safer when \'tis back\'d with France.\n  HASTINGS. \'Tis better using France than trusting France.\n    Let us be back\'d with God, and with the seas\n    Which He hath giv\'n for fence impregnable,\n    And with their helps only defend ourselves.\n    In them and in ourselves our safety lies.\n  CLARENCE. For this one speech Lord Hastings well deserves\n    To have the heir of the Lord Hungerford.\n  KING EDWARD. Ay, what of that? it was my will and grant;\n    And for this once my will shall stand for law.\n  GLOUCESTER. And yet methinks your Grace hath not done well\n    To give the heir and daughter of Lord Scales  \n    Unto the brother of your loving bride.\n    She better would have fitted me or Clarence;\n    But in your bride you bury brotherhood.\n  CLARENCE. Or else you would not have bestow\'d the heir\n    Of the Lord Bonville on your new wife\'s son,\n    And leave your brothers to go speed elsewhere.\n  KING EDWARD. Alas, poor Clarence! Is it for a wife\n    That thou art malcontent? I will provide thee.\n  CLARENCE. In choosing for yourself you show\'d your judgment,\n    Which being shallow, you shall give me leave\n    To play the broker in mine own behalf;\n    And to that end I shortly mind to leave you.\n  KING EDWARD. Leave me or tarry, Edward will be King,\n    And not be tied unto his brother\'s will.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. My lords, before it pleas\'d his Majesty\n    To raise my state to title of a queen,\n    Do me but right, and you must all confess\n    That I was not ignoble of descent:\n    And meaner than myself have had like fortune.\n    But as this title honours me and mine,  \n    So your dislikes, to whom I would be pleasing,\n    Doth cloud my joys with danger and with sorrow.\n  KING EDWARD. My love, forbear to fawn upon their frowns.\n    What danger or what sorrow can befall thee,\n    So long as Edward is thy constant friend\n    And their true sovereign whom they must obey?\n    Nay, whom they shall obey, and love thee too,\n    Unless they seek for hatred at my hands;\n    Which if they do, yet will I keep thee safe,\n    And they shall feel the vengeance of my wrath.\n  GLOUCESTER. [Aside] I hear, yet say not much, but think the more.\n\n                          Enter a POST\n\n  KING EDWARD. Now, messenger, what letters or what news\n    From France?\n  MESSENGER. My sovereign liege, no letters, and few words,\n    But such as I, without your special pardon,\n    Dare not relate.\n  KING EDWARD. Go to, we pardon thee; therefore, in brief,  \n    Tell me their words as near as thou canst guess them.\n    What answer makes King Lewis unto our letters?\n  MESSENGER. At my depart, these were his very words:\n    \'Go tell false Edward, the supposed king,\n    That Lewis of France is sending over masquers\n    To revel it with him and his new bride.\'\n  KING EDWARD. IS Lewis so brave? Belike he thinks me Henry.\n    But what said Lady Bona to my marriage?\n  MESSENGER. These were her words, utt\'red with mild disdain:\n    \'Tell him, in hope he\'ll prove a widower shortly,\n    I\'ll wear the willow-garland for his sake.\'\n  KING EDWARD. I blame not her: she could say little less;\n    She had the wrong. But what said Henry\'s queen?\n    For I have heard that she was there in place.\n  MESSENGER. \'Tell him\' quoth she \'my mourning weeds are done,\n    And I am ready to put armour on.\'\n  KING EDWARD. Belike she minds to play the Amazon.\n    But what said Warwick to these injuries?\n  MESSENGER. He, more incens\'d against your Majesty\n    Than all the rest, discharg\'d me with these words:  \n    \'Tell him from me that he hath done me wrong;\n    And therefore I\'ll uncrown him ere\'t be long.\'\n  KING EDWARD. Ha! durst the traitor breathe out so proud words?\n    Well, I will arm me, being thus forewarn\'d.\n    They shall have wars and pay for their presumption.\n    But say, is Warwick friends with Margaret?\n  MESSENGER. Ay, gracious sovereign; they are so link\'d in friendship\n    That young Prince Edward marries Warwick\'s daughter.\n  CLARENCE. Belike the elder; Clarence will have the younger.\n    Now, brother king, farewell, and sit you fast,\n    For I will hence to Warwick\'s other daughter;\n    That, though I want a kingdom, yet in marriage\n    I may not prove inferior to yourself.\n    You that love me and Warwick, follow me.\n                                      Exit, and SOMERSET follows\n  GLOUCESTER. [Aside] Not I.\n    My thoughts aim at a further matter; I\n    Stay not for the love of Edward but the crown.\n  KING EDWARD. Clarence and Somerset both gone to Warwick!\n    Yet am I arm\'d against the worst can happen;  \n    And haste is needful in this desp\'rate case.\n    Pembroke and Stafford, you in our behalf\n    Go levy men and make prepare for war;\n    They are already, or quickly will be landed.\n    Myself in person will straight follow you.\n                                    Exeunt PEMBROKE and STAFFORD\n    But ere I go, Hastings and Montague,\n    Resolve my doubt. You twain, of all the rest,\n    Are near to Warwick by blood and by alliance.\n    Tell me if you love Warwick more than me?\n    If it be so, then both depart to him:\n    I rather wish you foes than hollow friends.\n    But if you mind to hold your true obedience,\n    Give me assurance with some friendly vow,\n    That I may never have you in suspect.\n  MONTAGUE. So God help Montague as he proves true!\n  HASTINGS. And Hastings as he favours Edward\'s cause!\n  KING EDWARD. Now, brother Richard, will you stand by us?\n  GLOUCESTER. Ay, in despite of all that shall withstand you.\n  KING EDWARD. Why, so! then am I sure of victory.  \n    Now therefore let us hence, and lose no hour\n    Till we meet Warwick with his foreign pow\'r.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nA plain in Warwickshire\n\nEnter WARWICK and OXFORD, with French soldiers\n\n  WARWICK. Trust me, my lord, all hitherto goes well;\n    The common people by numbers swarm to us.\n\n                 Enter CLARENCE and SOMERSET\n\n    But see where Somerset and Clarence comes.\n    Speak suddenly, my lords- are we all friends?\n  CLARENCE. Fear not that, my lord.\n  WARWICK. Then, gentle Clarence, welcome unto Warwick;\n    And welcome, Somerset. I hold it cowardice\n    To rest mistrustful where a noble heart\n    Hath pawn\'d an open hand in sign of love;\n    Else might I think that Clarence, Edward\'s brother,\n    Were but a feigned friend to our proceedings.\n    But welcome, sweet Clarence; my daughter shall be thine.\n    And now what rests but, in night\'s coverture,\n    Thy brother being carelessly encamp\'d,  \n    His soldiers lurking in the towns about,\n    And but attended by a simple guard,\n    We may surprise and take him at our pleasure?\n    Our scouts have found the adventure very easy;\n    That as Ulysses and stout Diomede\n    With sleight and manhood stole to Rhesus\' tents,\n    And brought from thence the Thracian fatal steeds,\n    So we, well cover\'d with the night\'s black mantle,\n    At unawares may beat down Edward\'s guard\n    And seize himself- I say not \'slaughter him,\'\n    For I intend but only to surprise him.\n    You that will follow me to this attempt,\n    Applaud the name of Henry with your leader.\n                                         [They all cry \'Henry!\']\n    Why then, let\'s on our way in silent sort.\n    For Warwick and his friends, God and Saint George!    Exeunt\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nEdward\'s camp, near Warwick\n\nEnter three WATCHMEN, to guard the KING\'S tent\n\n  FIRST WATCHMAN. Come on, my masters, each man take his stand;\n    The King by this is set him down to sleep.\n  SECOND WATCHMAN. What, will he not to bed?\n  FIRST WATCHMAN. Why, no; for he hath made a solemn vow\n    Never to lie and take his natural rest\n    Till Warwick or himself be quite suppress\'d.\n  SECOND WATCHMAN. To-morrow then, belike, shall be the day,\n    If Warwick be so near as men report.\n  THIRD WATCHMAN. But say, I pray, what nobleman is that\n    That with the King here resteth in his tent?\n  FIRST WATCHMAN. \'Tis the Lord Hastings, the King\'s chiefest friend.\n  THIRD WATCHMAN. O, is it So? But why commands the King\n    That his chief followers lodge in towns about him,\n    While he himself keeps in the cold field?\n  SECOND WATCHMAN. \'Tis the more honour, because more dangerous.\n  THIRD WATCHMAN. Ay, but give me worship and quietness;\n    I like it better than dangerous honour.  \n    If Warwick knew in what estate he stands,\n    \'Tis to be doubted he would waken him.\n  FIRST WATCHMAN. Unless our halberds did shut up his passage.\n  SECOND WATCHMAN. Ay, wherefore else guard we his royal tent\n    But to defend his person from night-foes?\n\n             Enter WARWICK, CLARENCE, OXFORD, SOMERSET,\n                   and French soldiers, silent all\n\n  WARWICK. This is his tent; and see where stand his guard.\n    Courage, my masters! Honour now or never!\n    But follow me, and Edward shall be ours.\n  FIRST WATCHMAN. Who goes there?\n  SECOND WATCHMAN. Stay, or thou diest.\n\n       WARWICK and the rest cry all \'Warwick! Warwick!\' and\n      set upon the guard, who fly, crying \'Arm! Arm!\' WARWICK\n                   and the rest following them\n\n      The drum playing and trumpet sounding, re-enter WARWICK  \n         and the rest, bringing the KING out in his gown,\n   sitting in a chair. GLOUCESTER and HASTINGS fly over the stage\n\n  SOMERSET. What are they that fly there?\n  WARWICK. Richard and Hastings. Let them go; here is the Duke.\n  KING EDWARD. The Duke! Why, Warwick, when we parted,\n    Thou call\'dst me King?\n  WARWICK. Ay, but the case is alter\'d.\n    When you disgrac\'d me in my embassade,\n    Then I degraded you from being King,\n    And come now to create you Duke of York.\n    Alas, how should you govern any kingdom\n    That know not how to use ambassadors,\n    Nor how to be contented with one wife,\n    Nor how to use your brothers brotherly,\n    Nor how to study for the people\'s welfare,\n    Nor how to shroud yourself from enemies?\n  KING EDWARD. Yea, brother of Clarence, art thou here too?\n    Nay, then I see that Edward needs must down.\n    Yet, Warwick, in despite of all mischance,  \n    Of thee thyself and all thy complices,\n    Edward will always bear himself as King.\n    Though fortune\'s malice overthrow my state,\n    My mind exceeds the compass of her wheel.\n  WARWICK. Then, for his mind, be Edward England\'s king;\n                                           [Takes off his crown]\n    But Henry now shall wear the English crown\n    And be true King indeed; thou but the shadow.\n    My Lord of Somerset, at my request,\n    See that forthwith Duke Edward be convey\'d\n    Unto my brother, Archbishop of York.\n    When I have fought with Pembroke and his fellows,\n    I\'ll follow you and tell what answer\n    Lewis and the Lady Bona send to him.\n    Now for a while farewell, good Duke of York.\n  KING EDWARD. What fates impose, that men must needs abide;\n    It boots not to resist both wind and tide.\n                                    [They lead him out forcibly]\n  OXFORD. What now remains, my lords, for us to do\n    But march to London with our soldiers?  \n  WARWICK. Ay, that\'s the first thing that we have to do;\n    To free King Henry from imprisonment,\n    And see him seated in the regal throne.               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter QUEEN ELIZABETH and RIVERS\n\n  RIVERS. Madam, what makes you in this sudden change?\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Why, brother Rivers, are you yet to learn\n    What late misfortune is befall\'n King Edward?\n  RIVERS. What, loss of some pitch\'d battle against Warwick?\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. No, but the loss of his own royal person.\n  RIVERS. Then is my sovereign slain?\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ay, almost slain, for he is taken prisoner;\n    Either betray\'d by falsehood of his guard\n    Or by his foe surpris\'d at unawares;\n    And, as I further have to understand,\n    Is new committed to the Bishop of York,\n    Fell Warwick\'s brother, and by that our foe.\n  RIVERS. These news, I must confess, are full of grief;\n    Yet, gracious madam, bear it as you may:\n    Warwick may lose that now hath won the day.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Till then, fair hope must hinder life\'s decay.\n    And I the rather wean me from despair  \n    For love of Edward\'s offspring in my womb.\n    This is it that makes me bridle passion\n    And bear with mildness my misfortune\'s cross;\n    Ay, ay, for this I draw in many a tear\n    And stop the rising of blood-sucking sighs,\n    Lest with my sighs or tears I blast or drown\n    King Edward\'s fruit, true heir to th\' English crown.\n  RIVERS. But, madam, where is Warwick then become?\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. I am inform\'d that he comes towards London\n    To set the crown once more on Henry\'s head.\n    Guess thou the rest: King Edward\'s friends must down.\n    But to prevent the tyrant\'s violence-\n    For trust not him that hath once broken faith-\n    I\'ll hence forthwith unto the sanctuary\n    To save at least the heir of Edward\'s right.\n    There shall I rest secure from force and fraud.\n    Come, therefore, let us fly while we may fly:\n    If Warwick take us, we are sure to die.               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nA park near Middleham Castle in Yorkshire\n\nEnter GLOUCESTER, LORD HASTINGS, SIR WILLIAM STANLEY, and others\n\n  GLOUCESTER. Now, my Lord Hastings and Sir William Stanley,\n    Leave off to wonder why I drew you hither\n    Into this chiefest thicket of the park.\n    Thus stands the case: you know our King, my brother,\n    Is prisoner to the Bishop here, at whose hands\n    He hath good usage and great liberty;\n    And often but attended with weak guard\n    Comes hunting this way to disport himself.\n    I have advertis\'d him by secret means\n    That if about this hour he make this way,\n    Under the colour of his usual game,\n    He shall here find his friends, with horse and men,\n    To set him free from his captivity.\n\n             Enter KING EDWARD and a HUNTSMAN with him\n  \n  HUNTSMAN. This way, my lord; for this way lies the game.\n  KING EDWARD. Nay, this way, man. See where the huntsmen stand.\n    Now, brother of Gloucester, Lord Hastings, and the rest,\n    Stand you thus close to steal the Bishop\'s deer?\n  GLOUCESTER. Brother, the time and case requireth haste;\n    Your horse stands ready at the park corner.\n  KING EDWARD. But whither shall we then?\n  HASTINGS. To Lynn, my lord; and shipt from thence to Flanders.\n  GLOUCESTER. Well guess\'d, believe me; for that was my meaning.\n  KING EDWARD. Stanley, I will requite thy forwardness.\n  GLOUCESTER. But wherefore stay we? \'Tis no time to talk.\n  KING EDWARD. Huntsman, what say\'st thou? Wilt thou go along?\n  HUNTSMAN. Better do so than tarry and be hang\'d.\n  GLOUCESTER. Come then, away; let\'s ha\' no more ado.\n  KING EDWARD. Bishop, farewell. Shield thee from Warwick\'s frown,\n    And pray that I may repossess the crown.              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nLondon. The Tower\n\nFlourish. Enter KING HENRY, CLARENCE, WARWICK, SOMERSET, young HENRY,\nEARL OF RICHMOND, OXFORD, MONTAGUE, LIEUTENANT OF THE TOWER, and attendants\n\n  KING HENRY. Master Lieutenant, now that God and friends\n    Have shaken Edward from the regal seat\n    And turn\'d my captive state to liberty,\n    My fear to hope, my sorrows unto joys,\n    At our enlargement what are thy due fees?\n  LIEUTENANT. Subjects may challenge nothing of their sov\'reigns;\n    But if an humble prayer may prevail,\n    I then crave pardon of your Majesty.\n  KING HENRY. For what, Lieutenant? For well using me?\n    Nay, be thou sure I\'ll well requite thy kindness,\n    For that it made my imprisonment a pleasure;\n    Ay, such a pleasure as incaged birds\n    Conceive when, after many moody thoughts,\n    At last by notes of household harmony\n    They quite forget their loss of liberty.  \n    But, Warwick, after God, thou set\'st me free,\n    And chiefly therefore I thank God and thee;\n    He was the author, thou the instrument.\n    Therefore, that I may conquer fortune\'s spite\n    By living low where fortune cannot hurt me,\n    And that the people of this blessed land\n    May not be punish\'d with my thwarting stars,\n    Warwick, although my head still wear the crown,\n    I here resign my government to thee,\n    For thou art fortunate in all thy deeds.\n  WARWICK. Your Grace hath still been fam\'d for virtuous,\n    And now may seem as wise as virtuous\n    By spying and avoiding fortune\'s malice,\n    For few men rightly temper with the stars;\n    Yet in this one thing let me blame your Grace,\n    For choosing me when Clarence is in place.\n  CLARENCE. No, Warwick, thou art worthy of the sway,\n    To whom the heav\'ns in thy nativity\n    Adjudg\'d an olive branch and laurel crown,\n    As likely to be blest in peace and war;  \n    And therefore I yield thee my free consent.\n  WARWICK. And I choose Clarence only for Protector.\n  KING HENRY. Warwick and Clarence, give me both your hands.\n    Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts,\n    That no dissension hinder government.\n    I make you both Protectors of this land,\n    While I myself will lead a private life\n    And in devotion spend my latter days,\n    To sin\'s rebuke and my Creator\'s praise.\n  WARWICK. What answers Clarence to his sovereign\'s will?\n  CLARENCE. That he consents, if Warwick yield consent,\n    For on thy fortune I repose myself.\n  WARWICK. Why, then, though loath, yet must I be content.\n    We\'ll yoke together, like a double shadow\n    To Henry\'s body, and supply his place;\n    I mean, in bearing weight of government,\n    While he enjoys the honour and his ease.\n    And, Clarence, now then it is more than needful\n    Forthwith that Edward be pronounc\'d a traitor,\n    And all his lands and goods confiscated.  \n  CLARENCE. What else? And that succession be determin\'d.\n  WARWICK. Ay, therein Clarence shall not want his part.\n  KING HENRY. But, with the first of all your chief affairs,\n    Let me entreat- for I command no more-\n    That Margaret your Queen and my son Edward\n    Be sent for to return from France with speed;\n    For till I see them here, by doubtful fear\n    My joy of liberty is half eclips\'d.\n  CLARENCE. It shall be done, my sovereign, with all speed.\n  KING HENRY. My Lord of Somerset, what youth is that,\n    Of whom you seem to have so tender care?\n  SOMERSET. My liege, it is young Henry, Earl of Richmond.\n  KING HENRY. Come hither, England\'s hope.\n                                     [Lays his hand on his head]\n    If secret powers\n    Suggest but truth to my divining thoughts,\n    This pretty lad will prove our country\'s bliss.\n    His looks are full of peaceful majesty;\n    His head by nature fram\'d to wear a crown,\n    His hand to wield a sceptre; and himself  \n    Likely in time to bless a regal throne.\n    Make much of him, my lords; for this is he\n    Must help you more than you are hurt by me.\n\n                          Enter a POST\n\n  WARWICK. What news, my friend?\n  POST. That Edward is escaped from your brother\n    And fled, as he hears since, to Burgundy.\n  WARWICK. Unsavoury news! But how made he escape?\n  POST. He was convey\'d by Richard Duke of Gloucester\n    And the Lord Hastings, who attended him\n    In secret ambush on the forest side\n    And from the Bishop\'s huntsmen rescu\'d him;\n    For hunting was his daily exercise.\n  WARWICK. My brother was too careless of his charge.\n    But let us hence, my sovereign, to provide\n    A salve for any sore that may betide.\n                   Exeunt all but SOMERSET, RICHMOND, and OXFORD\n  SOMERSET. My lord, I like not of this flight of Edward\'s;  \n    For doubtless Burgundy will yield him help,\n    And we shall have more wars befor\'t be long.\n    As Henry\'s late presaging prophecy\n    Did glad my heart with hope of this young Richmond,\n    So doth my heart misgive me, in these conflicts,\n    What may befall him to his harm and ours.\n    Therefore, Lord Oxford, to prevent the worst,\n    Forthwith we\'ll send him hence to Brittany,\n    Till storms be past of civil enmity.\n  OXFORD. Ay, for if Edward repossess the crown,\n    \'Tis like that Richmond with the rest shall down.\n  SOMERSET. It shall be so; he shall to Brittany.\n    Come therefore, let\'s about it speedily.              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\nBefore York\n\nFlourish. Enter KING EDWARD, GLOUCESTER, HASTINGS, and soldiers\n\n  KING EDWARD. Now, brother Richard, Lord Hastings, and the rest,\n    Yet thus far fortune maketh us amends,\n    And says that once more I shall interchange\n    My waned state for Henry\'s regal crown.\n    Well have we pass\'d and now repass\'d the seas,\n    And brought desired help from Burgundy;\n    What then remains, we being thus arriv\'d\n    From Ravenspurgh haven before the gates of York,\n    But that we enter, as into our dukedom?\n  GLOUCESTER. The gates made fast! Brother, I like not this;\n    For many men that stumble at the threshold\n    Are well foretold that danger lurks within.\n  KING EDWARD. Tush, man, abodements must not now affright us.\n    By fair or foul means we must enter in,\n    For hither will our friends repair to us.\n  HASTINGS. My liege, I\'ll knock once more to summon them.  \n\n         Enter, on the walls, the MAYOR OF YORK and\n                       his BRETHREN\n\n  MAYOR. My lords, we were forewarned of your coming\n    And shut the gates for safety of ourselves,\n    For now we owe allegiance unto Henry.\n  KING EDWARD. But, Master Mayor, if Henry be your King,\n    Yet Edward at the least is Duke of York.\n  MAYOR. True, my good lord; I know you for no less.\n  KING EDWARD. Why, and I challenge nothing but my dukedom,\n    As being well content with that alone.\n  GLOUCESTER. [Aside] But when the fox hath once got in his nose,\n    He\'ll soon find means to make the body follow.\n  HASTINGS. Why, Master Mayor, why stand you in a doubt?\n    Open the gates; we are King Henry\'s friends.\n  MAYOR. Ay, say you so? The gates shall then be open\'d.\n                                                   [He descends]\n  GLOUCESTER. A wise stout captain, and soon persuaded!\n  HASTINGS. The good old man would fain that all were well,  \n    So \'twere not long of him; but being ent\'red,\n    I doubt not, I, but we shall soon persuade\n    Both him and all his brothers unto reason.\n\n             Enter, below, the MAYOR and two ALDERMEN\n\n  KING EDWARD. So, Master Mayor. These gates must not be shut\n    But in the night or in the time of war.\n    What! fear not, man, but yield me up the keys;\n                                                [Takes his keys]\n    For Edward will defend the town and thee,\n    And all those friends that deign to follow me.\n\n           March. Enter MONTGOMERY with drum and soldiers\n\n  GLOUCESTER. Brother, this is Sir John Montgomery,\n    Our trusty friend, unless I be deceiv\'d.\n  KING EDWARD. Welcome, Sir john! But why come you in arms?\n  MONTGOMERY. To help King Edward in his time of storm,\n    As every loyal subject ought to do.  \n  KING EDWARD. Thanks, good Montgomery; but we now forget\n    Our title to the crown, and only claim\n    Our dukedom till God please to send the rest.\n  MONTGOMERY. Then fare you well, for I will hence again.\n    I came to serve a king and not a duke.\n    Drummer, strike up, and let us march away.\n                                      [The drum begins to march]\n  KING EDWARD. Nay, stay, Sir John, a while, and we\'ll debate\n    By what safe means the crown may be recover\'d.\n  MONTGOMERY. What talk you of debating? In few words:\n    If you\'ll not here proclaim yourself our King,\n    I\'ll leave you to your fortune and be gone\n    To keep them back that come to succour you.\n    Why shall we fight, if you pretend no title?\n  GLOUCESTER. Why, brother, wherefore stand you on nice points?\n  KING EDWARD. When we grow stronger, then we\'ll make our claim;\n    Till then \'tis wisdom to conceal our meaning.\n  HASTINGS. Away with scrupulous wit! Now arms must rule.\n  GLOUCESTER. And fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns.\n    Brother, we will proclaim you out of hand;  \n    The bruit thereof will bring you many friends.\n  KING EDWARD. Then be it as you will; for \'tis my right,\n    And Henry but usurps the diadem.\n  MONTGOMERY. Ay, now my sovereign speaketh like himself;\n    And now will I be Edward\'s champion.\n  HASTINGS. Sound trumpet; Edward shall be here proclaim\'d.\n    Come, fellow soldier, make thou proclamation.\n                                   [Gives him a paper. Flourish]\n  SOLDIER. [Reads] \'Edward the Fourth, by the grace of God,\n    King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, &c.\'\n  MONTGOMERY. And whoso\'er gainsays King Edward\'s right,\n    By this I challenge him to single fight.\n                                          [Throws down gauntlet]\n  ALL. Long live Edward the Fourth!\n  KING EDWARD. Thanks, brave Montgomery, and thanks unto you all;\n    If fortune serve me, I\'ll requite this kindness.\n    Now for this night let\'s harbour here in York;\n    And when the morning sun shall raise his car\n    Above the border of this horizon,\n    We\'ll forward towards Warwick and his mates;  \n    For well I wot that Henry is no soldier.\n    Ah, froward Clarence, how evil it beseems the\n    To flatter Henry and forsake thy brother!\n    Yet, as we may, we\'ll meet both thee and Warwick.\n    Come on, brave soldiers; doubt not of the day,\n    And, that once gotten, doubt not of large pay.        Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VIII.\nLondon. The palace\n\nFlourish. Enter KING HENRY, WARWICK, MONTAGUE, CLARENCE, OXFORD, and EXETER\n\n  WARWICK. What counsel, lords? Edward from Belgia,\n    With hasty Germans and blunt Hollanders,\n    Hath pass\'d in safety through the narrow seas\n    And with his troops doth march amain to London;\n    And many giddy people flock to him.\n  KING HENRY. Let\'s levy men and beat him back again.\n  CLARENCE. A little fire is quickly trodden out,\n    Which, being suffer\'d, rivers cannot quench.\n  WARWICK. In Warwickshire I have true-hearted friends,\n    Not mutinous in peace, yet bold in war;\n    Those will I muster up, and thou, son Clarence,\n    Shalt stir up in Suffolk, Norfolk, and in Kent,\n    The knights and gentlemen to come with thee.\n    Thou, brother Montague, in Buckingham,\n    Northampton, and in Leicestershire, shalt find\n    Men well inclin\'d to hear what thou command\'st.  \n    And thou, brave Oxford, wondrous well belov\'d,\n    In Oxfordshire shalt muster up thy friends.\n    My sovereign, with the loving citizens,\n    Like to his island girt in with the ocean\n    Or modest Dian circled with her nymphs,\n    Shall rest in London till we come to him.\n    Fair lords, take leave and stand not to reply.\n    Farewell, my sovereign.\n  KING HENRY. Farewell, my Hector and my Troy\'s true hope.\n  CLARENCE. In sign of truth, I kiss your Highness\' hand.\n  KING HENRY. Well-minded Clarence, be thou fortunate!\n  MONTAGUE. Comfort, my lord; and so I take my leave.\n  OXFORD. [Kissing the KING\'S band] And thus I seal my truth and bid\n    adieu.\n  KING HENRY. Sweet Oxford, and my loving Montague,\n    And all at once, once more a happy farewell.\n  WARWICK. Farewell, sweet lords; let\'s meet at Coventry.\n                              Exeunt all but the KING and EXETER\n  KING HENRY. Here at the palace will I rest a while.\n    Cousin of Exeter, what thinks your lordship?  \n    Methinks the power that Edward hath in field\n    Should not be able to encounter mine.\n  EXETER. The doubt is that he will seduce the rest.\n  KING HENRY. That\'s not my fear; my meed hath got me fame:\n    I have not stopp\'d mine ears to their demands,\n    Nor posted off their suits with slow delays;\n    My pity hath been balm to heal their wounds,\n    My mildness hath allay\'d their swelling griefs,\n    My mercy dried their water-flowing tears;\n    I have not been desirous of their wealth,\n    Nor much oppress\'d them with great subsidies,\n    Nor forward of revenge, though they much err\'d.\n    Then why should they love Edward more than me?\n    No, Exeter, these graces challenge grace;\n    And, when the lion fawns upon the lamb,\n    The lamb will never cease to follow him.\n                      [Shout within \'A Lancaster! A Lancaster!\']\n  EXETER. Hark, hark, my lord! What shouts are these?\n\n            Enter KING EDWARD, GLOUCESTER, and soldiers  \n\n  KING EDWARD. Seize on the shame-fac\'d Henry, bear him hence;\n    And once again proclaim us King of England.\n    You are the fount that makes small brooks to flow.\n    Now stops thy spring; my sea shall suck them dry,\n    And swell so much the higher by their ebb.\n    Hence with him to the Tower: let him not speak.\n                                     Exeunt some with KING HENRY\n    And, lords, towards Coventry bend we our course,\n    Where peremptory Warwick now remains.\n    The sun shines hot; and, if we use delay,\n    Cold biting winter mars our hop\'d-for hay.\n  GLOUCESTER. Away betimes, before his forces join,\n    And take the great-grown traitor unawares.\n    Brave warriors, march amain towards Coventry.         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nCoventry\n\nEnter WARWICK, the MAYOR OF COVENTRY, two MESSENGERS,\nand others upon the walls\n\n  WARWICK. Where is the post that came from valiant Oxford?\n    How far hence is thy lord, mine honest fellow?\n  FIRST MESSENGER. By this at Dunsmore, marching hitherward.\n  WARWICK. How far off is our brother Montague?\n    Where is the post that came from Montague?\n  SECOND MESSENGER. By this at Daintry, with a puissant troop.\n\n                   Enter SIR JOHN SOMERVILLE\n\n  WARWICK. Say, Somerville, what says my loving son?\n    And by thy guess how nigh is Clarence now?\n  SOMERVILLE. At Southam I did leave him with his forces,\n    And do expect him here some two hours hence.\n                                                    [Drum heard]\n  WARWICK. Then Clarence is at hand; I hear his drum.\n  SOMERVILLE. It is not his, my lord; here Southam lies.  \n    The drum your Honour hears marcheth from Warwick.\n  WARWICK. Who should that be? Belike unlook\'d for friends.\n  SOMERVILLE. They are at hand, and you shall quickly know.\n\n        March. Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD, GLOUCESTER,\n                         and soldiers\n\n  KING EDWARD. Go, trumpet, to the walls, and sound a parle.\n  GLOUCESTER. See how the surly Warwick mans the wall.\n  WARWICK. O unbid spite! Is sportful Edward come?\n    Where slept our scouts or how are they seduc\'d\n    That we could hear no news of his repair?\n  KING EDWARD. Now, Warwick, wilt thou ope the city gates,\n    Speak gentle words, and humbly bend thy knee,\n    Call Edward King, and at his hands beg mercy?\n    And he shall pardon thee these outrages.\n  WARWICK. Nay, rather, wilt thou draw thy forces hence,\n    Confess who set thee up and pluck\'d thee down,\n    Call Warwick patron, and be penitent?\n    And thou shalt still remain the Duke of York.  \n  GLOUCESTER. I thought, at least, he would have said the King;\n    Or did he make the jest against his will?\n  WARWICK. Is not a dukedom, sir, a goodly gift?\n  GLOUCESTER. Ay, by my faith, for a poor earl to give.\n    I\'ll do thee service for so good a gift.\n  WARWICK. \'Twas I that gave the kingdom to thy brother.\n  KING EDWARD. Why then \'tis mine, if but by Warwick\'s gift.\n  WARWICK. Thou art no Atlas for so great a weight;\n    And, weakling, Warwick takes his gift again;\n    And Henry is my King, Warwick his subject.\n  KING EDWARD. But Warwick\'s king is Edward\'s prisoner.\n    And, gallant Warwick, do but answer this:\n    What is the body when the head is off?\n  GLOUCESTER. Alas, that Warwick had no more forecast,\n    But, whiles he thought to steal the single ten,\n    The king was slily finger\'d from the deck!\n    You left poor Henry at the Bishop\'s palace,\n    And ten to one you\'ll meet him in the Tower.\n  KING EDWARD. \'Tis even so; yet you are Warwick still.\n  GLOUCESTER. Come, Warwick, take the time; kneel down, kneel down.  \n    Nay, when? Strike now, or else the iron cools.\n  WARWICK. I had rather chop this hand off at a blow,\n    And with the other fling it at thy face,\n    Than bear so low a sail to strike to thee.\n  KING EDWARD. Sail how thou canst, have wind and tide thy friend,\n    This hand, fast wound about thy coal-black hair,\n    Shall, whiles thy head is warm and new cut off,\n    Write in the dust this sentence with thy blood:\n    \'Wind-changing Warwick now can change no more.\'\n\n               Enter OXFORD, with drum and colours\n\n  WARWICK. O cheerful colours! See where Oxford comes.\n  OXFORD. Oxford, Oxford, for Lancaster!\n                              [He and his forces enter the city]\n  GLOUCESTER. The gates are open, let us enter too.\n  KING EDWARD. So other foes may set upon our backs.\n    Stand we in good array, for they no doubt\n    Will issue out again and bid us battle;\n    If not, the city being but of small defence,  \n    We\'ll quietly rouse the traitors in the same.\n  WARWICK. O, welcome, Oxford! for we want thy help.\n\n             Enter MONTAGUE, with drum and colours\n\n  MONTAGUE. Montague, Montague, for Lancaster!\n                              [He and his forces enter the city]\n  GLOUCESTER. Thou and thy brother both shall buy this treason\n    Even with the dearest blood your bodies bear.\n  KING EDWARD. The harder match\'d, the greater victory.\n    My mind presageth happy gain and conquest.\n\n             Enter SOMERSET, with drum and colours\n\n  SOMERSET. Somerset, Somerset, for Lancaster!\n                              [He and his forces enter the city]\n  GLOUCESTER. Two of thy name, both Dukes of Somerset,\n    Have sold their lives unto the house of York;\n    And thou shalt be the third, if this sword hold.\n  \n             Enter CLARENCE, with drum and colours\n\n  WARWICK. And lo where George of Clarence sweeps along,\n    Of force enough to bid his brother battle;\n    With whom an upright zeal to right prevails\n    More than the nature of a brother\'s love.\n  CLARENCE. Clarence, Clarence, for Lancaster!\n  KING EDWARD. Et tu Brute- wilt thou stab Caesar too?\n    A parley, sirrah, to George of Clarence.\n                  [Sound a parley. RICHARD and CLARENCE whisper]\n  WARWICK. Come, Clarence, come. Thou wilt if Warwick call.\n  CLARENCE. [Taking the red rose from his hat and throwing\n      it at WARWICK]\n    Father of Warwick, know you what this means?\n    Look here, I throw my infamy at thee.\n    I will not ruinate my father\'s house,\n    Who gave his blood to lime the stones together,\n    And set up Lancaster. Why, trowest thou, Warwick,\n    That Clarence is so harsh, so blunt, unnatural,\n    To bend the fatal instruments of war  \n    Against his brother and his lawful King?\n    Perhaps thou wilt object my holy oath.\n    To keep that oath were more impiety\n    Than Jephtha when he sacrific\'d his daughter.\n    I am so sorry for my trespass made\n    That, to deserve well at my brother\'s hands,\n    I here proclaim myself thy mortal foe;\n    With resolution whereso\'er I meet thee-\n    As I will meet thee, if thou stir abroad-\n    To plague thee for thy foul misleading me.\n    And so, proud-hearted Warwick, I defy thee,\n    And to my brother turn my blushing cheeks.\n    Pardon me, Edward, I will make amends;\n    And, Richard, do not frown upon my faults,\n    For I will henceforth be no more unconstant.\n  KING EDWARD. Now welcome more, and ten times more belov\'d,\n    Than if thou never hadst deserv\'d our hate.\n  GLOUCESTER. Welcome, good Clarence; this is brother-like.\n  WARWICK. O passing traitor, perjur\'d and unjust!\n  KING EDWARD. What, Warwick, wilt thou leave die town and fight?  \n    Or shall we beat the stones about thine ears?\n  WARWICK. Alas, I am not coop\'d here for defence!\n    I will away towards Barnet presently\n    And bid thee battle, Edward, if thou dar\'st.\n  KING EDWARD. Yes, Warwick, Edward dares and leads the way.\n    Lords, to the field; Saint George and victory!\n                                                 Exeunt YORKISTS\n                         [March. WARWICK and his company follow]\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nA field of battle near Barnet\n\nAlarum and excursions. Enter KING EDWARD, bringing forth WARWICK, wounded\n\n  KING EDWARD. So, lie thou there. Die thou, and die our fear;\n    For Warwick was a bug that fear\'d us all.\n    Now, Montague, sit fast; I seek for thee,\n    That Warwick\'s bones may keep thine company.            Exit\n  WARWICK. Ah, who is nigh? Come to me, friend or foe,\n    And tell me who is victor, York or Warwick?\n    Why ask I that? My mangled body shows,\n    My blood, my want of strength, my sick heart shows,\n    That I must yield my body to the earth\n    And, by my fall, the conquest to my foe.\n    Thus yields the cedar to the axe\'s edge,\n    Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle,\n    Under whose shade the ramping lion slept,\n    Whose top-branch overpeer\'d Jove\'s spreading tree\n    And kept low shrubs from winter\'s pow\'rful wind.\n    These eyes, that now are dimm\'d with death\'s black veil,  \n    Have been as piercing as the mid-day sun\n    To search the secret treasons of the world;\n    The wrinkles in my brows, now fill\'d with blood,\n    Were lik\'ned oft to kingly sepulchres;\n    For who liv\'d King, but I could dig his grave?\n    And who durst smile when Warwick bent his brow?\n    Lo now my glory smear\'d in dust and blood!\n    My parks, my walks, my manors, that I had,\n    Even now forsake me; and of all my lands\n    Is nothing left me but my body\'s length.\n    what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?\n    And live we how we can, yet die we must.\n\n                  Enter OXFORD and SOMERSET\n\n  SOMERSET. Ah, Warwick, Warwick! wert thou as we are,\n    We might recover all our loss again.\n    The Queen from France hath brought a puissant power;\n    Even now we heard the news. Ah, couldst thou fly!\n  WARWICK. Why then, I would not fly. Ah, Montague,  \n    If thou be there, sweet brother, take my hand,\n    And with thy lips keep in my soul a while!\n    Thou lov\'st me not; for, brother, if thou didst,\n    Thy tears would wash this cold congealed blood\n    That glues my lips and will not let me speak.\n    Come quickly, Montague, or I am dead.\n  SOMERSET. Ah, Warwick! Montague hath breath\'d his last;\n    And to the latest gasp cried out for Warwick,\n    And said \'Commend me to my valiant brother.\'\n    And more he would have said; and more he spoke,\n    Which sounded like a clamour in a vault,\n    That mought not be distinguish\'d; but at last,\n    I well might hear, delivered with a groan,\n    \'O farewell, Warwick!\'\n  WARWICK. Sweet rest his soul! Fly, lords, and save yourselves:\n    For Warwick bids you all farewell, to meet in heaven.\n                                                          [Dies]\n  OXFORD. Away, away, to meet the Queen\'s great power!\n                                  [Here they bear away his body]\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nAnother part of the field\n\nFlourish. Enter KING in triumph; with GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE, and the rest\n\n  KING EDWARD. Thus far our fortune keeps an upward course,\n    And we are grac\'d with wreaths of victory.\n    But in the midst of this bright-shining day\n    I spy a black, suspicious, threat\'ning cloud\n    That will encounter with our glorious sun\n    Ere he attain his easeful western bed-\n    I mean, my lords, those powers that the Queen\n    Hath rais\'d in Gallia have arriv\'d our coast\n    And, as we hear, march on to fight with us.\n  CLARENCE. A little gale will soon disperse that cloud\n    And blow it to the source from whence it came;\n    Thy very beams will dry those vapours up,\n    For every cloud engenders not a storm.\n  GLOUCESTER. The Queen is valued thirty thousand strong,\n    And Somerset, with Oxford, fled to her.\n    If she have time to breathe, be well assur\'d  \n    Her faction will be full as strong as ours.\n  KING EDWARD. are advertis\'d by our loving friends\n    That they do hold their course toward Tewksbury;\n    We, having now the best at Barnet field,\n    Will thither straight, for willingness rids way;\n    And as we march our strength will be augmented\n    In every county as we go along.\n    Strike up the drum; cry \'Courage!\' and away.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nPlains wear Tewksbury\n\nFlourish. March. Enter QUEEN MARGARET, PRINCE EDWARD, SOMERSET, OXFORD,\nand SOLDIERS\n\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Great lords, wise men ne\'er sit and wail their\n      loss,\n    But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.\n    What though the mast be now blown overboard,\n    The cable broke, the holding-anchor lost,\n    And half our sailors swallow\'d in the flood;\n    Yet lives our pilot still. Is\'t meet that he\n    Should leave the helm and, like a fearful lad,\n    With tearful eyes add water to the sea\n    And give more strength to that which hath too much;\n    Whiles, in his moan, the ship splits on the rock,\n    Which industry and courage might have sav\'d?\n    Ah, what a shame! ah, what a fault were this!\n    Say Warwick was our anchor; what of that?\n    And Montague our top-mast; what of him?\n    Our slaught\'red friends the tackles; what of these?  \n    Why, is not Oxford here another anchor?\n    And Somerset another goodly mast?\n    The friends of France our shrouds and tacklings?\n    And, though unskilful, why not Ned and I\n    For once allow\'d the skilful pilot\'s charge?\n    We will not from the helm to sit and weep,\n    But keep our course, though the rough wind say no,\n    From shelves and rocks that threaten us with wreck,\n    As good to chide the waves as speak them fair.\n    And what is Edward but a ruthless sea?\n    What Clarence but a quicksand of deceit?\n    And Richard but a ragged fatal rock?\n    All these the enemies to our poor bark.\n    Say you can swim; alas, \'tis but a while!\n    Tread on the sand; why, there you quickly sink.\n    Bestride the rock; the tide will wash you off,\n    Or else you famish- that\'s a threefold death.\n    This speak I, lords, to let you understand,\n    If case some one of you would fly from us,\n    That there\'s no hop\'d-for mercy with the brothers  \n    More than with ruthless waves, with sands, and rocks.\n    Why, courage then! What cannot be avoided\n    \'Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.\n  PRINCE OF WALES. Methinks a woman of this valiant spirit\n    Should, if a coward hear her speak these words,\n    Infuse his breast with magnanimity\n    And make him naked foil a man-at-arms.\n    I speak not this as doubting any here;\n    For did I but suspect a fearful man,\n    He should have leave to go away betimes,\n    Lest in our need he might infect another\n    And make him of the like spirit to himself.\n    If any such be here- as God forbid!-\n    Let him depart before we need his help.\n  OXFORD. Women and children of so high a courage,\n    And warriors faint! Why, \'twere perpetual shame.\n    O brave young Prince! thy famous grandfather\n    Doth live again in thee. Long mayst thou Eve\n    To bear his image and renew his glories!\n  SOMERSET. And he that will not fight for such a hope,  \n    Go home to bed and, like the owl by day,\n    If he arise, be mock\'d and wond\'red at.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Thanks, gentle Somerset; sweet Oxford, thanks.\n  PRINCE OF WALES. And take his thanks that yet hath nothing else.\n\n                        Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. Prepare you, lords, for Edward is at hand\n    Ready to fight; therefore be resolute.\n  OXFORD. I thought no less. It is his policy\n    To haste thus fast, to find us unprovided.\n  SOMERSET. But he\'s deceiv\'d; we are in readiness.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. This cheers my heart, to see your forwardness.\n  OXFORD. Here pitch our battle; hence we will not budge.\n\n      Flourish and march. Enter, at a distance, KING EDWARD,\n               GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE, and soldiers\n\n  KING EDWARD. Brave followers, yonder stands the thorny wood\n    Which, by the heavens\' assistance and your strength,  \n    Must by the roots be hewn up yet ere night.\n    I need not add more fuel to your fire,\n    For well I wot ye blaze to burn them out.\n    Give signal to the fight, and to it, lords.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Lords, knights, and gentlemen, what I should say\n    My tears gainsay; for every word I speak,\n    Ye see, I drink the water of my eye.\n    Therefore, no more but this: Henry, your sovereign,\n    Is prisoner to the foe; his state usurp\'d,\n    His realm a slaughter-house, his subjects slain,\n    His statutes cancell\'d, and his treasure spent;\n    And yonder is the wolf that makes this spoil.\n    You fight in justice. Then, in God\'s name, lords,\n    Be valiant, and give signal to the fight.\n                             Alarum, retreat, excursions. Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nAnother part of the field\n\nFlourish. Enter KING EDWARD, GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE, and forces,\nWith QUEEN MARGARET, OXFORD, and SOMERSET, prisoners\n\n  KING EDWARD. Now here a period of tumultuous broils.\n    Away with Oxford to Hames Castle straight;\n    For Somerset, off with his guilty head.\n    Go, bear them hence; I will not hear them speak.\n  OXFORD. For my part, I\'ll not trouble thee with words.\n  SOMERSET. Nor I, but stoop with patience to my fortune.\n                             Exeunt OXFORD and SOMERSET, guarded\n  QUEEN MARGARET. So part we sadly in this troublous world,\n    To meet with joy in sweet Jerusalem.\n  KING EDWARD. Is proclamation made that who finds Edward\n    Shall have a high reward, and he his life?\n  GLOUCESTER. It is; and lo where youthful Edward comes.\n\n                Enter soldiers, with PRINCE EDWARD\n  \n  KING EDWARD. Bring forth the gallant; let us hear him speak.\n    What, can so young a man begin to prick?\n    Edward, what satisfaction canst thou make\n    For bearing arms, for stirring up my subjects,\n    And all the trouble thou hast turn\'d me to?\n  PRINCE OF WALES. Speak like a subject, proud ambitious York.\n    Suppose that I am now my father\'s mouth;\n    Resign thy chair, and where I stand kneel thou,\n    Whilst I propose the self-same words to the\n    Which, traitor, thou wouldst have me answer to.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Ah, that thy father had been so resolv\'d!\n  GLOUCESTER. That you might still have worn the petticoat\n    And ne\'er have stol\'n the breech from Lancaster.\n  PRINCE OF WALES. Let Aesop fable in a winter\'s night;\n    His currish riddle sorts not with this place.\n  GLOUCESTER. By heaven, brat, I\'ll plague ye for that word.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, thou wast born to be a plague to men.\n  GLOUCESTER. For God\'s sake, take away this captive scold.\n  PRINCE OF WALES. Nay, take away this scolding crookback rather.\n  KING EDWARD. Peace, wilful boy, or I will charm your tongue.  \n  CLARENCE. Untutor\'d lad, thou art too malapert.\n  PRINCE OF WALES. I know my duty; you are all undutiful.\n    Lascivious Edward, and thou perjur\'d George,\n    And thou misshapen Dick, I tell ye all\n    I am your better, traitors as ye are;\n    And thou usurp\'st my father\'s right and mine.\n  KING EDWARD. Take that, the likeness of this railer here.\n                                                     [Stabs him]\n  GLOUCESTER. Sprawl\'st thou? Take that, to end thy agony.\n                                                     [Stabs him]\n  CLARENCE. And there\'s for twitting me with perjury.\n                                                     [Stabs him]\n  QUEEN MARGARET. O, kill me too!\n  GLOUCESTER. Marry, and shall.             [Offers to kill her]\n  KING EDWARD. Hold, Richard, hold; for we have done to much.\n  GLOUCESTER. Why should she live to fill the world with words?\n  KING EDWARD. What, doth she swoon? Use means for her recovery.\n  GLOUCESTER. Clarence, excuse me to the King my brother.\n    I\'ll hence to London on a serious matter;\n    Ere ye come there, be sure to hear some news.  \n  CLARENCE. What? what?\n  GLOUCESTER. The Tower! the Tower!                         Exit\n  QUEEN MARGARET. O Ned, sweet Ned, speak to thy mother, boy!\n    Canst thou not speak? O traitors! murderers!\n    They that stabb\'d Caesar shed no blood at all,\n    Did not offend, nor were not worthy blame,\n    If this foul deed were by to equal it.\n    He was a man: this, in respect, a child;\n    And men ne\'er spend their fury on a child.\n    What\'s worse than murderer, that I may name it?\n    No, no, my heart will burst, an if I speak-\n    And I will speak, that so my heart may burst.\n    Butchers and villains! bloody cannibals!\n    How sweet a plant have you untimely cropp\'d!\n    You have no children, butchers, if you had,\n    The thought of them would have stirr\'d up remorse.\n    But if you ever chance to have a child,\n    Look in his youth to have him so cut off\n    As, deathsmen, you have rid this sweet young prince!\n  KING EDWARD. Away with her; go, bear her hence perforce.  \n  QUEEN MARGARET. Nay, never bear me hence; dispatch me here.\n    Here sheathe thy sword; I\'ll pardon thee my death.\n    What, wilt thou not? Then, Clarence, do it thou.\n  CLARENCE. By heaven, I will not do thee so much ease.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Good Clarence, do; sweet Clarence, do thou do it.\n  CLARENCE. Didst thou not hear me swear I would not do it?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, but thou usest to forswear thyself.\n    \'Twas sin before, but now \'tis charity.\n    What! wilt thou not? Where is that devil\'s butcher,\n    Hard-favour\'d Richard? Richard, where art thou?\n    Thou art not here. Murder is thy alms-deed;\n    Petitioners for blood thou ne\'er put\'st back.\n  KING EDWARD. Away, I say; I charge ye bear her hence.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. So come to you and yours as to this prince.\n                                          Exit, led out forcibly\n  KING EDWARD. Where\'s Richard gone?\n  CLARENCE. To London, all in post; and, as I guess,\n    To make a bloody supper in the Tower.\n  KING EDWARD. He\'s sudden, if a thing comes in his head.\n    Now march we hence. Discharge the common sort  \n    With pay and thanks; and let\'s away to London\n    And see our gentle queen how well she fares.\n    By this, I hope, she hath a son for me.               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nLondon. The Tower\n\nEnter KING HENRY and GLOUCESTER with the LIEUTENANT, on the walls\n\n  GLOUCESTER. Good day, my lord. What, at your book so hard?\n  KING HENRY. Ay, my good lord- my lord, I should say rather.\n    \'Tis sin to flatter; \'good\' was little better.\n    \'Good Gloucester\' and \'good devil\' were alike,\n    And both preposterous; therefore, not \'good lord.\'\n  GLOUCESTER. Sirrah, leave us to ourselves; we must confer.\n                                                 Exit LIEUTENANT\n  KING HENRY. So flies the reckless shepherd from the wolf;\n    So first the harmless sheep doth yield his fleece,\n    And next his throat unto the butcher\'s knife.\n    What scene of death hath Roscius now to act?\n  GLOUCESTER. Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind:\n    The thief doth fear each bush an officer.\n  KING HENRY. The bird that hath been limed in a bush\n    With trembling wings misdoubteth every bush;\n    And I, the hapless male to one sweet bird,  \n    Have now the fatal object in my eye\n    Where my poor young was lim\'d, was caught, and kill\'d.\n  GLOUCESTER. Why, what a peevish fool was that of Crete\n    That taught his son the office of a fowl!\n    And yet, for all his wings, the fool was drown\'d.\n  KING HENRY. I, Daedalus; my poor boy, Icarus;\n    Thy father, Minos, that denied our course;\n    The sun that sear\'d the wings of my sweet boy,\n    Thy brother Edward; and thyself, the sea\n    Whose envious gulf did swallow up his life.\n    Ah, kill me with thy weapon, not with words!\n    My breast can better brook thy dagger\'s point\n    Than can my ears that tragic history.\n    But wherefore dost thou come? Is\'t for my life?\n  GLOUCESTER. Think\'st thou I am an executioner?\n  KING HENRY. A persecutor I am sure thou art.\n    If murdering innocents be executing,\n    Why, then thou are an executioner.\n  GLOUCESTER. Thy son I kill\'d for his presumption.\n  KING HENRY. Hadst thou been kill\'d when first thou didst presume,  \n    Thou hadst not liv\'d to kill a son of mine.\n    And thus I prophesy, that many a thousand\n    Which now mistrust no parcel of my fear,\n    And many an old man\'s sigh, and many a widow\'s,\n    And many an orphan\'s water-standing eye-\n    Men for their sons, wives for their husbands,\n    Orphans for their parents\' timeless death-\n    Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born.\n    The owl shriek\'d at thy birth- an evil sign;\n    The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time;\n    Dogs howl\'d, and hideous tempest shook down trees;\n    The raven rook\'d her on the chimney\'s top,\n    And chatt\'ring pies in dismal discords sung;\n    Thy mother felt more than a mother\'s pain,\n    And yet brought forth less than a mother\'s hope,\n    To wit, an indigest deformed lump,\n    Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree.\n    Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born,\n    To signify thou cam\'st to bite the world;\n    And if the rest be true which I have heard,  \n    Thou cam\'st-\n  GLOUCESTER. I\'ll hear no more. Die, prophet, in thy speech.\n                                                     [Stabs him]\n    For this, amongst the rest, was I ordain\'d.\n  KING HENRY. Ay, and for much more slaughter after this.\n    O, God forgive my sins and pardon thee!               [Dies]\n  GLOUCESTER. What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster\n    Sink in the ground? I thought it would have mounted.\n    See how my sword weeps for the poor King\'s death.\n    O, may such purple tears be always shed\n    From those that wish the downfall of our house!\n    If any spark of life be yet remaining,\n    Down, down to hell; and say I sent thee thither-\n                                               [Stabs him again]\n    I, that have neither pity, love, nor fear.\n    Indeed, \'tis true that Henry told me of;\n    For I have often heard my mother say\n    I came into the world with my legs forward.\n    Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste\n    And seek their ruin that usurp\'d our right?  \n    The midwife wonder\'d; and the women cried\n    \'O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!\'\n    And so I was, which plainly signified\n    That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog.\n    Then, since the heavens have shap\'d my body so,\n    Let hell make crook\'d my mind to answer it.\n    I have no brother, I am like no brother;\n    And this word \'love,\' which greybeards call divine,\n    Be resident in men like one another,\n    And not in me! I am myself alone.\n    Clarence, beware; thou keep\'st me from the light,\n    But I will sort a pitchy day for thee;\n    For I will buzz abroad such prophecies\n    That Edward shall be fearful of his life;\n    And then to purge his fear, I\'ll be thy death.\n    King Henry and the Prince his son are gone.\n    Clarence, thy turn is next, and then the rest;\n    Counting myself but bad till I be best.\n    I\'ll throw thy body in another room,\n    And triumph, Henry, in thy day of doom.  \n                                              Exit with the body\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\nLondon. The palace\n\nFlourish. Enter KING EDWARD, QUEEN ELIZABETH, CLARENCE, GLOUCESTER,\nHASTINGS, NURSE, with the Young PRINCE, and attendants\n\n  KING EDWARD. Once more we sit in England\'s royal throne,\n    Repurchas\'d with the blood of enemies.\n    What valiant foemen, like to autumn\'s corn,\n    Have we mow\'d down in tops of all their pride!\n    Three Dukes of Somerset, threefold renown\'d\n    For hardy and undoubted champions;\n    Two Cliffords, as the father and the son;\n    And two Northumberlands- two braver men\n    Ne\'er spurr\'d their coursers at the trumpet\'s sound;\n    With them the two brave bears, Warwick and Montague,\n    That in their chains fetter\'d the kingly lion\n    And made the forest tremble when they roar\'d.\n    Thus have we swept suspicion from our seat\n    And made our footstool of security.\n    Come hither, Bess, and let me kiss my boy.  \n    Young Ned, for thee thine uncles and myself\n    Have in our armours watch\'d the winter\'s night,\n    Went all afoot in summer\'s scalding heat,\n    That thou might\'st repossess the crown in peace;\n    And of our labours thou shalt reap the gain.\n  GLOUCESTER. [Aside] I\'ll blast his harvest if your head were laid;\n    For yet I am not look\'d on in the world.\n    This shoulder was ordain\'d so thick to heave;\n    And heave it shall some weight or break my back.\n    Work thou the way- and that shall execute.\n  KING EDWARD. Clarence and Gloucester, love my lovely queen;\n    And kiss your princely nephew, brothers both.\n  CLARENCE. The duty that I owe unto your Majesty\n    I seal upon the lips of this sweet babe.\n  KING EDWARD. Thanks, noble Clarence; worthy brother, thanks.\n  GLOUCESTER. And that I love the tree from whence thou sprang\'st,\n    Witness the loving kiss I give the fruit.\n    [Aside] To say the truth, so Judas kiss\'d his master\n    And cried \'All hail!\' when as he meant all harm.\n  KING EDWARD. Now am I seated as my soul delights,  \n    Having my country\'s peace and brothers\' loves.\n  CLARENCE. What will your Grace have done with Margaret?\n    Reignier, her father, to the King of France\n    Hath pawn\'d the Sicils and Jerusalem,\n    And hither have they sent it for her ransom.\n  KING EDWARD. Away with her, and waft her hence to France.\n    And now what rests but that we spend the time\n    With stately triumphs, mirthful comic shows,\n    Such as befits the pleasure of the court?\n    Sound drums and trumpets. Farewell, sour annoy!\n    For here, I hope, begins our lasting joy.             Exeunt\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1611\n\nKING HENRY THE EIGHTH\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\n  KING HENRY THE EIGHTH\n  CARDINAL WOLSEY               CARDINAL CAMPEIUS\n  CAPUCIUS, Ambassador from the Emperor Charles V\n  CRANMER, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY\n  DUKE OF NORFOLK               DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM\n  DUKE OF SUFFOLK               EARL OF SURREY\n  LORD CHAMBERLAIN              LORD CHANCELLOR\n  GARDINER, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER\n  BISHOP OF LINCOLN             LORD ABERGAVENNY\n  LORD SANDYS                   SIR HENRY GUILDFORD\n  SIR THOMAS LOVELL             SIR ANTHONY DENNY\n  SIR NICHOLAS VAUX             SECRETARIES to Wolsey\n  CROMWELL, servant to Wolsey\n  GRIFFITH, gentleman-usher to Queen Katharine\n  THREE GENTLEMEN\n  DOCTOR BUTTS, physician to the King\n  GARTER KING-AT-ARMS\n  SURVEYOR to the Duke of Buckingham\n  BRANDON, and a SERGEANT-AT-ARMS\n  DOORKEEPER Of the Council chamber  \n  PORTER, and his MAN           PAGE to Gardiner\n  A CRIER\n\n  QUEEN KATHARINE, wife to King Henry, afterwards divorced\n  ANNE BULLEN, her Maid of Honour, afterwards Queen\n  AN OLD LADY, friend to Anne Bullen\n  PATIENCE, woman to Queen Katharine\n\n  Lord Mayor, Aldermen, Lords and Ladies in the Dumb\n       Shows; Women attending upon the Queen; Scribes,\n       Officers, Guards, and other Attendants; Spirits\n\n                          SCENE:\n\n              London; Westminster; Kimbolton\n\n\n\n                 KING HENRY THE EIGHTH\n\n                     THE PROLOGUE.\n\n    I come no more to make you laugh; things now\n    That bear a weighty and a serious brow,\n    Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,\n    Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow,\n    We now present. Those that can pity here\n    May, if they think it well, let fall a tear:\n    The subject will deserve it. Such as give\n    Their money out of hope they may believe\n    May here find truth too. Those that come to see\n    Only a show or two, and so agree\n    The play may pass, if they be still and willing,\n    I\'ll undertake may see away their shilling\n    Richly in two short hours. Only they\n    That come to hear a merry bawdy play,\n    A noise of targets, or to see a fellow\n    In a long motley coat guarded with yellow,\n    Will be deceiv\'d; for, gentle hearers, know,\n    To rank our chosen truth with such a show  \n    As fool and fight is, beside forfeiting\n    Our own brains, and the opinion that we bring\n    To make that only true we now intend,\n    Will leave us never an understanding friend.\n    Therefore, for goodness sake, and as you are known\n    The first and happiest hearers of the town,\n    Be sad, as we would make ye. Think ye see\n    The very persons of our noble story\n    As they were living; think you see them great,\n    And follow\'d with the general throng and sweat\n    Of thousand friends; then, in a moment, see\n    How soon this mightiness meets misery.\n    And if you can be merry then, I\'ll say\n    A man may weep upon his wedding-day.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE 1.\n\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter the DUKE OF NORFOLK at one door; at the other,\nthe DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM and the LORD ABERGAVENNY\n\n  BUCKINGHAM. Good morrow, and well met. How have ye done\n    Since last we saw in France?\n  NORFOLK. I thank your Grace,\n    Healthful; and ever since a fresh admirer\n    Of what I saw there.\n  BUCKINGHAM. An untimely ague\n    Stay\'d me a prisoner in my chamber when\n    Those suns of glory, those two lights of men,\n    Met in the vale of Andren.\n  NORFOLK. \'Twixt Guynes and Arde-\n    I was then present, saw them salute on horseback;\n    Beheld them, when they lighted, how they clung\n    In their embracement, as they grew together;\n    Which had they, what four thron\'d ones could have weigh\'d  \n    Such a compounded one?\n  BUCKINGHAM. All the whole time\n    I was my chamber\'s prisoner.\n  NORFOLK. Then you lost\n    The view of earthly glory; men might say,\n    Till this time pomp was single, but now married\n    To one above itself. Each following day\n    Became the next day\'s master, till the last\n    Made former wonders its. To-day the French,\n    All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods,\n    Shone down the English; and to-morrow they\n    Made Britain India: every man that stood\n    Show\'d like a mine. Their dwarfish pages were\n    As cherubins, an gilt; the madams too,\n    Not us\'d to toil, did almost sweat to bear\n    The pride upon them, that their very labour\n    Was to them as a painting. Now this masque\n    Was cried incomparable; and th\' ensuing night\n    Made it a fool and beggar. The two kings,\n    Equal in lustre, were now best, now worst,  \n    As presence did present them: him in eye\n    still him in praise; and being present both,\n    \'Twas said they saw but one, and no discerner\n    Durst wag his tongue in censure. When these suns-\n    For so they phrase \'em-by their heralds challeng\'d\n    The noble spirits to arms, they did perform\n    Beyond thought\'s compass, that former fabulous story,\n    Being now seen possible enough, got credit,\n    That Bevis was believ\'d.\n  BUCKINGHAM. O, you go far!\n  NORFOLK. As I belong to worship, and affect\n    In honour honesty, the tract of ev\'rything\n    Would by a good discourser lose some life\n    Which action\'s self was tongue to. All was royal:\n    To the disposing of it nought rebell\'d;\n    Order gave each thing view. The office did\n    Distinctly his full function.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Who did guide-\n    I mean, who set the body and the limbs\n    Of this great sport together, as you guess?  \n  NORFOLK. One, certes, that promises no element\n    In such a business.\n  BUCKINGHAM. I pray you, who, my lord?\n  NORFOLK. All this was ord\'red by the good discretion\n    Of the right reverend Cardinal of York.\n  BUCKINGHAM. The devil speed him! No man\'s pie is freed\n    From his ambitious finger. What had he\n    To do in these fierce vanities? I wonder\n    That such a keech can with his very bulk\n    Take up the rays o\' th\' beneficial sun,\n    And keep it from the earth.\n  NORFOLK. Surely, sir,\n    There\'s in him stuff that puts him to these ends;\n    For, being not propp\'d by ancestry, whose grace\n    Chalks successors their way, nor call\'d upon\n    For high feats done to th\' crown, neither allied\n    To eminent assistants, but spider-like,\n    Out of his self-drawing web, \'a gives us note\n    The force of his own merit makes his way-\n    A gift that heaven gives for him, which buys  \n    A place next to the King.\n  ABERGAVENNY. I cannot tell\n    What heaven hath given him-let some graver eye\n    Pierce into that; but I can see his pride\n    Peep through each part of him. Whence has he that?\n    If not from hell, the devil is a niggard\n    Or has given all before, and he begins\n    A new hell in himself.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Why the devil,\n    Upon this French going out, took he upon him-\n    Without the privity o\' th\' King-t\' appoint\n    Who should attend on him? He makes up the file\n    Of all the gentry; for the most part such\n    To whom as great a charge as little honour\n    He meant to lay upon; and his own letter,\n    The honourable board of council out,\n    Must fetch him in he papers.\n  ABERGAVENNY. I do know\n    Kinsmen of mine, three at the least, that have\n    By this so sicken\'d their estates that never  \n    They shall abound as formerly.\n  BUCKINGHAM. O, many\n    Have broke their backs with laying manors on \'em\n    For this great journey. What did this vanity\n    But minister communication of\n    A most poor issue?\n  NORFOLK. Grievingly I think\n    The peace between the French and us not values\n    The cost that did conclude it.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Every man,\n    After the hideous storm that follow\'d, was\n    A thing inspir\'d, and, not consulting, broke\n    Into a general prophecy-that this tempest,\n    Dashing the garment of this peace, aboded\n    The sudden breach on\'t.\n  NORFOLK. Which is budded out;\n    For France hath flaw\'d the league, and hath attach\'d\n    Our merchants\' goods at Bordeaux.\n  ABERGAVENNY. Is it therefore\n    Th\' ambassador is silenc\'d?  \n  NORFOLK. Marry, is\'t.\n  ABERGAVENNY. A proper tide of a peace, and purchas\'d\n    At a superfluous rate!\n  BUCKINGHAM. Why, all this business\n    Our reverend Cardinal carried.\n  NORFOLK. Like it your Grace,\n    The state takes notice of the private difference\n    Betwixt you and the Cardinal. I advise you-\n    And take it from a heart that wishes towards you\n    Honour and plenteous safety-that you read\n    The Cardinal\'s malice and his potency\n    Together; to consider further, that\n    What his high hatred would effect wants not\n    A minister in his power. You know his nature,\n    That he\'s revengeful; and I know his sword\n    Hath a sharp edge-it\'s long and\'t may be said\n    It reaches far, and where \'twill not extend,\n    Thither he darts it. Bosom up my counsel\n    You\'ll find it wholesome. Lo, where comes that rock\n    That I advise your shunning.  \n\n      Enter CARDINAL WOLSEY, the purse borne before\n      him, certain of the guard, and two SECRETARIES\n      with papers. The CARDINAL in his passage fixeth his\n      eye on BUCKINGHAM, and BUCKINGHAM on him,\n      both full of disdain\n\n  WOLSEY. The Duke of Buckingham\'s surveyor? Ha!\n    Where\'s his examination?\n  SECRETARY. Here, so please you.\n  WOLSEY. Is he in person ready?\n  SECRETARY. Ay, please your Grace.\n  WOLSEY. Well, we shall then know more, and Buckingham\n    shall lessen this big look.\n                                          Exeunt WOLSEY and his train\n  BUCKINGHAM. This butcher\'s cur is venom-mouth\'d, and I\n    Have not the power to muzzle him; therefore best\n    Not wake him in his slumber. A beggar\'s book\n    Outworths a noble\'s blood.\n  NORFOLK. What, are you chaf\'d?  \n    Ask God for temp\'rance; that\'s th\' appliance only\n    Which your disease requires.\n  BUCKINGHAM. I read in\'s looks\n    Matter against me, and his eye revil\'d\n    Me as his abject object. At this instant\n    He bores me with some trick. He\'s gone to th\' King;\n    I\'ll follow, and outstare him.\n  NORFOLK. Stay, my lord,\n    And let your reason with your choler question\n    What \'tis you go about. To climb steep hills\n    Requires slow pace at first. Anger is like\n    A full hot horse, who being allow\'d his way,\n    Self-mettle tires him. Not a man in England\n    Can advise me like you; be to yourself\n    As you would to your friend.\n  BUCKINGHAM. I\'ll to the King,\n    And from a mouth of honour quite cry down\n    This Ipswich fellow\'s insolence; or proclaim\n    There\'s difference in no persons.\n  NORFOLK. Be advis\'d:  \n    Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot\n    That it do singe yourself. We may outrun\n    By violent swiftness that which we run at,\n    And lose by over-running. Know you not\n    The fire that mounts the liquor till\'t run o\'er\n    In seeming to augment it wastes it? Be advis\'d.\n    I say again there is no English soul\n    More stronger to direct you than yourself,\n    If with the sap of reason you would quench\n    Or but allay the fire of passion.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Sir,\n    I am thankful to you, and I\'ll go along\n    By your prescription; but this top-proud fellow-\n    Whom from the flow of gan I name not, but\n    From sincere motions, by intelligence,\n    And proofs as clear as founts in July when\n    We see each grain of gravel-I do know\n    To be corrupt and treasonous.\n  NORFOLK. Say not treasonous.\n  BUCKINGHAM. To th\' King I\'ll say\'t, and make my vouch as strong  \n    As shore of rock. Attend: this holy fox,\n    Or wolf, or both-for he is equal rav\'nous\n    As he is subtle, and as prone to mischief\n    As able to perform\'t, his mind and place\n    Infecting one another, yea, reciprocally-\n    Only to show his pomp as well in France\n    As here at home, suggests the King our master\n    To this last costly treaty, th\' interview\n    That swallowed so much treasure and like a glass\n    Did break i\' th\' wrenching.\n  NORFOLK. Faith, and so it did.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Pray, give me favour, sir; this cunning cardinal\n    The articles o\' th\' combination drew\n    As himself pleas\'d; and they were ratified\n    As he cried \'Thus let be\' to as much end\n    As give a crutch to th\' dead. But our Count-Cardinal\n    Has done this, and \'tis well; for worthy Wolsey,\n    Who cannot err, he did it. Now this follows,\n    Which, as I take it, is a kind of puppy\n    To th\' old dam treason: Charles the Emperor,  \n    Under pretence to see the Queen his aunt-\n    For \'twas indeed his colour, but he came\n    To whisper Wolsey-here makes visitation-\n    His fears were that the interview betwixt\n    England and France might through their amity\n    Breed him some prejudice; for from this league\n    Peep\'d harms that menac\'d him-privily\n    Deals with our Cardinal; and, as I trow-\n    Which I do well, for I am sure the Emperor\n    Paid ere he promis\'d; whereby his suit was granted\n    Ere it was ask\'d-but when the way was made,\n    And pav\'d with gold, the Emperor thus desir\'d,\n    That he would please to alter the King\'s course,\n    And break the foresaid peace. Let the King know,\n    As soon he shall by me, that thus the Cardinal\n    Does buy and sell his honour as he pleases,\n    And for his own advantage.\n  NORFOLK. I am sorry\n    To hear this of him, and could wish he were\n    Something mistaken in\'t.  \n  BUCKINGHAM. No, not a syllable:\n    I do pronounce him in that very shape\n    He shall appear in proof.\n\n       Enter BRANDON, a SERGEANT-AT-ARMS before him,\n              and two or three of the guard\n\n  BRANDON. Your office, sergeant: execute it.\n  SERGEANT. Sir,\n    My lord the Duke of Buckingham, and Earl\n    Of Hereford, Stafford, and Northampton, I\n    Arrest thee of high treason, in the name\n    Of our most sovereign King.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Lo you, my lord,\n    The net has fall\'n upon me! I shall perish\n    Under device and practice.\n  BRANDON. I am sorry\n    To see you ta\'en from liberty, to look on\n    The business present; \'tis his Highness\' pleasure\n    You shall to th\' Tower.  \n  BUCKINGHAM. It will help nothing\n    To plead mine innocence; for that dye is on me\n    Which makes my whit\'st part black. The will of heav\'n\n    Be done in this and all things! I obey.\n    O my Lord Aberga\'ny, fare you well!\n  BRANDON. Nay, he must bear you company.\n    [To ABERGAVENNY]  The King\n    Is pleas\'d you shall to th\' Tower, till you know\n    How he determines further.\n  ABERGAVENNY. As the Duke said,\n    The will of heaven be done, and the King\'s pleasure\n    By me obey\'d.\n  BRANDON. Here is warrant from\n    The King t\' attach Lord Montacute and the bodies\n    Of the Duke\'s confessor, John de la Car,\n    One Gilbert Peck, his chancellor-\n  BUCKINGHAM. So, so!\n    These are the limbs o\' th\' plot; no more, I hope.\n  BRANDON. A monk o\' th\' Chartreux.\n  BUCKINGHAM. O, Nicholas Hopkins?  \n  BRANDON. He.\n  BUCKINGHAM. My surveyor is false. The o\'er-great Cardinal\n    Hath show\'d him gold; my life is spann\'d already.\n    I am the shadow of poor Buckingham,\n    Whose figure even this instant cloud puts on\n    By dark\'ning my clear sun. My lord, farewell.\n    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE 2.\n\nLondon. The Council Chamber\n\nCornets. Enter KING HENRY, leaning on the CARDINAL\'S shoulder, the NOBLES,\nand SIR THOMAS LOVELL, with others. The CARDINAL places himself\nunder the KING\'S feet on his right side\n\n  KING. My life itself, and the best heart of it,\n    Thanks you for this great care; I stood i\' th\' level\n    Of a full-charg\'d confederacy, and give thanks\n    To you that chok\'d it. Let be call\'d before us\n    That gentleman of Buckingham\'s. In person\n    I\'ll hear his confessions justify;\n    And point by point the treasons of his master\n    He shall again relate.\n\n      A noise within, crying \'Room for the Queen!\'\n      Enter the QUEEN, usher\'d by the DUKES OF NORFOLK\n      and SUFFOLK; she kneels. The KING riseth\n      from his state, takes her up, kisses and placeth her  \n      by him\n\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Nay, we must longer kneel: I am suitor.\n  KING. Arise, and take place by us. Half your suit\n    Never name to us: you have half our power.\n    The other moiety ere you ask is given;\n    Repeat your will, and take it.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Thank your Majesty.\n    That you would love yourself, and in that love\n    Not unconsidered leave your honour nor\n    The dignity of your office, is the point\n    Of my petition.\n  KING. Lady mine, proceed.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. I am solicited, not by a few,\n    And those of true condition, that your subjects\n    Are in great grievance: there have been commissions\n    Sent down among \'em which hath flaw\'d the heart\n    Of all their loyalties; wherein, although,\n    My good Lord Cardinal, they vent reproaches\n    Most bitterly on you as putter-on  \n    Of these exactions, yet the King our master-\n    Whose honour Heaven shield from soil!-even he escapes not\n    Language unmannerly; yea, such which breaks\n    The sides of loyalty, and almost appears\n    In loud rebellion.\n  NORFOLK. Not almost appears-\n    It doth appear; for, upon these taxations,\n    The clothiers all, not able to maintain\n    The many to them \'longing, have put of\n    The spinsters, carders, fullers, weavers, who\n    Unfit for other life, compell\'d by hunger\n    And lack of other means, in desperate manner\n    Daring th\' event to th\' teeth, are all in uproar,\n    And danger serves among them.\n  KING. Taxation!\n    Wherein? and what taxation? My Lord Cardinal,\n    You that are blam\'d for it alike with us,\n    Know you of this taxation?\n  WOLSEY. Please you, sir,\n    I know but of a single part in aught  \n    Pertains to th\' state, and front but in that file\n    Where others tell steps with me.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. No, my lord!\n    You know no more than others! But you frame\n    Things that are known alike, which are not wholesome\n    To those which would not know them, and yet must\n    Perforce be their acquaintance. These exactions,\n    Whereof my sovereign would have note, they are\n    Most pestilent to th\' hearing; and to bear \'em\n    The back is sacrifice to th\' load. They say\n    They are devis\'d by you, or else you suffer\n    Too hard an exclamation.\n  KING. Still exaction!\n    The nature of it? In what kind, let\'s know,\n    Is this exaction?\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. I am much too venturous\n    In tempting of your patience, but am bold\'ned\n    Under your promis\'d pardon. The subjects\' grief\n    Comes through commissions, which compels from each\n    The sixth part of his substance, to be levied  \n    Without delay; and the pretence for this\n    Is nam\'d your wars in France. This makes bold mouths;\n    Tongues spit their duties out, and cold hearts freeze\n    Allegiance in them; their curses now\n    Live where their prayers did; and it\'s come to pass\n    This tractable obedience is a slave\n    To each incensed will. I would your Highness\n    Would give it quick consideration, for\n    There is no primer business.\n  KING. By my life,\n    This is against our pleasure.\n  WOLSEY. And for me,\n    I have no further gone in this than by\n    A single voice; and that not pass\'d me but\n    By learned approbation of the judges. If I am\n    Traduc\'d by ignorant tongues, which neither know\n    My faculties nor person, yet will be\n    The chronicles of my doing, let me say\n    \'Tis but the fate of place, and the rough brake\n    That virtue must go through. We must not stint  \n    Our necessary actions in the fear\n    To cope malicious censurers, which ever\n    As rav\'nous fishes do a vessel follow\n    That is new-trimm\'d, but benefit no further\n    Than vainly longing. What we oft do best,\n    By sick interpreters, once weak ones, is\n    Not ours, or not allow\'d; what worst, as oft\n    Hitting a grosser quality, is cried up\n    For our best act. If we shall stand still,\n    In fear our motion will be mock\'d or carp\'d at,\n    We should take root here where we sit, or sit\n    State-statues only.\n  KING. Things done well\n    And with a care exempt themselves from fear:\n    Things done without example, in their issue\n    Are to be fear\'d. Have you a precedent\n    Of this commission? I believe, not any.\n    We must not rend our subjects from our laws,\n    And stick them in our will. Sixth part of each?\n    A trembling contribution! Why, we take  \n    From every tree lop, bark, and part o\' th\' timber;\n    And though we leave it with a root, thus hack\'d,\n    The air will drink the sap. To every county\n    Where this is question\'d send our letters with\n    Free pardon to each man that has denied\n    The force of this commission. Pray, look tot;\n    I put it to your care.\n  WOLSEY. [Aside to the SECRETARY]  A word with you.\n    Let there be letters writ to every shire\n    Of the King\'s grace and pardon. The grieved commons\n    Hardly conceive of me-let it be nois\'d\n    That through our intercession this revokement\n    And pardon comes. I shall anon advise you\n    Further in the proceeding.                         Exit SECRETARY\n\n                    Enter SURVEYOR\n\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. I am sorry that the Duke of Buckingham\n    Is run in your displeasure.\n  KING. It grieves many.  \n    The gentleman is learn\'d and a most rare speaker;\n    To nature none more bound; his training such\n    That he may furnish and instruct great teachers\n    And never seek for aid out of himself. Yet see,\n    When these so noble benefits shall prove\n    Not well dispos\'d, the mind growing once corrupt,\n    They turn to vicious forms, ten times more ugly\n    Than ever they were fair. This man so complete,\n    Who was enroll\'d \'mongst wonders, and when we,\n    Almost with ravish\'d list\'ning, could not find\n    His hour of speech a minute-he, my lady,\n    Hath into monstrous habits put the graces\n    That once were his, and is become as black\n    As if besmear\'d in hell. Sit by us; you shall hear-\n    This was his gentleman in trust-of him\n    Things to strike honour sad. Bid him recount\n    The fore-recited practices, whereof\n    We cannot feel too little, hear too much.\n  WOLSEY. Stand forth, and with bold spirit relate what you,\n    Most like a careful subject, have collected  \n    Out of the Duke of Buckingham.\n  KING. Speak freely.\n  SURVEYOR. First, it was usual with him-every day\n    It would infect his speech-that if the King\n    Should without issue die, he\'ll carry it so\n    To make the sceptre his. These very words\n    I\'ve heard him utter to his son-in-law,\n    Lord Aberga\'ny, to whom by oath he menac\'d\n    Revenge upon the Cardinal.\n  WOLSEY. Please your Highness, note\n    This dangerous conception in this point:\n    Not friended by his wish, to your high person\n    His will is most malignant, and it stretches\n    Beyond you to your friends.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. My learn\'d Lord Cardinal,\n    Deliver all with charity.\n  KING. Speak on.\n    How grounded he his title to the crown\n    Upon our fail? To this point hast thou heard him\n    At any time speak aught?  \n  SURVEYOR. He was brought to this\n    By a vain prophecy of Nicholas Henton.\n  KING. What was that Henton?\n  SURVEYOR. Sir, a Chartreux friar,\n    His confessor, who fed him every minute\n    With words of sovereignty.\n  KING. How know\'st thou this?\n  SURVEYOR. Not long before your Highness sped to France,\n    The Duke being at the Rose, within the parish\n    Saint Lawrence Poultney, did of me demand\n    What was the speech among the Londoners\n    Concerning the French journey. I replied\n    Men fear\'d the French would prove perfidious,\n    To the King\'s danger. Presently the Duke\n    Said \'twas the fear indeed and that he doubted\n    \'Twould prove the verity of certain words\n    Spoke by a holy monk \'that oft\' says he\n    \'Hath sent to me, wishing me to permit\n    John de la Car, my chaplain, a choice hour\n    To hear from him a matter of some moment;  \n    Whom after under the confession\'s seal\n    He solemnly had sworn that what he spoke\n    My chaplain to no creature living but\n    To me should utter, with demure confidence\n    This pausingly ensu\'d: "Neither the King nor\'s heirs,\n    Tell you the Duke, shall prosper; bid him strive\n    To gain the love o\' th\' commonalty; the Duke\n    Shall govern England."\'\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. If I know you well,\n    You were the Duke\'s surveyor, and lost your office\n    On the complaint o\' th\' tenants. Take good heed\n    You charge not in your spleen a noble person\n    And spoil your nobler soul. I say, take heed;\n    Yes, heartily beseech you.\n  KING. Let him on.\n    Go forward.\n  SURVEYOR. On my soul, I\'ll speak but truth.\n    I told my lord the Duke, by th\' devil\'s illusions\n    The monk might be deceiv\'d, and that \'twas dangerous\n      for him  \n    To ruminate on this so far, until\n    It forg\'d him some design, which, being believ\'d,\n    It was much like to do. He answer\'d \'Tush,\n    It can do me no damage\'; adding further\n    That, had the King in his last sickness fail\'d,\n    The Cardinal\'s and Sir Thomas Lovell\'s heads\n    Should have gone off.\n  KING. Ha! what, so rank? Ah ha!\n    There\'s mischief in this man. Canst thou say further?\n  SURVEYOR. I can, my liege.\n  KING. Proceed.\n  SURVEYOR. Being at Greenwich,\n    After your Highness had reprov\'d the Duke\n    About Sir William Bulmer-\n  KING. I remember\n    Of such a time: being my sworn servant,\n    The Duke retain\'d him his. But on: what hence?\n  SURVEYOR. \'If\' quoth he \'I for this had been committed-\n    As to the Tower I thought-I would have play\'d\n    The part my father meant to act upon  \n    Th\' usurper Richard; who, being at Salisbury,\n    Made suit to come in\'s presence, which if granted,\n    As he made semblance of his duty, would\n    Have put his knife into him.\'\n  KING. A giant traitor!\n  WOLSEY. Now, madam, may his Highness live in freedom,\n    And this man out of prison?\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. God mend all!\n  KING. There\'s something more would out of thee: what say\'st?\n  SURVEYOR. After \'the Duke his father\' with the \'knife,\'\n    He stretch\'d him, and, with one hand on his dagger,\n    Another spread on\'s breast, mounting his eyes,\n    He did discharge a horrible oath, whose tenour\n    Was, were he evil us\'d, he would outgo\n    His father by as much as a performance\n    Does an irresolute purpose.\n  KING. There\'s his period,\n    To sheath his knife in us. He is attach\'d;\n    Call him to present trial. If he may\n    Find mercy in the law, \'tis his; if none,  \n    Let him not seek\'t of us. By day and night!\n    He\'s traitor to th\' height.                                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE 3.\n\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter the LORD CHAMBERLAIN and LORD SANDYS\n\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Is\'t possible the spells of France should juggle\n    Men into such strange mysteries?\n  SANDYS. New customs,\n    Though they be never so ridiculous,\n    Nay, let \'em be unmanly, yet are follow\'d.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. As far as I see, all the good our English\n    Have got by the late voyage is but merely\n    A fit or two o\' th\' face; but they are shrewd ones;\n    For when they hold \'em, you would swear directly\n    Their very noses had been counsellors\n    To Pepin or Clotharius, they keep state so.\n  SANDYS. They have all new legs, and lame ones. One would take it,\n    That never saw \'em pace before, the spavin\n    Or springhalt reign\'d among \'em.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Death! my lord,\n    Their clothes are after such a pagan cut to\'t,  \n    That sure th\' have worn out Christendom.\n\n           Enter SIR THOMAS LOVELL\n\n    How now?\n    What news, Sir Thomas Lovell?\n  LOVELL. Faith, my lord,\n    I hear of none but the new proclamation\n    That\'s clapp\'d upon the court gate.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. What is\'t for?\n  LOVELL. The reformation of our travell\'d gallants,\n    That fill the court with quarrels, talk, and tailors.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. I am glad \'tis there. Now I would pray our monsieurs\n    To think an English courtier may be wise,\n    And never see the Louvre.\n  LOVELL. They must either,\n    For so run the conditions, leave those remnants\n    Of fool and feather that they got in France,\n    With all their honourable points of ignorance\n    Pertaining thereunto-as fights and fireworks;  \n    Abusing better men than they can be,\n    Out of a foreign wisdom-renouncing clean\n    The faith they have in tennis, and tall stockings,\n    Short blist\'red breeches, and those types of travel\n    And understand again like honest men,\n    Or pack to their old playfellows. There, I take it,\n    They may, cum privilegio, wear away\n    The lag end of their lewdness and be laugh\'d at.\n  SANDYS. \'Tis time to give \'em physic, their diseases\n    Are grown so catching.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. What a loss our ladies\n    Will have of these trim vanities!\n  LOVELL. Ay, marry,\n    There will be woe indeed, lords: the sly whoresons\n    Have got a speeding trick to lay down ladies.\n    A French song and a fiddle has no fellow.\n  SANDYS. The devil fiddle \'em! I am glad they are going,\n    For sure there\'s no converting \'em. Now\n    An honest country lord, as I am, beaten\n    A long time out of play, may bring his plainsong  \n    And have an hour of hearing; and, by\'r Lady,\n    Held current music too.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Well said, Lord Sandys;\n    Your colt\'s tooth is not cast yet.\n  SANDYS. No, my lord,\n    Nor shall not while I have a stamp.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Sir Thomas,\n    Whither were you a-going?\n  LOVELL. To the Cardinal\'s;\n    Your lordship is a guest too.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. O, \'tis true;\n    This night he makes a supper, and a great one,\n    To many lords and ladies; there will be\n    The beauty of this kingdom, I\'ll assure you.\n  LOVELL. That churchman bears a bounteous mind indeed,\n    A hand as fruitful as the land that feeds us;\n    His dews fall everywhere.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. No doubt he\'s noble;\n    He had a black mouth that said other of him.\n  SANDYS. He may, my lord; has wherewithal. In him  \n    Sparing would show a worse sin than ill doctrine:\n    Men of his way should be most liberal,\n    They are set here for examples.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. True, they are so;\n    But few now give so great ones. My barge stays;\n    Your lordship shall along. Come, good Sir Thomas,\n    We shall be late else; which I would not be,\n    For I was spoke to, with Sir Henry Guildford,\n    This night to be comptrollers.\n  SANDYS. I am your lordship\'s.                                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE 4.\n\nLondon. The Presence Chamber in York Place\n\nHautboys. A small table under a state for the Cardinal,\na longer table for the guests. Then enter ANNE BULLEN,\nand divers other LADIES and GENTLEMEN, as guests, at one door;\nat another door enter SIR HENRY GUILDFORD\n\n  GUILDFORD. Ladies, a general welcome from his Grace\n    Salutes ye all; this night he dedicates\n    To fair content and you. None here, he hopes,\n    In all this noble bevy, has brought with her\n    One care abroad; he would have all as merry\n    As, first, good company, good wine, good welcome,\n    Can make good people.\n\n       Enter LORD CHAMBERLAIN, LORD SANDYS, and SIR\n                  THOMAS LOVELL\n\n    O, my lord, y\'are tardy,  \n    The very thought of this fair company\n    Clapp\'d wings to me.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. You are young, Sir Harry Guildford.\n  SANDYS. Sir Thomas Lovell, had the Cardinal\n    But half my lay thoughts in him, some of these\n    Should find a running banquet ere they rested\n    I think would better please \'em. By my life,\n    They are a sweet society of fair ones.\n  LOVELL. O that your lordship were but now confessor\n    To one or two of these!\n  SANDYS. I would I were;\n    They should find easy penance.\n  LOVELL. Faith, how easy?\n  SANDYS. As easy as a down bed would afford it.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Sweet ladies, will it please you sit? Sir Harry,\n    Place you that side; I\'ll take the charge of this.\n    His Grace is ent\'ring. Nay, you must not freeze:\n    Two women plac\'d together makes cold weather.\n    My Lord Sandys, you are one will keep \'em waking:\n    Pray sit between these ladies.  \n  SANDYS. By my faith,\n    And thank your lordship. By your leave, sweet ladies.\n                 [Seats himself between ANNE BULLEN and another lady]\n    If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me;\n    I had it from my father.\n  ANNE. Was he mad, sir?\n  SANDYS. O, very mad, exceeding mad, in love too.\n    But he would bite none; just as I do now,\n    He would kiss you twenty with a breath.              [Kisses her]\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Well said, my lord.\n    So, now y\'are fairly seated. Gentlemen,\n    The penance lies on you if these fair ladies\n    Pass away frowning.\n  SANDYS. For my little cure,\n    Let me alone.\n\n         Hautboys. Enter CARDINAL WOLSEY, attended; and\n                         takes his state\n\n  WOLSEY. Y\'are welcome, my fair guests. That noble lady  \n    Or gentleman that is not freely merry\n    Is not my friend. This, to confirm my welcome-\n    And to you all, good health!                             [Drinks]\n  SANDYS. Your Grace is noble.\n    Let me have such a bowl may hold my thanks\n    And save me so much talking.\n  WOLSEY. My Lord Sandys,\n    I am beholding to you. Cheer your neighbours.\n    Ladies, you are not merry. Gentlemen,\n    Whose fault is this?\n  SANDYS. The red wine first must rise\n    In their fair cheeks, my lord; then we shall have \'em\n    Talk us to silence.\n  ANNE. You are a merry gamester,\n    My Lord Sandys.\n  SANDYS. Yes, if I make my play.\n    Here\'s to your ladyship; and pledge it, madam,\n    For \'tis to such a thing-\n  ANNE. You cannot show me.\n  SANDYS. I told your Grace they would talk anon.  \n                             [Drum and trumpet. Chambers discharg\'d]\n  WOLSEY. What\'s that?\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Look out there, some of ye.             Exit a SERVANT\n  WOLSEY. What warlike voice,\n    And to what end, is this? Nay, ladies, fear not:\n    By all the laws of war y\'are privileg\'d.\n\n            Re-enter SERVANT\n\n  CHAMBERLAIN. How now! what is\'t?\n  SERVANT. A noble troop of strangers-\n    For so they seem. Th\' have left their barge and landed,\n    And hither make, as great ambassadors\n    From foreign princes.\n  WOLSEY. Good Lord Chamberlain,\n    Go, give \'em welcome; you can speak the French tongue;\n    And pray receive \'em nobly and conduct \'em\n    Into our presence, where this heaven of beauty\n    Shall shine at full upon them. Some attend him.\n              Exit CHAMBERLAIN attended. All rise, and tables remov\'d  \n    You have now a broken banquet, but we\'ll mend it.\n    A good digestion to you all; and once more\n    I show\'r a welcome on ye; welcome all.\n\n      Hautboys. Enter the KING, and others, as maskers,\n      habited like shepherds, usher\'d by the LORD CHAMBERLAIN.\n      They pass directly before the CARDINAL,\n      and gracefully salute him\n\n    A noble company! What are their pleasures?\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Because they speak no English, thus they pray\'d\n    To tell your Grace, that, having heard by fame\n    Of this so noble and so fair assembly\n    This night to meet here, they could do no less,\n    Out of the great respect they bear to beauty,\n    But leave their flocks and, under your fair conduct,\n    Crave leave to view these ladies and entreat\n    An hour of revels with \'em.\n  WOLSEY. Say, Lord Chamberlain,\n    They have done my poor house grace; for which I pay \'em  \n    A thousand thanks, and pray \'em take their pleasures.\n                   [They choose ladies. The KING chooses ANNE BULLEN]\n  KING. The fairest hand I ever touch\'d! O beauty,\n    Till now I never knew thee!                        [Music. Dance]\n  WOLSEY. My lord!\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Your Grace?\n  WOLSEY. Pray tell \'em thus much from me:\n    There should be one amongst \'em, by his person,\n    More worthy this place than myself; to whom,\n    If I but knew him, with my love and duty\n    I would surrender it.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. I will, my lord.\n                                         [He whispers to the maskers]\n  WOLSEY. What say they?\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Such a one, they all confess,\n    There is indeed; which they would have your Grace\n    Find out, and he will take it.\n  WOLSEY. Let me see, then.                    [Comes from his state]\n    By all your good leaves, gentlemen, here I\'ll make\n    My royal choice.  \n  KING.  [Unmasking]  Ye have found him, Cardinal.\n    You hold a fair assembly; you do well, lord.\n    You are a churchman, or, I\'ll tell you, Cardinal,\n    I should judge now unhappily.\n  WOLSEY. I am glad\n    Your Grace is grown so pleasant.\n  KING. My Lord Chamberlain,\n    Prithee come hither: what fair lady\'s that?\n  CHAMBERLAIN. An\'t please your Grace, Sir Thomas Bullen\'s\n      daughter-\n    The Viscount Rochford-one of her Highness\' women.\n  KING. By heaven, she is a dainty one. Sweet heart,\n    I were unmannerly to take you out\n    And not to kiss you. A health, gentlemen!\n    Let it go round.\n  WOLSEY. Sir Thomas Lovell, is the banquet ready\n    I\' th\' privy chamber?\n  LOVELL. Yes, my lord.\n  WOLSEY. Your Grace,\n    I fear, with dancing is a little heated.  \n  KING. I fear, too much.\n  WOLSEY. There\'s fresher air, my lord,\n    In the next chamber.\n  KING. Lead in your ladies, ev\'ry one. Sweet partner,\n    I must not yet forsake you. Let\'s be merry:\n    Good my Lord Cardinal, I have half a dozen healths\n    To drink to these fair ladies, and a measure\n    To lead \'em once again; and then let\'s dream\n    Who\'s best in favour. Let the music knock it.\n                                                Exeunt, with trumpets\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 1.\n\nWestminster. A street\n\nEnter two GENTLEMEN, at several doors\n\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Whither away so fast?\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. O, God save ye!\n    Ev\'n to the Hall, to hear what shall become\n    Of the great Duke of Buckingham.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. I\'ll save you\n    That labour, sir. All\'s now done but the ceremony\n    Of bringing back the prisoner.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Were you there?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes, indeed, was I.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Pray, speak what has happen\'d.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. You may guess quickly what.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Is he found guilty?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes, truly is he, and condemn\'d upon\'t.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. I am sorry for\'t.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. So are a number more.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. But, pray, how pass\'d it?  \n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. I\'ll tell you in a little. The great Duke.\n    Came to the bar; where to his accusations\n    He pleaded still not guilty, and alleged\n    Many sharp reasons to defeat the law.\n    The King\'s attorney, on the contrary,\n    Urg\'d on the examinations, proofs, confessions,\n    Of divers witnesses; which the Duke desir\'d\n    To have brought, viva voce, to his face;\n    At which appear\'d against him his surveyor,\n    Sir Gilbert Peck his chancellor, and John Car,\n    Confessor to him, with that devil-monk,\n    Hopkins, that made this mischief.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. That was he\n    That fed him with his prophecies?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. The same.\n    All these accus\'d him strongly, which he fain\n    Would have flung from him; but indeed he could not;\n    And so his peers, upon this evidence,\n    Have found him guilty of high treason. Much\n    He spoke, and learnedly, for life; but all  \n    Was either pitied in him or forgotten.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. After all this, how did he bear him-self\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. When he was brought again to th\' bar to hear\n    His knell rung out, his judgment, he was stirr\'d\n    With such an agony he sweat extremely,\n    And something spoke in choler, ill and hasty;\n    But he fell to himself again, and sweetly\n    In all the rest show\'d a most noble patience.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. I do not think he fears death.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Sure, he does not;\n    He never was so womanish; the cause\n    He may a little grieve at.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Certainly\n    The Cardinal is the end of this.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. \'Tis likely,\n    By all conjectures: first, Kildare\'s attainder,\n    Then deputy of Ireland, who remov\'d,\n    Earl Surrey was sent thither, and in haste too,\n    Lest he should help his father.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. That trick of state  \n    Was a deep envious one.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. At his return\n    No doubt he will requite it. This is noted,\n    And generally: whoever the King favours\n    The Cardinal instantly will find employment,\n    And far enough from court too.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. All the commons\n    Hate him perniciously, and, o\' my conscience,\n    Wish him ten fathom deep: this Duke as much\n    They love and dote on; call him bounteous Buckingham,\n    The mirror of all courtesy-\n\n      Enter BUCKINGHAM from his arraignment, tip-staves\n      before him; the axe with the edge towards him; halberds\n      on each side; accompanied with SIR THOMAS\n      LOVELL, SIR NICHOLAS VAUX, SIR WILLIAM SANDYS,\n      and common people, etc.\n\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Stay there, sir,\n    And see the noble ruin\'d man you speak of.  \n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Let\'s stand close, and behold him.\n  BUCKINGHAM. All good people,\n    You that thus far have come to pity me,\n    Hear what I say, and then go home and lose me.\n    I have this day receiv\'d a traitor\'s judgment,\n    And by that name must die; yet, heaven bear witness,\n    And if I have a conscience, let it sink me\n    Even as the axe falls, if I be not faithful!\n    The law I bear no malice for my death:\n    \'T has done, upon the premises, but justice.\n    But those that sought it I could wish more Christians.\n    Be what they will, I heartily forgive \'em;\n    Yet let \'em look they glory not in mischief\n    Nor build their evils on the graves of great men,\n    For then my guiltless blood must cry against \'em.\n    For further life in this world I ne\'er hope\n    Nor will I sue, although the King have mercies\n    More than I dare make faults. You few that lov\'d me\n    And dare be bold to weep for Buckingham,\n    His noble friends and fellows, whom to leave  \n    Is only bitter to him, only dying,\n    Go with me like good angels to my end;\n    And as the long divorce of steel falls on me\n    Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice,\n    And lift my soul to heaven. Lead on, a God\'s name.\n  LOVELL. I do beseech your Grace, for charity,\n    If ever any malice in your heart\n    Were hid against me, now to forgive me frankly.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Sir Thomas Lovell, I as free forgive you\n    As I would be forgiven. I forgive all.\n    There cannot be those numberless offences\n    \'Gainst me that I cannot take peace with. No black envy\n    Shall mark my grave. Commend me to his Grace;\n    And if he speak of Buckingham, pray tell him\n    You met him half in heaven. My vows and prayers\n    Yet are the King\'s, and, till my soul forsake,\n    Shall cry for blessings on him. May he live\n    Longer than I have time to tell his years;\n    Ever belov\'d and loving may his rule be;\n    And when old time Shall lead him to his end,  \n    Goodness and he fill up one monument!\n  LOVELL. To th\' water side I must conduct your Grace;\n    Then give my charge up to Sir Nicholas Vaux,\n    Who undertakes you to your end.\n  VAUX. Prepare there;\n    The Duke is coming; see the barge be ready;\n    And fit it with such furniture as suits\n    The greatness of his person.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Nay, Sir Nicholas,\n    Let it alone; my state now will but mock me.\n    When I came hither I was Lord High Constable\n    And Duke of Buckingham; now, poor Edward Bohun.\n    Yet I am richer than my base accusers\n    That never knew what truth meant; I now seal it;\n    And with that blood will make \'em one day groan fort.\n    My noble father, Henry of Buckingham,\n    Who first rais\'d head against usurping Richard,\n    Flying for succour to his servant Banister,\n    Being distress\'d, was by that wretch betray\'d\n    And without trial fell; God\'s peace be with him!  \n    Henry the Seventh succeeding, truly pitying\n    My father\'s loss, like a most royal prince,\n    Restor\'d me to my honours, and out of ruins\n    Made my name once more noble. Now his son,\n    Henry the Eighth, life, honour, name, and all\n    That made me happy, at one stroke has taken\n    For ever from the world. I had my trial,\n    And must needs say a noble one; which makes me\n    A little happier than my wretched father;\n    Yet thus far we are one in fortunes: both\n    Fell by our servants, by those men we lov\'d most-\n    A most unnatural and faithless service.\n    Heaven has an end in all. Yet, you that hear me,\n    This from a dying man receive as certain:\n    Where you are liberal of your loves and counsels,\n    Be sure you be not loose; for those you make friends\n    And give your hearts to, when they once perceive\n    The least rub in your fortunes, fall away\n    Like water from ye, never found again\n    But where they mean to sink ye. All good people,  \n    Pray for me! I must now forsake ye; the last hour\n    Of my long weary life is come upon me.\n    Farewell;\n    And when you would say something that is sad,\n    Speak how I fell. I have done; and God forgive me!\n                                          Exeunt BUCKINGHAM and train\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. O, this is full of pity! Sir, it calls,\n    I fear, too many curses on their heads\n    That were the authors.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. If the Duke be guiltless,\n    \'Tis full of woe; yet I can give you inkling\n    Of an ensuing evil, if it fall,\n    Greater than this.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Good angels keep it from us!\n    What may it be? You do not doubt my faith, sir?\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. This secret is so weighty, \'twill require\n    A strong faith to conceal it.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Let me have it;\n    I do not talk much.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. I am confident.  \n    You shall, sir. Did you not of late days hear\n    A buzzing of a separation\n    Between the King and Katharine?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes, but it held not;\n    For when the King once heard it, out of anger\n    He sent command to the Lord Mayor straight\n    To stop the rumour and allay those tongues\n    That durst disperse it.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. But that slander, sir,\n    Is found a truth now; for it grows again\n    Fresher than e\'er it was, and held for certain\n    The King will venture at it. Either the Cardinal\n    Or some about him near have, out of malice\n    To the good Queen, possess\'d him with a scruple\n    That will undo her. To confirm this too,\n    Cardinal Campeius is arriv\'d and lately;\n    As all think, for this business.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. \'Tis the Cardinal;\n    And merely to revenge him on the Emperor\n    For not bestowing on him at his asking  \n    The archbishopric of Toledo, this is purpos\'d.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. I think you have hit the mark; but is\'t\n        not cruel\n    That she should feel the smart of this? The Cardinal\n    Will have his will, and she must fall.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. \'Tis woeful.\n    We are too open here to argue this;\n    Let\'s think in private more.                               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 2.\n\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter the LORD CHAMBERLAIN reading this letter\n\n  CHAMBERLAIN. \'My lord,\n    \'The horses your lordship sent for, with all the care\n    had, I saw well chosen, ridden, and furnish\'d. They were\n    young and handsome, and of the best breed in the north.\n    When they were ready to set out for London, a man of\n    my Lord Cardinal\'s, by commission, and main power, took\n    \'em from me, with this reason: his master would be serv\'d\n    before a subject, if not before the King; which stopp\'d\n    our mouths, sir.\'\n\n    I fear he will indeed. Well, let him have them.\n    He will have all, I think.\n\n    Enter to the LORD CHAMBERLAIN the DUKES OF NORFOLK and SUFFOLK\n\n  NORFOLK. Well met, my Lord Chamberlain.  \n  CHAMBERLAIN. Good day to both your Graces.\n  SUFFOLK. How is the King employ\'d?\n  CHAMBERLAIN. I left him private,\n    Full of sad thoughts and troubles.\n  NORFOLK. What\'s the cause?\n  CHAMBERLAIN. It seems the marriage with his brother\'s wife\n    Has crept too near his conscience.\n  SUFFOLK. No, his conscience\n    Has crept too near another lady.\n  NORFOLK. \'Tis so;\n    This is the Cardinal\'s doing; the King-Cardinal,\n    That blind priest, like the eldest son of fortune,\n    Turns what he list. The King will know him one day.\n  SUFFOLK. Pray God he do! He\'ll never know himself else.\n  NORFOLK. How holily he works in all his business!\n    And with what zeal! For, now he has crack\'d the league\n    Between us and the Emperor, the Queen\'s great nephew,\n    He dives into the King\'s soul and there scatters\n    Dangers, doubts, wringing of the conscience,\n    Fears, and despairs-and all these for his marriage;  \n    And out of all these to restore the King,\n    He counsels a divorce, a loss of her\n    That like a jewel has hung twenty years\n    About his neck, yet never lost her lustre;\n    Of her that loves him with that excellence\n    That angels love good men with; even of her\n    That, when the greatest stroke of fortune falls,\n    Will bless the King-and is not this course pious?\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Heaven keep me from such counsel! \'Tis most true\n    These news are everywhere; every tongue speaks \'em,\n    And every true heart weeps for \'t. All that dare\n    Look into these affairs see this main end-\n    The French King\'s sister. Heaven will one day open\n    The King\'s eyes, that so long have slept upon\n    This bold bad man.\n  SUFFOLK. And free us from his slavery.\n  NORFOLK. We had need pray, and heartily, for our deliverance;\n    Or this imperious man will work us an\n    From princes into pages. All men\'s honours\n    Lie like one lump before him, to be fashion\'d  \n    Into what pitch he please.\n  SUFFOLK. For me, my lords,\n    I love him not, nor fear him-there\'s my creed;\n    As I am made without him, so I\'ll stand,\n    If the King please; his curses and his blessings\n    Touch me alike; th\' are breath I not believe in.\n    I knew him, and I know him; so I leave him\n    To him that made him proud-the Pope.\n  NORFOLK. Let\'s in;\n    And with some other business put the King\n    From these sad thoughts that work too much upon him.\n    My lord, you\'ll bear us company?\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Excuse me,\n    The King has sent me otherwhere; besides,\n    You\'ll find a most unfit time to disturb him.\n    Health to your lordships!\n  NORFOLK. Thanks, my good Lord Chamberlain.\n                            Exit LORD CHAMBERLAIN; and the KING draws\n                               the curtain and sits reading pensively\n  SUFFOLK. How sad he looks; sure, he is much afflicted.  \n  KING. Who\'s there, ha?\n  NORFOLK. Pray God he be not angry.\n  KING HENRY. Who\'s there, I say? How dare you thrust yourselves\n    Into my private meditations?\n    Who am I, ha?\n  NORFOLK. A gracious king that pardons all offences\n    Malice ne\'er meant. Our breach of duty this way\n    Is business of estate, in which we come\n    To know your royal pleasure.\n  KING. Ye are too bold.\n    Go to; I\'ll make ye know your times of business.\n    Is this an hour for temporal affairs, ha?\n\n      Enter WOLSEY and CAMPEIUS with a commission\n\n    Who\'s there? My good Lord Cardinal? O my Wolsey,\n    The quiet of my wounded conscience,\n    Thou art a cure fit for a King.  [To CAMPEIUS]  You\'re\n      welcome,\n    Most learned reverend sir, into our kingdom.  \n    Use us and it.  [To WOLSEY]  My good lord, have great care\n    I be not found a talker.\n  WOLSEY. Sir, you cannot.\n    I would your Grace would give us but an hour\n    Of private conference.\n  KING.  [To NORFOLK and SUFFOLK]  We are busy; go.\n  NORFOLK.  [Aside to SUFFOLK]  This priest has no pride in him!\n  SUFFOLK.  [Aside to NORFOLK]  Not to speak of!\n    I would not be so sick though for his place.\n    But this cannot continue.\n  NORFOLK.  [Aside to SUFFOLK]  If it do,\n    I\'ll venture one have-at-him.\n  SUFFOLK.  [Aside to NORFOLK]  I another.\n                                           Exeunt NORFOLK and SUFFOLK\n  WOLSEY. Your Grace has given a precedent of wisdom\n    Above all princes, in committing freely\n    Your scruple to the voice of Christendom.\n    Who can be angry now? What envy reach you?\n    The Spaniard, tied by blood and favour to her,\n    Must now confess, if they have any goodness,  \n    The trial just and noble. All the clerks,\n    I mean the learned ones, in Christian kingdoms\n    Have their free voices. Rome the nurse of judgment,\n    Invited by your noble self, hath sent\n    One general tongue unto us, this good man,\n    This just and learned priest, Cardinal Campeius,\n    Whom once more I present unto your Highness.\n  KING. And once more in mine arms I bid him welcome,\n    And thank the holy conclave for their loves.\n    They have sent me such a man I would have wish\'d for.\n  CAMPEIUS. Your Grace must needs deserve an strangers\' loves,\n    You are so noble. To your Highness\' hand\n    I tender my commission; by whose virtue-\n    The court of Rome commanding-you, my Lord\n    Cardinal of York, are join\'d with me their servant\n    In the unpartial judging of this business.\n  KING. Two equal men. The Queen shall be acquainted\n    Forthwith for what you come. Where\'s Gardiner?\n  WOLSEY. I know your Majesty has always lov\'d her\n    So dear in heart not to deny her that  \n    A woman of less place might ask by law-\n    Scholars allow\'d freely to argue for her.\n  KING. Ay, and the best she shall have; and my favour\n    To him that does best. God forbid else. Cardinal,\n    Prithee call Gardiner to me, my new secretary;\n    I find him a fit fellow.                              Exit WOLSEY\n\n          Re-enter WOLSEY with GARDINER\n\n  WOLSEY.  [Aside to GARDINER]  Give me your hand: much\n      joy and favour to you;\n    You are the King\'s now.\n  GARDINER.  [Aside to WOLSEY]  But to be commanded\n    For ever by your Grace, whose hand has rais\'d me.\n  KING. Come hither, Gardiner.                   [Walks and whispers]\n  CAMPEIUS. My Lord of York, was not one Doctor Pace\n    In this man\'s place before him?\n  WOLSEY. Yes, he was.\n  CAMPEIUS. Was he not held a learned man?\n  WOLSEY. Yes, surely.  \n  CAMPEIUS. Believe me, there\'s an ill opinion spread then,\n    Even of yourself, Lord Cardinal.\n  WOLSEY. How! Of me?\n  CAMPEIUS. They will not stick to say you envied him\n    And, fearing he would rise, he was so virtuous,\n    Kept him a foreign man still; which so griev\'d him\n    That he ran mad and died.\n  WOLSEY. Heav\'n\'s peace be with him!\n    That\'s Christian care enough. For living murmurers\n    There\'s places of rebuke. He was a fool,\n    For he would needs be virtuous: that good fellow,\n    If I command him, follows my appointment.\n    I will have none so near else. Learn this, brother,\n    We live not to be grip\'d by meaner persons.\n  KING. Deliver this with modesty to th\' Queen.\n                                                        Exit GARDINER\n    The most convenient place that I can think of\n    For such receipt of learning is Blackfriars;\n    There ye shall meet about this weighty business-\n    My Wolsey, see it furnish\'d. O, my lord,  \n    Would it not grieve an able man to leave\n    So sweet a bedfellow? But, conscience, conscience!\n    O, \'tis a tender place! and I must leave her.              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 3.\n\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter ANNE BULLEN and an OLD LADY\n\n  ANNE. Not for that neither. Here\'s the pang that pinches:\n    His Highness having liv\'d so long with her, and she\n    So good a lady that no tongue could ever\n    Pronounce dishonour of her-by my life,\n    She never knew harm-doing-O, now, after\n    So many courses of the sun enthroned,\n    Still growing in a majesty and pomp, the which\n    To leave a thousand-fold more bitter than\n    \'Tis sweet at first t\' acquire-after this process,\n    To give her the avaunt, it is a pity\n    Would move a monster.\n  OLD LADY. Hearts of most hard temper\n    Melt and lament for her.\n  ANNE. O, God\'s will! much better\n    She ne\'er had known pomp; though\'t be temporal,\n    Yet, if that quarrel, fortune, do divorce  \n    It from the bearer, \'tis a sufferance panging\n    As soul and body\'s severing.\n  OLD LADY. Alas, poor lady!\n    She\'s a stranger now again.\n  ANNE. So much the more\n    Must pity drop upon her. Verily,\n    I swear \'tis better to be lowly born\n    And range with humble livers in content\n    Than to be perk\'d up in a glist\'ring grief\n    And wear a golden sorrow.\n  OLD LADY. Our content\n    Is our best having.\n  ANNE. By my troth and maidenhead,\n    I would not be a queen.\n  OLD LADY. Beshrew me, I would,\n    And venture maidenhead for \'t; and so would you,\n    For all this spice of your hypocrisy.\n    You that have so fair parts of woman on you\n    Have too a woman\'s heart, which ever yet\n    Affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty;  \n    Which, to say sooth, are blessings; and which gifts,\n    Saving your mincing, the capacity\n    Of your soft cheveril conscience would receive\n    If you might please to stretch it.\n  ANNE. Nay, good troth.\n  OLD LADY. Yes, troth and troth. You would not be a queen!\n  ANNE. No, not for all the riches under heaven.\n  OLD LADY. \'Tis strange: a threepence bow\'d would hire me,\n    Old as I am, to queen it. But, I pray you,\n    What think you of a duchess? Have you limbs\n    To bear that load of title?\n  ANNE. No, in truth.\n  OLD LADY. Then you are weakly made. Pluck off a little;\n    I would not be a young count in your way\n    For more than blushing comes to. If your back\n    Cannot vouchsafe this burden, \'tis too weak\n    Ever to get a boy.\n  ANNE. How you do talk!\n    I swear again I would not be a queen\n    For all the world.  \n  OLD LADY. In faith, for little England\n    You\'d venture an emballing. I myself\n    Would for Carnarvonshire, although there long\'d\n    No more to th\' crown but that. Lo, who comes here?\n\n         Enter the LORD CHAMBERLAIN\n\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Good morrow, ladies. What were\'t worth to know\n    The secret of your conference?\n  ANNE. My good lord,\n    Not your demand; it values not your asking.\n    Our mistress\' sorrows we were pitying.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. It was a gentle business and becoming\n    The action of good women; there is hope\n    All will be well.\n  ANNE. Now, I pray God, amen!\n  CHAMBERLAIN. You bear a gentle mind, and heav\'nly blessings\n    Follow such creatures. That you may, fair lady,\n    Perceive I speak sincerely and high notes\n    Ta\'en of your many virtues, the King\'s Majesty  \n    Commends his good opinion of you to you, and\n    Does purpose honour to you no less flowing\n    Than Marchioness of Pembroke; to which tide\n    A thousand pound a year, annual support,\n    Out of his grace he adds.\n  ANNE. I do not know\n    What kind of my obedience I should tender;\n    More than my all is nothing, nor my prayers\n    Are not words duly hallowed, nor my wishes\n    More worth than empty vanities; yet prayers and wishes\n    Are all I can return. Beseech your lordship,\n    Vouchsafe to speak my thanks and my obedience,\n    As from a blushing handmaid, to his Highness;\n    Whose health and royalty I pray for.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Lady,\n    I shall not fail t\' approve the fair conceit\n    The King hath of you.  [Aside]  I have perus\'d her well:\n    Beauty and honour in her are so mingled\n    That they have caught the King; and who knows yet\n    But from this lady may proceed a gem  \n    To lighten all this isle?-I\'ll to the King\n    And say I spoke with you.\n  ANNE. My honour\'d lord!                       Exit LORD CHAMBERLAIN\n  OLD LADY. Why, this it is: see, see!\n    I have been begging sixteen years in court-\n    Am yet a courtier beggarly-nor could\n    Come pat betwixt too early and too late\n    For any suit of pounds; and you, O fate!\n    A very fresh-fish here-fie, fie, fie upon\n    This compell\'d fortune!-have your mouth fill\'d up\n    Before you open it.\n  ANNE. This is strange to me.\n  OLD LADY. How tastes it? Is it bitter? Forty pence, no.\n    There was a lady once-\'tis an old story-\n    That would not be a queen, that would she not,\n    For all the mud in Egypt. Have you heard it?\n  ANNE. Come, you are pleasant.\n  OLD LADY. With your theme I could\n    O\'ermount the lark. The Marchioness of Pembroke!\n    A thousand pounds a year for pure respect!  \n    No other obligation! By my life,\n    That promises moe thousands: honour\'s train\n    Is longer than his foreskirt. By this time\n    I know your back will bear a duchess. Say,\n    Are you not stronger than you were?\n  ANNE. Good lady,\n    Make yourself mirth with your particular fancy,\n    And leave me out on\'t. Would I had no being,\n    If this salute my blood a jot; it faints me\n    To think what follows.\n    The Queen is comfortless, and we forgetful\n    In our long absence. Pray, do not deliver\n    What here y\' have heard to her.\n  OLD LADY. What do you think me?                              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 4.\n\nLondon. A hall in Blackfriars\n\nTrumpets, sennet, and cornets. Enter two VERGERS, with short silver wands;\nnext them, two SCRIBES, in the habit of doctors; after them,\nthe ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY alone; after him, the BISHOPS OF LINCOLN, ELY,\nROCHESTER, and SAINT ASAPH; next them, with some small distance,\nfollows a GENTLEMAN bearing the purse, with the great seal,\nand a Cardinal\'s hat; then two PRIESTS, bearing each silver cross;\nthen a GENTLEMAN USHER bareheaded, accompanied with a SERGEANT-AT-ARMS\nbearing a silver mace; then two GENTLEMEN bearing two great silver pillars;\nafter them, side by side, the two CARDINALS, WOLSEY and CAMPEIUS;\ntwo NOBLEMEN with the sword and mace. Then enter the KING and QUEEN\nand their trains. The KING takes place under the cloth of state;\nthe two CARDINALS sit under him as judges. The QUEEN takes place\nsome distance from the KING. The BISHOPS place themselves on each side\nof the court, in manner of consistory; below them the SCRIBES.\nThe LORDS sit next the BISHOPS. The rest of the attendants stand\nin convenient order about the stage\n\n  WOLSEY. Whilst our commission from Rome is read,\n    Let silence be commanded.\n  KING. What\'s the need?\n    It hath already publicly been read,\n    And on all sides th\' authority allow\'d;\n    You may then spare that time.\n  WOLSEY. Be\'t so; proceed.\n  SCRIBE. Say \'Henry King of England, come into the court.\'\n  CRIER. Henry King of England, &c.\n  KING. Here.\n  SCRIBE. Say \'Katharine Queen of England, come into the court.\'\n  CRIER. Katharine Queen of England, &c.\n\n     The QUEEN makes no answer, rises out of her chair,\n     goes about the court, comes to the KING, and kneels  \n     at his feet; then speaks\n\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Sir, I desire you do me right and justice,\n    And to bestow your pity on me; for\n    I am a most poor woman and a stranger,\n    Born out of your dominions, having here\n    No judge indifferent, nor no more assurance\n    Of equal friendship and proceeding. Alas, sir,\n    In what have I offended you? What cause\n    Hath my behaviour given to your displeasure\n    That thus you should proceed to put me of\n    And take your good grace from me? Heaven witness,\n    I have been to you a true and humble wife,\n    At all times to your will conformable,\n    Ever in fear to kindle your dislike,\n    Yea, subject to your countenance-glad or sorry\n    As I saw it inclin\'d. When was the hour\n    I ever contradicted your desire\n    Or made it not mine too? Or which of your friends\n    Have I not strove to love, although I knew  \n    He were mine enemy? What friend of mine\n    That had to him deriv\'d your anger did\n    Continue in my liking? Nay, gave notice\n    He was from thence discharg\'d? Sir, call to mind\n    That I have been your wife in this obedience\n    Upward of twenty years, and have been blest\n    With many children by you. If, in the course\n    And process of this time, you can report,\n    And prove it too against mine honour, aught,\n    My bond to wedlock or my love and duty,\n    Against your sacred person, in God\'s name,\n    Turn me away and let the foul\'st contempt\n    Shut door upon me, and so give me up\n    To the sharp\'st kind of justice. Please you, sir,\n    The King, your father, was reputed for\n    A prince most prudent, of an excellent\n    And unmatch\'d wit and judgment; Ferdinand,\n    My father, King of Spain, was reckon\'d one\n    The wisest prince that there had reign\'d by many\n    A year before. It is not to be question\'d  \n    That they had gather\'d a wise council to them\n    Of every realm, that did debate this business,\n    Who deem\'d our marriage lawful. Wherefore I humbly\n    Beseech you, sir, to spare me till I may\n    Be by my friends in Spain advis\'d, whose counsel\n    I will implore. If not, i\' th\' name of God,\n    Your pleasure be fulfill\'d!\n  WOLSEY. You have here, lady,\n    And of your choice, these reverend fathers-men\n    Of singular integrity and learning,\n    Yea, the elect o\' th\' land, who are assembled\n    To plead your cause. It shall be therefore bootless\n    That longer you desire the court, as well\n    For your own quiet as to rectify\n    What is unsettled in the King.\n  CAMPEIUS. His Grace\n    Hath spoken well and justly; therefore, madam,\n    It\'s fit this royal session do proceed\n    And that, without delay, their arguments\n    Be now produc\'d and heard.  \n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Lord Cardinal,\n    To you I speak.\n  WOLSEY. Your pleasure, madam?\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Sir,\n    I am about to weep; but, thinking that\n    We are a queen, or long have dream\'d so, certain\n    The daughter of a king, my drops of tears\n    I\'ll turn to sparks of fire.\n  WOLSEY. Be patient yet.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. I Will, when you are humble; nay, before\n    Or God will punish me. I do believe,\n    Induc\'d by potent circumstances, that\n    You are mine enemy, and make my challenge\n    You shall not be my judge; for it is you\n    Have blown this coal betwixt my lord and me-\n    Which God\'s dew quench! Therefore I say again,\n    I utterly abhor, yea, from my soul\n    Refuse you for my judge, whom yet once more\n    I hold my most malicious foe and think not\n    At all a friend to truth.  \n  WOLSEY. I do profess\n    You speak not like yourself, who ever yet\n    Have stood to charity and display\'d th\' effects\n    Of disposition gentle and of wisdom\n    O\'ertopping woman\'s pow\'r. Madam, you do me wrong:\n    I have no spleen against you, nor injustice\n    For you or any; how far I have proceeded,\n    Or how far further shall, is warranted\n    By a commission from the Consistory,\n    Yea, the whole Consistory of Rome. You charge me\n    That I have blown this coal: I do deny it.\n    The King is present; if it be known to him\n    That I gainsay my deed, how may he wound,\n    And worthily, my falsehood! Yea, as much\n    As you have done my truth. If he know\n    That I am free of your report, he knows\n    I am not of your wrong. Therefore in him\n    It lies to cure me, and the cure is to\n    Remove these thoughts from you; the which before\n    His Highness shall speak in, I do beseech  \n    You, gracious madam, to unthink your speaking\n    And to say so no more.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. My lord, my lord,\n    I am a simple woman, much too weak\n    T\' oppose your cunning. Y\'are meek and humble-mouth\'d;\n    You sign your place and calling, in full seeming,\n    With meekness and humility; but your heart\n    Is cramm\'d with arrogancy, spleen, and pride.\n    You have, by fortune and his Highness\' favours,\n    Gone slightly o\'er low steps, and now are mounted\n    Where pow\'rs are your retainers, and your words,\n    Domestics to you, serve your will as\'t please\n    Yourself pronounce their office. I must tell you\n    You tender more your person\'s honour than\n    Your high profession spiritual; that again\n    I do refuse you for my judge and here,\n    Before you all, appeal unto the Pope,\n    To bring my whole cause \'fore his Holiness\n    And to be judg\'d by him.\n                     [She curtsies to the KING, and offers to depart]  \n  CAMPEIUS. The Queen is obstinate,\n    Stubborn to justice, apt to accuse it, and\n    Disdainful to be tried by\'t; \'tis not well.\n    She\'s going away.\n  KING. Call her again.\n  CRIER. Katharine Queen of England, come into the court.\n  GENTLEMAN USHER. Madam, you are call\'d back.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. What need you note it? Pray you keep your way;\n    When you are call\'d, return. Now the Lord help!\n    They vex me past my patience. Pray you pass on.\n    I will not tarry; no, nor ever more\n    Upon this business my appearance make\n    In any of their courts.           Exeunt QUEEN and her attendants\n  KING. Go thy ways, Kate.\n    That man i\' th\' world who shall report he has\n    A better wife, let him in nought be trusted\n    For speaking false in that. Thou art, alone-\n    If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness,\n    Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government,\n    Obeying in commanding, and thy parts  \n    Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out-\n    The queen of earthly queens. She\'s noble born;\n    And like her true nobility she has\n    Carried herself towards me.\n  WOLSEY. Most gracious sir,\n    In humblest manner I require your Highness\n    That it shall please you to declare in hearing\n    Of all these ears-for where I am robb\'d and bound,\n    There must I be unloos\'d, although not there\n    At once and fully satisfied-whether ever I\n    Did broach this business to your Highness, or\n    Laid any scruple in your way which might\n    Induce you to the question on\'t, or ever\n    Have to you, but with thanks to God for such\n    A royal lady, spake one the least word that might\n    Be to the prejudice of her present state,\n    Or touch of her good person?\n  KING. My Lord Cardinal,\n    I do excuse you; yea, upon mine honour,\n    I free you from\'t. You are not to be taught  \n    That you have many enemies that know not\n    Why they are so, but, like to village curs,\n    Bark when their fellows do. By some of these\n    The Queen is put in anger. Y\'are excus\'d.\n    But will you be more justified? You ever\n    Have wish\'d the sleeping of this business; never desir\'d\n    It to be stirr\'d; but oft have hind\'red, oft,\n    The passages made toward it. On my honour,\n    I speak my good Lord Cardinal to this point,\n    And thus far clear him. Now, what mov\'d me to\'t,\n    I will be bold with time and your attention.\n    Then mark th\' inducement. Thus it came-give heed to\'t:\n    My conscience first receiv\'d a tenderness,\n    Scruple, and prick, on certain speeches utter\'d\n    By th\' Bishop of Bayonne, then French ambassador,\n    Who had been hither sent on the debating\n    A marriage \'twixt the Duke of Orleans and\n    Our daughter Mary. I\' th\' progress of this business,\n    Ere a determinate resolution, he-\n    I mean the Bishop-did require a respite  \n    Wherein he might the King his lord advertise\n    Whether our daughter were legitimate,\n    Respecting this our marriage with the dowager,\n    Sometimes our brother\'s wife. This respite shook\n    The bosom of my conscience, enter\'d me,\n    Yea, with a splitting power, and made to tremble\n    The region of my breast, which forc\'d such way\n    That many maz\'d considerings did throng\n    And press\'d in with this caution. First, methought\n    I stood not in the smile of heaven, who had\n    Commanded nature that my lady\'s womb,\n    If it conceiv\'d a male child by me, should\n    Do no more offices of life to\'t than\n    The grave does to the dead; for her male issue\n    Or died where they were made, or shortly after\n    This world had air\'d them. Hence I took a thought\n    This was a judgment on me, that my kingdom,\n    Well worthy the best heir o\' th\' world, should not\n    Be gladded in\'t by me. Then follows that\n    I weigh\'d the danger which my realms stood in  \n    By this my issue\'s fail, and that gave to me\n    Many a groaning throe. Thus hulling in\n    The wild sea of my conscience, I did steer\n    Toward this remedy, whereupon we are\n    Now present here together; that\'s to say\n    I meant to rectify my conscience, which\n    I then did feel full sick, and yet not well,\n    By all the reverend fathers of the land\n    And doctors learn\'d. First, I began in private\n    With you, my Lord of Lincoln; you remember\n    How under my oppression I did reek,\n    When I first mov\'d you.\n  LINCOLN. Very well, my liege.\n  KING. I have spoke long; be pleas\'d yourself to say\n    How far you satisfied me.\n  LINCOLN. So please your Highness,\n    The question did at first so stagger me-\n    Bearing a state of mighty moment in\'t\n    And consequence of dread-that I committed\n    The daring\'st counsel which I had to doubt,  \n    And did entreat your Highness to this course\n    Which you are running here.\n  KING. I then mov\'d you,\n    My Lord of Canterbury, and got your leave\n    To make this present summons. Unsolicited\n    I left no reverend person in this court,\n    But by particular consent proceeded\n    Under your hands and seals; therefore, go on,\n    For no dislike i\' th\' world against the person\n    Of the good Queen, but the sharp thorny points\n    Of my alleged reasons, drives this forward.\n    Prove but our marriage lawful, by my life\n    And kingly dignity, we are contented\n    To wear our moral state to come with her,\n    Katharine our queen, before the primest creature\n    That\'s paragon\'d o\' th\' world.\n  CAMPEIUS. So please your Highness,\n    The Queen being absent, \'tis a needful fitness\n    That we adjourn this court till further day;\n    Meanwhile must be an earnest motion  \n    Made to the Queen to call back her appeal\n    She intends unto his Holiness.\n  KING.  [Aside]  I may perceive\n    These cardinals trifle with me. I abhor\n    This dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome.\n    My learn\'d and well-beloved servant, Cranmer,\n    Prithee return. With thy approach I know\n    My comfort comes along. -Break up the court;\n    I say, set on.                   Exuent in manner as they entered\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 1.\n\nLondon. The QUEEN\'S apartments\n\nEnter the QUEEN and her women, as at work\n\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Take thy lute, wench. My soul grows\n      sad with troubles;\n    Sing and disperse \'em, if thou canst. Leave working.\n\n                    SONG\n\n        Orpheus with his lute made trees,\n        And the mountain tops that freeze,\n          Bow themselves when he did sing;\n        To his music plants and flowers\n        Ever sprung, as sun and showers\n          There had made a lasting spring.\n\n        Every thing that heard him play,\n        Even the billows of the sea,\n          Hung their heads and then lay by.  \n        In sweet music is such art,\n        Killing care and grief of heart\n          Fall asleep or hearing die.\n\n              Enter a GENTLEMAN\n\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. How now?\n  GENTLEMAN. An\'t please your Grace, the two great Cardinals\n    Wait in the presence.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Would they speak with me?\n  GENTLEMAN. They will\'d me say so, madam.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Pray their Graces\n    To come near. [Exit GENTLEMAN] What can be their business\n    With me, a poor weak woman, fall\'n from favour?\n    I do not like their coming. Now I think on\'t,\n    They should be good men, their affairs as righteous;\n    But all hoods make not monks.\n\n         Enter the two CARDINALS, WOLSEY and CAMPEIUS\n  \n  WOLSEY. Peace to your Highness!\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Your Graces find me here part of housewife;\n    I would be all, against the worst may happen.\n    What are your pleasures with me, reverend lords?\n  WOLSEY. May it please you, noble madam, to withdraw\n    Into your private chamber, we shall give you\n    The full cause of our coming.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Speak it here;\n    There\'s nothing I have done yet, o\' my conscience,\n    Deserves a corner. Would all other women\n    Could speak this with as free a soul as I do!\n    My lords, I care not-so much I am happy\n    Above a number-if my actions\n    Were tried by ev\'ry tongue, ev\'ry eye saw \'em,\n    Envy and base opinion set against \'em,\n    I know my life so even. If your business\n    Seek me out, and that way I am wife in,\n    Out with it boldly; truth loves open dealing.\n  WOLSEY. Tanta est erga te mentis integritas, regina serenis-sima-\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. O, good my lord, no Latin!  \n    I am not such a truant since my coming,\n    As not to know the language I have liv\'d in;\n    A strange tongue makes my cause more strange, suspicious;\n    Pray speak in English. Here are some will thank you,\n    If you speak truth, for their poor mistress\' sake:\n    Believe me, she has had much wrong. Lord Cardinal,\n    The willing\'st sin I ever yet committed\n    May be absolv\'d in English.\n  WOLSEY. Noble lady,\n    I am sorry my integrity should breed,\n    And service to his Majesty and you,\n    So deep suspicion, where all faith was meant\n    We come not by the way of accusation\n    To taint that honour every good tongue blesses,\n    Nor to betray you any way to sorrow-\n    You have too much, good lady; but to know\n    How you stand minded in the weighty difference\n    Between the King and you, and to deliver,\n    Like free and honest men, our just opinions\n    And comforts to your cause.  \n  CAMPEIUS. Most honour\'d madam,\n    My Lord of York, out of his noble nature,\n    Zeal and obedience he still bore your Grace,\n    Forgetting, like a good man, your late censure\n    Both of his truth and him-which was too far-\n    Offers, as I do, in a sign of peace,\n    His service and his counsel.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE.  [Aside]  To betray me.-\n    My lords, I thank you both for your good wins;\n    Ye speak like honest men-pray God ye prove so!\n    But how to make ye suddenly an answer,\n    In such a point of weight, so near mine honour,\n    More near my life, I fear, with my weak wit,\n    And to such men of gravity and learning,\n    In truth I know not. I was set at work\n    Among my maids, full little, God knows, looking\n    Either for such men or such business.\n    For her sake that I have been-for I feel\n    The last fit of my greatness-good your Graces,\n    Let me have time and counsel for my cause.  \n    Alas, I am a woman, friendless, hopeless!\n  WOLSEY. Madam, you wrong the King\'s love with these fears;\n    Your hopes and friends are infinite.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. In England\n    But little for my profit; can you think, lords,\n    That any Englishman dare give me counsel?\n    Or be a known friend, \'gainst his Highness\' pleasure-\n    Though he be grown so desperate to be honest-\n    And live a subject? Nay, forsooth, my friends,\n    They that must weigh out my afflictions,\n    They that my trust must grow to, live not here;\n    They are, as all my other comforts, far hence,\n    In mine own country, lords.\n  CAMPEIUS. I would your Grace\n    Would leave your griefs, and take my counsel.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. How, sir?\n  CAMPEIUS. Put your main cause into the King\'s protection;\n    He\'s loving and most gracious. \'Twill be much\n    Both for your honour better and your cause;\n    For if the trial of the law o\'ertake ye  \n    You\'ll part away disgrac\'d.\n  WOLSEY. He tells you rightly.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Ye tell me what ye wish for both-my ruin.\n    Is this your Christian counsel? Out upon ye!\n    Heaven is above all yet: there sits a Judge\n    That no king can corrupt.\n  CAMPEIUS. Your rage mistakes us.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. The more shame for ye; holy men I thought ye,\n    Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues;\n    But cardinal sins and hollow hearts I fear ye.\n    Mend \'em, for shame, my lords. Is this your comfort?\n    The cordial that ye bring a wretched lady-\n    A woman lost among ye, laugh\'d at, scorn\'d?\n    I will not wish ye half my miseries:\n    I have more charity; but say I warned ye.\n    Take heed, for heaven\'s sake take heed, lest at once\n    The burden of my sorrows fall upon ye.\n  WOLSEY. Madam, this is a mere distraction;\n    You turn the good we offer into envy.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Ye turn me into nothing. Woe upon ye,  \n    And all such false professors! Would you have me-\n    If you have any justice, any pity,\n    If ye be any thing but churchmen\'s habits-\n    Put my sick cause into his hands that hates me?\n    Alas! has banish\'d me his bed already,\n    His love too long ago! I am old, my lords,\n    And all the fellowship I hold now with him\n    Is only my obedience. What can happen\n    To me above this wretchedness? All your studies\n    Make me a curse like this.\n  CAMPEIUS. Your fears are worse.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Have I liv\'d thus long-let me speak myself,\n    Since virtue finds no friends-a wife, a true one?\n    A woman, I dare say without vain-glory,\n    Never yet branded with suspicion?\n    Have I with all my full affections\n    Still met the King, lov\'d him next heav\'n, obey\'d him,\n    Been, out of fondness, superstitious to him,\n    Almost forgot my prayers to content him,\n    And am I thus rewarded? \'Tis not well, lords.  \n    Bring me a constant woman to her husband,\n    One that ne\'er dream\'d a joy beyond his pleasure,\n    And to that woman, when she has done most,\n    Yet will I add an honour-a great patience.\n  WOLSEY. Madam, you wander from the good we aim at.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty,\n    To give up willingly that noble title\n    Your master wed me to: nothing but death\n    Shall e\'er divorce my dignities.\n  WOLSEY. Pray hear me.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Would I had never trod this English earth,\n    Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it!\n    Ye have angels\' faces, but heaven knows your hearts.\n    What will become of me now, wretched lady?\n    I am the most unhappy woman living.\n    [To her WOMEN]  Alas, poor wenches, where are now\n      your fortunes?\n    Shipwreck\'d upon a kingdom, where no pity,\n    No friends, no hope; no kindred weep for me;\n    Almost no grave allow\'d me. Like the My,  \n    That once was mistress of the field, and flourish\'d,\n    I\'ll hang my head and perish.\n  WOLSEY. If your Grace\n    Could but be brought to know our ends are honest,\n    You\'d feel more comfort. Why should we, good lady,\n    Upon what cause, wrong you? Alas, our places,\n    The way of our profession is against it;\n    We are to cure such sorrows, not to sow \'em.\n    For goodness\' sake, consider what you do;\n    How you may hurt yourself, ay, utterly\n    Grow from the King\'s acquaintance, by this carriage.\n    The hearts of princes kiss obedience,\n    So much they love it; but to stubborn spirits\n    They swell and grow as terrible as storms.\n    I know you have a gentle, noble temper,\n    A soul as even as a calm. Pray think us\n    Those we profess, peace-makers, friends, and servants.\n  CAMPEIUS. Madam, you\'ll find it so. You wrong your virtues\n    With these weak women\'s fears. A noble spirit,\n    As yours was put into you, ever casts  \n    Such doubts as false coin from it. The King loves you;\n    Beware you lose it not. For us, if you please\n    To trust us in your business, we are ready\n    To use our utmost studies in your service.\n  QUEEN KATHARINE. Do what ye will my lords; and pray\n      forgive me\n    If I have us\'d myself unmannerly;\n    You know I am a woman, lacking wit\n    To make a seemly answer to such persons.\n    Pray do my service to his Majesty;\n    He has my heart yet, and shall have my prayers\n    While I shall have my life. Come, reverend fathers,\n    Bestow your counsels on me; she now begs\n    That little thought, when she set footing here,\n    She should have bought her dignities so dear.              Exeunt\n\n\n\nACT III.SCENE 2.\n\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter the DUKE OF NORFOLK, the DUKE OF SUFFOLK, the EARL OF SURREY,\nand the LORD CHAMBERLAIN\n\n  NORFOLK. If you will now unite in your complaints\n    And force them with a constancy, the Cardinal\n    Cannot stand under them: if you omit\n    The offer of this time, I cannot promise\n    But that you shall sustain moe new disgraces\n    With these you bear already.\n  SURREY. I am joyful\n    To meet the least occasion that may give me\n    Remembrance of my father-in-law, the Duke,\n    To be reveng\'d on him.\n  SUFFOLK. Which of the peers\n    Have uncontemn\'d gone by him, or at least\n    Strangely neglected? When did he regard\n    The stamp of nobleness in any person\n    Out of himself?  \n  CHAMBERLAIN. My lords, you speak your pleasures.\n    What he deserves of you and me I know;\n    What we can do to him-though now the time\n    Gives way to us-I much fear. If you cannot\n    Bar his access to th\' King, never attempt\n    Anything on him; for he hath a witchcraft\n    Over the King in\'s tongue.\n  NORFOLK. O, fear him not!\n    His spell in that is out; the King hath found\n    Matter against him that for ever mars\n    The honey of his language. No, he\'s settled,\n    Not to come off, in his displeasure.\n  SURREY. Sir,\n    I should be glad to hear such news as this\n    Once every hour.\n  NORFOLK. Believe it, this is true:\n    In the divorce his contrary proceedings\n    Are all unfolded; wherein he appears\n    As I would wish mine enemy.\n  SURREY. How came  \n    His practices to light?\n  SUFFOLK. Most Strangely.\n  SURREY. O, how, how?\n  SUFFOLK. The Cardinal\'s letters to the Pope miscarried,\n    And came to th\' eye o\' th\' King; wherein was read\n    How that the Cardinal did entreat his Holiness\n    To stay the judgment o\' th\' divorce; for if\n    It did take place, \'I do\' quoth he \'perceive\n    My king is tangled in affection to\n    A creature of the Queen\'s, Lady Anne Bullen.\'\n  SURREY. Has the King this?\n  SUFFOLK. Believe it.\n  SURREY. Will this work?\n  CHAMBERLAIN. The King in this perceives him how he coasts\n    And hedges his own way. But in this point\n    All his tricks founder, and he brings his physic\n    After his patient\'s death: the King already\n    Hath married the fair lady.\n  SURREY. Would he had!\n  SUFFOLK. May you be happy in your wish, my lord!  \n    For, I profess, you have it.\n  SURREY. Now, all my joy\n    Trace the conjunction!\n  SUFFOLK. My amen to\'t!\n  NORFOLK. An men\'s!\n  SUFFOLK. There\'s order given for her coronation;\n    Marry, this is yet but young, and may be left\n    To some ears unrecounted. But, my lords,\n    She is a gallant creature, and complete\n    In mind and feature. I persuade me from her\n    Will fall some blessing to this land, which shall\n    In it be memoriz\'d.\n  SURREY. But will the King\n    Digest this letter of the Cardinal\'s?\n    The Lord forbid!\n  NORFOLK. Marry, amen!\n  SUFFOLK. No, no;\n    There be moe wasps that buzz about his nose\n    Will make this sting the sooner. Cardinal Campeius\n    Is stol\'n away to Rome; hath ta\'en no leave;  \n    Has left the cause o\' th\' King unhandled, and\n    Is posted, as the agent of our Cardinal,\n    To second all his plot. I do assure you\n    The King cried \'Ha!\' at this.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Now, God incense him,\n    And let him cry \'Ha!\' louder!\n  NORFOLK. But, my lord,\n    When returns Cranmer?\n  SUFFOLK. He is return\'d in his opinions; which\n    Have satisfied the King for his divorce,\n    Together with all famous colleges\n    Almost in Christendom. Shortly, I believe,\n    His second marriage shall be publish\'d, and\n    Her coronation. Katharine no more\n    Shall be call\'d queen, but princess dowager\n    And widow to Prince Arthur.\n  NORFOLK. This same Cranmer\'s\n    A worthy fellow, and hath ta\'en much pain\n    In the King\'s business.\n  SUFFOLK. He has; and we shall see him  \n    For it an archbishop.\n  NORFOLK. So I hear.\n  SUFFOLK. \'Tis so.\n\n        Enter WOLSEY and CROMWELL\n\n    The Cardinal!\n  NORFOLK. Observe, observe, he\'s moody.\n  WOLSEY. The packet, Cromwell,\n    Gave\'t you the King?\n  CROMWELL. To his own hand, in\'s bedchamber.\n  WOLSEY. Look\'d he o\' th\' inside of the paper?\n  CROMWELL. Presently\n    He did unseal them; and the first he view\'d,\n    He did it with a serious mind; a heed\n    Was in his countenance. You he bade\n    Attend him here this morning.\n  WOLSEY. Is he ready\n    To come abroad?\n  CROMWELL. I think by this he is.  \n  WOLSEY. Leave me awhile.                              Exit CROMWELL\n    [Aside]  It shall be to the Duchess of Alencon,\n    The French King\'s sister; he shall marry her.\n    Anne Bullen! No, I\'ll no Anne Bullens for him;\n    There\'s more in\'t than fair visage. Bullen!\n    No, we\'ll no Bullens. Speedily I wish\n    To hear from Rome. The Marchioness of Pembroke!\n  NORFOLK. He\'s discontented.\n  SUFFOLK. May be he hears the King\n    Does whet his anger to him.\n  SURREY. Sharp enough,\n    Lord, for thy justice!\n  WOLSEY.  [Aside]  The late Queen\'s gentlewoman, a knight\'s\n      daughter,\n    To be her mistress\' mistress! The Queen\'s queen!\n    This candle burns not clear. \'Tis I must snuff it;\n    Then out it goes. What though I know her virtuous\n    And well deserving? Yet I know her for\n    A spleeny Lutheran; and not wholesome to\n    Our cause that she should lie i\' th\' bosom of  \n    Our hard-rul\'d King. Again, there is sprung up\n    An heretic, an arch one, Cranmer; one\n    Hath crawl\'d into the favour of the King,\n    And is his oracle.\n  NORFOLK. He is vex\'d at something.\n\n        Enter the KING, reading of a schedule, and LOVELL\n\n  SURREY. I would \'twere something that would fret the string,\n    The master-cord on\'s heart!\n  SUFFOLK. The King, the King!\n  KING. What piles of wealth hath he accumulated\n    To his own portion! And what expense by th\' hour\n    Seems to flow from him! How, i\' th\' name of thrift,\n    Does he rake this together?-Now, my lords,\n    Saw you the Cardinal?\n  NORFOLK. My lord, we have\n    Stood here observing him. Some strange commotion\n    Is in his brain: he bites his lip and starts,\n    Stops on a sudden, looks upon the ground,  \n    Then lays his finger on his temple; straight\n    Springs out into fast gait; then stops again,\n    Strikes his breast hard; and anon he casts\n    His eye against the moon. In most strange postures\n    We have seen him set himself.\n  KING. It may well be\n    There is a mutiny in\'s mind. This morning\n    Papers of state he sent me to peruse,\n    As I requir\'d; and wot you what I found\n    There-on my conscience, put unwittingly?\n    Forsooth, an inventory, thus importing\n    The several parcels of his plate, his treasure,\n    Rich stuffs, and ornaments of household; which\n    I find at such proud rate that it outspeaks\n    Possession of a subject.\n  NORFOLK. It\'s heaven\'s will;\n    Some spirit put this paper in the packet\n    To bless your eye withal.\n  KING. If we did think\n    His contemplation were above the earth  \n    And fix\'d on spiritual object, he should still\n    dwell in his musings; but I am afraid\n    His thinkings are below the moon, not worth\n    His serious considering.\n                        [The KING takes his seat and whispers LOVELL,\n                                           who goes to the CARDINAL]\n  WOLSEY. Heaven forgive me!\n    Ever God bless your Highness!\n  KING. Good, my lord,\n    You are full of heavenly stuff, and bear the inventory\n    Of your best graces in your mind; the which\n    You were now running o\'er. You have scarce time\n    To steal from spiritual leisure a brief span\n    To keep your earthly audit; sure, in that\n    I deem you an ill husband, and am glad\n    To have you therein my companion.\n  WOLSEY. Sir,\n    For holy offices I have a time; a time\n    To think upon the part of business which\n    I bear i\' th\' state; and nature does require  \n    Her times of preservation, which perforce\n    I, her frail son, amongst my brethren mortal,\n    Must give my tendance to.\n  KING. You have said well.\n  WOLSEY. And ever may your Highness yoke together,\n    As I will lend you cause, my doing well\n    With my well saying!\n  KING. \'Tis well said again;\n    And \'tis a kind of good deed to say well;\n    And yet words are no deeds. My father lov\'d you:\n    He said he did; and with his deed did crown\n    His word upon you. Since I had my office\n    I have kept you next my heart; have not alone\n    Employ\'d you where high profits might come home,\n    But par\'d my present havings to bestow\n    My bounties upon you.\n  WOLSEY.  [Aside]  What should this mean?\n  SURREY.  [Aside]  The Lord increase this business!\n  KING. Have I not made you\n    The prime man of the state? I pray you tell me  \n    If what I now pronounce you have found true;\n    And, if you may confess it, say withal\n    If you are bound to us or no. What say you?\n  WOLSEY. My sovereign, I confess your royal graces,\n    Show\'r\'d on me daily, have been more than could\n    My studied purposes requite; which went\n    Beyond all man\'s endeavours. My endeavours,\n    Have ever come too short of my desires,\n    Yet fil\'d with my abilities; mine own ends\n    Have been mine so that evermore they pointed\n    To th\' good of your most sacred person and\n    The profit of the state. For your great graces\n    Heap\'d upon me, poor undeserver, I\n    Can nothing render but allegiant thanks;\n    My pray\'rs to heaven for you; my loyalty,\n    Which ever has and ever shall be growing,\n    Till death, that winter, kill it.\n  KING. Fairly answer\'d!\n    A loyal and obedient subject is\n    Therein illustrated; the honour of it  \n    Does pay the act of it, as, i\' th\' contrary,\n    The foulness is the punishment. I presume\n    That, as my hand has open\'d bounty to you,\n    My heart dropp\'d love, my pow\'r rain\'d honour, more\n    On you than any, so your hand and heart,\n    Your brain, and every function of your power,\n    Should, notwithstanding that your bond of duty,\n    As \'twere in love\'s particular, be more\n    To me, your friend, than any.\n  WOLSEY. I do profess\n    That for your Highness\' good I ever labour\'d\n    More than mine own; that am, have, and will be-\n    Though all the world should crack their duty to you,\n    And throw it from their soul; though perils did\n    Abound as thick as thought could make \'em, and\n    Appear in forms more horrid-yet my duty,\n    As doth a rock against the chiding flood,\n    Should the approach of this wild river break,\n    And stand unshaken yours.\n  KING. \'Tis nobly spoken.  \n    Take notice, lords, he has a loyal breast,\n    For you have seen him open \'t. Read o\'er this;\n                                                  [Giving him papers]\n    And after, this; and then to breakfast with\n    What appetite you have.\n                Exit the KING, frowning upon the CARDINAL; the NOBLES\n                             throng after him, smiling and whispering\n  WOLSEY. What should this mean?\n    What sudden anger\'s this? How have I reap\'d it?\n    He parted frowning from me, as if ruin\n    Leap\'d from his eyes; so looks the chafed lion\n    Upon the daring huntsman that has gall\'d him-\n    Then makes him nothing. I must read this paper;\n    I fear, the story of his anger. \'Tis so;\n    This paper has undone me. \'Tis th\' account\n    Of all that world of wealth I have drawn together\n    For mine own ends; indeed to gain the popedom,\n    And fee my friends in Rome. O negligence,\n    Fit for a fool to fall by! What cross devil\n    Made me put this main secret in the packet  \n    I sent the King? Is there no way to cure this?\n    No new device to beat this from his brains?\n    I know \'twill stir him strongly; yet I know\n    A way, if it take right, in spite of fortune,\n    Will bring me off again. What\'s this? \'To th\' Pope.\'\n    The letter, as I live, with all the business\n    I writ to\'s Holiness. Nay then, farewell!\n    I have touch\'d the highest point of all my greatness,\n    And from that full meridian of my glory\n    I haste now to my setting. I shall fall\n    Like a bright exhalation in the evening,\n    And no man see me more.\n\n        Re-enter to WOLSEY the DUKES OF NORFOLK and\n        SUFFOLK, the EARL OF SURREY, and the LORD\n        CHAMBERLAIN\n\n  NORFOLK. Hear the King\'s pleasure, Cardinal, who commands you\n    To render up the great seal presently\n    Into our hands, and to confine yourself  \n    To Asher House, my Lord of Winchester\'s,\n    Till you hear further from his Highness.\n  WOLSEY. Stay:\n    Where\'s your commission, lords? Words cannot carry\n    Authority so weighty.\n  SUFFOLK. Who dares cross \'em,\n    Bearing the King\'s will from his mouth expressly?\n  WOLSEY. Till I find more than will or words to do it-\n    I mean your malice-know, officious lords,\n    I dare and must deny it. Now I feel\n    Of what coarse metal ye are moulded-envy;\n    How eagerly ye follow my disgraces,\n    As if it fed ye; and how sleek and wanton\n    Ye appear in every thing may bring my ruin!\n    Follow your envious courses, men of malice;\n    You have Christian warrant for \'em, and no doubt\n    In time will find their fit rewards. That seal\n    You ask with such a violence, the King-\n    Mine and your master-with his own hand gave me;\n    Bade me enjoy it, with the place and honours,  \n    During my life; and, to confirm his goodness,\n    Tied it by letters-patents. Now, who\'ll take it?\n  SURREY. The King, that gave it.\n  WOLSEY. It must be himself then.\n  SURREY. Thou art a proud traitor, priest.\n  WOLSEY. Proud lord, thou liest.\n    Within these forty hours Surrey durst better\n    Have burnt that tongue than said so.\n  SURREY. Thy ambition,\n    Thou scarlet sin, robb\'d this bewailing land\n    Of noble Buckingham, my father-in-law.\n    The heads of all thy brother cardinals,\n    With thee and all thy best parts bound together,\n    Weigh\'d not a hair of his. Plague of your policy!\n    You sent me deputy for Ireland;\n    Far from his succour, from the King, from all\n    That might have mercy on the fault thou gav\'st him;\n    Whilst your great goodness, out of holy pity,\n    Absolv\'d him with an axe.\n  WOLSEY. This, and all else  \n    This talking lord can lay upon my credit,\n    I answer is most false. The Duke by law\n    Found his deserts; how innocent I was\n    From any private malice in his end,\n    His noble jury and foul cause can witness.\n    If I lov\'d many words, lord, I should tell you\n    You have as little honesty as honour,\n    That in the way of loyalty and truth\n    Toward the King, my ever royal master,\n    Dare mate a sounder man than Surrey can be\n    And an that love his follies.\n  SURREY. By my soul,\n    Your long coat, priest, protects you; thou shouldst feel\n    My sword i\' the life-blood of thee else. My lords\n    Can ye endure to hear this arrogance?\n    And from this fellow? If we live thus tamely,\n    To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet,\n    Farewell nobility! Let his Grace go forward\n    And dare us with his cap like larks.\n  WOLSEY. All goodness  \n    Is poison to thy stomach.\n  SURREY. Yes, that goodness\n    Of gleaning all the land\'s wealth into one,\n    Into your own hands, Cardinal, by extortion;\n    The goodness of your intercepted packets\n    You writ to th\' Pope against the King; your goodness,\n    Since you provoke me, shall be most notorious.\n    My Lord of Norfolk, as you are truly noble,\n    As you respect the common good, the state\n    Of our despis\'d nobility, our issues,\n    Whom, if he live, will scarce be gentlemen-\n    Produce the grand sum of his sins, the articles\n    Collected from his life. I\'ll startle you\n    Worse than the sacring bell, when the brown wench\n    Lay kissing in your arms, Lord Cardinal.\n  WOLSEY. How much, methinks, I could despise this man,\n    But that I am bound in charity against it!\n  NORFOLK. Those articles, my lord, are in the King\'s hand;\n    But, thus much, they are foul ones.\n  WOLSEY. So much fairer  \n    And spotless shall mine innocence arise,\n    When the King knows my truth.\n  SURREY. This cannot save you.\n    I thank my memory I yet remember\n    Some of these articles; and out they shall.\n    Now, if you can blush and cry guilty, Cardinal,\n    You\'ll show a little honesty.\n  WOLSEY. Speak on, sir;\n    I dare your worst objections. If I blush,\n    It is to see a nobleman want manners.\n  SURREY. I had rather want those than my head. Have at you!\n    First, that without the King\'s assent or knowledge\n    You wrought to be a legate; by which power\n    You maim\'d the jurisdiction of all bishops.\n  NORFOLK. Then, that in all you writ to Rome, or else\n    To foreign princes, \'Ego et Rex meus\'\n    Was still inscrib\'d; in which you brought the King\n    To be your servant.\n  SUFFOLK. Then, that without the knowledge\n    Either of King or Council, when you went  \n    Ambassador to the Emperor, you made bold\n    To carry into Flanders the great seal.\n  SURREY. Item, you sent a large commission\n    To Gregory de Cassado, to conclude,\n    Without the King\'s will or the state\'s allowance,\n    A league between his Highness and Ferrara.\n  SUFFOLK. That out of mere ambition you have caus\'d\n    Your holy hat to be stamp\'d on the King\'s coin.\n  SURREY. Then, that you have sent innumerable substance,\n    By what means got I leave to your own conscience,\n    To furnish Rome and to prepare the ways\n    You have for dignities, to the mere undoing\n    Of all the kingdom. Many more there are,\n    Which, since they are of you, and odious,\n    I will not taint my mouth with.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. O my lord,\n    Press not a falling man too far! \'Tis virtue.\n    His faults lie open to the laws; let them,\n    Not you, correct him. My heart weeps to see him\n    So little of his great self.  \n  SURREY. I forgive him.\n  SUFFOLK. Lord Cardinal, the King\'s further pleasure is-\n    Because all those things you have done of late,\n    By your power legatine within this kingdom,\n    Fall into th\' compass of a praemunire-\n    That therefore such a writ be sued against you:\n    To forfeit all your goods, lands, tenements,\n    Chattels, and whatsoever, and to be\n    Out of the King\'s protection. This is my charge.\n  NORFOLK. And so we\'ll leave you to your meditations\n    How to live better. For your stubborn answer\n    About the giving back the great seal to us,\n    The King shall know it, and, no doubt, shall thank you.\n    So fare you well, my little good Lord Cardinal.\n                                                Exeunt all but WOLSEY\n  WOLSEY. So farewell to the little good you bear me.\n    Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!\n    This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth\n    The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms\n    And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;  \n    The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,\n    And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely\n    His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,\n    And then he falls, as I do. I have ventur\'d,\n    Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,\n    This many summers in a sea of glory;\n    But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride\n    At length broke under me, and now has left me,\n    Weary and old with service, to the mercy\n    Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.\n    Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye;\n    I feel my heart new open\'d. O, how wretched\n    Is that poor man that hangs on princes\' favours!\n    There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to,\n    That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin\n    More pangs and fears than wars or women have;\n    And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,\n    Never to hope again.\n\n         Enter CROMWELL, standing amazed  \n\n    Why, how now, Cromwell!\n  CROMWELL. I have no power to speak, sir.\n  WOLSEY. What, amaz\'d\n    At my misfortunes? Can thy spirit wonder\n    A great man should decline? Nay, an you weep,\n    I am fall\'n indeed.\n  CROMWELL. How does your Grace?\n  WOLSEY. Why, well;\n    Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell.\n    I know myself now, and I feel within me\n    A peace above all earthly dignities,\n    A still and quiet conscience. The King has cur\'d me,\n    I humbly thank his Grace; and from these shoulders,\n    These ruin\'d pillars, out of pity, taken\n    A load would sink a navy-too much honour.\n    O, \'tis a burden, Cromwell, \'tis a burden\n    Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven!\n  CROMWELL. I am glad your Grace has made that right use of it.\n  WOLSEY. I hope I have. I am able now, methinks,  \n    Out of a fortitude of soul I feel,\n    To endure more miseries and greater far\n    Than my weak-hearted enemies dare offer.\n    What news abroad?\n  CROMWELL. The heaviest and the worst\n    Is your displeasure with the King.\n  WOLSEY. God bless him!\n  CROMWELL. The next is that Sir Thomas More is chosen\n    Lord Chancellor in your place.\n  WOLSEY. That\'s somewhat sudden.\n    But he\'s a learned man. May he continue\n    Long in his Highness\' favour, and do justice\n    For truth\'s sake and his conscience; that his bones\n    When he has run his course and sleeps in blessings,\n    May have a tomb of orphans\' tears wept on him!\n    What more?\n  CROMWELL. That Cranmer is return\'d with welcome,\n    Install\'d Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.\n  WOLSEY. That\'s news indeed.\n  CROMWELL. Last, that the Lady Anne,  \n    Whom the King hath in secrecy long married,\n    This day was view\'d in open as his queen,\n    Going to chapel; and the voice is now\n    Only about her coronation.\n  WOLSEY. There was the weight that pull\'d me down.\n      O Cromwell,\n    The King has gone beyond me. All my glories\n    In that one woman I have lost for ever.\n    No sun shall ever usher forth mine honours,\n    Or gild again the noble troops that waited\n    Upon my smiles. Go get thee from me, Cromwell;\n    I am a poor fall\'n man, unworthy now\n    To be thy lord and master. Seek the King;\n    That sun, I pray, may never set! I have told him\n    What and how true thou art. He will advance thee;\n    Some little memory of me will stir him-\n    I know his noble nature-not to let\n    Thy hopeful service perish too. Good Cromwell,\n    Neglect him not; make use now, and provide\n    For thine own future safety.  \n  CROMWELL. O my lord,\n    Must I then leave you? Must I needs forgo\n    So good, so noble, and so true a master?\n    Bear witness, all that have not hearts of iron,\n    With what a sorrow Cromwell leaves his lord.\n    The King shall have my service; but my prayers\n    For ever and for ever shall be yours.\n  WOLSEY. Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear\n    In all my miseries; but thou hast forc\'d me,\n    Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman.\n    Let\'s dry our eyes; and thus far hear me, Cromwell,\n    And when I am forgotten, as I shall be,\n    And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention\n    Of me more must be heard of, say I taught thee-\n    Say Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory,\n    And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour,\n    Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in-\n    A sure and safe one, though thy master miss\'d it.\n    Mark but my fall and that that ruin\'d me.\n    Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:  \n    By that sin fell the angels. How can man then,\n    The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?\n    Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee;\n    Corruption wins not more than honesty.\n    Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace\n    To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not;\n    Let all the ends thou aim\'st at be thy country\'s,\n    Thy God\'s, and truth\'s; then, if thou fall\'st, O Cromwell,\n    Thou fall\'st a blessed martyr!\n    Serve the King, and-prithee lead me in.\n    There take an inventory of all I have\n    To the last penny; \'tis the King\'s. My robe,\n    And my integrity to heaven, is all\n    I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell!\n    Had I but serv\'d my God with half the zeal\n    I serv\'d my King, he would not in mine age\n    Have left me naked to mine enemies.\n  CROMWELL. Good sir, have patience.\n  WOLSEY. So I have. Farewell\n    The hopes of court! My hopes in heaven do dwell.           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 1.\n\nA street in Westminster\n\nEnter two GENTLEMEN, meeting one another\n\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Y\'are well met once again.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. So are you.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. You come to take your stand here, and\n      behold\n    The Lady Anne pass from her coronation?\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. \'Tis all my business. At our last encounter\n    The Duke of Buckingham came from his trial.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. \'Tis very true. But that time offer\'d\n      sorrow;\n    This, general joy.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. \'Tis well. The citizens,\n    I am sure, have shown at full their royal minds-\n    As, let \'em have their rights, they are ever forward-\n    In celebration of this day with shows,\n    Pageants, and sights of honour.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Never greater,  \n    Nor, I\'ll assure you, better taken, sir.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. May I be bold to ask what that contains,\n    That paper in your hand?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes; \'tis the list\n    Of those that claim their offices this day,\n    By custom of the coronation.\n    The Duke of Suffolk is the first, and claims\n    To be High Steward; next, the Duke of Norfolk,\n    He to be Earl Marshal. You may read the rest.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. I thank you, sir; had I not known\n      those customs,\n    I should have been beholding to your paper.\n    But, I beseech you, what\'s become of Katharine,\n    The Princess Dowager? How goes her business?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. That I can tell you too. The Archbishop\n    Of Canterbury, accompanied with other\n    Learned and reverend fathers of his order,\n    Held a late court at Dunstable, six miles of\n    From Ampthill, where the Princess lay; to which\n    She was often cited by them, but appear\'d not.  \n    And, to be short, for not appearance and\n    The King\'s late scruple, by the main assent\n    Of all these learned men, she was divorc\'d,\n    And the late marriage made of none effect;\n    Since which she was removed to Kimbolton,\n    Where she remains now sick.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Alas, good lady!                       [Trumpets]\n    The trumpets sound. Stand close, the Queen is coming.\n[Hautboys]\n\n              THE ORDER OF THE CORONATION.\n\n    1. A lively flourish of trumpets.\n    2. Then two JUDGES.\n    3. LORD CHANCELLOR, with purse and mace before him.\n    4. CHORISTERS singing.                                    [Music]\n    5. MAYOR OF LONDON, bearing the mace. Then GARTER, in\n       his coat of arms, and on his head he wore a gilt copper\n       crown.\n    6. MARQUIS DORSET, bearing a sceptre of gold, on his head a  \n       demi-coronal of gold. With him, the EARL OF SURREY,\n       bearing the rod of silver with the dove, crowned with an\n       earl\'s coronet. Collars of Esses.\n    7. DUKE OF SUFFOLK, in his robe of estate, his coronet on\n       his head, bearing a long white wand, as High Steward.\n       With him, the DUKE OF NORFOLK, with the rod of\n       marshalship, a coronet on his head. Collars of Esses.\n    8. A canopy borne by four of the CINQUE-PORTS; under it\n       the QUEEN in her robe; in her hair richly adorned with\n       pearl, crowned. On each side her, the BISHOPS OF LONDON\n       and WINCHESTER.\n    9. The old DUCHESS OF NORFOLK, in a coronal of gold\n       wrought with flowers, bearing the QUEEN\'S train.\n   10. Certain LADIES or COUNTESSES, with plain circlets of gold\n       without flowers.\n\n             Exeunt, first passing over the stage in order and state,\n                                and then a great flourish of trumpets\n\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. A royal train, believe me. These know.  \n    Who\'s that that bears the sceptre?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Marquis Dorset;\n    And that the Earl of Surrey, with the rod.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. A bold brave gentleman. That should be\n    The Duke of Suffolk?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. \'Tis the same-High Steward.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. And that my Lord of Norfolk?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN.  [Looking on the QUEEN]  Heaven\n      bless thee!\n    Thou hast the sweetest face I ever look\'d on.\n    Sir, as I have a soul, she is an angel;\n    Our king has all the Indies in his arms,\n    And more and richer, when he strains that lady;\n    I cannot blame his conscience.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. They that bear\n    The cloth of honour over her are four barons\n    Of the Cinque-ports.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Those men are happy; and so are all\n      are near her.  \n    I take it she that carries up the train\n    Is that old noble lady, Duchess of Norfolk.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. It is; and all the rest are countesses.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Their coronets say so. These are stars indeed,\n    And sometimes falling ones.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. No more of that.\n                   Exit Procession, with a great flourish of trumpets\n\n               Enter a third GENTLEMAN\n\n    God save you, sir! Where have you been broiling?\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. Among the crowds i\' th\' Abbey, where a finger\n    Could not be wedg\'d in more; I am stifled\n    With the mere rankness of their joy.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. You saw\n    The ceremony?\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. That I did.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. How was it?\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. Well worth the seeing.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Good sir, speak it to us.  \n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. As well as I am able. The rich stream\n    Of lords and ladies, having brought the Queen\n    To a prepar\'d place in the choir, fell of\n    A distance from her, while her Grace sat down\n    To rest awhile, some half an hour or so,\n    In a rich chair of state, opposing freely\n    The beauty of her person to the people.\n    Believe me, sir, she is the goodliest woman\n    That ever lay by man; which when the people\n    Had the full view of, such a noise arose\n    As the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest,\n    As loud, and to as many tunes; hats, cloaks-\n    Doublets, I think-flew up, and had their faces\n    Been loose, this day they had been lost. Such joy\n    I never saw before. Great-bellied women,\n    That had not half a week to go, like rams\n    In the old time of war, would shake the press,\n    And make \'em reel before \'em. No man living\n    Could say \'This is my wife\' there, all were woven\n    So strangely in one piece.  \n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. But what follow\'d?\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. At length her Grace rose, and with\n      modest paces\n    Came to the altar, where she kneel\'d, and saintlike\n    Cast her fair eyes to heaven, and pray\'d devoutly.\n    Then rose again, and bow\'d her to the people;\n    When by the Archbishop of Canterbury\n    She had all the royal makings of a queen:\n    As holy oil, Edward Confessor\'s crown,\n    The rod, and bird of peace, and all such emblems\n    Laid nobly on her; which perform\'d, the choir,\n    With all the choicest music of the kingdom,\n    Together sung \'Te Deum.\' So she parted,\n    And with the same full state pac\'d back again\n    To York Place, where the feast is held.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Sir,\n    You must no more call it York Place: that\'s past:\n    For since the Cardinal fell that title\'s lost.\n    \'Tis now the King\'s, and called Whitehall.\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. I know it;  \n    But \'tis so lately alter\'d that the old name\n    Is fresh about me.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. What two reverend bishops\n    Were those that went on each side of the Queen?\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. Stokesly and Gardiner: the one of Winchester,\n    Newly preferr\'d from the King\'s secretary;\n    The other, London.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. He of Winchester\n    Is held no great good lover of the Archbishop\'s,\n    The virtuous Cranmer.\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. All the land knows that;\n    However, yet there is no great breach. When it comes,\n    Cranmer will find a friend will not shrink from him.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Who may that be, I pray you?\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. Thomas Cromwell,\n    A man in much esteem with th\' King, and truly\n    A worthy friend. The King has made him Master\n    O\' th\' jewel House,\n    And one, already, of the Privy Council.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. He will deserve more.  \n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. Yes, without all doubt.\n    Come, gentlemen, ye shall go my way, which\n    Is to th\' court, and there ye shall be my guests:\n    Something I can command. As I walk thither,\n    I\'ll tell ye more.\n  BOTH. You may command us, sir.                               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 2.\n\nKimbolton\n\nEnter KATHARINE, Dowager, sick; led between GRIFFITH, her Gentleman Usher,\nand PATIENCE, her woman\n\n  GRIFFITH. How does your Grace?\n  KATHARINE. O Griffith, sick to death!\n    My legs like loaden branches bow to th\' earth,\n    Willing to leave their burden. Reach a chair.\n    So-now, methinks, I feel a little ease.\n    Didst thou not tell me, Griffith, as thou led\'st me,\n    That the great child of honour, Cardinal Wolsey,\n    Was dead?\n  GRIFFITH. Yes, madam; but I think your Grace,\n    Out of the pain you suffer\'d, gave no ear to\'t.\n  KATHARINE. Prithee, good Griffith, tell me how he died.\n    If well, he stepp\'d before me, happily,\n    For my example.\n  GRIFFITH. Well, the voice goes, madam;  \n    For after the stout Earl Northumberland\n    Arrested him at York and brought him forward,\n    As a man sorely tainted, to his answer,\n    He fell sick suddenly, and grew so ill\n    He could not sit his mule.\n  KATHARINE. Alas, poor man!\n  GRIFFITH. At last, with easy roads, he came to Leicester,\n    Lodg\'d in the abbey; where the reverend abbot,\n    With all his covent, honourably receiv\'d him;\n    To whom he gave these words: \'O father Abbot,\n    An old man, broken with the storms of state,\n    Is come to lay his weary bones among ye;\n    Give him a little earth for charity!\'\n    So went to bed; where eagerly his sickness\n    Pursu\'d him still And three nights after this,\n    About the hour of eight-which he himself\n    Foretold should be his last-full of repentance,\n    Continual meditations, tears, and sorrows,\n    He gave his honours to the world again,\n    His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace.  \n  KATHARINE. So may he rest; his faults lie gently on him!\n    Yet thus far, Griffith, give me leave to speak him,\n    And yet with charity. He was a man\n    Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking\n    Himself with princes; one that, by suggestion,\n    Tied all the kingdom. Simony was fair play;\n    His own opinion was his law. I\' th\' presence\n    He would say untruths, and be ever double\n    Both in his words and meaning. He was never,\n    But where he meant to ruin, pitiful.\n    His promises were, as he then was, mighty;\n    But his performance, as he is now, nothing.\n    Of his own body he was ill, and gave\n    The clergy ill example.\n  GRIFFITH. Noble madam,\n    Men\'s evil manners live in brass: their virtues\n    We write in water. May it please your Highness\n    To hear me speak his good now?\n  KATHARINE. Yes, good Griffith;\n    I were malicious else.  \n  GRIFFITH. This Cardinal,\n    Though from an humble stock, undoubtedly\n    Was fashion\'d to much honour from his cradle.\n    He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one;\n    Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading;\n    Lofty and sour to them that lov\'d him not,\n    But to those men that sought him sweet as summer.\n    And though he were unsatisfied in getting-\n    Which was a sin-yet in bestowing, madam,\n    He was most princely: ever witness for him\n    Those twins of learning that he rais\'d in you,\n    Ipswich and Oxford! One of which fell with him,\n    Unwilling to outlive the good that did it;\n    The other, though unfinish\'d, yet so famous,\n    So excellent in art, and still so rising,\n    That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue.\n    His overthrow heap\'d happiness upon him;\n    For then, and not till then, he felt himself,\n    And found the blessedness of being little.\n    And, to add greater honours to his age  \n    Than man could give him, he died fearing God.\n  KATHARINE. After my death I wish no other herald,\n    No other speaker of my living actions,\n    To keep mine honour from corruption,\n    But such an honest chronicler as Griffith.\n    Whom I most hated living, thou hast made me,\n    With thy religious truth and modesty,\n    Now in his ashes honour. Peace be with him!\n    patience, be near me still, and set me lower:\n    I have not long to trouble thee. Good Griffith,\n    Cause the musicians play me that sad note\n    I nam\'d my knell, whilst I sit meditating\n    On that celestial harmony I go to.\n                                              [Sad and solemn music]\n  GRIFFITH. She is asleep. Good wench, let\'s sit down quiet,\n    For fear we wake her. Softly, gentle Patience.\n\n                 THE VISION.\n\n      Enter, solemnly tripping one after another, six  \n      PERSONAGES clad in white robes, wearing on their\n      heads garlands of bays, and golden vizards on their\n      faces; branches of bays or palm in their hands. They\n      first congee unto her, then dance; and, at certain\n      changes, the first two hold a spare garland over her\n      head, at which the other four make reverent curtsies.\n      Then the two that held the garland deliver the\n      same to the other next two, who observe the same\n      order in their changes, and holding the garland over\n      her head; which done, they deliver the same garland\n      to the last two, who likewise observe the same order;\n      at which, as it were by inspiration, she makes\n      in her sleep signs of rejoicing, and holdeth up her\n      hands to heaven. And so in their dancing vanish,\n      carrying the garland with them. The music continues\n\n  KATHARINE. Spirits of peace, where are ye? Are ye all gone?\n    And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye?\n  GRIFFITH. Madam, we are here.\n  KATHARINE. It is not you I call for.  \n    Saw ye none enter since I slept?\n  GRIFFITH. None, madam.\n  KATHARINE. No? Saw you not, even now, a blessed troop\n    Invite me to a banquet; whose bright faces\n    Cast thousand beams upon me, like the sun?\n    They promis\'d me eternal happiness,\n    And brought me garlands, Griffith, which I feel\n    I am not worthy yet to wear. I shall, assuredly.\n  GRIFFITH. I am most joyful, madam, such good dreams\n    Possess your fancy.\n  KATHARINE. Bid the music leave,\n    They are harsh and heavy to me.                    [Music ceases]\n  PATIENCE. Do you note\n    How much her Grace is alter\'d on the sudden?\n    How long her face is drawn! How pale she looks,\n    And of an earthly cold! Mark her eyes.\n  GRIFFITH. She is going, wench. Pray, pray.\n  PATIENCE. Heaven comfort her!\n\n             Enter a MESSENGER  \n\n  MESSENGER. An\'t like your Grace-\n  KATHARINE. You are a saucy fellow.\n    Deserve we no more reverence?\n  GRIFFITH. You are to blame,\n    Knowing she will not lose her wonted greatness,\n    To use so rude behaviour. Go to, kneel.\n  MESSENGER. I humbly do entreat your Highness\' pardon;\n    My haste made me unmannerly. There is staying\n    A gentleman, sent from the King, to see you.\n  KATHARINE. Admit him entrance, Griffith; but this fellow\n    Let me ne\'er see again.                            Exit MESSENGER\n\n              Enter LORD CAPUCIUS\n\n    If my sight fail not,\n    You should be Lord Ambassador from the Emperor,\n    My royal nephew, and your name Capucius.\n  CAPUCIUS. Madam, the same-your servant.\n  KATHARINE. O, my Lord,  \n    The times and titles now are alter\'d strangely\n    With me since first you knew me. But, I pray you,\n    What is your pleasure with me?\n  CAPUCIUS. Noble lady,\n    First, mine own service to your Grace; the next,\n    The King\'s request that I would visit you,\n    Who grieves much for your weakness, and by me\n    Sends you his princely commendations\n    And heartily entreats you take good comfort.\n  KATHARINE. O my good lord, that comfort comes too late,\n    \'Tis like a pardon after execution:\n    That gentle physic, given in time, had cur\'d me;\n    But now I am past all comforts here, but prayers.\n    How does his Highness?\n  CAPUCIUS. Madam, in good health.\n  KATHARINE. So may he ever do! and ever flourish\n    When I shall dwell with worms, and my poor name\n    Banish\'d the kingdom! Patience, is that letter\n    I caus\'d you write yet sent away?\n  PATIENCE. No, madam.                       [Giving it to KATHARINE]  \n  KATHARINE. Sir, I most humbly pray you to deliver\n    This to my lord the King.\n  CAPUCIUS. Most willing, madam.\n  KATHARINE. In which I have commended to his goodness\n    The model of our chaste loves, his young daughter-\n    The dews of heaven fall thick in blessings on her!-\n    Beseeching him to give her virtuous breeding-\n    She is young, and of a noble modest nature;\n    I hope she will deserve well-and a little\n    To love her for her mother\'s sake, that lov\'d him,\n    Heaven knows how dearly. My next poor petition\n    Is that his noble Grace would have some pity\n    Upon my wretched women that so long\n    Have follow\'d both my fortunes faithfully;\n    Of which there is not one, I dare avow-\n    And now I should not lie-but will deserve,\n    For virtue and true beauty of the soul,\n    For honesty and decent carriage,\n    A right good husband, let him be a noble;\n    And sure those men are happy that shall have \'em.  \n    The last is for my men-they are the poorest,\n    But poverty could never draw \'em from me-\n    That they may have their wages duly paid \'em,\n    And something over to remember me by.\n    If heaven had pleas\'d to have given me longer life\n    And able means, we had not parted thus.\n    These are the whole contents; and, good my lord,\n    By that you love the dearest in this world,\n    As you wish Christian peace to souls departed,\n    Stand these poor people\'s friend, and urge the King\n    To do me this last right.\n  CAPUCIUS. By heaven, I will,\n    Or let me lose the fashion of a man!\n  KATHARINE. I thank you, honest lord. Remember me\n    In all humility unto his Highness;\n    Say his long trouble now is passing\n    Out of this world. Tell him in death I bless\'d him,\n    For so I will. Mine eyes grow dim. Farewell,\n    My lord. Griffith, farewell. Nay, Patience,\n    You must not leave me yet. I must to bed;  \n    Call in more women. When I am dead, good wench,\n    Let me be us\'d with honour; strew me over\n    With maiden flowers, that all the world may know\n    I was a chaste wife to my grave. Embalm me,\n    Then lay me forth; although unqueen\'d, yet like\n    A queen, and daughter to a king, inter me.\n    I can no more.                          Exeunt, leading KATHARINE\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 1.\n\nLondon. A gallery in the palace\n\nEnter GARDINER, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, a PAGE with a torch before him,\nmet by SIR THOMAS LOVELL\n\n  GARDINER. It\'s one o\'clock, boy, is\'t not?\n  BOY. It hath struck.\n  GARDINER. These should be hours for necessities,\n    Not for delights; times to repair our nature\n    With comforting repose, and not for us\n    To waste these times. Good hour of night, Sir Thomas!\n    Whither so late?\n  LOVELL. Came you from the King, my lord?\n  GARDINER. I did, Sir Thomas, and left him at primero\n    With the Duke of Suffolk.\n  LOVELL. I must to him too,\n    Before he go to bed. I\'ll take my leave.\n  GARDINER. Not yet, Sir Thomas Lovell. What\'s the matter?\n    It seems you are in haste. An if there be  \n    No great offence belongs to\'t, give your friend\n    Some touch of your late business. Affairs that walk-\n    As they say spirits do-at midnight, have\n    In them a wilder nature than the business\n    That seeks despatch by day.\n  LOVELL. My lord, I love you;\n    And durst commend a secret to your ear\n    Much weightier than this work. The Queen\'s in labour,\n    They say in great extremity, and fear\'d\n    She\'ll with the labour end.\n  GARDINER. The fruit she goes with\n    I pray for heartily, that it may find\n    Good time, and live; but for the stock, Sir Thomas,\n    I wish it grubb\'d up now.\n  LOVELL. Methinks I could\n    Cry thee amen; and yet my conscience says\n    She\'s a good creature, and, sweet lady, does\n    Deserve our better wishes.\n  GARDINER. But, sir, sir-\n    Hear me, Sir Thomas. Y\'are a gentleman  \n    Of mine own way; I know you wise, religious;\n    And, let me tell you, it will ne\'er be well-\n    \'Twill not, Sir Thomas Lovell, take\'t of me-\n    Till Cranmer, Cromwell, her two hands, and she,\n    Sleep in their graves.\n  LOVELL. Now, sir, you speak of two\n    The most remark\'d i\' th\' kingdom. As for Cromwell,\n    Beside that of the Jewel House, is made Master\n    O\' th\' Rolls, and the King\'s secretary; further, sir,\n    Stands in the gap and trade of moe preferments,\n    With which the time will load him. Th\' Archbishop\n    Is the King\'s hand and tongue, and who dare speak\n    One syllable against him?\n  GARDINER. Yes, yes, Sir Thomas,\n    There are that dare; and I myself have ventur\'d\n    To speak my mind of him; and indeed this day,\n    Sir-I may tell it you-I think I have\n    Incens\'d the lords o\' th\' Council, that he is-\n    For so I know he is, they know he is-\n    A most arch heretic, a pestilence  \n    That does infect the land; with which they moved\n    Have broken with the King, who hath so far\n    Given ear to our complaint-of his great grace\n    And princely care, foreseeing those fell mischiefs\n    Our reasons laid before him-hath commanded\n    To-morrow morning to the Council board\n    He be convented. He\'s a rank weed, Sir Thomas,\n    And we must root him out. From your affairs\n    I hinder you too long-good night, Sir Thomas.\n  LOVELL. Many good nights, my lord; I rest your servant.\n                                             Exeunt GARDINER and PAGE\n\n         Enter the KING and the DUKE OF SUFFOLK\n\n  KING. Charles, I will play no more to-night;\n    My mind\'s not on\'t; you are too hard for me.\n  SUFFOLK. Sir, I did never win of you before.\n  KING. But little, Charles;\n    Nor shall not, when my fancy\'s on my play.\n    Now, Lovell, from the Queen what is the news?  \n  LOVELL. I could not personally deliver to her\n    What you commanded me, but by her woman\n    I sent your message; who return\'d her thanks\n    In the great\'st humbleness, and desir\'d your Highness\n    Most heartily to pray for her.\n  KING. What say\'st thou, ha?\n    To pray for her? What, is she crying out?\n  LOVELL. So said her woman; and that her suff\'rance made\n    Almost each pang a death.\n  KING. Alas, good lady!\n  SUFFOLK. God safely quit her of her burden, and\n    With gentle travail, to the gladding of\n    Your Highness with an heir!\n  KING. \'Tis midnight, Charles;\n    Prithee to bed; and in thy pray\'rs remember\n    Th\' estate of my poor queen. Leave me alone,\n    For I must think of that which company\n    Will not be friendly to.\n  SUFFOLK. I wish your Highness\n    A quiet night, and my good mistress will  \n    Remember in my prayers.\n  KING. Charles, good night.                             Exit SUFFOLK\n\n         Enter SIR ANTHONY DENNY\n\n    Well, sir, what follows?\n  DENNY. Sir, I have brought my lord the Archbishop,\n    As you commanded me.\n  KING. Ha! Canterbury?\n  DENNY. Ay, my good lord.\n  KING. \'Tis true. Where is he, Denny?\n  DENNY. He attends your Highness\' pleasure.\n  KING. Bring him to us.                                   Exit DENNY\n  LOVELL.  [Aside]  This is about that which the bishop spake.\n    I am happily come hither.\n\n         Re-enter DENNY, With CRANMER\n\n  KING. Avoid the gallery.                     [LOVELL seems to stay]\n    Ha! I have said. Be gone.  \n    What!                                     Exeunt LOVELL and DENNY\n  CRANMER.  [Aside]  I am fearful-wherefore frowns he thus?\n    \'Tis his aspect of terror. All\'s not well.\n  KING. How now, my lord? You do desire to know\n    Wherefore I sent for you.\n  CRANMER.  [Kneeling]  It is my duty\n    T\'attend your Highness\' pleasure.\n  KING. Pray you, arise,\n    My good and gracious Lord of Canterbury.\n    Come, you and I must walk a turn together;\n    I have news to tell you; come, come, me your hand.\n    Ah, my good lord, I grieve at what I speak,\n    And am right sorry to repeat what follows.\n    I have, and most unwillingly, of late\n    Heard many grievous-I do say, my lord,\n    Grievous-complaints of you; which, being consider\'d,\n    Have mov\'d us and our Council that you shall\n    This morning come before us; where I know\n    You cannot with such freedom purge yourself\n    But that, till further trial in those charges  \n    Which will require your answer, you must take\n    Your patience to you and be well contented\n    To make your house our Tow\'r. You a brother of us,\n    It fits we thus proceed, or else no witness\n    Would come against you.\n  CRANMER. I humbly thank your Highness\n    And am right glad to catch this good occasion\n    Most throughly to be winnowed where my chaff\n    And corn shall fly asunder; for I know\n    There\'s none stands under more calumnious tongues\n    Than I myself, poor man.\n  KING. Stand up, good Canterbury;\n    Thy truth and thy integrity is rooted\n    In us, thy friend. Give me thy hand, stand up;\n    Prithee let\'s walk. Now, by my holidame,\n    What manner of man are you? My lord, I look\'d\n    You would have given me your petition that\n    I should have ta\'en some pains to bring together\n    Yourself and your accusers, and to have heard you\n    Without indurance further.  \n  CRANMER. Most dread liege,\n    The good I stand on is my truth and honesty;\n    If they shall fail, I with mine enemies\n    Will triumph o\'er my person; which I weigh not,\n    Being of those virtues vacant. I fear nothing\n    What can be said against me.\n  KING. Know you not\n    How your state stands i\' th\' world, with the whole world?\n    Your enemies are many, and not small; their practices\n    Must bear the same proportion; and not ever\n    The justice and the truth o\' th\' question carries\n    The due o\' th\' verdict with it; at what ease\n    Might corrupt minds procure knaves as corrupt\n    To swear against you? Such things have been done.\n    You are potently oppos\'d, and with a malice\n    Of as great size. Ween you of better luck,\n    I mean in perjur\'d witness, than your Master,\n    Whose minister you are, whiles here He liv\'d\n    Upon this naughty earth? Go to, go to;\n    You take a precipice for no leap of danger,  \n    And woo your own destruction.\n  CRANMER. God and your Majesty\n    Protect mine innocence, or I fall into\n    The trap is laid for me!\n  KING. Be of good cheer;\n    They shall no more prevail than we give way to.\n    Keep comfort to you, and this morning see\n    You do appear before them; if they shall chance,\n    In charging you with matters, to commit you,\n    The best persuasions to the contrary\n    Fail not to use, and with what vehemency\n    Th\' occasion shall instruct you. If entreaties\n    Will render you no remedy, this ring\n    Deliver them, and your appeal to us\n    There make before them. Look, the good man weeps!\n    He\'s honest, on mine honour. God\'s blest Mother!\n    I swear he is true-hearted, and a soul\n    None better in my kingdom. Get you gone,\n    And do as I have bid you.\n                                                         Exit CRANMER  \n    He has strangled his language in his tears.\n\n           Enter OLD LADY\n\n  GENTLEMAN.  [Within]  Come back; what mean you?\n  OLD LADY. I\'ll not come back; the tidings that I bring\n    Will make my boldness manners. Now, good angels\n    Fly o\'er thy royal head, and shade thy person\n    Under their blessed wings!\n  KING. Now, by thy looks\n    I guess thy message. Is the Queen deliver\'d?\n    Say ay, and of a boy.\n  OLD LADY. Ay, ay, my liege;\n    And of a lovely boy. The God of Heaven\n    Both now and ever bless her! \'Tis a girl,\n    Promises boys hereafter. Sir, your queen\n    Desires your visitation, and to be\n    Acquainted with this stranger; \'tis as like you\n    As cherry is to cherry.\n  KING. Lovell!  \n\n           Enter LOVELL\n\n  LOVELL. Sir?\n  KING. Give her an hundred marks. I\'ll to the Queen.            Exit\n  OLD LADY. An hundred marks? By this light, I\'ll ha\' more!\n    An ordinary groom is for such payment.\n    I will have more, or scold it out of him.\n    Said I for this the girl was like to him! I\'ll\n    Have more, or else unsay\'t; and now, while \'tis hot,\n    I\'ll put it to the issue.                                  Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 2.\n\nLobby before the Council Chamber\n\nEnter CRANMER, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY\n\n  CRANMER. I hope I am not too late; and yet the gentleman\n    That was sent to me from the Council pray\'d me\n    To make great haste. All fast? What means this? Ho!\n    Who waits there? Sure you know me?\n\n           Enter KEEPER\n\n  KEEPER. Yes, my lord;\n    But yet I cannot help you.\n  CRANMER. Why?\n  KEEPER. Your Grace must wait till you be call\'d for.\n\n           Enter DOCTOR BUTTS\n\n  CRANMER. So.\n  BUTTS.  [Aside]  This is a piece of malice. I am glad  \n    I came this way so happily; the King\n    Shall understand it presently.                               Exit\n  CRANMER.  [Aside]  \'Tis Butts,\n    The King\'s physician; as he pass\'d along,\n    How earnestly he cast his eyes upon me!\n    Pray heaven he sound not my disgrace! For certain,\n    This is of purpose laid by some that hate me-\n    God turn their hearts! I never sought their malice-\n    To quench mine honour; they would shame to make me\n    Wait else at door, a fellow councillor,\n    \'Mong boys, grooms, and lackeys. But their pleasures\n    Must be fulfill\'d, and I attend with patience.\n\n         Enter the KING and BUTTS at window above\n\n  BUTTS. I\'ll show your Grace the strangest sight-\n  KING. What\'s that, Butts?\n  BUTTS. I think your Highness saw this many a day.\n  KING. Body a me, where is it?\n  BUTTS. There my lord:  \n    The high promotion of his Grace of Canterbury;\n    Who holds his state at door, \'mongst pursuivants,\n    Pages, and footboys.\n  KING. Ha, \'tis he indeed.\n    Is this the honour they do one another?\n    \'Tis well there\'s one above \'em yet. I had thought\n    They had parted so much honesty among \'em-\n    At least good manners-as not thus to suffer\n    A man of his place, and so near our favour,\n    To dance attendance on their lordships\' pleasures,\n    And at the door too, like a post with packets.\n    By holy Mary, Butts, there\'s knavery!\n    Let \'em alone, and draw the curtain close;\n    We shall hear more anon.                                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 3.\n\nThe Council Chamber\n\nA Council table brought in, with chairs and stools, and placed\nunder the state. Enter LORD CHANCELLOR, places himself at the upper end\nof the table on the left band, a seat being left void above him,\nas for Canterbury\'s seat. DUKE OF SUFFOLK, DUKE OF NORFOLK, SURREY,\nLORD CHAMBERLAIN, GARDINER, seat themselves in order on each side;\nCROMWELL at lower end, as secretary. KEEPER at the door\n\n  CHANCELLOR. Speak to the business, master secretary;\n    Why are we met in council?\n  CROMWELL. Please your honours,\n    The chief cause concerns his Grace of Canterbury.\n  GARDINER. Has he had knowledge of it?\n  CROMWELL. Yes.\n  NORFOLK. Who waits there?\n  KEEPER. Without, my noble lords?\n  GARDINER. Yes.  \n  KEEPER. My Lord Archbishop;\n    And has done half an hour, to know your pleasures.\n  CHANCELLOR. Let him come in.\n  KEEPER. Your Grace may enter now.\n\n      CRANMER approaches the Council table\n\n  CHANCELLOR. My good Lord Archbishop, I am very sorry\n    To sit here at this present, and behold\n    That chair stand empty; but we all are men,\n    In our own natures frail and capable\n    Of our flesh; few are angels; out of which frailty\n    And want of wisdom, you, that best should teach us,\n    Have misdemean\'d yourself, and not a little,\n    Toward the King first, then his laws, in filling\n    The whole realm by your teaching and your chaplains-\n    For so we are inform\'d-with new opinions,\n    Divers and dangerous; which are heresies,\n    And, not reform\'d, may prove pernicious.\n  GARDINER. Which reformation must be sudden too,  \n    My noble lords; for those that tame wild horses\n    Pace \'em not in their hands to make \'em gentle,\n    But stop their mouth with stubborn bits and spur \'em\n    Till they obey the manage. If we suffer,\n    Out of our easiness and childish pity\n    To one man\'s honour, this contagious sickness,\n    Farewell all physic; and what follows then?\n    Commotions, uproars, with a general taint\n    Of the whole state; as of late days our neighbours,\n    The upper Germany, can dearly witness,\n    Yet freshly pitied in our memories.\n  CRANMER. My good lords, hitherto in all the progress\n    Both of my life and office, I have labour\'d,\n    And with no little study, that my teaching\n    And the strong course of my authority\n    Might go one way, and safely; and the end\n    Was ever to do well. Nor is there living-\n    I speak it with a single heart, my lords-\n    A man that more detests, more stirs against,\n    Both in his private conscience and his place,  \n    Defacers of a public peace than I do.\n    Pray heaven the King may never find a heart\n    With less allegiance in it! Men that make\n    Envy and crooked malice nourishment\n    Dare bite the best. I do beseech your lordships\n    That, in this case of justice, my accusers,\n    Be what they will, may stand forth face to face\n    And freely urge against me.\n  SUFFOLK. Nay, my lord,\n    That cannot be; you are a councillor,\n    And by that virtue no man dare accuse you.\n  GARDINER. My lord, because we have business of more moment,\n    We will be short with you. \'Tis his Highness\' pleasure\n    And our consent, for better trial of you,\n    From hence you be committed to the Tower;\n    Where, being but a private man again,\n    You shall know many dare accuse you boldly,\n    More than, I fear, you are provided for.\n  CRANMER. Ah, my good Lord of Winchester, I thank you;\n    You are always my good friend; if your will pass,  \n    I shall both find your lordship judge and juror,\n    You are so merciful. I see your end-\n    \'Tis my undoing. Love and meekness, lord,\n    Become a churchman better than ambition;\n    Win straying souls with modesty again,\n    Cast none away. That I shall clear myself,\n    Lay all the weight ye can upon my patience,\n    I make as little doubt as you do conscience\n    In doing daily wrongs. I could say more,\n    But reverence to your calling makes me modest.\n  GARDINER. My lord, my lord, you are a sectary;\n    That\'s the plain truth. Your painted gloss discovers,\n    To men that understand you, words and weakness.\n  CROMWELL. My Lord of Winchester, y\'are a little,\n    By your good favour, too sharp; men so noble,\n    However faulty, yet should find respect\n    For what they have been; \'tis a cruelty\n    To load a falling man.\n  GARDINER. Good Master Secretary,\n    I cry your honour mercy; you may, worst  \n    Of all this table, say so.\n  CROMWELL. Why, my lord?\n  GARDINER. Do not I know you for a favourer\n    Of this new sect? Ye are not sound.\n  CROMWELL. Not sound?\n  GARDINER. Not sound, I say.\n  CROMWELL. Would you were half so honest!\n    Men\'s prayers then would seek you, not their fears.\n  GARDINER. I shall remember this bold language.\n  CROMWELL. Do.\n    Remember your bold life too.\n  CHANCELLOR. This is too much;\n    Forbear, for shame, my lords.\n  GARDINER. I have done.\n  CROMWELL. And I.\n  CHANCELLOR. Then thus for you, my lord: it stands agreed,\n    I take it, by all voices, that forthwith\n    You be convey\'d to th\' Tower a prisoner;\n    There to remain till the King\'s further pleasure\n    Be known unto us. Are you all agreed, lords?  \n  ALL. We are.\n  CRANMER. Is there no other way of mercy,\n    But I must needs to th\' Tower, my lords?\n  GARDINER. What other\n    Would you expect? You are strangely troublesome.\n    Let some o\' th\' guard be ready there.\n\n           Enter the guard\n\n  CRANMER. For me?\n    Must I go like a traitor thither?\n  GARDINER. Receive him,\n    And see him safe i\' th\' Tower.\n  CRANMER. Stay, good my lords,\n    I have a little yet to say. Look there, my lords;\n    By virtue of that ring I take my cause\n    Out of the gripes of cruel men and give it\n    To a most noble judge, the King my master.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. This is the King\'s ring.\n  SURREY. \'Tis no counterfeit.  \n  SUFFOLK. \'Tis the right ring, by heav\'n. I told ye all,\n    When we first put this dangerous stone a-rolling,\n    \'Twould fall upon ourselves.\n  NORFOLK. Do you think, my lords,\n    The King will suffer but the little finger\n    Of this man to be vex\'d?\n  CHAMBERLAIN. \'Tis now too certain;\n    How much more is his life in value with him!\n    Would I were fairly out on\'t!\n  CROMWELL. My mind gave me,\n    In seeking tales and informations\n    Against this man-whose honesty the devil\n    And his disciples only envy at-\n    Ye blew the fire that burns ye. Now have at ye!\n\n      Enter the KING frowning on them; he takes his seat\n\n  GARDINER. Dread sovereign, how much are we bound to heaven\n    In daily thanks, that gave us such a prince;\n    Not only good and wise but most religious;  \n    One that in all obedience makes the church\n    The chief aim of his honour and, to strengthen\n    That holy duty, out of dear respect,\n    His royal self in judgment comes to hear\n    The cause betwixt her and this great offender.\n  KING. You were ever good at sudden commendations,\n    Bishop of Winchester. But know I come not\n    To hear such flattery now, and in my presence\n    They are too thin and bare to hide offences.\n    To me you cannot reach you play the spaniel,\n    And think with wagging of your tongue to win me;\n    But whatsoe\'er thou tak\'st me for, I\'m sure\n    Thou hast a cruel nature and a bloody.\n    [To CRANMER]  Good man, sit down. Now let me see the proudest\n    He that dares most but wag his finger at thee.\n    By all that\'s holy, he had better starve\n    Than but once think this place becomes thee not.\n  SURREY. May it please your Grace-\n  KING. No, sir, it does not please me.\n    I had thought I had had men of some understanding  \n    And wisdom of my Council; but I find none.\n    Was it discretion, lords, to let this man,\n    This good man-few of you deserve that title-\n    This honest man, wait like a lousy footboy\n    At chamber door? and one as great as you are?\n    Why, what a shame was this! Did my commission\n    Bid ye so far forget yourselves? I gave ye\n    Power as he was a councillor to try him,\n    Not as a groom. There\'s some of ye, I see,\n    More out of malice than integrity,\n    Would try him to the utmost, had ye mean;\n    Which ye shall never have while I live.\n  CHANCELLOR. Thus far,\n    My most dread sovereign, may it like your Grace\n    To let my tongue excuse all. What was purpos\'d\n    concerning his imprisonment was rather-\n    If there be faith in men-meant for his trial\n    And fair purgation to the world, than malice,\n    I\'m sure, in me.\n  KING. Well, well, my lords, respect him;  \n    Take him, and use him well, he\'s worthy of it.\n    I will say thus much for him: if a prince\n    May be beholding to a subject,\n    Am for his love and service so to him.\n    Make me no more ado, but all embrace him;\n    Be friends, for shame, my lords! My Lord of Canterbury,\n    I have a suit which you must not deny me:\n    That is, a fair young maid that yet wants baptism;\n    You must be godfather, and answer for her.\n  CRANMER. The greatest monarch now alive may glory\n    In such an honour; how may I deserve it,\n    That am a poor and humble subject to you?\n  KING. Come, come, my lord, you\'d spare your spoons. You\n      shall have\n    Two noble partners with you: the old Duchess of Norfolk\n    And Lady Marquis Dorset. Will these please you?\n    Once more, my Lord of Winchester, I charge you,\n    Embrace and love this man.\n  GARDINER. With a true heart\n    And brother-love I do it.  \n  CRANMER. And let heaven\n    Witness how dear I hold this confirmation.\n  KING. Good man, those joyful tears show thy true heart.\n    The common voice, I see, is verified\n    Of thee, which says thus: \'Do my Lord of Canterbury\n    A shrewd turn and he\'s your friend for ever.\'\n    Come, lords, we trifle time away; I long\n    To have this young one made a Christian.\n    As I have made ye one, lords, one remain;\n    So I grow stronger, you more honour gain.                  Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 4.\n\nThe palace yard\n\nNoise and tumult within. Enter PORTER and his MAN\n\n  PORTER. You\'ll leave your noise anon, ye rascals. Do you\n    take the court for Paris garden? Ye rude slaves, leave your\n    gaping.\n    [Within: Good master porter, I belong to th\' larder.]\n  PORTER. Belong to th\' gallows, and be hang\'d, ye rogue! Is\n    this a place to roar in? Fetch me a dozen crab-tree staves,\n    and strong ones; these are but switches to \'em. I\'ll scratch\n    your heads. You must be seeing christenings? Do you look\n    for ale and cakes here, you rude rascals?\n  MAN. Pray, sir, be patient; \'tis as much impossible,\n    Unless we sweep \'em from the door with cannons,\n    To scatter \'em as \'tis to make \'em sleep\n    On May-day morning; which will never be.\n    We may as well push against Paul\'s as stir \'em.\n  PORTER. How got they in, and be hang\'d?\n  MAN. Alas, I know not: how gets the tide in?  \n    As much as one sound cudgel of four foot-\n    You see the poor remainder-could distribute,\n    I made no spare, sir.\n  PORTER. You did nothing, sir.\n  MAN. I am not Samson, nor Sir Guy, nor Colbrand,\n    To mow \'em down before me; but if I spar\'d any\n    That had a head to hit, either young or old,\n    He or she, cuckold or cuckold-maker,\n    Let me ne\'er hope to see a chine again;\n    And that I would not for a cow, God save her!\n    [ Within: Do you hear, master porter?]\n  PORTER. I shall be with you presently, good master puppy.\n    Keep the door close, sirrah.\n  MAN. What would you have me do?\n  PORTER. What should you do, but knock \'em down by th\'\n    dozens? Is this Moorfields to muster in? Or have we some\n    strange Indian with the great tool come to court, the\n    women so besiege us? Bless me, what a fry of fornication\n    is at door! On my Christian conscience, this one christening\n    will beget a thousand: here will be father, godfather,  \n    and all together.\n  MAN. The spoons will be the bigger, sir. There is a fellow\n    somewhat near the door, he should be a brazier by his\n    face, for, o\' my conscience, twenty of the dog-days now\n    reign in\'s nose; all that stand about him are under the line,\n    they need no other penance. That fire-drake did I hit three\n    times on the head, and three times was his nose discharged\n    against me; he stands there like a mortar-piece, to blow us.\n    There was a haberdasher\'s wife of small wit near him, that\n    rail\'d upon me till her pink\'d porringer fell off her head,\n    for kindling such a combustion in the state. I miss\'d the\n    meteor once, and hit that woman, who cried out \'Clubs!\'\n    when I might see from far some forty truncheoners draw\n    to her succour, which were the hope o\' th\' Strand, where\n    she was quartered. They fell on; I made good my place.\n    At length they came to th\' broomstaff to me; I defied \'em\n    still; when suddenly a file of boys behind \'em, loose shot,\n    deliver\'d such a show\'r of pebbles that I was fain to draw\n    mine honour in and let \'em win the work: the devil was\n    amongst \'em, I think surely.  \n  PORTER. These are the youths that thunder at a playhouse\n    and fight for bitten apples; that no audience but the tribulation\n    of Tower-hill or the limbs of Limehouse, their dear\n    brothers, are able to endure. I have some of \'em in Limbo\n    Patrum, and there they are like to dance these three days;\n    besides the running banquet of two beadles that is to come.\n\n          Enter the LORD CHAMBERLAIN\n\n  CHAMBERLAIN. Mercy o\' me, what a multitude are here!\n    They grow still too; from all parts they are coming,\n    As if we kept a fair here! Where are these porters,\n    These lazy knaves? Y\'have made a fine hand, fellows.\n    There\'s a trim rabble let in: are all these\n    Your faithful friends o\' th\' suburbs? We shall have\n    Great store of room, no doubt, left for the ladies,\n    When they pass back from the christening.\n  PORTER. An\'t please your honour,\n    We are but men; and what so many may do,\n    Not being torn a pieces, we have done.  \n    An army cannot rule \'em.\n  CHAMBERLAIN. As I live,\n    If the King blame me for\'t, I\'ll lay ye an\n    By th\' heels, and suddenly; and on your heads\n    Clap round fines for neglect. Y\'are lazy knaves;\n    And here ye lie baiting of bombards, when\n    Ye should do service. Hark! the trumpets sound;\n    Th\' are come already from the christening.\n    Go break among the press and find a way out\n    To let the troops pass fairly, or I\'ll find\n    A Marshalsea shall hold ye play these two months.\n  PORTER. Make way there for the Princess.\n  MAN. You great fellow,\n    Stand close up, or I\'ll make your head ache.\n  PORTER. You i\' th\' camlet, get up o\' th\' rail;\n    I\'ll peck you o\'er the pales else.                         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 5.\n\nThe palace\n\nEnter TRUMPETS, sounding; then two ALDERMEN, LORD MAYOR, GARTER, CRANMER,\nDUKE OF NORFOLK, with his marshal\'s staff, DUKE OF SUFFOLK,\ntwo Noblemen bearing great standing-bowls for the christening gifts;\nthen four Noblemen bearing a canopy, under which the DUCHESS OF NORFOLK,\ngodmother, bearing the CHILD richly habited in a mantle, etc.,\ntrain borne by a LADY; then follows the MARCHIONESS DORSET,\nthe other godmother, and LADIES. The troop pass once about the stage,\nand GARTER speaks\n\n  GARTER. Heaven, from thy endless goodness, send prosperous\n    life, long and ever-happy, to the high and mighty\n    Princess of England, Elizabeth!\n\n           Flourish. Enter KING and guard\n  \n  CRANMER.  [Kneeling]  And to your royal Grace and the\n      good Queen!\n    My noble partners and myself thus pray:\n    All comfort, joy, in this most gracious lady,\n    Heaven ever laid up to make parents happy,\n    May hourly fall upon ye!\n  KING. Thank you, good Lord Archbishop.\n    What is her name?\n  CRANMER. Elizabeth.\n  KING. Stand up, lord.                   [The KING kisses the child]\n    With this kiss take my blessing: God protect thee!\n    Into whose hand I give thy life.\n  CRANMER. Amen.\n  KING. My noble gossips, y\'have been too prodigal;\n    I thank ye heartily. So shall this lady,\n    When she has so much English.\n  CRANMER. Let me speak, sir,\n    For heaven now bids me; and the words I utter\n    Let none think flattery, for they\'ll find \'em truth.\n    This royal infant-heaven still move about her!-  \n    Though in her cradle, yet now promises\n    Upon this land a thousand blessings,\n    Which time shall bring to ripeness. She shall be-\n    But few now living can behold that goodness-\n    A pattern to all princes living with her,\n    And all that shall succeed. Saba was never\n    More covetous of wisdom and fair virtue\n    Than this pure soul shall be. All princely graces\n    That mould up such a mighty piece as this is,\n    With all the virtues that attend the good,\n    Shall still be doubled on her. Truth shall nurse her,\n    Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her;\n    She shall be lov\'d and fear\'d. Her own shall bless her:\n    Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn,\n    And hang their heads with sorrow. Good grows with her;\n    In her days every man shall eat in safety\n    Under his own vine what he plants, and sing\n    The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours.\n    God shall be truly known; and those about her\n    From her shall read the perfect ways of honour,  \n    And by those claim their greatness, not by blood.\n    Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when\n    The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix\n    Her ashes new create another heir\n    As great in admiration as herself,\n    So shall she leave her blessedness to one-\n    When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness-\n    Who from the sacred ashes of her honour\n    Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was,\n    And so stand fix\'d. Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror,\n    That were the servants to this chosen infant,\n    Shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him;\n    Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,\n    His honour and the greatness of his name\n    Shall be, and make new nations; he shall flourish,\n    And like a mountain cedar reach his branches\n    To all the plains about him; our children\'s children\n    Shall see this and bless heaven.\n  KING. Thou speakest wonders.\n  CRANMER. She shall be, to the happiness of England,  \n    An aged princess; many days shall see her,\n    And yet no day without a deed to crown it.\n    Would I had known no more! But she must die-\n    She must, the saints must have her-yet a virgin;\n    A most unspotted lily shall she pass\n    To th\' ground, and all the world shall mourn her.\n  KING. O Lord Archbishop,\n    Thou hast made me now a man; never before\n    This happy child did I get anything.\n    This oracle of comfort has so pleas\'d me\n    That when I am in heaven I shall desire\n    To see what this child does, and praise my Maker.\n    I thank ye all. To you, my good Lord Mayor,\n    And you, good brethren, I am much beholding;\n    I have receiv\'d much honour by your presence,\n    And ye shall find me thankful. Lead the way, lords;\n    Ye must all see the Queen, and she must thank ye,\n    She will be sick else. This day, no man think\n    Has business at his house; for all shall stay.\n    This little one shall make it holiday.                     Exeunt\n\nKING_HENRY_VIII|EPILOGUE\n              THE EPILOGUE.\n\n    \'Tis ten to one this play can never please\n    All that are here. Some come to take their ease\n    And sleep an act or two; but those, we fear,\n    W\'have frighted with our trumpets; so, \'tis clear,\n    They\'ll say \'tis nought; others to hear the city\n    Abus\'d extremely, and to cry \'That\'s witty!\'\n    Which we have not done neither; that, I fear,\n    All the expected good w\'are like to hear\n    For this play at this time is only in\n    The merciful construction of good women;\n    For such a one we show\'d \'em. If they smile\n    And say \'twill do, I know within a while\n    All the best men are ours; for \'tis ill hap\n    If they hold when their ladies bid \'em clap.\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1597\n\nKING JOHN\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\n    KING JOHN\n    PRINCE HENRY, his son\n    ARTHUR, DUKE OF BRITAINE, son of Geffrey, late Duke of\n      Britaine, the elder brother of King John\n    EARL OF PEMBROKE\n    EARL OF ESSEX\n    EARL OF SALISBURY\n    LORD BIGOT\n    HUBERT DE BURGH\n    ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE, son to Sir Robert Faulconbridge\n    PHILIP THE BASTARD, his half-brother\n    JAMES GURNEY, servant to Lady Faulconbridge\n    PETER OF POMFRET, a prophet\n\n    KING PHILIP OF FRANCE\n    LEWIS, the Dauphin\n    LYMOGES, Duke of Austria\n    CARDINAL PANDULPH, the Pope\'s legate\n    MELUN, a French lord\n    CHATILLON, ambassador from France to King John  \n\n    QUEEN ELINOR, widow of King Henry II and mother to\n      King John\n    CONSTANCE, Mother to Arthur\n    BLANCH OF SPAIN, daughter to the King of Castile\n      and niece to King John\n    LADY FAULCONBRIDGE, widow of Sir Robert Faulconbridge\n\n    Lords, Citizens of Angiers, Sheriff, Heralds, Officers,\n      Soldiers, Executioners, Messengers, Attendants\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nEngland and France\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE 1\n\nKING JOHN\'s palace\n\nEnter KING JOHN, QUEEN ELINOR, PEMBROKE, ESSEX, SALISBURY, and others,\nwith CHATILLON\n\n  KING JOHN. Now, say, Chatillon, what would France with us?\n  CHATILLON. Thus, after greeting, speaks the King of France\n    In my behaviour to the majesty,\n    The borrowed majesty, of England here.\n  ELINOR. A strange beginning- \'borrowed majesty\'!\n  KING JOHN. Silence, good mother; hear the embassy.\n  CHATILLON. Philip of France, in right and true behalf\n    Of thy deceased brother Geffrey\'s son,\n    Arthur Plantagenet, lays most lawful claim\n    To this fair island and the territories,\n    To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine,\n    Desiring thee to lay aside the sword\n    Which sways usurpingly these several titles,\n    And put the same into young Arthur\'s hand,\n    Thy nephew and right royal sovereign.  \n  KING JOHN. What follows if we disallow of this?\n  CHATILLON. The proud control of fierce and bloody war,\n    To enforce these rights so forcibly withheld.\n  KING JOHN. Here have we war for war, and blood for blood,\n    Controlment for controlment- so answer France.\n  CHATILLON. Then take my king\'s defiance from my mouth-\n    The farthest limit of my embassy.\n  KING JOHN. Bear mine to him, and so depart in peace;\n    Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France;\n    For ere thou canst report I will be there,\n    The thunder of my cannon shall be heard.\n    So hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath\n    And sullen presage of your own decay.\n    An honourable conduct let him have-\n    Pembroke, look to \'t. Farewell, Chatillon.\n                                        Exeunt CHATILLON and PEMBROKE\n  ELINOR. What now, my son! Have I not ever said\n    How that ambitious Constance would not cease\n    Till she had kindled France and all the world\n    Upon the right and party of her son?  \n    This might have been prevented and made whole\n    With very easy arguments of love,\n    Which now the manage of two kingdoms must\n    With fearful bloody issue arbitrate.\n  KING JOHN. Our strong possession and our right for us!\n  ELINOR. Your strong possession much more than your right,\n    Or else it must go wrong with you and me;\n    So much my conscience whispers in your ear,\n    Which none but heaven and you and I shall hear.\n\n                  Enter a SHERIFF\n\n  ESSEX. My liege, here is the strangest controversy\n    Come from the country to be judg\'d by you\n    That e\'er I heard. Shall I produce the men?\n  KING JOHN. Let them approach.                          Exit SHERIFF\n    Our abbeys and our priories shall pay\n    This expedition\'s charge.\n\n     Enter ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE and PHILIP, his bastard  \n                     brother\n\n    What men are you?\n  BASTARD. Your faithful subject I, a gentleman\n    Born in Northamptonshire, and eldest son,\n    As I suppose, to Robert Faulconbridge-\n    A soldier by the honour-giving hand\n    Of Coeur-de-lion knighted in the field.\n  KING JOHN. What art thou?\n  ROBERT. The son and heir to that same Faulconbridge.\n  KING JOHN. Is that the elder, and art thou the heir?\n    You came not of one mother then, it seems.\n  BASTARD. Most certain of one mother, mighty king-\n    That is well known- and, as I think, one father;\n    But for the certain knowledge of that truth\n    I put you o\'er to heaven and to my mother.\n    Of that I doubt, as all men\'s children may.\n  ELINOR. Out on thee, rude man! Thou dost shame thy mother,\n    And wound her honour with this diffidence.\n  BASTARD. I, madam? No, I have no reason for it-  \n    That is my brother\'s plea, and none of mine;\n    The which if he can prove, \'a pops me out\n    At least from fair five hundred pound a year.\n    Heaven guard my mother\'s honour and my land!\n  KING JOHN. A good blunt fellow. Why, being younger born,\n    Doth he lay claim to thine inheritance?\n  BASTARD. I know not why, except to get the land.\n    But once he slander\'d me with bastardy;\n    But whe\'er I be as true begot or no,\n    That still I lay upon my mother\'s head;\n    But that I am as well begot, my liege-\n    Fair fall the bones that took the pains for me!-\n    Compare our faces and be judge yourself.\n    If old Sir Robert did beget us both\n    And were our father, and this son like him-\n    O old Sir Robert, father, on my knee\n    I give heaven thanks I was not like to thee!\n  KING JOHN. Why, what a madcap hath heaven lent us here!\n  ELINOR. He hath a trick of Coeur-de-lion\'s face;\n    The accent of his tongue affecteth him.  \n    Do you not read some tokens of my son\n    In the large composition of this man?\n  KING JOHN. Mine eye hath well examined his parts\n    And finds them perfect Richard. Sirrah, speak,\n    What doth move you to claim your brother\'s land?\n  BASTARD. Because he hath a half-face, like my father.\n    With half that face would he have all my land:\n    A half-fac\'d groat five hundred pound a year!\n  ROBERT. My gracious liege, when that my father liv\'d,\n    Your brother did employ my father much-\n  BASTARD. Well, sir, by this you cannot get my land:\n    Your tale must be how he employ\'d my mother.\n  ROBERT. And once dispatch\'d him in an embassy\n    To Germany, there with the Emperor\n    To treat of high affairs touching that time.\n    Th\' advantage of his absence took the King,\n    And in the meantime sojourn\'d at my father\'s;\n    Where how he did prevail I shame to speak-\n    But truth is truth: large lengths of seas and shores\n    Between my father and my mother lay,  \n    As I have heard my father speak himself,\n    When this same lusty gentleman was got.\n    Upon his death-bed he by will bequeath\'d\n    His lands to me, and took it on his death\n    That this my mother\'s son was none of his;\n    And if he were, he came into the world\n    Full fourteen weeks before the course of time.\n    Then, good my liege, let me have what is mine,\n    My father\'s land, as was my father\'s will.\n  KING JOHN. Sirrah, your brother is legitimate:\n    Your father\'s wife did after wedlock bear him,\n    And if she did play false, the fault was hers;\n    Which fault lies on the hazards of all husbands\n    That marry wives. Tell me, how if my brother,\n    Who, as you say, took pains to get this son,\n    Had of your father claim\'d this son for his?\n    In sooth, good friend, your father might have kept\n    This calf, bred from his cow, from all the world;\n    In sooth, he might; then, if he were my brother\'s,\n    My brother might not claim him; nor your father,  \n    Being none of his, refuse him. This concludes:\n    My mother\'s son did get your father\'s heir;\n    Your father\'s heir must have your father\'s land.\n  ROBERT. Shall then my father\'s will be of no force\n    To dispossess that child which is not his?\n  BASTARD. Of no more force to dispossess me, sir,\n    Than was his will to get me, as I think.\n  ELINOR. Whether hadst thou rather be a Faulconbridge,\n    And like thy brother, to enjoy thy land,\n    Or the reputed son of Coeur-de-lion,\n    Lord of thy presence and no land beside?\n  BASTARD. Madam, an if my brother had my shape\n    And I had his, Sir Robert\'s his, like him;\n    And if my legs were two such riding-rods,\n    My arms such eel-skins stuff\'d, my face so thin\n    That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose\n    Lest men should say \'Look where three-farthings goes!\'\n    And, to his shape, were heir to all this land-\n    Would I might never stir from off this place,\n    I would give it every foot to have this face!  \n    I would not be Sir Nob in any case.\n  ELINOR. I like thee well. Wilt thou forsake thy fortune,\n    Bequeath thy land to him and follow me?\n    I am a soldier and now bound to France.\n  BASTARD. Brother, take you my land, I\'ll take my chance.\n    Your face hath got five hundred pound a year,\n    Yet sell your face for fivepence and \'tis dear.\n    Madam, I\'ll follow you unto the death.\n  ELINOR. Nay, I would have you go before me thither.\n  BASTARD. Our country manners give our betters way.\n  KING JOHN. What is thy name?\n  BASTARD. Philip, my liege, so is my name begun:\n    Philip, good old Sir Robert\'s wife\'s eldest son.\n  KING JOHN. From henceforth bear his name whose form thou bearest:\n    Kneel thou down Philip, but rise more great-\n    Arise Sir Richard and Plantagenet.\n  BASTARD. Brother by th\' mother\'s side, give me your hand;\n    My father gave me honour, yours gave land.\n    Now blessed be the hour, by night or day,\n    When I was got, Sir Robert was away!  \n  ELINOR. The very spirit of Plantagenet!\n    I am thy grandam, Richard: call me so.\n  BASTARD. Madam, by chance, but not by truth; what though?\n    Something about, a little from the right,\n    In at the window, or else o\'er the hatch;\n    Who dares not stir by day must walk by night;\n    And have is have, however men do catch.\n    Near or far off, well won is still well shot;\n    And I am I, howe\'er I was begot.\n  KING JOHN. Go, Faulconbridge; now hast thou thy desire:\n    A landless knight makes thee a landed squire.\n    Come, madam, and come, Richard, we must speed\n    For France, for France, for it is more than need.\n  BASTARD. Brother, adieu. Good fortune come to thee!\n    For thou wast got i\' th\' way of honesty.\n                                           Exeunt all but the BASTARD\n    A foot of honour better than I was;\n    But many a many foot of land the worse.\n    Well, now can I make any Joan a lady.\n    \'Good den, Sir Richard!\'-\'God-a-mercy, fellow!\'  \n    And if his name be George, I\'ll call him Peter;\n    For new-made honour doth forget men\'s names:\n    \'Tis too respective and too sociable\n    For your conversion. Now your traveller,\n    He and his toothpick at my worship\'s mess-\n    And when my knightly stomach is suffic\'d,\n    Why then I suck my teeth and catechize\n    My picked man of countries: \'My dear sir,\'\n    Thus leaning on mine elbow I begin\n    \'I shall beseech you\'-That is question now;\n    And then comes answer like an Absey book:\n    \'O sir,\' says answer \'at your best command,\n    At your employment, at your service, sir!\'\n    \'No, sir,\' says question \'I, sweet sir, at yours.\'\n    And so, ere answer knows what question would,\n    Saving in dialogue of compliment,\n    And talking of the Alps and Apennines,\n    The Pyrenean and the river Po-\n    It draws toward supper in conclusion so.\n    But this is worshipful society,  \n    And fits the mounting spirit like myself;\n    For he is but a bastard to the time\n    That doth not smack of observation-\n    And so am I, whether I smack or no;\n    And not alone in habit and device,\n    Exterior form, outward accoutrement,\n    But from the inward motion to deliver\n    Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age\'s tooth;\n    Which, though I will not practise to deceive,\n    Yet, to avoid deceit, I mean to learn;\n    For it shall strew the footsteps of my rising.\n    But who comes in such haste in riding-robes?\n    What woman-post is this? Hath she no husband\n    That will take pains to blow a horn before her?\n\n      Enter LADY FAULCONBRIDGE, and JAMES GURNEY\n\n    O me, \'tis my mother! How now, good lady!\n    What brings you here to court so hastily?\n  LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. Where is that slave, thy brother?  \n      Where is he\n    That holds in chase mine honour up and down?\n  BASTARD. My brother Robert, old Sir Robert\'s son?\n    Colbrand the giant, that same mighty man?\n    Is it Sir Robert\'s son that you seek so?\n  LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. Sir Robert\'s son! Ay, thou unreverend boy,\n    Sir Robert\'s son! Why scorn\'st thou at Sir Robert?\n    He is Sir Robert\'s son, and so art thou.\n  BASTARD. James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile?\n  GURNEY. Good leave, good Philip.\n  BASTARD. Philip-Sparrow! James,\n    There\'s toys abroad-anon I\'ll tell thee more.\n                                                          Exit GURNEY\n    Madam, I was not old Sir Robert\'s son;\n    Sir Robert might have eat his part in me\n    Upon Good Friday, and ne\'er broke his fast.\n    Sir Robert could do: well-marry, to confess-\n    Could he get me? Sir Robert could not do it:\n    We know his handiwork. Therefore, good mother,\n    To whom am I beholding for these limbs?  \n    Sir Robert never holp to make this leg.\n  LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. Hast thou conspired with thy brother too,\n    That for thine own gain shouldst defend mine honour?\n    What means this scorn, thou most untoward knave?\n  BASTARD. Knight, knight, good mother, Basilisco-like.\n    What! I am dubb\'d; I have it on my shoulder.\n    But, mother, I am not Sir Robert\'s son:\n    I have disclaim\'d Sir Robert and my land;\n    Legitimation, name, and all is gone.\n    Then, good my mother, let me know my father-\n    Some proper man, I hope. Who was it, mother?\n  LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. Hast thou denied thyself a Faulconbridge?\n  BASTARD. As faithfully as I deny the devil.\n  LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. King Richard Coeur-de-lion was thy father.\n    By long and vehement suit I was seduc\'d\n    To make room for him in my husband\'s bed.\n    Heaven lay not my transgression to my charge!\n    Thou art the issue of my dear offence,\n    Which was so strongly urg\'d past my defence.\n  BASTARD. Now, by this light, were I to get again,  \n    Madam, I would not wish a better father.\n    Some sins do bear their privilege on earth,\n    And so doth yours: your fault was not your folly;\n    Needs must you lay your heart at his dispose,\n    Subjected tribute to commanding love,\n    Against whose fury and unmatched force\n    The aweless lion could not wage the fight\n    Nor keep his princely heart from Richard\'s hand.\n    He that perforce robs lions of their hearts\n    May easily win a woman\'s. Ay, my mother,\n    With all my heart I thank thee for my father!\n    Who lives and dares but say thou didst not well\n    When I was got, I\'ll send his soul to hell.\n    Come, lady, I will show thee to my kin;\n    And they shall say when Richard me begot,\n    If thou hadst said him nay, it had been sin.\n    Who says it was, he lies; I say \'twas not.                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 1\n\nFrance. Before Angiers\n\nEnter, on one side, AUSTRIA and forces; on the other, KING PHILIP OF FRANCE,\nLEWIS the Dauphin, CONSTANCE, ARTHUR, and forces\n\n  KING PHILIP. Before Angiers well met, brave Austria.\n    Arthur, that great forerunner of thy blood,\n    Richard, that robb\'d the lion of his heart\n    And fought the holy wars in Palestine,\n    By this brave duke came early to his grave;\n    And for amends to his posterity,\n    At our importance hither is he come\n    To spread his colours, boy, in thy behalf;\n    And to rebuke the usurpation\n    Of thy unnatural uncle, English John.\n    Embrace him, love him, give him welcome hither.\n  ARTHUR. God shall forgive you Coeur-de-lion\'s death\n    The rather that you give his offspring life,\n    Shadowing their right under your wings of war.\n    I give you welcome with a powerless hand,  \n    But with a heart full of unstained love;\n    Welcome before the gates of Angiers, Duke.\n  KING PHILIP. A noble boy! Who would not do thee right?\n  AUSTRIA. Upon thy cheek lay I this zealous kiss\n    As seal to this indenture of my love:\n    That to my home I will no more return\n    Till Angiers and the right thou hast in France,\n    Together with that pale, that white-fac\'d shore,\n    Whose foot spurns back the ocean\'s roaring tides\n    And coops from other lands her islanders-\n    Even till that England, hedg\'d in with the main,\n    That water-walled bulwark, still secure\n    And confident from foreign purposes-\n    Even till that utmost corner of the west\n    Salute thee for her king. Till then, fair boy,\n    Will I not think of home, but follow arms.\n  CONSTANCE. O, take his mother\'s thanks, a widow\'s thanks,\n    Till your strong hand shall help to give him strength\n    To make a more requital to your love!\n  AUSTRIA. The peace of heaven is theirs that lift their swords  \n    In such a just and charitable war.\n  KING PHILIP. Well then, to work! Our cannon shall be bent\n    Against the brows of this resisting town;\n    Call for our chiefest men of discipline,\n    To cull the plots of best advantages.\n    We\'ll lay before this town our royal bones,\n    Wade to the market-place in Frenchmen\'s blood,\n    But we will make it subject to this boy.\n  CONSTANCE. Stay for an answer to your embassy,\n    Lest unadvis\'d you stain your swords with blood;\n    My Lord Chatillon may from England bring\n    That right in peace which here we urge in war,\n    And then we shall repent each drop of blood\n    That hot rash haste so indirectly shed.\n\n                  Enter CHATILLON\n\n  KING PHILIP. A wonder, lady! Lo, upon thy wish,\n    Our messenger Chatillon is arriv\'d.\n    What England says, say briefly, gentle lord;  \n    We coldly pause for thee. Chatillon, speak.\n  CHATILLON. Then turn your forces from this paltry siege\n    And stir them up against a mightier task.\n    England, impatient of your just demands,\n    Hath put himself in arms. The adverse winds,\n    Whose leisure I have stay\'d, have given him time\n    To land his legions all as soon as I;\n    His marches are expedient to this town,\n    His forces strong, his soldiers confident.\n    With him along is come the mother-queen,\n    An Ate, stirring him to blood and strife;\n    With her the Lady Blanch of Spain;\n    With them a bastard of the king\'s deceas\'d;\n    And all th\' unsettled humours of the land-\n    Rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntaries,\n    With ladies\' faces and fierce dragons\' spleens-\n    Have sold their fortunes at their native homes,\n    Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs,\n    To make a hazard of new fortunes here.\n    In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits  \n    Than now the English bottoms have waft o\'er\n    Did never float upon the swelling tide\n    To do offence and scathe in Christendom.             [Drum beats]\n    The interruption of their churlish drums\n    Cuts off more circumstance: they are at hand;\n    To parley or to fight, therefore prepare.\n  KING PHILIP. How much unlook\'d for is this expedition!\n  AUSTRIA. By how much unexpected, by so much\n    We must awake endeavour for defence,\n    For courage mounteth with occasion.\n    Let them be welcome then; we are prepar\'d.\n\n       Enter KING JOHN, ELINOR, BLANCH, the BASTARD,\n                 PEMBROKE, and others\n\n  KING JOHN. Peace be to France, if France in peace permit\n    Our just and lineal entrance to our own!\n    If not, bleed France, and peace ascend to heaven,\n    Whiles we, God\'s wrathful agent, do correct\n    Their proud contempt that beats His peace to heaven!  \n  KING PHILIP. Peace be to England, if that war return\n    From France to England, there to live in peace!\n    England we love, and for that England\'s sake\n    With burden of our armour here we sweat.\n    This toil of ours should be a work of thine;\n    But thou from loving England art so far\n    That thou hast under-wrought his lawful king,\n    Cut off the sequence of posterity,\n    Outfaced infant state, and done a rape\n    Upon the maiden virtue of the crown.\n    Look here upon thy brother Geffrey\'s face:\n    These eyes, these brows, were moulded out of his;\n    This little abstract doth contain that large\n    Which died in Geffrey, and the hand of time\n    Shall draw this brief into as huge a volume.\n    That Geffrey was thy elder brother born,\n    And this his son; England was Geffrey\'s right,\n    And this is Geffrey\'s. In the name of God,\n    How comes it then that thou art call\'d a king,\n    When living blood doth in these temples beat  \n    Which owe the crown that thou o\'er-masterest?\n  KING JOHN. From whom hast thou this great commission, France,\n    To draw my answer from thy articles?\n  KING PHILIP. From that supernal judge that stirs good thoughts\n    In any breast of strong authority\n    To look into the blots and stains of right.\n    That judge hath made me guardian to this boy,\n    Under whose warrant I impeach thy wrong,\n    And by whose help I mean to chastise it.\n  KING JOHN. Alack, thou dost usurp authority.\n  KING PHILIP. Excuse it is to beat usurping down.\n  ELINOR. Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?\n  CONSTANCE. Let me make answer: thy usurping son.\n  ELINOR. Out, insolent! Thy bastard shall be king,\n    That thou mayst be a queen and check the world!\n  CONSTANCE. My bed was ever to thy son as true\n    As thine was to thy husband; and this boy\n    Liker in feature to his father Geffrey\n    Than thou and John in manners-being as Eke\n    As rain to water, or devil to his dam.  \n    My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think\n    His father never was so true begot;\n    It cannot be, an if thou wert his mother.\n  ELINOR. There\'s a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.\n  CONSTANCE. There\'s a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee.\n  AUSTRIA. Peace!\n  BASTARD. Hear the crier.\n  AUSTRIA. What the devil art thou?\n  BASTARD. One that will play the devil, sir, with you,\n    An \'a may catch your hide and you alone.\n    You are the hare of whom the proverb goes,\n    Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard;\n    I\'ll smoke your skin-coat an I catch you right;\n    Sirrah, look to \'t; i\' faith I will, i\' faith.\n  BLANCH. O, well did he become that lion\'s robe\n    That did disrobe the lion of that robe!\n  BASTARD. It lies as sightly on the back of him\n    As great Alcides\' shows upon an ass;\n    But, ass, I\'ll take that burden from your back,\n    Or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack.  \n  AUSTRIA. What cracker is this same that deafs our ears\n    With this abundance of superfluous breath?\n    King Philip, determine what we shall do straight.\n  KING PHILIP. Women and fools, break off your conference.\n    King John, this is the very sum of all:\n    England and Ireland, Anjou, Touraine, Maine,\n    In right of Arthur, do I claim of thee;\n    Wilt thou resign them and lay down thy arms?\n  KING JOHN. My life as soon. I do defy thee, France.\n    Arthur of Britaine, yield thee to my hand,\n    And out of my dear love I\'ll give thee more\n    Than e\'er the coward hand of France can win.\n    Submit thee, boy.\n  ELINOR. Come to thy grandam, child.\n  CONSTANCE. Do, child, go to it grandam, child;\n    Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will\n    Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig.\n    There\'s a good grandam!\n  ARTHUR. Good my mother, peace!\n    I would that I were low laid in my grave:  \n    I am not worth this coil that\'s made for me.\n  ELINOR. His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps.\n  CONSTANCE. Now shame upon you, whe\'er she does or no!\n    His grandam\'s wrongs, and not his mother\'s shames,\n    Draws those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes,\n    Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee;\n    Ay, with these crystal beads heaven shall be brib\'d\n    To do him justice and revenge on you.\n  ELINOR. Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!\n  CONSTANCE. Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth,\n    Call not me slanderer! Thou and thine usurp\n    The dominations, royalties, and rights,\n    Of this oppressed boy; this is thy eldest son\'s son,\n    Infortunate in nothing but in thee.\n    Thy sins are visited in this poor child;\n    The canon of the law is laid on him,\n    Being but the second generation\n    Removed from thy sin-conceiving womb.\n  KING JOHN. Bedlam, have done.\n  CONSTANCE. I have but this to say-  \n    That he is not only plagued for her sin,\n    But God hath made her sin and her the plague\n    On this removed issue, plagued for her\n    And with her plague; her sin his injury,\n    Her injury the beadle to her sin;\n    All punish\'d in the person of this child,\n    And all for her-a plague upon her!\n  ELINOR. Thou unadvised scold, I can produce\n    A will that bars the title of thy son.\n  CONSTANCE. Ay, who doubts that? A will, a wicked will;\n    A woman\'s will; a cank\'red grandam\'s will!\n  KING PHILIP. Peace, lady! pause, or be more temperate.\n    It ill beseems this presence to cry aim\n    To these ill-tuned repetitions.\n    Some trumpet summon hither to the walls\n    These men of Angiers; let us hear them speak\n    Whose title they admit, Arthur\'s or John\'s.\n\n      Trumpet sounds. Enter citizens upon the walls\n  \n  CITIZEN. Who is it that hath warn\'d us to the walls?\n  KING PHILIP. \'Tis France, for England.\n  KING JOHN. England for itself.\n    You men of Angiers, and my loving subjects-\n  KING PHILIP. You loving men of Angiers, Arthur\'s subjects,\n    Our trumpet call\'d you to this gentle parle-\n  KING JOHN. For our advantage; therefore hear us first.\n    These flags of France, that are advanced here\n    Before the eye and prospect of your town,\n    Have hither march\'d to your endamagement;\n    The cannons have their bowels full of wrath,\n    And ready mounted are they to spit forth\n    Their iron indignation \'gainst your walls;\n    All preparation for a bloody siege\n    And merciless proceeding by these French\n    Confront your city\'s eyes, your winking gates;\n    And but for our approach those sleeping stones\n    That as a waist doth girdle you about\n    By the compulsion of their ordinance\n    By this time from their fixed beds of lime  \n    Had been dishabited, and wide havoc made\n    For bloody power to rush upon your peace.\n    But on the sight of us your lawful king,\n    Who painfully with much expedient march\n    Have brought a countercheck before your gates,\n    To save unscratch\'d your city\'s threat\'ned cheeks-\n    Behold, the French amaz\'d vouchsafe a parle;\n    And now, instead of bullets wrapp\'d in fire,\n    To make a shaking fever in your walls,\n    They shoot but calm words folded up in smoke,\n    To make a faithless error in your cars;\n    Which trust accordingly, kind citizens,\n    And let us in-your King, whose labour\'d spirits,\n    Forwearied in this action of swift speed,\n    Craves harbourage within your city walls.\n  KING PHILIP. When I have said, make answer to us both.\n    Lo, in this right hand, whose protection\n    Is most divinely vow\'d upon the right\n    Of him it holds, stands young Plantagenet,\n    Son to the elder brother of this man,  \n    And king o\'er him and all that he enjoys;\n    For this down-trodden equity we tread\n    In warlike march these greens before your town,\n    Being no further enemy to you\n    Than the constraint of hospitable zeal\n    In the relief of this oppressed child\n    Religiously provokes. Be pleased then\n    To pay that duty which you truly owe\n    To him that owes it, namely, this young prince;\n    And then our arms, like to a muzzled bear,\n    Save in aspect, hath all offence seal\'d up;\n    Our cannons\' malice vainly shall be spent\n    Against th\' invulnerable clouds of heaven;\n    And with a blessed and unvex\'d retire,\n    With unhack\'d swords and helmets all unbruis\'d,\n    We will bear home that lusty blood again\n    Which here we came to spout against your town,\n    And leave your children, wives, and you, in peace.\n    But if you fondly pass our proffer\'d offer,\n    \'Tis not the roundure of your old-fac\'d walls  \n    Can hide you from our messengers of war,\n    Though all these English and their discipline\n    Were harbour\'d in their rude circumference.\n    Then tell us, shall your city call us lord\n    In that behalf which we have challeng\'d it;\n    Or shall we give the signal to our rage,\n    And stalk in blood to our possession?\n  CITIZEN. In brief: we are the King of England\'s subjects;\n    For him, and in his right, we hold this town.\n  KING JOHN. Acknowledge then the King, and let me in.\n  CITIZEN. That can we not; but he that proves the King,\n    To him will we prove loyal. Till that time\n    Have we ramm\'d up our gates against the world.\n  KING JOHN. Doth not the crown of England prove the King?\n    And if not that, I bring you witnesses:\n    Twice fifteen thousand hearts of England\'s breed-\n  BASTARD. Bastards and else.\n  KING JOHN. To verify our title with their lives.\n  KING PHILIP. As many and as well-born bloods as those-\n  BASTARD. Some bastards too.  \n  KING PHILIP. Stand in his face to contradict his claim.\n  CITIZEN. Till you compound whose right is worthiest,\n    We for the worthiest hold the right from both.\n  KING JOHN. Then God forgive the sin of all those souls\n    That to their everlasting residence,\n    Before the dew of evening fall shall fleet\n    In dreadful trial of our kingdom\'s king!\n  KING PHILIP. Amen, Amen! Mount, chevaliers; to arms!\n  BASTARD. Saint George, that swing\'d the dragon, and e\'er since\n    Sits on\'s horse back at mine hostess\' door,\n    Teach us some fence!  [To AUSTRIA]  Sirrah, were I at home,\n    At your den, sirrah, with your lioness,\n    I would set an ox-head to your lion\'s hide,\n    And make a monster of you.\n  AUSTRIA. Peace! no more.\n  BASTARD. O, tremble, for you hear the lion roar!\n  KING JOHN. Up higher to the plain, where we\'ll set forth\n    In best appointment all our regiments.\n  BASTARD. Speed then to take advantage of the field.\n  KING PHILIP. It shall be so; and at the other hill  \n    Command the rest to stand. God and our right!              Exeunt\n\n    Here, after excursions, enter the HERALD OF FRANCE,\n              with trumpets, to the gates\n\n  FRENCH HERALD. You men of Angiers, open wide your gates\n    And let young Arthur, Duke of Britaine, in,\n    Who by the hand of France this day hath made\n    Much work for tears in many an English mother,\n    Whose sons lie scattered on the bleeding ground;\n    Many a widow\'s husband grovelling lies,\n    Coldly embracing the discoloured earth;\n    And victory with little loss doth play\n    Upon the dancing banners of the French,\n    Who are at hand, triumphantly displayed,\n    To enter conquerors, and to proclaim\n    Arthur of Britaine England\'s King and yours.\n\n         Enter ENGLISH HERALD, with trumpet\n  \n  ENGLISH HERALD. Rejoice, you men of Angiers, ring your bells:\n    King John, your king and England\'s, doth approach,\n    Commander of this hot malicious day.\n    Their armours that march\'d hence so silver-bright\n    Hither return all gilt with Frenchmen\'s blood.\n    There stuck no plume in any English crest\n    That is removed by a staff of France;\n    Our colours do return in those same hands\n    That did display them when we first march\'d forth;\n    And like a jolly troop of huntsmen come\n    Our lusty English, all with purpled hands,\n    Dy\'d in the dying slaughter of their foes.\n    Open your gates and give the victors way.\n  CITIZEN. Heralds, from off our tow\'rs we might behold\n    From first to last the onset and retire\n    Of both your armies, whose equality\n    By our best eyes cannot be censured.\n    Blood hath bought blood, and blows have answer\'d blows;\n    Strength match\'d with strength, and power confronted power;\n    Both are alike, and both alike we like.  \n    One must prove greatest. While they weigh so even,\n    We hold our town for neither, yet for both.\n\n    Enter the two KINGS, with their powers, at several doors\n\n  KING JOHN. France, hast thou yet more blood to cast away?\n    Say, shall the current of our right run on?\n    Whose passage, vex\'d with thy impediment,\n    Shall leave his native channel and o\'erswell\n    With course disturb\'d even thy confining shores,\n    Unless thou let his silver water keep\n    A peaceful progress to the ocean.\n  KING PHILIP. England, thou hast not sav\'d one drop of blood\n    In this hot trial more than we of France;\n    Rather, lost more. And by this hand I swear,\n    That sways the earth this climate overlooks,\n    Before we will lay down our just-borne arms,\n    We\'ll put thee down, \'gainst whom these arms we bear,\n    Or add a royal number to the dead,\n    Gracing the scroll that tells of this war\'s loss  \n    With slaughter coupled to the name of kings.\n  BASTARD. Ha, majesty! how high thy glory tow\'rs\n    When the rich blood of kings is set on fire!\n    O, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel;\n    The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs;\n    And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men,\n    In undetermin\'d differences of kings.\n    Why stand these royal fronts amazed thus?\n    Cry \'havoc!\' kings; back to the stained field,\n    You equal potents, fiery kindled spirits!\n    Then let confusion of one part confirm\n    The other\'s peace. Till then, blows, blood, and death!\n  KING JOHN. Whose party do the townsmen yet admit?\n  KING PHILIP. Speak, citizens, for England; who\'s your king?\n  CITIZEN. The King of England, when we know the King.\n  KING PHILIP. Know him in us that here hold up his right.\n  KING JOHN. In us that are our own great deputy\n    And bear possession of our person here,\n    Lord of our presence, Angiers, and of you.\n  CITIZEN. A greater pow\'r than we denies all this;  \n    And till it be undoubted, we do lock\n    Our former scruple in our strong-barr\'d gates;\n    King\'d of our fears, until our fears, resolv\'d,\n    Be by some certain king purg\'d and depos\'d.\n  BASTARD. By heaven, these scroyles of Angiers flout you, kings,\n    And stand securely on their battlements\n    As in a theatre, whence they gape and point\n    At your industrious scenes and acts of death.\n    Your royal presences be rul\'d by me:\n    Do like the mutines of Jerusalem,\n    Be friends awhile, and both conjointly bend\n    Your sharpest deeds of malice on this town.\n    By east and west let France and England mount\n    Their battering cannon, charged to the mouths,\n    Till their soul-fearing clamours have brawl\'d down\n    The flinty ribs of this contemptuous city.\n    I\'d play incessantly upon these jades,\n    Even till unfenced desolation\n    Leave them as naked as the vulgar air.\n    That done, dissever your united strengths  \n    And part your mingled colours once again,\n    Turn face to face and bloody point to point;\n    Then in a moment Fortune shall cull forth\n    Out of one side her happy minion,\n    To whom in favour she shall give the day,\n    And kiss him with a glorious victory.\n    How like you this wild counsel, mighty states?\n    Smacks it not something of the policy?\n  KING JOHN. Now, by the sky that hangs above our heads,\n    I like it well. France, shall we knit our pow\'rs\n    And lay this Angiers even with the ground;\n    Then after fight who shall be king of it?\n  BASTARD. An if thou hast the mettle of a king,\n    Being wrong\'d as we are by this peevish town,\n    Turn thou the mouth of thy artillery,\n    As we will ours, against these saucy walls;\n    And when that we have dash\'d them to the ground,\n    Why then defy each other, and pell-mell\n    Make work upon ourselves, for heaven or hell.\n  KING PHILIP. Let it be so. Say, where will you assault?  \n  KING JOHN. We from the west will send destruction\n    Into this city\'s bosom.\n  AUSTRIA. I from the north.\n  KING PHILIP. Our thunder from the south\n    Shall rain their drift of bullets on this town.\n  BASTARD.  [Aside]  O prudent discipline! From north to south,\n    Austria and France shoot in each other\'s mouth.\n    I\'ll stir them to it.-Come, away, away!\n  CITIZEN. Hear us, great kings: vouchsafe awhile to stay,\n    And I shall show you peace and fair-fac\'d league;\n    Win you this city without stroke or wound;\n    Rescue those breathing lives to die in beds\n    That here come sacrifices for the field.\n    Persever not, but hear me, mighty kings.\n  KING JOHN. Speak on with favour; we are bent to hear.\n  CITIZEN. That daughter there of Spain, the Lady Blanch,\n    Is niece to England; look upon the years\n    Of Lewis the Dauphin and that lovely maid.\n    If lusty love should go in quest of beauty,\n    Where should he find it fairer than in Blanch?  \n    If zealous love should go in search of virtue,\n    Where should he find it purer than in Blanch?\n    If love ambitious sought a match of birth,\n    Whose veins bound richer blood than Lady Blanch?\n    Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth,\n    Is the young Dauphin every way complete-\n    If not complete of, say he is not she;\n    And she again wants nothing, to name want,\n    If want it be not that she is not he.\n    He is the half part of a blessed man,\n    Left to be finished by such as she;\n    And she a fair divided excellence,\n    Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.\n    O, two such silver currents, when they join,\n    Do glorify the banks that bound them in;\n    And two such shores to two such streams made one,\n    Two such controlling bounds, shall you be, Kings,\n    To these two princes, if you marry them.\n    This union shall do more than battery can\n    To our fast-closed gates; for at this match  \n    With swifter spleen than powder can enforce,\n    The mouth of passage shall we fling wide ope\n    And give you entrance; but without this match,\n    The sea enraged is not half so deaf,\n    Lions more confident, mountains and rocks\n    More free from motion-no, not Death himself\n    In mortal fury half so peremptory\n    As we to keep this city.\n  BASTARD. Here\'s a stay\n    That shakes the rotten carcass of old Death\n    Out of his rags! Here\'s a large mouth, indeed,\n    That spits forth death and mountains, rocks and seas;\n    Talks as familiarly of roaring lions\n    As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs!\n    What cannoneer begot this lusty blood?\n    He speaks plain cannon-fire, and smoke and bounce;\n    He gives the bastinado with his tongue;\n    Our ears are cudgell\'d; not a word of his\n    But buffets better than a fist of France.\n    Zounds! I was never so bethump\'d with words  \n    Since I first call\'d my brother\'s father dad.\n  ELINOR. Son, list to this conjunction, make this match;\n    Give with our niece a dowry large enough;\n    For by this knot thou shalt so surely tie\n    Thy now unsur\'d assurance to the crown\n    That yon green boy shall have no sun to ripe\n    The bloom that promiseth a mighty fruit.\n    I see a yielding in the looks of France;\n    Mark how they whisper. Urge them while their souls\n    Are capable of this ambition,\n    Lest zeal, now melted by the windy breath\n    Of soft petitions, pity, and remorse,\n    Cool and congeal again to what it was.\n  CITIZEN. Why answer not the double majesties\n    This friendly treaty of our threat\'ned town?\n  KING PHILIP. Speak England first, that hath been forward first\n    To speak unto this city: what say you?\n  KING JOHN. If that the Dauphin there, thy princely son,\n    Can in this book of beauty read \'I love,\'\n    Her dowry shall weigh equal with a queen;  \n    For Anjou, and fair Touraine, Maine, Poictiers,\n    And all that we upon this side the sea-\n    Except this city now by us besieg\'d-\n    Find liable to our crown and dignity,\n    Shall gild her bridal bed, and make her rich\n    In titles, honours, and promotions,\n    As she in beauty, education, blood,\n    Holds hand with any princess of the world.\n  KING PHILIP. What say\'st thou, boy? Look in the lady\'s face.\n  LEWIS. I do, my lord, and in her eye I find\n    A wonder, or a wondrous miracle,\n    The shadow of myself form\'d in her eye;\n    Which, being but the shadow of your son,\n    Becomes a sun, and makes your son a shadow.\n    I do protest I never lov\'d myself\n    Till now infixed I beheld myself\n    Drawn in the flattering table of her eye.\n                                               [Whispers with BLANCH]\n  BASTARD.  [Aside]  Drawn in the flattering table of her eye,\n    Hang\'d in the frowning wrinkle of her brow,  \n    And quarter\'d in her heart-he doth espy\n    Himself love\'s traitor. This is pity now,\n    That hang\'d and drawn and quarter\'d there should be\n    In such a love so vile a lout as he.\n  BLANCH. My uncle\'s will in this respect is mine.\n    If he see aught in you that makes him like,\n    That anything he sees which moves his liking\n    I can with ease translate it to my will;\n    Or if you will, to speak more properly,\n    I will enforce it eas\'ly to my love.\n    Further I will not flatter you, my lord,\n    That all I see in you is worthy love,\n    Than this: that nothing do I see in you-\n    Though churlish thoughts themselves should be your judge-\n    That I can find should merit any hate.\n  KING JOHN. What say these young ones? What say you, my niece?\n  BLANCH. That she is bound in honour still to do\n    What you in wisdom still vouchsafe to say.\n  KING JOHN. Speak then, Prince Dauphin; can you love this lady?\n  LEWIS. Nay, ask me if I can refrain from love;  \n    For I do love her most unfeignedly.\n  KING JOHN. Then do I give Volquessen, Touraine, Maine,\n    Poictiers, and Anjou, these five provinces,\n    With her to thee; and this addition more,\n    Full thirty thousand marks of English coin.\n    Philip of France, if thou be pleas\'d withal,\n    Command thy son and daughter to join hands.\n  KING PHILIP. It likes us well; young princes, close your hands.\n  AUSTRIA. And your lips too; for I am well assur\'d\n    That I did so when I was first assur\'d.\n  KING PHILIP. Now, citizens of Angiers, ope your gates,\n    Let in that amity which you have made;\n    For at Saint Mary\'s chapel presently\n    The rites of marriage shall be solemniz\'d.\n    Is not the Lady Constance in this troop?\n    I know she is not; for this match made up\n    Her presence would have interrupted much.\n    Where is she and her son? Tell me, who knows.\n  LEWIS. She is sad and passionate at your Highness\' tent.\n  KING PHILIP. And, by my faith, this league that we have made  \n    Will give her sadness very little cure.\n    Brother of England, how may we content\n    This widow lady? In her right we came;\n    Which we, God knows, have turn\'d another way,\n    To our own vantage.\n  KING JOHN. We will heal up all,\n    For we\'ll create young Arthur Duke of Britaine,\n    And Earl of Richmond; and this rich fair town\n    We make him lord of. Call the Lady Constance;\n    Some speedy messenger bid her repair\n    To our solemnity. I trust we shall,\n    If not fill up the measure of her will,\n    Yet in some measure satisfy her so\n    That we shall stop her exclamation.\n    Go we as well as haste will suffer us\n    To this unlook\'d-for, unprepared pomp.\n                                           Exeunt all but the BASTARD\n  BASTARD. Mad world! mad kings! mad composition!\n    John, to stop Arthur\'s tide in the whole,\n    Hath willingly departed with a part;  \n    And France, whose armour conscience buckled on,\n    Whom zeal and charity brought to the field\n    As God\'s own soldier, rounded in the ear\n    With that same purpose-changer, that sly devil,\n    That broker that still breaks the pate of faith,\n    That daily break-vow, he that wins of all,\n    Of kings, of beggars, old men, young men, maids,\n    Who having no external thing to lose\n    But the word \'maid,\' cheats the poor maid of that;\n    That smooth-fac\'d gentleman, tickling commodity,\n    Commodity, the bias of the world-\n    The world, who of itself is peised well,\n    Made to run even upon even ground,\n    Till this advantage, this vile-drawing bias,\n    This sway of motion, this commodity,\n    Makes it take head from all indifferency,\n    From all direction, purpose, course, intent-\n    And this same bias, this commodity,\n    This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word,\n    Clapp\'d on the outward eye of fickle France,  \n    Hath drawn him from his own determin\'d aid,\n    From a resolv\'d and honourable war,\n    To a most base and vile-concluded peace.\n    And why rail I on this commodity?\n    But for because he hath not woo\'d me yet;\n    Not that I have the power to clutch my hand\n    When his fair angels would salute my palm,\n    But for my hand, as unattempted yet,\n    Like a poor beggar raileth on the rich.\n    Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail\n    And say there is no sin but to be rich;\n    And being rich, my virtue then shall be\n    To say there is no vice but beggary.\n    Since kings break faith upon commodity,\n    Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee.                   Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 1.\n\nFrance. The FRENCH KING\'S camp\n\nEnter CONSTANCE, ARTHUR, and SALISBURY\n\n  CONSTANCE. Gone to be married! Gone to swear a peace!\n    False blood to false blood join\'d! Gone to be friends!\n    Shall Lewis have Blanch, and Blanch those provinces?\n    It is not so; thou hast misspoke, misheard;\n    Be well advis\'d, tell o\'er thy tale again.\n    It cannot be; thou dost but say \'tis so;\n    I trust I may not trust thee, for thy word\n    Is but the vain breath of a common man:\n    Believe me I do not believe thee, man;\n    I have a king\'s oath to the contrary.\n    Thou shalt be punish\'d for thus frighting me,\n    For I am sick and capable of fears,\n    Oppress\'d with wrongs, and therefore full of fears;\n    A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;\n    A woman, naturally born to fears;\n    And though thou now confess thou didst but jest,  \n    With my vex\'d spirits I cannot take a truce,\n    But they will quake and tremble all this day.\n    What dost thou mean by shaking of thy head?\n    Why dost thou look so sadly on my son?\n    What means that hand upon that breast of thine?\n    Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum,\n    Like a proud river peering o\'er his bounds?\n    Be these sad signs confirmers of thy words?\n    Then speak again-not all thy former tale,\n    But this one word, whether thy tale be true.\n  SALISBURY. As true as I believe you think them false\n    That give you cause to prove my saying true.\n  CONSTANCE. O, if thou teach me to believe this sorrow,\n    Teach thou this sorrow how to make me die;\n    And let belief and life encounter so\n    As doth the fury of two desperate men\n    Which in the very meeting fall and die!\n    Lewis marry Blanch! O boy, then where art thou?\n    France friend with England; what becomes of me?\n    Fellow, be gone: I cannot brook thy sight;  \n    This news hath made thee a most ugly man.\n  SALISBURY. What other harm have I, good lady, done\n    But spoke the harm that is by others done?\n  CONSTANCE. Which harm within itself so heinous is\n    As it makes harmful all that speak of it.\n  ARTHUR. I do beseech you, madam, be content.\n  CONSTANCE. If thou that bid\'st me be content wert grim,\n    Ugly, and sland\'rous to thy mother\'s womb,\n    Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains,\n    Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious,\n    Patch\'d with foul moles and eye-offending marks,\n    I would not care, I then would be content;\n    For then I should not love thee; no, nor thou\n    Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown.\n    But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy,\n    Nature and Fortune join\'d to make thee great:\n    Of Nature\'s gifts thou mayst with lilies boast,\n    And with the half-blown rose; but Fortune, O!\n    She is corrupted, chang\'d, and won from thee;\n    Sh\' adulterates hourly with thine uncle John,  \n    And with her golden hand hath pluck\'d on France\n    To tread down fair respect of sovereignty,\n    And made his majesty the bawd to theirs.\n    France is a bawd to Fortune and King John-\n    That strumpet Fortune, that usurping John!\n    Tell me, thou fellow, is not France forsworn?\n    Envenom him with words, or get thee gone\n    And leave those woes alone which I alone\n    Am bound to under-bear.\n  SALISBURY. Pardon me, madam,\n    I may not go without you to the kings.\n  CONSTANCE. Thou mayst, thou shalt; I will not go with thee;\n    I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,\n    For grief is proud, and makes his owner stoop.\n    To me, and to the state of my great grief,\n    Let kings assemble; for my grief\'s so great\n    That no supporter but the huge firm earth\n    Can hold it up.                     [Seats herself on the ground]\n    Here I and sorrows sit;\n    Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.  \n\n       Enter KING JOHN, KING PHILIP, LEWIS, BLANCH,\n       ELINOR, the BASTARD, AUSTRIA, and attendants\n\n  KING PHILIP. \'Tis true, fair daughter, and this blessed day\n    Ever in France shall be kept festival.\n    To solemnize this day the glorious sun\n    Stays in his course and plays the alchemist,\n    Turning with splendour of his precious eye\n    The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold.\n    The yearly course that brings this day about\n    Shall never see it but a holiday.\n  CONSTANCE.  [Rising]  A wicked day, and not a holy day!\n    What hath this day deserv\'d? what hath it done\n    That it in golden letters should be set\n    Among the high tides in the calendar?\n    Nay, rather turn this day out of the week,\n    This day of shame, oppression, perjury;\n    Or, if it must stand still, let wives with child\n    Pray that their burdens may not fall this day,  \n    Lest that their hopes prodigiously be cross\'d;\n    But on this day let seamen fear no wreck;\n    No bargains break that are not this day made;\n    This day, all things begun come to ill end,\n    Yea, faith itself to hollow falsehood change!\n  KING PHILIP. By heaven, lady, you shall have no cause\n    To curse the fair proceedings of this day.\n    Have I not pawn\'d to you my majesty?\n  CONSTANCE. You have beguil\'d me with a counterfeit\n    Resembling majesty, which, being touch\'d and tried,\n    Proves valueless; you are forsworn, forsworn;\n    You came in arms to spill mine enemies\' blood,\n    But now in arms you strengthen it with yours.\n    The grappling vigour and rough frown of war\n    Is cold in amity and painted peace,\n    And our oppression hath made up this league.\n    Arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjur\'d kings!\n    A widow cries: Be husband to me, heavens!\n    Let not the hours of this ungodly day\n    Wear out the day in peace; but, ere sunset,  \n    Set armed discord \'twixt these perjur\'d kings!\n    Hear me, O, hear me!\n  AUSTRIA. Lady Constance, peace!\n  CONSTANCE. War! war! no peace! Peace is to me a war.\n    O Lymoges! O Austria! thou dost shame\n    That bloody spoil. Thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward!\n    Thou little valiant, great in villainy!\n    Thou ever strong upon the stronger side!\n    Thou Fortune\'s champion that dost never fight\n    But when her humorous ladyship is by\n    To teach thee safety! Thou art perjur\'d too,\n    And sooth\'st up greatness. What a fool art thou,\n    A ramping fool, to brag and stamp and swear\n    Upon my party! Thou cold-blooded slave,\n    Hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side,\n    Been sworn my soldier, bidding me depend\n    Upon thy stars, thy fortune, and thy strength,\n    And dost thou now fall over to my foes?\n    Thou wear a lion\'s hide! Doff it for shame,\n    And hang a calf\'s-skin on those recreant limbs.  \n  AUSTRIA. O that a man should speak those words to me!\n  BASTARD. And hang a calf\'s-skin on those recreant limbs.\n  AUSTRIA. Thou dar\'st not say so, villain, for thy life.\n  BASTARD. And hang a calf\'s-skin on those recreant limbs.\n  KING JOHN. We like not this: thou dost forget thyself.\n\n                  Enter PANDULPH\n\n  KING PHILIP. Here comes the holy legate of the Pope.\n  PANDULPH. Hail, you anointed deputies of heaven!\n    To thee, King John, my holy errand is.\n    I Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal,\n    And from Pope Innocent the legate here,\n    Do in his name religiously demand\n    Why thou against the Church, our holy mother,\n    So wilfully dost spurn; and force perforce\n    Keep Stephen Langton, chosen Archbishop\n    Of Canterbury, from that holy see?\n    This, in our foresaid holy father\'s name,\n    Pope Innocent, I do demand of thee.  \n  KING JOHN. What earthly name to interrogatories\n    Can task the free breath of a sacred king?\n    Thou canst not, Cardinal, devise a name\n    So slight, unworthy, and ridiculous,\n    To charge me to an answer, as the Pope.\n    Tell him this tale, and from the mouth of England\n    Add thus much more, that no Italian priest\n    Shall tithe or toll in our dominions;\n    But as we under heaven are supreme head,\n    So, under Him that great supremacy,\n    Where we do reign we will alone uphold,\n    Without th\' assistance of a mortal hand.\n    So tell the Pope, all reverence set apart\n    To him and his usurp\'d authority.\n  KING PHILIP. Brother of England, you blaspheme in this.\n  KING JOHN. Though you and all the kings of Christendom\n    Are led so grossly by this meddling priest,\n    Dreading the curse that money may buy out,\n    And by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust,\n    Purchase corrupted pardon of a man,  \n    Who in that sale sells pardon from himself-\n    Though you and all the rest, so grossly led,\n    This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish;\n    Yet I alone, alone do me oppose\n    Against the Pope, and count his friends my foes.\n  PANDULPH. Then by the lawful power that I have\n    Thou shalt stand curs\'d and excommunicate;\n    And blessed shall he be that doth revolt\n    From his allegiance to an heretic;\n    And meritorious shall that hand be call\'d,\n    Canonized, and worshipp\'d as a saint,\n    That takes away by any secret course\n    Thy hateful life.\n  CONSTANCE. O, lawful let it be\n    That I have room with Rome to curse awhile!\n    Good father Cardinal, cry thou \'amen\'\n    To my keen curses; for without my wrong\n    There is no tongue hath power to curse him right.\n  PANDULPH. There\'s law and warrant, lady, for my curse.\n  CONSTANCE. And for mine too; when law can do no right,  \n    Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong;\n    Law cannot give my child his kingdom here,\n    For he that holds his kingdom holds the law;\n    Therefore, since law itself is perfect wrong,\n    How can the law forbid my tongue to curse?\n  PANDULPH. Philip of France, on peril of a curse,\n    Let go the hand of that arch-heretic,\n    And raise the power of France upon his head,\n    Unless he do submit himself to Rome.\n  ELINOR. Look\'st thou pale, France? Do not let go thy hand.\n  CONSTANCE. Look to that, devil, lest that France repent\n    And by disjoining hands hell lose a soul.\n  AUSTRIA. King Philip, listen to the Cardinal.\n  BASTARD. And hang a calf\'s-skin on his recreant limbs.\n  AUSTRIA. Well, ruffian, I must pocket up these wrongs,\n    Because-\n  BASTARD. Your breeches best may carry them.\n  KING JOHN. Philip, what say\'st thou to the Cardinal?\n  CONSTANCE. What should he say, but as the Cardinal?\n  LEWIS. Bethink you, father; for the difference  \n    Is purchase of a heavy curse from Rome\n    Or the light loss of England for a friend.\n    Forgo the easier.\n  BLANCH. That\'s the curse of Rome.\n  CONSTANCE. O Lewis, stand fast! The devil tempts thee here\n    In likeness of a new untrimmed bride.\n  BLANCH. The Lady Constance speaks not from her faith,\n    But from her need.\n  CONSTANCE. O, if thou grant my need,\n    Which only lives but by the death of faith,\n    That need must needs infer this principle-\n    That faith would live again by death of need.\n    O then, tread down my need, and faith mounts up:\n    Keep my need up, and faith is trodden down!\n  KING JOHN. The King is mov\'d, and answers not to this.\n  CONSTANCE. O be remov\'d from him, and answer well!\n  AUSTRIA. Do so, King Philip; hang no more in doubt.\n  BASTARD. Hang nothing but a calf\'s-skin, most sweet lout.\n  KING PHILIP. I am perplex\'d and know not what to say.\n  PANDULPH. What canst thou say but will perplex thee more,  \n    If thou stand excommunicate and curs\'d?\n  KING PHILIP. Good reverend father, make my person yours,\n    And tell me how you would bestow yourself.\n    This royal hand and mine are newly knit,\n    And the conjunction of our inward souls\n    Married in league, coupled and link\'d together\n    With all religious strength of sacred vows;\n    The latest breath that gave the sound of words\n    Was deep-sworn faith, peace, amity, true love,\n    Between our kingdoms and our royal selves;\n    And even before this truce, but new before,\n    No longer than we well could wash our hands,\n    To clap this royal bargain up of peace,\n    Heaven knows, they were besmear\'d and overstain\'d\n    With slaughter\'s pencil, where revenge did paint\n    The fearful difference of incensed kings.\n    And shall these hands, so lately purg\'d of blood,\n    So newly join\'d in love, so strong in both,\n    Unyoke this seizure and this kind regreet?\n    Play fast and loose with faith? so jest with heaven,  \n    Make such unconstant children of ourselves,\n    As now again to snatch our palm from palm,\n    Unswear faith sworn, and on the marriage-bed\n    Of smiling peace to march a bloody host,\n    And make a riot on the gentle brow\n    Of true sincerity? O, holy sir,\n    My reverend father, let it not be so!\n    Out of your grace, devise, ordain, impose,\n    Some gentle order; and then we shall be blest\n    To do your pleasure, and continue friends.\n  PANDULPH. All form is formless, order orderless,\n    Save what is opposite to England\'s love.\n    Therefore, to arms! be champion of our church,\n    Or let the church, our mother, breathe her curse-\n    A mother\'s curse-on her revolting son.\n    France, thou mayst hold a serpent by the tongue,\n    A chafed lion by the mortal paw,\n    A fasting tiger safer by the tooth,\n    Than keep in peace that hand which thou dost hold.\n  KING PHILIP. I may disjoin my hand, but not my faith.  \n  PANDULPH. So mak\'st thou faith an enemy to faith;\n    And like. a civil war set\'st oath to oath.\n    Thy tongue against thy tongue. O, let thy vow\n    First made to heaven, first be to heaven perform\'d,\n    That is, to be the champion of our Church.\n    What since thou swor\'st is sworn against thyself\n    And may not be performed by thyself,\n    For that which thou hast sworn to do amiss\n    Is not amiss when it is truly done;\n    And being not done, where doing tends to ill,\n    The truth is then most done not doing it;\n    The better act of purposes mistook\n    Is to mistake again; though indirect,\n    Yet indirection thereby grows direct,\n    And falsehood cures, as fire cools fire\n    Within the scorched veins of one new-burn\'d.\n    It is religion that doth make vows kept;\n    But thou hast sworn against religion\n    By what thou swear\'st against the thing thou swear\'st,\n    And mak\'st an oath the surety for thy truth  \n    Against an oath; the truth thou art unsure\n    To swear swears only not to be forsworn;\n    Else what a mockery should it be to swear!\n    But thou dost swear only to be forsworn;\n    And most forsworn to keep what thou dost swear.\n    Therefore thy later vows against thy first\n    Is in thyself rebellion to thyself;\n    And better conquest never canst thou make\n    Than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts\n    Against these giddy loose suggestions;\n    Upon which better part our pray\'rs come in,\n    If thou vouchsafe them. But if not, then know\n    The peril of our curses fight on thee\n    So heavy as thou shalt not shake them off,\n    But in despair die under the black weight.\n  AUSTRIA. Rebellion, flat rebellion!\n  BASTARD. Will\'t not be?\n    Will not a calf\'s-skin stop that mouth of thine?\n  LEWIS. Father, to arms!\n  BLANCH. Upon thy wedding-day?  \n    Against the blood that thou hast married?\n    What, shall our feast be kept with slaughtered men?\n    Shall braying trumpets and loud churlish drums,\n    Clamours of hell, be measures to our pomp?\n    O husband, hear me! ay, alack, how new\n    Is \'husband\' in my mouth! even for that name,\n    Which till this time my tongue did ne\'er pronounce,\n    Upon my knee I beg, go not to arms\n    Against mine uncle.\n  CONSTANCE. O, upon my knee,\n    Made hard with kneeling, I do pray to thee,\n    Thou virtuous Dauphin, alter not the doom\n    Forethought by heaven!\n  BLANCH. Now shall I see thy love. What motive may\n    Be stronger with thee than the name of wife?\n  CONSTANCE. That which upholdeth him that thee upholds,\n    His honour. O, thine honour, Lewis, thine honour!\n  LEWIS. I muse your Majesty doth seem so cold,\n    When such profound respects do pull you on.\n  PANDULPH. I will denounce a curse upon his head.  \n  KING PHILIP. Thou shalt not need. England, I will fall from thee.\n  CONSTANCE. O fair return of banish\'d majesty!\n  ELINOR. O foul revolt of French inconstancy!\n  KING JOHN. France, thou shalt rue this hour within this hour.\n  BASTARD. Old Time the clock-setter, that bald sexton Time,\n    Is it as he will? Well then, France shall rue.\n  BLANCH. The sun\'s o\'ercast with blood. Fair day, adieu!\n    Which is the side that I must go withal?\n    I am with both: each army hath a hand;\n    And in their rage, I having hold of both,\n    They whirl asunder and dismember me.\n    Husband, I cannot pray that thou mayst win;\n    Uncle, I needs must pray that thou mayst lose;\n    Father, I may not wish the fortune thine;\n    Grandam, I will not wish thy wishes thrive.\n    Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose:\n    Assured loss before the match be play\'d.\n  LEWIS. Lady, with me, with me thy fortune lies.\n  BLANCH. There where my fortune lives, there my life dies.\n  KING JOHN. Cousin, go draw our puissance together.  \n                                                         Exit BASTARD\n    France, I am burn\'d up with inflaming wrath,\n    A rage whose heat hath this condition\n    That nothing can allay, nothing but blood,\n    The blood, and dearest-valu\'d blood, of France.\n  KING PHILIP. Thy rage shall burn thee up, and thou shalt turn\n    To ashes, ere our blood shall quench that fire.\n    Look to thyself, thou art in jeopardy.\n  KING JOHN. No more than he that threats. To arms let\'s hie!\n                                                     Exeunt severally\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\n\nFrance. Plains near Angiers\n\nAlarums, excursions. Enter the BASTARD with AUSTRIA\'S head\n\n  BASTARD. Now, by my life, this day grows wondrous hot;\n    Some airy devil hovers in the sky\n    And pours down mischief. Austria\'s head lie there,\n    While Philip breathes.\n\n          Enter KING JOHN, ARTHUR, and HUBERT\n\n  KING JOHN. Hubert, keep this boy. Philip, make up:\n    My mother is assailed in our tent,\n    And ta\'en, I fear.\n  BASTARD. My lord, I rescued her;\n    Her Highness is in safety, fear you not;\n    But on, my liege, for very little pains\n    Will bring this labour to an happy end.                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\n\nFrance. Plains near Angiers\n\nAlarums, excursions, retreat. Enter KING JOHN, ELINOR, ARTHUR,\nthe BASTARD, HUBERT, and LORDS\n\n  KING JOHN.  [To ELINOR]  So shall it be; your Grace shall stay\n      behind,\n    So strongly guarded.  [To ARTHUR]  Cousin, look not sad;\n    Thy grandam loves thee, and thy uncle will\n    As dear be to thee as thy father was.\n  ARTHUR. O, this will make my mother die with grief!\n  KING JOHN.  [To the BASTARD]  Cousin, away for England! haste\n      before,\n    And, ere our coming, see thou shake the bags\n    Of hoarding abbots; imprisoned angels\n    Set at liberty; the fat ribs of peace\n    Must by the hungry now be fed upon.\n    Use our commission in his utmost force.\n  BASTARD. Bell, book, and candle, shall not drive me back,\n    When gold and silver becks me to come on.  \n    I leave your Highness. Grandam, I will pray,\n    If ever I remember to be holy,\n    For your fair safety. So, I kiss your hand.\n  ELINOR. Farewell, gentle cousin.\n  KING JOHN. Coz, farewell.\n                                                         Exit BASTARD\n  ELINOR. Come hither, little kinsman; hark, a word.\n  KING JOHN. Come hither, Hubert. O my gentle Hubert,\n    We owe thee much! Within this wall of flesh\n    There is a soul counts thee her creditor,\n    And with advantage means to pay thy love;\n    And, my good friend, thy voluntary oath\n    Lives in this bosom, dearly cherished.\n    Give me thy hand. I had a thing to say-\n    But I will fit it with some better time.\n    By heaven, Hubert, I am almost asham\'d\n    To say what good respect I have of thee.\n  HUBERT. I am much bounden to your Majesty.\n  KING JOHN. Good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet,\n    But thou shalt have; and creep time ne\'er so slow,  \n    Yet it shall come for me to do thee good.\n    I had a thing to say-but let it go:\n    The sun is in the heaven, and the proud day,\n    Attended with the pleasures of the world,\n    Is all too wanton and too full of gawds\n    To give me audience. If the midnight bell\n    Did with his iron tongue and brazen mouth\n    Sound on into the drowsy race of night;\n    If this same were a churchyard where we stand,\n    And thou possessed with a thousand wrongs;\n    Or if that surly spirit, melancholy,\n    Had bak\'d thy blood and made it heavy-thick,\n    Which else runs tickling up and down the veins,\n    Making that idiot, laughter, keep men\'s eyes\n    And strain their cheeks to idle merriment,\n    A passion hateful to my purposes;\n    Or if that thou couldst see me without eyes,\n    Hear me without thine cars, and make reply\n    Without a tongue, using conceit alone,\n    Without eyes, ears, and harmful sound of words-  \n    Then, in despite of brooded watchful day,\n    I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts.\n    But, ah, I will not! Yet I love thee well;\n    And, by my troth, I think thou lov\'st me well.\n  HUBERT. So well that what you bid me undertake,\n    Though that my death were adjunct to my act,\n    By heaven, I would do it.\n  KING JOHN. Do not I know thou wouldst?\n    Good Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, throw thine eye\n    On yon young boy. I\'ll tell thee what, my friend,\n    He is a very serpent in my way;\n    And wheresoe\'er this foot of mine doth tread,\n    He lies before me. Dost thou understand me?\n    Thou art his keeper.\n  HUBERT. And I\'ll keep him so\n    That he shall not offend your Majesty.\n  KING JOHN. Death.\n  HUBERT. My lord?\n  KING JOHN. A grave.\n  HUBERT. He shall not live.  \n  KING JOHN. Enough!\n    I could be merry now. Hubert, I love thee.\n    Well, I\'ll not say what I intend for thee.\n    Remember. Madam, fare you well;\n    I\'ll send those powers o\'er to your Majesty.\n  ELINOR. My blessing go with thee!\n  KING JOHN.  [To ARTHUR]  For England, cousin, go;\n    Hubert shall be your man, attend on you\n    With all true duty. On toward Calais, ho!                  Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4.\n\nFrance. The FRENCH KING\'s camp\n\nEnter KING PHILIP, LEWIS, PANDULPH, and attendants\n\n  KING PHILIP. So by a roaring tempest on the flood\n    A whole armado of convicted sail\n    Is scattered and disjoin\'d from fellowship.\n  PANDULPH. Courage and comfort! All shall yet go well.\n  KING PHILIP. What can go well, when we have run so ill.\n    Are we not beaten? Is not Angiers lost?\n    Arthur ta\'en prisoner? Divers dear friends slain?\n    And bloody England into England gone,\n    O\'erbearing interruption, spite of France?\n  LEWIS. he hath won, that hath he fortified;\n    So hot a speed with such advice dispos\'d,\n    Such temperate order in so fierce a cause,\n    Doth want example; who hath read or heard\n    Of any kindred action like to this?\n  KING PHILIP. Well could I bear that England had this praise,\n    So we could find some pattern of our shame.  \n\n                   Enter CONSTANCE\n\n    Look who comes here! a grave unto a soul;\n    Holding th\' eternal spirit, against her will,\n    In the vile prison of afflicted breath.\n    I prithee, lady, go away with me.\n  CONSTANCE. Lo now! now see the issue of your peace!\n  KING PHILIP. Patience, good lady! Comfort, gentle Constance!\n  CONSTANCE. No, I defy all counsel, all redress,\n    But that which ends all counsel, true redress-\n    Death, death; O amiable lovely death!\n    Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!\n    Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,\n    Thou hate and terror to prosperity,\n    And I will kiss thy detestable bones,\n    And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows,\n    And ring these fingers with thy household worms,\n    And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,\n    And be a carrion monster like thyself.  \n    Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil\'st,\n    And buss thee as thy wife. Misery\'s love,\n    O, come to me!\n  KING PHILIP. O fair affliction, peace!\n  CONSTANCE. No, no, I will not, having breath to cry.\n    O that my tongue were in the thunder\'s mouth!\n    Then with a passion would I shake the world,\n    And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy\n    Which cannot hear a lady\'s feeble voice,\n    Which scorns a modern invocation.\n  PANDULPH. Lady, you utter madness and not sorrow.\n  CONSTANCE. Thou art not holy to belie me so.\n    I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;\n    My name is Constance; I was Geffrey\'s wife;\n    Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost.\n    I am not mad-I would to heaven I were!\n    For then \'tis like I should forget myself.\n    O, if I could, what grief should I forget!\n    Preach some philosophy to make me mad,\n    And thou shalt be canoniz\'d, Cardinal;  \n    For, being not mad, but sensible of grief,\n    My reasonable part produces reason\n    How I may be deliver\'d of these woes,\n    And teaches me to kill or hang myself.\n    If I were mad I should forget my son,\n    Or madly think a babe of clouts were he.\n    I am not mad; too well, too well I feel\n    The different plague of each calamity.\n  KING PHILIP. Bind up those tresses. O, what love I note\n    In the fair multitude of those her hairs!\n    Where but by a chance a silver drop hath fall\'n,\n    Even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends\n    Do glue themselves in sociable grief,\n    Like true, inseparable, faithful loves,\n    Sticking together in calamity.\n  CONSTANCE. To England, if you will.\n  KING PHILIP. Bind up your hairs.\n  CONSTANCE. Yes, that I will; and wherefore will I do it?\n    I tore them from their bonds, and cried aloud\n    \'O that these hands could so redeem my son,  \n    As they have given these hairs their liberty!\'\n    But now I envy at their liberty,\n    And will again commit them to their bonds,\n    Because my poor child is a prisoner.\n    And, father Cardinal, I have heard you say\n    That we shall see and know our friends in heaven;\n    If that be true, I shall see my boy again;\n    For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,\n    To him that did but yesterday suspire,\n    There was not such a gracious creature born.\n    But now will canker sorrow eat my bud\n    And chase the native beauty from his cheek,\n    And he will look as hollow as a ghost,\n    As dim and meagre as an ague\'s fit;\n    And so he\'ll die; and, rising so again,\n    When I shall meet him in the court of heaven\n    I shall not know him. Therefore never, never\n    Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.\n  PANDULPH. You hold too heinous a respect of grief.\n  CONSTANCE. He talks to me that never had a son.  \n  KING PHILIP. You are as fond of grief as of your child.\n  CONSTANCE. Grief fills the room up of my absent child,\n    Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,\n    Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,\n    Remembers me of all his gracious parts,\n    Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;\n    Then have I reason to be fond of grief.\n    Fare you well; had you such a loss as I,\n    I could give better comfort than you do.\n    I will not keep this form upon my head,\n                                                   [Tearing her hair]\n    When there is such disorder in my wit.\n    O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!\n    My life, my joy, my food, my ail the world!\n    My widow-comfort, and my sorrows\' cure!                      Exit\n  KING PHILIP. I fear some outrage, and I\'ll follow her.         Exit\n  LEWIS. There\'s nothing in this world can make me joy.\n    Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale\n    Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man;\n    And bitter shame hath spoil\'d the sweet world\'s taste,  \n    That it yields nought but shame and bitterness.\n  PANDULPH. Before the curing of a strong disease,\n    Even in the instant of repair and health,\n    The fit is strongest; evils that take leave\n    On their departure most of all show evil;\n    What have you lost by losing of this day?\n  LEWIS. All days of glory, joy, and happiness.\n  PANDULPH. If you had won it, certainly you had.\n    No, no; when Fortune means to men most good,\n    She looks upon them with a threat\'ning eye.\n    \'Tis strange to think how much King John hath lost\n    In this which he accounts so clearly won.\n    Are not you griev\'d that Arthur is his prisoner?\n  LEWIS. As heartily as he is glad he hath him.\n  PANDULPH. Your mind is all as youthful as your blood.\n    Now hear me speak with a prophetic spirit;\n    For even the breath of what I mean to speak\n    Shall blow each dust, each straw, each little rub,\n    Out of the path which shall directly lead\n    Thy foot to England\'s throne. And therefore mark:  \n    John hath seiz\'d Arthur; and it cannot be\n    That, whiles warm life plays in that infant\'s veins,\n    The misplac\'d John should entertain an hour,\n    One minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest.\n    A sceptre snatch\'d with an unruly hand\n    Must be boisterously maintain\'d as gain\'d,\n    And he that stands upon a slipp\'ry place\n    Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up;\n    That John may stand then, Arthur needs must fall;\n    So be it, for it cannot be but so.\n  LEWIS. But what shall I gain by young Arthur\'s fall?\n  PANDULPH. You, in the right of Lady Blanch your wife,\n    May then make all the claim that Arthur did.\n  LEWIS. And lose it, life and all, as Arthur did.\n  PANDULPH. How green you are and fresh in this old world!\n    John lays you plots; the times conspire with you;\n    For he that steeps his safety in true blood\n    Shall find but bloody safety and untrue.\n    This act, so evilly borne, shall cool the hearts\n    Of all his people and freeze up their zeal,  \n    That none so small advantage shall step forth\n    To check his reign but they will cherish it;\n    No natural exhalation in the sky,\n    No scope of nature, no distemper\'d day,\n    No common wind, no customed event,\n    But they will pluck away his natural cause\n    And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs,\n    Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven,\n    Plainly denouncing vengeance upon John.\n  LEWIS. May be he will not touch young Arthur\'s life,\n    But hold himself safe in his prisonment.\n  PANDULPH. O, Sir, when he shall hear of your approach,\n    If that young Arthur be not gone already,\n    Even at that news he dies; and then the hearts\n    Of all his people shall revolt from him,\n    And kiss the lips of unacquainted change,\n    And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath\n    Out of the bloody fingers\' ends of john.\n    Methinks I see this hurly all on foot;\n    And, O, what better matter breeds for you  \n    Than I have nam\'d! The bastard Faulconbridge\n    Is now in England ransacking the Church,\n    Offending charity; if but a dozen French\n    Were there in arms, they would be as a can\n    To train ten thousand English to their side;\n    Or as a little snow, tumbled about,\n    Anon becomes a mountain. O noble Dauphin,\n    Go with me to the King. \'Tis wonderful\n    What may be wrought out of their discontent,\n    Now that their souls are topful of offence.\n    For England go; I will whet on the King.\n  LEWIS. Strong reasons makes strong actions. Let us go;\n    If you say ay, the King will not say no.                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 1.\n\nEngland. A castle\n\nEnter HUBERT and EXECUTIONERS\n\n  HUBERT. Heat me these irons hot; and look thou stand\n    Within the arras. When I strike my foot\n    Upon the bosom of the ground, rush forth\n    And bind the boy which you shall find with me\n    Fast to the chair. Be heedful; hence, and watch.\n  EXECUTIONER. I hope your warrant will bear out the deed.\n  HUBERT. Uncleanly scruples! Fear not you. Look to\'t.\n                                                  Exeunt EXECUTIONERS\n    Young lad, come forth; I have to say with you.\n\n                    Enter ARTHUR\n\n  ARTHUR. Good morrow, Hubert.\n  HUBERT. Good morrow, little Prince.\n  ARTHUR. As little prince, having so great a tide\n    To be more prince, as may be. You are sad.  \n  HUBERT. Indeed I have been merrier.\n  ARTHUR. Mercy on me!\n    Methinks no body should be sad but I;\n    Yet, I remember, when I was in France,\n    Young gentlemen would be as sad as night,\n    Only for wantonness. By my christendom,\n    So I were out of prison and kept sheep,\n    I should be as merry as the day is long;\n    And so I would be here but that I doubt\n    My uncle practises more harm to me;\n    He is afraid of me, and I of him.\n    Is it my fault that I was Geffrey\'s son?\n    No, indeed, ist not; and I would to heaven\n    I were your son, so you would love me, Hubert.\n  HUBERT.  [Aside]  If I talk to him, with his innocent prate\n    He will awake my mercy, which lies dead;\n    Therefore I will be sudden and dispatch.\n  ARTHUR. Are you sick, Hubert? You look pale to-day;\n    In sooth, I would you were a little sick,\n    That I might sit all night and watch with you.  \n    I warrant I love you more than you do me.\n  HUBERT.  [Aside]  His words do take possession of my bosom.-\n    Read here, young Arthur.                        [Showing a paper]\n      [Aside]  How now, foolish rheum!\n    Turning dispiteous torture out of door!\n    I must be brief, lest resolution drop\n    Out at mine eyes in tender womanish tears.-\n    Can you not read it? Is it not fair writ?\n  ARTHUR. Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect.\n    Must you with hot irons burn out both mine eyes?\n  HUBERT. Young boy, I must.\n  ARTHUR. And will you?\n  HUBERT. And I will.\n  ARTHUR. Have you the heart? When your head did but ache,\n    I knit my handkerchief about your brows-\n    The best I had, a princess wrought it me-\n    And I did never ask it you again;\n    And with my hand at midnight held your head;\n    And, like the watchful minutes to the hour,\n    Still and anon cheer\'d up the heavy time,  \n    Saying \'What lack you?\' and \'Where lies your grief?\'\n    Or \'What good love may I perform for you?\'\n    Many a poor man\'s son would have lyen still,\n    And ne\'er have spoke a loving word to you;\n    But you at your sick service had a prince.\n    Nay, you may think my love was crafty love,\n    And call it cunning. Do, an if you will.\n    If heaven be pleas\'d that you must use me ill,\n    Why, then you must. Will you put out mine eyes,\n    These eyes that never did nor never shall\n    So much as frown on you?\n  HUBERT. I have sworn to do it;\n    And with hot irons must I burn them out.\n  ARTHUR. Ah, none but in this iron age would do it!\n    The iron of itself, though heat red-hot,\n    Approaching near these eyes would drink my tears,\n    And quench his fiery indignation\n    Even in the matter of mine innocence;\n    Nay, after that, consume away in rust\n    But for containing fire to harm mine eye.  \n    Are you more stubborn-hard than hammer\'d iron?\n    An if an angel should have come to me\n    And told me Hubert should put out mine eyes,\n    I would not have believ\'d him-no tongue but Hubert\'s.\n  HUBERT.  [Stamps]  Come forth.\n\n     Re-enter EXECUTIONERS, With cord, irons, etc.\n\n    Do as I bid you do.\n  ARTHUR. O, save me, Hubert, save me! My eyes are out\n    Even with the fierce looks of these bloody men.\n  HUBERT. Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here.\n  ARTHUR. Alas, what need you be so boist\'rous rough?\n    I will not struggle, I will stand stone-still.\n    For heaven sake, Hubert, let me not be bound!\n    Nay, hear me, Hubert! Drive these men away,\n    And I will sit as quiet as a lamb;\n    I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word,\n    Nor look upon the iron angrily;\n    Thrust but these men away, and I\'ll forgive you,  \n    Whatever torment you do put me to.\n  HUBERT. Go, stand within; let me alone with him.\n  EXECUTIONER. I am best pleas\'d to be from such a deed.\n                                                  Exeunt EXECUTIONERS\n  ARTHUR. Alas, I then have chid away my friend!\n    He hath a stern look but a gentle heart.\n    Let him come back, that his compassion may\n    Give life to yours.\n  HUBERT. Come, boy, prepare yourself.\n  ARTHUR. Is there no remedy?\n  HUBERT. None, but to lose your eyes.\n  ARTHUR. O heaven, that there were but a mote in yours,\n    A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair,\n    Any annoyance in that precious sense!\n    Then, feeling what small things are boisterous there,\n    Your vile intent must needs seem horrible.\n  HUBERT. Is this your promise? Go to, hold your tongue.\n  ARTHUR. Hubert, the utterance of a brace of tongues\n    Must needs want pleading for a pair of eyes.\n    Let me not hold my tongue, let me not, Hubert;  \n    Or, Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue,\n    So I may keep mine eyes. O, spare mine eyes,\n    Though to no use but still to look on you!\n    Lo, by my troth, the instrument is cold\n    And would not harm me.\n  HUBERT. I can heat it, boy.\n  ARTHUR. No, in good sooth; the fire is dead with grief,\n    Being create for comfort, to be us\'d\n    In undeserved extremes. See else yourself:\n    There is no malice in this burning coal;\n    The breath of heaven hath blown his spirit out,\n    And strew\'d repentant ashes on his head.\n  HUBERT. But with my breath I can revive it, boy.\n  ARTHUR. An if you do, you will but make it blush\n    And glow with shame of your proceedings, Hubert.\n    Nay, it perchance will sparkle in your eyes,\n    And, like a dog that is compell\'d to fight,\n    Snatch at his master that doth tarre him on.\n    All things that you should use to do me wrong\n    Deny their office; only you do lack  \n    That mercy which fierce fire and iron extends,\n    Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses.\n  HUBERT. Well, see to live; I will not touch thine eye\n    For all the treasure that thine uncle owes.\n    Yet I am sworn, and I did purpose, boy,\n    With this same very iron to burn them out.\n  ARTHUR. O, now you look like Hubert! All this while\n    You were disguis\'d.\n  HUBERT. Peace; no more. Adieu.\n    Your uncle must not know but you are dead:\n    I\'ll fill these dogged spies with false reports;\n    And, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure\n    That Hubert, for the wealth of all the world,\n    Will not offend thee.\n  ARTHUR. O heaven! I thank you, Hubert.\n  HUBERT. Silence; no more. Go closely in with me.\n    Much danger do I undergo for thee.                         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\n\nEngland. KING JOHN\'S palace\n\nEnter KING JOHN, PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, and other LORDS\n\n  KING JOHN. Here once again we sit, once again crown\'d,\n    And look\'d upon, I hope, with cheerful eyes.\n  PEMBROKE. This once again, but that your Highness pleas\'d,\n    Was once superfluous: you were crown\'d before,\n    And that high royalty was ne\'er pluck\'d off,\n    The faiths of men ne\'er stained with revolt;\n    Fresh expectation troubled not the land\n    With any long\'d-for change or better state.\n  SALISBURY. Therefore, to be possess\'d with double pomp,\n    To guard a title that was rich before,\n    To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,\n    To throw a perfume on the violet,\n    To smooth the ice, or add another hue\n    Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light\n    To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,\n    Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.\n  PEMBROKE. But that your royal pleasure must be done,\n    This act is as an ancient tale new told  \n    And, in the last repeating, troublesome,\n    Being urged at a time unseasonable.\n  SALISBURY. In this the antique and well-noted face\n    Of plain old form is much disfigured;\n    And like a shifted wind unto a sail\n    It makes the course of thoughts to fetch about,\n    Startles and frights consideration,\n    Makes sound opinion sick, and truth suspected,\n    For putting on so new a fashion\'d robe.\n  PEMBROKE. When workmen strive to do better than well,\n    They do confound their skill in covetousness;\n    And oftentimes excusing of a fault\n    Doth make the fault the worse by th\' excuse,\n    As patches set upon a little breach\n    Discredit more in hiding of the fault\n    Than did the fault before it was so patch\'d.\n  SALISBURY. To this effect, before you were new-crown\'d,\n    We breath\'d our counsel; but it pleas\'d your Highness\n    To overbear it; and we are all well pleas\'d,\n    Since all and every part of what we would  \n    Doth make a stand at what your Highness will.\n  KING JOHN. Some reasons of this double coronation\n    I have possess\'d you with, and think them strong;\n    And more, more strong, when lesser is my fear,\n    I shall indue you with. Meantime but ask\n    What you would have reform\'d that is not well,\n    And well shall you perceive how willingly\n    I will both hear and grant you your requests.\n  PEMBROKE. Then I, as one that am the tongue of these,\n    To sound the purposes of all their hearts,\n    Both for myself and them- but, chief of all,\n    Your safety, for the which myself and them\n    Bend their best studies, heartily request\n    Th\' enfranchisement of Arthur, whose restraint\n    Doth move the murmuring lips of discontent\n    To break into this dangerous argument:\n    If what in rest you have in right you hold,\n    Why then your fears-which, as they say, attend\n    The steps of wrong-should move you to mew up\n    Your tender kinsman, and to choke his days  \n    With barbarous ignorance, and deny his youth\n    The rich advantage of good exercise?\n    That the time\'s enemies may not have this\n    To grace occasions, let it be our suit\n    That you have bid us ask his liberty;\n    Which for our goods we do no further ask\n    Than whereupon our weal, on you depending,\n    Counts it your weal he have his liberty.\n  KING JOHN. Let it be so. I do commit his youth\n    To your direction.\n\n                     Enter HUBERT\n\n    [Aside]  Hubert, what news with you?\n  PEMBROKE. This is the man should do the bloody deed:\n    He show\'d his warrant to a friend of mine;\n    The image of a wicked heinous fault\n    Lives in his eye; that close aspect of his\n    Doth show the mood of a much troubled breast,\n    And I do fearfully believe \'tis done  \n    What we so fear\'d he had a charge to do.\n  SALISBURY. The colour of the King doth come and go\n    Between his purpose and his conscience,\n    Like heralds \'twixt two dreadful battles set.\n    His passion is so ripe it needs must break.\n  PEMBROKE. And when it breaks, I fear will issue thence\n    The foul corruption of a sweet child\'s death.\n  KING JOHN. We cannot hold mortality\'s strong hand.\n    Good lords, although my will to give is living,\n    The suit which you demand is gone and dead:\n    He tells us Arthur is deceas\'d to-night.\n  SALISBURY. Indeed, we fear\'d his sickness was past cure.\n  PEMBROKE. Indeed, we heard how near his death he was,\n    Before the child himself felt he was sick.\n    This must be answer\'d either here or hence.\n  KING JOHN. Why do you bend such solemn brows on me?\n    Think you I bear the shears of destiny?\n    Have I commandment on the pulse of life?\n  SALISBURY. It is apparent foul-play; and \'tis shame\n    That greatness should so grossly offer it.  \n    So thrive it in your game! and so, farewell.\n  PEMBROKE. Stay yet, Lord Salisbury, I\'ll go with thee\n    And find th\' inheritance of this poor child,\n    His little kingdom of a forced grave.\n    That blood which ow\'d the breadth of all this isle\n    Three foot of it doth hold-bad world the while!\n    This must not be thus borne: this will break out\n    To all our sorrows, and ere long I doubt.            Exeunt LORDS\n  KING JOHN. They burn in indignation. I repent.\n    There is no sure foundation set on blood,\n    No certain life achiev\'d by others\' death.\n\n                 Enter a MESSENGER\n\n    A fearful eye thou hast; where is that blood\n    That I have seen inhabit in those cheeks?\n    So foul a sky clears not without a storm.\n    Pour down thy weather-how goes all in France?\n  MESSENGER. From France to England. Never such a pow\'r\n    For any foreign preparation  \n    Was levied in the body of a land.\n    The copy of your speed is learn\'d by them,\n    For when you should be told they do prepare,\n    The tidings comes that they are all arriv\'d.\n  KING JOHN. O, where hath our intelligence been drunk?\n    Where hath it slept? Where is my mother\'s care,\n    That such an army could be drawn in France,\n    And she not hear of it?\n  MESSENGER. My liege, her ear\n    Is stopp\'d with dust: the first of April died\n    Your noble mother; and as I hear, my lord,\n    The Lady Constance in a frenzy died\n    Three days before; but this from rumour\'s tongue\n    I idly heard-if true or false I know not.\n  KING JOHN. Withhold thy speed, dreadful occasion!\n    O, make a league with me, till I have pleas\'d\n    My discontented peers! What! mother dead!\n    How wildly then walks my estate in France!\n    Under whose conduct came those pow\'rs of France\n    That thou for truth giv\'st out are landed here?  \n  MESSENGER. Under the Dauphin.\n  KING JOHN. Thou hast made me giddy\n    With these in tidings.\n\n         Enter the BASTARD and PETER OF POMFRET\n\n    Now! What says the world\n    To your proceedings? Do not seek to stuff\n    My head with more ill news, for it is fun.\n  BASTARD. But if you be afear\'d to hear the worst,\n    Then let the worst, unheard, fall on your head.\n  KING JOHN. Bear with me, cousin, for I was amaz\'d\n    Under the tide; but now I breathe again\n    Aloft the flood, and can give audience\n    To any tongue, speak it of what it will.\n  BASTARD. How I have sped among the clergymen\n    The sums I have collected shall express.\n    But as I travell\'d hither through the land,\n    I find the people strangely fantasied;\n    Possess\'d with rumours, full of idle dreams.  \n    Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear;\n    And here\'s a prophet that I brought with me\n    From forth the streets of Pomfret, whom I found\n    With many hundreds treading on his heels;\n    To whom he sung, in rude harsh-sounding rhymes,\n    That, ere the next Ascension-day at noon,\n    Your Highness should deliver up your crown.\n  KING JOHN. Thou idle dreamer, wherefore didst thou so?\n  PETER. Foreknowing that the truth will fall out so.\n  KING JOHN. Hubert, away with him; imprison him;\n    And on that day at noon whereon he says\n    I shall yield up my crown let him be hang\'d.\n    Deliver him to safety; and return,\n    For I must use thee.\n                                               Exit HUBERT with PETER\n    O my gentle cousin,\n    Hear\'st thou the news abroad, who are arriv\'d?\n  BASTARD. The French, my lord; men\'s mouths are full of it;\n    Besides, I met Lord Bigot and Lord Salisbury,\n    With eyes as red as new-enkindled fire,  \n    And others more, going to seek the grave\n    Of Arthur, whom they say is kill\'d to-night\n    On your suggestion.\n  KING JOHN. Gentle kinsman, go\n    And thrust thyself into their companies.\n    I have a way to will their loves again;\n    Bring them before me.\n  BASTARD. I Will seek them out.\n  KING JOHN. Nay, but make haste; the better foot before.\n    O, let me have no subject enemies\n    When adverse foreigners affright my towns\n    With dreadful pomp of stout invasion!\n    Be Mercury, set feathers to thy heels,\n    And fly like thought from them to me again.\n  BASTARD. The spirit of the time shall teach me speed.\n  KING JOHN. Spoke like a sprightful noble gentleman.\n                                                         Exit BASTARD\n    Go after him; for he perhaps shall need\n    Some messenger betwixt me and the peers;\n    And be thou he.  \n  MESSENGER. With all my heart, my liege.                        Exit\n  KING JOHN. My mother dead!\n\n                   Re-enter HUBERT\n\n  HUBERT. My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night;\n    Four fixed, and the fifth did whirl about\n    The other four in wondrous motion.\n  KING JOHN. Five moons!\n  HUBERT. Old men and beldams in the streets\n    Do prophesy upon it dangerously;\n    Young Arthur\'s death is common in their mouths;\n    And when they talk of him, they shake their heads,\n    And whisper one another in the ear;\n    And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer\'s wrist,\n    Whilst he that hears makes fearful action\n    With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes.\n    I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,\n    The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,\n    With open mouth swallowing a tailor\'s news;  \n    Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,\n    Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste\n    Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet,\n    Told of a many thousand warlike French\n    That were embattailed and rank\'d in Kent.\n    Another lean unwash\'d artificer\n    Cuts off his tale, and talks of Arthur\'s death.\n  KING JOHN. Why seek\'st thou to possess me with these fears?\n    Why urgest thou so oft young Arthur\'s death?\n    Thy hand hath murd\'red him. I had a mighty cause\n    To wish him dead, but thou hadst none to kill him.\n  HUBERT. No had, my lord! Why, did you not provoke me?\n  KING JOHN. It is the curse of kings to be attended\n    By slaves that take their humours for a warrant\n    To break within the bloody house of life,\n    And on the winking of authority\n    To understand a law; to know the meaning\n    Of dangerous majesty, when perchance it frowns\n    More upon humour than advis\'d respect.\n  HUBERT. Here is your hand and seal for what I did.  \n  KING JOHN. O, when the last account \'twixt heaven and earth\n    Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal\n    Witness against us to damnation!\n    How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds\n    Make deeds ill done! Hadst not thou been by,\n    A fellow by the hand of nature mark\'d,\n    Quoted and sign\'d to do a deed of shame,\n    This murder had not come into my mind;\n    But, taking note of thy abhorr\'d aspect,\n    Finding thee fit for bloody villainy,\n    Apt, liable to be employ\'d in danger,\n    I faintly broke with thee of Arthur\'s death;\n    And thou, to be endeared to a king,\n    Made it no conscience to destroy a prince.\n  HUBERT. My lord-\n  KING JOHN. Hadst thou but shook thy head or made pause,\n    When I spake darkly what I purposed,\n    Or turn\'d an eye of doubt upon my face,\n    As bid me tell my tale in express words,\n    Deep shame had struck me dumb, made me break off,  \n    And those thy fears might have wrought fears in me.\n    But thou didst understand me by my signs,\n    And didst in signs again parley with sin;\n    Yea, without stop, didst let thy heart consent,\n    And consequently thy rude hand to act\n    The deed which both our tongues held vile to name.\n    Out of my sight, and never see me more!\n    My nobles leave me; and my state is braved,\n    Even at my gates, with ranks of foreign pow\'rs;\n    Nay, in the body of the fleshly land,\n    This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath,\n    Hostility and civil tumult reigns\n    Between my conscience and my cousin\'s death.\n  HUBERT. Arm you against your other enemies,\n    I\'ll make a peace between your soul and you.\n    Young Arthur is alive. This hand of mine\n    Is yet a maiden and an innocent hand,\n    Not painted with the crimson spots of blood.\n    Within this bosom never ent\'red yet\n    The dreadful motion of a murderous thought  \n    And you have slander\'d nature in my form,\n    Which, howsoever rude exteriorly,\n    Is yet the cover of a fairer mind\n    Than to be butcher of an innocent child.\n  KING JOHN. Doth Arthur live? O, haste thee to the peers,\n    Throw this report on their incensed rage\n    And make them tame to their obedience!\n    Forgive the comment that my passion made\n    Upon thy feature; for my rage was blind,\n    And foul imaginary eyes of blood\n    Presented thee more hideous than thou art.\n    O, answer not; but to my closet bring\n    The angry lords with all expedient haste.\n    I conjure thee but slowly; run more fast.                  Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\n\nEngland. Before the castle\n\nEnter ARTHUR, on the walls\n\n  ARTHUR. The wall is high, and yet will I leap down.\n    Good ground, be pitiful and hurt me not!\n    There\'s few or none do know me; if they did,\n    This ship-boy\'s semblance hath disguis\'d me quite.\n    I am afraid; and yet I\'ll venture it.\n    If I get down and do not break my limbs,\n    I\'ll find a thousand shifts to get away.\n    As good to die and go, as die and stay.              [Leaps down]\n    O me! my uncle\'s spirit is in these stones.\n    Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones!\n    [Dies]\n\n          Enter PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, and BIGOT\n\n  SALISBURY. Lords, I will meet him at Saint Edmundsbury;\n    It is our safety, and we must embrace  \n    This gentle offer of the perilous time.\n  PEMBROKE. Who brought that letter from the Cardinal?\n  SALISBURY. The Count Melun, a noble lord of France,\n    Whose private with me of the Dauphin\'s love\n    Is much more general than these lines import.\n  BIGOT. To-morrow morning let us meet him then.\n  SALISBURY. Or rather then set forward; for \'twill be\n    Two long days\' journey, lords, or ere we meet.\n\n                 Enter the BASTARD\n\n  BASTARD. Once more to-day well met, distemper\'d lords!\n    The King by me requests your presence straight.\n  SALISBURY. The King hath dispossess\'d himself of us.\n    We will not line his thin bestained cloak\n    With our pure honours, nor attend the foot\n    That leaves the print of blood where\'er it walks.\n    Return and tell him so. We know the worst.\n  BASTARD. Whate\'er you think, good words, I think, were best.\n  SALISBURY. Our griefs, and not our manners, reason now.  \n  BASTARD. But there is little reason in your grief;\n    Therefore \'twere reason you had manners now.\n  PEMBROKE. Sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege.\n  BASTARD. \'Tis true-to hurt his master, no man else.\n  SALISBURY. This is the prison. What is he lies here?\n  PEMBROKE. O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty!\n    The earth had not a hole to hide this deed.\n  SALISBURY. Murder, as hating what himself hath done,\n    Doth lay it open to urge on revenge.\n  BIGOT. Or, when he doom\'d this beauty to a grave,\n    Found it too precious-princely for a grave.\n  SALISBURY. Sir Richard, what think you? Have you beheld,\n    Or have you read or heard, or could you think?\n    Or do you almost think, although you see,\n    That you do see? Could thought, without this object,\n    Form such another? This is the very top,\n    The height, the crest, or crest unto the crest,\n    Of murder\'s arms; this is the bloodiest shame,\n    The wildest savagery, the vilest stroke,\n    That ever wall-ey\'d wrath or staring rage  \n    Presented to the tears of soft remorse.\n  PEMBROKE. All murders past do stand excus\'d in this;\n    And this, so sole and so unmatchable,\n    Shall give a holiness, a purity,\n    To the yet unbegotten sin of times,\n    And prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest,\n    Exampled by this heinous spectacle.\n  BASTARD. It is a damned and a bloody work;\n    The graceless action of a heavy hand,\n    If that it be the work of any hand.\n  SALISBURY. If that it be the work of any hand!\n    We had a kind of light what would ensue.\n    It is the shameful work of Hubert\'s hand;\n    The practice and the purpose of the King;\n    From whose obedience I forbid my soul\n    Kneeling before this ruin of sweet life,\n    And breathing to his breathless excellence\n    The incense of a vow, a holy vow,\n    Never to taste the pleasures of the world,\n    Never to be infected with delight,  \n    Nor conversant with ease and idleness,\n    Till I have set a glory to this hand\n    By giving it the worship of revenge.\n  PEMBROKE. and BIGOT. Our souls religiously confirm thy words.\n\n                     Enter HUBERT\n\n  HUBERT. Lords, I am hot with haste in seeking you.\n    Arthur doth live; the King hath sent for you.\n  SALISBURY. O, he is bold, and blushes not at death!\n    Avaunt, thou hateful villain, get thee gone!\n  HUBERT. I am no villain.\n  SALISBURY. Must I rob the law?                  [Drawing his sword]\n  BASTARD. Your sword is bright, sir; put it up again.\n  SALISBURY. Not till I sheathe it in a murderer\'s skin.\n  HUBERT. Stand back, Lord Salisbury, stand back, I say;\n    By heaven, I think my sword\'s as sharp as yours.\n    I would not have you, lord, forget yourself,\n    Nor tempt the danger of my true defence;\n    Lest I, by marking of your rage, forget  \n    Your worth, your greatness and nobility.\n  BIGOT. Out, dunghill! Dar\'st thou brave a nobleman?\n  HUBERT. Not for my life; but yet I dare defend\n    My innocent life against an emperor.\n  SALISBURY. Thou art a murderer.\n  HUBERT. Do not prove me so.\n    Yet I am none. Whose tongue soe\'er speaks false,\n    Not truly speaks; who speaks not truly, lies.\n  PEMBROKE. Cut him to pieces.\n  BASTARD. Keep the peace, I say.\n  SALISBURY. Stand by, or I shall gall you, Faulconbridge.\n  BASTARD. Thou wert better gall the devil, Salisbury.\n    If thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot,\n    Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame,\n    I\'ll strike thee dead. Put up thy sword betime;\n    Or I\'ll so maul you and your toasting-iron\n    That you shall think the devil is come from hell.\n  BIGOT. What wilt thou do, renowned Faulconbridge?\n    Second a villain and a murderer?\n  HUBERT. Lord Bigot, I am none.  \n  BIGOT. Who kill\'d this prince?\n  HUBERT. \'Tis not an hour since I left him well.\n    I honour\'d him, I lov\'d him, and will weep\n    My date of life out for his sweet life\'s loss.\n  SALISBURY. Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes,\n    For villainy is not without such rheum;\n    And he, long traded in it, makes it seem\n    Like rivers of remorse and innocency.\n    Away with me, all you whose souls abhor\n    Th\' uncleanly savours of a slaughter-house;\n    For I am stifled with this smell of sin.\n  BIGOT. Away toward Bury, to the Dauphin there!\n  PEMBROKE. There tell the King he may inquire us out.\n                                                         Exeunt LORDS\n  BASTARD. Here\'s a good world! Knew you of this fair work?\n    Beyond the infinite and boundless reach\n    Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death,\n    Art thou damn\'d, Hubert.\n  HUBERT. Do but hear me, sir.\n  BASTARD. Ha! I\'ll tell thee what:  \n    Thou\'rt damn\'d as black-nay, nothing is so black-\n    Thou art more deep damn\'d than Prince Lucifer;\n    There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell\n    As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.\n  HUBERT. Upon my soul-\n  BASTARD. If thou didst but consent\n    To this most cruel act, do but despair;\n    And if thou want\'st a cord, the smallest thread\n    That ever spider twisted from her womb\n    Will serve to strangle thee; a rush will be a beam\n    To hang thee on; or wouldst thou drown thyself,\n    Put but a little water in a spoon\n    And it shall be as all the ocean,\n    Enough to stifle such a villain up\n    I do suspect thee very grievously.\n  HUBERT. If I in act, consent, or sin of thought,\n    Be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath\n    Which was embounded in this beauteous clay,\n    Let hell want pains enough to torture me!\n    I left him well.  \n  BASTARD. Go, bear him in thine arms.\n    I am amaz\'d, methinks, and lose my way\n    Among the thorns and dangers of this world.\n    How easy dost thou take all England up!\n    From forth this morsel of dead royalty\n    The life, the right, and truth of all this realm\n    Is fled to heaven; and England now is left\n    To tug and scamble, and to part by th\' teeth\n    The unowed interest of proud-swelling state.\n    Now for the bare-pick\'d bone of majesty\n    Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest\n    And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace;\n    Now powers from home and discontents at home\n    Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits,\n    As doth a raven on a sick-fall\'n beast,\n    The imminent decay of wrested pomp.\n    Now happy he whose cloak and cincture can\n    Hold out this tempest. Bear away that child,\n    And follow me with speed. I\'ll to the King;\n    A thousand businesses are brief in hand,  \n    And heaven itself doth frown upon the land.                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 1.\nEngland. KING JOHN\'S palace\n\nEnter KING JOHN, PANDULPH, and attendants\n\n  KING JOHN. Thus have I yielded up into your hand\n    The circle of my glory.\n  PANDULPH.  [Gives back the crown]  Take again\n    From this my hand, as holding of the Pope,\n    Your sovereign greatness and authority.\n  KING JOHN. Now keep your holy word; go meet the French;\n    And from his Holiness use all your power\n    To stop their marches fore we are inflam\'d.\n    Our discontented counties do revolt;\n    Our people quarrel with obedience,\n    Swearing allegiance and the love of soul\n    To stranger blood, to foreign royalty.\n    This inundation of mistemp\'red humour\n    Rests by you only to be qualified.\n    Then pause not; for the present time\'s so sick\n    That present med\'cine must be minist\'red  \n    Or overthrow incurable ensues.\n  PANDULPH. It was my breath that blew this tempest up,\n    Upon your stubborn usage of the Pope;\n    But since you are a gentle convertite,\n    My tongue shall hush again this storm of war\n    And make fair weather in your blust\'ring land.\n    On this Ascension-day, remember well,\n    Upon your oath of service to the Pope,\n    Go I to make the French lay down their arms.                 Exit\n  KING JOHN. Is this Ascension-day? Did not the prophet\n    Say that before Ascension-day at noon\n    My crown I should give off? Even so I have.\n    I did suppose it should be on constraint;\n    But, heaven be thank\'d, it is but voluntary.\n\n                 Enter the BASTARD\n\n  BASTARD. All Kent hath yielded; nothing there holds out\n    But Dover Castle. London hath receiv\'d,\n    Like a kind host, the Dauphin and his powers.  \n    Your nobles will not hear you, but are gone\n    To offer service to your enemy;\n    And wild amazement hurries up and down\n    The little number of your doubtful friends.\n  KING JOHN. Would not my lords return to me again\n    After they heard young Arthur was alive?\n    BASTARD. They found him dead, and cast into the streets,\n    An empty casket, where the jewel of life\n    By some damn\'d hand was robbed and ta\'en away.\n  KING JOHN. That villain Hubert told me he did live.\n  BASTARD. So, on my soul, he did, for aught he knew.\n    But wherefore do you droop? Why look you sad?\n    Be great in act, as you have been in thought;\n    Let not the world see fear and sad distrust\n    Govern the motion of a kingly eye.\n    Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire;\n    Threaten the threat\'ner, and outface the brow\n    Of bragging horror; so shall inferior eyes,\n    That borrow their behaviours from the great,\n    Grow great by your example and put on  \n    The dauntless spirit of resolution.\n    Away, and glister like the god of war\n    When he intendeth to become the field;\n    Show boldness and aspiring confidence.\n    What, shall they seek the lion in his den,\n    And fright him there, and make him tremble there?\n    O, let it not be said! Forage, and run\n    To meet displeasure farther from the doors\n    And grapple with him ere he come so nigh.\n  KING JOHN. The legate of the Pope hath been with me,\n    And I have made a happy peace with him;\n    And he hath promis\'d to dismiss the powers\n    Led by the Dauphin.\n  BASTARD. O inglorious league!\n    Shall we, upon the footing of our land,\n    Send fair-play orders, and make compromise,\n    Insinuation, parley, and base truce,\n    To arms invasive? Shall a beardless boy,\n    A cock\'red silken wanton, brave our fields\n    And flesh his spirit in a warlike soil,  \n    Mocking the air with colours idly spread,\n    And find no check? Let us, my liege, to arms.\n    Perchance the Cardinal cannot make your peace;\n    Or, if he do, let it at least be said\n    They saw we had a purpose of defence.\n  KING JOHN. Have thou the ordering of this present time.\n  BASTARD. Away, then, with good courage!\n    Yet, I know\n    Our party may well meet a prouder foe.                     Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\nEngland. The DAUPHIN\'S camp at Saint Edmundsbury\n\nEnter, in arms, LEWIS, SALISBURY, MELUN, PEMBROKE, BIGOT, and soldiers\n\n  LEWIS. My Lord Melun, let this be copied out\n    And keep it safe for our remembrance;\n    Return the precedent to these lords again,\n    That, having our fair order written down,\n    Both they and we, perusing o\'er these notes,\n    May know wherefore we took the sacrament,\n    And keep our faiths firm and inviolable.\n  SALISBURY. Upon our sides it never shall be broken.\n    And, noble Dauphin, albeit we swear\n    A voluntary zeal and an unurg\'d faith\n    To your proceedings; yet, believe me, Prince,\n    I am not glad that such a sore of time\n    Should seek a plaster by contemn\'d revolt,\n    And heal the inveterate canker of one wound\n    By making many. O, it grieves my soul  \n    That I must draw this metal from my side\n    To be a widow-maker! O, and there\n    Where honourable rescue and defence\n    Cries out upon the name of Salisbury!\n    But such is the infection of the time\n    That, for the health and physic of our right,\n    We cannot deal but with the very hand\n    Of stern injustice and confused wrong.\n    And is\'t not pity, O my grieved friends!\n    That we, the sons and children of this isle,\n    Were born to see so sad an hour as this;\n    Wherein we step after a stranger-march\n    Upon her gentle bosom, and fill up\n    Her enemies\' ranks-I must withdraw and weep\n    Upon the spot of this enforced cause-\n    To grace the gentry of a land remote\n    And follow unacquainted colours here?\n    What, here? O nation, that thou couldst remove!\n    That Neptune\'s arms, who clippeth thee about,\n    Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself  \n    And grapple thee unto a pagan shore,\n    Where these two Christian armies might combine\n    The blood of malice in a vein of league,\n    And not to spend it so unneighbourly!\n  LEWIS. A noble temper dost thou show in this;\n    And great affections wrestling in thy bosom\n    Doth make an earthquake of nobility.\n    O, what a noble combat hast thou fought\n    Between compulsion and a brave respect!\n    Let me wipe off this honourable dew\n    That silverly doth progress on thy cheeks.\n    My heart hath melted at a lady\'s tears,\n    Being an ordinary inundation;\n    But this effusion of such manly drops,\n    This show\'r, blown up by tempest of the soul,\n    Startles mine eyes and makes me more amaz\'d\n    Than had I seen the vaulty top of heaven\n    Figur\'d quite o\'er with burning meteors.\n    Lift up thy brow, renowned Salisbury,\n    And with a great heart heave away this storm;  \n    Commend these waters to those baby eyes\n    That never saw the giant world enrag\'d,\n    Nor met with fortune other than at feasts,\n    Full of warm blood, of mirth, of gossiping.\n    Come, come; for thou shalt thrust thy hand as deep\n    Into the purse of rich prosperity\n    As Lewis himself. So, nobles, shall you all,\n    That knit your sinews to the strength of mine.\n\n                Enter PANDULPH\n\n    And even there, methinks, an angel spake:\n    Look where the holy legate comes apace,\n    To give us warrant from the hand of heaven\n    And on our actions set the name of right\n    With holy breath.\n  PANDULPH. Hail, noble prince of France!\n    The next is this: King John hath reconcil\'d\n    Himself to Rome; his spirit is come in,\n    That so stood out against the holy Church,  \n    The great metropolis and see of Rome.\n    Therefore thy threat\'ning colours now wind up\n    And tame the savage spirit of wild war,\n    That, like a lion fostered up at hand,\n    It may lie gently at the foot of peace\n    And be no further harmful than in show.\n  LEWIS. Your Grace shall pardon me, I will not back:\n    I am too high-born to be propertied,\n    To be a secondary at control,\n    Or useful serving-man and instrument\n    To any sovereign state throughout the world.\n    Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars\n    Between this chastis\'d kingdom and myself\n    And brought in matter that should feed this fire;\n    And now \'tis far too huge to be blown out\n    With that same weak wind which enkindled it.\n    You taught me how to know the face of right,\n    Acquainted me with interest to this land,\n    Yea, thrust this enterprise into my heart;\n    And come ye now to tell me John hath made  \n    His peace with Rome? What is that peace to me?\n    I, by the honour of my marriage-bed,\n    After young Arthur, claim this land for mine;\n    And, now it is half-conquer\'d, must I back\n    Because that John hath made his peace with Rome?\n    Am I Rome\'s slave? What penny hath Rome borne,\n    What men provided, what munition sent,\n    To underprop this action? Is \'t not I\n    That undergo this charge? Who else but I,\n    And such as to my claim are liable,\n    Sweat in this business and maintain this war?\n    Have I not heard these islanders shout out\n    \'Vive le roi!\' as I have bank\'d their towns?\n    Have I not here the best cards for the game\n    To will this easy match, play\'d for a crown?\n    And shall I now give o\'er the yielded set?\n    No, no, on my soul, it never shall be said.\n  PANDULPH. You look but on the outside of this work.\n  LEWIS. Outside or inside, I will not return\n    Till my attempt so much be glorified  \n    As to my ample hope was promised\n    Before I drew this gallant head of war,\n    And cull\'d these fiery spirits from the world\n    To outlook conquest, and to will renown\n    Even in the jaws of danger and of death.\n                                                     [Trumpet sounds]\n    What lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?\n\n             Enter the BASTARD, attended\n\n  BASTARD. According to the fair play of the world,\n    Let me have audience: I am sent to speak.\n    My holy lord of Milan, from the King\n    I come, to learn how you have dealt for him;\n    And, as you answer, I do know the scope\n    And warrant limited unto my tongue.\n  PANDULPH. The Dauphin is too wilful-opposite,\n    And will not temporize with my entreaties;\n    He flatly says he\'ll not lay down his arms.\n  BASTARD. By all the blood that ever fury breath\'d,  \n    The youth says well. Now hear our English King;\n    For thus his royalty doth speak in me.\n    He is prepar\'d, and reason too he should.\n    This apish and unmannerly approach,\n    This harness\'d masque and unadvised revel\n    This unhair\'d sauciness and boyish troops,\n    The King doth smile at; and is well prepar\'d\n    To whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms,\n    From out the circle of his territories.\n    That hand which had the strength, even at your door.\n    To cudgel you and make you take the hatch,\n    To dive like buckets in concealed wells,\n    To crouch in litter of your stable planks,\n    To lie like pawns lock\'d up in chests and trunks,\n    To hug with swine, to seek sweet safety out\n    In vaults and prisons, and to thrill and shake\n    Even at the crying of your nation\'s crow,\n    Thinking this voice an armed Englishman-\n    Shall that victorious hand be feebled here\n    That in your chambers gave you chastisement?  \n    No. Know the gallant monarch is in arms\n    And like an eagle o\'er his aery tow\'rs\n    To souse annoyance that comes near his nest.\n    And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts,\n    You bloody Neroes, ripping up the womb\n    Of your dear mother England, blush for shame;\n    For your own ladies and pale-visag\'d maids,\n    Like Amazons, come tripping after drums,\n    Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change,\n    Their needles to lances, and their gentle hearts\n    To fierce and bloody inclination.\n  LEWIS. There end thy brave, and turn thy face in peace;\n    We grant thou canst outscold us. Fare thee well;\n    We hold our time too precious to be spent\n    With such a brabbler.\n  PANDULPH. Give me leave to speak.\n  BASTARD. No, I will speak.\n  LEWIS. We will attend to neither.\n    Strike up the drums; and let the tongue of war,\n    Plead for our interest and our being here.  \n  BASTARD. Indeed, your drums, being beaten, will cry out;\n    And so shall you, being beaten. Do but start\n    And echo with the clamour of thy drum,\n    And even at hand a drum is ready brac\'d\n    That shall reverberate all as loud as thine:\n    Sound but another, and another shall,\n    As loud as thine, rattle the welkin\'s ear\n    And mock the deep-mouth\'d thunder; for at hand-\n    Not trusting to this halting legate here,\n    Whom he hath us\'d rather for sport than need-\n    Is warlike John; and in his forehead sits\n    A bare-ribb\'d death, whose office is this day\n    To feast upon whole thousands of the French.\n  LEWIS. Strike up our drums to find this danger out.\n  BASTARD. And thou shalt find it, Dauphin, do not doubt.\n    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\n\nEngland. The field of battle\n\nAlarums. Enter KING JOHN and HUBERT\n\n  KING JOHN. How goes the day with us? O, tell me, Hubert.\n  HUBERT. Badly, I fear. How fares your Majesty?\n  KING JOHN. This fever that hath troubled me so long\n    Lies heavy on me. O, my heart is sick!\n\n                  Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. My lord, your valiant kinsman, Faulconbridge,\n    Desires your Majesty to leave the field\n    And send him word by me which way you go.\n  KING JOHN. Tell him, toward Swinstead, to the abbey there.\n  MESSENGER. Be of good comfort; for the great supply\n    That was expected by the Dauphin here\n    Are wreck\'d three nights ago on Goodwin Sands;\n    This news was brought to Richard but even now.\n    The French fight coldly, and retire themselves.  \n  KING JOHN. Ay me, this tyrant fever burns me up\n    And will not let me welcome this good news.\n    Set on toward Swinstead; to my litter straight;\n    Weakness possesseth me, and I am faint.                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4.\n\nEngland. Another part of the battlefield\n\nEnter SALISBURY, PEMBROKE, and BIGOT\n\n  SALISBURY. I did not think the King so stor\'d with friends.\n  PEMBROKE. Up once again; put spirit in the French;\n    If they miscarry, we miscarry too.\n  SALISBURY. That misbegotten devil, Faulconbridge,\n    In spite of spite, alone upholds the day.\n  PEMBROKE. They say King John, sore sick, hath left the field.\n\n                 Enter MELUN, wounded\n\n  MELUN. Lead me to the revolts of England here.\n  SALISBURY. When we were happy we had other names.\n  PEMBROKE. It is the Count Melun.\n  SALISBURY. Wounded to death.\n  MELUN. Fly, noble English, you are bought and sold;\n    Unthread the rude eye of rebellion,\n    And welcome home again discarded faith.  \n    Seek out King John, and fall before his feet;\n    For if the French be lords of this loud day,\n    He means to recompense the pains you take\n    By cutting off your heads. Thus hath he sworn,\n    And I with him, and many moe with me,\n    Upon the altar at Saint Edmundsbury;\n    Even on that altar where we swore to you\n    Dear amity and everlasting love.\n  SALISBURY. May this be possible? May this be true?\n  MELUN. Have I not hideous death within my view,\n    Retaining but a quantity of life,\n    Which bleeds away even as a form of wax\n    Resolveth from his figure \'gainst the fire?\n    What in the world should make me now deceive,\n    Since I must lose the use of all deceit?\n    Why should I then be false, since it is true\n    That I must die here, and live hence by truth?\n    I say again, if Lewis do will the day,\n    He is forsworn if e\'er those eyes of yours\n    Behold another day break in the east;  \n    But even this night, whose black contagious breath\n    Already smokes about the burning crest\n    Of the old, feeble, and day-wearied sun,\n    Even this ill night, your breathing shall expire,\n    Paying the fine of rated treachery\n    Even with a treacherous fine of all your lives.\n    If Lewis by your assistance win the day.\n    Commend me to one Hubert, with your King;\n    The love of him-and this respect besides,\n    For that my grandsire was an Englishman-\n    Awakes my conscience to confess all this.\n    In lieu whereof, I pray you, bear me hence\n    From forth the noise and rumour of the field,\n    Where I may think the remnant of my thoughts\n    In peace, and part this body and my soul\n    With contemplation and devout desires.\n  SALISBURY. We do believe thee; and beshrew my soul\n    But I do love the favour and the form\n    Of this most fair occasion, by the which\n    We will untread the steps of damned flight,  \n    And like a bated and retired flood,\n    Leaving our rankness and irregular course,\n    Stoop low within those bounds we have o\'erlook\'d,\n    And calmly run on in obedience\n    Even to our ocean, to great King John.\n    My arm shall give thee help to bear thee hence;\n    For I do see the cruel pangs of death\n    Right in thine eye. Away, my friends! New flight,\n    And happy newness, that intends old right.\n                                            Exeunt, leading off MELUN\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 5.\n\nEngland. The French camp\n\nEnter LEWIS and his train\n\n  LEWIS. The sun of heaven, methought, was loath to set,\n    But stay\'d and made the western welkin blush,\n    When English measure backward their own ground\n    In faint retire. O, bravely came we off,\n    When with a volley of our needless shot,\n    After such bloody toil, we bid good night;\n    And wound our tott\'ring colours clearly up,\n    Last in the field and almost lords of it!\n\n                 Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. Where is my prince, the Dauphin?\n  LEWIS. Here; what news?\n  MESSENGER. The Count Melun is slain; the English lords\n    By his persuasion are again fall\'n off,\n    And your supply, which you have wish\'d so long,  \n    Are cast away and sunk on Goodwin Sands.\n  LEWIS. Ah, foul shrewd news! Beshrew thy very heart!\n    I did not think to be so sad to-night\n    As this hath made me. Who was he that said\n    King John did fly an hour or two before\n    The stumbling night did part our weary pow\'rs?\n  MESSENGER. Whoever spoke it, it is true, my lord.\n  LEWIS. keep good quarter and good care to-night;\n    The day shall not be up so soon as I\n    To try the fair adventure of to-morrow.                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 6.\n\nAn open place wear Swinstead Abbey\n\nEnter the BASTARD and HUBERT, severally\n\n  HUBERT. Who\'s there? Speak, ho! speak quickly, or I shoot.\n  BASTARD. A friend. What art thou?\n  HUBERT. Of the part of England.\n  BASTARD. Whither dost thou go?\n  HUBERT. What\'s that to thee? Why may I not demand\n    Of thine affairs as well as thou of mine?\n  BASTARD. Hubert, I think.\n  HUBERT. Thou hast a perfect thought.\n    I will upon all hazards well believe\n    Thou art my friend that know\'st my tongue so well.\n    Who art thou?\n  BASTARD. Who thou wilt. And if thou please,\n    Thou mayst befriend me so much as to think\n    I come one way of the Plantagenets.\n  HUBERT. Unkind remembrance! thou and eyeless night\n    Have done me shame. Brave soldier, pardon me  \n    That any accent breaking from thy tongue\n    Should scape the true acquaintance of mine ear.\n  BASTARD. Come, come; sans compliment, what news abroad?\n  HUBERT. Why, here walk I in the black brow of night\n    To find you out.\n  BASTARD. Brief, then; and what\'s the news?\n  HUBERT. O, my sweet sir, news fitting to the night,\n    Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible.\n  BASTARD. Show me the very wound of this ill news;\n    I am no woman, I\'ll not swoon at it.\n  HUBERT. The King, I fear, is poison\'d by a monk;\n    I left him almost speechless and broke out\n    To acquaint you with this evil, that you might\n    The better arm you to the sudden time\n    Than if you had at leisure known of this.\n  BASTARD. How did he take it; who did taste to him?\n  HUBERT. A monk, I tell you; a resolved villain,\n    Whose bowels suddenly burst out. The King\n    Yet speaks, and peradventure may recover.\n  BASTARD. Who didst thou leave to tend his Majesty?  \n  HUBERT. Why, know you not? The lords are all come back,\n    And brought Prince Henry in their company;\n    At whose request the King hath pardon\'d them,\n    And they are all about his Majesty.\n  BASTARD. Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven,\n    And tempt us not to bear above our power!\n    I\'ll tell thee, Hubert, half my power this night,\n    Passing these flats, are taken by the tide-\n    These Lincoln Washes have devoured them;\n    Myself, well-mounted, hardly have escap\'d.\n    Away, before! conduct me to the King;\n    I doubt he will be dead or ere I come.                     Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 7.\n\nThe orchard at Swinstead Abbey\n\nEnter PRINCE HENRY, SALISBURY, and BIGOT\n\n  PRINCE HENRY. It is too late; the life of all his blood\n    Is touch\'d corruptibly, and his pure brain.\n    Which some suppose the soul\'s frail dwelling-house,\n    Doth by the idle comments that it makes\n    Foretell the ending of mortality.\n\n                   Enter PEMBROKE\n\n  PEMBROKE. His Highness yet doth speak, and holds belief\n    That, being brought into the open air,\n    It would allay the burning quality\n    Of that fell poison which assaileth him.\n  PRINCE HENRY. Let him be brought into the orchard here.\n    Doth he still rage?                                    Exit BIGOT\n  PEMBROKE. He is more patient\n    Than when you left him; even now he sung.  \n  PRINCE HENRY. O vanity of sickness! Fierce extremes\n    In their continuance will not feel themselves.\n    Death, having prey\'d upon the outward parts,\n    Leaves them invisible, and his siege is now\n    Against the mind, the which he pricks and wounds\n    With many legions of strange fantasies,\n    Which, in their throng and press to that last hold,\n    Confound themselves. \'Tis strange that death should sing.\n    I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan\n    Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,\n    And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings\n    His soul and body to their lasting rest.\n  SALISBURY. Be of good comfort, Prince; for you are born\n    To set a form upon that indigest\n    Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude.\n\n       Re-enter BIGOT and attendants, who bring in\n                KING JOHN in a chair\n\n  KING JOHN. Ay, marry, now my soul hath elbow-room;  \n    It would not out at windows nor at doors.\n    There is so hot a summer in my bosom\n    That all my bowels crumble up to dust.\n    I am a scribbled form drawn with a pen\n    Upon a parchment, and against this fire\n    Do I shrink up.\n  PRINCE HENRY. How fares your Majesty?\n  KING JOHN. Poison\'d-ill-fare! Dead, forsook, cast off;\n    And none of you will bid the winter come\n    To thrust his icy fingers in my maw,\n    Nor let my kingdom\'s rivers take their course\n    Through my burn\'d bosom, nor entreat the north\n    To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips\n    And comfort me with cold. I do not ask you much;\n    I beg cold comfort; and you are so strait\n    And so ingrateful you deny me that.\n  PRINCE HENRY. O that there were some virtue in my tears,\n    That might relieve you!\n  KING JOHN. The salt in them is hot.\n    Within me is a hell; and there the poison  \n    Is as a fiend confin\'d to tyrannize\n    On unreprievable condemned blood.\n\n                 Enter the BASTARD\n\n  BASTARD. O, I am scalded with my violent motion\n    And spleen of speed to see your Majesty!\n  KING JOHN. O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye!\n    The tackle of my heart is crack\'d and burnt,\n    And all the shrouds wherewith my life should sail\n    Are turned to one thread, one little hair;\n    My heart hath one poor string to stay it by,\n    Which holds but till thy news be uttered;\n    And then all this thou seest is but a clod\n    And module of confounded royalty.\n  BASTARD. The Dauphin is preparing hitherward,\n    Where God He knows how we shall answer him;\n    For in a night the best part of my pow\'r,\n    As I upon advantage did remove,\n    Were in the Washes all unwarily  \n    Devoured by the unexpected flood.                 [The KING dies]\n  SALISBURY. You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear.\n    My liege! my lord! But now a king-now thus.\n  PRINCE HENRY. Even so must I run on, and even so stop.\n    What surety of the world, what hope, what stay,\n    When this was now a king, and now is clay?\n  BASTARD. Art thou gone so? I do but stay behind\n    To do the office for thee of revenge,\n    And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven,\n    As it on earth hath been thy servant still.\n    Now, now, you stars that move in your right spheres,\n    Where be your pow\'rs? Show now your mended faiths,\n    And instantly return with me again\n    To push destruction and perpetual shame\n    Out of the weak door of our fainting land.\n    Straight let us seek, or straight we shall be sought;\n    The Dauphin rages at our very heels.\n  SALISBURY. It seems you know not, then, so much as we:\n    The Cardinal Pandulph is within at rest,\n    Who half an hour since came from the Dauphin,  \n    And brings from him such offers of our peace\n    As we with honour and respect may take,\n    With purpose presently to leave this war.\n  BASTARD. He will the rather do it when he sees\n    Ourselves well sinewed to our defence.\n  SALISBURY. Nay, \'tis in a manner done already;\n    For many carriages he hath dispatch\'d\n    To the sea-side, and put his cause and quarrel\n    To the disposing of the Cardinal;\n    With whom yourself, myself, and other lords,\n    If you think meet, this afternoon will post\n    To consummate this business happily.\n  BASTARD. Let it be so. And you, my noble Prince,\n    With other princes that may best be spar\'d,\n    Shall wait upon your father\'s funeral.\n  PRINCE HENRY. At Worcester must his body be interr\'d;\n    For so he will\'d it.\n  BASTARD. Thither shall it, then;\n    And happily may your sweet self put on\n    The lineal state and glory of the land!  \n    To whom, with all submission, on my knee\n    I do bequeath my faithful services\n    And true subjection everlastingly.\n  SALISBURY. And the like tender of our love we make,\n    To rest without a spot for evermore.\n  PRINCE HENRY. I have a kind soul that would give you thanks,\n    And knows not how to do it but with tears.\n  BASTARD. O, let us pay the time but needful woe,\n    Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.\n    This England never did, nor never shall,\n    Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,\n    But when it first did help to wound itself.\n    Now these her princes are come home again,\n    Come the three corners of the world in arms,\n    And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,\n    If England to itself do rest but true.                     Exeunt\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n1599\n\n\nTHE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  JULIUS CAESAR, Roman statesman and general\n  OCTAVIUS, Triumvir after Caesar\'s death, later Augustus Caesar,\n    first emperor of Rome\n  MARK ANTONY, general and friend of Caesar, a Triumvir after his death\n  LEPIDUS, third member of the Triumvirate\n  MARCUS BRUTUS, leader of the conspiracy against Caesar\n  CASSIUS, instigator of the conspiracy\n  CASCA,          conspirator against Caesar\n  TREBONIUS,           "          "     "\n  CAIUS LIGARIUS,      "          "     "\n  DECIUS BRUTUS,       "          "     "\n  METELLUS CIMBER,     "          "     "\n  CINNA,               "          "     "\n  CALPURNIA, wife of Caesar\n  PORTIA, wife of Brutus\n  CICERO,     senator\n  POPILIUS,      "\n  POPILIUS LENA, "\n  FLAVIUS, tribune  \n  MARULLUS, tribune\n  CATO,     supportor of Brutus\n  LUCILIUS,     "     "    "\n  TITINIUS,     "     "    "\n  MESSALA,      "     "    "\n  VOLUMNIUS,    "     "    "\n  ARTEMIDORUS, a teacher of rhetoric\n  CINNA, a poet\n  VARRO,     servant to Brutus\n  CLITUS,       "    "     "\n  CLAUDIO,      "    "     "\n  STRATO,       "    "     "\n  LUCIUS,       "    "     "\n  DARDANIUS,    "    "     "\n  PINDARUS, servant to Cassius\n  The Ghost of Caesar\n  A Soothsayer\n  A Poet\n  Senators, Citizens, Soldiers, Commoners, Messengers, and Servants\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE: Rome, the conspirators\' camp near Sardis,  and the plains of Philippi.\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nRome. A street.\n\nEnter Flavius, Marullus, and certain Commoners.\n\n  FLAVIUS. Hence, home, you idle creatures, get you home.\n    Is this a holiday? What, know you not,\n    Being mechanical, you ought not walk\n    Upon a laboring day without the sign\n    Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou?\n  FIRST COMMONER. Why, sir, a carpenter.\n  MARULLUS. Where is thy leather apron and thy rule?\n    What dost thou with thy best apparel on?\n    You, sir, what trade are you?\n  SECOND COMMONER. Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am\n    but, as you would say, a cobbler.\n  MARULLUS. But what trade art thou? Answer me directly.\n  SECOND COMMONER. A trade, sir, that, I hope, I may use with a safe\n    conscience, which is indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.\n  MARULLUS. What trade, thou knave? Thou naughty knave, what trade?\n  SECOND COMMONER. Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me; yet,\n    if you be out, sir, I can mend you.  \n  MARULLUS. What mean\'st thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!\n  SECOND COMMONER. Why, sir, cobble you.\n  FLAVIUS. Thou art a cobbler, art thou?\n  SECOND COMMONER. Truly, Sir, all that I live by is with the awl; I\n    meddle with no tradesman\'s matters, nor women\'s matters, but with\n    awl. I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they are in\n    great danger, I recover them. As proper men as ever trod upon\n    neat\'s leather have gone upon my handiwork.\n  FLAVIUS. But wherefore art not in thy shop today?\n    Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?\n  SECOND COMMONER. Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes to get myself\n    into more work. But indeed, sir, we make holiday to see Caesar\n    and to rejoice in his triumph.\n  MARULLUS. Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home?\n    What tributaries follow him to Rome\n    To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels?\n    You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!\n    O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,\n    Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft\n    Have you climb\'d up to walls and battlements,  \n    To towers and windows, yea, to chimney tops,\n    Your infants in your arms, and there have sat\n    The livelong day with patient expectation\n    To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome.\n    And when you saw his chariot but appear,\n    Have you not made an universal shout\n    That Tiber trembled underneath her banks\n    To hear the replication of your sounds\n    Made in her concave shores?\n    And do you now put on your best attire?\n    And do you now cull out a holiday?\n    And do you now strew flowers in his way\n    That comes in triumph over Pompey\'s blood?\n    Be gone!\n    Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,\n    Pray to the gods to intermit the plague\n    That needs must light on this ingratitude.\n  FLAVIUS. Go, go, good countrymen, and, for this fault,\n    Assemble all the poor men of your sort,\n    Draw them to Tiber banks, and weep your tears  \n    Into the channel, till the lowest stream\n    Do kiss the most exalted shores of all.\n                                           Exeunt all Commoners.\n    See whether their basest metal be not moved;\n    They vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness.\n    Go you down that way towards the Capitol;\n    This way will I. Disrobe the images\n    If you do find them deck\'d with ceremonies.\n  MARULLUS. May we do so?\n    You know it is the feast of Lupercal.\n  FLAVIUS. It is no matter; let no images\n    Be hung with Caesar\'s trophies. I\'ll about\n    And drive away the vulgar from the streets;\n    So do you too, where you perceive them thick.\n    These growing feathers pluck\'d from Caesar\'s wing\n    Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,\n    Who else would soar above the view of men\n    And keep us all in servile fearfulness.              Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nA public place.\n\nFlourish. Enter Caesar; Antony, for the course; Calpurnia, Portia,\nDecius, Cicero, Brutus, Cassius, and Casca; a great crowd follows,\namong them a Soothsayer.\n\n  CAESAR. Calpurnia!\n  CASCA. Peace, ho! Caesar speaks.\n                                                   Music ceases.\n  CAESAR. Calpurnia!\n  CALPURNIA. Here, my lord.\n  CAESAR. Stand you directly in Antonio\'s way,\n    When he doth run his course. Antonio!\n  ANTONY. Caesar, my lord?\n  CAESAR. Forget not in your speed, Antonio,\n    To touch Calpurnia, for our elders say\n    The barren, touched in this holy chase,\n    Shake off their sterile curse.\n  ANTONY. I shall remember.\n    When Caesar says "Do this," it is perform\'d.\n  CAESAR. Set on, and leave no ceremony out.           Flourish.  \n  SOOTHSAYER. Caesar!\n  CAESAR. Ha! Who calls?\n  CASCA. Bid every noise be still. Peace yet again!\n  CAESAR. Who is it in the press that calls on me?\n    I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music,\n    Cry "Caesar." Speak, Caesar is turn\'d to hear.\n  SOOTHSAYER. Beware the ides of March.\n  CAESAR. What man is that?\n  BRUTUS. A soothsayer you beware the ides of March.\n  CAESAR. Set him before me let me see his face.\n  CASSIUS. Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.\n  CAESAR. What say\'st thou to me now? Speak once again.\n  SOOTHSAYER. Beware the ides of March.\n  CAESAR. He is a dreamer; let us leave him. Pass.\n                      Sennet. Exeunt all but Brutus and Cassius.\n  CASSIUS. Will you go see the order of the course?\n  BRUTUS. Not I.\n  CASSIUS. I pray you, do.\n  BRUTUS. I am not gamesome; I do lack some part\n    Of that quick spirit that is in Antony.  \n    Let me not hinder, Cassius, your desires;\n    I\'ll leave you.\n  CASSIUS. Brutus, I do observe you now of late;\n    I have not from your eyes that gentleness\n    And show of love as I was wont to have;\n    You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand\n    Over your friend that loves you.\n  BRUTUS. Cassius,\n    Be not deceived; if I have veil\'d my look,\n    I turn the trouble of my countenance\n    Merely upon myself. Vexed I am\n    Of late with passions of some difference,\n    Conceptions only proper to myself,\n    Which give some soil perhaps to my behaviors;\n    But let not therefore my good friends be grieved-\n    Among which number, Cassius, be you one-\n    Nor construe any further my neglect\n    Than that poor Brutus with himself at war\n    Forgets the shows of love to other men.\n  CASSIUS. Then, Brutus, I have much mistook your passion,  \n    By means whereof this breast of mine hath buried\n    Thoughts of great value, worthy cogitations.\n    Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?\n  BRUTUS. No, Cassius, for the eye sees not itself\n    But by reflection, by some other things.\n  CASSIUS. \'Tis just,\n    And it is very much lamented, Brutus,\n    That you have no such mirrors as will turn\n    Your hidden worthiness into your eye\n    That you might see your shadow. I have heard\n    Where many of the best respect in Rome,\n    Except immortal Caesar, speaking of Brutus\n    And groaning underneath this age\'s yoke,\n    Have wish\'d that noble Brutus had his eyes.\n  BRUTUS. Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius,\n    That you would have me seek into myself\n    For that which is not in me?\n  CASSIUS. Therefore, good Brutus, be prepared to hear,\n    And since you know you cannot see yourself\n    So well as by reflection, I your glass  \n    Will modestly discover to yourself\n    That of yourself which you yet know not of.\n    And be not jealous on me, gentle Brutus;\n    Were I a common laugher, or did use\n    To stale with ordinary oaths my love\n    To every new protester, if you know\n    That I do fawn on men and hug them hard\n    And after scandal them, or if you know\n    That I profess myself in banqueting\n    To all the rout, then hold me dangerous.\n                                             Flourish and shout.\n  BRUTUS. What means this shouting? I do fear the people\n    Choose Caesar for their king.\n  CASSIUS. Ay, do you fear it?\n    Then must I think you would not have it so.\n  BRUTUS. I would not, Cassius, yet I love him well.\n    But wherefore do you hold me here so long?\n    What is it that you would impart to me?\n    If it be aught toward the general good,\n    Set honor in one eye and death i\' the other  \n    And I will look on both indifferently.\n    For let the gods so speed me as I love\n    The name of honor more than I fear death.\n  CASSIUS. I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus,\n    As well as I do know your outward favor.\n    Well, honor is the subject of my story.\n    I cannot tell what you and other men\n    Think of this life, but, for my single self,\n    I had as lief not be as live to be\n    In awe of such a thing as I myself.\n    I was born free as Caesar, so were you;\n    We both have fed as well, and we can both\n    Endure the winter\'s cold as well as he.\n    For once, upon a raw and gusty day,\n    The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores,\n    Caesar said to me, "Darest thou, Cassius, now\n    Leap in with me into this angry flood\n    And swim to yonder point?" Upon the word,\n    Accoutred as I was, I plunged in\n    And bade him follow. So indeed he did.  \n    The torrent roar\'d, and we did buffet it\n    With lusty sinews, throwing it aside\n    And stemming it with hearts of controversy.\n    But ere we could arrive the point proposed,\n    Caesar cried, "Help me, Cassius, or I sink!\n    I, as Aeneas our great ancestor\n    Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder\n    The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber\n    Did I the tired Caesar. And this man\n    Is now become a god, and Cassius is\n    A wretched creature and must bend his body\n    If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.\n    He had a fever when he was in Spain,\n    And when the fit was on him I did mark\n    How he did shake. \'Tis true, this god did shake;\n    His coward lips did from their color fly,\n    And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world\n    Did lose his luster. I did hear him groan.\n    Ay, and that tongue of his that bade the Romans\n    Mark him and write his speeches in their books,  \n    Alas, it cried, "Give me some drink, Titinius,"\n    As a sick girl. Ye gods! It doth amaze me\n    A man of such a feeble temper should\n    So get the start of the majestic world\n    And bear the palm alone. Shout.                    Flourish.\n  BRUTUS. Another general shout!\n    I do believe that these applauses are\n    For some new honors that are heap\'d on Caesar.\n  CASSIUS. Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world\n    Like a Colossus, and we petty men\n    Walk under his huge legs and peep about\n    To find ourselves dishonorable graves.\n    Men at some time are masters of their fates:\n    The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,\n    But in ourselves that we are underlings.\n    Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that "Caesar"?\n    Why should that name be sounded more than yours?\n    Write them together, yours is as fair a name;\n    Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;\n    Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with \'em,  \n    "Brutus" will start a spirit as soon as "Caesar."\n    Now, in the names of all the gods at once,\n    Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed\n    That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!\n    Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!\n    When went there by an age since the great flood\n    But it was famed with more than with one man?\n    When could they say till now that talk\'d of Rome\n    That her wide walls encompass\'d but one man?\n    Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough,\n    When there is in it but one only man.\n    O, you and I have heard our fathers say\n    There was a Brutus once that would have brook\'d\n    The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome\n    As easily as a king.\n  BRUTUS. That you do love me, I am nothing jealous;\n    What you would work me to, I have some aim.\n    How I have thought of this and of these times,\n    I shall recount hereafter; for this present,\n    I would not, so with love I might entreat you,  \n    Be any further moved. What you have said\n    I will consider; what you have to say\n    I will with patience hear, and find a time\n    Both meet to hear and answer such high things.\n    Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this:\n    Brutus had rather be a villager\n    Than to repute himself a son of Rome\n    Under these hard conditions as this time\n    Is like to lay upon us.\n  CASSIUS. I am glad that my weak words\n    Have struck but thus much show of fire from Brutus.\n\n            Re-enter Caesar and his Train.\n\n  BRUTUS. The games are done, and Caesar is returning.\n  CASSIUS. As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve,\n    And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you\n    What hath proceeded worthy note today.\n  BRUTUS. I will do so. But, look you, Cassius,\n    The angry spot doth glow on Caesar\'s brow,  \n    And all the rest look like a chidden train:\n    Calpurnia\'s cheek is pale, and Cicero\n    Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes\n    As we have seen him in the Capitol,\n    Being cross\'d in conference by some senators.\n  CASSIUS. Casca will tell us what the matter is.\n  CAESAR. Antonio!\n  ANTONY. Caesar?\n  CAESAR. Let me have men about me that are fat,\n    Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o\' nights:\n    Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;\n    He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.\n  ANTONY. Fear him not, Caesar; he\'s not dangerous;\n    He is a noble Roman and well given.\n  CAESAR. Would he were fatter! But I fear him not,\n    Yet if my name were liable to fear,\n    I do not know the man I should avoid\n    So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much,\n    He is a great observer, and he looks\n    Quite through the deeds of men. He loves no plays,  \n    As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;\n    Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort\n    As if he mock\'d himself and scorn\'d his spirit\n    That could be moved to smile at anything.\n    Such men as he be never at heart\'s ease\n    Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,\n    And therefore are they very dangerous.\n    I rather tell thee what is to be fear\'d\n    Than what I fear, for always I am Caesar.\n    Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf,\n    And tell me truly what thou think\'st of him.\n              Sennet. Exeunt Caesar and all his Train but Casca.\n  CASCA. You pull\'d me by the cloak; would you speak with me?\n  BRUTUS. Ay, Casca, tell us what hath chanced today\n    That Caesar looks so sad.\n  CASCA. Why, you were with him, were you not?\n  BRUTUS. I should not then ask Casca what had chanced.\n  CASCA. Why, there was a crown offered him, and being offered him,\n     he put it by with the back of his hand, thus, and then the\n     people fell ashouting.  \n  BRUTUS. What was the second noise for?\n  CASCA. Why, for that too.\n  CASSIUS. They shouted thrice. What was the last cry for?\n  CASCA. Why, for that too.\n  BRUTUS. Was the crown offered him thrice?\n  CASCA. Ay, marry, wast, and he put it by thrice, every time gentler\n    than other, and at every putting by mine honest neighbors\n    shouted.\n  CASSIUS. Who offered him the crown?\n  CASCA. Why, Antony.\n  BRUTUS. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.\n  CASCA. I can as well be hang\'d as tell the manner of it. It was\n    mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a\n    crown (yet \'twas not a crown neither, \'twas one of these\n    coronets) and, as I told you, he put it by once. But for all\n    that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered\n    it to him again; then he put it by again. But, to my thinking, he\n    was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it\n    the third time; he put it the third time by; and still as he\n    refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chopped hands  \n    and threw up their sweaty nightcaps and uttered such a deal of\n    stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown that it had\n    almost choked Caesar, for he swounded and fell down at it. And\n    for mine own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips\n    and receiving the bad air.\n  CASSIUS. But, soft, I pray you, what, did Caesars wound?\n  CASCA. He fell down in the marketplace and foamed at mouth and was\n    speechless.\n  BRUTUS. \'Tis very like. He hath the falling sickness.\n  CASSIUS. No, Caesar hath it not, but you, and I,\n    And honest Casca, we have the falling sickness.\n  CASCA. I know not what you mean by that, but I am sure Caesar fell\n    down. If the tagrag people did not clap him and hiss him\n    according as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do\n    the players in the theatre, I am no true man.\n  BRUTUS. What said he when he came unto himself?\n  CASCA. Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the common\n    herd was glad he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his doublet\n    and offered them his throat to cut. An had been a man of any\n    occupation, if I would not have taken him at a word, I would I  \n    might go to hell among the rogues. And so he fell. When he came\n    to himself again, he said, if he had done or said anything amiss,\n    he desired their worships to think it was his infirmity. Three or\n    four wenches where I stood cried, "Alas, good soul!" and forgave\n    him with all their hearts. But there\'s no heed to be taken of\n    them; if Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done\n    no less.\n  BRUTUS. And after that he came, thus sad, away?\n  CASCA. Ay.\n  CASSIUS. Did Cicero say anything?\n  CASCA. Ay, he spoke Greek.\n  CASSIUS. To what effect?\n  CASCA. Nay, an I tell you that, I\'ll ne\'er look you i\' the face\n    again; but those that understood him smiled at one another and\n    shook their heads; but for mine own part, it was Greek to me. I\n    could tell you more news too: Marullus and Flavius, for pulling\n    scarfs off Caesar\'s images, are put to silence. Fare you well.\n    There was more foolery yet, if could remember it.\n  CASSIUS. Will you sup with me tonight, Casca?\n  CASCA. No, I am promised forth.  \n  CASSIUS. Will you dine with me tomorrow?\n  CASCA. Ay, if I be alive, and your mind hold, and your dinner worth\n    the eating.\n  CASSIUS. Good, I will expect you.\n  CASCA. Do so, farewell, both.                            Exit.\n  BRUTUS. What a blunt fellow is this grown to be!\n    He was quick mettle when he went to school.\n  CASSIUS. So is he now in execution\n    Of any bold or noble enterprise,\n    However he puts on this tardy form.\n    This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,\n    Which gives men stomach to digest his words\n    With better appetite.\n  BRUTUS. And so it is. For this time I will leave you.\n    Tomorrow, if you please to speak with me,\n    I will come home to you, or, if you will,\n    Come home to me and I will wait for you.\n  CASSIUS. I will do so. Till then, think of the world.\n                                                    Exit Brutus.\n    Well, Brutus, thou art noble; yet, I see  \n    Thy honorable mettle may be wrought\n    From that it is disposed; therefore it is meet\n    That noble minds keep ever with their likes;\n    For who so firm that cannot be seduced?\n    Caesar doth bear me hard, but he loves Brutus.\n    If I were Brutus now and he were Cassius,\n    He should not humor me. I will this night,\n    In several hands, in at his windows throw,\n    As if they came from several citizens,\n    Writings, all tending to the great opinion\n    That Rome holds of his name, wherein obscurely\n    Caesar\'s ambition shall be glanced at.\n    And after this let Caesar seat him sure;\n    For we will shake him, or worse days endure.           Exit.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nA street. Thunder and lightning.\n\nEnter, from opposite sides, Casca, with his sword drawn, and Cicero.\n\n  CICERO. Good even, Casca. Brought you Caesar home?\n    Why are you breathless, and why stare you so?\n  CASCA. Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth\n    Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,\n    I have seen tempests when the scolding winds\n    Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen\n    The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam\n    To be exalted with the threatening clouds,\n    But never till tonight, never till now,\n    Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.\n    Either there is a civil strife in heaven,\n    Or else the world too saucy with the gods\n    Incenses them to send destruction.\n  CICERO. Why, saw you anything more wonderful?\n  CASCA. A common slave- you know him well by sight-\n    Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn  \n    Like twenty torches join\'d, and yet his hand\n    Not sensible of fire remain\'d unscorch\'d.\n    Besides- I ha\' not since put up my sword-\n    Against the Capitol I met a lion,\n    Who glaz\'d upon me and went surly by\n    Without annoying me. And there were drawn\n    Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women\n    Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw\n    Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.\n    And yesterday the bird of night did sit\n    Even at noonday upon the marketplace,\n    Howling and shrieking. When these prodigies\n    Do so conjointly meet, let not men say\n    "These are their reasons; they are natural":\n    For I believe they are portentous things\n    Unto the climate that they point upon.\n  CICERO. Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time.\n    But men may construe things after their fashion,\n    Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.\n    Comes Caesar to the Capitol tomorrow?  \n  CASCA. He doth, for he did bid Antonio\n    Send word to you he would be there tomorrow.\n  CICERO. Good then, Casca. This disturbed sky\n    Is not to walk in.\n  CASCA. Farewell, Cicero.                          Exit Cicero.\n\n                        Enter Cassius.\n\n  CASSIUS. Who\'s there?\n  CASCA. A Roman.\n  CASSIUS. Casca, by your voice.\n  CASCA. Your ear is good. Cassius, what night is this!\n  CASSIUS. A very pleasing night to honest men.\n  CASCA. Who ever knew the heavens menace so?\n  CASSIUS. Those that have known the earth so full of faults.\n    For my part, I have walk\'d about the streets,\n    Submitting me unto the perilous night,\n    And thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,\n    Have bared my bosom to the thunderstone;\n    And when the cross blue lightning seem\'d to open  \n    The breast of heaven, I did present myself\n    Even in the aim and very flash of it.\n  CASCA. But wherefore did you so much tempt the heavens?\n    It is the part of men to fear and tremble\n    When the most mighty gods by tokens send\n    Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.\n  CASSIUS. You are dull, Casca, and those sparks of life\n    That should be in a Roman you do want,\n    Or else you use not. You look pale and gaze\n    And put on fear and cast yourself in wonder\n    To see the strange impatience of the heavens.\n    But if you would consider the true cause\n    Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts,\n    Why birds and beasts from quality and kind,\n    Why old men, fools, and children calculate,\n    Why all these things change from their ordinance,\n    Their natures, and preformed faculties\n    To monstrous quality, why, you shall find\n    That heaven hath infused them with these spirits\n    To make them instruments of fear and warning  \n    Unto some monstrous state.\n    Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man\n    Most like this dreadful night,\n    That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars\n    As doth the lion in the Capitol,\n    A man no mightier than thyself or me\n    In personal action, yet prodigious grown\n    And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.\n  CASCA. \'Tis Caesar that you mean, is it not, Cassius?\n  CASSIUS. Let it be who it is, for Romans now\n    Have thews and limbs like to their ancestors.\n    But, woe the while! Our fathers\' minds are dead,\n    And we are govern\'d with our mothers\' spirits;\n    Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.\n  CASCA. Indeed they say the senators tomorrow\n    Mean to establish Caesar as a king,\n    And he shall wear his crown by sea and land\n    In every place save here in Italy.\n  CASSIUS. I know where I will wear this dagger then:\n    Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius.  \n    Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;\n    Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat.\n    Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,\n    Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron\n    Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;\n    But life, being weary of these worldly bars,\n    Never lacks power to dismiss itself.\n    If I know this, know all the world besides,\n    That part of tyranny that I do bear\n    I can shake off at pleasure.                  Thunder still.\n  CASCA. So can I.\n    So every bondman in his own hand bears\n    The power to cancel his captivity.\n  CASSIUS. And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?\n    Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf\n    But that he sees the Romans are but sheep.\n    He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.\n    Those that with haste will make a mighty fire\n    Begin it with weak straws. What trash is Rome,\n    What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves  \n    For the base matter to illuminate\n    So vile a thing as Caesar? But, O grief,\n    Where hast thou led me? I perhaps speak this\n    Before a willing bondman; then I know\n    My answer must be made. But I am arm\'d,\n    And dangers are to me indifferent.\n  CASCA. You speak to Casca, and to such a man\n    That is no fleering tell-tale. Hold, my hand.\n    Be factious for redress of all these griefs,\n    And I will set this foot of mine as far\n    As who goes farthest.\n  CASSIUS. There\'s a bargain made.\n    Now know you, Casca, I have moved already\n    Some certain of the noblest-minded Romans\n    To undergo with me an enterprise\n    Of honorable-dangerous consequence;\n    And I do know by this, they stay for me\n    In Pompey\'s Porch. For now, this fearful night,\n    There is no stir or walking in the streets,\n    And the complexion of the element  \n    In favor\'s like the work we have in hand,\n    Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible.\n\n                       Enter Cinna.\n\n  CASCA. Stand close awhile, for here comes one in haste.\n  CASSIUS. \'Tis Cinna, I do know him by his gait;\n    He is a friend. Cinna, where haste you so?\n  CINNA. To find out you. Who\'s that? Metellus Cimber?\n  CASSIUS. No, it is Casca, one incorporate\n    To our attempts. Am I not stay\'d for, Cinna?\n  CINNA. I am glad on\'t. What a fearful night is this!\n    There\'s two or three of us have seen strange sights.\n  CASSIUS. Am I not stay\'d for? Tell me.\n  CINNA. Yes, you are.\n    O Cassius, if you could\n    But win the noble Brutus to our party-\n  CASSIUS. Be you content. Good Cinna, take this paper,\n    And look you lay it in the praetor\'s chair,\n    Where Brutus may but find it; and throw this  \n    In at his window; set this up with wax\n    Upon old Brutus\' statue. All this done,\n    Repair to Pompey\'s Porch, where you shall find us.\n    Is Decius Brutus and Trebonius there?\n  CINNA. All but Metellus Cimber, and he\'s gone\n    To seek you at your house. Well, I will hie\n    And so bestow these papers as you bade me.\n  CASSIUS. That done, repair to Pompey\'s Theatre.\n                                                     Exit Cinna.\n    Come, Casca, you and I will yet ere day\n    See Brutus at his house. Three parts of him\n    Is ours already, and the man entire\n    Upon the next encounter yields him ours.\n  CASCA. O, he sits high in all the people\'s hearts,\n    And that which would appear offense in us,\n    His countenance, like richest alchemy,\n    Will change to virtue and to worthiness.\n  CASSIUS. Him and his worth and our great need of him\n    You have right well conceited. Let us go,\n    For it is after midnight, and ere day  \n    We will awake him and be sure of him.                Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\n\nEnter Brutus in his orchard.\n\n  BRUTUS. What, Lucius, ho!\n    I cannot, by the progress of the stars,\n    Give guess how near to day. Lucius, I say!\n    I would it were my fault to sleep so soundly.\n    When, Lucius, when? Awake, I say! What, Lucius!\n\n                            Enter Lucius.\n\n  LUCIUS. Call\'d you, my lord?\n  BRUTUS. Get me a taper in my study, Lucius.\n    When it is lighted, come and call me here.\n  LUCIUS. I will, my lord.                                 Exit.\n  BRUTUS. It must be by his death, and, for my part,\n    I know no personal cause to spurn at him,\n    But for the general. He would be crown\'d:\n    How that might change his nature, there\'s the question.\n    It is the bright day that brings forth the adder\n    And that craves wary walking. Crown him that,  \n    And then, I grant, we put a sting in him\n    That at his will he may do danger with.\n    The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins\n    Remorse from power, and, to speak truth of Caesar,\n    I have not known when his affections sway\'d\n    More than his reason. But \'tis a common proof\n    That lowliness is young ambition\'s ladder,\n    Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;\n    But when he once attains the upmost round,\n    He then unto the ladder turns his back,\n    Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees\n    By which he did ascend. So Caesar may;\n    Then, lest he may, prevent. And, since the quarrel\n    Will bear no color for the thing he is,\n    Fashion it thus, that what he is, augmented,\n    Would run to these and these extremities;\n    And therefore think him as a serpent\'s egg\n    Which hatch\'d would as his kind grow mischievous,\n    And kill him in the shell.\n  \n                        Re-enter Lucius.\n\n  LUCIUS. The taper burneth in your closet, sir.\n    Searching the window for a flint I found\n    This paper thus seal\'d up, and I am sure\n    It did not lie there when I went to bed.\n                                           Gives him the letter.\n  BRUTUS. Get you to bed again, it is not day.\n    Is not tomorrow, boy, the ides of March?\n  LUCIUS. I know not, sir.\n  BRUTUS. Look in the calendar and bring me word.\n  LUCIUS. I will, sir.                                     Exit.\n  BRUTUS. The exhalations whizzing in the air\n    Give so much light that I may read by them.\n                                     Opens the letter and reads.\n    "Brutus, thou sleep\'st: awake and see thyself!\n    Shall Rome, etc. Speak, strike, redress!"\n\n    "Brutus, thou sleep\'st: awake!"\n    Such instigations have been often dropp\'d  \n    Where I have took them up.\n    "Shall Rome, etc." Thus must I piece it out.\n    Shall Rome stand under one man\'s awe? What, Rome?\n    My ancestors did from the streets of Rome\n    The Tarquin drive, when he was call\'d a king.\n    "Speak, strike, redress!" Am I entreated\n    To speak and strike? O Rome, I make thee promise,\n    If the redress will follow, thou receivest\n    Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus!\n\n                        Re-enter Lucius.\n\n  LUCIUS. Sir, March is wasted fifteen days.\n                                                Knocking within.\n  BRUTUS. \'Tis good. Go to the gate, somebody knocks.\n                                                    Exit Lucius.\n    Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar\n    I have not slept.\n    Between the acting of a dreadful thing\n    And the first motion, all the interim is  \n    Like a phantasma or a hideous dream;\n    The genius and the mortal instruments\n    Are then in council, and the state of man,\n    Like to a little kingdom, suffers then\n    The nature of an insurrection.\n\n                         Re-enter Lucius.\n\n  LUCIUS. Sir, \'tis your brother Cassius at the door,\n    Who doth desire to see you.\n  BRUTUS. Is he alone?\n  LUCIUS. No, sir, there are more with him.\n  BRUTUS. Do you know them?\n  LUCIUS. No, sir, their hats are pluck\'d about their ears,\n    And half their faces buried in their cloaks,\n    That by no means I may discover them\n    By any mark of favor.\n  BRUTUS. Let \'em enter.                            Exit Lucius.\n    They are the faction. O Conspiracy,\n    Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,  \n    When evils are most free? O, then, by day\n    Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough\n    To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, Conspiracy;\n    Hide it in smiles and affability;\n    For if thou path, thy native semblance on,\n    Not Erebus itself were dim enough\n    To hide thee from prevention.\n\n    Enter the conspirators, Cassius, Casca, Decius, Cinna,\n                Metellus Cimber, and Trebonius.\n\n  CASSIUS. I think we are too bold upon your rest.\n    Good morrow, Brutus, do we trouble you?\n  BRUTUS. I have been up this hour, awake all night.\n    Know I these men that come along with you?\n  CASSIUS. Yes, every man of them, and no man here\n    But honors you, and every one doth wish\n    You had but that opinion of yourself\n    Which every noble Roman bears of you.\n    This is Trebonius.  \n  BRUTUS. He is welcome hither.\n  CASSIUS. This, Decius Brutus.\n  BRUTUS. He is welcome too.\nCASSIUS. This, Casca; this, Cinna; and this, Metellus Cimber.\n  BRUTUS. They are all welcome.\n    What watchful cares do interpose themselves\n    Betwixt your eyes and night?\n  CASSIUS. Shall I entreat a word?                 They whisper.\n  DECIUS. Here lies the east. Doth not the day break here?\n  CASCA. No.\n  CINNA. O, pardon, sir, it doth, and yongrey lines\n    That fret the clouds are messengers of day.\n  CASCA. You shall confess that you are both deceived.\n    Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises,\n    Which is a great way growing on the south,\n    Weighing the youthful season of the year.\n    Some two months hence up higher toward the north\n    He first presents his fire, and the high east\n    Stands as the Capitol, directly here.\n  BRUTUS. Give me your hands all over, one by one.\n  CASSIUS. And let us swear our resolution.  \n  BRUTUS. No, not an oath. If not the face of men,\n    The sufferance of our souls, the time\'s abuse-\n    If these be motives weak, break off betimes,\n    And every man hence to his idle bed;\n    So let high-sighted tyranny range on\n    Till each man drop by lottery. But if these,\n    As I am sure they do, bear fire enough\n    To kindle cowards and to steel with valor\n    The melting spirits of women, then, countrymen,\n    What need we any spur but our own cause\n    To prick us to redress? What other bond\n    Than secret Romans that have spoke the word\n    And will not palter? And what other oath\n    Than honesty to honesty engaged\n    That this shall be or we will fall for it?\n    Swear priests and cowards and men cautelous,\n    Old feeble carrions and such suffering souls\n    That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear\n    Such creatures as men doubt; but do not stain\n    The even virtue of our enterprise,  \n    Nor the insuppressive mettle of our spirits,\n    To think that or our cause or our performance\n    Did need an oath; when every drop of blood\n    That every Roman bears, and nobly bears,\n    Is guilty of a several bastardy\n    If he do break the smallest particle\n    Of any promise that hath pass\'d from him.\n  CASSIUS. But what of Cicero? Shall we sound him?\n    I think he will stand very strong with us.\n  CASCA. Let us not leave him out.\n  CINNA. No, by no means.\n  METELLUS. O, let us have him, for his silver hairs\n    Will purchase us a good opinion,\n    And buy men\'s voices to commend our deeds.\n    It shall be said his judgement ruled our hands;\n    Our youths and wildness shall no whit appear,\n    But all be buried in his gravity.\n  BRUTUS. O, name him not; let us not break with him,\n    For he will never follow anything\n    That other men begin.  \n  CASSIUS. Then leave him out.\n  CASCA. Indeed he is not fit.\n  DECIUS. Shall no man else be touch\'d but only Caesar?\n  CASSIUS. Decius, well urged. I think it is not meet\n    Mark Antony, so well beloved of Caesar,\n    Should outlive Caesar. We shall find of him\n    A shrewd contriver; and you know his means,\n    If he improve them, may well stretch so far\n    As to annoy us all, which to prevent,\n    Let Antony and Caesar fall together.\n  BRUTUS. Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius,\n    To cut the head off and then hack the limbs\n    Like wrath in death and envy afterwards;\n    For Antony is but a limb of Caesar.\n    Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.\n    We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar,\n    And in the spirit of men there is no blood.\n    O, that we then could come by Caesar\'s spirit,\n    And not dismember Caesar! But, alas,\n    Caesar must bleed for it! And, gentle friends,  \n    Let\'s kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;\n    Let\'s carve him as a dish fit for the gods,\n    Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds;\n    And let our hearts, as subtle masters do,\n    Stir up their servants to an act of rage\n    And after seem to chide \'em. This shall make\n    Our purpose necessary and not envious,\n    Which so appearing to the common eyes,\n    We shall be call\'d purgers, not murderers.\n    And for Mark Antony, think not of him,\n    For he can do no more than Caesar\'s arm\n    When Caesar\'s head is off.\n  CASSIUS. Yet I fear him,\n    For in the ingrated love he bears to Caesar-\n  BRUTUS. Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him.\n    If he love Caesar, all that he can do\n    Is to himself, take thought and die for Caesar.\n    And that were much he should, for he is given\n    To sports, to wildness, and much company.\n  TREBONIUS. There is no fear in him-let him not die,  \n    For he will live and laugh at this hereafter.\n                                                  Clock strikes.\n  BRUTUS. Peace, count the clock.\n  CASSIUS. The clock hath stricken three.\n  TREBONIUS. \'Tis time to part.\n  CASSIUS. But it is doubtful yet\n    Whether Caesar will come forth today or no,\n    For he is superstitious grown of late,\n    Quite from the main opinion he held once\n    Of fantasy, of dreams, and ceremonies.\n    It may be these apparent prodigies,\n    The unaccustom\'d terror of this night,\n    And the persuasion of his augurers\n    May hold him from the Capitol today.\n  DECIUS. Never fear that. If he be so resolved,\n    I can o\'ersway him, for he loves to hear\n    That unicorns may be betray\'d with trees,\n    And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,\n    Lions with toils, and men with flatterers;\n    But when I tell him he hates flatterers,  \n    He says he does, being then most flattered.\n    Let me work;\n    For I can give his humor the true bent,\n    And I will bring him to the Capitol.\n  CASSIUS. Nay, we will all of us be there to fetch him.\n  BRUTUS. By the eighth hour. Is that the utter most?\n  CINNA. Be that the uttermost, and fail not then.\n  METELLUS. Caius Ligarius doth bear Caesar hard,\n    Who rated him for speaking well of Pompey.\n    I wonder none of you have thought of him.\n  BRUTUS. Now, good Metellus, go along by him.\n    He loves me well, and I have given him reasons;\n    Send him but hither, and I\'ll fashion him.\n  CASSIUS. The morning comes upon \'s. We\'ll leave you, Brutus,\n    And, friends, disperse yourselves, but all remember\n    What you have said and show yourselves true Romans.\n  BRUTUS. Good gentlemen, look fresh and merrily;\n    Let not our looks put on our purposes,\n    But bear it as our Roman actors do,\n    With untired spirits and formal constancy.  \n    And so, good morrow to you every one.\n                                          Exeunt all but Brutus.\n    Boy! Lucius! Fast asleep? It is no matter.\n    Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber;\n    Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies,\n    Which busy care draws in the brains of men;\n    Therefore thou sleep\'st so sound.\n\n                           Enter Portia.\n\n  PORTIA. Brutus, my lord!\n  BRUTUS. Portia, what mean you? Wherefore rise you now?\n    It is not for your health thus to commit\n    Your weak condition to the raw cold morning.\n  PORTIA. Nor for yours neither. have ungently, Brutus,\n    Stole from my bed; and yesternight at supper\n    You suddenly arose and walk\'d about,\n    Musing and sighing, with your arms across;\n    And when I ask\'d you what the matter was,\n    You stared upon me with ungentle looks.  \n    I urged you further; then you scratch\'d your head,\n    And too impatiently stamp\'d with your foot.\n    Yet I insisted, yet you answer\'d not,\n    But with an angry waiter of your hand\n    Gave sign for me to leave you. So I did,\n    Fearing to strengthen that impatience\n    Which seem\'d too much enkindled, and withal\n    Hoping it was but an effect of humor,\n    Which sometime hath his hour with every man.\n    It will not let you eat, nor talk, nor sleep,\n    And, could it work so much upon your shape\n    As it hath much prevail\'d on your condition,\n    I should not know you, Brutus. Dear my lord,\n    Make me acquainted with your cause of grief.\n  BRUTUS. I am not well in health, and that is all.\n  PORTIA. Brutus is wise, and, were he not in health,\n    He would embrace the means to come by it.\n  BRUTUS. Why, so I do. Good Portia, go to bed.\n  PORTIA. Is Brutus sick, and is it physical\n    To walk unbraced and suck up the humors  \n    Of the dank morning? What, is Brutus sick,\n    And will he steal out of his wholesome bed\n    To dare the vile contagion of the night\n    And tempt the rheumy and unpurged air\n    To add unto his sickness? No, my Brutus,\n    You have some sick offense within your mind,\n    Which by the right and virtue of my place\n    I ought to know of; and, upon my knees,\n    I charm you, by my once commended beauty,\n    By all your vows of love and that great vow\n    Which did incorporate and make us one,\n    That you unfold to me, yourself, your half,\n    Why you are heavy and what men tonight\n    Have had resort to you; for here have been\n    Some six or seven, who did hide their faces\n    Even from darkness.\n  BRUTUS. Kneel not, gentle Portia.\n  PORTIA. I should not need, if you were gentle Brutus.\n    Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus,\n    Is it excepted I should know no secrets  \n    That appertain to you? Am I yourself\n    But, as it were, in sort or limitation,\n    To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,\n    And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs\n    Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,\n    Portia is Brutus\' harlot, not his wife.\n  BRUTUS. You are my true and honorable wife,\n    As dear to me as are the ruddy drops\n    That visit my sad heart.\n  PORTIA. If this were true, then should I know this secret.\n    I grant I am a woman, but withal\n    A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife.\n    I grant I am a woman, but withal\n    A woman well reputed, Cato\'s daughter.\n    Think you I am no stronger than my sex,\n    Being so father\'d and so husbanded?\n    Tell me your counsels, I will not disclose \'em.\n    I have made strong proof of my constancy,\n    Giving myself a voluntary wound\n    Here in the thigh. Can I bear that with patience  \n    And not my husband\'s secrets?\n  BRUTUS. O ye gods,\n    Render me worthy of this noble wife! Knocking within.\n    Hark, hark, one knocks. Portia, go in awhile,\n    And by and by thy bosom shall partake\n    The secrets of my heart.\n    All my engagements I will construe to thee,\n    All the charactery of my sad brows.\n    Leave me with haste. [Exit Portia.] Lucius, who\'s that knocks?\n\n                  Re-enter Lucius with Ligarius.\n\n  LUCIUS. Here is a sick man that would speak with you.\n  BRUTUS. Caius Ligarius, that Metellus spake of.\n    Boy, stand aside. Caius Ligarius, how?\n  LIGARIUS. Vouchsafe good morrow from a feeble tongue.\n  BRUTUS. O, what a time have you chose out, brave Caius,\n    To wear a kerchief! Would you were not sick!\n  LIGARIUS. I am not sick, if Brutus have in hand\n    Any exploit worthy the name of honor.  \n  BRUTUS. Such an exploit have I in hand, Ligarius,\n    Had you a healthful ear to hear of it.\n  LIGARIUS. By all the gods that Romans bow before,\n    I here discard my sickness! Soul of Rome!\n    Brave son, derived from honorable loins!\n    Thou, like an exorcist, hast conjured up\n    My mortified spirit. Now bid me run,\n    And I will strive with things impossible,\n    Yea, get the better of them. What\'s to do?\n  BRUTUS. A piece of work that will make sick men whole.\n  LIGARIUS. But are not some whole that we must make sick?\n  BRUTUS. That must we also. What it is, my Caius,\n    I shall unfold to thee, as we are going\n    To whom it must be done.\n  LIGARIUS. Set on your foot,\n    And with a heart new-fired I follow you,\n    To do I know not what; but it sufficeth\n    That Brutus leads me on.\n  BRUTUS. Follow me then.                                Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nCaesar\'s house. Thunder and lightning.\n\nEnter Caesar, in his nightgown.\n\n  CAESAR. Nor heaven nor earth have been at peace tonight.\n    Thrice hath Calpurnia in her sleep cried out,\n    "Help, ho! They murther Caesar!" Who\'s within?\n\n                         Enter a Servant.\n\n  SERVANT. My lord?\n  CAESAR. Go bid the priests do present sacrifice,\n    And bring me their opinions of success.\n  SERVANT. I will, my lord.                                Exit.\n\n                         Enter Calpurnia.\n\n  CALPURNIA. What mean you, Caesar? Think you to walk forth?\n    You shall not stir out of your house today.\n  CAESAR. Caesar shall forth: the things that threaten\'d me\n    Ne\'er look\'d but on my back; when they shall see  \n    The face of Caesar, they are vanished.\n  CALPURNIA. Caesar, I I stood on ceremonies,\n    Yet now they fright me. There is one within,\n    Besides the things that we have heard and seen,\n    Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.\n    A lioness hath whelped in the streets;\n    And graves have yawn\'d, and yielded up their dead;\n    Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds,\n    In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,\n    Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;\n    The noise of battle hurtled in the air,\n    Horses did neigh and dying men did groan,\n    And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.\n    O Caesar! These things are beyond all use,\n    And I do fear them.\n  CAESAR. What can be avoided\n    Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?\n    Yet Caesar shall go forth, for these predictions\n    Are to the world in general as to Caesar.\n  CALPURNIA. When beggars die, there are no comets seen;  \n    The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.\n  CAESAR. Cowards die many times before their deaths;\n    The valiant never taste of death but once.\n    Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,\n    It seems to me most strange that men should fear\n    Seeing that death, a necessary end,\n    Will come when it will come.\n\n                      Re-enter Servant.\n\n    What say the augurers?\n  SERVANT. They would not have you to stir forth today.\n    Plucking the entrails of an offering forth,\n    They could not find a heart within the beast.\n  CAESAR. The gods do this in shame of cowardice.\n    Caesar should be a beast without a heart\n    If he should stay at home today for fear.\n    No, Caesar shall not. Danger knows full well\n    That Caesar is more dangerous than he.\n    We are two lions litter\'d in one day,  \n    And I the elder and more terrible.\n    And Caesar shall go forth.\n  CALPURNIA. Alas, my lord,\n    Your wisdom is consumed in confidence.\n    Do not go forth today. Call it my fear\n    That keeps you in the house and not your own.\n    We\'ll send Mark Antony to the Senate House,\n    And he shall say you are not well today.\n    Let me, upon my knee, prevail in this.\n  CAESAR. Mark Antony shall say I am not well,\n    And, for thy humor, I will stay at home.\n\n                        Enter Decius.\n\n    Here\'s Decius Brutus, he shall tell them so.\n  DECIUS. Caesar, all hail! Good morrow, worthy Caesar!\n    I come to fetch you to the Senate House.\n  CAESAR. And you are come in very happy time\n    To bear my greeting to the senators\n    And tell them that I will not come today.  \n    Cannot, is false, and that I dare not, falser:\n    I will not come today. Tell them so, Decius.\n  CALPURNIA. Say he is sick.\n  CAESAR. Shall Caesar send a lie?\n    Have I in conquest stretch\'d mine arm so far\n    To be afeard to tell greybeards the truth?\n    Decius, go tell them Caesar will not come.\n  DECIUS. Most mighty Caesar, let me know some cause,\n    Lest I be laugh\'d at when I tell them so.\n  CAESAR. The cause is in my will: I will not come,\n    That is enough to satisfy the Senate.\n    But, for your private satisfaction,\n    Because I love you, I will let you know.\n    Calpurnia here, my wife, stays me at home;\n    She dreamt tonight she saw my statue,\n    Which, like a fountain with an hundred spouts,\n    Did run pure blood, and many lusty Romans\n    Came smiling and did bathe their hands in it.\n    And these does she apply for warnings and portents\n    And evils imminent, and on her knee  \n    Hath begg\'d that I will stay at home today.\n  DECIUS. This dream is all amiss interpreted;\n    It was a vision fair and fortunate.\n    Your statue spouting blood in many pipes,\n    In which so many smiling Romans bathed,\n    Signifies that from you great Rome shall suck\n    Reviving blood, and that great men shall press\n    For tinctures, stains, relics, and cognizance.\n    This by Calpurnia\'s dream is signified.\n  CAESAR. And this way have you well expounded it.\n  DECIUS. I have, when you have heard what I can say.\n    And know it now, the Senate have concluded\n    To give this day a crown to mighty Caesar.\n    If you shall send them word you will not come,\n    Their minds may change. Besides, it were a mock\n    Apt to be render\'d, for someone to say\n    "Break up the Senate till another time,\n    When Caesar\'s wife shall meet with better dreams."\n    If Caesar hide himself, shall they not whisper\n    "Lo, Caesar is afraid"?  \n    Pardon me, Caesar, for my dear dear love\n    To your proceeding bids me tell you this,\n    And reason to my love is liable.\n  CAESAR. How foolish do your fears seem now, Calpurnia!\n    I am ashamed I did yield to them.\n    Give me my robe, for I will go.\n\n         Enter Publius, Brutus, Ligarius, Metellus, Casca,\n                     Trebonius, and Cinna.\n\n    And look where Publius is come to fetch me.\n  PUBLIUS. Good morrow,Caesar.\n  CAESAR. Welcome, Publius.\n    What, Brutus, are you stirr\'d so early too?\n    Good morrow, Casca. Caius Ligarius,\n    Caesar was ne\'er so much your enemy\n    As that same ague which hath made you lean.\n    What is\'t o\'clock?\n  BRUTUS. Caesar, \'tis strucken eight.\n  CAESAR. I thank you for your pains and courtesy.  \n\n                           Enter Antony.\n\n    See, Antony, that revels long o\' nights,\n    Is notwithstanding up. Good morrow, Antony.\n  ANTONY. So to most noble Caesar.\n  CAESAR. Bid them prepare within.\n    I am to blame to be thus waited for.\n    Now, Cinna; now, Metellus; what, Trebonius,\n    I have an hour\'s talk in store for you;\n    Remember that you call on me today;\n    Be near me, that I may remember you.\n  TREBONIUS. Caesar, I will. [Aside.] And so near will I be\n    That your best friends shall wish I had been further.\n  CAESAR. Good friends, go in and taste some wine with me,\n    And we like friends will straightway go together.\n  BRUTUS. [Aside.] That every like is not the same, O Caesar,\n    The heart of Brutus yearns to think upon!            Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nA street near the Capitol.\n\nEnter Artemidorus, reading paper.\n\n  ARTEMIDORUS. "Caesar, beware of Brutus; take heed of Cassius; come\n    not near Casca; have an eye to Cinna; trust not Trebonius; mark\n    well Metellus Cimber; Decius Brutus loves thee not; thou hast\n    wronged Caius Ligarius. There is but one mind in all these men,\n    and it is bent against Caesar. If thou beest not immortal, look\n    about you. Security gives way to conspiracy. The mighty gods\n    defend thee!\n                                        Thy lover, Artemidorus."\n    Here will I stand till Caesar pass along,\n    And as a suitor will I give him this.\n    My heart laments that virtue cannot live\n    Out of the teeth of emulation.\n    If thou read this, O Caesar, thou mayest live;\n    If not, the Fates with traitors do contrive.           Exit.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nAnother part of the same street, before the house of Brutus.\n\nEnter Portia and Lucius.\n\n  PORTIA. I prithee, boy, run to the Senate House;\n    Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone.\n    Why dost thou stay?\n  LUCIUS. To know my errand, madam.\n  PORTIA. I would have had thee there, and here again,\n    Ere I can tell thee what thou shouldst do there.\n    O constancy, be strong upon my side!\n    Set a huge mountain \'tween my heart and tongue!\n    I have a man\'s mind, but a woman\'s might.\n    How hard it is for women to keep counsel!\n    Art thou here yet?\n  LUCIUS. Madam, what should I do?\n    Run to the Capitol, and nothing else?\n    And so return to you, and nothing else?\n  PORTIA. Yes, bring me word, boy, if thy lord look well,\n    For he went sickly forth; and take good note\n    What Caesar doth, what suitors press to him.  \n    Hark, boy, what noise is that?\n  LUCIUS. I hear none, madam.\n  PORTIA. Prithee, listen well.\n    I heard a bustling rumor like a fray,\n    And the wind brings it from the Capitol.\n  LUCIUS. Sooth, madam, I hear nothing.\n\n                     Enter the Soothsayer.\n\n  PORTIA. Come hither, fellow;\n    Which way hast thou been?\n  SOOTHSAYER. At mine own house, good lady.\n  PORTIA. What is\'t o\'clock?\n  SOOTHSAYER. About the ninth hour, lady.\n  PORTIA. Is Caesar yet gone to the Capitol?\n  SOOTHSAYER. Madam, not yet. I go to take my stand\n    To see him pass on to the Capitol.\n  PORTIA. Thou hast some suit to Caesar, hast thou not?\n  SOOTHSAYER. That I have, lady. If it will please Caesar\n    To be so good to Caesar as to hear me,  \n    I shall beseech him to befriend himself.\n  PORTIA. Why, know\'st thou any harm\'s intended towards him?\n  SOOTHSAYER. None that I know will be, much that I fear may chance.\n    Good morrow to you. Here the street is narrow,\n    The throng that follows Caesar at the heels,\n    Of senators, of praetors, common suitors,\n    Will crowd a feeble man almost to death.\n    I\'ll get me to a place more void and there\n    Speak to great Caesar as he comes along.               Exit.\n  PORTIA. I must go in. Ay me, how weak a thing\n    The heart of woman is! O Brutus,\n    The heavens speed thee in thine enterprise!\n    Sure, the boy heard me. Brutus hath a suit\n    That Caesar will not grant. O, I grow faint.\n    Run, Lucius, and commend me to my lord;\n    Say I am merry. Come to me again,\n    And bring me word what he doth say to thee.\n                                               Exeunt severally.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nRome. Before the Capitol; the Senate sitting above.\nA crowd of people, among them Artemidorus and the Soothsayer.\n\nFlourish. Enter Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Casca, Decius, Metellus,\nTrebonius, Cinna, Antony, Lepidus, Popilius, Publius, and others.\n\n  CAESAR. The ides of March are come.\n  SOOTHSAYER. Ay, Caesar, but not gone.\n  A Hail, Caesar! Read this schedule.\n  DECIUS. Trebonius doth desire you to o\'er read,\n    At your best leisure, this his humble suit.\n  ARTEMIDORUS. O Caesar, read mine first, for mine\'s a suit\n    That touches Caesar nearer. Read it, great Caesar.\n  CAESAR. What touches us ourself shall be last served.\n  ARTEMIDORUS. Delay not, Caesar; read it instantly.\n  CAESAR. What, is the fellow mad?\n  PUBLIUS. Sirrah, give place.\n  CASSIUS. What, urge you your petitions in the street?\n    Come to the Capitol.\n  \n      Caesar goes up to the Senate House, the rest follow.\n\n  POPILIUS. I wish your enterprise today may thrive.\n  CASSIUS. What enterprise, Popilius?\n  POPILIUS. Fare you well.\n                                             Advances to Caesar.\n  BRUTUS. What said Popilius Lena?\n  CASSIUS. He wish\'d today our enterprise might thrive.\n    I fear our purpose is discovered.\n  BRUTUS. Look, how he makes to Caesar. Mark him.\n  CASSIUS. Casca,\n    Be sudden, for we fear prevention.\n    Brutus, what shall be done? If this be known,\n    Cassius or Caesar never shall turn back,\n    For I will slay myself.\n  BRUTUS. Cassius, be constant.\n    Popilius Lena speaks not of our purposes;\n    For, look, he smiles, and Caesar doth not change.\n  CASSIUS. Trebonius knows his time, for, look you, Brutus,\n    He draws Mark Antony out of the way.  \n                                    Exeunt Antony and Trebonius.\n  DECIUS. Where is Metellus Cimber? Let him\n    And presently prefer his suit to Caesar.\n  BRUTUS. He is address\'d; press near and second him.\n  CINNA. Casca, you are the first that rears your hand.\n  CAESAR. Are we all ready? What is now amiss\n    That Caesar and his Senate must redress?\n  METELLUS. Most high, most mighty, and most puissant Caesar,\n    Metellus Cimber throws before thy seat\n    An humble heart.                                     Kneels.\n  CAESAR. I must prevent thee, Cimber.\n    These couchings and these lowly courtesies\n    Might fire the blood of ordinary men\n    And turn preordinance and first decree\n    Into the law of children. Be not fond\n    To think that Caesar bears such rebel blood\n    That will be thaw\'d from the true quality\n    With that which melteth fools- I mean sweet words,\n    Low-crooked court\'sies, and base spaniel-fawning.\n    Thy brother by decree is banished.  \n    If thou dost bend and pray and fawn for him,\n    I spurn thee like a cur out of my way.\n    Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause\n    Will he be satisfied.\n  METELLUS. Is there no voice more worthy than my own,\n    To sound more sweetly in great Caesar\'s ear\n    For the repealing of my banish\'d brother?\n  BRUTUS. I kiss thy hand, but not in flattery, Caesar,\n    Desiring thee that Publius Cimber may\n    Have an immediate freedom of repeal.\n  CAESAR. What, Brutus?\n  CASSIUS. Pardon, Caesar! Caesar, pardon!\n    As low as to thy foot doth Cassius fall\n    To beg enfranchisement for Publius Cimber.\n  CAESAR. I could be well moved, if I were as you;\n    If I could pray to move, prayers would move me;\n    But I am constant as the northern star,\n    Of whose true-fix\'d and resting quality\n    There is no fellow in the firmament.\n    The skies are painted with unnumber\'d sparks;  \n    They are all fire and every one doth shine;\n    But there\'s but one in all doth hold his place.\n    So in the world, \'tis furnish\'d well with men,\n    And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive;\n    Yet in the number I do know but one\n    That unassailable holds on his rank,\n    Unshaked of motion; and that I am he,\n    Let me a little show it, even in this;\n    That I was constant Cimber should be banish\'d,\n    And constant do remain to keep him so.\n  CINNA. O Caesar-\n  CAESAR. Hence! Wilt thou lift up Olympus?\n  DECIUS. Great Caesar-\n  CAESAR. Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?\n  CASCA. Speak, hands, for me!\n                        Casca first, then the other Conspirators\n                                  and Marcus Brutus stab Caesar.\n  CAESAR. Et tu, Brute?- Then fall, Caesar! Dies.\n  CINNA. Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!\n    Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets.  \n  CASSIUS. Some to the common pulpits and cry out\n    "Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!"\n  BRUTUS. People and senators, be not affrighted,\n    Fly not, stand still; ambition\'s debt is paid.\n  CASCA. Go to the pulpit, Brutus.\n  DECIUS. And Cassius too.\n  BRUTUS. Where\'s Publius?\n  CINNA. Here, quite confounded with this mutiny.\n  METELLUS. Stand fast together, lest some friend of Caesar\'s\n    Should chance-\n  BRUTUS. Talk not of standing. Publius, good cheer,\n    There is no harm intended to your person,\n    Nor to no Roman else. So tell them, Publius.\n  CASSIUS. And leave us, Publius, lest that the people\n    Rushing on us should do your age some mischief.\n  BRUTUS. Do so, and let no man abide this deed\n    But we the doers.\n\n                        Re-enter Trebonius.\n  \n  CASSIUS. Where is Antony?\n  TREBONIUS. Fled to his house amazed.\n    Men, wives, and children stare, cry out, and run\n    As it were doomsday.\n  BRUTUS. Fates, we will know your pleasures.\n    That we shall die, we know; \'tis but the time\n    And drawing days out that men stand upon.\n  CASSIUS. Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life\n    Cuts off so many years of fearing death.\n  BRUTUS. Grant that, and then is death a benefit;\n    So are we Caesar\'s friends that have abridged\n    His time of fearing death. Stoop, Romans, stoop,\n    And let us bathe our hands in Caesar\'s blood\n    Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords;\n    Then walk we forth, even to the marketplace,\n    And waving our red weapons o\'er our heads,\n    Let\'s all cry, "Peace, freedom, and liberty!"\n  CASSIUS. Stoop then, and wash. How many ages hence\n    Shall this our lofty scene be acted over\n    In states unborn and accents yet unknown!  \n  BRUTUS. How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport,\n    That now on Pompey\'s basis lies along\n    No worthier than the dust!\n  CASSIUS. So oft as that shall be,\n    So often shall the knot of us be call\'d\n    The men that gave their country liberty.\n  DECIUS. What, shall we forth?\n  CASSIUS. Ay, every man away.\n    Brutus shall lead, and we will grace his heels\n    With the most boldest and best hearts of Rome.\n\n                        Enter a Servant.\n\n  BRUTUS. Soft, who comes here? A friend of Antony\'s.\n  SERVANT. Thus, Brutus, did my master bid me kneel,\n    Thus did Mark Antony bid me fall down,\n    And, being prostrate, thus he bade me say:\n    Brutus is noble, wise, valiant, and honest;\n    Caesar was mighty, bold, royal, and loving.\n    Say I love Brutus and I honor him;  \n    Say I fear\'d Caesar, honor\'d him, and loved him.\n    If Brutus will vouchsafe that Antony\n    May safely come to him and be resolved\n    How Caesar hath deserved to lie in death,\n    Mark Antony shall not love Caesar dead\n    So well as Brutus living, but will follow\n    The fortunes and affairs of noble Brutus\n    Thorough the hazards of this untrod state\n    With all true faith. So says my master Antony.\n  BRUTUS. Thy master is a wise and valiant Roman;\n    I never thought him worse.\n    Tell him, so please him come unto this place,\n    He shall be satisfied and, by my honor,\n    Depart untouch\'d.\n  SERVANT. I\'ll fetch him presently.                       Exit.\n  BRUTUS. I know that we shall have him well to friend.\n  CASSIUS. I wish we may, but yet have I a mind\n    That fears him much, and my misgiving still\n    Falls shrewdly to the purpose.\n  \n                          Re-enter Antony.\n\n  BRUTUS. But here comes Antony. Welcome, Mark Antony.\n  ANTONY. O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?\n    Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,\n    Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.\n    I know not, gentlemen, what you intend,\n    Who else must be let blood, who else is rank.\n    If I myself, there is no hour so fit\n    As Caesar\'s death\'s hour, nor no instrument\n    Of half that worth as those your swords, made rich\n    With the most noble blood of all this world.\n    I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard,\n    Now, whilst your purpled hands do reek and smoke,\n    Fulfill your pleasure. Live a thousand years,\n    I shall not find myself so apt to die;\n    No place will please me so, no means of death,\n    As here by Caesar, and by you cut off,\n    The choice and master spirits of this age.\n  BRUTUS. O Antony, beg not your death of us!  \n    Though now we must appear bloody and cruel,\n    As, by our hands and this our present act\n    You see we do, yet see you but our hands\n    And this the bleeding business they have done.\n    Our hearts you see not; they are pitiful;\n    And pity to the general wrong of Rome-\n    As fire drives out fire, so pity pity-\n    Hath done this deed on Caesar. For your part,\n    To you our swords have leaden points, Mark Antony;\n    Our arms in strength of malice, and our hearts\n    Of brothers\' temper, do receive you in\n    With all kind love, good thoughts, and reverence.\n  CASSIUS. Your voice shall be as strong as any man\'s\n    In the disposing of new dignities.\n  BRUTUS. Only be patient till we have appeased\n    The multitude, beside themselves with fear,\n    And then we will deliver you the cause\n    Why I, that did love Caesar when I struck him,\n    Have thus proceeded.\n  ANTONY. I doubt not of your wisdom.  \n    Let each man render me his bloody hand.\n    First, Marcus Brutus, will I shake with you;\n    Next, Caius Cassius, do I take your hand;\n    Now, Decius Brutus, yours; now yours, Metellus;\n    Yours, Cinna; and, my valiant Casca, yours;\n    Though last, not least in love, yours, good Trebonius.\n    Gentlemen all- alas, what shall I say?\n    My credit now stands on such slippery ground,\n    That one of two bad ways you must conceit me,\n    Either a coward or a flatterer.\n    That I did love thee, Caesar, O, \'tis true!\n    If then thy spirit look upon us now,\n    Shall it not grieve thee dearer than thy death\n    To see thy Antony making his peace,\n    Shaking the bloody fingers of thy foes,\n    Most noble! In the presence of thy corse?\n    Had I as many eyes as thou hast wounds,\n    Weeping as fast as they stream forth thy blood,\n    It would become me better than to close\n    In terms of friendship with thine enemies.  \n    Pardon me, Julius! Here wast thou bay\'d, brave hart,\n    Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand,\n    Sign\'d in thy spoil, and crimson\'d in thy Lethe.\n    O world, thou wast the forest to this hart,\n    And this, indeed, O world, the heart of thee.\n    How like a deer strucken by many princes\n    Dost thou here lie!\n  CASSIUS. Mark Antony-\n  ANTONY. Pardon me, Caius Cassius.\n    The enemies of Caesar shall say this:\n    Then, in a friend, it is cold modesty.\n  CASSIUS. I blame you not for praising Caesar so;\n    But what compact mean you to have with us?\n    Will you be prick\'d in number of our friends,\n    Or shall we on, and not depend on you?\n  ANTONY. Therefore I took your hands, but was indeed\n    Sway\'d from the point by looking down on Caesar.\n    Friends am I with you all and love you all,\n    Upon this hope that you shall give me reasons\n    Why and wherein Caesar was dangerous.  \n  BRUTUS. Or else were this a savage spectacle.\n    Our reasons are so full of good regard\n    That were you, Antony, the son of Caesar,\n    You should be satisfied.\n  ANTONY. That\'s all I seek;\n    And am moreover suitor that I may\n    Produce his body to the marketplace,\n    And in the pulpit, as becomes a friend,\n    Speak in the order of his funeral.\n  BRUTUS. You shall, Mark Antony.\n  CASSIUS. Brutus, a word with you.\n    [Aside to Brutus.] You know not what you do. Do not consent\n    That Antony speak in his funeral.\n    Know you how much the people may be moved\n    By that which he will utter?\n  BRUTUS. By your pardon,\n    I will myself into the pulpit first,\n    And show the reason of our Caesar\'s death.\n    What Antony shall speak, I will protest\n    He speaks by leave and by permission,  \n    And that we are contented Caesar shall\n    Have all true rites and lawful ceremonies.\n    It shall advantage more than do us wrong.\n  CASSIUS. I know not what may fall; I like it not.\n  BRUTUS. Mark Antony, here, take you Caesar\'s body.\n    You shall not in your funeral speech blame us,\n    But speak all good you can devise of Caesar,\n    And say you do\'t by our permission,\n    Else shall you not have any hand at all\n    About his funeral. And you shall speak\n    In the same pulpit whereto I am going,\n    After my speech is ended.\n  ANTONY. Be it so,\n    I do desire no more.\n  BRUTUS. Prepare the body then, and follow us.\n                                          Exeunt all but Antony.\n  ANTONY. O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,\n    That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!\n    Thou art the ruins of the noblest man\n    That ever lived in the tide of times.  \n    Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!\n    Over thy wounds now do I prophesy\n    (Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips\n    To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue)\n    A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;\n    Domestic fury and fierce civil strife\n    Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;\n    Blood and destruction shall be so in use,\n    And dreadful objects so familiar,\n    That mothers shall but smile when they behold\n    Their infants quarter\'d with the hands of war;\n    All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,\n    And Caesar\'s spirit ranging for revenge,\n    With Ate by his side come hot from hell,\n    Shall in these confines with a monarch\'s voice\n    Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war,\n    That this foul deed shall smell above the earth\n    With carrion men, groaning for burial.\n\n                        Enter a Servant.  \n\n    You serve Octavius Caesar, do you not?\n  SERVANT. I do, Mark Antony.\n  ANTONY. Caesar did write for him to come to Rome.\n  SERVANT. He did receive his letters, and is coming,\n    And bid me say to you by word of mouth-\n    O Caesar!                                     Sees the body.\n  ANTONY. Thy heart is big; get thee apart and weep.\n    Passion, I see, is catching, for mine eyes,\n    Seeing those beads of sorrow stand in thine,\n    Began to water. Is thy master coming?\n  SERVANT. He lies tonight within seven leagues of Rome.\n  ANTONY. Post back with speed and tell him what hath chanced.\n    Here is a mourning Rome, a dangerous Rome,\n    No Rome of safety for Octavius yet;\n    Hie hence, and tell him so. Yet stay awhile,\n    Thou shalt not back till I have borne this corse\n    Into the marketplace. There shall I try,\n    In my oration, how the people take\n    The cruel issue of these bloody men,  \n    According to the which thou shalt discourse\n    To young Octavius of the state of things.\n    Lend me your hand.                Exeunt with Caesar\'s body.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe Forum.\n\nEnter Brutus and Cassius, and a throng of Citizens.\n\n  CITIZENS. We will be satisfied! Let us be satisfied!\n  BRUTUS. Then follow me and give me audience, friends.\n    Cassius, go you into the other street\n    And part the numbers.\n    Those that will hear me speak, let \'em stay here;\n    Those that will follow Cassius, go with him;\n    And public reasons shall be rendered\n    Of Caesar\'s death.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. I will hear Brutus speak.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. I will hear Cassius and compare their reasons,\n    When severally we hear them rendered.\n                               Exit Cassius, with some Citizens.\n                                    Brutus goes into the pulpit.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. The noble Brutus is ascended. Silence!\n  BRUTUS. Be patient till the last.\n    Romans, countrymen, and lovers! Hear me for my cause, and be\n    silent, that you may hear. Believe me for mine honor, and have  \n    respect to mine honor, that you may believe. Censure me in your\n    wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. If\n    there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar\'s, to\n    him I say that Brutus\' love to Caesar was no less than his. If\n    then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is\n    my answer: Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome\n    more. Had you rather Caesar were living and die all slaves, than\n    that Caesar were dead to live all freemen? As Caesar loved me, I\n    weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was\n    valiant, I honor him; but as he was ambitious, I slew him. There\n    is tears for his love, joy for his fortune, honor for his valor,\n    and death for his ambition. Who is here so base that would be a\n    bondman? If any, speak, for him have I offended. Who is here so\n    rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak, for him have I\n    offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If\n    any, speak, for him have I offended. I pause for a reply.\n  ALL. None, Brutus, none.\n  BRUTUS. Then none have I offended. I have done no more to Caesar\n    than you shall do to Brutus. The question of his death is\n    enrolled in the Capitol, his glory not extenuated, wherein he was  \n    worthy, nor his offenses enforced, for which he suffered death.\n\n              Enter Antony and others, with Caesar\'s body.\n\n    Here comes his body, mourned by Mark Antony, who, though he had\n    no hand in his death, shall receive the benefit of his dying, a\n    place in the commonwealth, as which of you shall not? With this I\n    depart- that, as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I\n    have the same dagger for myself, when it shall please my country\n    to need my death.\n  ALL. Live, Brutus, live, live!\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Bring him with triumph home unto his house.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Give him a statue with his ancestors.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Let him be Caesar.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. Caesar\'s better parts\n    Shall be crown\'d in Brutus.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. We\'ll bring him to his house with shouts and\n    clamors.\n  BRUTUS. My countrymen-\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Peace! Silence! Brutus speaks.  \n  FIRST CITIZEN. Peace, ho!\n  BRUTUS. Good countrymen, let me depart alone,\n    And, for my sake, stay here with Antony.\n    Do grace to Caesar\'s corse, and grace his speech\n    Tending to Caesar\'s glories, which Mark Antony,\n    By our permission, is allow\'d to make.\n    I do entreat you, not a man depart,\n    Save I alone, till Antony have spoke.                  Exit.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Stay, ho, and let us hear Mark Antony.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Let him go up into the public chair;\n    We\'ll hear him. Noble Antony, go up.\n  ANTONY. For Brutus\' sake, I am beholding to you.\n                                           Goes into the pulpit.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. What does he say of Brutus?\n  THIRD CITIZEN. He says, for Brutus\' sake,\n    He finds himself beholding to us all.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. \'Twere best he speak no harm of Brutus here.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. This Caesar was a tyrant.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Nay, that\'s certain.\n    We are blest that Rome is rid of him.  \n  SECOND CITIZEN. Peace! Let us hear what Antony can say.\n  ANTONY. You gentle Romans-\n  ALL. Peace, ho! Let us hear him.\n  ANTONY. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!\n    I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.\n    The evil that men do lives after them,\n    The good is oft interred with their bones;\n    So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus\n    Hath told you Caesar was ambitious;\n    If it were so, it was a grievous fault,\n    And grievously hath Caesar answer\'d it.\n    Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest-\n    For Brutus is an honorable man;\n    So are they all, all honorable men-\n    Come I to speak in Caesar\'s funeral.\n    He was my friend, faithful and just to me;\n    But Brutus says he was ambitious,\n    And Brutus is an honorable man.\n    He hath brought many captives home to Rome,\n    Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.  \n    Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?\n    When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept;\n    Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:\n    Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,\n    And Brutus is an honorable man.\n    You all did see that on the Lupercal\n    I thrice presented him a kingly crown,\n    Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?\n    Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,\n    And sure he is an honorable man.\n    I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,\n    But here I am to speak what I do know.\n    You all did love him once, not without cause;\n    What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?\n    O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts,\n    And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;\n    My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,\n    And I must pause till it come back to me.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Methinks there is much reason in his sayings.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. If thou consider rightly of the matter,  \n    Caesar has had great wrong.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Has he, masters?\n    I fear there will a worse come in his place.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. Mark\'d ye his words? He would not take the crown;\n    Therefore \'tis certain he was not ambitious.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. If it be found so, some will dear abide it.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Poor soul, his eyes are red as fire with weeping.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. There\'s not a nobler man in Rome than Antony.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. Now mark him, he begins again to speak.\n  ANTONY. But yesterday the word of Caesar might\n    Have stood against the world. Now lies he there,\n    And none so poor to do him reverence.\n    O masters! If I were disposed to stir\n    Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,\n    I should do Brutus wrong and Cassius wrong,\n    Who, you all know, are honorable men.\n    I will not do them wrong; I rather choose\n    To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,\n    Than I will wrong such honorable men.\n    But here\'s a parchment with the seal of Caesar;  \n    I found it in his closet, \'tis his will.\n    Let but the commons hear this testament-\n    Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read-\n    And they would go and kiss dead Caesar\'s wounds\n    And dip their napkins in his sacred blood,\n    Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,\n    And, dying, mention it within their wills,\n    Bequeathing it as a rich legacy\n    Unto their issue.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. We\'ll hear the will. Read it, Mark Antony.\n  ALL. The will, the will! We will hear Caesar\'s will.\n  ANTONY. Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it;\n    It is not meet you know how Caesar loved you.\n    You are not wood, you are not stones, but men;\n    And, being men, hearing the will of Caesar,\n    It will inflame you, it will make you mad.\n    \'Tis good you know not that you are his heirs,\n    For if you should, O, what would come of it!\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. Read the will; we\'ll hear it, Antony.\n    You shall read us the will, Caesar\'s will.  \n  ANTONY. Will you be patient? Will you stay awhile?\n    I have o\'ershot myself to tell you of it.\n    I fear I wrong the honorable men\n    Whose daggers have stabb\'d Caesar; I do fear it.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. They were traitors. Honorable men!\n  ALL. The will! The testament!\n  SECOND CITIZEN. They were villains, murtherers. The will!\n    Read the will!\n  ANTONY. You will compel me then to read the will?\n    Then make a ring about the corse of Caesar,\n    And let me show you him that made the will.\n    Shall I descend? And will you give me leave?\n  ALL. Come down.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Descend.\n                                  He comes down from the pulpit.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. You shall have leave.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. A ring, stand round.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Stand from the hearse, stand from the body.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Room for Antony, most noble Antony.\n  ANTONY. Nay, press not so upon me, stand far off.  \n  ALL. Stand back; room, bear back!\n  ANTONY. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.\n    You all do know this mantle. I remember\n    The first time ever Caesar put it on;\n    \'Twas on a summer\'s evening, in his tent,\n    That day he overcame the Nervii.\n    Look, in this place ran Cassius\' dagger through;\n    See what a rent the envious Casca made;\n    Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb\'d;\n    And as he pluck\'d his cursed steel away,\n    Mark how the blood of Caesar follow\'d it,\n    As rushing out of doors, to be resolved\n    If Brutus so unkindly knock\'d, or no;\n    For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar\'s angel.\n    Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him!\n    This was the most unkindest cut of all;\n    For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,\n    Ingratitude, more strong than traitors\' arms,\n    Quite vanquish\'d him. Then burst his mighty heart,\n    And, in his mantle muffling up his face,  \n    Even at the base of Pompey\'s statue,\n    Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.\n    O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!\n    Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,\n    Whilst bloody treason flourish\'d over us.\n    O, now you weep, and I perceive you feel\n    The dint of pity. These are gracious drops.\n    Kind souls, what weep you when you but behold\n    Our Caesar\'s vesture wounded? Look you here,\n    Here is himself, marr\'d, as you see, with traitors.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. O piteous spectacle!\n  SECOND CITIZEN. O noble Caesar!\n  THIRD CITIZEN. O woeful day!\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. O traitors villains!\n  FIRST CITIZEN. O most bloody sight!\n  SECOND CITIZEN. We will be revenged.\n  ALL. Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill!\n    Slay! Let not a traitor live!\n  ANTONY. Stay, countrymen.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Peace there! Hear the noble Antony.  \n  SECOND CITIZEN. We\'ll hear him, we\'ll follow him, we\'ll die with\n    him.\n  ANTONY. Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up\n    To such a sudden flood of mutiny.\n    They that have done this deed are honorable.\n    What private griefs they have, alas, I know not,\n    That made them do it. They are wise and honorable,\n    And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.\n    I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts.\n    I am no orator, as Brutus is;\n    But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man,\n    That love my friend, and that they know full well\n    That gave me public leave to speak of him.\n    For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,\n    Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,\n    To stir men\'s blood. I only speak right on;\n    I tell you that which you yourselves do know;\n    Show you sweet Caesar\'s wounds, poor dumb mouths,\n    And bid them speak for me. But were I Brutus,\n    And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony  \n    Would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue\n    In every wound of Caesar that should move\n    The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.\n  ALL. We\'ll mutiny.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. We\'ll burn the house of Brutus.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Away, then! Come, seek the conspirators.\n  ANTONY. Yet hear me, countrymen; yet hear me speak.\n  ALL. Peace, ho! Hear Antony, most noble Antony!\n  ANTONY. Why, friends, you go to do you know not what.\n    Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your loves?\n    Alas, you know not; I must tell you then.\n    You have forgot the will I told you of.\n  ALL. Most true, the will! Let\'s stay and hear the will.\n  ANTONY. Here is the will, and under Caesar\'s seal.\n    To every Roman citizen he gives,\n    To every several man, seventy-five drachmas.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Most noble Caesar! We\'ll revenge his death.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. O royal Caesar!\n  ANTONY. Hear me with patience.\n  ALL. Peace, ho!  \n  ANTONY. Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,\n    His private arbors, and new-planted orchards,\n    On this side Tiber; he hath left them you,\n    And to your heirs forever- common pleasures,\n    To walk abroad and recreate yourselves.\n    Here was a Caesar! When comes such another?\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Never, never. Come, away, away!\n    We\'ll burn his body in the holy place\n    And with the brands fire the traitors\' houses.\n    Take up the body.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Go fetch fire.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Pluck down benches.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. Pluck down forms, windows, anything.\n                                  Exeunt Citizens with the body.\n  ANTONY. Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot,\n    Take thou what course thou wilt.\n\n                        Enter a Servant.\n\n    How now, fellow?  \n  SERVANT. Sir, Octavius is already come to Rome.\n  ANTONY. Where is he?\n  SERVANT. He and Lepidus are at Caesar\'s house.\n  ANTONY. And thither will I straight to visit him.\n    He comes upon a wish. Fortune is merry,\n    And in this mood will give us anything.\n  SERVANT. I heard him say Brutus and Cassius\n    Are rid like madmen through the gates of Rome.\n  ANTONY. Be like they had some notice of the people,\n    How I had moved them. Bring me to Octavius.          Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nA street.\n\nEnter Cinna the poet.\n\n  CINNA. I dreamt tonight that I did feast with Caesar,\n    And things unluckily charge my fantasy.\n    I have no will to wander forth of doors,\n    Yet something leads me forth.\n\n                        Enter Citizens.\n\n  FIRST CITIZEN. What is your name?\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Whither are you going?\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Where do you dwell?\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. Are you a married man or a bachelor?\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Answer every man directly.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Ay, and briefly.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. Ay, and wisely.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Ay, and truly, you were best.\n  CINNA. What is my name? Whither am I going? Where do I dwell? Am I\n    a married man or a bachelor? Then, to answer every man directly  \n    and briefly, wisely and truly: wisely I say, I am a bachelor.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. That\'s as much as to say they are fools that marry.\n    You\'ll bear me a bang for that, I fear. Proceed directly.\n  CINNA. Directly, I am going to Caesar\'s funeral.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. As a friend or an enemy?\n  CINNA. As a friend.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. That matter is answered directly.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. For your dwelling, briefly.\n  CINNA. Briefly, I dwell by the Capitol.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Your name, sir, truly.\n  CINNA. Truly, my name is Cinna.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Tear him to pieces, he\'s a conspirator.\n  CINNA. I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad\n    verses.\n  CINNA. I am not Cinna the conspirator.\n  FOURTH CITIZEN. It is no matter, his name\'s Cinna. Pluck but his\n    name out of his heart, and turn him going.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Tear him, tear him! Come, brands, ho, firebrands. To\n    Brutus\', to Cassius\'; burn all. Some to Decius\' house, and some  \n    to Casca\'s, some to Ligarius\'. Away, go!             Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nA house in Rome. Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus, seated at a table.\n\n  ANTONY. These many then shall die, their names are prick\'d.\n  OCTAVIUS. Your brother too must die; consent you, Lepidus?\n  LEPIDUS. I do consent-\n  OCTAVIUS. Prick him down, Antony.\n  LEPIDUS. Upon condition Publius shall not live,\n    Who is your sister\'s son, Mark Antony.\n  ANTONY. He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him.\n    But, Lepidus, go you to Caesar\'s house,\n    Fetch the will hither, and we shall determine\n    How to cut off some charge in legacies.\n  LEPIDUS. What, shall I find you here?\n  OCTAVIUS. Or here, or at the Capitol.            Exit Lepidus.\n  ANTONY. This is a slight unmeritable man,\n    Meet to be sent on errands. Is it fit,\n    The three-fold world divided, he should stand\n    One of the three to share it?\n  OCTAVIUS. So you thought him,\n    And took his voice who should be prick\'d to die  \n    In our black sentence and proscription.\n  ANTONY. Octavius, I have seen more days than you,\n    And though we lay these honors on this man\n    To ease ourselves of divers slanderous loads,\n    He shall but bear them as the ass bears gold,\n    To groan and sweat under the business,\n    Either led or driven, as we point the way;\n    And having brought our treasure where we will,\n    Then take we down his load and turn him off,\n    Like to the empty ass, to shake his ears\n    And graze in commons.\n  OCTAVIUS. You may do your will,\n    But he\'s a tried and valiant soldier.\n  ANTONY. So is my horse, Octavius, and for that\n    I do appoint him store of provender.\n    It is a creature that I teach to fight,\n    To wind, to stop, to run directly on,\n    His corporal motion govern\'d by my spirit.\n    And, in some taste, is Lepidus but so:\n    He must be taught, and train\'d, and bid go forth;  \n    A barren-spirited fellow, one that feeds\n    On objects, arts, and imitations,\n    Which, out of use and staled by other men,\n    Begin his fashion. Do not talk of him\n    But as a property. And now, Octavius,\n    Listen great things. Brutus and Cassius\n    Are levying powers; we must straight make head;\n    Therefore let our alliance be combined,\n    Our best friends made, our means stretch\'d;\n    And let us presently go sit in council,\n    How covert matters may be best disclosed,\n    And open perils surest answered.\n  OCTAVIUS. Let us do so, for we are at the stake,\n    And bay\'d about with many enemies;\n    And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear,\n    Millions of mischiefs.                               Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nCamp near Sardis. Before Brutus\' tent. Drum.\n\nEnter Brutus, Lucilius, Lucius, and Soldiers; Titinius and Pindarus meet them.\n\n  BRUTUS. Stand, ho!\n  LUCILIUS. Give the word, ho, and stand.\n  BRUTUS. What now, Lucilius, is Cassius near?\n  LUCILIUS. He is at hand, and Pindarus is come\n    To do you salutation from his master.\n  BRUTUS. He greets me well. Your master, Pindarus,\n    In his own change, or by ill officers,\n    Hath given me some worthy cause to wish\n    Things done undone; but if he be at hand,\n    I shall be satisfied.\n  PINDARUS. I do not doubt\n    But that my noble master will appear\n    Such as he is, full of regard and honor.\n  BRUTUS. He is not doubted. A word, Lucilius,\n    How he received you. Let me be resolved.\n  LUCILIUS. With courtesy and with respect enough,  \n    But not with such familiar instances,\n    Nor with such free and friendly conference,\n    As he hath used of old.\n  BRUTUS. Thou hast described\n    A hot friend cooling. Ever note, Lucilius,\n    When love begins to sicken and decay\n    It useth an enforced ceremony.\n    There are no tricks in plain and simple faith;\n    But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,\n    Make gallant show and promise of their mettle;\n    But when they should endure the bloody spur,\n    They fall their crests and like deceitful jades\n    Sink in the trial. Comes his army on?\n  LUCILIUS. They meant his night in Sard is to be quarter\'d;\n    The greater part, the horse in general,\n    Are come with Cassius.                     Low march within.\n  BRUTUS. Hark, he is arrived.\n    March gently on to meet him.\n\n                  Enter Cassius and his Powers.  \n\n  CASSIUS. Stand, ho!\n  BRUTUS. Stand, ho! Speak the word along.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Stand!\n  SECOND SOLDIER. Stand!\n  THIRD SOLDIER. Stand!\n  CASSIUS. Most noble brother, you have done me wrong.\n  BRUTUS. Judge me, you gods! Wrong I mine enemies?\n    And, if not so, how should I wrong a brother?\n  CASSIUS. Brutus, this sober form of yours hides wrongs,\n    And when you do them-\n  BRUTUS. Cassius, be content,\n    Speak your griefs softly, I do know you well.\n    Before the eyes of both our armies here,\n    Which should perceive nothing but love from us,\n    Let us not wrangle. Bid them move away;\n    Then in my tent, Cassius, enlarge your griefs,\n    And I will give you audience.\n  CASSIUS. Pindarus,\n    Bid our commanders lead their charges off  \n    A little from this ground.\n  BRUTUS. Lucilius, do you the like, and let no man\n    Come to our tent till we have done our conference.\n    Let Lucius and Titinius guard our door.             Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nBrutus\' tent.\n\nEnter Brutus and Cassius.\n\n  CASSIUS. That you have wrong\'d me doth appear in this:\n    You have condemn\'d and noted Lucius Pella\n    For taking bribes here of the Sardians,\n    Wherein my letters, praying on his side,\n    Because I knew the man, were slighted off.\n  BRUTUS. You wrong\'d yourself to write in such a case.\n  CASSIUS. In such a time as this it is not meet\n    That every nice offense should bear his comment.\n  BRUTUS. Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself\n    Are much condemn\'d to have an itching palm,\n    To sell and mart your offices for gold\n    To undeservers.\n  CASSIUS. I an itching palm?\n    You know that you are Brutus that speaks this,\n    Or, by the gods, this speech were else your last.\n  BRUTUS. The name of Cassius honors this corruption,\n    And chastisement doth therefore hide his head.  \n  CASSIUS. Chastisement?\n  BRUTUS. Remember March, the ides of March remember.\n    Did not great Julius bleed for justice\' sake?\n    What villain touch\'d his body, that did stab,\n    And not for justice? What, shall one of us,\n    That struck the foremost man of all this world\n    But for supporting robbers, shall we now\n    Contaminate our fingers with base bribes\n    And sell the mighty space of our large honors\n    For so much trash as may be grasped thus?\n    I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon,\n    Than such a Roman.\n  CASSIUS. Brutus, bait not me,\n    I\'ll not endure it. You forget yourself\n    To hedge me in. I am a soldier, I,\n    Older in practice, abler than yourself\n    To make conditions.\n  BRUTUS. Go to, you are not, Cassius.\n  CASSIUS. I am.\n  BRUTUS. I say you are not.  \n  CASSIUS. Urge me no more, I shall forget myself;\n    Have mind upon your health, tempt me no farther.\n  BRUTUS. Away, slight man!\n  CASSIUS. Is\'t possible?\n  BRUTUS. Hear me, for I will speak.\n    Must I give way and room to your rash choler?\n    Shall I be frighted when a madman stares?\n  CASSIUS. O gods, ye gods! Must I endure all this?\n  BRUTUS. All this? Ay, more. Fret till your proud heart break.\n    Go show your slaves how choleric you are,\n    And make your bondmen tremble. Must I bouge?\n    Must I observe you? Must I stand and crouch\n    Under your testy humor? By the gods,\n    You shall digest the venom of your spleen,\n    Though it do split you, for, from this day forth,\n    I\'ll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter,\n    When you are waspish.\n  CASSIUS. Is it come to this?\n  BRUTUS. You say you are a better soldier:\n    Let it appear so, make your vaunting true,  \n    And it shall please me well. For mine own part,\n    I shall be glad to learn of noble men.\n  CASSIUS. You wrong me every way, you wrong me, Brutus.\n    I said, an elder soldier, not a better.\n    Did I say "better"?\n  BRUTUS. If you did, I care not.\n  CASSIUS. When Caesar lived, he durst not thus have moved me.\n  BRUTUS. Peace, peace! You durst not so have tempted him.\n  CASSIUS. I durst not?\n  BRUTUS. No.\n  CASSIUS. What, durst not tempt him?\n  BRUTUS. For your life you durst not.\n  CASSIUS. Do not presume too much upon my love;\n    I may do that I shall be sorry for.\n  BRUTUS. You have done that you should be sorry for.\n    There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats,\n    For I am arm\'d so strong in honesty,\n    That they pass by me as the idle wind\n    Which I respect not. I did send to you\n    For certain sums of gold, which you denied me,  \n    For I can raise no money by vile means.\n    By heaven, I had rather coin my heart\n    And drop my blood for drachmas than to wring\n    From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash\n    By any indirection. I did send\n    To you for gold to pay my legions,\n    Which you denied me. Was that done like Cassius?\n    Should I have answer\'d Caius Cassius so?\n    When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous\n    To lock such rascal counters from his friends,\n    Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts,\n    Dash him to pieces!\n  CASSIUS. I denied you not.\n  BRUTUS. You did.\n  CASSIUS. I did not. He was but a fool\n    That brought my answer back. Brutus hath rived my heart.\n    A friend should bear his friend\'s infirmities,\n    But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.\n  BRUTUS. I do not, till you practise them on me.\n  CASSIUS. You love me not.  \n  BRUTUS. I do not like your faults.\n  CASSIUS. A friendly eye could never see such faults.\n  BRUTUS. A flatterer\'s would not, though they do appear\n    As huge as high Olympus.\n  CASSIUS. Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come,\n    Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius,\n    For Cassius is aweary of the world:\n    Hated by one he loves; braved by his brother;\n    Check\'d like a bondman; all his faults observed,\n    Set in a notebook, learn\'d and conn\'d by rote,\n    To cast into my teeth. O, I could weep\n    My spirit from mine eyes! There is my dagger,\n    And here my naked breast; within, a heart\n    Dearer than Pluto\'s mine, richer than gold.\n    If that thou best a Roman, take it forth;\n    I, that denied thee gold, will give my heart.\n    Strike, as thou didst at Caesar, for I know,\n    When thou didst hate him worst, thou lovedst him better\n    Than ever thou lovedst Cassius.\n  BRUTUS. Sheathe your dagger.  \n    Be angry when you will, it shall have scope;\n    Do what you will, dishonor shall be humor.\n    O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb,\n    That carries anger as the flint bears fire,\n    Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark\n    And straight is cold again.\n  CASSIUS. Hath Cassius lived\n    To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus,\n    When grief and blood ill-temper\'d vexeth him?\n  BRUTUS. When I spoke that, I was ill-temper\'d too.\n  CASSIUS. Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.\n  BRUTUS. And my heart too.\n  CASSIUS. O Brutus!\n  BRUTUS. What\'s the matter?\n  CASSIUS. Have not you love enough to bear with me\n    When that rash humor which my mother gave me\n    Makes me forgetful?\n  BRUTUS. Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth,\n    When you are overearnest with your Brutus,\n    He\'ll think your mother chides, and leave you so.  \n  POET. [Within.] Let me go in to see the generals.\n    There is some grudge between \'em, \'tis not meet\n    They be alone.\n  LUCILIUS. [Within.] You shall not come to them.\n  POET. [Within.] Nothing but death shall stay me.\n\n      Enter Poet, followed by Lucilius, Titinius, and Lucius.\n\n  CASSIUS. How now, what\'s the matter?\n  POET. For shame, you generals! What do you mean?\n    Love, and be friends, as two such men should be;\n    For I have seen more years, I\'m sure, than ye.\n  CASSIUS. Ha, ha! How vilely doth this cynic rhyme!\n  BRUTUS. Get you hence, sirrah; saucy fellow, hence!\n  CASSIUS. Bear with him, Brutus; \'tis his fashion.\n  BRUTUS. I\'ll know his humor when he knows his time.\n    What should the wars do with these jigging fools?\n    Companion, hence!\n  CASSIUS. Away, away, be gone!                       Exit Poet.\n  BRUTUS. Lucilius and Titinius, bid the commanders  \n    Prepare to lodge their companies tonight.\n  CASSIUS. And come yourselves and bring Messala with you\n    Immediately to us.             Exeunt Lucilius and Titinius.\n  BRUTUS. Lucius, a bowl of wine!                   Exit Lucius.\n  CASSIUS. I did not think you could have been so angry.\n  BRUTUS. O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs.\n  CASSIUS. Of your philosophy you make no use,\n    If you give place to accidental evils.\n  BRUTUS. No man bears sorrow better. Portia is dead.\n  CASSIUS. Ha? Portia?\n  BRUTUS. She is dead.\n  CASSIUS. How \'scaped killing when I cross\'d you so?\n    O insupportable and touching loss!\n    Upon what sickness?\n  BRUTUS. Impatient of my absence,\n    And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony\n    Have made themselves so strong- for with her death\n    That tidings came- with this she fell distract,\n    And (her attendants absent) swallow\'d fire.\n  CASSIUS. And died so?  \n  BRUTUS. Even so.\n  CASSIUS. O ye immortal gods!\n\n               Re-enter Lucius, with wine and taper.\n\n  BRUTUS. Speak no more of her. Give me a bowl of wine.\n    In this I bury all unkindness, Cassius.              Drinks.\n  CASSIUS. My heart is thirsty for that noble pledge.\n  Fill, Lucius, till the wine o\'erswell the cup;\n  I cannot drink too much of Brutus\' love.               Drinks.\n  BRUTUS. Come in, Titinius!                        Exit Lucius.\n\n                 Re-enter Titinius, with Messala.\n\n    Welcome, good Messala.\n    Now sit we close about this taper here,\n    And call in question our necessities.\n  CASSIUS. Portia, art thou gone?\n  BRUTUS. No more, I pray you.\n    Messala, I have here received letters  \n    That young Octavius and Mark Antony\n    Come down upon us with a mighty power,\n    Bending their expedition toward Philippi.\n  MESSALA. Myself have letters of the selfsame tenure.\n  BRUTUS. With what addition?\n  MESSALA. That by proscription and bills of outlawry\n    Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus\n    Have put to death an hundred senators.\n  BRUTUS. There in our letters do not well agree;\n    Mine speak of seventy senators that died\n    By their proscriptions, Cicero being one.\n  CASSIUS. Cicero one!\n  MESSALA. Cicero is dead,\n    And by that order of proscription.\n    Had you your letters from your wife, my lord?\n  BRUTUS. No, Messala.\n  MESSALA. Nor nothing in your letters writ of her?\n  BRUTUS. Nothing, Messala.\n  MESSALA. That, methinks, is strange.\n  BRUTUS. Why ask you? Hear you aught of her in yours?  \n  MESSALA. No, my lord.\n  BRUTUS. Now, as you are a Roman, tell me true.\n  MESSALA. Then like a Roman bear the truth I tell:\n    For certain she is dead, and by strange manner.\n  BRUTUS. Why, farewell, Portia. We must die, Messala.\n    With meditating that she must die once\n    I have the patience to endure it now.\n  MESSALA. Even so great men great losses should endure.\n  CASSIUS. I have as much of this in art as you,\n    But yet my nature could not bear it so.\n  BRUTUS. Well, to our work alive. What do you think\n    Of marching to Philippi presently?\n  CASSIUS. I do not think it good.\n  BRUTUS. Your reason?\n  CASSIUS. This it is:\n    \'Tis better that the enemy seek us;\n    So shall he waste his means, weary his soldiers,\n    Doing himself offense, whilst we lying still\n    Are full of rest, defense, and nimbleness.\n  BRUTUS. Good reasons must of force give place to better.  \n    The people \'twixt Philippi and this ground\n    Do stand but in a forced affection,\n    For they have grudged us contribution.\n    The enemy, marching along by them,\n    By them shall make a fuller number up,\n    Come on refresh\'d, new-added, and encouraged;\n    From which advantage shall we cut him off\n    If at Philippi we do face him there,\n    These people at our back.\n  CASSIUS. Hear me, good brother.\n  BRUTUS. Under your pardon. You must note beside\n    That we have tried the utmost of our friends,\n    Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe:\n    The enemy increaseth every day;\n    We, at the height, are ready to decline.\n    There is a tide in the affairs of men\n    Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune;\n    Omitted, all the voyage of their life\n    Is bound in shallows and in miseries.\n    On such a full sea are we now afloat,  \n    And we must take the current when it serves,\n    Or lose our ventures.\n  CASSIUS. Then, with your will, go on;\n    We\'ll along ourselves and meet them at Philippi.\n  BRUTUS. The deep of night is crept upon our talk,\n    And nature must obey necessity,\n    Which we will niggard with a little rest.\n    There is no more to say?\n  CASSIUS. No more. Good night.\n    Early tomorrow will we rise and hence.\n  BRUTUS. Lucius!\n\n                       Re-enter Lucius.\n\n    My gown.                                        Exit Lucius.\n    Farewell, good Messala;\n    Good night, Titinius; noble, noble Cassius,\n    Good night and good repose.\n  CASSIUS. O my dear brother!\n    This was an ill beginning of the night.  \n    Never come such division \'tween our souls!\n    Let it not, Brutus.\n  BRUTUS. Everything is well.\n  CASSIUS. Good night, my lord.\n  BRUTUS. Good night, good brother.\n  TITINIUS. MESSALA. Good night, Lord Brutus.\n  BRUTUS. Farewell, everyone.\n                                          Exeunt all but Brutus.\n\n               Re-enter Lucius, with the gown.\n\n    Give me the gown. Where is thy instrument?\n  LUCIUS. Here in the tent.\n  BRUTUS. What, thou speak\'st drowsily?\n    Poor knave, I blame thee not, thou art o\'erwatch\'d.\n    Call Claudio and some other of my men,\n    I\'ll have them sleep on cushions in my tent.\n  LUCIUS. Varro and Claudio!\n\n                   Enter Varro and Claudio.  \n\n  VARRO. Calls my lord?\n  BRUTUS. I pray you, sirs, lie in my tent and sleep;\n    It may be I shall raise you by and by\n    On business to my brother Cassius.\n  VARRO. So please you, we will stand and watch your pleasure.\n  BRUTUS. I would not have it so. Lie down, good sirs.\n    It may be I shall otherwise bethink me.\n    Look Lucius, here\'s the book I sought for so;\n    I put it in the pocket of my gown.\n                                     Varro and Claudio lie down.\n  LUCIUS. I was sure your lordship did not give it me.\n  BRUTUS. Bear with me, good boy, I am much forgetful.\n    Canst thou hold up thy heavy eyes awhile,\n    And touch thy instrument a strain or two?\n  LUCIUS. Ay, my lord, an\'t please you.\n  BRUTUS. It does, my boy.\n    I trouble thee too much, but thou art willing.\n  LUCIUS. It is my duty, sir.\n  BRUTUS. I should not urge thy duty past thy might;  \n    I know young bloods look for a time of rest.\n  LUCIUS. I have slept, my lord, already.\n  BRUTUS. It was well done, and thou shalt sleep again;\n    I will not hold thee long. If I do live,\n    I will be good to thee.                   Music, and a song.\n    This is a sleepy tune. O murtherous slumber,\n    Layest thou thy leaden mace upon my boy\n    That plays thee music? Gentle knave, good night.\n    I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee.\n    If thou dost nod, thou break\'st thy instrument;\n    I\'ll take it from thee; and, good boy, good night.\n    Let me see, let me see; is not the leaf turn\'d down\n    Where I left reading? Here it is, I think.        Sits down.\n\n                 Enter the Ghost of Caesar.\n\n    How ill this taper burns! Ha, who comes here?\n    I think it is the weakness of mine eyes\n    That shapes this monstrous apparition.\n    It comes upon me. Art thou anything?  \n    Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil\n    That makest my blood cold and my hair to stare?\n    Speak to me what thou art.\n  GHOST. Thy evil spirit, Brutus.\n  BRUTUS. Why comest thou?\n  GHOST. To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi.\n  BRUTUS. Well, then I shall see thee again?\n  GHOST. Ay, at Philippi.\n  BRUTUS. Why, I will see thee at Philippi then.     Exit Ghost.\n    Now I have taken heart thou vanishest.\n    Ill spirit, I would hold more talk with thee.\n    Boy! Lucius! Varro! Claudio! Sirs, awake!\n    Claudio!\n  LUCIUS. The strings, my lord, are false.\n  BRUTUS. He thinks he still is at his instrument.\n    Lucius, awake!\n  LUCIUS. My lord?\n  BRUTUS. Didst thou dream, Lucius, that thou so criedst out?\n  LUCIUS. My lord, I do not know that I did cry.\n  BRUTUS. Yes, that thou didst. Didst thou see anything?  \n  LUCIUS. Nothing, my lord.\n  BRUTUS. Sleep again, Lucius. Sirrah Claudio!\n    [To Varro.] Fellow thou, awake!\n  VARRO. My lord?\n  CLAUDIO. My lord?\n  BRUTUS. Why did you so cry out, sirs, in your sleep?\n  VARRO. CLAUDIO. Did we, my lord?\n  BRUTUS. Ay, saw you anything?\n  VARRO. No, my lord, I saw nothing.\n  CLAUDIO. Nor I, my lord.\n  BRUTUS. Go and commend me to my brother Cassius;\n    Bid him set on his powers betimes before,\n    And we will follow.\n  VARRO. CLAUDIO. It shall be done, my lord.             Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nThe plains of Philippi.\n\nEnter Octavius, Antony, and their Army.\n\n  OCTAVIUS. Now, Antony, our hopes are answered.\n    You said the enemy would not come down,\n    But keep the hills and upper regions.\n    It proves not so. Their battles are at hand;\n    They mean to warn us at Philippi here,\n    Answering before we do demand of them.\n  ANTONY. Tut, I am in their bosoms, and I know\n    Wherefore they do it. They could be content\n    To visit other places, and come down\n    With fearful bravery, thinking by this face\n    To fasten in our thoughts that they have courage;\n    But \'tis not so.\n\n                    Enter a Messenger.\n\n  MESSENGER. Prepare you, generals.\n    The enemy comes on in gallant show;  \n    Their bloody sign of battle is hung out,\n    And something to be done immediately.\n  ANTONY. Octavius, lead your battle softly on,\n    Upon the left hand of the even field.\n  OCTAVIUS. Upon the right hand I, keep thou the left.\n  ANTONY. Why do you cross me in this exigent?\n  OCTAVIUS. I do not cross you, but I will do so.\n\n      March. Drum. Enter Brutus, Cassius, and their Army;\n           Lucilius, Titinius, Messala, and others.\n\n  BRUTUS. They stand, and would have parley.\n  CASSIUS. Stand fast, Titinius; we must out and talk.\n  OCTAVIUS. Mark Antony, shall we give sign of battle?\n  ANTONY. No, Caesar, we will answer on their charge.\n    Make forth, the generals would have some words.\n  OCTAVIUS. Stir not until the signal not until the signal.\n  BRUTUS. Words before blows. Is it so, countrymen?\n  OCTAVIUS. Not that we love words better, as you do.\n  BRUTUS. Good words are better than bad strokes, Octavius.  \n  ANTONY. In your bad strokes, Brutus, you give good words.\n    Witness the hole you made in Caesar\'s heart,\n    Crying "Long live! Hail, Caesar!"\n  CASSIUS. Antony,\n    The posture of your blows are yet unknown;\n    But for your words, they rob the Hybla bees,\n    And leave them honeyless.\n  ANTONY. Not stingless too.\n  BRUTUS. O, yes, and soundless too,\n    For you have stol\'n their buzzing, Antony,\n    And very wisely threat before you sting.\n  ANTONY. Villains! You did not so when your vile daggers\n    Hack\'d one another in the sides of Caesar.\n    You show\'d your teeth like apes, and fawn\'d like hounds,\n    And bow\'d like bondmen, kissing Caesar\'s feet;\n    Whilst damned Casca, like a cur, behind\n    Strooke Caesar on the neck. O you flatterers!\n  CASSIUS. Flatterers? Now, Brutus, thank yourself.\n    This tongue had not offended so today,\n    If Cassius might have ruled.  \n  OCTAVIUS. Come, come, the cause. If arguing make us sweat,\n    The proof of it will turn to redder drops.\n    Look,\n    I draw a sword against conspirators;\n    When think you that the sword goes up again?\n    Never, till Caesar\'s three and thirty wounds\n    Be well avenged, or till another Caesar\n    Have added slaughter to the sword of traitors.\n  BRUTUS. Caesar, thou canst not die by traitors\' hands,\n    Unless thou bring\'st them with thee.\n  OCTAVIUS. So I hope,\n    I was not born to die on Brutus\' sword.\n  BRUTUS. O, if thou wert the noblest of thy strain,\n    Young man, thou couldst not die more honorable.\n  CASSIUS. A peevish school boy, worthless of such honor,\n    Join\'d with a masker and a reveler!\n  ANTONY. Old Cassius still!\n  OCTAVIUS. Come, Antony, away!\n    Defiance, traitors, hurl we in your teeth.\n    If you dare fight today, come to the field;  \n    If not, when you have stomachs.\n                        Exeunt Octavius, Antony, and their Army.\n  CASSIUS. Why, now, blow and, swell billow, and swim bark!\n    The storm is up, and all is on the hazard.\n  BRUTUS. Ho, Lucilius! Hark, a word with you.\n  LUCILIUS. [Stands forth.] My lord?\n                             Brutus and Lucilius converse apart.\n  CASSIUS. Messala!\n  MESSALA. [Stands forth.] What says my general?\n  CASSIUS. Messala,\n    This is my birthday, as this very day\n    Was Cassius born. Give me thy hand, Messala.\n    Be thou my witness that, against my will,\n    As Pompey was, am I compell\'d to set\n    Upon one battle all our liberties.\n    You know that I held Epicurus strong,\n    And his opinion. Now I change my mind,\n    And partly credit things that do presage.\n    Coming from Sardis, on our former ensign\n    Two mighty eagles fell, and there they perch\'d,  \n    Gorging and feeding from our soldiers\' hands,\n    Who to Philippi here consorted us.\n    This morning are they fled away and gone,\n    And in their steads do ravens, crows, and kites\n    Fly o\'er our heads and downward look on us,\n    As we were sickly prey. Their shadows seem\n    A canopy most fatal, under which\n    Our army lies, ready to give up the ghost.\n  MESSALA. Believe not so.\n  CASSIUS. I but believe it partly,\n    For I am fresh of spirit and resolved\n    To meet all perils very constantly.\n  BRUTUS. Even so, Lucilius.\n  CASSIUS. Now, most noble Brutus,\n    The gods today stand friendly that we may,\n    Lovers in peace, lead on our days to age!\n    But, since the affairs of men rest still incertain,\n    Let\'s reason with the worst that may befall.\n    If we do lose this battle, then is this\n    The very last time we shall speak together.  \n    What are you then determined to do?\n  BRUTUS. Even by the rule of that philosophy\n    By which I did blame Cato for the death\n    Which he did give himself- I know not how,\n    But I do find it cowardly and vile,\n    For fear of what might fall, so to prevent\n    The time of life- arming myself with patience\n    To stay the providence of some high powers\n    That govern us below.\n  CASSIUS. Then, if we lose this battle,\n    You are contented to be led in triumph\n    Thorough the streets of Rome?\n  BRUTUS. No, Cassius, no. Think not, thou noble Roman,\n    That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome;\n    He bears too great a mind. But this same day\n    Must end that work the ides of March begun.\n    And whether we shall meet again I know not.\n    Therefore our everlasting farewell take.\n    Forever, and forever, farewell, Cassius!\n    If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;  \n    If not, why then this parting was well made.\n  CASSIUS. Forever and forever farewell, Brutus!\n    If we do meet again, we\'ll smile indeed;\n    If not, \'tis true this parting was well made.\n  BRUTUS. Why then, lead on. O, that a man might know\n    The end of this day\'s business ere it come!\n    But it sufficeth that the day will end,\n    And then the end is known. Come, ho! Away!           Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe field of battle.\n\nAlarum. Enter Brutus and Messala.\n\n  BRUTUS. Ride, ride, Messala, ride, and give these bills\n    Unto the legions on the other side.             Loud alarum.\n    Let them set on at once, for I perceive\n    But cold demeanor in Octavia\'s wing,\n    And sudden push gives them the overthrow.\n    Ride, ride, Messala. Let them all come down.         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nAnother part of the field.\n\nAlarums. Enter Cassius and Titinius.\n\n  CASSIUS. O, look, Titinius, look, the villains fly!\n    Myself have to mine own turn\'d enemy.\n    This ensign here of mine was turning back;\n    I slew the coward, and did take it from him.\n  TITINIUS. O Cassius, Brutus gave the word too early,\n    Who, having some advantage on Octavius,\n    Took it too eagerly. His soldiers fell to spoil,\n    Whilst we by Antony are all enclosed.\n\n                       Enter Pindarus.\n\n  PINDARUS. Fly further off, my lord, fly further off;\n    Mark Antony is in your tents, my lord;\n    Fly, therefore, noble Cassius, fly far off.\n  CASSIUS. This hill is far enough. Look, look, Titinius:\n    Are those my tents where I perceive the fire?\n  TITINIUS. They are, my lord.  \n  CASSIUS. Titinius, if thou lovest me,\n    Mount thou my horse and hide thy spurs in him,\n    Till he have brought thee up to yonder troops\n    And here again, that I may rest assured\n    Whether yond troops are friend or enemy.\n  TITINIUS. I will be here again, even with a thought.     Exit.\n  CASSIUS. Go, Pindarus, get higher on that hill;\n    My sight was ever thick; regard Titinius,\n    And tell me what thou notest about the field.\n                                      Pindarus ascends the hill.\n    This day I breathed first: time is come round,\n    And where I did begin, there shall I end;\n    My life is run his compass. Sirrah, what news?\n  PINDARUS. [Above.] O my lord!\n  CASSIUS. What news?\n  PINDARUS. [Above.] Titinius is enclosed round about\n    With horsemen, that make to him on the spur;\n    Yet he spurs on. Now they are almost on him.\n    Now, Titinius! Now some light. O, he lights too.\n    He\'s ta\'en [Shout.] And, hark! They shout for joy.  \n  CASSIUS. Come down; behold no more.\n    O, coward that I am, to live so long,\n    To see my best friend ta\'en before my face!\n                                              Pindarus descends.\n    Come hither, sirrah.\n    In Parthia did I take thee prisoner,\n    And then I swore thee, saving of thy life,\n    That whatsoever I did bid thee do,\n    Thou shouldst attempt it. Come now, keep thine oath;\n    Now be a freeman, and with this good sword,\n    That ran through Caesar\'s bowels, search this bosom.\n    Stand not to answer: here, take thou the hilts;\n    And when my face is cover\'d, as \'tis now,\n    Guide thou the sword. [Pindarus stabs him.] Caesar, thou art\n      revenged,\n    Even with the sword that kill\'d thee.                  Dies.\n  PINDARUS. So, I am free, yet would not so have been,\n    Durst I have done my will. O Cassius!\n    Far from this country Pindarus shall run,\n    Where never Roman shall take note of him.              Exit.  \n\n                Re-enter Titinius with Messala.\n\n  MESSALA. It is but change, Titinius, for Octavius\n    Is overthrown by noble Brutus\' power,\n    As Cassius\' legions are by Antony.\n  TITINIUS. These tidings would well comfort Cassius.\n  MESSALA. Where did you leave him?\n  TITINIUS. All disconsolate,\n    With Pindarus his bondman, on this hill.\n  MESSALA. Is not that he that lies upon the ground?\n  TITINIUS. He lies not like the living. O my heart!\n  MESSALA. Is not that he?\n  TITINIUS. No, this was he, Messala,\n    But Cassius is no more. O setting sun,\n    As in thy red rays thou dost sink to night,\n    So in his red blood Cassius\' day is set,\n    The sun of Rome is set! Our day is gone;\n    Clouds, dews, and dangers come; our deeds are done!\n    Mistrust of my success hath done this deed.  \n  MESSALA. Mistrust of good success hath done this deed.\n    O hateful error, melancholy\'s child,\n    Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men\n    The things that are not? O error, soon conceived,\n    Thou never comest unto a happy birth,\n    But kill\'st the mother that engender\'d thee!\n  TITINIUS. What, Pindarus! Where art thou, Pindarus?\n  MESSALA. Seek him, Titinius, whilst I go to meet\n    The noble Brutus, thrusting this report\n    Into his ears. I may say "thrusting" it,\n    For piercing steel and darts envenomed\n    Shall be as welcome to the ears of Brutus\n    As tidings of this sight.\n  TITINIUS. Hie you, Messala,\n    And I will seek for Pindarus the while.        Exit Messala.\n    Why didst thou send me forth, brave Cassius?\n    Did I not meet thy friends? And did not they\n    Put on my brows this wreath of victory,\n    And bid me give it thee? Didst thou not hear their shouts?\n    Alas, thou hast misconstrued everything!  \n    But, hold thee, take this garland on thy brow;\n    Thy Brutus bid me give it thee, and I\n    Will do his bidding. Brutus, come apace,\n    And see how I regarded Caius Cassius.\n    By your leave, gods, this is a Roman\'s part.\n    Come, Cassius\' sword, and find Titinius\' heart.\n                                                  Kills himself.\n\n       Alarum. Re-enter Messala, with Brutus, young Cato,\n                         and others.\n\n  BRUTUS. Where, where, Messala, doth his body lie?\n  MESSALA. Lo, yonder, and Titinius mourning it.\n  BRUTUS. Titinius\' face is upward.\n  CATO. He is slain.\n  BRUTUS. O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet!\n    Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords\n    In our own proper entrails.                     Low alarums.\n  CATO. Brave Titinius!\n    Look whe\'er he have not crown\'d dead Cassius!  \n  BRUTUS. Are yet two Romans living such as these?\n    The last of all the Romans, fare thee well!\n    It is impossible that ever Rome\n    Should breed thy fellow. Friends, I owe moe tears\n    To this dead man than you shall see me pay.\n    I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time.\n    Come therefore, and to Thasos send his body;\n    His funerals shall not be in our camp,\n    Lest it discomfort us. Lucilius, come,\n    And come, young Cato; let us to the field.\n    Labio and Flavio, set our battles on.\n    \'Tis three o\'clock, and Romans, yet ere night\n    We shall try fortune in a second fight.              Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nAnother part of the field.\n\nAlarum. Enter, fighting, Soldiers of both armies; then Brutus, young Cato,\nLucilius, and others.\n\n  BRUTUS. Yet, countrymen, O, yet hold up your heads!\n  CATO. What bastard doth not? Who will go with me?\n    I will proclaim my name about the field.\n    I am the son of Marcus Cato, ho!\n    A foe to tyrants, and my country\'s friend.\n    I am the son of Marcus Cato, ho!\n  BRUTUS. And I am Brutus, Marcus Brutus, I;\n    Brutus, my country\'s friend; know me for Brutus!       Exit.\n  LUCILIUS. O young and noble Cato, art thou down?\n    Why, now thou diest as bravely as Titinius,\n    And mayst be honor\'d, being Cato\'s son.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. Yield, or thou diest.\n  LUCILIUS. Only I yield to die.\n    [Offers money.] There is so much that thou wilt kill me straight:\n    Kill Brutus, and be honor\'d in his death.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. We must not. A noble prisoner!  \n  SECOND SOLDIER. Room, ho! Tell Antony, Brutus is ta\'en.\n  FIRST SOLDIER. I\'ll tell the news. Here comes the general.\n\n                         Enter Antony.\n\n    Brutus is ta\'en, Brutus is ta\'en, my lord.\n  ANTONY. Where is he?\n  LUCILIUS. Safe, Antony, Brutus is safe enough.\n    I dare assure thee that no enemy\n    Shall ever take alive the noble Brutus;\n    The gods defend him from so great a shame!\n    When you do find him, or alive or dead,\n    He will be found like Brutus, like himself.\n  ANTONY. This is not Brutus, friend, but, I assure you,\n    A prize no less in worth. Keep this man safe,\n    Give him all kindness; I had rather have\n    Such men my friends than enemies. Go on,\n    And see wheer Brutus be alive or dead,\n    And bring us word unto Octavius\' tent\n    How everything is chanced.                           Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nAnother part of the field.\n\nEnter Brutus, Dardanius, Clitus, Strato, and Volumnius.\n\n  BRUTUS. Come, poor remains of friends, rest on this rock.\n  CLITUS. Statilius show\'d the torchlight, but, my lord,\n    He came not back. He is or ta\'en or slain.\n  BRUTUS. Sit thee down, Clitus. Slaying is the word:\n    It is a deed in fashion. Hark thee, Clitus.        Whispers.\n  CLITUS. What, I, my lord? No, not for all the world.\n  BRUTUS. Peace then, no words.\n  CLITUS. I\'ll rather kill myself.\n  BRUTUS. Hark thee, Dardanius.                        Whispers.\n  DARDANIUS. Shall I do such a deed?\n  CLITUS. O Dardanius!\n  DARDANIUS. O Clitus!\n  CLITUS. What ill request did Brutus make to thee?\n  DARDANIUS. To kill him, Clitus. Look, he meditates.\n  CLITUS. Now is that noble vessel full of grief,\n    That it runs over even at his eyes.\n  BRUTUS. Come hither, good Volumnius, list a word.  \n  VOLUMNIUS. What says my lord?\n  BRUTUS. Why, this, Volumnius:\n    The ghost of Caesar hath appear\'d to me\n    Two several times by night; at Sardis once,\n    And this last night here in Philippi fields.\n    I know my hour is come.\n  VOLUMNIUS. Not so, my lord.\n  BRUTUS. Nay I am sure it is, Volumnius.\n    Thou seest the world, Volumnius, how it goes;\n    Our enemies have beat us to the pit;            Low alarums.\n    It is more worthy to leap in ourselves\n    Than tarry till they push us. Good Volumnius,\n    Thou know\'st that we two went to school together;\n    Even for that our love of old, I prithee,\n    Hold thou my sword-hilts, whilst I run on it.\n  VOLUMNIUS. That\'s not an office for a friend, my lord.\n                                                   Alarum still.\n  CLITUS. Fly, fly, my lord, there is no tarrying here.\n  BRUTUS. Farewell to you, and you, and you, Volumnius.\n    Strato, thou hast been all this while asleep;  \n    Farewell to thee too, Strato. Countrymen,\n    My heart doth joy that yet in all my life\n    I found no man but he was true to me.\n    I shall have glory by this losing day,\n    More than Octavius and Mark Antony\n    By this vile conquest shall attain unto.\n    So, fare you well at once, for Brutus\' tongue\n    Hath almost ended his life\'s history.\n    Night hangs upon mine eyes, my bones would rest\n    That have but labor\'d to attain this hour.\n                            Alarum. Cry within, "Fly, fly, fly!"\n  CLITUS. Fly, my lord, fly.\n  BRUTUS. Hence! I will follow.\n                        Exeunt Clitus, Dardanius, and Volumnius.\n    I prithee, Strato, stay thou by thy lord.\n    Thou art a fellow of a good respect;\n    Thy life hath had some smatch of honor in it.\n    Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face,\n    While I do run upon it. Wilt thou, Strato?\n  STRATO. Give me your hand first. Fare you well, my lord.  \n  BRUTUS. Farewell, good Strato.              Runs on his sword.\n    Caesar, now be still;\n    I kill\'d not thee with half so good a will.            Dies.\n\n     Alarum. Retreat. Enter Octavius, Antony, Messala,\n                 Lucilius, and the Army.\n\n  OCTAVIUS. What man is that?\n  MESSALA. My master\'s man. Strato, where is thy master?\n  STRATO. Free from the bondage you are in, Messala:\n    The conquerors can but make a fire of him;\n    For Brutus only overcame himself,\n    And no man else hath honor by his death.\n  LUCILIUS. So Brutus should be found. I thank thee, Brutus,\n    That thou hast proved Lucilius\' saying true.\n  OCTAVIUS. All that served Brutus, I will entertain them.\n    Fellow, wilt thou bestow thy time with me?\n  STRATO. Ay, if Messala will prefer me to you.\n  OCTAVIUS. Do so, good Messala.\n  MESSALA. How died my master, Strato?  \n  STRATO. I held the sword, and he did run on it.\n  MESSALA. Octavius, then take him to follow thee\n    That did the latest service to my master.\n  ANTONY. This was the noblest Roman of them all.\n    All the conspirators, save only he,\n    Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;\n    He only, in a general honest thought\n    And common good to all, made one of them.\n    His life was gentle, and the elements\n    So mix\'d in him that Nature might stand up\n    And say to all the world, "This was a man!"\n  OCTAVIUS. According to his virtue let us use him\n    With all respect and rites of burial.\n    Within my tent his bones tonight shall lie,\n    Most like a soldier, ordered honorably.\n    So call the field to rest, and let\'s away,\n    To part the glories of this happy day.              Exeunt.\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n1606\n\n\nTHE TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n      Lear, King of Britain.\n      King of France.\n      Duke of Burgundy.\n      Duke of Cornwall.\n      Duke of Albany.\n      Earl of Kent.\n      Earl of Gloucester.\n      Edgar, son of Gloucester.\n      Edmund, bastard son to Gloucester.\n      Curan, a courtier.\n      Old Man, tenant to Gloucester.\n      Doctor.\n      Lear\'s Fool.\n      Oswald, steward to Goneril.\n      A Captain under Edmund\'s command.\n      Gentlemen.\n      A Herald.\n      Servants to Cornwall.\n\n      Goneril, daughter to Lear.\n      Regan, daughter to Lear.\n      Cordelia, daughter to Lear.\n\n      Knights attending on Lear, Officers, Messengers, Soldiers,\n        Attendants.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nScene: - Britain.\n\n\nACT I. Scene I.\n[King Lear\'s Palace.]\n\nEnter Kent, Gloucester, and Edmund. [Kent and Glouceste converse.\nEdmund stands back.]\n\n  Kent. I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albany than\n     Cornwall.\n  Glou. It did always seem so to us; but now, in the division of the\n     kingdom, it appears not which of the Dukes he values most, for\n     equalities are so weigh\'d that curiosity in neither can make\n     choice of either\'s moiety.\n  Kent. Is not this your son, my lord?\n  Glou. His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge. I have so often\n     blush\'d to acknowledge him that now I am braz\'d to\'t.\n  Kent. I cannot conceive you.\n  Glou. Sir, this young fellow\'s mother could; whereupon she grew\n     round-womb\'d, and had indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she\n     had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a fault?\n  Kent. I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so\n     proper.\n  Glou. But I have, sir, a son by order of law, some year elder than\n     this, who yet is no dearer in my account. Though this knave came\n     something saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was  \n     his mother fair, there was good sport at his making, and the\n     whoreson must be acknowledged.- Do you know this noble gentleman,\n     Edmund?\n  Edm. [comes forward] No, my lord.\n  Glou. My Lord of Kent. Remember him hereafter as my honourable\n     friend.\n  Edm. My services to your lordship.\n  Kent. I must love you, and sue to know you better.\n  Edm. Sir, I shall study deserving.\n  Glou. He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again.\n                                                 Sound a sennet.\n     The King is coming.\n\n      Enter one bearing a coronet; then Lear; then the Dukes of\n      Albany and Cornwall; next, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia, with\n                              Followers.\n\n  Lear. Attend the lords of France and Burgundy, Gloucester.\n  Glou. I shall, my liege.\n                                 Exeunt [Gloucester and Edmund].\n  Lear. Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.\n     Give me the map there. Know we have divided  \n     In three our kingdom; and \'tis our fast intent\n     To shake all cares and business from our age,\n     Conferring them on younger strengths while we\n     Unburthen\'d crawl toward death. Our son of Cornwall,\n     And you, our no less loving son of Albany,\n     We have this hour a constant will to publish\n     Our daughters\' several dowers, that future strife\n     May be prevented now. The princes, France and Burgundy,\n     Great rivals in our youngest daughter\'s love,\n     Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn,\n     And here are to be answer\'d. Tell me, my daughters\n     (Since now we will divest us both of rule,\n     Interest of territory, cares of state),\n     Which of you shall we say doth love us most?\n     That we our largest bounty may extend\n     Where nature doth with merit challenge. Goneril,\n     Our eldest-born, speak first.\n  Gon. Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter;\n     Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty;\n     Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;  \n     No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour;\n     As much as child e\'er lov\'d, or father found;\n     A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable.\n     Beyond all manner of so much I love you.\n  Cor. [aside] What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent.\n  Lear. Of all these bounds, even from this line to this,\n     With shadowy forests and with champains rich\'d,\n     With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,\n     We make thee lady. To thine and Albany\'s issue\n     Be this perpetual.- What says our second daughter,\n     Our dearest Regan, wife to Cornwall? Speak.\n  Reg. Sir, I am made\n     Of the selfsame metal that my sister is,\n     And prize me at her worth. In my true heart\n     I find she names my very deed of love;\n     Only she comes too short, that I profess\n     Myself an enemy to all other joys\n     Which the most precious square of sense possesses,\n     And find I am alone felicitate\n     In your dear Highness\' love.  \n  Cor. [aside] Then poor Cordelia!\n     And yet not so; since I am sure my love\'s\n     More richer than my tongue.\n  Lear. To thee and thine hereditary ever\n     Remain this ample third of our fair kingdom,\n     No less in space, validity, and pleasure\n     Than that conferr\'d on Goneril.- Now, our joy,\n     Although the last, not least; to whose young love\n     The vines of France and milk of Burgundy\n     Strive to be interest; what can you say to draw\n     A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.\n  Cor. Nothing, my lord.\n  Lear. Nothing?\n  Cor. Nothing.\n  Lear. Nothing can come of nothing. Speak again.\n  Cor. Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave\n     My heart into my mouth. I love your Majesty\n     According to my bond; no more nor less.\n  Lear. How, how, Cordelia? Mend your speech a little,\n     Lest it may mar your fortunes.  \n  Cor. Good my lord,\n     You have begot me, bred me, lov\'d me; I\n     Return those duties back as are right fit,\n     Obey you, love you, and most honour you.\n     Why have my sisters husbands, if they say\n     They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed,\n     That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry\n     Half my love with him, half my care and duty.\n     Sure I shall never marry like my sisters,\n     To love my father all.\n  Lear. But goes thy heart with this?\n  Cor. Ay, good my lord.\n  Lear. So young, and so untender?\n  Cor. So young, my lord, and true.\n  Lear. Let it be so! thy truth then be thy dower!\n     For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,\n     The mysteries of Hecate and the night;\n     By all the operation of the orbs\n     From whom we do exist and cease to be;\n     Here I disclaim all my paternal care,  \n     Propinquity and property of blood,\n     And as a stranger to my heart and me\n     Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,\n     Or he that makes his generation messes\n     To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom\n     Be as well neighbour\'d, pitied, and reliev\'d,\n     As thou my sometime daughter.\n  Kent. Good my liege-\n  Lear. Peace, Kent!\n     Come not between the dragon and his wrath.\n     I lov\'d her most, and thought to set my rest\n     On her kind nursery.- Hence and avoid my sight!-\n     So be my grave my peace as here I give\n     Her father\'s heart from her! Call France! Who stirs?\n     Call Burgundy! Cornwall and Albany,\n     With my two daughters\' dowers digest this third;\n     Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.\n     I do invest you jointly in my power,\n     Preeminence, and all the large effects\n     That troop with majesty. Ourself, by monthly course,  \n     With reservation of an hundred knights,\n     By you to be sustain\'d, shall our abode\n     Make with you by due turns. Only we still retain\n     The name, and all th\' additions to a king. The sway,\n     Revenue, execution of the rest,\n     Beloved sons, be yours; which to confirm,\n     This coronet part betwixt you.\n  Kent. Royal Lear,\n     Whom I have ever honour\'d as my king,\n     Lov\'d as my father, as my master follow\'d,\n     As my great patron thought on in my prayers-\n  Lear. The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft.\n  Kent. Let it fall rather, though the fork invade\n     The region of my heart! Be Kent unmannerly\n     When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man?\n     Think\'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak\n     When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour\'s bound\n     When majesty falls to folly. Reverse thy doom;\n     And in thy best consideration check\n     This hideous rashness. Answer my life my judgment,  \n     Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least,\n     Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound\n     Reverbs no hollowness.\n  Lear. Kent, on thy life, no more!\n  Kent. My life I never held but as a pawn\n     To wage against thine enemies; nor fear to lose it,\n     Thy safety being the motive.\n  Lear. Out of my sight!\n  Kent. See better, Lear, and let me still remain\n     The true blank of thine eye.\n  Lear. Now by Apollo-\n  Kent. Now by Apollo, King,\n     Thou swear\'st thy gods in vain.\n  Lear. O vassal! miscreant!\n                                   [Lays his hand on his sword.]\n  Alb., Corn. Dear sir, forbear!\n  Kent. Do!\n     Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow\n     Upon the foul disease. Revoke thy gift,\n     Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat,  \n     I\'ll tell thee thou dost evil.\n  Lear. Hear me, recreant!\n     On thine allegiance, hear me!\n     Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow-\n     Which we durst never yet- and with strain\'d pride\n     To come between our sentence and our power,-\n     Which nor our nature nor our place can bear,-\n     Our potency made good, take thy reward.\n     Five days we do allot thee for provision\n     To shield thee from diseases of the world,\n     And on the sixth to turn thy hated back\n     Upon our kingdom. If, on the tenth day following,\n     Thy banish\'d trunk be found in our dominions,\n     The moment is thy death. Away! By Jupiter,\n     This shall not be revok\'d.\n  Kent. Fare thee well, King. Since thus thou wilt appear,\n     Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here.\n     [To Cordelia] The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid,\n     That justly think\'st and hast most rightly said!\n     [To Regan and Goneril] And your large speeches may your deeds  \n        approve,\n     That good effects may spring from words of love.\n     Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu;\n     He\'ll shape his old course in a country new.\nExit.\n\n  Flourish. Enter Gloucester, with France and Burgundy; Attendants.\n\n  Glou. Here\'s France and Burgundy, my noble lord.\n  Lear. My Lord of Burgundy,\n     We first address toward you, who with this king\n     Hath rivall\'d for our daughter. What in the least\n     Will you require in present dower with her,\n     Or cease your quest of love?\n  Bur. Most royal Majesty,\n     I crave no more than hath your Highness offer\'d,\n     Nor will you tender less.\n  Lear. Right noble Burgundy,\n     When she was dear to us, we did hold her so;\n     But now her price is fall\'n. Sir, there she stands.\n     If aught within that little seeming substance,\n     Or all of it, with our displeasure piec\'d,  \n     And nothing more, may fitly like your Grace,\n     She\'s there, and she is yours.\n  Bur. I know no answer.\n  Lear. Will you, with those infirmities she owes,\n     Unfriended, new adopted to our hate,\n     Dow\'r\'d with our curse, and stranger\'d with our oath,\n     Take her, or leave her?\n  Bur. Pardon me, royal sir.\n     Election makes not up on such conditions.\n  Lear. Then leave her, sir; for, by the pow\'r that made me,\n     I tell you all her wealth. [To France] For you, great King,\n     I would not from your love make such a stray\n     To match you where I hate; therefore beseech you\n     T\' avert your liking a more worthier way\n     Than on a wretch whom nature is asham\'d\n     Almost t\' acknowledge hers.\n  France. This is most strange,\n     That she that even but now was your best object,\n     The argument of your praise, balm of your age,\n     Most best, most dearest, should in this trice of time  \n     Commit a thing so monstrous to dismantle\n     So many folds of favour. Sure her offence\n     Must be of such unnatural degree\n     That monsters it, or your fore-vouch\'d affection\n     Fall\'n into taint; which to believe of her\n     Must be a faith that reason without miracle\n     Should never plant in me.\n  Cor. I yet beseech your Majesty,\n     If for I want that glib and oily art\n     To speak and purpose not, since what I well intend,\n     I\'ll do\'t before I speak- that you make known\n     It is no vicious blot, murther, or foulness,\n     No unchaste action or dishonoured step,\n     That hath depriv\'d me of your grace and favour;\n     But even for want of that for which I am richer-\n     A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue\n     As I am glad I have not, though not to have it\n     Hath lost me in your liking.\n  Lear. Better thou\n     Hadst not been born than not t\' have pleas\'d me better.  \n  France. Is it but this- a tardiness in nature\n     Which often leaves the history unspoke\n     That it intends to do? My Lord of Burgundy,\n     What say you to the lady? Love\'s not love\n     When it is mingled with regards that stands\n     Aloof from th\' entire point. Will you have her?\n     She is herself a dowry.\n  Bur. Royal Lear,\n     Give but that portion which yourself propos\'d,\n     And here I take Cordelia by the hand,\n     Duchess of Burgundy.\n  Lear. Nothing! I have sworn; I am firm.\n  Bur. I am sorry then you have so lost a father\n     That you must lose a husband.\n  Cor. Peace be with Burgundy!\n     Since that respects of fortune are his love,\n     I shall not be his wife.\n  France. Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor;\n     Most choice, forsaken; and most lov\'d, despis\'d!\n     Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon.  \n     Be it lawful I take up what\'s cast away.\n     Gods, gods! \'tis strange that from their cold\'st neglect\n     My love should kindle to inflam\'d respect.\n     Thy dow\'rless daughter, King, thrown to my chance,\n     Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France.\n     Not all the dukes in wat\'rish Burgundy\n     Can buy this unpriz\'d precious maid of me.\n     Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind.\n     Thou losest here, a better where to find.\n  Lear. Thou hast her, France; let her be thine; for we\n     Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see\n     That face of hers again. Therefore be gone\n     Without our grace, our love, our benison.\n     Come, noble Burgundy.\n             Flourish. Exeunt Lear, Burgundy, [Cornwall, Albany,\n                                    Gloucester, and Attendants].\n  France. Bid farewell to your sisters.\n  Cor. The jewels of our father, with wash\'d eyes\n     Cordelia leaves you. I know you what you are;\n     And, like a sister, am most loath to call  \n     Your faults as they are nam\'d. Use well our father.\n     To your professed bosoms I commit him;\n     But yet, alas, stood I within his grace,\n     I would prefer him to a better place!\n     So farewell to you both.\n  Gon. Prescribe not us our duties.\n  Reg. Let your study\n     Be to content your lord, who hath receiv\'d you\n     At fortune\'s alms. You have obedience scanted,\n     And well are worth the want that you have wanted.\n  Cor. Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides.\n     Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.\n     Well may you prosper!\n  France. Come, my fair Cordelia.\n                                     Exeunt France and Cordelia.\n  Gon. Sister, it is not little I have to say of what most nearly\n     appertains to us both. I think our father will hence to-night.\n  Reg. That\'s most certain, and with you; next month with us.\n  Gon. You see how full of changes his age is. The observation we\n     have made of it hath not been little. He always lov\'d our  \n     sister most, and with what poor judgment he hath now cast her\n     off appears too grossly.\n  Reg. \'Tis the infirmity of his age; yet he hath ever but slenderly\n     known himself.\n  Gon. The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash; then\n     must we look to receive from his age, not alone the\n     imperfections of long-ingraffed condition, but therewithal\n     the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with\n     them.\n  Reg. Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this\n     of Kent\'s banishment.\n  Gon. There is further compliment of leave-taking between France and\n     him. Pray you let\'s hit together. If our father carry authority\n     with such dispositions as he bears, this last surrender of his\n     will but offend us.\n  Reg. We shall further think on\'t.\n  Gon. We must do something, and i\' th\' heat.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nThe Earl of Gloucester\'s Castle.\n\nEnter [Edmund the] Bastard solus, [with a letter].\n\n  Edm. Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law\n     My services are bound. Wherefore should I\n     Stand in the plague of custom, and permit\n     The curiosity of nations to deprive me,\n     For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines\n     Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?\n     When my dimensions are as well compact,\n     My mind as generous, and my shape as true,\n     As honest madam\'s issue? Why brand they us\n     With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?\n     Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take\n     More composition and fierce quality\n     Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,\n     Go to th\' creating a whole tribe of fops\n     Got \'tween asleep and wake? Well then,\n     Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.\n     Our father\'s love is to the bastard Edmund\n     As to th\' legitimate. Fine word- \'legitimate\'!\n     Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,  \n     And my invention thrive, Edmund the base\n     Shall top th\' legitimate. I grow; I prosper.\n     Now, gods, stand up for bastards!\n\n                          Enter Gloucester.\n\n  Glou. Kent banish\'d thus? and France in choler parted?\n     And the King gone to-night? subscrib\'d his pow\'r?\n     Confin\'d to exhibition? All this done\n     Upon the gad? Edmund, how now? What news?\n  Edm. So please your lordship, none.\n                                           [Puts up the letter.]\n  Glou. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?\n  Edm. I know no news, my lord.\n  Glou. What paper were you reading?\n  Edm. Nothing, my lord.\n  Glou. No? What needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your\n     pocket? The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide\n     itself. Let\'s see. Come, if it be nothing, I shall not need\n     spectacles.\n  Edm. I beseech you, sir, pardon me. It is a letter from my brother\n     that I have not all o\'er-read; and for so much as I have  \n     perus\'d, I find it not fit for your o\'erlooking.\n  Glou. Give me the letter, sir.\n  Edm. I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The contents, as\n     in part I understand them, are to blame.\n  Glou. Let\'s see, let\'s see!\n  Edm. I hope, for my brother\'s justification, he wrote this but as\n     an essay or taste of my virtue.\n\n  Glou. (reads) \'This policy and reverence of age makes the world\n     bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us\n     till our oldness cannot relish them. I begin to find an idle\n     and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny, who sways,\n     not as it hath power, but as it is suffer\'d. Come to me, that\n     of this I may speak more. If our father would sleep till I\n     wak\'d him, you should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live\n     the beloved of your brother,\n                                                        \'EDGAR.\'\n\n     Hum! Conspiracy? \'Sleep till I wak\'d him, you should enjoy half\n     his revenue.\' My son Edgar! Had he a hand to write this? a heart\n     and brain to breed it in? When came this to you? Who brought it?\n  Edm. It was not brought me, my lord: there\'s the cunning of it. I  \n     found it thrown in at the casement of my closet.\n  Glou. You know the character to be your brother\'s?\n  Edm. If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swear it were his;\n     but in respect of that, I would fain think it were not.\n  Glou. It is his.\n  Edm. It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is not in the\n     contents.\n  Glou. Hath he never before sounded you in this business?\n  Edm. Never, my lord. But I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit\n     that, sons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the father\n     should be as ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue.\n  Glou. O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter! Abhorred\n     villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain! worse than\n     brutish! Go, sirrah, seek him. I\'ll apprehend him. Abominable\n     villain! Where is he?\n  Edm. I do not well know, my lord. If it shall please you to suspend\n     your indignation against my brother till you can derive from him\n     better testimony of his intent, you should run a certain course;\n     where, if you violently proceed against him, mistaking his\n     purpose, it would make a great gap in your own honour and shake  \n     in pieces the heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life\n     for him that he hath writ this to feel my affection to your\n     honour, and to no other pretence of danger.\n  Glou. Think you so?\n  Edm. If your honour judge it meet, I will place you where you shall\n     hear us confer of this and by an auricular assurance have your\n     satisfaction, and that without any further delay than this very\n     evening.\n  Glou. He cannot be such a monster.\n  Edm. Nor is not, sure.\n  Glou. To his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him.\n     Heaven and earth! Edmund, seek him out; wind me into him, I pray\n     you; frame the business after your own wisdom. I would unstate\n     myself to be in a due resolution.\n  Edm. I will seek him, sir, presently; convey the business as I\n     shall find means, and acquaint you withal.\n  Glou. These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to\n     us. Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet\n     nature finds itself scourg\'d by the sequent effects. Love cools,\n     friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in  \n     countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crack\'d\n     \'twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under the\n     prediction; there\'s son against father: the King falls from bias\n     of nature; there\'s father against child. We have seen the best\n     of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all\n     ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves. Find out\n     this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it\n     carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banish\'d! his\n     offence, honesty! \'Tis strange.                       Exit.\n  Edm. This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are\n     sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make\n     guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if\n     we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion;\n     knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance;\n     drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc\'d obedience of\n     planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine\n     thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whore-master man, to lay\n     his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father\n     compounded with my mother under the Dragon\'s Tail, and my\n     nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and  \n     lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am, had the\n     maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.\n     Edgar-\n\n                             Enter Edgar.\n\n     and pat! he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy. My\n     cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o\' Bedlam.\n     O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! Fa, sol, la, mi.\n  Edg. How now, brother Edmund? What serious contemplation are you\n     in?\n  Edm. I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day,\n     what should follow these eclipses.\n  Edg. Do you busy yourself with that?\n  Edm. I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed unhappily: as\n     of unnaturalness between the child and the parent; death,\n     dearth, dissolutions of ancient amities; divisions in state,\n     menaces and maledictions against king and nobles; needless\n     diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts,\n     nuptial breaches, and I know not what.\n  Edg. How long have you been a sectary astronomical?\n  Edm. Come, come! When saw you my father last?  \n  Edg. The night gone by.\n  Edm. Spake you with him?\n  Edg. Ay, two hours together.\n  Edm. Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in him by\n     word or countenance\n  Edg. None at all.\n  Edm. Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him; and at my\n     entreaty forbear his presence until some little time hath\n     qualified the heat of his displeasure, which at this instant so\n     rageth in him that with the mischief of your person it would\n     scarcely allay.\n  Edg. Some villain hath done me wrong.\n  Edm. That\'s my fear. I pray you have a continent forbearance till\n     the speed of his rage goes slower; and, as I say, retire with me\n     to my lodging, from whence I will fitly bring you to hear my\n     lord speak. Pray ye, go! There\'s my key. If you do stir abroad,\n     go arm\'d.\n  Edg. Arm\'d, brother?\n  Edm. Brother, I advise you to the best. Go arm\'d. I am no honest man\n     if there be any good meaning toward you. I have told you what I  \n     have seen and heard; but faintly, nothing like the image and\n     horror of it. Pray you, away!\n  Edg. Shall I hear from you anon?\n  Edm. I do serve you in this business.\n                                                     Exit Edgar.\n     A credulous father! and a brother noble,\n     Whose nature is so far from doing harms\n     That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty\n     My practices ride easy! I see the business.\n     Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit;\n     All with me\'s meet that I can fashion fit.\nExit.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nThe Duke of Albany\'s Palace.\n\nEnter Goneril and [her] Steward [Oswald].\n\n  Gon. Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his fool?\n  Osw. Ay, madam.\n  Gon. By day and night, he wrongs me! Every hour\n     He flashes into one gross crime or other\n     That sets us all at odds. I\'ll not endure it.\n     His knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us\n     On every trifle. When he returns from hunting,\n     I will not speak with him. Say I am sick.\n     If you come slack of former services,\n     You shall do well; the fault of it I\'ll answer.\n                                                 [Horns within.]\n  Osw. He\'s coming, madam; I hear him.\n  Gon. Put on what weary negligence you please,\n     You and your fellows. I\'d have it come to question.\n     If he distaste it, let him to our sister,\n     Whose mind and mine I know in that are one,\n     Not to be overrul\'d. Idle old man,  \n     That still would manage those authorities\n     That he hath given away! Now, by my life,\n     Old fools are babes again, and must be us\'d\n     With checks as flatteries, when they are seen abus\'d.\n     Remember what I have said.\n  Osw. Very well, madam.\n  Gon. And let his knights have colder looks among you.\n     What grows of it, no matter. Advise your fellows so.\n     I would breed from hence occasions, and I shall,\n     That I may speak. I\'ll write straight to my sister\n     To hold my very course. Prepare for dinner.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nThe Duke of Albany\'s Palace.\n\nEnter Kent, [disguised].\n\n  Kent. If but as well I other accents borrow,\n     That can my speech defuse, my good intent\n     May carry through itself to that full issue\n     For which I raz\'d my likeness. Now, banish\'d Kent,\n     If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn\'d,\n     So may it come, thy master, whom thou lov\'st,\n     Shall find thee full of labours.\n\n         Horns within. Enter Lear, [Knights,] and Attendants.\n\n  Lear. Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go get it ready. [Exit\n     an Attendant.] How now? What art thou?\n  Kent. A man, sir.\n  Lear. What dost thou profess? What wouldst thou with us?\n  Kent. I do profess to be no less than I seem, to serve him truly\n     that will put me in trust, to love him that is honest, to\n     converse with him that is wise and says little, to fear  \n     judgment, to fight when I cannot choose, and to eat no fish.\n  Lear. What art thou?\n  Kent. A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the King.\n  Lear. If thou be\'st as poor for a subject as he\'s for a king, thou\n     art poor enough. What wouldst thou?\n  Kent. Service.\n  Lear. Who wouldst thou serve?\n  Kent. You.\n  Lear. Dost thou know me, fellow?\n  Kent. No, sir; but you have that in your countenance which I would\n     fain call master.\n  Lear. What\'s that?\n  Kent. Authority.\n  Lear. What services canst thou do?\n  Kent. I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a curious tale in\n     telling it and deliver a plain message bluntly. That which\n     ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in, and the best of me\n     is diligence.\n  Lear. How old art thou?\n  Kent. Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing, nor so old to  \n     dote on her for anything. I have years on my back forty-eight.\n  Lear. Follow me; thou shalt serve me. If I like thee no worse after\n     dinner, I will not part from thee yet. Dinner, ho, dinner!\n     Where\'s my knave? my fool? Go you and call my fool hither.\n\n                                            [Exit an attendant.]\n\n                     Enter [Oswald the] Steward.\n\n     You, you, sirrah, where\'s my daughter?\n  Osw. So please you-                                      Exit.\n  Lear. What says the fellow there? Call the clotpoll back.\n     [Exit a Knight.] Where\'s my fool, ho? I think the world\'s\n     asleep.\n\n                            [Enter Knight]\n\n     How now? Where\'s that mongrel?\n  Knight. He says, my lord, your daughter is not well.\n  Lear. Why came not the slave back to me when I call\'d him?  \n  Knight. Sir, he answered me in the roundest manner, he would not.\n  Lear. He would not?\n  Knight. My lord, I know not what the matter is; but to my judgment\n     your Highness is not entertain\'d with that ceremonious affection\n     as you were wont. There\'s a great abatement of kindness appears\n     as well in the general dependants as in the Duke himself also\n     and your daughter.\n  Lear. Ha! say\'st thou so?\n  Knight. I beseech you pardon me, my lord, if I be mistaken; for\n     my duty cannot be silent when I think your Highness wrong\'d.\n  Lear. Thou but rememb\'rest me of mine own conception. I have\n     perceived a most faint neglect of late, which I have rather\n     blamed as mine own jealous curiosity than as a very pretence\n     and purpose of unkindness. I will look further into\'t. But\n     where\'s my fool? I have not seen him this two days.\n  Knight. Since my young lady\'s going into France, sir, the fool\n     hath much pined away.\n  Lear. No more of that; I have noted it well. Go you and tell my\n     daughter I would speak with her. [Exit Knight.] Go you, call\n     hither my fool.  \n                                            [Exit an Attendant.]\n\n                     Enter [Oswald the] Steward.\n\n     O, you, sir, you! Come you hither, sir. Who am I, sir?\n  Osw. My lady\'s father.\n  Lear. \'My lady\'s father\'? My lord\'s knave! You whoreson dog! you\n     slave! you cur!\n  Osw. I am none of these, my lord; I beseech your pardon.\n  Lear. Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?\n                                                  [Strikes him.]\n  Osw. I\'ll not be strucken, my lord.\n  Kent. Nor tripp\'d neither, you base football player?\n                                            [Trips up his heels.\n  Lear. I thank thee, fellow. Thou serv\'st me, and I\'ll love thee.\n  Kent. Come, sir, arise, away! I\'ll teach you differences. Away,\n     away! If you will measure your lubber\'s length again, tarry; but\n     away! Go to! Have you wisdom? So.\n                                               [Pushes him out.]\n  Lear. Now, my friendly knave, I thank thee. There\'s earnest of thy  \n     service.                                     [Gives money.]\n\n                             Enter Fool.\n\n  Fool. Let me hire him too. Here\'s my coxcomb.\n                                          [Offers Kent his cap.]\n  Lear. How now, my pretty knave? How dost thou?\n  Fool. Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb.\n  Kent. Why, fool?\n  Fool. Why? For taking one\'s part that\'s out of favour. Nay, an thou\n     canst not smile as the wind sits, thou\'lt catch cold shortly.\n     There, take my coxcomb! Why, this fellow hath banish\'d two on\'s\n     daughters, and did the third a blessing against his will. If\n     thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb.- How now,\n     nuncle? Would I had two coxcombs and two daughters!\n  Lear. Why, my boy?\n  Fool. If I gave them all my living, I\'ld keep my coxcombs myself.\n     There\'s mine! beg another of thy daughters.\n  Lear. Take heed, sirrah- the whip.\n  Fool. Truth\'s a dog must to kennel; he must be whipp\'d out, when  \n     Lady the brach may stand by th\' fire and stink.\n  Lear. A pestilent gall to me!\n  Fool. Sirrah, I\'ll teach thee a speech.\n  Lear. Do.\n  Fool. Mark it, nuncle.\n          Have more than thou showest,\n          Speak less than thou knowest,\n          Lend less than thou owest,\n          Ride more than thou goest,\n          Learn more than thou trowest,\n          Set less than thou throwest;\n          Leave thy drink and thy whore,\n          And keep in-a-door,\n          And thou shalt have more\n          Than two tens to a score.\n  Kent. This is nothing, fool.\n  Fool. Then \'tis like the breath of an unfeed lawyer- you gave me\n     nothing for\'t. Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?\n  Lear. Why, no, boy. Nothing can be made out of nothing.\n  Fool. [to Kent] Prithee tell him, so much the rent of his land  \n     comes to. He will not believe a fool.\n  Lear. A bitter fool!\n  Fool. Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter\n     fool and a sweet fool?\n  Lear. No, lad; teach me.\n  Fool.   That lord that counsell\'d thee\n            To give away thy land,\n          Come place him here by me-\n            Do thou for him stand.\n          The sweet and bitter fool\n            Will presently appear;\n          The one in motley here,\n            The other found out there.\n  Lear. Dost thou call me fool, boy?\n  Fool. All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast\n     born with.\n  Kent. This is not altogether fool, my lord.\n  Fool. No, faith; lords and great men will not let me. If I had a\n     monopoly out, they would have part on\'t. And ladies too, they\n     will not let me have all the fool to myself; they\'ll be  \n     snatching. Give me an egg, nuncle, and I\'ll give thee two\n     crowns.\n  Lear. What two crowns shall they be?\n  Fool. Why, after I have cut the egg i\' th\' middle and eat up the\n     meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou clovest thy crown i\'\n     th\' middle and gav\'st away both parts, thou bor\'st thine ass on\n     thy back o\'er the dirt. Thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown\n     when thou gav\'st thy golden one away. If I speak like myself in\n     this, let him be whipp\'d that first finds it so.\n\n     [Sings]    Fools had ne\'er less grace in a year,\n                  For wise men are grown foppish;\n                They know not how their wits to wear,\n                  Their manners are so apish.\n\n  Lear. When were you wont to be so full of songs, sirrah?\n  Fool. I have us\'d it, nuncle, ever since thou mad\'st thy daughters\n     thy mother; for when thou gav\'st them the rod, and put\'st down\n     thine own breeches,\n  \n     [Sings]    Then they for sudden joy did weep,\n                  And I for sorrow sung,\n                That such a king should play bo-peep\n                  And go the fools among.\n\n     Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to\n     lie. I would fain learn to lie.\n  Lear. An you lie, sirrah, we\'ll have you whipp\'d.\n  Fool. I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are. They\'ll have me\n     whipp\'d for speaking true; thou\'lt have me whipp\'d for lying;\n     and sometimes I am whipp\'d for holding my peace. I had rather be\n     any kind o\' thing than a fool! And yet I would not be thee,\n     nuncle. Thou hast pared thy wit o\' both sides and left nothing\n     i\' th\' middle. Here comes one o\' the parings.\n\n                            Enter Goneril.\n\n  Lear. How now, daughter? What makes that frontlet on? Methinks you\n     are too much o\' late i\' th\' frown.\n  Fool. Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for  \n     her frowning. Now thou art an O without a figure. I am better\n     than thou art now: I am a fool, thou art nothing.\n     [To Goneril] Yes, forsooth, I will hold my tongue. So your face\n     bids me, though you say nothing. Mum, mum!\n\n            He that keeps nor crust nor crum,\n            Weary of all, shall want some.-\n\n     [Points at Lear] That\'s a sheal\'d peascod.\n  Gon. Not only, sir, this your all-licens\'d fool,\n     But other of your insolent retinue\n     Do hourly carp and quarrel, breaking forth\n     In rank and not-to-be-endured riots. Sir,\n     I had thought, by making this well known unto you,\n     To have found a safe redress, but now grow fearful,\n     By what yourself, too, late have spoke and done,\n     That you protect this course, and put it on\n     By your allowance; which if you should, the fault\n     Would not scape censure, nor the redresses sleep,\n     Which, in the tender of a wholesome weal,  \n     Might in their working do you that offence\n     Which else were shame, that then necessity\n     Must call discreet proceeding.\n  Fool. For you know, nuncle,\n\n          The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long\n          That it had it head bit off by it young.\n\n     So out went the candle, and we were left darkling.\n  Lear. Are you our daughter?\n  Gon. Come, sir,\n     I would you would make use of that good wisdom\n     Whereof I know you are fraught, and put away\n     These dispositions that of late transform you\n     From what you rightly are.\n  Fool. May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse?\n     Whoop, Jug, I love thee!\n  Lear. Doth any here know me? This is not Lear.\n     Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?\n     Either his notion weakens, his discernings  \n     Are lethargied- Ha! waking? \'Tis not so!\n     Who is it that can tell me who I am?\n  Fool. Lear\'s shadow.\n  Lear. I would learn that; for, by the marks of sovereignty,\n     Knowledge, and reason, I should be false persuaded\n     I had daughters.\n  Fool. Which they will make an obedient father.\n  Lear. Your name, fair gentlewoman?\n  Gon. This admiration, sir, is much o\' th\' savour\n     Of other your new pranks. I do beseech you\n     To understand my purposes aright.\n     As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.\n     Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires;\n     Men so disorder\'d, so debosh\'d, and bold\n     That this our court, infected with their manners,\n     Shows like a riotous inn. Epicurism and lust\n     Make it more like a tavern or a brothel\n     Than a grac\'d palace. The shame itself doth speak\n     For instant remedy. Be then desir\'d\n     By her that else will take the thing she begs  \n     A little to disquantity your train,\n     And the remainder that shall still depend\n     To be such men as may besort your age,\n     Which know themselves, and you.\n  Lear. Darkness and devils!\n     Saddle my horses! Call my train together!\n     Degenerate bastard, I\'ll not trouble thee;\n     Yet have I left a daughter.\n  Gon. You strike my people, and your disorder\'d rabble\n     Make servants of their betters.\n\n                            Enter Albany.\n\n  Lear. Woe that too late repents!- O, sir, are you come?\n     Is it your will? Speak, sir!- Prepare my horses.\n     Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,\n     More hideous when thou show\'st thee in a child\n     Than the sea-monster!\n  Alb. Pray, sir, be patient.\n  Lear. [to Goneril] Detested kite, thou liest!  \n     My train are men of choice and rarest parts,\n     That all particulars of duty know\n     And in the most exact regard support\n     The worships of their name.- O most small fault,\n     How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show!\n     Which, like an engine, wrench\'d my frame of nature\n     From the fix\'d place; drew from my heart all love\n     And added to the gall. O Lear, Lear, Lear!\n     Beat at this gate that let thy folly in  [Strikes his head.]\n     And thy dear judgment out! Go, go, my people.\n  Alb. My lord, I am guiltless, as I am ignorant\n     Of what hath mov\'d you.\n  Lear. It may be so, my lord.\n     Hear, Nature, hear! dear goddess, hear!\n     Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend\n     To make this creature fruitful.\n     Into her womb convey sterility;\n     Dry up in her the organs of increase;\n     And from her derogate body never spring\n     A babe to honour her! If she must teem,  \n     Create her child of spleen, that it may live\n     And be a thwart disnatur\'d torment to her.\n     Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,\n     With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,\n     Turn all her mother\'s pains and benefits\n     To laughter and contempt, that she may feel\n     How sharper than a serpent\'s tooth it is\n     To have a thankless child! Away, away!                Exit.\n  Alb. Now, gods that we adore, whereof comes this?\n  Gon. Never afflict yourself to know the cause;\n     But let his disposition have that scope\n     That dotage gives it.\n\n                             Enter Lear.\n\n  Lear. What, fifty of my followers at a clap?\n     Within a fortnight?\n  Alb. What\'s the matter, sir?\n  Lear. I\'ll tell thee. [To Goneril] Life and death! I am asham\'d\n     That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus;  \n     That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,\n     Should make thee worth them. Blasts and fogs upon thee!\n     Th\' untented woundings of a father\'s curse\n     Pierce every sense about thee!- Old fond eyes,\n     Beweep this cause again, I\'ll pluck ye out,\n     And cast you, with the waters that you lose,\n     To temper clay. Yea, is it come to this?\n     Let it be so. Yet have I left a daughter,\n     Who I am sure is kind and comfortable.\n     When she shall hear this of thee, with her nails\n     She\'ll flay thy wolvish visage. Thou shalt find\n     That I\'ll resume the shape which thou dost think\n     I have cast off for ever; thou shalt, I warrant thee.\n                            Exeunt [Lear, Kent, and Attendants].\n  Gon. Do you mark that, my lord?\n  Alb. I cannot be so partial, Goneril,\n     To the great love I bear you -\n  Gon. Pray you, content.- What, Oswald, ho!\n     [To the Fool] You, sir, more knave than fool, after your master!\n  Fool. Nuncle Lear, nuncle Lear, tarry! Take the fool with thee.  \n\n          A fox when one has caught her,\n          And such a daughter,\n          Should sure to the slaughter,\n          If my cap would buy a halter.\n          So the fool follows after.                       Exit.\n  Gon. This man hath had good counsel! A hundred knights?\n     \'Tis politic and safe to let him keep\n     At point a hundred knights; yes, that on every dream,\n     Each buzz, each fancy, each complaint, dislike,\n     He may enguard his dotage with their pow\'rs\n     And hold our lives in mercy.- Oswald, I say!\n  Alb. Well, you may fear too far.\n  Gon. Safer than trust too far.\n     Let me still take away the harms I fear,\n     Not fear still to be taken. I know his heart.\n     What he hath utter\'d I have writ my sister.\n     If she sustain him and his hundred knights,\n     When I have show\'d th\' unfitness-\n  \n                     Enter [Oswald the] Steward.\n\n     How now, Oswald?\n     What, have you writ that letter to my sister?\n  Osw. Yes, madam.\n  Gon. Take you some company, and away to horse!\n     Inform her full of my particular fear,\n     And thereto add such reasons of your own\n     As may compact it more. Get you gone,\n     And hasten your return. [Exit Oswald.] No, no, my lord!\n     This milky gentleness and course of yours,\n     Though I condemn it not, yet, under pardon,\n     You are much more at task for want of wisdom\n     Than prais\'d for harmful mildness.\n  Alb. How far your eyes may pierce I cannot tell.\n     Striving to better, oft we mar what\'s well.\n  Gon. Nay then-\n  Alb. Well, well; th\' event.                            Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene V.\nCourt before the Duke of Albany\'s Palace.\n\nEnter Lear, Kent, and Fool.\n\n  Lear. Go you before to Gloucester with these letters. Acquaint my\n     daughter no further with anything you know than comes from her\n     demand out of the letter. If your diligence be not speedy, I\n     shall be there afore you.\n  Kent. I will not sleep, my lord, till I have delivered your letter.\nExit.\n  Fool. If a man\'s brains were in\'s heels, were\'t not in danger of\n     kibes?\n  Lear. Ay, boy.\n  Fool. Then I prithee be merry. Thy wit shall ne\'er go slip-shod.\n  Lear. Ha, ha, ha!\n  Fool. Shalt see thy other daughter will use thee kindly; for though\n     she\'s as like this as a crab\'s like an apple, yet I can tell\n     what I can tell.\n  Lear. What canst tell, boy?\n  Fool. She\'ll taste as like this as a crab does to a crab. Thou\n     canst tell why one\'s nose stands i\' th\' middle on\'s face?  \n  Lear. No.\n  Fool. Why, to keep one\'s eyes of either side\'s nose, that what a\n     man cannot smell out, \'a may spy into.\n  Lear. I did her wrong.\n  Fool. Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?\n  Lear. No.\n  Fool. Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house.\n  Lear. Why?\n  Fool. Why, to put\'s head in; not to give it away to his daughters,\n     and leave his horns without a case.\n  Lear. I will forget my nature. So kind a father!- Be my horses\n     ready?\n  Fool. Thy asses are gone about \'em. The reason why the seven stars\n     are no moe than seven is a pretty reason.\n  Lear. Because they are not eight?\n  Fool. Yes indeed. Thou wouldst make a good fool.\n  Lear. To tak\'t again perforce! Monster ingratitude!\n  Fool. If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I\'ld have thee beaten for being\n     old before thy time.\n  Lear. How\'s that?  \n  Fool. Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.\n  Lear. O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!\n     Keep me in temper; I would not be mad!\n\n                         [Enter a Gentleman.]\n\n     How now? Are the horses ready?\n  Gent. Ready, my lord.\n  Lear. Come, boy.\n  Fool. She that\'s a maid now, and laughs at my departure,\n     Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. Scene I.\nA court within the Castle of the Earl of Gloucester.\n\nEnter [Edmund the] Bastard and Curan, meeting.\n\n  Edm. Save thee, Curan.\n  Cur. And you, sir. I have been with your father, and given him\n     notice that the Duke of Cornwall and Regan his Duchess will be\n     here with him this night.\n  Edm. How comes that?\n  Cur. Nay, I know not. You have heard of the news abroad- I mean the\n     whisper\'d ones, for they are yet but ear-kissing arguments?\n  Edm. Not I. Pray you, what are they?\n  Cur. Have you heard of no likely wars toward \'twixt the two Dukes\n     of Cornwall and Albany?\n  Edm. Not a word.\n  Cur. You may do, then, in time. Fare you well, sir.      Exit.\n  Edm. The Duke be here to-night? The better! best!\n     This weaves itself perforce into my business.\n     My father hath set guard to take my brother;\n     And I have one thing, of a queasy question,\n     Which I must act. Briefness and fortune, work!  \n     Brother, a word! Descend! Brother, I say!\n\n                             Enter Edgar.\n\n     My father watches. O sir, fly this place!\n     Intelligence is given where you are hid.\n     You have now the good advantage of the night.\n     Have you not spoken \'gainst the Duke of Cornwall?\n     He\'s coming hither; now, i\' th\' night, i\' th\' haste,\n     And Regan with him. Have you nothing said\n     Upon his party \'gainst the Duke of Albany?\n     Advise yourself.\n  Edg. I am sure on\'t, not a word.\n  Edm. I hear my father coming. Pardon me!\n     In cunning I must draw my sword upon you.\n     Draw, seem to defend yourself; now quit you well.-\n     Yield! Come before my father. Light, ho, here!\n     Fly, brother.- Torches, torches!- So farewell.\n                                                     Exit Edgar.\n     Some blood drawn on me would beget opinion  \n     Of my more fierce endeavour. [Stabs his arm.] I have seen\n        drunkards\n     Do more than this in sport.- Father, father!-\n     Stop, stop! No help?\n\n             Enter Gloucester, and Servants with torches.\n\n  Glou. Now, Edmund, where\'s the villain?\n  Edm. Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out,\n     Mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon\n     To stand \'s auspicious mistress.\n  Glou. But where is he?\n  Edm. Look, sir, I bleed.\n  Glou. Where is the villain, Edmund?\n  Edm. Fled this way, sir. When by no means he could-\n  Glou. Pursue him, ho! Go after.        [Exeunt some Servants].\n     By no means what?\n  Edm. Persuade me to the murther of your lordship;\n     But that I told him the revenging gods\n     \'Gainst parricides did all their thunders bend;  \n     Spoke with how manifold and strong a bond\n     The child was bound to th\' father- sir, in fine,\n     Seeing how loathly opposite I stood\n     To his unnatural purpose, in fell motion\n     With his prepared sword he charges home\n     My unprovided body, lanch\'d mine arm;\n     But when he saw my best alarum\'d spirits,\n     Bold in the quarrel\'s right, rous\'d to th\' encounter,\n     Or whether gasted by the noise I made,\n     Full suddenly he fled.\n  Glou. Let him fly far.\n     Not in this land shall he remain uncaught;\n     And found- dispatch. The noble Duke my master,\n     My worthy arch and patron, comes to-night.\n     By his authority I will proclaim it\n     That he which find, him shall deserve our thanks,\n     Bringing the murderous caitiff to the stake;\n     He that conceals him, death.\n  Edm. When I dissuaded him from his intent\n     And found him pight to do it, with curst speech  \n     I threaten\'d to discover him. He replied,\n     \'Thou unpossessing bastard, dost thou think,\n     If I would stand against thee, would the reposal\n     Of any trust, virtue, or worth in thee\n     Make thy words faith\'d? No. What I should deny\n     (As this I would; ay, though thou didst produce\n     My very character), I\'ld turn it all\n     To thy suggestion, plot, and damned practice;\n     And thou must make a dullard of the world,\n     If they not thought the profits of my death\n     Were very pregnant and potential spurs\n     To make thee seek it.\'\n  Glou. Strong and fast\'ned villain!\n     Would he deny his letter? I never got him.\n                                                  Tucket within.\n     Hark, the Duke\'s trumpets! I know not why he comes.\n     All ports I\'ll bar; the villain shall not scape;\n     The Duke must grant me that. Besides, his picture\n     I will send far and near, that all the kingdom\n     May have due note of him, and of my land,  \n     Loyal and natural boy, I\'ll work the means\n     To make thee capable.\n\n                Enter Cornwall, Regan, and Attendants.\n\n  Corn. How now, my noble friend? Since I came hither\n     (Which I can call but now) I have heard strange news.\n  Reg. If it be true, all vengeance comes too short\n     Which can pursue th\' offender. How dost, my lord?\n  Glou. O madam, my old heart is crack\'d, it\'s crack\'d!\n  Reg. What, did my father\'s godson seek your life?\n     He whom my father nam\'d? Your Edgar?\n  Glou. O lady, lady, shame would have it hid!\n  Reg. Was he not companion with the riotous knights\n     That tend upon my father?\n  Glou. I know not, madam. \'Tis too bad, too bad!\n  Edm. Yes, madam, he was of that consort.\n  Reg. No marvel then though he were ill affected.\n     \'Tis they have put him on the old man\'s death,\n     To have th\' expense and waste of his revenues.  \n     I have this present evening from my sister\n     Been well inform\'d of them, and with such cautions\n     That, if they come to sojourn at my house,\n     I\'ll not be there.\n  Corn. Nor I, assure thee, Regan.\n     Edmund, I hear that you have shown your father\n     A childlike office.\n  Edm. \'Twas my duty, sir.\n  Glou. He did bewray his practice, and receiv\'d\n     This hurt you see, striving to apprehend him.\n  Corn. Is he pursued?\n  Glou. Ay, my good lord.\n  Corn. If he be taken, he shall never more\n     Be fear\'d of doing harm. Make your own purpose,\n     How in my strength you please. For you, Edmund,\n     Whose virtue and obedience doth this instant\n     So much commend itself, you shall be ours.\n     Natures of such deep trust we shall much need;\n     You we first seize on.\n  Edm. I shall serve you, sir,  \n     Truly, however else.\n  Glou. For him I thank your Grace.\n  Corn. You know not why we came to visit you-\n  Reg. Thus out of season, threading dark-ey\'d night.\n     Occasions, noble Gloucester, of some poise,\n     Wherein we must have use of your advice.\n     Our father he hath writ, so hath our sister,\n     Of differences, which I best thought it fit\n     To answer from our home. The several messengers\n     From hence attend dispatch. Our good old friend,\n     Lay comforts to your bosom, and bestow\n     Your needful counsel to our business,\n     Which craves the instant use.\n  Glou. I serve you, madam.\n     Your Graces are right welcome.\n                                               Exeunt. Flourish.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nBefore Gloucester\'s Castle.\n\nEnter Kent and [Oswald the] Steward, severally.\n\n  Osw. Good dawning to thee, friend. Art of this house?\n  Kent. Ay.\n  Osw. Where may we set our horses?\n  Kent. I\' th\' mire.\n  Osw. Prithee, if thou lov\'st me, tell me.\n  Kent. I love thee not.\n  Osw. Why then, I care not for thee.\n  Kent. If I had thee in Lipsbury Pinfold, I would make thee care for\n     me.\n  Osw. Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not.\n  Kent. Fellow, I know thee.\n  Osw. What dost thou know me for?\n  Kent. A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud,\n     shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy,\n     worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver\'d, action-taking, whoreson,\n     glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue;\n     one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of\n     good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave,  \n     beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch;\n     one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deny the\n     least syllable of thy addition.\n  Osw. Why, what a monstrous fellow art thou, thus to rail on one\n     that\'s neither known of thee nor knows thee!\n  Kent. What a brazen-fac\'d varlet art thou, to deny thou knowest me!\n     Is it two days ago since I beat thee and tripp\'d up thy heels\n     before the King? [Draws his sword.] Draw, you rogue! for, though\n     it be night, yet the moon shines. I\'ll make a sop o\' th\'\n     moonshine o\' you. Draw, you whoreson cullionly barbermonger!\n     draw!\n  Osw. Away! I have nothing to do with thee.\n  Kent. Draw, you rascal! You come with letters against the King, and\n     take Vanity the puppet\'s part against the royalty of her father.\n     Draw, you rogue, or I\'ll so carbonado your shanks! Draw, you\n     rascal! Come your ways!\n  Osw. Help, ho! murther! help!\n  Kent. Strike, you slave! Stand, rogue! Stand, you neat slave!\n     Strike!                                        [Beats him.]  \n  Osw. Help, ho! murther! murther!\n\n      Enter Edmund, with his rapier drawn, Gloucester, Cornwall,\n                           Regan, Servants.\n\n  Edm. How now? What\'s the matter?                 Parts [them].\n  Kent. With you, goodman boy, an you please! Come, I\'ll flesh ye!\n     Come on, young master!\n  Glou. Weapons? arms? What\'s the matter here?\n  Corn. Keep peace, upon your lives!\n     He dies that strikes again. What is the matter?\n  Reg. The messengers from our sister and the King\n  Corn. What is your difference? Speak.\n  Osw. I am scarce in breath, my lord.\n  Kent. No marvel, you have so bestirr\'d your valour. You cowardly\n     rascal, nature disclaims in thee; a tailor made thee.\n  Corn. Thou art a strange fellow. A tailor make a man?\n  Kent. Ay, a tailor, sir. A stonecutter or a painter could not have\n     made him so ill, though he had been but two hours at the trade.\n  Corn. Speak yet, how grew your quarrel?  \n  Osw. This ancient ruffian, sir, whose life I have spar\'d\n     At suit of his grey beard-\n  Kent. Thou whoreson zed! thou unnecessary letter! My lord, if\n     you\'ll give me leave, I will tread this unbolted villain into\n     mortar and daub the walls of a jakes with him. \'Spare my grey\n     beard,\' you wagtail?\n  Corn. Peace, sirrah!\n     You beastly knave, know you no reverence?\n  Kent. Yes, sir, but anger hath a privilege.\n  Corn. Why art thou angry?\n  Kent. That such a slave as this should wear a sword,\n     Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as these,\n     Like rats, oft bite the holy cords atwain\n     Which are too intrinse t\' unloose; smooth every passion\n     That in the natures of their lords rebel,\n     Bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods;\n     Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks\n     With every gale and vary of their masters,\n     Knowing naught (like dogs) but following.\n     A plague upon your epileptic visage!  \n     Smile you my speeches, as I were a fool?\n     Goose, an I had you upon Sarum Plain,\n     I\'ld drive ye cackling home to Camelot.\n  Corn. What, art thou mad, old fellow?\n  Glou. How fell you out? Say that.\n  Kent. No contraries hold more antipathy\n     Than I and such a knave.\n  Corn. Why dost thou call him knave? What is his fault?\n  Kent. His countenance likes me not.\n  Corn. No more perchance does mine, or his, or hers.\n  Kent. Sir, \'tis my occupation to be plain.\n     I have seen better faces in my time\n     Than stands on any shoulder that I see\n     Before me at this instant.\n  Corn. This is some fellow\n     Who, having been prais\'d for bluntness, doth affect\n     A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb\n     Quite from his nature. He cannot flatter, he!\n     An honest mind and plain- he must speak truth!\n     An they will take it, so; if not, he\'s plain.  \n     These kind of knaves I know which in this plainness\n     Harbour more craft and more corrupter ends\n     Than twenty silly-ducking observants\n     That stretch their duties nicely.\n  Kent. Sir, in good faith, in sincere verity,\n     Under th\' allowance of your great aspect,\n     Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire\n     On flickering Phoebus\' front-\n  Corn. What mean\'st by this?\n  Kent. To go out of my dialect, which you discommend so much. I\n     know, sir, I am no flatterer. He that beguil\'d you in a plain\n     accent was a plain knave, which, for my part, I will not be,\n     though I should win your displeasure to entreat me to\'t.\n  Corn. What was th\' offence you gave him?\n  Osw. I never gave him any.\n     It pleas\'d the King his master very late\n     To strike at me, upon his misconstruction;\n     When he, conjunct, and flattering his displeasure,\n     Tripp\'d me behind; being down, insulted, rail\'d\n     And put upon him such a deal of man  \n     That worthied him, got praises of the King\n     For him attempting who was self-subdu\'d;\n     And, in the fleshment of this dread exploit,\n     Drew on me here again.\n  Kent. None of these rogues and cowards\n     But Ajax is their fool.\n  Corn. Fetch forth the stocks!\n     You stubborn ancient knave, you reverent braggart,\n     We\'ll teach you-\n  Kent. Sir, I am too old to learn.\n     Call not your stocks for me. I serve the King;\n     On whose employment I was sent to you.\n     You shall do small respect, show too bold malice\n     Against the grace and person of my master,\n     Stocking his messenger.\n  Corn. Fetch forth the stocks! As I have life and honour,\n     There shall he sit till noon.\n  Reg. Till noon? Till night, my lord, and all night too!\n  Kent. Why, madam, if I were your father\'s dog,\n     You should not use me so.  \n  Reg. Sir, being his knave, I will.\n  Corn. This is a fellow of the selfsame colour\n     Our sister speaks of. Come, bring away the stocks!\n                                             Stocks brought out.\n  Glou. Let me beseech your Grace not to do so.\n     His fault is much, and the good King his master\n     Will check him for\'t. Your purpos\'d low correction\n     Is such as basest and contemn\'dest wretches\n     For pilf\'rings and most common trespasses\n     Are punish\'d with. The King must take it ill\n     That he, so slightly valued in his messenger,\n     Should have him thus restrain\'d.\n  Corn. I\'ll answer that.\n  Reg. My sister may receive it much more worse,\n     To have her gentleman abus\'d, assaulted,\n     For following her affairs. Put in his legs.-\n                                    [Kent is put in the stocks.]\n     Come, my good lord, away.\n                           Exeunt [all but Gloucester and Kent].\n  Glou. I am sorry for thee, friend. \'Tis the Duke\'s pleasure,  \n     Whose disposition, all the world well knows,\n     Will not be rubb\'d nor stopp\'d. I\'ll entreat for thee.\n  Kent. Pray do not, sir. I have watch\'d and travell\'d hard.\n     Some time I shall sleep out, the rest I\'ll whistle.\n     A good man\'s fortune may grow out at heels.\n     Give you good morrow!\n  Glou. The Duke \'s to blame in this; \'twill be ill taken.\nExit.\n  Kent. Good King, that must approve the common saw,\n     Thou out of heaven\'s benediction com\'st\n     To the warm sun!\n     Approach, thou beacon to this under globe,\n     That by thy comfortable beams I may\n     Peruse this letter. Nothing almost sees miracles\n     But misery. I know \'tis from Cordelia,\n     Who hath most fortunately been inform\'d\n     Of my obscured course- and [reads] \'shall find time\n     From this enormous state, seeking to give\n     Losses their remedies\'- All weary and o\'erwatch\'d,\n     Take vantage, heavy eyes, not to behold  \n     This shameful lodging.\n     Fortune, good night; smile once more, turn thy wheel.\n                                                         Sleeps.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nThe open country.\n\nEnter Edgar.\n\n  Edg. I heard myself proclaim\'d,\n     And by the happy hollow of a tree\n     Escap\'d the hunt. No port is free, no place\n     That guard and most unusual vigilance\n     Does not attend my taking. Whiles I may scape,\n     I will preserve myself; and am bethought\n     To take the basest and most poorest shape\n     That ever penury, in contempt of man,\n     Brought near to beast. My face I\'ll grime with filth,\n     Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots,\n     And with presented nakedness outface\n     The winds and persecutions of the sky.\n     The country gives me proof and precedent\n     Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,\n     Strike in their numb\'d and mortified bare arms\n     Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;\n     And with this horrible object, from low farms,  \n     Poor pelting villages, sheepcotes, and mills,\n     Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,\n     Enforce their charity. \'Poor Turlygod! poor Tom!\'\n     That\'s something yet! Edgar I nothing am.             Exit.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nBefore Gloucester\'s Castle; Kent in the stocks.\n\nEnter Lear, Fool, and Gentleman.\n\n  Lear. \'Tis strange that they should so depart from home,\n     And not send back my messenger.\n  Gent. As I learn\'d,\n     The night before there was no purpose in them\n     Of this remove.\n  Kent. Hail to thee, noble master!\n  Lear. Ha!\n     Mak\'st thou this shame thy pastime?\n  Kent. No, my lord.\n  Fool. Ha, ha! look! he wears cruel garters. Horses are tied by the\n     head, dogs and bears by th\' neck, monkeys by th\' loins, and men\n     by th\' legs. When a man\'s over-lusty at legs, then he wears\n     wooden nether-stocks.\n  Lear. What\'s he that hath so much thy place mistook\n     To set thee here?\n  Kent. It is both he and she-\n     Your son and daughter.  \n  Lear. No.\n  Kent. Yes.\n  Lear. No, I say.\n  Kent. I say yea.\n  Lear. No, no, they would not!\n  Kent. Yes, they have.\n  Lear. By Jupiter, I swear no!\n  Kent. By Juno, I swear ay!\n  Lear. They durst not do\'t;\n     They would not, could not do\'t. \'Tis worse than murther\n     To do upon respect such violent outrage.\n     Resolve me with all modest haste which way\n     Thou mightst deserve or they impose this usage,\n     Coming from us.\n  Kent. My lord, when at their home\n     I did commend your Highness\' letters to them,\n     Ere I was risen from the place that show\'d\n     My duty kneeling, came there a reeking post,\n     Stew\'d in his haste, half breathless, panting forth\n     From Goneril his mistress salutations;  \n     Deliver\'d letters, spite of intermission,\n     Which presently they read; on whose contents,\n     They summon\'d up their meiny, straight took horse,\n     Commanded me to follow and attend\n     The leisure of their answer, gave me cold looks,\n     And meeting here the other messenger,\n     Whose welcome I perceiv\'d had poison\'d mine-\n     Being the very fellow which of late\n     Display\'d so saucily against your Highness-\n     Having more man than wit about me, drew.\n     He rais\'d the house with loud and coward cries.\n     Your son and daughter found this trespass worth\n     The shame which here it suffers.\n  Fool. Winter\'s not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way.\n\n          Fathers that wear rags\n            Do make their children blind;\n          But fathers that bear bags\n            Shall see their children kind.\n          Fortune, that arrant whore,  \n          Ne\'er turns the key to th\' poor.\n\n     But for all this, thou shalt have as many dolours for thy\n     daughters as thou canst tell in a year.\n  Lear. O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!\n     Hysterica passio! Down, thou climbing sorrow!\n     Thy element\'s below! Where is this daughter?\n  Kent. With the Earl, sir, here within.\n  Lear. Follow me not;\n     Stay here.                                            Exit.\n  Gent. Made you no more offence but what you speak of?\n  Kent. None.\n     How chance the King comes with so small a number?\n  Fool. An thou hadst been set i\' th\' stocks for that question,\n     thou\'dst well deserv\'d it.\n  Kent. Why, fool?\n  Fool. We\'ll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there\'s no\n     labouring i\' th\' winter. All that follow their noses are led by\n     their eyes but blind men, and there\'s not a nose among twenty\n     but can smell him that\'s stinking. Let go thy hold when a great  \n     wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following\n     it; but the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after.\n     When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again. I\n     would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it.\n          That sir which serves and seeks for gain,\n            And follows but for form,\n          Will pack when it begins to rain\n            And leave thee in the storm.\n          But I will tarry; the fool will stay,\n            And let the wise man fly.\n          The knave turns fool that runs away;\n            The fool no knave, perdy.\n  Kent. Where learn\'d you this, fool?\n  Fool. Not i\' th\' stocks, fool.\n\n                      Enter Lear and Gloucester\n\n  Lear. Deny to speak with me? They are sick? they are weary?\n     They have travell\'d all the night? Mere fetches-\n     The images of revolt and flying off!  \n     Fetch me a better answer.\n  Glou. My dear lord,\n     You know the fiery quality of the Duke,\n     How unremovable and fix\'d he is\n     In his own course.\n  Lear. Vengeance! plague! death! confusion!\n     Fiery? What quality? Why, Gloucester, Gloucester,\n     I\'ld speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife.\n  Glou. Well, my good lord, I have inform\'d them so.\n  Lear. Inform\'d them? Dost thou understand me, man?\n  Glou. Ay, my good lord.\n  Lear. The King would speak with Cornwall; the dear father\n     Would with his daughter speak, commands her service.\n     Are they inform\'d of this? My breath and blood!\n     Fiery? the fiery Duke? Tell the hot Duke that-\n     No, but not yet! May be he is not well.\n     Infirmity doth still neglect all office\n     Whereto our health is bound. We are not ourselves\n     When nature, being oppress\'d, commands the mind\n     To suffer with the body. I\'ll forbear;  \n     And am fallen out with my more headier will,\n     To take the indispos\'d and sickly fit\n     For the sound man.- Death on my state! Wherefore\n     Should be sit here? This act persuades me\n     That this remotion of the Duke and her\n     Is practice only. Give me my servant forth.\n     Go tell the Duke and \'s wife I\'ld speak with them-\n     Now, presently. Bid them come forth and hear me,\n     Or at their chamber door I\'ll beat the drum\n     Till it cry sleep to death.\n  Glou. I would have all well betwixt you.                 Exit.\n  Lear. O me, my heart, my rising heart! But down!\n  Fool. Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she\n     put \'em i\' th\' paste alive. She knapp\'d \'em o\' th\' coxcombs with\n     a stick and cried \'Down, wantons, down!\' \'Twas her brother that,\n     in pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay.\n\n             Enter Cornwall, Regan, Gloucester, Servants.\n\n  Lear. Good morrow to you both.  \n  Corn. Hail to your Grace!\n                                       Kent here set at liberty.\n  Reg. I am glad to see your Highness.\n  Lear. Regan, I think you are; I know what reason\n     I have to think so. If thou shouldst not be glad,\n     I would divorce me from thy mother\'s tomb,\n     Sepulchring an adultress. [To Kent] O, are you free?\n     Some other time for that.- Beloved Regan,\n     Thy sister\'s naught. O Regan, she hath tied\n     Sharp-tooth\'d unkindness, like a vulture, here!\n                                   [Lays his hand on his heart.]\n     I can scarce speak to thee. Thou\'lt not believe\n     With how deprav\'d a quality- O Regan!\n  Reg. I pray you, sir, take patience. I have hope\n     You less know how to value her desert\n     Than she to scant her duty.\n  Lear. Say, how is that?\n  Reg. I cannot think my sister in the least\n     Would fail her obligation. If, sir, perchance\n     She have restrain\'d the riots of your followers,  \n     \'Tis on such ground, and to such wholesome end,\n     As clears her from all blame.\n  Lear. My curses on her!\n  Reg. O, sir, you are old!\n     Nature in you stands on the very verge\n     Of her confine. You should be rul\'d, and led\n     By some discretion that discerns your state\n     Better than you yourself. Therefore I pray you\n     That to our sister you do make return;\n     Say you have wrong\'d her, sir.\n  Lear. Ask her forgiveness?\n     Do you but mark how this becomes the house:\n     \'Dear daughter, I confess that I am old.          [Kneels.]\n     Age is unnecessary. On my knees I beg\n     That you\'ll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food.\'\n  Reg. Good sir, no more! These are unsightly tricks.\n     Return you to my sister.\n  Lear. [rises] Never, Regan!\n     She hath abated me of half my train;\n     Look\'d black upon me; struck me with her tongue,  \n     Most serpent-like, upon the very heart.\n     All the stor\'d vengeances of heaven fall\n     On her ingrateful top! Strike her young bones,\n     You taking airs, with lameness!\n  Corn. Fie, sir, fie!\n  Lear. You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames\n     Into her scornful eyes! Infect her beauty,\n     You fen-suck\'d fogs, drawn by the pow\'rful sun,\n     To fall and blast her pride!\n  Reg. O the blest gods! so will you wish on me\n     When the rash mood is on.\n  Lear. No, Regan, thou shalt never have my curse.\n     Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give\n     Thee o\'er to harshness. Her eyes are fierce; but thine\n     Do comfort, and not burn. \'Tis not in thee\n     To grudge my pleasures, to cut off my train,\n     To bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes,\n     And, in conclusion, to oppose the bolt\n     Against my coming in. Thou better know\'st\n     The offices of nature, bond of childhood,  \n     Effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude.\n     Thy half o\' th\' kingdom hast thou not forgot,\n     Wherein I thee endow\'d.\n  Reg. Good sir, to th\' purpose.\n                                                  Tucket within.\n  Lear. Who put my man i\' th\' stocks?\n  Corn. What trumpet\'s that?\n  Reg. I know\'t- my sister\'s. This approves her letter,\n     That she would soon be here.\n\n                     Enter [Oswald the] Steward.\n\n     Is your lady come?\n  Lear. This is a slave, whose easy-borrowed pride\n     Dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows.\n     Out, varlet, from my sight!\n  Corn. What means your Grace?\n\n                            Enter Goneril.\n  \n  Lear. Who stock\'d my servant? Regan, I have good hope\n     Thou didst not know on\'t.- Who comes here? O heavens!\n     If you do love old men, if your sweet sway\n     Allow obedience- if yourselves are old,\n     Make it your cause! Send down, and take my part!\n     [To Goneril] Art not asham\'d to look upon this beard?-\n     O Regan, wilt thou take her by the hand?\n  Gon. Why not by th\' hand, sir? How have I offended?\n     All\'s not offence that indiscretion finds\n     And dotage terms so.\n  Lear. O sides, you are too tough!\n     Will you yet hold? How came my man i\' th\' stocks?\n  Corn. I set him there, sir; but his own disorders\n     Deserv\'d much less advancement.\n  Lear. You? Did you?\n  Reg. I pray you, father, being weak, seem so.\n     If, till the expiration of your month,\n     You will return and sojourn with my sister,\n     Dismissing half your train, come then to me.\n     I am now from home, and out of that provision  \n     Which shall be needful for your entertainment.\n  Lear. Return to her, and fifty men dismiss\'d?\n     No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose\n     To wage against the enmity o\' th\' air,\n     To be a comrade with the wolf and owl-\n     Necessity\'s sharp pinch! Return with her?\n     Why, the hot-blooded France, that dowerless took\n     Our youngest born, I could as well be brought\n     To knee his throne, and, squire-like, pension beg\n     To keep base life afoot. Return with her?\n     Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter\n     To this detested groom.                 [Points at Oswald.]\n  Gon. At your choice, sir.\n  Lear. I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad.\n     I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell.\n     We\'ll no more meet, no more see one another.\n     But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter;\n     Or rather a disease that\'s in my flesh,\n     Which I must needs call mine. Thou art a boil,\n     A plague sore, an embossed carbuncle  \n     In my corrupted blood. But I\'ll not chide thee.\n     Let shame come when it will, I do not call it.\n     I do not bid the Thunder-bearer shoot\n     Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove.\n     Mend when thou canst; be better at thy leisure;\n     I can be patient, I can stay with Regan,\n     I and my hundred knights.\n  Reg. Not altogether so.\n     I look\'d not for you yet, nor am provided\n     For your fit welcome. Give ear, sir, to my sister;\n     For those that mingle reason with your passion\n     Must be content to think you old, and so-\n     But she knows what she does.\n  Lear. Is this well spoken?\n  Reg. I dare avouch it, sir. What, fifty followers?\n     Is it not well? What should you need of more?\n     Yea, or so many, sith that both charge and danger\n     Speak \'gainst so great a number? How in one house\n     Should many people, under two commands,\n     Hold amity? \'Tis hard; almost impossible.  \n  Gon. Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance\n     From those that she calls servants, or from mine?\n  Reg. Why not, my lord? If then they chanc\'d to slack ye,\n     We could control them. If you will come to me\n     (For now I spy a danger), I entreat you\n     To bring but five-and-twenty. To no more\n     Will I give place or notice.\n  Lear. I gave you all-\n  Reg. And in good time you gave it!\n  Lear. Made you my guardians, my depositaries;\n     But kept a reservation to be followed\n     With such a number. What, must I come to you\n     With five-and-twenty, Regan? Said you so?\n  Reg. And speak\'t again my lord. No more with me.\n  Lear. Those wicked creatures yet do look well-favour\'d\n     When others are more wicked; not being the worst\n     Stands in some rank of praise. [To Goneril] I\'ll go with thee.\n     Thy fifty yet doth double five-and-twenty,\n     And thou art twice her love.\n  Gon. Hear, me, my lord.  \n     What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five,\n     To follow in a house where twice so many\n     Have a command to tend you?\n  Reg. What need one?\n  Lear. O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars\n     Are in the poorest thing superfluous.\n     Allow not nature more than nature needs,\n     Man\'s life is cheap as beast\'s. Thou art a lady:\n     If only to go warm were gorgeous,\n     Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear\'st\n     Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need-\n     You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!\n     You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,\n     As full of grief as age; wretched in both.\n     If it be you that stirs these daughters\' hearts\n     Against their father, fool me not so much\n     To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,\n     And let not women\'s weapons, water drops,\n     Stain my man\'s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags!\n     I will have such revenges on you both  \n     That all the world shall- I will do such things-\n     What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be\n     The terrors of the earth! You think I\'ll weep.\n     No, I\'ll not weep.\n     I have full cause of weeping, but this heart\n     Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws\n     Or ere I\'ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!\n              Exeunt Lear, Gloucester, Kent, and Fool. Storm and\n                                                        tempest.\n  Corn. Let us withdraw; \'twill be a storm.\n  Reg. This house is little; the old man and \'s people\n     Cannot be well bestow\'d.\n  Gon. \'Tis his own blame; hath put himself from rest\n     And must needs taste his folly.\n  Reg. For his particular, I\'ll receive him gladly,\n     But not one follower.\n  Gon. So am I purpos\'d.\n     Where is my Lord of Gloucester?\n  Corn. Followed the old man forth.\n  \n                          Enter Gloucester.\n\n     He is return\'d.\n  Glou. The King is in high rage.\n  Corn. Whither is he going?\n  Glou. He calls to horse, but will I know not whither.\n  Corn. \'Tis best to give him way; he leads himself.\n  Gon. My lord, entreat him by no means to stay.\n  Glou. Alack, the night comes on, and the bleak winds\n     Do sorely ruffle. For many miles about\n     There\'s scarce a bush.\n  Reg. O, sir, to wilful men\n     The injuries that they themselves procure\n     Must be their schoolmasters. Shut up your doors.\n     He is attended with a desperate train,\n     And what they may incense him to, being apt\n     To have his ear abus\'d, wisdom bids fear.\n  Corn. Shut up your doors, my lord: \'tis a wild night.\n     My Regan counsels well. Come out o\' th\' storm.        [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. Scene I.\nA heath.\n\nStorm still. Enter Kent and a Gentleman at several doors.\n\n  Kent. Who\'s there, besides foul weather?\n  Gent. One minded like the weather, most unquietly.\n  Kent. I know you. Where\'s the King?\n  Gent. Contending with the fretful elements;\n     Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,\n     Or swell the curled waters \'bove the main,\n     That things might change or cease; tears his white hair,\n     Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage,\n     Catch in their fury and make nothing of;\n     Strives in his little world of man to outscorn\n     The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain.\n     This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,\n     The lion and the belly-pinched wolf\n     Keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs,\n     And bids what will take all.\n  Kent. But who is with him?\n  Gent. None but the fool, who labours to outjest  \n     His heart-struck injuries.\n  Kent. Sir, I do know you,\n     And dare upon the warrant of my note\n     Commend a dear thing to you. There is division\n     (Although as yet the face of it be cover\'d\n     With mutual cunning) \'twixt Albany and Cornwall;\n     Who have (as who have not, that their great stars\n     Thron\'d and set high?) servants, who seem no less,\n     Which are to France the spies and speculations\n     Intelligent of our state. What hath been seen,\n     Either in snuffs and packings of the Dukes,\n     Or the hard rein which both of them have borne\n     Against the old kind King, or something deeper,\n     Whereof, perchance, these are but furnishings-\n     But, true it is, from France there comes a power\n     Into this scattered kingdom, who already,\n     Wise in our negligence, have secret feet\n     In some of our best ports and are at point\n     To show their open banner. Now to you:\n     If on my credit you dare build so far  \n     To make your speed to Dover, you shall find\n     Some that will thank you, making just report\n     Of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow\n     The King hath cause to plain.\n     I am a gentleman of blood and breeding,\n     And from some knowledge and assurance offer\n     This office to you.\n  Gent. I will talk further with you.\n  Kent. No, do not.\n     For confirmation that I am much more\n     Than my out-wall, open this purse and take\n     What it contains. If you shall see Cordelia\n     (As fear not but you shall), show her this ring,\n     And she will tell you who your fellow is\n     That yet you do not know. Fie on this storm!\n     I will go seek the King.\n  Gent. Give me your hand. Have you no more to say?\n  Kent. Few words, but, to effect, more than all yet:\n     That, when we have found the King (in which your pain\n     That way, I\'ll this), he that first lights on him  \n     Holla the other.\n                                             Exeunt [severally].\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nAnother part of the heath.\n\nStorm still. Enter Lear and Fool.\n\n  Lear. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!\n     You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout\n     Till you have drench\'d our steeples, drown\'d the cocks!\n     You sulph\'rous and thought-executing fires,\n     Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,\n     Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,\n     Strike flat the thick rotundity o\' th\' world,\n     Crack Nature\'s moulds, all germains spill at once,\n     That makes ingrateful man!\n  Fool. O nuncle, court holy water in a dry house is better than this\n     rain water out o\' door. Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters\n     blessing! Here\'s a night pities nether wise men nor fools.\n  Lear. Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!\n     Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.\n     I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.\n     I never gave you kingdom, call\'d you children,\n     You owe me no subscription. Then let fall  \n     Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,\n     A poor, infirm, weak, and despis\'d old man.\n     But yet I call you servile ministers,\n     That will with two pernicious daughters join\n     Your high-engender\'d battles \'gainst a head\n     So old and white as this! O! O! \'tis foul!\n  Fool. He that has a house to put \'s head in has a good head-piece.\n          The codpiece that will house\n            Before the head has any,\n          The head and he shall louse:\n            So beggars marry many.\n          The man that makes his toe\n            What he his heart should make\n          Shall of a corn cry woe,\n            And turn his sleep to wake.\n     For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a\n     glass.\n\n                             Enter Kent.\n  \n  Lear. No, I will be the pattern of all patience;\n     I will say nothing.\n  Kent. Who\'s there?\n  Fool. Marry, here\'s grace and a codpiece; that\'s a wise man and a\n     fool.\n  Kent. Alas, sir, are you here? Things that love night\n     Love not such nights as these. The wrathful skies\n     Gallow the very wanderers of the dark\n     And make them keep their caves. Since I was man,\n     Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,\n     Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never\n     Remember to have heard. Man\'s nature cannot carry\n     Th\' affliction nor the fear.\n  Lear. Let the great gods,\n     That keep this dreadful pudder o\'er our heads,\n     Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,\n     That hast within thee undivulged crimes\n     Unwhipp\'d of justice. Hide thee, thou bloody hand;\n     Thou perjur\'d, and thou simular man of virtue\n     That art incestuous. Caitiff, in pieces shake  \n     That under covert and convenient seeming\n     Hast practis\'d on man\'s life. Close pent-up guilts,\n     Rive your concealing continents, and cry\n     These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man\n     More sinn\'d against than sinning.\n  Kent. Alack, bareheaded?\n     Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;\n     Some friendship will it lend you \'gainst the tempest.\n     Repose you there, whilst I to this hard house\n     (More harder than the stones whereof \'tis rais\'d,\n     Which even but now, demanding after you,\n     Denied me to come in) return, and force\n     Their scanted courtesy.\n  Lear. My wits begin to turn.\n     Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold?\n     I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?\n     The art of our necessities is strange,\n     That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel.\n     Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart\n     That\'s sorry yet for thee.  \n  Fool. [sings]\n\n          He that has and a little tiny wit-\n            With hey, ho, the wind and the rain-\n          Must make content with his fortunes fit,\n             For the rain it raineth every day.\n\n  Lear. True, my good boy. Come, bring us to this hovel.\n                                         Exeunt [Lear and Kent].\n  Fool. This is a brave night to cool a courtesan. I\'ll speak a\n     prophecy ere I go:\n          When priests are more in word than matter;\n          When brewers mar their malt with water;\n          When nobles are their tailors\' tutors,\n          No heretics burn\'d, but wenches\' suitors;\n          When every case in law is right,\n          No squire in debt nor no poor knight;\n          When slanders do not live in tongues,\n          Nor cutpurses come not to throngs;\n          When usurers tell their gold i\' th\' field,  \n          And bawds and whores do churches build:\n          Then shall the realm of Albion\n          Come to great confusion.\n          Then comes the time, who lives to see\'t,\n          That going shall be us\'d with feet.\n     This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time.\nExit.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nGloucester\'s Castle.\n\nEnter Gloucester and Edmund.\n\n  Glou. Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this unnatural dealing! When\n     I desir\'d their leave that I might pity him, they took from me\n     the use of mine own house, charg\'d me on pain of perpetual\n     displeasure neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor any\n     way sustain him.\n  Edm. Most savage and unnatural!\n  Glou. Go to; say you nothing. There is division betwixt the Dukes,\n     and a worse matter than that. I have received a letter this\n     night- \'tis dangerous to be spoken- I have lock\'d the letter in\n     my closet. These injuries the King now bears will be revenged\n     home; there\'s part of a power already footed; we must incline to\n     the King. I will seek him and privily relieve him. Go you and\n     maintain talk with the Duke, that my charity be not of him\n     perceived. If he ask for me, I am ill and gone to bed. Though I\n     die for\'t, as no less is threat\'ned me, the King my old master\n     must be relieved. There is some strange thing toward, Edmund.\n     Pray you be careful.                                  Exit.  \n  Edm. This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the Duke\n     Instantly know, and of that letter too.\n     This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me\n     That which my father loses- no less than all.\n     The younger rises when the old doth fall.             Exit.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nThe heath. Before a hovel.\n\nStorm still. Enter Lear, Kent, and Fool.\n\n  Kent. Here is the place, my lord. Good my lord, enter.\n     The tyranny of the open night \'s too rough\n     For nature to endure.\n  Lear. Let me alone.\n  Kent. Good my lord, enter here.\n  Lear. Wilt break my heart?\n  Kent. I had rather break mine own. Good my lord, enter.\n  Lear. Thou think\'st \'tis much that this contentious storm\n     Invades us to the skin. So \'tis to thee;\n     But where the greater malady is fix\'d,\n     The lesser is scarce felt. Thou\'dst shun a bear;\n     But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea,\n     Thou\'dst meet the bear i\' th\' mouth. When the mind\'s free,\n     The body\'s delicate. The tempest in my mind\n     Doth from my senses take all feeling else\n     Save what beats there. Filial ingratitude!\n     Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand  \n     For lifting food to\'t? But I will punish home!\n     No, I will weep no more. In such a night\n     \'To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure.\n     In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!\n     Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all!\n     O, that way madness lies; let me shun that!\n     No more of that.\n  Kent. Good my lord, enter here.\n  Lear. Prithee go in thyself; seek thine own ease.\n     This tempest will not give me leave to ponder\n     On things would hurt me more. But I\'ll go in.\n     [To the Fool] In, boy; go first.- You houseless poverty-\n     Nay, get thee in. I\'ll pray, and then I\'ll sleep.\n                                                    Exit [Fool].\n     Poor naked wretches, wheresoe\'er you are,\n     That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,\n     How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,\n     Your loop\'d and window\'d raggedness, defend you\n     From seasons such as these? O, I have ta\'en\n     Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;  \n     Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,\n     That thou mayst shake the superflux to them\n     And show the heavens more just.\n  Edg. [within] Fathom and half, fathom and half! Poor Tom!\n\n                     Enter Fool [from the hovel].\n\n  Fool. Come not in here, nuncle, here\'s a spirit. Help me, help me!\n  Kent. Give me thy hand. Who\'s there?\n  Fool. A spirit, a spirit! He says his name\'s poor Tom.\n  Kent. What art thou that dost grumble there i\' th\' straw?\n     Come forth.\n\n                 Enter Edgar [disguised as a madman].\n\n  Edg. Away! the foul fiend follows me! Through the sharp hawthorn\n     blows the cold wind. Humh! go to thy cold bed, and warm thee.\n  Lear. Hast thou given all to thy two daughters, and art thou come\n     to this?\n  Edg. Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led  \n     through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlpool, o\'er\n     bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow and\n     halters in his pew, set ratsbane by his porridge, made him proud\n     of heart, to ride on a bay trotting horse over four-inch\'d\n     bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor. Bless thy five\n     wits! Tom \'s acold. O, do de, do de, do de. Bless thee from\n     whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking! Do poor Tom some charity,\n     whom the foul fiend vexes. There could I have him now- and there-\n     and there again- and there!\n                                                    Storm still.\n  Lear. What, have his daughters brought him to this pass?\n     Couldst thou save nothing? Didst thou give \'em all?\n  Fool. Nay, he reserv\'d a blanket, else we had been all sham\'d.\n  Lear. Now all the plagues that in the pendulous air\n     Hang fated o\'er men\'s faults light on thy daughters!\n  Kent. He hath no daughters, sir.\n  Lear. Death, traitor! nothing could have subdu\'d nature\n     To such a lowness but his unkind daughters.\n     Is it the fashion that discarded fathers\n     Should have thus little mercy on their flesh?  \n     Judicious punishment! \'Twas this flesh begot\n     Those pelican daughters.\n  Edg. Pillicock sat on Pillicock\'s Hill. \'Allow, \'allow, loo, loo!\n  Fool. This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.\n  Edg. Take heed o\' th\' foul fiend; obey thy parents: keep thy word\n     justly; swear not; commit not with man\'s sworn spouse; set not\n     thy sweet heart on proud array. Tom \'s acold.\n  Lear. What hast thou been?\n  Edg. A servingman, proud in heart and mind; that curl\'d my hair,\n     wore gloves in my cap; serv\'d the lust of my mistress\' heart and\n     did the act of darkness with her; swore as many oaths as I spake\n     words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven; one that\n     slept in the contriving of lust, and wak\'d to do it. Wine lov\'d\n     I deeply, dice dearly; and in woman out-paramour\'d the Turk.\n     False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox\n     in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey.\n     Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks betray\n     thy poor heart to woman. Keep thy foot out of brothel, thy hand\n     out of placket, thy pen from lender\'s book, and defy the foul\n     fiend. Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind; says  \n     suum, mun, hey, no, nonny. Dolphin my boy, my boy, sessa! let\n     him trot by.\n                                                    Storm still.\n  Lear. Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy\n     uncover\'d body this extremity of the skies. Is man no more than\n     this? Consider him well. Thou ow\'st the worm no silk, the beast\n     no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! Here\'s three\n     on\'s are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself;\n     unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked\n     animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! Come, unbutton\n     here.\n                                         [Tears at his clothes.]\n  Fool. Prithee, nuncle, be contented! \'Tis a naughty night to swim\n     in. Now a little fire in a wild field were like an old lecher\'s\n     heart- a small spark, all the rest on\'s body cold. Look, here\n     comes a walking fire.\n\n                    Enter Gloucester with a torch.\n\n  Edg. This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet. He begins at curfew,  \n     and walks till the first cock. He gives the web and the pin,\n     squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat,\n     and hurts the poor creature of earth.\n\n           Saint Withold footed thrice the \'old;\n           He met the nightmare, and her nine fold;\n              Bid her alight\n              And her troth plight,\n           And aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!\n\n  Kent. How fares your Grace?\n  Lear. What\'s he?\n  Kent. Who\'s there? What is\'t you seek?\n  Glou. What are you there? Your names?\n  Edg. Poor Tom, that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the todpole,\n     the wall-newt and the water; that in the fury of his heart, when\n     the foul fiend rages, eats cow-dung for sallets, swallows the\n     old rat and the ditch-dog, drinks the green mantle of the\n     standing pool; who is whipp\'d from tithing to tithing, and\n     stock-punish\'d and imprison\'d; who hath had three suits to his  \n     back, six shirts to his body, horse to ride, and weapons to\n     wear;\n\n          But mice and rats, and such small deer,\n          Have been Tom\'s food for seven long year.\n\n     Beware my follower. Peace, Smulkin! peace, thou fiend!\n  Glou. What, hath your Grace no better company?\n  Edg. The prince of darkness is a gentleman!\n     Modo he\'s call\'d, and Mahu.\n  Glou. Our flesh and blood is grown so vile, my lord,\n     That it doth hate what gets it.\n  Edg. Poor Tom \'s acold.\n  Glou. Go in with me. My duty cannot suffer\n     T\' obey in all your daughters\' hard commands.\n     Though their injunction be to bar my doors\n     And let this tyrannous night take hold upon you,\n     Yet have I ventur\'d to come seek you out\n     And bring you where both fire and food is ready.\n  Lear. First let me talk with this philosopher.  \n     What is the cause of thunder?\n  Kent. Good my lord, take his offer; go into th\' house.\n  Lear. I\'ll talk a word with this same learned Theban.\n     What is your study?\n  Edg. How to prevent the fiend and to kill vermin.\n  Lear. Let me ask you one word in private.\n  Kent. Importune him once more to go, my lord.\n     His wits begin t\' unsettle.\n  Glou. Canst thou blame him?\n                                                    Storm still.\n     His daughters seek his death. Ah, that good Kent!\n     He said it would be thus- poor banish\'d man!\n     Thou say\'st the King grows mad: I\'ll tell thee, friend,\n     I am almost mad myself. I had a son,\n     Now outlaw\'d from my blood. He sought my life\n     But lately, very late. I lov\'d him, friend-\n     No father his son dearer. True to tell thee,\n     The grief hath craz\'d my wits. What a night \'s this!\n     I do beseech your Grace-\n  Lear. O, cry you mercy, sir.  \n     Noble philosopher, your company.\n  Edg. Tom\'s acold.\n  Glou. In, fellow, there, into th\' hovel; keep thee warm.\n  Lear. Come, let\'s in all.\n  Kent. This way, my lord.\n  Lear. With him!\n     I will keep still with my philosopher.\n  Kent. Good my lord, soothe him; let him take the fellow.\n  Glou. Take him you on.\n  Kent. Sirrah, come on; go along with us.\n  Lear. Come, good Athenian.\n  Glou. No words, no words! hush.\n  Edg. Child Rowland to the dark tower came;\n     His word was still\n\n          Fie, foh, and fum!\n          I smell the blood of a British man.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\nScene V.\nGloucester\'s Castle.\n\nEnter Cornwall and Edmund.\n\n  Corn. I will have my revenge ere I depart his house.\n  Edm. How, my lord, I may be censured, that nature thus gives way to\n     loyalty, something fears me to think of.\n  Corn. I now perceive it was not altogether your brother\'s evil\n     disposition made him seek his death; but a provoking merit, set\n     awork by a reproveable badness in himself.\n  Edm. How malicious is my fortune that I must repent to be just!\n     This is the letter he spoke of, which approves him an\n     intelligent party to the advantages of France. O heavens! that\n     this treason were not- or not I the detector!\n  Corn. Go with me to the Duchess.\n  Edm. If the matter of this paper be certain, you have mighty\n     business in hand.\n  Corn. True or false, it hath made thee Earl of Gloucester.\n     Seek out where thy father is, that he may be ready for our\n     apprehension.\n  Edm. [aside] If I find him comforting the King, it will stuff his  \n     suspicion more fully.- I will persever in my course of loyalty,\n     though the conflict be sore between that and my blood.\n  Corn. I will lay trust upon thee, and thou shalt find a dearer\n     father in my love.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene VI.\nA farmhouse near Gloucester\'s Castle.\n\nEnter Gloucester, Lear, Kent, Fool, and Edgar.\n\n  Glou. Here is better than the open air; take it thankfully. I will\n     piece out the comfort with what addition I can. I will not be\n     long from you.\n  Kent. All the power of his wits have given way to his impatience.\n     The gods reward your kindness!\n                                              Exit [Gloucester].\n  Edg. Frateretto calls me, and tells me Nero is an angler in the\n     lake of darkness. Pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend.\n  Fool. Prithee, nuncle, tell me whether a madman be a gentleman or a\n     yeoman.\n  Lear. A king, a king!\n  Fool. No, he\'s a yeoman that has a gentleman to his son; for he\'s a\n     mad yeoman that sees his son a gentleman before him.\n  Lear. To have a thousand with red burning spits\n     Come hizzing in upon \'em-\n  Edg. The foul fiend bites my back.\n  Fool. He\'s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse\'s\n     health, a boy\'s love, or a whore\'s oath.  \n  Lear. It shall be done; I will arraign them straight.\n     [To Edgar] Come, sit thou here, most learned justicer.\n     [To the Fool] Thou, sapient sir, sit here. Now, you she-foxes!\n  Edg. Look, where he stands and glares! Want\'st thou eyes at trial,\n     madam?\n\n             Come o\'er the bourn, Bessy, to me.\n\n  Fool.      Her boat hath a leak,\n             And she must not speak\n           Why she dares not come over to thee.\n\n  Edg. The foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale.\n     Hoppedance cries in Tom\'s belly for two white herring. Croak\n     not, black angel; I have no food for thee.\n  Kent. How do you, sir? Stand you not so amaz\'d.\n     Will you lie down and rest upon the cushions?\n  Lear. I\'ll see their trial first. Bring in their evidence.\n     [To Edgar] Thou, robed man of justice, take thy place.\n     [To the Fool] And thou, his yokefellow of equity,  \n     Bench by his side. [To Kent] You are o\' th\' commission,\n     Sit you too.\n  Edg. Let us deal justly.\n\n          Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd?\n            Thy sheep be in the corn;\n          And for one blast of thy minikin mouth\n            Thy sheep shall take no harm.\n\n     Purr! the cat is gray.\n  Lear. Arraign her first. \'Tis Goneril. I here take my oath before\n     this honourable assembly, she kicked the poor King her father.\n  Fool. Come hither, mistress. Is your name Goneril?\n  Lear. She cannot deny it.\n  Fool. Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool.\n  Lear. And here\'s another, whose warp\'d looks proclaim\n     What store her heart is made on. Stop her there!\n     Arms, arms! sword! fire! Corruption in the place!\n     False justicer, why hast thou let her scape?\n  Edg. Bless thy five wits!  \n  Kent. O pity! Sir, where is the patience now\n     That you so oft have boasted to retain?\n  Edg. [aside] My tears begin to take his part so much\n     They\'ll mar my counterfeiting.\n  Lear. The little dogs and all,\n     Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.\n  Edg. Tom will throw his head at them. Avaunt, you curs!\n           Be thy mouth or black or white,\n           Tooth that poisons if it bite;\n           Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim,\n           Hound or spaniel, brach or lym,\n           Bobtail tyke or trundle-tall-\n           Tom will make them weep and wail;\n           For, with throwing thus my head,\n           Dogs leap the hatch, and all are fled.\n     Do de, de, de. Sessa! Come, march to wakes and fairs and market\n     towns. Poor Tom, thy horn is dry.\n  Lear. Then let them anatomize Regan. See what breeds about her\n     heart. Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard\n     hearts? [To Edgar] You, sir- I entertain you for one of my  \n     hundred; only I do not like the fashion of your garments. You\'ll\n     say they are Persian attire; but let them be chang\'d.\n  Kent. Now, good my lord, lie here and rest awhile.\n  Lear. Make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains.\n     So, so, so. We\'ll go to supper i\' th\' morning. So, so, so.\n  Fool. And I\'ll go to bed at noon.\n\n                          Enter Gloucester.\n\n  Glou. Come hither, friend. Where is the King my master?\n  Kent. Here, sir; but trouble him not; his wits are gone.\n  Glou. Good friend, I prithee take him in thy arms.\n     I have o\'erheard a plot of death upon him.\n     There is a litter ready; lay him in\'t\n     And drive towards Dover, friend, where thou shalt meet\n     Both welcome and protection. Take up thy master.\n     If thou shouldst dally half an hour, his life,\n     With thine, and all that offer to defend him,\n     Stand in assured loss. Take up, take up!\n     And follow me, that will to some provision  \n     Give thee quick conduct.\n  Kent. Oppressed nature sleeps.\n     This rest might yet have balm\'d thy broken senses,\n     Which, if convenience will not allow,\n     Stand in hard cure. [To the Fool] Come, help to bear thy master.\n     Thou must not stay behind.\n  Glou. Come, come, away!\n                                         Exeunt [all but Edgar].\n  Edg. When we our betters see bearing our woes,\n     We scarcely think our miseries our foes.\n     Who alone suffers suffers most i\' th\' mind,\n     Leaving free things and happy shows behind;\n     But then the mind much sufferance doth o\'erskip\n     When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.\n     How light and portable my pain seems now,\n     When that which makes me bend makes the King bow,\n     He childed as I fathered! Tom, away!\n     Mark the high noises, and thyself bewray\n     When false opinion, whose wrong thought defiles thee,\n     In thy just proof repeals and reconciles thee.  \n     What will hap more to-night, safe scape the King!\n     Lurk, lurk.                                         [Exit.]\n\n\n\n\nScene VII.\nGloucester\'s Castle.\n\nEnter Cornwall, Regan, Goneril, [Edmund the] Bastard, and Servants.\n\n  Corn. [to Goneril] Post speedily to my lord your husband, show him\n     this letter. The army of France is landed.- Seek out the traitor\n     Gloucester.\n                                  [Exeunt some of the Servants.]\n  Reg. Hang him instantly.\n  Gon. Pluck out his eyes.\n  Corn. Leave him to my displeasure. Edmund, keep you our sister\n     company. The revenges we are bound to take upon your traitorous\n     father are not fit for your beholding. Advise the Duke where you\n     are going, to a most festinate preparation. We are bound to the\n     like. Our posts shall be swift and intelligent betwixt us.\n     Farewell, dear sister; farewell, my Lord of Gloucester.\n\n                     Enter [Oswald the] Steward.\n\n     How now? Where\'s the King?  \n  Osw. My Lord of Gloucester hath convey\'d him hence.\n     Some five or six and thirty of his knights,\n     Hot questrists after him, met him at gate;\n     Who, with some other of the lord\'s dependants,\n     Are gone with him towards Dover, where they boast\n     To have well-armed friends.\n  Corn. Get horses for your mistress.\n  Gon. Farewell, sweet lord, and sister.\n  Corn. Edmund, farewell.\n                           Exeunt Goneril, [Edmund, and Oswald].\n     Go seek the traitor Gloucester,\n     Pinion him like a thief, bring him before us.\n                                        [Exeunt other Servants.]\n     Though well we may not pass upon his life\n     Without the form of justice, yet our power\n     Shall do a court\'sy to our wrath, which men\n     May blame, but not control.\n\n            Enter Gloucester, brought in by two or three.\n  \n     Who\'s there? the traitor?\n  Reg. Ingrateful fox! \'tis he.\n  Corn. Bind fast his corky arms.\n  Glou. What mean, your Graces? Good my friends, consider\n     You are my guests. Do me no foul play, friends.\n  Corn. Bind him, I say.\n                                            [Servants bind him.]\n  Reg. Hard, hard. O filthy traitor!\n  Glou. Unmerciful lady as you are, I am none.\n  Corn. To this chair bind him. Villain, thou shalt find-\n                                       [Regan plucks his beard.]\n  Glou. By the kind gods, \'tis most ignobly done\n     To pluck me by the beard.\n  Reg. So white, and such a traitor!\n  Glou. Naughty lady,\n     These hairs which thou dost ravish from my chin\n     Will quicken, and accuse thee. I am your host.\n     With robber\'s hands my hospitable favours\n     You should not ruffle thus. What will you do?\n  Corn. Come, sir, what letters had you late from France?  \n  Reg. Be simple-answer\'d, for we know the truth.\n  Corn. And what confederacy have you with the traitors\n     Late footed in the kingdom?\n  Reg. To whose hands have you sent the lunatic King?\n     Speak.\n  Glou. I have a letter guessingly set down,\n     Which came from one that\'s of a neutral heart,\n     And not from one oppos\'d.\n  Corn. Cunning.\n  Reg. And false.\n  Corn. Where hast thou sent the King?\n  Glou. To Dover.\n  Reg. Wherefore to Dover? Wast thou not charg\'d at peril-\n  Corn. Wherefore to Dover? Let him first answer that.\n  Glou. I am tied to th\' stake, and I must stand the course.\n  Reg. Wherefore to Dover, sir?\n  Glou. Because I would not see thy cruel nails\n     Pluck out his poor old eyes; nor thy fierce sister\n     In his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs.\n     The sea, with such a storm as his bare head  \n     In hell-black night endur\'d, would have buoy\'d up\n     And quench\'d the steeled fires.\n     Yet, poor old heart, he holp the heavens to rain.\n     If wolves had at thy gate howl\'d that stern time,\n     Thou shouldst have said, \'Good porter, turn the key.\'\n     All cruels else subscrib\'d. But I shall see\n     The winged vengeance overtake such children.\n  Corn. See\'t shalt thou never. Fellows, hold the chair.\n     Upon these eyes of thine I\'ll set my foot.\n  Glou. He that will think to live till he be old,\n     Give me some help!- O cruel! O ye gods!\n  Reg. One side will mock another. Th\' other too!\n  Corn. If you see vengeance-\n  1. Serv. Hold your hand, my lord!\n     I have serv\'d you ever since I was a child;\n     But better service have I never done you\n     Than now to bid you hold.\n  Reg. How now, you dog?\n  1. Serv. If you did wear a beard upon your chin,\n     I\'ld shake it on this quarrel.  \n  Reg. What do you mean?\n  Corn. My villain!                               Draw and fight.\n  1. Serv. Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger.\n  Reg. Give me thy sword. A peasant stand up thus?\n                        She takes a sword and runs at him behind.\n  1. Serv. O, I am slain! My lord, you have one eye left\n     To see some mischief on him. O!                     He dies.\n  Corn. Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly!\n     Where is thy lustre now?\n  Glou. All dark and comfortless! Where\'s my son Edmund?\n     Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature\n     To quit this horrid act.\n  Reg. Out, treacherous villain!\n     Thou call\'st on him that hates thee. It was he\n     That made the overture of thy treasons to us;\n     Who is too good to pity thee.\n  Glou. O my follies! Then Edgar was abus\'d.\n     Kind gods, forgive me that, and prosper him!\n  Reg. Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell\n     His way to Dover.  \n                                     Exit [one] with Gloucester.\n     How is\'t, my lord? How look you?\n  Corn. I have receiv\'d a hurt. Follow me, lady.\n     Turn out that eyeless villain. Throw this slave\n     Upon the dunghill. Regan, I bleed apace.\n     Untimely comes this hurt. Give me your arm.\n                                  Exit [Cornwall, led by Regan].\n  2. Serv. I\'ll never care what wickedness I do,\n     If this man come to good.\n  3. Serv. If she live long,\n     And in the end meet the old course of death,\n     Women will all turn monsters.\n  2. Serv. Let\'s follow the old Earl, and get the bedlam\n     To lead him where he would. His roguish madness\n     Allows itself to anything.\n  3. Serv. Go thou. I\'ll fetch some flax and whites of eggs\n     To apply to his bleeding face. Now heaven help him!\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. Scene I.\nThe heath.\n\nEnter Edgar.\n\n  Edg. Yet better thus, and known to be contemn\'d,\n     Than still contemn\'d and flatter\'d. To be worst,\n     The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,\n     Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear.\n     The lamentable change is from the best;\n     The worst returns to laughter. Welcome then,\n     Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace!\n     The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst\n     Owes nothing to thy blasts.\n\n                 Enter Gloucester, led by an Old Man.\n\n     But who comes here?\n     My father, poorly led? World, world, O world!\n     But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee,\n     Life would not yield to age.\n  Old Man. O my good lord,  \n     I have been your tenant, and your father\'s tenant,\n     These fourscore years.\n  Glou. Away, get thee away! Good friend, be gone.\n     Thy comforts can do me no good at all;\n     Thee they may hurt.\n  Old Man. You cannot see your way.\n  Glou. I have no way, and therefore want no eyes;\n     I stumbled when I saw. Full oft \'tis seen\n     Our means secure us, and our mere defects\n     Prove our commodities. Ah dear son Edgar,\n     The food of thy abused father\'s wrath!\n     Might I but live to see thee in my touch,\n     I\'ld say I had eyes again!\n  Old Man. How now? Who\'s there?\n  Edg. [aside] O gods! Who is\'t can say \'I am at the worst\'?\n     I am worse than e\'er I was.\n  Old Man. \'Tis poor mad Tom.\n  Edg. [aside] And worse I may be yet. The worst is not\n     So long as we can say \'This is the worst.\'\n  Old Man. Fellow, where goest?  \n  Glou. Is it a beggarman?\n  Old Man. Madman and beggar too.\n  Glou. He has some reason, else he could not beg.\n     I\' th\' last night\'s storm I such a fellow saw,\n     Which made me think a man a worm. My son\n     Came then into my mind, and yet my mind\n     Was then scarce friends with him. I have heard more since.\n     As flies to wanton boys are we to th\' gods.\n     They kill us for their sport.\n  Edg. [aside] How should this be?\n     Bad is the trade that must play fool to sorrow,\n     Ang\'ring itself and others.- Bless thee, master!\n  Glou. Is that the naked fellow?\n  Old Man. Ay, my lord.\n  Glou. Then prithee get thee gone. If for my sake\n     Thou wilt o\'ertake us hence a mile or twain\n     I\' th\' way toward Dover, do it for ancient love;\n     And bring some covering for this naked soul,\n     Who I\'ll entreat to lead me.\n  Old Man. Alack, sir, he is mad!  \n  Glou. \'Tis the time\'s plague when madmen lead the blind.\n     Do as I bid thee, or rather do thy pleasure.\n     Above the rest, be gone.\n  Old Man. I\'ll bring him the best \'parel that I have,\n     Come on\'t what will.                                  Exit.\n  Glou. Sirrah naked fellow-\n  Edg. Poor Tom\'s acold. [Aside] I cannot daub it further.\n  Glou. Come hither, fellow.\n  Edg. [aside] And yet I must.- Bless thy sweet eyes, they bleed.\n  Glou. Know\'st thou the way to Dover?\n  Edg. Both stile and gate, horseway and footpath. Poor Tom hath been\n     scar\'d out of his good wits. Bless thee, good man\'s son, from\n     the foul fiend! Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once: of\n     lust, as Obidicut; Hobbididence, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of\n     stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and\n     mowing, who since possesses chambermaids and waiting women. So,\n     bless thee, master!\n  Glou. Here, take this Purse, thou whom the heavens\' plagues\n     Have humbled to all strokes. That I am wretched\n     Makes thee the happier. Heavens, deal so still!  \n     Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,\n     That slaves your ordinance, that will not see\n     Because he does not feel, feel your pow\'r quickly;\n     So distribution should undo excess,\n     And each man have enough. Dost thou know Dover?\n  Edg. Ay, master.\n  Glou. There is a cliff, whose high and bending head\n     Looks fearfully in the confined deep.\n     Bring me but to the very brim of it,\n     And I\'ll repair the misery thou dost bear\n     With something rich about me. From that place\n     I shall no leading need.\n  Edg. Give me thy arm.\n     Poor Tom shall lead thee.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nBefore the Duke of Albany\'s Palace.\n\nEnter Goneril and [Edmund the] Bastard.\n\n  Gon. Welcome, my lord. I marvel our mild husband\n     Not met us on the way.\n\n                     Enter [Oswald the] Steward.\n\n     Now, where\'s your master?\n  Osw. Madam, within, but never man so chang\'d.\n     I told him of the army that was landed:\n     He smil\'d at it. I told him you were coming:\n     His answer was, \'The worse.\' Of Gloucester\'s treachery\n     And of the loyal service of his son\n     When I inform\'d him, then he call\'d me sot\n     And told me I had turn\'d the wrong side out.\n     What most he should dislike seems pleasant to him;\n     What like, offensive.\n  Gon. [to Edmund] Then shall you go no further.\n     It is the cowish terror of his spirit,  \n     That dares not undertake. He\'ll not feel wrongs\n     Which tie him to an answer. Our wishes on the way\n     May prove effects. Back, Edmund, to my brother.\n     Hasten his musters and conduct his pow\'rs.\n     I must change arms at home and give the distaff\n     Into my husband\'s hands. This trusty servant\n     Shall pass between us. Ere long you are like to hear\n     (If you dare venture in your own behalf)\n     A mistress\'s command. Wear this.          [Gives a favour.]\n     Spare speech.\n     Decline your head. This kiss, if it durst speak,\n     Would stretch thy spirits up into the air.\n     Conceive, and fare thee well.\n  Edm. Yours in the ranks of death!                        Exit.\n  Gon. My most dear Gloucester!\n     O, the difference of man and man!\n     To thee a woman\'s services are due;\n     My fool usurps my body.\n  Osw. Madam, here comes my lord.                          Exit.\n  \n                            Enter Albany.\n\n  Gon. I have been worth the whistle.\n  Alb. O Goneril,\n     You are not worth the dust which the rude wind\n     Blows in your face! I fear your disposition.\n     That nature which contemns it origin\n     Cannot be bordered certain in itself.\n     She that herself will sliver and disbranch\n     From her material sap, perforce must wither\n     And come to deadly use.\n  Gon. No more! The text is foolish.\n  Alb. Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;\n     Filths savour but themselves. What have you done?\n     Tigers, not daughters, what have you perform\'d?\n     A father, and a gracious aged man,\n     Whose reverence even the head-lugg\'d bear would lick,\n     Most barbarous, most degenerate, have you madded.\n     Could my good brother suffer you to do it?\n     A man, a prince, by him so benefited!  \n     If that the heavens do not their visible spirits\n     Send quickly down to tame these vile offences,\n     It will come,\n     Humanity must perforce prey on itself,\n     Like monsters of the deep.\n  Gon. Milk-liver\'d man!\n     That bear\'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs;\n     Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning\n     Thine honour from thy suffering; that not know\'st\n     Fools do those villains pity who are punish\'d\n     Ere they have done their mischief. Where\'s thy drum?\n     France spreads his banners in our noiseless land,\n     With plumed helm thy state begins to threat,\n     Whiles thou, a moral fool, sit\'st still, and criest\n     \'Alack, why does he so?\'\n  Alb. See thyself, devil!\n     Proper deformity seems not in the fiend\n     So horrid as in woman.\n  Gon. O vain fool!\n  Alb. Thou changed and self-cover\'d thing, for shame!  \n     Bemonster not thy feature! Were\'t my fitness\n     To let these hands obey my blood,\n     They are apt enough to dislocate and tear\n     Thy flesh and bones. Howe\'er thou art a fiend,\n     A woman\'s shape doth shield thee.\n  Gon. Marry, your manhood mew!\n\n                          Enter a Gentleman.\n\n  Alb. What news?\n  Gent. O, my good lord, the Duke of Cornwall \'s dead,\n     Slain by his servant, going to put out\n     The other eye of Gloucester.\n  Alb. Gloucester\'s eyes?\n  Gent. A servant that he bred, thrill\'d with remorse,\n     Oppos\'d against the act, bending his sword\n     To his great master; who, thereat enrag\'d,\n     Flew on him, and amongst them fell\'d him dead;\n     But not without that harmful stroke which since\n     Hath pluck\'d him after.  \n  Alb. This shows you are above,\n     You justicers, that these our nether crimes\n     So speedily can venge! But O poor Gloucester!\n     Lose he his other eye?\n  Gent. Both, both, my lord.\n     This letter, madam, craves a speedy answer.\n     \'Tis from your sister.\n  Gon. [aside] One way I like this well;\n     But being widow, and my Gloucester with her,\n     May all the building in my fancy pluck\n     Upon my hateful life. Another way\n     The news is not so tart.- I\'ll read, and answer.\nExit.\n  Alb. Where was his son when they did take his eyes?\n  Gent. Come with my lady hither.\n  Alb. He is not here.\n  Gent. No, my good lord; I met him back again.\n  Alb. Knows he the wickedness?\n  Gent. Ay, my good lord. \'Twas he inform\'d against him,\n     And quit the house on purpose, that their punishment  \n     Might have the freer course.\n  Alb. Gloucester, I live\n     To thank thee for the love thou show\'dst the King,\n     And to revenge thine eyes. Come hither, friend.\n     Tell me what more thou know\'st.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nThe French camp near Dover.\n\nEnter Kent and a Gentleman.\n\n  Kent. Why the King of France is so suddenly gone back know you the\n     reason?\n  Gent. Something he left imperfect in the state, which since his\n     coming forth is thought of, which imports to the kingdom so much\n     fear and danger that his personal return was most required and\n     necessary.\n  Kent. Who hath he left behind him general?\n  Gent. The Marshal of France, Monsieur La Far.\n  Kent. Did your letters pierce the Queen to any demonstration of\n     grief?\n  Gent. Ay, sir. She took them, read them in my presence,\n     And now and then an ample tear trill\'d down\n     Her delicate cheek. It seem\'d she was a queen\n     Over her passion, who, most rebel-like,\n     Sought to be king o\'er her.\n  Kent. O, then it mov\'d her?\n  Gent. Not to a rage. Patience and sorrow strove  \n     Who should express her goodliest. You have seen\n     Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears\n     Were like, a better way. Those happy smilets\n     That play\'d on her ripe lip seem\'d not to know\n     What guests were in her eyes, which parted thence\n     As pearls from diamonds dropp\'d. In brief,\n     Sorrow would be a rarity most belov\'d,\n     If all could so become it.\n  Kent. Made she no verbal question?\n  Gent. Faith, once or twice she heav\'d the name of father\n     Pantingly forth, as if it press\'d her heart;\n     Cried \'Sisters, sisters! Shame of ladies! Sisters!\n     Kent! father! sisters! What, i\' th\' storm? i\' th\' night?\n     Let pity not be believ\'d!\' There she shook\n     The holy water from her heavenly eyes,\n     And clamour moisten\'d. Then away she started\n     To deal with grief alone.\n  Kent. It is the stars,\n     The stars above us, govern our conditions;\n     Else one self mate and mate could not beget  \n     Such different issues. You spoke not with her since?\n  Gent. No.\n  Kent. Was this before the King return\'d?\n  Gent. No, since.\n  Kent. Well, sir, the poor distressed Lear\'s i\' th\' town;\n     Who sometime, in his better tune, remembers\n     What we are come about, and by no means\n     Will yield to see his daughter.\n  Gent. Why, good sir?\n  Kent. A sovereign shame so elbows him; his own unkindness,\n     That stripp\'d her from his benediction, turn\'d her\n     To foreign casualties, gave her dear rights\n     To his dog-hearted daughters- these things sting\n     His mind so venomously that burning shame\n     Detains him from Cordelia.\n  Gent. Alack, poor gentleman!\n  Kent. Of Albany\'s and Cornwall\'s powers you heard not?\n  Gent. \'Tis so; they are afoot.\n  Kent. Well, sir, I\'ll bring you to our master Lear\n     And leave you to attend him. Some dear cause  \n     Will in concealment wrap me up awhile.\n     When I am known aright, you shall not grieve\n     Lending me this acquaintance. I pray you go\n     Along with me.                                      Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nThe French camp.\n\nEnter, with Drum and Colours, Cordelia, Doctor, and Soldiers.\n\n  Cor. Alack, \'tis he! Why, he was met even now\n     As mad as the vex\'d sea, singing aloud,\n     Crown\'d with rank fumiter and furrow weeds,\n     With hardocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo flow\'rs,\n     Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow\n     In our sustaining corn. A century send forth.\n     Search every acre in the high-grown field\n     And bring him to our eye. [Exit an Officer.] What can man\'s\n        wisdom\n     In the restoring his bereaved sense?\n     He that helps him take all my outward worth.\n  Doct. There is means, madam.\n     Our foster nurse of nature is repose,\n     The which he lacks. That to provoke in him\n     Are many simples operative, whose power\n     Will close the eye of anguish.\n  Cor. All blest secrets,  \n     All you unpublish\'d virtues of the earth,\n     Spring with my tears! be aidant and remediate\n     In the good man\'s distress! Seek, seek for him!\n     Lest his ungovern\'d rage dissolve the life\n     That wants the means to lead it.\n\n                           Enter Messenger.\n\n  Mess. News, madam.\n     The British pow\'rs are marching hitherward.\n  Cor. \'Tis known before. Our preparation stands\n     In expectation of them. O dear father,\n     It is thy business that I go about.\n     Therefore great France\n     My mourning and important tears hath pitied.\n     No blown ambition doth our arms incite,\n     But love, dear love, and our ag\'d father\'s right.\n     Soon may I hear and see him!\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene V.\nGloucester\'s Castle.\n\nEnter Regan and [Oswald the] Steward.\n\n  Reg. But are my brother\'s pow\'rs set forth?\n  Osw. Ay, madam.\n  Reg. Himself in person there?\n  Osw. Madam, with much ado.\n     Your sister is the better soldier.\n  Reg. Lord Edmund spake not with your lord at home?\n  Osw. No, madam.\n  Reg. What might import my sister\'s letter to him?\n  Osw. I know not, lady.\n  Reg. Faith, he is posted hence on serious matter.\n     It was great ignorance, Gloucester\'s eyes being out,\n     To let him live. Where he arrives he moves\n     All hearts against us. Edmund, I think, is gone,\n     In pity of his misery, to dispatch\n     His nighted life; moreover, to descry\n     The strength o\' th\' enemy.\n  Osw. I must needs after him, madam, with my letter.  \n  Reg. Our troops set forth to-morrow. Stay with us.\n     The ways are dangerous.\n  Osw. I may not, madam.\n     My lady charg\'d my duty in this business.\n  Reg. Why should she write to Edmund? Might not you\n     Transport her purposes by word? Belike,\n     Something- I know not what- I\'ll love thee much-\n     Let me unseal the letter.\n  Osw. Madam, I had rather-\n  Reg. I know your lady does not love her husband;\n     I am sure of that; and at her late being here\n     She gave strange eliads and most speaking looks\n     To noble Edmund. I know you are of her bosom.\n  Osw. I, madam?\n  Reg. I speak in understanding. Y\'are! I know\'t.\n     Therefore I do advise you take this note.\n     My lord is dead; Edmund and I have talk\'d,\n     And more convenient is he for my hand\n     Than for your lady\'s. You may gather more.\n     If you do find him, pray you give him this;  \n     And when your mistress hears thus much from you,\n     I pray desire her call her wisdom to her.\n     So farewell.\n     If you do chance to hear of that blind traitor,\n     Preferment falls on him that cuts him off.\n  Osw. Would I could meet him, madam! I should show\n     What party I do follow.\n  Reg. Fare thee well.                                   Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene VI.\nThe country near Dover.\n\nEnter Gloucester, and Edgar [like a Peasant].\n\n  Glou. When shall I come to th\' top of that same hill?\n  Edg. You do climb up it now. Look how we labour.\n  Glou. Methinks the ground is even.\n  Edg. Horrible steep.\n     Hark, do you hear the sea?\n  Glou. No, truly.\n  Edg. Why, then, your other senses grow imperfect\n     By your eyes\' anguish.\n  Glou. So may it be indeed.\n     Methinks thy voice is alter\'d, and thou speak\'st\n     In better phrase and matter than thou didst.\n  Edg. Y\'are much deceiv\'d. In nothing am I chang\'d\n     But in my garments.\n  Glou. Methinks y\'are better spoken.\n  Edg. Come on, sir; here\'s the place. Stand still. How fearful\n     And dizzy \'tis to cast one\'s eyes so low!\n     The crows and choughs that wing the midway air  \n     Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down\n     Hangs one that gathers sampire- dreadful trade!\n     Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.\n     The fishermen that walk upon the beach\n     Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,\n     Diminish\'d to her cock; her cock, a buoy\n     Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge\n     That on th\' unnumb\'red idle pebble chafes\n     Cannot be heard so high. I\'ll look no more,\n     Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight\n     Topple down headlong.\n  Glou. Set me where you stand.\n  Edg. Give me your hand. You are now within a foot\n     Of th\' extreme verge. For all beneath the moon\n     Would I not leap upright.\n  Glou. Let go my hand.\n     Here, friend, is another purse; in it a jewel\n     Well worth a poor man\'s taking. Fairies and gods\n     Prosper it with thee! Go thou further off;\n     Bid me farewell, and let me hear thee going.  \n  Edg. Now fare ye well, good sir.\n  Glou. With all my heart.\n  Edg. [aside]. Why I do trifle thus with his despair\n     Is done to cure it.\n  Glou. O you mighty gods!                            He kneels.\n     This world I do renounce, and, in your sights,\n     Shake patiently my great affliction off.\n     If I could bear it longer and not fall\n     To quarrel with your great opposeless wills,\n     My snuff and loathed part of nature should\n     Burn itself out. If Edgar live, O, bless him!\n     Now, fellow, fare thee well.\n                                  He falls [forward and swoons].\n  Edg. Gone, sir, farewell.-\n     And yet I know not how conceit may rob\n     The treasury of life when life itself\n     Yields to the theft. Had he been where he thought,\n     By this had thought been past.- Alive or dead?\n     Ho you, sir! friend! Hear you, sir? Speak!-\n     Thus might he pass indeed. Yet he revives.  \n     What are you, sir?\n  Glou. Away, and let me die.\n  Edg. Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air,\n     So many fadom down precipitating,\n     Thou\'dst shiver\'d like an egg; but thou dost breathe;\n     Hast heavy substance; bleed\'st not; speak\'st; art sound.\n     Ten masts at each make not the altitude\n     Which thou hast perpendicularly fell.\n     Thy life is a miracle. Speak yet again.\n  Glou. But have I fall\'n, or no?\n  Edg. From the dread summit of this chalky bourn.\n     Look up a-height. The shrill-gorg\'d lark so far\n     Cannot be seen or heard. Do but look up.\n  Glou. Alack, I have no eyes!\n     Is wretchedness depriv\'d that benefit\n     To end itself by death? \'Twas yet some comfort\n     When misery could beguile the tyrant\'s rage\n     And frustrate his proud will.\n  Edg. Give me your arm.\n     Up- so. How is\'t? Feel you your legs? You stand.  \n  Glou. Too well, too well.\n  Edg. This is above all strangeness.\n     Upon the crown o\' th\' cliff what thing was that\n     Which parted from you?\n  Glou. A poor unfortunate beggar.\n  Edg. As I stood here below, methought his eyes\n     Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses,\n     Horns whelk\'d and wav\'d like the enridged sea.\n     It was some fiend. Therefore, thou happy father,\n     Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours\n     Of men\'s impossibility, have preserv\'d thee.\n  Glou. I do remember now. Henceforth I\'ll bear\n     Affliction till it do cry out itself\n     \'Enough, enough,\' and die. That thing you speak of,\n     I took it for a man. Often \'twould say\n     \'The fiend, the fiend\'- he led me to that place.\n  Edg. Bear free and patient thoughts.\n\n         Enter Lear, mad, [fantastically dressed with weeds].\n  \n     But who comes here?\n     The safer sense will ne\'er accommodate\n     His master thus.\n  Lear. No, they cannot touch me for coming;\n     I am the King himself.\n  Edg. O thou side-piercing sight!\n  Lear. Nature \'s above art in that respect. There\'s your press\n     money. That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper. Draw me\n     a clothier\'s yard. Look, look, a mouse! Peace, peace; this piece\n     of toasted cheese will do\'t. There\'s my gauntlet; I\'ll prove it\n     on a giant. Bring up the brown bills. O, well flown, bird! i\'\n     th\' clout, i\' th\' clout! Hewgh! Give the word.\n  Edg. Sweet marjoram.\n  Lear. Pass.\n  Glou. I know that voice.\n  Lear. Ha! Goneril with a white beard? They flatter\'d me like a dog,\n     and told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones\n     were there. To say \'ay\' and \'no\' to everything I said! \'Ay\' and\n     \'no\' too was no good divinity. When the rain came to wet me\n     once, and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would  \n     not peace at my bidding; there I found \'em, there I smelt \'em\n     out. Go to, they are not men o\' their words! They told me I was\n     everything. \'Tis a lie- I am not ague-proof.\n  Glou. The trick of that voice I do well remember.\n     Is\'t not the King?\n  Lear. Ay, every inch a king!\n     When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.\n     I pardon that man\'s life. What was thy cause?\n     Adultery?\n     Thou shalt not die. Die for adultery? No.\n     The wren goes to\'t, and the small gilded fly\n     Does lecher in my sight.\n     Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester\'s bastard son\n     Was kinder to his father than my daughters\n     Got \'tween the lawful sheets.\n     To\'t, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers.\n     Behold yond simp\'ring dame,\n     Whose face between her forks presageth snow,\n     That minces virtue, and does shake the head\n     To hear of pleasure\'s name.  \n     The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to\'t\n     With a more riotous appetite.\n     Down from the waist they are Centaurs,\n     Though women all above.\n     But to the girdle do the gods inherit,\n     Beneath is all the fiend\'s.\n     There\'s hell, there\'s darkness, there\'s the sulphurous pit;\n     burning, scalding, stench, consumption. Fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!\n     Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my\n     imagination. There\'s money for thee.\n  Glou. O, let me kiss that hand!\n  Lear. Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.\n  Glou. O ruin\'d piece of nature! This great world\n     Shall so wear out to naught. Dost thou know me?\n  Lear. I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny at me?\n     No, do thy worst, blind Cupid! I\'ll not love. Read thou this\n     challenge; mark but the penning of it.\n  Glou. Were all the letters suns, I could not see one.\n  Edg. [aside] I would not take this from report. It is,\n     And my heart breaks at it.  \n  Lear. Read.\n  Glou. What, with the case of eyes?\n  Lear. O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your head, nor no\n     money in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse\n     in a light. Yet you see how this world goes.\n  Glou. I see it feelingly.\n  Lear. What, art mad? A man may see how the world goes with no eyes.\n     Look with thine ears. See how yond justice rails upon yond\n     simple thief. Hark in thine ear. Change places and, handy-dandy,\n     which is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen a\n     farmer\'s dog bark at a beggar?\n  Glou. Ay, sir.\n  Lear. And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold\n     the great image of authority: a dog\'s obeyed in office.\n     Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!\n     Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back.\n     Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind\n     For which thou whip\'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.\n     Through tatter\'d clothes small vices do appear;\n     Robes and furr\'d gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,  \n     And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;\n     Arm it in rags, a pygmy\'s straw does pierce it.\n     None does offend, none- I say none! I\'ll able \'em.\n     Take that of me, my friend, who have the power\n     To seal th\' accuser\'s lips. Get thee glass eyes\n     And, like a scurvy politician, seem\n     To see the things thou dost not. Now, now, now, now!\n     Pull off my boots. Harder, harder! So.\n  Edg. O, matter and impertinency mix\'d!\n     Reason, in madness!\n  Lear. If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes.\n     I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloucester.\n     Thou must be patient. We came crying hither;\n     Thou know\'st, the first time that we smell the air\n     We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee. Mark.\n  Glou. Alack, alack the day!\n  Lear. When we are born, we cry that we are come\n     To this great stage of fools. This\' a good block.\n     It were a delicate stratagem to shoe\n     A troop of horse with felt. I\'ll put\'t in proof,  \n     And when I have stol\'n upon these sons-in-law,\n     Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!\n\n                 Enter a Gentleman [with Attendants].\n\n  Gent. O, here he is! Lay hand upon him.- Sir,\n     Your most dear daughter-\n  Lear. No rescue? What, a prisoner? I am even\n     The natural fool of fortune. Use me well;\n     You shall have ransom. Let me have a surgeon;\n     I am cut to th\' brains.\n  Gent. You shall have anything.\n  Lear. No seconds? All myself?\n     Why, this would make a man a man of salt,\n     To use his eyes for garden waterpots,\n     Ay, and laying autumn\'s dust.\n  Gent. Good sir-\n  Lear. I will die bravely, like a smug bridegroom. What!\n     I will be jovial. Come, come, I am a king;\n     My masters, know you that?  \n  Gent. You are a royal one, and we obey you.\n  Lear. Then there\'s life in\'t. Nay, an you get it, you shall get it\n     by running. Sa, sa, sa, sa!\n                              Exit running. [Attendants follow.]\n  Gent. A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch,\n     Past speaking of in a king! Thou hast one daughter\n     Who redeems nature from the general curse\n     Which twain have brought her to.\n  Edg. Hail, gentle sir.\n  Gent. Sir, speed you. What\'s your will?\n  Edg. Do you hear aught, sir, of a battle toward?\n  Gent. Most sure and vulgar. Every one hears that\n     Which can distinguish sound.\n  Edg. But, by your favour,\n     How near\'s the other army?\n  Gent. Near and on speedy foot. The main descry\n     Stands on the hourly thought.\n  Edg. I thank you sir. That\'s all.\n  Gent. Though that the Queen on special cause is here,\n     Her army is mov\'d on.  \n  Edg. I thank you, sir\n                                               Exit [Gentleman].\n  Glou. You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me;\n     Let not my worser spirit tempt me again\n     To die before you please!\n  Edg. Well pray you, father.\n  Glou. Now, good sir, what are you?\n  Edg. A most poor man, made tame to fortune\'s blows,\n     Who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows,\n     Am pregnant to good pity. Give me your hand;\n     I\'ll lead you to some biding.\n  Glou. Hearty thanks.\n     The bounty and the benison of heaven\n     To boot, and boot!\n\n                     Enter [Oswald the] Steward.\n\n  Osw. A proclaim\'d prize! Most happy!\n     That eyeless head of thine was first fram\'d flesh\n     To raise my fortunes. Thou old unhappy traitor,  \n     Briefly thyself remember. The sword is out\n     That must destroy thee.\n  Glou. Now let thy friendly hand\n     Put strength enough to\'t.\n                                             [Edgar interposes.]\n  Osw. Wherefore, bold peasant,\n     Dar\'st thou support a publish\'d traitor? Hence!\n     Lest that th\' infection of his fortune take\n     Like hold on thee. Let go his arm.\n  Edg. Chill not let go, zir, without vurther \'cagion.\n  Osw. Let go, slave, or thou diest!\n  Edg. Good gentleman, go your gait, and let poor voke pass. An chud\n     ha\' bin zwagger\'d out of my life, \'twould not ha\' bin zo long as\n     \'tis by a vortnight. Nay, come not near th\' old man. Keep out,\n     che vore ye, or Ise try whether your costard or my ballow be the\n     harder. Chill be plain with you.\n  Osw. Out, dunghill!\n                                                     They fight.\n  Edg. Chill pick your teeth, zir. Come! No matter vor your foins.\n                                                 [Oswald falls.]  \n  Osw. Slave, thou hast slain me. Villain, take my purse.\n     If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body,\n     And give the letters which thou find\'st about me\n     To Edmund Earl of Gloucester. Seek him out\n     Upon the British party. O, untimely death! Death!\n                                                        He dies.\n  Edg. I know thee well. A serviceable villain,\n     As duteous to the vices of thy mistress\n     As badness would desire.\n  Glou. What, is he dead?\n  Edg. Sit you down, father; rest you.\n     Let\'s see his pockets; these letters that he speaks of\n     May be my friends. He\'s dead. I am only sorry\n     He had no other deathsman. Let us see.\n     Leave, gentle wax; and, manners, blame us not.\n     To know our enemies\' minds, we\'ld rip their hearts;\n     Their papers, is more lawful.             Reads the letter.\n\n       \'Let our reciprocal vows be rememb\'red. You have many\n     opportunities to cut him off. If your will want not, time and\n     place will be fruitfully offer\'d. There is nothing done, if he  \n     return the conqueror. Then am I the prisoner, and his bed my\n     jail; from the loathed warmth whereof deliver me, and supply the\n     place for your labour.\n           \'Your (wife, so I would say) affectionate servant,\n                                                          \'Goneril.\'\n\n     O indistinguish\'d space of woman\'s will!\n     A plot upon her virtuous husband\'s life,\n     And the exchange my brother! Here in the sands\n     Thee I\'ll rake up, the post unsanctified\n     Of murtherous lechers; and in the mature time\n     With this ungracious paper strike the sight\n     Of the death-practis\'d Duke, For him \'tis well\n     That of thy death and business I can tell.\n  Glou. The King is mad. How stiff is my vile sense,\n     That I stand up, and have ingenious feeling\n     Of my huge sorrows! Better I were distract.\n     So should my thoughts be sever\'d from my griefs,\n     And woes by wrong imaginations lose  \n     The knowledge of themselves.\n                                                A drum afar off.\n  Edg. Give me your hand.\n     Far off methinks I hear the beaten drum.\n     Come, father, I\'ll bestow you with a friend.        Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene VII.\nA tent in the French camp.\n\nEnter Cordelia, Kent, Doctor, and Gentleman.\n\n  Cor. O thou good Kent, how shall I live and work\n     To match thy goodness? My life will be too short\n     And every measure fail me.\n  Kent. To be acknowledg\'d, madam, is o\'erpaid.\n     All my reports go with the modest truth;\n     Nor more nor clipp\'d, but so.\n  Cor. Be better suited.\n     These weeds are memories of those worser hours.\n     I prithee put them off.\n  Kent. Pardon, dear madam.\n     Yet to be known shortens my made intent.\n     My boon I make it that you know me not\n     Till time and I think meet.\n  Cor. Then be\'t so, my good lord. [To the Doctor] How, does the King?\n  Doct. Madam, sleeps still.\n  Cor. O you kind gods,\n     Cure this great breach in his abused nature!  \n     Th\' untun\'d and jarring senses, O, wind up\n     Of this child-changed father!\n  Doct. So please your Majesty\n     That we may wake the King? He hath slept long.\n  Cor. Be govern\'d by your knowledge, and proceed\n     I\' th\' sway of your own will. Is he array\'d?\n\n              Enter Lear in a chair carried by Servants.\n\n  Gent. Ay, madam. In the heaviness of sleep\n     We put fresh garments on him.\n  Doct. Be by, good madam, when we do awake him.\n     I doubt not of his temperance.\n  Cor. Very well.\n                                                          Music.\n  Doct. Please you draw near. Louder the music there!\n  Cor. O my dear father, restoration hang\n     Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss\n     Repair those violent harms that my two sisters\n     Have in thy reverence made!  \n  Kent. Kind and dear princess!\n  Cor. Had you not been their father, these white flakes\n     Had challeng\'d pity of them. Was this a face\n     To be oppos\'d against the warring winds?\n     To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder?\n     In the most terrible and nimble stroke\n     Of quick cross lightning? to watch- poor perdu!-\n     With this thin helm? Mine enemy\'s dog,\n     Though he had bit me, should have stood that night\n     Against my fire; and wast thou fain, poor father,\n     To hovel thee with swine and rogues forlorn,\n     In short and musty straw? Alack, alack!\n     \'Tis wonder that thy life and wits at once\n     Had not concluded all.- He wakes. Speak to him.\n  Doct. Madam, do you; \'tis fittest.\n  Cor. How does my royal lord? How fares your Majesty?\n  Lear. You do me wrong to take me out o\' th\' grave.\n     Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound\n     Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears\n     Do scald like molten lead.  \n  Cor. Sir, do you know me?\n  Lear. You are a spirit, I know. When did you die?\n  Cor. Still, still, far wide!\n  Doct. He\'s scarce awake. Let him alone awhile.\n  Lear. Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight,\n     I am mightily abus\'d. I should e\'en die with pity,\n     To see another thus. I know not what to say.\n     I will not swear these are my hands. Let\'s see.\n     I feel this pin prick. Would I were assur\'d\n     Of my condition!\n  Cor. O, look upon me, sir,\n     And hold your hands in benediction o\'er me.\n     No, sir, you must not kneel.\n  Lear. Pray, do not mock me.\n     I am a very foolish fond old man,\n     Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;\n     And, to deal plainly,\n     I fear I am not in my perfect mind.\n     Methinks I should know you, and know this man;\n     Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant  \n     What place this is; and all the skill I have\n     Remembers not these garments; nor I know not\n     Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;\n     For (as I am a man) I think this lady\n     To be my child Cordelia.\n  Cor. And so I am! I am!\n  Lear. Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray weep not.\n     If you have poison for me, I will drink it.\n     I know you do not love me; for your sisters\n     Have, as I do remember, done me wrong.\n     You have some cause, they have not.\n  Cor. No cause, no cause.\n  Lear. Am I in France?\n  Kent. In your own kingdom, sir.\n  Lear. Do not abuse me.\n  Doct. Be comforted, good madam. The great rage\n     You see is kill\'d in him; and yet it is danger\n     To make him even o\'er the time he has lost.\n     Desire him to go in. Trouble him no more\n     Till further settling.  \n  Cor. Will\'t please your Highness walk?\n  Lear. You must bear with me.\n     Pray you now, forget and forgive. I am old and foolish.\n                              Exeunt. Manent Kent and Gentleman.\n  Gent. Holds it true, sir, that the Duke of Cornwall was so slain?\n  Kent. Most certain, sir.\n  Gent. Who is conductor of his people?\n  Kent. As \'tis said, the bastard son of Gloucester.\n  Gent. They say Edgar, his banish\'d son, is with the Earl of Kent\n     in Germany.\n  Kent. Report is changeable. \'Tis time to look about; the powers of\n     the kingdom approach apace.\n  Gent. The arbitrement is like to be bloody.\n     Fare you well, sir.                                 [Exit.]\n  Kent. My point and period will be throughly wrought,\n     Or well or ill, as this day\'s battle\'s fought.        Exit.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. Scene I.\nThe British camp near Dover.\n\nEnter, with Drum and Colours, Edmund, Regan, Gentleman, and Soldiers.\n\n  Edm. Know of the Duke if his last purpose hold,\n     Or whether since he is advis\'d by aught\n     To change the course. He\'s full of alteration\n     And self-reproving. Bring his constant pleasure.\n                                              [Exit an Officer.]\n  Reg. Our sister\'s man is certainly miscarried.\n  Edm. Tis to be doubted, madam.\n  Reg. Now, sweet lord,\n     You know the goodness I intend upon you.\n     Tell me- but truly- but then speak the truth-\n     Do you not love my sister?\n  Edm. In honour\'d love.\n  Reg. But have you never found my brother\'s way\n     To the forfended place?\n  Edm. That thought abuses you.\n  Reg. I am doubtful that you have been conjunct  \n     And bosom\'d with her, as far as we call hers.\n  Edm. No, by mine honour, madam.\n  Reg. I never shall endure her. Dear my lord,\n     Be not familiar with her.\n  Edm. Fear me not.\n     She and the Duke her husband!\n\n       Enter, with Drum and Colours, Albany, Goneril, Soldiers.\n\n  Gon. [aside] I had rather lose the battle than that sister\n     Should loosen him and me.\n  Alb. Our very loving sister, well bemet.\n     Sir, this I hear: the King is come to his daughter,\n     With others whom the rigour of our state\n     Forc\'d to cry out. Where I could not be honest,\n     I never yet was valiant. For this business,\n     It toucheth us as France invades our land,\n     Not bolds the King, with others whom, I fear,\n     Most just and heavy causes make oppose.\n  Edm. Sir, you speak nobly.  \n  Reg. Why is this reason\'d?\n  Gon. Combine together \'gainst the enemy;\n     For these domestic and particular broils\n     Are not the question here.\n  Alb. Let\'s then determine\n     With th\' ancient of war on our proceeding.\n  Edm. I shall attend you presently at your tent.\n  Reg. Sister, you\'ll go with us?\n  Gon. No.\n  Reg. \'Tis most convenient. Pray you go with us.\n  Gon. [aside] O, ho, I know the riddle.- I will go.\n\n          [As they are going out,] enter Edgar [disguised].\n\n  Edg. If e\'er your Grace had speech with man so poor,\n     Hear me one word.\n  Alb. I\'ll overtake you.- Speak.\n                              Exeunt [all but Albany and Edgar].\n  Edg. Before you fight the battle, ope this letter.\n     If you have victory, let the trumpet sound  \n     For him that brought it. Wretched though I seem,\n     I can produce a champion that will prove\n     What is avouched there. If you miscarry,\n     Your business of the world hath so an end,\n     And machination ceases. Fortune love you!\n  Alb. Stay till I have read the letter.\n  Edg. I was forbid it.\n     When time shall serve, let but the herald cry,\n     And I\'ll appear again.\n  Alb. Why, fare thee well. I will o\'erlook thy paper.\n                                                   Exit [Edgar].\n\n                            Enter Edmund.\n\n  Edm. The enemy \'s in view; draw up your powers.\n     Here is the guess of their true strength and forces\n     By diligent discovery; but your haste\n     Is now urg\'d on you.\n  Alb. We will greet the time.                             Exit.\n  Edm. To both these sisters have I sworn my love;  \n     Each jealous of the other, as the stung\n     Are of the adder. Which of them shall I take?\n     Both? one? or neither? Neither can be enjoy\'d,\n     If both remain alive. To take the widow\n     Exasperates, makes mad her sister Goneril;\n     And hardly shall I carry out my side,\n     Her husband being alive. Now then, we\'ll use\n     His countenance for the battle, which being done,\n     Let her who would be rid of him devise\n     His speedy taking off. As for the mercy\n     Which he intends to Lear and to Cordelia-\n     The battle done, and they within our power,\n     Shall never see his pardon; for my state\n     Stands on me to defend, not to debate.                Exit.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nA field between the two camps.\n\nAlarum within. Enter, with Drum and Colours, the Powers of France\nover the stage, Cordelia with her Father in her hand, and exeunt.\n\nEnter Edgar and Gloucester.\n\n  Edg. Here, father, take the shadow of this tree\n     For your good host. Pray that the right may thrive.\n     If ever I return to you again,\n     I\'ll bring you comfort.\n  Glou. Grace go with you, sir!\n                                                   Exit [Edgar].\n\n               Alarum and retreat within. Enter Edgar,\n\n  Edg. Away, old man! give me thy hand! away!\n     King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta\'en.\n     Give me thy hand! come on!\n  Glou. No further, sir. A man may rot even here.  \n  Edg. What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure\n     Their going hence, even as their coming hither;\n     Ripeness is all. Come on.\n  Glou. And that\'s true too.                             Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nThe British camp, near Dover.\n\nEnter, in conquest, with Drum and Colours, Edmund; Lear and Cordelia\nas prisoners; Soldiers, Captain.\n\n  Edm. Some officers take them away. Good guard\n     Until their greater pleasures first be known\n     That are to censure them.\n  Cor. We are not the first\n     Who with best meaning have incurr\'d the worst.\n     For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down;\n     Myself could else outfrown false Fortune\'s frown.\n     Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?\n  Lear. No, no, no, no! Come, let\'s away to prison.\n     We two alone will sing like birds i\' th\' cage.\n     When thou dost ask me blessing, I\'ll kneel down\n     And ask of thee forgiveness. So we\'ll live,\n     And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh\n     At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues\n     Talk of court news; and we\'ll talk with them too-\n     Who loses and who wins; who\'s in, who\'s out-  \n     And take upon \'s the mystery of things,\n     As if we were God\'s spies; and we\'ll wear out,\n     In a wall\'d prison, packs and sects of great ones\n     That ebb and flow by th\' moon.\n  Edm. Take them away.\n  Lear. Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,\n     The gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee?\n     He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven\n     And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes.\n     The goodyears shall devour \'em, flesh and fell,\n     Ere they shall make us weep! We\'ll see \'em starv\'d first.\n     Come.                  Exeunt [Lear and Cordelia, guarded].\n  Edm. Come hither, Captain; hark.\n     Take thou this note [gives a paper]. Go follow them to prison.\n     One step I have advanc\'d thee. If thou dost\n     As this instructs thee, thou dost make thy way\n     To noble fortunes. Know thou this, that men\n     Are as the time is. To be tender-minded\n     Does not become a sword. Thy great employment\n     Will not bear question. Either say thou\'lt do\'t,  \n     Or thrive by other means.\n  Capt. I\'ll do\'t, my lord.\n  Edm. About it! and write happy when th\' hast done.\n     Mark- I say, instantly; and carry it so\n     As I have set it down.\n  Capt. I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats;\n     If it be man\'s work, I\'ll do\'t.                       Exit.\n\n          Flourish. Enter Albany, Goneril, Regan, Soldiers.\n\n  Alb. Sir, you have show\'d to-day your valiant strain,\n     And fortune led you well. You have the captives\n     Who were the opposites of this day\'s strife.\n     We do require them of you, so to use them\n     As we shall find their merits and our safety\n     May equally determine.\n  Edm. Sir, I thought it fit\n     To send the old and miserable King\n     To some retention and appointed guard;\n     Whose age has charms in it, whose title more,  \n     To pluck the common bosom on his side\n     And turn our impress\'d lances in our eyes\n     Which do command them. With him I sent the Queen,\n     My reason all the same; and they are ready\n     To-morrow, or at further space, t\' appear\n     Where you shall hold your session. At this time\n     We sweat and bleed: the friend hath lost his friend;\n     And the best quarrels, in the heat, are curs\'d\n     By those that feel their sharpness.\n     The question of Cordelia and her father\n     Requires a fitter place.\n  Alb. Sir, by your patience,\n     I hold you but a subject of this war,\n     Not as a brother.\n  Reg. That\'s as we list to grace him.\n     Methinks our pleasure might have been demanded\n     Ere you had spoke so far. He led our powers,\n     Bore the commission of my place and person,\n     The which immediacy may well stand up\n     And call itself your brother.  \n  Gon. Not so hot!\n     In his own grace he doth exalt himself\n     More than in your addition.\n  Reg. In my rights\n     By me invested, he compeers the best.\n  Gon. That were the most if he should husband you.\n  Reg. Jesters do oft prove prophets.\n  Gon. Holla, holla!\n     That eye that told you so look\'d but asquint.\n  Reg. Lady, I am not well; else I should answer\n     From a full-flowing stomach. General,\n     Take thou my soldiers, prisoners, patrimony;\n     Dispose of them, of me; the walls are thine.\n     Witness the world that I create thee here\n     My lord and master.\n  Gon. Mean you to enjoy him?\n  Alb. The let-alone lies not in your good will.\n  Edm. Nor in thine, lord.\n  Alb. Half-blooded fellow, yes.\n  Reg. [to Edmund] Let the drum strike, and prove my title thine.  \n  Alb. Stay yet; hear reason. Edmund, I arrest thee\n     On capital treason; and, in thine attaint,\n     This gilded serpent [points to Goneril]. For your claim, fair\n        sister,\n     I bar it in the interest of my wife.\n     \'Tis she is subcontracted to this lord,\n     And I, her husband, contradict your banes.\n     If you will marry, make your loves to me;\n     My lady is bespoke.\n  Gon. An interlude!\n  Alb. Thou art arm\'d, Gloucester. Let the trumpet sound.\n     If none appear to prove upon thy person\n     Thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons,\n     There is my pledge [throws down a glove]! I\'ll prove it on thy\n        heart,\n     Ere I taste bread, thou art in nothing less\n     Than I have here proclaim\'d thee.\n  Reg. Sick, O, sick!\n  Gon. [aside] If not, I\'ll ne\'er trust medicine.\n  Edm. There\'s my exchange [throws down a glove]. What in the world  \n        he is\n     That names me traitor, villain-like he lies.\n     Call by thy trumpet. He that dares approach,\n     On him, on you, who not? I will maintain\n     My truth and honour firmly.\n  Alb. A herald, ho!\n  Edm. A herald, ho, a herald!\n  Alb. Trust to thy single virtue; for thy soldiers,\n     All levied in my name, have in my name\n     Took their discharge.\n  Reg. My sickness grows upon me.\n  Alb. She is not well. Convey her to my tent.\n                                              [Exit Regan, led.]\n\n                           Enter a Herald.\n\n     Come hither, herald. Let the trumpet sound,\n     And read out this.\n  Capt. Sound, trumpet!                        A trumpet sounds.\n  \n  Her. (reads) \'If any man of quality or degree within the lists of\n     the army will maintain upon Edmund, supposed Earl of Gloucester,\n     that he is a manifold traitor, let him appear by the third sound\n     of the trumpet. He is bold in his defence.\'\n\n  Edm. Sound!                                     First trumpet.\n  Her. Again!                                    Second trumpet.\n  Her. Again!                                     Third trumpet.\n                                         Trumpet answers within.\n\n    Enter Edgar, armed, at the third sound, a Trumpet before him.\n\n  Alb. Ask him his purposes, why he appears\n     Upon this call o\' th\' trumpet.\n  Her. What are you?\n     Your name, your quality? and why you answer\n     This present summons?\n  Edg. Know my name is lost;\n     By treason\'s tooth bare-gnawn and canker-bit.\n     Yet am I noble as the adversary  \n     I come to cope.\n  Alb. Which is that adversary?\n  Edg. What\'s he that speaks for Edmund Earl of Gloucester?\n  Edm. Himself. What say\'st thou to him?\n  Edg. Draw thy sword,\n     That, if my speech offend a noble heart,\n     Thy arm may do thee justice. Here is mine.\n     Behold, it is the privilege of mine honours,\n     My oath, and my profession. I protest-\n     Maugre thy strength, youth, place, and eminence,\n     Despite thy victor sword and fire-new fortune,\n     Thy valour and thy heart- thou art a traitor;\n     False to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father;\n     Conspirant \'gainst this high illustrious prince;\n     And from th\' extremest upward of thy head\n     To the descent and dust beneath thy foot,\n     A most toad-spotted traitor. Say thou \'no,\'\n     This sword, this arm, and my best spirits are bent\n     To prove upon thy heart, whereto I speak,\n     Thou liest.  \n  Edm. In wisdom I should ask thy name;\n     But since thy outside looks so fair and warlike,\n     And that thy tongue some say of breeding breathes,\n     What safe and nicely I might well delay\n     By rule of knighthood, I disdain and spurn.\n     Back do I toss those treasons to thy head;\n     With the hell-hated lie o\'erwhelm thy heart;\n     Which- for they yet glance by and scarcely bruise-\n     This sword of mine shall give them instant way\n     Where they shall rest for ever. Trumpets, speak!\n                                 Alarums. Fight. [Edmund falls.]\n  Alb. Save him, save him!\n  Gon. This is mere practice, Gloucester.\n     By th\' law of arms thou wast not bound to answer\n     An unknown opposite. Thou art not vanquish\'d,\n     But cozen\'d and beguil\'d.\n  Alb. Shut your mouth, dame,\n     Or with this paper shall I stop it. [Shows her her letter to\n     Edmund.]- [To Edmund]. Hold, sir.\n     [To Goneril] Thou worse than any name, read thine own evil.  \n     No tearing, lady! I perceive you know it.\n  Gon. Say if I do- the laws are mine, not thine.\n     Who can arraign me for\'t?\n  Alb. Most monstrous!\n     Know\'st thou this paper?\n  Gon. Ask me not what I know.                             Exit.\n  Alb. Go after her. She\'s desperate; govern her.\n                                              [Exit an Officer.]\n  Edm. What, you have charg\'d me with, that have I done,\n     And more, much more. The time will bring it out.\n     \'Tis past, and so am I.- But what art thou\n     That hast this fortune on me? If thou\'rt noble,\n     I do forgive thee.\n  Edg. Let\'s exchange charity.\n     I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund;\n     If more, the more th\' hast wrong\'d me.\n     My name is Edgar and thy father\'s son.\n     The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices\n     Make instruments to scourge us.\n     The dark and vicious place where thee he got  \n     Cost him his eyes.\n  Edm. Th\' hast spoken right; \'tis true.\n     The wheel is come full circle; I am here.\n  Alb. Methought thy very gait did prophesy\n     A royal nobleness. I must embrace thee.\n     Let sorrow split my heart if ever I\n     Did hate thee, or thy father!\n  Edg. Worthy prince, I know\'t.\n  Alb. Where have you hid yourself?\n     How have you known the miseries of your father?\n  Edg. By nursing them, my lord. List a brief tale;\n     And when \'tis told, O that my heart would burst!\n     The bloody proclamation to escape\n     That follow\'d me so near (O, our lives\' sweetness!\n     That with the pain of death would hourly die\n     Rather than die at once!) taught me to shift\n     Into a madman\'s rags, t\' assume a semblance\n     That very dogs disdain\'d; and in this habit\n     Met I my father with his bleeding rings,\n     Their precious stones new lost; became his guide,  \n     Led him, begg\'d for him, sav\'d him from despair;\n     Never (O fault!) reveal\'d myself unto him\n     Until some half hour past, when I was arm\'d,\n     Not sure, though hoping of this good success,\n     I ask\'d his blessing, and from first to last\n     Told him my pilgrimage. But his flaw\'d heart\n     (Alack, too weak the conflict to support!)\n     \'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,\n     Burst smilingly.\n  Edm. This speech of yours hath mov\'d me,\n     And shall perchance do good; but speak you on;\n     You look as you had something more to say.\n  Alb. If there be more, more woful, hold it in;\n     For I am almost ready to dissolve,\n     Hearing of this.\n  Edg. This would have seem\'d a period\n     To such as love not sorrow; but another,\n     To amplify too much, would make much more,\n     And top extremity.\n     Whilst I was big in clamour, came there a man,  \n     Who, having seen me in my worst estate,\n     Shunn\'d my abhorr\'d society; but then, finding\n     Who \'twas that so endur\'d, with his strong arms\n     He fastened on my neck, and bellowed out\n     As he\'d burst heaven; threw him on my father;\n     Told the most piteous tale of Lear and him\n     That ever ear receiv\'d; which in recounting\n     His grief grew puissant, and the strings of life\n     Began to crack. Twice then the trumpets sounded,\n     And there I left him tranc\'d.\n  Alb. But who was this?\n  Edg. Kent, sir, the banish\'d Kent; who in disguise\n     Followed his enemy king and did him service\n     Improper for a slave.\n\n                Enter a Gentleman with a bloody knife.\n\n  Gent. Help, help! O, help!\n  Edg. What kind of help?\n  Alb. Speak, man.  \n  Edg. What means that bloody knife?\n  Gent. \'Tis hot, it smokes.\n     It came even from the heart of- O! she\'s dead!\n  Alb. Who dead? Speak, man.\n  Gent. Your lady, sir, your lady! and her sister\n     By her is poisoned; she hath confess\'d it.\n  Edm. I was contracted to them both. All three\n     Now marry in an instant.\n\n                             Enter Kent.\n\n  Edg. Here comes Kent.\n  Alb. Produce their bodies, be they alive or dead.\n                                               [Exit Gentleman.]\n     This judgement of the heavens, that makes us tremble\n     Touches us not with pity. O, is this he?\n     The time will not allow the compliment\n     That very manners urges.\n  Kent. I am come\n     To bid my king and master aye good night.  \n     Is he not here?\n  Alb. Great thing of us forgot!\n     Speak, Edmund, where\'s the King? and where\'s Cordelia?\n                 The bodies of Goneril and Regan are brought in.\n     Seest thou this object, Kent?\n  Kent. Alack, why thus?\n  Edm. Yet Edmund was belov\'d.\n     The one the other poisoned for my sake,\n     And after slew herself.\n  Alb. Even so. Cover their faces.\n  Edm. I pant for life. Some good I mean to do,\n     Despite of mine own nature. Quickly send\n     (Be brief in\'t) to the castle; for my writ\n     Is on the life of Lear and on Cordelia.\n     Nay, send in time.\n  Alb. Run, run, O, run!\n  Edg. To who, my lord? Who has the office? Send\n     Thy token of reprieve.\n  Edm. Well thought on. Take my sword;\n     Give it the Captain.  \n  Alb. Haste thee for thy life.                    [Exit Edgar.]\n  Edm. He hath commission from thy wife and me\n     To hang Cordelia in the prison and\n     To lay the blame upon her own despair\n     That she fordid herself.\n  Alb. The gods defend her! Bear him hence awhile.\n                                          [Edmund is borne off.]\n\n    Enter Lear, with Cordelia [dead] in his arms, [Edgar, Captain,\n                        and others following].\n\n  Lear. Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stone.\n     Had I your tongues and eyes, I\'ld use them so\n     That heaven\'s vault should crack. She\'s gone for ever!\n     I know when one is dead, and when one lives.\n     She\'s dead as earth. Lend me a looking glass.\n     If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,\n     Why, then she lives.\n  Kent. Is this the promis\'d end?\n  Edg. Or image of that horror?  \n  Alb. Fall and cease!\n  Lear. This feather stirs; she lives! If it be so,\n     It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows\n     That ever I have felt.\n  Kent. O my good master!\n  Lear. Prithee away!\n  Edg. \'Tis noble Kent, your friend.\n  Lear. A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!\n     I might have sav\'d her; now she\'s gone for ever!\n     Cordelia, Cordelia! stay a little. Ha!\n     What is\'t thou say\'st, Her voice was ever soft,\n     Gentle, and low- an excellent thing in woman.\n     I kill\'d the slave that was a-hanging thee.\n  Capt. \'Tis true, my lords, he did.\n  Lear. Did I not, fellow?\n     I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion\n     I would have made them skip. I am old now,\n     And these same crosses spoil me. Who are you?\n     Mine eyes are not o\' th\' best. I\'ll tell you straight.\n  Kent. If fortune brag of two she lov\'d and hated,  \n     One of them we behold.\n  Lear. This\' a dull sight. Are you not Kent?\n  Kent. The same-\n     Your servant Kent. Where is your servant Caius?\n  Lear. He\'s a good fellow, I can tell you that.\n     He\'ll strike, and quickly too. He\'s dead and rotten.\n  Kent. No, my good lord; I am the very man-\n  Lear. I\'ll see that straight.\n  Kent. That from your first of difference and decay\n     Have followed your sad steps.\n  Lear. You\'re welcome hither.\n  Kent. Nor no man else! All\'s cheerless, dark, and deadly.\n     Your eldest daughters have fordone themselves,\n     And desperately are dead.\n  Lear. Ay, so I think.\n  Alb. He knows not what he says; and vain is it\n     That we present us to him.\n  Edg. Very bootless.\n\n                           Enter a Captain.  \n\n  Capt. Edmund is dead, my lord.\n  Alb. That\'s but a trifle here.\n     You lords and noble friends, know our intent.\n     What comfort to this great decay may come\n     Shall be applied. For us, we will resign,\n     During the life of this old Majesty,\n     To him our absolute power; [to Edgar and Kent] you to your\n        rights;\n     With boot, and Such addition as your honours\n     Have more than merited.- All friends shall taste\n     The wages of their virtue, and all foes\n     The cup of their deservings.- O, see, see!\n  Lear. And my poor fool is hang\'d! No, no, no life!\n     Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,\n     And thou no breath at all? Thou\'lt come no more,\n     Never, never, never, never, never!\n     Pray you undo this button. Thank you, sir.\n     Do you see this? Look on her! look! her lips!\n     Look there, look there!                            He dies.  \n  Edg. He faints! My lord, my lord!\n  Kent. Break, heart; I prithee break!\n  Edg. Look up, my lord.\n  Kent. Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass! He hates him\n     That would upon the rack of this tough world\n     Stretch him out longer.\n  Edg. He is gone indeed.\n  Kent. The wonder is, he hath endur\'d so long.\n     He but usurp\'d his life.\n  Alb. Bear them from hence. Our present business\n     Is general woe. [To Kent and Edgar] Friends of my soul, you\n        twain\n     Rule in this realm, and the gor\'d state sustain.\n  Kent. I have a journey, sir, shortly to go.\n     My master calls me; I must not say no.\n  Alb. The weight of this sad time we must obey,\n     Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.\n     The oldest have borne most; we that are young\n     Shall never see so much, nor live so long.\n                                       Exeunt with a dead march.\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n1595\n\nLOVE\'S LABOUR\'S LOST\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae.\n\n  FERDINAND, King of Navarre\n  BEROWNE,    lord attending on the King\n  LONGAVILLE,  "      "      "   "   "\n  DUMAIN,      "      "      "   "   "\n  BOYET,   lord attending on the Princess of France\n  MARCADE,   "     "       "  "     "      "    "\n  DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO, fantastical Spaniard\n  SIR NATHANIEL, a curate\n  HOLOFERNES, a schoolmaster\n  DULL, a constable\n  COSTARD, a clown\n  MOTH, page to Armado\n  A FORESTER\n\n  THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE\n  ROSALINE, lady attending on the Princess\n  MARIA,      "     "       "  "     "\n  KATHARINE, lady attending on the Princess\n  JAQUENETTA, a country wench\n  \n  Lords, Attendants, etc.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nNavarre\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nNavarre. The King\'s park\n\nEnter the King, BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN\n\n  KING. Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,\n    Live regist\'red upon our brazen tombs,\n    And then grace us in the disgrace of death;\n    When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,\n    Th\' endeavour of this present breath may buy\n    That honour which shall bate his scythe\'s keen edge,\n    And make us heirs of all eternity.\n    Therefore, brave conquerors- for so you are\n    That war against your own affections\n    And the huge army of the world\'s desires-\n    Our late edict shall strongly stand in force:\n    Navarre shall be the wonder of the world;\n    Our court shall be a little Academe,\n    Still and contemplative in living art.\n    You three, Berowne, Dumain, and Longaville,\n    Have sworn for three years\' term to live with me\n    My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes  \n    That are recorded in this schedule here.\n    Your oaths are pass\'d; and now subscribe your names,\n    That his own hand may strike his honour down\n    That violates the smallest branch herein.\n    If you are arm\'d to do as sworn to do,\n    Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it too.\n  LONGAVILLE. I am resolv\'d; \'tis but a three years\' fast.\n    The mind shall banquet, though the body pine.\n    Fat paunches have lean pates; and dainty bits\n    Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.\n  DUMAIN. My loving lord, Dumain is mortified.\n    The grosser manner of these world\'s delights\n    He throws upon the gross world\'s baser slaves;\n    To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die,\n    With all these living in philosophy.\n  BEROWNE. I can but say their protestation over;\n    So much, dear liege, I have already sworn,\n    That is, to live and study here three years.\n    But there are other strict observances,\n    As: not to see a woman in that term,  \n    Which I hope well is not enrolled there;\n    And one day in a week to touch no food,\n    And but one meal on every day beside,\n    The which I hope is not enrolled there;\n    And then to sleep but three hours in the night\n    And not be seen to wink of all the day-\n    When I was wont to think no harm all night,\n    And make a dark night too of half the day-\n    Which I hope well is not enrolled there.\n    O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep,\n    Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep!\n  KING. Your oath is pass\'d to pass away from these.\n  BEROWNE. Let me say no, my liege, an if you please:\n    I only swore to study with your Grace,\n    And stay here in your court for three years\' space.\n  LONGAVILLE. You swore to that, Berowne, and to the rest.\n  BEROWNE. By yea and nay, sir, then I swore in jest.\n    What is the end of study, let me know.\n  KING. Why, that to know which else we should not know.\n  BEROWNE. Things hid and barr\'d, you mean, from common sense?  \n  KING. Ay, that is study\'s god-like recompense.\n  BEROWNE. Come on, then; I will swear to study so,\n    To know the thing I am forbid to know,\n    As thus: to study where I well may dine,\n    When I to feast expressly am forbid;\n    Or study where to meet some mistress fine,\n    When mistresses from common sense are hid;\n    Or, having sworn too hard-a-keeping oath,\n    Study to break it, and not break my troth.\n    If study\'s gain be thus, and this be so,\n    Study knows that which yet it doth not know.\n    Swear me to this, and I will ne\'er say no.\n  KING. These be the stops that hinder study quite,\n    And train our intellects to vain delight.\n  BEROWNE. Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain\n    Which, with pain purchas\'d, doth inherit pain,\n    As painfully to pore upon a book\n    To seek the light of truth; while truth the while\n    Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.\n    Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile;  \n    So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,\n    Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.\n    Study me how to please the eye indeed,\n    By fixing it upon a fairer eye;\n    Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed,\n    And give him light that it was blinded by.\n    Study is like the heaven\'s glorious sun,\n    That will not be deep-search\'d with saucy looks;\n    Small have continual plodders ever won,\n    Save base authority from others\' books.\n    These earthly godfathers of heaven\'s lights\n    That give a name to every fixed star\n    Have no more profit of their shining nights\n    Than those that walk and wot not what they are.\n    Too much to know is to know nought but fame;\n    And every godfather can give a name.\n  KING. How well he\'s read, to reason against reading!\n  DUMAIN. Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding!\n  LONGAVILLE. He weeds the corn, and still lets grow the weeding.\n  BEROWNE. The spring is near, when green geese are a-breeding.  \n  DUMAIN. How follows that?\n  BEROWNE. Fit in his place and time.\n  DUMAIN. In reason nothing.\n  BEROWNE. Something then in rhyme.\n  LONGAVILLE. Berowne is like an envious sneaping frost\n    That bites the first-born infants of the spring.\n  BEROWNE. Well, say I am; why should proud summer boast\n    Before the birds have any cause to sing?\n    Why should I joy in any abortive birth?\n    At Christmas I no more desire a rose\n    Than wish a snow in May\'s new-fangled shows;\n    But like of each thing that in season grows;\n    So you, to study now it is too late,\n    Climb o\'er the house to unlock the little gate.\n  KING. Well, sit out; go home, Berowne; adieu.\n  BEROWNE. No, my good lord; I have sworn to stay with you;\n    And though I have for barbarism spoke more\n    Than for that angel knowledge you can say,\n    Yet confident I\'ll keep what I have swore,\n    And bide the penance of each three years\' day.  \n    Give me the paper; let me read the same;\n    And to the strictest decrees I\'ll write my name.\n  KING. How well this yielding rescues thee from shame!\n  BEROWNE. [Reads] \'Item. That no woman shall come within a mile of\n    my court\'- Hath this been proclaimed?\n  LONGAVILLE. Four days ago.\n  BEROWNE. Let\'s see the penalty. [Reads] \'-on pain of losing her\n    tongue.\' Who devis\'d this penalty?\n  LONGAVILLE. Marry, that did I.\n  BEROWNE. Sweet lord, and why?\n  LONGAVILLE. To fright them hence with that dread penalty.\n  BEROWNE. A dangerous law against gentility.\n    [Reads] \'Item. If any man be seen to talk with a woman within\n    the term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as the\n    rest of the court can possibly devise.\'\n    This article, my liege, yourself must break;\n    For well you know here comes in embassy\n    The French king\'s daughter, with yourself to speak-\n    A mild of grace and complete majesty-\n    About surrender up of Aquitaine  \n    To her decrepit, sick, and bedrid father;\n    Therefore this article is made in vain,\n    Or vainly comes th\' admired princess hither.\n  KING. What say you, lords? Why, this was quite forgot.\n  BEROWNE. So study evermore is over-shot.\n    While it doth study to have what it would,\n    It doth forget to do the thing it should;\n    And when it hath the thing it hunteth most,\n    \'Tis won as towns with fire- so won, so lost.\n  KING. We must of force dispense with this decree;\n    She must lie here on mere necessity.\n  BEROWNE. Necessity will make us all forsworn\n    Three thousand times within this three years\' space;\n    For every man with his affects is born,\n    Not by might mast\'red, but by special grace.\n    If I break faith, this word shall speak for me:\n    I am forsworn on mere necessity.\n    So to the laws at large I write my name;        [Subscribes]\n    And he that breaks them in the least degree\n    Stands in attainder of eternal shame.  \n    Suggestions are to other as to me;\n    But I believe, although I seem so loath,\n    I am the last that will last keep his oath.\n    But is there no quick recreation granted?\n  KING. Ay, that there is. Our court, you know, is haunted\n    With a refined traveller of Spain,\n    A man in all the world\'s new fashion planted,\n    That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;\n    One who the music of his own vain tongue\n    Doth ravish like enchanting harmony;\n    A man of complements, whom right and wrong\n    Have chose as umpire of their mutiny.\n    This child of fancy, that Armado hight,\n    For interim to our studies shall relate,\n    In high-born words, the worth of many a knight\n    From tawny Spain lost in the world\'s debate.\n    How you delight, my lords, I know not, I;\n    But I protest I love to hear him lie,\n    And I will use him for my minstrelsy.\n  BEROWNE. Armado is a most illustrious wight,  \n    A man of fire-new words, fashion\'s own knight.\n  LONGAVILLE. Costard the swain and he shall be our sport;\n    And so to study three years is but short.\n\n      Enter DULL, a constable, with a letter, and COSTARD\n\n  DULL. Which is the Duke\'s own person?\n  BEROWNE. This, fellow. What wouldst?\n  DULL. I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his Grace\'s\n    farborough; but I would see his own person in flesh and blood.\n  BEROWNE. This is he.\n  DULL. Signior Arme- Arme- commends you. There\'s villainy abroad;\n    this letter will tell you more.\n  COSTARD. Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me.\n  KING. A letter from the magnificent Armado.\n  BEROWNE. How low soever the matter, I hope in God for high words.\n  LONGAVILLE. A high hope for a low heaven. God grant us patience!\n  BEROWNE. To hear, or forbear hearing?\n  LONGAVILLE. To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately; or, to\n    forbear both.  \n  BEROWNE. Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to climb\n    in the merriness.\n  COSTARD. The matter is to me, sir, as concerning Jaquenetta.\n    The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner.\n  BEROWNE. In what manner?\n  COSTARD. In manner and form following, sir; all those three: I was\n    seen with her in the manor-house, sitting with her upon the form,\n    and taken following her into the park; which, put together, is in\n    manner and form following. Now, sir, for the manner- it is the\n    manner of a man to speak to a woman. For the form- in some form.\n  BEROWNE. For the following, sir?\n  COSTARD. As it shall follow in my correction; and God defend the\n    right!\n  KING. Will you hear this letter with attention?\n  BEROWNE. As we would hear an oracle.\n  COSTARD. Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.\n  KING. [Reads] \'Great deputy, the welkin\'s vicegerent and sole\n    dominator of Navarre, my soul\'s earth\'s god and body\'s fost\'ring\n    patron\'-\n  COSTARD. Not a word of Costard yet.  \n  KING. [Reads] \'So it is\'-\n  COSTARD. It may be so; but if he say it is so, he is, in telling\n    true, but so.\n  KING. Peace!\n  COSTARD. Be to me, and every man that dares not fight!\n  KING. No words!\n  COSTARD. Of other men\'s secrets, I beseech you.\n  KING. [Reads] \'So it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I\n    did commend the black oppressing humour to the most wholesome\n    physic of thy health-giving air; and, as I am a gentleman, betook\n    myself to walk. The time When? About the sixth hour; when beasts\n    most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment\n    which is called supper. So much for the time When. Now for the\n    ground Which? which, I mean, I upon; it is ycleped thy park. Then\n    for the place Where? where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene\n    and most prepost\'rous event that draweth from my snow-white pen\n    the ebon-coloured ink which here thou viewest, beholdest,\n    surveyest, or seest. But to the place Where? It standeth\n    north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy\n    curious-knotted garden. There did I see that low-spirited swain,  \n    that base minnow of thy mirth,\'\n  COSTARD. Me?\n  KING. \'that unlettered small-knowing soul,\'\n  COSTARD. Me?\n  KING. \'that shallow vassal,\'\n  COSTARD. Still me?\n  KING. \'which, as I remember, hight Costard,\'\n  COSTARD. O, me!\n  KING. \'sorted and consorted, contrary to thy established proclaimed\n    edict and continent canon; which, with, O, with- but with this I\n    passion to say wherewith-\'\n  COSTARD. With a wench.\n    King. \'with a child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy\n    more sweet understanding, a woman. Him I, as my ever-esteemed\n    duty pricks me on, have sent to thee, to receive the meed of\n    punishment, by thy sweet Grace\'s officer, Antony Dull, a man of\n    good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation.\'\n  DULL. Me, an\'t shall please you; I am Antony Dull.\n  KING. \'For Jaquenetta- so is the weaker vessel called, which I\n    apprehended with the aforesaid swain- I keep her as a vessel of  \n    thy law\'s fury; and shall, at the least of thy sweet notice,\n    bring her to trial. Thine, in all compliments of devoted and\n    heart-burning heat of duty,\n                                         DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO.\'\n\n  BEROWNE. This is not so well as I look\'d for, but the best that\n    ever I heard.\n  KING. Ay, the best for the worst. But, sirrah, what say you to\n    this?\n  COSTARD. Sir, I confess the wench.\n  KING. Did you hear the proclamation?\n  COSTARD. I do confess much of the hearing it, but little of the\n    marking of it.\n  KING. It was proclaimed a year\'s imprisonment to be taken with a\n    wench.\n  COSTARD. I was taken with none, sir; I was taken with a damsel.\n  KING. Well, it was proclaimed damsel.\n  COSTARD. This was no damsel neither, sir; she was a virgin.\n  KING. It is so varied too, for it was proclaimed virgin.\n  COSTARD. If it were, I deny her virginity; I was taken with a maid.  \n  KING. This \'maid\' not serve your turn, sir.\n  COSTARD. This maid will serve my turn, sir.\n  KING. Sir, I will pronounce your sentence: you shall fast a week\n    with bran and water.\n  COSTARD. I had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge.\n  KING. And Don Armado shall be your keeper.\n    My Lord Berowne, see him delivered o\'er;\n    And go we, lords, to put in practice that\n    Which each to other hath so strongly sworn.\n                             Exeunt KING, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN\n  BEROWNE. I\'ll lay my head to any good man\'s hat\n    These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn.\n    Sirrah, come on.\n  COSTARD. I suffer for the truth, sir; for true it is I was taken\n    with Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true girl; and therefore\n    welcome the sour cup of prosperity! Affliction may one day smile\n    again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe park\n\nEnter ARMADO and MOTH, his page\n\n  ARMADO. Boy, what sign is it when a man of great spirit grows\n    melancholy?\n  MOTH. A great sign, sir, that he will look sad.\n  ARMADO. Why, sadness is one and the self-same thing, dear imp.\n  MOTH. No, no; O Lord, sir, no!\n  ARMADO. How canst thou part sadness and melancholy, my tender\n    juvenal?\n  MOTH. By a familiar demonstration of the working, my tough signior.\n  ARMADO. Why tough signior? Why tough signior?\n  MOTH. Why tender juvenal? Why tender juvenal?\n  ARMADO. I spoke it, tender juvenal, as a congruent epitheton\n    appertaining to thy young days, which we may nominate tender.\n  MOTH. And I, tough signior, as an appertinent title to your old\n    time, which we may name tough.\n  ARMADO. Pretty and apt.\n  MOTH. How mean you, sir? I pretty, and my saying apt? or I apt, and\n    my saying pretty?  \n  ARMADO. Thou pretty, because little.\n  MOTH. Little pretty, because little. Wherefore apt?\n  ARMADO. And therefore apt, because quick.\n  MOTH. Speak you this in my praise, master?\n  ARMADO. In thy condign praise.\n  MOTH. I will praise an eel with the same praise.\n  ARMADO. that an eel is ingenious?\n  MOTH. That an eel is quick.\n  ARMADO. I do say thou art quick in answers; thou heat\'st my blood.\n  MOTH. I am answer\'d, sir.\n  ARMADO. I love not to be cross\'d.\n  MOTH. [Aside] He speaks the mere contrary: crosses love not him.\n  ARMADO. I have promised to study three years with the Duke.\n  MOTH. You may do it in an hour, sir.\n  ARMADO. Impossible.\n  MOTH. How many is one thrice told?\n  ARMADO. I am ill at reck\'ning; it fitteth the spirit of a tapster.\n  MOTH. You are a gentleman and a gamester, sir.\n  ARMADO. I confess both; they are both the varnish of a complete\n    man.  \n  MOTH. Then I am sure you know how much the gross sum of deuce-ace\n    amounts to.\n  ARMADO. It doth amount to one more than two.\n  MOTH. Which the base vulgar do call three.\n  ARMADO. True.\n  MOTH. Why, sir, is this such a piece of study? Now here is three\n    studied ere ye\'ll thrice wink; and how easy it is to put \'years\'\n    to the word \'three,\' and study three years in two words, the\n    dancing horse will tell you.\n  ARMADO. A most fine figure!\n  MOTH. [Aside] To prove you a cipher.\n  ARMADO. I will hereupon confess I am in love. And as it is base for\n    a soldier to love, so am I in love with a base wench. If drawing\n    my sword against the humour of affection would deliver me from\n    the reprobate thought of it, I would take Desire prisoner, and\n    ransom him to any French courtier for a new-devis\'d curtsy. I\n    think scorn to sigh; methinks I should out-swear Cupid. Comfort\n    me, boy; what great men have been in love?\n  MOTH. Hercules, master.\n  ARMADO. Most sweet Hercules! More authority, dear boy, name more;  \n    and, sweet my child, let them be men of good repute and carriage.\n  MOTH. Samson, master; he was a man of good carriage, great\n    carriage, for he carried the town gates on his back like a\n    porter; and he was in love.\n  ARMADO. O well-knit Samson! strong-jointed Samson! I do excel thee\n    in my rapier as much as thou didst me in carrying gates. I am in\n    love too. Who was Samson\'s love, my dear Moth?\n  MOTH. A woman, master.\n  ARMADO. Of what complexion?\n  MOTH. Of all the four, or the three, or the two, or one of the\n    four.\n  ARMADO. Tell me precisely of what complexion.\n  MOTH. Of the sea-water green, sir.\n  ARMADO. Is that one of the four complexions?\n  MOTH. As I have read, sir; and the best of them too.\n  ARMADO. Green, indeed, is the colour of lovers; but to have a love\n    of that colour, methinks Samson had small reason for it. He\n    surely affected her for her wit.\n  MOTH. It was so, sir; for she had a green wit.\n  ARMADO. My love is most immaculate white and red.  \n  MOTH. Most maculate thoughts, master, are mask\'d under such\n    colours.\n  ARMADO. Define, define, well-educated infant.\n  MOTH. My father\'s wit my mother\'s tongue assist me!\n  ARMADO. Sweet invocation of a child; most pretty, and pathetical!\n  MOTH.      If she be made of white and red,\n               Her faults will ne\'er be known;\n             For blushing cheeks by faults are bred,\n               And fears by pale white shown.\n             Then if she fear, or be to blame,\n               By this you shall not know;\n             For still her cheeks possess the same\n               Which native she doth owe.\n    A dangerous rhyme, master, against the reason of white and red.\n  ARMADO. Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar?\n  MOTH. The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages\n    since; but I think now \'tis not to be found; or if it were, it\n    would neither serve for the writing nor the tune.\n  ARMADO. I will have that subject newly writ o\'er, that I may\n    example my digression by some mighty precedent. Boy, I do love  \n    that country girl that I took in the park with the rational hind\n    Costard; she deserves well.\n  MOTH. [Aside] To be whipt; and yet a better love than my master.\n  ARMADO. Sing, boy; my spirit grows heavy in love.\n  MOTH. And that\'s great marvel, loving a light wench.\n  ARMADO. I say, sing.\n  MOTH. Forbear till this company be past.\n\n                Enter DULL, COSTARD, and JAQUENETTA\n\n  DULL. Sir, the Duke\'s pleasure is that you keep Costard safe; and\n    you must suffer him to take no delight nor no penance; but \'a\n    must fast three days a week. For this damsel, I must keep her at\n    the park; she is allow\'d for the day-woman. Fare you well.\n  ARMADO. I do betray myself with blushing. Maid!\n  JAQUENETTA. Man!\n  ARMADO. I will visit thee at the lodge.\n  JAQUENETTA. That\'s hereby.\n  ARMADO. I know where it is situate.\n  JAQUENETTA. Lord, how wise you are!  \n  ARMADO. I will tell thee wonders.\n  JAQUENETTA. With that face?\n  ARMADO. I love thee.\n  JAQUENETTA. So I heard you say.\n  ARMADO. And so, farewell.\n  JAQUENETTA. Fair weather after you!\n  DULL. Come, Jaquenetta, away.             Exit with JAQUENETTA\n  ARMADO. Villain, thou shalt fast for thy offences ere thou be\n    pardoned.\n  COSTARD. Well, sir, I hope when I do it I shall do it on a full\n    stomach.\n  ARMADO. Thou shalt be heavily punished.\n  COSTARD. I am more bound to you than your fellows, for they are but\n    lightly rewarded.\n  ARMADO. Take away this villain; shut him up.\n  MOTH. Come, you transgressing slave, away.\n  COSTARD. Let me not be pent up, sir; I will fast, being loose.\n  MOTH. No, sir; that were fast, and loose. Thou shalt to prison.\n  COSTARD. Well, if ever I do see the merry days of desolation that I\n    have seen, some shall see.  \n  MOTH. What shall some see?\n  COSTARD. Nay, nothing, Master Moth, but what they look upon. It is\n    not for prisoners to be too silent in their words, and therefore\n    I will say nothing. I thank God I have as little patience as\n    another man, and therefore I can be quiet.\n                                         Exeunt MOTH and COSTARD\n  ARMADO. I do affect the very ground, which is base, where her shoe,\n    which is baser, guided by her foot, which is basest, doth tread.\n    I shall be forsworn- which is a great argument of falsehood- if I\n    love. And how can that be true love which is falsely attempted?\n    Love is a familiar; Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but\n    Love. Yet was Samson so tempted, and he had an excellent\n    strength; yet was Solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit.\n    Cupid\'s butt-shaft is too hard for Hercules\' club, and therefore\n    too much odds for a Spaniard\'s rapier. The first and second cause\n    will not serve my turn; the passado he respects not, the duello\n    he regards not; his disgrace is to be called boy, but his glory\n    is to subdue men. Adieu, valour; rust, rapier; be still, drum;\n    for your manager is in love; yea, he loveth. Assist me, some\n    extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet.  \n    Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.\n Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE II.\nThe park\n\nEnter the PRINCESS OF FRANCE, with three attending ladies,\nROSALINE, MARIA, KATHARINE, BOYET, and two other LORDS\n\n  BOYET. Now, madam, summon up your dearest spirits.\n    Consider who the King your father sends,\n    To whom he sends, and what\'s his embassy:\n    Yourself, held precious in the world\'s esteem,\n    To parley with the sole inheritor\n    Of all perfections that a man may owe,\n    Matchless Navarre; the plea of no less weight\n    Than Aquitaine, a dowry for a queen.\n    Be now as prodigal of all dear grace\n    As Nature was in making graces dear,\n    When she did starve the general world beside\n    And prodigally gave them all to you.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,\n    Needs not the painted flourish of your praise.\n    Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye,\n    Not utt\'red by base sale of chapmen\'s tongues;  \n    I am less proud to hear you tell my worth\n    Than you much willing to be counted wise\n    In spending your wit in the praise of mine.\n    But now to task the tasker: good Boyet,\n    You are not ignorant all-telling fame\n    Doth noise abroad Navarre hath made a vow,\n    Till painful study shall outwear three years,\n    No woman may approach his silent court.\n    Therefore to\'s seemeth it a needful course,\n    Before we enter his forbidden gates,\n    To know his pleasure; and in that behalf,\n    Bold of your worthiness, we single you\n    As our best-moving fair solicitor.\n    Tell him the daughter of the King of France,\n    On serious business, craving quick dispatch,\n    Importunes personal conference with his Grace.\n    Haste, signify so much; while we attend,\n    Like humble-visag\'d suitors, his high will.\n  BOYET. Proud of employment, willingly I go.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. All pride is willing pride, and yours is so.  \n                                                      Exit BOYET\n    Who are the votaries, my loving lords,\n    That are vow-fellows with this virtuous duke?\n  FIRST LORD. Lord Longaville is one.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Know you the man?\n  MARIA. I know him, madam; at a marriage feast,\n    Between Lord Perigort and the beauteous heir\n    Of Jaques Falconbridge, solemnized\n    In Normandy, saw I this Longaville.\n    A man of sovereign parts, peerless esteem\'d,\n    Well fitted in arts, glorious in arms;\n    Nothing becomes him ill that he would well.\n    The only soil of his fair virtue\'s gloss,\n    If virtue\'s gloss will stain with any soil,\n    Is a sharp wit match\'d with too blunt a will,\n    Whose edge hath power to cut, whose will still wills\n    It should none spare that come within his power.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Some merry mocking lord, belike; is\'t so?\n  MARIA. They say so most that most his humours know.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Such short-liv\'d wits do wither as they grow.  \n    Who are the rest?\n  KATHARINE. The young Dumain, a well-accomplish\'d youth,\n    Of all that virtue love for virtue loved;\n    Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill,\n    For he hath wit to make an ill shape good,\n    And shape to win grace though he had no wit.\n    I saw him at the Duke Alencon\'s once;\n    And much too little of that good I saw\n    Is my report to his great worthiness.\n  ROSALINE. Another of these students at that time\n    Was there with him, if I have heard a truth.\n    Berowne they call him; but a merrier man,\n    Within the limit of becoming mirth,\n    I never spent an hour\'s talk withal.\n    His eye begets occasion for his wit,\n    For every object that the one doth catch\n    The other turns to a mirth-moving jest,\n    Which his fair tongue, conceit\'s expositor,\n    Delivers in such apt and gracious words\n    That aged ears play truant at his tales,  \n    And younger hearings are quite ravished;\n    So sweet and voluble is his discourse.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. God bless my ladies! Are they all in love,\n    That every one her own hath garnished\n    With such bedecking ornaments of praise?\n  FIRST LORD. Here comes Boyet.\n\n                       Re-enter BOYET\n\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Now, what admittance, lord?\n  BOYET. Navarre had notice of your fair approach,\n    And he and his competitors in oath\n    Were all address\'d to meet you, gentle lady,\n    Before I came. Marry, thus much I have learnt:\n    He rather means to lodge you in the field,\n    Like one that comes here to besiege his court,\n    Than seek a dispensation for his oath,\n    To let you enter his unpeopled house.\n                                    [The LADIES-IN-WAITING mask]\n  \n             Enter KING, LONGAVILLE, DUMAIN, BEROWNE,\n                         and ATTENDANTS\n\n    Here comes Navarre.\n  KING. Fair Princess, welcome to the court of Navarre.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. \'Fair\' I give you back again; and \'welcome\' I\n    have not yet. The roof of this court is too high to be yours, and\n    welcome to the wide fields too base to be mine.\n  KING. You shall be welcome, madam, to my court.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. I will be welcome then; conduct me thither.\n  KING. Hear me, dear lady: I have sworn an oath-\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Our Lady help my lord! He\'ll be forsworn.\n  KING. Not for the world, fair madam, by my will.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Why, will shall break it; will, and nothing\n    else.\n  KING. Your ladyship is ignorant what it is.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Were my lord so, his ignorance were wise,\n    Where now his knowledge must prove ignorance.\n    I hear your Grace hath sworn out house-keeping.\n    \'Tis deadly sin to keep that oath, my lord,  \n    And sin to break it.\n    But pardon me, I am too sudden bold;\n    To teach a teacher ill beseemeth me.\n    Vouchsafe to read the purpose of my coming,\n    And suddenly resolve me in my suit.         [Giving a paper]\n  KING. Madam, I will, if suddenly I may.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. YOU Will the sooner that I were away,\n    For you\'ll prove perjur\'d if you make me stay.\n  BEROWNE. Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?\n  KATHARINE. Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?\n  BEROWNE. I know you did.\n  KATHARINE. How needless was it then to ask the question!\n  BEROWNE. You must not be so quick.\n  KATHARINE. \'Tis long of you, that spur me with such questions.\n  BEROWNE. Your wit \'s too hot, it speeds too fast, \'twill tire.\n  KATHARINE. Not till it leave the rider in the mire.\n  BEROWNE. What time o\' day?\n  KATHARINE. The hour that fools should ask.\n  BEROWNE. Now fair befall your mask!\n  KATHARINE. Fair fall the face it covers!  \n  BEROWNE. And send you many lovers!\n  KATHARINE. Amen, so you be none.\n  BEROWNE. Nay, then will I be gone.\n  KING. Madam, your father here doth intimate\n    The payment of a hundred thousand crowns;\n    Being but the one half of an entire sum\n    Disbursed by my father in his wars.\n    But say that he or we, as neither have,\n    Receiv\'d that sum, yet there remains unpaid\n    A hundred thousand more, in surety of the which,\n    One part of Aquitaine is bound to us,\n    Although not valued to the money\'s worth.\n    If then the King your father will restore\n    But that one half which is unsatisfied,\n    We will give up our right in Aquitaine,\n    And hold fair friendship with his Majesty.\n    But that, it seems, he little purposeth,\n    For here he doth demand to have repaid\n    A hundred thousand crowns; and not demands,\n    On payment of a hundred thousand crowns,  \n    To have his title live in Aquitaine;\n    Which we much rather had depart withal,\n    And have the money by our father lent,\n    Than Aquitaine so gelded as it is.\n    Dear Princess, were not his requests so far\n    From reason\'s yielding, your fair self should make\n    A yielding \'gainst some reason in my breast,\n    And go well satisfied to France again.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. You do the King my father too much wrong,\n    And wrong the reputation of your name,\n    In so unseeming to confess receipt\n    Of that which hath so faithfully been paid.\n  KING. I do protest I never heard of it;\n    And, if you prove it, I\'ll repay it back\n    Or yield up Aquitaine.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. We arrest your word.\n    Boyet, you can produce acquittances\n    For such a sum from special officers\n    Of Charles his father.\n  KING. Satisfy me so.  \n  BOYET. So please your Grace, the packet is not come,\n    Where that and other specialties are bound;\n    To-morrow you shall have a sight of them.\n  KING. It shall suffice me; at which interview\n    All liberal reason I will yield unto.\n    Meantime receive such welcome at my hand\n    As honour, without breach of honour, may\n    Make tender of to thy true worthiness.\n    You may not come, fair Princess, within my gates;\n    But here without you shall be so receiv\'d\n    As you shall deem yourself lodg\'d in my heart,\n    Though so denied fair harbour in my house.\n    Your own good thoughts excuse me, and farewell.\n    To-morrow shall we visit you again.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Sweet health and fair desires consort your\n    Grace!\n  KING. Thy own wish wish I thee in every place.\n                                            Exit with attendants\n  BEROWNE. Lady, I will commend you to mine own heart.\n  ROSALINE. Pray you, do my commendations;  \n    I would be glad to see it.\n  BEROWNE. I would you heard it groan.\n  ROSALINE. Is the fool sick?\n  BEROWNE. Sick at the heart.\n  ROSALINE. Alack, let it blood.\n  BEROWNE. Would that do it good?\n  ROSALINE. My physic says \'ay.\'\n  BEROWNE. Will YOU prick\'t with your eye?\n  ROSALINE. No point, with my knife.\n  BEROWNE. Now, God save thy life!\n  ROSALINE. And yours from long living!\n  BEROWNE. I cannot stay thanksgiving.                [Retiring]\n  DUMAIN. Sir, I pray you, a word: what lady is that same?\n  BOYET. The heir of Alencon, Katharine her name.\n  DUMAIN. A gallant lady! Monsieur, fare you well.          Exit\n  LONGAVILLE. I beseech you a word: what is she in the white?\n  BOYET. A woman sometimes, an you saw her in the light.\n  LONGAVILLE. Perchance light in the light. I desire her name.\n  BOYET. She hath but one for herself; to desire that were a shame.\n  LONGAVILLE. Pray you, sir, whose daughter?  \n  BOYET. Her mother\'s, I have heard.\n  LONGAVILLE. God\'s blessing on your beard!\n  BOYET. Good sir, be not offended;\n    She is an heir of Falconbridge.\n  LONGAVILLE. Nay, my choler is ended.\n    She is a most sweet lady.\n  BOYET. Not unlike, sir; that may be.           Exit LONGAVILLE\n  BEROWNE. What\'s her name in the cap?\n  BOYET. Rosaline, by good hap.\n  BEROWNE. Is she wedded or no?\n  BOYET. To her will, sir, or so.\n  BEROWNE. You are welcome, sir; adieu!\n  BOYET. Farewell to me, sir, and welcome to you.\n                                     Exit BEROWNE. LADIES Unmask\n  MARIA. That last is Berowne, the merry mad-cap lord;\n    Not a word with him but a jest.\n  BOYET. And every jest but a word.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. It was well done of you to take him at his\n    word.\n  BOYET. I was as willing to grapple as he was to board.  \n  KATHARINE. Two hot sheeps, marry!\n  BOYET. And wherefore not ships?\n    No sheep, sweet lamb, unless we feed on your lips.\n  KATHARINE. You sheep and I pasture- shall that finish the jest?\n  BOYET. So you grant pasture for me.     [Offering to kiss her]\n  KATHARINE. Not so, gentle beast;\n    My lips are no common, though several they be.\n  BOYET. Belonging to whom?\n  KATHARINE. To my fortunes and me.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Good wits will be jangling; but, gentles,\n      agree;\n    This civil war of wits were much better used\n    On Navarre and his book-men, for here \'tis abused.\n  BOYET. If my observation, which very seldom lies,\n    By the heart\'s still rhetoric disclosed with eyes,\n    Deceive me not now, Navarre is infected.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. With what?\n  BOYET. With that which we lovers entitle \'affected.\'\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Your reason?\n  BOYET. Why, all his behaviours did make their retire  \n    To the court of his eye, peeping thorough desire.\n    His heart, like an agate, with your print impressed,\n    Proud with his form, in his eye pride expressed;\n    His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see,\n    Did stumble with haste in his eyesight to be;\n    All senses to that sense did make their repair,\n    To feel only looking on fairest of fair.\n    Methought all his senses were lock\'d in his eye,\n    As jewels in crystal for some prince to buy;\n    Who, tend\'ring their own worth from where they were glass\'d,\n    Did point you to buy them, along as you pass\'d.\n    His face\'s own margent did quote such amazes\n    That all eyes saw his eyes enchanted with gazes.\n    I\'ll give you Aquitaine and all that is his,\n    An you give him for my sake but one loving kiss.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Come, to our pavilion. Boyet is dispos\'d.\n  BOYET. But to speak that in words which his eye hath disclos\'d;\n    I only have made a mouth of his eye,\n    By adding a tongue which I know will not lie.\n  MARIA. Thou art an old love-monger, and speakest skilfully.  \n  KATHARINE. He is Cupid\'s grandfather, and learns news of him.\n  ROSALINE. Then was Venus like her mother; for her father is but\n    grim.\n  BOYET. Do you hear, my mad wenches?\n  MARIA. No.\n  BOYET. What, then; do you see?\n  MARIA. Ay, our way to be gone.\n  BOYET. You are too hard for me.                         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nThe park\n\nEnter ARMADO and MOTH\n\n  ARMADO. Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.\n                                         [MOTH sings Concolinel]\n  ARMADO. Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years, take this key, give\n    enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately hither; I must\n    employ him in a letter to my love.\n  MOTH. Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?\n  ARMADO. How meanest thou? Brawling in French?\n  MOTH. No, my complete master; but to jig off a tune at the tongue\'s\n    end, canary to it with your feet, humour it with turning up your\n    eyelids, sigh a note and sing a note, sometime through the\n    throat, as if you swallowed love with singing love, sometime\n    through the nose, as if you snuff\'d up love by smelling love,\n    with your hat penthouse-like o\'er the shop of your eyes, with\n    your arms cross\'d on your thin-belly doublet, like a rabbit on a\n    spit, or your hands in your pocket, like a man after the old\n    painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away.\n    These are complements, these are humours; these betray nice  \n    wenches, that would be betrayed without these; and make them men\n    of note- do you note me?- that most are affected to these.\n  ARMADO. How hast thou purchased this experience?\n  MOTH. By my penny of observation.\n  ARMADO. But O- but O-\n  MOTH. The hobby-horse is forgot.\n  ARMADO. Call\'st thou my love \'hobby-horse\'?\n  MOTH. No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your love\n    perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love?\n  ARMADO. Almost I had.\n  MOTH. Negligent student! learn her by heart.\n  ARMADO. By heart and in heart, boy.\n  MOTH. And out of heart, master; all those three I will prove.\n  ARMADO. What wilt thou prove?\n  MOTH. A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and without, upon the\n    instant. By heart you love her, because your heart cannot come by\n    her; in heart you love her, because your heart is in love with\n    her; and out of heart you love her, being out of heart that you\n    cannot enjoy her.\n  ARMADO. I am all these three.  \n  MOTH. And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all.\n  ARMADO. Fetch hither the swain; he must carry me a letter.\n  MOTH. A message well sympathiz\'d- a horse to be ambassador for an\n    ass.\n  ARMADO. Ha, ha, what sayest thou?\n  MOTH. Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse, for he is\n    very slow-gaited. But I go.\n  ARMADO. The way is but short; away.\n  MOTH. As swift as lead, sir.\n  ARMADO. The meaning, pretty ingenious?\n    Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?\n  MOTH. Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.\n  ARMADO. I say lead is slow.\n  MOTH. You are too swift, sir, to say so:\n    Is that lead slow which is fir\'d from a gun?\n  ARMADO. Sweet smoke of rhetoric!\n    He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that\'s he;\n    I shoot thee at the swain.\n  MOTH. Thump, then, and I flee.                            Exit\n  ARMADO. A most acute juvenal; volable and free of grace!  \n    By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face;\n    Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.\n    My herald is return\'d.\n\n                       Re-enter MOTH with COSTARD\n\n  MOTH. A wonder, master! here\'s a costard broken in a shin.\n  ARMADO. Some enigma, some riddle; come, thy l\'envoy; begin.\n  COSTARD. No egma, no riddle, no l\'envoy; no salve in the mail, sir.\n    O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain; no l\'envoy, no l\'envoy; no\n    salve, sir, but a plantain!\n  ARMADO. By virtue thou enforcest laughter; thy silly thought, my\n    spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous\n    smiling. O, pardon me, my stars! Doth the inconsiderate take\n    salve for l\'envoy, and the word \'l\'envoy\' for a salve?\n  MOTH. Do the wise think them other? Is not l\'envoy a salve?\n  ARMADO. No, page; it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain\n    Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.\n    I will example it:\n           The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,  \n           Were still at odds, being but three.\n    There\'s the moral. Now the l\'envoy.\n  MOTH. I will add the l\'envoy. Say the moral again.\n  ARMADO.  The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,\n           Were still at odds, being but three.\n  MOTH.    Until the goose came out of door,\n           And stay\'d the odds by adding four.\n    Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with my l\'envoy.\n           The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,\n           Were still at odds, being but three.\n  ARMADO.  Until the goose came out of door,\n           Staying the odds by adding four.\n  MOTH. A good l\'envoy, ending in the goose; would you desire more?\n  COSTARD. The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose, that\'s flat.\n    Sir, your pennyworth is good, an your goose be fat.\n    To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose;\n    Let me see: a fat l\'envoy; ay, that\'s a fat goose.\n  ARMADO. Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin?\n  MOTH. By saying that a costard was broken in a shin.\n    Then call\'d you for the l\'envoy.  \n  COSTARD. True, and I for a plantain. Thus came your argument in;\n    Then the boy\'s fat l\'envoy, the goose that you bought;\n    And he ended the market.\n  ARMADO. But tell me: how was there a costard broken in a shin?\n  MOTH. I will tell you sensibly.\n  COSTARD. Thou hast no feeling of it, Moth; I will speak that\n      l\'envoy.\n    I, Costard, running out, that was safely within,\n    Fell over the threshold and broke my shin.\n  ARMADO. We will talk no more of this matter.\n  COSTARD. Till there be more matter in the shin.\n  ARMADO. Sirrah Costard. I will enfranchise thee.\n  COSTARD. O, Marry me to one Frances! I smell some l\'envoy, some\n    goose, in this.\n  ARMADO. By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty,\n    enfreedoming thy person; thou wert immured, restrained,\n    captivated, bound.\n  COSTARD. True, true; and now you will be my purgation, and let me\n    loose.\n  ARMADO. I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance; and, in  \n    lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing but this: bear this\n    significant [giving a letter] to the country maid Jaquenetta;\n    there is remuneration, for the best ward of mine honour is\n    rewarding my dependents. Moth, follow.                  Exit\n  MOTH. Like the sequel, I. Signior Costard, adieu.\n  COSTARD. My sweet ounce of man\'s flesh, my incony Jew!\n                                                       Exit MOTH\n    Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration! O, that\'s the\n    Latin word for three farthings. Three farthings- remuneration.\n    \'What\'s the price of this inkle?\'- \'One penny.\'- \'No, I\'ll give\n    you a remuneration.\' Why, it carries it. Remuneration! Why, it is\n    a fairer name than French crown. I will never buy and sell out of\n    this word.\n\n                          Enter BEROWNE\n\n  BEROWNE. My good knave Costard, exceedingly well met!\n  COSTARD. Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man buy for\n    a remuneration?\n  BEROWNE. What is a remuneration?  \n  COSTARD. Marry, sir, halfpenny farthing.\n  BEROWNE. Why, then, three-farthing worth of silk.\n  COSTARD. I thank your worship. God be wi\' you!\n  BEROWNE. Stay, slave; I must employ thee.\n    As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave,\n    Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.\n  COSTARD. When would you have it done, sir?\n  BEROWNE. This afternoon.\n  COSTARD. Well, I will do it, sir; fare you well.\n  BEROWNE. Thou knowest not what it is.\n  COSTARD. I shall know, sir, when I have done it.\n  BEROWNE. Why, villain, thou must know first.\n  COSTARD. I will come to your worship to-morrow morning.\n  BEROWNE. It must be done this afternoon.\n    Hark, slave, it is but this:\n    The Princess comes to hunt here in the park,\n    And in her train there is a gentle lady;\n    When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name,\n    And Rosaline they call her. Ask for her,\n    And to her white hand see thou do commend  \n    This seal\'d-up counsel. There\'s thy guerdon; go.\n                                         [Giving him a shilling]\n  COSTARD. Gardon, O sweet gardon! better than remuneration; a\n    \'leven-pence farthing better; most sweet gardon! I will do it,\n    sir, in print. Gardon- remuneration!                    Exit\n  BEROWNE. And I, forsooth, in love; I, that have been love\'s whip;\n    A very beadle to a humorous sigh;\n    A critic, nay, a night-watch constable;\n    A domineering pedant o\'er the boy,\n    Than whom no mortal so magnificent!\n    This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,\n    This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;\n    Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,\n    Th\' anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,\n    Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,\n    Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,\n    Sole imperator, and great general\n    Of trotting paritors. O my little heart!\n    And I to be a corporal of his field,\n    And wear his colours like a tumbler\'s hoop!  \n    What! I love, I sue, I seek a wife-\n    A woman, that is like a German clock,\n    Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,\n    And never going aright, being a watch,\n    But being watch\'d that it may still go right!\n    Nay, to be perjur\'d, which is worst of all;\n    And, among three, to love the worst of all,\n    A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,\n    With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes;\n    Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deed,\n    Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard.\n    And I to sigh for her! to watch for her!\n    To pray for her! Go to; it is a plague\n    That Cupid will impose for my neglect\n    Of his almighty dreadful little might.\n    Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan:\n    Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.              Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nThe park\n\nEnter the PRINCESS, ROSALINE, MARIA, KATHARINE, BOYET, LORDS, ATTENDANTS,\nand a FORESTER\n\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Was that the King that spurr\'d his horse so\n      hard\n    Against the steep uprising of the hill?\n  BOYET. I know not; but I think it was not he.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Whoe\'er \'a was, \'a show\'d a mounting mind.\n    Well, lords, to-day we shall have our dispatch;\n    On Saturday we will return to France.\n    Then, forester, my friend, where is the bush\n    That we must stand and play the murderer in?\n  FORESTER. Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice;\n    A stand where you may make the fairest shoot.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. I thank my beauty I am fair that shoot,\n    And thereupon thou speak\'st the fairest shoot.\n  FORESTER. Pardon me, madam, for I meant not so.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. What, what? First praise me, and again say no?\n    O short-liv\'d pride! Not fair? Alack for woe!  \n  FORESTER. Yes, madam, fair.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Nay, never paint me now;\n    Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow.\n    Here, good my glass, take this for telling true:\n                                             [ Giving him money]\n    Fair payment for foul words is more than due.\n  FORESTER. Nothing but fair is that which you inherit.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. See, see, my beauty will be sav\'d by merit.\n    O heresy in fair, fit for these days!\n    A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise.\n    But come, the bow. Now mercy goes to kill,\n    And shooting well is then accounted ill;\n    Thus will I save my credit in the shoot:\n    Not wounding, pity would not let me do\'t;\n    If wounding, then it was to show my skill,\n    That more for praise than purpose meant to kill.\n    And, out of question, so it is sometimes:\n    Glory grows guilty of detested crimes,\n    When, for fame\'s sake, for praise, an outward part,\n    We bend to that the working of the heart;  \n    As I for praise alone now seek to spill\n    The poor deer\'s blood that my heart means no ill.\n  BOYET. Do not curst wives hold that self-sovereignty\n    Only for praise sake, when they strive to be\n    Lords o\'er their lords?\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Only for praise; and praise we may afford\n    To any lady that subdues a lord.\n\n                       Enter COSTARD\n\n  BOYET. Here comes a member of the commonwealth.\n  COSTARD. God dig-you-den all! Pray you, which is the head lady?\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Thou shalt know her, fellow, by the rest that\n    have no heads.\n  COSTARD. Which is the greatest lady, the highest?\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. The thickest and the tallest.\n  COSTARD. The thickest and the tallest! It is so; truth is truth.\n    An your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit,\n    One o\' these maids\' girdles for your waist should be fit.\n    Are not you the chief woman? You are the thickest here.  \n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. What\'s your will, sir? What\'s your will?\n  COSTARD. I have a letter from Monsieur Berowne to one\n    Lady Rosaline.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. O, thy letter, thy letter! He\'s a good friend\n      of mine.\n    Stand aside, good bearer. Boyet, you can carve.\n    Break up this capon.\n  BOYET. I am bound to serve.\n    This letter is mistook; it importeth none here.\n    It is writ to Jaquenetta.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. We will read it, I swear.\n    Break the neck of the wax, and every one give ear.\n  BOYET. [Reads] \'By heaven, that thou art fair is most infallible;\n    true that thou art beauteous; truth itself that thou art lovely.\n    More fairer than fair, beautiful than beauteous, truer than truth\n    itself, have commiseration on thy heroical vassal. The\n    magnanimous and most illustrate king Cophetua set eye upon the\n    pernicious and indubitate beggar Zenelophon; and he it was that\n    might rightly say, \'Veni, vidi, vici\'; which to annothanize in\n    the vulgar,- O base and obscure vulgar!- videlicet, He came, saw,  \n    and overcame. He came, one; saw, two; overcame, three. Who came?-\n    the king. Why did he come?- to see. Why did he see?-to overcome.\n    To whom came he?- to the beggar. What saw he?- the beggar. Who\n    overcame he?- the beggar. The conclusion is victory; on whose\n    side?- the king\'s. The captive is enrich\'d; on whose side?- the\n    beggar\'s. The catastrophe is a nuptial; on whose side?- the\n    king\'s. No, on both in one, or one in both. I am the king, for so\n    stands the comparison; thou the beggar, for so witnesseth thy\n    lowliness. Shall I command thy love? I may. Shall I enforce thy\n    love? I could. Shall I entreat thy love? I will. What shalt thou\n    exchange for rags?- robes, for tittles?- titles, for thyself?\n    -me. Thus expecting thy reply, I profane my lips on thy foot, my\n    eyes on thy picture, and my heart on thy every part.\n                  Thine in the dearest design of industry,\n                                           DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO.\n\n    \'Thus dost thou hear the Nemean lion roar\n    \'Gainst thee, thou lamb, that standest as his prey;\n    Submissive fall his princely feet before,\n    And he from forage will incline to play.  \n    But if thou strive, poor soul, what are thou then?\n    Food for his rage, repasture for his den.\'\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. What plume of feathers is he that indited this\n      letter?\n    What vane? What weathercock? Did you ever hear better?\n  BOYET. I am much deceived but I remember the style.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Else your memory is bad, going o\'er it\n    erewhile.\n  BOYET. This Armado is a Spaniard, that keeps here in court;\n    A phantasime, a Monarcho, and one that makes sport\n    To the Prince and his book-mates.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Thou fellow, a word.\n    Who gave thee this letter?\n  COSTARD. I told you: my lord.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. To whom shouldst thou give it?\n  COSTARD. From my lord to my lady.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. From which lord to which lady?\n  COSTARD. From my Lord Berowne, a good master of mine,\n    To a lady of France that he call\'d Rosaline.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Thou hast mistaken his letter. Come, lords,  \n      away.\n    [To ROSALINE] Here, sweet, put up this; \'twill be thine another\n      day.                             Exeunt PRINCESS and TRAIN\n  BOYET. Who is the shooter? who is the shooter?\n  ROSALINE. Shall I teach you to know?\n  BOYET. Ay, my continent of beauty.\n  ROSALINE. Why, she that bears the bow.\n    Finely put off!\n  BOYET. My lady goes to kill horns; but, if thou marry,\n    Hang me by the neck, if horns that year miscarry.\n    Finely put on!\n  ROSALINE. Well then, I am the shooter.\n  BOYET. And who is your deer?\n  ROSALINE. If we choose by the horns, yourself come not near.\n    Finely put on indeed!\n  MARIA. You Still wrangle with her, Boyet, and she strikes at the\n    brow.\n  BOYET. But she herself is hit lower. Have I hit her now?\n  ROSALINE. Shall I come upon thee with an old saying, that was a man\n    when King Pepin of France was a little boy, as touching the hit  \n    it?\n  BOYET. So I may answer thee with one as old, that was a woman when\n    Queen Guinever of Britain was a little wench, as touching the hit\n    it.\n  ROSALINE. [Singing]\n            Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it,\n            Thou canst not hit it, my good man.\n  BOYET.    An I cannot, cannot, cannot,\n            An I cannot, another can.\n                                   Exeunt ROSALINE and KATHARINE\n  COSTARD. By my troth, most pleasant! How both did fit it!\n  MARIA. A mark marvellous well shot; for they both did hit it.\n  BOYET. A mark! O, mark but that mark! A mark, says my lady!\n    Let the mark have a prick in\'t, to mete at, if it may be.\n  MARIA. Wide o\' the bow-hand! I\' faith, your hand is out.\n  COSTARD. Indeed, \'a must shoot nearer, or he\'ll ne\'er hit the\n    clout.\n  BOYET. An if my hand be out, then belike your hand is in.\n  COSTARD. Then will she get the upshoot by cleaving the pin.\n  MARIA. Come, come, you talk greasily; your lips grow foul.  \n  COSTARD. She\'s too hard for you at pricks, sir; challenge her to\n    bowl.\n  BOYET. I fear too much rubbing; good-night, my good owl.\n                                          Exeunt BOYET and MARIA\n  COSTARD. By my soul, a swain, a most simple clown!\n    Lord, Lord! how the ladies and I have put him down!\n    O\' my troth, most sweet jests, most incony vulgar wit!\n    When it comes so smoothly off, so obscenely, as it were, so fit.\n    Armado a th\' t\'one side- O, a most dainty man!\n    To see him walk before a lady and to bear her fan!\n    To see him kiss his hand, and how most sweetly \'a will swear!\n    And his page a t\' other side, that handful of wit!\n    Ah, heavens, it is a most pathetical nit!\n    Sola, sola!                                     Exit COSTARD\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe park\n\nFrom the shooting within, enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL\n\n  NATHANIEL. Very reverent sport, truly; and done in the testimony of\n    a good conscience.\n  HOLOFERNES. The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe as\n    the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo,\n    the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on\n    the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth.\n  NATHANIEL. Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly\n    varied, like a scholar at the least; but, sir, I assure ye it was\n    a buck of the first head.\n  HOLOFERNES. Sir Nathaniel, haud credo.\n  DULL. \'Twas not a haud credo; \'twas a pricket.\n  HOLOFERNES. Most barbarous intimation! yet a kind of insinuation,\n    as it were, in via, in way, of explication; facere, as it were,\n    replication, or rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his\n    inclination, after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated,\n    unpruned, untrained, or rather unlettered, or ratherest  \n    unconfirmed fashion, to insert again my haud credo for a deer.\n  DULL. I Said the deer was not a haud credo; \'twas a pricket.\n  HOLOFERNES. Twice-sod simplicity, bis coctus!\n    O thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!\n  NATHANIEL. Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in\n      a book;\n    He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his\n    intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible\n    in the duller parts;\n    And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should\n      be-\n    Which we of taste and feeling are- for those parts that do\n      fructify in us more than he.\n    For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool,\n    So, were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school.\n    But, omne bene, say I, being of an old father\'s mind:\n    Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.\n  DULL. You two are book-men: can you tell me by your wit\n    What was a month old at Cain\'s birth that\'s not five weeks old as\n      yet?  \n  HOLOFERNES. Dictynna, goodman Dull; Dictynna, goodman Dull.\n  DULL. What is Dictynna?\n  NATHANIEL. A title to Phoebe, to Luna, to the moon.\n  HOLOFERNES. The moon was a month old when Adam was no more,\n    And raught not to five weeks when he came to five-score.\n    Th\' allusion holds in the exchange.\n  DULL. \'Tis true, indeed; the collusion holds in the exchange.\n  HOLOFERNES. God comfort thy capacity! I say th\' allusion holds in\n    the exchange.\n  DULL. And I say the polusion holds in the exchange; for the moon is\n    never but a month old; and I say, beside, that \'twas a pricket\n    that the Princess kill\'d.\n  HOLOFERNES. Sir Nathaniel, will you hear an extemporal epitaph on\n    the death of the deer? And, to humour the ignorant, call the deer\n    the Princess kill\'d a pricket.\n  NATHANIEL. Perge, good Master Holofernes, perge, so it shall please\n    you to abrogate scurrility.\n  HOLOFERNES. I Will something affect the letter, for it argues\n    facility.\n  \n    The preyful Princess pierc\'d and prick\'d a pretty pleasing\n      pricket.\n    Some say a sore; but not a sore till now made sore with shooting.\n    The dogs did yell; put el to sore, then sorel jumps from thicket-\n    Or pricket sore, or else sorel; the people fall a-hooting.\n    If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores o\' sorel.\n    Of one sore I an hundred make by adding but one more L.\n\n  NATHANIEL. A rare talent!\n  DULL. [Aside] If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a\n    talent.\n  HOLOFERNES. This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish\n    extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects,\n    ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions. These are begot in\n    the ventricle of memory, nourish\'d in the womb of pia mater, and\n    delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the gift is good in\n    those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.\n  NATHANIEL. Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my\n    parishioners; for their sons are well tutor\'d by you, and their\n    daughters profit very greatly under you. You are a good member of  \n    the commonwealth.\n  HOLOFERNES. Mehercle, if their sons be ingenious, they shall want\n    no instruction; if their daughters be capable, I will put it to\n    them; but, vir sapit qui pauca loquitur. A soul feminine saluteth\n    us.\n\n                    Enter JAQUENETTA and COSTARD\n\n  JAQUENETTA. God give you good morrow, Master Person.\n  HOLOFERNES. Master Person, quasi pers-one. And if one should be\n    pierc\'d which is the one?\n  COSTARD. Marry, Master Schoolmaster, he that is likest to a\n    hogshead.\n  HOLOFERNES. Piercing a hogshead! A good lustre of conceit in a turf\n    of earth; fire enough for a flint, pearl enough for a swine; \'tis\n    pretty; it is well.\n  JAQUENETTA. Good Master Parson, be so good as read me this letter;\n    it was given me by Costard, and sent me from Don Armado. I\n    beseech you read it.\n  HOLOFERNES. Fauste, precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra  \n    Ruminat-\n    and so forth. Ah, good old Mantuan! I may speak of thee as\n    the traveller doth of Venice:\n                   Venetia, Venetia,\n                   Chi non ti vede, non ti pretia.\n    Old Mantuan, old Mantuan! Who understandeth thee not,\n    loves thee not-\n                      Ut, re, sol, la, mi, fa.\n    Under pardon, sir, what are the contents? or rather as\n    Horace says in his- What, my soul, verses?\n  NATHANIEL. Ay, sir, and very learned.\n  HOLOFERNES. Let me hear a staff, a stanze, a verse; lege, domine.\n  NATHANIEL. [Reads] \'If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to\n      love?\n    Ah, never faith could hold, if not to beauty vowed!\n    Though to myself forsworn, to thee I\'ll faithful prove;\n    Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed.\n    Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes,\n    Where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend.\n    If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice;  \n    Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend;\n    All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder;\n    Which is to me some praise that I thy parts admire.\n    Thy eye Jove\'s lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder,\n    Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire.\n    Celestial as thou art, O, pardon love this wrong,\n    That singes heaven\'s praise with such an earthly tongue.\'\n  HOLOFERNES. You find not the apostrophas, and so miss the accent:\n    let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified;\n    but, for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy,\n    caret. Ovidius Naso was the man. And why, indeed, \'Naso\' but for\n    smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of\n    invention? Imitari is nothing: so doth the hound his master, the\n    ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider. But, damosella virgin,\n    was this directed to you?\n  JAQUENETTA. Ay, sir, from one Monsieur Berowne, one of the strange\n    queen\'s lords.\n  HOLOFERNES. I will overglance the superscript: \'To the snow-white\n    hand of the most beauteous Lady Rosaline.\' I will look again on\n    the intellect of the letter, for the nomination of the party  \n    writing to the person written unto: \'Your Ladyship\'s in all\n    desired employment, Berowne.\' Sir Nathaniel, this Berowne is one\n    of the votaries with the King; and here he hath framed a letter\n    to a sequent of the stranger queen\'s which accidentally, or by\n    the way of progression, hath miscarried. Trip and go, my sweet;\n    deliver this paper into the royal hand of the King; it may\n    concern much. Stay not thy compliment; I forgive thy duty. Adieu.\n  JAQUENETTA. Good Costard, go with me. Sir, God save your life!\n  COSTARD. Have with thee, my girl.\n                                   Exeunt COSTARD and JAQUENETTA\n  NATHANIEL. Sir, you have done this in the fear of God, very\n    religiously; and, as a certain father saith-\n  HOLOFERNES. Sir, tell not me of the father; I do fear colourable\n    colours. But to return to the verses: did they please you, Sir\n    Nathaniel?\n  NATHANIEL. Marvellous well for the pen.\n  HOLOFERNES. I do dine to-day at the father\'s of a certain pupil of\n    mine; where, if, before repast, it shall please you to gratify\n    the table with a grace, I will, on my privilege I have with the\n    parents of the foresaid child or pupil, undertake your ben  \n    venuto; where I will prove those verses to be very unlearned,\n    neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention. I beseech your\n    society.\n  NATHANIEL. And thank you too; for society, saith the text, is the\n    happiness of life.\n  HOLOFERNES. And certes, the text most infallibly concludes it.\n    [To DULL] Sir, I do invite you too; you shall not say me nay:\n    pauca verba. Away; the gentles are at their game, and we will to\n    our recreation.                                       Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nThe park\n\nEnter BEROWNE, with a paper his band, alone\n\n  BEROWNE. The King he is hunting the deer: I am coursing myself.\n    They have pitch\'d a toil: I am tolling in a pitch- pitch that\n    defiles. Defile! a foul word. Well, \'set thee down, sorrow!\' for\n    so they say the fool said, and so say I, and I am the fool. Well\n    proved, wit. By the Lord, this love is as mad as Ajax: it kills\n    sheep; it kills me- I a sheep. Well proved again o\' my side. I\n    will not love; if I do, hang me. I\' faith, I will not. O, but her\n    eye! By this light, but for her eye, I would not love her- yes,\n    for her two eyes. Well, I do nothing in the world but lie, and\n    lie in my throat. By heaven, I do love; and it hath taught me to\n    rhyme, and to be melancholy; and here is part of my rhyme, and\n    here my melancholy. Well, she hath one o\' my sonnets already; the\n    clown bore it, the fool sent it, and the lady hath it: sweet\n    clown, sweeter fool, sweetest lady! By the world, I would not\n    care a pin if the other three were in. Here comes one with a\n    paper; God give him grace to groan!\n                                            [Climbs into a tree]  \n\n                      Enter the KING, with a paper\n\n  KING. Ay me!\n  BEROWNE. Shot, by heaven! Proceed, sweet Cupid; thou hast thump\'d\n    him with thy bird-bolt under the left pap. In faith, secrets!\n  KING. [Reads]\n      \'So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not\n      To those fresh morning drops upon the rose,\n      As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote\n      The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows;\n      Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright\n      Through the transparent bosom of the deep,\n      As doth thy face through tears of mine give light.\n      Thou shin\'st in every tear that I do weep;\n      No drop but as a coach doth carry thee;\n      So ridest thou triumphing in my woe.\n      Do but behold the tears that swell in me,\n      And they thy glory through my grief will show.\n      But do not love thyself; then thou wilt keep  \n      My tears for glasses, and still make me weep.\n      O queen of queens! how far dost thou excel\n      No thought can think nor tongue of mortal tell.\'\n    How shall she know my griefs? I\'ll drop the paper-\n    Sweet leaves, shade folly. Who is he comes here?\n                                                   [Steps aside]\n\n                  Enter LONGAVILLE, with a paper\n\n    What, Longaville, and reading! Listen, car.\n  BEROWNE. Now, in thy likeness, one more fool appear!\n  LONGAVILLE. Ay me, I am forsworn!\n  BEROWNE. Why, he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers.\n  KING. In love, I hope; sweet fellowship in shame!\n  BEROWNE. One drunkard loves another of the name.\n  LONGAVILLE. Am I the first that have been perjur\'d so?\n  BEROWNE. I could put thee in comfort: not by two that I know;\n    Thou makest the triumviry, the corner-cap of society,\n    The shape of Love\'s Tyburn that hangs up simplicity.\n  LONGAVILLE. I fear these stubborn lines lack power to move.  \n    O sweet Maria, empress of my love!\n    These numbers will I tear, and write in prose.\n  BEROWNE. O, rhymes are guards on wanton Cupid\'s hose:\n    Disfigure not his slop.\n  LONGAVILLE. This same shall go.          [He reads the sonnet]\n      \'Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,\n      \'Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument,\n      Persuade my heart to this false perjury?\n      Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment.\n      A woman I forswore; but I will prove,\n      Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee:\n      My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love;\n      Thy grace being gain\'d cures all disgrace in me.\n      Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is;\n      Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine,\n      Exhal\'st this vapour-vow; in thee it is.\n      If broken, then it is no fault of mine;\n      If by me broke, what fool is not so wise\n      To lose an oath to win a paradise?\'\n  BEROWNE. This is the liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity,  \n    A green goose a goddess- pure, pure idolatry.\n    God amend us, God amend! We are much out o\' th\' way.\n\n                      Enter DUMAIN, with a paper\n\n  LONGAVILLE. By whom shall I send this?- Company! Stay.\n                                                   [Steps aside]\n  BEROWNE. \'All hid, all hid\'- an old infant play.\n    Like a demigod here sit I in the sky,\n    And wretched fools\' secrets heedfully o\'er-eye.\n    More sacks to the mill! O heavens, I have my wish!\n    Dumain transformed! Four woodcocks in a dish!\n  DUMAIN. O most divine Kate!\n  BEROWNE. O most profane coxcomb!\n  DUMAIN. By heaven, the wonder in a mortal eye!\n  BEROWNE. By earth, she is not, corporal: there you lie.\n  DUMAIN. Her amber hairs for foul hath amber quoted.\n  BEROWNE. An amber-colour\'d raven was well noted.\n  DUMAIN. As upright as the cedar.\n  BEROWNE. Stoop, I say;  \n    Her shoulder is with child.\n  DUMAIN. As fair as day.\n  BEROWNE. Ay, as some days; but then no sun must shine.\n  DUMAIN. O that I had my wish!\n  LONGAVILLE. And I had mine!\n  KING. And I mine too,.good Lord!\n  BEROWNE. Amen, so I had mine! Is not that a good word?\n  DUMAIN. I would forget her; but a fever she\n    Reigns in my blood, and will rememb\'red be.\n  BEROWNE. A fever in your blood? Why, then incision\n    Would let her out in saucers. Sweet misprision!\n  DUMAIN. Once more I\'ll read the ode that I have writ.\n  BEROWNE. Once more I\'ll mark how love can vary wit.\n  DUMAIN. [Reads]\n        \'On a day-alack the day!-\n        Love, whose month is ever May,\n        Spied a blossom passing fair\n        Playing in the wanton air.\n        Through the velvet leaves the wind,\n        All unseen, can passage find;  \n        That the lover, sick to death,\n        Wish\'d himself the heaven\'s breath.\n        "Air," quoth he "thy cheeks may blow;\n        Air, would I might triumph so!\n        But, alack, my hand is sworn\n        Ne\'er to pluck thee from thy thorn;\n        Vow, alack, for youth unmeet,\n        Youth so apt to pluck a sweet.\n        Do not call it sin in me\n        That I am forsworn for thee;\n        Thou for whom Jove would swear\n        Juno but an Ethiope were;\n        And deny himself for Jove,\n        Turning mortal for thy love."\'\n    This will I send; and something else more plain\n    That shall express my true love\'s fasting pain.\n    O, would the King, Berowne and Longaville,\n    Were lovers too! Ill, to example ill,\n    Would from my forehead wipe a perjur\'d note;\n    For none offend where all alike do dote.  \n  LONGAVILLE. [Advancing] Dumain, thy love is far from charity,\n    That in love\'s grief desir\'st society;\n    You may look pale, but I should blush, I know,\n    To be o\'erheard and taken napping so.\n  KING. [Advancing] Come, sir, you blush; as his, your case is such.\n    You chide at him, offending twice as much:\n    You do not love Maria! Longaville\n    Did never sonnet for her sake compile;\n    Nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart\n    His loving bosom, to keep down his heart.\n    I have been closely shrouded in this bush,\n    And mark\'d you both, and for you both did blush.\n    I heard your guilty rhymes, observ\'d your fashion,\n    Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion.\n    \'Ay me!\' says one. \'O Jove!\' the other cries.\n    One, her hairs were gold; crystal the other\'s eyes.\n    [To LONGAVILLE] You would for paradise break faith and troth;\n    [To Dumain] And Jove for your love would infringe an oath.\n    What will Berowne say when that he shall hear\n    Faith infringed which such zeal did swear?  \n    How will he scorn, how will he spend his wit!\n    How will he triumph, leap, and laugh at it!\n    For all the wealth that ever I did see,\n    I would not have him know so much by me.\n  BEROWNE. [Descending] Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy,\n    Ah, good my liege, I pray thee pardon me.\n    Good heart, what grace hast thou thus to reprove\n    These worms for loving, that art most in love?\n    Your eyes do make no coaches; in your tears\n    There is no certain princess that appears;\n    You\'ll not be perjur\'d; \'tis a hateful thing;\n    Tush, none but minstrels like of sonneting.\n    But are you not ashamed? Nay, are you not,\n    All three of you, to be thus much o\'ershot?\n    You found his mote; the King your mote did see;\n    But I a beam do find in each of three.\n    O, what a scene of fool\'ry have I seen,\n    Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow, and of teen!\n    O, me, with what strict patience have I sat,\n    To see a king transformed to a gnat!  \n    To see great Hercules whipping a gig,\n    And profound Solomon to tune a jig,\n    And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys,\n    And critic Timon laugh at idle toys!\n    Where lies thy grief, O, tell me, good Dumain?\n    And, gentle Longaville, where lies thy pain?\n    And where my liege\'s? All about the breast.\n    A caudle, ho!\n  KING. Too bitter is thy jest.\n    Are we betrayed thus to thy over-view?\n  BEROWNE. Not you by me, but I betrayed to you.\n    I that am honest, I that hold it sin\n    To break the vow I am engaged in;\n    I am betrayed by keeping company\n    With men like you, men of inconstancy.\n    When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme?\n    Or groan for Joan? or spend a minute\'s time\n    In pruning me? When shall you hear that I\n    Will praise a hand, a foot, a face, an eye,\n    A gait, a state, a brow, a breast, a waist,  \n    A leg, a limb-\n  KING. Soft! whither away so fast?\n    A true man or a thief that gallops so?\n  BEROWNE. I post from love; good lover, let me go.\n\n                 Enter JAQUENETTA and COSTARD\n\n  JAQUENETTA. God bless the King!\n  KING. What present hast thou there?\n  COSTARD. Some certain treason.\n  KING. What makes treason here?\n  COSTARD. Nay, it makes nothing, sir.\n  KING. If it mar nothing neither,\n    The treason and you go in peace away together.\n  JAQUENETTA. I beseech your Grace, let this letter be read;\n    Our person misdoubts it: \'twas treason, he said.\n  KING. Berowne, read it over.        [BEROWNE reads the letter]\n    Where hadst thou it?\n  JAQUENETTA. Of Costard.\n  KING. Where hadst thou it?  \n  COSTARD. Of Dun Adramadio, Dun Adramadio.\n                                      [BEROWNE tears the letter]\n  KING. How now! What is in you? Why dost thou tear it?\n  BEROWNE. A toy, my liege, a toy! Your Grace needs not fear it.\n  LONGAVILLE. It did move him to passion, and therefore let\'s hear\n     it.\n  DUMAIN. It is Berowne\'s writing, and here is his name.\n                                       [Gathering up the pieces]\n  BEROWNE. [ To COSTARD] Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, you were born\n      to do me shame.\n    Guilty, my lord, guilty! I confess, I confess.\n  KING. What?\n  BEROWNE. That you three fools lack\'d me fool to make up the mess;\n    He, he, and you- and you, my liege!- and I\n    Are pick-purses in love, and we deserve to die.\n    O, dismiss this audience, and I shall tell you more.\n    DUMAIN. Now the number is even.\n  BEROWNE. True, true, we are four.\n    Will these turtles be gone?\n  KING. Hence, sirs, away.  \n  COSTARD. Walk aside the true folk, and let the traitors stay.\n                                   Exeunt COSTARD and JAQUENETTA\n  BEROWNE. Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O, let us embrace!\n    As true we are as flesh and blood can be.\n    The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face;\n    Young blood doth not obey an old decree.\n    We cannot cross the cause why we were born,\n    Therefore of all hands must we be forsworn.\n  KING. What, did these rent lines show some love of thine?\n  BEROWNE. \'Did they?\' quoth you. Who sees the heavenly Rosaline\n    That, like a rude and savage man of Inde\n    At the first op\'ning of the gorgeous east,\n    Bows not his vassal head and, strucken blind,\n    Kisses the base ground with obedient breast?\n    What peremptory eagle-sighted eye\n    Dares look upon the heaven of her brow\n    That is not blinded by her majesty?\n  KING. What zeal, what fury hath inspir\'d thee now?\n    My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon;\n    She, an attending star, scarce seen a light.  \n  BEROWNE. My eyes are then no eyes, nor I Berowne.\n    O, but for my love, day would turn to night!\n    Of all complexions the cull\'d sovereignty\n    Do meet, as at a fair, in her fair cheek,\n    Where several worthies make one dignity,\n    Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek.\n    Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues-\n    Fie, painted rhetoric! O, she needs it not!\n    To things of sale a seller\'s praise belongs:\n    She passes praise; then praise too short doth blot.\n    A wither\'d hermit, five-score winters worn,\n    Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye.\n    Beauty doth varnish age, as if new-born,\n    And gives the crutch the cradle\'s infancy.\n    O, \'tis the sun that maketh all things shine!\n  KING. By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.\n  BEROWNE. Is ebony like her? O wood divine!\n    A wife of such wood were felicity.\n    O, who can give an oath? Where is a book?\n    That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack,  \n    If that she learn not of her eye to look.\n    No face is fair that is not full so black.\n  KING. O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,\n    The hue of dungeons, and the school of night;\n    And beauty\'s crest becomes the heavens well.\n  BEROWNE. Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.\n    O, if in black my lady\'s brows be deckt,\n    It mourns that painting and usurping hair\n    Should ravish doters with a false aspect;\n    And therefore is she born to make black fair.\n    Her favour turns the fashion of the days;\n    For native blood is counted painting now;\n    And therefore red that would avoid dispraise\n    Paints itself black, to imitate her brow.\n  DUMAIN. To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.\n  LONGAVILLE. And since her time are colliers counted bright.\n  KING. And Ethiopes of their sweet complexion crack.\n  DUMAIN. Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.\n  BEROWNE. Your mistresses dare never come in rain\n    For fear their colours should be wash\'d away.  \n  KING. \'Twere good yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain,\n    I\'ll find a fairer face not wash\'d to-day.\n  BEROWNE. I\'ll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.\n  KING. No devil will fright thee then so much as she.\n  DUMAIN. I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear.\n  LONGAVILLE. Look, here\'s thy love: my foot and her face see.\n                                              [Showing his shoe]\n  BEROWNE. O, if the streets were paved with thine eyes,\n    Her feet were much too dainty for such tread!\n  DUMAIN. O vile! Then, as she goes, what upward lies\n    The street should see as she walk\'d overhead.\n  KING. But what of this? Are we not all in love?\n  BEROWNE. Nothing so sure; and thereby all forsworn.\n  KING. Then leave this chat; and, good Berowne, now prove\n    Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn.\n  DUMAIN. Ay, marry, there; some flattery for this evil.\n  LONGAVILLE. O, some authority how to proceed;\n    Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the devil!\n  DUMAIN. Some salve for perjury.\n  BEROWNE. \'Tis more than need.  \n    Have at you, then, affection\'s men-at-arms.\n    Consider what you first did swear unto:\n    To fast, to study, and to see no woman-\n    Flat treason \'gainst the kingly state of youth.\n    Say, can you fast? Your stomachs are too young,\n    And abstinence engenders maladies.\n    And, where that you you have vow\'d to study, lords,\n    In that each of you have forsworn his book,\n    Can you still dream, and pore, and thereon look?\n    For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,\n    Have found the ground of study\'s excellence\n    Without the beauty of a woman\'s face?\n    From women\'s eyes this doctrine I derive:\n    They are the ground, the books, the academes,\n    From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.\n    Why, universal plodding poisons up\n    The nimble spirits in the arteries,\n    As motion and long-during action tires\n    The sinewy vigour of the traveller.\n    Now, for not looking on a woman\'s face,  \n    You have in that forsworn the use of eyes,\n    And study too, the causer of your vow;\n    For where is author in the world\n    Teaches such beauty as a woman\'s eye?\n    Learning is but an adjunct to ourself,\n    And where we are our learning likewise is;\n    Then when ourselves we see in ladies\' eyes,\n    With ourselves.\n    Do we not likewise see our learning there?\n    O, we have made a vow to study, lords,\n    And in that vow we have forsworn our books.\n    For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,\n    In leaden contemplation have found out\n    Such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes\n    Of beauty\'s tutors have enrich\'d you with?\n    Other slow arts entirely keep the brain;\n    And therefore, finding barren practisers,\n    Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil;\n    But love, first learned in a lady\'s eyes,\n    Lives not alone immured in the brain,  \n    But with the motion of all elements\n    Courses as swift as thought in every power,\n    And gives to every power a double power,\n    Above their functions and their offices.\n    It adds a precious seeing to the eye:\n    A lover\'s eyes will gaze an eagle blind.\n    A lover\'s ear will hear the lowest sound,\n    When the suspicious head of theft is stopp\'d.\n    Love\'s feeling is more soft and sensible\n    Than are the tender horns of cockled snails:\n    Love\'s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.\n    For valour, is not Love a Hercules,\n    Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?\n    Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical\n    As bright Apollo\'s lute, strung with his hair.\n    And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods\n    Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.\n    Never durst poet touch a pen to write\n    Until his ink were temp\'red with Love\'s sighs;\n    O, then his lines would ravish savage ears,  \n    And plant in tyrants mild humility.\n    From women\'s eyes this doctrine I derive.\n    They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;\n    They are the books, the arts, the academes,\n    That show, contain, and nourish, all the world,\n    Else none at all in aught proves excellent.\n    Then fools you were these women to forswear;\n    Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.\n    For wisdom\'s sake, a word that all men love;\n    Or for Love\'s sake, a word that loves all men;\n    Or for men\'s sake, the authors of these women;\n    Or women\'s sake, by whom we men are men-\n    Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,\n    Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.\n    It is religion to be thus forsworn;\n    For charity itself fulfils the law,\n    And who can sever love from charity?\n  KING. Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field!\n  BEROWNE. Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;\n    Pell-mell, down with them! be first advis\'d,  \n    In conflict, that you get the sun of them.\n  LONGAVILLE. Now to plain-dealing; lay these glozes by.\n    Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?\n  KING. And win them too; therefore let us devise\n    Some entertainment for them in their tents.\n  BEROWNE. First, from the park let us conduct them thither;\n    Then homeward every man attach the hand\n    Of his fair mistress. In the afternoon\n    We will with some strange pastime solace them,\n    Such as the shortness of the time can shape;\n    For revels, dances, masks, and merry hours,\n    Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.\n  KING. Away, away! No time shall be omitted\n    That will betime, and may by us be fitted.\n  BEROWNE. Allons! allons! Sow\'d cockle reap\'d no corn,\n    And justice always whirls in equal measure.\n    Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn;\n    If so, our copper buys no better treasure.            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nThe park\n\nEnter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL\n\n  HOLOFERNES. Satis quod sufficit.\n  NATHANIEL. I praise God for you, sir. Your reasons at dinner have\n    been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty\n    without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without\n    opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam\n    day with a companion of the King\'s who is intituled, nominated,\n    or called, Don Adriano de Armado.\n  HOLOFERNES. Novi hominem tanquam te. His humour is lofty, his\n    discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his\n    gait majestical and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and\n    thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd,\n    as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.\n  NATHANIEL. A most singular and choice epithet.\n                                      [Draws out his table-book]\n  HOLOFERNES. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than\n    the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes,\n    such insociable and point-devise companions; such rackers of  \n    orthography, as to speak \'dout\' fine, when he should say \'doubt\';\n    \'det\' when he should pronounce \'debt\'- d, e, b, t, not d, e, t.\n    He clepeth a calf \'cauf,\' half \'hauf\'; neighbour vocatur\n    \'nebour\'; \'neigh\' abbreviated \'ne.\' This is abhominable- which he\n    would call \'abbominable.\' It insinuateth me of insanie: ne\n    intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic.\n  NATHANIEL. Laus Deo, bone intelligo.\n  HOLOFERNES. \'Bone\'?- \'bone\' for \'bene.\' Priscian a little\n    scratch\'d; \'twill serve.\n\n                 Enter ARMADO, MOTH, and COSTARD\n\n  NATHANIEL. Videsne quis venit?\n  HOLOFERNES. Video, et gaudeo.\n  ARMADO. [To MOTH] Chirrah!\n  HOLOFERNES. Quare \'chirrah,\' not \'sirrah\'?\n  ARMADO. Men of peace, well encount\'red.\n  HOLOFERNES. Most military sir, salutation.\n  MOTH. [Aside to COSTARD] They have been at a great feast of\n    languages and stol\'n the scraps.  \n  COSTARD. O, they have liv\'d long on the alms-basket of words. I\n    marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou are\n    not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus; thou art\n    easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.\n  MOTH. Peace! the peal begins.\n  ARMADO. [To HOLOFERNES] Monsieur, are you not lett\'red?\n  MOTH. Yes, yes; he teaches boys the hornbook. What is a, b, spelt\n    backward with the horn on his head?\n  HOLOFERNES. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.\n  MOTH. Ba, most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning.\n  HOLOFERNES. Quis, quis, thou consonant?\n  MOTH. The third of the five vowels, if You repeat them; or the\n    fifth, if I.\n  HOLOFERNES. I will repeat them: a, e, I-\n  MOTH. The sheep; the other two concludes it: o, U.\n  ARMADO. Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch,\n    a quick venue of wit- snip, snap, quick and home. It rejoiceth my\n    intellect. True wit!\n  MOTH. Offer\'d by a child to an old man; which is wit-old.\n  HOLOFERNES. What is the figure? What is the figure?  \n  MOTH. Horns.\n  HOLOFERNES. Thou disputes like an infant; go whip thy gig.\n  MOTH. Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your\n    infamy circum circa- a gig of a cuckold\'s horn.\n  COSTARD. An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it\n    to buy ginger-bread. Hold, there is the very remuneration I had\n    of thy master, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of\n    discretion. O, an the heavens were so pleased that thou wert but\n    my bastard, what a joyful father wouldst thou make me! Go to;\n    thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers\' ends, as they say.\n  HOLOFERNES. O, I smell false Latin; \'dunghill\' for unguem.\n  ARMADO. Arts-man, preambulate; we will be singuled from the\n    barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the charge-house on the\n    top of the mountain?\n  HOLOFERNES. Or mons, the hill.\n  ARMADO. At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.\n  HOLOFERNES. I do, sans question.\n  ARMADO. Sir, it is the King\'s most sweet pleasure and affection to\n    congratulate the Princess at her pavilion, in the posteriors of\n    this day; which the rude multitude call the afternoon.  \n  HOLOFERNES. The posterior of the day, most generous sir, is liable,\n    congruent, and measurable, for the afternoon. The word is well\n    cull\'d, chose, sweet, and apt, I do assure you, sir, I do assure.\n  ARMADO. Sir, the King is a noble gentleman, and my familiar, I do\n    assure ye, very good friend. For what is inward between us, let\n    it pass. I do beseech thee, remember thy courtesy. I beseech\n    thee, apparel thy head. And among other importunate and most\n    serious designs, and of great import indeed, too- but let that\n    pass; for I must tell thee it will please his Grace, by the\n    world, sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder, and with his royal\n    finger thus dally with my excrement, with my mustachio; but,\n    sweet heart, let that pass. By the world, I recount no fable:\n    some certain special honours it pleaseth his greatness to impart\n    to Armado, a soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world;\n    but let that pass. The very all of all is- but, sweet heart, I do\n    implore secrecy- that the King would have me present the\n    Princess, sweet chuck, with some delightful ostentation, or show,\n    or pageant, or antic, or firework. Now, understanding that the\n    curate and your sweet self are good at such eruptions and sudden\n    breaking-out of mirth, as it were, I have acquainted you withal,  \n    to the end to crave your assistance.\n  HOLOFERNES. Sir, you shall present before her the Nine Worthies.\n    Sir Nathaniel, as concerning some entertainment of time, some\n    show in the posterior of this day, to be rend\'red by our\n    assistance, the King\'s command, and this most gallant,\n    illustrate, and learned gentleman, before the Princess- I say\n    none so fit as to present the Nine Worthies.\n  NATHANIEL. Where will you find men worthy enough to present them?\n  HOLOFERNES. Joshua, yourself; myself, Alexander; this gallant\n    gentleman, Judas Maccabaeus; this swain, because of his great\n    limb or joint, shall pass Pompey the Great; the page, Hercules.\n  ARMADO. Pardon, sir; error: he is not quantity enough for that\n    Worthy\'s thumb; he is not so big as the end of his club.\n  HOLOFERNES. Shall I have audience? He shall present Hercules in\n    minority: his enter and exit shall be strangling a snake; and I\n    will have an apology for that purpose.\n  MOTH. An excellent device! So, if any of the audience hiss, you may\n    cry \'Well done, Hercules; now thou crushest the snake!\' That is\n    the way to make an offence gracious, though few have the grace to\n    do it.  \n  ARMADO. For the rest of the Worthies?\n  HOLOFERNES. I will play three myself.\n  MOTH. Thrice-worthy gentleman!\n  ARMADO. Shall I tell you a thing?\n  HOLOFERNES. We attend.\n  ARMADO. We will have, if this fadge not, an antic. I beseech you,\n    follow.\n  HOLOFERNES. Via, goodman Dull! Thou has spoken no word all this\n    while.\n  DULL. Nor understood none neither, sir.\n  HOLOFERNES. Allons! we will employ thee.\n  DULL. I\'ll make one in a dance, or so, or I will play\n    On the tabor to the Worthies, and let them dance the hay.\n  HOLOFERNES. Most dull, honest Dull! To our sport, away.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe park\n\nEnter the PRINCESS, MARIA, KATHARINE, and ROSALINE\n\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart,\n    If fairings come thus plentifully in.\n    A lady wall\'d about with diamonds!\n    Look you what I have from the loving King.\n  ROSALINE. Madam, came nothing else along with that?\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Nothing but this! Yes, as much love in rhyme\n    As would be cramm\'d up in a sheet of paper\n    Writ o\' both sides the leaf, margent and all,\n    That he was fain to seal on Cupid\'s name.\n  ROSALINE. That was the way to make his godhead wax;\n    For he hath been five thousand year a boy.\n  KATHARINE. Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too.\n  ROSALINE. You\'ll ne\'er be friends with him: \'a kill\'d your sister.\n  KATHARINE. He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy;\n    And so she died. Had she been light, like you,\n    Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit,\n    She might \'a been a grandam ere she died.  \n    And so may you; for a light heart lives long.\n  ROSALINE. What\'s your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word?\n  KATHARINE. A light condition in a beauty dark.\n  ROSALINE. We need more light to find your meaning out.\n  KATHARINE. You\'ll mar the light by taking it in snuff;\n    Therefore I\'ll darkly end the argument.\n  ROSALINE. Look what you do, you do it still i\' th\' dark.\n  KATHARINE. So do not you; for you are a light wench.\n  ROSALINE. Indeed, I weigh not you; and therefore light.\n  KATHARINE. You weigh me not? O, that\'s you care not for me.\n  ROSALINE. Great reason; for \'past cure is still past care.\'\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Well bandied both; a set of wit well play\'d.\n    But, Rosaline, you have a favour too?\n    Who sent it? and what is it?\n  ROSALINE. I would you knew.\n    An if my face were but as fair as yours,\n    My favour were as great: be witness this.\n    Nay, I have verses too, I thank Berowne;\n    The numbers true, and, were the numb\'ring too,\n    I were the fairest goddess on the ground.  \n    I am compar\'d to twenty thousand fairs.\n    O, he hath drawn my picture in his letter!\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Anything like?\n  ROSALINE. Much in the letters; nothing in the praise.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Beauteous as ink- a good conclusion.\n  KATHARINE. Fair as a text B in a copy-book.\n  ROSALINE. Ware pencils, ho! Let me not die your debtor,\n    My red dominical, my golden letter:\n    O that your face were not so full of O\'s!\n  KATHARINE. A pox of that jest! and I beshrew all shrows!\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. But, Katharine, what was sent to you from fair\n    Dumain?\n  KATHARINE. Madam, this glove.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Did he not send you twain?\n  KATHARINE. Yes, madam; and, moreover,\n    Some thousand verses of a faithful lover;\n    A huge translation of hypocrisy,\n    Vilely compil\'d, profound simplicity.\n  MARIA. This, and these pearl, to me sent Longaville;\n    The letter is too long by half a mile.  \n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. I think no less. Dost thou not wish in heart\n    The chain were longer and the letter short?\n  MARIA. Ay, or I would these hands might never part.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. We are wise girls to mock our lovers so.\n  ROSALINE. They are worse fools to purchase mocking so.\n    That same Berowne I\'ll torture ere I go.\n    O that I knew he were but in by th\' week!\n    How I would make him fawn, and beg, and seek,\n    And wait the season, and observe the times,\n    And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rhymes,\n    And shape his service wholly to my hests,\n    And make him proud to make me proud that jests!\n    So pertaunt-like would I o\'ersway his state\n    That he should be my fool, and I his fate.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. None are so surely caught, when they are\n      catch\'d,\n    As wit turn\'d fool; folly, in wisdom hatch\'d,\n    Hath wisdom\'s warrant and the help of school,\n    And wit\'s own grace to grace a learned fool.\n  ROSALINE. The blood of youth burns not with such excess  \n    As gravity\'s revolt to wantonness.\n  MARIA. Folly in fools bears not so strong a note\n    As fool\'ry in the wise when wit doth dote,\n    Since all the power thereof it doth apply\n    To prove, by wit, worth in simplicity.\n\n                          Enter BOYET\n\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Here comes Boyet, and mirth is in his face.\n  BOYET. O, I am stabb\'d with laughter! Where\'s her Grace?\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Thy news, Boyet?\n  BOYET. Prepare, madam, prepare!\n    Arm, wenches, arm! Encounters mounted are\n    Against your peace. Love doth approach disguis\'d,\n    Armed in arguments; you\'ll be surpris\'d.\n    Muster your wits; stand in your own defence;\n    Or hide your heads like cowards, and fly hence.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Saint Dennis to Saint Cupid! What are they\n    That charge their breath against us? Say, scout, say.\n  BOYET. Under the cool shade of a sycamore  \n    I thought to close mine eyes some half an hour;\n    When, lo, to interrupt my purpos\'d rest,\n    Toward that shade I might behold addrest\n    The King and his companions; warily\n    I stole into a neighbour thicket by,\n    And overheard what you shall overhear-\n    That, by and by, disguis\'d they will be here.\n    Their herald is a pretty knavish page,\n    That well by heart hath conn\'d his embassage.\n    Action and accent did they teach him there:\n    \'Thus must thou speak\' and \'thus thy body bear,\'\n    And ever and anon they made a doubt\n    Presence majestical would put him out;\n    \'For\' quoth the King \'an angel shalt thou see;\n    Yet fear not thou, but speak audaciously.\'\n    The boy replied \'An angel is not evil;\n    I should have fear\'d her had she been a devil.\'\n    With that all laugh\'d, and clapp\'d him on the shoulder,\n    Making the bold wag by their praises bolder.\n    One rubb\'d his elbow, thus, and fleer\'d, and swore  \n    A better speech was never spoke before.\n    Another with his finger and his thumb\n    Cried \'Via! we will do\'t, come what will come.\'\n    The third he caper\'d, and cried \'All goes well.\'\n    The fourth turn\'d on the toe, and down he fell.\n    With that they all did tumble on the ground,\n    With such a zealous laughter, so profound,\n    That in this spleen ridiculous appears,\n    To check their folly, passion\'s solemn tears.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. But what, but what, come they to visit us?\n  BOYET. They do, they do, and are apparell\'d thus,\n    Like Muscovites or Russians, as I guess.\n    Their purpose is to parley, court, and dance;\n    And every one his love-feat will advance\n    Unto his several mistress; which they\'ll know\n    By favours several which they did bestow.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. And will they so? The gallants shall be task\'d,\n    For, ladies, we will every one be mask\'d;\n    And not a man of them shall have the grace,\n    Despite of suit, to see a lady\'s face.  \n    Hold, Rosaline, this favour thou shalt wear,\n    And then the King will court thee for his dear;\n    Hold, take thou this, my sweet, and give me thine,\n    So shall Berowne take me for Rosaline.\n    And change you favours too; so shall your loves\n    Woo contrary, deceiv\'d by these removes.\n  ROSALINE. Come on, then, wear the favours most in sight.\n  KATHARINE. But, in this changing, what is your intent?\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. The effect of my intent is to cross theirs.\n    They do it but in mocking merriment,\n    And mock for mock is only my intent.\n    Their several counsels they unbosom shall\n    To loves mistook, and so be mock\'d withal\n    Upon the next occasion that we meet\n    With visages display\'d to talk and greet.\n  ROSALINE. But shall we dance, if they desire us to\'t?\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. No, to the death, we will not move a foot,\n    Nor to their penn\'d speech render we no grace;\n    But while \'tis spoke each turn away her face.\n  BOYET. Why, that contempt will kill the speaker\'s heart,  \n    And quite divorce his memory from his part.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Therefore I do it; and I make no doubt\n    The rest will ne\'er come in, if he be out.\n    There\'s no such sport as sport by sport o\'erthrown,\n    To make theirs ours, and ours none but our own;\n    So shall we stay, mocking intended game,\n    And they well mock\'d depart away with shame.\n                                         [Trumpet sounds within]\n  BOYET. The trumpet sounds; be mask\'d; the maskers come.\n                                               [The LADIES mask]\n\n          Enter BLACKAMOORS music, MOTH as Prologue, the\n     KING and his LORDS as maskers, in the guise of Russians\n\n  MOTH. All hail, the richest heauties on the earth!\n  BOYET. Beauties no richer than rich taffeta.\n  MOTH. A holy parcel of the fairest dames\n                            [The LADIES turn their backs to him]\n    That ever turn\'d their- backs- to mortal views!\n  BEROWNE. Their eyes, villain, their eyes.  \n  MOTH. That ever turn\'d their eyes to mortal views!\n    Out-\n  BOYET. True; out indeed.\n  MOTH. Out of your favours, heavenly spirits, vouchsafe\n    Not to behold-\n  BEROWNE. Once to behold, rogue.\n  MOTH. Once to behold with your sun-beamed eyes- with your\n    sun-beamed eyes-\n  BOYET. They will not answer to that epithet;\n    You were best call it \'daughter-beamed eyes.\'\n  MOTH. They do not mark me, and that brings me out.\n  BEROWNE. Is this your perfectness? Be gone, you rogue.\n                                                       Exit MOTH\n  ROSALINE. What would these strangers? Know their minds, Boyet.\n    If they do speak our language, \'tis our will\n    That some plain man recount their purposes.\n    Know what they would.\n  BOYET. What would you with the Princess?\n  BEROWNE. Nothing but peace and gentle visitation.\n  ROSALINE. What would they, say they?  \n  BOYET. Nothing but peace and gentle visitation.\n  ROSALINE. Why, that they have; and bid them so be gone.\n  BOYET. She says you have it, and you may be gone.\n  KING. Say to her we have measur\'d many miles\n    To tread a measure with her on this grass.\n  BOYET. They say that they have measur\'d many a mile\n    To tread a measure with you on this grass.\n  ROSALINE. It is not so. Ask them how many inches\n    Is in one mile? If they have measured many,\n    The measure, then, of one is eas\'ly told.\n  BOYET. If to come hither you have measur\'d miles,\n    And many miles, the Princess bids you tell\n    How many inches doth fill up one mile.\n  BEROWNE. Tell her we measure them by weary steps.\n  BOYET. She hears herself.\n  ROSALINE. How many weary steps\n    Of many weary miles you have o\'ergone\n    Are numb\'red in the travel of one mile?\n  BEROWNE. We number nothing that we spend for you;\n    Our duty is so rich, so infinite,  \n    That we may do it still without accompt.\n    Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face,\n    That we, like savages, may worship it.\n  ROSALINE. My face is but a moon, and clouded too.\n  KING. Blessed are clouds, to do as such clouds do.\n    Vouchsafe, bright moon, and these thy stars, to shine,\n    Those clouds removed, upon our watery eyne.\n  ROSALINE. O vain petitioner! beg a greater matter;\n    Thou now requests but moonshine in the water.\n  KING. Then in our measure do but vouchsafe one change.\n    Thou bid\'st me beg; this begging is not strange.\n  ROSALINE. Play, music, then. Nay, you must do it soon.\n    Not yet? No dance! Thus change I like the moon.\n  KING. Will you not dance? How come you thus estranged?\n  ROSALINE. You took the moon at full; but now she\'s changed.\n  KING. Yet still she is the Moon, and I the Man.\n    The music plays; vouchsafe some motion to it.\n  ROSALINE. Our ears vouchsafe it.\n  KING. But your legs should do it.\n  ROSALINE. Since you are strangers, and come here by chance,  \n    We\'ll not be nice; take hands. We will not dance.\n  KING. Why take we hands then?\n  ROSALINE. Only to part friends.\n    Curtsy, sweet hearts; and so the measure ends.\n  KING. More measure of this measure; be not nice.\n  ROSALINE. We can afford no more at such a price.\n  KING. Price you yourselves. What buys your company?\n  ROSALINE. Your absence only.\n  KING. That can never be.\n  ROSALINE. Then cannot we be bought; and so adieu-\n    Twice to your visor and half once to you.\n  KING. If you deny to dance, let\'s hold more chat.\n  ROSALINE. In private then.\n  KING. I am best pleas\'d with that.       [They converse apart]\n  BEROWNE. White-handed mistress, one sweet word with thee.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Honey, and milk, and sugar; there is three.\n  BEROWNE. Nay, then, two treys, an if you grow so nice,\n    Metheglin, wort, and malmsey; well run dice!\n    There\'s half a dozen sweets.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Seventh sweet, adieu!  \n    Since you can cog, I\'ll play no more with you.\n  BEROWNE. One word in secret.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Let it not be sweet.\n  BEROWNE. Thou grievest my gall.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Gall! bitter.\n  BEROWNE. Therefore meet.                 [They converse apart]\n  DUMAIN. Will you vouchsafe with me to change a word?\n  MARIA. Name it.\n  DUMAIN. Fair lady-\n  MARIA. Say you so? Fair lord-\n    Take that for your fair lady.\n  DUMAIN. Please it you,\n    As much in private, and I\'ll bid adieu.\n                                           [They converse apart]\n  KATHARINE. What, was your vizard made without a tongue?\n  LONGAVILLE. I know the reason, lady, why you ask.\n  KATHARINE. O for your reason! Quickly, sir; I long.\n  LONGAVILLE. You have a double tongue within your mask,\n    And would afford my speechless vizard half.\n  KATHARINE. \'Veal\' quoth the Dutchman. Is not \'veal\' a calf?  \n  LONGAVILLE. A calf, fair lady!\n  KATHARINE. No, a fair lord calf.\n  LONGAVILLE. Let\'s part the word.\n  KATHARINE. No, I\'ll not be your half.\n    Take all and wean it; it may prove an ox.\n  LONGAVILLE. Look how you butt yourself in these sharp mocks!\n    Will you give horns, chaste lady? Do not so.\n  KATHARINE. Then die a calf, before your horns do grow.\n  LONGAVILLE. One word in private with you ere I die.\n  KATHARINE. Bleat softly, then; the butcher hears you cry.\n                                           [They converse apart]\n  BOYET. The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen\n    As is the razor\'s edge invisible,\n    Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen,\n    Above the sense of sense; so sensible\n    Seemeth their conference; their conceits have wings,\n    Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things.\n  ROSALINE. Not one word more, my maids; break off, break off.\n  BEROWNE. By heaven, all dry-beaten with pure scoff!\n  KING. Farewell, mad wenches; you have simple wits.  \n                             Exeunt KING, LORDS, and BLACKAMOORS\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Twenty adieus, my frozen Muscovits.\n    Are these the breed of wits so wondered at?\n  BOYET. Tapers they are, with your sweet breaths puff\'d out.\n  ROSALINE. Well-liking wits they have; gross, gross; fat, fat.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. O poverty in wit, kingly-poor flout!\n    Will they not, think you, hang themselves to-night?\n    Or ever but in vizards show their faces?\n    This pert Berowne was out of count\'nance quite.\n  ROSALINE. They were all in lamentable cases!\n    The King was weeping-ripe for a good word.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Berowne did swear himself out of all suit.\n  MARIA. Dumain was at my service, and his sword.\n    \'No point\' quoth I; my servant straight was mute.\n  KATHARINE. Lord Longaville said I came o\'er his heart;\n    And trow you what he call\'d me?\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Qualm, perhaps.\n  KATHARINE. Yes, in good faith.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Go, sickness as thou art!\n  ROSALINE. Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps.  \n    But will you hear? The King is my love sworn.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. And quick Berowne hath plighted faith to me.\n  KATHARINE. And Longaville was for my service born.\n  MARIA. Dumain is mine, as sure as bark on tree.\n  BOYET. Madam, and pretty mistresses, give ear:\n    Immediately they will again be here\n    In their own shapes; for it can never be\n    They will digest this harsh indignity.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Will they return?\n  BOYET. They will, they will, God knows,\n    And leap for joy, though they are lame with blows;\n    Therefore, change favours; and, when they repair,\n    Blow like sweet roses in this summer air.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. How blow? how blow? Speak to be understood.\n  BOYET. Fair ladies mask\'d are roses in their bud:\n    Dismask\'d, their damask sweet commixture shown,\n    Are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Avaunt, perplexity! What shall we do\n    If they return in their own shapes to woo?\n  ROSALINE. Good madam, if by me you\'ll be advis\'d,  \n    Let\'s mock them still, as well known as disguis\'d.\n    Let us complain to them what fools were here,\n    Disguis\'d like Muscovites, in shapeless gear;\n    And wonder what they were, and to what end\n    Their shallow shows and prologue vilely penn\'d,\n    And their rough carriage so ridiculous,\n    Should be presented at our tent to us.\n  BOYET. Ladies, withdraw; the gallants are at hand.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Whip to our tents, as roes run o\'er land.\n                 Exeunt PRINCESS, ROSALINE, KATHARINE, and MARIA\n\n         Re-enter the KING, BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN,\n                        in their proper habits\n\n  KING. Fair sir, God save you! Where\'s the Princess?\n  BOYET. Gone to her tent. Please it your Majesty\n    Command me any service to her thither?\n  KING. That she vouchsafe me audience for one word.\n  BOYET. I will; and so will she, I know, my lord.          Exit\n  BEROWNE. This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease,  \n    And utters it again when God doth please.\n    He is wit\'s pedlar, and retails his wares\n    At wakes, and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs;\n    And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,\n    Have not the grace to grace it with such show.\n    This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve;\n    Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve.\n    \'A can carve too, and lisp; why this is he\n    That kiss\'d his hand away in courtesy;\n    This is the ape of form, Monsieur the Nice,\n    That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice\n    In honourable terms; nay, he can sing\n    A mean most meanly; and in ushering,\n    Mend him who can. The ladies call him sweet;\n    The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet.\n    This is the flow\'r that smiles on every one,\n    To show his teeth as white as whales-bone;\n    And consciences that will not die in debt\n    Pay him the due of \'honey-tongued Boyet.\'\n  KING. A blister on his sweet tongue, with my heart,  \n    That put Armado\'s page out of his part!\n\n        Re-enter the PRINCESS, ushered by BOYET; ROSALINE,\n                      MARIA, and KATHARINE\n\n  BEROWNE. See where it comes! Behaviour, what wert thou\n    Till this man show\'d thee? And what art thou now?\n  KING. All hail, sweet madam, and fair time of day!\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. \'Fair\' in \'all hail\' is foul, as I conceive.\n  KING. Construe my speeches better, if you may.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Then wish me better; I will give you leave.\n  KING. We came to visit you, and purpose now\n    To lead you to our court; vouchsafe it then.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. This field shall hold me, and so hold your vow:\n    Nor God, nor I, delights in perjur\'d men.\n  KING. Rebuke me not for that which you provoke.\n    The virtue of your eye must break my oath.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. You nickname virtue: vice you should have\n      spoke;\n    For virtue\'s office never breaks men\'s troth.  \n    Now by my maiden honour, yet as pure\n    As the unsullied lily, I protest,\n    A world of torments though I should endure,\n    I would not yield to be your house\'s guest;\n    So much I hate a breaking cause to be\n    Of heavenly oaths, vowed with integrity.\n  KING. O, you have liv\'d in desolation here,\n    Unseen, unvisited, much to our shame.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Not so, my lord; it is not so, I swear;\n    We have had pastimes here, and pleasant game;\n    A mess of Russians left us but of late.\n  KING. How, madam! Russians!\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Ay, in truth, my lord;\n    Trim gallants, full of courtship and of state.\n  ROSALINE. Madam, speak true. It is not so, my lord.\n    My lady, to the manner of the days,\n    In courtesy gives undeserving praise.\n    We four indeed confronted were with four\n    In Russian habit; here they stayed an hour\n    And talk\'d apace; and in that hour, my lord,  \n    They did not bless us with one happy word.\n    I dare not call them fools; but this I think,\n    When they are thirsty, fools would fain have drink.\n  BEROWNE. This jest is dry to me. Fair gentle sweet,\n    Your wit makes wise things foolish; when we greet,\n    With eyes best seeing, heaven\'s fiery eye,\n    By light we lose light; your capacity\n    Is of that nature that to your huge store\n    Wise things seem foolish and rich things but poor.\n  ROSALINE. This proves you wise and rich, for in my eye-\n  BEROWNE. I am a fool, and full of poverty.\n  ROSALINE. But that you take what doth to you belong,\n    It were a fault to snatch words from my tongue.\n  BEROWNE. O, I am yours, and all that I possess.\n  ROSALINE. All the fool mine?\n  BEROWNE. I cannot give you less.\n  ROSALINE. Which of the vizards was it that you wore?\n  BEROWNE. Where? when? what vizard? Why demand you this?\n  ROSALINE. There, then, that vizard; that superfluous case\n    That hid the worse and show\'d the better face.  \n  KING. We were descried; they\'ll mock us now downright.\n  DUMAIN. Let us confess, and turn it to a jest.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Amaz\'d, my lord? Why looks your Highness sad?\n  ROSALINE. Help, hold his brows! he\'ll swoon! Why look you pale?\n    Sea-sick, I think, coming from Muscovy.\n  BEROWNE. Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury.\n    Can any face of brass hold longer out?\n    Here stand I, lady- dart thy skill at me,\n    Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout,\n    Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance,\n    Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit;\n    And I will wish thee never more to dance,\n    Nor never more in Russian habit wait.\n    O, never will I trust to speeches penn\'d,\n    Nor to the motion of a school-boy\'s tongue,\n    Nor never come in vizard to my friend,\n    Nor woo in rhyme, like a blind harper\'s song.\n    Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,\n    Three-pil\'d hyperboles, spruce affectation,\n    Figures pedantical- these summer-flies  \n    Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.\n    I do forswear them; and I here protest,\n    By this white glove- how white the hand, God knows!-\n    Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express\'d\n    In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes.\n    And, to begin, wench- so God help me, law!-\n    My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw.\n  ROSALINE. Sans \'sans,\' I pray you.\n  BEROWNE. Yet I have a trick\n    Of the old rage; bear with me, I am sick;\n    I\'ll leave it by degrees. Soft, let us see-\n    Write \'Lord have mercy on us\' on those three;\n    They are infected; in their hearts it lies;\n    They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes.\n    These lords are visited; you are not free,\n    For the Lord\'s tokens on you do I see.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. No, they are free that gave these tokens to us.\n  BEROWNE. Our states are forfeit; seek not to undo us.\n  ROSALINE. It is not so; for how can this be true,\n    That you stand forfeit, being those that sue?  \n  BEROWNE. Peace; for I will not have to do with you.\n  ROSALINE. Nor shall not, if I do as I intend.\n  BEROWNE. Speak for yourselves; my wit is at an end.\n  KING. Teach us, sweet madam, for our rude transgression\n    Some fair excuse.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. The fairest is confession.\n    Were not you here but even now, disguis\'d?\n  KING. Madam, I was.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. And were you well advis\'d?\n  KING. I was, fair madam.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. When you then were here,\n    What did you whisper in your lady\'s ear?\n  KING. That more than all the world I did respect her.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. When she shall challenge this, you will reject\n    her.\n  KING. Upon mine honour, no.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Peace, peace, forbear;\n    Your oath once broke, you force not to forswear.\n  KING. Despise me when I break this oath of mine.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. I will; and therefore keep it. Rosaline,  \n    What did the Russian whisper in your ear?\n  ROSALINE. Madam, he swore that he did hold me dear\n    As precious eyesight, and did value me\n    Above this world; adding thereto, moreover,\n    That he would wed me, or else die my lover.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. God give thee joy of him! The noble lord\n     Most honourably doth uphold his word.\n  KING. What mean you, madam? By my life, my troth,\n    I never swore this lady such an oath.\n  ROSALINE. By heaven, you did; and, to confirm it plain,\n    You gave me this; but take it, sir, again.\n  KING. My faith and this the Princess I did give;\n    I knew her by this jewel on her sleeve.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Pardon me, sir, this jewel did she wear;\n    And Lord Berowne, I thank him, is my dear.\n    What, will you have me, or your pearl again?\n BEROWNE. Neither of either; I remit both twain.\n    I see the trick on\'t: here was a consent,\n    Knowing aforehand of our merriment,\n    To dash it like a Christmas comedy.\n    Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany,  \n    Some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick,\n    That smiles his cheek in years and knows the trick\n    To make my lady laugh when she\'s dispos\'d,\n    Told our intents before; which once disclos\'d,\n    The ladies did change favours; and then we,\n    Following the signs, woo\'d but the sign of she.\n    Now, to our perjury to add more terror,\n    We are again forsworn in will and error.\n    Much upon this it is; [To BOYET] and might not you\n    Forestall our sport, to make us thus untrue?\n    Do not you know my lady\'s foot by th\' squier,\n    And laugh upon the apple of her eye?\n    And stand between her back, sir, and the fire,\n    Holding a trencher, jesting merrily?\n    You put our page out. Go, you are allow\'d;\n    Die when you will, a smock shall be your shroud.\n    You leer upon me, do you? There\'s an eye\n    Wounds like a leaden sword.\n  BOYET. Full merrily\n    Hath this brave manage, this career, been run.  \n  BEROWNE. Lo, he is tilting straight! Peace; I have done.\n\n                          Enter COSTARD\n\n    Welcome, pure wit! Thou part\'st a fair fray.\n  COSTARD. O Lord, sir, they would know\n     Whether the three Worthies shall come in or no?\n  BEROWNE. What, are there but three?\n  COSTARD. No, sir; but it is vara fine,\n    For every one pursents three.\n  BEROWNE. And three times thrice is nine.\n  COSTARD. Not so, sir; under correction, sir,\n    I hope it is not so.\n    You cannot beg us, sir, I can assure you, sir; we know what we\n      know;\n    I hope, sir, three times thrice, sir-\n  BEROWNE. Is not nine.\n  COSTARD. Under correction, sir, we know whereuntil it doth amount.\n  BEROWNE. By Jove, I always took three threes for nine.\n  COSTARD. O Lord, sir, it were pity you should get your living by  \n    reck\'ning, sir.\n  BEROWNE. How much is it?\n  COSTARD. O Lord, sir, the parties themselves, the actors, sir, will\n    show whereuntil it doth amount. For mine own part, I am, as they\n    say, but to parfect one man in one poor man, Pompion the Great,\n    sir.\n  BEROWNE. Art thou one of the Worthies?\n  COSTARD. It pleased them to think me worthy of Pompey the Great;\n    for mine own part, I know not the degree of the Worthy; but I am\n    to stand for him.\n  BEROWNE. Go, bid them prepare.\n  COSTARD. We will turn it finely off, sir; we will take some care.\n                                                    Exit COSTARD\n  KING. Berowne, they will shame us; let them not approach.\n  BEROWNE. We are shame-proof, my lord, and \'tis some policy\n    To have one show worse than the King\'s and his company.\n  KING. I say they shall not come.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Nay, my good lord, let me o\'errule you now.\n    That sport best pleases that doth least know how;\n    Where zeal strives to content, and the contents  \n    Dies in the zeal of that which it presents.\n    Their form confounded makes most form in mirth,\n    When great things labouring perish in their birth.\n  BEROWNE. A right description of our sport, my lord.\n\n                        Enter ARMADO\n\n  ARMADO. Anointed, I implore so much expense of thy royal sweet\n    breath as will utter a brace of words.\n           [Converses apart with the KING, and delivers a paper]\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Doth this man serve God?\n  BEROWNE. Why ask you?\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. \'A speaks not like a man of God his making.\n  ARMADO. That is all one, my fair, sweet, honey monarch; for, I\n    protest, the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical; too too vain,\n    too too vain; but we will put it, as they say, to fortuna de la\n    guerra. I wish you the peace of mind, most royal couplement!\n                                                     Exit ARMADO\n  KING. Here is like to be a good presence of Worthies. He presents\n    Hector of Troy; the swain, Pompey the Great; the parish curate,  \n    Alexander; Arinado\'s page, Hercules; the pedant, Judas\n    Maccabaeus.\n    And if these four Worthies in their first show thrive,\n    These four will change habits and present the other five.\n  BEROWNE. There is five in the first show.\n  KING. You are deceived, \'tis not so.\n  BEROWNE. The pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool, and\n    the boy:\n    Abate throw at novum, and the whole world again\n    Cannot pick out five such, take each one in his vein.\n  KING. The ship is under sail, and here she comes amain.\n\n                   Enter COSTARD, armed for POMPEY\n\n  COSTARD. I Pompey am-\n  BEROWNE. You lie, you are not he.\n  COSTARD. I Pompey am-\n  BOYET. With libbard\'s head on knee.\n  BEROWNE. Well said, old mocker; I must needs be friends with thee.\n  COSTARD. I Pompey am, Pompey surnam\'d the Big-  \n   DUMAIN. The Great.\n  COSTARD. It is Great, sir.\n    Pompey surnam\'d the Great,\n    That oft in field, with targe and shield, did make my foe to\n      sweat;\n    And travelling along this coast, I bere am come by chance,\n    And lay my arms before the legs of this sweet lass of France.\n\n    If your ladyship would say \'Thanks, Pompey,\' I had done.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Great thanks, great Pompey.\n  COSTARD. \'Tis not so much worth; but I hope I was perfect.\n    I made a little fault in Great.\n  BEROWNE. My hat to a halfpenny, Pompey proves the best Worthy.\n\n                 Enter SIR NATHANIEL, for ALEXANDER\n\n  NATHANIEL. When in the world I liv\'d, I was the world\'s commander;\n    By east, west, north, and south, I spread my conquering might.\n    My scutcheon plain declares that I am Alisander-\n  BOYET. Your nose says, no, you are not; for it stands to right.  \n  BEROWNE. Your nose smells \'no\' in this, most tender-smelling\n    knight.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. The conqueror is dismay\'d. Proceed, good\n    Alexander.\n  NATHANIEL. When in the world I liv\'d, I was the world\'s commander-\n  BOYET. Most true, \'tis right, you were so, Alisander.\n  BEROWNE. Pompey the Great!\n  COSTARD. Your servant, and Costard.\n  BEROWNE. Take away the conqueror, take away Alisander.\n  COSTARD. [To Sir Nathaniel] O, Sir, you have overthrown Alisander\n    the conqueror! You will be scrap\'d out of the painted cloth for\n    this. Your lion, that holds his poleaxe sitting on a close-stool,\n    will be given to Ajax. He will be the ninth Worthy. A conqueror\n    and afeard to speak! Run away for shame, Alisander.\n    [Sir Nathaniel retires] There, an\'t shall please you, a foolish\n    mild man; an honest man, look you, and soon dash\'d. He is a\n    marvellous good neighbour, faith, and a very good bowler; but for\n    Alisander- alas! you see how \'tis- a little o\'erparted. But there\n    are Worthies a-coming will speak their mind in some other sort.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Stand aside, good Pompey.  \n\n         Enter HOLOFERNES, for JUDAS; and MOTH, for HERCULES\n\n  HOLOFERNES. Great Hercules is presented by this imp,\n    Whose club kill\'d Cerberus, that three-headed canus;\n    And when be was a babe, a child, a shrimp,\n    Thus did he strangle serpents in his manus.\n    Quoniam he seemeth in minority,\n    Ergo I come with this apology.\n    Keep some state in thy exit, and vanish.      [MOTH retires]\n    Judas I am-\n  DUMAIN. A Judas!\n  HOLOFERNES. Not Iscariot, sir.\n    Judas I am, ycliped Maccabaeus.\n  DUMAIN. Judas Maccabaeus clipt is plain Judas.\n  BEROWNE. A kissing traitor. How art thou prov\'d Judas?\n  HOLOFERNES. Judas I am-\n  DUMAIN. The more shame for you, Judas!\n  HOLOFERNES. What mean you, sir?\n  BOYET. To make Judas hang himself.  \n  HOLOFERNES. Begin, sir; you are my elder.\n  BEROWNE. Well followed: Judas was hanged on an elder.\n  HOLOFERNES. I will not be put out of countenance.\n  BEROWNE. Because thou hast no face.\n  HOLOFERNES. What is this?\n  BOYET. A cittern-head.\n  DUMAIN. The head of a bodkin.\n  BEROWNE. A death\'s face in a ring.\n  LONGAVILLE. The face of an old Roman coin, scarce seen.\n  BOYET. The pommel of Coesar\'s falchion.\n  DUMAIN. The carv\'d-bone face on a flask.\n  BEROWNE. Saint George\'s half-cheek in a brooch.\n  DUMAIN. Ay, and in a brooch of lead.\n  BEROWNE. Ay, and worn in the cap of a tooth-drawer. And now,\n    forward; for we have put thee in countenance.\n  HOLOFERNES. You have put me out of countenance.\n  BEROWNE. False: we have given thee faces.\n  HOLOFERNES. But you have outfac\'d them all.\n  BEROWNE. An thou wert a lion we would do so.\n  BOYET. Therefore, as he is an ass, let him go.  \n    And so adieu, sweet Jude! Nay, why dost thou stay?\n  DUMAIN. For the latter end of his name.\n  BEROWNE. For the ass to the Jude; give it him- Jud-as, away.\n  HOLOFERNES. This is not generous, not gentle, not humble.\n  BOYET. A light for Monsieur Judas! It grows dark, he may stumble.\n                                            [HOLOFERNES retires]\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Alas, poor Maccabaeus, how hath he been baited!\n\n                   Enter ARMADO, for HECTOR\n\n  BEROWNE. Hide thy head, Achilles; here comes Hector in arms.\n  DUMAIN. Though my mocks come home by me, I will now be merry.\n  KING. Hector was but a Troyan in respect of this.\n  BOYET. But is this Hector?\n  DUMAIN. I think Hector was not so clean-timber\'d.\n  LONGAVILLE. His leg is too big for Hector\'s.\n  DUMAIN. More calf, certain.\n  BOYET. No; he is best indued in the small.\n  BEROWNE. This cannot be Hector.\n  DUMAIN. He\'s a god or a painter, for he makes faces.  \n  ARMADO. The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty,\n    Gave Hector a gift-\n  DUMAIN. A gilt nutmeg.\n  BEROWNE. A lemon.\n  LONGAVILLE. Stuck with cloves.\n  DUMAIN. No, cloven.\n  ARMADO. Peace!\n    The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty,\n    Gave Hector a gift, the heir of Ilion;\n    A man so breathed that certain he would fight ye,\n    From morn till night out of his pavilion.\n    I am that flower-\n  DUMAIN. That mint.\n  LONGAVILLE. That columbine.\n  ARMADO. Sweet Lord Longaville, rein thy tongue.\n  LONGAVILLE. I must rather give it the rein, for it runs against\n    Hector.\n  DUMAIN. Ay, and Hector\'s a greyhound.\n  ARMADO. The sweet war-man is dead and rotten; sweet chucks, beat\n    not the bones of the buried; when he breathed, he was a man. But  \n    I will forward with my device. [To the PRINCESS] Sweet royalty,\n    bestow on me the sense of hearing.\n\n          [BEROWNE steps forth, and speaks to COSTARD]\n\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Speak, brave Hector; we are much delighted.\n  ARMADO. I do adore thy sweet Grace\'s slipper.\n  BOYET. [Aside to DUMAIN] Loves her by the foot.\n  DUMAIN. [Aside to BOYET] He may not by the yard.\n  ARMADO. This Hector far surmounted Hannibal-\n  COSTARD. The party is gone, fellow Hector, she is gone; she is two\n    months on her way.\n  ARMADO. What meanest thou?\n  COSTARD. Faith, unless you play the honest Troyan, the poor wench\n    is cast away. She\'s quick; the child brags in her belly already;\n    \'tis yours.\n  ARMADO. Dost thou infamonize me among potentates? Thou shalt die.\n  COSTARD. Then shall Hector be whipt for Jaquenetta that is quick by\n    him, and hang\'d for Pompey that is dead by him.\n  DUMAIN. Most rare Pompey!  \n  BOYET. Renowned Pompey!\n  BEROWNE. Greater than Great! Great, great, great Pompey! Pompey the\n    Huge!\n  DUMAIN. Hector trembles.\n  BEROWNE. Pompey is moved. More Ates, more Ates! Stir them on! stir\n    them on!\n  DUMAIN. Hector will challenge him.\n  BEROWNE. Ay, if \'a have no more man\'s blood in his belly than will\n    sup a flea.\n  ARMADO. By the North Pole, I do challenge thee.\n  COSTARD. I will not fight with a pole, like a Northern man; I\'ll\n    slash; I\'ll do it by the sword. I bepray you, let me borrow my\n    arms again.\n  DUMAIN. Room for the incensed Worthies!\n  COSTARD. I\'ll do it in my shirt.\n  DUMAIN. Most resolute Pompey!\n  MOTH. Master, let me take you a buttonhole lower. Do you not see\n    Pompey is uncasing for the combat? What mean you? You will lose\n    your reputation.\n  ARMADO. Gentlemen and soldiers, pardon me; I will not combat in my  \n    shirt.\n  DUMAIN. You may not deny it: Pompey hath made the challenge.\n  ARMADO. Sweet bloods, I both may and will.\n  BEROWNE. What reason have you for \'t?\n  ARMADO. The naked truth of it is: I have no shirt; I go woolward\n    for penance.\n  BOYET. True, and it was enjoined him in Rome for want of linen;\n    since when, I\'ll be sworn, he wore none but a dishclout of\n    Jaquenetta\'s, and that \'a wears next his heart for a favour.\n\n                 Enter as messenger, MONSIEUR MARCADE\n\n  MARCADE. God save you, madam!\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Welcome, Marcade;\n    But that thou interruptest our merriment.\n  MARCADE. I am sorry, madam; for the news I bring\n    Is heavy in my tongue. The King your father-\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Dead, for my life!\n  MARCADE. Even so; my tale is told.\n  BEROWNE. WOrthies away; the scene begins to cloud.  \n  ARMADO. For mine own part, I breathe free breath. I have seen the\n    day of wrong through the little hole of discretion, and I will\n    right myself like a soldier.                 Exeunt WORTHIES\n  KING. How fares your Majesty?\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Boyet, prepare; I will away to-night.\n  KING. Madam, not so; I do beseech you stay.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Prepare, I say. I thank you, gracious lords,\n    For all your fair endeavours, and entreat,\n    Out of a new-sad soul, that you vouchsafe\n    In your rich wisdom to excuse or hide\n    The liberal opposition of our spirits,\n    If over-boldly we have borne ourselves\n    In the converse of breath- your gentleness\n    Was guilty of it. Farewell, worthy lord.\n    A heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue.\n    Excuse me so, coming too short of thanks\n    For my great suit so easily obtain\'d.\n  KING. The extreme parts of time extremely forms\n    All causes to the purpose of his speed;\n    And often at his very loose decides  \n    That which long process could not arbitrate.\n    And though the mourning brow of progeny\n    Forbid the smiling courtesy of love\n    The holy suit which fain it would convince,\n    Yet, since love\'s argument was first on foot,\n    Let not the cloud of sorrow justle it\n    From what it purpos\'d; since to wail friends lost\n    Is not by much so wholesome-profitable\n    As to rejoice at friends but newly found.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. I understand you not; my griefs are double.\n  BEROWNE. Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief;\n    And by these badges understand the King.\n    For your fair sakes have we neglected time,\n    Play\'d foul play with our oaths; your beauty, ladies,\n    Hath much deformed us, fashioning our humours\n    Even to the opposed end of our intents;\n    And what in us hath seem\'d ridiculous,\n    As love is full of unbefitting strains,\n    All wanton as a child, skipping and vain;\n    Form\'d by the eye and therefore, like the eye,  \n    Full of strange shapes, of habits, and of forms,\n    Varying in subjects as the eye doth roll\n    To every varied object in his glance;\n    Which parti-coated presence of loose love\n    Put on by us, if in your heavenly eyes\n    Have misbecom\'d our oaths and gravities,\n    Those heavenly eyes that look into these faults\n    Suggested us to make. Therefore, ladies,\n    Our love being yours, the error that love makes\n    Is likewise yours. We to ourselves prove false,\n    By being once false for ever to be true\n    To those that make us both- fair ladies, you;\n    And even that falsehood, in itself a sin,\n    Thus purifies itself and turns to grace.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. We have receiv\'d your letters, full of love;\n    Your favours, the ambassadors of love;\n    And, in our maiden council, rated them\n    At courtship, pleasant jest, and courtesy,\n    As bombast and as lining to the time;\n    But more devout than this in our respects  \n    Have we not been; and therefore met your loves\n    In their own fashion, like a merriment.\n  DUMAIN. Our letters, madam, show\'d much more than jest.\n  LONGAVILLE. So did our looks.\n  ROSALINE. We did not quote them so.\n  KING. Now, at the latest minute of the hour,\n    Grant us your loves.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. A time, methinks, too short\n    To make a world-without-end bargain in.\n    No, no, my lord, your Grace is perjur\'d much,\n    Full of dear guiltiness; and therefore this,\n    If for my love, as there is no such cause,\n    You will do aught- this shall you do for me:\n    Your oath I will not trust; but go with speed\n    To some forlorn and naked hermitage,\n    Remote from all the pleasures of the world;\n    There stay until the twelve celestial signs\n    Have brought about the annual reckoning.\n    If this austere insociable life\n    Change not your offer made in heat of blood,  \n    If frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin weeds,\n    Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,\n    But that it bear this trial, and last love,\n    Then, at the expiration of the year,\n    Come, challenge me, challenge me by these deserts;\n    And, by this virgin palm now kissing thine,\n    I will be thine; and, till that instant, shut\n    My woeful self up in a mournful house,\n    Raining the tears of lamentation\n    For the remembrance of my father\'s death.\n    If this thou do deny, let our hands part,\n    Neither intitled in the other\'s heart.\n  KING. If this, or more than this, I would deny,\n    To flatter up these powers of mine with rest,\n    The sudden hand of death close up mine eye!\n    Hence hermit then, my heart is in thy breast.\n  BEROWNE. And what to me, my love? and what to me?\n  ROSALINE. You must he purged too, your sins are rack\'d;\n    You are attaint with faults and perjury;\n    Therefore, if you my favour mean to get,  \n    A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest,\n    But seek the weary beds of people sick.\n  DUMAIN. But what to me, my love? but what to me?\n    A wife?\n  KATHARINE. A beard, fair health, and honesty;\n    With threefold love I wish you all these three.\n  DUMAIN. O, shall I say I thank you, gentle wife?\n  KATHARINE. No so, my lord; a twelvemonth and a day\n    I\'ll mark no words that smooth-fac\'d wooers say.\n    Come when the King doth to my lady come;\n    Then, if I have much love, I\'ll give you some.\n  DUMAIN. I\'ll serve thee true and faithfully till then.\n  KATHARINE. Yet swear not, lest ye be forsworn again.\n  LONGAVILLE. What says Maria?\n  MARIA. At the twelvemonth\'s end\n    I\'ll change my black gown for a faithful friend.\n  LONGAVILLE. I\'ll stay with patience; but the time is long.\n  MARIA. The liker you; few taller are so young.\n  BEROWNE. Studies my lady? Mistress, look on me;\n    Behold the window of my heart, mine eye,  \n    What humble suit attends thy answer there.\n    Impose some service on me for thy love.\n  ROSALINE. Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Berowne,\n    Before I saw you; and the world\'s large tongue\n    Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks,\n    Full of comparisons and wounding flouts,\n    Which you on all estates will execute\n    That lie within the mercy of your wit.\n    To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain,\n    And therewithal to win me, if you please,\n    Without the which I am not to be won,\n    You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day\n    Visit the speechless sick, and still converse\n    With groaning wretches; and your task shall be,\n    With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,\n    To enforce the pained impotent to smile.\n  BEROWNE. To move wild laughter in the throat of death?\n    It cannot be; it is impossible;\n    Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.\n  ROSALINE. Why, that\'s the way to choke a gibing spirit,  \n    Whose influence is begot of that loose grace\n    Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools.\n    A jest\'s prosperity lies in the ear\n    Of him that hears it, never in the tongue\n    Of him that makes it; then, if sickly ears,\n    Deaf\'d with the clamours of their own dear groans,\n    Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,\n    And I will have you and that fault withal.\n    But if they will not, throw away that spirit,\n    And I shall find you empty of that fault,\n    Right joyful of your reformation.\n  BEROWNE. A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall,\n    I\'ll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. [ To the King] Ay, sweet my lord, and so I take\n    my leave.\n  KING. No, madam; we will bring you on your way.\n  BEROWNE. Our wooing doth not end like an old play:\n    Jack hath not Jill. These ladies\' courtesy\n    Might well have made our sport a comedy.\n  KING. Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth an\' a day,  \n    And then \'twill end.\n  BEROWNE. That\'s too long for a play.\n\n                          Re-enter ARMADO\n\n  ARMADO. Sweet Majesty, vouchsafe me-\n  PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Was not that not Hector?\n  DUMAIN. The worthy knight of Troy.\n  ARMADO. I will kiss thy royal finger, and take leave. I am a\n    votary: I have vow\'d to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her\n    sweet love three year. But, most esteemed greatness, will you\n    hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled in\n    praise of the Owl and the Cuckoo? It should have followed in the\n    end of our show.\n  KING. Call them forth quickly; we will do so.\n  ARMADO. Holla! approach.\n\n                            Enter All\n\n    This side is Hiems, Winter; this Ver, the Spring- the one  \n    maintained by the Owl, th\' other by the Cuckoo. Ver, begin.\n\n                      SPRING\n         When daisies pied and violets blue\n         And lady-smocks all silver-white\n         And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue\n         Do paint the meadows with delight,\n         The cuckoo then on every tree\n         Mocks married men, for thus sings he:\n              \'Cuckoo;\n         Cuckoo, cuckoo\'- O word of fear,\n         Unpleasing to a married ear!\n\n         When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,\n         And merry larks are ploughmen\'s clocks;\n         When turtles tread, and rooks and daws,\n         And maidens bleach their summer smocks;\n         The cuckoo then on every tree\n         Mocks married men, for thus sings he:\n              \'Cuckoo;  \n         Cuckoo, cuckoo\'- O word of fear,\n         Unpleasing to a married ear!\n\n\n                    WINTER\n\n         When icicles hang by the wall,\n         And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,\n         And Tom bears logs into the hall,\n         And milk comes frozen home in pail,\n         When blood is nipp\'d, and ways be foul,\n         Then nightly sings the staring owl:\n              \'Tu-who;\n         Tu-whit, Tu-who\'- A merry note,\n         While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.\n\n         When all aloud the wind doth blow,\n         And coughing drowns the parson\'s saw,\n         And birds sit brooding in the snow,\n         And Marian\'s nose looks red and raw,\n         When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,  \n         Then nightly sings the staring owl:\n              \'Tu-who;\n         Tu-whit, To-who\'- A merry note,\n         While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.\n\n  ARMADO. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.\n    You that way: we this way.                            Exeunt\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n1606\n\nTHE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH\n\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  DUNCAN, King of Scotland\n  MACBETH, Thane of Glamis and Cawdor, a general in the King\'s army\n  LADY MACBETH, his wife\n  MACDUFF, Thane of Fife, a nobleman of Scotland\n  LADY MACDUFF, his wife\n  MALCOLM, elder son of Duncan\n  DONALBAIN, younger son of Duncan\n  BANQUO, Thane of Lochaber, a general in the King\'s army\n  FLEANCE, his son\n  LENNOX, nobleman of Scotland\n  ROSS, nobleman of Scotland\n  MENTEITH nobleman of Scotland\n  ANGUS, nobleman of Scotland\n  CAITHNESS, nobleman of Scotland\n  SIWARD, Earl of Northumberland, general of the English forces\n  YOUNG SIWARD, his son\n  SEYTON, attendant to Macbeth\n  HECATE, Queen of the Witches\n  The Three Witches\n  Boy, Son of Macduff  \n  Gentlewoman attending on Lady Macbeth\n  An English Doctor\n  A Scottish Doctor\n  A Sergeant\n  A Porter\n  An Old Man\n  The Ghost of Banquo and other Apparitions\n  Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldiers, Murtherers, Attendants,\n     and Messengers\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE: Scotland and England\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nA desert place. Thunder and lightning.\n\nEnter three Witches.\n\n  FIRST WITCH. When shall we three meet again?\n    In thunder, lightning, or in rain?\n  SECOND WITCH. When the hurlyburly\'s done,\n    When the battle\'s lost and won.\n  THIRD WITCH. That will be ere the set of sun.\n  FIRST WITCH. Where the place?\n  SECOND WITCH. Upon the heath.\n  THIRD WITCH. There to meet with Macbeth.\n  FIRST WITCH. I come, Graymalkin.\n  ALL. Paddock calls. Anon!\n    Fair is foul, and foul is fair.\n    Hover through the fog and filthy air.                Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nA camp near Forres. Alarum within.\n\nEnter Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox, with Attendants,\nmeeting a bleeding Sergeant.\n\n  DUNCAN. What bloody man is that? He can report,\n    As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt\n    The newest state.\n  MALCOLM. This is the sergeant\n    Who like a good and hardy soldier fought\n    \'Gainst my captivity. Hail, brave friend!\n    Say to the King the knowledge of the broil\n    As thou didst leave it.\n  SERGEANT. Doubtful it stood,\n    As two spent swimmers that do cling together\n    And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald-\n    Worthy to be a rebel, for to that\n    The multiplying villainies of nature\n    Do swarm upon him -from the Western Isles\n    Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied;\n    And Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,  \n    Show\'d like a rebel\'s whore. But all\'s too weak;\n    For brave Macbeth -well he deserves that name-\n    Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish\'d steel,\n    Which smoked with bloody execution,\n    Like Valor\'s minion carved out his passage\n    Till he faced the slave,\n    Which ne\'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,\n    Till he unseam\'d him from the nave to the chaps,\n    And fix\'d his head upon our battlements.\n  DUNCAN. O valiant cousin! Worthy gentleman!\n  SERGEANT. As whence the sun \'gins his reflection\n    Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break,\n    So from that spring whence comfort seem\'d to come\n    Discomfort swells. Mark, King of Scotland, mark.\n    No sooner justice had, with valor arm\'d,\n    Compell\'d these skipping kerns to trust their heels,\n    But the Norweyan lord, surveying vantage,\n    With furbish\'d arms and new supplies of men,\n    Began a fresh assault.\n  DUNCAN. Dismay\'d not this  \n    Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo.?\n  SERGEANT. Yes,\n    As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion.\n    If I say sooth, I must report they were\n    As cannons overcharged with double cracks,\n    So they\n    Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe.\n    Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,\n    Or memorize another Golgotha,\n    I cannot tell-\n    But I am faint; my gashes cry for help.\n  DUNCAN. So well thy words become thee as thy wounds;\n    They smack of honor both. Go get him surgeons.\n                                        Exit Sergeant, attended.\n    Who comes here?\n\n                       Enter Ross.\n\n  MALCOLM The worthy Thane of Ross.\n  LENNOX. What a haste looks through his eyes! So should he look  \n    That seems to speak things strange.\n  ROSS. God save the King!\n  DUNCAN. Whence camest thou, worthy Thane?\n  ROSS. From Fife, great King,\n    Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky\n    And fan our people cold.\n    Norway himself, with terrible numbers,\n    Assisted by that most disloyal traitor\n    The Thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict,\n    Till that Bellona\'s bridegroom, lapp\'d in proof,\n    Confronted him with self-comparisons,\n    Point against point rebellious, arm \'gainst arm,\n    Curbing his lavish spirit; and, to conclude,\n    The victory fell on us.\n  DUNCAN. Great happiness!\n  ROSS. That now\n    Sweno, the Norways\' king, craves composition;\n    Nor would we deign him burial of his men\n    Till he disbursed, at Saint Colme\'s Inch,\n    Ten thousand dollars to our general use.  \n  DUNCAN. No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive\n    Our bosom interest. Go pronounce his present death,\n    And with his former title greet Macbeth.\n  ROSS. I\'ll see it done.\n  DUNCAN. What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nA heath. Thunder.\n\nEnter the three Witches.\n\n  FIRST WITCH. Where hast thou been, sister?\n  SECOND WITCH. Killing swine.\n  THIRD WITCH. Sister, where thou?\n  FIRST WITCH. A sailor\'s wife had chestnuts in her lap,\n    And mounch\'d, and mounch\'d, and mounch\'d. "Give me," quoth I.\n    "Aroint thee, witch!" the rump-fed ronyon cries.\n    Her husband\'s to Aleppo gone, master the Tiger;\n    But in a sieve I\'ll thither sail,\n    And, like a rat without a tail,\n    I\'ll do, I\'ll do, and I\'ll do.\n  SECOND WITCH. I\'ll give thee a wind.\n  FIRST WITCH. Thou\'rt kind.\n  THIRD WITCH. And I another.\n  FIRST WITCH. I myself have all the other,\n    And the very ports they blow,\n    All the quarters that they know\n    I\' the shipman\'s card.  \n    I will drain him dry as hay:\n    Sleep shall neither night nor day\n    Hang upon his penthouse lid;\n    He shall live a man forbid.\n    Weary se\'nnights nine times nine\n    Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine;\n    Though his bark cannot be lost,\n    Yet it shall be tempest-toss\'d.\n    Look what I have.\n  SECOND WITCH. Show me, show me.\n  FIRST WITCH. Here I have a pilot\'s thumb,\n    Wreck\'d as homeward he did come.                Drum within.\n  THIRD WITCH. A drum, a drum!\n    Macbeth doth come.\n  ALL. The weird sisters, hand in hand,\n    Posters of the sea and land,\n    Thus do go about, about,\n    Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,\n    And thrice again, to make up nine.\n    Peace! The charm\'s wound up.  \n\n                 Enter Macbeth and Banquo.\n\n  MACBETH. So foul and fair a day I have not seen.\n  BANQUO. How far is\'t call\'d to Forres? What are these\n    So wither\'d and so wild in their attire,\n    That look not like the inhabitants o\' the earth,\n    And yet are on\'t? Live you? or are you aught\n    That man may question? You seem to understand me,\n    By each at once her choppy finger laying\n    Upon her skinny lips. You should be women,\n    And yet your beards forbid me to interpret\n    That you are so.\n  MACBETH. Speak, if you can. What are you?\n  FIRST WITCH. All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!\n  SECOND WITCH. All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!\n  THIRD WITCH. All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter!\n  BANQUO. Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear\n    Things that do sound so fair? I\' the name of truth,\n    Are ye fantastical or that indeed  \n    Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner\n    You greet with present grace and great prediction\n    Of noble having and of royal hope,\n    That he seems rapt withal. To me you speak not.\n    If you can look into the seeds of time,\n    And say which grain will grow and which will not,\n    Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear\n    Your favors nor your hate.\n  FIRST WITCH. Hail!\n  SECOND WITCH. Hail!\n  THIRD WITCH. Hail!\n  FIRST WITCH. Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.\n  SECOND WITCH. Not so happy, yet much happier.\n  THIRD WITCH. Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.\n    So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!\n  FIRST WITCH. Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!\n  MACBETH. Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more.\n    By Sinel\'s death I know I am Thane of Glamis;\n    But how of Cawdor? The Thane of Cawdor lives,\n    A prosperous gentleman; and to be King  \n    Stands not within the prospect of belief,\n    No more than to be Cawdor. Say from whence\n    You owe this strange intelligence, or why\n    Upon this blasted heath you stop our way\n    With such prophetic greeting? Speak, I charge you.\n                                                 Witches vanish.\n  BANQUO. The earth hath bubbles as the water has,\n    And these are of them. Whither are they vanish\'d?\n  MACBETH. Into the air, and what seem\'d corporal melted\n    As breath into the wind. Would they had stay\'d!\n  BANQUO. Were such things here as we do speak about?\n    Or have we eaten on the insane root\n    That takes the reason prisoner?\n  MACBETH. Your children shall be kings.\n  BANQUO. You shall be King.\n  MACBETH. And Thane of Cawdor too. Went it not so?\n  BANQUO. To the selfsame tune and words. Who\'s here?\n\n                Enter Ross and Angus.\n  \n  ROSS. The King hath happily received, Macbeth,\n    The news of thy success; and when he reads\n    Thy personal venture in the rebels\' fight,\n    His wonders and his praises do contend\n    Which should be thine or his. Silenced with that,\n    In viewing o\'er the rest o\' the selfsame day,\n    He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks,\n    Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make,\n    Strange images of death. As thick as hail\n    Came post with post, and every one did bear\n    Thy praises in his kingdom\'s great defense,\n    And pour\'d them down before him.\n  ANGUS. We are sent\n    To give thee, from our royal master, thanks;\n    Only to herald thee into his sight,\n    Not pay thee.\n  ROSS. And for an earnest of a greater honor,\n    He bade me, from him, call thee Thane of Cawdor.\n    In which addition, hail, most worthy Thane,\n    For it is thine.  \n  BANQUO. What, can the devil speak true?\n  MACBETH. The Thane of Cawdor lives. Why do you dress me\n    In borrow\'d robes?\n  ANGUS. Who was the Thane lives yet,\n    But under heavy judgement bears that life\n    Which he deserves to lose. Whether he was combined\n    With those of Norway, or did line the rebel\n    With hidden help and vantage, or that with both\n    He labor\'d in his country\'s wreck, I know not;\n    But treasons capital, confess\'d and proved,\n    Have overthrown him.\n  MACBETH. [Aside.] Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor!\n    The greatest is behind. [To Ross and Angus] Thanks for your\n      pains.\n    [Aside to Banquo] Do you not hope your children shall be kings,\n    When those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me\n    Promised no less to them?\n  BANQUO. [Aside to Macbeth.] That, trusted home,\n    Might yet enkindle you unto the crown,\n    Besides the Thane of Cawdor. But \'tis strange;  \n    And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,\n    The instruments of darkness tell us truths,\n    Win us with honest trifles, to betray\'s\n    In deepest consequence-\n    Cousins, a word, I pray you.\n  MACBETH. [Aside.] Two truths are told,\n    As happy prologues to the swelling act\n    Of the imperial theme-I thank you, gentlemen.\n    [Aside.] This supernatural soliciting\n    Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,\n    Why hath it given me earnest of success,\n    Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor.\n    If good, why do I yield to that suggestion\n    Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair\n    And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,\n    Against the use of nature? Present fears\n    Are less than horrible imaginings:\n    My thought, whose murther yet is but fantastical,\n    Shakes so my single state of man that function\n    Is smother\'d in surmise, and nothing is  \n    But what is not.\n  BANQUO. Look, how our partner\'s rapt.\n  MACBETH. [Aside.] If chance will have me King, why, chance may\n      crown me\n    Without my stir.\n  BANQUO. New honors come upon him,\n    Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould\n    But with the aid of use.\n  MACBETH. [Aside.] Come what come may,\n    Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.\n  BANQUO. Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure.\n  MACBETH. Give me your favor; my dull brain was wrought\n    With things forgotten. Kind gentlemen, your pains\n    Are register\'d where every day I turn\n    The leaf to read them. Let us toward the King.\n    Think upon what hath chanced, and at more time,\n    The interim having weigh\'d it, let us speak\n    Our free hearts each to other.\n  BANQUO. Very gladly.\n  MACBETH. Till then, enough. Come, friends.             Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nForres. The palace.\n\nFlourish. Enter Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox, and Attendants.\n\n  DUNCAN. Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not\n    Those in commission yet return\'d?\n  MALCOLM. My liege,\n    They are not yet come back. But I have spoke\n    With one that saw him die, who did report\n    That very frankly he confess\'d his treasons,\n    Implored your Highness\' pardon, and set forth\n    A deep repentance. Nothing in his life\n    Became him like the leaving it; he died\n    As one that had been studied in his death,\n    To throw away the dearest thing he owed\n    As \'twere a careless trifle.\n  DUNCAN. There\'s no art\n    To find the mind\'s construction in the face:\n    He was a gentleman on whom I built\n    An absolute trust.  \n\n             Enter Macbeth, Banquo, Ross, and Angus.\n\n    O worthiest cousin!\n    The sin of my ingratitude even now\n    Was heavy on me. Thou art so far before,\n    That swiftest wing of recompense is slow\n    To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserved,\n    That the proportion both of thanks and payment\n    Might have been mine! Only I have left to say,\n    More is thy due than more than all can pay.\n  MACBETH. The service and the loyalty lowe,\n    In doing it, pays itself. Your Highness\' part\n    Is to receive our duties, and our duties\n    Are to your throne and state, children and servants,\n    Which do but what they should, by doing everything\n    Safe toward your love and honor.\n  DUNCAN. Welcome hither.\n    I have begun to plant thee, and will labor\n    To make thee full of growing. Noble Banquo,  \n    That hast no less deserved, nor must be known\n    No less to have done so; let me infold thee\n    And hold thee to my heart.\n  BANQUO. There if I grow,\n    The harvest is your own.\n  DUNCAN. My plenteous joys,\n    Wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves\n    In drops of sorrow. Sons, kinsmen, thanes,\n    And you whose places are the nearest, know\n    We will establish our estate upon\n    Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter\n    The Prince of Cumberland; which honor must\n    Not unaccompanied invest him only,\n    But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine\n    On all deservers. From hence to Inverness,\n    And bind us further to you.\n  MACBETH. The rest is labor, which is not used for you.\n    I\'ll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful\n    The hearing of my wife with your approach;\n    So humbly take my leave.  \n  DUNCAN. My worthy Cawdor!\n  MACBETH. [Aside.] The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step\n    On which I must fall down, or else o\'erleap,\n    For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;\n    Let not light see my black and deep desires.\n    The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be\n    Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.          Exit.\n  DUNCAN. True, worthy Banquo! He is full so valiant,\n    And in his commendations I am fed;\n    It is a banquet to me. Let\'s after him,\n    Whose care is gone before to bid us welcome.\n    It is a peerless kinsman.                  Flourish. Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nInverness. Macbeth\'s castle.\n\nEnter Lady Macbeth, reading a letter.\n\n  LADY MACBETH. "They met me in the day of success, and I have\n    learned by the perfectest report they have more in them than\n    mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them\n    further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished.\n    Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the\n    King, who all-hailed me \'Thane of Cawdor\'; by which title,\n    before, these weird sisters saluted me and referred me to the\n    coming on of time with \'Hail, King that shalt be!\' This have I\n    thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness,\n    that thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being\n    ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart,\n    and farewell."\n\n    Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be\n    What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature.\n    It is too full o\' the milk of human kindness\n    To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great;  \n    Art not without ambition, but without\n    The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly,\n    That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,\n    And yet wouldst wrongly win. Thou\'ldst have, great Glamis,\n    That which cries, "Thus thou must do, if thou have it;\n    And that which rather thou dost fear to do\n    Than wishest should be undone." Hie thee hither,\n    That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,\n    And chastise with the valor of my tongue\n    All that impedes thee from the golden round,\n    Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem\n    To have thee crown\'d withal.\n\n                     Enter a Messenger.\n\n    What is your tidings?\n  MESSENGER. The King comes here tonight.\n  LADY MACBETH. Thou\'rt mad to say it!\n    Is not thy master with him? who, were\'t so,\n    Would have inform\'d for preparation.  \n  MESSENGER. So please you, it is true; our Thane is coming.\n    One of my fellows had the speed of him,\n    Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more\n    Than would make up his message.\n  LADY MACBETH. Give him tending;\n    He brings great news.                        Exit Messenger.\n    The raven himself is hoarse\n    That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan\n    Under my battlements. Come, you spirits\n    That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here\n    And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full\n    Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,\n    Stop up the access and passage to remorse,\n    That no compunctious visitings of nature\n    Shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between\n    The effect and it! Come to my woman\'s breasts,\n    And take my milk for gall, your murthering ministers,\n    Wherever in your sightless substances\n    You wait on nature\'s mischief! Come, thick night,\n    And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell  \n    That my keen knife see not the wound it makes\n    Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark\n    To cry, "Hold, hold!"\n\n                    Enter Macbeth.\n\n    Great Glamis! Worthy Cawdor!\n    Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter!\n    Thy letters have transported me beyond\n    This ignorant present, and I feel now\n    The future in the instant.\n  MACBETH. My dearest love,\n    Duncan comes here tonight.\n  LADY MACBETH. And when goes hence?\n  MACBETH. Tomorrow, as he purposes.\n  LADY MACBETH. O, never\n    Shall sun that morrow see!\n    Your face, my Thane, is as a book where men\n    May read strange matters. To beguile the time,\n    Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,  \n    Your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower,\n    But be the serpent under it. He that\'s coming\n    Must be provided for; and you shall put\n    This night\'s great business into my dispatch,\n    Which shall to all our nights and days to come\n    Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.\n  MACBETH. We will speak further.\n  LADY MACBETH. Only look up clear;\n    To alter favor ever is to fear.\n    Leave all the rest to me.                            Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nBefore Macbeth\'s castle.  Hautboys and torches.\n\nEnter Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Banquo, Lennox, Macduff, Ross, Angus,\nand Attendants.\n\n  DUNCAN. This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air\n    Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself\n    Unto our gentle senses.\n  BANQUO. This guest of summer,\n    The temple-haunting martlet, does approve\n    By his loved mansionry that the heaven\'s breath\n    Smells wooingly here. No jutty, frieze,\n    Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird\n    Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle;\n    Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed\n    The air is delicate.\n\n                     Enter Lady Macbeth.\n\n  DUNCAN. See, see, our honor\'d hostess!\n    The love that follows us sometime is our trouble,  \n    Which still we thank as love. Herein I teach you\n    How you shall bid God \'ield us for your pains,\n    And thank us for your trouble.\n  LADY MACBETH. All our service\n    In every point twice done, and then done double,\n    Were poor and single business to contend\n    Against those honors deep and broad wherewith\n    Your Majesty loads our house. For those of old,\n    And the late dignities heap\'d up to them,\n    We rest your hermits.\n  DUNCAN. Where\'s the Thane of Cawdor?\n    We coursed him at the heels and had a purpose\n    To be his purveyor; but he rides well,\n    And his great love, sharp as his spur, hath holp him\n    To his home before us. Fair and noble hostess,\n    We are your guest tonight.\n  LADY MACBETH. Your servants ever\n    Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs, in compt,\n    To make their audit at your Highness\' pleasure,\n    Still to return your own.  \n  DUNCAN. Give me your hand;\n    Conduct me to mine host. We love him highly,\n    And shall continue our graces towards him.\n    By your leave, hostess.                              Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII\nMacbeth\'s castle.  Hautboys and torches.\n\nEnter a Sewer and divers Servants with dishes and service, who pass over\nthe stage.  Then enter Macbeth.\n\n  MACBETH. If it were done when \'tis done, then \'twere well\n    It were done quickly. If the assassination\n    Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,\n    With his surcease, success; that but this blow\n    Might be the be-all and the end-all -here,\n    But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,\n    We\'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases\n    We still have judgement here, that we but teach\n    Bloody instructions, which being taught return\n    To plague the inventor. This even-handed justice\n    Commends the ingredients of our poison\'d chalice\n    To our own lips. He\'s here in double trust:\n    First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,\n    Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,\n    Who should against his murtherer shut the door,  \n    Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan\n    Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been\n    So clear in his great office, that his virtues\n    Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued against\n    The deep damnation of his taking-off,\n    And pity, like a naked new-born babe\n    Striding the blast, or heaven\'s cherubin horsed\n    Upon the sightless couriers of the air,\n    Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,\n    That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur\n    To prick the sides of my intent, but only\n    Vaulting ambition, which o\'erleaps itself\n    And falls on the other.\n\n                 Enter Lady Macbeth.\n\n    How now, what news?\n  LADY MACBETH. He has almost supp\'d. Why have you left the chamber?\n  MACBETH. Hath he ask\'d for me?\n  LADY MACBETH. Know you not he has?  \n  MACBETH. We will proceed no further in this business:\n    He hath honor\'d me of late, and I have bought\n    Golden opinions from all sorts of people,\n    Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,\n    Not cast aside so soon.\n  LADY MACBETH. Was the hope drunk\n    Wherein you dress\'d yourself? Hath it slept since?\n    And wakes it now, to look so green and pale\n    At what it did so freely? From this time\n    Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard\n    To be the same in thine own act and valor\n    As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that\n    Which thou esteem\'st the ornament of life\n    And live a coward in thine own esteem,\n    Letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would"\n    Like the poor cat i\' the adage?\n  MACBETH. Prithee, peace!\n    I dare do all that may become a man;\n    Who dares do more is none.\n  LADY MACBETH. What beast wast then  \n    That made you break this enterprise to me?\n    When you durst do it, then you were a man,\n    And, to be more than what you were, you would\n    Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place\n    Did then adhere, and yet you would make both.\n    They have made themselves, and that their fitness now\n    Does unmake you. I have given suck and know\n    How tender \'tis to love the babe that milks me-\n    I would, while it was smiling in my face,\n    Have pluck\'d my nipple from his boneless gums\n    And dash\'d the brains out had I so sworn as you\n    Have done to this.\n  MACBETH. If we should fail?\n  LADY MACBETH. We fail?\n    But screw your courage to the sticking-place\n    And we\'ll not fail. When Duncan is asleep-\n    Whereto the rather shall his day\'s hard journey\n    Soundly invite him- his two chamberlains\n    Will I with wine and wassail so convince\n    That memory, the warder of the brain,  \n    Shall be a fume and the receipt of reason\n    A limbeck only. When in swinish sleep\n    Their drenched natures lie as in a death,\n    What cannot you and I perform upon\n    The unguarded Duncan? What not put upon\n    His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt\n    Of our great quell?\n  MACBETH. Bring forth men-children only,\n    For thy undaunted mettle should compose\n    Nothing but males. Will it not be received,\n    When we have mark\'d with blood those sleepy two\n    Of his own chamber and used their very daggers,\n    That they have done\'t?\n  LADY MACBETH. Who dares receive it other,\n    As we shall make our griefs and clamor roar\n    Upon his death?\n  MACBETH. I am settled and bend up\n    Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.\n    Away, and mock the time with fairest show:\n    False face must hide what the false heart doth know.  \n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nInverness. Court of Macbeth\'s castle.\n\nEnter Banquo and Fleance, bearing a torch before him.\n\n  BANQUO. How goes the night, boy?\n  FLEANCE. The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.\n  BANQUO. And she goes down at twelve.\n  FLEANCE. I take\'t \'tis later, sir.\n  BANQUO. Hold, take my sword. There\'s husbandry in heaven,\n    Their candles are all out. Take thee that too.\n    A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,\n    And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers,\n    Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature\n    Gives way to in repose!\n\n           Enter Macbeth and a Servant with a torch.\n\n    Give me my sword.\n    Who\'s there?\n  MACBETH. A friend.\n  BANQUO. What, sir, not yet at rest? The King\'s abed.  \n    He hath been in unusual pleasure and\n    Sent forth great largess to your offices.\n    This diamond he greets your wife withal,\n    By the name of most kind hostess, and shut up\n    In measureless content.\n  MACBETH. Being unprepared,\n    Our will became the servant to defect,\n    Which else should free have wrought.\n  BANQUO. All\'s well.\n    I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters:\n    To you they have show\'d some truth.\n  MACBETH. I think not of them;\n    Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve,\n    We would spend it in some words upon that business,\n    If you would grant the time.\n  BANQUO. At your kind\'st leisure.\n  MACBETH. If you shall cleave to my consent, when \'tis,\n    It shall make honor for you.\n  BANQUO. So I lose none\n    In seeking to augment it, but still keep  \n    My bosom franchised and allegiance clear,\n    I shall be counsel\'d.\n  MACBETH. Good repose the while.\n  BANQUO. Thanks, sir, the like to you.\n                                     Exeunt Banquo. and Fleance.\n  MACBETH. Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,\n    She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.     Exit Servant.\n    Is this a dagger which I see before me,\n    The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.\n    I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.\n    Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible\n    To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but\n    A dagger of the mind, a false creation,\n    Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?\n    I see thee yet, in form as palpable\n    As this which now I draw.\n    Thou marshal\'st me the way that I was going,\n    And such an instrument I was to use.\n    Mine eyes are made the fools o\' the other senses,\n    Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still,  \n    And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,\n    Which was not so before. There\'s no such thing:\n    It is the bloody business which informs\n    Thus to mine eyes. Now o\'er the one half-world\n    Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse\n    The curtain\'d sleep; witchcraft celebrates\n    Pale Hecate\'s offerings; and wither\'d Murther,\n    Alarum\'d by his sentinel, the wolf,\n    Whose howl\'s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,\n    With Tarquin\'s ravishing strides, towards his design\n    Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,\n    Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear\n    Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,\n    And take the present horror from the time,\n    Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives;\n    Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.\n                                                   A bell rings.\n    I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.\n    Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell\n    That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.               Exit.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe same.\n\nEnter Lady Macbeth.\n\n  LADY MACBETH. That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold;\n    What hath quench\'d them hath given me fire. Hark! Peace!\n    It was the owl that shriek\'d, the fatal bellman,\n    Which gives the stern\'st good night. He is about it:\n    The doors are open, and the surfeited grooms\n    Do mock their charge with snores. I have drugg\'d their possets\n    That death and nature do contend about them,\n    Whether they live or die.\n  MACBETH. [Within.] Who\'s there\' what, ho!\n  LADY MACBETH. Alack, I am afraid they have awaked\n    And \'tis not done. The attempt and not the deed\n    Confounds us. Hark! I laid their daggers ready;\n    He could not miss \'em. Had he not resembled\n    My father as he slept, I had done\'t.\n\n                      Enter Macbeth,\n  \n    My husband!\n  MACBETH. I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?\n  LADY MACBETH. I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.\n    Did not you speak?\n  MACBETH. When?\n  LADY MACBETH. Now.\n  MACBETH. As I descended?\n  LADY MACBETH. Ay.\n  MACBETH. Hark!\n    Who lies i\' the second chamber?\n  LADY MACBETH. Donalbain.\n  MACBETH. This is a sorry sight.           [Looks on his hands.\n  LADY MACBETH. A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.\n  MACBETH. There\'s one did laugh in \'s sleep, and one cried,\n      "Murther!"\n    That they did wake each other. I stood and heard them,\n    But they did say their prayers and address\'d them\n    Again to sleep.\n  LADY MACBETH. There are two lodged together.\n  MACBETH. One cried, "God bless us!" and "Amen" the other,  \n    As they had seen me with these hangman\'s hands.\n    Listening their fear, I could not say "Amen,"\n    When they did say, "God bless us!"\n  LADY MACBETH. Consider it not so deeply.\n  MACBETH. But wherefore could not I pronounce "Amen"?\n    I had most need of blessing, and "Amen"\n    Stuck in my throat.\n  LADY MACBETH. These deeds must not be thought\n    After these ways; so, it will make us mad.\n  MACBETH. I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more!\n    Macbeth does murther sleep" -the innocent sleep,\n    Sleep that knits up the ravel\'d sleave of care,\n    The death of each day\'s life, sore labor\'s bath,\n    Balm of hurt minds, great nature\'s second course,\n    Chief nourisher in life\'s feast-\n  LADY MACBETH. What do you mean?\n  MACBETH. Still it cried, "Sleep no more!" to all the house;\n    "Glamis hath murther\'d sleep, and therefore Cawdor\n    Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more."\n  LADY MACBETH. Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy Thane,  \n    You do unbend your noble strength, to think\n    So brainsickly of things. Go, get some water\n    And wash this filthy witness from your hand.\n    Why did you bring these daggers from the place?\n    They must lie there. Go carry them, and smear\n    The sleepy grooms with blood.\n  MACBETH. I\'ll go no more.\n    I am afraid to think what I have done;\n    Look on\'t again I dare not.\n  LADY MACBETH. Infirm of purpose!\n    Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead\n    Are but as pictures; \'tis the eye of childhood\n    That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,\n    I\'ll gild the faces of the grooms withal,\n    For it must seem their guilt.         Exit. Knocking within.\n  MACBETH. Whence is that knocking?\n    How is\'t with me, when every noise appals me?\n    What hands are here? Ha, they pluck out mine eyes!\n    Will all great Neptune\'s ocean wash this blood\n    Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather  \n    The multitudinous seas incarnadine,\n    Making the green one red.\n\n                   Re-enter Lady Macbeth.\n\n  LADY MACBETH. My hands are of your color, but I shame\n    To wear a heart so white. [Knocking within.] I hear knocking\n    At the south entry. Retire we to our chamber.\n    A little water clears us of this deed.\n    How easy is it then! Your constancy\n    Hath left you unattended. [Knocking within.] Hark, more knocking.\n    Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us\n    And show us to be watchers. Be not lost\n    So poorly in your thoughts.\n  MACBETH. To know my deed, \'twere best not know myself.\n                                                Knocking within.\n    Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nThe same.\n\nEnter a Porter. Knocking within.\n\n  PORTER. Here\'s a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of Hell\n    Gate, he should have old turning the key. [Knocking within.]\n    Knock, knock, knock! Who\'s there, i\' the name of Belzebub? Here\'s\n    a farmer that hanged himself on th\' expectation of plenty. Come\n    in time! Have napkins enow about you; here you\'ll sweat fort.\n    [Knocking within.] Knock, knock! Who\'s there, in th\' other\n    devil\'s name? Faith, here\'s an equivocator that could swear in\n    both the scales against either scale, who committed treason\n    enough for God\'s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven. O,\n    come in, equivocator. [Knocking within.] Knock, knock, knock!\n    Who\'s there? Faith, here\'s an English tailor come hither, for\n    stealing out of a French hose. Come in, tailor; here you may\n    roast your goose. [Knocking within.] Knock, knock! Never at\n    quiet! What are you? But this place is too cold for hell. I\'ll\n    devil-porter it no further. I had thought to have let in some of\n    all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlasting\n    bonfire. [Knocking within.] Anon, anon! I pray you, remember the  \n    porter.\n                                                 Opens the gate.\n\n                       Enter Macduff and Lennox.\n\n  MACDUFF. Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed,\n    That you do lie so late?\n  PORTER. Faith, sir, we were carousing till the second cock; and\n    drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.\n  MACDUFF. What three things does drink especially provoke?\n  PORTER. Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir,\n    it provokes and unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes\n    away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an\n    equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets\n    him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him and disheartens\n    him; makes him stand to and not stand to; in conclusion,\n    equivocates him in a sleep, and giving him the lie, leaves him.\n  MACDUFF. I believe drink gave thee the lie last night.\n  PORTER. That it did, sir, i\' the very throat on me; but requited\n    him for his lie, and, I think, being too strong for him, though  \n    he took up my legs sometime, yet I made shift to cast him.\n  MACDUFF. Is thy master stirring?\n\n                             Enter Macbeth.\n\n    Our knocking has awaked him; here he comes.\n  LENNOX. Good morrow, noble sir.\n  MACBETH. morrow, both.\n  MACDUFF. Is the King stirring, worthy Thane?\n  MACBETH. Not yet.\n  MACDUFF. He did command me to call timely on him;\n    I have almost slipp\'d the hour.\n  MACBETH. I\'ll bring you to him.\n  MACDUFF. I know this is a joyful trouble to you,\n    But yet \'tis one.\n  MACBETH. The labor we delight in physics pain.\n    This is the door.\n  MACDUFF I\'ll make so bold to call,\n    For \'tis my limited service.                           Exit.\n  LENNOX. Goes the King hence today?  \n  MACBETH. He does; he did appoint so.\n  LENNOX. The night has been unruly. Where we lay,\n    Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say,\n    Lamentings heard i\' the air, strange screams of death,\n    And prophesying with accents terrible\n    Of dire combustion and confused events\n    New hatch\'d to the woeful time. The obscure bird\n    Clamor\'d the livelong night. Some say the earth\n    Was feverous and did shake.\n  MACBETH. \'Twas a rough fight.\n  LENNOX. My young remembrance cannot parallel\n    A fellow to it.\n\n                      Re-enter Macduff.\n\n  MACDUFF. O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart\n    Cannot conceive nor name thee.\n  MACBETH. LENNOX. What\'s the matter?\n  MACDUFF. Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.\n    Most sacrilegious murther hath broke ope  \n    The Lord\'s anointed temple and stole thence\n    The life o\' the building.\n  MACBETH. What is\'t you say? the life?\n  LENNOX. Mean you his Majesty?\n  MACDUFF. Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight\n    With a new Gorgon. Do not bid me speak;\n    See, and then speak yourselves.\n                                      Exeunt Macbeth and Lennox.\n    Awake, awake!\n    Ring the alarum bell. Murther and treason!\n    Banquo and Donalbain! Malcolm, awake!\n    Shake off this downy sleep, death\'s counterfeit,\n    And look on death itself! Up, up, and see\n    The great doom\'s image! Malcolm! Banquo!\n    As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites\n    To countenance this horror! Ring the bell.       Bell rings.\n\n                     Enter Lady Macbeth.\n\n  LADY MACBETH. What\'s the business,  \n    That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley\n    The sleepers of the house? Speak, speak!\n  MACDUFF. O gentle lady,\n    \'Tis not for you to hear what I can speak:\n    The repetition in a woman\'s ear\n    Would murther as it fell.\n\n                     Enter Banquo.\n\n    O Banquo, Banquo!\n    Our royal master\'s murther\'d.\n  LADY MACBETH. Woe, alas!\n    What, in our house?\n  BANQUO. Too cruel anywhere.\n    Dear Duff, I prithee, contradict thyself,\n    And say it is not so.\n\n          Re-enter Macbeth and Lennox, with Ross.\n\n  MACBETH. Had I but died an hour before this chance,  \n    I had lived a blessed time, for from this instant\n    There\'s nothing serious in mortality.\n    All is but toys; renown and grace is dead,\n    The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees\n    Is left this vault to brag of.\n\n                Enter Malcolm and Donalbain.\n\n  DONALBAIN. What is amiss?\n  MACBETH. You are, and do not know\'t.\n    The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood\n    Is stopped, the very source of it is stopp\'d.\n  MACDUFF. Your royal father\'s murther\'d.\n   MALCOLM. O, by whom?\n  LENNOX. Those of his chamber, as it seem\'d, had done\'t.\n    Their hands and faces were all badged with blood;\n    So were their daggers, which unwiped we found\n    Upon their pillows.\n    They stared, and were distracted; no man\'s life\n    Was to be trusted with them.  \n  MACBETH. O, yet I do repent me of my fury,\n    That I did kill them.\n  MACDUFF. Wherefore did you so?\n  MACBETH. Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,\n    Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.\n    The expedition of my violent love\n    Outrun the pauser reason. Here lay Duncan,\n    His silver skin laced with his golden blood,\n    And his gash\'d stabs look\'d like a breach in nature\n    For ruin\'s wasteful entrance; there, the murtherers,\n    Steep\'d in the colors of their trade, their daggers\n    Unmannerly breech\'d with gore. Who could refrain,\n    That had a heart to love, and in that heart\n    Courage to make \'s love known?\n  LADY MACBETH. Help me hence, ho!\n  MACDUFF. Look to the lady.\n  MALCOLM. [Aside to Donalbain.] Why do we hold our tongues,\n    That most may claim this argument for ours?\n  DONALBAIN. [Aside to Malcolm.] What should be spoken here, where\n      our fate,  \n    Hid in an auger hole, may rush and seize us?\n    Let\'s away,\n    Our tears are not yet brew\'d.\n  MALCOLM. [Aside to Donalbain.] Nor our strong sorrow\n    Upon the foot of motion.\n  BANQUO. Look to the lady.\n                                    Lady Macbeth is carried out.\n    And when we have our naked frailties hid,\n    That suffer in exposure, let us meet\n    And question this most bloody piece of work\n    To know it further. Fears and scruples shake us.\n    In the great hand of God I stand, and thence\n    Against the undivulged pretense I fight\n    Of treasonous malice.\n  MACDUFF. And so do I.\n  ALL. So all.\n  MACBETH. Let\'s briefly put on manly readiness\n    And meet i\' the hall together.\n  ALL. Well contented.\n                           Exeunt all but Malcolm and Donalbain.  \n  MALCOLM. What will you do? Let\'s not consort with them.\n    To show an unfelt sorrow is an office\n    Which the false man does easy. I\'ll to England.\n  DONALBAIN. To Ireland, I; our separated fortune\n    Shall keep us both the safer. Where we are\n    There\'s daggers in men\'s smiles; the near in blood,\n    The nearer bloody.\n  MALCOLM. This murtherous shaft that\'s shot\n    Hath not yet lighted, and our safest way\n    Is to avoid the aim. Therefore to horse;\n    And let us not be dainty of leave-taking,\n    But shift away. There\'s warrant in that theft\n    Which steals itself when there\'s no mercy left.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nOutside Macbeth\'s castle.\n\nEnter Ross with an Old Man.\n\n  OLD MAN. Threescore and ten I can remember well,\n    Within the volume of which time I have seen\n    Hours dreadful and things strange, but this sore night\n    Hath trifled former knowings.\n  ROSS. Ah, good father,\n    Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man\'s act,\n    Threaten his bloody stage. By the clock \'tis day,\n    And yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp.\n    Is\'t night\'s predominance, or the day\'s shame,\n    That darkness does the face of earth entomb,\n    When living light should kiss it?\n  OLD MAN. \'Tis unnatural,\n    Even like the deed that\'s done. On Tuesday last\n    A falcon towering in her pride of place\n    Was by a mousing owl hawk\'d at and kill\'d.\n  ROSS. And Duncan\'s horses-a thing most strange and certain-\n    Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,  \n    Turn\'d wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,\n    Contending \'gainst obedience, as they would make\n    War with mankind.\n  OLD MAN. \'Tis said they eat each other.\n  ROSS. They did so, to the amazement of mine eyes\n    That look\'d upon\'t.\n\n                     Enter Macduff.\n\n    Here comes the good Macduff.\n    How goes the world, sir, now?\n  MACDUFF. Why, see you not?\n  ROSS. Is\'t known who did this more than bloody deed?\n  MACDUFF. Those that Macbeth hath slain.\n  ROSS. Alas, the day!\n    What good could they pretend?\n  MACDUFF. They were suborn\'d:\n    Malcolm and Donalbain, the King\'s two sons,\n    Are stol\'n away and fled, which puts upon them\n    Suspicion of the deed.  \n  ROSS. \'Gainst nature still!\n    Thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin up\n    Thine own life\'s means! Then \'tis most like\n    The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth.\n  MACDUFF. He is already named, and gone to Scone\n    To be invested.\n  ROSS. Where is Duncan\'s body?\n  MACDUFF. Carried to Colmekill,\n    The sacred storehouse of his predecessors\n    And guardian of their bones.\n  ROSS. Will you to Scone?\n  MACDUFF. No, cousin, I\'ll to Fife.\n  ROSS. Well, I will thither.\n  MACDUFF. Well, may you see things well done there.\n    Adieu,\n    Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!\n  ROSS. Farewell, father.\n  OLD MAN. God\'s benison go with you and with those\n    That would make good of bad and friends of foes!\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nForres. The palace.\n\nEnter Banquo.\n\n  BANQUO. Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all,\n    As the weird women promised, and I fear\n    Thou play\'dst most foully for\'t; yet it was said\n    It should not stand in thy posterity,\n    But that myself should be the root and father\n    Of many kings. If there come truth from them\n    (As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine)\n    Why, by the verities on thee made good,\n    May they not be my oracles as well\n    And set me up in hope? But hush, no more.\n\n      Sennet sounds. Enter Macbeth as King, Lady Macbeth\n    as Queen, Lennox, Ross, Lords, Ladies, and Attendants.\n\n  MACBETH. Here\'s our chief guest.\n  LADY MACBETH. If he had been forgotten,\n    It had been as a gap in our great feast  \n    And all thing unbecoming.\n  MACBETH. Tonight we hold a solemn supper, sir,\n    And I\'ll request your presence.\n  BANQUO. Let your Highness\n    Command upon me, to the which my duties\n    Are with a most indissoluble tie\n    Forever knit.\n  MACBETH. Ride you this afternoon?\n  BANQUO. Ay, my good lord.\n  MACBETH. We should have else desired your good advice,\n    Which still hath been both grave and prosperous\n    In this day\'s council; but we\'ll take tomorrow.\n    Is\'t far you ride\'!\n  BANQUO. As far, my lord, as will fill up the time\n    \'Twixt this and supper. Go not my horse the better,\n    I must become a borrower of the night\n    For a dark hour or twain.\n  MACBETH. Fail not our feast.\n  BANQUO. My lord, I will not.\n  MACBETH. We hear our bloody cousins are bestow\'d  \n    In England and in Ireland, not confessing\n    Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers\n    With strange invention. But of that tomorrow,\n    When therewithal we shall have cause of state\n    Craving us jointly. Hie you to horse; adieu,\n    Till you return at night. Goes Fleance with you?\n  BANQUO. Ay, my good lord. Our time does call upon \'s.\n  MACBETH. I wish your horses swift and sure of foot,\n    And so I do commend you to their backs.\n    Farewell.                                       Exit Banquo.\n    Let every man be master of his time\n    Till seven at night; to make society\n    The sweeter welcome, we will keep ourself\n    Till supper time alone. While then, God be with you!\n                        Exeunt all but Macbeth and an Attendant.\n    Sirrah, a word with you. Attend those men\n    Our pleasure?\n  ATTENDANT. They are, my lord, without the palace gate.\n  MACBETH. Bring them before us.                 Exit Attendant.\n    To be thus is nothing,  \n    But to be safely thus. Our fears in Banquo.\n    Stick deep, and in his royalty of nature\n    Reigns that which would be fear\'d. \'Tis much he dares,\n    And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,\n    He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valor\n    To act in safety. There is none but he\n    Whose being I do fear; and under him\n    My genius is rebuked, as it is said\n    Mark Antony\'s was by Caesar. He chid the sisters\n    When first they put the name of King upon me\n    And bade them speak to him; then prophet-like\n    They hail\'d him father to a line of kings.\n    Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown\n    And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,\n    Thence to be wrench\'d with an unlineal hand,\n    No son of mine succeeding. If\'t be so,\n    For Banquo\'s issue have I filed my mind,\n    For them the gracious Duncan have I murther\'d,\n    Put rancors in the vessel of my peace\n    Only for them, and mine eternal jewel  \n    Given to the common enemy of man,\n    To make them kings -the seed of Banquo kings!\n    Rather than so, come, Fate, into the list,\n    And champion me to the utterance! Who\'s there?\n\n        Re-enter Attendant, with two Murtherers.\n\n    Now go to the door, and stay there till we call.\n                                                 Exit Attendant.\n    Was it not yesterday we spoke together?\n  FIRST MURTHERER. It was, so please your Highness.\n  MACBETH. Well then, now\n    Have you consider\'d of my speeches? Know\n    That it was he in the times past which held you\n    So under fortune, which you thought had been\n    Our innocent self? This I made good to you\n    In our last conference, pass\'d in probation with you:\n    How you were borne in hand, how cross\'d, the instruments,\n    Who wrought with them, and all things else that might\n    To half a soul and to a notion crazed  \n    Say, "Thus did Banquo."\n  FIRST MURTHERER. You made it known to us.\n  MACBETH. I did so, and went further, which is now\n    Our point of second meeting. Do you find\n    Your patience so predominant in your nature,\n    That you can let this go? Are you so gospel\'d,\n    To pray for this good man and for his issue,\n    Whose heavy hand hath bow\'d you to the grave\n    And beggar\'d yours forever?\n  FIRST MURTHERER. We are men, my liege.\n  MACBETH. Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men,\n    As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,\n    Shoughs, waterrugs, and demi-wolves are clept\n    All by the name of dogs. The valued file\n    Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,\n    The housekeeper, the hunter, every one\n    According to the gift which bounteous nature\n    Hath in him closed, whereby he does receive\n    Particular addition, from the bill\n    That writes them all alike; and so of men.  \n    Now if you have a station in the file,\n    Not i\' the worst rank of manhood, say it,\n    And I will put that business in your bosoms\n    Whose execution takes your enemy off,\n    Grapples you to the heart and love of us,\n    Who wear our health but sickly in his life,\n    Which in his death were perfect.\n  SECOND MURTHERER. I am one, my liege,\n    Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world\n    Have so incensed that I am reckless what\n    I do to spite the world.\n  FIRST MURTHERER. And I another\n    So weary with disasters, tugg\'d with fortune,\n    That I would set my life on any chance,\n    To mend it or be rid on\'t.\n  MACBETH. Both of you\n    Know Banquo was your enemy.\n  BOTH MURTHERERS. True, my lord.\n  MACBETH. So is he mine, and in such bloody distance\n    That every minute of his being thrusts  \n    Against my near\'st of life; and though I could\n    With barefaced power sweep him from my sight\n    And bid my will avouch it, yet I must not,\n    For certain friends that are both his and mine,\n    Whose loves I may not drop, but wail his fall\n    Who I myself struck down. And thence it is\n    That I to your assistance do make love,\n    Masking the business from the common eye\n    For sundry weighty reasons.\n  SECOND MURTHERER. We shall, my lord,\n    Perform what you command us.\n  FIRST MURTHERER. Though our lives-\n  MACBETH. Your spirits shine through you. Within this hour at most\n    I will advise you where to plant yourselves,\n    Acquaint you with the perfect spy o\' the time,\n    The moment on\'t; fort must be done tonight\n    And something from the palace (always thought\n    That I require a clearness); and with him-\n    To leave no rubs nor botches in the work-\n    Fleance his son, that keeps him company,  \n    Whose absence is no less material to me\n    Than is his father\'s, must embrace the fate\n    Of that dark hour. Resolve yourselves apart;\n    I\'ll come to you anon.\n  BOTH MURTHERERS. We are resolved, my lord.\n  MACBETH. I\'ll call upon you straight. Abide within.\n                                              Exeunt Murtherers.\n    It is concluded: Banquo, thy soul\'s flight,\n    If it find heaven, must find it out tonight.           Exit.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe palace.\n\nEnter Lady Macbeth and a Servant.\n\n  LADY MACBETH. Is Banquo gone from court?\n  SERVANT. Ay, madam, but returns again tonight.\n  LADY MACBETH. Say to the King I would attend his leisure\n    For a few words.\n  SERVANT. Madam, I will.                                  Exit.\n  LADY MACBETH. Nought\'s had, all\'s spent,\n    Where our desire is got without content.\n    \'Tis safer to be that which we destroy\n    Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.\n\n                    Enter Macbeth.\n\n    How now, my lord? Why do you keep alone,\n    Of sorriest fancies your companions making,\n    Using those thoughts which should indeed have died\n    With them they think on? Things without all remedy\n    Should be without regard. What\'s done is done.  \n  MACBETH. We have scotch\'d the snake, not kill\'d it.\n    She\'ll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice\n    Remains in danger of her former tooth.\n    But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,\n    Ere we will eat our meal in fear and sleep\n    In the affliction of these terrible dreams\n    That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead,\n    Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,\n    Than on the torture of the mind to lie\n    In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;\n    After life\'s fitful fever he sleeps well.\n    Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,\n    Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,\n    Can touch him further.\n  LADY MACBETH. Come on,\n    Gentle my lord, sleek o\'er your rugged looks;\n    Be bright and jovial among your guests tonight.\n  MACBETH. So shall I, love, and so, I pray, be you.\n    Let your remembrance apply to Banquo;\n    Present him eminence, both with eye and tongue:  \n    Unsafe the while, that we\n    Must lave our honors in these flattering streams,\n    And make our faces vizards to our hearts,\n    Disguising what they are.\n  LADY MACBETH. You must leave this.\n  MACBETH. O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!\n    Thou know\'st that Banquo and his Fleance lives.\n  LADY MACBETH. But in them nature\'s copy\'s not eterne.\n  MACBETH. There\'s comfort yet; they are assailable.\n    Then be thou jocund. Ere the bat hath flown\n    His cloister\'d flight, ere to black Hecate\'s summons\n    The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums\n    Hath rung night\'s yawning peal, there shall be done\n    A deed of dreadful note.\n  LADY MACBETH. What\'s to be done?\n  MACBETH. Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,\n    Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night,\n    Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,\n    And with thy bloody and invisible hand\n    Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond  \n    Which keeps me pale! Light thickens, and the crow\n    Makes wing to the rooky wood;\n    Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,\n    Whiles night\'s black agents to their preys do rouse.\n    Thou marvel\'st at my words, but hold thee still:\n    Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.\n    So, prithee, go with me.                             Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nA park near the palace.\n\nEnter three Murtherers.\n\n  FIRST MURTHERER. But who did bid thee join with us?\n  THIRD MURTHERER. Macbeth.\n  SECOND MURTHERER. He needs not our mistrust, since he delivers\n    Our offices and what we have to do\n    To the direction just.\n  FIRST MURTHERER. Then stand with us.\n    The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day;\n    Now spurs the lated traveler apace\n    To gain the timely inn, and near approaches\n    The subject of our watch.\n  THIRD MURTHERER. Hark! I hear horses.\n  BANQUO. [Within.] Give us a light there, ho!\n  SECOND MURTHERER. Then \'tis he; the rest\n    That are within the note of expectation\n    Already are i\' the court.\n  FIRST MURTHERER. His horses go about.\n  THIRD MURTHERER. Almost a mile, but he does usually-  \n    So all men do -from hence to the palace gate\n    Make it their walk.\n  SECOND MURTHERER. A light, a light!\n\n              Enter Banquo, and Fleance with a torch.\n\n  THIRD MURTHERER. \'Tis he.\n  FIRST MURTHERER. Stand to\'t.\n  BANQUO. It will be rain tonight.\n  FIRST MURTHERER. Let it come down.\n                                           They set upon Banquo.\n  BANQUO. O, treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!\n    Thou mayst revenge. O slave!          Dies. Fleance escapes.\n  THIRD MURTHERER. Who did strike out the light?\n  FIRST MURTHERER. Wast not the way?\n  THIRD MURTHERER. There\'s but one down; the son is fled.\n  SECOND MURTHERER. We have lost\n    Best half of our affair.\n  FIRST MURTHERER. Well, let\'s away and say how much is done.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nA Hall in the palace. A banquet prepared.\n\nEnter Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Ross, Lennox, Lords, and Attendants.\n\n  MACBETH. You know your own degrees; sit down. At first\n    And last the hearty welcome.\n  LORDS. Thanks to your Majesty.\n  MACBETH. Ourself will mingle with society\n    And play the humble host.\n    Our hostess keeps her state, but in best time\n    We will require her welcome.\n  LADY MACBETH. Pronounce it for me, sir, to all our friends,\n    For my heart speaks they are welcome.\n\n                Enter first Murtherer to the door.\n\n  MACBETH. See, they encounter thee with their hearts\' thanks.\n    Both sides are even; here I\'ll sit i\' the midst.\n    Be large in mirth; anon we\'ll drink a measure\n    The table round. [Approaches the door.] There\'s blood upon thy  \n      face.\n  MURTHERER. \'Tis Banquo\'s then.\n  MACBETH. \'Tis better thee without than he within.\n    Is he dispatch\'d?\n  MURTHERER. My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him.\n  MACBETH. Thou art the best o\' the cut-throats! Yet he\'s good\n    That did the like for Fleance. If thou didst it,\n    Thou art the nonpareil.\n  MURTHERER. Most royal sir,\n    Fleance is \'scaped.\n  MACBETH. [Aside.] Then comes my fit again. I had else been perfect,\n    Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,\n    As broad and general as the casing air;\n    But now I am cabin\'d, cribb\'d, confin\'d, bound in\n    To saucy doubts and fears -But Banquo\'s safe?\n  MURTHERER. Ay, my good lord. Safe in a ditch he bides,\n    With twenty trenched gashes on his head,\n    The least a death to nature.\n  MACBETH. Thanks for that.\n    There the grown serpent lies; the worm that\'s fled  \n    Hath nature that in time will venom breed,\n    No teeth for the present. Get thee gone. Tomorrow\n    We\'ll hear ourselves again.\n                                                 Exit Murtherer.\n  LADY MACBETH. My royal lord,\n    You do not give the cheer. The feast is sold\n    That is not often vouch\'d, while \'tis amaking,\n    \'Tis given with welcome. To feed were best at home;\n    From thence the sauce to meat is ceremony;\n    Meeting were bare without it.\n  MACBETH. Sweet remembrancer!\n    Now good digestion wait on appetite,\n    And health on both!\n  LENNOX. May\'t please your Highness sit.\n\n      The Ghost of Banquo enters and sits in Macbeth\'s place.\n\n  MACBETH. Here had we now our country\'s honor roof\'d,\n    Were the graced person of our Banquo present,\n    Who may I rather challenge for unkindness  \n    Than pity for mischance!\n  ROSS. His absence, sir,\n    Lays blame upon his promise. Please\'t your Highness\n    To grace us with your royal company?\n  MACBETH. The table\'s full.\n  LENNOX. Here is a place reserved, sir.\n  MACBETH. Where?\n  LENNOX. Here, my good lord. What is\'t that moves your Highness?\n  MACBETH. Which of you have done this?\n  LORDS. What, my good lord?\n  MACBETH. Thou canst not say I did it; never shake\n    Thy gory locks at me.\n  ROSS. Gentlemen, rise; his Highness is well.\n  LADY MACBETH. Sit, worthy friends; my lord is often thus,\n    And hath been from his youth. Pray you, keep seat.\n    The fit is momentary; upon a thought\n    He will again be well. If much you note him,\n    You shall offend him and extend his passion.\n    Feed, and regard him not-Are you a man?\n  MACBETH. Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that  \n    Which might appal the devil.\n  LADY MACBETH. O proper stuff!\n    This is the very painting of your fear;\n    This is the air-drawn dagger which you said\n    Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts,\n    Impostors to true fear, would well become\n    A woman\'s story at a winter\'s fire,\n    Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself!\n    Why do you make such faces? When all\'s done,\n    You look but on a stool.\n  MACBETH. Prithee, see there! Behold! Look! Lo! How say you?\n    Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.\n    If charnel houses and our graves must send\n    Those that we bury back, our monuments\n    Shall be the maws of kites.                      Exit Ghost.\n  LADY MACBETH. What, quite unmann\'d in folly?\n  MACBETH. If I stand here, I saw him.\n  LADY MACBETH. Fie, for shame!\n  MACBETH. Blood hath been shed ere now, i\' the olden time,\n    Ere humane statute purged the gentle weal;  \n    Ay, and since too, murthers have been perform\'d\n    Too terrible for the ear. The time has been,\n    That, when the brains were out, the man would die,\n    And there an end; but now they rise again,\n    With twenty mortal murthers on their crowns,\n    And push us from our stools. This is more strange\n    Than such a murther is.\n  LADY MACBETH. My worthy lord,\n    Your noble friends do lack you.\n  MACBETH. I do forget.\n    Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends.\n    I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing\n    To those that know me. Come, love and health to all;\n    Then I\'ll sit down. Give me some wine, fill full.\n    I drink to the general joy o\' the whole table,\n    And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss.\n    Would he were here! To all and him we thirst,\n    And all to all.\n  LORDS. Our duties and the pledge.\n  \n                     Re-enter Ghost.\n\n  MACBETH. Avaunt, and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!\n    Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;\n    Thou hast no speculation in those eyes\n    Which thou dost glare with.\n  LADY MACBETH. Think of this, good peers,\n    But as a thing of custom. \'Tis no other,\n    Only it spoils the pleasure of the time.\n  MACBETH. What man dare, I dare.\n    Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,\n    The arm\'d rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger;\n    Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves\n    Shall never tremble. Or be alive again,\n    And dare me to the desert with thy sword.\n    If trembling I inhabit then, protest me\n    The baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow!\n    Unreal mockery, hence!                           Exit Ghost.\n    Why, so, being gone,\n    I am a man again. Pray you sit still.  \n  LADY MACBETH. You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting,\n    With most admired disorder.\n  MACBETH. Can such things be,\n    And overcome us like a summer\'s cloud,\n    Without our special wonder? You make me strange\n    Even to the disposition that I owe\n    When now I think you can behold such sights\n    And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks\n    When mine is blanch\'d with fear.\n  ROSS. What sights, my lord?\n  LADY MACBETH. I pray you, speak not; he grows worse and worse;\n    Question enrages him. At once, good night.\n    Stand not upon the order of your going,\n    But go at once.\n  LENNOX. Good night, and better health\n    Attend his Majesty!\n  LADY MACBETH. A kind good night to all!\n                        Exeunt all but Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.\n  MACBETH. will have blood; they say blood will have blood.\n    Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;  \n    Augures and understood relations have\n    By maggot pies and choughs and rooks brought forth\n    The secret\'st man of blood. What is the night?\n  LADY MACBETH. Almost at odds with morning, which is which.\n  MACBETH. How say\'st thou, that Macduff denies his person\n    At our great bidding?\n  LADY MACBETH. Did you send to him, sir?\n  MACBETH. I hear it by the way, but I will send.\n    There\'s not a one of them but in his house\n    I keep a servant feed. I will tomorrow,\n    And betimes I will, to the weird sisters.\n    More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,\n    By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good\n    All causes shall give way. I am in blood\n    Stepp\'d in so far that, should I wade no more,\n    Returning were as tedious as go o\'er.\n    Strange things I have in head that will to hand,\n    Which must be acted ere they may be scann\'d.\n  LADY MACBETH. You lack the season of all natures, sleep.\n  MACBETH. Come, we\'ll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse  \n    Is the initiate fear that wants hard use.\n    We are yet but young in deed.                       Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nA heath. Thunder.\n\nEnter the three Witches, meeting Hecate.\n\n  FIRST WITCH. Why, how now, Hecate? You look angerly.\n  HECATE. Have I not reason, beldams as you are,\n    Saucy and overbold? How did you dare\n    To trade and traffic with Macbeth\n    In riddles and affairs of death,\n    And I, the mistress of your charms,\n    The close contriver of all harms,\n    Was never call\'d to bear my part,\n    Or show the glory of our art?\n    And, which is worse, all you have done\n    Hath been but for a wayward son,\n    Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do,\n    Loves for his own ends, not for you.\n    But make amends now. Get you gone,\n    And at the pit of Acheron\n    Meet me i\' the morning. Thither he\n    Will come to know his destiny.  \n    Your vessels and your spells provide,\n    Your charms and everything beside.\n    I am for the air; this night I\'ll spend\n    Unto a dismal and a fatal end.\n    Great business must be wrought ere noon:\n    Upon the corner of the moon\n    There hangs a vaporous drop profound;\n    I\'ll catch it ere it come to ground.\n    And that distill\'d by magic sleights\n    Shall raise such artificial sprites\n    As by the strength of their illusion\n    Shall draw him on to his confusion.\n    He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear\n    His hopes \'bove wisdom, grace, and fear.\n    And you all know security\n    Is mortals\' chiefest enemy.\n                                        Music and a song within,\n                                         "Come away, come away."\n    Hark! I am call\'d; my little spirit, see,\n    Sits in a foggy cloud and stays for me.                Exit.  \n  FIRST WITCH. Come, let\'s make haste; she\'ll soon be back again.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nForres. The palace.\n\nEnter Lennox and another Lord.\n\n  LENNOX. My former speeches have but hit your thoughts,\n    Which can interpret farther; only I say\n    Thing\'s have been strangely borne. The gracious Duncan\n    Was pitied of Macbeth; marry, he was dead.\n    And the right valiant Banquo walk\'d too late,\n    Whom, you may say, if\'t please you, Fleance kill\'d,\n    For Fleance fled. Men must not walk too late.\n    Who cannot want the thought, how monstrous\n    It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain\n    To kill their gracious father? Damned fact!\n    How it did grieve Macbeth! Did he not straight,\n    In pious rage, the two delinquents tear\n    That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep?\n    Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too,\n    For \'twould have anger\'d any heart alive\n    To hear the men deny\'t. So that, I say,\n    He has borne all things well; and I do think  \n    That, had he Duncan\'s sons under his key-\n    As, an\'t please heaven, he shall not -they should find\n    What \'twere to kill a father; so should Fleance.\n    But, peace! For from broad words, and \'cause he fail\'d\n    His presence at the tyrant\'s feast, I hear,\n    Macduff lives in disgrace. Sir, can you tell\n    Where he bestows himself?\n  LORD. The son of Duncan,\n    From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth,\n    Lives in the English court and is received\n    Of the most pious Edward with such grace\n    That the malevolence of fortune nothing\n    Takes from his high respect. Thither Macduff\n    Is gone to pray the holy King, upon his aid\n    To wake Northumberland and warlike Siward;\n    That by the help of these, with Him above\n    To ratify the work, we may again\n    Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights,\n    Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives,\n    Do faithful homage, and receive free honors-  \n    All which we pine for now. And this report\n    Hath so exasperate the King that he\n    Prepares for some attempt of war.\n  LENNOX. Sent he to Macduff?\n  LORD. He did, and with an absolute "Sir, not I,"\n    The cloudy messenger turns me his back,\n    And hums, as who should say, "You\'ll rue the time\n    That clogs me with this answer."\n  LENNOX. And that well might\n    Advise him to a caution, to hold what distance\n    His wisdom can provide. Some holy angel\n    Fly to the court of England and unfold\n    His message ere he come, that a swift blessing\n    May soon return to this our suffering country\n    Under a hand accursed!\n  LORD. I\'ll send my prayers with him.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nA cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron. Thunder.\n\nEnter the three Witches.\n  FIRST WITCH. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew\'d.\n  SECOND WITCH. Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.\n  THIRD WITCH. Harpier cries, "\'Tis time, \'tis time."\n  FIRST WITCH. Round about the cauldron go;\n    In the poison\'d entrails throw.\n    Toad, that under cold stone\n    Days and nights has thirty-one\n    Swelter\'d venom sleeping got,\n    Boil thou first i\' the charmed pot.\n  ALL. Double, double, toil and trouble;\n    Fire burn and cauldron bubble.\n  SECOND WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake,\n    In the cauldron boil and bake;\n    Eye of newt and toe of frog,\n    Wool of bat and tongue of dog,\n    Adder\'s fork and blind-worm\'s sting,\n    Lizard\'s leg and howlet\'s wing,\n    For a charm of powerful trouble,  \n    Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.\n  ALL. Double, double, toil and trouble;\n    Fire burn and cauldron bubble.\n  THIRD WITCH. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,\n    Witch\'s mummy, maw and gulf\n    Of the ravin\'d salt-sea shark,\n    Root of hemlock digg\'d i\' the dark,\n    Liver of blaspheming Jew,\n    Gall of goat and slips of yew\n    Sliver\'d in the moon\'s eclipse,\n    Nose of Turk and Tartar\'s lips,\n    Finger of birth-strangled babe\n    Ditch-deliver\'d by a drab,\n    Make the gruel thick and slab.\n    Add thereto a tiger\'s chawdron,\n    For the ingredients of our cawdron.\n  ALL. Double, double, toil and trouble;\n    Fire burn and cauldron bubble.\n  SECOND WITCH. Cool it with a baboon\'s blood,\n    Then the charm is firm and good.  \n\n            Enter Hecate to the other three Witches.\n\n  HECATE. O, well done! I commend your pains,\n    And everyone shall share i\' the gains.\n    And now about the cauldron sing,\n    Like elves and fairies in a ring,\n    Enchanting all that you put in.\n                              Music and a song, "Black spirits."\n                                                 Hecate retires.\n  SECOND WITCH. By the pricking of my thumbs,\n    Something wicked this way comes.\n    Open, locks,\n    Whoever knocks!\n\n                      Enter Macbeth.\n\n  MACBETH. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags?\n    What is\'t you do?\n  ALL. A deed without a name.  \n  MACBETH. I conjure you, by that which you profess\n    (Howeer you come to know it) answer me:\n    Though you untie the winds and let them fight\n    Against the churches, though the yesty waves\n    Confound and swallow navigation up,\n    Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down,\n    Though castles topple on their warders\' heads,\n    Though palaces and pyramids do slope\n    Their heads to their foundations, though the treasure\n    Of nature\'s germaines tumble all together\n    Even till destruction sicken, answer me\n    To what I ask you.\n  FIRST WITCH. Speak.\n  SECOND WITCH. Demand.\n  THIRD WITCH. We\'ll answer.\n  FIRST WITCH. Say, if thou\'dst rather hear it from our mouths,\n    Or from our masters\'?\n  MACBETH. Call \'em, let me see \'em.\n  FIRST WITCH. Pour in sow\'s blood that hath eaten\n    Her nine farrow; grease that\'s sweaten  \n    From the murtherer\'s gibbet throw\n    Into the flame.\n  ALL. Come, high or low;\n    Thyself and office deftly show!\n\n            Thunder. First Apparition: an armed Head.\n\n  MACBETH. Tell me, thou unknown power-\n  FIRST WITCH. He knows thy thought:\n    Hear his speech, but say thou nought.\n  FIRST APPARITION. Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Beware Macduff,\n    Beware the Thane of Fife. Dismiss me. Enough.\n                                                       Descends.\n  MACBETH. Whate\'er thou art, for thy good caution, thanks;\n    Thou hast harp\'d my fear aright. But one word more-\n  FIRST WITCH. He will not be commanded. Here\'s another,\n    More potent than the first.\n\n          Thunder. Second Apparition: a bloody Child.\n  \n  SECOND APPARITION. Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!\n  MACBETH. Had I three ears, I\'d hear thee.\n  SECOND APPARITION. Be bloody, bold, and resolute: laugh to scorn\n    The power of man, for none of woman born\n    Shall harm Macbeth.                                Descends.\n  MACBETH. Then live, Macduff. What need I fear of thee?\n    But yet I\'ll make assurance double sure,\n    And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live,\n    That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies,\n    And sleep in spite of thunder.\n\n       Thunder. Third Apparition: a Child crowned,\n               with a tree in his hand.\n\n    What is this,\n    That rises like the issue of a king,\n    And wears upon his baby brow the round\n    And top of sovereignty?\n  ALL. Listen, but speak not to\'t.\n  THIRD APPARITION. Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care  \n    Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are.\n    Macbeth shall never vanquish\'d be until\n    Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill\n    Shall come against him.                            Descends.\n  MACBETH. That will never be.\n    Who can impress the forest, bid the tree\n    Unfix his earth-bound root? Sweet bodements, good!\n    Rebellion\'s head, rise never till the Wood\n    Of Birnam rise, and our high-placed Macbeth\n    Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath\n    To time and mortal custom. Yet my heart\n    Throbs to know one thing: tell me, if your art\n    Can tell so much, shall Banquo\'s issue ever\n    Reign in this kingdom?\n  ALL. Seek to know no more.\n  MACBETH. I will be satisfied! Deny me this,\n    And an eternal curse fall on you! Let me know.\n    Why sinks that cauldron, and what noise is this?\n                                                       Hautboys.\n  FIRST WITCH. Show!  \n  SECOND WITCH. Show!\n  THIRD. WITCH. Show!\n  ALL. Show his eyes, and grieve his heart;\n    Come like shadows, so depart!\n\n    A show of eight Kings, the last with a glass in his hand;\n                   Banquo\'s Ghost following.\n\n  MACBETH. Thou are too like the spirit of Banquo Down!\n    Thy crown does sear mine eyeballs. And thy hair,\n    Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first.\n    A third is like the former. Filthy hags!\n    Why do you show me this? A fourth! Start, eyes!\n    What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?\n    Another yet! A seventh! I\'ll see no more!\n    And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass\n    Which shows me many more; and some I see\n    That twofold balls and treble sceptres carry.\n    Horrible sight! Now I see \'tis true;\n    For the blood-bolter\'d Banquo smiles upon me,  \n    And points at them for his. What, is this so?\n  FIRST WITCH. Ay, sir, all this is so. But why\n    Stands Macbeth thus amazedly?\n    Come,sisters, cheer we up his sprites,\n    And show the best of our delights.\n    I\'ll charm the air to give a sound,\n    While you perform your antic round,\n    That this great King may kindly say\n    Our duties did his welcome pay.\n                                    Music. The Witches dance and\n                                        then vanish with Hecate.\n  MACBETH. are they? Gone? Let this pernicious hour\n    Stand ay accursed in the calendar!\n    Come in, without there!\n\n                    Enter Lennox.\n\n  LENNOX. What\'s your Grace\'s will?\n  MACBETH. Saw you the weird sisters?\n  LENNOX. No, my lord.  \n  MACBETH. Came they not by you?\n  LENNOX. No indeed, my lord.\n  MACBETH. Infected be the \'air whereon they ride,\n    And damn\'d all those that trust them! I did hear\n    The galloping of horse. Who wast came by?\n  LENNOX. \'Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word\n    Macduff is fled to England.\n  MACBETH. Fled to England?\n  LENNOX. Ay, my good lord.\n  MACBETH. [Aside.] Time, thou anticipatest my dread exploits.\n    The flighty purpose never is o\'ertook\n    Unless the deed go with it. From this moment\n    The very firstlings of my heart shall be\n    The firstlings of my hand. And even now,\n    To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done:\n    The castle of Macduff I will surprise,\n    Seize upon Fife, give to the edge o\' the sword\n    His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls\n    That trace him in his line. No boasting like a fool;\n    This deed I\'ll do before this purpose cool.  \n    But no more sights! -Where are these gentlemen?\n    Come, bring me where they are.                       Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nFife. Macduff\'s castle.\n\nEnter Lady Macduff, her Son, and Ross.\n\n  LADY MACDUFF. What had he done, to make him fly the land?\n  ROSS. You must have patience, madam.\n  LADY MACDUFF. He had none;\n    His flight was madness. When our actions do not,\n    Our fears do make us traitors.\n  ROSS. You know not\n    Whether it was his wisdom or his fear.\n  LADY MACDUFF. Wisdom? To leave his wife, to leave his babes,\n    His mansion, and his titles, in a place\n    From whence himself does fly? He loves us not;\n    He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren,\n    The most diminutive of birds, will fight,\n    Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.\n    All is the fear and nothing is the love;\n    As little is the wisdom, where the flight\n    So runs against all reason.\n  ROSS. My dearest coz,  \n    I pray you, school yourself. But for your husband,\n    He is noble, wise, Judicious, and best knows\n    The fits o\' the season. I dare not speak much further;\n    But cruel are the times when we are traitors\n    And do not know ourselves; when we hold rumor\n    From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,\n    But float upon a wild and violent sea\n    Each way and move. I take my leave of you;\n    Shall not be long but I\'ll be here again.\n    Things at the worst will cease or else climb upward\n    To what they were before. My pretty cousin,\n    Blessing upon you!\n  LADY MACDUFF. Father\'d he is, and yet he\'s fatherless.\n  ROSS. I am so much a fool, should I stay longer,\n    It would be my disgrace and your discomfort.\n    I take my leave at once.                               Exit.\n  LADY MACDUFF. Sirrah, your father\'s dead.\n    And what will you do now? How will you live?\n  SON. As birds do, Mother.\n  LADY MACDUFF. What, with worms and flies?  \n  SON. With what I get, I mean; and so do they.\n  LADY MACDUFF. Poor bird! Thou\'ldst never fear the net nor lime,\n    The pitfall nor the gin.\n  SON. Why should I, Mother? Poor birds they are not set for.\n    My father is not dead, for all your saying.\n  LADY MACDUFF. Yes, he is dead. How wilt thou do for father?\n  SON. Nay, how will you do for a husband?\n  LADY MACDUFF. Why, I can buy me twenty at any market.\n  SON. Then you\'ll buy \'em to sell again.\n  LADY MACDUFF. Thou speak\'st with all thy wit, and yet, i\' faith,\n    With wit enough for thee.\n  SON. Was my father a traitor, Mother?\n  LADY MACDUFF. Ay, that he was.\n  SON. What is a traitor?\n  LADY MACDUFF. Why one that swears and lies.\n  SON. And be all traitors that do so?\n  LADY MACDUFF. Everyone that does so is a traitor and must be\n     hanged.\n  SON. And must they all be hanged that swear and lie?\n  LADY MACDUFF. Everyone.  \n  SON. Who must hang them?\n  LADY MACDUFF. Why, the honest men.\n  SON. Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and\n    swearers enow to beat the honest men and hang up them.\n  LADY MACDUFF. Now, God help thee, poor monkey! But how wilt thou do\n    for a father?\n  SON. If he were dead, you\'ld weep for him; if you would not, it\n    were a good sign that I should quickly have a new father.\n  LADY MACDUFF. Poor prattler, how thou talk\'st!\n\n                    Enter a Messenger.\n\n  MESSENGER. Bless you, fair dame! I am not to you known,\n    Though in your state of honor I am perfect.\n    I doubt some danger does approach you nearly.\n    If you will take a homely man\'s advice,\n    Be not found here; hence, with your little ones.\n    To fright you thus, methinks I am too savage;\n    To do worse to you were fell cruelty,\n    Which is too nigh your person. Heaven preserve you!  \n    I dare abide no longer.                                Exit.\n  LADY MACDUFF. Whither should I fly?\n    I have done no harm. But I remember now\n    I am in this earthly world, where to do harm\n    Is often laudable, to do good sometime\n    Accounted dangerous folly. Why then, alas,\n    Do I put up that womanly defense,\n    To say I have done no harm -What are these faces?\n\n                      Enter Murtherers.\n\n  FIRST MURTHERER. Where is your husband?\n  LADY MACDUFF. I hope, in no place so unsanctified\n    Where such as thou mayst find him.\n  FIRST MURTHERER. He\'s a traitor.\n  SON. Thou liest, thou shag-ear\'d villain!\n  FIRST MURTHERER. What, you egg!\n                                                      Stabs him.\n    Young fry of treachery!\n  SON. He has kill\'d me, Mother.  \n    Run away, I pray you!                                  Dies.\n                            Exit Lady Macduff, crying "Murther!"\n                               Exeunt Murtherers, following her.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nEngland. Before the King\'s palace.\n\nEnter Malcolm and Macduff.\n\n  MALCOLM. Let us seek out some desolate shade and there\n    Weep our sad bosoms empty.\n  MACDUFF. Let us rather\n    Hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men\n    Bestride our downfall\'n birthdom. Each new morn\n    New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows\n    Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds\n    As if it felt with Scotland and yell\'d out\n    Like syllable of dolor.\n  MALCOLM. What I believe, I\'ll wall;\n    What know, believe; and what I can redress,\n    As I shall find the time to friend, I will.\n    What you have spoke, it may be so perchance.\n    This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,\n    Was once thought honest. You have loved him well;\n    He hath not touch\'d you yet. I am young, but something\n    You may deserve of him through me, and wisdom  \n    To offer up a weak, poor, innocent lamb\n    To appease an angry god.\n  MACDUFF. I am not treacherous.\n  MALCOLM. But Macbeth is.\n    A good and virtuous nature may recoil\n    In an imperial charge. But I shall crave your pardon;\n    That which you are, my thoughts cannot transpose.\n    Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.\n    Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,\n    Yet grace must still look so.\n  MACDUFF. I have lost my hopes.\n  MALCOLM. Perchance even there where I did find my doubts.\n    Why in that rawness left you wife and child,\n    Those precious motives, those strong knots of love,\n    Without leave-taking? I pray you,\n    Let not my jealousies be your dishonors,\n    But mine own safeties. You may be rightly just,\n    Whatever I shall think.\n  MACDUFF. Bleed, bleed, poor country!\n    Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,  \n    For goodness dare not check thee. Wear thou thy wrongs;\n    The title is affeer\'d. Fare thee well, lord.\n    I would not be the villain that thou think\'st\n    For the whole space that\'s in the tyrant\'s grasp\n    And the rich East to boot.\n  MALCOLM. Be not offended;\n    I speak not as in absolute fear of you.\n    I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;\n    It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash\n    Is added to her wounds. I think withal\n    There would be hands uplifted in my right;\n    And here from gracious England have I offer\n    Of goodly thousands. But for all this,\n    When I shall tread upon the tyrant\'s head,\n    Or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country\n    Shall have more vices than it had before,\n    More suffer and more sundry ways than ever,\n    By him that shall succeed.\n  MACDUFF. What should he be?\n  MALCOLM. It is myself I mean, in whom I know  \n    All the particulars of vice so grafted\n    That, when they shall be open\'d, black Macbeth\n    Will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state\n    Esteem him as a lamb, being compared\n    With my confineless harms.\n  MACDUFF. Not in the legions\n    Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn\'d\n    In evils to top Macbeth.\n  MALCOLM. I grant him bloody,\n    Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,\n    Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin\n    That has a name. But there\'s no bottom, none,\n    In my voluptuousness. Your wives, your daughters,\n    Your matrons, and your maids could not fill up\n    The cestern of my lust, and my desire\n    All continent impediments would o\'erbear\n    That did oppose my will. Better Macbeth\n    Than such an one to reign.\n  MACDUFF. Boundless intemperance\n    In nature is a tyranny; it hath been  \n    The untimely emptying of the happy throne,\n    And fall of many kings. But fear not yet\n    To take upon you what is yours. You may\n    Convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty\n    And yet seem cold, the time you may so hoodwink.\n    We have willing dames enough; there cannot be\n    That vulture in you to devour so many\n    As will to greatness dedicate themselves,\n    Finding it so inclined.\n  MALCOLM. With this there grows\n    In my most ill-composed affection such\n    A stanchless avarice that, were I King,\n    I should cut off the nobles for their lands,\n    Desire his jewels and this other\'s house,\n    And my more-having would be as a sauce\n    To make me hunger more, that I should forge\n    Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal,\n    Destroying them for wealth.\n  MACDUFF. This avarice\n    Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root  \n    Than summer-seeming lust, and it hath been\n    The sword of our slain kings. Yet do not fear;\n    Scotland hath foisons to fill up your will\n    Of your mere own. All these are portable,\n    With other graces weigh\'d.\n  MALCOLM. But I have none. The king-becoming graces,\n    As justice, verity, temperance, stableness,\n    Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,\n    Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,\n    I have no relish of them, but abound\n    In the division of each several crime,\n    Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should\n    Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,\n    Uproar the universal peace, confound\n    All unity on earth.\n  MACDUFF. O Scotland, Scotland!\n  MALCOLM. If such a one be fit to govern, speak.\n    I am as I have spoken.\n  MACDUFF. Fit to govern?\n    No, not to live. O nation miserable!  \n    With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter\'d,\n    When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again,\n    Since that the truest issue of thy throne\n    By his own interdiction stands accursed\n    And does blaspheme his breed? Thy royal father\n    Was a most sainted king; the queen that bore thee,\n    Oftener upon her knees than on her feet,\n    Died every day she lived. Fare thee well!\n    These evils thou repeat\'st upon thyself\n    Have banish\'d me from Scotland. O my breast,\n    Thy hope ends here!\n  MALCOLM. Macduff, this noble passion,\n    Child of integrity, hath from my soul\n    Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts\n    To thy good truth and honor. Devilish Macbeth\n    By many of these trains hath sought to win me\n    Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me\n    From over-credulous haste. But God above\n    Deal between thee and me! For even now\n    I put myself to thy direction and  \n    Unspeak mine own detraction; here abjure\n    The taints and blames I laid upon myself,\n    For strangers to my nature. I am yet\n    Unknown to woman, never was forsworn,\n    Scarcely have coveted what was mine own,\n    At no time broke my faith, would not betray\n    The devil to his fellow, and delight\n    No less in truth than life. My first false speaking\n    Was this upon myself. What I am truly\n    Is thine and my poor country\'s to command.\n    Whither indeed, before thy here-approach,\n    Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike men\n    Already at a point, was setting forth.\n    Now we\'ll together, and the chance of goodness\n    Be like our warranted quarrel! Why are you silent?\n  MACDUFF. Such welcome and unwelcome things at once\n    \'Tis hard to reconcile.\n\n                     Enter a Doctor.\n  \n  MALCOLM. Well, more anon. Comes the King forth, I pray you?\n  DOCTOR. Ay, sir, there are a crew of wretched souls\n    That stay his cure. Their malady convinces\n    The great assay of art, but at his touch,\n    Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand,\n    They presently amend.\n  MALCOLM. I thank you, Doctor.                     Exit Doctor.\n  MACDUFF. What\'s the disease he means?\n  MALCOLM. \'Tis call\'d the evil:\n    A most miraculous work in this good King,\n    Which often, since my here-remain in England,\n    I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven,\n    Himself best knows; but strangely-visited people,\n    All swol\'n and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,\n    The mere despair of surgery, he cures,\n    Hanging a golden stamp about their necks\n    Put on with holy prayers; and \'tis spoken,\n    To the succeeding royalty he leaves\n    The healing benediction. With this strange virtue\n    He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,  \n    And sundry blessings hang about his throne\n    That speak him full of grace.\n\n                    Enter Ross.\n\n  MACDUFF. See, who comes here?\n  MALCOLM. My countryman, but yet I know him not.\n  MACDUFF. My ever gentle cousin, welcome hither.\n  MALCOLM. I know him now. Good God, betimes remove\n    The means that makes us strangers!\n  ROSS. Sir, amen.\n  MACDUFF. Stands Scotland where it did?\n  ROSS. Alas, poor country,\n    Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot\n    Be call\'d our mother, but our grave. Where nothing,\n    But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;\n    Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air,\n    Are made, not mark\'d; where violent sorrow seems\n    A modern ecstasy. The dead man\'s knell\n    Is there scarce ask\'d for who, and good men\'s lives  \n    Expire before the flowers in their caps,\n    Dying or ere they sicken.\n  MACDUFF. O, relation\n    Too nice, and yet too true!\n  MALCOLM. What\'s the newest grief?\n  ROSS. That of an hour\'s age doth hiss the speaker;\n    Each minute teems a new one.\n  MACDUFF. How does my wife?\n  ROSS. Why, well.\n  MACDUFF. And all my children?\n  ROSS. Well too.\n  MACDUFF. The tyrant has not batter\'d at their peace?\n  ROSS. No, they were well at peace when I did leave \'em.\n  MACDUFF. Be not a niggard of your speech. How goest?\n  ROSS. When I came hither to transport the tidings,\n    Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumor\n    Of many worthy fellows that were out,\n    Which was to my belief witness\'d the rather,\n    For that I saw the tyrant\'s power afoot.\n    Now is the time of help; your eye in Scotland  \n    Would create soldiers, make our women fight,\n    To doff their dire distresses.\n  MALCOLM. Be\'t their comfort\n    We are coming thither. Gracious England hath\n    Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men;\n    An older and a better soldier none\n    That Christendom gives out.\n  ROSS. Would I could answer\n    This comfort with the like! But I have words\n    That would be howl\'d out in the desert air,\n    Where hearing should not latch them.\n  MACDUFF. What concern they?\n    The general cause? Or is it a fee-grief\n    Due to some single breast?\n  ROSS. No mind that\'s honest\n    But in it shares some woe, though the main part\n    Pertains to you alone.\n  MACDUFF. If it be mine,\n    Keep it not from me, quickly let me have it.\n  ROSS. Let not your ears despise my tongue forever,  \n    Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound\n    That ever yet they heard.\n  MACDUFF. Humh! I guess at it.\n  ROSS. Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes\n    Savagely slaughter\'d. To relate the manner\n    Were, on the quarry of these murther\'d deer,\n    To add the death of you.\n  MALCOLM. Merciful heaven!\n    What, man! Neer pull your hat upon your brows;\n    Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak\n    Whispers the o\'erfraught heart, and bids it break.\n  MACDUFF. My children too?\n  ROSS. Wife, children, servants, all\n    That could be found.\n  MACDUFF. And I must be from thence!\n    My wife kill\'d too?\n  ROSS. I have said.\n  MALCOLM. Be comforted.\n    Let\'s make us medicines of our great revenge,\n    To cure this deadly grief.  \n  MACDUFF. He has no children. All my pretty ones?\n    Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?\n    What, all my pretty chickens and their dam\n    At one fell swoop?\n  MALCOLM. Dispute it like a man.\n  MACDUFF. I shall do so,\n    But I must also feel it as a man.\n    I cannot but remember such things were\n    That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on,\n    And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff,\n    They were all struck for thee! Naught that I am,\n    Not for their own demerits, but for mine,\n    Fell slaughter on their souls. Heaven rest them now!\n  MALCOLM. Be this the whetstone of your sword. Let grief\n    Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.\n  MACDUFF. O, I could play the woman with mine eyes\n    And braggart with my tongue! But, gentle heavens,\n    Cut short all intermission; front to front\n    Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;\n    Within my sword\'s length set him; if he \'scape,  \n    Heaven forgive him too!\n  MALCOLM. This tune goes manly.\n    Come, go we to the King; our power is ready,\n    Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth\n    Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above\n    Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may,\n    The night is long that never finds the day.          Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nDunsinane. Anteroom in the castle.\n\nEnter a Doctor of Physic and a Waiting Gentlewoman.\n\n  DOCTOR. I have two nights watched with you, but can perceive no\n    truth in your report. When was it she last walked?\n  GENTLEWOMAN. Since his Majesty went into the field, have seen her\n    rise from her bed, throw her nightgown upon her, unlock her\n    closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon\'t, read it,\n    afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while\n    in a most fast sleep.\n  DOCTOR. A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the\n    benefit of sleep and do the effects of watching! In this slumbery\n    agitation, besides her walking and other actual performances,\n    what, at any time, have you heard her say?\n  GENTLEWOMAN. That, sir, which I will not report after her.\n  DOCTOR. You may to me, and \'tis most meet you should.\n  GENTLEWOMAN. Neither to you nor anyone, having no witness to\n    confirm my speech.\n\n                Enter Lady Macbeth with a taper.  \n\n    Lo you, here she comes! This is her very guise, and, upon my\n    life, fast asleep. Observe her; stand close.\n  DOCTOR. How came she by that light?\n  GENTLEWOMAN. Why, it stood by her. She has light by her\n     continually; \'tis her command.\n  DOCTOR. You see, her eyes are open.\n  GENTLEWOMAN. Ay, but their sense is shut.\n  DOCTOR. What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands.\n  GENTLEWOMAN. It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus\n    washing her hands. I have known her continue in this a quarter of\n    an hour.\n  LADY MACBETH. Yet here\'s a spot.\n  DOCTOR. Hark, she speaks! I will set down what comes from her, to\n    satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.\n  LADY MACBETH. Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One- two -why then \'tis\n    time to do\'t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and\n    afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our\n    power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have\n    had so much blood in him?  \n  DOCTOR. Do you mark that?\n  LADY MACBETH. The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now? What,\n    will these hands neer be clean? No more o\' that, my lord, no more\n    o\' that. You mar all with this starting.\n  DOCTOR. Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.\n  GENTLEWOMAN. She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that.\n    Heaven knows what she has known.\n  LADY MACBETH. Here\'s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes\n    of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!\n  DOCTOR. What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charged.\n  GENTLEWOMAN. I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the\n    dignity of the whole body.\n  DOCTOR. Well, well, well-\n  GENTLEWOMAN. Pray God it be, sir.\n  DOCTOR. This disease is beyond my practice. Yet I have known those\n    which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in their\n    beds.\n  LADY MACBETH. Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so\n    pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo\'s buried; he cannot come out\n    on\'s grave.  \n  DOCTOR. Even so?\n  LADY MACBETH. To bed, to bed; there\'s knocking at the gate. Come,\n    come, come, come, give me your hand.What\'s done cannot be undone.\n    To bed, to bed, to bed.\nExit.\n  DOCTOR. Will she go now to bed?\n  GENTLEWOMAN. Directly.\n  DOCTOR. Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds\n    Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds\n    To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.\n    More needs she the divine than the physician.\n    God, God, forgive us all! Look after her;\n    Remove from her the means of all annoyance,\n    And still keep eyes upon her. So good night.\n    My mind she has mated and amazed my sight.\n    I think, but dare not speak.\n  GENTLEWOMAN. Good night, good doctor.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe country near Dunsinane. Drum and colors.\n\nEnter Menteith, Caithness, Angus, Lennox, and Soldiers.\n\n  MENTEITH. The English power is near, led on by Malcolm,\n    His uncle Siward, and the good Macduff.\n    Revenges burn in them, for their dear causes\n    Would to the bleeding and the grim alarm\n    Excite the mortified man.\n  ANGUS. Near Birnam Wood\n    Shall we well meet them; that way are they coming.\n  CAITHNESS. Who knows if Donalbain be with his brother?\n  LENNOX. For certain, sir, he is not; I have a file\n    Of all the gentry. There is Seward\'s son\n    And many unrough youths that even now\n    Protest their first of manhood.\n  MENTEITH. What does the tyrant?\n  CAITHNESS. Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies.\n    Some say he\'s mad; others, that lesser hate him,\n    Do call it valiant fury; but, for certain,\n    He cannot buckle his distemper\'d cause  \n    Within the belt of rule.\n  ANGUS. Now does he feel\n    His secret murthers sticking on his hands,\n    Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;\n    Those he commands move only in command,\n    Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title\n    Hang loose about him, like a giant\'s robe\n    Upon a dwarfish thief.\n  MENTEITH. Who then shall blame\n    His pester\'d senses to recoil and start,\n    When all that is within him does condemn\n    Itself for being there?\n  CAITHNESS. Well, march we on\n    To give obedience where \'tis truly owed.\n    Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal,\n    And with him pour we, in our country\'s purge,\n    Each drop of us.\n  LENNOX. Or so much as it needs\n    To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds.\n    Make we our march towards Birnam.           Exeunt marching.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nDunsinane. A room in the castle.\n\nEnter Macbeth, Doctor, and Attendants.\n\n  MACBETH. Bring me no more reports; let them fly all!\n    Till Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane\n    I cannot taint with fear. What\'s the boy Malcolm?\n    Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know\n    All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:\n    "Fear not, Macbeth; no man that\'s born of woman\n    Shall e\'er have power upon thee." Then fly, false Thanes,\n    And mingle with the English epicures!\n    The mind I sway by and the heart I bear\n    Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.\n\n                       Enter a Servant.\n\n    The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!\n    Where got\'st thou that goose look?\n  SERVANT. There is ten thousand-\n  MACBETH. Geese, villain?  \n  SERVANT. Soldiers, sir.\n  MACBETH. Go prick thy face and over-red thy fear,\n    Thou lily-liver\'d boy. What soldiers, patch?\n    Death of thy soul! Those linen cheeks of thine\n    Are counselors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face?\n  SERVANT. The English force, so please you.\n  MACBETH. Take thy face hence.                    Exit Servant.\n    Seyton-I am sick at heart,\n    When I behold- Seyton, I say!- This push\n    Will cheer me ever or disseat me now.\n    I have lived long enough. My way of life\n    Is fall\'n into the sear, the yellow leaf,\n    And that which should accompany old age,\n    As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,\n    I must not look to have; but in their stead,\n    Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath,\n    Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not.\n    Seyton!\n\n                       Enter Seyton.  \n\n  SEYTON. What\'s your gracious pleasure?\n  MACBETH. What news more?\n  SEYTON. All is confirm\'d, my lord, which was reported.\n  MACBETH. I\'ll fight, \'til from my bones my flesh be hack\'d.\n    Give me my armor.\n  SEYTON. \'Tis not needed yet.\n  MACBETH. I\'ll put it on.\n    Send out more horses, skirr the country round,\n    Hang those that talk of fear. Give me mine armor.\n    How does your patient, doctor?\n  DOCTOR. Not so sick, my lord,\n    As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies,\n    That keep her from her rest.\n  MACBETH. Cure her of that.\n    Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,\n    Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,\n    Raze out the written troubles of the brain,\n    And with some sweet oblivious antidote\n    Cleanse the stuff\'d bosom of that perilous stuff  \n    Which weighs upon the heart?\n  DOCTOR. Therein the patient\n    Must minister to himself.\n  MACBETH. Throw physic to the dogs, I\'ll none of it.\n    Come, put mine armor on; give me my staff.\n    Seyton, send out. Doctor, the Thanes fly from me.\n    Come, sir, dispatch. If thou couldst, doctor, cast\n    The water of my land, find her disease\n    And purge it to a sound and pristine health,\n    I would applaud thee to the very echo,\n    That should applaud again. Pull\'t off, I say.\n    What rhubarb, cyme, or what purgative drug\n    Would scour these English hence? Hearst thou of them?\n  DOCTOR. Ay, my good lord, your royal preparation\n    Makes us hear something.\n  MACBETH. Bring it after me.\n    I will not be afraid of death and bane\n    Till Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane.\n  DOCTOR. [Aside.] Were I from Dunsinane away and clear,\n    Profit again should hardly draw me here.             Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nCountry near Birnam Wood. Drum and colors.\n\nEnter Malcolm, old Seward and his Son, Macduff, Menteith, Caithness,\nAngus, Lennox, Ross, and Soldiers, marching.\n\n  MALCOLM. Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand\n    That chambers will be safe.\n  MENTEITH. We doubt it nothing.\n  SIWARD. What wood is this before us?\n  MENTEITH. The Wood of Birnam.\n  MALCOLM. Let every soldier hew him down a bough,\n    And bear\'t before him; thereby shall we shadow\n    The numbers of our host, and make discovery\n    Err in report of us.\n  SOLDIERS. It shall be done.\n  SIWARD. We learn no other but the confident tyrant\n    Keeps still in Dunsinane and will endure\n    Our setting down before\'t.\n  MALCOLM. \'Tis his main hope;\n    For where there is advantage to be given,\n    Both more and less have given him the revolt,  \n    And none serve with him but constrained things\n    Whose hearts are absent too.\n  MACDUFF. Let our just censures\n    Attend the true event, and put we on\n    Industrious soldiership.\n  SIWARD. The time approaches\n    That will with due decision make us know\n    What we shall say we have and what we owe.\n    Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,\n    But certain issue strokes must arbitrate.\n    Towards which advance the war.\n                                                Exeunt Marching.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nDunsinane. Within the castle.\n\nEnter Macbeth, Seyton, and Soldiers, with drum and colors.\n\n  MACBETH. Hang out our banners on the outward walls;\n    The cry is still, "They come!" Our castle\'s strength\n    Will laugh a siege to scorn. Here let them lie\n    Till famine and the ague eat them up.\n    Were they not forced with those that should be ours,\n    We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,\n    And beat them backward home.\n                                          A cry of women within.\n    What is that noise?\n  SEYTON. It is the cry of women, my good lord.            Exit.\n  MACBETH. I have almost forgot the taste of fears:\n    The time has been, my senses would have cool\'d\n    To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair\n    Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir\n    As life were in\'t. I have supp\'d full with horrors;\n    Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,\n    Cannot once start me.  \n\n                  Re-enter Seyton.\n     Wherefore was that cry?\n  SEYTON. The Queen, my lord, is dead.\n  MACBETH. She should have died hereafter;\n    There would have been a time for such a word.\n    Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow\n    Creeps in this petty pace from day to day\n    To the last syllable of recorded time;\n    And all our yesterdays have lighted fools\n    The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!\n    Life\'s but a walking shadow, a poor player\n    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage\n    And then is heard no more. It is a tale\n    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,\n    Signifying nothing.\n\n                 Enter a Messenger.\n\n    Thou comest to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.  \n  MESSENGER. Gracious my lord,\n    I should report that which I say I saw,\n    But know not how to do it.\n  MACBETH. Well, say, sir.\n  MESSENGER. As I did stand my watch upon the hill,\n    I look\'d toward Birnam, and anon, methought,\n    The Wood began to move.\n  MACBETH. Liar and slave!\n  MESSENGER. Let me endure your wrath, if\'t be not so.\n    Within this three mile may you see it coming;\n    I say, a moving grove.\n  MACBETH. If thou speak\'st false,\n    Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,\n    Till famine cling thee; if thy speech be sooth,\n    I care not if thou dost for me as much.\n    I pull in resolution and begin\n    To doubt the equivocation of the fiend\n    That lies like truth. "Fear not, till Birnam Wood\n    Do come to Dunsinane," and now a wood\n    Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!  \n    If this which he avouches does appear,\n    There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.\n    I \'gin to be aweary of the sun\n    And wish the estate o\' the world were now undone.\n    Ring the alarum bell! Blow, wind! Come, wrack!\n    At least we\'ll die with harness on our back.         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nDunsinane.  Before the castle.\n\nEnter Malcolm, old Siward, Macduff, and their Army, with boughs.\nDrum and colors.\n\n  MALCOLM. Now near enough; your leavy screens throw down,\n    And show like those you are. You, worthy uncle,\n    Shall with my cousin, your right noble son,\n    Lead our first battle. Worthy Macduff and we\n    Shall take upon \'s what else remains to do,\n    According to our order.\n  SIWARD. Fare you well.\n    Do we but find the tyrant\'s power tonight,\n    Let us be beaten if we cannot fight.\n  MACDUFF. Make all our trumpets speak, give them all breath,\n    Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\nDunsinane.  Before the castle.  Alarums.\n\nEnter Macbeth.\n\n  MACBETH. They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly,\n    But bear-like I must fight the course. What\'s he\n    That was not born of woman? Such a one\n    Am I to fear, or none.\n\n                     Enter young Siward.\n\n  YOUNG SIWARD. What is thy name?\n  MACBETH. Thou\'lt be afraid to hear it.\n  YOUNG SIWARD. No, though thou call\'st thyself a hotter name\n    Than any is in hell.\n  MACBETH. My name\'s Macbeth.\n  YOUNG SIWARD. The devil himself could not pronounce a title\n    More hateful to mine ear.\n  MACBETH. No, nor more fearful.\n  YOUNG SIWARD O Thou liest, abhorred tyrant; with my sword\n    I\'ll prove the lie thou speak\'st.  \n                          They fight, and young Seward is slain.\n  MACBETH. Thou wast born of woman.\n    But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn,\n    Brandish\'d by man that\'s of a woman born.              Exit.\n\n                Alarums. Enter Macduff.\n\n  MACDUFF. That way the noise is. Tyrant, show thy face!\n    If thou best slain and with no stroke of mine,\n    My wife and children\'s ghosts will haunt me still.\n    I cannot strike at wretched kerns, whose arms\n    Are hired to bear their staves. Either thou, Macbeth,\n    Or else my sword, with an unbatter\'d edge,\n    I sheathe again undeeded. There thou shouldst be;\n    By this great clatter, one of greatest note\n    Seems bruited. Let me find him, Fortune!\n    And more I beg not.                           Exit. Alarums.\n\n                Enter Malcolm and old Siward.\n  \n  SIWARD. This way, my lord; the castle\'s gently render\'d.\n    The tyrant\'s people on both sides do fight,\n    The noble Thanes do bravely in the war,\n    The day almost itself professes yours,\n    And little is to do.\n  MALCOLM. We have met with foes\n    That strike beside us.\n  SIWARD. Enter, sir, the castle.\n                                                 Exeunt. Alarum.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VIII.\nAnother part of the field.\n\nEnter Macbeth.\n\n  MACBETH. Why should I play the Roman fool and die\n    On mine own sword? Whiles I see lives, the gashes\n    Do better upon them.\n\n                      Enter Macduff.\n\n  MACDUFF. Turn, hell hound, turn!\n  MACBETH. Of all men else I have avoided thee.\n    But get thee back, my soul is too much charged\n    With blood of thine already.\n  MACDUFF. I have no words.\n    My voice is in my sword, thou bloodier villain\n    Than terms can give thee out!                    They fight.\n  MACBETH. Thou losest labor.\n    As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air\n    With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed.\n    Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;  \n    I bear a charmed life, which must not yield\n    To one of woman born.\n  MACDUFF. Despair thy charm,\n    And let the angel whom thou still hast served\n    Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother\'s womb\n    Untimely ripp\'d.\n  MACBETH. Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,\n    For it hath cow\'d my better part of man!\n    And be these juggling fiends no more believed\n    That patter with us in a double sense,\n    That keep the word of promise to our ear\n    And break it to our hope. I\'ll not fight with thee.\n  MACDUFF. Then yield thee, coward,\n    And live to be the show and gaze o\' the time.\n    We\'ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,\n    Painted upon a pole, and underwrit,\n    "Here may you see the tyrant."\n  MACBETH. I will not yield,\n    To kiss the ground before young Malcolm\'s feet,\n    And to be baited with the rabble\'s curse.  \n    Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane,\n    And thou opposed, being of no woman born,\n    Yet I will try the last. Before my body\n    I throw my warlike shield! Lay on, Macduff,\n    And damn\'d be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"\n                                       Exeunt fighting. Alarums.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IX.\n\nRetreat. Flourish. Enter, with drum and colors, Malcolm, old Siward, Ross,\nthe other Thanes, and Soldiers.\n\n  MALCOLM. I would the friends we miss were safe arrived.\n  SIWARD. Some must go off, and yet, by these I see,\n    So great a day as this is cheaply bought.\n  MALCOLM. Macduff is missing, and your noble son.\n  ROSS. Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier\'s debt.\n    He only lived but till he was a man,\n    The which no sooner had his prowess confirm\'d\n    In the unshrinking station where he fought,\n    But like a man he died.\n  SIWARD. Then he is dead?\n  ROSS. Ay, and brought off the field. Your cause of sorrow\n    Must not be measured by his worth, for then\n    It hath no end.\n  SIWARD. Had he his hurts before?\n  ROSS. Ay, on the front.\n  SIWARD. Why then, God\'s soldier be he!\n    Had I as many sons as I have hairs,  \n    I would not wish them to a fairer death.\n    And so his knell is knoll\'d.\n  MALCOLM. He\'s worth more sorrow,\n    And that I\'ll spend for him.\n  SIWARD. He\'s worth no more:\n    They say he parted well and paid his score,\n    And so God be with him! Here comes newer comfort.\n\n             Re-enter Macduff, with Macbeth\'s head.\n\n  MACDUFF. Hail, King, for so thou art. Behold where stands\n    The usurper\'s cursed head. The time is free.\n    I see thee compass\'d with thy kingdom\'s pearl\n    That speak my salutation in their minds,\n    Whose voices I desire aloud with mine-\n    Hail, King of Scotland!\n  ALL. Hail, King of Scotland!                         Flourish.\n  MALCOLM. We shall not spend a large expense of time\n    Before we reckon with your several loves\n    And make us even with you. My Thanes and kinsmen,  \n    Henceforth be Earls, the first that ever Scotland\n    In such an honor named. What\'s more to do,\n    Which would be planted newly with the time,\n    As calling home our exiled friends abroad\n    That fled the snares of watchful tyranny,\n    Producing forth the cruel ministers\n    Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,\n    Who, as \'tis thought, by self and violent hands\n    Took off her life; this, and what needful else\n    That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace\n    We will perform in measure, time, and place.\n    So thanks to all at once and to each one,\n    Whom we invite to see us crown\'d at Scone.\n                                               Flourish. Exeunt.\n                 -THE END-\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1605\n\n\nMEASURE FOR MEASURE\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\n  VINCENTIO, the Duke\n  ANGELO, the Deputy\n  ESCALUS, an ancient Lord\n  CLAUDIO, a young gentleman\n  LUCIO, a fantastic\n  Two other like Gentlemen\n  VARRIUS, a gentleman, servant to the Duke\n  PROVOST\n  THOMAS, friar\n  PETER, friar\n  A JUSTICE\n  ELBOW, a simple constable\n  FROTH, a foolish gentleman\n  POMPEY, a clown and servant to Mistress Overdone\n  ABHORSON, an executioner\n  BARNARDINE, a dissolute prisoner\n\n  ISABELLA, sister to Claudio\n  MARIANA, betrothed to Angelo\n  JULIET, beloved of Claudio  \n  FRANCISCA, a nun\n  MISTRESS OVERDONE, a bawd\n\n  Lords, Officers, Citizens, Boy, and Attendants\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nVienna\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nThe DUKE\'S palace\n\nEnter DUKE, ESCALUS, LORDS, and ATTENDANTS\n\n  DUKE. Escalus!\n  ESCALUS. My lord.\n  DUKE. Of government the properties to unfold\n    Would seem in me t\' affect speech and discourse,\n    Since I am put to know that your own science\n    Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice\n    My strength can give you; then no more remains\n    But that to your sufficiency- as your worth is able-\n    And let them work. The nature of our people,\n    Our city\'s institutions, and the terms\n    For common justice, y\'are as pregnant in\n    As art and practice hath enriched any\n    That we remember. There is our commission,\n    From which we would not have you warp. Call hither,\n    I say, bid come before us, Angelo.         Exit an ATTENDANT\n    What figure of us think you he will bear?\n    For you must know we have with special soul  \n    Elected him our absence to supply;\n    Lent him our terror, dress\'d him with our love,\n    And given his deputation all the organs\n    Of our own power. What think you of it?\n  ESCALUS. If any in Vienna be of worth\n    To undergo such ample grace and honour,\n    It is Lord Angelo.\n\n                          Enter ANGELO\n\n  DUKE. Look where he comes.\n  ANGELO. Always obedient to your Grace\'s will,\n    I come to know your pleasure.\n  DUKE. Angelo,\n    There is a kind of character in thy life\n    That to th\' observer doth thy history\n    Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings\n    Are not thine own so proper as to waste\n    Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.\n    Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,  \n    Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues\n    Did not go forth of us, \'twere all alike\n    As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch\'d\n    But to fine issues; nor Nature never lends\n    The smallest scruple of her excellence\n    But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines\n    Herself the glory of a creditor,\n    Both thanks and use. But I do bend my speech\n    To one that can my part in him advertise.\n    Hold, therefore, Angelo-\n    In our remove be thou at full ourself;\n    Mortality and mercy in Vienna\n    Live in thy tongue and heart. Old Escalus,\n    Though first in question, is thy secondary.\n    Take thy commission.\n  ANGELO. Now, good my lord,\n    Let there be some more test made of my metal,\n    Before so noble and so great a figure\n    Be stamp\'d upon it.\n  DUKE. No more evasion!  \n    We have with a leaven\'d and prepared choice\n    Proceeded to you; therefore take your honours.\n    Our haste from hence is of so quick condition\n    That it prefers itself, and leaves unquestion\'d\n    Matters of needful value. We shall write to you,\n    As time and our concernings shall importune,\n    How it goes with us, and do look to know\n    What doth befall you here. So, fare you well.\n    To th\' hopeful execution do I leave you\n    Of your commissions.\n  ANGELO. Yet give leave, my lord,\n    That we may bring you something on the way.\n  DUKE. My haste may not admit it;\n    Nor need you, on mine honour, have to do\n    With any scruple: your scope is as mine own,\n    So to enforce or qualify the laws\n    As to your soul seems good. Give me your hand;\n    I\'ll privily away. I love the people,\n    But do not like to stage me to their eyes;\n    Though it do well, I do not relish well  \n    Their loud applause and Aves vehement;\n    Nor do I think the man of safe discretion\n    That does affect it. Once more, fare you well.\n  ANGELO. The heavens give safety to your purposes!\n  ESCALUS. Lead forth and bring you back in happiness!\n  DUKE. I thank you. Fare you well.                         Exit\n  ESCALUS. I shall desire you, sir, to give me leave\n    To have free speech with you; and it concerns me\n    To look into the bottom of my place:\n    A pow\'r I have, but of what strength and nature\n    I am not yet instructed.\n  ANGELO. \'Tis so with me. Let us withdraw together,\n    And we may soon our satisfaction have\n    Touching that point.\n  ESCALUS. I\'ll wait upon your honour.                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nA street\n\nEnter Lucio and two other GENTLEMEN\n\n  LUCIO. If the Duke, with the other dukes, come not to composition\n    with the King of Hungary, why then all the dukes fall upon the\n    King.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of\n    Hungary\'s!\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Amen.\n  LUCIO. Thou conclud\'st like the sanctimonious pirate that went to\n    sea with the Ten Commandments, but scrap\'d one out of the table.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. \'Thou shalt not steal\'?\n  LUCIO. Ay, that he raz\'d.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Why, \'twas a commandment to command the captain\n    and all the rest from their functions: they put forth to steal.\n    There\'s not a soldier of us all that, in the thanksgiving before\n    meat, do relish the petition well that prays for peace.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. I never heard any soldier dislike it.\n  LUCIO. I believe thee; for I think thou never wast where grace was\n    said.  \n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. No? A dozen times at least.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. What, in metre?\n  LUCIO. In any proportion or in any language.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. I think, or in any religion.\n  LUCIO. Ay, why not? Grace is grace, despite of all controversy; as,\n    for example, thou thyself art a wicked villain, despite of all\n    grace.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Well, there went but a pair of shears between us.\n  LUCIO. I grant; as there may between the lists and the velvet.\n    Thou art the list.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. And thou the velvet; thou art good velvet; thou\'rt\n    a three-pil\'d piece, I warrant thee. I had as lief be a list of\n    an English kersey as be pil\'d, as thou art pil\'d, for a French\n    velvet. Do I speak feelingly now?\n  LUCIO. I think thou dost; and, indeed, with most painful feeling of\n    thy speech. I will, out of thine own confession, learn to begin\n    thy health; but, whilst I live, forget to drink after thee.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. I think I have done myself wrong, have I not?\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Yes, that thou hast, whether thou art tainted or\n    free.  \n\n                        Enter MISTRESS OVERDONE\n\n  LUCIO. Behold, behold, where Madam Mitigation comes! I have\n    purchas\'d as many diseases under her roof as come to-\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. To what, I pray?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Judge.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. To three thousand dolours a year.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Ay, and more.\n  LUCIO. A French crown more.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Thou art always figuring diseases in me, but thou\n    art full of error; I am sound.\n  LUCIO. Nay, not, as one would say, healthy; but so sound as things\n    that are hollow: thy bones are hollow; impiety has made a feast\n    of thee.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. How now! which of your hips has the most profound\n    sciatica?\n  MRS. OVERDONE. Well, well! there\'s one yonder arrested and carried\n    to prison was worth five thousand of you all.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Who\'s that, I pray thee?  \n  MRS. OVERDONE. Marry, sir, that\'s Claudio, Signior Claudio.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Claudio to prison? \'Tis not so.\n  MRS. OVERDONE. Nay, but I know \'tis so: I saw him arrested; saw him\n    carried away; and, which is more, within these three days his\n    head to be chopp\'d off.\n  LUCIO. But, after all this fooling, I would not have it so. Art\n    thou sure of this?\n  MRS. OVERDONE. I am too sure of it; and it is for getting Madam\n    Julietta with child.\n  LUCIO. Believe me, this may be; he promis\'d to meet me two hours\n    since, and he was ever precise in promise-keeping.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Besides, you know, it draws something near to the\n    speech we had to such a purpose.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. But most of all agreeing with the proclamation.\n  LUCIO. Away; let\'s go learn the truth of it.\n                                      Exeunt Lucio and GENTLEMEN\n  MRS. OVERDONE. Thus, what with the war, what with the sweat, what\n    with the gallows, and what with poverty, I am custom-shrunk.\n\n                               Enter POMPEY  \n\n    How now! what\'s the news with you?\n  POMPEY. Yonder man is carried to prison.\n  MRS. OVERDONE. Well, what has he done?\n  POMPEY. A woman.\n  MRS. OVERDONE. But what\'s his offence?\n  POMPEY. Groping for trouts in a peculiar river.\n  MRS. OVERDONE. What! is there a maid with child by him?\n  POMPEY. No; but there\'s a woman with maid by him. You have not\n   heard of the proclamation, have you?\n  MRS. OVERDONE. What proclamation, man?\n  POMPEY. All houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be pluck\'d down.\n  MRS. OVERDONE. And what shall become of those in the city?\n  POMPEY. They shall stand for seed; they had gone down too, but that\n    a wise burgher put in for them.\n  MRS. OVERDONE. But shall all our houses of resort in the suburbs be\n    pull\'d down?\n  POMPEY. To the ground, mistress.\n  MRS. OVERDONE. Why, here\'s a change indeed in the commonwealth!\n    What shall become of me?  \n  POMPEY. Come, fear not you: good counsellors lack no clients.\n    Though you change your place you need not change your trade; I\'ll\n    be your tapster still. Courage, there will be pity taken on you;\n    you that have worn your eyes almost out in the service, you will\n    be considered.\n  MRS. OVERDONE. What\'s to do here, Thomas Tapster? Let\'s withdraw.\n  POMPEY. Here comes Signior Claudio, led by the provost to prison;\n    and there\'s Madam Juliet.                             Exeunt\n\n            Enter PROVOST, CLAUDIO, JULIET, and OFFICERS;\n                            LUCIO following\n\n  CLAUDIO. Fellow, why dost thou show me thus to th\' world?\n    Bear me to prison, where I am committed.\n  PROVOST. I do it not in evil disposition,\n    But from Lord Angelo by special charge.\n  CLAUDIO. Thus can the demigod Authority\n    Make us pay down for our offence by weight\n    The words of heaven: on whom it will, it will;\n    On whom it will not, so; yet still \'tis just.  \n  LUCIO. Why, how now, Claudio, whence comes this restraint?\n  CLAUDIO. From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty;\n    As surfeit is the father of much fast,\n    So every scope by the immoderate use\n    Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue,\n    Like rats that ravin down their proper bane,\n    A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die.\n  LUCIO. If I could speak so wisely under an arrest, I would send for\n    certain of my creditors; and yet, to say the truth, I had as lief\n    have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment.\n    What\'s thy offence, Claudio?\n  CLAUDIO. What but to speak of would offend again.\n  LUCIO. What, is\'t murder?\n  CLAUDIO. No.\n  LUCIO. Lechery?\n  CLAUDIO. Call it so.\n  PROVOST. Away, sir; you must go.\n  CLAUDIO. One word, good friend. Lucio, a word with you.\n  LUCIO. A hundred, if they\'ll do you any good. Is lechery so look\'d\n    after?  \n  CLAUDIO. Thus stands it with me: upon a true contract\n    I got possession of Julietta\'s bed.\n    You know the lady; she is fast my wife,\n    Save that we do the denunciation lack\n    Of outward order; this we came not to,\n    Only for propagation of a dow\'r\n    Remaining in the coffer of her friends.\n    From whom we thought it meet to hide our love\n    Till time had made them for us. But it chances\n    The stealth of our most mutual entertainment,\n    With character too gross, is writ on Juliet.\n  LUCIO. With child, perhaps?\n  CLAUDIO. Unhappily, even so.\n    And the new deputy now for the Duke-\n    Whether it be the fault and glimpse of newness,\n    Or whether that the body public be\n    A horse whereon the governor doth ride,\n    Who, newly in the seat, that it may know\n    He can command, lets it straight feel the spur;\n    Whether the tyranny be in his place,  \n    Or in his eminence that fills it up,\n    I stagger in. But this new governor\n    Awakes me all the enrolled penalties\n    Which have, like unscour\'d armour, hung by th\' wall\n    So long that nineteen zodiacs have gone round\n    And none of them been worn; and, for a name,\n    Now puts the drowsy and neglected act\n    Freshly on me. \'Tis surely for a name.\n  LUCIO. I warrant it is; and thy head stands so tickle on thy\n    shoulders that a milkmaid, if she be in love, may sigh it off.\n    Send after the Duke, and appeal to him.\n  CLAUDIO. I have done so, but he\'s not to be found.\n    I prithee, Lucio, do me this kind service:\n    This day my sister should the cloister enter,\n    And there receive her approbation;\n    Acquaint her with the danger of my state;\n    Implore her, in my voice, that she make friends\n    To the strict deputy; bid herself assay him.\n    I have great hope in that; for in her youth\n    There is a prone and speechless dialect  \n    Such as move men; beside, she hath prosperous art\n    When she will play with reason and discourse,\n    And well she can persuade.\n  LUCIO. I pray she may; as well for the encouragement of the like,\n    which else would stand under grievous imposition, as for the\n    enjoying of thy life, who I would be sorry should be thus\n    foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack. I\'ll to her.\n  CLAUDIO. I thank you, good friend Lucio.\n  LUCIO. Within two hours.\n  CLAUDIO. Come, officer, away.                           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nA monastery\n\nEnter DUKE and FRIAR THOMAS\n\n  DUKE. No, holy father; throw away that thought;\n    Believe not that the dribbling dart of love\n    Can pierce a complete bosom. Why I desire thee\n    To give me secret harbour hath a purpose\n    More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends\n    Of burning youth.\n  FRIAR. May your Grace speak of it?\n  DUKE. My holy sir, none better knows than you\n    How I have ever lov\'d the life removed,\n    And held in idle price to haunt assemblies\n    Where youth, and cost, a witless bravery keeps.\n    I have deliver\'d to Lord Angelo,\n    A man of stricture and firm abstinence,\n    My absolute power and place here in Vienna,\n    And he supposes me travell\'d to Poland;\n    For so I have strew\'d it in the common ear,\n    And so it is received. Now, pious sir,  \n    You will demand of me why I do this.\n  FRIAR. Gladly, my lord.\n  DUKE. We have strict statutes and most biting laws,\n    The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds,\n    Which for this fourteen years we have let slip;\n    Even like an o\'ergrown lion in a cave,\n    That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers,\n    Having bound up the threat\'ning twigs of birch,\n    Only to stick it in their children\'s sight\n    For terror, not to use, in time the rod\n    Becomes more mock\'d than fear\'d; so our decrees,\n    Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;\n    And liberty plucks justice by the nose;\n    The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart\n    Goes all decorum.\n  FRIAR. It rested in your Grace\n    To unloose this tied-up justice when you pleas\'d;\n    And it in you more dreadful would have seem\'d\n    Than in Lord Angelo.\n  DUKE. I do fear, too dreadful.  \n    Sith \'twas my fault to give the people scope,\n    \'Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them\n    For what I bid them do; for we bid this be done,\n    When evil deeds have their permissive pass\n    And not the punishment. Therefore, indeed, my father,\n    I have on Angelo impos\'d the office;\n    Who may, in th\' ambush of my name, strike home,\n    And yet my nature never in the fight\n    To do in slander. And to behold his sway,\n    I will, as \'twere a brother of your order,\n    Visit both prince and people. Therefore, I prithee,\n    Supply me with the habit, and instruct me\n    How I may formally in person bear me\n    Like a true friar. Moe reasons for this action\n    At our more leisure shall I render you.\n    Only, this one: Lord Angelo is precise;\n    Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses\n    That his blood flows, or that his appetite\n    Is more to bread than stone. Hence shall we see,\n    If power change purpose, what our seemers be.         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nA nunnery\n\nEnter ISABELLA and FRANCISCA\n\n  ISABELLA. And have you nuns no farther privileges?\n  FRANCISCA. Are not these large enough?\n  ISABELLA. Yes, truly; I speak not as desiring more,\n    But rather wishing a more strict restraint\n    Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare.\n  LUCIO. [ Within] Ho! Peace be in this place!\n  ISABELLA. Who\'s that which calls?\n  FRANCISCA. It is a man\'s voice. Gentle Isabella,\n    Turn you the key, and know his business of him:\n    You may, I may not; you are yet unsworn;\n    When you have vow\'d, you must not speak with men\n    But in the presence of the prioress;\n    Then, if you speak, you must not show your face,\n    Or, if you show your face, you must not speak.\n    He calls again; I pray you answer him.        Exit FRANCISCA\n  ISABELLA. Peace and prosperity! Who is\'t that calls?\n  \n                           Enter LUCIO\n\n  LUCIO. Hail, virgin, if you be, as those cheek-roses\n    Proclaim you are no less. Can you so stead me\n    As bring me to the sight of Isabella,\n    A novice of this place, and the fair sister\n    To her unhappy brother Claudio?\n  ISABELLA. Why her \'unhappy brother\'? Let me ask\n    The rather, for I now must make you know\n    I am that Isabella, and his sister.\n  LUCIO. Gentle and fair, your brother kindly greets you.\n    Not to be weary with you, he\'s in prison.\n  ISABELLA. Woe me! For what?\n  LUCIO. For that which, if myself might be his judge,\n    He should receive his punishment in thanks:\n    He hath got his friend with child.\n  ISABELLA. Sir, make me not your story.\n  LUCIO. It is true.\n    I would not- though \'tis my familiar sin\n    With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest,  \n    Tongue far from heart- play with all virgins so:\n    I hold you as a thing enskied and sainted,\n    By your renouncement an immortal spirit,\n    And to be talk\'d with in sincerity,\n    As with a saint.\n  ISABELLA. You do blaspheme the good in mocking me.\n  LUCIO. Do not believe it. Fewness and truth, \'tis thus:\n    Your brother and his lover have embrac\'d.\n    As those that feed grow full, as blossoming time\n    That from the seedness the bare fallow brings\n    To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb\n    Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry.\n  ISABELLA. Some one with child by him? My cousin Juliet?\n  LUCIO. Is she your cousin?\n  ISABELLA. Adoptedly, as school-maids change their names\n    By vain though apt affection.\n  LUCIO. She it is.\n  ISABELLA. O, let him marry her!\n  LUCIO. This is the point.\n    The Duke is very strangely gone from hence;  \n    Bore many gentlemen, myself being one,\n    In hand, and hope of action; but we do learn,\n    By those that know the very nerves of state,\n    His givings-out were of an infinite distance\n    From his true-meant design. Upon his place,\n    And with full line of his authority,\n    Governs Lord Angelo, a man whose blood\n    Is very snow-broth, one who never feels\n    The wanton stings and motions of the sense,\n    But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge\n    With profits of the mind, study and fast.\n    He- to give fear to use and liberty,\n    Which have for long run by the hideous law,\n    As mice by lions- hath pick\'d out an act\n    Under whose heavy sense your brother\'s life\n    Falls into forfeit; he arrests him on it,\n    And follows close the rigour of the statute\n    To make him an example. All hope is gone,\n    Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer\n    To soften Angelo. And that\'s my pith of business  \n    \'Twixt you and your poor brother.\n  ISABELLA. Doth he so seek his life?\n  LUCIO. Has censur\'d him\n    Already, and, as I hear, the Provost hath\n    A warrant for his execution.\n  ISABELLA. Alas! what poor ability\'s in me\n    To do him good?\n  LUCIO. Assay the pow\'r you have.\n  ISABELLA. My power, alas, I doubt!\n  LUCIO. Our doubts are traitors,\n    And make us lose the good we oft might win\n    By fearing to attempt. Go to Lord Angelo,\n    And let him learn to know, when maidens sue,\n    Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel,\n    All their petitions are as freely theirs\n    As they themselves would owe them.\n  ISABELLA. I\'ll see what I can do.\n  LUCIO. But speedily.\n  ISABELLA. I will about it straight;\n    No longer staying but to give the Mother  \n    Notice of my affair. I humbly thank you.\n    Commend me to my brother; soon at night\n    I\'ll send him certain word of my success.\n  LUCIO. I take my leave of you.\n  ISABELLA. Good sir, adieu.                              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. Scene I.\nA hall in ANGELO\'S house\n\nEnter ANGELO, ESCALUS, a JUSTICE, PROVOST, OFFICERS, and other ATTENDANTS\n\n  ANGELO. We must not make a scarecrow of the law,\n    Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,\n    And let it keep one shape till custom make it\n    Their perch, and not their terror.\n  ESCALUS. Ay, but yet\n    Let us be keen, and rather cut a little\n    Than fall and bruise to death. Alas! this gentleman,\n    Whom I would save, had a most noble father.\n    Let but your honour know,\n    Whom I believe to be most strait in virtue,\n    That, in the working of your own affections,\n    Had time coher\'d with place, or place with wishing,\n    Or that the resolute acting of our blood\n    Could have attain\'d th\' effect of your own purpose\n    Whether you had not sometime in your life\n    Err\'d in this point which now you censure him,  \n    And pull\'d the law upon you.\n  ANGELO. \'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,\n    Another thing to fall. I not deny\n    The jury, passing on the prisoner\'s life,\n    May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two\n    Guiltier than him they try. What\'s open made to justice,\n    That justice seizes. What knows the laws\n    That thieves do pass on thieves? \'Tis very pregnant,\n    The jewel that we find, we stoop and take\'t,\n    Because we see it; but what we do not see\n    We tread upon, and never think of it.\n    You may not so extenuate his offence\n    For I have had such faults; but rather tell me,\n    When I, that censure him, do so offend,\n    Let mine own judgment pattern out my death,\n    And nothing come in partial. Sir, he must die.\n  ESCALUS. Be it as your wisdom will.\n  ANGELO. Where is the Provost?\n  PROVOST. Here, if it like your honour.\n  ANGELO. See that Claudio  \n    Be executed by nine to-morrow morning;\n    Bring him his confessor; let him be prepar\'d;\n    For that\'s the utmost of his pilgrimage.        Exit PROVOST\n  ESCALUS. [Aside] Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all!\n    Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall;\n    Some run from breaks of ice, and answer none,\n    And some condemned for a fault alone.\n\n         Enter ELBOW and OFFICERS with FROTH and POMPEY\n\n  ELBOW. Come, bring them away; if these be good people in a\n    commonweal that do nothing but use their abuses in common houses,\n    I know no law; bring them away.\n  ANGELO. How now, sir! What\'s your name, and what\'s the matter?\n  ELBOW. If it please your honour, I am the poor Duke\'s constable,\n    and my name is Elbow; I do lean upon justice, sir, and do bring\n    in here before your good honour two notorious benefactors.\n  ANGELO. Benefactors! Well- what benefactors are they? Are they not\n    malefactors?\n  ELBOW. If it please your honour, I know not well what they are; but  \n    precise villains they are, that I am sure of, and void of all\n    profanation in the world that good Christians ought to have.\n  ESCALUS. This comes off well; here\'s a wise officer.\n  ANGELO. Go to; what quality are they of? Elbow is your name? Why\n    dost thou not speak, Elbow?\n  POMPEY. He cannot, sir; he\'s out at elbow.\n  ANGELO. What are you, sir?\n  ELBOW. He, sir? A tapster, sir; parcel-bawd; one that serves a bad\n    woman; whose house, sir, was, as they say, pluck\'d down in the\n    suburbs; and now she professes a hot-house, which, I think, is a\n    very ill house too.\n  ESCALUS. How know you that?\n  ELBOW. My Wife, sir, whom I detest before heaven and your honour-\n  ESCALUS. How! thy wife!\n  ELBOW. Ay, sir; whom I thank heaven, is an honest woman-\n  ESCALUS. Dost thou detest her therefore?\n  ELBOW. I say, sir, I will detest myself also, as well as she, that\n    this house, if it be not a bawd\'s house, it is pity of her life,\n    for it is a naughty house.\n  ESCALUS. How dost thou know that, constable?  \n  ELBOW. Marry, sir, by my wife; who, if she had been a woman\n    cardinally given, might have been accus\'d in fornication,\n    adultery, and all uncleanliness there.\n  ESCALUS. By the woman\'s means?\n  ELBOW. Ay, sir, by Mistress Overdone\'s means; but as she spit in\n    his face, so she defied him.\n  POMPEY. Sir, if it please your honour, this is not so.\n  ELBOW. Prove it before these varlets here, thou honourable man,\n    prove it.\n  ESCALUS. Do you hear how he misplaces?\n  POMPEY. Sir, she came in great with child; and longing, saving your\n    honour\'s reverence, for stew\'d prunes. Sir, we had but two in the\n    house, which at that very distant time stood, as it were, in a\n    fruit dish, a dish of some three pence; your honours have seen\n    such dishes; they are not China dishes, but very good dishes.\n  ESCALUS. Go to, go to; no matter for the dish, sir.\n  POMPEY. No, indeed, sir, not of a pin; you are therein in the\n    right; but to the point. As I say, this Mistress Elbow, being, as\n    I say, with child, and being great-bellied, and longing, as I\n    said, for prunes; and having but two in the dish, as I said,  \n    Master Froth here, this very man, having eaten the rest, as I\n    said, and, as I say, paying for them very honestly; for, as you\n    know, Master Froth, I could not give you three pence again-\n  FROTH. No, indeed.\n  POMPEY. Very well; you being then, if you be rememb\'red, cracking\n    the stones of the foresaid prunes-\n  FROTH. Ay, so I did indeed.\n  POMPEY. Why, very well; I telling you then, if you be rememb\'red,\n    that such a one and such a one were past cure of the thing you\n    wot of, unless they kept very good diet, as I told you-\n  FROTH. All this is true.\n  POMPEY. Why, very well then-\n  ESCALUS. Come, you are a tedious fool. To the purpose: what was\n    done to Elbow\'s wife that he hath cause to complain of? Come me\n    to what was done to her.\n  POMPEY. Sir, your honour cannot come to that yet.\n  ESCALUS. No, sir, nor I mean it not.\n  POMPEY. Sir, but you shall come to it, by your honour\'s leave. And,\n    I beseech you, look into Master Froth here, sir, a man of\n    fourscore pound a year; whose father died at Hallowmas- was\'t not  \n    at Hallowmas, Master Froth?\n  FROTH. All-hallond eve.\n  POMPEY. Why, very well; I hope here be truths. He, sir, sitting, as\n    I say, in a lower chair, sir; \'twas in the Bunch of Grapes,\n    where, indeed, you have a delight to sit, have you not?\n  FROTH. I have so; because it is an open room, and good for winter.\n  POMPEY. Why, very well then; I hope here be truths.\n  ANGELO. This will last out a night in Russia,\n    When nights are longest there; I\'ll take my leave,\n    And leave you to the hearing of the cause,\n    Hoping you\'ll find good cause to whip them all.\n  ESCALUS. I think no less. Good morrow to your lordship.\n    [Exit ANGELO] Now, sir, come on; what was done to Elbow\'s wife,\n    once more?\n  POMPEY. Once?- sir. There was nothing done to her once.\n  ELBOW. I beseech you, sir, ask him what this man did to my wife.\n  POMPEY. I beseech your honour, ask me.\n  ESCALUS. Well, sir, what did this gentleman to her?\n  POMPEY. I beseech you, sir, look in this gentleman\'s face. Good\n    Master Froth, look upon his honour; \'tis for a good purpose. Doth  \n    your honour mark his face?\n  ESCALUS. Ay, sir, very well.\n  POMPEY. Nay, I beseech you, mark it well.\n  ESCALUS. Well, I do so.\n  POMPEY. Doth your honour see any harm in his face?\n  ESCALUS. Why, no.\n  POMPEY. I\'ll be suppos\'d upon a book his face is the worst thing\n    about him. Good then; if his face be the worst thing about him,\n    how could Master Froth do the constable\'s wife any harm? I would\n    know that of your honour.\n  ESCALUS. He\'s in the right, constable; what say you to it?\n  ELBOW. First, an it like you, the house is a respected house; next,\n    this is a respected fellow; and his mistress is a respected\n    woman.\n  POMPEY. By this hand, sir, his wife is a more respected person than\n    any of us all.\n  ELBOW. Varlet, thou liest; thou liest, wicket varlet; the time is\n    yet to come that she was ever respected with man, woman, or\n    child.\n  POMPEY. Sir, she was respected with him before he married with her.  \n  ESCALUS. Which is the wiser here, Justice or Iniquity? Is this\n    true?\n  ELBOW. O thou caitiff! O thou varlet! O thou wicked Hannibal! I\n    respected with her before I was married to her! If ever I was\n    respected with her, or she with me, let not your worship think me\n    the poor Duke\'s officer. Prove this, thou wicked Hannibal, or\n    I\'ll have mine action of batt\'ry on thee.\n  ESCALUS. If he took you a box o\' th\' ear, you might have your\n    action of slander too.\n  ELBOW. Marry, I thank your good worship for it. What is\'t your\n    worship\'s pleasure I shall do with this wicked caitiff?\n  ESCALUS. Truly, officer, because he hath some offences in him that\n    thou wouldst discover if thou couldst, let him continue in his\n    courses till thou know\'st what they are.\n  ELBOW. Marry, I thank your worship for it. Thou seest, thou wicked\n    varlet, now, what\'s come upon thee: thou art to continue now,\n    thou varlet; thou art to continue.\n  ESCALUS. Where were you born, friend?\n  FROTH. Here in Vienna, sir.\n  ESCALUS. Are you of fourscore pounds a year?  \n  FROTH. Yes, an\'t please you, sir.\n  ESCALUS. So. What trade are you of, sir?\n  POMPEY. A tapster, a poor widow\'s tapster.\n  ESCALUS. Your mistress\' name?\n  POMPEY. Mistress Overdone.\n  ESCALUS. Hath she had any more than one husband?\n  POMPEY. Nine, sir; Overdone by the last.\n  ESCALUS. Nine! Come hither to me, Master Froth. Master Froth, I\n    would not have you acquainted with tapsters: they will draw you,\n    Master Froth, and you will hang them. Get you gone, and let me\n    hear no more of you.\n  FROTH. I thank your worship. For mine own part, I never come into\n    any room in a taphouse but I am drawn in.\n  ESCALUS. Well, no more of it, Master Froth; farewell. [Exit FROTH]\n    Come you hither to me, Master Tapster; what\'s your name, Master\n    Tapster?\n  POMPEY. Pompey.\n  ESCALUS. What else?\n  POMPEY. Bum, sir.\n  ESCALUS. Troth, and your bum is the greatest thing about you; so  \n    that, in the beastliest sense, you are Pompey the Great. Pompey,\n    you are partly a bawd, Pompey, howsoever you colour it in being a\n    tapster. Are you not? Come, tell me true; it shall be the better\n    for you.\n  POMPEY. Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live.\n  ESCALUS. How would you live, Pompey- by being a bawd? What do you\n    think of the trade, Pompey? Is it a lawful trade?\n  POMPEY. If the law would allow it, sir.\n  ESCALUS. But the law will not allow it, Pompey; nor it shall not be\n    allowed in Vienna.\n  POMPEY. Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the youth of\n    the city?\n  ESCALUS. No, Pompey.\n  POMPEY. Truly, sir, in my poor opinion, they will to\'t then. If\n    your worship will take order for the drabs and the knaves, you\n    need not to fear the bawds.\n  ESCALUS. There is pretty orders beginning, I can tell you: but it\n    is but heading and hanging.\n  POMPEY. If you head and hang all that offend that way but for ten\n    year together, you\'ll be glad to give out a commission for more  \n    heads; if this law hold in Vienna ten year, I\'ll rent the fairest\n    house in it, after threepence a bay. If you live to see this come\n    to pass, say Pompey told you so.\n  ESCALUS. Thank you, good Pompey; and, in requital of your prophecy,\n    hark you: I advise you, let me not find you before me again upon\n    any complaint whatsoever- no, not for dwelling where you do; if I\n    do, Pompey, I shall beat you to your tent, and prove a shrewd\n    Caesar to you; in plain dealing, Pompey, I shall have you whipt.\n    So for this time, Pompey, fare you well.\n  POMPEY. I thank your worship for your good counsel; [Aside] but I\n    shall follow it as the flesh and fortune shall better determine.\n    Whip me? No, no; let carman whip his jade;\n    The valiant heart\'s not whipt out of his trade.         Exit\n  ESCALUS. Come hither to me, Master Elbow; come hither, Master\n    Constable. How long have you been in this place of constable?\n  ELBOW. Seven year and a half, sir.\n  ESCALUS. I thought, by the readiness in the office, you had\n    continued in it some time. You say seven years together?\n  ELBOW. And a half, sir.\n  ESCALUS. Alas, it hath been great pains to you! They do you wrong  \n    to put you so oft upon\'t. Are there not men in your ward\n    sufficient to serve it?\n  ELBOW. Faith, sir, few of any wit in such matters; as they are\n    chosen, they are glad to choose me for them; I do it for some\n    piece of money, and go through with all.\n  ESCALUS. Look you, bring me in the names of some six or seven, the\n    most sufficient of your parish.\n  ELBOW. To your worship\'s house, sir?\n  ESCALUS. To my house. Fare you well.              [Exit ELBOW]\n    What\'s o\'clock, think you?\n  JUSTICE. Eleven, sir.\n  ESCALUS. I pray you home to dinner with me.\n  JUSTICE. I humbly thank you.\n  ESCALUS. It grieves me for the death of Claudio;\n    But there\'s no remedy.\n  JUSTICE. Lord Angelo is severe.\n  ESCALUS. It is but needful:\n    Mercy is not itself that oft looks so;\n    Pardon is still the nurse of second woe.\n    But yet, poor Claudio! There is no remedy.  \n    Come, sir.                                            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nAnother room in ANGELO\'S house\n\nEnter PROVOST and a SERVANT\n\n  SERVANT. He\'s hearing of a cause; he will come straight.\n    I\'ll tell him of you.\n  PROVOST. Pray you do. [Exit SERVANT] I\'ll know\n    His pleasure; may be he will relent. Alas,\n    He hath but as offended in a dream!\n    All sects, all ages, smack of this vice; and he\n    To die for \'t!\n\n                            Enter ANGELO\n\n  ANGELO. Now, what\'s the matter, Provost?\n  PROVOST. Is it your will Claudio shall die to-morrow?\n  ANGELO. Did not I tell thee yea? Hadst thou not order?\n    Why dost thou ask again?\n  PROVOST. Lest I might be too rash;\n    Under your good correction, I have seen\n    When, after execution, judgment hath  \n    Repented o\'er his doom.\n  ANGELO. Go to; let that be mine.\n    Do you your office, or give up your place,\n    And you shall well be spar\'d.\n  PROVOST. I crave your honour\'s pardon.\n    What shall be done, sir, with the groaning Juliet?\n    She\'s very near her hour.\n  ANGELO. Dispose of her\n    To some more fitter place, and that with speed.\n\n                           Re-enter SERVANT\n\n  SERVANT. Here is the sister of the man condemn\'d\n    Desires access to you.\n  ANGELO. Hath he a sister?\n  PROVOST. Ay, my good lord; a very virtuous maid,\n    And to be shortly of a sisterhood,\n    If not already.\n  ANGELO. Well, let her be admitted.                Exit SERVANT\n    See you the fornicatress be remov\'d;  \n    Let her have needful but not lavish means;\n    There shall be order for\'t.\n\n                         Enter Lucio and ISABELLA\n\n  PROVOST. [Going] Save your honour!\n  ANGELO. Stay a little while. [To ISABELLA] Y\'are welcome; what\'s\n    your will?\n  ISABELLA. I am a woeful suitor to your honour,\n    Please but your honour hear me.\n  ANGELO. Well; what\'s your suit?\n  ISABELLA. There is a vice that most I do abhor,\n    And most desire should meet the blow of justice;\n    For which I would not plead, but that I must;\n    For which I must not plead, but that I am\n    At war \'twixt will and will not.\n  ANGELO. Well; the matter?\n  ISABELLA. I have a brother is condemn\'d to die;\n    I do beseech you, let it be his fault,\n    And not my brother.  \n  PROVOST. [Aside] Heaven give thee moving graces.\n  ANGELO. Condemn the fault and not the actor of it!\n    Why, every fault\'s condemn\'d ere it be done;\n    Mine were the very cipher of a function,\n    To fine the faults whose fine stands in record,\n    And let go by the actor.\n  ISABELLA. O just but severe law!\n    I had a brother, then. Heaven keep your honour!\n  LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] Give\'t not o\'er so; to him again, entreat him,\n    Kneel down before him, hang upon his gown;\n    You are too cold: if you should need a pin,\n    You could not with more tame a tongue desire it.\n    To him, I say.\n  ISABELLA. Must he needs die?\n  ANGELO. Maiden, no remedy.\n  ISABELLA. Yes; I do think that you might pardon him.\n    And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy.\n  ANGELO. I will not do\'t.\n  ISABELLA. But can you, if you would?\n  ANGELO. Look, what I will not, that I cannot do.  \n  ISABELLA. But might you do\'t, and do the world no wrong,\n    If so your heart were touch\'d with that remorse\n    As mine is to him?\n  ANGELO. He\'s sentenc\'d; \'tis too late.\n  LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] You are too cold.\n  ISABELLA. Too late? Why, no; I, that do speak a word,\n    May call it back again. Well, believe this:\n    No ceremony that to great ones longs,\n    Not the king\'s crown nor the deputed sword,\n    The marshal\'s truncheon nor the judge\'s robe,\n    Become them with one half so good a grace\n    As mercy does.\n    If he had been as you, and you as he,\n    You would have slipp\'d like him; but he, like you,\n    Would not have been so stern.\n  ANGELO. Pray you be gone.\n  ISABELLA. I would to heaven I had your potency,\n    And you were Isabel! Should it then be thus?\n    No; I would tell what \'twere to be a judge\n    And what a prisoner.  \n  LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] Ay, touch him; there\'s the vein.\n  ANGELO. Your brother is a forfeit of the law,\n    And you but waste your words.\n  ISABELLA. Alas! Alas!\n    Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once;\n    And He that might the vantage best have took\n    Found out the remedy. How would you be\n    If He, which is the top of judgment, should\n    But judge you as you are? O, think on that;\n    And mercy then will breathe within your lips,\n    Like man new made.\n  ANGELO. Be you content, fair maid.\n    It is the law, not I condemn your brother.\n    Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son,\n    It should be thus with him. He must die to-morrow.\n  ISABELLA. To-morrow! O, that\'s sudden! Spare him, spare him.\n    He\'s not prepar\'d for death. Even for our kitchens\n    We kill the fowl of season; shall we serve heaven\n    With less respect than we do minister\n    To our gross selves? Good, good my lord, bethink you.  \n    Who is it that hath died for this offence?\n    There\'s many have committed it.\n  LUCIO. [Aside] Ay, well said.\n  ANGELO. The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.\n    Those many had not dar\'d to do that evil\n    If the first that did th\' edict infringe\n    Had answer\'d for his deed. Now \'tis awake,\n    Takes note of what is done, and, like a prophet,\n    Looks in a glass that shows what future evils-\n    Either now or by remissness new conceiv\'d,\n    And so in progress to be hatch\'d and born-\n    Are now to have no successive degrees,\n    But here they live to end.\n  ISABELLA. Yet show some pity.\n  ANGELO. I show it most of all when I show justice;\n    For then I pity those I do not know,\n    Which a dismiss\'d offence would after gall,\n    And do him right that, answering one foul wrong,\n    Lives not to act another. Be satisfied;\n    Your brother dies to-morrow; be content.  \n  ISABELLA. So you must be the first that gives this sentence,\n    And he that suffers. O, it is excellent\n    To have a giant\'s strength! But it is tyrannous\n    To use it like a giant.\n  LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] That\'s well said.\n  ISABELLA. Could great men thunder\n    As Jove himself does, Jove would never be quiet,\n    For every pelting petty officer\n    Would use his heaven for thunder,\n    Nothing but thunder. Merciful Heaven,\n    Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,\n    Splits the unwedgeable and gnarled oak\n    Than the soft myrtle. But man, proud man,\n    Dress\'d in a little brief authority,\n    Most ignorant of what he\'s most assur\'d,\n    His glassy essence, like an angry ape,\n    Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven\n    As makes the angels weep; who, with our speens,\n    Would all themselves laugh mortal.\n  LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] O, to him, to him, wench! He will relent;  \n    He\'s coming; I perceive \'t.\n  PROVOST. [Aside] Pray heaven she win him.\n  ISABELLA. We cannot weigh our brother with ourself.\n    Great men may jest with saints: \'tis wit in them;\n    But in the less foul profanation.\n  LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] Thou\'rt i\' th\' right, girl; more o\' that.\n  ISABELLA. That in the captain\'s but a choleric word\n    Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.\n  LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] Art avis\'d o\' that? More on\'t.\n  ANGELO. Why do you put these sayings upon me?\n  ISABELLA. Because authority, though it err like others,\n    Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself\n    That skins the vice o\' th\' top. Go to your bosom,\n    Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know\n    That\'s like my brother\'s fault. If it confess\n    A natural guiltiness such as is his,\n    Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue\n    Against my brother\'s life.\n  ANGELO. [Aside] She speaks, and \'tis\n    Such sense that my sense breeds with it.- Fare you well.  \n  ISABELLA. Gentle my lord, turn back.\n  ANGELO. I will bethink me. Come again to-morrow.\n  ISABELLA. Hark how I\'ll bribe you; good my lord, turn back.\n  ANGELO. How, bribe me?\n  ISABELLA. Ay, with such gifts that heaven shall share with you.\n  LUCIO. [To ISABELLA) You had marr\'d all else.\n  ISABELLA. Not with fond sicles of the tested gold,\n    Or stones, whose rate are either rich or poor\n    As fancy values them; but with true prayers\n    That shall be up at heaven and enter there\n    Ere sun-rise, prayers from preserved souls,\n    From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate\n    To nothing temporal.\n  ANGELO. Well; come to me to-morrow.\n  LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] Go to; \'tis well; away.\n  ISABELLA. Heaven keep your honour safe!\n  ANGELO. [Aside] Amen; for I\n    Am that way going to temptation\n    Where prayers cross.\n  ISABELLA. At what hour to-morrow  \n    Shall I attend your lordship?\n  ANGELO. At any time \'fore noon.\n  ISABELLA. Save your honour!              Exeunt all but ANGELO\n  ANGELO. From thee; even from thy virtue!\n    What\'s this, what\'s this? Is this her fault or mine?\n    The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?\n    Ha!\n    Not she; nor doth she tempt; but it is I\n    That, lying by the violet in the sun,\n    Do as the carrion does, not as the flow\'r,\n    Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be\n    That modesty may more betray our sense\n    Than woman\'s lightness? Having waste ground enough,\n    Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,\n    And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!\n    What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?\n    Dost thou desire her foully for those things\n    That make her good? O, let her brother live!\n    Thieves for their robbery have authority\n    When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,  \n    That I desire to hear her speak again,\n    And feast upon her eyes? What is\'t I dream on?\n    O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,\n    With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous\n    Is that temptation that doth goad us on\n    To sin in loving virtue. Never could the strumpet,\n    With all her double vigour, art and nature,\n    Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid\n    Subdues me quite. Ever till now,\n    When men were fond, I smil\'d and wond\'red how.          Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nA prison\n\nEnter, severally, DUKE, disguised as a FRIAR, and PROVOST\n\n  DUKE. Hail to you, Provost! so I think you are.\n  PROVOST. I am the Provost. What\'s your will, good friar?\n  DUKE. Bound by my charity and my blest order,\n    I come to visit the afflicted spirits\n    Here in the prison. Do me the common right\n    To let me see them, and to make me know\n    The nature of their crimes, that I may minister\n    To them accordingly.\n  PROVOST. I would do more than that, if more were needful.\n\n                          Enter JULIET\n\n    Look, here comes one; a gentlewoman of mine,\n    Who, falling in the flaws of her own youth,\n    Hath blister\'d her report. She is with child;\n    And he that got it, sentenc\'d- a young man\n    More fit to do another such offence  \n    Than die for this.\n  DUKE. When must he die?\n  PROVOST. As I do think, to-morrow.\n    [To JULIET] I have provided for you; stay awhile\n    And you shall be conducted.\n  DUKE. Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry?\n  JULIET. I do; and bear the shame most patiently.\n  DUKE. I\'ll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience,\n    And try your penitence, if it be sound\n    Or hollowly put on.\n  JULIET. I\'ll gladly learn.\n  DUKE. Love you the man that wrong\'d you?\n  JULIET. Yes, as I love the woman that wrong\'d him.\n  DUKE. So then, it seems, your most offenceful act\n    Was mutually committed.\n  JULIET. Mutually.\n  DUKE. Then was your sin of heavier kind than his.\n  JULIET. I do confess it, and repent it, father.\n  DUKE. \'Tis meet so, daughter; but lest you do repent\n    As that the sin hath brought you to this shame,  \n    Which sorrow is always toward ourselves, not heaven,\n    Showing we would not spare heaven as we love it,\n    But as we stand in fear-\n  JULIET. I do repent me as it is an evil,\n    And take the shame with joy.\n  DUKE. There rest.\n    Your partner, as I hear, must die to-morrow,\n    And I am going with instruction to him.\n    Grace go with you! Benedicite!                          Exit\n  JULIET. Must die to-morrow! O, injurious law,\n    That respites me a life whose very comfort\n    Is still a dying horror!\n  PROVOST. \'Tis pity of him.                              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nANGELO\'S house\n\nEnter ANGELO\n\n  ANGELO. When I would pray and think, I think and pray\n    To several subjects. Heaven hath my empty words,\n    Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,\n    Anchors on Isabel. Heaven in my mouth,\n    As if I did but only chew his name,\n    And in my heart the strong and swelling evil\n    Of my conception. The state whereon I studied\n    Is, like a good thing being often read,\n    Grown sere and tedious; yea, my gravity,\n    Wherein- let no man hear me- I take pride,\n    Could I with boot change for an idle plume\n    Which the air beats for vain. O place, O form,\n    How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,\n    Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls\n    To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood.\n    Let\'s write \'good angel\' on the devil\'s horn;\n    \'Tis not the devil\'s crest.  \n\n                           Enter SERVANT\n\n    How now, who\'s there?\n  SERVANT. One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you.\n  ANGELO. Teach her the way. [Exit SERVANT] O heavens!\n    Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,\n    Making both it unable for itself\n    And dispossessing all my other parts\n    Of necessary fitness?\n    So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons;\n    Come all to help him, and so stop the air\n    By which he should revive; and even so\n    The general subject to a well-wish\'d king\n    Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness\n    Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love\n    Must needs appear offence.\n\n                            Enter ISABELLA\n  \n    How now, fair maid?\n  ISABELLA. I am come to know your pleasure.\n  ANGELO. That you might know it would much better please me\n    Than to demand what \'tis. Your brother cannot live.\n  ISABELLA. Even so! Heaven keep your honour!\n  ANGELO. Yet may he live awhile, and, it may be,\n    As long as you or I; yet he must die.\n  ISABELLA. Under your sentence?\n  ANGELO. Yea.\n  ISABELLA. When? I beseech you; that in his reprieve,\n    Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted\n    That his soul sicken not.\n  ANGELO. Ha! Fie, these filthy vices! It were as good\n    To pardon him that hath from nature stol\'n\n    A man already made, as to remit\n    Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven\'s image\n    In stamps that are forbid; \'tis all as easy\n    Falsely to take away a life true made\n    As to put metal in restrained means\n    To make a false one.  \n  ISABELLA. \'Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth.\n  ANGELO. Say you so? Then I shall pose you quickly.\n    Which had you rather- that the most just law\n    Now took your brother\'s life; or, to redeem him,\n    Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness\n    As she that he hath stain\'d?\n  ISABELLA. Sir, believe this:\n    I had rather give my body than my soul.\n  ANGELO. I talk not of your soul; our compell\'d sins\n    Stand more for number than for accompt.\n  ISABELLA. How say you?\n  ANGELO. Nay, I\'ll not warrant that; for I can speak\n    Against the thing I say. Answer to this:\n    I, now the voice of the recorded law,\n    Pronounce a sentence on your brother\'s life;\n    Might there not be a charity in sin\n    To save this brother\'s life?\n  ISABELLA. Please you to do\'t,\n    I\'ll take it as a peril to my soul\n    It is no sin at all, but charity.  \n  ANGELO. Pleas\'d you to do\'t at peril of your soul,\n    Were equal poise of sin and charity.\n  ISABELLA. That I do beg his life, if it be sin,\n    Heaven let me bear it! You granting of my suit,\n    If that be sin, I\'ll make it my morn prayer\n    To have it added to the faults of mine,\n    And nothing of your answer.\n  ANGELO. Nay, but hear me;\n    Your sense pursues not mine; either you are ignorant\n    Or seem so, craftily; and that\'s not good.\n  ISABELLA. Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good\n    But graciously to know I am no better.\n  ANGELO. Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright\n    When it doth tax itself; as these black masks\n    Proclaim an enshielded beauty ten times louder\n    Than beauty could, display\'d. But mark me:\n    To be received plain, I\'ll speak more gross-\n    Your brother is to die.\n  ISABELLA. So.\n  ANGELO. And his offence is so, as it appears,  \n    Accountant to the law upon that pain.\n  ISABELLA. True.\n  ANGELO. Admit no other way to save his life,\n    As I subscribe not that, nor any other,\n    But, in the loss of question, that you, his sister,\n    Finding yourself desir\'d of such a person\n    Whose credit with the judge, or own great place,\n    Could fetch your brother from the manacles\n    Of the all-binding law; and that there were\n    No earthly mean to save him but that either\n    You must lay down the treasures of your body\n    To this supposed, or else to let him suffer-\n    What would you do?\n  ISABELLA. As much for my poor brother as myself;\n    That is, were I under the terms of death,\n    Th\' impression of keen whips I\'d wear as rubies,\n    And strip myself to death as to a bed\n    That longing have been sick for, ere I\'d yield\n    My body up to shame.\n  ANGELO. Then must your brother die.  \n  ISABELLA. And \'twere the cheaper way:\n    Better it were a brother died at once\n    Than that a sister, by redeeming him,\n    Should die for ever.\n  ANGELO. Were not you, then, as cruel as the sentence\n    That you have slander\'d so?\n  ISABELLA. Ignominy in ransom and free pardon\n    Are of two houses: lawful mercy\n    Is nothing kin to foul redemption.\n  ANGELO. You seem\'d of late to make the law a tyrant;\n    And rather prov\'d the sliding of your brother\n    A merriment than a vice.\n  ISABELLA. O, pardon me, my lord! It oft falls out,\n    To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean:\n    I something do excuse the thing I hate\n    For his advantage that I dearly love.\n  ANGELO. We are all frail.\n  ISABELLA. Else let my brother die,\n    If not a fedary but only he\n    Owe and succeed thy weakness.  \n  ANGELO. Nay, women are frail too.\n  ISABELLA. Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves,\n    Which are as easy broke as they make forms.\n    Women, help heaven! Men their creation mar\n    In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail;\n    For we are soft as our complexions are,\n    And credulous to false prints.\n  ANGELO. I think it well;\n    And from this testimony of your own sex,\n    Since I suppose we are made to be no stronger\n    Than faults may shake our frames, let me be bold.\n    I do arrest your words. Be that you are,\n    That is, a woman; if you be more, you\'re none;\n    If you be one, as you are well express\'d\n    By all external warrants, show it now\n    By putting on the destin\'d livery.\n  ISABELLA. I have no tongue but one; gentle, my lord,\n    Let me intreat you speak the former language.\n  ANGELO. Plainly conceive, I love you.\n  ISABELLA. My brother did love Juliet,  \n    And you tell me that he shall die for\'t.\n  ANGELO. He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love.\n  ISABELLA. I know your virtue hath a license in\'t,\n    Which seems a little fouler than it is,\n    To pluck on others.\n  ANGELO. Believe me, on mine honour,\n    My words express my purpose.\n  ISABELLA. Ha! little honour to be much believ\'d,\n    And most pernicious purpose! Seeming, seeming!\n    I will proclaim thee, Angelo, look for\'t.\n    Sign me a present pardon for my brother\n    Or, with an outstretch\'d throat, I\'ll tell the world aloud\n    What man thou art.\n  ANGELO. Who will believe thee, Isabel?\n    My unsoil\'d name, th\' austereness of my life,\n    My vouch against you, and my place i\' th\' state,\n    Will so your accusation overweigh\n    That you shall stifle in your own report,\n    And smell of calumny. I have begun,\n    And now I give my sensual race the rein:  \n    Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite;\n    Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes\n    That banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother\n    By yielding up thy body to my will;\n    Or else he must not only die the death,\n    But thy unkindness shall his death draw out\n    To ling\'ring sufferance. Answer me to-morrow,\n    Or, by the affection that now guides me most,\n    I\'ll prove a tyrant to him. As for you,\n    Say what you can: my false o\'erweighs your true.        Exit\n  ISABELLA. To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,\n    Who would believe me? O perilous mouths\n    That bear in them one and the self-same tongue\n    Either of condemnation or approof,\n    Bidding the law make curtsy to their will;\n    Hooking both right and wrong to th\' appetite,\n    To follow as it draws! I\'ll to my brother.\n    Though he hath fall\'n by prompture of the blood,\n    Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour\n    That, had he twenty heads to tender down  \n    On twenty bloody blocks, he\'d yield them up\n    Before his sister should her body stoop\n    To such abhorr\'d pollution.\n    Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die:\n    More than our brother is our chastity.\n    I\'ll tell him yet of Angelo\'s request,\n    And fit his mind to death, for his soul\'s rest.         Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nThe prison\n\nEnter DUKE, disguised as before, CLAUDIO, and PROVOST\n\n  DUKE. So, then you hope of pardon from Lord Angelo?\n  CLAUDIO. The miserable have no other medicine\n    But only hope:\n    I have hope to Eve, and am prepar\'d to die.\n  DUKE. Be absolute for death; either death or life\n    Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life.\n    If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing\n    That none but fools would keep. A breath thou art,\n    Servile to all the skyey influences,\n    That dost this habitation where thou keep\'st\n    Hourly afflict. Merely, thou art Death\'s fool;\n    For him thou labour\'st by thy flight to shun\n    And yet run\'st toward him still. Thou art not noble;\n    For all th\' accommodations that thou bear\'st\n    Are nurs\'d by baseness. Thou \'rt by no means valiant;\n    For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork\n    Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,  \n    And that thou oft provok\'st; yet grossly fear\'st\n    Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;\n    For thou exists on many a thousand grains\n    That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;\n    For what thou hast not, still thou striv\'st to get,\n    And what thou hast, forget\'st. Thou art not certain;\n    For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,\n    After the moon. If thou art rich, thou\'rt poor;\n    For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,\n    Thou bear\'st thy heavy riches but a journey,\n    And Death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none;\n    For thine own bowels which do call thee sire,\n    The mere effusion of thy proper loins,\n    Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,\n    For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age,\n    But, as it were, an after-dinner\'s sleep,\n    Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth\n    Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms\n    Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,\n    Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,  \n    To make thy riches pleasant. What\'s yet in this\n    That bears the name of life? Yet in this life\n    Lie hid moe thousand deaths; yet death we fear,\n    That makes these odds all even.\n  CLAUDIO. I humbly thank you.\n    To sue to live, I find I seek to die;\n    And, seeking death, find life. Let it come on.\n  ISABELLA. [Within] What, ho! Peace here; grace and good company!\n  PROVOST. Who\'s there? Come in; the wish deserves a welcome.\n  DUKE. Dear sir, ere long I\'ll visit you again.\n  CLAUDIO. Most holy sir, I thank you.\n\n                        Enter ISABELLA\n\n  ISABELLA. My business is a word or two with Claudio.\n  PROVOST. And very welcome. Look, signior, here\'s your sister.\n  DUKE. Provost, a word with you.\n  PROVOST. As many as you please.\n  DUKE. Bring me to hear them speak, where I may be conceal\'d.\n                                         Exeunt DUKE and PROVOST  \n  CLAUDIO. Now, sister, what\'s the comfort?\n  ISABELLA. Why,\n    As all comforts are; most good, most good, indeed.\n    Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven,\n    Intends you for his swift ambassador,\n    Where you shall be an everlasting leiger.\n    Therefore, your best appointment make with speed;\n    To-morrow you set on.\n  CLAUDIO. Is there no remedy?\n  ISABELLA. None, but such remedy as, to save a head,\n    To cleave a heart in twain.\n  CLAUDIO. But is there any?\n  ISABELLA. Yes, brother, you may live:\n    There is a devilish mercy in the judge,\n    If you\'ll implore it, that will free your life,\n    But fetter you till death.\n  CLAUDIO. Perpetual durance?\n  ISABELLA. Ay, just; perpetual durance, a restraint,\n    Though all the world\'s vastidity you had,\n    To a determin\'d scope.  \n  CLAUDIO. But in what nature?\n  ISABELLA. In such a one as, you consenting to\'t,\n    Would bark your honour from that trunk you bear,\n    And leave you naked.\n  CLAUDIO. Let me know the point.\n  ISABELLA. O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake,\n    Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain,\n    And six or seven winters more respect\n    Than a perpetual honour. Dar\'st thou die?\n    The sense of death is most in apprehension;\n    And the poor beetle that we tread upon\n    In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great\n    As when a giant dies.\n  CLAUDIO. Why give you me this shame?\n    Think you I can a resolution fetch\n    From flow\'ry tenderness? If I must die,\n    I will encounter darkness as a bride\n    And hug it in mine arms.\n  ISABELLA. There spake my brother; there my father\'s grave\n    Did utter forth a voice. Yes, thou must die:  \n    Thou art too noble to conserve a life\n    In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy,\n    Whose settled visage and deliberate word\n    Nips youth i\' th\' head, and follies doth enew\n    As falcon doth the fowl, is yet a devil;\n    His filth within being cast, he would appear\n    A pond as deep as hell.\n  CLAUDIO. The precise Angelo!\n  ISABELLA. O, \'tis the cunning livery of hell\n    The damned\'st body to invest and cover\n    In precise guards! Dost thou think, Claudio,\n    If I would yield him my virginity\n    Thou mightst be freed?\n  CLAUDIO. O heavens! it cannot be.\n  ISABELLA. Yes, he would give\'t thee, from this rank offence,\n    So to offend him still. This night\'s the time\n    That I should do what I abhor to name,\n    Or else thou diest to-morrow.\n  CLAUDIO. Thou shalt not do\'t.\n  ISABELLA. O, were it but my life!  \n    I\'d throw it down for your deliverance\n    As frankly as a pin.\n  CLAUDIO. Thanks, dear Isabel.\n  ISABELLA. Be ready, Claudio, for your death to-morrow.\n  CLAUDIO. Yes. Has he affections in him\n    That thus can make him bite the law by th\' nose\n    When he would force it? Sure it is no sin;\n    Or of the deadly seven it is the least.\n  ISABELLA. Which is the least?\n  CLAUDIO. If it were damnable, he being so wise,\n    Why would he for the momentary trick\n    Be perdurably fin\'d?- O Isabel!\n  ISABELLA. What says my brother?\n  CLAUDIO. Death is a fearful thing.\n  ISABELLA. And shamed life a hateful.\n  CLAUDIO. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;\n    To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;\n    This sensible warm motion to become\n    A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit\n    To bathe in fiery floods or to reside  \n    In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;\n    To be imprison\'d in the viewless winds,\n    And blown with restless violence round about\n    The pendent world; or to be worse than worst\n    Of those that lawless and incertain thought\n    Imagine howling- \'tis too horrible.\n    The weariest and most loathed worldly life\n    That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment,\n    Can lay on nature is a paradise\n    To what we fear of death.\n  ISABELLA. Alas, alas!\n  CLAUDIO. Sweet sister, let me live.\n    What sin you do to save a brother\'s life,\n    Nature dispenses with the deed so far\n    That it becomes a virtue.\n  ISABELLA. O you beast!\n    O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!\n    Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?\n    Is\'t not a kind of incest to take life\n    From thine own sister\'s shame? What should I think?  \n    Heaven shield my mother play\'d my father fair!\n    For such a warped slip of wilderness\n    Ne\'er issu\'d from his blood. Take my defiance;\n    Die; perish. Might but my bending down\n    Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed.\n    I\'ll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,\n    No word to save thee.\n  CLAUDIO. Nay, hear me, Isabel.\n  ISABELLA. O fie, fie, fie!\n    Thy sin\'s not accidental, but a trade.\n    Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd;\n    \'Tis best that thou diest quickly.\n  CLAUDIO. O, hear me, Isabella.\n\n                            Re-enter DUKE\n\n  DUKE. Vouchsafe a word, young sister, but one word.\n  ISABELLA. What is your will?\n  DUKE. Might you dispense with your leisure, I would by and by have\n    some speech with you; the satisfaction I would require is  \n    likewise your own benefit.\n  ISABELLA. I have no superfluous leisure; my stay must be stolen out\n    of other affairs; but I will attend you awhile.\n                                                   [Walks apart]\n  DUKE. Son, I have overheard what hath pass\'d between you and your\n    sister. Angelo had never the purpose to corrupt her; only he hath\n    made an assay of her virtue to practise his judgment with the\n    disposition of natures. She, having the truth of honour in her,\n    hath made him that gracious denial which he is most glad to\n    receive. I am confessor to Angelo, and I know this to be true;\n    therefore prepare yourself to death. Do not satisfy your\n    resolution with hopes that are fallible; to-morrow you must die;\n    go to your knees and make ready.\n  CLAUDIO. Let me ask my sister pardon. I am so out of love with life\n    that I will sue to be rid of it.\n  DUKE. Hold you there. Farewell. [Exit CLAUDIO] Provost, a word with\n    you.\n\n                          Re-enter PROVOST\n  \n  PROVOST. What\'s your will, father?\n  DUKE. That, now you are come, you will be gone. Leave me a while\n    with the maid; my mind promises with my habit no loss shall touch\n    her by my company.\n  PROVOST. In good time.                            Exit PROVOST\n  DUKE. The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good; the\n    goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness;\n    but grace, being the soul of your complexion, shall keep the body\n    of it ever fair. The assault that Angelo hath made to you,\n    fortune hath convey\'d to my understanding; and, but that frailty\n    hath examples for his falling, I should wonder at Angelo. How\n    will you do to content this substitute, and to save your brother?\n  ISABELLA. I am now going to resolve him; I had rather my brother\n    die by the law than my son should be unlawfully born. But, O, how\n    much is the good Duke deceiv\'d in Angelo! If ever he return, and\n    I can speak to him, I will open my lips in vain, or discover his\n    government.\n  DUKE. That shall not be much amiss; yet, as the matter now stands,\n    he will avoid your accusation: he made trial of you only.\n    Therefore fasten your ear on my advisings; to the love I have in  \n    doing good a remedy presents itself. I do make myself believe\n    that you may most uprighteously do a poor wronged lady a merited\n    benefit; redeem your brother from the angry law; do no stain to\n    your own gracious person; and much please the absent Duke, if\n    peradventure he shall ever return to have hearing of this\n    business.\n  ISABELLA. Let me hear you speak farther; I have spirit to do\n    anything that appears not foul in the truth of my spirit.\n  DUKE. Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful. Have you not\n    heard speak of Mariana, the sister of Frederick, the great\n    soldier who miscarried at sea?\n  ISABELLA. I have heard of the lady, and good words went with her\n    name.\n  DUKE. She should this Angelo have married; was affianced to her by\n    oath, and the nuptial appointed; between which time of the\n    contract and limit of the solemnity her brother Frederick was\n    wreck\'d at sea, having in that perished vessel the dowry of his\n    sister. But mark how heavily this befell to the poor gentlewoman:\n    there she lost a noble and renowned brother, in his love toward\n    her ever most kind and natural; with him the portion and sinew of  \n    her fortune, her marriage-dowry; with both, her combinate\n    husband, this well-seeming Angelo.\n  ISABELLA. Can this be so? Did Angelo so leave her?\n  DUKE. Left her in her tears, and dried not one of them with his\n    comfort; swallowed his vows whole, pretending in her discoveries\n    of dishonour; in few, bestow\'d her on her own lamentation, which\n    she yet wears for his sake; and he, a marble to her tears, is\n    washed with them, but relents not.\n  ISABELLA. What a merit were it in death to take this poor maid from\n    the world! What corruption in this life that it will let this man\n    live! But how out of this can she avail?\n  DUKE. It is a rupture that you may easily heal; and the cure of it\n    not only saves your brother, but keeps you from dishonour in\n    doing it.\n  ISABELLA. Show me how, good father.\n  DUKE. This forenamed maid hath yet in her the continuance of her\n    first affection; his unjust unkindness, that in all reason should\n    have quenched her love, hath, like an impediment in the current,\n    made it more violent and unruly. Go you to Angelo; answer his\n    requiring with a plausible obedience; agree with his demands to  \n    the point; only refer yourself to this advantage: first, that\n    your stay with him may not be long; that the time may have all\n    shadow and silence in it; and the place answer to convenience.\n    This being granted in course- and now follows all: we shall\n    advise this wronged maid to stead up your appointment, go in your\n    place. If the encounter acknowledge itself hereafter, it may\n    compel him to her recompense; and here, by this, is your brother\n    saved, your honour untainted, the poor Mariana advantaged, and\n    the corrupt deputy scaled. The maid will I frame and make fit for\n    his attempt. If you think well to carry this as you may, the\n    doubleness of the benefit defends the deceit from reproof. What\n    think you of it?\n  ISABELLA. The image of it gives me content already; and I trust it\n    will grow to a most prosperous perfection.\n  DUKE. It lies much in your holding up. Haste you speedily to\n    Angelo; if for this night he entreat you to his bed, give him\n    promise of satisfaction. I will presently to Saint Luke\'s; there,\n    at the moated grange, resides this dejected Mariana. At that\n    place call upon me; and dispatch with Angelo, that it may be\n    quickly.  \n  ISABELLA. I thank you for this comfort. Fare you well, good father.\n                                                Exeunt severally\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nThe street before the prison\n\nEnter, on one side, DUKE disguised as before; on the other, ELBOW,\nand OFFICERS with POMPEY\n\n  ELBOW. Nay, if there be no remedy for it, but that you will needs\n    buy and sell men and women like beasts, we shall have all the\n    world drink brown and white bastard.\n  DUKE. O heavens! what stuff is here?\n  POMPEY. \'Twas never merry world since, of two usuries, the merriest\n    was put down, and the worser allow\'d by order of law a furr\'d\n    gown to keep him warm; and furr\'d with fox on lamb-skins too, to\n    signify that craft, being richer than innocency, stands for the\n    facing.\n  ELBOW. Come your way, sir. Bless you, good father friar.\n  DUKE. And you, good brother father. What offence hath this man made\n    you, sir?\n  ELBOW. Marry, sir, he hath offended the law; and, sir, we take him\n    to be a thief too, sir, for we have found upon him, sir, a\n    strange picklock, which we have sent to the deputy.\n  DUKE. Fie, sirrah, a bawd, a wicked bawd!  \n    The evil that thou causest to be done,\n    That is thy means to live. Do thou but think\n    What \'tis to cram a maw or clothe a back\n    From such a filthy vice; say to thyself\n    \'From their abominable and beastly touches\n    I drink, I eat, array myself, and live.\'\n    Canst thou believe thy living is a life,\n    So stinkingly depending? Go mend, go mend.\n  POMPEY. Indeed, it does stink in some sort, sir; but yet, sir,\n    I would prove-\n  DUKE. Nay, if the devil have given thee proofs for sin,\n    Thou wilt prove his. Take him to prison, officer;\n    Correction and instruction must both work\n    Ere this rude beast will profit.\n  ELBOW. He must before the deputy, sir; he has given him warning.\n    The deputy cannot abide a whoremaster; if he be a whoremonger,\n    and comes before him, he were as good go a mile on his errand.\n  DUKE. That we were all, as some would seem to be,\n    From our faults, as his faults from seeming, free.\n  ELBOW. His neck will come to your waist- a cord, sir.  \n\n                          Enter LUCIO\n\n  POMPEY. I spy comfort; I cry bail. Here\'s a gentleman, and a friend\n    of mine.\n  LUCIO. How now, noble Pompey! What, at the wheels of Caesar? Art\n    thou led in triumph? What, is there none of Pygmalion\'s images,\n    newly made woman, to be had now for putting the hand in the\n    pocket and extracting it clutch\'d? What reply, ha? What say\'st\n    thou to this tune, matter, and method? Is\'t not drown\'d i\' th\'\n    last rain, ha? What say\'st thou, trot? Is the world as it was,\n    man? Which is the way? Is it sad, and few words? or how? The\n    trick of it?\n  DUKE. Still thus, and thus; still worse!\n  LUCIO. How doth my dear morsel, thy mistress? Procures she still,\n    ha?\n  POMPEY. Troth, sir, she hath eaten up all her beef, and she is\n    herself in the tub.\n  LUCIO. Why, \'tis good; it is the right of it; it must be so; ever\n    your fresh whore and your powder\'d bawd- an unshunn\'d  \n    consequence; it must be so. Art going to prison, Pompey?\n  POMPEY. Yes, faith, sir.\n  LUCIO. Why, \'tis not amiss, Pompey. Farewell; go, say I sent thee\n    thither. For debt, Pompey- or how?\n  ELBOW. For being a bawd, for being a bawd.\n  LUCIO. Well, then, imprison him. If imprisonment be the due of a\n    bawd, why, \'tis his right. Bawd is he doubtless, and of\n    antiquity, too; bawd-born. Farewell, good Pompey. Commend me to\n    the prison, Pompey. You will turn good husband now, Pompey; you\n    will keep the house.\n  POMPEY. I hope, sir, your good worship will be my bail.\n  LUCIO. No, indeed, will I not, Pompey; it is not the wear. I will\n    pray, Pompey, to increase your bondage. If you take it not\n    patiently, why, your mettle is the more. Adieu trusty Pompey.\n    Bless you, friar.\n  DUKE. And you.\n  LUCIO. Does Bridget paint still, Pompey, ha?\n  ELBOW. Come your ways, sir; come.\n  POMPEY. You will not bail me then, sir?\n  LUCIO. Then, Pompey, nor now. What news abroad, friar? what news?  \n  ELBOW. Come your ways, sir; come.\n  LUCIO. Go to kennel, Pompey, go.\n\n                               Exeunt ELBOW, POMPEY and OFFICERS\n\n    What news, friar, of the Duke?\n  DUKE. I know none. Can you tell me of any?\n  LUCIO. Some say he is with the Emperor of Russia; other some, he is\n    in Rome; but where is he, think you?\n  DUKE. I know not where; but wheresoever, I wish him well.\n  LUCIO. It was a mad fantastical trick of him to steal from the\n    state and usurp the beggary he was never born to. Lord Angelo\n    dukes it well in his absence; he puts transgression to\'t.\n  DUKE. He does well in\'t.\n  LUCIO. A little more lenity to lechery would do no harm in him;\n    something too crabbed that way, friar.\n  DUKE. It is too general a vice, and severity must cure it.\n  LUCIO. Yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great kindred; it is\n    well allied; but it is impossible to extirp it quite, friar, till\n    eating and drinking be put down. They say this Angelo was not  \n    made by man and woman after this downright way of creation. Is it\n    true, think you?\n  DUKE. How should he be made, then?\n  LUCIO. Some report a sea-maid spawn\'d him; some, that he was begot\n    between two stock-fishes. But it is certain that when he makes\n    water his urine is congeal\'d ice; that I know to be true. And he\n    is a motion generative; that\'s infallible.\n  DUKE. You are pleasant, sir, and speak apace.\n  LUCIO. Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the rebellion\n    of a codpiece to take away the life of a man! Would the Duke that\n    is absent have done this? Ere he would have hang\'d a man for the\n    getting a hundred bastards, he would have paid for the nursing a\n    thousand. He had some feeling of the sport; he knew the service,\n    and that instructed him to mercy.\n  DUKE. I never heard the absent Duke much detected for women; he was\n    not inclin\'d that way.\n  LUCIO. O, sir, you are deceiv\'d.\n  DUKE. \'Tis not possible.\n  LUCIO. Who- not the Duke? Yes, your beggar of fifty; and his use\n    was to put a ducat in her clack-dish. The Duke had crotchets in  \n    him. He would be drunk too; that let me inform you.\n  DUKE. You do him wrong, surely.\n  LUCIO. Sir, I was an inward of his. A shy fellow was the Duke; and\n    I believe I know the cause of his withdrawing.\n  DUKE. What, I prithee, might be the cause?\n  LUCIO. No, pardon; \'tis a secret must be lock\'d within the teeth\n    and the lips; but this I can let you understand: the greater file\n    of the subject held the Duke to be wise.\n  DUKE. Wise? Why, no question but he was.\n  LUCIO. A very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow.\n  DUKE. Either this is envy in you, folly, or mistaking; the very\n    stream of his life, and the business he hath helmed, must, upon a\n    warranted need, give him a better proclamation. Let him be but\n    testimonied in his own bringings-forth, and he shall appear to\n    the envious a scholar, a statesman, and a soldier. Therefore you\n    speak unskilfully; or, if your knowledge be more, it is much\n    dark\'ned in your malice.\n  LUCIO. Sir, I know him, and I love him.\n  DUKE. Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer\n    love.  \n  LUCIO. Come, sir, I know what I know.\n  DUKE. I can hardly believe that, since you know not what you speak.\n    But, if ever the Duke return, as our prayers are he may, let me\n    desire you to make your answer before him. If it be honest you\n    have spoke, you have courage to maintain it; I am bound to call\n    upon you; and I pray you your name?\n  LUCIO. Sir, my name is Lucio, well known to the Duke.\n  DUKE. He shall know you better, sir, if I may live to report you.\n  LUCIO. I fear you not.\n  DUKE. O, you hope the Duke will return no more; or you imagine me\n    too unhurtful an opposite. But, indeed, I can do you little harm:\n    you\'ll forswear this again.\n  LUCIO. I\'ll be hang\'d first. Thou art deceiv\'d in me, friar. But no\n    more of this. Canst thou tell if Claudio die to-morrow or no?\n  DUKE. Why should he die, sir?\n  LUCIO. Why? For filling a bottle with a tun-dish. I would the Duke\n    we talk of were return\'d again. This ungenitur\'d agent will\n    unpeople the province with continency; sparrows must not build in\n    his house-eaves because they are lecherous. The Duke yet would\n    have dark deeds darkly answered; he would never bring them to  \n    light. Would he were return\'d! Marry, this Claudio is condemned\n    for untrussing. Farewell, good friar; I prithee pray for me. The\n    Duke, I say to thee again, would eat mutton on Fridays. He\'s not\n    past it yet; and, I say to thee, he would mouth with a beggar\n    though she smelt brown bread and garlic. Say that I said so.\n    Farewell.                                               Exit\n  DUKE. No might nor greatness in mortality\n    Can censure scape; back-wounding calumny\n    The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong\n    Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?\n    But who comes here?\n\n             Enter ESCALUS, PROVOST, and OFFICERS with\n                           MISTRESS OVERDONE\n\n  ESCALUS. Go, away with her to prison.\n  MRS. OVERDONE. Good my lord, be good to me; your honour is\n    accounted a merciful man; good my lord.\n  ESCALUS. Double and treble admonition, and still forfeit in the\n    same kind! This would make mercy swear and play the tyrant.  \n  PROVOST. A bawd of eleven years\' continuance, may it please your\n    honour.\n  MRS. OVERDONE. My lord, this is one Lucio\'s information against me.\n    Mistress Kate Keepdown was with child by him in the Duke\'s time;\n    he promis\'d her marriage. His child is a year and a quarter old\n    come Philip and Jacob; I have kept it myself; and see how he goes\n    about to abuse me.\n  ESCALUS. That fellow is a fellow of much license. Let him be call\'d\n    before us. Away with her to prison. Go to; no more words. [Exeunt\n    OFFICERS with MISTRESS OVERDONE]  Provost, my brother Angelo will\n    not be alter\'d: Claudio must die to-morrow. Let him be furnish\'d\n    with divines, and have all charitable preparation. If my brother\n    wrought by my pity, it should not be so with him.\n  PROVOST. So please you, this friar hath been with him, and advis\'d\n    him for th\' entertainment of death.\n  ESCALUS. Good even, good father.\n  DUKE. Bliss and goodness on you!\n  ESCALUS. Of whence are you?\n  DUKE. Not of this country, though my chance is now\n    To use it for my time. I am a brother  \n    Of gracious order, late come from the See\n    In special business from his Holiness.\n  ESCALUS. What news abroad i\' th\' world?\n  DUKE. None, but that there is so great a fever on goodness that the\n    dissolution of it must cure it. Novelty is only in request; and,\n    as it is, as dangerous to be aged in any kind of course as it is\n    virtuous to be constant in any undertakeing. There is scarce\n    truth enough alive to make societies secure; but security enough\n    to make fellowships accurst. Much upon this riddle runs the\n    wisdom of the world. This news is old enough, yet it is every\n    day\'s news. I pray you, sir, of what disposition was the Duke?\n  ESCALUS. One that, above all other strifes, contended especially to\n    know himself.\n  DUKE. What pleasure was he given to?\n  ESCALUS. Rather rejoicing to see another merry than merry at\n    anything which profess\'d to make him rejoice; a gentleman of all\n    temperance. But leave we him to his events, with a prayer they\n    may prove prosperous; and let me desire to know how you find\n    Claudio prepar\'d. I am made to understand that you have lent him\n    visitation.  \n  DUKE. He professes to have received no sinister measure from his\n    judge, but most willingly humbles himself to the determination of\n    justice. Yet had he framed to himself, by the instruction of his\n    frailty, many deceiving promises of life; which I, by my good\n    leisure, have discredited to him, and now he is resolv\'d to die.\n  ESCALUS. You have paid the heavens your function, and the prisoner\n    the very debt of your calling. I have labour\'d for the poor\n    gentleman to the extremest shore of my modesty; but my brother\n    justice have I found so severe that he hath forc\'d me to tell him\n    he is indeed Justice.\n  DUKE. If his own life answer the straitness of his proceeding, it\n    shall become him well; wherein if he chance to fail, he hath\n    sentenc\'d himself.\n  ESCALUS. I am going to visit the prisoner. Fare you well.\n  DUKE. Peace be with you!            Exeunt ESCALUS and PROVOST\n\n         He who the sword of heaven will bear\n         Should be as holy as severe;\n         Pattern in himself to know,\n         Grace to stand, and virtue go;  \n         More nor less to others paying\n         Than by self-offences weighing.\n         Shame to him whose cruel striking\n         Kills for faults of his own liking!\n         Twice treble shame on Angelo,\n         To weed my vice and let his grow!\n         O, what may man within him hide,\n         Though angel on the outward side!\n         How may likeness, made in crimes,\n         Make a practice on the times,\n         To draw with idle spiders\' strings\n         Most ponderous and substantial things!\n         Craft against vice I must apply.\n         With Angelo to-night shall lie\n         His old betrothed but despised;\n         So disguise shall, by th\' disguised,\n         Pay with falsehood false exacting,\n         And perform an old contracting.                    Exit\n\n\n\n\nAct IV. Scene I.\nThe moated grange at Saint Duke\'s\n\nEnter MARIANA; and BOY singing\n\n                             SONG\n\n           Take, O, take those lips away,\n             That so sweetly were forsworn;\n           And those eyes, the break of day,\n             Lights that do mislead the morn;\n           But my kisses bring again, bring again;\n           Seals of love, but seal\'d in vain, seal\'d in vain.\n\n                  Enter DUKE, disguised as before\n\n  MARIANA. Break off thy song, and haste thee quick away;\n    Here comes a man of comfort, whose advice\n    Hath often still\'d my brawling discontent.          Exit BOY\n    I cry you mercy, sir, and well could wish\n    You had not found me here so musical.\n    Let me excuse me, and believe me so,  \n    My mirth it much displeas\'d, but pleas\'d my woe.\n  DUKE. \'Tis good; though music oft hath such a charm\n    To make bad good and good provoke to harm.\n    I pray you tell me hath anybody inquir\'d for me here to-day. Much\n    upon this time have I promis\'d here to meet.\n  MARIANA. You have not been inquir\'d after; I have sat here all day.\n\n                         Enter ISABELLA\n\n  DUKE. I do constantly believe you. The time is come even now. I\n    shall crave your forbearance a little. May be I will call upon\n    you anon, for some advantage to yourself.\n  MARIANA. I am always bound to you.                        Exit\n  DUKE. Very well met, and well come.\n    What is the news from this good deputy?\n  ISABELLA. He hath a garden circummur\'d with brick,\n    Whose western side is with a vineyard back\'d;\n    And to that vineyard is a planched gate\n    That makes his opening with this bigger key;\n    This other doth command a little door  \n    Which from the vineyard to the garden leads.\n    There have I made my promise\n    Upon the heavy middle of the night\n    To call upon him.\n  DUKE. But shall you on your knowledge find this way?\n  ISABELLA. I have ta\'en a due and wary note upon\'t;\n    With whispering and most guilty diligence,\n    In action all of precept, he did show me\n    The way twice o\'er.\n  DUKE. Are there no other tokens\n    Between you \'greed concerning her observance?\n  ISABELLA. No, none, but only a repair i\' th\' dark;\n    And that I have possess\'d him my most stay\n    Can be but brief; for I have made him know\n    I have a servant comes with me along,\n    That stays upon me; whose persuasion is\n    I come about my brother.\n  DUKE. \'Tis well borne up.\n    I have not yet made known to Mariana\n    A word of this. What ho, within! come forth.  \n\n                       Re-enter MARIANA\n\n    I pray you be acquainted with this maid;\n    She comes to do you good.\n  ISABELLA. I do desire the like.\n  DUKE. Do you persuade yourself that I respect you?\n  MARIANA. Good friar, I know you do, and have found it.\n  DUKE. Take, then, this your companion by the hand,\n    Who hath a story ready for your ear.\n    I shall attend your leisure; but make haste;\n    The vaporous night approaches.\n  MARIANA. Will\'t please you walk aside?\n                                     Exeunt MARIANA and ISABELLA\n  DUKE. O place and greatness! Millions of false eyes\n    Are stuck upon thee. Volumes of report\n    Run with these false, and most contrarious quest\n    Upon thy doings. Thousand escapes of wit\n    Make thee the father of their idle dream,\n    And rack thee in their fancies.  \n\n                 Re-enter MARIANA and ISABELLA\n\n    Welcome, how agreed?\n  ISABELLA. She\'ll take the enterprise upon her, father,\n    If you advise it.\n  DUKE. It is not my consent,\n    But my entreaty too.\n  ISABELLA. Little have you to say,\n    When you depart from him, but, soft and low,\n    \'Remember now my brother.\'\n  MARIANA. Fear me not.\n  DUKE. Nor, gentle daughter, fear you not at all.\n    He is your husband on a pre-contract.\n    To bring you thus together \'tis no sin,\n    Sith that the justice of your title to him\n    Doth flourish the deceit. Come, let us go;\n    Our corn\'s to reap, for yet our tithe\'s to sow.       Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe prison\n\nEnter PROVOST and POMPEY\n\n  PROVOST. Come hither, sirrah. Can you cut off a man\'s head?\n  POMPEY. If the man be a bachelor, sir, I can; but if he be a\n    married man, he\'s his wife\'s head, and I can never cut of a\n    woman\'s head.\n  PROVOST. Come, sir, leave me your snatches and yield me a direct\n    answer. To-morrow morning are to die Claudio and Barnardine. Here\n    is in our prison a common executioner, who in his office lacks a\n    helper; if you will take it on you to assist him, it shall redeem\n    you from your gyves; if not, you shall have your full time of\n    imprisonment, and your deliverance with an unpitied whipping, for\n    you have been a notorious bawd.\n  POMPEY. Sir, I have been an unlawful bawd time out of mind; but yet\n    I will be content to be a lawful hangman. I would be glad to\n    receive some instructions from my fellow partner.\n  PROVOST. What ho, Abhorson! Where\'s Abhorson there?\n\n                          Enter ABHORSON  \n\n  ABHORSON. Do you call, sir?\n  PROVOST. Sirrah, here\'s a fellow will help you to-morrow in your\n    execution. If you think it meet, compound with him by the year,\n    and let him abide here with you; if not, use him for the present,\n    and dismiss him. He cannot plead his estimation with you; he hath\n    been a bawd.\n  ABHORSON. A bawd, sir? Fie upon him! He will discredit our mystery.\n  PROVOST. Go to, sir; you weigh equally; a feather will turn the\n    scale.                                                  Exit\n  POMPEY. Pray, sir, by your good favour- for surely, sir, a good\n    favour you have but that you have a hanging look- do you call,\n    sir, your occupation a mystery?\n  ABHORSON. Ay, sir; a mystery.\n  POMPEY. Painting, sir, I have heard say, is a mystery; and your\n    whores, sir, being members of my occupation, using painting, do\n    prove my occupation a mystery; but what mystery there should be\n    in hanging, if I should be hang\'d, I cannot imagine.\n  ABHORSON. Sir, it is a mystery.\n  POMPEY. Proof?  \n  ABHORSON. Every true man\'s apparel fits your thief: if it be too\n    little for your thief, your true man thinks it big enough; if it\n    be too big for your thief, your thief thinks it little enough; so\n    every true man\'s apparel fits your thief.\n\n                          Re-enter PROVOST\n\n  PROVOST. Are you agreed?\n  POMPEY. Sir, I will serve him; for I do find your hangman is a more\n    penitent trade than your bawd; he doth oftener ask forgiveness.\n  PROVOST. You, sirrah, provide your block and your axe to-morrow\n    four o\'clock.\n  ABHORSON. Come on, bawd; I will instruct thee in my trade; follow.\n  POMPEY. I do desire to learn, sir; and I hope, if you have occasion\n    to use me for your own turn, you shall find me yare; for truly,\n    sir, for your kindness I owe you a good turn.\n  PROVOST. Call hither Barnardine and Claudio.\n                                      Exeunt ABHORSON and POMPEY\n    Th\' one has my pity; not a jot the other,\n    Being a murderer, though he were my brother.  \n\n                           Enter CLAUDIO\n\n    Look, here\'s the warrant, Claudio, for thy death;\n    \'Tis now dead midnight, and by eight to-morrow\n    Thou must be made immortal. Where\'s Barnardine?\n  CLAUDIO. As fast lock\'d up in sleep as guiltless labour\n    When it lies starkly in the traveller\'s bones.\n    He will not wake.\n  PROVOST. Who can do good on him?\n    Well, go, prepare yourself. [Knocking within] But hark, what\n      noise?\n    Heaven give your spirits comfort!               Exit CLAUDIO\n    [Knocking continues] By and by.\n    I hope it is some pardon or reprieve\n    For the most gentle Claudio.\n\n                 Enter DUKE, disguised as before\n\n    Welcome, father.  \n  DUKE. The best and wholesom\'st spirits of the night\n    Envelop you, good Provost! Who call\'d here of late?\n  PROVOST. None, since the curfew rung.\n  DUKE. Not Isabel?\n  PROVOST. No.\n  DUKE. They will then, ere\'t be long.\n  PROVOST. What comfort is for Claudio?\n  DUKE. There\'s some in hope.\n  PROVOST. It is a bitter deputy.\n  DUKE. Not so, not so; his life is parallel\'d\n    Even with the stroke and line of his great justice;\n    He doth with holy abstinence subdue\n    That in himself which he spurs on his pow\'r\n    To qualify in others. Were he meal\'d with that\n    Which he corrects, then were he tyrannous;\n    But this being so, he\'s just. [Knocking within] Now are they\n      come.                                         Exit PROVOST\n    This is a gentle provost; seldom when\n    The steeled gaoler is the friend of men. [Knocking within]\n    How now, what noise! That spirit\'s possess\'d with haste  \n    That wounds th\' unsisting postern with these strokes.\n\n                        Re-enter PROVOST\n\n  PROVOST. There he must stay until the officer\n    Arise to let him in; he is call\'d up.\n  DUKE. Have you no countermand for Claudio yet\n    But he must die to-morrow?\n  PROVOST. None, sir, none.\n  DUKE. As near the dawning, Provost, as it is,\n    You shall hear more ere morning.\n  PROVOST. Happily\n    You something know; yet I believe there comes\n    No countermand; no such example have we.\n    Besides, upon the very siege of justice,\n    Lord Angelo hath to the public ear\n    Profess\'d the contrary.\n\n                         Enter a MESSENGER  \n    This is his lordship\'s man.\n  DUKE. And here comes Claudio\'s pardon.\n  MESSENGER. My lord hath sent you this note; and by me this further\n    charge, that you swerve not from the smallest article of it,\n    neither in time, matter, or other circumstance. Good morrow; for\n    as I take it, it is almost day.\n  PROVOST. I shall obey him.                      Exit MESSENGER\n  DUKE. [Aside] This is his pardon, purchas\'d by such sin\n    For which the pardoner himself is in;\n    Hence hath offence his quick celerity,\n    When it is borne in high authority.\n    When vice makes mercy, mercy\'s so extended\n    That for the fault\'s love is th\' offender friended.\n    Now, sir, what news?\n  PROVOST. I told you: Lord Angelo, belike thinking me remiss in mine\n    office, awakens me with this unwonted putting-on; methinks\n    strangely, for he hath not us\'d it before.\n  DUKE. Pray you, let\'s hear.\n  PROVOST. [Reads] \'Whatsoever you may hear to the contrary, let\n    Claudio be executed by four of the clock, and, in the afternoon,  \n    Barnardine. For my better satisfaction, let me have Claudio\'s\n    head sent me by five. Let this be duly performed, with a thought\n    that more depends on it than we must yet deliver. Thus fail not\n    to do your office, as you will answer it at your peril.\'\n    What say you to this, sir?\n  DUKE. What is that Barnardine who is to be executed in th\'\n    afternoon?\n  PROVOST. A Bohemian born; but here nurs\'d up and bred.\n    One that is a prisoner nine years old.\n  DUKE. How came it that the absent Duke had not either deliver\'d him\n    to his liberty or executed him? I have heard it was ever his\n    manner to do so.\n  PROVOST. His friends still wrought reprieves for him; and, indeed,\n    his fact, till now in the government of Lord Angelo, came not to\n    an undoubted proof.\n  DUKE. It is now apparent?\n  PROVOST. Most manifest, and not denied by himself.\n  DUKE. Hath he borne himself penitently in prison? How seems he to\n    be touch\'d?\n  PROVOST. A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a  \n    drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless, of what\'s past,\n    present, or to come; insensible of mortality and desperately\n    mortal.\n  DUKE. He wants advice.\n  PROVOST. He will hear none. He hath evermore had the liberty of the\n    prison; give him leave to escape hence, he would not; drunk many\n    times a day, if not many days entirely drunk. We have very oft\n    awak\'d him, as if to carry him to execution, and show\'d him a\n    seeming warrant for it; it hath not moved him at all.\n  DUKE. More of him anon. There is written in your brow, Provost,\n    honesty and constancy. If I read it not truly, my ancient skill\n    beguiles me; but in the boldness of my cunning I will lay myself\n    in hazard. Claudio, whom here you have warrant to execute, is no\n    greater forfeit to the law than Angelo who hath sentenc\'d him. To\n    make you understand this in a manifested effect, I crave but four\n    days\' respite; for the which you are to do me both a present and\n    a dangerous courtesy.\n  PROVOST. Pray, sir, in what?\n  DUKE. In the delaying death.\n  PROVOST. Alack! How may I do it, having the hour limited, and an  \n    express command, under penalty, to deliver his head in the view\n    of Angelo? I may make my case as Claudio\'s, to cross this in the\n    smallest.\n  DUKE. By the vow of mine order, I warrant you, if my instructions\n    may be your guide. Let this Barnardine be this morning executed,\n    and his head borne to Angelo.\n  PROVOST. Angelo hath seen them both, and will discover the favour.\n  DUKE. O, death\'s a great disguiser; and you may add to it. Shave\n    the head and tie the beard; and say it was the desire of the\n    penitent to be so bar\'d before his death. You know the course is\n    common. If anything fall to you upon this more than thanks and\n    good fortune, by the saint whom I profess, I will plead against\n    it with my life.\n  PROVOST. Pardon me, good father; it is against my oath.\n  DUKE. Were you sworn to the Duke, or to the deputy?\n  PROVOST. To him and to his substitutes.\n  DUKE. You will think you have made no offence if the Duke avouch\n    the justice of your dealing?\n  PROVOST. But what likelihood is in that?\n  DUKE. Not a resemblance, but a certainty. Yet since I see you  \n    fearful, that neither my coat, integrity, nor persuasion, can\n    with ease attempt you, I will go further than I meant, to pluck\n    all fears out of you. Look you, sir, here is the hand and seal of\n    the Duke. You know the character, I doubt not; and the signet is\n    not strange to you.\n  PROVOST. I know them both.\n  DUKE. The contents of this is the return of the Duke; you shall\n    anon over-read it at your pleasure, where you shall find within\n    these two days he will be here. This is a thing that Angelo knows\n    not; for he this very day receives letters of strange tenour,\n    perchance of the Duke\'s death, perchance entering into some\n    monastery; but, by chance, nothing of what is writ. Look, th\'\n    unfolding star calls up the shepherd. Put not yourself into\n    amazement how these things should be: all difficulties are but\n    easy when they are known. Call your executioner, and off with\n    Barnardine\'s head. I will give him a present shrift, and advise\n    him for a better place. Yet you are amaz\'d, but this shall\n    absolutely resolve you. Come away; it is almost clear dawn.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nThe prison\n\nEnter POMPEY\n\n  POMPEY. I am as well acquainted here as I was in our house of\n    profession; one would think it were Mistress Overdone\'s own\n    house, for here be many of her old customers. First, here\'s young\n    Master Rash; he\'s in for a commodity of brown paper and old\n    ginger, nine score and seventeen pounds, of which he made five\n    marks ready money. Marry, then ginger was not much in request,\n    for the old women were all dead. Then is there here one Master\n    Caper, at the suit of Master Threepile the mercer, for some four\n    suits of peach-colour\'d satin, which now peaches him a beggar.\n    Then have we here young Dizy, and young Master Deepvow, and\n    Master Copperspur, and Master Starvelackey, the rapier and dagger\n    man, and young Dropheir that kill\'d lusty Pudding, and Master\n    Forthlight the tilter, and brave Master Shootie the great\n    traveller, and wild Halfcan that stabb\'d Pots, and, I think,\n    forty more- all great doers in our trade, and are now \'for the\n    Lord\'s sake.\'\n  \n                            Enter ABHORSON\n\n  ABHORSON. Sirrah, bring Barnardine hither.\n  POMPEY. Master Barnardine! You must rise and be hang\'d, Master\n    Barnardine!\n  ABHORSON. What ho, Barnardine!\n  BARNARDINE. [Within] A pox o\' your throats! Who makes that noise\n    there? What are you?\n  POMPEY. Your friends, sir; the hangman. You must be so good, sir,\n    to rise and be put to death.\n  BARNARDINE. [ Within ] Away, you rogue, away; I am sleepy.\n  ABHORSON. Tell him he must awake, and that quickly too.\n  POMPEY. Pray, Master Barnardine, awake till you are executed, and\n    sleep afterwards.\n  ABHORSON. Go in to him, and fetch him out.\n  POMPEY. He is coming, sir, he is coming; I hear his straw rustle.\n\n                             Enter BARNARDINE\n\n  ABHORSON. Is the axe upon the block, sirrah?  \n  POMPEY. Very ready, sir.\n  BARNARDINE. How now, Abhorson, what\'s the news with you?\n  ABHORSON. Truly, sir, I would desire you to clap into your prayers;\n    for, look you, the warrant\'s come.\n  BARNARDINE. You rogue, I have been drinking all night; I am not\n    fitted for\'t.\n  POMPEY. O, the better, sir! For he that drinks all night and is\n    hanged betimes in the morning may sleep the sounder all the next\n    day.\n\n                  Enter DUKE, disguised as before\n\n  ABHORSON. Look you, sir, here comes your ghostly father.\n    Do we jest now, think you?\n  DUKE. Sir, induced by my charity, and hearing how hastily you are\n    to depart, I am come to advise you, comfort you, and pray with\n    you.\n  BARNARDINE. Friar, not I; I have been drinking hard all night, and\n    I will have more time to prepare me, or they shall beat out my\n    brains with billets. I will not consent to die this day, that\'s  \n    certain.\n  DUKE. O, Sir, you must; and therefore I beseech you\n    Look forward on the journey you shall go.\n  BARNARDINE. I swear I will not die to-day for any man\'s persuasion.\n  DUKE. But hear you-\n  BARNARDINE. Not a word; if you have anything to say to me, come to\n    my ward; for thence will not I to-day.                  Exit\n  DUKE. Unfit to live or die. O gravel heart!\n    After him, fellows; bring him to the block.\n                                      Exeunt ABHORSON and POMPEY\n\n                            Enter PROVOST\n\n  PROVOST. Now, sir, how do you find the prisoner?\n  DUKE. A creature unprepar\'d, unmeet for death;\n    And to transport him in the mind he is\n    Were damnable.\n  PROVOST. Here in the prison, father,\n    There died this morning of a cruel fever\n    One Ragozine, a most notorious pirate,  \n    A man of Claudio\'s years; his beard and head\n    Just of his colour. What if we do omit\n    This reprobate till he were well inclin\'d,\n    And satisfy the deputy with the visage\n    Of Ragozine, more like to Claudio?\n  DUKE. O, \'tis an accident that heaven provides!\n    Dispatch it presently; the hour draws on\n    Prefix\'d by Angelo. See this be done,\n    And sent according to command; whiles I\n    Persuade this rude wretch willingly to die.\n  PROVOST. This shall be done, good father, presently.\n    But Barnardine must die this afternoon;\n    And how shall we continue Claudio,\n    To save me from the danger that might come\n    If he were known alive?\n  DUKE. Let this be done:\n    Put them in secret holds, both Barnardine and Claudio.\n    Ere twice the sun hath made his journal greeting\n    To the under generation, you shall find\n    Your safety manifested.  \n  PROVOST. I am your free dependant.\n  DUKE. Quick, dispatch, and send the head to Angelo.\n                                                    Exit PROVOST\n    Now will I write letters to Angelo-\n    The Provost, he shall bear them- whose contents\n    Shall witness to him I am near at home,\n    And that, by great injunctions, I am bound\n    To enter publicly. Him I\'ll desire\n    To meet me at the consecrated fount,\n    A league below the city; and from thence,\n    By cold gradation and well-balanc\'d form.\n    We shall proceed with Angelo.\n\n                         Re-enter PROVOST\n\n  PROVOST. Here is the head; I\'ll carry it myself.\n  DUKE. Convenient is it. Make a swift return;\n    For I would commune with you of such things\n    That want no ear but yours.\n  PROVOST. I\'ll make all speed.                             Exit  \n  ISABELLA. [ Within ] Peace, ho, be here!\n  DUKE. The tongue of Isabel. She\'s come to know\n    If yet her brother\'s pardon be come hither;\n    But I will keep her ignorant of her good,\n    To make her heavenly comforts of despair\n    When it is least expected.\n\n                           Enter ISABELLA\n\n  ISABELLA. Ho, by your leave!\n  DUKE. Good morning to you, fair and gracious daughter.\n  ISABELLA. The better, given me by so holy a man.\n    Hath yet the deputy sent my brother\'s pardon?\n  DUKE. He hath releas\'d him, Isabel, from the world.\n    His head is off and sent to Angelo.\n  ISABELLA. Nay, but it is not so.\n  DUKE. It is no other.\n    Show your wisdom, daughter, in your close patience,\n  ISABELLA. O, I will to him and pluck out his eyes!\n  DUKE. You shall not be admitted to his sight.  \n  ISABELLA. Unhappy Claudio! Wretched Isabel!\n    Injurious world! Most damned Angelo!\n  DUKE. This nor hurts him nor profits you a jot;\n    Forbear it, therefore; give your cause to heaven.\n    Mark what I say, which you shall find\n    By every syllable a faithful verity.\n    The Duke comes home to-morrow. Nay, dry your eyes.\n    One of our covent, and his confessor,\n    Gives me this instance. Already he hath carried\n    Notice to Escalus and Angelo,\n    Who do prepare to meet him at the gates,\n    There to give up their pow\'r. If you can, pace your wisdom\n    In that good path that I would wish it go,\n    And you shall have your bosom on this wretch,\n    Grace of the Duke, revenges to your heart,\n    And general honour.\n  ISABELLA. I am directed by you.\n  DUKE. This letter, then, to Friar Peter give;\n    \'Tis that he sent me of the Duke\'s return.\n    Say, by this token, I desire his company  \n    At Mariana\'s house to-night. Her cause and yours\n    I\'ll perfect him withal; and he shall bring you\n    Before the Duke; and to the head of Angelo\n    Accuse him home and home. For my poor self,\n    I am combined by a sacred vow,\n    And shall be absent. Wend you with this letter.\n    Command these fretting waters from your eyes\n    With a light heart; trust not my holy order,\n    If I pervert your course. Who\'s here?\n\n                           Enter LUCIO\n\n  LUCIO. Good even. Friar, where\'s the Provost?\n  DUKE. Not within, sir.\n  LUCIO. O pretty Isabella, I am pale at mine heart to see thine eyes\n    so red. Thou must be patient. I am fain to dine and sup with\n    water and bran; I dare not for my head fill my belly; one\n    fruitful meal would set me to\'t. But they say the Duke will be\n    here to-morrow. By my troth, Isabel, I lov\'d thy brother. If the\n    old fantastical Duke of dark corners had been at home, he had  \n    lived.                                         Exit ISABELLA\n  DUKE. Sir, the Duke is marvellous little beholding to your reports;\n    but the best is, he lives not in them.\n  LUCIO. Friar, thou knowest not the Duke so well as I do; he\'s a\n    better woodman than thou tak\'st him for.\n  DUKE. Well, you\'ll answer this one day. Fare ye well.\n  LUCIO. Nay, tarry; I\'ll go along with thee; I can tell thee pretty\n    tales of the Duke.\n  DUKE. You have told me too many of him already, sir, if they be\n    true; if not true, none were enough.\n  LUCIO. I was once before him for getting a wench with child.\n  DUKE. Did you such a thing?\n  LUCIO. Yes, marry, did I; but I was fain to forswear it: they would\n    else have married me to the rotten medlar.\n  DUKE. Sir, your company is fairer than honest. Rest you well.\n  LUCIO. By my troth, I\'ll go with thee to the lane\'s end. If bawdy\n    talk offend you, we\'ll have very little of it. Nay, friar, I am a\n    kind of burr; I shall stick.                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nANGELO\'S house\n\nEnter ANGELO and ESCALUS\n\n  ESCALUS. Every letter he hath writ hath disvouch\'d other.\n  ANGELO. In most uneven and distracted manner. His actions show much\n    like to madness; pray heaven his wisdom be not tainted! And why\n    meet him at the gates, and redeliver our authorities there?\n  ESCALUS. I guess not.\n  ANGELO. And why should we proclaim it in an hour before his\n    ent\'ring that, if any crave redress of injustice, they should\n    exhibit their petitions in the street?\n  ESCALUS. He shows his reason for that: to have a dispatch of\n     complaints; and to deliver us from devices hereafter, which\n    shall then have no power to stand against us.\n  ANGELO. Well, I beseech you, let it be proclaim\'d;\n    Betimes i\' th\' morn I\'ll call you at your house;\n    Give notice to such men of sort and suit\n    As are to meet him.\n  ESCALUS. I shall, sir; fare you well.\n  ANGELO. Good night.                               Exit ESCALUS  \n    This deed unshapes me quite, makes me unpregnant\n    And dull to all proceedings. A deflow\'red maid!\n    And by an eminent body that enforc\'d\n    The law against it! But that her tender shame\n    Will not proclaim against her maiden loss,\n    How might she tongue me! Yet reason dares her no;\n    For my authority bears a so credent bulk\n    That no particular scandal once can touch\n    But it confounds the breather. He should have liv\'d,\n    Save that his riotous youth, with dangerous sense,\n    Might in the times to come have ta\'en revenge,\n    By so receiving a dishonour\'d life\n    With ransom of such shame. Would yet he had liv\'d!\n    Alack, when once our grace we have forgot,\n    Nothing goes right; we would, and we would not.         Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nFields without the town\n\nEnter DUKE in his own habit, and Friar PETER\n\n  DUKE. These letters at fit time deliver me.   [Giving letters]\n    The Provost knows our purpose and our plot.\n    The matter being afoot, keep your instruction\n    And hold you ever to our special drift;\n    Though sometimes you do blench from this to that\n    As cause doth minister. Go, call at Flavius\' house,\n    And tell him where I stay; give the like notice\n    To Valentinus, Rowland, and to Crassus,\n    And bid them bring the trumpets to the gate;\n    But send me Flavius first.\n    PETER. It shall be speeded well.                  Exit FRIAR\n\n                             Enter VARRIUS\n\n  DUKE. I thank thee, Varrius; thou hast made good haste.\n    Come, we will walk. There\'s other of our friends\n    Will greet us here anon. My gentle Varrius!           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nA street near the city gate\n\nEnter ISABELLA and MARIANA\n\n  ISABELLA. To speak so indirectly I am loath;\n    I would say the truth; but to accuse him so,\n    That is your part. Yet I am advis\'d to do it;\n    He says, to veil full purpose.\n  MARIANA. Be rul\'d by him.\n  ISABELLA. Besides, he tells me that, if peradventure\n    He speak against me on the adverse side,\n    I should not think it strange; for \'tis a physic\n    That\'s bitter to sweet end.\n  MARIANA. I would Friar Peter-\n\n                         Enter FRIAR PETER\n\n  ISABELLA. O, peace! the friar is come.\n  PETER. Come, I have found you out a stand most fit,\n    Where you may have such vantage on the Duke\n    He shall not pass you. Twice have the trumpets sounded;  \n    The generous and gravest citizens\n    Have hent the gates, and very near upon\n    The Duke is ent\'ring; therefore, hence, away.         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nThe city gate\n\nEnter at several doors DUKE, VARRIUS, LORDS; ANGELO, ESCALUS, Lucio,\nPROVOST, OFFICERS, and CITIZENS\n\n  DUKE. My very worthy cousin, fairly met!\n    Our old and faithful friend, we are glad to see you.\n  ANGELO, ESCALUS. Happy return be to your royal Grace!\n  DUKE. Many and hearty thankings to you both.\n    We have made inquiry of you, and we hear\n    Such goodness of your justice that our soul\n    Cannot but yield you forth to public thanks,\n    Forerunning more requital.\n  ANGELO. You make my bonds still greater.\n  DUKE. O, your desert speaks loud; and I should wrong it\n    To lock it in the wards of covert bosom,\n    When it deserves, with characters of brass,\n    A forted residence \'gainst the tooth of time\n    And razure of oblivion. Give me your hand.\n    And let the subject see, to make them know\n    That outward courtesies would fain proclaim  \n    Favours that keep within. Come, Escalus,\n    You must walk by us on our other hand,\n    And good supporters are you.\n\n                 Enter FRIAR PETER and ISABELLA\n\n  PETER. Now is your time; speak loud, and kneel before him.\n  ISABELLA. Justice, O royal Duke! Vail your regard\n    Upon a wrong\'d- I would fain have said a maid!\n    O worthy Prince, dishonour not your eye\n    By throwing it on any other object\n    Till you have heard me in my true complaint,\n    And given me justice, justice, justice, justice.\n  DUKE. Relate your wrongs. In what? By whom? Be brief.\n    Here is Lord Angelo shall give you justice;\n    Reveal yourself to him.\n  ISABELLA. O worthy Duke,\n    You bid me seek redemption of the devil!\n    Hear me yourself; for that which I must speak\n    Must either punish me, not being believ\'d,  \n    Or wring redress from you. Hear me, O, hear me, here!\n  ANGELO. My lord, her wits, I fear me, are not firm;\n    She hath been a suitor to me for her brother,\n    Cut off by course of justice-\n  ISABELLA. By course of justice!\n  ANGELO. And she will speak most bitterly and strange.\n  ISABELLA. Most strange, but yet most truly, will I speak.\n    That Angelo\'s forsworn, is it not strange?\n    That Angelo\'s a murderer, is\'t not strange?\n    That Angelo is an adulterous thief,\n    An hypocrite, a virgin-violator,\n    Is it not strange and strange?\n  DUKE. Nay, it is ten times strange.\n  ISABELLA. It is not truer he is Angelo\n    Than this is all as true as it is strange;\n    Nay, it is ten times true; for truth is truth\n    To th\' end of reck\'ning.\n  DUKE. Away with her. Poor soul,\n    She speaks this in th\' infirmity of sense.\n  ISABELLA. O Prince! I conjure thee, as thou believ\'st  \n    There is another comfort than this world,\n    That thou neglect me not with that opinion\n    That I am touch\'d with madness. Make not impossible\n    That which but seems unlike: \'tis not impossible\n    But one, the wicked\'st caitiff on the ground,\n    May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute,\n    As Angelo; even so may Angelo,\n    In all his dressings, characts, titles, forms,\n    Be an arch-villain. Believe it, royal Prince,\n    If he be less, he\'s nothing; but he\'s more,\n    Had I more name for badness.\n  DUKE. By mine honesty,\n    If she be mad, as I believe no other,\n    Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense,\n    Such a dependency of thing on thing,\n    As e\'er I heard in madness.\n  ISABELLA. O gracious Duke,\n    Harp not on that; nor do not banish reason\n    For inequality; but let your reason serve\n    To make the truth appear where it seems hid,  \n    And hide the false seems true.\n  DUKE. Many that are not mad\n    Have, sure, more lack of reason. What would you say?\n  ISABELLA. I am the sister of one Claudio,\n    Condemn\'d upon the act of fornication\n    To lose his head; condemn\'d by Angelo.\n    I, in probation of a sisterhood,\n    Was sent to by my brother; one Lucio\n    As then the messenger-\n  LUCIO. That\'s I, an\'t like your Grace.\n    I came to her from Claudio, and desir\'d her\n    To try her gracious fortune with Lord Angelo\n    For her poor brother\'s pardon.\n  ISABELLA. That\'s he, indeed.\n  DUKE. You were not bid to speak.\n  LUCIO. No, my good lord;\n    Nor wish\'d to hold my peace.\n  DUKE. I wish you now, then;\n    Pray you take note of it; and when you have\n    A business for yourself, pray heaven you then  \n    Be perfect.\n  LUCIO. I warrant your honour.\n  DUKE. The warrant\'s for yourself; take heed to\'t.\n  ISABELLA. This gentleman told somewhat of my tale.\n  LUCIO. Right.\n  DUKE. It may be right; but you are i\' the wrong\n    To speak before your time. Proceed.\n  ISABELLA. I went\n    To this pernicious caitiff deputy.\n  DUKE. That\'s somewhat madly spoken.\n  ISABELLA. Pardon it;\n    The phrase is to the matter.\n  DUKE. Mended again. The matter- proceed.\n  ISABELLA. In brief- to set the needless process by,\n    How I persuaded, how I pray\'d, and kneel\'d,\n    How he refell\'d me, and how I replied,\n    For this was of much length- the vile conclusion\n    I now begin with grief and shame to utter:\n    He would not, but by gift of my chaste body\n    To his concupiscible intemperate lust,  \n    Release my brother; and, after much debatement,\n    My sisterly remorse confutes mine honour,\n    And I did yield to him. But the next morn betimes,\n    His purpose surfeiting, he sends a warrant\n    For my poor brother\'s head.\n  DUKE. This is most likely!\n  ISABELLA. O that it were as like as it is true!\n  DUKE. By heaven, fond wretch, thou know\'st not what thou speak\'st,\n    Or else thou art suborn\'d against his honour\n    In hateful practice. First, his integrity\n    Stands without blemish; next, it imports no reason\n    That with such vehemency he should pursue\n    Faults proper to himself. If he had so offended,\n    He would have weigh\'d thy brother by himself,\n    And not have cut him off. Some one hath set you on;\n    Confess the truth, and say by whose advice\n    Thou cam\'st here to complain.\n  ISABELLA. And is this all?\n    Then, O you blessed ministers above,\n    Keep me in patience; and, with ripened time,  \n    Unfold the evil which is here wrapt up\n    In countenance! Heaven shield your Grace from woe,\n    As I, thus wrong\'d, hence unbelieved go!\n  DUKE. I know you\'d fain be gone. An officer!\n    To prison with her! Shall we thus permit\n    A blasting and a scandalous breath to fall\n    On him so near us? This needs must be a practice.\n    Who knew of your intent and coming hither?\n  ISABELLA. One that I would were here, Friar Lodowick.\n  DUKE. A ghostly father, belike. Who knows that Lodowick?\n  LUCIO. My lord, I know him; \'tis a meddling friar.\n    I do not like the man; had he been lay, my lord,\n    For certain words he spake against your Grace\n    In your retirement, I had swing\'d him soundly.\n  DUKE. Words against me? This\'s a good friar, belike!\n    And to set on this wretched woman here\n    Against our substitute! Let this friar be found.\n  LUCIO. But yesternight, my lord, she and that friar,\n    I saw them at the prison; a saucy friar,\n    A very scurvy fellow.  \n  PETER. Blessed be your royal Grace!\n    I have stood by, my lord, and I have heard\n    Your royal ear abus\'d. First, hath this woman\n    Most wrongfully accus\'d your substitute;\n    Who is as free from touch or soil with her\n    As she from one ungot.\n  DUKE. We did believe no less.\n    Know you that Friar Lodowick that she speaks of?\n  PETER. I know him for a man divine and holy;\n    Not scurvy, nor a temporary meddler,\n    As he\'s reported by this gentleman;\n    And, on my trust, a man that never yet\n    Did, as he vouches, misreport your Grace.\n  LUCIO. My lord, most villainously; believe it.\n  PETER. Well, he in time may come to clear himself;\n    But at this instant he is sick, my lord,\n    Of a strange fever. Upon his mere request-\n    Being come to knowledge that there was complaint\n    Intended \'gainst Lord Angelo- came I hither\n    To speak, as from his mouth, what he doth know  \n    Is true and false; and what he, with his oath\n    And all probation, will make up full clear,\n    Whensoever he\'s convented. First, for this woman-\n    To justify this worthy nobleman,\n    So vulgarly and personally accus\'d-\n    Her shall you hear disproved to her eyes,\n    Till she herself confess it.\n  DUKE. Good friar, let\'s hear it.         Exit ISABELLA guarded\n    Do you not smile at this, Lord Angelo?\n    O heaven, the vanity of wretched fools!\n    Give us some seats. Come, cousin Angelo;\n    In this I\'ll be impartial; be you judge\n    Of your own cause.\n\n                     Enter MARIANA veiled\n\n    Is this the witness, friar?\n  FIRST let her show her face, and after speak.\n  MARIANA. Pardon, my lord; I will not show my face\n    Until my husband bid me.  \n  DUKE. What, are you married?\n  MARIANA. No, my lord.\n  DUKE. Are you a maid?\n  MARIANA. No, my lord.\n  DUKE. A widow, then?\n  MARIANA. Neither, my lord.\n  DUKE. Why, you are nothing then; neither maid, widow, nor wife.\n  LUCIO. My lord, she may be a punk; for many of them are neither\n    maid, widow, nor wife.\n  DUKE. Silence that fellow. I would he had some cause\n    To prattle for himself.\n  LUCIO. Well, my lord.\n  MARIANA. My lord, I do confess I ne\'er was married,\n    And I confess, besides, I am no maid.\n    I have known my husband; yet my husband\n    Knows not that ever he knew me.\n  LUCIO. He was drunk, then, my lord; it can be no better.\n  DUKE. For the benefit of silence, would thou wert so too!\n  LUCIO. Well, my lord.\n  DUKE. This is no witness for Lord Angelo.  \n  MARIANA. Now I come to\'t, my lord:\n    She that accuses him of fornication,\n    In self-same manner doth accuse my husband;\n    And charges him, my lord, with such a time\n    When I\'ll depose I had him in mine arms,\n    With all th\' effect of love.\n  ANGELO. Charges she moe than me?\n  MARIANA. Not that I know.\n  DUKE. No? You say your husband.\n  MARIANA. Why, just, my lord, and that is Angelo,\n    Who thinks he knows that he ne\'er knew my body,\n    But knows he thinks that he knows Isabel\'s.\n  ANGELO. This is a strange abuse. Let\'s see thy face.\n  MARIANA. My husband bids me; now I will unmask.\n                                                     [Unveiling]\n    This is that face, thou cruel Angelo,\n    Which once thou swor\'st was worth the looking on;\n    This is the hand which, with a vow\'d contract,\n    Was fast belock\'d in thine; this is the body\n    That took away the match from Isabel,  \n    And did supply thee at thy garden-house\n    In her imagin\'d person.\n  DUKE. Know you this woman?\n  LUCIO. Carnally, she says.\n  DUKE. Sirrah, no more.\n  LUCIO. Enough, my lord.\n  ANGELO. My lord, I must confess I know this woman;\n    And five years since there was some speech of marriage\n    Betwixt myself and her; which was broke off,\n    Partly for that her promised proportions\n    Came short of composition; but in chief\n    For that her reputation was disvalued\n    In levity. Since which time of five years\n    I never spake with her, saw her, nor heard from her,\n    Upon my faith and honour.\n  MARIANA. Noble Prince,\n    As there comes light from heaven and words from breath,\n    As there is sense in truth and truth in virtue,\n    I am affianc\'d this man\'s wife as strongly\n    As words could make up vows. And, my good lord,  \n    But Tuesday night last gone, in\'s garden-house,\n    He knew me as a wife. As this is true,\n    Let me in safety raise me from my knees,\n    Or else for ever be confixed here,\n    A marble monument!\n  ANGELO. I did but smile till now.\n    Now, good my lord, give me the scope of justice;\n    My patience here is touch\'d. I do perceive\n    These poor informal women are no more\n    But instruments of some more mightier member\n    That sets them on. Let me have way, my lord,\n    To find this practice out.\n  DUKE. Ay, with my heart;\n    And punish them to your height of pleasure.\n    Thou foolish friar, and thou pernicious woman,\n    Compact with her that\'s gone, think\'st thou thy oaths,\n    Though they would swear down each particular saint,\n    Were testimonies against his worth and credit,\n    That\'s seal\'d in approbation? You, Lord Escalus,\n    Sit with my cousin; lend him your kind pains  \n    To find out this abuse, whence \'tis deriv\'d.\n    There is another friar that set them on;\n    Let him be sent for.\n  PETER. Would lie were here, my lord! For he indeed\n    Hath set the women on to this complaint.\n    Your provost knows the place where he abides,\n    And he may fetch him.\n  DUKE. Go, do it instantly.                        Exit PROVOST\n    And you, my noble and well-warranted cousin,\n    Whom it concerns to hear this matter forth,\n    Do with your injuries as seems you best\n    In any chastisement. I for a while will leave you;\n    But stir not you till you have well determin\'d\n    Upon these slanderers.\n  ESCALUS. My lord, we\'ll do it throughly.             Exit DUKE\n    Signior Lucio, did not you say you knew that Friar Lodowick to be\n    a dishonest person?\n  LUCIO. \'Cucullus non facit monachum\': honest in nothing but in his\n    clothes; and one that hath spoke most villainous speeches of the\n    Duke.  \n  ESCALUS. We shall entreat you to abide here till he come and\n    enforce them against him. We shall find this friar a notable\n    fellow.\n  LUCIO. As any in Vienna, on my word.\n  ESCALUS. Call that same Isabel here once again; I would speak with\n    her. [Exit an ATTENDANT] Pray you, my lord, give me leave to\n    question; you shall see how I\'ll handle her.\n  LUCIO. Not better than he, by her own report.\n  ESCALUS. Say you?\n  LUCIO. Marry, sir, I think, if you handled her privately, she would\n    sooner confess; perchance, publicly, she\'ll be asham\'d.\n\n       Re-enter OFFICERS with ISABELLA; and PROVOST with the\n                    DUKE in his friar\'s habit\n\n  ESCALUS. I will go darkly to work with her.\n  LUCIO. That\'s the way; for women are light at midnight.\n  ESCALUS. Come on, mistress; here\'s a gentlewoman denies all that\n    you have said.\n  LUCIO. My lord, here comes the rascal I spoke of, here with the  \n    Provost.\n  ESCALUS. In very good time. Speak not you to him till we call upon\n    you.\n  LUCIO. Mum.\n  ESCALUS. Come, sir; did you set these women on to slander Lord\n    Angelo? They have confess\'d you did.\n  DUKE. \'Tis false.\n  ESCALUS. How! Know you where you are?\n  DUKE. Respect to your great place! and let the devil\n    Be sometime honour\'d for his burning throne!\n    Where is the Duke? \'Tis he should hear me speak.\n  ESCALUS. The Duke\'s in us; and we will hear you speak;\n    Look you speak justly.\n  DUKE. Boldly, at least. But, O, poor souls,\n    Come you to seek the lamb here of the fox,\n    Good night to your redress! Is the Duke gone?\n    Then is your cause gone too. The Duke\'s unjust\n    Thus to retort your manifest appeal,\n    And put your trial in the villain\'s mouth\n    Which here you come to accuse.  \n  LUCIO. This is the rascal; this is he I spoke of.\n  ESCALUS. Why, thou unreverend and unhallowed friar,\n    Is\'t not enough thou hast suborn\'d these women\n    To accuse this worthy man, but, in foul mouth,\n    And in the witness of his proper ear,\n    To call him villain; and then to glance from him\n    To th\' Duke himself, to tax him with injustice?\n    Take him hence; to th\' rack with him! We\'ll touze you\n    Joint by joint, but we will know his purpose.\n    What, \'unjust\'!\n  DUKE. Be not so hot; the Duke\n    Dare no more stretch this finger of mine than he\n    Dare rack his own; his subject am I not,\n    Nor here provincial. My business in this state\n    Made me a looker-on here in Vienna,\n    Where I have seen corruption boil and bubble\n    Till it o\'errun the stew: laws for all faults,\n    But faults so countenanc\'d that the strong statutes\n    Stand like the forfeits in a barber\'s shop,\n    As much in mock as mark.  \n  ESCALUS. Slander to th\' state! Away with him to prison!\n  ANGELO. What can you vouch against him, Signior Lucio?\n    Is this the man that you did tell us of?\n  LUCIO. \'Tis he, my lord. Come hither, good-man bald-pate.\n    Do you know me?\n  DUKE. I remember you, sir, by the sound of your voice. I met you at\n    the prison, in the absence of the Duke.\n  LUCIO. O did you so? And do you remember what you said of the Duke?\n  DUKE. Most notedly, sir.\n  LUCIO. Do you so, sir? And was the Duke a fleshmonger, a fool, and\n    a coward, as you then reported him to be?\n  DUKE. You must, sir, change persons with me ere you make that my\n    report; you, indeed, spoke so of him; and much more, much worse.\n  LUCIO. O thou damnable fellow! Did not I pluck thee by the nose for\n    thy speeches?\n  DUKE. I protest I love the Duke as I love myself.\n  ANGELO. Hark how the villain would close now, after his treasonable\n    abuses!\n  ESCALUS. Such a fellow is not to be talk\'d withal. Away with him to\n    prison! Where is the Provost? Away with him to prison! Lay bolts  \n    enough upon him; let him speak no more. Away with those giglets\n    too, and with the other confederate companion!\n                            [The PROVOST lays bands on the DUKE]\n  DUKE. Stay, sir; stay awhile.\n  ANGELO. What, resists he? Help him, Lucio.\n  LUCIO. Come, sir; come, sir; come, sir; foh, sir! Why, you\n    bald-pated lying rascal, you must be hooded, must you? Show your\n    knave\'s visage, with a pox to you! Show your sheep-biting face,\n    and be hang\'d an hour! Will\'t not off?\n             [Pulls off the FRIAR\'S bood and discovers the DUKE]\n  DUKE. Thou art the first knave that e\'er mad\'st a duke.\n    First, Provost, let me bail these gentle three.\n    [To Lucio] Sneak not away, sir, for the friar and you\n    Must have a word anon. Lay hold on him.\n  LUCIO. This may prove worse than hanging.\n  DUKE. [To ESCALUS] What you have spoke I pardon; sit you down.\n    We\'ll borrow place of him. [To ANGELO] Sir, by your leave.\n    Hast thou or word, or wit, or impudence,\n    That yet can do thee office? If thou hast,\n    Rely upon it till my tale be heard,  \n    And hold no longer out.\n  ANGELO. O my dread lord,\n    I should be guiltier than my guiltiness,\n    To think I can be undiscernible,\n    When I perceive your Grace, like pow\'r divine,\n    Hath look\'d upon my passes. Then, good Prince,\n    No longer session hold upon my shame,\n    But let my trial be mine own confession;\n    Immediate sentence then, and sequent death,\n    Is all the grace I beg.\n  DUKE. Come hither, Mariana.\n    Say, wast thou e\'er contracted to this woman?\n  ANGELO. I was, my lord.\n  DUKE. Go, take her hence and marry her instantly.\n    Do you the office, friar; which consummate,\n    Return him here again. Go with him, Provost.\n                Exeunt ANGELO, MARIANA, FRIAR PETER, and PROVOST\n  ESCALUS. My lord, I am more amaz\'d at his dishonour\n    Than at the strangeness of it.\n  DUKE. Come hither, Isabel.  \n    Your friar is now your prince. As I was then\n    Advertising and holy to your business,\n    Not changing heart with habit, I am still\n    Attorney\'d at your service.\n  ISABELLA. O, give me pardon,\n    That I, your vassal have employ\'d and pain\'d\n    Your unknown sovereignty.\n  DUKE. You are pardon\'d, Isabel.\n    And now, dear maid, be you as free to us.\n    Your brother\'s death, I know, sits at your heart;\n    And you may marvel why I obscur\'d myself,\n    Labouring to save his life, and would not rather\n    Make rash remonstrance of my hidden pow\'r\n    Than let him so be lost. O most kind maid,\n    It was the swift celerity of his death,\n    Which I did think with slower foot came on,\n    That brain\'d my purpose. But peace be with him!\n    That life is better life, past fearing death,\n    Than that which lives to fear. Make it your comfort,\n    So happy is your brother.  \n  ISABELLA. I do, my lord.\n\n       Re-enter ANGELO, MARIANA, FRIAR PETER, and PROVOST\n\n  DUKE. For this new-married man approaching here,\n    Whose salt imagination yet hath wrong\'d\n    Your well-defended honour, you must pardon\n    For Mariana\'s sake; but as he adjudg\'d your brother-\n    Being criminal in double violation\n    Of sacred chastity and of promise-breach,\n    Thereon dependent, for your brother\'s life-\n    The very mercy of the law cries out\n    Most audible, even from his proper tongue,\n    \'An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!\'\n    Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;\n    Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.\n    Then, Angelo, thy fault\'s thus manifested,\n    Which, though thou wouldst deny, denies thee vantage.\n    We do condemn thee to the very block\n    Where Claudio stoop\'d to death, and with like haste.  \n    Away with him!\n  MARIANA. O my most gracious lord,\n    I hope you will not mock me with a husband.\n  DUKE. It is your husband mock\'d you with a husband.\n    Consenting to the safeguard of your honour,\n    I thought your marriage fit; else imputation,\n    For that he knew you, might reproach your life,\n    And choke your good to come. For his possessions,\n    Although by confiscation they are ours,\n    We do instate and widow you withal\n    To buy you a better husband.\n  MARIANA. O my dear lord,\n    I crave no other, nor no better man.\n  DUKE. Never crave him; we are definitive.\n  MARIANA. Gentle my liege-                           [Kneeling]\n  DUKE. You do but lose your labour.\n    Away with him to death! [To LUCIO] Now, sir, to you.\n  MARIANA. O my good lord! Sweet Isabel, take my part;\n    Lend me your knees, and all my life to come\n    I\'ll lend you all my life to do you service.  \n  DUKE. Against all sense you do importune her.\n    Should she kneel down in mercy of this fact,\n    Her brother\'s ghost his paved bed would break,\n    And take her hence in horror.\n  MARIANA. Isabel,\n    Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me;\n    Hold up your hands, say nothing; I\'ll speak all.\n    They say best men moulded out of faults;\n    And, for the most, become much more the better\n    For being a little bad; so may my husband.\n    O Isabel, will you not lend a knee?\n  DUKE. He dies for Claudio\'s death.\n  ISABELLA. [Kneeling] Most bounteous sir,\n    Look, if it please you, on this man condemn\'d,\n    As if my brother liv\'d. I partly think\n    A due sincerity govern\'d his deeds\n    Till he did look on me; since it is so,\n    Let him not die. My brother had but justice,\n    In that he did the thing for which he died;\n    For Angelo,  \n    His act did not o\'ertake his bad intent,\n    And must be buried but as an intent\n    That perish\'d by the way. Thoughts are no subjects;\n    Intents but merely thoughts.\n  MARIANA. Merely, my lord.\n  DUKE. Your suit\'s unprofitable; stand up, I say.\n    I have bethought me of another fault.\n    Provost, how came it Claudio was beheaded\n    At an unusual hour?\n  PROVOST. It was commanded so.\n  DUKE. Had you a special warrant for the deed?\n  PROVOST. No, my good lord; it was by private message.\n  DUKE. For which I do discharge you of your office;\n    Give up your keys.\n  PROVOST. Pardon me, noble lord;\n    I thought it was a fault, but knew it not;\n    Yet did repent me, after more advice;\n    For testimony whereof, one in the prison,\n    That should by private order else have died,\n    I have reserv\'d alive.  \n  DUKE. What\'s he?\n  PROVOST. His name is Barnardine.\n  DUKE. I would thou hadst done so by Claudio.\n    Go fetch him hither; let me look upon him.      Exit PROVOST\n  ESCALUS. I am sorry one so learned and so wise\n    As you, Lord Angelo, have still appear\'d,\n    Should slip so grossly, both in the heat of blood\n    And lack of temper\'d judgment afterward.\n  ANGELO. I am sorry that such sorrow I procure;\n    And so deep sticks it in my penitent heart\n    That I crave death more willingly than mercy;\n    \'Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it.\n\n       Re-enter PROVOST, with BARNARDINE, CLAUDIO (muffled)\n                            and JULIET\n\n  DUKE. Which is that Barnardine?\n  PROVOST. This, my lord.\n  DUKE. There was a friar told me of this man.\n    Sirrah, thou art said to have a stubborn soul,  \n    That apprehends no further than this world,\n    And squar\'st thy life according. Thou\'rt condemn\'d;\n    But, for those earthly faults, I quit them all,\n    And pray thee take this mercy to provide\n    For better times to come. Friar, advise him;\n    I leave him to your hand. What muffl\'d fellow\'s that?\n  PROVOST. This is another prisoner that I sav\'d,\n    Who should have died when Claudio lost his head;\n    As like almost to Claudio as himself.    [Unmuffles CLAUDIO]\n  DUKE. [To ISABELLA] If he be like your brother, for his sake\n    Is he pardon\'d; and for your lovely sake,\n    Give me your hand and say you will be mine,\n    He is my brother too. But fitter time for that.\n    By this Lord Angelo perceives he\'s safe;\n    Methinks I see a quick\'ning in his eye.\n    Well, Angelo, your evil quits you well.\n    Look that you love your wife; her worth worth yours.\n    I find an apt remission in myself;\n    And yet here\'s one in place I cannot pardon.\n    To Lucio] You, sirrah, that knew me for a fool, a coward,  \n    One all of luxury, an ass, a madman!\n    Wherein have I so deserv\'d of you\n    That you extol me thus?\n  LUCIO. Faith, my lord, I spoke it but according to the trick.\n    If you will hang me for it, you may; but I had rather it would\n    please you I might be whipt.\n  DUKE. Whipt first, sir, and hang\'d after.\n    Proclaim it, Provost, round about the city,\n    If any woman wrong\'d by this lewd fellow-\n    As I have heard him swear himself there\'s one\n    Whom he begot with child, let her appear,\n    And he shall marry her. The nuptial finish\'d,\n    Let him be whipt and hang\'d.\n  LUCIO. I beseech your Highness, do not marry me to a whore. Your\n    Highness said even now I made you a duke; good my lord, do not\n    recompense me in making me a cuckold.\n  DUKE. Upon mine honour, thou shalt marry her.\n    Thy slanders I forgive; and therewithal\n    Remit thy other forfeits. Take him to prison;\n    And see our pleasure herein executed.  \n  LUCIO. Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, whipping,\n    and hanging.\n  DUKE. Slandering a prince deserves it.\n                                      Exeunt OFFICERS with LUCIO\n    She, Claudio, that you wrong\'d, look you restore.\n    Joy to you, Mariana! Love her, Angelo;\n    I have confess\'d her, and I know her virtue.\n    Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness;\n    There\'s more behind that is more gratulate.\n    Thanks, Provost, for thy care and secrecy;\n    We shall employ thee in a worthier place.\n    Forgive him, Angelo, that brought you home\n    The head of Ragozine for Claudio\'s:\n    Th\' offence pardons itself. Dear Isabel,\n    I have a motion much imports your good;\n    Whereto if you\'ll a willing ear incline,\n    What\'s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.\n    So, bring us to our palace, where we\'ll show\n    What\'s yet behind that\'s meet you all should know.\n                                                          Exeunt  \n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1597\n\nTHE MERCHANT OF VENICE\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\n  THE DUKE OF VENICE\n  THE PRINCE OF MOROCCO, suitor to Portia\n  THE PRINCE OF ARRAGON,    "    "    "\n  ANTONIO, a merchant of Venice\n  BASSANIO, his friend, suitor to Portia\n  SOLANIO,   friend to Antonio and Bassanio\n  SALERIO,      "    "    "     "     "\n  GRATIANO,     "    "    "     "     "\n  LORENZO, in love with Jessica\n  SHYLOCK, a rich Jew\n  TUBAL, a Jew, his friend\n  LAUNCELOT GOBBO, a clown, servant to Shylock\n  OLD GOBBO, father to Launcelot\n  LEONARDO, servant to Bassanio\n  BALTHASAR, servant to Portia\n  STEPHANO,     "     "    "\n\n  PORTIA, a rich heiress\n  NERISSA, her waiting-maid\n  JESSICA, daughter to Shylock  \n\n  Magnificoes of Venice, Officers of the Court of Justice,\n    Gaoler, Servants, and other Attendants\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nVenice, and PORTIA\'S house at Belmont\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nVenice. A street\n\nEnter ANTONIO, SALERIO, and SOLANIO\n\n  ANTONIO. In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.\n    It wearies me; you say it wearies you;\n    But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,\n    What stuff \'tis made of, whereof it is born,\n    I am to learn;\n    And such a want-wit sadness makes of me\n    That I have much ado to know myself.\n  SALERIO. Your mind is tossing on the ocean;\n    There where your argosies, with portly sail-\n    Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood,\n    Or as it were the pageants of the sea-\n    Do overpeer the petty traffickers,\n    That curtsy to them, do them reverence,\n    As they fly by them with their woven wings.\n  SOLANIO. Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth,\n    The better part of my affections would\n    Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still  \n    Plucking the grass to know where sits the wind,\n    Peering in maps for ports, and piers, and roads;\n    And every object that might make me fear\n    Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt,\n    Would make me sad.\n  SALERIO. My wind, cooling my broth,\n    Would blow me to an ague when I thought\n    What harm a wind too great might do at sea.\n    I should not see the sandy hour-glass run\n    But I should think of shallows and of flats,\n    And see my wealthy Andrew dock\'d in sand,\n    Vailing her high top lower than her ribs\n    To kiss her burial. Should I go to church\n    And see the holy edifice of stone,\n    And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks,\n    Which, touching but my gentle vessel\'s side,\n    Would scatter all her spices on the stream,\n    Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks,\n    And, in a word, but even now worth this,\n    And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought  \n    To think on this, and shall I lack the thought\n    That such a thing bechanc\'d would make me sad?\n    But tell not me; I know Antonio\n    Is sad to think upon his merchandise.\n  ANTONIO. Believe me, no; I thank my fortune for it,\n    My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,\n    Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate\n    Upon the fortune of this present year;\n    Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad.\n  SOLANIO. Why then you are in love.\n  ANTONIO. Fie, fie!\n  SOLANIO. Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad\n    Because you are not merry; and \'twere as easy\n    For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry,\n    Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus,\n    Nature hath fram\'d strange fellows in her time:\n    Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,\n    And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper;\n    And other of such vinegar aspect\n    That they\'ll not show their teeth in way of smile  \n    Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.\n\n               Enter BASSANIO, LORENZO, and GRATIANO\n\n    Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kinsman,\n    Gratiano and Lorenzo. Fare ye well;\n    We leave you now with better company.\n  SALERIO. I would have stay\'d till I had made you merry,\n    If worthier friends had not prevented me.\n  ANTONIO. Your worth is very dear in my regard.\n    I take it your own business calls on you,\n    And you embrace th\' occasion to depart.\n  SALERIO. Good morrow, my good lords.\n  BASSANIO. Good signiors both, when shall we laugh? Say when.\n    You grow exceeding strange; must it be so?\n  SALERIO. We\'ll make our leisures to attend on yours.\n                                      Exeunt SALERIO and SOLANIO\n  LORENZO. My Lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio,\n    We two will leave you; but at dinner-time,\n    I pray you, have in mind where we must meet.  \n  BASSANIO. I will not fail you.\n  GRATIANO. You look not well, Signior Antonio;\n    You have too much respect upon the world;\n    They lose it that do buy it with much care.\n    Believe me, you are marvellously chang\'d.\n  ANTONIO. I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano-\n    A stage, where every man must play a part,\n    And mine a sad one.\n  GRATIANO. Let me play the fool.\n    With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;\n    And let my liver rather heat with wine\n    Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.\n    Why should a man whose blood is warm within\n    Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster,\n    Sleep when he wakes, and creep into the jaundice\n    By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio-\n    I love thee, and \'tis my love that speaks-\n    There are a sort of men whose visages\n    Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,\n    And do a wilful stillness entertain,  \n    With purpose to be dress\'d in an opinion\n    Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;\n    As who should say \'I am Sir Oracle,\n    And when I ope my lips let no dog bark.\'\n    O my Antonio, I do know of these\n    That therefore only are reputed wise\n    For saying nothing; when, I am very sure,\n    If they should speak, would almost damn those ears\n    Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools.\n    I\'ll tell thee more of this another time.\n    But fish not with this melancholy bait\n    For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.\n    Come, good Lorenzo. Fare ye well awhile;\n    I\'ll end my exhortation after dinner.\n  LORENZO. Well, we will leave you then till dinner-time.\n    I must be one of these same dumb wise men,\n    For Gratiano never lets me speak.\n  GRATIANO. Well, keep me company but two years moe,\n    Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue.\n  ANTONIO. Fare you well; I\'ll grow a talker for this gear.  \n  GRATIANO. Thanks, i\' faith, for silence is only commendable\n    In a neat\'s tongue dried, and a maid not vendible.\n                                     Exeunt GRATIANO and LORENZO\n  ANTONIO. Is that anything now?\n  BASSANIO. Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than\n    any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid\n    in, two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find\n    them, and when you have them they are not worth the search.\n  ANTONIO. Well; tell me now what lady is the same\n    To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage,\n    That you to-day promis\'d to tell me of?\n  BASSANIO. \'Tis not unknown to you, Antonio,\n    How much I have disabled mine estate\n    By something showing a more swelling port\n    Than my faint means would grant continuance;\n    Nor do I now make moan to be abridg\'d\n    From such a noble rate; but my chief care\n    Is to come fairly off from the great debts\n    Wherein my time, something too prodigal,\n    Hath left me gag\'d. To you, Antonio,  \n    I owe the most, in money and in love;\n    And from your love I have a warranty\n    To unburden all my plots and purposes\n    How to get clear of all the debts I owe.\n  ANTONIO. I pray you, good Bassanio, let me know it;\n    And if it stand, as you yourself still do,\n    Within the eye of honour, be assur\'d\n    My purse, my person, my extremest means,\n    Lie all unlock\'d to your occasions.\n  BASSANIO. In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft,\n    I shot his fellow of the self-same flight\n    The self-same way, with more advised watch,\n    To find the other forth; and by adventuring both\n    I oft found both. I urge this childhood proof,\n    Because what follows is pure innocence.\n    I owe you much; and, like a wilful youth,\n    That which I owe is lost; but if you please\n    To shoot another arrow that self way\n    Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt,\n    As I will watch the aim, or to find both,  \n    Or bring your latter hazard back again\n    And thankfully rest debtor for the first.\n  ANTONIO. You know me well, and herein spend but time\n    To wind about my love with circumstance;\n    And out of doubt you do me now more wrong\n    In making question of my uttermost\n    Than if you had made waste of all I have.\n    Then do but say to me what I should do\n    That in your knowledge may by me be done,\n    And I am prest unto it; therefore, speak.\n  BASSANIO. In Belmont is a lady richly left,\n    And she is fair and, fairer than that word,\n    Of wondrous virtues. Sometimes from her eyes\n    I did receive fair speechless messages.\n    Her name is Portia- nothing undervalu\'d\n    To Cato\'s daughter, Brutus\' Portia.\n    Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth;\n    For the four winds blow in from every coast\n    Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks\n    Hang on her temples like a golden fleece,  \n    Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos\' strond,\n    And many Jasons come in quest of her.\n    O my Antonio, had I but the means\n    To hold a rival place with one of them,\n    I have a mind presages me such thrift\n    That I should questionless be fortunate.\n  ANTONIO. Thou know\'st that all my fortunes are at sea;\n    Neither have I money nor commodity\n    To raise a present sum; therefore go forth,\n    Try what my credit can in Venice do;\n    That shall be rack\'d, even to the uttermost,\n    To furnish thee to Belmont to fair Portia.\n    Go presently inquire, and so will I,\n    Where money is; and I no question make\n    To have it of my trust or for my sake.                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nBelmont. PORTIA\'S house\n\nEnter PORTIA with her waiting-woman, NERISSA\n\n  PORTIA. By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this\n    great world.\n  NERISSA. You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in the\n    same abundance as your good fortunes are; and yet, for aught I\n    see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that\n    starve with nothing. It is no mean happiness, therefore, to be\n    seated in the mean: superfluity come sooner by white hairs, but\n    competency lives longer.\n  PORTIA. Good sentences, and well pronounc\'d.\n  NERISSA. They would be better, if well followed.\n  PORTIA. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do,\n    chapels had been churches, and poor men\'s cottages princes\'\n    palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions; I\n    can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one\n    of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may devise\n    laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o\'er a cold decree;\n    such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o\'er the meshes of good  \n    counsel the cripple. But this reasoning is not in the fashion to\n    choose me a husband. O me, the word \'choose\'! I may neither\n    choose who I would nor refuse who I dislike; so is the will of a\n    living daughter curb\'d by the will of a dead father. Is it not\n    hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose one, nor refuse none?\n  NERISSA. Your father was ever virtuous, and holy men at their death\n    have good inspirations; therefore the lott\'ry that he hath\n    devised in these three chests, of gold, silver, and lead- whereof\n    who chooses his meaning chooses you- will no doubt never be\n    chosen by any rightly but one who you shall rightly love. But\n    what warmth is there in your affection towards any of these\n    princely suitors that are already come?\n  PORTIA. I pray thee over-name them; and as thou namest them, I will\n    describe them; and according to my description, level at my\n    affection.\n  NERISSA. First, there is the Neapolitan prince.\n  PORTIA. Ay, that\'s a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of\n    his horse; and he makes it a great appropriation to his own good\n    parts that he can shoe him himself; I am much afear\'d my lady his\n    mother play\'d false with a smith.  \n  NERISSA. Then is there the County Palatine.\n  PORTIA. He doth nothing but frown, as who should say \'An you will\n    not have me, choose.\' He hears merry tales and smiles not. I fear\n    he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old, being so\n    full of unmannerly sadness in his youth. I had rather be married\n    to a death\'s-head with a bone in his mouth than to either of\n    these. God defend me from these two!\n  NERISSA. How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le Bon?\n  PORTIA. God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man. In\n    truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker, but he- why, he hath a\n    horse better than the Neapolitan\'s, a better bad habit of\n    frowning than the Count Palatine; he is every man in no man. If a\n    throstle sing he falls straight a-cap\'ring; he will fence with\n    his own shadow; if I should marry him, I should marry twenty\n    husbands. If he would despise me, I would forgive him; for if he\n    love me to madness, I shall never requite him.\n  NERISSA. What say you then to Falconbridge, the young baron of\n    England?\n  PORTIA. You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me,\n    nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian, and you  \n    will come into the court and swear that I have a poor pennyworth\n    in the English. He is a proper man\'s picture; but alas, who can\n    converse with a dumb-show? How oddly he is suited! I think he\n    bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet\n    in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere.\n  NERISSA. What think you of the Scottish lord, his neighbour?\n  PORTIA. That he hath a neighbourly charity in him, for he borrowed\n    a box of the ear of the Englishman, and swore he would pay him\n    again when he was able; I think the Frenchman became his surety,\n    and seal\'d under for another.\n  NERISSA. How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony\'s\n    nephew?\n  PORTIA. Very vilely in the morning when he is sober; and most\n    vilely in the afternoon when he is drunk. When he is best, he is\n    a little worse than a man, and when he is worst, he is little\n    better than a beast. An the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I\n    shall make shift to go without him.\n  NERISSA. If he should offer to choose, and choose the right casket,\n    you should refuse to perform your father\'s will, if you should\n    refuse to accept him.  \n  PORTIA. Therefore, for fear of the worst, I pray thee set a deep\n    glass of Rhenish wine on the contrary casket; for if the devil be\n    within and that temptation without, I know he will choose it. I\n    will do anything, Nerissa, ere I will be married to a sponge.\n  NERISSA. You need not fear, lady, the having any of these lords;\n    they have acquainted me with their determinations, which is\n    indeed to return to their home, and to trouble you with no more\n    suit, unless you may be won by some other sort than your father\'s\n    imposition, depending on the caskets.\n  PORTIA. If I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as chaste as\n    Diana, unless I be obtained by the manner of my father\'s will. I\n    am glad this parcel of wooers are so reasonable; for there is not\n    one among them but I dote on his very absence, and I pray God\n    grant them a fair departure.\n  NERISSA. Do you not remember, lady, in your father\'s time, a\n    Venetian, a scholar and a soldier, that came hither in company of\n    the Marquis of Montferrat?\n  PORTIA. Yes, yes, it was Bassanio; as I think, so was he call\'d.\n  NERISSA. True, madam; he, of all the men that ever my foolish eyes\n    look\'d upon, was the best deserving a fair lady.  \n  PORTIA. I remember him well, and I remember him worthy of thy\n    praise.\n\n                         Enter a SERVINGMAN\n\n    How now! what news?\n  SERVINGMAN. The four strangers seek for you, madam, to take their\n    leave; and there is a forerunner come from a fifth, the Prince of\n    Morocco, who brings word the Prince his master will be here\n    to-night.\n  PORTIA. If I could bid the fifth welcome with so good heart as I\n    can bid the other four farewell, I should be glad of his\n    approach; if he have the condition of a saint and the complexion\n    of a devil, I had rather he should shrive me than wive me.\n    Come, Nerissa. Sirrah, go before.\n    Whiles we shut the gate upon one wooer, another knocks at the\n      door.                                               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nVenice. A public place\n\nEnter BASSANIO With SHYLOCK the Jew\n\n  SHYLOCK. Three thousand ducats- well.\n  BASSANIO. Ay, sir, for three months.\n  SHYLOCK. For three months- well.\n  BASSANIO. For the which, as I told you, Antonio shall be bound.\n  SHYLOCK. Antonio shall become bound- well.\n  BASSANIO. May you stead me? Will you pleasure me? Shall I know your\n    answer?\n  SHYLOCK. Three thousand ducats for three months, and Antonio bound.\n  BASSANIO. Your answer to that.\n  SHYLOCK. Antonio is a good man.\n  BASSANIO. Have you heard any imputation to the contrary?\n  SHYLOCK. Ho, no, no, no, no; my meaning in saying he is a good man\n    is to have you understand me that he is sufficient; yet his means\n    are in supposition: he hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another\n    to the Indies; I understand, moreover, upon the Rialto, he hath a\n    third at Mexico, a fourth for England- and other ventures he\n    hath, squand\'red abroad. But ships are but boards, sailors but  \n    men; there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and\n    land-thieves- I mean pirates; and then there is the peril of\n    waters, winds, and rocks. The man is, notwithstanding,\n    sufficient. Three thousand ducats- I think I may take his bond.\n  BASSANIO. Be assur\'d you may.\n  SHYLOCK. I will be assur\'d I may; and, that I may be assured, I\n    will bethink me. May I speak with Antonio?\n  BASSANIO. If it please you to dine with us.\n  SHYLOCK. Yes, to smell pork, to eat of the habitation which your\n    prophet, the Nazarite, conjured the devil into! I will buy with\n    you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so\n    following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray\n    with you. What news on the Rialto? Who is he comes here?\n\n                            Enter ANTONIO\n\n  BASSANIO. This is Signior Antonio.\n  SHYLOCK.  [Aside]  How like a fawning publican he looks!\n    I hate him for he is a Christian;\n    But more for that in low simplicity  \n    He lends out money gratis, and brings down\n    The rate of usance here with us in Venice.\n    If I can catch him once upon the hip,\n    I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.\n    He hates our sacred nation; and he rails,\n    Even there where merchants most do congregate,\n    On me, my bargains, and my well-won thrift,\n    Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe\n    If I forgive him!\n  BASSANIO. Shylock, do you hear?\n  SHYLOCK. I am debating of my present store,\n    And, by the near guess of my memory,\n    I cannot instantly raise up the gross\n    Of full three thousand ducats. What of that?\n    Tubal, a wealthy Hebrew of my tribe,\n    Will furnish me. But soft! how many months\n    Do you desire?  [To ANTONIO]  Rest you fair, good signior;\n    Your worship was the last man in our mouths.\n  ANTONIO. Shylock, albeit I neither lend nor borrow\n    By taking nor by giving of excess,  \n    Yet, to supply the ripe wants of my friend,\n    I\'ll break a custom.  [To BASSANIO]  Is he yet possess\'d\n    How much ye would?\n  SHYLOCK. Ay, ay, three thousand ducats.\n  ANTONIO. And for three months.\n  SHYLOCK. I had forgot- three months; you told me so.\n    Well then, your bond; and, let me see- but hear you,\n    Methoughts you said you neither lend nor borrow\n    Upon advantage.\n  ANTONIO. I do never use it.\n  SHYLOCK. When Jacob graz\'d his uncle Laban\'s sheep-\n    This Jacob from our holy Abram was,\n    As his wise mother wrought in his behalf,\n    The third possessor; ay, he was the third-\n  ANTONIO. And what of him? Did he take interest?\n  SHYLOCK. No, not take interest; not, as you would say,\n    Directly int\'rest; mark what Jacob did:\n    When Laban and himself were compromis\'d\n    That all the eanlings which were streak\'d and pied\n    Should fall as Jacob\'s hire, the ewes, being rank,  \n    In end of autumn turned to the rams;\n    And when the work of generation was\n    Between these woolly breeders in the act,\n    The skilful shepherd pill\'d me certain wands,\n    And, in the doing of the deed of kind,\n    He stuck them up before the fulsome ewes,\n    Who, then conceiving, did in eaning time\n    Fall parti-colour\'d lambs, and those were Jacob\'s.\n    This was a way to thrive, and he was blest;\n    And thrift is blessing, if men steal it not.\n  ANTONIO. This was a venture, sir, that Jacob serv\'d for;\n    A thing not in his power to bring to pass,\n    But sway\'d and fashion\'d by the hand of heaven.\n    Was this inserted to make interest good?\n    Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams?\n  SHYLOCK. I cannot tell; I make it breed as fast.\n    But note me, signior.\n  ANTONIO.  [Aside]  Mark you this, Bassanio,\n    The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.\n    An evil soul producing holy witness  \n    Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,\n    A goodly apple rotten at the heart.\n    O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!\n  SHYLOCK. Three thousand ducats- \'tis a good round sum.\n    Three months from twelve; then let me see, the rate-\n  ANTONIO. Well, Shylock, shall we be beholding to you?\n  SHYLOCK. Signior Antonio, many a time and oft\n    In the Rialto you have rated me\n    About my moneys and my usances;\n    Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,\n    For suff\'rance is the badge of all our tribe;\n    You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,\n    And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,\n    And all for use of that which is mine own.\n    Well then, it now appears you need my help;\n    Go to, then; you come to me, and you say\n    \'Shylock, we would have moneys.\' You say so-\n    You that did void your rheum upon my beard\n    And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur\n    Over your threshold; moneys is your suit.  \n    What should I say to you? Should I not say\n    \'Hath a dog money? Is it possible\n    A cur can lend three thousand ducats?\' Or\n    Shall I bend low and, in a bondman\'s key,\n    With bated breath and whisp\'ring humbleness,\n    Say this:\n    \'Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last,\n    You spurn\'d me such a day; another time\n    You call\'d me dog; and for these courtesies\n    I\'ll lend you thus much moneys\'?\n  ANTONIO. I am as like to call thee so again,\n    To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.\n    If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not\n    As to thy friends- for when did friendship take\n    A breed for barren metal of his friend?-\n    But lend it rather to thine enemy,\n    Who if he break thou mayst with better face\n    Exact the penalty.\n  SHYLOCK. Why, look you, how you storm!\n    I would be friends with you, and have your love,  \n    Forget the shames that you have stain\'d me with,\n    Supply your present wants, and take no doit\n    Of usance for my moneys, and you\'ll not hear me.\n    This is kind I offer.\n  BASSANIO. This were kindness.\n  SHYLOCK. This kindness will I show.\n    Go with me to a notary, seal me there\n    Your single bond, and, in a merry sport,\n    If you repay me not on such a day,\n    In such a place, such sum or sums as are\n    Express\'d in the condition, let the forfeit\n    Be nominated for an equal pound\n    Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken\n    In what part of your body pleaseth me.\n  ANTONIO. Content, in faith; I\'ll seal to such a bond,\n    And say there is much kindness in the Jew.\n  BASSANIO. You shall not seal to such a bond for me;\n    I\'ll rather dwell in my necessity.\n  ANTONIO. Why, fear not, man; I will not forfeit it;\n    Within these two months- that\'s a month before  \n    This bond expires- I do expect return\n    Of thrice three times the value of this bond.\n  SHYLOCK. O father Abram, what these Christians are,\n    Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect\n    The thoughts of others! Pray you, tell me this:\n    If he should break his day, what should I gain\n    By the exaction of the forfeiture?\n    A pound of man\'s flesh taken from a man\n    Is not so estimable, profitable neither,\n    As flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats. I say,\n    To buy his favour, I extend this friendship;\n    If he will take it, so; if not, adieu;\n    And, for my love, I pray you wrong me not.\n  ANTONIO. Yes, Shylock, I will seal unto this bond.\n  SHYLOCK. Then meet me forthwith at the notary\'s;\n    Give him direction for this merry bond,\n    And I will go and purse the ducats straight,\n    See to my house, left in the fearful guard\n    Of an unthrifty knave, and presently\n    I\'ll be with you.  \n  ANTONIO. Hie thee, gentle Jew.                    Exit SHYLOCK\n    The Hebrew will turn Christian: he grows kind.\n  BASSANIO. I like not fair terms and a villain\'s mind.\n  ANTONIO. Come on; in this there can be no dismay;\n    My ships come home a month before the day.            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nBelmont. PORTIA\'S house\n\nFlourish of cornets. Enter the PRINCE of MOROCCO, a tawny Moor all in white,\nand three or four FOLLOWERS accordingly, with PORTIA, NERISSA, and train\n\n  PRINCE OF Morocco. Mislike me not for my complexion,\n    The shadowed livery of the burnish\'d sun,\n    To whom I am a neighbour, and near bred.\n    Bring me the fairest creature northward born,\n    Where Phoebus\' fire scarce thaws the icicles,\n    And let us make incision for your love\n    To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.\n    I tell thee, lady, this aspect of mine\n    Hath fear\'d the valiant; by my love, I swear\n    The best-regarded virgins of our clime\n    Have lov\'d it too. I would not change this hue,\n    Except to steal your thoughts, my gentle queen.\n  PORTIA. In terms of choice I am not solely led\n    By nice direction of a maiden\'s eyes;\n    Besides, the lott\'ry of my destiny  \n    Bars me the right of voluntary choosing.\n    But, if my father had not scanted me,\n    And hedg\'d me by his wit to yield myself\n    His wife who wins me by that means I told you,\n    Yourself, renowned Prince, then stood as fair\n    As any comer I have look\'d on yet\n    For my affection.\n  PRINCE OF MOROCCO. Even for that I thank you.\n    Therefore, I pray you, lead me to the caskets\n    To try my fortune. By this scimitar,\n    That slew the Sophy and a Persian prince,\n    That won three fields of Sultan Solyman,\n    I would o\'erstare the sternest eyes that look,\n    Outbrave the heart most daring on the earth,\n    Pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear,\n    Yea, mock the lion when \'a roars for prey,\n    To win thee, lady. But, alas the while!\n    If Hercules and Lichas play at dice\n    Which is the better man, the greater throw\n    May turn by fortune from the weaker band.  \n    So is Alcides beaten by his page;\n    And so may I, blind Fortune leading me,\n    Miss that which one unworthier may attain,\n    And die with grieving.\n  PORTIA. You must take your chance,\n    And either not attempt to choose at all,\n    Or swear before you choose, if you choose wrong,\n    Never to speak to lady afterward\n    In way of marriage; therefore be advis\'d.\n  PRINCE OF MOROCCO. Nor will not; come, bring me unto my chance.\n  PORTIA. First, forward to the temple. After dinner\n    Your hazard shall be made.\n  PRINCE OF MOROCCO. Good fortune then,\n    To make me blest or cursed\'st among men!\n                                           [Cornets, and exeunt]\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nVenice. A street\n\nEnter LAUNCELOT GOBBO\n\n  LAUNCELOT. Certainly my conscience will serve me to run from this\n    Jew my master. The fiend is at mine elbow and tempts me, saying\n    to me \'Gobbo, Launcelot Gobbo, good Launcelot\' or \'good Gobbo\' or\n    \'good Launcelot Gobbo, use your legs, take the start, run away.\'\n    My conscience says \'No; take heed, honest Launcelot, take heed,\n    honest Gobbo\' or, as aforesaid, \'honest Launcelot Gobbo, do not\n    run; scorn running with thy heels.\' Well, the most courageous\n    fiend bids me pack. \'Via!\' says the fiend; \'away!\' says the\n    fiend. \'For the heavens, rouse up a brave mind\' says the fiend\n    \'and run.\' Well, my conscience, hanging about the neck of my\n    heart, says very wisely to me \'My honest friend Launcelot, being\n    an honest man\'s son\' or rather \'an honest woman\'s son\'; for\n    indeed my father did something smack, something grow to, he had a\n    kind of taste- well, my conscience says \'Launcelot, budge not.\'\n    \'Budge,\' says the fiend. \'Budge not,\' says my conscience.\n    \'Conscience,\' say I, (you counsel well.\' \'Fiend,\' say I, \'you\n    counsel well.\' To be rul\'d by my conscience, I should stay with  \n    the Jew my master, who- God bless the mark!- is a kind of devil;\n    and, to run away from the Jew, I should be ruled by the fiend,\n    who- saving your reverence!- is the devil himself. Certainly the\n    Jew is the very devil incarnation; and, in my conscience, my\n    conscience is but a kind of hard conscience to offer to counsel\n    me to stay with the Jew. The fiend gives the more friendly\n    counsel. I will run, fiend; my heels are at your commandment; I\n    will run.\n\n                     Enter OLD GOBBO, with a basket\n\n  GOBBO. Master young man, you, I pray you, which is the way to\n    master Jew\'s?\n  LAUNCELOT.  [Aside]  O heavens! This is my true-begotten father,\n    who, being more than sand-blind, high-gravel blind, knows me not.\n    I will try confusions with him.\n  GOBBO. Master young gentleman, I pray you, which is the way to\n    master Jew\'s?\n  LAUNCELOT. Turn up on your right hand at the next turning, but, at\n    the next turning of all, on your left; marry, at the very next  \n    turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the Jew\'s\n    house.\n  GOBBO. Be God\'s sonties, \'twill be a hard way to hit! Can you tell\n    me whether one Launcelot, that dwells with him, dwell with him or\n    no?\n  LAUNCELOT. Talk you of young Master Launcelot?  [Aside]  Mark me\n    now; now will I raise the waters.- Talk you of young Master\n    Launcelot?\n  GOBBO. No master, sir, but a poor man\'s son; his father, though I\n    say\'t, is an honest exceeding poor man, and, God be thanked, well\n    to live.\n  LAUNCELOT. Well, let his father be what \'a will, we talk of young\n    Master Launcelot.\n  GOBBO. Your worship\'s friend, and Launcelot, sir.\n  LAUNCELOT. But I pray you, ergo, old man, ergo, I beseech you, talk\n    you of young Master Launcelot?\n  GOBBO. Of Launcelot, an\'t please your mastership.\n  LAUNCELOT. Ergo, Master Launcelot. Talk not of Master Launcelot,\n    father; for the young gentleman, according to Fates and Destinies\n    and such odd sayings, the Sisters Three and such branches of  \n    learning, is indeed deceased; or, as you would say in plain\n    terms, gone to heaven.\n  GOBBO. Marry, God forbid! The boy was the very staff of my age, my\n    very prop.\n  LAUNCELOT. Do I look like a cudgel or a hovel-post, a staff or a\n    prop? Do you know me, father?\n  GOBBO. Alack the day, I know you not, young gentleman; but I pray\n    you tell me, is my boy- God rest his soul!- alive or dead?\n  LAUNCELOT. Do you not know me, father?\n  GOBBO. Alack, sir, I am sand-blind; I know you not.\n  LAUNCELOT. Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of the\n    knowing me: it is a wise father that knows his own child. Well,\n    old man, I will tell you news of your son. Give me your blessing;\n    truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man\'s son\n    may, but in the end truth will out.\n  GOBBO. Pray you, sir, stand up; I am sure you are not Launcelot my\n    boy.\n  LAUNCELOT. Pray you, let\'s have no more fooling about it, but give\n    me your blessing; I am Launcelot, your boy that was, your son\n    that is, your child that shall be.  \n  GOBBO. I cannot think you are my son.\n  LAUNCELOT. I know not what I shall think of that; but I am\n    Launcelot, the Jew\'s man, and I am sure Margery your wife is my\n    mother.\n  GOBBO. Her name is Margery, indeed. I\'ll be sworn, if thou be\n    Launcelot, thou art mine own flesh and blood. Lord worshipp\'d\n    might he be, what a beard hast thou got! Thou hast got more hair\n    on thy chin than Dobbin my fill-horse has on his tail.\n  LAUNCELOT. It should seem, then, that Dobbin\'s tail grows backward;\n    I am sure he had more hair of his tail than I have of my face\n    when I last saw him.\n  GOBBO. Lord, how art thou chang\'d! How dost thou and thy master\n    agree? I have brought him a present. How \'gree you now?\n  LAUNCELOT. Well, well; but, for mine own part, as I have set up my\n    rest to run away, so I will not rest till I have run some ground.\n    My master\'s a very Jew. Give him a present! Give him a halter. I\n    am famish\'d in his service; you may tell every finger I have with\n    my ribs. Father, I am glad you are come; give me your present to\n    one Master Bassanio, who indeed gives rare new liveries; if I\n    serve not him, I will run as far as God has any ground. O rare  \n    fortune! Here comes the man. To him, father, for I am a Jew, if I\n    serve the Jew any longer.\n\n         Enter BASSANIO, with LEONARDO, with a FOLLOWER or two\n\n  BASSANIO. You may do so; but let it be so hasted that supper be\n    ready at the farthest by five of the clock. See these letters\n    delivered, put the liveries to making, and desire Gratiano to\n    come anon to my lodging.                      Exit a SERVANT\n  LAUNCELOT. To him, father.\n  GOBBO. God bless your worship!\n  BASSANIO. Gramercy; wouldst thou aught with me?\n  GOBBO. Here\'s my son, sir, a poor boy-\n  LAUNCELOT. Not a poor boy, sir, but the rich Jew\'s man, that would,\n    sir, as my father shall specify-\n  GOBBO. He hath a great infection, sir, as one would say, to serve-\n  LAUNCELOT. Indeed the short and the long is, I serve the Jew, and\n    have a desire, as my father shall specify-\n  GOBBO. His master and he, saving your worship\'s reverence, are\n    scarce cater-cousins-  \n  LAUNCELOT. To be brief, the very truth is that the Jew, having done\n    me wrong, doth cause me, as my father, being I hope an old man,\n    shall frutify unto you-\n  GOBBO. I have here a dish of doves that I would bestow upon your\n    worship; and my suit is-\n  LAUNCELOT. In very brief, the suit is impertinent to myself, as\n    your worship shall know by this honest old man; and, though I say\n    it, though old man, yet poor man, my father.\n  BASSANIO. One speak for both. What would you?\n  LAUNCELOT. Serve you, sir.\n  GOBBO. That is the very defect of the matter, sir.\n  BASSANIO. I know thee well; thou hast obtain\'d thy suit.\n    Shylock thy master spoke with me this day,\n    And hath preferr\'d thee, if it be preferment\n    To leave a rich Jew\'s service to become\n    The follower of so poor a gentleman.\n  LAUNCELOT. The old proverb is very well parted between my master\n    Shylock and you, sir: you have the grace of God, sir, and he hath\n    enough.\n  BASSANIO. Thou speak\'st it well. Go, father, with thy son.  \n    Take leave of thy old master, and inquire\n    My lodging out.  [To a SERVANT]  Give him a livery\n    More guarded than his fellows\'; see it done.\n  LAUNCELOT. Father, in. I cannot get a service, no! I have ne\'er a\n    tongue in my head!  [Looking on his palm]  Well; if any man in\n    Italy have a fairer table which doth offer to swear upon a book- I\n    shall have good fortune. Go to, here\'s a simple line of life;\n    here\'s a small trifle of wives; alas, fifteen wives is nothing;\n    a\'leven widows and nine maids is a simple coming-in for one man.\n    And then to scape drowning thrice, and to be in peril of my life\n    with the edge of a feather-bed-here are simple scapes. Well, if\n    Fortune be a woman, she\'s a good wench for this gear. Father,\n    come; I\'ll take my leave of the Jew in the twinkling.\n                                  Exeunt LAUNCELOT and OLD GOBBO\n  BASSANIO. I pray thee, good Leonardo, think on this.\n    These things being bought and orderly bestowed,\n    Return in haste, for I do feast to-night\n    My best esteem\'d acquaintance; hie thee, go.\n  LEONARDO. My best endeavours shall be done herein.\n  \n                          Enter GRATIANO\n\n  GRATIANO. Where\'s your master?\n  LEONARDO. Yonder, sir, he walks.                          Exit\n  GRATIANO. Signior Bassanio!\n  BASSANIO. Gratiano!\n  GRATIANO. I have suit to you.\n  BASSANIO. You have obtain\'d it.\n  GRATIANO. You must not deny me: I must go with you to Belmont.\n  BASSANIO. Why, then you must. But hear thee, Gratiano:\n    Thou art too wild, too rude, and bold of voice-\n    Parts that become thee happily enough,\n    And in such eyes as ours appear not faults;\n    But where thou art not known, why there they show\n    Something too liberal. Pray thee, take pain\n    To allay with some cold drops of modesty\n    Thy skipping spirit; lest through thy wild behaviour\n    I be misconst\'red in the place I go to\n    And lose my hopes.\n  GRATIANO. Signior Bassanio, hear me:  \n    If I do not put on a sober habit,\n    Talk with respect, and swear but now and then,\n    Wear prayer-books in my pocket, look demurely,\n    Nay more, while grace is saying hood mine eyes\n    Thus with my hat, and sigh, and say amen,\n    Use all the observance of civility\n    Like one well studied in a sad ostent\n    To please his grandam, never trust me more.\n  BASSANIO. Well, we shall see your bearing.\n  GRATIANO. Nay, but I bar to-night; you shall not gauge me\n    By what we do to-night.\n  BASSANIO. No, that were pity;\n    I would entreat you rather to put on\n    Your boldest suit of mirth, for we have friends\n    That purpose merriment. But fare you well;\n    I have some business.\n  GRATIANO. And I must to Lorenzo and the rest;\n    But we will visit you at supper-time.                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nVenice. SHYLOCK\'S house\n\nEnter JESSICA and LAUNCELOT\n\n  JESSICA. I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so.\n    Our house is hell; and thou, a merry devil,\n    Didst rob it of some taste of tediousness.\n    But fare thee well; there is a ducat for thee;\n    And, Launcelot, soon at supper shalt thou see\n    Lorenzo, who is thy new master\'s guest.\n    Give him this letter; do it secretly.\n    And so farewell. I would not have my father\n    See me in talk with thee.\n  LAUNCELOT. Adieu! tears exhibit my tongue. Most beautiful pagan,\n    most sweet Jew! If a Christian do not play the knave and get\n    thee, I am much deceived. But, adieu! these foolish drops do\n    something drown my manly spirit; adieu!\n  JESSICA. Farewell, good Launcelot.              Exit LAUNCELOT\n    Alack, what heinous sin is it in me\n    To be asham\'d to be my father\'s child!\n    But though I am a daughter to his blood,  \n    I am not to his manners. O Lorenzo,\n    If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife,\n    Become a Christian and thy loving wife.                 Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nVenice. A street\n\nEnter GRATIANO, LORENZO, SALERIO, and SOLANIO\n\n  LORENZO. Nay, we will slink away in suppertime,\n    Disguise us at my lodging, and return\n    All in an hour.\n  GRATIANO. We have not made good preparation.\n  SALERIO. We have not spoke us yet of torch-bearers.\n  SOLANIO. \'Tis vile, unless it may be quaintly ordered;\n    And better in my mind not undertook.\n  LORENZO. \'Tis now but four o\'clock; we have two hours\n    To furnish us.\n\n                 Enter LAUNCELOT, With a letter\n\n    Friend Launcelot, what\'s the news?\n  LAUNCELOT. An it shall please you to break up this, it shall seem\n    to signify.\n  LORENZO. I know the hand; in faith, \'tis a fair hand,\n    And whiter than the paper it writ on  \n    Is the fair hand that writ.\n  GRATIANO. Love-news, in faith!\n  LAUNCELOT. By your leave, sir.\n  LORENZO. Whither goest thou?\n  LAUNCELOT. Marry, sir, to bid my old master, the Jew, to sup\n    to-night with my new master, the Christian.\n  LORENZO. Hold, here, take this. Tell gentle Jessica\n    I will not fail her; speak it privately.\n    Go, gentlemen,                                Exit LAUNCELOT\n    Will you prepare you for this masque to-night?\n    I am provided of a torch-bearer.\n  SALERIO. Ay, marry, I\'ll be gone about it straight.\n  SOLANIO. And so will I.\n  LORENZO. Meet me and Gratiano\n    At Gratiano\'s lodging some hour hence.\n  SALERIO. \'Tis good we do so.        Exeunt SALERIO and SOLANIO\n  GRATIANO. Was not that letter from fair Jessica?\n  LORENZO. I must needs tell thee all. She hath directed\n    How I shall take her from her father\'s house;\n    What gold and jewels she is furnish\'d with;  \n    What page\'s suit she hath in readiness.\n    If e\'er the Jew her father come to heaven,\n    It will be for his gentle daughter\'s sake;\n    And never dare misfortune cross her foot,\n    Unless she do it under this excuse,\n    That she is issue to a faithless Jew.\n    Come, go with me, peruse this as thou goest;\n    Fair Jessica shall be my torch-bearer.                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nVenice. Before SHYLOCK\'S house\n\nEnter SHYLOCK and LAUNCELOT\n\n  SHYLOCK. Well, thou shalt see; thy eyes shall be thy judge,\n    The difference of old Shylock and Bassanio.-\n    What, Jessica!- Thou shalt not gormandize\n    As thou hast done with me- What, Jessica!-\n    And sleep and snore, and rend apparel out-\n    Why, Jessica, I say!\n  LAUNCELOT. Why, Jessica!\n  SHYLOCK. Who bids thee call? I do not bid thee call.\n  LAUNCELOT. Your worship was wont to tell me I could do nothing\n    without bidding.\n\n                          Enter JESSICA\n\n  JESSICA. Call you? What is your will?\n  SHYLOCK. I am bid forth to supper, Jessica;\n    There are my keys. But wherefore should I go?\n    I am not bid for love; they flatter me;  \n    But yet I\'ll go in hate, to feed upon\n    The prodigal Christian. Jessica, my girl,\n    Look to my house. I am right loath to go;\n    There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest,\n    For I did dream of money-bags to-night.\n  LAUNCELOT. I beseech you, sir, go; my young master doth expect your\n    reproach.\n  SHYLOCK. So do I his.\n  LAUNCELOT. And they have conspired together; I will not say you\n    shall see a masque, but if you do, then it was not for nothing\n    that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black Monday last at six o\'clock\n    i\' th\' morning, falling out that year on Ash Wednesday was four\n    year, in th\' afternoon.\n  SHYLOCK. What, are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica:\n    Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum,\n    And the vile squealing of the wry-neck\'d fife,\n    Clamber not you up to the casements then,\n    Nor thrust your head into the public street\n    To gaze on Christian fools with varnish\'d faces;\n    But stop my house\'s ears- I mean my casements;  \n    Let not the sound of shallow fopp\'ry enter\n    My sober house. By Jacob\'s staff, I swear\n    I have no mind of feasting forth to-night;\n    But I will go. Go you before me, sirrah;\n    Say I will come.\n  LAUNCELOT. I will go before, sir. Mistress, look out at window for\n    all this.\n        There will come a Christian by\n        Will be worth a Jewess\' eye.                        Exit\n  SHYLOCK. What says that fool of Hagar\'s offspring, ha?\n  JESSICA. His words were \'Farewell, mistress\'; nothing else.\n  SHYLOCK. The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder,\n    Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day\n    More than the wild-cat; drones hive not with me,\n    Therefore I part with him; and part with him\n    To one that I would have him help to waste\n    His borrowed purse. Well, Jessica, go in;\n    Perhaps I will return immediately.\n    Do as I bid you, shut doors after you.\n    Fast bind, fast find-  \n    A proverb never stale in thrifty mind.                  Exit\n  JESSICA. Farewell; and if my fortune be not crost,\n    I have a father, you a daughter, lost.                  Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nVenice. Before SHYLOCK\'S house\n\nEnter the maskers, GRATIANO and SALERIO\n\n  GRATIANO. This is the pent-house under which Lorenzo\n    Desired us to make stand.\n  SALERIO. His hour is almost past.\n  GRATIANO. And it is marvel he out-dwells his hour,\n    For lovers ever run before the clock.\n  SALERIO. O, ten times faster Venus\' pigeons fly\n    To seal love\'s bonds new made than they are wont\n    To keep obliged faith unforfeited!\n  GRATIANO. That ever holds: who riseth from a feast\n    With that keen appetite that he sits down?\n    Where is the horse that doth untread again\n    His tedious measures with the unbated fire\n    That he did pace them first? All things that are\n    Are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.\n    How like a younker or a prodigal\n    The scarfed bark puts from her native bay,\n    Hugg\'d and embraced by the strumpet wind;  \n    How like the prodigal doth she return,\n    With over-weather\'d ribs and ragged sails,\n    Lean, rent, and beggar\'d by the strumpet wind!\n\n                       Enter LORENZO\n\n  SALERIO. Here comes Lorenzo; more of this hereafter.\n  LORENZO. Sweet friends, your patience for my long abode!\n    Not I, but my affairs, have made you wait.\n    When you shall please to play the thieves for wives,\n    I\'ll watch as long for you then. Approach;\n    Here dwells my father Jew. Ho! who\'s within?\n\n           Enter JESSICA, above, in boy\'s clothes\n\n  JESSICA. Who are you? Tell me, for more certainty,\n    Albeit I\'ll swear that I do know your tongue.\n  LORENZO. Lorenzo, and thy love.\n  JESSICA. Lorenzo, certain; and my love indeed;\n    For who love I so much? And now who knows  \n    But you, Lorenzo, whether I am yours?\n  LORENZO. Heaven and thy thoughts are witness that thou art.\n  JESSICA. Here, catch this casket; it is worth the pains.\n    I am glad \'tis night, you do not look on me,\n    For I am much asham\'d of my exchange;\n    But love is blind, and lovers cannot see\n    The pretty follies that themselves commit,\n    For, if they could, Cupid himself would blush\n    To see me thus transformed to a boy.\n  LORENZO. Descend, for you must be my torch-bearer.\n  JESSICA. What! must I hold a candle to my shames?\n    They in themselves, good sooth, are too too light.\n    Why, \'tis an office of discovery, love,\n    And I should be obscur\'d.\n  LORENZO. So are you, sweet,\n    Even in the lovely garnish of a boy.\n    But come at once,\n    For the close night doth play the runaway,\n    And we are stay\'d for at Bassanio\'s feast.\n  JESSICA. I will make fast the doors, and gild myself  \n    With some moe ducats, and be with you straight.\n                                                      Exit above\n\n  GRATIANO. Now, by my hood, a gentle, and no Jew.\n  LORENZO. Beshrew me, but I love her heartily,\n    For she is wise, if I can judge of her,\n    And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true,\n    And true she is, as she hath prov\'d herself;\n    And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true,\n    Shall she be placed in my constant soul.\n\n                     Enter JESSICA, below\n\n    What, art thou come? On, gentlemen, away;\n    Our masquing mates by this time for us stay.\n                                   Exit with JESSICA and SALERIO\n\n                        Enter ANTONIO\n\n  ANTONIO. Who\'s there?  \n  GRATIANO. Signior Antonio?\n  ANTONIO. Fie, fie, Gratiano, where are all the rest?\n    \'Tis nine o\'clock; our friends all stay for you;\n    No masque to-night; the wind is come about;\n    Bassanio presently will go aboard;\n    I have sent twenty out to seek for you.\n  GRATIANO. I am glad on\'t; I desire no more delight\n    Than to be under sail and gone to-night.              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\nBelmont. PORTIA\'s house\n\nFlourish of cornets. Enter PORTIA, with the PRINCE OF MOROCCO,\nand their trains\n\n  PORTIA. Go draw aside the curtains and discover\n    The several caskets to this noble Prince.\n    Now make your choice.\n  PRINCE OF MOROCCO. The first, of gold, who this inscription bears:\n    \'Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.\'\n    The second, silver, which this promise carries:\n    \'Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.\'\n    This third, dull lead, with warning all as blunt:\n    \'Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.\'\n    How shall I know if I do choose the right?\n  PORTIA. The one of them contains my picture, Prince;\n    If you choose that, then I am yours withal.\n  PRINCE OF MOROCCO. Some god direct my judgment! Let me see;\n    I will survey th\' inscriptions back again.\n    What says this leaden casket?\n    \'Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.\'  \n    Must give- for what? For lead? Hazard for lead!\n    This casket threatens; men that hazard all\n    Do it in hope of fair advantages.\n    A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross;\n    I\'ll then nor give nor hazard aught for lead.\n    What says the silver with her virgin hue?\n    \'Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.\'\n    As much as he deserves! Pause there, Morocco,\n    And weigh thy value with an even hand.\n    If thou beest rated by thy estimation,\n    Thou dost deserve enough, and yet enough\n    May not extend so far as to the lady;\n    And yet to be afeard of my deserving\n    Were but a weak disabling of myself.\n    As much as I deserve? Why, that\'s the lady!\n    I do in birth deserve her, and in fortunes,\n    In graces, and in qualities of breeding;\n    But more than these, in love I do deserve.\n    What if I stray\'d no farther, but chose here?\n    Let\'s see once more this saying grav\'d in gold:  \n    \'Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.\'\n    Why, that\'s the lady! All the world desires her;\n    From the four corners of the earth they come\n    To kiss this shrine, this mortal-breathing saint.\n    The Hyrcanian deserts and the vasty wilds\n    Of wide Arabia are as throughfares now\n    For princes to come view fair Portia.\n    The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head\n    Spits in the face of heaven, is no bar\n    To stop the foreign spirits, but they come\n    As o\'er a brook to see fair Portia.\n    One of these three contains her heavenly picture.\n    Is\'t like that lead contains her? \'Twere damnation\n    To think so base a thought; it were too gross\n    To rib her cerecloth in the obscure grave.\n    Or shall I think in silver she\'s immur\'d,\n    Being ten times undervalued to tried gold?\n    O sinful thought! Never so rich a gem\n    Was set in worse than gold. They have in England\n    A coin that bears the figure of an angel  \n    Stamp\'d in gold; but that\'s insculp\'d upon.\n    But here an angel in a golden bed\n    Lies all within. Deliver me the key;\n    Here do I choose, and thrive I as I may!\n  PORTIA. There, take it, Prince, and if my form lie there,\n    Then I am yours.                [He opens the golden casket]\n  PRINCE OF MOROCCO. O hell! what have we here?\n    A carrion Death, within whose empty eye\n    There is a written scroll! I\'ll read the writing.\n         \'All that glisters is not gold,\n         Often have you heard that told;\n         Many a man his life hath sold\n         But my outside to behold.\n         Gilded tombs do worms infold.\n         Had you been as wise as bold,\n         Young in limbs, in judgment old,\n         Your answer had not been inscroll\'d.\n         Fare you well, your suit is cold.\'\n      Cold indeed, and labour lost,\n      Then farewell, heat, and welcome, frost.  \n    Portia, adieu! I have too griev\'d a heart\n    To take a tedious leave; thus losers part.\n                        Exit with his train. Flourish of cornets\n  PORTIA. A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains, go.\n    Let all of his complexion choose me so.               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VIII.\nVenice. A street\n\nEnter SALERIO and SOLANIO\n\n  SALERIO. Why, man, I saw Bassanio under sail;\n    With him is Gratiano gone along;\n    And in their ship I am sure Lorenzo is not.\n  SOLANIO. The villain Jew with outcries rais\'d the Duke,\n    Who went with him to search Bassanio\'s ship.\n  SALERIO. He came too late, the ship was under sail;\n    But there the Duke was given to understand\n    That in a gondola were seen together\n    Lorenzo and his amorous Jessica;\n    Besides, Antonio certified the Duke\n    They were not with Bassanio in his ship.\n  SOLANIO. I never heard a passion so confus\'d,\n    So strange, outrageous, and so variable,\n    As the dog Jew did utter in the streets.\n    \'My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!\n    Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!\n    Justice! the law! My ducats and my daughter!  \n    A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats,\n    Of double ducats, stol\'n from me by my daughter!\n    And jewels- two stones, two rich and precious stones,\n    Stol\'n by my daughter! Justice! Find the girl;\n    She hath the stones upon her and the ducats.\'\n  SALERIO. Why, all the boys in Venice follow him,\n    Crying, his stones, his daughter, and his ducats.\n  SOLANIO. Let good Antonio look he keep his day,\n    Or he shall pay for this.\n  SALERIO. Marry, well rememb\'red;\n    I reason\'d with a Frenchman yesterday,\n    Who told me, in the narrow seas that part\n    The French and English, there miscarried\n    A vessel of our country richly fraught.\n    I thought upon Antonio when he told me,\n    And wish\'d in silence that it were not his.\n  SOLANIO. You were best to tell Antonio what you hear;\n    Yet do not suddenly, for it may grieve him.\n  SALERIO. A kinder gentleman treads not the earth.\n    I saw Bassanio and Antonio part.  \n    Bassanio told him he would make some speed\n    Of his return. He answered \'Do not so;\n    Slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio,\n    But stay the very riping of the time;\n    And for the Jew\'s bond which he hath of me,\n    Let it not enter in your mind of love;\n    Be merry, and employ your chiefest thoughts\n    To courtship, and such fair ostents of love\n    As shall conveniently become you there.\'\n    And even there, his eye being big with tears,\n    Turning his face, he put his hand behind him,\n    And with affection wondrous sensible\n    He wrung Bassanio\'s hand; and so they parted.\n  SOLANIO. I think he only loves the world for him.\n    I pray thee, let us go and find him out,\n    And quicken his embraced heaviness\n    With some delight or other.\n  SALERIO. Do we so.                                      Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IX.\nBelmont. PORTIA\'S house\n\nEnter NERISSA, and a SERVITOR\n\n  NERISSA. Quick, quick, I pray thee, draw the curtain straight;\n    The Prince of Arragon hath ta\'en his oath,\n    And comes to his election presently.\n\n       Flourish of cornets. Enter the PRINCE OF ARRAGON,\n                    PORTIA, and their trains\n\n  PORTIA. Behold, there stand the caskets, noble Prince.\n    If you choose that wherein I am contain\'d,\n    Straight shall our nuptial rites be solemniz\'d;\n    But if you fail, without more speech, my lord,\n    You must be gone from hence immediately.\n  ARRAGON. I am enjoin\'d by oath to observe three things:\n    First, never to unfold to any one\n    Which casket \'twas I chose; next, if I fail\n    Of the right casket, never in my life\n    To woo a maid in way of marriage;  \n    Lastly,\n    If I do fail in fortune of my choice,\n    Immediately to leave you and be gone.\n  PORTIA. To these injunctions every one doth swear\n    That comes to hazard for my worthless self.\n  ARRAGON. And so have I address\'d me. Fortune now\n    To my heart\'s hope! Gold, silver, and base lead.\n    \'Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.\'\n    You shall look fairer ere I give or hazard.\n    What says the golden chest? Ha! let me see:\n    \'Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.\'\n    What many men desire- that \'many\' may be meant\n    By the fool multitude, that choose by show,\n    Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach;\n    Which pries not to th\' interior, but, like the martlet,\n    Builds in the weather on the outward wall,\n    Even in the force and road of casualty.\n    I will not choose what many men desire,\n    Because I will not jump with common spirits\n    And rank me with the barbarous multitudes.  \n    Why, then to thee, thou silver treasure-house!\n    Tell me once more what title thou dost bear.\n    \'Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.\'\n    And well said too; for who shall go about\n    To cozen fortune, and be honourable\n    Without the stamp of merit? Let none presume\n    To wear an undeserved dignity.\n    O that estates, degrees, and offices,\n    Were not deriv\'d corruptly, and that clear honour\n    Were purchas\'d by the merit of the wearer!\n    How many then should cover that stand bare!\n    How many be commanded that command!\n    How much low peasantry would then be gleaned\n    From the true seed of honour! and how much honour\n    Pick\'d from the chaff and ruin of the times,\n    To be new varnish\'d! Well, but to my choice.\n    \'Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.\'\n    I will assume desert. Give me a key for this,\n    And instantly unlock my fortunes here.\n                                    [He opens the silver casket]  \n  PORTIA.  [Aside]  Too long a pause for that which you find there.\n  ARRAGON. What\'s here? The portrait of a blinking idiot\n    Presenting me a schedule! I will read it.\n    How much unlike art thou to Portia!\n    How much unlike my hopes and my deservings!\n    \'Who chooseth me shall have as much as he deserves.\'\n    Did I deserve no more than a fool\'s head?\n    Is that my prize? Are my deserts no better?\n  PORTIA. To offend and judge are distinct offices\n    And of opposed natures.\n  ARRAGON. What is here?  [Reads]\n\n         \'The fire seven times tried this;\n         Seven times tried that judgment is\n         That did never choose amiss.\n         Some there be that shadows kiss,\n         Such have but a shadow\'s bliss.\n         There be fools alive iwis\n         Silver\'d o\'er, and so was this.\n         Take what wife you will to bed,  \n         I will ever be your head.\n         So be gone; you are sped.\'\n\n         Still more fool I shall appear\n         By the time I linger here.\n         With one fool\'s head I came to woo,\n         But I go away with two.\n         Sweet, adieu! I\'ll keep my oath,\n         Patiently to bear my wroth.         Exit with his train\n\n  PORTIA. Thus hath the candle sing\'d the moth.\n    O, these deliberate fools! When they do choose,\n    They have the wisdom by their wit to lose.\n  NERISSA. The ancient saying is no heresy:\n    Hanging and wiving goes by destiny.\n  PORTIA. Come, draw the curtain, Nerissa.\n\n                       Enter a SERVANT\n\n  SERVANT. Where is my lady?  \n  PORTIA. Here; what would my lord?\n  SERVANT. Madam, there is alighted at your gate\n    A young Venetian, one that comes before\n    To signify th\' approaching of his lord,\n    From whom he bringeth sensible regreets;\n    To wit, besides commends and courteous breath,\n    Gifts of rich value. Yet I have not seen\n    So likely an ambassador of love.\n    A day in April never came so sweet\n    To show how costly summer was at hand\n    As this fore-spurrer comes before his lord.\n  PORTIA. No more, I pray thee; I am half afeard\n    Thou wilt say anon he is some kin to thee,\n    Thou spend\'st such high-day wit in praising him.\n    Come, come, Nerissa, for I long to see\n    Quick Cupid\'s post that comes so mannerly.\n  NERISSA. Bassanio, Lord Love, if thy will it be!        Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nVenice. A street\n\nEnter SOLANIO and SALERIO\n\n  SOLANIO. Now, what news on the Rialto?\n  SALERIO. Why, yet it lives there uncheck\'d that Antonio hath a ship\n    of rich lading wreck\'d on the narrow seas; the Goodwins I think\n    they call the place, a very dangerous flat and fatal, where the\n    carcases of many a tall ship lie buried, as they say, if my\n    gossip Report be an honest woman of her word.\n  SOLANIO. I would she were as lying a gossip in that as ever knapp\'d\n    ginger or made her neighbours believe she wept for the death of a\n    third husband. But it is true, without any slips of prolixity or\n    crossing the plain highway of talk, that the good Antonio, the\n    honest Antonio- O that I had a title good enough to keep his name\n    company!-\n  SALERIO. Come, the full stop.\n  SOLANIO. Ha! What sayest thou? Why, the end is, he hath lost a\n    ship.\n  SALERIO. I would it might prove the end of his losses.\n  SOLANIO. Let me say amen betimes, lest the devil cross my prayer,  \n    for here he comes in the likeness of a Jew.\n\n                             Enter SHYLOCK\n\n    How now, Shylock? What news among the merchants?\n  SHYLOCK. You knew, none so well, none so well as you, of my\n    daughter\'s flight.\n  SALERIO. That\'s certain; I, for my part, knew the tailor that made\n    the wings she flew withal.\n  SOLANIO. And Shylock, for his own part, knew the bird was flidge;\n    and then it is the complexion of them all to leave the dam.\n  SHYLOCK. She is damn\'d for it.\n  SALERIO. That\'s certain, if the devil may be her judge.\n  SHYLOCK. My own flesh and blood to rebel!\n  SOLANIO. Out upon it, old carrion! Rebels it at these years?\n  SHYLOCK. I say my daughter is my flesh and my blood.\n  SALERIO. There is more difference between thy flesh and hers than\n    between jet and ivory; more between your bloods than there is\n    between red wine and Rhenish. But tell us, do you hear whether\n    Antonio have had any loss at sea or no?  \n  SHYLOCK. There I have another bad match: a bankrupt, a prodigal,\n    who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto; a beggar, that was\n    us\'d to come so smug upon the mart. Let him look to his bond. He\n    was wont to call me usurer; let him look to his bond. He was wont\n    to lend money for a Christian courtesy; let him look to his bond.\n  SALERIO. Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his\n    flesh. What\'s that good for?\n  SHYLOCK. To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else, it will\n    feed my revenge. He hath disgrac\'d me and hind\'red me half a\n    million; laugh\'d at my losses, mock\'d at my gains, scorned my\n    nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine\n    enemies. And what\'s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes?\n    Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections,\n    passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons,\n    subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed\n    and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If\n    you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?\n    If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we\n    not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you\n    in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?  \n    Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance\n    be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me\n    I will execute; and itshall go hard but I will better the\n    instruction.\n\n                    Enter a MAN from ANTONIO\n\n  MAN. Gentlemen, my master Antonio is at his house, and desires to\n    speak with you both.\n  SALERIO. We have been up and down to seek him.\n\n                          Enter TUBAL\n\n  SOLANIO. Here comes another of the tribe; a third cannot be\n    match\'d, unless the devil himself turn Jew.\n                                Exeunt SOLANIO, SALERIO, and MAN\n  SHYLOCK. How now, Tubal, what news from Genoa? Hast thou found my\n    daughter?\n  TUBAL. I often came where I did hear of her, but cannot find her.\n  SHYLOCK. Why there, there, there, there! A diamond gone, cost me  \n    two thousand ducats in Frankfort! The curse never fell upon our\n    nation till now; I never felt it till now. Two thousand ducats in\n    that, and other precious, precious jewels. I would my daughter\n    were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear; would she were\n    hears\'d at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin! No news of\n    them? Why, so- and I know not what\'s spent in the search. Why,\n    thou- loss upon loss! The thief gone with so much, and so much to\n    find the thief; and no satisfaction, no revenge; nor no ill luck\n    stirring but what lights o\' my shoulders; no sighs but o\' my\n    breathing; no tears but o\' my shedding!\n  TUBAL. Yes, other men have ill luck too: Antonio, as I heard in\n    Genoa-\n  SHYLOCK. What, what, what? Ill luck, ill luck?\n  TUBAL. Hath an argosy cast away coming from Tripolis.\n  SHYLOCK. I thank God, I thank God. Is it true, is it true?\n  TUBAL. I spoke with some of the sailors that escaped the wreck.\n  SHYLOCK. I thank thee, good Tubal. Good news, good news- ha, ha!-\n    heard in Genoa.\n  TUBAL. Your daughter spent in Genoa, as I heard, one night,\n    fourscore ducats.  \n  SHYLOCK. Thou stick\'st a dagger in me- I shall never see my gold\n    again. Fourscore ducats at a sitting! Fourscore ducats!\n  TUBAL. There came divers of Antonio\'s creditors in my company to\n    Venice that swear he cannot choose but break.\n  SHYLOCK. I am very glad of it; I\'ll plague him, I\'ll torture him; I\n    am glad of it.\n  TUBAL. One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter\n    for a monkey.\n  SHYLOCK. Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my\n    turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor; I would not\n    have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.\n  TUBAL. But Antonio is certainly undone.\n  SHYLOCK. Nay, that\'s true; that\'s very true. Go, Tubal, fee me an\n    officer; bespeak him a fortnight before. I will have the heart of\n    him, if he forfeit; for, were he out of Venice, I can make what\n    merchandise I will. Go, Tubal, and meet me at our synagogue; go,\n    good Tubal; at our synagogue, Tubal.                  Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nBelmont. PORTIA\'S house\n\nEnter BASSANIO, PORTIA, GRATIANO, NERISSA, and all their trains\n\n  PORTIA. I pray you tarry; pause a day or two\n    Before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong,\n    I lose your company; therefore forbear a while.\n    There\'s something tells me- but it is not love-\n    I would not lose you; and you know yourself\n    Hate counsels not in such a quality.\n    But lest you should not understand me well-\n    And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought-\n    I would detain you here some month or two\n    Before you venture for me. I could teach you\n    How to choose right, but then I am forsworn;\n    So will I never be; so may you miss me;\n    But if you do, you\'ll make me wish a sin,\n    That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes!\n    They have o\'erlook\'d me and divided me;\n    One half of me is yours, the other half yours-  \n    Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,\n    And so all yours. O! these naughty times\n    Puts bars between the owners and their rights;\n    And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so,\n    Let fortune go to hell for it, not I.\n    I speak too long, but \'tis to peize the time,\n    To eke it, and to draw it out in length,\n    To stay you from election.\n  BASSANIO. Let me choose;\n    For as I am, I live upon the rack.\n  PORTIA. Upon the rack, Bassanio? Then confess\n    What treason there is mingled with your love.\n  BASSANIO. None but that ugly treason of mistrust\n    Which makes me fear th\' enjoying of my love;\n    There may as well be amity and life\n    \'Tween snow and fire as treason and my love.\n  PORTIA. Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack,\n    Where men enforced do speak anything.\n  BASSANIO. Promise me life, and I\'ll confess the truth.\n  PORTIA. Well then, confess and live.  \n  BASSANIO. \'Confess\' and \'love\'\n    Had been the very sum of my confession.\n    O happy torment, when my torturer\n    Doth teach me answers for deliverance!\n    But let me to my fortune and the caskets.\n  PORTIA. Away, then; I am lock\'d in one of them.\n    If you do love me, you will find me out.\n    Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof;\n    Let music sound while he doth make his choice;\n    Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,\n    Fading in music. That the comparison\n    May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream\n    And wat\'ry death-bed for him. He may win;\n    And what is music then? Then music is\n    Even as the flourish when true subjects bow\n    To a new-crowned monarch; such it is\n    As are those dulcet sounds in break of day\n    That creep into the dreaming bridegroom\'s ear\n    And summon him to marriage. Now he goes,\n    With no less presence, but with much more love,  \n    Than young Alcides when he did redeem\n    The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy\n    To the sea-monster. I stand for sacrifice;\n    The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives,\n    With bleared visages come forth to view\n    The issue of th\' exploit. Go, Hercules!\n    Live thou, I live. With much much more dismay\n    I view the fight than thou that mak\'st the fray.\n\n                            A SONG\n\n      the whilst BASSANIO comments on the caskets to himself\n\n                 Tell me where is fancy bred,\n                 Or in the heart or in the head,\n                 How begot, how nourished?\n                   Reply, reply.\n                 It is engend\'red in the eyes,\n                 With gazing fed; and fancy dies\n                 In the cradle where it lies.  \n                   Let us all ring fancy\'s knell:\n                   I\'ll begin it- Ding, dong, bell.\n  ALL.           Ding, dong, bell.\n\n  BASSANIO. So may the outward shows be least themselves;\n    The world is still deceiv\'d with ornament.\n    In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt\n    But, being season\'d with a gracious voice,\n    Obscures the show of evil? In religion,\n    What damned error but some sober brow\n    Will bless it, and approve it with a text,\n    Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?\n    There is no vice so simple but assumes\n    Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.\n    How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false\n    As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins\n    The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars;\n    Who, inward search\'d, have livers white as milk!\n    And these assume but valour\'s excrement\n    To render them redoubted. Look on beauty  \n    And you shall see \'tis purchas\'d by the weight,\n    Which therein works a miracle in nature,\n    Making them lightest that wear most of it;\n    So are those crisped snaky golden locks\n    Which make such wanton gambols with the wind\n    Upon supposed fairness often known\n    To be the dowry of a second head-\n    The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.\n    Thus ornament is but the guiled shore\n    To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf\n    Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word,\n    The seeming truth which cunning times put on\n    To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold,\n    Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee;\n    Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge\n    \'Tween man and man; but thou, thou meagre lead,\n    Which rather threaten\'st than dost promise aught,\n    Thy plainness moves me more than eloquence,\n    And here choose I. Joy be the consequence!\n  PORTIA.  [Aside]  How all the other passions fleet to air,  \n    As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac\'d despair,\n    And shudd\'ring fear, and green-ey\'d jealousy!\n    O love, be moderate, allay thy ecstasy,\n    In measure rain thy joy, scant this excess!\n    I feel too much thy blessing. Make it less,\n    For fear I surfeit.\n  BASSANIO.  [Opening the leaden casket]  What find I here?\n    Fair Portia\'s counterfeit! What demi-god\n    Hath come so near creation? Move these eyes?\n    Or whether riding on the balls of mine\n    Seem they in motion? Here are sever\'d lips,\n    Parted with sugar breath; so sweet a bar\n    Should sunder such sweet friends. Here in her hairs\n    The painter plays the spider, and hath woven\n    A golden mesh t\' entrap the hearts of men\n    Faster than gnats in cobwebs. But her eyes-\n    How could he see to do them? Having made one,\n    Methinks it should have power to steal both his,\n    And leave itself unfurnish\'d. Yet look how far\n    The substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow  \n    In underprizing it, so far this shadow\n    Doth limp behind the substance. Here\'s the scroll,\n    The continent and summary of my fortune.\n         \'You that choose not by the view,\n         Chance as fair and choose as true!\n         Since this fortune falls to you,\n         Be content and seek no new.\n         If you be well pleas\'d with this,\n         And hold your fortune for your bliss,\n         Turn to where your lady is\n         And claim her with a loving kiss.\'\n    A gentle scroll. Fair lady, by your leave;\n    I come by note, to give and to receive.\n    Like one of two contending in a prize,\n    That thinks he hath done well in people\'s eyes,\n    Hearing applause and universal shout,\n    Giddy in spirit, still gazing in a doubt\n    Whether those peals of praise be his or no;\n    So, thrice-fair lady, stand I even so,\n    As doubtful whether what I see be true,  \n    Until confirm\'d, sign\'d, ratified by you.\n  PORTIA. You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,\n    Such as I am. Though for myself alone\n    I would not be ambitious in my wish\n    To wish myself much better, yet for you\n    I would be trebled twenty times myself,\n    A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich,\n    That only to stand high in your account\n    I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,\n    Exceed account. But the full sum of me\n    Is sum of something which, to term in gross,\n    Is an unlesson\'d girl, unschool\'d, unpractis\'d;\n    Happy in this, she is not yet so old\n    But she may learn; happier than this,\n    She is not bred so dull but she can learn;\n    Happiest of all is that her gentle spirit\n    Commits itself to yours to be directed,\n    As from her lord, her governor, her king.\n    Myself and what is mine to you and yours\n    Is now converted. But now I was the lord  \n    Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,\n    Queen o\'er myself; and even now, but now,\n    This house, these servants, and this same myself,\n    Are yours- my lord\'s. I give them with this ring,\n    Which when you part from, lose, or give away,\n    Let it presage the ruin of your love,\n    And be my vantage to exclaim on you.\n  BASSANIO. Madam, you have bereft me of all words;\n    Only my blood speaks to you in my veins;\n    And there is such confusion in my powers\n    As, after some oration fairly spoke\n    By a beloved prince, there doth appear\n    Among the buzzing pleased multitude,\n    Where every something, being blent together,\n    Turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy\n    Express\'d and not express\'d. But when this ring\n    Parts from this finger, then parts life from hence;\n    O, then be bold to say Bassanio\'s dead!\n  NERISSA. My lord and lady, it is now our time\n    That have stood by and seen our wishes prosper  \n    To cry \'Good joy.\' Good joy, my lord and lady!\n  GRATIANO. My Lord Bassanio, and my gentle lady,\n    I wish you all the joy that you can wish,\n    For I am sure you can wish none from me;\n    And, when your honours mean to solemnize\n    The bargain of your faith, I do beseech you\n    Even at that time I may be married too.\n  BASSANIO. With all my heart, so thou canst get a wife.\n  GRATIANO. I thank your lordship, you have got me one.\n    My eyes, my lord, can look as swift as yours:\n    You saw the mistress, I beheld the maid;\n    You lov\'d, I lov\'d; for intermission\n    No more pertains to me, my lord, than you.\n    Your fortune stood upon the caskets there,\n    And so did mine too, as the matter falls;\n    For wooing here until I sweat again,\n    And swearing till my very roof was dry\n    With oaths of love, at last- if promise last-\n    I got a promise of this fair one here\n    To have her love, provided that your fortune  \n    Achiev\'d her mistress.\n  PORTIA. Is this true, Nerissa?\n  NERISSA. Madam, it is, so you stand pleas\'d withal.\n  BASSANIO. And do you, Gratiano, mean good faith?\n  GRATIANO. Yes, faith, my lord.\n  BASSANIO. Our feast shall be much honoured in your marriage.\n  GRATIANO. We\'ll play with them: the first boy for a thousand\n    ducats.\n  NERISSA. What, and stake down?\n  GRATIANO. No; we shall ne\'er win at that sport, and stake down-\n    But who comes here? Lorenzo and his infidel?\n    What, and my old Venetian friend, Salerio!\n\n          Enter LORENZO, JESSICA, and SALERIO, a messenger\n                           from Venice\n\n  BASSANIO. Lorenzo and Salerio, welcome hither,\n    If that the youth of my new int\'rest here\n    Have power to bid you welcome. By your leave,\n    I bid my very friends and countrymen,  \n    Sweet Portia, welcome.\n  PORTIA. So do I, my lord;\n    They are entirely welcome.\n  LORENZO. I thank your honour. For my part, my lord,\n    My purpose was not to have seen you here;\n    But meeting with Salerio by the way,\n    He did entreat me, past all saying nay,\n    To come with him along.\n  SALERIO. I did, my lord,\n    And I have reason for it. Signior Antonio\n    Commends him to you.               [Gives BASSANIO a letter]\n  BASSANIO. Ere I ope his letter,\n    I pray you tell me how my good friend doth.\n  SALERIO. Not sick, my lord, unless it be in mind;\n    Nor well, unless in mind; his letter there\n    Will show you his estate.        [BASSANIO opens the letter]\n  GRATIANO. Nerissa, cheer yond stranger; bid her welcome.\n    Your hand, Salerio. What\'s the news from Venice?\n    How doth that royal merchant, good Antonio?\n    I know he will be glad of our success:  \n    We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece.\n  SALERIO. I would you had won the fleece that he hath lost.\n  PORTIA. There are some shrewd contents in yond same paper\n    That steals the colour from Bassanio\'s cheek:\n    Some dear friend dead, else nothing in the world\n    Could turn so much the constitution\n    Of any constant man. What, worse and worse!\n    With leave, Bassanio: I am half yourself,\n    And I must freely have the half of anything\n    That this same paper brings you.\n  BASSANIO. O sweet Portia,\n    Here are a few of the unpleasant\'st words\n    That ever blotted paper! Gentle lady,\n    When I did first impart my love to you,\n    I freely told you all the wealth I had\n    Ran in my veins- I was a gentleman;\n    And then I told you true. And yet, dear lady,\n    Rating myself at nothing, you shall see\n    How much I was a braggart. When I told you\n    My state was nothing, I should then have told you  \n    That I was worse than nothing; for indeed\n    I have engag\'d myself to a dear friend,\n    Engag\'d my friend to his mere enemy,\n    To feed my means. Here is a letter, lady,\n    The paper as the body of my friend,\n    And every word in it a gaping wound\n    Issuing life-blood. But is it true, Salerio?\n    Hath all his ventures fail\'d? What, not one hit?\n    From Tripolis, from Mexico, and England,\n    From Lisbon, Barbary, and India,\n    And not one vessel scape the dreadful touch\n    Of merchant-marring rocks?\n  SALERIO. Not one, my lord.\n    Besides, it should appear that, if he had\n    The present money to discharge the Jew,\n    He would not take it. Never did I know\n    A creature that did bear the shape of man\n    So keen and greedy to confound a man.\n    He plies the Duke at morning and at night,\n    And doth impeach the freedom of the state,  \n    If they deny him justice. Twenty merchants,\n    The Duke himself, and the magnificoes\n    Of greatest port, have all persuaded with him;\n    But none can drive him from the envious plea\n    Of forfeiture, of justice, and his bond.\n  JESSICA. When I was with him, I have heard him swear\n    To Tubal and to Chus, his countrymen,\n    That he would rather have Antonio\'s flesh\n    Than twenty times the value of the sum\n    That he did owe him; and I know, my lord,\n    If law, authority, and power, deny not,\n    It will go hard with poor Antonio.\n  PORTIA. Is it your dear friend that is thus in trouble?\n  BASSANIO. The dearest friend to me, the kindest man,\n    The best condition\'d and unwearied spirit\n    In doing courtesies; and one in whom\n    The ancient Roman honour more appears\n    Than any that draws breath in Italy.\n  PORTIA. What sum owes he the Jew?\n  BASSANIO. For me, three thousand ducats.  \n  PORTIA. What! no more?\n    Pay him six thousand, and deface the bond;\n    Double six thousand, and then treble that,\n    Before a friend of this description\n    Shall lose a hair through Bassanio\'s fault.\n    First go with me to church and call me wife,\n    And then away to Venice to your friend;\n    For never shall you lie by Portia\'s side\n    With an unquiet soul. You shall have gold\n    To pay the petty debt twenty times over.\n    When it is paid, bring your true friend along.\n    My maid Nerissa and myself meantime\n    Will live as maids and widows. Come, away;\n    For you shall hence upon your wedding day.\n    Bid your friends welcome, show a merry cheer;\n    Since you are dear bought, I will love you dear.\n    But let me hear the letter of your friend.\n  BASSANIO.  [Reads]  \'Sweet Bassanio, my ships have all miscarried,\n    my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to the\n    Jew is forfeit; and since, in paying it, it is impossible I  \n    should live, all debts are clear\'d between you and I, if I might\n    but see you at my death. Notwithstanding, use your pleasure; if\n    your love do not persuade you to come, let not my letter.\'\n  PORTIA. O love, dispatch all business and be gone!\n  BASSANIO. Since I have your good leave to go away,\n    I will make haste; but, till I come again,\n    No bed shall e\'er be guilty of my stay,\n    Nor rest be interposer \'twixt us twain.               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nVenice. A street\n\nEnter SHYLOCK, SOLANIO, ANTONIO, and GAOLER\n\n  SHYLOCK. Gaoler, look to him. Tell not me of mercy-\n    This is the fool that lent out money gratis.\n    Gaoler, look to him.\n  ANTONIO. Hear me yet, good Shylock.\n  SHYLOCK. I\'ll have my bond; speak not against my bond.\n    I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond.\n    Thou call\'dst me dog before thou hadst a cause,\n    But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs;\n    The Duke shall grant me justice. I do wonder,\n    Thou naughty gaoler, that thou art so fond\n    To come abroad with him at his request.\n  ANTONIO. I pray thee hear me speak.\n  SHYLOCK. I\'ll have my bond. I will not hear thee speak;\n    I\'ll have my bond; and therefore speak no more.\n    I\'ll not be made a soft and dull-ey\'d fool,\n    To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield,\n    To Christian intercessors. Follow not;  \n    I\'ll have no speaking; I will have my bond.             Exit\n  SOLANIO. It is the most impenetrable cur\n    That ever kept with men.\n  ANTONIO. Let him alone;\n    I\'ll follow him no more with bootless prayers.\n    He seeks my life; his reason well I know:\n    I oft deliver\'d from his forfeitures\n    Many that have at times made moan to me;\n    Therefore he hates me.\n  SOLANIO. I am sure the Duke\n    Will never grant this forfeiture to hold.\n  ANTONIO. The Duke cannot deny the course of law;\n    For the commodity that strangers have\n    With us in Venice, if it be denied,\n    Will much impeach the justice of the state,\n    Since that the trade and profit of the city\n    Consisteth of all nations. Therefore, go;\n    These griefs and losses have so bated me\n    That I shall hardly spare a pound of flesh\n    To-morrow to my bloody creditor.  \n    Well, gaoler, on; pray God Bassanio come\n    To see me pay his debt, and then I care not.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nBelmont. PORTIA\'S house\n\nEnter PORTIA, NERISSA, LORENZO, JESSICA, and BALTHASAR\n\n  LORENZO. Madam, although I speak it in your presence,\n    You have a noble and a true conceit\n    Of godlike amity, which appears most strongly\n    In bearing thus the absence of your lord.\n    But if you knew to whom you show this honour,\n    How true a gentleman you send relief,\n    How dear a lover of my lord your husband,\n    I know you would be prouder of the work\n    Than customary bounty can enforce you.\n  PORTIA. I never did repent for doing good,\n    Nor shall not now; for in companions\n    That do converse and waste the time together,\n    Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love,\n    There must be needs a like proportion\n    Of lineaments, of manners, and of spirit,\n    Which makes me think that this Antonio,\n    Being the bosom lover of my lord,  \n    Must needs be like my lord. If it be so,\n    How little is the cost I have bestowed\n    In purchasing the semblance of my soul\n    From out the state of hellish cruelty!\n    This comes too near the praising of myself;\n    Therefore, no more of it; hear other things.\n    Lorenzo, I commit into your hands\n    The husbandry and manage of my house\n    Until my lord\'s return; for mine own part,\n    I have toward heaven breath\'d a secret vow\n    To live in prayer and contemplation,\n    Only attended by Nerissa here,\n    Until her husband and my lord\'s return.\n    There is a monastery two miles off,\n    And there we will abide. I do desire you\n    Not to deny this imposition,\n    The which my love and some necessity\n    Now lays upon you.\n  LORENZO. Madam, with all my heart\n    I shall obey you in an fair commands.  \n  PORTIA. My people do already know my mind,\n    And will acknowledge you and Jessica\n    In place of Lord Bassanio and myself.\n    So fare you well till we shall meet again.\n  LORENZO. Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you!\n  JESSICA. I wish your ladyship all heart\'s content.\n  PORTIA. I thank you for your wish, and am well pleas\'d\n    To wish it back on you. Fare you well, Jessica.\n                                      Exeunt JESSICA and LORENZO\n    Now, Balthasar,\n    As I have ever found thee honest-true,\n    So let me find thee still. Take this same letter,\n    And use thou all th\' endeavour of a man\n    In speed to Padua; see thou render this\n    Into my cousin\'s hands, Doctor Bellario;\n    And look what notes and garments he doth give thee,\n    Bring them, I pray thee, with imagin\'d speed\n    Unto the traject, to the common ferry\n    Which trades to Venice. Waste no time in words,\n    But get thee gone; I shall be there before thee.  \n  BALTHASAR. Madam, I go with all convenient speed.         Exit\n  PORTIA. Come on, Nerissa, I have work in hand\n    That you yet know not of; we\'ll see our husbands\n    Before they think of us.\n  NERISSA. Shall they see us?\n  PORTIA. They shall, Nerissa; but in such a habit\n    That they shall think we are accomplished\n    With that we lack. I\'ll hold thee any wager,\n    When we are both accoutred like young men,\n    I\'ll prove the prettier fellow of the two,\n    And wear my dagger with the braver grace,\n    And speak between the change of man and boy\n    With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps\n    Into a manly stride; and speak of frays\n    Like a fine bragging youth; and tell quaint lies,\n    How honourable ladies sought my love,\n    Which I denying, they fell sick and died-\n    I could not do withal. Then I\'ll repent,\n    And wish for all that, that I had not kill\'d them.\n    And twenty of these puny lies I\'ll tell,  \n    That men shall swear I have discontinued school\n    About a twelvemonth. I have within my mind\n    A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks,\n    Which I will practise.\n  NERISSA. Why, shall we turn to men?\n  PORTIA. Fie, what a question\'s that,\n    If thou wert near a lewd interpreter!\n    But come, I\'ll tell thee all my whole device\n    When I am in my coach, which stays for us\n    At the park gate; and therefore haste away,\n    For we must measure twenty miles to-day.              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nBelmont. The garden\n\nEnter LAUNCELOT and JESSICA\n\n  LAUNCELOT. Yes, truly; for, look you, the sins of the father are to\n    be laid upon the children; therefore, I promise you, I fear you.\n    I was always plain with you, and so now I speak my agitation of\n    the matter; therefore be o\' good cheer, for truly I think you are\n    damn\'d. There is but one hope in it that can do you any good, and\n    that is but a kind of bastard hope, neither.\n  JESSICA. And what hope is that, I pray thee?\n  LAUNCELOT. Marry, you may partly hope that your father got you not-\n   that you are not the Jew\'s daughter.\n  JESSICA. That were a kind of bastard hope indeed; so the sins of my\n    mother should be visited upon me.\n  LAUNCELOT. Truly then I fear you are damn\'d both by father and\n    mother; thus when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into\n    Charybdis, your mother; well, you are gone both ways.\n  JESSICA. I shall be sav\'d by my husband; he hath made me a\n    Christian.\n  LAUNCELOT. Truly, the more to blame he; we were Christians enow  \n    before, e\'en as many as could well live one by another. This\n    making of Christians will raise the price of hogs; if we grow all\n    to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the\n    coals for money.\n\n                             Enter LORENZO\n\n  JESSICA. I\'ll tell my husband, Launcelot, what you say; here he\n    comes.\n  LORENZO. I shall grow jealous of you shortly, Launcelot, if you\n    thus get my wife into corners.\n  JESSICA. Nay, you need nor fear us, Lorenzo; Launcelot and I are\n    out; he tells me flatly there\'s no mercy for me in heaven,\n    because I am a Jew\'s daughter; and he says you are no good member\n    of the commonwealth, for in converting Jews to Christians you\n    raise the price of pork.\n  LORENZO. I shall answer that better to the commonwealth than you\n    can the getting up of the negro\'s belly; the Moor is with child\n    by you, Launcelot.\n  LAUNCELOT. It is much that the Moor should be more than reason; but  \n    if she be less than an honest woman, she is indeed more than I\n    took her for.\n  LORENZO. How every fool can play upon the word! I think the best\n    grace of wit will shortly turn into silence, and discourse grow\n    commendable in none only but parrots. Go in, sirrah; bid them\n    prepare for dinner.\n  LAUNCELOT. That is done, sir; they have all stomachs.\n  LORENZO. Goodly Lord, what a wit-snapper are you! Then bid them\n    prepare dinner.\n  LAUNCELOT. That is done too, sir, only \'cover\' is the word.\n  LORENZO. Will you cover, then, sir?\n  LAUNCELOT. Not so, sir, neither; I know my duty.\n  LORENZO. Yet more quarrelling with occasion! Wilt thou show the\n    whole wealth of thy wit in an instant? I pray thee understand a\n    plain man in his plain meaning: go to thy fellows, bid them cover\n    the table, serve in the meat, and we will come in to dinner.\n  LAUNCELOT. For the table, sir, it shall be serv\'d in; for the meat,\n    sir, it shall be cover\'d; for your coming in to dinner, sir, why,\n    let it be as humours and conceits shall govern.\n Exit  \n  LORENZO. O dear discretion, how his words are suited!\n    The fool hath planted in his memory\n    An army of good words; and I do know\n    A many fools that stand in better place,\n    Garnish\'d like him, that for a tricksy word\n    Defy the matter. How cheer\'st thou, Jessica?\n    And now, good sweet, say thy opinion,\n    How dost thou like the Lord Bassanio\'s wife?\n  JESSICA. Past all expressing. It is very meet\n    The Lord Bassanio live an upright life,\n    For, having such a blessing in his lady,\n    He finds the joys of heaven here on earth;\n    And if on earth he do not merit it,\n    In reason he should never come to heaven.\n    Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match,\n    And on the wager lay two earthly women,\n    And Portia one, there must be something else\n    Pawn\'d with the other; for the poor rude world\n    Hath not her fellow.\n  LORENZO. Even such a husband  \n    Hast thou of me as she is for a wife.\n  JESSICA. Nay, but ask my opinion too of that.\n  LORENZO. I will anon; first let us go to dinner.\n  JESSICA. Nay, let me praise you while I have a stomach.\n  LORENZO. No, pray thee, let it serve for table-talk;\n    Then howsome\'er thou speak\'st, \'mong other things\n    I shall digest it.\n  JESSICA. Well, I\'ll set you forth.                      Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nVenice. The court of justice\n\nEnter the DUKE, the MAGNIFICOES, ANTONIO, BASSANIO, GRATIANO, SALERIO,\nand OTHERS\n\n  DUKE OF VENICE. What, is Antonio here?\n  ANTONIO. Ready, so please your Grace.\n  DUKE OF VENICE. I am sorry for thee; thou art come to answer\n    A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch,\n    Uncapable of pity, void and empty\n    From any dram of mercy.\n  ANTONIO. I have heard\n    Your Grace hath ta\'en great pains to qualify\n    His rigorous course; but since he stands obdurate,\n    And that no lawful means can carry me\n    Out of his envy\'s reach, I do oppose\n    My patience to his fury, and am arm\'d\n    To suffer with a quietness of spirit\n    The very tyranny and rage of his.\n  DUKE OF VENICE. Go one, and call the Jew into the court.\n  SALERIO. He is ready at the door; he comes, my lord.  \n\n                          Enter SHYLOCK\n\n  DUKE OF VENICE. Make room, and let him stand before our face.\n    Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too,\n    That thou but leadest this fashion of thy malice\n    To the last hour of act; and then, \'tis thought,\n    Thou\'lt show thy mercy and remorse, more strange\n    Than is thy strange apparent cruelty;\n    And where thou now exacts the penalty,\n    Which is a pound of this poor merchant\'s flesh,\n    Thou wilt not only loose the forfeiture,\n    But, touch\'d with human gentleness and love,\n    Forgive a moiety of the principal,\n    Glancing an eye of pity on his losses,\n    That have of late so huddled on his back-\n    Enow to press a royal merchant down,\n    And pluck commiseration of his state\n    From brassy bosoms and rough hearts of flint,\n    From stubborn Turks and Tartars, never train\'d  \n    To offices of tender courtesy.\n    We all expect a gentle answer, Jew.\n  SHYLOCK. I have possess\'d your Grace of what I purpose,\n    And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn\n    To have the due and forfeit of my bond.\n    If you deny it, let the danger light\n    Upon your charter and your city\'s freedom.\n    You\'ll ask me why I rather choose to have\n    A weight of carrion flesh than to receive\n    Three thousand ducats. I\'ll not answer that,\n    But say it is my humour- is it answer\'d?\n    What if my house be troubled with a rat,\n    And I be pleas\'d to give ten thousand ducats\n    To have it ban\'d? What, are you answer\'d yet?\n    Some men there are love not a gaping pig;\n    Some that are mad if they behold a cat;\n    And others, when the bagpipe sings i\' th\' nose,\n    Cannot contain their urine; for affection,\n    Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood\n    Of what it likes or loathes. Now, for your answer:  \n    As there is no firm reason to be rend\'red\n    Why he cannot abide a gaping pig;\n    Why he, a harmless necessary cat;\n    Why he, a woollen bagpipe, but of force\n    Must yield to such inevitable shame\n    As to offend, himself being offended;\n    So can I give no reason, nor I will not,\n    More than a lodg\'d hate and a certain loathing\n    I bear Antonio, that I follow thus\n    A losing suit against him. Are you answered?\n  BASSANIO. This is no answer, thou unfeeling man,\n    To excuse the current of thy cruelty.\n  SHYLOCK. I am not bound to please thee with my answers.\n  BASSANIO. Do all men kill the things they do not love?\n  SHYLOCK. Hates any man the thing he would not kill?\n  BASSANIO. Every offence is not a hate at first.\n  SHYLOCK. What, wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?\n  ANTONIO. I pray you, think you question with the Jew.\n    You may as well go stand upon the beach\n    And bid the main flood bate his usual height;  \n    You may as well use question with the wolf,\n    Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb;\n    You may as well forbid the mountain pines\n    To wag their high tops and to make no noise\n    When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven;\n    You may as well do anything most hard\n    As seek to soften that- than which what\'s harder?-\n    His jewish heart. Therefore, I do beseech you,\n    Make no moe offers, use no farther means,\n    But with all brief and plain conveniency\n    Let me have judgment, and the Jew his will.\n  BASSANIO. For thy three thousand ducats here is six.\n  SHYLOCK. If every ducat in six thousand ducats\n    Were in six parts, and every part a ducat,\n    I would not draw them; I would have my bond.\n  DUKE OF VENICE. How shalt thou hope for mercy, rend\'ring none?\n  SHYLOCK. What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?\n    You have among you many a purchas\'d slave,\n    Which, fike your asses and your dogs and mules,\n    You use in abject and in slavish parts,  \n    Because you bought them; shall I say to you\n    \'Let them be free, marry them to your heirs-\n    Why sweat they under burdens?- let their beds\n    Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates\n    Be season\'d with such viands\'? You will answer\n    \'The slaves are ours.\' So do I answer you:\n    The pound of flesh which I demand of him\n    Is dearly bought, \'tis mine, and I will have it.\n    If you deny me, fie upon your law!\n    There is no force in the decrees of Venice.\n    I stand for judgment; answer; shall I have it?\n  DUKE OF VENICE. Upon my power I may dismiss this court,\n    Unless Bellario, a learned doctor,\n    Whom I have sent for to determine this,\n    Come here to-day.\n  SALERIO. My lord, here stays without\n    A messenger with letters from the doctor,\n    New come from Padua.\n  DUKE OF VENICE. Bring us the letters; call the messenger.\n  BASSANIO. Good cheer, Antonio! What, man, courage yet!  \n    The Jew shall have my flesh, blood, bones, and all,\n    Ere thou shalt lose for me one drop of blood.\n  ANTONIO. I am a tainted wether of the flock,\n    Meetest for death; the weakest kind of fruit\n    Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me.\n    You cannot better be employ\'d, Bassanio,\n    Than to live still, and write mine epitaph.\n\n           Enter NERISSA dressed like a lawyer\'s clerk\n\n  DUKE OF VENICE. Came you from Padua, from Bellario?\n  NERISSA. From both, my lord. Bellario greets your Grace.\n                                             [Presents a letter]\n  BASSANIO. Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?\n  SHYLOCK. To cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there.\n  GRATIANO. Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew,\n    Thou mak\'st thy knife keen; but no metal can,\n    No, not the hangman\'s axe, bear half the keenness\n    Of thy sharp envy. Can no prayers pierce thee?\n  SHYLOCK. No, none that thou hast wit enough to make.  \n  GRATIANO. O, be thou damn\'d, inexecrable dog!\n    And for thy life let justice be accus\'d.\n    Thou almost mak\'st me waver in my faith,\n    To hold opinion with Pythagoras\n    That souls of animals infuse themselves\n    Into the trunks of men. Thy currish spirit\n    Govern\'d a wolf who, hang\'d for human slaughter,\n    Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,\n    And, whilst thou layest in thy unhallowed dam,\n    Infus\'d itself in thee; for thy desires\n    Are wolfish, bloody, starv\'d and ravenous.\n  SHYLOCK. Till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond,\n    Thou but offend\'st thy lungs to speak so loud;\n    Repair thy wit, good youth, or it will fall\n    To cureless ruin. I stand here for law.\n  DUKE OF VENICE. This letter from Bellario doth commend\n    A young and learned doctor to our court.\n    Where is he?\n  NERISSA. He attendeth here hard by\n    To know your answer, whether you\'ll admit him.  \n  DUKE OF VENICE. With all my heart. Some three or four of you\n    Go give him courteous conduct to this place.\n    Meantime, the court shall hear Bellario\'s letter.\n  CLERK.  [Reads]  \'Your Grace shall understand that at the receipt\n    of your letter I am very sick; but in the instant that your\n    messenger came, in loving visitation was with me a young doctor\n    of Rome- his name is Balthazar. I acquainted him with the cause\n    in controversy between the Jew and Antonio the merchant; we\n    turn\'d o\'er many books together; he is furnished with my opinion\n    which, bettered with his own learning-the greatness whereof I\n    cannot enough commend- comes with him at my importunity to fill\n    up your Grace\'s request in my stead. I beseech you let his lack\n    of years be no impediment to let him lack a reverend estimation,\n    for I never knew so young a body with so old a head. I leave him\n    to your gracious acceptance, whose trial shall better publish his\n    commendation.\'\n\n      Enter PORTIA for BALTHAZAR, dressed like a Doctor of Laws\n\n  DUKE OF VENICE. YOU hear the learn\'d Bellario, what he writes;  \n    And here, I take it, is the doctor come.\n    Give me your hand; come you from old Bellario?\n  PORTIA. I did, my lord.\n  DUKE OF VENICE. You are welcome; take your place.\n    Are you acquainted with the difference\n    That holds this present question in the court?\n  PORTIA. I am informed throughly of the cause.\n    Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?\n  DUKE OF VENICE. Antonio and old Shylock, both stand forth.\n  PORTIA. Is your name Shylock?\n  SHYLOCK. Shylock is my name.\n  PORTIA. Of a strange nature is the suit you follow;\n    Yet in such rule that the Venetian law\n    Cannot impugn you as you do proceed.\n    You stand within his danger, do you not?\n  ANTONIO. Ay, so he says.\n  PORTIA. Do you confess the bond?\n  ANTONIO. I do.\n  PORTIA. Then must the Jew be merciful.\n  SHYLOCK. On what compulsion must I? Tell me that.  \n  PORTIA. The quality of mercy is not strain\'d;\n    It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven\n    Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:\n    It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.\n    \'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes\n    The throned monarch better than his crown;\n    His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,\n    The attribute to awe and majesty,\n    Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;\n    But mercy is above this sceptred sway,\n    It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,\n    It is an attribute to God himself;\n    And earthly power doth then show likest God\'s\n    When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,\n    Though justice be thy plea, consider this-\n    That in the course of justice none of us\n    Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy,\n    And that same prayer doth teach us all to render\n    The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much\n    To mitigate the justice of thy plea,  \n    Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice\n    Must needs give sentence \'gainst the merchant there.\n  SHYLOCK. My deeds upon my head! I crave the law,\n    The penalty and forfeit of my bond.\n  BASSANIO. Yes; here I tender it for him in the court;\n    Yea, twice the sum; if that will not suffice,\n    I will be bound to pay it ten times o\'er\n    On forfeit of my hands, my head, my heart;\n    If this will not suffice, it must appear\n    That malice bears down truth. And, I beseech you,\n    Wrest once the law to your authority;\n    To do a great right do a little wrong,\n    And curb this cruel devil of his will.\n  PORTIA. It must not be; there is no power in Venice\n    Can alter a decree established;\n    \'Twill be recorded for a precedent,\n    And many an error, by the same example,\n    Will rush into the state; it cannot be.\n  SHYLOCK. A Daniel come to judgment! Yea, a Daniel!\n    O wise young judge, how I do honour thee!  \n  PORTIA. I pray you, let me look upon the bond.\n  SHYLOCK. Here \'tis, most reverend Doctor; here it is.\n  PORTIA. Shylock, there\'s thrice thy money off\'red thee.\n  SHYLOCK. An oath, an oath! I have an oath in heaven.\n    Shall I lay perjury upon my soul?\n    No, not for Venice.\n  PORTIA. Why, this bond is forfeit;\n    And lawfully by this the Jew may claim\n    A pound of flesh, to be by him cut off\n    Nearest the merchant\'s heart. Be merciful.\n    Take thrice thy money; bid me tear the bond.\n  SHYLOCK. When it is paid according to the tenour.\n    It doth appear you are a worthy judge;\n    You know the law; your exposition\n    Hath been most sound; I charge you by the law,\n    Whereof you are a well-deserving pillar,\n    Proceed to judgment. By my soul I swear\n    There is no power in the tongue of man\n    To alter me. I stay here on my bond.\n  ANTONIO. Most heartily I do beseech the court  \n    To give the judgment.\n  PORTIA. Why then, thus it is:\n    You must prepare your bosom for his knife.\n  SHYLOCK. O noble judge! O excellent young man!\n  PORTIA. For the intent and purpose of the law\n    Hath full relation to the penalty,\n    Which here appeareth due upon the bond.\n  SHYLOCK. \'Tis very true. O wise and upright judge,\n    How much more elder art thou than thy looks!\n  PORTIA. Therefore, lay bare your bosom.\n  SHYLOCK. Ay, his breast-\n    So says the bond; doth it not, noble judge?\n    \'Nearest his heart,\' those are the very words.\n  PORTIA. It is so. Are there balance here to weigh\n    The flesh?\n  SHYLOCK. I have them ready.\n  PORTIA. Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your charge,\n    To stop his wounds, lest he do bleed to death.\n  SHYLOCK. Is it so nominated in the bond?\n  PORTIA. It is not so express\'d, but what of that?  \n    \'Twere good you do so much for charity.\n  SHYLOCK. I cannot find it; \'tis not in the bond.\n  PORTIA. You, merchant, have you anything to say?\n  ANTONIO. But little: I am arm\'d and well prepar\'d.\n    Give me your hand, Bassanio; fare you well.\n    Grieve not that I am fall\'n to this for you,\n    For herein Fortune shows herself more kind\n    Than is her custom. It is still her use\n    To let the wretched man outlive his wealth,\n    To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow\n    An age of poverty; from which ling\'ring penance\n    Of such misery doth she cut me off.\n    Commend me to your honourable wife;\n    Tell her the process of Antonio\'s end;\n    Say how I lov\'d you; speak me fair in death;\n    And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge\n    Whether Bassanio had not once a love.\n    Repent but you that you shall lose your friend,\n    And he repents not that he pays your debt;\n    For if the Jew do cut but deep enough,  \n    I\'ll pay it instantly with all my heart.\n  BASSANIO. Antonio, I am married to a wife\n    Which is as dear to me as life itself;\n    But life itself, my wife, and all the world,\n    Are not with me esteem\'d above thy life;\n    I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all\n    Here to this devil, to deliver you.\n  PORTIA. Your wife would give you little thanks for that,\n    If she were by to hear you make the offer.\n  GRATIANO. I have a wife who I protest I love;\n    I would she were in heaven, so she could\n    Entreat some power to change this currish Jew.\n  NERISSA. \'Tis well you offer it behind her back;\n    The wish would make else an unquiet house.\n  SHYLOCK.  [Aside]  These be the Christian husbands! I have a\n    daughter-\n    Would any of the stock of Barrabas\n    Had been her husband, rather than a Christian!-\n    We trifle time; I pray thee pursue sentence.\n  PORTIA. A pound of that same merchant\'s flesh is thine.  \n    The court awards it and the law doth give it.\n  SHYLOCK. Most rightful judge!\n  PORTIA. And you must cut this flesh from off his breast.\n    The law allows it and the court awards it.\n  SHYLOCK. Most learned judge! A sentence! Come, prepare.\n  PORTIA. Tarry a little; there is something else.\n    This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood:\n    The words expressly are \'a pound of flesh.\'\n    Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh;\n    But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed\n    One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods\n    Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate\n    Unto the state of Venice.\n  GRATIANO. O upright judge! Mark, Jew. O learned judge!\n  SHYLOCK. Is that the law?\n  PORTIA. Thyself shalt see the act;\n    For, as thou urgest justice, be assur\'d\n    Thou shalt have justice, more than thou desir\'st.\n  GRATIANO. O learned judge! Mark, Jew. A learned judge!\n  SHYLOCK. I take this offer then: pay the bond thrice,  \n    And let the Christian go.\n  BASSANIO. Here is the money.\n  PORTIA. Soft!\n    The Jew shall have all justice. Soft! No haste.\n    He shall have nothing but the penalty.\n  GRATIANO. O Jew! an upright judge, a learned judge!\n  PORTIA. Therefore, prepare thee to cut off the flesh.\n    Shed thou no blood, nor cut thou less nor more\n    But just a pound of flesh; if thou tak\'st more\n    Or less than a just pound- be it but so much\n    As makes it light or heavy in the substance,\n    Or the division of the twentieth part\n    Of one poor scruple; nay, if the scale do turn\n    But in the estimation of a hair-\n    Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.\n  GRATIANO. A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew!\n    Now, infidel, I have you on the hip.\n  PORTIA. Why doth the Jew pause? Take thy forfeiture.\n  SHYLOCK. Give me my principal, and let me go.\n  BASSANIO. I have it ready for thee; here it is.  \n  PORTIA. He hath refus\'d it in the open court;\n    He shall have merely justice, and his bond.\n  GRATIANO. A Daniel still say I, a second Daniel!\n    I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.\n  SHYLOCK. Shall I not have barely my principal?\n  PORTIA. Thou shalt have nothing but the forfeiture\n    To be so taken at thy peril, Jew.\n  SHYLOCK. Why, then the devil give him good of it!\n    I\'ll stay no longer question.\n  PORTIA. Tarry, Jew.\n    The law hath yet another hold on you.\n    It is enacted in the laws of Venice,\n    If it be proved against an alien\n    That by direct or indirect attempts\n    He seek the life of any citizen,\n    The party \'gainst the which he doth contrive\n    Shall seize one half his goods; the other half\n    Comes to the privy coffer of the state;\n    And the offender\'s life lies in the mercy\n    Of the Duke only, \'gainst all other voice.  \n    In which predicament, I say, thou stand\'st;\n    For it appears by manifest proceeding\n    That indirectly, and directly too,\n    Thou hast contrived against the very life\n    Of the defendant; and thou hast incurr\'d\n    The danger formerly by me rehears\'d.\n    Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the Duke.\n  GRATIANO. Beg that thou mayst have leave to hang thyself;\n    And yet, thy wealth being forfeit to the state,\n    Thou hast not left the value of a cord;\n    Therefore thou must be hang\'d at the state\'s charge.\n  DUKE OF VENICE. That thou shalt see the difference of our spirit,\n    I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it.\n    For half thy wealth, it is Antonio\'s;\n    The other half comes to the general state,\n    Which humbleness may drive unto a fine.\n  PORTIA. Ay, for the state; not for Antonio.\n  SHYLOCK. Nay, take my life and all, pardon not that.\n    You take my house when you do take the prop\n    That doth sustain my house; you take my life  \n    When you do take the means whereby I live.\n  PORTIA. What mercy can you render him, Antonio?\n  GRATIANO. A halter gratis; nothing else, for God\'s sake!\n  ANTONIO. So please my lord the Duke and all the court\n    To quit the fine for one half of his goods;\n    I am content, so he will let me have\n    The other half in use, to render it\n    Upon his death unto the gentleman\n    That lately stole his daughter-\n    Two things provided more; that, for this favour,\n    He presently become a Christian;\n    The other, that he do record a gift,\n    Here in the court, of all he dies possess\'d\n    Unto his son Lorenzo and his daughter.\n  DUKE OF VENICE. He shall do this, or else I do recant\n    The pardon that I late pronounced here.\n  PORTIA. Art thou contented, Jew? What dost thou say?\n  SHYLOCK. I am content.\n  PORTIA. Clerk, draw a deed of gift.\n  SHYLOCK. I pray you, give me leave to go from hence;  \n    I am not well; send the deed after me\n    And I will sign it.\n  DUKE OF VENICE. Get thee gone, but do it.\n  GRATIANO. In christ\'ning shalt thou have two god-fathers;\n    Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more,\n    To bring thee to the gallows, not to the font.\n                                                    Exit SHYLOCK\n  DUKE OF VENICE. Sir, I entreat you home with me to dinner.\n  PORTIA. I humbly do desire your Grace of pardon;\n    I must away this night toward Padua,\n    And it is meet I presently set forth.\n  DUKE OF VENICE. I am sorry that your leisure serves you not.\n    Antonio, gratify this gentleman,\n    For in my mind you are much bound to him.\n                             Exeunt DUKE, MAGNIFICOES, and train\n  BASSANIO. Most worthy gentleman, I and my friend\n    Have by your wisdom been this day acquitted\n    Of grievous penalties; in lieu whereof\n    Three thousand ducats, due unto the Jew,\n    We freely cope your courteous pains withal.  \n  ANTONIO. And stand indebted, over and above,\n    In love and service to you evermore.\n  PORTIA. He is well paid that is well satisfied,\n    And I, delivering you, am satisfied,\n    And therein do account myself well paid.\n    My mind was never yet more mercenary.\n    I pray you, know me when we meet again;\n    I wish you well, and so I take my leave.\n  BASSANIO. Dear sir, of force I must attempt you further;\n    Take some remembrance of us, as a tribute,\n    Not as fee. Grant me two things, I pray you,\n    Not to deny me, and to pardon me.\n  PORTIA. You press me far, and therefore I will yield.\n    [To ANTONIO]  Give me your gloves, I\'ll wear them for your sake.\n    [To BASSANIO]  And, for your love, I\'ll take this ring from you.\n    Do not draw back your hand; I\'ll take no more,\n    And you in love shall not deny me this.\n  BASSANIO. This ring, good sir- alas, it is a trifle;\n    I will not shame myself to give you this.\n  PORTIA. I will have nothing else but only this;  \n    And now, methinks, I have a mind to it.\n  BASSANIO.. There\'s more depends on this than on the value.\n    The dearest ring in Venice will I give you,\n    And find it out by proclamation;\n    Only for this, I pray you, pardon me.\n  PORTIA. I see, sir, you are liberal in offers;\n    You taught me first to beg, and now, methinks,\n    You teach me how a beggar should be answer\'d.\n  BASSANIO. Good sir, this ring was given me by my wife;\n    And, when she put it on, she made me vow\n    That I should neither sell, nor give, nor lose it.\n  PORTIA. That \'scuse serves many men to save their gifts.\n    And if your wife be not a mad woman,\n    And know how well I have deserv\'d this ring,\n    She would not hold out enemy for ever\n    For giving it to me. Well, peace be with you!\n                                       Exeunt PORTIA and NERISSA\n  ANTONIO. My Lord Bassanio, let him have the ring.\n    Let his deservings, and my love withal,\n    Be valued \'gainst your wife\'s commandment.  \n  BASSANIO. Go, Gratiano, run and overtake him;\n    Give him the ring, and bring him, if thou canst,\n    Unto Antonio\'s house. Away, make haste.        Exit GRATIANO\n    Come, you and I will thither presently;\n    And in the morning early will we both\n    Fly toward Belmont. Come, Antonio.                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nVenice. A street\n\nEnter PORTIA and NERISSA\n\n  PORTIA. Inquire the Jew\'s house out, give him this deed,\n    And let him sign it; we\'ll away tonight,\n    And be a day before our husbands home.\n    This deed will be well welcome to Lorenzo.\n\n                          Enter GRATIANO\n\n  GRATIANO. Fair sir, you are well o\'erta\'en.\n    My Lord Bassanio, upon more advice,\n    Hath sent you here this ring, and doth entreat\n    Your company at dinner.\n  PORTIA. That cannot be.\n    His ring I do accept most thankfully,\n    And so, I pray you, tell him. Furthermore,\n    I pray you show my youth old Shylock\'s house.\n  GRATIANO. That will I do.\n  NERISSA. Sir, I would speak with you.  \n    [Aside to PORTIA]  I\'ll See if I can get my husband\'s ring,\n    Which I did make him swear to keep for ever.\n  PORTIA.  [To NERISSA]  Thou Mayst, I warrant. We shall have old\n      swearing\n    That they did give the rings away to men;\n    But we\'ll outface them, and outswear them too.\n    [Aloud]  Away, make haste, thou know\'st where I will tarry.\n  NERISSA. Come, good sir, will you show me to this house?\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nBelmont. The garden before PORTIA\'S house\n\nEnter LORENZO and JESSICA\n\n  LORENZO. The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,\n    When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,\n    And they did make no noise- in such a night,\n    Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls,\n    And sigh\'d his soul toward the Grecian tents,\n    Where Cressid lay that night.\n  JESSICA. In such a night\n    Did Thisby fearfully o\'ertrip the dew,\n    And saw the lion\'s shadow ere himself,\n    And ran dismayed away.\n  LORENZO. In such a night\n    Stood Dido with a willow in her hand\n    Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love\n    To come again to Carthage.\n  JESSICA. In such a night\n    Medea gathered the enchanted herbs\n    That did renew old AEson.\n LORENZO. In such a night  \n    Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew,\n    And with an unthrift love did run from Venice\n    As far as Belmont.\n  JESSICA. In such a night\n    Did young Lorenzo swear he lov\'d her well,\n    Stealing her soul with many vows of faith,\n    And ne\'er a true one.\n  LORENZO. In such a night\n    Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew,\n    Slander her love, and he forgave it her.\n  JESSICA. I would out-night you, did no body come;\n    But, hark, I hear the footing of a man.\n\n                       Enter STEPHANO\n\n  LORENZO. Who comes so fast in silence of the night?\n  STEPHANO. A friend.\n  LORENZO. A friend! What friend? Your name, I pray you, friend?\n  STEPHANO. Stephano is my name, and I bring word\n    My mistress will before the break of day  \n    Be here at Belmont; she doth stray about\n    By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays\n    For happy wedlock hours.\n  LORENZO. Who comes with her?\n  STEPHANO. None but a holy hermit and her maid.\n    I pray you, is my master yet return\'d?\n  LORENZO. He is not, nor we have not heard from him.\n    But go we in, I pray thee, Jessica,\n    And ceremoniously let us prepare\n    Some welcome for the mistress of the house.\n\n                         Enter LAUNCELOT\n\n  LAUNCELOT. Sola, sola! wo ha, ho! sola, sola!\n  LORENZO. Who calls?\n  LAUNCELOT. Sola! Did you see Master Lorenzo? Master Lorenzo! Sola,\n    sola!\n  LORENZO. Leave holloaing, man. Here!\n  LAUNCELOT. Sola! Where, where?\n  LORENZO. Here!  \n  LAUNCELOT. Tell him there\'s a post come from my master with his\n    horn full of good news; my master will be here ere morning.\n Exit\n  LORENZO. Sweet soul, let\'s in, and there expect their coming.\n    And yet no matter- why should we go in?\n    My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you,\n    Within the house, your mistress is at hand;\n    And bring your music forth into the air.       Exit STEPHANO\n    How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!\n    Here will we sit and let the sounds of music\n    Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night\n    Become the touches of sweet harmony.\n    Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven\n    Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;\n    There\'s not the smallest orb which thou behold\'st\n    But in his motion like an angel sings,\n    Still quiring to the young-ey\'d cherubins;\n    Such harmony is in immortal souls,\n    But whilst this muddy vesture of decay\n    Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.  \n\n                          Enter MUSICIANS\n\n    Come, ho, and wake Diana with a hymn;\n    With sweetest touches pierce your mistress\' ear.\n    And draw her home with music.                        [Music]\n  JESSICA. I am never merry when I hear sweet music.\n  LORENZO. The reason is your spirits are attentive;\n    For do but note a wild and wanton herd,\n    Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,\n    Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,\n    Which is the hot condition of their blood-\n    If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,\n    Or any air of music touch their ears,\n    You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,\n    Their savage eyes turn\'d to a modest gaze\n    By the sweet power of music. Therefore the poet\n    Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods;\n    Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage,\n    But music for the time doth change his nature.  \n    The man that hath no music in himself,\n    Nor is not mov\'d with concord of sweet sounds,\n    Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;\n    The motions of his spirit are dull:as night,\n    And his affections dark as Erebus.\n    Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.\n\n                    Enter PORTIA and NERISSA\n\n  PORTIA. That light we see is burning in my hall.\n    How far that little candle throws his beams!\n    So shines a good deed in a naughty world.\n  NERISSA. When the moon shone, we did not see the candle.\n  PORTIA. So doth the greater glory dim the less:\n    A substitute shines brightly as a king\n    Until a king be by, and then his state\n    Empties itself, as doth an inland brook\n    Into the main of waters. Music! hark!\n  NERISSA. It is your music, madam, of the house.\n  PORTIA. Nothing is good, I see, without respect;  \n    Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.\n  NERISSA. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam.\n  PORTIA. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark\n    When neither is attended; and I think\n    ne nightingale, if she should sing by day,\n    When every goose is cackling, would be thought\n    No better a musician than the wren.\n    How many things by season season\'d are\n    To their right praise and true perfection!\n    Peace, ho! The moon sleeps with Endymion,\n    And would not be awak\'d.                      [Music ceases]\n  LORENZO. That is the voice,\n    Or I am much deceiv\'d, of Portia.\n  PORTIA. He knows me as the blind man knows the cuckoo,\n    By the bad voice.\n  LORENZO. Dear lady, welcome home.\n  PORTIA. We have been praying for our husbands\' welfare,\n    Which speed, we hope, the better for our words.\n    Are they return\'d?\n  LORENZO. Madam, they are not yet;  \n    But there is come a messenger before,\n    To signify their coming.\n  PORTIA.. Go in, Nerissa;\n    Give order to my servants that they take\n    No note at all of our being absent hence;\n    Nor you, Lorenzo; Jessica, nor you.        [A tucket sounds]\n  LORENZO. Your husband is at hand; I hear his trumpet.\n    We are no tell-tales, madam, fear you not.\n  PORTIA. This night methinks is but the daylight sick;\n    It looks a little paler; \'tis a day\n    Such as the day is when the sun is hid.\n\n       Enter BASSANIO, ANTONIO, GRATIANO, and their followers\n\n  BASSANIO. We should hold day with the Antipodes,\n    If you would walk in absence of the sun.\n  PORTIA. Let me give light, but let me not be light,\n    For a light wife doth make a heavy husband,\n    And never be Bassanio so for me;\n    But God sort all! You are welcome home, my lord.  \n  BASSANIO. I thank you, madam; give welcome to my friend.\n    This is the man, this is Antonio,\n    To whom I am so infinitely bound.\n  PORTIA. You should in all sense be much bound to him,\n    For, as I hear, he was much bound for you.\n  ANTONIO. No more than I am well acquitted of.\n  PORTIA. Sir, you are very welcome to our house.\n    It must appear in other ways than words,\n    Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy.\n  GRATIANO.  [To NERISSA]  By yonder moon I swear you do me wrong;\n    In faith, I gave it to the judge\'s clerk.\n    Would he were gelt that had it, for my part,\n    Since you do take it, love, so much at heart.\n  PORTIA. A quarrel, ho, already! What\'s the matter?\n  GRATIANO. About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring\n    That she did give me, whose posy was\n    For all the world like cutler\'s poetry\n    Upon a knife, \'Love me, and leave me not.\'\n  NERISSA. What talk you of the posy or the value?\n    You swore to me, when I did give it you,  \n    That you would wear it till your hour of death,\n    And that it should lie with you in your grave;\n    Though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths,\n    You should have been respective and have kept it.\n    Gave it a judge\'s clerk! No, God\'s my judge,\n    The clerk will ne\'er wear hair on\'s face that had it.\n  GRATIANO. He will, an if he live to be a man.\n  NERISSA. Ay, if a woman live to be a man.\n  GRATIANO. Now by this hand I gave it to a youth,\n    A kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy\n    No higher than thyself, the judge\'s clerk;\n    A prating boy that begg\'d it as a fee;\n    I could not for my heart deny it him.\n  PORTIA. You were to blame, I must be plain with you,\n    To part so slightly with your wife\'s first gift,\n    A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger\n    And so riveted with faith unto your flesh.\n    I gave my love a ring, and made him swear\n    Never to part with it, and here he stands;\n    I dare be sworn for him he would not leave it  \n    Nor pluck it from his finger for the wealth\n    That the world masters. Now, in faith, Gratiano,\n    You give your wife too unkind a cause of grief;\n    An \'twere to me, I should be mad at it.\n  BASSANIO.  [Aside]  Why, I were best to cut my left hand off,\n    And swear I lost the ring defending it.\n  GRATIANO. My Lord Bassanio gave his ring away\n    Unto the judge that begg\'d it, and indeed\n    Deserv\'d it too; and then the boy, his clerk,\n    That took some pains in writing, he begg\'d mine;\n    And neither man nor master would take aught\n    But the two rings.\n  PORTIA. What ring gave you, my lord?\n    Not that, I hope, which you receiv\'d of me.\n  BASSANIO. If I could add a lie unto a fault,\n    I would deny it; but you see my finger\n    Hath not the ring upon it; it is gone.\n  PORTIA. Even so void is your false heart of truth;\n    By heaven, I will ne\'er come in your bed\n    Until I see the ring.  \n  NERISSA. Nor I in yours\n    Till I again see mine.\n  BASSANIO. Sweet Portia,\n    If you did know to whom I gave the ring,\n    If you did know for whom I gave the ring,\n    And would conceive for what I gave the ring,\n    And how unwillingly I left the ring,\n    When nought would be accepted but the ring,\n    You would abate the strength of your displeasure.\n  PORTIA. If you had known the virtue of the ring,\n    Or half her worthiness that gave the ring,\n    Or your own honour to contain the ring,\n    You would not then have parted with the ring.\n    What man is there so much unreasonable,\n    If you had pleas\'d to have defended it\n    With any terms of zeal, wanted the modesty\n    To urge the thing held as a ceremony?\n    Nerissa teaches me what to believe:\n    I\'ll die for\'t but some woman had the ring.\n  BASSANIO. No, by my honour, madam, by my soul,  \n    No woman had it, but a civil doctor,\n    Which did refuse three thousand ducats of me,\n    And begg\'d the ring; the which I did deny him,\n    And suffer\'d him to go displeas\'d away-\n    Even he that had held up the very life\n    Of my dear friend. What should I say, sweet lady?\n    I was enforc\'d to send it after him;\n    I was beset with shame and courtesy;\n    My honour would not let ingratitude\n    So much besmear it. Pardon me, good lady;\n    For by these blessed candles of the night,\n    Had you been there, I think you would have begg\'d\n    The ring of me to give the worthy doctor.\n  PORTIA. Let not that doctor e\'er come near my house;\n    Since he hath got the jewel that I loved,\n    And that which you did swear to keep for me,\n    I will become as liberal as you;\n    I\'ll not deny him anything I have,\n    No, not my body, nor my husband\'s bed.\n    Know him I shall, I am well sure of it.  \n    Lie not a night from home; watch me like Argus;\n    If you do not, if I be left alone,\n    Now, by mine honour which is yet mine own,\n    I\'ll have that doctor for mine bedfellow.\n  NERISSA. And I his clerk; therefore be well advis\'d\n    How you do leave me to mine own protection.\n  GRATIANO. Well, do you so, let not me take him then;\n    For, if I do, I\'ll mar the young clerk\'s pen.\n  ANTONIO. I am th\' unhappy subject of these quarrels.\n  PORTIA. Sir, grieve not you; you are welcome not withstanding.\n  BASSANIO. Portia, forgive me this enforced wrong;\n    And in the hearing of these many friends\n    I swear to thee, even by thine own fair eyes,\n    Wherein I see myself-\n  PORTIA. Mark you but that!\n    In both my eyes he doubly sees himself,\n    In each eye one; swear by your double self,\n    And there\'s an oath of credit.\n  BASSANIO. Nay, but hear me.\n    Pardon this fault, and by my soul I swear  \n    I never more will break an oath with thee.\n  ANTONIO. I once did lend my body for his wealth,\n    Which, but for him that had your husband\'s ring,\n    Had quite miscarried; I dare be bound again,\n    My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord\n    Will never more break faith advisedly.\n  PORTIA. Then you shall be his surety. Give him this,\n    And bid him keep it better than the other.\n  ANTONIO. Here, Lord Bassanio, swear to keep this ring.\n  BASSANIO. By heaven, it is the same I gave the doctor!\n  PORTIA. I had it of him. Pardon me, Bassanio,\n    For, by this ring, the doctor lay with me.\n  NERISSA. And pardon me, my gentle Gratiano,\n    For that same scrubbed boy, the doctor\'s clerk,\n    In lieu of this, last night did lie with me.\n  GRATIANO. Why, this is like the mending of highways\n    In summer, where the ways are fair enough.\n    What, are we cuckolds ere we have deserv\'d it?\n  PORTIA. Speak not so grossly. You are all amaz\'d.\n    Here is a letter; read it at your leisure;  \n    It comes from Padua, from Bellario;\n    There you shall find that Portia was the doctor,\n    Nerissa there her clerk. Lorenzo here\n    Shall witness I set forth as soon as you,\n    And even but now return\'d; I have not yet\n    Enter\'d my house. Antonio, you are welcome;\n    And I have better news in store for you\n    Than you expect. Unseal this letter soon;\n    There you shall find three of your argosies\n    Are richly come to harbour suddenly.\n    You shall not know by what strange accident\n    I chanced on this letter.\n  ANTONIO. I am dumb.\n  BASSANIO. Were you the doctor, and I knew you not?\n  GRATIANO. Were you the clerk that is to make me cuckold?\n  NERISSA. Ay, but the clerk that never means to do it,\n    Unless he live until he be a man.\n  BASSANIO. Sweet doctor, you shall be my bedfellow;\n    When I am absent, then lie with my wife.\n  ANTONIO. Sweet lady, you have given me life and living;  \n    For here I read for certain that my ships\n    Are safely come to road.\n  PORTIA. How now, Lorenzo!\n    My clerk hath some good comforts too for you.\n  NERISSA. Ay, and I\'ll give them him without a fee.\n    There do I give to you and Jessica,\n    From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift,\n    After his death, of all he dies possess\'d of.\n  LORENZO. Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way\n    Of starved people.\n  PORTIA. It is almost morning,\n    And yet I am sure you are not satisfied\n    Of these events at full. Let us go in,\n    And charge us there upon inter\'gatories,\n    And we will answer all things faithfully.\n  GRATIANO. Let it be so. The first inter\'gatory\n    That my Nerissa shall be sworn on is,\n    Whether till the next night she had rather stay,\n    Or go to bed now, being two hours to day.\n    But were the day come, I should wish it dark,  \n    Till I were couching with the doctor\'s clerk.\n    Well, while I live, I\'ll fear no other thing\n    So sore as keeping safe Nerissa\'s ring.               Exeunt\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1601\n\nTHE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  SIR JOHN FALSTAFF\n  FENTON, a young gentleman\n  SHALLOW, a country justice\n  SLENDER, cousin to Shallow\n\n    Gentlemen of Windsor\n  FORD\n  PAGE\n  WILLIAM PAGE, a boy, son to Page\n  SIR HUGH EVANS, a Welsh parson\n  DOCTOR CAIUS, a French physician\n  HOST of the Garter Inn\n\n    Followers of Falstaff\n  BARDOLPH\n  PISTOL\n  NYM\n  ROBIN, page to Falstaff\n  SIMPLE, servant to Slender\n  RUGBY, servant to Doctor Caius  \n\n  MISTRESS FORD\n  MISTRESS PAGE\n  MISTRESS ANNE PAGE, her daughter\n  MISTRESS QUICKLY, servant to Doctor Caius\n  SERVANTS to Page, Ford, etc.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nWindsor, and the neighbourhood\n\n\nThe Merry Wives of Windsor\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE 1.\n\nWindsor. Before PAGE\'S house\n\nEnter JUSTICE SHALLOW, SLENDER, and SIR HUGH EVANS\n\n  SHALLOW. Sir Hugh, persuade me not; I will make a Star\n    Chamber matter of it; if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs,\n    he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, esquire.\n  SLENDER. In the county of Gloucester, Justice of Peace, and\n    Coram.\n  SHALLOW. Ay, cousin Slender, and Custalorum.\n  SLENDER. Ay, and Ratolorum too; and a gentleman born,\n    Master Parson, who writes himself \'Armigero\' in any bill,\n    warrant, quittance, or obligation-\'Armigero.\'\n  SHALLOW. Ay, that I do; and have done any time these three\n    hundred years.\n  SLENDER. All his successors, gone before him, hath done\'t;\n    and all his ancestors, that come after him, may: they may\n    give the dozen white luces in their coat.\n  SHALLOW. It is an old coat.\n  EVANS. The dozen white louses do become an old coat well;  \n    it agrees well, passant; it is a familiar beast to man, and\n    signifies love.\n  SHALLOW. The luce is the fresh fish; the salt fish is an old\n    coat.\n  SLENDER. I may quarter, coz.\n  SHALLOW. You may, by marrying.\n  EVANS. It is marring indeed, if he quarter it.\n  SHALLOW. Not a whit.\n  EVANS. Yes, py\'r lady! If he has a quarter of your coat, there\n    is but three skirts for yourself, in my simple conjectures;\n    but that is all one. If Sir John Falstaff have committed\n    disparagements unto you, I am of the church, and will be\n    glad to do my benevolence, to make atonements and\n    compremises between you.\n  SHALLOW. The Council shall hear it; it is a riot.\n  EVANS. It is not meet the Council hear a riot; there is no\n    fear of Got in a riot; the Council, look you, shall desire\n    to hear the fear of Got, and not to hear a riot; take your\n    vizaments in that.\n  SHALLOW. Ha! o\' my life, if I were young again, the sword  \n    should end it.\n  EVANS. It is petter that friends is the sword and end it;\n    and there is also another device in my prain, which\n    peradventure prings goot discretions with it. There is Anne\n    Page, which is daughter to Master George Page, which is\n    pretty virginity.\n  SLENDER. Mistress Anne Page? She has brown hair, and\n    speaks small like a woman.\n  EVANS. It is that fery person for all the orld, as just as you\n    will desire; and seven hundred pounds of moneys, and\n    gold, and silver, is her grandsire upon his death\'s-bed-Got\n    deliver to a joyful resurrections!-give, when she is able to\n    overtake seventeen years old. It were a goot motion if we\n    leave our pribbles and prabbles, and desire a marriage\n    between Master Abraham and Mistress Anne Page.\n  SHALLOW. Did her grandsire leave her seven hundred pound?\n  EVANS. Ay, and her father is make her a petter penny.\n  SHALLOW. I know the young gentlewoman; she has good\n    gifts.\n  EVANS. Seven hundred pounds, and possibilities, is goot gifts.  \n  SHALLOW. Well, let us see honest Master Page. Is Falstaff\n    there?\n  EVANS. Shall I tell you a lie? I do despise a liar as I do\n    despise one that is false; or as I despise one that is not\n    true. The knight Sir John is there; and, I beseech you, be\n    ruled by your well-willers. I will peat the door for Master\n    Page.\n    [Knocks]  What, hoa! Got pless your house here!\n  PAGE.  [Within]  Who\'s there?\n\n                            Enter PAGE\n\n  EVANS. Here is Got\'s plessing, and your friend, and Justice\n  Shallow; and here young Master Slender, that peradventures\n    shall tell you another tale, if matters grow to your\n    likings.\n  PAGE. I am glad to see your worships well. I thank you for\n    my venison, Master Shallow.\n  SHALLOW. Master Page, I am glad to see you; much good do\n    it your good heart! I wish\'d your venison better; it was ill  \n    kill\'d. How doth good Mistress Page?-and I thank you\n    always with my heart, la! with my heart.\n  PAGE. Sir, I thank you.\n  SHALLOW. Sir, I thank you; by yea and no, I do.\n  PAGE. I am glad to see you, good Master Slender.\n  SLENDER. How does your fallow greyhound, sir? I heard say\n    he was outrun on Cotsall.\n  PAGE. It could not be judg\'d, sir.\n  SLENDER. You\'ll not confess, you\'ll not confess.\n  SHALLOW. That he will not. \'Tis your fault; \'tis your fault;\n    \'tis a good dog.\n  PAGE. A cur, sir.\n  SHALLOW. Sir, he\'s a good dog, and a fair dog. Can there be\n    more said? He is good, and fair. Is Sir John Falstaff here?\n  PAGE. Sir, he is within; and I would I could do a good office\n    between you.\n  EVANS. It is spoke as a Christians ought to speak.\n  SHALLOW. He hath wrong\'d me, Master Page.\n  PAGE. Sir, he doth in some sort confess it.\n  SHALLOW. If it be confessed, it is not redressed; is not that  \n    so, Master Page? He hath wrong\'d me; indeed he hath; at a\n    word, he hath, believe me; Robert Shallow, esquire, saith\n    he is wronged.\n  PAGE. Here comes Sir John.\n\n      Enter SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, BARDOLPH, NYM, and PISTOL\n\n  FALSTAFF. Now, Master Shallow, you\'ll complain of me to\n    the King?\n  SHALLOW. Knight, you have beaten my men, kill\'d my deer,\n    and broke open my lodge.\n  FALSTAFF. But not kiss\'d your keeper\'s daughter.\n  SHALLOW. Tut, a pin! this shall be answer\'d.\n  FALSTAFF. I will answer it straight: I have done all this.\n    That is now answer\'d.\n  SHALLOW. The Council shall know this.\n  FALSTAFF. \'Twere better for you if it were known in counsel:\n    you\'ll be laugh\'d at.\n  EVANS. Pauca verba, Sir John; goot worts.\n  FALSTAFF. Good worts! good cabbage! Slender, I broke your  \n    head; what matter have you against me?\n  SLENDER. Marry, sir, I have matter in my head against you;\n    and against your cony-catching rascals, Bardolph, Nym,\n    and Pistol. They carried me to the tavern, and made me\n    drunk, and afterwards pick\'d my pocket.\n  BARDOLPH. You Banbury cheese!\n  SLENDER. Ay, it is no matter.\n  PISTOL. How now, Mephostophilus!\n  SLENDER. Ay, it is no matter.\n  NYM. Slice, I say! pauca, pauca; slice! That\'s my humour.\n  SLENDER. Where\'s Simple, my man? Can you tell, cousin?\n  EVANS. Peace, I pray you. Now let us understand. There is\n    three umpires in this matter, as I understand: that is,\n    Master Page, fidelicet Master Page; and there is myself,\n    fidelicet myself; and the three party is, lastly and\n    finally, mine host of the Garter.\n  PAGE. We three to hear it and end it between them.\n  EVANS. Fery goot. I will make a prief of it in my note-book;\n    and we will afterwards ork upon the cause with as great\n    discreetly as we can.  \n  FALSTAFF. Pistol!\n  PISTOL. He hears with ears.\n  EVANS. The tevil and his tam! What phrase is this, \'He hears\n    with ear\'? Why, it is affectations.\n  FALSTAFF. Pistol, did you pick Master Slender\'s purse?\n  SLENDER. Ay, by these gloves, did he-or I would I might\n    never come in mine own great chamber again else!-of\n    seven groats in mill-sixpences, and two Edward\n    shovel-boards that cost me two shilling and two pence apiece\n    of Yead Miller, by these gloves.\n  FALSTAFF. Is this true, Pistol?\n  EVANS. No, it is false, if it is a pick-purse.\n  PISTOL. Ha, thou mountain-foreigner! Sir John and master\n    mine,\n    I combat challenge of this latten bilbo.\n    Word of denial in thy labras here!\n    Word of denial! Froth and scum, thou liest.\n  SLENDER. By these gloves, then, \'twas he.\n  NYM. Be avis\'d, sir, and pass good humours; I will say\n    \'marry trap\' with you, if you run the nuthook\'s humour on  \n    me; that is the very note of it.\n  SLENDER. By this hat, then, he in the red face had it; for\n    though I cannot remember what I did when you made me\n    drunk, yet I am not altogether an ass.\n  FALSTAFF. What say you, Scarlet and John?\n  BARDOLPH. Why, sir, for my part, I say the gentleman had\n    drunk himself out of his five sentences.\n  EVANS. It is his five senses; fie, what the ignorance is!\n  BARDOLPH. And being fap, sir, was, as they say, cashier\'d;\n    and so conclusions pass\'d the careers.\n  SLENDER. Ay, you spake in Latin then too; but \'tis no matter;\n    I\'ll ne\'er be drunk whilst I live again, but in honest,\n    civil, godly company, for this trick. If I be drunk, I\'ll be\n    drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with\n    drunken knaves.\n  EVANS. So Got udge me, that is a virtuous mind.\n  FALSTAFF. You hear all these matters deni\'d, gentlemen; you\n    hear it.\n\n          Enter MISTRESS ANNE PAGE with wine; MISTRESS  \n               FORD and MISTRESS PAGE, following\n\n  PAGE. Nay, daughter, carry the wine in; we\'ll drink within.\n                                                  Exit ANNE PAGE\n  SLENDER. O heaven! this is Mistress Anne Page.\n  PAGE. How now, Mistress Ford!\n  FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford, by my troth, you are very well\n    met; by your leave, good mistress.              [Kisses her]\n  PAGE. Wife, bid these gentlemen welcome. Come, we have a\n    hot venison pasty to dinner; come, gentlemen, I hope we\n    shall drink down all unkindness.\n                      Exeunt all but SHALLOW, SLENDER, and EVANS\n  SLENDER. I had rather than forty shillings I had my Book of\n    Songs and Sonnets here.\n\n                          Enter SIMPLE\n\n    How, Simple! Where have you been? I must wait on\n    myself, must I? You have not the Book of Riddles about you,\n    have you?  \n  SIMPLE. Book of Riddles! Why, did you not lend it to Alice\n    Shortcake upon Allhallowmas last, a fortnight afore\n    Michaelmas?\n  SHALLOW. Come, coz; come, coz; we stay for you. A word\n    with you, coz; marry, this, coz: there is, as \'twere, a\n    tender, a kind of tender, made afar off by Sir Hugh here. Do\n    you understand me?\n  SLENDER. Ay, sir, you shall find me reasonable; if it be so, I\n    shall do that that is reason.\n  SHALLOW. Nay, but understand me.\n  SLENDER. So I do, sir.\n  EVANS. Give ear to his motions: Master Slender, I will\n    description the matter to you, if you be capacity of it.\n  SLENDER. Nay, I will do as my cousin Shallow says; I pray\n    you pardon me; he\'s a justice of peace in his country,\n    simple though I stand here.\n  EVANS. But that is not the question. The question is\n    concerning your marriage.\n  SHALLOW. Ay, there\'s the point, sir.\n  EVANS. Marry is it; the very point of it; to Mistress Anne  \n    Page.\n  SLENDER. Why, if it be so, I will marry her upon any\n    reasonable demands.\n  EVANS. But can you affection the oman? Let us command to\n    know that of your mouth or of your lips; for divers philosophers\n    hold that the lips is parcel of the mouth. Therefore,\n    precisely, can you carry your good will to the maid?\n  SHALLOW. Cousin Abraham Slender, can you love her?\n  SLENDER. I hope, sir, I will do as it shall become one that\n    would do reason.\n  EVANS. Nay, Got\'s lords and his ladies! you must speak possitable,\n    if you can carry her your desires towards her.\n  SHALLOW. That you must. Will you, upon good dowry,\n    marry her?\n  SLENDER. I will do a greater thing than that upon your request,\n    cousin, in any reason.\n  SHALLOW. Nay, conceive me, conceive me, sweet coz; what\n    I do is to pleasure you, coz. Can you love the maid?\n  SLENDER. I will marry her, sir, at your request; but if there\n    be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease  \n    it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and\n    have more occasion to know one another. I hope upon\n    familiarity will grow more contempt. But if you say\n    \'marry her,\' I will marry her; that I am freely dissolved,\n    and dissolutely.\n  EVANS. It is a fery discretion answer, save the fall is in the\n    ord \'dissolutely\': the ort is, according to our meaning,\n    \'resolutely\'; his meaning is good.\n  SHALLOW. Ay, I think my cousin meant well.\n  SLENDER. Ay, or else I would I might be hang\'d, la!\n\n                       Re-enter ANNE PAGE\n\n  SHALLOW. Here comes fair Mistress Anne. Would I were\n    young for your sake, Mistress Anne!\n  ANNE. The dinner is on the table; my father desires your\n    worships\' company.\n  SHALLOW. I will wait on him, fair Mistress Anne!\n  EVANS. Od\'s plessed will! I will not be absence at the grace.\n                                        Exeunt SHALLOW and EVANS  \n  ANNE. Will\'t please your worship to come in, sir?\n  SLENDER. No, I thank you, forsooth, heartily; I am very\n    well.\n  ANNE. The dinner attends you, sir.\n  SLENDER. I am not a-hungry, I thank you, forsooth. Go,\n    sirrah, for all you are my man, go wait upon my cousin\n  Shallow.  [Exit SIMPLE]  A justice of peace sometime may\n    be beholding to his friend for a man. I keep but three men\n    and a boy yet, till my mother be dead. But what though?\n    Yet I live like a poor gentleman born.\n  ANNE. I may not go in without your worship; they will not\n    sit till you come.\n  SLENDER. I\' faith, I\'ll eat nothing; I thank you as much as\n    though I did.\n  ANNE. I pray you, sir, walk in.\n  SLENDER. I had rather walk here, I thank you. I bruis\'d my\n    shin th\' other day with playing at sword and dagger with\n    a master of fence-three veneys for a dish of stew\'d prunes\n    -and, I with my ward defending my head, he hot my shin,\n    and, by my troth, I cannot abide the smell of hot meat  \n    since. Why do your dogs bark so? Be there bears i\' th\'\n    town?\n  ANNE. I think there are, sir; I heard them talk\'d of.\n  SLENDER. I love the sport well; but I shall as soon quarrel at\n    it as any man in England. You are afraid, if you see the\n    bear loose, are you not?\n  ANNE. Ay, indeed, sir.\n  SLENDER. That\'s meat and drink to me now. I have seen\n    Sackerson loose twenty times, and have taken him by the\n    chain; but I warrant you, the women have so cried and\n    shriek\'d at it that it pass\'d; but women, indeed, cannot\n    abide \'em; they are very ill-favour\'d rough things.\n\n                         Re-enter PAGE\n\n  PAGE. Come, gentle Master Slender, come; we stay for you.\n  SLENDER. I\'ll eat nothing, I thank you, sir.\n  PAGE. By cock and pie, you shall not choose, sir! Come,\n    come.\n  SLENDER. Nay, pray you lead the way.  \n  PAGE. Come on, sir.\n  SLENDER. Mistress Anne, yourself shall go first.\n  ANNE. Not I, sir; pray you keep on.\n  SLENDER. Truly, I will not go first; truly, la! I will not do\n    you that wrong.\n  ANNE. I pray you, sir.\n  SLENDER. I\'ll rather be unmannerly than troublesome. You\n    do yourself wrong indeed, la!                         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\n\nBefore PAGE\'S house\n\nEnter SIR HUGH EVANS and SIMPLE\n\n  EVANS. Go your ways, and ask of Doctor Caius\' house which\n    is the way; and there dwells one Mistress Quickly, which\n    is in the manner of his nurse, or his dry nurse, or his cook,\n    or his laundry, his washer, and his wringer.\n  SIMPLE. Well, sir.\n  EVANS. Nay, it is petter yet. Give her this letter; for it is a\n    oman that altogether\'s acquaintance with Mistress Anne\n    Page; and the letter is to desire and require her to solicit\n    your master\'s desires to Mistress Anne Page. I pray you\n    be gone. I will make an end of my dinner; there\'s pippins\n    and cheese to come.                                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\n\nThe Garter Inn\n\nEnter FALSTAFF, HOST, BARDOLPH, NYM, PISTOL, and ROBIN\n\n  FALSTAFF. Mine host of the Garter!\n  HOST. What says my bully rook? Speak scholarly and\n    wisely.\n  FALSTAFF. Truly, mine host, I must turn away some of my\n    followers.\n  HOST. Discard, bully Hercules; cashier; let them wag; trot,\n    trot.\n  FALSTAFF. I sit at ten pounds a week.\n  HOST. Thou\'rt an emperor-Caesar, Keiser, and Pheazar. I\n    will entertain Bardolph; he shall draw, he shall tap; said I\n    well, bully Hector?\n  FALSTAFF. Do so, good mine host.\n  HOST. I have spoke; let him follow.  [To BARDOLPH]  Let me\n    see thee froth and lime. I am at a word; follow.   Exit HOST\n  FALSTAFF. Bardolph, follow him. A tapster is a good trade;\n    an old cloak makes a new jerkin; a wither\'d serving-man a  \n    fresh tapster. Go; adieu.\n  BARDOLPH. It is a life that I have desir\'d; I will thrive.\n  PISTOL. O base Hungarian wight! Wilt thou the spigot\n    wield?                                         Exit BARDOLPH\n  NYM. He was gotten in drink. Is not the humour conceited?\n  FALSTAFF. I am glad I am so acquit of this tinder-box: his\n    thefts were too open; his filching was like an unskilful\n    singer-he kept not time.\n  NYM. The good humour is to steal at a minute\'s rest.\n  PISTOL. \'Convey\' the wise it call. \'Steal\' foh! A fico for the\n    phrase!\n  FALSTAFF. Well, sirs, I am almost out at heels.\n  PISTOL. Why, then, let kibes ensue.\n  FALSTAFF. There is no remedy; I must cony-catch; I must\n    shift.\n  PISTOL. Young ravens must have food.\n  FALSTAFF. Which of you know Ford of this town?\n  PISTOL. I ken the wight; he is of substance good.\n  FALSTAFF. My honest lads, I will tell you what I am about.\n  PISTOL. Two yards, and more.  \n  FALSTAFF. No quips now, Pistol. Indeed, I am in the waist\n    two yards about; but I am now about no waste; I am about\n    thrift. Briefly, I do mean to make love to Ford\'s wife; I\n    spy entertainment in her; she discourses, she carves, she\n    gives the leer of invitation; I can construe the action of her\n    familiar style; and the hardest voice of her behaviour, to be\n    English\'d rightly, is \'I am Sir John Falstaff\'s.\'\n    PISTOL. He hath studied her well, and translated her will out\n    of honesty into English.\n  NYM. The anchor is deep; will that humour pass?\n  FALSTAFF. Now, the report goes she has all the rule of her\n    husband\'s purse; he hath a legion of angels.\n  PISTOL. As many devils entertain; and \'To her, boy,\' say I.\n  NYM. The humour rises; it is good; humour me the angels.\n  FALSTAFF. I have writ me here a letter to her; and here\n    another to Page\'s wife, who even now gave me good eyes\n    too, examin\'d my parts with most judicious oeillades;\n    sometimes the beam of her view gilded my foot, sometimes my\n    portly belly.\n  PISTOL. Then did the sun on dunghill shine.  \n  NYM. I thank thee for that humour.\n  FALSTAFF. O, she did so course o\'er my exteriors with such\n    a greedy intention that the appetite of her eye did seem to\n    scorch me up like a burning-glass! Here\'s another letter to\n    her. She bears the purse too; she is a region in Guiana, all\n    gold and bounty. I will be cheaters to them both, and they\n    shall be exchequers to me; they shall be my East and West\n    Indies, and I will trade to them both. Go, bear thou this\n    letter to Mistress Page; and thou this to Mistress Ford. We\n    will thrive, lads, we will thrive.\n  PISTOL. Shall I Sir Pandarus of Troy become,\n    And by my side wear steel? Then Lucifer take all!\n  NYM. I will run no base humour. Here, take the\n    humour-letter; I will keep the haviour of reputation.\n  FALSTAFF.  [To ROBIN]  Hold, sirrah; bear you these letters\n    tightly;\n    Sail like my pinnace to these golden shores.\n    Rogues, hence, avaunt! vanish like hailstones, go;\n    Trudge, plod away i\' th\' hoof; seek shelter, pack!\n    Falstaff will learn the humour of the age;  \n    French thrift, you rogues; myself, and skirted page.\n                                       Exeunt FALSTAFF and ROBIN\n  PISTOL. Let vultures gripe thy guts! for gourd and fullam\n    holds,\n    And high and low beguiles the rich and poor;\n    Tester I\'ll have in pouch when thou shalt lack,\n    Base Phrygian Turk!\n  NYM. I have operations in my head which be humours of\n    revenge.\n  PISTOL. Wilt thou revenge?\n  NYM. By welkin and her star!\n  PISTOL. With wit or steel?\n  NYM. With both the humours, I.\n    I will discuss the humour of this love to Page.\n  PISTOL. And I to Ford shall eke unfold\n    How Falstaff, varlet vile,\n    His dove will prove, his gold will hold,\n    And his soft couch defile.\n  NYM. My humour shall not cool; I will incense Page to deal\n    with poison; I will possess him with yellowness; for the  \n    revolt of mine is dangerous. That is my true humour.\n  PISTOL. Thou art the Mars of malcontents; I second thee;\n    troop on.                                             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4.\n\nDOCTOR CAIUS\'S house\n\nEnter MISTRESS QUICKLY, SIMPLE, and RUGBY\n\n  QUICKLY. What, John Rugby! I pray thee go to the casement\n    and see if you can see my master, Master Doctor\n    Caius, coming. If he do, i\' faith, and find anybody in the\n    house, here will be an old abusing of God\'s patience and\n    the King\'s English.\n  RUGBY. I\'ll go watch.\n  QUICKLY. Go; and we\'ll have a posset for\'t soon at night, in\n    faith, at the latter end of a sea-coal fire.  [Exit RUGBY]  An\n    honest, willing, kind fellow, as ever servant shall come in\n    house withal; and, I warrant you, no tell-tale nor no\n    breed-bate; his worst fault is that he is given to prayer; he is\n    something peevish that way; but nobody but has his fault;\n    but let that pass. Peter Simple you say your name is?\n  SIMPLE. Ay, for fault of a better.\n  QUICKLY. And Master Slender\'s your master?\n  SIMPLE. Ay, forsooth.  \n  QUICKLY. Does he not wear a great round beard, like a\n    glover\'s paring-knife?\n  SIMPLE. No, forsooth; he hath but a little whey face, with a\n    little yellow beard, a Cain-colour\'d beard.\n  QUICKLY. A softly-sprighted man, is he not?\n  SIMPLE. Ay, forsooth; but he is as tall a man of his hands as\n    any is between this and his head; he hath fought with a\n    warrener.\n  QUICKLY. How say you? O, I should remember him. Does\n    he not hold up his head, as it were, and strut in his gait?\n  SIMPLE. Yes, indeed, does he.\n  QUICKLY. Well, heaven send Anne Page no worse fortune!\n    Tell Master Parson Evans I will do what I can for your\n    master. Anne is a good girl, and I wish-\n\n                         Re-enter RUGBY\n\n  RUGBY. Out, alas! here comes my master.\n  QUICKLY. We shall all be shent. Run in here, good young\n    man; go into this closet.  [Shuts SIMPLE in the closet]  He  \n    will not stay long. What, John Rugby! John! what, John,\n    I say! Go, John, go inquire for my master; I doubt he be\n    not well that he comes not home.  [Singing]\n    And down, down, adown-a, etc.\n\n                       Enter DOCTOR CAIUS\n\n  CAIUS. Vat is you sing? I do not like des toys. Pray you, go\n    and vetch me in my closet un boitier vert-a box, a green-a\n    box. Do intend vat I speak? A green-a box.\n  QUICKLY. Ay, forsooth, I\'ll fetch it you.  [Aside]  I am glad\n    he went not in himself; if he had found the young man,\n    he would have been horn-mad.\n  CAIUS. Fe, fe, fe fe! ma foi, il fait fort chaud. Je m\'en vais a\n    la cour-la grande affaire.\n  QUICKLY. Is it this, sir?\n  CAIUS. Oui; mette le au mon pocket: depeche, quickly. Vere\n    is dat knave, Rugby?\n  QUICKLY. What, John Rugby? John!\n  RUGBY. Here, sir.  \n  CAIUS. You are John Rugby, and you are Jack Rugby.\n    Come, take-a your rapier, and come after my heel to the\n    court.\n  RUGBY. \'Tis ready, sir, here in the porch.\n    CAIUS. By my trot, I tarry too long. Od\'s me! Qu\'ai j\'oublie?\n    Dere is some simples in my closet dat I vill not for the\n    varld I shall leave behind.\n  QUICKLY. Ay me, he\'ll find the young man there, and be\n    mad!\n  CAIUS. O diable, diable! vat is in my closet? Villainy! larron!\n    [Pulling SIMPLE out]  Rugby, my rapier!\n  QUICKLY. Good master, be content.\n  CAIUS. Wherefore shall I be content-a?\n  QUICKLY. The young man is an honest man.\n  CAIUS. What shall de honest man do in my closet? Dere is\n    no honest man dat shall come in my closet.\n  QUICKLY. I beseech you, be not so phlegmatic; hear the\n    truth of it. He came of an errand to me from Parson Hugh.\n  CAIUS. Vell?\n  SIMPLE. Ay, forsooth, to desire her to-  \n  QUICKLY. Peace, I pray you.\n  CAIUS. Peace-a your tongue. Speak-a your tale.\n  SIMPLE. To desire this honest gentlewoman, your maid, to\n    speak a good word to Mistress Anne Page for my master,\n    in the way of marriage.\n  QUICKLY. This is all, indeed, la! but I\'ll ne\'er put my finger\n    in the fire, and need not.\n  CAIUS. Sir Hugh send-a you? Rugby, baillez me some paper.\n    Tarry you a little-a-while.                        [Writes]\n  QUICKLY.  [Aside to SIMPLE]  I am glad he is so quiet; if he\n    had been throughly moved, you should have heard him\n    so loud and so melancholy. But notwithstanding, man, I\'ll\n    do you your master what good I can; and the very yea and\n    the no is, the French doctor, my master-I may call him\n    my master, look you, for I keep his house; and I wash,\n    wring, brew, bake, scour, dress meat and drink, make the\n    beds, and do all myself-\n  SIMPLE.  [Aside to QUICKLY]  \'Tis a great charge to come\n    under one body\'s hand.\n  QUICKLY.  [Aside to SIMPLE]  Are you avis\'d o\' that? You  \n    shall find it a great charge; and to be up early and down\n    late; but notwithstanding-to tell you in your ear, I would\n    have no words of it-my master himself is in love with\n    Mistress Anne Page; but notwithstanding that, I know\n    Anne\'s mind-that\'s neither here nor there.\n  CAIUS. You jack\'nape; give-a this letter to Sir Hugh; by gar,\n    it is a shallenge; I will cut his troat in de park; and I will\n    teach a scurvy jack-a-nape priest to meddle or make. You\n    may be gone; it is not good you tarry here. By gar, I will\n    cut all his two stones; by gar, he shall not have a stone\n    to throw at his dog.                             Exit SIMPLE\n  QUICKLY. Alas, he speaks but for his friend.\n  CAIUS. It is no matter-a ver dat. Do not you tell-a me dat I\n    shall have Anne Page for myself? By gar, I vill kill de Jack\n    priest; and I have appointed mine host of de Jarteer to\n    measure our weapon. By gar, I will myself have Anne\n    Page.\n  QUICKLY. Sir, the maid loves you, and all shall be well. We\n    must give folks leave to prate. What the good-year!\n  CAIUS. Rugby, come to the court with me. By gar, if I have  \n    not Anne Page, I shall turn your head out of my door.\n    Follow my heels, Rugby.               Exeunt CAIUS and RUGBY\n  QUICKLY. You shall have-An fool\'s-head of your own. No,\n    I know Anne\'s mind for that; never a woman in Windsor\n    knows more of Anne\'s mind than I do; nor can do more\n    than I do with her, I thank heaven.\n  FENTON.  [Within]  Who\'s within there? ho!\n  QUICKLY. Who\'s there, I trow? Come near the house, I pray\n    you.\n\n                          Enter FENTON\n\n  FENTON. How now, good woman, how dost thou?\n  QUICKLY. The better that it pleases your good worship to\n    ask.\n  FENTON. What news? How does pretty Mistress Anne?\n  QUICKLY. In truth, sir, and she is pretty, and honest, and\n    gentle; and one that is your friend, I can tell you that by\n    the way; I praise heaven for it.\n  FENTON. Shall I do any good, think\'st thou? Shall I not lose  \n    my suit?\n  QUICKLY. Troth, sir, all is in His hands above; but\n    notwithstanding, Master Fenton, I\'ll be sworn on a book\n    she loves you. Have not your worship a wart above your eye?\n  FENTON. Yes, marry, have I; what of that?\n  QUICKLY. Well, thereby hangs a tale; good faith, it is such\n    another Nan; but, I detest, an honest maid as ever broke\n    bread. We had an hour\'s talk of that wart; I shall never\n    laugh but in that maid\'s company! But, indeed, she is\n    given too much to allicholy and musing; but for you-well,\n    go to.\n  FENTON. Well, I shall see her to-day. Hold, there\'s money\n    for thee; let me have thy voice in my behalf. If thou seest\n    her before me, commend me.\n  QUICKLY. Will I? I\' faith, that we will; and I will tell your\n    worship more of the wart the next time we have confidence;\n    and of other wooers.\n  FENTON. Well, farewell; I am in great haste now.\n  QUICKLY. Farewell to your worship.  [Exit FENTON]  Truly,\n    an honest gentleman; but Anne loves him not; for I know  \n    Anne\'s mind as well as another does. Out upon \'t, what\n    have I forgot?                                          Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 1.\n\nBefore PAGE\'S house\n\nEnter MISTRESS PAGE, with a letter\n\n  MRS. PAGE. What! have I scap\'d love-letters in the holiday-time\n    of my beauty, and am I now a subject for them? Let\n    me see.                                              [Reads]\n    \'Ask me no reason why I love you; for though Love use\n    Reason for his precisian, he admits him not for his counsellor.\n    You are not young, no more am I; go to, then, there\'s\n    sympathy. You are merry, so am I; ha! ha! then there\'s\n    more sympathy. You love sack, and so do I; would you\n    desire better sympathy? Let it suffice thee, Mistress Page\n    at the least, if the love of soldier can suffice-that I love\n    thee. I will not say, Pity me: \'tis not a soldier-like phrase;\n    but I say, Love me. By me,\n    Thine own true knight,\n    By day or night,\n    Or any kind of light,\n    With all his might,  \n    For thee to fight,\n    JOHN FALSTAFF.\'\n    What a Herod of Jewry is this! O wicked, wicked world!\n    One that is well-nigh worn to pieces with age to show\n    himself a young gallant! What an unweighed behaviour\n    hath this Flemish drunkard pick\'d-with the devil\'s name!\n    -out of my conversation, that he dares in this manner\n    assay me? Why, he hath not been thrice in my company!\n    What should I say to him? I was then frugal of my mirth.\n    Heaven forgive me! Why, I\'ll exhibit a bill in the parliament\n    for the putting down of men. How shall I be\n    reveng\'d on him? for reveng\'d I will be, as sure as his guts\n    are made of puddings.\n\n                       Enter MISTRESS FORD\n\n  MRS. FORD. Mistress Page! trust me, I was going to your\n    house.\n  MRS. PAGE. And, trust me, I was coming to you. You look\n    very ill.  \n  MRS. FORD. Nay, I\'ll ne\'er believe that; I have to show to\n    the contrary.\n  MRS. PAGE. Faith, but you do, in my mind.\n  MRS. FORD. Well, I do, then; yet, I say, I could show you to\n    the contrary. O Mistress Page, give me some counsel.\n  MRS. PAGE. What\'s the matter, woman?\n  MRS. FORD. O woman, if it were not for one trifling respect,\n    I could come to such honour!\n  MRS. PAGE. Hang the trifle, woman; take the honour. What\n    is it? Dispense with trifles; what is it?\n  MRS. FORD. If I would but go to hell for an eternal moment\n    or so, I could be knighted.\n  MRS. PAGE. What? Thou liest. Sir Alice Ford! These knights\n    will hack; and so thou shouldst not alter the article of thy\n    gentry.\n  MRS. FORD. We burn daylight. Here, read, read; perceive\n    how I might be knighted. I shall think the worse of fat\n    men as long as I have an eye to make difference of men\'s\n    liking. And yet he would not swear; prais\'d women\'s\n    modesty, and gave such orderly and well-behaved reproof  \n    to all uncomeliness that I would have sworn his disposition\n    would have gone to the truth of his words; but they do no\n    more adhere and keep place together than the Hundredth\n    Psalm to the tune of \'Greensleeves.\' What tempest, I trow,\n    threw this whale, with so many tuns of oil in his belly,\n    ashore at Windsor? How shall I be revenged on him? I\n    think the best way were to entertain him with hope, till\n    the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease.\n    Did you ever hear the like?\n  MRS. PAGE. Letter for letter, but that the name of Page and\n    Ford differs. To thy great comfort in this mystery of ill\n    opinions, here\'s the twin-brother of thy letter; but let thine\n    inherit first, for, I protest, mine never shall. I warrant he\n    hath a thousand of these letters, writ with blank space for\n    different names-sure, more!-and these are of the second\n    edition. He will print them, out of doubt; for he cares not\n    what he puts into the press when he would put us two. I\n    had rather be a giantess and lie under Mount Pelion. Well,\n    I will find you twenty lascivious turtles ere one chaste\n    man.  \n  MRS. FORD. Why, this is the very same; the very hand, the\n    very words. What doth he think of us?\n  MRS. PAGE. Nay, I know not; it makes me almost ready to\n    wrangle with mine own honesty. I\'ll entertain myself like\n    one that I am not acquainted withal; for, sure, unless he\n    know some strain in me that I know not myself, he would\n    never have boarded me in this fury.\n  MRS. FORD. \'Boarding\' call you it? I\'ll be sure to keep him\n    above deck.\n  MRS. PAGE. So will I; if he come under my hatches, I\'ll never\n    to sea again. Let\'s be reveng\'d on him; let\'s appoint him a\n    meeting, give him a show of comfort in his suit, and lead\n    him on with a fine-baited delay, till he hath pawn\'d his\n    horses to mine host of the Garter.\n  MRS. FORD. Nay, I will consent to act any villainy against\n    him that may not sully the chariness of our honesty. O\n    that my husband saw this letter! It would give eternal food\n    to his jealousy.\n  MRS. PAGE. Why, look where he comes; and my good man\n    too; he\'s as far from jealousy as I am from giving him  \n    cause; and that, I hope, is an unmeasurable distance.\n  MRS. FORD. You are the happier woman.\n  MRS. PAGE. Let\'s consult together against this greasy knight.\n    Come hither.                                   [They retire]\n\n           Enter FORD with PISTOL, and PAGE with Nym\n\n  FORD. Well, I hope it be not so.\n  PISTOL. Hope is a curtal dog in some affairs.\n    Sir John affects thy wife.\n  FORD. Why, sir, my wife is not young.\n  PISTOL. He woos both high and low, both rich and poor,\n    Both young and old, one with another, Ford;\n    He loves the gallimaufry. Ford, perpend.\n  FORD. Love my wife!\n  PISTOL. With liver burning hot. Prevent, or go thou,\n    Like Sir Actaeon he, with Ringwood at thy heels.\n    O, odious is the name!\n  FORD. What name, sir?\n  PISTOL. The horn, I say. Farewell.  \n    Take heed, have open eye, for thieves do foot by night;\n    Take heed, ere summer comes, or cuckoo birds do sing.\n    Away, Sir Corporal Nym.\n    Believe it, Page; he speaks sense.               Exit PISTOL\n  FORD.  [Aside]  I will be patient; I will find out this.\n  NYM.  [To PAGE]  And this is true; I like not the humour of\n    lying. He hath wronged me in some humours; I should\n    have borne the humour\'d letter to her; but I have a sword,\n    and it shall bite upon my necessity. He loves your wife;\n    there\'s the short and the long.\n    My name is Corporal Nym; I speak, and I avouch;\n    \'Tis true. My name is Nym, and Falstaff loves your wife.\n    Adieu! I love not the humour of bread and cheese; and\n    there\'s the humour of it. Adieu.                    Exit Nym\n  PAGE. \'The humour of it,\' quoth \'a! Here\'s a fellow frights\n    English out of his wits.\n  FORD. I will seek out Falstaff.\n  PAGE. I never heard such a drawling, affecting rogue.\n  FORD. If I do find it-well.\n  PAGE. I will not believe such a Cataian though the priest o\'  \n    th\' town commended him for a true man.\n  FORD. \'Twas a good sensible fellow. Well.\n\n             MISTRESS PAGE and MISTRESS FORD come forward\n\n  PAGE. How now, Meg!\n  MRS. PAGE. Whither go you, George? Hark you.\n  MRS. FORD. How now, sweet Frank, why art thou melancholy?\n  FORD. I melancholy! I am not melancholy. Get you home;\n    go.\n  MRS. FORD. Faith, thou hast some crotchets in thy head now.\n    Will you go, Mistress Page?\n\n                     Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY\n\n  MRS. PAGE. Have with you. You\'ll come to dinner, George?\n    [Aside to MRS. FORD]  Look who comes yonder; she shall\n    be our messenger to this paltry knight.\n  MRS. FORD.  [Aside to MRS. PAGE]  Trust me, I thought on\n    her; she\'ll fit it.  \n  MRS. PAGE. You are come to see my daughter Anne?\n  QUICKLY. Ay, forsooth; and, I pray, how does good Mistress Anne?\n  MRS. PAGE. Go in with us and see; we have an hour\'s talk\n    with you.           Exeunt MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD, and\n                                                MISTRESS QUICKLY\n  PAGE. How now, Master Ford!\n  FORD. You heard what this knave told me, did you not?\n  PAGE. Yes; and you heard what the other told me?\n  FORD. Do you think there is truth in them?\n  PAGE. Hang \'em, slaves! I do not think the knight would offer it;\n    but these that accuse him in his intent towards our\n    wives are a yoke of his discarded men; very rogues, now\n    they be out of service.\n  FORD. Were they his men?\n  PAGE. Marry, were they.\n  FORD. I like it never the better for that. Does he lie at the\n    Garter?\n  PAGE. Ay, marry, does he. If he should intend this voyage\n    toward my wife, I would turn her loose to him; and what\n    he gets more of her than sharp words, let it lie on my head.  \n  FORD. I do not misdoubt my wife; but I would be loath to\n    turn them together. A man may be too confident. I would\n    have nothing lie on my head. I cannot be thus satisfied.\n\n                           Enter HOST\n\n  PAGE. Look where my ranting host of the Garter comes.\n    There is either liquor in his pate or money in his purse\n    when he looks so merrily. How now, mine host!\n  HOST. How now, bully rook! Thou\'rt a gentleman.  [To\n    SHALLOW following]  Cavaleiro Justice, I say.\n\n                         Enter SHALLOW\n\n  SHALLOW. I follow, mine host, I follow. Good even and\n    twenty, good Master Page! Master Page, will you go with\n    us? We have sport in hand.\n  HOST. Tell him, Cavaleiro Justice; tell him, bully rook.\n  SHALLOW. Sir, there is a fray to be fought between Sir Hugh\n    the Welsh priest and Caius the French doctor.  \n  FORD. Good mine host o\' th\' Garter, a word with you.\n  HOST. What say\'st thou, my bully rook?         [They go aside]\n  SHALLOW.  [To PAGE] Will you go with us to behold it? My\n    merry host hath had the measuring of their weapons; and,\n    I think, hath appointed them contrary places; for, believe\n    me, I hear the parson is no jester. Hark, I will tell you\n    what our sport shall be.               [They converse apart]\n  HOST. Hast thou no suit against my knight, my guest-cavaleiro.\n  FORD. None, I protest; but I\'ll give you a pottle of burnt\n    sack to give me recourse to him, and tell him my name is\n    Brook-only for a jest.\n  HOST. My hand, bully; thou shalt have egress and regress-\n    said I well?-and thy name shall be Brook. It is a merry\n    knight. Will you go, Mynheers?\n  SHALLOW. Have with you, mine host.\n  PAGE. I have heard the Frenchman hath good skill in his\n    rapier.\n  SHALLOW. Tut, sir, I could have told you more. In these\n    times you stand on distance, your passes, stoccadoes, and\n    I know not what. \'Tis the heart, Master Page; \'tis here,  \n    \'tis here. I have seen the time with my long sword I would\n    have made you four tall fellows skip like rats.\n  HOST. Here, boys, here, here! Shall we wag?\n  PAGE. Have with you. I had rather hear them scold than\n    fight.                                   Exeunt all but FORD\n  FORD. Though Page be a secure fool, and stands so firmly on\n    his wife\'s frailty, yet I cannot put off my opinion so\n    easily. She was in his company at Page\'s house, and what\n    they made there I know not. Well, I will look further into\n    \'t, and I have a disguise to sound Falstaff. If I find her\n    honest, I lose not my labour; if she be otherwise, \'tis labour\n    well bestowed.                                          Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\n\nA room in the Garter Inn\n\nEnter FALSTAFF and PISTOL\n\n  FALSTAFF. I will not lend thee a penny.\n  PISTOL. I will retort the sum in equipage.\n  FALSTAFF. Not a penny.\n  PISTOL. Why, then the world\'s mine oyster. Which I with\n    sword will open.\n  FALSTAFF. Not a penny. I have been content, sir, you should\n    lay my countenance to pawn. I have grated upon my good\n    friends for three reprieves for you and your coach-fellow,\n    Nym; or else you had look\'d through the grate, like a\n    geminy of baboons. I am damn\'d in hell for swearing to\n    gentlemen my friends you were good soldiers and tall fellows;\n    and when Mistress Bridget lost the handle of her fan,\n    I took \'t upon mine honour thou hadst it not.\n  PISTOL. Didst not thou share? Hadst thou not fifteen pence?\n  FALSTAFF. Reason, you rogue, reason. Think\'st thou I\'ll\n    endanger my soul gratis? At a word, hang no more about me,  \n    I am no gibbet for you. Go-a short knife and a throng!-\n    to your manor of Pickt-hatch; go. You\'ll not bear a letter\n    for me, you rogue! You stand upon your honour! Why,\n    thou unconfinable baseness, it is as much as I can do to\n    keep the terms of my honour precise. I, I, I myself\n    sometimes, leaving the fear of God on the left hand, and hiding\n    mine honour in my necessity, am fain to shuffle, to hedge,\n    and to lurch; and yet you, rogue, will ensconce your rags,\n    your cat-a-mountain looks, your red-lattice phrases, and\n    your bold-beating oaths, under the shelter of your honour!\n    You will not do it, you!\n  PISTOL. I do relent; what would thou more of man?\n\n                          Enter ROBIN\n\n  ROBIN. Sir, here\'s a woman would speak with you.\n  FALSTAFF. Let her approach.\n\n                     Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY\n  \n  QUICKLY. Give your worship good morrow.\n  FALSTAFF. Good morrow, good wife.\n  QUICKLY. Not so, an\'t please your worship.\n  FALSTAFF. Good maid, then.\n  QUICKLY. I\'ll be sworn;\n    As my mother was, the first hour I was born.\n  FALSTAFF. I do believe the swearer. What with me?\n  QUICKLY. Shall I vouchsafe your worship a word or two?\n  FALSTAFF. Two thousand, fair woman; and I\'ll vouchsafe\n    thee the hearing.\n  QUICKLY. There is one Mistress Ford, sir-I pray, come a little\n    nearer this ways. I myself dwell with Master Doctor\n    Caius.\n  FALSTAFF. Well, on: Mistress Ford, you say-\n  QUICKLY. Your worship says very true. I pray your worship\n    come a little nearer this ways.\n  FALSTAFF. I warrant thee nobody hears-mine own people,\n    mine own people.\n  QUICKLY. Are they so? God bless them, and make them his\n    servants!  \n  FALSTAFF. Well; Mistress Ford, what of her?\n  QUICKLY. Why, sir, she\'s a good creature. Lord, Lord, your\n    worship\'s a wanton! Well, heaven forgive you, and all of\n    us, I pray.\n  FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford; come, Mistress Ford-\n  QUICKLY. Marry, this is the short and the long of it: you\n    have brought her into such a canaries as \'tis wonderful.\n    The best courtier of them all, when the court lay at Windsor,\n    could never have brought her to such a canary. Yet\n    there has been knights, and lords, and gentlemen, with\n    their coaches; I warrant you, coach after coach, letter after\n    letter, gift after gift; smelling so sweetly, all musk, and so\n    rushling, I warrant you, in silk and gold; and in such alligant\n    terms; and in such wine and sugar of the best and the\n    fairest, that would have won any woman\'s heart; and I\n    warrant you, they could never get an eye-wink of her.\n    I had myself twenty angels given me this morning; but I\n    defy all angels, in any such sort, as they say, but in the\n    way of honesty; and, I warrant you, they could never get\n    her so much as sip on a cup with the proudest of them all;  \n    and yet there has been earls, nay, which is more,\n    pensioners; but, I warrant you, all is one with her.\n  FALSTAFF. But what says she to me? Be brief, my good she-\n    Mercury.\n  QUICKLY. Marry, she hath receiv\'d your letter; for the\n    which she thanks you a thousand times; and she gives you\n    to notify that her husband will be absence from his house\n    between ten and eleven.\n  FALSTAFF. Ten and eleven?\n  QUICKLY. Ay, forsooth; and then you may come and see\n    the picture, she says, that you wot of. Master Ford, her\n    husband, will be from home. Alas, the sweet woman leads\n    an ill life with him! He\'s a very jealousy man; she leads a\n    very frampold life with him, good heart.\n  FALSTAFF. Ten and eleven. Woman, commend me to her; I\n    will not fail her.\n  QUICKLY. Why, you say well. But I have another messenger\n    to your worship. Mistress Page hath her hearty commendations\n    to you too; and let me tell you in your ear, she\'s as\n    fartuous a civil modest wife, and one, I tell you, that will  \n    not miss you morning nor evening prayer, as any is in\n    Windsor, whoe\'er be the other; and she bade me tell your\n    worship that her husband is seldom from home, but she\n    hopes there will come a time. I never knew a woman so\n    dote upon a man: surely I think you have charms, la! Yes,\n    in truth.\n  FALSTAFF. Not I, I assure thee; setting the attraction of my\n    good parts aside, I have no other charms.\n  QUICKLY. Blessing on your heart for \'t!\n  FALSTAFF. But, I pray thee, tell me this: has Ford\'s wife and\n    Page\'s wife acquainted each other how they love me?\n  QUICKLY. That were a jest indeed! They have not so little\n    grace, I hope-that were a trick indeed! But Mistress Page\n    would desire you to send her your little page of all loves.\n    Her husband has a marvellous infection to the little page;\n    and truly Master Page is an honest man. Never a wife in\n    Windsor leads a better life than she does; do what she will,\n    say what she will, take all, pay all, go to bed when she\n    list, rise when she list, all is as she will; and truly she\n    deserves it; for if there be a kind woman in Windsor, she  \n    is one. You must send her your page; no remedy.\n  FALSTAFF. Why, I will.\n  QUICKLY. Nay, but do so then; and, look you, he may come\n    and go between you both; and in any case have a\n    nay-word, that you may know one another\'s mind, and the boy\n    never need to understand any thing; for \'tis not good that\n    children should know any wickedness. Old folks, you\n    know, have discretion, as they say, and know the world.\n  FALSTAFF. Fare thee well; commend me to them both.\n    There\'s my purse; I am yet thy debtor. Boy, go along with\n    this woman.  [Exeunt QUICKLY and ROBIN]  This news\n    distracts me.\n  PISTOL.  [Aside]  This punk is one of Cupid\'s carriers;\n    Clap on more sails; pursue; up with your fights;\n    Give fire; she is my prize, or ocean whelm them all!    Exit\n  FALSTAFF. Say\'st thou so, old Jack; go thy ways; I\'ll make\n    more of thy old body than I have done. Will they yet look\n    after thee? Wilt thou, after the expense of so much money,\n    be now a gainer? Good body, I thank thee. Let them say\n    \'tis grossly done; so it be fairly done, no matter.  \n\n                         Enter BARDOLPH\n\n  BARDOLPH. Sir John, there\'s one Master Brook below would\n    fain speak with you, and be acquainted with you; and hath\n    sent your worship a moming\'s draught of sack.\n  FALSTAFF. Brook is his name?\n  BARDOLPH. Ay, sir.\n  FALSTAFF. Call him in.  [Exit BARDOLPH]  Such Brooks are\n    welcome to me, that o\'erflows such liquor. Ah, ha! Mistress\n    Ford and Mistress Page, have I encompass\'d you? Go to;\n    via!\n\n              Re-enter BARDOLPH, with FORD disguised\n\n  FORD. Bless you, sir!\n  FALSTAFF. And you, sir! Would you speak with me?\n  FORD. I make bold to press with so little preparation upon\n    you.\n  FALSTAFF. You\'re welcome. What\'s your will? Give us leave,  \n    drawer.                                        Exit BARDOLPH\n  FORD. Sir, I am a gentleman that have spent much; my name\n    is Brook.\n  FALSTAFF. Good Master Brook, I desire more acquaintance\n    of you.\n  FORD. Good Sir John, I sue for yours-not to charge you; for I\n    must let you understand I think myself in better plight for\n    a lender than you are; the which hath something\n    embold\'ned me to this unseason\'d intrusion; for they say, if\n    money go before, all ways do lie open.\n  FALSTAFF. Money is a good soldier, sir, and will on.\n  FORD. Troth, and I have a bag of money here troubles me; if\n    you will help to bear it, Sir John, take all, or half, for easing\n    me of the carriage.\n  FALSTAFF. Sir, I know not how I may deserve to be your\n    porter.\n  FORD. I will tell you, sir, if you will give me the hearing.\n  FALSTAFF. Speak, good Master Brook; I shall be glad to be\n    your servant.\n  FORD. Sir, I hear you are a scholar-I will be brief with you  \n    -and you have been a man long known to me, though I\n    had never so good means as desire to make myself acquainted\n    with you. I shall discover a thing to you, wherein\n    I must very much lay open mine own imperfection; but,\n    good Sir John, as you have one eye upon my follies, as you\n    hear them unfolded, turn another into the register of your\n    own, that I may pass with a reproof the easier, sith you\n    yourself know how easy is it to be such an offender.\n  FALSTAFF. Very well, sir; proceed.\n  FORD. There is a gentlewoman in this town, her husband\'s\n    name is Ford.\n  FALSTAFF. Well, sir.\n  FORD. I have long lov\'d her, and, I protest to you, bestowed\n    much on her; followed her with a doting observance;\n    engross\'d opportunities to meet her; fee\'d every slight occasion\n    that could but niggardly give me sight of her; not\n    only bought many presents to give her, but have given\n    largely to many to know what she would have given;\n    briefly, I have pursu\'d her as love hath pursued me; which\n    hath been on the wing of all occasions. But whatsoever I  \n    have merited, either in my mind or in my means, meed, I\n    am sure, I have received none, unless experience be a jewel;\n    that I have purchased at an infinite rate, and that hath\n    taught me to say this:\n    \'Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues;\n    Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.\'\n  FALSTAFF. Have you receiv\'d no promise of satisfaction at\n    her hands?\n  FORD. Never.\n  FALSTAFF. Have you importun\'d her to such a purpose?\n  FORD. Never.\n    FALSTAFF. Of what quality was your love, then?\n  FORD. Like a fair house built on another man\'s ground; so\n    that I have lost my edifice by mistaking the place where\n    erected it.\n  FALSTAFF. To what purpose have you unfolded this to me?\n  FORD. When I have told you that, I have told you all. Some\n    say that though she appear honest to me, yet in other\n    places she enlargeth her mirth so far that there is shrewd\n    construction made of her. Now, Sir John, here is the heart  \n    of my purpose: you are a gentleman of excellent\n    breeding, admirable discourse, of great admittance, authentic in\n    your place and person, generally allow\'d for your many\n    war-like, courtlike, and learned preparations.\n  FALSTAFF. O, sir!\n  FORD. Believe it, for you know it. There is money; spend it,\n    spend it; spend more; spend all I have; only give me so\n    much of your time in exchange of it as to lay an amiable\n    siege to the honesty of this Ford\'s wife; use your art of\n    wooing, win her to consent to you; if any man may, you\n    may as soon as any.\n    FALSTAFF. Would it apply well to the vehemency of your\n    affection, that I should win what you would enjoy?\n    Methinks you prescribe to yourself very preposterously.\n  FORD. O, understand my drift. She dwells so securely on the\n    excellency of her honour that the folly of my soul dares\n    not present itself; she is too bright to be look\'d against.\n    Now, could I come to her with any detection in my hand,\n    my desires had instance and argument to commend themselves;\n    I could drive her then from the ward of her purity,  \n    her reputation, her marriage vow, and a thousand other her\n    defences, which now are too too strongly embattl\'d against\n    me. What say you to\'t, Sir John?\n  FALSTAFF. Master Brook, I will first make bold with your\n    money; next, give me your hand; and last, as I am a gentleman,\n    you shall, if you will, enjoy Ford\'s wife.\n  FORD. O good sir!\n  FALSTAFF. I say you shall.\n  FORD. Want no money, Sir John; you shall want none.\n  FALSTAFF. Want no Mistress Ford, Master Brook; you shall\n    want none. I shall be with her, I may tell you, by her own\n    appointment; even as you came in to me her assistant, or\n    go-between, parted from me; I say I shall be with her between\n    ten and eleven; for at that time the jealous rascally\n    knave, her husband, will be forth. Come you to me at\n    night; you shall know how I speed.\n  FORD. I am blest in your acquaintance. Do you know Ford,\n    Sir?\n  FALSTAFF. Hang him, poor cuckoldly knave! I know him\n    not; yet I wrong him to call him poor; they say the  \n    jealous wittolly knave hath masses of money; for the which\n    his wife seems to me well-favour\'d. I will use her as the\n    key of the cuckoldly rogue\'s coffer; and there\'s my harvest-home.\n  FORD. I would you knew Ford, sir, that you might avoid him\n    if you saw him.\n  FALSTAFF. Hang him, mechanical salt-butter rogue! I will\n    stare him out of his wits; I will awe him with my cudgel;\n    it shall hang like a meteor o\'er the cuckold\'s horns. Master\n    Brook, thou shalt know I will predominate over the\n    peasant, and thou shalt lie with his wife. Come to me soon at\n    night. Ford\'s a knave, and I will aggravate his style; thou,\n    Master Brook, shalt know him for knave and cuckold.\n    Come to me soon at night.                               Exit\n  FORD. What a damn\'d Epicurean rascal is this! My heart is\n    ready to crack with impatience. Who says this is improvident\n    jealousy? My wife hath sent to him; the hour is fix\'d;\n    the match is made. Would any man have thought this? See\n    the hell of having a false woman! My bed shall be abus\'d,\n    my coffers ransack\'d, my reputation gnawn at; and I shall\n    not only receive this villainous wrong, but stand under the  \n    adoption of abominable terms, and by him that does me\n    this wrong. Terms! names! Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer,\n    well; Barbason, well; yet they are devils\' additions, the names\n    of fiends. But cuckold! Wittol! Cuckold! the devil himself\n    hath not such a name. Page is an ass, a secure ass; he will trust\n    his wife; he will not be jealous; I will rather trust a Fleming\n    with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my\n    cheese, an Irishman with my aqua-vitae bottle, or a thief to\n    walk my ambling gelding, than my wife with herself. Then\n    she plots, then she ruminates, then she devises; and what\n    they think in their hearts they may effect, they will break\n    their hearts but they will effect. God be prais\'d for my\n    jealousy! Eleven o\'clock the hour. I will prevent this, detect\n    my wife, be reveng\'d on Falstaff, and laugh at Page.\n    I will about it; better three hours too soon than a minute\n    too late. Fie, fie, fie! cuckold! cuckold! cuckold!     Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\n\nA field near Windsor\n\nEnter CAIUS and RUGBY\n\n  CAIUS. Jack Rugby!\n  RUGBY. Sir?\n  CAIUS. Vat is de clock, Jack?\n  RUGBY. \'Tis past the hour, sir, that Sir Hugh promis\'d to\n    meet.\n  CAIUS. By gar, he has save his soul dat he is no come; he has\n    pray his Pible well dat he is no come; by gar, Jack Rugby,\n    he is dead already, if he be come.\n  RUGBY. He is wise, sir; he knew your worship would kill\n    him if he came.\n  CAIUS. By gar, de herring is no dead so as I vill kill him. Take\n    your rapier, Jack; I vill tell you how I vill kill him.\n  RUGBY. Alas, sir, I cannot fence!\n  CAIUS. Villainy, take your rapier.\n  RUGBY. Forbear; here\'s company.\n  \n            Enter HOST, SHALLOW, SLENDER, and PAGE\n\n  HOST. Bless thee, bully doctor!\n  SHALLOW. Save you, Master Doctor Caius!\n  PAGE. Now, good Master Doctor!\n  SLENDER. Give you good morrow, sir.\n  CAIUS. Vat be all you, one, two, tree, four, come for?\n  HOST. To see thee fight, to see thee foin, to see thee traverse;\n    to see thee here, to see thee there; to see thee pass thy\n    punto, thy stock, thy reverse, thy distance, thy montant.\n    Is he dead, my Ethiopian? Is he dead, my Francisco? Ha,\n    bully! What says my Aesculapius? my Galen? my heart\n    of elder? Ha! is he dead, bully stale? Is he dead?\n  CAIUS. By gar, he is de coward Jack priest of de world; he is\n    not show his face.\n  HOST. Thou art a Castalion-King-Urinal. Hector of Greece,\n    my boy!\n  CAIUS. I pray you, bear witness that me have stay six or\n    seven, two tree hours for him, and he is no come.\n  SHALLOW. He is the wiser man, Master Doctor: he is a curer  \n    of souls, and you a curer of bodies; if you should fight,\n    you go against the hair of your professions. Is it not true,\n    Master Page?\n  PAGE. Master Shallow, you have yourself been a great fighter,\n    though now a man of peace.\n  SHALLOW. Bodykins, Master Page, though I now be old, and\n    of the peace, if I see a sword out, my finger itches to make\n    one. Though we are justices, and doctors, and churchmen,\n    Master Page, we have some salt of our youth in us; we are\n    the sons of women, Master Page.\n  PAGE. \'Tis true, Master Shallow.\n  SHALLOW. It will be found so, Master Page. Master Doctor\n  CAIUS, I come to fetch you home. I am sworn of the peace;\n    you have show\'d yourself a wise physician, and Sir Hugh\n    hath shown himself a wise and patient churchman. You\n    must go with me, Master Doctor.\n  HOST. Pardon, Guest Justice. A word, Mounseur Mockwater.\n  CAIUS. Mock-vater! Vat is dat?\n  HOST. Mockwater, in our English tongue, is valour, bully.\n  CAIUS. By gar, then I have as much mockvater as de Englishman.  \n    Scurvy jack-dog priest! By gar, me vill cut his ears.\n  HOST. He will clapper-claw thee tightly, bully.\n  CAIUS. Clapper-de-claw! Vat is dat?\n  HOST. That is, he will make thee amends.\n  CAIUS. By gar, me do look he shall clapper-de-claw me; for,\n    by gar, me vill have it.\n  HOST. And I will provoke him to\'t, or let him wag.\n  CAIUS. Me tank you for dat.\n  HOST. And, moreover, bully-but first:  [Aside to the others]\n    Master Guest, and Master Page, and eke Cavaleiro Slender,\n    go you through the town to Frogmore.\n  PAGE.  [Aside]  Sir Hugh is there, is he?\n  HOST.  [Aside]  He is there. See what humour he is in; and\n    I will bring the doctor about by the fields. Will it do well?\n  SHALLOW.  [Aside]  We will do it.\n  PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER. Adieu, good Master Doctor.\n                               Exeunt PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER\n  CAIUS. By gar, me vill kill de priest; for he speak for a jack-\n    an-ape to Anne Page.\n  HOST. Let him die. Sheathe thy impatience; throw cold water  \n    on thy choler; go about the fields with me through Frogmore;\n    I will bring thee where Mistress Anne Page is, at a a\n    farm-house, a-feasting; and thou shalt woo her. Cried\n    game! Said I well?\n  CAIUS. By gar, me dank you vor dat; by gar, I love you; and\n    I shall procure-a you de good guest, de earl, de knight, de\n    lords, de gentlemen, my patients.\n  HOST. For the which I will be thy adversary toward Anne\n    Page. Said I well?\n  CAIUS. By gar, \'tis good; vell said.\n  HOST. Let us wag, then.\n  CAIUS. Come at my heels, Jack Rugby.                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III SCENE 1.\n\nA field near Frogmore\n\nEnter SIR HUGH EVANS and SIMPLE\n\n  EVANS. I pray you now, good Master Slender\'s serving-man,\n    and friend Simple by your name, which way have you\n    look\'d for Master Caius, that calls himself Doctor of\n    Physic?\n  SIMPLE. Marry, sir, the pittie-ward, the park-ward; every\n    way; old Windsor way, and every way but the town way.\n  EVANS. I most fehemently desire you you will also look that\n    way.\n  SIMPLE. I will, Sir.                                      Exit\n  EVANS. Pless my soul, how full of chollors I am, and trempling\n    of mind! I shall be glad if he have deceived me. How\n    melancholies I am! I will knog his urinals about his knave\'s\n    costard when I have goot opportunities for the ork. Pless\n    my soul!                                             [Sings]\n    To shallow rivers, to whose falls\n    Melodious birds sings madrigals;  \n    There will we make our peds of roses,\n    And a thousand fragrant posies.\n    To shallow-\n    Mercy on me! I have a great dispositions to cry.     [Sings]\n    Melodious birds sing madrigals-\n    Whenas I sat in Pabylon-\n    And a thousand vagram posies.\n    To shallow, etc.\n\n                       Re-enter SIMPLE\n\n  SIMPLE. Yonder he is, coming this way, Sir Hugh.\n  EVANS. He\'s welcome.                                   [Sings]\n    To shallow rivers, to whose falls-\n    Heaven prosper the right! What weapons is he?\n  SIMPLE. No weapons, sir. There comes my master, Master\n    Shallow, and another gentleman, from Frogmore, over the\n    stile, this way.\n  EVANS. Pray you give me my gown; or else keep it in your\n    arms.                                     [Takes out a book]  \n\n               Enter PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER\n\n  SHALLOW. How now, Master Parson! Good morrow, good\n    Sir Hugh. Keep a gamester from the dice, and a good student\n     from his book, and it is wonderful.\n  SLENDER.  [Aside]  Ah, sweet Anne Page!\n  PAGE. Save you, good Sir Hugh!\n  EVANS. Pless you from his mercy sake, all of you!\n  SHALLOW. What, the sword and the word! Do you study\n    them both, Master Parson?\n  PAGE. And youthful still, in your doublet and hose, this raw\n    rheumatic day!\n  EVANS. There is reasons and causes for it.\n  PAGE. We are come to you to do a good office, Master\n    Parson.\n  EVANS. Fery well; what is it?\n  PAGE. Yonder is a most reverend gentleman, who, belike having\n    received wrong by some person, is at most odds with\n    his own gravity and patience that ever you saw.  \n  SHALLOW. I have lived fourscore years and upward; I never\n    heard a man of his place, gravity, and learning, so wide of\n    his own respect.\n  EVANS. What is he?\n  PAGE. I think you know him: Master Doctor Caius, the\n    renowned French physician.\n  EVANS. Got\'s will and his passion of my heart! I had as lief\n    you would tell me of a mess of porridge.\n  PAGE. Why?\n  EVANS. He has no more knowledge in Hibocrates and\n    Galen, and he is a knave besides-a cowardly knave as you\n    would desires to be acquainted withal.\n  PAGE. I warrant you, he\'s the man should fight with him.\n  SLENDER.  [Aside]  O sweet Anne Page!\n  SHALLOW. It appears so, by his weapons. Keep them asunder;\n    here comes Doctor Caius.\n\n                 Enter HOST, CAIUS, and RUGBY\n\n  PAGE. Nay, good Master Parson, keep in your weapon.  \n  SHALLOW. So do you, good Master Doctor.\n  HOST. Disarm them, and let them question; let them keep\n    their limbs whole and hack our English.\n  CAIUS. I pray you, let-a me speak a word with your ear.\n    Verefore will you not meet-a me?\n  EVANS.  [Aside to CAIUS]  Pray you use your patience; in\n    good time.\n  CAIUS. By gar, you are de coward, de Jack dog, John ape.\n  EVANS.  [Aside to CAIUS]  Pray you, let us not be\n    laughing-stocks to other men\'s humours; I desire you in\n    friendship, and I will one way or other make you amends.\n    [Aloud]  I will knog your urinals about your knave\'s cogscomb\n    for missing your meetings and appointments.\n  CAIUS. Diable! Jack Rugby-mine Host de Jarteer-have I\n    not stay for him to kill him? Have I not, at de place I did\n    appoint?\n  EVANS. As I am a Christians soul, now, look you, this is the\n    place appointed. I\'ll be judgment by mine host of the\n    Garter.\n  HOST. Peace, I say, Gallia and Gaul, French and Welsh,  \n    soul-curer and body-curer.\n  CAIUS. Ay, dat is very good! excellent!\n  HOST. Peace, I say. Hear mine host of the Garter. Am I\n    politic? am I subtle? am I a Machiavel? Shall I lose my\n    doctor? No; he gives me the potions and the motions. Shall I\n    lose my parson, my priest, my Sir Hugh? No; he gives me\n    the proverbs and the noverbs. Give me thy hand, terrestrial;\n    so. Give me thy hand, celestial; so. Boys of art, I have\n    deceiv\'d you both; I have directed you to wrong places;\n    your hearts are mighty, your skins are whole, and let burnt\n    sack be the issue. Come, lay their swords to pawn. Follow\n    me, lads of peace; follow, follow, follow.\n  SHALLOW. Trust me, a mad host. Follow, gentlemen, follow.\n  SLENDER.  [Aside]  O sweet Anne Page!\n                                  Exeunt all but CAIUS and EVANS\n  CAIUS. Ha, do I perceive dat? Have you make-a de sot of us,\n    ha, ha?\n  EVANS. This is well; he has made us his vlouting-stog. I\n    desire you that we may be friends; and let us knog our prains\n    together to be revenge on this same scall, scurvy, cogging  \n    companion, the host of the Garter.\n  CAIUS. By gar, with all my heart. He promise to bring me\n    where is Anne Page; by gar, he deceive me too.\n  EVANS. Well, I will smite his noddles. Pray you follow.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\n\nThe street in Windsor\n\nEnter MISTRESS PAGE and ROBIN\n\n  MRS. PAGE. Nay, keep your way, little gallant; you were\n    wont to be a follower, but now you are a leader. Whether\n    had you rather lead mine eyes, or eye your master\'s heels?\n  ROBIN. I had rather, forsooth, go before you like a man than\n    follow him like a dwarf.\n  MRS. PAGE. O, you are a flattering boy; now I see you\'ll be a\n    courtier.\n\n                          Enter FORD\n\n  FORD. Well met, Mistress Page. Whither go you?\n  MRS. PAGE. Truly, sir, to see your wife. Is she at home?\n  FORD. Ay; and as idle as she may hang together, for want of\n    company. I think, if your husbands were dead, you two\n    would marry.\n  MRS. PAGE. Be sure of that-two other husbands.  \n  FORD. Where had you this pretty weathercock?\n  MRS. PAGE. I cannot tell what the dickens his name is my\n    husband had him of. What do you call your knight\'s\n    name, sirrah?\n  ROBIN. Sir John Falstaff.\n  FORD. Sir John Falstaff!\n  MRS. PAGE. He, he; I can never hit on\'s name. There is such\n    a league between my good man and he! Is your wife at\n    home indeed?\n  FORD. Indeed she is.\n  MRS. PAGE. By your leave, sir. I am sick till I see her.\n                                      Exeunt MRS. PAGE and ROBIN\n  FORD. Has Page any brains? Hath he any eyes? Hath he any\n    thinking? Sure, they sleep; he hath no use of them. Why,\n    this boy will carry a letter twenty mile as easy as a cannon\n    will shoot pointblank twelve score. He pieces out his wife\'s\n    inclination; he gives her folly motion and advantage; and\n    now she\'s going to my wife, and Falstaff\'s boy with her. A\n    man may hear this show\'r sing in the wind. And Falstaff\'s\n    boy with her! Good plots! They are laid; and our revolted  \n    wives share damnation together. Well; I will take him,\n    then torture my wife, pluck the borrowed veil of modesty\n    from the so seeming Mistress Page, divulge Page himself\n    for a secure and wilful Actaeon; and to these violent proceedings\n    all my neighbours shall cry aim.  [Clock strikes]\n    The clock gives me my cue, and my assurance bids me\n    search; there I shall find Falstaff. I shall be rather prais\'d\n    for this than mock\'d; for it is as positive as the earth is firm\n    that Falstaff is there. I will go.\n\n     Enter PAGE, SHALLOW, SLENDER, HOST, SIR HUGH EVANS,\n                              CAIUS, and RUGBY\n\n  SHALLOW, PAGE, &C. Well met, Master Ford.\n  FORD. Trust me, a good knot; I have good cheer at home,\n    and I pray you all go with me.\n  SHALLOW. I must excuse myself, Master Ford.\n  SLENDER. And so must I, sir; we have appointed to dine with\n    Mistress Anne, and I would not break with her for more\n    money than I\'ll speak of.  \n  SHALLOW. We have linger\'d about a match between Anne\n    Page and my cousin Slender, and this day we shall have\n    our answer.\n  SLENDER. I hope I have your good will, father Page.\n  PAGE. You have, Master Slender; I stand wholly for you. But\n    my wife, Master Doctor, is for you altogether.\n  CAIUS. Ay, be-gar; and de maid is love-a me; my nursh-a\n    Quickly tell me so mush.\n  HOST. What say you to young Master Fenton? He capers,\n    he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks\n    holiday, he smells April and May; he will carry \'t, he will\n    carry \'t; \'tis in his buttons; he will carry \'t.\n  PAGE. Not by my consent, I promise you. The gentleman is\n    of no having: he kept company with the wild Prince and\n    Poins; he is of too high a region, he knows too much. No,\n    he shall not knit a knot in his fortunes with the finger of\n    my substance; if he take her, let him take her simply; the\n    wealth I have waits on my consent, and my consent goes\n    not that way.\n  FORD. I beseech you, heartily, some of you go home with me  \n    to dinner: besides your cheer, you shall have sport; I will\n    show you a monster. Master Doctor, you shall go; so shall\n    you, Master Page; and you, Sir Hugh.\n  SHALLOW. Well, fare you well; we shall have the freer\n    wooing at Master Page\'s.          Exeunt SHALLOW and SLENDER\n  CAIUS. Go home, John Rugby; I come anon.            Exit RUGBY\n  HOST. Farewell, my hearts; I will to my honest knight\n    Falstaff, and drink canary with him.               Exit HOST\n  FORD.  [Aside]  I think I shall drink in pipe-wine first with\n    him. I\'ll make him dance. Will you go, gentles?\n  ALL. Have with you to see this monster.                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\n\nFORD\'S house\n\nEnter MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE\n\n  MRS. FORD. What, John! what, Robert!\n  MRS. PAGE. Quickly, quickly! Is the buck-basket-\n  MRS. FORD. I warrant. What, Robin, I say!\n\n                 Enter SERVANTS with a basket\n\n  MRS. PAGE. Come, come, come.\n  MRS. FORD. Here, set it down.\n  MRS. PAGE. Give your men the charge; we must be brief.\n  MRS. FORD. Marry, as I told you before, John and Robert, be\n    ready here hard by in the brew-house; and when I suddenly\n    call you, come forth, and, without any pause or\n    staggering, take this basket on your shoulders. That done,\n    trudge with it in all haste, and carry it among the whitsters\n    in Datchet Mead, and there empty it in the muddy ditch\n    close by the Thames side.  \n  Mrs. PAGE. You will do it?\n  MRS. FORD. I ha\' told them over and over; they lack no\n    direction. Be gone, and come when you are call\'d.\n                                               Exeunt SERVANTS\n  MRS. PAGE. Here comes little Robin.\n\n                         Enter ROBIN\n\n  MRS. FORD. How now, my eyas-musket, what news with\n    you?\n  ROBIN. My Master Sir John is come in at your back-door,\n    Mistress Ford, and requests your company.\n  MRS. PAGE. You little Jack-a-Lent, have you been true to us?\n  ROBIN. Ay, I\'ll be sworn. My master knows not of your\n    being here, and hath threat\'ned to put me into everlasting\n    liberty, if I tell you of it; for he swears he\'ll turn me away.\n  MRS. PAGE. Thou \'rt a good boy; this secrecy of thine shall\n    be a tailor to thee, and shall make thee a new doublet and\n    hose. I\'ll go hide me.\n  MRS. FORD. Do so. Go tell thy master I am alone.  [Exit  \n  ROBIN]  Mistress Page, remember you your cue.\n  MRS. PAGE. I warrant thee; if I do not act it, hiss me.\n                                                Exit MRS. PAGE\n  MRS. FORD. Go to, then; we\'ll use this unwholesome\n    humidity, this gross wat\'ry pumpion; we\'ll teach him to\n    know turtles from jays.\n\n                      Enter FALSTAFF\n\n  FALSTAFF. Have I caught thee, my heavenly jewel?\n    Why, now let me die, for I have liv\'d long enough; this is\n    the period of my ambition. O this blessed hour!\n  MRS. FORD. O sweet Sir John!\n  FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford, I cannot cog, I cannot prate,\n    Mistress Ford. Now shall I sin in my wish; I would thy\n    husband were dead; I\'ll speak it before the best lord, I\n    would make thee my lady.\n  MRS. FORD. I your lady, Sir John? Alas, I should be a pitiful\n    lady.\n  FALSTAFF. Let the court of France show me such another. I  \n    see how thine eye would emulate the diamond; thou hast\n    the right arched beauty of the brow that becomes the\n    ship-tire, the tire-valiant, or any tire of Venetian admittance.\n  MRS. FORD. A plain kerchief, Sir John; my brows become\n    nothing else, nor that well neither.\n  FALSTAFF. By the Lord, thou art a tyrant to say so; thou\n    wouldst make an absolute courtier, and the firm fixture of\n    thy foot would give an excellent motion to thy gait in a\n    semi-circled farthingale. I see what thou wert, if Fortune\n    thy foe were, not Nature, thy friend. Come, thou canst not\n    hide it.\n  MRS. FORD. Believe me, there\'s no such thing in me.\n  FALSTAFF. What made me love thee? Let that persuade thee\n    there\'s something extra-ordinary in thee. Come, I cannot\n    cog, and say thou art this and that, like a many of these\n    lisping hawthorn-buds that come like women in men\'s\n    apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple time; I\n    cannot; but I love thee, none but thee; and thou deserv\'st it.\n  MRS. FORD. Do not betray me, sir; I fear you love Mistress\n    Page.  \n  FALSTAFF. Thou mightst as well say I love to walk by the\n    Counter-gate, which is as hateful to me as the reek of a\n    lime-kiln.\n  MRS. FORD. Well, heaven knows how I love you; and you\n    shall one day find it.\n  FALSTAFF. Keep in that mind; I\'ll deserve it.\n  MRS. FORD. Nay, I must tell you, so you do; or else I could\n    not be in that mind.\n  ROBIN.  [Within]  Mistress Ford, Mistress Ford! here\'s\n    Mistress Page at the door, sweating and blowing and looking\n    wildly, and would needs speak with you presently.\n  FALSTAFF. She shall not see me; I will ensconce me behind\n    the arras.\n  MRS. FORD. Pray you, do so; she\'s a very tattling woman.\n                                      [FALSTAFF hides himself]\n\n               Re-enter MISTRESS PAGE and ROBIN\n\n    What\'s the matter? How now!\n  MRS. PAGE. O Mistress Ford, what have you done? You\'re  \n    sham\'d, y\'are overthrown, y\'are undone for ever.\n  MRS. FORD. What\'s the matter, good Mistress Page?\n  MRS. PAGE. O well-a-day, Mistress Ford, having an honest\n    man to your husband, to give him such cause of suspicion!\n  MRS. FORD. What cause of suspicion?\n  MRS. PAGE. What cause of suspicion? Out upon you, how\n    am I mistook in you!\n  MRS. FORD. Why, alas, what\'s the matter?\n  MRS. PAGE. Your husband\'s coming hither, woman, with all\n    the officers in Windsor, to search for a gentleman that he\n    says is here now in the house, by your consent, to take an\n    ill advantage of his absence. You are undone.\n  MRS. FORD. \'Tis not so, I hope.\n  MRS. PAGE. Pray heaven it be not so that you have such a\n    man here; but \'tis most certain your husband\'s coming,\n    with half Windsor at his heels, to search for such a one. I\n    come before to tell you. If you know yourself clear, why,\n    I am glad of it; but if you have a friend here, convey,\n    convey him out. Be not amaz\'d; call all your senses to you;\n    defend your reputation, or bid farewell to your good life  \n    for ever.\n  MRS. FORD. What shall I do? There is a gentleman, my dear\n    friend; and I fear not mine own shame as much as his peril.\n    I had rather than a thousand pound he were out of the\n    house.\n  MRS. PAGE. For shame, never stand \'you had rather\' and \'you\n    had rather\'! Your husband\'s here at hand; bethink you of\n    some conveyance; in the house you cannot hide him. O,\n    how have you deceiv\'d me! Look, here is a basket; if he be\n    of any reasonable stature, he may creep in here; and throw\n    foul linen upon him, as if it were going to bucking, or-it is\n    whiting-time-send him by your two men to Datchet\n    Mead.\n  MRS. FORD. He\'s too big to go in there. What shall I do?\n  FALSTAFF.  [Coming forward]  Let me see \'t, let me see \'t. O,\n    let me see \'t! I\'ll in, I\'ll in; follow your friend\'s counsel;\n    I\'ll in.\n  MRS. PAGE. What, Sir John Falstaff!      [Aside to FALSTAFF]\n    Are these your letters, knight?\n  FALSTAFF.  [Aside to MRS. PAGE]  I love thee and none but  \n    thee; help me away.-Let me creep in here; I\'ll never-\n    [Gets into the basket; they cover him with foul linen]\n  MRS. PAGE. Help to cover your master, boy. Call your men,\n    Mistress Ford. You dissembling knight!\n  MRS. FORD. What, John! Robert! John!                Exit ROBIN\n\n                 Re-enter SERVANTS\n\n    Go, take up these clothes here, quickly; where\'s the\n    cowl-staff? Look how you drumble. Carry them to the laundress\n    in Datchet Mead; quickly, come.\n\n         Enter FORD, PAGE, CAIUS, and SIR HUGH EVANS\n\n  FORD. Pray you come near. If I suspect without cause, why\n    then make sport at me, then let me be your jest; I deserve\n    it. How now, whither bear you this?\n  SERVANT. To the laundress, forsooth.\n  MRS. FORD. Why, what have you to do whither they bear it?\n    You were best meddle with buck-washing.  \n  FORD. Buck? I would I could wash myself of the buck!\n    Buck, buck, buck! ay, buck! I warrant you, buck; and of\n    the season too, it shall appear.  [Exeunt SERVANTS with\n    basket]  Gentlemen, I have dream\'d to-night; I\'ll tell you my\n    dream. Here, here, here be my keys; ascend my chambers,\n    search, seek, find out. I\'ll warrant we\'ll unkennel the fox.\n    Let me stop this way first.  [Locking the door]  So, now\n    uncape.\n  PAGE. Good Master Ford, be contented; you wrong yourself\n    too much.\n  FORD. True, Master Page. Up, gentlemen, you shall see sport\n    anon; follow me, gentlemen.                             Exit\n  EVANS. This is fery fantastical humours and jealousies.\n  CAIUS. By gar, \'tis no the fashion of France; it is not jealous\n    in France.\n  PAGE. Nay, follow him, gentlemen; see the issue of his\n    search.                        Exeunt EVANS, PAGE, and CAIUS\n  MRS. PAGE. Is there not a double excellency in this?\n  MRS. FORD. I know not which pleases me better, that my\n    husband is deceived, or Sir John.  \n  MRS. PAGE. What a taking was he in when your husband\n    ask\'d who was in the basket!\n  MRS. FORD. I am half afraid he will have need of washing; so\n    throwing him into the water will do him a benefit.\n  MRS. PAGE. Hang him, dishonest rascal! I would all of the\n    same strain were in the same distress.\n  MRS. FORD. I think my husband hath some special suspicion\n    of Falstaff\'s being here, for I never saw him so gross in his\n    jealousy till now.\n  MRS. PAGE. I Will lay a plot to try that, and we will yet have\n    more tricks with Falstaff. His dissolute disease will scarce\n    obey this medicine.\n  MRS. FORD. Shall we send that foolish carrion, Mistress\n    Quickly, to him, and excuse his throwing into the water,\n    and give him another hope, to betray him to another\n    punishment?\n  MRS. PAGE. We will do it; let him be sent for to-morrow\n    eight o\'clock, to have amends.\n\n       Re-enter FORD, PAGE, CAIUS, and SIR HUGH EVANS  \n\n  FORD. I cannot find him; may be the knave bragg\'d of that\n    he could not compass.\n  MRS. PAGE.  [Aside to MRS. FORD]  Heard you that?\n  MRS. FORD. You use me well, Master Ford, do you?\n  FORD. Ay, I do so.\n  MRS. FORD. Heaven make you better than your thoughts!\n  FORD. Amen.\n  MRS. PAGE. You do yourself mighty wrong, Master Ford.\n  FORD. Ay, ay; I must bear it.\n  EVANS. If there be any pody in the house, and in the\n    chambers, and in the coffers, and in the presses, heaven forgive\n    my sins at the day of judgment!\n  CAIUS. Be gar, nor I too; there is no bodies.\n  PAGE. Fie, fie, Master Ford, are you not asham\'d? What\n    spirit, what devil suggests this imagination? I would not ha\'\n    your distemper in this kind for the wealth of Windsor\n    Castle.\n  FORD. \'Tis my fault, Master Page; I suffer for it.\n  EVANS. You suffer for a pad conscience. Your wife is as  \n    honest a omans as I will desires among five thousand, and five\n    hundred too.\n  CAIUS. By gar, I see \'tis an honest woman.\n  FORD. Well, I promis\'d you a dinner. Come, come, walk in\n    the Park. I pray you pardon me; I will hereafter make\n    known to you why I have done this. Come, wife, come,\n    Mistress Page; I pray you pardon me; pray heartly,\n    pardon me.\n  PAGE. Let\'s go in, gentlemen; but, trust me, we\'ll mock him.\n    I do invite you to-morrow morning to my house to breakfast;\n    after, we\'ll a-birding together; I have a fine hawk for\n    the bush. Shall it be so?\n  FORD. Any thing.\n  EVANS. If there is one, I shall make two in the company.\n  CAIUS. If there be one or two, I shall make-a the turd.\n  FORD. Pray you go, Master Page.\n  EVANS. I pray you now, remembrance to-morrow on the\n    lousy knave, mine host.\n  CAIUS. Dat is good; by gar, with all my heart.\n  EVANS. A lousy knave, to have his gibes and his mockeries!  \n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4.\n\nBefore PAGE\'S house\n\nEnter FENTON and ANNE PAGE\n\n  FENTON. I see I cannot get thy father\'s love;\n    Therefore no more turn me to him, sweet Nan.\n  ANNE. Alas, how then?\n  FENTON. Why, thou must be thyself.\n    He doth object I am too great of birth;\n    And that, my state being gall\'d with my expense,\n    I seek to heal it only by his wealth.\n    Besides these, other bars he lays before me,\n    My riots past, my wild societies;\n    And tells me \'tis a thing impossible\n    I should love thee but as a property.\n  ANNE.. May be he tells you true.\n  FENTON. No, heaven so speed me in my time to come!\n    Albeit I will confess thy father\'s wealth\n    Was the first motive that I woo\'d thee, Anne;\n    Yet, wooing thee, I found thee of more value  \n    Than stamps in gold, or sums in sealed bags;\n    And \'tis the very riches of thyself\n    That now I aim at.\n  ANNE. Gentle Master Fenton,\n    Yet seek my father\'s love; still seek it, sir.\n    If opportunity and humblest suit\n    Cannot attain it, why then-hark you hither.\n                                           [They converse apart]\n\n        Enter SHALLOW, SLENDER, and MISTRESS QUICKLY\n\n  SHALLOW. Break their talk, Mistress Quickly; my kinsman\n    shall speak for himself.\n  SLENDER. I\'ll make a shaft or a bolt on \'t; \'slid, \'tis but\n    venturing.\n  SHALLOW. Be not dismay\'d.\n  SLENDER. No, she shall not dismay me. I care not for that,\n    but that I am afeard.\n  QUICKLY. Hark ye, Master Slender would speak a word\n    with you.  \n  ANNE. I come to him.  [Aside]  This is my father\'s choice.\n    O, what a world of vile ill-favour\'d faults\n    Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!\n  QUICKLY. And how does good Master Fenton? Pray you, a\n    word with you.\n  SHALLOW. She\'s coming; to her, coz. O boy, thou hadst a\n    father!\n  SLENDER. I had a father, Mistress Anne; my uncle can tell\n    you good jests of him. Pray you, uncle, tell Mistress Anne\n    the jest how my father stole two geese out of a pen, good\n    uncle.\n  SHALLOW. Mistress Anne, my cousin loves you.\n  SLENDER. Ay, that I do; as well as I love any woman in\n    Gloucestershire.\n  SHALLOW. He will maintain you like a gentlewoman.\n  SLENDER. Ay, that I will come cut and longtail, under the\n    degree of a squire.\n  SHALLOW. He will make you a hundred and fifty pounds\n    jointure.\n  ANNE. Good Master Shallow, let him woo for himself.  \n  SHALLOW. Marry, I thank you for it; I thank you for that\n    good comfort. She calls you, coz; I\'ll leave you.\n  ANNE. Now, Master Slender-\n  SLENDER. Now, good Mistress Anne-\n  ANNE. What is your will?\n  SLENDER. My Will! \'Od\'s heartlings, that\'s a pretty jest\n    indeed! I ne\'er made my will yet, I thank heaven; I am not\n    such a sickly creature, I give heaven praise.\n  ANNE. I mean, Master Slender, what would you with me?\n  SLENDER. Truly, for mine own part I would little or nothing\n    with you. Your father and my uncle hath made motions;\n    if it be my luck, so; if not, happy man be his dole! They\n    can tell you how things go better than I can. You may ask\n    your father; here he comes.\n\n            Enter PAGE and MISTRESS PAGE\n\n  PAGE. Now, Master Slender! Love him, daughter Anne-\n    Why, how now, what does Master Fenton here?\n    You wrong me, sir, thus still to haunt my house.  \n    I told you, sir, my daughter is dispos\'d of.\n  FENTON. Nay, Master Page, be not impatient.\n  MRS. PAGE. Good Master Fenton, come not to my child.\n  PAGE. She is no match for you.\n  FENTON. Sir, will you hear me?\n  PAGE. No, good Master Fenton.\n    Come, Master Shallow; come, son Slender; in.\n    Knowing my mind, you wrong me, Master Fenton.\n                               Exeunt PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER\n  QUICKLY. Speak to Mistress Page.\n  FENTON. Good Mistress Page, for that I love your daughter\n    In such a righteous fashion as I do,\n    Perforce, against all checks, rebukes, and manners,\n    I must advance the colours of my love,\n    And not retire. Let me have your good will.\n  ANNE. Good mother, do not marry me to yond fool.\n  MRS. PAGE. I mean it not; I seek you a better husband.\n  QUICKLY. That\'s my master, Master Doctor.\n  ANNE. Alas, I had rather be set quick i\' th\' earth.\n    And bowl\'d to death with turnips.  \n  MRS. PAGE. Come, trouble not yourself. Good Master\n    Fenton,\n    I will not be your friend, nor enemy;\n    My daughter will I question how she loves you,\n    And as I find her, so am I affected;\n    Till then, farewell, sir; she must needs go in;\n    Her father will be angry.\n  FENTON. Farewell, gentle mistress; farewell, Nan.\n                                       Exeunt MRS. PAGE and ANNE\n  QUICKLY. This is my doing now: \'Nay,\' said I \'will you cast\n    away your child on a fool, and a physician? Look on\n    Master Fenton.\' This is my doing.\n  FENTON. I thank thee; and I pray thee, once to-night\n    Give my sweet Nan this ring. There\'s for thy pains.\n  QUICKLY. Now Heaven send thee good fortune!  [Exit\n    FENTON]  A kind heart he hath; a woman would run through\n    fire and water for such a kind heart. But yet I would my\n    master had Mistress Anne; or I would Master Slender had\n    her; or, in sooth, I would Master Fenton had her; I will\n    do what I can for them all three, for so I have promis\'d,  \n    and I\'ll be as good as my word; but speciously for Master\n    Fenton. Well, I must of another errand to Sir John Falstaff\n    from my two mistresses. What a beast am I to slack it!\n Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 5.\n\nThe Garter Inn\n\nEnter FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH\n\n  FALSTAFF. Bardolph, I say!\n  BARDOLPH. Here, sir.\n  FALSTAFF. Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in \'t.\n                                                   Exit BARDOLPH\n    Have I liv\'d to be carried in a basket, like a barrow of\n    butcher\'s offal, and to be thrown in the Thames? Well, if\n    I be serv\'d such another trick, I\'ll have my brains ta\'en out\n    and butter\'d, and give them to a dog for a new-year\'s gift.\n    The rogues slighted me into the river with as little remorse\n    as they would have drown\'d a blind bitch\'s puppies, fifteen\n    i\' th\' litter; and you may know by my size that I have\n    a kind of alacrity in sinking; if the bottom were as deep as\n    hell I should down. I had been drown\'d but that the shore\n    was shelvy and shallow-a death that I abhor; for the water\n    swells a man; and what a thing should I have been when\n    had been swell\'d! I should have been a mountain of  \n    mummy.\n\n                  Re-enter BARDOLPH, with sack\n\n  BARDOLPH. Here\'s Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with you\n  FALSTAFF. Come, let me pour in some sack to the Thames\n    water; for my belly\'s as cold as if I had swallow\'d\n    snowballs for pills to cool the reins. Call her in.\n  BARDOLPH. Come in, woman.\n\n                     Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY\n\n  QUICKLY. By your leave; I cry you mercy. Give your\n    worship good morrow.\n  FALSTAFF. Take away these chalices. Go, brew me a pottle\n    of sack finely.\n  BARDOLPH. With eggs, sir?\n  FALSTAFF. Simple of itself; I\'ll no pullet-sperm in my\n    brewage.  [Exit BARDOLPH]  How now!\n  QUICKLY. Marry, sir, I come to your worship from Mistress  \n    Ford.\n  FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford! I have had ford enough; I was\n    thrown into the ford; I have my belly full of ford.\n  QUICKLY. Alas the day, good heart, that was not her fault!\n    She does so take on with her men; they mistook their\n    erection.\n  FALSTAFF. So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman\'s\n    promise.\n  QUICKLY. Well, she laments, sir, for it, that it would yearn\n    your heart to see it. Her husband goes this morning\n    a-birding; she desires you once more to come to her between\n    eight and nine; I must carry her word quickly. She\'ll make\n    you amends, I warrant you.\n  FALSTAFF. Well, I Will visit her. Tell her so; and bid her\n    think what a man is. Let her consider his frailty, and then\n    judge of my merit.\n  QUICKLY. I will tell her.\n  FALSTAFF. Do so. Between nine and ten, say\'st thou?\n  QUICKLY. Eight and nine, sir.\n  FALSTAFF. Well, be gone; I will not miss her.  \n  QUICKLY. Peace be with you, sir.                          Exit\n  FALSTAFF. I marvel I hear not of Master Brook; he sent me\n    word to stay within. I like his money well. O, here he\n    comes.\n\n                       Enter FORD disguised\n\n  FORD. Bless you, sir!\n  FALSTAFF. Now, Master Brook, you come to know what\n    hath pass\'d between me and Ford\'s wife?\n  FORD. That, indeed, Sir John, is my business.\n  FALSTAFF. Master Brook, I will not lie to you; I was at her\n    house the hour she appointed me.\n  FORD. And sped you, sir?\n  FALSTAFF. Very ill-favouredly, Master Brook.\n  FORD. How so, sir; did she change her determination?\n  FALSTAFF. No. Master Brook; but the peaking cornuto her\n    husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual \'larum of\n    jealousy, comes me in the instant of our, encounter, after\n    we had embrac\'d, kiss\'d, protested, and, as it were, spoke  \n    the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of his\n    companions, thither provoked and instigated by his\n    distemper, and, forsooth, to search his house for his wife\'s\n    love.\n  FORD. What, while you were there?\n  FALSTAFF. While I was there.\n  FORD. And did he search for you, and could not find you?\n  FALSTAFF. You shall hear. As good luck would have it, comes\n    in one Mistress Page, gives intelligence of Ford\'s approach;\n    and, in her invention and Ford\'s wife\'s distraction, they\n    convey\'d me into a buck-basket.\n  FORD. A buck-basket!\n  FALSTAFF. By the Lord, a buck-basket! Ramm\'d me in with\n    foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy\n    napkins, that, Master Brook, there was the rankest compound\n    of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.\n  FORD. And how long lay you there?\n  FALSTAFF. Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have\n    suffer\'d to bring this woman to evil for your good. Being\n    thus cramm\'d in the basket, a couple of Ford\'s knaves, his  \n    hinds, were call\'d forth by their mistress to carry me in\n    the name of foul clothes to Datchet Lane; they took me on\n    their shoulders; met the jealous knave their master in the\n    door; who ask\'d them once or twice what they had in their\n    basket. I quak\'d for fear lest the lunatic knave would have\n    search\'d it; but Fate, ordaining he should be a cuckold,\n    held his hand. Well, on went he for a search, and away\n    went I for foul clothes. But mark the sequel, Master\n    Brook-I suffered the pangs of three several deaths: first,\n    an intolerable fright to be detected with a jealous rotten\n    bell-wether; next, to be compass\'d like a good bilbo in the\n    circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head; and\n    then, to be stopp\'d in, like a strong distillation, with\n    stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease. Think of that\n    -a man of my kidney. Think of that-that am as subject to\n    heat as butter; a man of continual dissolution and thaw. It\n    was a miracle to scape suffocation. And in the height of\n    this bath, when I was more than half-stew\'d in grease, like\n    a Dutch dish, to be thrown into the Thames, and cool\'d,\n    glowing hot, in that surge, like a horse-shoe; think of that  \n    -hissing hot. Think of that, Master Brook.\n  FORD. In good sadness, sir, I am sorry that for my sake you\n    have suffer\'d all this. My suit, then, is desperate;\n    you\'ll undertake her no more.\n  FALSTAFF. Master Brook, I will be thrown into Etna, as I\n    have been into Thames, ere I will leave her thus. Her\n    husband is this morning gone a-birding; I have received from\n    her another embassy of meeting; \'twixt eight and nine is\n    the hour, Master Brook.\n  FORD. \'Tis past eight already, sir.\n  FALSTAFF. Is it? I Will then address me to my appointment.\n    Come to me at your convenient leisure, and you shall\n    know how I speed; and the conclusion shall be crowned\n    with your enjoying her. Adieu. You shall have her, Master\n    Brook; Master Brook, you shall cuckold Ford.            Exit\n  FORD. Hum! ha! Is this a vision? Is this a dream? Do I sleep?\n    Master Ford, awake; awake, Master Ford. There\'s a hole\n    made in your best coat, Master Ford. This \'tis to be\n    married; this \'tis to have linen and buck-baskets! Well, I will\n    proclaim myself what I am; I will now take the lecher; he  \n    is at my house. He cannot scape me; \'tis impossible he\n    should; he cannot creep into a halfpenny purse nor into\n    a pepper box. But, lest the devil that guides him should aid\n    him, I will search impossible places. Though what I am I\n    cannot avoid, yet to be what I would not shall not make\n    me tame. If I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb\n    go with me-I\'ll be horn mad.                            Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\n\nWindsor. A street\n\nEnter MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS QUICKLY, and WILLIAM\n\n  MRS. PAGE. Is he at Master Ford\'s already, think\'st thou?\n  QUICKLY. Sure he is by this; or will be presently; but truly\n    he is very courageous mad about his throwing into the\n    water. Mistress Ford desires you to come suddenly.\n  MRS. PAGE. I\'ll be with her by and by; I\'ll but bring my\n    young man here to school. Look where his master comes;\n    \'tis a playing day, I see.\n\n                     Enter SIR HUGH EVANS\n\n    How now, Sir Hugh, no school to-day?\n  EVANS. No; Master Slender is let the boys leave to play.\n  QUICKLY. Blessing of his heart!\n  MRS. PAGE. Sir Hugh, my husband says my son profits\n    nothing in the world at his book; I pray you ask him some\n    questions in his accidence.  \n  EVANS. Come hither, William; hold up your head; come.\n  MRS. PAGE. Come on, sirrah; hold up your head; answer your\n    master; be not afraid.\n  EVANS. William, how many numbers is in nouns?\n  WILLIAM. Two.\n  QUICKLY. Truly, I thought there had been one number\n    more, because they say \'Od\'s nouns.\'\n  EVANS. Peace your tattlings. What is \'fair,\' William?\n  WILLIAM. Pulcher.\n  QUICKLY. Polecats! There are fairer things than polecats,\n    sure.\n  EVANS. You are a very simplicity oman; I pray you, peace.\n    What is \'lapis,\' William?\n  WILLIAM. A stone.\n  EVANS. And what is \'a stone,\' William?\n  WILLIAM. A pebble.\n  EVANS. No, it is \'lapis\'; I pray you remember in your prain.\n  WILLIAM. Lapis.\n  EVANS. That is a good William. What is he, William, that\n    does lend articles?  \n  WILLIAM. Articles are borrowed of the pronoun, and be\n    thus declined: Singulariter, nominativo; hic, haec, hoc.\n  EVANS. Nominativo, hig, hag, hog; pray you, mark: genitivo,\n    hujus. Well, what is your accusative case?\n  WILLIAM. Accusativo, hinc.\n  EVANS. I pray you, have your remembrance, child.\n    Accusativo, hung, hang, hog.\n  QUICKLY. \'Hang-hog\' is Latin for bacon, I warrant you.\n  EVANS. Leave your prabbles, oman. What is the focative\n    case, William?\n  WILLIAM. O-vocativo, O.\n  EVANS. Remember, William: focative is caret.\n  QUICKLY. And that\'s a good root.\n  EVANS. Oman, forbear.\n  MRS. PAGE. Peace.\n  EVANS. What is your genitive case plural, William?\n  WILLIAM. Genitive case?\n  EVANS. Ay.\n  WILLIAM. Genitive: horum, harum, horum.\n  QUICKLY. Vengeance of Jenny\'s case; fie on her! Never  \n    name her, child, if she be a whore.\n  EVANS. For shame, oman.\n  QUICKLY. YOU do ill to teach the child such words. He\n    teaches him to hick and to hack, which they\'ll do fast\n    enough of themselves; and to call \'horum\'; fie upon you!\n  EVANS. Oman, art thou lunatics? Hast thou no understandings\n    for thy cases, and the numbers of the genders? Thou\n    art as foolish Christian creatures as I would desires.\n  MRS. PAGE. Prithee hold thy peace.\n  EVANS. Show me now, William, some declensions of your\n    pronouns.\n  WILLIAM. Forsooth, I have forgot.\n  EVANS. It is qui, quae, quod; if you forget your qui\'s, your\n    quae\'s, and your quod\'s, you must be preeches. Go your\n    ways and play; go.\n  MRS. PAGE. He is a better scholar than I thought he was.\n  EVANS. He is a good sprag memory. Farewell, Mistress Page.\n  MRS. PAGE. Adieu, good Sir Hugh.                 Exit SIR HUGH\n    Get you home, boy. Come, we stay too long.            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\n\nFORD\'S house\n\nEnter FALSTAFF and MISTRESS FORD\n\n  FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford, your sorrow hath eaten up my\n    sufferance. I see you are obsequious in your love, and I\n    profess requital to a hair\'s breadth; not only, Mistress Ford, in\n    the simple office of love, but in all the accoutrement,\n    complement, and ceremony of it. But are you sure of your\n    husband now?\n  MRS. FORD. He\'s a-birding, sweet Sir John.\n  MRS. PAGE.  [Within]  What hoa, gossip Ford, what hoa!\n  MRS. FORD. Step into th\' chamber, Sir John.      Exit FALSTAFF\n\n                      Enter MISTRESS PAGE\n\n  MRS. PAGE. How now, sweetheart, who\'s at home besides\n    yourself?\n  MRS. FORD. Why, none but mine own people.\n  MRS. PAGE. Indeed?  \n  MRS. FORD. No, certainly.  [Aside to her]  Speak louder.\n  MRS. PAGE. Truly, I am so glad you have nobody here.\n  MRS. FORD. Why?\n  MRS. PAGE. Why, woman, your husband is in his old lunes\n    again. He so takes on yonder with my husband; so rails\n    against all married mankind; so curses an Eve\'s daughters,\n    of what complexion soever; and so buffets himself on the\n    forehead, crying \'Peer-out, peer-out!\' that any madness I\n    ever yet beheld seem\'d but tameness, civility, and patience,\n    to this his distemper he is in now. I am glad the fat knight\n    is not here.\n  MRS. FORD. Why, does he talk of him?\n  MRS. PAGE. Of none but him; and swears he was carried out,\n    the last time he search\'d for him, in a basket; protests to\n    my husband he is now here; and hath drawn him and the\n    rest of their company from their sport, to make another\n    experiment of his suspicion. But I am glad the knight is not\n    here; now he shall see his own foolery.\n  MRS. FORD. How near is he, Mistress Page?\n  MRS. PAGE. Hard by, at street end; he will be here anon.  \n  MRS. FORD. I am undone: the knight is here.\n  MRS. PAGE. Why, then, you are utterly sham\'d, and he\'s but\n    a dead man. What a woman are you! Away with him,\n    away with him; better shame than murder.\n  MRS. FORD. Which way should he go? How should I bestow\n    him? Shall I put him into the basket again?\n\n                  Re-enter FALSTAFF\n\n  FALSTAFF. No, I\'ll come no more i\' th\' basket. May I not go\n    out ere he come?\n  MRS. PAGE. Alas, three of Master Ford\'s brothers watch the\n    door with pistols, that none shall issue out; otherwise you\n    might slip away ere he came. But what make you here?\n  FALSTAFF. What shall I do? I\'ll creep up into the chimney.\n  MRS. FORD. There they always use to discharge their\n    birding-pieces.\n  MRS. PAGE. Creep into the kiln-hole.\n  FALSTAFF. Where is it?\n  MRS. FORD. He will seek there, on my word. Neither press,  \n    coffer, chest, trunk, well, vault, but he hath an abstract for\n    the remembrance of such places, and goes to them by his\n    note. There is no hiding you in the house.\n  FALSTAFF. I\'ll go out then.\n  MRS. PAGE. If you go out in your own semblance, you die,\n    Sir John. Unless you go out disguis\'d.\n  MRS. FORD. How might we disguise him?\n  MRS. PAGE. Alas the day, I know not! There is no woman\'s\n    gown big enough for him; otherwise he might put on a\n    hat, a muffler, and a kerchief, and so escape.\n  FALSTAFF. Good hearts, devise something; any extremity\n    rather than a mischief.\n  MRS. FORD. My Maid\'s aunt, the fat woman of Brainford, has\n    a gown above.\n  MRS. PAGE. On my word, it will serve him; she\'s as big as he\n    is; and there\'s her thrumm\'d hat, and her muffler too. Run\n    up, Sir John.\n  MRS. FORD. Go, go, sweet Sir John. Mistress Page and I will\n    look some linen for your head.\n  MRS. PAGE. Quick, quick; we\'ll come dress you straight. Put  \n    on the gown the while.                         Exit FALSTAFF\n  MRS. FORD. I would my husband would meet him in this\n    shape; he cannot abide the old woman of Brainford; he\n    swears she\'s a witch, forbade her my house, and hath\n    threat\'ned to beat her.\n  MRS. PAGE. Heaven guide him to thy husband\'s cudgel; and\n    the devil guide his cudgel afterwards!\n  MRS. FORD. But is my husband coming?\n  MRS. PAGE. Ay, in good sadness is he; and talks of the basket\n    too, howsoever he hath had intelligence.\n  MRS. FORD. We\'ll try that; for I\'ll appoint my men to carry\n    the basket again, to meet him at the door with it as they\n    did last time.\n  MRS. PAGE. Nay, but he\'ll be here presently; let\'s go dress\n    him like the witch of Brainford.\n  MRS. FORD. I\'ll first direct my men what they shall do with\n    the basket. Go up; I\'ll bring linen for him straight.   Exit\n  MRS. PAGE. Hang him, dishonest varlet! we cannot misuse\n    him enough.\n    We\'ll leave a proof, by that which we will do,  \n    Wives may be merry and yet honest too.\n    We do not act that often jest and laugh;\n    \'Tis old but true: Still swine eats all the draff.      Exit\n\n            Re-enter MISTRESS FORD, with two SERVANTS\n\n  MRS. FORD. Go, sirs, take the basket again on your shoulders;\n    your master is hard at door; if he bid you set it down, obey\n    him; quickly, dispatch.                                 Exit\n  FIRST SERVANT. Come, come, take it up.\n  SECOND SERVANT. Pray heaven it be not full of knight again.\n  FIRST SERVANT. I hope not; I had lief as bear so much lead.\n\n    Enter FORD, PAGE, SHALLOW, CAIUS, and SIR HUGH EVANS\n\n  FORD. Ay, but if it prove true, Master Page, have you any\n    way then to unfool me again? Set down the basket, villain!\n    Somebody call my wife. Youth in a basket! O you panderly\n    rascals, there\'s a knot, a ging, a pack, a conspiracy\n    against me. Now shall the devil be sham\'d. What, wife, I  \n    say! Come, come forth; behold what honest clothes you\n    send forth to bleaching.\n  PAGE. Why, this passes, Master Ford; you are not to go loose\n    any longer; you must be pinion\'d.\n  EVANS. Why, this is lunatics. This is mad as a mad dog.\n  SHALLOW. Indeed, Master Ford, this is not well, indeed.\n  FORD. So say I too, sir.\n\n                     Re-enter MISTRESS FORD\n\n    Come hither, Mistress Ford; Mistress Ford, the honest\n    woman, the modest wife, the virtuous creature, that hath\n    the jealous fool to her husband! I suspect without cause,\n    Mistress, do I?\n  MRS. FORD. Heaven be my witness, you do, if you suspect\n    me in any dishonesty.\n  FORD. Well said, brazen-face; hold it out. Come forth, sirrah.\n                           [Pulling clothes out of the basket]\n  PAGE. This passes!\n  MRS. FORD. Are you not asham\'d? Let the clothes alone.  \n  FORD. I shall find you anon.\n  EVANS. \'Tis unreasonable. Will you take up your wife\'s\n    clothes? Come away.\n  FORD. Empty the basket, I say.\n  MRS. FORD. Why, man, why?\n  FORD. Master Page, as I am a man, there was one convey\'d\n    out of my house yesterday in this basket. Why may not\n    he be there again? In my house I am sure he is; my\n    intelligence is true; my jealousy is reasonable.\n    Pluck me out all the linen.\n  MRS. FORD. If you find a man there, he shall die a flea\'s\n    death.\n  PAGE. Here\'s no man.\n  SHALLOW. By my fidelity, this is not well, Master Ford; this\n    wrongs you.\n  EVANS. Master Ford, you must pray, and not follow the\n    imaginations of your own heart; this is jealousies.\n  FORD. Well, he\'s not here I seek for.\n  PAGE. No, nor nowhere else but in your brain.\n  FORD. Help to search my house this one time. If I find not  \n    what I seek, show no colour for my extremity; let me for\n    ever be your table sport; let them say of me \'As jealous as\n    Ford, that search\'d a hollow walnut for his wife\'s leman.\'\n    Satisfy me once more; once more search with me.\n  MRS. FORD. What, hoa, Mistress Page! Come you and the old\n    woman down; my husband will come into the chamber.\n  FORD. Old woman? what old woman\'s that?\n  MRS. FORD. Why, it is my maid\'s aunt of Brainford.\n  FORD. A witch, a quean, an old cozening quean! Have I not\n    forbid her my house? She comes of errands, does she? We\n    are simple men; we do not know what\'s brought to pass\n    under the profession of fortune-telling. She works by\n    charms, by spells, by th\' figure, and such daub\'ry as this\n    is, beyond our element. We know nothing. Come down, you\n    witch, you hag you; come down, I say.\n  MRS. FORD. Nay, good sweet husband! Good gentlemen, let\n    him not strike the old woman.\n\n   Re-enter FALSTAFF in woman\'s clothes, and MISTRESS PAGE\n  \n  MRS. PAGE. Come, Mother Prat; come. give me your hand.\n  FORD. I\'ll prat her.  [Beating him]  Out of my door, you\n    witch, you hag, you. baggage, you polecat, you ronyon!\n    Out, out! I\'ll conjure you, I\'ll fortune-tell you.\n                                                   Exit FALSTAFF\n  MRS. PAGE. Are you not asham\'d? I think you have kill\'d the\n    poor woman.\n  MRS. FORD. Nay, he will do it. \'Tis a goodly credit for you.\n  FORD. Hang her, witch!\n  EVANS. By yea and no, I think the oman is a witch indeed; I\n    like not when a oman has a great peard; I spy a great peard\n    under his muffler.\n  FORD. Will you follow, gentlemen? I beseech you follow;\n    see but the issue of my jealousy; if I cry out thus upon no\n    trail, never trust me when I open again.\n  PAGE. Let\'s obey his humour a little further. Come,\n    gentlemen.            Exeunt all but MRS. FORD and MRS. PAGE\n  MRS. PAGE. Trust me, he beat him most pitifully.\n  MRS. FORD. Nay, by th\' mass, that he did not; he beat him\n    most unpitifully methought.  \n  MRS. PAGE. I\'ll have the cudgel hallow\'d and hung o\'er the\n    altar; it hath done meritorious service.\n  MRS. FORD. What think you? May we, with the warrant of\n    womanhood and the witness of a good conscience, pursue\n    him with any further revenge?\n  MRS. PAGE. The spirit of wantonness is sure scar\'d out of\n    him; if the devil have him not in fee-simple, with fine and\n    recovery, he will never, I think, in the way of waste,\n    attempt us again.\n  MRS. FORD. Shall we tell our husbands how we have serv\'d\n    him?\n  MRS. PAGE. Yes, by all means; if it be but to scrape the\n    figures out of your husband\'s brains. If they can find in their\n    hearts the poor unvirtuous fat knight shall be any further\n    afflicted, we two will still be the ministers.\n  MRS. FORD. I\'ll warrant they\'ll have him publicly sham\'d;\n    and methinks there would be no period to the jest, should\n    he not be publicly sham\'d.\n  MRS. PAGE. Come, to the forge with it then; shape it. I\n    would not have things cool.                           Exeunt  \n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\n\nThe Garter Inn\n\nEnter HOST and BARDOLPH\n\n  BARDOLPH. Sir, the Germans desire to have three of your\n    horses; the Duke himself will be to-morrow at court, and\n    they are going to meet him.\n  HOST. What duke should that be comes so secretly? I hear\n    not of him in the court. Let me speak with the gentlemen;\n    they speak English?\n  BARDOLPH. Ay, sir; I\'ll call them to you.\n  HOST. They shall have my horses, but I\'ll make them pay;\n    I\'ll sauce them; they have had my house a week at\n    command; I have turn\'d away my other guests. They must\n    come off; I\'ll sauce them. Come.                      Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4\n\nFORD\'S house\n\nEnter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD, and SIR HUGH EVANS\n\n  EVANS. \'Tis one of the best discretions of a oman as ever\n    did look upon.\n  PAGE. And did he send you both these letters at an instant?\n  MRS. PAGE. Within a quarter of an hour.\n  FORD. Pardon me, wife. Henceforth, do what thou wilt;\n    I rather will suspect the sun with cold\n    Than thee with wantonness. Now doth thy honour stand,\n    In him that was of late an heretic,\n    As firm as faith.\n  PAGE. \'Tis well, \'tis well; no more.\n    Be not as extreme in submission as in offence;\n    But let our plot go forward. Let our wives\n    Yet once again, to make us public sport,\n    Appoint a meeting with this old fat fellow,\n    Where we may take him and disgrace him for it.  \n  FORD. There is no better way than that they spoke of.\n  PAGE. How? To send him word they\'ll meet him in the Park\n    at midnight? Fie, fie! he\'ll never come!\n  EVANS. You say he has been thrown in the rivers; and has\n    been grievously peaten as an old oman; methinks there\n    should be terrors in him, that he should not come;\n    methinks his flesh is punish\'d; he shall have no desires.\n  PAGE. So think I too.\n  MRS. FORD. Devise but how you\'ll use him when he comes,\n    And let us two devise to bring him thither.\n  MRS. PAGE. There is an old tale goes that Heme the Hunter,\n    Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,\n    Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,\n    Walk round about an oak, with great ragg\'d horns;\n    And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,\n    And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain\n    In a most hideous and dreadful manner.\n    You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know\n    The superstitious idle-headed eld\n    Receiv\'d, and did deliver to our age,  \n    This tale of Heme the Hunter for a truth.\n  PAGE. Why yet there want not many that do fear\n    In deep of night to walk by this Herne\'s oak.\n    But what of this?\n  MRS. FORD. Marry, this is our device-\n    That Falstaff at that oak shall meet with us,\n    Disguis\'d, like Heme, with huge horns on his head.\n  PAGE. Well, let it not be doubted but he\'ll come,\n    And in this shape. When you have brought him thither,\n    What shall be done with him? What is your plot?\n  MRS. PAGE. That likewise have we thought upon, and\n    thus:\n    Nan Page my daughter, and my little son,\n    And three or four more of their growth, we\'ll dress\n    Like urchins, ouphes, and fairies, green and white,\n    With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads,\n    And rattles in their hands; upon a sudden,\n    As Falstaff, she, and I, are newly met,\n    Let them from forth a sawpit rush at once\n    With some diffused song; upon their sight  \n    We two in great amazedness will fly.\n    Then let them all encircle him about,\n    And fairy-like, to pinch the unclean knight;\n    And ask him why, that hour of fairy revel,\n    In their so sacred paths he dares to tread\n    In shape profane.\n  MRS. FORD. And till he tell the truth,\n    Let the supposed fairies pinch him sound,\n    And burn him with their tapers.\n  MRS. PAGE. The truth being known,\n    We\'ll all present ourselves; dis-horn the spirit,\n    And mock him home to Windsor.\n  FORD. The children must\n    Be practis\'d well to this or they\'ll nev\'r do \'t.\n  EVANS. I will teach the children their behaviours; and I will\n    be like a jack-an-apes also, to burn the knight with my\n    taber.\n  FORD. That will be excellent. I\'ll go buy them vizards.\n  MRS. PAGE. My Nan shall be the Queen of all the Fairies,\n    Finely attired in a robe of white.  \n  PAGE. That silk will I go buy.  [Aside]  And in that time\n    Shall Master Slender steal my Nan away,\n    And marry her at Eton.-Go, send to Falstaff straight.\n  FORD. Nay, I\'ll to him again, in name of Brook;\n    He\'ll tell me all his purpose. Sure, he\'ll come.\n  MRS. PAGE. Fear not you that. Go get us properties\n    And tricking for our fairies.\n  EVANS. Let us about it. It is admirable pleasures, and fery\n    honest knaveries.               Exeunt PAGE, FORD, and EVANS\n  MRS. PAGE. Go, Mistress Ford.\n    Send Quickly to Sir John to know his mind.\n                                                  Exit MRS. FORD\n    I\'ll to the Doctor; he hath my good will,\n    And none but he, to marry with Nan Page.\n    That Slender, though well landed, is an idiot;\n    And he my husband best of all affects.\n    The Doctor is well money\'d, and his friends\n    Potent at court; he, none but he, shall have her,\n    Though twenty thousand worthier come to crave her.      Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 5.\n\nThe Garter Inn\n\nEnter HOST and SIMPLE\n\n  HOST. What wouldst thou have, boor? What, thick-skin?\n    Speak, breathe, discuss; brief, short, quick, snap.\n  SIMPLE. Marry, sir, I come to speak with Sir John Falstaff\n    from Master Slender.\n  HOST. There\'s his chamber, his house, his castle, his\n    standing-bed and truckle-bed; \'tis painted about with the\n    story of the Prodigal, fresh and new. Go, knock and can; he\'ll\n    speak like an Anthropophaginian unto thee. Knock, I say.\n  SIMPLE. There\'s an old woman, a fat woman, gone up into\n    his chamber; I\'ll be so bold as stay, sir, till she come down;\n    I come to speak with her, indeed.\n  HOST. Ha! a fat woman? The knight may be robb\'d. I\'ll call.\n    Bully knight! Bully Sir John! Speak from thy lungs\n    military. Art thou there? It is thine host, thine Ephesian, calls.\n  FALSTAFF.  [Above]  How now, mine host?\n  HOST. Here\'s a Bohemian-Tartar tarries the coming down of  \n    thy fat woman. Let her descend, bully, let her descend;\n    my chambers are honourible. Fie, privacy, fie!\n\n                    Enter FALSTAFF\n\n  FALSTAFF. There was, mine host, an old fat woman even\n    now with, me; but she\'s gone.\n  SIMPLE. Pray you, sir, was\'t not the wise woman of\n    Brainford?\n  FALSTAFF. Ay, marry was it, mussel-shell. What would you\n    with her?\n  SIMPLE. My master, sir, my Master Slender, sent to her,\n    seeing her go thorough the streets, to know, sir, whether one\n    Nym, sir, that beguil\'d him of a chain, had the chain or no.\n  FALSTAFF. I spake with the old woman about it.\n  SIMPLE. And what says she, I pray, sir?\n  FALSTAFF Marry, she says that the very same man that\n    beguil\'d Master Slender of his chain cozen\'d him of it.\n  SIMPLE. I would I could have spoken with the woman\n    herself; I had other things to have spoken with her too,  \n    from him.\n  FALSTAFF. What are they? Let us know.\n  HOST. Ay, come; quick.\n  SIMPLE. I may not conceal them, sir.\n  FALSTAFF. Conceal them, or thou diest.\n    SIMPLE.. Why, sir, they were nothing but about Mistress\n    Anne Page: to know if it were my master\'s fortune to\n    have her or no.\n  FALSTAFF. \'Tis, \'tis his fortune.\n  SIMPLE. What sir?\n  FALSTAFF. To have her, or no. Go; say the woman told me\n    so.\n  SIMPLE. May I be bold to say so, sir?\n  FALSTAFF. Ay, sir, like who more bold?\n  SIMPLE., I thank your worship; I shall make my master glad\n    with these tidings.                              Exit SIMPLE\n  HOST. Thou art clerkly, thou art clerkly, Sir John. Was\n    there a wise woman with thee?\n  FALSTAFF. Ay, that there was, mine host; one that hath\n    taught me more wit than ever I learn\'d before in my life;  \n    and I paid nothing for it neither, but was paid for my\n    learning.\n\n                    Enter BARDOLPH\n\n  BARDOLPH. Out, alas, sir, cozenage, mere cozenage!\n  HOST. Where be my horses? Speak well of them, varletto.\n  BARDOLPH. Run away with the cozeners; for so soon as I\n    came beyond Eton, they threw me off from behind one of\n    them, in a slough of mire; and set spurs and away, like\n    three German devils, three Doctor Faustuses.\n  HOST. They are gone but to meet the Duke, villain; do not\n    say they be fled. Germans are honest men.\n\n                 Enter SIR HUGH EVANS\n\n  EVANS. Where is mine host?\n  HOST. What is the matter, sir?\n  EVANS. Have a care of your entertainments. There is a friend\n    of mine come to town tells me there is three  \n    cozen-germans that has cozen\'d all the hosts of Readins,\n    of Maidenhead, of Colebrook, of horses and money. I tell you for\n    good will, look you; you are wise, and full of gibes and\n    vlouting-stogs, and \'tis not convenient you should be\n    cozened. Fare you well.                                 Exit\n\n                  Enter DOCTOR CAIUS\n\n  CAIUS. Vere is mine host de Jarteer?\n  HOST. Here, Master Doctor, in perplexity and doubtful\n    dilemma.\n  CAIUS. I cannot tell vat is dat; but it is tell-a me dat you\n    make grand preparation for a Duke de Jamany. By my\n    trot, dere is no duke that the court is know to come; I\n    tell you for good will. Adieu.                          Exit\n  HOST. Hue and cry, villain, go! Assist me, knight; I am\n    undone. Fly, run, hue and cry, villain; I am undone.\n                                        Exeunt HOST and BARDOLPH\n  FALSTAFF. I would all the world might be cozen\'d, for I have\n    been cozen\'d and beaten too. If it should come to the car  \n    of the court how I have been transformed, and how my\n    transformation hath been wash\'d and cudgell\'d, they\n    would melt me out of my fat, drop by drop, and liquor\n    fishermen\'s boots with me; I warrant they would whip me\n    with their fine wits till I were as crestfall\'n as a dried pear.\n    I never prosper\'d since I forswore myself at primero. Well,\n    if my wind were but long enough to say my prayers,\n    would repent.\n\n                Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY\n\n    Now! whence come you?\n  QUICKLY. From the two parties, forsooth.\n  FALSTAFF. The devil take one party and his dam the other!\n    And so they shall be both bestowed. I have suffer\'d more\n    for their sakes, more than the villainous inconstancy of\n    man\'s disposition is able to bear.\n  QUICKLY. And have not they suffer\'d? Yes, I warrant;\n    speciously one of them; Mistress Ford, good heart, is beaten\n    black and blue, that you cannot see a white spot about her.  \n  FALSTAFF. What tell\'st thou me of black and blue? I was\n    beaten myself into all the colours of the rainbow; and\n    was like to be apprehended for the witch of Brainford. But\n    that my admirable dexterity of wit, my counterfeiting the\n    action of an old woman, deliver\'d me, the knave constable\n    had set me i\' th\' stocks, i\' th\' common stocks, for a witch.\n  QUICKLY. Sir, let me speak with you in your chamber; you\n    shall hear how things go, and, I warrant, to your content.\n    Here is a letter will say somewhat. Good hearts, what ado\n    here is to bring you together! Sure, one of you does not\n    serve heaven well, that you are so cross\'d.\n  FALSTAFF. Come up into my chamber.                      Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 6.\n\nThe Garter Inn\n\nEnter FENTON and HOST\n\n  HOST. Master Fenton, talk not to me; my mind is heavy; I\n    will give over all.\n  FENTON. Yet hear me speak. Assist me in my purpose,\n    And, as I am a gentleman, I\'ll give the\n    A hundred pound in gold more than your loss.\n  HOST. I will hear you, Master Fenton; and I will, at the least,\n    keep your counsel.\n  FENTON. From time to time I have acquainted you\n    With the dear love I bear to fair Anne Page;\n    Who, mutually, hath answer\'d my affection,\n    So far forth as herself might be her chooser,\n    Even to my wish. I have a letter from her\n    Of such contents as you will wonder at;\n    The mirth whereof so larded with my matter\n    That neither, singly, can be manifested\n    Without the show of both. Fat Falstaff  \n    Hath a great scene. The image of the jest\n    I\'ll show you here at large. Hark, good mine host:\n    To-night at Heme\'s oak, just \'twixt twelve and one,\n    Must my sweet Nan present the Fairy Queen-\n    The purpose why is here-in which disguise,\n    While other jests are something rank on foot,\n    Her father hath commanded her to slip\n    Away with Slender, and with him at Eton\n    Immediately to marry; she hath consented.\n    Now, sir,\n    Her mother, even strong against that match\n    And firm for Doctor Caius, hath appointed\n    That he shall likewise shuffle her away\n    While other sports are tasking of their minds,\n    And at the dean\'ry, where a priest attends,\n    Straight marry her. To this her mother\'s plot\n    She seemingly obedient likewise hath\n    Made promise to the doctor. Now thus it rests:\n    Her father means she shall be all in white;\n    And in that habit, when Slender sees his time  \n    To take her by the hand and bid her go,\n    She shall go with him; her mother hath intended\n    The better to denote her to the doctor-\n    For they must all be mask\'d and vizarded-\n    That quaint in green she shall be loose enrob\'d,\n    With ribands pendent, flaring \'bout her head;\n    And when the doctor spies his vantage ripe,\n    To pinch her by the hand, and, on that token,\n    The maid hath given consent to go with him.\n  HOST. Which means she to deceive, father or mother?\n  FENTON. Both, my good host, to go along with me.\n    And here it rests-that you\'ll procure the vicar\n    To stay for me at church, \'twixt twelve and one,\n    And in the lawful name of marrying,\n    To give our hearts united ceremony.\n  HOST. Well, husband your device; I\'ll to the vicar.\n    Bring you the maid, you shall not lack a priest.\n  FENTON. So shall I evermore be bound to thee;\n    Besides, I\'ll make a present recompense.              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 1.\n\nThe Garter Inn\n\nEnter FALSTAFF and MISTRESS QUICKLY\n\n  FALSTAFF. Prithee, no more prattling; go. I\'ll, hold. This is\n    the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers.\n    Away, go; they say there is divinity in odd numbers, either\n    in nativity, chance, or death. Away.\n  QUICKLY. I\'ll provide you a chain, and I\'ll do what I can to\n    get you a pair of horns.\n  FALSTAFF. Away, I say; time wears; hold up your head, and\n    mince.                                     Exit MRS. QUICKLY\n\n                 Enter FORD disguised\n\n    How now, Master Brook. Master Brook, the matter will\n    be known tonight or never. Be you in the Park about\n    midnight, at Herne\'s oak, and you shall see wonders.\n  FORD. Went you not to her yesterday, sir, as you told me\n    you had appointed?  \n  FALSTAFF. I went to her, Master Brook, as you see, like a\n    poor old man; but I came from her, Master Brook, like a\n    poor old woman. That same knave Ford, her husband, hath\n    the finest mad devil of jealousy in him, Master Brook, that\n    ever govern\'d frenzy. I will tell you-he beat me grievously\n    in the shape of a woman; for in the shape of man, Master\n    Brook, I fear not Goliath with a weaver\'s beam; because\n    I know also life is a shuttle. I am in haste; go along with\n    me; I\'ll. tell you all, Master Brook. Since I pluck\'d geese,\n    play\'d truant, and whipp\'d top, I knew not what \'twas to\n    be beaten till lately. Follow me. I\'ll tell you strange things\n    of this knave-Ford, on whom to-night I will be revenged,\n    and I will deliver his wife into your hand. Follow. Strange\n    things in hand, Master Brook! Follow.                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\n\nWindsor Park\n\nEnter PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER\n\n  PAGE. Come, come; we\'ll couch i\' th\' Castle ditch till we\n    see the light of our fairies. Remember, son Slender, my daughter.\n  SLENDER. Ay, forsooth; I have spoke with her, and we have\n    a nay-word how to know one another. I come to her in\n    white and cry \'mum\'; she cries \'budget,\' and by that we\n    know one another.\n  SHALLOW. That\'s good too; but what needs either your mum\n    or her budget? The white will decipher her well enough.\n    It hath struck ten o\'clock.\n  PAGE. The night is dark; light and spirits will become it well.\n    Heaven prosper our sport! No man means evil but the\n    devil, and we shall know him by his horns. Let\'s away;\n    follow me.                                            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\n\nA street leading to the Park\n\nEnter MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD, and DOCTOR CAIUS\n\n  MRS. PAGE. Master Doctor, my daughter is in green; when\n    you see your time, take her by the hand, away with her to\n    the deanery, and dispatch it quickly. Go before into the\n    Park; we two must go together.\n  CAIUS. I know vat I have to do; adieu.\n  MRS. PAGE. Fare you well, sir.  [Exit CAIUS]  My husband\n    will not rejoice so much at the abuse of Falstaff as he will\n    chafe at the doctor\'s marrying my daughter; but \'tis no\n    matter; better a little chiding than a great deal of\n    heartbreak.\n  MRS. FORD. Where is Nan now, and her troop of fairies, and\n    the Welsh devil, Hugh?\n  MRS. PAGE. They are all couch\'d in a pit hard by Heme\'s\n    oak, with obscur\'d lights; which, at the very instant of\n    Falstaff\'s and our meeting, they will at once display to the\n    night.\n  MRS. FORD. That cannot choose but amaze him.\n  MRS. PAGE. If he be not amaz\'d, he will be mock\'d; if he be  \n    amaz\'d, he will every way be mock\'d.\n  MRS. FORD. We\'ll betray him finely.\n  MRS. PAGE. Against such lewdsters and their lechery,\n    Those that betray them do no treachery.\n  MRS. FORD. The hour draws on. To the oak, to the oak!\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4.\n\nWindsor Park\n\nEnter SIR HUGH EVANS like a satyr, with OTHERS as fairies\n\n  EVANS. Trib, trib, fairies; come; and remember your parts.\n    Be pold, I pray you; follow me into the pit; and when I\n    give the watch-ords, do as I pid you. Come, come; trib,\n    trib.                                                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 5.\n\nAnother part of the Park\n\nEnter FALSTAFF disguised as HERNE\n\n  FALSTAFF. The Windsor bell hath struck twelve; the minute\n    draws on. Now the hot-blooded gods assist me!\n    Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa; love set on thy\n    horns. O powerful love! that in some respects makes a\n    beast a man; in some other a man a beast. You were also,\n    Jupiter, a swan, for the love of Leda. O omnipotent love!\n    how near the god drew to the complexion of a goose! A\n    fault done first in the form of a beast-O Jove, a beastly\n    fault!-and then another fault in the semblance of a fowl-\n    think on\'t, Jove, a foul fault! When gods have hot backs\n    what shall poor men do? For me, I am here a Windsor\n    stag; and the fattest, I think, i\' th\' forest. Send me a cool\n    rut-time, Jove, or who can blame me to piss my tallow?\n    Who comes here? my doe?\n\n        Enter MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE  \n\n  MRS. FORD. Sir John! Art thou there, my deer, my male deer.\n  FALSTAFF. My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain\n    potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Greensleeves, hail\n    kissing-comfits, and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest\n    of provocation, I will shelter me here.      [Embracing her]\n  MRS. FORD. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.\n  FALSTAFF. Divide me like a brib\'d buck, each a haunch; I\n    will keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow\n    of this walk, and my horns I bequeath your husbands. Am\n    I a woodman, ha? Speak I like Heme the Hunter? Why,\n    now is Cupid a child of conscience; he makes restitution.\n    As I am a true spirit, welcome!           [A noise of horns]\n  MRS. PAGE. Alas, what noise?\n  MRS. FORD. Heaven forgive our sins!\n  FALSTAFF. What should this be?\n  MRS. FORD. } Away, away.\n  MRS. PAGE. } Away, away.                        [They run off]\n  FALSTAFF. I think the devil will not have me damn\'d, lest the\n    oil that\'s in me should set hell on fire; he would never else  \n    cross me thus.\n\n        Enter SIR HUGH EVANS like a satyr, ANNE PAGE as\n      a fairy, and OTHERS as the Fairy Queen, fairies, and\n               Hobgoblin; all with tapers\n\n  FAIRY QUEEN. Fairies, black, grey, green, and white,\n    You moonshine revellers, and shades of night,\n    You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,\n    Attend your office and your quality.\n    Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes.\n  PUCK. Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys.\n    Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap;\n    Where fires thou find\'st unrak\'d, and hearths unswept,\n    There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry;\n    Our radiant Queen hates sluts and sluttery.\n  FALSTAFF. They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die.\n    I\'ll wink and couch; no man their works must eye.\n                                       [Lies down upon his face]\n  EVANS. Where\'s Pede? Go you, and where you find a maid  \n    That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said,\n    Raise up the organs of her fantasy\n    Sleep she as sound as careless infancy;\n    But those as sleep and think not on their sins,\n    Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins.\n  FAIRY QUEEN. About, about;\n    Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out;\n    Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room,\n    That it may stand till the perpetual doom\n    In state as wholesome as in state \'tis fit,\n    Worthy the owner and the owner it.\n    The several chairs of order look you scour\n    With juice of balm and every precious flower;\n    Each fair instalment, coat, and sev\'ral crest,\n    With loyal blazon, evermore be blest!\n    And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,\n    Like to the Garter\'s compass, in a ring;\n    Th\' expressure that it bears, green let it be,\n    More fertile-fresh than all the field to see;\n    And \'Honi soit qui mal y pense\' write  \n    In em\'rald tufts, flow\'rs purple, blue and white;\n    Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,\n    Buckled below fair knighthood\'s bending knee.\n    Fairies use flow\'rs for their charactery.\n    Away, disperse; but till \'tis one o\'clock,\n    Our dance of custom round about the oak\n    Of Herne the Hunter let us not forget.\n  EVANS. Pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves in order set;\n    And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be,\n    To guide our measure round about the tree.\n    But, stay. I smell a man of middle earth.\n  FALSTAFF. Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he\n    transform me to a piece of cheese!\n  PUCK. Vile worm, thou wast o\'erlook\'d even in thy birth.\n  FAIRY QUEEN. With trial-fire touch me his finger-end;\n    If he be chaste, the flame will back descend,\n    And turn him to no pain; but if he start,\n    It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.\n  PUCK. A trial, come.\n  EVANS. Come, will this wood take fire?  \n             [They put the tapers to his fingers, and he starts]\n  FALSTAFF. Oh, oh, oh!\n  FAIRY QUEEN. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!\n    About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme;\n    And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.\n  THE SONG.\n    Fie on sinful fantasy!\n    Fie on lust and luxury!\n    Lust is but a bloody fire,\n    Kindled with unchaste desire,\n    Fed in heart, whose flames aspire,\n    As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.\n    Pinch him, fairies, mutually;\n    Pinch him for his villainy;\n    Pinch him and burn him and turn him about,\n    Till candles and star-light and moonshine be out.\n\n        During this song they pinch FALSTAFF. DOCTOR\n        CAIUS comes one way, and steals away a fairy in\n        green; SLENDER another way, and takes off a fairy in  \n        white; and FENTON steals away ANNE PAGE. A noise\n        of hunting is heard within. All the fairies run away.\n        FALSTAFF pulls off his buck\'s head, and rises\n\n       Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD, and\n                        SIR HUGH EVANS\n\n  PAGE. Nay, do not fly; I think we have watch\'d you now.\n    Will none but Heme the Hunter serve your turn?\n  MRS. PAGE. I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher.\n    Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives?\n    See you these, husband? Do not these fair yokes\n    Become the forest better than the town?\n  FORD. Now, sir, who\'s a cuckold now? Master Brook,\n    Falstaff\'s a knave, a cuckoldly knave; here are his horns,\n    Master Brook; and, Master Brook, he hath enjoyed nothing of\n    Ford\'s but his buck-basket, his cudgel, and twenty pounds\n    of money, which must be paid to Master Brook; his horses\n    are arrested for it, Master Brook.\n  MRS. FORD. Sir John, we have had ill luck; we could never  \n    meet. I will never take you for my love again; but I will\n    always count you my deer.\n  FALSTAFF. I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass.\n  FORD. Ay, and an ox too; both the proofs are extant.\n  FALSTAFF. And these are not fairies? I was three or four\n    times in the thought they were not fairies; and yet the\n    guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprise of my powers,\n    drove the grossness of the foppery into a receiv\'d belief,\n    in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and reason, that they\n    were fairies. See now how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent\n    when \'tis upon ill employment.\n  EVANS. Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires,\n    and fairies will not pinse you.\n  FORD. Well said, fairy Hugh.\n  EVANS. And leave you your jealousies too, I pray you.\n  FORD. I will never mistrust my wife again, till thou art able\n    to woo her in good English.\n  FALSTAFF. Have I laid my brain in the sun, and dried it, that\n    it wants matter to prevent so gross, o\'er-reaching as this?\n    Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? Shall I have a cox-comb  \n    of frieze? \'Tis time I were chok\'d with a piece of\n    toasted cheese.\n  EVANS. Seese is not good to give putter; your belly is all\n    putter.\n  FALSTAFF. \'Seese\' and \'putter\'! Have I liv\'d to stand at the\n    taunt of one that makes fritters of English? This is enough\n    to be the decay of lust and late-walking through the realm.\n  MRS. PAGE. Why, Sir John, do you think, though we would\n    have thrust virtue out of our hearts by the head and\n    shoulders, and have given ourselves without scruple to hell,\n    that ever the devil could have made you our delight?\n  FORD. What, a hodge-pudding? a bag of flax?\n  MRS. PAGE. A puff\'d man?\n  PAGE. Old, cold, wither\'d, and of intolerable entrails?\n  FORD. And one that is as slanderous as Satan?\n  PAGE. And as poor as Job?\n  FORD. And as wicked as his wife?\n  EVANS. And given to fornications, and to taverns, and sack,\n    and wine, and metheglins, and to drinkings, and swearings,\n    and starings, pribbles and prabbles?  \n  FALSTAFF. Well, I am your theme; you have the start of me;\n    I am dejected; I am not able to answer the Welsh flannel;\n    ignorance itself is a plummet o\'er me; use me as you will.\n  FORD. Marry, sir, we\'ll bring you to Windsor, to one Master\n    Brook, that you have cozen\'d of money, to whom you\n    should have been a pander. Over and above that you have\n    suffer\'d, I think to repay that money will be a biting\n    affliction.\n  PAGE. Yet be cheerful, knight; thou shalt eat a posset\n    tonight at my house, where I will desire thee to laugh at my\n    wife, that now laughs at thee. Tell her Master Slender hath\n    married her daughter.\n  MRS. PAGE.  [Aside]  Doctors doubt that; if Anne Page be\n    my daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius\' wife.\n\n                        Enter SLENDER\n\n  SLENDER. Whoa, ho, ho, father Page!\n  PAGE. Son, how now! how now, son! Have you dispatch\'d\'?\n  SLENDER. Dispatch\'d! I\'ll make the best in Gloucestershire  \n    know on\'t; would I were hang\'d, la, else!\n  PAGE. Of what, son?\n  SLENDER. I came yonder at Eton to marry Mistress Anne\n    Page, and she\'s a great lubberly boy. If it had not been i\'\n    th\' church, I would have swing\'d him, or he should have\n    swing\'d me. If I did not think it had been Anne Page,\n    would I might never stir!-and \'tis a postmaster\'s boy.\n  PAGE. Upon my life, then, you took the wrong.\n  SLENDER. What need you tell me that? I think so, when I\n    took a boy for a girl. If I had been married to him, for all\n    he was in woman\'s apparel, I would not have had him.\n  PAGE. Why, this is your own folly. Did not I tell you how\n    you should know my daughter by her garments?\n  SLENDER. I went to her in white and cried \'mum\' and she\n    cried \'budget\' as Anne and I had appointed; and yet it was\n    not Anne, but a postmaster\'s boy.\n  MRS. PAGE. Good George, be not angry. I knew of your\n    purpose; turn\'d my daughter into green; and, indeed, she\n    is now with the Doctor at the dean\'ry, and there married.\n  \n                         Enter CAIUS\n\n  CAIUS. Vere is Mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened; I ha\'\n    married un garcon, a boy; un paysan, by gar, a boy; it is\n    not Anne Page; by gar, I am cozened.\n  MRS. PAGE. Why, did you take her in green?\n  CAIUS. Ay, be gar, and \'tis a boy; be gar, I\'ll raise all\n    Windsor.                                          Exit CAIUS\n  FORD. This is strange. Who hath got the right Anne?\n  PAGE. My heart misgives me; here comes Master Fenton.\n\n                  Enter FENTON and ANNE PAGE\n\n    How now, Master Fenton!\n  ANNE. Pardon, good father. Good my mother, pardon.\n  PAGE. Now, Mistress, how chance you went not with Master\n    Slender?\n  MRS. PAGE. Why went you not with Master Doctor, maid?\n  FENTON. You do amaze her. Hear the truth of it.\n    You would have married her most shamefully,  \n    Where there was no proportion held in love.\n    The truth is, she and I, long since contracted,\n    Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us.\n    Th\' offence is holy that she hath committed;\n    And this deceit loses the name of craft,\n    Of disobedience, or unduteous title,\n    Since therein she doth evitate and shun\n    A thousand irreligious cursed hours,\n    Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.\n  FORD. Stand not amaz\'d; here is no remedy.\n    In love, the heavens themselves do guide the state;\n    Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.\n  FALSTAFF. I am glad, though you have ta\'en a special stand\n    to strike at me, that your arrow hath glanc\'d.\n  PAGE. Well, what remedy? Fenton, heaven give thee joy!\n    What cannot be eschew\'d must be embrac\'d.\n  FALSTAFF. When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chas\'d.\n  MRS. PAGE. Well, I will muse no further. Master Fenton,\n    Heaven give you many, many merry days!\n    Good husband, let us every one go home,  \n    And laugh this sport o\'er by a country fire;\n    Sir John and all.\n  FORD. Let it be so. Sir John,\n    To Master Brook you yet shall hold your word;\n    For he, to-night, shall lie with Mistress Ford.       Exeunt\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1596\n\nA MIDSUMMER NIGHT\'S DREAM\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\n  THESEUS, Duke of Athens\n  EGEUS, father to Hermia\n  LYSANDER, in love with Hermia\n  DEMETRIUS, in love with Hermia\n  PHILOSTRATE, Master of the Revels to Theseus\n  QUINCE, a carpenter\n  SNUG, a joiner\n  BOTTOM, a weaver\n  FLUTE, a bellows-mender\n  SNOUT, a tinker\n  STARVELING, a tailor\n\n  HIPPOLYTA, Queen of the Amazons, bethrothed to Theseus\n  HERMIA, daughter to Egeus, in love with Lysander\n  HELENA, in love with Demetrius\n\n  OBERON, King of the Fairies\n  TITANIA, Queen of the Fairies\n  PUCK, or ROBIN GOODFELLOW\n  PEASEBLOSSOM, fairy  \n  COBWEB, fairy\n  MOTH, fairy\n  MUSTARDSEED, fairy\n\n  PROLOGUE, PYRAMUS, THISBY, WALL, MOONSHINE, LION are presented by:\n    QUINCE, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, STARVELING, AND SNUG\n\n  Other Fairies attending their King and Queen\n  Attendants on Theseus and Hippolyta\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nAthens and a wood near it\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nAthens. The palace of THESEUS\n\nEnter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, and ATTENDANTS\n\n  THESEUS. Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour\n    Draws on apace; four happy days bring in\n    Another moon; but, O, methinks, how slow\n    This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires,\n    Like to a step-dame or a dowager,\n    Long withering out a young man\'s revenue.\n  HIPPOLYTA. Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;\n    Four nights will quickly dream away the time;\n    And then the moon, like to a silver bow\n    New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night\n    Of our solemnities.\n  THESEUS. Go, Philostrate,\n    Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments;\n    Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth;\n    Turn melancholy forth to funerals;\n    The pale companion is not for our pomp.     Exit PHILOSTRATE\n    Hippolyta, I woo\'d thee with my sword,  \n    And won thy love doing thee injuries;\n    But I will wed thee in another key,\n    With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.\n\n          Enter EGEUS, and his daughter HERMIA, LYSANDER,\n                           and DEMETRIUS\n\n  EGEUS. Happy be Theseus, our renowned Duke!\n  THESEUS. Thanks, good Egeus; what\'s the news with thee?\n  EGEUS. Full of vexation come I, with complaint\n    Against my child, my daughter Hermia.\n    Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,\n    This man hath my consent to marry her.\n    Stand forth, Lysander. And, my gracious Duke,\n    This man hath bewitch\'d the bosom of my child.\n    Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,\n    And interchang\'d love-tokens with my child;\n    Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,\n    With feigning voice, verses of feigning love,\n    And stol\'n the impression of her fantasy  \n    With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,\n    Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats- messengers\n    Of strong prevailment in unhardened youth;\n    With cunning hast thou filch\'d my daughter\'s heart;\n    Turn\'d her obedience, which is due to me,\n    To stubborn harshness. And, my gracious Duke,\n    Be it so she will not here before your Grace\n    Consent to marry with Demetrius,\n    I beg the ancient privilege of Athens:\n    As she is mine I may dispose of her;\n    Which shall be either to this gentleman\n    Or to her death, according to our law\n    Immediately provided in that case.\n  THESEUS. What say you, Hermia? Be advis\'d, fair maid.\n    To you your father should be as a god;\n    One that compos\'d your beauties; yea, and one\n    To whom you are but as a form in wax,\n    By him imprinted, and within his power\n    To leave the figure, or disfigure it.\n    Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.  \n  HERMIA. So is Lysander.\n  THESEUS. In himself he is;\n    But, in this kind, wanting your father\'s voice,\n    The other must be held the worthier.\n  HERMIA. I would my father look\'d but with my eyes.\n  THESEUS. Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.\n  HERMIA. I do entreat your Grace to pardon me.\n    I know not by what power I am made bold,\n    Nor how it may concern my modesty\n    In such a presence here to plead my thoughts;\n    But I beseech your Grace that I may know\n    The worst that may befall me in this case,\n    If I refuse to wed Demetrius.\n  THESEUS. Either to die the death, or to abjure\n    For ever the society of men.\n    Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires,\n    Know of your youth, examine well your blood,\n    Whether, if you yield not to your father\'s choice,\n    You can endure the livery of a nun,\n    For aye to be shady cloister mew\'d,  \n    To live a barren sister all your life,\n    Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.\n    Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood\n    To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;\n    But earthlier happy is the rose distill\'d\n    Than that which withering on the virgin thorn\n    Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness.\n  HERMIA. So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,\n    Ere I will yield my virgin patent up\n    Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke\n    My soul consents not to give sovereignty.\n  THESEUS. Take time to pause; and by the next new moon-\n    The sealing-day betwixt my love and me\n    For everlasting bond of fellowship-\n    Upon that day either prepare to die\n    For disobedience to your father\'s will,\n    Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would,\n    Or on Diana\'s altar to protest\n    For aye austerity and single life.\n  DEMETRIUS. Relent, sweet Hermia; and, Lysander, yield  \n    Thy crazed title to my certain right.\n  LYSANDER. You have her father\'s love, Demetrius;\n    Let me have Hermia\'s; do you marry him.\n  EGEUS. Scornful Lysander, true, he hath my love;\n    And what is mine my love shall render him;\n    And she is mine; and all my right of her\n    I do estate unto Demetrius.\n  LYSANDER. I am, my lord, as well deriv\'d as he,\n    As well possess\'d; my love is more than his;\n    My fortunes every way as fairly rank\'d,\n    If not with vantage, as Demetrius\';\n    And, which is more than all these boasts can be,\n    I am belov\'d of beauteous Hermia.\n    Why should not I then prosecute my right?\n    Demetrius, I\'ll avouch it to his head,\n    Made love to Nedar\'s daughter, Helena,\n    And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes,\n    Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,\n    Upon this spotted and inconstant man.\n  THESEUS. I must confess that I have heard so much,  \n    And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof;\n    But, being over-full of self-affairs,\n    My mind did lose it. But, Demetrius, come;\n    And come, Egeus; you shall go with me;\n    I have some private schooling for you both.\n    For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself\n    To fit your fancies to your father\'s will,\n    Or else the law of Athens yields you up-\n    Which by no means we may extenuate-\n    To death, or to a vow of single life.\n    Come, my Hippolyta; what cheer, my love?\n    Demetrius, and Egeus, go along;\n    I must employ you in some business\n    Against our nuptial, and confer with you\n    Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.\n  EGEUS. With duty and desire we follow you.\n                              Exeunt all but LYSANDER and HERMIA\n  LYSANDER. How now, my love! Why is your cheek so pale?\n    How chance the roses there do fade so fast?\n  HERMIA. Belike for want of rain, which I could well  \n    Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.\n  LYSANDER. Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,\n    Could ever hear by tale or history,\n    The course of true love never did run smooth;\n    But either it was different in blood-\n  HERMIA. O cross! too high to be enthrall\'d to low.\n  LYSANDER. Or else misgraffed in respect of years-\n  HERMIA. O spite! too old to be engag\'d to young.\n  LYSANDER. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends-\n  HERMIA. O hell! to choose love by another\'s eyes.\n  LYSANDER. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,\n    War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it,\n    Making it momentary as a sound,\n    Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,\n    Brief as the lightning in the collied night\n    That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,\n    And ere a man hath power to say \'Behold!\'\n    The jaws of darkness do devour it up;\n    So quick bright things come to confusion.\n  HERMIA. If then true lovers have ever cross\'d,  \n    It stands as an edict in destiny.\n    Then let us teach our trial patience,\n    Because it is a customary cross,\n    As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,\n    Wishes and tears, poor Fancy\'s followers.\n  LYSANDER. A good persuasion; therefore, hear me, Hermia.\n    I have a widow aunt, a dowager\n    Of great revenue, and she hath no child-\n    From Athens is her house remote seven leagues-\n    And she respects me as her only son.\n    There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;\n    And to that place the sharp Athenian law\n    Cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me then,\n    Steal forth thy father\'s house to-morrow night;\n    And in the wood, a league without the town,\n    Where I did meet thee once with Helena\n    To do observance to a morn of May,\n    There will I stay for thee.\n  HERMIA. My good Lysander!\n    I swear to thee by Cupid\'s strongest bow,  \n    By his best arrow, with the golden head,\n    By the simplicity of Venus\' doves,\n    By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves,\n    And by that fire which burn\'d the Carthage Queen,\n    When the false Troyan under sail was seen,\n    By all the vows that ever men have broke,\n    In number more than ever women spoke,\n    In that same place thou hast appointed me,\n    To-morrow truly will I meet with thee.\n  LYSANDER. Keep promise, love. Look, here comes Helena.\n\n                         Enter HELENA\n\n  HERMIA. God speed fair Helena! Whither away?\n  HELENA. Call you me fair? That fair again unsay.\n    Demetrius loves your fair. O happy fair!\n    Your eyes are lode-stars and your tongue\'s sweet air\n    More tuneable than lark to shepherd\'s ear,\n    When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.\n    Sickness is catching; O, were favour so,  \n    Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go!\n    My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,\n    My tongue should catch your tongue\'s sweet melody.\n    Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,\n    The rest I\'d give to be to you translated.\n    O, teach me how you look, and with what art\n    You sway the motion of Demetrius\' heart!\n  HERMIA. I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.\n  HELENA. O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!\n  HERMIA. I give him curses, yet he gives me love.\n  HELENA. O that my prayers could such affection move!\n  HERMIA. The more I hate, the more he follows me.\n  HELENA. The more I love, the more he hateth me.\n  HERMIA. His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.\n  HELENA. None, but your beauty; would that fault were mine!\n  HERMIA. Take comfort: he no more shall see my face;\n    Lysander and myself will fly this place.\n    Before the time I did Lysander see,\n    Seem\'d Athens as a paradise to me.\n    O, then, what graces in my love do dwell,  \n    That he hath turn\'d a heaven unto a hell!\n  LYSANDER. Helen, to you our minds we will unfold:\n    To-morrow night, when Phoebe doth behold\n    Her silver visage in the wat\'ry glass,\n    Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,\n    A time that lovers\' flights doth still conceal,\n    Through Athens\' gates have we devis\'d to steal.\n  HERMIA. And in the wood where often you and I\n    Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie,\n    Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet,\n    There my Lysander and myself shall meet;\n    And thence from Athens turn away our eyes,\n    To seek new friends and stranger companies.\n    Farewell, sweet playfellow; pray thou for us,\n    And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius!\n    Keep word, Lysander; we must starve our sight\n    From lovers\' food till morrow deep midnight.\n  LYSANDER. I will, my Hermia. [Exit HERMIA] Helena, adieu;\n    As you on him, Demetrius dote on you.                   Exit\n  HELENA. How happy some o\'er other some can be!  \n    Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.\n    But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;\n    He will not know what all but he do know.\n    And as he errs, doting on Hermia\'s eyes,\n    So I, admiring of his qualities.\n    Things base and vile, holding no quantity,\n    Love can transpose to form and dignity.\n    Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;\n    And therefore is wing\'d Cupid painted blind.\n    Nor hath Love\'s mind of any judgment taste;\n    Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste;\n    And therefore is Love said to be a child,\n    Because in choice he is so oft beguil\'d.\n    As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,\n    So the boy Love is perjur\'d everywhere;\n    For ere Demetrius look\'d on Hermia\'s eyne,\n    He hail\'d down oaths that he was only mine;\n    And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,\n    So he dissolv\'d, and show\'rs of oaths did melt.\n    I will go tell him of fair Hermia\'s flight;  \n    Then to the wood will he to-morrow night\n    Pursue her; and for this intelligence\n    If I have thanks, it is a dear expense.\n    But herein mean I to enrich my pain,\n    To have his sight thither and back again.               Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nAthens. QUINCE\'S house\n\nEnter QUINCE, SNUG, BOTTOM FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING\n\n  QUINCE. Is all our company here?\n  BOTTOM. You were best to call them generally, man by man, according\n    to the scrip.\n  QUINCE. Here is the scroll of every man\'s name which is thought\n    fit, through all Athens, to play in our interlude before the Duke\n    and the Duchess on his wedding-day at night.\n  BOTTOM. First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on; then\n    read the names of the actors; and so grow to a point.\n  QUINCE. Marry, our play is \'The most Lamentable Comedy and most\n    Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisby.\'\n  BOTTOM. A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a merry. Now,\n    good Peter Quince, call forth your actors by the scroll. Masters,\n    spread yourselves.\n  QUINCE. Answer, as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver.\n  BOTTOM. Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed.\n  QUINCE. You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.  \n  BOTTOM. What is Pyramus? A lover, or a tyrant?\n  QUINCE. A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love.\n  BOTTOM. That will ask some tears in the true performing of it. If I\n    do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms; I\n    will condole in some measure. To the rest- yet my chief humour is\n    for a tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat\n    in, to make all split.\n\n                 \'The raging rocks\n                 And shivering shocks\n                 Shall break the locks\n                   Of prison gates;\n\n                 And Phibbus\' car\n                 Shall shine from far,\n                 And make and mar\n                   The foolish Fates.\'\n\n    This was lofty. Now name the rest of the players. This is\n    Ercles\' vein, a tyrant\'s vein: a lover is more condoling.  \n  QUINCE. Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.\n  FLUTE. Here, Peter Quince.\n  QUINCE. Flute, you must take Thisby on you.\n  FLUTE. What is Thisby? A wand\'ring knight?\n  QUINCE. It is the lady that Pyramus must love.\n  FLUTE. Nay, faith, let not me play a woman; I have a beard coming.\n  QUINCE. That\'s all one; you shall play it in a mask, and you may\n    speak as small as you will.\n  BOTTOM. An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too.\n    I\'ll speak in a monstrous little voice: \'Thisne, Thisne!\'\n    [Then speaking small] \'Ah Pyramus, my lover dear! Thy\n    Thisby dear, and lady dear!\'\n  QUINCE. No, no, you must play Pyramus; and, Flute, you Thisby.\n  BOTTOM. Well, proceed.\n  QUINCE. Robin Starveling, the tailor.\n  STARVELING. Here, Peter Quince.\n  QUINCE. Robin Starveling, you must play Thisby\'s mother.\n    Tom Snout, the tinker.\n  SNOUT. Here, Peter Quince.\n  QUINCE. You, Pyramus\' father; myself, Thisby\'s father; Snug, the  \n    joiner, you, the lion\'s part. And, I hope, here is a play fitted.\n  SNUG. Have you the lion\'s part written? Pray you, if it be, give it\n    me, for I am slow of study.\n  QUINCE. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.\n  BOTTOM. Let me play the lion too. I will roar that I will do any\n    man\'s heart good to hear me; I will roar that I will make the\n    Duke say \'Let him roar again, let him roar again.\'\n  QUINCE. An you should do it too terribly, you would fright the\n    Duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were\n    enough to hang us all.\n  ALL. That would hang us, every mother\'s son.\n  BOTTOM. I grant you, friends, if you should fright the ladies out\n    of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us;\n    but I will aggravate my voice so, that I will roar you as gently\n    as any sucking dove; I will roar you an \'twere any nightingale.\n  QUINCE. You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a\n    sweet-fac\'d man; a proper man, as one shall see in a summer\'s\n    day; a most lovely gentleman-like man; therefore you must needs\n    play Pyramus.\n  BOTTOM. Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play  \n    it in?\n  QUINCE. Why, what you will.\n  BOTTOM. I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your\n    orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your\n    French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow.\n  QUINCE. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then\n    you will play bare-fac\'d. But, masters, here are your parts; and\n    I am to entreat you, request you, and desire you, to con them by\n    to-morrow night; and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without\n    the town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse; for if we meet in\n    the city, we shall be dogg\'d with company, and our devices known.\n    In the meantime I will draw a bill of properties, such as our\n    play wants. I pray you, fail me not.\n  BOTTOM. We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and\n    courageously. Take pains; be perfect; adieu.\n  QUINCE. At the Duke\'s oak we meet.\n  BOTTOM. Enough; hold, or cut bow-strings.               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nA wood near Athens\n\nEnter a FAIRY at One door, and PUCK at another\n\n  PUCK. How now, spirit! whither wander you?\n  FAIRY.      Over hill, over dale,\n                Thorough bush, thorough brier,\n              Over park, over pale,\n                Thorough flood, thorough fire,\n              I do wander every where,\n              Swifter than the moon\'s sphere;\n              And I serve the Fairy Queen,\n              To dew her orbs upon the green.\n              The cowslips tall her pensioners be;\n              In their gold coats spots you see;\n              Those be rubies, fairy favours,\n              In those freckles live their savours.\n\n    I must go seek some dewdrops here,\n    And hang a pearl in every cowslip\'s ear.\n    Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I\'ll be gone.  \n    Our Queen and all her elves come here anon.\n  PUCK. The King doth keep his revels here to-night;\n    Take heed the Queen come not within his sight;\n    For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,\n    Because that she as her attendant hath\n    A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king.\n    She never had so sweet a changeling;\n    And jealous Oberon would have the child\n    Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;\n    But she perforce withholds the loved boy,\n    Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy.\n    And now they never meet in grove or green,\n    By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,\n    But they do square, that all their elves for fear\n    Creep into acorn cups and hide them there.\n  FAIRY. Either I mistake your shape and making quite,\n    Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite\n    Call\'d Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he\n    That frights the maidens of the villagery,\n    Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern,  \n    And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,\n    And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,\n    Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?\n    Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,\n    You do their work, and they shall have good luck.\n    Are not you he?\n  PUCK. Thou speakest aright:\n    I am that merry wanderer of the night.\n    I jest to Oberon, and make him smile\n    When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,\n    Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;\n    And sometime lurk I in a gossip\'s bowl\n    In very likeness of a roasted crab,\n    And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,\n    And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.\n    The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,\n    Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;\n    Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,\n    And \'tailor\' cries, and falls into a cough;\n    And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,  \n    And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear\n    A merrier hour was never wasted there.\n    But room, fairy, here comes Oberon.\n  FAIRY. And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!\n\n       Enter OBERON at one door, with his TRAIN, and TITANIA,\n                        at another, with hers\n\n  OBERON. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.\n  TITANIA. What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence;\n    I have forsworn his bed and company.\n  OBERON. Tarry, rash wanton; am not I thy lord?\n  TITANIA. Then I must be thy lady; but I know\n    When thou hast stolen away from fairy land,\n    And in the shape of Corin sat all day,\n    Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love\n    To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here,\n    Come from the farthest steep of India,\n    But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,\n    Your buskin\'d mistress and your warrior love,  \n    To Theseus must be wedded, and you come\n    To give their bed joy and prosperity?\n  OBERON. How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania,\n    Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,\n    Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?\n    Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night\n    From Perigouna, whom he ravished?\n    And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,\n    With Ariadne and Antiopa?\n  TITANIA. These are the forgeries of jealousy;\n    And never, since the middle summer\'s spring,\n    Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,\n    By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,\n    Or in the beached margent of the sea,\n    To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,\n    But with thy brawls thou hast disturb\'d our sport.\n    Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,\n    As in revenge, have suck\'d up from the sea\n    Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land,\n    Hath every pelting river made so proud  \n    That they have overborne their continents.\n    The ox hath therefore stretch\'d his yoke in vain,\n    The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn\n    Hath rotted ere his youth attain\'d a beard;\n    The fold stands empty in the drowned field,\n    And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;\n    The nine men\'s morris is fill\'d up with mud,\n    And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,\n    For lack of tread, are undistinguishable.\n    The human mortals want their winter here;\n    No night is now with hymn or carol blest;\n    Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,\n    Pale in her anger, washes all the air,\n    That rheumatic diseases do abound.\n    And thorough this distemperature we see\n    The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts\n    Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;\n    And on old Hiems\' thin and icy crown\n    An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds\n    Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,  \n    The childing autumn, angry winter, change\n    Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,\n    By their increase, now knows not which is which.\n    And this same progeny of evils comes\n    From our debate, from our dissension;\n    We are their parents and original.\n  OBERON. Do you amend it, then; it lies in you.\n    Why should Titania cross her Oberon?\n    I do but beg a little changeling boy\n    To be my henchman.\n  TITANIA. Set your heart at rest;\n    The fairy land buys not the child of me.\n    His mother was a vot\'ress of my order;\n    And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,\n    Full often hath she gossip\'d by my side;\n    And sat with me on Neptune\'s yellow sands,\n    Marking th\' embarked traders on the flood;\n    When we have laugh\'d to see the sails conceive,\n    And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;\n    Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait  \n    Following- her womb then rich with my young squire-\n    Would imitate, and sail upon the land,\n    To fetch me trifles, and return again,\n    As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.\n    But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;\n    And for her sake do I rear up her boy;\n    And for her sake I will not part with him.\n  OBERON. How long within this wood intend you stay?\n  TITANIA. Perchance till after Theseus\' wedding-day.\n    If you will patiently dance in our round,\n    And see our moonlight revels, go with us;\n    If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.\n  OBERON. Give me that boy and I will go with thee.\n  TITANIA. Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away.\n    We shall chide downright if I longer stay.\n                                     Exit TITANIA with her train\n  OBERON. Well, go thy way; thou shalt not from this grove\n    Till I torment thee for this injury.\n    My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb\'rest\n    Since once I sat upon a promontory,  \n    And heard a mermaid on a dolphin\'s back\n    Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath\n    That the rude sea grew civil at her song,\n    And certain stars shot madly from their spheres\n    To hear the sea-maid\'s music.\n  PUCK. I remember.\n  OBERON. That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,\n    Flying between the cold moon and the earth\n    Cupid, all arm\'d; a certain aim he took\n    At a fair vestal, throned by the west,\n    And loos\'d his love-shaft smartly from his bow,\n    As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;\n    But I might see young Cupid\'s fiery shaft\n    Quench\'d in the chaste beams of the wat\'ry moon;\n    And the imperial vot\'ress passed on,\n    In maiden meditation, fancy-free.\n    Yet mark\'d I where the bolt of Cupid fell.\n    It fell upon a little western flower,\n    Before milk-white, now purple with love\'s wound,\n    And maidens call it Love-in-idleness.  \n    Fetch me that flow\'r, the herb I showed thee once.\n    The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid\n    Will make or man or woman madly dote\n    Upon the next live creature that it sees.\n    Fetch me this herb, and be thou here again\n    Ere the leviathan can swim a league.\n  PUCK. I\'ll put a girdle round about the earth\n    In forty minutes.                                  Exit PUCK\n  OBERON. Having once this juice,\n    I\'ll watch Titania when she is asleep,\n    And drop the liquor of it in her eyes;\n    The next thing then she waking looks upon,\n    Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull,\n    On meddling monkey, or on busy ape,\n    She shall pursue it with the soul of love.\n    And ere I take this charm from off her sight,\n    As I can take it with another herb,\n    I\'ll make her render up her page to me.\n    But who comes here? I am invisible;\n    And I will overhear their conference.  \n\n               Enter DEMETRIUS, HELENA following him\n\n  DEMETRIUS. I love thee not, therefore pursue me not.\n    Where is Lysander and fair Hermia?\n    The one I\'ll slay, the other slayeth me.\n    Thou told\'st me they were stol\'n unto this wood,\n    And here am I, and wood within this wood,\n    Because I cannot meet my Hermia.\n    Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.\n  HELENA. You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant;\n    But yet you draw not iron, for my heart\n    Is true as steel. Leave you your power to draw,\n    And I shall have no power to follow you.\n  DEMETRIUS. Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair?\n    Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth\n    Tell you I do not nor I cannot love you?\n  HELENA. And even for that do I love you the more.\n    I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,\n    The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.  \n    Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,\n    Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,\n    Unworthy as I am, to follow you.\n    What worser place can I beg in your love,\n    And yet a place of high respect with me,\n    Than to be used as you use your dog?\n  DEMETRIUS. Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit;\n    For I am sick when I do look on thee.\n  HELENA. And I am sick when I look not on you.\n  DEMETRIUS. You do impeach your modesty too much\n    To leave the city and commit yourself\n    Into the hands of one that loves you not;\n    To trust the opportunity of night,\n    And the ill counsel of a desert place,\n    With the rich worth of your virginity.\n  HELENA. Your virtue is my privilege for that:\n    It is not night when I do see your face,\n    Therefore I think I am not in the night;\n    Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company,\n    For you, in my respect, are all the world.  \n    Then how can it be said I am alone\n    When all the world is here to look on me?\n  DEMETRIUS. I\'ll run from thee and hide me in the brakes,\n    And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts.\n  HELENA. The wildest hath not such a heart as you.\n    Run when you will; the story shall be chang\'d:\n    Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase;\n    The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind\n    Makes speed to catch the tiger- bootless speed,\n    When cowardice pursues and valour flies.\n  DEMETRIUS. I will not stay thy questions; let me go;\n    Or, if thou follow me, do not believe\n    But I shall do thee mischief in the wood.\n  HELENA. Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field,\n    You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius!\n    Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex.\n    We cannot fight for love as men may do;\n    We should be woo\'d, and were not made to woo.\n                                                  Exit DEMETRIUS\n    I\'ll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell,  \n    To die upon the hand I love so well.             Exit HELENA\n  OBERON. Fare thee well, nymph; ere he do leave this grove,\n    Thou shalt fly him, and he shall seek thy love.\n\n                            Re-enter PUCK\n\n    Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer.\n  PUCK. Ay, there it is.\n  OBERON. I pray thee give it me.\n    I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,\n    Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,\n    Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,\n    With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine;\n    There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,\n    Lull\'d in these flowers with dances and delight;\n    And there the snake throws her enamell\'d skin,\n    Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in;\n    And with the juice of this I\'ll streak her eyes,\n    And make her full of hateful fantasies.\n    Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove:  \n    A sweet Athenian lady is in love\n    With a disdainful youth; anoint his eyes;\n    But do it when the next thing he espies\n    May be the lady. Thou shalt know the man\n    By the Athenian garments he hath on.\n    Effect it with some care, that he may prove\n    More fond on her than she upon her love.\n    And look thou meet me ere the first cock crow.\n  PUCK. Fear not, my lord; your servant shall do so.      Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nAnother part of the wood\n\nEnter TITANIA, with her train\n\n  TITANIA. Come now, a roundel and a fairy song;\n    Then, for the third part of a minute, hence:\n    Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds;\n    Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings,\n    To make my small elves coats; and some keep back\n    The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders\n    At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep;\n    Then to your offices, and let me rest.\n\n                          The FAIRIES Sing\n\n  FIRST FAIRY. You spotted snakes with double tongue,\n               Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;\n               Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong,\n               Come not near our fairy Queen.\n  CHORUS.      Philomel with melody\n               Sing in our sweet lullaby.  \n               Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby.\n               Never harm\n               Nor spell nor charm\n               Come our lovely lady nigh.\n               So good night, with lullaby.\n  SECOND FAIRY.  Weaving spiders, come not here;\n                 Hence, you long-legg\'d spinners, hence.\n                 Beetles black, approach not near;\n                 Worm nor snail do no offence.\n  CHORUS.      Philomel with melody, etc.       [TITANIA Sleeps]\n  FIRST FAIRY. Hence away; now all is well.\n               One aloof stand sentinel.          Exeunt FAIRIES\n\n      Enter OBERON and squeezes the flower on TITANIA\'S eyelids\n\n  OBERON. What thou seest when thou dost wake,\n    Do it for thy true-love take;\n    Love and languish for his sake.\n    Be it ounce, or cat, or bear,\n    Pard, or boar with bristled hair,  \n    In thy eye that shall appear\n    When thou wak\'st, it is thy dear.\n    Wake when some vile thing is near.                      Exit\n\n                     Enter LYSANDER and HERMIA\n\n  LYSANDER. Fair love, you faint with wand\'ring in the wood;\n    And, to speak troth, I have forgot our way;\n    We\'ll rest us, Hermia, if you think it good,\n    And tarry for the comfort of the day.\n  HERMIA. Be it so, Lysander: find you out a bed,\n    For I upon this bank will rest my head.\n  LYSANDER. One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;\n    One heart, one bed, two bosoms, and one troth.\n  HERMIA. Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my dear,\n    Lie further off yet; do not lie so near.\n  LYSANDER. O, take the sense, sweet, of my innocence!\n    Love takes the meaning in love\'s conference.\n    I mean that my heart unto yours is knit,\n    So that but one heart we can make of it;  \n    Two bosoms interchained with an oath,\n    So then two bosoms and a single troth.\n    Then by your side no bed-room me deny,\n    For lying so, Hermia, I do not lie.\n  HERMIA. Lysander riddles very prettily.\n    Now much beshrew my manners and my pride,\n    If Hermia meant to say Lysander lied!\n    But, gentle friend, for love and courtesy\n    Lie further off, in human modesty;\n    Such separation as may well be said\n    Becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid,\n    So far be distant; and good night, sweet friend.\n    Thy love ne\'er alter till thy sweet life end!\n  LYSANDER. Amen, amen, to that fair prayer say I;\n    And then end life when I end loyalty!\n    Here is my bed; sleep give thee all his rest!\n  HERMIA. With half that wish the wisher\'s eyes be press\'d!\n                                                    [They sleep]\n\n                          Enter PUCK  \n\n  PUCK.      Through the forest have I gone,\n             But Athenian found I none\n             On whose eyes I might approve\n             This flower\'s force in stirring love.\n             Night and silence- Who is here?\n             Weeds of Athens he doth wear:\n             This is he, my master said,\n             Despised the Athenian maid;\n             And here the maiden, sleeping sound,\n             On the dank and dirty ground.\n             Pretty soul! she durst not lie\n             Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy.\n             Churl, upon thy eyes I throw\n             All the power this charm doth owe:\n             When thou wak\'st let love forbid\n             Sleep his seat on thy eyelid.\n             So awake when I am gone;\n             For I must now to Oberon.                      Exit\n  \n               Enter DEMETRIUS and HELENA, running\n\n  HELENA. Stay, though thou kill me, sweet Demetrius.\n  DEMETRIUS. I charge thee, hence, and do not haunt me thus.\n  HELENA. O, wilt thou darkling leave me? Do not so.\n  DEMETRIUS. Stay on thy peril; I alone will go.            Exit\n  HELENA. O, I am out of breath in this fond chase!\n    The more my prayer, the lesser is my grace.\n    Happy is Hermia, wheresoe\'er she lies,\n    For she hath blessed and attractive eyes.\n    How came her eyes so bright? Not with salt tears;\n    If so, my eyes are oft\'ner wash\'d than hers.\n    No, no, I am as ugly as a bear,\n    For beasts that meet me run away for fear;\n    Therefore no marvel though Demetrius\n    Do, as a monster, fly my presence thus.\n    What wicked and dissembling glass of mine\n    Made me compare with Hermia\'s sphery eyne?\n    But who is here? Lysander! on the ground!\n    Dead, or asleep? I see no blood, no wound.  \n    Lysander, if you live, good sir, awake.\n  LYSANDER. [Waking] And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake.\n    Transparent Helena! Nature shows art,\n    That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart.\n    Where is Demetrius? O, how fit a word\n    Is that vile name to perish on my sword!\n  HELENA. Do not say so, Lysander; say not so.\n    What though he love your Hermia? Lord, what though?\n    Yet Hermia still loves you; then be content.\n  LYSANDER. Content with Hermia! No: I do repent\n    The tedious minutes I with her have spent.\n    Not Hermia but Helena I love:\n    Who will not change a raven for a dove?\n    The will of man is by his reason sway\'d,\n    And reason says you are the worthier maid.\n    Things growing are not ripe until their season;\n    So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason;\n    And touching now the point of human skill,\n    Reason becomes the marshal to my will,\n    And leads me to your eyes, where I o\'erlook  \n    Love\'s stories, written in Love\'s richest book.\n  HELENA. Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born?\n    When at your hands did I deserve this scorn?\n    Is\'t not enough, is\'t not enough, young man,\n    That I did never, no, nor never can,\n    Deserve a sweet look from Demetrius\' eye,\n    But you must flout my insufficiency?\n    Good troth, you do me wrong, good sooth, you do,\n    In such disdainful manner me to woo.\n    But fare you well; perforce I must confess\n    I thought you lord of more true gentleness.\n    O, that a lady of one man refus\'d\n    Should of another therefore be abus\'d!                  Exit\n  LYSANDER. She sees not Hermia. Hermia, sleep thou there;\n    And never mayst thou come Lysander near!\n    For, as a surfeit of the sweetest things\n    The deepest loathing to the stomach brings,\n    Or as the heresies that men do leave\n    Are hated most of those they did deceive,\n    So thou, my surfeit and my heresy,  \n    Of all be hated, but the most of me!\n    And, all my powers, address your love and might\n    To honour Helen, and to be her knight!                  Exit\n  HERMIA. [Starting] Help me, Lysander, help me; do thy best\n    To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast.\n    Ay me, for pity! What a dream was here!\n    Lysander, look how I do quake with fear.\n    Methought a serpent eat my heart away,\n    And you sat smiling at his cruel prey.\n    Lysander! What, remov\'d? Lysander! lord!\n    What, out of hearing gone? No sound, no word?\n    Alack, where are you? Speak, an if you hear;\n    Speak, of all loves! I swoon almost with fear.\n    No? Then I well perceive you are not nigh.\n    Either death or you I\'ll find immediately.              Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nThe wood. TITANIA lying asleep\n\nEnter QUINCE, SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING\n\n  BOTTOM. Are we all met?\n  QUINCE. Pat, pat; and here\'s a marvellous convenient place for our\n    rehearsal. This green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn\n    brake our tiring-house; and we will do it in action, as we will\n    do it before the Duke.\n  BOTTOM. Peter Quince!\n  QUINCE. What sayest thou, bully Bottom?\n  BOTTOM. There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisby that\n    will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill\n    himself; which the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that?\n  SNOUT. By\'r lakin, a parlous fear.\n  STARVELING. I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is\n    done.\n  BOTTOM. Not a whit; I have a device to make all well. Write me a\n    prologue; and let the prologue seem to say we will do no harm\n    with our swords, and that Pyramus is not kill\'d indeed; and for  \n    the more better assurance, tell them that I Pyramus am not\n    Pyramus but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear.\n  QUINCE. Well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall be written\n    in eight and six.\n  BOTTOM. No, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight.\n  SNOUT. Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion?\n  STARVELING. I fear it, I promise you.\n  BOTTOM. Masters, you ought to consider with yourself to bring in-\n    God shield us!- a lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing; for\n    there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion living; and\n    we ought to look to\'t.\n  SNOUT. Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion.\n  BOTTOM. Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must be seen\n    through the lion\'s neck; and he himself must speak through,\n    saying thus, or to the same defect: \'Ladies,\' or \'Fair ladies, I\n    would wish you\' or \'I would request you\' or \'I would entreat you\n    not to fear, not to tremble. My life for yours! If you think I\n    come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life. No, I am no such\n    thing; I am a man as other men are.\' And there, indeed, let him\n    name his name, and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.  \n  QUINCE. Well, it shall be so. But there is two hard things- that\n    is, to bring the moonlight into a chamber; for, you know, Pyramus\n    and Thisby meet by moonlight.\n  SNOUT. Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?\n  BOTTOM. A calendar, a calendar! Look in the almanack; find out\n    moonshine, find out moonshine.\n  QUINCE. Yes, it doth shine that night.\n  BOTTOM. Why, then may you leave a casement of the great chamber\n    window, where we play, open; and the moon may shine in at the\n    casement.\n  QUINCE. Ay; or else one must come in with a bush of thorns and a\n    lantern, and say he comes to disfigure or to present the person\n    of Moonshine. Then there is another thing: we must have a wall in\n    the great chamber; for Pyramus and Thisby, says the story, did\n    talk through the chink of a wall.\n  SNOUT. You can never bring in a wall. What say you, Bottom?\n  BOTTOM. Some man or other must present Wall; and let him have some\n    plaster, or some loam, or some rough-cast about him, to signify\n    wall; and let him hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny\n    shall Pyramus and Thisby whisper.  \n  QUINCE. If that may be, then all is well. Come, sit down, every\n    mother\'s son, and rehearse your parts. Pyramus, you begin; when\n    you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake; and so every\n    one according to his cue.\n\n                          Enter PUCK behind\n\n  PUCK. What hempen homespuns have we swagg\'ring here,\n    So near the cradle of the Fairy Queen?\n    What, a play toward! I\'ll be an auditor;\n    An actor too perhaps, if I see cause.\n  QUINCE. Speak, Pyramus. Thisby, stand forth.\n  BOTTOM. Thisby, the flowers of odious savours sweet-\n  QUINCE. \'Odious\'- odorous!\n  BOTTOM. -odours savours sweet;\n    So hath thy breath, my dearest Thisby dear.\n    But hark, a voice! Stay thou but here awhile,\n    And by and by I will to thee appear.                    Exit\n  PUCK. A stranger Pyramus than e\'er played here!           Exit\n  FLUTE. Must I speak now?  \n  QUINCE. Ay, marry, must you; for you must understand he goes but to\n    see a noise that he heard, and is to come again.\n  FLUTE. Most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of hue,\n    Of colour like the red rose on triumphant brier,\n    Most brisky juvenal, and eke most lovely Jew,\n    As true as truest horse, that would never tire,\n    I\'ll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny\'s tomb.\n  QUINCE. \'Ninus\' tomb,\' man! Why, you must not speak that yet; that\n    you answer to Pyramus. You speak all your part at once, cues, and\n    all. Pyramus enter: your cue is past; it is \'never tire.\'\n  FLUTE. O- As true as truest horse, that y et would never tire.\n\n            Re-enter PUCK, and BOTTOM with an ass\'s head\n\n  BOTTOM. If I were fair, Thisby, I were only thine.\n  QUINCE. O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted. Pray, masters! fly,\n    masters! Help!\n                                  Exeunt all but BOTTOM and PUCK\n  PUCK. I\'ll follow you; I\'ll lead you about a round,\n    Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier;  \n    Sometime a horse I\'ll be, sometime a hound,\n    A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;\n    And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,\n    Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.\nExit\n  BOTTOM. Why do they run away? This is a knavery of them to make me\n    afeard.\n\n                          Re-enter SNOUT\n\n  SNOUT. O Bottom, thou art chang\'d! What do I see on thee?\n  BOTTOM. What do you see? You see an ass-head of your own, do you?\n                                                      Exit SNOUT\n\n                          Re-enter QUINCE\n\n  QUINCE. Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee! Thou art translated.\n Exit\n  BOTTOM. I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me; to\n    fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this place, do  \n    what they can; I will walk up and down here, and will sing, that\n    they shall hear I am not afraid.                     [Sings]\n\n          The ousel cock, so black of hue,\n            With orange-tawny bill,\n          The throstle with his note so true,\n            The wren with little quill.\n\n  TITANIA. What angel wakes me from my flow\'ry bed?\n  BOTTOM. [Sings]\n          The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,\n            The plain-song cuckoo grey,\n          Whose note full many a man doth mark,\n            And dares not answer nay-\n    for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird?\n    Who would give a bird the he, though he cry \'cuckoo\' never so?\n  TITANIA. I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again.\n    Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note;\n    So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;\n    And thy fair virtue\'s force perforce doth move me,  \n    On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee.\n  BOTTOM. Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that.\n    And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company\n    together now-a-days. The more the pity that some honest\n    neighbours will not make them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon\n    occasion.\n  TITANIA. Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.\n  BOTTOM. Not so, neither; but if I had wit enough to get out of this\n    wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn.\n  TITANIA. Out of this wood do not desire to go;\n    Thou shalt remain here whether thou wilt or no.\n    I am a spirit of no common rate;\n    The summer still doth tend upon my state;\n    And I do love thee; therefore, go with me.\n    I\'ll give thee fairies to attend on thee;\n    And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,\n    And sing, while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;\n    And I will purge thy mortal grossness so\n    That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.\n    Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!  \n\n       Enter PEASEBLOSSOM, COBWEB, MOTH, and MUSTARDSEED\n\n  PEASEBLOSSOM. Ready.\n  COBWEB. And I.\n  MOTH. And I.\n  MUSTARDSEED. And I.\n  ALL. Where shall we go?\n  TITANIA. Be kind and courteous to this gentleman;\n    Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes;\n    Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,\n    With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;\n    The honey bags steal from the humble-bees,\n    And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs,\n    And light them at the fiery glow-worm\'s eyes,\n    To have my love to bed and to arise;\n    And pluck the wings from painted butterflies,\n    To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.\n    Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.\n  PEASEBLOSSOM. Hail, mortal!  \n  COBWEB. Hail!\n  MOTH. Hail!\n  MUSTARDSEED. Hail!\n  BOTTOM. I cry your worships mercy, heartily; I beseech your\n    worship\'s name.\n  COBWEB. Cobweb.\n  BOTTOM. I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master\n    Cobweb. If I cut my finger, I shall make bold with you. Your\n    name, honest gentleman?\n  PEASEBLOSSOM. Peaseblossom.\n  BOTTOM. I pray you, commend me to Mistress Squash, your mother, and\n    to Master Peascod, your father. Good Master Peaseblossom, I shall\n    desire you of more acquaintance too. Your name, I beseech you,\n    sir?\n  MUSTARDSEED. Mustardseed.\n  BOTTOM. Good Master Mustardseed, I know your patience well. That\n    same cowardly giant-like ox-beef hath devour\'d many a gentleman\n    of your house. I promise you your kindred hath made my eyes water\n    ere now. I desire you of more acquaintance, good Master\n    Mustardseed.  \n  TITANIA. Come, wait upon him; lead him to my bower.\n    The moon, methinks, looks with a wat\'ry eye;\n    And when she weeps, weeps every little flower;\n    Lamenting some enforced chastity.\n    Tie up my love\'s tongue, bring him silently.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nAnother part of the wood\n\nEnter OBERON\n\n  OBERON. I wonder if Titania be awak\'d;\n    Then, what it was that next came in her eye,\n    Which she must dote on in extremity.\n\n                          Enter PUCK\n\n    Here comes my messenger. How now, mad spirit!\n    What night-rule now about this haunted grove?\n  PUCK. My mistress with a monster is in love.\n    Near to her close and consecrated bower,\n    While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,\n    A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,\n    That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,\n    Were met together to rehearse a play\n    Intended for great Theseus\' nuptial day.\n    The shallowest thickskin of that barren sort,\n    Who Pyramus presented, in their sport\n    Forsook his scene and ent\'red in a brake;  \n    When I did him at this advantage take,\n    An ass\'s nole I fixed on his head.\n    Anon his Thisby must be answered,\n    And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy,\n    As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,\n    Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,\n    Rising and cawing at the gun\'s report,\n    Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,\n    So at his sight away his fellows fly;\n    And at our stamp here, o\'er and o\'er one falls;\n    He murder cries, and help from Athens calls.\n    Their sense thus weak, lost with their fears thus strong,\n    Made senseless things begin to do them wrong,\n    For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch;\n    Some sleeves, some hats, from yielders all things catch.\n    I led them on in this distracted fear,\n    And left sweet Pyramus translated there;\n    When in that moment, so it came to pass,\n    Titania wak\'d, and straightway lov\'d an ass.\n  OBERON. This falls out better than I could devise.  \n    But hast thou yet latch\'d the Athenian\'s eyes\n    With the love-juice, as I did bid thee do?\n  PUCK. I took him sleeping- that is finish\'d too-\n    And the Athenian woman by his side;\n    That, when he wak\'d, of force she must be ey\'d.\n\n                 Enter DEMETRIUS and HERMIA\n\n  OBERON. Stand close; this is the same Athenian.\n  PUCK. This is the woman, but not this the man.\n  DEMETRIUS. O, why rebuke you him that loves you so?\n    Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.\n  HERMIA. Now I but chide, but I should use thee worse,\n    For thou, I fear, hast given me cause to curse.\n    If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep,\n    Being o\'er shoes in blood, plunge in the deep,\n    And kill me too.\n    The sun was not so true unto the day\n    As he to me. Would he have stolen away\n    From sleeping Hermia? I\'ll believe as soon  \n    This whole earth may be bor\'d, and that the moon\n    May through the centre creep and so displease\n    Her brother\'s noontide with th\' Antipodes.\n    It cannot be but thou hast murd\'red him;\n    So should a murderer look- so dead, so grim.\n  DEMETRIUS. So should the murdered look; and so should I,\n    Pierc\'d through the heart with your stern cruelty;\n    Yet you, the murderer, look as bright, as clear,\n    As yonder Venus in her glimmering sphere.\n  HERMIA. What\'s this to my Lysander? Where is he?\n    Ah, good Demetrius, wilt thou give him me?\n  DEMETRIUS. I had rather give his carcass to my hounds.\n  HERMIA. Out, dog! out, cur! Thou driv\'st me past the bounds\n    Of maiden\'s patience. Hast thou slain him, then?\n    Henceforth be never numb\'red among men!\n    O, once tell true; tell true, even for my sake!\n    Durst thou have look\'d upon him being awake,\n    And hast thou kill\'d him sleeping? O brave touch!\n    Could not a worm, an adder, do so much?\n    An adder did it; for with doubler tongue  \n    Than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung.\n  DEMETRIUS. You spend your passion on a mispris\'d mood:\n    I am not guilty of Lysander\'s blood;\n    Nor is he dead, for aught that I can tell.\n  HERMIA. I pray thee, tell me then that he is well.\n  DEMETRIUS. An if I could, what should I get therefore?\n  HERMIA. A privilege never to see me more.\n    And from thy hated presence part I so;\n    See me no more whether he be dead or no.                Exit\n  DEMETRIUS. There is no following her in this fierce vein;\n    Here, therefore, for a while I will remain.\n    So sorrow\'s heaviness doth heavier grow\n    For debt that bankrupt sleep doth sorrow owe;\n    Which now in some slight measure it will pay,\n    If for his tender here I make some stay.         [Lies down]\n  OBERON. What hast thou done? Thou hast mistaken quite,\n    And laid the love-juice on some true-love\'s sight.\n    Of thy misprision must perforce ensue\n    Some true love turn\'d, and not a false turn\'d true.\n  PUCK. Then fate o\'er-rules, that, one man holding troth,  \n    A million fail, confounding oath on oath.\n  OBERON. About the wood go swifter than the wind,\n    And Helena of Athens look thou find;\n    All fancy-sick she is and pale of cheer,\n    With sighs of love that costs the fresh blood dear.\n    By some illusion see thou bring her here;\n    I\'ll charm his eyes against she do appear.\n  PUCK. I go, I go; look how I go,\n    Swifter than arrow from the Tartar\'s bow.               Exit\n  OBERON.       Flower of this purple dye,\n                Hit with Cupid\'s archery,\n                Sink in apple of his eye.\n                When his love he doth espy,\n                Let her shine as gloriously\n                As the Venus of the sky.\n                When thou wak\'st, if she be by,\n                Beg of her for remedy.\n\n                       Re-enter PUCK\n  \n  PUCK.         Captain of our fairy band,\n                Helena is here at hand,\n                And the youth mistook by me\n                Pleading for a lover\'s fee;\n                Shall we their fond pageant see?\n                Lord, what fools these mortals be!\n  OBERON.       Stand aside. The noise they make\n                Will cause Demetrius to awake.\n  PUCK.         Then will two at once woo one.\n                That must needs be sport alone;\n                And those things do best please me\n                That befall prepost\'rously.\n\n                   Enter LYSANDER and HELENA\n\n  LYSANDER. Why should you think that I should woo in scorn?\n    Scorn and derision never come in tears.\n    Look when I vow, I weep; and vows so born,\n    In their nativity all truth appears.\n    How can these things in me seem scorn to you,  \n    Bearing the badge of faith, to prove them true?\n  HELENA. You do advance your cunning more and more.\n    When truth kills truth, O devilish-holy fray!\n    These vows are Hermia\'s. Will you give her o\'er?\n    Weigh oath with oath, and you will nothing weigh:\n    Your vows to her and me, put in two scales,\n    Will even weigh; and both as light as tales.\n  LYSANDER. I hod no judgment when to her I swore.\n  HELENA. Nor none, in my mind, now you give her o\'er.\n  LYSANDER. Demetrius loves her, and he loves not you.\n  DEMETRIUS. [Awaking] O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!\n    To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?\n    Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show\n    Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!\n    That pure congealed white, high Taurus\' snow,\n    Fann\'d with the eastern wind, turns to a crow\n    When thou hold\'st up thy hand. O, let me kiss\n    This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss!\n  HELENA. O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent\n    To set against me for your merriment.  \n    If you were civil and knew courtesy,\n    You would not do me thus much injury.\n    Can you not hate me, as I know you do,\n    But you must join in souls to mock me too?\n    If you were men, as men you are in show,\n    You would not use a gentle lady so:\n    To vow, and swear, and superpraise my parts,\n    When I am sure you hate me with your hearts.\n    You both are rivals, and love Hermia;\n    And now both rivals, to mock Helena.\n    A trim exploit, a manly enterprise,\n    To conjure tears up in a poor maid\'s eyes\n    With your derision! None of noble sort\n    Would so offend a virgin, and extort\n    A poor soul\'s patience, all to make you sport.\n  LYSANDER. You are unkind, Demetrius; be not so;\n    For you love Hermia. This you know I know;\n    And here, with all good will, with all my heart,\n    In Hermia\'s love I yield you up my part;\n    And yours of Helena to me bequeath,  \n    Whom I do love and will do till my death.\n  HELENA. Never did mockers waste more idle breath.\n  DEMETRIUS. Lysander, keep thy Hermia; I will none.\n    If e\'er I lov\'d her, all that love is gone.\n    My heart to her but as guest-wise sojourn\'d,\n    And now to Helen is it home return\'d,\n    There to remain.\n  LYSANDER. Helen, it is not so.\n  DEMETRIUS. Disparage not the faith thou dost not know,\n    Lest, to thy peril, thou aby it dear.\n    Look where thy love comes; yonder is thy dear.\n\n                       Enter HERMIA\n\n  HERMIA. Dark night, that from the eye his function takes,\n    The ear more quick of apprehension makes;\n    Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense,\n    It pays the hearing double recompense.\n    Thou art not by mine eye, Lysander, found;\n    Mine ear, I thank it, brought me to thy sound.  \n    But why unkindly didst thou leave me so?\n  LYSANDER. Why should he stay whom love doth press to go?\n  HERMIA. What love could press Lysander from my side?\n  LYSANDER. Lysander\'s love, that would not let him bide-\n    Fair Helena, who more engilds the night\n    Than all yon fiery oes and eyes of light.\n    Why seek\'st thou me? Could not this make thee know\n    The hate I bare thee made me leave thee so?\n  HERMIA. You speak not as you think; it cannot be.\n  HELENA. Lo, she is one of this confederacy!\n    Now I perceive they have conjoin\'d all three\n    To fashion this false sport in spite of me.\n    Injurious Hermia! most ungrateful maid!\n    Have you conspir\'d, have you with these contriv\'d,\n    To bait me with this foul derision?\n    Is all the counsel that we two have shar\'d,\n    The sisters\' vows, the hours that we have spent,\n    When we have chid the hasty-footed time\n    For parting us- O, is all forgot?\n    All school-days\' friendship, childhood innocence?  \n    We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,\n    Have with our needles created both one flower,\n    Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,\n    Both warbling of one song, both in one key;\n    As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,\n    Had been incorporate. So we grew together,\n    Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,\n    But yet an union in partition,\n    Two lovely berries moulded on one stern;\n    So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;\n    Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,\n    Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.\n    And will you rent our ancient love asunder,\n    To join with men in scorning your poor friend?\n    It is not friendly, \'tis not maidenly;\n    Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,\n    Though I alone do feel the injury.\n  HERMIA. I am amazed at your passionate words;\n    I scorn you not; it seems that you scorn me.\n  HELENA. Have you not set Lysander, as in scorn,  \n    To follow me and praise my eyes and face?\n    And made your other love, Demetrius,\n    Who even but now did spurn me with his foot,\n    To call me goddess, nymph, divine, and rare,\n    Precious, celestial? Wherefore speaks he this\n    To her he hates? And wherefore doth Lysander\n    Deny your love, so rich within his soul,\n    And tender me, forsooth, affection,\n    But by your setting on, by your consent?\n    What though I be not so in grace as you,\n    So hung upon with love, so fortunate,\n    But miserable most, to love unlov\'d?\n    This you should pity rather than despise.\n  HERMIA. I understand not what you mean by this.\n  HELENA. Ay, do- persever, counterfeit sad looks,\n    Make mouths upon me when I turn my back,\n    Wink each at other; hold the sweet jest up;\n    This sport, well carried, shall be chronicled.\n    If you have any pity, grace, or manners,\n    You would not make me such an argument.  \n    But fare ye well; \'tis partly my own fault,\n    Which death, or absence, soon shall remedy.\n  LYSANDER. Stay, gentle Helena; hear my excuse;\n    My love, my life, my soul, fair Helena!\n  HELENA. O excellent!\n  HERMIA. Sweet, do not scorn her so.\n  DEMETRIUS. If she cannot entreat, I can compel.\n  LYSANDER. Thou canst compel no more than she entreat;\n    Thy threats have no more strength than her weak prayers\n    Helen, I love thee, by my life I do;\n    I swear by that which I will lose for thee\n    To prove him false that says I love thee not.\n  DEMETRIUS. I say I love thee more than he can do.\n  LYSANDER. If thou say so, withdraw, and prove it too.\n  DEMETRIUS. Quick, come.\n  HERMIA. Lysander, whereto tends all this?\n  LYSANDER. Away, you Ethiope!\n  DEMETRIUS. No, no, he will\n    Seem to break loose- take on as you would follow,\n    But yet come not. You are a tame man; go!  \n  LYSANDER. Hang off, thou cat, thou burr; vile thing, let loose,\n    Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent.\n  HERMIA. Why are you grown so rude? What change is this,\n    Sweet love?\n  LYSANDER. Thy love! Out, tawny Tartar, out!\n    Out, loathed med\'cine! O hated potion, hence!\n  HERMIA. Do you not jest?\n  HELENA. Yes, sooth; and so do you.\n  LYSANDER. Demetrius, I will keep my word with thee.\n  DEMETRIUS. I would I had your bond; for I perceive\n    A weak bond holds you; I\'ll not trust your word.\n  LYSANDER. What, should I hurt her, strike her, kill her dead?\n    Although I hate her, I\'ll not harm her so.\n  HERMIA. What! Can you do me greater harm than hate?\n    Hate me! wherefore? O me! what news, my love?\n    Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander?\n    I am as fair now as I was erewhile.\n    Since night you lov\'d me; yet since night you left me.\n    Why then, you left me- O, the gods forbid!-\n    In earnest, shall I say?  \n  LYSANDER. Ay, by my life!\n    And never did desire to see thee more.\n    Therefore be out of hope, of question, of doubt;\n    Be certain, nothing truer; \'tis no jest\n    That I do hate thee and love Helena.\n  HERMIA. O me! you juggler! you cankerblossom!\n    You thief of love! What! Have you come by night,\n    And stol\'n my love\'s heart from him?\n  HELENA. Fine, i\' faith!\n    Have you no modesty, no maiden shame,\n    No touch of bashfulness? What! Will you tear\n    Impatient answers from my gentle tongue?\n    Fie, fie! you counterfeit, you puppet you!\n  HERMIA. \'Puppet!\' why so? Ay, that way goes the game.\n    Now I perceive that she hath made compare\n    Between our statures; she hath urg\'d her height;\n    And with her personage, her tall personage,\n    Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail\'d with him.\n    And are you grown so high in his esteem\n    Because I am so dwarfish and so low?  \n    How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak.\n    How low am I? I am not yet so low\n    But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.\n  HELENA. I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen,\n    Let her not hurt me. I was never curst;\n    I have no gift at all in shrewishness;\n    I am a right maid for my cowardice;\n    Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think,\n    Because she is something lower than myself,\n    That I can match her.\n  HERMIA. \'Lower\' hark, again.\n  HELENA. Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me.\n    I evermore did love you, Hermia,\n    Did ever keep your counsels, never wrong\'d you;\n    Save that, in love unto Demetrius,\n    I told him of your stealth unto this wood.\n    He followed you; for love I followed him;\n    But he hath chid me hence, and threat\'ned me\n    To strike me, spurn me, nay, to kill me too;\n    And now, so you will let me quiet go,  \n    To Athens will I bear my folly back,\n    And follow you no further. Let me go.\n    You see how simple and how fond I am.\n  HERMIA. Why, get you gone! Who is\'t that hinders you?\n  HELENA. A foolish heart that I leave here behind.\n  HERMIA. What! with Lysander?\n  HELENA. With Demetrius.\n  LYSANDER. Be not afraid; she shall not harm thee, Helena.\n  DEMETRIUS. No, sir, she shall not, though you take her part.\n  HELENA. O, when she is angry, she is keen and shrewd;\n    She was a vixen when she went to school;\n    And, though she be but little, she is fierce.\n  HERMIA. \'Little\' again! Nothing but \'low\' and \'little\'!\n    Why will you suffer her to flout me thus?\n    Let me come to her.\n  LYSANDER. Get you gone, you dwarf;\n    You minimus, of hind\'ring knot-grass made;\n    You bead, you acorn.\n  DEMETRIUS. You are too officious\n    In her behalf that scorns your services.  \n    Let her alone; speak not of Helena;\n    Take not her part; for if thou dost intend\n    Never so little show of love to her,\n    Thou shalt aby it.\n  LYSANDER. Now she holds me not.\n    Now follow, if thou dar\'st, to try whose right,\n    Of thine or mine, is most in Helena.\n  DEMETRIUS. Follow! Nay, I\'ll go with thee, cheek by jowl.\n                                   Exeunt LYSANDER and DEMETRIUS\n  HERMIA. You, mistress, all this coil is long of you.\n    Nay, go not back.\n  HELENA. I will not trust you, I;\n    Nor longer stay in your curst company.\n    Your hands than mine are quicker for a fray;\n    My legs are longer though, to run away.                 Exit\n  HERMIA. I am amaz\'d, and know not what to say.            Exit\n  OBERON. This is thy negligence. Still thou mistak\'st,\n    Or else committ\'st thy knaveries wilfully.\n  PUCK. Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook.\n    Did not you tell me I should know the man  \n    By the Athenian garments he had on?\n    And so far blameless proves my enterprise\n    That I have \'nointed an Athenian\'s eyes;\n    And so far am I glad it so did sort,\n    As this their jangling I esteem a sport.\n  OBERON. Thou seest these lovers seek a place to fight.\n    Hie therefore, Robin, overcast the night;\n    The starry welkin cover thou anon\n    With drooping fog as black as Acheron,\n    And lead these testy rivals so astray\n    As one come not within another\'s way.\n    Like to Lysander sometime frame thy tongue,\n    Then stir Demetrius up with bitter wrong;\n    And sometime rail thou like Demetrius;\n    And from each other look thou lead them thus,\n    Till o\'er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep\n    With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep.\n    Then crush this herb into Lysander\'s eye;\n    Whose liquor hath this virtuous property,\n    To take from thence all error with his might  \n    And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight.\n    When they next wake, all this derision\n    Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision;\n    And back to Athens shall the lovers wend\n    With league whose date till death shall never end.\n    Whiles I in this affair do thee employ,\n    I\'ll to my queen, and beg her Indian boy;\n    And then I will her charmed eye release\n    From monster\'s view, and all things shall be peace.\n  PUCK. My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,\n    For night\'s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast;\n    And yonder shines Aurora\'s harbinger,\n    At whose approach ghosts, wand\'ring here and there,\n    Troop home to churchyards. Damned spirits all\n    That in cross-ways and floods have burial,\n    Already to their wormy beds are gone,\n    For fear lest day should look their shames upon;\n    They wilfully themselves exil\'d from light,\n    And must for aye consort with black-brow\'d night.\n  OBERON. But we are spirits of another sort:  \n    I with the Morning\'s love have oft made sport;\n    And, like a forester, the groves may tread\n    Even till the eastern gate, all fiery red,\n    Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,\n    Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.\n    But, notwithstanding, haste, make no delay;\n    We may effect this business yet ere day.         Exit OBERON\n  PUCK.      Up and down, up and down,\n             I will lead them up and down.\n             I am fear\'d in field and town.\n             Goblin, lead them up and down.\n    Here comes one.\n\n                      Enter LYSANDER\n\n  LYSANDER. Where art thou, proud Demetrius? Speak thou now.\n  PUCK. Here, villain, drawn and ready. Where art thou?\n  LYSANDER. I will be with thee straight.\n  PUCK. Follow me, then,\n    To plainer ground.      Exit LYSANDER as following the voice  \n\n                      Enter DEMETRIUS\n\n  DEMETRIUS. Lysander, speak again.\n    Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled?\n    Speak! In some bush? Where dost thou hide thy head?\n  PUCK. Thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars,\n    Telling the bushes that thou look\'st for wars,\n    And wilt not come? Come, recreant, come, thou child;\n    I\'ll whip thee with a rod. He is defil\'d\n    That draws a sword on thee.\n  DEMETRIUS. Yea, art thou there?\n  PUCK. Follow my voice; we\'ll try no manhood here.       Exeunt\n\n                      Re-enter LYSANDER\n\n  LYSANDER. He goes before me, and still dares me on;\n    When I come where he calls, then he is gone.\n    The villain is much lighter heel\'d than I.\n    I followed fast, but faster he did fly,  \n    That fallen am I in dark uneven way,\n    And here will rest me. [Lies down] Come, thou gentle day.\n    For if but once thou show me thy grey light,\n    I\'ll find Demetrius, and revenge this spite.        [Sleeps]\n\n                 Re-enter PUCK and DEMETRIUS\n\n  PUCK. Ho, ho, ho! Coward, why com\'st thou not?\n  DEMETRIUS. Abide me, if thou dar\'st; for well I wot\n    Thou run\'st before me, shifting every place,\n    And dar\'st not stand, nor look me in the face.\n    Where art thou now?\n  PUCK. Come hither; I am here.\n  DEMETRIUS. Nay, then, thou mock\'st me. Thou shalt buy this dear,\n    If ever I thy face by daylight see;\n    Now, go thy way. Faintness constraineth me\n    To measure out my length on this cold bed.\n    By day\'s approach look to be visited.\n                                          [Lies down and sleeps]\n  \n                       Enter HELENA\n\n  HELENA. O weary night, O long and tedious night,\n    Abate thy hours! Shine comforts from the east,\n    That I may back to Athens by daylight,\n    From these that my poor company detest.\n    And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow\'s eye,\n    Steal me awhile from mine own company.              [Sleeps]\n  PUCK.       Yet but three? Come one more;\n              Two of both kinds makes up four.\n              Here she comes, curst and sad.\n              Cupid is a knavish lad,\n              Thus to make poor females mad.\n\n                     Enter HERMIA\n\n  HERMIA. Never so weary, never so in woe,\n    Bedabbled with the dew, and torn with briers,\n    I can no further crawl, no further go;\n    My legs can keep no pace with my desires.  \n    Here will I rest me till the break of day.\n    Heavens shield Lysander, if they mean a fray!\n                                          [Lies down and sleeps]\n  PUCK.          On the ground\n                 Sleep sound;\n                 I\'ll apply\n                 To your eye,\n          Gentle lover, remedy.\n                        [Squeezing the juice on LYSANDER\'S eyes]\n                 When thou wak\'st,\n                 Thou tak\'st\n                 True delight\n                 In the sight\n          Of thy former lady\'s eye;\n          And the country proverb known,\n          That every man should take his own,\n          In your waking shall be shown:\n                 Jack shall have Jill;\n                 Nought shall go ill;\n    The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.  \n Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nThe wood. LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HELENA, and HERMIA, lying asleep\n\nEnter TITANIA and Bottom; PEASEBLOSSOM, COBWEB, MOTH, MUSTARDSEED,\nand other FAIRIES attending;\n                      OBERON behind, unseen\n\n  TITANIA. Come, sit thee down upon this flow\'ry bed,\n    While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,\n    And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head,\n    And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.\n  BOTTOM. Where\'s Peaseblossom?\n  PEASEBLOSSOM. Ready.\n  BOTTOM. Scratch my head, Peaseblossom.\n    Where\'s Mounsieur Cobweb?\n  COBWEB. Ready.\n  BOTTOM. Mounsieur Cobweb; good mounsieur, get you your weapons in\n    your hand and kill me a red-hipp\'d humble-bee on the top of a\n    thistle; and, good mounsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret\n    yourself too much in the action, mounsieur; and, good mounsieur,\n    have a care the honey-bag break not; I would be loath to have you  \n    overflown with a honey-bag, signior. Where\'s Mounsieur\n    Mustardseed?\n  MUSTARDSEED. Ready.\n  BOTTOM. Give me your neaf, Mounsieur Mustardseed. Pray you, leave\n    your curtsy, good mounsieur.\n  MUSTARDSEED. What\'s your will?\n  BOTTOM. Nothing, good mounsieur, but to help Cavalery Cobweb to\n    scratch. I must to the barber\'s, mounsieur; for methinks I am\n    marvellous hairy about the face; and I am such a tender ass, if\n    my hair do but tickle me I must scratch.\n  TITANIA. What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love?\n  BOTTOM. I have a reasonable good ear in music. Let\'s have the tongs\n    and the bones.\n  TITANIA. Or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat.\n  BOTTOM. Truly, a peck of provender; I could munch your good dry\n    oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay. Good\n    hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.\n  TITANIA. I have a venturous fairy that shall seek\n    The squirrel\'s hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.\n  BOTTOM. I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas. But, I  \n    pray you, let none of your people stir me; I have an exposition\n    of sleep come upon me.\n  TITANIA. Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.\n    Fairies, be gone, and be all ways away.       Exeunt FAIRIES\n    So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle\n    Gently entwist; the female ivy so\n    Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.\n    O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!         [They sleep]\n\n                         Enter PUCK\n\n  OBERON. [Advancing] Welcome, good Robin. Seest thou this sweet\n      sight?\n    Her dotage now I do begin to pity;\n    For, meeting her of late behind the wood,\n    Seeking sweet favours for this hateful fool,\n    I did upbraid her and fall out with her.\n    For she his hairy temples then had rounded\n    With coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers;\n    And that same dew which sometime on the buds  \n    Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls\n    Stood now within the pretty flowerets\' eyes,\n    Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.\n    When I had at my pleasure taunted her,\n    And she in mild terms begg\'d my patience,\n    I then did ask of her her changeling child;\n    Which straight she gave me, and her fairy sent\n    To bear him to my bower in fairy land.\n    And now I have the boy, I will undo\n    This hateful imperfection of her eyes.\n    And, gentle Puck, take this transformed scalp\n    From off the head of this Athenian swain,\n    That he awaking when the other do\n    May all to Athens back again repair,\n    And think no more of this night\'s accidents\n    But as the fierce vexation of a dream.\n    But first I will release the Fairy Queen.\n                                             [Touching her eyes]\n           Be as thou wast wont to be;\n           See as thou was wont to see.  \n           Dian\'s bud o\'er Cupid\'s flower\n           Hath such force and blessed power.\n    Now, my Titania; wake you, my sweet queen.\n  TITANIA. My Oberon! What visions have I seen!\n    Methought I was enamour\'d of an ass.\n  OBERON. There lies your love.\n  TITANIA. How came these things to pass?\n    O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!\n  OBERON. Silence awhile. Robin, take off this head.\n    Titania, music call; and strike more dead\n    Than common sleep of all these five the sense.\n  TITANIA. Music, ho, music, such as charmeth sleep!\n  PUCK. Now when thou wak\'st with thine own fool\'s eyes peep.\n  OBERON. Sound, music. Come, my Queen, take hands with me,\n                                                         [Music]\n    And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.\n    Now thou and I are new in amity,\n    And will to-morrow midnight solemnly\n    Dance in Duke Theseus\' house triumphantly,\n    And bless it to all fair prosperity.  \n    There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be\n    Wedded, with Theseus, an in jollity.\n  PUCK.       Fairy King, attend and mark;\n              I do hear the morning lark.\n  OBERON.     Then, my Queen, in silence sad,\n              Trip we after night\'s shade.\n              We the globe can compass soon,\n              Swifter than the wand\'ring moon.\n  TITANIA.    Come, my lord; and in our flight,\n              Tell me how it came this night\n              That I sleeping here was found\n              With these mortals on the ground.           Exeunt\n\n        To the winding of horns, enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA,\n                      EGEUS, and train\n\n  THESEUS. Go, one of you, find out the forester;\n    For now our observation is perform\'d,\n    And since we have the vaward of the day,\n    My love shall hear the music of my hounds.  \n    Uncouple in the western valley; let them go.\n    Dispatch, I say, and find the forester.    Exit an ATTENDANT\n    We will, fair Queen, up to the mountain\'s top,\n    And mark the musical confusion\n    Of hounds and echo in conjunction.\n  HIPPOLYTA. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once\n    When in a wood of Crete they bay\'d the bear\n    With hounds of Sparta; never did I hear\n    Such gallant chiding, for, besides the groves,\n    The skies, the fountains, every region near\n    Seem\'d all one mutual cry. I never heard\n    So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.\n  THESEUS. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,\n    So flew\'d, so sanded; and their heads are hung\n    With ears that sweep away the morning dew;\n    Crook-knee\'d and dew-lapp\'d like Thessalian bulls;\n    Slow in pursuit, but match\'d in mouth like bells,\n    Each under each. A cry more tuneable\n    Was never holla\'d to, nor cheer\'d with horn,\n    In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly.  \n    Judge when you hear. But, soft, what nymphs are these?\n  EGEUS. My lord, this is my daughter here asleep,\n    And this Lysander, this Demetrius is,\n    This Helena, old Nedar\'s Helena.\n    I wonder of their being here together.\n  THESEUS. No doubt they rose up early to observe\n    The rite of May; and, hearing our intent,\n    Came here in grace of our solemnity.\n    But speak, Egeus; is not this the day\n    That Hermia should give answer of her choice?\n  EGEUS. It is, my lord.\n  THESEUS. Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns.\n                           [Horns and shout within. The sleepers\n                                     awake and kneel to THESEUS]\n    Good-morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past;\n    Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?\n  LYSANDER. Pardon, my lord.\n  THESEUS. I pray you all, stand up.\n    I know you two are rival enemies;\n    How comes this gentle concord in the world  \n    That hatred is so far from jealousy\n    To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity?\n  LYSANDER. My lord, I shall reply amazedly,\n    Half sleep, half waking; but as yet, I swear,\n    I cannot truly say how I came here,\n    But, as I think- for truly would I speak,\n    And now I do bethink me, so it is-\n    I came with Hermia hither. Our intent\n    Was to be gone from Athens, where we might,\n    Without the peril of the Athenian law-\n  EGEUS. Enough, enough, my Lord; you have enough;\n    I beg the law, the law upon his head.\n    They would have stol\'n away, they would, Demetrius,\n    Thereby to have defeated you and me:\n    You of your wife, and me of my consent,\n    Of my consent that she should be your wife.\n  DEMETRIUS. My lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth,\n    Of this their purpose hither to this wood;\n    And I in fury hither followed them,\n    Fair Helena in fancy following me.  \n    But, my good lord, I wot not by what power-\n    But by some power it is- my love to Hermia,\n    Melted as the snow, seems to me now\n    As the remembrance of an idle gaud\n    Which in my childhood I did dote upon;\n    And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,\n    The object and the pleasure of mine eye,\n    Is only Helena. To her, my lord,\n    Was I betroth\'d ere I saw Hermia.\n    But, like a sickness, did I loathe this food;\n    But, as in health, come to my natural taste,\n    Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,\n    And will for evermore be true to it.\n  THESEUS. Fair lovers, you are fortunately met;\n    Of this discourse we more will hear anon.\n    Egeus, I will overbear your will;\n    For in the temple, by and by, with us\n    These couples shall eternally be knit.\n    And, for the morning now is something worn,\n    Our purpos\'d hunting shall be set aside.  \n    Away with us to Athens, three and three;\n    We\'ll hold a feast in great solemnity.\n    Come, Hippolyta.\n                     Exeunt THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, EGEUS, and train\n  DEMETRIUS. These things seem small and undistinguishable,\n    Like far-off mountains turned into clouds.\n  HERMIA. Methinks I see these things with parted eye,\n    When every thing seems double.\n  HELENA. So methinks;\n    And I have found Demetrius like a jewel,\n    Mine own, and not mine own.\n  DEMETRIUS. Are you sure\n    That we are awake? It seems to me\n    That yet we sleep, we dream. Do not you think\n    The Duke was here, and bid us follow him?\n  HERMIA. Yea, and my father.\n  HELENA. And Hippolyta.\n  LYSANDER. And he did bid us follow to the temple.\n  DEMETRIUS. Why, then, we are awake; let\'s follow him;\n    And by the way let us recount our dreams.             Exeunt  \n  BOTTOM. [Awaking] When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer. My\n    next is \'Most fair Pyramus.\' Heigh-ho! Peter Quince! Flute, the\n    bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God\'s my life,\n    stol\'n hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision.\n    I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.\n    Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought\n    I was- there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and\n    methought I had, but man is but a patch\'d fool, if he will offer\n    to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the\n    ear of man hath not seen, man\'s hand is not able to taste, his\n    tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I\n    will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall\n    be call\'d \'Bottom\'s Dream,\' because it hath no bottom; and I will\n    sing it in the latter end of a play, before the Duke.\n    Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at\n    her death.                                              Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nAthens. QUINCE\'S house\n\nEnter QUINCE, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING\n\n  QUINCE. Have you sent to Bottom\'s house? Is he come home yet?\n  STARVELING. He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt he is transported.\n  FLUTE. If he come not, then the play is marr\'d; it goes not\n    forward, doth it?\n  QUINCE. It is not possible. You have not a man in all Athens able\n    to discharge Pyramus but he.\n  FLUTE. No; he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft man in\n    Athens.\n  QUINCE. Yea, and the best person too; and he is a very paramour for\n    a sweet voice.\n  FLUTE. You must say \'paragon.\' A paramour is- God bless us!- A\n    thing of naught.\n\n                           Enter SNUG\n\n  SNUG. Masters, the Duke is coming from the temple; and there is two\n    or three lords and ladies more married. If our sport had gone  \n    forward, we had all been made men.\n  FLUTE. O sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost sixpence a day\n    during his life; he could not have scaped sixpence a day. An the\n    Duke had not given him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I\'ll\n    be hanged. He would have deserved it: sixpence a day in Pyramus,\n    or nothing.\n\n                           Enter BOTTOM\n\n  BOTTOM. Where are these lads? Where are these hearts?\n  QUINCE. Bottom! O most courageous day! O most happy hour!\n  BOTTOM. Masters, I am to discourse wonders; but ask me not what;\n    for if I tell you, I am not true Athenian. I will tell you\n    everything, right as it fell out.\n  QUINCE. Let us hear, sweet Bottom.\n  BOTTOM. Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is, that the\n    Duke hath dined. Get your apparel together; good strings to your\n    beards, new ribbons to your pumps; meet presently at the palace;\n    every man look o\'er his part; for the short and the long is, our\n    play is preferr\'d. In any case, let Thisby have clean linen; and  \n    let not him that plays the lion pare his nails, for they shall\n    hang out for the lion\'s claws. And, most dear actors, eat no\n    onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath; and I do not\n    doubt but to hear them say it is a sweet comedy. No more words.\n    Away, go, away!                                       Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nAthens. The palace of THESEUS\n\nEnter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, LORDS, and ATTENDANTS\n\n  HIPPOLYTA. \'Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.\n  THESEUS. More strange than true. I never may believe\n    These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.\n    Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,\n    Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend\n    More than cool reason ever comprehends.\n    The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,\n    Are of imagination all compact.\n    One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;\n    That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,\n    Sees Helen\'s beauty in a brow of Egypt.\n    The poet\'s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,\n    Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;\n    And as imagination bodies forth\n    The forms of things unknown, the poet\'s pen\n    Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing  \n    A local habitation and a name.\n    Such tricks hath strong imagination\n    That, if it would but apprehend some joy,\n    It comprehends some bringer of that joy;\n    Or in the night, imagining some fear,\n    How easy is a bush suppos\'d a bear?\n  HIPPOLYTA. But all the story of the night told over,\n    And all their minds transfigur\'d so together,\n    More witnesseth than fancy\'s images,\n    And grows to something of great constancy,\n    But howsoever strange and admirable.\n\n          Enter LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HERMIA, and HELENA\n\n  THESEUS. Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.\n    Joy, gentle friends, joy and fresh days of love\n    Accompany your hearts!\n  LYSANDER. More than to us\n    Wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed!\n  THESEUS. Come now; what masques, what dances shall we have,  \n    To wear away this long age of three hours\n    Between our after-supper and bed-time?\n    Where is our usual manager of mirth?\n    What revels are in hand? Is there no play\n    To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?\n    Call Philostrate.\n  PHILOSTRATE. Here, mighty Theseus.\n  THESEUS. Say, what abridgment have you for this evening?\n    What masque? what music? How shall we beguile\n    The lazy time, if not with some delight?\n  PHILOSTRATE. There is a brief how many sports are ripe;\n    Make choice of which your Highness will see first.\n                                                [Giving a paper]\n  THESEUS. \'The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung\n    By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.\'\n    We\'ll none of that: that have I told my love,\n    In glory of my kinsman Hercules.\n    \'The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,\n    Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.\'\n    That is an old device, and it was play\'d  \n    When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.\n    \'The thrice three Muses mourning for the death\n    Of Learning, late deceas\'d in beggary.\'\n    That is some satire, keen and critical,\n    Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.\n    \'A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus\n    And his love Thisby; very tragical mirth.\'\n    Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!\n    That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow.\n    How shall we find the concord of this discord?\n  PHILOSTRATE. A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,\n    Which is as brief as I have known a play;\n    But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,\n    Which makes it tedious; for in all the play\n    There is not one word apt, one player fitted.\n    And tragical, my noble lord, it is;\n    For Pyramus therein doth kill himself.\n    Which when I saw rehears\'d, I must confess,\n    Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears\n    The passion of loud laughter never shed.  \n  THESEUS. What are they that do play it?\n  PHILOSTRATE. Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,\n    Which never labour\'d in their minds till now;\n    And now have toil\'d their unbreathed memories\n    With this same play against your nuptial.\n  THESEUS. And we will hear it.\n  PHILOSTRATE. No, my noble lord,\n    It is not for you. I have heard it over,\n    And it is nothing, nothing in the world;\n    Unless you can find sport in their intents,\n    Extremely stretch\'d and conn\'d with cruel pain,\n    To do you service.\n  THESEUS. I will hear that play;\n    For never anything can be amiss\n    When simpleness and duty tender it.\n    Go, bring them in; and take your places, ladies.\n                                                Exit PHILOSTRATE\n  HIPPOLYTA. I love not to see wretchedness o\'er-charged,\n    And duty in his service perishing.\n  THESEUS. Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing.  \n  HIPPOLYTA. He says they can do nothing in this kind.\n  THESEUS. The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.\n    Our sport shall be to take what they mistake;\n    And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect\n    Takes it in might, not merit.\n    Where I have come, great clerks have purposed\n    To greet me with premeditated welcomes;\n    Where I have seen them shiver and look pale,\n    Make periods in the midst of sentences,\n    Throttle their practis\'d accent in their fears,\n    And, in conclusion, dumbly have broke off,\n    Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet,\n    Out of this silence yet I pick\'d a welcome;\n    And in the modesty of fearful duty\n    I read as much as from the rattling tongue\n    Of saucy and audacious eloquence.\n    Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity\n    In least speak most to my capacity.\n\n                       Re-enter PHILOSTRATE  \n\n  PHILOSTRATE. SO please your Grace, the Prologue is address\'d.\n  THESEUS. Let him approach.              [Flourish of trumpets]\n\n                 Enter QUINCE as the PROLOGUE\n\n  PROLOGUE. If we offend, it is with our good will.\n    That you should think, we come not to offend,\n    But with good will. To show our simple skill,\n    That is the true beginning of our end.\n    Consider then, we come but in despite.\n    We do not come, as minding to content you,\n    Our true intent is. All for your delight\n    We are not here. That you should here repent you,\n    The actors are at band; and, by their show,\n    You shall know all, that you are like to know,\n  THESEUS. This fellow doth not stand upon points.\n  LYSANDER. He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt; he knows not\n    the stop. A good moral, my lord: it is not enough to speak, but\n    to speak true.  \n  HIPPOLYTA. Indeed he hath play\'d on this prologue like a child on a\n    recorder- a sound, but not in government.\n  THESEUS. His speech was like a tangled chain; nothing im paired,\n    but all disordered. Who is next?\n\n          Enter, with a trumpet before them, as in dumb show,\n            PYRAMUS and THISBY, WALL, MOONSHINE, and LION\n\n  PROLOGUE. Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show;\n    But wonder on, till truth make all things plain.\n    This man is Pyramus, if you would know;\n    This beauteous lady Thisby is certain.\n    This man, with lime and rough-cast, doth present\n    Wall, that vile Wall which did these lovers sunder;\n    And through Walls chink, poor souls, they are content\n    To whisper. At the which let no man wonder.\n    This man, with lanthorn, dog, and bush of thorn,\n    Presenteth Moonshine; for, if you will know,\n    By moonshine did these lovers think no scorn\n    To meet at Ninus\' tomb, there, there to woo.  \n    This grisly beast, which Lion hight by name,\n    The trusty Thisby, coming first by night,\n    Did scare away, or rather did affright;\n    And as she fled, her mantle she did fall;\n    Which Lion vile with bloody mouth did stain.\n    Anon comes Pyramus, sweet youth and tall,\n    And finds his trusty Thisby\'s mantle slain;\n    Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade,\n    He bravely broach\'d his boiling bloody breast;\n    And Thisby, tarrying in mulberry shade,\n    His dagger drew, and died. For all the rest,\n    Let Lion, Moonshine, Wall, and lovers twain,\n    At large discourse while here they do remain.\n                               Exeunt PROLOGUE, PYRAMUS, THISBY,\n                                             LION, and MOONSHINE\n  THESEUS. I wonder if the lion be to speak.\n  DEMETRIUS. No wonder, my lord: one lion may, when many asses do.\n  WALL. In this same interlude it doth befall\n    That I, one Snout by name, present a wall;\n    And such a wall as I would have you think  \n    That had in it a crannied hole or chink,\n    Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisby,\n    Did whisper often very secretly.\n    This loam, this rough-cast, and this stone, doth show\n    That I am that same wall; the truth is so;\n    And this the cranny is, right and sinister,\n    Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper.\n  THESEUS. Would you desire lime and hair to speak better?\n  DEMETRIUS. It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard\n    discourse, my lord.\n\n                       Enter PYRAMUS\n\n  THESEUS. Pyramus draws near the wall; silence.\n  PYRAMUS. O grim-look\'d night! O night with hue so black!\n    O night, which ever art when day is not!\n    O night, O night, alack, alack, alack,\n    I fear my Thisby\'s promise is forgot!\n    And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,\n    That stand\'st between her father\'s ground and mine;  \n    Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall,\n    Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne.\n                                     [WALL holds up his fingers]\n    Thanks, courteous wall. Jove shield thee well for this!\n    But what see what see I? No Thisby do I see.\n    O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss,\n    Curs\'d he thy stones for thus deceiving me!\n  THESEUS. The wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse again.\n  PYRAMUS. No, in truth, sir, he should not. Deceiving me is Thisby\'s\n    cue. She is to enter now, and I am to spy her through the wall.\n    You shall see it will fall pat as I told you; yonder she comes.\n\n                          Enter THISBY\n\n  THISBY. O wall, full often hast thou beard my moans,\n    For parting my fair Pyramus and me!\n    My cherry lips have often kiss\'d thy stones,\n    Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.\n  PYRAMUS. I see a voice; now will I to the chink,\n    To spy an I can hear my Thisby\'s face.  \n    Thisby!\n  THISBY. My love! thou art my love, I think.\n  PYRAMUS. Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover\'s grace;\n    And like Limander am I trusty still.\n  THISBY. And I like Helen, till the Fates me kill.\n  PYRAMUS. Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true.\n  THISBY. As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you.\n  PYRAMUS. O, kiss me through the hole of this vile wall.\n  THISBY. I kiss the wall\'s hole, not your lips at all.\n  PYRAMUS. Wilt thou at Ninny\'s tomb meet me straightway?\n  THISBY. Tide life, tide death, I come without delay.\n                                       Exeunt PYRAMUS and THISBY\n  WALL. Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so;\n    And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.           Exit WALL\n  THESEUS. Now is the moon used between the two neighbours.\n  DEMETRIUS. No remedy, my lord, when walls are so wilful to hear\n    without warning.\n  HIPPOLYTA. This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.\n  THESEUS. The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are\n    no worse, if imagination amend them.  \n  HIPPOLYTA. It must be your imagination then, and not theirs.\n  THESEUS. If we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves,\n    they may pass for excellent men. Here come two noble beasts in, a\n    man and a lion.\n\n                   Enter LION and MOONSHINE\n\n  LION. You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear\n    The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,\n    May now, perchance, both quake and tremble here,\n    When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar.\n    Then know that I as Snug the joiner am\n    A lion fell, nor else no lion\'s dam;\n    For, if I should as lion come in strife\n    Into this place, \'twere pity on my life.\n  THESEUS. A very gentle beast, and of a good conscience.\n  DEMETRIUS. The very best at a beast, my lord, that e\'er I saw.\n  LYSANDER. This lion is a very fox for his valour.\n  THESEUS. True; and a goose for his discretion.\n  DEMETRIUS. Not so, my lord; for his valour cannot carry his  \n    discretion, and the fox carries the goose.\n  THESEUS. His discretion, I am sure, cannot carry his valour; for\n    the goose carries not the fox. It is well. Leave it to his\n    discretion, and let us listen to the Moon.\n  MOONSHINE. This lanthorn doth the horned moon present-\n  DEMETRIUS. He should have worn the horns on his head.\n  THESEUS. He is no crescent, and his horns are invisible within the\n    circumference.\n  MOONSHINE. This lanthorn doth the horned moon present;\n    Myself the Man i\' th\' Moon do seem to be.\n  THESEUS. This is the greatest error of all the rest; the man should\n    be put into the lantern. How is it else the man i\' th\' moon?\n  DEMETRIUS. He dares not come there for the candle; for, you see, it\n    is already in snuff.\n  HIPPOLYTA. I am aweary of this moon. Would he would change!\n  THESEUS. It appears, by his small light of discretion, that he is\n    in the wane; but yet, in courtesy, in all reason, we must stay\n    the time.\n  LYSANDER. Proceed, Moon.\n  MOON. All that I have to say is to tell you that the lanthorn is  \n    the moon; I, the Man i\' th\' Moon; this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush;\n    and this dog, my dog.\n  DEMETRIUS. Why, all these should be in the lantern; for all these\n    are in the moon. But silence; here comes Thisby.\n\n                        Re-enter THISBY\n\n  THISBY. This is old Ninny\'s tomb. Where is my love?\n  LION. [Roaring] O-                           [THISBY runs off]\n  DEMETRIUS. Well roar\'d, Lion.\n  THESEUS. Well run, Thisby.\n  HIPPOLYTA. Well shone, Moon. Truly, the moon shines with a good\n    grace.            [The LION tears THISBY\'S Mantle, and exit]\n  THESEUS. Well mous\'d, Lion.\n\n                        Re-enter PYRAMUS\n\n  DEMETRIUS. And then came Pyramus.\n  LYSANDER. And so the lion vanish\'d.\n  PYRAMUS. Sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams;  \n    I thank thee, Moon, for shining now so bright;\n    For, by thy gracious golden, glittering gleams,\n    I trust to take of truest Thisby sight.\n             But stay, O spite!\n             But mark, poor knight,\n           What dreadful dole is here!\n             Eyes, do you see?\n             How can it he?\n           O dainty duck! O dear!\n             Thy mantle good,\n             What! stain\'d with blood?\n           Approach, ye Furies fell.\n             O Fates! come, come;\n             Cut thread and thrum;\n           Quail, crush, conclude, and quell.\n  THESEUS. This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go\n    near to make a man look sad.\n  HIPPOLYTA. Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man.\n  PYRAMUS. O wherefore, Nature, didst thou lions frame?\n    Since lion vile hath here deflower\'d my dear;  \n    Which is- no, no- which was the fairest dame\n    That liv\'d, that lov\'d, that lik\'d, that look\'d with cheer.\n             Come, tears, confound;\n             Out, sword, and wound\n           The pap of Pyramus;\n             Ay, that left pap,\n             Where heart doth hop.               [Stabs himself]\n           Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.\n             Now am I dead,\n             Now am I fled;\n           My soul is in the sky.\n             Tongue, lose thy light;\n             Moon, take thy flight.             [Exit MOONSHINE]\n           Now die, die, die, die, die.                   [Dies]\n  DEMETRIUS. No die, but an ace, for him; for he is but one.\n  LYSANDER. Less than an ace, man; for he is dead; he is nothing.\n  THESEUS. With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover and yet\n    prove an ass.\n  HIPPOLYTA. How chance Moonshine is gone before Thisby comes back\n    and finds her lover?  \n\n                       Re-enter THISBY\n\n  THESEUS. She will find him by starlight. Here she comes; and her\n    passion ends the play.\n  HIPPOLYTA. Methinks she should not use a long one for such a\n    Pyramus; I hope she will be brief.\n  DEMETRIUS. A mote will turn the balance, which Pyramus, which\n    Thisby, is the better- he for a man, God warrant us: She for a\n    woman, God bless us!\n  LYSANDER. She hath spied him already with those sweet eyes.\n  DEMETRIUS. And thus she moans, videlicet:-\n  THISBY.      Asleep, my love?\n               What, dead, my dove?\n             O Pyramus, arise,\n               Speak, speak. Quite dumb?\n               Dead, dead? A tomb\n             Must cover thy sweet eyes.\n               These lily lips,\n               This cherry nose,  \n             These yellow cowslip cheeks,\n               Are gone, are gone;\n               Lovers, make moan;\n             His eyes were green as leeks.\n               O Sisters Three,\n               Come, come to me,\n             With hands as pale as milk;\n               Lay them in gore,\n               Since you have shore\n             With shears his thread of silk.\n               Tongue, not a word.\n               Come, trusty sword;\n             Come, blade, my breast imbrue.      [Stabs herself]\n               And farewell, friends;\n               Thus Thisby ends;\n             Adieu, adieu, adieu.                         [Dies]\n  THESEUS. Moonshine and Lion are left to bury the dead.\n  DEMETRIUS. Ay, and Wall too.\n  BOTTOM. [Starting up] No, I assure you; the wall is down that\n    parted their fathers. Will it please you to see the Epilogue, or  \n    to hear a Bergomask dance between two of our company?\n  THESEUS. No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excuse.\n    Never excuse; for when the players are all dead there need none\n    to be blamed. Marry, if he that writ it had played Pyramus, and\n    hang\'d himself in Thisby\'s garter, it would have been a fine\n    tragedy. And so it is, truly; and very notably discharg\'d. But\n    come, your Bergomask; let your epilogue alone.     [A dance]\n    The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve.\n    Lovers, to bed; \'tis almost fairy time.\n    I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn,\n    As much as we this night have overwatch\'d.\n    This palpable-gross play hath well beguil\'d\n    The heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed.\n    A fortnight hold we this solemnity,\n    In nightly revels and new jollity.                    Exeunt\n\n                     Enter PUCK with a broom\n\n  PUCK.      Now the hungry lion roars,\n             And the wolf behowls the moon;  \n             Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,\n             All with weary task fordone.\n             Now the wasted brands do glow,\n             Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud,\n             Puts the wretch that lies in woe\n             In remembrance of a shroud.\n             Now it is the time of night\n             That the graves, all gaping wide,\n             Every one lets forth his sprite,\n             In the church-way paths to glide.\n             And we fairies, that do run\n             By the triple Hecate\'s team\n             From the presence of the sun,\n             Following darkness like a dream,\n             Now are frolic. Not a mouse\n             Shall disturb this hallowed house.\n             I am sent with broom before,\n             To sweep the dust behind the door.\n\n         Enter OBERON and TITANIA, with all their train  \n\n  OBERON.    Through the house give glimmering light,\n             By the dead and drowsy fire;\n             Every elf and fairy sprite\n             Hop as light as bird from brier;\n             And this ditty, after me,\n             Sing and dance it trippingly.\n  TITANIA.      First, rehearse your song by rote,\n                To each word a warbling note;\n                Hand in hand, with fairy grace,\n                Will we sing, and bless this place.\n\n           [OBERON leading, the FAIRIES sing and dance]\n\n  OBERON.    Now, until the break of day,\n             Through this house each fairy stray.\n             To the best bride-bed will we,\n             Which by us shall blessed be;\n             And the issue there create\n             Ever shall be fortunate.  \n             So shall all the couples three\n             Ever true in loving be;\n             And the blots of Nature\'s hand\n             Shall not in their issue stand;\n             Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar,\n             Nor mark prodigious, such as are\n             Despised in nativity,\n             Shall upon their children be.\n             With this field-dew consecrate,\n             Every fairy take his gait,\n             And each several chamber bless,\n             Through this palace, with sweet peace;\n             And the owner of it blest\n             Ever shall in safety rest.\n             Trip away; make no stay;\n             Meet me all by break of day.    Exeunt all but PUCK\n  PUCK.      If we shadows have offended,\n             Think but this, and all is mended,\n             That you have but slumb\'red here\n             While these visions did appear.  \n             And this weak and idle theme,\n             No more yielding but a dream,\n             Gentles, do not reprehend.\n             If you pardon, we will mend.\n             And, as I am an honest Puck,\n             If we have unearned luck\n             Now to scape the serpent\'s tongue,\n             We will make amends ere long;\n             Else the Puck a liar call.\n             So, good night unto you all.\n             Give me your hands, if we be friends,\n             And Robin shall restore amends.                Exit\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1599\n\n\nMUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING\n\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  Don Pedro, Prince of Arragon.\n  Don John, his bastard brother.\n  Claudio, a young lord of Florence.\n  Benedick, a Young lord of Padua.\n  Leonato, Governor of Messina.\n  Antonio, an old man, his brother.\n  Balthasar, attendant on Don Pedro.\n  Borachio, follower of Don John.\n  Conrade, follower of Don John.\n  Friar Francis.\n  Dogberry, a Constable.\n  Verges, a Headborough.\n  A Sexton.\n  A Boy.\n\n  Hero, daughter to Leonato.\n  Beatrice, niece to Leonato.\n  Margaret, waiting gentlewoman attending on Hero.\n  Ursula, waiting gentlewoman attending on Hero.\n\n  Messengers, Watch, Attendants, etc.  \n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE.--Messina.\n\n\nACT I. Scene I.\nAn orchard before Leonato\'s house.\n\nEnter Leonato (Governor of Messina), Hero (his Daughter),\nand Beatrice (his Niece), with a Messenger.\n\n  Leon. I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Arragon comes this\n    night to Messina.\n  Mess. He is very near by this. He was not three leagues off when I\n    left him.\n  Leon. How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?\n  Mess. But few of any sort, and none of name.\n  Leon. A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full\n    numbers. I find here that Don Pedro hath bestowed much honour on\n    a young Florentine called Claudio.\n  Mess. Much deserv\'d on his part, and equally rememb\'red by Don\n    Pedro. He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing\n    in the figure of a lamb the feats of a lion. He hath indeed\n    better bett\'red expectation than you must expect of me to tell\n    you how.\n  Leon. He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much glad of it.\n  Mess. I have already delivered him letters, and there appears much  \n    joy in him; even so much that joy could not show itself modest\n    enough without a badge of bitterness.\n  Leon. Did he break out into tears?\n  Mess. In great measure.\n  Leon. A kind overflow of kindness. There are no faces truer than\n    those that are so wash\'d. How much better is it to weep at joy\n    than to joy at weeping!\n  Beat. I pray you, is Signior Mountanto return\'d from the wars or no?\n  Mess. I know none of that name, lady. There was none such in the\n    army of any sort.\n  Leon. What is he that you ask for, niece?\n  Hero. My cousin means Signior Benedick of Padua.\n  Mess. O, he\'s return\'d, and as pleasant as ever he was.\n  Beat. He set up his bills here in Messina and challeng\'d Cupid at\n    the flight, and my uncle\'s fool, reading the challenge,\n    subscrib\'d for Cupid and challeng\'d him at the burbolt. I pray\n    you, how many hath he kill\'d and eaten in these wars? But how\n    many hath he kill\'d? For indeed I promised to eat all of his\n    killing.\n  Leon. Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much; but he\'ll  \n    be meet with you, I doubt it not.\n  Mess. He hath done good service, lady, in these wars.\n  Beat. You had musty victual, and he hath holp to eat it. He is a\n    very valiant trencherman; he hath an excellent stomach.\n  Mess. And a good soldier too, lady.\n  Beat. And a good soldier to a lady; but what is he to a lord?\n  Mess. A lord to a lord, a man to a man; stuff\'d with all honourable\n    virtues.\n  Beat. It is so indeed. He is no less than a stuff\'d man; but for\n    the stuffing--well, we are all mortal.\n  Leon. You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is a kind of merry\n    war betwixt Signior Benedick and her. They never meet but there\'s\n    a skirmish of wit between them.\n  Beat. Alas, he gets nothing by that! In our last conflict four of\n    his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man govern\'d\n    with one; so that if he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let\n    him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse; for\n    it is all the wealth that he hath left to be known a reasonable\n    creature. Who is his companion now? He hath every month a new\n    sworn brother.  \n  Mess. Is\'t possible?\n  Beat. Very easily possible. He wears his faith but as the fashion\n    of his hat; it ever changes with the next block.\n  Mess. I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.\n  Beat. No. An he were, I would burn my study. But I pray you, who is\n    his companion? Is there no young squarer now that will make a\n    voyage with him to the devil?\n  Mess. He is most in the company of the right noble Claudio.\n  Beat. O Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease! He is sooner\n    caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad. God\n    help the noble Claudio! If he have caught the Benedick, it will\n    cost him a thousand pound ere \'a be cured.\n  Mess. I will hold friends with you, lady.\n  Beat. Do, good friend.\n  Leon. You will never run mad, niece.\n  Beat. No, not till a hot January.\n  Mess. Don Pedro is approach\'d.\n\n  Enter Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, Balthasar, and John the Bastard.\n  \n  Pedro. Good Signior Leonato, are you come to meet your trouble? The\n    fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.\n  Leon. Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of your Grace;\n    for trouble being gone, comfort should remain; but when you depart\n    from me, sorrow abides and happiness takes his leave.\n  Pedro. You embrace your charge too willingly. I think this is your\n    daughter.\n  Leon. Her mother hath many times told me so.\n  Bene. Were you in doubt, sir, that you ask\'d her?\n  Leon. Signior Benedick, no; for then were you a child.\n  Pedro. You have it full, Benedick. We may guess by this what you\n    are, being a man. Truly the lady fathers herself. Be happy, lady;\n    for you are like an honourable father.\n  Bene. If Signior Leonato be her father, she would not have his head\n    on her shoulders for all Messina, as like him as she is.\n  Beat. I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick.\n    Nobody marks you.\n  Bene. What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?\n  Beat. Is it possible Disdain should die while she hath such meet\n    food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert  \n    to disdain if you come in her presence.\n  Bene. Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of\n    all ladies, only you excepted; and I would I could find in my\n    heart that I had not a hard heart, for truly I love none.\n  Beat. A dear happiness to women! They would else have been troubled\n    with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of\n    your humour for that. I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow\n    than a man swear he loves me.\n  Bene. God keep your ladyship still in that mind! So some gentleman\n    or other shall scape a predestinate scratch\'d face.\n  Beat. Scratching could not make it worse an \'twere such a face as\n    yours were.\n  Bene. Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.\n  Beat. A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.\n  Bene. I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a\n    continuer. But keep your way, a God\'s name! I have done.\n  Beat. You always end with a jade\'s trick. I know you of old.\n  Pedro. That is the sum of all, Leonato. Signior Claudio and Signior\n    Benedick, my dear friend Leonato hath invited you all. I tell him\n    we shall stay here at the least a month, and he heartly prays  \n    some occasion may detain us longer. I dare swear he is no\n    hypocrite, but prays from his heart.\n  Leon. If you swear, my lord, you shall not be forsworn. [To Don\n    John] Let me bid you welcome, my lord. Being reconciled to the\n    Prince your brother, I owe you all duty.\n  John. I thank you. I am not of many words, but I thank you.\n  Leon. Please it your Grace lead on?\n  Pedro. Your hand, Leonato. We will go together.\n                            Exeunt. Manent Benedick and Claudio.\n  Claud. Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of Signior Leonato?\n  Bene. I noted her not, but I look\'d on her.\n  Claud. Is she not a modest young lady?\n  Bene. Do you question me, as an honest man should do, for my simple\n    true judgment? or would you have me speak after my custom, as\n    being a professed tyrant to their sex?\n  Claud. No. I pray thee speak in sober judgment.\n  Bene. Why, i\' faith, methinks she\'s too low for a high praise,\n    too brown for a fair praise, and too little for a great praise.\n    Only this commendation I can afford her, that were she other\n    than she is, she were unhandsome, and being no other but as she  \n    is, I do not like her.\n  Claud. Thou thinkest I am in sport. I pray thee tell me truly how\n    thou lik\'st her.\n  Bene. Would you buy her, that you enquire after her?\n  Claud. Can the world buy such a jewel?\n  Bene. Yea, and a case to put it into. But speak you this with a sad\n    brow? or do you play the flouting Jack, to tell us Cupid is a\n    good hare-finder and Vulcan a rare carpenter? Come, in what key\n    shall a man take you to go in the song?\n  Claud. In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I look\'d on.\n  Bene. I can see yet without spectacles, and I see no such matter.\n    There\'s her cousin, an she were not possess\'d with a fury,exceeds\n    her as much in beauty as the first of May doth the last of\n    December. But I hope you have no intent to turn husband, have\n    you?\n  Claud. I would scarce trust myself, though I had sworn the\n    contrary, if Hero would be my wife.\n  Bene. Is\'t come to this? In faith, hath not the world one man but\n    he will wear his cap with suspicion? Shall I never see a\n    bachelor of threescore again? Go to, i\' faith! An thou wilt needs  \n    thrust thy neck into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away\n    Sundays.\n\n                       Enter Don Pedro.\n\n    Look! Don Pedro is returned to seek you.\n  Pedro. What secret hath held you here, that you followed not to\n    Leonato\'s?\n  Bene. I would your Grace would constrain me to tell.\n  Pedro. I charge thee on thy allegiance.\n  Bene. You hear, Count Claudio. I can be secret as a dumb man, I\n    would have you think so; but, on my allegiance--mark you this-on\n    my allegiance! he is in love. With who? Now that is your Grace\'s\n    part. Mark how short his answer is: With Hero, Leonato\'s short\n    daughter.\n  Claud. If this were so, so were it utt\'red.\n  Bene. Like the old tale, my lord: \'It is not so, nor \'twas not so;\n    but indeed, God forbid it should be so!\'\n  Claud. If my passion change not shortly, God forbid it should be\n    otherwise.  \n  Pedro. Amen, if you love her; for the lady is very well worthy.\n  Claud. You speak this to fetch me in, my lord.\n  Pedro. By my troth, I speak my thought.\n  Claud. And, in faith, my lord, I spoke mine.\n  Bene. And, by my two faiths and troths, my lord, I spoke mine.\n  Claud. That I love her, I feel.\n  Pedro. That she is worthy, I know.\n  Bene. That I neither feel how she should be loved, nor know how she\n    should be worthy, is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me.\n    I will die in it at the stake.\n  Pedro. Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the despite of\n    beauty.\n  Claud. And never could maintain his part but in the force of his\n    will.\n  Bene. That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she brought me\n    up, I likewise give her most humble thanks; but that I will have\n    a rechate winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible\n    baldrick, all women shall pardon me. Because I will not do them\n    the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust\n    none; and the fine is (for the which I may go the finer), I will  \n    live a bachelor.\n  Pedro. I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love.\n  Bene. With anger, with sickness, or with hunger, my lord; not with\n    love. Prove that ever I lose more blood with love than I will get\n    again with drinking, pick out mine eyes with a ballad-maker\'s pen\n    and hang me up at the door of a brothel house for the sign of\n    blind Cupid.\n  Pedro. Well, if ever thou dost fall from this faith, thou wilt\n    prove a notable argument.\n  Bene. If I do, hang me in a bottle like a cat and shoot at me; and\n    he that hits me, let him be clapp\'d on the shoulder and call\'d\n    Adam.\n  Pedro. Well, as time shall try.\n    \'In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke.\'\n  Bene. The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible Benedick bear\n    it, pluck off the bull\'s horns and set them in my forehead, and\n    let me be vilely painted, and in such great letters as they write\n    \'Here is good horse to hire,\' let them signify under my sign\n    \'Here you may see Benedick the married man.\'\n  Claud. If this should ever happen, thou wouldst be horn-mad.  \n  Pedro. Nay, if Cupid have not spent all his quiver in Venice, thou\n    wilt quake for this shortly.\n  Bene. I look for an earthquake too then.\n  Pedro. Well, you will temporize with the hours. In the meantime,\n    good Signior Benedick, repair to Leonato\'s, commend me to him and\n    tell him I will not fail him at supper; for indeed he hath made\n    great preparation.\n  Bene. I have almost matter enough in me for such an embassage; and\n    so I commit you--\n  Claud. To the tuition of God. From my house--if I had it--\n  Pedro. The sixth of July. Your loving friend, Benedick.\n  Bene. Nay, mock not, mock not. The body of your discourse is\n    sometime guarded with fragments, and the guards are but slightly\n    basted on neither. Ere you flout old ends any further, examine\n    your conscience. And so I leave you.                   Exit.\n  Claud. My liege, your Highness now may do me good.\n  Pedro. My love is thine to teach. Teach it but how,\n    And thou shalt see how apt it is to learn\n    Any hard lesson that may do thee good.\n  Claud. Hath Leonato any son, my lord?  \n  Pedro. No child but Hero; she\'s his only heir.\n    Dost thou affect her, Claudio?\n  Claud.O my lord,\n    When you went onward on this ended action,\n    I look\'d upon her with a soldier\'s eye,\n    That lik\'d, but had a rougher task in hand\n    Than to drive liking to the name of love;\n    But now I am return\'d and that war-thoughts\n    Have left their places vacant, in their rooms\n    Come thronging soft and delicate desires,\n    All prompting me how fair young Hero is,\n    Saying I lik\'d her ere I went to wars.\n  Pedro. Thou wilt be like a lover presently\n    And tire the hearer with a book of words.\n    If thou dost love fair Hero, cherish it,\n    And I will break with her and with her father,\n    And thou shalt have her. Wast not to this end\n    That thou began\'st to twist so fine a story?\n  Claud. How sweetly you do minister to love,\n    That know love\'s grief by his complexion!  \n    But lest my liking might too sudden seem,\n    I would have salv\'d it with a longer treatise.\n  Pedro. What need the bridge much broader than the flood?\n    The fairest grant is the necessity.\n    Look, what will serve is fit. \'Tis once, thou lovest,\n    And I will fit thee with the remedy.\n    I know we shall have revelling to-night.\n    I will assume thy part in some disguise\n    And tell fair Hero I am Claudio,\n    And in her bosom I\'ll unclasp my heart\n    And take her hearing prisoner with the force\n    And strong encounter of my amorous tale.\n    Then after to her father will I break,\n    And the conclusion is, she shall be thine.\n    In practice let us put it presently.                 Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nA room in Leonato\'s house.\n\nEnter [at one door] Leonato and [at another door, Antonio] an old man,\nbrother to Leonato.\n\n  Leon. How now, brother? Where is my cousin your son? Hath he\n    provided this music?\n  Ant. He is very busy about it. But, brother, I can tell you strange\n    news that you yet dreamt not of.\n  Leon. Are they good?\n  Ant. As the event stamps them; but they have a good cover, they\n    show well outward. The Prince and Count Claudio, walking in a\n    thick-pleached alley in mine orchard, were thus much overheard by\n    a man of mine: the Prince discovered to Claudio that he loved my\n    niece your daughter and meant to acknowledge it this night in a\n    dance, and if he found her accordant, he meant to take the\n    present time by the top and instantly break with you of it.\n  Leon. Hath the fellow any wit that told you this?\n  Ant. A good sharp fellow. I will send for him, and question him\n    yourself.\n  Leon. No, no. We will hold it as a dream till it appear itself; but  \n    I will acquaint my daughter withal, that she may be the better\n    prepared for an answer, if peradventure this be true. Go you and\n    tell her of it.                              [Exit Antonio.]\n\n         [Enter Antonio\'s Son with a Musician, and others.]\n\n    [To the Son] Cousin, you know what you have to do.\n    --[To the Musician] O, I cry you mercy, friend. Go you with me,\n    and I will use your skill.--Good cousin, have a care this busy\n    time.                                                Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nAnother room in Leonato\'s house.]\n\nEnter Sir John the Bastard and Conrade, his companion.\n\n  Con. What the goodyear, my lord! Why are you thus out of measure\n    sad?\n  John. There is no measure in the occasion that breeds; therefore\n    the sadness is without limit.\n  Con. You should hear reason.\n  John. And when I have heard it, what blessings brings it?\n  Con. If not a present remedy, at least a patient sufferance.\n  John. I wonder that thou (being, as thou say\'st thou art, born\n    under Saturn) goest about to apply a moral medicine to a\n    mortifying mischief. I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when\n    I have cause, and smile at no man\'s jests; eat when I have\n    stomach, and wait for no man\'s leisure; sleep when I am drowsy,\n    and tend on no man\'s business; laugh when I am merry, and claw no\n    man in his humour.\n  Con. Yea, but you must not make the full show of this till you may\n    do it without controlment. You have of late stood out against\n    your brother, and he hath ta\'en you newly into his grace, where  \n    it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair\n    weather that you make yourself. It is needful that you frame the\n    season for your own harvest.\n  John. I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace,\n    and it better fits my blood to be disdain\'d of all than to\n    fashion a carriage to rob love from any. In this, though I cannot\n    be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but\n    I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with a muzzle and\n    enfranchis\'d with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in\n    my cage. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I\n    would do my liking. In the meantime let me be that I am, and seek\n    not to alter me.\n  Con. Can you make no use of your discontent?\n  John. I make all use of it, for I use it only.\n\n                       Enter Borachio.\n\n    Who comes here? What news, Borachio?\n  Bora. I came yonder from a great supper. The Prince your brother is\n    royally entertain\'d by Leonato, and I can give you intelligence  \n    of an intended marriage.\n  John. Will it serve for any model to build mischief on?\n    What is he for a fool that betroths himself to unquietness?\n  Bora. Marry, it is your brother\'s right hand.\n  John. Who? the most exquisite Claudio?\n  Bora. Even he.\n  John. A proper squire! And who? and who? which way looks he?\n  Bora. Marry, on Hero, the daughter and heir of Leonato.\n  John. A very forward March-chick! How came you to this?\n  Bora. Being entertain\'d for a perfumer, as I was smoking a musty\n    room, comes me the Prince and Claudio, hand in hand in sad\n    conference. I whipt me behind the arras and there heard it agreed\n    upon that the Prince should woo Hero for himself, and having\n    obtain\'d her, give her to Count Claudio.\n  John. Come, come, let us thither. This may prove food to my\n    displeasure. That young start-up hath all the glory of my\n    overthrow. If I can cross him any way, I bless myself every way.\n    You are both sure, and will assist me?\n  Con. To the death, my lord.\n  John. Let us to the great supper. Their cheer is the greater that  \n    I am subdued. Would the cook were o\' my mind! Shall we go prove\n    what\'s to be done?\n  Bora. We\'ll wait upon your lordship.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. Scene I.\nA hall in Leonato\'s house.\n\nEnter Leonato, [Antonio] his Brother, Hero his Daughter,\nand Beatrice his Niece, and a Kinsman; [also Margaret and Ursula].\n\n  Leon. Was not Count John here at supper?\n  Ant. I saw him not.\n  Beat. How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can see him but I am\n    heart-burn\'d an hour after.\n  Hero. He is of a very melancholy disposition.\n  Beat. He were an excellent man that were made just in the midway\n    between him and Benedick. The one is too like an image and says\n    nothing, and the other too like my lady\'s eldest son, evermore\n    tattling.\n  Leon. Then half Signior Benedick\'s tongue in Count John\'s mouth,\n    and half Count John\'s melancholy in Signior Benedick\'s face--\n  Beat. With a good leg and a good foot, uncle, and money enough in\n    his purse, such a man would win any woman in the world--if \'a\n    could get her good will.\n  Leon. By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband if\n    thou be so shrewd of thy tongue.  \n  Ant. In faith, she\'s too curst.\n  Beat. Too curst is more than curst. I shall lessen God\'s sending\n    that way, for it is said, \'God sends a curst cow short horns,\'\n    but to a cow too curst he sends none.\n  Leon. So, by being too curst, God will send you no horns.\n  Beat. Just, if he send me no husband; for the which blessing I am\n    at him upon my knees every morning and evening. Lord, I could not\n    endure a husband with a beard on his face. I had rather lie in\n    the woollen!\n  Leon. You may light on a husband that hath no beard.\n  Beat. What should I do with him? dress him in my apparel and make\n    him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a\n    youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that\n    is more than a youth is not for me; and he that is less than a\n    man, I am not for him. Therefore I will even take sixpence in\n    earnest of the berrord and lead his apes into hell.\n  Leon. Well then, go you into hell?\n  Beat. No; but to the gate, and there will the devil meet me like an\n    old cuckold with horns on his head, and say \'Get you to heaven,\n    Beatrice, get you to heaven. Here\'s no place for you maids.\' So  \n    deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter--for the heavens.\n    He shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry\n    as the day is long.\n  Ant. [to Hero] Well, niece, I trust you will be rul\'d by your\n    father.\n  Beat. Yes faith. It is my cousin\'s duty to make cursy and say,\n    \'Father, as it please you.\' But yet for all that, cousin, let him\n    be a handsome fellow, or else make another cursy, and say,\n    \'Father, as it please me.\'\n  Leon. Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.\n  Beat. Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would\n    it not grieve a woman to be overmaster\'d with a piece of valiant\n    dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl?\n    No, uncle, I\'ll none. Adam\'s sons are my brethren, and truly I\n    hold it a sin to match in my kinred.\n  Leon. Daughter, remember what I told you. If the Prince do solicit\n    you in that kind, you know your answer.\n  Beat. The fault will be in the music, cousin, if you be not wooed\n    in good time. If the Prince be too important, tell him there is\n    measure in everything, and so dance out the answer. For, hear me,  \n    Hero: wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a\n    measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty like\n    a Scotch jig--and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly\n    modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes\n    Repentance and with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace\n    faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.\n  Leon. Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly.\n  Beat. I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight.\n  Leon. The revellers are ent\'ring, brother. Make good room.\n                                                 [Exit Antonio.]\n\n    Enter, [masked,] Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, and Balthasar.\n       [With them enter Antonio, also masked. After them enter]\n       Don John [and Borachio (without masks), who stand aside\n                 and look on during the dance].\n\n  Pedro. Lady, will you walk a bout with your friend?\n  Hero. So you walk softly and look sweetly and say nothing,\n    I am yours for the walk; and especially when I walk away.\n  Pedro. With me in your company?  \n  Hero. I may say so when I please.\n  Pedro. And when please you to say so?\n  Hero. When I like your favour, for God defend the lute should be\n    like the case!\n  Pedro. My visor is Philemon\'s roof; within the house is Jove.\n  Hero. Why then, your visor should be thatch\'d.\n  Pedro. Speak low if you speak love.         [Takes her aside.]\n  Balth. Well, I would you did like me.\n  Marg. So would not I for your own sake, for I have many ill\n    qualities.\n  Balth. Which is one?\n  Marg. I say my prayers aloud.\n  Balth. I love you the better. The hearers may cry Amen.\n  Marg. God match me with a good dancer!\n  Balth. Amen.\n  Marg. And God keep him out of my sight when the dance is done!\n    Answer, clerk.\n  Balth. No more words. The clerk is answered.\n                                              [Takes her aside.]\n  Urs. I know you well enough. You are Signior Antonio.  \n  Ant. At a word, I am not.\n  Urs. I know you by the waggling of your head.\n  Ant. To tell you true, I counterfeit him.\n  Urs. You could never do him so ill-well unless you were the very\n    man. Here\'s his dry hand up and down. You are he, you are he!\n  Ant. At a word, I am not.\n  Urs. Come, come, do you think I do not know you by your excellent\n    wit? Can virtue hide itself? Go to, mum you are he. Graces will\n    appear, and there\'s an end.              [ They step aside.]\n  Beat. Will you not tell me who told you so?\n  Bene. No, you shall pardon me.\n  Beat. Nor will you not tell me who you are?\n  Bene. Not now.\n  Beat. That I was disdainful, and that I had my good wit out of the\n    \'Hundred Merry Tales.\' Well, this was Signior Benedick that said\n    so.\n  Bene. What\'s he?\n  Beat. I am sure you know him well enough.\n  Bene. Not I, believe me.\n  Beat. Did he never make you laugh?  \n  Bene. I pray you, what is he?\n  Beat. Why, he is the Prince\'s jester, a very dull fool. Only his\n    gift is in devising impossible slanders. None but libertines\n    delight in him; and the commendation is not in his wit, but in\n    his villany; for he both pleases men and angers them, and then\n    they laugh at him and beat him. I am sure he is in the fleet.\n    I would he had boarded me.\n  Bene. When I know the gentleman, I\'ll tell him what you say.\n  Beat. Do, do. He\'ll but break a comparison or two on me; which\n    peradventure, not marked or not laugh\'d at, strikes him into\n    melancholy; and then there\'s a partridge wing saved, for the fool\n    will eat no supper that night.\n                                                        [Music.]\n    We must follow the leaders.\n  Bene. In every good thing.\n  Beat. Nay, if they lead to any ill, I will leave them at the next\n    turning.\n        Dance. Exeunt (all but Don John, Borachio, and Claudio].\n  John. Sure my brother is amorous on Hero and hath withdrawn her\n    father to break with him about it. The ladies follow her and but  \n    one visor remains.\n  Bora. And that is Claudio. I know him by his bearing.\n  John. Are you not Signior Benedick?\n  Claud. You know me well. I am he.\n  John. Signior, you are very near my brother in his love. He is\n    enamour\'d on Hero. I pray you dissuade him from her; she is no\n    equal for his birth. You may do the part of an honest man in it.\n  Claud. How know you he loves her?\n  John. I heard him swear his affection.\n  Bora. So did I too, and he swore he would marry her tonight.\n  John. Come, let us to the banquet.\n                                          Exeunt. Manet Claudio.\n  Claud. Thus answer I in name of Benedick\n    But hear these ill news with the ears of Claudio.\n                                                      [Unmasks.]\n    \'Tis certain so. The Prince wooes for himself.\n    Friendship is constant in all other things\n    Save in the office and affairs of love.\n    Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;\n    Let every eye negotiate for itself  \n    And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch\n    Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.\n    This is an accident of hourly proof,\n    Which I mistrusted not. Farewell therefore Hero!\n\n                  Enter Benedick [unmasked].\n\n  Bene. Count Claudio?\n  Claud. Yea, the same.\n  Bene. Come, will you go with me?\n  Claud. Whither?\n  Bene. Even to the next willow, about your own business, County. What\n    fashion will you wear the garland of? about your neck, like an\n    usurer\'s chain? or under your arm, like a lieutenant\'s scarf? You\n    must wear it one way, for the Prince hath got your Hero.\n  Claud. I wish him joy of her.\n  Bene. Why, that\'s spoken like an honest drovier. So they sell\n    bullocks. But did you think the Prince would have served you\n    thus?\n  Claud. I pray you leave me.  \n  Bene. Ho! now you strike like the blind man! \'Twas the boy that\n    stole your meat, and you\'ll beat the post.\n  Claud. If it will not be, I\'ll leave you.                Exit.\n  Bene. Alas, poor hurt fowl! now will he creep into sedges. But,\n    that my Lady Beatrice should know me, and not know me! The\n    Prince\'s fool! Ha! it may be I go under that title because I am\n    merry. Yea, but so I am apt to do myself wrong. I am not so\n    reputed. It is the base (though bitter) disposition of Beatrice\n    that puts the world into her person and so gives me out. Well,\n    I\'ll be revenged as I may.\n\n                         Enter Don Pedro.\n\n  Pedro. Now, signior, where\'s the Count? Did you see him?\n  Bene. Troth, my lord, I have played the part of Lady Fame, I found\n    him here as melancholy as a lodge in a warren. I told him, and I\n    think I told him true, that your Grace had got the good will of\n    this young lady, and I off\'red him my company to a willow tree,\n    either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to bind him\n    up a rod, as being worthy to be whipt.  \n  Pedro. To be whipt? What\'s his fault?\n  Bene. The flat transgression of a schoolboy who, being overjoyed\n    with finding a bird\'s nest, shows it his companion, and he steals\n    it.\n  Pedro. Wilt thou make a trust a transgression? The transgression is\n    in the stealer.\n  Bene. Yet it had not been amiss the rod had been made, and the\n    garland too; for the garland he might have worn himself, and the\n    rod he might have bestowed on you, who, as I take it, have stol\'n\n    his bird\'s nest.\n  Pedro. I will but teach them to sing and restore them to the owner.\n  Bene. If their singing answer your saying, by my faith you say\n    honestly.\n  Pedro. The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you. The gentleman that\n    danc\'d with her told her she is much wrong\'d by you.\n  Bene. O, she misus\'d me past the endurance of a block! An oak but\n    with one green leaf on it would have answered her; my very visor\n    began to assume life and scold with her. She told me, not\n    thinking I had been myself, that I was the Prince\'s jester, that\n    I was duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest with such  \n    impossible conveyance upon me that I stood like a man at a mark,\n    with a whole army shooting at me. She speaks poniards, and every\n    word stabs. If her breath were as terrible as her terminations,\n    there were no living near her; she would infect to the North\n    Star. I would not marry her though she were endowed with all that\n    Adam had left him before he transgress\'d. She would have made\n    Hercules have turn\'d spit, yea, and have cleft his club to make\n    the fire too. Come, talk not of her. You shall find her the\n    infernal Ate in good apparel. I would to God some scholar would\n    conjure her, for certainly, while she is here, a man may live as\n    quiet in hell as in a sanctuary; and people sin upon purpose,\n    because they would go thither; so indeed all disquiet, horror,\n    and perturbation follows her.\n\n           Enter Claudio and Beatrice, Leonato, Hero.\n\n  Pedro. Look, here she comes.\n  Bene. Will your Grace command me any service to the world\'s end? I\n    will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can\n    devise to send me on; I will fetch you a toothpicker now from the  \n    furthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John\'s\n    foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham\'s beard; do you any\n    embassage to the Pygmies--rather than hold three words\'\n    conference with this harpy. You have no employment for me?\n  Pedro. None, but to desire your good company.\n  Bene. O God, sir, here\'s a dish I love not! I cannot endure my Lady\n    Tongue.                                              [Exit.]\n  Pedro. Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior\n    Benedick.\n  Beat. Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile, and I gave him use for\n    it--a double heart for his single one. Marry, once before he won\n    it of me with false dice; therefore your Grace may well say I\n    have lost it.\n  Pedro. You have put him down, lady; you have put him down.\n  Beat. So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should prove\n    the mother of fools. I have brought Count Claudio, whom you sent\n    me to seek.\n  Pedro. Why, how now, Count? Wherefore are you sad?\n  Claud. Not sad, my lord.\n  Pedro. How then? sick?  \n  Claud. Neither, my lord.\n  Beat. The Count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well; but\n    civil count--civil as an orange, and something of that jealous\n    complexion.\n  Pedro. I\' faith, lady, I think your blazon to be true; though I\'ll\n    be sworn, if he be so, his conceit is false. Here, Claudio, I\n    have wooed in thy name, and fair Hero is won. I have broke with\n    her father, and his good will obtained. Name the day of marriage,\n    and God give thee joy!\n  Leon. Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes. His\n    Grace hath made the match, and all grace say Amen to it!\n  Beat. Speak, Count, \'tis your cue.\n  Claud. Silence is the perfectest herald of joy. I were but little\n    happy if I could say how much. Lady, as you are mine, I am yours.\n    I give away myself for you and dote upon the exchange.\n  Beat. Speak, cousin; or, if you cannot, stop his mouth with a kiss\n    and let not him speak neither.\n  Pedro. In faith, lady, you have a merry heart.\n  Beat. Yea, my lord; I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on the windy\n    side of care. My cousin tells him in his ear that he is in her  \n    heart.\n  Claud. And so she doth, cousin.\n  Beat. Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes every one to the world but\n    I, and I am sunburnt. I may sit in a corner and cry \'Heigh-ho for\n    a husband!\'\n  Pedro. Lady Beatrice, I will get you one.\n  Beat. I would rather have one of your father\'s getting. Hath your\n    Grace ne\'er a brother like you? Your father got excellent\n    husbands, if a maid could come by them.\n  Pedro. Will you have me, lady?\n  Beat. No, my lord, unless I might have another for working days:\n    your Grace is too costly to wear every day. But I beseech your\n    Grace pardon me. I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.\n  Pedro. Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes\n    you, for out o\' question you were born in a merry hour.\n  Beat. No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star\n    danc\'d, and under that was I born. Cousins, God give you joy!\n  Leon. Niece, will you look to those things I told you of?\n  Beat. I cry you mercy, uncle, By your Grace\'s pardon.    Exit.\n  Pedro. By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady.  \n  Leon. There\'s little of the melancholy element in her, my lord. She\n    is never sad but when she sleeps, and not ever sad then; for I\n    have heard my daughter say she hath often dreamt of unhappiness\n    and wak\'d herself with laughing.\n  Pedro. She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband.\n  Leon. O, by no means! She mocks all her wooers out of suit.\n  Pedro. She were an excellent wife for Benedick.\n  Leon. O Lord, my lord! if they were but a week married, they would\n    talk themselves mad.\n  Pedro. County Claudio, when mean you to go to church?\n  Claud. To-morrow, my lord. Time goes on crutches till love have all\n    his rites.\n  Leon. Not till Monday, my dear son, which is hence a just\n    sevennight; and a time too brief too, to have all things answer\n    my mind.\n  Pedro. Come, you shake the head at so long a breathing;\n    but I warrant thee, Claudio, the time shall not go dully by us.\n    I will in the interim undertake one of Hercules\' labours, which\n    is, to bring Signior Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a\n    mountain of affection th\' one with th\' other. I would fain have  \n    it a match, and I doubt not but to fashion it if you three will\n    but minister such assistance as I shall give you direction.\n  Leon. My lord, I am for you, though it cost me ten nights\'\n    watchings.\n  Claud. And I, my lord.\n  Pedro. And you too, gentle Hero?\n  Hero. I will do any modest office, my lord, to help my cousin to a\n    good husband.\n  Pedro. And Benedick is not the unhopefullest husband that I know.\n    Thus far can I praise him: he is of a noble strain, of approved\n    valour, and confirm\'d honesty. I will teach you how to humour\n    your cousin, that she shall fall in love with Benedick; and I,\n    [to Leonato and Claudio] with your two helps, will so practise on\n    Benedick that, in despite of his quick wit and his queasy\n    stomach, he shall fall in love with Beatrice. If we can do this,\n    Cupid is no longer an archer; his glory shall be ours, for we are\n    the only love-gods. Go in with me, and I will tell you my drift.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nA hall in Leonato\'s house.\n\nEnter [Don] John and Borachio.\n\n  John. It is so. The Count Claudio shall marry the daughter of\n    Leonato.\n  Bora. Yea, my lord; but I can cross it.\n  John. Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be med\'cinable to me.\n    I am sick in displeasure to him, and whatsoever comes athwart his\n    affection ranges evenly with mine. How canst thou cross this\n    marriage?\n  Bora. Not honestly, my lord, but so covertly that no dishonesty\n    shall appear in me.\n  John. Show me briefly how.\n  Bora. I think I told your lordship, a year since, how much I am in\n    the favour of Margaret, the waiting gentlewoman to Hero.\n  John. I remember.\n  Bora. I can, at any unseasonable instant of the night, appoint her\n    to look out at her lady\'s chamber window.\n  John. What life is in that to be the death of this marriage?\n  Bora. The poison of that lies in you to temper. Go you to the  \n    Prince your brother; spare not to tell him that he hath wronged\n    his honour in marrying the renowned Claudio (whose estimation do\n    you mightily hold up) to a contaminated stale, such a one as\n    Hero.\n  John. What proof shall I make of that?\n  Bora. Proof enough to misuse the Prince, to vex Claudio, to undo\n    Hero, and kill Leonato. Look you for any other issue?\n  John. Only to despite them I will endeavour anything.\n  Bora. Go then; find me a meet hour to draw Don Pedro and the Count\n    Claudio alone; tell them that you know that Hero loves me; intend\n    a kind of zeal both to the Prince and Claudio, as--in love of\n    your brother\'s honour, who hath made this match, and his friend\'s\n    reputation, who is thus like to be cozen\'d with the semblance of\n    a maid--that you have discover\'d thus. They will scarcely believe\n    this without trial. Offer them instances; which shall bear no\n    less likelihood than to see me at her chamber window, hear me\n    call Margaret Hero, hear Margaret term me Claudio; and bring them\n    to see this the very night before the intended wedding (for in\n    the meantime I will so fashion the matter that Hero shall be\n    absent) and there shall appear such seeming truth of Hero\'s  \n    disloyalty that jealousy shall be call\'d assurance and all the\n    preparation overthrown.\n  John. Grow this to what adverse issue it can, I will put it in\n    practice. Be cunning in the working this, and thy fee is a\n    thousand ducats.\n  Bora. Be you constant in the accusation, and my cunning shall not\n    shame me.\n  John. I will presently go learn their day of marriage.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nLeonato\'s orchard.\n\nEnter Benedick alone.\n\n  Bene. Boy!\n\n                    [Enter Boy.]\n\n  Boy. Signior?\n  Bene. In my chamber window lies a book. Bring it hither to me in\n    the orchard.\n  Boy. I am here already, sir.\n  Bene. I know that, but I would have thee hence and here again.\n    (Exit Boy.) I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much\n    another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviours to love,\n    will, after he hath laugh\'d at such shallow follies in others,\n    become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love; and such\n    a man is Claudio. I have known when there was no music with him\n    but the drum and the fife; and now had he rather hear the tabor\n    and the pipe. I have known when he would have walk\'d ten mile\n    afoot to see a good armour; and now will he lie ten nights awake  \n    carving the fashion of a new doublet. He was wont to speak plain\n    and to the purpose, like an honest man and a soldier; and now is\n    he turn\'d orthography; his words are a very fantastical banquet--\n    just so many strange dishes. May I be so converted and see with\n    these eyes? I cannot tell; I think not. I will not be sworn but\n    love may transform me to an oyster; but I\'ll take my oath on it,\n    till he have made an oyster of me he shall never make me such a\n    fool. One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am\n    well; another virtuous, yet I am well; but till all graces be in\n    one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace. Rich she shall\n    be, that\'s certain; wise, or I\'ll none; virtuous, or I\'ll never\n    cheapen her; fair, or I\'ll never look on her; mild, or come not\n    near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good discourse, an\n    excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what colour it\n    please God. Ha, the Prince and Monsieur Love! I will hide me in\n    the arbour.                                         [Hides.]\n\n              Enter Don Pedro, Leonato, Claudio.\n                      Music [within].\n  \n  Pedro. Come, shall we hear this music?\n  Claud. Yea, my good lord. How still the evening is,\n    As hush\'d on purpose to grace harmony!\n  Pedro. See you where Benedick hath hid himself?\n  Claud. O, very well, my lord. The music ended,\n    We\'ll fit the kid-fox with a pennyworth.\n\n                   Enter Balthasar with Music.\n\n  Pedro. Come, Balthasar, we\'ll hear that song again.\n  Balth. O, good my lord, tax not so bad a voice\n    To slander music any more than once.\n  Pedro. It is the witness still of excellency\n    To put a strange face on his own perfection.\n    I pray thee sing, and let me woo no more.\n  Balth. Because you talk of wooing, I will sing,\n    Since many a wooer doth commence his suit\n    To her he thinks not worthy, yet he wooes,\n    Yet will he swear he loves.\n  Pedro. Nay, pray thee come;  \n    Or if thou wilt hold longer argument,\n    Do it in notes.\n  Balth. Note this before my notes:\n    There\'s not a note of mine that\'s worth the noting.\n  Pedro. Why, these are very crotchets that he speaks!\n    Note notes, forsooth, and nothing!                  [Music.]\n  Bene. [aside] Now divine air! Now is his soul ravish\'d! Is it not\n    strange that sheep\'s guts should hale souls out of men\'s bodies?\n    Well, a horn for my money, when all\'s done.\n                                              [Balthasar sings.]\n                      The Song.\n\n        Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more!\n          Men were deceivers ever,\n        One foot in sea, and one on shore;\n          To one thing constant never.\n            Then sigh not so,\n            But let them go,\n          And be you blithe and bonny,\n        Converting all your sounds of woe  \n          Into Hey nonny, nonny.\n\n        Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,\n          Of dumps so dull and heavy!\n        The fraud of men was ever so,\n          Since summer first was leavy.\n            Then sigh not so, &c.\n\n  Pedro. By my troth, a good song.\n  Balth. And an ill singer, my lord.\n  Pedro. Ha, no, no, faith! Thou sing\'st well enough for a shift.\n  Bene. [aside] An he had been a dog that should have howl\'d thus,\n    they would have hang\'d him; and I pray God his bad voice bode no\n    mischief. I had as live have heard the night raven, come what\n    plague could have come after it.\n  Pedro. Yea, marry. Dost thou hear, Balthasar? I pray thee get us\n    some excellent music; for to-morrow night we would have it at the\n    Lady Hero\'s chamber window.\n  Balth. The best I can, my lord.\n  Pedro. Do so. Farewell.  \n                                Exit Balthasar [with Musicians].\n    Come hither, Leonato. What was it you told me of to-day? that\n    your niece Beatrice was in love with Signior Benedick?\n  Claud. O, ay!-[Aside to Pedro] Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits.\n    --I did never think that lady would have loved any man.\n  Leon. No, nor I neither; but most wonderful that she should so dote\n    on Signior Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviours\n    seem\'d ever to abhor.\n  Bene. [aside] Is\'t possible? Sits the wind in that corner?\n  Leon. By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think of it, but\n    that she loves him with an enraged affection. It is past the\n    infinite of thought.\n  Pedro. May be she doth but counterfeit.\n  Claud. Faith, like enough.\n  Leon. O God, counterfeit? There was never counterfeit of passion\n    came so near the life of passion as she discovers it.\n  Pedro. Why, what effects of passion shows she?\n  Claud. [aside] Bait the hook well! This fish will bite.\n  Leon. What effects, my lord? She will sit you--you heard my\n    daughter tell you how.  \n  Claud. She did indeed.\n  Pedro. How, how, I pray you? You amaze me. I would have thought her\n    spirit had been invincible against all assaults of affection.\n  Leon. I would have sworn it had, my lord--especially against\n    Benedick.\n  Bene. [aside] I should think this a gull but that the white-bearded\n    fellow speaks it. Knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such\n    reverence.\n  Claud. [aside] He hath ta\'en th\' infection. Hold it up.\n  Pedro. Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?\n  Leon. No, and swears she never will. That\'s her torment.\n  Claud. \'Tis true indeed. So your daughter says. \'Shall I,\' says\n    she, \'that have so oft encount\'red him with scorn, write to him\n    that I love him?\'"\n  Leon. This says she now when she is beginning to write to him; for\n    she\'ll be up twenty times a night, and there will she sit in her\n    smock till she have writ a sheet of paper. My daughter tells us\n    all.\n  Claud. Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty jest\n    your daughter told us of.  \n  Leon. O, when she had writ it, and was reading it over, she found\n    \'Benedick\' and \'Beatrice\' between the sheet?\n  Claud. That.\n  Leon. O, she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence, rail\'d at\n    herself that she should be so immodest to write to one that she\n    knew would flout her. \'I measure him,\' says she, \'by my own\n    spirit; for I should flout him if he writ to me. Yea, though I\n    love him, I should.\'\n  Claud. Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her\n    heart, tears her hair, prays, curses--\'O sweet Benedick! God give\n    me patience!\'\n  Leon. She doth indeed; my daughter says so. And the ecstasy hath so\n    much overborne her that my daughter is sometime afeard she will\n    do a desperate outrage to herself. It is very true.\n  Pedro. It were good that Benedick knew of it by some other, if she\n    will not discover it.\n  Claud. To what end? He would make but a sport of it and torment the\n    poor lady worse.\n  Pedro. An he should, it were an alms to hang him! She\'s an\n    excellent sweet lady, and (out of all suspicion) she is virtuous.  \n  Claud. And she is exceeding wise.\n  Pedro. In everything but in loving Benedick.\n  Leon. O, my lord, wisdom and blood combating in so tender a body,\n    we have ten proofs to one that blood hath the victory. I am sorry\n    for her, as I have just cause, being her uncle and her guardian.\n  Pedro. I would she had bestowed this dotage on me. I would have\n    daff\'d all other respects and made her half myself. I pray you\n    tell Benedick of it and hear what \'a will say.\n  Leon. Were it good, think you?\n  Claud. Hero thinks surely she will die; for she says she will die\n    if he love her not, and she will die ere she make her love known,\n    and she will die, if he woo her, rather than she will bate one\n    breath of her accustomed crossness.\n  Pedro. She doth well. If she should make tender of her love, \'tis\n    very possible he\'ll scorn it; for the man (as you know all) hath\n    a contemptible spirit.\n  Claud. He is a very proper man.\n  Pedro. He hath indeed a good outward happiness.\n  Claud. Before God! and in my mind, very wise.\n  Pedro. He doth indeed show some sparks that are like wit.  \n  Claud. And I take him to be valiant.\n  Pedro. As Hector, I assure you; and in the managing of quarrels you\n    may say he is wise, for either he avoids them with great\n    discretion, or undertakes them with a most Christianlike fear.\n  Leon. If he do fear God, \'a must necessarily keep peace. If he\n    break the peace, he ought to enter into a quarrel with fear and\n    trembling.\n  Pedro. And so will he do; for the man doth fear God, howsoever it\n    seems not in him by some large jests he will make. Well, I am\n    sorry for your niece. Shall we go seek Benedick and tell him of\n    her love?\n  Claud. Never tell him, my lord. Let her wear it out with good\n    counsel.\n  Leon. Nay, that\'s impossible; she may wear her heart out first.\n  Pedro. Well, we will hear further of it by your daughter. Let it\n    cool the while. I love Benedick well, and I could wish he would\n    modestly examine himself to see how much he is unworthy so good a\n    lady.\n  Leon. My lord, will you .walk? Dinner is ready.\n                                               [They walk away.]  \n  Claud. If he dote on her upon this, I will never trust my\n    expectation.\n  Pedro. Let there be the same net spread for her, and that must your\n    daughter and her gentlewomen carry. The sport will be, when they\n    hold one an opinion of another\'s dotage, and no such matter.\n    That\'s the scene that I would see, which will be merely a dumb\n    show. Let us send her to call him in to dinner.\n                       Exeunt [Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato].\n\n                [Benedick advances from the arbour.]\n\n  Bene. This can be no trick. The conference was sadly borne; they\n    have the truth of this from Hero; they seem to pity the lady.\n    It seems her affections have their full bent. Love me? Why, it\n    must be requited. I hear how I am censur\'d. They say I will bear\n    myself proudly if I perceive the love come from her. They say too\n    that she will rather die than give any sign of affection. I did\n    never think to marry. I must not seem proud. Happy are they that\n    hear their detractions and can put them to mending. They say the\n    lady is fair--\'tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous  \n    --\'tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me--by\n    my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of\n    her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her. I may chance\n    have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me because I\n    have railed so long against marriage. But doth not the appetite\n    alters? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure\n    in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of\n    the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No, the world\n    must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not\n    think I should live till I were married.\n\n                 Enter Beatrice.\n\n    Here comes Beatrice. By this day, she\'s a fair lady! I do spy\n    some marks of love in her.\n  Beat. Against my will I am sent to bid You come in to dinner.\n  Bene. Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.\n  Beat. I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to\n    thank me. If it had been painful, I would not have come.\n  Bene. You take pleasure then in the message?  \n  Beat. Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knives point, and\n    choke a daw withal. You have no stomach, signior. Fare you well.\nExit.\n  Bene. Ha! \'Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.\'\n    There\'s a double meaning in that. \'I took no more pains for those\n    thanks than you took pains to thank me.\' That\'s as much as to\n    say, \'Any pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks.\' If I\n    do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I\n    am a Jew. I will go get her picture.                   Exit.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. Scene I.\nLeonato\'s orchard.\n\nEnter Hero and two Gentlewomen, Margaret and Ursula.\n\n  Hero. Good Margaret, run thee to the parlour.\n    There shalt thou find my cousin Beatrice\n    Proposing with the Prince and Claudio.\n    Whisper her ear and tell her, I and Ursley\n    Walk in the orchard, and our whole discourse\n    Is all of her. Say that thou overheard\'st us;\n    And bid her steal into the pleached bower,\n    Where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun,\n    Forbid the sun to enter--like favourites,\n    Made proud by princes, that advance their pride\n    Against that power that bred it. There will she hide her\n    To listen our propose. This is thy office.\n    Bear thee well in it and leave us alone.\n  Marg. I\'ll make her come, I warrant you, presently.    [Exit.]\n  Hero. Now, Ursula, when Beatrice doth come,\n    As we do trace this alley up and down,\n    Our talk must only be of Benedick.  \n    When I do name him, let it be thy part\n    To praise him more than ever man did merit.\n    My talk to thee must be how Benedick\n    Is sick in love with Beatrice. Of this matter\n    Is little Cupid\'s crafty arrow made,\n    That only wounds by hearsay.\n\n                   [Enter Beatrice.]\n\n    Now begin;\n    For look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs\n    Close by the ground, to hear our conference.\n\n               [Beatrice hides in the arbour].\n\n  Urs. The pleasant\'st angling is to see the fish\n    Cut with her golden oars the silver stream\n    And greedily devour the treacherous bait.\n    So angle we for Beatrice, who even now\n    Is couched in the woodbine coverture.  \n    Fear you not my part of the dialogue.\n  Hero. Then go we near her, that her ear lose nothing\n    Of the false sweet bait that we lay for it.\n                                     [They approach the arbour.]\n    No, truly, Ursula, she is too disdainful.\n    I know her spirits are as coy and wild\n    As haggards of the rock.\n  Urs. But are you sure\n    That Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?\n  Hero. So says the Prince, and my new-trothed lord.\n  Urs. And did they bid you tell her of it, madam?\n  Hero. They did entreat me to acquaint her of it;\n    But I persuaded them, if they lov\'d Benedick,\n    To wish him wrestle with affection\n    And never to let Beatrice know of it.\n  Urs. Why did you so? Doth not the gentleman\n    Deserve as full, as fortunate a bed\n    As ever Beatrice shall couch upon?\n  Hero. O god of love! I know he doth deserve\n    As much as may be yielded to a man:  \n    But Nature never fram\'d a woman\'s heart\n    Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice.\n    Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,\n    Misprizing what they look on; and her wit\n    Values itself so highly that to her\n    All matter else seems weak. She cannot love,\n    Nor take no shape nor project of affection,\n    She is so self-endeared.\n  Urs. Sure I think so;\n    And therefore certainly it were not good\n    She knew his love, lest she\'ll make sport at it.\n  Hero. Why, you speak truth. I never yet saw man,\n    How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur\'d,\n    But she would spell him backward. If fair-fac\'d,\n    She would swear the gentleman should be her sister;\n    If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antic,\n    Made a foul blot; if tall, a lance ill-headed;\n    If low, an agate very vilely cut;\n    If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds;\n    If silent, why, a block moved with none.  \n    So turns she every man the wrong side out\n    And never gives to truth and virtue that\n    Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.\n  Urs. Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable.\n  Hero. No, not to be so odd, and from all fashions,\n    As Beatrice is, cannot be commendable.\n    But who dare tell her so? If I should speak,\n    She would mock me into air; O, she would laugh me\n    Out of myself, press me to death with wit!\n    Therefore let Benedick, like cover\'d fire,\n    Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly.\n    It were a better death than die with mocks,\n    Which is as bad as die with tickling.\n  Urs. Yet tell her of it. Hear what she will say.\n  Hero. No; rather I will go to Benedick\n    And counsel him to fight against his passion.\n    And truly, I\'ll devise some honest slanders\n    To stain my cousin with. One doth not know\n    How much an ill word may empoison liking.\n  Urs. O, do not do your cousin such a wrong!  \n    She cannot be so much without true judgment\n    (Having so swift and excellent a wit\n    As she is priz\'d to have) as to refuse\n    So rare a gentleman as Signior Benedick.\n  Hero. He is the only man of Italy,\n    Always excepted my dear Claudio.\n  Urs. I pray you be not angry with me, madam,\n    Speaking my fancy: Signior Benedick,\n    For shape, for bearing, argument, and valour,\n    Goes foremost in report through Italy.\n  Hero. Indeed he hath an excellent good name.\n  Urs. His excellence did earn it ere he had it.\n    When are you married, madam?\n  Hero. Why, every day to-morrow! Come, go in.\n    I\'ll show thee some attires, and have thy counsel\n    Which is the best to furnish me to-morrow.\n                                               [They walk away.]\n  Urs. She\'s lim\'d, I warrant you! We have caught her, madam.\n  Hero. If it prove so, then loving goes by haps;\n    Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.  \n                                       Exeunt [Hero and Ursula].\n\n    [Beatrice advances from the arbour.]\n\n  Beat. What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?\n    Stand I condemn\'d for pride and scorn so much?\n    Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu!\n    No glory lives behind the back of such.\n    And, Benedick, love on; I will requite thee,\n    Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand.\n    If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee\n    To bind our loves up in a holy band;\n    For others say thou dost deserve, and I\n    Believe it better than reportingly.                    Exit.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nA room in Leonato\'s house.\n\nEnter Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, and Leonato.\n\n  Pedro. I do but stay till your marriage be consummate, and then go\n    I toward Arragon.\n  Claud. I\'ll bring you thither, my lord, if you\'ll vouchsafe me.\n  Pedro. Nay, that would be as great a soil in the new gloss of your\n    marriage as to show a child his new coat and forbid him to wear\n    it. I will only be bold with Benedick for his company; for, from\n    the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he is all mirth.\n    He hath twice or thrice cut Cupid\'s bowstring, and the little\n    hangman dare not shoot at him. He hath a heart as sound as a\n    bell; and his tongue is the clapper, for what his heart thinks,\n    his tongue speaks.\n  Bene. Gallants, I am not as I have been.\n  Leon. So say I. Methinks you are sadder.\n  Claud. I hope he be in love.\n  Pedro. Hang him, truant! There\'s no true drop of blood in him to be\n    truly touch\'d with love. If he be sad, he wants money.\n  Bene. I have the toothache.  \n  Pedro. Draw it.\n  Bene. Hang it!\n  Claud. You must hang it first and draw it afterwards.\n  Pedro. What? sigh for the toothache?\n  Leon. Where is but a humour or a worm.\n  Bene. Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.\n  Claud. Yet say I he is in love.\n  Pedro. There is no appearance of fancy in him, unless it be a fancy\n    that he hath to strange disguises; as to be a Dutchman to-day, a\n    Frenchman to-morrow; or in the shape of two countries at once, as\n    a German from the waist downward, all slops, and a Spaniard from\n    the hip upward, no doublet. Unless he have a fancy to this\n    foolery, as it appears he hath, he is no fool for fancy, as you\n    would have it appear he is.\n  Claud. If he be not in love with some woman, there is no believing\n    old signs. \'A brushes his hat o\' mornings. What should that bode?\n  Pedro. Hath any man seen him at the barber\'s?\n  Claud. No, but the barber\'s man hath been seen with him, and the\n     old ornament of his cheek hath already stuff\'d tennis balls.\n  Leon. Indeed he looks younger than he did, by the loss of a beard.  \n  Pedro. Nay, \'a rubs himself with civet. Can you smell him out by\n    that?\n  Claud. That\'s as much as to say, the sweet youth\'s in love.\n  Pedro. The greatest note of it is his melancholy.\n  Claud. And when was he wont to wash his face?\n  Pedro. Yea, or to paint himself? for the which I hear what they say\n    of him.\n  Claud. Nay, but his jesting spirit, which is new-crept into a\n    lutestring, and now govern\'d by stops.\n  Pedro. Indeed that tells a heavy tale for him. Conclude, conclude,\n    he is in love.\n  Claud. Nay, but I know who loves him.\n  Pedro. That would I know too. I warrant, one that knows him not.\n  Claud. Yes, and his ill conditions; and in despite of all, dies for\n    him.\n  Pedro. She shall be buried with her face upwards.\n  Bene. Yet is this no charm for the toothache. Old signior, walk\n    aside with me. I have studied eight or nine wise words to speak\n    to you, which these hobby-horses must not hear.\n                                  [Exeunt Benedick and Leonato.]  \n  Pedro. For my life, to break with him about Beatrice!\n  Claud. \'Tis even so. Hero and Margaret have by this played their\n    parts with Beatrice, and then the two bears will not bite one\n    another when they meet.\n\n                 Enter John the Bastard.\n\n  John. My lord and brother, God save you.\n  Pedro. Good den, brother.\n  John. If your leisure serv\'d, I would speak with you.\n  Pedro. In private?\n  John. If it please you. Yet Count Claudio may hear, for what I\n    would speak of concerns him.\n  Pedro. What\'s the matter?\n  John. [to Claudio] Means your lordship to be married tomorrow?\n  Pedro. You know he does.\n  John. I know not that, when he knows what I know.\n  Claud. If there be any impediment, I pray you discover it.\n  John. You may think I love you not. Let that appear hereafter, and\n    aim better at me by that I now will manifest. For my brother, I  \n    think he holds you well and in dearness of heart hath holp to\n    effect your ensuing marriage--surely suit ill spent and labour\n    ill bestowed!\n  Pedro. Why, what\'s the matter?\n  John. I came hither to tell you, and, circumstances short\'ned (for\n    she has been too long a-talking of), the lady is disloyal.\n  Claud. Who? Hero?\n  John. Even she--Leonato\'s Hero, your Hero, every man\'s Hero.\n  Claud. Disloyal?\n  John. The word is too good to paint out her wickedness. I could say\n    she were worse; think you of a worse title, and I will fit her to\n    it. Wonder not till further warrant. Go but with me to-night, you\n    shall see her chamber window ent\'red, even the night before her\n    wedding day. If you love her then, to-morrow wed her. But it\n    would better fit your honour to change your mind.\n  Claud. May this be so?\n  Pedro. I will not think it.\n  John. If you dare not trust that you see, confess not that you\n    know. If you will follow me, I will show you enough; and when you\n    have seen more and heard more, proceed accordingly.  \n  Claud. If I see anything to-night why I should not marry her\n    to-morrow, in the congregation where I should wed, there will I\n    shame her.\n  Pedro. And, as I wooed for thee to obtain her, I will join with\n    thee to disgrace her.\n  John. I will disparage her no farther till you are my witnesses.\n    Bear it coldly but till midnight, and let the issue show itself.\n  Pedro. O day untowardly turned!\n  Claud. O mischief strangely thwarting!\n  John. O plague right well prevented!\n    So will you say when you have seen the Sequel.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nA street.\n\nEnter Dogberry and his compartner [Verges], with the Watch.\n\n  Dog. Are you good men and true?\n  Verg. Yea, or else it were pity but they should suffer salvation,\n    body and soul.\n  Dog. Nay, that were a punishment too good for them if they should\n    have any allegiance in them, being chosen for the Prince\'s watch.\n  Verg. Well, give them their charge, neighbour Dogberry.\n  Dog. First, who think you the most desartless man to be constable?\n  1. Watch. Hugh Oatcake, sir, or George Seacoal; for they can write\n    and read.\n  Dog. Come hither, neighbour Seacoal. God hath bless\'d you with a\n    good name. To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune, but\n    to write and read comes by nature.\n  2. Watch. Both which, Master Constable--\n  Dog. You have. I knew it would be your answer. Well, for your\n    favour, sir, why, give God thanks and make no boast of it; and\n    for your writing and reading, let that appear when there is no\n    need of such vanity. You are thought here to be the most  \n    senseless and fit man for the constable of the watch. Therefore\n    bear you the lanthorn. This is your charge: you shall comprehend\n    all vagrom men; you are to bid any man stand, in the Prince\'s\n    name.\n  2. Watch. How if \'a will not stand?\n  Dog. Why then, take no note of him, but let him go, and presently\n    call the rest of the watch together and thank God you are rid of\n    a knave.\n  Verg. If he will not stand when he is bidden, he is none of the\n    Prince\'s subjects.\n  Dog. True, and they are to meddle with none but the Prince\'s\n    subjects. You shall also make no noise in the streets; for for\n    the watch to babble and to talk is most tolerable, and not to be\n    endured.\n  2. Watch. We will rather sleep than talk. We know what belongs to\n    a watch.\n  Dog. Why, you speak like an ancient and most quiet watchman, for I\n    cannot see how sleeping should offend. Only have a care that your\n    bills be not stol\'n. Well, you are to call at all the alehouses\n    and bid those that are drunk get them to bed.  \n  2. Watch. How if they will not?\n  Dog. Why then, let them alone till they are sober. If they make you\n    not then the better answer, You may say they are not the men you\n    took them for.\n  2. Watch. Well, sir.\n  Dog. If you meet a thief, you may suspect him, by virtue of your\n    office, to be no true man; and for such kind of men, the less you\n    meddle or make with them, why, the more your honesty.\n  2. Watch. If we know him to be a thief, shall we not lay hands on\n    him?\n  Dog. Truly, by your office you may; but I think they that touch\n    pitch will be defil\'d. The most peaceable way for you, if you do\n    take a thief, is to let him show himself what he is, and steal\n    out of your company.\n  Verg. You have been always called a merciful man, partner.\n  Dog. Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who\n    hath any honesty in him.\n  Verg. If you hear a child cry in the night, you must call to the\n    nurse and bid her still it.\n  2. Watch. How if the nurse be asleep and will not hear us?  \n  Dog. Why then, depart in peace and let the child wake her with\n    crying; for the ewe that will not hear her lamb when it baes will\n    never answer a calf when he bleats.\n  Verg. \'Tis very true.\n  Dog. This is the end of the charge: you, constable, are to present\n    the Prince\'s own person. If you meet the Prince in the night,\n    you may stay him.\n  Verg. Nay, by\'r lady, that I think \'a cannot.\n  Dog. Five shillings to one on\'t with any man that knows the\n    statutes, he may stay him! Marry, not without the Prince be\n    willing; for indeed the watch ought to offend no man, and it is\n    an offence to stay a man against his will.\n  Verg. By\'r lady, I think it be so.\n  Dog. Ha, ah, ha! Well, masters, good night. An there be any matter\n    of weight chances, call up me. Keep your fellows\' counsels and\n    your own, and good night. Come, neighbour.\n  2. Watch. Well, masters, we hear our charge. Let us go sit here\n    upon the church bench till two, and then all to bed.\n  Dog. One word more, honest neighbours. I pray you watch about\n    Signior Leonato\'s door; for the wedding being there tomorrow,  \n    there is a great coil to-night. Adieu. Be vigitant, I beseech\n    you.                           Exeunt [Dogberry and Verges].\n\n                     Enter Borachio and Conrade.\n\n  Bora. What, Conrade!\n  2. Watch. [aside] Peace! stir not!\n  Bora. Conrade, I say!\n  Con. Here, man. I am at thy elbow.\n  Bora. Mass, and my elbow itch\'d! I thought there would a scab\n    follow.\n  Con. I will owe thee an answer for that; and now forward with thy\n    tale.\n  Bora. Stand thee close then under this penthouse, for it drizzles\n    rain, and I will, like a true drunkard, utter all to thee.\n  2. Watch. [aside] Some treason, masters. Yet stand close.\n  Bora. Therefore know I have earned of Don John a thousand ducats.\n  Con. Is it possible that any villany should be so dear?\n  Bora. Thou shouldst rather ask if it were possible any villany\n    should be so rich; for when rich villains have need of poor ones,  \n    poor ones may make what price they will.\n  Con. I wonder at it.\n  Bora. That shows thou art unconfirm\'d. Thou knowest that the\n    fashion of a doublet, or a hat, or a cloak, is nothing to a man.\n  Con. Yes, it is apparel.\n  Bora. I mean the fashion.\n  Con. Yes, the fashion is the fashion.\n  Bora. Tush! I may as well say the fool\'s the fool. But seest thou\n    not what a deformed thief this fashion is?\n  2. Watch. [aside] I know that Deformed. \'A bas been a vile thief\n    this seven year; \'a goes up and down like a gentleman. I remember\n    his name.\n  Bora. Didst thou not hear somebody?\n  Con. No; \'twas the vane on the house.\n  Bora. Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this fashion is?\n    how giddily \'a turns about all the hot-bloods between fourteen\n    and five-and-thirty? sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoh\'s\n    soldiers in the reechy painting, sometime like god Bel\'s priests\n    in the old church window, sometime like the shaven Hercules in\n    the smirch\'d worm-eaten tapestry, where his codpiece seems as  \n    massy as his club?\n  Con. All this I see; and I see that the fashion wears out more\n    apparel than the man. But art not thou thyself giddy with the\n    fashion too, that thou hast shifted out of thy tale into telling\n    me of the fashion?\n  Bora. Not so neither. But know that I have to-night wooed Margaret,\n    the Lady Hero\'s gentlewoman, by the name of Hero. She leans me\n    out at her mistress\' chamber window, bids me a thousand times\n    good night--I tell this tale vilely; I should first tell thee how\n    the Prince, Claudio and my master, planted and placed and\n    possessed by my master Don John, saw afar off in the orchard this\n    amiable encounter.\n  Con. And thought they Margaret was Hero?\n  Bora. Two of them did, the Prince and Claudio; but the devil my\n    master knew she was Margaret; and partly by his oaths, which\n    first possess\'d them, partly by the dark night, which did deceive\n    them, but chiefly by my villany, which did confirm any slander\n    that Don John had made, away went Claudio enrag\'d; swore he would\n    meet her, as he was appointed, next morning at the temple, and\n    there, before the whole congregation, shame her with what he saw  \n    o\'ernight and send her home again without a husband.\n  2. Watch. We charge you in the Prince\'s name stand!\n  1. Watch. Call up the right Master Constable. We have here\n    recover\'d the most dangerous piece of lechery that ever was known\n    in the commonwealth.\n  2. Watch. And one Deformed is one of them. I know him; \'a wears a\n    lock.\n  Con. Masters, masters--\n  1. Watch. You\'ll be made bring Deformed forth, I warrant you.\n  Con. Masters--\n  2. Watch. Never speak, we charge you. Let us obey you to go with\n    us.\n  Bora. We are like to prove a goodly commodity, being taken up of\n    these men\'s bills.\n  Con. A commodity in question, I warrant you. Come, we\'ll obey you.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nA Room in Leonato\'s house.\n\nEnter Hero, and Margaret and Ursula.\n\n  Hero. Good Ursula, wake my cousin Beatrice and desire her to rise.\n  Urs. I will, lady.\n  Hero. And bid her come hither.\n  Urs. Well.                                             [Exit.]\n  Marg. Troth, I think your other rebato were better.\n  Hero. No, pray thee, good Meg, I\'ll wear this.\n  Marg. By my troth, \'s not so good, and I warrant your cousin will\n    say so.\n  Hero. My cousin\'s a fool, and thou art another. I\'ll wear none but\n    this.\n  Marg. I like the new tire within excellently, if the hair were a\n    thought browner; and your gown\'s a most rare fashion, i\' faith.\n    I saw the Duchess of Milan\'s gown that they praise so.\n  Hero. O, that exceeds, they say.\n  Marg. By my troth, \'s but a nightgown in respect of yours--\n    cloth-o\'-gold and cuts, and lac\'d with silver, set with pearls\n    down sleeves, side-sleeves, and skirts, round underborne with  \n    a blush tinsel. But for a fine, quaint, graceful, and excellent\n    fashion, yours is worth ten on\'t.\n  Hero. God give me joy to wear it! for my heart is exceeding heavy.\n  Marg. \'Twill be heavier soon by the weight of a man.\n  Hero. Fie upon thee! art not ashamed?\n  Marg. Of what, lady? of speaking honourably? Is not marriage\n    honourable in a beggar? Is not your lord honourable without\n    marriage? I think you would have me say, \'saving your reverence,\n    a husband.\' An bad thinking do not wrest true speaking, I\'ll\n    offend nobody. Is there any harm in \'the heavier for a husband\'?\n    None, I think, an it be the right husband and the right wife.\n    Otherwise \'tis light, and not heavy. Ask my Lady Beatrice else.\n    Here she comes.\n\n                               Enter Beatrice.\n\n  Hero. Good morrow, coz.\n  Beat. Good morrow, sweet Hero.\n  Hero. Why, how now? Do you speak in the sick tune?\n  Beat. I am out of all other tune, methinks.  \n  Marg. Clap\'s into \'Light o\' love.\' That goes without a burden. Do\n    you sing it, and I\'ll dance it.\n  Beat. Yea, \'Light o\' love\' with your heels! then, if your husband\n    have stables enough, you\'ll see he shall lack no barnes.\n  Marg. O illegitimate construction! I scorn that with my heels.\n  Beat. \'Tis almost five o\'clock, cousin; \'tis time you were ready.\n    By my troth, I am exceeding ill. Hey-ho!\n  Marg. For a hawk, a horse, or a husband?\n  Beat. For the letter that begins them all, H.\n  Marg. Well, an you be not turn\'d Turk, there\'s no more sailing by\n    the star.\n  Beat. What means the fool, trow?\n  Marg. Nothing I; but God send every one their heart\'s desire!\n  Hero. These gloves the Count sent me, they are an excellent\n    perfume.\n  Beat. I am stuff\'d, cousin; I cannot smell.\n  Marg. A maid, and stuff\'d! There\'s goodly catching of cold.\n  Beat. O, God help me! God help me! How long have you profess\'d\n    apprehension?\n  Marg. Ever since you left it. Doth not my wit become me rarely?  \n  Beat. It is not seen enough. You should wear it in your cap. By my\n    troth, I am sick.\n  Marg. Get you some of this distill\'d carduus benedictus and lay it\n    to your heart. It is the only thing for a qualm.\n  Hero. There thou prick\'st her with a thistle.\n  Beat. Benedictus? why benedictus? You have some moral in this\n    \'benedictus.\'\n  Marg. Moral? No, by my troth, I have no moral meaning; I meant\n    plain holy thistle. You may think perchance that I think you are\n    in love. Nay, by\'r lady, I am not such a fool to think what I\n    list; nor I list not to think what I can; nor indeed I cannot\n    think, if I would think my heart out of thinking, that you are in\n    love, or that you will be in love, or that you can be in love.\n    Yet Benedick was such another, and now is he become a man. He\n    swore he would never marry; and yet now in despite of his heart\n    he eats his meat without grudging; and how you may be converted I\n    know not, but methinks you look with your eyes as other women do.\n  Beat. What pace is this that thy tongue keeps?\n  Marg. Not a false gallop.\n  \n                         Enter Ursula.\n\n  Urs. Madam, withdraw. The Prince, the Count, Signior Benedick, Don\n    John, and all the gallants of the town are come to fetch you to\n    church.\n  Hero. Help to dress me, good coz, good Meg, good Ursula.\n                                                       [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\nScene V.\nThe hall in Leonato\'s house.\n\nEnter Leonato and the Constable [Dogberry] and the Headborough [verges].\n\n  Leon. What would you with me, honest neighbour?\n  Dog. Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with you that decerns\n    you nearly.\n  Leon. Brief, I pray you; for you see it is a busy time with me.\n  Dog. Marry, this it is, sir.\n  Verg. Yes, in truth it is, sir.\n  Leon. What is it, my good friends?\n  Dog. Goodman Verges, sir, speaks a little off the matter--an old\n    man, sir, and his wits are not so blunt as, God help, I would\n    desire they were; but, in faith, honest as the skin between his\n    brows.\n  Verg. Yes, I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is an\n    old man and no honester than I.\n  Dog. Comparisons are odorous. Palabras, neighbour Verges.\n  Leon. Neighbours, you are tedious.\n  Dog. It pleases your worship to say so, but we are the poor Duke\'s  \n    officers; but truly, for mine own part, if I were as tedious as a\n    king, I could find in my heart to bestow it all of your worship.\n  Leon. All thy tediousness on me, ah?\n  Dog. Yea, in \'twere a thousand pound more than \'tis; for I hear as\n    good exclamation on your worship as of any man in the city; and\n    though I be but a poor man, I am glad to hear it.\n  Verg. And so am I.\n  Leon. I would fain know what you have to say.\n  Verg. Marry, sir, our watch to-night, excepting your worship\'s\n    presence, ha\' ta\'en a couple of as arrant knaves as any in\n    Messina.\n  Dog. A good old man, sir; he will be talking. As they say, \'When\n    the age is in, the wit is out.\' God help us! it is a world to\n    see! Well said, i\' faith, neighbour Verges. Well, God\'s a good\n    man. An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind. An honest\n    soul, i\' faith, sir, by my troth he is, as ever broke bread; but\n    God is to be worshipp\'d; all men are not alike, alas, good\n    neighbour!\n  Leon. Indeed, neighbour, he comes too short of you.\n  Dog. Gifts that God gives.  \n  Leon. I must leave you.\n  Dog. One word, sir. Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two\n    aspicious persons, and we would have them this morning examined\n    before your worship.\n  Leon. Take their examination yourself and bring it me. I am now in\n    great haste, as it may appear unto you.\n  Dog. It shall be suffigance.\n  Leon. Drink some wine ere you go. Fare you well.\n\n                       [Enter a Messenger.]\n\n  Mess. My lord, they stay for you to give your daughter to her\n    husband.\n  Leon. I\'ll wait upon them. I am ready.\n                                 [Exeunt Leonato and Messenger.]\n  Dog. Go, good partner, go get you to Francis Seacoal; bid him bring\n    his pen and inkhorn to the jail. We are now to examination these\n    men.\n  Verg. And we must do it wisely.\n  Dog. We will spare for no wit, I warrant you. Here\'s that shall  \n    drive some of them to a non-come. Only get the learned writer to\n    set down our excommunication, and meet me at the jail.\n                                                       [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. Scene I.\nA church.\n\nEnter Don Pedro, [John the] Bastard, Leonato, Friar [Francis], Claudio,\nBenedick, Hero, Beatrice, [and Attendants].\n\n  Leon. Come, Friar Francis, be brief. Only to the plain form of\n    marriage, and you shall recount their particular duties\n    afterwards.\n  Friar. You come hither, my lord, to marry this lady?\n  Claud. No.\n  Leon. To be married to her. Friar, you come to marry her.\n  Friar. Lady, you come hither to be married to this count?\n  Hero. I do.\n  Friar. If either of you know any inward impediment why you should\n    not be conjoined, I charge you on your souls to utter it.\n  Claud. Know you any, Hero?\n  Hero. None, my lord.\n  Friar. Know you any, Count?\n  Leon. I dare make his answer--none.\n  Claud. O, what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not\n    knowing what they do!  \n  Bene. How now? interjections? Why then, some be of laughing, as,\n    ah, ha, he!\n  Claud. Stand thee by, friar. Father, by your leave:\n    Will you with free and unconstrained soul\n    Give me this maid your daughter?\n  Leon. As freely, son, as God did give her me.\n  Claud. And what have I to give you back whose worth\n    May counterpoise this rich and precious gift?\n  Pedro. Nothing, unless you render her again.\n  Claud. Sweet Prince, you learn me noble thankfulness.\n    There, Leonato, take her back again.\n    Give not this rotten orange to your friend.\n    She\'s but the sign and semblance of her honour.\n    Behold how like a maid she blushes here!\n    O, what authority and show of truth\n    Can cunning sin cover itself withal!\n    Comes not that blood as modest evidence\n    To witness simple virtue, Would you not swear,\n    All you that see her, that she were a maid\n    By these exterior shows? But she is none:  \n    She knows the heat of a luxurious bed;\n    Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.\n  Leon. What do you mean, my lord?\n  Claud. Not to be married,\n    Not to knit my soul to an approved wanton.\n  Leon. Dear my lord, if you, in your own proof,\n    Have vanquish\'d the resistance of her youth\n    And made defeat of her virginity--\n  Claud. I know what you would say. If I have known her,\n    You will say she did embrace me as a husband,\n    And so extenuate the forehand sin.\n    No, Leonato,\n    I never tempted her with word too large,\n    But, as a brother to his sister, show\'d\n    Bashful sincerity and comely love.\n  Hero. And seem\'d I ever otherwise to you?\n  Claud. Out on the seeming! I will write against it.\n    You seem to me as Dian in her orb,\n    As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown;\n    But you are more intemperate in your blood  \n    Than Venus, or those pamp\'red animals\n    That rage in savage sensuality.\n  Hero. Is my lord well that he doth speak so wide?\n  Leon. Sweet Prince, why speak not you?\n  Pedro. What should I speak?\n    I stand dishonour\'d that have gone about\n    To link my dear friend to a common stale.\n  Leon. Are these things spoken, or do I but dream?\n  John. Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true.\n  Bene. This looks not like a nuptial.\n  Hero. \'True!\' O God!\n  Claud. Leonato, stand I here?\n    Is this the Prince, Is this the Prince\'s brother?\n    Is this face Hero\'s? Are our eyes our own?\n  Leon. All this is so; but what of this, my lord?\n  Claud. Let me but move one question to your daughter,\n    And by that fatherly and kindly power\n    That you have in her, bid her answer truly.\n  Leon. I charge thee do so, as thou art my child.\n  Hero. O, God defend me! How am I beset!  \n    What kind of catechising call you this?\n  Claud. To make you answer truly to your name.\n  Hero. Is it not Hero? Who can blot that name\n    With any just reproach?\n  Claud. Marry, that can Hero!\n    Hero itself can blot out Hero\'s virtue.\n    What man was he talk\'d with you yesternight,\n    Out at your window betwixt twelve and one?\n    Now, if you are a maid, answer to this.\n  Hero. I talk\'d with no man at that hour, my lord.\n  Pedro. Why, then are you no maiden. Leonato,\n    I am sorry you must hear. Upon my honour,\n    Myself, my brother, and this grieved Count\n    Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night\n    Talk with a ruffian at her chamber window,\n    Who hath indeed, most like a liberal villain,\n    Confess\'d the vile encounters they have had\n    A thousand times in secret.\n  John. Fie, fie! they are not to be nam\'d, my lord--\n    Not to be spoke of;  \n    There is not chastity, enough in language\n    Without offence to utter them. Thus, pretty lady,\n    I am sorry for thy much misgovernment.\n  Claud. O Hero! what a Hero hadst thou been\n    If half thy outward graces had been plac\'d\n    About thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart!\n    But fare thee well, most foul, most fair! Farewell,\n    Thou pure impiety and impious purity!\n    For thee I\'ll lock up all the gates of love,\n    And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang,\n    To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm,\n    And never shall it more be gracious.\n  Leon. Hath no man\'s dagger here a point for me?\n                                                  [Hero swoons.]\n  Beat. Why, how now, cousin? Wherefore sink you down?\n  John. Come let us go. These things, come thus to light,\n    Smother her spirits up.\n                      [Exeunt Don Pedro, Don Juan, and Claudio.]\n  Bene. How doth the lady?\n  Beat. Dead, I think. Help, uncle!  \n    Hero! why, Hero! Uncle! Signior Benedick! Friar!\n  Leon. O Fate, take not away thy heavy hand!\n    Death is the fairest cover for her shame\n    That may be wish\'d for.\n  Beat. How now, cousin Hero?\n  Friar. Have comfort, lady.\n  Leon. Dost thou look up?\n  Friar. Yea, wherefore should she not?\n  Leon. Wherefore? Why, doth not every earthly thing\n    Cry shame upon her? Could she here deny\n    The story that is printed in her blood?\n    Do not live, Hero; do not ope thine eyes;\n    For, did I think thou wouldst not quickly die,\n    Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames,\n    Myself would on the rearward of reproaches\n    Strike at thy life. Griev\'d I, I had but one?\n    Child I for that at frugal nature\'s frame?\n    O, one too much by thee! Why had I one?\n    Why ever wast thou lovely in my eyes?\n    Why had I not with charitable hand  \n    Took up a beggar\'s issue at my gates,\n    Who smirched thus and mir\'d with infamy,\n    I might have said, \'No part of it is mine;\n    This shame derives itself from unknown loins\'?\n    But mine, and mine I lov\'d, and mine I prais\'d,\n    And mine that I was proud on--mine so much\n    That I myself was to myself not mine,\n    Valuing of her--why, she, O, she is fall\'n\n    Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea\n    Hath drops too few to wash her clean again,\n    And salt too little which may season give\n    To her foul tainted flesh!\n  Bene. Sir, sir, be patient.\n    For my part, I am so attir\'d in wonder,\n    I know not what to say.\n  Beat. O, on my soul, my cousin is belied!\n  Bene. Lady, were you her bedfellow last night?\n  Beat. No, truly, not; although, until last night,\n    I have this twelvemonth been her bedfellow\n  Leon. Confirm\'d, confirm\'d! O, that is stronger made  \n    Which was before barr\'d up with ribs of iron!\n    Would the two princes lie? and Claudio lie,\n    Who lov\'d her so that, speaking of her foulness,\n    Wash\'d it with tears? Hence from her! let her die.\n  Friar. Hear me a little;\n    For I have only been silent so long,\n    And given way unto this course of fortune,\n    By noting of the lady. I have mark\'d\n    A thousand blushing apparitions\n    To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames\n    In angel whiteness beat away those blushes,\n    And in her eye there hath appear\'d a fire\n    To burn the errors that these princes hold\n    Against her maiden truth. Call me a fool;\n    Trust not my reading nor my observation,\n    Which with experimental seal doth warrant\n    The tenure of my book; trust not my age,\n    My reverence, calling, nor divinity,\n    If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here\n    Under some biting error.  \n  Leon. Friar, it cannot be.\n    Thou seest that all the grace that she hath left\n    Is that she will not add to her damnation\n    A sin of perjury: she not denies it.\n    Why seek\'st thou then to cover with excuse\n    That which appears in proper nakedness?\n  Friar. Lady, what man is he you are accus\'d of?\n  Hero. They know that do accuse me; I know none.\n    If I know more of any man alive\n    Than that which maiden modesty doth warrant,\n    Let all my sins lack mercy! O my father,\n    Prove you that any man with me convers\'d\n    At hours unmeet, or that I yesternight\n    Maintain\'d the change of words with any creature,\n    Refuse me, hate me, torture me to death!\n  Friar. There is some strange misprision in the princes.\n  Bene. Two of them have the very bent of honour;\n    And if their wisdoms be misled in this,\n    The practice of it lives in John the bastard,\n    Whose spirits toil in frame of villanies.  \n  Leon. I know not. If they speak but truth of her,\n    These hands shall tear her. If they wrong her honour,\n    The proudest of them shall well hear of it.\n    Time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine,\n    Nor age so eat up my invention,\n    Nor fortune made such havoc of my means,\n    Nor my bad life reft me so much of friends,\n    But they shall find awak\'d in such a kind\n    Both strength of limb and policy of mind,\n    Ability in means, and choice of friends,\n    To quit me of them throughly.\n  Friar. Pause awhile\n    And let my counsel sway you in this case.\n    Your daughter here the princes left for dead,\n    Let her awhile be secretly kept in,\n    And publish it that she is dead indeed;\n    Maintain a mourning ostentation,\n    And on your family\'s old monument\n    Hang mournful epitaphs, and do all rites\n    That appertain unto a burial.  \n  Leon. What shall become of this? What will this do?\n  Friar. Marry, this well carried shall on her behalf\n    Change slander to remorse. That is some good.\n    But not for that dream I on this strange course,\n    But on this travail look for greater birth.\n    She dying, as it must be so maintain\'d,\n    Upon the instant that she was accus\'d,\n    Shall be lamented, pitied, and excus\'d\n    Of every hearer; for it so falls out\n    That what we have we prize not to the worth\n    Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack\'d and lost,\n    Why, then we rack the value, then we find\n    The virtue that possession would not show us\n    Whiles it was ours. So will it fare with Claudio.\n    When he shall hear she died upon his words,\n    Th\' idea of her life shall sweetly creep\n    Into his study of imagination,\n    And every lovely organ of her life\n    Shall come apparell\'d in more precious habit,\n    More moving, delicate, and full of life,  \n    Into the eye and prospect of his soul\n    Than when she liv\'d indeed. Then shall he mourn\n    (If ever love had interest in his liver)\n    And wish he had not so accused her--\n    No, though be thought his accusation true.\n    Let this be so, and doubt not but success\n    Will fashion the event in better shape\n    Than I can lay it down in likelihood.\n    But if all aim but this be levell\'d false,\n    The supposition of the lady\'s death\n    Will quench the wonder of her infamy.\n    And if it sort not well, you may conceal her,\n    As best befits her wounded reputation,\n    In some reclusive and religious life,\n    Out of all eyes, tongues, minds, and injuries.\n  Bene. Signior Leonato, let the friar advise you;\n    And though you know my inwardness and love\n    Is very much unto the Prince and Claudio,\n    Yet, by mine honour, I will deal in this\n    As secretly and justly as your soul  \n    Should with your body.\n  Leon. Being that I flow in grief,\n    The smallest twine may lead me.\n  Friar. \'Tis well consented. Presently away;\n    For to strange sores strangely they strain the cure.\n    Come, lady, die to live. This wedding day\n    Perhaps is but prolong\'d. Have patience and endure.\n                         Exeunt [all but Benedick and Beatrice].\n  Bene. Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?\n  Beat. Yea, and I will weep a while longer.\n  Bene. I will not desire that.\n  Beat. You have no reason. I do it freely.\n  Bene. Surely I do believe your fair cousin is wronged.\n  Beat. Ah, how much might the man deserve of me that would right\n     her!\n  Bene. Is there any way to show such friendship?\n  Beat. A very even way, but no such friend.\n  Bene. May a man do it?\n  Beat. It is a man\'s office, but not yours.\n  Bene. I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that  \n    strange?\n  Beat. As strange as the thing I know not. It were as possible for\n    me to say I loved nothing so well as you. But believe me not; and\n    yet I lie not. I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing. I am sorry\n    for my cousin.\n  Bene. By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me.\n  Beat. Do not swear, and eat it.\n  Bene. I will swear by it that you love me, and I will make him eat\n    it that says I love not you.\n  Beat. Will you not eat your word?\n  Bene. With no sauce that can be devised to it. I protest I love\n    thee.\n  Beat. Why then, God forgive me!\n  Bene. What offence, sweet Beatrice?\n  Beat. You have stayed me in a happy hour. I was about to protest I\n    loved you.\n  Bene. And do it with all thy heart.\n  Beat. I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to\n    protest.\n  Bene. Come, bid me do anything for thee.  \n  Beat. Kill Claudio.\n  Bene. Ha! not for the wide world!\n  Beat. You kill me to deny it. Farewell.\n  Bene. Tarry, sweet Beatrice.\n  Beat. I am gone, though I am here. There is no love in you. Nay, I\n    pray you let me go.\n  Bene. Beatrice--\n  Beat. In faith, I will go.\n  Bene. We\'ll be friends first.\n  Beat. You dare easier be friends with me than fight with mine\n    enemy.\n  Bene. Is Claudio thine enemy?\n  Beat. Is \'a not approved in the height a villain, that hath\n    slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? O that I were a\n    man! What? bear her in hand until they come to take hands, and\n    then with public accusation, uncover\'d slander, unmitigated\n    rancour--O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the\n    market place.\n  Bene. Hear me, Beatrice!\n  Beat. Talk with a man out at a window!-a proper saying!  \n  Bene. Nay but Beatrice--\n  Beat. Sweet Hero! she is wrong\'d, she is sland\'red, she is undone.\n  Bene. Beat--\n  Beat. Princes and Counties! Surely a princely testimony, a goodly\n    count, Count Comfect, a sweet gallant surely! O that I were a man\n    for his sake! or that I had any friend would be a man for my\n    sake! But manhood is melted into cursies, valour into compliment,\n    and men are only turn\'d into tongue, and trim ones too. He is now\n    as valiant as Hercules that only tells a lie,and swears it. I\n    cannot be a man with wishing; therefore I will die a woman with\n    grieving.\n  Bene. Tarry, good Beatrice. By this hand, I love thee.\n  Beat. Use it for my love some other way than swearing by it.\n  Bene. Think you in your soul the Count Claudio hath wrong\'d Hero?\n  Beat. Yea, as sure is I have a thought or a soul.\n  Bene. Enough, I am engag\'d, I will challenge him. I will kiss your\n    hand, and so I leave you. By this hand, Claudio shall render me a\n    dear account. As you hear of me, so think of me. Go comfort your\n    cousin. I must say she is dead-and so farewell.\n                                                       [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nA prison.\n\nEnter the Constables [Dogberry and Verges] and the Sexton, in gowns,\n[and the Watch, with Conrade and] Borachio.\n\n  Dog. Is our whole dissembly appear\'d?\n  Verg. O, a stool and a cushion for the sexton.\n  Sex. Which be the malefactors?\n  Dog. Marry, that am I and my partner.\n  Verg. Nay, that\'s certain. We have the exhibition to examine.\n  Sex. But which are the offenders that are to be examined? let them\n    come before Master Constable.\n  Dog. Yea, marry, let them come before me. What is your name,\n    friend?\n  Bor. Borachio.\n  Dog. Pray write down Borachio. Yours, sirrah?\n  Con. I am a gentleman, sir, and my name is Conrade.\n  Dog. Write down Master Gentleman Conrade. Masters, do you serve\n    God?\n  Both. Yea, sir, we hope.\n  Dog. Write down that they hope they serve God; and write God first,  \n    for God defend but God should go before such villains! Masters,\n    it is proved already that you are little better than false\n    knaves, and it will go near to be thought so shortly. How answer\n    you for yourselves?\n  Con. Marry, sir, we say we are none.\n  Dog. A marvellous witty fellow, I assure you; but I will go about\n    with him. Come you hither, sirrah. A word in your ear. Sir, I say\n    to you, it is thought you are false knaves.\n  Bora. Sir, I say to you we are none.\n  Dog. Well, stand aside. Fore God, they are both in a tale.\n    Have you writ down that they are none?\n  Sex. Master Constable, you go not the way to examine. You must call\n    forth the watch that are their accusers.\n  Dog. Yea, marry, that\'s the eftest way. Let the watch come forth.\n    Masters, I charge you in the Prince\'s name accuse these men.\n  1. Watch. This man said, sir, that Don John the Prince\'s brother\n    was a villain.\n  Dog. Write down Prince John a villain. Why, this is flat perjury,\n    to call a prince\'s brother villain.\n  Bora. Master Constable--  \n  Dog. Pray thee, fellow, peace. I do not like thy look, I promise\n    thee.\n  Sex. What heard you him say else?\n  2. Watch. Marry, that he had received a thousand ducats of Don John\n    for accusing the Lady Hero wrongfully.\n  Dog. Flat burglary as ever was committed.\n  Verg. Yea, by th\' mass, that it is.\n  Sex. What else, fellow?\n  1. Watch. And that Count Claudio did mean, upon his words, to\n    disgrace Hero before the whole assembly, and not marry her.\n  Dog. O villain! thou wilt be condemn\'d into everlasting redemption\n    for this.\n  Sex. What else?\n  Watchmen. This is all.\n  Sex. And this is more, masters, than you can deny. Prince John is\n    this morning secretly stol\'n away. Hero was in this manner\n    accus\'d, in this manner refus\'d, and upon the grief of this\n    suddenly died. Master Constable, let these men be bound and\n    brought to Leonato\'s. I will go before and show him their\n    examination.                                         [Exit.]  \n  Dog. Come, let them be opinion\'d.\n  Verg. Let them be in the hands--\n  Con. Off, coxcomb!\n  Dog. God\'s my life, where\'s the sexton? Let him write down the\n    Prince\'s officer coxcomb. Come, bind them.--Thou naughty varlet!\n  Con. Away! you are an ass, you are an ass.\n  Dog. Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my\n    years? O that he were here to write me down an ass! But, masters,\n    remember that I am an ass. Though it be not written down, yet\n    forget not that I am an ass. No, thou villain, thou art full of\n    piety, as shall be prov\'d upon thee by good witness. I am a wise\n    fellow; and which is more, an officer; and which is more, a\n    householder; and which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any\n    is in Messina, and one that knows the law, go to! and a rich\n    fellow enough, go to! and a fellow that hath had losses; and one\n    that hath two gowns and everything handsome about him. Bring him\n    away. O that I had been writ down an ass!\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. Scene I.\nThe street, near Leonato\'s house.\n\nEnter Leonato and his brother [ Antonio].\n\n  Ant. If you go on thus, you will kill yourself,\n    And \'tis not wisdom thus to second grief\n    Against yourself.\n  Leon. I pray thee cease thy counsel,\n    Which falls into mine ears as profitless\n    As water in a sieve. Give not me counsel,\n    Nor let no comforter delight mine ear\n    But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine.\n    Bring me a father that so lov\'d his child,\n    Whose joy of her is overwhelm\'d like mine,\n    And bid him speak to me of patience.\n    Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine,\n    And let it answer every strain for strain,\n    As thus for thus, and such a grief for such,\n    In every lineament, branch, shape, and form.\n    If such a one will smile and stroke his beard,\n    Bid sorrow wag, cry \'hem\' when he should groan,  \n    Patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune drunk\n    With candle-wasters--bring him yet to me,\n    And I of him will gather patience.\n    But there is no such man; for, brother, men\n    Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief\n    Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,\n    Their counsel turns to passion, which before\n    Would give preceptial medicine to rage,\n    Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,\n    Charm ache with air and agony with words.\n    No, no! \'Tis all men\'s office to speak patience\n    To those that wring under the load of sorrow,\n    But no man\'s virtue nor sufficiency\n    To be so moral when he shall endure\n    The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel.\n    My griefs cry louder than advertisement.\n  Ant. Therein do men from children nothing differ.\n  Leon. I pray thee peace. I will be flesh and blood;\n    For there was never yet philosopher\n    That could endure the toothache patiently,  \n    However they have writ the style of gods\n    And made a push at chance and sufferance.\n  Ant. Yet bend not all the harm upon yourself.\n    Make those that do offend you suffer too.\n  Leon. There thou speak\'st reason. Nay, I will do so.\n    My soul doth tell me Hero is belied;\n    And that shall Claudio know; so shall the Prince,\n    And all of them that thus dishonour her.\n\n              Enter Don Pedro and Claudio.\n\n  Ant. Here comes the Prince and Claudio hastily.\n  Pedro. Good den, Good den.\n  Claud. Good day to both of you.\n  Leon. Hear you, my lords!\n  Pedro. We have some haste, Leonato.\n  Leon. Some haste, my lord! well, fare you well, my lord.\n    Are you so hasty now? Well, all is one.\n  Pedro. Nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man.\n  Ant. If he could right himself with quarrelling,  \n    Some of us would lie low.\n  Claud. Who wrongs him?\n  Leon. Marry, thou dost wrong me, thou dissembler, thou!\n    Nay, never lay thy hand upon thy sword;\n    I fear thee not.\n  Claud. Mary, beshrew my hand\n    If it should give your age such cause of fear.\n    In faith, my hand meant nothing to my sword.\n  Leon. Tush, tush, man! never fleer and jest at me\n    I speak not like a dotard nor a fool,\n    As under privilege of age to brag\n    What I have done being young, or what would do,\n    Were I not old. Know, Claudio, to thy head,\n    Thou hast so wrong\'d mine innocent child and me\n    That I am forc\'d to lay my reverence by\n    And, with grey hairs and bruise of many days,\n    Do challenge thee to trial of a man.\n    I say thou hast belied mine innocent child;\n    Thy slander hath gone through and through her heart,\n    And she lied buried with her ancestors-  \n    O, in a tomb where never scandal slept,\n    Save this of hers, fram\'d by thy villany!\n  Claud. My villany?\n  Leon. Thine, Claudio; thine I say.\n  Pedro. You say not right, old man\n  Leon. My lord, my lord,\n    I\'ll prove it on his body if he dare,\n    Despite his nice fence and his active practice,\n    His May of youth and bloom of lustihood.\n  Claud. Away! I will not have to do with you.\n  Leon. Canst thou so daff me? Thou hast kill\'d my child.\n    If thou kill\'st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man.\n    And. He shall kill two of us, and men indeed\n    But that\'s no matter; let him kill one first.\n    Win me and wear me! Let him answer me.\n    Come, follow me, boy,. Come, sir boy, come follow me.\n    Sir boy, I\'ll whip you from your foining fence!\n    Nay, as I am a gentleman, I will.\n  Leon. Brother--\n  Ant. Content yourself. God knows I lov\'d my niece,  \n    And she is dead, slander\'d to death by villains,\n    That dare as well answer a man indeed\n    As I dare take a serpent by the tongue.\n    Boys, apes, braggarts, jacks, milksops!\n  Leon. Brother Anthony--\n  Ant. Hold you content. What, man! I know them, yea,\n    And what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple,\n    Scambling, outfacing, fashion-monging boys,\n    That lie and cog and flout, deprave and slander,\n    Go anticly, show outward hideousness,\n    And speak off half a dozen dang\'rous words,\n    How they might hurt their enemies, if they durst;\n    And this is all.\n  Leon. But, brother Anthony--\n  Ant. Come, \'tis no matter.\n    Do not you meddle; let me deal in this.\n  Pedro. Gentlemen both, we will not wake your patience.\n    My heart is sorry for your daughter\'s death;\n    But, on my honour, she was charg\'d with nothing\n    But what was true, and very full of proof.  \n  Leon. My lord, my lord--\n  Pedro. I will not hear you.\n  Leon. No? Come, brother, away!--I will be heard.\n  Ant. And shall, or some of us will smart for it.\n                                                    Exeunt ambo.\n\n                  Enter Benedick.\n\n  Pedro. See, see! Here comes the man we went to seek.\n  Claud. Now, signior, what news?\n  Bene. Good day, my lord.\n  Pedro. Welcome, signior. You are almost come to part almost a fray.\n  Claud. We had lik\'d to have had our two noses snapp\'d off with two\n    old men without teeth.\n  Pedro. Leonato and his brother. What think\'st thou? Had we fought,\n    I doubt we should have been too young for them.\n  Bene. In a false quarrel there is no true valour. I came to seek\n    you both.\n  Claud. We have been up and down to seek thee; for we are high-proof\n    melancholy, and would fain have it beaten away. Wilt thou use thy  \n    wit?\n  Bene. It is in my scabbard. Shall I draw it?\n  Pedro. Dost thou wear thy wit by thy side?\n  Claud. Never any did so, though very many have been beside their\n    wit. I will bid thee draw, as we do the minstrel--draw to\n    pleasure us.\n  Pedro. As I am an honest man, he looks pale. Art thou sick or\n    angry?\n  Claud. What, courage, man! What though care kill\'d a cat, thou hast\n    mettle enough in thee to kill care.\n  Bene. Sir, I shall meet your wit in the career an you charge it\n    against me. I pray you choose another subject.\n  Claud. Nay then, give him another staff; this last was broke cross.\n  Pedro. By this light, he changes more and more. I think he be angry\n    indeed.\n  Claud. If he be, he knows how to turn his girdle.\n  Bene. Shall I speak a word in your ear?\n  Claud. God bless me from a challenge!\n  Bene. [aside to Claudio] You are a villain. I jest not; I will make\n    it good how you dare, with what you dare, and when you dare. Do  \n    me right, or I will protest your cowardice. You have kill\'d a\n    sweet lady, and her death shall fall heavy on you. Let me hear\n    from you.\n  Claud. Well, I will meet you, so I may have good cheer.\n  Pedro. What, a feast, a feast?\n  Claud. I\' faith, I thank him, he hath bid me to a calve\'s head and\n    a capon, the which if I do not carve most curiously, say my\n    knife\'s naught. Shall I not find a woodcock too?\n  Bene. Sir, your wit ambles well; it goes easily.\n  Pedro. I\'ll tell thee how Beatrice prais\'d thy wit the other day. I\n    said thou hadst a fine wit: \'True,\' said she, \'a fine little\n    one.\' \'No,\' said I, \'a great wit.\' \'Right,\' says she, \'a great\n    gross one.\' \'Nay,\' said I, \'a good wit.\' \'Just,\' said she, \'it\n    hurts nobody.\' \'Nay,\' said I, \'the gentleman is wise.\' \'Certain,\'\n    said she, a wise gentleman.\' \'Nay,\' said I, \'he hath the\n    tongues.\' \'That I believe\' said she, \'for he swore a thing to me\n    on Monday night which he forswore on Tuesday morning. There\'s a\n    double tongue; there\'s two tongues.\' Thus did she an hour\n    together transshape thy particular virtues. Yet at last she\n    concluded with a sigh, thou wast the proper\'st man in Italy.  \n  Claud. For the which she wept heartily and said she cared not.\n  Pedro. Yea, that she did; but yet, for all that, an if she did not\n    hate him deadly, she would love him dearly. The old man\'s\n    daughter told us all.\n  Claud. All, all! and moreover, God saw him when he was hid in the\n    garden.\n  Pedro. But when shall we set the savage bull\'s horns on the\n    sensible Benedick\'s head?\n  Claud. Yea, and text underneath, \'Here dwells Benedick, the married\n    man\'?\n  Bene. Fare you well, boy; you know my mind. I will leave you now to\n    your gossiplike humour. You break jests as braggards do their\n    blades, which God be thanked hurt not. My lord, for your many\n    courtesies I thank you. I must discontinue your company. Your\n    brother the bastard is fled from Messina. You have among you\n    kill\'d a sweet and innocent lady. For my Lord Lackbeard there, he\n    and I shall meet; and till then peace be with him.\n                                                         [Exit.]\n  Pedro. He is in earnest.\n  Claud. In most profound earnest; and, I\'ll warrant you, for the  \n    love of Beatrice.\n  Pedro. And hath challeng\'d thee.\n  Claud. Most sincerely.\n  Pedro. What a pretty thing man is when he goes in his doublet and\n    hose and leaves off his wit!\n\n  Enter Constables [Dogberry and Verges, with the Watch, leading]\n                      Conrade and Borachio.\n\n  Claud. He is then a giant to an ape; but then is an ape a doctor to\n    such a man.\n  Pedro. But, soft you, let me be! Pluck up, my heart, and be sad!\n    Did he not say my brother was fled?\n  Dog. Come you, sir. If justice cannot tame you, she shall ne\'er\n    weigh more reasons in her balance. Nay, an you be a cursing\n    hypocrite once, you must be look\'d to.\n  Pedro. How now? two of my brother\'s men bound? Borachio one.\n  Claud. Hearken after their offence, my lord.\n  Pedro. Officers, what offence have these men done?\n  Dog. Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they  \n    have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and\n    lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified\n    unjust things; and to conclude, they are lying knaves.\n  Pedro. First, I ask thee what they have done; thirdly, I ask thee\n    what\'s their offence; sixth and lastly, why they are committed;\n    and to conclude, what you lay to their charge.\n  Claud. Rightly reasoned, and in his own division; and by my troth\n    there\'s one meaning well suited.\n  Pedro. Who have you offended, masters, that you are thus bound to\n    your answer? This learned constable is too cunning to be\n    understood. What\'s your offence?\n  Bora. Sweet Prince, let me go no farther to mine answer. Do you\n    hear me, and let this Count kill me. I have deceived even your\n    very eyes. What your wisdoms could not discover, these shallow\n    fools have brought to light, who in the night overheard me\n    confessing to this man, how Don John your brother incensed me to\n    slander the Lady Hero; how you were brought into the orchard and\n    saw me court Margaret in Hero\'s garments; how you disgrac\'d her\n    when you should marry her. My villany they have upon record,\n    which I had rather seal with my death than repeat over to my  \n    shame. The lady is dead upon mine and my master\'s false\n    accusation; and briefly, I desire nothing but the reward of a\n    villain.\n  Pedro. Runs not this speech like iron through your blood?\n  Claud. I have drunk poison whiles he utter\'d it.\n  Pedro. But did my brother set thee on to this?\n  Bora. Yea, and paid me richly for the practice of it.\n  Pedro. He is compos\'d and fram\'d of treachery,\n    And fled he is upon this villany.\n  Claud. Sweet Hero, now thy image doth appear\n    In the rare semblance that I lov\'d it first.\n  Dog. Come, bring away the plaintiffs. By this time our sexton hath\n    reformed Signior Leonato of the matter. And, masters, do not\n    forget to specify, when time and place shall serve, that I am an\n    ass.\n  Verg. Here, here comes Master Signior Leonato, and the sexton too.\n\n          Enter Leonato, his brother [Antonio], and the Sexton.\n\n  Leon. Which is the villain? Let me see his eyes,  \n    That, when I note another man like him,\n    I may avoid him. Which of these is he?\n  Bora. If you would know your wronger, look on me.\n  Leon. Art thou the slave that with thy breath hast kill\'d\n    Mine innocent child?\n  Bora. Yea, even I alone.\n  Leon. No, not so, villain! thou beliest thyself.\n    Here stand a pair of honourable men--\n    A third is fled--that had a hand in it.\n    I thank you princes for my daughter\'s death.\n    Record it with your high and worthy deeds.\n    \'Twas bravely done, if you bethink you of it.\n  Claud. I know not how to pray your patience;\n    Yet I must speak. Choose your revenge yourself;\n    Impose me to what penance your invention\n    Can lay upon my sin. Yet sinn\'d I not\n    But in mistaking.\n  Pedro. By my soul, nor I!\n    And yet, to satisfy this good old man,\n    I would bend under any heavy weight  \n    That he\'ll enjoin me to.\n  Leon. I cannot bid you bid my daughter live-\n    That were impossible; but I pray you both,\n    Possess the people in Messina here\n    How innocent she died; and if your love\n    Can labour aught in sad invention,\n    Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb,\n    And sing it to her bones--sing it to-night.\n    To-morrow morning come you to my house,\n    And since you could not be my son-in-law,\n    Be yet my nephew. My brother hath a daughter,\n    Almost the copy of my child that\'s dead,\n    And she alone is heir to both of us.\n    Give her the right you should have giv\'n her cousin,\n    And so dies my revenge.\n  Claud. O noble sir!\n    Your over-kindness doth wring tears from me.\n    I do embrace your offer; and dispose\n    For henceforth of poor Claudio.\n  Leon. To-morrow then I will expect your coming;  \n    To-night I take my leave. This naughty man\n    Shall fact to face be brought to Margaret,\n    Who I believe was pack\'d in all this wrong,\n    Hir\'d to it by your brother.\n  Bora. No, by my soul, she was not;\n    Nor knew not what she did when she spoke to me;\n    But always hath been just and virtuous\n    In anything that I do know by her.\n  Dog. Moreover, sir, which indeed is not under white and black, this\n    plaintiff here, the offender, did call me ass. I beseech you let\n    it be rememb\'red in his punishment. And also the watch heard them\n    talk of one Deformed. They say he wears a key in his ear, and a\n    lock hanging by it, and borrows money in God\'s name, the which he\n    hath us\'d so long and never paid that now men grow hard-hearted\n    and will lend nothing for God\'s sake. Pray you examine him upon\n    that point.\n  Leon. I thank thee for thy care and honest pains.\n  Dog. Your worship speaks like a most thankful and reverent youth,\n    and I praise God for you.\n  Leon. There\'s for thy pains. [Gives money.]  \n  Dog. God save the foundation!\n  Leon. Go, I discharge thee of thy prisoner, and I thank thee.\n  Dog. I leave an arrant knave with your worship, which I beseech\n    your worship to correct yourself, for the example of others.\n    God keep your worship! I wish your worship well. God restore you\n    to health! I humbly give you leave to depart; and if a merry\n    meeting may be wish\'d, God prohibit it! Come, neighbour.\n                                   Exeunt [Dogberry and Verges].\n  Leon. Until to-morrow morning, lords, farewell.\n  Ant. Farewell, my lords. We look for you to-morrow.\n  Pedro. We will not fall.\n  Claud. To-night I\'ll mourn with Hero.\n                                 [Exeunt Don Pedro and Claudio.]\n  Leon. [to the Watch] Bring you these fellows on.--We\'ll talk with\n      Margaret,\n    How her acquaintance grew with this lewd fellow.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nLeonato\'s orchard.\n\nEnter Benedick and Margaret [meeting].\n\n  Bene. Pray thee, sweet Mistress Margaret, deserve well at my hands\n    by helping me to the speech of Beatrice.\n  Marg. Will you then write me a sonnet in praise of my beauty?\n  Bene. In so high a style, Margaret, that no man living shall come\n    over it; for in most comely truth thou deservest it.\n  Marg. To have no man come over me? Why, shall I always keep below\n    stairs?\n  Bene. Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound\'s mouth--it catches.\n  Marg. And yours as blunt as the fencer\'s foils, which hit but hurt\n    not.\n  Bene. A most manly wit, Margaret: it will not hurt a woman.\n    And so I pray thee call Beatrice. I give thee the bucklers.\n  Marg. Give us the swords; we have bucklers of our own.\n  Bene. If you use them, Margaret, you must put in the pikes with a\n    vice, and they are dangerous weapons for maids.\n  Marg. Well, I will call Beatrice to you, who I think hath legs.\n  Bene. And therefore will come.  \n                                                  Exit Margaret.\n       [Sings] The god of love,\n               That sits above\n           And knows me, and knows me,\n             How pitiful I deserve--\n\n    I mean in singing; but in loving Leander the good swimmer,\n    Troilus the first employer of panders, and a whole book full of\n    these quondam carpet-mongers, whose names yet run smoothly in the\n    even road of a blank verse--why, they were never so truly turn\'d\n    over and over as my poor self in love. Marry, I cannot show it in\n    rhyme. I have tried. I can find out no rhyme to \'lady\' but \'baby\'\n    --an innocent rhyme; for \'scorn,\' \'horn\'--a hard rhyme; for\n    \'school\', \'fool\'--a babbling rhyme: very ominous endings! No, I\n    was not born under a rhyming planet, nor cannot woo in festival\n    terms.\n\n                    Enter Beatrice.\n\n    Sweet Beatrice, wouldst thou come when I call\'d thee?  \n  Beat. Yea, signior, and depart when you bid me.\n  Bene. O, stay but till then!\n  Beat. \'Then\' is spoken. Fare you well now. And yet, ere I go, let\n    me go with that I came for, which is, with knowing what hath\n    pass\'d between you and Claudio.\n  Bene. Only foul words; and thereupon I will kiss thee.\n  Beat. Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul\n    breath, and foul breath is noisome. Therefore I will depart\n    unkiss\'d.\n  Bene. Thou hast frighted the word out of his right sense, so\n    forcible is thy wit. But I must tell thee plainly, Claudio\n    undergoes my challenge; and either I must shortly hear from him\n    or I will subscribe him a coward. And I pray thee now tell me,\n    for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?\n  Beat. For them all together, which maintain\'d so politic a state of\n    evil that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with\n    them. But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love\n    for me?\n  Bene. Suffer love!--a good epithet. I do suffer love indeed, for I\n    love thee against my will.  \n  Beat. In spite of your heart, I think. Alas, poor heart! If you\n    spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours, for I will never\n    love that which my friend hates.\n  Bene. Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.\n  Beat. It appears not in this confession. There\'s not one wise man\n    among twenty, that will praise himself.\n  Bene. An old, an old instance, Beatrice, that liv\'d in the time of\n    good neighbours. If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb\n    ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bell\n    rings and the widow weeps.\n  Beat. And how long is that, think you?\n  Bene. Question: why, an hour in clamour and a quarter in rheum.\n    Therefore is it most expedient for the wise, if Don Worm (his\n    conscience) find no impediment to the contrary, to be the trumpet\n    of his own virtues, as I am to myself. So much for praising\n    myself, who, I myself will bear witness, is praiseworthy. And now\n    tell me, how doth your cousin?\n  Beat. Very ill.\n  Bene. And how do you?\n  Beat. Very ill too.  \n  Bene. Serve God, love me, and mend. There will I leave you too, for\n    here comes one in haste.\n\n                         Enter Ursula.\n\n  Urs. Madam, you must come to your uncle. Yonder\'s old coil at home.\n    It is proved my Lady Hero hath been falsely accus\'d, the Prince\n    and Claudio mightily abus\'d, and Don John is the author of all,\n    who is fled and gone. Will you come presently?\n  Beat. Will you go hear this news, signior?\n  Bene. I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried thy\n    eyes; and moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle\'s.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nA churchyard.\n\nEnter Claudio, Don Pedro, and three or four with tapers,\n[followed by Musicians].\n\n  Claud. Is this the monument of Leonato?\n  Lord. It is, my lord.\n  Claud. [reads from a scroll]\n\n                      Epitaph.\n\n        Done to death by slanderous tongues\n          Was the Hero that here lies.\n        Death, in guerdon of her wrongs,\n          Gives her fame which never dies.\n        So the life that died with shame\n        Lives in death with glorious fame.\n\n    Hang thou there upon the tomb,\n                                          [Hangs up the scroll.]\n    Praising her when I am dumb.  \n    Now, music, sound, and sing your solemn hymn.\n\n                     Song.\n\n        Pardon, goddess of the night,\n        Those that slew thy virgin knight;\n        For the which, with songs of woe,\n        Round about her tomb they go.\n        Midnight, assist our moan,\n        Help us to sigh and groan\n          Heavily, heavily,\n        Graves, yawn and yield your dead,\n        Till death be uttered\n          Heavily, heavily.\n\n  Claud. Now unto thy bones good night!\n    Yearly will I do this rite.\n  Pedro. Good morrow, masters. Put your torches out.\n    The wolves have prey\'d, and look, the gentle day,\n    Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about  \n    Dapples the drowsy east with spots of grey.\n    Thanks to you all, and leave us. Fare you well.\n  Claud. Good morrow, masters. Each his several way.\n  Pedro. Come, let us hence and put on other weeds,\n    And then to Leonato\'s we will go.\n  Claud. And Hymen now with luckier issue speeds\n    Than this for whom we rend\'red up this woe.          Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV\nThe hall in Leonato\'s house.\n\nEnter Leonato, Benedick, [Beatrice,] Margaret, Ursula, Antonio,\nFriar [Francis], Hero.\n\n  Friar. Did I not tell you she was innocent?\n  Leon. So are the Prince and Claudio, who accus\'d her\n    Upon the error that you heard debated.\n    But Margaret was in some fault for this,\n    Although against her will, as it appears\n    In the true course of all the question.\n  Ant. Well, I am glad that all things sort so well.\n  Bene. And so am I, being else by faith enforc\'d\n    To call young Claudio to a reckoning for it.\n  Leon. Well, daughter, and you gentlewomen all,\n    Withdraw into a chamber by yourselves,\n    And when I send for you, come hither mask\'d.\n                                                  Exeunt Ladies.\n    The Prince and Claudio promis\'d by this hour\n    To visit me. You know your office, brother:\n    You must be father to your brother\'s daughter,  \n    And give her to young Claudio.\n  Ant. Which I will do with confirm\'d countenance.\n  Bene. Friar, I must entreat your pains, I think.\n  Friar. To do what, signior?\n  Bene. To bind me, or undo me--one of them.\n    Signior Leonato, truth it is, good signior,\n    Your niece regards me with an eye of favour.\n  Leon. That eye my daughter lent her. \'Tis most true.\n  Bene. And I do with an eye of love requite her.\n  Leon. The sight whereof I think you had from me,\n    From Claudio, and the Prince; but what\'s your will?\n  Bene. Your answer, sir, is enigmatical;\n    But, for my will, my will is, your good will\n    May stand with ours, this day to be conjoin\'d\n    In the state of honourable marriage;\n    In which, good friar, I shall desire your help.\n  Leon. My heart is with your liking.\n  Friar. And my help.\n\n       Enter Don Pedro and Claudio and two or three other.  \n\n    Here comes the Prince and Claudio.\n  Pedro. Good morrow to this fair assembly.\n  Leon. Good morrow, Prince; good morrow, Claudio.\n    We here attend you. Are you yet determin\'d\n    To-day to marry with my brother\'s daughter?\n  Claud. I\'ll hold my mind, were she an Ethiope.\n  Leon. Call her forth, brother. Here\'s the friar ready.\n                                                 [Exit Antonio.]\n  Pedro. Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what\'s the matter\n    That you have such a February face,\n    So full of frost, of storm, and cloudiness?\n  Claud. I think he thinks upon the savage bull.\n    Tush, fear not, man! We\'ll tip thy horns with gold,\n    And all Europa shall rejoice at thee,\n    As once Europa did at lusty Jove\n    When he would play the noble beast in love.\n  Bene. Bull Jove, sir, had an amiable low,\n    And some such strange bull leap\'d your father\'s cow\n    And got a calf in that same noble feat  \n    Much like to you, for you have just his bleat.\n\n       Enter [Leonato\'s] brother [Antonio], Hero, Beatrice,\n            Margaret, Ursula, [the ladies wearing masks].\n\n  Claud. For this I owe you. Here comes other reckonings.\n    Which is the lady I must seize upon?\n  Ant. This same is she, and I do give you her.\n  Claud. Why then, she\'s mine. Sweet, let me see your face.\n  Leon. No, that you shall not till you take her hand\n    Before this friar and swear to marry her.\n  Claud. Give me your hand before this holy friar.\n    I am your husband if you like of me.\n  Hero. And when I liv\'d I was your other wife;       [Unmasks.]\n    And when you lov\'d you were my other husband.\n  Claud. Another Hero!\n  Hero. Nothing certainer.\n    One Hero died defil\'d; but I do live,\n    And surely as I live, I am a maid.\n  Pedro. The former Hero! Hero that is dead!  \n  Leon. She died, my lord, but whiles her slander liv\'d.\n  Friar. All this amazement can I qualify,\n    When, after that the holy rites are ended,\n    I\'ll tell you largely of fair Hero\'s death.\n    Meantime let wonder seem familiar,\n    And to the chapel let us presently.\n  Bene. Soft and fair, friar. Which is Beatrice?\n  Beat. [unmasks] I answer to that name. What is your will?\n  Bene. Do not you love me?\n  Beat. Why, no; no more than reason.\n  Bene. Why, then your uncle, and the Prince, and Claudio\n    Have been deceived; for they swore you did.\n  Beat. Do not you love me?\n  Bene. Troth, no; no more than reason.\n  Beat. Why, then my cousin, Margaret, and Ursula\n    Are much deceiv\'d; for they did swear you did.\n  Bene. They swore that you were almost sick for me.\n  Beat. They swore that you were well-nigh dead for me.\n  Bene. \'Tis no such matter. Then you do not love me?\n  Beat. No, truly, but in friendly recompense.  \n  Leon. Come, cousin, I am sure you love the gentleman.\n  Claud. And I\'ll be sworn upon\'t that he loves her;\n    For here\'s a paper written in his hand,\n    A halting sonnet of his own pure brain,\n    Fashion\'d to Beatrice.\n  Hero. And here\'s another,\n    Writ in my cousin\'s hand, stol\'n from her pocket,\n    Containing her affection unto Benedick.\n  Bene. A miracle! Here\'s our own hands against our hearts.\n    Come, I will have thee; but, by this light, I take thee for pity.\n  Beat. I would not deny you; but, by this good day, I yield upon\n    great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told\n    you were in a consumption.\n  Bene. Peace! I will stop your mouth.             [Kisses her.]\n  Beat. I\'ll tell thee what, Prince: a college of wit-crackers cannot\n    flout me out of my humour. Dost thou think I care for a satire or\n    an epigram? No. If a man will be beaten with brains, \'a shall\n    wear nothing handsome about him. In brief, since I do purpose to\n    marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say\n    against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said  \n    against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.\n    For thy part, Claudio, I did think to have beaten thee; but in\n    that thou art like to be my kinsman, live unbruis\'d, and love my\n    cousin.\n  Claud. I had well hop\'d thou wouldst have denied Beatrice, that I\n    might have cudgell\'d thee out of thy single life, to make thee a\n    double-dealer, which out of question thou wilt be if my cousin do\n    not look exceeding narrowly to thee.\n  Bene. Come, come, we are friends. Let\'s have a dance ere we are\n    married, that we may lighten our own hearts and our wives\' heels.\n  Leon. We\'ll have dancing afterward.\n  Bene. First, of my word! Therefore play, music. Prince, thou art\n    sad. Get thee a wife, get thee a wife! There is no staff more\n    reverent than one tipp\'d with horn.\n\n                       Enter Messenger.\n\n  Mess. My lord, your brother John is ta\'en in flight,\n    And brought with armed men back to Messina.\n  Bene. Think not on him till to-morrow. I\'ll devise thee brave  \n    punishments for him. Strike up, pipers!\n                                                Dance. [Exeunt.]\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1605\n\n\nTHE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO, MOOR OF VENICE\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  OTHELLO, the Moor, general of the Venetian forces\n  DESDEMONA, his wife\n  IAGO, ensign to Othello\n  EMILIA, his wife, lady-in-waiting to Desdemona\n  CASSIO, lieutenant to Othello\n  THE DUKE OF VENICE\n  BRABANTIO, Venetian Senator, father of Desdemona\n  GRATIANO, nobleman of Venice, brother of Brabantio\n  LODOVICO, nobleman of Venice, kinsman of Brabantio\n  RODERIGO, rejected suitor of Desdemona\n  BIANCA, mistress of Cassio\n  MONTANO, a Cypriot official\n  A Clown in service to Othello\n  Senators, Sailors, Messengers, Officers, Gentlemen, Musicians, and\n    Attendants\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE: Venice and Cyprus\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nVenice. A street.\n\nEnter Roderigo and Iago.\n\n  RODERIGO. Tush, never tell me! I take it much unkindly\n    That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse\n    As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this.\n  IAGO. \'Sblood, but you will not hear me.\n    If ever I did dream of such a matter,\n    Abhor me.\n  RODERIGO. Thou told\'st me thou didst hold him in thy hate.\n  IAGO. Despise me, if I do not. Three great ones of the city,\n    In personal suit to make me his lieutenant,\n    Off-capp\'d to him; and, by the faith of man,\n    I know my price, I am worth no worse a place.\n    But he, as loving his own pride and purposes,\n    Evades them, with a bumbast circumstance\n    Horribly stuff\'d with epithets of war,\n    And, in conclusion,\n    Nonsuits my mediators; for, "Certes," says he,\n    "I have already chose my officer."  \n    And what was he?\n    Forsooth, a great arithmetician,\n    One Michael Cassio, a Florentine\n    (A fellow almost damn\'d in a fair wife)\n    That never set a squadron in the field,\n    Nor the division of a battle knows\n    More than a spinster; unless the bookish theoric,\n    Wherein the toged consuls can propose\n    As masterly as he. Mere prattle without practice\n    Is all his soldiership. But he, sir, had the election;\n    And I, of whom his eyes had seen the proof\n    At Rhodes, at Cyprus, and on other grounds\n    Christian and heathen, must be belee\'d and calm\'d\n    By debitor and creditor. This counter-caster,\n    He, in good time, must his lieutenant be,\n    And I- God bless the mark!- his Moorship\'s ancient.\n  RODERIGO. By heaven, I rather would have been his hangman.\n  IAGO. Why, there\'s no remedy. \'Tis the curse of service,\n    Preferment goes by letter and affection,\n    And not by old gradation, where each second  \n    Stood heir to the first. Now, sir, be judge yourself\n    Whether I in any just term am affined\n    To love the Moor.\n  RODERIGO.           I would not follow him then.\n  IAGO. O, sir, content you.\n    I follow him to serve my turn upon him:\n    We cannot all be masters, nor all masters\n    Cannot be truly follow\'d. You shall mark\n    Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave,\n    That doting on his own obsequious bondage\n    Wears out his time, much like his master\'s ass,\n    For nought but provender, and when he\'s old, cashier\'d.\n    Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are\n    Who, trimm\'d in forms and visages of duty,\n    Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,\n    And throwing but shows of service on their lords\n    Do well thrive by them; and when they have lined their coats\n    Do themselves homage. These fellows have some soul,\n    And such a one do I profess myself.\n    For, sir,  \n    It is as sure as you are Roderigo,\n    Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago.\n    In following him, I follow but myself;\n    Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,\n    But seeming so, for my peculiar end.\n    For when my outward action doth demonstrate\n    The native act and figure of my heart\n    In complement extern, \'tis not long after\n    But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve\n    For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.\n  RODERIGO. What a full fortune does the thick-lips owe,\n    If he can carry\'t thus!\n  IAGO.                     Call up her father,\n    Rouse him, make after him, poison his delight,\n    Proclaim him in the streets, incense her kinsmen,\n    And, though he in a fertile climate dwell,\n    Plague him with flies. Though that his joy be joy,\n    Yet throw such changes of vexation on\'t\n    As it may lose some color.\n  RODERIGO. Here is her father\'s house; I\'ll call aloud.  \n  IAGO. Do, with like timorous accent and dire yell\n    As when, by night and negligence, the fire\n    Is spied in populous cities.\n  RODERIGO. What, ho, Brabantio! Signior Brabantio, ho!\n  IAGO. Awake! What, ho, Brabantio! Thieves! Thieves! Thieves!\n    Look to your house, your daughter, and your bags!\n    Thieves! Thieves!\n\n                Brabantio appears above, at a window.\n\n  BRABANTIO. What is the reason of this terrible summons?\n    What is the matter there?\n  RODERIGO. Signior, is all your family within?\n  IAGO. Are your doors lock\'d?\n  BRABANTIO.                   Why? Wherefore ask you this?\n  IAGO. \'Zounds, sir, you\'re robb\'d! For shame, put on your gown;\n    Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul;\n    Even now, now, very now, an old black ram\n    Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise!\n    Awake the snorting citizens with the bell,  \n    Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you.\n    Arise, I say!\n  BRABANTIO. What, have you lost your wits?\n  RODERIGO. Most reverend signior, do you know my voice?\n  BRABANTIO. Not I. What are you?\n  RODERIGO. My name is Roderigo.\n  BRABANTIO.                     The worser welcome.\n    I have charged thee not to haunt about my doors.\n    In honest plainness thou hast heard me say\n    My daughter is not for thee; and now, in madness,\n    Being full of supper and distempering draughts,\n    Upon malicious bravery, dost thou come\n    To start my quiet.\n  RODERIGO. Sir, sir, sir-\n  BRABANTIO.               But thou must needs be sure\n    My spirit and my place have in them power\n    To make this bitter to thee.\n  RODERIGO.                      Patience, good sir.\n  BRABANTIO. What tell\'st thou me of robbing? This is Venice;\n    My house is not a grange.  \n  RODERIGO.                   Most grave Brabantio,\n    In simple and pure soul I come to you.\n  IAGO. \'Zounds, sir, you are one of those that will not serve God,\n    if the devil bid you. Because we come to do you service and you\n    think we are ruffians, you\'ll have your daughter covered with a\n    Barbary horse; you\'ll have your nephews neigh to you; you\'ll have\n    coursers for cousins, and gennets for germans.\n  BRABANTIO. What profane wretch art thou?\n  IAGO. I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the\n    Moor are now making the beast with two backs.\n  BRABANTIO. Thou are a villain.\n  IAGO.                          You are- a senator.\n  BRABANTIO. This thou shalt answer; I know thee, Roderigo.\n  RODERIGO. Sir, I will answer anything. But, I beseech you,\n    If\'t be your pleasure and most wise consent,\n    As partly I find it is, that your fair daughter,\n    At this odd-even and dull watch o\' the night,\n    Transported with no worse nor better guard\n    But with a knave of common hire, a gondolier,\n    To the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor-  \n    If this be known to you, and your allowance,\n    We then have done you bold and saucy wrongs;\n    But if you know not this, my manners tell me\n    We have your wrong rebuke. Do not believe\n    That, from the sense of all civility,\n    I thus would play and trifle with your reverence.\n    Your daughter, if you have not given her leave,\n    I say again, hath made a gross revolt,\n    Tying her duty, beauty, wit, and fortunes\n    In an extravagant and wheeling stranger\n    Of here and everywhere. Straight satisfy yourself:\n    If she be in her chamber or your house,\n    Let loose on me the justice of the state\n    For thus deluding you.\n  BRABANTIO.               Strike on the tinder, ho!\n    Give me a taper! Call up all my people!\n    This accident is not unlike my dream;\n    Belief of it oppresses me already.\n    Light, I say, light!                                  Exit above.\n  IAGO.                  Farewell, for I must leave you.  \n    It seems not meet, nor wholesome to my place,\n    To be produced- as, if I stay, I shall-\n    Against the Moor; for I do know, the state,\n    However this may gall him with some check,\n    Cannot with safety cast him, for he\'s embark\'d\n    With such loud reason to the Cyprus wars,\n    Which even now stands in act, that, for their souls,\n    Another of his fathom they have none\n    To lead their business; in which regard,\n    Though I do hate him as I do hell pains,\n    Yet for necessity of present life,\n    I must show out a flag and sign of love,\n    Which is indeed but sign. That you shall surely find him,\n    Lead to the Sagittary the raised search,\n    And there will I be with him. So farewell.                  Exit.\n\n            Enter, below, Brabantio, in his nightgown, and\n                        Servants with torches.\n\n  BRABANTIO. It is too true an evil: gone she is,  \n    And what\'s to come of my despised time\n    Is nought but bitterness. Now, Roderigo,\n    Where didst thou see her? O unhappy girl!\n    With the Moor, say\'st thou? Who would be a father!\n    How didst thou know \'twas she? O, she deceives me\n    Past thought! What said she to you? Get more tapers.\n    Raise all my kindred. Are they married, think you?\n  RODERIGO. Truly, I think they are.\n  BRABANTIO. O heaven! How got she out? O treason of the blood!\n    Fathers, from hence trust not your daughters\' minds\n    By what you see them act. Is there not charms\n    By which the property of youth and maidhood\n    May be abused? Have you not read, Roderigo,\n    Of some such thing?\n  RODERIGO.             Yes, sir, I have indeed.\n  BRABANTIO. Call up my brother. O, would you had had her!\n    Some one way, some another. Do you know\n    Where we may apprehend her and the Moor?\n  RODERIGO. I think I can discover him, if you please\n    To get good guard and go along with me.  \n  BRABANTIO. Pray you, lead on. At every house I\'ll call;\n    I may command at most. Get weapons, ho!\n    And raise some special officers of night.\n    On, good Roderigo, I\'ll deserve your pains.               Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nAnother street.\n\nEnter Othello, Iago, and Attendants with torches.\n\n  IAGO. Though in the trade of war I have slain men,\n    Yet do I hold it very stuff o\' the conscience\n    To do no contrived murther. I lack iniquity\n    Sometimes to do me service. Nine or ten times\n    I had thought to have yerk\'d him here under the ribs.\n  OTHELLO. \'Tis better as it is.\n  IAGO.                          Nay, but he prated\n    And spoke such scurvy and provoking terms\n    Against your honor\n    That, with the little godliness I have,\n    I did full hard forbear him. But I pray you, sir,\n    Are you fast married? Be assured of this,\n    That the magnifico is much beloved,\n    And hath in his effect a voice potential\n    As double as the Duke\'s. He will divorce you,\n    Or put upon you what restraint and grievance\n    The law, with all his might to enforce it on,  \n    Will give him cable.\n  OTHELLO.               Let him do his spite.\n    My services, which I have done the signiory,\n    Shall out-tongue his complaints. \'Tis yet to know-\n    Which, when I know that boasting is an honor,\n    I shall promulgate- I fetch my life and being\n    From men of royal siege, and my demerits\n    May speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune\n    As this that I have reach\'d. For know, Iago,\n    But that I love the gentle Desdemona,\n    I would not my unhoused free condition\n    Put into circumscription and confine\n    For the sea\'s worth. But, look! What lights come yond?\n  IAGO. Those are the raised father and his friends.\n    You were best go in.\n  OTHELLO.               Not I; I must be found.\n    My parts, my title, and my perfect soul\n    Shall manifest me rightly. Is it they?\n  IAGO. By Janus, I think no.\n  \n           Enter Cassio and certain Officers with torches.\n\n  OTHELLO. The servants of the Duke? And my lieutenant?\n    The goodness of the night upon you, friends!\n    What is the news?\n  CASSIO.             The Duke does greet you, general,\n    And he requires your haste-post-haste appearance,\n    Even on the instant.\n  OTHELLO.               What is the matter, think you?\n  CASSIO. Something from Cyprus, as I may divine;\n    It is a business of some heat. The galleys\n    Have sent a dozen sequent messengers\n    This very night at one another\'s heels;\n    And many of the consuls, raised and met,\n    Are at the Duke\'s already. You have been hotly call\'d for,\n    When, being not at your lodging to be found,\n    The Senate hath sent about three several quests\n    To search you out.\n  OTHELLO.             \'Tis well I am found by you.\n    I will but spend a word here in the house  \n    And go with you.                                            Exit.\n  CASSIO.            Ancient, what makes he here?\n  IAGO. Faith, he tonight hath boarded a land carack;\n    If it prove lawful prize, he\'s made forever.\n  CASSIO. I do not understand.\n  IAGO.                        He\'s married.\n  CASSIO.                                    To who?\n\n                          Re-enter Othello.\n\n  IAGO. Marry, to- Come, captain, will you go?\n  OTHELLO.                                     Have with you.\n  CASSIO. Here comes another troop to seek for you.\n  IAGO. It is Brabantio. General, be advised,\n    He comes to bad intent.\n\n         Enter Brabantio, Roderigo, and Officers with torches\n                             and weapons.\n\n  OTHELLO.                  Holla! Stand there!  \n  RODERIGO. Signior, it is the Moor.\n  BRABANTIO.                         Down with him, thief!\n                                             They draw on both sides.\n  IAGO. You, Roderigo! Come, sir, I am for you.\n  OTHELLO. Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.\n    Good signior, you shall more command with years\n    Than with your weapons.\n  BRABANTIO. O thou foul thief, where hast thou stow\'d my daughter?\n    Damn\'d as thou art, thou hast enchanted her,\n    For I\'ll refer me to all things of sense,\n    If she in chains of magic were not bound,\n    Whether a maid so tender, fair, and happy,\n    So opposite to marriage that she shunn\'d\n    The wealthy, curled darlings of our nation,\n    Would ever have, to incur a general mock,\n    Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom\n    Of such a thing as thou- to fear, not to delight.\n    Judge me the world, if \'tis not gross in sense\n    That thou hast practiced on her with foul charms,\n    Abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals  \n    That weaken motion. I\'ll have\'t disputed on;\n    \'Tis probable, and palpable to thinking.\n    I therefore apprehend and do attach thee\n    For an abuser of the world, a practicer\n    Of arts inhibited and out of warrant.\n    Lay hold upon him. If he do resist,\n    Subdue him at his peril.\n  OTHELLO.                   Hold your hands,\n    Both you of my inclining and the rest.\n    Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it\n    Without a prompter. Where will you that I go\n    To answer this your charge?\n  BRABANTIO.                    To prison, till fit time\n    Of law and course of direct session\n    Call thee to answer.\n  OTHELLO.               What if I do obey?\n    How may the Duke be therewith satisfied,\n    Whose messengers are here about my side,\n    Upon some present business of the state\n    To bring me to him?  \n  FIRST OFFICER.        \'Tis true, most worthy signior;\n    The Duke\'s in council, and your noble self,\n    I am sure, is sent for.\n  BRABANTIO.                How? The Duke in council?\n    In this time of the night? Bring him away;\n    Mine\'s not an idle cause. The Duke himself,\n    Or any of my brothers of the state,\n    Cannot but feel this wrong as \'twere their own;\n    For if such actions may have passage free,\n    Bond slaves and pagans shall our statesmen be.            Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nA council chamber. The Duke and Senators sitting at a table;\nOfficers attending.\n\n  DUKE. There is no composition in these news\n    That gives them credit.\n  FIRST SENATOR.            Indeed they are disproportion\'d;\n    My letters say a hundred and seven galleys.\n  DUKE. And mine, a hundred and forty.\n  SECOND SENATOR.                      And mine, two hundred.\n    But though they jump not on a just account-\n    As in these cases, where the aim reports,\n    \'Tis oft with difference- yet do they all confirm\n    A Turkish fleet, and bearing up to Cyprus.\n  DUKE. Nay, it is possible enough to judgement.\n    I do not so secure me in the error,\n    But the main article I do approve\n    In fearful sense.\n  SAILOR. [Within.] What, ho! What, ho! What, ho!\n  FIRST OFFICER. A messenger from the galleys.\n\n                            Enter Sailor.\n  \n  DUKE.                                Now, what\'s the business?\n  SAILOR. The Turkish preparation makes for Rhodes,\n    So was I bid report here to the state\n    By Signior Angelo.\n  DUKE. How say you by this change?\n  FIRST SENATOR.                    This cannot be,\n    By no assay of reason; \'tis a pageant\n    To keep us in false gaze. When we consider\n    The importancy of Cyprus to the Turk,\n    And let ourselves again but understand\n    That as it more concerns the Turk than Rhodes,\n    So may he with more facile question bear it,\n    For that it stands not in such warlike brace,\n    But altogether lacks the abilities\n    That Rhodes is dress\'d in. If we make thought of this,\n    We must not think the Turk is so unskillful\n    To leave that latest which concerns him first,\n    Neglecting an attempt of ease and gain,\n    To wake and wage a danger profitless.\n  DUKE. Nay, in all confidence, he\'s not for Rhodes.  \n  FIRST OFFICER. Here is more news.\n\n                          Enter a Messenger.\n\n  MESSENGER. The Ottomites, reverend and gracious,\n    Steering with due course toward the isle of Rhodes,\n    Have there injointed them with an after fleet.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Ay, so I thought. How many, as you guess?\n  MESSENGER. Of thirty sail; and now they do re-stem\n    Their backward course, bearing with frank appearance\n    Their purposes toward Cyprus. Signior Montano,\n    Your trusty and most valiant servitor,\n    With his free duty recommends you thus,\n    And prays you to believe him.\n  DUKE. \'Tis certain then for Cyprus.\n    Marcus Luccicos, is not he in town?\n  FIRST SENATOR. He\'s now in Florence.\n  DUKE. Write from us to him, post-post-haste dispatch.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Here comes Brabantio and the valiant Moor.\n  \n       Enter Brabantio, Othello, Iago, Roderigo, and Officers.\n\n  DUKE. Valiant Othello, we must straight employ you\n    Against the general enemy Ottoman.\n    [To Brabantio.] I did not see you; welcome, gentle signior;\n    We lack\'d your counsel and your help tonight.\n  BRABANTIO. So did I yours. Good your Grace, pardon me:\n    Neither my place nor aught I heard of business\n    Hath raised me from my bed, nor doth the general care\n    Take hold on me; for my particular grief\n    Is of so flood-gate and o\'erbearing nature\n    That it engluts and swallows other sorrows,\n    And it is still itself.\n  DUKE.                     Why, what\'s the matter?\n  BRABANTIO. My daughter! O, my daughter!\n  ALL.                                    Dead?\n  BRABANTIO.                                    Ay, to me.\n    She is abused, stol\'n from me and corrupted\n    By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks;\n    For nature so preposterously to err,  \n    Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense,\n    Sans witchcraft could not.\n  DUKE. Whoe\'er he be that in this foul proceeding\n    Hath thus beguiled your daughter of herself\n    And you of her, the bloody book of law\n    You shall yourself read in the bitter letter\n    After your own sense, yea, though our proper son\n    Stood in your action.\n  BRABANTIO.              Humbly I thank your Grace.\n    Here is the man, this Moor, whom now, it seems,\n    Your special mandate for the state affairs\n    Hath hither brought.\n  ALL.                   We are very sorry for\'t.\n  DUKE. [To Othello.] What in your own part can you say to this?\n  BRABANTIO. Nothing, but this is so.\n  OTHELLO. Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors,\n    My very noble and approved good masters,\n    That I have ta\'en away this old man\'s daughter,\n    It is most true; true, I have married her;\n    The very head and front of my offending  \n    Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in my speech,\n    And little blest with the soft phrase of peace;\n    For since these arms of mine had seven years\' pith,\n    Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used\n    Their dearest action in the tented field,\n    And little of this great world can I speak,\n    More than pertains to feats of broil and battle;\n    And therefore little shall I grace my cause\n    In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience,\n    I will a round unvarnish\'d tale deliver\n    Of my whole course of love: what drugs, what charms,\n    What conjuration, and what mighty magic-\n    For such proceeding I am charged withal-\n    I won his daughter.\n  BRABANTIO.            A maiden never bold,\n    Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion\n    Blush\'d at herself; and she- in spite of nature,\n    Of years, of country, credit, everything-\n    To fall in love with what she fear\'d to look on!\n    It is judgement maim\'d and most imperfect,  \n    That will confess perfection so could err\n    Against all rules of nature, and must be driven\n    To find out practices of cunning hell\n    Why this should be. I therefore vouch again\n    That with some mixtures powerful o\'er the blood,\n    Or with some dram conjured to this effect,\n    He wrought upon her.\n  DUKE.                  To vouch this is no proof,\n    Without more certain and more overt test\n    Than these thin habits and poor likelihoods\n    Of modern seeming do prefer against him.\n  FIRST SENATOR. But, Othello, speak.\n    Did you by indirect and forced courses\n    Subdue and poison this young maid\'s affections?\n    Or came it by request, and such fair question\n    As soul to soul affordeth?\n  OTHELLO.                     I do beseech you,\n    Send for the lady to the Sagittary,\n    And let her speak of me before her father.\n    If you do find me foul in her report,  \n    The trust, the office I do hold of you,\n    Not only take away, but let your sentence\n    Even fall upon my life.\n  DUKE.                     Fetch Desdemona hither.\n  OTHELLO. Ancient, conduct them; you best know the place.\n                                          Exeunt Iago and Attendants.\n    And till she come, as truly as to heaven\n    I do confess the vices of my blood,\n    So justly to your grave ears I\'ll present\n    How I did thrive in this fair lady\'s love\n    And she in mine.\n  DUKE. Say it, Othello.\n  OTHELLO. Her father loved me, oft invited me,\n    Still question\'d me the story of my life\n    From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,\n    That I have pass\'d.\n    I ran it through, even from my boyish days\n    To the very moment that he bade me tell it:\n    Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,\n    Of moving accidents by flood and field,  \n    Of hair-breadth \'scapes i\' the imminent deadly breach,\n    Of being taken by the insolent foe\n    And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence\n    And portance in my travels\' history;\n    Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,\n    Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,\n    It was my hint to speak- such was the process-\n    And of the Cannibals that each other eat,\n    The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads\n    Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear\n    Would Desdemona seriously incline;\n    But still the house affairs would draw her thence,\n    Which ever as she could with haste dispatch,\n    She\'ld come again, and with a greedy ear\n    Devour up my discourse; which I observing,\n    Took once a pliant hour, and found good means\n    To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart\n    That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,\n    Whereof by parcels she had something heard,\n    But not intentively. I did consent,  \n    And often did beguile her of her tears\n    When I did speak of some distressful stroke\n    That my youth suffer\'d. My story being done,\n    She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;\n    She swore, in faith, \'twas strange, \'twas passing strange;\n    \'Twas pitiful, \'twas wondrous pitiful.\n    She wish\'d she had not heard it, yet she wish\'d\n    That heaven had made her such a man; she thank\'d me,\n    And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,\n    I should but teach him how to tell my story,\n    And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:\n    She loved me for the dangers I had pass\'d,\n    And I loved her that she did pity them.\n    This only is the witchcraft I have used.\n    Here comes the lady; let her witness it.\n\n                Enter Desdemona, Iago, and Attendants.\n\n  DUKE. I think this tale would win my daughter too.\n    Good Brabantio,  \n    Take up this mangled matter at the best:\n    Men do their broken weapons rather use\n    Than their bare hands.\n  BRABANTIO.               I pray you, hear her speak.\n    If she confess that she was half the wooer,\n    Destruction on my head, if my bad blame\n    Light on the man! Come hither, gentle mistress.\n    Do you perceive in all this noble company\n    Where most you owe obedience?\n  DESDEMONA.                      My noble father,\n    I do perceive here a divided duty.\n    To you I am bound for life and education;\n    My life and education both do learn me\n    How to respect you; you are the lord of duty,\n    I am hitherto your daughter. But here\'s my husband,\n    And so much duty as my mother show\'d\n    To you, preferring you before her father,\n    So much I challenge that I may profess\n    Due to the Moor, my lord.\n  BRABANTIO.                  God be with you! I have done.  \n    Please it your Grace, on to the state affairs;\n    I had rather to adopt a child than get it.\n    Come hither, Moor.\n    I here do give thee that with all my heart\n    Which, but thou hast already, with all my heart\n    I would keep from thee. For your sake, jewel,\n    I am glad at soul I have no other child;\n    For thy escape would teach me tyranny,\n    To hang clogs on them. I have done, my lord.\n  DUKE. Let me speak like yourself, and lay a sentence\n    Which, as a grise or step, may help these lovers\n    Into your favor.\n    When remedies are past, the griefs are ended\n    By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended.\n    To mourn a mischief that is past and gone\n    Is the next way to draw new mischief on.\n    What cannot be preserved when Fortune takes,\n    Patience her injury a mockery makes.\n    The robb\'d that smiles steals something from the thief;\n    He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.  \n  BRABANTIO. So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile;\n    We lose it not so long as we can smile.\n    He bears the sentence well, that nothing bears\n    But the free comfort which from thence he hears;\n    But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow\n    That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow.\n    These sentences, to sugar or to gall,\n    Being strong on both sides, are equivocal.\n    But words are words; I never yet did hear\n    That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear.\n    I humbly beseech you, proceed to the affairs of state.\n  DUKE. The Turk with a most mighty preparation makes for Cyprus.\n    Othello, the fortitude of the place is best known to you; and\n    though we have there a substitute of most allowed sufficiency,\n    yet opinion, a sovereign mistress of effects, throws a more safer\n    voice on you. You must therefore be content to slubber the gloss\n    of your new fortunes with this more stubborn and boisterous\n    expedition.\n  OTHELLO. The tyrant custom, most grave senators,\n    Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war  \n    My thrice-driven bed of down. I do agnize\n    A natural and prompt alacrity\n    I find in hardness and do undertake\n    These present wars against the Ottomites.\n    Most humbly therefore bending to your state,\n    I crave fit disposition for my wife,\n    Due reference of place and exhibition,\n    With such accommodation and besort\n    As levels with her breeding.\n  DUKE.                          If you please,\n    Be\'t at her father\'s.\n  BRABANTIO.              I\'ll not have it so.\n  OTHELLO. Nor I.\n  DESDEMONA.      Nor I. I would not there reside\n    To put my father in impatient thoughts\n    By being in his eye. Most gracious Duke,\n    To my unfolding lend your prosperous ear,\n    And let me find a charter in your voice\n    To assist my simpleness.\n  DUKE. What would you, Desdemona?  \n  DESDEMONA. That I did love the Moor to live with him,\n    My downright violence and storm of fortunes\n    May trumpet to the world. My heart\'s subdued\n    Even to the very quality of my lord.\n    I saw Othello\'s visage in his mind,\n    And to his honors and his valiant parts\n    Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate.\n    So that, dear lords, if I be left behind,\n    A moth of peace, and he go to the war,\n    The rites for which I love him are bereft me,\n    And I a heavy interim shall support\n    By his dear absence. Let me go with him.\n  OTHELLO. Let her have your voices.\n    Vouch with me, heaven, I therefore beg it not\n    To please the palate of my appetite,\n    Nor to comply with heat- the young affects\n    In me defunct- and proper satisfaction;\n    But to be free and bounteous to her mind.\n    And heaven defend your good souls, that you think\n    I will your serious and great business scant  \n    For she is with me. No, when light-wing\'d toys\n    Of feather\'d Cupid seel with wanton dullness\n    My speculative and officed instruments,\n    That my disports corrupt and taint my business,\n    Let housewives make a skillet of my helm,\n    And all indign and base adversities\n    Make head against my estimation!\n  DUKE. Be it as you shall privately determine,\n    Either for her stay or going. The affair cries haste,\n    And speed must answer\'t: you must hence tonight.\n  DESDEMONA. Tonight, my lord?\n  DUKE.                        This night.\n  OTHELLO.                                 With all my heart.\n  DUKE. At nine i\' the morning here we\'ll meet again.\n    Othello, leave some officer behind,\n    And he shall our commission bring to you,\n    With such things else of quality and respect\n    As doth import you.\n  OTHELLO.              So please your Grace, my ancient;\n    A man he is of honesty and trust.  \n    To his conveyance I assign my wife,\n    With what else needful your good Grace shall think\n    To be sent after me.\n  DUKE.                  Let it be so.\n    Good night to everyone. [To Brabantio.] And, noble signior,\n    If virtue no delighted beauty lack,\n    Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Adieu, brave Moor, use Desdemona well.\n  BRABANTIO. Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see;\n    She has deceived her father, and may thee.\n                                 Exeunt Duke, Senators, and Officers.\n  OTHELLO. My life upon her faith! Honest Iago,\n    My Desdemona must I leave to thee.\n    I prithee, let thy wife attend on her,\n    And bring them after in the best advantage.\n    Come, Desdemona, I have but an hour\n    Of love, of worldly matters and direction,\n    To spend with thee. We must obey the time.\n                                        Exeunt Othello and Desdemona.\n  RODERIGO. Iago!  \n  IAGO. What say\'st thou, noble heart?\n  RODERIGO. What will I do, thinkest thou?\n  IAGO. Why, go to bed and sleep.\n  RODERIGO. I will incontinently drown myself.\n  IAGO. If thou dost, I shall never love thee after.\n    Why, thou silly gentleman!\n  RODERIGO. It is silliness to live when to live is torment, and then\n    have we a prescription to die when death is our physician.\n  IAGO. O villainous! I have looked upon the world for four times\n    seven years, and since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and\n    an injury, I never found man that knew how to love himself. Ere I\n    would say I would drown myself for the love of a guinea hen, I\n    would change my humanity with a baboon.\n  RODERIGO. What should I do? I confess it is my shame to be so fond,\n    but it is not in my virtue to amend it.\n  IAGO. Virtue? a fig! \'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.\n    Our bodies are gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so\n    that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed\n    up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with\n    many, either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with  \n    industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in\n    our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of\n    reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of\n    our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions.\n    But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings,\n    our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this, that you call love, to\n    be a sect or scion.\n  RODERIGO. It cannot be.\n  IAGO. It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the\n    will. Come, be a man! Drown thyself? Drown cats and blind\n    puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to\n    thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness; I could never\n    better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou\n    the wars; defeat thy favor with an usurped beard. I say, put\n    money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona should long\n    continue her love to the Moor- put money in thy purse- nor he his\n    to her. It was a violent commencement, and thou shalt see an\n    answerable sequestration- put but money in thy purse. These Moors\n    are changeable in their wills- fill thy purse with money. The\n    food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be to him  \n    shortly as acerb as the coloquintida. She must change for youth;\n    when she is sated with his body, she will find the error of her\n    choice. She must have change, she must; therefore put money in\n    thy purse. If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate\n    way than drowning. Make all the money thou canst. If sanctimony\n    and a frail vow betwixt an erring barbarian and a supersubtle\n    Venetian be not too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell,\n    thou shalt enjoy her- therefore make money. A pox of drowning\n    thyself! It is clean out of the way. Seek thou rather to be\n    hanged in compassing thy joy than to be drowned and go without\n    her.\n  RODERIGO. Wilt thou be fast to my hopes, if I depend on the issue?\n  IAGO. Thou art sure of me- go, make money. I have told thee often,\n    and I retell thee again and again, I hate the Moor. My cause is\n    hearted; thine hath no less reason. Let us be conjunctive in our\n    revenge against him. If thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself\n    a pleasure, me a sport. There are many events in the womb of time\n    which will be delivered. Traverse, go, provide thy money. We will\n    have more of this tomorrow. Adieu.\n  RODERIGO. Where shall we meet i\' the morning?  \n  IAGO. At my lodging.\n  RODERIGO. I\'ll be with thee betimes.\n  IAGO. Go to, farewell. Do you hear, Roderigo?\n  RODERIGO. What say you?\n  IAGO. No more of drowning, do you hear?\n  RODERIGO. I am changed; I\'ll go sell all my land.             Exit.\n  IAGO. Thus do I ever make my fool my purse;\n    For I mine own gain\'d knowledge should profane\n    If I would time expend with such a snipe\n    But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor,\n    And it is thought abroad that \'twixt my sheets\n    He has done my office. I know not if\'t be true,\n    But I for mere suspicion in that kind\n    Will do as if for surety. He holds me well,\n    The better shall my purpose work on him.\n    Cassio\'s a proper man. Let me see now-\n    To get his place, and to plume up my will\n    In double knavery- How, how?- Let\'s see-\n    After some time, to abuse Othello\'s ear\n    That he is too familiar with his wife.  \n    He hath a person and a smooth dispose\n    To be suspected- framed to make women false.\n    The Moor is of a free and open nature,\n    That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,\n    And will as tenderly be led by the nose\n    As asses are.\n    I have\'t. It is engender\'d. Hell and night\n    Must bring this monstrous birth to the world\'s light.\n     Exit.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nA seaport in Cyprus. An open place near the quay.\n\nEnter Montano and two Gentlemen.\n\n  MONTANO. What from the cape can you discern at sea?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Nothing at all. It is a high-wrought flood;\n    I cannot, \'twixt the heaven and the main,\n    Descry a sail.\n  MONTANO. Methinks the wind hath spoke aloud at land;\n    A fuller blast ne\'er shook our battlements.\n    If it hath ruffian\'d so upon the sea,\n    What ribs of oak, when mountains melt on them,\n    Can hold the mortise? What shall we hear of this?\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. A segregation of the Turkish fleet.\n    For do but stand upon the foaming shore,\n    The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds;\n    The wind-shaked surge, with high and monstrous mane,\n    Seems to cast water on the burning bear,\n    And quench the guards of the ever-fixed pole.\n    I never did like molestation view\n    On the enchafed flood.  \n  MONTANO.                 If that the Turkish fleet\n    Be not enshelter\'d and embay\'d, they are drown\'d;\n    It is impossible to bear it out.\n\n                       Enter a third Gentleman.\n\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. News, lads! Our wars are done.\n    The desperate tempest hath so bang\'d the Turks,\n    That their designment halts. A noble ship of Venice\n    Hath seen a grievous wreck and sufferance\n    On most part of their fleet.\n  MONTANO. How? Is this true?\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN.            The ship is here put in,\n    A Veronesa. Michael Cassio,\n    Lieutenant to the warlike Moor, Othello,\n    Is come on shore; the Moor himself at sea,\n    And is in full commission here for Cyprus.\n  MONTANO. I am glad on\'t; \'tis a worthy governor.\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. But this same Cassio, though he speak of comfort\n    Touching the Turkish loss, yet he looks sadly  \n    And prays the Moor be safe; for they were parted\n    With foul and violent tempest.\n  MONTANO.                         Pray heavens he be,\n    For I have served him, and the man commands\n    Like a full soldier. Let\'s to the seaside, ho!\n    As well to see the vessel that\'s come in\n    As to throw out our eyes for brave Othello,\n    Even till we make the main and the aerial blue\n    An indistinct regard.\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. Come, let\'s do so,\n    For every minute is expectancy\n    Of more arrivance.\n\n                            Enter Cassio.\n\n  CASSIO. Thanks, you the valiant of this warlike isle,\n    That so approve the Moor! O, let the heavens\n    Give him defense against the elements,\n    For I have lost him on a dangerous sea.\n  MONTANO. I she well shipp\'d?  \n  CASSIO. His bark is stoutly timber\'d, and his pilot\n    Of very expert and approved allowance;\n    Therefore my hopes, not surfeited to death,\n    Stand in bold cure.\n                              A cry within, "A sail, a sail, a sail!"\n\n                      Enter a fourth Gentleman.\n\n                        What noise?\n  FOURTH GENTLEMAN. The town is empty; on the brow o\' the sea\n    Stand ranks of people, and they cry, "A sail!"\n  CASSIO. My hopes do shape him for the governor.\n                                                          Guns heard.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. They do discharge their shot of courtesy-\n    Our friends at least.\n  CASSIO.                 I pray you, sir, go forth,\n    And give us truth who \'tis that is arrived.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. I shall.                                    Exit.\n  MONTANO. But, good lieutenant, is your general wived?\n  CASSIO. Most fortunately: he hath achieved a maid  \n    That paragons description and wild fame,\n    One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens,\n    And in the essential vesture of creation\n    Does tire the ingener.\n\n                      Re-enter second Gentleman.\n\n                           How now! who has put in?\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. \'Tis one Iago, ancient to the general.\n  CASSIO. He has had most favorable and happy speed:\n    Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds,\n    The gutter\'d rocks, and congregated sands,\n    Traitors ensteep\'d to clog the guiltless keel,\n    As having sense of beauty, do omit\n    Their mortal natures, letting go safely by\n    The divine Desdemona.\n  MONTANO.                What is she?\n  CASSIO. She that I spake of, our great captain\'s captain,\n    Left in the conduct of the bold Iago,\n    Whose footing here anticipates our thoughts  \n    A se\'nnight\'s speed. Great Jove, Othello guard,\n    And swell his sail with thine own powerful breath,\n    That he may bless this bay with his tall ship,\n    Make love\'s quick pants in Desdemona\'s arms,\n    Give renew\'d fire to our extincted spirits,\n    And bring all Cyprus comfort.\n\n       Enter Desdemona, Emilia Iago, Roderigo, and Attendants.\n\n                                  O, behold,\n    The riches of the ship is come on shore!\n    Ye men of Cyprus, let her have your knees.\n    Hall to thee, lady! And the grace of heaven,\n    Before, behind thee, and on every hand,\n    Enwheel thee round!\n  DESDEMONA.            I thank you, valiant Cassio.\n    What tidings can you tell me of my lord?\n  CASSIO. He is not yet arrived, nor know I aught\n    But that he\'s well and will be shortly here.\n  DESDEMONA. O, but I fear- How lost you company?  \n  CASSIO. The great contention of the sea and skies\n    Parted our fellowship- But, hark! a sail.\n                          A cry within, "A sail, a sail!" Guns heard.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. They give their greeting to the citadel;\n    This likewise is a friend.\n  CASSIO.                      See for the news.\n                                                      Exit Gentleman.\n    Good ancient, you are welcome. [To Emilia.] Welcome, mistress.\n    Let it not gall your patience, good Iago,\n    That I extend my manners; \'tis my breeding\n    That gives me this bold show of courtesy.             Kisses her.\n  IAGO. Sir, would she give you so much of her lips\n    As of her tongue she oft bestows on me,\n    You\'ld have enough.\n  DESDEMONA.            Alas, she has no speech.\n  IAGO. In faith, too much;\n    I find it still when I have list to sleep.\n    Marry, before your ladyship I grant,\n    She puts her tongue a little in her heart\n    And chides with thinking.  \n  EMILIA. You have little cause to say so.\n  IAGO. Come on, come on. You are pictures out of doors,\n    Bells in your parlors, wildcats in your kitchens,\n    Saints in your injuries, devils being offended,\n    Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds.\n  DESDEMONA. O, fie upon thee, slanderer!\n  IAGO. Nay, it is true, or else I am a Turk:\n    You rise to play, and go to bed to work.\n  EMILIA. You shall not write my praise.\n  IAGO.                                  No, let me not.\n  DESDEMONA. What wouldst thou write of me, if thou shouldst\n    praise me?\n  IAGO. O gentle lady, do not put me to\'t,\n    For I am nothing if not critical.\n  DESDEMONA. Come on, assay- There\'s one gone to the harbor?\n  IAGO. Ay, madam.\n  DESDEMONA. I am not merry, but I do beguile\n    The thing I am by seeming otherwise.\n    Come, how wouldst thou praise me?\n  IAGO. I am about it, but indeed my invention  \n    Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frieze;\n    It plucks out brains and all. But my Muse labors,\n    And thus she is deliver\'d.\n    If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit,\n    The one\'s for use, the other useth it.\n  DESDEMONA. Well praised! How if she be black and witty?\n  IAGO. If she be black, and thereto have a wit,\n    She\'ll find a white that shall her blackness fit.\n  DESDEMONA. Worse and worse.\n  EMILIA. How if fair and foolish?\n  IAGO. She never yet was foolish that was fair,\n    For even her folly help\'d her to an heir.\n  DESDEMONA. These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i\' the\n    alehouse. What miserable praise hast thou for her that\'s foul and\n    foolish?\n  IAGO. There\'s none so foul and foolish thereunto,\n    But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do.\n  DESDEMONA. O heavy ignorance! Thou praisest the worst best. But what\n    praise couldst thou bestow on a deserving woman indeed, one that\n    in the authority of her merit did justly put on the vouch of very  \n    malice itself?\n  IAGO. She that was ever fair and never proud,\n    Had tongue at will and yet was never loud,\n    Never lack\'d gold and yet went never gay,\n    Fled from her wish and yet said, "Now I may";\n    She that, being anger\'d, her revenge being nigh,\n    Bade her wrong stay and her displeasure fly;\n    She that in wisdom never was so frail\n    To change the cod\'s head for the salmon\'s tail;\n    She that could think and ne\'er disclose her mind,\n    See suitors following and not look behind;\n    She was a wight, if ever such wight were-\n  DESDEMONA. To do what?\n  IAGO. To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.\n  DESDEMONA. O most lame and impotent conclusion! Do not learn of him,\n    Emilia, though he be thy husband. How say you, Cassio? Is he not\n    a most profane and liberal counselor?\n  CASSIO. He speaks home, madam. You may relish him more in the\n    soldier than in the scholar.\n  IAGO. [Aside.] He takes her by the palm; ay, well said, whisper.  \n    With as little a web as this will I ensnare as great a fly as\n    Cassio. Ay, smile upon her, do; I will gyve thee in thine own\n    courtship. You say true; \'tis so, indeed. If such tricks as these\n    strip you out of your lieutenantry, it had been better you had\n    not kissed your three fingers so oft, which now again you are\n    most apt to play the sir in. Very good. Well kissed! an excellent\n    courtesy! \'tis so, indeed. Yet again your fingers to your lips?\n    Would they were clyster-pipes for your sake! [Trumpet within.]\n    The Moor! I know his trumpet.\n  CASSIO. \'Tis truly so.\n  DESDEMONA. Let\'s meet him and receive him.\n  CASSIO. Lo, where he comes!\n\n                    Enter Othello and Attendants.\n\n  OTHELLO. O my fair warrior!\n  DESDEMONA.                  My dear Othello!\n  OTHELLO. It gives me wonder great as my content\n    To see you here before me. O my soul\'s joy!\n    If after every tempest come such calms,  \n    May the winds blow till they have waken\'d death!\n    And let the laboring bark climb hills of seas\n    Olympus-high, and duck again as low\n    As hell\'s from heaven! If it were now to die,\n    \'Twere now to be most happy; for I fear\n    My soul hath her content so absolute\n    That not another comfort like to this\n    Succeeds in unknown fate.\n  DESDEMONA.                  The heavens forbid\n    But that our loves and comforts should increase,\n    Even as our days do grow!\n  OTHELLO.                    Amen to that, sweet powers!\n    I cannot speak enough of this content;\n    It stops me here; it is too much of joy.\n    And this, and this, the greatest discords be          Kisses her.\n    That e\'er our hearts shall make!\n  IAGO.                     [Aside.] O, you are well tuned now!\n    But I\'ll set down the pegs that make this music,\n    As honest as I am.\n  OTHELLO.             Come, let us to the castle.  \n    News, friends: our wars are done, the Turks are drown\'d.\n    How does my old acquaintance of this isle?\n    Honey, you shall be well desired in Cyprus;\n    I have found great love amongst them. O my sweet,\n    I prattle out of fashion, and I dote\n    In mine own comforts. I prithee, good Iago,\n    Go to the bay and disembark my coffers.\n    Bring thou the master to the citadel;\n    He is a good one, and his worthiness\n    Does challenge much respect. Come, Desdemona,\n    Once more well met at Cyprus.\n                                    Exeunt all but Iago and Roderigo.\n  IAGO. Do thou meet me presently at the harbor. Come hither. If thou\n    be\'st valiant- as they say base men being in love have then a\n    nobility in their natures more than is native to them- list me.\n    The lieutenant tonight watches on the court of guard. First, I\n    must tell thee this: Desdemona is directly in love with him.\n  RODERIGO. With him? Why, \'tis not possible.\n  IAGO. Lay thy finger thus, and let thy soul be instructed. Mark me\n    with what violence she first loved the Moor, but for bragging and  \n    telling her fantastical lies. And will she love him still for\n    prating? Let not thy discreet heart think it. Her eye must be\n    fed; and what delight shall she have to look on the devil? When\n    the blood is made dull with the act of sport, there should be,\n    again to inflame it and to give satiety a fresh appetite,\n    loveliness in favor, sympathy in years, manners, and beauties-\n    all which the Moor is defective in. Now, for want of these\n    required conveniences, her delicate tenderness will find itself\n    abused, begin to heave the gorge, disrelish and abhor the Moor;\n    very nature will instruct her in it and compel her to some second\n    choice. Now sir, this granted- as it is a most pregnant and\n    unforced position- who stands so eminently in the degree of this\n    fortune as Cassio does? A knave very voluble; no further\n    conscionable than in putting on the mere form of civil and humane\n    seeming, for the better compass of his salt and most hidden loose\n    affection? Why, none, why, none- a slipper and subtle knave, a\n    finder out of occasions, that has an eye can stamp and\n    counterfeit advantages, though true advantage never present\n    itself- a devilish knave! Besides, the knave is handsome, young,\n    and hath all those requisites in him that folly and green minds  \n    look after- a pestilent complete knave, and the woman hath found\n    him already.\n  RODERIGO. I cannot believe that in her; she\'s full of most blest\n    condition.\n  IAGO. Blest fig\'s-end! The wine she drinks is made of grapes. If\n    she had been blest, she would never have loved the Moor. Blest\n    pudding! Didst thou not see her paddle with the palm of his hand?\n    Didst not mark that?\n  RODERIGO. Yes, that I did; but that was but courtesy.\n  IAGO. Lechery, by this hand; an index and obscure prologue to the\n    history of lust and foul thoughts. They met so near with their\n    lips that their breaths embraced together. Villainous thoughts,\n    Roderigo! When these mutualities so marshal the way, hard at hand\n    comes the master and main exercise, the incorporate conclusion.\n    Pish! But, sir, be you ruled by me. I have brought you from\n    Venice. Watch you tonight; for the command, I\'ll lay\'t upon you.\n    Cassio knows you not. I\'ll not be far from you. Do you find some\n    occasion to anger Cassio, either by speaking too loud, or\n    tainting his discipline, or from what other course you please,\n    which the time shall more favorably minister.  \n  RODERIGO. Well.\n  IAGO. Sir, he is rash and very sudden in choler, and haply may\n    strike at you. Provoke him, that he may; for even out of that\n    will I cause these of Cyprus to mutiny, whose qualification shall\n    come into no true taste again but by the displanting of Cassio.\n    So shall you have a shorter journey to your desires by the means\n    I shall then have to prefer them, and the impediment most\n    profitably removed, without the which there were no expectation\n    of our prosperity.\n  RODERIGO. I will do this, if I can bring it to any opportunity.\n  IAGO. I warrant thee. Meet me by and by at the citadel. I must\n    fetch his necessaries ashore. Farewell.\n  RODERIGO. Adieu.                                              Exit.\n  IAGO. That Cassio loves her, I do well believe it;\n    That she loves him, \'tis apt and of great credit.\n    The Moor, howbeit that I endure him not,\n    Is of a constant, loving, noble nature,\n    And I dare think he\'ll prove to Desdemona\n    A most dear husband. Now, I do love her too,\n    Not out of absolute lust, though peradventure  \n    I stand accountant for as great a sin,\n    But partly led to diet my revenge,\n    For that I do suspect the lusty Moor\n    Hath leap\'d into my seat; the thought whereof\n    Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards,\n    And nothing can or shall content my soul\n    Till I am even\'d with him, wife for wife.\n    Or failing so, yet that I put the Moor\n    At least into a jealousy so strong\n    That judgement cannot cure. Which thing to do,\n    If this poor trash of Venice, whom I trace\n    For his quick hunting, stand the putting on,\n    I\'ll have our Michael Cassio on the hip,\n    Abuse him to the Moor in the rank garb\n    (For I fear Cassio with my nightcap too),\n    Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me\n    For making him egregiously an ass\n    And practicing upon his peace and quiet\n    Even to madness. \'Tis here, but yet confused:\n    Knavery\'s plain face is never seen till used.               Exit.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nA street.\n\nEnter a Herald with a proclamation; people following.\n\n  HERALD. It is Othello\'s pleasure, our noble and valiant general,\n    that upon certain tidings now arrived, importing the mere\n    perdition of the Turkish fleet, every man put himself into\n    triumph; some to dance, some to make bonfires, each man to what\n    sport and revels his addiction leads him; for besides these\n    beneficial news, it is the celebration of his nuptial. So much\n    was his pleasure should be proclaimed. All offices are open, and\n    there is full liberty of feasting from this present hour of five\n    till the bell have told eleven. Heaven bless the isle of Cyprus\n    and our noble general Othello!                            Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nA hall in the castle.\n\nEnter Othello, Desdemona, Cassio, and Attendants.\n\n  OTHELLO. Good Michael, look you to the guard tonight.\n    Let\'s teach ourselves that honorable stop,\n    Not to outsport discretion.\n  CASSIO. Iago hath direction what to do;\n    But notwithstanding with my personal eye\n    Will I look to\'t.\n  OTHELLO.            Iago is most honest.\n    Michael, good night. Tomorrow with your earliest\n    Let me have speech with you. Come, my dear love,\n    The purchase made, the fruits are to ensue;\n    That profit\'s yet to come \'tween me and you.\n    Good night.\n                           Exeunt Othello, Desdemona, and Attendants.\n\n                             Enter Iago.\n\n  CASSIO. Welcome, Iago; we must to the watch.  \n  IAGO. Not this hour, lieutenant; \'tis not yet ten o\' the clock. Our\n    general cast us thus early for the love of his Desdemona; who let\n    us not therefore blame. He hath not yet made wanton the night\n    with her, and she is sport for Jove.\n  CASSIO. She\'s a most exquisite lady.\n  IAGO. And, I\'ll warrant her, full of game.\n  CASSIO. Indeed she\'s a most fresh and delicate creature.\n  IAGO. What an eye she has! Methinks it sounds a parley to\n    provocation.\n  CASSIO. An inviting eye; and yet methinks right modest.\n  IAGO. And when she speaks, is it not an alarum to love?\n  CASSIO. She is indeed perfection.\n  IAGO. Well, happiness to their sheets! Come, lieutenant, I have a\n    stope of wine, and here without are a brace of Cyprus gallants\n    that would fain have a measure to the health of black Othello.\n  CASSIO. Not tonight, good Iago. I have very poor and unhappy brains\n    for drinking. I could well wish courtesy would invent some other\n    custom of entertainment.\n  IAGO. O, they are our friends! But one cup; I\'ll drink for you.\n  CASSIO. I have drunk but one cup tonight, and that was craftily  \n    qualified too, and behold what innovation it makes here. I am\n    unfortunate in the infirmity, and dare not task my weakness with\n    any more.\n  IAGO. What, man! \'Tis a night of revels, the gallants desire it.\n  CASSIO. Where are they?\n  IAGO. Here at the door; I pray you, call them in.\n  CASSIO. I\'ll do\'t, but it dislikes me.                        Exit.\n  IAGO. If I can fasten but one cup upon him,\n    With that which he hath drunk tonight already,\n    He\'ll be as full of quarrel and offense\n    As my young mistress\' dog. Now my sick fool Roderigo,\n    Whom love hath turn\'d almost the wrong side out,\n    To Desdemona hath tonight caroused\n    Potations pottle-deep; and he\'s to watch.\n    Three lads of Cyprus, noble swelling spirits,\n    That hold their honors in a wary distance,\n    The very elements of this warlike isle,\n    Have I tonight fluster\'d with flowing cups,\n    And they watch too. Now, \'mongst this flock of drunkards,\n    Am I to put our Cassio in some action  \n    That may offend the isle. But here they come.\n    If consequence do but approve my dream,\n    My boat sails freely, both with wind and stream.\n\n           Re-enter Cassio; with him Montano and Gentlemen;\n                    Servants following with wine.\n\n  CASSIO. \'Fore God, they have given me a rouse already.\n  MONTANO. Good faith, a little one; not past a pint, as I am a\n    soldier.\n  IAGO. Some wine, ho!\n\n    [Sings.]   "And let me the canakin clink, clink;\n               And let me the canakin clink.\n                 A soldier\'s a man;\n                 O, man\'s life\'s but a span;\n               Why then let a soldier drink."\n\n    Some wine, boys!\n  CASSIO. \'Fore God, an excellent song.  \n  IAGO. I learned it in England, where indeed they are most potent in\n    potting. Your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander-\n    Drink, ho!- are nothing to your English.\n  CASSIO. Is your Englishman so expert in his drinking?\n  IAGO. Why, he drinks you with facility your Dane dead drunk; he\n    sweats not to overthrow your Almain; he gives your Hollander a\n    vomit ere the next pottle can be filled.\n  CASSIO. To the health of our general!\n  MONTANO. I am for it, lieutenant, and I\'ll do you justice.\n  IAGO. O sweet England!\n\n    [Sings.]   "King Stephen was and-a worthy peer,\n                 His breeches cost him but a crown;\n               He held them sixpence all too dear,\n                 With that he call\'d the tailor lown.\n\n               "He was a wight of high renown,\n                 And thou art but of low degree.\n               \'Tis pride that pulls the country down;\n                 Then take thine auld cloak about thee."  \n\n    Some wine, ho!\n  CASSIO. Why, this is a more exquisite song than the other.\n  IAGO. Will you hear\'t again?\n  CASSIO. No, for I hold him to be unworthy of his place that does\n    those things. Well, God\'s above all, and there be souls must be\n    saved, and there be souls must not be saved.\n  IAGO. It\'s true, good lieutenant.\n  CASSIO. For mine own part- no offense to the general, nor any man\n    of quality- I hope to be saved.\n  IAGO. And so do I too, lieutenant.\n  CASSIO. Ay, but, by your leave, not before me; the lieutenant is to\n    be saved before the ancient. Let\'s have no more of this; let\'s to\n    our affairs. God forgive us our sins! Gentlemen, let\'s look to\n    our business. Do not think, gentlemen, I am drunk: this is my\n    ancient, this is my right hand, and this is my left. I am not\n    drunk now; I can stand well enough, and I speak well enough.\n  ALL. Excellent well.\n  CASSIO. Why, very well then; you must not think then that I am\n    drunk.                                                      Exit.  \n  MONTANO. To the platform, masters; come, let\'s set the watch.\n  IAGO. You see this fellow that is gone before;\n    He is a soldier fit to stand by Caesar\n    And give direction. And do but see his vice;\n    \'Tis to his virtue a just equinox,\n    The one as long as the other. \'Tis pity of him.\n    I fear the trust Othello puts him in\n    On some odd time of his infirmity\n    Will shake this island.\n  MONTANO.                  But is he often thus?\n  IAGO. \'Tis evermore the prologue to his sleep.\n    He\'ll watch the horologe a double set,\n    If drink rock not his cradle.\n  MONTANO.                        It were well\n    The general were put in mind of it.\n    Perhaps he sees it not, or his good nature\n    Prizes the virtue that appears in Cassio\n    And looks not on his evils. Is not this true?\n\n                           Enter Roderigo.  \n\n  IAGO. [Aside to him.] How now, Roderigo!\n    I pray you, after the lieutenant; go.              Exit Roderigo.\n  MONTANO. And \'tis great pity that the noble Moor\n    Should hazard such a place as his own second\n    With one of an ingraft infirmity.\n    It were an honest action to say\n    So to the Moor.\n  IAGO.             Not I, for this fair island.\n    I do love Cassio well, and would do much\n    To cure him of this evil- But, hark! What noise?\n                                          A cry within, "Help, help!"\n\n                Re-enter Cassio, driving in Roderigo.\n\n  CASSIO. \'Zounds! You rogue! You rascal!\n  MONTANO. What\'s the matter, lieutenant?\n  CASSIO. A knave teach me my duty! But I\'ll beat the knave into a\n    twiggen bottle.\n  RODERIGO. Beat me!  \n  CASSIO. Dost thou prate, rogue?                   Strikes Roderigo.\n  MONTANO. Nay, good lieutenant; I pray you, sir, hold your hand.\n  CASSIO. Let me go, sir, or I\'ll knock you o\'er the mazzard.\n  MONTANO. Come, come, you\'re drunk.\n  CASSIO. Drunk?                                          They fight.\n  IAGO. [Aside to Roderigo.] Away, I say; go out and cry a mutiny.\n                                                       Exit Roderigo.\n    Nay, good lieutenant! God\'s will, gentlemen!\n    Help, ho!- Lieutenant- sir- Montano- sir-\n    Help, masters!- Here\'s a goodly watch indeed!\n                                                        A bell rings.\n    Who\'s that that rings the bell?- Diablo, ho!\n    The town will rise. God\'s will, lieutenant, hold!\n    You will be shamed forever.\n\n                   Re-enter Othello and Attendants.\n\n  OTHELLO.                      What is the matter here?\n  MONTANO. \'Zounds, I bleed still; I am hurt to the death.\n   Faints.  \n  OTHELLO. Hold, for your lives!\n  IAGO. Hold, ho! Lieutenant- sir- Montano- gentlemen-\n    Have you forgot all place of sense and duty?\n    Hold! the general speaks to you! Hold, hold, for shame!\n  OTHELLO. Why, how now, ho! from whence ariseth this?\n    Are we turn\'d Turks, and to ourselves do that\n    Which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?\n    For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl.\n    He that stirs next to carve for his own rage\n    Holds his soul light; he dies upon his motion.\n    Silence that dreadful bell; it frights the isle\n    From her propriety. What is the matter, masters?\n    Honest Iago, that look\'st dead with grieving,\n    Speak: who began this? On thy love, I charge thee.\n  IAGO. I do not know. Friends all but now, even now,\n    In quarter, and in terms like bride and groom\n    Devesting them for bed; and then, but now\n    (As if some planet had unwitted men),\n    Swords out, and tilting one at other\'s breast,\n    In opposition bloody. I cannot speak  \n    Any beginning to this peevish odds;\n    And would in action glorious I had lost\n    Those legs that brought me to a part of it!\n  OTHELLO. How comes it, Michael, you are thus forgot?\n  CASSIO. I pray you, pardon me; I cannot speak.\n  OTHELLO. Worthy Montano, you were wont be civil;\n    The gravity and stillness of your youth\n    The world hath noted, and your name is great\n    In mouths of wisest censure. What\'s the matter,\n    That you unlace your reputation thus,\n    And spend your rich opinion for the name\n    Of a night-brawler? Give me answer to it.\n  MONTANO. Worthy Othello, I am hurt to danger.\n    Your officer, Iago, can inform you-\n    While I spare speech, which something now offends me-\n    Of all that I do know. Nor know I aught\n    By me that\'s said or done amiss this night,\n    Unless self-charity be sometimes a vice,\n    And to defend ourselves it be a sin\n    When violence assails us.  \n  OTHELLO.                    Now, by heaven,\n    My blood begins my safer guides to rule,\n    And passion, having my best judgement collied,\n    Assays to lead the way. If I once stir,\n    Or do but lift this arm, the best of you\n    Shall sink in my rebuke. Give me to know\n    How this foul rout began, who set it on,\n    And he that is approved in this offense,\n    Though he had twinn\'d with me, both at a birth,\n    Shall lose me. What! in a town of war,\n    Yet wild, the people\'s hearts brimful of fear,\n    To manage private and domestic quarrel,\n    In night, and on the court and guard of safety!\n    \'Tis monstrous. Iago, who began\'t?\n  MONTANO. If partially affined, or leagued in office,\n    Thou dost deliver more or less than truth,\n    Thou art no soldier.\n  IAGO.                  Touch me not so near:\n    I had rather have this tongue cut from my mouth\n    Than it should do offense to Michael Cassio;  \n    Yet, I persuade myself, to speak the truth\n    Shall nothing wrong him. Thus it is, general.\n    Montano and myself being in speech,\n    There comes a fellow crying out for help,\n    And Cassio following him with determined sword,\n    To execute upon him. Sir, this gentleman\n    Steps in to Cassio and entreats his pause.\n    Myself the crying fellow did pursue,\n    Lest by his clamor- as it so fell out-\n    The town might fall in fright. He, swift of foot,\n    Outran my purpose; and I return\'d the rather\n    For that I heard the clink and fall of swords,\n    And Cassio high in oath, which till tonight\n    I ne\'er might say before. When I came back-\n    For this was brief- I found them close together,\n    At blow and thrust, even as again they were\n    When you yourself did part them.\n    More of this matter cannot I report.\n    But men are men; the best sometimes forget.\n    Though Cassio did some little wrong to him,  \n    As men in rage strike those that wish them best,\n    Yet surely Cassio, I believe, received\n    From him that fled some strange indignity,\n    Which patience could not pass.\n  OTHELLO.                         I know, Iago,\n    Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter,\n    Making it light to Cassio. Cassio, I love thee,\n    But never more be officer of mine.\n\n                    Re-enter Desdemona, attended.\n\n    Look, if my gentle love be not raised up!\n    I\'ll make thee an example.\n  DESDEMONA.                   What\'s the matter?\n  OTHELLO. All\'s well now, sweeting; come away to bed.\n    Sir, for your hurts, myself will be your surgeon.\n    Lead him off.                             Exit Montano, attended.\n    Iago, look with care about the town,\n    And silence those whom this vile brawl distracted.\n    Come, Desdemona, \'tis the soldiers\' life.  \n    To have their balmy slumbers waked with strife.\n                                      Exeunt all but Iago and Cassio.\n  IAGO. What, are you hurt, lieutenant?\n  CASSIO. Ay, past all surgery.\n  IAGO. Marry, heaven forbid!\n  CASSIO. Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my\n    reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what\n    remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!\n  IAGO. As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily\n    wound; there is more sense in that than in reputation. Reputation\n    is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit and\n    lost without deserving. You have lost no reputation at all,\n    unless you repute yourself such a loser. What, man! there are\n    ways to recover the general again. You are but now cast in his\n    mood, a punishment more in policy than in malice; even so as one\n    would beat his offenseless dog to affright an imperious lion. Sue\n    to him again, and he\'s yours.\n  CASSIO. I will rather sue to be despised than to deceive so good a\n    commander with so slight, so drunken, and so indiscreet an\n    officer. Drunk? and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? swear?  \n    and discourse fustian with one\'s own shadow? O thou invisible\n    spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call\n    thee devil!\n  IAGO. What was he that you followed with your sword?\n    What had he done to you?\n  CASSIO. I know not.\n  IAGO. Is\'t possible?\n  CASSIO. I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a\n    quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O God, that men should put an\n    enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should,\n    with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves\n    into beasts!\n  IAGO. Why, but you are now well enough. How came you thus\n     recovered?\n  CASSIO. It hath pleased the devil drunkenness to give place to the\n    devil wrath: one unperfectness shows me another, to make me\n    frankly despise myself.\n  IAGO. Come, you are too severe a moraler. As the time, the place,\n    and the condition of this country stands, I could heartily wish\n    this had not befallen; but since it is as it is, mend it for your  \n    own good.\n  CASSIO. I will ask him for my place again; he shall tell me I am a\n    drunkard! Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would\n    stop them all. To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and\n    presently a beast! O strange! Every inordinate cup is unblest,\n    and the ingredient is a devil.\n  IAGO. Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be\n    well used. Exclaim no more against it. And, good lieutenant, I\n    think you think I love you.\n  CASSIO. I have well approved it, sir. I drunk!\n  IAGO. You or any man living may be drunk at some time, man. I\'ll\n    tell you what you shall do. Our general\'s wife is now the\n    general. I may say so in this respect, for that he hath devoted\n    and given up himself to the contemplation, mark, and denotement\n    of her parts and graces. Confess yourself freely to her;\n    importune her help to put you in your place again. She is of so\n    free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, she holds it a\n    vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested. This\n    broken joint between you and her husband entreat her to splinter;\n    and, my fortunes against any lay worth naming, this crack of your  \n    love shall grow stronger than it was before.\n  CASSIO. You advise me well.\n  IAGO. I protest, in the sincerity of love and honest kindness.\n  CASSIO. I think it freely; and betimes in the morning I will beseech\n    the virtuous Desdemona to undertake for me. I am desperate of my\n    fortunes if they check me here.\n  IAGO. You are in the right. Good night, lieutenant, I must to the\n    watch.\n  CASSIO. Good night, honest Iago.                              Exit.\n  IAGO. And what\'s he then that says I play the villain?\n    When this advice is free I give and honest,\n    Probal to thinking, and indeed the course\n    To win the Moor again? For \'tis most easy\n    The inclining Desdemona to subdue\n    In any honest suit. She\'s framed as fruitful\n    As the free elements. And then for her\n    To win the Moor, were\'t to renounce his baptism,\n    All seals and symbols of redeemed sin,\n    His soul is so enfetter\'d to her love,\n    That she may make, unmake, do what she list,  \n    Even as her appetite shall play the god\n    With his weak function. How am I then a villain\n    To counsel Cassio to this parallel course,\n    Directly to his good? Divinity of hell!\n    When devils will the blackest sins put on,\n    They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,\n    As I do now. For whiles this honest fool\n    Plies Desdemona to repair his fortune,\n    And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor,\n    I\'ll pour this pestilence into his ear,\n    That she repeals him for her body\'s lust;\n    And by how much she strives to do him good,\n    She shall undo her credit with the Moor.\n    So will I turn her virtue into pitch,\n    And out of her own goodness make the net\n    That shall enmesh them all.\n\n                           Enter Roderigo.\n\n                                How now, Roderigo!  \n  RODERIGO. I do follow here in the chase, not like a hound that\n    hunts, but one that fills up the cry. My money is almost spent; I\n    have been tonight exceedingly well cudgeled; and I think the\n    issue will be, I shall have so much experience for my pains; and\n    so, with no money at all and a little more wit, return again to\n    Venice.\n  IAGO. How poor are they that have not patience!\n    What wound did ever heal but by degrees?\n    Thou know\'st we work by wit and not by witchcraft,\n    And wit depends on dilatory time.\n    Does\'t not go well? Cassio hath beaten thee,\n    And thou by that small hurt hast cashier\'d Cassio.\n    Though other things grow fair against the sun,\n    Yet fruits that blossom first will first be ripe.\n    Content thyself awhile. By the mass, \'tis morning;\n    Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.\n    Retire thee; go where thou art billeted.\n    Away, I say. Thou shalt know more hereafter.\n    Nay, get thee gone. [Exit Roderigo.] Two things are to be done:\n    My wife must move for Cassio to her mistress-  \n    I\'ll set her on;\n    Myself the while to draw the Moor apart,\n    And bring him jump when he may Cassio find\n    Soliciting his wife. Ay, that\'s the way;\n    Dull not device by coldness and delay.                      Exit.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nBefore the castle.\n\nEnter Cassio and some Musicians.\n\n  CASSIO. Masters, play here, I will content your pains; Something\n    that\'s brief; and bid "Good morrow, general."\n    Music.\n\n                             Enter Clown.\n\n  CLOWN. Why, masters, have your instruments been in Naples, that\n    they speak i\' the nose thus?\n  FIRST MUSICIAN. How, sir, how?\n  CLOWN. Are these, I pray you, wind instruments?\n  FIRST MUSICIAN. Ay, marry, are they, sir.\n  CLOWN. O, thereby hangs a tail.\n  FIRST MUSICIAN. Whereby hangs a tale, sir?\n  CLOWN. Marry, sir, by many a wind instrument that I know. But,\n    masters, here\'s money for you; and the general so likes your\n    music, that he desires you, for love\'s sake, to make no more\n    noise with it.  \n  FIRST MUSICIAN. Well, sir, we will not.\n  CLOWN. If you have any music that may not be heard, to\'t again;\n    but, as they say, to hear music the general does not greatly\n    care.\n  FIRST MUSICIAN. We have none such, sir.\n  CLOWN. Then put up your pipes in your bag, for I\'ll away.\n    Go, vanish into air, away!                      Exeunt Musicians.\n  CASSIO. Dost thou hear, my honest friend?\n  CLOWN. No, I hear not your honest friend; I hear you.\n  CASSIO. Prithee, keep up thy quillets. There\'s a poor piece of gold\n    for thee. If the gentlewoman that attends the general\'s wife be\n    stirring, tell her there\'s one Cassio entreats her a little favor\n    of speech. Wilt thou do this?\n  CLOWN. She is stirring, sir. If she will stir hither, I shall seem\n    to notify unto her.\n  CASSIO. Do, good my friend.                             Exit Clown.\n\n                             Enter Iago.\n\n                              In happy time, Iago.  \n  IAGO. You have not been abed, then?\n  CASSIO. Why, no; the day had broke\n    Before we parted. I have made bold, Iago,\n    To send in to your wife. My suit to her\n    Is that she will to virtuous Desdemona\n    Procure me some access.\n  IAGO.                     I\'ll send her to you presently;\n    And I\'ll devise a mean to draw the Moor\n    Out of the way, that your converse and business\n    May be more free.\n  CASSIO. I humbly thank you for\'t. [Exit Iago.] I never knew\n    A Florentine more kind and honest.\n\n                            Enter Emilia.\n\n  EMILIA. Good morrow, good lieutenant. I am sorry\n    For your displeasure, but all will sure be well.\n    The general and his wife are talking of it,\n    And she speaks for you stoutly. The Moor replies\n    That he you hurt is of great fame in Cyprus  \n    And great affinity and that in wholesome wisdom\n    He might not but refuse you; but he protests he loves you\n    And needs no other suitor but his likings\n    To take the safest occasion by the front\n    To bring you in again.\n  CASSIO.                  Yet, I beseech you,\n    If you think fit, or that it may be done,\n    Give me advantage of some brief discourse\n    With Desdemona alone.\n  EMILIA.                 Pray you, come in.\n    I will bestow you where you shall have time\n    To speak your bosom freely.\n  CASSIO.                       I am much bound to you.\n   Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nA room in the castle.\n\nEnter Othello, Iago, and Gentlemen.\n\n  OTHELLO. These letters give, Iago, to the pilot,\n    And by him do my duties to the Senate.\n    That done, I will be walking on the works;\n    Repair there to me.\n  IAGO.                 Well, my good lord, I\'ll do\'t.\n  OTHELLO. This fortification, gentlemen, shall we see\'t?\n  GENTLEMEN. We\'ll wait upon your lordship.                   Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nThe garden of the castle.\n\nEnter Desdemona, Cassio, and Emilia.\n\n  DESDEMONA. Be thou assured, good Cassio, I will do\n    All my abilities in thy behalf.\n  EMILIA. Good madam, do. I warrant it grieves my husband\n    As if the cause were his.\n  DESDEMONA. O, that\'s an honest fellow. Do not doubt, Cassio,\n    But I will have my lord and you again\n    As friendly as you were.\n  CASSIO.                    Bounteous madam,\n    Whatever shall become of Michael Cassio,\n    He\'s never anything but your true servant.\n  DESDEMONA. I know\'t: I thank you. You do love my lord:\n    You have known him long; and be you well assured\n    He shall in strangeness stand no farther off\n    Than in a politic distance.\n  CASSIO.                       Ay, but, lady,\n    That policy may either last so long,\n    Or feed upon such nice and waterish diet,  \n    Or breed itself so out of circumstances,\n    That I being absent and my place supplied,\n    My general will forget my love and service.\n  DESDEMONA. Do not doubt that. Before Emilia here\n    I give thee warrant of thy place, assure thee,\n    If I do vow a friendship, I\'ll perform it\n    To the last article. My lord shall never rest;\n    I\'ll watch him tame and talk him out of patience;\n    His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift;\n    I\'ll intermingle everything he does\n    With Cassio\'s suit. Therefore be merry, Cassio,\n    For thy solicitor shall rather die\n    Than give thy cause away.\n\n                Enter Othello and Iago, at a distance.\n\n  EMILIA. Madam, here comes my lord.\n  CASSIO. Madam, I\'ll take my leave.\n  DESDEMONA. Nay, stay and hear me speak.\n  CASSIO. Madam, not now. I am very ill at ease,  \n    Unfit for mine own purposes.\n  DESDEMONA. Well, do your discretion.                   Exit Cassio.\n  IAGO. Ha! I like not that.\n  OTHELLO. What dost thou say?\n  IAGO. Nothing, my lord; or if- I know not what.\n  OTHELLO. Was not that Cassio parted from my wife?\n  IAGO. Cassio, my lord! No, sure, I cannot think it,\n    That he would steal away so guilty-like,\n    Seeing you coming.\n  OTHELLO.             I do believe \'twas he.\n  DESDEMONA. How now, my lord!\n    I have been talking with a suitor here,\n    A man that languishes in your displeasure.\n  OTHELLO. Who is\'t you mean?\n  DESDEMONA. Why, your lieutenant, Cassio. Good my lord,\n    If I have any grace or power to move you,\n    His present reconciliation take;\n    For if he be not one that truly loves you,\n    That errs in ignorance and not in cunning,\n    I have no judgement in an honest face.  \n    I prithee, call him back.\n  OTHELLO.                    Went he hence now?\n  DESDEMONA. Ay, sooth; so humbled\n    That he hath left part of his grief with me\n    To suffer with him. Good love, call him back.\n  OTHELLO. Not now, sweet Desdemona; some other time.\n  DESDEMONA. But shall\'t be shortly?\n  OTHELLO.                           The sooner, sweet, for you.\n  DESDEMONA. Shall\'t be tonight at supper?\n  OTHELLO.                                 No, not tonight.\n  DESDEMONA. Tomorrow dinner then?\n  OTHELLO.                         I shall not dine at home;\n    I meet the captains at the citadel.\n  DESDEMONA. Why then tomorrow night, or Tuesday morn,\n    On Tuesday noon, or night, on Wednesday morn.\n    I prithee, name the time, but let it not\n    Exceed three days. In faith, he\'s penitent;\n    And yet his trespass, in our common reason-\n    Save that, they say, the wars must make example\n    Out of their best- is not almost a fault  \n    To incur a private check. When shall he come?\n    Tell me, Othello. I wonder in my soul,\n    What you would ask me, that I should deny,\n    Or stand so mammering on. What? Michael Cassio,\n    That came awooing with you, and so many a time\n    When I have spoke of you dispraisingly\n    Hath ta\'en your part- to have so much to do\n    To bring him in! Trust me, I could do much-\n  OTHELLO. Prithee, no more. Let him come when he will;\n    I will deny thee nothing.\n  DESDEMONA.                  Why, this is not a boon;\n    \'Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves,\n    Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm,\n    Or sue to you to do a peculiar profit\n    To your own person. Nay, when I have a suit\n    Wherein I mean to touch your love indeed,\n    It shall be full of poise and difficult weight,\n    And fearful to be granted.\n  OTHELLO.                     I will deny thee nothing,\n    Whereon, I do beseech thee, grant me this,  \n    To leave me but a little to myself.\n  DESDEMONA. Shall I deny you? No. Farewell, my lord.\n  OTHELLO. Farewell, my Desdemona; I\'ll come to thee straight.\n  DESDEMONA. Emilia, come. Be as your fancies teach you;\n    Whate\'er you be, I am obedient.\n                                         Exeunt Desdemona and Emilia.\n  OTHELLO. Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul,\n    But I do love thee! and when I love thee not,\n    Chaos is come again.\n  IAGO. My noble lord-\n  OTHELLO.             What dost thou say, Iago?\n  IAGO. Did Michael Cassio, when you woo\'d my lady,\n    Know of your love?\n  OTHELLO. He did, from first to last. Why dost thou ask?\n  IAGO. But for a satisfaction of my thought;\n    No further harm.\n  OTHELLO.           Why of thy thought, Iago?\n  IAGO. I did not think he had been acquainted with her.\n  OTHELLO. O, yes, and went between us very oft.\n  IAGO. Indeed!  \n  OTHELLO. Indeed? ay, indeed. Discern\'st thou aught in that?\n    Is he not honest?\n  IAGO. Honest, my lord?\n  OTHELLO. Honest? Ay, honest.\n  IAGO. My lord, for aught I know.\n  OTHELLO. What dost thou think?\n  IAGO. Think, my lord?\n  OTHELLO. Think, my lord? By heaven, he echoes me,\n    As if there were some monster in his thought\n    Too hideous to be shown. Thou dost mean something.\n    I heard thee say even now, thou like\'st not that,\n    When Cassio left my wife. What didst not like?\n    And when I told thee he was of my counsel\n    In my whole course of wooing, thou criedst, "Indeed!"\n    And didst contract and purse thy brow together,\n    As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain\n    Some horrible conceit. If thou dost love me,\n    Show me thy thought.\n  IAGO. My lord, you know I love you.\n  OTHELLO.                            I think thou dost;  \n    And for I know thou\'rt full of love and honesty\n    And weigh\'st thy words before thou givest them breath,\n    Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more;\n    For such things in a false disloyal knave\n    Are tricks of custom; but in a man that\'s just\n    They\'re close dilations, working from the heart,\n    That passion cannot rule.\n  IAGO.                       For Michael Cassio,\n    I dare be sworn I think that he is honest.\n  OTHELLO. I think so too.\n  IAGO.                    Men should be what they seem;\n    Or those that be not, would they might seem none!\n  OTHELLO. Certain, men should be what they seem.\n  IAGO. Why then I think Cassio\'s an honest man.\n  OTHELLO. Nay, yet there\'s more in this.\n    I prithee, speak to me as to thy thinkings,\n    As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts\n    The worst of words.\n  IAGO.                 Good my lord, pardon me;\n    Though I am bound to every act of duty,  \n    I am not bound to that all slaves are free to.\n    Utter my thoughts? Why, say they are vile and false;\n    As where\'s that palace whereinto foul things\n    Sometimes intrude not? Who has a breast so pure,\n    But some uncleanly apprehensions\n    Keep leets and law-days, and in session sit\n    With meditations lawful?\n  OTHELLO. Thou dost conspire against thy friend, Iago,\n    If thou but think\'st him wrong\'d and makest his ear\n    A stranger to thy thoughts.\n  IAGO.                         I do beseech you-\n    Though I perchance am vicious in my guess,\n    As, I confess, it is my nature\'s plague\n    To spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy\n    Shapes faults that are not- that your wisdom yet,\n    From one that so imperfectly conceits,\n    Would take no notice, nor build yourself a trouble\n    Out of his scattering and unsure observance.\n    It were not for your quiet nor your good,\n    Nor for my manhood, honesty, or wisdom,  \n    To let you know my thoughts.\n  OTHELLO.                       What dost thou mean?\n  IAGO. Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,\n    Is the immediate jewel of their souls.\n    Who steals my purse steals trash; \'tis something, nothing;\n    \'Twas mine, \'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;\n    But he that filches from me my good name\n    Robs me of that which not enriches him\n    And makes me poor indeed.\n  OTHELLO. By heaven, I\'ll know thy thoughts.\n  IAGO. You cannot, if my heart were in your hand;\n    Nor shall not, whilst \'tis in my custody.\n  OTHELLO. Ha!\n  IAGO.        O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!\n    It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock\n    The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss\n    Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;\n    But O, what damned minutes tells he o\'er\n    Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!\n  OTHELLO. O misery!  \n  IAGO. Poor and content is rich, and rich enough;\n    But riches fineless is as poor as winter\n    To him that ever fears he shall be poor.\n    Good heaven, the souls of all my tribe defend\n    From jealousy!\n  OTHELLO.         Why, why is this?\n    Think\'st thou I\'ld make a life of jealousy,\n    To follow still the changes of the moon\n    With fresh suspicions? No! To be once in doubt\n    Is once to be resolved. Exchange me for a goat\n    When I shall turn the business of my soul\n    To such exsufflicate and blown surmises,\n    Matching thy inference. \'Tis not to make me jealous\n    To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,\n    Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well;\n    Where virtue is, these are more virtuous.\n    Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw\n    The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt;\n    For she had eyes and chose me. No, Iago,\n    I\'ll see before I doubt; when I doubt, prove;  \n    And on the proof, there is no more but this-\n    Away at once with love or jealousy!\n  IAGO. I am glad of it, for now I shall have reason\n    To show the love and duty that I bear you\n    With franker spirit. Therefore, as I am bound,\n    Receive it from me. I speak not yet of proof.\n    Look to your wife; observe her well with Cassio;\n    Wear your eye thus, not jealous nor secure.\n    I would not have your free and noble nature\n    Out of self-bounty be abused. Look to\'t.\n    I know our country disposition well;\n    In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks\n    They dare not show their husbands; their best conscience\n    Is not to leave\'t undone, but keep\'t unknown.\n  OTHELLO. Dost thou say so?\n  IAGO. She did deceive her father, marrying you;\n    And when she seem\'d to shake and fear your looks,\n    She loved them most.\n  OTHELLO.               And so she did.\n  IAGO.                                  Why, go to then.  \n    She that so young could give out such a seeming,\n    To seel her father\'s eyes up close as oak-\n    He thought \'twas witchcraft- but I am much to blame;\n    I humbly do beseech you of your pardon\n    For too much loving you.\n  OTHELLO.                   I am bound to thee forever.\n  IAGO. I see this hath a little dash\'d your spirits.\n  OTHELLO. Not a jot, not a jot.\n  IAGO.                          I\'faith, I fear it has.\n    I hope you will consider what is spoke\n    Comes from my love. But I do see you\'re moved;\n    I am to pray you not to strain my speech\n    To grosser issues nor to larger reach\n    Than to suspicion.\n  OTHELLO. I will not.\n  IAGO.                Should you do so, my lord,\n    My speech should fall into such vile success\n    Which my thoughts aim not at. Cassio\'s my worthy friend-\n    My lord, I see you\'re moved.\n  OTHELLO.                       No, not much moved.  \n    I do not think but Desdemona\'s honest.\n  IAGO. Long live she so! and long live you to think so!\n  OTHELLO. And yet, how nature erring from itself-\n  IAGO. Ay, there\'s the point, as- to be bold with you-\n    Not to affect many proposed matches\n    Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,\n    Whereto we see in all things nature tends-\n    Foh, one may smell in such a will most rank,\n    Foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural.\n    But pardon me. I do not in position\n    Distinctly speak of her; though I may fear,\n    Her will, recoiling to her better judgement,\n    May fall to match you with her country forms,\n    And happily repent.\n  OTHELLO.              Farewell, farewell.\n    If more thou dost perceive, let me know more;\n    Set on thy wife to observe. Leave me, Iago.\n  IAGO. [Going.] My lord, I take my leave.\n  OTHELLO. Why did I marry? This honest creature doubtless\n    Sees and knows more, much more, than he unfolds.  \n  IAGO. [Returning.] My lord, I would I might entreat your honor\n    To scan this thing no further; leave it to time.\n    Though it be fit that Cassio have his place,\n    For sure he fills it up with great ability,\n    Yet, if you please to hold him off awhile,\n    You shall by that perceive him and his means.\n    Note if your lady strain his entertainment\n    With any strong or vehement importunity;\n    Much will be seen in that. In the meantime,\n    Let me be thought too busy in my fears-\n    As worthy cause I have to fear I am-\n    And hold her free, I do beseech your honor.\n  OTHELLO. Fear not my government.\n  IAGO. I once more take my leave.                              Exit.\n  OTHELLO. This fellow\'s of exceeding honesty,\n    And knows all qualities, with a learned spirit,\n    Of human dealings. If I do prove her haggard,\n    Though that her jesses were my dear heartstrings,\n    I\'ld whistle her off and let her down the wind\n    To prey at fortune. Haply, for I am black  \n    And have not those soft parts of conversation\n    That chamberers have, or for I am declined\n    Into the vale of years- yet that\'s not much-\n    She\'s gone. I am abused, and my relief\n    Must be to loathe her. O curse of marriage,\n    That we can call these delicate creatures ours,\n    And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad,\n    And live upon the vapor of a dungeon,\n    Than keep a corner in the thing I love\n    For others\' uses. Yet, \'tis the plague of great ones:\n    Prerogatived are they less than the base;\n    \'Tis destiny unshunnable, like death.\n    Even then this forked plague is fated to us\n    When we do quicken. Desdemona comes:\n\n                    Re-enter Desdemona and Emilia.\n\n    If she be false, O, then heaven mocks itself!\n    I\'ll not believe\'t.\n  DESDEMONA.            How now, my dear Othello!  \n    Your dinner, and the generous islanders\n    By you invited, do attend your presence.\n  OTHELLO. I am to blame.\n  DESDEMONA.              Why do you speak so faintly?\n    Are you not well?\n  OTHELLO. I have a pain upon my forehead here.\n  DESDEMONA. Faith, that\'s with watching; \'twill away again.\n    Let me but bind it hard, within this hour\n    It will be well.\n  OTHELLO.           Your napkin is too little;\n            He puts the handkerchief from him, and she drops it.\n    Let it alone. Come, I\'ll go in with you.\n  DESDEMONA. I am very sorry that you are not well.\n                                        Exeunt Othello and Desdemona.\n  EMILIA. I am glad I have found this napkin;\n    This was her first remembrance from the Moor.\n    My wayward husband hath a hundred times\n    Woo\'d me to steal it; but she so loves the token,\n    For he conjured her she should ever keep it,\n    That she reserves it evermore about her  \n    To kiss and talk to. I\'ll have the work ta\'en out,\n    And give\'t Iago. What he will do with it\n    Heaven knows, not I;\n    I nothing but to please his fantasy.\n\n                            Re-enter Iago.\n\n  IAGO. How now, what do you here alone?\n  EMILIA. Do not you chide; I have a thing for you.\n  IAGO. A thing for me? It is a common thing-\n  EMILIA. Ha!\n  IAGO. To have a foolish wife.\n  EMILIA. O, is that all? What will you give me now\n    For that same handkerchief?\n  IAGO.                         What handkerchief?\n  EMILIA. What handkerchief?\n    Why, that the Moor first gave to Desdemona,\n    That which so often you did bid me steal.\n  IAGO. Hast stol\'n it from her?\n  EMILIA. No, faith; she let it drop by negligence,  \n    And, to the advantage, I being here took\'t up.\n    Look, here it is.\n  IAGO.               A good wench; give it me.\n  EMILIA. What will you do with\'t, that you have been so earnest\n    To have me filch it?\n  IAGO. [Snatching it.] Why, what is that to you?\n  EMILIA. If\'t be not for some purpose of import,\n    Give\'t me again. Poor lady, she\'ll run mad\n    When she shall lack it.\n  IAGO. Be not acknown on\'t; I have use for it.\n    Go, leave me.                                        Exit Emilia.\n    I will in Cassio\'s lodging lose this napkin,\n    And let him find it. Trifles light as air\n    Are to the jealous confirmations strong\n    As proofs of holy writ; this may do something.\n    The Moor already changes with my poison:\n    Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons,\n    Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,\n    But with a little act upon the blood\n    Burn like the mines of sulphur. I did say so.  \n    Look, where he comes!\n\n                          Re-enter Othello.\n\n                          Not poppy, nor mandragora,\n    Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,\n    Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep\n    Which thou owedst yesterday.\n  OTHELLO.                       Ha, ha, false to me?\n  IAGO. Why, how now, general! No more of that.\n  OTHELLO. Avaunt! be gone! Thou hast set me on the rack.\n    I swear \'tis better to be much abused\n    Than but to know\'t a little.\n  IAGO.                          How now, my lord?\n  OTHELLO. What sense had I of her stol\'n hours of lust?\n    I saw\'t not, thought it not, it harm\'d not me;\n    I slept the next night well, was free and merry;\n    I found not Cassio\'s kisses on her lips.\n    He that is robb\'d, not wanting what is stol\'n,\n    Let him not know\'t and he\'s not robb\'d at all.  \n  IAGO. I am sorry to hear this.\n  OTHELLO. I had been happy if the general camp,\n    Pioners and all, had tasted her sweet body,\n    So I had nothing known. O, now forever\n    Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content!\n    Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars\n    That make ambition virtue! O, farewell,\n    Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,\n    The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,\n    The royal banner, and all quality,\n    Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!\n    And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats\n    The immortal Jove\'s dread clamors counterfeit,\n    Farewell! Othello\'s occupation\'s gone!\n  IAGO. Is\'t possible, my lord?\n  OTHELLO. Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore;\n    Be sure of it. Give me the ocular proof;\n    Or, by the worth of man\'s eternal soul,\n    Thou hadst been better have been born a dog\n    Than answer my waked wrath!  \n  IAGO.                         Is\'t come to this?\n  OTHELLO. Make me to see\'t; or at the least so prove it,\n    That the probation bear no hinge nor loop\n    To hang a doubt on; or woe upon thy life!\n  IAGO. My noble lord-\n  OTHELLO. If thou dost slander her and torture me,\n    Never pray more; abandon all remorse;\n    On horror\'s head horrors accumulate;\n    Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amazed;\n    For nothing canst thou to damnation add\n    Greater than that.\n  IAGO.                O grace! O heaven defend me!\n    Are you a man? have you a soul or sense?\n    God be wi\' you; take mine office. O wretched fool,\n    That livest to make thine honesty a vice!\n    O monstrous world! Take note, take note, O world,\n    To be direct and honest is not safe.\n    I thank you for this profit, and from hence\n    I\'ll love no friend sith love breeds such offense.\n  OTHELLO. Nay, stay; thou shouldst be honest.  \n  IAGO. I should be wise; for honesty\'s a fool,\n    And loses that it works for.\n  OTHELLO.                       By the world,\n    I think my wife be honest, and think she is not;\n    I think that thou art just, and think thou art not.\n    I\'ll have some proof. Her name, that was as fresh\n    As Dian\'s visage, is now begrimed and black\n    As mine own face. If there be cords or knives,\n    Poison or fire, or suffocating streams,\n    I\'ll not endure it. Would I were satisfied!\n  IAGO. I see, sir, you are eaten up with passion;\n    I do repent me that I put it to you.\n    You would be satisfied?\n  OTHELLO.                  Would? Nay, I will.\n  IAGO. And may. But, how? how satisfied, my lord?\n    Would you, the supervisor, grossly gape on?\n    Behold her topp\'d?\n  OTHELLO.             Death and damnation! O!\n  IAGO. It were a tedious difficulty, I think,\n    To bring them to that prospect. Damn them then,  \n    If ever mortal eyes do see them bolster\n    More than their own! What then? how then?\n    What shall I say? Where\'s satisfaction?\n    It is impossible you should see this\n    Were they as prime as goats, as hot as monkeys,\n    As salt as wolves in pride, and fools as gross\n    As ignorance made drunk. But yet, I say,\n    If imputation and strong circumstances,\n    Which lead directly to the door of truth,\n    Will give you satisfaction, you may have\'t.\n  OTHELLO. Give me a living reason she\'s disloyal.\n  IAGO. I do not like the office;\n    But sith I am enter\'d in this cause so far,\n    Prick\'d to\'t by foolish honesty and love,\n    I will go on. I lay with Cassio lately\n    And, being troubled with a raging tooth,\n    I could not sleep.\n    There are a kind of men so loose of soul,\n    That in their sleeps will mutter their affairs;\n    One of this kind is Cassio.  \n    In sleep I heard him say, "Sweet Desdemona,\n    Let us be wary, let us hide our loves";\n    And then, sir, would he gripe and wring my hand,\n    Cry, "O sweet creature!" and then kiss me hard,\n    As if he pluck\'d up kisses by the roots,\n    That grew upon my lips; then laid his leg\n    Over my thigh, and sigh\'d and kiss\'d; and then\n    Cried, "Cursed fate that gave thee to the Moor!"\n  OTHELLO. O monstrous! monstrous!\n  IAGO.                            Nay, this was but his dream.\n  OTHELLO. But this denoted a foregone conclusion.\n    \'Tis a shrewd doubt, though it be but a dream.\n  IAGO. And this may help to thicken other proofs\n    That do demonstrate thinly.\n  OTHELLO.                      I\'ll tear her all to pieces.\n  IAGO. Nay, but be wise; yet we see nothing done;\n    She may be honest yet. Tell me but this;\n    Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief\n    Spotted with strawberries in your wife\'s hand?\n  OTHELLO. I gave her such a one; \'twas my first gift.  \n  IAGO. I know not that; but such a handkerchief-\n    I am sure it was your wife\'s- did I today\n    See Cassio wipe his beard with.\n  OTHELLO.                          If it be that-\n  IAGO. If it be that, or any that was hers,\n    It speaks against her with the other proofs.\n  OTHELLO. O, that the slave had forty thousand lives!\n    One is too poor, too weak for my revenge.\n    Now do I see \'tis true. Look here, Iago,\n    All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven.\n    \'Tis gone.\n    Arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow hell!\n    Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne\n    To tyrannous hate! Swell, bosom, with thy fraught,\n    For \'tis of aspics\' tongues!\n  IAGO.                          Yet be content.\n  OTHELLO. O, blood, blood, blood!\n  IAGO. Patience, I say; your mind perhaps may change.\n  OTHELLO. Never, Iago. Like to the Pontic Sea,\n    Whose icy current and compulsive course  \n    Ne\'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on\n    To the Propontic and the Hellespont,\n    Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,\n    Shall ne\'er look back, ne\'er ebb to humble love,\n    Till that a capable and wide revenge\n    Swallow them up. Now, by yond marble heaven,\n    In the due reverence of a sacred vow                      Kneels.\n    I here engage my words.\n  IAGO.                     Do not rise yet.                  Kneels.\n    Witness, you ever-burning lights above,\n    You elements that clip us round about,\n    Witness that here Iago doth give up\n    The execution of his wit, hands, heart,\n    To wrong\'d Othello\'s service! Let him command,\n    And to obey shall be in me remorse,\n    What bloody business ever.                             They rise.\n  OTHELLO.                     I greet thy love,\n    Not with vain thanks, but with acceptance bounteous,\n    And will upon the instant put thee to\'t:\n    Within these three days let me hear thee say  \n    That Cassio\'s not alive.\n  IAGO. My friend is dead, \'tis done at your request;\n    But let her live.\n  OTHELLO.            Damn her, lewd minx! O, damn her!\n    Come, go with me apart; I will withdraw,\n    To furnish me with some swift means of death\n    For the fair devil. Now art thou my lieutenant.\n  IAGO. I am your own forever.                                Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nBefore the castle.\n\nEnter Desdemona, Emilia, and Clown.\n\n  DESDEMONA. Do you know, sirrah, where Lieutenant Cassio lies?\n  CLOWN. I dare not say he lies anywhere.\n  DESDEMONA. Why, man?\n  CLOWN. He\'s a soldier; and for one to say a soldier lies, is\n    stabbing.\n  DESDEMONA. Go to! Where lodges he?\n  CLOWN. To tell you where he lodges, is to tell you where I lie.\n  DESDEMONA. Can anything be made of this?\n  CLOWN. I know not where he lodges, and for me to devise a lodging,\n    and say he lies here or he lies there, were to lie in mine own\n    throat.\n  DESDEMONA. Can you inquire him out and be edified by report?\n  CLOWN. I will catechize the world for him; that is, make questions\n    and by them answer.\n  DESDEMONA. Seek him, bid him come hither. Tell him I have moved my\n    lord on his behalf and hope all will be well.\n  CLOWN. To do this is within the compass of man\'s wit, and therefore  \n    I will attempt the doing it.                                Exit.\n  DESDEMONA. Where should I lose that handkerchief, Emilia?\n  EMILIA. I know not, madam.\n  DESDEMONA. Believe me, I had rather have lost my purse\n    Full of crusadoes; and, but my noble Moor\n    Is true of mind and made of no such baseness\n    As jealous creatures are, it were enough\n    To put him to ill thinking.\n  EMILIA.                       Is he not jealous?\n  DESDEMONA. Who, he? I think the sun where he was born\n    Drew all such humors from him.\n  EMILIA.                          Look, where he comes.\n  DESDEMONA. I will not leave him now till Cassio\n    Be call\'d to him.\n\n                            Enter Othello.\n\n                      How is\'t with you, my lord?\n  OTHELLO. Well, my good lady. [Aside.] O, hardness to dissemble!\n    How do you, Desdemona?  \n  DESDEMONA.               Well, my good lord.\n  OTHELLO. Give me your hand. This hand is moist, my lady.\n  DESDEMONA. It yet has felt no age nor known no sorrow.\n  OTHELLO. This argues fruitfulness and liberal heart;\n    Hot, hot, and moist. This hand of yours requires\n    A sequester from liberty, fasting, and prayer,\n    Much castigation, exercise devout,\n    For here\'s a young and sweating devil here\n    That commonly rebels. \'Tis a good hand,\n    A frank one.\n  DESDEMONA. You may, indeed, say so;\n    For \'twas that hand that gave away my heart.\n  OTHELLO. A liberal hand. The hearts of old gave hands;\n    But our new heraldry is hands, not hearts.\n  DESDEMONA. I cannot speak of this. Come now, your promise.\n  OTHELLO. What promise, chuck?\n  DESDEMONA. I have sent to bid Cassio come speak with you.\n  OTHELLO. I have a salt and sorry rheum offends me;\n    Lend me thy handkerchief.\n  DESDEMONA. Here, my lord.  \n  OTHELLO. That which I gave you.\n  DESDEMONA. I have it not about me.\n  OTHELLO. Not?\n  DESDEMONA. No, faith, my lord.\n  OTHELLO. That\'s a fault. That handkerchief\n    Did an Egyptian to my mother give;\n    She was a charmer, and could almost read\n    The thoughts of people. She told her, while she kept it,\n    \'Twould make her amiable and subdue my father\n    Entirely to her love, but if she lost it\n    Or made a gift of it, my father\'s eye\n    Should hold her loathed and his spirits should hunt\n    After new fancies. She dying gave it me,\n    And bid me, when my fate would have me wive,\n    To give it her. I did so, and take heed on\'t;\n    Make it a darling like your precious eye;\n    To lose\'t or give\'t away were such perdition\n    As nothing else could match.\n  DESDEMONA.                     Is\'t possible?\n  OTHELLO. \'Tis true; there\'s magic in the web of it.  \n    A sibyl, that had number\'d in the world\n    The sun to course two hundred compasses,\n    In her prophetic fury sew\'d the work;\n    The worms were hallow\'d that did breed the silk,\n    And it was dyed in mummy which the skillful\n    Conserved of maiden\'s hearts.\n  DESDEMONA.                      Indeed! is\'t true?\n  OTHELLO. Most veritable; therefore look to\'t well.\n  DESDEMONA. Then would to God that I had never seen\'t!\n  OTHELLO. Ha! wherefore?\n  DESDEMONA. Why do you speak so startingly and rash?\n  OTHELLO. Is\'t lost? is\'t gone? speak, is it out o\' the way?\n  DESDEMONA. Heaven bless us!\n  OTHELLO. Say you?\n  DESDEMONA. It is not lost; but what an if it were?\n  OTHELLO. How?\n  DESDEMONA. I say, it is not lost.\n  OTHELLO. Fetch\'t, let me see it.\n  DESDEMONA. Why, so I can, sir, but I will not now.\n    This is a trick to put me from my suit.  \n    Pray you, let Cassio be received again.\n  OTHELLO. Fetch me the handkerchief, my mind misgives.\n  DESDEMONA. Come, come,\n    You\'ll never meet a more sufficient man.\n  OTHELLO. The handkerchief!\n  DESDEMONA.                 I pray, talk me of Cassio.\n  OTHELLO. The handkerchief!\n  DESDEMONA.                 A man that all his time\n    Hath founded his good fortunes on your love,\n    Shared dangers with you-\n  OTHELLO. The handkerchief!\n  DESDEMONA. In sooth, you are to blame.\n  OTHELLO. Away!                                                Exit.\n  EMILIA. Is not this man jealous?\n  DESDEMONA. I ne\'er saw this before.\n    Sure there\'s some wonder in this handkerchief;\n    I am most unhappy in the loss of it.\n  EMILIA. \'Tis not a year or two shows us a man.\n    They are all but stomachs and we all but food;\n    They eat us hungerly, and when they are full  \n    They belch us. Look you! Cassio and my husband.\n\n                        Enter Cassio and Iago.\n\n  IAGO. There is no other way; \'tis she must do\'t.\n    And, lo, the happiness! Go and importune her.\n  DESDEMONA. How now, good Cassio! What\'s the news with you?\n  CASSIO. Madam, my former suit: I do beseech you\n    That by your virtuous means I may again\n    Exist and be a member of his love\n    Whom I with all the office of my heart\n    Entirely honor. I would not be delay\'d.\n    If my offense be of such mortal kind\n    That nor my service past nor present sorrows\n    Nor purposed merit in futurity\n    Can ransom me into his love again,\n    But to know so must be my benefit;\n    So shall I clothe me in a forced content\n    And shut myself up in some other course\n    To Fortune\'s alms.  \n  DESDEMONA.           Alas, thrice-gentle Cassio!\n    My advocation is not now in tune;\n    My lord is not my lord, nor should I know him\n    Were he in favor as in humor alter\'d.\n    So help me every spirit sanctified,\n    As I have spoken for you all my best\n    And stood within the blank of his displeasure\n    For my free speech! You must awhile be patient.\n    What I can do I will; and more I will\n    Than for myself I dare. Let that suffice you.\n  IAGO. Is my lord angry?\n  EMILIA.                 He went hence but now,\n    And certainly in strange unquietness.\n  IAGO. Can he be angry? I have seen the cannon,\n    When it hath blown his ranks into the air\n    And, like the devil, from his very arm\n    Puff\'d his own brother. And can he be angry?\n    Something of moment then. I will go meet him.\n    There\'s matter in\'t indeed if he be angry.\n  DESDEMONA. I prithee, do so.                             Exit Iago.  \n                               Something sure of state,\n    Either from Venice or some unhatch\'d practice\n    Made demonstrable here in Cyprus to him,\n    Hath puddled his clear spirit; and in such cases\n    Men\'s natures wrangle with inferior things,\n    Though great ones are their object. \'Tis even so;\n    For let our finger ache, and it indues\n    Our other healthful members even to that sense\n    Of pain. Nay, we must think men are not gods,\n    Nor of them look for such observancy\n    As fits the bridal. Beshrew me much, Emilia,\n    I was, unhandsome warrior as I am,\n    Arraigning his unkindness with my soul;\n    But now I find I had suborn\'d the witness,\n    And he\'s indicted falsely.\n  EMILIA. Pray heaven it be state matters, as you think,\n    And no conception nor no jealous toy\n    Concerning you.\n  DESDEMONA. Alas the day, I never gave him cause!\n  EMILIA. But jealous souls will not be answer\'d so;  \n    They are not ever jealous for the cause,\n    But jealous for they are jealous. \'Tis a monster\n    Begot upon itself, born on itself.\n  DESDEMONA. Heaven keep that monster from Othello\'s mind!\n  EMILIA. Lady, amen.\n  DESDEMONA. I will go seek him. Cassio, walk hereabout.\n    If I do find him fit, I\'ll move your suit,\n    And seek to effect it to my uttermost.\n  CASSIO. I humbly thank your ladyship.\n                                         Exeunt Desdemona and Emilia.\n\n                            Enter Bianca.\n\n  BIANCA. Save you, friend Cassio!\n  CASSIO.                          What make you from home?\n    How is it with you, my most fair Bianca?\n    I\'faith, sweet love, I was coming to your house.\n  BIANCA. And I was going to your lodging, Cassio.\n    What, keep a week away? seven days and nights?\n    Eight score eight hours? and lovers\' absent hours,  \n    More tedious than the dial eight score times?\n    O weary reckoning!\n  CASSIO.              Pardon me, Bianca.\n    I have this while with leaden thoughts been press\'d;\n    But I shall in a more continuate time\n    Strike off this score of absence. Sweet Bianca,\n                                  Gives her Desdemona\'s handkerchief.\n    Take me this work out.\n  BIANCA.                  O Cassio, whence came this?\n    This is some token from a newer friend.\n    To the felt absence now I feel a cause.\n    Is\'t come to this? Well, well.\n  CASSIO.                          Go to, woman!\n    Throw your vile guesses in the devil\'s teeth,\n    From whence you have them. You are jealous now\n    That this is from some mistress, some remembrance.\n    No, by my faith, Bianca.\n  BIANCA.                    Why, whose is it?\n  CASSIO. I know not, sweet. I found it in my chamber.\n    I like the work well. Ere it be demanded-  \n    As like enough it will- I\'ld have it copied.\n    Take it, and do\'t; and leave me for this time.\n  BIANCA. Leave you! wherefore?\n  CASSIO. I do attend here on the general;\n    And think it no addition, nor my wish,\n    To have him see me woman\'d.\n  BIANCA.                       Why, I pray you?\n  CASSIO. Not that I love you not.\n  BIANCA.                          But that you do not love me.\n    I pray you, bring me on the way a little,\n    And say if I shall see you soon at night.\n  CASSIO. \'Tis but a little way that I can bring you,\n    For I attend here, but I\'ll see you soon.\n  BIANCA. \'Tis very good; I must be circumstanced.            Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nCyprus. Before the castle.\n\nEnter Othello and Iago.\n\n  IAGO. Will you think so?\n  OTHELLO.                 Think so, Iago?\n  IAGO.                                    What,\n    To kiss in private?\n  OTHELLO.              An unauthorized kiss.\n  IAGO. Or to be naked with her friend in bed\n    An hour or more, not meaning any harm?\n  OTHELLO. Naked in bed, Iago, and not mean harm!\n    It is hypocrisy against the devil.\n    They that mean virtuously and yet do so,\n    The devil their virtue tempts and they tempt heaven.\n  IAGO. So they do nothing, \'tis a venial slip.\n    But if I give my wife a handkerchief-\n  OTHELLO. What then?\n  IAGO. Why, then, \'tis hers, my lord, and being hers,\n    She may, I think, bestow\'t on any man.\n  OTHELLO. She is protectress of her honor too.  \n    May she give that?\n  IAGO. Her honor is an essence that\'s not seen;\n    They have it very oft that have it not.\n    But for the handkerchief-\n  OTHELLO. By heaven, I would most gladly have forgot it.\n    Thou said\'st- O, it comes o\'er my memory,\n    As doth the raven o\'er the infected house,\n    Boding to all- he had my handkerchief.\n  IAGO. Ay, what of that?\n  OTHELLO.                That\'s not so good now.\n  IAGO.                                           What,\n    If I had said I had seen him do you wrong?\n    Or heard him say- as knaves be such abroad,\n    Who having, by their own importunate suit,\n    Or voluntary dotage of some mistress,\n    Convinced or supplied them, cannot choose\n    But they must blab-\n  OTHELLO.              Hath he said anything?\n  IAGO. He hath, my lord; but be you well assured,\n    No more than he\'ll unswear.  \n  OTHELLO.                      What hath he said?\n  IAGO. Faith, that he did- I know not what he did.\n  OTHELLO. What? what?\n  IAGO. Lie-\n  OTHELLO. With her?\n  IAGO.              With her, on her, what you will.\n  OTHELLO. Lie with her! lie on her! We say lie on her, when they\n    belie her. Lie with her! \'Zounds, that\'s fulsome! Handkerchief-\n    confessions- handkerchief! To confess and be hanged for his labor-\n    first, to be hanged, and then to confess. I tremble at it.\n    Nature would not invest herself in such shadowing passion without\n    some instruction. It is not words that shakes me thus. Pish!\n    Noses, ears, and lips. Is\'t possible? Confess? Handkerchief? O\n    devil!\n                                                   Falls in a trance.\n  IAGO. Work on,\n    My medicine, work! Thus credulous fools are caught,\n    And many worthy and chaste dames even thus,\n    All guiltless, meet reproach. What, ho! My lord!\n    My lord, I say! Othello!  \n\n                            Enter Cassio.\n\n                             How now, Cassio!\n  CASSIO. What\'s the matter?\n  IAGO. My lord is fall\'n into an epilepsy.\n    This is his second fit; he had one yesterday.\n  CASSIO. Rub him about the temples.\n  IAGO.                              No, forbear;\n    The lethargy must have his quiet course.\n    If not, he foams at mouth, and by and by\n    Breaks out to savage madness. Look, he stirs.\n    Do you withdraw yourself a little while,\n    He will recover straight. When he is gone,\n    I would on great occasion speak with you.            Exit Cassio.\n    How is it, general? Have you not hurt your head?\n  OTHELLO. Dost thou mock me?\n  IAGO.                       I mock you? No, by heaven.\n    Would you would bear your fortune like a man!\n  OTHELLO. A horned man\'s a monster and a beast.  \n  IAGO. There\'s many a beast then in a populous city,\n    And many a civil monster.\n  OTHELLO. Did he confess it?\n  IAGO.                       Good sir, be a man;\n    Think every bearded fellow that\'s but yoked\n    May draw with you. There\'s millions now alive\n    That nightly lie in those unproper beds\n    Which they dare swear peculiar. Your case is better.\n    O, \'tis the spite of hell, the fiend\'s arch-mock,\n    To lip a wanton in a secure couch,\n    And to suppose her chaste! No, let me know,\n    And knowing what I am, I know what she shall be.\n  OTHELLO. O, thou art wise; \'tis certain.\n  IAGO.                                    Stand you awhile apart,\n    Confine yourself but in a patient list.\n    Whilst you were here o\'erwhelmed with your grief-\n    A passion most unsuiting such a man-\n    Cassio came hither. I shifted him away,\n    And laid good \'scuse upon your ecstasy;\n    Bade him anon return and here speak with me  \n    The which he promised. Do but encave yourself\n    And mark the fleers, the gibes, and notable scorns,\n    That dwell in every region of his face;\n    For I will make him tell the tale anew,\n    Where, how, how oft, how long ago, and when\n    He hath and is again to cope your wife.\n    I say, but mark his gesture. Marry, patience,\n    Or I shall say you are all in all in spleen,\n    And nothing of a man.\n  OTHELLO.                Dost thou hear, Iago?\n    I will be found most cunning in my patience;\n    But (dost thou hear?) most bloody.\n  IAGO.                                That\'s not amiss;\n    But yet keep time in all. Will you withdraw?\n                                                     Othello retires.\n    Now will I question Cassio of Bianca,\n    A housewife that by selling her desires\n    Buys herself bread and clothes. It is a creature\n    That dotes on Cassio, as \'tis the strumpet\'s plague\n    To beguile many and be beguiled by one.  \n    He, when he hears of her, cannot refrain\n    From the excess of laughter. Here he comes.\n\n                           Re-enter Cassio.\n\n    As he shall smile, Othello shall go mad;\n    And his unbookish jealousy must construe\n    Poor Cassio\'s smiles, gestures, and light behavior\n    Quite in the wrong. How do you now, lieutenant?\n  CASSIO. The worser that you give me the addition\n    Whose want even kills me.\n  IAGO. Ply Desdemona well, and you are sure on\'t.\n    Now, if this suit lay in Bianco\'s power,\n    How quickly should you speed!\n  CASSIO.                         Alas, poor caitiff!\n  OTHELLO. Look, how he laughs already!\n  IAGO. I never knew a woman love man so.\n  CASSIO. Alas, poor rogue! I think, i\'faith, she loves me.\n  OTHELLO. Now he denies it faintly and laughs it out.\n  IAGO. Do you hear, Cassio?  \n  OTHELLO.                   Now he importunes him\n    To tell it o\'er. Go to; well said, well said.\n  IAGO. She gives it out that you shall marry her.\n    Do you intend it?\n  CASSIO. Ha, ha, ha!\n  OTHELLO. Do you triumph, Roman? Do you triumph?\n  CASSIO. I marry her! What? A customer! I prithee, bear some charity\n    to my wit; do not think it so unwholesome. Ha, ha, ha!\n  OTHELLO. So, so, so, so. They laugh that win.\n  IAGO. Faith, the cry goes that you shall marry her.\n  CASSIO. Prithee, say true.\n  IAGO. I am a very villain else.\n  OTHELLO. Have you scored me? Well.\n  CASSIO. This is the monkey\'s own giving out. She is persuaded I\n    will marry her, out of her own love and flattery, not out of my\n    promise.\n  OTHELLO. Iago beckons me; now he begins the story.\n  CASSIO. She was here even now; she haunts me in every place. I was\n    the other day talking on the sea bank with certain Venetians, and\n    thither comes the bauble, and, by this hand, she falls me thus  \n    about my neck-\n  OTHELLO. Crying, "O dear Cassio!" as it were; his gesture imports\n    it.\n  CASSIO. So hangs and lolls and weeps upon me; so hales and pulls\n    me. Ha, ha, ha!\n  OTHELLO. Now he tells how she plucked him to my chamber. O, I see\n    that nose of yours, but not that dog I shall throw it to.\n  CASSIO. Well, I must leave her company.\n  IAGO. Before me! look where she comes.\n  CASSIO. \'Tis such another fitchew! marry, a perfumed one.\n\n                            Enter Bianca.\n\n    What do you mean by this haunting of me?\n  BIANCA. Let the devil and his dam haunt you! What did you mean by\n    that same handkerchief you gave me even now? I was a fine fool to\n    take it. I must take out the work? A likely piece of work that\n    you should find it in your chamber and not know who left it\n    there! This is some minx\'s token, and I must take out the work?\n    There, give it your hobbyhorse. Wheresoever you had it, I\'ll take  \n    out no work on\'t.\n  CASSIO. How now, my sweet Bianca! how now! how now!\n  OTHELLO. By heaven, that should be my handkerchief!\n  BIANCA. An you\'ll come to supper tonight, you may; an you will not,\n    come when you are next prepared for.                        Exit.\n  IAGO. After her, after her.\n  CASSIO. Faith, I must; she\'ll rail i\' the street else.\n  IAGO. Will you sup there?\n  CASSIO. Faith, I intend so.\n  IAGO. Well, I may chance to see you, for I would very fain speak\n    with you.\n  CASSIO. Prithee, come; will you?\n  IAGO. Go to; say no more.                              Exit Cassio.\n  OTHELLO. [Advancing.] How shall I murther him, Iago?\n  IAGO. Did you perceive how he laughed at his vice?\n  OTHELLO. O Iago!\n  IAGO. And did you see the handkerchief?\n  OTHELLO. Was that mine?\n  IAGO. Yours, by this hand. And to see how he prizes the foolish\n    woman your wife! She gave it him, and he hath given it his whore.  \n  OTHELLO. I would have him nine years akilling. A fine woman! a fair\n    woman! a sweet woman!\n  IAGO. Nay, you must forget that.\n  OTHELLO. Ay, let her rot, and perish, and be damned tonight, for\n    she shall not live. No, my heart is turned to stone; I strike it,\n    and it hurts my hand. O, the world hath not a sweeter creature.\n    She might lie by an emperor\'s side, and command him tasks.\n  IAGO. Nay, that\'s not your way.\n  OTHELLO. Hang her! I do but say what she is. So delicate with her\n    needle, an admirable musician. O, she will sing the savageness\n    out of a bear. Of so high and plenteous wit and invention-\n  IAGO. She\'s the worse for all this.\n  OTHELLO. O, a thousand, a thousand times. And then, of so gentle a\n    condition!\n  IAGO. Ay, too gentle.\n  OTHELLO. Nay, that\'s certain. But yet the pity of it, Iago!\n    O Iago, the pity of it, Iago!\n  IAGO. If you are so fond over her iniquity, give her patent to\n    offend, for, if it touch not you, it comes near nobody.\n  OTHELLO. I will chop her into messes. Cuckold me!  \n  IAGO. O, \'tis foul in her.\n  OTHELLO. With mine officer!\n  IAGO. That\'s fouler.\n  OTHELLO. Get me some poison, Iago, this night. I\'ll not expostulate\n    with her, lest her body and beauty unprovide my mind again. This\n    night, Iago.\n  IAGO. Do it not with poison, strangle her in her bed, even the bed\n    she hath contaminated.\n  OTHELLO. Good, good, the justice of it pleases, very good.\n  IAGO. And for Cassio, let me be his undertaker. You shall hear more\n    by midnight.\n  OTHELLO. Excellent good. [A trumpet within.] What trumpet is that\n    same?\n  IAGO. Something from Venice, sure. \'Tis Lodovico\n    Come from the Duke. And, see your wife is with him.\n\n              Enter Lodovico, Desdemona, and Attendants.\n\n  LODOVICO. God save the worthy general!\n  OTHELLO.                               With all my heart, sir.  \n  LODOVICO. The Duke and Senators of Venice greet you.\n                                                  Gives him a letter.\n  OTHELLO. I kiss the instrument of their pleasures.\n                                         Opens the letter, and reads.\n  DESDEMONA. And what\'s the news, good cousin Lodovico?\n  IAGO. I am very glad to see you, signior;\n    Welcome to Cyprus.\n  LODOVICO. I thank you. How does Lieutenant Cassio?\n  IAGO. Lives, sir.\n  DESDEMONA. Cousin, there\'s fall\'n between him and my lord\n    An unkind breech; but you shall make all well.\n  OTHELLO. Are you sure of that?\n  DESDEMONA. My lord?\n  OTHELLO. [Reads.] "This fail you not to do, as you will-"\n  LODOVICO. He did not call; he\'s busy in the paper.\n    Is there division \'twixt my lord and Cassio?\n  DESDEMONA. A most unhappy one. I would do much\n    To atone them, for the love I bear to Cassio.\n  OTHELLO. Fire and brimstone!\n  DESDEMONA. My lord?  \n  OTHELLO. Are you wise?\n  DESDEMONA. What, is he angry?\n  LODOVICO.                     May be the letter moved him;\n    For, as I think, they do command him home,\n    Deputing Cassio in his government.\n  DESDEMONA. By my troth, I am glad on\'t.\n  OTHELLO.                                Indeed!\n  DESDEMONA.                                      My lord?\n  OTHELLO. I am glad to see you mad.\n  DESDEMONA.                         Why, sweet Othello?\n  OTHELLO. Devil!                                        Strikes her.\n  DESDEMONA. I have not deserved this.\n  LODOVICO. My lord, this would not be believed in Venice,\n    Though I should swear I saw\'t. \'Tis very much.\n    Make her amends; she weeps.\n  OTHELLO.                      O devil, devil!\n    If that the earth could teem with woman\'s tears,\n    Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.\n    Out of my sight!\n  DESDEMONA. [Going.] I will not stay to offend you.  \n  LODOVICO. Truly, an obedient lady.\n    I do beseech your lordship, call her back.\n  OTHELLO. Mistress!\n  DESDEMONA. My lord?\n  OTHELLO. What would you with her, sir?\n  LODOVICO.                              Who, I, my lord?\n  OTHELLO. Ay, you did wish that I would make her turn.\n    Sir, she can turn and turn, and yet go on,\n    And turn again; and she can weep, sir, weep;\n    And she\'s obedient, as you say, obedient,\n    Very obedient. Proceed you in your tears.\n    Concerning this, sir- O well-painted passion!-\n    I am commanded home. Get you away;\n    I\'ll send for you anon. Sir, I obey the mandate,\n    And will return to Venice. Hence, avaunt!\n                                                      Exit Desdemona.\n    Cassio shall have my place. And, sir, tonight,\n    I do entreat that we may sup together.\n    You are welcome, sir, to Cyprus. Goats and monkeys!\n     Exit.  \n  LODOVICO. Is this the noble Moor whom our full Senate\n    Call all in all sufficient? This the nature\n    Whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue\n    The shot of accident nor dart of chance\n    Could neither graze nor pierce?\n  IAGO.                             He is much changed.\n  LODOVICO. Are his wits safe? Is he not light of brain?\n  IAGO. He\'s that he is. I may not breathe my censure\n    What he might be: if what he might he is not,\n    I would to heaven he were!\n  LODOVICO.                    What, strike his wife!\n  IAGO. Faith, that was not so well; yet would I knew\n    That stroke would prove the worst!\n  LODOVICO.                            Is it his use?\n    Or did the letters work upon his blood,\n    And new create this fault?\n  IAGO.                        Alas, alas!\n    It is not honesty in me to speak\n    What I have seen and known. You shall observe him,\n    And his own courses will denote him so  \n    That I may save my speech. Do but go after,\n    And mark how he continues.\n  LODOVICO. I am sorry that I am deceived in him.             Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nA room in the castle.\n\nEnter Othello and Emilia.\n\n  OTHELLO. You have seen nothing, then?\n  EMILIA. Nor ever heard, nor ever did suspect.\n  OTHELLO. Yes, you have seen Cassio and she together.\n  EMILIA. But then I saw no harm, and then I heard\n    Each syllable that breath made up between them.\n  OTHELLO. What, did they never whisper?\n  EMILIA.                                Never, my lord.\n  OTHELLO. Nor send you out o\' the way?\n  EMILIA. Never.\n  OTHELLO. To fetch her fan, her gloves, her mask, nor nothing?\n  EMILIA. Never, my lord.\n  OTHELLO. That\'s strange.\n  EMILIA. I durst, my lord, to wager she is honest,\n    Lay down my soul at stake. If you think other,\n    Remove your thought; it doth abuse your bosom.\n    If any wretch have put this in your head,\n    Let heaven requite it with the serpent\'s curse!  \n    For if she be not honest, chaste, and true,\n    There\'s no man happy; the purest of their wives\n    Is foul as slander.\n  OTHELLO.              Bid her come hither; go.         Exit Emilia.\n    She says enough; yet she\'s a simple bawd\n    That cannot say as much. This is a subtle whore,\n    A closet lock and key of villainous secrets.\n    And yet she\'ll kneel and pray; I have seen her do\'t.\n\n                     Enter Desdemona with Emilia.\n\n  DESDEMONA. My lord, what is your will?\n  OTHELLO.                               Pray, chuck, come hither.\n  DESDEMONA. What is your pleasure?\n  OTHELLO.                          Let me see your eyes;\n    Look in my face.\n  DESDEMONA.         What horrible fancy\'s this?\n  OTHELLO. [To Emilia.] Some of your function, mistress,\n    Leave procreants alone and shut the door;\n    Cough, or cry "hem," if anybody come.  \n    Your mystery, your mystery; nay, dispatch.           Exit Emilia.\n  DESDEMONA. Upon my knees, what doth your speech import?\n    I understand a fury in your words,\n    But not the words.\n  OTHELLO. Why, what art thou?\n  DESDEMONA. Your wife, my lord, your true and loyal wife.\n  OTHELLO. Come, swear it, damn thyself;\n    Lest, being like one of heaven, the devils themselves\n    Should fear to seize thee. Therefore be double-damn\'d;\n    Swear thou art honest.\n  DESDEMONA.               Heaven doth truly know it.\n  OTHELLO. Heaven truly knows that thou art false as hell.\n  DESDEMONA. To whom, my lord? with whom? how am I false?\n  OTHELLO. O Desdemona! Away! away! away!\n  DESDEMONA. Alas the heavy day! Why do you weep?\n    Am I the motive of these tears, my lord?\n    If haply you my father do suspect\n    An instrument of this your calling back,\n    Lay not your blame on me. If you have lost him,\n    Why, I have lost him too.  \n  OTHELLO.                    Had it pleased heaven\n    To try me with affliction, had they rain\'d\n    All kinds of sores and shames on my bare head,\n    Steep\'d me in poverty to the very lips,\n    Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes,\n    I should have found in some place of my soul\n    A drop of patience; but, alas, to make me\n    A fixed figure for the time of scorn\n    To point his slow unmoving finger at!\n    Yet could I bear that too, well, very well;\n    But there, where I have garner\'d up my heart,\n    Where either I must live or bear no life;\n    The fountain from the which my current runs,\n    Or else dries up; to be discarded thence!\n    Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads\n    To knot and gender in! Turn thy complexion there,\n    Patience, thou young and rose-lipp\'d cherubin,\n    Ay, there, look grim as hell!\n  DESDEMONA. I hope my noble lord esteems me honest.\n  OTHELLO. O, ay, as summer flies are in the shambles,  \n    That quicken even with blowing. O thou weed,\n    Who art so lovely fair and smell\'st so sweet\n    That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne\'er been born!\n  DESDEMONA. Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?\n  OTHELLO. Was this fair paper, this most goodly book,\n    Made to write "whore" upon? What committed?\n    Committed? O thou public commoner!\n    I should make very forges of my cheeks,\n    That would to cinders burn up modesty,\n    Did I but speak thy deeds. What committed!\n    Heaven stops the nose at it, and the moon winks;\n    The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets,\n    Is hush\'d within the hollow mine of earth,\n    And will not hear it. What committed?\n    Impudent strumpet!\n  DESDEMONA.           By heaven, you do me wrong.\n  OTHELLO. Are not you a strumpet?\n  DESDEMONA.                       No, as I am a Christian.\n    If to preserve this vessel for my lord\n    From any other foul unlawful touch  \n    Be not to be a strumpet, I am none.\n  OTHELLO. What, not a whore?\n  DESDEMONA.                  No, as I shall be saved.\n  OTHELLO. Is\'t possible?\n  DESDEMONA. O, heaven forgive us!\n  OTHELLO.                         I cry you mercy then;\n    I took you for that cunning whore of Venice\n    That married with Othello. [Raises his voice.] You, mistress,\n    That have the office opposite to Saint Peter,\n    And keep the gate of hell!\n\n                           Re-enter Emilia.\n\n                               You, you, ay, you!\n    We have done our course; there\'s money for your pains.\n    I pray you, turn the key, and keep our counsel.             Exit.\n  EMILIA. Alas, what does this gentleman conceive?\n    How do you, madam? How do you, my good lady?\n  DESDEMONA. Faith, half asleep.\n  EMILIA. Good madam, what\'s the matter with my lord?  \n  DESDEMONA. With who?\n  EMILIA. Why, with my lord, madam.\n  DESDEMONA. Who is thy lord?\n  EMILIA.                     He that is yours, sweet lady.\n  DESDEMONA. I have none. Do not talk to me, Emilia;\n    I cannot weep, nor answer have I none\n    But what should go by water. Prithee, tonight\n    Lay on my bed my wedding sheets. Remember,\n    And call thy husband hither.\n  EMILIA.                        Here\'s a change indeed!\n     Exit.\n  DESDEMONA. \'Tis meet I should be used so, very meet.\n    How have I been behaved, that he might stick\n    The small\'st opinion on my least misuse?\n\n                      Re-enter Emilia with Iago.\n\n  IAGO. What is your pleasure, madam? How is\'t with you?\n  DESDEMONA. I cannot tell. Those that do teach young babes\n    Do it with gentle means and easy tasks.  \n    He might have chid me so, for in good faith,\n    I am a child to chiding.\n  IAGO.                      What\'s the matter, lady?\n  EMILIA. Alas, Iago, my lord hath so bewhored her,\n    Thrown such despite and heavy terms upon her,\n    As true hearts cannot bear.\n  DESDEMONA. Am I that name, Iago?\n  IAGO.                            What name, fair lady?\n  DESDEMONA. Such as she says my lord did say I was.\n  EMILIA. He call\'d her whore; a beggar in his drink\n    Could not have laid such terms upon his callet.\n  IAGO. Why did he so?\n  DESDEMONA. I do not know; I am sure I am none such.\n  IAGO. Do not weep, do not weep. Alas the day!\n  EMILIA. Hath she forsook so many noble matches,\n    Her father and her country and her friends,\n    To be call\'d whore? Would it not make one weep?\n  DESDEMONA. It is my wretched fortune.\n  IAGO.                                 Beshrew him for\'t!\n    How comes this trick upon him?  \n  DESDEMONA.                       Nay, heaven doth know.\n  EMILIA. I will be hang\'d, if some eternal villain,\n    Some busy and insinuating rogue,\n    Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office,\n    Have not devised this slander; I\'ll be hang\'d else.\n  IAGO. Fie, there is no such man; it is impossible.\n  DESDEMONA. If any such there be, heaven pardon him!\n  EMILIA. A halter pardon him! And hell gnaw his bones!\n    Why should he call her whore? Who keeps her company?\n    What place? What time? What form? What likelihood?\n    The Moor\'s abused by some most villainous knave,\n    Some base notorious knave, some scurvy fellow.\n    O heaven, that such companions thou\'ldst unfold,\n    And put in every honest hand a whip\n    To lash the rascals naked through the world\n    Even from the east to the west!\n  IAGO.                             Speak within door.\n  EMILIA. O, fie upon them! Some such squire he was\n    That turn\'d your wit the seamy side without,\n    And made you to suspect me with the Moor.  \n  IAGO. You are a fool; go to.\n  DESDEMONA.                   O good Iago,\n    What shall I do to win my lord again?\n    Good friend, go to him, for by this light of heaven,\n    I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel:\n    If e\'er my will did trespass \'gainst his love\n    Either in discourse of thought or actual deed,\n    Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense,\n    Delighted them in any other form,\n    Or that I do not yet, and ever did,\n    And ever will, though he do shake me off\n    To beggarly divorcement, love him dearly,\n    Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much,\n    And his unkindness may defeat my life,\n    But never taint my love. I cannot say "whore."\n    It doth abhor me now I speak the word;\n    To do the act that might the addition earn\n    Not the world\'s mass of vanity could make me.\n  IAGO. I pray you, be content; \'tis but his humor:\n    The business of the state does him offense,  \n    And he does chide with you.\n  DESDEMONA. If \'twere no other-\n  IAGO. \'Tis but so, I warrant.                      Trumpets within.\n    Hark, how these instruments summon to supper!\n    The messengers of Venice stay the meat.\n    Go in, and weep not; all things shall be well.\n                                         Exeunt Desdemona and Emilia.\n\n                           Enter Roderigo.\n\n    How now, Roderigo!\n  RODERIGO. I do not find that thou dealest justly with me.\n  IAGO. What in the contrary?\n  RODERIGO. Every day thou daffest me with some device, Iago; and\n    rather, as it seems to me now, keepest from me all conveniency\n    than suppliest me with the least advantage of hope. I will indeed\n    no longer endure it; nor am I yet persuaded to put up in peace\n    what already I have foolishly suffered.\n  IAGO. Will you hear me, Roderigo?\n  RODERIGO. Faith, I have heard too much, for your words and  \n    performances are no kin together.\n  IAGO. You charge me most unjustly.\n  RODERIGO. With nought but truth. I have wasted myself out of my\n    means. The jewels you have had from me to deliver to Desdemona\n    would half have corrupted a votarist. You have told me she hath\n    received them and returned me expectations and comforts of sudden\n    respect and acquaintance; but I find none.\n  IAGO. Well, go to, very well.\n  RODERIGO. Very well! go to! I cannot go to, man; nor \'tis not very\n    well. By this hand, I say \'tis very scurvy, and begin to find\n    myself fopped in it.\n  IAGO. Very well.\n  RODERIGO. I tell you \'tis not very well. I will make myself known\n    to Desdemona. If she will return me my jewels, I will give over\n    my suit and repent my unlawful solicitation; if not, assure\n    yourself I will seek satisfaction of you.\n  IAGO. You have said now.\n  RODERIGO. Ay, and said nothing but what I protest intendment of\n    doing.\n  IAGO. Why, now I see there\'s mettle in thee; and even from this  \n    instant do build on thee a better opinion than ever before. Give\n    me thy hand, Roderigo. Thou hast taken against me a most just\n    exception; but yet, I protest, have dealt most directly in thy\n    affair.\n  RODERIGO. It hath not appeared.\n  IAGO. I grant indeed it hath not appeared, and your suspicion is\n    not without wit and judgement. But, Roderigo, if thou hast that\n    in thee indeed, which I have greater reason to believe now than\n    ever, I mean purpose, courage, and valor, this night show it; if\n    thou the next night following enjoy not Desdemona, take me from\n    this world with treachery and devise engines for my life.\n  RODERIGO. Well, what is it? Is it within reason and compass?\n  IAGO. Sir, there is especial commission come from Venice to depute\n    Cassio in Othello\'s place.\n  RODERIGO. Is that true? Why then Othello and Desdemona return again\n    to Venice.\n  IAGO. O, no; he goes into Mauritania, and takes away with him the\n    fair Desdemona, unless his abode be lingered here by some\n    accident; wherein none can be so determinate as the removing of\n    Cassio.  \n  RODERIGO. How do you mean, removing of him?\n  IAGO. Why, by making him uncapable of Othello\'s place; knocking out\n    his brains.\n  RODERIGO. And that you would have me to do?\n  IAGO. Ay, if you dare do yourself a profit and a right. He sups\n    tonight with a harlotry, and thither will I go to him. He knows\n    not yet of his honorable fortune. If you will watch his going\n    thence, which his will fashion to fall out between twelve and\n    one, you may take him at your pleasure; I will be near to second\n    your attempt, and he shall fall between us. Come, stand not\n    amazed at it, but go along with me; I will show you such a\n    necessity in his death that you shall think yourself bound to put\n    it on him. It is now high supper-time, and the night grows to\n    waste. About it.\n  RODERIGO. I will hear further reason for this.\n  IAGO. And you shall be satisfied.                           Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nAnother room in the castle.\n\nEnter Othello, Lodovico, Desdemona, Emilia, and Attendants.\n\n  LODOVICO. I do beseech you, sir, trouble yourself no further.\n  OTHELLO. O, pardon me; \'twill do me good to walk.\n  LODOVICO. Madam, good night; I humbly thank your ladyship.\n  DESDEMONA. Your honor is most welcome.\n  OTHELLO.                               Will you walk, sir?\n    O- Desdemona-\n  DESDEMONA. My lord?\n  OTHELLO. Get you to bed on the instant; I will be returned\n    forthwith. Dismiss your attendant there; look it be done.\n  DESDEMONA. I will, my lord.\n                            Exeunt Othello, Lodovico, and Attendants.\n  EMILIA. How goes it now? He looks gentler than he did.\n  DESDEMONA. He says he will return incontinent.\n    He hath commanded me to go to bed,\n    And bade me to dismiss you.\n  EMILIA.                       Dismiss me?\n  DESDEMONA. It was his bidding; therefore, good Emilia,  \n    Give me my nightly wearing, and adieu.\n    We must not now displease him.\n  EMILIA. I would you had never seen him!\n  DESDEMONA. So would not I. My love doth so approve him,\n    That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns-\n    Prithee, unpin me- have grace and favor in them.\n  EMILIA. I have laid those sheets you bade me on the bed.\n  DESDEMONA. All\'s one. Good faith, how foolish are our minds!\n    If I do die before thee, prithee shroud me\n    In one of those same sheets.\n  EMILIA.                        Come, come, you talk.\n  DESDEMONA. My mother had a maid call\'d Barbary;\n    She was in love, and he she loved proved mad\n    And did forsake her. She had a song of "willow";\n    An old thing \'twas, but it express\'d her fortune,\n    And she died singing it. That song tonight\n    Will not go from my mind; I have much to do\n    But to go hang my head all at one side\n    And sing it like poor Barbary. Prithee, dispatch.\n  EMILIA. Shall I go fetch your nightgown?  \n  DESDEMONA.                               No, unpin me here.\n    This Lodovico is a proper man.\n  EMILIA. A very handsome man.\n  DESDEMONA. He speaks well.\n  EMILIA. I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to\n    Palestine for a touch of his nether lip.\n  DESDEMONA. [Sings.]\n\n        "The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,\n          Sing all a green willow;\n        Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,\n          Sing willow, willow, willow.\n        The fresh streams ran by her, and murmur\'d her moans,\n          Sing willow, willow, willow;\n        Her salt tears fell from her, and soften\'d the stones-"\n\n    Lay be these-\n\n    [Sings.]   "Sing willow, willow, willow-"\n  \n    Prithee, hie thee; he\'ll come anon-\n    [Sings.]   "Sing all a green willow must be my garland.\n               Let nobody blame him; his scorn I approve-"\n\n    Nay, that\'s not next. Hark, who is\'t that knocks?\n  EMILIA. It\'s the wind.\n  DESDEMONA. [Sings.]\n\n        "I call\'d my love false love; but what said he then?\n          Sing willow, willow, willow.\n        If I court moe women, you\'ll couch with moe men-"\n\n    So get thee gone; good night. Mine eyes do itch;\n    Doth that bode weeping?\n  EMILIA.                   \'Tis neither here nor there.\n  DESDEMONA. I have heard it said so. O, these men, these men!\n    Dost thou in conscience think- tell me, Emilia-\n    That there be women do abuse their husbands\n    In such gross kind?\n  EMILIA.               There be some such, no question.  \n  DESDEMONA. Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?\n  EMILIA. Why, would not you?\n  DESDEMONA.                  No, by this heavenly light!\n  EMILIA. Nor I neither by this heavenly light; I might do\'t as well\n    i\' the dark.\n  DESDEMONA. Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?\n  EMILIA. The world\'s a huge thing; it is a great price\n    For a small vice.\n  DESDEMONA.          In troth, I think thou wouldst not.\n  EMILIA. In troth, I think I should, and undo\'t when I had done.\n    Marry, I would not do such a thing for a joint-ring, nor for\n    measures of lawn, nor for gowns, petticoats, nor caps, nor any\n    petty exhibition; but, for the whole world- why, who would not\n    make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch? I should\n    venture purgatory for\'t.\n  DESDEMONA. Beshrew me, if I would do such a wrong\n    For the whole world.\n  EMILIA. Why, the wrong is but a wrong i\' the world; and having the\n    world for your labor, \'tis a wrong in your own world, and you\n    might quickly make it right.  \n  DESDEMONA. I do not think there is any such woman.\n  EMILIA. Yes, a dozen, and as many to the vantage as would store the\n      world they played for.\n    But I do think it is their husbands\' faults\n    If wives do fall; say that they slack their duties\n    And pour our treasures into foreign laps,\n    Or else break out in peevish jealousies,\n    Throwing restraint upon us, or say they strike us,\n    Or scant our former having in despite,\n    Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace,\n    Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know\n    Their wives have sense like them; they see and smell\n    And have their palates both for sweet and sour,\n    As husbands have. What is it that they do\n    When they change us for others? Is it sport?\n    I think it is. And doth affection breed it?\n    I think it doth. Is\'t frailty that thus errs?\n    It is so too. And have not we affections,\n    Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?\n    Then let them use us well; else let them know,  \n    The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.\n  DESDEMONA. Good night, good night. Heaven me such uses send,\n    Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend!                Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nCyprus. A street.\n\nEnter Iago and Roderigo:\n\n  IAGO. Here, stand behind this bulk; straight will he come.\n    Wear thy good rapier bare, and put it home.\n    Quick, quick; fear nothing; I\'ll be at thy elbow.\n    It makes us, or it mars us; think on that,\n    And fix most firm thy resolution.\n  RODERIGO. Be near at hand; I may miscarry in\'t.\n  IAGO. Here, at thy hand, be bold, and take thy stand.\n  Retires.\n  RODERIGO. I have no great devotion to the deed;\n    And yet he hath given me satisfying reasons.\n    \'Tis but a man gone. Forth, my sword; he dies.\n  IAGO. I have rubb\'d this young quat almost to the sense,\n    And he grows angry. Now, whether he kill Cassio,\n    Or Cassio him, or each do kill the other,\n    Every way makes my gain. Live Roderigo,\n    He calls me to a restitution large\n    Of gold and jewels that I bobb\'d from him,  \n    As gifts to Desdemona;\n    It must not be. If Cassio do remain,\n    He hath a daily beauty in his life\n    That makes me ugly; and besides, the Moor\n    May unfold me to him; there stand I in much peril.\n    No, he must die. Be\'t so. I hear him coming.\n\n                            Enter Cassio.\n\n  RODERIGO. I know his gait; \'tis he. Villain, thou diest!\n                                              Makes a pass at Cassio.\n  CASSIO. That thrust had been mine enemy indeed,\n    But that my coat is better than thou know\'st;\n    I will make proof of thine.           Draws, and wounds Roderigo.\n  RODERIGO.                     O, I am slain!\n            Iago from behind wounds Cassio in the leg, and exit.\n  CASSIO. I am maim\'d forever. Help, ho! Murther! Murther!\n    Falls.\n\n                            Enter Othello.  \n\n  OTHELLO. The voice of Cassio; Iago keeps his word.\n  RODERIGO. O, villain that I am!\n  OTHELLO.                        It is even so.\n  CASSIO. O, help, ho! Light! A surgeon!\n  OTHELLO. \'Tis he. O brave Iago, honest and just,\n    That hast such noble sense of thy friend\'s wrong!\n    Thou teachest me. Minion, your dear lies dead,\n    And your unblest fate hies. Strumpet, I come!\n    Forth of my heart those charms, thine eyes, are blotted;\n    Thy bed lust-stain\'d shall with lust\'s blood be spotted.\n     Exit.\n\n                     Enter Lodovico and Gratiano.\n\n  CASSIO. What, ho! No watch? No passage? Murther! Murther!\n  GRATIANO. \'Tis some mischance; the cry is very direful.\n  CASSIO. O, help!\n  LODOVICO. Hark!\n  RODERIGO. O wretched villain!  \n  LODOVICO. Two or three groan; it is a heavy night.\n    These may be counterfeits; let\'s think\'t unsafe\n    To come in to the cry without more help.\n  RODERIGO. Nobody come? Then shall I bleed to death.\n  LODOVICO. Hark!\n\n                     Re-enter Iago, with a light.\n\n  GRATIANO. Here\'s one comes in his shirt, with light and weapons.\n  IAGO. Who\'s there? Whose noise is this that cries on murther?\n  LODOVICO. We do not know.\n  IAGO.                     Did not you hear a cry?\n  CASSIO. Here, here! for heaven\'s sake, help me!\n  IAGO.                                       What\'s the matter?\n  GRATIANO. This is Othello\'s ancient, as I take it.\n  LODOVICO. The same indeed; a very valiant fellow.\n  IAGO. What are you here that cry so grievously?\n  CASSIO. Iago? O, I am spoil\'d, undone by villains!\n    Give me some help.\n  IAGO. O me, lieutenant! What villains have done this?  \n  CASSIO. I think that one of them is hereabout,\n    And cannot make away.\n  IAGO.                   O treacherous villains!\n    [To Lodovico and Gratiano.] What are you there?\n    Come in and give some help.\n  RODERIGO. O, help me here!\n  CASSIO. That\'s one of them.\n  IAGO.                       O murtherous slave! O villain!\n                                                      Stabs Roderigo.\n  RODERIGO. O damn\'d Iago! O inhuman dog!\n  IAGO. Kill men i\' the dark! Where be these bloody thieves?\n    How silent is this town! Ho! Murther! Murther!\n    What may you be? Are you of good or evil?\n  LODOVICO. As you shall prove us, praise us.\n  IAGO. Signior Lodovico?\n  LODOVICO. He, sir.\n  IAGO. I cry you mercy. Here\'s Cassio hurt by villains.\n  GRATIANO. Cassio?\n  IAGO. How is\'t, brother?\n  CASSIO. My leg is cut in two.  \n  IAGO.                         Marry, heaven forbid!\n    Light, gentlemen; I\'ll bind it with my shirt.\n\n                            Enter Bianca.\n\n  BIANCA. What is the matter, ho? Who is\'t that cried?\n  IAGO. Who is\'t that cried?\n  BIANCA. O my dear Cassio, my sweet Cassio! O Cassio, Cassio,\n     Cassio!\n  IAGO. O notable strumpet! Cassio, may you suspect\n    Who they should be that have thus mangled you?\n  CASSIO. No.\n  GRATIANO. I am sorry to find you thus; I have been to seek you.\n  IAGO. Lend me a garter. So. O, for a chair,\n    To bear him easily hence!\n  BIANCA. Alas, he faints! O Cassio, Cassio, Cassio!\n  IAGO. Gentlemen all, I do suspect this trash\n    To be a party in this injury.\n    Patience awhile, good Cassio. Come, come;\n    Lend me a light. Know we this face or no?  \n    Alas, my friend and my dear countryman\n    Roderigo? No- yes, sure. O heaven! Roderigo.\n  GRATIANO. What, of Venice?\n  IAGO. Even he, sir. Did you know him?\n  GRATIANO.                             Know him! ay.\n  IAGO. Signior Gratiano? I cry you gentle pardon;\n    These bloody accidents must excuse my manners,\n    That so neglected you.\n  GRATIANO.                I am glad to see you.\n  IAGO. How do you, Cassio? O, a chair, a chair!\n  GRATIANO. Roderigo!\n  IAGO. He, he, \'tis he. [A chair brought in.] O, that\'s well said:\n      the chair.\n    Some good man bear him carefully from hence;\n    I\'ll fetch the general\'s surgeon. [To Bianca.] For you, mistress,\n    Save you your labor. He that lies slain here, Cassio,\n    Was my dear friend; what malice was between you?\n  CASSIO. None in the world; nor do I know the man.\n  IAGO. [To Bianca.] What, look you pale? O, bear him out o\' the air.\n                                   Cassio and Roderigo are borne off.  \n    Stay you, good gentlemen. Look you pale, mistress?\n    Do you perceive the gastness of her eye?\n    Nay, if you stare, we shall hear more anon.\n    Behold her well; I pray you, look upon her.\n    Do you see, gentlemen? Nay, guiltiness will speak,\n    Though tongues were out of use.\n\n                            Enter Emilia.\n\n  EMILIA. \'Las, what\'s the matter? What\'s the matter, husband?\n  IAGO. Cassio hath here been set on in the dark\n    By Roderigo, and fellows that are \'scaped;\n    He\'s almost slain, and Roderigo dead.\n  EMILIA. Alas, good gentleman! alas, good Cassio!\n  IAGO. This is the fruit of whoring. Prithee, Emilia,\n    Go know of Cassio where he supp\'d tonight.\n    What, do you shake at that?\n  BIANCA. He supp\'d at my house; but I therefore shake not.\n  IAGO. O, did he so? I charge you, go with me.\n  EMILIA. Fie, fie upon thee, strumpet!  \n  BIANCA. I am no strumpet, but of life as honest\n    As you that thus abuse me.\n  EMILIA.                      As I! foh! fie upon thee!\n  IAGO. Kind gentlemen, let\'s go see poor Cassio dress\'d.\n    Come, mistress, you must tell\'s another tale.\n    Emilia, run you to the citadel,\n    And tell my lord and lady what hath happ\'d!\n    Will you go on? [Aside.] This is the night\n    That either makes me or fordoes me quite.                 Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nA bedchamber in the castle. Desdemona in bed asleep; a light burning.\n\nEnter Othello.\n\n  OTHELLO. It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul.\n    Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!\n    It is the cause. Yet I\'ll not shed her blood,\n    Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow\n    And smooth as monumental alabaster.\n    Yet she must die, else she\'ll betray more men.\n    Put out the light, and then put out the light.\n    If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,\n    I can again thy former light restore,\n    Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,\n    Thou cunning\'st pattern of excelling nature,\n    I know not where is that Promethean heat\n    That can thy light relume. When I have pluck\'d the rose,\n    I cannot give it vital growth again,\n    It must needs wither; I\'ll smell it on the tree.      Kisses her.\n    O, balmy breath, that dost almost persuade\n    Justice to break her sword! One more, one more;  \n    Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,\n    And love thee after. One more, and this the last;\n    So sweet was ne\'er so fatal. I must weep,\n    But they are cruel tears; this sorrow\'s heavenly,\n    It strikes where it doth love. She wakes.\n  DESDEMONA. Who\'s there? Othello?\n  OTHELLO.                         Ay, Desdemona.\n  DESDEMONA. Will you come to bed, my lord?\n  OTHELLO. Have you pray\'d tonight, Desdemona?\n  DESDEMONA. Ay, my lord.\n  OTHELLO. If you bethink yourself of any crime\n    Unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace,\n    Solicit for it straight.\n  DESDEMONA. Alas, my lord, what may you mean by that?\n  OTHELLO. Well, do it, and be brief; I will walk by.\n    I would not kill thy unprepared spirit.\n    No, heaven forfend! I would not kill thy soul.\n  DESDEMONA. Talk you of killing?\n  OTHELLO. Ay, I do.\n  DESDEMONA. Then heaven have mercy on me!  \n  OTHELLO. Amen, with all my heart!\n  DESDEMONA. If you say so, I hope you will not kill me.\n  OTHELLO. Hum!\n  DESDEMONA. And yet I fear you, for you are fatal then\n    When your eyes roll so. Why I should fear I know not,\n    Since guiltiness I know not; but yet I feel I fear.\n  OTHELLO. Think on thy sins.\n  DESDEMONA.                  They are loves I bear to you.\n  OTHELLO. Ay, and for that thou diest.\n  DESDEMONA. That death\'s unnatural that kills for loving.\n    Alas, why gnaw you so your nether lip?\n    Some bloody passion shakes your very frame.\n    These are portents; but yet I hope, I hope,\n    They do not point on me.\n  OTHELLO.                   Peace, and be still!\n  DESDEMONA. I will so. What\'s the matter?\n  OTHELLO. That handkerchief which I so loved and gave thee\n    Thou gavest to Cassio.\n  DESDEMONA.               No, by my life and soul!\n    Send for the man, and ask him.  \n  OTHELLO.                         Sweet soul, take heed,\n    Take heed of perjury; thou are on thy deathbed.\n  DESDEMONA. Ay, but not yet to die.\n  OTHELLO.                           Yes, presently:\n    Therefore confess thee freely of thy sin,\n    For to deny each article with oath\n    Cannot remove nor choke the strong conception\n    That I do groan withal. Thou art to die.\n  DESDEMONA. Then Lord have mercy on me!\n  OTHELLO.                               I say, amen.\n  DESDEMONA. And have you mercy too! I never did\n    Offend you in my life; never loved Cassio\n    But with such general warranty of heaven\n    As I might love. I never gave him token.\n  OTHELLO. By heaven, I saw my handkerchief in \'s hand.\n    O perjured woman! Thou dost stone my heart,\n    And makest me call what I intend to do\n    A murther, which I thought a sacrifice.\n    I saw the handkerchief.\n  DESDEMONA.                He found it then;  \n    I never gave it him. Send for him hither;\n    Let him confess a truth.\n  OTHELLO.                   He hath confess\'d.\n  DESDEMONA. What, my lord?\n  OTHELLO. That he hath used thee.\n  DESDEMONA.                       How? unlawfully?\n  OTHELLO. Ay.\n  DESDEMONA. He will not say so.\n  OTHELLO.                       No, his mouth is stopp\'d;\n    Honest Iago hath ta\'en order for\'t.\n  DESDEMONA. O, my fear interprets! What, is he dead?\n  OTHELLO. Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge\n    Had stomach for them all.\n  DESDEMONA. Alas, he is betray\'d, and I undone!\n  OTHELLO. Out, strumpet! Weep\'st thou for him to my face?\n  DESDEMONA. O, banish me, my lord, but kill me not!\n  OTHELLO. Down, strumpet!\n  DESDEMONA. Kill me tomorrow; let me live tonight!\n  OTHELLO. Nay, if you strive-\n  DESDEMONA. But half an hour!  \n  OTHELLO.                     Being done, there is no pause.\n  DESDEMONA. But while I say one prayer!\n  OTHELLO.                        It is too late.     He stifles her.\n  EMILIA. [Within.] My lord, my lord! What, ho! my lord, my lord!\n  OTHELLO. What noise is this? Not dead? not yet quite dead?\n    I that am cruel am yet merciful;\n    I would not have thee linger in thy pain.\n    So, so.\n  EMILIA. [Within.] What, ho! my lord, my lord!\n  OTHELLO.                                      Who\'s there?\n  EMILIA. [Within.] O, good my lord, I would speak a word with you!\n  OTHELLO. Yes, \'tis Emilia. By and by. She\'s dead.\n    \'Tis like she comes to speak of Cassio\'s death.\n    The noise was here. Ha! no more moving?\n    Still as the grave. Shall she come in? were\'t good?\n    I think she stirs again. No. What\'s best to do?\n    If she come in, she\'ll sure speak to my wife.\n    My wife! My wife! What wife? I have no wife.\n    O, insupportable! O heavy hour!\n    Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse  \n    Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe\n    Should yawn at alteration.\n  EMILIA. [Within.] I do beseech you\n    That I may speak with you, O, good my lord!\n  OTHELLO. I had forgot thee. O, come in, Emilia.\n    Soft, by and by. Let me the curtains draw.\n    Where art thou?                                 Unlocks the door.\n\n                            Enter Emilia.\n\n                    What\'s the matter with thee now?\n  EMILIA. O, my good lord, yonder\'s foul murthers done!\n  OTHELLO. What, now?\n  EMILIA. But now, my lord.\n  OTHELLO. It is the very error of the moon;\n    She comes more nearer earth than she was wont\n    And makes men mad.\n  EMILIA. Cassio, my lord, hath kill\'d a young Venetian\n    Call\'d Roderigo.\n  OTHELLO.           Roderigo kill\'d?  \n    And Cassio kill\'d?\n  EMILIA.              No, Cassio is not kill\'d.\n  OTHELLO. Not Cassio kill\'d! Then murther\'s out of tune,\n    And sweet revenge grows harsh.\n  DESDEMONA. O, falsely, falsely murther\'d!\n  EMILIA.                                   Alas, what cry is that?\n  OTHELLO. That? what?\n  EMILIA. Out, and alas! That was my lady\'s voice.\n    Help! help, ho! help! O lady, speak again!\n    Sweet Desdemona! O sweet mistress, speak!\n  DESDEMONA. A guiltless death I die.\n  EMILIA. O, who hath done this deed?\n  DESDEMONA. Nobody; I myself. Farewell;\n    Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell!                    Dies.\n  OTHELLO. Why, how should she be murther\'d?\n  EMILIA.                                    Alas, who knows?\n  OTHELLO. You heard her say herself, it was not I.\n  EMILIA. She said so; I must needs report the truth.\n  OTHELLO. She\'s like a liar gone to burning hell;\n    \'Twas I that kill\'d her.  \n  EMILIA.                    O, the more angel she,\n    And you the blacker devil!\n  OTHELLO. She turn\'d to folly, and she was a whore.\n  EMILIA. Thou dost belie her, and thou art a devil.\n  OTHELLO. She was false as water.\n  EMILIA.                          Thou art rash as fire, to say\n    That she was false. O, she was heavenly true!\n  OTHELLO. Cassio did top her; ask thy husband else.\n    O, I were damn\'d beneath all depth in hell,\n    But that I did proceed upon just grounds\n    To this extremity. Thy husband knew it all.\n  EMILIA. My husband?\n  OTHELLO. Thy husband.\n  EMILIA. That she was false to wedlock?\n  OTHELLO. Ay, with Cassio. Nay, had she been true,\n    If heaven would make me such another world\n    Of one entire and perfect chrysolite,\n    I\'ld not have sold her for it.\n  EMILIA.                          My husband?\n  OTHELLO. Ay, \'twas he that told me first.  \n    An honest man he is, and hates the slime\n    That sticks on filthy deeds.\n  EMILIA.                        My husband?\n  OTHELLO. What needs this iteration, woman? I say thy husband.\n  EMILIA. O mistress, villainy hath made mocks with love!\n    My husband say that she was false!\n  OTHELLO.                             He, woman;\n    I say thy husband. Dost understand the word?\n    My friend, thy husband, honest, honest Iago.\n  EMILIA. If he say so, may his pernicious soul\n    Rot half a grain a day! He lies to the heart.\n    She was too fond of her most filthy bargain.\n  OTHELLO. Ha!\n  EMILIA. Do thy worst;\n    This deed of thine is no more worthy heaven\n    Than thou wast worthy her.\n  OTHELLO.                     Peace, you were best.\n  EMILIA. Thou hast not half that power to do me harm\n    As I have to be hurt. O gull! O dolt!\n    As ignorant as dirt! Thou hast done a deed-  \n    I care not for thy sword; I\'ll make thee known,\n    Though I lost twenty lives. Help! help, ho! help!\n    The Moor hath kill\'d my mistress! Murther, murther!\n\n              Enter Montano, Gratiano, Iago, and others.\n\n  MONTANO. What is the matter? How now, general?\n  EMILIA. O, are you come, Iago? You have done well,\n    That men must lay their murthers on your neck.\n  GRATIANO. What is the matter?\n  EMILIA. Disprove this villain, if thou be\'st a man.\n    He says thou told\'st him that his wife was false;\n    I know thou didst not, thou\'rt not such a villain.\n    Speak, for my heart is full.\n  IAGO. I told him what I thought, and told no more\n    Than what he found himself was apt and true.\n  EMILIA. But did you ever tell him she was false?\n  IAGO. I did.\n  EMILIA. You told a lie, an odious, damned lie;\n    Upon my soul, a lie, a wicked lie!  \n    She false with Cassio? Did you say with Cassio?\n  IAGO. With Cassio, mistress. Go to, charm your tongue.\n  EMILIA. I will not charm my tongue; I am bound to speak.\n    My mistress here lies murther\'d in her bed-\n  ALL. O heavens forfend!\n  EMILIA. And your reports have set the murther on.\n  OTHELLO. Nay, stare not, masters; it is true indeed.\n  GRATIANO. \'Tis a strange truth.\n  MONTANO. O monstrous act!\n  EMILIA.                   Villainy, villainy, villainy!\n    I think upon\'t, I think, I smell\'t, O villainy!\n    I thought so then. I\'ll kill myself for grief.\n    O villainy, villainy!\n  IAGO. What, are you mad? I charge you, get you home.\n  EMILIA. Good gentlemen, let me have leave to speak;\n    \'Tis proper I obey him, but not now.\n    Perchance, Iago, I will ne\'er go home.\n  OTHELLO. O! O! O!                                 Falls on the bed.\n  EMILIA.           Nay, lay thee down and roar;\n    For thou hast kill\'d the sweetest innocent  \n    That e\'er did lift up eye.\n  OTHELLO.            [Rises.] O, she was foul!\n    I scarce did know you, uncle; there lies your niece,\n    Whose breath indeed these hands have newly stopp\'d.\n    I know this act shows horrible and grim.\n  GRATIANO. Poor Desdemon! I am glad thy father\'s dead.\n    Thy match was mortal to him, and pure grief\n    Shore his old thread in twain; did he live now,\n    This sight would make him do a desperate turn,\n    Yea, curse his better angel from his side,\n    And fall to reprobation.\n  OTHELLO. \'Tis pitiful, but yet Iago knows\n    That she with Cassio hath the act of shame\n    A thousand times committed. Cassio confess\'d it,\n    And she did gratify his amorous works\n    With that recognizance and pledge of love\n    Which I first gave her. I saw it in his hand,\n    It was a handkerchief, an antique token\n    My father gave my mother.\n  EMILIA. O heaven! O heavenly powers!  \n  IAGO. \'Zounds! Hold your peace.\n  EMILIA.                         \'Twill out, \'twill. I peace?\n    No, I will speak as liberal as the north;\n    Let heaven and men and devils, let them all,\n    All, all, cry shame against me, yet I\'ll speak.\n  IAGO. Be wise, and get you home.\n  EMILIA.                          I will not.\n                                          Iago offers to stab Emilia.\n  GRATIANO.                                    Fie!\n    Your sword upon a woman?\n  EMILIA. O thou dull Moor! That handkerchief thou speak\'st of\n    I found by fortune and did give my husband,\n    For often with a solemn earnestness,\n    More than indeed belong\'d to such a trifle,\n    He begg\'d of me to steal it.\n  IAGO.                          Villainous whore!\n  EMILIA. She give it Cassio? No, alas, I found it,\n    And I did give\'t my husband.\n  IAGO.                          Filth, thou liest!\n  EMILIA. By heaven, I do not, I do not, gentlemen.  \n    O murtherous coxcomb! What should such a fool\n    Do with so good a wife?\n  OTHELLO.                  Are there not stones in heaven\n    But what serve for thunder? Precious villain!\n                                         He runs at Iago, but Montano\n                                      disarms him. Iago stabs Emilia.\n  GRATIANO. The woman falls; sure, he hath kill\'d his wife.\n  EMILIA. Ay, ay! O, lay me by my mistress\' side.          Exit Iago.\n  GRATIANO. He\'s gone, but his wife\'s kill\'d.\n  MONTANO. \'Tis a notorious villain. Take you this weapon,\n    Which I have here recover\'d from the Moor.\n    Come, guard the door without; let him not pass,\n    But kill him rather. I\'ll after that same villain,\n    For \'tis a damned slave.       Exeunt all but Othello and Emilia.\n  OTHELLO.                   I am not valiant neither,\n    But every puny whipster gets my sword.\n    But why should honor outlive honesty?\n    Let it go all.\n  EMILIA.          What did thy song bode, lady?\n    Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan,  \n    And die in music. [Sings.] "Willow, willow, willow."\n    Moor, she was chaste; she loved thee, cruel Moor;\n    So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true;\n    So speaking as I think, I die, I die.                       Dies.\n  OTHELLO. I have another weapon in this chamber;\n    It is a sword of Spain, the ice-brook\'s temper-\n    O, here it is. Uncle, I must come forth.\n  GRATIANO. [Within.] If thou attempt it, it will cost thee dear.\n    Thou hast no weapon, and perforce must suffer.\n  OTHELLO. Look in upon me then, and speak with me,\n    Or, naked as I am, I will assault thee.\n\n                          Re-enter Gratiano.\n\n  GRATIANO. What is the matter?\n  OTHELLO.                      Behold, I have a weapon;\n    A better never did itself sustain\n    Upon a soldier\'s thigh. I have seen the day\n    That with this little arm and this good sword\n    I have made my way through more impediments  \n    Than twenty times your stop. But, O vain boast!\n    Who can control his fate? \'Tis not so now.\n    Be not afraid, though you do see me weapon\'d;\n    Here is my journey\'s end, here is my butt\n    And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.\n    Do you go back dismay\'d? \'Tis a lost fear.\n    Man but a rush against Othello\'s breast,\n    And he retires. Where should Othello go?\n    Now, how dost thou look now? O ill-starr\'d wench!\n    Pale as thy smock! When we shall meet at compt,\n    This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven,\n    And fiends will snatch at it. Cold, cold, my girl?\n    Even like thy chastity. O cursed, cursed slave!\n    Whip me, ye devils,\n    From the possession of this heavenly sight!\n    Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur!\n    Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!\n    O Desdemon! dead, Desdemon! dead!\n    O! O! O!\n  \n         Enter Lodovico, Montano, Cassio carried in a chair,\n                  and Officers with Iago, prisoner.\n\n  LODOVICO. Where is this rash and most unfortunate man?\n  OTHELLO. That\'s he that was Othello. Here I am.\n  LODOVICO. Where is that viper? Bring the villain forth.\n  OTHELLO. I look down towards his feet; but that\'s a fable.\n    If that thou be\'st a devil, I cannot kill thee.      Wounds Iago.\n  LODOVICO. Wrench his sword from him.\n  IAGO.                                I bleed, sir, but not kill\'d.\n  OTHELLO. I am not sorry neither. I\'ld have thee live,\n    For, in my sense, \'tis happiness to die.\n  LODOVICO. O thou Othello, that wert once so good,\n    Fall\'n in the practice of a damned slave,\n    What shall be said to thee?\n  OTHELLO.                      Why, anything;\n    An honorable murtherer, if you will,\n    For nought did I in hate, but all in honor.\n  LODOVICO. This wretch hath part confess\'d his villainy.\n    Did you and he consent in Cassio\'s death?  \n  OTHELLO. Ay.\n  CASSIO. Dear general, I never gave you cause.\n  OTHELLO. I do believe it, and I ask your pardon.\n    Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil\n    Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body?\n  IAGO. Demand me nothing; what you know, you know.\n    From this time forth I never will speak word.\n  LODOVICO. What, not to pray?\n  GRATIANO.                    Torments will ope your lips.\n  OTHELLO. Well, thou dost best.\n  LODOVICO. Sir, you shall understand what hath befall\'n,\n    Which, as I think, you know not. Here is a letter\n    Found in the pocket of the slain Roderigo,\n    And here another. The one of them imports\n    The death of Cassio to be undertook\n    By Roderigo.\n  OTHELLO. O villain!\n  CASSIO.             Most heathenish and most gross!\n  LODOVICO. Now here\'s another discontented paper,\n    Found in his pocket too; and this, it seems,  \n    Roderigo meant to have sent this damned villain;\n    But that, belike, Iago in the interim\n    Came in and satisfied him.\n  OTHELLO.                     O the pernicious caitiff!\n    How came you, Cassio, by that handkerchief\n    That was my wife\'s?\n  CASSIO.               I found it in my chamber;\n    And he himself confess\'d but even now\n    That there he dropp\'d it for a special purpose\n    Which wrought to his desire.\n  OTHELLO.                       O fool! fool! fool!\n  CASSIO. There is besides in Roderigo\'s letter,\n    How he upbraids Iago, that he made him\n    Brave me upon the watch, whereon it came\n    That I was cast. And even but now he spake\n    After long seeming dead, Iago hurt him,\n    Iago set him on.\n  LODOVICO. You must forsake this room, and go with us.\n    Your power and your command is taken off,\n    And Cassio rules in Cyprus. For this slave,  \n    If there be any cunning cruelty\n    That can torment him much and hold him long,\n    It shall be his. You shall close prisoner rest,\n    Till that the nature of your fault be known\n    To the Venetian state. Come, bring away.\n  OTHELLO. Soft you; a word or two before you go.\n    I have done the state some service, and they know\'t.\n    No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,\n    When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,\n    Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,\n    Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak\n    Of one that loved not wisely but too well;\n    Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,\n    Perplex\'d in the extreme; of one whose hand,\n    Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away\n    Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,\n    Albeit unused to the melting mood,\n    Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees\n    Their medicinal gum. Set you down this;\n    And say besides, that in Aleppo once,  \n    Where a malignant and a turban\'d Turk\n    Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,\n    I took by the throat the circumcised dog\n    And smote him, thus.                               Stabs himself.\n  LODOVICO. O bloody period!\n  GRATIANO.                  All that\'s spoke is marr\'d.\n  OTHELLO. I kiss\'d thee ere I kill\'d thee. No way but this,\n    Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.\n                                          Falls on the bed, and dies.\n  CASSIO. This did I fear, but thought he had no weapon;\n    For he was great of heart.\n  LODOVICO.         [To Iago.] O Spartan dog,\n    More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea!\n    Look on the tragic loading of this bed;\n    This is thy work. The object poisons sight;\n    Let it be hid. Gratiano, keep the house,\n    And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor,\n    For they succeed on you. To you, Lord Governor,\n    Remains the censure of this hellish villain,\n    The time, the place, the torture. O, enforce it!  \n    Myself will straight aboard, and to the state\n    This heavy act with heavy heart relate.                   Exeunt.\n\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1596\n\n\nKING RICHARD THE SECOND\n\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\n  KING RICHARD THE SECOND\n  JOHN OF GAUNT, Duke of Lancaster - uncle to the King\n  EDMUND LANGLEY, Duke of York - uncle to the King\n  HENRY, surnamed BOLINGBROKE, Duke of Hereford, son of\n    John of Gaunt, afterwards King Henry IV\n  DUKE OF AUMERLE, son of the Duke of York\n  THOMAS MOWBRAY, Duke of Norfolk\n  DUKE OF SURREY\n  EARL OF SALISBURY\n  EARL BERKELEY\n  BUSHY - favourites of King Richard\n  BAGOT -     "      "   "     "\n  GREEN -     "      "   "     "\n  EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND\n  HENRY PERCY, surnamed HOTSPUR, his son\n  LORD Ross                             LORD WILLOUGHBY\n  LORD FITZWATER                        BISHOP OF CARLISLE\n  ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER                  LORD MARSHAL\n  SIR STEPHEN SCROOP                    SIR PIERCE OF EXTON\n  CAPTAIN of a band of Welshmen         TWO GARDENERS  \n\n  QUEEN to King Richard\n  DUCHESS OF YORK\n  DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER, widow of Thomas of Woodstock,\n    Duke of Gloucester\n  LADY attending on the Queen\n\n  Lords, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, Keeper, Messenger,\n    Groom, and other Attendants\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nEngland and Wales\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter RICHARD, JOHN OF GAUNT, with other NOBLES and attendants\n\n  KING RICHARD. Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster,\n    Hast thou, according to thy oath and band,\n    Brought hither Henry Hereford, thy bold son,\n    Here to make good the boist\'rous late appeal,\n    Which then our leisure would not let us hear,\n    Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?\n  GAUNT. I have, my liege.\n  KING RICHARD. Tell me, moreover, hast thou sounded him\n    If he appeal the Duke on ancient malice,\n    Or worthily, as a good subject should,\n    On some known ground of treachery in him?\n  GAUNT. As near as I could sift him on that argument,\n    On some apparent danger seen in him\n    Aim\'d at your Highness-no inveterate malice.\n  KING RICHARD. Then call them to our presence: face to face\n    And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear  \n    The accuser and the accused freely speak.\n    High-stomach\'d are they both and full of ire,\n    In rage, deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.\n\n         Enter BOLINGBROKE and MOWBRAY\n\n  BOLINGBROKE. Many years of happy days befall\n    My gracious sovereign, my most loving liege!\n  MOWBRAY. Each day still better other\'s happiness\n    Until the heavens, envying earth\'s good hap,\n    Add an immortal title to your crown!\n  KING RICHARD. We thank you both; yet one but flatters us,\n    As well appeareth by the cause you come;\n    Namely, to appeal each other of high treason.\n    Cousin of Hereford, what dost thou object\n    Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?\n  BOLINGBROKE. First-heaven be the record to my speech!\n    In the devotion of a subject\'s love,\n    Tend\'ring the precious safety of my prince,\n    And free from other misbegotten hate,  \n    Come I appellant to this princely presence.\n    Now, Thomas Mowbray, do I turn to thee,\n    And mark my greeting well; for what I speak\n    My body shall make good upon this earth,\n    Or my divine soul answer it in heaven-\n    Thou art a traitor and a miscreant,\n    Too good to be so, and too bad to live,\n    Since the more fair and crystal is the sky,\n    The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.\n    Once more, the more to aggravate the note,\n    With a foul traitor\'s name stuff I thy throat;\n    And wish-so please my sovereign-ere I move,\n    What my tongue speaks, my right drawn sword may prove.\n  MOWBRAY. Let not my cold words here accuse my zeal.\n    \'Tis not the trial of a woman\'s war,\n    The bitter clamour of two eager tongues,\n    Can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain;\n    The blood is hot that must be cool\'d for this.\n    Yet can I not of such tame patience boast\n    As to be hush\'d and nought at an to say.  \n    First, the fair reverence of your Highness curbs me\n    From giving reins and spurs to my free speech;\n    Which else would post until it had return\'d\n    These terms of treason doubled down his throat.\n    Setting aside his high blood\'s royalty,\n    And let him be no kinsman to my liege,\n    I do defy him, and I spit at him,\n    Call him a slanderous coward and a villain;\n    Which to maintain, I would allow him odds\n    And meet him, were I tied to run afoot\n    Even to the frozen ridges of the Alps,\n    Or any other ground inhabitable\n    Where ever Englishman durst set his foot.\n    Meantime let this defend my loyalty-\n    By all my hopes, most falsely doth he lie\n  BOLINGBROKE. Pale trembling coward, there I throw my gage,\n    Disclaiming here the kindred of the King;\n    And lay aside my high blood\'s royalty,\n    Which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except.\n    If guilty dread have left thee so much strength  \n    As to take up mine honour\'s pawn, then stoop.\n    By that and all the rites of knighthood else\n    Will I make good against thee, arm to arm,\n    What I have spoke or thou canst worst devise.\n  MOWBRAY. I take it up; and by that sword I swear\n    Which gently laid my knighthood on my shoulder\n    I\'ll answer thee in any fair degree\n    Or chivalrous design of knightly trial;\n    And when I mount, alive may I not light\n    If I be traitor or unjustly fight!\n  KING RICHARD. What doth our cousin lay to Mowbray\'s charge?\n    It must be great that can inherit us\n    So much as of a thought of ill in him.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Look what I speak, my life shall prove it true-\n    That Mowbray hath receiv\'d eight thousand nobles\n    In name of lendings for your Highness\' soldiers,\n    The which he hath detain\'d for lewd employments\n    Like a false traitor and injurious villain.\n    Besides, I say and will in battle prove-\n    Or here, or elsewhere to the furthest verge  \n    That ever was survey\'d by English eye-\n    That all the treasons for these eighteen years\n    Complotted and contrived in this land\n    Fetch from false Mowbray their first head and spring.\n    Further I say, and further will maintain\n    Upon his bad life to make all this good,\n    That he did plot the Duke of Gloucester\'s death,\n    Suggest his soon-believing adversaries,\n    And consequently, like a traitor coward,\n    Sluic\'d out his innocent soul through streams of blood;\n    Which blood, like sacrificing Abel\'s, cries,\n    Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,\n    To me for justice and rough chastisement;\n    And, by the glorious worth of my descent,\n    This arm shall do it, or this life be spent.\n  KING RICHARD. How high a pitch his resolution soars!\n    Thomas of Norfolk, what say\'st thou to this?\n  MOWBRAY. O, let my sovereign turn away his face\n    And bid his ears a little while be deaf,\n    Till I have told this slander of his blood  \n    How God and good men hate so foul a liar.\n  KING RICHARD. Mowbray, impartial are our eyes and cars.\n    Were he my brother, nay, my kingdom\'s heir,\n    As he is but my father\'s brother\'s son,\n    Now by my sceptre\'s awe I make a vow,\n    Such neighbour nearness to our sacred blood\n    Should nothing privilege him nor partialize\n    The unstooping firmness of my upright soul.\n    He is our subject, Mowbray; so art thou:\n    Free speech and fearless I to thee allow.\n  MOWBRAY. Then, Bolingbroke, as low as to thy heart,\n    Through the false passage of thy throat, thou liest.\n    Three parts of that receipt I had for Calais\n    Disburs\'d I duly to his Highness\' soldiers;\n    The other part reserv\'d I by consent,\n    For that my sovereign liege was in my debt\n    Upon remainder of a dear account\n    Since last I went to France to fetch his queen:\n    Now swallow down that lie. For Gloucester\'s death-\n    I slew him not, but to my own disgrace  \n    Neglected my sworn duty in that case.\n    For you, my noble Lord of Lancaster,\n    The honourable father to my foe,\n    Once did I lay an ambush for your life,\n    A trespass that doth vex my grieved soul;\n    But ere I last receiv\'d the sacrament\n    I did confess it, and exactly begg\'d\n    Your Grace\'s pardon; and I hope I had it.\n    This is my fault. As for the rest appeal\'d,\n    It issues from the rancour of a villain,\n    A recreant and most degenerate traitor;\n    Which in myself I boldly will defend,\n    And interchangeably hurl down my gage\n    Upon this overweening traitor\'s foot\n    To prove myself a loyal gentleman\n    Even in the best blood chamber\'d in his bosom.\n    In haste whereof, most heartily I pray\n    Your Highness to assign our trial day.\n  KING RICHARD. Wrath-kindled gentlemen, be rul\'d by me;\n    Let\'s purge this choler without letting blood-  \n    This we prescribe, though no physician;\n    Deep malice makes too deep incision.\n    Forget, forgive; conclude and be agreed:\n    Our doctors say this is no month to bleed.\n    Good uncle, let this end where it begun;\n    We\'ll calm the Duke of Norfolk, you your son.\n  GAUNT. To be a make-peace shall become my age.\n    Throw down, my son, the Duke of Norfolk\'s gage.\n  KING RICHARD. And, Norfolk, throw down his.\n  GAUNT. When, Harry, when?\n    Obedience bids I should not bid again.\n  KING RICHARD. Norfolk, throw down; we bid.\n    There is no boot.\n  MOWBRAY. Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot;\n    My life thou shalt command, but not my shame:\n    The one my duty owes; but my fair name,\n    Despite of death, that lives upon my grave\n    To dark dishonour\'s use thou shalt not have.\n    I am disgrac\'d, impeach\'d, and baffl\'d here;\n    Pierc\'d to the soul with slander\'s venom\'d spear,  \n    The which no balm can cure but his heart-blood\n    Which breath\'d this poison.\n  KING RICHARD. Rage must be withstood:\n    Give me his gage-lions make leopards tame.\n  MOWBRAY. Yea, but not change his spots. Take but my shame,\n    And I resign my gage. My dear dear lord,\n    The purest treasure mortal times afford\n    Is spotless reputation; that away,\n    Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.\n    A jewel in a ten-times barr\'d-up chest\n    Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.\n    Mine honour is my life; both grow in one;\n    Take honour from me, and my life is done:\n    Then, dear my liege, mine honour let me try;\n    In that I live, and for that will I die.\n  KING RICHARD. Cousin, throw up your gage; do you begin.\n  BOLINGBROKE. O, God defend my soul from such deep sin!\n    Shall I seem crest-fallen in my father\'s sight?\n    Or with pale beggar-fear impeach my height\n    Before this outdar\'d dastard? Ere my tongue  \n    Shall wound my honour with such feeble wrong\n    Or sound so base a parle, my teeth shall tear\n    The slavish motive of recanting fear,\n    And spit it bleeding in his high disgrace,\n    Where shame doth harbour, even in Mowbray\'s face.\n                                                      Exit GAUNT\n  KING RICHARD. We were not born to sue, but to command;\n    Which since we cannot do to make you friends,\n    Be ready, as your lives shall answer it,\n    At Coventry, upon Saint Lambert\'s day.\n    There shall your swords and lances arbitrate\n    The swelling difference of your settled hate;\n    Since we can not atone you, we shall see\n    Justice design the victor\'s chivalry.\n    Lord Marshal, command our officers-at-arms\n    Be ready to direct these home alarms.                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\nLondon. The DUKE OF LANCASTER\'S palace\n\nEnter JOHN OF GAUNT with the DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER\n\n  GAUNT. Alas, the part I had in Woodstock\'s blood\n    Doth more solicit me than your exclaims\n    To stir against the butchers of his life!\n    But since correction lieth in those hands\n    Which made the fault that we cannot correct,\n    Put we our quarrel to the will of heaven;\n    Who, when they see the hours ripe on earth,\n    Will rain hot vengeance on offenders\' heads.\n  DUCHESS. Finds brotherhood in thee no sharper spur?\n    Hath love in thy old blood no living fire?\n    Edward\'s seven sons, whereof thyself art one,\n    Were as seven vials of his sacred blood,\n    Or seven fair branches springing from one root.\n    Some of those seven are dried by nature\'s course,\n    Some of those branches by the Destinies cut;\n    But Thomas, my dear lord, my life, my Gloucester,\n    One vial full of Edward\'s sacred blood,  \n    One flourishing branch of his most royal root,\n    Is crack\'d, and all the precious liquor spilt;\n    Is hack\'d down, and his summer leaves all faded,\n    By envy\'s hand and murder\'s bloody axe.\n    Ah, Gaunt, his blood was thine! That bed, that womb,\n    That mettle, that self mould, that fashion\'d thee,\n    Made him a man; and though thou livest and breathest,\n    Yet art thou slain in him. Thou dost consent\n    In some large measure to thy father\'s death\n    In that thou seest thy wretched brother die,\n    Who was the model of thy father\'s life.\n    Call it not patience, Gaunt-it is despair;\n    In suff\'ring thus thy brother to be slaught\'red,\n    Thou showest the naked pathway to thy life,\n    Teaching stern murder how to butcher thee.\n    That which in mean men we entitle patience\n    Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.\n    What shall I say? To safeguard thine own life\n    The best way is to venge my Gloucester\'s death.\n  GAUNT. God\'s is the quarrel; for God\'s substitute,  \n    His deputy anointed in His sight,\n    Hath caus\'d his death; the which if wrongfully,\n    Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift\n    An angry arm against His minister.\n  DUCHESS. Where then, alas, may I complain myself?\n  GAUNT. To God, the widow\'s champion and defence.\n  DUCHESS. Why then, I will. Farewell, old Gaunt.\n    Thou goest to Coventry, there to behold\n    Our cousin Hereford and fell Mowbray fight.\n    O, sit my husband\'s wrongs on Hereford\'s spear,\n    That it may enter butcher Mowbray\'s breast!\n    Or, if misfortune miss the first career,\n    Be Mowbray\'s sins so heavy in his bosom\n    That they may break his foaming courser\'s back\n    And throw the rider headlong in the lists,\n    A caitiff recreant to my cousin Hereford!\n    Farewell, old Gaunt; thy sometimes brother\'s wife,\n    With her companion, Grief, must end her life.\n  GAUNT. Sister, farewell; I must to Coventry.\n    As much good stay with thee as go with me!  \n  DUCHESS. Yet one word more- grief boundeth where it falls,\n    Not with the empty hollowness, but weight.\n    I take my leave before I have begun,\n    For sorrow ends not when it seemeth done.\n    Commend me to thy brother, Edmund York.\n    Lo, this is all- nay, yet depart not so;\n    Though this be all, do not so quickly go;\n    I shall remember more. Bid him- ah, what?-\n    With all good speed at Plashy visit me.\n    Alack, and what shall good old York there see\n    But empty lodgings and unfurnish\'d walls,\n    Unpeopled offices, untrodden stones?\n    And what hear there for welcome but my groans?\n    Therefore commend me; let him not come there\n    To seek out sorrow that dwells every where.\n    Desolate, desolate, will I hence and die;\n    The last leave of thee takes my weeping eye.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\nThe lists at Coventry\n\nEnter the LORD MARSHAL and the DUKE OF AUMERLE\n\n  MARSHAL. My Lord Aumerle, is Harry Hereford arm\'d?\n  AUMERLE. Yea, at all points; and longs to enter in.\n  MARSHAL. The Duke of Norfolk, spightfully and bold,\n    Stays but the summons of the appelant\'s trumpet.\n  AUMERLE. Why then, the champions are prepar\'d, and stay\n    For nothing but his Majesty\'s approach.\n\n     The trumpets sound, and the KING enters with his nobles,\n     GAUNT, BUSHY, BAGOT, GREEN, and others. When they are set,\n     enter MOWBRAY, Duke of Nor folk, in arms, defendant, and\n     a HERALD\n\n  KING RICHARD. Marshal, demand of yonder champion\n    The cause of his arrival here in arms;\n    Ask him his name; and orderly proceed\n    To swear him in the justice of his cause.\n  MARSHAL. In God\'s name and the King\'s, say who thou art,  \n    And why thou comest thus knightly clad in arms;\n    Against what man thou com\'st, and what thy quarrel.\n    Speak truly on thy knighthood and thy oath;\n    As so defend thee heaven and thy valour!\n  MOWBRAY. My name is Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk;\n    Who hither come engaged by my oath-\n    Which God defend a knight should violate!-\n    Both to defend my loyalty and truth\n    To God, my King, and my succeeding issue,\n    Against the Duke of Hereford that appeals me;\n    And, by the grace of God and this mine arm,\n    To prove him, in defending of myself,\n    A traitor to my God, my King, and me.\n    And as I truly fight, defend me heaven!\n\n   The trumpets sound. Enter BOLINGBROKE, Duke of Hereford,\n            appellant, in armour, and a HERALD\n\n  KING RICHARD. Marshal, ask yonder knight in arms,\n    Both who he is and why he cometh hither  \n    Thus plated in habiliments of war;\n    And formally, according to our law,\n    Depose him in the justice of his cause.\n  MARSHAL. What is thy name? and wherefore com\'st thou hither\n    Before King Richard in his royal lists?\n    Against whom comest thou? and what\'s thy quarrel?\n    Speak like a true knight, so defend thee heaven!\n  BOLINGBROKE. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,\n    Am I; who ready here do stand in arms\n    To prove, by God\'s grace and my body\'s valour,\n    In lists on Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,\n    That he is a traitor, foul and dangerous,\n    To God of heaven, King Richard, and to me.\n    And as I truly fight, defend me heaven!\n  MARSHAL. On pain of death, no person be so bold\n    Or daring-hardy as to touch the lists,\n    Except the Marshal and such officers\n    Appointed to direct these fair designs.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Lord Marshal, let me kiss my sovereign\'s hand,\n    And bow my knee before his Majesty;  \n    For Mowbray and myself are like two men\n    That vow a long and weary pilgrimage.\n    Then let us take a ceremonious leave\n    And loving farewell of our several friends.\n  MARSHAL. The appellant in all duty greets your Highness,\n    And craves to kiss your hand and take his leave.\n  KING RICHARD. We will descend and fold him in our arms.\n    Cousin of Hereford, as thy cause is right,\n    So be thy fortune in this royal fight!\n    Farewell, my blood; which if to-day thou shed,\n    Lament we may, but not revenge thee dead.\n  BOLINGBROKE. O, let no noble eye profane a tear\n    For me, if I be gor\'d with Mowbray\'s spear.\n    As confident as is the falcon\'s flight\n    Against a bird, do I with Mowbray fight.\n    My loving lord, I take my leave of you;\n    Of you, my noble cousin, Lord Aumerle;\n    Not sick, although I have to do with death,\n    But lusty, young, and cheerly drawing breath.\n    Lo, as at English feasts, so I regreet  \n    The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet.\n    O thou, the earthly author of my blood,\n    Whose youthful spirit, in me regenerate,\n    Doth with a twofold vigour lift me up\n    To reach at victory above my head,\n    Add proof unto mine armour with thy prayers,\n    And with thy blessings steel my lance\'s point,\n    That it may enter Mowbray\'s waxen coat\n    And furbish new the name of John o\' Gaunt,\n    Even in the lusty haviour of his son.\n  GAUNT. God in thy good cause make thee prosperous!\n    Be swift like lightning in the execution,\n    And let thy blows, doubly redoubled,\n    Fall like amazing thunder on the casque\n    Of thy adverse pernicious enemy.\n    Rouse up thy youthful blood, be valiant, and live.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Mine innocence and Saint George to thrive!\n  MOWBRAY. However God or fortune cast my lot,\n    There lives or dies, true to King Richard\'s throne,\n    A loyal, just, and upright gentleman.  \n    Never did captive with a freer heart\n    Cast off his chains of bondage, and embrace\n    His golden uncontroll\'d enfranchisement,\n    More than my dancing soul doth celebrate\n    This feast of battle with mine adversary.\n    Most mighty liege, and my companion peers,\n    Take from my mouth the wish of happy years.\n    As gentle and as jocund as to jest\n    Go I to fight: truth hath a quiet breast.\n  KING RICHARD. Farewell, my lord, securely I espy\n    Virtue with valour couched in thine eye.\n    Order the trial, Marshal, and begin.\n  MARSHAL. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,\n    Receive thy lance; and God defend the right!\n  BOLINGBROKE. Strong as a tower in hope, I cry amen.\n  MARSHAL. [To an officer] Go bear this lance to Thomas,\n      Duke of Norfolk.\n  FIRST HERALD. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,\n    Stands here for God, his sovereign, and himself,\n    On pain to be found false and recreant,  \n    To prove the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray,\n    A traitor to his God, his King, and him;\n    And dares him to set forward to the fight.\n  SECOND HERALD. Here standeth Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,\n    On pain to be found false and recreant,\n    Both to defend himself, and to approve\n    Henry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,\n    To God, his sovereign, and to him disloyal,\n    Courageously and with a free desire\n    Attending but the signal to begin.\n  MARSHAL. Sound trumpets; and set forward, combatants.\n                                           [A charge sounded]\n    Stay, the King hath thrown his warder down.\n  KING RICHARD. Let them lay by their helmets and their spears,\n    And both return back to their chairs again.\n    Withdraw with us; and let the trumpets sound\n    While we return these dukes what we decree.\n\n    A long flourish, while the KING consults his Council\n  \n    Draw near,\n    And list what with our council we have done.\n    For that our kingdom\'s earth should not be soil\'d\n    With that dear blood which it hath fostered;\n    And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect\n    Of civil wounds plough\'d up with neighbours\' sword;\n    And for we think the eagle-winged pride\n    Of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts,\n    With rival-hating envy, set on you\n    To wake our peace, which in our country\'s cradle\n    Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep;\n    Which so rous\'d up with boist\'rous untun\'d drums,\n    With harsh-resounding trumpets\' dreadful bray,\n    And grating shock of wrathful iron arms,\n    Might from our quiet confines fright fair peace\n    And make us wade even in our kindred\'s blood-\n    Therefore we banish you our territories.\n    You, cousin Hereford, upon pain of life,\n    Till twice five summers have enrich\'d our fields\n    Shall not regreet our fair dominions,  \n    But tread the stranger paths of banishment.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Your will be done. This must my comfort be-\n    That sun that warms you here shall shine on me,\n    And those his golden beams to you here lent\n    Shall point on me and gild my banishment.\n  KING RICHARD. Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom,\n    Which I with some unwillingness pronounce:\n    The sly slow hours shall not determinate\n    The dateless limit of thy dear exile;\n    The hopeless word of \'never to return\'\n    Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life.\n  MOWBRAY. A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege,\n    And all unlook\'d for from your Highness\' mouth.\n    A dearer merit, not so deep a maim\n    As to be cast forth in the common air,\n    Have I deserved at your Highness\' hands.\n    The language I have learnt these forty years,\n    My native English, now I must forgo;\n    And now my tongue\'s use is to me no more\n    Than an unstringed viol or a harp;  \n    Or like a cunning instrument cas\'d up\n    Or, being open, put into his hands\n    That knows no touch to tune the harmony.\n    Within my mouth you have engaol\'d my tongue,\n    Doubly portcullis\'d with my teeth and lips;\n    And dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance\n    Is made my gaoler to attend on me.\n    I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,\n    Too far in years to be a pupil now.\n    What is thy sentence, then, but speechless death,\n    Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?\n  KING RICHARD. It boots thee not to be compassionate;\n    After our sentence plaining comes too late.\n  MOWBRAY. Then thus I turn me from my countrv\'s light,\n    To dwell in solemn shades of endless night.\n  KING RICHARD. Return again, and take an oath with thee.\n    Lay on our royal sword your banish\'d hands;\n    Swear by the duty that you owe to God,\n    Our part therein we banish with yourselves,\n    To keep the oath that we administer:  \n    You never shall, so help you truth and God,\n    Embrace each other\'s love in banishment;\n    Nor never look upon each other\'s face;\n    Nor never write, regreet, nor reconcile\n    This louring tempest of your home-bred hate;\n    Nor never by advised purpose meet\n    To plot, contrive, or complot any ill,\n    \'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.\n  BOLINGBROKE. I swear.\n  MOWBRAY. And I, to keep all this.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy.\n    By this time, had the King permitted us,\n    One of our souls had wand\'red in the air,\n    Banish\'d this frail sepulchre of our flesh,\n    As now our flesh is banish\'d from this land-\n    Confess thy treasons ere thou fly the realm;\n    Since thou hast far to go, bear not along\n    The clogging burden of a guilty soul.\n  MOWBRAY. No, Bolingbroke; if ever I were traitor,\n    My name be blotted from the book of life,  \n    And I from heaven banish\'d as from hence!\n    But what thou art, God, thou, and I, do know;\n    And all too soon, I fear, the King shall rue.\n    Farewell, my liege. Now no way can I stray:\n    Save back to England, an the world\'s my way.            Exit\n  KING RICHARD. Uncle, even in the glasses of thine eyes\n    I see thy grieved heart. Thy sad aspect\n    Hath from the number of his banish\'d years\n    Pluck\'d four away. [To BOLINGBROKE] Six frozen winters spent,\n    Return with welcome home from banishment.\n  BOLINGBROKE. How long a time lies in one little word!\n    Four lagging winters and four wanton springs\n    End in a word: such is the breath of Kings.\n  GAUNT. I thank my liege that in regard of me\n    He shortens four years of my son\'s exile;\n    But little vantage shall I reap thereby,\n    For ere the six years that he hath to spend\n    Can change their moons and bring their times about,\n    My oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light\n    Shall be extinct with age and endless night;  \n    My inch of taper will be burnt and done,\n    And blindfold death not let me see my son.\n  KING RICHARD. Why, uncle, thou hast many years to live.\n  GAUNT. But not a minute, King, that thou canst give:\n    Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow\n    And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow;\n    Thou can\'st help time to furrow me with age,\n    But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage;\n    Thy word is current with him for my death,\n    But dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath.\n  KING RICHARD. Thy son is banish\'d upon good advice,\n    Whereto thy tongue a party-verdict gave.\n    Why at our justice seem\'st thou then to lour?\n  GAUNT. Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.\n    You urg\'d me as a judge; but I had rather\n    You would have bid me argue like a father.\n    O, had it been a stranger, not my child,\n    To smooth his fault I should have been more mild.\n    A partial slander sought I to avoid,\n    And in the sentence my own life destroy\'d.  \n    Alas, I look\'d when some of you should say\n    I was too strict to make mine own away;\n    But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue\n    Against my will to do myself this wrong.\n  KING RICHARD. Cousin, farewell; and, uncle, bid him so.\n    Six years we banish him, and he shall go.\n                                  Flourish. Exit KING with train\n  AUMERLE. Cousin, farewell; what presence must not know,\n    From where you do remain let paper show.\n  MARSHAL. My lord, no leave take I, for I will ride\n    As far as land will let me by your side.\n  GAUNT. O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words,\n    That thou returnest no greeting to thy friends?\n  BOLINGBROKE. I have too few to take my leave of you,\n    When the tongue\'s office should be prodigal\n    To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.\n  GAUNT. Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Joy absent, grief is present for that time.\n  GAUNT. What is six winters? They are quickly gone.\n  BOLINGBROKE. To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten.  \n  GAUNT. Call it a travel that thou tak\'st for pleasure.\n  BOLINGBROKE. My heart will sigh when I miscall it so,\n    Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage.\n  GAUNT. The sullen passage of thy weary steps\n    Esteem as foil wherein thou art to set\n    The precious jewel of thy home return.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make\n    Will but remember me what a deal of world\n    I wander from the jewels that I love.\n    Must I not serve a long apprenticehood\n    To foreign passages; and in the end,\n    Having my freedom, boast of nothing else\n    But that I was a journeyman to grief?\n  GAUNT. All places that the eye of heaven visits\n    Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.\n    Teach thy necessity to reason thus:\n    There is no virtue like necessity.\n    Think not the King did banish thee,\n    But thou the King. Woe doth the heavier sit\n    Where it perceives it is but faintly home.  \n    Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honour,\n    And not the King exil\'d thee; or suppose\n    Devouring pestilence hangs in our air\n    And thou art flying to a fresher clime.\n    Look what thy soul holds dear, imagine it\n    To lie that way thou goest, not whence thou com\'st.\n    Suppose the singing birds musicians,\n    The grass whereon thou tread\'st the presence strew\'d,\n    The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more\n    Than a delightful measure or a dance;\n    For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite\n    The man that mocks at it and sets it light.\n  BOLINGBROKE. O, who can hold a fire in his hand\n    By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?\n    Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite\n    By bare imagination of a feast?\n    Or wallow naked in December snow\n    By thinking on fantastic summer\'s heat?\n    O, no! the apprehension of the good\n    Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.  \n    Fell sorrow\'s tooth doth never rankle more\n    Than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore.\n  GAUNT. Come, come, my son, I\'ll bring thee on thy way.\n    Had I thy youtli and cause, I would not stay.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Then, England\'s ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu;\n    My mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet!\n    Where\'er I wander, boast of this I can:\n    Though banish\'d, yet a trueborn English man.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4.\nLondon. The court\n\nEnter the KING, with BAGOT and GREEN, at one door;\nand the DUKE OF AUMERLE at another\n\n  KING RICHARD. We did observe. Cousin Aumerle,\n    How far brought you high Hereford on his way?\n  AUMERLE. I brought high Hereford, if you call him so,\n    But to the next high way, and there I left him.\n  KING RICHARD. And say, what store of parting tears were shed?\n  AUMERLE. Faith, none for me; except the north-east wind,\n    Which then blew bitterly against our faces,\n    Awak\'d the sleeping rheum, and so by chance\n    Did grace our hollow parting with a tear.\n  KING RICHARD. What said our cousin when you parted with him?\n  AUMERLE. \'Farewell.\'\n    And, for my heart disdained that my tongue\n    Should so profane the word, that taught me craft\n    To counterfeit oppression of such grief\n    That words seem\'d buried in my sorrow\'s grave.\n    Marry, would the word \'farewell\' have length\'ned hours  \n    And added years to his short banishment,\n    He should have had a volume of farewells;\n    But since it would not, he had none of me.\n  KING RICHARD. He is our cousin, cousin; but \'tis doubt,\n    When time shall call him home from banishment,\n    Whether our kinsman come to see his friends.\n    Ourself, and Bushy, Bagot here, and Green,\n    Observ\'d his courtship to the common people;\n    How he did seem to dive into their hearts\n    With humble and familiar courtesy;\n    What reverence he did throw away on slaves,\n    Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles\n    And patient underbearing of his fortune,\n    As \'twere to banish their affects with him.\n    Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;\n    A brace of draymen bid God speed him well\n    And had the tribute of his supple knee,\n    With \'Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends\';\n    As were our England in reversion his,\n    And he our subjects\' next degree in hope.  \n  GREEN. Well, he is gone; and with him go these thoughts!\n    Now for the rebels which stand out in Ireland,\n    Expedient manage must be made, my liege,\n    Ere further leisure yicld them further means\n    For their advantage and your Highness\' loss.\n  KING RICHARD. We will ourself in person to this war;\n    And, for our coffers, with too great a court\n    And liberal largess, are grown somewhat light,\n    We are enforc\'d to farm our royal realm;\n    The revenue whereof shall furnish us\n    For our affairs in hand. If that come short,\n    Our substitutes at home shall have blank charters;\n    Whereto, when they shall know what men are rich,\n    They shall subscribe them for large sums of gold,\n    And send them after to supply our wants;\n    For we will make for Ireland presently.\n\n                     Enter BUSHY\n\n    Bushy, what news?  \n  BUSHY. Old John of Gaunt is grievous sick, my lord,\n    Suddenly taken; and hath sent poste-haste\n    To entreat your Majesty to visit him.\n  KING RICHARD. Where lies he?\n  BUSHY. At Ely House.\n  KING RICHARD. Now put it, God, in the physician\'s mind\n    To help him to his grave immediately!\n    The lining of his coffers shall make coats\n    To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars.\n    Come, gentlemen, let\'s all go visit him.\n    Pray God we may make haste, and come too late!\n  ALL. Amen.                                              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nLondon. Ely House\n\nEnter JOHN OF GAUNT, sick, with the DUKE OF YORK, etc.\n\n  GAUNT. Will the King come, that I may breathe my last\n    In wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth?\n  YORK. Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath;\n    For all in vain comes counsel to his ear.\n  GAUNT. O, but they say the tongues of dying men\n    Enforce attention like deep harmony.\n    Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain;\n    For they breathe truth that breathe their words -in pain.\n    He that no more must say is listen\'d more\n    Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose;\n    More are men\'s ends mark\'d than their lives before.\n    The setting sun, and music at the close,\n    As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,\n    Writ in remembrance more than things long past.\n    Though Richard my life\'s counsel would not hear,\n    My death\'s sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.\n  YORK. No; it is stopp\'d with other flattering sounds,  \n    As praises, of whose taste the wise are fond,\n    Lascivious metres, to whose venom sound\n    The open ear of youth doth always listen;\n    Report of fashions in proud Italy,\n    Whose manners still our tardy apish nation\n    Limps after in base imitation.\n    Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity-\n    So it be new, there\'s no respect how vile-\n    That is not quickly buzz\'d into his ears?\n    Then all too late comes counsel to be heard\n    Where will doth mutiny with wit\'s regard.\n    Direct not him whose way himself will choose.\n    \'Tis breath thou lack\'st, and that breath wilt thou lose.\n  GAUNT. Methinks I am a prophet new inspir\'d,\n    And thus expiring do foretell of him:\n    His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,\n    For violent fires soon burn out themselves;\n    Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;\n    He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;\n    With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder;  \n    Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,\n    Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.\n    This royal throne of kings, this scept\'red isle,\n    This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,\n    This other Eden, demi-paradise,\n    This fortress built by Nature for herself\n    Against infection and the hand of war,\n    This happy breed of men, this little world,\n    This precious stone set in the silver sea,\n    Which serves it in the office of a wall,\n    Or as a moat defensive to a house,\n    Against the envy of less happier lands;\n    This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,\n    This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,\n    Fear\'d by their breed, and famous by their birth,\n    Renowned for their deeds as far from home,\n    For Christian service and true chivalry,\n    As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry\n    Of the world\'s ransom, blessed Mary\'s Son;\n    This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,  \n    Dear for her reputation through the world,\n    Is now leas\'d out-I die pronouncing it-\n    Like to a tenement or pelting farm.\n    England, bound in with the triumphant sea,\n    Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege\n    Of wat\'ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame,\n    With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds;\n    That England, that was wont to conquer others,\n    Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.\n    Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,\n    How happy then were my ensuing death!\n\n    Enter KING and QUEEN, AUMERLE, BUSHY, GREEN, BAGOT,\n                Ross, and WILLOUGHBY\n\n  YORK. The King is come; deal mildly with his youth,\n    For young hot colts being rag\'d do rage the more.\n  QUEEN. How fares our noble uncle Lancaster?\n  KING RICHARD. What comfort, man? How is\'t with aged Gaunt?\n  GAUNT. O, how that name befits my composition!  \n    Old Gaunt, indeed; and gaunt in being old.\n    Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast;\n    And who abstains from meat that is not gaunt?\n    For sleeping England long time have I watch\'d;\n    Watching breeds leanness, leanness is an gaunt.\n    The pleasure that some fathers feed upon\n    Is my strict fast-I mean my children\'s looks;\n    And therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt.\n    Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,\n    Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones.\n  KING RICHARD. Can sick men play so nicely with their names?\n  GAUNT. No, misery makes sport to mock itself:\n    Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,\n    I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee.\n  KING RICHARD. Should dying men flatter with those that live?\n  GAUNT. No, no; men living flatter those that die.\n  KING RICHARD. Thou, now a-dying, sayest thou flatterest me.\n  GAUNT. O, no! thou diest, though I the sicker be.\n  KING RICHARD. I am in health, I breathe, and see thee ill.\n  GAUNT. Now He that made me knows I see thee ill;  \n    Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill.\n    Thy death-bed is no lesser than thy land\n    Wherein thou liest in reputation sick;\n    And thou, too careless patient as thou art,\n    Commit\'st thy anointed body to the cure\n    Of those physicians that first wounded thee:\n    A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,\n    Whose compass is no bigger than thy head;\n    And yet, incaged in so small a verge,\n    The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.\n    O, had thy grandsire with a prophet\'s eye\n    Seen how his son\'s son should destroy his sons,\n    From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame,\n    Deposing thee before thou wert possess\'d,\n    Which art possess\'d now to depose thyself.\n    Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world,\n    It were a shame to let this land by lease;\n    But for thy world enjoying but this land,\n    Is it not more than shame to shame it so?\n    Landlord of England art thou now, not King.  \n    Thy state of law is bondslave to the law;\n    And thou-\n  KING RICHARD. A lunatic lean-witted fool,\n    Presuming on an ague\'s privilege,\n    Darest with thy frozen admonition\n    Make pale our cheek, chasing the royal blood\n    With fury from his native residence.\n    Now by my seat\'s right royal majesty,\n    Wert thou not brother to great Edward\'s son,\n    This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head\n    Should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders.\n  GAUNT. O, Spare me not, my brother Edward\'s son,\n    For that I was his father Edward\'s son;\n    That blood already, like the pelican,\n    Hast thou tapp\'d out, and drunkenly carous\'d.\n    My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul-\n    Whom fair befall in heaven \'mongst happy souls!-\n    May be a precedent and witness good\n    That thou respect\'st not spilling Edward\'s blood.\n    Join with the present sickness that I have;  \n    And thy unkindness be like crooked age,\n    To crop at once a too long withered flower.\n    Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!\n    These words hereafter thy tormentors be!\n    Convey me to my bed, then to my grave.\n    Love they to live that love and honour have.\n                               Exit, borne out by his attendants\n  KING RICHARD. And let them die that age and sullens have;\n    For both hast thou, and both become the grave.\n  YORK. I do beseech your Majesty impute his words\n    To wayward sickliness and age in him.\n    He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear\n    As Harry Duke of Hereford, were he here.\n  KING RICHARD. Right, you say true: as Hereford\'s love, so his;\n    As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.\n\n                Enter NORTHUMBERLAND\n\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your Majesty.\n  KING RICHARD. What says he?  \n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Nay, nothing; all is said.\n    His tongue is now a stringless instrument;\n    Words, life, and all, old Lancaster hath spent.\n  YORK. Be York the next that must be bankrupt so!\n    Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.\n  KING RICHARD. The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he;\n    His time is spent, our pilgrimage must be.\n    So much for that. Now for our Irish wars.\n    We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns,\n    Which live like venom where no venom else\n    But only they have privilege to live.\n    And for these great affairs do ask some charge,\n    Towards our assistance we do seize to us\n    The plate, coin, revenues, and moveables,\n    Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possess\'d.\n  YORK. How long shall I be patient? Ah, how long\n    Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?\n    Not Gloucester\'s death, nor Hereford\'s banishment,\n    Nor Gaunt\'s rebukes, nor England\'s private wrongs,\n    Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke  \n    About his marriage, nor my own disgrace,\n    Have ever made me sour my patient cheek\n    Or bend one wrinkle on my sovereign\'s face.\n    I am the last of noble Edward\'s sons,\n    Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first.\n    In war was never lion rag\'d more fierce,\n    In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,\n    Than was that young and princely gentleman.\n    His face thou hast, for even so look\'d he,\n    Accomplish\'d with the number of thy hours;\n    But when he frown\'d, it was against the French\n    And not against his friends. His noble hand\n    Did win what he did spend, and spent not that\n    Which his triumphant father\'s hand had won.\n    His hands were guilty of no kindred blood,\n    But bloody with the enemies of his kin.\n    O Richard! York is too far gone with grief,\n    Or else he never would compare between-\n  KING RICHARD. Why, uncle, what\'s the matter?\n  YORK. O my liege,  \n    Pardon me, if you please; if not, I, pleas\'d\n    Not to be pardoned, am content withal.\n    Seek you to seize and gripe into your hands\n    The royalties and rights of banish\'d Hereford?\n    Is not Gaunt dead? and doth not Hereford live?\n    Was not Gaunt just? and is not Harry true?\n    Did not the one deserve to have an heir?\n    Is not his heir a well-deserving son?\n    Take Hereford\'s rights away, and take from Time\n    His charters and his customary rights;\n    Let not to-morrow then ensue to-day;\n    Be not thyself-for how art thou a king\n    But by fair sequence and succession?\n    Now, afore God-God forbid I say true!-\n    If you do wrongfully seize Hereford\'s rights,\n    Call in the letters patents that he hath\n    By his attorneys-general to sue\n    His livery, and deny his off\'red homage,\n    You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,\n    You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts,  \n    And prick my tender patience to those thoughts\n    Which honour and allegiance cannot think.\n  KING RICHARD. Think what you will, we seize into our hands\n    His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands.\n  YORK. I\'ll not be by the while. My liege, farewell.\n    What will ensue hereof there\'s none can tell;\n    But by bad courses may be understood\n    That their events can never fall out good.              Exit\n  KING RICHARD. Go, Bushy, to the Earl of Wiltshire straight;\n    Bid him repair to us to Ely House\n    To see this business. To-morrow next\n    We will for Ireland; and \'tis time, I trow.\n    And we create, in absence of ourself,\n    Our Uncle York Lord Governor of England;\n    For he is just, and always lov\'d us well.\n    Come on, our queen; to-morrow must we part;\n    Be merry, for our time of stay is short.\n                   Flourish. Exeunt KING, QUEEN, BUSHY, AUMERLE,\n                                                GREEN, and BAGOT\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Well, lords, the Duke of Lancaster is dead.  \n    Ross. And living too; for now his son is Duke.\n  WILLOUGHBY. Barely in title, not in revenues.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Richly in both, if justice had her right.\n  ROSS. My heart is great; but it must break with silence,\n    Ere\'t be disburdened with a liberal tongue.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Nay, speak thy mind; and let him ne\'er speak more\n    That speaks thy words again to do thee harm!\n  WILLOUGHBY. Tends that thou wouldst speak to the Duke of Hereford?\n    If it be so, out with it boldly, man;\n    Quick is mine ear to hear of good towards him.\n  ROSS. No good at all that I can do for him;\n    Unless you call it good to pity him,\n    Bereft and gelded of his patrimony.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Now, afore God, \'tis shame such wrongs are borne\n    In him, a royal prince, and many moe\n    Of noble blood in this declining land.\n    The King is not himself, but basely led\n    By flatterers; and what they will inform,\n    Merely in hate, \'gainst any of us an,\n    That will the King severely prosecute  \n    \'Gainst us, our lives, our children, and our heirs.\n  ROSS. The commons hath he pill\'d with grievous taxes;\n    And quite lost their hearts; the nobles hath he find\n    For ancient quarrels and quite lost their hearts.\n  WILLOUGHBY. And daily new exactions are devis\'d,\n    As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what;\n    But what, a God\'s name, doth become of this?\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Wars hath not wasted it, for warr\'d he hath not,\n    But basely yielded upon compromise\n    That which his noble ancestors achiev\'d with blows.\n    More hath he spent in peace than they in wars.\n  ROSS. The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.\n  WILLOUGHBY. The King\'s grown bankrupt like a broken man.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Reproach and dissolution hangeth over him.\n  ROSS. He hath not money for these Irish wars,\n    His burdenous taxations notwithstanding,\n    But by the robbing of the banish\'d Duke.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. His noble kinsman-most degenerate king!\n    But, lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing,\n    Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm;  \n    We see the wind sit sore upon our sails,\n    And yet we strike not, but securely perish.\n  ROSS. We see the very wreck that we must suffer;\n    And unavoided is the danger now\n    For suffering so the causes of our wreck.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Not so; even through the hollow eyes of death\n    I spy life peering; but I dare not say\n    How near the tidings of our comfort is.\n  WILLOUGHBY. Nay, let us share thy thoughts as thou dost ours.\n  ROSS. Be confident to speak, Northumberland.\n    We three are but thyself, and, speaking so,\n    Thy words are but as thoughts; therefore be bold.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Then thus: I have from Le Port Blanc, a bay\n    In Brittany, receiv\'d intelligence\n    That Harry Duke of Hereford, Rainold Lord Cobham,\n    That late broke from the Duke of Exeter,\n    His brother, Archbishop late of Canterbury,\n    Sir Thomas Erpingham, Sir John Ramston,\n    Sir John Norbery, Sir Robert Waterton, and Francis Quoint-\n    All these, well furnish\'d by the Duke of Britaine,  \n    With eight tall ships, three thousand men of war,\n    Are making hither with all due expedience,\n    And shortly mean to touch our northern shore.\n    Perhaps they had ere this, but that they stay\n    The first departing of the King for Ireland.\n    If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke,\n    Imp out our drooping country\'s broken wing,\n    Redeem from broking pawn the blemish\'d crown,\n    Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre\'s gilt,\n    And make high majesty look like itself,\n    Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh;\n    But if you faint, as fearing to do so,\n    Stay and be secret, and myself will go.\n  ROSS. To horse, to horse! Urge doubts to them that fear.\n  WILLOUGHBY. Hold out my horse, and I will first be there.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\nWindsor Castle\n\nEnter QUEEN, BUSHY, and BAGOT\n\n  BUSHY. Madam, your Majesty is too much sad.\n    You promis\'d, when you parted with the King,\n    To lay aside life-harming heaviness\n    And entertain a cheerful disposition.\n  QUEEN. To please the King, I did; to please myself\n    I cannot do it; yet I know no cause\n    Why I should welcome such a guest as grief,\n    Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest\n    As my sweet Richard. Yet again methinks\n    Some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune\'s womb,\n    Is coming towards me, and my inward soul\n    With nothing trembles. At some thing it grieves\n    More than with parting from my lord the King.\n  BUSHY. Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,\n    Which shows like grief itself, but is not so;\n    For sorrow\'s eye, glazed with blinding tears,\n    Divides one thing entire to many objects,  \n    Like perspectives which, rightly gaz\'d upon,\n    Show nothing but confusion-ey\'d awry,\n    Distinguish form. So your sweet Majesty,\n    Looking awry upon your lord\'s departure,\n    Find shapes of grief more than himself to wail;\n    Which, look\'d on as it is, is nought but shadows\n    Of what it is not. Then, thrice-gracious Queen,\n    More than your lord\'s departure weep not-more is not seen;\n    Or if it be, \'tis with false sorrow\'s eye,\n    Which for things true weeps things imaginary.\n  QUEEN. It may be so; but yet my inward soul\n    Persuades me it is otherwise. Howe\'er it be,\n    I cannot but be sad; so heavy sad\n    As-though, on thinking, on no thought I think-\n    Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink.\n  BUSHY. \'Tis nothing but conceit, my gracious lady.\n  QUEEN. \'Tis nothing less: conceit is still deriv\'d\n    From some forefather grief; mine is not so,\n    For nothing hath begot my something grief,\n    Or something hath the nothing that I grieve;  \n    \'Tis in reversion that I do possess-\n    But what it is that is not yet known what,\n    I cannot name; \'tis nameless woe, I wot.\n\n                   Enter GREEN\n\n  GREEN. God save your Majesty! and well met, gentlemen.\n    I hope the King is not yet shipp\'d for Ireland.\n  QUEEN. Why hopest thou so? \'Tis better hope he is;\n    For his designs crave haste, his haste good hope.\n    Then wherefore dost thou hope he is not shipp\'d?\n  GREEN. That he, our hope, might have retir\'d his power\n    And driven into despair an enemy\'s hope\n    Who strongly hath set footing in this land.\n    The banish\'d Bolingbroke repeals himself,\n    And with uplifted arms is safe arriv\'d\n    At Ravenspurgh.\n  QUEEN. Now God in heaven forbid!\n  GREEN. Ah, madam, \'tis too true; and that is worse,\n    The Lord Northumberland, his son young Henry Percy,  \n    The Lords of Ross, Beaumond, and Willoughby,\n    With all their powerful friends, are fled to him.\n  BUSHY. Why have you not proclaim\'d Northumberland\n    And all the rest revolted faction traitors?\n  GREEN. We have; whereupon the Earl of Worcester\n    Hath broken his staff, resign\'d his stewardship,\n    And all the household servants fled with him\n    To Bolingbroke.\n  QUEEN. So, Green, thou art the midwife to my woe,\n    And Bolingbroke my sorrow\'s dismal heir.\n    Now hath my soul brought forth her prodigy;\n    And I, a gasping new-deliver\'d mother,\n    Have woe to woe, sorrow to sorrow join\'d.\n  BUSHY. Despair not, madam.\n  QUEEN. Who shall hinder me?\n    I will despair, and be at enmity\n    With cozening hope-he is a flatterer,\n    A parasite, a keeper-back of death,\n    Who gently would dissolve the bands of life,\n    Which false hope lingers in extremity.  \n\n                    Enter YORK\n\n  GREEN. Here comes the Duke of York.\n  QUEEN. With signs of war about his aged neck.\n    O, full of careful business are his looks!\n    Uncle, for God\'s sake, speak comfortable words.\n  YORK. Should I do so, I should belie my thoughts.\n    Comfort\'s in heaven; and we are on the earth,\n    Where nothing lives but crosses, cares, and grief.\n    Your husband, he is gone to save far off,\n    Whilst others come to make him lose at home.\n    Here am I left to underprop his land,\n    Who, weak with age, cannot support myself.\n    Now comes the sick hour that his surfeit made;\n    Now shall he try his friends that flatter\'d him.\n\n                   Enter a SERVINGMAN\n\n  SERVINGMAN. My lord, your son was gone before I came.  \n  YORK. He was-why so go all which way it will!\n    The nobles they are fled, the commons they are cold\n    And will, I fear, revolt on Hereford\'s side.\n    Sirrah, get thee to Plashy, to my sister Gloucester;\n    Bid her send me presently a thousand pound.\n    Hold, take my ring.\n  SERVINGMAN. My lord, I had forgot to tell your lordship,\n    To-day, as I came by, I called there-\n    But I shall grieve you to report the rest.\n  YORK. What is\'t, knave?\n  SERVINGMAN. An hour before I came, the Duchess died.\n  YORK. God for his mercy! what a tide of woes\n    Comes rushing on this woeful land at once!\n    I know not what to do. I would to God,\n    So my untruth had not provok\'d him to it,\n    The King had cut off my head with my brother\'s.\n    What, are there no posts dispatch\'d for Ireland?\n    How shall we do for money for these wars?\n    Come, sister-cousin, I would say-pray, pardon me.\n    Go, fellow, get thee home, provide some carts,  \n    And bring away the armour that is there.\n                                                 Exit SERVINGMAN\n    Gentlemen, will you go muster men?\n    If I know how or which way to order these affairs\n    Thus disorderly thrust into my hands,\n    Never believe me. Both are my kinsmen.\n    T\'one is my sovereign, whom both my oath\n    And duty bids defend; t\'other again\n    Is my kinsman, whom the King hath wrong\'d,\n    Whom conscience and my kindred bids to right.\n    Well, somewhat we must do.-Come, cousin,\n    I\'ll dispose of you. Gentlemen, go muster up your men\n    And meet me presently at Berkeley.\n    I should to Plashy too,\n    But time will not permit. All is uneven,\n    And everything is left at six and seven.\n                                           Exeunt YORK and QUEEN\n  BUSHY. The wind sits fair for news to go to Ireland.\n    But none returns. For us to levy power\n    Proportionable to the enemy  \n    Is all unpossible.\n  GREEN. Besides, our nearness to the King in love\n    Is near the hate of those love not the King.\n  BAGOT. And that is the wavering commons; for their love\n    Lies in their purses; and whoso empties them,\n    By so much fills their hearts with deadly hate.\n  BUSHY. Wherein the King stands generally condemn\'d.\n  BAGOT. If judgment lie in them, then so do we,\n    Because we ever have been near the King.\n  GREEN. Well, I will for refuge straight to Bristow Castle.\n    The Earl of Wiltshire is already there.\n  BUSHY. Thither will I with you; for little office\n    Will the hateful commons perform for us,\n    Except Eke curs to tear us all to pieces.\n    Will you go along with us?\n  BAGOT. No; I will to Ireland to his Majesty.\n    Farewell. If heart\'s presages be not vain,\n    We three here part that ne\'er shall meet again.\n  BUSHY. That\'s as York thrives to beat back Bolingbroke.\n  GREEN. Alas, poor Duke! the task he undertakes  \n    Is numb\'ring sands and drinking oceans dry.\n    Where one on his side fights, thousands will fly.\n    Farewell at once-for once, for all, and ever.\n  BUSHY. Well, we may meet again.\n  BAGOT. I fear me, never.                                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\nGloucestershire\n\nEnter BOLINGBROKE and NORTHUMBERLAND, forces\n\n  BOLINGBROKE. How far is it, my lord, to Berkeley now?\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Believe me, noble lord,\n    I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire.\n    These high wild hills and rough uneven ways\n    Draws out our miles, and makes them wearisome;\n    And yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar,\n    Making the hard way sweet and delectable.\n    But I bethink me what a weary way\n    From Ravenspurgh to Cotswold will be found\n    In Ross and Willoughby, wanting your company,\n    Which, I protest, hath very much beguil\'d\n    The tediousness and process of my travel.\n    But theirs is sweet\'ned with the hope to have\n    The present benefit which I possess;\n    And hope to joy is little less in joy\n    Than hope enjoy\'d. By this the weary lords\n    Shall make their way seem short, as mine hath done  \n    By sight of what I have, your noble company.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Of much less value is my company\n    Than your good words. But who comes here?\n\n                 Enter HARRY PERCY\n\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. It is my son, young Harry Percy,\n    Sent from my brother Worcester, whencesoever.\n    Harry, how fares your uncle?\n  PERCY. I had thought, my lord, to have learn\'d his health of you.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Why, is he not with the Queen?\n  PERCY. No, my good lord; he hath forsook the court,\n    Broken his staff of office, and dispers\'d\n    The household of the King.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. What was his reason?\n    He was not so resolv\'d when last we spake together.\n  PERCY. Because your lordship was proclaimed traitor.\n    But he, my lord, is gone to Ravenspurgh,\n    To offer service to the Duke of Hereford;\n    And sent me over by Berkeley, to discover  \n    What power the Duke of York had levied there;\n    Then with directions to repair to Ravenspurgh.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Have you forgot the Duke of Hereford, boy?\n  PERCY. No, my good lord; for that is not forgot\n    Which ne\'er I did remember; to my knowledge,\n    I never in my life did look on him.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Then learn to know him now; this is the Duke.\n  PERCY. My gracious lord, I tender you my service,\n    Such as it is, being tender, raw, and young;\n    Which elder days shall ripen, and confirm\n    To more approved service and desert.\n  BOLINGBROKE. I thank thee, gentle Percy; and be sure\n    I count myself in nothing else so happy\n    As in a soul rememb\'ring my good friends;\n    And as my fortune ripens with thy love,\n    It shall be still thy true love\'s recompense.\n    My heart this covenant makes, my hand thus seals it.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. How far is it to Berkeley? And what stir\n    Keeps good old York there with his men of war?\n  PERCY. There stands the castle, by yon tuft of trees,  \n    Mann\'d with three hundred men, as I have heard;\n    And in it are the Lords of York, Berkeley, and Seymour-\n    None else of name and noble estimate.\n\n                  Enter Ross and WILLOUGHBY\n\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Here come the Lords of Ross and Willoughby,\n    Bloody with spurring, fiery-red with haste.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Welcome, my lords. I wot your love pursues\n    A banish\'d traitor. All my treasury\n    Is yet but unfelt thanks, which, more enrich\'d,\n    Shall be your love and labour\'s recompense.\n  ROSS. Your presence makes us rich, most noble lord.\n  WILLOUGHBY. And far surmounts our labour to attain it.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor;\n    Which, till my infant fortune comes to years,\n    Stands for my bounty. But who comes here?\n\n                     Enter BERKELEY\n  \n  NORTHUMBERLAND. It is my Lord of Berkeley, as I guess.\n  BERKELEY. My Lord of Hereford, my message is to you.\n  BOLINGBROKE. My lord, my answer is-\'to Lancaster\';\n    And I am come to seek that name in England;\n    And I must find that title in your tongue\n    Before I make reply to aught you say.\n  BERKELEY. Mistake me not, my lord; \'tis not my meaning\n    To raze one title of your honour out.\n    To you, my lord, I come-what lord you will-\n    From the most gracious regent of this land,\n    The Duke of York, to know what pricks you on\n    To take advantage of the absent time,\n    And fright our native peace with self-borne arms.\n\n                 Enter YORK, attended\n\n  BOLINGBROKE. I shall not need transport my words by you;\n    Here comes his Grace in person. My noble uncle!\n                                                     [Kneels]\n  YORK. Show me thy humble heart, and not thy knee,  \n    Whose duty is deceivable and false.\n  BOLINGBROKE. My gracious uncle!-\n  YORK. Tut, tut!\n    Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle.\n    I am no traitor\'s uncle; and that word \'grace\'\n    In an ungracious mouth is but profane.\n    Why have those banish\'d and forbidden legs\n    Dar\'d once to touch a dust of England\'s ground?\n    But then more \'why?\'-why have they dar\'d to march\n    So many miles upon her peaceful bosom,\n    Frighting her pale-fac\'d villages with war\n    And ostentation of despised arms?\n    Com\'st thou because the anointed King is hence?\n    Why, foolish boy, the King is left behind,\n    And in my loyal bosom lies his power.\n    Were I but now lord of such hot youth\n    As when brave Gaunt, thy father, and myself\n    Rescued the Black Prince, that young Mars of men,\n    From forth the ranks of many thousand French,\n    O, then how quickly should this arm of mine,  \n    Now prisoner to the palsy, chastise the\n    And minister correction to thy fault!\n  BOLINGBROKE My gracious uncle, let me know my fault;\n    On what condition stands it and wherein?\n  YORK. Even in condition of the worst degree-\n    In gross rebellion and detested treason.\n    Thou art a banish\'d man, and here art come\n    Before the expiration of thy time,\n    In braving arms against thy sovereign.\n  BOLINGBROKE. As I was banish\'d, I was banish\'d Hereford;\n    But as I come, I come for Lancaster.\n    And, noble uncle, I beseech your Grace\n    Look on my wrongs with an indifferent eye.\n    You are my father, for methinks in you\n    I see old Gaunt alive. O, then, my father,\n    Will you permit that I shall stand condemn\'d\n    A wandering vagabond; my rights and royalties\n    Pluck\'d from my arms perforce, and given away\n    To upstart unthrifts? Wherefore was I born?\n    If that my cousin king be King in England,  \n    It must be granted I am Duke of Lancaster.\n    You have a son, Aumerle, my noble cousin;\n    Had you first died, and he been thus trod down,\n    He should have found his uncle Gaunt a father\n    To rouse his wrongs and chase them to the bay.\n    I am denied to sue my livery here,\n    And yet my letters patents give me leave.\n    My father\'s goods are all distrain\'d and sold;\n    And these and all are all amiss employ\'d.\n    What would you have me do? I am a subject,\n    And I challenge law-attorneys are denied me;\n    And therefore personally I lay my claim\n    To my inheritance of free descent.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. The noble Duke hath been too much abused.\n  ROSS. It stands your Grace upon to do him right.\n  WILLOUGHBY. Base men by his endowments are made great.\n  YORK. My lords of England, let me tell you this:\n    I have had feeling of my cousin\'s wrongs,\n    And labour\'d all I could to do him right;\n    But in this kind to come, in braving arms,  \n    Be his own carver and cut out his way,\n    To find out right with wrong-it may not be;\n    And you that do abet him in this kind\n    Cherish rebellion, and are rebels all.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. The noble Duke hath sworn his coming is\n    But for his own; and for the right of that\n    We all have strongly sworn to give him aid;\n    And let him never see joy that breaks that oath!\n  YORK. Well, well, I see the issue of these arms.\n    I cannot mend it, I must needs confess,\n    Because my power is weak and all ill left;\n    But if I could, by Him that gave me life,\n    I would attach you all and make you stoop\n    Unto the sovereign mercy of the King;\n    But since I cannot, be it known unto you\n    I do remain as neuter. So, fare you well;\n    Unless you please to enter in the castle,\n    And there repose you for this night.\n  BOLINGBROKE. An offer, uncle, that we will accept.\n    But we must win your Grace to go with us  \n    To Bristow Castle, which they say is held\n    By Bushy, Bagot, and their complices,\n    The caterpillars of the commonwealth,\n    Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away.\n  YORK. It may be I will go with you; but yet I\'ll pause,\n    For I am loath to break our country\'s laws.\n    Nor friends nor foes, to me welcome you are.\n    Things past redress are now with me past care.        Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4.\nA camp in Wales\n\nEnter EARL OF SALISBURY and a WELSH CAPTAIN\n\n  CAPTAIN. My Lord of Salisbury, we have stay\'d ten days\n    And hardly kept our countrymen together,\n    And yet we hear no tidings from the King;\n    Therefore we will disperse ourselves. Farewell.\n  SALISBURY. Stay yet another day, thou trusty Welshman;\n    The King reposeth all his confidence in thee.\n  CAPTAIN. \'Tis thought the King is dead; we will not stay.\n    The bay trees in our country are all wither\'d,\n    And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;\n    The pale-fac\'d moon looks bloody on the earth,\n    And lean-look\'d prophets whisper fearful change;\n    Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap-\n    The one in fear to lose what they enjoy,\n    The other to enjoy by rage and war.\n    These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.\n    Farewell. Our countrymen are gone and fled,\n    As well assur\'d Richard their King is dead.             Exit  \n  SALISBURY. Ah, Richard, with the eyes of heavy mind,\n    I see thy glory like a shooting star\n    Fall to the base earth from the firmament!\n    The sun sets weeping in the lowly west,\n    Witnessing storms to come, woe, and unrest;\n    Thy friends are fled, to wait upon thy foes;\n    And crossly to thy good all fortune goes.               Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nBOLINGBROKE\'S camp at Bristol\n\nEnter BOLINGBROKE, YORK, NORTHUMBERLAND, PERCY, ROSS, WILLOUGHBY,\nBUSHY and GREEN, prisoners\n\n  BOLINGBROKE. Bring forth these men.\n    Bushy and Green, I will not vex your souls-\n    Since presently your souls must part your bodies-\n    With too much urging your pernicious lives,\n    For \'twere no charity; yet, to wash your blood\n    From off my hands, here in the view of men\n    I will unfold some causes of your deaths:\n    You have misled a prince, a royal king,\n    A happy gentleman in blood and lineaments,\n    By you unhappied and disfigured clean;\n    You have in manner with your sinful hours\n    Made a divorce betwixt his queen and him;\n    Broke the possession of a royal bed,\n    And stain\'d the beauty of a fair queen\'s cheeks\n    With tears drawn from her eyes by your foul wrongs;\n    Myself-a prince by fortune of my birth,  \n    Near to the King in blood, and near in love\n    Till you did make him misinterpret me-\n    Have stoop\'d my neck under your injuries\n    And sigh\'d my English breath in foreign clouds,\n    Eating the bitter bread of banishment,\n    Whilst you have fed upon my signories,\n    Dispark\'d my parks and fell\'d my forest woods,\n    From my own windows torn my household coat,\n    Raz\'d out my imprese, leaving me no sign\n    Save men\'s opinions and my living blood\n    To show the world I am a gentleman.\n    This and much more, much more than twice all this,\n    Condemns you to the death. See them delivered over\n    To execution and the hand of death.\n  BUSHY. More welcome is the stroke of death to me\n    Than Bolingbroke to England. Lords, farewell.\n  GREEN. My comfort is that heaven will take our souls,\n    And plague injustice with the pains of hell.\n  BOLINGBROKE. My Lord Northumberland, see them dispatch\'d.\n           Exeunt NORTHUMBERLAND, and others, with the prisoners  \n    Uncle, you say the Queen is at your house;\n    For God\'s sake, fairly let her be entreated.\n    Tell her I send to her my kind commends;\n    Take special care my greetings be delivered.\n  YORK. A gentleman of mine I have dispatch\'d\n    With letters of your love to her at large.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Thanks, gentle uncle. Come, lords, away,\n    To fight with Glendower and his complices.\n    Awhile to work, and after holiday.                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\nThe coast of Wales. A castle in view\n\nDrums. Flourish and colours. Enter the KING, the BISHOP OF CARLISLE,\nAUMERLE, and soldiers\n\n  KING RICHARD. Barkloughly Castle can they this at hand?\n  AUMERLE. Yea, my lord. How brooks your Grace the air\n    After your late tossing on the breaking seas?\n  KING RICHARD. Needs must I like it well. I weep for joy\n    To stand upon my kingdom once again.\n    Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,\n    Though rebels wound thee with their horses\' hoofs.\n    As a long-parted mother with her child\n    Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting,\n    So weeping-smiling greet I thee, my earth,\n    And do thee favours with my royal hands.\n    Feed not thy sovereign\'s foe, my gentle earth,\n    Nor with thy sweets comfort his ravenous sense;\n    But let thy spiders, that suck up thy venom,\n    And heavy-gaited toads, lie in their way,\n    Doing annoyance to the treacherous feet  \n    Which with usurping steps do trample thee;\n    Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies;\n    And when they from thy bosom pluck a flower,\n    Guard it, I pray thee, with a lurking adder,\n    Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch\n    Throw death upon thy sovereign\'s enemies.\n    Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords.\n    This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones\n    Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king\n    Shall falter under foul rebellion\'s arms.\n  CARLISLE. Fear not, my lord; that Power that made you king\n    Hath power to keep you king in spite of all.\n    The means that heaven yields must be embrac\'d\n    And not neglected; else, if heaven would,\n    And we will not, heaven\'s offer we refuse,\n    The proffered means of succour and redress.\n  AUMERLE. He means, my lord, that we are too remiss;\n    Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security,\n    Grows strong and great in substance and in power.\n  KING RICHARD. Discomfortable cousin! know\'st thou not  \n    That when the searching eye of heaven is hid,\n    Behind the globe, that lights the lower world,\n    Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen\n    In murders and in outrage boldly here;\n    But when from under this terrestrial ball\n    He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines\n    And darts his light through every guilty hole,\n    Then murders, treasons, and detested sins,\n    The cloak of night being pluck\'d from off their backs,\n    Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves?\n    So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke,\n    Who all this while hath revell\'d in the night,\n    Whilst we were wand\'ring with the Antipodes,\n    Shall see us rising in our throne, the east,\n    His treasons will sit blushing in his face,\n    Not able to endure the sight of day,\n    But self-affrighted tremble at his sin.\n    Not all the water in the rough rude sea\n    Can wash the balm off from an anointed king;\n    The breath of worldly men cannot depose  \n    The deputy elected by the Lord.\n    For every man that Bolingbroke hath press\'d\n    To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown,\n    God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay\n    A glorious angel. Then, if angels fight,\n    Weak men must fall; for heaven still guards the right.\n\n                 Enter SALISBURY\n\n    Welcome, my lord. How far off lies your power?\n  SALISBURY. Nor near nor farther off, my gracious lord,\n    Than this weak arm. Discomfort guides my tongue,\n    And bids me speak of nothing but despair.\n    One day too late, I fear me, noble lord,\n    Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth.\n    O, call back yesterday, bid time return,\n    And thou shalt have twelve thousand fighting men!\n    To-day, to-day, unhappy day, too late,\n    O\'erthrows thy joys, friends, fortune, and thy state;\n    For all the Welshmen, hearing thou wert dead,  \n    Are gone to Bolingbroke, dispers\'d, and fled.\n  AUMERLE. Comfort, my liege, why looks your Grace so pale?\n  KING RICHARD. But now the blood of twenty thousand men\n    Did triumph in my face, and they are fled;\n    And, till so much blood thither come again,\n    Have I not reason to look pale and dead?\n    All souls that will be safe, fly from my side;\n    For time hath set a blot upon my pride.\n  AUMERLE. Comfort, my liege; remember who you are.\n  KING RICHARD. I had forgot myself; am I not King?\n    Awake, thou coward majesty! thou sleepest.\n    Is not the King\'s name twenty thousand names?\n    Arm, arm, my name! a puny subject strikes\n    At thy great glory. Look not to the ground,\n    Ye favourites of a king; are we not high?\n    High be our thoughts. I know my uncle York\n    Hath power enough to serve our turn. But who comes here?\n\n                   Enter SCROOP\n  \n  SCROOP. More health and happiness betide my liege\n    Than can my care-tun\'d tongue deliver him.\n  KING RICHARD. Mine ear is open and my heart prepar\'d.\n    The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold.\n    Say, is my kingdom lost? Why, \'twas my care,\n    And what loss is it to be rid of care?\n    Strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we?\n    Greater he shall not be; if he serve God,\n    We\'ll serve him too, and be his fellow so.\n    Revolt our subjects? That we cannot mend;\n    They break their faith to God as well as us.\n    Cry woe, destruction, ruin, and decay-\n    The worst is death, and death will have his day.\n  SCROOP. Glad am I that your Highness is so arm\'d\n    To bear the tidings of calamity.\n    Like an unseasonable stormy day\n    Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores,\n    As if the world were all dissolv\'d to tears,\n    So high above his limits swells the rage\n    Of Bolingbroke, covering your fearful land  \n    With hard bright steel and hearts harder than steel.\n    White-beards have arm\'d their thin and hairless scalps\n    Against thy majesty; boys, with women\'s voices,\n    Strive to speak big, and clap their female joints\n    In stiff unwieldy arms against thy crown;\n    Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows\n    Of double-fatal yew against thy state;\n    Yea, distaff-women manage rusty bills\n    Against thy seat: both young and old rebel,\n    And all goes worse than I have power to tell.\n  KING RICHARD. Too well, too well thou tell\'st a tale so in.\n    Where is the Earl of Wiltshire? Where is Bagot?\n    What is become of Bushy? Where is Green?\n    That they have let the dangerous enemy\n    Measure our confines with such peaceful steps?\n    If we prevail, their heads shall pay for it.\n    I warrant they have made peace with Bolingbroke.\n  SCROOP. Peace have they made with him indeed, my lord.\n  KING RICHARD. O villains, vipers, damn\'d without redemption!\n    Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!  \n    Snakes, in my heart-blood warm\'d, that sting my heart!\n    Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas!\n    Would they make peace? Terrible hell make war\n    Upon their spotted souls for this offence!\n  SCROOP. Sweet love, I see, changing his property,\n    Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate.\n    Again uncurse their souls; their peace is made\n    With heads, and not with hands; those whom you curse\n    Have felt the worst of death\'s destroying wound\n    And lie full low, grav\'d in the hollow ground.\n  AUMERLE. Is Bushy, Green, and the Earl of Wiltshire dead?\n  SCROOP. Ay, all of them at Bristow lost their heads.\n  AUMERLE. Where is the Duke my father with his power?\n  KING RICHARD. No matter where-of comfort no man speak.\n    Let\'s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;\n    Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes\n    Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.\n    Let\'s choose executors and talk of wills;\n    And yet not so-for what can we bequeath\n    Save our deposed bodies to the ground?  \n    Our lands, our lives, and an, are Bolingbroke\'s.\n    And nothing can we can our own but death\n    And that small model of the barren earth\n    Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.\n    For God\'s sake let us sit upon the ground\n    And tell sad stories of the death of kings:\n    How some have been depos\'d, some slain in war,\n    Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos\'d,\n    Some poison\'d by their wives, some sleeping kill\'d,\n    All murder\'d-for within the hollow crown\n    That rounds the mortal temples of a king\n    Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits,\n    Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp;\n    Allowing him a breath, a little scene,\n    To monarchize, be fear\'d, and kill with looks;\n    Infusing him with self and vain conceit,\n    As if this flesh which walls about our life\n    Were brass impregnable; and, humour\'d thus,\n    Comes at the last, and with a little pin\n    Bores through his castle wall, and farewell, king!  \n    Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood\n    With solemn reverence; throw away respect,\n    Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty;\n    For you have but mistook me all this while.\n    I live with bread like you, feel want,\n    Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,\n    How can you say to me I am a king?\n  CARLISLE. My lord, wise men ne\'er sit and wail their woes,\n    But presently prevent the ways to wail.\n    To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength,\n    Gives, in your weakness, strength unto your foe,\n    And so your follies fight against yourself.\n    Fear and be slain-no worse can come to fight;\n    And fight and die is death destroying death,\n    Where fearing dying pays death servile breath.\n  AUMERLE. My father hath a power; inquire of him,\n    And learn to make a body of a limb.\n  KING RICHARD. Thou chid\'st me well. Proud Bolingbroke, I come\n    To change blows with thee for our day of doom.\n    This ague fit of fear is over-blown;  \n    An easy task it is to win our own.\n    Say, Scroop, where lies our uncle with his power?\n    Speak sweetly, man, although thy looks be sour.\n  SCROOP. Men judge by the complexion of the sky\n    The state in inclination of the day;\n    So may you by my dull and heavy eye,\n    My tongue hath but a heavier tale to say.\n    I play the torturer, by small and small\n    To lengthen out the worst that must be spoken:\n    Your uncle York is join\'d with Bolingbroke;\n    And all your northern castles yielded up,\n    And all your southern gentlemen in arms\n    Upon his party.\n  KING RICHARD. Thou hast said enough.\n      [To AUMERLE] Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth\n    Of that sweet way I was in to despair!\n    What say you now? What comfort have we now?\n    By heaven, I\'ll hate him everlastingly\n    That bids me be of comfort any more.\n    Go to Flint Castle; there I\'ll pine away;  \n    A king, woe\'s slave, shall kingly woe obey.\n    That power I have, discharge; and let them go\n    To ear the land that hath some hope to grow,\n    For I have none. Let no man speak again\n    To alter this, for counsel is but vain.\n  AUMERLE. My liege, one word.\n  KING RICHARD. He does me double wrong\n    That wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue.\n    Discharge my followers; let them hence away,\n    From Richard\'s night to Bolingbroke\'s fair day.       Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\nWales. Before Flint Castle\n\nEnter, with drum and colours, BOLINGBROKE, YORK, NORTHUMBERLAND,\nand forces\n\n  BOLINGBROKE. So that by this intelligence we learn\n    The Welshmen are dispers\'d; and Salisbury\n    Is gone to meet the King, who lately landed\n    With some few private friends upon this coast.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. The news is very fair and good, my lord.\n    Richard not far from hence hath hid his head.\n  YORK. It would beseem the Lord Northumberland\n    To say \'King Richard.\' Alack the heavy day\n    When such a sacred king should hide his head!\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Your Grace mistakes; only to be brief,\n    Left I his title out.\n  YORK. The time hath been,\n    Would you have been so brief with him, he would\n    Have been so brief with you to shorten you,\n    For taking so the head, your whole head\'s length.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Mistake not, uncle, further than you should.  \n  YORK. Take not, good cousin, further than you should,\n    Lest you mistake. The heavens are over our heads.\n  BOLINGBROKE. I know it, uncle; and oppose not myself\n    Against their will. But who comes here?\n\n                    Enter PERCY\n\n    Welcome, Harry. What, will not this castle yield?\n  PIERCY. The castle royally is mann\'d, my lord,\n    Against thy entrance.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Royally!\n    Why, it contains no king?\n  PERCY. Yes, my good lord,\n    It doth contain a king; King Richard lies\n    Within the limits of yon lime and stone;\n    And with him are the Lord Aumerle, Lord Salisbury,\n    Sir Stephen Scroop, besides a clergyman\n    Of holy reverence; who, I cannot learn.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. O, belike it is the Bishop of Carlisle.\n  BOLINGBROKE. [To NORTHUMBERLAND] Noble lord,  \n    Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle;\n    Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parley\n    Into his ruin\'d ears, and thus deliver:\n    Henry Bolingbroke\n    On both his knees doth kiss King Richard\'s hand,\n    And sends allegiance and true faith of heart\n    To his most royal person; hither come\n    Even at his feet to lay my arms and power,\n    Provided that my banishment repeal\'d\n    And lands restor\'d again be freely granted;\n    If not, I\'ll use the advantage of my power\n    And lay the summer\'s dust with showers of blood\n    Rain\'d from the wounds of slaughtered Englishmen;\n    The which how far off from the mind of Bolingbroke\n    It is such crimson tempest should bedrench\n    The fresh green lap of fair King Richard\'s land,\n    My stooping duty tenderly shall show.\n    Go, signify as much, while here we march\n    Upon the grassy carpet of this plain.\n           [NORTHUMBERLAND advances to the Castle, with a trumpet]  \n    Let\'s march without the noise of threat\'ning drum,\n    That from this castle\'s tottered battlements\n    Our fair appointments may be well perus\'d.\n    Methinks King Richard and myself should meet\n    With no less terror than the elements\n    Of fire and water, when their thund\'ring shock\n    At meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven.\n    Be he the fire, I\'ll be the yielding water;\n    The rage be his, whilst on the earth I rain\n    My waters-on the earth, and not on him.\n    March on, and mark King Richard how he looks.\n\n      Parle without, and answer within; then a flourish.\n      Enter on the walls, the KING, the BISHOP OF CARLISLE,\n      AUMERLE, SCROOP, and SALISBURY\n\n    See, see, King Richard doth himself appear,\n    As doth the blushing discontented sun\n    From out the fiery portal of the east,\n    When he perceives the envious clouds are bent  \n    To dim his glory and to stain the track\n    Of his bright passage to the occident.\n  YORK. Yet he looks like a king. Behold, his eye,\n    As bright as is the eagle\'s, lightens forth\n    Controlling majesty. Alack, alack, for woe,\n    That any harm should stain so fair a show!\n  KING RICHARD. [To NORTHUMBERLAND] We are amaz\'d; and thus long\n      have we stood\n    To watch the fearful bending of thy knee,\n    Because we thought ourself thy lawful King;\n    And if we be, how dare thy joints forget\n    To pay their awful duty to our presence?\n    If we be not, show us the hand of God\n    That hath dismiss\'d us from our stewardship;\n    For well we know no hand of blood and bone\n    Can gripe the sacred handle of our sceptre,\n    Unless he do profane, steal, or usurp.\n    And though you think that all, as you have done,\n    Have torn their souls by turning them from us,\n    And we are barren and bereft of friends,  \n    Yet know-my master, God omnipotent,\n    Is mustering in his clouds on our behalf\n    Armies of pestilence; and they shall strike\n    Your children yet unborn and unbegot,\n    That lift your vassal hands against my head\n    And threat the glory of my precious crown.\n    Tell Bolingbroke, for yon methinks he stands,\n    That every stride he makes upon my land\n    Is dangerous treason; he is come to open\n    The purple testament of bleeding war;\n    But ere the crown he looks for live in peace,\n    Ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers\' sons\n    Shall ill become the flower of England\'s face,\n    Change the complexion of her maid-pale peace\n    To scarlet indignation, and bedew\n    Her pastures\' grass with faithful English blood.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. The King of Heaven forbid our lord the King\n    Should so with civil and uncivil arms\n    Be rush\'d upon! Thy thrice noble cousin,\n    Harry Bolingbroke, doth humbly kiss thy hand;  \n    And by the honourable tomb he swears\n    That stands upon your royal grandsire\'s bones,\n    And by the royalties of both your bloods,\n    Currents that spring from one most gracious head,\n    And by the buried hand of warlike Gaunt,\n    And by the worth and honour of himself,\n    Comprising all that may be sworn or said,\n    His coming hither hath no further scope\n    Than for his lineal royalties, and to beg\n    Enfranchisement immediate on his knees;\n    Which on thy royal party granted once,\n    His glittering arms he will commend to rust,\n    His barbed steeds to stables, and his heart\n    To faithful service of your Majesty.\n    This swears he, as he is a prince, is just;\n    And as I am a gentleman I credit him.\n  KING RICHARD. Northumberland, say thus the King returns:\n    His noble cousin is right welcome hither;\n    And all the number of his fair demands\n    Shall be accomplish\'d without contradiction.  \n    With all the gracious utterance thou hast\n    Speak to his gentle hearing kind commends.\n    [To AUMERLE] We do debase ourselves, cousin, do we not,\n    To look so poorly and to speak so fair?\n    Shall we call back Northumberland, and send\n    Defiance to the traitor, and so die?\n  AUMERLE. No, good my lord; let\'s fight with gentle words\n    Till time lend friends, and friends their helpful swords.\n  KING RICHARD. O God, O God! that e\'er this tongue of mine\n    That laid the sentence of dread banishment\n    On yon proud man should take it off again\n    With words of sooth! O that I were as great\n    As is my grief, or lesser than my name!\n    Or that I could forget what I have been!\n    Or not remember what I must be now!\n    Swell\'st thou, proud heart? I\'ll give thee scope to beat,\n    Since foes have scope to beat both thee and me.\n  AUMERLE. Northumberland comes back from Bolingbroke.\n  KING RICHARD. What must the King do now? Must he submit?\n    The King shall do it. Must he be depos\'d?  \n    The King shall be contented. Must he lose\n    The name of king? A God\'s name, let it go.\n    I\'ll give my jewels for a set of beads,\n    My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,\n    My gay apparel for an almsman\'s gown,\n    My figur\'d goblets for a dish of wood,\n    My sceptre for a palmer\'s walking staff,\n    My subjects for a pair of carved saints,\n    And my large kingdom for a little grave,\n    A little little grave, an obscure grave-\n    Or I\'ll be buried in the king\'s high way,\n    Some way of common trade, where subjects\' feet\n    May hourly trample on their sovereign\'s head;\n    For on my heart they tread now whilst I live,\n    And buried once, why not upon my head?\n    Aumerle, thou weep\'st, my tender-hearted cousin!\n    We\'ll make foul weather with despised tears;\n    Our sighs and they shall lodge the summer corn\n    And make a dearth in this revolting land.\n    Or shall we play the wantons with our woes  \n    And make some pretty match with shedding tears?\n    As thus: to drop them still upon one place\n    Till they have fretted us a pair of graves\n    Within the earth; and, therein laid-there lies\n    Two kinsmen digg\'d their graves with weeping eyes.\n    Would not this ill do well? Well, well, I see\n    I talk but idly, and you laugh at me.\n    Most mighty prince, my Lord Northumberland,\n    What says King Bolingbroke? Will his Majesty\n    Give Richard leave to live till Richard die?\n    You make a leg, and Bolingbroke says ay.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. My lord, in the base court he doth attend\n    To speak with you; may it please you to come down?\n  KING RICHARD. Down, down I come, like glist\'ring Phaethon,\n    Wanting the manage of unruly jades.\n    In the base court? Base court, where kings grow base,\n    To come at traitors\' calls, and do them grace.\n    In the base court? Come down? Down, court! down, king!\n    For night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing.\n                                               Exeunt from above  \n  BOLINGBROKE. What says his Majesty?\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Sorrow and grief of heart\n    Makes him speak fondly, like a frantic man;\n    Yet he is come.\n\n          Enter the KING, and his attendants, below\n\n  BOLINGBROKE. Stand all apart,\n    And show fair duty to his Majesty.   [He kneels down]\n    My gracious lord-\n  KING RICHARD. Fair cousin, you debase your princely knee\n    To make the base earth proud with kissing it.\n    Me rather had my heart might feel your love\n    Than my unpleas\'d eye see your courtesy.\n    Up, cousin, up; your heart is up, I know,\n    [Touching his own head] Thus high at least, although your\n      knee be low.\n  BOLINGBROKE. My gracious lord, I come but for mine own.\n  KING RICHARD. Your own is yours, and I am yours, and all.\n  BOLINGBROKE. So far be mine, my most redoubted lord,  \n    As my true service shall deserve your love.\n  KING RICHARD. Well you deserve. They well deserve to have\n    That know the strong\'st and surest way to get.\n    Uncle, give me your hands; nay, dry your eyes:\n    Tears show their love, but want their remedies.\n    Cousin, I am too young to be your father,\n    Though you are old enough to be my heir.\n    What you will have, I\'ll give, and willing too;\n    For do we must what force will have us do.\n    Set on towards London. Cousin, is it so?\n  BOLINGBROKE. Yea, my good lord.\n  KING RICHARD. Then I must not say no.         Flourish. Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4.\nThe DUKE OF YORK\'s garden\n\nEnter the QUEEN and two LADIES\n\n  QUEEN. What sport shall we devise here in this garden\n    To drive away the heavy thought of care?\n  LADY. Madam, we\'ll play at bowls.\n  QUEEN. \'Twill make me think the world is full of rubs\n    And that my fortune runs against the bias.\n  LADY. Madam, we\'ll dance.\n  QUEEN. My legs can keep no measure in delight,\n    When my poor heart no measure keeps in grief;\n    Therefore no dancing, girl; some other sport.\n  LADY. Madam, we\'ll tell tales.\n  QUEEN. Of sorrow or of joy?\n  LADY. Of either, madam.\n  QUEEN. Of neither, girl;\n    For if of joy, being altogether wanting,\n    It doth remember me the more of sorrow;\n    Or if of grief, being altogether had,\n    It adds more sorrow to my want of joy;  \n    For what I have I need not to repeat,\n    And what I want it boots not to complain.\n  LADY. Madam, I\'ll sing.\n  QUEEN. \'Tis well\' that thou hast cause;\n    But thou shouldst please me better wouldst thou weep.\n  LADY. I could weep, madam, would it do you good.\n  QUEEN. And I could sing, would weeping do me good,\n    And never borrow any tear of thee.\n\n           Enter a GARDENER and two SERVANTS\n\n    But stay, here come the gardeners.\n    Let\'s step into the shadow of these trees.\n    My wretchedness unto a row of pins,\n    They will talk of state, for every one doth so\n    Against a change: woe is forerun with woe.\n                                       [QUEEN and LADIES retire]\n  GARDENER. Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks,\n    Which, like unruly children, make their sire\n    Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight;  \n    Give some supportance to the bending twigs.\n    Go thou, and Eke an executioner\n    Cut off the heads of too fast growing sprays\n    That look too lofty in our commonwealth:\n    All must be even in our government.\n    You thus employ\'d, I will go root away\n    The noisome weeds which without profit suck\n    The soil\'s fertility from wholesome flowers.\n  SERVANT. Why should we, in the compass of a pale,\n    Keep law and form and due proportion,\n    Showing, as in a model, our firm estate,\n    When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,\n    Is full of weeds; her fairest flowers chok\'d up,\n    Her fruit trees all unprun\'d, her hedges ruin\'d,\n    Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs\n    Swarming with caterpillars?\n  GARDENER. Hold thy peace.\n    He that hath suffer\'d this disorder\'d spring\n    Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf;\n    The weeds which his broad-spreading leaves did shelter,  \n    That seem\'d in eating him to hold him up,\n    Are pluck\'d up root and all by Bolingbroke-\n    I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.\n  SERVANT. What, are they dead?\n  GARDENER. They are; and Bolingbroke\n    Hath seiz\'d the wasteful King. O, what pity is it\n    That he had not so trimm\'d and dress\'d his land\n    As we this garden! We at time of year\n    Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees,\n    Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood,\n    With too much riches it confound itself;\n    Had he done so to great and growing men,\n    They might have Ev\'d to bear, and he to taste\n    Their fruits of duty. Superfluous branches\n    We lop away, that bearing boughs may live;\n    Had he done so, himself had home the crown,\n    Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.\n  SERVANT. What, think you the King shall be deposed?\n  GARDENER. Depress\'d he is already, and depos\'d\n    \'Tis doubt he will be. Letters came last night  \n    To a dear friend of the good Duke of York\'s\n    That tell black tidings.\n  QUEEN. O, I am press\'d to death through want of speaking!\n                                                [Coming forward]\n    Thou, old Adam\'s likeness, set to dress this garden,\n    How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news?\n    What Eve, what serpent, hath suggested the\n    To make a second fall of cursed man?\n    Why dost thou say King Richard is depos\'d?\n    Dar\'st thou, thou little better thing than earth,\n    Divine his downfall? Say, where, when, and how,\n    Cam\'st thou by this ill tidings? Speak, thou wretch.\n  GARDENER. Pardon me, madam; little joy have\n    To breathe this news; yet what I say is true.\n    King Richard, he is in the mighty hold\n    Of Bolingbroke. Their fortunes both are weigh\'d.\n    In your lord\'s scale is nothing but himself,\n    And some few vanities that make him light;\n    But in the balance of great Bolingbroke,\n    Besides himself, are all the English peers,  \n    And with that odds he weighs King Richard down.\n    Post you to London, and you will find it so;\n    I speak no more than every one doth know.\n  QUEEN. Nimble mischance, that art so light of foot,\n    Doth not thy embassage belong to me,\n    And am I last that knows it? O, thou thinkest\n    To serve me last, that I may longest keep\n    Thy sorrow in my breast. Come, ladies, go\n    To meet at London London\'s King in woe.\n    What, was I born to this, that my sad look\n    Should grace the triumph of great Bolingbroke?\n    Gard\'ner, for telling me these news of woe,\n    Pray God the plants thou graft\'st may never grow!\n                                         Exeunt QUEEN and LADIES\n  GARDENER. Poor Queen, so that thy state might be no worse,\n    I would my skill were subject to thy curse.\n    Here did she fall a tear; here in this place\n    I\'ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace.\n    Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen,\n    In the remembrance of a weeping queen.                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 1.\nWestminster Hall\n\nEnter, as to the Parliament, BOLINGBROKE, AUMERLE, NORTHUMBERLAND, PERCY,\nFITZWATER, SURREY, the BISHOP OF CARLISLE, the ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER,\nand others; HERALD, OFFICERS, and BAGOT\n\n  BOLINGBROKE. Call forth Bagot.\n    Now, Bagot, freely speak thy mind-\n    What thou dost know of noble Gloucester\'s death;\n    Who wrought it with the King, and who perform\'d\n    The bloody office of his timeless end.\n  BAGOT. Then set before my face the Lord Aumerle.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Cousin, stand forth, and look upon that man.\n  BAGOT. My Lord Aumerle, I know your daring tongue\n    Scorns to unsay what once it hath deliver\'d.\n    In that dead time when Gloucester\'s death was plotted\n    I heard you say \'Is not my arm of length,\n    That reacheth from the restful English Court\n    As far as Calais, to mine uncle\'s head?\'\n    Amongst much other talk that very time  \n    I heard you say that you had rather refuse\n    The offer of an hundred thousand crowns\n    Than Bolingbroke\'s return to England;\n    Adding withal, how blest this land would be\n    In this your cousin\'s death.\n  AUMERLE. Princes, and noble lords,\n    What answer shall I make to this base man?\n    Shall I so much dishonour my fair stars\n    On equal terms to give him chastisement?\n    Either I must, or have mine honour soil\'d\n    With the attainder of his slanderous lips.\n    There is my gage, the manual seal of death\n    That marks thee out for hell. I say thou liest,\n    And will maintain what thou hast said is false\n    In thy heart-blood, through being all too base\n    To stain the temper of my knightly sword.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Bagot, forbear; thou shalt not take it up.\n  AUMERLE. Excepting one, I would he were the best\n    In all this presence that hath mov\'d me so.\n  FITZWATER. If that thy valour stand on sympathy,  \n    There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine.\n    By that fair sun which shows me where thou stand\'st,\n    I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak\'st it,\n    That thou wert cause of noble Gloucester\'s death.\n    If thou deniest it twenty times, thou liest;\n    And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart,\n    Where it was forged, with my rapier\'s point.\n  AUMERLE. Thou dar\'st not, coward, live to see that day.\n  FITZWATER. Now, by my soul, I would it were this hour.\n  AUMERLE. Fitzwater, thou art damn\'d to hell for this.\n  PERCY. Aumerle, thou liest; his honour is as true\n    In this appeal as thou art an unjust;\n    And that thou art so, there I throw my gage,\n    To prove it on thee to the extremest point\n    Of mortal breathing. Seize it, if thou dar\'st.\n  AUMERLE. An if I do not, may my hands rot of\n    And never brandish more revengeful steel\n    Over the glittering helmet of my foe!\n  ANOTHER LORD. I task the earth to the like, forsworn Aumerle;\n    And spur thee on with fun as many lies  \n    As may be halloa\'d in thy treacherous ear\n    From sun to sun. There is my honour\'s pawn;\n    Engage it to the trial, if thou darest.\n  AUMERLE. Who sets me else? By heaven, I\'ll throw at all!\n    I have a thousand spirits in one breast\n    To answer twenty thousand such as you.\n  SURREY. My Lord Fitzwater, I do remember well\n    The very time Aumerle and you did talk.\n  FITZWATER. \'Tis very true; you were in presence then,\n    And you can witness with me this is true.\n  SURREY. As false, by heaven, as heaven itself is true.\n  FITZWATER. Surrey, thou liest.\n  SURREY. Dishonourable boy!\n    That lie shall lie so heavy on my sword\n    That it shall render vengeance and revenge\n    Till thou the lie-giver and that lie do he\n    In earth as quiet as thy father\'s skull.\n    In proof whereof, there is my honour\'s pawn;\n    Engage it to the trial, if thou dar\'st.\n  FITZWATER. How fondly dost thou spur a forward horse!  \n    If I dare eat, or drink, or breathe, or live,\n    I dare meet Surrey in a wilderness,\n    And spit upon him whilst I say he lies,\n    And lies, and lies. There is my bond of faith,\n    To tie thee to my strong correction.\n    As I intend to thrive in this new world,\n    Aumerle is guilty of my true appeal.\n    Besides, I heard the banish\'d Norfolk say\n    That thou, Aumerle, didst send two of thy men\n    To execute the noble Duke at Calais.\n  AUMERLE. Some honest Christian trust me with a gage\n    That Norfolk lies. Here do I throw down this,\n    If he may be repeal\'d to try his honour.\n  BOLINGBROKE. These differences shall all rest under gage\n    Till Norfolk be repeal\'d-repeal\'d he shall be\n    And, though mine enemy, restor\'d again\n    To all his lands and signories. When he is return\'d,\n    Against Aumerle we will enforce his trial.\n  CARLISLE. That honourable day shall never be seen.\n    Many a time hath banish\'d Norfolk fought  \n    For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field,\n    Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross\n    Against black pagans, Turks, and Saracens;\n    And, toil\'d with works of war, retir\'d himself\n    To Italy; and there, at Venice, gave\n    His body to that pleasant country\'s earth,\n    And his pure soul unto his captain, Christ,\n    Under whose colours he had fought so long.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Why, Bishop, is Norfolk dead?\n  CARLISLE. As surely as I live, my lord.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Sweet peace conduct his sweet soul to the bosom\n    Of good old Abraham! Lords appellants,\n    Your differences shall all rest under gage\n    Till we assign you to your days of trial\n\n                 Enter YORK, attended\n\n  YORK. Great Duke of Lancaster, I come to the\n    From plume-pluck\'d Richard, who with willing soul\n    Adopts thee heir, and his high sceptre yields  \n    To the possession of thy royal hand.\n    Ascend his throne, descending now from him-\n    And long live Henry, fourth of that name!\n  BOLINGBROKE. In God\'s name, I\'ll ascend the regal throne.\n  CARLISLE. Marry, God forbid!\n    Worst in this royal presence may I speak,\n    Yet best beseeming me to speak the truth.\n    Would God that any in this noble presence\n    Were enough noble to be upright judge\n    Of noble Richard! Then true noblesse would\n    Learn him forbearance from so foul a wrong.\n    What subject can give sentence on his king?\n    And who sits here that is not Richard\'s subject?\n    Thieves are not judg\'d but they are by to hear,\n    Although apparent guilt be seen in them;\n    And shall the figure of God\'s majesty,\n    His captain, steward, deputy elect,\n    Anointed, crowned, planted many years,\n    Be judg\'d by subject and inferior breath,\n    And he himself not present? O, forfend it, God,  \n    That in a Christian climate souls refin\'d\n    Should show so heinous, black, obscene a deed!\n    I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks,\n    Stirr\'d up by God, thus boldly for his king.\n    My Lord of Hereford here, whom you call king,\n    Is a foul traitor to proud Hereford\'s king;\n    And if you crown him, let me prophesy-\n    The blood of English shall manure the ground,\n    And future ages groan for this foul act;\n    Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels,\n    And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars\n    Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound;\n    Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny,\n    Shall here inhabit, and this land be call\'d\n    The field of Golgotha and dead men\'s skulls.\n    O, if you raise this house against this house,\n    It will the woefullest division prove\n    That ever fell upon this cursed earth.\n    Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so,\n    Lest child, child\'s children, cry against you woe.  \n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Well have you argued, sir; and, for your pains,\n    Of capital treason we arrest you here.\n    My Lord of Westminster, be it your charge\n    To keep him safely till his day of trial.\n    May it please you, lords, to grant the commons\' suit?\n  BOLINGBROKE. Fetch hither Richard, that in common view\n    He may surrender; so we shall proceed\n    Without suspicion.\n  YORK. I will be his conduct.                              Exit\n  BOLINGBROKE. Lords, you that here are under our arrest,\n    Procure your sureties for your days of answer.\n    Little are we beholding to your love,\n    And little look\'d for at your helping hands.\n\n      Re-enter YORK, with KING RICHARD, and OFFICERS\n                bearing the regalia\n\n  KING RICHARD. Alack, why am I sent for to a king,\n    Before I have shook off the regal thoughts\n    Wherewith I reign\'d? I hardly yet have learn\'d  \n    To insinuate, flatter, bow, and bend my knee.\n    Give sorrow leave awhile to tutor me\n    To this submission. Yet I well remember\n    The favours of these men. Were they not mine?\n    Did they not sometime cry \'All hail!\' to me?\n    So Judas did to Christ; but he, in twelve,\n    Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand, none.\n    God save the King! Will no man say amen?\n    Am I both priest and clerk? Well then, amen.\n    God save the King! although I be not he;\n    And yet, amen, if heaven do think him me.\n    To do what service am I sent for hither?\n  YORK. To do that office of thine own good will\n    Which tired majesty did make thee offer-\n    The resignation of thy state and crown\n    To Henry Bolingbroke.\n  KING RICHARD. Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize the crown.\n    Here, cousin,\n    On this side my hand, and on that side thine.\n    Now is this golden crown like a deep well  \n    That owes two buckets, filling one another;\n    The emptier ever dancing in the air,\n    The other down, unseen, and full of water.\n    That bucket down and fun of tears am I,\n    Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.\n  BOLINGBROKE. I thought you had been willing to resign.\n  KING RICHARD. My crown I am; but still my griefs are mine.\n    You may my glories and my state depose,\n    But not my griefs; still am I king of those.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Part of your cares you give me with your crown.\n  KING RICHARD. Your cares set up do not pluck my cares down.\n    My care is loss of care, by old care done;\n    Your care is gain of care, by new care won.\n    The cares I give I have, though given away;\n    They tend the crown, yet still with me they stay.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Are you contented to resign the crown?\n  KING RICHARD. Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be;\n    Therefore no no, for I resign to thee.\n    Now mark me how I will undo myself:\n    I give this heavy weight from off my head,  \n    And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,\n    The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;\n    With mine own tears I wash away my balm,\n    With mine own hands I give away my crown,\n    With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,\n    With mine own breath release all duteous oaths;\n    All pomp and majesty I do forswear;\n    My manors, rents, revenues, I forgo;\n    My acts, decrees, and statutes, I deny.\n    God pardon all oaths that are broke to me!\n    God keep all vows unbroke are made to thee!\n    Make me, that nothing have, with nothing griev\'d,\n    And thou with all pleas\'d, that hast an achiev\'d.\n    Long mayst thou live in Richard\'s seat to sit,\n    And soon lie Richard in an earthly pit.\n    God save King Henry, unking\'d Richard says,\n    And send him many years of sunshine days!\n    What more remains?\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. No more; but that you read\n    These accusations, and these grievous crimes  \n    Committed by your person and your followers\n    Against the state and profit of this land;\n    That, by confessing them, the souls of men\n    May deem that you are worthily depos\'d.\n  KING RICHARD. Must I do so? And must I ravel out\n    My weav\'d-up follies? Gentle Northumberland,\n    If thy offences were upon record,\n    Would it not shame thee in so fair a troop\n    To read a lecture of them? If thou wouldst,\n    There shouldst thou find one heinous article,\n    Containing the deposing of a king\n    And cracking the strong warrant of an oath,\n    Mark\'d with a blot, damn\'d in the book of heaven.\n    Nay, all of you that stand and look upon me\n    Whilst that my wretchedness doth bait myself,\n    Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands,\n    Showing an outward pity-yet you Pilates\n    Have here deliver\'d me to my sour cross,\n    And water cannot wash away your sin.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. My lord, dispatch; read o\'er these  \n    articles.\n  KING RICHARD. Mine eyes are full of tears; I cannot see.\n    And yet salt water blinds them not so much\n    But they can see a sort of traitors here.\n    Nay, if I turn mine eyes upon myself,\n    I find myself a traitor with the rest;\n    For I have given here my soul\'s consent\n    T\'undeck the pompous body of a king;\n    Made glory base, and sovereignty a slave,\n    Proud majesty a subject, state a peasant.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. My lord-\n  KING RICHARD. No lord of thine, thou haught insulting man,\n    Nor no man\'s lord; I have no name, no tide-\n    No, not that name was given me at the font-\n    But \'tis usurp\'d. Alack the heavy day,\n    That I have worn so many winters out,\n    And know not now what name to call myself!\n    O that I were a mockery king of snow,\n    Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke\n    To melt myself away in water drops!  \n    Good king, great king, and yet not greatly good,\n    An if my word be sterling yet in England,\n    Let it command a mirror hither straight,\n    That it may show me what a face I have\n    Since it is bankrupt of his majesty.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Go some of you and fetch a looking-glass.\n                                               Exit an attendant\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. Read o\'er this paper while the glass doth come.\n  KING RICHARD. Fiend, thou torments me ere I come to hell.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Urge it no more, my Lord Northumberland.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. The Commons will not, then, be satisfied.\n  KING RICHARD. They shall be satisfied. I\'ll read enough,\n    When I do see the very book indeed\n    Where all my sins are writ, and that\'s myself.\n\n                Re-enter attendant with glass\n\n    Give me that glass, and therein will I read.\n    No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struck\n    So many blows upon this face of mine  \n    And made no deeper wounds? O flatt\'ring glass,\n    Like to my followers in prosperity,\n    Thou dost beguile me! Was this face the face\n    That every day under his household roof\n    Did keep ten thousand men? Was this the face\n    That like the sun did make beholders wink?\n    Is this the face which fac\'d so many follies\n    That was at last out-fac\'d by Bolingbroke?\n    A brittle glory shineth in this face;\n    As brittle as the glory is the face;\n                        [Dashes the glass against the ground]\n    For there it is, crack\'d in a hundred shivers.\n    Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport-\n    How soon my sorrow hath destroy\'d my face.\n  BOLINGBROKE. The shadow of your sorrow hath destroy\'d\n    The shadow of your face.\n  KING RICHARD. Say that again.\n    The shadow of my sorrow? Ha! let\'s see.\n    \'Tis very true: my grief lies all within;\n    And these external manner of laments  \n    Are merely shadows to the unseen grief\n    That swells with silence in the tortur\'d soul.\n    There lies the substance; and I thank thee, king,\n    For thy great bounty, that not only giv\'st\n    Me cause to wail, but teachest me the way\n    How to lament the cause. I\'ll beg one boon,\n    And then be gone and trouble you no more.\n    Shall I obtain it?\n  BOLINGBROKE. Name it, fair cousin.\n  KING RICHARD. Fair cousin! I am greater than a king;\n    For when I was a king, my flatterers\n    Were then but subjects; being now a subject,\n    I have a king here to my flatterer.\n    Being so great, I have no need to beg.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Yet ask.\n  KING RICHARD. And shall I have?\n  BOLINGBROKE. You shall.\n  KING RICHARD. Then give me leave to go.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Whither?\n  KING RICHARD. Whither you will, so I were from your sights.  \n  BOLINGBROKE. Go, some of you convey him to the Tower.\n  KING RICHARD. O, good! Convey! Conveyers are you all,\n    That rise thus nimbly by a true king\'s fall.\n                     Exeunt KING RICHARD, some Lords and a Guard\n  BOLINGBROKE. On Wednesday next we solemnly set down\n    Our coronation. Lords, prepare yourselves.\n                    Exeunt all but the ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER, the\n                                 BISHOP OF CARLISLE, and AUMERLE\n  ABBOT. A woeful pageant have we here beheld.\n  CARLISLE. The woe\'s to come; the children yet unborn\n    Shall feel this day as sharp to them as thorn.\n  AUMERLE. You holy clergymen, is there no plot\n    To rid the realm of this pernicious blot?\n  ABBOT. My lord,\n    Before I freely speak my mind herein,\n    You shall not only take the sacrament\n    To bury mine intents, but also to effect\n    Whatever I shall happen to devise.\n    I see your brows are full of discontent,\n    Your hearts of sorrow, and your eyes of tears.  \n    Come home with me to supper; I will lay\n    A plot shall show us all a merry day.                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 1.\nLondon. A street leading to the Tower\n\nEnter the QUEEN, with her attendants\n\n  QUEEN. This way the King will come; this is the way\n    To Julius Caesar\'s ill-erected tower,\n    To whose flint bosom my condemned lord\n    Is doom\'d a prisoner by proud Bolingbroke.\n    Here let us rest, if this rebellious earth\n    Have any resting for her true King\'s queen.\n\n            Enter KING RICHARD and Guard\n\n    But soft, but see, or rather do not see,\n    My fair rose wither. Yet look up, behold,\n    That you in pity may dissolve to dew,\n    And wash him fresh again with true-love tears.\n    Ah, thou, the model where old Troy did stand;\n    Thou map of honour, thou King Richard\'s tomb,\n    And not King Richard; thou most beauteous inn,\n    Why should hard-favour\'d grief be lodg\'d in thee,  \n    When triumph is become an alehouse guest?\n  KING RICHARD. Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so,\n    To make my end too sudden. Learn, good soul,\n    To think our former state a happy dream;\n    From which awak\'d, the truth of what we are\n    Shows us but this: I am sworn brother, sweet,\n    To grim Necessity; and he and\n    Will keep a league till death. Hie thee to France,\n    And cloister thee in some religious house.\n    Our holy lives must win a new world\'s crown,\n    Which our profane hours here have thrown down.\n  QUEEN. What, is my Richard both in shape and mind\n    Transform\'d and weak\'ned? Hath Bolingbroke depos\'d\n    Thine intellect? Hath he been in thy heart?\n    The lion dying thrusteth forth his paw\n    And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage\n    To be o\'erpow\'r\'d; and wilt thou, pupil-like,\n    Take the correction mildly, kiss the rod,\n    And fawn on rage with base humility,\n    Which art a lion and the king of beasts?  \n  KING RICHARD. A king of beasts, indeed! If aught but beasts,\n    I had been still a happy king of men.\n    Good sometimes queen, prepare thee hence for France.\n    Think I am dead, and that even here thou takest,\n    As from my death-bed, thy last living leave.\n    In winter\'s tedious nights sit by the fire\n    With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales\n    Of woeful ages long ago betid;\n    And ere thou bid good night, to quit their griefs\n    Tell thou the lamentable tale of me,\n    And send the hearers weeping to their beds;\n    For why, the senseless brands will sympathize\n    The heavy accent of thy moving tongue,\n    And in compassion weep the fire out;\n    And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black,\n    For the deposing of a rightful king.\n\n             Enter NORTHUMBERLAND attended\n\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. My lord, the mind of Bolingbroke is chang\'d;  \n    You must to Pomfret, not unto the Tower.\n    And, madam, there is order ta\'en for you:\n    With all swift speed you must away to France.\n  KING RICHARD. Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal\n    The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne,\n    The time shall not be many hours of age\n    More than it is, ere foul sin gathering head\n    Shall break into corruption. Thou shalt think\n    Though he divide the realm and give thee half\n    It is too little, helping him to all;\n    And he shall think that thou, which knowest the way\n    To plant unrightful kings, wilt know again,\n    Being ne\'er so little urg\'d, another way\n    To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne.\n    The love of wicked men converts to fear;\n    That fear to hate; and hate turns one or both\n    To worthy danger and deserved death.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. My guilt be on my head, and there an end.\n    Take leave, and part; for you must part forthwith.\n  KING RICHARD. Doubly divorc\'d! Bad men, you violate  \n    A twofold marriage-\'twixt my crown and me,\n    And then betwixt me and my married wife.\n    Let me unkiss the oath \'twixt thee and me;\n    And yet not so, for with a kiss \'twas made.\n    Part us, Northumberland; I towards the north,\n    Where shivering cold and sickness pines the clime;\n    My wife to France, from whence set forth in pomp,\n    She came adorned hither like sweet May,\n    Sent back like Hallowmas or short\'st of day.\n  QUEEN. And must we be divided? Must we part?\n  KING RICHARD. Ay, hand from hand, my love, and heart from heart.\n  QUEEN. Banish us both, and send the King with me.\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. That were some love, but little policy.\n  QUEEN. Then whither he goes thither let me go.\n  KING RICHARD. So two, together weeping, make one woe.\n    Weep thou for me in France, I for thee here;\n    Better far off than near, be ne\'er the near.\n    Go, count thy way with sighs; I mine with groans.\n  QUEEN. So longest way shall have the longest moans.\n  KING RICHARD. Twice for one step I\'ll groan, the way being short,  \n    And piece the way out with a heavy heart.\n    Come, come, in wooing sorrow let\'s be brief,\n    Since, wedding it, there is such length in grief.\n    One kiss shall stop our mouths, and dumbly part;\n    Thus give I mine, and thus take I thy heart.\n  QUEEN. Give me mine own again; \'twere no good part\n    To take on me to keep and kill thy heart.\n    So, now I have mine own again, be gone.\n    That I may strive to kill it with a groan.\n  KING RICHARD. We make woe wanton with this fond delay.\n    Once more, adieu; the rest let sorrow say.            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\nThe DUKE OF YORK\'s palace\n\nEnter the DUKE OF YORK and the DUCHESS\n\n  DUCHESS. My Lord, you told me you would tell the rest,\n    When weeping made you break the story off,\n    Of our two cousins\' coming into London.\n  YORK. Where did I leave?\n  DUCHESS. At that sad stop, my lord,\n    Where rude misgoverned hands from windows\' tops\n    Threw dust and rubbish on King Richard\'s head.\n  YORK. Then, as I said, the Duke, great Bolingbroke,\n    Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed\n    Which his aspiring rider seem\'d to know,\n    With slow but stately pace kept on his course,\n    Whilst all tongues cried \'God save thee, Bolingbroke!\'\n    You would have thought the very windows spake,\n    So many greedy looks of young and old\n    Through casements darted their desiring eyes\n    Upon his visage; and that all the walls\n    With painted imagery had said at once  \n    \'Jesu preserve thee! Welcome, Bolingbroke!\'\n    Whilst he, from the one side to the other turning,\n    Bareheaded, lower than his proud steed\'s neck,\n    Bespake them thus, \'I thank you, countrymen.\'\n    And thus still doing, thus he pass\'d along.\n  DUCHESS. Alack, poor Richard! where rode he the whilst?\n  YORK. As in a theatre the eyes of men\n    After a well-grac\'d actor leaves the stage\n    Are idly bent on him that enters next,\n    Thinking his prattle to be tedious;\n    Even so, or with much more contempt, men\'s eyes\n    Did scowl on gentle Richard; no man cried \'God save him!\'\n    No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home;\n    But dust was thrown upon his sacred head;\n    Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off,\n    His face still combating with tears and smiles,\n    The badges of his grief and patience,\n    That had not God, for some strong purpose, steel\'d\n    The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted,\n    And barbarism itself have pitied him.  \n    But heaven hath a hand in these events,\n    To whose high will we bound our calm contents.\n    To Bolingbroke are we sworn subjects now,\n    Whose state and honour I for aye allow.\n  DUCHESS. Here comes my son Aumerle.\n  YORK. Aumerle that was\n    But that is lost for being Richard\'s friend,\n    And madam, you must call him Rudand now.\n    I am in Parliament pledge for his truth\n    And lasting fealty to the new-made king.\n\n                  Enter AUMERLE\n\n  DUCHESS. Welcome, my son. Who are the violets now\n    That strew the green lap of the new come spring?\n  AUMERLE. Madam, I know not, nor I greatly care not.\n    God knows I had as lief be none as one.\n  YORK. Well, bear you well in this new spring of time,\n    Lest you be cropp\'d before you come to prime.\n    What news from Oxford? Do these justs and triumphs hold?  \n  AUMERLE. For aught I know, my lord, they do.\n  YORK. You will be there, I know.\n  AUMERLE. If God prevent not, I purpose so.\n  YORK. What seal is that that without thy bosom?\n    Yea, look\'st thou pale? Let me see the writing.\n  AUMERLE. My lord, \'tis nothing.\n  YORK. No matter, then, who see it.\n    I will be satisfied; let me see the writing.\n  AUMERLE. I do beseech your Grace to pardon me;\n    It is a matter of small consequence\n    Which for some reasons I would not have seen.\n  YORK. Which for some reasons, sir, I mean to see.\n    I fear, I fear-\n  DUCHESS. What should you fear?\n    \'Tis nothing but some bond that he is ent\'red into\n    For gay apparel \'gainst the triumph-day.\n  YORK. Bound to himself! What doth he with a bond\n    That he is bound to? Wife, thou art a fool.\n    Boy, let me see the writing.\n  AUMERLE. I do beseech you, pardon me; I may not show it.  \n  YORK. I will be satisfied; let me see it, I say.\n                [He plucks it out of his bosom, and reads it]\n    Treason, foul treason! Villain! traitor! slave!\n  DUCHESS. What is the matter, my lord?\n  YORK. Ho! who is within there?\n\n                    Enter a servant\n\n    Saddle my horse.\n    God for his mercy, what treachery is here!\n  DUCHESS. Why, York, what is it, my lord?\n  YORK. Give me my boots, I say; saddle my horse.\n                                                    Exit servant\n    Now, by mine honour, by my life, my troth,\n    I will appeach the villain.\n  DUCHESS. What is the matter?\n  YORK. Peace, foolish woman.\n  DUCHESS. I will not peace. What is the matter, Aumerle?\n  AUMERLE. Good mother, be content; it is no more\n    Than my poor life must answer.  \n  DUCHESS. Thy life answer!\n  YORK. Bring me my boots. I will unto the King.\n\n              His man enters with his boots\n\n  DUCHESS. Strike him, Aumerle. Poor boy, thou art amaz\'d.\n    Hence, villain! never more come in my sight.\n  YORK. Give me my boots, I say.\n  DUCHESS. Why, York, what wilt thou do?\n    Wilt thou not hide the trespass of thine own?\n    Have we more sons? or are we like to have?\n    Is not my teeming date drunk up with time?\n    And wilt thou pluck my fair son from mine age\n    And rob me of a happy mother\'s name?\n    Is he not like thee? Is he not thine own?\n  YORK. Thou fond mad woman,\n    Wilt thou conceal this dark conspiracy?\n    A dozen of them here have ta\'en the sacrament,\n    And interchangeably set down their hands\n    To kill the King at Oxford.  \n  DUCHESS. He shall be none;\n    We\'ll keep him here. Then what is that to him?\n  YORK. Away, fond woman! were he twenty times my son\n    I would appeach him.\n  DUCHESS. Hadst thou groan\'d for him\n    As I have done, thou wouldst be more pitiful.\n    But now I know thy mind: thou dost suspect\n    That I have been disloyal to thy bed\n    And that he is a bastard, not thy son.\n    Sweet York, sweet husband, be not of that mind.\n    He is as like thee as a man may be\n    Not like to me, or any of my kin,\n    And yet I love him.\n  YORK. Make way, unruly woman!                             Exit\n  DUCHESS. After, Aumerle! Mount thee upon his horse;\n    Spur post, and get before him to the King,\n    And beg thy pardon ere he do accuse thee.\n    I\'ll not be long behind; though I be old,\n    I doubt not but to ride as fast as York;\n    And never will I rise up from the ground  \n    Till Bolingbroke have pardon\'d thee. Away, be gone.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\nWindsor Castle\n\nEnter BOLINGBROKE as King, PERCY, and other LORDS\n\n  BOLINGBROKE. Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son?\n    \'Tis full three months since I did see him last.\n    If any plague hang over us, \'tis he.\n    I would to God, my lords, he might be found.\n    Inquire at London, \'mongst the taverns there,\n    For there, they say, he daily doth frequent\n    With unrestrained loose companions,\n    Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes\n    And beat our watch and rob our passengers,\n    Which he, young wanton and effeminate boy,\n    Takes on the point of honour to support\n    So dissolute a crew.\n  PERCY. My lord, some two days since I saw the Prince,\n    And told him of those triumphs held at Oxford.\n  BOLINGBROKE. And what said the gallant?\n  PERCY. His answer was, he would unto the stews,\n    And from the common\'st creature pluck a glove  \n    And wear it as a favour; and with that\n    He would unhorse the lustiest challenger.\n  BOLINGBROKE. As dissolute as desperate; yet through both\n    I see some sparks of better hope, which elder years\n    May happily bring forth. But who comes here?\n\n                Enter AUMERLE amazed\n\n  AUMERLE. Where is the King?\n  BOLINGBROKE. What means our cousin that he stares and looks\n    So wildly?\n  AUMERLE. God save your Grace! I do beseech your Majesty,\n    To have some conference with your Grace alone.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Withdraw yourselves, and leave us here alone.\n                                          Exeunt PERCY and LORDS\n    What is the matter with our cousin now?\n  AUMERLE. For ever may my knees grow to the earth,\n                                                    [Kneels]\n    My tongue cleave to my roof within my mouth,\n    Unless a pardon ere I rise or speak.  \n  BOLINGBROKE. Intended or committed was this fault?\n    If on the first, how heinous e\'er it be,\n    To win thy after-love I pardon thee.\n  AUMERLE. Then give me leave that I may turn the key,\n    That no man enter till my tale be done.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Have thy desire.\n            [The DUKE OF YORK knocks at the door and crieth]\n  YORK. [Within] My liege, beware; look to thyself;\n    Thou hast a traitor in thy presence there.\n  BOLINGBROKE. [Drawing] Villain, I\'ll make thee safe.\n  AUMERLE. Stay thy revengeful hand; thou hast no cause to fear.\n  YORK. [Within] Open the door, secure, foolhardy King.\n    Shall I, for love, speak treason to thy face?\n    Open the door, or I will break it open.\n\n                    Enter YORK\n\n  BOLINGBROKE. What is the matter, uncle? Speak;\n    Recover breath; tell us how near is danger,\n    That we may arm us to encounter it.\n  YORK. Peruse this writing here, and thou shalt know  \n    The treason that my haste forbids me show.\n  AUMERLE. Remember, as thou read\'st, thy promise pass\'d.\n    I do repent me; read not my name there;\n    My heart is not confederate with my hand.\n  YORK. It was, villain, ere thy hand did set it down.\n    I tore it from the traitor\'s bosom, King;\n    Fear, and not love, begets his penitence.\n    Forget to pity him, lest thy pity prove\n    A serpent that will sting thee to the heart.\n  BOLINGBROKE. O heinous, strong, and bold conspiracy!\n    O loyal father of a treacherous son!\n    Thou sheer, immaculate, and silver fountain,\n    From whence this stream through muddy passages\n    Hath held his current and defil\'d himself!\n    Thy overflow of good converts to bad;\n    And thy abundant goodness shall excuse\n    This deadly blot in thy digressing son.\n  YORK. So shall my virtue be his vice\'s bawd;\n    And he shall spend mine honour with his shame,\n    As thriftless sons their scraping fathers\' gold.  \n    Mine honour lives when his dishonour dies,\n    Or my sham\'d life in his dishonour lies.\n    Thou kill\'st me in his life; giving him breath,\n    The traitor lives, the true man\'s put to death.\n  DUCHESS. [Within] I What ho, my liege, for God\'s sake, let me in.\n  BOLINGBROKE. What shrill-voic\'d suppliant makes this eager cry?\n  DUCHESS. [Within] A woman, and thine aunt, great King; \'tis I.\n    Speak with me, pity me, open the door.\n    A beggar begs that never begg\'d before.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Our scene is alt\'red from a serious thing,\n    And now chang\'d to \'The Beggar and the King.\'\n    My dangerous cousin, let your mother in.\n    I know she is come to pray for your foul sin.\n  YORK. If thou do pardon whosoever pray,\n    More sins for this forgiveness prosper may.\n    This fest\'red joint cut off, the rest rest sound;\n    This let alone will all the rest confound.\n\n                 Enter DUCHESS\n  \n  DUCHESS. O King, believe not this hard-hearted man!\n    Love loving not itself, none other can.\n  YORK. Thou frantic woman, what dost thou make here?\n    Shall thy old dugs once more a traitor rear?\n  DUCHESS. Sweet York, be patient. Hear me, gentle liege.\n                                                     [Kneels]\n  BOLINGBROKE. Rise up, good aunt.\n  DUCHESS. Not yet, I thee beseech.\n    For ever will I walk upon my knees,\n    And never see day that the happy sees\n    Till thou give joy; until thou bid me joy\n    By pardoning Rutland, my transgressing boy.\n  AUMERLE. Unto my mother\'s prayers I bend my knee.\n                                                     [Kneels]\n  YORK. Against them both, my true joints bended be.\n                                                     [Kneels]\n    Ill mayst thou thrive, if thou grant any grace!\n  DUCHESS. Pleads he in earnest? Look upon his face;\n    His eyes do drop no tears, his prayers are in jest;\n    His words come from his mouth, ours from our breast.  \n    He prays but faintly and would be denied;\n    We pray with heart and soul, and all beside.\n    His weary joints would gladly rise, I know;\n    Our knees still kneel till to the ground they grow.\n    His prayers are full of false hypocrisy;\n    Ours of true zeal and deep integrity.\n    Our prayers do out-pray his; then let them have\n    That mercy which true prayer ought to have.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Good aunt, stand up.\n  DUCHESS. do not say \'stand up\';\n    Say \'pardon\' first, and afterwards \'stand up.\'\n    An if I were thy nurse, thy tongue to teach,\n    \'Pardon\' should be the first word of thy speech.\n    I never long\'d to hear a word till now;\n    Say \'pardon,\' King; let pity teach thee how.\n    The word is short, but not so short as sweet;\n    No word like \'pardon\' for kings\' mouths so meet.\n  YORK. Speak it in French, King, say \'pardonne moy.\'\n  DUCHESS. Dost thou teach pardon pardon to destroy?\n    Ah, my sour husband, my hard-hearted lord,  \n    That sets the word itself against the word!\n    Speak \'pardon\' as \'tis current in our land;\n    The chopping French we do not understand.\n    Thine eye begins to speak, set thy tongue there;\n    Or in thy piteous heart plant thou thine ear,\n    That hearing how our plaints and prayers do pierce,\n    Pity may move thee \'pardon\' to rehearse.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Good aunt, stand up.\n  DUCHESS. I do not sue to stand;\n    Pardon is all the suit I have in hand.\n  BOLINGBROKE. I pardon him, as God shall pardon me.\n  DUCHESS. O happy vantage of a kneeling knee!\n    Yet am I sick for fear. Speak it again.\n    Twice saying \'pardon\' doth not pardon twain,\n    But makes one pardon strong.\n  BOLINGBROKE. With all my heart\n    I pardon him.\n  DUCHESS. A god on earth thou art.\n  BOLINGBROKE. But for our trusty brother-in-law and the Abbot,\n    With all the rest of that consorted crew,  \n    Destruction straight shall dog them at the heels.\n    Good uncle, help to order several powers\n    To Oxford, or where\'er these traitors are.\n    They shall not live within this world, I swear,\n    But I will have them, if I once know where.\n    Uncle, farewell; and, cousin, adieu;\n    Your mother well hath pray\'d, and prove you true.\n  DUCHESS. Come, my old son; I pray God make thee new.      Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4.\nWindsor Castle\n\nEnter SIR PIERCE OF EXTON and a servant\n\n  EXTON. Didst thou not mark the King, what words he spake?\n    \'Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?\'\n    Was it not so?\n  SERVANT. These were his very words.\n  EXTON. \'Have I no friend?\' quoth he. He spake it twice\n    And urg\'d it twice together, did he not?\n  SERVANT. He did.\n  EXTON. And, speaking it, he wishtly look\'d on me,\n    As who should say \'I would thou wert the man\n    That would divorce this terror from my heart\';\n    Meaning the King at Pomfret. Come, let\'s go.\n    I am the King\'s friend, and will rid his foe.         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 5.\nPomfret Castle. The dungeon of the Castle\n\nEnter KING RICHARD\n\n  KING RICHARD. I have been studying how I may compare\n    This prison where I live unto the world\n    And, for because the world is populous\n    And here is not a creature but myself,\n    I cannot do it. Yet I\'ll hammer it out.\n    My brain I\'ll prove the female to my soul,\n    My soul the father; and these two beget\n    A generation of still-breeding thoughts,\n    And these same thoughts people this little world,\n    In humours like the people of this world,\n    For no thought is contented. The better sort,\n    As thoughts of things divine, are intermix\'d\n    With scruples, and do set the word itself\n    Against the word,\n    As thus: \'Come, little ones\'; and then again,\n    \'It is as hard to come as for a camel\n    To thread the postern of a small needle\'s eye.\'  \n    Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot\n    Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails\n    May tear a passage through the flinty ribs\n    Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls;\n    And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.\n    Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves\n    That they are not the first of fortune\'s slaves,\n    Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars\n    Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame,\n    That many have and others must sit there;\n    And in this thought they find a kind of ease,\n    Bearing their own misfortunes on the back\n    Of such as have before endur\'d the like.\n    Thus play I in one person many people,\n    And none contented. Sometimes am I king;\n    Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,\n    And so I am. Then crushing penury\n    Persuades me I was better when a king;\n    Then am I king\'d again; and by and by\n    Think that I am unking\'d by Bolingbroke,  \n    And straight am nothing. But whate\'er I be,\n    Nor I, nor any man that but man is,\n    With nothing shall be pleas\'d till he be eas\'d\n    With being nothing.                    [The music plays]\n    Music do I hear?\n    Ha, ha! keep time. How sour sweet music is\n    When time is broke and no proportion kept!\n    So is it in the music of men\'s lives.\n    And here have I the daintiness of ear\n    To check time broke in a disorder\'d string;\n    But, for the concord of my state and time,\n    Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.\n    I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;\n    For now hath time made me his numb\'ring clock:\n    My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar\n    Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,\n    Whereto my finger, like a dial\'s point,\n    Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.\n    Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is\n    Are clamorous groans which strike upon my heart,  \n    Which is the bell. So sighs, and tears, and groans,\n    Show minutes, times, and hours; but my time\n    Runs posting on in Bolingbroke\'s proud joy,\n    While I stand fooling here, his Jack of the clock.\n    This music mads me. Let it sound no more;\n    For though it have holp madmen to their wits,\n    In me it seems it will make wise men mad.\n    Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me!\n    For \'tis a sign of love; and love to Richard\n    Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.\n\n              Enter a GROOM of the stable\n\n  GROOM. Hail, royal Prince!\n  KING RICHARD. Thanks, noble peer!\n    The cheapest of us is ten groats too dear.\n    What art thou? and how comest thou hither,\n    Where no man never comes but that sad dog\n    That brings me food to make misfortune live?\n  GROOM. I was a poor groom of thy stable, King,  \n    When thou wert king; who, travelling towards York,\n    With much ado at length have gotten leave\n    To look upon my sometimes royal master\'s face.\n    O, how it ern\'d my heart, when I beheld,\n    In London streets, that coronation-day,\n    When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary-\n    That horse that thou so often hast bestrid,\n    That horse that I so carefully have dress\'d!\n  KING RICHARD. Rode he on Barbary? Tell me, gentle friend,\n    How went he under him?\n  GROOM. So proudly as if he disdain\'d the ground.\n  KING RICHARD. So proud that Bolingbroke was on his back!\n    That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand;\n    This hand hath made him proud with clapping him.\n    Would he not stumble? would he not fall down,\n    Since pride must have a fall, and break the neck\n    Of that proud man that did usurp his back?\n    Forgiveness, horse! Why do I rail on thee,\n    Since thou, created to be aw\'d by man,\n    Wast born to bear? I was not made a horse;  \n    And yet I bear a burden like an ass,\n    Spurr\'d, gall\'d, and tir\'d, by jauncing Bolingbroke.\n\n              Enter KEEPER with meat\n\n  KEEPER. Fellow, give place; here is no longer stay.\n  KING RICHARD. If thou love me, \'tis time thou wert away.\n  GROOM. my tongue dares not, that my heart shall say.\n Exit\n  KEEPER. My lord, will\'t please you to fall to?\n  KING RICHARD. Taste of it first as thou art wont to do.\n  KEEPER. My lord, I dare not. Sir Pierce of Exton,\n    Who lately came from the King, commands the contrary.\n  KING RICHARD. The devil take Henry of Lancaster and thee!\n    Patience is stale, and I am weary of it.\n                                           [Beats the KEEPER]\n  KEEPER. Help, help, help!\n    The murderers, EXTON and servants, rush in, armed\n  KING RICHARD. How now! What means death in this rude assault?\n    Villain, thy own hand yields thy death\'s instrument.  \n                         [Snatching a weapon and killing one]\n    Go thou and fill another room in hell.\n              [He kills another, then EXTON strikes him down]\n    That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire\n    That staggers thus my person. Exton, thy fierce hand\n    Hath with the King\'s blood stain\'d the King\'s own land.\n    Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high;\n    Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.\n                                                       [Dies]\n  EXTON. As full of valour as of royal blood.\n    Both have I spill\'d. O, would the deed were good!\n    For now the devil, that told me I did well,\n    Says that this deed is chronicled in hell.\n    This dead King to the living King I\'ll bear.\n    Take hence the rest, and give them burial here.       Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 6.\nWindsor Castle\n\nFlourish. Enter BOLINGBROKE, the DUKE OF YORK, With other LORDS\nand attendants\n\n  BOLINGBROKE. Kind uncle York, the latest news we hear\n    Is that the rebels have consum\'d with fire\n    Our town of Ciceter in Gloucestershire;\n    But whether they be ta\'en or slain we hear not.\n\n              Enter NORTHUMBERLAND\n\n    Welcome, my lord. What is the news?\n  NORTHUMBERLAND. First, to thy sacred state wish I all happiness.\n    The next news is, I have to London sent\n    The heads of Salisbury, Spencer, Blunt, and Kent.\n    The manner of their taking may appear\n    At large discoursed in this paper here.\n  BOLINGBROKE. We thank thee, gentle Percy, for thy pains;\n    And to thy worth will add right worthy gains.\n  \n                  Enter FITZWATER\n\n  FITZWATER. My lord, I have from Oxford sent to London\n    The heads of Brocas and Sir Bennet Seely;\n    Two of the dangerous consorted traitors\n    That sought at Oxford thy dire overthrow.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Thy pains, Fitzwater, shall not be forgot;\n    Right noble is thy merit, well I wot.\n\n         Enter PERCY, With the BISHOP OF CARLISLE\n\n  PERCY. The grand conspirator, Abbot of Westminster,\n    With clog of conscience and sour melancholy,\n    Hath yielded up his body to the grave;\n    But here is Carlisle living, to abide\n    Thy kingly doom, and sentence of his pride.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Carlisle, this is your doom:\n    Choose out some secret place, some reverend room,\n    More than thou hast, and with it joy thy life;\n    So as thou liv\'st in peace, die free from strife;  \n    For though mine enemy thou hast ever been,\n    High sparks of honour in thee have I seen.\n\n      Enter EXTON, with attendants, hearing a coffin\n\n  EXTON. Great King, within this coffin I present\n    Thy buried fear. Herein all breathless lies\n    The mightiest of thy greatest enemies,\n    Richard of Bordeaux, by me hither brought.\n  BOLINGBROKE. Exton, I thank thee not; for thou hast wrought\n    A deed of slander with thy fatal hand\n    Upon my head and all this famous land.\n  EXTON. From your own mouth, my lord, did I this deed.\n  BOLINGBROKE. They love not poison that do poison need,\n    Nor do I thee. Though I did wish him dead,\n    I hate the murderer, love him murdered.\n    The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour,\n    But neither my good word nor princely favour;\n    With Cain go wander thorough shades of night,\n    And never show thy head by day nor light.  \n    Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe\n    That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow.\n    Come, mourn with me for what I do lament,\n    And put on sullen black incontinent.\n    I\'ll make a voyage to the Holy Land,\n    To wash this blood off from my guilty hand.\n    March sadly after; grace my mournings here\n    In weeping after this untimely bier.                  Exeunt\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1593\n\nKING RICHARD III\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  EDWARD THE FOURTH\n\n    Sons to the King\n  EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES afterwards KING EDWARD V\n  RICHARD, DUKE OF YORK,\n\n    Brothers to the King\n  GEORGE, DUKE OF CLARENCE,\n  RICHARD, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, afterwards KING RICHARD III\n\n  A YOUNG SON OF CLARENCE (Edward, Earl of Warwick)\n  HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND, afterwards KING HENRY VII\n  CARDINAL BOURCHIER, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY\n  THOMAS ROTHERHAM, ARCHBISHOP OF YORK\n  JOHN MORTON, BISHOP OF ELY\n  DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM\n  DUKE OF NORFOLK\n  EARL OF SURREY, his son\n  EARL RIVERS, brother to King Edward\'s Queen\n  MARQUIS OF DORSET and LORD GREY, her sons\n  EARL OF OXFORD  \n  LORD HASTINGS\n  LORD LOVEL\n  LORD STANLEY, called also EARL OF DERBY\n  SIR THOMAS VAUGHAN\n  SIR RICHARD RATCLIFF\n  SIR WILLIAM CATESBY\n  SIR JAMES TYRREL\n  SIR JAMES BLOUNT\n  SIR WALTER HERBERT\n  SIR WILLIAM BRANDON\n  SIR ROBERT BRAKENBURY, Lieutenant of the Tower\n  CHRISTOPHER URSWICK, a priest\n  LORD MAYOR OF LONDON\n  SHERIFF OF WILTSHIRE\n  HASTINGS, a pursuivant\n  TRESSEL and BERKELEY, gentlemen attending on Lady Anne\n  ELIZABETH, Queen to King Edward IV\n  MARGARET, widow of King Henry VI\n  DUCHESS OF YORK, mother to King Edward IV\n  LADY ANNE, widow of Edward, Prince of Wales, son to King  \n    Henry VI; afterwards married to the Duke of Gloucester\n  A YOUNG DAUGHTER OF CLARENCE (Margaret Plantagenet,\n    Countess of Salisbury)\n  Ghosts, of Richard\'s victims\n  Lords, Gentlemen, and Attendants; Priest, Scrivener, Page, Bishops,\n    Aldermen, Citizens, Soldiers, Messengers, Murderers, Keeper\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE: England\n\nKing Richard the Third\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE 1.\n\nLondon. A street\n\nEnter RICHARD, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, solus\n\n  GLOUCESTER. Now is the winter of our discontent\n    Made glorious summer by this sun of York;\n    And all the clouds that lour\'d upon our house\n    In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.\n    Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;\n    Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;\n    Our stern alarums chang\'d to merry meetings,\n    Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.\n    Grim-visag\'d war hath smooth\'d his wrinkled front,\n    And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds\n    To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,\n    He capers nimbly in a lady\'s chamber\n    To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.\n    But I-that am not shap\'d for sportive tricks,\n    Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass-\n    I-that am rudely stamp\'d, and want love\'s majesty\n    To strut before a wanton ambling nymph-  \n    I-that am curtail\'d of this fair proportion,\n    Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,\n    Deform\'d, unfinish\'d, sent before my time\n    Into this breathing world scarce half made up,\n    And that so lamely and unfashionable\n    That dogs bark at me as I halt by them-\n    Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,\n    Have no delight to pass away the time,\n    Unless to spy my shadow in the sun\n    And descant on mine own deformity.\n    And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover\n    To entertain these fair well-spoken days,\n    I am determined to prove a villain\n    And hate the idle pleasures of these days.\n    Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,\n    By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,\n    To set my brother Clarence and the King\n    In deadly hate the one against the other;\n    And if King Edward be as true and just\n    As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,  \n    This day should Clarence closely be mew\'d up-\n    About a prophecy which says that G\n    Of Edward\'s heirs the murderer shall be.\n    Dive, thoughts, down to my soul. Here Clarence comes.\n\n             Enter CLARENCE, guarded, and BRAKENBURY\n\n    Brother, good day. What means this armed guard\n    That waits upon your Grace?\n  CLARENCE. His Majesty,\n    Tend\'ring my person\'s safety, hath appointed\n    This conduct to convey me to th\' Tower.\n  GLOUCESTER. Upon what cause?\n  CLARENCE. Because my name is George.\n  GLOUCESTER. Alack, my lord, that fault is none of yours:\n    He should, for that, commit your godfathers.\n    O, belike his Majesty hath some intent\n    That you should be new-christ\'ned in the Tower.\n    But what\'s the matter, Clarence? May I know?\n  CLARENCE. Yea, Richard, when I know; for I protest  \n    As yet I do not; but, as I can learn,\n    He hearkens after prophecies and dreams,\n    And from the cross-row plucks the letter G,\n    And says a wizard told him that by G\n    His issue disinherited should be;\n    And, for my name of George begins with G,\n    It follows in his thought that I am he.\n    These, as I learn, and such like toys as these\n    Hath mov\'d his Highness to commit me now.\n  GLOUCESTER. Why, this it is when men are rul\'d by women:\n    \'Tis not the King that sends you to the Tower;\n    My Lady Grey his wife, Clarence, \'tis she\n    That tempers him to this extremity.\n    Was it not she and that good man of worship,\n    Antony Woodville, her brother there,\n    That made him send Lord Hastings to the Tower,\n    From whence this present day he is delivered?\n    We are not safe, Clarence; we are not safe.\n  CLARENCE. By heaven, I think there is no man is secure\n    But the Queen\'s kindred, and night-walking heralds  \n    That trudge betwixt the King and Mistress Shore.\n    Heard you not what an humble suppliant\n    Lord Hastings was, for her delivery?\n  GLOUCESTER. Humbly complaining to her deity\n    Got my Lord Chamberlain his liberty.\n    I\'ll tell you what-I think it is our way,\n    If we will keep in favour with the King,\n    To be her men and wear her livery:\n    The jealous o\'er-worn widow, and herself,\n    Since that our brother dubb\'d them gentlewomen,\n    Are mighty gossips in our monarchy.\n  BRAKENBURY. I beseech your Graces both to pardon me:\n    His Majesty hath straitly given in charge\n    That no man shall have private conference,\n    Of what degree soever, with your brother.\n  GLOUCESTER. Even so; an\'t please your worship, Brakenbury,\n    You may partake of any thing we say:\n    We speak no treason, man; we say the King\n    Is wise and virtuous, and his noble queen\n    Well struck in years, fair, and not jealous;  \n    We say that Shore\'s wife hath a pretty foot,\n    A cherry lip, a bonny eye, a passing pleasing tongue;\n    And that the Queen\'s kindred are made gentlefolks.\n    How say you, sir? Can you deny all this?\n  BRAKENBURY. With this, my lord, myself have naught to do.\n  GLOUCESTER. Naught to do with Mistress Shore! I tell thee,\n    fellow,\n    He that doth naught with her, excepting one,\n    Were best to do it secretly alone.\n  BRAKENBURY. What one, my lord?\n  GLOUCESTER. Her husband, knave! Wouldst thou betray me?\n  BRAKENBURY. I do beseech your Grace to pardon me, and\n    withal\n    Forbear your conference with the noble Duke.\n  CLARENCE. We know thy charge, Brakenbury, and will\n    obey.\n  GLOUCESTER. We are the Queen\'s abjects and must obey.\n    Brother, farewell; I will unto the King;\n    And whatsoe\'er you will employ me in-\n    Were it to call King Edward\'s widow sister-  \n    I will perform it to enfranchise you.\n    Meantime, this deep disgrace in brotherhood\n    Touches me deeper than you can imagine.\n  CLARENCE. I know it pleaseth neither of us well.\n  GLOUCESTER. Well, your imprisonment shall not be long;\n    I will deliver or else lie for you.\n    Meantime, have patience.\n  CLARENCE. I must perforce. Farewell.\n                          Exeunt CLARENCE, BRAKENBURY, and guard\n  GLOUCESTER. Go tread the path that thou shalt ne\'er return.\n    Simple, plain Clarence, I do love thee so\n    That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven,\n    If heaven will take the present at our hands.\n    But who comes here? The new-delivered Hastings?\n\n                       Enter LORD HASTINGS\n\n  HASTINGS. Good time of day unto my gracious lord!\n  GLOUCESTER. As much unto my good Lord Chamberlain!\n    Well are you welcome to the open air.  \n    How hath your lordship brook\'d imprisonment?\n  HASTINGS. With patience, noble lord, as prisoners must;\n    But I shall live, my lord, to give them thanks\n    That were the cause of my imprisonment.\n  GLOUCESTER. No doubt, no doubt; and so shall Clarence too;\n    For they that were your enemies are his,\n    And have prevail\'d as much on him as you.\n  HASTINGS. More pity that the eagles should be mew\'d\n    Whiles kites and buzzards prey at liberty.\n  GLOUCESTER. What news abroad?\n  HASTINGS. No news so bad abroad as this at home:\n    The King is sickly, weak, and melancholy,\n    And his physicians fear him mightily.\n  GLOUCESTER. Now, by Saint John, that news is bad indeed.\n    O, he hath kept an evil diet long\n    And overmuch consum\'d his royal person!\n    \'Tis very grievous to be thought upon.\n    Where is he? In his bed?\n  HASTINGS. He is.\n  GLOUCESTER. Go you before, and I will follow you.  \n                                                   Exit HASTINGS\n    He cannot live, I hope, and must not die\n    Till George be pack\'d with posthorse up to heaven.\n    I\'ll in to urge his hatred more to Clarence\n    With lies well steel\'d with weighty arguments;\n    And, if I fail not in my deep intent,\n    Clarence hath not another day to live;\n    Which done, God take King Edward to his mercy,\n    And leave the world for me to bustle in!\n    For then I\'ll marry Warwick\'s youngest daughter.\n    What though I kill\'d her husband and her father?\n    The readiest way to make the wench amends\n    Is to become her husband and her father;\n    The which will I-not all so much for love\n    As for another secret close intent\n    By marrying her which I must reach unto.\n    But yet I run before my horse to market.\n    Clarence still breathes; Edward still lives and reigns;\n    When they are gone, then must I count my gains.         Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\n\nLondon. Another street\n\nEnter corpse of KING HENRY THE SIXTH, with halberds to guard it;\nLADY ANNE being the mourner, attended by TRESSEL and BERKELEY\n\n  ANNE. Set down, set down your honourable load-\n    If honour may be shrouded in a hearse;\n    Whilst I awhile obsequiously lament\n    Th\' untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster.\n    Poor key-cold figure of a holy king!\n    Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster!\n    Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood!\n    Be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost\n    To hear the lamentations of poor Anne,\n    Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughtered son,\n    Stabb\'d by the self-same hand that made these wounds.\n    Lo, in these windows that let forth thy life\n    I pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes.\n    O, cursed be the hand that made these holes!\n    Cursed the heart that had the heart to do it!  \n    Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence!\n    More direful hap betide that hated wretch\n    That makes us wretched by the death of thee\n    Than I can wish to adders, spiders, toads,\n    Or any creeping venom\'d thing that lives!\n    If ever he have child, abortive be it,\n    Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,\n    Whose ugly and unnatural aspect\n    May fright the hopeful mother at the view,\n    And that be heir to his unhappiness!\n    If ever he have wife, let her be made\n    More miserable by the death of him\n    Than I am made by my young lord and thee!\n    Come, now towards Chertsey with your holy load,\n    Taken from Paul\'s to be interred there;\n    And still as you are weary of this weight\n    Rest you, whiles I lament King Henry\'s corse.\n                                [The bearers take up the coffin]\n\n                      Enter GLOUCESTER  \n\n  GLOUCESTER. Stay, you that bear the corse, and set it down.\n  ANNE. What black magician conjures up this fiend\n    To stop devoted charitable deeds?\n  GLOUCESTER. Villains, set down the corse; or, by Saint Paul,\n    I\'ll make a corse of him that disobeys!\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. My lord, stand back, and let the coffin\n    pass.\n  GLOUCESTER. Unmannerd dog! Stand thou, when I command.\n    Advance thy halberd higher than my breast,\n    Or, by Saint Paul, I\'ll strike thee to my foot\n    And spurn upon thee, beggar, for thy boldness.\n                               [The bearers set down the coffin]\n  ANNE. What, do you tremble? Are you all afraid?\n    Alas, I blame you not, for you are mortal,\n    And mortal eyes cannot endure the devil.\n    Avaunt, thou dreadful minister of hell!\n    Thou hadst but power over his mortal body,\n    His soul thou canst not have; therefore, be gone.\n  GLOUCESTER. Sweet saint, for charity, be not so curst.  \n  ANNE. Foul devil, for God\'s sake, hence and trouble us not;\n    For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell\n    Fill\'d it with cursing cries and deep exclaims.\n    If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds,\n    Behold this pattern of thy butcheries.\n    O, gentlemen, see, see! Dead Henry\'s wounds\n    Open their congeal\'d mouths and bleed afresh.\n    Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity,\n    For \'tis thy presence that exhales this blood\n    From cold and empty veins where no blood dwells;\n    Thy deeds inhuman and unnatural\n    Provokes this deluge most unnatural.\n    O God, which this blood mad\'st, revenge his death!\n    O earth, which this blood drink\'st, revenge his death!\n    Either, heav\'n, with lightning strike the murd\'rer dead;\n    Or, earth, gape open wide and eat him quick,\n    As thou dost swallow up this good king\'s blood,\n    Which his hell-govern\'d arm hath butchered.\n  GLOUCESTER. Lady, you know no rules of charity,\n    Which renders good for bad, blessings for curses.  \n  ANNE. Villain, thou knowest nor law of God nor man:\n    No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.\n  GLOUCESTER. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.\n  ANNE. O wonderful, when devils tell the truth!\n  GLOUCESTER. More wonderful when angels are so angry.\n    Vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman,\n    Of these supposed crimes to give me leave\n    By circumstance but to acquit myself.\n  ANNE. Vouchsafe, diffus\'d infection of a man,\n    Of these known evils but to give me leave\n    By circumstance to accuse thy cursed self.\n  GLOUCESTER. Fairer than tongue can name thee, let me have\n    Some patient leisure to excuse myself.\n  ANNE. Fouler than heart can think thee, thou canst make\n    No excuse current but to hang thyself.\n  GLOUCESTER. By such despair I should accuse myself.\n  ANNE. And by despairing shalt thou stand excused\n    For doing worthy vengeance on thyself\n    That didst unworthy slaughter upon others.\n  GLOUCESTER. Say that I slew them not?  \n  ANNE. Then say they were not slain.\n    But dead they are, and, devilish slave, by thee.\n  GLOUCESTER. I did not kill your husband.\n  ANNE. Why, then he is alive.\n  GLOUCESTER. Nay, he is dead, and slain by Edward\'s hands.\n  ANNE. In thy foul throat thou liest: Queen Margaret saw\n    Thy murd\'rous falchion smoking in his blood;\n    The which thou once didst bend against her breast,\n    But that thy brothers beat aside the point.\n  GLOUCESTER. I was provoked by her sland\'rous tongue\n    That laid their guilt upon my guiltless shoulders.\n  ANNE. Thou wast provoked by thy bloody mind,\n    That never dream\'st on aught but butcheries.\n    Didst thou not kill this king?\n  GLOUCESTER. I grant ye.\n  ANNE. Dost grant me, hedgehog? Then, God grant me to\n    Thou mayst be damned for that wicked deed!\n    O, he was gentle, mild, and virtuous!\n  GLOUCESTER. The better for the King of Heaven, that hath\n    him.  \n  ANNE. He is in heaven, where thou shalt never come.\n  GLOUCESTER. Let him thank me that holp to send him\n    thither,\n    For he was fitter for that place than earth.\n  ANNE. And thou unfit for any place but hell.\n  GLOUCESTER. Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it.\n  ANNE. Some dungeon.\n  GLOUCESTER. Your bed-chamber.\n  ANNE. Ill rest betide the chamber where thou liest!\n  GLOUCESTER. So will it, madam, till I lie with you.\n  ANNE. I hope so.\n  GLOUCESTER. I know so. But, gentle Lady Anne,\n    To leave this keen encounter of our wits,\n    And fall something into a slower method-\n    Is not the causer of the timeless deaths\n    Of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward,\n    As blameful as the executioner?\n  ANNE. Thou wast the cause and most accurs\'d effect.\n  GLOUCESTER. Your beauty was the cause of that effect-\n    Your beauty that did haunt me in my sleep  \n    To undertake the death of all the world\n    So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom.\n  ANNE. If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide,\n    These nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks.\n  GLOUCESTER. These eyes could not endure that beauty\'s\n    wreck;\n    You should not blemish it if I stood by.\n    As all the world is cheered by the sun,\n    So I by that; it is my day, my life.\n  ANNE. Black night o\'ershade thy day, and death thy life!\n  GLOUCESTER. Curse not thyself, fair creature; thou art both.\n  ANNE. I would I were, to be reveng\'d on thee.\n  GLOUCESTER. It is a quarrel most unnatural,\n    To be reveng\'d on him that loveth thee.\n  ANNE. It is a quarrel just and reasonable,\n    To be reveng\'d on him that kill\'d my husband.\n  GLOUCESTER. He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband\n    Did it to help thee to a better husband.\n  ANNE. His better doth not breathe upon the earth.\n  GLOUCESTER. He lives that loves thee better than he could.  \n  ANNE. Name him.\n  GLOUCESTER. Plantagenet.\n  ANNE. Why, that was he.\n  GLOUCESTER. The self-same name, but one of better nature.\n  ANNE. Where is he?\n  GLOUCESTER. Here.  [She spits at him]  Why dost thou spit\n    at me?\n  ANNE. Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake!\n  GLOUCESTER. Never came poison from so sweet a place.\n  ANNE. Never hung poison on a fouler toad.\n    Out of my sight! Thou dost infect mine eyes.\n  GLOUCESTER. Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine.\n  ANNE. Would they were basilisks to strike thee dead!\n  GLOUCESTER. I would they were, that I might die at once;\n    For now they kill me with a living death.\n    Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears,\n    Sham\'d their aspects with store of childish drops-\n    These eyes, which never shed remorseful tear,\n    No, when my father York and Edward wept\n    To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made  \n    When black-fac\'d Clifford shook his sword at him;\n    Nor when thy warlike father, like a child,\n    Told the sad story of my father\'s death,\n    And twenty times made pause to sob and weep\n    That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks\n    Like trees bedash\'d with rain-in that sad time\n    My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear;\n    And what these sorrows could not thence exhale\n    Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping.\n    I never sued to friend nor enemy;\n    My tongue could never learn sweet smoothing word;\n    But, now thy beauty is propos\'d my fee,\n    My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to speak.\n                                   [She looks scornfully at him]\n    Teach not thy lip such scorn; for it was made\n    For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.\n    If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive,\n    Lo here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword;\n    Which if thou please to hide in this true breast\n    And let the soul forth that adoreth thee,  \n    I lay it naked to the deadly stroke,\n    And humbly beg the death upon my knee.\n      [He lays his breast open; she offers at it with his sword]\n    Nay, do not pause; for I did kill King Henry-\n    But \'twas thy beauty that provoked me.\n    Nay, now dispatch; \'twas I that stabb\'d young Edward-\n    But \'twas thy heavenly face that set me on.\n                                           [She falls the sword]\n    Take up the sword again, or take up me.\n  ANNE. Arise, dissembler; though I wish thy death,\n    I will not be thy executioner.\n  GLOUCESTER. Then bid me kill myself, and I will do it;\n  ANNE. I have already.\n  GLOUCESTER. That was in thy rage.\n    Speak it again, and even with the word\n    This hand, which for thy love did kill thy love,\n    Shall for thy love kill a far truer love;\n    To both their deaths shalt thou be accessary.\n  ANNE. I would I knew thy heart.\n  GLOUCESTER. \'Tis figur\'d in my tongue.  \n  ANNE. I fear me both are false.\n  GLOUCESTER. Then never was man true.\n  ANNE. well put up your sword.\n  GLOUCESTER. Say, then, my peace is made.\n  ANNE. That shalt thou know hereafter.\n  GLOUCESTER. But shall I live in hope?\n  ANNE. All men, I hope, live so.\n  GLOUCESTER. Vouchsafe to wear this ring.\n  ANNE. To take is not to give.               [Puts on the ring]\n  GLOUCESTER. Look how my ring encompasseth thy finger,\n    Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart;\n    Wear both of them, for both of them are thine.\n    And if thy poor devoted servant may\n    But beg one favour at thy gracious hand,\n    Thou dost confirm his happiness for ever.\n  ANNE. What is it?\n  GLOUCESTER. That it may please you leave these sad designs\n    To him that hath most cause to be a mourner,\n    And presently repair to Crosby House;\n    Where-after I have solemnly interr\'d  \n    At Chertsey monast\'ry this noble king,\n    And wet his grave with my repentant tears-\n    I will with all expedient duty see you.\n    For divers unknown reasons, I beseech you,\n    Grant me this boon.\n  ANNE. With all my heart; and much it joys me too\n    To see you are become so penitent.\n    Tressel and Berkeley, go along with me.\n  GLOUCESTER. Bid me farewell.\n  ANNE. \'Tis more than you deserve;\n    But since you teach me how to flatter you,\n    Imagine I have said farewell already.\n                             Exeunt two GENTLEMEN With LADY ANNE\n  GLOUCESTER. Sirs, take up the corse.\n  GENTLEMEN. Towards Chertsey, noble lord?\n  GLOUCESTER. No, to White Friars; there attend my coming.\n                                       Exeunt all but GLOUCESTER\n    Was ever woman in this humour woo\'d?\n    Was ever woman in this humour won?\n    I\'ll have her; but I will not keep her long.  \n    What! I that kill\'d her husband and his father-\n    To take her in her heart\'s extremest hate,\n    With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,\n    The bleeding witness of my hatred by;\n    Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me,\n    And I no friends to back my suit at all\n    But the plain devil and dissembling looks,\n    And yet to win her, all the world to nothing!\n    Ha!\n    Hath she forgot already that brave prince,\n    Edward, her lord, whom I, some three months since,\n    Stabb\'d in my angry mood at Tewksbury?\n    A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman-\n    Fram\'d in the prodigality of nature,\n    Young, valiant, wise, and no doubt right royal-\n    The spacious world cannot again afford;\n    And will she yet abase her eyes on me,\n    That cropp\'d the golden prime of this sweet prince\n    And made her widow to a woeful bed?\n    On me, whose all not equals Edward\'s moiety?  \n    On me, that halts and am misshapen thus?\n    My dukedom to a beggarly denier,\n    I do mistake my person all this while.\n    Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot,\n    Myself to be a marv\'llous proper man.\n    I\'ll be at charges for a looking-glass,\n    And entertain a score or two of tailors\n    To study fashions to adorn my body.\n    Since I am crept in favour with myself,\n    I will maintain it with some little cost.\n    But first I\'ll turn yon fellow in his grave,\n    And then return lamenting to my love.\n    Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,\n    That I may see my shadow as I pass.                     Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\n\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter QUEEN ELIZABETH, LORD RIVERS, and LORD GREY\n\n  RIVERS. Have patience, madam; there\'s no doubt his Majesty\n    Will soon recover his accustom\'d health.\n  GREY. In that you brook it ill, it makes him worse;\n    Therefore, for God\'s sake, entertain good comfort,\n    And cheer his Grace with quick and merry eyes.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. If he were dead, what would betide on\n    me?\n  GREY. No other harm but loss of such a lord.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. The loss of such a lord includes all\n    harms.\n  GREY. The heavens have bless\'d you with a goodly son\n    To be your comforter when he is gone.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, he is young; and his minority\n    Is put unto the trust of Richard Gloucester,\n    A man that loves not me, nor none of you.\n  RIVER. Is it concluded he shall be Protector?  \n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. It is determin\'d, not concluded yet;\n    But so it must be, if the King miscarry.\n\n                     Enter BUCKINGHAM and DERBY\n\n  GREY. Here come the Lords of Buckingham and Derby.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Good time of day unto your royal Grace!\n  DERBY. God make your Majesty joyful as you have been.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. The Countess Richmond, good my Lord\n    of Derby,\n    To your good prayer will scarcely say amen.\n    Yet, Derby, notwithstanding she\'s your wife\n    And loves not me, be you, good lord, assur\'d\n    I hate not you for her proud arrogance.\n  DERBY. I do beseech you, either not believe\n    The envious slanders of her false accusers;\n    Or, if she be accus\'d on true report,\n    Bear with her weakness, which I think proceeds\n    From wayward sickness and no grounded malice.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Saw you the King to-day, my Lord of  \n    Derby?\n  DERBY. But now the Duke of Buckingham and I\n    Are come from visiting his Majesty.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. What likelihood of his amendment,\n    Lords?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Madam, good hope; his Grace speaks\n    cheerfully.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. God grant him health! Did you confer\n    with him?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Ay, madam; he desires to make atonement\n    Between the Duke of Gloucester and your brothers,\n    And between them and my Lord Chamberlain;\n    And sent to warn them to his royal presence.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Would all were well! But that will\n    never be.\n    I fear our happiness is at the height.\n\n              Enter GLOUCESTER, HASTINGS, and DORSET\n\n  GLOUCESTER. They do me wrong, and I will not endure it.  \n    Who is it that complains unto the King\n    That I, forsooth, am stern and love them not?\n    By holy Paul, they love his Grace but lightly\n    That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours.\n    Because I cannot flatter and look fair,\n    Smile in men\'s faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,\n    Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,\n    I must be held a rancorous enemy.\n    Cannot a plain man live and think no harm\n    But thus his simple truth must be abus\'d\n    With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?\n  GREY. To who in all this presence speaks your Grace?\n  GLOUCESTER. To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace.\n    When have I injur\'d thee? when done thee wrong,\n    Or thee, or thee, or any of your faction?\n    A plague upon you all! His royal Grace-\n    Whom God preserve better than you would wish!-\n    Cannot be quiet searce a breathing while\n    But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Brother of Gloucester, you mistake the  \n    matter.\n    The King, on his own royal disposition\n    And not provok\'d by any suitor else-\n    Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred\n    That in your outward action shows itself\n    Against my children, brothers, and myself-\n    Makes him to send that he may learn the ground.\n  GLOUCESTER. I cannot tell; the world is grown so bad\n    That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.\n    Since every Jack became a gentleman,\n    There\'s many a gentle person made a Jack.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Come, come, we know your meaning,\n    brother Gloucester:\n    You envy my advancement and my friends\';\n    God grant we never may have need of you!\n  GLOUCESTER. Meantime, God grants that I have need of you.\n    Our brother is imprison\'d by your means,\n    Myself disgrac\'d, and the nobility\n    Held in contempt; while great promotions\n    Are daily given to ennoble those  \n    That scarce some two days since were worth a noble.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. By Him that rais\'d me to this careful\n    height\n    From that contented hap which I enjoy\'d,\n    I never did incense his Majesty\n    Against the Duke of Clarence, but have been\n    An earnest advocate to plead for him.\n    My lord, you do me shameful injury\n    Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects.\n  GLOUCESTER. You may deny that you were not the mean\n    Of my Lord Hastings\' late imprisonment.\n  RIVERS. She may, my lord; for-\n  GLOUCESTER. She may, Lord Rivers? Why, who knows\n    not so?\n    She may do more, sir, than denying that:\n    She may help you to many fair preferments\n    And then deny her aiding hand therein,\n    And lay those honours on your high desert.\n    What may she not? She may-ay, marry, may she-\n  RIVERS. What, marry, may she?  \n  GLOUCESTER. What, marry, may she? Marry with a king,\n    A bachelor, and a handsome stripling too.\n    Iwis your grandam had a worser match.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. My Lord of Gloucester, I have too long\n    borne\n    Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs.\n    By heaven, I will acquaint his Majesty\n    Of those gross taunts that oft I have endur\'d.\n    I had rather be a country servant-maid\n    Than a great queen with this condition-\n    To be so baited, scorn\'d, and stormed at.\n\n                Enter old QUEEN MARGARET, behind\n\n    Small joy have I in being England\'s Queen.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. And less\'ned be that small, God, I\n    beseech Him!\n    Thy honour, state, and seat, is due to me.\n  GLOUCESTER. What! Threat you me with telling of the\n    King?  \n    Tell him and spare not. Look what I have said\n    I will avouch\'t in presence of the King.\n    I dare adventure to be sent to th\' Tow\'r.\n    \'Tis time to speak-my pains are quite forgot.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Out, devil! I do remember them to\n    well:\n    Thou kill\'dst my husband Henry in the Tower,\n    And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.\n  GLOUCESTER. Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband\n    King,\n    I was a pack-horse in his great affairs,\n    A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,\n    A liberal rewarder of his friends;\n    To royalize his blood I spent mine own.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, and much better blood than his or\n    thine.\n  GLOUCESTER. In all which time you and your husband Grey\n    Were factious for the house of Lancaster;\n    And, Rivers, so were you. Was not your husband\n    In Margaret\'s battle at Saint Albans slain?  \n    Let me put in your minds, if you forget,\n    What you have been ere this, and what you are;\n    Withal, what I have been, and what I am.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. A murd\'rous villain, and so still thou art.\n  GLOUCESTER. Poor Clarence did forsake his father, Warwick,\n    Ay, and forswore himself-which Jesu pardon!-\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Which God revenge!\n  GLOUCESTER. To fight on Edward\'s party for the crown;\n    And for his meed, poor lord, he is mewed up.\n    I would to God my heart were flint like Edward\'s,\n    Or Edward\'s soft and pitiful like mine.\n    I am too childish-foolish for this world.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Hie thee to hell for shame and leave this\n    world,\n    Thou cacodemon; there thy kingdom is.\n  RIVERS. My Lord of Gloucester, in those busy days\n    Which here you urge to prove us enemies,\n    We follow\'d then our lord, our sovereign king.\n    So should we you, if you should be our king.\n  GLOUCESTER. If I should be! I had rather be a pedlar.  \n    Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof!\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. As little joy, my lord, as you suppose\n    You should enjoy were you this country\'s king,\n    As little joy you may suppose in me\n    That I enjoy, being the Queen thereof.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. As little joy enjoys the Queen thereof;\n    For I am she, and altogether joyless.\n    I can no longer hold me patient.                 [Advancing]\n    Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out\n    In sharing that which you have pill\'d from me.\n    Which of you trembles not that looks on me?\n    If not that, I am Queen, you bow like subjects,\n    Yet that, by you depos\'d, you quake like rebels?\n    Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away!\n  GLOUCESTER. Foul wrinkled witch, what mak\'st thou in my\n    sight?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. But repetition of what thou hast marr\'d,\n    That will I make before I let thee go.\n  GLOUCESTER. Wert thou not banished on pain of death?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. I was; but I do find more pain in  \n    banishment\n    Than death can yield me here by my abode.\n    A husband and a son thou ow\'st to me;\n    And thou a kingdom; all of you allegiance.\n    This sorrow that I have by right is yours;\n    And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.\n  GLOUCESTER. The curse my noble father laid on thee,\n    When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper\n    And with thy scorns drew\'st rivers from his eyes,\n    And then to dry them gav\'st the Duke a clout\n    Steep\'d in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland-\n    His curses then from bitterness of soul\n    Denounc\'d against thee are all fall\'n upon thee;\n    And God, not we, hath plagu\'d thy bloody deed.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. So just is God to right the innocent.\n  HASTINGS. O, \'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,\n    And the most merciless that e\'er was heard of!\n  RIVERS. Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.\n  DORSET. No man but prophesied revenge for it.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.  \n  QUEEN MARGARET. What, were you snarling all before I came,\n    Ready to catch each other by the throat,\n    And turn you all your hatred now on me?\n    Did York\'s dread curse prevail so much with heaven\n    That Henry\'s death, my lovely Edward\'s death,\n    Their kingdom\'s loss, my woeful banishment,\n    Should all but answer for that peevish brat?\n    Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?\n    Why then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses!\n    Though not by war, by surfeit die your king,\n    As ours by murder, to make him a king!\n    Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales,\n    For Edward our son, that was Prince of Wales,\n    Die in his youth by like untimely violence!\n    Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,\n    Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self!\n    Long mayest thou live to wail thy children\'s death,\n    And see another, as I see thee now,\n    Deck\'d in thy rights, as thou art stall\'d in mine!\n    Long die thy happy days before thy death;  \n    And, after many length\'ned hours of grief,\n    Die neither mother, wife, nor England\'s Queen!\n    Rivers and Dorset, you were standers by,\n    And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son\n    Was stabb\'d with bloody daggers. God, I pray him,\n    That none of you may live his natural age,\n    But by some unlook\'d accident cut off!\n  GLOUCESTER. Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither\'d\n    hag.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. And leave out thee? Stay, dog, for thou\n    shalt hear me.\n    If heaven have any grievous plague in store\n    Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,\n    O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,\n    And then hurl down their indignation\n    On thee, the troubler of the poor world\'s peace!\n    The worm of conscience still be-gnaw thy soul!\n    Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv\'st,\n    And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!\n    No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,  \n    Unless it be while some tormenting dream\n    Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!\n    Thou elvish-mark\'d, abortive, rooting hog,\n    Thou that wast seal\'d in thy nativity\n    The slave of nature and the son of hell,\n    Thou slander of thy heavy mother\'s womb,\n    Thou loathed issue of thy father\'s loins,\n    Thou rag of honour, thou detested-\n  GLOUCESTER. Margaret!\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Richard!\n  GLOUCESTER. Ha?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. I call thee not.\n  GLOUCESTER. I cry thee mercy then, for I did think\n    That thou hadst call\'d me all these bitter names.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Why, so I did, but look\'d for no reply.\n    O, let me make the period to my curse!\n  GLOUCESTER. \'Tis done by me, and ends in-Margaret.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Thus have you breath\'d your curse\n    against yourself.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my  \n    fortune!\n    Why strew\'st thou sugar on that bottled spider\n    Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about?\n    Fool, fool! thou whet\'st a knife to kill thyself.\n    The day will come that thou shalt wish for me\n    To help thee curse this poisonous bunch-back\'d toad.\n  HASTINGS. False-boding woman, end thy frantic curse,\n    Lest to thy harm thou move our patience.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Foul shame upon you! you have all\n    mov\'d mine.\n  RIVERS. Were you well serv\'d, you would be taught your\n      duty.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. To serve me well you all should do me\n    duty,\n    Teach me to be your queen and you my subjects.\n    O, serve me well, and teach yourselves that duty!\n  DORSET. Dispute not with her; she is lunatic.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Peace, Master Marquis, you are malapert;\n    Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current.\n    O, that your young nobility could judge  \n    What \'twere to lose it and be miserable!\n    They that stand high have many blasts to shake them,\n    And if they fall they dash themselves to pieces.\n  GLOUCESTER. Good counsel, marry; learn it, learn it, Marquis.\n  DORSET. It touches you, my lord, as much as me.\n  GLOUCESTER. Ay, and much more; but I was born so high,\n    Our aery buildeth in the cedar\'s top,\n    And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. And turns the sun to shade-alas! alas!\n    Witness my son, now in the shade of death,\n    Whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath\n    Hath in eternal darkness folded up.\n    Your aery buildeth in our aery\'s nest.\n    O God that seest it, do not suffer it;\n    As it is won with blood, lost be it so!\n  BUCKINGHAM. Peace, peace, for shame, if not for charity!\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Urge neither charity nor shame to me.\n    Uncharitably with me have you dealt,\n    And shamefully my hopes by you are butcher\'d.\n    My charity is outrage, life my shame;  \n    And in that shame still live my sorrow\'s rage!\n  BUCKINGHAM. Have done, have done.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. O princely Buckingham, I\'ll kiss thy\n    hand\n    In sign of league and amity with thee.\n    Now fair befall thee and thy noble house!\n    Thy garments are not spotted with our blood,\n    Nor thou within the compass of my curse.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Nor no one here; for curses never pass\n    The lips of those that breathe them in the air.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. I will not think but they ascend the sky\n    And there awake God\'s gentle-sleeping peace.\n    O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog!\n    Look when he fawns, he bites; and when he bites,\n    His venom tooth will rankle to the death:\n    Have not to do with him, beware of him;\n    Sin, death, and hell, have set their marks on him,\n    And all their ministers attend on him.\n  GLOUCESTER. What doth she say, my Lord of Buckingham?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Nothing that I respect, my gracious lord.  \n  QUEEN MARGARET. What, dost thou scorn me for my gentle\n    counsel,\n    And soothe the devil that I warn thee from?\n    O, but remember this another day,\n    When he shall split thy very heart with sorrow,\n    And say poor Margaret was a prophetess!\n    Live each of you the subjects to his hate,\n    And he to yours, and all of you to God\'s!               Exit\n  BUCKINGHAM. My hair doth stand an end to hear her curses.\n  RIVERS. And so doth mine. I muse why she\'s at liberty.\n  GLOUCESTER. I cannot blame her; by God\'s holy Mother,\n    She hath had too much wrong; and I repent\n    My part thereof that I have done to her.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. I never did her any to my knowledge.\n  GLOUCESTER. Yet you have all the vantage of her wrong.\n    I was too hot to do somebody good\n    That is too cold in thinking of it now.\n    Marry, as for Clarence, he is well repaid;\n    He is frank\'d up to fatting for his pains;\n    God pardon them that are the cause thereof!  \n  RIVERS. A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion,\n    To pray for them that have done scathe to us!\n  GLOUCESTER. So do I ever-  [Aside]  being well advis\'d;\n    For had I curs\'d now, I had curs\'d myself.\n\n                         Enter CATESBY\n\n  CATESBY. Madam, his Majesty doth can for you,\n    And for your Grace, and you, my gracious lords.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Catesby, I come. Lords, will you go\n    with me?\n  RIVERS. We wait upon your Grace.\n                                       Exeunt all but GLOUCESTER\n  GLOUCESTER. I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.\n    The secret mischiefs that I set abroach\n    I lay unto the grievous charge of others.\n    Clarence, who I indeed have cast in darkness,\n    I do beweep to many simple gulls;\n    Namely, to Derby, Hastings, Buckingham;\n    And tell them \'tis the Queen and her allies  \n    That stir the King against the Duke my brother.\n    Now they believe it, and withal whet me\n    To be reveng\'d on Rivers, Dorset, Grey;\n    But then I sigh and, with a piece of Scripture,\n    Tell them that God bids us do good for evil.\n    And thus I clothe my naked villainy\n    With odd old ends stol\'n forth of holy writ,\n    And seem a saint when most I play the devil.\n\n                       Enter two MURDERERS\n\n    But, soft, here come my executioners.\n    How now, my hardy stout resolved mates!\n    Are you now going to dispatch this thing?\n  FIRST MURDERER. We are, my lord, and come to have the\n    warrant,\n    That we may be admitted where he is.\n  GLOUCESTER. Well thought upon; I have it here about me.\n                                             [Gives the warrant]\n    When you have done, repair to Crosby Place.  \n    But, sirs, be sudden in the execution,\n    Withal obdurate, do not hear him plead;\n    For Clarence is well-spoken, and perhaps\n    May move your hearts to pity, if you mark him.\n  FIRST MURDERER. Tut, tut, my lord, we will not stand to\n    prate;\n    Talkers are no good doers. Be assur\'d\n    We go to use our hands and not our tongues.\n  GLOUCESTER. Your eyes drop millstones when fools\' eyes fall\n    tears.\n    I like you, lads; about your business straight;\n    Go, go, dispatch.\n  FIRST MURDERER. We will, my noble lord.                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4.\n\nLondon. The Tower\n\nEnter CLARENCE and KEEPER\n\n  KEEPER. Why looks your Grace so heavily to-day?\n  CLARENCE. O, I have pass\'d a miserable night,\n    So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,\n    That, as I am a Christian faithful man,\n    I would not spend another such a night\n    Though \'twere to buy a world of happy days-\n    So full of dismal terror was the time!\n  KEEPER. What was your dream, my lord? I pray you\n    tell me.\n  CLARENCE. Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower\n    And was embark\'d to cross to Burgundy;\n    And in my company my brother Gloucester,\n    Who from my cabin tempted me to walk\n    Upon the hatches. Thence we look\'d toward England,\n    And cited up a thousand heavy times,\n    During the wars of York and Lancaster,\n    That had befall\'n us. As we pac\'d along  \n    Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,\n    Methought that Gloucester stumbled, and in falling\n    Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard\n    Into the tumbling billows of the main.\n    O Lord, methought what pain it was to drown,\n    What dreadful noise of waters in my ears,\n    What sights of ugly death within my eyes!\n    Methoughts I saw a thousand fearful wrecks,\n    A thousand men that fishes gnaw\'d upon,\n    Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,\n    Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,\n    All scatt\'red in the bottom of the sea;\n    Some lay in dead men\'s skulls, and in the holes\n    Where eyes did once inhabit there were crept,\n    As \'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,\n    That woo\'d the slimy bottom of the deep\n    And mock\'d the dead bones that lay scatt\'red by.\n  KEEPER. Had you such leisure in the time of death\n    To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?\n  CLARENCE. Methought I had; and often did I strive  \n    To yield the ghost, but still the envious flood\n    Stopp\'d in my soul and would not let it forth\n    To find the empty, vast, and wand\'ring air;\n    But smother\'d it within my panting bulk,\n    Who almost burst to belch it in the sea.\n  KEEPER. Awak\'d you not in this sore agony?\n  CLARENCE. No, no, my dream was lengthen\'d after life.\n    O, then began the tempest to my soul!\n    I pass\'d, methought, the melancholy flood\n    With that sour ferryman which poets write of,\n    Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.\n    The first that there did greet my stranger soul\n    Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick,\n    Who spake aloud \'What scourge for perjury\n    Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?\'\n    And so he vanish\'d. Then came wand\'ring by\n    A shadow like an angel, with bright hair\n    Dabbled in blood, and he shriek\'d out aloud\n    \'Clarence is come-false, fleeting, perjur\'d Clarence,\n    That stabb\'d me in the field by Tewksbury.  \n    Seize on him, Furies, take him unto torment!\'\n    With that, methoughts, a legion of foul fiends\n    Environ\'d me, and howled in mine ears\n    Such hideous cries that, with the very noise,\n    I trembling wak\'d, and for a season after\n    Could not believe but that I was in hell,\n    Such terrible impression made my dream.\n  KEEPER. No marvel, lord, though it affrighted you;\n    I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it.\n  CLARENCE. Ah, Keeper, Keeper, I have done these things\n    That now give evidence against my soul\n    For Edward\'s sake, and see how he requites me!\n    O God! If my deep prayers cannot appease Thee,\n    But Thou wilt be aveng\'d on my misdeeds,\n    Yet execute Thy wrath in me alone;\n    O, spare my guiltless wife and my poor children!\n  KEEPER, I prithee sit by me awhile;\n    My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.\n  KEEPER. I will, my lord. God give your Grace good rest.\n                                               [CLARENCE sleeps]  \n\n                  Enter BRAKENBURY the Lieutenant\n\n  BRAKENBURY. Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours,\n    Makes the night morning and the noontide night.\n    Princes have but their titles for their glories,\n    An outward honour for an inward toil;\n    And for unfelt imaginations\n    They often feel a world of restless cares,\n    So that between their tides and low name\n    There\'s nothing differs but the outward fame.\n\n                      Enter the two MURDERERS\n\n  FIRST MURDERER. Ho! who\'s here?\n  BRAKENBURY. What wouldst thou, fellow, and how cam\'st\n    thou hither?\n  FIRST MURDERER. I would speak with Clarence, and I came\n    hither on my legs.\n  BRAKENBURY. What, so brief?  \n  SECOND MURDERER. \'Tis better, sir, than to be tedious. Let\n    him see our commission and talk no more.\n                                           [BRAKENBURY reads it]\n  BRAKENBURY. I am, in this, commanded to deliver\n    The noble Duke of Clarence to your hands.\n    I will not reason what is meant hereby,\n    Because I will be guiltless from the meaning.\n    There lies the Duke asleep; and there the keys.\n    I\'ll to the King and signify to him\n    That thus I have resign\'d to you my charge.\n  FIRST MURDERER. You may, sir; \'tis a point of wisdom. Fare\n    you well.                       Exeunt BRAKENBURY and KEEPER\n  SECOND MURDERER. What, shall I stab him as he sleeps?\n  FIRST MURDERER. No; he\'ll say \'twas done cowardly, when\n    he wakes.\n  SECOND MURDERER. Why, he shall never wake until the great\n    judgment-day.\n  FIRST MURDERER. Why, then he\'ll say we stabb\'d him\n    sleeping.\n  SECOND MURDERER. The urging of that word judgment hath  \n    bred a kind of remorse in me.\n  FIRST MURDERER. What, art thou afraid?\n  SECOND MURDERER. Not to kill him, having a warrant; but to\n    be damn\'d for killing him, from the which no warrant can\n    defend me.\n  FIRST MURDERER. I thought thou hadst been resolute.\n  SECOND MURDERER. So I am, to let him live.\n  FIRST MURDERER. I\'ll back to the Duke of Gloucester and\n    tell him so.\n  SECOND MURDERER. Nay, I prithee, stay a little. I hope this\n    passionate humour of mine will change; it was wont to\n    hold me but while one tells twenty.\n  FIRST MURDERER. How dost thou feel thyself now?\n    SECOND MURDERER. Faith, some certain dregs of conscience\n    are yet within me.\n  FIRST MURDERER. Remember our reward, when the deed\'s\n    done.\n  SECOND MURDERER. Zounds, he dies; I had forgot the reward.\n  FIRST MURDERER. Where\'s thy conscience now?\n  SECOND MURDERER. O, in the Duke of Gloucester\'s purse!  \n  FIRST MURDERER. When he opens his purse to give us our\n    reward, thy conscience flies out.\n  SECOND MURDERER. \'Tis no matter; let it go; there\'s few or\n    none will entertain it.\n  FIRST MURDERER. What if it come to thee again?\n  SECOND MURDERER. I\'ll not meddle with it-it makes a man\n    coward: a man cannot steal, but it accuseth him; a man\n    cannot swear, but it checks him; a man cannot lie with his\n    neighbour\'s wife, but it detects him. \'Tis a blushing shame-\n    fac\'d spirit that mutinies in a man\'s bosom; it fills a man\n    full of obstacles: it made me once restore a purse of gold\n    that-by chance I found. It beggars any man that keeps it.\n    It is turn\'d out of towns and cities for a dangerous thing;\n    and every man that means to live well endeavours to trust\n    to himself and live without it.\n  FIRST MURDERER. Zounds, \'tis even now at my elbow,\n    persuading me not to kill the Duke.\n  SECOND MURDERER. Take the devil in thy mind and believe\n    him not; he would insinuate with thee but to make the\n    sigh.  \n  FIRST MURDERER. I am strong-fram\'d; he cannot prevail with\n    me.\n  SECOND MURDERER. Spoke like a tall man that respects thy\n    reputation. Come, shall we fall to work?\n  FIRST MURDERER. Take him on the costard with the hilts of\n    thy sword, and then chop him in the malmsey-butt in the\n    next room.\n  SECOND MURDERER. O excellent device! and make a sop of\n    him.\n  FIRST MURDERER. Soft! he wakes.\n  SECOND MURDERER. Strike!\n  FIRST MURDERER. No, we\'ll reason with him.\n  CLARENCE. Where art thou, Keeper? Give me a cup of wine.\n  SECOND MURDERER. You shall have wine enough, my lord,\n    anon.\n  CLARENCE. In God\'s name, what art thou?\n  FIRST MURDERER. A man, as you are.\n  CLARENCE. But not as I am, royal.\n  SECOND MURDERER. Nor you as we are, loyal.\n  CLARENCE. Thy voice is thunder, but thy looks are humble.  \n  FIRST MURDERER. My voice is now the King\'s, my looks\n    mine own.\n  CLARENCE. How darkly and how deadly dost thou speak!\n    Your eyes do menace me. Why look you pale?\n    Who sent you hither? Wherefore do you come?\n  SECOND MURDERER. To, to, to-\n  CLARENCE. To murder me?\n  BOTH MURDERERS. Ay, ay.\n  CLARENCE. You scarcely have the hearts to tell me so,\n    And therefore cannot have the hearts to do it.\n    Wherein, my friends, have I offended you?\n  FIRST MURDERER. Offended us you have not, but the King.\n  CLARENCE. I shall be reconcil\'d to him again.\n  SECOND MURDERER. Never, my lord; therefore prepare to die.\n  CLARENCE. Are you drawn forth among a world of men\n    To slay the innocent? What is my offence?\n    Where is the evidence that doth accuse me?\n    What lawful quest have given their verdict up\n    Unto the frowning judge, or who pronounc\'d\n    The bitter sentence of poor Clarence\' death?  \n    Before I be convict by course of law,\n    To threaten me with death is most unlawful.\n    I charge you, as you hope to have redemption\n    By Christ\'s dear blood shed for our grievous sins,\n    That you depart and lay no hands on me.\n    The deed you undertake is damnable.\n  FIRST MURDERER. What we will do, we do upon command.\n  SECOND MURDERER. And he that hath commanded is our\n    King.\n  CLARENCE. Erroneous vassals! the great King of kings\n    Hath in the tables of his law commanded\n    That thou shalt do no murder. Will you then\n    Spurn at his edict and fulfil a man\'s?\n    Take heed; for he holds vengeance in his hand\n    To hurl upon their heads that break his law.\n  SECOND MURDERER. And that same vengeance doth he hurl\n    on thee\n    For false forswearing, and for murder too;\n    Thou didst receive the sacrament to fight\n    In quarrel of the house of Lancaster.  \n  FIRST MURDERER. And like a traitor to the name of God\n    Didst break that vow; and with thy treacherous blade\n    Unripp\'dst the bowels of thy sov\'reign\'s son.\n  SECOND MURDERER. Whom thou wast sworn to cherish and\n    defend.\n  FIRST MURDERER. How canst thou urge God\'s dreadful law\n    to us,\n    When thou hast broke it in such dear degree?\n  CLARENCE. Alas! for whose sake did I that ill deed?\n    For Edward, for my brother, for his sake.\n    He sends you not to murder me for this,\n    For in that sin he is as deep as I.\n    If God will be avenged for the deed,\n    O, know you yet He doth it publicly.\n    Take not the quarrel from His pow\'rful arm;\n    He needs no indirect or lawless course\n    To cut off those that have offended Him.\n  FIRST MURDERER. Who made thee then a bloody minister\n    When gallant-springing brave Plantagenet,\n    That princely novice, was struck dead by thee?  \n  CLARENCE. My brother\'s love, the devil, and my rage.\n  FIRST MURDERER. Thy brother\'s love, our duty, and thy\n    faults,\n    Provoke us hither now to slaughter thee.\n  CLARENCE. If you do love my brother, hate not me;\n    I am his brother, and I love him well.\n    If you are hir\'d for meed, go back again,\n    And I will send you to my brother Gloucester,\n    Who shall reward you better for my life\n    Than Edward will for tidings of my death.\n  SECOND MURDERER. You are deceiv\'d: your brother Gloucester\n    hates you.\n  CLARENCE. O, no, he loves me, and he holds me dear.\n    Go you to him from me.\n  FIRST MURDERER. Ay, so we will.\n  CLARENCE. Tell him when that our princely father York\n    Bless\'d his three sons with his victorious arm\n    And charg\'d us from his soul to love each other,\n    He little thought of this divided friendship.\n    Bid Gloucester think of this, and he will weep.  \n  FIRST MURDERER. Ay, millstones; as he lesson\'d us to weep.\n  CLARENCE. O, do not slander him, for he is kind.\n  FIRST MURDERER. Right, as snow in harvest. Come, you\n    deceive yourself:\n    \'Tis he that sends us to destroy you here.\n    CLARENCE. It cannot be; for he bewept my fortune\n    And hugg\'d me in his arms, and swore with sobs\n    That he would labour my delivery.\n  FIRST MURDERER. Why, so he doth, when he delivers you\n    From this earth\'s thraldom to the joys of heaven.\n  SECOND MURDERER. Make peace with God, for you must die,\n    my lord.\n  CLARENCE. Have you that holy feeling in your souls\n    To counsel me to make my peace with God,\n    And are you yet to your own souls so blind\n    That you will war with God by murd\'ring me?\n    O, sirs, consider: they that set you on\n    To do this deed will hate you for the deed.\n  SECOND MURDERER. What shall we do?\n  CLARENCE. Relent, and save your souls.  \n  FIRST MURDERER. Relent! No, \'tis cowardly and womanish.\n  CLARENCE. Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish.\n    Which of you, if you were a prince\'s son,\n    Being pent from liberty as I am now,\n    If two such murderers as yourselves came to you,\n    Would not entreat for life?\n    My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks;\n    O, if thine eye be not a flatterer,\n    Come thou on my side and entreat for me-\n    As you would beg were you in my distress.\n    A begging prince what beggar pities not?\n  SECOND MURDERER. Look behind you, my lord.\n  FIRST MURDERER.  [Stabbing him]  Take that, and that. If all\n    this will not do,\n    I\'ll drown you in the malmsey-butt within.\n                                              Exit with the body\n  SECOND MURDERER. A bloody deed, and desperately\n    dispatch\'d!\n    How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands\n    Of this most grievous murder!  \n\n                       Re-enter FIRST MURDERER\n\n  FIRST MURDERER-How now, what mean\'st thou that thou\n    help\'st me not?\n    By heavens, the Duke shall know how slack you have\n    been!\n  SECOND MURDERER. I would he knew that I had sav\'d his\n    brother!\n    Take thou the fee, and tell him what I say;\n    For I repent me that the Duke is slain.                 Exit\n  FIRST MURDERER. So do not I. Go, coward as thou art.\n    Well, I\'ll go hide the body in some hole,\n    Till that the Duke give order for his burial;\n    And when I have my meed, I will away;\n    For this will out, and then I must not stay.            Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 1.\n\nLondon. The palace\n\nFlourish. Enter KING EDWARD sick, QUEEN ELIZABETH, DORSET, RIVERS,\nHASTINGS, BUCKINGHAM, GREY, and others\n\n  KING EDWARD. Why, so. Now have I done a good day\'s\n    work.\n    You peers, continue this united league.\n    I every day expect an embassage\n    From my Redeemer to redeem me hence;\n    And more at peace my soul shall part to heaven,\n    Since I have made my friends at peace on earth.\n    Hastings and Rivers, take each other\'s hand;\n    Dissemble not your hatred, swear your love.\n  RIVERS. By heaven, my soul is purg\'d from grudging hate;\n    And with my hand I seal my true heart\'s love.\n  HASTINGS. So thrive I, as I truly swear the like!\n  KING EDWARD. Take heed you dally not before your king;\n    Lest He that is the supreme King of kings\n    Confound your hidden falsehood and award  \n    Either of you to be the other\'s end.\n  HASTINGS. So prosper I, as I swear perfect love!\n  RIVERS. And I, as I love Hastings with my heart!\n  KING EDWARD. Madam, yourself is not exempt from this;\n    Nor you, son Dorset; Buckingham, nor you:\n    You have been factious one against the other.\n    Wife, love Lord Hastings, let him kiss your hand;\n    And what you do, do it unfeignedly.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. There, Hastings; I will never more\n    remember\n    Our former hatred, so thrive I and mine!\n  KING EDWARD. Dorset, embrace him; Hastings, love Lord\n    Marquis.\n  DORSET. This interchange of love, I here protest,\n    Upon my part shall be inviolable.\n  HASTINGS. And so swear I.                       [They embrace]\n  KING EDWARD. Now, princely Buckingham, seal thou this\n    league\n    With thy embracements to my wife\'s allies,\n    And make me happy in your unity.  \n  BUCKINGHAM.  [To the QUEEN]  Whenever Buckingham\n    doth turn his hate\n    Upon your Grace, but with all duteous love\n    Doth cherish you and yours, God punish me\n    With hate in those where I expect most love!\n    When I have most need to employ a friend\n    And most assured that he is a friend,\n    Deep, hollow, treacherous, and full of guile,\n    Be he unto me! This do I beg of God\n    When I am cold in love to you or yours.\n                                                  [They embrace]\n  KING EDWARD. A pleasing cordial, princely Buckingham,\n    Is this thy vow unto my sickly heart.\n    There wanteth now our brother Gloucester here\n    To make the blessed period of this peace.\n  BUCKINGHAM. And, in good time,\n    Here comes Sir Richard Ratcliff and the Duke.\n\n                      Enter GLOUCESTER, and RATCLIFF\n  \n  GLOUCESTER. Good morrow to my sovereign king and\n    Queen;\n    And, princely peers, a happy time of day!\n  KING EDWARD. Happy, indeed, as we have spent the day.\n    Gloucester, we have done deeds of charity,\n    Made peace of enmity, fair love of hate,\n    Between these swelling wrong-incensed peers.\n  GLOUCESTER. A blessed labour, my most sovereign lord.\n    Among this princely heap, if any here,\n    By false intelligence or wrong surmise,\n    Hold me a foe-\n    If I unwittingly, or in my rage,\n    Have aught committed that is hardly borne\n    To any in this presence, I desire\n    To reconcile me to his friendly peace:\n    \'Tis death to me to be at enmity;\n    I hate it, and desire all good men\'s love.\n    First, madam, I entreat true peace of you,\n    Which I will purchase with my duteous service;\n    Of you, my noble cousin Buckingham,  \n    If ever any grudge were lodg\'d between us;\n    Of you, and you, Lord Rivers, and of Dorset,\n    That all without desert have frown\'d on me;\n    Of you, Lord Woodville, and, Lord Scales, of you;\n    Dukes, earls, lords, gentlemen-indeed, of all.\n    I do not know that Englishman alive\n    With whom my soul is any jot at odds\n    More than the infant that is born to-night.\n    I thank my God for my humility.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. A holy day shall this be kept hereafter.\n    I would to God all strifes were well compounded.\n    My sovereign lord, I do beseech your Highness\n    To take our brother Clarence to your grace.\n  GLOUCESTER. Why, madam, have I off\'red love for this,\n    To be so flouted in this royal presence?\n    Who knows not that the gentle Duke is dead?\n                                                [They all start]\n    You do him injury to scorn his corse.\n  KING EDWARD. Who knows not he is dead! Who knows\n    he is?  \n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. All-seeing heaven, what a world is this!\n  BUCKINGHAM. Look I so pale, Lord Dorset, as the rest?\n  DORSET. Ay, my good lord; and no man in the presence\n    But his red colour hath forsook his cheeks.\n  KING EDWARD. Is Clarence dead? The order was revers\'d.\n  GLOUCESTER. But he, poor man, by your first order died,\n    And that a winged Mercury did bear;\n    Some tardy cripple bare the countermand\n    That came too lag to see him buried.\n    God grant that some, less noble and less loyal,\n    Nearer in bloody thoughts, an not in blood,\n    Deserve not worse than wretched Clarence did,\n    And yet go current from suspicion!\n\n                           Enter DERBY\n\n  DERBY. A boon, my sovereign, for my service done!\n  KING EDWARD. I prithee, peace; my soul is full of sorrow.\n  DERBY. I Will not rise unless your Highness hear me.\n  KING EDWARD. Then say at once what is it thou requests.  \n  DERBY. The forfeit, sovereign, of my servant\'s life;\n    Who slew to-day a riotous gentleman\n    Lately attendant on the Duke of Norfolk.\n  KING EDWARD. Have I a tongue to doom my brother\'s death,\n    And shall that tongue give pardon to a slave?\n    My brother killed no man-his fault was thought,\n    And yet his punishment was bitter death.\n    Who sued to me for him? Who, in my wrath,\n    Kneel\'d at my feet, and bid me be advis\'d?\n    Who spoke of brotherhood? Who spoke of love?\n    Who told me how the poor soul did forsake\n    The mighty Warwick and did fight for me?\n    Who told me, in the field at Tewksbury\n    When Oxford had me down, he rescued me\n    And said \'Dear Brother, live, and be a king\'?\n    Who told me, when we both lay in the field\n    Frozen almost to death, how he did lap me\n    Even in his garments, and did give himself,\n    All thin and naked, to the numb cold night?\n    All this from my remembrance brutish wrath  \n    Sinfully pluck\'d, and not a man of you\n    Had so much race to put it in my mind.\n    But when your carters or your waiting-vassals\n    Have done a drunken slaughter and defac\'d\n    The precious image of our dear Redeemer,\n    You straight are on your knees for pardon, pardon;\n    And I, unjustly too, must grant it you.        [DERBY rises]\n    But for my brother not a man would speak;\n    Nor I, ungracious, speak unto myself\n    For him, poor soul. The proudest of you all\n    Have been beholding to him in his life;\n    Yet none of you would once beg for his life.\n    O God, I fear thy justice will take hold\n    On me, and you, and mine, and yours, for this!\n    Come, Hastings, help me to my closet. Ah, poor Clarence!\n                                 Exeunt some with KING and QUEEN\n  GLOUCESTER. This is the fruits of rashness. Mark\'d you not\n    How that the guilty kindred of the Queen\n    Look\'d pale when they did hear of Clarence\' death?\n    O, they did urge it still unto the King!  \n    God will revenge it. Come, lords, will you go\n    To comfort Edward with our company?\n  BUCKINGHAM. We wait upon your Grace.                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\n\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter the old DUCHESS OF YORK, with the SON and DAUGHTER of CLARENCE\n\n  SON. Good grandam, tell us, is our father dead?\n  DUCHESS. No, boy.\n  DAUGHTER. Why do you weep so oft, and beat your breast,\n    And cry \'O Clarence, my unhappy son!\'?\n  SON. Why do you look on us, and shake your head,\n    And call us orphans, wretches, castaways,\n    If that our noble father were alive?\n  DUCHESS. My pretty cousins, you mistake me both;\n    I do lament the sickness of the King,\n    As loath to lose him, not your father\'s death;\n    It were lost sorrow to wail one that\'s lost.\n  SON. Then you conclude, my grandam, he is dead.\n    The King mine uncle is to blame for it.\n    God will revenge it; whom I will importune\n    With earnest prayers all to that effect.\n  DAUGHTER. And so will I.  \n  DUCHESS. Peace, children, peace! The King doth love you\n    well.\n    Incapable and shallow innocents,\n    You cannot guess who caus\'d your father\'s death.\n  SON. Grandam, we can; for my good uncle Gloucester\n    Told me the King, provok\'d to it by the Queen,\n    Devis\'d impeachments to imprison him.\n    And when my uncle told me so, he wept,\n    And pitied me, and kindly kiss\'d my cheek;\n    Bade me rely on him as on my father,\n    And he would love me dearly as a child.\n  DUCHESS. Ah, that deceit should steal such gentle shape,\n    And with a virtuous vizor hide deep vice!\n    He is my son; ay, and therein my shame;\n    Yet from my dugs he drew not this deceit.\n  SON. Think you my uncle did dissemble, grandam?\n  DUCHESS. Ay, boy.\n  SON. I cannot think it. Hark! what noise is this?\n\n            Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, with her hair about her  \n                ears; RIVERS and DORSET after her\n\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, who shall hinder me to wail and\n    weep,\n    To chide my fortune, and torment myself?\n    I\'ll join with black despair against my soul\n    And to myself become an enemy.\n  DUCHESS. What means this scene of rude impatience?\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. To make an act of tragic violence.\n  EDWARD, my lord, thy son, our king, is dead.\n    Why grow the branches when the root is gone?\n    Why wither not the leaves that want their sap?\n    If you will live, lament; if die, be brief,\n    That our swift-winged souls may catch the King\'s,\n    Or like obedient subjects follow him\n    To his new kingdom of ne\'er-changing night.\n  DUCHESS. Ah, so much interest have I in thy sorrow\n    As I had title in thy noble husband!\n    I have bewept a worthy husband\'s death,\n    And liv\'d with looking on his images;  \n    But now two mirrors of his princely semblance\n    Are crack\'d in pieces by malignant death,\n    And I for comfort have but one false glass,\n    That grieves me when I see my shame in him.\n    Thou art a widow, yet thou art a mother\n    And hast the comfort of thy children left;\n    But death hath snatch\'d my husband from mine arms\n    And pluck\'d two crutches from my feeble hands-\n    Clarence and Edward. O, what cause have I-\n    Thine being but a moiety of my moan-\n    To overgo thy woes and drown thy cries?\n  SON. Ah, aunt, you wept not for our father\'s death!\n    How can we aid you with our kindred tears?\n  DAUGHTER. Our fatherless distress was left unmoan\'d;\n    Your widow-dolour likewise be unwept!\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Give me no help in lamentation;\n    I am not barren to bring forth complaints.\n    All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes\n    That I, being govern\'d by the watery moon,\n    May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world!  \n    Ah for my husband, for my dear Lord Edward!\n  CHILDREN. Ah for our father, for our dear Lord Clarence!\n  DUCHESS. Alas for both, both mine, Edward and Clarence!\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. What stay had I but Edward? and he\'s\n    gone.\n  CHILDREN. What stay had we but Clarence? and he\'s gone.\n  DUCHESS. What stays had I but they? and they are gone.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Was never widow had so dear a loss.\n  CHILDREN. Were never orphans had so dear a loss.\n  DUCHESS. Was never mother had so dear a loss.\n    Alas, I am the mother of these griefs!\n    Their woes are parcell\'d, mine is general.\n    She for an Edward weeps, and so do I:\n    I for a Clarence weep, so doth not she.\n    These babes for Clarence weep, and so do I:\n    I for an Edward weep, so do not they.\n    Alas, you three on me, threefold distress\'d,\n    Pour all your tears! I am your sorrow\'s nurse,\n    And I will pamper it with lamentation.\n  DORSET. Comfort, dear mother. God is much displeas\'d  \n    That you take with unthankfulness his doing.\n    In common worldly things \'tis called ungrateful\n    With dull unwillingness to repay a debt\n    Which with a bounteous hand was kindly lent;\n    Much more to be thus opposite with heaven,\n    For it requires the royal debt it lent you.\n  RIVERS. Madam, bethink you, like a careful mother,\n    Of the young prince your son. Send straight for him;\n    Let him be crown\'d; in him your comfort lives.\n    Drown desperate sorrow in dead Edward\'s grave,\n    And plant your joys in living Edward\'s throne.\n\n               Enter GLOUCESTER, BUCKINGHAM, DERBY,\n                      HASTINGS, and RATCLIFF\n\n  GLOUCESTER. Sister, have comfort. All of us have cause\n    To wail the dimming of our shining star;\n    But none can help our harms by wailing them.\n    Madam, my mother, I do cry you mercy;\n    I did not see your Grace. Humbly on my knee  \n    I crave your blessing.\n  DUCHESS. God bless thee; and put meekness in thy breast,\n    Love, charity, obedience, and true duty!\n  GLOUCESTER. Amen!  [Aside]  And make me die a good old\n    man!\n    That is the butt end of a mother\'s blessing;\n    I marvel that her Grace did leave it out.\n  BUCKINGHAM. You cloudy princes and heart-sorrowing\n    peers,\n    That bear this heavy mutual load of moan,\n    Now cheer each other in each other\'s love.\n    Though we have spent our harvest of this king,\n    We are to reap the harvest of his son.\n    The broken rancour of your high-swol\'n hearts,\n    But lately splinter\'d, knit, and join\'d together,\n    Must gently be preserv\'d, cherish\'d, and kept.\n    Me seemeth good that, with some little train,\n    Forthwith from Ludlow the young prince be fet\n    Hither to London, to be crown\'d our King.\n\n RIVERS. Why with some little train, my Lord of  \n    Buckingham?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Marry, my lord, lest by a multitude\n    The new-heal\'d wound of malice should break out,\n    Which would be so much the more dangerous\n    By how much the estate is green and yet ungovern\'d;\n    Where every horse bears his commanding rein\n    And may direct his course as please himself,\n    As well the fear of harm as harm apparent,\n    In my opinion, ought to be prevented.\n  GLOUCESTER. I hope the King made peace with all of us;\n    And the compact is firm and true in me.\n  RIVERS. And so in me; and so, I think, in an.\n    Yet, since it is but green, it should be put\n    To no apparent likelihood of breach,\n    Which haply by much company might be urg\'d;\n    Therefore I say with noble Buckingham\n    That it is meet so few should fetch the Prince.\n  HASTINGS. And so say I.\n  GLOUCESTER. Then be it so; and go we to determine\n    Who they shall be that straight shall post to Ludlow.  \n    Madam, and you, my sister, will you go\n    To give your censures in this business?\n                        Exeunt all but BUCKINGHAM and GLOUCESTER\n  BUCKINGHAM. My lord, whoever journeys to the Prince,\n    For God sake, let not us two stay at home;\n    For by the way I\'ll sort occasion,\n    As index to the story we late talk\'d of,\n    To part the Queen\'s proud kindred from the Prince.\n  GLOUCESTER. My other self, my counsel\'s consistory,\n    My oracle, my prophet, my dear cousin,\n    I, as a child, will go by thy direction.\n    Toward Ludlow then, for we\'ll not stay behind.        Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\n\nLondon. A street\n\nEnter one CITIZEN at one door, and another at the other\n\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Good morrow, neighbour. Whither away so\n    fast?\n  SECOND CITIZEN. I promise you, I scarcely know myself.\n    Hear you the news abroad?\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Yes, that the King is dead.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Ill news, by\'r lady; seldom comes the\n    better.\n    I fear, I fear \'twill prove a giddy world.\n\n                        Enter another CITIZEN\n\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Neighbours, God speed!\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Give you good morrow, sir.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Doth the news hold of good King Edward\'s\n    death?\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Ay, sir, it is too true; God help the while!  \n  THIRD CITIZEN. Then, masters, look to see a troublous\n    world.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. No, no; by God\'s good grace, his son shall\n    reign.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Woe to that land that\'s govern\'d by a child.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. In him there is a hope of government,\n    Which, in his nonage, council under him,\n    And, in his full and ripened years, himself,\n    No doubt, shall then, and till then, govern well.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. So stood the state when Henry the Sixth\n    Was crown\'d in Paris but at nine months old.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Stood the state so? No, no, good friends,\n    God wot;\n    For then this land was famously enrich\'d\n    With politic grave counsel; then the King\n    Had virtuous uncles to protect his Grace.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Why, so hath this, both by his father and\n    mother.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Better it were they all came by his father,\n    Or by his father there were none at all;  \n    For emulation who shall now be nearest\n    Will touch us all too near, if God prevent not.\n    O, full of danger is the Duke of Gloucester!\n    And the Queen\'s sons and brothers haught and proud;\n    And were they to be rul\'d, and not to rule,\n    This sickly land might solace as before.\n  FIRST CITIZEN. Come, come, we fear the worst; all will be\n    well.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. When clouds are seen, wise men put on\n    their cloaks;\n    When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand;\n    When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?\n    Untimely storms make men expect a dearth.\n    All may be well; but, if God sort it so,\n    \'Tis more than we deserve or I expect.\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Truly, the hearts of men are fun of fear.\n    You cannot reason almost with a man\n    That looks not heavily and fun of dread.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. Before the days of change, still is it so;\n    By a divine instinct men\'s minds mistrust  \n    Ensuing danger; as by proof we see\n    The water swell before a boist\'rous storm.\n    But leave it all to God. Whither away?\n  SECOND CITIZEN. Marry, we were sent for to the justices.\n  THIRD CITIZEN. And so was I; I\'ll bear you company.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4.\n\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, the young DUKE OF YORK, QUEEN ELIZABETH,\nand the DUCHESS OF YORK\n\n  ARCHBISHOP. Last night, I hear, they lay at Stony Stratford,\n    And at Northampton they do rest to-night;\n    To-morrow or next day they will be here.\n  DUCHESS. I long with all my heart to see the Prince.\n    I hope he is much grown since last I saw him.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. But I hear no; they say my son of York\n    Has almost overta\'en him in his growth.\n  YORK. Ay, mother; but I would not have it so.\n  DUCHESS. Why, my good cousin, it is good to grow.\n  YORK. Grandam, one night as we did sit at supper,\n    My uncle Rivers talk\'d how I did grow\n    More than my brother. \'Ay,\' quoth my uncle Gloucester\n    \'Small herbs have grace: great weeds do grow apace.\'\n    And since, methinks, I would not grow so fast,\n    Because sweet flow\'rs are slow and weeds make haste.  \n  DUCHESS. Good faith, good faith, the saying did not hold\n    In him that did object the same to thee.\n    He was the wretched\'st thing when he was young,\n    So long a-growing and so leisurely\n    That, if his rule were true, he should be gracious.\n  ARCHBISHOP. And so no doubt he is, my gracious madam.\n  DUCHESS. I hope he is; but yet let mothers doubt.\n  YORK. Now, by my troth, if I had been rememb\'red,\n    I could have given my uncle\'s Grace a flout\n    To touch his growth nearer than he touch\'d mine.\n  DUCHESS. How, my young York? I prithee let me hear it.\n  YORK. Marry, they say my uncle grew so fast\n    That he could gnaw a crust at two hours old.\n    \'Twas full two years ere I could get a tooth.\n    Grandam, this would have been a biting jest.\n  DUCHESS. I prithee, pretty York, who told thee this?\n  YORK. Grandam, his nurse.\n  DUCHESS. His nurse! Why she was dead ere thou wast\n    born.\n  YORK. If \'twere not she, I cannot tell who told me.  \n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. A parlous boy! Go to, you are too\n    shrewd.\n  ARCHBISHOP. Good madam, be not angry with the child.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Pitchers have ears.\n\n                        Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  ARCHBISHOP. Here comes a messenger. What news?\n  MESSENGER. Such news, my lord, as grieves me to report.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. How doth the Prince?\n  MESSENGER. Well, madam, and in health.\n  DUCHESS. What is thy news?\n  MESSENGER. Lord Rivers and Lord Grey\n    Are sent to Pomfret, and with them\n    Sir Thomas Vaughan, prisoners.\n  DUCHESS. Who hath committed them?\n  MESSENGER. The mighty Dukes, Gloucester and Buckingham.\n  ARCHBISHOP. For what offence?\n  MESSENGER. The sum of all I can, I have disclos\'d.\n    Why or for what the nobles were committed  \n    Is all unknown to me, my gracious lord.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ay me, I see the ruin of my house!\n    The tiger now hath seiz\'d the gentle hind;\n    Insulting tyranny begins to jet\n    Upon the innocent and aweless throne.\n    Welcome, destruction, blood, and massacre!\n    I see, as in a map, the end of all.\n  DUCHESS. Accursed and unquiet wrangling days,\n    How many of you have mine eyes beheld!\n    My husband lost his life to get the crown;\n    And often up and down my sons were toss\'d\n    For me to joy and weep their gain and loss;\n    And being seated, and domestic broils\n    Clean over-blown, themselves the conquerors\n    Make war upon themselves-brother to brother,\n    Blood to blood, self against self. O, preposterous\n    And frantic outrage, end thy damned spleen,\n    Or let me die, to look on death no more!\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Come, come, my boy; we will to\n    sanctuary.  \n    Madam, farewell.\n  DUCHESS. Stay, I will go with you.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. You have no cause.\n  ARCHBISHOP.  [To the QUEEN]  My gracious lady, go.\n    And thither bear your treasure and your goods.\n    For my part, I\'ll resign unto your Grace\n    The seal I keep; and so betide to me\n    As well I tender you and all of yours!\n    Go, I\'ll conduct you to the sanctuary.                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 1.\n\nLondon. A street\n\nThe trumpets sound. Enter the PRINCE OF WALES, GLOUCESTER, BUCKINGHAM,\nCATESBY, CARDINAL BOURCHIER, and others\n\n  BUCKINGHAM. Welcome, sweet Prince, to London, to your\n    chamber.\n  GLOUCESTER. Welcome, dear cousin, my thoughts\' sovereign.\n    The weary way hath made you melancholy.\n  PRINCE. No, uncle; but our crosses on the way\n    Have made it tedious, wearisome, and heavy.\n    I want more uncles here to welcome me.\n  GLOUCESTER. Sweet Prince, the untainted virtue of your\n    years\n    Hath not yet div\'d into the world\'s deceit;\n    Nor more can you distinguish of a man\n    Than of his outward show; which, God He knows,\n    Seldom or never jumpeth with the heart.\n    Those uncles which you want were dangerous;\n    Your Grace attended to their sug\'red words  \n    But look\'d not on the poison of their hearts.\n    God keep you from them and from such false friends!\n  PRINCE. God keep me from false friends! but they were\n    none.\n  GLOUCESTER. My lord, the Mayor of London comes to greet\n    you.\n\n                Enter the LORD MAYOR and his train\n\n  MAYOR. God bless your Grace with health and happy days!\n  PRINCE. I thank you, good my lord, and thank you all.\n    I thought my mother and my brother York\n    Would long ere this have met us on the way.\n    Fie, what a slug is Hastings, that he comes not\n    To tell us whether they will come or no!\n\n                        Enter LORD HASTINGS\n\n  BUCKINGHAM. And, in good time, here comes the sweating\n    Lord.  \n  PRINCE. Welcome, my lord. What, will our mother come?\n  HASTINGS. On what occasion, God He knows, not I,\n    The Queen your mother and your brother York\n    Have taken sanctuary. The tender Prince\n    Would fain have come with me to meet your Grace,\n    But by his mother was perforce withheld.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Fie, what an indirect and peevish course\n    Is this of hers? Lord Cardinal, will your Grace\n    Persuade the Queen to send the Duke of York\n    Unto his princely brother presently?\n    If she deny, Lord Hastings, go with him\n    And from her jealous arms pluck him perforce.\n  CARDINAL. My Lord of Buckingham, if my weak oratory\n    Can from his mother win the Duke of York,\n    Anon expect him here; but if she be obdurate\n    To mild entreaties, God in heaven forbid\n    We should infringe the holy privilege\n    Of blessed sanctuary! Not for all this land\n    Would I be guilty of so deep a sin.\n  BUCKINGHAM. You are too senseless-obstinate, my lord,  \n    Too ceremonious and traditional.\n    Weigh it but with the grossness of this age,\n    You break not sanctuary in seizing him.\n    The benefit thereof is always granted\n    To those whose dealings have deserv\'d the place\n    And those who have the wit to claim the place.\n    This Prince hath neither claim\'d it nor deserv\'d it,\n    And therefore, in mine opinion, cannot have it.\n    Then, taking him from thence that is not there,\n    You break no privilege nor charter there.\n    Oft have I heard of sanctuary men;\n    But sanctuary children never till now.\n  CARDINAL. My lord, you shall o\'errule my mind for once.\n    Come on, Lord Hastings, will you go with me?\n  HASTINGS. I go, my lord.\n  PRINCE. Good lords, make all the speedy haste you may.\n                                    Exeunt CARDINAL and HASTINGS\n    Say, uncle Gloucester, if our brother come,\n    Where shall we sojourn till our coronation?\n  GLOUCESTER. Where it seems best unto your royal self.  \n    If I may counsel you, some day or two\n    Your Highness shall repose you at the Tower,\n    Then where you please and shall be thought most fit\n    For your best health and recreation.\n  PRINCE. I do not like the Tower, of any place.\n    Did Julius Caesar build that place, my lord?\n  BUCKINGHAM. He did, my gracious lord, begin that place,\n    Which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified.\n  PRINCE. Is it upon record, or else reported\n    Successively from age to age, he built it?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Upon record, my gracious lord.\n  PRINCE. But say, my lord, it were not regist\'red,\n    Methinks the truth should Eve from age to age,\n    As \'twere retail\'d to all posterity,\n    Even to the general all-ending day.\n  GLOUCESTER.  [Aside]  So wise so young, they say, do never\n    live long.\n  PRINCE. What say you, uncle?\n  GLOUCESTER. I say, without characters, fame lives long.\n    [Aside]  Thus, like the formal vice, Iniquity,  \n    I moralize two meanings in one word.\n  PRINCE. That Julius Caesar was a famous man;\n    With what his valour did enrich his wit,\n    His wit set down to make his valour live.\n    Death makes no conquest of this conqueror;\n    For now he lives in fame, though not in life.\n    I\'ll tell you what, my cousin Buckingham-\n  BUCKINGHAM. What, my gracious lord?\n  PRINCE. An if I live until I be a man,\n    I\'ll win our ancient right in France again,\n    Or die a soldier as I liv\'d a king.\n  GLOUCESTER.  [Aside]  Short summers lightly have a forward\n    spring.\n\n              Enter HASTINGS, young YORK, and the CARDINAL\n\n  BUCKINGHAM. Now, in good time, here comes the Duke of\n    York.\n  PRINCE. Richard of York, how fares our loving brother?\n  YORK. Well, my dread lord; so must I can you now.  \n  PRINCE. Ay brother, to our grief, as it is yours.\n    Too late he died that might have kept that title,\n    Which by his death hath lost much majesty.\n  GLOUCESTER. How fares our cousin, noble Lord of York?\n  YORK. I thank you, gentle uncle. O, my lord,\n    You said that idle weeds are fast in growth.\n    The Prince my brother hath outgrown me far.\n  GLOUCESTER. He hath, my lord.\n  YORK. And therefore is he idle?\n  GLOUCESTER. O, my fair cousin, I must not say so.\n  YORK. Then he is more beholding to you than I.\n  GLOUCESTER. He may command me as my sovereign;\n    But you have power in me as in a kinsman.\n  YORK. I pray you, uncle, give me this dagger.\n  GLOUCESTER. My dagger, little cousin? With all my heart!\n  PRINCE. A beggar, brother?\n  YORK. Of my kind uncle, that I know will give,\n    And being but a toy, which is no grief to give.\n  GLOUCESTER. A greater gift than that I\'ll give my cousin.\n  YORK. A greater gift! O, that\'s the sword to it!  \n  GLOUCESTER. Ay, gentle cousin, were it light enough.\n  YORK. O, then, I see you will part but with light gifts:\n    In weightier things you\'ll say a beggar nay.\n  GLOUCESTER. It is too heavy for your Grace to wear.\n  YORK. I weigh it lightly, were it heavier.\n  GLOUCESTER. What, would you have my weapon, little\n    Lord?\n  YORK. I would, that I might thank you as you call me.\n  GLOUCESTER. How?\n  YORK. Little.\n  PRINCE. My Lord of York will still be cross in talk.\n    Uncle, your Grace knows how to bear with him.\n  YORK. You mean, to bear me, not to bear with me.\n    Uncle, my brother mocks both you and me;\n    Because that I am little, like an ape,\n    He thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders.\n  BUCKINGHAM. With what a sharp-provided wit he reasons!\n    To mitigate the scorn he gives his uncle\n    He prettily and aptly taunts himself.\n    So cunning and so young is wonderful.  \n  GLOUCESTER. My lord, will\'t please you pass along?\n    Myself and my good cousin Buckingham\n    Will to your mother, to entreat of her\n    To meet you at the Tower and welcome you.\n  YORK. What, will you go unto the Tower, my lord?\n  PRINCE. My Lord Protector needs will have it so.\n  YORK. I shall not sleep in quiet at the Tower.\n  GLOUCESTER. Why, what should you fear?\n  YORK. Marry, my uncle Clarence\' angry ghost.\n    My grandam told me he was murder\'d there.\n  PRINCE. I fear no uncles dead.\n  GLOUCESTER. Nor none that live, I hope.\n  PRINCE. An if they live, I hope I need not fear.\n    But come, my lord; and with a heavy heart,\n    Thinking on them, go I unto the Tower.\n    A sennet.\n              Exeunt all but GLOUCESTER, BUCKINGHAM, and CATESBY\n  BUCKINGHAM. Think you, my lord, this little prating York\n    Was not incensed by his subtle mother\n    To taunt and scorn you thus opprobriously?  \n  GLOUCESTER. No doubt, no doubt. O, \'tis a perilous boy;\n    Bold, quick, ingenious, forward, capable.\n    He is all the mother\'s, from the top to toe.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Well, let them rest. Come hither, Catesby.\n    Thou art sworn as deeply to effect what we intend\n    As closely to conceal what we impart.\n    Thou know\'st our reasons urg\'d upon the way.\n    What think\'st thou? Is it not an easy matter\n    To make William Lord Hastings of our mind,\n    For the instalment of this noble Duke\n    In the seat royal of this famous isle?\n  CATESBY. He for his father\'s sake so loves the Prince\n    That he will not be won to aught against him.\n  BUCKINGHAM. What think\'st thou then of Stanley? Will\n    not he?\n  CATESBY. He will do all in all as Hastings doth.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Well then, no more but this: go, gentle\n    Catesby,\n    And, as it were far off, sound thou Lord Hastings\n    How he doth stand affected to our purpose;  \n    And summon him to-morrow to the Tower,\n    To sit about the coronation.\n    If thou dost find him tractable to us,\n    Encourage him, and tell him all our reasons;\n    If he be leaden, icy, cold, unwilling,\n    Be thou so too, and so break off the talk,\n    And give us notice of his inclination;\n    For we to-morrow hold divided councils,\n    Wherein thyself shalt highly be employ\'d.\n  GLOUCESTER. Commend me to Lord William. Tell him,\n    Catesby,\n    His ancient knot of dangerous adversaries\n    To-morrow are let blood at Pomfret Castle;\n    And bid my lord, for joy of this good news,\n    Give Mistress Shore one gentle kiss the more.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Good Catesby, go effect this business soundly.\n  CATESBY. My good lords both, with all the heed I can.\n  GLOUCESTER. Shall we hear from you, Catesby, ere we sleep?\n  CATESBY. You shall, my lord.\n  GLOUCESTER. At Crosby House, there shall you find us both.  \n                                                    Exit CATESBY\n  BUCKINGHAM. Now, my lord, what shall we do if we\n    perceive\n    Lord Hastings will not yield to our complots?\n  GLOUCESTER. Chop off his head-something we will\n    determine.\n    And, look when I am King, claim thou of me\n    The earldom of Hereford and all the movables\n    Whereof the King my brother was possess\'d.\n  BUCKINGHAM. I\'ll claim that promise at your Grace\'s hand.\n  GLOUCESTER. And look to have it yielded with all kindness.\n    Come, let us sup betimes, that afterwards\n    We may digest our complots in some form.              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\n\nBefore LORD HASTING\'S house\n\nEnter a MESSENGER to the door of HASTINGS\n\n  MESSENGER. My lord, my lord!                        [Knocking]\n  HASTINGS.  [Within]  Who knocks?\n  MESSENGER. One from the Lord Stanley.\n  HASTINGS.  [Within]  What is\'t o\'clock?\n  MESSENGER. Upon the stroke of four.\n\n                        Enter LORD HASTINGS\n\n  HASTINGS. Cannot my Lord Stanley sleep these tedious\n    nights?\n  MESSENGER. So it appears by that I have to say.\n    First, he commends him to your noble self.\n  HASTINGS. What then?\n  MESSENGER. Then certifies your lordship that this night\n    He dreamt the boar had razed off his helm.\n    Besides, he says there are two councils kept,\n    And that may be determin\'d at the one  \n    Which may make you and him to rue at th\' other.\n    Therefore he sends to know your lordship\'s pleasure-\n    If you will presently take horse with him\n    And with all speed post with him toward the north\n    To shun the danger that his soul divines.\n  HASTINGS. Go, fellow, go, return unto thy lord;\n    Bid him not fear the separated council:\n    His honour and myself are at the one,\n    And at the other is my good friend Catesby;\n    Where nothing can proceed that toucheth us\n    Whereof I shall not have intelligence.\n    Tell him his fears are shallow, without instance;\n    And for his dreams, I wonder he\'s so simple\n    To trust the mock\'ry of unquiet slumbers.\n    To fly the boar before the boar pursues\n    Were to incense the boar to follow us\n    And make pursuit where he did mean no chase.\n    Go, bid thy master rise and come to me;\n    And we will both together to the Tower,\n    Where, he shall see, the boar will use us kindly.  \n  MESSENGER. I\'ll go, my lord, and tell him what you say.\n Exit\n\n                         Enter CATESBY\n\n  CATESBY. Many good morrows to my noble lord!\n  HASTINGS. Good morrow, Catesby; you are early stirring.\n    What news, what news, in this our tott\'ring state?\n  CATESBY. It is a reeling world indeed, my lord;\n    And I believe will never stand upright\n    Till Richard wear the garland of the realm.\n  HASTINGS. How, wear the garland! Dost thou mean the\n    crown?\n  CATESBY. Ay, my good lord.\n  HASTINGS. I\'ll have this crown of mine cut from my\n    shoulders\n    Before I\'ll see the crown so foul misplac\'d.\n    But canst thou guess that he doth aim at it?\n  CATESBY. Ay, on my life; and hopes to find you forward\n    Upon his party for the gain thereof;  \n    And thereupon he sends you this good news,\n    That this same very day your enemies,\n    The kindred of the Queen, must die at Pomfret.\n  HASTINGS. Indeed, I am no mourner for that news,\n    Because they have been still my adversaries;\n    But that I\'ll give my voice on Richard\'s side\n    To bar my master\'s heirs in true descent,\n    God knows I will not do it to the death.\n  CATESBY. God keep your lordship in that gracious mind!\n  HASTINGS. But I shall laugh at this a twelve month hence,\n    That they which brought me in my master\'s hate,\n    I live to look upon their tragedy.\n    Well, Catesby, ere a fortnight make me older,\n    I\'ll send some packing that yet think not on\'t.\n  CATESBY. \'Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord,\n    When men are unprepar\'d and look not for it.\n  HASTINGS. O monstrous, monstrous! And so falls it out\n    With Rivers, Vaughan, Grey; and so \'twill do\n    With some men else that think themselves as safe\n    As thou and I, who, as thou knowest, are dear  \n    To princely Richard and to Buckingham.\n  CATESBY. The Princes both make high account of you-\n    [Aside]  For they account his head upon the bridge.\n  HASTINGS. I know they do, and I have well deserv\'d it.\n\n                      Enter LORD STANLEY\n\n    Come on, come on; where is your boar-spear, man?\n    Fear you the boar, and go so unprovided?\n  STANLEY. My lord, good morrow; good morrow, Catesby.\n    You may jest on, but, by the holy rood,\n    I do not like these several councils, I.\n  HASTINGS. My lord, I hold my life as dear as yours,\n    And never in my days, I do protest,\n    Was it so precious to me as \'tis now.\n    Think you, but that I know our state secure,\n    I would be so triumphant as I am?\n  STANLEY. The lords at Pomfret, when they rode from\n    London,\n    Were jocund and suppos\'d their states were sure,  \n    And they indeed had no cause to mistrust;\n    But yet you see how soon the day o\'ercast.\n    This sudden stab of rancour I misdoubt;\n    Pray God, I say, I prove a needless coward.\n    What, shall we toward the Tower? The day is spent.\n  HASTINGS. Come, come, have with you. Wot you what, my\n    Lord?\n    To-day the lords you talk\'d of are beheaded.\n  STANLEY. They, for their truth, might better wear their\n    heads\n    Than some that have accus\'d them wear their hats.\n    But come, my lord, let\'s away.\n\n                 Enter HASTINGS, a pursuivant\n\n  HASTINGS. Go on before; I\'ll talk with this good fellow.\n                                      Exeunt STANLEY and CATESBY\n    How now, Hastings! How goes the world with thee?\n  PURSUIVANT. The better that your lordship please to ask.\n  HASTINGS. I tell thee, man, \'tis better with me now  \n    Than when thou met\'st me last where now we meet:\n    Then was I going prisoner to the Tower\n    By the suggestion of the Queen\'s allies;\n    But now, I tell thee-keep it to thyself-\n    This day those enernies are put to death,\n    And I in better state than e\'er I was.\n  PURSUIVANT. God hold it, to your honour\'s good content!\n  HASTINGS. Gramercy, Hastings; there, drink that for me.\n                                          [Throws him his purse]\n  PURSUIVANT. I thank your honour.                          Exit\n\n                            Enter a PRIEST\n\n  PRIEST. Well met, my lord; I am glad to see your honour.\n  HASTINGS. I thank thee, good Sir John, with all my heart.\n    I am in your debt for your last exercise;\n    Come the next Sabbath, and I will content you.\n                                        [He whispers in his ear]\n  PRIEST. I\'ll wait upon your lordship.\n  \n                            Enter BUCKINGHAM\n\n  BUCKINGHAM. What, talking with a priest, Lord\n    Chamberlain!\n    Your friends at Pomfret, they do need the priest:\n    Your honour hath no shriving work in hand.\n  HASTINGS. Good faith, and when I met this holy man,\n    The men you talk of came into my mind.\n    What, go you toward the Tower?\n  BUCKINGHAM. I do, my lord, but long I cannot stay there;\n    I shall return before your lordship thence.\n  HASTINGS. Nay, like enough, for I stay dinner there.\n  BUCKINGHAM.  [Aside]  And supper too, although thou\n    knowest it not.-\n    Come, will you go?\n  HASTINGS. I\'ll wait upon your lordship.                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\n\nPomfret Castle\n\nEnter SIR RICHARD RATCLIFF, with halberds, carrying the Nobles,\nRIVERS, GREY, and VAUGHAN, to death\n\n  RIVERS. Sir Richard Ratcliff, let me tell thee this:\n    To-day shalt thou behold a subject die\n    For truth, for duty, and for loyalty.\n  GREY. God bless the Prince from all the pack of you!\n    A knot you are of damned blood-suckers.\n  VAUGHAN. You live that shall cry woe for this hereafter.\n  RATCLIFF. Dispatch; the limit of your lives is out.\n  RIVERS. O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison,\n    Fatal and ominous to noble peers!\n    Within the guilty closure of thy walls\n  RICHARD the Second here was hack\'d to death;\n    And for more slander to thy dismal seat,\n    We give to thee our guiltless blood to drink.\n  GREY. Now Margaret\'s curse is fall\'n upon our heads,\n    When she exclaim\'d on Hastings, you, and I,  \n    For standing by when Richard stabb\'d her son.\n  RIVERS. Then curs\'d she Richard, then curs\'d she\n    Buckingham,\n    Then curs\'d she Hastings. O, remember, God,\n    To hear her prayer for them, as now for us!\n    And for my sister, and her princely sons,\n    Be satisfied, dear God, with our true blood,\n    Which, as thou know\'st, unjustly must be spilt.\n  RATCLIFF. Make haste; the hour of death is expiate.\n  RIVERS. Come, Grey; come, Vaughan; let us here embrace.\n    Farewell, until we meet again in heaven.              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4\n\nLondon. The Tower\n\nEnter BUCKINGHAM, DERBY, HASTINGS, the BISHOP of ELY, RATCLIFF, LOVEL,\nwith others and seat themselves at a table\n\n  HASTINGS. Now, noble peers, the cause why we are met\n    Is to determine of the coronation.\n    In God\'s name speak-when is the royal day?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Is all things ready for the royal time?\n  DERBY. It is, and wants but nomination.\n  BISHOP OF ELY. To-morrow then I judge a happy day.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Who knows the Lord Protector\'s mind\n    herein?\n    Who is most inward with the noble Duke?\n  BISHOP OF ELY. Your Grace, we think, should soonest know\n    his mind.\n  BUCKINGHAM. We know each other\'s faces; for our hearts,\n    He knows no more of mine than I of yours;\n    Or I of his, my lord, than you of mine.\n    Lord Hastings, you and he are near in love.  \n  HASTINGS. I thank his Grace, I know he loves me well;\n    But for his purpose in the coronation\n    I have not sounded him, nor he deliver\'d\n    His gracious pleasure any way therein.\n    But you, my honourable lords, may name the time;\n    And in the Duke\'s behalf I\'ll give my voice,\n    Which, I presume, he\'ll take in gentle part.\n\n                       Enter GLOUCESTER\n\n  BISHOP OF ELY. In happy time, here comes the Duke himself.\n  GLOUCESTER. My noble lords and cousins an, good morrow.\n    I have been long a sleeper, but I trust\n    My absence doth neglect no great design\n    Which by my presence might have been concluded.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Had you not come upon your cue, my lord,\n  WILLIAM Lord Hastings had pronounc\'d your part-\n    I mean, your voice for crowning of the King.\n  GLOUCESTER. Than my Lord Hastings no man might be\n    bolder;  \n    His lordship knows me well and loves me well.\n    My lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn\n    I saw good strawberries in your garden there.\n    I do beseech you send for some of them.\n  BISHOP of ELY. Marry and will, my lord, with all my heart.\n Exit\n  GLOUCESTER. Cousin of Buckingham, a word with you.\n                                               [Takes him aside]\n    Catesby hath sounded Hastings in our business,\n    And finds the testy gentleman so hot\n    That he will lose his head ere give consent\n    His master\'s child, as worshipfully he terms it,\n    Shall lose the royalty of England\'s throne.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Withdraw yourself awhile; I\'ll go with you.\n                                Exeunt GLOUCESTER and BUCKINGHAM\n  DERBY. We have not yet set down this day of triumph.\n    To-morrow, in my judgment, is too sudden;\n    For I myself am not so well provided\n    As else I would be, were the day prolong\'d.\n  \n                    Re-enter the BISHOP OF ELY\n\n  BISHOP OF ELY. Where is my lord the Duke of Gloucester?\n    I have sent for these strawberries.\n  HASTINGS. His Grace looks cheerfully and smooth this\n    morning;\n    There\'s some conceit or other likes him well\n    When that he bids good morrow with such spirit.\n    I think there\'s never a man in Christendom\n    Can lesser hide his love or hate than he;\n    For by his face straight shall you know his heart.\n  DERBY. What of his heart perceive you in his face\n    By any livelihood he show\'d to-day?\n  HASTINGS. Marry, that with no man here he is offended;\n    For, were he, he had shown it in his looks.\n\n               Re-enter GLOUCESTER and BUCKINGHAM\n\n  GLOUCESTER. I pray you all, tell me what they deserve\n    That do conspire my death with devilish plots  \n    Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevail\'d\n    Upon my body with their hellish charms?\n  HASTINGS. The tender love I bear your Grace, my lord,\n    Makes me most forward in this princely presence\n    To doom th\' offenders, whosoe\'er they be.\n    I say, my lord, they have deserved death.\n  GLOUCESTER. Then be your eyes the witness of their evil.\n    Look how I am bewitch\'d; behold, mine arm\n    Is like a blasted sapling wither\'d up.\n    And this is Edward\'s wife, that monstrous witch,\n    Consorted with that harlot strumpet Shore,\n    That by their witchcraft thus have marked me.\n  HASTINGS. If they have done this deed, my noble lord-\n  GLOUCESTER. If?-thou protector of this damned strumpet,\n    Talk\'st thou to me of ifs? Thou art a traitor.\n    Off with his head! Now by Saint Paul I swear\n    I will not dine until I see the same.\n    Lovel and Ratcliff, look that it be done.\n    The rest that love me, rise and follow me.\n                    Exeunt all but HASTINGS, LOVEL, and RATCLIFF  \n  HASTINGS. Woe, woe, for England! not a whit for me;\n    For I, too fond, might have prevented this.\n  STANLEY did dream the boar did raze our helms,\n    And I did scorn it and disdain to fly.\n    Three times to-day my foot-cloth horse did stumble,\n    And started when he look\'d upon the Tower,\n    As loath to bear me to the slaughter-house.\n    O, now I need the priest that spake to me!\n    I now repent I told the pursuivant,\n    As too triumphing, how mine enemies\n    To-day at Pomfret bloodily were butcher\'d,\n    And I myself secure in grace and favour.\n    O Margaret, Margaret, now thy heavy curse\n    Is lighted on poor Hastings\' wretched head!\n  RATCLIFF. Come, come, dispatch; the Duke would be at\n    dinner.\n    Make a short shrift; he longs to see your head.\n  HASTINGS. O momentary grace of mortal men,\n    Which we more hunt for than the grace of God!\n    Who builds his hope in air of your good looks  \n    Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast,\n    Ready with every nod to tumble down\n    Into the fatal bowels of the deep.\n  LOVEL. Come, come, dispatch; \'tis bootless to exclaim.\n  HASTINGS. O bloody Richard! Miserable England!\n    I prophesy the fearfull\'st time to thee\n    That ever wretched age hath look\'d upon.\n    Come, lead me to the block; bear him my head.\n    They smile at me who shortly shall be dead.           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 5.\n\nLondon. The Tower-walls\n\nEnter GLOUCESTER and BUCKINGHAM in rotten armour, marvellous ill-favoured\n\n  GLOUCESTER. Come, cousin, canst thou quake and change\n    thy colour,\n    Murder thy breath in middle of a word,\n    And then again begin, and stop again,\n    As if thou were distraught and mad with terror?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian;\n    Speak and look back, and pry on every side,\n    Tremble and start at wagging of a straw,\n    Intending deep suspicion. Ghastly looks\n    Are at my service, like enforced smiles;\n    And both are ready in their offices\n    At any time to grace my stratagems.\n    But what, is Catesby gone?\n  GLOUCESTER. He is; and, see, he brings the mayor along.\n\n                 Enter the LORD MAYOR and CATESBY  \n\n  BUCKINGHAM. Lord Mayor-\n  GLOUCESTER. Look to the drawbridge there!\n  BUCKINGHAM. Hark! a drum.\n  GLOUCESTER. Catesby, o\'erlook the walls.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Lord Mayor, the reason we have sent-\n  GLOUCESTER. Look back, defend thee; here are enemies.\n  BUCKINGHAM. God and our innocence defend and guard us!\n\n           Enter LOVEL and RATCLIFF, with HASTINGS\' head\n\n  GLOUCESTER. Be patient; they are friends-Ratcliff and Lovel.\n  LOVEL. Here is the head of that ignoble traitor,\n    The dangerous and unsuspected Hastings.\n  GLOUCESTER. So dear I lov\'d the man that I must weep.\n    I took him for the plainest harmless creature\n    That breath\'d upon the earth a Christian;\n    Made him my book, wherein my soul recorded\n    The history of all her secret thoughts.\n    So smooth he daub\'d his vice with show of virtue  \n    That, his apparent open guilt omitted,\n    I mean his conversation with Shore\'s wife-\n    He liv\'d from all attainder of suspects.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Well, well, he was the covert\'st shelt\'red\n    traitor\n    That ever liv\'d.\n    Would you imagine, or almost believe-\n    Were\'t not that by great preservation\n    We live to tell it-that the subtle traitor\n    This day had plotted, in the council-house,\n    To murder me and my good Lord of Gloucester.\n  MAYOR. Had he done so?\n  GLOUCESTER. What! think you we are Turks or Infidels?\n    Or that we would, against the form of law,\n    Proceed thus rashly in the villain\'s death\n    But that the extreme peril of the case,\n    The peace of England and our persons\' safety,\n    Enforc\'d us to this execution?\n  MAYOR. Now, fair befall you! He deserv\'d his death;\n    And your good Graces both have well proceeded  \n    To warn false traitors from the like attempts.\n    I never look\'d for better at his hands\n    After he once fell in with Mistress Shore.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Yet had we not determin\'d he should die\n    Until your lordship came to see his end-\n    Which now the loving haste of these our friends,\n    Something against our meanings, have prevented-\n    Because, my lord, I would have had you heard\n    The traitor speak, and timorously confess\n    The manner and the purpose of his treasons:\n    That you might well have signified the same\n    Unto the citizens, who haply may\n    Misconster us in him and wail his death.\n  MAYOR. But, my good lord, your Grace\'s words shall serve\n    As well as I had seen and heard him speak;\n    And do not doubt, right noble Princes both,\n    But I\'ll acquaint our duteous citizens\n    With all your just proceedings in this cause.\n  GLOUCESTER. And to that end we wish\'d your lordship here,\n    T\' avoid the the the censures of the carping world.  \n  BUCKINGHAM. Which since you come too late of our intent,\n    Yet witness what you hear we did intend.\n    And so, my good Lord Mayor, we bid farewell.\n                                                 Exit LORD MAYOR\n  GLOUCESTER. Go, after, after, cousin Buckingham.\n    The Mayor towards Guildhall hies him in an post.\n    There, at your meet\'st advantage of the time,\n    Infer the bastardy of Edward\'s children.\n    Tell them how Edward put to death a citizen\n    Only for saying he would make his son\n    Heir to the crown-meaning indeed his house,\n    Which by the sign thereof was termed so.\n    Moreover, urge his hateful luxury\n    And bestial appetite in change of lust,\n    Which stretch\'d unto their servants, daughters, wives,\n    Even where his raging eye or savage heart\n    Without control lusted to make a prey.\n    Nay, for a need, thus far come near my person:\n    Tell them, when that my mother went with child\n    Of that insatiate Edward, noble York  \n    My princely father then had wars in France\n    And, by true computation of the time,\n    Found that the issue was not his begot;\n    Which well appeared in his lineaments,\n    Being nothing like the noble Duke my father.\n    Yet touch this sparingly, as \'twere far off;\n    Because, my lord, you know my mother lives.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Doubt not, my lord, I\'ll play the orator\n    As if the golden fee for which I plead\n    Were for myself; and so, my lord, adieu.\n  GLOUCESTER. If you thrive well, bring them to Baynard\'s\n    Castle;\n    Where you shall find me well accompanied\n    With reverend fathers and well learned bishops.\n  BUCKINGHAM. I go; and towards three or four o\'clock\n    Look for the news that the Guildhall affords.           Exit\n  GLOUCESTER. Go, Lovel, with all speed to Doctor Shaw.\n    [To CATESBY]  Go thou to Friar Penker. Bid them both\n    Meet me within this hour at Baynard\'s Castle.\n                                       Exeunt all but GLOUCESTER  \n    Now will I go to take some privy order\n    To draw the brats of Clarence out of sight,\n    And to give order that no manner person\n    Have any time recourse unto the Princes.                Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 6.\n\nLondon. A street\n\nEnter a SCRIVENER\n\n  SCRIVENER. Here is the indictment of the good Lord Hastings;\n    Which in a set hand fairly is engross\'d\n    That it may be to-day read o\'er in Paul\'s.\n    And mark how well the sequel hangs together:\n    Eleven hours I have spent to write it over,\n    For yesternight by Catesby was it sent me;\n    The precedent was full as long a-doing;\n    And yet within these five hours Hastings liv\'d,\n    Untainted, unexamin\'d, free, at liberty.\n    Here\'s a good world the while! Who is so gros\n    That cannot see this palpable device?\n    Yet who\'s so bold but says he sees it not?\n    Bad is the world; and all will come to nought,\n    When such ill dealing must be seen in thought.          Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 7.\n\nLondon. Baynard\'s Castle\n\nEnter GLOUCESTER and BUCKINGHAM, at several doors\n\n  GLOUCESTER. How now, how now! What say the citizens?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Now, by the holy Mother of our Lord,\n    The citizens are mum, say not a word.\n  GLOUCESTER. Touch\'d you the bastardy of Edward\'s\n    children?\n  BUCKINGHAM. I did; with his contract with Lady Lucy,\n    And his contract by deputy in France;\n    Th\' insatiate greediness of his desire,\n    And his enforcement of the city wives;\n    His tyranny for trifles; his own bastardy,\n    As being got, your father then in France,\n    And his resemblance, being not like the Duke.\n    Withal I did infer your lineaments,\n    Being the right idea of your father,\n    Both in your form and nobleness of mind;\n    Laid open all your victories in Scotland,\n    Your discipline in war, wisdom in peace,  \n    Your bounty, virtue, fair humility;\n    Indeed, left nothing fitting for your purpose\n    Untouch\'d or slightly handled in discourse.\n    And when mine oratory drew toward end\n    I bid them that did love their country\'s good\n    Cry \'God save Richard, England\'s royal King!\'\n  GLOUCESTER. And did they so?\n  BUCKINGHAM. No, so God help me, they spake not a word;\n    But, like dumb statues or breathing stones,\n    Star\'d each on other, and look\'d deadly pale.\n    Which when I saw, I reprehended them,\n    And ask\'d the Mayor what meant this wilfull silence.\n    His answer was, the people were not used\n    To be spoke to but by the Recorder.\n    Then he was urg\'d to tell my tale again.\n    \'Thus saith the Duke, thus hath the Duke inferr\'d\'-\n    But nothing spoke in warrant from himself.\n    When he had done, some followers of mine own\n    At lower end of the hall hurl\'d up their caps,\n    And some ten voices cried \'God save King Richard!\'  \n    And thus I took the vantage of those few-\n    \'Thanks, gentle citizens and friends,\' quoth I\n    \'This general applause and cheerful shout\n    Argues your wisdoms and your love to Richard.\'\n    And even here brake off and came away.\n  GLOUCESTER. What, tongueless blocks were they? Would\n    they not speak?\n    Will not the Mayor then and his brethren come?\n  BUCKINGHAM. The Mayor is here at hand. Intend some fear;\n    Be not you spoke with but by mighty suit;\n    And look you get a prayer-book in your hand,\n    And stand between two churchmen, good my lord;\n    For on that ground I\'ll make a holy descant;\n    And be not easily won to our requests.\n    Play the maid\'s part: still answer nay, and take it.\n  GLOUCESTER. I go; and if you plead as well for them\n    As I can say nay to thee for myself,\n    No doubt we bring it to a happy issue.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Go, go, up to the leads; the Lord Mayor\n    knocks.                                      Exit GLOUCESTER  \n\n           Enter the LORD MAYOR, ALDERMEN, and citizens\n\n    Welcome, my lord. I dance attendance here;\n    I think the Duke will not be spoke withal.\n\n                         Enter CATESBY\n\n    Now, Catesby, what says your lord to my request?\n  CATESBY. He doth entreat your Grace, my noble lord,\n    To visit him to-morrow or next day.\n    He is within, with two right reverend fathers,\n    Divinely bent to meditation;\n    And in no worldly suits would he be mov\'d,\n    To draw him from his holy exercise.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Return, good Catesby, to the gracious Duke;\n    Tell him, myself, the Mayor and Aldermen,\n    In deep designs, in matter of great moment,\n    No less importing than our general good,\n    Are come to have some conference with his Grace.  \n  CATESBY. I\'ll signify so much unto him straight.          Exit\n  BUCKINGHAM. Ah ha, my lord, this prince is not an Edward!\n    He is not lolling on a lewd love-bed,\n    But on his knees at meditation;\n    Not dallying with a brace of courtezans,\n    But meditating with two deep divines;\n    Not sleeping, to engross his idle body,\n    But praying, to enrich his watchful soul.\n    Happy were England would this virtuous prince\n    Take on his Grace the sovereignty thereof;\n    But, sure, I fear we shall not win him to it.\n  MAYOR. Marry, God defend his Grace should say us nay!\n  BUCKINGHAM. I fear he will. Here Catesby comes again.\n\n                          Re-enter CATESBY\n\n    Now, Catesby, what says his Grace?\n  CATESBY. My lord,\n    He wonders to what end you have assembled\n    Such troops of citizens to come to him.  \n    His Grace not being warn\'d thereof before,\n    He fears, my lord, you mean no good to him.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Sorry I am my noble cousin should\n    Suspect me that I mean no good to him.\n    By heaven, we come to him in perfect love;\n    And so once more return and tell his Grace.\n                                                    Exit CATESBY\n    When holy and devout religious men\n    Are at their beads, \'tis much to draw them thence,\n    So sweet is zealous contemplation.\n\n           Enter GLOUCESTER aloft, between two BISHOPS.\n                      CATESBY returns\n\n  MAYOR. See where his Grace stands \'tween two clergymen!\n  BUCKINGHAM. Two props of virtue for a Christian prince,\n    To stay him from the fall of vanity;\n    And, see, a book of prayer in his hand,\n    True ornaments to know a holy man.\n    Famous Plantagenet, most gracious Prince,  \n    Lend favourable ear to our requests,\n    And pardon us the interruption\n    Of thy devotion and right Christian zeal.\n  GLOUCESTER. My lord, there needs no such apology:\n    I do beseech your Grace to pardon me,\n    Who, earnest in the service of my God,\n    Deferr\'d the visitation of my friends.\n    But, leaving this, what is your Grace\'s pleasure?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Even that, I hope, which pleaseth God above,\n    And all good men of this ungovern\'d isle.\n  GLOUCESTER. I do suspect I have done some offence\n    That seems disgracious in the city\'s eye,\n    And that you come to reprehend my ignorance.\n  BUCKINGHAM. You have, my lord. Would it might please\n    your Grace,\n    On our entreaties, to amend your fault!\n  GLOUCESTER. Else wherefore breathe I in a Christian land?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Know then, it is your fault that you resign\n    The supreme seat, the throne majestical,\n    The scept\'red office of your ancestors,  \n    Your state of fortune and your due of birth,\n    The lineal glory of your royal house,\n    To the corruption of a blemish\'d stock;\n    Whiles in the mildness of your sleepy thoughts,\n    Which here we waken to our country\'s good,\n    The noble isle doth want her proper limbs;\n    Her face defac\'d with scars of infamy,\n    Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants,\n    And almost should\'red in the swallowing gulf\n    Of dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion.\n    Which to recure, we heartily solicit\n    Your gracious self to take on you the charge\n    And kingly government of this your land-\n    Not as protector, steward, substitute,\n    Or lowly factor for another\'s gain;\n    But as successively, from blood to blood,\n    Your right of birth, your empery, your own.\n    For this, consorted with the citizens,\n    Your very worshipful and loving friends,\n    And by their vehement instigation,  \n    In this just cause come I to move your Grace.\n  GLOUCESTER. I cannot tell if to depart in silence\n    Or bitterly to speak in your reproof\n    Best fitteth my degree or your condition.\n    If not to answer, you might haply think\n    Tongue-tied ambition, not replying, yielded\n    To bear the golden yoke of sovereignty,\n    Which fondly you would here impose on me;\n    If to reprove you for this suit of yours,\n    So season\'d with your faithful love to me,\n    Then, on the other side, I check\'d my friends.\n    Therefore-to speak, and to avoid the first,\n    And then, in speaking, not to incur the last-\n    Definitively thus I answer you:\n    Your love deserves my thanks, but my desert\n    Unmeritable shuns your high request.\n    First, if all obstacles were cut away,\n    And that my path were even to the crown,\n    As the ripe revenue and due of birth,\n    Yet so much is my poverty of spirit,  \n    So mighty and so many my defects,\n    That I would rather hide me from my greatness-\n    Being a bark to brook no mighty sea-\n    Than in my greatness covet to be hid,\n    And in the vapour of my glory smother\'d.\n    But, God be thank\'d, there is no need of me-\n    And much I need to help you, were there need.\n    The royal tree hath left us royal fruit\n    Which, mellow\'d by the stealing hours of time,\n    Will well become the seat of majesty\n    And make, no doubt, us happy by his reign.\n    On him I lay that you would lay on me-\n    The right and fortune of his happy stars,\n    Which God defend that I should wring from him.\n  BUCKINGHAM. My lord, this argues conscience in your\n    Grace;\n    But the respects thereof are nice and trivial,\n    All circumstances well considered.\n    You say that Edward is your brother\'s son.\n    So say we too, but not by Edward\'s wife;  \n    For first was he contract to Lady Lucy-\n    Your mother lives a witness to his vow-\n    And afterward by substitute betroth\'d\n    To Bona, sister to the King of France.\n    These both put off, a poor petitioner,\n    A care-craz\'d mother to a many sons,\n    A beauty-waning and distressed widow,\n    Even in the afternoon of her best days,\n    Made prize and purchase of his wanton eye,\n    Seduc\'d the pitch and height of his degree\n    To base declension and loath\'d bigamy.\n    By her, in his unlawful bed, he got\n    This Edward, whom our manners call the Prince.\n    More bitterly could I expostulate,\n    Save that, for reverence to some alive,\n    I give a sparing limit to my tongue.\n    Then, good my lord, take to your royal self\n    This proffer\'d benefit of dignity;\n    If not to bless us and the land withal,\n    Yet to draw forth your noble ancestry  \n    From the corruption of abusing times\n    Unto a lineal true-derived course.\n  MAYOR. Do, good my lord; your citizens entreat you.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Refuse not, mighty lord, this proffer\'d love.\n  CATESBY. O, make them joyful, grant their lawful suit!\n  GLOUCESTER. Alas, why would you heap this care on me?\n    I am unfit for state and majesty.\n    I do beseech you, take it not amiss:\n    I cannot nor I will not yield to you.\n  BUCKINGHAM. If you refuse it-as, in love and zeal,\n    Loath to depose the child, your brother\'s son;\n    As well we know your tenderness of heart\n    And gentle, kind, effeminate remorse,\n    Which we have noted in you to your kindred\n    And egally indeed to all estates-\n    Yet know, whe\'er you accept our suit or no,\n    Your brother\'s son shall never reign our king;\n    But we will plant some other in the throne\n    To the disgrace and downfall of your house;\n    And in this resolution here we leave you.  \n    Come, citizens. Zounds, I\'ll entreat no more.\n  GLOUCESTER. O, do not swear, my lord of Buckingham.\n                          Exeunt BUCKINGHAM, MAYOR, and citizens\n  CATESBY. Call him again, sweet Prince, accept their suit.\n    If you deny them, all the land will rue it.\n  GLOUCESTER. Will you enforce me to a world of cares?\n    Call them again. I am not made of stones,\n    But penetrable to your kind entreaties,\n    Albeit against my conscience and my soul.\n\n                  Re-enter BUCKINGHAM and the rest\n\n    Cousin of Buckingham, and sage grave men,\n    Since you will buckle fortune on my back,\n    To bear her burden, whe\'er I will or no,\n    I must have patience to endure the load;\n    But if black scandal or foul-fac\'d reproach\n    Attend the sequel of your imposition,\n    Your mere enforcement shall acquittance me\n    From all the impure blots and stains thereof;  \n    For God doth know, and you may partly see,\n    How far I am from the desire of this.\n  MAYOR. God bless your Grace! We see it, and will say it.\n  GLOUCESTER. In saying so, you shall but say the truth.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Then I salute you with this royal title-\n    Long live King Richard, England\'s worthy King!\n  ALL. Amen.\n  BUCKINGHAM. To-morrow may it please you to be crown\'d?\n  GLOUCESTER. Even when you please, for you will have it so.\n  BUCKINGHAM. To-morrow, then, we will attend your Grace;\n    And so, most joyfully, we take our leave.\n  GLOUCESTER.  [To the BISHOPS]  Come, let us to our holy\n    work again.\n    Farewell, my cousin; farewell, gentle friends.        Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 1.\n\nLondon. Before the Tower\n\nEnter QUEEN ELIZABETH, DUCHESS of YORK, and MARQUIS of DORSET, at one door;\nANNE, DUCHESS of GLOUCESTER, leading LADY MARGARET PLANTAGENET,\nCLARENCE\'s young daughter, at another door\n\n  DUCHESS. Who meets us here? My niece Plantagenet,\n    Led in the hand of her kind aunt of Gloucester?\n    Now, for my life, she\'s wand\'ring to the Tower,\n    On pure heart\'s love, to greet the tender Princes.\n    Daughter, well met.\n  ANNE. God give your Graces both\n    A happy and a joyful time of day!\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. As much to you, good sister! Whither\n    away?\n  ANNE. No farther than the Tower; and, as I guess,\n    Upon the like devotion as yourselves,\n    To gratulate the gentle Princes there.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Kind sister, thanks; we\'ll enter  \n    all together.\n\n                       Enter BRAKENBURY\n\n    And in good time, here the lieutenant comes.\n    Master Lieutenant, pray you, by your leave,\n    How doth the Prince, and my young son of York?\n  BRAKENBURY. Right well, dear madam. By your patience,\n    I may not suffer you to visit them.\n    The King hath strictly charg\'d the contrary.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. The King! Who\'s that?\n  BRAKENBURY. I mean the Lord Protector.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. The Lord protect him from that kingly\n    title!\n    Hath he set bounds between their love and me?\n    I am their mother; who shall bar me from them?\n  DUCHESS. I am their father\'s mother; I will see them.\n  ANNE. Their aunt I am in law, in love their mother.\n    Then bring me to their sights; I\'ll bear thy blame,\n    And take thy office from thee on my peril.  \n  BRAKENBURY. No, madam, no. I may not leave it so;\n    I am bound by oath, and therefore pardon me.            Exit\n\n                         Enter STANLEY\n\n  STANLEY. Let me but meet you, ladies, one hour hence,\n    And I\'ll salute your Grace of York as mother\n    And reverend looker-on of two fair queens.\n    [To ANNE]  Come, madam, you must straight to\n    Westminster,\n    There to be crowned Richard\'s royal queen.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, cut my lace asunder\n    That my pent heart may have some scope to beat,\n    Or else I swoon with this dead-killing news!\n  ANNE. Despiteful tidings! O unpleasing news!\n  DORSET. Be of good cheer; mother, how fares your Grace?\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. O Dorset, speak not to me, get thee\n    gone!\n    Death and destruction dogs thee at thy heels;\n    Thy mother\'s name is ominous to children.  \n    If thou wilt outstrip death, go cross the seas,\n    And live with Richmond, from the reach of hell.\n    Go, hie thee, hie thee from this slaughter-house,\n    Lest thou increase the number of the dead,\n    And make me die the thrall of Margaret\'s curse,\n    Nor mother, wife, nor England\'s counted queen.\n  STANLEY. Full of wise care is this your counsel, madam.\n    Take all the swift advantage of the hours;\n    You shall have letters from me to my son\n    In your behalf, to meet you on the way.\n    Be not ta\'en tardy by unwise delay.\n  DUCHESS. O ill-dispersing wind of misery!\n    O my accursed womb, the bed of death!\n    A cockatrice hast thou hatch\'d to the world,\n    Whose unavoided eye is murderous.\n  STANLEY. Come, madam, come; I in all haste was sent.\n  ANNE. And I with all unwillingness will go.\n    O, would to God that the inclusive verge\n    Of golden metal that must round my brow\n    Were red-hot steel, to sear me to the brains!  \n    Anointed let me be with deadly venom,\n    And die ere men can say \'God save the Queen!\'\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Go, go, poor soul; I envy not thy glory.\n    To feed my humour, wish thyself no harm.\n  ANNE. No, why? When he that is my husband now\n    Came to me, as I follow\'d Henry\'s corse;\n    When scarce the blood was well wash\'d from his hands\n    Which issued from my other angel husband,\n    And that dear saint which then I weeping follow\'d-\n    O, when, I say, I look\'d on Richard\'s face,\n    This was my wish: \'Be thou\' quoth I \'accurs\'d\n    For making me, so young, so old a widow;\n    And when thou wed\'st, let sorrow haunt thy bed;\n    And be thy wife, if any be so mad,\n    More miserable by the life of thee\n    Than thou hast made me by my dear lord\'s death.\'\n    Lo, ere I can repeat this curse again,\n    Within so small a time, my woman\'s heart\n    Grossly grew captive to his honey words\n    And prov\'d the subject of mine own soul\'s curse,  \n    Which hitherto hath held my eyes from rest;\n    For never yet one hour in his bed\n    Did I enjoy the golden dew of sleep,\n    But with his timorous dreams was still awak\'d.\n    Besides, he hates me for my father Warwick;\n    And will, no doubt, shortly be rid of me.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Poor heart, adieu! I pity thy complaining.\n  ANNE. No more than with my soul I mourn for yours.\n  DORSET. Farewell, thou woeful welcomer of glory!\n  ANNE. Adieu, poor soul, that tak\'st thy leave of it!\n  DUCHESS.  [To DORSET]  Go thou to Richmond, and good\n    fortune guide thee!\n    [To ANNE]  Go thou to Richard, and good angels tend\n    thee!  [To QUEEN ELIZABETH]  Go thou to sanctuary, and good\n    thoughts possess thee!\n    I to my grave, where peace and rest lie with me!\n    Eighty odd years of sorrow have I seen,\n    And each hour\'s joy wreck\'d with a week of teen.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Stay, yet look back with me unto the\n    Tower.  \n    Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes\n    Whom envy hath immur\'d within your walls,\n    Rough cradle for such little pretty ones.\n    Rude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow\n    For tender princes, use my babies well.\n    So foolish sorrows bids your stones farewell.         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\n\nLondon. The palace\n\nSound a sennet. Enter RICHARD, in pomp, as KING; BUCKINGHAM, CATESBY,\nRATCLIFF, LOVEL, a PAGE, and others\n\n  KING RICHARD. Stand all apart. Cousin of Buckingham!\n  BUCKINGHAM. My gracious sovereign?\n  KING RICHARD. Give me thy hand.\n                           [Here he ascendeth the throne. Sound]\n    Thus high, by thy advice\n    And thy assistance, is King Richard seated.\n    But shall we wear these glories for a day;\n    Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Still live they, and for ever let them last!\n  KING RICHARD. Ah, Buckingham, now do I play the touch,\n    To try if thou be current gold indeed.\n    Young Edward lives-think now what I would speak.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Say on, my loving lord.\n  KING RICHARD. Why, Buckingham, I say I would be King.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Why, so you are, my thrice-renowned lord.  \n  KING RICHARD. Ha! am I King? \'Tis so; but Edward lives.\n  BUCKINGHAM. True, noble Prince.\n  KING RICHARD. O bitter consequence:\n    That Edward still should live-true noble Prince!\n    Cousin, thou wast not wont to be so dull.\n    Shall I be plain? I wish the bastards dead.\n    And I would have it suddenly perform\'d.\n    What say\'st thou now? Speak suddenly, be brief.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Your Grace may do your pleasure.\n  KING RICHARD. Tut, tut, thou art all ice; thy kindness freezes.\n    Say, have I thy consent that they shall die?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Give me some little breath, some pause,\n    dear Lord,\n    Before I positively speak in this.\n    I will resolve you herein presently.                    Exit\n  CATESBY.  [Aside to another]  The King is angry; see, he\n    gnaws his lip.\n  KING RICHARD. I will converse with iron-witted fools\n                                      [Descends from the throne]\n    And unrespective boys; none are for me  \n    That look into me with considerate eyes.\n    High-reaching Buckingham grows circumspect.\n    Boy!\n  PAGE. My lord?\n  KING RICHARD. Know\'st thou not any whom corrupting\n    gold\n    Will tempt unto a close exploit of death?\n  PAGE. I know a discontented gentleman\n    Whose humble means match not his haughty spirit.\n    Gold were as good as twenty orators,\n    And will, no doubt, tempt him to anything.\n  KING RICHARD. What is his name?\n  PAGE. His name, my lord, is Tyrrel.\n  KING RICHARD. I partly know the man. Go, call him hither,\n    boy.                                               Exit PAGE\n    The deep-revolving witty Buckingham\n    No more shall be the neighbour to my counsels.\n    Hath he so long held out with me, untir\'d,\n    And stops he now for breath? Well, be it so.\n  \n                            Enter STANLEY\n\n    How now, Lord Stanley! What\'s the news?\n  STANLEY. Know, my loving lord,\n    The Marquis Dorset, as I hear, is fled\n    To Richmond, in the parts where he abides.    [Stands apart]\n  KING RICHARD. Come hither, Catesby. Rumour it abroad\n    That Anne, my wife, is very grievous sick;\n    I will take order for her keeping close.\n    Inquire me out some mean poor gentleman,\n    Whom I will marry straight to Clarence\' daughter-\n    The boy is foolish, and I fear not him.\n    Look how thou dream\'st! I say again, give out\n    That Anne, my queen, is sick and like to die.\n    About it; for it stands me much upon\n    To stop all hopes whose growth may damage me.\n                                                    Exit CATESBY\n    I must be married to my brother\'s daughter,\n    Or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass.\n    Murder her brothers, and then marry her!  \n    Uncertain way of gain! But I am in\n    So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin.\n    Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye.\n\n                     Re-enter PAGE, with TYRREL\n\n    Is thy name Tyrrel?\n  TYRREL. James Tyrrel, and your most obedient subject.\n  KING RICHARD. Art thou, indeed?\n  TYRREL. Prove me, my gracious lord.\n  KING RICHARD. Dar\'st\'thou resolve to kill a friend of mine?\n  TYRREL. Please you;\n    But I had rather kill two enemies.\n  KING RICHARD. Why, then thou hast it. Two deep enemies,\n    Foes to my rest, and my sweet sleep\'s disturbers,\n    Are they that I would have thee deal upon.\n  TYRREL, I mean those bastards in the Tower.\n  TYRREL. Let me have open means to come to them,\n    And soon I\'ll rid you from the fear of them.\n  KING RICHARD. Thou sing\'st sweet music. Hark, come  \n    hither, Tyrrel.\n    Go, by this token. Rise, and lend thine ear.      [Whispers]\n    There is no more but so: say it is done,\n    And I will love thee and prefer thee for it.\n  TYRREL. I will dispatch it straight.                      Exit\n\n                    Re-enter BUCKINGHAM\n\n    BUCKINGHAM. My lord, I have consider\'d in my mind\n    The late request that you did sound me in.\n  KING RICHARD. Well, let that rest. Dorset is fled to\n    Richmond.\n  BUCKINGHAM. I hear the news, my lord.\n  KING RICHARD. Stanley, he is your wife\'s son: well, look\n    unto it.\n  BUCKINGHAM. My lord, I claim the gift, my due by promise,\n    For which your honour and your faith is pawn\'d:\n    Th\' earldom of Hereford and the movables\n    Which you have promised I shall possess.\n  KING RICHARD. Stanley, look to your wife; if she convey  \n    Letters to Richmond, you shall answer it.\n  BUCKINGHAM. What says your Highness to my just request?\n  KING RICHARD. I do remember me: Henry the Sixth\n    Did prophesy that Richmond should be King,\n    When Richmond was a little peevish boy.\n    A king!-perhaps-\n  BUCKINGHAM. My lord-\n  KING RICHARD. How chance the prophet could not at that\n    time\n    Have told me, I being by, that I should kill him?\n  BUCKINGHAM. My lord, your promise for the earldom-\n  KING RICHARD. Richmond! When last I was at Exeter,\n    The mayor in courtesy show\'d me the castle\n    And call\'d it Rugemount, at which name I started,\n    Because a bard of Ireland told me once\n    I should not live long after I saw Richmond.\n  BUCKINGHAM. My lord-\n  KING RICHARD. Ay, what\'s o\'clock?\n  BUCKINGHAM. I am thus bold to put your Grace in mind\n    Of what you promis\'d me.  \n  KING RICHARD. Well, but o\'clock?\n  BUCKINGHAM. Upon the stroke of ten.\n  KING RICHARD. Well, let it strike.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Why let it strike?\n  KING RICHARD. Because that like a Jack thou keep\'st the\n    stroke\n    Betwixt thy begging and my meditation.\n    I am not in the giving vein to-day.\n  BUCKINGHAM. May it please you to resolve me in my suit.\n  KING RICHARD. Thou troublest me; I am not in the vein.\n                                       Exeunt all but Buckingham\n  BUCKINGHAM. And is it thus? Repays he my deep service\n    With such contempt? Made I him King for this?\n    O, let me think on Hastings, and be gone\n    To Brecknock while my fearful head is on!               Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\n\nLondon. The palace\n\nEnter TYRREL\n\n  TYRREL. The tyrannous and bloody act is done,\n    The most arch deed of piteous massacre\n    That ever yet this land was guilty of.\n    Dighton and Forrest, who I did suborn\n    To do this piece of ruthless butchery,\n    Albeit they were flesh\'d villains, bloody dogs,\n    Melted with tenderness and mild compassion,\n    Wept like two children in their deaths\' sad story.\n    \'O, thus\' quoth Dighton \'lay the gentle babes\'-\n    \'Thus, thus,\' quoth Forrest \'girdling one another\n    Within their alabaster innocent arms.\n    Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,\n    And in their summer beauty kiss\'d each other.\n    A book of prayers on their pillow lay;\n    Which once,\' quoth Forrest \'almost chang\'d my mind;\n    But, O, the devil\'-there the villain stopp\'d;\n    When Dighton thus told on: \'We smothered  \n    The most replenished sweet work of nature\n    That from the prime creation e\'er she framed.\'\n    Hence both are gone with conscience and remorse\n    They could not speak; and so I left them both,\n    To bear this tidings to the bloody King.\n\n                        Enter KING RICHARD\n\n    And here he comes. All health, my sovereign lord!\n  KING RICHARD. Kind Tyrrel, am I happy in thy news?\n  TYRREL. If to have done the thing you gave in charge\n    Beget your happiness, be happy then,\n    For it is done.\n  KING RICHARD. But didst thou see them dead?\n  TYRREL. I did, my lord.\n  KING RICHARD. And buried, gentle Tyrrel?\n  TYRREL. The chaplain of the Tower hath buried them;\n    But where, to say the truth, I do not know.\n  KING RICHARD. Come to me, Tyrrel, soon at after supper,\n    When thou shalt tell the process of their death.  \n    Meantime, but think how I may do thee good\n    And be inheritor of thy desire.\n    Farewell till then.\n  TYRREL. I humbly take my leave.                           Exit\n  KING RICHARD. The son of Clarence have I pent up close;\n    His daughter meanly have I match\'d in marriage;\n    The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham\'s bosom,\n    And Anne my wife hath bid this world good night.\n    Now, for I know the Britaine Richmond aims\n    At young Elizabeth, my brother\'s daughter,\n    And by that knot looks proudly on the crown,\n    To her go I, a jolly thriving wooer.\n\n                           Enter RATCLIFF\n\n  RATCLIFF. My lord!\n  KING RICHARD. Good or bad news, that thou com\'st in so\n    bluntly?\n  RATCLIFF. Bad news, my lord: Morton is fled to Richmond;\n    And Buckingham, back\'d with the hardy Welshmen,  \n    Is in the field, and still his power increaseth.\n  KING RICHARD. Ely with Richmond troubles me more near\n    Than Buckingham and his rash-levied strength.\n    Come, I have learn\'d that fearful commenting\n    Is leaden servitor to dull delay;\n    Delay leads impotent and snail-pac\'d beggary.\n    Then fiery expedition be my wing,\n    Jove\'s Mercury, and herald for a king!\n    Go, muster men. My counsel is my shield.\n    We must be brief when traitors brave the field.       Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4.\n\nLondon. Before the palace\n\nEnter old QUEEN MARGARET\n\n  QUEEN MARGARET. So now prosperity begins to mellow\n    And drop into the rotten mouth of death.\n    Here in these confines slily have I lurk\'d\n    To watch the waning of mine enemies.\n    A dire induction am I witness to,\n    And will to France, hoping the consequence\n    Will prove as bitter, black, and tragical.\n    Withdraw thee, wretched Margaret. Who comes here?\n                                                       [Retires]\n\n           Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH and the DUCHESS OF YORK\n\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, my poor princes! ah, my tender\n    babes!\n    My unblown flowers, new-appearing sweets!\n    If yet your gentle souls fly in the air\n    And be not fix\'d in doom perpetual,  \n    Hover about me with your airy wings\n    And hear your mother\'s lamentation.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Hover about her; say that right for right\n    Hath dimm\'d your infant morn to aged night.\n  DUCHESS. So many miseries have craz\'d my voice\n    That my woe-wearied tongue is still and mute.\n    Edward Plantagenet, why art thou dead?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Plantagenet doth quit Plantagenet,\n    Edward for Edward pays a dying debt.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Wilt thou, O God, fly from such gentle\n    lambs\n    And throw them in the entrails of the wolf?\n    When didst thou sleep when such a deed was done?\n  QUEEN MARGARET. When holy Harry died, and my sweet\n    son.\n  DUCHESS. Dead life, blind sight, poor mortal living ghost,\n    Woe\'s scene, world\'s shame, grave\'s due by life usurp\'d,\n    Brief abstract and record of tedious days,\n    Rest thy unrest on England\'s lawful earth,    [Sitting down]\n    Unlawfully made drunk with innocent blood.  \n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, that thou wouldst as soon afford a\n    grave\n    As thou canst yield a melancholy seat!\n    Then would I hide my bones, not rest them here.\n    Ah, who hath any cause to mourn but we?\n                                           [Sitting down by her]\n  QUEEN MARGARET.  [Coming forward]  If ancient sorrow be\n    most reverend,\n    Give mine the benefit of seniory,\n    And let my griefs frown on the upper hand.\n    If sorrow can admit society,        [Sitting down with them]\n    Tell o\'er your woes again by viewing mine.\n    I had an Edward, till a Richard kill\'d him;\n    I had a husband, till a Richard kill\'d him:\n    Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard kill\'d him;\n    Thou hadst a Richard, till a Richard kill\'d him.\n  DUCHESS. I had a Richard too, and thou didst kill him;\n    I had a Rutland too, thou holp\'st to kill him.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Thou hadst a Clarence too, and Richard\n    kill\'d him.  \n    From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept\n    A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death.\n    That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes\n    To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood,\n    That foul defacer of God\'s handiwork,\n    That excellent grand tyrant of the earth\n    That reigns in galled eyes of weeping souls,\n    Thy womb let loose to chase us to our graves.\n    O upright, just, and true-disposing God,\n    How do I thank thee that this carnal cur\n    Preys on the issue of his mother\'s body\n    And makes her pew-fellow with others\' moan!\n  DUCHESS. O Harry\'s wife, triumph not in my woes!\n    God witness with me, I have wept for thine.\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Bear with me; I am hungry for revenge,\n    And now I cloy me with beholding it.\n    Thy Edward he is dead, that kill\'d my Edward;\n    The other Edward dead, to quit my Edward;\n    Young York he is but boot, because both they\n    Match\'d not the high perfection of my loss.  \n    Thy Clarence he is dead that stabb\'d my Edward;\n    And the beholders of this frantic play,\n    Th\' adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey,\n    Untimely smother\'d in their dusky graves.\n    Richard yet lives, hell\'s black intelligencer;\n    Only reserv\'d their factor to buy souls\n    And send them thither. But at hand, at hand,\n    Ensues his piteous and unpitied end.\n    Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar, saints pray,\n    To have him suddenly convey\'d from hence.\n    Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray,\n    That I may live and say \'The dog is dead.\'\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. O, thou didst prophesy the time would\n      come\n    That I should wish for thee to help me curse\n    That bottled spider, that foul bunch-back\'d toad!\n  QUEEN MARGARET. I Call\'d thee then vain flourish of my\n      fortune;\n    I call\'d thee then poor shadow, painted queen,\n    The presentation of but what I was,  \n    The flattering index of a direful pageant,\n    One heav\'d a-high to be hurl\'d down below,\n    A mother only mock\'d with two fair babes,\n    A dream of what thou wast, a garish flag\n    To be the aim of every dangerous shot,\n    A sign of dignity, a breath, a bubble,\n    A queen in jest, only to fill the scene.\n    Where is thy husband now? Where be thy brothers?\n    Where be thy two sons? Wherein dost thou joy?\n    Who sues, and kneels, and says \'God save the Queen\'?\n    Where be the bending peers that flattered thee?\n    Where be the thronging troops that followed thee?\n    Decline an this, and see what now thou art:\n    For happy wife, a most distressed widow;\n    For joyful mother, one that wails the name;\n    For one being su\'d to, one that humbly sues;\n    For Queen, a very caitiff crown\'d with care;\n    For she that scorn\'d at me, now scorn\'d of me;\n    For she being fear\'d of all, now fearing one;\n    For she commanding all, obey\'d of none.  \n    Thus hath the course of justice whirl\'d about\n    And left thee but a very prey to time,\n    Having no more but thought of what thou wast\n    To torture thee the more, being what thou art.\n    Thou didst usurp my place, and dost thou not\n    Usurp the just proportion of my sorrow?\n    Now thy proud neck bears half my burden\'d yoke,\n    From which even here I slip my weary head\n    And leave the burden of it all on thee.\n    Farewell, York\'s wife, and queen of sad mischance;\n    These English woes shall make me smile in France.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. O thou well skill\'d in curses, stay awhile\n    And teach me how to curse mine enemies!\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Forbear to sleep the nights, and fast the\n      days;\n    Compare dead happiness with living woe;\n    Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were,\n    And he that slew them fouler than he is.\n    Bett\'ring thy loss makes the bad-causer worse;\n    Revolving this will teach thee how to curse.  \n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. My words are dull; O, quicken them\n    with thine!\n  QUEEN MARGARET. Thy woes will make them sharp and\n    pierce like mine.                                       Exit\n  DUCHESS. Why should calamity be fun of words?\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Windy attorneys to their client woes,\n    Airy succeeders of intestate joys,\n    Poor breathing orators of miseries,\n    Let them have scope; though what they will impart\n    Help nothing else, yet do they case the heart.\n  DUCHESS. If so, then be not tongue-tied. Go with me,\n    And in the breath of bitter words let\'s smother\n    My damned son that thy two sweet sons smother\'d.\n    The trumpet sounds; be copious in exclaims.\n\n         Enter KING RICHARD and his train, marching with\n                     drums and trumpets\n\n  KING RICHARD. Who intercepts me in my expedition?\n  DUCHESS. O, she that might have intercepted thee,  \n    By strangling thee in her accursed womb,\n    From all the slaughters, wretch, that thou hast done!\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Hidest thou that forehead with a golden\n    crown\n    Where\'t should be branded, if that right were right,\n    The slaughter of the Prince that ow\'d that crown,\n    And the dire death of my poor sons and brothers?\n    Tell me, thou villain slave, where are my children?\n  DUCHESS. Thou toad, thou toad, where is thy brother\n    Clarence?\n    And little Ned Plantagenet, his son?\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Where is the gentle Rivers, Vaughan,\n    Grey?\n  DUCHESS. Where is kind Hastings?\n  KING RICHARD. A flourish, trumpets! Strike alarum, drums!\n    Let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women\n    Rail on the Lord\'s anointed. Strike, I say!\n                                             [Flourish. Alarums]\n    Either be patient and entreat me fair,\n    Or with the clamorous report of war  \n    Thus will I drown your exclamations.\n  DUCHESS. Art thou my son?\n  KING RICHARD. Ay, I thank God, my father, and yourself.\n  DUCHESS. Then patiently hear my impatience.\n  KING RICHARD. Madam, I have a touch of your condition\n    That cannot brook the accent of reproof.\n  DUCHESS. O, let me speak!\n  KING RICHARD. Do, then; but I\'ll not hear.\n  DUCHESS. I will be mild and gentle in my words.\n  KING RICHARD. And brief, good mother; for I am in haste.\n  DUCHESS. Art thou so hasty? I have stay\'d for thee,\n    God knows, in torment and in agony.\n  KING RICHARD. And came I not at last to comfort you?\n  DUCHESS. No, by the holy rood, thou know\'st it well\n    Thou cam\'st on earth to make the earth my hell.\n    A grievous burden was thy birth to me;\n    Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy;\n    Thy school-days frightful, desp\'rate, wild, and furious;\n    Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous;\n    Thy age confirm\'d, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody,  \n    More mild, but yet more harmful-kind in hatred.\n    What comfortable hour canst thou name\n    That ever grac\'d me with thy company?\n  KING RICHARD. Faith, none but Humphrey Hour, that call\'d\n    your Grace\n    To breakfast once forth of my company.\n    If I be so disgracious in your eye,\n    Let me march on and not offend you, madam.\n    Strike up the drum.\n  DUCHESS. I prithee hear me speak.\n  KING RICHARD. You speak too bitterly.\n  DUCHESS. Hear me a word;\n    For I shall never speak to thee again.\n  KING RICHARD. So.\n  DUCHESS. Either thou wilt die by God\'s just ordinance\n    Ere from this war thou turn a conqueror;\n    Or I with grief and extreme age shall perish\n    And never more behold thy face again.\n    Therefore take with thee my most grievous curse,\n    Which in the day of battle tire thee more  \n    Than all the complete armour that thou wear\'st!\n    My prayers on the adverse party fight;\n    And there the little souls of Edward\'s children\n    Whisper the spirits of thine enemies\n    And promise them success and victory.\n    Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end.\n    Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.        Exit\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Though far more cause, yet much less\n      spirit to curse\n    Abides in me; I say amen to her.\n  KING RICHARD. Stay, madam, I must talk a word with you.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. I have no moe sons of the royal blood\n    For thee to slaughter. For my daughters, Richard,\n    They shall be praying nuns, not weeping queens;\n    And therefore level not to hit their lives.\n  KING RICHARD. You have a daughter call\'d Elizabeth.\n    Virtuous and fair, royal and gracious.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. And must she die for this? O, let her\n      live,\n    And I\'ll corrupt her manners, stain her beauty,  \n    Slander myself as false to Edward\'s bed,\n    Throw over her the veil of infamy;\n    So she may live unscarr\'d of bleeding slaughter,\n    I will confess she was not Edward\'s daughter.\n  KING RICHARD. Wrong not her birth; she is a royal\n    Princess.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. To save her life I\'ll say she is not so.\n  KING RICHARD. Her life is safest only in her birth.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. And only in that safety died her\n      brothers.\n  KING RICHARD. Lo, at their birth good stars were opposite.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. No, to their lives ill friends were\n      contrary.\n  KING RICHARD. All unavoided is the doom of destiny.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. True, when avoided grace makes destiny.\n    My babes were destin\'d to a fairer death,\n    If grace had bless\'d thee with a fairer life.\n  KING RICHARD. You speak as if that I had slain my cousins.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Cousins, indeed; and by their uncle\n      cozen\'d  \n    Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life.\n    Whose hand soever lanc\'d their tender hearts,\n    Thy head, an indirectly, gave direction.\n    No doubt the murd\'rous knife was dull and blunt\n    Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart\n    To revel in the entrails of my lambs.\n    But that stiff use of grief makes wild grief tame,\n    My tongue should to thy ears not name my boys\n    Till that my nails were anchor\'d in thine eyes;\n    And I, in such a desp\'rate bay of death,\n    Like a poor bark, of sails and tackling reft,\n    Rush all to pieces on thy rocky bosom.\n  KING RICHARD. Madam, so thrive I in my enterprise\n    And dangerous success of bloody wars,\n    As I intend more good to you and yours\n    Than ever you or yours by me were harm\'d!\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. What good is cover\'d with the face of\n      heaven,\n    To be discover\'d, that can do me good?\n  KING RICHARD. advancement of your children, gentle  \n    lady.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Up to some scaffold, there to lose their\n    heads?\n  KING RICHARD. Unto the dignity and height of Fortune,\n    The high imperial type of this earth\'s glory.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Flatter my sorrow with report of it;\n    Tell me what state, what dignity, what honour,\n    Canst thou demise to any child of mine?\n  KING RICHARD. Even all I have-ay, and myself and all\n    Will I withal endow a child of thine;\n    So in the Lethe of thy angry soul\n    Thou drown the sad remembrance of those wrongs\n    Which thou supposest I have done to thee.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Be brief, lest that the process of thy\n      kindness\n    Last longer telling than thy kindness\' date.\n  KING RICHARD. Then know, that from my soul I love thy\n    daughter.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. My daughter\'s mother thinks it with her\n    soul.  \n  KING RICHARD. What do you think?\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. That thou dost love my daughter from\n      thy soul.\n    So from thy soul\'s love didst thou love her brothers,\n    And from my heart\'s love I do thank thee for it.\n  KING RICHARD. Be not so hasty to confound my meaning.\n    I mean that with my soul I love thy daughter\n    And do intend to make her Queen of England.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Well, then, who dost thou mean shall be\n    her king?\n  KING RICHARD. Even he that makes her Queen. Who else\n    should be?\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. What, thou?\n  KING RICHARD. Even so. How think you of it?\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. How canst thou woo her?\n  KING RICHARD. That would I learn of you,\n    As one being best acquainted with her humour.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. And wilt thou learn of me?\n  KING RICHARD. Madam, with all my heart.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Send to her, by the man that slew her  \n    brothers,\n    A pair of bleeding hearts; thereon engrave\n    \'Edward\' and \'York.\' Then haply will she weep;\n    Therefore present to her-as sometimes Margaret\n    Did to thy father, steep\'d in Rutland\'s blood-\n    A handkerchief; which, say to her, did drain\n    The purple sap from her sweet brother\'s body,\n    And bid her wipe her weeping eyes withal.\n    If this inducement move her not to love,\n    Send her a letter of thy noble deeds;\n    Tell her thou mad\'st away her uncle Clarence,\n    Her uncle Rivers; ay, and for her sake\n    Mad\'st quick conveyance with her good aunt Anne.\n  KING RICHARD. You mock me, madam; this is not the way\n    To win your daughter.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. There is no other way;\n    Unless thou couldst put on some other shape\n    And not be Richard that hath done all this.\n  KING RICHARD. Say that I did all this for love of her.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Nay, then indeed she cannot choose but  \n      hate thee,\n    Having bought love with such a bloody spoil.\n  KING RICHARD. Look what is done cannot be now amended.\n    Men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes,\n    Which after-hours gives leisure to repent.\n    If I did take the kingdom from your sons,\n    To make amends I\'ll give it to your daughter.\n    If I have kill\'d the issue of your womb,\n    To quicken your increase I will beget\n    Mine issue of your blood upon your daughter.\n    A grandam\'s name is little less in love\n    Than is the doating title of a mother;\n    They are as children but one step below,\n    Even of your metal, of your very blood;\n    Of all one pain, save for a night of groans\n    Endur\'d of her, for whom you bid like sorrow.\n    Your children were vexation to your youth;\n    But mine shall be a comfort to your age.\n    The loss you have is but a son being King,\n    And by that loss your daughter is made Queen.  \n    I cannot make you what amends I would,\n    Therefore accept such kindness as I can.\n    Dorset your son, that with a fearful soul\n    Leads discontented steps in foreign soil,\n    This fair alliance quickly shall can home\n    To high promotions and great dignity.\n    The King, that calls your beauteous daughter wife,\n    Familiarly shall call thy Dorset brother;\n    Again shall you be mother to a king,\n    And all the ruins of distressful times\n    Repair\'d with double riches of content.\n    What! we have many goodly days to see.\n    The liquid drops of tears that you have shed\n    Shall come again, transform\'d to orient pearl,\n    Advantaging their loan with interest\n    Of ten times double gain of happiness.\n    Go, then, my mother, to thy daughter go;\n    Make bold her bashful years with your experience;\n    Prepare her ears to hear a wooer\'s tale;\n    Put in her tender heart th\' aspiring flame  \n    Of golden sovereignty; acquaint the Princes\n    With the sweet silent hours of marriage joys.\n    And when this arm of mine hath chastised\n    The petty rebel, dull-brain\'d Buckingham,\n    Bound with triumphant garlands will I come,\n    And lead thy daughter to a conqueror\'s bed;\n    To whom I will retail my conquest won,\n    And she shall be sole victoress, Caesar\'s Caesar.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. What were I best to say? Her father\'s\n      brother\n    Would be her lord? Or shall I say her uncle?\n    Or he that slew her brothers and her uncles?\n    Under what title shall I woo for thee\n    That God, the law, my honour, and her love\n    Can make seem pleasing to her tender years?\n  KING RICHARD. Infer fair England\'s peace by this alliance.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Which she shall purchase with\n    still-lasting war.\n  KING RICHARD. Tell her the King, that may command,\n    entreats.  \n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. That at her hands which the King\'s\n    King forbids.\n  KING RICHARD. Say she shall be a high and mighty queen.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. To wail the title, as her mother doth.\n  KING RICHARD. Say I will love her everlastingly.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. But how long shall that title \'ever\' last?\n  KING RICHARD. Sweetly in force unto her fair life\'s end.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. But how long fairly shall her sweet life\n    last?\n  KING RICHARD. As long as heaven and nature lengthens it.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. As long as hell and Richard likes of it.\n  KING RICHARD. Say I, her sovereign, am her subject low.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. But she, your subject, loathes such\n    sovereignty.\n  KING RICHARD. Be eloquent in my behalf to her.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. An honest tale speeds best being plainly\n    told.\n  KING RICHARD. Then plainly to her tell my loving tale.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Plain and not honest is too harsh a style.\n  KING RICHARD. Your reasons are too shallow and too quick.  \n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. O, no, my reasons are too deep and\n      dead-\n    Too deep and dead, poor infants, in their graves.\n  KING RICHARD. Harp not on that string, madam; that is past.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Harp on it still shall I till heartstrings\n    break.\n  KING RICHARD. Now, by my George, my garter, and my\n    crown-\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Profan\'d, dishonour\'d, and the third\n    usurp\'d.\n  KING RICHARD. I swear-\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. By nothing; for this is no oath:\n    Thy George, profan\'d, hath lost his lordly honour;\n    Thy garter, blemish\'d, pawn\'d his knightly virtue;\n    Thy crown, usurp\'d, disgrac\'d his kingly glory.\n    If something thou wouldst swear to be believ\'d,\n    Swear then by something that thou hast not wrong\'d.\n  KING RICHARD. Then, by my self-\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Thy self is self-misus\'d.\n  KING RICHARD. Now, by the world-  \n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. \'Tis full of thy foul wrongs.\n  KING RICHARD. My father\'s death-\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Thy life hath it dishonour\'d.\n  KING RICHARD. Why, then, by God-\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. God\'s wrong is most of all.\n    If thou didst fear to break an oath with Him,\n    The unity the King my husband made\n    Thou hadst not broken, nor my brothers died.\n    If thou hadst fear\'d to break an oath by Him,\n    Th\' imperial metal, circling now thy head,\n    Had grac\'d the tender temples of my child;\n    And both the Princes had been breathing here,\n    Which now, two tender bedfellows for dust,\n    Thy broken faith hath made the prey for worms.\n    What canst thou swear by now?\n  KING RICHARD. The time to come.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. That thou hast wronged in the time\n    o\'erpast;\n    For I myself have many tears to wash\n    Hereafter time, for time past wrong\'d by thee.  \n    The children live whose fathers thou hast slaughter\'d,\n    Ungovern\'d youth, to wail it in their age;\n    The parents live whose children thou hast butcheed,\n    Old barren plants, to wail it with their age.\n    Swear not by time to come; for that thou hast\n    Misus\'d ere us\'d, by times ill-us\'d o\'erpast.\n  KING RICHARD. As I intend to prosper and repent,\n    So thrive I in my dangerous affairs\n    Of hostile arms! Myself myself confound!\n    Heaven and fortune bar me happy hours!\n    Day, yield me not thy light; nor, night, thy rest!\n    Be opposite all planets of good luck\n    To my proceeding!-if, with dear heart\'s love,\n    Immaculate devotion, holy thoughts,\n    I tender not thy beauteous princely daughter.\n    In her consists my happiness and thine;\n    Without her, follows to myself and thee,\n    Herself, the land, and many a Christian soul,\n    Death, desolation, ruin, and decay.\n    It cannot be avoided but by this;  \n    It will not be avoided but by this.\n    Therefore, dear mother-I must call you so-\n    Be the attorney of my love to her;\n    Plead what I will be, not what I have been;\n    Not my deserts, but what I will deserve.\n    Urge the necessity and state of times,\n    And be not peevish-fond in great designs.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Shall I be tempted of the devil thus?\n  KING RICHARD. Ay, if the devil tempt you to do good.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Shall I forget myself to be myself?\n  KING RICHARD. Ay, if your self\'s remembrance wrong\n    yourself.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Yet thou didst kill my children.\n  KING RICHARD. But in your daughter\'s womb I bury them;\n    Where, in that nest of spicery, they will breed\n    Selves of themselves, to your recomforture.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. Shall I go win my daughter to thy will?\n  KING RICHARD. And be a happy mother by the deed.\n  QUEEN ELIZABETH. I go. Write to me very shortly,\n    And you shall understand from me her mind.  \n  KING RICHARD. Bear her my true love\'s kiss; and so, farewell.\n                               Kissing her. Exit QUEEN ELIZABETH\n    Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman!\n\n                 Enter RATCLIFF; CATESBY following\n\n    How now! what news?\n  RATCLIFF. Most mighty sovereign, on the western coast\n    Rideth a puissant navy; to our shores\n    Throng many doubtful hollow-hearted friends,\n    Unarm\'d, and unresolv\'d to beat them back.\n    \'Tis thought that Richmond is their admiral;\n    And there they hull, expecting but the aid\n    Of Buckingham to welcome them ashore.\n  KING RICHARD. Some light-foot friend post to the Duke of\n    Norfolk.\n    Ratcliff, thyself-or Catesby; where is he?\n  CATESBY. Here, my good lord.\n  KING RICHARD. Catesby, fly to the Duke.\n  CATESBY. I will my lord, with all convenient haste.  \n  KING RICHARD. Ratcliff, come hither. Post to Salisbury;\n    When thou com\'st thither-  [To CATESBY]  Dull,\n    unmindfull villain,\n    Why stay\'st thou here, and go\'st not to the Duke?\n  CATESBY. First, mighty liege, tell me your Highness\' pleasure,\n    What from your Grace I shall deliver to him.\n  KING RICHARD. O, true, good Catesby. Bid him levy straight\n    The greatest strength and power that he can make\n    And meet me suddenly at Salisbury.\n  CATESBY. I go.                                            Exit\n  RATCLIFF. What, may it please you, shall I do at Salisbury?\n  KING RICHARD. Why, what wouldst thou do there before I\n    go?\n  RATCLIFF. Your Highness told me I should post before.\n  KING RICHARD. My mind is chang\'d.\n\n                           Enter LORD STANLEY\n\n  STANLEY, what news with you?\n  STANLEY. None good, my liege, to please you with  \n    the hearing;\n    Nor none so bad but well may be reported.\n  KING RICHARD. Hoyday, a riddle! neither good nor bad!\n    What need\'st thou run so many miles about,\n    When thou mayest tell thy tale the nearest way?\n    Once more, what news?\n  STANLEY. Richmond is on the seas.\n  KING RICHARD. There let him sink, and be the seas on him!\n    White-liver\'d runagate, what doth he there?\n  STANLEY. I know not, mighty sovereign, but by guess.\n  KING RICHARD. Well, as you guess?\n  STANLEY. Stirr\'d up by Dorset, Buckingham, and Morton,\n    He makes for England here to claim the crown.\n  KING RICHARD. Is the chair empty? Is the sword unsway\'d?\n    Is the King dead, the empire unpossess\'d?\n    What heir of York is there alive but we?\n    And who is England\'s King but great York\'s heir?\n    Then tell me what makes he upon the seas.\n  STANLEY. Unless for that, my liege, I cannot guess.\n  KING RICHARD. Unless for that he comes to be your liege,  \n    You cannot guess wherefore the Welshman comes.\n    Thou wilt revolt and fly to him, I fear.\n  STANLEY. No, my good lord; therefore mistrust me not.\n  KING RICHARD. Where is thy power then, to beat him back?\n    Where be thy tenants and thy followers?\n    Are they not now upon the western shore,\n    Safe-conducting the rebels from their ships?\n  STANLEY. No, my good lord, my friends are in the north.\n  KING RICHARD. Cold friends to me. What do they in the\n    north,\n    When they should serve their sovereign in the west?\n  STANLEY. They have not been commanded, mighty King.\n    Pleaseth your Majesty to give me leave,\n    I\'ll muster up my friends and meet your Grace\n    Where and what time your Majesty shall please.\n  KING RICHARD. Ay, ay, thou wouldst be gone to join with\n    Richmond;\n    But I\'ll not trust thee.\n  STANLEY. Most mighty sovereign,\n    You have no cause to hold my friendship doubtful.  \n    I never was nor never will be false.\n  KING RICHARD. Go, then, and muster men. But leave behind\n    Your son, George Stanley. Look your heart be firm,\n    Or else his head\'s assurance is but frail.\n  STANLEY. So deal with him as I prove true to you.         Exit\n\n                          Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. My gracious sovereign, now in Devonshire,\n    As I by friends am well advertised,\n    Sir Edward Courtney and the haughty prelate,\n    Bishop of Exeter, his elder brother,\n    With many moe confederates, are in arms.\n\n                         Enter another MESSENGER\n\n  SECOND MESSENGER. In Kent, my liege, the Guilfords are in\n    arms;\n    And every hour more competitors\n    Flock to the rebels, and their power grows strong.  \n\n                         Enter another MESSENGER\n\n  THIRD MESSENGER. My lord, the army of great Buckingham-\n  KING RICHARD. Out on you, owls! Nothing but songs of\n    death?                                      [He strikes him]\n    There, take thou that till thou bring better news.\n  THIRD MESSENGER. The news I have to tell your Majesty\n    Is that by sudden floods and fall of waters\n    Buckingham\'s army is dispers\'d and scatter\'d;\n    And he himself wand\'red away alone,\n    No man knows whither.\n  KING RICHARD. I cry thee mercy.\n    There is my purse to cure that blow of thine.\n    Hath any well-advised friend proclaim\'d\n    Reward to him that brings the traitor in?\n  THIRD MESSENGER. Such proclamation hath been made,\n    my Lord.\n\n                      Enter another MESSENGER  \n\n  FOURTH MESSENGER. Sir Thomas Lovel and Lord Marquis\n    Dorset,\n    \'Tis said, my liege, in Yorkshire are in arms.\n    But this good comfort bring I to your Highness-\n    The Britaine navy is dispers\'d by tempest.\n    Richmond in Dorsetshire sent out a boat\n    Unto the shore, to ask those on the banks\n    If they were his assistants, yea or no;\n    Who answer\'d him they came from Buckingham\n    Upon his party. He, mistrusting them,\n    Hois\'d sail, and made his course again for Britaine.\n  KING RICHARD. March on, march on, since we are up in\n    arms;\n    If not to fight with foreign enemies,\n    Yet to beat down these rebels here at home.\n\n                          Re-enter CATESBY\n\n  CATESBY. My liege, the Duke of Buckingham is taken-  \n    That is the best news. That the Earl of Richmond\n    Is with a mighty power landed at Milford\n    Is colder tidings, yet they must be told.\n  KING RICHARD. Away towards Salisbury! While we reason\n    here\n    A royal battle might be won and lost.\n    Some one take order Buckingham be brought\n    To Salisbury; the rest march on with me.\n    Flourish.                                             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 5.\n\nLORD DERBY\'S house\n\nEnter STANLEY and SIR CHRISTOPHER URSWICK\n\n  STANLEY. Sir Christopher, tell Richmond this from me:\n    That in the sty of the most deadly boar\n    My son George Stanley is frank\'d up in hold;\n    If I revolt, off goes young George\'s head;\n    The fear of that holds off my present aid.\n    So, get thee gone; commend me to thy lord.\n    Withal say that the Queen hath heartily consented\n    He should espouse Elizabeth her daughter.\n    But tell me, where is princely Richmond now?\n  CHRISTOPHER. At Pembroke, or at Ha\'rford west in Wales.\n  STANLEY. What men of name resort to him?\n  CHRISTOPHER. Sir Walter Herbert, a renowned soldier;\n  SIR Gilbert Talbot, Sir William Stanley,\n  OXFORD, redoubted Pembroke, Sir James Blunt,\n    And Rice ap Thomas, with a valiant crew;\n    And many other of great name and worth;\n    And towards London do they bend their power,  \n    If by the way they be not fought withal.\n  STANLEY. Well, hie thee to thy lord; I kiss his hand;\n    My letter will resolve him of my mind.\n    Farewell.                                             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 1.\n\nSalisbury. An open place\n\nEnter the SHERIFF and guard, with BUCKINGHAM, led to execution\n\n  BUCKINGHAM. Will not King Richard let me speak with\n    him?\n  SHERIFF. No, my good lord; therefore be patient.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Hastings, and Edward\'s children, Grey, and\n    Rivers,\n    Holy King Henry, and thy fair son Edward,\n    Vaughan, and all that have miscarried\n    By underhand corrupted foul injustice,\n    If that your moody discontented souls\n    Do through the clouds behold this present hour,\n    Even for revenge mock my destruction!\n    This is All-Souls\' day, fellow, is it not?\n  SHERIFF. It is, my lord.\n  BUCKINGHAM. Why, then All-Souls\' day is my body\'s\n    doomsday.\n    This is the day which in King Edward\'s time  \n    I wish\'d might fall on me when I was found\n    False to his children and his wife\'s allies;\n    This is the day wherein I wish\'d to fall\n    By the false faith of him whom most I trusted;\n    This, this All-Souls\' day to my fearful soul\n    Is the determin\'d respite of my wrongs;\n    That high All-Seer which I dallied with\n    Hath turn\'d my feigned prayer on my head\n    And given in earnest what I begg\'d in jest.\n    Thus doth He force the swords of wicked men\n    To turn their own points in their masters\' bosoms.\n    Thus Margaret\'s curse falls heavy on my neck.\n    \'When he\' quoth she \'shall split thy heart with sorrow,\n    Remember Margaret was a prophetess.\'\n    Come lead me, officers, to the block of shame;\n    Wrong hath but wrong, and blame the due of blame.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2.\n\nCamp near Tamworth\n\nEnter RICHMOND, OXFORD, SIR JAMES BLUNT, SIR WALTER HERBERT, and others,\nwith drum and colours\n\n  RICHMOND. Fellows in arms, and my most loving friends,\n    Bruis\'d underneath the yoke of tyranny,\n    Thus far into the bowels of the land\n    Have we march\'d on without impediment;\n    And here receive we from our father Stanley\n    Lines of fair comfort and encouragement.\n    The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar,\n    That spoil\'d your summer fields and fruitful vines,\n    Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough\n    In your embowell\'d bosoms-this foul swine\n    Is now even in the centre of this isle,\n    Near to the town of Leicester, as we learn.\n    From Tamworth thither is but one day\'s march.\n    In God\'s name cheerly on, courageous friends,\n    To reap the harvest of perpetual peace  \n    By this one bloody trial of sharp war.\n  OXFORD. Every man\'s conscience is a thousand men,\n    To fight against this guilty homicide.\n  HERBERT. I doubt not but his friends will turn to us.\n  BLUNT. He hath no friends but what are friends for fear,\n    Which in his dearest need will fly from him.\n  RICHMOND. All for our vantage. Then in God\'s name march.\n    True hope is swift and flies with swallow\'s wings;\n    Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.      Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3.\n\nBosworth Field\n\nEnter KING RICHARD in arms, with NORFOLK, RATCLIFF,\nthe EARL of SURREYS and others\n\n  KING RICHARD. Here pitch our tent, even here in Bosworth\n    field.\n    My Lord of Surrey, why look you so sad?\n  SURREY. My heart is ten times lighter than my looks.\n  KING RICHARD. My Lord of Norfolk!\n  NORFOLK. Here, most gracious liege.\n  KING RICHARD. Norfolk, we must have knocks; ha! must we\n    not?\n  NORFOLK. We must both give and take, my loving lord.\n  KING RICHARD. Up With my tent! Here will I lie to-night;\n                      [Soldiers begin to set up the KING\'S tent]\n    But where to-morrow? Well, all\'s one for that.\n    Who hath descried the number of the traitors?\n  NORFOLK. Six or seven thousand is their utmost power.\n  KING RICHARD. Why, our battalia trebles that account;\n    Besides, the King\'s name is a tower of strength,  \n    Which they upon the adverse faction want.\n    Up with the tent! Come, noble gentlemen,\n    Let us survey the vantage of the ground.\n    Call for some men of sound direction.\n    Let\'s lack no discipline, make no delay;\n    For, lords, to-morrow is a busy day.                  Exeunt\n\n             Enter, on the other side of the field,\n          RICHMOND, SIR WILLIAM BRANDON, OXFORD, DORSET,\n              and others. Some pitch RICHMOND\'S tent\n\n  RICHMOND. The weary sun hath made a golden set,\n    And by the bright tract of his fiery car\n    Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.\n    Sir William Brandon, you shall bear my standard.\n    Give me some ink and paper in my tent.\n    I\'ll draw the form and model of our battle,\n    Limit each leader to his several charge,\n    And part in just proportion our small power.\n    My Lord of Oxford-you, Sir William Brandon-  \n    And you, Sir Walter Herbert-stay with me.\n    The Earl of Pembroke keeps his regiment;\n    Good Captain Blunt, bear my good night to him,\n    And by the second hour in the morning\n    Desire the Earl to see me in my tent.\n    Yet one thing more, good Captain, do for me-\n    Where is Lord Stanley quarter\'d, do you know?\n  BLUNT. Unless I have mista\'en his colours much-\n    Which well I am assur\'d I have not done-\n    His regiment lies half a mile at least\n    South from the mighty power of the King.\n  RICHMOND. If without peril it be possible,\n    Sweet Blunt, make some good means to speak with him\n    And give him from me this most needful note.\n  BLUNT. Upon my life, my lord, I\'ll undertake it;\n    And so, God give you quiet rest to-night!\n  RICHMOND. Good night, good Captain Blunt. Come,\n    gentlemen,\n    Let us consult upon to-morrow\'s business.\n    In to my tent; the dew is raw and cold.  \n                                   [They withdraw into the tent]\n\n            Enter, to his-tent, KING RICHARD, NORFOLK,\n                       RATCLIFF, and CATESBY\n\n  KING RICHARD. What is\'t o\'clock?\n  CATESBY. It\'s supper-time, my lord;\n    It\'s nine o\'clock.\n  KING RICHARD. I will not sup to-night.\n    Give me some ink and paper.\n    What, is my beaver easier than it was?\n    And all my armour laid into my tent?\n  CATESBY. It is, my liege; and all things are in readiness.\n  KING RICHARD. Good Norfolk, hie thee to thy charge;\n    Use careful watch, choose trusty sentinels.\n  NORFOLK. I go, my lord.\n  KING RICHARD. Stir with the lark to-morrow, gentle Norfolk.\n  NORFOLK. I warrant you, my lord.                          Exit\n  KING RICHARD. Catesby!\n  CATESBY. My lord?  \n  KING RICHARD. Send out a pursuivant-at-arms\n    To Stanley\'s regiment; bid him bring his power\n    Before sunrising, lest his son George fall\n    Into the blind cave of eternal night.           Exit CATESBY\n    Fill me a bowl of wine. Give me a watch.\n    Saddle white Surrey for the field to-morrow.\n    Look that my staves be sound, and not too heavy.\n    Ratcliff!\n  RATCLIFF. My lord?\n  KING RICHARD. Saw\'st thou the melancholy Lord\n    Northumberland?\n  RATCLIFF. Thomas the Earl of Surrey and himself,\n    Much about cock-shut time, from troop to troop\n    Went through the army, cheering up the soldiers.\n  KING RICHARD. So, I am satisfied. Give me a bowl of wine.\n    I have not that alacrity of spirit\n    Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have.\n    Set it down. Is ink and paper ready?\n  RATCLIFF. It is, my lord.\n  KING RICHARD. Bid my guard watch; leave me.  \n  RATCLIFF, about the mid of night come to my tent\n    And help to arm me. Leave me, I say.\n                                   Exit RATCLIFF. RICHARD sleeps\n\n               Enter DERBY to RICHMOND in his tent;\n                        LORDS attending\n\n  DERBY. Fortune and victory sit on thy helm!\n  RICHMOND. All comfort that the dark night can afford\n    Be to thy person, noble father-in-law!\n    Tell me, how fares our loving mother?\n  DERBY. I, by attorney, bless thee from thy mother,\n    Who prays continually for Richmond\'s good.\n    So much for that. The silent hours steal on,\n    And flaky darkness breaks within the east.\n    In brief, for so the season bids us be,\n    Prepare thy battle early in the morning,\n    And put thy fortune to the arbitrement\n    Of bloody strokes and mortal-staring war.\n    I, as I may-that which I would I cannot-  \n    With best advantage will deceive the time\n    And aid thee in this doubtful shock of arms;\n    But on thy side I may not be too forward,\n    Lest, being seen, thy brother, tender George,\n    Be executed in his father\'s sight.\n    Farewell; the leisure and the fearful time\n    Cuts off the ceremonious vows of love\n    And ample interchange of sweet discourse\n    Which so-long-sund\'red friends should dwell upon.\n    God give us leisure for these rites of love!\n    Once more, adieu; be valiant, and speed well!\n  RICHMOND. Good lords, conduct him to his regiment.\n    I\'ll strive with troubled thoughts to take a nap,\n    Lest leaden slumber peise me down to-morrow\n    When I should mount with wings of victory.\n    Once more, good night, kind lords and gentlemen.\n                                         Exeunt all but RICHMOND\n    O Thou, whose captain I account myself,\n    Look on my forces with a gracious eye;\n    Put in their hands Thy bruising irons of wrath,  \n    That they may crush down with a heavy fall\n    The usurping helmets of our adversaries!\n    Make us Thy ministers of chastisement,\n    That we may praise Thee in the victory!\n    To Thee I do commend my watchful soul\n    Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes.\n    Sleeping and waking, O, defend me still!            [Sleeps]\n\n            Enter the GHOST Of YOUNG PRINCE EDWARD,\n                    son to HENRY THE SIXTH\n\n  GHOST.  [To RICHARD]  Let me sit heavy on thy soul\n    to-morrow!\n    Think how thou stabb\'dst me in my prime of youth\n    At Tewksbury; despair, therefore, and die!\n    [To RICHMOND]  Be cheerful, Richmond; for the wronged\n    souls\n    Of butcher\'d princes fight in thy behalf.\n    King Henry\'s issue, Richmond, comforts thee.\n  \n              Enter the GHOST of HENRY THE SIXTH\n\n  GHOST.  [To RICHARD]  When I was mortal, my anointed\n    body\n    By thee was punched full of deadly holes.\n    Think on the Tower and me. Despair, and die.\n    Harry the Sixth bids thee despair and die.\n    [To RICHMOND]  Virtuous and holy, be thou conqueror!\n    Harry, that prophesied thou shouldst be King,\n    Doth comfort thee in thy sleep. Live and flourish!\n\n                   Enter the GHOST of CLARENCE\n\n  GHOST.  [To RICHARD]  Let me sit heavy in thy soul\n    to-morrow! I that was wash\'d to death with fulsome wine,\n    Poor Clarence, by thy guile betray\'d to death!\n    To-morrow in the battle think on me,\n    And fall thy edgeless sword. Despair and die!\n    [To RICHMOND]  Thou offspring of the house of Lancaster,\n    The wronged heirs of York do pray for thee.  \n    Good angels guard thy battle! Live and flourish!\n\n           Enter the GHOSTS of RIVERS, GREY, and VAUGHAN\n\n  GHOST OF RIVERS.  [To RICHARD]  Let me sit heavy in thy\n    soul to-morrow,\n    Rivers that died at Pomfret! Despair and die!\n  GHOST OF GREY.  [To RICHARD]  Think upon Grey, and let\n    thy soul despair!\n  GHOST OF VAUGHAN.  [To RICHARD]  Think upon Vaughan,\n    and with guilty fear\n    Let fall thy lance. Despair and die!\n  ALL.  [To RICHMOND]  Awake, and think our wrongs in\n    Richard\'s bosom\n    Will conquer him. Awake and win the day.\n\n                Enter the GHOST of HASTINGS\n\n  GHOST.  [To RICHARD]  Bloody and guilty, guiltily awake,\n    And in a bloody battle end thy days!  \n    Think on Lord Hastings. Despair and die.\n    [To RICHMOND]   Quiet untroubled soul, awake, awake!\n    Arm, fight, and conquer, for fair England\'s sake!\n\n         Enter the GHOSTS of the two young PRINCES\n\n  GHOSTS.  [To RICHARD]  Dream on thy cousins smothered in\n    the Tower.\n    Let us be lead within thy bosom, Richard,\n    And weigh thee down to ruin, shame, and death!\n    Thy nephews\' souls bid thee despair and die.\n    [To RICHMOND]  Sleep, Richmond, sleep in peace, and\n    wake in joy;\n    Good angels guard thee from the boar\'s annoy!\n    Live, and beget a happy race of kings!\n    Edward\'s unhappy sons do bid thee flourish.\n\n          Enter the GHOST of LADY ANNE, his wife\n\n  GHOST.  [To RICHARD]  Richard, thy wife, that wretched  \n    Anne thy wife\n    That never slept a quiet hour with thee\n    Now fills thy sleep with perturbations.\n    To-morrow in the battle think on me,\n    And fall thy edgeless sword. Despair and die.\n    [To RICHMOND]  Thou quiet soul, sleep thou a quiet sleep;\n    Dream of success and happy victory.\n    Thy adversary\'s wife doth pray for thee.\n\n                   Enter the GHOST of BUCKINGHAM\n\n  GHOST.  [To RICHARD]  The first was I that help\'d thee\n    to the crown;\n    The last was I that felt thy tyranny.\n    O, in the battle think on Buckingham,\n    And die in terror of thy guiltiness!\n    Dream on, dream on of bloody deeds and death;\n    Fainting, despair; despairing, yield thy breath!\n    [To RICHMOND]  I died for hope ere I could lend thee aid;\n    But cheer thy heart and be thou not dismay\'d:  \n    God and good angels fight on Richmond\'s side;\n    And Richard falls in height of all his pride.\n            [The GHOSTS vanish. RICHARD starts out of his dream]\n  KING RICHARD. Give me another horse. Bind up my wounds.\n    Have mercy, Jesu! Soft! I did but dream.\n    O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!\n    The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.\n    Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.\n    What do I fear? Myself? There\'s none else by.\n    Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.\n    Is there a murderer here? No-yes, I am.\n    Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why-\n    Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself!\n    Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good\n    That I myself have done unto myself?\n    O, no! Alas, I rather hate myself\n    For hateful deeds committed by myself!\n    I am a villain; yet I lie, I am not.\n    Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter.\n    My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,  \n    And every tongue brings in a several tale,\n    And every tale condemns me for a villain.\n    Perjury, perjury, in the high\'st degree;\n    Murder, stern murder, in the dir\'st degree;\n    All several sins, all us\'d in each degree,\n    Throng to the bar, crying all \'Guilty! guilty!\'\n    I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;\n    And if I die no soul will pity me:\n    And wherefore should they, since that I myself\n    Find in myself no pity to myself?\n    Methought the souls of all that I had murder\'d\n    Came to my tent, and every one did threat\n    To-morrow\'s vengeance on the head of Richard.\n\n                            Enter RATCLIFF\n\n  RATCLIFF. My lord!\n  KING RICHARD. Zounds, who is there?\n  RATCLIFF. Ratcliff, my lord; \'tis I. The early village-cock\n    Hath twice done salutation to the morn;  \n    Your friends are up and buckle on their armour.\n  KING RICHARD. O Ratcliff, I have dream\'d a fearful dream!\n    What think\'st thou-will our friends prove all true?\n  RATCLIFF. No doubt, my lord.\n  KING RICHARD. O Ratcliff, I fear, I fear.\n  RATCLIFF. Nay, good my lord, be not afraid of shadows.\n  KING RICHARD By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night\n    Have stuck more terror to the soul of Richard\n    Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers\n    Armed in proof and led by shallow Richmond.\n    \'Tis not yet near day. Come, go with me;\n    Under our tents I\'ll play the eaves-dropper,\n    To see if any mean to shrink from me.                 Exeunt\n\n          Enter the LORDS to RICHMOND sitting in his tent\n\n  LORDS. Good morrow, Richmond!\n  RICHMOND. Cry mercy, lords and watchful gentlemen,\n    That you have ta\'en a tardy sluggard here.\n  LORDS. How have you slept, my lord?  \n  RICHMOND. The sweetest sleep and fairest-boding dreams\n    That ever ent\'red in a drowsy head\n    Have I since your departure had, my lords.\n    Methought their souls whose bodies Richard murder\'d\n    Came to my tent and cried on victory.\n    I promise you my soul is very jocund\n    In the remembrance of so fair a dream.\n    How far into the morning is it, lords?\n  LORDS. Upon the stroke of four.\n  RICHMOND. Why, then \'tis time to arm and give direction.\n\n                 His ORATION to his SOLDIERS\n\n    More than I have said, loving countrymen,\n    The leisure and enforcement of the time\n    Forbids to dwell upon; yet remember this:\n    God and our good cause fight upon our side;\n    The prayers of holy saints and wronged souls,\n    Like high-rear\'d bulwarks, stand before our faces;\n    Richard except, those whom we fight against  \n    Had rather have us win than him they follow.\n    For what is he they follow? Truly, gentlemen,\n    A bloody tyrant and a homicide;\n    One rais\'d in blood, and one in blood establish\'d;\n    One that made means to come by what he hath,\n    And slaughtered those that were the means to help him;\n    A base foul stone, made precious by the foil\n    Of England\'s chair, where he is falsely set;\n    One that hath ever been God\'s enemy.\n    Then if you fight against God\'s enemy,\n    God will in justice ward you as his soldiers;\n    If you do sweat to put a tyrant down,\n    You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain;\n    If you do fight against your country\'s foes,\n    Your country\'s foes shall pay your pains the hire;\n    If you do fight in safeguard of your wives,\n    Your wives shall welcome home the conquerors;\n    If you do free your children from the sword,\n    Your children\'s children quits it in your age.\n    Then, in the name of God and all these rights,  \n    Advance your standards, draw your willing swords.\n    For me, the ransom of my bold attempt\n    Shall be this cold corpse on the earth\'s cold face;\n    But if I thrive, the gain of my attempt\n    The least of you shall share his part thereof.\n    Sound drums and trumpets boldly and cheerfully;\n    God and Saint George! Richmond and victory!           Exeunt\n\n           Re-enter KING RICHARD, RATCLIFF, attendants,\n                         and forces\n\n  KING RICHARD. What said Northumberland as touching\n    Richmond?\n  RATCLIFF. That he was never trained up in arms.\n  KING RICHARD. He said the truth; and what said Surrey\n    then?\n  RATCLIFF. He smil\'d, and said \'The better for our purpose.\'\n  KING He was in the right; and so indeed it is.\n                                                 [Clock strikes]\n    Tell the clock there. Give me a calendar.  \n    Who saw the sun to-day?\n  RATCLIFF. Not I, my lord.\n  KING RICHARD. Then he disdains to shine; for by the book\n    He should have brav\'d the east an hour ago.\n    A black day will it be to somebody.\n    Ratcliff!\n  RATCLIFF. My lord?\n  KING RICHARD. The sun will not be seen to-day;\n    The sky doth frown and lour upon our army.\n    I would these dewy tears were from the ground.\n    Not shine to-day! Why, what is that to me\n    More than to Richmond? For the selfsame heaven\n    That frowns on me looks sadly upon him.\n\n                       Enter NORFOLK\n\n  NORFOLK. Arm, arm, my lord; the foe vaunts in the field.\n  KING RICHARD. Come, bustle, bustle; caparison my horse;\n    Call up Lord Stanley, bid him bring his power.\n    I will lead forth my soldiers to the plain,  \n    And thus my battle shall be ordered:\n    My foreward shall be drawn out all in length,\n    Consisting equally of horse and foot;\n    Our archers shall be placed in the midst.\n    John Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Earl of Surrey,\n    Shall have the leading of this foot and horse.\n    They thus directed, we will follow\n    In the main battle, whose puissance on either side\n    Shall be well winged with our chiefest horse.\n    This, and Saint George to boot! What think\'st thou,\n    Norfolk?\n  NORFOLK. A good direction, warlike sovereign.\n    This found I on my tent this morning.\n                                        [He sheweth him a paper]\n  KING RICHARD.                                          [Reads]\n    \'Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold,\n    For Dickon thy master is bought and sold.\'\n    A thing devised by the enemy.\n    Go, gentlemen, every man unto his charge.\n    Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls;  \n    Conscience is but a word that cowards use,\n    Devis\'d at first to keep the strong in awe.\n    Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.\n    March on, join bravely, let us to it pell-mell;\n    If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.\n\n                      His ORATION to his ARMY\n\n    What shall I say more than I have inferr\'d?\n    Remember whom you are to cope withal-\n    A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,\n    A scum of Britaines, and base lackey peasants,\n    Whom their o\'er-cloyed country vomits forth\n    To desperate adventures and assur\'d destruction.\n    You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest;\n    You having lands, and bless\'d with beauteous wives,\n    They would restrain the one, distain the other.\n    And who doth lead them but a paltry fellow,\n    Long kept in Britaine at our mother\'s cost?\n    A milk-sop, one that never in his life  \n    Felt so much cold as over shoes in snow?\n    Let\'s whip these stragglers o\'er the seas again;\n    Lash hence these over-weening rags of France,\n    These famish\'d beggars, weary of their lives;\n    Who, but for dreaming on this fond exploit,\n    For want of means, poor rats, had hang\'d themselves.\n    If we be conquered, let men conquer us,\n    And not these bastard Britaines, whom our fathers\n    Have in their own land beaten, bobb\'d, and thump\'d,\n    And, in record, left them the heirs of shame.\n    Shall these enjoy our lands? lie with our wives,\n    Ravish our daughters?  [Drum afar off]  Hark! I hear their\n    drum.\n    Fight, gentlemen of England! Fight, bold yeomen!\n    Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head!\n    Spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood;\n    Amaze the welkin with your broken staves!\n\n                        Enter a MESSENGER\n  \n    What says Lord Stanley? Will he bring his power?\n  MESSENGER. My lord, he doth deny to come.\n  KING RICHARD. Off with his son George\'s head!\n  NORFOLK. My lord, the enemy is pass\'d the marsh.\n    After the battle let George Stanley die.\n  KING RICHARD. A thousand hearts are great within my\n    bosom.\n    Advance our standards, set upon our foes;\n    Our ancient word of courage, fair Saint George,\n    Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons!\n    Upon them! Victory sits on our helms.                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 4.\n\nAnother part of the field\n\nAlarum; excursions. Enter NORFOLK and forces; to him CATESBY\n\n  CATESBY. Rescue, my Lord of Norfolk, rescue, rescue!\n    The King enacts more wonders than a man,\n    Daring an opposite to every danger.\n    His horse is slain, and all on foot he fights,\n    Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death.\n    Rescue, fair lord, or else the day is lost.\n\n                     Alarums. Enter KING RICHARD\n\n  KING RICHARD. A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!\n  CATESBY. Withdraw, my lord! I\'ll help you to a horse.\n  KING RICHARD. Slave, I have set my life upon a cast\n    And I Will stand the hazard of the die.\n    I think there be six Richmonds in the field;\n    Five have I slain to-day instead of him.\n    A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!             Exeunt  \n\n\n\n\nSCENE 5.\n\nAnother part of the field\n\nAlarum. Enter RICHARD and RICHMOND; they fight; RICHARD is slain.\nRetreat and flourish. Enter RICHMOND, DERBY bearing the crown,\nwith other LORDS\n\n  RICHMOND. God and your arms be prais\'d, victorious friends;\n    The day is ours, the bloody dog is dead.\n  DERBY. Courageous Richmond, well hast thou acquit thee!\n    Lo, here, this long-usurped royalty\n    From the dead temples of this bloody wretch\n    Have I pluck\'d off, to grace thy brows withal.\n    Wear it, enjoy it, and make much of it.\n  RICHMOND. Great God of heaven, say Amen to all!\n    But, teLL me is young George Stanley living.\n  DERBY. He is, my lord, and safe in Leicester town,\n    Whither, if it please you, we may now withdraw us.\n  RICHMOND. What men of name are slain on either side?\n  DERBY. John Duke of Norfolk, Walter Lord Ferrers,\n    Sir Robert Brakenbury, and Sir William Brandon.\n  RICHMOND. Inter their bodies as becomes their births.  \n    Proclaim a pardon to the soldiers fled\n    That in submission will return to us.\n    And then, as we have ta\'en the sacrament,\n    We will unite the white rose and the red.\n    Smile heaven upon this fair conjunction,\n    That long have frown\'d upon their emnity!\n    What traitor hears me, and says not Amen?\n    England hath long been mad, and scarr\'d herself;\n    The brother blindly shed the brother\'s blood,\n    The father rashly slaughter\'d his own son,\n    The son, compell\'d, been butcher to the sire;\n    All this divided York and Lancaster,\n    Divided in their dire division,\n    O, now let Richmond and Elizabeth,\n    The true succeeders of each royal house,\n    By God\'s fair ordinance conjoin together!\n    And let their heirs, God, if thy will be so,\n    Enrich the time to come with smooth-fac\'d peace,\n    With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days!\n    Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord,  \n    That would reduce these bloody days again\n    And make poor England weep in streams of blood!\n    Let them not live to taste this land\'s increase\n    That would with treason wound this fair land\'s peace!\n    Now civil wounds are stopp\'d, peace lives again-\n    That she may long live here, God say Amen!            Exeunt\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1595\n\n\nTHE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  Chorus.\n\n  Escalus, Prince of Verona.\n  Paris, a young Count, kinsman to the Prince.\n  Montague, heads of two houses at variance with each other.\n  Capulet, heads of two houses at variance with each other.\n  An old Man, of the Capulet family.\n  Romeo, son to Montague.\n  Tybalt, nephew to Lady Capulet.\n  Mercutio, kinsman to the Prince and friend to Romeo.\n  Benvolio, nephew to Montague, and friend to Romeo\n  Tybalt, nephew to Lady Capulet.\n  Friar Laurence, Franciscan.\n  Friar John, Franciscan.\n  Balthasar, servant to Romeo.\n  Abram, servant to Montague.\n  Sampson, servant to Capulet.\n  Gregory, servant to Capulet.\n  Peter, servant to Juliet\'s nurse.\n  An Apothecary.  \n  Three Musicians.\n  An Officer.\n\n  Lady Montague, wife to Montague.\n  Lady Capulet, wife to Capulet.\n  Juliet, daughter to Capulet.\n  Nurse to Juliet.\n\n  Citizens of Verona; Gentlemen and Gentlewomen of both houses;\n    Maskers, Torchbearers, Pages, Guards, Watchmen, Servants, and\n    Attendants.\n\n                            SCENE.--Verona; Mantua.\n\n\n\n                        THE PROLOGUE\n\n                        Enter Chorus.\n\n  Chor. Two households, both alike in dignity,\n    In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,\n    From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,\n    Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.\n    From forth the fatal loins of these two foes\n    A pair of star-cross\'d lovers take their life;\n    Whose misadventur\'d piteous overthrows\n    Doth with their death bury their parents\' strife.\n    The fearful passage of their death-mark\'d love,\n    And the continuance of their parents\' rage,\n    Which, but their children\'s end, naught could remove,\n    Is now the two hours\' traffic of our stage;\n    The which if you with patient ears attend,\n    What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.\n                                                         [Exit.]\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT I. Scene I.\nVerona. A public place.\n\nEnter Sampson and Gregory (with swords and bucklers) of the house of Capulet.\n\n  Samp. Gregory, on my word, we\'ll not carry coals.\n  Greg. No, for then we should be colliers.\n  Samp. I mean, an we be in choler, we\'ll draw.\n  Greg. Ay, while you live, draw your neck out of collar.\n  Samp. I strike quickly, being moved.\n  Greg. But thou art not quickly moved to strike.\n  Samp. A dog of the house of Montague moves me.\n  Greg. To move is to stir, and to be valiant is to stand.\n    Therefore, if thou art moved, thou runn\'st away.\n  Samp. A dog of that house shall move me to stand. I will take the\n    wall of any man or maid of Montague\'s.\n  Greg. That shows thee a weak slave; for the weakest goes to the\n    wall.\n  Samp. \'Tis true; and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are\n    ever thrust to the wall. Therefore I will push Montague\'s men\n    from the wall and thrust his maids to the wall.\n  Greg. The quarrel is between our masters and us their men.  \n  Samp. \'Tis all one. I will show myself a tyrant. When I have fought\n    with the men, I will be cruel with the maids- I will cut off\n    their heads.\n  Greg. The heads of the maids?\n  Samp. Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads.\n    Take it in what sense thou wilt.\n  Greg. They must take it in sense that feel it.\n  Samp. Me they shall feel while I am able to stand; and \'tis known I\n    am a pretty piece of flesh.\n  Greg. \'Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been\n    poor-John. Draw thy tool! Here comes two of the house of\n    Montagues.\n\n           Enter two other Servingmen [Abram and Balthasar].\n\n  Samp. My naked weapon is out. Quarrel! I will back thee.\n  Greg. How? turn thy back and run?\n  Samp. Fear me not.\n  Greg. No, marry. I fear thee!\n  Samp. Let us take the law of our sides; let them begin.  \n  Greg. I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as they list.\n  Samp. Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them; which is\n    disgrace to them, if they bear it.\n  Abr. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?\n  Samp. I do bite my thumb, sir.\n  Abr. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?\n  Samp. [aside to Gregory] Is the law of our side if I say ay?\n  Greg. [aside to Sampson] No.\n  Samp. No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir; but I bite my\n    thumb, sir.\n  Greg. Do you quarrel, sir?\n  Abr. Quarrel, sir? No, sir.\n  Samp. But if you do, sir, am for you. I serve as good a man as you.\n  Abr. No better.\n  Samp. Well, sir.\n\n                        Enter Benvolio.\n\n  Greg. [aside to Sampson] Say \'better.\' Here comes one of my\n    master\'s kinsmen.  \n  Samp. Yes, better, sir.\n  Abr. You lie.\n  Samp. Draw, if you be men. Gregory, remember thy swashing blow.\n                                                     They fight.\n  Ben. Part, fools! [Beats down their swords.]\n    Put up your swords. You know not what you do.\n\n                          Enter Tybalt.\n\n  Tyb. What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?\n    Turn thee Benvolio! look upon thy death.\n  Ben. I do but keep the peace. Put up thy sword,\n    Or manage it to part these men with me.\n  Tyb. What, drawn, and talk of peace? I hate the word\n    As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee.\n    Have at thee, coward!                            They fight.\n\n     Enter an officer, and three or four Citizens with clubs or\n                          partisans.\n  \n  Officer. Clubs, bills, and partisans! Strike! beat them down!\n  Citizens. Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues!\n\n           Enter Old Capulet in his gown, and his Wife.\n\n  Cap. What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!\n  Wife. A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword?\n  Cap. My sword, I say! Old Montague is come\n    And flourishes his blade in spite of me.\n\n                 Enter Old Montague and his Wife.\n\n  Mon. Thou villain Capulet!- Hold me not, let me go.\n  M. Wife. Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.\n\n                Enter Prince Escalus, with his Train.\n\n  Prince. Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace,\n    Profaners of this neighbour-stained steel-\n    Will they not hear? What, ho! you men, you beasts,  \n    That quench the fire of your pernicious rage\n    With purple fountains issuing from your veins!\n    On pain of torture, from those bloody hands\n    Throw your mistempered weapons to the ground\n    And hear the sentence of your moved prince.\n    Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word\n    By thee, old Capulet, and Montague,\n    Have thrice disturb\'d the quiet of our streets\n    And made Verona\'s ancient citizens\n    Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments\n    To wield old partisans, in hands as old,\n    Cank\'red with peace, to part your cank\'red hate.\n    If ever you disturb our streets again,\n    Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.\n    For this time all the rest depart away.\n    You, Capulet, shall go along with me;\n    And, Montague, come you this afternoon,\n    To know our farther pleasure in this case,\n    To old Freetown, our common judgment place.\n    Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.  \n              Exeunt [all but Montague, his Wife, and Benvolio].\n  Mon. Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?\n    Speak, nephew, were you by when it began?\n  Ben. Here were the servants of your adversary\n    And yours, close fighting ere I did approach.\n    I drew to part them. In the instant came\n    The fiery Tybalt, with his sword prepar\'d;\n    Which, as he breath\'d defiance to my ears,\n    He swung about his head and cut the winds,\n    Who, nothing hurt withal, hiss\'d him in scorn.\n    While we were interchanging thrusts and blows,\n    Came more and more, and fought on part and part,\n    Till the Prince came, who parted either part.\n  M. Wife. O, where is Romeo? Saw you him to-day?\n    Right glad I am he was not at this fray.\n  Ben. Madam, an hour before the worshipp\'d sun\n    Peer\'d forth the golden window of the East,\n    A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad;\n    Where, underneath the grove of sycamore\n    That westward rooteth from the city\'s side,  \n    So early walking did I see your son.\n    Towards him I made; but he was ware of me\n    And stole into the covert of the wood.\n    I- measuring his affections by my own,\n    Which then most sought where most might not be found,\n    Being one too many by my weary self-\n    Pursu\'d my humour, not Pursuing his,\n    And gladly shunn\'d who gladly fled from me.\n  Mon. Many a morning hath he there been seen,\n    With tears augmenting the fresh morning\'s dew,\n    Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs;\n    But all so soon as the all-cheering sun\n    Should in the farthest East bean to draw\n    The shady curtains from Aurora\'s bed,\n    Away from light steals home my heavy son\n    And private in his chamber pens himself,\n    Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight\n    And makes himself an artificial night.\n    Black and portentous must this humour prove\n    Unless good counsel may the cause remove.  \n  Ben. My noble uncle, do you know the cause?\n  Mon. I neither know it nor can learn of him\n  Ben. Have you importun\'d him by any means?\n  Mon. Both by myself and many other friend;\n    But he, his own affections\' counsellor,\n    Is to himself- I will not say how true-\n    But to himself so secret and so close,\n    So far from sounding and discovery,\n    As is the bud bit with an envious worm\n    Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air\n    Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.\n    Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow,\n    We would as willingly give cure as know.\n\n                       Enter Romeo.\n\n  Ben. See, where he comes. So please you step aside,\n    I\'ll know his grievance, or be much denied.\n  Mon. I would thou wert so happy by thy stay\n    To hear true shrift. Come, madam, let\'s away,  \n                                     Exeunt [Montague and Wife].\n  Ben. Good morrow, cousin.\n  Rom. Is the day so young?\n  Ben. But new struck nine.\n  Rom. Ay me! sad hours seem long.\n    Was that my father that went hence so fast?\n  Ben. It was. What sadness lengthens Romeo\'s hours?\n  Rom. Not having that which having makes them short.\n  Ben. In love?\n  Rom. Out-\n  Ben. Of love?\n  Rom. Out of her favour where I am in love.\n  Ben. Alas that love, so gentle in his view,\n    Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!\n  Rom. Alas that love, whose view is muffled still,\n    Should without eyes see pathways to his will!\n    Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here?\n    Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.\n    Here\'s much to do with hate, but more with love.\n    Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!  \n    O anything, of nothing first create!\n    O heavy lightness! serious vanity!\n    Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!\n    Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!\n    Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is\n    This love feel I, that feel no love in this.\n    Dost thou not laugh?\n  Ben. No, coz, I rather weep.\n  Rom. Good heart, at what?\n  Ben. At thy good heart\'s oppression.\n  Rom. Why, such is love\'s transgression.\n    Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast,\n    Which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest\n    With more of thine. This love that thou hast shown\n    Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.\n    Love is a smoke rais\'d with the fume of sighs;\n    Being purg\'d, a fire sparkling in lovers\' eyes;\n    Being vex\'d, a sea nourish\'d with lovers\' tears.\n    What is it else? A madness most discreet,\n    A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.  \n    Farewell, my coz.\n  Ben. Soft! I will go along.\n    An if you leave me so, you do me wrong.\n  Rom. Tut! I have lost myself; I am not here:\n    This is not Romeo, he\'s some other where.\n  Ben. Tell me in sadness, who is that you love?\n  Rom. What, shall I groan and tell thee?\n  Ben. Groan? Why, no;\n    But sadly tell me who.\n  Rom. Bid a sick man in sadness make his will.\n    Ah, word ill urg\'d to one that is so ill!\n    In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.\n  Ben. I aim\'d so near when I suppos\'d you lov\'d.\n  Rom. A right good markman! And she\'s fair I love.\n  Ben. A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.\n  Rom. Well, in that hit you miss. She\'ll not be hit\n    With Cupid\'s arrow. She hath Dian\'s wit,\n    And, in strong proof of chastity well arm\'d,\n    From Love\'s weak childish bow she lives unharm\'d.\n    She will not stay the siege of loving terms,  \n    Nor bide th\' encounter of assailing eyes,\n    Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold.\n    O, she\'s rich in beauty; only poor\n    That, when she dies, with beauty dies her store.\n  Ben. Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?\n  Rom. She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste;\n    For beauty, starv\'d with her severity,\n    Cuts beauty off from all posterity.\n    She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,\n    To merit bliss by making me despair.\n    She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow\n    Do I live dead that live to tell it now.\n  Ben. Be rul\'d by me: forget to think of her.\n  Rom. O, teach me how I should forget to think!\n  Ben. By giving liberty unto thine eyes.\n    Examine other beauties.\n  Rom. \'Tis the way\n    To call hers (exquisite) in question more.\n    These happy masks that kiss fair ladies\' brows,\n    Being black puts us in mind they hide the fair.  \n    He that is strucken blind cannot forget\n    The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.\n    Show me a mistress that is passing fair,\n    What doth her beauty serve but as a note\n    Where I may read who pass\'d that passing fair?\n    Farewell. Thou canst not teach me to forget.\n  Ben. I\'ll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt.      Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nA Street.\n\nEnter Capulet, County Paris, and [Servant] -the Clown.\n\n  Cap. But Montague is bound as well as I,\n    In penalty alike; and \'tis not hard, I think,\n    For men so old as we to keep the peace.\n  Par. Of honourable reckoning are you both,\n    And pity \'tis you liv\'d at odds so long.\n    But now, my lord, what say you to my suit?\n  Cap. But saying o\'er what I have said before:\n    My child is yet a stranger in the world,\n    She hath not seen the change of fourteen years;\n    Let two more summers wither in their pride\n    Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.\n  Par. Younger than she are happy mothers made.\n  Cap. And too soon marr\'d are those so early made.\n    The earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she;\n    She is the hopeful lady of my earth.\n    But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart;\n    My will to her consent is but a part.  \n    An she agree, within her scope of choice\n    Lies my consent and fair according voice.\n    This night I hold an old accustom\'d feast,\n    Whereto I have invited many a guest,\n    Such as I love; and you among the store,\n    One more, most welcome, makes my number more.\n    At my poor house look to behold this night\n    Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light.\n    Such comfort as do lusty young men feel\n    When well apparell\'d April on the heel\n    Of limping Winter treads, even such delight\n    Among fresh female buds shall you this night\n    Inherit at my house. Hear all, all see,\n    And like her most whose merit most shall be;\n    Which, on more view of many, mine, being one,\n    May stand in number, though in reck\'ning none.\n    Come, go with me. [To Servant, giving him a paper] Go, sirrah,\n      trudge about\n    Through fair Verona; find those persons out\n    Whose names are written there, and to them say,  \n    My house and welcome on their pleasure stay-\n                                     Exeunt [Capulet and Paris].\n  Serv. Find them out whose names are written here? It is written\n    that the shoemaker should meddle with his yard and the tailor\n    with his last, the fisher with his pencil and the painter with\n    his nets; but I am sent to find those persons whose names are\n    here writ, and can never find what names the writing person hath\n    here writ. I must to the learned. In good time!\n\n                   Enter Benvolio and Romeo.\n\n  Ben. Tut, man, one fire burns out another\'s burning;\n    One pain is lessoned by another\'s anguish;\n    Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;\n    One desperate grief cures with another\'s languish.\n    Take thou some new infection to thy eye,\n    And the rank poison of the old will die.\n  Rom. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.\n  Ben. For what, I pray thee?\n  Rom. For your broken shin.  \n  Ben. Why, Romeo, art thou mad?\n  Rom. Not mad, but bound more than a madman is;\n    Shut up in Prison, kept without my food,\n    Whipp\'d and tormented and- God-den, good fellow.\n  Serv. God gi\' go-den. I pray, sir, can you read?\n  Rom. Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.\n  Serv. Perhaps you have learned it without book. But I pray, can you\n    read anything you see?\n  Rom. Ay, If I know the letters and the language.\n  Serv. Ye say honestly. Rest you merry!\n  Rom. Stay, fellow; I can read.                       He reads.\n\n      \'Signior Martino and his wife and daughters;\n      County Anselmo and his beauteous sisters;\n      The lady widow of Vitruvio;\n      Signior Placentio and His lovely nieces;\n      Mercutio and his brother Valentine;\n      Mine uncle Capulet, his wife, and daughters;\n      My fair niece Rosaline and Livia;\n      Signior Valentio and His cousin Tybalt;  \n      Lucio and the lively Helena.\'\n\n    [Gives back the paper.] A fair assembly. Whither should they come?\n  Serv. Up.\n  Rom. Whither?\n  Serv. To supper, to our house.\n  Rom. Whose house?\n  Serv. My master\'s.\n  Rom. Indeed I should have ask\'d you that before.\n  Serv. Now I\'ll tell you without asking. My master is the great rich\n    Capulet; and if you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray come\n    and crush a cup of wine. Rest you merry!               Exit.\n  Ben. At this same ancient feast of Capulet\'s\n    Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lov\'st;\n    With all the admired beauties of Verona.\n    Go thither, and with unattainted eye\n    Compare her face with some that I shall show,\n    And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.\n  Rom. When the devout religion of mine eye\n    Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires;  \n    And these, who, often drown\'d, could never die,\n    Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!\n    One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun\n    Ne\'er saw her match since first the world begun.\n  Ben. Tut! you saw her fair, none else being by,\n    Herself pois\'d with herself in either eye;\n    But in that crystal scales let there be weigh\'d\n    Your lady\'s love against some other maid\n    That I will show you shining at this feast,\n    And she shall scant show well that now seems best.\n  Rom. I\'ll go along, no such sight to be shown,\n    But to rejoice in splendour of my own.              [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nCapulet\'s house.\n\nEnter Capulet\'s Wife, and Nurse.\n\n  Wife. Nurse, where\'s my daughter? Call her forth to me.\n  Nurse. Now, by my maidenhead at twelve year old,\n    I bade her come. What, lamb! what ladybird!\n    God forbid! Where\'s this girl? What, Juliet!\n\n                         Enter Juliet.\n\n  Jul. How now? Who calls?\n  Nurse. Your mother.\n  Jul. Madam, I am here.\n    What is your will?\n  Wife. This is the matter- Nurse, give leave awhile,\n    We must talk in secret. Nurse, come back again;\n    I have rememb\'red me, thou\'s hear our counsel.\n    Thou knowest my daughter\'s of a pretty age.\n  Nurse. Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.\n  Wife. She\'s not fourteen.  \n  Nurse. I\'ll lay fourteen of my teeth-\n    And yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four-\n    She is not fourteen. How long is it now\n    To Lammastide?\n  Wife. A fortnight and odd days.\n  Nurse. Even or odd, of all days in the year,\n    Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.\n    Susan and she (God rest all Christian souls!)\n    Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God;\n    She was too good for me. But, as I said,\n    On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen;\n    That shall she, marry; I remember it well.\n    \'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;\n    And she was wean\'d (I never shall forget it),\n    Of all the days of the year, upon that day;\n    For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,\n    Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall.\n    My lord and you were then at Mantua.\n    Nay, I do bear a brain. But, as I said,\n    When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple  \n    Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,\n    To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!\n    Shake, quoth the dovehouse! \'Twas no need, I trow,\n    To bid me trudge.\n    And since that time it is eleven years,\n    For then she could stand high-lone; nay, by th\' rood,\n    She could have run and waddled all about;\n    For even the day before, she broke her brow;\n    And then my husband (God be with his soul!\n    \'A was a merry man) took up the child.\n    \'Yea,\' quoth he, \'dost thou fall upon thy face?\n    Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;\n    Wilt thou not, Jule?\' and, by my holidam,\n    The pretty wretch left crying, and said \'Ay.\'\n    To see now how a jest shall come about!\n    I warrant, an I should live a thousand yeas,\n    I never should forget it. \'Wilt thou not, Jule?\' quoth he,\n    And, pretty fool, it stinted, and said \'Ay.\'\n  Wife. Enough of this. I pray thee hold thy peace.\n  Nurse. Yes, madam. Yet I cannot choose but laugh  \n    To think it should leave crying and say \'Ay.\'\n    And yet, I warrant, it bad upon it brow\n    A bump as big as a young cock\'rel\'s stone;\n    A perilous knock; and it cried bitterly.\n    \'Yea,\' quoth my husband, \'fall\'st upon thy face?\n    Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age;\n    Wilt thou not, Jule?\' It stinted, and said \'Ay.\'\n  Jul. And stint thou too, I pray thee, nurse, say I.\n  Nurse. Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace!\n    Thou wast the prettiest babe that e\'er I nurs\'d.\n    An I might live to see thee married once, I have my wish.\n  Wife. Marry, that \'marry\' is the very theme\n    I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet,\n    How stands your disposition to be married?\n  Jul. It is an honour that I dream not of.\n  Nurse. An honour? Were not I thine only nurse,\n    I would say thou hadst suck\'d wisdom from thy teat.\n  Wife. Well, think of marriage now. Younger than you,\n    Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,\n    Are made already mothers. By my count,  \n    I was your mother much upon these years\n    That you are now a maid. Thus then in brief:\n    The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.\n  Nurse. A man, young lady! lady, such a man\n    As all the world- why he\'s a man of wax.\n  Wife. Verona\'s summer hath not such a flower.\n  Nurse. Nay, he\'s a flower, in faith- a very flower.\n  Wife. What say you? Can you love the gentleman?\n    This night you shall behold him at our feast.\n    Read o\'er the volume of young Paris\' face,\n    And find delight writ there with beauty\'s pen;\n    Examine every married lineament,\n    And see how one another lends content;\n    And what obscur\'d in this fair volume lies\n    Find written in the margent of his eyes,\n    This precious book of love, this unbound lover,\n    To beautify him only lacks a cover.\n    The fish lives in the sea, and \'tis much pride\n    For fair without the fair within to hide.\n    That book in many\'s eyes doth share the glory,  \n    That in gold clasps locks in the golden story;\n    So shall you share all that he doth possess,\n    By having him making yourself no less.\n  Nurse. No less? Nay, bigger! Women grow by men\n  Wife. Speak briefly, can you like of Paris\' love?\n  Jul. I\'ll look to like, if looking liking move;\n    But no more deep will I endart mine eye\n    Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.\n\n                        Enter Servingman.\n\n  Serv. Madam, the guests are come, supper serv\'d up, you call\'d, my\n    young lady ask\'d for, the nurse curs\'d in the pantry, and\n    everything in extremity. I must hence to wait. I beseech you\n    follow straight.\n  Wife. We follow thee.                       Exit [Servingman].\n    Juliet, the County stays.\n  Nurse. Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nA street.\n\nEnter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six other Maskers; Torchbearers.\n\n  Rom. What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?\n    Or shall we on without apology?\n  Ben. The date is out of such prolixity.\n    We\'ll have no Cupid hoodwink\'d with a scarf,\n    Bearing a Tartar\'s painted bow of lath,\n    Scaring the ladies like a crowkeeper;\n    Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke\n    After the prompter, for our entrance;\n    But, let them measure us by what they will,\n    We\'ll measure them a measure, and be gone.\n  Rom. Give me a torch. I am not for this ambling.\n    Being but heavy, I will bear the light.\n  Mer. Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.\n  Rom. Not I, believe me. You have dancing shoes\n    With nimble soles; I have a soul of lead\n    So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.  \n  Mer. You are a lover. Borrow Cupid\'s wings\n    And soar with them above a common bound.\n  Rom. I am too sore enpierced with his shaft\n    To soar with his light feathers; and so bound\n    I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe.\n    Under love\'s heavy burthen do I sink.\n  Mer. And, to sink in it, should you burthen love-\n    Too great oppression for a tender thing.\n  Rom. Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,\n    Too rude, too boist\'rous, and it pricks like thorn.\n  Mer. If love be rough with you, be rough with love.\n    Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.\n    Give me a case to put my visage in.\n    A visor for a visor! What care I\n    What curious eye doth quote deformities?\n    Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.\n  Ben. Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in\n    But every man betake him to his legs.\n  Rom. A torch for me! Let wantons light of heart\n    Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels;  \n    For I am proverb\'d with a grandsire phrase,\n    I\'ll be a candle-holder and look on;\n    The game was ne\'er so fair, and I am done.\n  Mer. Tut! dun\'s the mouse, the constable\'s own word!\n    If thou art Dun, we\'ll draw thee from the mire\n    Of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick\'st\n    Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho!\n  Rom. Nay, that\'s not so.\n  Mer. I mean, sir, in delay\n    We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.\n    Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits\n    Five times in that ere once in our five wits.\n  Rom. And we mean well, in going to this masque;\n    But \'tis no wit to go.\n  Mer. Why, may one ask?\n  Rom. I dreamt a dream to-night.\n  Mer. And so did I.\n  Rom. Well, what was yours?\n  Mer. That dreamers often lie.\n  Rom. In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.  \n  Mer. O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.\n    She is the fairies\' midwife, and she comes\n    In shape no bigger than an agate stone\n    On the forefinger of an alderman,\n    Drawn with a team of little atomies\n    Athwart men\'s noses as they lie asleep;\n    Her wagon spokes made of long spinners\' legs,\n    The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;\n    Her traces, of the smallest spider\'s web;\n    Her collars, of the moonshine\'s wat\'ry beams;\n    Her whip, of cricket\'s bone; the lash, of film;\n    Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat,\n    Not half so big as a round little worm\n    Prick\'d from the lazy finger of a maid;\n    Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,\n    Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,\n    Time out o\' mind the fairies\' coachmakers.\n    And in this state she \'gallops night by night\n    Through lovers\' brains, and then they dream of love;\n    O\'er courtiers\' knees, that dream on cursies straight;  \n    O\'er lawyers\' fingers, who straight dream on fees;\n    O\'er ladies\' lips, who straight on kisses dream,\n    Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,\n    Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.\n    Sometime she gallops o\'er a courtier\'s nose,\n    And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;\n    And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig\'s tail\n    Tickling a parson\'s nose as \'a lies asleep,\n    Then dreams he of another benefice.\n    Sometimes she driveth o\'er a soldier\'s neck,\n    And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,\n    Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,\n    Of healths five fadom deep; and then anon\n    Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,\n    And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two\n    And sleeps again. This is that very Mab\n    That plats the manes of horses in the night\n    And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish, hairs,\n    Which once untangled much misfortune bodes\n    This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,  \n    That presses them and learns them first to bear,\n    Making them women of good carriage.\n    This is she-\n  Rom. Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!\n    Thou talk\'st of nothing.\n  Mer. True, I talk of dreams;\n    Which are the children of an idle brain,\n    Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;\n    Which is as thin of substance as the air,\n    And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes\n    Even now the frozen bosom of the North\n    And, being anger\'d, puffs away from thence,\n    Turning his face to the dew-dropping South.\n  Ben. This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves.\n    Supper is done, and we shall come too late.\n  Rom. I fear, too early; for my mind misgives\n    Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,\n    Shall bitterly begin his fearful date\n    With this night\'s revels and expire the term\n    Of a despised life, clos\'d in my breast,  \n    By some vile forfeit of untimely death.\n    But he that hath the steerage of my course\n    Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen!\n  Ben. Strike, drum.\n                           They march about the stage. [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\nScene V.\nCapulet\'s house.\n\nServingmen come forth with napkins.\n\n  1. Serv. Where\'s Potpan, that he helps not to take away?\n    He shift a trencher! he scrape a trencher!\n  2. Serv. When good manners shall lie all in one or two men\'s hands,\n    and they unwash\'d too, \'tis a foul thing.\n  1. Serv. Away with the join-stools, remove the court-cubbert, look\n    to the plate. Good thou, save me a piece of marchpane and, as\n    thou loves me, let the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell.\n    Anthony, and Potpan!\n  2. Serv. Ay, boy, ready.\n  1. Serv. You are look\'d for and call\'d for, ask\'d for and sought\n    for, in the great chamber.\n  3. Serv. We cannot be here and there too. Cheerly, boys!\n    Be brisk awhile, and the longer liver take all.      Exeunt.\n\n    Enter the Maskers, Enter, [with Servants,] Capulet, his Wife,\n              Juliet, Tybalt, and all the Guests\n               and Gentlewomen to the Maskers.  \n\n  Cap. Welcome, gentlemen! Ladies that have their toes\n    Unplagu\'d with corns will have a bout with you.\n    Ah ha, my mistresses! which of you all\n    Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty,\n    She I\'ll swear hath corns. Am I come near ye now?\n    Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day\n    That I have worn a visor and could tell\n    A whispering tale in a fair lady\'s ear,\n    Such as would please. \'Tis gone, \'tis gone, \'tis gone!\n    You are welcome, gentlemen! Come, musicians, play.\n    A hall, a hall! give room! and foot it, girls.\n                                    Music plays, and they dance.\n    More light, you knaves! and turn the tables up,\n    And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot.\n    Ah, sirrah, this unlook\'d-for sport comes well.\n    Nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin Capulet,\n    For you and I are past our dancing days.\n    How long is\'t now since last yourself and I\n    Were in a mask?  \n  2. Cap. By\'r Lady, thirty years.\n  Cap. What, man? \'Tis not so much, \'tis not so much!\n    \'Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio,\n    Come Pentecost as quickly as it will,\n    Some five-and-twenty years, and then we mask\'d.\n  2. Cap. \'Tis more, \'tis more! His son is elder, sir;\n    His son is thirty.\n  Cap. Will you tell me that?\n    His son was but a ward two years ago.\n  Rom. [to a Servingman] What lady\'s that, which doth enrich the hand\n    Of yonder knight?\n  Serv. I know not, sir.\n  Rom. O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!\n    It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night\n    Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop\'s ear-\n    Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!\n    So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows\n    As yonder lady o\'er her fellows shows.\n    The measure done, I\'ll watch her place of stand\n    And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.  \n    Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!\n    For I ne\'er saw true beauty till this night.\n  Tyb. This, by his voice, should be a Montague.\n    Fetch me my rapier, boy. What, dares the slave\n    Come hither, cover\'d with an antic face,\n    To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?\n    Now, by the stock and honour of my kin,\n    To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.\n  Cap. Why, how now, kinsman? Wherefore storm you so?\n  Tyb. Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe;\n    A villain, that is hither come in spite\n    To scorn at our solemnity this night.\n  Cap. Young Romeo is it?\n  Tyb. \'Tis he, that villain Romeo.\n  Cap. Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone.\n    \'A bears him like a portly gentleman,\n    And, to say truth, Verona brags of him\n    To be a virtuous and well-govern\'d youth.\n    I would not for the wealth of all this town\n    Here in my house do him disparagement.  \n    Therefore be patient, take no note of him.\n    It is my will; the which if thou respect,\n    Show a fair presence and put off these frowns,\n    An ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.\n  Tyb. It fits when such a villain is a guest.\n    I\'ll not endure him.\n  Cap. He shall be endur\'d.\n    What, goodman boy? I say he shall. Go to!\n    Am I the master here, or you? Go to!\n    You\'ll not endure him? God shall mend my soul!\n    You\'ll make a mutiny among my guests!\n    You will set cock-a-hoop! you\'ll be the man!\n  Tyb. Why, uncle, \'tis a shame.\n  Cap. Go to, go to!\n    You are a saucy boy. Is\'t so, indeed?\n    This trick may chance to scathe you. I know what.\n    You must contrary me! Marry, \'tis time.-\n    Well said, my hearts!- You are a princox- go!\n    Be quiet, or- More light, more light!- For shame!\n    I\'ll make you quiet; what!- Cheerly, my hearts!  \n  Tyb. Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting\n    Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting.\n    I will withdraw; but this intrusion shall,\n    Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt\'rest gall.          Exit.\n  Rom. If I profane with my unworthiest hand\n    This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:\n    My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand\n    To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.\n  Jul. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,\n    Which mannerly devotion shows in this;\n    For saints have hands that pilgrims\' hands do touch,\n    And palm to palm is holy palmers\' kiss.\n  Rom. Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?\n  Jul. Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in pray\'r.\n  Rom. O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do!\n    They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.\n  Jul. Saints do not move, though grant for prayers\' sake.\n  Rom. Then move not while my prayer\'s effect I take.\n    Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purg\'d.  [Kisses her.]\n  Jul. Then have my lips the sin that they have took.  \n  Rom. Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urg\'d!\n    Give me my sin again.                          [Kisses her.]\n  Jul. You kiss by th\' book.\n  Nurse. Madam, your mother craves a word with you.\n  Rom. What is her mother?\n  Nurse. Marry, bachelor,\n    Her mother is the lady of the house.\n    And a good lady, and a wise and virtuous.\n    I nurs\'d her daughter that you talk\'d withal.\n    I tell you, he that can lay hold of her\n    Shall have the chinks.\n  Rom. Is she a Capulet?\n    O dear account! my life is my foe\'s debt.\n  Ben. Away, be gone; the sport is at the best.\n  Rom. Ay, so I fear; the more is my unrest.\n  Cap. Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone;\n    We have a trifling foolish banquet towards.\n    Is it e\'en so? Why then, I thank you all.\n    I thank you, honest gentlemen. Good night.\n    More torches here! [Exeunt Maskers.] Come on then, let\'s to bed.  \n    Ah, sirrah, by my fay, it waxes late;\n    I\'ll to my rest.\n                              Exeunt [all but Juliet and Nurse].\n  Jul. Come hither, nurse. What is yond gentleman?\n  Nurse. The son and heir of old Tiberio.\n  Jul. What\'s he that now is going out of door?\n  Nurse. Marry, that, I think, be young Petruchio.\n  Jul. What\'s he that follows there, that would not dance?\n  Nurse. I know not.\n  Jul. Go ask his name.- If he be married,\n    My grave is like to be my wedding bed.\n  Nurse. His name is Romeo, and a Montague,\n    The only son of your great enemy.\n  Jul. My only love, sprung from my only hate!\n    Too early seen unknown, and known too late!\n    Prodigious birth of love it is to me\n    That I must love a loathed enemy.\n  Nurse. What\'s this? what\'s this?\n  Jul. A rhyme I learnt even now\n    Of one I danc\'d withal.  \n                                     One calls within, \'Juliet.\'\n  Nurse. Anon, anon!\n    Come, let\'s away; the strangers all are gone.        Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nPROLOGUE\n\nEnter Chorus.\n\n  Chor. Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie,\n    And young affection gapes to be his heir;\n    That fair for which love groan\'d for and would die,\n    With tender Juliet match\'d, is now not fair.\n    Now Romeo is belov\'d, and loves again,\n    Alike bewitched by the charm of looks;\n    But to his foe suppos\'d he must complain,\n    And she steal love\'s sweet bait from fearful hooks.\n    Being held a foe, he may not have access\n    To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear,\n    And she as much in love, her means much less\n    To meet her new beloved anywhere;\n    But passion lends them power, time means, to meet,\n    Temp\'ring extremities with extreme sweet.\nExit.\n\n\n\n\nACT II. Scene I.\nA lane by the wall of Capulet\'s orchard.\n\nEnter Romeo alone.\n\n  Rom. Can I go forward when my heart is here?\n    Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out.\n                     [Climbs the wall and leaps down within it.]\n\n                   Enter Benvolio with Mercutio.\n\n  Ben. Romeo! my cousin Romeo! Romeo!\n  Mer. He is wise,\n    And, on my life, hath stol\'n him home to bed.\n  Ben. He ran this way, and leapt this orchard wall.\n    Call, good Mercutio.\n  Mer. Nay, I\'ll conjure too.\n    Romeo! humours! madman! passion! lover!\n    Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh;\n    Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied!\n    Cry but \'Ay me!\' pronounce but \'love\' and \'dove\';\n    Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word,  \n    One nickname for her purblind son and heir,\n    Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim\n    When King Cophetua lov\'d the beggar maid!\n    He heareth not, he stirreth not, be moveth not;\n    The ape is dead, and I must conjure him.\n    I conjure thee by Rosaline\'s bright eyes.\n    By her high forehead and her scarlet lip,\n    By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh,\n    And the demesnes that there adjacent lie,\n    That in thy likeness thou appear to us!\n  Ben. An if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him.\n  Mer. This cannot anger him. \'Twould anger him\n    To raise a spirit in his mistress\' circle\n    Of some strange nature, letting it there stand\n    Till she had laid it and conjur\'d it down.\n    That were some spite; my invocation\n    Is fair and honest: in his mistress\' name,\n    I conjure only but to raise up him.\n  Ben. Come, he hath hid himself among these trees\n    To be consorted with the humorous night.  \n    Blind is his love and best befits the dark.\n  Mer. If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.\n    Now will he sit under a medlar tree\n    And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit\n    As maids call medlars when they laugh alone.\n    O, Romeo, that she were, O that she were\n    An open et cetera, thou a pop\'rin pear!\n    Romeo, good night. I\'ll to my truckle-bed;\n    This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep.\n    Come, shall we go?\n  Ben. Go then, for \'tis in vain\n    \'To seek him here that means not to be found.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nCapulet\'s orchard.\n\nEnter Romeo.\n\n  Rom. He jests at scars that never felt a wound.\n\n                     Enter Juliet above at a window.\n\n    But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?\n    It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!\n    Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,\n    Who is already sick and pale with grief\n    That thou her maid art far more fair than she.\n    Be not her maid, since she is envious.\n    Her vestal livery is but sick and green,\n    And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off.\n    It is my lady; O, it is my love!\n    O that she knew she were!\n    She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?\n    Her eye discourses; I will answer it.\n    I am too bold; \'tis not to me she speaks.  \n    Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,\n    Having some business, do entreat her eyes\n    To twinkle in their spheres till they return.\n    What if her eyes were there, they in her head?\n    The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars\n    As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven\n    Would through the airy region stream so bright\n    That birds would sing and think it were not night.\n    See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!\n    O that I were a glove upon that hand,\n    That I might touch that cheek!\n  Jul. Ay me!\n  Rom. She speaks.\n    O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art\n    As glorious to this night, being o\'er my head,\n    As is a winged messenger of heaven\n    Unto the white-upturned wond\'ring eyes\n    Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him\n    When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds\n    And sails upon the bosom of the air.  \n  Jul. O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?\n    Deny thy father and refuse thy name!\n    Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,\n    And I\'ll no longer be a Capulet.\n  Rom. [aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?\n  Jul. \'Tis but thy name that is my enemy.\n    Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.\n    What\'s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,\n    Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part\n    Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!\n    What\'s in a name? That which we call a rose\n    By any other name would smell as sweet.\n    So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call\'d,\n    Retain that dear perfection which he owes\n    Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;\n    And for that name, which is no part of thee,\n    Take all myself.\n  Rom. I take thee at thy word.\n    Call me but love, and I\'ll be new baptiz\'d;\n    Henceforth I never will be Romeo.  \n  Jul. What man art thou that, thus bescreen\'d in night,\n    So stumblest on my counsel?\n  Rom. By a name\n    I know not how to tell thee who I am.\n    My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,\n    Because it is an enemy to thee.\n    Had I it written, I would tear the word.\n  Jul. My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words\n    Of that tongue\'s utterance, yet I know the sound.\n    Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?\n  Rom. Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike.\n  Jul. How cam\'st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?\n    The orchard walls are high and hard to climb,\n    And the place death, considering who thou art,\n    If any of my kinsmen find thee here.\n  Rom. With love\'s light wings did I o\'erperch these walls;\n    For stony limits cannot hold love out,\n    And what love can do, that dares love attempt.\n    Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me.\n  Jul. If they do see thee, they will murther thee.  \n  Rom. Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye\n    Than twenty of their swords! Look thou but sweet,\n    And I am proof against their enmity.\n  Jul. I would not for the world they saw thee here.\n  Rom. I have night\'s cloak to hide me from their sight;\n    And but thou love me, let them find me here.\n    My life were better ended by their hate\n    Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.\n  Jul. By whose direction found\'st thou out this place?\n  Rom. By love, that first did prompt me to enquire.\n    He lent me counsel, and I lent him eyes.\n    I am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far\n    As that vast shore wash\'d with the farthest sea,\n    I would adventure for such merchandise.\n  Jul. Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face;\n    Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek\n    For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night.\n    Fain would I dwell on form- fain, fain deny\n    What I have spoke; but farewell compliment!\n    Dost thou love me, I know thou wilt say \'Ay\';  \n    And I will take thy word. Yet, if thou swear\'st,\n    Thou mayst prove false. At lovers\' perjuries,\n    They say Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,\n    If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.\n    Or if thou thinkest I am too quickly won,\n    I\'ll frown, and be perverse, and say thee nay,\n    So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world.\n    In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,\n    And therefore thou mayst think my haviour light;\n    But trust me, gentleman, I\'ll prove more true\n    Than those that have more cunning to be strange.\n    I should have been more strange, I must confess,\n    But that thou overheard\'st, ere I was ware,\n    My true-love passion. Therefore pardon me,\n    And not impute this yielding to light love,\n    Which the dark night hath so discovered.\n  Rom. Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear,\n    That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops-\n  Jul. O, swear not by the moon, th\' inconstant moon,\n    That monthly changes in her circled orb,  \n    Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.\n  Rom. What shall I swear by?\n  Jul. Do not swear at all;\n    Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,\n    Which is the god of my idolatry,\n    And I\'ll believe thee.\n  Rom. If my heart\'s dear love-\n  Jul. Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee,\n    I have no joy of this contract to-night.\n    It is too rash, too unadvis\'d, too sudden;\n    Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be\n    Ere one can say \'It lightens.\' Sweet, good night!\n    This bud of love, by summer\'s ripening breath,\n    May prove a beauteous flow\'r when next we meet.\n    Good night, good night! As sweet repose and rest\n    Come to thy heart as that within my breast!\n  Rom. O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?\n  Jul. What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?\n  Rom. Th\' exchange of thy love\'s faithful vow for mine.\n  Jul. I gave thee mine before thou didst request it;  \n    And yet I would it were to give again.\n  Rom. Would\'st thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love?\n  Jul. But to be frank and give it thee again.\n    And yet I wish but for the thing I have.\n    My bounty is as boundless as the sea,\n    My love as deep; the more I give to thee,\n    The more I have, for both are infinite.\n    I hear some noise within. Dear love, adieu!\n                                           [Nurse] calls within.\n    Anon, good nurse! Sweet Montague, be true.\n    Stay but a little, I will come again.                [Exit.]\n  Rom. O blessed, blessed night! I am afeard,\n    Being in night, all this is but a dream,\n    Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.\n\n                       Enter Juliet above.\n\n  Jul. Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed.\n    If that thy bent of love be honourable,\n    Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow,  \n    By one that I\'ll procure to come to thee,\n    Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite;\n    And all my fortunes at thy foot I\'ll lay\n    And follow thee my lord throughout the world.\n  Nurse. (within) Madam!\n  Jul. I come, anon.- But if thou meanest not well,\n    I do beseech thee-\n  Nurse. (within) Madam!\n  Jul. By-and-by I come.-\n    To cease thy suit and leave me to my grief.\n    To-morrow will I send.\n  Rom. So thrive my soul-\n  Jul. A thousand times good night!                        Exit.\n  Rom. A thousand times the worse, to want thy light!\n    Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books;\n    But love from love, towards school with heavy looks.\n\n                     Enter Juliet again, [above].\n\n  Jul. Hist! Romeo, hist! O for a falconer\'s voice  \n    To lure this tassel-gentle back again!\n    Bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud;\n    Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies,\n    And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine\n    With repetition of my Romeo\'s name.\n    Romeo!\n  Rom. It is my soul that calls upon my name.\n    How silver-sweet sound lovers\' tongues by night,\n    Like softest music to attending ears!\n  Jul. Romeo!\n  Rom. My dear?\n  Jul. At what o\'clock to-morrow\n    Shall I send to thee?\n  Rom. By the hour of nine.\n  Jul. I will not fail. \'Tis twenty years till then.\n    I have forgot why I did call thee back.\n  Rom. Let me stand here till thou remember it.\n  Jul. I shall forget, to have thee still stand there,\n    Rememb\'ring how I love thy company.\n  Rom. And I\'ll still stay, to have thee still forget,  \n    Forgetting any other home but this.\n  Jul. \'Tis almost morning. I would have thee gone-\n    And yet no farther than a wanton\'s bird,\n    That lets it hop a little from her hand,\n    Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,\n    And with a silk thread plucks it back again,\n    So loving-jealous of his liberty.\n  Rom. I would I were thy bird.\n  Jul. Sweet, so would I.\n    Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.\n    Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,\n    That I shall say good night till it be morrow.\n                                                         [Exit.]\n  Rom. Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast!\n    Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!\n    Hence will I to my ghostly father\'s cell,\n    His help to crave and my dear hap to tell.\n Exit\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nFriar Laurence\'s cell.\n\nEnter Friar, [Laurence] alone, with a basket.\n\n  Friar. The grey-ey\'d morn smiles on the frowning night,\n    Check\'ring the Eastern clouds with streaks of light;\n    And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels\n    From forth day\'s path and Titan\'s fiery wheels.\n    Non, ere the sun advance his burning eye\n    The day to cheer and night\'s dank dew to dry,\n    I must up-fill this osier cage of ours\n    With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.\n    The earth that\'s nature\'s mother is her tomb.\n    What is her burying gave, that is her womb;\n    And from her womb children of divers kind\n    We sucking on her natural bosom find;\n    Many for many virtues excellent,\n    None but for some, and yet all different.\n    O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies\n    In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities;\n    For naught so vile that on the earth doth live  \n    But to the earth some special good doth give;\n    Nor aught so good but, strain\'d from that fair use,\n    Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.\n    Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,\n    And vice sometime\'s by action dignified.\n    Within the infant rind of this small flower\n    Poison hath residence, and medicine power;\n    For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;\n    Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.\n    Two such opposed kings encamp them still\n    In man as well as herbs- grace and rude will;\n    And where the worser is predominant,\n    Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.\n\n                        Enter Romeo.\n\n  Rom. Good morrow, father.\n  Friar. Benedicite!\n    What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?\n    Young son, it argues a distempered head  \n    So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed.\n    Care keeps his watch in every old man\'s eye,\n    And where care lodges sleep will never lie;\n    But where unbruised youth with unstuff\'d brain\n    Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.\n    Therefore thy earliness doth me assure\n    Thou art uprous\'d with some distemp\'rature;\n    Or if not so, then here I hit it right-\n    Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night.\n  Rom. That last is true-the sweeter rest was mine.\n  Friar. God pardon sin! Wast thou with Rosaline?\n  Rom. With Rosaline, my ghostly father? No.\n    I have forgot that name, and that name\'s woe.\n  Friar. That\'s my good son! But where hast thou been then?\n  Rom. I\'ll tell thee ere thou ask it me again.\n    I have been feasting with mine enemy,\n    Where on a sudden one hath wounded me\n    That\'s by me wounded. Both our remedies\n    Within thy help and holy physic lies.\n    I bear no hatred, blessed man, for, lo,  \n    My intercession likewise steads my foe.\n  Friar. Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift\n    Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.\n  Rom. Then plainly know my heart\'s dear love is set\n    On the fair daughter of rich Capulet;\n    As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine,\n    And all combin\'d, save what thou must combine\n    By holy marriage. When, and where, and how\n    We met, we woo\'d, and made exchange of vow,\n    I\'ll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray,\n    That thou consent to marry us to-day.\n  Friar. Holy Saint Francis! What a change is here!\n    Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear,\n    So soon forsaken? Young men\'s love then lies\n    Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.\n    Jesu Maria! What a deal of brine\n    Hath wash\'d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!\n    How much salt water thrown away in waste,\n    To season love, that of it doth not taste!\n    The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears,  \n    Thy old groans ring yet in mine ancient ears.\n    Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit\n    Of an old tear that is not wash\'d off yet.\n    If e\'er thou wast thyself, and these woes thine,\n    Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline.\n    And art thou chang\'d? Pronounce this sentence then:\n    Women may fall when there\'s no strength in men.\n  Rom. Thou chid\'st me oft for loving Rosaline.\n  Friar. For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.\n  Rom. And bad\'st me bury love.\n  Friar. Not in a grave\n    To lay one in, another out to have.\n  Rom. I pray thee chide not. She whom I love now\n    Doth grace for grace and love for love allow.\n    The other did not so.\n  Friar. O, she knew well\n    Thy love did read by rote, that could not spell.\n    But come, young waverer, come go with me.\n    In one respect I\'ll thy assistant be;\n    For this alliance may so happy prove  \n    To turn your households\' rancour to pure love.\n  Rom. O, let us hence! I stand on sudden haste.\n  Friar. Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nA street.\n\nEnter Benvolio and Mercutio.\n\n  Mer. Where the devil should this Romeo be?\n    Came he not home to-night?\n  Ben. Not to his father\'s. I spoke with his man.\n  Mer. Why, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline,\n    Torments him so that he will sure run mad.\n  Ben. Tybalt, the kinsman to old Capulet,\n    Hath sent a letter to his father\'s house.\n  Mer. A challenge, on my life.\n  Ben. Romeo will answer it.\n  Mer. Any man that can write may answer a letter.\n  Ben. Nay, he will answer the letter\'s master, how he dares, being\n    dared.\n  Mer. Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead! stabb\'d with a white\n    wench\'s black eye; shot through the ear with a love song; the\n    very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy\'s butt-shaft;\n    and is he a man to encounter Tybalt?\n  Ben. Why, what is Tybalt?  \n  Mer. More than Prince of Cats, I can tell you. O, he\'s the\n    courageous captain of compliments. He fights as you sing\n    pricksong-keeps time, distance, and proportion; rests me his\n    minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom! the very\n    butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist! a gentleman of\n    the very first house, of the first and second cause. Ah, the\n    immortal passado! the punto reverse! the hay.\n  Ben. The what?\n  Mer. The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting fantasticoes- these\n    new tuners of accent! \'By Jesu, a very good blade! a very tall\n    man! a very good whore!\' Why, is not this a lamentable thing,\n    grandsir, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange\n    flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardona-mi\'s, who stand so\n    much on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on the old\n    bench? O, their bones, their bones!\n\n                               Enter Romeo.\n\n  Ben. Here comes Romeo! here comes Romeo!\n  Mer. Without his roe, like a dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how art  \n    thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed\n    in. Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen wench (marry, she had a\n    better love to berhyme her), Dido a dowdy, Cleopatra a gypsy,\n    Helen and Hero hildings and harlots, This be a gray eye or so,\n    but not to the purpose. Signior Romeo, bon jour! There\'s a French\n    salutation to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit\n    fairly last night.\n  Rom. Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?\n  Mer. The slip, sir, the slip. Can you not conceive?\n  Rom. Pardon, good Mercutio. My business was great, and in such a\n    case as mine a man may strain courtesy.\n  Mer. That\'s as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a\n    man to bow in the hams.\n  Rom. Meaning, to cursy.\n  Mer. Thou hast most kindly hit it.\n  Rom. A most courteous exposition.\n  Mer. Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.\n  Rom. Pink for flower.\n  Mer. Right.\n  Rom. Why, then is my pump well-flower\'d.  \n  Mer. Well said! Follow me this jest now till thou hast worn out thy\n    pump, that, when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may\n    remain, after the wearing, solely singular.\n  Rom. O single-sold jest, solely singular for the singleness!\n  Mer. Come between us, good Benvolio! My wits faint.\n  Rom. Swits and spurs, swits and spurs! or I\'ll cry a match.\n  Mer. Nay, if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done; for thou\n    hast more of the wild goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I\n    have in my whole five. Was I with you there for the goose?\n  Rom. Thou wast never with me for anything when thou wast not there\n    for the goose.\n  Mer. I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.\n  Rom. Nay, good goose, bite not!\n  Mer. Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce.\n  Rom. And is it not, then, well serv\'d in to a sweet goose?\n  Mer. O, here\'s a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an inch\n    narrow to an ell broad!\n  Rom. I stretch it out for that word \'broad,\' which, added to the\n    goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose.\n  Mer. Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art  \n    thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by\n    art as well as by nature. For this drivelling love is like a\n    great natural that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in\n    a hole.\n  Ben. Stop there, stop there!\n  Mer. Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair.\n  Ben. Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large.\n  Mer. O, thou art deceiv\'d! I would have made it short; for I was\n    come to the whole depth of my tale, and meant indeed to occupy\n    the argument no longer.\n  Rom. Here\'s goodly gear!\n\n                      Enter Nurse and her Man [Peter].\n\n  Mer. A sail, a sail!\n  Ben. Two, two! a shirt and a smock.\n  Nurse. Peter!\n  Peter. Anon.\n  Nurse. My fan, Peter.\n  Mer. Good Peter, to hide her face; for her fan\'s the fairer face of  \n    the two.\n  Nurse. God ye good morrow, gentlemen.\n  Mer. God ye good-den, fair gentlewoman.\n  Nurse. Is it good-den?\n  Mer. \'Tis no less, I tell ye; for the bawdy hand of the dial is now\n    upon the prick of noon.\n  Nurse. Out upon you! What a man are you!\n  Rom. One, gentlewoman, that God hath made for himself to mar.\n  Nurse. By my troth, it is well said. \'For himself to mar,\' quoth\n    \'a? Gentlemen, can any of you tell me where I may find the young\n    Romeo?\n  Rom. I can tell you; but young Romeo will be older when you have\n    found him than he was when you sought him. I am the youngest of\n    that name, for fault of a worse.\n  Nurse. You say well.\n  Mer. Yea, is the worst well? Very well took, i\' faith! wisely,\n    wisely.\n  Nurse. If you be he, sir, I desire some confidence with you.\n  Ben. She will endite him to some supper.\n  Mer. A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! So ho!  \n  Rom. What hast thou found?\n  Mer. No hare, sir; unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie, that is\n    something stale and hoar ere it be spent\n                                     He walks by them and sings.\n\n                   An old hare hoar,\n                   And an old hare hoar,\n                Is very good meat in Lent;\n                   But a hare that is hoar\n                   Is too much for a score\n                When it hoars ere it be spent.\n\n    Romeo, will you come to your father\'s? We\'ll to dinner thither.\n  Rom. I will follow you.\n  Mer. Farewell, ancient lady. Farewell,\n    [sings] lady, lady, lady.\n                                      Exeunt Mercutio, Benvolio.\n  Nurse. Marry, farewell! I Pray you, Sir, what saucy merchant was\n    this that was so full of his ropery?\n  Rom. A gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear himself talk and will  \n    speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.\n  Nurse. An \'a speak anything against me, I\'ll take him down, an \'a\n    were lustier than he is, and twenty such jacks; and if I cannot,\n    I\'ll find those that shall. Scurvy knave! I am none of his\n    flirt-gills; I am none of his skains-mates. And thou must stand\n    by too, and suffer every knave to use me at his pleasure!\n  Peter. I saw no man use you at his pleasure. If I had, my weapon\n    should quickly have been out, I warrant you. I dare draw as soon\n    as another man, if I see occasion in a good quarrel, and the law\n    on my side.\n  Nurse. Now, afore God, I am so vexed that every part about me\n    quivers. Scurvy knave! Pray you, sir, a word; and, as I told you,\n    my young lady bid me enquire you out. What she bid me say, I will\n    keep to myself; but first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her\n    into a fool\'s paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of\n    behaviour, as they say; for the gentlewoman is young; and\n    therefore, if you should deal double with her, truly it were an\n    ill thing to be off\'red to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing.\n  Rom. Nurse, commend me to thy lady and mistress. I protest unto\n    thee-  \n  Nurse. Good heart, and I faith I will tell her as much. Lord,\n    Lord! she will be a joyful woman.\n  Rom. What wilt thou tell her, nurse? Thou dost not mark me.\n  Nurse. I will tell her, sir, that you do protest, which, as I take\n    it, is a gentlemanlike offer.\n  Rom. Bid her devise\n    Some means to come to shrift this afternoon;\n    And there she shall at Friar Laurence\' cell\n    Be shriv\'d and married. Here is for thy pains.\n  Nurse. No, truly, sir; not a penny.\n  Rom. Go to! I say you shall.\n  Nurse. This afternoon, sir? Well, she shall be there.\n  Rom. And stay, good nurse, behind the abbey wall.\n    Within this hour my man shall be with thee\n    And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair,\n    Which to the high topgallant of my joy\n    Must be my convoy in the secret night.\n    Farewell. Be trusty, and I\'ll quit thy pains.\n    Farewell. Commend me to thy mistress.\n  Nurse. Now God in heaven bless thee! Hark you, sir.  \n  Rom. What say\'st thou, my dear nurse?\n  Nurse. Is your man secret? Did you ne\'er hear say,\n    Two may keep counsel, putting one away?\n  Rom. I warrant thee my man\'s as true as steel.\n  Nurse. Well, sir, my mistress is the sweetest lady. Lord, Lord!\n    when \'twas a little prating thing- O, there is a nobleman in\n    town, one Paris, that would fain lay knife aboard; but she, good\n    soul, had as lieve see a toad, a very toad, as see him. I anger\n    her sometimes, and tell her that Paris is the properer man; but\n    I\'ll warrant you, when I say so, she looks as pale as any clout\n    in the versal world. Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin both with\n    a letter?\n  Rom. Ay, nurse; what of that? Both with an R.\n  Nurse. Ah, mocker! that\'s the dog\'s name. R is for the- No; I know\n    it begins with some other letter; and she hath the prettiest\n    sententious of it, of you and rosemary, that it would do you good\n    to hear it.\n  Rom. Commend me to thy lady.\n  Nurse. Ay, a thousand times. [Exit Romeo.] Peter!\n  Peter. Anon.  \n  Nurse. Peter, take my fan, and go before, and apace.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene V.\nCapulet\'s orchard.\n\nEnter Juliet.\n\n  Jul. The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse;\n    In half an hour she \'promis\'d to return.\n    Perchance she cannot meet him. That\'s not so.\n    O, she is lame! Love\'s heralds should be thoughts,\n    Which ten times faster glide than the sun\'s beams\n    Driving back shadows over low\'ring hills.\n    Therefore do nimble-pinion\'d doves draw Love,\n    And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.\n    Now is the sun upon the highmost hill\n    Of this day\'s journey, and from nine till twelve\n    Is three long hours; yet she is not come.\n    Had she affections and warm youthful blood,\n    She would be as swift in motion as a ball;\n    My words would bandy her to my sweet love,\n    And his to me,\n    But old folks, many feign as they were dead-\n    Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.  \n\n                      Enter Nurse [and Peter].\n\n    O God, she comes! O honey nurse, what news?\n    Hast thou met with him? Send thy man away.\n  Nurse. Peter, stay at the gate.\n                                                   [Exit Peter.]\n  Jul. Now, good sweet nurse- O Lord, why look\'st thou sad?\n    Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily;\n    If good, thou shamest the music of sweet news\n    By playing it to me with so sour a face.\n  Nurse. I am aweary, give me leave awhile.\n    Fie, how my bones ache! What a jaunce have I had!\n  Jul. I would thou hadst my bones, and I thy news.\n    Nay, come, I pray thee speak. Good, good nurse, speak.\n  Nurse. Jesu, what haste! Can you not stay awhile?\n    Do you not see that I am out of breath?\n  Jul. How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath\n    To say to me that thou art out of breath?\n    The excuse that thou dost make in this delay  \n    Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse.\n    Is thy news good or bad? Answer to that.\n    Say either, and I\'ll stay the circumstance.\n    Let me be satisfied, is\'t good or bad?\n  Nurse. Well, you have made a simple choice; you know not how to\n    choose a man. Romeo? No, not he. Though his face be better than\n    any man\'s, yet his leg excels all men\'s; and for a hand and a\n    foot, and a body, though they be not to be talk\'d on, yet they\n    are past compare. He is not the flower of courtesy, but, I\'ll\n    warrant him, as gentle as a lamb. Go thy ways, wench; serve God.\n    What, have you din\'d at home?\n  Jul. No, no. But all this did I know before.\n    What says he of our marriage? What of that?\n  Nurse. Lord, how my head aches! What a head have I!\n    It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces.\n    My back o\' t\' other side,- ah, my back, my back!\n    Beshrew your heart for sending me about\n    To catch my death with jauncing up and down!\n  Jul. I\' faith, I am sorry that thou art not well.\n    Sweet, sweet, Sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love?  \n  Nurse. Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courteous,\n    and a kind, and a handsome; and, I warrant, a virtuous- Where is\n    your mother?\n  Jul. Where is my mother? Why, she is within.\n    Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest!\n    \'Your love says, like an honest gentleman,\n    "Where is your mother?"\'\n  Nurse. O God\'s Lady dear!\n    Are you so hot? Marry come up, I trow.\n    Is this the poultice for my aching bones?\n    Henceforward do your messages yourself.\n  Jul. Here\'s such a coil! Come, what says Romeo?\n  Nurse. Have you got leave to go to shrift to-day?\n  Jul. I have.\n  Nurse. Then hie you hence to Friar Laurence\' cell;\n    There stays a husband to make you a wife.\n    Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks:\n    They\'ll be in scarlet straight at any news.\n    Hie you to church; I must another way,\n    To fetch a ladder, by the which your love  \n    Must climb a bird\'s nest soon when it is dark.\n    I am the drudge, and toil in your delight;\n    But you shall bear the burthen soon at night.\n    Go; I\'ll to dinner; hie you to the cell.\n  Jul. Hie to high fortune! Honest nurse, farewell.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene VI.\nFriar Laurence\'s cell.\n\nEnter Friar [Laurence] and Romeo.\n\n  Friar. So smile the heavens upon this holy act\n    That after-hours with sorrow chide us not!\n  Rom. Amen, amen! But come what sorrow can,\n    It cannot countervail the exchange of joy\n    That one short minute gives me in her sight.\n    Do thou but close our hands with holy words,\n    Then love-devouring death do what he dare-\n    It is enough I may but call her mine.\n  Friar. These violent delights have violent ends\n    And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,\n    Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey\n    Is loathsome in his own deliciousness\n    And in the taste confounds the appetite.\n    Therefore love moderately: long love doth so;\n    Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.\n\n                     Enter Juliet.  \n\n    Here comes the lady. O, so light a foot\n    Will ne\'er wear out the everlasting flint.\n    A lover may bestride the gossamer\n    That idles in the wanton summer air,\n    And yet not fall; so light is vanity.\n  Jul. Good even to my ghostly confessor.\n  Friar. Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both.\n  Jul. As much to him, else is his thanks too much.\n  Rom. Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy\n    Be heap\'d like mine, and that thy skill be more\n    To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath\n    This neighbour air, and let rich music\'s tongue\n    Unfold the imagin\'d happiness that both\n    Receive in either by this dear encounter.\n  Jul. Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,\n    Brags of his substance, not of ornament.\n    They are but beggars that can count their worth;\n    But my true love is grown to such excess\n    cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.  \n  Friar. Come, come with me, and we will make short work;\n    For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone\n    Till Holy Church incorporate two in one.\n                                                       [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. Scene I.\nA public place.\n\nEnter Mercutio, Benvolio, and Men.\n\n  Ben. I pray thee, good Mercutio, let\'s retire.\n    The day is hot, the Capulets abroad.\n    And if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl,\n    For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.\n  Mer. Thou art like one of these fellows that, when he enters the\n    confines of a tavern, claps me his sword upon the table and says\n    \'God send me no need of thee!\' and by the operation of the second\n    cup draws him on the drawer, when indeed there is no need.\n  Ben. Am I like such a fellow?\n  Mer. Come, come, thou art as hot a jack in thy mood as any in\n    Italy; and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be\n    moved.\n  Ben. And what to?\n  Mer. Nay, an there were two such, we should have none shortly, for\n    one would kill the other. Thou! why, thou wilt quarrel with a man\n    that hath a hair more or a hair less in his beard than thou hast.\n    Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other  \n    reason but because thou hast hazel eyes. What eye but such an eye\n    would spy out such a quarrel? Thy head is as full of quarrels as\n    an egg is full of meat; and yet thy head hath been beaten as\n    addle as an egg for quarrelling. Thou hast quarrell\'d with a man\n    for coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy dog that\n    hath lain asleep in the sun. Didst thou not fall out with a\n    tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter, with another\n    for tying his new shoes with an old riband? And yet thou wilt\n    tutor me from quarrelling!\n  Ben. An I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man should buy\n    the fee simple of my life for an hour and a quarter.\n  Mer. The fee simple? O simple!\n\n                       Enter Tybalt and others.\n\n  Ben. By my head, here come the Capulets.\n  Mer. By my heel, I care not.\n  Tyb. Follow me close, for I will speak to them.\n    Gentlemen, good den. A word with one of you.\n  Mer. And but one word with one of us?  \n    Couple it with something; make it a word and a blow.\n  Tyb. You shall find me apt enough to that, sir, an you will give me\n    occasion.\n  Mer. Could you not take some occasion without giving\n  Tyb. Mercutio, thou consortest with Romeo.\n  Mer. Consort? What, dost thou make us minstrels? An thou make\n    minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but discords. Here\'s my\n    fiddlestick; here\'s that shall make you dance. Zounds, consort!\n  Ben. We talk here in the public haunt of men.\n    Either withdraw unto some private place\n    And reason coldly of your grievances,\n    Or else depart. Here all eyes gaze on us.\n  Mer. Men\'s eyes were made to look, and let them gaze.\n    I will not budge for no man\'s pleasure,\n\n                        Enter Romeo.\n\n  Tyb. Well, peace be with you, sir. Here comes my man.\n  Mer. But I\'ll be hang\'d, sir, if he wear your livery.\n    Marry, go before to field, he\'ll be your follower!  \n    Your worship in that sense may call him man.\n  Tyb. Romeo, the love I bear thee can afford\n    No better term than this: thou art a villain.\n  Rom. Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee\n    Doth much excuse the appertaining rage\n    To such a greeting. Villain am I none.\n    Therefore farewell. I see thou knowest me not.\n  Tyb. Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries\n    That thou hast done me; therefore turn and draw.\n  Rom. I do protest I never injur\'d thee,\n    But love thee better than thou canst devise\n    Till thou shalt know the reason of my love;\n    And so good Capulet, which name I tender\n    As dearly as mine own, be satisfied.\n  Mer. O calm, dishonourable, vile submission!\n    Alla stoccata carries it away.                      [Draws.]\n    Tybalt, you ratcatcher, will you walk?\n  Tyb. What wouldst thou have with me?\n  Mer. Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives. That I\n    mean to make bold withal, and, as you shall use me hereafter,  \n    dry-beat the rest of the eight. Will you pluck your sword out of\n    his pitcher by the ears? Make haste, lest mine be about your ears\n    ere it be out.\n  Tyb. I am for you.                                    [Draws.]\n  Rom. Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up.\n  Mer. Come, sir, your passado!\n                                                   [They fight.]\n  Rom. Draw, Benvolio; beat down their weapons.\n    Gentlemen, for shame! forbear this outrage!\n    Tybalt, Mercutio, the Prince expressly hath\n    Forbid this bandying in Verona streets.\n    Hold, Tybalt! Good Mercutio!\n         Tybalt under Romeo\'s arm thrusts Mercutio in, and flies\n                                           [with his Followers].\n  Mer. I am hurt.\n    A plague o\' both your houses! I am sped.\n    Is he gone and hath nothing?\n  Ben. What, art thou hurt?\n  Mer. Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch. Marry, \'tis enough.\n    Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a surgeon.  \n                                                    [Exit Page.]\n  Rom. Courage, man. The hurt cannot be much.\n  Mer. No, \'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door;\n    but \'tis enough, \'twill serve. Ask for me to-morrow, and you\n    shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this\n    world. A plague o\' both your houses! Zounds, a dog, a rat, a\n    mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart, a rogue, a\n    villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic! Why the devil\n    came you between us? I was hurt under your arm.\n  Rom. I thought all for the best.\n  Mer. Help me into some house, Benvolio,\n    Or I shall faint. A plague o\' both your houses!\n    They have made worms\' meat of me. I have it,\n    And soundly too. Your houses!\n                                 [Exit. [supported by Benvolio].\n  Rom. This gentleman, the Prince\'s near ally,\n    My very friend, hath got this mortal hurt\n    In my behalf- my reputation stain\'d\n    With Tybalt\'s slander- Tybalt, that an hour\n    Hath been my kinsman. O sweet Juliet,  \n    Thy beauty hath made me effeminate\n    And in my temper soft\'ned valour\'s steel\n\n                      Enter Benvolio.\n\n  Ben. O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio\'s dead!\n    That gallant spirit hath aspir\'d the clouds,\n    Which too untimely here did scorn the earth.\n  Rom. This day\'s black fate on moe days doth depend;\n    This but begins the woe others must end.\n\n                       Enter Tybalt.\n\n  Ben. Here comes the furious Tybalt back again.\n  Rom. Alive in triumph, and Mercutio slain?\n    Away to heaven respective lenity,\n    And fire-ey\'d fury be my conduct now!\n    Now, Tybalt, take the \'villain\' back again\n    That late thou gavest me; for Mercutio\'s soul\n    Is but a little way above our heads,  \n    Staying for thine to keep him company.\n    Either thou or I, or both, must go with him.\n  Tyb. Thou, wretched boy, that didst consort him here,\n    Shalt with him hence.\n  Rom. This shall determine that.\n                                       They fight. Tybalt falls.\n  Ben. Romeo, away, be gone!\n    The citizens are up, and Tybalt slain.\n    Stand not amaz\'d. The Prince will doom thee death\n    If thou art taken. Hence, be gone, away!\n  Rom. O, I am fortune\'s fool!\n  Ben. Why dost thou stay?\n                                                     Exit Romeo.\n                      Enter Citizens.\n\n  Citizen. Which way ran he that kill\'d Mercutio?\n    Tybalt, that murtherer, which way ran he?\n  Ben. There lies that Tybalt.\n  Citizen. Up, sir, go with me.\n    I charge thee in the Prince\'s name obey.  \n\n  Enter Prince [attended], Old Montague, Capulet, their Wives,\n                     and [others].\n\n  Prince. Where are the vile beginners of this fray?\n  Ben. O noble Prince. I can discover all\n    The unlucky manage of this fatal brawl.\n    There lies the man, slain by young Romeo,\n    That slew thy kinsman, brave Mercutio.\n  Cap. Wife. Tybalt, my cousin! O my brother\'s child!\n    O Prince! O husband! O, the blood is spill\'d\n    Of my dear kinsman! Prince, as thou art true,\n    For blood of ours shed blood of Montague.\n    O cousin, cousin!\n  Prince. Benvolio, who began this bloody fray?\n  Ben. Tybalt, here slain, whom Romeo\'s hand did stay.\n    Romeo, that spoke him fair, bid him bethink\n    How nice the quarrel was, and urg\'d withal\n    Your high displeasure. All this- uttered\n    With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bow\'d-  \n    Could not take truce with the unruly spleen\n    Of Tybalt deaf to peace, but that he tilts\n    With piercing steel at bold Mercutio\'s breast;\n    Who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point,\n    And, with a martial scorn, with one hand beats\n    Cold death aside and with the other sends\n    It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity\n    Retorts it. Romeo he cries aloud,\n    \'Hold, friends! friends, part!\' and swifter than his tongue,\n    His agile arm beats down their fatal points,\n    And \'twixt them rushes; underneath whose arm\n    An envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life\n    Of stout Mercutio, and then Tybalt fled;\n    But by-and-by comes back to Romeo,\n    Who had but newly entertain\'d revenge,\n    And to\'t they go like lightning; for, ere I\n    Could draw to part them, was stout Tybalt slain;\n    And, as he fell, did Romeo turn and fly.\n    This is the truth, or let Benvolio die.\n  Cap. Wife. He is a kinsman to the Montague;  \n    Affection makes him false, he speaks not true.\n    Some twenty of them fought in this black strife,\n    And all those twenty could but kill one life.\n    I beg for justice, which thou, Prince, must give.\n    Romeo slew Tybalt; Romeo must not live.\n  Prince. Romeo slew him; he slew Mercutio.\n    Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?\n  Mon. Not Romeo, Prince; he was Mercutio\'s friend;\n    His fault concludes but what the law should end,\n    The life of Tybalt.\n  Prince. And for that offence\n    Immediately we do exile him hence.\n    I have an interest in your hate\'s proceeding,\n    My blood for your rude brawls doth lie a-bleeding;\n    But I\'ll amerce you with so strong a fine\n    That you shall all repent the loss of mine.\n    I will be deaf to pleading and excuses;\n    Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses.\n    Therefore use none. Let Romeo hence in haste,\n    Else, when he is found, that hour is his last.  \n    Bear hence this body, and attend our will.\n    Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nCapulet\'s orchard.\n\nEnter Juliet alone.\n\n  Jul. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,\n    Towards Phoebus\' lodging! Such a wagoner\n    As Phaeton would whip you to the West\n    And bring in cloudy night immediately.\n    Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,\n    That runaway eyes may wink, and Romeo\n    Leap to these arms untalk\'d of and unseen.\n    Lovers can see to do their amorous rites\n    By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,\n    It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,\n    Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,\n    And learn me how to lose a winning match,\n    Play\'d for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.\n    Hood my unmann\'d blood, bating in my cheeks,\n    With thy black mantle till strange love, grown bold,\n    Think true love acted simple modesty.\n    Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;  \n    For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night\n    Whiter than new snow upon a raven\'s back.\n    Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-brow\'d night;\n    Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,\n    Take him and cut him out in little stars,\n    And he will make the face of heaven so fine\n    That all the world will be in love with night\n    And pay no worship to the garish sun.\n    O, I have bought the mansion of a love,\n    But not possess\'d it; and though I am sold,\n    Not yet enjoy\'d. So tedious is this day\n    As is the night before some festival\n    To an impatient child that hath new robes\n    And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse,\n\n                Enter Nurse, with cords.\n\n    And she brings news; and every tongue that speaks\n    But Romeo\'s name speaks heavenly eloquence.\n    Now, nurse, what news? What hast thou there? the cords  \n    That Romeo bid thee fetch?\n  Nurse. Ay, ay, the cords.\n                                             [Throws them down.]\n  Jul. Ay me! what news? Why dost thou wring thy hands\n  Nurse. Ah, weraday! he\'s dead, he\'s dead, he\'s dead!\n    We are undone, lady, we are undone!\n    Alack the day! he\'s gone, he\'s kill\'d, he\'s dead!\n  Jul. Can heaven be so envious?\n  Nurse. Romeo can,\n    Though heaven cannot. O Romeo, Romeo!\n    Who ever would have thought it? Romeo!\n  Jul. What devil art thou that dost torment me thus?\n    This torture should be roar\'d in dismal hell.\n    Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but \'I,\'\n    And that bare vowel \'I\' shall poison more\n    Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.\n    I am not I, if there be such an \'I\';\n    Or those eyes shut that make thee answer \'I.\'\n    If be be slain, say \'I\'; or if not, \'no.\'\n    Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.  \n  Nurse. I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes,\n    (God save the mark!) here on his manly breast.\n    A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse;\n    Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaub\'d in blood,\n    All in gore-blood. I swounded at the sight.\n  Jul. O, break, my heart! poor bankrout, break at once!\n    To prison, eyes; ne\'er look on liberty!\n    Vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here,\n    And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier!\n  Nurse. O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had!\n    O courteous Tybalt! honest gentleman\n    That ever I should live to see thee dead!\n  Jul. What storm is this that blows so contrary?\n    Is Romeo slaught\'red, and is Tybalt dead?\n    My dear-lov\'d cousin, and my dearer lord?\n    Then, dreadful trumpet, sound the general doom!\n    For who is living, if those two are gone?\n  Nurse. Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished;\n    Romeo that kill\'d him, he is banished.\n  Jul. O God! Did Romeo\'s hand shed Tybalt\'s blood?  \n  Nurse. It did, it did! alas the day, it did!\n  Jul. O serpent heart, hid with a flow\'ring face!\n    Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?\n    Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!\n    Dove-feather\'d raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!\n    Despised substance of divinest show!\n    Just opposite to what thou justly seem\'st-\n    A damned saint, an honourable villain!\n    O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell\n    When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend\n    In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?\n    Was ever book containing such vile matter\n    So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell\n    In such a gorgeous palace!\n  Nurse. There\'s no trust,\n    No faith, no honesty in men; all perjur\'d,\n    All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.\n    Ah, where\'s my man? Give me some aqua vitae.\n    These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old.\n    Shame come to Romeo!  \n  Jul. Blister\'d be thy tongue\n    For such a wish! He was not born to shame.\n    Upon his brow shame is asham\'d to sit;\n    For \'tis a throne where honour may be crown\'d\n    Sole monarch of the universal earth.\n    O, what a beast was I to chide at him!\n  Nurse. Will you speak well of him that kill\'d your cousin?\n  Jul. Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?\n    Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name\n    When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?\n    But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?\n    That villain cousin would have kill\'d my husband.\n    Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring!\n    Your tributary drops belong to woe,\n    Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy.\n    My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain;\n    And Tybalt\'s dead, that would have slain my husband.\n    All this is comfort; wherefore weep I then?\n    Some word there was, worser than Tybalt\'s death,\n    That murd\'red me. I would forget it fain;  \n    But O, it presses to my memory\n    Like damned guilty deeds to sinners\' minds!\n    \'Tybalt is dead, and Romeo- banished.\'\n    That \'banished,\' that one word \'banished,\'\n    Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt\'s death\n    Was woe enough, if it had ended there;\n    Or, if sour woe delights in fellowship\n    And needly will be rank\'d with other griefs,\n    Why followed not, when she said \'Tybalt\'s dead,\'\n    Thy father, or thy mother, nay, or both,\n    Which modern lamentation might have mov\'d?\n    But with a rearward following Tybalt\'s death,\n    \'Romeo is banished\'- to speak that word\n    Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,\n    All slain, all dead. \'Romeo is banished\'-\n    There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,\n    In that word\'s death; no words can that woe sound.\n    Where is my father and my mother, nurse?\n  Nurse. Weeping and wailing over Tybalt\'s corse.\n    Will you go to them? I will bring you thither.  \n  Jul. Wash they his wounds with tears? Mine shall be spent,\n    When theirs are dry, for Romeo\'s banishment.\n    Take up those cords. Poor ropes, you are beguil\'d,\n    Both you and I, for Romeo is exil\'d.\n    He made you for a highway to my bed;\n    But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed.\n    Come, cords; come, nurse. I\'ll to my wedding bed;\n    And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!\n  Nurse. Hie to your chamber. I\'ll find Romeo\n    To comfort you. I wot well where he is.\n    Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night.\n    I\'ll to him; he is hid at Laurence\' cell.\n  Jul. O, find him! give this ring to my true knight\n    And bid him come to take his last farewell.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nFriar Laurence\'s cell.\n\nEnter Friar [Laurence].\n\n  Friar. Romeo, come forth; come forth, thou fearful man.\n    Affliction is enanmour\'d of thy parts,\n    And thou art wedded to calamity.\n\n                         Enter Romeo.\n\n  Rom. Father, what news? What is the Prince\'s doom\n    What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand\n    That I yet know not?\n  Friar. Too familiar\n    Is my dear son with such sour company.\n    I bring thee tidings of the Prince\'s doom.\n  Rom. What less than doomsday is the Prince\'s doom?\n  Friar. A gentler judgment vanish\'d from his lips-\n    Not body\'s death, but body\'s banishment.\n  Rom. Ha, banishment? Be merciful, say \'death\';\n    For exile hath more terror in his look,  \n    Much more than death. Do not say \'banishment.\'\n  Friar. Hence from Verona art thou banished.\n    Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.\n  Rom. There is no world without Verona walls,\n    But purgatory, torture, hell itself.\n    Hence banished is banish\'d from the world,\n    And world\'s exile is death. Then \'banishment\'\n    Is death misterm\'d. Calling death \'banishment,\'\n    Thou cut\'st my head off with a golden axe\n    And smilest upon the stroke that murders me.\n  Friar. O deadly sin! O rude unthankfulness!\n    Thy fault our law calls death; but the kind Prince,\n    Taking thy part, hath rush\'d aside the law,\n    And turn\'d that black word death to banishment.\n    This is dear mercy, and thou seest it not.\n  Rom. \'Tis torture, and not mercy. Heaven is here,\n    Where Juliet lives; and every cat and dog\n    And little mouse, every unworthy thing,\n    Live here in heaven and may look on her;\n    But Romeo may not. More validity,  \n    More honourable state, more courtship lives\n    In carrion flies than Romeo. They may seize\n    On the white wonder of dear Juliet\'s hand\n    And steal immortal blessing from her lips,\n    Who, even in pure and vestal modesty,\n    Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin;\n    But Romeo may not- he is banished.\n    This may flies do, when I from this must fly;\n    They are free men, but I am banished.\n    And sayest thou yet that exile is not death?\n    Hadst thou no poison mix\'d, no sharp-ground knife,\n    No sudden mean of death, though ne\'er so mean,\n    But \'banished\' to kill me- \'banished\'?\n    O friar, the damned use that word in hell;\n    Howling attends it! How hast thou the heart,\n    Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,\n    A sin-absolver, and my friend profess\'d,\n    To mangle me with that word \'banished\'?\n  Friar. Thou fond mad man, hear me a little speak.\n  Rom. O, thou wilt speak again of banishment.  \n  Friar. I\'ll give thee armour to keep off that word;\n    Adversity\'s sweet milk, philosophy,\n    To comfort thee, though thou art banished.\n  Rom. Yet \'banished\'? Hang up philosophy!\n    Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,\n    Displant a town, reverse a prince\'s doom,\n    It helps not, it prevails not. Talk no more.\n  Friar. O, then I see that madmen have no ears.\n  Rom. How should they, when that wise men have no eyes?\n  Friar. Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.\n  Rom. Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel.\n    Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,\n    An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,\n    Doting like me, and like me banished,\n    Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair,\n    And fall upon the ground, as I do now,\n    Taking the measure of an unmade grave.\n                                                 Knock [within].\n  Friar. Arise; one knocks. Good Romeo, hide thyself.\n  Rom. Not I; unless the breath of heartsick groans,  \n    Mist-like infold me from the search of eyes.          Knock.\n  Friar. Hark, how they knock! Who\'s there? Romeo, arise;\n    Thou wilt be taken.- Stay awhile!- Stand up;          Knock.\n    Run to my study.- By-and-by!- God\'s will,\n    What simpleness is this.- I come, I come!             Knock.\n    Who knocks so hard? Whence come you? What\'s your will\n  Nurse. [within] Let me come in, and you shall know my errand.\n    I come from Lady Juliet.\n  Friar. Welcome then.\n\n                       Enter Nurse.\n\n  Nurse. O holy friar, O, tell me, holy friar\n    Where is my lady\'s lord, where\'s Romeo?\n  Friar. There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.\n  Nurse. O, he is even in my mistress\' case,\n    Just in her case!\n  Friar. O woeful sympathy!\n    Piteous predicament!\n  Nurse. Even so lies she,  \n    Blubb\'ring and weeping, weeping and blubbering.\n    Stand up, stand up! Stand, an you be a man.\n    For Juliet\'s sake, for her sake, rise and stand!\n    Why should you fall into so deep an O?\n  Rom. (rises) Nurse-\n  Nurse. Ah sir! ah sir! Well, death\'s the end of all.\n  Rom. Spakest thou of Juliet? How is it with her?\n    Doth not she think me an old murtherer,\n    Now I have stain\'d the childhood of our joy\n    With blood remov\'d but little from her own?\n    Where is she? and how doth she! and what says\n    My conceal\'d lady to our cancell\'d love?\n  Nurse. O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps;\n    And now falls on her bed, and then starts up,\n    And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries,\n    And then down falls again.\n  Rom. As if that name,\n    Shot from the deadly level of a gun,\n    Did murther her; as that name\'s cursed hand\n    Murder\'d her kinsman. O, tell me, friar, tell me,  \n    In what vile part of this anatomy\n    Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sack\n    The hateful mansion.                     [Draws his dagger.]\n  Friar. Hold thy desperate hand.\n    Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art;\n    Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote\n    The unreasonable fury of a beast.\n    Unseemly woman in a seeming man!\n    Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!\n    Thou hast amaz\'d me. By my holy order,\n    I thought thy disposition better temper\'d.\n    Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself?\n    And slay thy lady that in thy life lives,\n    By doing damned hate upon thyself?\n    Why railest thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth?\n    Since birth and heaven and earth, all three do meet\n    In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose.\n    Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit,\n    Which, like a usurer, abound\'st in all,\n    And usest none in that true use indeed  \n    Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit.\n    Thy noble shape is but a form of wax\n    Digressing from the valour of a man;\n    Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,\n    Killing that love which thou hast vow\'d to cherish;\n    Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,\n    Misshapen in the conduct of them both,\n    Like powder in a skilless soldier\'s flask,\n    is get afire by thine own ignorance,\n    And thou dismemb\'red with thine own defence.\n    What, rouse thee, man! Thy Juliet is alive,\n    For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead.\n    There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee,\n    But thou slewest Tybalt. There art thou happy too.\n    The law, that threat\'ned death, becomes thy friend\n    And turns it to exile. There art thou happy.\n    A pack of blessings light upon thy back;\n    Happiness courts thee in her best array;\n    But, like a misbhav\'d and sullen wench,\n    Thou pout\'st upon thy fortune and thy love.  \n    Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.\n    Go get thee to thy love, as was decreed,\n    Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her.\n    But look thou stay not till the watch be set,\n    For then thou canst not pass to Mantua,\n    Where thou shalt live till we can find a time\n    To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,\n    Beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back\n    With twenty hundred thousand times more joy\n    Than thou went\'st forth in lamentation.\n    Go before, nurse. Commend me to thy lady,\n    And bid her hasten all the house to bed,\n    Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto.\n    Romeo is coming.\n  Nurse. O Lord, I could have stay\'d here all the night\n    To hear good counsel. O, what learning is!\n    My lord, I\'ll tell my lady you will come.\n  Rom. Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide.\n  Nurse. Here is a ring she bid me give you, sir.\n    Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.           Exit.  \n  Rom. How well my comfort is reviv\'d by this!\n  Friar. Go hence; good night; and here stands all your state:\n    Either be gone before the watch be set,\n    Or by the break of day disguis\'d from hence.\n    Sojourn in Mantua. I\'ll find out your man,\n    And he shall signify from time to time\n    Every good hap to you that chances here.\n    Give me thy hand. \'Tis late. Farewell; good night.\n  Rom. But that a joy past joy calls out on me,\n    It were a grief so brief to part with thee.\n    Farewell.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nCapulet\'s house\n\nEnter Old Capulet, his Wife, and Paris.\n\n  Cap. Things have fall\'n out, sir, so unluckily\n    That we have had no time to move our daughter.\n    Look you, she lov\'d her kinsman Tybalt dearly,\n    And so did I. Well, we were born to die.\n    \'Tis very late; she\'ll not come down to-night.\n    I promise you, but for your company,\n    I would have been abed an hour ago.\n  Par. These times of woe afford no tune to woo.\n    Madam, good night. Commend me to your daughter.\n  Lady. I will, and know her mind early to-morrow;\n    To-night she\'s mew\'d up to her heaviness.\n  Cap. Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender\n    Of my child\'s love. I think she will be rul\'d\n    In all respects by me; nay more, I doubt it not.\n    Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed;\n    Acquaint her here of my son Paris\' love\n    And bid her (mark you me?) on Wednesday next-  \n    But, soft! what day is this?\n  Par. Monday, my lord.\n  Cap. Monday! ha, ha! Well, Wednesday is too soon.\n    Thursday let it be- a Thursday, tell her\n    She shall be married to this noble earl.\n    Will you be ready? Do you like this haste?\n    We\'ll keep no great ado- a friend or two;\n    For hark you, Tybalt being slain so late,\n    It may be thought we held him carelessly,\n    Being our kinsman, if we revel much.\n    Therefore we\'ll have some half a dozen friends,\n    And there an end. But what say you to Thursday?\n  Par. My lord, I would that Thursday were to-morrow.\n  Cap. Well, get you gone. A Thursday be it then.\n    Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed;\n    Prepare her, wife, against this wedding day.\n    Farewell, My lord.- Light to my chamber, ho!\n    Afore me, It is so very very late\n    That we may call it early by-and-by.\n    Good night.  \n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nScene V.\nCapulet\'s orchard.\n\nEnter Romeo and Juliet aloft, at the Window.\n\n  Jul. Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.\n    It was the nightingale, and not the lark,\n    That pierc\'d the fearful hollow of thine ear.\n    Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree.\n    Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.\n  Rom. It was the lark, the herald of the morn;\n    No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks\n    Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East.\n    Night\'s candles are burnt out, and jocund day\n    Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.\n    I must be gone and live, or stay and die.\n  Jul. Yond light is not daylight; I know it, I.\n    It is some meteor that the sun exhales\n    To be to thee this night a torchbearer\n    And light thee on the way to Mantua.\n    Therefore stay yet; thou need\'st not to be gone.\n  Rom. Let me be ta\'en, let me be put to death.  \n    I am content, so thou wilt have it so.\n    I\'ll say yon grey is not the morning\'s eye,\n    \'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia\'s brow;\n    Nor that is not the lark whose notes do beat\n    The vaulty heaven so high above our heads.\n    I have more care to stay than will to go.\n    Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.\n    How is\'t, my soul? Let\'s talk; it is not day.\n  Jul. It is, it is! Hie hence, be gone, away!\n    It is the lark that sings so out of tune,\n    Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.\n    Some say the lark makes sweet division;\n    This doth not so, for she divideth us.\n    Some say the lark and loathed toad chang\'d eyes;\n    O, now I would they had chang\'d voices too,\n    Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,\n    Hunting thee hence with hunt\'s-up to the day!\n    O, now be gone! More light and light it grows.\n  Rom. More light and light- more dark and dark our woes!\n  \n                          Enter Nurse.\n\n  Nurse. Madam!\n  Jul. Nurse?\n  Nurse. Your lady mother is coming to your chamber.\n    The day is broke; be wary, look about.\n  Jul. Then, window, let day in, and let life out.\n                                                         [Exit.]\n  Rom. Farewell, farewell! One kiss, and I\'ll descend.\n                                                  He goeth down.\n  Jul. Art thou gone so, my lord, my love, my friend?\n    I must hear from thee every day in the hour,\n    For in a minute there are many days.\n    O, by this count I shall be much in years\n    Ere I again behold my Romeo!\n  Rom. Farewell!\n    I will omit no opportunity\n    That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.\n  Jul. O, think\'st thou we shall ever meet again?\n  Rom. I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve  \n    For sweet discourses in our time to come.\n  Jul. O God, I have an ill-divining soul!\n    Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,\n    As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.\n    Either my eyesight fails, or thou look\'st pale.\n  Rom. And trust me, love, in my eye so do you.\n    Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu!\nExit.\n  Jul. O Fortune, Fortune! all men call thee fickle.\n    If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him\n    That is renown\'d for faith? Be fickle, Fortune,\n    For then I hope thou wilt not keep him long\n    But send him back.\n  Lady. [within] Ho, daughter! are you up?\n  Jul. Who is\'t that calls? It is my lady mother.\n    Is she not down so late, or up so early?\n    What unaccustom\'d cause procures her hither?\n\n                       Enter Mother.\n  \n  Lady. Why, how now, Juliet?\n  Jul. Madam, I am not well.\n  Lady. Evermore weeping for your cousin\'s death?\n    What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?\n    An if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live.\n    Therefore have done. Some grief shows much of love;\n    But much of grief shows still some want of wit.\n  Jul. Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.\n  Lady. So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend\n    Which you weep for.\n  Jul. Feeling so the loss,\n    I cannot choose but ever weep the friend.\n  Lady. Well, girl, thou weep\'st not so much for his death\n    As that the villain lives which slaughter\'d him.\n  Jul. What villain, madam?\n  Lady. That same villain Romeo.\n  Jul. [aside] Villain and he be many miles asunder.-\n    God pardon him! I do, with all my heart;\n    And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.\n  Lady. That is because the traitor murderer lives.  \n  Jul. Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands.\n    Would none but I might venge my cousin\'s death!\n  Lady. We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not.\n    Then weep no more. I\'ll send to one in Mantua,\n    Where that same banish\'d runagate doth live,\n    Shall give him such an unaccustom\'d dram\n    That he shall soon keep Tybalt company;\n    And then I hope thou wilt be satisfied.\n  Jul. Indeed I never shall be satisfied\n    With Romeo till I behold him- dead-\n    Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vex\'d.\n    Madam, if you could find out but a man\n    To bear a poison, I would temper it;\n    That Romeo should, upon receipt thereof,\n    Soon sleep in quiet. O, how my heart abhors\n    To hear him nam\'d and cannot come to him,\n    To wreak the love I bore my cousin Tybalt\n    Upon his body that hath slaughter\'d him!\n  Lady. Find thou the means, and I\'ll find such a man.\n    But now I\'ll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.  \n  Jul. And joy comes well in such a needy time.\n    What are they, I beseech your ladyship?\n  Lady. Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child;\n    One who, to put thee from thy heaviness,\n    Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy\n    That thou expects not nor I look\'d not for.\n  Jul. Madam, in happy time! What day is that?\n  Lady. Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn\n    The gallant, young, and noble gentleman,\n    The County Paris, at Saint Peter\'s Church,\n    Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.\n  Jul. Now by Saint Peter\'s Church, and Peter too,\n    He shall not make me there a joyful bride!\n    I wonder at this haste, that I must wed\n    Ere he that should be husband comes to woo.\n    I pray you tell my lord and father, madam,\n    I will not marry yet; and when I do, I swear\n    It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate,\n    Rather than Paris. These are news indeed!\n  Lady. Here comes your father. Tell him so yourself,  \n    And see how be will take it at your hands.\n\n                   Enter Capulet and Nurse.\n\n  Cap. When the sun sets the air doth drizzle dew,\n    But for the sunset of my brother\'s son\n    It rains downright.\n    How now? a conduit, girl? What, still in tears?\n    Evermore show\'ring? In one little body\n    Thou counterfeit\'st a bark, a sea, a wind:\n    For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,\n    Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is\n    Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs,\n    Who, raging with thy tears and they with them,\n    Without a sudden calm will overset\n    Thy tempest-tossed body. How now, wife?\n    Have you delivered to her our decree?\n  Lady. Ay, sir; but she will none, she gives you thanks.\n    I would the fool were married to her grave!\n  Cap. Soft! take me with you, take me with you, wife.  \n    How? Will she none? Doth she not give us thanks?\n    Is she not proud? Doth she not count her blest,\n    Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought\n    So worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom?\n  Jul. Not proud you have, but thankful that you have.\n    Proud can I never be of what I hate,\n    But thankful even for hate that is meant love.\n  Cap. How, how, how, how, choplogic? What is this?\n    \'Proud\'- and \'I thank you\'- and \'I thank you not\'-\n    And yet \'not proud\'? Mistress minion you,\n    Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds,\n    But fettle your fine joints \'gainst Thursday next\n    To go with Paris to Saint Peter\'s Church,\n    Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.\n    Out, you green-sickness carrion I out, you baggage!\n    You tallow-face!\n  Lady. Fie, fie! what, are you mad?\n  Jul. Good father, I beseech you on my knees,\n    Hear me with patience but to speak a word.\n  Cap. Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch!  \n    I tell thee what- get thee to church a Thursday\n    Or never after look me in the face.\n    Speak not, reply not, do not answer me!\n    My fingers itch. Wife, we scarce thought us blest\n    That God had lent us but this only child;\n    But now I see this one is one too much,\n    And that we have a curse in having her.\n    Out on her, hilding!\n  Nurse. God in heaven bless her!\n    You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.\n  Cap. And why, my Lady Wisdom? Hold your tongue,\n    Good Prudence. Smatter with your gossips, go!\n  Nurse. I speak no treason.\n  Cap. O, God-i-god-en!\n  Nurse. May not one speak?\n  Cap. Peace, you mumbling fool!\n    Utter your gravity o\'er a gossip\'s bowl,\n    For here we need it not.\n  Lady. You are too hot.\n  Cap. God\'s bread I it makes me mad. Day, night, late, early,  \n    At home, abroad, alone, in company,\n    Waking or sleeping, still my care hath been\n    To have her match\'d; and having now provided\n    A gentleman of princely parentage,\n    Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train\'d,\n    Stuff\'d, as they say, with honourable parts,\n    Proportion\'d as one\'s thought would wish a man-\n    And then to have a wretched puling fool,\n    A whining mammet, in her fortune\'s tender,\n    To answer \'I\'ll not wed, I cannot love;\n    I am too young, I pray you pardon me\'!\n    But, an you will not wed, I\'ll pardon you.\n    Graze where you will, you shall not house with me.\n    Look to\'t, think on\'t; I do not use to jest.\n    Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise:\n    An you be mine, I\'ll give you to my friend;\n    An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets,\n    For, by my soul, I\'ll ne\'er acknowledge thee,\n    Nor what is mine shall never do thee good.\n    Trust to\'t. Bethink you. I\'ll not be forsworn.         Exit.  \n  Jul. Is there no pity sitting in the clouds\n    That sees into the bottom of my grief?\n    O sweet my mother, cast me not away!\n    Delay this marriage for a month, a week;\n    Or if you do not, make the bridal bed\n    In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.\n  Lady. Talk not to me, for I\'ll not speak a word.\n    Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.            Exit.\n  Jul. O God!- O nurse, how shall this be prevented?\n    My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven.\n    How shall that faith return again to earth\n    Unless that husband send it me from heaven\n    By leaving earth? Comfort me, counsel me.\n    Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems\n    Upon so soft a subject as myself!\n    What say\'st thou? Hast thou not a word of joy?\n    Some comfort, nurse.\n  Nurse. Faith, here it is.\n    Romeo is banish\'d; and all the world to nothing\n    That he dares ne\'er come back to challenge you;  \n    Or if he do, it needs must be by stealth.\n    Then, since the case so stands as now it doth,\n    I think it best you married with the County.\n    O, he\'s a lovely gentleman!\n    Romeo\'s a dishclout to him. An eagle, madam,\n    Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye\n    As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,\n    I think you are happy in this second match,\n    For it excels your first; or if it did not,\n    Your first is dead- or \'twere as good he were\n    As living here and you no use of him.\n  Jul. Speak\'st thou this from thy heart?\n  Nurse. And from my soul too; else beshrew them both.\n  Jul. Amen!\n  Nurse. What?\n  Jul. Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much.\n    Go in; and tell my lady I am gone,\n    Having displeas\'d my father, to Laurence\' cell,\n    To make confession and to be absolv\'d.\n  Nurse. Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.           Exit.  \n  Jul. Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!\n    Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn,\n    Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue\n    Which she hath prais\'d him with above compare\n    So many thousand times? Go, counsellor!\n    Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.\n    I\'ll to the friar to know his remedy.\n    If all else fail, myself have power to die.            Exit.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. Scene I.\nFriar Laurence\'s cell.\n\nEnter Friar, [Laurence] and County Paris.\n\n  Friar. On Thursday, sir? The time is very short.\n  Par. My father Capulet will have it so,\n    And I am nothing slow to slack his haste.\n  Friar. You say you do not know the lady\'s mind.\n    Uneven is the course; I like it not.\n  Par. Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt\'s death,\n    And therefore have I little talk\'d of love;\n    For Venus smiles not in a house of tears.\n    Now, sir, her father counts it dangerous\n    That she do give her sorrow so much sway,\n    And in his wisdom hastes our marriage\n    To stop the inundation of her tears,\n    Which, too much minded by herself alone,\n    May be put from her by society.\n    Now do you know the reason of this haste.\n  Friar. [aside] I would I knew not why it should be slow\'d.-\n    Look, sir, here comes the lady toward my cell.  \n\n                    Enter Juliet.\n\n  Par. Happily met, my lady and my wife!\n  Jul. That may be, sir, when I may be a wife.\n  Par. That may be must be, love, on Thursday next.\n  Jul. What must be shall be.\n  Friar. That\'s a certain text.\n  Par. Come you to make confession to this father?\n  Jul. To answer that, I should confess to you.\n  Par. Do not deny to him that you love me.\n  Jul. I will confess to you that I love him.\n  Par. So will ye, I am sure, that you love me.\n  Jul. If I do so, it will be of more price,\n    Being spoke behind your back, than to your face.\n  Par. Poor soul, thy face is much abus\'d with tears.\n  Jul. The tears have got small victory by that,\n    For it was bad enough before their spite.\n  Par. Thou wrong\'st it more than tears with that report.\n  Jul. That is no slander, sir, which is a truth;  \n    And what I spake, I spake it to my face.\n  Par. Thy face is mine, and thou hast sland\'red it.\n  Jul. It may be so, for it is not mine own.\n    Are you at leisure, holy father, now,\n    Or shall I come to you at evening mass\n  Friar. My leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now.\n    My lord, we must entreat the time alone.\n  Par. God shield I should disturb devotion!\n    Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse ye.\n    Till then, adieu, and keep this holy kiss.             Exit.\n  Jul. O, shut the door! and when thou hast done so,\n    Come weep with me- past hope, past cure, past help!\n  Friar. Ah, Juliet, I already know thy grief;\n    It strains me past the compass of my wits.\n    I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it,\n    On Thursday next be married to this County.\n  Jul. Tell me not, friar, that thou hear\'st of this,\n    Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it.\n    If in thy wisdom thou canst give no help,\n    Do thou but call my resolution wise  \n    And with this knife I\'ll help it presently.\n    God join\'d my heart and Romeo\'s, thou our hands;\n    And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo\'s seal\'d,\n    Shall be the label to another deed,\n    Or my true heart with treacherous revolt\n    Turn to another, this shall slay them both.\n    Therefore, out of thy long-experienc\'d time,\n    Give me some present counsel; or, behold,\n    \'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife\n    Shall play the empire, arbitrating that\n    Which the commission of thy years and art\n    Could to no issue of true honour bring.\n    Be not so long to speak. I long to die\n    If what thou speak\'st speak not of remedy.\n  Friar. Hold, daughter. I do spy a kind of hope,\n    Which craves as desperate an execution\n    As that is desperate which we would prevent.\n    If, rather than to marry County Paris\n    Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself,\n    Then is it likely thou wilt undertake  \n    A thing like death to chide away this shame,\n    That cop\'st with death himself to scape from it;\n    And, if thou dar\'st, I\'ll give thee remedy.\n  Jul. O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,\n    From off the battlements of yonder tower,\n    Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk\n    Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears,\n    Or shut me nightly in a charnel house,\n    O\'ercover\'d quite with dead men\'s rattling bones,\n    With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls;\n    Or bid me go into a new-made grave\n    And hide me with a dead man in his shroud-\n    Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble-\n    And I will do it without fear or doubt,\n    To live an unstain\'d wife to my sweet love.\n  Friar. Hold, then. Go home, be merry, give consent\n    To marry Paris. Wednesday is to-morrow.\n    To-morrow night look that thou lie alone;\n    Let not the nurse lie with thee in thy chamber.\n    Take thou this vial, being then in bed,  \n    And this distilled liquor drink thou off;\n    When presently through all thy veins shall run\n    A cold and drowsy humour; for no pulse\n    Shall keep his native progress, but surcease;\n    No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest;\n    The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade\n    To paly ashes, thy eyes\' windows fall\n    Like death when he shuts up the day of life;\n    Each part, depriv\'d of supple government,\n    Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death;\n    And in this borrowed likeness of shrunk death\n    Thou shalt continue two-and-forty hours,\n    And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.\n    Now, when the bridegroom in the morning comes\n    To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead.\n    Then, as the manner of our country is,\n    In thy best robes uncovered on the bier\n    Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault\n    Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.\n    In the mean time, against thou shalt awake,  \n    Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift;\n    And hither shall he come; and he and I\n    Will watch thy waking, and that very night\n    Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua.\n    And this shall free thee from this present shame,\n    If no inconstant toy nor womanish fear\n    Abate thy valour in the acting it.\n  Jul. Give me, give me! O, tell not me of fear!\n  Friar. Hold! Get you gone, be strong and prosperous\n    In this resolve. I\'ll send a friar with speed\n    To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord.\n  Jul. Love give me strength! and strength shall help afford.\n    Farewell, dear father.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nCapulet\'s house.\n\nEnter Father Capulet, Mother, Nurse, and Servingmen,\n                        two or three.\n\n  Cap. So many guests invite as here are writ.\n                                            [Exit a Servingman.]\n    Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.\n  Serv. You shall have none ill, sir; for I\'ll try if they can lick\n    their fingers.\n  Cap. How canst thou try them so?\n  Serv. Marry, sir, \'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own\n    fingers. Therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes not with\n    me.\n  Cap. Go, begone.\n                                                Exit Servingman.\n    We shall be much unfurnish\'d for this time.\n    What, is my daughter gone to Friar Laurence?\n  Nurse. Ay, forsooth.\n  Cap. Well, be may chance to do some good on her.\n    A peevish self-will\'d harlotry it is.  \n\n                        Enter Juliet.\n\n  Nurse. See where she comes from shrift with merry look.\n  Cap. How now, my headstrong? Where have you been gadding?\n  Jul. Where I have learnt me to repent the sin\n    Of disobedient opposition\n    To you and your behests, and am enjoin\'d\n    By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here\n    To beg your pardon. Pardon, I beseech you!\n    Henceforward I am ever rul\'d by you.\n  Cap. Send for the County. Go tell him of this.\n    I\'ll have this knot knit up to-morrow morning.\n  Jul. I met the youthful lord at Laurence\' cell\n    And gave him what becomed love I might,\n    Not stepping o\'er the bounds of modesty.\n  Cap. Why, I am glad on\'t. This is well. Stand up.\n    This is as\'t should be. Let me see the County.\n    Ay, marry, go, I say, and fetch him hither.\n    Now, afore God, this reverend holy friar,  \n    All our whole city is much bound to him.\n  Jul. Nurse, will you go with me into my closet\n    To help me sort such needful ornaments\n    As you think fit to furnish me to-morrow?\n  Mother. No, not till Thursday. There is time enough.\n  Cap. Go, nurse, go with her. We\'ll to church to-morrow.\n                                        Exeunt Juliet and Nurse.\n  Mother. We shall be short in our provision.\n    \'Tis now near night.\n  Cap. Tush, I will stir about,\n    And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife.\n    Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her.\n    I\'ll not to bed to-night; let me alone.\n    I\'ll play the housewife for this once. What, ho!\n    They are all forth; well, I will walk myself\n    To County Paris, to prepare him up\n    Against to-morrow. My heart is wondrous light,\n    Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim\'d.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nJuliet\'s chamber.\n\nEnter Juliet and Nurse.\n\n  Jul. Ay, those attires are best; but, gentle nurse,\n    I pray thee leave me to myself to-night;\n    For I have need of many orisons\n    To move the heavens to smile upon my state,\n    Which, well thou knowest, is cross and full of sin.\n\n                          Enter Mother.\n\n  Mother. What, are you busy, ho? Need you my help?\n  Jul. No, madam; we have cull\'d such necessaries\n    As are behooffull for our state to-morrow.\n    So please you, let me now be left alone,\n    And let the nurse this night sit up with you;\n    For I am sure you have your hands full all\n    In this so sudden business.\n  Mother. Good night.\n    Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need.  \n                                      Exeunt [Mother and Nurse.]\n  Jul. Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again.\n    I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins\n    That almost freezes up the heat of life.\n    I\'ll call them back again to comfort me.\n    Nurse!- What should she do here?\n    My dismal scene I needs must act alone.\n    Come, vial.\n    What if this mixture do not work at all?\n    Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?\n    No, No! This shall forbid it. Lie thou there.\n                                             Lays down a dagger.\n    What if it be a poison which the friar\n    Subtilly hath minist\'red to have me dead,\n    Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour\'d\n    Because he married me before to Romeo?\n    I fear it is; and yet methinks it should not,\n    For he hath still been tried a holy man.\n    I will not entertain so bad a thought.\n    How if, when I am laid into the tomb,  \n    I wake before the time that Romeo\n    Come to redeem me? There\'s a fearful point!\n    Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,\n    To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,\n    And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?\n    Or, if I live, is it not very like\n    The horrible conceit of death and night,\n    Together with the terror of the place-\n    As in a vault, an ancient receptacle\n    Where for this many hundred years the bones\n    Of all my buried ancestors are pack\'d;\n    Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,\n    Lies fest\'ring in his shroud; where, as they say,\n    At some hours in the night spirits resort-\n    Alack, alack, is it not like that I,\n    So early waking- what with loathsome smells,\n    And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,\n    That living mortals, hearing them, run mad-\n    O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,\n    Environed with all these hideous fears,  \n    And madly play with my forefathers\' joints,\n    And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud.,\n    And, in this rage, with some great kinsman\'s bone\n    As with a club dash out my desp\'rate brains?\n    O, look! methinks I see my cousin\'s ghost\n    Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body\n    Upon a rapier\'s point. Stay, Tybalt, stay!\n    Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.\n\n        She [drinks and] falls upon her bed within the curtains.\n\n\n\n\nScene IV.\nCapulet\'s house.\n\nEnter Lady of the House and Nurse.\n\n  Lady. Hold, take these keys and fetch more spices, nurse.\n  Nurse. They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.\n\n                       Enter Old Capulet.\n\n  Cap. Come, stir, stir, stir! The second cock hath crow\'d,\n    The curfew bell hath rung, \'tis three o\'clock.\n    Look to the bak\'d meats, good Angelica;\n    Spare not for cost.\n  Nurse. Go, you cot-quean, go,\n    Get you to bed! Faith, you\'ll be sick to-morrow\n    For this night\'s watching.\n  Cap. No, not a whit. What, I have watch\'d ere now\n    All night for lesser cause, and ne\'er been sick.\n  Lady. Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time;\n    But I will watch you from such watching now.\n                                          Exeunt Lady and Nurse.  \n  Cap. A jealous hood, a jealous hood!\n\n  Enter three or four [Fellows, with spits and logs and baskets.\n\n    What is there? Now, fellow,\n  Fellow. Things for the cook, sir; but I know not what.\n  Cap. Make haste, make haste. [Exit Fellow.] Sirrah, fetch drier\n      logs.\n    Call Peter; he will show thee where they are.\n  Fellow. I have a head, sir, that will find out logs\n    And never trouble Peter for the matter.\n  Cap. Mass, and well said; a merry whoreson, ha!\n    Thou shalt be loggerhead. [Exit Fellow.] Good faith, \'tis day.\n    The County will be here with music straight,\n    For so he said he would.                         Play music.\n    I hear him near.\n    Nurse! Wife! What, ho! What, nurse, I say!\n\n                              Enter Nurse.  \n    Go waken Juliet; go and trim her up.\n    I\'ll go and chat with Paris. Hie, make haste,\n    Make haste! The bridegroom he is come already:\n    Make haste, I say.\n                                                       [Exeunt.]\n\n\n\n\nScene V.\nJuliet\'s chamber.\n\n[Enter Nurse.]\n\n  Nurse. Mistress! what, mistress! Juliet! Fast, I warrant her, she.\n    Why, lamb! why, lady! Fie, you slug-abed!\n    Why, love, I say! madam! sweetheart! Why, bride!\n    What, not a word? You take your pennyworths now!\n    Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant,\n    The County Paris hath set up his rest\n    That you shall rest but little. God forgive me!\n    Marry, and amen. How sound is she asleep!\n    I needs must wake her. Madam, madam, madam!\n    Ay, let the County take you in your bed!\n    He\'ll fright you up, i\' faith. Will it not be?\n                                     [Draws aside the curtains.]\n    What, dress\'d, and in your clothes, and down again?\n    I must needs wake you. Lady! lady! lady!\n    Alas, alas! Help, help! My lady\'s dead!\n    O weraday that ever I was born!\n    Some aqua-vitae, ho! My lord! my lady!  \n\n                           Enter Mother.\n\n  Mother. What noise is here?\n  Nurse. O lamentable day!\n  Mother. What is the matter?\n  Nurse. Look, look! O heavy day!\n  Mother. O me, O me! My child, my only life!\n    Revive, look up, or I will die with thee!\n    Help, help! Call help.\n\n                            Enter Father.\n\n  Father. For shame, bring Juliet forth; her lord is come.\n  Nurse. She\'s dead, deceas\'d; she\'s dead! Alack the day!\n  Mother. Alack the day, she\'s dead, she\'s dead, she\'s dead!\n  Cap. Ha! let me see her. Out alas! she\'s cold,\n    Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;\n    Life and these lips have long been separated.\n    Death lies on her like an untimely frost  \n    Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.\n  Nurse. O lamentable day!\n  Mother. O woful time!\n  Cap. Death, that hath ta\'en her hence to make me wail,\n    Ties up my tongue and will not let me speak.\n\n  Enter Friar [Laurence] and the County [Paris], with Musicians.\n\n  Friar. Come, is the bride ready to go to church?\n  Cap. Ready to go, but never to return.\n    O son, the night before thy wedding day\n    Hath Death lain with thy wife. See, there she lies,\n    Flower as she was, deflowered by him.\n    Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir;\n    My daughter he hath wedded. I will die\n    And leave him all. Life, living, all is Death\'s.\n  Par. Have I thought long to see this morning\'s face,\n    And doth it give me such a sight as this?\n  Mother. Accurs\'d, unhappy, wretched, hateful day!\n    Most miserable hour that e\'er time saw  \n    In lasting labour of his pilgrimage!\n    But one, poor one, one poor and loving child,\n    But one thing to rejoice and solace in,\n    And cruel Death hath catch\'d it from my sight!\n  Nurse. O woe? O woful, woful, woful day!\n    Most lamentable day, most woful day\n    That ever ever I did yet behold!\n    O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!\n    Never was seen so black a day as this.\n    O woful day! O woful day!\n  Par. Beguil\'d, divorced, wronged, spited, slain!\n    Most detestable Death, by thee beguil\'d,\n    By cruel cruel thee quite overthrown!\n    O love! O life! not life, but love in death\n  Cap. Despis\'d, distressed, hated, martyr\'d, kill\'d!\n    Uncomfortable time, why cam\'st thou now\n    To murther, murther our solemnity?\n    O child! O child! my soul, and not my child!\n    Dead art thou, dead! alack, my child is dead,\n    And with my child my joys are buried!  \n  Friar. Peace, ho, for shame! Confusion\'s cure lives not\n    In these confusions. Heaven and yourself\n    Had part in this fair maid! now heaven hath all,\n    And all the better is it for the maid.\n    Your part in her you could not keep from death,\n    But heaven keeps his part in eternal life.\n    The most you sought was her promotion,\n    For \'twas your heaven she should be advanc\'d;\n    And weep ye now, seeing she is advanc\'d\n    Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?\n    O, in this love, you love your child so ill\n    That you run mad, seeing that she is well.\n    She\'s not well married that lives married long,\n    But she\'s best married that dies married young.\n    Dry up your tears and stick your rosemary\n    On this fair corse, and, as the custom is,\n    In all her best array bear her to church;\n    For though fond nature bids us all lament,\n    Yet nature\'s tears are reason\'s merriment.\n  Cap. All things that we ordained festival  \n    Turn from their office to black funeral-\n    Our instruments to melancholy bells,\n    Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast;\n    Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change;\n    Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse;\n    And all things change them to the contrary.\n  Friar. Sir, go you in; and, madam, go with him;\n    And go, Sir Paris. Every one prepare\n    To follow this fair corse unto her grave.\n    The heavens do low\'r upon you for some ill;\n    Move them no more by crossing their high will.\n                           Exeunt. Manent Musicians [and Nurse].\n  1. Mus. Faith, we may put up our pipes and be gone.\n  Nurse. Honest good fellows, ah, put up, put up!\n    For well you know this is a pitiful case.            [Exit.]\n  1. Mus. Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended.\n\n                         Enter Peter.\n\n  Pet. Musicians, O, musicians, \'Heart\'s ease,\' \'Heart\'s ease\'!  \n    O, an you will have me live, play \'Heart\'s ease.\'\n  1. Mus. Why \'Heart\'s ease\'\',\n  Pet. O, musicians, because my heart itself plays \'My heart is full\n    of woe.\' O, play me some merry dump to comfort me.\n  1. Mus. Not a dump we! \'Tis no time to play now.\n  Pet. You will not then?\n  1. Mus. No.\n  Pet. I will then give it you soundly.\n  1. Mus. What will you give us?\n  Pet. No money, on my faith, but the gleek. I will give you the\n     minstrel.\n  1. Mus. Then will I give you the serving-creature.\n  Pet. Then will I lay the serving-creature\'s dagger on your pate.\n    I will carry no crotchets. I\'ll re you, I\'ll fa you. Do you note\n    me?\n  1. Mus. An you re us and fa us, you note us.\n  2. Mus. Pray you put up your dagger, and put out your wit.\n  Pet. Then have at you with my wit! I will dry-beat you with an iron\n    wit, and put up my iron dagger. Answer me like men.\n  \n           \'When griping grief the heart doth wound,\n             And doleful dumps the mind oppress,\n           Then music with her silver sound\'-\n\n    Why \'silver sound\'? Why \'music with her silver sound\'?\n    What say you, Simon Catling?\n  1. Mus. Marry, sir, because silver hath a sweet sound.\n  Pet. Pretty! What say You, Hugh Rebeck?\n  2. Mus. I say \'silver sound\' because musicians sound for silver.\n  Pet. Pretty too! What say you, James Soundpost?\n  3. Mus. Faith, I know not what to say.\n  Pet. O, I cry you mercy! you are the singer. I will say for you. It\n    is \'music with her silver sound\' because musicians have no gold\n    for sounding.\n\n           \'Then music with her silver sound\n             With speedy help doth lend redress.\'         [Exit.\n\n  1. Mus. What a pestilent knave is this same?\n  2. Mus. Hang him, Jack! Come, we\'ll in here, tarry for the  \n    mourners, and stay dinner.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. Scene I.\nMantua. A street.\n\nEnter Romeo.\n\n  Rom. If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep\n    My dreams presage some joyful news at hand.\n    My bosom\'s lord sits lightly in his throne,\n    And all this day an unaccustom\'d spirit\n    Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.\n    I dreamt my lady came and found me dead\n    (Strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think!)\n    And breath\'d such life with kisses in my lips\n    That I reviv\'d and was an emperor.\n    Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess\'d,\n    When but love\'s shadows are so rich in joy!\n\n                Enter Romeo\'s Man Balthasar, booted.\n\n    News from Verona! How now, Balthasar?\n    Dost thou not bring me letters from the friar?\n    How doth my lady? Is my father well?  \n    How fares my Juliet? That I ask again,\n    For nothing can be ill if she be well.\n  Man. Then she is well, and nothing can be ill.\n    Her body sleeps in Capel\'s monument,\n    And her immortal part with angels lives.\n    I saw her laid low in her kindred\'s vault\n    And presently took post to tell it you.\n    O, pardon me for bringing these ill news,\n    Since you did leave it for my office, sir.\n  Rom. Is it e\'en so? Then I defy you, stars!\n    Thou knowest my lodging. Get me ink and paper\n    And hire posthorses. I will hence to-night.\n  Man. I do beseech you, sir, have patience.\n    Your looks are pale and wild and do import\n    Some misadventure.\n  Rom. Tush, thou art deceiv\'d.\n    Leave me and do the thing I bid thee do.\n    Hast thou no letters to me from the friar?\n  Man. No, my good lord.\n  Rom. No matter. Get thee gone  \n    And hire those horses. I\'ll be with thee straight.\n                                               Exit [Balthasar].\n    Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.\n    Let\'s see for means. O mischief, thou art swift\n    To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!\n    I do remember an apothecary,\n    And hereabouts \'a dwells, which late I noted\n    In tatt\'red weeds, with overwhelming brows,\n    Culling of simples. Meagre were his looks,\n    Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;\n    And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,\n    An alligator stuff\'d, and other skins\n    Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves\n    A beggarly account of empty boxes,\n    Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,\n    Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses\n    Were thinly scattered, to make up a show.\n    Noting this penury, to myself I said,\n    \'An if a man did need a poison now\n    Whose sale is present death in Mantua,  \n    Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.\'\n    O, this same thought did but forerun my need,\n    And this same needy man must sell it me.\n    As I remember, this should be the house.\n    Being holiday, the beggar\'s shop is shut. What, ho! apothecary!\n\n                        Enter Apothecary.\n\n  Apoth. Who calls so loud?\n  Rom. Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor.\n    Hold, there is forty ducats. Let me have\n    A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear\n    As will disperse itself through all the veins\n    That the life-weary taker mall fall dead,\n    And that the trunk may be discharg\'d of breath\n    As violently as hasty powder fir\'d\n    Doth hurry from the fatal cannon\'s womb.\n  Apoth. Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua\'s law\n    Is death to any he that utters them.\n  Rom. Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness  \n    And fearest to die? Famine is in thy cheeks,\n    Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,\n    Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back:\n    The world is not thy friend, nor the world\'s law;\n    The world affords no law to make thee rich;\n    Then be not poor, but break it and take this.\n  Apoth. My poverty but not my will consents.\n  Rom. I pay thy poverty and not thy will.\n  Apoth. Put this in any liquid thing you will\n    And drink it off, and if you had the strength\n    Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.\n  Rom. There is thy gold- worse poison to men\'s souls,\n    Doing more murther in this loathsome world,\n    Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.\n    I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none.\n    Farewell. Buy food and get thyself in flesh.\n    Come, cordial and not poison, go with me\n    To Juliet\'s grave; for there must I use thee.\n                                                         Exeunt.\n\n\n\n\nScene II.\nVerona. Friar Laurence\'s cell.\n\nEnter Friar John to Friar Laurence.\n\n  John. Holy Franciscan friar, brother, ho!\n\n                      Enter Friar Laurence.\n\n  Laur. This same should be the voice of Friar John.\n    Welcome from Mantua. What says Romeo?\n    Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter.\n  John. Going to find a barefoot brother out,\n    One of our order, to associate me\n    Here in this city visiting the sick,\n    And finding him, the searchers of the town,\n    Suspecting that we both were in a house\n    Where the infectious pestilence did reign,\n    Seal\'d up the doors, and would not let us forth,\n    So that my speed to Mantua there was stay\'d.\n  Laur. Who bare my letter, then, to Romeo?\n  John. I could not send it- here it is again-  \n    Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,\n    So fearful were they of infection.\n  Laur. Unhappy fortune! By my brotherhood,\n    The letter was not nice, but full of charge,\n    Of dear import; and the neglecting it\n    May do much danger. Friar John, go hence,\n    Get me an iron crow and bring it straight\n    Unto my cell.\n  John. Brother, I\'ll go and bring it thee.                 Exit.\n  Laur. Now, must I to the monument alone.\n    Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake.\n    She will beshrew me much that Romeo\n    Hath had no notice of these accidents;\n    But I will write again to Mantua,\n    And keep her at my cell till Romeo come-\n    Poor living corse, clos\'d in a dead man\'s tomb!        Exit.\n\n\n\n\nScene III.\nVerona. A churchyard; in it the monument of the Capulets.\n\nEnter Paris and his Page with flowers and [a torch].\n\n  Par. Give me thy torch, boy. Hence, and stand aloof.\n    Yet put it out, for I would not be seen.\n    Under yond yew tree lay thee all along,\n    Holding thine ear close to the hollow ground.\n    So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread\n    (Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves)\n    But thou shalt hear it. Whistle then to me,\n    As signal that thou hear\'st something approach.\n    Give me those flowers. Do as I bid thee, go.\n  Page. [aside] I am almost afraid to stand alone\n    Here in the churchyard; yet I will adventure.     [Retires.]\n  Par. Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew\n    (O woe! thy canopy is dust and stones)\n    Which with sweet water nightly I will dew;\n    Or, wanting that, with tears distill\'d by moans.\n    The obsequies that I for thee will keep\n    Nightly shall be to strew, thy grave and weep.  \n                                                    Whistle Boy.\n    The boy gives warning something doth approach.\n    What cursed foot wanders this way to-night\n    To cross my obsequies and true love\'s rite?\n    What, with a torch? Muffle me, night, awhile.     [Retires.]\n\n       Enter Romeo, and Balthasar with a torch, a mattock,\n                    and a crow of iron.\n\n  Rom. Give me that mattock and the wrenching iron.\n    Hold, take this letter. Early in the morning\n    See thou deliver it to my lord and father.\n    Give me the light. Upon thy life I charge thee,\n    Whate\'er thou hearest or seest, stand all aloof\n    And do not interrupt me in my course.\n    Why I descend into this bed of death\n    Is partly to behold my lady\'s face,\n    But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger\n    A precious ring- a ring that I must use\n    In dear employment. Therefore hence, be gone.  \n    But if thou, jealous, dost return to pry\n    In what I farther shall intend to do,\n    By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint\n    And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs.\n    The time and my intents are savage-wild,\n    More fierce and more inexorable far\n    Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.\n  Bal. I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you.\n  Rom. So shalt thou show me friendship. Take thou that.\n    Live, and be prosperous; and farewell, good fellow.\n  Bal. [aside] For all this same, I\'ll hide me hereabout.\n    His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt.        [Retires.]\n  Rom. Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,\n    Gorg\'d with the dearest morsel of the earth,\n    Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,\n    And in despite I\'ll cram thee with more food.\n                                           Romeo opens the tomb.\n  Par. This is that banish\'d haughty Montague\n    That murd\'red my love\'s cousin- with which grief\n    It is supposed the fair creature died-  \n    And here is come to do some villanous shame\n    To the dead bodies. I will apprehend him.\n    Stop thy unhallowed toil, vile Montague!\n    Can vengeance be pursu\'d further than death?\n    Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee.\n    Obey, and go with me; for thou must die.\n  Rom. I must indeed; and therefore came I hither.\n    Good gentle youth, tempt not a desp\'rate man.\n    Fly hence and leave me. Think upon these gone;\n    Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth,\n    But not another sin upon my head\n    By urging me to fury. O, be gone!\n    By heaven, I love thee better than myself,\n    For I come hither arm\'d against myself.\n    Stay not, be gone. Live, and hereafter say\n    A madman\'s mercy bid thee run away.\n  Par. I do defy thy, conjuration\n    And apprehend thee for a felon here.\n  Rom. Wilt thou provoke me? Then have at thee, boy!\n                                                     They fight.  \n  Page. O Lord, they fight! I will go call the watch.\n                                            [Exit. Paris falls.]\n  Par. O, I am slain! If thou be merciful,\n    Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet.                   [Dies.]\n  Rom. In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face.\n    Mercutio\'s kinsman, noble County Paris!\n    What said my man when my betossed soul\n    Did not attend him as we rode? I think\n    He told me Paris should have married Juliet.\n    Said he not so? or did I dream it so?\n    Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet\n    To think it was so? O, give me thy hand,\n    One writ with me in sour misfortune\'s book!\n    I\'ll bury thee in a triumphant grave.\n    A grave? O, no, a lanthorn, slaught\'red youth,\n    For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes\n    This vault a feasting presence full of light.\n    Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr\'d.\n                                         [Lays him in the tomb.]\n    How oft when men are at the point of death  \n    Have they been merry! which their keepers call\n    A lightning before death. O, how may I\n    Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife!\n    Death, that hath suck\'d the honey of thy breath,\n    Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.\n    Thou art not conquer\'d. Beauty\'s ensign yet\n    Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,\n    And death\'s pale flag is not advanced there.\n    Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?\n    O, what more favour can I do to thee\n    Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain\n    To sunder his that was thine enemy?\n    Forgive me, cousin.\' Ah, dear Juliet,\n    Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe\n    That unsubstantial Death is amorous,\n    And that the lean abhorred monster keeps\n    Thee here in dark to be his paramour?\n    For fear of that I still will stay with thee\n    And never from this palace of dim night\n    Depart again. Here, here will I remain  \n    With worms that are thy chambermaids. O, here\n    Will I set up my everlasting rest\n    And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars\n    From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!\n    Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you\n    The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss\n    A dateless bargain to engrossing death!\n    Come, bitter conduct; come, unsavoury guide!\n    Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on\n    The dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark!\n    Here\'s to my love! [Drinks.] O true apothecary!\n    Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.          Falls.\n\n    Enter Friar [Laurence], with lanthorn, crow, and spade.\n\n  Friar. Saint Francis be my speed! how oft to-night\n    Have my old feet stumbled at graves! Who\'s there?\n  Bal. Here\'s one, a friend, and one that knows you well.\n  Friar. Bliss be upon you! Tell me, good my friend,\n    What torch is yond that vainly lends his light  \n    To grubs and eyeless skulls? As I discern,\n    It burneth in the Capels\' monument.\n  Bal. It doth so, holy sir; and there\'s my master,\n    One that you love.\n  Friar. Who is it?\n  Bal. Romeo.\n  Friar. How long hath he been there?\n  Bal. Full half an hour.\n  Friar. Go with me to the vault.\n  Bal. I dare not, sir.\n    My master knows not but I am gone hence,\n    And fearfully did menace me with death\n    If I did stay to look on his intents.\n  Friar. Stay then; I\'ll go alone. Fear comes upon me.\n    O, much I fear some ill unthrifty thing.\n  Bal. As I did sleep under this yew tree here,\n    I dreamt my master and another fought,\n    And that my master slew him.\n  Friar. Romeo!\n    Alack, alack, what blood is this which stains  \n    The stony entrance of this sepulchre?\n    What mean these masterless and gory swords\n    To lie discolour\'d by this place of peace? [Enters the tomb.]\n    Romeo! O, pale! Who else? What, Paris too?\n    And steep\'d in blood? Ah, what an unkind hour\n    Is guilty of this lamentable chance! The lady stirs.\n                                                   Juliet rises.\n  Jul. O comfortable friar! where is my lord?\n    I do remember well where I should be,\n    And there I am. Where is my Romeo?\n  Friar. I hear some noise. Lady, come from that nest\n    Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep.\n    A greater power than we can contradict\n    Hath thwarted our intents. Come, come away.\n    Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead;\n    And Paris too. Come, I\'ll dispose of thee\n    Among a sisterhood of holy nuns.\n    Stay not to question, for the watch is coming.\n    Come, go, good Juliet. I dare no longer stay.\n  Jul. Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.  \n                                                   Exit [Friar].\n    What\'s here? A cup, clos\'d in my true love\'s hand?\n    Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.\n    O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop\n    To help me after? I will kiss thy lips.\n    Haply some poison yet doth hang on them\n    To make me die with a restorative.             [Kisses him.]\n    Thy lips are warm!\n  Chief Watch. [within] Lead, boy. Which way?\n    Yea, noise? Then I\'ll be brief. O happy dagger!\n                                      [Snatches Romeo\'s dagger.]\n    This is thy sheath; there rest, and let me die.\n                  She stabs herself and falls [on Romeo\'s body].\n\n                Enter [Paris\'s] Boy and Watch.\n\n  Boy. This is the place. There, where the torch doth burn.\n  Chief Watch. \'the ground is bloody. Search about the churchyard.\n    Go, some of you; whoe\'er you find attach.\n                                     [Exeunt some of the Watch.]  \n    Pitiful sight! here lies the County slain;\n    And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,\n    Who here hath lain this two days buried.\n    Go, tell the Prince; run to the Capulets;\n    Raise up the Montagues; some others search.\n                                   [Exeunt others of the Watch.]\n    We see the ground whereon these woes do lie,\n    But the true ground of all these piteous woes\n    We cannot without circumstance descry.\n\n     Enter [some of the Watch,] with Romeo\'s Man [Balthasar].\n\n  2. Watch. Here\'s Romeo\'s man. We found him in the churchyard.\n  Chief Watch. Hold him in safety till the Prince come hither.\n\n          Enter Friar [Laurence] and another Watchman.\n\n  3. Watch. Here is a friar that trembles, sighs, and weeps.\n    We took this mattock and this spade from him\n    As he was coming from this churchyard side.  \n  Chief Watch. A great suspicion! Stay the friar too.\n\n              Enter the Prince [and Attendants].\n\n  Prince. What misadventure is so early up,\n    That calls our person from our morning rest?\n\n            Enter Capulet and his Wife [with others].\n\n  Cap. What should it be, that they so shriek abroad?\n  Wife. The people in the street cry \'Romeo,\'\n    Some \'Juliet,\' and some \'Paris\'; and all run,\n    With open outcry, toward our monument.\n  Prince. What fear is this which startles in our ears?\n  Chief Watch. Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain;\n    And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before,\n    Warm and new kill\'d.\n  Prince. Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.\n  Chief Watch. Here is a friar, and slaughter\'d Romeo\'s man,\n    With instruments upon them fit to open  \n    These dead men\'s tombs.\n  Cap. O heavens! O wife, look how our daughter bleeds!\n    This dagger hath mista\'en, for, lo, his house\n    Is empty on the back of Montague,\n    And it missheathed in my daughter\'s bosom!\n  Wife. O me! this sight of death is as a bell\n    That warns my old age to a sepulchre.\n\n               Enter Montague [and others].\n\n  Prince. Come, Montague; for thou art early up\n    To see thy son and heir more early down.\n  Mon. Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night!\n    Grief of my son\'s exile hath stopp\'d her breath.\n    What further woe conspires against mine age?\n  Prince. Look, and thou shalt see.\n  Mon. O thou untaught! what manners is in this,\n    To press before thy father to a grave?\n  Prince. Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,\n    Till we can clear these ambiguities  \n    And know their spring, their head, their true descent;\n    And then will I be general of your woes\n    And lead you even to death. Meantime forbear,\n    And let mischance be slave to patience.\n    Bring forth the parties of suspicion.\n  Friar. I am the greatest, able to do least,\n    Yet most suspected, as the time and place\n    Doth make against me, of this direful murther;\n    And here I stand, both to impeach and purge\n    Myself condemned and myself excus\'d.\n  Prince. Then say it once what thou dost know in this.\n  Friar. I will be brief, for my short date of breath\n    Is not so long as is a tedious tale.\n    Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;\n    And she, there dead, that Romeo\'s faithful wife.\n    I married them; and their stol\'n marriage day\n    Was Tybalt\'s doomsday, whose untimely death\n    Banish\'d the new-made bridegroom from this city;\n    For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pin\'d.\n    You, to remove that siege of grief from her,  \n    Betroth\'d and would have married her perforce\n    To County Paris. Then comes she to me\n    And with wild looks bid me devise some mean\n    To rid her from this second marriage,\n    Or in my cell there would she kill herself.\n    Then gave I her (so tutored by my art)\n    A sleeping potion; which so took effect\n    As I intended, for it wrought on her\n    The form of death. Meantime I writ to Romeo\n    That he should hither come as this dire night\n    To help to take her from her borrowed grave,\n    Being the time the potion\'s force should cease.\n    But he which bore my letter, Friar John,\n    Was stay\'d by accident, and yesternight\n    Return\'d my letter back. Then all alone\n    At the prefixed hour of her waking\n    Came I to take her from her kindred\'s vault;\n    Meaning to keep her closely at my cell\n    Till I conveniently could send to Romeo.\n    But when I came, some minute ere the time  \n    Of her awaking, here untimely lay\n    The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.\n    She wakes; and I entreated her come forth\n    And bear this work of heaven with patience;\n    But then a noise did scare me from the tomb,\n    And she, too desperate, would not go with me,\n    But, as it seems, did violence on herself.\n    All this I know, and to the marriage\n    Her nurse is privy; and if aught in this\n    Miscarried by my fault, let my old life\n    Be sacrific\'d, some hour before his time,\n    Unto the rigour of severest law.\n  Prince. We still have known thee for a holy man.\n    Where\'s Romeo\'s man? What can he say in this?\n  Bal. I brought my master news of Juliet\'s death;\n    And then in post he came from Mantua\n    To this same place, to this same monument.\n    This letter he early bid me give his father,\n    And threat\'ned me with death, going in the vault,\n    If I departed not and left him there.  \n  Prince. Give me the letter. I will look on it.\n    Where is the County\'s page that rais\'d the watch?\n    Sirrah, what made your master in this place?\n  Boy. He came with flowers to strew his lady\'s grave;\n    And bid me stand aloof, and so I did.\n    Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb;\n    And by-and-by my master drew on him;\n    And then I ran away to call the watch.\n  Prince. This letter doth make good the friar\'s words,\n    Their course of love, the tidings of her death;\n    And here he writes that he did buy a poison\n    Of a poor pothecary, and therewithal\n    Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.\n    Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montage,\n    See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,\n    That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!\n    And I, for winking at you, discords too,\n    Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punish\'d.\n  Cap. O brother Montague, give me thy hand.\n    This is my daughter\'s jointure, for no more  \n    Can I demand.\n  Mon. But I can give thee more;\n    For I will raise her Statue in pure gold,\n    That whiles Verona by that name is known,\n    There shall no figure at such rate be set\n    As that of true and faithful Juliet.\n  Cap. As rich shall Romeo\'s by his lady\'s lie-\n    Poor sacrifices of our enmity!\n  Prince. A glooming peace this morning with it brings.\n    The sun for sorrow will not show his head.\n    Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;\n    Some shall be pardon\'d, and some punished;\n    For never was a story of more woe\n    Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.\n                                                   Exeunt omnes.\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n1594\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE TAMING OF THE SHREW\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n    Persons in the Induction\n  A LORD\n  CHRISTOPHER SLY, a tinker\n  HOSTESS\n  PAGE\n  PLAYERS\n  HUNTSMEN\n  SERVANTS\n\n  BAPTISTA MINOLA, a gentleman of Padua\n  VINCENTIO, a Merchant of Pisa\n  LUCENTIO, son to Vincentio, in love with Bianca\n  PETRUCHIO, a gentleman of Verona, a suitor to Katherina\n\n    Suitors to Bianca\n  GREMIO\n  HORTENSIO\n\n    Servants to Lucentio\n  TRANIO  \n  BIONDELLO\n\n    Servants to Petruchio\n  GRUMIO\n  CURTIS\n\n  A PEDANT\n\n    Daughters to Baptista\n  KATHERINA, the shrew\n  BIANCA\n\n  A WIDOW\n\n  Tailor, Haberdasher, and Servants attending on Baptista and\n    Petruchio\n\n                             SCENE:\n            Padua, and PETRUCHIO\'S house in the country\n\nSC_1\n                      INDUCTION. SCENE I.\n                  Before an alehouse on a heath\n\n                      Enter HOSTESS and SLY\n\n  SLY. I\'ll pheeze you, in faith.\n  HOSTESS. A pair of stocks, you rogue!\n  SLY. Y\'are a baggage; the Slys are no rogues. Look in the\n    chronicles: we came in with Richard Conqueror. Therefore, paucas\n    pallabris; let the world slide. Sessa!\n  HOSTESS. You will not pay for the glasses you have burst?\n  SLY. No, not a denier. Go by, Saint Jeronimy, go to thy cold bed\n    and warm thee.\n  HOSTESS. I know my remedy; I must go fetch the third-borough.\n Exit\n  SLY. Third, or fourth, or fifth borough, I\'ll answer him by law.\n    I\'ll not budge an inch, boy; let him come, and kindly.\n                                                  [Falls asleep]\n\n       Wind horns. Enter a LORD from bunting, with his train\n\n  LORD. Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds;  \n    Brach Merriman, the poor cur, is emboss\'d;\n    And couple Clowder with the deep-mouth\'d brach.\n    Saw\'st thou not, boy, how Silver made it good\n    At the hedge corner, in the coldest fault?\n    I would not lose the dog for twenty pound.\n  FIRST HUNTSMAN. Why, Belman is as good as he, my lord;\n    He cried upon it at the merest loss,\n    And twice to-day pick\'d out the dullest scent;\n    Trust me, I take him for the better dog.\n  LORD. Thou art a fool; if Echo were as fleet,\n    I would esteem him worth a dozen such.\n    But sup them well, and look unto them all;\n    To-morrow I intend to hunt again.\n  FIRST HUNTSMAN. I will, my lord.\n  LORD. What\'s here? One dead, or drunk?\n    See, doth he breathe?\n  SECOND HUNTSMAN. He breathes, my lord. Were he not warm\'d with ale,\n    This were a bed but cold to sleep so soundly.\n  LORD. O monstrous beast, how like a swine he lies!\n    Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!  \n    Sirs, I will practise on this drunken man.\n    What think you, if he were convey\'d to bed,\n    Wrapp\'d in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers,\n    A most delicious banquet by his bed,\n    And brave attendants near him when he wakes,\n    Would not the beggar then forget himself?\n  FIRST HUNTSMAN. Believe me, lord, I think he cannot choose.\n  SECOND HUNTSMAN. It would seem strange unto him when he wak\'d.\n  LORD. Even as a flatt\'ring dream or worthless fancy.\n    Then take him up, and manage well the jest:\n    Carry him gently to my fairest chamber,\n    And hang it round with all my wanton pictures;\n    Balm his foul head in warm distilled waters,\n    And burn sweet wood to make the lodging sweet;\n    Procure me music ready when he wakes,\n    To make a dulcet and a heavenly sound;\n    And if he chance to speak, be ready straight,\n    And with a low submissive reverence\n    Say \'What is it your honour will command?\'\n    Let one attend him with a silver basin  \n    Full of rose-water and bestrew\'d with flowers;\n    Another bear the ewer, the third a diaper,\n    And say \'Will\'t please your lordship cool your hands?\'\n    Some one be ready with a costly suit,\n    And ask him what apparel he will wear;\n    Another tell him of his hounds and horse,\n    And that his lady mourns at his disease;\n    Persuade him that he hath been lunatic,\n    And, when he says he is, say that he dreams,\n    For he is nothing but a mighty lord.\n    This do, and do it kindly, gentle sirs;\n    It will be pastime passing excellent,\n    If it be husbanded with modesty.\n  FIRST HUNTSMAN. My lord, I warrant you we will play our part\n    As he shall think by our true diligence\n    He is no less than what we say he is.\n  LORD. Take him up gently, and to bed with him;\n    And each one to his office when he wakes.\n                          [SLY is carried out. A trumpet sounds]\n    Sirrah, go see what trumpet \'tis that sounds-  \n                                                    Exit SERVANT\n    Belike some noble gentleman that means,\n    Travelling some journey, to repose him here.\n\n                         Re-enter a SERVINGMAN\n\n    How now! who is it?\n  SERVANT. An\'t please your honour, players\n    That offer service to your lordship.\n  LORD. Bid them come near.\n\n                             Enter PLAYERS\n\n    Now, fellows, you are welcome.\n  PLAYERS. We thank your honour.\n  LORD. Do you intend to stay with me to-night?\n  PLAYER. So please your lordship to accept our duty.\n  LORD. With all my heart. This fellow I remember\n    Since once he play\'d a farmer\'s eldest son;\n    \'Twas where you woo\'d the gentlewoman so well.  \n    I have forgot your name; but, sure, that part\n    Was aptly fitted and naturally perform\'d.\n  PLAYER. I think \'twas Soto that your honour means.\n  LORD. \'Tis very true; thou didst it excellent.\n    Well, you are come to me in happy time,\n    The rather for I have some sport in hand\n    Wherein your cunning can assist me much.\n    There is a lord will hear you play to-night;\n    But I am doubtful of your modesties,\n    Lest, over-eying of his odd behaviour,\n    For yet his honour never heard a play,\n    You break into some merry passion\n    And so offend him; for I tell you, sirs,\n    If you should smile, he grows impatient.\n  PLAYER. Fear not, my lord; we can contain ourselves,\n    Were he the veriest antic in the world.\n  LORD. Go, sirrah, take them to the buttery,\n    And give them friendly welcome every one;\n    Let them want nothing that my house affords.\n                                       Exit one with the PLAYERS  \n    Sirrah, go you to Bartholomew my page,\n    And see him dress\'d in all suits like a lady;\n    That done, conduct him to the drunkard\'s chamber,\n    And call him \'madam,\' do him obeisance.\n    Tell him from me- as he will win my love-\n    He bear himself with honourable action,\n    Such as he hath observ\'d in noble ladies\n    Unto their lords, by them accomplished;\n    Such duty to the drunkard let him do,\n    With soft low tongue and lowly courtesy,\n    And say \'What is\'t your honour will command,\n    Wherein your lady and your humble wife\n    May show her duty and make known her love?\'\n    And then with kind embracements, tempting kisses,\n    And with declining head into his bosom,\n    Bid him shed tears, as being overjoyed\n    To see her noble lord restor\'d to health,\n    Who for this seven years hath esteemed him\n    No better than a poor and loathsome beggar.\n    And if the boy have not a woman\'s gift  \n    To rain a shower of commanded tears,\n    An onion will do well for such a shift,\n    Which, in a napkin being close convey\'d,\n    Shall in despite enforce a watery eye.\n    See this dispatch\'d with all the haste thou canst;\n    Anon I\'ll give thee more instructions.     Exit a SERVINGMAN\n    I know the boy will well usurp the grace,\n    Voice, gait, and action, of a gentlewoman;\n    I long to hear him call the drunkard \'husband\';\n    And how my men will stay themselves from laughter\n    When they do homage to this simple peasant.\n    I\'ll in to counsel them; haply my presence\n    May well abate the over-merry spleen,\n    Which otherwise would grow into extremes.             Exeunt\n\nSC_2\n                            SCENE II.\n               A bedchamber in the LORD\'S house\n\n    Enter aloft SLY, with ATTENDANTS; some with apparel, basin\n             and ewer, and other appurtenances; and LORD\n\n  SLY. For God\'s sake, a pot of small ale.\n  FIRST SERVANT. Will\'t please your lordship drink a cup of sack?\n  SECOND SERVANT. Will\'t please your honour taste of these conserves?\n  THIRD SERVANT. What raiment will your honour wear to-day?\n  SLY. I am Christophero Sly; call not me \'honour\' nor \'lordship.\' I\n    ne\'er drank sack in my life; and if you give me any conserves,\n    give me conserves of beef. Ne\'er ask me what raiment I\'ll wear,\n    for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than\n    legs, nor no more shoes than feet- nay, sometime more feet than\n    shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the overleather.\n  LORD. Heaven cease this idle humour in your honour!\n    O, that a mighty man of such descent,\n    Of such possessions, and so high esteem,\n    Should be infused with so foul a spirit!\n  SLY. What, would you make me mad? Am not I Christopher Sly, old\n    Sly\'s son of Burton Heath; by birth a pedlar, by education a  \n    cardmaker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present\n    profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of\n    Wincot, if she know me not; if she say I am not fourteen pence on\n    the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying\'st knave in\n    Christendom. What! I am not bestraught.  [Taking a pot of ale]\n    Here\'s-\n  THIRD SERVANT. O, this it is that makes your lady mourn!\n  SECOND SERVANT. O, this is it that makes your servants droop!\n  LORD. Hence comes it that your kindred shuns your house,\n    As beaten hence by your strange lunacy.\n    O noble lord, bethink thee of thy birth!\n    Call home thy ancient thoughts from banishment,\n    And banish hence these abject lowly dreams.\n    Look how thy servants do attend on thee,\n    Each in his office ready at thy beck.\n    Wilt thou have music? Hark! Apollo plays,            [Music]\n    And twenty caged nightingales do sing.\n    Or wilt thou sleep? We\'ll have thee to a couch\n    Softer and sweeter than the lustful bed\n    On purpose trimm\'d up for Semiramis.  \n    Say thou wilt walk: we will bestrew the ground.\n    Or wilt thou ride? Thy horses shall be trapp\'d,\n    Their harness studded all with gold and pearl.\n    Dost thou love hawking? Thou hast hawks will soar\n    Above the morning lark. Or wilt thou hunt?\n    Thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them\n    And fetch shall echoes from the hollow earth.\n  FIRST SERVANT. Say thou wilt course; thy greyhounds are as swift\n    As breathed stags; ay, fleeter than the roe.\n  SECOND SERVANT. Dost thou love pictures? We will fetch thee\n      straight\n    Adonis painted by a running brook,\n    And Cytherea all in sedges hid,\n    Which seem to move and wanton with her breath\n    Even as the waving sedges play wi\' th\' wind.\n  LORD. We\'ll show thee lo as she was a maid\n    And how she was beguiled and surpris\'d,\n    As lively painted as the deed was done.\n  THIRD SERVANT. Or Daphne roaming through a thorny wood,\n    Scratching her legs, that one shall swear she bleeds  \n    And at that sight shall sad Apollo weep,\n    So workmanly the blood and tears are drawn.\n  LORD. Thou art a lord, and nothing but a lord.\n    Thou hast a lady far more beautiful\n    Than any woman in this waning age.\n  FIRST SERVANT. And, till the tears that she hath shed for thee\n    Like envious floods o\'er-run her lovely face,\n    She was the fairest creature in the world;\n    And yet she is inferior to none.\n  SLY. Am I a lord and have I such a lady?\n    Or do I dream? Or have I dream\'d till now?\n    I do not sleep: I see, I hear, I speak;\n    I smell sweet savours, and I feel soft things.\n    Upon my life, I am a lord indeed,\n    And not a tinker, nor Christopher Sly.\n    Well, bring our lady hither to our sight;\n    And once again, a pot o\' th\' smallest ale.\n  SECOND SERVANT. Will\'t please your Mightiness to wash your hands?\n    O, how we joy to see your wit restor\'d!\n    O, that once more you knew but what you are!  \n    These fifteen years you have been in a dream;\n    Or, when you wak\'d, so wak\'d as if you slept.\n  SLY. These fifteen years! by my fay, a goodly nap.\n    But did I never speak of all that time?\n  FIRST SERVANT. O, yes, my lord, but very idle words;\n    For though you lay here in this goodly chamber,\n    Yet would you say ye were beaten out of door;\n    And rail upon the hostess of the house,\n    And say you would present her at the leet,\n    Because she brought stone jugs and no seal\'d quarts.\n    Sometimes you would call out for Cicely Hacket.\n  SLY. Ay, the woman\'s maid of the house.\n  THIRD SERVANT. Why, sir, you know no house nor no such maid,\n    Nor no such men as you have reckon\'d up,\n    As Stephen Sly, and old John Naps of Greece,\n    And Peter Turph, and Henry Pimpernell;\n    And twenty more such names and men as these,\n    Which never were, nor no man ever saw.\n  SLY. Now, Lord be thanked for my good amends!\n  ALL. Amen.  \n\n           Enter the PAGE as a lady, with ATTENDANTS\n\n  SLY. I thank thee; thou shalt not lose by it.\n  PAGE. How fares my noble lord?\n  SLY. Marry, I fare well; for here is cheer enough.\n    Where is my wife?\n  PAGE. Here, noble lord; what is thy will with her?\n  SLY. Are you my wife, and will not call me husband?\n    My men should call me \'lord\'; I am your goodman.\n  PAGE. My husband and my lord, my lord and husband;\n    I am your wife in all obedience.\n  SLY. I know it well. What must I call her?\n  LORD. Madam.\n  SLY. Al\'ce madam, or Joan madam?\n  LORD. Madam, and nothing else; so lords call ladies.\n  SLY. Madam wife, they say that I have dream\'d\n    And slept above some fifteen year or more.\n  PAGE. Ay, and the time seems thirty unto me,\n    Being all this time abandon\'d from your bed.  \n  SLY. \'Tis much. Servants, leave me and her alone.\n                                                 Exeunt SERVANTS\n    Madam, undress you, and come now to bed.\n  PAGE. Thrice noble lord, let me entreat of you\n    To pardon me yet for a night or two;\n    Or, if not so, until the sun be set.\n    For your physicians have expressly charg\'d,\n    In peril to incur your former malady,\n    That I should yet absent me from your bed.\n    I hope this reason stands for my excuse.\n  SLY. Ay, it stands so that I may hardly tarry so long. But I would\n    be loath to fall into my dreams again. I will therefore tarry in\n    despite of the flesh and the blood.\n\n                       Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  MESSENGER. Your honour\'s players, hearing your amendment,\n    Are come to play a pleasant comedy;\n    For so your doctors hold it very meet,\n    Seeing too much sadness hath congeal\'d your blood,  \n    And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy.\n    Therefore they thought it good you hear a play\n    And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,\n    Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.\n  SLY. Marry, I will; let them play it. Is not a comonty a\n    Christmas gambold or a tumbling-trick?\n  PAGE. No, my good lord, it is more pleasing stuff.\n  SLY. What, household stuff?\n  PAGE. It is a kind of history.\n  SLY. Well, we\'ll see\'t. Come, madam wife, sit by my side and let\n    the world slip;-we shall ne\'er be younger.\n                                                 [They sit down]\n\n          A flourish of trumpets announces the play\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nPadua. A public place\n\nEnter LUCENTIO and his man TRANIO\n\n  LUCENTIO. Tranio, since for the great desire I had\n    To see fair Padua, nursery of arts,\n    I am arriv\'d for fruitful Lombardy,\n    The pleasant garden of great Italy,\n    And by my father\'s love and leave am arm\'d\n    With his good will and thy good company,\n    My trusty servant well approv\'d in all,\n    Here let us breathe, and haply institute\n    A course of learning and ingenious studies.\n    Pisa, renowned for grave citizens,\n    Gave me my being and my father first,\n    A merchant of great traffic through the world,\n    Vincentio, come of the Bentivolii;\n    Vincentio\'s son, brought up in Florence,\n    It shall become to serve all hopes conceiv\'d,\n    To deck his fortune with his virtuous deeds.\n    And therefore, Tranio, for the time I study,  \n    Virtue and that part of philosophy\n    Will I apply that treats of happiness\n    By virtue specially to be achiev\'d.\n    Tell me thy mind; for I have Pisa left\n    And am to Padua come as he that leaves\n    A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep,\n    And with satiety seeks to quench his thirst.\n  TRANIO. Mi perdonato, gentle master mine;\n    I am in all affected as yourself;\n    Glad that you thus continue your resolve\n    To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy.\n    Only, good master, while we do admire\n    This virtue and this moral discipline,\n    Let\'s be no Stoics nor no stocks, I pray,\n    Or so devote to Aristotle\'s checks\n    As Ovid be an outcast quite abjur\'d.\n    Balk logic with acquaintance that you have,\n    And practise rhetoric in your common talk;\n    Music and poesy use to quicken you;\n    The mathematics and the metaphysics,  \n    Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you.\n    No profit grows where is no pleasure ta\'en;\n    In brief, sir, study what you most affect.\n  LUCENTIO. Gramercies, Tranio, well dost thou advise.\n    If, Biondello, thou wert come ashore,\n    We could at once put us in readiness,\n    And take a lodging fit to entertain\n    Such friends as time in Padua shall beget.\n\n      Enter BAPTISTA with his two daughters, KATHERINA\n        and BIANCA; GREMIO, a pantaloon; HORTENSIO,\n        suitor to BIANCA. LUCENTIO and TRANIO stand by\n\n    But stay awhile; what company is this?\n  TRANIO. Master, some show to welcome us to town.\n  BAPTISTA. Gentlemen, importune me no farther,\n    For how I firmly am resolv\'d you know;\n    That is, not to bestow my youngest daughter\n    Before I have a husband for the elder.\n    If either of you both love Katherina,  \n    Because I know you well and love you well,\n    Leave shall you have to court her at your pleasure.\n  GREMIO. To cart her rather. She\'s too rough for me.\n    There, there, Hortensio, will you any wife?\n  KATHERINA.  [To BAPTISTA]  I pray you, sir, is it your will\n    To make a stale of me amongst these mates?\n  HORTENSIO. Mates, maid! How mean you that? No mates for you,\n    Unless you were of gentler, milder mould.\n  KATHERINA. I\' faith, sir, you shall never need to fear;\n    Iwis it is not halfway to her heart;\n    But if it were, doubt not her care should be\n    To comb your noddle with a three-legg\'d stool,\n    And paint your face, and use you like a fool.\n  HORTENSIO. From all such devils, good Lord deliver us!\n  GREMIO. And me, too, good Lord!\n  TRANIO. Husht, master! Here\'s some good pastime toward;\n    That wench is stark mad or wonderful froward.\n  LUCENTIO. But in the other\'s silence do I see\n    Maid\'s mild behaviour and sobriety.\n    Peace, Tranio!  \n  TRANIO. Well said, master; mum! and gaze your fill.\n  BAPTISTA. Gentlemen, that I may soon make good\n    What I have said- Bianca, get you in;\n    And let it not displease thee, good Bianca,\n    For I will love thee ne\'er the less, my girl.\n  KATHERINA. A pretty peat! it is best\n    Put finger in the eye, an she knew why.\n  BIANCA. Sister, content you in my discontent.\n    Sir, to your pleasure humbly I subscribe;\n    My books and instruments shall be my company,\n    On them to look, and practise by myself.\n  LUCENTIO. Hark, Tranio, thou mayst hear Minerva speak!\n  HORTENSIO. Signior Baptista, will you be so strange?\n    Sorry am I that our good will effects\n    Bianca\'s grief.\n  GREMIO. Why will you mew her up,\n    Signior Baptista, for this fiend of hell,\n    And make her bear the penance of her tongue?\n  BAPTISTA. Gentlemen, content ye; I am resolv\'d.\n    Go in, Bianca.                                   Exit BIANCA  \n    And for I know she taketh most delight\n    In music, instruments, and poetry,\n    Schoolmasters will I keep within my house\n    Fit to instruct her youth. If you, Hortensio,\n    Or, Signior Gremio, you, know any such,\n    Prefer them hither; for to cunning men\n    I will be very kind, and liberal\n    To mine own children in good bringing-up;\n    And so, farewell. Katherina, you may stay;\n    For I have more to commune with Bianca.                 Exit\n  KATHERINA. Why, and I trust I may go too, may I not?\n    What! shall I be appointed hours, as though, belike,\n    I knew not what to take and what to leave? Ha!          Exit\n  GREMIO. You may go to the devil\'s dam; your gifts are so good\n    here\'s none will hold you. There! Love is not so great,\n    Hortensio, but we may blow our nails together, and fast it fairly\n    out; our cake\'s dough on both sides. Farewell; yet, for the love\n    I bear my sweet Bianca, if I can by any means light on a fit man\n    to teach her that wherein she delights, I will wish him to her\n    father.  \n  HORTENSIO. SO Will I, Signior Gremio; but a word, I pray. Though\n    the nature of our quarrel yet never brook\'d parle, know now, upon\n    advice, it toucheth us both- that we may yet again have access to\n    our fair mistress, and be happy rivals in Bianca\'s love- to\n    labour and effect one thing specially.\n  GREMIO. What\'s that, I pray?\n  HORTENSIO. Marry, sir, to get a husband for her sister.\n  GREMIO. A husband? a devil.\n  HORTENSIO. I say a husband.\n  GREMIO. I say a devil. Think\'st thou, Hortensio, though her father\n    be very rich, any man is so very a fool to be married to hell?\n  HORTENSIO. Tush, Gremio! Though it pass your patience and mine to\n    endure her loud alarums, why, man, there be good fellows in the\n    world, an a man could light on them, would take her with all\n    faults, and money enough.\n  GREMIO. I cannot tell; but I had as lief take her dowry with this\n    condition: to be whipp\'d at the high cross every morning.\n  HORTENSIO. Faith, as you say, there\'s small choice in rotten\n    apples. But, come; since this bar in law makes us friends, it\n    shall be so far forth friendly maintain\'d till by helping  \n    Baptista\'s eldest daughter to a husband we set his youngest free\n    for a husband, and then have to\'t afresh. Sweet Bianca! Happy man\n    be his dole! He that runs fastest gets the ring. How say you,\n    Signior Gremio?\n  GREMIO. I am agreed; and would I had given him the best horse in\n    Padua to begin his wooing that would thoroughly woo her, wed her,\n    and bed her, and rid the house of her! Come on.\n                                     Exeunt GREMIO and HORTENSIO\n  TRANIO. I pray, sir, tell me, is it possible\n    That love should of a sudden take such hold?\n  LUCENTIO. O Tranio, till I found it to be true,\n    I never thought it possible or likely.\n    But see! while idly I stood looking on,\n    I found the effect of love in idleness;\n    And now in plainness do confess to thee,\n    That art to me as secret and as dear\n    As Anna to the Queen of Carthage was-\n    Tranio, I burn, I pine, I perish, Tranio,\n    If I achieve not this young modest girl.\n    Counsel me, Tranio, for I know thou canst;  \n    Assist me, Tranio, for I know thou wilt.\n  TRANIO. Master, it is no time to chide you now;\n    Affection is not rated from the heart;\n    If love have touch\'d you, nought remains but so:\n    \'Redime te captum quam queas minimo.\'\n  LUCENTIO. Gramercies, lad. Go forward; this contents;\n    The rest will comfort, for thy counsel\'s sound.\n  TRANIO. Master, you look\'d so longly on the maid.\n    Perhaps you mark\'d not what\'s the pith of all.\n  LUCENTIO. O, yes, I saw sweet beauty in her face,\n    Such as the daughter of Agenor had,\n    That made great Jove to humble him to her hand,\n    When with his knees he kiss\'d the Cretan strand.\n  TRANIO. Saw you no more? Mark\'d you not how her sister\n    Began to scold and raise up such a storm\n    That mortal ears might hardly endure the din?\n  LUCENTIO. Tranio, I saw her coral lips to move,\n    And with her breath she did perfume the air;\n    Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her.\n  TRANIO. Nay, then \'tis time to stir him from his trance.  \n    I pray, awake, sir. If you love the maid,\n    Bend thoughts and wits to achieve her. Thus it stands:\n    Her elder sister is so curst and shrewd\n    That, till the father rid his hands of her,\n    Master, your love must live a maid at home;\n    And therefore has he closely mew\'d her up,\n    Because she will not be annoy\'d with suitors.\n  LUCENTIO. Ah, Tranio, what a cruel father\'s he!\n    But art thou not advis\'d he took some care\n    To get her cunning schoolmasters to instruct her?\n  TRANIO. Ay, marry, am I, sir, and now \'tis plotted.\n  LUCENTIO. I have it, Tranio.\n  TRANIO. Master, for my hand,\n    Both our inventions meet and jump in one.\n  LUCENTIO. Tell me thine first.\n  TRANIO. You will be schoolmaster,\n    And undertake the teaching of the maid-\n    That\'s your device.\n  LUCENTIO. It is. May it be done?\n  TRANIO. Not possible; for who shall bear your part  \n    And be in Padua here Vincentio\'s son;\n    Keep house and ply his book, welcome his friends,\n    Visit his countrymen, and banquet them?\n  LUCENTIO. Basta, content thee, for I have it full.\n    We have not yet been seen in any house,\n    Nor can we be distinguish\'d by our faces\n    For man or master. Then it follows thus:\n    Thou shalt be master, Tranio, in my stead,\n    Keep house and port and servants, as I should;\n    I will some other be- some Florentine,\n    Some Neapolitan, or meaner man of Pisa.\n    \'Tis hatch\'d, and shall be so. Tranio, at once\n    Uncase thee; take my colour\'d hat and cloak.\n    When Biondello comes, he waits on thee;\n    But I will charm him first to keep his tongue.\n  TRANIO. So had you need.                [They exchange habits]\n    In brief, sir, sith it your pleasure is,\n    And I am tied to be obedient-\n    For so your father charg\'d me at our parting:\n    \'Be serviceable to my son\' quoth he,  \n    Although I think \'twas in another sense-\n    I am content to be Lucentio,\n    Because so well I love Lucentio.\n  LUCENTIO. Tranio, be so because Lucentio loves;\n    And let me be a slave t\' achieve that maid\n    Whose sudden sight hath thrall\'d my wounded eye.\n\n                       Enter BIONDELLO.\n\n    Here comes the rogue. Sirrah, where have you been?\n  BIONDELLO. Where have I been! Nay, how now! where are you?\n    Master, has my fellow Tranio stol\'n your clothes?\n    Or you stol\'n his? or both? Pray, what\'s the news?\n  LUCENTIO. Sirrah, come hither; \'tis no time to jest,\n    And therefore frame your manners to the time.\n    Your fellow Tranio here, to save my life,\n    Puts my apparel and my count\'nance on,\n    And I for my escape have put on his;\n    For in a quarrel since I came ashore\n    I kill\'d a man, and fear I was descried.  \n    Wait you on him, I charge you, as becomes,\n    While I make way from hence to save my life.\n    You understand me?\n  BIONDELLO. I, sir? Ne\'er a whit.\n  LUCENTIO. And not a jot of Tranio in your mouth:\n    Tranio is chang\'d into Lucentio.\n  BIONDELLO. The better for him; would I were so too!\n  TRANIO. So could I, faith, boy, to have the next wish after,\n    That Lucentio indeed had Baptista\'s youngest daughter.\n    But, sirrah, not for my sake but your master\'s, I advise\n    You use your manners discreetly in all kind of companies.\n    When I am alone, why, then I am Tranio;\n    But in all places else your master Lucentio.\n  LUCENTIO. Tranio, let\'s go.\n    One thing more rests, that thyself execute-\n    To make one among these wooers. If thou ask me why-\n    Sufficeth, my reasons are both good and weighty.      Exeunt\n\n                 The Presenters above speak\n  \n  FIRST SERVANT. My lord, you nod; you do not mind the play.\n  SLY. Yes, by Saint Anne do I. A good matter, surely; comes there\n    any more of it?\n  PAGE. My lord, \'tis but begun.\n  SLY. \'Tis a very excellent piece of work, madam lady\n    Would \'twere done!                        [They sit and mark]\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nPadua. Before HORTENSIO\'S house\n\nEnter PETRUCHIO and his man GRUMIO\n\n  PETRUCHIO. Verona, for a while I take my leave,\n    To see my friends in Padua; but of all\n    My best beloved and approved friend,\n    Hortensio; and I trow this is his house.\n    Here, sirrah Grumio, knock, I say.\n GRUMIO. Knock, sir! Whom should I knock?\n    Is there any man has rebus\'d your worship?\n  PETRUCHIO. Villain, I say, knock me here soundly.\n  GRUMIO. Knock you here, sir? Why, sir, what am I, sir, that I\n    should knock you here, sir?\n  PETRUCHIO. Villain, I say, knock me at this gate,\n    And rap me well, or I\'ll knock your knave\'s pate.\n  GRUMIO. My master is grown quarrelsome. I should knock you first,\n    And then I know after who comes by the worst.\n  PETRUCHIO. Will it not be?\n    Faith, sirrah, an you\'ll not knock I\'ll ring it;\n    I\'ll try how you can sol-fa, and sing it.\n                                     [He wrings him by the ears]  \n  GRUMIO. Help, masters, help! My master is mad.\n  PETRUCHIO. Now knock when I bid you, sirrah villain!\n\n                        Enter HORTENSIO\n\n  HORTENSIO. How now! what\'s the matter? My old friend Grumio and my\n    good friend Petruchio! How do you all at Verona?\n  PETRUCHIO. Signior Hortensio, come you to part the fray?\n    \'Con tutto il cuore ben trovato\' may I say.\n  HORTENSIO. Alla nostra casa ben venuto,\n    Molto honorato signor mio Petruchio.\n    Rise, Grumio, rise; we will compound this quarrel.\n  GRUMIO. Nay, \'tis no matter, sir, what he \'leges in Latin. If this\n    be not a lawful cause for me to leave his service- look you, sir:\n    he bid me knock him and rap him soundly, sir. Well, was it fit\n    for a servant to use his master so; being, perhaps, for aught I\n    see, two and thirty, a pip out?\n    Whom would to God I had well knock\'d at first,\n    Then had not Grumio come by the worst.\n  PETRUCHIO. A senseless villain! Good Hortensio,  \n    I bade the rascal knock upon your gate,\n    And could not get him for my heart to do it.\n  GRUMIO. Knock at the gate? O heavens! Spake you not these words\n    plain: \'Sirrah knock me here, rap me here, knock me well, and\n    knock me soundly\'? And come you now with \'knocking at the gate\'?\n  PETRUCHIO. Sirrah, be gone, or talk not, I advise you.\n  HORTENSIO. Petruchio, patience; I am Grumio\'s pledge;\n    Why, this\'s a heavy chance \'twixt him and you,\n    Your ancient, trusty, pleasant servant Grumio.\n    And tell me now, sweet friend, what happy gale\n    Blows you to Padua here from old Verona?\n  PETRUCHIO. Such wind as scatters young men through the world\n    To seek their fortunes farther than at home,\n    Where small experience grows. But in a few,\n    Signior Hortensio, thus it stands with me:\n    Antonio, my father, is deceas\'d,\n    And I have thrust myself into this maze,\n    Haply to wive and thrive as best I may;\n    Crowns in my purse I have, and goods at home,\n    And so am come abroad to see the world.  \n  HORTENSIO. Petruchio, shall I then come roundly to thee\n    And wish thee to a shrewd ill-favour\'d wife?\n    Thou\'dst thank me but a little for my counsel,\n    And yet I\'ll promise thee she shall be rich,\n    And very rich; but th\'art too much my friend,\n    And I\'ll not wish thee to her.\n  PETRUCHIO. Signior Hortensio, \'twixt such friends as we\n    Few words suffice; and therefore, if thou know\n    One rich enough to be Petruchio\'s wife,\n    As wealth is burden of my wooing dance,\n    Be she as foul as was Florentius\' love,\n    As old as Sibyl, and as curst and shrewd\n    As Socrates\' Xanthippe or a worse-\n    She moves me not, or not removes, at least,\n    Affection\'s edge in me, were she as rough\n    As are the swelling Adriatic seas.\n    I come to wive it wealthily in Padua;\n    If wealthily, then happily in Padua.\n  GRUMIO. Nay, look you, sir, he tells you flatly what his mind is.\n    Why, give him gold enough and marry him to a puppet or an  \n    aglet-baby, or an old trot with ne\'er a tooth in her head, though\n    she has as many diseases as two and fifty horses. Why, nothing\n    comes amiss, so money comes withal.\n  HORTENSIO. Petruchio, since we are stepp\'d thus far in,\n    I will continue that I broach\'d in jest.\n    I can, Petruchio, help thee to a wife\n    With wealth enough, and young and beauteous;\n    Brought up as best becomes a gentlewoman;\n    Her only fault, and that is faults enough,\n    Is- that she is intolerable curst,\n    And shrewd and froward so beyond all measure\n    That, were my state far worser than it is,\n    I would not wed her for a mine of gold.\n  PETRUCHIO. Hortensio, peace! thou know\'st not gold\'s effect.\n    Tell me her father\'s name, and \'tis enough;\n    For I will board her though she chide as loud\n    As thunder when the clouds in autumn crack.\n  HORTENSIO. Her father is Baptista Minola,\n    An affable and courteous gentleman;\n    Her name is Katherina Minola,  \n    Renown\'d in Padua for her scolding tongue.\n  PETRUCHIO. I know her father, though I know not her;\n    And he knew my deceased father well.\n    I will not sleep, Hortensio, till I see her;\n    And therefore let me be thus bold with you\n    To give you over at this first encounter,\n    Unless you will accompany me thither.\n  GRUMIO. I pray you, sir, let him go while the humour lasts. O\' my\n    word, and she knew him as well as I do, she would think scolding\n    would do little good upon him. She may perhaps call him half a\n    score knaves or so. Why, that\'s nothing; and he begin once, he\'ll\n    rail in his rope-tricks. I\'ll tell you what, sir: an she stand\n    him but a little, he will throw a figure in her face, and so\n    disfigure her with it that she shall have no more eyes to see\n    withal than a cat. You know him not, sir.\n  HORTENSIO. Tarry, Petruchio, I must go with thee,\n    For in Baptista\'s keep my treasure is.\n    He hath the jewel of my life in hold,\n    His youngest daughter, beautiful Bianca;\n    And her withholds from me, and other more,  \n    Suitors to her and rivals in my love;\n    Supposing it a thing impossible-\n    For those defects I have before rehears\'d-\n    That ever Katherina will be woo\'d.\n    Therefore this order hath Baptista ta\'en,\n    That none shall have access unto Bianca\n    Till Katherine the curst have got a husband.\n  GRUMIO. Katherine the curst!\n    A title for a maid of all titles the worst.\n  HORTENSIO. Now shall my friend Petruchio do me grace,\n    And offer me disguis\'d in sober robes\n    To old Baptista as a schoolmaster\n    Well seen in music, to instruct Bianca;\n    That so I may by this device at least\n    Have leave and leisure to make love to her,\n    And unsuspected court her by herself.\n\n        Enter GREMIO with LUCENTIO disguised as CAMBIO\n\n  GRUMIO. Here\'s no knavery! See, to beguile the old folks, how the  \n    young folks lay their heads together! Master, master, look about\n    you. Who goes there, ha?\n  HORTENSIO. Peace, Grumio! It is the rival of my love. Petruchio,\n    stand by awhile.\n  GRUMIO. A proper stripling, and an amorous!\n                                              [They stand aside]\n  GREMIO. O, very well; I have perus\'d the note.\n    Hark you, sir; I\'ll have them very fairly bound-\n    All books of love, see that at any hand;\n    And see you read no other lectures to her.\n    You understand me- over and beside\n    Signior Baptista\'s liberality,\n    I\'ll mend it with a largess. Take your paper too,\n    And let me have them very well perfum\'d;\n    For she is sweeter than perfume itself\n    To whom they go to. What will you read to her?\n  LUCENTIO. Whate\'er I read to her, I\'ll plead for you\n    As for my patron, stand you so assur\'d,\n    As firmly as yourself were still in place;\n    Yea, and perhaps with more successful words  \n    Than you, unless you were a scholar, sir.\n  GREMIO. O this learning, what a thing it is!\n  GRUMIO. O this woodcock, what an ass it is!\n  PETRUCHIO. Peace, sirrah!\n  HORTENSIO. Grumio, mum!                       [Coming forward]\n    God save you, Signior Gremio!\n  GREMIO. And you are well met, Signior Hortensio.\n    Trow you whither I am going? To Baptista Minola.\n    I promis\'d to enquire carefully\n    About a schoolmaster for the fair Bianca;\n    And by good fortune I have lighted well\n    On this young man; for learning and behaviour\n    Fit for her turn, well read in poetry\n    And other books- good ones, I warrant ye.\n  HORTENSIO. \'Tis well; and I have met a gentleman\n    Hath promis\'d me to help me to another,\n    A fine musician to instruct our mistress;\n    So shall I no whit be behind in duty\n    To fair Bianca, so beloved of me.\n  GREMIO. Beloved of me- and that my deeds shall prove.  \n  GRUMIO. And that his bags shall prove.\n  HORTENSIO. Gremio, \'tis now no time to vent our love.\n    Listen to me, and if you speak me fair\n    I\'ll tell you news indifferent good for either.\n    Here is a gentleman whom by chance I met,\n    Upon agreement from us to his liking,\n    Will undertake to woo curst Katherine;\n    Yea, and to marry her, if her dowry please.\n  GREMIO. So said, so done, is well.\n    Hortensio, have you told him all her faults?\n  PETRUCHIO. I know she is an irksome brawling scold;\n    If that be all, masters, I hear no harm.\n  GREMIO. No, say\'st me so, friend? What countryman?\n  PETRUCHIO. Born in Verona, old Antonio\'s son.\n    My father dead, my fortune lives for me;\n    And I do hope good days and long to see.\n  GREMIO. O Sir, such a life with such a wife were strange!\n    But if you have a stomach, to\'t a God\'s name;\n    You shall have me assisting you in all.\n    But will you woo this wild-cat?  \n  PETRUCHIO. Will I live?\n  GRUMIO. Will he woo her? Ay, or I\'ll hang her.\n  PETRUCHIO. Why came I hither but to that intent?\n    Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?\n    Have I not in my time heard lions roar?\n    Have I not heard the sea, puff\'d up with winds,\n    Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?\n    Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,\n    And heaven\'s artillery thunder in the skies?\n    Have I not in a pitched battle heard\n    Loud \'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets\' clang?\n    And do you tell me of a woman\'s tongue,\n    That gives not half so great a blow to hear\n    As will a chestnut in a fariner\'s fire?\n    Tush! tush! fear boys with bugs.\n  GRUMIO. For he fears none.\n  GREMIO. Hortensio, hark:\n    This gentleman is happily arriv\'d,\n    My mind presumes, for his own good and ours.\n  HORTENSIO. I promis\'d we would be contributors  \n    And bear his charge of wooing, whatsoe\'er.\n  GREMIO. And so we will- provided that he win her.\n  GRUMIO. I would I were as sure of a good dinner.\n\n    Enter TRANIO, bravely apparelled as LUCENTIO, and BIONDELLO\n\n  TRANIO. Gentlemen, God save you! If I may be bold,\n    Tell me, I beseech you, which is the readiest way\n    To the house of Signior Baptista Minola?\n  BIONDELLO. He that has the two fair daughters; is\'t he you mean?\n  TRANIO. Even he, Biondello.\n  GREMIO. Hark you, sir, you mean not her to-\n  TRANIO. Perhaps him and her, sir; what have you to do?\n  PETRUCHIO. Not her that chides, sir, at any hand, I pray.\n  TRANIO. I love no chiders, sir. Biondello, let\'s away.\n  LUCENTIO.  [Aside]  Well begun, Tranio.\n  HORTENSIO. Sir, a word ere you go.\n    Are you a suitor to the maid you talk of, yea or no?\n  TRANIO. And if I be, sir, is it any offence?\n  GREMIO. No; if without more words you will get you hence.  \n  TRANIO. Why, sir, I pray, are not the streets as free\n    For me as for you?\n  GREMIO. But so is not she.\n\n  TRANIO. For what reason, I beseech you?\n  GREMIO. For this reason, if you\'ll know,\n    That she\'s the choice love of Signior Gremio.\n  HORTENSIO. That she\'s the chosen of Signior Hortensio.\n  TRANIO. Softly, my masters! If you be gentlemen,\n    Do me this right- hear me with patience.\n    Baptista is a noble gentleman,\n    To whom my father is not all unknown,\n    And, were his daughter fairer than she is,\n    She may more suitors have, and me for one.\n    Fair Leda\'s daughter had a thousand wooers;\n    Then well one more may fair Bianca have;\n    And so she shall: Lucentio shall make one,\n    Though Paris came in hope to speed alone.\n  GREMIO. What, this gentleman will out-talk us all!\n  LUCENTIO. Sir, give him head; I know he\'ll prove a jade.  \n  PETRUCHIO. Hortensio, to what end are all these words?\n  HORTENSIO. Sir, let me be so bold as ask you,\n    Did you yet ever see Baptista\'s daughter?\n  TRANIO. No, sir, but hear I do that he hath two:\n    The one as famous for a scolding tongue\n    As is the other for beauteous modesty.\n  PETRUCHIO. Sir, sir, the first\'s for me; let her go by.\n  GREMIO. Yea, leave that labour to great Hercules,\n    And let it be more than Alcides\' twelve.\n  PETRUCHIO. Sir, understand you this of me, in sooth:\n    The youngest daughter, whom you hearken for,\n    Her father keeps from all access of suitors,\n    And will not promise her to any man\n    Until the elder sister first be wed.\n    The younger then is free, and not before.\n  TRANIO. If it be so, sir, that you are the man\n    Must stead us all, and me amongst the rest;\n    And if you break the ice, and do this feat,\n    Achieve the elder, set the younger free\n    For our access- whose hap shall be to have her  \n    Will not so graceless be to be ingrate.\n  HORTENSIO. Sir, you say well, and well you do conceive;\n    And since you do profess to be a suitor,\n    You must, as we do, gratify this gentleman,\n    To whom we all rest generally beholding.\n  TRANIO. Sir, I shall not be slack; in sign whereof,\n    Please ye we may contrive this afternoon,\n    And quaff carouses to our mistress\' health;\n    And do as adversaries do in law-\n    Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.\n  GRUMIO, BIONDELLO. O excellent motion! Fellows, let\'s be gone.\n  HORTENSIO. The motion\'s good indeed, and be it so.\n    Petruchio, I shall be your ben venuto.                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT Il. SCENE I.\nPadua. BAPTISTA\'S house\n\nEnter KATHERINA and BIANCA\n\n  BIANCA. Good sister, wrong me not, nor wrong yourself,\n    To make a bondmaid and a slave of me-\n    That I disdain; but for these other gawds,\n    Unbind my hands, I\'ll pull them off myself,\n    Yea, all my raiment, to my petticoat;\n    Or what you will command me will I do,\n    So well I know my duty to my elders.\n  KATHERINA. Of all thy suitors here I charge thee tell\n    Whom thou lov\'st best. See thou dissemble not.\n  BIANCA. Believe me, sister, of all the men alive\n    I never yet beheld that special face\n    Which I could fancy more than any other.\n  KATHERINA. Minion, thou liest. Is\'t not Hortensio?\n  BIANCA. If you affect him, sister, here I swear\n    I\'ll plead for you myself but you shall have him.\n  KATHERINA. O then, belike, you fancy riches more:\n    You will have Gremio to keep you fair.  \n  BIANCA. Is it for him you do envy me so?\n    Nay, then you jest; and now I well perceive\n    You have but jested with me all this while.\n    I prithee, sister Kate, untie my hands.\n  KATHERINA. [Strikes her]  If that be jest, then an the rest was so.\n\n                            Enter BAPTISTA\n\n  BAPTISTA. Why, how now, dame! Whence grows this insolence?\n    Bianca, stand aside- poor girl! she weeps.\n                                                [He unbinds her]\n    Go ply thy needle; meddle not with her.\n    For shame, thou hilding of a devilish spirit,\n    Why dost thou wrong her that did ne\'er wrong thee?\n    When did she cross thee with a bitter word?\n  KATHERINA. Her silence flouts me, and I\'ll be reveng\'d.\n                                            [Flies after BIANCA]\n  BAPTISTA. What, in my sight? Bianca, get thee in.\n                                                     Exit BIANCA\n  KATHERINA. What, will you not suffer me? Nay, now I see  \n    She is your treasure, she must have a husband;\n    I must dance bare-foot on her wedding-day,\n    And for your love to her lead apes in hell.\n    Talk not to me; I will go sit and weep,\n    Till I can find occasion of revenge.          Exit KATHERINA\n  BAPTISTA. Was ever gentleman thus griev\'d as I?\n    But who comes here?\n\n        Enter GREMIO, with LUCENTIO in the habit of a mean man;\n         PETRUCHIO, with HORTENSIO as a musician; and TRANIO,\n    as LUCENTIO, with his boy, BIONDELLO, bearing a lute and books\n\n  GREMIO. Good morrow, neighbour Baptista.\n  BAPTISTA. Good morrow, neighbour Gremio.\n    God save you, gentlemen!\n  PETRUCHIO. And you, good sir! Pray, have you not a daughter\n    Call\'d Katherina, fair and virtuous?\n  BAPTISTA. I have a daughter, sir, call\'d Katherina.\n  GREMIO. You are too blunt; go to it orderly.\n  PETRUCHIO. You wrong me, Signior Gremio; give me leave.  \n    I am a gentleman of Verona, sir,\n    That, hearing of her beauty and her wit,\n    Her affability and bashful modesty,\n    Her wondrous qualities and mild behaviour,\n    Am bold to show myself a forward guest\n    Within your house, to make mine eye the witness\n    Of that report which I so oft have heard.\n    And, for an entrance to my entertainment,\n    I do present you with a man of mine,\n                                          [Presenting HORTENSIO]\n    Cunning in music and the mathematics,\n    To instruct her fully in those sciences,\n    Whereof I know she is not ignorant.\n    Accept of him, or else you do me wrong-\n    His name is Licio, born in Mantua.\n  BAPTISTA. Y\'are welcome, sir, and he for your good sake;\n    But for my daughter Katherine, this I know,\n    She is not for your turn, the more my grief.\n  PETRUCHIO. I see you do not mean to part with her;\n    Or else you like not of my company.  \n  BAPTISTA. Mistake me not; I speak but as I find.\n    Whence are you, sir? What may I call your name?\n  PETRUCHIO. Petruchio is my name, Antonio\'s son,\n    A man well known throughout all Italy.\n  BAPTISTA. I know him well; you are welcome for his sake.\n  GREMIO. Saving your tale, Petruchio, I pray,\n    Let us that are poor petitioners speak too.\n    Bacare! you are marvellous forward.\n  PETRUCHIO. O, pardon me, Signior Gremio! I would fain be doing.\n  GREMIO. I doubt it not, sir; but you will curse your wooing.\n    Neighbour, this is a gift very grateful, I am sure of it. To\n    express the like kindness, myself, that have been more kindly\n    beholding to you than any, freely give unto you this young\n    scholar  [Presenting LUCENTIO]  that hath been long studying at\n    Rheims; as cunning in Greek, Latin, and other languages, as the\n    other in music and mathematics. His name is Cambio. Pray accept\n    his service.\n  BAPTISTA. A thousand thanks, Signior Gremio. Welcome, good Cambio.\n    [To TRANIO]  But, gentle sir, methinks you walk like a stranger.\n    May I be so bold to know the cause of your coming?  \n  TRANIO. Pardon me, sir, the boldness is mine own\n    That, being a stranger in this city here,\n    Do make myself a suitor to your daughter,\n    Unto Bianca, fair and virtuous.\n    Nor is your firm resolve unknown to me\n    In the preferment of the eldest sister.\n    This liberty is all that I request-\n    That, upon knowledge of my parentage,\n    I may have welcome \'mongst the rest that woo,\n    And free access and favour as the rest.\n    And toward the education of your daughters\n    I here bestow a simple instrument,\n    And this small packet of Greek and Latin books.\n    If you accept them, then their worth is great.\n  BAPTISTA. Lucentio is your name? Of whence, I pray?\n  TRANIO. Of Pisa, sir; son to Vincentio.\n  BAPTISTA. A mighty man of Pisa. By report\n    I know him well. You are very welcome, sir.\n    Take you the lute, and you the set of books;\n    You shall go see your pupils presently.  \n    Holla, within!\n\n                         Enter a SERVANT\n\n    Sirrah, lead these gentlemen\n    To my daughters; and tell them both\n    These are their tutors. Bid them use them well.\n\n                Exit SERVANT leading HORTENSIO carrying the lute\n                                     and LUCENTIO with the books\n\n    We will go walk a little in the orchard,\n    And then to dinner. You are passing welcome,\n    And so I pray you all to think yourselves.\n  PETRUCHIO. Signior Baptista, my business asketh haste,\n    And every day I cannot come to woo.\n    You knew my father well, and in him me,\n    Left solely heir to all his lands and goods,\n    Which I have bettered rather than decreas\'d.\n    Then tell me, if I get your daughter\'s love,  \n    What dowry shall I have with her to wife?\n  BAPTISTA. After my death, the one half of my lands\n    And, in possession, twenty thousand crowns.\n  PETRUCHIO. And for that dowry, I\'ll assure her of\n    Her widowhood, be it that she survive me,\n    In all my lands and leases whatsoever.\n    Let specialities be therefore drawn between us,\n    That covenants may be kept on either hand.\n  BAPTISTA. Ay, when the special thing is well obtain\'d,\n    That is, her love; for that is all in all.\n  PETRUCHIO. Why, that is nothing; for I tell you, father,\n    I am as peremptory as she proud-minded;\n    And where two raging fires meet together,\n    They do consume the thing that feeds their fury.\n    Though little fire grows great with little wind,\n    Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all.\n    So I to her, and so she yields to me;\n    For I am rough, and woo not like a babe.\n  BAPTISTA. Well mayst thou woo, and happy be thy speed\n    But be thou arm\'d for some unhappy words.  \n  PETRUCHIO. Ay, to the proof, as mountains are for winds,\n    That shake not though they blow perpetually.\n\n             Re-enter HORTENSIO, with his head broke\n\n  BAPTISTA. How now, my friend! Why dost thou look so pale?\n  HORTENSIO. For fear, I promise you, if I look pale.\n  BAPTISTA. What, will my daughter prove a good musician?\n  HORTENSIO. I think she\'ll sooner prove a soldier:\n    Iron may hold with her, but never lutes.\n  BAPTISTA. Why, then thou canst not break her to the lute?\n  HORTENSIO. Why, no; for she hath broke the lute to me.\n    I did but tell her she mistook her frets,\n    And bow\'d her hand to teach her fingering,\n    When, with a most impatient devilish spirit,\n    \'Frets, call you these?\' quoth she \'I\'ll fume with them.\'\n    And with that word she struck me on the head,\n    And through the instrument my pate made way;\n    And there I stood amazed for a while,\n    As on a pillory, looking through the lute,  \n    While she did call me rascal fiddler\n    And twangling Jack, with twenty such vile terms,\n    As she had studied to misuse me so.\n  PETRUCHIO. Now, by the world, it is a lusty wench;\n    I love her ten times more than e\'er I did.\n    O, how I long to have some chat with her!\n  BAPTISTA. Well, go with me, and be not so discomfited;\n    Proceed in practice with my younger daughter;\n    She\'s apt to learn, and thankful for good turns.\n    Signior Petruchio, will you go with us,\n    Or shall I send my daughter Kate to you?\n  PETRUCHIO. I pray you do.             Exeunt all but PETRUCHIO\n    I\'ll attend her here,\n    And woo her with some spirit when she comes.\n    Say that she rail; why, then I\'ll tell her plain\n    She sings as sweetly as a nightingale.\n    Say that she frown; I\'ll say she looks as clear\n    As morning roses newly wash\'d with dew.\n    Say she be mute, and will not speak a word;\n    Then I\'ll commend her volubility,  \n    And say she uttereth piercing eloquence.\n    If she do bid me pack, I\'ll give her thanks,\n    As though she bid me stay by her a week;\n    If she deny to wed, I\'ll crave the day\n    When I shall ask the banns, and when be married.\n    But here she comes; :Lnd.now, Petruchio, speak.\n\n                        Enter KATHERINA\n\n    Good morrow, Kate- for that\'s your name, I hear.\n  KATHERINA. Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing:\n    They call me Katherine that do talk of me.\n  PETRUCHIO. You lie, in faith, for you are call\'d plain Kate,\n    And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst;\n    But, Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom,\n    Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate,\n    For dainties are all Kates, and therefore, Kate,\n    Take this of me, Kate of my consolation-\n    Hearing thy mildness prais\'d in every town,\n    Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded,  \n    Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs,\n    Myself am mov\'d to woo thee for my wife.\n  KATHERINA. Mov\'d! in good time! Let him that mov\'d you hither\n    Remove you hence. I knew you at the first\n    You were a moveable.\n  PETRUCHIO. Why, what\'s a moveable?\n  KATHERINA. A join\'d-stool.\n  PETRUCHIO. Thou hast hit it. Come, sit on me.\n  KATHERINA. Asses are made to bear, and so are you.\n  PETRUCHIO. Women are made to bear, and so are you.\n  KATHERINA. No such jade as you, if me you mean.\n  PETRUCHIO. Alas, good Kate, I will not burden thee!\n    For, knowing thee to be but young and light-\n  KATHERINA. Too light for such a swain as you to catch;\n    And yet as heavy as my weight should be.\n  PETRUCHIO. Should be! should- buzz!\n  KATHERINA. Well ta\'en, and like a buzzard.\n  PETRUCHIO. O, slow-wing\'d turtle, shall a buzzard take thee?\n  KATHERINA. Ay, for a turtle, as he takes a buzzard.\n  PETRUCHIO. Come, come, you wasp; i\' faith, you are too angry.  \n  KATHERINA. If I be waspish, best beware my sting.\n  PETRUCHIO. My remedy is then to pluck it out.\n  KATHERINA. Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies.\n  PETRUCHIO. Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting?\n    In his tail.\n  KATHERINA. In his tongue.\n  PETRUCHIO. Whose tongue?\n  KATHERINA. Yours, if you talk of tales; and so farewell.\n  PETRUCHIO. What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again,\n    Good Kate; I am a gentleman.\n  KATHERINA. That I\'ll try.                    [She strikes him]\n  PETRUCHIO. I swear I\'ll cuff you, if you strike again.\n  KATHERINA. So may you lose your arms.\n    If you strike me, you are no gentleman;\n    And if no gentleman, why then no arms.\n  PETRUCHIO. A herald, Kate? O, put me in thy books!\n  KATHERINA. What is your crest- a coxcomb?\n  PETRUCHIO. A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen.\n  KATHERINA. No cock of mine: you crow too like a craven.\n  PETRUCHIO. Nay, come, Kate, come; you must not look so sour.  \n  KATHERINA. It is my fashion, when I see a crab.\n  PETRUCHIO. Why, here\'s no crab; and therefore look not sour.\n  KATHERINA. There is, there is.\n  PETRUCHIO. Then show it me.\n  KATHERINA. Had I a glass I would.\n  PETRUCHIO. What, you mean my face?\n  KATHERINA. Well aim\'d of such a young one.\n  PETRUCHIO. Now, by Saint George, I am too young for you.\n  KATHERINA. Yet you are wither\'d.\n  PETRUCHIO. \'Tis with cares.\n  KATHERINA. I care not.\n  PETRUCHIO. Nay, hear you, Kate- in sooth, you scape not so.\n  KATHERINA. I chafe you, if I tarry; let me go.\n  PETRUCHIO. No, not a whit; I find you passing gentle.\n    \'Twas told me you were rough, and coy, and sullen,\n    And now I find report a very liar;\n    For thou art pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous,\n    But slow in speech, yet sweet as springtime flowers.\n    Thou canst not frown, thou canst not look askance,\n    Nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will,  \n    Nor hast thou pleasure to be cross in talk;\n    But thou with mildness entertain\'st thy wooers;\n    With gentle conference, soft and affable.\n    Why does the world report that Kate doth limp?\n    O sland\'rous world! Kate like the hazel-twig\n    Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue\n    As hazel-nuts, and sweeter than the kernels.\n    O, let me see thee walk. Thou dost not halt.\n  KATHERINA. Go, fool, and whom thou keep\'st command.\n  PETRUCHIO. Did ever Dian so become a grove\n    As Kate this chamber with her princely gait?\n    O, be thou Dian, and let her be Kate;\n    And then let Kate be chaste, and Dian sportful!\n  KATHERINA. Where did you study all this goodly speech?\n  PETRUCHIO. It is extempore, from my mother wit.\n  KATHERINA. A witty mother! witless else her son.\n  PETRUCHIO. Am I not wise?\n  KATHERINA. Yes, keep you warm.\n  PETRUCHIO. Marry, so I mean, sweet Katherine, in thy bed.\n    And therefore, setting all this chat aside,  \n    Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented\n    That you shall be my wife your dowry greed on;\n    And will you, nill you, I will marry you.\n    Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn;\n    For, by this light, whereby I see thy beauty,\n    Thy beauty that doth make me like thee well,\n    Thou must be married to no man but me;\n    For I am he am born to tame you, Kate,\n    And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate\n    Conformable as other household Kates.\n\n               Re-enter BAPTISTA, GREMIO, and TRANIO\n\n    Here comes your father. Never make denial;\n    I must and will have Katherine to my wife.\n  BAPTISTA. Now, Signior Petruchio, how speed you with my daughter?\n  PETRUCHIO. How but well, sir? how but well?\n    It were impossible I should speed amiss.\n  BAPTISTA. Why, how now, daughter Katherine, in your dumps?\n  KATHERINA. Call you me daughter? Now I promise you  \n    You have show\'d a tender fatherly regard\n    To wish me wed to one half lunatic,\n    A mad-cap ruffian and a swearing Jack,\n    That thinks with oaths to face the matter out.\n  PETRUCHIO. Father, \'tis thus: yourself and all the world\n    That talk\'d of her have talk\'d amiss of her.\n    If she be curst, it is for policy,\n    For,she\'s not froward, but modest as the dove;\n    She is not hot, but temperate as the morn;\n    For patience she will prove a second Grissel,\n    And Roman Lucrece for her chastity.\n    And, to conclude, we have \'greed so well together\n    That upon Sunday is the wedding-day.\n  KATHERINA. I\'ll see thee hang\'d on Sunday first.\n  GREMIO. Hark, Petruchio; she says she\'ll see thee hang\'d first.\n  TRANIO. Is this your speeding? Nay, then good-night our part!\n  PETRUCHIO. Be patient, gentlemen. I choose her for myself;\n    If she and I be pleas\'d, what\'s that to you?\n    \'Tis bargain\'d \'twixt us twain, being alone,\n    That she shall still be curst in company.  \n    I tell you \'tis incredible to believe.\n    How much she loves me- O, the kindest Kate!\n    She hung about my neck, and kiss on kiss\n    She vied so fast, protesting oath on oath,\n    That in a twink she won me to her love.\n    O, you are novices! \'Tis a world to see,\n    How tame, when men and women are alone,\n    A meacock wretch can make the curstest shrew.\n    Give me thy hand, Kate; I will unto Venice,\n    To buy apparel \'gainst the wedding-day.\n    Provide the feast, father, and bid the guests;\n    I will be sure my Katherine shall be fine.\n  BAPTISTA. I know not what to say; but give me your hands.\n    God send you joy, Petruchio! \'Tis a match.\n  GREMIO, TRANIO. Amen, say we; we will be witnesses.\n  PETRUCHIO. Father, and wife, and gentlemen, adieu.\n    I will to Venice; Sunday comes apace;\n    We will have rings and things, and fine array;\n    And kiss me, Kate; we will be married a Sunday.\n                        Exeunt PETRUCHIO and KATHERINA severally  \n  GREMIO. Was ever match clapp\'d up so suddenly?\n  BAPTISTA. Faith, gentlemen, now I play a merchant\'s part,\n    And venture madly on a desperate mart.\n  TRANIO. \'Twas a commodity lay fretting by you;\n    \'Twill bring you gain, or perish on the seas.\n  BAPTISTA. The gain I seek is quiet in the match.\n  GREMIO. No doubt but he hath got a quiet catch.\n    But now, Baptista, to your younger daughter:\n    Now is the day we long have looked for;\n    I am your neighbour, and was suitor first.\n  TRANIO. And I am one that love Bianca more\n    Than words can witness or your thoughts can guess.\n  GREMIO. Youngling, thou canst not love so dear as I.\n  TRANIO. Greybeard, thy love doth freeze.\n  GREMIO. But thine doth fry.\n    Skipper, stand back; \'tis age that nourisheth.\n  TRANIO. But youth in ladies\' eyes that flourisheth.\n  BAPTISTA. Content you, gentlemen; I will compound this strife.\n    \'Tis deeds must win the prize, and he of both\n    That can assure my daughter greatest dower  \n    Shall have my Bianca\'s love.\n    Say, Signior Gremio, what can you assure her?\n  GREMIO. First, as you know, my house within the city\n    Is richly furnished with plate and gold,\n    Basins and ewers to lave her dainty hands;\n    My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry;\n    In ivory coffers I have stuff\'d my crowns;\n    In cypress chests my arras counterpoints,\n    Costly apparel, tents, and canopies,\n    Fine linen, Turkey cushions boss\'d with pearl,\n    Valance of Venice gold in needle-work;\n    Pewter and brass, and all things that belongs\n    To house or housekeeping. Then at my farm\n    I have a hundred milch-kine to the pail,\n    Six score fat oxen standing in my stalls,\n    And all things answerable to this portion.\n    Myself am struck in years, I must confess;\n    And if I die to-morrow this is hers,\n    If whilst I live she will be only mine.\n  TRANIO. That \'only\' came well in. Sir, list to me:  \n    I am my father\'s heir and only son;\n    If I may have your daughter to my wife,\n    I\'ll leave her houses three or four as good\n    Within rich Pisa\'s walls as any one\n    Old Signior Gremio has in Padua;\n    Besides two thousand ducats by the year\n    Of fruitful land, all which shall be her jointure.\n    What, have I pinch\'d you, Signior Gremio?\n  GREMIO. Two thousand ducats by the year of land!\n    [Aside]  My land amounts not to so much in all.-\n    That she shall have, besides an argosy\n    That now is lying in Marseilles road.\n    What, have I chok\'d you with an argosy?\n  TRANIO. Gremio, \'tis known my father hath no less\n    Than three great argosies, besides two galliasses,\n    And twelve tight galleys. These I will assure her,\n    And twice as much whate\'er thou off\'rest next.\n  GREMIO. Nay, I have off\'red all; I have no more;\n    And she can have no more than all I have;\n    If you like me, she shall have me and mine.  \n  TRANIO. Why, then the maid is mine from all the world\n    By your firm promise; Gremio is out-vied.\n  BAPTISTA. I must confess your offer is the best;\n    And let your father make her the assurance,\n    She is your own. Else, you must pardon me;\n    If you should die before him, where\'s her dower?\n  TRANIO. That\'s but a cavil; he is old, I young.\n  GREMIO. And may not young men die as well as old?\n  BAPTISTA. Well, gentlemen,\n    I am thus resolv\'d: on Sunday next you know\n    My daughter Katherine is to be married;\n    Now, on the Sunday following shall Bianca\n    Be bride to you, if you make this assurance;\n    If not, to Signior Gremio.\n    And so I take my leave, and thank you both.\n  GREMIO. Adieu, good neighbour.                   Exit BAPTISTA\n    Now, I fear thee not.\n    Sirrah young gamester, your father were a fool\n    To give thee all, and in his waning age\n    Set foot under thy table. Tut, a toy!  \n    An old Italian fox is not so kind, my boy.              Exit\n  TRANIO. A vengeance on your crafty withered hide!\n    Yet I have fac\'d it with a card of ten.\n    \'Tis in my head to do my master good:\n    I see no reason but suppos\'d Lucentio\n    Must get a father, call\'d suppos\'d Vincentio;\n    And that\'s a wonder- fathers commonly\n    Do get their children; but in this case of wooing\n    A child shall get a sire, if I fail not of my cunning.\n Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nPadua. BAPTISTA\'S house\n\nEnter LUCENTIO as CAMBIO, HORTENSIO as LICIO, and BIANCA\n\n  LUCENTIO. Fiddler, forbear; you grow too forward, sir.\n    Have you so soon forgot the entertainment\n    Her sister Katherine welcome\'d you withal?\n  HORTENSIO. But, wrangling pedant, this is\n    The patroness of heavenly harmony.\n    Then give me leave to have prerogative;\n    And when in music we have spent an hour,\n    Your lecture shall have leisure for as much.\n  LUCENTIO. Preposterous ass, that never read so far\n    To know the cause why music was ordain\'d!\n    Was it not to refresh the mind of man\n    After his studies or his usual pain?\n    Then give me leave to read philosophy,\n    And while I pause serve in your harmony.\n  HORTENSIO. Sirrah, I will not bear these braves of thine.\n  BIANCA. Why, gentlemen, you do me double wrong\n    To strive for that which resteth in my choice.  \n    I arn no breeching scholar in the schools,\n    I\'ll not be tied to hours nor \'pointed times,\n    But learn my lessons as I please myself.\n    And to cut off all strife: here sit we down;\n    Take you your instrument, play you the whiles!\n    His lecture will be done ere you have tun\'d.\n  HORTENSIO. You\'ll leave his lecture when I am in tune?\n  LUCENTIO. That will be never- tune your instrument.\n  BIANCA. Where left we last?\n  LUCENTIO. Here, madam:\n    \'Hic ibat Simois, hic est Sigeia tellus,\n    Hic steterat Priami regia celsa senis.\'\n  BIANCA. Construe them.\n  LUCENTIO. \'Hic ibat\' as I told you before- \'Simois\' I am Lucentio-\n    \'hic est\' son unto Vincentio of Pisa- \'Sigeia tellus\' disguised\n    thus to get your love- \'Hic steterat\' and that Lucentio that\n    comes a-wooing- \'Priami\' is my man Tranio- \'regia\' bearing my\n    port- \'celsa senis\' that we might beguile the old pantaloon.\n  HORTENSIO. Madam, my instrument\'s in tune.\n  BIANCA. Let\'s hear. O fie! the treble jars.  \n  LUCENTIO. Spit in the hole, man, and tune again.\n  BIANCA. Now let me see if I can construe it: \'Hic ibat Simois\' I\n    know you not- \'hic est Sigeia tellus\' I trust you not- \'Hic\n    steterat Priami\' take heed he hear us not- \'regia\' presume not-\n   \'celsa senis\' despair not.\n  HORTENSIO. Madam, \'tis now in tune.\n  LUCENTIO. All but the bass.\n  HORTENSIO. The bass is right; \'tis the base knave that jars.\n    [Aside]  How fiery and forward our pedant is!\n    Now, for my life, the knave doth court my love.\n    Pedascule, I\'ll watch you better yet.\n  BIANCA. In time I may believe, yet I mistrust.\n  LUCENTIO. Mistrust it not- for sure, AEacides\n    Was Ajax, call\'d so from his grandfather.\n  BIANCA. I must believe my master; else, I promise you,\n    I should be arguing still upon that doubt;\n    But let it rest. Now, Licio, to you.\n    Good master, take it not unkindly, pray,\n    That I have been thus pleasant with you both.\n  HORTENSIO.  [To LUCENTIO]  You may go walk and give me leave  \n      awhile;\n    My lessons make no music in three Parts.\n  LUCENTIO. Are you so formal, sir? Well, I must wait,\n    [Aside]  And watch withal; for, but I be deceiv\'d,\n    Our fine musician groweth amorous.\n  HORTENSIO. Madam, before you touch the instrument\n    To learn the order of my fingering,\n    I must begin with rudiments of art,\n    To teach you gamut in a briefer sort,\n    More pleasant, pithy, and effectual,\n    Than hath been taught by any of my trade;\n    And there it is in writing fairly drawn.\n  BIANCA. Why, I am past my gamut long ago.\n  HORTENSIO. Yet read the gamut of Hortensio.\n  BIANCA.  [Reads]\n         \'"Gamut" I am, the ground of all accord-\n         "A re" to plead Hortensio\'s passion-\n         "B mi" Bianca, take him for thy lord-\n         "C fa ut" that loves with all affection-\n         "D sol re" one clef, two notes have I-  \n         "E la mi" show pity or I die.\'\n    Call you this gamut? Tut, I like it not!\n    Old fashions please me best; I am not so nice\n    To change true rules for odd inventions.\n\n                       Enter a SERVANT\n\n  SERVANT. Mistress, your father prays you leave your books\n    And help to dress your sister\'s chamber up.\n    You know to-morrow is the wedding-day.\n  BIANCA. Farewell, sweet masters, both; I must be gone.\n                                       Exeunt BIANCA and SERVANT\n  LUCENTIO. Faith, mistress, then I have no cause to stay.\n Exit\n  HORTENSIO. But I have cause to pry into this pedant;\n    Methinks he looks as though he were in love.\n    Yet if thy thoughts, Bianca, be so humble\n    To cast thy wand\'ring eyes on every stale-\n    Seize thee that list. If once I find thee ranging,\n  HORTENSIO will be quit with thee by changing.             Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nPadua. Before BAPTISTA\'So house\n\nEnter BAPTISTA, GREMIO, TRANIO as LUCENTIO, KATHERINA, BIANCA,\nLUCENTIO as CAMBIO, and ATTENDANTS\n\n  BAPTISTA.  [To TRANIO]  Signior Lucentio, this is the \'pointed day\n    That Katherine and Petruchio should be married,\n    And yet we hear not of our son-in-law.\n    What will be said? What mockery will it be\n    To want the bridegroom when the priest attends\n    To speak the ceremonial rites of marriage!\n    What says Lucentio to this shame of ours?\n  KATHERINA. No shame but mine; I must, forsooth, be forc\'d\n    To give my hand, oppos\'d against my heart,\n    Unto a mad-brain rudesby, full of spleen,\n    Who woo\'d in haste and means to wed at leisure.\n    I told you, I, he was a frantic fool,\n    Hiding his bitter jests in blunt behaviour;\n    And, to be noted for a merry man,\n    He\'ll woo a thousand, \'point the day of marriage,\n    Make friends invited, and proclaim the banns;  \n    Yet never means to wed where he hath woo\'d.\n    Now must the world point at poor Katherine,\n    And say \'Lo, there is mad Petruchio\'s wife,\n    If it would please him come and marry her!\'\n  TRANIO. Patience, good Katherine, and Baptista too.\n    Upon my life, Petruchio means but well,\n    Whatever fortune stays him from his word.\n    Though he be blunt, I know him passing wise;\n    Though he be merry, yet withal he\'s honest.\n  KATHERINA. Would Katherine had never seen him though!\n                    Exit, weeping, followed by BIANCA and others\n  BAPTISTA. Go, girl, I cannot blame thee now to weep,\n    For such an injury would vex a very saint;\n    Much more a shrew of thy impatient humour.\n\n                           Enter BIONDELLO\n\n    Master, master! News, and such old news as you never heard of!\n  BAPTISTA. Is it new and old too? How may that be?\n  BIONDELLO. Why, is it not news to hear of Petruchio\'s coming?  \n  BAPTISTA. Is he come?\n  BIONDELLO. Why, no, sir.\n  BAPTISTA. What then?\n  BIONDELLO. He is coming.\n  BAPTISTA. When will he be here?\n  BIONDELLO. When he stands where I am and sees you there.\n  TRANIO. But, say, what to thine old news?\n  BIONDELLO. Why, Petruchio is coming- in a new hat and an old\n    jerkin; a pair of old breeches thrice turn\'d; a pair of boots\n    that have been candle-cases, one buckled, another lac\'d; an old\n    rusty sword ta\'en out of the town armoury, with a broken hilt,\n    and chapeless; with two broken points; his horse hipp\'d, with an\n    old motley saddle and stirrups of no kindred; besides, possess\'d\n    with the glanders and like to mose in the chine, troubled with\n    the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped\n    with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of the fives,\n    stark spoil\'d with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, sway\'d in\n    the back and shoulder-shotten, near-legg\'d before, and with a\n    half-cheek\'d bit, and a head-stall of sheep\'s leather which,\n    being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often  \n    burst, and now repaired with knots; one girth six times piec\'d,\n    and a woman\'s crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her\n    name fairly set down in studs, and here and there piec\'d with\n    pack-thread.\n  BAPTISTA. Who comes with him?\n  BIONDELLO. O, sir, his lackey, for all the world caparison\'d like\n    the horse- with a linen stock on one leg and a kersey boot-hose\n    on the other, gart\'red with a red and blue list; an old hat, and\n    the humour of forty fancies prick\'d in\'t for a feather; a\n    monster, a very monster in apparel, and not like a Christian\n    footboy or a gentleman\'s lackey.\n  TRANIO. \'Tis some odd humour pricks him to this fashion;\n    Yet oftentimes lie goes but mean-apparell\'d.\n  BAPTISTA. I am glad he\'s come, howsoe\'er he comes.\n  BIONDELLO. Why, sir, he comes not.\n  BAPTISTA. Didst thou not say he comes?\n  BIONDELLO. Who? that Petruchio came?\n  BAPTISTA. Ay, that Petruchio came.\n  BIONDELLO. No, sir; I say his horse comes with him on his back.\n  BAPTISTA. Why, that\'s all one.  \n  BIONDELLO. Nay, by Saint Jamy,\n             I hold you a penny,\n             A horse and a man\n             Is more than one,\n             And yet not many.\n\n                  Enter PETRUCHIO and GRUMIO\n\n  PETRUCHIO. Come, where be these gallants? Who\'s at home?\n  BAPTISTA. You are welcome, sir.\n  PETRUCHIO. And yet I come not well.\n  BAPTISTA. And yet you halt not.\n  TRANIO. Not so well apparell\'d\n    As I wish you were.\n  PETRUCHIO. Were it better, I should rush in thus.\n    But where is Kate? Where is my lovely bride?\n    How does my father? Gentles, methinks you frown;\n    And wherefore gaze this goodly company\n    As if they saw some wondrous monument,\n    Some comet or unusual prodigy?  \n  BAPTISTA. Why, sir, you know this is your wedding-day.\n    First were we sad, fearing you would not come;\n    Now sadder, that you come so unprovided.\n    Fie, doff this habit, shame to your estate,\n    An eye-sore to our solemn festival!\n  TRANIO. And tell us what occasion of import\n    Hath all so long detain\'d you from your wife,\n    And sent you hither so unlike yourself?\n  PETRUCHIO. Tedious it were to tell, and harsh to hear;\n    Sufficeth I am come to keep my word,\n    Though in some part enforced to digress,\n    Which at more leisure I will so excuse\n    As you shall well be satisfied withal.\n    But where is Kate? I stay too long from her;\n    The morning wears, \'tis time we were at church.\n  TRANIO. See not your bride in these unreverent robes;\n    Go to my chamber, put on clothes of mine.\n  PETRUCHIO. Not I, believe me; thus I\'ll visit her.\n  BAPTISTA. But thus, I trust, you will not marry her.\n  PETRUCHIO. Good sooth, even thus; therefore ha\' done with words;  \n    To me she\'s married, not unto my clothes.\n    Could I repair what she will wear in me\n    As I can change these poor accoutrements,\n    \'Twere well for Kate and better for myself.\n    But what a fool am I to chat with you,\n    When I should bid good-morrow to my bride\n    And seal the title with a lovely kiss!\n                                  Exeunt PETRUCHIO and PETRUCHIO\n  TRANIO. He hath some meaning in his mad attire.\n    We will persuade him, be it possible,\n    To put on better ere he go to church.\n  BAPTISTA. I\'ll after him and see the event of this.\n              Exeunt BAPTISTA, GREMIO, BIONDELLO, and ATTENDENTS\n  TRANIO. But to her love concerneth us to ad\n    Her father\'s liking; which to bring to pass,\n    As I before imparted to your worship,\n    I am to get a man- whate\'er he be\n    It skills not much; we\'ll fit him to our turn-\n    And he shall be Vincentio of Pisa,\n    And make assurance here in Padua  \n    Of greater sums than I have promised.\n    So shall you quietly enjoy your hope\n    And marry sweet Bianca with consent.\n  LUCENTIO. Were it not that my fellow schoolmaster\n    Doth watch Bianca\'s steps so narrowly,\n    \'Twere good, methinks, to steal our marriage;\n    Which once perform\'d, let all the world say no,\n    I\'ll keep mine own despite of all the world.\n  TRANIO. That by degrees we mean to look into\n    And watch our vantage in this business;\n    We\'ll over-reach the greybeard, Gremio,\n    The narrow-prying father, Minola,\n    The quaint musician, amorous Licio-\n    All for my master\'s sake, Lucentio.\n\n                           Re-enter GREMIO\n\n    Signior Gremio, came you from the church?\n  GREMIO. As willingly as e\'er I came from school.\n  TRANIO. And is the bride and bridegroom coming home?  \n  GREMIO. A bridegroom, say you? \'Tis a groom indeed,\n    A grumbling groom, and that the girl shall find.\n  TRANIO. Curster than she? Why, \'tis impossible.\n  GREMIO. Why, he\'s a devil, a devil, a very fiend.\n  TRANIO. Why, she\'s a devil, a devil, the devil\'s dam.\n  GREMIO. Tut, she\'s a lamb, a dove, a fool, to him!\n    I\'ll tell you, Sir Lucentio: when the priest\n    Should ask if Katherine should be his wife,\n    \'Ay, by gogs-wouns\' quoth he, and swore so loud\n    That, all amaz\'d, the priest let fall the book;\n    And as he stoop\'d again to take it up,\n    This mad-brain\'d bridegroom took him such a cuff\n    That down fell priest and book, and book and priest.\n    \'Now take them up,\' quoth he \'if any list.\'\n  TRANIO. What said the wench, when he rose again?\n  GREMIO. Trembled and shook, for why he stamp\'d and swore\n    As if the vicar meant to cozen him.\n    But after many ceremonies done\n    He calls for wine: \'A health!\' quoth he, as if\n    He had been abroad, carousing to his mates  \n    After a storm; quaff\'d off the muscadel,\n    And threw the sops all in the sexton\'s face,\n    Having no other reason\n    But that his beard grew thin and hungerly\n    And seem\'d to ask him sops as he was drinking.\n    This done, he took the bride about the neck,\n    And kiss\'d her lips with such a clamorous smack\n    That at the parting all the church did echo.\n    And I, seeing this, came thence for very shame;\n    And after me, I know, the rout is coming.\n    Such a mad marriage never was before.\n    Hark, hark! I hear the minstrels play.         [Music plays]\n\n       Enter PETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, BIANCA, BAPTISTA, HORTENSIO,\n                         GRUMIO, and train\n\n  PETRUCHIO. Gentlemen and friends, I thank you for your pains.\n    I know you think to dine with me to-day,\n    And have prepar\'d great store of wedding cheer\n    But so it is- my haste doth call me hence,  \n    And therefore here I mean to take my leave.\n  BAPTISTA. Is\'t possible you will away to-night?\n  PETRUCHIO. I must away to-day before night come.\n    Make it no wonder; if you knew my business,\n    You would entreat me rather go than stay.\n    And, honest company, I thank you all\n    That have beheld me give away myself\n    To this most patient, sweet, and virtuous wife.\n    Dine with my father, drink a health to me.\n    For I must hence; and farewell to you all.\n  TRANIO. Let us entreat you stay till after dinner.\n  PETRUCHIO. It may not be.\n  GREMIO. Let me entreat you.\n  PETRUCHIO. It cannot be.\n  KATHERINA. Let me entreat you.\n  PETRUCHIO. I am content.\n  KATHERINA. Are you content to stay?\n  PETRUCHIO. I am content you shall entreat me stay;\n    But yet not stay, entreat me how you can.\n  KATHERINA. Now, if you love me, stay.  \n  PETRUCHIO. Grumio, my horse.\n  GRUMIO. Ay, sir, they be ready; the oats have eaten the horses.\n  KATHERINA. Nay, then,\n    Do what thou canst, I will not go to-day;\n    No, nor to-morrow, not till I please myself.\n    The door is open, sir; there lies your way;\n    You may be jogging whiles your boots are green;\n    For me, I\'ll not be gone till I please myself.\n    \'Tis like you\'ll prove a jolly surly groom\n    That take it on you at the first so roundly.\n  PETRUCHIO. O Kate, content thee; prithee be not angry.\n  KATHERINA. I will be angry; what hast thou to do?\n    Father, be quiet; he shall stay my leisure.\n  GREMIO. Ay, marry, sir, now it begins to work.\n  KATHERINA. Gentlemen, forward to the bridal dinner.\n    I see a woman may be made a fool\n    If she had not a spirit to resist.\n  PETRUCHIO. They shall go forward, Kate, at thy command.\n    Obey the bride, you that attend on her;\n    Go to the feast, revel and domineer,  \n    Carouse full measure to her maidenhead;\n    Be mad and merry, or go hang yourselves.\n    But for my bonny Kate, she must with me.\n    Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret;\n    I will be master of what is mine own-\n    She is my goods, my chattels, she is my house,\n    My household stuff, my field, my barn,\n    My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing,\n    And here she stands; touch her whoever dare;\n    I\'ll bring mine action on the proudest he\n    That stops my way in Padua. Grumio,\n    Draw forth thy weapon; we are beset with thieves;\n    Rescue thy mistress, if thou be a man.\n    Fear not, sweet wench; they shall not touch thee, Kate;\n    I\'ll buckler thee against a million.\n                         Exeunt PETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, and GRUMIO\n  BAPTISTA. Nay, let them go, a couple of quiet ones.\n  GREMIO. Went they not quickly, I should die with laughing.\n  TRANIO. Of all mad matches, never was the like.\n  LUCENTIO. Mistress, what\'s your opinion of your sister?  \n  BIANCA. That, being mad herself, she\'s madly mated.\n  GREMIO. I warrant him, Petruchio is Kated.\n  BAPTISTA. Neighbours and friends, though bride and bridegroom wants\n    For to supply the places at the table,\n    You know there wants no junkets at the feast.\n    Lucentio, you shall supply the bridegroom\'s place;\n    And let Bianca take her sister\'s room.\n  TRANIO. Shall sweet Bianca practise how to bride it?\n  BAPTISTA. She shall, Lucentio. Come, gentlemen, let\'s go.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nPETRUCHIO\'S country house\n\nEnter GRUMIO\n\n  GRUMIO. Fie, fie on all tired jades, on all mad masters, and all\n    foul ways! Was ever man so beaten? Was ever man so ray\'d? Was\n    ever man so weary? I am sent before to make a fire, and they are\n    coming after to warm them. Now were not I a little pot and soon\n    hot, my very lips might freeze to my teeth, my tongue to the roof\n    of my mouth, my heart in my belly, ere I should come by a fire to\n    thaw me. But I with blowing the fire shall warm myself; for,\n    considering the weather, a taller man than I will take cold.\n    Holla, ho! Curtis!\n\n                            Enter CURTIS\n\n  CURTIS. Who is that calls so coldly?\n  GRUMIO. A piece of ice. If thou doubt it, thou mayst slide from my\n    shoulder to my heel with no greater a run but my head and my\n    neck. A fire, good Curtis.\n  CURTIS. Is my master and his wife coming, Grumio?  \n  GRUMIO. O, ay, Curtis, ay; and therefore fire, fire; cast on no\n    water.\n  CURTIS. Is she so hot a shrew as she\'s reported?\n  GRUMIO. She was, good Curtis, before this frost; but thou know\'st\n    winter tames man, woman, and beast; for it hath tam\'d my old\n    master, and my new mistress, and myself, fellow Curtis.\n  CURTIS. Away, you three-inch fool! I am no beast.\n  GRUMIO. Am I but three inches? Why, thy horn is a foot, and so long\n    am I at the least. But wilt thou make a fire, or shall I complain\n    on thee to our mistress, whose hand- she being now at hand- thou\n    shalt soon feel, to thy cold comfort, for being slow in thy hot\n    office?\n  CURTIS. I prithee, good Grumio, tell me how goes the world?\n  GRUMIO. A cold world, Curtis, in every office but thine; and\n    therefore fire. Do thy duty, and have thy duty, for my master and\n    mistress are almost frozen to death.\n  CURTIS. There\'s fire ready; and therefore, good Grumio, the news?\n  GRUMIO. Why, \'Jack boy! ho, boy!\' and as much news as thou wilt.\n  CURTIS. Come, you are so full of cony-catching!\n  GRUMIO. Why, therefore, fire; for I have caught extreme cold.  \n    Where\'s the cook? Is supper ready, the house trimm\'d, rushes\n    strew\'d, cobwebs swept, the serving-men in their new fustian,\n    their white stockings, and every officer his wedding-garment on?\n    Be the jacks fair within, the jills fair without, the carpets\n    laid, and everything in order?\n  CURTIS. All ready; and therefore, I pray thee, news.\n  GRUMIO. First know my horse is tired; my master and mistress fall\'n\n    out.\n  CURTIS. How?\n  GRUMIO. Out of their saddles into the dirt; and thereby hangs a\n    tale.\n  CURTIS. Let\'s ha\'t, good Grumio.\n  GRUMIO. Lend thine ear.\n  CURTIS. Here.\n  GRUMIO. There.                                  [Striking him]\n  CURTIS. This \'tis to feel a tale, not to hear a tale.\n  GRUMIO. And therefore \'tis call\'d a sensible tale; and this cuff\n    was but to knock at your car and beseech list\'ning. Now I begin:\n    Imprimis, we came down a foul hill, my master riding behind my\n    mistress-  \n  CURTIS. Both of one horse?\n  GRUMIO. What\'s that to thee?\n  CURTIS. Why, a horse.\n  GRUMIO. Tell thou the tale. But hadst thou not cross\'d me, thou\n    shouldst have heard how her horse fell and she under her horse;\n    thou shouldst have heard in how miry a place, how she was\n    bemoil\'d, how he left her with the horse upon her, how he beat me\n    because her horse stumbled, how she waded through the dirt to\n    pluck him off me, how he swore, how she pray\'d that never pray\'d\n    before, how I cried, how the horses ran away, how her bridle was\n    burst, how I lost my crupper- with many things of worthy memory,\n    which now shall die in oblivion, and thou return unexperienc\'d to\n    thy grave.\n  CURTIS. By this reck\'ning he is more shrew than she.\n  GRUMIO. Ay, and that thou and the proudest of you all shall find\n    when he comes home. But what talk I of this? Call forth\n    Nathaniel, Joseph, Nicholas, Philip, Walter, Sugarsop, and the\n    rest; let their heads be sleekly comb\'d, their blue coats brush\'d\n    and their garters of an indifferent knit; let them curtsy with\n    their left legs, and not presume to touch a hair of my mastcr\'s  \n    horse-tail till they kiss their hands. Are they all ready?\n  CURTIS. They are.\n  GRUMIO. Call them forth.\n  CURTIS. Do you hear, ho? You must meet my master, to countenance my\n    mistress.\n  GRUMIO. Why, she hath a face of her own.\n  CURTIS. Who knows not that?\n  GRUMIO. Thou, it seems, that calls for company to countenance her.\n  CURTIS. I call them forth to credit her.\n  GRUMIO. Why, she comes to borrow nothing of them.\n\n                     Enter four or five SERVINGMEN\n\n  NATHANIEL. Welcome home, Grumio!\n  PHILIP. How now, Grumio!\n  JOSEPH. What, Grumio!\n  NICHOLAS. Fellow Grumio!\n  NATHANIEL. How now, old lad!\n  GRUMIO. Welcome, you!- how now, you!- what, you!- fellow, you!- and\n    thus much for greeting. Now, my spruce companions, is all ready,  \n    and all things neat?\n  NATHANIEL. All things is ready. How near is our master?\n  GRUMIO. E\'en at hand, alighted by this; and therefore be not-\n   Cock\'s passion, silence! I hear my master.\n\n                     Enter PETRUCHIO and KATHERINA\n\n  PETRUCHIO. Where be these knaves? What, no man at door\n    To hold my stirrup nor to take my horse!\n    Where is Nathaniel, Gregory, Philip?\n  ALL SERVANTS. Here, here, sir; here, sir.\n  PETRUCHIO. Here, sir! here, sir! here, sir! here, sir!\n    You logger-headed and unpolish\'d grooms!\n    What, no attendance? no regard? no duty?\n    Where is the foolish knave I sent before?\n  GRUMIO. Here, sir; as foolish as I was before.\n  PETRUCHIO. YOU peasant swain! you whoreson malt-horse drudge!\n    Did I not bid thee meet me in the park\n    And bring along these rascal knaves with thee?\n  GRUMIO. Nathaniel\'s coat, sir, was not fully made,  \n    And Gabriel\'s pumps were all unpink\'d i\' th\' heel;\n    There was no link to colour Peter\'s hat,\n    And Walter\'s dagger was not come from sheathing;\n    There were none fine but Adam, Ralph, and Gregory;\n    The rest were ragged, old, and beggarly;\n    Yet, as they are, here are they come to meet you.\n  PETRUCHIO. Go, rascals, go and fetch my supper in.\n                                   Exeunt some of the SERVINGMEN\n\n    [Sings]  Where is the life that late I led?\n             Where are those-\n\n    Sit down, Kate, and welcome. Soud, soud, soud, soud!\n\n                 Re-enter SERVANTS with supper\n\n    Why, when, I say? Nay, good sweet Kate, be merry.\n    Off with my boots, you rogues! you villains, when?\n\n    [Sings]  It was the friar of orders grey,  \n             As he forth walked on his way-\n\n    Out, you rogue! you pluck my foot awry;\n    Take that, and mend the plucking off the other.\n                                                   [Strikes him]\n    Be merry, Kate. Some water, here, what, ho!\n\n                      Enter one with water\n\n    Where\'s my spaniel Troilus? Sirrah, get you hence,\n    And bid my cousin Ferdinand come hither:\n                                                 Exit SERVINGMAN\n    One, Kate, that you must kiss and be acquainted with.\n    Where are my slippers? Shall I have some water?\n    Come, Kate, and wash, and welcome heartily.\n    You whoreson villain! will you let it fall?    [Strikes him]\n  KATHERINA. Patience, I pray you; \'twas a fault unwilling.\n  PETRUCHIO. A whoreson, beetle-headed, flap-ear\'d knave!\n    Come, Kate, sit down; I know you have a stomach.\n    Will you give thanks, sweet Kate, or else shall I?  \n    What\'s this? Mutton?\n  FIRST SERVANT. Ay.\n  PETRUCHIO. Who brought it?\n  PETER. I.\n  PETRUCHIO. \'Tis burnt; and so is all the meat.\n    What dogs are these? Where is the rascal cook?\n    How durst you villains bring it from the dresser\n    And serve it thus to me that love it not?\n    There, take it to you, trenchers, cups, and all;\n                                [Throws the meat, etc., at them]\n    You heedless joltheads and unmanner\'d slaves!\n    What, do you grumble? I\'ll be with you straight.\n                                                 Exeunt SERVANTS\n  KATHERINA. I pray you, husband, be not so disquiet;\n    The meat was well, if you were so contented.\n  PETRUCHIO. I tell thee, Kate, \'twas burnt and dried away,\n    And I expressly am forbid to touch it;\n    For it engenders choler, planteth anger;\n    And better \'twere that both of us did fast,\n    Since, of ourselves, ourselves are choleric,  \n    Than feed it with such over-roasted flesh.\n    Be patient; to-morrow \'t shall be mended.\n    And for this night we\'ll fast for company.\n    Come, I will bring thee to thy bridal chamber.        Exeunt\n\n                     Re-enter SERVANTS severally\n\n  NATHANIEL. Peter, didst ever see the like?\n  PETER. He kills her in her own humour.\n\n                            Re-enter CURTIS\n\n  GRUMIO. Where is he?\n  CURTIS. In her chamber. Making a sermon of continency to her,\n    And rails, and swears, and rates, that she, poor soul,\n    Knows not which way to stand, to look, to speak.\n    And sits as one new risen from a dream.\n    Away, away! for he is coming hither.                  Exeunt\n\n                       Re-enter PETRUCHIO  \n\n  PETRUCHIO. Thus have I politicly begun my reign,\n    And \'tis my hope to end successfully.\n    My falcon now is sharp and passing empty.\n    And till she stoop she must not be full-gorg\'d,\n    For then she never looks upon her lure.\n    Another way I have to man my haggard,\n    To make her come, and know her keeper\'s call,\n    That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites\n    That bate and beat, and will not be obedient.\n    She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat;\n    Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not;\n    As with the meat, some undeserved fault\n    I\'ll find about the making of the bed;\n    And here I\'ll fling the pillow, there the bolster,\n    This way the coverlet, another way the sheets;\n    Ay, and amid this hurly I intend\n    That all is done in reverend care of her-\n    And, in conclusion, she shall watch all night;\n    And if she chance to nod I\'ll rail and brawl  \n    And with the clamour keep her still awake.\n    This is a way to kill a wife with kindness,\n    And thus I\'ll curb her mad and headstrong humour.\n    He that knows better how to tame a shrew,\n    Now let him speak; \'tis charity to show.                Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nPadua. Before BAPTISTA\'S house\n\nEnter TRANIO as LUCENTIO, and HORTENSIO as LICIO\n\n  TRANIO. Is \'t possible, friend Licio, that Mistress Bianca\n    Doth fancy any other but Lucentio?\n    I tell you, sir, she bears me fair in hand.\n  HORTENSIO. Sir, to satisfy you in what I have said,\n    Stand by and mark the manner of his teaching.\n                                              [They stand aside]\n\n               Enter BIANCA, and LUCENTIO as CAMBIO\n\n  LUCENTIO. Now, mistress, profit you in what you read?\n  BIANCA. What, master, read you, First resolve me that.\n  LUCENTIO. I read that I profess, \'The Art to Love.\'\n  BIANCA. And may you prove, sir, master of your art!\n  LUCENTIO. While you, sweet dear, prove mistress of my heart.\n                                                   [They retire]\n  HORTENSIO. Quick proceeders, marry! Now tell me, I pray,\n    You that durst swear that your Mistress Blanca  \n    Lov\'d none in the world so well as Lucentio.\n  TRANIO. O despiteful love! unconstant womankind!\n    I tell thee, Licio, this is wonderful.\n  HORTENSIO. Mistake no more; I am not Licio.\n    Nor a musician as I seem to be;\n    But one that scorn to live in this disguise\n    For such a one as leaves a gentleman\n    And makes a god of such a cullion.\n    Know, sir, that I am call\'d Hortensio.\n  TRANIO. Signior Hortensio, I have often heard\n    Of your entire affection to Bianca;\n    And since mine eyes are witness of her lightness,\n    I will with you, if you be so contented,\n    Forswear Bianca and her love for ever.\n  HORTENSIO. See, how they kiss and court! Signior Lucentio,\n    Here is my hand, and here I firmly vow\n    Never to woo her more, but do forswear her,\n    As one unworthy all the former favours\n    That I have fondly flatter\'d her withal.\n  TRANIO. And here I take the like unfeigned oath,  \n    Never to marry with her though she would entreat;\n    Fie on her! See how beastly she doth court him!\n  HORTENSIO. Would all the world but he had quite forsworn!\n    For me, that I may surely keep mine oath,\n    I will be married to a wealtlly widow\n    Ere three days pass, which hath as long lov\'d me\n    As I have lov\'d this proud disdainful haggard.\n    And so farewell, Signior Lucentio.\n    Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks,\n    Shall win my love; and so I take my leave,\n    In resolution as I swore before.                        Exit\n  TRANIO. Mistress Bianca, bless you with such grace\n    As \'longeth to a lover\'s blessed case!\n    Nay, I have ta\'en you napping, gentle love,\n    And have forsworn you with Hortensio.\n  BIANCA. Tranio, you jest; but have you both forsworn me?\n  TRANIO. Mistress, we have.\n  LUCENTIO. Then we are rid of Licio.\n  TRANIO. I\' faith, he\'ll have a lusty widow now,\n    That shall be woo\'d and wedded in a day.  \n  BIANCA. God give him joy!\n  TRANIO. Ay, and he\'ll tame her.\n  BIANCA. He says so, Tranio.\n  TRANIO. Faith, he is gone unto the taming-school.\n  BIANCA. The taming-school! What, is there such a place?\n  TRANIO. Ay, mistress; and Petruchio is the master,\n    That teacheth tricks eleven and twenty long,\n    To tame a shrew and charm her chattering tongue.\n\n                       Enter BIONDELLO\n\n  BIONDELLO. O master, master, have watch\'d so long\n    That I am dog-weary; but at last I spied\n    An ancient angel coming down the hill\n    Will serve the turn.\n  TRANIO. What is he, Biondello?\n  BIONDELLO. Master, a mercatante or a pedant,\n    I know not what; but formal in apparel,\n    In gait and countenance surely like a father.\n  LUCENTIO. And what of him, Tranio?  \n  TRANIO. If he be credulous and trust my tale,\n    I\'ll make him glad to seem Vincentio,\n    And give assurance to Baptista Minola\n    As if he were the right Vincentio.\n    Take in your love, and then let me alone.\n                                      Exeunt LUCENTIO and BIANCA\n\n                         Enter a PEDANT\n\n  PEDANT. God save you, sir!\n  TRANIO. And you, sir; you are welcome.\n    Travel you far on, or are you at the farthest?\n  PEDANT. Sir, at the farthest for a week or two;\n    But then up farther, and as far as Rome;\n    And so to Tripoli, if God lend me life.\n  TRANIO. What countryman, I pray?\n  PEDANT. Of Mantua.\n  TRANIO. Of Mantua, sir? Marry, God forbid,\n    And come to Padua, careless of your life!\n  PEDANT. My life, sir! How, I pray? For that goes hard.  \n  TRANIO. \'Tis death for any one in Mantua\n    To come to Padua. Know you not the cause?\n    Your ships are stay\'d at Venice; and the Duke,\n    For private quarrel \'twixt your Duke and him,\n    Hath publish\'d and proclaim\'d it openly.\n    \'Tis marvel- but that you are but newly come,\n    You might have heard it else proclaim\'d about.\n  PEDANT. Alas, sir, it is worse for me than so!\n    For I have bills for money by exchange\n    From Florence, and must here deliver them.\n  TRANIO. Well, sir, to do you courtesy,\n    This will I do, and this I will advise you-\n    First, tell me, have you ever been at Pisa?\n  PEDANT. Ay, sir, in Pisa have I often been,\n    Pisa renowned for grave citizens.\n  TRANIO. Among them know you one Vincentio?\n  PEDANT. I know him not, but I have heard of him,\n    A merchant of incomparable wealth.\n  TRANIO. He is my father, sir; and, sooth to say,\n    In count\'nance somewhat doth resemble you.  \n  BIONDELLO.  [Aside]  As much as an apple doth an oyster, and all\n    one.\n  TRANIO. To save your life in this extremity,\n    This favour will I do you for his sake;\n    And think it not the worst of all your fortunes\n    That you are like to Sir Vincentio.\n    His name and credit shall you undertake,\n    And in my house you shall be friendly lodg\'d;\n    Look that you take upon you as you should.\n    You understand me, sir. So shall you stay\n    Till you have done your business in the city.\n    If this be court\'sy, sir, accept of it.\n  PEDANT. O, sir, I do; and will repute you ever\n    The patron of my life and liberty.\n  TRANIO. Then go with me to make the matter good.\n    This, by the way, I let you understand:\n    My father is here look\'d for every day\n    To pass assurance of a dow\'r in marriage\n    \'Twixt me and one Baptista\'s daughter here.\n    In all these circumstances I\'ll instruct you.  \n    Go with me to clothe you as becomes you.              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nPETRUCHIO\'S house\n\nEnter KATHERINA and GRUMIO\n\n  GRUMIO. No, no, forsooth; I dare not for my life.\n  KATHERINA. The more my wrong, the more his spite appears.\n    What, did he marry me to famish me?\n    Beggars that come unto my father\'s door\n    Upon entreaty have a present alms;\n    If not, elsewhere they meet with charity;\n    But I, who never knew how to entreat,\n    Nor never needed that I should entreat,\n    Am starv\'d for meat, giddy for lack of sleep;\n    With oaths kept waking, and with brawling fed;\n    And that which spites me more than all these wants-\n    He does it under name of perfect love;\n    As who should say, if I should sleep or eat,\n    \'Twere deadly sickness or else present death.\n    I prithee go and get me some repast;\n    I care not what, so it be wholesome food.\n  GRUMIO. What say you to a neat\'s foot?  \n  KATHERINA. \'Tis passing good; I prithee let me have it.\n  GRUMIO. I fear it is too choleric a meat.\n    How say you to a fat tripe finely broil\'d?\n  KATHERINA. I like it well; good Grumio, fetch it me.\n  GRUMIO. I cannot tell; I fear \'tis choleric.\n    What say you to a piece of beef and mustard?\n  KATHERINA. A dish that I do love to feed upon.\n  GRUMIO. Ay, but the mustard is too hot a little.\n  KATHERINA. Why then the beef, and let the mustard rest.\n  GRUMIO. Nay, then I will not; you shall have the mustard,\n    Or else you get no beef of Grumio.\n  KATHERINA. Then both, or one, or anything thou wilt.\n  GRUMIO. Why then the mustard without the beef.\n  KATHERINA. Go, get thee gone, thou false deluding slave,\n                                                     [Beats him]\n    That feed\'st me with the very name of meat.\n    Sorrow on thee and all the pack of you\n    That triumph thus upon my misery!\n    Go, get thee gone, I say.\n  \n               Enter PETRUCHIO, and HORTENSIO with meat\n\n  PETRUCHIO. How fares my Kate? What, sweeting, all amort?\n  HORTENSIO. Mistress, what cheer?\n  KATHERINA. Faith, as cold as can be.\n  PETRUCHIO. Pluck up thy spirits, look cheerfully upon me.\n    Here, love, thou seest how diligent I am,\n    To dress thy meat myself, and bring it thee.\n    I am sure, sweet Kate, this kindness merits thanks.\n    What, not a word? Nay, then thou lov\'st it not,\n    And all my pains is sorted to no proof.\n    Here, take away this dish.\n  KATHERINA. I pray you, let it stand.\n  PETRUCHIO. The poorest service is repaid with thanks;\n    And so shall mine, before you touch the meat.\n  KATHERINA. I thank you, sir.\n  HORTENSIO. Signior Petruchio, fie! you are to blame.\n    Come, Mistress Kate, I\'ll bear you company.\n  PETRUCHIO.  [Aside]  Eat it up all, Hortensio, if thou lovest me.-\n    Much good do it unto thy gentle heart!  \n    Kate, eat apace. And now, my honey love,\n    Will we return unto thy father\'s house\n    And revel it as bravely as the best,\n    With silken coats and caps, and golden rings,\n    With ruffs and cuffs and farthingales and things,\n    With scarfs and fans and double change of brav\'ry.\n    With amber bracelets, beads, and all this knav\'ry.\n    What, hast thou din\'d? The tailor stays thy leisure,\n    To deck thy body with his ruffling treasure.\n\n                          Enter TAILOR\n\n    Come, tailor, let us see these ornaments;\n    Lay forth the gown.\n\n                        Enter HABERDASHER\n\n    What news with you, sir?\n  HABERDASHER. Here is the cap your worship did bespeak.\n  PETRUCHIO. Why, this was moulded on a porringer;  \n    A velvet dish. Fie, fie! \'tis lewd and filthy;\n    Why, \'tis a cockle or a walnut-shell,\n    A knack, a toy, a trick, a baby\'s cap.\n    Away with it. Come, let me have a bigger.\n  KATHERINA. I\'ll have no bigger; this doth fit the time,\n    And gentlewomen wear such caps as these.\n  PETRUCHIO. When you are gentle, you shall have one too,\n    And not till then.\n  HORTENSIO.  [Aside]  That will not be in haste.\n  KATHERINA. Why, sir, I trust I may have leave to speak;\n    And speak I will. I am no child, no babe.\n    Your betters have endur\'d me say my mind,\n    And if you cannot, best you stop your ears.\n    My tongue will tell the anger of my heart,\n    Or else my heart, concealing it, will break;\n    And rather than it shall, I will be free\n    Even to the uttermost, as I please, in words.\n  PETRUCHIO. Why, thou say\'st true; it is a paltry cap,\n    A custard-coffin, a bauble, a silken pie;\n    I love thee well in that thou lik\'st it not.  \n  KATHERINA. Love me or love me not, I like the cap;\n    And it I will have, or I will have none.    Exit HABERDASHER\n  PETRUCHIO. Thy gown? Why, ay. Come, tailor, let us see\'t.\n    O mercy, God! what masquing stuff is here?\n    What\'s this? A sleeve? \'Tis like a demi-cannon.\n    What, up and down, carv\'d like an appletart?\n    Here\'s snip and nip and cut and slish and slash,\n    Like to a censer in a barber\'s shop.\n    Why, what a devil\'s name, tailor, call\'st thou this?\n  HORTENSIO.  [Aside]  I see she\'s like to have neither cap nor gown.\n  TAILOR. You bid me make it orderly and well,\n    According to the fashion and the time.\n  PETRUCHIO. Marry, and did; but if you be rememb\'red,\n    I did not bid you mar it to the time.\n    Go, hop me over every kennel home,\n    For you shall hop without my custom, sir.\n    I\'ll none of it; hence! make your best of it.\n  KATHERINA. I never saw a better fashion\'d gown,\n    More quaint, more pleasing, nor more commendable;\n    Belike you mean to make a puppet of me.  \n  PETRUCHIO. Why, true; he means to make a puppet of thee.\n  TAILOR. She says your worship means to make a puppet of her.\n  PETRUCHIO. O monstrous arrogance! Thou liest, thou thread, thou\n      thimble,\n    Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail,\n    Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket thou-\n    Brav\'d in mine own house with a skein of thread!\n    Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant;\n    Or I shall so bemete thee with thy yard\n    As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou liv\'st!\n    I tell thee, I, that thou hast marr\'d her gown.\n  TAILOR. Your worship is deceiv\'d; the gown is made\n    Just as my master had direction.\n    Grumio gave order how it should be done.\n  GRUMIO. I gave him no order; I gave him the stuff.\n  TAILOR. But how did you desire it should be made?\n  GRUMIO. Marry, sir, with needle and thread.\n  TAILOR. But did you not request to have it cut?\n  GRUMIO. Thou hast fac\'d many things.\n  TAILOR. I have.  \n  GRUMIO. Face not me. Thou hast brav\'d many men; brave not me. I\n    will neither be fac\'d nor brav\'d. I say unto thee, I bid thy\n    master cut out the gown; but I did not bid him cut it to pieces.\n    Ergo, thou liest.\n  TAILOR. Why, here is the note of the fashion to testify.\n  PETRUCHIO. Read it.\n  GRUMIO. The note lies in\'s throat, if he say I said so.\n  TAILOR.  [Reads]  \'Imprimis, a loose-bodied gown\'-\n  GRUMIO. Master, if ever I said loose-bodied gown, sew me in the\n    skirts of it and beat me to death with a bottom of brown bread; I\n    said a gown.\n  PETRUCHIO. Proceed.\n  TAILOR.  [Reads]  \'With a small compass\'d cape\'-\n  GRUMIO. I confess the cape.\n  TAILOR.  [Reads]  \'With a trunk sleeve\'-\n  GRUMIO. I confess two sleeves.\n  TAILOR.  [Reads]  \'The sleeves curiously cut.\'\n  PETRUCHIO. Ay, there\'s the villainy.\n  GRUMIO. Error i\' th\' bill, sir; error i\' th\' bill! I commanded the\n    sleeves should be cut out, and sew\'d up again; and that I\'ll  \n    prove upon thee, though thy little finger be armed in a thimble.\n  TAILOR. This is true that I say; an I had thee in place where, thou\n    shouldst know it.\n  GRUMIO. I am for thee straight; take thou the bill, give me thy\n    meteyard, and spare not me.\n  HORTENSIO. God-a-mercy, Grumio! Then he shall have no odds.\n  PETRUCHIO. Well, sir, in brief, the gown is not for me.\n  GRUMIO. You are i\' th\' right, sir; \'tis for my mistress.\n  PETRUCHIO. Go, take it up unto thy master\'s use.\n  GRUMIO. Villain, not for thy life! Take up my mistress\' gown for\n    thy master\'s use!\n  PETRUCHIO. Why, sir, what\'s your conceit in that?\n  GRUMIO. O, sir, the conceit is deeper than you think for.\n    Take up my mistress\' gown to his master\'s use!\n    O fie, fie, fie!\n  PETRUCHIO.  [Aside]  Hortensio, say thou wilt see the tailor paid.-\n    Go take it hence; be gone, and say no more.\n  HORTENSIO. Tailor, I\'ll pay thee for thy gown to-morrow;\n    Take no unkindness of his hasty words.\n    Away, I say; commend me to thy master.           Exit TAILOR  \n  PETRUCHIO. Well, come, my Kate; we will unto your father\'s\n    Even in these honest mean habiliments;\n    Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor;\n    For \'tis the mind that makes the body rich;\n    And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,\n    So honour peereth in the meanest habit.\n    What, is the jay more precious than the lark\n    Because his feathers are more beautiful?\n    Or is the adder better than the eel\n    Because his painted skin contents the eye?\n    O no, good Kate; neither art thou the worse\n    For this poor furniture and mean array.\n    If thou account\'st it shame, lay it on me;\n    And therefore frolic; we will hence forthwith\n    To feast and sport us at thy father\'s house.\n    Go call my men, and let us straight to him;\n    And bring our horses unto Long-lane end;\n    There will we mount, and thither walk on foot.\n    Let\'s see; I think \'tis now some seven o\'clock,\n    And well we may come there by dinner-time.  \n  KATHERINA. I dare assure you, sir, \'tis almost two,\n    And \'twill be supper-time ere you come there.\n  PETRUCHIO. It shall be seven ere I go to horse.\n    Look what I speak, or do, or think to do,\n    You are still crossing it. Sirs, let \'t alone;\n    I will not go to-day; and ere I do,\n    It shall be what o\'clock I say it is.\n  HORTENSIO. Why, so this gallant will command the sun.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nPadua. Before BAPTISTA\'S house\n\nEnter TRANIO as LUCENTIO, and the PEDANT dressed like VINCENTIO\n\n  TRANIO. Sir, this is the house; please it you that I call?\n  PEDANT. Ay, what else? And, but I be deceived,\n    Signior Baptista may remember me\n    Near twenty years ago in Genoa,\n    Where we were lodgers at the Pegasus.\n  TRANIO. \'Tis well; and hold your own, in any case,\n    With such austerity as longeth to a father.\n\n                       Enter BIONDELLO\n\n  PEDANT. I warrant you. But, sir, here comes your boy;\n    \'Twere good he were school\'d.\n  TRANIO. Fear you not him. Sirrah Biondello,\n    Now do your duty throughly, I advise you.\n    Imagine \'twere the right Vincentio.\n  BIONDELLO. Tut, fear not me.  \n  TRANIO. But hast thou done thy errand to Baptista?\n  BIONDELLO. I told him that your father was at Venice,\n    And that you look\'d for him this day in Padua.\n  TRANIO. Th\'art a tall fellow; hold thee that to drink.\n    Here comes Baptista. Set your countenance, sir.\n\n                 Enter BAPTISTA, and LUCENTIO as CAMBIO\n\n    Signior Baptista, you are happily met.\n    [To To the PEDANT] Sir, this is the gentleman I told you of;\n    I pray you stand good father to me now;\n    Give me Bianca for my patrimony.\n  PEDANT. Soft, son!\n    Sir, by your leave: having come to Padua\n    To gather in some debts, my son Lucentio\n    Made me acquainted with a weighty cause\n    Of love between your daughter and himself;\n    And- for the good report I hear of you,\n    And for the love he beareth to your daughter,\n    And she to him- to stay him not too long,  \n    I am content, in a good father\'s care,\n    To have him match\'d; and, if you please to like\n    No worse than I, upon some agreement\n    Me shall you find ready and willing\n    With one consent to have her so bestow\'d;\n    For curious I cannot be with you,\n    Signior Baptista, of whom I hear so well.\n  BAPTISTA. Sir, pardon me in what I have to say.\n    Your plainness and your shortness please me well.\n    Right true it is your son Lucentio here\n    Doth love my daughter, and she loveth him,\n    Or both dissemble deeply their affections;\n    And therefore, if you say no more than this,\n    That like a father you will deal with him,\n    And pass my daughter a sufficient dower,\n    The match is made, and all is done-\n    Your son shall have my daughter with consent.\n  TRANIO. I thank you, sir. Where then do you know best\n    We be affied, and such assurance ta\'en\n    As shall with either part\'s agreement stand?  \n  BAPTISTA. Not in my house, Lucentio, for you know\n    Pitchers have ears, and I have many servants;\n    Besides, old Gremio is heark\'ning still,\n    And happily we might be interrupted.\n  TRANIO. Then at my lodging, an it like you.\n    There doth my father lie; and there this night\n    We\'ll pass the business privately and well.\n    Send for your daughter by your servant here;\n    My boy shall fetch the scrivener presently.\n    The worst is this, that at so slender warning\n    You are like to have a thin and slender pittance.\n  BAPTISTA. It likes me well. Cambio, hie you home,\n    And bid Bianca make her ready straight;\n    And, if you will, tell what hath happened-\n    Lucentio\'s father is arriv\'d in Padua,\n    And how she\'s like to be Lucentio\'s wife.      Exit LUCENTIO\n  BIONDELLO. I pray the gods she may, with all my heart.\n  TRANIO. Dally not with the gods, but get thee gone.\n                                                  Exit BIONDELLO\n    Signior Baptista, shall I lead the way?  \n    Welcome! One mess is like to be your cheer;\n    Come, sir; we will better it in Pisa.\n  BAPTISTA. I follow you.                                 Exeunt\n\n            Re-enter LUCENTIO as CAMBIO, and BIONDELLO\n\n  BIONDELLO. Cambio.\n  LUCENTIO. What say\'st thou, Biondello?\n  BIONDELLO. You saw my master wink and laugh upon you?\n  LUCENTIO. Biondello, what of that?\n  BIONDELLO. Faith, nothing; but has left me here behind to expound\n    the meaning or moral of his signs and tokens.\n  LUCENTIO. I pray thee moralize them.\n  BIONDELLO. Then thus: Baptista is safe, talking with the deceiving\n    father of a deceitful son.\n  LUCENTIO. And what of him?\n  BIONDELLO. His daughter is to be brought by you to the supper.\n  LUCENTIO. And then?\n  BIONDELLO. The old priest at Saint Luke\'s church is at your command\n    at all hours.  \n  LUCENTIO. And what of all this?\n  BIONDELLO. I cannot tell, except they are busied about a\n    counterfeit assurance. Take your assurance of her, cum privilegio\n    ad imprimendum solum; to th\' church take the priest, clerk, and\n    some sufficient honest witnesses.\n    If this be not that you look for, I have more to say,\n    But bid Bianca farewell for ever and a day.\n  LUCENTIO. Hear\'st thou, Biondello?\n  BIONDELLO. I cannot tarry. I knew a wench married in an afternoon\n    as she went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit; and so\n    may you, sir; and so adieu, sir. My master hath appointed me to\n    go to Saint Luke\'s to bid the priest be ready to come against you\n    come with your appendix.\n Exit\n  LUCENTIO. I may and will, if she be so contented.\n    She will be pleas\'d; then wherefore should I doubt?\n    Hap what hap may, I\'ll roundly go about her;\n    It shall go hard if Cambio go without her.              Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nA public road\n\nEnter PETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, HORTENSIO, and SERVANTS\n\n  PETRUCHIO. Come on, a God\'s name; once more toward our father\'s.\n    Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon!\n  KATHERINA. The moon? The sun! It is not moonlight now.\n  PETRUCHIO. I say it is the moon that shines so bright.\n  KATHERINA. I know it is the sun that shines so bright.\n  PETRUCHIO. Now by my mother\'s son, and that\'s myself,\n    It shall be moon, or star, or what I list,\n    Or ere I journey to your father\'s house.\n    Go on and fetch our horses back again.\n    Evermore cross\'d and cross\'d; nothing but cross\'d!\n  HORTENSIO. Say as he says, or we shall never go.\n  KATHERINA. Forward, I pray, since we have come so far,\n    And be it moon, or sun, or what you please;\n    And if you please to call it a rush-candle,\n    Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.\n  PETRUCHIO. I say it is the moon.\n  KATHERINA. I know it is the moon.  \n  PETRUCHIO. Nay, then you lie; it is the blessed sun.\n  KATHERINA. Then, God be bless\'d, it is the blessed sun;\n    But sun it is not, when you say it is not;\n    And the moon changes even as your mind.\n    What you will have it nam\'d, even that it is,\n    And so it shall be so for Katherine.\n  HORTENSIO. Petruchio, go thy ways, the field is won.\n  PETRUCHIO. Well, forward, forward! thus the bowl should run,\n    And not unluckily against the bias.\n    But, soft! Company is coming here.\n\n                            Enter VINCENTIO\n\n    [To VINCENTIO]  Good-morrow, gentle mistress; where away?-\n    Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too,\n    Hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman?\n    Such war of white and red within her cheeks!\n    What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty\n    As those two eyes become that heavenly face?\n    Fair lovely maid, once more good day to thee.  \n    Sweet Kate, embrace her for her beauty\'s sake.\n  HORTENSIO. \'A will make the man mad, to make a woman of him.\n  KATHERINA. Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet,\n    Whither away, or where is thy abode?\n    Happy the parents of so fair a child;\n    Happier the man whom favourable stars\n    Allots thee for his lovely bed-fellow.\n  PETRUCHIO. Why, how now, Kate, I hope thou art not mad!\n    This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, withered,\n    And not a maiden, as thou sayst he is.\n  KATHERINA. Pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes,\n    That have been so bedazzled with the sun\n    That everything I look on seemeth green;\n    Now I perceive thou art a reverend father.\n    Pardon, I pray thee, for my mad mistaking.\n  PETRUCHIO. Do, good old grandsire, and withal make known\n    Which way thou travellest- if along with us,\n    We shall be joyful of thy company.\n  VINCENTIO. Fair sir, and you my merry mistress,\n    That with your strange encounter much amaz\'d me,  \n    My name is call\'d Vincentio, my dwelling Pisa,\n    And bound I am to Padua, there to visit\n    A son of mine, which long I have not seen.\n  PETRUCHIO. What is his name?\n  VINCENTIO. Lucentio, gentle sir.\n  PETRUCHIO. Happily met; the happier for thy son.\n    And now by law, as well as reverend age,\n    I may entitle thee my loving father:\n    The sister to my wife, this gentlewoman,\n    Thy son by this hath married. Wonder not,\n    Nor be not grieved- she is of good esteem,\n    Her dowry wealthy, and of worthy birth;\n    Beside, so qualified as may beseem\n    The spouse of any noble gentleman.\n    Let me embrace with old Vincentio;\n    And wander we to see thy honest son,\n    Who will of thy arrival be full joyous.\n  VINCENTIO. But is this true; or is it else your pleasure,\n    Like pleasant travellers, to break a jest\n    Upon the company you overtake?  \n  HORTENSIO. I do assure thee, father, so it is.\n  PETRUCHIO. Come, go along, and see the truth hereof;\n    For our first merriment hath made thee jealous.\n                                        Exeunt all but HORTENSIO\n  HORTENSIO. Well, Petruchio, this has put me in heart.\n    Have to my widow; and if she be froward,\n    Then hast thou taught Hortensio to be untoward.         Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nPadua. Before LUCENTIO\'S house\n\nEnter BIONDELLO, LUCENTIO, and BIANCA; GREMIO is out before\n\n  BIONDELLO. Softly and swiftly, sir, for the priest is ready.\n  LUCENTIO. I fly, Biondello; but they may chance to need the at\n    home, therefore leave us.\n  BIONDELLO. Nay, faith, I\'ll see the church a your back, and then\n    come back to my master\'s as soon as I can.\n                          Exeunt LUCENTIO, BIANCA, and BIONDELLO\n  GREMIO. I marvel Cambio comes not all this while.\n\n           Enter PETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, VINCENTIO, GRUMIO,\n                          and ATTENDANTS\n\n  PETRUCHIO. Sir, here\'s the door; this is Lucentio\'s house;\n    My father\'s bears more toward the market-place;\n    Thither must I, and here I leave you, sir.\n  VINCENTIO. You shall not choose but drink before you go;\n    I think I shall command your welcome here,  \n    And by all likelihood some cheer is toward.         [Knocks]\n  GREMIO. They\'re busy within; you were best knock louder.\n                                [PEDANT looks out of the window]\n  PEDANT. What\'s he that knocks as he would beat down the gate?\n  VINCENTIO. Is Signior Lucentio within, sir?\n  PEDANT. He\'s within, sir, but not to be spoken withal.\n  VINCENTIO. What if a man bring him a hundred pound or two to make\n    merry withal?\n  PEDANT. Keep your hundred pounds to yourself; he shall need none so\n    long as I live.\n  PETRUCHIO. Nay, I told you your son was well beloved in Padua. Do\n    you hear, sir? To leave frivolous circumstances, I pray you tell\n    Signior Lucentio that his father is come from Pisa, and is here\n    at the door to speak with him.\n  PEDANT. Thou liest: his father is come from Padua, and here looking\n    out at the window.\n  VINCENTIO. Art thou his father?\n  PEDANT. Ay, sir; so his mother says, if I may believe her.\n  PETRUCHIO.  [To VINCENTIO]  Why, how now, gentleman!\n    Why, this is flat knavery to take upon you another man\'s name.  \n  PEDANT. Lay hands on the villain; I believe \'a means to cozen\n    somebody in this city under my countenance.\n\n                       Re-enter BIONDELLO\n\n  BIONDELLO. I have seen them in the church together. God send \'em\n    good shipping! But who is here? Mine old master, Vicentio! Now we\n    are undone and brought to nothing.\n  VINCENTIO.  [Seeing BIONDELLO]  Come hither, crack-hemp.\n  BIONDELLO. I hope I may choose, sir.\n  VINCENTIO. Come hither, you rogue. What, have you forgot me?\n  BIONDELLO. Forgot you! No, sir. I could not forget you, for I never\n    saw you before in all my life.\n  VINCENTIO. What, you notorious villain, didst thou never see thy\n    master\'s father, Vincentio?\n  BIONDELLO. What, my old worshipful old master? Yes, marry, sir; see\n    where he looks out of the window.\n  VINCENTIO. Is\'t so, indeed?               [He beats BIONDELLO]\n  BIONDELLO. Help, help, help! Here\'s a madman will murder me.\n Exit  \n  PEDANT. Help, son! help, Signior Baptista!     Exit from above\n  PETRUCHIO. Prithee, Kate, let\'s stand aside and see the end of this\n    controversy.                              [They stand aside]\n\n       Re-enter PEDANT below; BAPTISTA, TRANIO, and SERVANTS\n\n  TRANIO. Sir, what are you that offer to beat my servant?\n  VINCENTIO. What am I, sir? Nay, what are you, sir? O immortal gods!\n    O fine villain! A silken doublet, a velvet hose, a scarlet cloak,\n    and a copatain hat! O, I am undone! I am undone! While I play the\n    good husband at home, my son and my servant spend all at the\n    university.\n  TRANIO. How now! what\'s the matter?\n  BAPTISTA. What, is the man lunatic?\n  TRANIO. Sir, you seem a sober ancient gentleman by your habit, but\n    your words show you a madman. Why, sir, what \'cerns it you if I\n    wear pearl and gold? I thank my good father, I am able to\n    maintain it.\n  VINCENTIO. Thy father! O villain! he is a sailmaker in Bergamo.\n  BAPTISTA. You mistake, sir; you mistake, sir. Pray, what do you  \n    think is his name?\n  VINCENTIO. His name! As if I knew not his name! I have brought him\n    up ever since he was three years old, and his name is Tranio.\n  PEDANT. Away, away, mad ass! His name is Lucentio; and he is mine\n    only son, and heir to the lands of me, Signior Vicentio.\n  VINCENTIO. Lucentio! O, he hath murd\'red his master! Lay hold on\n    him, I charge you, in the Duke\'s name. O, my son, my son! Tell\n    me, thou villain, where is my son, Lucentio?\n  TRANIO. Call forth an officer.\n\n                      Enter one with an OFFICER\n\n    Carry this mad knave to the gaol. Father Baptista, I charge you\n    see that he be forthcoming.\n  VINCENTIO. Carry me to the gaol!\n  GREMIO. Stay, Officer; he shall not go to prison.\n  BAPTISTA. Talk not, Signior Gremio; I say he shall go to prison.\n  GREMIO. Take heed, Signior Baptista, lest you be cony-catch\'d in\n    this business; I dare swear this is the right Vincentio.\n  PEDANT. Swear if thou dar\'st.  \n  GREMIO. Nay, I dare not swear it.\n  TRANIO. Then thou wert best say that I am not Lucentio.\n  GREMIO. Yes, I know thee to be Signior Lucentio.\n  BAPTISTA. Away with the dotard; to the gaol with him!\n  VINCENTIO. Thus strangers may be hal\'d and abus\'d. O monstrous\n    villain!\n\n          Re-enter BIONDELLO, with LUCENTIO and BIANCA\n\n  BIONDELLO. O, we are spoil\'d; and yonder he is! Deny him, forswear\n    him, or else we are all undone.\n         Exeunt BIONDELLO, TRANIO, and PEDANT, as fast as may be\n  LUCENTIO.  [Kneeling]  Pardon, sweet father.\n  VINCENTIO. Lives my sweet son?\n  BIANCA. Pardon, dear father.\n  BAPTISTA. How hast thou offended?\n    Where is Lucentio?\n  LUCENTIO. Here\'s Lucentio,\n    Right son to the right Vincentio,\n    That have by marriage made thy daughter mine,  \n    While counterfeit supposes blear\'d thine eyne.\n  GREMIO. Here\'s packing, with a witness, to deceive us all!\n  VINCENTIO. Where is that damned villain, Tranio,\n    That fac\'d and brav\'d me in this matter so?\n  BAPTISTA. Why, tell me, is not this my Cambio?\n  BIANCA. Cambio is chang\'d into Lucentio.\n  LUCENTIO. Love wrought these miracles. Bianca\'s love\n    Made me exchange my state with Tranio,\n    While he did bear my countenance in the town;\n    And happily I have arrived at the last\n    Unto the wished haven of my bliss.\n    What Tranio did, myself enforc\'d him to;\n    Then pardon him, sweet father, for my sake.\n  VINCENTIO. I\'ll slit the villain\'s nose that would have sent me to\n    the gaol.\n  BAPTISTA.  [To LUCENTIO]  But do you hear, sir? Have you married my\n    daughter without asking my good will?\n  VINCENTIO. Fear not, Baptista; we will content you, go to; but I\n    will in to be revenged for this villainy.               Exit\n  BAPTISTA. And I to sound the depth of this knavery.       Exit  \n  LUCENTIO. Look not pale, Bianca; thy father will not frown.\n                                      Exeunt LUCENTIO and BIANCA\n  GREMIO. My cake is dough, but I\'ll in among the rest;\n    Out of hope of all but my share of the feast.           Exit\n  KATHERINA. Husband, let\'s follow to see the end of this ado.\n  PETRUCHIO. First kiss me, Kate, and we will.\n  KATHERINA. What, in the midst of the street?\n  PETRUCHIO. What, art thou asham\'d of me?\n  KATHERINA. No, sir; God forbid; but asham\'d to kiss.\n  PETRUCHIO. Why, then, let\'s home again. Come, sirrah, let\'s away.\n  KATHERINA. Nay, I will give thee a kiss; now pray thee, love, stay.\n  PETRUCHIO. Is not this well? Come, my sweet Kate:\n    Better once than never, for never too late.           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nLUCENTIO\'S house\n\nEnter BAPTISTA, VINCENTIO, GREMIO, the PEDANT, LUCENTIO, BIANCA,\nPETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, HORTENSIO, and WIDOW. The SERVINGMEN with TRANIO,\nBIONDELLO, and GRUMIO, bringing in a banquet\n\n  LUCENTIO. At last, though long, our jarring notes agree;\n    And time it is when raging war is done\n    To smile at scapes and perils overblown.\n    My fair Bianca, bid my father welcome,\n    While I with self-same kindness welcome thine.\n    Brother Petruchio, sister Katherina,\n    And thou, Hortensio, with thy loving widow,\n    Feast with the best, and welcome to my house.\n    My banquet is to close our stomachs up\n    After our great good cheer. Pray you, sit down;\n    For now we sit to chat as well as eat.            [They sit]\n  PETRUCHIO. Nothing but sit and sit, and eat and eat!\n  BAPTISTA. Padua affords this kindness, son Petruchio.\n  PETRUCHIO. Padua affords nothing but what is kind.  \n  HORTENSIO. For both our sakes I would that word were true.\n  PETRUCHIO. Now, for my life, Hortensio fears his widow.\n  WIDOW. Then never trust me if I be afeard.\n  PETRUCHIO. YOU are very sensible, and yet you miss my sense:\n    I mean Hortensio is afeard of you.\n  WIDOW. He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.\n  PETRUCHIO. Roundly replied.\n  KATHERINA. Mistress, how mean you that?\n  WIDOW. Thus I conceive by him.\n  PETRUCHIO. Conceives by me! How likes Hortensio that?\n  HORTENSIO. My widow says thus she conceives her tale.\n  PETRUCHIO. Very well mended. Kiss him for that, good widow.\n  KATHERINA. \'He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.\'\n    I pray you tell me what you meant by that.\n  WIDOW. Your husband, being troubled with a shrew,\n    Measures my husband\'s sorrow by his woe;\n    And now you know my meaning.\n  KATHERINA. A very mean meaning.\n  WIDOW. Right, I mean you.\n  KATHERINA. And I am mean, indeed, respecting you.  \n  PETRUCHIO. To her, Kate!\n  HORTENSIO. To her, widow!\n  PETRUCHIO. A hundred marks, my Kate does put her down.\n  HORTENSIO. That\'s my office.\n  PETRUCHIO. Spoke like an officer- ha\' to thee, lad.\n                                           [Drinks to HORTENSIO]\n  BAPTISTA. How likes Gremio these quick-witted folks?\n  GREMIO. Believe me, sir, they butt together well.\n  BIANCA. Head and butt! An hasty-witted body\n    Would say your head and butt were head and horn.\n  VINCENTIO. Ay, mistress bride, hath that awakened you?\n  BIANCA. Ay, but not frighted me; therefore I\'ll sleep again.\n  PETRUCHIO. Nay, that you shall not; since you have begun,\n    Have at you for a bitter jest or two.\n  BIANCA. Am I your bird? I mean to shift my bush,\n    And then pursue me as you draw your bow.\n    You are welcome all.\n                             Exeunt BIANCA, KATHERINA, and WIDOW\n  PETRUCHIO. She hath prevented me. Here, Signior Tranio,\n    This bird you aim\'d at, though you hit her not;  \n    Therefore a health to all that shot and miss\'d.\n  TRANIO. O, sir, Lucentio slipp\'d me like his greyhound,\n    Which runs himself, and catches for his master.\n  PETRUCHIO. A good swift simile, but something currish.\n  TRANIO. \'Tis well, sir, that you hunted for yourself;\n    \'Tis thought your deer does hold you at a bay.\n  BAPTISTA. O, O, Petruchio! Tranio hits you now.\n  LUCENTIO. I thank thee for that gird, good Tranio.\n  HORTENSIO. Confess, confess; hath he not hit you here?\n  PETRUCHIO. \'A has a little gall\'d me, I confess;\n    And, as the jest did glance away from me,\n    \'Tis ten to one it maim\'d you two outright.\n  BAPTISTA. Now, in good sadness, son Petruchio,\n    I think thou hast the veriest shrew of all.\n  PETRUCHIO. Well, I say no; and therefore, for assurance,\n    Let\'s each one send unto his wife,\n    And he whose wife is most obedient,\n    To come at first when he doth send for her,\n    Shall win the wager which we will propose.\n  HORTENSIO. Content. What\'s the wager?  \n  LUCENTIO. Twenty crowns.\n  PETRUCHIO. Twenty crowns?\n    I\'ll venture so much of my hawk or hound,\n    But twenty times so much upon my wife.\n  LUCENTIO. A hundred then.\n  HORTENSIO. Content.\n  PETRUCHIO. A match! \'tis done.\n  HORTENSIO. Who shall begin?\n  LUCENTIO. That will I.\n    Go, Biondello, bid your mistress come to me.\n  BIONDELLO. I go.                                          Exit\n  BAPTISTA. Son, I\'ll be your half Bianca comes.\n  LUCENTIO. I\'ll have no halves; I\'ll bear it all myself.\n\n                          Re-enter BIONDELLO\n\n    How now! what news?\n  BIONDELLO. Sir, my mistress sends you word\n    That she is busy and she cannot come.\n  PETRUCHIO. How! She\'s busy, and she cannot come!  \n    Is that an answer?\n  GREMIO. Ay, and a kind one too.\n    Pray God, sir, your wife send you not a worse.\n  PETRUCHIO. I hope better.\n  HORTENSIO. Sirrah Biondello, go and entreat my wife\n    To come to me forthwith.                      Exit BIONDELLO\n  PETRUCHIO. O, ho! entreat her!\n    Nay, then she must needs come.\n  HORTENSIO. I am afraid, sir,\n    Do what you can, yours will not be entreated.\n\n                            Re-enter BIONDELLO\n\n    Now, where\'s my wife?\n  BIONDELLO. She says you have some goodly jest in hand:\n    She will not come; she bids you come to her.\n  PETRUCHIO. Worse and worse; she will not come! O vile,\n    Intolerable, not to be endur\'d!\n    Sirrah Grumio, go to your mistress;\n    Say I command her come to me.                    Exit GRUMIO  \n  HORTENSIO. I know her answer.\n  PETRUCHIO. What?\n  HORTENSIO. She will not.\n  PETRUCHIO. The fouler fortune mine, and there an end.\n\n                             Re-enter KATHERINA\n\n  BAPTISTA. Now, by my holidame, here comes Katherina!\n  KATHERINA. What is your sir, that you send for me?\n  PETRUCHIO. Where is your sister, and Hortensio\'s wife?\n  KATHERINA. They sit conferring by the parlour fire.\n  PETRUCHIO. Go, fetch them hither; if they deny to come.\n    Swinge me them soundly forth unto their husbands.\n    Away, I say, and bring them hither straight.\n                                                  Exit KATHERINA\n  LUCENTIO. Here is a wonder, if you talk of a wonder.\n  HORTENSIO. And so it is. I wonder what it bodes.\n  PETRUCHIO. Marry, peace it bodes, and love, and quiet life,\n    An awful rule, and right supremacy;\n    And, to be short, what not that\'s sweet and happy.  \n  BAPTISTA. Now fair befall thee, good Petruchio!\n    The wager thou hast won; and I will ad\n    Unto their losses twenty thousand crowns;\n    Another dowry to another daughter,\n    For she is chang\'d, as she had never been.\n  PETRUCHIO. Nay, I will win my wager better yet,\n    And show more sign of her obedience,\n    Her new-built virtue and obedience.\n\n                 Re-enter KATHERINA with BIANCA and WIDOW\n\n    See where she comes, and brings your froward wives\n    As prisoners to her womanly persuasion.\n    Katherine, that cap of yours becomes you not:\n    Off with that bauble, throw it underfoot.\n                                            [KATHERINA complies]\n  WIDOW. Lord, let me never have a cause to sigh\n    Till I be brought to such a silly pass!\n  BIANCA. Fie! what a foolish duty call you this?\n  LUCENTIO. I would your duty were as foolish too;  \n    The wisdom of your duty, fair Bianca,\n    Hath cost me a hundred crowns since supper-time!\n  BIANCA. The more fool you for laying on my duty.\n  PETRUCHIO. Katherine, I charge thee, tell these headstrong women\n    What duty they do owe their lords and husbands.\n  WIDOW. Come, come, you\'re mocking; we will have no telling.\n  PETRUCHIO. Come on, I say; and first begin with her.\n  WIDOW. She shall not.\n  PETRUCHIO. I say she shall. And first begin with her.\n  KATHERINA. Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow,\n    And dart not scornful glances from those eyes\n    To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.\n    It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,\n    Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,\n    And in no sense is meet or amiable.\n    A woman mov\'d is like a fountain troubled-\n    Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;\n    And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty\n    Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.\n    Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,  \n    Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,\n    And for thy maintenance commits his body\n    To painful labour both by sea and land,\n    To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,\n    Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;\n    And craves no other tribute at thy hands\n    But love, fair looks, and true obedience-\n    Too little payment for so great a debt.\n    Such duty as the subject owes the prince,\n    Even such a woman oweth to her husband;\n    And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,\n    And not obedient to his honest will,\n    What is she but a foul contending rebel\n    And graceless traitor to her loving lord?\n    I am asham\'d that women are so simple\n    To offer war where they should kneel for peace;\n    Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,\n    When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.\n    Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,\n    Unapt to toll and trouble in the world,  \n    But that our soft conditions and our hearts\n    Should well agree with our external parts?\n    Come, come, you froward and unable worins!\n    My mind hath been as big as one of yours,\n    My heart as great, my reason haply more,\n    To bandy word for word and frown for frown;\n    But now I see our lances are but straws,\n    Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,\n    That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.\n    Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,\n    And place your hands below your husband\'s foot;\n    In token of which duty, if he please,\n    My hand is ready, may it do him ease.\n  PETRUCHIO. Why, there\'s a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate.\n  LUCENTIO. Well, go thy ways, old lad, for thou shalt ha\'t.\n  VINCENTIO. \'Tis a good hearing when children are toward.\n  LUCENTIO. But a harsh hearing when women are froward.\n  PETRUCHIO. Come, Kate, we\'ll to bed.\n    We three are married, but you two are sped.\n    [To LUCENTIO]  \'Twas I won the wager, though you hit the white;  \n    And being a winner, God give you good night!\n                                  Exeunt PETRUCHIO and KATHERINA\n  HORTENSIO. Now go thy ways; thou hast tam\'d a curst shrow.\n  LUCENTIO. \'Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tam\'d so.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1612\n\nTHE TEMPEST\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\n  ALONSO, King of Naples\n  SEBASTIAN, his brother\n  PROSPERO, the right Duke of Milan\n  ANTONIO, his brother, the usurping Duke of Milan\n  FERDINAND, son to the King of Naples\n  GONZALO, an honest old counsellor\n\n    Lords\n  ADRIAN\n  FRANCISCO\n  CALIBAN, a savage and deformed slave\n  TRINCULO, a jester\n  STEPHANO, a drunken butler\n  MASTER OF A SHIP\n  BOATSWAIN\n  MARINERS\n\n  MIRANDA, daughter to Prospero\n\n  ARIEL, an airy spirit  \n\n    Spirits\n  IRIS\n  CERES\n  JUNO\n  NYMPHS\n  REAPERS\n  Other Spirits attending on Prospero\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nA ship at sea; afterwards an uninhabited island\n\n\n\nTHE TEMPEST\nACT I. SCENE 1\n\nOn a ship at sea; a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard\n\nEnter a SHIPMASTER and a BOATSWAIN\n\n  MASTER. Boatswain!\n  BOATSWAIN. Here, master; what cheer?\n  MASTER. Good! Speak to th\' mariners; fall to\'t yarely, or\n    we run ourselves aground; bestir, bestir.               Exit\n\n                       Enter MARINERS\n\n  BOATSWAIN. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts!\n    yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to th\' master\'s\n    whistle. Blow till thou burst thy wind, if room enough.\n\n          Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, FERDINAND\n                     GONZALO, and OTHERS\n\n  ALONSO. Good boatswain, have care. Where\'s the master?  \n    Play the men.\n  BOATSWAIN. I pray now, keep below.\n  ANTONIO. Where is the master, boson?\n  BOATSWAIN. Do you not hear him? You mar our labour;\n    keep your cabins; you do assist the storm.\n  GONZALO. Nay, good, be patient.\n  BOATSWAIN. When the sea is. Hence! What cares these\n    roarers for the name of king? To cabin! silence! Trouble\n    us not.\n  GONZALO. Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard.\n  BOATSWAIN. None that I more love than myself. You are\n    counsellor; if you can command these elements to\n    silence, and work the peace of the present, we will not\n    hand a rope more. Use your authority; if you cannot, give\n    thanks you have liv\'d so long, and make yourself ready\n    in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so\n    hap.-Cheerly, good hearts!-Out of our way, I say.\n Exit\n  GONZALO. I have great comfort from this fellow. Methinks\n    he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is  \n    perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging;\n    make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth\n    little advantage. If he be not born to be hang\'d, our\n    case is miserable.                                    Exeunt\n\n                     Re-enter BOATSWAIN\n\n  BOATSWAIN. Down with the topmast. Yare, lower, lower!\n    Bring her to try wi\' th\' maincourse.  [A cry within]  A\n    plague upon this howling! They are louder than the\n    weather or our office.\n\n           Re-enter SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, and GONZALO\n\n    Yet again! What do you here? Shall we give o\'er, and\n    drown? Have you a mind to sink?\n  SEBASTIAN. A pox o\' your throat, you bawling, blasphemous,\n    incharitable dog!\n  BOATSWAIN. Work you, then.\n  ANTONIO. Hang, cur; hang, you whoreson, insolent noisemaker;  \n    we are less afraid to be drown\'d than thou art.\n  GONZALO. I\'ll warrant him for drowning, though the ship were\n    no stronger than a nutshell, and as leaky as an unstanched\n    wench.\n  BOATSWAIN. Lay her a-hold, a-hold; set her two courses; off\n    to sea again; lay her off.\n\n                    Enter MARINERS, Wet\n  MARINERS. All lost! to prayers, to prayers! all lost!\n                                                          Exeunt\n  BOATSWAIN. What, must our mouths be cold?\n  GONZALO. The King and Prince at prayers!\n    Let\'s assist them,\n    For our case is as theirs.\n  SEBASTIAN. I am out of patience.\n  ANTONIO. We are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards.\n    This wide-chopp\'d rascal-would thou mightst lie drowning\n    The washing of ten tides!\n  GONZALO. He\'ll be hang\'d yet,\n    Though every drop of water swear against it,  \n    And gape at wid\'st to glut him.\n    [A confused noise within: Mercy on us!\n    We split, we split! Farewell, my wife and children!\n    Farewell, brother! We split, we split, we split!]\n  ANTONIO. Let\'s all sink wi\' th\' King.\n  SEBASTIAN. Let\'s take leave of him.\n                                    Exeunt ANTONIO and SEBASTIAN\n  GONZALO. Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for\n    an acre of barren ground-long heath, brown furze, any\n    thing. The wills above be done, but I would fain die\n    dry death.                                            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2\n\nThe Island. Before PROSPERO\'S cell\n\nEnter PROSPERO and MIRANDA\n\n  MIRANDA. If by your art, my dearest father, you have\n    Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.\n    The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,\n    But that the sea, mounting to th\' welkin\'s cheek,\n    Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered\n    With those that I saw suffer! A brave vessel,\n    Who had no doubt some noble creature in her,\n    Dash\'d all to pieces! O, the cry did knock\n    Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perish\'d.\n    Had I been any god of power, I would\n    Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere\n    It should the good ship so have swallow\'d and\n    The fraughting souls within her.\n  PROSPERO. Be conected;\n    No more amazement; tell your piteous heart\n    There\'s no harm done.\n  MIRANDA. O, woe the day!  \n  PROSPERO. No harm.\n    I have done nothing but in care of thee,\n    Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who\n    Art ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing\n    Of whence I am, nor that I am more better\n    Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,\n    And thy no greater father.\n  MIRANDA. More to know\n    Did never meddle with my thoughts.\n  PROSPERO. \'Tis time\n    I should inform thee farther. Lend thy hand,\n    And pluck my magic garment from me. So,\n                                          [Lays down his mantle]\n    Lie there my art. Wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort.\n    The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch\'d\n    The very virtue of compassion in thee,\n    I have with such provision in mine art\n    So safely ordered that there is no soul-\n    No, not so much perdition as an hair\n    Betid to any creature in the vessel  \n    Which thou heard\'st cry, which thou saw\'st sink.\n    Sit down, for thou must now know farther.\n  MIRANDA. You have often\n    Begun to tell me what I am; but stopp\'d,\n    And left me to a bootless inquisition,\n    Concluding \'Stay; not yet.\'\n  PROSPERO. The hour\'s now come;\n    The very minute bids thee ope thine ear.\n    Obey, and be attentive. Canst thou remember\n    A time before we came unto this cell?\n    I do not think thou canst; for then thou wast not\n    Out three years old.\n  MIRANDA. Certainly, sir, I can.\n  PROSPERO. By what? By any other house, or person?\n    Of any thing the image, tell me, that\n    Hath kept with thy remembrance?\n  MIRANDA. \'Tis far off,\n    And rather like a dream than an assurance\n    That my remembrance warrants. Had I not\n    Four, or five, women once, that tended me?  \n  PROSPERO. Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it\n    That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else\n    In the dark backward and abysm of time?\n    If thou rememb\'rest aught, ere thou cam\'st here,\n    How thou cam\'st here thou mayst.\n  MIRANDA. But that I do not.\n  PROSPERO. Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since,\n    Thy father was the Duke of Milan, and\n    A prince of power.\n  MIRANDA. Sir, are not you my father?\n  PROSPERO. Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and\n    She said thou wast my daughter; and thy father\n    Was Duke of Milan, and his only heir\n    And princess no worse issued.\n  MIRANDA. O, the heavens!\n    What foul play had we that we came from thence?\n    Or blessed was\'t we did?\n  PROSPERO. Both, both, my girl.\n    By foul play, as thou say\'st, were we heav\'d thence;\n    But blessedly holp hither.  \n  MIRANDA. O, my heart bleeds\n    To think o\' th\' teen that I have turn\'d you to,\n    Which is from my remembrance. Please you, farther.\n  PROSPERO. My brother and thy uncle, call\'d Antonio-\n    I pray thee, mark me that a brother should\n    Be so perfidious. He, whom next thyself\n    Of all the world I lov\'d, and to him put\n    The manage of my state; as at that time\n    Through all the signories it was the first,\n    And Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed\n    In dignity, and for the liberal arts\n    Without a parallel, those being all my study-\n    The government I cast upon my brother\n    And to my state grew stranger, being transported\n    And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle-\n    Dost thou attend me?\n  MIRANDA. Sir, most heedfully.\n  PROSPERO. Being once perfected how to grant suits,\n    How to deny them, who t\' advance, and who\n    To trash for over-topping, new created  \n    The creatures that were mine, I say, or chang\'d \'em,\n    Or else new form\'d \'em; having both the key\n    Of officer and office, set all hearts i\' th\' state\n    To what tune pleas\'d his ear; that now he was\n    The ivy which had hid my princely trunk\n    And suck\'d my verdure out on\'t. Thou attend\'st not.\n  MIRANDA. O, good sir, I do!\n  PROSPERO. I pray thee, mark me.\n    I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated\n    To closeness and the bettering of my mind\n    With that which, but by being so retir\'d,\n    O\'er-priz\'d all popular rate, in my false brother\n    Awak\'d an evil nature; and my trust,\n    Like a good parent, did beget of him\n    A falsehood, in its contrary as great\n    As my trust was; which had indeed no limit,\n    A confidence sans bound. He being thus lorded,\n    Not only with what my revenue yielded,\n    But what my power might else exact, like one\n    Who having into truth, by telling of it,  \n    Made such a sinner of his memory,\n    To credit his own lie-he did believe\n    He was indeed the Duke; out o\' th\' substitution,\n    And executing th\' outward face of royalty\n    With all prerogative. Hence his ambition growing-\n    Dost thou hear?\n  MIRANDA. Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.\n  PROSPERO. To have no screen between this part he play\'d\n    And him he play\'d it for, he needs will be\n    Absolute Milan. Me, poor man-my library\n    Was dukedom large enough-of temporal royalties\n    He thinks me now incapable; confederates,\n    So dry he was for sway, wi\' th\' King of Naples,\n    To give him annual tribute, do him homage,\n    Subject his coronet to his crown, and bend\n    The dukedom, yet unbow\'d-alas, poor Milan!-\n    To most ignoble stooping.\n  MIRANDA. O the heavens!\n  PROSPERO. Mark his condition, and th\' event, then tell me\n    If this might be a brother.  \n  MIRANDA. I should sin\n    To think but nobly of my grandmother:\n    Good wombs have borne bad sons.\n  PROSPERO. Now the condition:\n    This King of Naples, being an enemy\n    To me inveterate, hearkens my brother\'s suit;\n    Which was, that he, in lieu o\' th\' premises,\n    Of homage, and I know not how much tribute,\n    Should presently extirpate me and mine\n    Out of the dukedom, and confer fair Milan\n    With all the honours on my brother. Whereon,\n    A treacherous army levied, one midnight\n    Fated to th\' purpose, did Antonio open\n    The gates of Milan; and, i\' th\' dead of darkness,\n    The ministers for th\' purpose hurried thence\n    Me and thy crying self.\n  MIRANDA. Alack, for pity!\n    I, not rememb\'ring how I cried out then,\n    Will cry it o\'er again; it is a hint\n    That wrings mine eyes to\'t.  \n  PROSPERO. Hear a little further,\n    And then I\'ll bring thee to the present busines\n    Which now\'s upon \'s; without the which this story\n    Were most impertinent.\n  MIRANDA. Wherefore did they not\n    That hour destroy us?\n  PROSPERO. Well demanded, wench!\n    My tale provokes that question. Dear, they durst not,\n    So dear the love my people bore me; nor set\n    A mark so bloody on the business; but\n    With colours fairer painted their foul ends.\n    In few, they hurried us aboard a bark;\n    Bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepared\n    A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigg\'d,\n    Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats\n    Instinctively have quit it. There they hoist us,\n    To cry to th\' sea, that roar\'d to us; to sigh\n    To th\' winds, whose pity, sighing back again,\n    Did us but loving wrong.\n  MIRANDA. Alack, what trouble  \n    Was I then to you!\n  PROSPERO. O, a cherubin\n    Thou wast that did preserve me! Thou didst smile,\n    Infused with a fortitude from heaven,\n    When I have deck\'d the sea with drops full salt,\n    Under my burden groan\'d; which rais\'d in me\n    An undergoing stomach, to bear up\n    Against what should ensue.\n  MIRANDA. How came we ashore?\n  PROSPERO. By Providence divine.\n    Some food we had and some fresh water that\n    A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,\n    Out of his charity, who being then appointed\n    Master of this design, did give us, with\n    Rich garments, linens, stuffs, and necessaries,\n    Which since have steaded much; so, of his gentleness,\n    Knowing I lov\'d my books, he furnish\'d me\n    From mine own library with volumes that\n    I prize above my dukedom.\n  MIRANDA. Would I might  \n    But ever see that man!\n  PROSPERO. Now I arise.                    [Puts on his mantle]\n    Sit still, and hear the last of our sea-sorrow.\n    Here in this island we arriv\'d; and here\n    Have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit\n    Than other princess\' can, that have more time\n    For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful.\n  MIRANDA. Heavens thank you for\'t! And now, I pray you,\n      sir,\n    For still \'tis beating in my mind, your reason\n    For raising this sea-storm?\n  PROSPERO. Know thus far forth:\n    By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune,\n    Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies\n    Brought to this shore; and by my prescience\n    I find my zenith doth depend upon\n    A most auspicious star, whose influence\n    If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes\n    Will ever after droop. Here cease more questions;\n    Thou art inclin\'d to sleep; \'tis a good dullness,  \n    And give it way. I know thou canst not choose.\n                                                [MIRANDA sleeps]\n    Come away, servant; come; I am ready now.\n    Approach, my Ariel. Come.\n\n                        Enter ARIEL\n\n  ARIEL. All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come\n    To answer thy best pleasure; be\'t to fly,\n    To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride\n    On the curl\'d clouds. To thy strong bidding task\n    Ariel and all his quality.\n  PROSPERO. Hast thou, spirit,\n    Perform\'d to point the tempest that I bade thee?\n  ARIEL. To every article.\n    I boarded the King\'s ship; now on the beak,\n    Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,\n    I flam\'d amazement. Sometime I\'d divide,\n    And burn in many places; on the topmast,\n    The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,  \n    Then meet and join Jove\'s lightning, the precursors\n    O\' th\' dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary\n    And sight-outrunning were not; the fire and cracks\n    Of sulphurous roaring the most mighty Neptune\n    Seem to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble,\n    Yea, his dread trident shake.\n  PROSPERO. My brave spirit!\n    Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil\n    Would not infect his reason?\n  ARIEL. Not a soul\n    But felt a fever of the mad, and play\'d\n    Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners\n    Plung\'d in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel,\n    Then all afire with me; the King\'s son, Ferdinand,\n    With hair up-staring-then like reeds, not hair-\n    Was the first man that leapt; cried \'Hell is empty,\n    And all the devils are here.\'\n  PROSPERO. Why, that\'s my spirit!\n    But was not this nigh shore?\n  ARIEL. Close by, my master.  \n  PROSPERO. But are they, Ariel, safe?\n  ARIEL. Not a hair perish\'d;\n    On their sustaining garments not a blemish,\n    But fresher than before; and, as thou bad\'st me,\n    In troops I have dispers\'d them \'bout the isle.\n    The King\'s son have I landed by himself,\n    Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs\n    In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting,\n    His arms in this sad knot.\n  PROSPERO. Of the King\'s ship,\n    The mariners, say how thou hast dispos\'d,\n    And all the rest o\' th\' fleet?\n  ARIEL. Safely in harbour\n    Is the King\'s ship; in the deep nook, where once\n    Thou call\'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew\n    From the still-vex\'d Bermoothes, there she\'s hid;\n    The mariners all under hatches stowed,\n    Who, with a charm join\'d to their suff\'red labour,\n    I have left asleep; and for the rest o\' th\' fleet,\n    Which I dispers\'d, they all have met again,  \n    And are upon the Mediterranean flote\n    Bound sadly home for Naples,\n    Supposing that they saw the King\'s ship wreck\'d,\n    And his great person perish.\n  PROSPERO. Ariel, thy charge\n    Exactly is perform\'d; but there\'s more work.\n    What is the time o\' th\' day?\n  ARIEL. Past the mid season.\n  PROSPERO. At least two glasses. The time \'twixt six and now\n    Must by us both be spent most preciously.\n  ARIEL. Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains,\n    Let me remember thee what thou hast promis\'d,\n    Which is not yet perform\'d me.\n  PROSPERO. How now, moody?\n    What is\'t thou canst demand?\n  ARIEL. My liberty.\n  PROSPERO. Before the time be out? No more!\n  ARIEL. I prithee,\n    Remember I have done thee worthy service,\n    Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, serv\'d  \n    Without or grudge or grumblings. Thou didst promise\n    To bate me a full year.\n  PROSPERO. Dost thou forget\n    From what a torment I did free thee?\n  ARIEL. No.\n  PROSPERO. Thou dost; and think\'st it much to tread the ooze\n    Of the salt deep,\n    To run upon the sharp wind of the north,\n    To do me business in the veins o\' th\' earth\n    When it is bak\'d with frost.\n  ARIEL. I do not, sir.\n  PROSPERO. Thou liest, malignant thing. Hast thou forgot\n    The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy\n    Was grown into a hoop? Hast thou forgot her?\n  ARIEL. No, sir.\n  PROSPERO. Thou hast. Where was she born?\n    Speak; tell me.\n  ARIEL. Sir, in Argier.\n  PROSPERO. O, was she so? I must\n    Once in a month recount what thou hast been,  \n    Which thou forget\'st. This damn\'d witch Sycorax,\n    For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible\n    To enter human hearing, from Argier\n    Thou know\'st was banish\'d; for one thing she did\n    They would not take her life. Is not this true?\n  ARIEL. Ay, sir.\n  PROSPERO. This blue-ey\'d hag was hither brought with child,\n    And here was left by th\'sailors. Thou, my slave,\n    As thou report\'st thyself, wast then her servant;\n    And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate\n    To act her earthy and abhorr\'d commands,\n    Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,\n    By help of her more potent ministers,\n    And in her most unmitigable rage,\n    Into a cloven pine; within which rift\n    Imprison\'d thou didst painfully remain\n    A dozen years; within which space she died,\n    And left thee there, where thou didst vent thy groans\n    As fast as mill-wheels strike. Then was this island-\n    Save for the son that she did litter here,  \n    A freckl\'d whelp, hag-born-not honour\'d with\n    A human shape.\n  ARIEL. Yes, Caliban her son.\n  PROSPERO. Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban\n    Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know\'st\n    What torment I did find thee in; thy groans\n    Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts\n    Of ever-angry bears; it was a torment\n    To lay upon the damn\'d, which Sycorax\n    Could not again undo. It was mine art,\n    When I arriv\'d and heard thee, that made gape\n    The pine, and let thee out.\n  ARIEL. I thank thee, master.\n  PROSPERO. If thou more murmur\'st, I will rend an oak\n    And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till\n    Thou hast howl\'d away twelve winters.\n  ARIEL. Pardon, master;\n    I will be correspondent to command,\n    And do my spriting gently.\n  PROSPERO. Do so; and after two days  \n    I will discharge thee.\n  ARIEL. That\'s my noble master!\n    What shall I do? Say what. What shall I do?\n  PROSPERO. Go make thyself like a nymph o\' th\' sea; be subject\n    To no sight but thine and mine, invisible\n    To every eyeball else. Go take this shape,\n    And hither come in \'t. Go, hence with diligence!\n                                                      Exit ARIEL\n    Awake, dear heart, awake; thou hast slept well;\n    Awake.\n  MIRANDA. The strangeness of your story put\n    Heaviness in me.\n  PROSPERO. Shake it off. Come on,\n    We\'ll visit Caliban, my slave, who never\n    Yields us kind answer.\n  MIRANDA. \'Tis a villain, sir,\n    I do not love to look on.\n  PROSPERO. But as \'tis,\n    We cannot miss him: he does make our fire,\n    Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices  \n    That profit us. What ho! slave! Caliban!\n    Thou earth, thou! Speak.\n  CALIBAN.   [ Within]  There\'s wood enough within.\n  PROSPERO. Come forth, I say; there\'s other business for thee.\n    Come, thou tortoise! when?\n\n             Re-enter ARIEL like a water-nymph\n\n    Fine apparition! My quaint Ariel,\n    Hark in thine ear.\n  ARIEL. My lord, it shall be done.                         Exit\n  PROSPERO. Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself\n    Upon thy wicked dam, come forth!\n\n                       Enter CALIBAN\n\n  CALIBAN. As wicked dew as e\'er my mother brush\'d\n    With raven\'s feather from unwholesome fen\n    Drop on you both! A south-west blow on ye\n    And blister you all o\'er!  \n  PROSPERO. For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,\n    Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins\n    Shall, for that vast of night that they may work,\n    All exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinch\'d\n    As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging\n    Than bees that made \'em.\n  CALIBAN. I must eat my dinner.\n    This island\'s mine, by Sycorax my mother,\n    Which thou tak\'st from me. When thou cam\'st first,\n    Thou strok\'st me and made much of me, wouldst give me\n    Water with berries in\'t, and teach me how\n    To name the bigger light, and how the less,\n    That burn by day and night; and then I lov\'d thee,\n    And show\'d thee all the qualities o\' th\' isle,\n    The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile.\n    Curs\'d be I that did so! All the charms\n    Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!\n    For I am all the subjects that you have,\n    Which first was mine own king; and here you sty me\n    In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me  \n    The rest o\' th\' island.\n  PROSPERO. Thou most lying slave,\n    Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have us\'d thee,\n    Filth as thou art, with human care, and lodg\'d thee\n    In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate\n    The honour of my child.\n  CALIBAN. O ho, O ho! Would\'t had been done.\n    Thou didst prevent me; I had peopl\'d else\n    This isle with Calibans.\n  MIRANDA. Abhorred slave,\n    Which any print of goodness wilt not take,\n    Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,\n    Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour\n    One thing or other. When thou didst not, savage,\n    Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like\n    A thing most brutish, I endow\'d thy purposes\n    With words that made them known. But thy vile race,\n    Though thou didst learn, had that in\'t which good natures\n    Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou\n    Deservedly confin\'d into this rock, who hadst  \n    Deserv\'d more than a prison.\n  CALIBAN. You taught me language, and my profit on\'t\n    Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you\n    For learning me your language!\n  PROSPERO. Hag-seed, hence!\n    Fetch us in fuel. And be quick, thou \'rt best,\n    To answer other business. Shrug\'st thou, malice?\n    If thou neglect\'st, or dost unwillingly\n    What I command, I\'ll rack thee with old cramps,\n    Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar,\n    That beasts shall tremble at thy din.\n  CALIBAN. No, pray thee.\n    [Aside]  I must obey. His art is of such pow\'r,\n    It would control my dam\'s god, Setebos,\n    And make a vassal of him.\n  PROSPERO. So, slave; hence!                       Exit CALIBAN\n\n         Re-enter ARIEL invisible, playing ad singing;\n                     FERDINAND following\n  \n                          ARIEL\'S SONG.\n            Come unto these yellow sands,\n              And then take hands;\n            Curtsied when you have and kiss\'d,\n              The wild waves whist,\n            Foot it featly here and there,\n            And, sweet sprites, the burden bear.\n              Hark, hark!\n            [Burden dispersedly: Bow-wow.]\n              The watch dogs bark.\n            [Burden dispersedly: Bow-wow.]\n              Hark, hark! I hear\n            The strain of strutting chanticleer\n              Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.\n  FERDINAND. Where should this music be? I\' th\' air or th\'\n    earth?\n    It sounds no more; and sure it waits upon\n    Some god o\' th\' island. Sitting on a bank,\n    Weeping again the King my father\'s wreck,\n    This music crept by me upon the waters,  \n    Allaying both their fury and my passion\n    With its sweet air; thence I have follow\'d it,\n    Or it hath drawn me rather. But \'tis gone.\n    No, it begins again.\n\n                   ARIEL\'S SONG\n         Full fathom five thy father lies;\n           Of his bones are coral made;\n         Those are pearls that were his eyes;\n           Nothing of him that doth fade\n         But doth suffer a sea-change\n         Into something rich and strange.\n         Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:\n           [Burden: Ding-dong.]\n         Hark! now I hear them-Ding-dong bell.\n\n  FERDINAND. The ditty does remember my drown\'d father.\n    This is no mortal business, nor no sound\n    That the earth owes. I hear it now above me.\n  PROSPERO. The fringed curtains of thine eye advance,  \n    And say what thou seest yond.\n  MIRANDA. What is\'t? a spirit?\n    Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,\n    It carries a brave form. But \'tis a spirit.\n  PROSPERO. No, wench; it eats and sleeps and hath such senses\n    As we have, such. This gallant which thou seest\n    Was in the wreck; and but he\'s something stain\'d\n    With grief, that\'s beauty\'s canker, thou mightst call him\n    A goodly person. He hath lost his fellows,\n    And strays about to find \'em.\n  MIRANDA. I might call him\n    A thing divine; for nothing natural\n    I ever saw so noble.\n  PROSPERO.  [Aside]  It goes on, I see,\n    As my soul prompts it. Spirit, fine spirit! I\'ll free thee\n    Within two days for this.\n  FERDINAND. Most sure, the goddess\n    On whom these airs attend! Vouchsafe my pray\'r\n    May know if you remain upon this island;\n    And that you will some good instruction give  \n    How I may bear me here. My prime request,\n    Which I do last pronounce, is, O you wonder!\n    If you be maid or no?\n  MIRANDA. No wonder, sir;\n    But certainly a maid.\n  FERDINAND. My language? Heavens!\n    I am the best of them that speak this speech,\n    Were I but where \'tis spoken.\n  PROSPERO. How? the best?\n    What wert thou, if the King of Naples heard thee?\n  FERDINAND. A single thing, as I am now, that wonders\n    To hear thee speak of Naples. He does hear me;\n    And that he does I weep. Myself am Naples,\n    Who with mine eyes, never since at ebb, beheld\n    The King my father wreck\'d.\n  MIRANDA. Alack, for mercy!\n  FERDINAND. Yes, faith, and all his lords, the Duke of Milan\n    And his brave son being twain.\n  PROSPERO.  [Aside]  The Duke of Milan\n    And his more braver daughter could control thee,  \n    If now \'twere fit to do\'t. At the first sight\n    They have chang\'d eyes. Delicate Ariel,\n    I\'ll set thee free for this.  [To FERDINAND]  A word, good\n    sir;\n    I fear you have done yourself some wrong; a word.\n  MIRANDA. Why speaks my father so ungently? This\n    Is the third man that e\'er I saw; the first\n    That e\'er I sigh\'d for. Pity move my father\n    To be inclin\'d my way!\n  FERDINAND. O, if a virgin,\n    And your affection not gone forth, I\'ll make you\n    The Queen of Naples.\n  PROSPERO. Soft, Sir! one word more.\n    [Aside]  They are both in either\'s pow\'rs; but this swift\n    busines\n    I must uneasy make, lest too light winning\n    Make the prize light.  [To FERDINAND]  One word more; I\n    charge thee\n    That thou attend me; thou dost here usurp\n    The name thou ow\'st not; and hast put thyself  \n    Upon this island as a spy, to win it\n    From me, the lord on\'t.\n  FERDINAND. No, as I am a man.\n  MIRANDA. There\'s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple.\n    If the ill spirit have so fair a house,\n    Good things will strive to dwell with\'t.\n  PROSPERO. Follow me.\n    Speak not you for him; he\'s a traitor. Come;\n    I\'ll manacle thy neck and feet together.\n    Sea-water shalt thou drink; thy food shall be\n    The fresh-brook mussels, wither\'d roots, and husks\n    Wherein the acorn cradled. Follow.\n  FERDINAND. No;\n    I will resist such entertainment till\n    Mine enemy has more power.\n                          [He draws, and is charmed from moving]\n  MIRANDA. O dear father,\n    Make not too rash a trial of him, for\n    He\'s gentle, and not fearful.\n  PROSPERO. What, I say,  \n    My foot my tutor? Put thy sword up, traitor;\n    Who mak\'st a show but dar\'st not strike, thy conscience\n    Is so possess\'d with guilt. Come from thy ward;\n    For I can here disarm thee with this stick\n    And make thy weapon drop.\n  MIRANDA. Beseech you, father!\n  PROSPERO. Hence! Hang not on my garments.\n  MIRANDA. Sir, have pity;\n    I\'ll be his surety.\n  PROSPERO. Silence! One word more\n    Shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. What!\n    An advocate for an impostor! hush!\n    Thou think\'st there is no more such shapes as he,\n    Having seen but him and Caliban. Foolish wench!\n    To th\' most of men this is a Caliban,\n    And they to him are angels.\n  MIRANDA. My affections\n    Are then most humble; I have no ambition\n    To see a goodlier man.\n  PROSPERO. Come on; obey.  \n    Thy nerves are in their infancy again,\n    And have no vigour in them.\n  FERDINAND. So they are;\n    My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up.\n    My father\'s loss, the weakness which I feel,\n    The wreck of all my friends, nor this man\'s threats\n    To whom I am subdu\'d, are but light to me,\n    Might I but through my prison once a day\n    Behold this maid. All corners else o\' th\' earth\n    Let liberty make use of; space enough\n    Have I in such a prison.\n  PROSPERO.  [Aside]  It works.  [To FERDINAND]  Come on.-\n    Thou hast done well, fine Ariel!  [To FERDINAND]  Follow\n    me.\n    [To ARIEL]  Hark what thou else shalt do me.\n  MIRANDA. Be of comfort;\n    My father\'s of a better nature, sir,\n    Than he appears by speech; this is unwonted\n    Which now came from him.\n  PROSPERO.  [To ARIEL]  Thou shalt be as free  \n    As mountain winds; but then exactly do\n    All points of my command.\n  ARIEL. To th\' syllable.\n  PROSPERO.  [To FERDINAND]  Come, follow.  [To MIRANDA]\n    Speak not for him.                                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 1\n\nAnother part of the island\n\nEnter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO, ADRIAN, FRANCISCO, and OTHERS\n\n  GONZALO. Beseech you, sir, be merry; you have cause,\n    So have we all, of joy; for our escape\n    Is much beyond our loss. Our hint of woe\n    Is common; every day, some sailor\'s wife,\n    The masters of some merchant, and the merchant,\n    Have just our theme of woe; but for the miracle,\n    I mean our preservation, few in millions\n    Can speak like us. Then wisely, good sir, weigh\n    Our sorrow with our comfort.\n  ALONSO. Prithee, peace.\n  SEBASTIAN. He receives comfort like cold porridge.\n  ANTONIO. The visitor will not give him o\'er so.\n  SEBASTIAN. Look, he\'s winding up the watch of his wit; by\n    and by it will strike.\n  GONZALO. Sir-\n  SEBASTIAN. One-Tell.  \n  GONZALO. When every grief is entertain\'d that\'s offer\'d,\n    Comes to th\' entertainer-\n  SEBASTIAN. A dollar.\n  GONZALO. Dolour comes to him, indeed; you have spoken\n    truer than you purpos\'d.\n  SEBASTIAN. You have taken it wiselier than I meant you\n    should.\n  GONZALO. Therefore, my lord-\n  ANTONIO. Fie, what a spendthrift is he of his tongue!\n  ALONSO. I prithee, spare.\n  GONZALO. Well, I have done; but yet-\n  SEBASTIAN. He will be talking.\n  ANTONIO. Which, of he or Adrian, for a good wager, first\n    begins to crow?\n  SEBASTIAN. The old cock.\n  ANTONIO. The cock\'rel.\n  SEBASTIAN. Done. The wager?\n  ANTONIO. A laughter.\n  SEBASTIAN. A match!\n  ADRIAN. Though this island seem to be desert-  \n  ANTONIO. Ha, ha, ha!\n  SEBASTIAN. So, you\'re paid.\n  ADRIAN. Uninhabitable, and almost inaccessible-\n  SEBASTIAN. Yet-\n  ADRIAN. Yet-\n  ANTONIO. He could not miss\'t.\n  ADRIAN. It must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate\n    temperance.\n  ANTONIO. Temperance was a delicate wench.\n  SEBASTIAN. Ay, and a subtle; as he most learnedly\n    deliver\'d.\n  ADRIAN. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly.\n  SEBASTIAN. As if it had lungs, and rotten ones.\n  ANTONIO. Or, as \'twere perfum\'d by a fen.\n  GONZALO. Here is everything advantageous to life.\n  ANTONIO. True; save means to live.\n  SEBASTIAN. Of that there\'s none, or little.\n  GONZALO. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green!\n  ANTONIO. The ground indeed is tawny.\n  SEBASTIAN. With an eye of green in\'t.  \n  ANTONIO. He misses not much.\n  SEBASTIAN. No; he doth but mistake the truth totally.\n  GONZALO. But the rarity of it is, which is indeed almost\n    beyond credit-\n  SEBASTIAN. As many vouch\'d rarities are.\n  GONZALO. That our garments, being, as they were, drench\'d\n    in the sea, hold, notwithstanding, their freshness and\n    glosses, being rather new-dy\'d, than stain\'d with salt\n    water.\n  ANTONIO. If but one of his pockets could speak, would it\n    not say he lies?\n  SEBASTIAN. Ay, or very falsely pocket up his report.\n  GONZALO. Methinks our garments are now as fresh as when\n    we put them on first in Afric, at the marriage of the\n    King\'s fair daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis.\n  SEBASTIAN. \'Twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper well in\n    our return.\n  ADRIAN. Tunis was never grac\'d before with such a paragon\n    to their queen.\n  GONZALO. Not since widow Dido\'s time.  \n  ANTONIO. Widow! a pox o\' that! How came that \'widow\'\n    in? Widow Dido!\n  SEBASTIAN. What if he had said \'widower Aeneas\' too?\n    Good Lord, how you take it!\n  ADRIAN. \'Widow Dido\' said you? You make me study of\n    that. She was of Carthage, not of Tunis.\n  GONZALO. This Tunis, sir, was Carthage.\n  ADRIAN. Carthage?\n  GONZALO. I assure you, Carthage.\n  ANTONIO. His word is more than the miraculous harp.\n  SEBASTIAN. He hath rais\'d the wall, and houses too.\n  ANTONIO. What impossible matter will he make easy next?\n  SEBASTIAN. I think he will carry this island home in his\n    pocket, and give it his son for an apple.\n  ANTONIO. And, sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring\n    forth more islands.\n  GONZALO. Ay.\n  ANTONIO. Why, in good time.\n  GONZALO. Sir, we were talking that our garments seem now\n    as fresh as when we were at Tunis at the marriage of  \n    your daughter, who is now Queen.\n  ANTONIO. And the rarest that e\'er came there.\n  SEBASTIAN. Bate, I beseech you, widow Dido.\n  ANTONIO. O, widow Dido! Ay, widow Dido.\n  GONZALO. Is not, sir, my doublet as fresh as the first day I\n    wore it? I mean, in a sort.\n  ANTONIO. That \'sort\' was well fish\'d for.\n  GONZALO. When I wore it at your daughter\'s marriage?\n  ALONSO. You cram these words into mine ears against\n    The stomach of my sense. Would I had never\n    Married my daughter there; for, coming thence,\n    My son is lost; and, in my rate, she too,\n    Who is so far from Italy removed\n    I ne\'er again shall see her. O thou mine heir\n    Of Naples and of Milan, what strange fish\n    Hath made his meal on thee?\n  FRANCISCO. Sir, he may live;\n    I saw him beat the surges under him,\n    And ride upon their backs; he trod the water,\n    Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted  \n    The surge most swoln that met him; his bold head\n    \'Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oared\n    Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke\n    To th\' shore, that o\'er his wave-worn basis bowed,\n    As stooping to relieve him. I not doubt\n    He came alive to land.\n  ALONSO. No, no, he\'s gone.\n  SEBASTIAN. Sir, you may thank yourself for this great loss,\n    That would not bless our Europe with your daughter,\n    But rather lose her to an African;\n    Where she, at least, is banish\'d from your eye,\n    Who hath cause to wet the grief on\'t.\n  ALONSO. Prithee, peace.\n  SEBASTIAN. You were kneel\'d to, and importun\'d otherwise\n    By all of us; and the fair soul herself\n    Weigh\'d between loathness and obedience at\n    Which end o\' th\' beam should bow. We have lost your son,\n    I fear, for ever. Milan and Naples have\n    Moe widows in them of this business\' making,\n    Than we bring men to comfort them;  \n    The fault\'s your own.\n  ALONSO. So is the dear\'st o\' th\' loss.\n  GONZALO. My lord Sebastian,\n    The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness,\n    And time to speak it in; you rub the sore,\n    When you should bring the plaster.\n  SEBASTIAN. Very well.\n  ANTONIO. And most chirurgeonly.\n  GONZALO. It is foul weather in us all, good sir,\n    When you are cloudy.\n  SEBASTIAN. Foul weather?\n  ANTONIO. Very foul.\n  GONZALO. Had I plantation of this isle, my lord-\n  ANTONIO. He\'d sow \'t with nettle-seed.\n  SEBASTIAN. Or docks, or mallows.\n  GONZALO. And were the king on\'t, what would I do?\n  SEBASTIAN. Scape being drunk for want of wine.\n  GONZALO. I\' th\' commonwealth I would by contraries\n    Execute all things; for no kind of traffic\n    Would I admit; no name of magistrate;  \n    Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,\n    And use of service, none; contract, succession,\n    Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;\n    No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;\n    No occupation; all men idle, all;\n    And women too, but innocent and pure;\n    No sovereignty-\n  SEBASTIAN. Yet he would be king on\'t.\n  ANTONIO. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the\n    beginning.\n  GONZALO. All things in common nature should produce\n    Without sweat or endeavour. Treason, felony,\n    Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,\n    Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,\n    Of it own kind, all foison, all abundance,\n    To feed my innocent people.\n  SEBASTIAN. No marrying \'mong his subjects?\n  ANTONIO. None, man; all idle; whores and knaves.\n  GONZALO. I would with such perfection govern, sir,\n    T\' excel the golden age.  \n  SEBASTIAN. Save his Majesty!\n  ANTONIO. Long live Gonzalo!\n  GONZALO. And-do you mark me, sir?\n  ALONSO. Prithee, no more; thou dost talk nothing to me.\n  GONZALO. I do well believe your Highness; and did it to\n    minister occasion to these gentlemen, who are of such\n    sensible and nimble lungs that they always use to laugh\n    at nothing.\n  ANTONIO. \'Twas you we laugh\'d at.\n  GONZALO. Who in this kind of merry fooling am nothing to\n    you; so you may continue, and laugh at nothing still.\n  ANTONIO. What a blow was there given!\n  SEBASTIAN. An it had not fall\'n flat-long.\n  GONZALO. You are gentlemen of brave mettle; you would\n    lift the moon out of her sphere, if she would continue\n    in it five weeks without changing.\n\n          Enter ARIEL, invisible, playing solemn music\n\n  SEBASTIAN. We would so, and then go a-bat-fowling.  \n  ANTONIO. Nay, good my lord, be not angry.\n  GONZALO. No, I warrant you; I will not adventure my\n    discretion so weakly. Will you laugh me asleep, for I am\n    very heavy?\n  ANTONIO. Go sleep, and hear us.\n                   [All sleep but ALONSO, SEBASTIAN and ANTONIO]\n  ALONSO. What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyes\n    Would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts; I find\n    They are inclin\'d to do so.\n  SEBASTIAN. Please you, sir,\n    Do not omit the heavy offer of it:\n    It seldom visits sorrow; when it doth,\n    It is a comforter.\n  ANTONIO. We two, my lord,\n    Will guard your person while you take your rest,\n    And watch your safety.\n  ALONSO. Thank you-wondrous heavy!\n                                     [ALONSO sleeps. Exit ARIEL]\n  SEBASTIAN. What a strange drowsiness possesses them!\n  ANTONIO. It is the quality o\' th\' climate.  \n  SEBASTIAN. Why\n    Doth it not then our eyelids sink? I find not\n    Myself dispos\'d to sleep.\n  ANTONIO. Nor I; my spirits are nimble.\n    They fell together all, as by consent;\n    They dropp\'d, as by a thunder-stroke. What might,\n    Worthy Sebastian? O, what might! No more!\n    And yet methinks I see it in thy face,\n    What thou shouldst be; th\' occasion speaks thee; and\n    My strong imagination sees a crown\n    Dropping upon thy head.\n  SEBASTIAN. What, art thou waking?\n  ANTONIO. Do you not hear me speak?\n  SEBASTIAN. I do; and surely\n    It is a sleepy language, and thou speak\'st\n    Out of thy sleep. What is it thou didst say?\n    This is a strange repose, to be asleep\n    With eyes wide open; standing, speaking, moving,\n    And yet so fast asleep.\n  ANTONIO. Noble Sebastian,  \n    Thou let\'st thy fortune sleep-die rather; wink\'st\n    Whiles thou art waking.\n  SEBASTIAN. Thou dost snore distinctly;\n    There\'s meaning in thy snores.\n  ANTONIO. I am more serious than my custom; you\n    Must be so too, if heed me; which to do\n    Trebles thee o\'er.\n  SEBASTIAN. Well, I am standing water.\n  ANTONIO. I\'ll teach you how to flow.\n  SEBASTIAN. Do so: to ebb,\n    Hereditary sloth instructs me.\n  ANTONIO. O,\n    If you but knew how you the purpose cherish,\n    Whiles thus you mock it! how, in stripping it,\n    You more invest it! Ebbing men indeed,\n    Most often, do so near the bottom run\n    By their own fear or sloth.\n  SEBASTIAN. Prithee say on.\n    The setting of thine eye and cheek proclaim\n    A matter from thee; and a birth, indeed,  \n    Which throes thee much to yield.\n  ANTONIO. Thus, sir:\n    Although this lord of weak remembrance, this\n    Who shall be of as little memory\n    When he is earth\'d, hath here almost persuaded-\n    For he\'s a spirit of persuasion, only\n    Professes to persuade-the King his son\'s alive,\n    \'Tis as impossible that he\'s undrown\'d\n    As he that sleeps here swims.\n  SEBASTIAN. I have no hope\n    That he\'s undrown\'d.\n  ANTONIO. O, out of that \'no hope\'\n    What great hope have you! No hope that way is\n    Another way so high a hope, that even\n    Ambition cannot pierce a wink beyond,\n    But doubt discovery there. Will you grant with me\n    That Ferdinand is drown\'d?\n  SEBASTIAN. He\'s gone.\n  ANTONIO. Then tell me,\n    Who\'s the next heir of Naples?  \n  SEBASTIAN. Claribel.\n  ANTONIO. She that is Queen of Tunis; she that dwells\n    Ten leagues beyond man\'s life; she that from Naples\n    Can have no note, unless the sun were post,\n    The Man i\' th\' Moon\'s too slow, till newborn chins\n    Be rough and razorable; she that from whom\n    We all were sea-swallow\'d, though some cast again,\n    And by that destiny, to perform an act\n    Whereof what\'s past is prologue, what to come\n    In yours and my discharge.\n  SEBASTIAN. What stuff is this! How say you?\n    \'Tis true, my brother\'s daughter\'s Queen of Tunis;\n    So is she heir of Naples; \'twixt which regions\n    There is some space.\n  ANTONIO. A space whose ev\'ry cubit\n    Seems to cry out \'How shall that Claribel\n    Measure us back to Naples? Keep in Tunis,\n    And let Sebastian wake.\' Say this were death\n    That now hath seiz\'d them; why, they were no worse\n    Than now they are. There be that can rule Naples  \n    As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate\n    As amply and unnecessarily\n    As this Gonzalo; I myself could make\n    A chough of as deep chat. O, that you bore\n    The mind that I do! What a sleep were this\n    For your advancement! Do you understand me?\n  SEBASTIAN. Methinks I do.\n  ANTONIO. And how does your content\n    Tender your own good fortune?\n  SEBASTIAN. I remember\n    You did supplant your brother Prospero.\n  ANTONIO. True.\n    And look how well my garments sit upon me,\n    Much feater than before. My brother\'s servants\n    Were then my fellows; now they are my men.\n  SEBASTIAN. But, for your conscience-\n  ANTONIO. Ay, sir; where lies that? If \'twere a kibe,\n    \'Twould put me to my slipper; but I feel not\n    This deity in my bosom; twenty consciences\n    That stand \'twixt me and Milan, candied be they  \n    And melt, ere they molest! Here lies your brother,\n    No better than the earth he lies upon,\n    If he were that which now he\'s like-that\'s dead;\n    Whom I with this obedient steel, three inches of it,\n    Can lay to bed for ever; whiles you, doing thus,\n    To the perpetual wink for aye might put\n    This ancient morsel, this Sir Prudence, who\n    Should not upbraid our course. For all the rest,\n    They\'ll take suggestion as a cat laps milk;\n    They\'ll tell the clock to any business that\n    We say befits the hour.\n  SEBASTIAN. Thy case, dear friend,\n    Shall be my precedent; as thou got\'st Milan,\n    I\'ll come by Naples. Draw thy sword. One stroke\n    Shall free thee from the tribute which thou payest;\n    And I the King shall love thee.\n  ANTONIO. Draw together;\n    And when I rear my hand, do you the like,\n    To fall it on Gonzalo.\n  SEBASTIAN. O, but one word.                  [They talk apart]  \n\n          Re-enter ARIEL, invisible, with music and song\n\n  ARIEL. My master through his art foresees the danger\n    That you, his friend, are in; and sends me forth-\n    For else his project dies-to keep them living.\n                                        [Sings in GONZALO\'S ear]\n    While you here do snoring lie,\n    Open-ey\'d conspiracy\n    His time doth take.\n    If of life you keep a care,\n    Shake off slumber, and beware.\n    Awake, awake!\n\n  ANTONIO. Then let us both be sudden.\n  GONZALO. Now, good angels\n    Preserve the King!                               [They wake]\n  ALONSO. Why, how now?-Ho, awake!-Why are you drawn?\n    Wherefore this ghastly looking?\n  GONZALO. What\'s the matter?  \n  SEBASTIAN. Whiles we stood here securing your repose,\n    Even now, we heard a hollow burst of bellowing\n    Like bulls, or rather lions; did\'t not wake you?\n    It struck mine ear most terribly.\n  ALONSO. I heard nothing.\n  ANTONIO. O, \'twas a din to fright a monster\'s ear,\n    To make an earthquake! Sure it was the roar\n    Of a whole herd of lions.\n  ALONSO. Heard you this, Gonzalo?\n  GONZALO. Upon mine honour, sir, I heard a humming,\n    And that a strange one too, which did awake me;\n    I shak\'d you, sir, and cried; as mine eyes open\'d,\n    I saw their weapons drawn-there was a noise,\n    That\'s verily. \'Tis best we stand upon our guard,\n    Or that we quit this place. Let\'s draw our weapons.\n  ALONSO. Lead off this ground; and let\'s make further\n    search\n    For my poor son.\n  GONZALO. Heavens keep him from these beasts!\n    For he is, sure, i\' th\' island.  \n  ALONSO. Lead away.\n  ARIEL. Prospero my lord shall know what I have done;\n    So, King, go safely on to seek thy son.               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2\n\nAnother part of the island\n\nEnter CALIBAN, with a burden of wood. A noise of thunder heard\n\n  CALIBAN. All the infections that the sun sucks up\n    From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him\n    By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me,\n    And yet I needs must curse. But they\'ll nor pinch,\n    Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i\' th\' mire,\n    Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark\n    Out of my way, unless he bid \'em; but\n    For every trifle are they set upon me;\n    Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me,\n    And after bite me; then like hedgehogs which\n    Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount\n    Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I\n    All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues\n    Do hiss me into madness.\n\n                         Enter TRINCULO  \n\n    Lo, now, lo!\n    Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me\n    For bringing wood in slowly. I\'ll fall flat;\n    Perchance he will not mind me.\n  TRINCULO. Here\'s neither bush nor shrub to bear off any\n    weather at all, and another storm brewing; I hear it\n    sing i\' th\' wind. Yond same black cloud, yond huge one,\n    looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If\n    it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to\n    hide my head. Yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by\n    pailfuls. What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or\n    alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient and\n    fish-like smell; kind of not-of-the-newest Poor-John. A\n    strange fish! Were I in England now, as once I was, and\n    had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but\n    would give a piece of silver. There would this monster\n    make a man; any strange beast there makes a man; when\n    they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they\n    will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. Legg\'d like a  \n    man, and his fins like arms! Warm, o\' my troth! I do now\n    let loose my opinion; hold it no longer: this is no\n    fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffered by\n    thunderbolt.  [Thunder]  Alas, the storm is come again! My\n    best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no\n    other shelter hereabout. Misery acquaints a man with\n    strange bed-fellows. I will here shroud till the dregs\n    of the storm be past.\n\n            Enter STEPHANO singing; a bottle in his hand\n\n  STEPHANO. I shall no more to sea, to sea,\n    Here shall I die ashore-\n    This is a very scurvy tune to sing at a man\'s funeral;\n    well, here\'s my comfort.                            [Drinks]\n\n    The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I,\n    The gunner, and his mate,\n    Lov\'d Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery,\n    But none of us car\'d for Kate;  \n    For she had a tongue with a tang,\n    Would cry to a sailor \'Go hang!\'\n    She lov\'d not the savour of tar nor of pitch,\n    Yet a tailor might scratch her where\'er she did itch.\n    Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang!\n\n    This is a scurvy tune too; but here\'s my comfort.\n                                                        [Drinks]\n  CALIBAN. Do not torment me. O!\n  STEPHANO. What\'s the matter? Have we devils here? Do you\n    put tricks upon \'s with savages and men of Ind? Ha! I\n    have not scap\'d drowning to be afeard now of your four\n    legs; for it hath been said: As proper a man as ever\n    went on four legs cannot make him give ground; and it\n    shall be said so again, while Stephano breathes at\n    nostrils.\n  CALIBAN. The spirit torments me. O!\n  STEPHANO. This is some monster of the isle with four legs,\n    who hath got, as I take it, an ague. Where the devil\n    should he learn our language? I will give him some  \n    relief, if it be but for that. If I can recover him, and\n    keep him tame, and get to Naples with him, he\'s a\n    present for any emperor that ever trod on neat\'s\n    leather.\n  CALIBAN. Do not torment me, prithee; I\'ll bring my wood\n    home faster.\n  STEPHANO. He\'s in his fit now, and does not talk after the\n    wisest. He shall taste of my bottle; if he have never\n    drunk wine afore, it will go near to remove his fit. If\n    I can recover him, and keep him tame, I will not take\n    too much for him; he shall pay for him that hath him,\n    and that soundly.\n  CALIBAN. Thou dost me yet but little hurt; thou wilt anon,\n    I know it by thy trembling; now Prosper works upon thee.\n  STEPHANO. Come on your ways; open your mouth; here is\n    that which will give language to you, cat. Open your\n    mouth; this will shake your shaking, I can tell you, and\n    that soundly; you cannot tell who\'s your friend. Open\n    your chaps again.\n  TRINCULO. I should know that voice; it should be-but he is  \n    drown\'d; and these are devils. O, defend me!\n  STEPHANO. Four legs and two voices; a most delicate monster!\n    His forward voice, now, is to speak well of his\n    friend; his backward voice is to utter foul speeches and\n    to detract. If all the wine in my bottle will recover\n    him, I will help his ague. Come-Amen! I will pour some\n    in thy other mouth.\n  TRINCULO. Stephano!\n  STEPHANO. Doth thy other mouth call me? Mercy, mercy!\n    This is a devil, and no monster; I will leave him; I\n    have no long spoon.\n  TRINCULO. Stephano! If thou beest Stephano, touch me, and\n    speak to me; for I am Trinculo-be not afeard-thy good\n    friend Trinculo.\n  STEPHANO. If thou beest Trinculo, come forth; I\'ll pull\n    the by the lesser legs; if any be Trinculo\'s legs, these\n    are they. Thou art very Trinculo indeed! How cam\'st thou\n    to be the siege of this moon-calf? Can he vent\n    Trinculos?\n  TRINCULO. I took him to be kill\'d with a thunderstroke.  \n    But art thou not drown\'d, Stephano? I hope now thou are\n    not drown\'d. Is the storm overblown? I hid me under the\n    dead moon-calf\'s gaberdine for fear of the storm. And\n    art thou living, Stephano? O Stephano, two Neapolitans\n    scap\'d!\n  STEPHANO. Prithee, do not turn me about; my stomach is not\n    constant.\n  CALIBAN.  [Aside]  These be fine things, an if they be not\n    sprites.\n    That\'s a brave god, and bears celestial liquor.\n    I will kneel to him.\n  STEPHANO. How didst thou scape? How cam\'st thou hither?\n    Swear by this bottle how thou cam\'st hither-I escap\'d\n    upon a butt of sack, which the sailors heaved o\'erboard-\n    by this bottle, which I made of the bark of a tree, with\n    mine own hands, since I was cast ashore.\n  CALIBAN. I\'ll swear upon that bottle to be thy true\n    subject, for the liquor is not earthly.\n  STEPHANO. Here; swear then how thou escap\'dst.\n  TRINCULO. Swum ashore, man, like a duck; I can swim like  \n    a duck, I\'ll be sworn.\n  STEPHANO.  [Passing the bottle]  Here, kiss the book. Though\n    thou canst swim like a duck, thou art made like a\n    goose.\n  TRINCULO. O Stephano, hast any more of this?\n  STEPHANO. The whole butt, man; my cellar is in a rock by\n    th\' seaside, where my wine is hid. How now, moon-calf!\n    How does thine ague?\n  CALIBAN. Hast thou not dropp\'d from heaven?\n  STEPHANO. Out o\' th\' moon, I do assure thee; I was the Man\n    i\' th\' Moon, when time was.\n  CALIBAN. I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee. My\n    mistress show\'d me thee, and thy dog and thy bush.\n  STEPHANO. Come, swear to that; kiss the book. I will\n    furnish it anon with new contents. Swear.\n                                                [CALIBAN drinks]\n  TRINCULO. By this good light, this is a very shallow\n    monster!\n    I afeard of him! A very weak monster! The Man i\' th\'\n    Moon! A most poor credulous monster! Well drawn,  \n    monster, in good sooth!\n  CALIBAN. I\'ll show thee every fertile inch o\' th\' island;\n    and will kiss thy foot. I prithee be my god.\n  TRINCULO. By this light, a most perfidious and drunken\n    monster! When\'s god\'s asleep he\'ll rob his bottle.\n  CALIBAN. I\'ll kiss thy foot; I\'ll swear myself thy\n    subject.\n  STEPHANO. Come on, then; down, and swear.\n  TRINCULO. I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-\n    headed monster. A most scurvy monster! I could find in\n    my heart to beat him-\n  STEPHANO. Come, kiss.\n  TRINCULO. But that the poor monster\'s in drink. An\n    abominable monster!\n  CALIBAN. I\'ll show thee the best springs; I\'ll pluck thee\n    berries;\n    I\'ll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough.\n    A plague upon the tyrant that I serve!\n    I\'ll bear him no more sticks, but follow thee,\n    Thou wondrous man.  \n  TRINCULO. A most ridiculous monster, to make a wonder of\n    a poor drunkard!\n  CALIBAN. I prithee let me bring thee where crabs grow;\n    And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts;\n    Show thee a jay\'s nest, and instruct thee how\n    To snare the nimble marmoset; I\'ll bring thee\n    To clust\'ring filberts, and sometimes I\'ll get thee\n    Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me?\n  STEPHANO. I prithee now, lead the way without any more\n    talking. Trinculo, the King and all our company else\n    being drown\'d, we will inherit here. Here, bear my bottle.\n    Fellow Trinculo, we\'ll fill him by and by again.\n  CALIBAN.  [Sings drunkenly]  Farewell, master; farewell,\n    farewell!\n  TRINCULO. A howling monster; a drunken monster!\n  CALIBAN. No more dams I\'ll make for fish;\n    Nor fetch in firing\n    At requiring,\n    Nor scrape trenchering, nor wash dish.\n    \'Ban \'Ban, Ca-Caliban,  \n    Has a new master-Get a new man.\n    Freedom, high-day! high-day, freedom! freedom, high-\n    day, freedom!\n  STEPHANO. O brave monster! Lead the way.                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 1\n\nBefore PROSPERO\'S cell\n\nEnter FERDINAND, hearing a log\n\n  FERDINAND. There be some sports are painful, and their\n    labour\n    Delight in them sets off; some kinds of baseness\n    Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters\n    Point to rich ends. This my mean task\n    Would be as heavy to me as odious, but\n    The mistress which I serve quickens what\'s dead,\n    And makes my labours pleasures. O, she is\n    Ten times more gentle than her father\'s crabbed;\n    And he\'s compos\'d of harshness. I must remove\n    Some thousands of these logs, and pile them up,\n    Upon a sore injunction; my sweet mistress\n    Weeps when she sees me work, and says such baseness\n    Had never like executor. I forget;\n    But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours,\n    Most busy, least when I do it.\n  \n        Enter MIRANDA; and PROSPERO at a distance, unseen\n\n  MIRANDA. Alas, now; pray you,\n    Work not so hard; I would the lightning had\n    Burnt up those logs that you are enjoin\'d to pile.\n    Pray, set it down and rest you; when this burns,\n    \'Twill weep for having wearied you. My father\n    Is hard at study; pray, now, rest yourself;\n    He\'s safe for these three hours.\n  FERDINAND. O most dear mistress,\n    The sun will set before I shall discharge\n    What I must strive to do.\n  MIRANDA. If you\'ll sit down,\n    I\'ll bear your logs the while; pray give me that;\n    I\'ll carry it to the pile.\n  FERDINAND. No, precious creature;\n    I had rather crack my sinews, break my back,\n    Than you should such dishonour undergo,\n    While I sit lazy by.\n  MIRANDA. It would become me  \n    As well as it does you; and I should do it\n    With much more ease; for my good will is to it,\n    And yours it is against.\n  PROSPERO.  [Aside]  Poor worm, thou art infected!\n    This visitation shows it.\n  MIRANDA. You look wearily.\n  FERDINAND. No, noble mistress; \'tis fresh morning with me\n    When you are by at night. I do beseech you,\n    Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers,\n    What is your name?\n  MIRANDA. Miranda-O my father,\n    I have broke your hest to say so!\n  FERDINAND. Admir\'d Miranda!\n    What\'s dearest to the world! Full many a lady\n    I have ey\'d with best regard; and many a time\n    Th\' harmony of their tongues hath into bondage\n    Brought my too diligent ear; for several virtues\n    Have I lik\'d several women, never any\n    With so full soul, but some defect in her\n    Did quarrel with the noblest grace she ow\'d,  \n    And put it to the foil; but you, O you,\n    So perfect and so peerless, are created\n    Of every creature\'s best!\n  MIRANDA. I do not know\n    One of my sex; no woman\'s face remember,\n    Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen\n    More that I may call men than you, good friend,\n    And my dear father. How features are abroad,\n    I am skilless of; but, by my modesty,\n    The jewel in my dower, I would not wish\n    Any companion in the world but you;\n    Nor can imagination form a shape,\n    Besides yourself, to like of. But I prattle\n    Something too wildly, and my father\'s precepts\n    I therein do forget.\n  FERDINAND. I am, in my condition,\n    A prince, Miranda; I do think, a king-\n    I would not so!-and would no more endure\n    This wooden slavery than to suffer\n    The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak:  \n    The very instant that I saw you, did\n    My heart fly to your service; there resides\n    To make me slave to it; and for your sake\n    Am I this patient log-man.\n  MIRANDA. Do you love me?\n  FERDINAND. O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound,\n    And crown what I profess with kind event,\n    If I speak true! If hollowly, invert\n    What best is boded me to mischief! I,\n    Beyond all limit of what else i\' th\' world,\n    Do love, prize, honour you.\n  MIRANDA. I am a fool\n    To weep at what I am glad of.\n  PROSPERO.  [Aside]  Fair encounter\n    Of two most rare affections! Heavens rain grace\n    On that which breeds between \'em!\n  FERDINAND. Wherefore weep you?\n  MIRANDA. At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer\n    What I desire to give, and much less take\n    What I shall die to want. But this is trifling;  \n    And all the more it seeks to hide itself,\n    The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning!\n    And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!\n    I am your wife, if you will marry me;\n    If not, I\'ll die your maid. To be your fellow\n    You may deny me; but I\'ll be your servant,\n    Whether you will or no.\n  FERDINAND. My mistress, dearest;\n    And I thus humble ever.\n  MIRANDA. My husband, then?\n  FERDINAND. Ay, with a heart as willing\n    As bondage e\'er of freedom. Here\'s my hand.\n  MIRANDA. And mine, with my heart in\'t. And now farewell\n    Till half an hour hence.\n  FERDINAND. A thousand thousand!\n                          Exeunt FERDINAND and MIRANDA severally\n  PROSPERO. So glad of this as they I cannot be,\n    Who are surpris\'d withal; but my rejoicing\n    At nothing can be more. I\'ll to my book;\n    For yet ere supper time must I perform  \n    Much business appertaining.                             Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 2\n\nAnother part of the island\n\nEnter CALIBAN, STEPHANO, and TRINCULO\n\n  STEPHANO. Tell not me-when the butt is out we will drink\n    water, not a drop before; therefore bear up, and board\n    \'em. Servant-monster, drink to me.\n  TRINCULO. Servant-monster! The folly of this island! They\n    say there\'s but five upon this isle: we are three of\n    them; if th\' other two be brain\'d like us, the state\n    totters.\n  STEPHANO. Drink, servant-monster, when I bid thee; thy\n    eyes are almost set in thy head.\n  TRINCULO. Where should they be set else? He were a brave\n    monster indeed, if they were set in his tail.\n  STEPHANO. My man-monster hath drown\'d his tongue in\n    sack. For my part, the sea cannot drown me; I swam, ere\n    I could recover the shore, five and thirty leagues, off\n    and on. By this light, thou shalt be my lieutenant,\n    monster, or my standard.\n  TRINCULO. Your lieutenant, if you list; he\'s no standard.  \n  STEPHANO. We\'ll not run, Monsieur Monster.\n  TRINCULO. Nor go neither; but you\'ll lie like dogs, and\n    yet say nothing neither.\n  STEPHANO. Moon-calf, speak once in thy life, if thou beest\n    a good moon-calf.\n  CALIBAN. How does thy honour? Let me lick thy shoe.\n    I\'ll not serve him; he is not valiant.\n  TRINCULO. Thou liest, most ignorant monster: I am in case\n    to justle a constable. Why, thou debosh\'d fish, thou,\n    was there ever man a coward that hath drunk so much sack\n    as I to-day? Wilt thou tell a monstrous lie, being but\n    half fish and half a monster?\n  CALIBAN. Lo, how he mocks me! Wilt thou let him, my\n    lord?\n  TRINCULO. \'Lord\' quoth he! That a monster should be such\n    a natural!\n  CALIBAN. Lo, lo again! Bite him to death, I prithee.\n  STEPHANO. Trinculo, keep a good tongue in your head; if\n    you prove a mutineer-the next tree! The poor monster\'s\n    my subject, and he shall not suffer indignity.  \n  CALIBAN. I thank my noble lord. Wilt thou be pleas\'d to\n    hearken once again to the suit I made to thee?\n  STEPHANO. Marry will I; kneel and repeat it; I will stand,\n    and so shall Trinculo.\n\n                     Enter ARIEL, invisible\n\n  CALIBAN. As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant,\n    sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the\n    island.\n  ARIEL. Thou liest.\n  CALIBAN. Thou liest, thou jesting monkey, thou;\n    I would my valiant master would destroy thee.\n    I do not lie.\n  STEPHANO. Trinculo, if you trouble him any more in\'s tale,\n    by this hand, I will supplant some of your teeth.\n  TRINCULO. Why, I said nothing.\n  STEPHANO. Mum, then, and no more. Proceed.\n  CALIBAN. I say, by sorcery he got this isle;\n    From me he got it. If thy greatness will  \n    Revenge it on him-for I know thou dar\'st,\n    But this thing dare not-\n  STEPHANO. That\'s most certain.\n  CALIBAN. Thou shalt be lord of it, and I\'ll serve thee.\n  STEPHANO. How now shall this be compass\'d? Canst thou\n    bring me to the party?\n  CALIBAN. Yea, yea, my lord; I\'ll yield him thee asleep,\n    Where thou mayst knock a nail into his head.\n  ARIEL. Thou liest; thou canst not.\n  CALIBAN. What a pied ninny\'s this! Thou scurvy patch!\n    I do beseech thy greatness, give him blows,\n    And take his bottle from him. When that\'s gone\n    He shall drink nought but brine; for I\'ll not show him\n    Where the quick freshes are.\n  STEPHANO. Trinculo, run into no further danger; interrupt\n    the monster one word further and, by this hand, I\'ll turn\n    my mercy out o\' doors, and make a stock-fish of thee.\n  TRINCULO. Why, what did I? I did nothing. I\'ll go farther\n    off.\n  STEPHANO. Didst thou not say he lied?  \n  ARIEL. Thou liest.\n  STEPHANO. Do I so? Take thou that.  [Beats him]  As you like\n    this, give me the lie another time.\n  TRINCULO. I did not give the lie. Out o\' your wits and\n    hearing too? A pox o\' your bottle! This can sack and\n    drinking do. A murrain on your monster, and the devil\n    take your fingers!\n  CALIBAN. Ha, ha, ha!\n  STEPHANO. Now, forward with your tale.-Prithee stand\n    further off.\n  CALIBAN. Beat him enough; after a little time, I\'ll beat\n    him too.\n  STEPHANO. Stand farther. Come, proceed.\n  CALIBAN. Why, as I told thee, \'tis a custom with him\n    I\' th\' afternoon to sleep; there thou mayst brain him,\n    Having first seiz\'d his books; or with a log\n    Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake,\n    Or cut his wezand with thy knife. Remember\n    First to possess his books; for without them\n    He\'s but a sot, as I am, nor hath not  \n    One spirit to command; they all do hate him\n    As rootedly as I. Burn but his books.\n    He has brave utensils-for so he calls them-\n    Which, when he has a house, he\'ll deck withal.\n    And that most deeply to consider is\n    The beauty of his daughter; he himself\n    Calls her a nonpareil. I never saw a woman\n    But only Sycorax my dam and she;\n    But she as far surpasseth Sycorax\n    As great\'st does least.\n  STEPHANO. Is it so brave a lass?\n  CALIBAN. Ay, lord; she will become thy bed, I warrant,\n    And bring thee forth brave brood.\n  STEPHANO. Monster, I will kill this man; his daughter and I\n    will be King and Queen-save our Graces!-and Trinculo\n    and thyself shall be viceroys. Dost thou like the plot,\n    Trinculo?\n  TRINCULO. Excellent.\n  STEPHANO. Give me thy hand; I am sorry I beat thee; but\n    while thou liv\'st, keep a good tongue in thy head.  \n  CALIBAN. Within this half hour will he be asleep.\n    Wilt thou destroy him then?\n  STEPHANO. Ay, on mine honour.\n  ARIEL. This will I tell my master.\n  CALIBAN. Thou mak\'st me merry; I am full of pleasure.\n    Let us be jocund; will you troll the catch\n    You taught me but while-ere?\n  STEPHANO. At thy request, monster, I will do reason, any\n    reason. Come on, Trinculo, let us sing.              [Sings]\n\n    Flout \'em and scout \'em,\n    And scout \'em and flout \'em;\n    Thought is free.\n\n  CALIBAN. That\'s not the tune.\n                      [ARIEL plays the tune on a tabor and pipe]\n  STEPHANO. What is this same?\n  TRINCULO. This is the tune of our catch, play\'d by the\n    picture of Nobody.\n  STEPHANO. If thou beest a man, show thyself in thy  \n    likeness; if thou beest a devil, take\'t as thou list.\n  TRINCULO. O, forgive me my sins!\n  STEPHANO. He that dies pays all debts. I defy thee. Mercy\n    upon us!\n  CALIBAN. Art thou afeard?\n  STEPHANO. No, monster, not I.\n  CALIBAN. Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,\n    Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.\n    Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments\n    Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,\n    That, if I then had wak\'d after long sleep,\n    Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,\n    The clouds methought would open and show riches\n    Ready to drop upon me, that, when I wak\'d,\n    I cried to dream again.\n  STEPHANO. This will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I\n    shall have my music for nothing.\n  CALIBAN. When Prospero is destroy\'d.\n  STEPHANO. That shall be by and by; I remember the story.\n  TRINCULO. The sound is going away; let\'s follow it, and  \n    after do our work.\n  STEPHANO. Lead, monster; we\'ll follow. I would I could see\n    this taborer; he lays it on.\n  TRINCULO. Wilt come? I\'ll follow, Stephano.             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE 3\n\nAnother part of the island\n\nEnter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO, ADRIAN, FRANCISCO, and OTHERS\n\n  GONZALO. By\'r lakin, I can go no further, sir;\n    My old bones ache. Here\'s a maze trod, indeed,\n    Through forth-rights and meanders! By your patience,\n    I needs must rest me.\n  ALONSO. Old lord, I cannot blame thee,\n    Who am myself attach\'d with weariness\n    To th\' dulling of my spirits; sit down and rest.\n    Even here I will put off my hope, and keep it\n    No longer for my flatterer; he is drown\'d\n    Whom thus we stray to find, and the sea mocks\n    Our frustrate search on land. Well, let him go.\n  ANTONIO.  [Aside to SEBASTIAN]  I am right glad that he\'s\n    so out of hope.\n    Do not, for one repulse, forgo the purpose\n    That you resolv\'d t\' effect.\n  SEBASTIAN.  [Aside to ANTONIO]  The next advantage  \n    Will we take throughly.\n  ANTONIO.  [Aside to SEBASTIAN]  Let it be to-night;\n    For, now they are oppress\'d with travel, they\n    Will not, nor cannot, use such vigilance\n    As when they are fresh.\n  SEBASTIAN.  [Aside to ANTONIO]  I say, to-night; no more.\n\n           Solemn and strange music; and PROSPERO on the\n           top, invisible. Enter several strange SHAPES,\n           bringing in a banquet; and dance about it with\n           gentle actions of salutations; and inviting the\n           KING, etc., to eat, they depart\n\n  ALONSO. What harmony is this? My good friends, hark!\n  GONZALO. Marvellous sweet music!\n  ALONSO. Give us kind keepers, heavens! What were these?\n  SEBASTIAN. A living drollery. Now I will believe\n    That there are unicorns; that in Arabia\n    There is one tree, the phoenix\' throne, one phoenix\n    At this hour reigning-there.  \n  ANTONIO. I\'ll believe both;\n    And what does else want credit, come to me,\n    And I\'ll be sworn \'tis true; travellers ne\'er did lie,\n    Though fools at home condemn \'em.\n  GONZALO. If in Naples\n    I should report this now, would they believe me?\n    If I should say, I saw such islanders,\n    For certes these are people of the island,\n    Who though they are of monstrous shape yet, note,\n    Their manners are more gentle-kind than of\n    Our human generation you shall find\n    Many, nay, almost any.\n  PROSPERO.  [Aside]  Honest lord,\n    Thou hast said well; for some of you there present\n    Are worse than devils.\n  ALONSO. I cannot too much muse\n    Such shapes, such gesture, and such sound, expressing,\n    Although they want the use of tongue, a kind\n    Of excellent dumb discourse.\n  PROSPERO.  [Aside]  Praise in departing.  \n  FRANCISCO. They vanish\'d strangely.\n  SEBASTIAN. No matter, since\n    They have left their viands behind; for we have stomachs.\n    Will\'t please you taste of what is here?\n  ALONSO. Not I.\n  GONZALO. Faith, sir, you need not fear. When we were boys,\n    Who would believe that there were mountaineers,\n    Dewlapp\'d like bulls, whose throats had hanging at \'em\n    Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men\n    Whose heads stood in their breasts? which now we find\n    Each putter-out of five for one will bring us\n    Good warrant of.\n  ALONSO. I will stand to, and feed,\n    Although my last; no matter, since I feel\n    The best is past. Brother, my lord the Duke,\n    Stand to, and do as we.\n\n       Thunder and lightning. Enter ARIEL, like a harpy;\n       claps his wings upon the table; and, with a quaint\n                device, the banquet vanishes  \n\n  ARIEL. You are three men of sin, whom Destiny,\n    That hath to instrument this lower world\n    And what is in\'t, the never-surfeited sea\n    Hath caus\'d to belch up you; and on this island\n    Where man doth not inhabit-you \'mongst men\n    Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad;\n    And even with such-like valour men hang and drown\n    Their proper selves.\n                     [ALONSO, SEBASTIAN etc., draw their swords]\n    You fools! I and my fellows\n    Are ministers of Fate; the elements\n    Of whom your swords are temper\'d may as well\n    Wound the loud winds, or with bemock\'d-at stabs\n    Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish\n    One dowle that\'s in my plume; my fellow-ministers\n    Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt,\n    Your swords are now too massy for your strengths\n    And will not be uplifted. But remember-\n    For that\'s my business to you-that you three  \n    From Milan did supplant good Prospero;\n    Expos\'d unto the sea, which hath requit it,\n    Him, and his innocent child; for which foul deed\n    The pow\'rs, delaying, not forgetting, have\n    Incens\'d the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures,\n    Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso,\n    They have bereft; and do pronounce by me\n    Ling\'ring perdition, worse than any death\n    Can be at once, shall step by step attend\n    You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from-\n    Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls\n    Upon your heads-is nothing but heart\'s sorrow,\n    And a clear life ensuing.\n\n        He vanishes in thunder; then, to soft music, enter\n        the SHAPES again, and dance, with mocks and mows,\n                and carrying out the table\n\n  PROSPERO. Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou\n    Perform\'d, my Ariel; a grace it had, devouring.  \n    Of my instruction hast thou nothing bated\n    In what thou hadst to say; so, with good life\n    And observation strange, my meaner ministers\n    Their several kinds have done. My high charms work,\n    And these mine enemies are all knit up\n    In their distractions. They now are in my pow\'r;\n    And in these fits I leave them, while I visit\n    Young Ferdinand, whom they suppose is drown\'d,\n    And his and mine lov\'d darling.                   Exit above\n  GONZALO. I\' th\' name of something holy, sir, why stand you\n    In this strange stare?\n  ALONSO. O, it is monstrous, monstrous!\n    Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it;\n    The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder,\n    That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc\'d\n    The name of Prosper; it did bass my trespass.\n    Therefore my son i\' th\' ooze is bedded; and\n    I\'ll seek him deeper than e\'er plummet sounded,\n    And with him there lie mudded.                          Exit\n  SEBASTIAN. But one fiend at a time,  \n    I\'ll fight their legions o\'er.\n  ANTONIO. I\'ll be thy second.      Exeunt SEBASTIAN and ANTONIO\n  GONZALO. All three of them are desperate; their great guilt,\n    Like poison given to work a great time after,\n    Now gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you,\n    That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly,\n    And hinder them from what this ecstasy\n    May now provoke them to.\n  ADRIAN. Follow, I pray you.                             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 1\n\nBefore PROSPERO\'S cell\n\nEnter PROSPERO, FERDINAND, and MIRANDA\n\n  PROSPERO. If I have too austerely punish\'d you,\n    Your compensation makes amends; for\n    Have given you here a third of mine own life,\n    Or that for which I live; who once again\n    I tender to thy hand. All thy vexations\n    Were but my trials of thy love, and thou\n    Hast strangely stood the test; here, afore heaven,\n    I ratify this my rich gift. O Ferdinand!\n    Do not smile at me that I boast her off,\n    For thou shalt find she will outstrip all praise,\n    And make it halt behind her.\n  FERDINAND. I do believe it\n    Against an oracle.\n  PROSPERO. Then, as my gift, and thine own acquisition\n    Wort\'hily purchas\'d, take my daughter. But\n    If thou dost break her virgin-knot before\n    All sanctimonious ceremonies may  \n    With full and holy rite be minist\'red,\n    No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall\n    To make this contract grow; but barren hate,\n    Sour-ey\'d disdain, and discord, shall bestrew\n    The union of your bed with weeds so loathly\n    That you shall hate it both. Therefore take heed,\n    As Hymen\'s lamps shall light you.\n  FERDINAND. As I hope\n    For quiet days, fair issue, and long life,\n    With such love as \'tis now, the murkiest den,\n    The most opportune place, the strong\'st suggestion\n    Our worser genius can, shall never melt\n    Mine honour into lust, to take away\n    The edge of that day\'s celebration,\n    When I shall think or Phoebus\' steeds are founder\'d\n    Or Night kept chain\'d below.\n  PROSPERO. Fairly spoke.\n    Sit, then, and talk with her; she is thine own.\n    What, Ariel! my industrious servant, Ariel!\n  \n                           Enter ARIEL\n\n  ARIEL. What would my potent master? Here I am.\n  PROSPERO. Thou and thy meaner fellows your last service\n    Did worthily perform; and I must use you\n    In such another trick. Go bring the rabble,\n    O\'er whom I give thee pow\'r, here to this place.\n    Incite them to quick motion; for I must\n    Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple\n    Some vanity of mine art; it is my promise,\n    And they expect it from me.\n  ARIEL. Presently?\n  PROSPERO. Ay, with a twink.\n  ARIEL. Before you can say \'come\' and \'go,\'\n    And breathe twice, and cry \'so, so,\'\n    Each one, tripping on his toe,\n    Will be here with mop and mow.\n    Do you love me, master? No?\n  PROSPERO. Dearly, my delicate Ariel. Do not approach\n    Till thou dost hear me call.  \n  ARIEL. Well! I conceive.                                  Exit\n  PROSPERO. Look thou be true; do not give dalliance\n    Too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw\n    To th\' fire i\' th\' blood. Be more abstemious,\n    Or else good night your vow!\n  FERDINAND. I warrant you, sir,\n    The white cold virgin snow upon my heart\n    Abates the ardour of my liver.\n  PROSPERO. Well!\n    Now come, my Ariel, bring a corollary,\n    Rather than want a spirit; appear, and pertly.\n    No tongue! All eyes! Be silent.                 [Soft music]\n\n                         Enter IRIS\n\n  IRIS. Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas\n    Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and pease;\n    Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep,\n    And flat meads thatch\'d with stover, them to keep;\n    Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims,  \n    Which spongy April at thy hest betrims,\n    To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom groves,\n    Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,\n    Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipt vineyard;\n    And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky hard,\n    Where thou thyself dost air-the Queen o\' th\' sky,\n    Whose wat\'ry arch and messenger am I,\n    Bids thee leave these; and with her sovereign grace,\n    Here on this grass-plot, in this very place,\n    To come and sport. Her peacocks fly amain.\n                                      [JUNO descends in her car]\n    Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain.\n\n                        Enter CERES\n\n  CERES. Hail, many-coloured messenger, that ne\'er\n    Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter;\n    Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flow\'rs\n    Diffusest honey drops, refreshing show\'rs;\n    And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown  \n    My bosky acres and my unshrubb\'d down,\n    Rich scarf to my proud earth-why hath thy Queen\n    Summon\'d me hither to this short-grass\'d green?\n  IRIS. A contract of true love to celebrate,\n    And some donation freely to estate\n    On the blest lovers.\n  CERES. Tell me, heavenly bow,\n    If Venus or her son, as thou dost know,\n    Do now attend the Queen? Since they did plot\n    The means that dusky Dis my daughter got,\n    Her and her blind boy\'s scandal\'d company\n    I have forsworn.\n  IRIS. Of her society\n    Be not afraid. I met her Deity\n    Cutting the clouds towards Paphos, and her son\n    Dove-drawn with her. Here thought they to have done\n    Some wanton charm upon this man and maid,\n    Whose vows are that no bed-rite shall be paid\n    Till Hymen\'s torch be lighted; but in vain.\n    Mars\'s hot minion is return\'d again;  \n    Her waspish-headed son has broke his arrows,\n    Swears he will shoot no more, but play with sparrows,\n    And be a boy right out.                       [JUNO alights]\n  CERES. Highest Queen of State,\n    Great Juno, comes; I know her by her gait.\n  JUNO. How does my bounteous sister? Go with me\n    To bless this twain, that they may prosperous be,\n    And honour\'d in their issue.                     [They sing]\n  JUNO. Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,\n    Long continuance, and increasing,\n    Hourly joys be still upon you!\n    Juno sings her blessings on you.\n  CERES. Earth\'s increase, foison plenty,\n    Barns and gamers never empty;\n    Vines with clust\'ring bunches growing,\n    Plants with goodly burden bowing;\n    Spring come to you at the farthest,\n    In the very end of harvest!\n    Scarcity and want shall shun you,\n    Ceres\' blessing so is on you.  \n  FERDINAND. This is a most majestic vision, and\n    Harmonious charmingly. May I be bold\n    To think these spirits?\n  PROSPERO. Spirits, which by mine art\n    I have from their confines call\'d to enact\n    My present fancies.\n  FERDINAND. Let me live here ever;\n    So rare a wond\'red father and a wise\n    Makes this place Paradise.\n           [JUNO and CERES whisper, and send IRIS on employment]\n  PROSPERO. Sweet now, silence;\n    Juno and Ceres whisper seriously.\n    There\'s something else to do; hush, and be mute,\n    Or else our spell is marr\'d.\n  IRIS. You nymphs, call\'d Naiads, of the wind\'ring brooks,\n    With your sedg\'d crowns and ever harmless looks,\n    Leave your crisp channels, and on this green land\n    Answer your summons; Juno does command.\n    Come, temperate nymphs, and help to celebrate\n    A contract of true love; be not too late.  \n\n                      Enter certain NYMPHS\n\n    You sun-burnt sicklemen, of August weary,\n    Come hither from the furrow, and be merry;\n    Make holiday; your rye-straw hats put on,\n    And these fresh nymphs encounter every one\n    In country footing.\n\n        Enter certain REAPERS, properly habited; they join\n         with the NYMPHS in a graceful dance; towards the\n         end whereof PROSPERO starts suddenly, and speaks,\n          after which, to a strange, hollow, and confused\n                  noise, they heavily vanish\n\n  PROSPERO.  [Aside]  I had forgot that foul conspiracy\n    Of the beast Caliban and his confederates\n    Against my life; the minute of their plot\n    Is almost come.  [To the SPIRITS]  Well done; avoid; no\n    more!  \n  FERDINAND. This is strange; your father\'s in some passion\n    That works him strongly.\n  MIRANDA. Never till this day\n    Saw I him touch\'d with anger so distemper\'d.\n  PROSPERO. You do look, my son, in a mov\'d sort,\n    As if you were dismay\'d; be cheerful, sir.\n    Our revels now are ended. These our actors,\n    As I foretold you, were all spirits, and\n    Are melted into air, into thin air;\n    And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,\n    The cloud-capp\'d towers, the gorgeous palaces,\n    The solemn temples, the great globe itself,\n    Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,\n    And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,\n    Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff\n    As dreams are made on; and our little life\n    Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex\'d;\n    Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled;\n    Be not disturb\'d with my infirmity.\n    If you be pleas\'d, retire into my cell  \n    And there repose; a turn or two I\'ll walk\n    To still my beating mind.\n  FERDINAND, MIRANDA. We wish your peace.                 Exeunt\n  PROSPERO. Come, with a thought. I thank thee, Ariel; come.\n\n                       Enter ARIEL\n\n  ARIEL. Thy thoughts I cleave to. What\'s thy pleasure?\n  PROSPERO. Spirit,\n    We must prepare to meet with Caliban.\n  ARIEL. Ay, my commander. When I presented \'Ceres.\'\n    I thought to have told thee of it; but I fear\'d\n    Lest I might anger thee.\n  PROSPERO. Say again, where didst thou leave these varlets?\n  ARIEL. I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking;\n    So full of valour that they smote the air\n    For breathing in their faces; beat the ground\n    For kissing of their feet; yet always bending\n    Towards their project. Then I beat my tabor,\n    At which like unback\'d colts they prick\'d their ears,  \n    Advanc\'d their eyelids, lifted up their noses\n    As they smelt music; so I charm\'d their cars,\n    That calf-like they my lowing follow\'d through\n    Tooth\'d briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns,\n    Which ent\'red their frail shins. At last I left them\n    I\' th\' filthy mantled pool beyond your cell,\n    There dancing up to th\' chins, that the foul lake\n    O\'erstunk their feet.\n  PROSPERO. This was well done, my bird.\n    Thy shape invisible retain thou still.\n    The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither\n    For stale to catch these thieves.\n  ARIEL. I go, I go.                                        Exit\n  PROSPERO. A devil, a born devil, on whose nature\n    Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains,\n    Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost;\n    And as with age his body uglier grows,\n    So his mind cankers. I will plague them all,\n    Even to roaring.\n  \n       Re-enter ARIEL, loaden with glistering apparel, &c.\n\n    Come, hang them on this line.\n                          [PROSPERO and ARIEL remain, invisible]\n\n         Enter CALIBAN, STEPHANO, and TRINCULO, all wet\n\n  CALIBAN. Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not\n    Hear a foot fall; we now are near his cell.\n  STEPHANO. Monster, your fairy, which you say is a harmless\n    fairy, has done little better than play\'d the Jack with us.\n  TRINCULO. Monster, I do smell all horse-piss at which my\n    nose is in great indignation.\n  STEPHANO. So is mine. Do you hear, monster? If I should\n    take a displeasure against you, look you-\n  TRINCULO. Thou wert but a lost monster.\n  CALIBAN. Good my lord, give me thy favour still.\n    Be patient, for the prize I\'ll bring thee to\n    Shall hoodwink this mischance; therefore speak softly.\n    All\'s hush\'d as midnight yet.  \n  TRINCULO. Ay, but to lose our bottles in the pool!\n  STEPHANO. There is not only disgrace and dishonour in\n    that, monster, but an infinite loss.\n  TRINCULO. That\'s more to me than my wetting; yet this is\n    your harmless fairy, monster.\n  STEPHANO. I will fetch off my bottle, though I be o\'er\n    ears for my labour.\n  CALIBAN. Prithee, my king, be quiet. Seest thou here,\n    This is the mouth o\' th\' cell; no noise, and enter.\n    Do that good mischief which may make this island\n    Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban,\n    For aye thy foot-licker.\n  STEPHANO. Give me thy hand. I do begin to have bloody\n    thoughts.\n  TRINCULO. O King Stephano! O peer! O worthy Stephano!\n    Look what a wardrobe here is for thee!\n  CALIBAN. Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash.\n  TRINCULO. O, ho, monster; we know what belongs to a\n    frippery. O King Stephano!\n  STEPHANO. Put off that gown, Trinculo; by this hand, I\'ll  \n    have that gown.\n  TRINCULO. Thy Grace shall have it.\n  CALIBAN. The dropsy drown this fool! What do you mean\n    To dote thus on such luggage? Let \'t alone,\n    And do the murder first. If he awake,\n    From toe to crown he\'ll fill our skins with pinches;\n    Make us strange stuff.\n  STEPHANO. Be you quiet, monster. Mistress line, is not\n    this my jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line; now,\n    jerkin, you are like to lose your hair, and prove a bald\n    jerkin.\n  TRINCULO. Do, do. We steal by line and level, an\'t like\n    your Grace.\n  STEPHANO. I thank thee for that jest; here\'s a garment\n    for\'t. Wit shall not go unrewarded while I am king of\n    this country. \'Steal by line and level\' is an excellent\n    pass of pate; there\'s another garmet for\'t.\n  TRINCULO. Monster, come, put some lime upon your fingers,\n    and away with the rest.\n  CALIBAN. I will have none on\'t. We shall lose our time,  \n    And all be turn\'d to barnacles, or to apes\n    With foreheads villainous low.\n  STEPHANO. Monster, lay-to your fingers; help to bear this\n    away where my hogshead of wine is, or I\'ll turn you out\n    of my kingdom. Go to, carry this.\n  TRINCULO. And this.\n  STEPHANO. Ay, and this.\n\n          A noise of hunters beard. Enter divers SPIRITS, in\n             shape of dogs and hounds, bunting them about;\n                   PROSPERO and ARIEL setting them on\n\n  PROSPERO. Hey, Mountain, hey!\n  ARIEL. Silver! there it goes, Silver!\n  PROSPERO. Fury, Fury! There, Tyrant, there! Hark, hark!\n                [CALIBAN, STEPHANO, and TRINCULO are driven out]\n    Go charge my goblins that they grind their joints\n    With dry convulsions, shorten up their sinews\n    With aged cramps, and more pinch-spotted make them\n    Than pard or cat o\' mountain.  \n  ARIEL. Hark, they roar.\n  PROSPERO. Let them be hunted soundly. At this hour\n    Lies at my mercy all mine enemies.\n    Shortly shall all my labours end, and thou\n    Shalt have the air at freedom; for a little\n    Follow, and do me service.                            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 1\n\nBefore PROSPERO\'S cell\n\nEnter PROSPERO in his magic robes, and ARIEL\n\n  PROSPERO. Now does my project gather to a head;\n    My charms crack not, my spirits obey; and time\n    Goes upright with his carriage. How\'s the day?\n  ARIEL. On the sixth hour; at which time, my lord,\n    You said our work should cease.\n  PROSPERO. I did say so,\n    When first I rais\'d the tempest. Say, my spirit,\n    How fares the King and \'s followers?\n  ARIEL. Confin\'d together\n    In the same fashion as you gave in charge;\n    Just as you left them; all prisoners, sir,\n    In the line-grove which weather-fends your cell;\n    They cannot budge till your release. The King,\n    His brother, and yours, abide all three distracted,\n    And the remainder mourning over them,\n    Brim full of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly\n    Him you term\'d, sir, \'the good old lord, Gonzalo\';  \n    His tears run down his beard, like winter\'s drops\n    From eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works \'em\n    That if you now beheld them your affections\n    Would become tender.\n  PROSPERO. Dost thou think so, spirit?\n  ARIEL. Mine would, sir, were I human.\n  PROSPERO. And mine shall.\n    Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling\n    Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,\n    One of their kind, that relish all as sharply,\n    Passion as they, be kindlier mov\'d than thou art?\n    Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th\' quick,\n    Yet with my nobler reason \'gainst my fury\n    Do I take part; the rarer action is\n    In virtue than in vengeance; they being penitent,\n    The sole drift of my purpose doth extend\n    Not a frown further. Go release them, Ariel;\n    My charms I\'ll break, their senses I\'ll restore,\n    And they shall be themselves.\n  ARIEL. I\'ll fetch them, sir.                              Exit  \n  PROSPERO. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and\n    groves;\n    And ye that on the sands with printless foot\n    Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him\n    When he comes back; you demi-puppets that\n    By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,\n    Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime\n    Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice\n    To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid-\n    Weak masters though ye be-I have be-dimm\'d\n    The noontide sun, call\'d forth the mutinous winds,\n    And \'twixt the green sea and the azur\'d vault\n    Set roaring war. To the dread rattling thunder\n    Have I given fire, and rifted Jove\'s stout oak\n    With his own bolt; the strong-bas\'d promontory\n    Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck\'d up\n    The pine and cedar. Graves at my command\n    Have wak\'d their sleepers, op\'d, and let \'em forth,\n    By my so potent art. But this rough magic\n    I here abjure; and, when I have requir\'d  \n    Some heavenly music-which even now I do-\n    To work mine end upon their senses that\n    This airy charm is for, I\'ll break my staff,\n    Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,\n    And deeper than did ever plummet sound\n    I\'ll drown my book.                            [Solem music]\n\n            Here enters ARIEL before; then ALONSO, with\n          frantic gesture, attended by GONZALO; SEBASTIAN\n           and ANTONIO in like manner, attended by ADRIAN\n           and FRANCISCO. They all enter the circle which\n          PROSPERO had made, and there stand charm\'d; which\n                    PROSPERO observing, speaks\n\n    A solemn air, and the best comforter\n    To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains,\n    Now useless, boil\'d within thy skull! There stand,\n    For you are spell-stopp\'d.\n    Holy Gonzalo, honourable man,\n    Mine eyes, ev\'n sociable to the show of thine,  \n    Fall fellowly drops. The charm dissolves apace,\n    And as the morning steals upon the night,\n    Melting the darkness, so their rising senses\n    Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle\n    Their clearer reason. O good Gonzalo,\n    My true preserver, and a loyal sir\n    To him thou follow\'st! I will pay thy graces\n    Home both in word and deed. Most cruelly\n    Didst thou, Alonso, use me and my daughter;\n    Thy brother was a furtherer in the act.\n    Thou art pinch\'d for\'t now, Sebastian. Flesh and blood,\n    You, brother mine, that entertain\'d ambition,\n    Expell\'d remorse and nature, who, with Sebastian-\n    Whose inward pinches therefore are most strong-\n    Would here have kill\'d your king, I do forgive thee,\n    Unnatural though thou art. Their understanding\n    Begins to swell, and the approaching tide\n    Will shortly fill the reasonable shore\n    That now lies foul and muddy. Not one of them\n    That yet looks on me, or would know me. Ariel,  \n    Fetch me the hat and rapier in my cell;           Exit ARIEL\n    I will discase me, and myself present\n    As I was sometime Milan. Quickly, spirit\n    Thou shalt ere long be free.\n\n        ARIEL, on returning, sings and helps to attire him\n\n    Where the bee sucks, there suck I;\n    In a cowslip\'s bell I lie;\n    There I couch when owls do cry.\n    On the bat\'s back I do fly\n    After summer merrily.\n    Merrily, merrily shall I live now\n    Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.\n\n  PROSPERO. Why, that\'s my dainty Ariel! I shall miss thee;\n    But yet thou shalt have freedom. So, so, so.\n    To the King\'s ship, invisible as thou art;\n    There shalt thou find the mariners asleep\n    Under the hatches; the master and the boatswain  \n    Being awake, enforce them to this place;\n    And presently, I prithee.\n  ARIEL. I drink the air before me, and return\n    Or ere your pulse twice beat.                           Exit\n  GONZALO. All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement,\n    Inhabits here. Some heavenly power guide us\n    Out of this fearful country!\n  PROSPERO. Behold, Sir King,\n    The wronged Duke of Milan, Prospero.\n    For more assurance that a living prince\n    Does now speak to thee, I embrace thy body;\n    And to thee and thy company I bid\n    A hearty welcome.\n  ALONSO. Whe\'er thou be\'st he or no,\n    Or some enchanted trifle to abuse me,\n    As late I have been, I not know. Thy pulse\n    Beats, as of flesh and blood; and, since I saw thee,\n    Th\' affliction of my mind amends, with which,\n    I fear, a madness held me. This must crave-\n    An if this be at all-a most strange story.  \n    Thy dukedom I resign, and do entreat\n    Thou pardon me my wrongs. But how should Prospero\n    Be living and be here?\n  PROSPERO. First, noble friend,\n    Let me embrace thine age, whose honour cannot\n    Be measur\'d or confin\'d.\n  GONZALO. Whether this be\n    Or be not, I\'ll not swear.\n  PROSPERO. You do yet taste\n    Some subtleties o\' th\' isle, that will not let you\n    Believe things certain. Welcome, my friends all!\n    [Aside to SEBASTIAN and ANTONIO]  But you, my brace of\n      lords, were I so minded,\n    I here could pluck his Highness\' frown upon you,\n    And justify you traitors; at this time\n    I will tell no tales.\n  SEBASTIAN.  [Aside]  The devil speaks in him.\n  PROSPERO. No.\n    For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother\n    Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive  \n    Thy rankest fault-all of them; and require\n    My dukedom of thee, which perforce I know\n    Thou must restore.\n  ALONSO. If thou beest Prospero,\n    Give us particulars of thy preservation;\n    How thou hast met us here, whom three hours since\n    Were wreck\'d upon this shore; where I have lost-\n    How sharp the point of this remembrance is!-\n    My dear son Ferdinand.\n  PROSPERO. I am woe for\'t, sir.\n  ALONSO. Irreparable is the loss; and patience\n    Says it is past her cure.\n  PROSPERO. I rather think\n    You have not sought her help, of whose soft grace\n    For the like loss I have her sovereign aid,\n    And rest myself content.\n  ALONSO. You the like loss!\n  PROSPERO. As great to me as late; and, supportable\n    To make the dear loss, have I means much weaker\n    Than you may call to comfort you, for I  \n    Have lost my daughter.\n  ALONSO. A daughter!\n    O heavens, that they were living both in Naples,\n    The King and Queen there! That they were, I wish\n    Myself were mudded in that oozy bed\n    Where my son lies. When did you lose your daughter?\n  PROSPERO. In this last tempest. I perceive these lords\n    At this encounter do so much admire\n    That they devour their reason, and scarce think\n    Their eyes do offices of truth, their words\n    Are natural breath; but, howsoe\'er you have\n    Been justled from your senses, know for certain\n    That I am Prospero, and that very duke\n    Which was thrust forth of Milan; who most strangely\n    Upon this shore, where you were wrecked, was landed\n    To be the lord on\'t. No more yet of this;\n    For \'tis a chronicle of day by day,\n    Not a relation for a breakfast, nor\n    Befitting this first meeting. Welcome, sir;\n    This cell\'s my court; here have I few attendants,  \n    And subjects none abroad; pray you, look in.\n    My dukedom since you have given me again,\n    I will requite you with as good a thing;\n    At least bring forth a wonder, to content ye\n    As much as me my dukedom.\n\n          Here PROSPERO discovers FERDINAND and MIRANDA,\n                      playing at chess\n\n  MIRANDA. Sweet lord, you play me false.\n  FERDINAND. No, my dearest love,\n    I would not for the world.\n  MIRANDA. Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle\n    And I would call it fair play.\n  ALONSO. If this prove\n    A vision of the island, one dear son\n    Shall I twice lose.\n  SEBASTIAN. A most high miracle!\n  FERDINAND. Though the seas threaten, they are merciful;\n    I have curs\'d them without cause.                   [Kneels]  \n  ALONSO. Now all the blessings\n    Of a glad father compass thee about!\n    Arise, and say how thou cam\'st here.\n  MIRANDA. O, wonder!\n    How many goodly creatures are there here!\n    How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world\n    That has such people in\'t!\n  PROSPERO. \'Tis new to thee.\n  ALONSO. What is this maid with whom thou wast at play?\n    Your eld\'st acquaintance cannot be three hours;\n    Is she the goddess that hath sever\'d us,\n    And brought us thus together?\n  FERDINAND. Sir, she is mortal;\n    But by immortal Providence she\'s mine.\n    I chose her when I could not ask my father\n    For his advice, nor thought I had one. She\n    Is daughter to this famous Duke of Milan,\n    Of whom so often I have heard renown\n    But never saw before; of whom I have\n    Receiv\'d a second life; and second father  \n    This lady makes him to me.\n  ALONSO. I am hers.\n    But, O, how oddly will it sound that I\n    Must ask my child forgiveness!\n  PROSPERO. There, sir, stop;\n    Let us not burden our remembrances with\n    A heaviness that\'s gone.\n  GONZALO. I have inly wept,\n    Or should have spoke ere this. Look down, you gods,\n    And on this couple drop a blessed crown;\n    For it is you that have chalk\'d forth the way\n    Which brought us hither.\n  ALONSO. I say, Amen, Gonzalo!\n  GONZALO. Was Milan thrust from Milan, that his issue\n    Should become Kings of Naples? O, rejoice\n    Beyond a common joy, and set it down\n    With gold on lasting pillars: in one voyage\n    Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis;\n    And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife\n    Where he himself was lost; Prospero his dukedom  \n    In a poor isle; and all of us ourselves\n    When no man was his own.\n  ALONSO.  [To FERDINAND and MIRANDA]  Give me your\n    hands.\n    Let grief and sorrow still embrace his heart\n    That doth not wish you joy.\n  GONZALO. Be it so. Amen!\n\n           Re-enter ARIEL, with the MASTER and BOATSWAIN\n                     amazedly following\n\n    O look, sir; look, sir! Here is more of us!\n    I prophesied, if a gallows were on land,\n    This fellow could not drown. Now, blasphemy,\n    That swear\'st grace o\'erboard, not an oath on shore?\n    Hast thou no mouth by land? What is the news?\n  BOATSWAIN. The best news is that we have safely found\n    Our King and company; the next, our ship-\n    Which but three glasses since we gave out split-\n    Is tight and yare, and bravely rigg\'d, as when  \n    We first put out to sea.\n  ARIEL.  [Aside to PROSPERO]  Sir, all this service\n    Have I done since I went.\n  PROSPERO.  [Aside to ARIEL]  My tricksy spirit!\n  ALONSO. These are not natural events; they strengthen\n    From strange to stranger. Say, how came you hither?\n  BOATSWAIN. If I did think, sir, I were well awake,\n    I\'d strive to tell you. We were dead of sleep,\n    And-how, we know not-all clapp\'d under hatches;\n    Where, but even now, with strange and several noises\n    Of roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains,\n    And moe diversity of sounds, all horrible,\n    We were awak\'d; straightway at liberty;\n    Where we, in all her trim, freshly beheld\n    Our royal, good, and gallant ship; our master\n    Cap\'ring to eye her. On a trice, so please you,\n    Even in a dream, were we divided from them,\n    And were brought moping hither.\n  ARIEL.  [Aside to PROSPERO]  Was\'t well done?\n  PROSPERO.  [Aside to ARIEL]  Bravely, my diligence. Thou  \n    shalt be free.\n  ALONSO. This is as strange a maze as e\'er men trod;\n    And there is in this business more than nature\n    Was ever conduct of. Some oracle\n    Must rectify our knowledge.\n  PROSPERO. Sir, my liege,\n    Do not infest your mind with beating on\n    The strangeness of this business; at pick\'d leisure,\n    Which shall be shortly, single I\'ll resolve you,\n    Which to you shall seem probable, of every\n    These happen\'d accidents; till when, be cheerful\n    And think of each thing well.  [Aside to ARIEL]  Come\n    hither, spirit;\n    Set Caliban and his companions free;\n    Untie the spell.  [Exit ARIEL]  How fares my gracious sir?\n    There are yet missing of your company\n    Some few odd lads that you remember not.\n\n         Re-enter ARIEL, driving in CALIBAN, STEPHANO, and\n  \n  TRINCULO, in their stolen apparel\n  STEPHANO. Every man shift for all the rest, and let no man\n    take care for himself; for all is but fortune. Coragio,\n    bully-monster, coragio!\n  TRINCULO. If these be true spies which I wear in my head,\n    here\'s a goodly sight.\n  CALIBAN. O Setebos, these be brave spirits indeed!\n    How fine my master is! I am afraid\n    He will chastise me.\n  SEBASTIAN. Ha, ha!\n    What things are these, my lord Antonio?\n    Will money buy\'em?\n  ANTONIO. Very like; one of them\n    Is a plain fish, and no doubt marketable.\n  PROSPERO. Mark but the badges of these men, my lords,\n    Then say if they be true. This mis-shapen knave-\n    His mother was a witch, and one so strong\n    That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs,\n    And deal in her command without her power.\n    These three have robb\'d me; and this demi-devil-  \n    For he\'s a bastard one-had plotted with them\n    To take my life. Two of these fellows you\n    Must know and own; this thing of darkness I\n    Acknowledge mine.\n  CALIBAN. I shall be pinch\'d to death.\n  ALONSO. Is not this Stephano, my drunken butler?\n  SEBASTIAN. He is drunk now; where had he wine?\n  ALONSO. And Trinculo is reeling ripe; where should they\n    Find this grand liquor that hath gilded \'em?\n    How cam\'st thou in this pickle?\n  TRINCULO. I have been in such a pickle since I saw you\n    last that, I fear me, will never out of my bones. I\n    shall not fear fly-blowing.\n  SEBASTIAN. Why, how now, Stephano!\n  STEPHANO. O, touch me not; I am not Stephano, but a\n    cramp.\n  PROSPERO. You\'d be king o\' the isle, sirrah?\n  STEPHANO. I should have been a sore one, then.\n  ALONSO.  [Pointing to CALIBAN]  This is as strange a thing\n    as e\'er I look\'d on.  \n  PROSPERO. He is as disproportioned in his manners\n    As in his shape. Go, sirrah, to my cell;\n    Take with you your companions; as you look\n    To have my pardon, trim it handsomely.\n  CALIBAN. Ay, that I will; and I\'ll be wise hereafter,\n    And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass\n    Was I to take this drunkard for a god,\n    And worship this dull fool!\n  PROSPERO. Go to; away!\n  ALONSO. Hence, and bestow your luggage where you found it.\n  SEBASTIAN. Or stole it, rather.\n                          Exeunt CALIBAN, STEPHANO, and TRINCULO\n  PROSPERO. Sir, I invite your Highness and your train\n    To my poor cell, where you shall take your rest\n    For this one night; which, part of it, I\'ll waste\n    With such discourse as, I not doubt, shall make it\n    Go quick away-the story of my life,\n    And the particular accidents gone by\n    Since I came to this isle. And in the morn\n    I\'ll bring you to your ship, and so to Naples,  \n    Where I have hope to see the nuptial\n    Of these our dear-belov\'d solemnized,\n    And thence retire me to my Milan, where\n    Every third thought shall be my grave.\n  ALONSO. I long\n    To hear the story of your life, which must\n    Take the ear strangely.\n  PROSPERO. I\'ll deliver all;\n    And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales,\n    And sail so expeditious that shall catch\n    Your royal fleet far off.  [Aside to ARIEL]  My Ariel,\n      chick,\n    That is thy charge. Then to the elements\n    Be free, and fare thou well!-Please you, draw near.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\nEPILOGUE\n                             EPILOGUE\n                        Spoken by PROSPERO\n\n          Now my charms are all o\'erthrown,\n          And what strength I have\'s mine own,\n          Which is most faint. Now \'tis true,\n          I must be here confin\'d by you,\n          Or sent to Naples. Let me not,\n          Since I have my dukedom got,\n          And pardon\'d the deceiver, dwell\n          In this bare island by your spell;\n          But release me from my bands\n          With the help of your good hands.\n          Gentle breath of yours my sails\n          Must fill, or else my project fails,\n          Which was to please. Now I want\n          Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;\n          And my ending is despair\n          Unless I be reliev\'d by prayer,\n          Which pierces so that it assaults\n          Mercy itself, and frees all faults.\n          As you from crimes would pardon\'d be,  \n          Let your indulgence set me free.\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1608\n\nTHE LIFE OF TIMON OF ATHENS\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\n    TIMON of Athens\n\n    LUCIUS\n    LUCULLUS\n    SEMPRONIUS\n       flattering lords\n\n    VENTIDIUS, one of Timon\'s false friends\n    ALCIBIADES, an Athenian captain\n    APEMANTUS, a churlish philosopher\n    FLAVIUS, steward to Timon\n\n    FLAMINIUS\n    LUCILIUS\n    SERVILIUS\n       Timon\'s servants\n\n    CAPHIS\n    PHILOTUS\n    TITUS  \n    HORTENSIUS\n       servants to Timon\'s creditors\n\n    POET\n    PAINTER\n    JEWELLER\n    MERCHANT\n    MERCER\n    AN OLD ATHENIAN\n    THREE STRANGERS\n    A PAGE\n    A FOOL\n\n    PHRYNIA\n    TIMANDRA\n       mistresses to Alcibiades\n\n    CUPID\n    AMAZONS\n      in the Masque  \n\n    Lords, Senators, Officers, Soldiers, Servants, Thieves, and\n      Attendants\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nAthens and the neighbouring woods\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nAthens. TIMON\'S house\n\nEnter POET, PAINTER, JEWELLER, MERCHANT, and MERCER, at several doors\n\n  POET. Good day, sir.\n  PAINTER. I am glad y\'are well.\n  POET. I have not seen you long; how goes the world?\n  PAINTER. It wears, sir, as it grows.\n  POET. Ay, that\'s well known.\n    But what particular rarity? What strange,\n    Which manifold record not matches? See,\n    Magic of bounty, all these spirits thy power\n    Hath conjur\'d to attend! I know the merchant.\n  PAINTER. I know them both; th\' other\'s a jeweller.\n  MERCHANT. O, \'tis a worthy lord!\n  JEWELLER. Nay, that\'s most fix\'d.\n  MERCHANT. A most incomparable man; breath\'d, as it were,\n    To an untirable and continuate goodness.\n    He passes.\n  JEWELLER. I have a jewel here-  \n  MERCHANT. O, pray let\'s see\'t. For the Lord Timon, sir?\n  JEWELLER. If he will touch the estimate. But for that-\n  POET. When we for recompense have prais\'d the vile,\n    It stains the glory in that happy verse\n    Which aptly sings the good.\n  MERCHANT. [Looking at the jewel] \'Tis a good form.\n  JEWELLER. And rich. Here is a water, look ye.\n  PAINTER. You are rapt, sir, in some work, some dedication\n    To the great lord.\n  POET. A thing slipp\'d idly from me.\n    Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes\n    From whence \'tis nourish\'d. The fire i\' th\' flint\n    Shows not till it be struck: our gentle flame\n    Provokes itself, and like the current flies\n    Each bound it chafes. What have you there?\n  PAINTER. A picture, sir. When comes your book forth?\n  POET. Upon the heels of my presentment, sir.\n    Let\'s see your piece.\n  PAINTER. \'Tis a good piece.\n  POET. So \'tis; this comes off well and excellent.  \n  PAINTER. Indifferent.\n  POET. Admirable. How this grace\n    Speaks his own standing! What a mental power\n    This eye shoots forth! How big imagination\n    Moves in this lip! To th\' dumbness of the gesture\n    One might interpret.\n  PAINTER. It is a pretty mocking of the life.\n    Here is a touch; is\'t good?\n  POET. I will say of it\n    It tutors nature. Artificial strife\n    Lives in these touches, livelier than life.\n\n              Enter certain SENATORS, and pass over\n\n  PAINTER. How this lord is followed!\n  POET. The senators of Athens- happy man!\n  PAINTER. Look, moe!\n  POET. You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors.\n    I have in this rough work shap\'d out a man\n    Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug  \n    With amplest entertainment. My free drift\n    Halts not particularly, but moves itself\n    In a wide sea of tax. No levell\'d malice\n    Infects one comma in the course I hold,\n    But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on,\n    Leaving no tract behind.\n  PAINTER. How shall I understand you?\n  POET. I will unbolt to you.\n    You see how all conditions, how all minds-\n    As well of glib and slipp\'ry creatures as\n    Of grave and austere quality, tender down\n    Their services to Lord Timon. His large fortune,\n    Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,\n    Subdues and properties to his love and tendance\n    All sorts of hearts; yea, from the glass-fac\'d flatterer\n    To Apemantus, that few things loves better\n    Than to abhor himself; even he drops down\n    The knee before him, and returns in peace\n    Most rich in Timon\'s nod.\n  PAINTER. I saw them speak together.  \n  POET. Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill\n    Feign\'d Fortune to be thron\'d. The base o\' th\' mount\n    Is rank\'d with all deserts, all kind of natures\n    That labour on the bosom of this sphere\n    To propagate their states. Amongst them all\n    Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fix\'d\n    One do I personate of Lord Timon\'s frame,\n    Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her;\n    Whose present grace to present slaves and servants\n    Translates his rivals.\n  PAINTER. \'Tis conceiv\'d to scope.\n    This throne, this Fortune, and this hill, methinks,\n    With one man beckon\'d from the rest below,\n    Bowing his head against the steepy mount\n    To climb his happiness, would be well express\'d\n    In our condition.\n  POET. Nay, sir, but hear me on.\n    All those which were his fellows but of late-\n    Some better than his value- on the moment\n    Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance,  \n    Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear,\n    Make sacred even his stirrup, and through him\n    Drink the free air.\n  PAINTER. Ay, marry, what of these?\n  POET. When Fortune in her shift and change of mood\n    Spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants,\n    Which labour\'d after him to the mountain\'s top\n    Even on their knees and hands, let him slip down,\n    Not one accompanying his declining foot.\n  PAINTER. \'Tis common.\n    A thousand moral paintings I can show\n    That shall demonstrate these quick blows of Fortune\'s\n    More pregnantly than words. Yet you do well\n    To show Lord Timon that mean eyes have seen\n    The foot above the head.\n\n         Trumpets sound. Enter TIMON, addressing himself\n          courteously to every suitor, a MESSENGER from\n         VENTIDIUS talking with him; LUCILIUS and other\n                       servants following  \n\n  TIMON. Imprison\'d is he, say you?\n  MESSENGER. Ay, my good lord. Five talents is his debt;\n    His means most short, his creditors most strait.\n    Your honourable letter he desires\n    To those have shut him up; which failing,\n    Periods his comfort.\n  TIMON. Noble Ventidius! Well.\n    I am not of that feather to shake of\n    My friend when he must need me. I do know him\n    A gentleman that well deserves a help,\n    Which he shall have. I\'ll pay the debt, and free him.\n  MESSENGER. Your lordship ever binds him.\n  TIMON. Commend me to him; I will send his ransom;\n    And being enfranchis\'d, bid him come to me.\n    \'Tis not enough to help the feeble up,\n    But to support him after. Fare you well.\n  MESSENGER. All happiness to your honour!                  Exit\n\n                      Enter an OLD ATHENIAN  \n\n  OLD ATHENIAN. Lord Timon, hear me speak.\n  TIMON. Freely, good father.\n  OLD ATHENIAN. Thou hast a servant nam\'d Lucilius.\n  TIMON. I have so; what of him?\n  OLD ATHENIAN. Most noble Timon, call the man before thee.\n  TIMON. Attends he here, or no? Lucilius!\n  LUCILIUS. Here, at your lordship\'s service.\n  OLD ATHENIAN. This fellow here, Lord Timon, this thy creature,\n    By night frequents my house. I am a man\n    That from my first have been inclin\'d to thrift,\n    And my estate deserves an heir more rais\'d\n    Than one which holds a trencher.\n  TIMON. Well; what further?\n  OLD ATHENIAN. One only daughter have I, no kin else,\n    On whom I may confer what I have got.\n    The maid is fair, o\' th\' youngest for a bride,\n    And I have bred her at my dearest cost\n    In qualities of the best. This man of thine\n    Attempts her love; I prithee, noble lord,  \n    Join with me to forbid him her resort;\n    Myself have spoke in vain.\n  TIMON. The man is honest.\n  OLD ATHENIAN. Therefore he will be, Timon.\n    His honesty rewards him in itself;\n    It must not bear my daughter.\n  TIMON. Does she love him?\n  OLD ATHENIAN. She is young and apt:\n    Our own precedent passions do instruct us\n    What levity\'s in youth.\n  TIMON. Love you the maid?\n  LUCILIUS. Ay, my good lord, and she accepts of it.\n  OLD ATHENIAN. If in her marriage my consent be missing,\n    I call the gods to witness I will choose\n    Mine heir from forth the beggars of the world,\n    And dispossess her all.\n  TIMON. How shall she be endow\'d,\n    If she be mated with an equal husband?\n  OLD ATHENIAN. Three talents on the present; in future, all.\n  TIMON. This gentleman of mine hath serv\'d me long;.  \n    To build his fortune I will strain a little,\n    For \'tis a bond in men. Give him thy daughter:\n    What you bestow, in him I\'ll counterpoise,\n    And make him weigh with her.\n  OLD ATHENIAN. Most noble lord,\n    Pawn me to this your honour, she is his.\n  TIMON. My hand to thee; mine honour on my promise.\n  LUCILIUS. Humbly I thank your lordship. Never may\n    That state or fortune fall into my keeping\n    Which is not owed to you!\n                                Exeunt LUCILIUS and OLD ATHENIAN\n  POET. [Presenting his poem] Vouchsafe my labour, and long live your\n    lordship!\n  TIMON. I thank you; you shall hear from me anon;\n    Go not away. What have you there, my friend?\n  PAINTER. A piece of painting, which I do beseech\n    Your lordship to accept.\n  TIMON. Painting is welcome.\n    The painting is almost the natural man;\n    For since dishonour traffics with man\'s nature,  \n    He is but outside; these pencill\'d figures are\n    Even such as they give out. I like your work,\n    And you shall find I like it; wait attendance\n    Till you hear further from me.\n  PAINTER. The gods preserve ye!\n  TIMON. Well fare you, gentleman. Give me your hand;\n    We must needs dine together. Sir, your jewel\n    Hath suffered under praise.\n  JEWELLER. What, my lord! Dispraise?\n  TIMON. A mere satiety of commendations;\n    If I should pay you for\'t as \'tis extoll\'d,\n    It would unclew me quite.\n  JEWELLER. My lord, \'tis rated\n    As those which sell would give; but you well know\n    Things of like value, differing in the owners,\n    Are prized by their masters. Believe\'t, dear lord,\n    You mend the jewel by the wearing it.\n  TIMON. Well mock\'d.\n\n                      Enter APEMANTUS  \n\n  MERCHANT. No, my good lord; he speaks the common tongue,\n    Which all men speak with him.\n  TIMON. Look who comes here; will you be chid?\n  JEWELLER. We\'ll bear, with your lordship.\n  MERCHANT. He\'ll spare none.\n  TIMON. Good morrow to thee, gentle Apemantus!\n  APEMANTUS. Till I be gentle, stay thou for thy good morrow;\n    When thou art Timon\'s dog, and these knaves honest.\n  TIMON. Why dost thou call them knaves? Thou know\'st them not.\n  APEMANTUS. Are they not Athenians?\n  TIMON. Yes.\n  APEMANTUS. Then I repent not.\n  JEWELLER. You know me, Apemantus?\n  APEMANTUS. Thou know\'st I do; I call\'d thee by thy name.\n  TIMON. Thou art proud, Apemantus.\n  APEMANTUS. Of nothing so much as that I am not like Timon.\n  TIMON. Whither art going?\n  APEMANTUS. To knock out an honest Athenian\'s brains.\n  TIMON. That\'s a deed thou\'t die for.  \n  APEMANTUS. Right, if doing nothing be death by th\' law.\n  TIMON. How lik\'st thou this picture, Apemantus?\n  APEMANTUS. The best, for the innocence.\n  TIMON. Wrought he not well that painted it?\n  APEMANTUS. He wrought better that made the painter; and yet he\'s\n    but a filthy piece of work.\n  PAINTER. Y\'are a dog.\n  APEMANTUS. Thy mother\'s of my generation; what\'s she, if I be a dog?\n  TIMON. Wilt dine with me, Apemantus?\n  APEMANTUS. No; I eat not lords.\n  TIMON. An thou shouldst, thou\'dst anger ladies.\n  APEMANTUS. O, they eat lords; so they come by great bellies.\n  TIMON. That\'s a lascivious apprehension.\n  APEMANTUS. So thou apprehend\'st it take it for thy labour.\n  TIMON. How dost thou like this jewel, Apemantus?\n  APEMANTUS. Not so well as plain dealing, which will not cost a man\n    a doit.\n  TIMON. What dost thou think \'tis worth?\n  APEMANTUS. Not worth my thinking. How now, poet!\n  POET. How now, philosopher!  \n  APEMANTUS. Thou liest.\n  POET. Art not one?\n  APEMANTUS. Yes.\n  POET. Then I lie not.\n  APEMANTUS. Art not a poet?\n  POET. Yes.\n  APEMANTUS. Then thou liest. Look in thy last work, where thou hast\n    feign\'d him a worthy fellow.\n  POET. That\'s not feign\'d- he is so.\n  APEMANTUS. Yes, he is worthy of thee, and to pay thee for thy\n    labour. He that loves to be flattered is worthy o\' th\' flatterer.\n    Heavens, that I were a lord!\n  TIMON. What wouldst do then, Apemantus?\n  APEMANTUS. E\'en as Apemantus does now: hate a lord with my heart.\n  TIMON. What, thyself?\n  APEMANTUS. Ay.\n  TIMON. Wherefore?\n  APEMANTUS. That I had no angry wit to be a lord.- Art not thou a\n    merchant?\n  MERCHANT. Ay, Apemantus.  \n  APEMANTUS. Traffic confound thee, if the gods will not!\n  MERCHANT. If traffic do it, the gods do it.\n  APEMANTUS. Traffic\'s thy god, and thy god confound thee!\n\n                Trumpet sounds. Enter a MESSENGER\n\n  TIMON. What trumpet\'s that?\n  MESSENGER. \'Tis Alcibiades, and some twenty horse,\n    All of companionship.\n  TIMON. Pray entertain them; give them guide to us.\n                                          Exeunt some attendants\n    You must needs dine with me. Go not you hence\n    Till I have thank\'d you. When dinner\'s done\n    Show me this piece. I am joyful of your sights.\n\n                Enter ALCIBIADES, with the rest\n\n    Most welcome, sir!                             [They salute]\n  APEMANTUS. So, so, there!\n    Aches contract and starve your supple joints!  \n    That there should be small love amongst these sweet knaves,\n    And all this courtesy! The strain of man\'s bred out\n    Into baboon and monkey.\n  ALCIBIADES. Sir, you have sav\'d my longing, and I feed\n    Most hungerly on your sight.\n  TIMON. Right welcome, sir!\n    Ere we depart we\'ll share a bounteous time\n    In different pleasures. Pray you, let us in.\n                                        Exeunt all but APEMANTUS\n\n                        Enter two LORDS\n\n  FIRST LORD. What time o\' day is\'t, Apemantus?\n  APEMANTUS. Time to be honest.\n  FIRST LORD. That time serves still.\n  APEMANTUS. The more accursed thou that still omit\'st it.\n  SECOND LORD. Thou art going to Lord Timon\'s feast.\n  APEMANTUS. Ay; to see meat fill knaves and wine heat fools.\n  SECOND LORD. Fare thee well, fare thee well.\n  APEMANTUS. Thou art a fool to bid me farewell twice.  \n  SECOND LORD. Why, Apemantus?\n  APEMANTUS. Shouldst have kept one to thyself, for I mean to give\n    thee none.\n  FIRST LORD. Hang thyself.\n  APEMANTUS. No, I will do nothing at thy bidding; make thy requests\n    to thy friend.\n  SECOND LORD. Away, unpeaceable dog, or I\'ll spurn thee hence.\n  APEMANTUS. I will fly, like a dog, the heels o\' th\' ass.  Exit\n  FIRST LORD. He\'s opposite to humanity. Come, shall we in\n    And taste Lord Timon\'s bounty? He outgoes\n    The very heart of kindness.\n  SECOND LORD. He pours it out: Plutus, the god of gold,\n    Is but his steward; no meed but he repays\n    Sevenfold above itself; no gift to him\n    But breeds the giver a return exceeding\n    All use of quittance.\n  FIRST LORD. The noblest mind he carries\n    That ever govern\'d man.\n  SECOND LORD. Long may he live in fortunes! shall we in?\n  FIRST LORD. I\'ll keep you company.                      Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nA room of state in TIMON\'S house\n\nHautboys playing loud music. A great banquet serv\'d in;\nFLAVIUS and others attending; and then enter LORD TIMON, the states,\nthe ATHENIAN LORDS, VENTIDIUS, which TIMON redeem\'d from prison.\nThen comes, dropping after all, APEMANTUS, discontentedly, like himself\n\n  VENTIDIUS. Most honoured Timon,\n    It hath pleas\'d the gods to remember my father\'s age,\n    And call him to long peace.\n    He is gone happy, and has left me rich.\n    Then, as in grateful virtue I am bound\n    To your free heart, I do return those talents,\n    Doubled with thanks and service, from whose help\n    I deriv\'d liberty.\n  TIMON. O, by no means,\n    Honest Ventidius! You mistake my love;\n    I gave it freely ever; and there\'s none\n    Can truly say he gives, if he receives.\n    If our betters play at that game, we must not dare  \n    To imitate them: faults that are rich are fair.\n  VENTIDIUS. A noble spirit!\n  TIMON. Nay, my lords, ceremony was but devis\'d at first\n    To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes,\n    Recanting goodness, sorry ere \'tis shown;\n    But where there is true friendship there needs none.\n    Pray, sit; more welcome are ye to my fortunes\n    Than my fortunes to me.                           [They sit]\n  FIRST LORD. My lord, we always have confess\'d it.\n  APEMANTUS. Ho, ho, confess\'d it! Hang\'d it, have you not?\n  TIMON. O, Apemantus, you are welcome.\n  APEMANTUS. No;\n    You shall not make me welcome.\n    I come to have thee thrust me out of doors.\n  TIMON. Fie, th\'art a churl; ye have got a humour there\n    Does not become a man; \'tis much to blame.\n    They say, my lords, Ira furor brevis est; but yond man is ever\n    angry. Go, let him have a table by himself; for he does neither\n    affect company nor is he fit for\'t indeed.\n  APEMANTUS. Let me stay at thine apperil, Timon.  \n    I come to observe; I give thee warning on\'t.\n  TIMON. I take no heed of thee. Th\'art an Athenian, therefore\n    welcome. I myself would have no power; prithee let my meat make\n    thee silent.\n  APEMANTUS. I scorn thy meat; \'t\'would choke me, for I should ne\'er\n    flatter thee. O you gods, what a number of men eats Timon, and he\n    sees \'em not! It grieves me to see so many dip their meat in one\n    man\'s blood; and all the madness is, he cheers them up too.\n    I wonder men dare trust themselves with men.\n    Methinks they should invite them without knives:\n    Good for their meat and safer for their lives.\n    There\'s much example for\'t; the fellow that sits next him now,\n    parts bread with him, pledges the breath of him in a divided\n    draught, is the readiest man to kill him. \'T has been proved. If\n    I were a huge man I should fear to drink at meals.\n    Lest they should spy my windpipe\'s dangerous notes:\n    Great men should drink with harness on their throats.\n  TIMON. My lord, in heart! and let the health go round.\n  SECOND LORD. Let it flow this way, my good lord.\n  APEMANTUS. Flow this way! A brave fellow! He keeps his tides well.  \n    Those healths will make thee and thy state look ill, Timon.\n    Here\'s that which is too weak to be a sinner, honest water, which\n    ne\'er left man i\' th\' mire.\n    This and my food are equals; there\'s no odds.\'\n    Feasts are too proud to give thanks to the gods.\n\n                  APEMANTUS\' Grace\n\n           Immortal gods, I crave no pelf;\n           I pray for no man but myself.\n           Grant I may never prove so fond\n           To trust man on his oath or bond,\n           Or a harlot for her weeping,\n           Or a dog that seems a-sleeping,\n           Or a keeper with my freedom,\n           Or my friends, if I should need \'em.\n           Amen. So fall to\'t.\n           Rich men sin, and I eat root.       [Eats and drinks]\n\n    Much good dich thy good heart, Apemantus!  \n  TIMON. Captain Alcibiades, your heart\'s in the field now.\n  ALCIBIADES. My heart is ever at your service, my lord.\n  TIMON. You had rather be at a breakfast of enemies than dinner of\n    friends.\n  ALCIBIADES. So they were bleeding new, my lord, there\'s no meat\n    like \'em; I could wish my best friend at such a feast.\n  APEMANTUS. Would all those flatterers were thine enemies then, that\n    then thou mightst kill \'em, and bid me to \'em.\n  FIRST LORD. Might we but have that happiness, my lord, that you\n    would once use our hearts, whereby we might express some part of\n    our zeals, we should think ourselves for ever perfect.\n  TIMON. O, no doubt, my good friends, but the gods themselves have\n    provided that I shall have much help from you. How had you been\n    my friends else? Why have you that charitable title from\n    thousands, did not you chiefly belong to my heart? I have told\n    more of you to myself than you can with modesty speak in your own\n    behalf; and thus far I confirm you. O you gods, think I, what\n    need we have any friends if we should ne\'er have need of \'em?\n    They were the most needless creatures living, should we ne\'er\n    have use for \'em; and would most resemble sweet instruments hung  \n    up in cases, that keep their sounds to themselves. Why, I have\n    often wish\'d myself poorer, that I might come nearer to you. We\n    are born to do benefits; and what better or properer can we call\n    our own than the riches of our friends? O, what a precious\n    comfort \'tis to have so many like brothers commanding one\n    another\'s fortunes! O, joy\'s e\'en made away ere\'t can be born!\n    Mine eyes cannot hold out water, methinks. To forget their\n    faults, I drink to you.\n  APEMANTUS. Thou weep\'st to make them drink, Timon.\n  SECOND LORD. Joy had the like conception in our eyes,\n    And at that instant like a babe sprung up.\n  APEMANTUS. Ho, ho! I laugh to think that babe a bastard.\n  THIRD LORD. I promise you, my lord, you mov\'d me much.\n  APEMANTUS. Much!                                [Sound tucket]\n  TIMON. What means that trump?\n\n                        Enter a SERVANT\n\n    How now?\n  SERVANT. Please you, my lord, there are certain ladies most  \n    desirous of admittance.\n  TIMON. Ladies! What are their wills?\n  SERVANT. There comes with them a forerunner, my lord, which bears\n    that office to signify their pleasures.\n  TIMON. I pray let them be admitted.\n\n                          Enter CUPID\n  CUPID. Hail to thee, worthy Timon, and to all\n    That of his bounties taste! The five best Senses\n    Acknowledge thee their patron, and come freely\n    To gratulate thy plenteous bosom. Th\' Ear,\n    Taste, Touch, Smell, pleas\'d from thy table rise;\n    They only now come but to feast thine eyes.\n  TIMON. They\'re welcome all; let \'em have kind admittance.\n    Music, make their welcome.                        Exit CUPID\n  FIRST LORD. You see, my lord, how ample y\'are belov\'d.\n\n      Music. Re-enter CUPID, witb a Masque of LADIES as Amazons,\n          with lutes in their hands, dancing and playing\n  \n  APEMANTUS. Hoy-day, what a sweep of vanity comes this way!\n    They dance? They are mad women.\n    Like madness is the glory of this life,\n    As this pomp shows to a little oil and root.\n    We make ourselves fools to disport ourselves,\n    And spend our flatteries to drink those men\n    Upon whose age we void it up again\n    With poisonous spite and envy.\n    Who lives that\'s not depraved or depraves?\n    Who dies that bears not one spurn to their graves\n    Of their friends\' gift?\n    I should fear those that dance before me now\n    Would one day stamp upon me. \'T has been done:\n    Men shut their doors against a setting sun.\n\n         The LORDS rise from table, with much adoring of\n        TIMON; and to show their loves, each single out an\n          Amazon, and all dance, men witb women, a lofty\n            strain or two to the hautboys, and cease\n  \n  TIMON. You have done our pleasures much grace, fair ladies,\n    Set a fair fashion on our entertainment,\n    Which was not half so beautiful and kind;\n    You have added worth unto\'t and lustre,\n    And entertain\'d me with mine own device;\n    I am to thank you for\'t.\n  FIRST LADY. My lord, you take us even at the best.\n  APEMANTUS. Faith, for the worst is filthy, and would not hold\n    taking, I doubt me.\n  TIMON. Ladies, there is an idle banquet attends you;\n    Please you to dispose yourselves.\n  ALL LADIES. Most thankfully, my lord.\n                                         Exeunt CUPID and LADIES\n  TIMON. Flavius!\n  FLAVIUS. My lord?\n  TIMON. The little casket bring me hither.\n  FLAVIUS. Yes, my lord. [Aside] More jewels yet!\n    There is no crossing him in\'s humour,\n    Else I should tell him- well i\' faith, I should-\n    When all\'s spent, he\'d be cross\'d then, an he could.  \n    \'Tis pity bounty had not eyes behind,\n    That man might ne\'er be wretched for his mind.          Exit\n  FIRST LORD. Where be our men?\n  SERVANT. Here, my lord, in readiness.\n  SECOND LORD. Our horses!\n\n               Re-enter FLAVIUS, with the casket\n\n  TIMON. O my friends,\n    I have one word to say to you. Look you, my good lord,\n    I must entreat you honour me so much\n    As to advance this jewel; accept it and wear it,\n    Kind my lord.\n  FIRST LORD. I am so far already in your gifts-\n  ALL. So are we all.\n\n                       Enter a SERVANT\n\n  SERVANT. My lord, there are certain nobles of the Senate newly\n    alighted and come to visit you.  \n  TIMON. They are fairly welcome.                   Exit SERVANT\n  FLAVIUS. I beseech your honour, vouchsafe me a word; it does\n    concern you near.\n  TIMON. Near! Why then, another time I\'ll hear thee. I prithee let\'s\n    be provided to show them entertainment.\n  FLAVIUS. [Aside] I scarce know how.\n\n                     Enter another SERVANT\n\n  SECOND SERVANT. May it please vour honour, Lord Lucius, out of his\n    free love, hath presented to you four milk-white horses, trapp\'d\n    in silver.\n  TIMON. I shall accept them fairly. Let the presents\n    Be worthily entertain\'d.                        Exit SERVANT\n\n                      Enter a third SERVANT\n\n    How now! What news?\n  THIRD SERVANT. Please you, my lord, that honourable gentleman, Lord\n    Lucullus, entreats your company to-morrow to hunt with him and  \n    has sent your honour two brace of greyhounds.\n  TIMON. I\'ll hunt with him; and let them be receiv\'d,\n    Not without fair reward.                        Exit SERVANT\n  FLAVIUS. [Aside] What will this come to?\n    He commands us to provide and give great gifts,\n    And all out of an empty coffer;\n    Nor will he know his purse, or yield me this,\n    To show him what a beggar his heart is,\n    Being of no power to make his wishes good.\n    His promises fly so beyond his state\n    That what he speaks is all in debt; he owes\n    For ev\'ry word. He is so kind that he now\n    Pays interest for\'t; his land\'s put to their books.\n    Well, would I were gently put out of office\n    Before I were forc\'d out!\n    Happier is he that has no friend to feed\n    Than such that do e\'en enemies exceed.\n    I bleed inwardly for my lord.                           Exit\n  TIMON. You do yourselves much wrong;\n    You bate too much of your own merits.  \n    Here, my lord, a trifle of our love.\n  SECOND LORD. With more than common thanks I will receive it.\n  THIRD LORD. O, he\'s the very soul of bounty!\n  TIMON. And now I remember, my lord, you gave good words the other\n    day of a bay courser I rode on. \'Tis yours because you lik\'d it.\n  THIRD LORD. O, I beseech you pardon me, my lord, in that.\n  TIMON. You may take my word, my lord: I know no man\n    Can justly praise but what he does affect.\n    I weigh my friend\'s affection with mine own.\n    I\'ll tell you true; I\'ll call to you.\n  ALL LORDS. O, none so welcome!\n  TIMON. I take all and your several visitations\n    So kind to heart \'tis not enough to give;\n    Methinks I could deal kingdoms to my friends\n    And ne\'er be weary. Alcibiades,\n    Thou art a soldier, therefore seldom rich.\n    It comes in charity to thee; for all thy living\n    Is \'mongst the dead, and all the lands thou hast\n    Lie in a pitch\'d field.\n  ALCIBIADES. Ay, defil\'d land, my lord.  \n  FIRST LORD. We are so virtuously bound-\n  TIMON. And so am I to you.\n  SECOND LORD. So infinitely endear\'d-\n  TIMON. All to you. Lights, more lights!\n  FIRST LORD. The best of happiness, honour, and fortunes, keep with\n    you, Lord Timon!\n  TIMON. Ready for his friends.\n                              Exeunt all but APEMANTUS and TIMON\n  APEMANTUS. What a coil\'s here!\n    Serving of becks and jutting-out of bums!\n    I doubt whether their legs be worth the sums\n    That are given for \'em. Friendship\'s full of dregs:\n    Methinks false hearts should never have sound legs.\n    Thus honest fools lay out their wealth on curtsies.\n  TIMON. Now, Apemantus, if thou wert not sullen\n    I would be good to thee.\n  APEMANTUS. No, I\'ll nothing; for if I should be brib\'d too, there\n    would be none left to rail upon thee, and then thou wouldst sin\n    the faster. Thou giv\'st so long, Timon, I fear me thou wilt give\n    away thyself in paper shortly. What needs these feasts, pomps,  \n    and vain-glories?\n  TIMON. Nay, an you begin to rail on society once, I am sworn not to\n    give regard to you. Farewell; and come with better music.\n Exit\n  APEMANTUS. So. Thou wilt not hear me now: thou shalt not then. I\'ll\n    lock thy heaven from thee.\n    O that men\'s ears should be\n    To counsel deaf, but not to flattery!                   Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nA SENATOR\'S house\n\nEnter A SENATOR, with papers in his hand\n\n  SENATOR. And late, five thousand. To Varro and to Isidore\n    He owes nine thousand; besides my former sum,\n    Which makes it five and twenty. Still in motion\n    Of raging waste? It cannot hold; it will not.\n    If I want gold, steal but a beggar\'s dog\n    And give it Timon, why, the dog coins gold.\n    If I would sell my horse and buy twenty moe\n    Better than he, why, give my horse to Timon,\n    Ask nothing, give it him, it foals me straight,\n    And able horses. No porter at his gate,\n    But rather one that smiles and still invites\n    All that pass by. It cannot hold; no reason\n    Can sound his state in safety. Caphis, ho!\n    Caphis, I say!\n\n                         Enter CAPHIS\n  \n  CAPHIS. Here, sir; what is your pleasure?\n  SENATOR. Get on your cloak and haste you to Lord Timon;\n    Importune him for my moneys; be not ceas\'d\n    With slight denial, nor then silenc\'d when\n    \'Commend me to your master\' and the cap\n    Plays in the right hand, thus; but tell him\n    My uses cry to me, I must serve my turn\n    Out of mine own; his days and times are past,\n    And my reliances on his fracted dates\n    Have smit my credit. I love and honour him,\n    But must not break my back to heal his finger.\n    Immediate are my needs, and my relief\n    Must not be toss\'d and turn\'d to me in words,\n    But find supply immediate. Get you gone;\n    Put on a most importunate aspect,\n    A visage of demand; for I do fear,\n    When every feather sticks in his own wing,\n    Lord Timon will be left a naked gull,\n    Which flashes now a phoenix. Get you gone.\n  CAPHIS. I go, sir.  \n  SENATOR. Take the bonds along with you,\n    And have the dates in compt.\n  CAPHIS. I will, sir.\n  SENATOR. Go.                                            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nBefore TIMON\'S house\n\nEnter FLAVIUS, TIMON\'S Steward, with many bills in his hand\n\n  FLAVIUS. No care, no stop! So senseless of expense\n    That he will neither know how to maintain it\n    Nor cease his flow of riot; takes no account\n    How things go from him, nor resumes no care\n    Of what is to continue. Never mind\n    Was to be so unwise to be so kind.\n    What shall be done? He will not hear till feel.\n    I must be round with him. Now he comes from hunting.\n    Fie, fie, fie, fie!\n\n       Enter CAPHIS, and the SERVANTS Of ISIDORE and VARRO\n\n  CAPHIS. Good even, Varro. What, you come for money?\n  VARRO\'S SERVANT. Is\'t not your business too?\n  CAPHIS. It is. And yours too, Isidore?\n  ISIDORE\'S SERVANT. It is so.\n  CAPHIS. Would we were all discharg\'d!  \n  VARRO\'S SERVANT. I fear it.\n  CAPHIS. Here comes the lord.\n\n            Enter TIMON and his train, with ALCIBIADES\n\n  TIMON. So soon as dinner\'s done we\'ll forth again,\n    My Alcibiades.- With me? What is your will?\n  CAPHIS. My lord, here is a note of certain dues.\n  TIMON. Dues! Whence are you?\n  CAPHIS. Of Athens here, my lord.\n  TIMON. Go to my steward.\n  CAPHIS. Please it your lordship, he hath put me off\n    To the succession of new days this month.\n    My master is awak\'d by great occasion\n    To call upon his own, and humbly prays you\n    That with your other noble parts you\'ll suit\n    In giving him his right.\n  TIMON. Mine honest friend,\n    I prithee but repair to me next morning.\n  CAPHIS. Nay, good my lord-  \n  TIMON. Contain thyself, good friend.\n  VARRO\'S SERVANT. One Varro\'s servant, my good lord-\n  ISIDORE\'S SERVANT. From Isidore: he humbly prays your speedy\n    payment-\n  CAPHIS. If you did know, my lord, my master\'s wants-\n  VARRO\'S SERVANT. \'Twas due on forfeiture, my lord, six weeks and\n    past.\n  ISIDORE\'S SERVANT. Your steward puts me off, my lord; and\n    I am sent expressly to your lordship.\n  TIMON. Give me breath.\n    I do beseech you, good my lords, keep on;\n    I\'ll wait upon you instantly.\n                                     Exeunt ALCIBIADES and LORDS\n    [To FLAVIUS] Come hither. Pray you,\n    How goes the world that I am thus encount\'red\n    With clamorous demands of date-broke bonds\n    And the detention of long-since-due debts,\n    Against my honour?\n  FLAVIUS. Please you, gentlemen,\n    The time is unagreeable to this business.  \n    Your importunacy cease till after dinner,\n    That I may make his lordship understand\n    Wherefore you are not paid.\n  TIMON. Do so, my friends.\n    See them well entertain\'d.                              Exit\n  FLAVIUS. Pray draw near.                                  Exit\n\n                      Enter APEMANTUS and FOOL\n\n  CAPHIS. Stay, stay, here comes the fool with Apemantus.\n    Let\'s ha\' some sport with \'em.\n  VARRO\'S SERVANT. Hang him, he\'ll abuse us!\n  ISIDORE\'S SERVANT. A plague upon him, dog!\n  VARRO\'S SERVANT. How dost, fool?\n  APEMANTUS. Dost dialogue with thy shadow?\n  VARRO\'S SERVANT. I speak not to thee.\n  APEMANTUS. No, \'tis to thyself. [To the FOOL] Come away.\n  ISIDORE\'S SERVANT. [To VARRO\'S SERVANT] There\'s the fool hangs on\n    your back already.\n  APEMANTUS. No, thou stand\'st single; th\'art not on him yet.  \n  CAPHIS. Where\'s the fool now?\n  APEMANTUS. He last ask\'d the question. Poor rogues and usurers\'\n    men! Bawds between gold and want!\n  ALL SERVANTS. What are we, Apemantus?\n  APEMANTUS. Asses.\n  ALL SERVANTS. Why?\n  APEMANTUS. That you ask me what you are, and do not know\n    yourselves. Speak to \'em, fool.\n  FOOL. How do you, gentlemen?\n  ALL SERVANTS. Gramercies, good fool. How does your mistress?\n  FOOL. She\'s e\'en setting on water to scald such chickens as you\n    are. Would we could see you at Corinth!\n  APEMANTUS. Good! gramercy.\n\n                           Enter PAGE\n\n  FOOL. Look you, here comes my mistress\' page.\n  PAGE. [To the FOOL] Why, how now, Captain? What do you in this wise\n    company? How dost thou, Apemantus?\n  APEMANTUS. Would I had a rod in my mouth, that I might answer thee  \n    profitably!\n  PAGE. Prithee, Apemantus, read me the superscription of these\n    letters; I know not which is which.\n  APEMANTUS. Canst not read?\n  PAGE. No.\n  APEMANTUS. There will little learning die, then, that day thou art\n    hang\'d. This is to Lord Timon; this to Alcibiades. Go; thou wast\n    born a bastard, and thou\'t die a bawd.\n  PAGE. Thou wast whelp\'d a dog, and thou shalt famish dog\'s death.\n    Answer not: I am gone.                             Exit PAGE\n  APEMANTUS. E\'en so thou outrun\'st grace.\n    Fool, I will go with you to Lord Timon\'s.\n  FOOL. Will you leave me there?\n  APEMANTUS. If Timon stay at home. You three serve three usurers?\n  ALL SERVANTS. Ay; would they serv\'d us!\n  APEMANTUS. So would I- as good a trick as ever hangman serv\'d\n    thief.\n  FOOL. Are you three usurers\' men?\n  ALL SERVANTS. Ay, fool.\n  FOOL. I think no usurer but has a fool to his servant. My mistress  \n    is one, and I am her fool. When men come to borrow of your\n    masters, they approach sadly and go away merry; but they enter my\n    mistress\' house merrily and go away sadly. The reason of this?\n  VARRO\'S SERVANT. I could render one.\n  APEMANTUS. Do it then, that we may account thee a whoremaster and a\n    knave; which notwithstanding, thou shalt be no less esteemed.\n  VARRO\'S SERVANT. What is a whoremaster, fool?\n  FOOL. A fool in good clothes, and something like thee. \'Tis a\n    spirit. Sometime \'t appears like a lord; sometime like a lawyer;\n    sometime like a philosopher, with two stones moe than\'s\n    artificial one. He is very often like a knight; and, generally,\n    in all shapes that man goes up and down in from fourscore to\n    thirteen, this spirit walks in.\n  VARRO\'S SERVANT. Thou art not altogether a fool.\n  FOOL. Nor thou altogether a wise man.\n    As much foolery as I have, so much wit thou lack\'st.\n  APEMANTUS. That answer might have become Apemantus.\n  VARRO\'S SERVANT. Aside, aside; here comes Lord Timon.\n\n                    Re-enter TIMON and FLAVIUS  \n\n  APEMANTUS. Come with me, fool, come.\n  FOOL. I do not always follow lover, elder brother, and woman;\n    sometime the philosopher.\n                                       Exeunt APEMANTUS and FOOL\n  FLAVIUS. Pray you walk near; I\'ll speak with you anon.\n                                                 Exeunt SERVANTS\n  TIMON. You make me marvel wherefore ere this time\n    Had you not fully laid my state before me,\n    That I might so have rated my expense\n    As I had leave of means.\n  FLAVIUS. You would not hear me\n    At many leisures I propos\'d.\n  TIMON. Go to;\n    Perchance some single vantages you took\n    When my indisposition put you back,\n    And that unaptness made your minister\n    Thus to excuse yourself.\n  FLAVIUS. O my good lord,\n    At many times I brought in my accounts,  \n    Laid them before you; you would throw them off\n    And say you found them in mine honesty.\n    When, for some trifling present, you have bid me\n    Return so much, I have shook my head and wept;\n    Yea, \'gainst th\' authority of manners, pray\'d you\n    To hold your hand more close. I did endure\n    Not seldom, nor no slight checks, when I have\n    Prompted you in the ebb of your estate\n    And your great flow of debts. My lov\'d lord,\n    Though you hear now- too late!- yet now\'s a time:\n    The greatest of your having lacks a half\n    To pay your present debts.\n  TIMON. Let all my land be sold.\n  FLAVIUS. \'Tis all engag\'d, some forfeited and gone;\n    And what remains will hardly stop the mouth\n    Of present dues. The future comes apace;\n    What shall defend the interim? And at length\n    How goes our reck\'ning?\n  TIMON. To Lacedaemon did my land extend.\n  FLAVIUS. O my good lord, the world is but a word;  \n    Were it all yours to give it in a breath,\n    How quickly were it gone!\n  TIMON. You tell me true.\n  FLAVIUS. If you suspect my husbandry or falsehood,\n    Call me before th\' exactest auditors\n    And set me on the proof. So the gods bless me,\n    When all our offices have been oppress\'d\n    With riotous feeders, when our vaults have wept\n    With drunken spilth of wine, when every room\n    Hath blaz\'d with lights and bray\'d with minstrelsy,\n    I have retir\'d me to a wasteful cock\n    And set mine eyes at flow.\n  TIMON. Prithee no more.\n  FLAVIUS. \'Heavens,\' have I said \'the bounty of this lord!\n    How many prodigal bits have slaves and peasants\n    This night englutted! Who is not Lord Timon\'s?\n    What heart, head, sword, force, means, but is Lord Timon\'s?\n    Great Timon, noble, worthy, royal Timon!\'\n    Ah! when the means are gone that buy this praise,\n    The breath is gone whereof this praise is made.  \n    Feast-won, fast-lost; one cloud of winter show\'rs,\n    These flies are couch\'d.\n  TIMON. Come, sermon me no further.\n    No villainous bounty yet hath pass\'d my heart;\n    Unwisely, not ignobly, have I given.\n    Why dost thou weep? Canst thou the conscience lack\n    To think I shall lack friends? Secure thy heart:\n    If I would broach the vessels of my love,\n    And try the argument of hearts by borrowing,\n    Men and men\'s fortunes could I frankly use\n    As I can bid thee speak.\n  FLAVIUS. Assurance bless your thoughts!\n  TIMON. And, in some sort, these wants of mine are crown\'d\n    That I account them blessings; for by these\n    Shall I try friends. You shall perceive how you\n    Mistake my fortunes; I am wealthy in my friends.\n    Within there! Flaminius! Servilius!\n\n           Enter FLAMINIUS, SERVILIUS, and another SERVANT\n  \n  SERVANTS. My lord! my lord!\n  TIMON. I will dispatch you severally- you to Lord Lucius; to Lord\n    Lucullus you; I hunted with his honour to-day. You to Sempronius.\n    Commend me to their loves; and I am proud, say, that my occasions\n    have found time to use \'em toward a supply of money. Let the\n    request be fifty talents.\n  FLAMINIUS. As you have said, my lord.          Exeunt SERVANTS\n  FLAVIUS. [Aside] Lord Lucius and Lucullus? Humh!\n  TIMON. Go you, sir, to the senators,\n    Of whom, even to the state\'s best health, I have\n    Deserv\'d this hearing. Bid \'em send o\' th\' instant\n    A thousand talents to me.\n  FLAVIUS. I have been bold,\n    For that I knew it the most general way,\n    To them to use your signet and your name;\n    But they do shake their heads, and I am here\n    No richer in return.\n  TIMON. Is\'t true? Can\'t be?\n  FLAVIUS. They answer, in a joint and corporate voice,\n    That now they are at fall, want treasure, cannot  \n    Do what they would, are sorry- you are honourable-\n    But yet they could have wish\'d- they know not-\n    Something hath been amiss- a noble nature\n    May catch a wrench- would all were well!- \'tis pity-\n    And so, intending other serious matters,\n    After distasteful looks, and these hard fractions,\n    With certain half-caps and cold-moving nods,\n    They froze me into silence.\n  TIMON. You gods, reward them!\n    Prithee, man, look cheerly. These old fellows\n    Have their ingratitude in them hereditary.\n    Their blood is cak\'d, \'tis cold, it seldom flows;\n    \'Tis lack of kindly warmth they are not kind;\n    And nature, as it grows again toward earth,\n    Is fashion\'d for the journey dull and heavy.\n    Go to Ventidius. Prithee be not sad,\n    Thou art true and honest; ingeniously I speak,\n    No blame belongs to thee. Ventidius lately\n    Buried his father, by whose death he\'s stepp\'d\n    Into a great estate. When he was poor,  \n    Imprison\'d, and in scarcity of friends,\n    I clear\'d him with five talents. Greet him from me,\n    Bid him suppose some good necessity\n    Touches his friend, which craves to be rememb\'red\n    With those five talents. That had, give\'t these fellows\n    To whom \'tis instant due. Nev\'r speak or think\n    That Timon\'s fortunes \'mong his friends can sink.\n  FLAVIUS. I would I could not think it.\n    That thought is bounty\'s foe;\n    Being free itself, it thinks all others so.           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nLUCULLUS\' house\n\nFLAMINIUS waiting to speak with LUCULLUS. Enter SERVANT to him\n\n  SERVANT. I have told my lord of you; he is coming down to you.\n  FLAMINIUS. I thank you, sir.\n\n                           Enter LUCULLUS\n\n  SERVANT. Here\'s my lord.\n  LUCULLUS. [Aside] One of Lord Timon\'s men? A gift, I warrant. Why,\n    this hits right; I dreamt of a silver basin and ewer to-night-\n    Flaminius, honest Flaminius, you are very respectively welcome,\n    sir. Fill me some wine. [Exit SERVANT] And how does that\n    honourable, complete, freehearted gentleman of Athens, thy very\n    bountiful good lord and master?\n  FLAMINIUS. His health is well, sir.\n  LUCULLUS. I am right glad that his health is well, sir. And what\n    hast thou there under thy cloak, pretty Flaminius?\n  FLAMINIUS. Faith, nothing but an empty box, sir, which in my lord\'s  \n    behalf I come to entreat your honour to supply;  who, having\n    great and instant occasion to use fifty talents, hath sent to\n    your lordship to furnish him, nothing doubting your present\n    assistance therein.\n  LUCULLIUS. La, la, la, la! \'Nothing doubting\' says he? Alas, good\n    lord! a noble gentleman \'tis, if he would not keep so good a\n    house. Many a time and often I ha\' din\'d with him and told him\n    on\'t; and come again to supper to him of purpose to have him\n    spend less; and yet he would embrace no counsel, take no warning\n    by my coming. Every man has his fault, and honesty is his. I ha\'\n    told him on\'t, but I could ne\'er get him from\'t.\n\n                    Re-enter SERVANT, with wine\n\n  SERVANT. Please your lordship, here is the wine.\n  LUCULLUS. Flaminius, I have noted thee always wise. Here\'s to thee.\n  FLAMINIUS. Your lordship speaks your pleasure.\n  LUCULLUS. I have observed thee always for a towardly prompt spirit,\n    give thee thy due, and one that knows what belongs to reason, and\n    canst use the time well, if the time use thee well. Good parts in  \n    thee. [To SERVANT] Get you gone, sirrah. [Exit SERVANT] Draw\n    nearer, honest Flaminius. Thy lord\'s a bountiful gentleman; but\n    thou art wise, and thou know\'st well enough, although thou com\'st\n    to me, that this is no time to lend money, especially upon bare\n    friendship without security. Here\'s three solidares for thee.\n    Good boy, wink at me, and say thou saw\'st me not. Fare thee well.\n  FLAMINIUS. Is\'t possible the world should so much differ,\n    And we alive that liv\'d? Fly, damned baseness,\n    To him that worships thee.         [Throwing the money back]\n  LUCULLUS. Ha! Now I see thou art a fool, and fit for thy master.\n Exit\n  FLAMINIUS. May these add to the number that may scald thee!\n    Let molten coin be thy damnation,\n    Thou disease of a friend and not himself!\n    Has friendship such a faint and milky heart\n    It turns in less than two nights? O you gods,\n    I feel my master\'s passion! This slave\n    Unto his honour has my lord\'s meat in him;\n    Why should it thrive and turn to nutriment\n    When he is turn\'d to poison?  \n    O, may diseases only work upon\'t!\n    And when he\'s sick to death, let not that part of nature\n    Which my lord paid for be of any power\n    To expel sickness, but prolong his hour!                Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nA public place\n\nEnter Lucius, with three STRANGERS\n\n  LUCIUS. Who, the Lord Timon? He is my very good friend, and an\n    honourable gentleman.\n  FIRST STRANGER. We know him for no less, though we are but\n    strangers to him. But I can tell you one thing, my lord, and\n    which I hear from common rumours: now Lord Timon\'s happy hours\n    are done and past, and his estate shrinks from him.\n  LUCIUS. Fie, no: do not believe it; he cannot want for money.\n  SECOND STRANGER. But believe you this, my lord, that not long ago\n     one of his men was with the Lord Lucullus to borrow so many\n    talents; nay, urg\'d extremely for\'t, and showed what necessity\n    belong\'d to\'t, and yet was denied.\n  LUCIUS. How?\n  SECOND STRANGER. I tell you, denied, my lord.\n  LUCIUS. What a strange case was that! Now, before the gods, I am\n    asham\'d on\'t. Denied that honourable man! There was very little\n    honour show\'d in\'t. For my own part, I must needs confess I have\n    received some small kindnesses from him, as money, plate, jewels,  \n    and such-like trifles, nothing comparing to his; yet, had he\n    mistook him and sent to me, I should ne\'er have denied his\n    occasion so many talents.\n\n                             Enter SERVILIUS\n\n  SERVILIUS. See, by good hap, yonder\'s my lord; I have sweat to see\n    his honour.- My honour\'d lord!\n  LUCIUS. Servilius? You are kindly met, sir. Fare thee well; commend\n    me to thy honourable virtuous lord, my very exquisite friend.\n  SERVILIUS. May it please your honour, my lord hath sent-\n  LUCIUS. Ha! What has he sent? I am so much endeared to that lord:\n    he\'s ever sending. How shall I thank him, think\'st thou? And what\n    has he sent now?\n  SERVILIUS. Has only sent his present occasion now, my lord,\n    requesting your lordship to supply his instant use with so many\n    talents.\n  LUCIUS. I know his lordship is but merry with me;\n    He cannot want fifty-five hundred talents.\n  SERVILIUS. But in the mean time he wants less, my lord.  \n    If his occasion were not virtuous\n    I should not urge it half so faithfully.\n  LUCIUS. Dost thou speak seriously, Servilius?\n  SERVILIUS. Upon my soul, \'tis true, sir.\n  LUCIUS. What a wicked beast was I to disfurnish myself against such\n    a good time, when I might ha\' shown myself honourable! How\n    unluckily it happ\'ned that I should purchase the day before for a\n    little part and undo a great deal of honour! Servilius, now\n    before the gods, I am not able to do- the more beast, I say! I\n    was sending to use Lord Timon myself, these gentlemen can\n    witness; but I would not for the wealth of Athens I had done\'t\n    now. Commend me bountifully to his good lordship, and I hope his\n    honour will conceive the fairest of me, because I have no power\n    to be kind. And tell him this from me: I count it one of my\n    greatest afflictions, say, that I cannot pleasure such an\n    honourable gentleman. Good Servilius, will you befriend me so far\n    as to use mine own words to him?\n  SERVILIUS. Yes, sir, I shall.\n  LUCIUS. I\'ll look you out a good turn, Servilius.\n                                                  Exit SERVILIUS  \n    True, as you said, Timon is shrunk indeed;\n    And he that\'s once denied will hardly speed.            Exit\n  FIRST STRANGER. Do you observe this, Hostilius?\n  SECOND STRANGER. Ay, too well.\n  FIRST STRANGER. Why, this is the world\'s soul; and just of the same\n      piece\n    Is every flatterer\'s spirit. Who can call him his friend\n    That dips in the same dish? For, in my knowing,\n    Timon has been this lord\'s father,\n    And kept his credit with his purse;\n    Supported his estate; nay, Timon\'s money\n    Has paid his men their wages. He ne\'er drinks\n    But Timon\'s silver treads upon his lip;\n    And yet- O, see the monstrousness of man\n    When he looks out in an ungrateful shape!-\n    He does deny him, in respect of his,\n    What charitable men afford to beggars.\n  THIRD STRANGER. Religion groans at it.\n  FIRST STRANGER. For mine own part,\n    I never tasted Timon in my life,  \n    Nor came any of his bounties over me\n    To mark me for his friend; yet I protest,\n    For his right noble mind, illustrious virtue,\n    And honourable carriage,\n    Had his necessity made use of me,\n    I would have put my wealth into donation,\n    And the best half should have return\'d to him,\n    So much I love his heart. But I perceive\n    Men must learn now with pity to dispense;\n    For policy sits above conscience.                     Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nSEMPRONIUS\' house\n\nEnter SEMPRONIUS and a SERVANT of TIMON\'S\n\n  SEMPRONIUS. Must he needs trouble me in\'t? Hum! \'Bove all others?\n    He might have tried Lord Lucius or Lucullus;\n    And now Ventidius is wealthy too,\n    Whom he redeem\'d from prison. All these\n    Owe their estates unto him.\n  SERVANT. My lord,\n    They have all been touch\'d and found base metal, for\n    They have all denied him.\n  SEMPRONIUS. How! Have they denied him?\n    Has Ventidius and Lucullus denied him?\n    And does he send to me? Three? Humh!\n    It shows but little love or judgment in him.\n    Must I be his last refuge? His friends, like physicians,\n    Thrice give him over. Must I take th\' cure upon me?\n    Has much disgrac\'d me in\'t; I\'m angry at him,\n    That might have known my place. I see no sense for\'t,\n    But his occasions might have woo\'d me first;  \n    For, in my conscience, I was the first man\n    That e\'er received gift from him.\n    And does he think so backwardly of me now\n    That I\'ll requite it last? No;\n    So it may prove an argument of laughter\n    To th\' rest, and I \'mongst lords be thought a fool.\n    I\'d rather than the worth of thrice the sum\n    Had sent to me first, but for my mind\'s sake;\n    I\'d such a courage to do him good. But now return,\n    And with their faint reply this answer join:\n    Who bates mine honour shall not know my coin.           Exit\n  SERVANT. Excellent! Your lordship\'s a goodly villain. The devil\n    knew not what he did when he made man politic- he cross\'d himself\n    by\'t; and I cannot think but, in the end, the villainies of man\n    will set him clear. How fairly this lord strives to appear foul!\n    Takes virtuous copies to be wicked, like those that under hot\n    ardent zeal would set whole realms on fire.\n    Of such a nature is his politic love.\n    This was my lord\'s best hope; now all are fled,\n    Save only the gods. Now his friends are dead,  \n    Doors that were ne\'er acquainted with their wards\n    Many a bounteous year must be employ\'d\n    Now to guard sure their master.\n    And this is all a liberal course allows:\n    Who cannot keep his wealth must keep his house.         Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nA hall in TIMON\'S house\n\nEnter two Of VARRO\'S MEN, meeting LUCIUS\' SERVANT, and others,\nall being servants of TIMON\'s creditors, to wait for his coming out.\nThen enter TITUS and HORTENSIUS\n\n  FIRST VARRO\'S SERVANT. Well met; good morrow, Titus and Hortensius.\n  TITUS. The like to you, kind Varro.\n  HORTENSIUS. Lucius! What, do we meet together?\n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Ay, and I think one business does command us all;\n    for mine is money.\n  TITUS. So is theirs and ours.\n\n                          Enter PHILOTUS\n\n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. And Sir Philotus too!\n  PHILOTUS. Good day at once.\n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. welcome, good brother, what do you think the hour?\n  PHILOTUS. Labouring for nine.\n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. So much?\n  PHILOTUS. Is not my lord seen yet?  \n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Not yet.\n  PHILOTUS. I wonder on\'t; he was wont to shine at seven.\n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Ay, but the days are wax\'d shorter with him;\n    You must consider that a prodigal course\n    Is like the sun\'s, but not like his recoverable.\n    I fear\n    \'Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon\'s purse;\n    That is, one may reach deep enough and yet\n    Find little.\n  PHILOTUS. I am of your fear for that.\n  TITUS. I\'ll show you how t\' observe a strange event.\n    Your lord sends now for money.\n  HORTENSIUS. Most true, he does.\n  TITUS. And he wears jewels now of Timon\'s gift,\n    For which I wait for money.\n  HORTENSIUS. It is against my heart.\n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Mark how strange it shows\n    Timon in this should pay more than he owes;\n    And e\'en as if your lord should wear rich jewels\n    And send for money for \'em.  \n  HORTENSIUS. I\'m weary of this charge, the gods can witness;\n    I know my lord hath spent of Timon\'s wealth,\n    And now ingratitude makes it worse than stealth.\n  FIRST VARRO\'S SERVANT. Yes, mine\'s three thousand crowns; what\'s\n    yours?\n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Five thousand mine.\n  FIRST VARRO\'S SERVANT. \'Tis much deep; and it should seem by th\'\n      sum\n    Your master\'s confidence was above mine,\n    Else surely his had equall\'d.\n\n                           Enter FLAMINIUS\n\n  TITUS. One of Lord Timon\'s men.\n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Flaminius! Sir, a word. Pray, is my lord ready to\n    come forth?\n  FLAMINIUS. No, indeed, he is not.\n  TITUS. We attend his lordship; pray signify so much.\n  FLAMINIUS. I need not tell him that; he knows you are to diligent.\n Exit  \n\n                 Enter FLAVIUS, in a cloak, muffled\n\n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Ha! Is not that his steward muffled so?\n    He goes away in a cloud. Call him, call him.\n  TITUS. Do you hear, sir?\n  SECOND VARRO\'S SERVANT. By your leave, sir.\n  FLAVIUS. What do ye ask of me, my friend?\n  TITUS. We wait for certain money here, sir.\n  FLAVIUS. Ay,\n    If money were as certain as your waiting,\n    \'Twere sure enough.\n    Why then preferr\'d you not your sums and bills\n    When your false masters eat of my lord\'s meat?\n    Then they could smile, and fawn upon his debts,\n    And take down th\' int\'rest into their glutt\'nous maws.\n    You do yourselves but wrong to stir me up;\n    Let me pass quietly.\n    Believe\'t, my lord and I have made an end:\n    I have no more to reckon, he to spend.  \n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Ay, but this answer will not serve.\n  FLAVIUS. If \'twill not serve, \'tis not so base as you,\n    For you serve knaves.                                   Exit\n  FIRST VARRO\'S SERVANT. How! What does his cashier\'d worship mutter?\n  SECOND VARRO\'S SERVANT. No matter what; he\'s poor, and that\'s\n    revenge enough. Who can speak broader than he that has no house\n    to put his head in? Such may rail against great buildings.\n\n                          Enter SERVILIUS\n\n  TITUS. O, here\'s Servilius; now we shall know some answer.\n  SERVILIUS. If I might beseech you, gentlemen, to repair some other\n    hour, I should derive much from\'t; for take\'t of my soul, my lord\n    leans wondrously to discontent. His comfortable temper has\n    forsook him; he\'s much out of health and keeps his chamber.\n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Many do keep their chambers are not sick;\n    And if it be so far beyond his health,\n    Methinks he should the sooner pay his debts,\n    And make a clear way to the gods.\n  SERVILIUS. Good gods!  \n  TITUS. We cannot take this for answer, sir.\n  FLAMINIUS. [Within] Servilius, help! My lord! my lord!\n\n           Enter TIMON, in a rage, FLAMINIUS following\n\n  TIMON. What, are my doors oppos\'d against my passage?\n    Have I been ever free, and must my house\n    Be my retentive enemy, my gaol?\n    The place which I have feasted, does it now,\n    Like all mankind, show me an iron heart?\n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Put in now, Titus.\n  TITUS. My lord, here is my bill.\n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Here\'s mine.\n  HORTENSIUS. And mine, my lord.\n  BOTH VARRO\'S SERVANTS. And ours, my lord.\n  PHILOTUS. All our bills.\n  TIMON. Knock me down with \'em; cleave me to the girdle.\n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Alas, my lord-\n  TIMON. Cut my heart in sums.\n  TITUS. Mine, fifty talents.  \n  TIMON. Tell out my blood.\n  LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Five thousand crowns, my lord.\n  TIMON. Five thousand drops pays that. What yours? and yours?\n  FIRST VARRO\'S SERVANT. My lord-\n  SECOND VARRO\'S SERVANT. My lord-\n  TIMON. Tear me, take me, and the gods fall upon you!      Exit\n  HORTENSIUS. Faith, I perceive our masters may throw their caps at\n    their money. These debts may well be call\'d desperate ones, for a\n    madman owes \'em.                                      Exeunt\n\n                    Re-enter TIMON and FLAVIUS\n\n  TIMON. They have e\'en put my breath from me, the slaves.\n    Creditors? Devils!\n  FLAVIUS. My dear lord-\n  TIMON. What if it should be so?\n  FLAMINIUS. My lord-\n  TIMON. I\'ll have it so. My steward!\n  FLAVIUS. Here, my lord.\n  TIMON. So fitly? Go, bid all my friends again:  \n    Lucius, Lucullus, and Sempronius- all.\n    I\'ll once more feast the rascals.\n  FLAVIUS. O my lord,\n    You only speak from your distracted soul;\n    There is not so much left to furnish out\n    A moderate table.\n  TIMON. Be it not in thy care.\n    Go, I charge thee, invite them all; let in the tide\n    Of knaves once more; my cook and I\'ll provide.        Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nThe Senate House\n\nEnter three SENATORS at one door, ALCIBIADES meeting them, with attendants\n\n  FIRST SENATOR. My lord, you have my voice to\'t: the fault\'s bloody.\n    \'Tis necessary he should die:\n    Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.\n  SECOND SENATOR. Most true; the law shall bruise him.\n  ALCIBIADES. Honour, health, and compassion, to the Senate!\n  FIRST SENATOR. Now, Captain?\n  ALCIBIADES. I am an humble suitor to your virtues;\n    For pity is the virtue of the law,\n    And none but tyrants use it cruelly.\n    It pleases time and fortune to lie heavy\n    Upon a friend of mine, who in hot blood\n    Hath stepp\'d into the law, which is past depth\n    To those that without heed do plunge into\'t.\n    He is a man, setting his fate aside,\n    Of comely virtues;\n    Nor did he soil the fact with cowardice-  \n    An honour in him which buys out his fault-\n    But with a noble fury and fair spirit,\n    Seeing his reputation touch\'d to death,\n    He did oppose his foe;\n    And with such sober and unnoted passion\n    He did behove his anger ere \'twas spent,\n    As if he had but prov\'d an argument.\n  FIRST SENATOR. You undergo too strict a paradox,\n    Striving to make an ugly deed look fair;\n    Your words have took such pains as if they labour\'d\n    To bring manslaughter into form and set\n    Quarrelling upon the head of valour; which, indeed,\n    Is valour misbegot, and came into the world\n    When sects and factions were newly born.\n    He\'s truly valiant that can wisely suffer\n    The worst that man can breathe,\n    And make his wrongs his outsides,\n    To wear them like his raiment, carelessly,\n    And ne\'er prefer his injuries to his heart,\n    To bring it into danger.  \n    If wrongs be evils, and enforce us kill,\n    What folly \'tis to hazard life for ill!\n  ALCIBIADES. My lord-\n  FIRST SENATOR. You cannot make gross sins look clear:\n    To revenge is no valour, but to bear.\n  ALCIBIADES. My lords, then, under favour, pardon me\n    If I speak like a captain:\n    Why do fond men expose themselves to battle,\n    And not endure all threats? Sleep upon\'t,\n    And let the foes quietly cut their throats,\n    Without repugnancy? If there be\n    Such valour in the bearing, what make we\n    Abroad? Why, then, women are more valiant,\n    That stay at home, if bearing carry it;\n    And the ass more captain than the lion; the fellow\n    Loaden with irons wiser than the judge,\n    If wisdom be in suffering. O my lords,\n    As you are great, be pitifully good.\n    Who cannot condemn rashness in cold blood?\n    To kill, I grant, is sin\'s extremest gust;  \n    But, in defence, by mercy, \'tis most just.\n    To be in anger is impiety;\n    But who is man that is not angry?\n    Weigh but the crime with this.\n  SECOND SENATOR. You breathe in vain.\n  ALCIBIADES. In vain! His service done\n    At Lacedaemon and Byzantium\n    Were a sufficient briber for his life.\n  FIRST SENATOR. What\'s that?\n  ALCIBIADES. Why, I say, my lords, has done fair service,\n    And slain in fight many of your enemies;\n    How full of valour did he bear himself\n    In the last conflict, and made plenteous wounds!\n  SECOND SENATOR. He has made too much plenty with \'em.\n    He\'s a sworn rioter; he has a sin that often\n    Drowns him and takes his valour prisoner.\n    If there were no foes, that were enough\n    To overcome him. In that beastly fury\n    He has been known to commit outrages\n    And cherish factions. \'Tis inferr\'d to us  \n    His days are foul and his drink dangerous.\n  FIRST SENATOR. He dies.\n  ALCIBIADES. Hard fate! He might have died in war.\n    My lords, if not for any parts in him-\n    Though his right arm might purchase his own time,\n    And be in debt to none- yet, more to move you,\n    Take my deserts to his, and join \'em both;\n    And, for I know your reverend ages love\n    Security, I\'ll pawn my victories, all\n    My honours to you, upon his good returns.\n    If by this crime he owes the law his life,\n    Why, let the war receive\'t in valiant gore;\n    For law is strict, and war is nothing more.\n  FIRST SENATOR. We are for law: he dies. Urge it no more\n    On height of our displeasure. Friend or brother,\n    He forfeits his own blood that spills another.\n  ALCIBIADES. Must it be so? It must not be. My lords,\n    I do beseech you, know me.\n  SECOND SENATOR. How!\n  ALCIBIADES. Call me to your remembrances.  \n  THIRD SENATOR. What!\n  ALCIBIADES. I cannot think but your age has forgot me;\n    It could not else be I should prove so base\n    To sue, and be denied such common grace.\n    My wounds ache at you.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Do you dare our anger?\n    \'Tis in few words, but spacious in effect:\n    We banish thee for ever.\n  ALCIBIADES. Banish me!\n    Banish your dotage! Banish usury\n    That makes the Senate ugly.\n  FIRST SENATOR. If after two days\' shine Athens contain thee,\n    Attend our weightier judgment. And, not to swell our spirit,\n    He shall be executed presently.              Exeunt SENATORS\n  ALCIBIADES. Now the gods keep you old enough that you may live\n    Only in bone, that none may look on you!\n    I\'m worse than mad; I have kept back their foes,\n    While they have told their money and let out\n    Their coin upon large interest, I myself\n    Rich only in large hurts. All those for this?  \n    Is this the balsam that the usuring Senate\n    Pours into captains\' wounds? Banishment!\n    It comes not ill; I hate not to be banish\'d;\n    It is a cause worthy my spleen and fury,\n    That I may strike at Athens. I\'ll cheer up\n    My discontented troops, and lay for hearts.\n    \'Tis honour with most lands to be at odds;\n    Soldiers should brook as little wrongs as gods.         Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nA banqueting hall in TIMON\'S house\n\nMusic. Tables set out; servants attending. Enter divers LORDS,\nfriends of TIMON, at several doors\n\n  FIRST LORD. The good time of day to you, sir.\n  SECOND LORD. I also wish it to you. I think this honourable lord\n    did but try us this other day.\n  FIRST LORD. Upon that were my thoughts tiring when we encount\'red.\n    I hope it is not so low with him as he made it seem in the trial\n    of his several friends.\n  SECOND LORD. It should not be, by the persuasion of his new\n    feasting.\n  FIRST LORD. I should think so. He hath sent me an earnest inviting,\n    which many my near occasions did urge me to put off; but he hath\n    conjur\'d me beyond them, and I must needs appear.\n  SECOND LORD. In like manner was I in debt to my importunate\n    business, but he would not hear my excuse. I am sorry, when he\n    sent to borrow of me, that my provision was out.\n  FIRST LORD. I am sick of that grief too, as I understand how all\n    things go.  \n  SECOND LORD. Every man here\'s so. What would he have borrowed of\n    you?\n  FIRST LORD. A thousand pieces.\n  SECOND LORD. A thousand pieces!\n  FIRST LORD. What of you?\n  SECOND LORD. He sent to me, sir- here he comes.\n\n                   Enter TIMON and attendants\n\n  TIMON. With all my heart, gentlemen both! And how fare you?\n  FIRST LORD. Ever at the best, hearing well of your lordship.\n  SECOND LORD. The swallow follows not summer more willing than we\n    your lordship.\n  TIMON. [Aside] Nor more willingly leaves winter; such summer-birds\n    are men- Gentlemen, our dinner will not recompense this long\n    stay; feast your ears with the music awhile, if they will fare so\n    harshly o\' th\' trumpet\'s sound; we shall to\'t presently.\n  FIRST LORD. I hope it remains not unkindly with your lordship that\n    I return\'d you an empty messenger.\n  TIMON. O sir, let it not trouble you.  \n  SECOND LORD. My noble lord-\n  TIMON. Ah, my good friend, what cheer?\n  SECOND LORD. My most honourable lord, I am e\'en sick of shame that,\n    when your lordship this other day sent to me, I was so\n    unfortunate a beggar.\n  TIMON. Think not on\'t, sir.\n  SECOND LORD. If you had sent but two hours before-\n  TIMON. Let it not cumber your better remembrance. [The banquet\n    brought in] Come, bring in all together.\n  SECOND LORD. All cover\'d dishes!\n  FIRST LORD. Royal cheer, I warrant you.\n  THIRD LORD. Doubt not that, if money and the season can yield it.\n  FIRST LORD. How do you? What\'s the news?\n  THIRD LORD. Alcibiades is banish\'d. Hear you of it?\n  FIRST AND SECOND LORDS. Alcibiades banish\'d!\n  THIRD LORD. \'Tis so, be sure of it.\n  FIRST LORD. How? how?\n  SECOND LORD. I pray you, upon what?\n  TIMON. My worthy friends, will you draw near?\n  THIRD LORD. I\'ll tell you more anon. Here\'s a noble feast toward.  \n  SECOND LORD. This is the old man still.\n  THIRD LORD. Will\'t hold? Will\'t hold?\n  SECOND LORD. It does; but time will- and so-\n  THIRD LORD. I do conceive.\n  TIMON. Each man to his stool with that spur as he would to the lip\n    of his mistress; your diet shall be in all places alike. Make not\n    a city feast of it, to let the meat cool ere we can agree upon\n    the first place. Sit, sit. The gods require our thanks:\n\n    You great benefactors, sprinkle our society with thankfulness.\n    For your own gifts make yourselves prais\'d; but reserve still to\n    give, lest your deities be despised. Lend to each man enough,\n    that one need not lend to another; for were your god-heads to\n    borrow of men, men would forsake the gods. Make the meat be\n    beloved more than the man that gives it. Let no assembly of\n    twenty be without a score of villains. If there sit twelve women\n    at the table, let a dozen of them be- as they are. The rest of\n    your foes, O gods, the senators of Athens, together with the\n    common lag of people, what is amiss in them, you gods, make\n    suitable for destruction. For these my present friends, as they  \n    are to me nothing, so in nothing bless them, and to nothing are\n    they welcome.\n\n    Uncover, dogs, and lap.        [The dishes are uncovered and\n                                  seen to he full of warm water]\n  SOME SPEAK. What does his lordship mean?\n  SOME OTHER. I know not.\n  TIMON. May you a better feast never behold,\n    You knot of mouth-friends! Smoke and lukewarm water\n    Is your perfection. This is Timon\'s last;\n    Who, stuck and spangled with your flatteries,\n    Washes it off, and sprinkles in your faces\n                             [Throwing the water in their faces]\n    Your reeking villainy. Live loath\'d and long,\n    Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites,\n    Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears,\n    You fools of fortune, trencher friends, time\'s flies,\n    Cap and knee slaves, vapours, and minute-lacks!\n    Of man and beast the infinite malady\n    Crust you quite o\'er! What, dost thou go?  \n    Soft, take thy physic first; thou too, and thou.\n    Stay, I will lend thee money, borrow none.       [Throws the\n                            dishes at them, and drives them out]\n    What, all in motion? Henceforth be no feast\n    Whereat a villain\'s not a welcome guest.\n    Burn house! Sink Athens! Henceforth hated be\n    Of Timon man and all humanity!                          Exit\n\n                           Re-enter the LORDS\n\n  FIRST LORD. How now, my lords!\n  SECOND LORD. Know you the quality of Lord Timon\'s fury?\n  THIRD LORD. Push! Did you see my cap?\n  FOURTH LORD. I have lost my gown.\n  FIRST LORD. He\'s but a mad lord, and nought but humours sways him.\n    He gave me a jewel th\' other day, and now he has beat it out of\n    my hat. Did you see my jewel?\n  THIRD LORD. Did you see my cap?\n  SECOND LORD. Here \'tis.\n  FOURTH LORD. Here lies my gown.  \n  FIRST LORD. Let\'s make no stay.\n  SECOND LORD. Lord Timon\'s mad.\n  THIRD LORD. I feel\'t upon my bones.\n  FOURTH LORD. One day he gives us diamonds, next day stones.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nWithout the walls of Athens\n\nEnter TIMON\n\n  TIMON. Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall\n    That girdles in those wolves, dive in the earth\n    And fence not Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent.\n    Obedience, fail in children! Slaves and fools,\n    Pluck the grave wrinkled Senate from the bench\n    And minister in their steads. To general filths\n    Convert, o\' th\' instant, green virginity.\n    Do\'t in your parents\' eyes. Bankrupts, hold fast;\n    Rather than render back, out with your knives\n    And cut your trusters\' throats. Bound servants, steal:\n    Large-handed robbers your grave masters are,\n    And pill by law. Maid, to thy master\'s bed:\n    Thy mistress is o\' th\' brothel. Son of sixteen,\n    Pluck the lin\'d crutch from thy old limping sire,\n    With it beat out his brains. Piety and fear,\n    Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,\n    Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,  \n    Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,\n    Degrees, observances, customs and laws,\n    Decline to your confounding contraries\n    And let confusion live. Plagues incident to men,\n    Your potent and infectious fevers heap\n    On Athens, ripe for stroke. Thou cold sciatica,\n    Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt\n    As lamely as their manners. Lust and liberty,\n    Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth,\n    That \'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive\n    And drown themselves in riot. Itches, blains,\n    Sow all th\' Athenian bosoms, and their crop\n    Be general leprosy! Breath infect breath,\n    That their society, as their friendship, may\n    Be merely poison! Nothing I\'ll bear from thee\n    But nakedness, thou detestable town!\n    Take thou that too, with multiplying bans.\n    Timon will to the woods, where he shall find\n    Th\' unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.\n    The gods confound- hear me, you good gods all-  \n    The Athenians both within and out that wall!\n    And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow\n    To the whole race of mankind, high and low!\n    Amen.                                                   Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nAthens. TIMON\'s house\n\nEnter FLAVIUS, with two or three SERVANTS\n\n  FIRST SERVANT. Hear you, Master Steward, where\'s our master?\n    Are we undone, cast off, nothing remaining?\n  FLAVIUS. Alack, my fellows, what should I say to you?\n    Let me be recorded by the righteous gods,\n    I am as poor as you.\n  FIRST SERVANT. Such a house broke!\n    So noble a master fall\'n! All gone, and not\n    One friend to take his fortune by the arm\n    And go along with him?\n  SECOND SERVANT. As we do turn our backs\n    From our companion, thrown into his grave,\n    So his familiars to his buried fortunes\n    Slink all away; leave their false vows with him,\n    Like empty purses pick\'d; and his poor self,\n    A dedicated beggar to the air,\n    With his disease of all-shunn\'d poverty,\n    Walks, like contempt, alone. More of our fellows.  \n\n                     Enter other SERVANTS\n\n  FLAVIUS. All broken implements of a ruin\'d house.\n  THIRD SERVANT. Yet do our hearts wear Timon\'s livery;\n    That see I by our faces. We are fellows still,\n    Serving alike in sorrow. Leak\'d is our bark;\n    And we, poor mates, stand on the dying deck,\n    Hearing the surges threat. We must all part\n    Into this sea of air.\n  FLAVIUS. Good fellows all,\n    The latest of my wealth I\'ll share amongst you.\n    Wherever we shall meet, for Timon\'s sake,\n    Let\'s yet be fellows; let\'s shake our heads and say,\n    As \'twere a knell unto our master\'s fortune,\n    \'We have seen better days.\' Let each take some.\n                                             [Giving them money]\n    Nay, put out all your hands. Not one word more!\n    Thus part we rich in sorrow, parting poor.\n                                [Embrace, and part several ways]  \n    O the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us!\n    Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt,\n    Since riches point to misery and contempt?\n    Who would be so mock\'d with glory, or to live\n    But in a dream of friendship,\n    To have his pomp, and all what state compounds,\n    But only painted, like his varnish\'d friends?\n    Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart,\n    Undone by goodness! Strange, unusual blood,\n    When man\'s worst sin is he does too much good!\n    Who then dares to be half so kind again?\n    For bounty, that makes gods, does still mar men.\n    My dearest lord- blest to be most accurst,\n    Rich only to be wretched- thy great fortunes\n    Are made thy chief afflictions. Alas, kind lord!\n    He\'s flung in rage from this ingrateful seat\n    Of monstrous friends; nor has he with him to\n    Supply his life, or that which can command it.\n    I\'ll follow and enquire him out.\n    I\'ll ever serve his mind with my best will;  \n    Whilst I have gold, I\'ll be his steward still.          Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nThe woods near the sea-shore. Before TIMON\'S cave\n\nEnter TIMON in the woods\n\n  TIMON. O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth\n    Rotten humidity; below thy sister\'s orb\n    Infect the air! Twinn\'d brothers of one womb-\n    Whose procreation, residence, and birth,\n    Scarce is dividant- touch them with several fortunes:\n    The greater scorns the lesser. Not nature,\n    To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune\n    But by contempt of nature.\n    Raise me this beggar and deny\'t that lord:\n    The senator shall bear contempt hereditary,\n    The beggar native honour.\n    It is the pasture lards the rother\'s sides,\n    The want that makes him lean. Who dares, who dares,\n    In purity of manhood stand upright,\n    And say \'This man\'s a flatterer\'? If one be,\n    So are they all; for every grise of fortune\n    Is smooth\'d by that below. The learned pate  \n    Ducks to the golden fool. All\'s oblique;\n    There\'s nothing level in our cursed natures\n    But direct villainy. Therefore be abhorr\'d\n    All feasts, societies, and throngs of men!\n    His semblable, yea, himself, Timon disdains.\n    Destruction fang mankind! Earth, yield me roots.\n                                                       [Digging]\n    Who seeks for better of thee, sauce his palate\n    With thy most operant poison. What is here?\n    Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold? No, gods,\n    I am no idle votarist. Roots, you clear heavens!\n    Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair,\n    Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant.\n    Ha, you gods! why this? What, this, you gods? Why, this\n    Will lug your priests and servants from your sides,\n    Pluck stout men\'s pillows from below their heads-\n    This yellow slave\n    Will knit and break religions, bless th\' accurs\'d,\n    Make the hoar leprosy ador\'d, place thieves\n    And give them title, knee, and approbation,  \n    With senators on the bench. This is it\n    That makes the wappen\'d widow wed again-\n    She whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores\n    Would cast the gorge at this embalms and spices\n    To th \'April day again. Come, damn\'d earth,\n    Thou common whore of mankind, that puts odds\n    Among the rout of nations, I will make thee\n    Do thy right nature.                        [March afar off]\n    Ha! a drum? Th\'art quick,\n    But yet I\'ll bury thee. Thou\'t go, strong thief,\n    When gouty keepers of thee cannot stand.\n    Nay, stay thou out for earnest.          [Keeping some gold]\n\n          Enter ALCIBIADES, with drum and fife, in warlike\n                  manner; and PHRYNIA and TIMANDRA\n\n  ALCIBIADES. What art thou there? Speak.\n  TIMON. A beast, as thou art. The canker gnaw thy heart\n    For showing me again the eyes of man!\n  ALCIBIADES. What is thy name? Is man so hateful to thee  \n    That art thyself a man?\n  TIMON. I am Misanthropos, and hate mankind.\n    For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog,\n    That I might love thee something.\n  ALCIBIADES. I know thee well;\n    But in thy fortunes am unlearn\'d and strange.\n  TIMON. I know thee too; and more than that I know thee\n    I not desire to know. Follow thy drum;\n    With man\'s blood paint the ground, gules, gules.\n    Religious canons, civil laws, are cruel;\n    Then what should war be? This fell whore of thine\n    Hath in her more destruction than thy sword\n    For all her cherubin look.\n  PHRYNIA. Thy lips rot off!\n  TIMON. I will not kiss thee; then the rot returns\n    To thine own lips again.\n  ALCIBIADES. How came the noble Timon to this change?\n  TIMON. As the moon does, by wanting light to give.\n    But then renew I could not, like the moon;\n    There were no suns to borrow of.  \n  ALCIBIADES. Noble Timon,\n    What friendship may I do thee?\n  TIMON. None, but to\n    Maintain my opinion.\n  ALCIBIADES. What is it, Timon?\n  TIMON. Promise me friendship, but perform none. If thou wilt not\n    promise, the gods plague thee, for thou art man! If thou dost\n    perform, confound thee, for thou art a man!\n  ALCIBIADES. I have heard in some sort of thy miseries.\n  TIMON. Thou saw\'st them when I had prosperity.\n  ALCIBIADES. I see them now; then was a blessed time.\n  TIMON. As thine is now, held with a brace of harlots.\n  TIMANDRA. Is this th\' Athenian minion whom the world\n    Voic\'d so regardfully?\n  TIMON. Art thou Timandra?\n  TIMANDRA. Yes.\n  TIMON. Be a whore still; they love thee not that use thee.\n    Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust.\n    Make use of thy salt hours. Season the slaves\n    For tubs and baths; bring down rose-cheek\'d youth  \n    To the tub-fast and the diet.\n  TIMANDRA. Hang thee, monster!\n  ALCIBIADES. Pardon him, sweet Timandra, for his wits\n    Are drown\'d and lost in his calamities.\n    I have but little gold of late, brave Timon,\n    The want whereof doth daily make revolt\n    In my penurious band. I have heard, and griev\'d,\n    How cursed Athens, mindless of thy worth,\n    Forgetting thy great deeds, when neighbour states,\n    But for thy sword and fortune, trod upon them-\n  TIMON. I prithee beat thy drum and get thee gone.\n  ALCIBIADES. I am thy friend, and pity thee, dear Timon.\n  TIMON. How dost thou pity him whom thou dost trouble?\n    I had rather be alone.\n  ALCIBIADES. Why, fare thee well;\n    Here is some gold for thee.\n  TIMON. Keep it: I cannot eat it.\n  ALCIBIADES. When I have laid proud Athens on a heap-\n  TIMON. War\'st thou \'gainst Athens?\n  ALCIBIADES. Ay, Timon, and have cause.  \n  TIMON. The gods confound them all in thy conquest;\n    And thee after, when thou hast conquer\'d!\n  ALCIBIADES. Why me, Timon?\n  TIMON. That by killing of villains\n    Thou wast born to conquer my country.\n    Put up thy gold. Go on. Here\'s gold. Go on.\n    Be as a planetary plague, when Jove\n    Will o\'er some high-vic\'d city hang his poison\n    In the sick air; let not thy sword skip one.\n    Pity not honour\'d age for his white beard:\n    He is an usurer. Strike me the counterfeit matron:\n    It is her habit only that is honest,\n    Herself\'s a bawd. Let not the virgin\'s cheek\n    Make soft thy trenchant sword; for those milk paps\n    That through the window bars bore at men\'s eyes\n    Are not within the leaf of pity writ,\n    But set them down horrible traitors. Spare not the babe\n    Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy;\n    Think it a bastard whom the oracle\n    Hath doubtfully pronounc\'d thy throat shall cut,  \n    And mince it sans remorse. Swear against abjects;\n    Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes,\n    Whose proof nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes,\n    Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding,\n    Shall pierce a jot. There\'s gold to pay thy soldiers.\n    Make large confusion; and, thy fury spent,\n    Confounded be thyself! Speak not, be gone.\n  ALCIBIADES. Hast thou gold yet? I\'ll take the gold thou givest me,\n    Not all thy counsel.\n  TIMON. Dost thou, or dost thou not, heaven\'s curse upon thee!\n  PHRYNIA AND TIMANDRA. Give us some gold, good Timon.\n    Hast thou more?\n  TIMON. Enough to make a whore forswear her trade,\n    And to make whores a bawd. Hold up, you sluts,\n    Your aprons mountant; you are not oathable,\n    Although I know you\'ll swear, terribly swear,\n    Into strong shudders and to heavenly agues,\n    Th\' immortal gods that hear you. Spare your oaths;\n    I\'ll trust to your conditions. Be whores still;\n    And he whose pious breath seeks to convert you-  \n    Be strong in whore, allure him, burn him up;\n    Let your close fire predominate his smoke,\n    And be no turncoats. Yet may your pains six months\n    Be quite contrary! And thatch your poor thin roofs\n    With burdens of the dead- some that were hang\'d,\n    No matter. Wear them, betray with them. Whore still;\n    Paint till a horse may mire upon your face.\n    A pox of wrinkles!\n  PHRYNIA AND TIMANDRA. Well, more gold. What then?\n    Believe\'t that we\'ll do anything for gold.\n  TIMON. Consumptions sow\n    In hollow bones of man; strike their sharp shins,\n    And mar men\'s spurring. Crack the lawyer\'s voice,\n    That he may never more false title plead,\n    Nor sound his quillets shrilly. Hoar the flamen,\n    That scolds against the quality of flesh\n    And not believes himself. Down with the nose,\n    Down with it flat, take the bridge quite away\n    Of him that, his particular to foresee,\n    Smells from the general weal. Make curl\'d-pate ruffians bald,  \n    And let the unscarr\'d braggarts of the war\n    Derive some pain from you. Plague all,\n    That your activity may defeat and quell\n    The source of all erection. There\'s more gold.\n    Do you damn others, and let this damn you,\n    And ditches grave you all!\n  PHRYNIA AND TIMANDRA. More counsel with more money, bounteous\n    Timon.\n  TIMON. More whore, more mischief first; I have given you earnest.\n  ALCIBIADES. Strike up the drum towards Athens. Farewell, Timon;\n    If I thrive well, I\'ll visit thee again.\n  TIMON. If I hope well, I\'ll never see thee more.\n  ALCIBIADES. I never did thee harm.\n  TIMON. Yes, thou spok\'st well of me.\n  ALCIBIADES. Call\'st thou that harm?\n  TIMON. Men daily find it. Get thee away, and take\n    Thy beagles with thee.\n  ALCIBIADES. We but offend him. Strike.\n                                Drum beats. Exeunt all but TIMON\n  TIMON. That nature, being sick of man\'s unkindness,  \n    Should yet be hungry! Common mother, thou,         [Digging]\n    Whose womb unmeasurable and infinite breast\n    Teems and feeds all; whose self-same mettle,\n    Whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puff\'d,\n    Engenders the black toad and adder blue,\n    The gilded newt and eyeless venom\'d worm,\n    With all th\' abhorred births below crisp heaven\n    Whereon Hyperion\'s quick\'ning fire doth shine-\n    Yield him, who all thy human sons doth hate,\n    From forth thy plenteous bosom, one poor root!\n    Ensear thy fertile and conceptious womb,\n    Let it no more bring out ingrateful man!\n    Go great with tigers, dragons, wolves, and bears;\n    Teem with new monsters whom thy upward face\n    Hath to the marbled mansion all above\n    Never presented!- O, a root! Dear thanks!-\n    Dry up thy marrows, vines, and plough-torn leas,\n    Whereof ingrateful man, with liquorish draughts\n    And morsels unctuous, greases his pure mind,\n    That from it all consideration slips-  \n\n                        Enter APEMANTUS\n\n    More man? Plague, plague!\n  APEMANTUS. I was directed hither. Men report\n    Thou dost affect my manners and dost use them.\n  TIMON. \'Tis, then, because thou dost not keep a dog,\n    Whom I would imitate. Consumption catch thee!\n  APEMANTUS. This is in thee a nature but infected,\n    A poor unmanly melancholy sprung\n    From change of fortune. Why this spade, this place?\n    This slave-like habit and these looks of care?\n    Thy flatterers yet wear silk, drink wine, lie soft,\n    Hug their diseas\'d perfumes, and have forgot\n    That ever Timon was. Shame not these woods\n    By putting on the cunning of a carper.\n    Be thou a flatterer now, and seek to thrive\n    By that which has undone thee: hinge thy knee,\n    And let his very breath whom thou\'lt observe\n    Blow off thy cap; praise his most vicious strain,  \n    And call it excellent. Thou wast told thus;\n    Thou gav\'st thine ears, like tapsters that bade welcome,\n    To knaves and all approachers. \'Tis most just\n    That thou turn rascal; hadst thou wealth again\n    Rascals should have\'t. Do not assume my likeness.\n  TIMON. Were I like thee, I\'d throw away myself.\n  APEMANTUS. Thou hast cast away thyself, being like thyself;\n    A madman so long, now a fool. What, think\'st\n    That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,\n    Will put thy shirt on warm? Will these moist trees,\n    That have outliv\'d the eagle, page thy heels\n    And skip when thou point\'st out? Will the cold brook,\n    Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste\n    To cure thy o\'ernight\'s surfeit? Call the creatures\n    Whose naked natures live in all the spite\n    Of wreakful heaven, whose bare unhoused trunks,\n    To the conflicting elements expos\'d,\n    Answer mere nature- bid them flatter thee.\n    O, thou shalt find-\n  TIMON. A fool of thee. Depart.  \n  APEMANTUS. I love thee better now than e\'er I did.\n  TIMON. I hate thee worse.\n  APEMANTUS. Why?\n  TIMON. Thou flatter\'st misery.\n  APEMANTUS. I flatter not, but say thou art a caitiff.\n  TIMON. Why dost thou seek me out?\n  APEMANTUS. To vex thee.\n  TIMON. Always a villain\'s office or a fool\'s.\n    Dost please thyself in\'t?\n  APEMANTUS. Ay.\n  TIMON. What, a knave too?\n  APEMANTUS. If thou didst put this sour-cold habit on\n    To castigate thy pride, \'twere well; but thou\n    Dost it enforcedly. Thou\'dst courtier be again\n    Wert thou not beggar. Willing misery\n    Outlives incertain pomp, is crown\'d before.\n    The one is filling still, never complete;\n    The other, at high wish. Best state, contentless,\n    Hath a distracted and most wretched being,\n    Worse than the worst, content.  \n    Thou should\'st desire to die, being miserable.\n  TIMON. Not by his breath that is more miserable.\n    Thou art a slave whom Fortune\'s tender arm\n    With favour never clasp\'d, but bred a dog.\n    Hadst thou, like us from our first swath, proceeded\n    The sweet degrees that this brief world affords\n    To such as may the passive drugs of it\n    Freely command, thou wouldst have plung\'d thyself\n    In general riot, melted down thy youth\n    In different beds of lust, and never learn\'d\n    The icy precepts of respect, but followed\n    The sug\'red game before thee. But myself,\n    Who had the world as my confectionary;\n    The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men\n    At duty, more than I could frame employment;\n    That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves\n    Do on the oak, have with one winter\'s brush\n    Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare\n    For every storm that blows- I to bear this,\n    That never knew but better, is some burden.  \n    Thy nature did commence in sufferance; time\n    Hath made thee hard in\'t. Why shouldst thou hate men?\n    They never flatter\'d thee. What hast thou given?\n    If thou wilt curse, thy father, that poor rag,\n    Must be thy subject; who, in spite, put stuff\n    To some she-beggar and compounded thee\n    Poor rogue hereditary. Hence, be gone.\n    If thou hadst not been born the worst of men,\n    Thou hadst been a knave and flatterer.\n  APEMANTUS. Art thou proud yet?\n  TIMON. Ay, that I am not thee.\n  APEMANTUS. I, that I was\n    No prodigal.\n  TIMON. I, that I am one now.\n    Were all the wealth I have shut up in thee,\n    I\'d give thee leave to hang it. Get thee gone.\n    That the whole life of Athens were in this!\n    Thus would I eat it.                         [Eating a root]\n  APEMANTUS. Here! I will mend thy feast.\n                                             [Offering him food]  \n  TIMON. First mend my company: take away thyself.\n  APEMANTUS. So I shall mend mine own by th\' lack of thine.\n  TIMON. \'Tis not well mended so; it is but botch\'d.\n    If not, I would it were.\n  APEMANTUS. What wouldst thou have to Athens?\n  TIMON. Thee thither in a whirlwind. If thou wilt,\n    Tell them there I have gold; look, so I have.\n  APEMANTUS. Here is no use for gold.\n  TIMON. The best and truest;\n    For here it sleeps and does no hired harm.\n  APEMANTUS. Where liest a nights, Timon?\n  TIMON. Under that\'s above me.\n    Where feed\'st thou a days, Apemantus?\n  APEMANTUS. Where my stomach. finds meat; or rather, where I eat it.\n  TIMON. Would poison were obedient, and knew my mind!\n  APEMANTUS. Where wouldst thou send it?\n  TIMON. To sauce thy dishes.\n  APEMANTUS. The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the\n    extremity of both ends. When thou wast in thy gilt and thy\n    perfume, they mock\'d thee for too much curiosity; in thy rags  \n    thou know\'st none, but art despis\'d for the contrary. There\'s a\n    medlar for thee; eat it.\n  TIMON. On what I hate I feed not.\n  APEMANTUS. Dost hate a medlar?\n  TIMON. Ay, though it look like thee.\n  APEMANTUS. An th\' hadst hated medlars sooner, thou shouldst have\n    loved thyself better now. What man didst thou ever know unthrift\n    that was beloved after his means?\n  TIMON. Who, without those means thou talk\'st of, didst thou ever\n    know belov\'d?\n  APEMANTUS. Myself.\n  TIMON. I understand thee: thou hadst some means to keep a dog.\n  APEMANTUS. What things in the world canst thou nearest compare to\n    thy flatterers?\n  TIMON. Women nearest; but men, men are the things themselves. What\n    wouldst thou do with the world, Apemantus, if it lay in thy\n    power?\n  APEMANTUS. Give it the beasts, to be rid of the men.\n  TIMON. Wouldst thou have thyself fall in the confusion of men, and\n    remain a beast with the beasts?  \n  APEMANTUS. Ay, Timon.\n  TIMON. A beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee t\' attain to!\n    If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou wert\n    the lamb, the fox would eat thee; if thou wert the fox, the lion\n    would suspect thee, when, peradventure, thou wert accus\'d by the\n    ass. If thou wert the ass, thy dulness would torment thee; and\n    still thou liv\'dst but as a breakfast to the wolf. If thou wert\n    the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou\n    shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner. Wert thou the unicorn,\n    pride and wrath would confound thee, and make thine own self the\n    conquest of thy fury. Wert thou bear, thou wouldst be kill\'d by\n    the horse; wert thou a horse, thou wouldst be seiz\'d by the\n    leopard; wert thou a leopard, thou wert german to the lion, and\n    the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life. All thy safety\n    were remotion, and thy defence absence. What beast couldst thou\n    be that were not subject to a beast? And what beast art thou\n    already, that seest not thy loss in transformation!\n  APEMANTUS. If thou couldst please me with speaking to me, thou\n    mightst have hit upon it here. The commonwealth of Athens is\n    become a forest of beasts.  \n  TIMON. How has the ass broke the wall, that thou art out of the\n    city?\n  APEMANTUS. Yonder comes a poet and a painter. The plague of company\n    light upon thee! I will fear to catch it, and give way. When I\n    know not what else to do, I\'ll see thee again.\n  TIMON. When there is nothing living but thee, thou shalt be\n    welcome. I had rather be a beggar\'s dog than Apemantus.\n  APEMANTUS. Thou art the cap of all the fools alive.\n  TIMON. Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!\n  APEMANTUS. A plague on thee! thou art too bad to curse.\n  TIMON. All villains that do stand by thee are pure.\n  APEMANTUS. There is no leprosy but what thou speak\'st.\n  TIMON. If I name thee.\n    I\'ll beat thee- but I should infect my hands.\n  APEMANTUS. I would my tongue could rot them off!\n  TIMON. Away, thou issue of a mangy dog!\n    Choler does kill me that thou art alive;\n    I swoon to see thee.\n  APEMANTUS. Would thou wouldst burst!\n  TIMON. Away,  \n    Thou tedious rogue! I am sorry I shall lose\n    A stone by thee.                     [Throws a stone at him]\n  APEMANTUS. Beast!\n  TIMON. Slave!\n  APEMANTUS. Toad!\n  TIMON. Rogue, rogue, rogue!\n    I am sick of this false world, and will love nought\n    But even the mere necessities upon\'t.\n    Then, Timon, presently prepare thy grave;\n    Lie where the light foam of the sea may beat\n    Thy gravestone daily; make thine epitaph,\n    That death in me at others\' lives may laugh.\n    [Looks at the gold] O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce\n    \'Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler\n    Of Hymen\'s purest bed! thou valiant Mars!\n    Thou ever young, fresh, lov\'d, and delicate wooer,\n    Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow\n    That lies on Dian\'s lap! thou visible god,\n    That sold\'rest close impossibilities,\n    And mak\'st them kiss! that speak\'st with every tongue  \n    To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!\n    Think thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue\n    Set them into confounding odds, that beasts\n    May have the world in empire!\n  APEMANTUS. Would \'twere so!\n    But not till I am dead. I\'ll say th\' hast gold.\n    Thou wilt be throng\'d to shortly.\n  TIMON. Throng\'d to?\n  APEMANTUS. Ay.\n  TIMON. Thy back, I prithee.\n  APEMANTUS. Live, and love thy misery!\n  TIMON. Long live so, and so die! [Exit APEMANTUS] I am quit. More\n    things like men? Eat, Timon, and abhor them.\n\n                       Enter the BANDITTI\n\n  FIRST BANDIT. Where should he have this gold? It is some poor\n    fragment, some slender ort of his remainder. The mere want of\n    gold and the falling-from of his friends drove him into this\n    melancholy.  \n  SECOND BANDIT. It is nois\'d he hath a mass of treasure.\n  THIRD BANDIT. Let us make the assay upon him; if he care not for\'t,\n    he will supply us easily; if he covetously reserve it, how\n    shall\'s get it?\n  SECOND BANDIT. True; for he bears it not about him. \'Tis hid.\n  FIRST BANDIT. Is not this he?\n  BANDITTI. Where?\n  SECOND BANDIT. \'Tis his description.\n  THIRD BANDIT. He; I know him.\n  BANDITTI. Save thee, Timon!\n  TIMON. Now, thieves?\n  BANDITTI. Soldiers, not thieves.\n  TIMON. Both too, and women\'s sons.\n  BANDITTI. We are not thieves, but men that much do want.\n  TIMON. Your greatest want is, you want much of meat.\n    Why should you want? Behold, the earth hath roots;\n    Within this mile break forth a hundred springs;\n    The oaks bear mast, the briars scarlet hips;\n    The bounteous housewife Nature on each bush\n    Lays her full mess before you. Want! Why want?  \n  FIRST BANDIT. We cannot live on grass, on berries, water,\n    As beasts and birds and fishes.\n  TIMON. Nor on the beasts themselves, the birds, and fishes;\n    You must eat men. Yet thanks I must you con\n    That you are thieves profess\'d, that you work not\n    In holier shapes; for there is boundless theft\n    In limited professions. Rascal thieves,\n    Here\'s gold. Go, suck the subtle blood o\' th\' grape\n    Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth,\n    And so scape hanging. Trust not the physician;\n    His antidotes are poison, and he slays\n    Moe than you rob. Take wealth and lives together;\n    Do villainy, do, since you protest to do\'t,\n    Like workmen. I\'ll example you with thievery:\n    The sun\'s a thief, and with his great attraction\n    Robs the vast sea; the moon\'s an arrant thief,\n    And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;\n    The sea\'s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves\n    The moon into salt tears; the earth\'s a thief,\n    That feeds and breeds by a composture stol\'n  \n    From gen\'ral excrement- each thing\'s a thief.\n    The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power\n    Has uncheck\'d theft. Love not yourselves; away,\n    Rob one another. There\'s more gold. Cut throats;\n    All that you meet are thieves. To Athens go,\n    Break open shops; nothing can you steal\n    But thieves do lose it. Steal not less for this\n    I give you; and gold confound you howsoe\'er!\n    Amen.\n  THIRD BANDIT. Has almost charm\'d me from my profession by\n    persuading me to it.\n  FIRST BANDIT. \'Tis in the malice of mankind that he thus advises\n    us; not to have us thrive in our mystery.\n  SECOND BANDIT. I\'ll believe him as an enemy, and give over my\n    trade.\n  FIRST BANDIT. Let us first see peace in Athens. There is no time so\n    miserable but a man may be true.              Exeunt THIEVES\n\n                         Enter FLAVIUS, to TIMON\n  \n  FLAVIUS. O you gods!\n    Is yond despis\'d and ruinous man my lord?\n    Full of decay and failing? O monument\n    And wonder of good deeds evilly bestow\'d!\n    What an alteration of honour\n    Has desp\'rate want made!\n    What viler thing upon the earth than friends,\n    Who can bring noblest minds to basest ends!\n    How rarely does it meet with this time\'s guise,\n    When man was wish\'d to love his enemies!\n    Grant I may ever love, and rather woo\n    Those that would mischief me than those that do!\n    Has caught me in his eye; I will present\n    My honest grief unto him, and as my lord\n    Still serve him with my life. My dearest master!\n  TIMON. Away! What art thou?\n  FLAVIUS. Have you forgot me, sir?\n  TIMON. Why dost ask that? I have forgot all men;\n    Then, if thou grant\'st th\'art a man, I have forgot thee.\n  FLAVIUS. An honest poor servant of yours.  \n  TIMON. Then I know thee not.\n    I never had honest man about me, I.\n    All I kept were knaves, to serve in meat to villains.\n  FLAVIUS. The gods are witness,\n    Nev\'r did poor steward wear a truer grief\n    For his undone lord than mine eyes for you.\n  TIMON. What, dost thou weep? Come nearer. Then I love thee\n    Because thou art a woman and disclaim\'st\n    Flinty mankind, whose eyes do never give\n    But thorough lust and laughter. Pity\'s sleeping.\n    Strange times, that weep with laughing, not with weeping!\n  FLAVIUS. I beg of you to know me, good my lord,\n    T\' accept my grief, and whilst this poor wealth lasts\n    To entertain me as your steward still.\n  TIMON. Had I a steward\n    So true, so just, and now so comfortable?\n    It almost turns my dangerous nature mild.\n    Let me behold thy face. Surely, this man\n    Was born of woman.\n    Forgive my general and exceptless rashness,  \n    You perpetual-sober gods! I do proclaim\n    One honest man- mistake me not, but one;\n    No more, I pray- and he\'s a steward.\n    How fain would I have hated all mankind!\n    And thou redeem\'st thyself. But all, save thee,\n    I fell with curses.\n    Methinks thou art more honest now than wise;\n    For by oppressing and betraying me\n    Thou mightst have sooner got another service;\n    For many so arrive at second masters\n    Upon their first lord\'s neck. But tell me true,\n    For I must ever doubt though ne\'er so sure,\n    Is not thy kindness subtle, covetous,\n    If not a usuring kindness, and as rich men deal gifts,\n    Expecting in return twenty for one?\n  FLAVIUS. No, my most worthy master, in whose breast\n    Doubt and suspect, alas, are plac\'d too late!\n    You should have fear\'d false times when you did feast:\n    Suspect still comes where an estate is least.\n    That which I show, heaven knows, is merely love,  \n    Duty, and zeal, to your unmatched mind,\n    Care of your food and living; and believe it,\n    My most honour\'d lord,\n    For any benefit that points to me,\n    Either in hope or present, I\'d exchange\n    For this one wish, that you had power and wealth\n    To requite me by making rich yourself.\n  TIMON. Look thee, \'tis so! Thou singly honest man,\n    Here, take. The gods, out of my misery,\n    Have sent thee treasure. Go, live rich and happy,\n    But thus condition\'d; thou shalt build from men;\n    Hate all, curse all, show charity to none,\n    But let the famish\'d flesh slide from the bone\n    Ere thou relieve the beggar. Give to dogs\n    What thou deniest to men; let prisons swallow \'em,\n    Debts wither \'em to nothing. Be men like blasted woods,\n    And may diseases lick up their false bloods!\n    And so, farewell and thrive.\n  FLAVIUS. O, let me stay\n    And comfort you, my master.  \n  TIMON. If thou hat\'st curses,\n    Stay not; fly whilst thou art blest and free.\n    Ne\'er see thou man, and let me ne\'er see thee.\n                                                Exeunt severally\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nThe woods. Before TIMON\'s cave\n\nEnter POET and PAINTER\n\n  PAINTER. As I took note of the place, it cannot be far where he\n    abides.\n  POET. to be thought of him? Does the rumour hold for true that he\'s\n    so full of gold?\n  PAINTER. Certain. Alcibiades reports it; Phrynia and Timandra had\n    gold of him. He likewise enrich\'d poor straggling soldiers with\n    great quantity. \'Tis said he gave unto his steward a mighty sum.\n  POET. Then this breaking of his has been but a try for his friends?\n  PAINTER. Nothing else. You shall see him a palm in Athens again,\n    and flourish with the highest. Therefore \'tis not amiss we tender\n    our loves to him in this suppos\'d distress of his; it will show\n    honestly in us, and is very likely to load our purposes with what\n    they travail for, if it be just and true report that goes of his\n    having.\n  POET. What have you now to present unto him?\n  PAINTER. Nothing at this time but my visitation; only I will\n    promise him an excellent piece.  \n  POET. I must serve him so too, tell him of an intent that\'s coming\n    toward him.\n  PAINTER. Good as the best. Promising is the very air o\' th\' time;\n    it opens the eyes of expectation. Performance is ever the duller\n    for his act, and but in the plainer and simpler kind of people\n    the deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is most\n    courtly and fashionable; performance is a kind of will or\n    testament which argues a great sickness in his judgment that\n    makes it.\n\n                    Enter TIMON from his cave\n\n  TIMON. [Aside] Excellent workman! Thou canst not paint a man so bad\n    as is thyself.\n  POET. I am thinking what I shall say I have provided for him. It\n    must be a personating of himself; a satire against the softness\n    of prosperity, with a discovery of the infinite flatteries that\n    follow youth and opulency.\n  TIMON. [Aside] Must thou needs stand for a villain in thine own\n    work? Wilt thou whip thine own faults in other men? Do so, I have  \n    gold for thee.\n  POET. Nay, let\'s seek him;\n    Then do we sin against our own estate\n    When we may profit meet and come too late.\n  PAINTER. True;\n    When the day serves, before black-corner\'d night,\n    Find what thou want\'st by free and offer\'d light.\n    Come.\n  TIMON. [Aside] I\'ll meet you at the turn. What a god\'s gold,\n    That he is worshipp\'d in a baser temple\n    Than where swine feed!\n    \'Tis thou that rig\'st the bark and plough\'st the foam,\n    Settlest admired reverence in a slave.\n    To thee be worship! and thy saints for aye\n    Be crown\'d with plagues, that thee alone obey!\n    Fit I meet them.                   [Advancing from his cave]\n  POET. Hail, worthy Timon!\n  PAINTER. Our late noble master!\n  TIMON. Have I once liv\'d to see two honest men?\n  POET. Sir,  \n    Having often of your open bounty tasted,\n    Hearing you were retir\'d, your friends fall\'n off,\n    Whose thankless natures- O abhorred spirits!-\n    Not all the whips of heaven are large enough-\n    What! to you,\n    Whose star-like nobleness gave life and influence\n    To their whole being! I am rapt, and cannot cover\n    The monstrous bulk of this ingratitude\n    With any size of words.\n  TIMON. Let it go naked: men may see\'t the better.\n    You that are honest, by being what you are,\n    Make them best seen and known.\n  PAINTER. He and myself\n    Have travail\'d in the great show\'r of your gifts,\n    And sweetly felt it.\n  TIMON. Ay, you are honest men.\n  PAINTER. We are hither come to offer you our service.\n  TIMON. Most honest men! Why, how shall I requite you?\n    Can you eat roots, and drink cold water- No?\n  BOTH. What we can do, we\'ll do, to do you service.  \n  TIMON. Y\'are honest men. Y\'have heard that I have gold;\n    I am sure you have. Speak truth; y\'are honest men.\n  PAINTER. So it is said, my noble lord; but therefore\n    Came not my friend nor I.\n  TIMON. Good honest men! Thou draw\'st a counterfeit\n    Best in all Athens. Th\'art indeed the best;\n    Thou counterfeit\'st most lively.\n  PAINTER. So, so, my lord.\n  TIMON. E\'en so, sir, as I say. [To To POET] And for thy fiction,\n    Why, thy verse swells with stuff so fine and smooth\n    That thou art even natural in thine art.\n    But for all this, my honest-natur\'d friends,\n    I must needs say you have a little fault.\n    Marry, \'tis not monstrous in you; neither wish I\n    You take much pains to mend.\n  BOTH. Beseech your honour\n    To make it known to us.\n  TIMON. You\'ll take it ill.\n  BOTH. Most thankfully, my lord.\n  TIMON. Will you indeed?  \n  BOTH. Doubt it not, worthy lord.\n  TIMON. There\'s never a one of you but trusts a knave\n    That mightily deceives you.\n  BOTH. Do we, my lord?\n  TIMON. Ay, and you hear him cog, see him dissemble,\n    Know his gross patchery, love him, feed him,\n    Keep in your bosom; yet remain assur\'d\n    That he\'s a made-up villain.\n  PAINTER. I know not such, my lord.\n  POET. Nor I.\n  TIMON. Look you, I love you well; I\'ll give you gold,\n    Rid me these villains from your companies.\n    Hang them or stab them, drown them in a draught,\n    Confound them by some course, and come to me,\n    I\'ll give you gold enough.\n  BOTH. Name them, my lord; let\'s know them.\n  TIMON. You that way, and you this- but two in company;\n    Each man apart, all single and alone,\n    Yet an arch-villain keeps him company.\n    [To the PAINTER] If, where thou art, two villians shall not be,  \n    Come not near him. [To the POET] If thou wouldst not reside\n    But where one villain is, then him abandon.-\n    Hence, pack! there\'s gold; you came for gold, ye slaves.\n    [To the PAINTER] You have work for me; there\'s payment; hence!\n    [To the POET] You are an alchemist; make gold of that.-\n    Out, rascal dogs!                [Beats and drives them out]\n\n                    Enter FLAVIUS and two SENATORS\n\n  FLAVIUS. It is vain that you would speak with Timon;\n    For he is set so only to himself\n    That nothing but himself which looks like man\n    Is friendly with him.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Bring us to his cave.\n    It is our part and promise to th\' Athenians\n    To speak with Timon.\n  SECOND SENATOR. At all times alike\n    Men are not still the same; \'twas time and griefs\n    That fram\'d him thus. Time, with his fairer hand,\n    Offering the fortunes of his former days,  \n    The former man may make him. Bring us to him,\n    And chance it as it may.\n  FLAVIUS. Here is his cave.\n    Peace and content be here! Lord Timon! Timon!\n    Look out, and speak to friends. Th\' Athenians\n    By two of their most reverend Senate greet thee.\n    Speak to them, noble Timon.\n\n                   Enter TIMON out of his cave\n\n  TIMON. Thou sun that comforts, burn. Speak and be hang\'d!\n    For each true word a blister, and each false\n    Be as a cauterizing to the root o\' th\' tongue,\n    Consuming it with speaking!\n  FIRST SENATOR. Worthy Timon-\n  TIMON. Of none but such as you, and you of Timon.\n  FIRST SENATOR. The senators of Athens greet thee, Timon.\n  TIMON. I thank them; and would send them back the plague,\n    Could I but catch it for them.\n  FIRST SENATOR. O, forget  \n    What we are sorry for ourselves in thee.\n    The senators with one consent of love\n    Entreat thee back to Athens, who have thought\n    On special dignities, which vacant lie\n    For thy best use and wearing.\n  SECOND SENATOR. They confess\n    Toward thee forgetfulness too general, gross;\n    Which now the public body, which doth seldom\n    Play the recanter, feeling in itself\n    A lack of Timon\'s aid, hath sense withal\n    Of it own fail, restraining aid to Timon,\n    And send forth us to make their sorrowed render,\n    Together with a recompense more fruitful\n    Than their offence can weigh down by the dram;\n    Ay, even such heaps and sums of love and wealth\n    As shall to thee blot out what wrongs were theirs\n    And write in thee the figures of their love,\n    Ever to read them thine.\n  TIMON. You witch me in it;\n    Surprise me to the very brink of tears.  \n    Lend me a fool\'s heart and a woman\'s eyes,\n    And I\'ll beweep these comforts, worthy senators.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Therefore so please thee to return with us,\n    And of our Athens, thine and ours, to take\n    The captainship, thou shalt be met with thanks,\n    Allow\'d with absolute power, and thy good name\n    Live with authority. So soon we shall drive back\n    Of Alcibiades th\' approaches wild,\n    Who, like a boar too savage, doth root up\n    His country\'s peace.\n  SECOND SENATOR. And shakes his threat\'ning sword\n    Against the walls of Athens.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Therefore, Timon-\n  TIMON. Well, sir, I will. Therefore I will, sir, thus:\n    If Alcibiades kill my countrymen,\n    Let Alcibiades know this of Timon,\n    That Timon cares not. But if he sack fair Athens,\n    And take our goodly aged men by th\' beards,\n    Giving our holy virgins to the stain\n    Of contumelious, beastly, mad-brain\'d war,  \n    Then let him know- and tell him Timon speaks it\n    In pity of our aged and our youth-\n    I cannot choose but tell him that I care not,\n    And let him take\'t at worst; for their knives care not,\n    While you have throats to answer. For myself,\n    There\'s not a whittle in th\' unruly camp\n    But I do prize it at my love before\n    The reverend\'st throat in Athens. So I leave you\n    To the protection of the prosperous gods,\n    As thieves to keepers.\n  FLAVIUS. Stay not, all\'s in vain.\n  TIMON. Why, I was writing of my epitaph;\n    It will be seen to-morrow. My long sickness\n    Of health and living now begins to mend,\n    And nothing brings me all things. Go, live still;\n    Be Alcibiades your plague, you his,\n    And last so long enough!\n  FIRST SENATOR. We speak in vain.\n  TIMON. But yet I love my country, and am not\n    One that rejoices in the common wreck,  \n    As common bruit doth put it.\n  FIRST SENATOR. That\'s well spoke.\n  TIMON. Commend me to my loving countrymen-\n  FIRST SENATOR. These words become your lips as they pass through\n    them.\n  SECOND SENATOR. And enter in our ears like great triumphers\n    In their applauding gates.\n  TIMON. Commend me to them,\n    And tell them that, to ease them of their griefs,\n    Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses,\n    Their pangs of love, with other incident throes\n    That nature\'s fragile vessel doth sustain\n    In life\'s uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them-\n    I\'ll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades\' wrath.\n  FIRST SENATOR. I like this well; he will return again.\n  TIMON. I have a tree, which grows here in my close,\n    That mine own use invites me to cut down,\n    And shortly must I fell it. Tell my friends,\n    Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree\n    From high to low throughout, that whoso please  \n    To stop affliction, let him take his haste,\n    Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe,\n    And hang himself. I pray you do my greeting.\n  FLAVIUS. Trouble him no further; thus you still shall find him.\n  TIMON. Come not to me again; but say to Athens\n    Timon hath made his everlasting mansion\n    Upon the beached verge of the salt flood,\n    Who once a day with his embossed froth\n    The turbulent surge shall cover. Thither come,\n    And let my gravestone be your oracle.\n    Lips, let sour words go by and language end:\n    What is amiss, plague and infection mend!\n    Graves only be men\'s works and death their gain!\n    Sun, hide thy beams. Timon hath done his reign.\n                                        Exit TIMON into his cave\n  FIRST SENATOR. His discontents are unremovably\n    Coupled to nature.\n  SECOND SENATOR. Our hope in him is dead. Let us return\n    And strain what other means is left unto us\n    In our dear peril.  \n  FIRST SENATOR. It requires swift foot.                  Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nBefore the walls of Athens\n\nEnter two other SENATORS with a MESSENGER\n\n  FIRST SENATOR. Thou hast painfully discover\'d; are his files\n    As full as thy report?\n  MESSENGER. I have spoke the least.\n    Besides, his expedition promises\n    Present approach.\n  SECOND SENATOR. We stand much hazard if they bring not Timon.\n  MESSENGER. I met a courier, one mine ancient friend,\n    Whom, though in general part we were oppos\'d,\n    Yet our old love had a particular force,\n    And made us speak like friends. This man was riding\n    From Alcibiades to Timon\'s cave\n    With letters of entreaty, which imported\n    His fellowship i\' th\' cause against your city,\n    In part for his sake mov\'d.\n\n               Enter the other SENATORS, from TIMON\n  \n  FIRST SENATOR. Here come our brothers.\n  THIRD SENATOR. No talk of Timon, nothing of him expect.\n    The enemies\' drum is heard, and fearful scouring\n    Doth choke the air with dust. In, and prepare.\n    Ours is the fall, I fear; our foes the snare.         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nThe TIMON\'s cave, and a rude tomb seen\n\nEnter a SOLDIER in the woods, seeking TIMON\n\n  SOLDIER. By all description this should be the place.\n    Who\'s here? Speak, ho! No answer? What is this?\n    Timon is dead, who hath outstretch\'d his span.\n    Some beast rear\'d this; here does not live a man.\n    Dead, sure; and this his grave. What\'s on this tomb\n    I cannot read; the character I\'ll take with wax.\n    Our captain hath in every figure skill,\n    An ag\'d interpreter, though young in days;\n    Before proud Athens he\'s set down by this,\n    Whose fall the mark of his ambition is.                 Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nBefore the walls of Athens\n\nTrumpets sound. Enter ALCIBIADES with his powers before Athens\n\n  ALCIBIADES. Sound to this coward and lascivious town\n    Our terrible approach.\n\n       Sound a parley. The SENATORS appear upon the walls\n\n    Till now you have gone on and fill\'d the time\n    With all licentious measure, making your wills\n    The scope of justice; till now, myself, and such\n    As slept within the shadow of your power,\n    Have wander\'d with our travers\'d arms, and breath\'d\n    Our sufferance vainly. Now the time is flush,\n    When crouching marrow, in the bearer strong,\n    Cries of itself \'No more!\' Now breathless wrong\n    Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease,\n    And pursy insolence shall break his wind\n    With fear and horrid flight.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Noble and young,  \n    When thy first griefs were but a mere conceit,\n    Ere thou hadst power or we had cause of fear,\n    We sent to thee, to give thy rages balm,\n    To wipe out our ingratitude with loves\n    Above their quantity.\n  SECOND SENATOR. So did we woo\n    Transformed Timon to our city\'s love\n    By humble message and by promis\'d means.\n    We were not all unkind, nor all deserve\n    The common stroke of war.\n  FIRST SENATOR. These walls of ours\n    Were not erected by their hands from whom\n    You have receiv\'d your griefs; nor are they such\n    That these great tow\'rs, trophies, and schools, should fall\n    For private faults in them.\n  SECOND SENATOR. Nor are they living\n    Who were the motives that you first went out;\n    Shame, that they wanted cunning, in excess\n    Hath broke their hearts. March, noble lord,\n    Into our city with thy banners spread.  \n    By decimation and a tithed death-\n    If thy revenges hunger for that food\n    Which nature loathes- take thou the destin\'d tenth,\n    And by the hazard of the spotted die\n    Let die the spotted.\n  FIRST SENATOR. All have not offended;\n    For those that were, it is not square to take,\n    On those that are, revenge: crimes, like lands,\n    Are not inherited. Then, dear countryman,\n    Bring in thy ranks, but leave without thy rage;\n    Spare thy Athenian cradle, and those kin\n    Which, in the bluster of thy wrath, must fall\n    With those that have offended. Like a shepherd\n    Approach the fold and cull th\' infected forth,\n    But kill not all together.\n  SECOND SENATOR. What thou wilt,\n    Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile\n    Than hew to\'t with thy sword.\n  FIRST SENATOR. Set but thy foot\n    Against our rampir\'d gates and they shall ope,  \n    So thou wilt send thy gentle heart before\n    To say thou\'t enter friendly.\n  SECOND SENATOR. Throw thy glove,\n    Or any token of thine honour else,\n    That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress\n    And not as our confusion, all thy powers\n    Shall make their harbour in our town till we\n    Have seal\'d thy full desire.\n  ALCIBIADES. Then there\'s my glove;\n    Descend, and open your uncharged ports.\n    Those enemies of Timon\'s and mine own,\n    Whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof,\n    Fall, and no more. And, to atone your fears\n    With my more noble meaning, not a man\n    Shall pass his quarter or offend the stream\n    Of regular justice in your city\'s bounds,\n    But shall be render\'d to your public laws\n    At heaviest answer.\n  BOTH. \'Tis most nobly spoken.\n  ALCIBIADES. Descend, and keep your words.  \n                       [The SENATORS descend and open the gates]\n\n                 Enter a SOLDIER as a Messenger\n\n  SOLDIER. My noble General, Timon is dead;\n    Entomb\'d upon the very hem o\' th\' sea;\n    And on his grave-stone this insculpture, which\n    With wax I brought away, whose soft impression\n    Interprets for my poor ignorance.\n\n                  ALCIBIADES reads the Epitaph\n\n    \'Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft;\n    Seek not my name. A plague consume you wicked caitiffs left!\n    Here lie I, Timon, who alive all living men did hate.\n    Pass by, and curse thy fill; but pass, and stay not here thy\n      gait.\'\n    These well express in thee thy latter spirits.\n    Though thou abhorr\'dst in us our human griefs,\n    Scorn\'dst our brain\'s flow, and those our droplets which  \n    From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit\n    Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye\n    On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead\n    Is noble Timon, of whose memory\n    Hereafter more. Bring me into your city,\n    And I will use the olive, with my sword;\n    Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each\n    Prescribe to other, as each other\'s leech.\n    Let our drums strike.                                 Exeunt\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1594\n\nTHE TRAGEDY OF TITUS ANDRONICUS\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  SATURNINUS, son to the late Emperor of Rome, afterwards Emperor\n  BASSIANUS, brother to Saturninus\n  TITUS ANDRONICUS, a noble Roman\n  MARCUS ANDRONICUS, Tribune of the People, and brother to Titus\n\n    Sons to Titus Andronicus:\n  LUCIUS\n  QUINTUS\n  MARTIUS\n  MUTIUS\n\n  YOUNG LUCIUS, a boy, son to Lucius\n  PUBLIUS, son to Marcus Andronicus\n\n    Kinsmen to Titus:\n  SEMPRONIUS\n  CAIUS\n  VALENTINE\n\n  AEMILIUS, a noble Roman  \n\n    Sons to Tamora:\n  ALARBUS\n  DEMETRIUS\n  CHIRON\n\n  AARON, a Moor, beloved by Tamora\n  A CAPTAIN\n  A MESSENGER\n  A CLOWN\n\n  TAMORA, Queen of the Goths\n  LAVINIA, daughter to Titus Andronicus\n  A NURSE, and a black CHILD\n\n  Romans and Goths, Senators, Tribunes, Officers, Soldiers, and\n    Attendants\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n                          SCENE:\n               Rome and the neighbourhood\n\n\nACT 1. SCENE I.\nRome. Before the Capitol\n\nFlourish. Enter the TRIBUNES and SENATORS aloft; and then enter below\nSATURNINUS and his followers at one door, and BASSIANUS and his followers\nat the other, with drums and trumpets\n\n  SATURNINUS. Noble patricians, patrons of my right,\n    Defend the justice of my cause with arms;\n    And, countrymen, my loving followers,\n    Plead my successive title with your swords.\n    I am his first born son that was the last\n    That ware the imperial diadem of Rome;\n    Then let my father\'s honours live in me,\n    Nor wrong mine age with this indignity.\n  BASSIANUS. Romans, friends, followers, favourers of my right,\n    If ever Bassianus, Caesar\'s son,\n    Were gracious in the eyes of royal Rome,\n    Keep then this passage to the Capitol;\n    And suffer not dishonour to approach\n    The imperial seat, to virtue consecrate,  \n    To justice, continence, and nobility;\n    But let desert in pure election shine;\n    And, Romans, fight for freedom in your choice.\n\n        Enter MARCUS ANDRONICUS aloft, with the crown\n\n  MARCUS. Princes, that strive by factions and by friends\n    Ambitiously for rule and empery,\n    Know that the people of Rome, for whom we stand\n    A special party, have by common voice\n    In election for the Roman empery\n    Chosen Andronicus, surnamed Pius\n    For many good and great deserts to Rome.\n    A nobler man, a braver warrior,\n    Lives not this day within the city walls.\n    He by the Senate is accited home,\n    From weary wars against the barbarous Goths,\n    That with his sons, a terror to our foes,\n    Hath yok\'d a nation strong, train\'d up in arms.\n    Ten years are spent since first he undertook  \n    This cause of Rome, and chastised with arms\n    Our enemies\' pride; five times he hath return\'d\n    Bleeding to Rome, bearing his valiant sons\n    In coffins from the field; and at this day\n    To the monument of that Andronici\n    Done sacrifice of expiation,\n    And slain the noblest prisoner of the Goths.\n    And now at last, laden with honour\'s spoils,\n    Returns the good Andronicus to Rome,\n    Renowned Titus, flourishing in arms.\n    Let us entreat, by honour of his name\n    Whom worthily you would have now succeed,\n    And in the Capitol and Senate\'s right,\n    Whom you pretend to honour and adore,\n    That you withdraw you and abate your strength,\n    Dismiss your followers, and, as suitors should,\n    Plead your deserts in peace and humbleness.\n  SATURNINUS. How fair the Tribune speaks to calm my thoughts.\n  BASSIANUS. Marcus Andronicus, so I do affy\n    In thy uprightness and integrity,  \n    And so I love and honour thee and thine,\n    Thy noble brother Titus and his sons,\n    And her to whom my thoughts are humbled all,\n    Gracious Lavinia, Rome\'s rich ornament,\n    That I will here dismiss my loving friends,\n    And to my fortunes and the people\'s favour\n    Commit my cause in balance to be weigh\'d.\n                                Exeunt the soldiers of BASSIANUS\n  SATURNINUS. Friends, that have been thus forward in my right,\n    I thank you all and here dismiss you all,\n    And to the love and favour of my country\n    Commit myself, my person, and the cause.\n                               Exeunt the soldiers of SATURNINUS\n    Rome, be as just and gracious unto me\n    As I am confident and kind to thee.\n    Open the gates and let me in.\n  BASSIANUS. Tribunes, and me, a poor competitor.\n                    [Flourish. They go up into the Senate House]\n\n                      Enter a CAPTAIN  \n\n  CAPTAIN. Romans, make way. The good Andronicus,\n    Patron of virtue, Rome\'s best champion,\n    Successful in the battles that he fights,\n    With honour and with fortune is return\'d\n    From where he circumscribed with his sword\n    And brought to yoke the enemies of Rome.\n\n        Sound drums and trumpets, and then enter MARTIUS\n        and MUTIUS, two of TITUS\' sons; and then two men\n        bearing a coffin covered with black; then LUCIUS\n        and QUINTUS, two other sons; then TITUS ANDRONICUS;\n        and then TAMORA the Queen of Goths, with her three\n        sons, ALARBUS, DEMETRIUS, and CHIRON, with AARON the\n        Moor, and others,  as many as can be. Then set down\n        the coffin and TITUS speaks\n\n  TITUS. Hail, Rome, victorious in thy mourning weeds!\n    Lo, as the bark that hath discharg\'d her fraught\n    Returns with precious lading to the bay  \n    From whence at first she weigh\'d her anchorage,\n    Cometh Andronicus, bound with laurel boughs,\n    To re-salute his country with his tears,\n    Tears of true joy for his return to Rome.\n    Thou great defender of this Capitol,\n    Stand gracious to the rites that we intend!\n    Romans, of five and twenty valiant sons,\n    Half of the number that King Priam had,\n    Behold the poor remains, alive and dead!\n    These that survive let Rome reward with love;\n    These that I bring unto their latest home,\n    With burial amongst their ancestors.\n    Here Goths have given me leave to sheathe my sword.\n    Titus, unkind, and careless of thine own,\n    Why suffer\'st thou thy sons, unburied yet,\n    To hover on the dreadful shore of Styx?\n    Make way to lay them by their brethren.\n                                            [They open the tomb]\n    There greet in silence, as the dead are wont,\n    And sleep in peace, slain in your country\'s wars.  \n    O sacred receptacle of my joys,\n    Sweet cell of virtue and nobility,\n    How many sons hast thou of mine in store\n    That thou wilt never render to me more!\n  LUCIUS. Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths,\n    That we may hew his limbs, and on a pile\n    Ad manes fratrum sacrifice his flesh\n    Before this earthy prison of their bones,\n    That so the shadows be not unappeas\'d,\n    Nor we disturb\'d with prodigies on earth.\n  TITUS. I give him you- the noblest that survives,\n    The eldest son of this distressed queen.\n  TAMORA. Stay, Roman brethen! Gracious conqueror,\n    Victorious Titus, rue the tears I shed,\n    A mother\'s tears in passion for her son;\n    And if thy sons were ever dear to thee,\n    O, think my son to be as dear to me!\n    Sufficeth not that we are brought to Rome\n    To beautify thy triumphs, and return\n    Captive to thee and to thy Roman yoke;  \n    But must my sons be slaughtered in the streets\n    For valiant doings in their country\'s cause?\n    O, if to fight for king and commonweal\n    Were piety in thine, it is in these.\n    Andronicus, stain not thy tomb with blood.\n    Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods?\n    Draw near them then in being merciful.\n    Sweet mercy is nobility\'s true badge.\n    Thrice-noble Titus, spare my first-born son.\n  TITUS. Patient yourself, madam, and pardon me.\n    These are their brethren, whom your Goths beheld\n    Alive and dead; and for their brethren slain\n    Religiously they ask a sacrifice.\n    To this your son is mark\'d, and die he must\n    T\' appease their groaning shadows that are gone.\n  LUCIUS. Away with him, and make a fire straight;\n    And with our swords, upon a pile of wood,\n    Let\'s hew his limbs till they be clean consum\'d.\n                                Exeunt TITUS\' SONS, with ALARBUS\n  TAMORA. O cruel, irreligious piety!  \n  CHIRON. Was never Scythia half so barbarous!\n  DEMETRIUS. Oppose not Scythia to ambitious Rome.\n    Alarbus goes to rest, and we survive\n    To tremble under Titus\' threat\'ning look.\n    Then, madam, stand resolv\'d, but hope withal\n    The self-same gods that arm\'d the Queen of Troy\n    With opportunity of sharp revenge\n    Upon the Thracian tyrant in his tent\n    May favour Tamora, the Queen of Goths-\n    When Goths were Goths and Tamora was queen-\n    To quit the bloody wrongs upon her foes.\n\n            Re-enter LUCIUS, QUINTUS, MARTIUS, and\n   MUTIUS, the sons of ANDRONICUS, with their swords bloody\n\n  LUCIUS. See, lord and father, how we have perform\'d\n    Our Roman rites: Alarbus\' limbs are lopp\'d,\n    And entrails feed the sacrificing fire,\n    Whose smoke like incense doth perfume the sky.\n    Remaineth nought but to inter our brethren,  \n    And with loud \'larums welcome them to Rome.\n  TITUS. Let it be so, and let Andronicus\n    Make this his latest farewell to their souls.\n                 [Sound trumpets and lay the coffin in the tomb]\n    In peace and honour rest you here, my sons;\n    Rome\'s readiest champions, repose you here in rest,\n    Secure from worldly chances and mishaps!\n    Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells,\n    Here grow no damned drugs, here are no storms,\n    No noise, but silence and eternal sleep.\n    In peace and honour rest you here, my sons!\n\n                       Enter LAVINIA\n\n  LAVINIA. In peace and honour live Lord Titus long;\n    My noble lord and father, live in fame!\n    Lo, at this tomb my tributary tears\n    I render for my brethren\'s obsequies;\n    And at thy feet I kneel, with tears of joy\n    Shed on this earth for thy return to Rome.  \n    O, bless me here with thy victorious hand,\n    Whose fortunes Rome\'s best citizens applaud!\n  TITUS. Kind Rome, that hast thus lovingly reserv\'d\n    The cordial of mine age to glad my heart!\n    Lavinia, live; outlive thy father\'s days,\n    And fame\'s eternal date, for virtue\'s praise!\n\n          Enter, above, MARCUS ANDRONICUS and TRIBUNES;\n          re-enter SATURNINUS, BASSIANUS, and attendants\n\n  MARCUS. Long live Lord Titus, my beloved brother,\n    Gracious triumpher in the eyes of Rome!\n  TITUS. Thanks, gentle Tribune, noble brother Marcus.\n  MARCUS. And welcome, nephews, from successful wars,\n    You that survive and you that sleep in fame.\n    Fair lords, your fortunes are alike in all\n    That in your country\'s service drew your swords;\n    But safer triumph is this funeral pomp\n    That hath aspir\'d to Solon\'s happiness\n    And triumphs over chance in honour\'s bed.  \n    Titus Andronicus, the people of Rome,\n    Whose friend in justice thou hast ever been,\n    Send thee by me, their Tribune and their trust,\n    This par]iament of white and spotless hue;\n    And name thee in election for the empire\n    With these our late-deceased Emperor\'s sons:\n    Be candidatus then, and put it on,\n    And help to set a head on headless Rome.\n  TITUS. A better head her glorious body fits\n    Than his that shakes for age and feebleness.\n    What should I don this robe and trouble you?\n    Be chosen with proclamations to-day,\n    To-morrow yield up rule, resign my life,\n    And set abroad new business for you all?\n    Rome, I have been thy soldier forty years,\n    And led my country\'s strength successfully,\n    And buried one and twenty valiant sons,\n    Knighted in field, slain manfully in arms,\n    In right and service of their noble country.\n    Give me a staff of honour for mine age,  \n    But not a sceptre to control the world.\n    Upright he held it, lords, that held it last.\n  MARCUS. Titus, thou shalt obtain and ask the empery.\n  SATURNINUS. Proud and ambitious Tribune, canst thou tell?\n  TITUS. Patience, Prince Saturninus.\n  SATURNINUS. Romans, do me right.\n    Patricians, draw your swords, and sheathe them not\n    Till Saturninus be Rome\'s Emperor.\n    Andronicus, would thou were shipp\'d to hell\n    Rather than rob me of the people\'s hearts!\n  LUCIUS. Proud Saturnine, interrupter of the good\n    That noble-minded Titus means to thee!\n  TITUS. Content thee, Prince; I will restore to thee\n    The people\'s hearts, and wean them from themselves.\n  BASSIANUS. Andronicus, I do not flatter thee,\n    But honour thee, and will do till I die.\n    My faction if thou strengthen with thy friends,\n    I will most thankful be; and thanks to men\n    Of noble minds is honourable meed.\n  TITUS. People of Rome, and people\'s Tribunes here,  \n    I ask your voices and your suffrages:\n    Will ye bestow them friendly on Andronicus?\n  TRIBUNES. To gratify the good Andronicus,\n    And gratulate his safe return to Rome,\n    The people will accept whom he admits.\n  TITUS. Tribunes, I thank you; and this suit I make,\n    That you create our Emperor\'s eldest son,\n    Lord Saturnine; whose virtues will, I hope,\n    Reflect on Rome as Titan\'s rays on earth,\n    And ripen justice in this commonweal.\n    Then, if you will elect by my advice,\n    Crown him, and say \'Long live our Emperor!\'\n  MARCUS. With voices and applause of every sort,\n    Patricians and plebeians, we create\n    Lord Saturninus Rome\'s great Emperor;\n    And say \'Long live our Emperor Saturnine!\'\n                           [A long flourish till they come down]\n  SATURNINUS. Titus Andronicus, for thy favours done\n    To us in our election this day\n    I give thee thanks in part of thy deserts,  \n    And will with deeds requite thy gentleness;\n    And for an onset, Titus, to advance\n    Thy name and honourable family,\n    Lavinia will I make my emperess,\n    Rome\'s royal mistress, mistress of my heart,\n    And in the sacred Pantheon her espouse.\n    Tell me, Andronicus, doth this motion please thee?\n  TITUS. It doth, my worthy lord, and in this match\n    I hold me highly honoured of your Grace,\n    And here in sight of Rome, to Saturnine,\n    King and commander of our commonweal,\n    The wide world\'s Emperor, do I consecrate\n    My sword, my chariot, and my prisoners,\n    Presents well worthy Rome\'s imperious lord;\n    Receive them then, the tribute that I owe,\n    Mine honour\'s ensigns humbled at thy feet.\n  SATURNINUS. Thanks, noble Titus, father of my life.\n    How proud I am of thee and of thy gifts\n    Rome shall record; and when I do forget\n    The least of these unspeakable deserts,  \n    Romans, forget your fealty to me.\n  TITUS.  [To TAMORA]  Now, madam, are you prisoner to an emperor;\n    To him that for your honour and your state\n    Will use you nobly and your followers.\n  SATURNINUS.  [Aside]  A goodly lady, trust me; of the hue\n    That I would choose, were I to choose anew.-\n    Clear up, fair Queen, that cloudy countenance;\n    Though chance of war hath wrought this change of cheer,\n    Thou com\'st not to be made a scorn in Rome-\n    Princely shall be thy usage every way.\n    Rest on my word, and let not discontent\n    Daunt all your hopes. Madam, he comforts you\n    Can make you greater than the Queen of Goths.\n    Lavinia, you are not displeas\'d with this?\n  LAVINIA. Not I, my lord, sith true nobility\n    Warrants these words in princely courtesy.\n  SATURNINUS. Thanks, sweet Lavinia. Romans, let us go.\n    Ransomless here we set our prisoners free.\n    Proclaim our honours, lords, with trump and drum.\n                                                      [Flourish]  \n  BASSIANUS. Lord Titus, by your leave, this maid is mine.\n                                               [Seizing LAVINIA]\n  TITUS. How, sir! Are you in earnest then, my lord?\n  BASSIANUS. Ay, noble Titus, and resolv\'d withal\n    To do myself this reason and this right.\n  MARCUS. Suum cuique is our Roman justice:\n    This prince in justice seizeth but his own.\n  LUCIUS. And that he will and shall, if Lucius live.\n  TITUS. Traitors, avaunt! Where is the Emperor\'s guard?\n    Treason, my lord- Lavinia is surpris\'d!\n  SATURNINUS. Surpris\'d! By whom?\n  BASSIANUS. By him that justly may\n    Bear his betroth\'d from all the world away.\n                        Exeunt BASSIANUS and MARCUS with LAVINIA\n  MUTIUS. Brothers, help to convey her hence away,\n    And with my sword I\'ll keep this door safe.\n                             Exeunt LUCIUS, QUINTUS, and MARTIUS\n  TITUS. Follow, my lord, and I\'ll soon bring her back.\n  MUTIUS. My lord, you pass not here.\n  TITUS. What, villain boy!  \n    Bar\'st me my way in Rome?\n  MUTIUS. Help, Lucius, help!\n            TITUS kills him. During the fray, exeunt SATURNINUS,\n                            TAMORA, DEMETRIUS, CHIRON, and AARON\n\n                      Re-enter Lucius\n\n  LUCIUS. My lord, you are unjust, and more than so:\n    In wrongful quarrel you have slain your son.\n  TITUS. Nor thou nor he are any sons of mine;\n    My sons would never so dishonour me.\n\n                 Re-enter aloft the EMPEROR\n      with TAMORA and her two Sons, and AARON the Moor\n\n    Traitor, restore Lavinia to the Emperor.\n  LUCIUS. Dead, if you will; but not to be his wife,\n    That is another\'s lawful promis\'d love.                 Exit\n  SATURNINUS. No, Titus, no; the Emperor needs her not,\n    Nor her, nor thee, nor any of thy stock.  \n    I\'ll trust by leisure him that mocks me once;\n    Thee never, nor thy traitorous haughty sons,\n    Confederates all thus to dishonour me.\n    Was there none else in Rome to make a stale\n    But Saturnine? Full well, Andronicus,\n    Agree these deeds with that proud brag of thine\n    That saidst I begg\'d the empire at thy hands.\n  TITUS. O monstrous! What reproachful words are these?\n  SATURNINUS. But go thy ways; go, give that changing piece\n    To him that flourish\'d for her with his sword.\n    A valiant son-in-law thou shalt enjoy;\n    One fit to bandy with thy lawless sons,\n    To ruffle in the commonwealth of Rome.\n  TITUS. These words are razors to my wounded heart.\n  SATURNINUS. And therefore, lovely Tamora, Queen of Goths,\n    That, like the stately Phoebe \'mongst her nymphs,\n    Dost overshine the gallant\'st dames of Rome,\n    If thou be pleas\'d with this my sudden choice,\n    Behold, I choose thee, Tamora, for my bride\n    And will create thee Emperess of Rome.  \n    Speak, Queen of Goths, dost thou applaud my choice?\n    And here I swear by all the Roman gods-\n    Sith priest and holy water are so near,\n    And tapers burn so bright, and everything\n    In readiness for Hymenaeus stand-\n    I will not re-salute the streets of Rome,\n    Or climb my palace, till from forth this place\n    I lead espous\'d my bride along with me.\n  TAMORA. And here in sight of heaven to Rome I swear,\n    If Saturnine advance the Queen of Goths,\n    She will a handmaid be to his desires,\n    A loving nurse, a mother to his youth.\n  SATURNINUS. Ascend, fair Queen, Pantheon. Lords, accompany\n    Your noble Emperor and his lovely bride,\n    Sent by the heavens for Prince Saturnine,\n    Whose wisdom hath her fortune conquered;\n    There shall we consummate our spousal rites.\n                                            Exeunt all but TITUS\n  TITUS. I am not bid to wait upon this bride.\n  TITUS, when wert thou wont to walk alone,  \n    Dishonoured thus, and challenged of wrongs?\n\n                      Re-enter MARCUS,\n        and TITUS\' SONS, LUCIUS, QUINTUS, and MARTIUS\n\n  MARCUS. O Titus, see, O, see what thou hast done!\n    In a bad quarrel slain a virtuous son.\n  TITUS. No, foolish Tribune, no; no son of mine-\n    Nor thou, nor these, confederates in the deed\n    That hath dishonoured all our family;\n    Unworthy brother and unworthy sons!\n  LUCIUS. But let us give him burial, as becomes;\n    Give Mutius burial with our bretheren.\n  TITUS. Traitors, away! He rests not in this tomb.\n    This monument five hundred years hath stood,\n    Which I have sumptuously re-edified;\n    Here none but soldiers and Rome\'s servitors\n    Repose in fame; none basely slain in brawls.\n    Bury him where you can, he comes not here.\n  MARCUS. My lord, this is impiety in you.  \n    My nephew Mutius\' deeds do plead for him;\n    He must be buried with his bretheren.\n  QUINTUS & MARTIUS. And shall, or him we will accompany.\n  TITUS. \'And shall!\' What villain was it spake that word?\n  QUINTUS. He that would vouch it in any place but here.\n  TITUS. What, would you bury him in my despite?\n  MARCUS. No, noble Titus, but entreat of thee\n    To pardon Mutius and to bury him.\n  TITUS. Marcus, even thou hast struck upon my crest,\n    And with these boys mine honour thou hast wounded.\n    My foes I do repute you every one;\n    So trouble me no more, but get you gone.\n  MARTIUS. He is not with himself; let us withdraw.\n  QUINTUS. Not I, till Mutius\' bones be buried.\n                                [The BROTHER and the SONS kneel]\n  MARCUS. Brother, for in that name doth nature plead-\n  QUINTUS. Father, and in that name doth nature speak-\n  TITUS. Speak thou no more, if all the rest will speed.\n  MARCUS. Renowned Titus, more than half my soul-\n  LUCIUS. Dear father, soul and substance of us all-  \n  MARCUS. Suffer thy brother Marcus to inter\n    His noble nephew here in virtue\'s nest,\n    That died in honour and Lavinia\'s cause.\n    Thou art a Roman- be not barbarous.\n    The Greeks upon advice did bury Ajax,\n    That slew himself; and wise Laertes\' son\n    Did graciously plead for his funerals.\n    Let not young Mutius, then, that was thy joy,\n    Be barr\'d his entrance here.\n  TITUS. Rise, Marcus, rise;\n    The dismal\'st day is this that e\'er I saw,\n    To be dishonoured by my sons in Rome!\n    Well, bury him, and bury me the next.\n                                   [They put MUTIUS in the tomb]\n  LUCIUS. There lie thy bones, sweet Mutius, with thy friends,\n    Till we with trophies do adorn thy tomb.\n  ALL.  [Kneeling]  No man shed tears for noble Mutius;\n    He lives in fame that died in virtue\'s cause.\n  MARCUS. My lord- to step out of these dreary dumps-\n    How comes it that the subtle Queen of Goths  \n    Is of a sudden thus advanc\'d in Rome?\n  TITUS. I know not, Marcus, but I know it is-\n    Whether by device or no, the heavens can tell.\n    Is she not, then, beholding to the man\n    That brought her for this high good turn so far?\n  MARCUS. Yes, and will nobly him remunerate.\n\n           Flourish. Re-enter the EMPEROR, TAMORA\n        and her two SONS, with the MOOR, at one door;\n    at the other door, BASSIANUS and LAVINIA, with others\n\n  SATURNINUS. So, Bassianus, you have play\'d your prize:\n    God give you joy, sir, of your gallant bride!\n  BASSIANUS. And you of yours, my lord! I say no more,\n    Nor wish no less; and so I take my leave.\n  SATURNINUS. Traitor, if Rome have law or we have power,\n    Thou and thy faction shall repent this rape.\n  BASSIANUS. Rape, call you it, my lord, to seize my own,\n    My true betrothed love, and now my wife?\n    But let the laws of Rome determine all;\n    Meanwhile am I possess\'d of that is mine.  \n  SATURNINUS. \'Tis good, sir. You are very short with us;\n    But if we live we\'ll be as sharp with you.\n  BASSIANUS. My lord, what I have done, as best I may,\n    Answer I must, and shall do with my life.\n    Only thus much I give your Grace to know:\n    By all the duties that I owe to Rome,\n    This noble gentleman, Lord Titus here,\n    Is in opinion and in honour wrong\'d,\n    That, in the rescue of Lavinia,\n    With his own hand did slay his youngest son,\n    In zeal to you, and highly mov\'d to wrath\n    To be controll\'d in that he frankly gave.\n    Receive him then to favour, Saturnine,\n    That hath express\'d himself in all his deeds\n    A father and a friend to thee and Rome.\n  TITUS. Prince Bassianus, leave to plead my deeds.\n    \'Tis thou and those that have dishonoured me.\n    Rome and the righteous heavens be my judge\n    How I have lov\'d and honoured Saturnine!\n  TAMORA. My worthy lord, if ever Tamora  \n    Were gracious in those princely eyes of thine,\n    Then hear me speak indifferently for all;\n    And at my suit, sweet, pardon what is past.\n  SATURNINUS. What, madam! be dishonoured openly,\n    And basely put it up without revenge?\n  TAMORA. Not so, my lord; the gods of Rome forfend\n    I should be author to dishonour you!\n    But on mine honour dare I undertake\n    For good Lord Titus\' innocence in all,\n    Whose fury not dissembled speaks his griefs.\n    Then at my suit look graciously on him;\n    Lose not so noble a friend on vain suppose,\n    Nor with sour looks afflict his gentle heart.\n    [Aside to SATURNINUS]  My lord, be rul\'d by me,\n      be won at last;\n    Dissemble all your griefs and discontents.\n    You are but newly planted in your throne;\n    Lest, then, the people, and patricians too,\n    Upon a just survey take Titus\' part,\n    And so supplant you for ingratitude,  \n    Which Rome reputes to be a heinous sin,\n    Yield at entreats, and then let me alone:\n    I\'ll find a day to massacre them all,\n    And raze their faction and their family,\n    The cruel father and his traitorous sons,\n    To whom I sued for my dear son\'s life;\n    And make them know what \'tis to let a queen\n    Kneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain.-\n    Come, come, sweet Emperor; come, Andronicus.\n    Take up this good old man, and cheer the heart\n    That dies in tempest of thy angry frown.\n  SATURNINUS. Rise, Titus, rise; my Empress hath prevail\'d.\n  TITUS. I thank your Majesty and her, my lord;\n    These words, these looks, infuse new life in me.\n  TAMORA. Titus, I am incorporate in Rome,\n    A Roman now adopted happily,\n    And must advise the Emperor for his good.\n    This day all quarrels die, Andronicus;\n    And let it be mine honour, good my lord,\n    That I have reconcil\'d your friends and you.  \n    For you, Prince Bassianus, I have pass\'d\n    My word and promise to the Emperor\n    That you will be more mild and tractable.\n    And fear not, lords- and you, Lavinia.\n    By my advice, all humbled on your knees,\n    You shall ask pardon of his Majesty.\n  LUCIUS. We do, and vow to heaven and to his Highness\n    That what we did was mildly as we might,\n    Tend\'ring our sister\'s honour and our own.\n  MARCUS. That on mine honour here do I protest.\n  SATURNINUS. Away, and talk not; trouble us no more.\n  TAMORA. Nay, nay, sweet Emperor, we must all be friends.\n    The Tribune and his nephews kneel for grace.\n    I will not be denied. Sweet heart, look back.\n  SATURNINUS. Marcus, for thy sake, and thy brother\'s here,\n    And at my lovely Tamora\'s entreats,\n    I do remit these young men\'s heinous faults.\n    Stand up.\n    Lavinia, though you left me like a churl,\n    I found a friend; and sure as death I swore  \n    I would not part a bachelor from the priest.\n    Come, if the Emperor\'s court can feast two brides,\n    You are my guest, Lavinia, and your friends.\n    This day shall be a love-day, Tamora.\n  TITUS. To-morrow, and it please your Majesty\n    To hunt the panther and the hart with me,\n    With horn and hound we\'ll give your Grace bonjour.\n  SATURNINUS. Be it so, Titus, and gramercy too.\n                                          Exeunt. Sound trumpets\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nRome. Before the palace\n\nEnter AARON\n\n  AARON. Now climbeth Tamora Olympus\' top,\n    Safe out of Fortune\'s shot, and sits aloft,\n    Secure of thunder\'s crack or lightning flash,\n    Advanc\'d above pale envy\'s threat\'ning reach.\n    As when the golden sun salutes the morn,\n    And, having gilt the ocean with his beams,\n    Gallops the zodiac in his glistening coach\n    And overlooks the highest-peering hills,\n    So Tamora.\n    Upon her wit doth earthly honour wait,\n    And virtue stoops and trembles at her frown.\n    Then, Aaron, arm thy heart and fit thy thoughts\n    To mount aloft with thy imperial mistress,\n    And mount her pitch whom thou in triumph long.\n    Hast prisoner held, fett\'red in amorous chains,\n    And faster bound to Aaron\'s charming eyes\n    Than is Prometheus tied to Caucasus.  \n    Away with slavish weeds and servile thoughts!\n    I will be bright and shine in pearl and gold,\n    To wait upon this new-made emperess.\n    To wait, said I? To wanton with this queen,\n    This goddess, this Semiramis, this nymph,\n    This siren that will charm Rome\'s Saturnine,\n    And see his shipwreck and his commonweal\'s.\n    Hullo! what storm is this?\n\n            Enter CHIRON and DEMETRIUS, braving\n\n  DEMETRIUS. Chiron, thy years wants wit, thy wits wants edge\n    And manners, to intrude where I am grac\'d,\n    And may, for aught thou knowest, affected be.\n  CHIRON. Demetrius, thou dost over-ween in all;\n    And so in this, to bear me down with braves.\n    \'Tis not the difference of a year or two\n    Makes me less gracious or thee more fortunate:\n    I am as able and as fit as thou\n    To serve and to deserve my mistress\' grace;  \n    And that my sword upon thee shall approve,\n    And plead my passions for Lavinia\'s love.\n  AARON.  [Aside]  Clubs, clubs! These lovers will not keep the\n    peace.\n  DEMETRIUS. Why, boy, although our mother, unadvis\'d,\n    Gave you a dancing rapier by your side,\n    Are you so desperate grown to threat your friends?\n    Go to; have your lath glued within your sheath\n    Till you know better how to handle it.\n  CHIRON. Meanwhile, sir, with the little skill I have,\n    Full well shalt thou perceive how much I dare.\n  DEMETRIUS. Ay, boy, grow ye so brave?              [They draw]\n  AARON.  [Coming forward]  Why, how now, lords!\n    So near the Emperor\'s palace dare ye draw\n    And maintain such a quarrel openly?\n    Full well I wot the ground of all this grudge:\n    I would not for a million of gold\n    The cause were known to them it most concerns;\n    Nor would your noble mother for much more\n    Be so dishonoured in the court of Rome.  \n    For shame, put up.\n  DEMETRIUS. Not I, till I have sheath\'d\n    My rapier in his bosom, and withal\n    Thrust those reproachful speeches down his throat\n    That he hath breath\'d in my dishonour here.\n  CHIRON. For that I am prepar\'d and full resolv\'d,\n    Foul-spoken coward, that thund\'rest with thy tongue,\n    And with thy weapon nothing dar\'st perform.\n  AARON. Away, I say!\n    Now, by the gods that warlike Goths adore,\n    This pretty brabble will undo us all.\n    Why, lords, and think you not how dangerous\n    It is to jet upon a prince\'s right?\n    What, is Lavinia then become so loose,\n    Or Bassianus so degenerate,\n    That for her love such quarrels may be broach\'d\n    Without controlment, justice, or revenge?\n    Young lords, beware; an should the Empress know\n    This discord\'s ground, the music would not please.\n  CHIRON. I care not, I, knew she and all the world:  \n    I love Lavinia more than all the world.\n  DEMETRIUS. Youngling, learn thou to make some meaner choice:\n    Lavina is thine elder brother\'s hope.\n  AARON. Why, are ye mad, or know ye not in Rome\n    How furious and impatient they be,\n    And cannot brook competitors in love?\n    I tell you, lords, you do but plot your deaths\n    By this device.\n  CHIRON. Aaron, a thousand deaths\n    Would I propose to achieve her whom I love.\n  AARON. To achieve her- how?\n  DEMETRIUS. Why mak\'st thou it so strange?\n    She is a woman, therefore may be woo\'d;\n    She is a woman, therefore may be won;\n    She is Lavinia, therefore must be lov\'d.\n    What, man! more water glideth by the mill\n    Than wots the miller of; and easy it is\n    Of a cut loaf to steal a shive, we know.\n    Though Bassianus be the Emperor\'s brother,\n    Better than he have worn Vulcan\'s badge.  \n  AARON.  [Aside]  Ay, and as good as Saturninus may.\n  DEMETRIUS. Then why should he despair that knows to court it\n    With words, fair looks, and liberality?\n    What, hast not thou full often struck a doe,\n    And borne her cleanly by the keeper\'s nose?\n  AARON. Why, then, it seems some certain snatch or so\n    Would serve your turns.\n  CHIRON. Ay, so the turn were served.\n  DEMETRIUS. Aaron, thou hast hit it.\n  AARON. Would you had hit it too!\n    Then should not we be tir\'d with this ado.\n    Why, hark ye, hark ye! and are you such fools\n    To square for this? Would it offend you, then,\n    That both should speed?\n  CHIRON. Faith, not me.\n  DEMETRIUS. Nor me, so I were one.\n  AARON. For shame, be friends, and join for that you jar.\n    \'Tis policy and stratagem must do\n    That you affect; and so must you resolve\n    That what you cannot as you would achieve,  \n    You must perforce accomplish as you may.\n    Take this of me: Lucrece was not more chaste\n    Than this Lavinia, Bassianus\' love.\n    A speedier course than ling\'ring languishment\n    Must we pursue, and I have found the path.\n    My lords, a solemn hunting is in hand;\n    There will the lovely Roman ladies troop;\n    The forest walks are wide and spacious,\n    And many unfrequented plots there are\n    Fitted by kind for rape and villainy.\n    Single you thither then this dainty doe,\n    And strike her home by force if not by words.\n    This way, or not at all, stand you in hope.\n    Come, come, our Empress, with her sacred wit\n    To villainy and vengeance consecrate,\n    Will we acquaint with all what we intend;\n    And she shall file our engines with advice\n    That will not suffer you to square yourselves,\n    But to your wishes\' height advance you both.\n    The Emperor\'s court is like the house of Fame,  \n    The palace full of tongues, of eyes, and ears;\n    The woods are ruthless, dreadful, deaf, and dull.\n    There speak and strike, brave boys, and take your turns;\n    There serve your lust, shadowed from heaven\'s eye,\n    And revel in Lavinia\'s treasury.\n  CHIRON. Thy counsel, lad, smells of no cowardice.\n  DEMETRIUS. Sit fas aut nefas, till I find the stream\n    To cool this heat, a charm to calm these fits,\n    Per Styga, per manes vehor.                           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nA forest near Rome\n\nEnter TITUS ANDRONICUS, and his three sons, LUCIUS, QUINTUS, MARTIUS,\nmaking a noise with hounds and horns; and MARCUS\n\n  TITUS. The hunt is up, the morn is bright and grey,\n    The fields are fragrant, and the woods are green.\n    Uncouple here, and let us make a bay,\n    And wake the Emperor and his lovely bride,\n    And rouse the Prince, and ring a hunter\'s peal,\n    That all the court may echo with the noise.\n    Sons, let it be your charge, as it is ours,\n    To attend the Emperor\'s person carefully.\n    I have been troubled in my sleep this night,\n    But dawning day new comfort hath inspir\'d.\n\n         Here a cry of hounds, and wind horns in a peal.\n       Then enter SATURNINUS, TAMORA, BASSIANUS LAVINIA,\n            CHIRON, DEMETRIUS, and their attendants  \n    Many good morrows to your Majesty!\n    Madam, to you as many and as good!\n    I promised your Grace a hunter\'s peal.\n  SATURNINUS. And you have rung it lustily, my lords-\n    Somewhat too early for new-married ladies.\n  BASSIANUS. Lavinia, how say you?\n  LAVINIA. I say no;\n    I have been broad awake two hours and more.\n  SATURNINUS. Come on then, horse and chariots let us have,\n    And to our sport.  [To TAMORA]  Madam, now shall ye see\n    Our Roman hunting.\n  MARCUS. I have dogs, my lord,\n    Will rouse the proudest panther in the chase,\n    And climb the highest promontory top.\n  TITUS. And I have horse will follow where the game\n    Makes way, and run like swallows o\'er the plain.\n  DEMETRIUS. Chiron, we hunt not, we, with horse nor hound,\n    But hope to pluck a dainty doe to ground.             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nA lonely part of the forest\n\nEnter AARON alone, with a bag of gold\n\n  AARON. He that had wit would think that I had none,\n    To bury so much gold under a tree\n    And never after to inherit it.\n    Let him that thinks of me so abjectly\n    Know that this gold must coin a stratagem,\n    Which, cunningly effected, will beget\n    A very excellent piece of villainy.\n    And so repose, sweet gold, for their unrest\n                                                [Hides the gold]\n    That have their alms out of the Empress\' chest.\n\n               Enter TAMORA alone, to the Moor\n\n  TAMORA. My lovely Aaron, wherefore look\'st thou sad\n    When everything does make a gleeful boast?\n    The birds chant melody on every bush;\n    The snakes lie rolled in the cheerful sun;  \n    The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind\n    And make a chequer\'d shadow on the ground;\n    Under their sweet shade, Aaron, let us sit,\n    And while the babbling echo mocks the hounds,\n    Replying shrilly to the well-tun\'d horns,\n    As if a double hunt were heard at once,\n    Let us sit down and mark their yellowing noise;\n    And- after conflict such as was suppos\'d\n    The wand\'ring prince and Dido once enjoyed,\n    When with a happy storm they were surpris\'d,\n    And curtain\'d with a counsel-keeping cave-\n    We may, each wreathed in the other\'s arms,\n    Our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber,\n    Whiles hounds and horns and sweet melodious birds\n    Be unto us as is a nurse\'s song\n    Of lullaby to bring her babe asleep.\n  AARON. Madam, though Venus govern your desires,\n    Saturn is dominator over mine.\n    What signifies my deadly-standing eye,\n    My silence and my cloudy melancholy,  \n    My fleece of woolly hair that now uncurls\n    Even as an adder when she doth unroll\n    To do some fatal execution?\n    No, madam, these are no venereal signs.\n    Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,\n    Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.\n    Hark, Tamora, the empress of my soul,\n    Which never hopes more heaven than rests in thee-\n    This is the day of doom for Bassianus;\n    His Philomel must lose her tongue to-day,\n    Thy sons make pillage of her chastity,\n    And wash their hands in Bassianus\' blood.\n    Seest thou this letter? Take it up, I pray thee,\n    And give the King this fatal-plotted scroll.\n    Now question me no more; we are espied.\n    Here comes a parcel of our hopeful booty,\n    Which dreads not yet their lives\' destruction.\n\n                Enter BASSIANUS and LAVINIA\n  \n  TAMORA. Ah, my sweet Moor, sweeter to me than life!\n  AARON. No more, great Empress: Bassianus comes.\n    Be cross with him; and I\'ll go fetch thy sons\n    To back thy quarrels, whatsoe\'er they be.               Exit\n  BASSIANUS. Who have we here? Rome\'s royal Emperess,\n    Unfurnish\'d of her well-beseeming troop?\n    Or is it Dian, habited like her,\n    Who hath abandoned her holy groves\n    To see the general hunting in this forest?\n  TAMORA. Saucy controller of my private steps!\n    Had I the pow\'r that some say Dian had,\n    Thy temples should be planted presently\n    With horns, as was Actaeon\'s; and the hounds\n    Should drive upon thy new-transformed limbs,\n    Unmannerly intruder as thou art!\n  LAVINIA. Under your patience, gentle Emperess,\n    \'Tis thought you have a goodly gift in horning,\n    And to be doubted that your Moor and you\n    Are singled forth to try thy experiments.\n    Jove shield your husband from his hounds to-day!  \n    \'Tis pity they should take him for a stag.\n  BASSIANUS. Believe me, Queen, your swarth Cimmerian\n    Doth make your honour of his body\'s hue,\n    Spotted, detested, and abominable.\n    Why are you sequest\'red from all your train,\n    Dismounted from your snow-white goodly steed,\n    And wand\'red hither to an obscure plot,\n    Accompanied but with a barbarous Moor,\n    If foul desire had not conducted you?\n  LAVINIA. And, being intercepted in your sport,\n    Great reason that my noble lord be rated\n    For sauciness. I pray you let us hence,\n    And let her joy her raven-coloured love;\n    This valley fits the purpose passing well.\n  BASSIANUS. The King my brother shall have notice of this.\n  LAVINIA. Ay, for these slips have made him noted long.\n    Good king, to be so mightily abused!\n  TAMORA. Why, I have patience to endure all this.\n\n                  Enter CHIRON and DEMETRIUS  \n\n  DEMETRIUS. How now, dear sovereign, and our gracious mother!\n    Why doth your Highness look so pale and wan?\n  TAMORA. Have I not reason, think you, to look pale?\n    These two have \'ticed me hither to this place.\n    A barren detested vale you see it is:\n    The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,\n    Overcome with moss and baleful mistletoe;\n    Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds,\n    Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven.\n    And when they show\'d me this abhorred pit,\n    They told me, here, at dead time of the night,\n    A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,\n    Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,\n    Would make such fearful and confused cries\n    As any mortal body hearing it\n    Should straight fall mad or else die suddenly.\n    No sooner had they told this hellish tale\n    But straight they told me they would bind me here\n    Unto the body of a dismal yew,  \n    And leave me to this miserable death.\n    And then they call\'d me foul adulteress,\n    Lascivious Goth, and all the bitterest terms\n    That ever ear did hear to such effect;\n    And had you not by wondrous fortune come,\n    This vengeance on me had they executed.\n    Revenge it, as you love your mother\'s life,\n    Or be ye not henceforth call\'d my children.\n  DEMETRIUS. This is a witness that I am thy son.\n                                               [Stabs BASSIANUS]\n  CHIRON. And this for me, struck home to show my strength.\n                                                    [Also stabs]\n  LAVINIA. Ay, come, Semiramis- nay, barbarous Tamora,\n    For no name fits thy nature but thy own!\n  TAMORA. Give me the poniard; you shall know, my boys,\n    Your mother\'s hand shall right your mother\'s wrong.\n  DEMETRIUS. Stay, madam, here is more belongs to her;\n    First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw.\n    This minion stood upon her chastity,\n    Upon her nuptial vow, her loyalty,  \n    And with that painted hope braves your mightiness;\n    And shall she carry this unto her grave?\n  CHIRON. An if she do, I would I were an eunuch.\n    Drag hence her husband to some secret hole,\n    And make his dead trunk pillow to our lust.\n  TAMORA. But when ye have the honey we desire,\n    Let not this wasp outlive, us both to sting.\n  CHIRON. I warrant you, madam, we will make that sure.\n    Come, mistress, now perforce we will enjoy\n    That nice-preserved honesty of yours.\n  LAVINIA. O Tamora! thou bearest a woman\'s face-\n  TAMORA. I will not hear her speak; away with her!\n  LAVINIA. Sweet lords, entreat her hear me but a word.\n  DEMETRIUS. Listen, fair madam: let it be your glory\n    To see her tears; but be your heart to them\n    As unrelenting flint to drops of rain.\n  LAVINIA. When did the tiger\'s young ones teach the dam?\n    O, do not learn her wrath- she taught it thee;\n    The milk thou suck\'dst from her did turn to marble,\n    Even at thy teat thou hadst thy tyranny.  \n    Yet every mother breeds not sons alike:\n    [To CHIRON]  Do thou entreat her show a woman\'s pity.\n  CHIRON. What, wouldst thou have me prove myself a bastard?\n  LAVINIA. \'Tis true, the raven doth not hatch a lark.\n    Yet have I heard- O, could I find it now!-\n    The lion, mov\'d with pity, did endure\n    To have his princely paws par\'d all away.\n    Some say that ravens foster forlorn children,\n    The whilst their own birds famish in their nests;\n    O, be to me, though thy hard heart say no,\n    Nothing so kind, but something pitiful!\n  TAMORA. I know not what it means; away with her!\n  LAVINIA. O, let me teach thee! For my father\'s sake,\n    That gave thee life when well he might have slain thee,\n    Be not obdurate, open thy deaf ears.\n  TAMORA. Hadst thou in person ne\'er offended me,\n    Even for his sake am I pitiless.\n    Remember, boys, I pour\'d forth tears in vain\n    To save your brother from the sacrifice;\n    But fierce Andronicus would not relent.  \n    Therefore away with her, and use her as you will;\n    The worse to her the better lov\'d of me.\n  LAVINIA. O Tamora, be call\'d a gentle queen,\n    And with thine own hands kill me in this place!\n    For \'tis not life that I have begg\'d so long;\n    Poor I was slain when Bassianus died.\n  TAMORA. What beg\'st thou, then? Fond woman, let me go.\n  LAVINIA. \'Tis present death I beg; and one thing more,\n    That womanhood denies my tongue to tell:\n    O, keep me from their worse than killing lust,\n    And tumble me into some loathsome pit,\n    Where never man\'s eye may behold my body;\n    Do this, and be a charitable murderer.\n  TAMORA. So should I rob my sweet sons of their fee;\n    No, let them satisfy their lust on thee.\n  DEMETRIUS. Away! for thou hast stay\'d us here too long.\n  LAVINIA. No grace? no womanhood? Ah, beastly creature,\n    The blot and enemy to our general name!\n    Confusion fall-\n  CHIRON. Nay, then I\'ll stop your mouth. Bring thou her husband.  \n    This is the hole where Aaron bid us hide him.\n\n                 DEMETRIUS throws the body\n           of BASSIANUS into the pit; then exeunt\n         DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, dragging off LAVINIA\n\n  TAMORA. Farewell, my sons; see that you make her sure.\n    Ne\'er let my heart know merry cheer indeed\n    Till all the Andronici be made away.\n    Now will I hence to seek my lovely Moor,\n    And let my spleenful sons this trull deflower.          Exit\n\n                  Re-enter AARON, with two\n             of TITUS\' sons, QUINTUS and MARTIUS\n\n  AARON. Come on, my lords, the better foot before;\n    Straight will I bring you to the loathsome pit\n    Where I espied the panther fast asleep.\n  QUINTUS. My sight is very dull, whate\'er it bodes.\n  MARTIUS. And mine, I promise you; were it not for shame,  \n    Well could I leave our sport to sleep awhile.\n                                            [Falls into the pit]\n  QUINTUS. What, art thou fallen? What subtle hole is this,\n    Whose mouth is covered with rude-growing briers,\n    Upon whose leaves are drops of new-shed blood\n    As fresh as morning dew distill\'d on flowers?\n    A very fatal place it seems to me.\n    Speak, brother, hast thou hurt thee with the fall?\n  MARTIUS. O brother, with the dismal\'st object hurt\n    That ever eye with sight made heart lament!\n  AARON.  [Aside]  Now will I fetch the King to find them here,\n    That he thereby may have a likely guess\n    How these were they that made away his brother.         Exit\n  MARTIUS. Why dost not comfort me, and help me out\n    From this unhallow\'d and blood-stained hole?\n  QUINTUS. I am surprised with an uncouth fear;\n    A chilling sweat o\'er-runs my trembling joints;\n    My heart suspects more than mine eye can see.\n  MARTIUS. To prove thou hast a true divining heart,\n    Aaron and thou look down into this den,  \n    And see a fearful sight of blood and death.\n  QUINTUS. Aaron is gone, and my compassionate heart\n    Will not permit mine eyes once to behold\n    The thing whereat it trembles by surmise;\n    O, tell me who it is, for ne\'er till now\n    Was I a child to fear I know not what.\n  MARTIUS. Lord Bassianus lies beray\'d in blood,\n    All on a heap, like to a slaughtered lamb,\n    In this detested, dark, blood-drinking pit.\n  QUINTUS. If it be dark, how dost thou know \'tis he?\n  MARTIUS. Upon his bloody finger he doth wear\n    A precious ring that lightens all this hole,\n    Which, like a taper in some monument,\n    Doth shine upon the dead man\'s earthy cheeks,\n    And shows the ragged entrails of this pit;\n    So pale did shine the moon on Pyramus\n    When he by night lay bath\'d in maiden blood.\n    O brother, help me with thy fainting hand-\n    If fear hath made thee faint, as me it hath-\n    Out of this fell devouring receptacle,  \n    As hateful as Cocytus\' misty mouth.\n  QUINTUS. Reach me thy hand, that I may help thee out,\n    Or, wanting strength to do thee so much good,\n    I may be pluck\'d into the swallowing womb\n    Of this deep pit, poor Bassianus\' grave.\n    I have no strength to pluck thee to the brink.\n  MARTIUS. Nor I no strength to climb without thy help.\n  QUINTUS. Thy hand once more; I will not loose again,\n    Till thou art here aloft, or I below.\n    Thou canst not come to me- I come to thee.        [Falls in]\n\n            Enter the EMPEROR and AARON the Moor\n\n  SATURNINUS. Along with me! I\'ll see what hole is here,\n    And what he is that now is leapt into it.\n    Say, who art thou that lately didst descend\n    Into this gaping hollow of the earth?\n  MARTIUS. The unhappy sons of old Andronicus,\n    Brought hither in a most unlucky hour,\n    To find thy brother Bassianus dead.  \n  SATURNINUS. My brother dead! I know thou dost but jest:\n    He and his lady both are at the lodge\n    Upon the north side of this pleasant chase;\n    \'Tis not an hour since I left them there.\n  MARTIUS. We know not where you left them all alive;\n    But, out alas! here have we found him dead.\n\n                   Re-enter TAMORA, with\n         attendants; TITUS ANDRONICUS and Lucius\n\n  TAMORA. Where is my lord the King?\n  SATURNINUS. Here, Tamora; though griev\'d with killing grief.\n  TAMORA. Where is thy brother Bassianus?\n  SATURNINUS. Now to the bottom dost thou search my wound;\n    Poor Bassianus here lies murdered.\n  TAMORA. Then all too late I bring this fatal writ,\n    The complot of this timeless tragedy;\n    And wonder greatly that man\'s face can fold\n    In pleasing smiles such murderous tyranny.\n                                 [She giveth SATURNINE a letter]  \n    SATURNINUS.  [Reads]  \'An if we miss to meet him handsomely,\n    Sweet huntsman- Bassianus \'tis we mean-\n    Do thou so much as dig the grave for him.\n    Thou know\'st our meaning. Look for thy reward\n    Among the nettles at the elder-tree\n    Which overshades the mouth of that same pit\n    Where we decreed to bury Bassianus.\n    Do this, and purchase us thy lasting friends.\'\n    O Tamora! was ever heard the like?\n    This is the pit and this the elder-tree.\n    Look, sirs, if you can find the huntsman out\n    That should have murdered Bassianus here.\n  AARON. My gracious lord, here is the bag of gold.\n  SATURNINUS.  [To TITUS]  Two of thy whelps, fell curs of bloody\n      kind,\n    Have here bereft my brother of his life.\n    Sirs, drag them from the pit unto the prison;\n    There let them bide until we have devis\'d\n    Some never-heard-of torturing pain for them.\n  TAMORA. What, are they in this pit? O wondrous thing!  \n    How easily murder is discovered!\n  TITUS. High Emperor, upon my feeble knee\n    I beg this boon, with tears not lightly shed,\n    That this fell fault of my accursed sons-\n    Accursed if the fault be prov\'d in them-\n  SATURNINUS. If it be prov\'d! You see it is apparent.\n    Who found this letter? Tamora, was it you?\n  TAMORA. Andronicus himself did take it up.\n  TITUS. I did, my lord, yet let me be their bail;\n    For, by my fathers\' reverend tomb, I vow\n    They shall be ready at your Highness\' will\n    To answer their suspicion with their lives.\n  SATURNINUS. Thou shalt not bail them; see thou follow me.\n    Some bring the murdered body, some the murderers;\n    Let them not speak a word- the guilt is plain;\n    For, by my soul, were there worse end than death,\n    That end upon them should be executed.\n  TAMORA. Andronicus, I will entreat the King.\n    Fear not thy sons; they shall do well enough.\n  TITUS. Come, Lucius, come; stay not to talk with them.     Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nAnother part of the forest\n\nEnter the Empress\' sons, DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, with LAVINIA,\nher hands cut off, and her tongue cut out, and ravish\'d\n\n  DEMETRIUS. So, now go tell, an if thy tongue can speak,\n    Who \'twas that cut thy tongue and ravish\'d thee.\n  CHIRON. Write down thy mind, bewray thy meaning so,\n    An if thy stumps will let thee play the scribe.\n  DEMETRIUS. See how with signs and tokens she can scrowl.\n  CHIRON. Go home, call for sweet water, wash thy hands.\n  DEMETRIUS. She hath no tongue to call, nor hands to wash;\n    And so let\'s leave her to her silent walks.\n  CHIRON. An \'twere my cause, I should go hang myself.\n  DEMETRIUS. If thou hadst hands to help thee knit the cord.\n                                     Exeunt DEMETRIUS and CHIRON\n\n           Wind horns. Enter MARCUS, from hunting\n\n  MARCUS. Who is this?- my niece, that flies away so fast?  \n    Cousin, a word: where is your husband?\n    If I do dream, would all my wealth would wake me!\n    If I do wake, some planet strike me down,\n    That I may slumber an eternal sleep!\n    Speak, gentle niece. What stern ungentle hands\n    Hath lopp\'d, and hew\'d, and made thy body bare\n    Of her two branches- those sweet ornaments\n    Whose circling shadows kings have sought to sleep in,\n    And might not gain so great a happiness\n    As half thy love? Why dost not speak to me?\n    Alas, a crimson river of warm blood,\n    Like to a bubbling fountain stirr\'d with wind,\n    Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips,\n    Coming and going with thy honey breath.\n    But sure some Tereus hath deflowered thee,\n    And, lest thou shouldst detect him, cut thy tongue.\n    Ah, now thou turn\'st away thy face for shame!\n    And notwithstanding all this loss of blood-\n    As from a conduit with three issuing spouts-\n    Yet do thy cheeks look red as Titan\'s face  \n    Blushing to be encount\'red with a cloud.\n    Shall I speak for thee? Shall I say \'tis so?\n    O, that I knew thy heart, and knew the beast,\n    That I might rail at him to ease my mind!\n    Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp\'d,\n    Doth burn the heart to cinders where it is.\n    Fair Philomel, why she but lost her tongue,\n    And in a tedious sampler sew\'d her mind;\n    But, lovely niece, that mean is cut from thee.\n    A craftier Tereus, cousin, hast thou met,\n    And he hath cut those pretty fingers off\n    That could have better sew\'d than Philomel.\n    O, had the monster seen those lily hands\n    Tremble like aspen leaves upon a lute\n    And make the silken strings delight to kiss them,\n    He would not then have touch\'d them for his life!\n    Or had he heard the heavenly harmony\n    Which that sweet tongue hath made,\n    He would have dropp\'d his knife, and fell asleep,\n    As Cerberus at the Thracian poet\'s feet.  \n    Come, let us go, and make thy father blind,\n    For such a sight will blind a father\'s eye;\n    One hour\'s storm will drown the fragrant meads,\n    What will whole months of tears thy father\'s eyes?\n    Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee;\n    O, could our mourning case thy misery!                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nRome. A street\n\nEnter the JUDGES, TRIBUNES, and SENATORS, with TITUS\' two sons\nMARTIUS and QUINTUS bound, passing on the stage to the place of execution,\nand TITUS going before, pleading\n\n  TITUS. Hear me, grave fathers; noble Tribunes, stay!\n    For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent\n    In dangerous wars whilst you securely slept;\n    For all my blood in Rome\'s great quarrel shed,\n    For all the frosty nights that I have watch\'d,\n    And for these bitter tears, which now you see\n    Filling the aged wrinkles in my cheeks,\n    Be pitiful to my condemned sons,\n    Whose souls are not corrupted as \'tis thought.\n    For two and twenty sons I never wept,\n    Because they died in honour\'s lofty bed.\n                          [ANDRONICUS lieth down, and the judges\n                     pass by him with the prisoners, and exeunt]\n    For these, Tribunes, in the dust I write  \n    My heart\'s deep languor and my soul\'s sad tears.\n    Let my tears stanch the earth\'s dry appetite;\n    My sons\' sweet blood will make it shame and blush.\n    O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain\n    That shall distil from these two ancient urns,\n    Than youthful April shall with all his show\'rs.\n    In summer\'s drought I\'ll drop upon thee still;\n    In winter with warm tears I\'ll melt the snow\n    And keep eternal spring-time on thy face,\n    So thou refuse to drink my dear sons\' blood.\n\n             Enter Lucius with his weapon drawn\n\n    O reverend Tribunes! O gentle aged men!\n    Unbind my sons, reverse the doom of death,\n    And let me say, that never wept before,\n    My tears are now prevailing orators.\n  LUCIUS. O noble father, you lament in vain;\n    The Tribunes hear you not, no man is by,\n    And you recount your sorrows to a stone.  \n  TITUS. Ah, Lucius, for thy brothers let me plead!\n    Grave Tribunes, once more I entreat of you.\n  LUCIUS. My gracious lord, no tribune hears you speak.\n  TITUS. Why, \'tis no matter, man: if they did hear,\n    They would not mark me; if they did mark,\n    They would not pity me; yet plead I must,\n    And bootless unto them.\n    Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones;\n    Who though they cannot answer my distress,\n    Yet in some sort they are better than the Tribunes,\n    For that they will not intercept my tale.\n    When I do weep, they humbly at my feet\n    Receive my tears, and seem to weep with me;\n    And were they but attired in grave weeds,\n    Rome could afford no tribunes like to these.\n    A stone is soft as wax: tribunes more hard than stones.\n    A stone is silent and offendeth not,\n    And tribunes with their tongues doom men to death.\n                                                         [Rises]\n    But wherefore stand\'st thou with thy weapon drawn?  \n  LUCIUS. To rescue my two brothers from their death;\n    For which attempt the judges have pronounc\'d\n    My everlasting doom of banishment.\n  TITUS. O happy man! they have befriended thee.\n    Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive\n    That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers?\n    Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey\n    But me and mine; how happy art thou then\n    From these devourers to be banished!\n    But who comes with our brother Marcus here?\n\n                 Enter MARCUS with LAVINIA\n\n  MARCUS. Titus, prepare thy aged eyes to weep,\n    Or if not so, thy noble heart to break.\n    I bring consuming sorrow to thine age.\n  TITUS. Will it consume me? Let me see it then.\n  MARCUS. This was thy daughter.\n  TITUS. Why, Marcus, so she is.\n  LUCIUS. Ay me! this object kills me.  \n  TITUS. Faint-hearted boy, arise, and look upon her.\n    Speak, Lavinia, what accursed hand\n    Hath made thee handless in thy father\'s sight?\n    What fool hath added water to the sea,\n    Or brought a fagot to bright-burning Troy?\n    My grief was at the height before thou cam\'st,\n    And now like Nilus it disdaineth bounds.\n    Give me a sword, I\'ll chop off my hands too,\n    For they have fought for Rome, and all in vain;\n    And they have nurs\'d this woe in feeding life;\n    In bootless prayer have they been held up,\n    And they have serv\'d me to effectless use.\n    Now all the service I require of them\n    Is that the one will help to cut the other.\n    \'Tis well, Lavinia, that thou hast no hands;\n    For hands to do Rome service is but vain.\n  LUCIUS. Speak, gentle sister, who hath martyr\'d thee?\n  MARCUS. O, that delightful engine of her thoughts\n    That blabb\'d them with such pleasing eloquence\n    Is torn from forth that pretty hollow cage,  \n    Where like a sweet melodious bird it sung\n    Sweet varied notes, enchanting every ear!\n  LUCIUS. O, say thou for her, who hath done this deed?\n  MARCUS. O, thus I found her straying in the park,\n    Seeking to hide herself as doth the deer\n    That hath receiv\'d some unrecuring wound.\n  TITUS. It was my dear, and he that wounded her\n    Hath hurt me more than had he kill\'d me dead;\n    For now I stand as one upon a rock,\n    Environ\'d with a wilderness of sea,\n    Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave,\n    Expecting ever when some envious surge\n    Will in his brinish bowels swallow him.\n    This way to death my wretched sons are gone;\n    Here stands my other son, a banish\'d man,\n    And here my brother, weeping at my woes.\n    But that which gives my soul the greatest spurn\n    Is dear Lavinia, dearer than my soul.\n    Had I but seen thy picture in this plight,\n    It would have madded me; what shall I do  \n    Now I behold thy lively body so?\n    Thou hast no hands to wipe away thy tears,\n    Nor tongue to tell me who hath martyr\'d thee;\n    Thy husband he is dead, and for his death\n    Thy brothers are condemn\'d, and dead by this.\n    Look, Marcus! Ah, son Lucius, look on her!\n    When I did name her brothers, then fresh tears\n    Stood on her cheeks, as doth the honey dew\n    Upon a gath\'red lily almost withered.\n  MARCUS. Perchance she weeps because they kill\'d her husband;\n    Perchance because she knows them innocent.\n  TITUS. If they did kill thy husband, then be joyful,\n    Because the law hath ta\'en revenge on them.\n    No, no, they would not do so foul a deed;\n    Witness the sorrow that their sister makes.\n    Gentle Lavinia, let me kiss thy lips,\n    Or make some sign how I may do thee ease.\n    Shall thy good uncle and thy brother Lucius\n    And thou and I sit round about some fountain,\n    Looking all downwards to behold our cheeks  \n    How they are stain\'d, like meadows yet not dry\n    With miry slime left on them by a flood?\n    And in the fountain shall we gaze so long,\n    Till the fresh taste be taken from that clearness,\n    And made a brine-pit with our bitter tears?\n    Or shall we cut away our hands like thine?\n    Or shall we bite our tongues, and in dumb shows\n    Pass the remainder of our hateful days?\n    What shall we do? Let us that have our tongues\n    Plot some device of further misery\n    To make us wonder\'d at in time to come.\n  LUCIUS. Sweet father, cease your tears; for at your grief\n    See how my wretched sister sobs and weeps.\n  MARCUS. Patience, dear niece. Good Titus, dry thine eyes.\n  TITUS. Ah, Marcus, Marcus! Brother, well I wot\n    Thy napkin cannot drink a tear of mine,\n    For thou, poor man, hast drown\'d it with thine own.\n  LUCIUS. Ah, my Lavinia, I will wipe thy cheeks.\n  TITUS. Mark, Marcus, mark! I understand her signs.\n    Had she a tongue to speak, now would she say  \n    That to her brother which I said to thee:\n    His napkin, with his true tears all bewet,\n    Can do no service on her sorrowful cheeks.\n    O, what a sympathy of woe is this\n    As far from help as Limbo is from bliss!\n\n                   Enter AARON the Moor\n\n  AARON. Titus Andronicus, my lord the Emperor\n    Sends thee this word, that, if thou love thy sons,\n    Let Marcus, Lucius, or thyself, old Titus,\n    Or any one of you, chop off your hand\n    And send it to the King: he for the same\n    Will send thee hither both thy sons alive,\n    And that shall be the ransom for their fault.\n  TITUS. O gracious Emperor! O gentle Aaron!\n    Did ever raven sing so like a lark\n    That gives sweet tidings of the sun\'s uprise?\n    With all my heart I\'ll send the Emperor my hand.\n    Good Aaron, wilt thou help to chop it off?  \n  LUCIUS. Stay, father! for that noble hand of thine,\n    That hath thrown down so many enemies,\n    Shall not be sent. My hand will serve the turn,\n    My youth can better spare my blood than you,\n    And therefore mine shall save my brothers\' lives.\n  MARCUS. Which of your hands hath not defended Rome\n    And rear\'d aloft the bloody battle-axe,\n    Writing destruction on the enemy\'s castle?\n    O, none of both but are of high desert!\n    My hand hath been but idle; let it serve\n    To ransom my two nephews from their death;\n    Then have I kept it to a worthy end.\n  AARON. Nay, come, agree whose hand shall go along,\n    For fear they die before their pardon come.\n  MARCUS. My hand shall go.\n  LUCIUS. By heaven, it shall not go!\n  TITUS. Sirs, strive no more; such with\'red herbs as these\n    Are meet for plucking up, and therefore mine.\n  LUCIUS. Sweet father, if I shall be thought thy son,\n    Let me redeem my brothers both from death.  \n  MARCUS. And for our father\'s sake and mother\'s care,\n    Now let me show a brother\'s love to thee.\n  TITUS. Agree between you; I will spare my hand.\n  LUCIUS. Then I\'ll go fetch an axe.\n  MARCUS. But I will use the axe.\n                                        Exeunt LUCIUS and MARCUS\n  TITUS. Come hither, Aaron, I\'ll deceive them both;\n    Lend me thy hand, and I will give thee mine.\n  AARON.  [Aside]  If that be call\'d deceit, I will be honest,\n    And never whilst I live deceive men so;\n    But I\'ll deceive you in another sort,\n    And that you\'ll say ere half an hour pass.\n                                       [He cuts off TITUS\' hand]\n\n                 Re-enter LUCIUS and MARCUS\n\n TITUS. Now stay your strife. What shall be is dispatch\'d.\n    Good Aaron, give his Majesty my hand;\n    Tell him it was a hand that warded him\n    From thousand dangers; bid him bury it.\n    More hath it merited- that let it have.  \n    As for my sons, say I account of them\n    As jewels purchas\'d at an easy price;\n    And yet dear too, because I bought mine own.\n  AARON. I go, Andronicus; and for thy hand\n    Look by and by to have thy sons with thee.\n    [Aside]  Their heads I mean. O, how this villainy\n    Doth fat me with the very thoughts of it!\n    Let fools do good, and fair men call for grace:\n    Aaron will have his soul black like his face.           Exit\n  TITUS. O, here I lift this one hand up to heaven,\n    And bow this feeble ruin to the earth;\n    If any power pities wretched tears,\n    To that I call!  [To LAVINIA]  What, would\'st thou kneel with me?\n    Do, then, dear heart; for heaven shall hear our prayers,\n    Or with our sighs we\'ll breathe the welkin dim\n    And stain the sun with fog, as sometime clouds\n    When they do hug him in their melting bosoms.\n  MARCUS. O brother, speak with possibility,\n    And do not break into these deep extremes.\n  TITUS. Is not my sorrow deep, having no bottom?  \n    Then be my passions bottomless with them.\n  MARCUS. But yet let reason govern thy lament.\n  TITUS. If there were reason for these miseries,\n    Then into limits could I bind my woes.\n    When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o\'erflow?\n    If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad,\n    Threat\'ning the welkin with his big-swol\'n face?\n    And wilt thou have a reason for this coil?\n    I am the sea; hark how her sighs do blow.\n    She is the weeping welkin, I the earth;\n    Then must my sea be moved with her sighs;\n    Then must my earth with her continual tears\n    Become a deluge, overflow\'d and drown\'d;\n    For why my bowels cannot hide her woes,\n    But like a drunkard must I vomit them.\n    Then give me leave; for losers will have leave\n    To ease their stomachs with their bitter tongues.\n\n        Enter a MESSENGER, with two heads and a hand\n  \n  MESSENGER. Worthy Andronicus, ill art thou repaid\n    For that good hand thou sent\'st the Emperor.\n    Here are the heads of thy two noble sons;\n    And here\'s thy hand, in scorn to thee sent back-\n    Thy grief their sports, thy resolution mock\'d,\n    That woe is me to think upon thy woes,\n    More than remembrance of my father\'s death.             Exit\n  MARCUS. Now let hot Aetna cool in Sicily,\n    And be my heart an ever-burning hell!\n    These miseries are more than may be borne.\n    To weep with them that weep doth ease some deal,\n    But sorrow flouted at is double death.\n  LUCIUS. Ah, that this sight should make so deep a wound,\n    And yet detested life not shrink thereat!\n    That ever death should let life bear his name,\n    Where life hath no more interest but to breathe!\n                                          [LAVINIA kisses TITUS]\n  MARCUS. Alas, poor heart, that kiss is comfortless\n    As frozen water to a starved snake.\n  TITUS. When will this fearful slumber have an end?  \n  MARCUS. Now farewell, flatt\'ry; die, Andronicus.\n    Thou dost not slumber: see thy two sons\' heads,\n    Thy warlike hand, thy mangled daughter here;\n    Thy other banish\'d son with this dear sight\n    Struck pale and bloodless; and thy brother, I,\n    Even like a stony image, cold and numb.\n    Ah! now no more will I control thy griefs.\n    Rent off thy silver hair, thy other hand\n    Gnawing with thy teeth; and be this dismal sight\n    The closing up of our most wretched eyes.\n    Now is a time to storm; why art thou still?\n  TITUS. Ha, ha, ha!\n  MARCUS. Why dost thou laugh? It fits not with this hour.\n  TITUS. Why, I have not another tear to shed;\n    Besides, this sorrow is an enemy,\n    And would usurp upon my wat\'ry eyes\n    And make them blind with tributary tears.\n    Then which way shall I find Revenge\'s cave?\n    For these two heads do seem to speak to me,\n    And threat me I shall never come to bliss  \n    Till all these mischiefs be return\'d again\n    Even in their throats that have committed them.\n    Come, let me see what task I have to do.\n    You heavy people, circle me about,\n    That I may turn me to each one of you\n    And swear unto my soul to right your wrongs.\n    The vow is made. Come, brother, take a head,\n    And in this hand the other will I bear.\n    And, Lavinia, thou shalt be employ\'d in this;\n    Bear thou my hand, sweet wench, between thy teeth.\n    As for thee, boy, go, get thee from my sight;\n    Thou art an exile, and thou must not stay.\n    Hie to the Goths and raise an army there;\n    And if ye love me, as I think you do,\n    Let\'s kiss and part, for we have much to do.\n                                           Exeunt all but Lucius\n  LUCIUS. Farewell, Andronicus, my noble father,\n    The woefull\'st man that ever liv\'d in Rome.\n    Farewell, proud Rome; till Lucius come again,\n    He leaves his pledges dearer than his life.  \n    Farewell, Lavinia, my noble sister;\n    O, would thou wert as thou tofore hast been!\n    But now nor Lucius nor Lavinia lives\n    But in oblivion and hateful griefs.\n    If Lucius live, he will requite your wrongs\n    And make proud Saturnine and his emperess\n    Beg at the gates like Tarquin and his queen.\n    Now will I to the Goths, and raise a pow\'r\n    To be reveng\'d on Rome and Saturnine.                   Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nRome. TITUS\' house\n\nA banquet.\n\nEnter TITUS, MARCUS, LAVINIA, and the boy YOUNG LUCIUS\n\n  TITUS. So so, now sit; and look you eat no more\n    Than will preserve just so much strength in us\n    As will revenge these bitter woes of ours.\n    Marcus, unknit that sorrow-wreathen knot;\n    Thy niece and I, poor creatures, want our hands,\n    And cannot passionate our tenfold grief\n    With folded arms. This poor right hand of mine\n    Is left to tyrannize upon my breast;\n    Who, when my heart, all mad with misery,\n    Beats in this hollow prison of my flesh,\n    Then thus I thump it down.\n    [To LAVINIA]  Thou map of woe, that thus dost talk in signs!\n    When thy poor heart beats with outrageous beating,\n    Thou canst not strike it thus to make it still.\n    Wound it with sighing, girl, kill it with groans;\n    Or get some little knife between thy teeth  \n    And just against thy heart make thou a hole,\n    That all the tears that thy poor eyes let fall\n    May run into that sink and, soaking in,\n    Drown the lamenting fool in sea-salt tears.\n  MARCUS. Fie, brother, fie! Teach her not thus to lay\n    Such violent hands upon her tender life.\n  TITUS. How now! Has sorrow made thee dote already?\n    Why, Marcus, no man should be mad but I.\n    What violent hands can she lay on her life?\n    Ah, wherefore dost thou urge the name of hands?\n    To bid Aeneas tell the tale twice o\'er\n    How Troy was burnt and he made miserable?\n    O, handle not the theme, to talk of hands,\n    Lest we remember still that we have none.\n    Fie, fie, how franticly I square my talk,\n    As if we should forget we had no hands,\n    If Marcus did not name the word of hands!\n    Come, let\'s fall to; and, gentle girl, eat this:\n    Here is no drink. Hark, Marcus, what she says-\n    I can interpret all her martyr\'d signs;  \n    She says she drinks no other drink but tears,\n    Brew\'d with her sorrow, mesh\'d upon her cheeks.\n    Speechless complainer, I will learn thy thought;\n    In thy dumb action will I be as perfect\n    As begging hermits in their holy prayers.\n    Thou shalt not sigh, nor hold thy stumps to heaven,\n    Nor wink, nor nod, nor kneel, nor make a sign,\n    But I of these will wrest an alphabet,\n    And by still practice learn to know thy meaning.\n  BOY. Good grandsire, leave these bitter deep laments;\n    Make my aunt merry with some pleasing tale.\n  MARCUS. Alas, the tender boy, in passion mov\'d,\n    Doth weep to see his grandsire\'s heaviness.\n  TITUS. Peace, tender sapling; thou art made of tears,\n    And tears will quickly melt thy life away.\n                          [MARCUS strikes the dish with a knife]\n    What dost thou strike at, Marcus, with thy knife?\n  MARCUS. At that that I have kill\'d, my lord- a fly.\n  TITUS. Out on thee, murderer, thou kill\'st my heart!\n    Mine eyes are cloy\'d with view of tyranny;  \n    A deed of death done on the innocent\n    Becomes not Titus\' brother. Get thee gone;\n    I see thou art not for my company.\n  MARCUS. Alas, my lord, I have but kill\'d a fly.\n  TITUS. \'But!\' How if that fly had a father and mother?\n    How would he hang his slender gilded wings\n    And buzz lamenting doings in the air!\n    Poor harmless fly,\n    That with his pretty buzzing melody\n    Came here to make us merry! And thou hast kill\'d him.\n  MARCUS. Pardon me, sir; it was a black ill-favour\'d fly,\n    Like to the Empress\' Moor; therefore I kill\'d him.\n  TITUS. O, O, O!\n    Then pardon me for reprehending thee,\n    For thou hast done a charitable deed.\n    Give me thy knife, I will insult on him,\n    Flattering myself as if it were the Moor\n    Come hither purposely to poison me.\n    There\'s for thyself, and that\'s for Tamora.\n    Ah, sirrah!  \n    Yet, I think, we are not brought so low\n    But that between us we can kill a fly\n    That comes in likeness of a coal-black Moor.\n  MARCUS. Alas, poor man! grief has so wrought on him,\n    He takes false shadows for true substances.\n  TITUS. Come, take away. Lavinia, go with me;\n    I\'ll to thy closet, and go read with thee\n    Sad stories chanced in the times of old.\n    Come, boy, and go with me; thy sight is young,\n    And thou shalt read when mine begin to dazzle.        Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nRome. TITUS\' garden\n\nEnter YOUNG LUCIUS and LAVINIA running after him,\nand the boy flies from her with his books under his arm.\n\nEnter TITUS and MARCUS\n\n  BOY. Help, grandsire, help! my aunt Lavinia\n    Follows me everywhere, I know not why.\n    Good uncle Marcus, see how swift she comes!\n    Alas, sweet aunt, I know not what you mean.\n  MARCUS. Stand by me, Lucius; do not fear thine aunt.\n  TITUS. She loves thee, boy, too well to do thee harm.\n  BOY. Ay, when my father was in Rome she did.\n  MARCUS. What means my niece Lavinia by these signs?\n  TITUS. Fear her not, Lucius; somewhat doth she mean.\n    See, Lucius, see how much she makes of thee.\n    Somewhither would she have thee go with her.\n    Ah, boy, Cornelia never with more care\n    Read to her sons than she hath read to thee\n    Sweet poetry and Tully\'s Orator.\n  MARCUS. Canst thou not guess wherefore she plies thee thus?  \n  BOY. My lord, I know not, I, nor can I guess,\n    Unless some fit or frenzy do possess her;\n    For I have heard my grandsire say full oft\n    Extremity of griefs would make men mad;\n    And I have read that Hecuba of Troy\n    Ran mad for sorrow. That made me to fear;\n    Although, my lord, I know my noble aunt\n    Loves me as dear as e\'er my mother did,\n    And would not, but in fury, fright my youth;\n    Which made me down to throw my books, and fly-\n    Causeless, perhaps. But pardon me, sweet aunt;\n    And, madam, if my uncle Marcus go,\n    I will most willingly attend your ladyship.\n  MARCUS. Lucius, I will.           [LAVINIA turns over with her\n                     stumps the books which Lucius has let fall]\n  TITUS. How now, Lavinia! Marcus, what means this?\n    Some book there is that she desires to see.\n    Which is it, girl, of these?- Open them, boy.-\n    But thou art deeper read and better skill\'d;\n    Come and take choice of all my library,  \n    And so beguile thy sorrow, till the heavens\n    Reveal the damn\'d contriver of this deed.\n    Why lifts she up her arms in sequence thus?\n  MARCUS. I think she means that there were more than one\n    Confederate in the fact; ay, more there was,\n    Or else to heaven she heaves them for revenge.\n  TITUS. Lucius, what book is that she tosseth so?\n  BOY. Grandsire, \'tis Ovid\'s Metamorphoses;\n    My mother gave it me.\n  MARCUS. For love of her that\'s gone,\n    Perhaps she cull\'d it from among the rest.\n  TITUS. Soft! So busily she turns the leaves! Help her.\n    What would she find? Lavinia, shall I read?\n    This is the tragic tale of Philomel\n    And treats of Tereus\' treason and his rape;\n    And rape, I fear, was root of thy annoy.\n  MARCUS. See, brother, see! Note how she quotes the leaves.\n  TITUS. Lavinia, wert thou thus surpris\'d, sweet girl,\n    Ravish\'d and wrong\'d as Philomela was,\n    Forc\'d in the ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods?  \n    See, see!\n    Ay, such a place there is where we did hunt-\n    O, had we never, never hunted there!-\n    Pattern\'d by that the poet here describes,\n    By nature made for murders and for rapes.\n  MARCUS. O, why should nature build so foul a den,\n    Unless the gods delight in tragedies?\n  TITUS. Give signs, sweet girl, for here are none but friends,\n    What Roman lord it was durst do the deed.\n    Or slunk not Saturnine, as Tarquin erst,\n    That left the camp to sin in Lucrece\' bed?\n  MARCUS. Sit down, sweet niece; brother, sit down by me.\n    Apollo, Pallas, Jove, or Mercury,\n    Inspire me, that I may this treason find!\n    My lord, look here! Look here, Lavinia!\n                                    [He writes his name with his\n                       staff, and guides it with feet and mouth]\n    This sandy plot is plain; guide, if thou canst,\n    This after me. I have writ my name\n    Without the help of any hand at all.  \n    Curs\'d be that heart that forc\'d us to this shift!\n    Write thou, good niece, and here display at last\n    What God will have discovered for revenge.\n    Heaven guide thy pen to print thy sorrows plain,\n    That we may know the traitors and the truth!\n                               [She takes the staff in her mouth\n                          and guides it with stumps, and writes]\n    O, do ye read, my lord, what she hath writ?\n  TITUS. \'Stuprum- Chiron- Demetrius.\'\n  MARCUS. What, what! the lustful sons of Tamora\n    Performers of this heinous bloody deed?\n  TITUS. Magni Dominator poli,\n    Tam lentus audis scelera? tam lentus vides?\n  MARCUS. O, calm thee, gentle lord! although I know\n    There is enough written upon this earth\n    To stir a mutiny in the mildest thoughts,\n    And arm the minds of infants to exclaims.\n    My lord, kneel down with me; Lavinia, kneel;\n    And kneel, sweet boy, the Roman Hector\'s hope;\n    And swear with me- as, with the woeful fere  \n    And father of that chaste dishonoured dame,\n    Lord Junius Brutus sware for Lucrece\' rape-\n    That we will prosecute, by good advice,\n    Mortal revenge upon these traitorous Goths,\n    And see their blood or die with this reproach.\n  TITUS. \'Tis sure enough, an you knew how;\n    But if you hunt these bear-whelps, then beware:\n    The dam will wake; and if she wind ye once,\n    She\'s with the lion deeply still in league,\n    And lulls him whilst she playeth on her back,\n    And when he sleeps will she do what she list.\n    You are a young huntsman, Marcus; let alone;\n    And come, I will go get a leaf of brass,\n    And with a gad of steel will write these words,\n    And lay it by. The angry northern wind\n    Will blow these sands like Sibyl\'s leaves abroad,\n    And where\'s our lesson, then? Boy, what say you?\n  BOY. I say, my lord, that if I were a man\n    Their mother\'s bedchamber should not be safe\n    For these base bondmen to the yoke of Rome.  \n  MARCUS. Ay, that\'s my boy! Thy father hath full oft\n    For his ungrateful country done the like.\n  BOY. And, uncle, so will I, an if I live.\n  TITUS. Come, go with me into mine armoury.\n    Lucius, I\'ll fit thee; and withal my boy\n    Shall carry from me to the Empress\' sons\n    Presents that I intend to send them both.\n    Come, come; thou\'lt do my message, wilt thou not?\n  BOY. Ay, with my dagger in their bosoms, grandsire.\n  TITUS. No, boy, not so; I\'ll teach thee another course.\n    Lavinia, come. Marcus, look to my house.\n    Lucius and I\'ll go brave it at the court;\n    Ay, marry, will we, sir! and we\'ll be waited on.\n                         Exeunt TITUS, LAVINIA, and YOUNG LUCIUS\n  MARCUS. O heavens, can you hear a good man groan\n    And not relent, or not compassion him?\n    Marcus, attend him in his ecstasy,\n    That hath more scars of sorrow in his heart\n    Than foemen\'s marks upon his batt\'red shield,\n    But yet so just that he will not revenge.  \n    Revenge the heavens for old Andronicus!                 Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nRome. The palace\n\nEnter AARON, DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, at one door; and at the other door,\nYOUNG LUCIUS and another with a bundle of weapons, and verses writ upon them\n\n  CHIRON. Demetrius, here\'s the son of Lucius;\n    He hath some message to deliver us.\n  AARON. Ay, some mad message from his mad grandfather.\n  BOY. My lords, with all the humbleness I may,\n    I greet your honours from Andronicus-\n    [Aside]  And pray the Roman gods confound you both!\n  DEMETRIUS. Gramercy, lovely Lucius. What\'s the news?\n  BOY.  [Aside]  That you are both decipher\'d, that\'s the news,\n    For villains mark\'d with rape.- May it please you,\n    My grandsire, well advis\'d, hath sent by me\n    The goodliest weapons of his armoury\n    To gratify your honourable youth,\n    The hope of Rome; for so he bid me say;\n    And so I do, and with his gifts present\n    Your lordships, that, whenever you have need,  \n    You may be armed and appointed well.\n    And so I leave you both-  [Aside]  like bloody villains.\n                               Exeunt YOUNG LUCIUS and attendant\n  DEMETRIUS. What\'s here? A scroll, and written round about.\n    Let\'s see:\n    [Reads]  \'Integer vitae, scelerisque purus,\n    Non eget Mauri iaculis, nec arcu.\'\n  CHIRON. O, \'tis a verse in Horace, I know it well;\n    I read it in the grammar long ago.\n  AARON. Ay, just- a verse in Horace. Right, you have it.\n    [Aside]  Now, what a thing it is to be an ass!\n    Here\'s no sound jest! The old man hath found their guilt,\n    And sends them weapons wrapp\'d about with lines\n    That wound, beyond their feeling, to the quick.\n    But were our witty Empress well afoot,\n    She would applaud Andronicus\' conceit.\n    But let her rest in her unrest awhile-\n    And now, young lords, was\'t not a happy star\n    Led us to Rome, strangers, and more than so,\n    Captives, to be advanced to this height?  \n    It did me good before the palace gate\n    To brave the Tribune in his brother\'s hearing.\n  DEMETRIUS. But me more good to see so great a lord\n    Basely insinuate and send us gifts.\n  AARON. Had he not reason, Lord Demetrius?\n    Did you not use his daughter very friendly?\n  DEMETRIUS. I would we had a thousand Roman dames\n    At such a bay, by turn to serve our lust.\n  CHIRON. A charitable wish and full of love.\n  AARON. Here lacks but your mother for to say amen.\n  CHIRON. And that would she for twenty thousand more.\n  DEMETRIUS. Come, let us go and pray to all the gods\n    For our beloved mother in her pains.\n  AARON.  [Aside]  Pray to the devils; the gods have given us over.\n                                                [Trumpets sound]\n  DEMETRIUS. Why do the Emperor\'s trumpets flourish thus?\n  CHIRON. Belike, for joy the Emperor hath a son.\n  DEMETRIUS. Soft! who comes here?\n\n            Enter NURSE, with a blackamoor CHILD  \n\n  NURSE. Good morrow, lords.\n    O, tell me, did you see Aaron the Moor?\n  AARON. Well, more or less, or ne\'er a whit at all,\n    Here Aaron is; and what with Aaron now?\n  NURSE. O gentle Aaron, we are all undone!\n    Now help, or woe betide thee evermore!\n  AARON. Why, what a caterwauling dost thou keep!\n    What dost thou wrap and fumble in thy arms?\n  NURSE. O, that which I would hide from heaven\'s eye:\n    Our Empress\' shame and stately Rome\'s disgrace!\n    She is delivered, lord; she is delivered.\n  AARON. To whom?\n  NURSE. I mean she is brought a-bed.\n  AARON. Well, God give her good rest! What hath he sent her?\n  NURSE. A devil.\n  AARON. Why, then she is the devil\'s dam;\n    A joyful issue.\n  NURSE. A joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue!\n    Here is the babe, as loathsome as a toad  \n    Amongst the fair-fac\'d breeders of our clime;\n    The Empress sends it thee, thy stamp, thy seal,\n    And bids thee christen it with thy dagger\'s point.\n  AARON. Zounds, ye whore! Is black so base a hue?\n    Sweet blowse, you are a beauteous blossom sure.\n  DEMETRIUS. Villain, what hast thou done?\n  AARON. That which thou canst not undo.\n  CHIRON. Thou hast undone our mother.\n  AARON. Villain, I have done thy mother.\n  DEMETRIUS. And therein, hellish dog, thou hast undone her.\n    Woe to her chance, and damn\'d her loathed choice!\n    Accurs\'d the offspring of so foul a fiend!\n  CHIRON. It shall not live.\n  AARON. It shall not die.\n  NURSE. Aaron, it must; the mother wills it so.\n  AARON. What, must it, nurse? Then let no man but I\n    Do execution on my flesh and blood.\n  DEMETRIUS. I\'ll broach the tadpole on my rapier\'s point.\n    Nurse, give it me; my sword shall soon dispatch it.\n  AARON. Sooner this sword shall plough thy bowels up.  \n                     [Takes the CHILD from the NURSE, and draws]\n    Stay, murderous villains, will you kill your brother!\n    Now, by the burning tapers of the sky\n    That shone so brightly when this boy was got,\n    He dies upon my scimitar\'s sharp point\n    That touches this my first-born son and heir.\n    I tell you, younglings, not Enceladus,\n    With all his threat\'ning band of Typhon\'s brood,\n    Nor great Alcides, nor the god of war,\n    Shall seize this prey out of his father\'s hands.\n    What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys!\n    Ye white-lim\'d walls! ye alehouse painted signs!\n    Coal-black is better than another hue\n    In that it scorns to bear another hue;\n    For all the water in the ocean\n    Can never turn the swan\'s black legs to white,\n    Although she lave them hourly in the flood.\n    Tell the Empress from me I am of age\n    To keep mine own- excuse it how she can.\n  DEMETRIUS. Wilt thou betray thy noble mistress thus?  \n  AARON. My mistress is my mistress: this my self,\n    The vigour and the picture of my youth.\n    This before all the world do I prefer;\n    This maugre all the world will I keep safe,\n    Or some of you shall smoke for it in Rome.\n  DEMETRIUS. By this our mother is for ever sham\'d.\n  CHIRON. Rome will despise her for this foul escape.\n  NURSE. The Emperor in his rage will doom her death.\n  CHIRON. I blush to think upon this ignomy.\n  AARON. Why, there\'s the privilege your beauty bears:\n    Fie, treacherous hue, that will betray with blushing\n    The close enacts and counsels of thy heart!\n    Here\'s a young lad fram\'d of another leer.\n    Look how the black slave smiles upon the father,\n    As who should say \'Old lad, I am thine own.\'\n    He is your brother, lords, sensibly fed\n    Of that self-blood that first gave life to you;\n    And from your womb where you imprisoned were\n    He is enfranchised and come to light.\n    Nay, he is your brother by the surer side,  \n    Although my seal be stamped in his face.\n  NURSE. Aaron, what shall I say unto the Empress?\n  DEMETRIUS. Advise thee, Aaron, what is to be done,\n    And we will all subscribe to thy advice.\n    Save thou the child, so we may all be safe.\n  AARON. Then sit we down and let us all consult.\n    My son and I will have the wind of you:\n    Keep there; now talk at pleasure of your safety.\n                                                      [They sit]\n  DEMETRIUS. How many women saw this child of his?\n  AARON. Why, so, brave lords! When we join in league\n    I am a lamb; but if you brave the Moor,\n    The chafed boar, the mountain lioness,\n    The ocean swells not so as Aaron storms.\n    But say, again, how many saw the child?\n  NURSE. Cornelia the midwife and myself;\n    And no one else but the delivered Empress.\n  AARON. The Emperess, the midwife, and yourself.\n    Two may keep counsel when the third\'s away:\n    Go to the Empress, tell her this I said.      [He kills her]  \n    Weeke weeke!\n    So cries a pig prepared to the spit.\n  DEMETRIUS. What mean\'st thou, Aaron? Wherefore didst thou this?\n  AARON. O Lord, sir, \'tis a deed of policy.\n    Shall she live to betray this guilt of ours-\n    A long-tongu\'d babbling gossip? No, lords, no.\n    And now be it known to you my full intent:\n    Not far, one Muliteus, my countryman-\n    His wife but yesternight was brought to bed;\n    His child is like to her, fair as you are.\n    Go pack with him, and give the mother gold,\n    And tell them both the circumstance of all,\n    And how by this their child shall be advanc\'d,\n    And be received for the Emperor\'s heir\n    And substituted in the place of mine,\n    To calm this tempest whirling in the court;\n    And let the Emperor dandle him for his own.\n    Hark ye, lords. You see I have given her physic,\n                                         [Pointing to the NURSE]\n    And you must needs bestow her funeral;  \n    The fields are near, and you are gallant grooms.\n    This done, see that you take no longer days,\n    But send the midwife presently to me.\n    The midwife and the nurse well made away,\n    Then let the ladies tattle what they please.\n  CHIRON. Aaron, I see thou wilt not trust the air\n    With secrets.\n  DEMETRIUS. For this care of Tamora,\n    Herself and hers are highly bound to thee.\n\n         Exeunt DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, bearing off the dead NURSE\n\n  AARON. Now to the Goths, as swift as swallow flies,\n    There to dispose this treasure in mine arms,\n    And secretly to greet the Empress\' friends.\n    Come on, you thick-lipp\'d slave, I\'ll bear you hence;\n    For it is you that puts us to our shifts.\n    I\'ll make you feed on berries and on roots,\n    And feed on curds and whey, and suck the goat,\n    And cabin in a cave, and bring you up  \n    To be a warrior and command a camp.\n                                             Exit with the CHILD\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nRome. A public place\n\nEnter TITUS, bearing arrows with letters on the ends of them;\nwith him MARCUS, YOUNG LUCIUS, and other gentlemen,\nPUBLIUS, SEMPRONIUS, and CAIUS, with bows\n\n  TITUS. Come, Marcus, come; kinsmen, this is the way.\n    Sir boy, let me see your archery;\n    Look ye draw home enough, and \'tis there straight.\n    Terras Astrea reliquit,\n    Be you rememb\'red, Marcus; she\'s gone, she\'s fled.\n    Sirs, take you to your tools. You, cousins, shall\n    Go sound the ocean and cast your nets;\n    Happily you may catch her in the sea;\n    Yet there\'s as little justice as at land.\n    No; Publius and Sempronius, you must do it;\n    \'Tis you must dig with mattock and with spade,\n    And pierce the inmost centre of the earth;\n    Then, when you come to Pluto\'s region,\n    I pray you deliver him this petition.\n    Tell him it is for justice and for aid,  \n    And that it comes from old Andronicus,\n    Shaken with sorrows in ungrateful Rome.\n    Ah, Rome! Well, well, I made thee miserable\n    What time I threw the people\'s suffrages\n    On him that thus doth tyrannize o\'er me.\n    Go get you gone; and pray be careful all,\n    And leave you not a man-of-war unsearch\'d.\n    This wicked Emperor may have shipp\'d her hence;\n    And, kinsmen, then we may go pipe for justice.\n  MARCUS. O Publius, is not this a heavy case,\n    To see thy noble uncle thus distract?\n  PUBLIUS. Therefore, my lords, it highly us concerns\n    By day and night t\' attend him carefully,\n    And feed his humour kindly as we may\n    Till time beget some careful remedy.\n  MARCUS. Kinsmen, his sorrows are past remedy.\n    Join with the Goths, and with revengeful war\n    Take wreak on Rome for this ingratitude,\n    And vengeance on the traitor Saturnine.\n  TITUS. Publius, how now? How now, my masters?  \n    What, have you met with her?\n  PUBLIUS. No, my good lord; but Pluto sends you word,\n    If you will have Revenge from hell, you shall.\n    Marry, for Justice, she is so employ\'d,\n    He thinks, with Jove in heaven, or somewhere else,\n    So that perforce you must needs stay a time.\n  TITUS. He doth me wrong to feed me with delays.\n    I\'ll dive into the burning lake below\n    And pull her out of Acheron by the heels.\n    Marcus, we are but shrubs, no cedars we,\n    No big-bon\'d men fram\'d of the Cyclops\' size;\n    But metal, Marcus, steel to the very back,\n    Yet wrung with wrongs more than our backs can bear;\n    And, sith there\'s no justice in earth nor hell,\n    We will solicit heaven, and move the gods\n    To send down justice for to wreak our wrongs.\n    Come, to this gear. You are a good archer, Marcus.\n                                      [He gives them the arrows]\n    \'Ad Jovem\' that\'s for you; here \'Ad Apollinem.\'\n    \'Ad Martem\' that\'s for myself.  \n    Here, boy, \'To Pallas\'; here \'To Mercury.\'\n    \'To Saturn,\' Caius- not to Saturnine:\n    You were as good to shoot against the wind.\n    To it, boy. Marcus, loose when I bid.\n    Of my word, I have written to effect;\n    There\'s not a god left unsolicited.\n  MARCUS. Kinsmen, shoot all your shafts into the court;\n    We will afflict the Emperor in his pride.\n  TITUS. Now, masters, draw.  [They shoot]  O, well said, Lucius!\n    Good boy, in Virgo\'s lap! Give it Pallas.\n  MARCUS. My lord, I aim a mile beyond the moon;\n    Your letter is with Jupiter by this.\n  TITUS. Ha! ha!\n    Publius, Publius, hast thou done?\n    See, see, thou hast shot off one of Taurus\' horns.\n  MARCUS. This was the sport, my lord: when Publius shot,\n    The Bull, being gall\'d, gave Aries such a knock\n    That down fell both the Ram\'s horns in the court;\n    And who should find them but the Empress\' villain?\n    She laugh\'d, and told the Moor he should not choose  \n    But give them to his master for a present.\n  TITUS. Why, there it goes! God give his lordship joy!\n\n    Enter the CLOWN, with a basket and two pigeons in it\n\n    News, news from heaven! Marcus, the post is come.\n    Sirrah, what tidings? Have you any letters?\n    Shall I have justice? What says Jupiter?\n  CLOWN. Ho, the gibbet-maker? He says that he hath taken them down\n    again, for the man must not be hang\'d till the next week.\n  TITUS. But what says Jupiter, I ask thee?\n  CLOWN. Alas, sir, I know not Jupiter; I never drank with him in all\n    my life.\n  TITUS. Why, villain, art not thou the carrier?\n  CLOWN. Ay, of my pigeons, sir; nothing else.\n  TITUS. Why, didst thou not come from heaven?\n  CLOWN. From heaven! Alas, sir, I never came there. God forbid I\n    should be so bold to press to heaven in my young days. Why, I am\n    going with my pigeons to the Tribunal Plebs, to take up a matter\n    of brawl betwixt my uncle and one of the Emperal\'s men.  \n  MARCUS. Why, sir, that is as fit as can be to serve for your\n    oration; and let him deliver the pigeons to the Emperor from you.\n  TITUS. Tell me, can you deliver an oration to the Emperor with a\n    grace?\n  CLOWN. Nay, truly, sir, I could never say grace in all my life.\n  TITUS. Sirrah, come hither. Make no more ado,\n    But give your pigeons to the Emperor;\n    By me thou shalt have justice at his hands.\n    Hold, hold! Meanwhile here\'s money for thy charges.\n    Give me pen and ink. Sirrah, can you with a grace deliver up a\n    supplication?\n  CLOWN. Ay, sir.\n  TITUS. Then here is a supplication for you. And when you come to\n    him, at the first approach you must kneel; then kiss his foot;\n    then deliver up your pigeons; and then look for your reward. I\'ll\n    be at hand, sir; see you do it bravely.\n  CLOWN. I warrant you, sir; let me alone.\n  TITUS. Sirrah, hast thou a knife? Come let me see it.\n    Here, Marcus, fold it in the oration;\n    For thou hast made it like a humble suppliant.  \n    And when thou hast given it to the Emperor,\n    Knock at my door, and tell me what he says.\n  CLOWN. God be with you, sir; I will.\n  TITUS. Come, Marcus, let us go. Publius, follow me.     Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nRome. Before the palace\n\nEnter the EMPEROR, and the EMPRESS and her two sons, DEMETRIUS and CHIRON;\nLORDS and others. The EMPEROR brings the arrows in his hand that TITUS\nshot at him\n\n  SATURNINUS. Why, lords, what wrongs are these! Was ever seen\n    An emperor in Rome thus overborne,\n    Troubled, confronted thus; and, for the extent\n    Of egal justice, us\'d in such contempt?\n    My lords, you know, as know the mightful gods,\n    However these disturbers of our peace\n    Buzz in the people\'s ears, there nought hath pass\'d\n    But even with law against the wilful sons\n    Of old Andronicus. And what an if\n    His sorrows have so overwhelm\'d his wits,\n    Shall we be thus afflicted in his wreaks,\n    His fits, his frenzy, and his bitterness?\n    And now he writes to heaven for his redress.\n    See, here\'s \'To Jove\' and this \'To Mercury\';\n    This \'To Apollo\'; this \'To the God of War\'-  \n    Sweet scrolls to fly about the streets of Rome!\n    What\'s this but libelling against the Senate,\n    And blazoning our unjustice every where?\n    A goodly humour, is it not, my lords?\n    As who would say in Rome no justice were.\n    But if I live, his feigned ecstasies\n    Shall be no shelter to these outrages;\n    But he and his shall know that justice lives\n    In Saturninus\' health; whom, if she sleep,\n    He\'ll so awake as he in fury shall\n    Cut off the proud\'st conspirator that lives.\n  TAMORA. My gracious lord, my lovely Saturnine,\n    Lord of my life, commander of my thoughts,\n    Calm thee, and bear the faults of Titus\' age,\n    Th\' effects of sorrow for his valiant sons\n    Whose loss hath pierc\'d him deep and scarr\'d his heart;\n    And rather comfort his distressed plight\n    Than prosecute the meanest or the best\n    For these contempts.  [Aside]  Why, thus it shall become\n    High-witted Tamora to gloze with all.  \n    But, Titus, I have touch\'d thee to the quick,\n    Thy life-blood out; if Aaron now be wise,\n    Then is all safe, the anchor in the port.\n\n                       Enter CLOWN\n\n    How now, good fellow! Wouldst thou speak with us?\n  CLOWN. Yes, forsooth, an your mistriship be Emperial.\n  TAMORA. Empress I am, but yonder sits the Emperor.\n  CLOWN. \'Tis he.- God and Saint Stephen give you godden. I have\n    brought you a letter and a couple of pigeons here.\n                                   [SATURNINUS reads the letter]\n  SATURNINUS. Go take him away, and hang him presently.\n  CLOWN. How much money must I have?\n  TAMORA. Come, sirrah, you must be hang\'d.\n  CLOWN. Hang\'d! by\'r lady, then I have brought up a neck to a fair\n    end.                                          [Exit guarded]\n  SATURNINUS. Despiteful and intolerable wrongs!\n    Shall I endure this monstrous villainy?\n    I know from whence this same device proceeds.  \n    May this be borne- as if his traitorous sons\n    That died by law for murder of our brother\n    Have by my means been butchered wrongfully?\n    Go drag the villain hither by the hair;\n    Nor age nor honour shall shape privilege.\n    For this proud mock I\'ll be thy slaughterman,\n    Sly frantic wretch, that holp\'st to make me great,\n    In hope thyself should govern Rome and me.\n\n                   Enter NUNTIUS AEMILIUS\n\n    What news with thee, Aemilius?\n  AEMILIUS. Arm, my lords! Rome never had more cause.\n    The Goths have gathered head; and with a power\n    Of high resolved men, bent to the spoil,\n    They hither march amain, under conduct\n    Of Lucius, son to old Andronicus;\n    Who threats in course of this revenge to do\n    As much as ever Coriolanus did.\n  SATURNINUS. Is warlike Lucius general of the Goths?  \n    These tidings nip me, and I hang the head\n    As flowers with frost, or grass beat down with storms.\n    Ay, now begins our sorrows to approach.\n    \'Tis he the common people love so much;\n    Myself hath often heard them say-\n    When I have walked like a private man-\n    That Lucius\' banishment was wrongfully,\n    And they have wish\'d that Lucius were their emperor.\n  TAMORA. Why should you fear? Is not your city strong?\n  SATURNINUS. Ay, but the citizens favour Lucius,\n    And will revolt from me to succour him.\n  TAMORA. King, be thy thoughts imperious like thy name!\n    Is the sun dimm\'d, that gnats do fly in it?\n    The eagle suffers little birds to sing,\n    And is not careful what they mean thereby,\n    Knowing that with the shadow of his wings\n    He can at pleasure stint their melody;\n    Even so mayest thou the giddy men of Rome.\n    Then cheer thy spirit; for know thou, Emperor,\n    I will enchant the old Andronicus  \n    With words more sweet, and yet more dangerous,\n    Than baits to fish or honey-stalks to sheep,\n    When as the one is wounded with the bait,\n    The other rotted with delicious feed.\n  SATURNINUS. But he will not entreat his son for us.\n  TAMORA. If Tamora entreat him, then he will;\n    For I can smooth and fill his aged ears\n    With golden promises, that, were his heart\n    Almost impregnable, his old ears deaf,\n    Yet should both ear and heart obey my tongue.\n    [To AEMILIUS]  Go thou before to be our ambassador;\n    Say that the Emperor requests a parley\n    Of warlike Lucius, and appoint the meeting\n    Even at his father\'s house, the old Andronicus.\n  SATURNINUS. Aemilius, do this message honourably;\n    And if he stand on hostage for his safety,\n    Bid him demand what pledge will please him best.\n  AEMILIUS. Your bidding shall I do effectually.            Exit\n  TAMORA. Now will I to that old Andronicus,\n    And temper him with all the art I have,  \n    To pluck proud Lucius from the warlike Goths.\n    And now, sweet Emperor, be blithe again,\n    And bury all thy fear in my devices.\n  SATURNINUS. Then go successantly, and plead to him.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nPlains near Rome\n\nEnter LUCIUS with an army of GOTHS with drums and colours\n\n  LUCIUS. Approved warriors and my faithful friends,\n    I have received letters from great Rome\n    Which signifies what hate they bear their Emperor\n    And how desirous of our sight they are.\n    Therefore, great lords, be, as your titles witness,\n    Imperious and impatient of your wrongs;\n    And wherein Rome hath done you any scath,\n    Let him make treble satisfaction.\n  FIRST GOTH. Brave slip, sprung from the great Andronicus,\n    Whose name was once our terror, now our comfort,\n    Whose high exploits and honourable deeds\n    Ingrateful Rome requites with foul contempt,\n    Be bold in us: we\'ll follow where thou lead\'st,\n    Like stinging bees in hottest summer\'s day,\n    Led by their master to the flow\'red fields,\n    And be aveng\'d on cursed Tamora.  \n  ALL THE GOTHS. And as he saith, so say we all with him.\n  LUCIUS. I humbly thank him, and I thank you all.\n    But who comes here, led by a lusty Goth?\n\n     Enter a GOTH, leading AARON with his CHILD in his arms\n\n  SECOND GOTH. Renowned Lucius, from our troops I stray\'d\n    To gaze upon a ruinous monastery;\n    And as I earnestly did fix mine eye\n    Upon the wasted building, suddenly\n    I heard a child cry underneath a wall.\n    I made unto the noise, when soon I heard\n    The crying babe controll\'d with this discourse:\n    \'Peace, tawny slave, half me and half thy dam!\n    Did not thy hue bewray whose brat thou art,\n    Had nature lent thee but thy mother\'s look,\n    Villain, thou mightst have been an emperor;\n    But where the bull and cow are both milk-white,\n    They never do beget a coal-black calf.\n    Peace, villain, peace!\'- even thus he rates the babe-  \n    \'For I must bear thee to a trusty Goth,\n    Who, when he knows thou art the Empress\' babe,\n    Will hold thee dearly for thy mother\'s sake.\'\n    With this, my weapon drawn, I rush\'d upon him,\n    Surpris\'d him suddenly, and brought him hither\n    To use as you think needful of the man.\n  LUCIUS. O worthy Goth, this is the incarnate devil\n    That robb\'d Andronicus of his good hand;\n    This is the pearl that pleas\'d your Empress\' eye;\n    And here\'s the base fruit of her burning lust.\n    Say, wall-ey\'d slave, whither wouldst thou convey\n    This growing image of thy fiend-like face?\n    Why dost not speak? What, deaf? Not a word?\n    A halter, soldiers! Hang him on this tree,\n    And by his side his fruit of bastardy.\n  AARON. Touch not the boy, he is of royal blood.\n  LUCIUS. Too like the sire for ever being good.\n    First hang the child, that he may see it sprawl-\n    A sight to vex the father\'s soul withal.\n    Get me a ladder.  \n                [A ladder brought, which AARON is made to climb]\n  AARON. Lucius, save the child,\n    And bear it from me to the Emperess.\n    If thou do this, I\'ll show thee wondrous things\n    That highly may advantage thee to hear;\n    If thou wilt not, befall what may befall,\n    I\'ll speak no more but \'Vengeance rot you all!\'\n  LUCIUS. Say on; an if it please me which thou speak\'st,\n    Thy child shall live, and I will see it nourish\'d.\n  AARON. An if it please thee! Why, assure thee, Lucius,\n    \'Twill vex thy soul to hear what I shall speak;\n    For I must talk of murders, rapes, and massacres,\n    Acts of black night, abominable deeds,\n    Complots of mischief, treason, villainies,\n    Ruthful to hear, yet piteously perform\'d;\n    And this shall all be buried in my death,\n    Unless thou swear to me my child shall live.\n  LUCIUS. Tell on thy mind; I say thy child shall live.\n  AARON. Swear that he shall, and then I will begin.\n  LUCIUS. Who should I swear by? Thou believest no god;  \n    That granted, how canst thou believe an oath?\n  AARON. What if I do not? as indeed I do not;\n    Yet, for I know thou art religious\n    And hast a thing within thee called conscience,\n    With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies\n    Which I have seen thee careful to observe,\n    Therefore I urge thy oath. For that I know\n    An idiot holds his bauble for a god,\n    And keeps the oath which by that god he swears,\n    To that I\'ll urge him. Therefore thou shalt vow\n    By that same god- what god soe\'er it be\n    That thou adorest and hast in reverence-\n    To save my boy, to nourish and bring him up;\n    Or else I will discover nought to thee.\n  LUCIUS. Even by my god I swear to thee I will.\n  AARON. First know thou, I begot him on the Empress.\n  LUCIUS. O most insatiate and luxurious woman!\n  AARON. Tut, Lucius, this was but a deed of charity\n    To that which thou shalt hear of me anon.\n    \'Twas her two sons that murdered Bassianus;  \n    They cut thy sister\'s tongue, and ravish\'d her,\n    And cut her hands, and trimm\'d her as thou sawest.\n  LUCIUS. O detestable villain! Call\'st thou that trimming?\n  AARON. Why, she was wash\'d, and cut, and trimm\'d, and \'twas\n    Trim sport for them which had the doing of it.\n  LUCIUS. O barbarous beastly villains like thyself!\n  AARON. Indeed, I was their tutor to instruct them.\n    That codding spirit had they from their mother,\n    As sure a card as ever won the set;\n    That bloody mind, I think, they learn\'d of me,\n    As true a dog as ever fought at head.\n    Well, let my deeds be witness of my worth.\n    I train\'d thy brethren to that guileful hole\n    Where the dead corpse of Bassianus lay;\n    I wrote the letter that thy father found,\n    And hid the gold within that letter mention\'d,\n    Confederate with the Queen and her two sons;\n    And what not done, that thou hast cause to rue,\n    Wherein I had no stroke of mischief in it?\n    I play\'d the cheater for thy father\'s hand,  \n    And, when I had it, drew myself apart\n    And almost broke my heart with extreme laughter.\n    I pried me through the crevice of a wall,\n    When, for his hand, he had his two sons\' heads;\n    Beheld his tears, and laugh\'d so heartily\n    That both mine eyes were rainy like to his;\n    And when I told the Empress of this sport,\n    She swooned almost at my pleasing tale,\n    And for my tidings gave me twenty kisses.\n  GOTH. What, canst thou say all this and never blush?\n  AARON. Ay, like a black dog, as the saying is.\n  LUCIUS. Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?\n  AARON. Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.\n    Even now I curse the day- and yet, I think,\n    Few come within the compass of my curse-\n    Wherein I did not some notorious ill;\n    As kill a man, or else devise his death;\n    Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it;\n    Accuse some innocent, and forswear myself;\n    Set deadly enmity between two friends;  \n    Make poor men\'s cattle break their necks;\n    Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,\n    And bid the owners quench them with their tears.\n    Oft have I digg\'d up dead men from their graves,\n    And set them upright at their dear friends\' door\n    Even when their sorrows almost was forgot,\n    And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,\n    Have with my knife carved in Roman letters\n    \'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.\'\n    Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things\n    As willingly as one would kill a fly;\n    And nothing grieves me heartily indeed\n    But that I cannot do ten thousand more.\n  LUCIUS. Bring down the devil, for he must not die\n    So sweet a death as hanging presently.\n  AARON. If there be devils, would I were a devil,\n    To live and burn in everlasting fire,\n    So I might have your company in hell\n    But to torment you with my bitter tongue!\n  LUCIUS. Sirs, stop his mouth, and let him speak no more.  \n\n                       Enter AEMILIUS\n\n  GOTH. My lord, there is a messenger from Rome\n    Desires to be admitted to your presence.\n  LUCIUS. Let him come near.\n    Welcome, Aemilius. What\'s the news from Rome?\n  AEMILIUS. Lord Lucius, and you Princes of the Goths,\n    The Roman Emperor greets you all by me;\n    And, for he understands you are in arms,\n    He craves a parley at your father\'s house,\n    Willing you to demand your hostages,\n    And they shall be immediately deliver\'d.\n  FIRST GOTH. What says our general?\n  LUCIUS. Aemilius, let the Emperor give his pledges\n    Unto my father and my uncle Marcus.\n    And we will come. March away.                         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nRome. Before TITUS\' house\n\nEnter TAMORA, and her two sons, DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, disguised\n\n  TAMORA. Thus, in this strange and sad habiliment,\n    I will encounter with Andronicus,\n    And say I am Revenge, sent from below\n    To join with him and right his heinous wrongs.\n    Knock at his study, where they say he keeps\n    To ruminate strange plots of dire revenge;\n    Tell him Revenge is come to join with him,\n    And work confusion on his enemies.\n\n         They knock and TITUS opens his study door, above\n\n  TITUS. Who doth molest my contemplation?\n    Is it your trick to make me ope the door,\n    That so my sad decrees may fly away\n    And all my study be to no effect?\n    You are deceiv\'d; for what I mean to do  \n    See here in bloody lines I have set down;\n    And what is written shall be executed.\n  TAMORA. Titus, I am come to talk with thee.\n  TITUS. No, not a word. How can I grace my talk,\n    Wanting a hand to give it that accord?\n    Thou hast the odds of me; therefore no more.\n  TAMORA. If thou didst know me, thou wouldst talk with me.\n  TITUS. I am not mad, I know thee well enough:\n    Witness this wretched stump, witness these crimson lines;\n    Witness these trenches made by grief and care;\n    Witness the tiring day and heavy night;\n    Witness all sorrow that I know thee well\n    For our proud Empress, mighty Tamora.\n    Is not thy coming for my other hand?\n  TAMORA. Know thou, sad man, I am not Tamora:\n    She is thy enemy and I thy friend.\n    I am Revenge, sent from th\' infernal kingdom\n    To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind\n    By working wreakful vengeance on thy foes.\n    Come down and welcome me to this world\'s light;  \n    Confer with me of murder and of death;\n    There\'s not a hollow cave or lurking-place,\n    No vast obscurity or misty vale,\n    Where bloody murder or detested rape\n    Can couch for fear but I will find them out;\n    And in their ears tell them my dreadful name-\n    Revenge, which makes the foul offender quake.\n  TITUS. Art thou Revenge? and art thou sent to me\n    To be a torment to mine enemies?\n  TAMORA. I am; therefore come down and welcome me.\n  TITUS. Do me some service ere I come to thee.\n    Lo, by thy side where Rape and Murder stands;\n    Now give some surance that thou art Revenge-\n    Stab them, or tear them on thy chariot wheels;\n    And then I\'ll come and be thy waggoner\n    And whirl along with thee about the globes.\n    Provide thee two proper palfreys, black as jet,\n    To hale thy vengeful waggon swift away,\n    And find out murderers in their guilty caves;\n    And when thy car is loaden with their heads,  \n    I will dismount, and by thy waggon wheel\n    Trot, like a servile footman, all day long,\n    Even from Hyperion\'s rising in the east\n    Until his very downfall in the sea.\n    And day by day I\'ll do this heavy task,\n    So thou destroy Rapine and Murder there.\n  TAMORA. These are my ministers, and come with me.\n  TITUS. Are they thy ministers? What are they call\'d?\n  TAMORA. Rape and Murder; therefore called so\n    \'Cause they take vengeance of such kind of men.\n  TITUS. Good Lord, how like the Empress\' sons they are!\n    And you the Empress! But we worldly men\n    Have miserable, mad, mistaking eyes.\n    O sweet Revenge, now do I come to thee;\n    And, if one arm\'s embracement will content thee,\n    I will embrace thee in it by and by.\n  TAMORA. This closing with him fits his lunacy.\n    Whate\'er I forge to feed his brain-sick humours,\n    Do you uphold and maintain in your speeches,\n    For now he firmly takes me for Revenge;  \n    And, being credulous in this mad thought,\n    I\'ll make him send for Lucius his son,\n    And whilst I at a banquet hold him sure,\n    I\'ll find some cunning practice out of hand\n    To scatter and disperse the giddy Goths,\n    Or, at the least, make them his enemies.\n    See, here he comes, and I must ply my theme.\n\n                 Enter TITUS, below\n\n  TITUS. Long have I been forlorn, and all for thee.\n    Welcome, dread Fury, to my woeful house.\n    Rapine and Murder, you are welcome too.\n    How like the Empress and her sons you are!\n    Well are you fitted, had you but a Moor.\n    Could not all hell afford you such a devil?\n    For well I wot the Empress never wags\n    But in her company there is a Moor;\n    And, would you represent our queen aright,\n    It were convenient you had such a devil.  \n    But welcome as you are. What shall we do?\n  TAMORA. What wouldst thou have us do, Andronicus?\n  DEMETRIUS. Show me a murderer, I\'ll deal with him.\n  CHIRON. Show me a villain that hath done a rape,\n    And I am sent to be reveng\'d on him.\n  TAMORA. Show me a thousand that hath done thee wrong,\n    And I will be revenged on them all.\n  TITUS. Look round about the wicked streets of Rome,\n    And when thou find\'st a man that\'s like thyself,\n    Good Murder, stab him; he\'s a murderer.\n    Go thou with him, and when it is thy hap\n    To find another that is like to thee,\n    Good Rapine, stab him; he is a ravisher.\n    Go thou with them; and in the Emperor\'s court\n    There is a queen, attended by a Moor;\n    Well shalt thou know her by thine own proportion,\n    For up and down she doth resemble thee.\n    I pray thee, do on them some violent death;\n    They have been violent to me and mine.\n  TAMORA. Well hast thou lesson\'d us; this shall we do.  \n    But would it please thee, good Andronicus,\n    To send for Lucius, thy thrice-valiant son,\n    Who leads towards Rome a band of warlike Goths,\n    And bid him come and banquet at thy house;\n    When he is here, even at thy solemn feast,\n    I will bring in the Empress and her sons,\n    The Emperor himself, and all thy foes;\n    And at thy mercy shall they stoop and kneel,\n    And on them shalt thou ease thy angry heart.\n    What says Andronicus to this device?\n  TITUS. Marcus, my brother! \'Tis sad Titus calls.\n\n                  Enter MARCUS\n\n    Go, gentle Marcus, to thy nephew Lucius;\n    Thou shalt inquire him out among the Goths.\n    Bid him repair to me, and bring with him\n    Some of the chiefest princes of the Goths;\n    Bid him encamp his soldiers where they are.\n    Tell him the Emperor and the Empress too  \n    Feast at my house, and he shall feast with them.\n    This do thou for my love; and so let him,\n    As he regards his aged father\'s life.\n  MARCUS. This will I do, and soon return again.            Exit\n  TAMORA. Now will I hence about thy business,\n    And take my ministers along with me.\n  TITUS. Nay, nay, let Rape and Murder stay with me,\n    Or else I\'ll call my brother back again,\n    And cleave to no revenge but Lucius.\n  TAMORA.  [Aside to her sons]  What say you, boys? Will you abide\n      with him,\n    Whiles I go tell my lord the Emperor\n    How I have govern\'d our determin\'d jest?\n    Yield to his humour, smooth and speak him fair,\n    And tarry with him till I turn again.\n  TITUS.  [Aside]  I knew them all, though they suppos\'d me mad,\n    And will o\'er reach them in their own devices,\n    A pair of cursed hell-hounds and their dam.\n  DEMETRIUS. Madam, depart at pleasure; leave us here.\n  TAMORA. Farewell, Andronicus, Revenge now goes  \n    To lay a complot to betray thy foes.\n  TITUS. I know thou dost; and, sweet Revenge, farewell.\n                                                     Exit TAMORA\n  CHIRON. Tell us, old man, how shall we be employ\'d?\n  TITUS. Tut, I have work enough for you to do.\n    Publius, come hither, Caius, and Valentine.\n\n          Enter PUBLIUS, CAIUS, and VALENTINE\n\n  PUBLIUS. What is your will?\n  TITUS. Know you these two?\n  PUBLIUS. The Empress\' sons, I take them: Chiron, Demetrius.\n  TITUS. Fie, Publius, fie! thou art too much deceiv\'d.\n    The one is Murder, and Rape is the other\'s name;\n    And therefore bind them, gentle Publius-\n    Caius and Valentine, lay hands on them.\n    Oft have you heard me wish for such an hour,\n    And now I find it; therefore bind them sure,\n    And stop their mouths if they begin to cry.             Exit\n                         [They lay hold on CHIRON and DEMETRIUS]  \n  CHIRON. Villains, forbear! we are the Empress\' sons.\n  PUBLIUS. And therefore do we what we are commanded.\n    Stop close their mouths, let them not speak a word.\n    Is he sure bound? Look that you bind them fast.\n\n               Re-enter TITUS ANDRONICUS\n        with a knife, and LAVINIA, with a basin\n\n  TITUS. Come, come, Lavinia; look, thy foes are bound.\n    Sirs, stop their mouths, let them not speak to me;\n    But let them hear what fearful words I utter.\n    O villains, Chiron and Demetrius!\n    Here stands the spring whom you have stain\'d with mud;\n    This goodly summer with your winter mix\'d.\n    You kill\'d her husband; and for that vile fault\n    Two of her brothers were condemn\'d to death,\n    My hand cut off and made a merry jest;\n    Both her sweet hands, her tongue, and that more dear\n    Than hands or tongue, her spotless chastity,\n    Inhuman traitors, you constrain\'d and forc\'d.  \n    What would you say, if I should let you speak?\n    Villains, for shame you could not beg for grace.\n    Hark, wretches! how I mean to martyr you.\n    This one hand yet is left to cut your throats,\n    Whiles that Lavinia \'tween her stumps doth hold\n    The basin that receives your guilty blood.\n    You know your mother means to feast with me,\n    And calls herself Revenge, and thinks me mad.\n    Hark, villains! I will grind your bones to dust,\n    And with your blood and it I\'ll make a paste;\n    And of the paste a coffin I will rear,\n    And make two pasties of your shameful heads;\n    And bid that strumpet, your unhallowed dam,\n    Like to the earth, swallow her own increase.\n    This is the feast that I have bid her to,\n    And this the banquet she shall surfeit on;\n    For worse than Philomel you us\'d my daughter,\n    And worse than Progne I will be reveng\'d.\n    And now prepare your throats. Lavinia, come,\n    Receive the blood; and when that they are dead,  \n    Let me go grind their bones to powder small,\n    And with this hateful liquor temper it;\n    And in that paste let their vile heads be bak\'d.\n    Come, come, be every one officious\n    To make this banquet, which I wish may prove\n    More stern and bloody than the Centaurs\' feast.\n                                         [He cuts their throats]\n    So.\n    Now bring them in, for I will play the cook,\n    And see them ready against their mother comes.\n                                 Exeunt, bearing the dead bodies\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nThe court of TITUS\' house\n\nEnter Lucius, MARCUS, and the GOTHS, with AARON prisoner,\nand his CHILD in the arms of an attendant\n\n  LUCIUS. Uncle Marcus, since \'tis my father\'s mind\n    That I repair to Rome, I am content.\n    FIRST GOTH. And ours with thine, befall what fortune will.\n  LUCIUS. Good uncle, take you in this barbarous Moor,\n    This ravenous tiger, this accursed devil;\n    Let him receive no sust\'nance, fetter him,\n    Till he be brought unto the Empress\' face\n    For testimony of her foul proceedings.\n    And see the ambush of our friends be strong;\n    I fear the Emperor means no good to us.\n  AARON. Some devil whisper curses in my ear,\n    And prompt me that my tongue may utter forth\n    The venomous malice of my swelling heart!\n  LUCIUS. Away, inhuman dog, unhallowed slave!\n    Sirs, help our uncle to convey him in.  \n                        Exeunt GOTHS with AARON. Flourish within\n    The trumpets show the Emperor is at hand.\n\n            Sound trumpets. Enter SATURNINUS and\n    TAMORA, with AEMILIUS, TRIBUNES, SENATORS, and others\n\n  SATURNINUS. What, hath the firmament more suns than one?\n  LUCIUS. What boots it thee to can thyself a sun?\n  MARCUS. Rome\'s Emperor, and nephew, break the parle;\n    These quarrels must be quietly debated.\n    The feast is ready which the careful Titus\n    Hath ordain\'d to an honourable end,\n    For peace, for love, for league, and good to Rome.\n    Please you, therefore, draw nigh and take your places.\n  SATURNINUS. Marcus, we will.\n                      [A table brought in. The company sit down]\n\n               Trumpets sounding, enter TITUS\n         like a cook, placing the dishes, and LAVINIA\n   with a veil over her face; also YOUNG LUCIUS, and others  \n\n  TITUS. Welcome, my lord; welcome, dread Queen;\n    Welcome, ye warlike Goths; welcome, Lucius;\n    And welcome all. Although the cheer be poor,\n    \'Twill fill your stomachs; please you eat of it.\n  SATURNINUS. Why art thou thus attir\'d, Andronicus?\n  TITUS. Because I would be sure to have all well\n    To entertain your Highness and your Empress.\n  TAMORA. We are beholding to you, good Andronicus.\n  TITUS. An if your Highness knew my heart, you were.\n    My lord the Emperor, resolve me this:\n    Was it well done of rash Virginius\n    To slay his daughter with his own right hand,\n    Because she was enforc\'d, stain\'d, and deflower\'d?\n  SATURNINUS. It was, Andronicus.\n  TITUS. Your reason, mighty lord.\n  SATURNINUS. Because the girl should not survive her shame,\n    And by her presence still renew his sorrows.\n  TITUS. A reason mighty, strong, and effectual;\n    A pattern, precedent, and lively warrant  \n    For me, most wretched, to perform the like.\n    Die, die, Lavinia, and thy shame with thee;   [He kills her]\n    And with thy shame thy father\'s sorrow die!\n  SATURNINUS. What hast thou done, unnatural and unkind?\n  TITUS. Kill\'d her for whom my tears have made me blind.\n    I am as woeful as Virginius was,\n    And have a thousand times more cause than he\n    To do this outrage; and it now is done.\n  SATURNINUS. What, was she ravish\'d? Tell who did the deed.\n  TITUS. Will\'t please you eat?  Will\'t please your Highness feed?\n  TAMORA. Why hast thou slain thine only daughter thus?\n  TITUS. Not I; \'twas Chiron and Demetrius.\n    They ravish\'d her, and cut away her tongue;\n    And they, \'twas they, that did her all this wrong.\n  SATURNINUS. Go, fetch them hither to us presently.\n  TITUS. Why, there they are, both baked in this pie,\n    Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,\n    Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.\n    \'Tis true, \'tis true: witness my knife\'s sharp point.\n                                          [He stabs the EMPRESS]  \n  SATURNINUS. Die, frantic wretch, for this accursed deed!\n                                                [He stabs TITUS]\n  LUCIUS. Can the son\'s eye behold his father bleed?\n    There\'s meed for meed, death for a deadly deed.\n                   [He stabs SATURNINUS. A great tumult. LUCIUS,\n               MARCUS, and their friends go up into the balcony]\n  MARCUS. You sad-fac\'d men, people and sons of Rome,\n    By uproars sever\'d, as a flight of fowl\n    Scatter\'d by winds and high tempestuous gusts?\n    O, let me teach you how to knit again\n    This scattered corn into one mutual sheaf,\n    These broken limbs again into one body;\n    Lest Rome herself be bane unto herself,\n    And she whom mighty kingdoms curtsy to,\n    Like a forlorn and desperate castaway,\n    Do shameful execution on herself.\n    But if my frosty signs and chaps of age,\n    Grave witnesses of true experience,\n    Cannot induce you to attend my words,\n    [To Lucius]  Speak, Rome\'s dear friend, as erst our ancestor,  \n    When with his solemn tongue he did discourse\n    To love-sick Dido\'s sad attending ear\n    The story of that baleful burning night,\n    When subtle Greeks surpris\'d King Priam\'s Troy.\n    Tell us what Sinon hath bewitch\'d our ears,\n    Or who hath brought the fatal engine in\n    That gives our Troy, our Rome, the civil wound.\n    My heart is not compact of flint nor steel;\n    Nor can I utter all our bitter grief,\n    But floods of tears will drown my oratory\n    And break my utt\'rance, even in the time\n    When it should move ye to attend me most,\n    And force you to commiseration.\n    Here\'s Rome\'s young Captain, let him tell the tale;\n    While I stand by and weep to hear him speak.\n  LUCIUS. Then, gracious auditory, be it known to you\n    That Chiron and the damn\'d Demetrius\n    Were they that murd\'red our Emperor\'s brother;\n    And they it were that ravished our sister.\n    For their fell faults our brothers were beheaded,  \n    Our father\'s tears despis\'d, and basely cozen\'d\n    Of that true hand that fought Rome\'s quarrel out\n    And sent her enemies unto the grave.\n    Lastly, myself unkindly banished,\n    The gates shut on me, and turn\'d weeping out,\n    To beg relief among Rome\'s enemies;\n    Who drown\'d their enmity in my true tears,\n    And op\'d their arms to embrace me as a friend.\n    I am the turned forth, be it known to you,\n    That have preserv\'d her welfare in my blood\n    And from her bosom took the enemy\'s point,\n    Sheathing the steel in my advent\'rous body.\n    Alas! you know I am no vaunter, I;\n    My scars can witness, dumb although they are,\n    That my report is just and full of truth.\n    But, soft! methinks I do digress too much,\n    Citing my worthless praise. O, pardon me!\n    For when no friends are by, men praise themselves.\n  MARCUS. Now is my turn to speak. Behold the child.\n                  [Pointing to the CHILD in an attendant\'s arms]  \n    Of this was Tamora delivered,\n    The issue of an irreligious Moor,\n    Chief architect and plotter of these woes.\n    The villain is alive in Titus\' house,\n    Damn\'d as he is, to witness this is true.\n    Now judge what cause had Titus to revenge\n    These wrongs unspeakable, past patience,\n    Or more than any living man could bear.\n    Now have you heard the truth: what say you, Romans?\n    Have we done aught amiss, show us wherein,\n    And, from the place where you behold us pleading,\n    The poor remainder of Andronici\n    Will, hand in hand, all headlong hurl ourselves,\n    And on the ragged stones beat forth our souls,\n    And make a mutual closure of our house.\n    Speak, Romans, speak; and if you say we shall,\n    Lo, hand in hand, Lucius and I will fall.\n  AEMILIUS. Come, come, thou reverend man of Rome,\n    And bring our Emperor gently in thy hand,\n    Lucius our Emperor; for well I know  \n    The common voice do cry it shall be so.\n  ALL. Lucius, all hail, Rome\'s royal Emperor!\n  MARCUS. Go, go into old Titus\' sorrowful house,\n    And hither hale that misbelieving Moor\n    To be adjudg\'d some direful slaught\'ring death,\n    As punishment for his most wicked life.          Exeunt some\n              attendants. LUCIUS, MARCUS, and the others descend\n  ALL. Lucius, all hail, Rome\'s gracious governor!\n  LUCIUS. Thanks, gentle Romans! May I govern so\n    To heal Rome\'s harms and wipe away her woe!\n    But, gentle people, give me aim awhile,\n    For nature puts me to a heavy task.\n    Stand all aloof; but, uncle, draw you near\n    To shed obsequious tears upon this trunk.\n    O, take this warm kiss on thy pale cold lips.  [Kisses TITUS]\n    These sorrowful drops upon thy blood-stain\'d face,\n    The last true duties of thy noble son!\n  MARCUS. Tear for tear and loving kiss for kiss\n    Thy brother Marcus tenders on thy lips.\n    O, were the sum of these that I should pay  \n    Countless and infinite, yet would I pay them!\n  LUCIUS. Come hither, boy; come, come, come, and learn of us\n    To melt in showers. Thy grandsire lov\'d thee well;\n    Many a time he danc\'d thee on his knee,\n    Sung thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow;\n    Many a story hath he told to thee,\n    And bid thee bear his pretty tales in mind\n    And talk of them when he was dead and gone.\n  MARCUS. How many thousand times hath these poor lips,\n    When they were living, warm\'d themselves on thine!\n    O, now, sweet boy, give them their latest kiss!\n    Bid him farewell; commit him to the grave;\n    Do them that kindness, and take leave of them.\n  BOY. O grandsire, grandsire! ev\'n with all my heart\n    Would I were dead, so you did live again!\n    O Lord, I cannot speak to him for weeping;\n    My tears will choke me, if I ope my mouth.\n\n            Re-enter attendants with AARON\n  \n  A ROMAN. You sad Andronici, have done with woes;\n    Give sentence on the execrable wretch\n    That hath been breeder of these dire events.\n  LUCIUS. Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him;\n    There let him stand and rave and cry for food.\n    If any one relieves or pities him,\n    For the offence he dies. This is our doom.\n    Some stay to see him fast\'ned in the earth.\n  AARON. Ah, why should wrath be mute and fury dumb?\n    I am no baby, I, that with base prayers\n    I should repent the evils I have done;\n    Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did\n    Would I perform, if I might have my will.\n    If one good deed in all my life I did,\n    I do repent it from my very soul.\n  LUCIUS. Some loving friends convey the Emperor hence,\n    And give him burial in his father\'s grave.\n    My father and Lavinia shall forthwith\n    Be closed in our household\'s monument.\n    As for that ravenous tiger, Tamora,  \n    No funeral rite, nor man in mourning weed,\n    No mournful bell shall ring her burial;\n    But throw her forth to beasts and birds to prey.\n    Her life was beastly and devoid of pity,\n    And being dead, let birds on her take pity.           Exeunt\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1602\n\nTHE HISTORY OF TROILUS AND CRESSIDA\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\n  PRIAM, King of Troy\n\n    His sons:\n  HECTOR\n  TROILUS\n  PARIS\n  DEIPHOBUS\n  HELENUS\n\n  MARGARELON, a bastard son of Priam\n\n     Trojan commanders:\n  AENEAS\n  ANTENOR\n\n  CALCHAS, a Trojan priest, taking part with the Greeks\n  PANDARUS, uncle to Cressida\n  AGAMEMNON, the Greek general\n  MENELAUS, his brother\n  \n    Greek commanders:\n  ACHILLES\n  AJAX\n  ULYSSES\n  NESTOR\n  DIOMEDES\n  PATROCLUS\n\n  THERSITES, a deformed and scurrilous Greek\n  ALEXANDER, servant to Cressida\n  SERVANT to Troilus\n  SERVANT to Paris\n  SERVANT to Diomedes\n\n  HELEN, wife to Menelaus\n  ANDROMACHE, wife to Hector\n  CASSANDRA, daughter to Priam, a prophetess\n  CRESSIDA, daughter to Calchas\n\n  Trojan and Greek Soldiers, and Attendants  \n\n                          SCENE:\n             Troy and the Greek camp before it\n\nPROLOGUE\n                  TROILUS AND CRESSIDA\n                        PROLOGUE\n\n    In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece\n    The princes orgillous, their high blood chaf\'d,\n    Have to the port of Athens sent their ships\n    Fraught with the ministers and instruments\n    Of cruel war. Sixty and nine that wore\n    Their crownets regal from th\' Athenian bay\n    Put forth toward Phrygia; and their vow is made\n    To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures\n    The ravish\'d Helen, Menelaus\' queen,\n    With wanton Paris sleeps-and that\'s the quarrel.\n    To Tenedos they come,\n    And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge\n    Their war-like fraughtage. Now on Dardan plains\n    The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch\n    Their brave pavilions: Priam\'s six-gated city,\n    Dardan, and Tymbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien,\n    And Antenorides, with massy staples\n    And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts,\n    Sperr up the sons of Troy.  \n    Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits\n    On one and other side, Troyan and Greek,\n    Sets all on hazard-and hither am I come\n    A Prologue arm\'d, but not in confidence\n    Of author\'s pen or actor\'s voice, but suited\n    In like conditions as our argument,\n    To tell you, fair beholders, that our play\n    Leaps o\'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils,\n    Beginning in the middle; starting thence away,\n    To what may be digested in a play.\n    Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are;\n    Now good or bad, \'tis but the chance of war.\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE 1.\nTroy. Before PRIAM\'S palace\n\nEnter TROILUS armed, and PANDARUS\n\n  TROILUS. Call here my varlet; I\'ll unarm again.\n    Why should I war without the walls of Troy\n    That find such cruel battle here within?\n    Each Troyan that is master of his heart,\n    Let him to field; Troilus, alas, hath none!\n  PANDARUS. Will this gear ne\'er be mended?\n  TROILUS. The Greeks are strong, and skilful to their strength,\n    Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant;\n    But I am weaker than a woman\'s tear,\n    Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance,\n    Less valiant than the virgin in the night,\n    And skilless as unpractis\'d infancy.\n  PANDARUS. Well, I have told you enough of this; for my part,\n    I\'ll not meddle nor make no farther. He that will have a cake\n    out of the wheat must needs tarry the grinding.\n  TROILUS. Have I not tarried?\n  PANDARUS. Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting.  \n  TROILUS. Have I not tarried?\n  PANDARUS. Ay, the bolting; but you must tarry the leavening.\n  TROILUS. Still have I tarried.\n  PANDARUS. Ay, to the leavening; but here\'s yet in the word\n    \'hereafter\' the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating\n    of the oven, and the baking; nay, you must stay the cooling too,\n    or you may chance to burn your lips.\n  TROILUS. Patience herself, what goddess e\'er she be,\n    Doth lesser blench at suff\'rance than I do.\n    At Priam\'s royal table do I sit;\n    And when fair Cressid comes into my thoughts-\n    So, traitor, then she comes when she is thence.\n  PANDARUS. Well, she look\'d yesternight fairer than ever I saw her\n    look, or any woman else.\n  TROILUS. I was about to tell thee: when my heart,\n    As wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain,\n    Lest Hector or my father should perceive me,\n    I have, as when the sun doth light a storm,\n    Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile.\n    But sorrow that is couch\'d in seeming gladness  \n    Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness.\n  PANDARUS. An her hair were not somewhat darker than Helen\'s- well,\n    go to- there were no more comparison between the women. But, for\n    my part, she is my kinswoman; I would not, as they term it,\n    praise her, but I would somebody had heard her talk yesterday, as\n    I did. I  will not dispraise your sister Cassandra\'s wit; but-\n  TROILUS. O Pandarus! I tell thee, Pandarus-\n    When I do tell thee there my hopes lie drown\'d,\n    Reply not in how many fathoms deep\n    They lie indrench\'d. I tell thee I am mad\n    In Cressid\'s love. Thou answer\'st \'She is fair\'-\n    Pourest in the open ulcer of my heart-\n    Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice,\n    Handlest in thy discourse. O, that her hand,\n    In whose comparison all whites are ink\n    Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure\n    The cygnet\'s down is harsh, and spirit of sense\n    Hard as the palm of ploughman! This thou tell\'st me,\n    As true thou tell\'st me, when I say I love her;\n    But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm,  \n    Thou lay\'st in every gash that love hath given me\n    The knife that made it.\n  PANDARUS. I speak no more than truth.\n  TROILUS. Thou dost not speak so much.\n  PANDARUS. Faith, I\'ll not meddle in it. Let her be as she is: if\n    she be fair, \'tis the better for her; an she be not, she has the\n    mends in her own hands.\n  TROILUS. Good Pandarus! How now, Pandarus!\n  PANDARUS. I have had my labour for my travail, ill thought on of\n    her and ill thought on of you; gone between and between, but\n    small thanks for my labour.\n  TROILUS. What, art thou angry, Pandarus? What, with me?\n  PANDARUS. Because she\'s kin to me, therefore she\'s not so fair as\n    Helen. An she were not kin to me, she would be as fair a Friday\n    as Helen is on Sunday. But what care I? I care not an she were a\n    blackamoor; \'tis all one to me.\n  TROILUS. Say I she is not fair?\n  PANDARUS. I do not care whether you do or no. She\'s a fool to stay\n    behind her father. Let her to the Greeks; and so I\'ll tell her\n    the next time I see her. For my part, I\'ll meddle nor make no  \n    more i\' th\' matter.\n  TROILUS. Pandarus!\n  PANDARUS. Not I.\n  TROILUS. Sweet Pandarus!\n  PANDARUS. Pray you, speak no more to me: I will leave all\n    as I found it, and there an end.               Exit. Sound alarum\n  TROILUS. Peace, you ungracious clamours! Peace, rude sounds!\n    Fools on both sides! Helen must needs be fair,\n    When with your blood you daily paint her thus.\n    I cannot fight upon this argument;\n    It is too starv\'d a subject for my sword.\n    But Pandarus-O gods, how do you plague me!\n    I cannot come to Cressid but by Pandar;\n    And he\'s as tetchy to be woo\'d to woo\n    As she is stubborn-chaste against all suit.\n    Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne\'s love,\n    What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we?\n    Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl;\n    Between our Ilium and where she resides\n    Let it be call\'d the wild and wand\'ring flood;  \n    Ourself the merchant, and this sailing Pandar\n    Our doubtful hope, our convoy, and our bark.\n\n                Alarum. Enter AENEAS\n\n  AENEAS. How now, Prince Troilus! Wherefore not afield?\n  TROILUS. Because not there. This woman\'s answer sorts,\n    For womanish it is to be from thence.\n    What news, Aeneas, from the field to-day?\n  AENEAS. That Paris is returned home, and hurt.\n  TROILUS. By whom, Aeneas?\n  AENEAS. Troilus, by Menelaus.\n  TROILUS. Let Paris bleed: \'tis but a scar to scorn;\n    Paris is gor\'d with Menelaus\' horn.                      [Alarum]\n  AENEAS. Hark what good sport is out of town to-day!\n  TROILUS. Better at home, if \'would I might\' were \'may.\'\n    But to the sport abroad. Are you bound thither?\n  AENEAS. In all swift haste.\n  TROILUS. Come, go we then together.                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE 2.\nTroy. A street\n\nEnter CRESSIDA and her man ALEXANDER\n\n  CRESSIDA. Who were those went by?\n  ALEXANDER. Queen Hecuba and Helen.\n  CRESSIDA. And whither go they?\n  ALEXANDER. Up to the eastern tower,\n    Whose height commands as subject all the vale,\n    To see the battle. Hector, whose patience\n    Is as a virtue fix\'d, to-day was mov\'d.\n    He chid Andromache, and struck his armourer;\n    And, like as there were husbandry in war,\n    Before the sun rose he was harness\'d light,\n    And to the field goes he; where every flower\n    Did as a prophet weep what it foresaw\n    In Hector\'s wrath.\n  CRESSIDA. What was his cause of anger?\n  ALEXANDER. The noise goes, this: there is among the Greeks\n    A lord of Troyan blood, nephew to Hector;\n    They call him Ajax.  \n  CRESSIDA. Good; and what of him?\n  ALEXANDER. They say he is a very man per se,\n    And stands alone.\n  CRESSIDA. So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no\n    legs.\n  ALEXANDER. This man, lady, hath robb\'d many beasts of their\n    particular additions: he is as valiant as a lion, churlish as the\n    bear, slow as the elephant-a man into whom nature hath so crowded\n    humours that his valour is crush\'d into folly, his folly sauced\n    with discretion. There is no man hath a virtue that he hath not a\n    glimpse of, nor any man an attaint but he carries some stain of\n    it; he is melancholy without cause and merry against the hair; he\n    hath the joints of every thing; but everything so out of joint\n    that he is a gouty Briareus, many hands and no use, or purblind\n    Argus, all eyes and no sight.\n  CRESSIDA. But how should this man, that makes me smile, make Hector\n      angry?\n  ALEXANDER. They say he yesterday cop\'d Hector in the battle and\n    struck him down, the disdain and shame whereof hath ever since\n    kept Hector fasting and waking.  \n\n                          Enter PANDARUS\n\n  CRESSIDA. Who comes here?\n  ALEXANDER. Madam, your uncle Pandarus.\n  CRESSIDA. Hector\'s a gallant man.\n  ALEXANDER. As may be in the world, lady.\n  PANDARUS. What\'s that? What\'s that?\n  CRESSIDA. Good morrow, uncle Pandarus.\n  PANDARUS. Good morrow, cousin Cressid. What do you talk of?- Good\n    morrow, Alexander.-How do you, cousin? When were you at Ilium?\n  CRESSIDA. This morning, uncle.\n  PANDARUS. What were you talking of when I came? Was Hector arm\'d\n    and gone ere you came to Ilium? Helen was not up, was she?\n  CRESSIDA. Hector was gone; but Helen was not up.\n  PANDARUS. E\'en so. Hector was stirring early.\n  CRESSIDA. That were we talking of, and of his anger.\n  PANDARUS. Was he angry?\n  CRESSIDA. So he says here.\n  PANDARUS. True, he was so; I know the cause too; he\'ll lay about  \n    him today, I can tell them that. And there\'s Troilus will not\n    come far behind him; let them take heed of Troilus, I can tell\n    them that too.\n  CRESSIDA. What, is he angry too?\n  PANDARUS. Who, Troilus? Troilus is the better man of the two.\n  CRESSIDA. O Jupiter! there\'s no comparison.\n  PANDARUS. What, not between Troilus and Hector? Do you know a man\n    if you see him?\n  CRESSIDA. Ay, if I ever saw him before and knew him.\n  PANDARUS. Well, I say Troilus is Troilus.\n  CRESSIDA. Then you say as I say, for I am sure he is not Hector.\n  PANDARUS. No, nor Hector is not Troilus in some degrees.\n  CRESSIDA. \'Tis just to each of them: he is himself.\n  PANDARUS. Himself! Alas, poor Troilus! I would he were!\n  CRESSIDA. So he is.\n  PANDARUS. Condition I had gone barefoot to India.\n  CRESSIDA. He is not Hector.\n  PANDARUS. Himself! no, he\'s not himself. Would \'a were himself!\n    Well, the gods are above; time must friend or end. Well, Troilus,\n    well! I would my heart were in her body! No, Hector is not a  \n    better man than Troilus.\n  CRESSIDA. Excuse me.\n  PANDARUS. He is elder.\n  CRESSIDA. Pardon me, pardon me.\n  PANDARUS. Th\' other\'s not come to\'t; you shall tell me another tale\n    when th\' other\'s come to\'t. Hector shall not have his wit this\n    year.\n  CRESSIDA. He shall not need it if he have his own.\n  PANDARUS. Nor his qualities.\n  CRESSIDA. No matter.\n  PANDARUS. Nor his beauty.\n  CRESSIDA. \'Twould not become him: his own\'s better.\n  PANDARUS. YOU have no judgment, niece. Helen herself swore th\'\n    other day that Troilus, for a brown favour, for so \'tis, I must\n    confess- not brown neither-\n  CRESSIDA. No, but brown.\n  PANDARUS. Faith, to say truth, brown and not brown.\n  CRESSIDA. To say the truth, true and not true.\n  PANDARUS. She prais\'d his complexion above Paris.\n  CRESSIDA. Why, Paris hath colour enough.  \n  PANDARUS. So he has.\n  CRESSIDA. Then Troilus should have too much. If she prais\'d him\n    above, his complexion is higher than his; he having colour\n    enough, and the other higher, is too flaming praise for a good\n    complexion. I had as lief Helen\'s golden tongue had commended\n    Troilus for a copper nose.\n  PANDARUS. I swear to you I think Helen loves him better than Paris.\n  CRESSIDA. Then she\'s a merry Greek indeed.\n  PANDARUS. Nay, I am sure she does. She came to him th\' other day\n    into the compass\'d window-and you know he has not past three or\n    four hairs on his chin-\n  CRESSIDA. Indeed a tapster\'s arithmetic may soon bring his\n    particulars therein to a total.\n  PANDARUS. Why, he is very young, and yet will he within three pound\n    lift as much as his brother Hector.\n  CRESSIDA. Is he so young a man and so old a lifter?\n  PANDARUS. But to prove to you that Helen loves him: she came and\n    puts me her white hand to his cloven chin-\n  CRESSIDA. Juno have mercy! How came it cloven?\n  PANDARUS. Why, you know, \'tis dimpled. I think his smiling becomes  \n    him better than any man in all Phrygia.\n  CRESSIDA. O, he smiles valiantly!\n  PANDARUS. Does he not?\n  CRESSIDA. O yes, an \'twere a cloud in autumn!\n  PANDARUS. Why, go to, then! But to prove to you that Helen loves\n    Troilus-\n  CRESSIDA. Troilus will stand to the proof, if you\'ll prove it so.\n  PANDARUS. Troilus! Why, he esteems her no more than I esteem an\n    addle egg.\n  CRESSIDA. If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle\n    head, you would eat chickens i\' th\' shell.\n  PANDARUS. I cannot choose but laugh to think how she tickled his\n    chin. Indeed, she has a marvell\'s white hand, I must needs\n    confess.\n  CRESSIDA. Without the rack.\n  PANDARUS. And she takes upon her to spy a white hair on his chin.\n  CRESSIDA. Alas, poor chin! Many a wart is richer.\n  PANDARUS. But there was such laughing! Queen Hecuba laugh\'d that\n    her eyes ran o\'er.\n  CRESSIDA. With millstones.  \n  PANDARUS. And Cassandra laugh\'d.\n  CRESSIDA. But there was a more temperate fire under the pot of her\n    eyes. Did her eyes run o\'er too?\n  PANDARUS. And Hector laugh\'d.\n  CRESSIDA. At what was all this laughing?\n  PANDARUS. Marry, at the white hair that Helen spied on Troilus\'\n    chin.\n  CRESSIDA. An\'t had been a green hair I should have laugh\'d too.\n  PANDARUS. They laugh\'d not so much at the hair as at his pretty\n    answer.\n  CRESSIDA. What was his answer?\n  PANDARUS. Quoth she \'Here\'s but two and fifty hairs on your chin,\n    and one of them is white.\'\n  CRESSIDA. This is her question.\n  PANDARUS. That\'s true; make no question of that. \'Two and fifty\n    hairs,\' quoth he \'and one white. That white hair is my father,\n    and all the rest are his sons.\' \'Jupiter!\' quoth she \'which of\n    these hairs is Paris my husband?\' \'The forked one,\' quoth he,\n    \'pluck\'t out and give it him.\' But there was such laughing! and\n    Helen so blush\'d, and Paris so chaf\'d; and all the rest so  \n    laugh\'d that it pass\'d.\n  CRESSIDA. So let it now; for it has been a great while going by.\n  PANDARUS. Well, cousin, I told you a thing yesterday; think on\'t.\n  CRESSIDA. So I do.\n  PANDARUS. I\'ll be sworn \'tis true; he will weep you, and \'twere a\n    man born in April.\n  CRESSIDA. And I\'ll spring up in his tears, an \'twere a nettle\n    against May.                                    [Sound a retreat]\n  PANDARUS. Hark! they are coming from the field. Shall we stand up\n    here and see them as they pass toward Ilium? Good niece, do,\n    sweet niece Cressida.\n  CRESSIDA. At your pleasure.\n  PANDARUS. Here, here, here\'s an excellent place; here we may see\n    most bravely. I\'ll tell you them all by their names as they pass\n    by; but mark Troilus above the rest.\n\n                       AENEAS passes\n\n  CRESSIDA. Speak not so loud.\n  PANDARUS. That\'s Aeneas. Is not that a brave man? He\'s one of the  \n    flowers of Troy, I can tell you. But mark Troilus; you shall see\n    anon.\n\n                       ANTENOR passes\n\n  CRESSIDA. Who\'s that?\n  PANDARUS. That\'s Antenor. He has a shrewd wit, I can tell you; and\n    he\'s a man good enough; he\'s one o\' th\' soundest judgments in\n    Troy, whosoever, and a proper man of person. When comes Troilus?\n    I\'ll show you Troilus anon. If he see me, you shall see him nod\n    at me.\n  CRESSIDA. Will he give you the nod?\n  PANDARUS. You shall see.\n  CRESSIDA. If he do, the rich shall have more.\n\n                     HECTOR passes\n\n  PANDARUS. That\'s Hector, that, that, look you, that; there\'s a\n    fellow! Go thy way, Hector! There\'s a brave man, niece. O brave\n    Hector! Look how he looks. There\'s a countenance! Is\'t not a  \n    brave man?\n  CRESSIDA. O, a brave man!\n  PANDARUS. Is \'a not? It does a man\'s heart good. Look you what\n    hacks are on his helmet! Look you yonder, do you see? Look you\n    there. There\'s no jesting; there\'s laying on; take\'t off who\n    will, as they say. There be hacks.\n  CRESSIDA. Be those with swords?\n  PANDARUS. Swords! anything, he cares not; an the devil come to him,\n    it\'s all one. By God\'s lid, it does one\'s heart good. Yonder\n    comes Paris, yonder comes Paris.\n\n                       PARIS passes\n\n    Look ye yonder, niece; is\'t not a gallant man too, is\'t not? Why,\n    this is brave now. Who said he came hurt home to-day? He\'s not\n    hurt. Why, this will do Helen\'s heart good now, ha! Would I could\n    see Troilus now! You shall see Troilus anon.\n\n                      HELENUS passes\n  \n  CRESSIDA. Who\'s that?\n  PANDARUS. That\'s Helenus. I marvel where Troilus is. That\'s\n    Helenus. I think he went not forth to-day. That\'s Helenus.\n  CRESSIDA. Can Helenus fight, uncle?\n  PANDARUS. Helenus! no. Yes, he\'ll fight indifferent well. I marvel\n    where Troilus is. Hark! do you not hear the people cry \'Troilus\'?\n    Helenus is a priest.\n  CRESSIDA. What sneaking fellow comes yonder?\n\n                    TROILUS passes\n\n  PANDARUS. Where? yonder? That\'s Deiphobus. \'Tis Troilus. There\'s a\n    man, niece. Hem! Brave Troilus, the prince of chivalry!\n  CRESSIDA. Peace, for shame, peace!\n  PANDARUS. Mark him; note him. O brave Troilus! Look well upon him,\n    niece; look you how his sword is bloodied, and his helm more\n    hack\'d than Hector\'s; and how he looks, and how he goes! O\n    admirable youth! he never saw three and twenty. Go thy way,\n    Troilus, go thy way. Had I a sister were a grace or a daughter a\n    goddess, he should take his choice. O admirable man! Paris? Paris  \n    is dirt to him; and, I warrant, Helen, to change, would give an\n    eye to boot.\n  CRESSIDA. Here comes more.\n\n                 Common soldiers pass\n\n  PANDARUS. Asses, fools, dolts! chaff and bran, chaff and bran!\n    porridge after meat! I could live and die in the eyes of Troilus.\n    Ne\'er look, ne\'er look; the eagles are gone. Crows and daws,\n    crows and daws! I had rather be such a man as Troilus than\n    Agamemnon and all Greece.\n  CRESSIDA. There is amongst the Greeks Achilles, a better man than\n    Troilus.\n  PANDARUS. Achilles? A drayman, a porter, a very camel!\n  CRESSIDA. Well, well.\n  PANDARUS. Well, well! Why, have you any discretion? Have you any\n    eyes? Do you know what a man is? Is not birth, beauty, good\n    shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth,\n    liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?\n  CRESSIDA. Ay, a minc\'d man; and then to be bak\'d with no date in  \n    the pie, for then the man\'s date is out.\n  PANDARUS. You are such a woman! A man knows not at what ward you\n    lie.\n  CRESSIDA. Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defend\n    my wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine honesty; my mask, to\n    defend my beauty; and you, to defend all these; and at all these\n    wards I lie at, at a thousand watches.\n  PANDARUS. Say one of your watches.\n  CRESSIDA. Nay, I\'ll watch you for that; and that\'s one of the\n    chiefest of them too. If I cannot ward what I would not have hit,\n    I can watch you for telling how I took the blow; unless it swell\n    past hiding, and then it\'s past watching\n  PANDARUS. You are such another!\n\n                   Enter TROILUS\' BOY\n\n  BOY. Sir, my lord would instantly speak with you.\n  PANDARUS. Where?\n  BOY. At your own house; there he unarms him.\n  PANDARUS. Good boy, tell him I come.                       Exit Boy  \n    I doubt he be hurt. Fare ye well, good niece.\n  CRESSIDA. Adieu, uncle.\n  PANDARUS. I will be with you, niece, by and by.\n  CRESSIDA. To bring, uncle.\n  PANDARUS. Ay, a token from Troilus.\n  CRESSIDA. By the same token, you are a bawd.\n                                                        Exit PANDARUS\n    Words, vows, gifts, tears, and love\'s full sacrifice,\n    He offers in another\'s enterprise;\n    But more in Troilus thousand-fold I see\n    Than in the glass of Pandar\'s praise may be,\n    Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing:\n    Things won are done; joy\'s soul lies in the doing.\n    That she belov\'d knows nought that knows not this:\n    Men prize the thing ungain\'d more than it is.\n    That she was never yet that ever knew\n    Love got so sweet as when desire did sue;\n    Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:\n    Achievement is command; ungain\'d, beseech.\n    Then though my heart\'s content firm love doth bear,  \n    Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.                 Exit\n\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE 3.\nThe Grecian camp. Before AGAMEMNON\'S tent\n\nSennet. Enter AGAMEMNON, NESTOR, ULYSSES, DIOMEDES, MENELAUS, and others\n\n  AGAMEMNON. Princes,\n    What grief hath set these jaundies o\'er your cheeks?\n    The ample proposition that hope makes\n    In all designs begun on earth below\n    Fails in the promis\'d largeness; checks and disasters\n    Grow in the veins of actions highest rear\'d,\n    As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,\n    Infects the sound pine, and diverts his grain\n    Tortive and errant from his course of growth.\n    Nor, princes, is it matter new to us\n    That we come short of our suppose so far\n    That after seven years\' siege yet Troy walls stand;\n    Sith every action that hath gone before,\n    Whereof we have record, trial did draw\n    Bias and thwart, not answering the aim,\n    And that unbodied figure of the thought  \n    That gave\'t surmised shape. Why then, you princes,\n    Do you with cheeks abash\'d behold our works\n    And call them shames, which are, indeed, nought else\n    But the protractive trials of great Jove\n    To find persistive constancy in men;\n    The fineness of which metal is not found\n    In fortune\'s love? For then the bold and coward,\n    The wise and fool, the artist and unread,\n    The hard and soft, seem all affin\'d and kin.\n    But in the wind and tempest of her frown\n    Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,\n    Puffing at all, winnows the light away;\n    And what hath mass or matter by itself\n    Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.\n  NESTOR. With due observance of thy godlike seat,\n    Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply\n    Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance\n    Lies the true proof of men. The sea being smooth,\n    How many shallow bauble boats dare sail\n    Upon her patient breast, making their way  \n    With those of nobler bulk!\n    But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage\n    The gentle Thetis, and anon behold\n    The strong-ribb\'d bark through liquid mountains cut,\n    Bounding between the two moist elements\n    Like Perseus\' horse. Where\'s then the saucy boat,\n    Whose weak untimber\'d sides but even now\n    Co-rivall\'d greatness? Either to harbour fled\n    Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so\n    Doth valour\'s show and valour\'s worth divide\n    In storms of fortune; for in her ray and brightness\n    The herd hath more annoyance by the breeze\n    Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind\n    Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,\n    And flies fled under shade-why, then the thing of courage\n    As rous\'d with rage, with rage doth sympathise,\n    And with an accent tun\'d in self-same key\n    Retorts to chiding fortune.\n  ULYSSES. Agamemnon,\n    Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece,  \n    Heart of our numbers, soul and only spirit\n    In whom the tempers and the minds of all\n    Should be shut up-hear what Ulysses speaks.\n    Besides the applause and approbation\n    The which, [To AGAMEMNON] most mighty, for thy place and sway,\n    [To NESTOR] And, thou most reverend, for thy stretch\'d-out life,\n    I give to both your speeches- which were such\n    As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece\n    Should hold up high in brass; and such again\n    As venerable Nestor, hatch\'d in silver,\n    Should with a bond of air, strong as the axle-tree\n    On which heaven rides, knit all the Greekish ears\n    To his experienc\'d tongue-yet let it please both,\n    Thou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak.\n  AGAMEMNON. Speak, Prince of Ithaca; and be\'t of less expect\n    That matter needless, of importless burden,\n    Divide thy lips than we are confident,\n    When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws,\n    We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.\n  ULYSSES. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,  \n    And the great Hector\'s sword had lack\'d a master,\n    But for these instances:\n    The specialty of rule hath been neglected;\n    And look how many Grecian tents do stand\n    Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.\n    When that the general is not like the hive,\n    To whom the foragers shall all repair,\n    What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,\n    Th\' unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.\n    The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,\n    Observe degree, priority, and place,\n    Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,\n    Office, and custom, in all line of order;\n    And therefore is the glorious planet Sol\n    In noble eminence enthron\'d and spher\'d\n    Amidst the other, whose med\'cinable eye\n    Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,\n    And posts, like the commandment of a king,\n    Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets\n    In evil mixture to disorder wander,  \n    What plagues and what portents, what mutiny,\n    What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,\n    Commotion in the winds! Frights, changes, horrors,\n    Divert and crack, rend and deracinate,\n    The unity and married calm of states\n    Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shak\'d,\n    Which is the ladder of all high designs,\n    The enterprise is sick! How could communities,\n    Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,\n    Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,\n    The primogenity and due of birth,\n    Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,\n    But by degree, stand in authentic place?\n    Take but degree away, untune that string,\n    And hark what discord follows! Each thing melts\n    In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters\n    Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,\n    And make a sop of all this solid globe;\n    Strength should be lord of imbecility,\n    And the rude son should strike his father dead;  \n    Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong-\n    Between whose endless jar justice resides-\n    Should lose their names, and so should justice too.\n    Then everything includes itself in power,\n    Power into will, will into appetite;\n    And appetite, an universal wolf,\n    So doubly seconded with will and power,\n    Must make perforce an universal prey,\n    And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,\n    This chaos, when degree is suffocate,\n    Follows the choking.\n    And this neglection of degree it is\n    That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose\n    It hath to climb. The general\'s disdain\'d\n    By him one step below, he by the next,\n    That next by him beneath; so ever step,\n    Exampl\'d by the first pace that is sick\n    Of his superior, grows to an envious fever\n    Of pale and bloodless emulation.\n    And \'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,  \n    Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,\n    Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.\n  NESTOR. Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover\'d\n    The fever whereof all our power is sick.\n  AGAMEMNON. The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,\n    What is the remedy?\n  ULYSSES. The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns\n    The sinew and the forehand of our host,\n    Having his ear full of his airy fame,\n    Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent\n    Lies mocking our designs; with him Patroclus\n    Upon a lazy bed the livelong day\n    Breaks scurril jests;\n    And with ridiculous and awkward action-\n    Which, slanderer, he imitation calls-\n    He pageants us. Sometime, great Agamemnon,\n    Thy topless deputation he puts on;\n    And like a strutting player whose conceit\n    Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich\n    To hear the wooden dialogue and sound  \n    \'Twixt his stretch\'d footing and the scaffoldage-\n    Such to-be-pitied and o\'er-wrested seeming\n    He acts thy greatness in; and when he speaks\n    \'Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms unsquar\'d,\n    Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp\'d,\n    Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff\n    The large Achilles, on his press\'d bed lolling,\n    From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause;\n    Cries \'Excellent! \'tis Agamemnon just.\n    Now play me Nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard,\n    As he being drest to some oration.\'\n    That\'s done-as near as the extremest ends\n    Of parallels, as like Vulcan and his wife;\n    Yet god Achilles still cries \'Excellent!\n    \'Tis Nestor right. Now play him me, Patroclus,\n    Arming to answer in a night alarm.\'\n    And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age\n    Must be the scene of mirth: to cough and spit\n    And, with a palsy-fumbling on his gorget,\n    Shake in and out the rivet. And at this sport  \n    Sir Valour dies; cries \'O, enough, Patroclus;\n    Or give me ribs of steel! I shall split all\n    In pleasure of my spleen.\' And in this fashion\n    All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes,\n    Severals and generals of grace exact,\n    Achievements, plots, orders, preventions,\n    Excitements to the field or speech for truce,\n    Success or loss, what is or is not, serves\n    As stuff for these two to make paradoxes.\n  NESTOR. And in the imitation of these twain-\n    Who, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns\n    With an imperial voice-many are infect.\n    Ajax is grown self-will\'d and bears his head\n    In such a rein, in full as proud a place\n    As broad Achilles; keeps his tent like him;\n    Makes factious feasts; rails on our state of war\n    Bold as an oracle, and sets Thersites,\n    A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint,\n    To match us in comparisons with dirt,\n    To weaken and discredit our exposure,  \n    How rank soever rounded in with danger.\n  ULYSSES. They tax our policy and call it cowardice,\n    Count wisdom as no member of the war,\n    Forestall prescience, and esteem no act\n    But that of hand. The still and mental parts\n    That do contrive how many hands shall strike\n    When fitness calls them on, and know, by measure\n    Of their observant toil, the enemies\' weight-\n    Why, this hath not a finger\'s dignity:\n    They call this bed-work, mapp\'ry, closet-war;\n    So that the ram that batters down the wall,\n    For the great swinge and rudeness of his poise,\n    They place before his hand that made the engine,\n    Or those that with the fineness of their souls\n    By reason guide his execution.\n  NESTOR. Let this be granted, and Achilles\' horse\n    Makes many Thetis\' sons.                                 [Tucket]\n  AGAMEMNON. What trumpet? Look, Menelaus.\n  MENELAUS. From Troy.\n  \n                      Enter AENEAS\n\n  AGAMEMNON. What would you fore our tent?\n  AENEAS. Is this great Agamemnon\'s tent, I pray you?\n  AGAMEMNON. Even this.\n  AENEAS. May one that is a herald and a prince\n    Do a fair message to his kingly eyes?\n  AGAMEMNON. With surety stronger than Achilles\' an\n    Fore all the Greekish heads, which with one voice\n    Call Agamemnon head and general.\n  AENEAS. Fair leave and large security. How may\n    A stranger to those most imperial looks\n    Know them from eyes of other mortals?\n  AGAMEMNON. How?\n  AENEAS. Ay;\n    I ask, that I might waken reverence,\n    And bid the cheek be ready with a blush\n    Modest as Morning when she coldly eyes\n    The youthful Phoebus.\n    Which is that god in office, guiding men?  \n    Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon?\n  AGAMEMNON. This Troyan scorns us, or the men of Troy\n    Are ceremonious courtiers.\n  AENEAS. Courtiers as free, as debonair, unarm\'d,\n    As bending angels; that\'s their fame in peace.\n    But when they would seem soldiers, they have galls,\n    Good arms, strong joints, true swords; and, Jove\'s accord,\n    Nothing so full of heart. But peace, Aeneas,\n    Peace, Troyan; lay thy finger on thy lips.\n    The worthiness of praise distains his worth,\n    If that the prais\'d himself bring the praise forth;\n    But what the repining enemy commends,\n    That breath fame blows; that praise, sole pure, transcends.\n  AGAMEMNON. Sir, you of Troy, call you yourself Aeneas?\n  AENEAS. Ay, Greek, that is my name.\n  AGAMEMNON. What\'s your affair, I pray you?\n  AENEAS. Sir, pardon; \'tis for Agamemnon\'s ears.\n  AGAMEMNON. He hears nought privately that comes from Troy.\n  AENEAS. Nor I from Troy come not to whisper with him;\n    I bring a trumpet to awake his ear,  \n    To set his sense on the attentive bent,\n    And then to speak.\n  AGAMEMNON. Speak frankly as the wind;\n    It is not Agamemnon\'s sleeping hour.\n    That thou shalt know, Troyan, he is awake,\n    He tells thee so himself.\n  AENEAS. Trumpet, blow loud,\n    Send thy brass voice through all these lazy tents;\n    And every Greek of mettle, let him know\n    What Troy means fairly shall be spoke aloud.\n                                                      [Sound trumpet]\n    We have, great Agamemnon, here in Troy\n    A prince called Hector-Priam is his father-\n    Who in this dull and long-continued truce\n    Is resty grown; he bade me take a trumpet\n    And to this purpose speak: Kings, princes, lords!\n    If there be one among the fair\'st of Greece\n    That holds his honour higher than his ease,\n    That seeks his praise more than he fears his peril,\n    That knows his valour and knows not his fear,  \n    That loves his mistress more than in confession\n    With truant vows to her own lips he loves,\n    And dare avow her beauty and her worth\n    In other arms than hers-to him this challenge.\n    Hector, in view of Troyans and of Greeks,\n    Shall make it good or do his best to do it:\n    He hath a lady wiser, fairer, truer,\n    Than ever Greek did couple in his arms;\n    And will to-morrow with his trumpet call\n    Mid-way between your tents and walls of Troy\n    To rouse a Grecian that is true in love.\n    If any come, Hector shall honour him;\n    If none, he\'ll say in Troy, when he retires,\n    The Grecian dames are sunburnt and not worth\n    The splinter of a lance. Even so much.\n  AGAMEMNON. This shall be told our lovers, Lord Aeneas.\n    If none of them have soul in such a kind,\n    We left them all at home. But we are soldiers;\n    And may that soldier a mere recreant prove\n    That means not, hath not, or is not in love.  \n    If then one is, or hath, or means to be,\n    That one meets Hector; if none else, I am he.\n  NESTOR. Tell him of Nestor, one that was a man\n    When Hector\'s grandsire suck\'d. He is old now;\n    But if there be not in our Grecian mould\n    One noble man that hath one spark of fire\n    To answer for his love, tell him from me\n    I\'ll hide my silver beard in a gold beaver,\n    And in my vantbrace put this wither\'d brawn,\n    And, meeting him, will tell him that my lady\n    Was fairer than his grandame, and as chaste\n    As may be in the world. His youth in flood,\n    I\'ll prove this truth with my three drops of blood.\n  AENEAS. Now heavens forfend such scarcity of youth!\n  ULYSSES. Amen.\n  AGAMEMNON. Fair Lord Aeneas, let me touch your hand;\n    To our pavilion shall I lead you, first.\n    Achilles shall have word of this intent;\n    So shall each lord of Greece, from tent to tent.\n    Yourself shall feast with us before you go,  \n    And find the welcome of a noble foe.\n                                    Exeunt all but ULYSSES and NESTOR\n  ULYSSES. Nestor!\n  NESTOR. What says Ulysses?\n  ULYSSES. I have a young conception in my brain;\n    Be you my time to bring it to some shape.\n  NESTOR. What is\'t?\n  ULYSSES. This \'tis:\n    Blunt wedges rive hard knots. The seeded pride\n    That hath to this maturity blown up\n    In rank Achilles must or now be cropp\'d\n    Or, shedding, breed a nursery of like evil\n    To overbulk us all.\n  NESTOR. Well, and how?\n  ULYSSES. This challenge that the gallant Hector sends,\n    However it is spread in general name,\n    Relates in purpose only to Achilles.\n  NESTOR. True. The purpose is perspicuous even as substance\n    Whose grossness little characters sum up;\n    And, in the publication, make no strain  \n    But that Achilles, were his brain as barren\n    As banks of Libya-though, Apollo knows,\n    \'Tis dry enough-will with great speed of judgment,\n    Ay, with celerity, find Hector\'s purpose\n    Pointing on him.\n  ULYSSES. And wake him to the answer, think you?\n  NESTOR. Why, \'tis most meet. Who may you else oppose\n    That can from Hector bring those honours off,\n    If not Achilles? Though \'t be a sportful combat,\n    Yet in this trial much opinion dwells;\n    For here the Troyans taste our dear\'st repute\n    With their fin\'st palate; and trust to me, Ulysses,\n    Our imputation shall be oddly pois\'d\n    In this vile action; for the success,\n    Although particular, shall give a scantling\n    Of good or bad unto the general;\n    And in such indexes, although small pricks\n    To their subsequent volumes, there is seen\n    The baby figure of the giant mas\n    Of things to come at large. It is suppos\'d  \n    He that meets Hector issues from our choice;\n    And choice, being mutual act of all our souls,\n    Makes merit her election, and doth boil,\n    As \'twere from forth us all, a man distill\'d\n    Out of our virtues; who miscarrying,\n    What heart receives from hence a conquering part,\n    To steel a strong opinion to themselves?\n    Which entertain\'d, limbs are his instruments,\n    In no less working than are swords and bows\n    Directive by the limbs.\n  ULYSSES. Give pardon to my speech.\n    Therefore \'tis meet Achilles meet not Hector.\n    Let us, like merchants, show our foulest wares\n    And think perchance they\'ll sell; if not, the lustre\n    Of the better yet to show shall show the better,\n    By showing the worst first. Do not consent\n    That ever Hector and Achilles meet;\n    For both our honour and our shame in this\n    Are dogg\'d with two strange followers.\n  NESTOR. I see them not with my old eyes. What are they?  \n  ULYSSES. What glory our Achilles shares from Hector,\n    Were he not proud, we all should wear with him;\n    But he already is too insolent;\n    And it were better parch in Afric sun\n    Than in the pride and salt scorn of his eyes,\n    Should he scape Hector fair. If he were foil\'d,\n    Why, then we do our main opinion crush\n    In taint of our best man. No, make a lott\'ry;\n    And, by device, let blockish Ajax draw\n    The sort to fight with Hector. Among ourselves\n    Give him allowance for the better man;\n    For that will physic the great Myrmidon,\n    Who broils in loud applause, and make him fall\n    His crest, that prouder than blue Iris bends.\n    If the dull brainless Ajax come safe off,\n    We\'ll dress him up in voices; if he fail,\n    Yet go we under our opinion still\n    That we have better men. But, hit or miss,\n    Our project\'s life this shape of sense assumes-\n    Ajax employ\'d plucks down Achilles\' plumes.  \n  NESTOR. Now, Ulysses, I begin to relish thy advice;\n    And I will give a taste thereof forthwith\n    To Agamemnon. Go we to him straight.\n    Two curs shall tame each other: pride alone\n    Must tarre the mastiffs on, as \'twere their bone.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 1.\nThe Grecian camp\n\nEnter Ajax and THERSITES\n\n  AJAX. Thersites!\n  THERSITES. Agamemnon-how if he had boils full, an over, generally?\n  AJAX. Thersites!\n  THERSITES. And those boils did run-say so. Did not the general run\n    then? Were not that a botchy core?\n  AJAX. Dog!\n  THERSITES. Then there would come some matter from him;\n    I see none now.\n  AJAX. Thou bitch-wolf\'s son, canst thou not hear? Feel, then.\n                                                        [Strikes him]\n  THERSITES. The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted\n    lord!\n  AJAX. Speak, then, thou whinid\'st leaven, speak. I will beat thee\n    into handsomeness.\n  THERSITES. I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness; but I\n    think thy horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn a\n    prayer without book. Thou canst strike, canst thou? A red murrain  \n    o\' thy jade\'s tricks!\n  AJAX. Toadstool, learn me the proclamation.\n  THERSITES. Dost thou think I have no sense, thou strikest me thus?\n  AJAX. The proclamation!\n  THERSITES. Thou art proclaim\'d, a fool, I think.\n  AJAX. Do not, porpentine, do not; my fingers itch.\n  THERSITES. I would thou didst itch from head to foot and I had the\n    scratching of thee; I would make thee the loathsomest scab in\n    Greece. When thou art forth in the incursions, thou strikest as\n    slow as another.\n  AJAX. I say, the proclamation.\n  THERSITES. Thou grumblest and railest every hour on Achilles; and\n    thou art as full of envy at his greatness as Cerberus is at\n    Proserpina\'s beauty-ay, that thou bark\'st at him.\n  AJAX. Mistress Thersites!\n  THERSITES. Thou shouldst strike him.\n  AJAX. Cobloaf!\n  THERSITES. He would pun thee into shivers with his fist, as a\n    sailor breaks a biscuit.\n  AJAX. You whoreson cur!                               [Strikes him]  \n  THERSITES. Do, do.\n  AJAX. Thou stool for a witch!\n  THERSITES. Ay, do, do; thou sodden-witted lord! Thou hast no more\n    brain than I have in mine elbows; an assinico may tutor thee. You\n    scurvy valiant ass! Thou art here but to thrash Troyans, and thou\n    art bought and sold among those of any wit like a barbarian\n    slave. If thou use to beat me, I will begin at thy heel and tell\n    what thou art by inches, thou thing of no bowels, thou!\n  AJAX. You dog!\n  THERSITES. You scurvy lord!\n  AJAX. You cur!                                        [Strikes him]\n  THERSITES. Mars his idiot! Do, rudeness; do, camel; do, do.\n\n                 Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS\n\n  ACHILLES. Why, how now, Ajax! Wherefore do you thus?\n    How now, Thersites! What\'s the matter, man?\n  THERSITES. You see him there, do you?\n  ACHILLES. Ay; what\'s the matter?\n  THERSITES. Nay, look upon him.  \n  ACHILLES. So I do. What\'s the matter?\n  THERSITES. Nay, but regard him well.\n  ACHILLES. Well! why, so I do.\n  THERSITES. But yet you look not well upon him; for who some ever\n    you take him to be, he is Ajax.\n  ACHILLES. I know that, fool.\n  THERSITES. Ay, but that fool knows not himself.\n  AJAX. Therefore I beat thee.\n  THERSITES. Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters! His\n    evasions have ears thus long. I have bobb\'d his brain more than\n    he has beat my bones. I will buy nine sparrows for a penny, and\n    his pia mater is not worth the ninth part of a sparrow. This\n    lord, Achilles, Ajax-who wears his wit in his belly and his guts\n    in his head-I\'ll tell you what I say of him.\n  ACHILLES. What?\n  THERSITES. I say this Ajax-             [AJAX offers to strike him]\n  ACHILLES. Nay, good Ajax.\n  THERSITES. Has not so much wit-\n  ACHILLES. Nay, I must hold you.\n  THERSITES. As will stop the eye of Helen\'s needle, for whom he  \n    comes to fight.\n  ACHILLES. Peace, fool.\n  THERSITES. I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will not-\n    he there; that he; look you there.\n  AJAX. O thou damned cur! I shall-\n  ACHILLES. Will you set your wit to a fool\'s?\n  THERSITES. No, I warrant you, the fool\'s will shame it.\n  PATROCLUS. Good words, Thersites.\n  ACHILLES. What\'s the quarrel?\n  AJAX. I bade the vile owl go learn me the tenour of the\n    proclamation, and he rails upon me.\n  THERSITES. I serve thee not.\n  AJAX. Well, go to, go to.\n  THERSITES. I serve here voluntary.\n  ACHILLES. Your last service was suff\'rance; \'twas not voluntary. No\n    man is beaten voluntary. Ajax was here the voluntary, and you as\n    under an impress.\n  THERSITES. E\'en so; a great deal of your wit too lies in your\n    sinews, or else there be liars. Hector shall have a great catch\n    an he knock out either of your brains: \'a were as good crack a  \n    fusty nut with no kernel.\n  ACHILLES. What, with me too, Thersites?\n  THERSITES. There\'s Ulysses and old Nestor-whose wit was mouldy ere\n    your grandsires had nails on their toes-yoke you like draught\n    oxen, and make you plough up the wars.\n  ACHILLES. What, what?\n  THERSITES. Yes, good sooth. To Achilles, to Ajax, to-\n  AJAX. I shall cut out your tongue.\n  THERSITES. \'Tis no matter; I shall speak as much as thou\n    afterwards.\n  PATROCLUS. No more words, Thersites; peace!\n  THERSITES. I will hold my peace when Achilles\' brach bids me, shall\n    I?\n  ACHILLES. There\'s for you, Patroclus.\n  THERSITES. I will see you hang\'d like clotpoles ere I come any more\n    to your tents. I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave\n    the faction of fools.                                        Exit\n  PATROCLUS. A good riddance.\n  ACHILLES. Marry, this, sir, is proclaim\'d through all our host,\n    That Hector, by the fifth hour of the sun,  \n    Will with a trumpet \'twixt our tents and Troy,\n    To-morrow morning, call some knight to arms\n    That hath a stomach; and such a one that dare\n    Maintain I know not what; \'tis trash. Farewell.\n  AJAX. Farewell. Who shall answer him?\n  ACHILLES. I know not; \'tis put to lott\'ry. Otherwise. He knew his\n    man.\n  AJAX. O, meaning you! I will go learn more of it.            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 2.\nTroy. PRIAM\'S palace\n\nEnter PRIAM, HECTOR, TROILUS, PARIS, and HELENUS\n\n  PRIAM. After so many hours, lives, speeches, spent,\n    Thus once again says Nestor from the Greeks:\n    \'Deliver Helen, and all damage else-\n    As honour, loss of time, travail, expense,\n    Wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consum\'d\n    In hot digestion of this cormorant war-\n    Shall be struck off.\' Hector, what say you to\'t?\n  HECTOR. Though no man lesser fears the Greeks than I,\n    As far as toucheth my particular,\n    Yet, dread Priam,\n    There is no lady of more softer bowels,\n    More spongy to suck in the sense of fear,\n    More ready to cry out \'Who knows what follows?\'\n    Than Hector is. The wound of peace is surety,\n    Surety secure; but modest doubt is call\'d\n    The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches\n    To th\' bottom of the worst. Let Helen go.  \n    Since the first sword was drawn about this question,\n    Every tithe soul \'mongst many thousand dismes\n    Hath been as dear as Helen-I mean, of ours.\n    If we have lost so many tenths of ours\n    To guard a thing not ours, nor worth to us,\n    Had it our name, the value of one ten,\n    What merit\'s in that reason which denies\n    The yielding of her up?\n  TROILUS. Fie, fie, my brother!\n    Weigh you the worth and honour of a king,\n    So great as our dread father\'s, in a scale\n    Of common ounces? Will you with counters sum\n    The past-proportion of his infinite,\n    And buckle in a waist most fathomless\n    With spans and inches so diminutive\n    As fears and reasons? Fie, for godly shame!\n  HELENUS. No marvel though you bite so sharp at reasons,\n    You are so empty of them. Should not our father\n    Bear the great sway of his affairs with reasons,\n    Because your speech hath none that tells him so?  \n  TROILUS. You are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest;\n    You fur your gloves with reason. Here are your reasons:\n    You know an enemy intends you harm;\n    You know a sword employ\'d is perilous,\n    And reason flies the object of all harm.\n    Who marvels, then, when Helenus beholds\n    A Grecian and his sword, if he do set\n    The very wings of reason to his heels\n    And fly like chidden Mercury from Jove,\n    Or like a star disorb\'d? Nay, if we talk of reason,\n    Let\'s shut our gates and sleep. Manhood and honour\n    Should have hare hearts, would they but fat their thoughts\n    With this cramm\'d reason. Reason and respect\n    Make livers pale and lustihood deject.\n  HECTOR. Brother, she is not worth what she doth, cost\n    The keeping.\n  TROILUS. What\'s aught but as \'tis valued?\n  HECTOR. But value dwells not in particular will:\n    It holds his estimate and dignity\n    As well wherein \'tis precious of itself  \n    As in the prizer. \'Tis mad idolatry\n    To make the service greater than the god-I\n    And the will dotes that is attributive\n    To what infectiously itself affects,\n    Without some image of th\' affected merit.\n  TROILUS. I take to-day a wife, and my election\n    Is led on in the conduct of my will;\n    My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears,\n    Two traded pilots \'twixt the dangerous shores\n    Of will and judgment: how may I avoid,\n    Although my will distaste what it elected,\n    The wife I chose? There can be no evasion\n    To blench from this and to stand firm by honour.\n    We turn not back the silks upon the merchant\n    When we have soil\'d them; nor the remainder viands\n    We do not throw in unrespective sieve,\n    Because we now are full. It was thought meet\n    Paris should do some vengeance on the Greeks;\n    Your breath with full consent benied his sails;\n    The seas and winds, old wranglers, took a truce,  \n    And did him service. He touch\'d the ports desir\'d;\n    And for an old aunt whom the Greeks held captive\n    He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness\n    Wrinkles Apollo\'s, and makes stale the morning.\n    Why keep we her? The Grecians keep our aunt.\n    Is she worth keeping? Why, she is a pearl\n    Whose price hath launch\'d above a thousand ships,\n    And turn\'d crown\'d kings to merchants.\n    If you\'ll avouch \'twas wisdom Paris went-\n    As you must needs, for you all cried \'Go, go\'-\n    If you\'ll confess he brought home worthy prize-\n    As you must needs, for you all clapp\'d your hands,\n    And cried \'Inestimable!\' -why do you now\n    The issue of your proper wisdoms rate,\n    And do a deed that never fortune did-\n    Beggar the estimation which you priz\'d\n    Richer than sea and land? O theft most base,\n    That we have stol\'n what we do fear to keep!\n    But thieves unworthy of a thing so stol\'n\n    That in their country did them that disgrace  \n    We fear to warrant in our native place!\n  CASSANDRA. [Within] Cry, Troyans, cry.\n  PRIAM. What noise, what shriek is this?\n  TROILUS. \'Tis our mad sister; I do know her voice.\n  CASSANDRA. [Within] Cry, Troyans.\n  HECTOR. It is Cassandra.\n\n                  Enter CASSANDRA, raving\n\n  CASSANDRA. Cry, Troyans, cry. Lend me ten thousand eyes,\n    And I will fill them with prophetic tears.\n  HECTOR. Peace, sister, peace.\n  CASSANDRA. Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled eld,\n    Soft infancy, that nothing canst but cry,\n    Add to my clamours. Let us pay betimes\n    A moiety of that mass of moan to come.\n    Cry, Troyans, cry. Practise your eyes with tears.\n    Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilion stand;\n    Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all.\n    Cry, Troyans, cry, A Helen and a woe!  \n    Cry, cry. Troy burns, or else let Helen go.                  Exit\n  HECTOR. Now, youthful Troilus, do not these high strains\n    Of divination in our sister work\n    Some touches of remorse, or is your blood\n    So madly hot that no discourse of reason,\n    Nor fear of bad success in a bad cause,\n    Can qualify the same?\n  TROILUS. Why, brother Hector,\n    We may not think the justness of each act\n    Such and no other than event doth form it;\n    Nor once deject the courage of our minds\n    Because Cassandra\'s mad. Her brain-sick raptures\n    Cannot distaste the goodness of a quarrel\n    Which hath our several honours all engag\'d\n    To make it gracious. For my private part,\n    I am no more touch\'d than all Priam\'s sons;\n    And Jove forbid there should be done amongst us\n    Such things as might offend the weakest spleen\n    To fight for and maintain.\n  PARIS. Else might the world convince of levity  \n    As well my undertakings as your counsels;\n    But I attest the gods, your full consent\n    Gave wings to my propension, and cut of\n    All fears attending on so dire a project.\n    For what, alas, can these my single arms?\n    What propugnation is in one man\'s valour\n    To stand the push and enmity of those\n    This quarrel would excite? Yet, I protest,\n    Were I alone to pass the difficulties,\n    And had as ample power as I have will,\n    Paris should ne\'er retract what he hath done\n    Nor faint in the pursuit.\n  PRIAM. Paris, you speak\n    Like one besotted on your sweet delights.\n    You have the honey still, but these the gall;\n    So to be valiant is no praise at all.\n  PARIS. Sir, I propose not merely to myself\n    The pleasures such a beauty brings with it;\n    But I would have the soil of her fair rape\n    Wip\'d off in honourable keeping her.  \n    What treason were it to the ransack\'d queen,\n    Disgrace to your great worths, and shame to me,\n    Now to deliver her possession up\n    On terms of base compulsion! Can it be\n    That so degenerate a strain as this\n    Should once set footing in your generous bosoms?\n    There\'s not the meanest spirit on our party\n    Without a heart to dare or sword to draw\n    When Helen is defended; nor none so noble\n    Whose life were ill bestow\'d or death unfam\'d\n    Where Helen is the subject. Then, I say,\n    Well may we fight for her whom we know well\n    The world\'s large spaces cannot parallel.\n  HECTOR. Paris and Troilus, you have both said well;\n    And on the cause and question now in hand\n    Have gloz\'d, but superficially; not much\n    Unlike young men, whom Aristode thought\n    Unfit to hear moral philosophy.\n    The reasons you allege do more conduce\n    To the hot passion of distemp\'red blood  \n    Than to make up a free determination\n    \'Twixt right and wrong; for pleasure and revenge\n    Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice\n    Of any true decision. Nature craves\n    All dues be rend\'red to their owners. Now,\n    What nearer debt in all humanity\n    Than wife is to the husband? If this law\n    Of nature be corrupted through affection;\n    And that great minds, of partial indulgence\n    To their benumbed wills, resist the same;\n    There is a law in each well-order\'d nation\n    To curb those raging appetites that are\n    Most disobedient and refractory.\n    If Helen, then, be wife to Sparta\'s king-\n    As it is known she is-these moral laws\n    Of nature and of nations speak aloud\n    To have her back return\'d. Thus to persist\n    In doing wrong extenuates not wrong,\n    But makes it much more heavy. Hector\'s opinion\n    Is this, in way of truth. Yet, ne\'er the less,  \n    My spritely brethren, I propend to you\n    In resolution to keep Helen still;\n    For \'tis a cause that hath no mean dependence\n    Upon our joint and several dignities.\n  TROILUS. Why, there you touch\'d the life of our design.\n    Were it not glory that we more affected\n    Than the performance of our heaving spleens,\n    I would not wish a drop of Troyan blood\n    Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector,\n    She is a theme of honour and renown,\n    A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds,\n    Whose present courage may beat down our foes,\n    And fame in time to come canonize us;\n    For I presume brave Hector would not lose\n    So rich advantage of a promis\'d glory\n    As smiles upon the forehead of this action\n    For the wide world\'s revenue.\n  HECTOR. I am yours,\n    You valiant offspring of great Priamus.\n    I have a roisting challenge sent amongst  \n    The dull and factious nobles of the Greeks\n    Will strike amazement to their drowsy spirits.\n    I was advertis\'d their great general slept,\n    Whilst emulation in the army crept.\n    This, I presume, will wake him.                            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE 3.\nThe Grecian camp. Before the tent of ACHILLES\n\nEnter THERSITES, solus\n\n  THERSITES. How now, Thersites! What, lost in the labyrinth of thy\n    fury? Shall the elephant Ajax carry it thus? He beats me, and I\n    rail at him. O worthy satisfaction! Would it were otherwise: that\n    I could beat him, whilst he rail\'d at me! \'Sfoot, I\'ll learn to\n    conjure and raise devils, but I\'ll see some issue of my spiteful\n    execrations. Then there\'s Achilles, a rare engineer! If Troy be\n    not taken till these two undermine it, the walls will stand till\n    they fall of themselves. O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus,\n    forget that thou art Jove, the king of gods, and, Mercury, lose\n    all the serpentine craft of thy caduceus, if ye take not that\n    little little less-than-little wit from them that they have!\n    which short-arm\'d ignorance itself knows is so abundant scarce,\n    it will not in circumvention deliver a fly from a spider without\n    drawing their massy irons and cutting the web. After this, the\n    vengeance on the whole camp! or, rather, the Neapolitan\n    bone-ache! for that, methinks, is the curse depending on those\n    that war for a placket. I have said my prayers; and devil Envy  \n    say \'Amen.\' What ho! my Lord Achilles!\n\n                      Enter PATROCLUS\n\n  PATROCLUS. Who\'s there? Thersites! Good Thersites, come in and\n    rail.\n  THERSITES. If I could \'a rememb\'red a gilt counterfeit, thou\n    wouldst not have slipp\'d out of my contemplation; but it is no\n    matter; thyself upon thyself! The common curse of mankind, folly\n    and ignorance, be thine in great revenue! Heaven bless thee from\n    a tutor, and discipline come not near thee! Let thy blood be thy\n    direction till thy death. Then if she that lays thee out says\n    thou art a fair corse, I\'ll be sworn and sworn upon\'t she never\n    shrouded any but lazars. Amen. Where\'s Achilles?\n  PATROCLUS. What, art thou devout? Wast thou in prayer?\n  THERSITES. Ay, the heavens hear me!\n  PATROCLUS. Amen.\n\n                      Enter ACHILLES\n  \n  ACHILLES. Who\'s there?\n  PATROCLUS. Thersites, my lord.\n  ACHILLES. Where, where? O, where? Art thou come? Why, my cheese, my\n    digestion, why hast thou not served thyself in to my table so\n    many meals? Come, what\'s Agamemnon?\n  THERSITES. Thy commander, Achilles. Then tell me, Patroclus, what\'s\n    Achilles?\n  PATROCLUS. Thy lord, Thersites. Then tell me, I pray thee, what\'s\n    Thersites?\n  THERSITES. Thy knower, Patroclus. Then tell me, Patroclus, what art\n    thou?\n  PATROCLUS. Thou must tell that knowest.\n  ACHILLES. O, tell, tell,\n  THERSITES. I\'ll decline the whole question. Agamemnon commands\n    Achilles; Achilles is my lord; I am Patroclus\' knower; and\n    Patroclus is a fool.\n  PATROCLUS. You rascal!\n  THERSITES. Peace, fool! I have not done.\n  ACHILLES. He is a privileg\'d man. Proceed, Thersites.\n  THERSITES. Agamemnon is a fool; Achilles is a fool; Thersites is a  \n    fool; and, as aforesaid, Patroclus is a fool.\n  ACHILLES. Derive this; come.\n  THERSITES. Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command Achilles;\n    Achilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemnon; Thersites is a\n    fool to serve such a fool; and this Patroclus is a fool positive.\n  PATROCLUS. Why am I a fool?\n  THERSITES. Make that demand of the Creator. It suffices me thou\n    art. Look you, who comes here?\n  ACHILLES. Come, Patroclus, I\'ll speak with nobody. Come in with me,\n    Thersites.                                                   Exit\n  THERSITES. Here is such patchery, such juggling, and such knavery.\n    All the argument is a whore and a cuckold-a good quarrel to draw\n    emulous factions and bleed to death upon. Now the dry serpigo on\n    the subject, and war and lechery confound all!               Exit\n\n         Enter AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, NESTOR, DIOMEDES,\n                   AJAX, and CALCHAS\n\n  AGAMEMNON. Where is Achilles?\n  PATROCLUS. Within his tent; but ill-dispos\'d, my lord.  \n  AGAMEMNON. Let it be known to him that we are here.\n    He shent our messengers; and we lay by\n    Our appertainings, visiting of him.\n    Let him be told so; lest, perchance, he think\n    We dare not move the question of our place\n    Or know not what we are.\n  PATROCLUS. I shall say so to him.                              Exit\n  ULYSSES. We saw him at the opening of his tent.\n    He is not sick.\n  AJAX. Yes, lion-sick, sick of proud heart. You may call it\n    melancholy, if you will favour the man; but, by my head, \'tis\n    pride. But why, why? Let him show us a cause. A word, my lord.\n                                              [Takes AGAMEMNON aside]\n  NESTOR. What moves Ajax thus to bay at him?\n  ULYSSES. Achilles hath inveigled his fool from him.\n  NESTOR.Who, Thersites?\n  ULYSSES. He.\n  NESTOR. Then will Ajax lack matter, if he have lost his argument\n  ULYSSES. No; you see he is his argument that has his argument-\n    Achilles.  \n  NESTOR. All the better; their fraction is more our wish than their\n    faction. But it was a strong composure a fool could disunite!\n  ULYSSES. The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.\n\n                    Re-enter PATROCLUS\n\n    Here comes Patroclus.\n  NESTOR. No Achilles with him.\n  ULYSSES. The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy; his legs\n    are legs for necessity, not for flexure.\n  PATROCLUS. Achilles bids me say he is much sorry\n    If any thing more than your sport and pleasure\n    Did move your greatness and this noble state\n    To call upon him; he hopes it is no other\n    But for your health and your digestion sake,\n    An after-dinner\'s breath.\n  AGAMEMNON. Hear you, Patroclus.\n    We are too well acquainted with these answers;\n    But his evasion, wing\'d thus swift with scorn,\n    Cannot outfly our apprehensions.  \n    Much attribute he hath, and much the reason\n    Why we ascribe it to him. Yet all his virtues,\n    Not virtuously on his own part beheld,\n    Do in our eyes begin to lose their gloss;\n    Yea, like fair fruit in an unwholesome dish,\n    Are like to rot untasted. Go and tell him\n    We come to speak with him; and you shall not sin\n    If you do say we think him over-proud\n    And under-honest, in self-assumption greater\n    Than in the note of judgment; and worthier than himself\n    Here tend the savage strangeness he puts on,\n    Disguise the holy strength of their command,\n    And underwrite in an observing kind\n    His humorous predominance; yea, watch\n    His pettish lunes, his ebbs, his flows, as if\n    The passage and whole carriage of this action\n    Rode on his tide. Go tell him this, and ad\n    That if he overhold his price so much\n    We\'ll none of him, but let him, like an engine\n    Not portable, lie under this report:  \n    Bring action hither; this cannot go to war.\n    A stirring dwarf we do allowance give\n    Before a sleeping giant. Tell him so.\n  PATROCLUS. I shall, and bring his answer presently.            Exit\n  AGAMEMNON. In second voice we\'ll not be satisfied;\n    We come to speak with him. Ulysses, enter you.\n                                                         Exit ULYSSES\n  AJAX. What is he more than another?\n  AGAMEMNON. No more than what he thinks he is.\n  AJAX. Is he so much? Do you not think he thinks himself a better\n    man than I am?\n  AGAMEMNON. No question.\n  AJAX. Will you subscribe his thought and say he is?\n  AGAMEMNON. No, noble Ajax; you are as strong, as valiant, as wise,\n    no less noble, much more gentle, and altogether more tractable.\n  AJAX. Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I know not\n    what pride is.\n  AGAMEMNON. Your mind is the clearer, Ajax, and your virtues the\n    fairer. He that is proud eats up himself. Pride is his own glass,\n    his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and whatever praises itself  \n    but in the deed devours the deed in the praise.\n\n                      Re-enter ULYSSES\n\n  AJAX. I do hate a proud man as I do hate the engend\'ring of toads.\n  NESTOR. [Aside] And yet he loves himself: is\'t not strange?\n  ULYSSES. Achilles will not to the field to-morrow.\n  AGAMEMNON. What\'s his excuse?\n  ULYSSES. He doth rely on none;\n    But carries on the stream of his dispose,\n    Without observance or respect of any,\n    In will peculiar and in self-admission.\n  AGAMEMNON. Why will he not, upon our fair request,\n    Untent his person and share the air with us?\n  ULYSSES. Things small as nothing, for request\'s sake only,\n    He makes important; possess\'d he is with greatness,\n    And speaks not to himself but with a pride\n    That quarrels at self-breath. Imagin\'d worth\n    Holds in his blood such swol\'n and hot discourse\n    That \'twixt his mental and his active parts  \n    Kingdom\'d Achilles in commotion rages,\n    And batters down himself. What should I say?\n    He is so plaguy proud that the death tokens of it\n    Cry \'No recovery.\'\n  AGAMEMNON. Let Ajax go to him.\n    Dear lord, go you and greet him in his tent.\n    \'Tis said he holds you well; and will be led\n    At your request a little from himself.\n  ULYSSES. O Agamemnon, let it not be so!\n    We\'ll consecrate the steps that Ajax makes\n    When they go from Achilles. Shall the proud lord\n    That bastes his arrogance with his own seam\n    And never suffers matter of the world\n    Enter his thoughts, save such as doth revolve\n    And ruminate himself-shall he be worshipp\'d\n    Of that we hold an idol more than he?\n    No, this thrice-worthy and right valiant lord\n    Shall not so stale his palm, nobly acquir\'d,\n    Nor, by my will, assubjugate his merit,\n    As amply titled as Achilles is,  \n    By going to Achilles.\n    That were to enlard his fat-already pride,\n    And add more coals to Cancer when he burns\n    With entertaining great Hyperion.\n    This lord go to him! Jupiter forbid,\n    And say in thunder \'Achilles go to him.\'\n  NESTOR. [Aside] O, this is well! He rubs the vein of him.\n  DIOMEDES. [Aside] And how his silence drinks up this applause!\n  AJAX. If I go to him, with my armed fist I\'ll pash him o\'er the\n    face.\n  AGAMEMNON. O, no, you shall not go.\n  AJAX. An \'a be proud with me I\'ll pheeze his pride.\n    Let me go to him.\n  ULYSSES. Not for the worth that hangs upon our quarrel.\n  AJAX. A paltry, insolent fellow!\n  NESTOR. [Aside] How he describes himself!\n  AJAX. Can he not be sociable?\n  ULYSSES. [Aside] The raven chides blackness.\n  AJAX. I\'ll let his humours blood.\n  AGAMEMNON. [Aside] He will be the physician that should be the  \n    patient.\n  AJAX. An all men were a my mind-\n  ULYSSES. [Aside] Wit would be out of fashion.\n  AJAX. \'A should not bear it so, \'a should eat\'s words first.\n    Shall pride carry it?\n  NESTOR. [Aside] An \'twould, you\'d carry half.\n  ULYSSES. [Aside] \'A would have ten shares.\n  AJAX. I will knead him, I\'ll make him supple.\n  NESTOR. [Aside] He\'s not yet through warm. Force him with praises;\n    pour in, pour in; his ambition is dry.\n  ULYSSES. [To AGAMEMNON] My lord, you feed too much on this dislike.\n  NESTOR. Our noble general, do not do so.\n  DIOMEDES. You must prepare to fight without Achilles.\n  ULYSSES. Why \'tis this naming of him does him harm.\n    Here is a man-but \'tis before his face;\n    I will be silent.\n  NESTOR. Wherefore should you so?\n    He is not emulous, as Achilles is.\n  ULYSSES. Know the whole world, he is as valiant.\n  AJAX. A whoreson dog, that shall palter with us thus!  \n    Would he were a Troyan!\n  NESTOR. What a vice were it in Ajax now-\n  ULYSSES. If he were proud.\n  DIOMEDES. Or covetous of praise.\n  ULYSSES. Ay, or surly borne.\n  DIOMEDES. Or strange, or self-affected.\n  ULYSSES. Thank the heavens, lord, thou art of sweet composure\n    Praise him that gat thee, she that gave thee suck;\n    Fam\'d be thy tutor, and thy parts of nature\n    Thrice-fam\'d beyond, beyond all erudition;\n    But he that disciplin\'d thine arms to fight-\n    Let Mars divide eternity in twain\n    And give him half; and, for thy vigour,\n    Bull-bearing Milo his addition yield\n    To sinewy Ajax. I will not praise thy wisdom,\n    Which, like a bourn, a pale, a shore, confines\n    Thy spacious and dilated parts. Here\'s Nestor,\n    Instructed by the antiquary times-\n    He must, he is, he cannot but be wise;\n    But pardon, father Nestor, were your days  \n    As green as Ajax\' and your brain so temper\'d,\n    You should not have the eminence of him,\n    But be as Ajax.\n  AJAX. Shall I call you father?\n  NESTOR. Ay, my good son.\n  DIOMEDES. Be rul\'d by him, Lord Ajax.\n  ULYSSES. There is no tarrying here; the hart Achilles\n    Keeps thicket. Please it our great general\n    To call together all his state of war;\n    Fresh kings are come to Troy. To-morrow\n    We must with all our main of power stand fast;\n    And here\'s a lord-come knights from east to west\n    And cull their flower, Ajax shall cope the best.\n  AGAMEMNON. Go we to council. Let Achilles sleep.\n    Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep.\n    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 1.\nTroy. PRIAM\'S palace\n\nMusic sounds within. Enter PANDARUS and a SERVANT\n\n  PANDARUS. Friend, you-pray you, a word. Do you not follow the young\n    Lord Paris?\n  SERVANT. Ay, sir, when he goes before me.\n  PANDARUS. You depend upon him, I mean?\n  SERVANT. Sir, I do depend upon the lord.\n  PANDARUS. You depend upon a notable gentleman; I must needs praise\n    him.\n  SERVANT. The lord be praised!\n  PANDARUS. You know me, do you not?\n  SERVANT. Faith, sir, superficially.\n  PANDARUS. Friend, know me better: I am the Lord Pandarus.\n  SERVANT. I hope I shall know your honour better.\n  PANDARUS. I do desire it.\n  SERVANT. You are in the state of grace.\n  PANDARUS. Grace! Not so, friend; honour and lordship are my titles.\n    What music is this?\n  SERVANT. I do but partly know, sir; it is music in parts.  \n  PANDARUS. Know you the musicians?\n  SERVANT. Wholly, sir.\n  PANDARUS. Who play they to?\n  SERVANT. To the hearers, sir.\n  PANDARUS. At whose pleasure, friend?\n  SERVANT. At mine, sir, and theirs that love music.\n  PANDARUS. Command, I mean, friend.\n  SERVANT. Who shall I command, sir?\n  PANDARUS. Friend, we understand not one another: I am to courtly,\n    and thou art too cunning. At whose request do these men play?\n  SERVANT. That\'s to\'t, indeed, sir. Marry, sir, at the request of\n    Paris my lord, who is there in person; with him the mortal Venus,\n    the heart-blood of beauty, love\'s invisible soul-\n  PANDARUS. Who, my cousin, Cressida?\n  SERVANT. No, sir, Helen. Could not you find out that by her\n    attributes?\n  PANDARUS. It should seem, fellow, that thou hast not seen the Lady\n    Cressida. I come to speak with Paris from the Prince Troilus; I\n    will make a complimental assault upon him, for my business\n    seethes.  \n  SERVANT. Sodden business! There\'s a stew\'d phrase indeed!\n\n              Enter PARIS and HELEN, attended\n\n  PANDARUS. Fair be to you, my lord, and to all this fair company!\n    Fair desires, in all fair measure, fairly guide them- especially\n    to you, fair queen! Fair thoughts be your fair pillow.\n  HELEN. Dear lord, you are full of fair words.\n  PANDARUS. You speak your fair pleasure, sweet queen. Fair prince,\n    here is good broken music.\n  PARIS. You have broke it, cousin; and by my life, you shall make it\n    whole again; you shall piece it out with a piece of your\n    performance.\n  HELEN. He is full of harmony.\n  PANDARUS. Truly, lady, no.\n  HELEN. O, sir-\n  PANDARUS. Rude, in sooth; in good sooth, very rude.\n  PARIS. Well said, my lord. Well, you say so in fits.\n  PANDARUS. I have business to my lord, dear queen. My lord, will you\n    vouchsafe me a word?  \n  HELEN. Nay, this shall not hedge us out. We\'ll hear you sing,\n    certainly-\n  PANDARUS. Well sweet queen, you are pleasant with me. But, marry,\n    thus, my lord: my dear lord and most esteemed friend, your\n    brother Troilus-\n  HELEN. My Lord Pandarus, honey-sweet lord-\n  PANDARUS. Go to, sweet queen, go to-commends himself most\n    affectionately to you-\n  HELEN. You shall not bob us out of our melody. If you do, our\n    melancholy upon your head!\n  PANDARUS. Sweet queen, sweet queen; that\'s a sweet queen, i\' faith.\n  HELEN. And to make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence.\n  PANDARUS. Nay, that shall not serve your turn; that shall it not,\n    in truth, la. Nay, I care not for such words; no, no. -And, my\n    lord, he desires you that, if the King call for him at supper,\n    you will make his excuse.\n  HELEN. My Lord Pandarus!\n  PANDARUS. What says my sweet queen, my very very sweet queen?\n  PARIS. What exploit\'s in hand? Where sups he to-night?\n  HELEN. Nay, but, my lord-  \n  PANDARUS. What says my sweet queen?-My cousin will fall out with\n    you.\n  HELEN. You must not know where he sups.\n  PARIS. I\'ll lay my life, with my disposer Cressida.\n  PANDARUS. No, no, no such matter; you are wide. Come, your disposer\n    is sick.\n  PARIS. Well, I\'ll make\'s excuse.\n  PANDARUS. Ay, good my lord. Why should you say Cressida?\n    No, your poor disposer\'s sick.\n  PARIS. I spy.\n  PANDARUS. You spy! What do you spy?-Come, give me an instrument.\n    Now, sweet queen.\n  HELEN. Why, this is kindly done.\n  PANDARUS. My niece is horribly in love with a thing you have, sweet\n    queen.\n  HELEN. She shall have it, my lord, if it be not my Lord Paris.\n  PANDARUS. He! No, she\'ll none of him; they two are twain.\n  HELEN. Falling in, after falling out, may make them three.\n  PANDARUS. Come, come. I\'ll hear no more of this; I\'ll sing you a\n    song now.  \n  HELEN. Ay, ay, prithee now. By my troth, sweet lord, thou hast a\n    fine forehead.\n  PANDARUS. Ay, you may, you may.\n  HELEN. Let thy song be love. This love will undo us all. O Cupid,\n    Cupid, Cupid!\n  PANDARUS. Love! Ay, that it shall, i\' faith.\n  PARIS. Ay, good now, love, love, nothing but love.\n  PANDARUS. In good troth, it begins so.                      [Sings]\n\n    Love, love, nothing but love, still love, still more!\n           For, oh, love\'s bow\n           Shoots buck and doe;\n           The shaft confounds\n           Not that it wounds,\n    But tickles still the sore.\n    These lovers cry, O ho, they die!\n       Yet that which seems the wound to kill\n    Doth turn O ho! to ha! ha! he!\n       So dying love lives still.\n    O ho! a while, but ha! ha! ha!  \n    O ho! groans out for ha! ha! ha!-hey ho!\n\n  HELEN. In love, i\' faith, to the very tip of the nose.\n  PARIS. He eats nothing but doves, love; and that breeds hot blood,\n    and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot\n    deeds, and hot deeds is love.\n  PANDARUS. Is this the generation of love: hot blood, hot thoughts,\n    and hot deeds? Why, they are vipers. Is love a generation of\n    vipers? Sweet lord, who\'s a-field today?\n  PARIS. Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and all the gallantry\n    of Troy. I would fain have arm\'d to-day, but my Nell would not\n    have it so. How chance my brother Troilus went not?\n  HELEN. He hangs the lip at something. You know all, Lord Pandarus.\n  PANDARUS. Not I, honey-sweet queen. I long to hear how they spend\n    to-day. You\'ll remember your brother\'s excuse?\n  PARIS. To a hair.\n  PANDARUS. Farewell, sweet queen.\n  HELEN. Commend me to your niece.\n  PANDARUS. I will, sweet queen.                Exit. Sound a retreat\n  PARIS. They\'re come from the field. Let us to Priam\'s hall  \n    To greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must woo you\n    To help unarm our Hector. His stubborn buckles,\n    With these your white enchanting fingers touch\'d,\n    Shall more obey than to the edge of steel\n    Or force of Greekish sinews; you shall do more\n    Than all the island kings-disarm great Hector.\n  HELEN. \'Twill make us proud to be his servant, Paris;\n    Yea, what he shall receive of us in duty\n    Gives us more palm in beauty than we have,\n    Yea, overshines ourself.\n  PARIS. Sweet, above thought I love thee.                     Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 2.\nTroy. PANDARUS\' orchard\n\nEnter PANDARUS and TROILUS\' BOY, meeting\n\n  PANDARUS. How now! Where\'s thy master? At my cousin Cressida\'s?\n  BOY. No, sir; he stays for you to conduct him thither.\n\n                      Enter TROILUS\n\n  PANDARUS. O, here he comes. How now, how now!\n  TROILUS. Sirrah, walk off.                                 Exit Boy\n  PANDARUS. Have you seen my cousin?\n  TROILUS. No, Pandarus. I stalk about her door\n    Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks\n    Staying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon,\n    And give me swift transportance to these fields\n    Where I may wallow in the lily beds\n    Propos\'d for the deserver! O gentle Pandar,\n    From Cupid\'s shoulder pluck his painted wings,\n    And fly with me to Cressid!\n  PANDARUS. Walk here i\' th\' orchard, I\'ll bring her straight.  \n      Exit\n  TROILUS. I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.\n    Th\' imaginary relish is so sweet\n    That it enchants my sense; what will it be\n    When that the wat\'ry palate tastes indeed\n    Love\'s thrice-repured nectar? Death, I fear me;\n    Swooning destruction; or some joy too fine,\n    Too subtle-potent, tun\'d too sharp in sweetness,\n    For the capacity of my ruder powers.\n    I fear it much; and I do fear besides\n    That I shall lose distinction in my joys;\n    As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps\n    The enemy flying.\n\n                     Re-enter PANDARUS\n\n  PANDARUS. She\'s making her ready, she\'ll come straight; you must be\n    witty now. She does so blush, and fetches her wind so short, as\n    if she were fray\'d with a sprite. I\'ll fetch her. It is the\n    prettiest villain; she fetches her breath as short as a new-ta\'en  \n    sparrow.                                                     Exit\n  TROILUS. Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom.\n    My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse,\n    And all my powers do their bestowing lose,\n    Like vassalage at unawares encount\'ring\n    The eye of majesty.\n\n              Re-enter PANDARUS With CRESSIDA\n\n  PANDARUS. Come, come, what need you blush? Shame\'s a baby.-Here she\n    is now; swear the oaths now to her that you have sworn to me.-\n    What, are you gone again? You must be watch\'d ere you be made\n    tame, must you? Come your ways, come your ways; an you draw\n    backward, we\'ll put you i\' th\' fills.-Why do you not speak to\n    her?-Come, draw this curtain and let\'s see your picture.\n    Alas the day, how loath you are to offend daylight! An \'twere\n    dark, you\'d close sooner. So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress\n    How now, a kiss in fee-farm! Build there, carpenter; the air is\n    sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out ere I part you. The\n    falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks i\' th\' river. Go to, go  \n    to.\n  TROILUS. You have bereft me of all words, lady.\n  PANDARUS. Words pay no debts, give her deeds; but she\'ll bereave\n    you o\' th\' deeds too, if she call your activity in question.\n    What, billing again? Here\'s \'In witness whereof the parties\n    interchangeably.\' Come in, come in; I\'ll go get a fire.\n      Exit\n  CRESSIDA. Will you walk in, my lord?\n  TROILUS. O Cressid, how often have I wish\'d me thus!\n  CRESSIDA. Wish\'d, my lord! The gods grant-O my lord!\n  TROILUS. What should they grant? What makes this pretty abruption?\n    What too curious dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain of our\n    love?\n  CRESSIDA. More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes.\n  TROILUS. Fears make devils of cherubims; they never see truly.\n  CRESSIDA. Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing\n    than blind reason stumbling without fear. To fear the worst oft\n    cures the worse.\n  TROILUS. O, let my lady apprehend no fear! In all Cupid\'s pageant\n    there is presented no monster.  \n  CRESSIDA. Nor nothing monstrous neither?\n  TROILUS. Nothing, but our undertakings when we vow to weep seas,\n    live in fire, cat rocks, tame tigers; thinking it harder for our\n    mistress to devise imposition enough than for us to undergo any\n    difficulty imposed. This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that\n    the will is infinite, and the execution confin\'d; that the desire\n    is boundless, and the act a slave to limit.\n  CRESSIDA. They say all lovers swear more performance than they are\n    able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform; vowing\n    more than the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the\n    tenth part of one. They that have the voice of lions and the act\n    of hares, are they not monsters?\n  TROILUS. Are there such? Such are not we. Praise us as we are\n    tasted, allow us as we prove; our head shall go bare till merit\n    crown it. No perfection in reversion shall have a praise in\n    present. We will not name desert before his birth; and, being\n    born, his addition shall be humble. Few words to fair faith:\n    Troilus shall be such to Cressid as what envy can say worst shall\n    be a mock for his truth; and what truth can speak truest not\n    truer than Troilus.  \n  CRESSIDA. Will you walk in, my lord?\n\n                    Re-enter PANDARUS\n\n  PANDARUS. What, blushing still? Have you not done talking yet?\n  CRESSIDA. Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate to you.\n  PANDARUS. I thank you for that; if my lord get a boy of you, you\'ll\n    give him me. Be true to my lord; if he flinch, chide me for it.\n  TROILUS. You know now your hostages: your uncle\'s word and my firm\n    faith.\n  PANDARUS. Nay, I\'ll give my word for her too: our kindred, though\n    they be long ere they are wooed, they are constant being won;\n    they are burs, I can tell you; they\'ll stick where they are\n    thrown.\n  CRESSIDA. Boldness comes to me now and brings me heart.\n    Prince Troilus, I have lov\'d you night and day\n    For many weary months.\n  TROILUS. Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?\n  CRESSIDA. Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord,\n    With the first glance that ever-pardon me.  \n    If I confess much, you will play the tyrant.\n    I love you now; but till now not so much\n    But I might master it. In faith, I lie;\n    My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown\n    Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!\n    Why have I blabb\'d? Who shall be true to us,\n    When we are so unsecret to ourselves?\n    But, though I lov\'d you well, I woo\'d you not;\n    And yet, good faith, I wish\'d myself a man,\n    Or that we women had men\'s privilege\n    Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue,\n    For in this rapture I shall surely speak\n    The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,\n    Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws\n    My very soul of counsel. Stop my mouth.\n  TROILUS. And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.\n  PANDARUS. Pretty, i\' faith.\n  CRESSIDA. My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me;\n    \'Twas not my purpose thus to beg a kiss.\n    I am asham\'d. O heavens! what have I done?  \n    For this time will I take my leave, my lord.\n  TROILUS. Your leave, sweet Cressid!\n  PANDARUS. Leave! An you take leave till to-morrow morning-\n  CRESSIDA. Pray you, content you.\n  TROILUS. What offends you, lady?\n  CRESSIDA. Sir, mine own company.\n  TROILUS. You cannot shun yourself.\n  CRESSIDA. Let me go and try.\n    I have a kind of self resides with you;\n    But an unkind self, that itself will leave\n    To be another\'s fool. I would be gone.\n    Where is my wit? I know not what I speak.\n  TROILUS. Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely.\n  CRESSIDA. Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love;\n    And fell so roundly to a large confession\n    To angle for your thoughts; but you are wise-\n    Or else you love not; for to be wise and love\n    Exceeds man\'s might; that dwells with gods above.\n  TROILUS. O that I thought it could be in a woman-\n    As, if it can, I will presume in you-  \n    To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love;\n    To keep her constancy in plight and youth,\n    Outliving beauty\'s outward, with a mind\n    That doth renew swifter than blood decays!\n    Or that persuasion could but thus convince me\n    That my integrity and truth to you\n    Might be affronted with the match and weight\n    Of such a winnowed purity in love.\n    How were I then uplifted! but, alas,\n    I am as true as truth\'s simplicity,\n    And simpler than the infancy of truth.\n  CRESSIDA. In that I\'ll war with you.\n  TROILUS. O virtuous fight,\n    When right with right wars who shall be most right!\n    True swains in love shall in the world to come\n    Approve their truth by Troilus, when their rhymes,\n    Full of protest, of oath, and big compare,\n    Want similes, truth tir\'d with iteration-\n    As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,\n    As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,  \n    As iron to adamant, as earth to th\' centre-\n    Yet, after all comparisons of truth,\n    As truth\'s authentic author to be cited,\n    \'As true as Troilus\' shall crown up the verse\n    And sanctify the numbers.\n  CRESSIDA. Prophet may you be!\n    If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,\n    When time is old and hath forgot itself,\n    When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,\n    And blind oblivion swallow\'d cities up,\n    And mighty states characterless are grated\n    To dusty nothing-yet let memory\n    From false to false, among false maids in love,\n    Upbraid my falsehood when th\' have said \'As false\n    As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,\n    As fox to lamb, or wolf to heifer\'s calf,\n    Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son\'-\n    Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,\n    \'As false as Cressid.\'\n  PANDARUS. Go to, a bargain made; seal it, seal it; I\'ll be the  \n    witness. Here I hold your hand; here my cousin\'s. If ever you\n    prove false one to another, since I have taken such pains to\n    bring you together, let all pitiful goers- between be call\'d to\n    the world\'s end after my name-call them all Pandars; let all\n    constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all\n    brokers between Pandars. Say \'Amen.\'\n  TROILUS. Amen.\n  CRESSIDA. Amen.\n  PANDARUS. Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber\n    and a bed; which bed, because it shall not speak of your\n    pretty encounters, press it to death. Away!\n    And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here,\n    Bed, chamber, pander, to provide this gear!                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE 3.\nThe Greek camp\n\nFlourish. Enter AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, DIOMEDES, NESTOR, AJAX, MENELAUS,\nand CALCHAS\n\n  CALCHAS. Now, Princes, for the service I have done,\n    Th\' advantage of the time prompts me aloud\n    To call for recompense. Appear it to your mind\n    That, through the sight I bear in things to come,\n    I have abandon\'d Troy, left my possession,\n    Incurr\'d a traitor\'s name, expos\'d myself\n    From certain and possess\'d conveniences\n    To doubtful fortunes, sequest\'ring from me all\n    That time, acquaintance, custom, and condition,\n    Made tame and most familiar to my nature;\n    And here, to do you service, am become\n    As new into the world, strange, unacquainted-\n    I do beseech you, as in way of taste,\n    To give me now a little benefit\n    Out of those many regist\'red in promise,\n    Which you say live to come in my behalf.  \n  AGAMEMNON. What wouldst thou of us, Troyan? Make demand.\n  CALCHAS. You have a Troyan prisoner call\'d Antenor,\n    Yesterday took; Troy holds him very dear.\n    Oft have you-often have you thanks therefore-\n    Desir\'d my Cressid in right great exchange,\n    Whom Troy hath still denied; but this Antenor,\n    I know, is such a wrest in their affairs\n    That their negotiations all must slack\n    Wanting his manage; and they will almost\n    Give us a prince of blood, a son of Priam,\n    In change of him. Let him be sent, great Princes,\n    And he shall buy my daughter; and her presence\n    Shall quite strike off all service I have done\n    In most accepted pain.\n  AGAMEMNON. Let Diomedes bear him,\n    And bring us Cressid hither. Calchas shall have\n    What he requests of us. Good Diomed,\n    Furnish you fairly for this interchange;\n    Withal, bring word if Hector will to-morrow\n    Be answer\'d in his challenge. Ajax is ready.  \n  DIOMEDES. This shall I undertake; and \'tis a burden\n    Which I am proud to bear.\n                                          Exeunt DIOMEDES and CALCHAS\n\n           ACHILLES and PATROCLUS stand in their tent\n\n  ULYSSES. Achilles stands i\' th\' entrance of his tent.\n    Please it our general pass strangely by him,\n    As if he were forgot; and, Princes all,\n    Lay negligent and loose regard upon him.\n    I will come last. \'Tis like he\'ll question me\n    Why such unplausive eyes are bent, why turn\'d on him?\n    If so, I have derision med\'cinable\n    To use between your strangeness and his pride,\n    Which his own will shall have desire to drink.\n    It may do good. Pride hath no other glass\n    To show itself but pride; for supple knees\n    Feed arrogance and are the proud man\'s fees.\n  AGAMEMNON. We\'ll execute your purpose, and put on\n    A form of strangeness as we pass along.  \n    So do each lord; and either greet him not,\n    Or else disdainfully, which shall shake him more\n    Than if not look\'d on. I will lead the way.\n  ACHILLES. What comes the general to speak with me?\n    You know my mind. I\'ll fight no more \'gainst Troy.\n  AGAMEMNON. What says Achilles? Would he aught with us?\n  NESTOR. Would you, my lord, aught with the general?\n  ACHILLES. No.\n  NESTOR. Nothing, my lord.\n  AGAMEMNON. The better.\n                                          Exeunt AGAMEMNON and NESTOR\n  ACHILLES. Good day, good day.\n  MENELAUS. How do you? How do you?                              Exit\n  ACHILLES. What, does the cuckold scorn me?\n  AJAX. How now, Patroclus?\n  ACHILLES. Good morrow, Ajax.\n  AJAX. Ha?\n  ACHILLES. Good morrow.\n  AJAX. Ay, and good next day too.                               Exit\n  ACHILLES. What mean these fellows? Know they not Achilles?  \n  PATROCLUS. They pass by strangely. They were us\'d to bend,\n    To send their smiles before them to Achilles,\n    To come as humbly as they us\'d to creep\n    To holy altars.\n  ACHILLES. What, am I poor of late?\n    \'Tis certain, greatness, once fall\'n out with fortune,\n    Must fall out with men too. What the declin\'d is,\n    He shall as soon read in the eyes of others\n    As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies,\n    Show not their mealy wings but to the summer;\n    And not a man for being simply man\n    Hath any honour, but honour for those honours\n    That are without him, as place, riches, and favour,\n    Prizes of accident, as oft as merit;\n    Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,\n    The love that lean\'d on them as slippery too,\n    Doth one pluck down another, and together\n    Die in the fall. But \'tis not so with me:\n    Fortune and I are friends; I do enjoy\n    At ample point all that I did possess  \n    Save these men\'s looks; who do, methinks, find out\n    Something not worth in me such rich beholding\n    As they have often given. Here is Ulysses.\n    I\'ll interrupt his reading.\n    How now, Ulysses!\n  ULYSSES. Now, great Thetis\' son!\n  ACHILLES. What are you reading?\n  ULYSSES. A strange fellow here\n    Writes me that man-how dearly ever parted,\n    How much in having, or without or in-\n    Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,\n    Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection;\n    As when his virtues shining upon others\n    Heat them, and they retort that heat again\n    To the first giver.\n  ACHILLES. This is not strange, Ulysses.\n    The beauty that is borne here in the face\n    The bearer knows not, but commends itself\n    To others\' eyes; nor doth the eye itself-\n    That most pure spirit of sense-behold itself,  \n    Not going from itself; but eye to eye opposed\n    Salutes each other with each other\'s form;\n    For speculation turns not to itself\n    Till it hath travell\'d, and is mirror\'d there\n    Where it may see itself. This is not strange at all.\n  ULYSSES. I do not strain at the position-\n    It is familiar-but at the author\'s drift;\n    Who, in his circumstance, expressly proves\n    That no man is the lord of anything,\n    Though in and of him there be much consisting,\n    Till he communicate his parts to others;\n    Nor doth he of himself know them for aught\n    Till he behold them formed in th\' applause\n    Where th\' are extended; who, like an arch, reverb\'rate\n    The voice again; or, like a gate of steel\n    Fronting the sun, receives and renders back\n    His figure and his heat. I was much rapt in this;\n    And apprehended here immediately\n    Th\' unknown Ajax. Heavens, what a man is there!\n    A very horse that has he knows not what!  \n    Nature, what things there are\n    Most abject in regard and dear in use!\n    What things again most dear in the esteem\n    And poor in worth! Now shall we see to-morrow-\n    An act that very chance doth throw upon him-\n    Ajax renown\'d. O heavens, what some men do,\n    While some men leave to do!\n    How some men creep in skittish Fortune\'s-hall,\n    Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!\n    How one man eats into another\'s pride,\n    While pride is fasting in his wantonness!\n    To see these Grecian lords!-why, even already\n    They clap the lubber Ajax on the shoulder,\n    As if his foot were on brave Hector\'s breast,\n    And great Troy shrinking.\n  ACHILLES. I do believe it; for they pass\'d by me\n    As misers do by beggars-neither gave to me\n    Good word nor look. What, are my deeds forgot?\n  ULYSSES. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,\n    Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,  \n    A great-siz\'d monster of ingratitudes.\n    Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour\'d\n    As fast as they are made, forgot as soon\n    As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,\n    Keeps honour bright. To have done is to hang\n    Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail\n    In monumental mock\'ry. Take the instant way;\n    For honour travels in a strait so narrow -\n    Where one but goes abreast. Keep then the path,\n    For emulation hath a thousand sons\n    That one by one pursue; if you give way,\n    Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,\n    Like to an ent\'red tide they all rush by\n    And leave you hindmost;\n    Or, like a gallant horse fall\'n in first rank,\n    Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,\n    O\'er-run and trampled on. Then what they do in present,\n    Though less than yours in past, must o\'ertop yours;\n    For Time is like a fashionable host,\n    That slightly shakes his parting guest by th\' hand;  \n    And with his arms out-stretch\'d, as he would fly,\n    Grasps in the corner. The welcome ever smiles,\n    And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek\n    Remuneration for the thing it was;\n    For beauty, wit,\n    High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,\n    Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all\n    To envious and calumniating Time.\n    One touch of nature makes the whole world kin-\n    That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,\n    Though they are made and moulded of things past,\n    And give to dust that is a little gilt\n    More laud than gilt o\'er-dusted.\n    The present eye praises the present object.\n    Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,\n    That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax,\n    Since things in motion sooner catch the eye\n    Than what stirs not. The cry went once on thee,\n    And still it might, and yet it may again,\n    If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive  \n    And case thy reputation in thy tent,\n    Whose glorious deeds but in these fields of late\n    Made emulous missions \'mongst the gods themselves,\n    And drave great Mars to faction.\n  ACHILLES. Of this my privacy\n    I have strong reasons.\n  ULYSSES. But \'gainst your privacy\n    The reasons are more potent and heroical.\n    \'Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love\n    With one of Priam\'s daughters.\n  ACHILLES. Ha! known!\n  ULYSSES. Is that a wonder?\n    The providence that\'s in a watchful state\n    Knows almost every grain of Plutus\' gold;\n    Finds bottom in th\' uncomprehensive deeps;\n    Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the gods,\n    Do thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.\n    There is a mystery-with whom relation\n    Durst never meddle-in the soul of state,\n    Which hath an operation more divine  \n    Than breath or pen can give expressure to.\n    All the commerce that you have had with Troy\n    As perfectly is ours as yours, my lord;\n    And better would it fit Achilles much\n    To throw down Hector than Polyxena.\n    But it must grieve young Pyrrhus now at home,\n    When fame shall in our island sound her trump,\n    And all the Greekish girls shall tripping sing\n    \'Great Hector\'s sister did Achilles win;\n    But our great Ajax bravely beat down him.\'\n    Farewell, my lord. I as your lover speak.\n    The fool slides o\'er the ice that you should break.          Exit\n  PATROCLUS. To this effect, Achilles, have I mov\'d you.\n    A woman impudent and mannish grown\n    Is not more loath\'d than an effeminate man\n    In time of action. I stand condemn\'d for this;\n    They think my little stomach to the war\n    And your great love to me restrains you thus.\n    Sweet, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid\n    Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,  \n    And, like a dew-drop from the lion\'s mane,\n    Be shook to airy air.\n  ACHILLES. Shall Ajax fight with Hector?\n  PATROCLUS. Ay, and perhaps receive much honour by him.\n  ACHILLES. I see my reputation is at stake;\n    My fame is shrewdly gor\'d.\n  PATROCLUS. O, then, beware:\n    Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves;\n    Omission to do what is necessary\n    Seals a commission to a blank of danger;\n    And danger, like an ague, subtly taints\n    Even then when they sit idly in the sun.\n  ACHILLES. Go call Thersites hither, sweet Patroclus.\n    I\'ll send the fool to Ajax, and desire him\n    T\' invite the Troyan lords, after the combat,\n    To see us here unarm\'d. I have a woman\'s longing,\n    An appetite that I am sick withal,\n    To see great Hector in his weeds of peace;\n    To talk with him, and to behold his visage,\n    Even to my full of view.  \n\n                     Enter THERSITES\n\n    A labour sav\'d!\n  THERSITES. A wonder!\n  ACHILLES. What?\n  THERSITES. Ajax goes up and down the field asking for himself.\n  ACHILLES. How so?\n  THERSITES. He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector, and is so\n    prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling that he raves in\n    saying nothing.\n  ACHILLES. How can that be?\n  THERSITES. Why, \'a stalks up and down like a peacock-a stride and a\n    stand; ruminaies like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her\n    brain to set down her reckoning, bites his lip with a politic\n    regard, as who should say \'There were wit in this head, an\n    \'twould out\'; and so there is; but it lies as coldly in him as\n    fire in a flint, which will not show without knocking. The man\'s\n    undone for ever; for if Hector break not his neck i\' th\' combat,\n    he\'ll break\'t himself in vainglory. He knows not me. I said \'Good  \n    morrow, Ajax\'; and he replies \'Thanks, Agamemnon.\' What think you\n    of this man that takes me for the general? He\'s grown a very land\n    fish, languageless, a monster. A plague of opinion! A man may\n    wear it on both sides, like leather jerkin.\n  ACHILLES. Thou must be my ambassador to him, Thersites.\n  THERSITES. Who, I? Why, he\'ll answer nobody; he professes not\n    answering. Speaking is for beggars: he wears his tongue in\'s\n    arms. I will put on his presence. Let Patroclus make his demands\n    to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax.\n  ACHILLES. To him, Patroclus. Tell him I humbly desire the valiant\n    Ajax to invite the most valorous Hector to come unarm\'d to my\n    tent; and to procure safe conduct for his person of the\n    magnanimous and most illustrious six-or-seven-times-honour\'d\n    Captain General of the Grecian army, et cetera, Agamemnon. Do\n    this.\n  PATROCLUS. Jove bless great Ajax!\n  THERSITES. Hum!\n  PATROCLUS. I come from the worthy Achilles-\n  THERSITES. Ha!\n  PATROCLUS. Who most humbly desires you to invite Hector to his  \n    tent-\n  THERSITES. Hum!\n  PATROCLUS. And to procure safe conduct from Agamemnon.\n  THERSITES. Agamemnon!\n  PATROCLUS. Ay, my lord.\n  THERSITES. Ha!\n  PATROCLUS. What you say to\'t?\n  THERSITES. God buy you, with all my heart.\n  PATROCLUS. Your answer, sir.\n  THERSITES. If to-morrow be a fair day, by eleven of the clock it\n    will go one way or other. Howsoever, he shall pay for me ere he\n    has me.\n  PATROCLUS. Your answer, sir.\n  THERSITES. Fare ye well, with all my heart.\n  ACHILLES. Why, but he is not in this tune, is he?\n  THERSITES. No, but he\'s out a tune thus. What music will be in him\n    when Hector has knock\'d out his brains I know not; but, I am sure,\n    none; unless the fiddler Apollo get his sinews to make catlings\n    on.\n  ACHILLES. Come, thou shalt bear a letter to him straight.  \n  THERSITES. Let me carry another to his horse; for that\'s the more\n    capable creature.\n  ACHILLES. My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr\'d;\n    And I myself see not the bottom of it.\n                                        Exeunt ACHILLES and PATROCLUS\n  THERSITES. Would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that I\n    might water an ass at it. I had rather be a tick in a sheep than\n    such a valiant ignorance.                                    Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 1.\nTroy. A street\n\nEnter, at one side, AENEAS, and servant with a torch; at another,\nPARIS, DEIPHOBUS, ANTENOR, DIOMEDES the Grecian, and others, with torches\n\n  PARIS. See, ho! Who is that there?\n  DEIPHOBUS. It is the Lord Aeneas.\n  AENEAS. Is the Prince there in person?\n    Had I so good occasion to lie long\n    As you, Prince Paris, nothing but heavenly business\n    Should rob my bed-mate of my company.\n  DIOMEDES. That\'s my mind too. Good morrow, Lord Aeneas.\n  PARIS. A valiant Greek, Aeneas -take his hand:\n    Witness the process of your speech, wherein\n    You told how Diomed, a whole week by days,\n    Did haunt you in the field.\n  AENEAS. Health to you, valiant sir,\n    During all question of the gentle truce;\n    But when I meet you arm\'d, as black defiance\n    As heart can think or courage execute.  \n  DIOMEDES. The one and other Diomed embraces.\n    Our bloods are now in calm; and so long health!\n    But when contention and occasion meet,\n    By Jove, I\'ll play the hunter for thy life\n    With all my force, pursuit, and policy.\n  AENEAS. And thou shalt hunt a lion, that will fly\n    With his face backward. In humane gentleness,\n    Welcome to Troy! now, by Anchises\' life,\n    Welcome indeed! By Venus\' hand I swear\n    No man alive can love in such a sort\n    The thing he means to kill, more excellently.\n  DIOMEDES. We sympathise. Jove let Aeneas live,\n    If to my sword his fate be not the glory,\n    A thousand complete courses of the sun!\n    But in mine emulous honour let him die\n    With every joint a wound, and that to-morrow!\n  AENEAS. We know each other well.\n  DIOMEDES.We do; and long to know each other worse.\n  PARIS. This is the most despiteful\'st gentle greeting\n    The noblest hateful love, that e\'er I heard of.  \n    What business, lord, so early?\n  AENEAS. I was sent for to the King; but why, I know not.\n  PARIS. His purpose meets you: \'twas to bring this Greek\n    To Calchas\' house, and there to render him,\n    For the enfreed Antenor, the fair Cressid.\n    Let\'s have your company; or, if you please,\n    Haste there before us. I constantly believe-\n    Or rather call my thought a certain knowledge-\n    My brother Troilus lodges there to-night.\n    Rouse him and give him note of our approach,\n    With the whole quality wherefore; I fear\n    We shall be much unwelcome.\n  AENEAS. That I assure you:\n    Troilus had rather Troy were borne to Greece\n    Than Cressid borne from Troy.\n  PARIS. There is no help;\n    The bitter disposition of the time\n    Will have it so. On, lord; we\'ll follow you.\n  AENEAS. Good morrow, all.                         Exit with servant\n  PARIS. And tell me, noble Diomed-faith, tell me true,  \n    Even in the soul of sound good-fellowship-\n    Who in your thoughts deserves fair Helen best,\n    Myself or Menelaus?\n  DIOMEDES. Both alike:\n    He merits well to have her that doth seek her,\n    Not making any scruple of her soilure,\n    With such a hell of pain and world of charge;\n    And you as well to keep her that defend her,\n    Not palating the taste of her dishonour,\n    With such a costly loss of wealth and friends.\n    He like a puling cuckold would drink up\n    The lees and dregs of a flat tamed piece;\n    You, like a lecher, out of whorish loins\n    Are pleas\'d to breed out your inheritors.\n    Both merits pois\'d, each weighs nor less nor more;\n    But he as he, the heavier for a whore.\n  PARIS. You are too bitter to your country-woman.\n  DIOMEDES. She\'s bitter to her country. Hear me, Paris:\n    For every false drop in her bawdy veins\n    A Grecian\'s life hath sunk; for every scruple  \n    Of her contaminated carrion weight\n    A Troyan hath been slain; since she could speak,\n    She hath not given so many good words breath\n    As for her Greeks and Troyans suff\'red death.\n  PARIS. Fair Diomed, you do as chapmen do,\n    Dispraise the thing that you desire to buy;\n    But we in silence hold this virtue well:\n    We\'ll not commend what we intend to sell.\n    Here lies our way.                                         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 2.\nTroy. The court of PANDARUS\' house\n\nEnter TROILUS and CRESSIDA\n\n  TROILUS. Dear, trouble not yourself; the morn is cold.\n  CRESSIDA. Then, sweet my lord, I\'ll call mine uncle down;\n    He shall unbolt the gates.\n  TROILUS. Trouble him not;\n    To bed, to bed! Sleep kill those pretty eyes,\n    And give as soft attachment to thy senses\n    As infants\' empty of all thought!\n  CRESSIDA. Good morrow, then.\n  TROILUS. I prithee now, to bed.\n  CRESSIDA. Are you aweary of me?\n  TROILUS. O Cressida! but that the busy day,\n    Wak\'d by the lark, hath rous\'d the ribald crows,\n    And dreaming night will hide our joys no longer,\n    I would not from thee.\n  CRESSIDA. Night hath been too brief.\n  TROILUS. Beshrew the witch! with venomous wights she stays\n    As tediously as hell, but flies the grasps of love  \n    With wings more momentary-swift than thought.\n    You will catch cold, and curse me.\n  CRESSIDA. Prithee tarry.\n    You men will never tarry.\n    O foolish Cressid! I might have still held off,\n    And then you would have tarried. Hark! there\'s one up.\n  PANDARUS. [Within] What\'s all the doors open here?\n  TROILUS. It is your uncle.\n\n                     Enter PANDARUS\n\n  CRESSIDA. A pestilence on him! Now will he be mocking.\n    I shall have such a life!\n  PANDARUS. How now, how now! How go maidenheads?\n    Here, you maid! Where\'s my cousin Cressid?\n  CRESSIDA. Go hang yourself, you naughty mocking uncle.\n    You bring me to do, and then you flout me too.\n  PANDARUS. To do what? to do what? Let her say what.\n    What have I brought you to do?\n  CRESSIDA. Come, come, beshrew your heart! You\'ll ne\'er be good,  \n    Nor suffer others.\n  PANDARUS. Ha, ha! Alas, poor wretch! a poor capocchia! hast not\n    slept to-night? Would he not, a naughty man, let it sleep? A\n    bugbear take him!\n  CRESSIDA. Did not I tell you? Would he were knock\'d i\' th\' head!\n                                                         [One knocks]\n    Who\'s that at door? Good uncle, go and see.\n    My lord, come you again into my chamber.\n    You smile and mock me, as if I meant naughtily.\n  TROILUS. Ha! ha!\n  CRESSIDA. Come, you are deceiv\'d, I think of no such thing.\n   [Knock]\n    How earnestly they knock! Pray you come in:\n    I would not for half Troy have you seen here.\n                                          Exeunt TROILUS and CRESSIDA\n  PANDARUS. Who\'s there? What\'s the matter? Will you beat down the\n    door? How now? What\'s the matter?\n\n                          Enter AENEAS  \n  AENEAS. Good morrow, lord, good morrow.\n  PANDARUS. Who\'s there? My lord Aeneas? By my troth,\n    I knew you not. What news with you so early?\n  AENEAS. Is not Prince Troilus here?\n  PANDARUS. Here! What should he do here?\n  AENEAS. Come, he is here, my lord; do not deny him.\n    It doth import him much to speak with me.\n  PANDARUS. Is he here, say you? It\'s more than I know, I\'ll be\n    sworn. For my own part, I came in late. What should he do here?\n  AENEAS. Who!-nay, then. Come, come, you\'ll do him wrong ere you are\n    ware; you\'ll be so true to him to be false to him. Do not you\n    know of him, but yet go fetch him hither; go.\n\n                       Re-enter TROILUS\n\n  TROILUS. How now! What\'s the matter?\n  AENEAS. My lord, I scarce have leisure to salute you,\n    My matter is so rash. There is at hand\n    Paris your brother, and Deiphobus,\n    The Grecian Diomed, and our Antenor  \n    Deliver\'d to us; and for him forthwith,\n    Ere the first sacrifice, within this hour,\n    We must give up to Diomedes\' hand\n    The Lady Cressida.\n  TROILUS. Is it so concluded?\n  AENEAS. By Priam, and the general state of Troy.\n    They are at hand and ready to effect it.\n  TROILUS. How my achievements mock me!\n    I will go meet them; and, my lord Aeneas,\n    We met by chance; you did not find me here.\n  AENEAS. Good, good, my lord, the secrets of neighbour Pandar\n    Have not more gift in taciturnity.\n                                            Exeunt TROILUS and AENEAS\n  PANDARUS. Is\'t possible? No sooner got but lost? The devil take\n    Antenor! The young prince will go mad. A plague upon Antenor! I\n    would they had broke\'s neck.\n\n                     Re-enter CRESSIDA\n\n  CRESSIDA. How now! What\'s the matter? Who was here?  \n  PANDARUS. Ah, ah!\n  CRESSIDA. Why sigh you so profoundly? Where\'s my lord? Gone? Tell\n    me, sweet uncle, what\'s the matter?\n  PANDARUS. Would I were as deep under the earth as I am above!\n  CRESSIDA. O the gods! What\'s the matter?\n  PANDARUS. Pray thee, get thee in. Would thou hadst ne\'er been born!\n    I knew thou wouldst be his death! O, poor gentleman! A plague\n    upon Antenor!\n  CRESSIDA. Good uncle, I beseech you, on my knees I beseech you,\n    what\'s the matter?\n  PANDARUS. Thou must be gone, wench, thou must be gone; thou art\n    chang\'d for Antenor; thou must to thy father, and be gone from\n    Troilus. \'Twill be his death; \'twill be his bane; he cannot bear\n    it.\n  CRESSIDA. O you immortal gods! I will not go.\n  PANDARUS. Thou must.\n  CRESSIDA. I will not, uncle. I have forgot my father;\n    I know no touch of consanguinity,\n    No kin, no love, no blood, no soul so near me\n    As the sweet Troilus. O you gods divine,  \n    Make Cressid\'s name the very crown of falsehood,\n    If ever she leave Troilus! Time, force, and death,\n    Do to this body what extremes you can,\n    But the strong base and building of my love\n    Is as the very centre of the earth,\n    Drawing all things to it. I\'ll go in and weep-\n  PANDARUS. Do, do.\n  CRESSIDA. Tear my bright hair, and scratch my praised cheeks,\n    Crack my clear voice with sobs and break my heart,\n    With sounding \'Troilus.\' I will not go from Troy.\n    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 3.\nTroy. A street before PANDARUS\' house\n\nEnter PARIS, TROILUS, AENEAS, DEIPHOBUS, ANTENOR, and DIOMEDES\n\n  PARIS. It is great morning; and the hour prefix\'d\n    For her delivery to this valiant Greek\n    Comes fast upon. Good my brother Troilus,\n    Tell you the lady what she is to do\n    And haste her to the purpose.\n  TROILUS. Walk into her house.\n    I\'ll bring her to the Grecian presently;\n    And to his hand when I deliver her,\n    Think it an altar, and thy brother Troilus\n    A priest, there off\'ring to it his own heart.                Exit\n  PARIS. I know what \'tis to love,\n    And would, as I shall pity, I could help!\n    Please you walk in, my lords.                              Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 4.\nTroy. PANDARUS\' house\n\nEnter PANDARUS and CRESSIDA\n\n  PANDARUS. Be moderate, be moderate.\n  CRESSIDA. Why tell you me of moderation?\n    The grief is fine, full, perfect, that I taste,\n    And violenteth in a sense as strong\n    As that which causeth it. How can I moderate it?\n    If I could temporize with my affections\n    Or brew it to a weak and colder palate,\n    The like allayment could I give my grief.\n    My love admits no qualifying dross;\n    No more my grief, in such a precious loss.\n\n                    Enter TROILUS\n\n  PANDARUS. Here, here, here he comes. Ah, sweet ducks!\n  CRESSIDA. O Troilus! Troilus! [Embracing him]\n  PANDARUS. What a pair of spectacles is here! Let me embrace too. \'O\n    heart,\' as the goodly saying is,  \n          O heart, heavy heart,\n       Why sigh\'st thou without breaking?\n    where he answers again\n       Because thou canst not ease thy smart\n       By friendship nor by speaking.\n    There was never a truer rhyme. Let us cast away nothing, for we\n    may live to have need of such a verse. We see it, we see it. How\n    now, lambs!\n  TROILUS. Cressid, I love thee in so strain\'d a purity\n    That the bless\'d gods, as angry with my fancy,\n    More bright in zeal than the devotion which\n    Cold lips blow to their deities, take thee from me.\n  CRESSIDA. Have the gods envy?\n  PANDARUS. Ay, ay, ay; \'tis too plain a case.\n  CRESSIDA. And is it true that I must go from Troy?\n  TROILUS. A hateful truth.\n  CRESSIDA. What, and from Troilus too?\n  TROILUS. From Troy and Troilus.\n  CRESSIDA. Is\'t possible?\n  TROILUS. And suddenly; where injury of chance  \n    Puts back leave-taking, justles roughly by\n    All time of pause, rudely beguiles our lips\n    Of all rejoindure, forcibly prevents\n    Our lock\'d embrasures, strangles our dear vows\n    Even in the birth of our own labouring breath.\n    We two, that with so many thousand sighs\n    Did buy each other, must poorly sell ourselves\n    With the rude brevity and discharge of one.\n    Injurious time now with a robber\'s haste\n    Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how.\n    As many farewells as be stars in heaven,\n    With distinct breath and consign\'d kisses to them,\n    He fumbles up into a loose adieu,\n    And scants us with a single famish\'d kiss,\n    Distasted with the salt of broken tears.\n  AENEAS. [Within] My lord, is the lady ready?\n  TROILUS. Hark! you are call\'d. Some say the Genius so\n    Cries \'Come\' to him that instantly must die.\n    Bid them have patience; she shall come anon.\n  PANDARUS. Where are my tears? Rain, to lay this wind, or my heart  \n    will be blown up by th\' root?                                Exit\n  CRESSIDA. I must then to the Grecians?\n  TROILUS. No remedy.\n  CRESSIDA. A woeful Cressid \'mongst the merry Greeks!\n    When shall we see again?\n  TROILUS. Hear me, my love. Be thou but true of heart-\n  CRESSIDA. I true! how now! What wicked deem is this?\n  TROILUS. Nay, we must use expostulation kindly,\n    For it is parting from us.\n    I speak not \'Be thou true\' as fearing thee,\n    For I will throw my glove to Death himself\n    That there\'s no maculation in thy heart;\n    But \'Be thou true\' say I to fashion in\n    My sequent protestation: be thou true,\n    And I will see thee.\n  CRESSIDA. O, you shall be expos\'d, my lord, to dangers\n    As infinite as imminent! But I\'ll be true.\n  TROILUS. And I\'ll grow friend with danger. Wear this sleeve.\n  CRESSIDA. And you this glove. When shall I see you?\n  TROILUS. I will corrupt the Grecian sentinels  \n    To give thee nightly visitation.\n    But yet be true.\n  CRESSIDA. O heavens! \'Be true\' again!\n  TROILUS. Hear why I speak it, love.\n    The Grecian youths are full of quality;\n    They\'re loving, well compos\'d with gifts of nature,\n    And flowing o\'er with arts and exercise.\n    How novelties may move, and parts with person,\n    Alas, a kind of godly jealousy,\n    Which I beseech you call a virtuous sin,\n    Makes me afeard.\n  CRESSIDA. O heavens! you love me not.\n  TROILUS. Die I a villain, then!\n    In this I do not call your faith in question\n    So mainly as my merit. I cannot sing,\n    Nor heel the high lavolt, nor sweeten talk,\n    Nor play at subtle games-fair virtues all,\n    To which the Grecians are most prompt and pregnant;\n    But I can tell that in each grace of these\n    There lurks a still and dumb-discoursive devil  \n    That tempts most cunningly. But be not tempted.\n  CRESSIDA. Do you think I will?\n  TROILUS. No.\n    But something may be done that we will not;\n    And sometimes we are devils to ourselves,\n    When we will tempt the frailty of our powers,\n    Presuming on their changeful potency.\n  AENEAS. [Within] Nay, good my lord!\n  TROILUS. Come, kiss; and let us part.\n  PARIS. [Within] Brother Troilus!\n  TROILUS. Good brother, come you hither;\n    And bring Aeneas and the Grecian with you.\n  CRESSIDA. My lord, will you be true?\n  TROILUS. Who, I? Alas, it is my vice, my fault!\n    Whiles others fish with craft for great opinion,\n    I with great truth catch mere simplicity;\n    Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns,\n    With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare.\n\n      Enter AENEAS, PARIS, ANTENOR, DEIPHOBUS, and DIOMEDES  \n\n    Fear not my truth: the moral of my wit\n    Is \'plain and true\'; there\'s all the reach of it.\n    Welcome, Sir Diomed! Here is the lady\n    Which for Antenor we deliver you;\n    At the port, lord, I\'ll give her to thy hand,\n    And by the way possess thee what she is.\n    Entreat her fair; and, by my soul, fair Greek,\n    If e\'er thou stand at mercy of my sword,\n    Name Cressid, and thy life shall be as safe\n    As Priam is in Ilion.\n  DIOMEDES. Fair Lady Cressid,\n    So please you, save the thanks this prince expects.\n    The lustre in your eye, heaven in your cheek,\n    Pleads your fair usage; and to Diomed\n    You shall be mistress, and command him wholly.\n  TROILUS. Grecian, thou dost not use me courteously\n    To shame the zeal of my petition to the\n    In praising her. I tell thee, lord of Greece,\n    She is as far high-soaring o\'er thy praises  \n    As thou unworthy to be call\'d her servant.\n    I charge thee use her well, even for my charge;\n    For, by the dreadful Pluto, if thou dost not,\n    Though the great bulk Achilles be thy guard,\n    I\'ll cut thy throat.\n  DIOMEDES. O, be not mov\'d, Prince Troilus.\n    Let me be privileg\'d by my place and message\n    To be a speaker free: when I am hence\n    I\'ll answer to my lust. And know you, lord,\n    I\'ll nothing do on charge: to her own worth\n    She shall be priz\'d. But that you say \'Be\'t so,\'\n    I speak it in my spirit and honour, \'No.\'\n  TROILUS. Come, to the port. I\'ll tell thee, Diomed,\n    This brave shall oft make thee to hide thy head.\n    Lady, give me your hand; and, as we walk,\n    To our own selves bend we our needful talk.\n                               Exeunt TROILUS, CRESSIDA, and DIOMEDES\n                                                      [Sound trumpet]\n  PARIS. Hark! Hector\'s trumpet.\n  AENEAS. How have we spent this morning!  \n    The Prince must think me tardy and remiss,\n    That swore to ride before him to the field.\n  PARIS. \'Tis Troilus\' fault. Come, come to field with him.\n  DEIPHOBUS. Let us make ready straight.\n  AENEAS. Yea, with a bridegroom\'s fresh alacrity\n    Let us address to tend on Hector\'s heels.\n    The glory of our Troy doth this day lie\n    On his fair worth and single chivalry.                     Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE 5.\nThe Grecian camp. Lists set out\n\nEnter AJAX, armed; AGAMEMNON, ACHILLES, PATROCLUS, MENELAUS, ULYSSES,\nNESTOR, and others\n\n  AGAMEMNON. Here art thou in appointment fresh and fair,\n    Anticipating time with starting courage.\n    Give with thy trumpet a loud note to Troy,\n    Thou dreadful Ajax, that the appalled air\n    May pierce the head of the great combatant,\n    And hale him hither.\n  AJAX. Thou, trumpet, there\'s my purse.\n    Now crack thy lungs and split thy brazen pipe;\n    Blow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheek\n    Out-swell the colic of puff Aquilon\'d.\n    Come, stretch thy chest, and let thy eyes spout blood:\n    Thou blowest for Hector.                         [Trumpet sounds]\n  ULYSSES. No trumpet answers.\n  ACHILLES. \'Tis but early days.\n\n                Enter DIOMEDES, with CRESSIDA  \n\n  AGAMEMNON. Is not yond Diomed, with Calchas\' daughter?\n  ULYSSES. \'Tis he, I ken the manner of his gait:\n    He rises on the toe. That spirit of his\n    In aspiration lifts him from the earth.\n  AGAMEMNON. Is this the lady Cressid?\n  DIOMEDES. Even she.\n  AGAMEMNON. Most dearly welcome to the Greeks, sweet lady.\n  NESTOR. Our general doth salute you with a kiss.\n  ULYSSES. Yet is the kindness but particular;\n    \'Twere better she were kiss\'d in general.\n  NESTOR. And very courtly counsel: I\'ll begin.\n    So much for Nestor.\n  ACHILLES. I\'ll take that winter from your lips, fair lady.\n    Achilles bids you welcome.\n  MENELAUS. I had good argument for kissing once.\n  PATROCLUS. But that\'s no argument for kissing now;\n    For thus popp\'d Paris in his hardiment,\n    And parted thus you and your argument.\n  ULYSSES. O deadly gall, and theme of all our scorns!  \n    For which we lose our heads to gild his horns.\n  PATROCLUS. The first was Menelaus\' kiss; this, mine-\n                                                   [Kisses her again]\n    Patroclus kisses you.\n  MENELAUS. O, this is trim!\n  PATROCLUS. Paris and I kiss evermore for him.\n  MENELAUS. I\'ll have my kiss, sir. Lady, by your leave.\n  CRESSIDA. In kissing, do you render or receive?\n  PATROCLUS. Both take and give.\n  CRESSIDA. I\'ll make my match to live,\n    The kiss you take is better than you give;\n    Therefore no kiss.\n  MENELAUS. I\'ll give you boot; I\'ll give you three for one.\n  CRESSIDA. You are an odd man; give even or give none.\n  MENELAUS. An odd man, lady? Every man is odd.\n  CRESSIDA. No, Paris is not; for you know \'tis true\n    That you are odd, and he is even with you.\n  MENELAUS. You fillip me o\' th\' head.\n  CRESSIDA. No, I\'ll be sworn.\n  ULYSSES. It were no match, your nail against his horn.  \n    May I, sweet lady, beg a kiss of you?\n  CRESSIDA. You may.\n  ULYSSES. I do desire it.\n  CRESSIDA. Why, beg then.\n  ULYSSES. Why then, for Venus\' sake give me a kiss\n    When Helen is a maid again, and his.\n  CRESSIDA. I am your debtor; claim it when \'tis due.\n  ULYSSES. Never\'s my day, and then a kiss of you.\n  DIOMEDES. Lady, a word. I\'ll bring you to your father.\n                                                   Exit with CRESSIDA\n  NESTOR. A woman of quick sense.\n  ULYSSES. Fie, fie upon her!\n    There\'s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,\n    Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out\n    At every joint and motive of her body.\n    O these encounters so glib of tongue\n    That give a coasting welcome ere it comes,\n    And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts\n    To every ticklish reader! Set them down\n    For sluttish spoils of opportunity,  \n    And daughters of the game.                       [Trumpet within]\n  ALL. The Troyans\' trumpet.\n\n        Enter HECTOR, armed; AENEAS, TROILUS, PARIS, HELENUS,\n                 and other Trojans, with attendants\n\n  AGAMEMNON. Yonder comes the troop.\n  AENEAS. Hail, all the state of Greece! What shall be done\n    To him that victory commands? Or do you purpose\n    A victor shall be known? Will you the knights\n    Shall to the edge of all extremity\n    Pursue each other, or shall they be divided\n    By any voice or order of the field?\n    Hector bade ask.\n  AGAMEMNON. Which way would Hector have it?\n  AENEAS. He cares not; he\'ll obey conditions.\n  ACHILLES. \'Tis done like Hector; but securely done,\n    A little proudly, and great deal misprizing\n    The knight oppos\'d.\n  AENEAS. If not Achilles, sir,  \n    What is your name?\n  ACHILLES. If not Achilles, nothing.\n  AENEAS. Therefore Achilles. But whate\'er, know this:\n    In the extremity of great and little\n    Valour and pride excel themselves in Hector;\n    The one almost as infinite as all,\n    The other blank as nothing. Weigh him well,\n    And that which looks like pride is courtesy.\n    This Ajax is half made of Hector\'s blood;\n    In love whereof half Hector stays at home;\n    Half heart, half hand, half Hector comes to seek\n    This blended knight, half Troyan and half Greek.\n  ACHILLES. A maiden battle then? O, I perceive you!\n\n                   Re-enter DIOMEDES\n\n  AGAMEMNON. Here is Sir Diomed. Go, gentle knight,\n    Stand by our Ajax. As you and Lord ]Eneas\n    Consent upon the order of their fight,\n    So be it; either to the uttermost,  \n    Or else a breath. The combatants being kin\n    Half stints their strife before their strokes begin.\n                                    [AJAX and HECTOR enter the lists]\n  ULYSSES. They are oppos\'d already.\n  AGAMEMNON. What Troyan is that same that looks so heavy?\n  ULYSSES. The youngest son of Priam, a true knight;\n    Not yet mature, yet matchless; firm of word;\n    Speaking in deeds and deedless in his tongue;\n    Not soon provok\'d, nor being provok\'d soon calm\'d;\n    His heart and hand both open and both free;\n    For what he has he gives, what thinks he shows,\n    Yet gives he not till judgment guide his bounty,\n    Nor dignifies an impair thought with breath;\n    Manly as Hector, but more dangerous;\n    For Hector in his blaze of wrath subscribes\n    To tender objects, but he in heat of action\n    Is more vindicative than jealous love.\n    They call him Troilus, and on him erect\n    A second hope as fairly built as Hector.\n    Thus says Aeneas, one that knows the youth  \n    Even to his inches, and, with private soul,\n    Did in great Ilion thus translate him to me.\n                                      [Alarum. HECTOR and AJAX fight]\n  AGAMEMNON. They are in action.\n  NESTOR. Now, Ajax, hold thine own!\n  TROILUS. Hector, thou sleep\'st;\n    Awake thee.\n  AGAMEMNON. His blows are well dispos\'d. There, Ajax!\n                                                     [Trumpets cease]\n  DIOMEDES. You must no more.\n  AENEAS. Princes, enough, so please you.\n  AJAX. I am not warm yet; let us fight again.\n  DIOMEDES. As Hector pleases.\n  HECTOR. Why, then will I no more.\n    Thou art, great lord, my father\'s sister\'s son,\n    A cousin-german to great Priam\'s seed;\n    The obligation of our blood forbids\n    A gory emulation \'twixt us twain:\n    Were thy commixtion Greek and Troyan so\n    That thou could\'st say \'This hand is Grecian all,  \n    And this is Troyan; the sinews of this leg\n    All Greek, and this all Troy; my mother\'s blood\n    Runs on the dexter cheek, and this sinister\n    Bounds in my father\'s\'; by Jove multipotent,\n    Thou shouldst not bear from me a Greekish member\n    Wherein my sword had not impressure made\n    Of our rank feud; but the just gods gainsay\n    That any drop thou borrow\'dst from thy mother,\n    My sacred aunt, should by my mortal sword\n    Be drained! Let me embrace thee, Ajax.\n    By him that thunders, thou hast lusty arms;\n    Hector would have them fall upon him thus.\n    Cousin, all honour to thee!\n  AJAX. I thank thee, Hector.\n    Thou art too gentle and too free a man.\n    I came to kill thee, cousin, and bear hence\n    A great addition earned in thy death.\n  HECTOR. Not Neoptolemus so mirable,\n    On whose bright crest Fame with her loud\'st Oyes\n    Cries \'This is he\' could promise to himself  \n    A thought of added honour torn from Hector.\n  AENEAS. There is expectance here from both the sides\n    What further you will do.\n  HECTOR. We\'ll answer it:\n    The issue is embracement. Ajax, farewell.\n  AJAX. If I might in entreaties find success,\n    As seld I have the chance, I would desire\n    My famous cousin to our Grecian tents.\n  DIOMEDES. \'Tis Agamemnon\'s wish; and great Achilles\n    Doth long to see unarm\'d the valiant Hector.\n  HECTOR. Aeneas, call my brother Troilus to me,\n    And signify this loving interview\n    To the expecters of our Troyan part;\n    Desire them home. Give me thy hand, my cousin;\n    I will go eat with thee, and see your knights.\n\n        AGAMEMNON and the rest of the Greeks come forward\n\n  AJAX. Great Agamemnon comes to meet us here.\n  HECTOR. The worthiest of them tell me name by name;  \n    But for Achilles, my own searching eyes\n    Shall find him by his large and portly size.\n  AGAMEMNON.Worthy all arms! as welcome as to one\n    That would be rid of such an enemy.\n    But that\'s no welcome. Understand more clear,\n    What\'s past and what\'s to come is strew\'d with husks\n    And formless ruin of oblivion;\n    But in this extant moment, faith and troth,\n    Strain\'d purely from all hollow bias-drawing,\n    Bids thee with most divine integrity,\n    From heart of very heart, great Hector, welcome.\n  HECTOR. I thank thee, most imperious Agamemnon.\n  AGAMEMNON. [To Troilus] My well-fam\'d lord of Troy, no less to you.\n  MENELAUS. Let me confirm my princely brother\'s greeting.\n    You brace of warlike brothers, welcome hither.\n  HECTOR. Who must we answer?\n  AENEAS. The noble Menelaus.\n  HECTOR. O you, my lord? By Mars his gauntlet, thanks!\n    Mock not that I affect the untraded oath;\n    Your quondam wife swears still by Venus\' glove.  \n    She\'s well, but bade me not commend her to you.\n  MENELAUS. Name her not now, sir; she\'s a deadly theme.\n  HECTOR. O, pardon; I offend.\n  NESTOR. I have, thou gallant Troyan, seen thee oft,\n    Labouring for destiny, make cruel way\n    Through ranks of Greekish youth; and I have seen thee,\n    As hot as Perseus, spur thy Phrygian steed,\n    Despising many forfeits and subduements,\n    When thou hast hung thy advanced sword i\' th\' air,\n    Not letting it decline on the declined;\n    That I have said to some my standers-by\n    \'Lo, Jupiter is yonder, dealing life!\'\n    And I have seen thee pause and take thy breath,\n    When that a ring of Greeks have hemm\'d thee in,\n    Like an Olympian wrestling. This have I seen;\n    But this thy countenance, still lock\'d in steel,\n    I never saw till now. I knew thy grandsire,\n    And once fought with him. He was a soldier good,\n    But, by great Mars, the captain of us all,\n    Never like thee. O, let an old man embrace thee;  \n    And, worthy warrior, welcome to our tents.\n  AENEAS. \'Tis the old Nestor.\n  HECTOR. Let me embrace thee, good old chronicle,\n    That hast so long walk\'d hand in hand with time.\n    Most reverend Nestor, I am glad to clasp thee.\n  NESTOR. I would my arms could match thee in contention\n    As they contend with thee in courtesy.\n  HECTOR. I would they could.\n  NESTOR. Ha!\n    By this white beard, I\'d fight with thee to-morrow.\n    Well, welcome, welcome! I have seen the time.\n  ULYSSES. I wonder now how yonder city stands,\n    When we have here her base and pillar by us.\n  HECTOR. I know your favour, Lord Ulysses, well.\n    Ah, sir, there\'s many a Greek and Troyan dead,\n    Since first I saw yourself and Diomed\n    In Ilion on your Greekish embassy.\n  ULYSSES. Sir, I foretold you then what would ensue.\n    My prophecy is but half his journey yet;\n    For yonder walls, that pertly front your town,  \n    Yond towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds,\n    Must kiss their own feet.\n  HECTOR. I must not believe you.\n    There they stand yet; and modestly I think\n    The fall of every Phrygian stone will cost\n    A drop of Grecian blood. The end crowns all;\n    And that old common arbitrator, Time,\n    Will one day end it.\n  ULYSSES. So to him we leave it.\n    Most gentle and most valiant Hector, welcome.\n    After the General, I beseech you next\n    To feast with me and see me at my tent.\n  ACHILLES. I shall forestall thee, Lord Ulysses, thou!\n    Now, Hector, I have fed mine eyes on thee;\n    I have with exact view perus\'d thee, Hector,\n    And quoted joint by joint.\n  HECTOR. Is this Achilles?\n  ACHILLES. I am Achilles.\n  HECTOR. Stand fair, I pray thee; let me look on thee.\n  ACHILLES. Behold thy fill.  \n  HECTOR. Nay, I have done already.\n  ACHILLES. Thou art too brief. I will the second time,\n    As I would buy thee, view thee limb by limb.\n  HECTOR. O, like a book of sport thou\'lt read me o\'er;\n    But there\'s more in me than thou understand\'st.\n    Why dost thou so oppress me with thine eye?\n  ACHILLES. Tell me, you heavens, in which part of his body\n    Shall I destroy him? Whether there, or there, or there?\n    That I may give the local wound a name,\n    And make distinct the very breach whereout\n    Hector\'s great spirit flew. Answer me, heavens.\n  HECTOR. It would discredit the blest gods, proud man,\n    To answer such a question. Stand again.\n    Think\'st thou to catch my life so pleasantly\n    As to prenominate in nice conjecture\n    Where thou wilt hit me dead?\n  ACHILLES. I tell thee yea.\n  HECTOR. Wert thou an oracle to tell me so,\n    I\'d not believe thee. Henceforth guard thee well;\n    For I\'ll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there;  \n    But, by the forge that stithied Mars his helm,\n    I\'ll kill thee everywhere, yea, o\'er and o\'er.\n    You wisest Grecians, pardon me this brag.\n    His insolence draws folly from my lips;\n    But I\'ll endeavour deeds to match these words,\n    Or may I never-\n  AJAX. Do not chafe thee, cousin;\n    And you, Achilles, let these threats alone\n    Till accident or purpose bring you to\'t.\n    You may have every day enough of Hector,\n    If you have stomach. The general state, I fear,\n    Can scarce entreat you to be odd with him.\n  HECTOR. I pray you let us see you in the field;\n    We have had pelting wars since you refus\'d\n    The Grecians\' cause.\n  ACHILLES. Dost thou entreat me, Hector?\n    To-morrow do I meet thee, fell as death;\n    To-night all friends.\n  HECTOR. Thy hand upon that match.\n  AGAMEMNON. First, all you peers of Greece, go to my tent;  \n    There in the full convive we; afterwards,\n    As Hector\'s leisure and your bounties shall\n    Concur together, severally entreat him.\n    Beat loud the tambourines, let the trumpets blow,\n    That this great soldier may his welcome know.\n                                   Exeunt all but TROILUS and ULYSSES\n  TROILUS. My Lord Ulysses, tell me, I beseech you,\n    In what place of the field doth Calchas keep?\n  ULYSSES. At Menelaus\' tent, most princely Troilus.\n    There Diomed doth feast with him to-night,\n    Who neither looks upon the heaven nor earth,\n    But gives all gaze and bent of amorous view\n    On the fair Cressid.\n  TROILUS. Shall I, sweet lord, be bound to you so much,\n    After we part from Agamemnon\'s tent,\n    To bring me thither?\n  ULYSSES. You shall command me, sir.\n    As gentle tell me of what honour was\n    This Cressida in Troy? Had she no lover there\n    That wails her absence?  \n  TROILUS. O, sir, to such as boasting show their scars\n    A mock is due. Will you walk on, my lord?\n    She was belov\'d, she lov\'d; she is, and doth;\n    But still sweet love is food for fortune\'s tooth.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 1.\nThe Grecian camp. Before the tent of ACHILLES\n\nEnter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS\n\n  ACHILLES. I\'ll heat his blood with Greekish wine to-night,\n    Which with my scimitar I\'ll cool to-morrow.\n    Patroclus, let us feast him to the height.\n  PATROCLUS. Here comes Thersites.\n\n                   Enter THERSITES\n\n  ACHILLES. How now, thou core of envy!\n    Thou crusty batch of nature, what\'s the news?\n  THERSITES. Why, thou picture of what thou seemest, and idol of\n    idiot worshippers, here\'s a letter for thee.\n  ACHILLES. From whence, fragment?\n  THERSITES. Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy.\n  PATROCLUS. Who keeps the tent now?\n  THERSITES. The surgeon\'s box or the patient\'s wound.\n  PATROCLUS. Well said, Adversity! and what needs these tricks?\n  THERSITES. Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk; thou  \n    art said to be Achilles\' male varlet.\n  PATROCLUS. Male varlet, you rogue! What\'s that?\n  THERSITES. Why, his masculine whore. Now, the rotten diseases of\n    the south, the guts-griping ruptures, catarrhs, loads o\' gravel\n    in the back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten\n    livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas,\n    limekilns i\' th\' palm, incurable bone-ache, and the rivelled fee-\n    simple of the tetter, take and take again such preposterous\n    discoveries!\n  PATROCLUS. Why, thou damnable box of envy, thou, what meanest thou\n    to curse thus?\n  THERSITES. Do I curse thee?\n  PATROCLUS. Why, no, you ruinous butt; you whoreson\n    indistinguishable cur, no.\n  THERSITES. No! Why art thou, then, exasperate, thou idle immaterial\n    skein of sleid silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye,\n    thou tassel of a prodigal\'s purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is\n    pest\'red with such water-flies-diminutives of nature!\n  PATROCLUS. Out, gall!\n  THERSITES. Finch egg!  \n  ACHILLES. My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite\n    From my great purpose in to-morrow\'s battle.\n    Here is a letter from Queen Hecuba,\n    A token from her daughter, my fair love,\n    Both taxing me and gaging me to keep\n    An oath that I have sworn. I will not break it.\n    Fall Greeks; fail fame; honour or go or stay;\n    My major vow lies here, this I\'ll obey.\n    Come, come, Thersites, help to trim my tent;\n    This night in banqueting must all be spent.\n    Away, Patroclus!                              Exit with PATROCLUS\n  THERSITES. With too much blood and too little brain these two may\n    run mad; but, if with too much brain and to little blood they do,\n    I\'ll be a curer of madmen. Here\'s Agamemnon, an honest fellow\n    enough, and one that loves quails, but he has not so much brain\n    as ear-wax; and the goodly transformation of Jupiter there, his\n    brother, the bull, the primitive statue and oblique memorial of\n    cuckolds, a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his\n    brother\'s leg-to what form but that he is, should wit larded with\n    malice, and malice forced with wit, turn him to? To an ass, were  \n    nothing: he is both ass and ox. To an ox, were nothing: he is both\n    ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a\n    lizard, an owl, a put-tock, or a herring without a roe, I would\n    not care; but to be Menelaus, I would conspire against destiny.\n    Ask me not what I would be, if I were not Thersites; for I care\n    not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus. Hey-day!\n    sprites and fires!\n\n         Enter HECTOR, TROILUS, AJAX, AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES,\n            NESTOR, MENELAUS, and DIOMEDES, with lights\n\n  AGAMEMNON. We go wrong, we go wrong.\n  AJAX. No, yonder \'tis;\n    There, where we see the lights.\n  HECTOR. I trouble you.\n  AJAX. No, not a whit.\n\n                    Re-enter ACHILLES\n\n  ULYSSES. Here comes himself to guide you.  \n  ACHILLES. Welcome, brave Hector; welcome, Princes all.\n  AGAMEMNON. So now, fair Prince of Troy, I bid good night;\n    Ajax commands the guard to tend on you.\n  HECTOR. Thanks, and good night to the Greeks\' general.\n  MENELAUS. Good night, my lord.\n  HECTOR. Good night, sweet Lord Menelaus.\n  THERSITES. Sweet draught! \'Sweet\' quoth \'a?\n    Sweet sink, sweet sewer!\n  ACHILLES. Good night and welcome, both at once, to those\n    That go or tarry.\n  AGAMEMNON. Good night.\n                                        Exeunt AGAMEMNON and MENELAUS\n  ACHILLES. Old Nestor tarries; and you too, Diomed,\n    Keep Hector company an hour or two.\n  DIOMEDES. I cannot, lord; I have important business,\n    The tide whereof is now. Good night, great Hector.\n  HECTOR. Give me your hand.\n  ULYSSES. [Aside to TROILUS] Follow his torch; he goes to\n    Calchas\' tent; I\'ll keep you company.\n  TROILUS. Sweet sir, you honour me.  \n  HECTOR. And so, good night.\n                         Exit DIOMEDES; ULYSSES and TROILUS following\n  ACHILLES. Come, come, enter my tent.\n                                             Exeunt all but THERSITES\n  THERSITES. That same Diomed\'s a false-hearted rogue, a most unjust\n    knave; I will no more trust him when he leers than I will a\n    serpent when he hisses. He will spend his mouth and promise, like\n    Brabbler the hound; but when he performs, astronomers foretell\n    it: it is prodigious, there will come some change; the sun\n    borrows of the moon when Diomed keeps his word. I will rather\n    leave to see Hector than not to dog him. They say he keeps a\n    Troyan drab, and uses the traitor Calchas\' tent. I\'ll after.\n    Nothing but lechery! All incontinent varlets!                Exit\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 2.\nThe Grecian camp. Before CALCHAS\' tent\n\nEnter DIOMEDES\n\n  DIOMEDES. What, are you up here, ho? Speak.\n  CALCHAS. [Within] Who calls?\n  DIOMEDES. Diomed. Calchas, I think. Where\'s your daughter?\n  CALCHAS. [Within] She comes to you.\n\n      Enter TROILUS and ULYSSES, at a distance; after them\n                        THERSITES\n\n  ULYSSES. Stand where the torch may not discover us.\n\n                     Enter CRESSIDA\n\n  TROILUS. Cressid comes forth to him.\n  DIOMEDES. How now, my charge!\n  CRESSIDA. Now, my sweet guardian! Hark, a word with you.\n[Whispers]\n  TROILUS. Yea, so familiar!  \n  ULYSSES. She will sing any man at first sight.\n  THERSITES. And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff;\n    she\'s noted.\n  DIOMEDES. Will you remember?\n  CRESSIDA. Remember? Yes.\n  DIOMEDES. Nay, but do, then;\n    And let your mind be coupled with your words.\n  TROILUS. What shall she remember?\n  ULYSSES. List!\n  CRESSIDA. Sweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to folly.\n  THERSITES. Roguery!\n  DIOMEDES. Nay, then-\n  CRESSIDA. I\'ll tell you what-\n  DIOMEDES. Fo, fo! come, tell a pin; you are a forsworn-\n  CRESSIDA. In faith, I cannot. What would you have me do?\n  THERSITES. A juggling trick, to be secretly open.\n  DIOMEDES. What did you swear you would bestow on me?\n  CRESSIDA. I prithee, do not hold me to mine oath;\n    Bid me do anything but that, sweet Greek.\n  DIOMEDES. Good night.  \n  TROILUS. Hold, patience!\n  ULYSSES. How now, Troyan!\n  CRESSIDA. Diomed!\n  DIOMEDES. No, no, good night; I\'ll be your fool no more.\n  TROILUS. Thy better must.\n  CRESSIDA. Hark! a word in your ear.\n  TROILUS. O plague and madness!\n  ULYSSES. You are moved, Prince; let us depart, I pray,\n    Lest your displeasure should enlarge itself\n    To wrathful terms. This place is dangerous;\n    The time right deadly; I beseech you, go.\n  TROILUS. Behold, I pray you.\n  ULYSSES. Nay, good my lord, go off;\n    You flow to great distraction; come, my lord.\n  TROILUS. I prithee stay.\n  ULYSSES. You have not patience; come.\n  TROILUS. I pray you, stay; by hell and all hell\'s torments,\n    I will not speak a word.\n  DIOMEDES. And so, good night.\n  CRESSIDA. Nay, but you part in anger.  \n  TROILUS. Doth that grieve thee? O withered truth!\n  ULYSSES. How now, my lord?\n  TROILUS. By Jove, I will be patient.\n  CRESSIDA. Guardian! Why, Greek!\n  DIOMEDES. Fo, fo! adieu! you palter.\n  CRESSIDA. In faith, I do not. Come hither once again.\n  ULYSSES. You shake, my lord, at something; will you go?\n    You will break out.\n  TROILUS. She strokes his cheek.\n  ULYSSES. Come, come.\n  TROILUS. Nay, stay; by Jove, I will not speak a word:\n    There is between my will and all offences\n    A guard of patience. Stay a little while.\n  THERSITES. How the devil luxury, with his fat rump and potato\n    finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry!\n  DIOMEDES. But will you, then?\n  CRESSIDA. In faith, I will, lo; never trust me else.\n  DIOMEDES. Give me some token for the surety of it.\n  CRESSIDA. I\'ll fetch you one.                                  Exit\n  ULYSSES. You have sworn patience.  \n  TROILUS. Fear me not, my lord;\n    I will not be myself, nor have cognition\n    Of what I feel. I am all patience.\n\n                    Re-enter CRESSIDA\n\n  THERSITES. Now the pledge; now, now, now!\n  CRESSIDA. Here, Diomed, keep this sleeve.\n  TROILUS. O beauty! where is thy faith?\n  ULYSSES. My lord!\n  TROILUS. I will be patient; outwardly I will.\n  CRESSIDA. You look upon that sleeve; behold it well.\n    He lov\'d me-O false wench!-Give\'t me again.\n  DIOMEDES. Whose was\'t?\n  CRESSIDA. It is no matter, now I ha\'t again.\n    I will not meet with you to-morrow night.\n    I prithee, Diomed, visit me no more.\n  THERSITES. Now she sharpens. Well said, whetstone.\n  DIOMEDES. I shall have it.\n  CRESSIDA. What, this?  \n  DIOMEDES. Ay, that.\n  CRESSIDA. O all you gods! O pretty, pretty pledge!\n    Thy master now lies thinking on his bed\n    Of thee and me, and sighs, and takes my glove,\n    And gives memorial dainty kisses to it,\n    As I kiss thee. Nay, do not snatch it from me;\n    He that takes that doth take my heart withal.\n  DIOMEDES. I had your heart before; this follows it.\n  TROILUS. I did swear patience.\n  CRESSIDA. You shall not have it, Diomed; faith, you shall not;\n    I\'ll give you something else.\n  DIOMEDES. I will have this. Whose was it?\n  CRESSIDA. It is no matter.\n  DIOMEDES. Come, tell me whose it was.\n  CRESSIDA. \'Twas one\'s that lov\'d me better than you will.\n    But, now you have it, take it.\n  DIOMEDES. Whose was it?\n  CRESSIDA. By all Diana\'s waiting women yond,\n    And by herself, I will not tell you whose.\n  DIOMEDES. To-morrow will I wear it on my helm,  \n    And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it.\n  TROILUS. Wert thou the devil and wor\'st it on thy horn,\n    It should be challeng\'d.\n  CRESSIDA. Well, well, \'tis done, \'tis past; and yet it is not;\n    I will not keep my word.\n  DIOMEDES. Why, then farewell;\n    Thou never shalt mock Diomed again.\n  CRESSIDA. You shall not go. One cannot speak a word\n    But it straight starts you.\n  DIOMEDES. I do not like this fooling.\n  THERSITES. Nor I, by Pluto; but that that likes not you\n    Pleases me best.\n  DIOMEDES. What, shall I come? The hour-\n  CRESSIDA. Ay, come-O Jove! Do come. I shall be plagu\'d.\n  DIOMEDES. Farewell till then.\n  CRESSIDA. Good night. I prithee come.                 Exit DIOMEDES\n    Troilus, farewell! One eye yet looks on thee;\n    But with my heart the other eye doth see.\n    Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find,\n    The error of our eye directs our mind.  \n    What error leads must err; O, then conclude,\n    Minds sway\'d by eyes are full of turpitude.                  Exit\n  THERSITES. A proof of strength she could not publish more,\n    Unless she said \'My mind is now turn\'d whore.\'\n  ULYSSES. All\'s done, my lord.\n  TROILUS. It is.\n  ULYSSES. Why stay we, then?\n  TROILUS. To make a recordation to my soul\n    Of every syllable that here was spoke.\n    But if I tell how these two did coact,\n    Shall I not lie in publishing a truth?\n    Sith yet there is a credence in my heart,\n    An esperance so obstinately strong,\n    That doth invert th\' attest of eyes and ears;\n    As if those organs had deceptious functions\n    Created only to calumniate.\n    Was Cressid here?\n  ULYSSES. I cannot conjure, Troyan.\n  TROILUS. She was not, sure.\n  ULYSSES. Most sure she was.  \n  TROILUS. Why, my negation hath no taste of madness.\n  ULYSSES. Nor mine, my lord. Cressid was here but now.\n  TROILUS. Let it not be believ\'d for womanhood.\n    Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage\n    To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme,\n    For depravation, to square the general sex\n    By Cressid\'s rule. Rather think this not Cressid.\n  ULYSSES. What hath she done, Prince, that can soil our mothers?\n  TROILUS. Nothing at all, unless that this were she.\n  THERSITES. Will \'a swagger himself out on\'s own eyes?\n  TROILUS. This she? No; this is Diomed\'s Cressida.\n    If beauty have a soul, this is not she;\n    If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies,\n    If sanctimony be the god\'s delight,\n    If there be rule in unity itself,\n    This was not she. O madness of discourse,\n    That cause sets up with and against itself!\n    Bifold authority! where reason can revolt\n    Without perdition, and loss assume all reason\n    Without revolt: this is, and is not, Cressid.  \n    Within my soul there doth conduce a fight\n    Of this strange nature, that a thing inseparate\n    Divides more wider than the sky and earth;\n    And yet the spacious breadth of this division\n    Admits no orifex for a point as subtle\n    As Ariachne\'s broken woof to enter.\n    Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto\'s gates:\n    Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven.\n    Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself:\n    The bonds of heaven are slipp\'d, dissolv\'d, and loos\'d;\n    And with another knot, five-finger-tied,\n    The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,\n    The fragments, scraps, the bits, and greasy relics\n    Of her o\'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.\n  ULYSSES. May worthy Troilus be half-attach\'d\n    With that which here his passion doth express?\n  TROILUS. Ay, Greek; and that shall be divulged well\n    In characters as red as Mars his heart\n    Inflam\'d with Venus. Never did young man fancy\n    With so eternal and so fix\'d a soul.  \n    Hark, Greek: as much as I do Cressid love,\n    So much by weight hate I her Diomed.\n    That sleeve is mine that he\'ll bear on his helm;\n    Were it a casque compos\'d by Vulcan\'s skill\n    My sword should bite it. Not the dreadful spout\n    Which shipmen do the hurricano call,\n    Constring\'d in mass by the almighty sun,\n    Shall dizzy with more clamour Neptune\'s ear\n    In his descent than shall my prompted sword\n    Falling on Diomed.\n  THERSITES. He\'ll tickle it for his concupy.\n  TROILUS. O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false!\n    Let all untruths stand by thy stained name,\n    And they\'ll seem glorious.\n  ULYSSES. O, contain yourself;\n    Your passion draws ears hither.\n\n                       Enter AENEAS\n\n  AENEAS. I have been seeking you this hour, my lord.  \n    Hector, by this, is arming him in Troy;\n    Ajax, your guard, stays to conduct you home.\n  TROILUS. Have with you, Prince. My courteous lord, adieu.\n    Fairwell, revolted fair!-and, Diomed,\n    Stand fast and wear a castle on thy head.\n  ULYSSES. I\'ll bring you to the gates.\n  TROILUS. Accept distracted thanks.\n\n            Exeunt TROILUS, AENEAS. and ULYSSES\n\n  THERSITES. Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would croak like\n    a raven; I would bode, I would bode. Patroclus will give me\n    anything for the intelligence of this whore; the parrot will not\n    do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab. Lechery,\n    lechery! Still wars and lechery! Nothing else holds fashion. A\n    burning devil take them!                                     Exit\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 3.\nTroy. Before PRIAM\'S palace\n\nEnter HECTOR and ANDROMACHE\n\n  ANDROMACHE. When was my lord so much ungently temper\'d\n    To stop his ears against admonishment?\n    Unarm, unarm, and do not fight to-day.\n  HECTOR. You train me to offend you; get you in.\n    By all the everlasting gods, I\'ll go.\n  ANDROMACHE. My dreams will, sure, prove ominous to the day.\n  HECTOR. No more, I say.\n\n                    Enter CASSANDRA\n\n  CASSANDRA. Where is my brother Hector?\n  ANDROMACHE. Here, sister, arm\'d, and bloody in intent.\n    Consort with me in loud and dear petition,\n    Pursue we him on knees; for I have dreamt\n    Of bloody turbulence, and this whole night\n    Hath nothing been but shapes and forms of slaughter.\n  CASSANDRA. O, \'tis true!  \n  HECTOR. Ho! bid my trumpet sound.\n  CASSANDRA. No notes of sally, for the heavens, sweet brother!\n  HECTOR. Be gone, I say. The gods have heard me swear.\n  CASSANDRA. The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows;\n    They are polluted off\'rings, more abhorr\'d\n    Than spotted livers in the sacrifice.\n  ANDROMACHE. O, be persuaded! Do not count it holy\n    To hurt by being just. It is as lawful,\n    For we would give much, to use violent thefts\n    And rob in the behalf of charity.\n  CASSANDRA. It is the purpose that makes strong the vow;\n    But vows to every purpose must not hold.\n    Unarm, sweet Hector.\n  HECTOR. Hold you still, I say.\n    Mine honour keeps the weather of my fate.\n    Life every man holds dear; but the dear man\n    Holds honour far more precious dear than life.\n\n                      Enter TROILUS\n  \n    How now, young man! Mean\'st thou to fight to-day?\n  ANDROMACHE. Cassandra, call my father to persuade.\n                                                       Exit CASSANDRA\n  HECTOR. No, faith, young Troilus; doff thy harness, youth;\n    I am to-day i\' th\' vein of chivalry.\n    Let grow thy sinews till their knots be strong,\n    And tempt not yet the brushes of the war.\n    Unarm thee, go; and doubt thou not, brave boy,\n    I\'ll stand to-day for thee and me and Troy.\n  TROILUS. Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you\n    Which better fits a lion than a man.\n  HECTOR. What vice is that, good Troilus?\n    Chide me for it.\n  TROILUS. When many times the captive Grecian falls,\n    Even in the fan and wind of your fair sword,\n    You bid them rise and live.\n  HECTOR. O, \'tis fair play!\n  TROILUS. Fool\'s play, by heaven, Hector.\n  HECTOR. How now! how now!\n  TROILUS. For th\' love of all the gods,  \n    Let\'s leave the hermit Pity with our mother;\n    And when we have our armours buckled on,\n    The venom\'d vengeance ride upon our swords,\n    Spur them to ruthful work, rein them from ruth!\n  HECTOR. Fie, savage, fie!\n  TROILUS. Hector, then \'tis wars.\n  HECTOR. Troilus, I would not have you fight to-day.\n  TROILUS. Who should withhold me?\n    Not fate, obedience, nor the hand of Mars\n    Beck\'ning with fiery truncheon my retire;\n    Not Priamus and Hecuba on knees,\n    Their eyes o\'ergalled with recourse of tears;\n    Nor you, my brother, with your true sword drawn,\n    Oppos\'d to hinder me, should stop my way,\n    But by my ruin.\n\n              Re-enter CASSANDRA, with PRIAM\n\n  CASSANDRA. Lay hold upon him, Priam, hold him fast;\n    He is thy crutch; now if thou lose thy stay,  \n    Thou on him leaning, and all Troy on thee,\n    Fall all together.\n  PRIAM. Come, Hector, come, go back.\n    Thy wife hath dreamt; thy mother hath had visions;\n    Cassandra doth foresee; and I myself\n    Am like a prophet suddenly enrapt\n    To tell thee that this day is ominous.\n    Therefore, come back.\n  HECTOR. Aeneas is a-field;\n    And I do stand engag\'d to many Greeks,\n    Even in the faith of valour, to appear\n    This morning to them.\n  PRIAM. Ay, but thou shalt not go.\n  HECTOR. I must not break my faith.\n    You know me dutiful; therefore, dear sir,\n    Let me not shame respect; but give me leave\n    To take that course by your consent and voice\n    Which you do here forbid me, royal Priam.\n  CASSANDRA. O Priam, yield not to him!\n  ANDROMACHE. Do not, dear father.  \n  HECTOR. Andromache, I am offended with you.\n    Upon the love you bear me, get you in.\n                                                      Exit ANDROMACHE\n  TROILUS. This foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl\n    Makes all these bodements.\n  CASSANDRA. O, farewell, dear Hector!\n    Look how thou diest. Look how thy eye turns pale.\n    Look how thy wounds do bleed at many vents.\n    Hark how Troy roars; how Hecuba cries out;\n    How poor Andromache shrills her dolours forth;\n    Behold distraction, frenzy, and amazement,\n    Like witless antics, one another meet,\n    And all cry, Hector! Hector\'s dead! O Hector!\n  TROILUS. Away, away!\n  CASSANDRA. Farewell!-yet, soft! Hector, I take my leave.\n    Thou dost thyself and all our Troy deceive.                  Exit\n  HECTOR. You are amaz\'d, my liege, at her exclaim.\n    Go in, and cheer the town; we\'ll forth, and fight,\n    Do deeds worth praise and tell you them at night.\n  PRIAM. Farewell. The gods with safety stand about thee!  \n                           Exeunt severally PRIAM and HECTOR. Alarums\n  TROILUS. They are at it, hark! Proud Diomed, believe,\n    I come to lose my arm or win my sleeve.\n\n                     Enter PANDARUS\n\n  PANDARUS. Do you hear, my lord? Do you hear?\n  TROILUS. What now?\n  PANDARUS. Here\'s a letter come from yond poor girl.\n  TROILUS. Let me read.\n  PANDARUS. A whoreson tisick, a whoreson rascally tisick so troubles\n    me, and the foolish fortune of this girl, and what one thing,\n    what another, that I shall leave you one o\' th\'s days; and I have\n    a rheum in mine eyes too, and such an ache in my bones that\n    unless a man were curs\'d I cannot tell what to think on\'t. What\n    says she there?\n  TROILUS. Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart;\n    Th\' effect doth operate another way.\n                                                 [Tearing the letter]\n    Go, wind, to wind, there turn and change together.  \n    My love with words and errors still she feeds,\n    But edifies another with her deeds.              Exeunt severally\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 4.\nThe plain between Troy and the Grecian camp\n\nEnter THERSITES. Excursions\n\n  THERSITES. Now they are clapper-clawing one another; I\'ll go look\n    on. That dissembling abominable varlet, Diomed, has got that same\n    scurvy doting foolish young knave\'s sleeve of Troy there in his\n    helm. I would fain see them meet, that that same young Troyan ass\n    that loves the whore there might send that Greekish whoremasterly\n    villain with the sleeve back to the dissembling luxurious drab of\n    a sleeve-less errand. A th\' t\'other side, the policy of those\n    crafty swearing rascals-that stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese,\n    Nestor, and that same dog-fox, Ulysses -is not prov\'d worth a\n    blackberry. They set me up, in policy, that mongrel cur, Ajax,\n    against that dog of as bad a kind, Achilles; and now is the cur,\n    Ajax prouder than the cur Achilles, and will not arm to-day;\n    whereupon the Grecians begin to proclaim barbarism, and policy\n    grows into an ill opinion.\n\n             Enter DIOMEDES, TROILUS following\n  \n    Soft! here comes sleeve, and t\'other.\n  TROILUS. Fly not; for shouldst thou take the river Styx\n    I would swim after.\n  DIOMEDES. Thou dost miscall retire.\n    I do not fly; but advantageous care\n    Withdrew me from the odds of multitude.\n    Have at thee.\n  THERSITES. Hold thy whore, Grecian; now for thy whore,\n    Troyan-now the sleeve, now the sleeve!\n                                 Exeunt TROILUS and DIOMEDES fighting\n\n                        Enter HECTOR\n\n  HECTOR. What art thou, Greek? Art thou for Hector\'s match?\n    Art thou of blood and honour?\n  THERSITES. No, no-I am a rascal; a scurvy railing knave; a very\n    filthy rogue.\n  HECTOR. I do believe thee. Live.                               Exit\n  THERSITES. God-a-mercy, that thou wilt believe me; but a plague\n    break thy neck for frighting me! What\'s become of the wenching  \n    rogues? I think they have swallowed one another. I would laugh at\n    that miracle. Yet, in a sort, lechery eats itself. I\'ll seek\n    them.                                                        Exit\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 5.\nAnother part of the plain\n\nEnter DIOMEDES and A SERVANT\n\n  DIOMEDES. Go, go, my servant, take thou Troilus\' horse;\n    Present the fair steed to my lady Cressid.\n    Fellow, commend my service to her beauty;\n    Tell her I have chastis\'d the amorous Troyan,\n    And am her knight by proof.\n  SERVANT. I go, my lord.                                        Exit\n\n                       Enter AGAMEMNON\n\n  AGAMEMNON. Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamus\n    Hath beat down enon; bastard Margarelon\n    Hath Doreus prisoner,\n    And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam,\n    Upon the pashed corses of the kings\n    Epistrophus and Cedius. Polixenes is slain;\n    Amphimacus and Thoas deadly hurt;\n    Patroclus ta\'en, or slain; and Palamedes  \n    Sore hurt and bruis\'d. The dreadful Sagittary\n    Appals our numbers. Haste we, Diomed,\n    To reinforcement, or we perish all.\n\n                        Enter NESTOR\n\n  NESTOR. Go, bear Patroclus\' body to Achilles,\n    And bid the snail-pac\'d Ajax arm for shame.\n    There is a thousand Hectors in the field;\n    Now here he fights on Galathe his horse,\n    And there lacks work; anon he\'s there afoot,\n    And there they fly or die, like scaled sculls\n    Before the belching whale; then is he yonder,\n    And there the strawy Greeks, ripe for his edge,\n    Fall down before him like the mower\'s swath.\n    Here, there, and everywhere, he leaves and takes;\n    Dexterity so obeying appetite\n    That what he will he does, and does so much\n    That proof is call\'d impossibility.\n  \n                       Enter ULYSSES\n\n  ULYSSES. O, courage, courage, courage, Princes! Great\n    Achilles Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance.\n    Patroclus\' wounds have rous\'d his drowsy blood,\n    Together with his mangled Myrmidons,\n    That noseless, handless, hack\'d and chipp\'d, come to\n    him, Crying on Hector. Ajax hath lost a friend\n    And foams at mouth, and he is arm\'d and at it,\n    Roaring for Troilus; who hath done to-day\n    Mad and fantastic execution,\n    Engaging and redeeming of himself\n    With such a careless force and forceless care\n    As if that luck, in very spite of cunning,\n    Bade him win all.\n\n                        Enter AJAX\n\n  AJAX. Troilus! thou coward Troilus!                            Exit\n  DIOMEDES. Ay, there, there.  \n  NESTOR. So, so, we draw together.                              Exit\n                      Enter ACHILLES\n\n  ACHILLES. Where is this Hector?\n    Come, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face;\n    Know what it is to meet Achilles angry.\n    Hector! where\'s Hector? I will none but Hector.            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 6.\nAnother part of the plain\n\nEnter AJAX\n\n  AJAX. Troilus, thou coward Troilus, show thy head.\n\n                     Enter DIOMEDES\n\n  DIOMEDES. Troilus, I say! Where\'s Troilus?\n  AJAX. What wouldst thou?\n  DIOMEDES. I would correct him.\n  AJAX. Were I the general, thou shouldst have my office\n    Ere that correction. Troilus, I say! What, Troilus!\n\n                      Enter TROILUS\n\n  TROILUS. O traitor Diomed! Turn thy false face, thou traitor,\n    And pay thy life thou owest me for my horse.\n  DIOMEDES. Ha! art thou there?\n  AJAX. I\'ll fight with him alone. Stand, Diomed.\n  DIOMEDES. He is my prize. I will not look upon.  \n  TROILUS. Come, both, you cogging Greeks; have at you\n                                                      Exeunt fighting\n\n                      Enter HECTOR\n\n  HECTOR. Yea, Troilus? O, well fought, my youngest brother!\n\n                     Enter ACHILLES\n\n  ACHILLES. Now do I see thee, ha! Have at thee, Hector!\n  HECTOR. Pause, if thou wilt.\n  ACHILLES. I do disdain thy courtesy, proud Troyan.\n    Be happy that my arms are out of use;\n    My rest and negligence befriends thee now,\n    But thou anon shalt hear of me again;\n    Till when, go seek thy fortune.                              Exit\n  HECTOR. Fare thee well.\n    I would have been much more a fresher man,\n    Had I expected thee.\n  \n                     Re-enter TROILUS\n\n    How now, my brother!\n  TROILUS. Ajax hath ta\'en Aeneas. Shall it be?\n    No, by the flame of yonder glorious heaven,\n    He shall not carry him; I\'ll be ta\'en too,\n    Or bring him off. Fate, hear me what I say:\n    I reck not though thou end my life to-day.                   Exit\n\n                    Enter one in armour\n\n  HECTOR. Stand, stand, thou Greek; thou art a goodly mark.\n    No? wilt thou not? I like thy armour well;\n    I\'ll frush it and unlock the rivets all\n    But I\'ll be master of it. Wilt thou not, beast, abide?\n    Why then, fly on; I\'ll hunt thee for thy hide.             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 7.\nAnother part of the plain\n\nEnter ACHILLES, with Myrmidons\n\n  ACHILLES. Come here about me, you my Myrmidons;\n    Mark what I say. Attend me where I wheel;\n    Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath;\n    And when I have the bloody Hector found,\n    Empale him with your weapons round about;\n    In fellest manner execute your arms.\n    Follow me, sirs, and my proceedings eye.\n    It is decreed Hector the great must die.                   Exeunt\n\n      Enter MENELAUS and PARIS, fighting; then THERSITES\n\n  THERSITES. The cuckold and the cuckold-maker are at it. Now, bull!\n    now, dog! \'Loo, Paris, \'loo! now my double-horn\'d Spartan! \'loo,\n    Paris, \'loo! The bull has the game. Ware horns, ho!\n                                            Exeunt PARIS and MENELAUS\n\n                      Enter MARGARELON  \n\n  MARGARELON. Turn, slave, and fight.\n  THERSITES. What art thou?\n  MARGARELON. A bastard son of Priam\'s.\n  THERSITES. I am a bastard too; I love bastards. I am a bastard\n    begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valour, in\n    everything illegitimate. One bear will not bite another, and\n    wherefore should one bastard? Take heed, the quarrel\'s most\n    ominous to us: if the son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts\n    judgment. Farewell, bastard.\n      Exit\n  MARGARELON. The devil take thee, coward!                       Exit\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 8.\nAnother part of the plain\n\nEnter HECTOR\n\n  HECTOR. Most putrified core so fair without,\n    Thy goodly armour thus hath cost thy life.\n    Now is my day\'s work done; I\'ll take good breath:\n    Rest, sword; thou hast thy fill of blood and death!\n [Disarms]\n\n              Enter ACHILLES and his Myrmidons\n\n  ACHILLES. Look, Hector, how the sun begins to set;\n    How ugly night comes breathing at his heels;\n    Even with the vail and dark\'ning of the sun,\n    To close the day up, Hector\'s life is done.\n  HECTOR. I am unarm\'d; forego this vantage, Greek.\n  ACHILLES. Strike, fellows, strike; this is the man I seek.\n                                                       [HECTOR falls]\n    So, Ilion, fall thou next! Come, Troy, sink down;\n    Here lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone.  \n    On, Myrmidons, and cry you an amain\n    \'Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain.\'\n                                                  [A retreat sounded]\n    Hark! a retire upon our Grecian part.\n  MYRMIDON. The Troyan trumpets sound the like, my lord.\n  ACHILLES. The dragon wing of night o\'erspreads the earth\n    And, stickler-like, the armies separates.\n    My half-supp\'d sword, that frankly would have fed,\n    Pleas\'d with this dainty bait, thus goes to bed.\n                                                 [Sheathes his sword]\n    Come, tie his body to my horse\'s tail;\n    Along the field I will the Troyan trail.                   Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 9.\nAnother part of the plain\n\nSound retreat. Shout. Enter AGAMEMNON, AJAX, MENELAUS, NESTOR, DIOMEDES,\nand the rest, marching\n\n  AGAMEMNON. Hark! hark! what shout is this?\n  NESTOR. Peace, drums!\n  SOLDIERS. [Within] Achilles! Achilles! Hector\'s slain. Achilles!\n  DIOMEDES. The bruit is Hector\'s slain, and by Achilles.\n  AJAX. If it be so, yet bragless let it be;\n    Great Hector was as good a man as he.\n  AGAMEMNON. March patiently along. Let one be sent\n    To pray Achilles see us at our tent.\n    If in his death the gods have us befriended;\n    Great Troy is ours, and our sharp wars are ended.\n    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE 10.\nAnother part of the plain\n\nEnter AENEAS, PARIS, ANTENOR, and DEIPHOBUS\n\n  AENEAS. Stand, ho! yet are we masters of the field.\n    Never go home; here starve we out the night.\n\n                         Enter TROILUS\n\n  TROILUS. Hector is slain.\n  ALL. Hector! The gods forbid!\n  TROILUS. He\'s dead, and at the murderer\'s horse\'s tail,\n    In beastly sort, dragg\'d through the shameful field.\n    Frown on, you heavens, effect your rage with speed.\n    Sit, gods, upon your thrones, and smile at Troy.\n    I say at once let your brief plagues be mercy,\n    And linger not our sure destructions on.\n  AENEAS. My lord, you do discomfort all the host.\n  TROILUS. You understand me not that tell me so.\n    I do not speak of flight, of fear of death,\n    But dare all imminence that gods and men  \n    Address their dangers in. Hector is gone.\n    Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba?\n    Let him that will a screech-owl aye be call\'d\n    Go in to Troy, and say there \'Hector\'s dead.\'\n    There is a word will Priam turn to stone;\n    Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives,\n    Cold statues of the youth; and, in a word,\n    Scare Troy out of itself. But, march away;\n    Hector is dead; there is no more to say.\n    Stay yet. You vile abominable tents,\n    Thus proudly pight upon our Phrygian plains,\n    Let Titan rise as early as he dare,\n    I\'ll through and through you. And, thou great-siz\'d coward,\n    No space of earth shall sunder our two hates;\n    I\'ll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still,\n    That mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy\'s thoughts.\n    Strike a free march to Troy. With comfort go;\n    Hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe.\n\n                        Enter PANDARUS  \n\n  PANDARUS. But hear you, hear you!\n  TROILUS. Hence, broker-lackey. Ignominy and shame\n    Pursue thy life and live aye with thy name!\n                                              Exeunt all but PANDARUS\n  PANDARUS. A goodly medicine for my aching bones! world! world! thus\n    is the poor agent despis\'d! traitors and bawds, how earnestly are\n    you set a work, and how ill requited! Why should our endeavour be\n    so lov\'d, and the performance so loathed? What verse for it? What\n    instance for it? Let me see-\n\n          Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing\n          Till he hath lost his honey and his sting;\n          And being once subdu\'d in armed trail,\n          Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail.\n\n    Good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted\n    cloths. As many as be here of pander\'s hall,\n    Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar\'s fall;\n    Or, if you cannot weep, yet give some groans,  \n    Though not for me, yet for your aching bones.\n    Brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade,\n    Some two months hence my will shall here be made.\n    It should be now, but that my fear is this,\n    Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss.\n    Till then I\'ll sweat and seek about for eases,\n    And at that time bequeath you my diseases.                   Exit\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1602\n\n\nTWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\n  ORSINO, Duke of Illyria\n  SEBASTIAN, brother of Viola\n  ANTONIO, a sea captain, friend of Sebastian\n  A SEA CAPTAIN, friend of Viola\n  VALENTINE, gentleman attending on the Duke\n  CURIO, gentleman attending on the Duke\n  SIR TOBY BELCH, uncle of Olivia\n  SIR ANDREW AGUECHEEK\n  MALVOLIO, steward to Olivia\n  FABIAN, servant to Olivia\n  FESTE, a clown, servant to Olivia\n\n  OLIVIA, a rich countess\n  VIOLA, sister of Sebastian\n  MARIA, Olivia\'s waiting woman\n\n  Lords, Priests, Sailors, Officers, Musicians, and Attendants\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:\nA city in Illyria; and the sea-coast near it\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nThe DUKE\'S palace\n\nEnter ORSINO, Duke of Illyria, CURIO, and other LORDS; MUSICIANS attending\n\n  DUKE. If music be the food of love, play on,\n    Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,\n    The appetite may sicken and so die.\n    That strain again! It had a dying fall;\n    O, it came o\'er my ear like the sweet sound\n    That breathes upon a bank of violets,\n    Stealing and giving odour! Enough, no more;\n    \'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.\n    O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!\n    That, notwithstanding thy capacity\n    Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,\n    Of what validity and pitch soe\'er,\n    But falls into abatement and low price\n    Even in a minute. So full of shapes is fancy,\n    That it alone is high fantastical.\n  CURIO. Will you go hunt, my lord?  \n  DUKE. What, Curio?\n  CURIO. The hart.\n  DUKE. Why, so I do, the noblest that I have.\n    O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,\n    Methought she purg\'d the air of pestilence!\n    That instant was I turn\'d into a hart,\n    And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,\n    E\'er since pursue me.\n\n                     Enter VALENTINE\n\n    How now! what news from her?\n  VALENTINE. So please my lord, I might not be admitted,\n    But from her handmaid do return this answer:\n    The element itself, till seven years\' heat,\n    Shall not behold her face at ample view;\n    But like a cloistress she will veiled walk,\n    And water once a day her chamber round\n    With eye-offending brine; all this to season\n    A brother\'s dead love, which she would keep fresh  \n    And lasting in her sad remembrance.\n  DUKE. O, she that hath a heart of that fine frame\n    To pay this debt of love but to a brother,\n    How will she love when the rich golden shaft\n    Hath kill\'d the flock of all affections else\n    That live in her; when liver, brain, and heart,\n    These sovereign thrones, are all supplied and fill\'d,\n    Her sweet perfections, with one self king!\n    Away before me to sweet beds of flow\'rs:\n    Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bow\'rs.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nThe sea-coast\n\nEnter VIOLA, a CAPTAIN, and SAILORS\n\n  VIOLA. What country, friends, is this?\n  CAPTAIN. This is Illyria, lady.\n  VIOLA. And what should I do in Illyria?\n    My brother he is in Elysium.\n    Perchance he is not drown\'d- what think you, sailors?\n  CAPTAIN. It is perchance that you yourself were saved.\n  VIOLA. O my poor brother! and so perchance may he be.\n  CAPTAIN. True, madam, and, to comfort you with chance,\n    Assure yourself, after our ship did split,\n    When you, and those poor number saved with you,\n    Hung on our driving boat, I saw your brother,\n    Most provident in peril, bind himself-\n    Courage and hope both teaching him the practice-\n    To a strong mast that liv\'d upon the sea;\n    Where, like Arion on the dolphin\'s back,\n    I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves\n    So long as I could see.  \n  VIOLA. For saying so, there\'s gold.\n    Mine own escape unfoldeth to my hope,\n    Whereto thy speech serves for authority,\n    The like of him. Know\'st thou this country?\n  CAPTAIN. Ay, madam, well; for I was bred and born\n    Not three hours\' travel from this very place.\n  VIOLA. Who governs here?\n  CAPTAIN. A noble duke, in nature as in name.\n  VIOLA. What is his name?\n  CAPTAIN. Orsino.\n  VIOLA. Orsino! I have heard my father name him.\n    He was a bachelor then.\n  CAPTAIN. And so is now, or was so very late;\n    For but a month ago I went from hence,\n    And then \'twas fresh in murmur- as, you know,\n    What great ones do the less will prattle of-\n    That he did seek the love of fair Olivia.\n  VIOLA. What\'s she?\n  CAPTAIN. A virtuous maid, the daughter of a count\n    That died some twelvemonth since, then leaving her  \n    In the protection of his son, her brother,\n    Who shortly also died; for whose dear love,\n    They say, she hath abjur\'d the company\n    And sight of men.\n  VIOLA. O that I serv\'d that lady,\n    And might not be delivered to the world,\n    Till I had made mine own occasion mellow,\n    What my estate is!\n  CAPTAIN. That were hard to compass,\n    Because she will admit no kind of suit-\n    No, not the Duke\'s.\n  VIOLA. There is a fair behaviour in thee, Captain;\n    And though that nature with a beauteous wall\n    Doth oft close in pollution, yet of thee\n    I will believe thou hast a mind that suits\n    With this thy fair and outward character.\n    I prithee, and I\'ll pay thee bounteously,\n    Conceal me what I am, and be my aid\n    For such disguise as haply shall become\n    The form of my intent. I\'ll serve this duke:  \n    Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him;\n    It may be worth thy pains, for I can sing\n    And speak to him in many sorts of music,\n    That will allow me very worth his service.\n    What else may hap to time I will commit;\n    Only shape thou silence to my wit.\n  CAPTAIN. Be you his eunuch and your mute I\'ll be;\n    When my tongue blabs, then let mine eyes not see.\n  VIOLA. I thank thee. Lead me on.                        Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nOLIVIA\'S house\n\nEnter SIR TOBY BELCH and MARIA\n\n  SIR TOBY. What a plague means my niece to take the death of her\n    brother thus? I am sure care\'s an enemy to life.\n  MARIA. By my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier o\' nights;\n    your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours.\n  SIR TOBY. Why, let her except before excepted.\n  MARIA. Ay, but you must confine yourself within the modest limits\n    of order.\n  SIR TOBY. Confine! I\'ll confine myself no finer than I am. These\n    clothes are good enough to drink in, and so be these boots too;\n    an they be not, let them hang themselves in their own straps.\n  MARIA. That quaffing and drinking will undo you; I heard my lady\n    talk of it yesterday, and of a foolish knight that you brought in\n    one night here to be her wooer.\n  SIR TOBY. Who? Sir Andrew Aguecheek?\n  MARIA. Ay, he.\n  SIR TOBY. He\'s as tall a man as any\'s in Illyria.\n  MARIA. What\'s that to th\' purpose?  \n  SIR TOBY. Why, he has three thousand ducats a year.\n  MARIA. Ay, but he\'ll have but a year in all these ducats; he\'s a\n    very fool and a prodigal.\n  SIR TOBY. Fie that you\'ll say so! He plays o\' th\' viol-de-gamboys,\n    and speaks three or four languages word for word without book,\n    and hath all the good gifts of nature.\n  MARIA. He hath indeed, almost natural; for, besides that he\'s a\n    fool, he\'s a great quarreller; and but that he hath the gift of a\n    coward to allay the gust he hath in quarrelling, \'tis thought\n    among the prudent he would quickly have the gift of a grave.\n  SIR TOBY. By this hand, they are scoundrels and subtractors that\n    say so of him. Who are they?\n  MARIA. They that add, moreover, he\'s drunk nightly in your company.\n  SIR TOBY. With drinking healths to my niece; I\'ll drink to her as\n    long as there is a passage in my throat and drink in Illyria.\n    He\'s a coward and a coystrill that will not drink to my niece\n    till his brains turn o\' th\' toe like a parish-top. What, wench!\n    Castiliano vulgo! for here comes Sir Andrew Agueface.\n\n                    Enter SIR ANDREW AGUECHEEK  \n\n  AGUECHEEK. Sir Toby Belch! How now, Sir Toby Belch!\n  SIR TOBY. Sweet Sir Andrew!\n  AGUECHEEK. Bless you, fair shrew.\n  MARIA. And you too, sir.\n  SIR TOBY. Accost, Sir Andrew, accost.\n  AGUECHEEK. What\'s that?\n  SIR TOBY. My niece\'s chambermaid.\n  AGUECHEEK. Good Mistress Accost, I desire better acquaintance.\n  MARIA. My name is Mary, sir.\n  AGUECHEEK. Good Mistress Mary Accost-\n  SIR Toby. You mistake, knight. \'Accost\' is front her, board her,\n    woo her, assail her.\n  AGUECHEEK. By my troth, I would not undertake her in this company.\n    Is that the meaning of \'accost\'?\n  MARIA. Fare you well, gentlemen.\n  SIR TOBY. An thou let part so, Sir Andrew, would thou mightst never\n    draw sword again!\n  AGUECHEEK. An you part so, mistress, I would I might never draw\n    sword again. Fair lady, do you think you have fools in hand?  \n  MARIA. Sir, I have not you by th\' hand.\n  AGUECHEEK. Marry, but you shall have; and here\'s my hand.\n  MARIA. Now, sir, thought is free. I pray you, bring your hand to\n    th\' buttry-bar and let it drink.\n  AGUECHEEK. Wherefore, sweetheart? What\'s your metaphor?\n  MARIA. It\'s dry, sir.\n  AGUECHEEK. Why, I think so; I am not such an ass but I can keep my\n    hand dry. But what\'s your jest?\n  MARIA. A dry jest, sir.\n  AGUECHEEK. Are you full of them?\n  MARIA. Ay, sir, I have them at my fingers\' ends; marry, now I let\n    go your hand, I am barren.                        Exit MARIA\n  SIR TOBY. O knight, thou lack\'st a cup of canary! When did I see\n    thee so put down?\n  AGUECHEEK. Never in your life, I think; unless you see canary put\n    me down. Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian\n    or an ordinary man has; but I am great eater of beef, and I\n    believe that does harm to my wit.\n  SIR TOBY. No question.\n  AGUECHEEK. An I thought that, I\'d forswear it. I\'ll ride home  \n    to-morrow, Sir Toby.\n  SIR TOBY. Pourquoi, my dear knight?\n  AGUECHEEK. What is \'pourquoi\'- do or not do? I would I had bestowed\n    that time in the tongues that I have in fencing, dancing, and\n    bear-baiting. Oh, had I but followed the arts!\n  SIR TOBY. Then hadst thou had an excellent head of hair.\n  AGUECHEEK. Why, would that have mended my hair?\n  SIR TOBY. Past question; for thou seest it will not curl by nature.\n  AGUECHEEK. But it becomes me well enough, does\'t not?\n  SIR TOBY. Excellent; it hangs like flax on a distaff, and I hope to\n    see a huswife take thee between her legs and spin it off.\n  AGUECHEEK. Faith, I\'ll home to-morrow, Sir Toby. Your niece will\n    not be seen, or if she be, it\'s four to one she\'ll none of me;\n    the Count himself here hard by woos her.\n  SIR TOBY. She\'ll none o\' th\' Count; she\'ll not match above her\n    degree, neither in estate, years, nor wit; I have heard her\n    swear\'t. Tut, there\'s life in\'t, man.\n  AGUECHEEK. I\'ll stay a month longer. I am a fellow o\' th\' strangest\n    mind i\' th\' world; I delight in masques and revels sometimes\n    altogether.  \n  SIR TOBY. Art thou good at these kickshawses, knight?\n  AGUECHEEK. As any man in Illyria, whatsoever he be, under the\n    degree of my betters; and yet I will not compare with an old man.\n  SIR TOBY. What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight?\n  AGUECHEEK. Faith, I can cut a caper.\n  SIR TOBY. And I can cut the mutton to\'t.\n  AGUECHEEK. And I think I have the back-trick simply as strong as\n    any man in Illyria.\n  SIR TOBY. Wherefore are these things hid? Wherefore have these\n    gifts a curtain before \'em? Are they like to take dust, like\n    Mistress Mall\'s picture? Why dost thou not go to church in a\n    galliard and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a\n    jig; I would not so much as make water but in a sink-a-pace. What\n    dost thou mean? Is it a world to hide virtues in? I did think, by\n    the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was form\'d under the\n    star of a galliard.\n  AGUECHEEK. Ay, \'tis strong, and it does indifferent well in\n    flame-colour\'d stock. Shall we set about some revels?\n  SIR TOBY. What shall we do else? Were we not born under Taurus?\n  AGUECHEEK. Taurus? That\'s sides and heart.  \n  SIR TOBY. No, sir; it is legs and thighs. Let me see the caper. Ha,\n    higher! Ha, ha, excellent!                            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nThe DUKE\'S palace\n\nEnter VALENTINE, and VIOLA in man\'s attire\n\n  VALENTINE. If the Duke continue these favours towards you, Cesario,\n    you are like to be much advanc\'d; he hath known you but three\n    days, and already you are no stranger.\n  VIOLA. You either fear his humour or my negligence, that you call\n    in question the continuance of his love. Is he inconstant, sir,\n    in his favours?\n  VALENTINE. No, believe me.\n\n                  Enter DUKE, CURIO, and ATTENDANTS\n\n  VIOLA. I thank you. Here comes the Count.\n  DUKE. Who saw Cesario, ho?\n  VIOLA. On your attendance, my lord, here.\n  DUKE. Stand you awhile aloof. Cesario,\n    Thou know\'st no less but all; I have unclasp\'d\n    To thee the book even of my secret soul.\n    Therefore, good youth, address thy gait unto her;  \n    Be not denied access, stand at her doors,\n    And tell them there thy fixed foot shall grow\n    Till thou have audience.\n  VIOLA. Sure, my noble lord,\n    If she be so abandon\'d to her sorrow\n    As it is spoke, she never will admit me.\n  DUKE. Be clamorous and leap all civil bounds,\n    Rather than make unprofited return.\n  VIOLA. Say I do speak with her, my lord, what then?\n  DUKE. O, then unfold the passion of my love,\n    Surprise her with discourse of my dear faith!\n    It shall become thee well to act my woes:\n    She will attend it better in thy youth\n    Than in a nuncio\'s of more grave aspect.\n  VIOLA. I think not so, my lord.\n  DUKE. Dear lad, believe it,\n    For they shall yet belie thy happy years\n    That say thou art a man: Diana\'s lip\n    Is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe\n    Is as the maiden\'s organ, shrill and sound,  \n    And all is semblative a woman\'s part.\n    I know thy constellation is right apt\n    For this affair. Some four or five attend him-\n    All, if you will, for I myself am best\n    When least in company. Prosper well in this,\n    And thou shalt live as freely as thy lord\n    To call his fortunes thine.\n  VIOLA. I\'ll do my best\n    To woo your lady. [Aside] Yet, a barful strife!\n    Whoe\'er I woo, myself would be his wife.\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nOLIVIA\'S house\n\nEnter MARIA and CLOWN\n\n  MARIA. Nay, either tell me where thou hast been, or I will not open\n    my lips so wide as a bristle may enter in way of thy excuse; my\n    lady will hang thee for thy absence.\n  CLOWN. Let her hang me. He that is well hang\'d in this world needs\n    to fear no colours.\n  MARIA. Make that good.\n  CLOWN. He shall see none to fear.\n  MARIA. A good lenten answer. I can tell thee where that saying was\n    born, of \'I fear no colours.\'\n  CLOWN. Where, good Mistress Mary?\n  MARIA. In the wars; and that may you be bold to say in your\n    foolery.\n  CLOWN. Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are\n    fools, let them use their talents.\n  MARIA. Yet you will be hang\'d for being so long absent; or to be\n    turn\'d away- is not that as good as a hanging to you?\n  CLOWN. Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage; and for turning  \n    away, let summer bear it out.\n  MARIA. You are resolute, then?\n  CLOWN. Not so, neither; but I am resolv\'d on two points.\n  MARIA. That if one break, the other will hold; or if both break,\n    your gaskins fall.\n  CLOWN. Apt, in good faith, very apt! Well, go thy way; if Sir Toby\n    would leave drinking, thou wert as witty a piece of Eve\'s flesh\n    as any in Illyria.\n  MARIA. Peace, you rogue, no more o\' that. Here comes my lady. Make\n    your excuse wisely, you were best.                      Exit\n\n                     Enter OLIVIA and MALVOLIO\n\n  CLOWN. Wit, an\'t be thy will, put me into good fooling! Those wits\n    that think they have thee do very oft prove fools; and I that am\n    sure I lack thee may pass for a wise man. For what says\n    Quinapalus? \'Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.\' God bless\n    thee, lady!\n  OLIVIA. Take the fool away.\n  CLOWN. Do you not hear, fellows? Take away the lady.  \n  OLIVIA. Go to, y\'are a dry fool; I\'ll no more of you. Besides, you\n    grow dishonest.\n  CLOWN. Two faults, madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend;\n    for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry. Bid the\n    dishonest man mend himself: if he mend, he is no longer\n    dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him. Anything\n    that\'s mended is but patch\'d; virtue that transgresses is but\n    patch\'d with sin, and sin that amends is but patch\'d with virtue.\n    If that this simple syllogism will serve, so; if it will not,\n    what remedy? As there is no true cuckold but calamity, so\n    beauty\'s a flower. The lady bade take away the fool; therefore, I\n    say again, take her away.\n  OLIVIA. Sir, I bade them take away you.\n  CLOWN. Misprision in the highest degree! Lady, \'Cucullus non facit\n    monachum\'; that\'s as much to say as I wear not motley in my\n    brain. Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.\n  OLIVIA. Can you do it?\n  CLOWN. Dexteriously, good madonna.\n  OLIVIA. Make your proof.\n  CLOWN. I must catechize you for it, madonna.  \n    Good my mouse of virtue, answer me.\n  OLIVIA. Well, sir, for want of other idleness, I\'ll bide your\n    proof.\n  CLOWN. Good madonna, why mourn\'st thou?\n  OLIVIA. Good fool, for my brother\'s death.\n  CLOWN. I think his soul is in hell, madonna.\n  OLIVIA. I know his soul is in heaven, fool.\n  CLOWN. The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother\'s soul\n    being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.\n  OLIVIA. What think you of this fool, Malvolio? Doth he not mend?\n  MALVOLIO. Yes, and shall do, till the pangs of death shake him.\n    Infirmity, that decays the wise, doth ever make the better fool.\n  CLOWN. God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity, for the better\n    increasing your folly! Sir Toby will be sworn that I am no fox;\n    but he will not pass his word for twopence that you are no fool.\n  OLIVIA. How say you to that, Malvolio?\n  MALVOLIO. I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren\n    rascal; I saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool\n    that has no more brain than a stone. Look you now, he\'s out of\n    his guard already; unless you laugh and minister occasion to him,  \n    he is gagg\'d. I protest I take these wise men that crow so at\n    these set kind of fools no better than the fools\' zanies.\n  OLIVIA. O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a\n    distemper\'d appetite. To be generous, guiltless, and of free\n    disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem\n    cannon bullets. There is no slander in an allow\'d fool, though he\n    do nothing but rail; nor no railing in known discreet man, though\n    he do nothing but reprove.\n  CLOWN. Now Mercury endue thee with leasing, for thou speak\'st well\n    of fools!\n\n                             Re-enter MARIA\n\n  MARIA. Madam, there is at the gate a young gentleman much desires\n    to speak with you.\n  OLIVIA. From the Count Orsino, is it?\n  MARIA. I know not, madam; \'tis a fair young man, and well attended.\n  OLIVIA. Who of my people hold him in delay?\n  MARIA. Sir Toby, madam, your kinsman.\n  OLIVIA. Fetch him off, I pray you; he speaks nothing but madman.  \n    Fie on him! [Exit MARIA] Go you, Malvolio: if it be a suit from\n    the Count, I am sick, or not at home- what you will to dismiss\n    it. [Exit MALVOLIO] Now you see, sir, how your fooling grows old,\n    and people dislike it.\n  CLOWN. Thou hast spoke for us, madonna, as if thy eldest son should\n    be a fool; whose skull Jove cram with brains! For- here he comes-\n    one of thy kin has a most weak pia mater.\n\n                         Enter SIR TOBY\n\n  OLIVIA. By mine honour, half drunk! What is he at the gate, cousin?\n  SIR TOBY. A gentleman.\n  OLIVIA. A gentleman! What gentleman?\n  SIR TOBY. \'Tis a gentleman here. [Hiccups] A plague o\' these\n    pickle-herring! How now, sot!\n  CLOWN. Good Sir Toby!\n  OLIVIA. Cousin, cousin, how have you come so early by this\n    lethargy?\n  SIR TOBY. Lechery! I defy lechery. There\'s one at the gate.\n  OLIVIA. Ay, marry; what is he?  \n  SIR TOBY. Let him be the devil an he will, I care not; give me\n    faith, say I. Well, it\'s all one.                       Exit\n  OLIVIA. What\'s a drunken man like, fool?\n  CLOWN. Like a drown\'d man, a fool, and a madman: one draught above\n    heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns\n    him.\n  OLIVIA. Go thou and seek the crowner, and let him sit o\' my coz;\n    for he\'s in the third degree of drink, he\'s drown\'d; go look\n    after him.\n  CLOWN. He is but mad yet, madonna, and the fool shall look to the\n    madman.                                                 Exit\n\n                           Re-enter MALVOLIO\n\n  MALVOLIO. Madam, yond young fellow swears he will speak with you. I\n    told him you were sick; he takes on him to understand so much,\n     and therefore comes to speak with you. I told him you were\n    asleep; he seems to have a foreknowledge of that too, and\n    therefore comes to speak with you. What is to be said to him,\n    lady? He\'s fortified against any denial.  \n  OLIVIA. Tell him he shall not speak with me.\n  MALVOLIO. Has been told so; and he says he\'ll stand at your door\n    like a sheriff\'s post, and be the supporter to a bench, but he\'ll\n    speak with you.\n  OLIVIA. What kind o\' man is he?\n  MALVOLIO. Why, of mankind.\n  OLIVIA. What manner of man?\n  MALVOLIO. Of very ill manner; he\'ll speak with you, will you or no.\n  OLIVIA. Of what personage and years is he?\n  MALVOLIO. Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy;\n    as a squash is before \'tis a peascod, or a codling when \'tis\n    almost an apple; \'tis with him in standing water, between boy and\n    man. He is very well-favour\'d, and he speaks very shrewishly; one\n    would think his mother\'s milk were scarce out of him.\n  OLIVIA. Let him approach. Call in my gentlewoman.\n  MALVOLIO. Gentlewoman, my lady calls.                     Exit\n\n                          Re-enter MARIA\n\n  OLIVIA. Give me my veil; come, throw it o\'er my face;  \n    We\'ll once more hear Orsino\'s embassy.\n\n                             Enter VIOLA\n\n  VIOLA. The honourable lady of the house, which is she?\n  OLIVIA. Speak to me; I shall answer for her. Your will?\n  VIOLA. Most radiant, exquisite, and unmatchable beauty- I pray you\n    tell me if this be the lady of the house, for I never saw her. I\n    would be loath to cast away my speech; for, besides that it is\n    excellently well penn\'d, I have taken great pains to con it. Good\n    beauties, let me sustain no scorn; I am very comptible, even to\n    the least sinister usage.\n  OLIVIA. Whence came you, sir?\n  VIOLA. I can say little more than I have studied, and that\n    question\'s out of my part. Good gentle one, give me modest\n    assurance if you be the lady of the house, that I may proceed in\n    my speech.\n  OLIVIA. Are you a comedian?\n  VIOLA. No, my profound heart; and yet, by the very fangs of malice\n    I swear, I am not that I play. Are you the lady of the house?  \n  OLIVIA. If I do not usurp myself, I am.\n  VIOLA. Most certain, if you are she, you do usurp yourself; for\n    what is yours to bestow is not yours to reserve. But this is from\n    my commission. I will on with my speech in your praise, and then\n    show you the heart of my message.\n  OLIVIA. Come to what is important in\'t. I forgive you the praise.\n  VIOLA. Alas, I took great pains to study it, and \'tis poetical.\n  OLIVIA. It is the more like to be feigned; I pray you keep it in. I\n    heard you were saucy at my gates, and allow\'d your approach\n    rather to wonder at you than to hear you. If you be not mad, be\n    gone; if you have reason, be brief; \'tis not that time of moon\n    with me to make one in so skipping dialogue.\n  MARIA. Will you hoist sail, sir? Here lies your way.\n  VIOLA. No, good swabber, I am to hull here a little longer.\n    Some mollification for your giant, sweet lady.\n  OLIVIA. Tell me your mind.\n  VIOLA. I am a messenger.\n  OLIVIA. Sure, you have some hideous matter to deliver, when the\n    courtesy of it is so fearful. Speak your office.\n  VIOLA. It alone concerns your ear. I bring no overture of war, no  \n    taxation of homage: I hold the olive in my hand; my words are as\n    full of peace as matter.\n  OLIVIA. Yet you began rudely. What are you? What would you?\n  VIOLA. The rudeness that hath appear\'d in me have I learn\'d from my\n    entertainment. What I am and what I would are as secret as\n    maidenhead- to your cars, divinity; to any other\'s, profanation.\n  OLIVIA. Give us the place alone; we will hear this divinity.\n    [Exeunt MARIA and ATTENDANTS] Now, sir, what is your text?\n  VIOLA. Most sweet lady-\n  OLIVIA. A comfortable doctrine, and much may be said of it.\n    Where lies your text?\n  VIOLA. In Orsino\'s bosom.\n  OLIVIA. In his bosom! In what chapter of his bosom?\n  VIOLA. To answer by the method: in the first of his heart.\n  OLIVIA. O, I have read it; it is heresy. Have you no more to say?\n  VIOLA. Good madam, let me see your face.\n  OLIVIA. Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my\n    face? You are now out of your text; but we will draw the curtain\n    and show you the picture. [Unveiling] Look you, sir, such a one I\n    was this present. Is\'t not well done?  \n  VIOLA. Excellently done, if God did all.\n  OLIVIA. \'Tis in grain, sir; \'twill endure wind and weather.\n  VIOLA. \'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white\n    Nature\'s own sweet and cunning hand laid on.\n    Lady, you are the cruell\'st she alive,\n    If you will lead these graces to the grave,\n    And leave the world no copy.\n  OLIVIA. O, sir, I will not be so hard-hearted; I will give out\n    divers schedules of my beauty. It shall be inventoried, and every\n    particle and utensil labell\'d to my will: as- item, two lips\n    indifferent red; item, two grey eyes with lids to them; item, one\n    neck, one chin, and so forth. Were you sent hither to praise me?\n  VIOLA. I see you what you are: you are too proud;\n    But, if you were the devil, you are fair.\n    My lord and master loves you- O, such love\n    Could be but recompens\'d though you were crown\'d\n    The nonpareil of beauty!\n  OLIVIA. How does he love me?\n  VIOLA. With adorations, fertile tears,\n    With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.  \n  OLIVIA. Your lord does know my mind; I cannot love him.\n    Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,\n    Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;\n    In voices well divulg\'d, free, learn\'d, and valiant,\n    And in dimension and the shape of nature\n    A gracious person; but yet I cannot love him.\n    He might have took his answer long ago.\n  VIOLA. If I did love you in my master\'s flame,\n    With such a suff\'ring, such a deadly life,\n    In your denial I would find no sense;\n    I would not understand it.\n  OLIVIA. Why, what would you?\n  VIOLA. Make me a willow cabin at your gate,\n    And call upon my soul within the house;\n    Write loyal cantons of contemned love\n    And sing them loud even in the dead of night;\n    Halloo your name to the reverberate hals,\n    And make the babbling gossip of the air\n    Cry out \'Olivia!\' O, you should not rest\n    Between the elements of air and earth  \n    But you should pity me!\n  OLIVIA. You might do much.\n    What is your parentage?\n  VIOLA. Above my fortunes, yet my state is well:\n    I am a gentleman.\n  OLIVIA. Get you to your lord.\n    I cannot love him; let him send no more-\n    Unless perchance you come to me again\n    To tell me how he takes it. Fare you well.\n    I thank you for your pains; spend this for me.\n  VIOLA. I am no fee\'d post, lady; keep your purse;\n    My master, not myself, lacks recompense.\n    Love make his heart of flint that you shall love;\n    And let your fervour, like my master\'s, be\n    Plac\'d in contempt! Farewell, fair cruelty.             Exit\n  OLIVIA. \'What is your parentage?\'\n    \'Above my fortunes, yet my state is well:\n    I am a gentleman.\' I\'ll be sworn thou art;\n    Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit,\n    Do give thee five-fold blazon. Not too fast! Soft, soft!  \n    Unless the master were the man. How now!\n    Even so quickly may one catch the plague?\n    Methinks I feel this youth\'s perfections\n    With an invisible and subtle stealth\n    To creep in at mine eyes. Well, let it be.\n    What ho, Malvolio!\n\n                        Re-enter MALVOLIO\n\n  MALVOLIO. Here, madam, at your service.\n  OLIVIA. Run after that same peevish messenger,\n    The County\'s man. He left this ring behind him,\n    Would I or not. Tell him I\'ll none of it.\n    Desire him not to flatter with his lord,\n    Nor hold him up with hopes; I am not for him.\n    If that the youth will come this way to-morrow,\n    I\'ll give him reasons for\'t. Hie thee, Malvolio.\n  MALVOLIO. Madam, I will.                                  Exit\n  OLIVIA. I do I know not what, and fear to find\n    Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind.  \n    Fate, show thy force: ourselves we do not owe;\n    What is decreed must be; and be this so!                Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nThe sea-coast\n\nEnter ANTONIO and SEBASTIAN\n\n  ANTONIO. Will you stay no longer; nor will you not that I go with\n    you?\n  SEBASTIAN. By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me; the\n    malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours; therefore I\n    shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It\n    were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you.\n  ANTONIO. Let me know of you whither you are bound.\n  SEBASTIAN. No, sooth, sir; my determinate voyage is mere\n    extravagancy. But I perceive in you so excellent a touch of\n    modesty that you will not extort from me what I am willing to\n    keep in; therefore it charges me in manners the rather to express\n    myself. You must know of me then, Antonio, my name is Sebastian,\n    which I call\'d Roderigo; my father was that Sebastian of\n    Messaline whom I know you have heard of. He left behind him\n    myself and a sister, both born in an hour; if the heavens had\n    been pleas\'d, would we had so ended! But you, sir, alter\'d that;\n    for some hour before you took me from the breach of the sea was  \n    my sister drown\'d.\n  ANTONIO. Alas the day!\n  SEBASTIAN. A lady, sir, though it was said she much resembled me,\n    was yet of many accounted beautiful; but though I could not with\n    such estimable wonder overfar believe that, yet thus far I will\n    boldly publish her: she bore mind that envy could not but call\n    fair. She is drown\'d already, sir, with salt water, though I seem\n    to drown her remembrance again with more.\n  ANTONIO. Pardon me, sir, your bad entertainment.\n  SEBASTIAN. O good Antonio, forgive me your trouble.\n  ANTONIO. If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your\n    servant.\n  SEBASTIAN. If you will not undo what you have done- that is, kill\n    him whom you have recover\'d-desire it not. Fare ye well at once;\n    my bosom is full of kindness, and I am yet so near the manners of\n    my mother that, upon the least occasion more, mine eyes will tell\n    tales of me. I am bound to the Count Orsino\'s court. Farewell.\n Exit\n  ANTONIO. The gentleness of all the gods go with thee!\n    I have many cnemies in Orsino\'s court,  \n    Else would I very shortly see thee there.\n    But come what may, I do adore thee so\n    That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.            Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nA street\n\nEnter VIOLA and MALVOLIO at several doors\n\n  MALVOLIO. Were you not ev\'n now with the Countess Olivia?\n  VIOLA. Even now, sir; on a moderate pace I have since arriv\'d but\n    hither.\n  MALVOLIO. She returns this ring to you, sir; you might have saved\n    me my pains, to have taken it away yourself. She adds, moreover,\n    that you should put your lord into a desperate assurance she will\n    none of him. And one thing more: that you be never so hardy to\n    come again in his affairs, unless it be to report your lord\'s\n    taking of this. Receive it so.\n  VIOLA. She took the ring of me; I\'ll none of it.\n  MALVOLIO. Come, sir, you peevishly threw it to her; and her will is\n    it should be so return\'d. If it be worth stooping for, there it\n    lies in your eye; if not, be it his that finds it.\n Exit\n  VIOLA. I left no ring with her; what means this lady?\n    Fortune forbid my outside have not charm\'d her!\n    She made good view of me; indeed, so much  \n    That methought her eyes had lost her tongue,\n    For she did speak in starts distractedly.\n    She loves me, sure: the cunning of her passion\n    Invites me in this churlish messenger.\n    None of my lord\'s ring! Why, he sent her none.\n    I am the man. If it be so- as \'tis-\n    Poor lady, she were better love a dream.\n    Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness\n    Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.\n    How easy is it for the proper-false\n    In women\'s waxen hearts to set their forms!\n    Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we!\n    For such as we are made of, such we be.\n    How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly,\n    And I, poor monster, fond as much on him;\n    And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.\n    What will become of this? As I am man,\n    My state is desperate for my master\'s love;\n    As I am woman- now alas the day!-\n    What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe!  \n    O Time, thou must untangle this, not I;\n    It is too hard a knot for me t\' untie!                  Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nOLIVIA\'S house\n\nEnter SIR TOBY and SIR ANDREW\n\n  SIR TOBY. Approach, Sir Andrew. Not to be abed after midnight is to\n    be up betimes; and \'diluculo surgere\' thou know\'st-\n  AGUECHEEK. Nay, by my troth, I know not; but I know to be up late\n    is to be up late.\n  SIR TOBY. A false conclusion! I hate it as an unfill\'d can. To be\n    up after midnight and to go to bed then is early; so that to go\n    to bed after midnight is to go to bed betimes. Does not our lives\n    consist of the four elements?\n  AGUECHEEK. Faith, so they say; but I think it rather consists of\n    eating and drinking.\n  SIR TOBY. Th\'art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink.\n    Marian, I say! a stoup of wine.\n\n                          Enter CLOWN\n\n  AGUECHEEK. Here comes the fool, i\' faith.\n  CLOWN. How now, my hearts! Did you never see the picture of \'we  \n    three\'?\n  SIR TOBY. Welcome, ass. Now let\'s have a catch.\n  AGUECHEEK. By my troth, the fool has an excellent breast. I had\n    rather than forty shillings I had such a leg, and so sweet a\n    breath to sing, as the fool has. In sooth, thou wast in very\n    gracious fooling last night, when thou spok\'st of Pigrogromitus,\n    of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of Queubus; \'twas very\n    good, i\' faith. I sent thee sixpence for thy leman; hadst it?\n  CLOWN. I did impeticos thy gratillity; for Malvolio\'s nose is no\n    whipstock. My lady has a white hand, and the Myrmidons are no\n    bottle-ale houses.\n  AGUECHEEK. Excellent! Why, this is the best fooling, when all is\n    done. Now, a song.\n  SIR TOBY. Come on, there is sixpence for you. Let\'s have a song.\n  AGUECHEEK. There\'s a testril of me too; if one knight give a-\nCLOWN. Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?\n  SIR TOBY. A love-song, a love-song.\n  AGUECHEEK. Ay, ay; I care not for good life.\n\n                         CLOWN sings\n  \n         O mistress mine, where are you roaming?\n         O, stay and hear; your true love\'s coming,\n           That can sing both high and low.\n           Trip no further, pretty sweeting;\n           Journeys end in lovers meeting,\n           Every wise man\'s son doth know.\n\n  AGUECHEEK. Excellent good, i\' faith!\n  SIR TOBY. Good, good!\n\n                         CLOWN sings\n\n           What is love? \'Tis not hereafter;\n           Present mirth hath present laughter;\n             What\'s to come is still unsure.\n           In delay there lies no plenty,\n           Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty;\n             Youth\'s a stuff will not endure.\n\n  AGUECHEEK. A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight.  \n  SIR TOBY. A contagious breath.\n  AGUECHEEK. Very sweet and contagious, i\' faith.\n  SIR TOBY. To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion. But shall\n    we make the welkin dance indeed? Shall we rouse the night-owl in\n    a catch that will draw three souls out of one weaver? Shall we do\n    that?\n  AGUECHEEK. An you love me, let\'s do\'t. I am dog at a catch.\n  CLOWN. By\'r lady, sir, and some dogs will catch well.\n  AGUECHEEK. Most certain. Let our catch be \'Thou knave.\'\n  CLOWN. \'Hold thy peace, thou knave\' knight? I shall be constrain\'d\n    in\'t to call thee knave, knight.\n  AGUECHEEK. \'Tis not the first time I have constrained one to call\n    me knave. Begin, fool: it begins \'Hold thy peace.\'\n  CLOWN. I shall never begin if I hold my peace.\n  AGUECHEEK. Good, i\' faith! Come, begin.           [Catch sung]\n\n                         Enter MARIA\n\n  MARIA. What a caterwauling do you keep here! If my lady have not\n    call\'d up her steward Malvolio, and bid him turn you out of  \n    doors, never trust me.\n  SIR TOBY. My lady\'s a Cataian, we are politicians, Malvolio\'s a\n    Peg-a-Ramsey, and                                    [Sings]\n                  Three merry men be we.\n    Am not I consanguineous? Am I not of her blood? Tilly-vally,\n    lady.                                                [Sings]\n              There dwelt a man in Babylon,\n              Lady, lady.\n  CLOWN. Beshrew me, the knight\'s in admirable fooling.\n  AGUECHEEK. Ay, he does well enough if he be dispos\'d, and so do I\n    too; he does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.\n  SIR TOBY. [Sings] O\' the twelfth day of December-\n  MARIA. For the love o\' God, peace!\n\n                       Enter MALVOLIO\n\n  MALVOLIO. My masters, are you mad? Or what are you? Have you no\n    wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this\n    time of night? Do ye make an ale-house of my lady\'s house, that\n    ye squeak out your coziers\' catches without any mitigation or  \n    remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor\n    time, in you?\n  SIR TOBY. We did keep time, sir, in our catches. Sneck up!\n  MALVOLIO. Sir Toby, I must be round with you. My lady bade me tell\n    you that, though she harbours you as her kins-man, she\'s nothing\n    allied to your disorders. If you can separate yourself and your\n    misdemeanours, you are welcome to the house; if not, and it would\n    please you to take leave of her, she is very willing to bid you\n    farewell.\n  SIR TOBY. [Sings] Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone.\n  MARIA. Nay, good Sir Toby.\n  CLOWN. [Sings] His eyes do show his days are almost done.\n  MALVOLIO. Is\'t even so?\n  SIR TOBY. [Sings] But I will never die.           [Falls down]\n  CLOWN. [Sings] Sir Toby, there you lie.\n  MALVOLIO. This is much credit to you.\n  SIR TOBY. [Sings] Shall I bid him go?\n  CLOWN. [Sings] What an if you do?\n  SIR TOBY. [Sings] Shall I bid him go, and spare not?\n  CLOWN. [Sings] O, no, no, no, no, you dare not.  \n  SIR TOBY. [Rising] Out o\' tune, sir! Ye lie. Art any more than a\n    steward? Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall\n    be no more cakes and ale?\n  CLOWN. Yes, by Saint Anne; and ginger shall be hot i\' th\' mouth\n    too.\n SIR TOBY. Th\' art i\' th\' right. Go, sir, rub your chain with crumbs.\n    A stoup of wine, Maria!\n  MALVOLIO. Mistress Mary, if you priz\'d my lady\'s favour at anything\n    more than contempt, you would not give means for this uncivil\n    rule; she shall know of it, by this hand.\n Exit\n  MARIA. Go shake your ears.\n  AGUECHEEK. \'Twere as good a deed as to drink when a man\'s ahungry,\n    to challenge him the field, and then to break promise with him\n    and make a fool of him.\n  SIR TOBY. Do\'t, knight. I\'ll write thee a challenge; or I\'ll\n    deliver thy indignation to him by word of mouth.\n  MARIA. Sweet Sir Toby, be patient for to-night; since the youth of\n    the Count\'s was to-day with my lady, she is much out of quiet.\n    For Monsieur Malvolio, let me alone with him; if I do not gull\n    him into a nayword, and make him a common recreation, do not  \n    think I have wit enough to lie straight in my bed. I know I can\n    do it.\n  SIR TOBY. Possess us, possess us; tell us something of him.\n  MARIA. Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of Puritan.\n  AGUECHEEK. O, if I thought that, I\'d beat him like a dog.\n  SIR TOBY. What, for being a Puritan? Thy exquisite reason, dear\n    knight?\n  AGUECHEEK. I have no exquisite reason for\'t, but I have reason good\n    enough.\n  MARIA. The devil a Puritan that he is, or anything constantly but a\n    time-pleaser; an affection\'d ass that cons state without book and\n     utters it by great swarths; the best persuaded of himself, so\n    cramm\'d, as he thinks, with excellencies that it is his grounds\n    of faith that all that look on him love him; and on that vice in\n    him will my revenge find notable cause to work.\n  SIR TOBY. What wilt thou do?\n  MARIA. I will drop in his way some obscure epistles of love;\n    wherein, by the colour of his beard, the shape of his leg, the\n    manner of his gait, the expressure of his eye, forehead, and\n    complexion, he shall find himself most feelingly personated. I  \n    can write very like my lady, your niece; on forgotten matter we\n    can hardly make distinction of our hands.\n  SIR TOBY. Excellent! I smell a device.\n  AGUECHEEK. I have\'t in my nose too.\n  SIR TOBY. He shall think, by the letters that thou wilt drop, that\n    they come from my niece, and that she\'s in love with him.\n  MARIA. My purpose is, indeed, a horse of that colour.\n  AGUECHEEK. And your horse now would make him an ass.\n  MARIA. Ass, I doubt not.\n  AGUECHEEK. O, \'twill be admirable!\n  MARIA. Sport royal, I warrant you. I know my physic will work with\n    him. I will plant you two, and let the fool make a third, where\n    he shall find the letter; observe his construction of it. For\n    this night, to bed, and dream on the event. Farewell.\n Exit\n  SIR TOBY. Good night, Penthesilea.\n  AGUECHEEK. Before me, she\'s a good wench.\n  SIR TOBY. She\'s a beagle true-bred, and one that adores me.\n    What o\' that?\n  AGUECHEEK. I was ador\'d once too.  \n  SIR TOBY. Let\'s to bed, knight. Thou hadst need send for more\n    money.\n  AGUECHEEK. If I cannot recover your niece, I am a foul way out.\n  SIR TOBY. Send for money, knight; if thou hast her not i\' th\' end,\n    call me Cut.\n  AGUECHEEK. If I do not, never trust me; take it how you will.\n  SIR TOBY. Come, come, I\'ll go burn some sack; \'tis too late to go\n    to bed now. Come, knight; come, knight.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nThe DUKE\'S palace\n\nEnter DUKE, VIOLA, CURIO, and OTHERS\n\n  DUKE. Give me some music. Now, good morrow, friends.\n    Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song,\n    That old and antique song we heard last night;\n    Methought it did relieve my passion much,\n    More than light airs and recollected terms\n    Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times.\n    Come, but one verse.\n  CURIO. He is not here, so please your lordship, that should sing\n    it.\n  DUKE. Who was it?\n  CURIO. Feste, the jester, my lord; a fool that the Lady Olivia\'s\n    father took much delight in. He is about the house.\n  DUKE. Seek him out, and play the tune the while.\n                                       Exit CURIO. [Music plays]\n    Come hither, boy. If ever thou shalt love,\n    In the sweet pangs of it remember me;\n    For such as I am all true lovers are,  \n    Unstaid and skittish in all motions else\n    Save in the constant image of the creature\n    That is belov\'d. How dost thou like this tune?\n  VIOLA. It gives a very echo to the seat\n    Where Love is thron\'d.\n  DUKE. Thou dost speak masterly.\n    My life upon\'t, young though thou art, thine eye\n    Hath stay\'d upon some favour that it loves;\n    Hath it not, boy?\n  VIOLA. A little, by your favour.\n  DUKE. What kind of woman is\'t?\n  VIOLA. Of your complexion.\n  DUKE. She is not worth thee, then. What years, i\' faith?\n  VIOLA. About your years, my lord.\n  DUKE. Too old, by heaven! Let still the woman take\n    An elder than herself; so wears she to him,\n    So sways she level in her husband\'s heart.\n    For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,\n    Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,\n    More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won,  \n    Than women\'s are.\n  VIOLA. I think it well, my lord.\n  DUKE. Then let thy love be younger than thyself,\n    Or thy affection cannot hold the bent;\n    For women are as roses, whose fair flow\'r\n    Being once display\'d doth fall that very hour.\n  VIOLA. And so they are; alas, that they are so!\n    To die, even when they to perfection grow!\n\n                  Re-enter CURIO and CLOWN\n\n  DUKE. O, fellow, come, the song we had last night.\n    Mark it, Cesario; it is old and plain;\n    The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,\n    And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,\n    Do use to chant it; it is silly sooth,\n    And dallies with the innocence of love,\n    Like the old age.\n  CLOWN. Are you ready, sir?\n  DUKE. Ay; prithee, sing.                               [Music]  \n\n                     FESTE\'S SONG\n\n            Come away, come away, death;\n          And in sad cypress let me be laid;\n            Fly away, fly away, breath,\n          I am slain by a fair cruel maid.\n          My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,\n                 O, prepare it!\n          My part of death no one so true\n                 Did share it.\n\n            Not a flower, not a flower sweet,\n          On my black coffin let there be strown;\n            Not a friend, not a friend greet\n          My poor corpse where my bones shall be thrown;\n          A thousand thousand to save,\n                 Lay me, O, where\n          Sad true lover never find my grave,\n                 To weep there!  \n\n  DUKE. There\'s for thy pains.\n  CLOWN. No pains, sir; I take pleasure in singing, sir.\n  DUKE. I\'ll pay thy pleasure, then.\n  CLOWN. Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid one time or another.\n  DUKE. Give me now leave to leave thee.\n  CLOWN. Now the melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy\n    doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal. I\n    would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business\n    might be everything, and their intent everywhere: for that\'s it\n    that always makes a good voyage of nothing. Farewell.\n                                                      Exit CLOWN\n  DUKE. Let all the rest give place.\n                                     Exeunt CURIO and ATTENDANTS\n    Once more, Cesario,\n    Get thee to yond same sovereign cruelty.\n    Tell her my love, more noble than the world,\n    Prizes not quantity of dirty lands;\n    The parts that fortune hath bestow\'d upon her,\n    Tell her I hold as giddily as Fortune;  \n    But \'tis that miracle and queen of gems\n    That Nature pranks her in attracts my soul.\n  VIOLA. But if she cannot love you, sir?\n  DUKE. I cannot be so answer\'d.\n  VIOLA. Sooth, but you must.\n    Say that some lady, as perhaps there is,\n    Hath for your love as great a pang of heart\n    As you have for Olivia. You cannot love her;\n    You tell her so. Must she not then be answer\'d?\n  DUKE. There is no woman\'s sides\n    Can bide the beating of so strong a passion\n    As love doth give my heart; no woman\'s heart\n    So big to hold so much; they lack retention.\n    Alas, their love may be call\'d appetite-\n    No motion of the liver, but the palate-\n    That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt;\n    But mine is all as hungry as the sea,\n    And can digest as much. Make no compare\n    Between that love a woman can bear me\n    And that I owe Olivia.  \n  VIOLA. Ay, but I know-\n  DUKE. What dost thou know?\n  VIOLA. Too well what love women to men may owe.\n    In faith, they are as true of heart as we.\n    My father had a daughter lov\'d a man,\n    As it might be perhaps, were I a woman,\n    I should your lordship.\n  DUKE. And what\'s her history?\n  VIOLA. A blank, my lord. She never told her love,\n    But let concealment, like a worm i\' th\' bud,\n    Feed on her damask cheek. She pin\'d in thought;\n    And with a green and yellow melancholy\n    She sat like Patience on a monument,\n    Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?\n    We men may say more, swear more, but indeed\n    Our shows are more than will; for still we prove\n    Much in our vows, but little in our love.\n  DUKE. But died thy sister of her love, my boy?\n  VIOLA. I am all the daughters of my father\'s house,\n    And all the brothers too- and yet I know not.  \n    Sir, shall I to this lady?\n  DUKE. Ay, that\'s the theme.\n    To her in haste. Give her this jewel; say\n    My love can give no place, bide no denay.             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nOLIVIA\'S garden\n\nEnter SIR TOBY, SIR ANDREW, and FABIAN\n\n  SIR TOBY. Come thy ways, Signior Fabian.\n  FABIAN. Nay, I\'ll come; if I lose a scruple of this sport let me be\n    boil\'d to death with melancholy.\n  SIR TOBY. Wouldst thou not be glad to have the niggardly rascally\n    sheep-biter come by some notable shame?\n  FABIAN. I would exult, man; you know he brought me out o\' favour\n    with my lady about a bear-baiting here.\n  SIR TOBY. To anger him we\'ll have the bear again; and we will fool\n    him black and blue- shall we not, Sir Andrew?\n  AGUECHEEK. And we do not, it is pity of our lives.\n\n                       Enter MARIA\n\n  SIR TOBY. Here comes the little villain.\n    How now, my metal of India!\n  MARIA. Get ye all three into the box-tree. Malvolio\'s coming down\n    this walk. He has been yonder i\' the sun practising behaviour to  \n    his own shadow this half hour. Observe him, for the love of\n    mockery, for I know this letter will make a contemplative idiot\n    of him. Close, in the name of jesting! [As the men hide she drops\n    a letter] Lie thou there; for here comes the trout that must be\n    caught with tickling.\n Exit\n\n                      Enter MALVOLIO\n\n  MALVOLIO. \'Tis but fortune; all is fortune. Maria once told me she\n    did affect me; and I have heard herself come thus near, that,\n    should she fancy, it should be one of my complexion. Besides, she\n    uses me with a more exalted respect than any one else that\n    follows her. What should I think on\'t?\n  SIR TOBY. Here\'s an overweening rogue!\n  FABIAN. O, peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him;\n    how he jets under his advanc\'d plumes!\n  AGUECHEEK. \'Slight, I could so beat the rogue-\n  SIR TOBY. Peace, I say.\n  MALVOLIO. To be Count Malvolio!  \n  SIR TOBY. Ah, rogue!\n  AGUECHEEK. Pistol him, pistol him.\n  SIR TOBY. Peace, peace!\n  MALVOLIO. There is example for\'t: the Lady of the Strachy married\n    the yeoman of the wardrobe.\n  AGUECHEEK. Fie on him, Jezebel!\n  FABIAN. O, peace! Now he\'s deeply in; look how imagination blows\n    him.\n  MALVOLIO. Having been three months married to her, sitting in my\n    state-\n  SIR TOBY. O, for a stone-bow to hit him in the eye!\n  MALVOLIO. Calling my officers about me, in my branch\'d velvet gown,\n    having come from a day-bed- where I have left Olivia sleeping-\n  SIR TOBY. Fire and brimstone!\n  FABIAN. O, peace, peace!\n  MALVOLIO. And then to have the humour of state; and after a demure\n    travel of regard, telling them I know my place as I would they\n    should do theirs, to ask for my kinsman Toby-\n  SIR TOBY. Bolts and shackles!\n  FABIAN. O, peace, peace, peace! Now, now.  \n  MALVOLIO. Seven of my people, with an obedient start, make out for\n    him. I frown the while, and perchance wind up my watch, or play\n    with my- some rich jewel. Toby approaches; curtsies there to me-\n  SIR TOBY. Shall this fellow live?\n  FABIAN. Though our silence be drawn from us with cars, yet peace.\n  MALVOLIO. I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile\n   with an austere regard of control-\n  SIR TOBY. And does not Toby take you a blow o\' the lips then?\n  MALVOLIO. Saying \'Cousin Toby, my fortunes having cast me on your\n    niece give me this prerogative of speech\'-\n  SIR TOBY. What, what?\n  MALVOLIO. \'You must amend your drunkenness\'-\n  SIR TOBY. Out, scab!\n  FABIAN. Nay, patience, or we break the sinews of our plot.\n  MALVOLIO. \'Besides, you waste the treasure of your time with a\n    foolish knight\'-\n  AGUECHEEK. That\'s me, I warrant you.\n  MALVOLIO. \'One Sir Andrew.\'\n  AGUECHEEK. I knew \'twas I; for many do call me fool.\n  MALVOLIO. What employment have we here?  \n                                          [Taking up the letter]\n  FABIAN. Now is the woodcock near the gin.\n  SIR TOBY. O, peace! And the spirit of humours intimate reading\n    aloud to him!\n  MALVOLIO. By my life, this is my lady\'s hand: these be her very\n    C\'s, her U\'s, and her T\'s; and thus makes she her great P\'s. It\n    is, in contempt of question, her hand.\n  AGUECHEEK. Her C\'s, her U\'s, and her T\'s. Why that?\n  MALVOLIO. [Reads] \'To the unknown belov\'d, this, and my good\n    wishes.\' Her very phrases! By your leave, wax. Soft! And the\n    impressure her Lucrece with which she uses to seal; \'tis my lady.\n    To whom should this be?\n  FABIAN. This wins him, liver and all.\n  MALVOLIO. [Reads]\n\n                    Jove knows I love,\n                      But who?\n                    Lips, do not move;\n                    No man must know.\'\n  \n    \'No man must know.\' What follows? The numbers alter\'d!\n    \'No man must know.\' If this should be thee, Malvolio?\n  SIR TOBY. Marry, hang thee, brock!\n  MALVOLIO. [Reads]\n\n             \'I may command where I adore;\n               But silence, like a Lucrece knife,\n             With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore;\n               M. O. A. I. doth sway my life.\'\n\n  FABIAN. A fustian riddle!\n  SIR TOBY. Excellent wench, say I.\n  MALVOLIO. \'M. O. A. I. doth sway my life.\'\n    Nay, but first let me see, let me see, let me see.\n  FABIAN. What dish o\' poison has she dress\'d him!\n  SIR TOBY. And with what wing the staniel checks at it!\n  MALVOLIO. \'I may command where I adore.\' Why, she may command me: I\n    serve her; she is my lady. Why, this is evident to any formal\n    capacity; there is no obstruction in this. And the end- what\n    should that alphabetical position portend? If I could make that  \n    resemble something in me. Softly! M. O. A. I.-\n  SIR TOBY. O, ay, make up that! He is now at a cold scent.\n  FABIAN. Sowter will cry upon\'t for all this, though it be as rank\n    as a fox.\n  MALVOLIO. M- Malvolio; M- why, that begins my name.\n  FABIAN. Did not I say he would work it out?\n    The cur is excellent at faults.\n  MALVOLIO. M- But then there is no consonancy in the sequel; that\n    suffers under probation: A should follow, but O does.\n  FABIAN. And O shall end, I hope.\n  SIR TOBY. Ay, or I\'ll cudgel him, and make him cry \'O!\'\n  MALVOLIO. And then I comes behind.\n  FABIAN. Ay, an you had any eye behind you, you might see more\n    detraction at your heels than fortunes before you.\n  MALVOLIO. M. O. A. I. This simulation is not as the former; and\n    yet, to crush this a little, it would bow to me, for every one of\n    these letters are in my name. Soft! here follows prose.\n                                                         [Reads]\n      \'If this fall into thy hand, revolve. In my stars I am above\n    thee; but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some  \n    achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon \'em. Thy\n    Fates open their hands; let thy blood and spirit embrace them;\n    and, to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy\n    humble slough and appear fresh. Be opposite with a kinsman, surly\n    with servants; let thy tongue tang arguments of state; put\n    thyself into the trick of singularity. She thus advises thee that\n    sighs for thee. Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and\n    wish\'d to see thee ever cross-garter\'d. I say, remember, Go to,\n    thou art made, if thou desir\'st to be so; if not, let me see thee\n    a steward still, the fellow of servants, and not worthy to touch\n    Fortune\'s fingers. Farewell. She that would alter services with\n    thee,\n                                         THE FORTUNATE-UNHAPPY.\'\n\n    Daylight and champain discovers not more. This is open. I will be\n    proud, I will read politic authors, I will baffle Sir Toby, I\n    will wash off gross acquaintance, I will be point-devise the very\n    man. I do not now fool myself to let imagination jade me; for\n    every reason excites to this, that my lady loves me. She did\n    commend my yellow stockings of late, she did praise my leg being  \n    cross-garter\'d; and in this she manifests herself to my love, and\n    with a kind of injunction drives me to these habits of her\n    liking. I thank my stars I am happy. I will be strange, stout, in\n    yellow stockings, and cross-garter\'d, even with the swiftness of\n    putting on. Jove and my stars be praised! Here is yet a\n    postscript.\n\n    [Reads] \'Thou canst not choose but know who I am. If thou\n    entertain\'st my love, let it appear in thy smiling; thy smiles\n    become thee well. Therefore in my presence still smile, dear my\n    sweet, I prithee.\'\n\n    Jove, I thank thee. I will smile; I will do everything that thou\n    wilt have me.                                           Exit\n  FABIAN. I will not give my part of this sport for a pension of\n    thousands to be paid from the Sophy.\n  SIR TOBY. I could marry this wench for this device.\n  AGUECHEEK. So could I too.\n  SIR TOBY. And ask no other dowry with her but such another jest.\n  \n                          Enter MARIA\n\n  AGUECHEEK. Nor I neither.\n  FABIAN. Here comes my noble gull-catcher.\n  SIR TOBY. Wilt thou set thy foot o\' my neck?\n  AGUECHEEK. Or o\' mine either?\n  SIR TOBY. Shall I play my freedom at tray-trip, and become thy\n    bond-slave?\n  AGUECHEEK. I\' faith, or I either?\n  SIR TOBY. Why, thou hast put him in such a dream that when the\n    image of it leaves him he must run mad.\n  MARIA. Nay, but say true; does it work upon him?\n  SIR TOBY. Like aqua-vita! with a midwife.\n  AIARIA. If you will then see the fruits of the sport, mark his\n    first approach before my lady. He will come to her in yellow\n    stockings, and \'tis a colour she abhors, and cross-garter\'d, a\n    fashion she detests; and he will smile upon her, which will now\n    be so unsuitable to her disposition, being addicted to a\n    melancholy as she is, that it cannot but turn him into a notable\n    contempt. If you will see it, follow me.  \n  SIR TOBY. To the gates of Tartar, thou most excellent devil of wit!\n  AGUECHEEK. I\'ll make one too.                           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nOLIVIA\'S garden\n\nEnter VIOLA, and CLOWN with a tabor\n\n  VIOLA. Save thee, friend, and thy music!\n    Dost thou live by thy tabor?\n  CLOWN. No, sir, I live by the church.\n  VIOLA. Art thou a churchman?\n  CLOWN. No such matter, sir: I do live by the church; for I do live\n    at my house, and my house doth stand by the church.\n  VIOLA. So thou mayst say the king lies by a beggar, if a beggar\n    dwell near him; or the church stands by thy tabor, if thy tabor\n    stand by the church.\n  CLOWN. You have said, sir. To see this age! A sentence is but a\n    chev\'ril glove to a good wit. How quickly the wrong side may be\n    turn\'d outward!\n  VIOLA. Nay, that\'s certain; they that dally nicely with words may\n    quickly make them wanton.\n  CLOWN. I would, therefore, my sister had had name, sir.\n  VIOLA. Why, man?\n  CLOWN. Why, sir, her name\'s a word; and to dally with that word  \n    might make my sister wanton. But indeed words are very rascals\n    since bonds disgrac\'d them.\n  VIOLA. Thy reason, man?\n  CLOWN. Troth, sir, I can yield you none without words, and words\n    are grown so false I am loath to prove reason with them.\n  VIOLA. I warrant thou art a merry fellow and car\'st for nothing.\n  CLOWN. Not so, sir; I do care for something; but in my conscience,\n    sir, I do not care for you. If that be to care for nothing, sir,\n    I would it would make you invisible.\n  VIOLA. Art not thou the Lady Olivia\'s fool?\n  CLOWN. No, indeed, sir; the Lady Olivia has no folly; she will keep\n    no fool, sir, till she be married; and fools are as like husbands\n    as pilchers are to herrings- the husband\'s the bigger. I am\n    indeed not her fool, but her corrupter of words.\n  VIOLA. I saw thee late at the Count Orsino\'s.\n  CLOWN. Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun- it\n    shines everywhere. I would be sorry, sir, but the fool should be\n    as oft with your master as with my mistress: think I saw your\n    wisdom there.\n  VIOLA. Nay, an thou pass upon me, I\'ll no more with thee.  \n    Hold, there\'s expenses for thee.             [Giving a coin]\n  CLOWN. Now Jove, in his next commodity of hair, send the a beard!\n  VIOLA. By my troth, I\'ll tell thee, I am almost sick for one;\n    [Aside] though I would not have it grow on my chin.- Is thy lady\n    within?\n  CLOWN. Would not a pair of these have bred, sir?\n  VIOLA. Yes, being kept together and put to use.\n  CLOWN. I would play Lord Pandarus of Phrygia, sir, to bring a\n    Cressida to this Troilus.\n  VIOLA. I understand you, sir; \'tis well begg\'d.\n                                           [Giving another coin]\n  CLOWN. The matter, I hope, is not great, sir, begging but a beggar:\n    Cressida was a beggar. My lady is within, sir. I will construe to\n    them whence you come; who you are and what you would are out of\n    my welkin- I might say \'element\' but the word is overworn.\n                                                      Exit CLOWN\n  VIOLA. This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;\n    And to do that well craves a kind of wit.\n    He must observe their mood on whom he jests,\n    The quality of persons, and the time;  \n    And, like the haggard, check at every feather\n    That comes before his eye. This is a practice\n    As full of labour as a wise man\'s art;\n    For folly that he wisely shows is fit;\n    But wise men, folly-fall\'n, quite taint their wit.\n\n                Enter SIR TOBY and SIR ANDREW\n\n  SIR TOBY. Save you, gentleman!\n  VIOLA. And you, sir.\n  AGUECHEEK. Dieu vous garde, monsieur.\n  VIOLA. Et vous aussi; votre serviteur.\n  AGUECHEEK. I hope, sir, you are; and I am yours.\n  SIR TOBY. Will you encounter the house? My niece is desirous you\n    should enter, if your trade be to her.\n  VIOLA. I am bound to your niece, sir; I mean, she is the list of my\n    voyage.\n  SIR TOBY. Taste your legs, sir; put them to motion.\n  VIOLA. My legs do better understand me, sir, than I understand what\n    you mean by bidding me taste my legs.  \n  SIR TOBY. I mean, to go, sir, to enter.\n  VIOLA. I will answer you with gait and entrance. But we are\n    prevented.\n\n                  Enter OLIVIA and MARIA\n\n    Most excellent accomplish\'d lady, the heavens rain odours on you!\n  AGUECHEEK. That youth\'s a rare courtier- \'Rain odours\' well!\n  VIOLA. My matter hath no voice, lady, but to your own most pregnant\n    and vouchsafed car.\n  AGUECHEEK. \'Odours,\' \'pregnant,\' and \'vouchsafed\'- I\'ll get \'em all\n    three all ready.\n  OLIVIA. Let the garden door be shut, and leave me to my hearing.\n    [Exeunt all but OLIVIA and VIOLA] Give me your hand, sir.\n  VIOLA. My duty, madam, and most humble service.\n  OLIVIA. What is your name?\n  VIOLA. Cesario is your servant\'s name, fair Princess.\n  OLIVIA. My servant, sir! \'Twas never merry world\n    Since lowly feigning was call\'d compliment.\n    Y\'are servant to the Count Orsino, youth.  \n  VIOLA. And he is yours, and his must needs be yours:\n    Your servant\'s servant is your servant, madam.\n  OLIVIA. For him, I think not on him; for his thoughts,\n    Would they were blanks rather than fill\'d with me!\n  VIOLA. Madam, I come to whet your gentle thoughts\n    On his behalf.\n  OLIVIA. O, by your leave, I pray you:\n    I bade you never speak again of him;\n    But, would you undertake another suit,\n    I had rather hear you to solicit that\n    Than music from the spheres.\n  VIOLA. Dear lady-\n  OLIVIA. Give me leave, beseech you. I did send,\n    After the last enchantment you did here,\n    A ring in chase of you; so did I abuse\n    Myself, my servant, and, I fear me, you.\n    Under your hard construction must I sit,\n    To force that on you in a shameful cunning\n    Which you knew none of yours. What might you think?\n    Have you not set mine honour at the stake,  \n    And baited it with all th\' unmuzzled thoughts\n    That tyrannous heart can think? To one of your receiving\n    Enough is shown: a cypress, not a bosom,\n    Hides my heart. So, let me hear you speak.\n  VIOLA. I Pity YOU.\n  OLIVIA. That\'s a degree to love.\n  VIOLA. No, not a grize; for \'tis a vulgar proof\n    That very oft we pity enemies.\n  OLIVIA. Why, then, methinks \'tis time to smile again.\n    O world, how apt the poor are to be proud!\n    If one should be a prey, how much the better\n    To fall before the lion than the wolf!       [Clock strikes]\n    The clock upbraids me with the waste of time.\n    Be not afraid, good youth; I will not have you;\n    And yet, when wit and youth is come to harvest,\n    Your wife is like to reap a proper man.\n    There lies your way, due west.\n  VIOLA. Then westward-ho!\n    Grace and good disposition attend your ladyship!\n    You\'ll nothing, madam, to my lord by me?  \n  OLIVIA. Stay.\n    I prithee tell me what thou think\'st of me.\n  VIOLA. That you do think you are not what you are.\n  OLIVIA. If I think so, I think the same of you.\n  VIOLA. Then think you right: I am not what I am.\n  OLIVIA. I would you were as I would have you be!\n  VIOLA. Would it be better, madam, than I am?\n    I wish it might, for now I am your fool.\n  OLIVIA. O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful\n    In the contempt and anger of his lip!\n    A murd\'rous guilt shows not itself more soon\n    Than love that would seem hid: love\'s night is noon.\n    Cesario, by the roses of the spring,\n    By maidhood, honour, truth, and every thing,\n    I love thee so that, maugre all thy pride,\n    Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide.\n    Do not extort thy reasons from this clause,\n    For that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause;\n    But rather reason thus with reason fetter:\n    Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.  \n  VIOLA. By innocence I swear, and by my youth,\n    I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth,\n    And that no woman has; nor never none\n    Shall mistress be of it, save I alone.\n    And so adieu, good madam; never more\n    Will I my master\'s tears to you deplore.\n  OLIVIA. Yet come again; for thou perhaps mayst move\n    That heart which now abhors to like his love.         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nOLIVIA\'S house\n\nEnter SIR TOBY, SIR ANDREW and FABIAN\n\n  AGUECHEEK. No, faith, I\'ll not stay a jot longer.\n  SIR TOBY. Thy reason, dear venom, give thy reason.\n  FABIAN. You must needs yield your reason, Sir Andrew.\n  AGUECHEEK. Marry, I saw your niece do more favours to the Count\'s\n    servingman than ever she bestow\'d upon me; I saw\'t i\' th\'\n    orchard.\n  SIR TOBY. Did she see thee the while, old boy? Tell me that.\n  AGUECHEEK. As plain as I see you now.\n  FABIAN. This was a great argument of love in her toward you.\n  AGUECHEEK. \'Slight! will you make an ass o\' me?\n  FABIAN. I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judgment\n    and reason.\n  SIR TOBY. And they have been grand-jurymen since before Noah was a\n    sailor.\n  FABIAN. She did show favour to the youth in your sight only to\n    exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in\n    your heart and brimstone in your liver. You should then have  \n    accosted her; and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the\n    mint, you should have bang\'d the youth into dumbness. This was\n    look\'d for at your hand, and this was baulk\'d. The double gilt of\n    this opportunity you let time wash off, and you are now sail\'d\n    into the north of my lady\'s opinion; where you will hang like an\n    icicle on Dutchman\'s beard, unless you do redeem it by some\n    laudable attempt either of valour or policy.\n  AGUECHEEK. An\'t be any way, it must be with valour, for policy I\n    hate; I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician.\n  SIR TOBY. Why, then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of\n    valour. Challenge me the Count\'s youth to fight with him; hurt\n    him in eleven places. My niece shall take note of it; and assure\n    thyself there is no love-broker in the world can more prevail in\n    man\'s commendation with woman than report of valour.\n  FABIAN. There is no way but this, Sir Andrew.\n  AGUECHEEK. Will either of you bear me a challenge to him?\n  SIR TOBY. Go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief; it is\n    no matter how witty, so it be eloquent and full of invention.\n    Taunt him with the license of ink; if thou thou\'st him some\n    thrice, it shall not be amiss; and as many lies as will lie in  \n    thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the\n    bed of Ware in England, set \'em down; go about it. Let there be\n    gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no\n    matter. About it.\n  AGUECHEEK. Where shall I find you?\n  SIR TOBY. We\'ll call thee at the cubiculo. Go.\n                                                 Exit SIR ANDREW\n  FABIAN. This is a dear manakin to you, Sir Toby.\n  SIR TOBY. I have been dear to him, lad- some two thousand strong,\n    or so.\n  FABIAN. We shall have a rare letter from him; but you\'ll not\n    deliver\'t?\n  SIR TOBY. Never trust me then; and by all means stir on the youth\n    to an answer. I think oxen and wainropes cannot hale them\n    together. For Andrew, if he were open\'d and you find so much\n    blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I\'ll eat the\n    rest of th\' anatomy.\n  FABIAN. And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no great\n    presage of cruelty.\n  \n                         Enter MARIA\n\n  SIR TOBY. Look where the youngest wren of nine comes.\n  MARIA. If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into\n    stitches, follow me. Yond gull Malvolio is turned heathen, a very\n    renegado; for there is no Christian that means to be saved by\n    believing rightly can ever believe such impossible passages of\n    grossness. He\'s in yellow stockings.\n  SIR TOBY. And cross-garter\'d?\n  MARIA. Most villainously; like a pedant that keeps a school i\' th\'\n    church. I have dogg\'d him like his murderer. He does obey every\n    point of the letter that I dropp\'d to betray him. He does smile\n    his face into more lines than is in the new map with the\n    augmentation of the Indies. You have not seen such a thing as\n    \'tis; I  can hardly forbear hurling things at him. I know my lady\n    will strike him; if she do, he\'ll smile and take\'t for a great\n    favour.\n  SIR TOBY. Come, bring us, bring us where he is.         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nA street\n\nEnter SEBASTIAN and ANTONIO\n\n  SEBASTIAN. I would not by my will have troubled you;\n    But since you make your pleasure of your pains,\n    I will no further chide you.\n  ANTONIO. I could not stay behind you: my desire,\n    More sharp than filed steel, did spur me forth;\n    And not all love to see you- though so much\n    As might have drawn one to a longer voyage-\n    But jealousy what might befall your travel,\n    Being skilless in these parts; which to a stranger,\n    Unguided and unfriended, often prove\n    Rough and unhospitable. My willing love,\n    The rather by these arguments of fear,\n    Set forth in your pursuit.\n  SEBASTIAN. My kind Antonio,\n    I can no other answer make but thanks,\n    And thanks, and ever thanks; and oft good turns\n    Are shuffl\'d off with such uncurrent pay;  \n    But were my worth as is my conscience firm,\n    You should find better dealing. What\'s to do?\n    Shall we go see the reliques of this town?\n  ANTONIO. To-morrow, sir; best first go see your lodging.\n  SEBASTIAN. I am not weary, and \'tis long to night;\n    I pray you, let us satisfy our eyes\n    With the memorials and the things of fame\n    That do renown this city.\n  ANTONIO. Would you\'d pardon me.\n    I do not without danger walk these streets:\n    Once in a sea-fight \'gainst the Count his galleys\n    I did some service; of such note, indeed,\n    That, were I ta\'en here, it would scarce be answer\'d.\n  SEBASTIAN. Belike you slew great number of his people.\n  ANTONIO.Th\' offence is not of such a bloody nature;\n    Albeit the quality of the time and quarrel\n    Might well have given us bloody argument.\n    It might have since been answer\'d in repaying\n    What we took from them; which, for traffic\'s sake,\n    Most of our city did. Only myself stood out;  \n    For which, if I be lapsed in this place,\n    I shall pay dear.\n  SEBASTIAN. Do not then walk too open.\n  ANTONIO. It doth not fit me. Hold, sir, here\'s my purse;\n    In the south suburbs, at the Elephant,\n    Is best to lodge. I will bespeak our diet,\n    Whiles you beguile the time and feed your knowledge\n    With viewing of the town; there shall you have me.\n  SEBASTIAN. Why I your purse?\n  ANTONIO. Haply your eye shall light upon some toy\n    You have desire to purchase; and your store,\n    I think, is not for idle markets, sir.\n  SEBASTIAN. I\'ll be your purse-bearer, and leave you for\n    An hour.\n  ANTONIO. To th\' Elephant.\n  SEBASTIAN. I do remember.                               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nOLIVIA\'S garden\n\nEnter OLIVIA and MARIA\n\n  OLIVIA. I have sent after him; he says he\'ll come.\n    How shall I feast him? What bestow of him?\n    For youth is bought more oft than begg\'d or borrow\'d.\n    I speak too loud.\n    Where\'s Malvolio? He is sad and civil,\n    And suits well for a servant with my fortunes.\n    Where is Malvolio?\n  MARIA. He\'s coming, madam; but in very strange manner.\n    He is sure possess\'d, madam.\n  OLIVIA. Why, what\'s the matter? Does he rave?\n  MARIA. No, madam, he does nothing but smile. Your ladyship were\n    best to have some guard about you if he come; for sure the man is\n    tainted in\'s wits.\n  OLIVIA. Go call him hither.                         Exit MARIA\n    I am as mad as he,\n    If sad and merry madness equal be.\n  \n               Re-enter MARIA with MALVOLIO\n\n    How now, Malvolio!\n  MALVOLIO. Sweet lady, ho, ho.\n  OLIVIA. Smil\'st thou?\n    I sent for thee upon a sad occasion.\n  MALVOLIO. Sad, lady? I could be sad. This does make some\n    obstruction in the blood, this cross-gartering; but what of that?\n    If it please the eye of one, it is with me as the very true\n    sonnet is: \'Please one and please all.\'\n  OLIVIA. Why, how dost thou, man? What is the matter with thee?\n  MALVOLIO. Not black in my mind, though yellow in my legs.\n    It did come to his hands, and commands shall be executed.\n    I think we do know the sweet Roman hand.\n  OLIVIA. Wilt thou go to bed, Malvolio?\n  MALVOLIO. To bed? Ay, sweetheart, and I\'ll come to thee.\n  OLIVIA. God comfort thee! Why dost thou smile so, and kiss thy hand\n    so oft?\n  MARIA. How do you, Malvolio?\n  MALVOLIO. At your request? Yes, nightingales answer daws!  \n  MARIA. Why appear you with this ridiculous boldness before my lady?\n  MALVOLIO. \'Be not afraid of greatness.\' \'Twas well writ.\n  OLIVIA. What mean\'st thou by that, Malvolio?\n  AIALVOLIO. \'Some are born great,\'-\n  OLIVIA. Ha?\n  MALVOLIO. \'Some achieve greatness,\'-\n  OLIVIA. What say\'st thou?\n  MALVOLIO. \'And some have greatness thrust upon them.\'\n  OLIVIA. Heaven restore thee!\n  MALVOLIO. \'Remember who commended thy yellow stockings,\'-\n  OLIVIA. \'Thy yellow stockings?\'\n  MALVOLIO. \'And wish\'d to see thee cross-garterd.\'\n  OLIVIA. \'Cross-garter\'d?\'\n  MALVOLIO. \'Go to, thou an made, if thou desir\'st to be so\';-\n  OLIVIA. Am I made?\n  MALVOLIO. \'If not, let me see thee a servant still.\'\n  OLIVIA. Why, this is very midsummer madness.\n\n                     Enter SERVANT\n  \n  SERVANT. Madam, the young gentleman of the Count Orsino\'s is\n    return\'d; I could hardly entreat him back; he attends your\n    ladyship\'s pleasure.\n  OLIVIA. I\'ll come to him. [Exit SERVANT] Good Maria, let this\n    fellow be look\'d to. Where\'s my cousin Toby? Let some of my\n    people have a special care of him; I would not have him miscarry\n    for the half of my dowry.\n                                         Exeunt OLIVIA and MARIA\n  MALVOLIO. O, ho! do you come near me now? No worse man than Sir\n    Toby to look to me! This concurs directly with the letter: she\n    sends him on purpose, that I may appear stubborn to him; for she\n    incites me to that in the letter. \'Cast thy humble slough,\' says\n    she. \'Be opposite with kinsman, surly with servants; let thy\n    tongue tang with arguments of state; put thyself into the trick\n    of singularity\' and consequently sets down the manner how, as: a\n    sad face, a reverend carriage, a slow tongue, in the habit of\n    some sir of note, and so forth. I have lim\'d her; but it is\n    Jove\'s doing, and Jove make me thankful! And when she went away\n    now- \'Let this fellow be look\'d to.\' \'Fellow,\' not \'Malvolio\' nor\n    after my degree, but \'fellow.\' Why, everything adheres together,  \n    that no dram of a scruple, no scruple of a scruple, no obstacle,\n    no incredulous or unsafe circumstance- What can be said? Nothing\n    that can be can come between me and the full prospect of my\n    hopes. Well, Jove, not I, is the doer of this, and he is to be\n    thanked.\n\n             Re-enter MARIA, with SIR TOBY and FABIAN\n\n  SIR TOBY. Which way is he, in the name of sanctity? If all the\n    devils of hell be drawn in little, and Legion himself possess\'d\n    him, yet I\'ll speak to him.\n  FABIAN. Here he is, here he is. How is\'t with you, sir?\n  SIR TOBY. How is\'t with you, man?\n  MALVOLIO. Go off; I discard you. Let me enjoy my private; go off.\n  MARIA. Lo, how hollow the fiend speaks within him! Did not I tell\n    you? Sir Toby, my lady prays you to have a care of him.\n  MALVOLIO. Ah, ha! does she so?\n  SIR TOBY. Go to, go to; peace, peace; we must deal gently with him.\n    Let me alone. How do you, Malvolio? How is\'t with you? What, man,\n    defy the devil; consider, he\'s an enemy to mankind.  \n  MALVOLIO. Do you know what you say?\n  MARIA. La you, an you speak ill of the devil, how he takes it at\n    heart! Pray God he be not bewitched.\n  FABIAN. Carry his water to th\' wise woman.\n  MARIA. Marry, and it shall be done to-morrow morning, if I live. My\n    lady would not lose him for more than I\'ll say.\n  MALVOLIO. How now, mistress!\n  MARIA. O Lord!\n  SIR TOBY. Prithee hold thy peace; this is not the way. Do you not\n    see you move him? Let me alone with him.\n  FABIAN. No way but gentleness- gently, gently. The fiend is rough,\n    and will not be roughly us\'d.\n  SIR TOBY. Why, how now, my bawcock!\n    How dost thou, chuck?\n  MALVOLIO. Sir!\n  SIR TOBY. Ay, Biddy, come with me. What, man, \'tis not for gravity\n    to play at cherrypit with Satan. Hang him, foul collier!\n  MARIA. Get him to say his prayers, good Sir Toby, get him to pray.\n  MALVOLIO. My prayers, minx!\n  MARIA. No, I warrant you, he will not hear of godliness.  \n  MALVOLIO. Go, hang yourselves all! You are idle shallow things; I\n    am not of your element; you shall know more hereafter.\n Exit\n  SIR TOBY. Is\'t possible?\n  FABIAN. If this were play\'d upon a stage now, I could condemn it as\n    an improbable fiction.\n  SIR TOBY. His very genius hath taken the infection of the device,\n    man.\n  MARIA. Nay, pursue him now, lest the device take air and taint.\n  FABIAN. Why, we shall make him mad indeed.\n  MARIA. The house will be the quieter.\n  SIR TOBY. Come, we\'ll have him in a dark room and bound. My niece\n    is already in the belief that he\'s mad. We may carry it thus, for\n    our pleasure and his penance, till our very pastime, tired out of\n    breath, prompt us to have mercy on him; at which time we will\n    bring the device to the bar and crown thee for a finder of\n    madmen. But see, but see.\n\n                     Enter SIR ANDREW\n  \n  FABIAN. More matter for a May morning.\n  AGUECHEEK. Here\'s the challenge; read it. I warrant there\'s vinegar\n    and pepper in\'t.\n  FABIAN. Is\'t so saucy?\n  AGUECHEEK. Ay, is\'t, I warrant him; do but read.\n  SIR TOBY. Give me. [Reads] \'Youth, whatsoever thou art, thou art\n    but a scurvy fellow.\'\n  FABIAN. Good and valiant.\n  SIR TOBY. [Reads] \'Wonder not, nor admire not in thy mind, why I do\n    call thee so, for I will show thee no reason for\'t.\'\n  FABIAN. A good note; that keeps you from the blow of the law.\n  SIR TOBY. [Reads] \'Thou com\'st to the Lady Olivia, and in my sight\n    she uses thee kindly; but thou liest in thy throat; that is not\n    the matter I challenge thee for.\'\n  FABIAN. Very brief, and to exceeding good sense- less.\n  SIR TOBY. [Reads] \'I will waylay thee going home; where if it be\n    thy chance to kill me\'-\n  FABIAN. Good.\n  SIR TOBY. \'Thou kill\'st me like a rogue and a villain.\'\n  FABIAN. Still you keep o\' th\' windy side of the law. Good!  \n  SIR TOBY. [Reads] \'Fare thee well; and God have mercy upon one of\n    our souls! He may have mercy upon mine; but my hope is better,\n    and so look to thyself. Thy friend, as thou usest him, and thy\n    sworn enemy,\n                                              ANDREW AGUECHEEK.\'\n\n    If this letter move him not, his legs cannot. I\'ll give\'t him.\n  MARIA. You may have very fit occasion for\'t; he is now in some\n    commerce with my lady, and will by and by depart.\n  SIR TOBY. Go, Sir Andrew; scout me for him at the corner of the\n    orchard, like a bum-baily; so soon as ever thou seest him, draw;\n    and as thou draw\'st, swear horrible; for it comes to pass oft\n    that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twang\'d\n    off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would\n    have earn\'d him. Away.\n  AGUECHEEK. Nay, let me alone for swearing.                Exit\n  SIR TOBY. Now will not I deliver his letter; for the behaviour of\n    the young gentleman gives him out to be of good capacity and\n    breeding; his employment between his lord and my niece confirms\n    no less. Therefore this letter, being so excellently ignorant,  \n    will breed no terror in the youth: he will find it comes from a\n    clodpole. But, sir, I will deliver his challenge by word of\n    mouth, set upon Aguecheek notable report of valour, and drive the\n    gentleman- as know his youth will aptly receive it- into a most\n    hideous opinion of his rage, skill, fury, and impetuosity. This\n    will so fright them both that they will kill one another by the\n    look, like cockatrices.\n\n                Re-enter OLIVIA. With VIOLA\n\n  FABIAN. Here he comes with your niece; give them way till he take\n    leave, and presently after him.\n  SIR TOBY. I will meditate the while upon some horrid message for a\n    challenge.\n                              Exeunt SIR TOBY, FABIAN, and MARIA\n  OLIVIA. I have said too much unto a heart of stone,\n    And laid mine honour too unchary out;\n    There\'s something in me that reproves my fault;\n    But such a headstrong potent fault it is\n    That it but mocks reproof.  \n  VIOLA. With the same haviour that your passion bears\n    Goes on my master\'s griefs.\n  OLIVIA. Here, wear this jewel for me; \'tis my picture.\n    Refuse it not; it hath no tongue to vex you.\n    And I beseech you come again to-morrow.\n    What shall you ask of me that I\'ll deny,\n    That honour sav\'d may upon asking give?\n  VIOLA. Nothing but this- your true love for my master.\n  OLIVIA. How with mine honour may I give him that\n    Which I have given to you?\n  VIOLA. I will acquit you.\n  OLIVIA. Well, come again to-morrow. Fare thee well;\n    A fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell.           Exit\n\n              Re-enter SIR TOBY and SIR FABIAN\n\n  SIR TOBY. Gentleman, God save thee.\n  VIOLA. And you, sir.\n  SIR TOBY. That defence thou hast, betake thee tot. Of what nature\n    the wrongs are thou hast done him, I know not; but thy  \n    intercepter, full of despite, bloody as the hunter, attends\n    thee at the orchard end. Dismount thy tuck, be yare in thy\n    preparation, for thy assailant is quick, skilful, and deadly.\n  VIOLA. You mistake, sir; I am sure no man hath any quarrel to me;\n    my remembrance is very free and clear from any image of offence\n    done to any man.\n  SIR TOBY. You\'ll find it otherwise, I assure you; therefore, if you\n    hold your life at any price, betake you to your guard; for your\n    opposite hath in him what youth, strength, skill, and wrath, can\n    furnish man withal.\n  VIOLA. I pray you, sir, what is he?\n  SIR TOBY. He is knight, dubb\'d with unhatch\'d rapier and on carpet\n    consideration; but he is a devil in private brawl. Souls and\n    bodies hath he divorc\'d three; and his incensement at this moment\n    is so implacable that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of\n    death and sepulchre. Hob-nob is his word- give\'t or take\'t.\n  VIOLA. I will return again into the house and desire some conduct\n    of the lady. I am no fighter. I have heard of some kind of men\n    that put quarrels purposely on others to taste their valour;\n    belike this is a man of that quirk.  \n  SIR TOBY. Sir, no; his indignation derives itself out of a very\n    competent injury; therefore, get you on and give him his desire.\n    Back you shall not to the house, unless you undertake that with\n    me which with as much safety you might answer him; therefore on,\n    or strip your sword stark naked; for meddle you must, that\'s\n    certain, or forswear to wear iron about you.\n  VIOLA. This is as uncivil as strange. I beseech you do me this\n    courteous office as to know of the knight what my offence to him\n    is: it is something of my negligence, nothing of my purpose.\n  SIR TOBY. I Will do so. Signior Fabian, stay you by this gentleman\n    till my return.                                Exit SIR TOBY\n  VIOLA. Pray you, sir, do you know of this matter?\n  FABIAN. I know the knight is incens\'d against you, even to a mortal\n    arbitrement; but nothing of the circumstance more.\n  VIOLA. I beseech you, what manner of man is he?\n  FABIAN. Nothing of that wonderful promise, to read him by his form,\n    as you are like to find him in the proof of his valour. He is\n    indeed, sir, the most skilful, bloody, and fatal opposite that\n    you could possibly have found in any part of Illyria. Will you\n    walk towards him? I will make your peace with him if I can.  \n  VIOLA. I shall be much bound to you for\'t. I am one that would\n    rather go with sir priest than sir knight. I care not who knows\n    so much of my mettle.                                 Exeunt\n\n                Re-enter SIR TOBY With SIR ANDREW\n\n  SIR TOBY. Why, man, he\'s a very devil; I have not seen such a\n    firago. I had a pass with him, rapier, scabbard, and all, and he\n    gives me the stuck in with such a mortal motion that it is\n    inevitable; and on the answer, he pays you as surely as your feet\n    hit the ground they step on. They say he has been fencer to the\n    Sophy.\n  AGUECHEEK. Pox on\'t, I\'ll not meddle with him.\n  SIR TOBY. Ay, but he will not now be pacified; Fabian can scarce\n    hold him yonder.\n  AGUECHEEK. Plague on\'t; an I thought he had been valiant, and so\n    cunning in fence, I\'d have seen him damn\'d ere I\'d have\n    challeng\'d him. Let him let the matter slip, and I\'ll give him\n    my horse, grey Capilet.\n  SIR TOBY. I\'ll make the motion. Stand here, make a good show on\'t;  \n    this shall end without the perdition of souls. [Aside] Marry,\n    I\'ll ride your horse as well as I ride you.\n\n              Re-enter FABIAN and VIOLA\n\n    [To FABIAN] I have his horse to take up the quarrel; I have\n    persuaded him the youth\'s a devil.\n  FABIAN. [To SIR TOBY] He is as horribly conceited of him; and pants\n   and looks pale, as if a bear were at his heels.\n  SIR TOBY. [To VIOLA] There\'s no remedy, sir: he will fight with you\n    for\'s oath sake. Marry, he hath better bethought him of his\n    quarrel, and he finds that now scarce to be worth talking of.\n    Therefore draw for the supportance of his vow; he protests he\n    will not hurt you.\n  VIOLA. [Aside] Pray God defend me! A little thing would make me\n    tell them how much I lack of a man.\n  FABIAN. Give ground if you see him furious.\n  SIR TOBY. Come, Sir Andrew, there\'s no remedy; the gentleman will,\n    for his honour\'s sake, have one bout with you; he cannot by the\n    duello avoid it; but he has promis\'d me, as he is a gentleman and  \n    a soldier, he will not hurt you. Come on; to\'t.\n  AGUECHEEK. Pray God he keep his oath!                [They draw]\n\n                      Enter ANTONIO\n\n  VIOLA. I do assure you \'tis against my will.\n  ANTONIO. Put up your sword. If this young gentleman\n    Have done offence, I take the fault on me:\n    If you offend him, I for him defy you.\n  SIR TOBY. You, sir! Why, what are you?\n  ANTONIO. One, sir, that for his love dares yet do more\n    Than you have heard him brag to you he will.\n  SIR TOBY. Nay, if you be an undertaker, I am for you.\n                                                     [They draw]\n\n                         Enter OFFICERS\n\n  FABIAN. O good Sir Toby, hold! Here come the officers.\n  SIR TOBY. [To ANTONIO] I\'ll be with you anon.\n  VIOLA. Pray, sir, put your sword up, if you please.  \n  AGUECHEEK. Marry, will I, sir; and for that I promis\'d you, I\'ll be\n    as good as my word. He will bear you easily and reins well.\n  FIRST OFFICER. This is the man; do thy office.\n  SECOND OFFICER. Antonio, I arrest thee at the suit\n    Of Count Orsino.\n  ANTONIO. You do mistake me, sir.\n  FIRST OFFICER. No, sir, no jot; I know your favour well,\n    Though now you have no sea-cap on your head.\n    Take him away; he knows I know him well.\n  ANTONIO. I Must obey. [To VIOLA] This comes with seeking you;\n    But there\'s no remedy; I shall answer it.\n    What will you do, now my necessity\n    Makes me to ask you for my purse? It grieves me\n    Much more for what I cannot do for you\n    Than what befalls myself. You stand amaz\'d;\n    But be of comfort.\n  SECOND OFFICER. Come, sir, away.\n  ANTONIO. I must entreat of you some of that money.\n  VIOLA. What money, sir?\n    For the fair kindness you have show\'d me here,  \n    And part being prompted by your present trouble,\n    Out of my lean and low ability\n    I\'ll lend you something. My having is not much;\n    I\'ll make division of my present with you;\n    Hold, there\'s half my coffer.\n  ANTONIO. Will you deny me now?\n    Is\'t possible that my deserts to you\n    Can lack persuasion? Do not tempt my misery,\n    Lest that it make me so unsound a man\n    As to upbraid you with those kindnesses\n    That I have done for you.\n  VIOLA. I know of none,\n    Nor know I you by voice or any feature.\n    I hate ingratitude more in a man\n    Than lying, vainness, babbling drunkenness,\n    Or any taint of vice whose strong corruption\n    Inhabits our frail blood.\n  ANTONIO. O heavens themselves!\n  SECOND OFFICER. Come, sir, I pray you go.\n  ANTONIO. Let me speak a little. This youth that you see here  \n    I snatch\'d one half out of the jaws of death,\n    Reliev\'d him with such sanctity of love,\n    And to his image, which methought did promise\n    Most venerable worth, did I devotion.\n  FIRST OFFICER. What\'s that to us? The time goes by; away.\n  ANTONIO. But, O, how vile an idol proves this god!\n    Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame.\n    In nature there\'s no blemish but the mind:\n    None can be call\'d deform\'d but the unkind.\n    Virtue is beauty; but the beauteous evil\n    Are empty trunks, o\'erflourish\'d by the devil.\n  FIRST OFFICER. The man grows mad. Away with him.\n    Come, come, sir.\n  ANTONIO. Lead me on.                        Exit with OFFICERS\n  VIOLA. Methinks his words do from such passion fly\n    That he believes himself; so do not I.\n    Prove true, imagination, O, prove true,\n    That I, dear brother, be now ta\'en for you!\n  SIR TOBY. Come hither, knight; come hither, Fabian; we\'ll whisper\n    o\'er a couplet or two of most sage saws.  \n  VIOLA. He nam\'d Sebastian. I my brother know\n    Yet living in my glass; even such and so\n    In favour was my brother; and he went\n    Still in this fashion, colour, ornament,\n    For him I imitate. O, if it prove,\n    Tempests are kind, and salt waves fresh in love!        Exit\n  SIR TOBY. A very dishonest paltry boy, and more a coward than a\n    hare. His dishonesty appears in leaving his friend here in\n    necessity and denying him; and for his cowardship, ask Fabian.\n  FABIAN. A coward, a most devout coward, religious in it.\n  AGUECHEEK. \'Slid, I\'ll after him again and beat him.\n  SIR TOBY. Do; cuff him soundly, but never draw thy sword.\n  AGUECHEEK. And I do not-                                  Exit\n  FABIAN. Come, let\'s see the event.\n  SIR TOBY. I dare lay any money \'twill be nothing yet.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nBefore OLIVIA\'S house\n\nEnter SEBASTIAN and CLOWN\n\n  CLOWN. Will you make me believe that I am not sent for you?\n  SEBASTIAN. Go to, go to, thou art a foolish fellow; let me be clear\n    of thee.\n  CLOWN. Well held out, i\' faith! No, I do not know you; nor I am not\n    sent to you by my lady, to bid you come speak with her; nor your\n    name is not Master Cesario; nor this is not my nose neither.\n    Nothing that is so is so.\n  SEBASTIAN. I prithee vent thy folly somewhere else.\n    Thou know\'st not me.\n  CLOWN. Vent my folly! He has heard that word of some great man, and\n    now applies it to a fool. Vent my folly! I am afraid this great\n    lubber, the world, will prove a cockney. I prithee now, ungird\n    thy strangeness, and tell me what I shall vent to my lady. Shall\n    I vent to her that thou art coming?\n  SEBASTIAN. I prithee, foolish Greek, depart from me;\n    There\'s money for thee; if you tarry longer\n    I shall give worse payment.  \n  CLOWN. By my troth, thou hast an open hand. These wise men that\n    give fools money get themselves a good report after fourteen\n    years\' purchase.\n\n             Enter SIR ANDREW, SIR TOBY, and FABIAN\n\n  AGUECHEEK. Now, sir, have I met you again?\n    [Striking SEBASTIAN] There\'s for you.\n  SEBASTIAN. Why, there\'s for thee, and there, and there.\n    Are all the people mad?\n  SIR TOBY. Hold, sir, or I\'ll throw your dagger o\'er the house.\n                                             [Holding SEBASTIAN]\n  CLOWN. This will I tell my lady straight. I would not be in some of\n    your coats for two-pence.                               Exit\n  SIR TOBY. Come on, sir; hold.\n  AGUECHEEK. Nay, let him alone. I\'ll go another way to work with\n    him; I\'ll have an action of battery against him, if there be any\n    law in Illyria; though I struck him first, yet it\'s no matter for\n    that.\n  SEBASTIAN. Let go thy hand.  \n  SIR TOBY. Come, sir, I will not let you go. Come, my young soldier,\n    put up your iron; you are well flesh\'d. Come on.\n  SEBASTIAN. I will be free from thee. What wouldst thou now?\n    If thou dar\'st tempt me further, draw thy sword.     [Draws]\n  SIR TOBY. What, what? Nay, then I must have an ounce or two of this\n    malapert blood from you. [Draws]\n\n                        Enter OLIVIA\n\n  OLIVIA. Hold, Toby; on thy life, I charge thee hold.\n  SIR TOBY. Madam!\n  OLIVIA. Will it be ever thus? Ungracious wretch,\n    Fit for the mountains and the barbarous caves,\n    Where manners ne\'er were preach\'d! Out of my sight!\n    Be not offended, dear Cesario-\n    Rudesby, be gone!\n                         Exeunt SIR TOBY, SIR ANDREW, and FABIAN\n    I prithee, gentle friend,\n    Let thy fair wisdom, not thy passion, sway\n    In this uncivil and unjust extent  \n    Against thy peace. Go with me to my house,\n    And hear thou there how many fruitless pranks\n    This ruffian hath botch\'d up, that thou thereby\n    Mayst smile at this. Thou shalt not choose but go;\n    Do not deny. Beshrew his soul for me!\n    He started one poor heart of mine in thee.\n  SEBASTIAN. What relish is in this? How runs the stream?\n    Or I am mad, or else this is a dream.\n    Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep;\n    If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!\n  OLIVIA. Nay, come, I prithee. Would thou\'dst be rul\'d by me!\n  SEBASTIAN. Madam, I will.\n  OLIVIA. O, say so, and so be!                           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nOLIVIA\'S house\n\nEnter MARIA and CLOWN\n\n  MARIA. Nay, I prithee, put on this gown and this beard; make him\n    believe thou art Sir Topas the curate; do it quickly. I\'ll call\n    Sir Toby the whilst.                                    Exit\n  CLOWN. Well, I\'ll put it on, and I will dissemble myself in\'t; and\n    I would I were the first that ever dissembled in such a gown. I\n    am not tall enough to become the function well nor lean enough to\n    be thought a good student; but to be said an honest man and a\n    good housekeeper goes as fairly as to say a careful man and a\n    great scholar. The competitors enter.\n\n                 Enter SIR TOBY and MARIA\n\n  SIR TOBY. Jove bless thee, Master Parson.\n  CLOWN. Bonos dies, Sir Toby; for as the old hermit of Prague, that\n    never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to niece of King\n    Gorboduc \'That that is is\'; so I, being Master Parson, am Master\n    Parson; for what is \'that\' but that, and \'is\' but is?  \n  SIR TOBY. To him, Sir Topas.\n  CLOWN. What ho, I say! Peace in this prison!\n  SIR TOBY. The knave counterfeits well; a good knave.\n  MALVOLIO. [Within] Who calls there?\n  CLOWN. Sir Topas the curate, who comes to visit Malvolio the\n    lunatic.\n  MALVOLIO. Sir Topas, Sir Topas, good Sir Topas, go to my lady.\n  CLOWN. Out, hyperbolical fiend! How vexest thou this man!\n    Talkest thou nothing but of ladies?\n  SIR TOBY. Well said, Master Parson.\n  MALVOLIO. Sir Topas, never was man thus wronged. Good Sir Topas, do\n    not think I am mad; they have laid me here in hideous darkness.\n  CLOWN. Fie, thou dishonest Satan! I call thee by the most modest\n    terms, for I am one of those gentle ones that will use the devil\n    himself with courtesy. Say\'st thou that house is dark?\n  MALVOLIO. As hell, Sir Topas.\n  CLOWN. Why, it hath bay windows transparent as barricadoes, and the\n    clerestories toward the south north are as lustrous as ebony; and\n    yet complainest thou of obstruction?\n  MALVOLIO. I am not mad, Sir Topas. I say to you this house is dark.  \n  CLOWN. Madman, thou errest. I say there is no darkness but\n    ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in\n    their fog.\n  MALVOLIO. I say this house is as dark as ignorance, though\n    ignorance were as dark as hell; and I say there was never man\n    thus abus\'d. I am no more mad than you are; make the trial of it\n    in any constant question.\n  CLOWN. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?\n  MALVOLIO. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.\n  CLOWN. What think\'st thou of his opinion?\n  MALVOLIO. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his\n    opinion.\n  CLOWN. Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness: thou shalt\n   hold th\' opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits; and\n    fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy\n    grandam. Fare thee well.\n  MALVOLIO. Sir Topas, Sir Topas!\n  SIR TOBY. My most exquisite Sir Topas!\n  CLOWN. Nay, I am for all waters.\n  MARIA. Thou mightst have done this without thy beard and gown: he  \n    sees thee not.\n  SIR TOBY. To him in thine own voice, and bring me word how thou\n    find\'st him. I would we were well rid of this knavery. If he may\n    be conveniently deliver\'d, I would he were; for I am now so far\n    in offence with my niece that I cannot pursue with any safety\n    this sport to the upshot. Come by and by to my chamber.\n                                                 Exit with MARIA\n  CLOWN. [Sings] Hey, Robin, jolly Robin,\n    Tell me how thy lady does.\n  MALVOLIO. Fool!\n  CLOWN. [Sings] My lady is unkind, perdy.\n  MALVOLIO. Fool!\n  CLOWN. [Sings] Alas, why is she so?\n  MALVOLIO. Fool I say!\n  CLOWN. [Sings] She loves another- Who calls, ha?\n  MALVOLIO. Good fool, as ever thou wilt deserve well at my hand,\n    help me to a candle, and pen, ink, and paper; as I am a\n    gentleman, I will live to be thankful to thee for\'t.\n  CLOWN. Master Malvolio?\n  MALVOLIO. Ay, good fool.  \n  CLOWN. Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?\n  MALVOLIO. Fool, there was never man so notoriously abus\'d;\n    I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art.\n  CLOWN. But as well? Then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in\n    your wits than a fool.\n  MALVOLIO. They have here propertied me; keep me in darkness, send\n    ministers to me, asses, and do all they can to face me out of my\n    wits.\n  CLOWN. Advise you what. you say: the minister is here.\n    [Speaking as SIR TOPAS] Malvolio, thy wits the heavens restore!\n    Endeavour thyself to sleep, and leave thy vain bibble-babble.\n  MALVOLIO. Sir Topas!\n  CLOWN. Maintain no words with him, good fellow.- Who, I, sir? Not\n    I, sir. God buy you, good Sir Topas.- Marry, amen.- I will sir, I\n    will.\n  MALVOLIO. Fool, fool, fool, I say!\n  CLOWN. Alas, sir, be patient. What say you, sir? I am shent for\n    speaking to you.\n  MALVOLIO. Good fool, help me to some light and some paper.\n    I tell thee I am as well in my wits as any man in Illyria.  \n  CLOWN. Well-a-day that you were, sir!\n  MALVOLIO. By this hand, I am. Good fool, some ink, paper, and\n    light; and convey what I will set down to my lady. It shall\n    advantage thee more than ever the bearing of letter did.\n  CLOWN. I will help you to\'t. But tell me true, are you not mad\n    indeed, or do you but counterfeit?\n  MALVOLIO. Believe me, I am not; I tell thee true.\n  CLOWN. Nay, I\'ll ne\'er believe a madman till I see his brains.\n    I will fetch you light and paper and ink.\n  MALVOLIO. Fool, I\'ll requite it in the highest degree; I prithe be\n    gone.\n  CLOWN. [Singing]\n                   I am gone, sir,\n                   And anon, sir,\n                 I\'ll be with you again,\n                   In a trice,\n                   Like to the old Vice,\n                 Your need to sustain;\n\n                 Who with dagger of lath,  \n                 In his rage and his wrath,\n                   Cries, Ah, ha! to the devil,\n                 Like a mad lad,\n                 Pare thy nails, dad.\n                   Adieu, goodman devil.                    Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nOLIVIA\'S garden\n\nEnter SEBASTIAN\n\n  SEBASTIAN. This is the air; that is the glorious sun;\n    This pearl she gave me, I do feel\'t and see\'t;\n    And though \'tis wonder that enwraps me thus,\n    Yet \'tis not madness. Where\'s Antonio, then?\n    I could not find him at the Elephant;\n    Yet there he was; and there I found this credit,\n    That he did range the town to seek me out.\n    His counsel now might do me golden service;\n    For though my soul disputes well with my sense\n    That this may be some error, but no madness,\n    Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune\n    So far exceed all instance, all discourse,\n    That I am ready to distrust mine eyes\n    And wrangle with my reason, that persuades me\n    To any other trust but that I am mad,\n    Or else the lady\'s mad; yet if \'twere so,\n    She could not sway her house, command her followers,  \n    Take and give back affairs and their dispatch\n    With such a smooth, discreet, and stable bearing,\n    As I perceive she does. There\'s something in\'t\n    That is deceivable. But here the lady comes.\n\n                Enter OLIVIA and PRIEST\n\n  OLIVIA. Blame not this haste of mine. If you mean well,\n    Now go with me and with this holy man\n    Into the chantry by; there, before him\n    And underneath that consecrated roof,\n    Plight me the fun assurance of your faith,\n    That my most jealous and too doubtful soul\n    May live at peace. He shall conceal it\n    Whiles you are willing it shall come to note,\n    What time we will our celebration keep\n    According to my birth. What do you say?\n  SEBASTIAN. I\'ll follow this good man, and go with you;\n    And, having sworn truth, ever will be true.\n  OLIVIA. Then lead the way, good father; and heavens so shine  \n    That they may fairly note this act of mine!           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nBefore OLIVIA\'s house\n\nEnter CLOWN and FABIAN\n\n  FABIAN. Now, as thou lov\'st me, let me see his letter.\n  CLOWN. Good Master Fabian, grant me another request.\n  FABIAN. Anything.\n  CLOWN. Do not desire to see this letter.\n  FABIAN. This is to give a dog, and in recompense desire my dog\n    again.\n\n             Enter DUKE, VIOLA, CURIO, and LORDS\n\n  DUKE. Belong you to the Lady Olivia, friends?\n  CLOWN. Ay, sir, we are some of her trappings.\n  DUKE. I know thee well. How dost thou, my good fellow?\n  CLOWN. Truly, sir, the better for my foes and the worse for my\n    friends.\n  DUKE. Just the contrary: the better for thy friends.\n  CLOWN. No, sir, the worse.\n  DUKE. How can that be?  \n  CLOWN. Marry, sir, they praise me and make an ass of me. Now my\n    foes tell me plainly I am an ass; so that by my foes, sir, I\n    profit in the knowledge of myself, and by my friends I am abused;\n    so that, conclusions to be as kisses, if your four negatives make\n    your two affirmatives, why then, the worse for my friends, and\n    the better for my foes.\n  DUKE. Why, this is excellent.\n  CLOWN. By my troth, sir, no; though it please you to be one of my\n    friends.\n  DUKE. Thou shalt not be the worse for me. There\'s gold.\n  CLOWN. But that it would be double-dealing, sir, I would you could\n    make it another.\n  DUKE. O, you give me ill counsel.\n  CLOWN. Put your grace in your pocket, sir, for this once, and let\n    your flesh and blood obey it.\n  DUKE. Well, I will be so much a sinner to be a double-dealer.\n    There\'s another.\n  CLOWN. Primo, secundo, tertio, is a good play; and the old saying\n    is \'The third pays for all.\' The triplex, sir, is a good tripping\n    measure; or the bells of Saint Bennet, sir, may put you in mind-  \n    one, two, three.\n  DUKE. You can fool no more money out of me at this throw; if you\n    will let your lady know I am here to speak with her, and bring\n    her along with you, it may awake my bounty further.\n  CLOWN. Marry, sir, lullaby to your bounty till I come again. I go,\n    sir; but I would not have you to think that my desire of having\n    is the sin of covetousness. But, as you say, sir, let your bounty\n    take a nap; I will awake it anon.                       Exit\n\n                 Enter ANTONIO and OFFICERS\n\n  VIOLA. Here comes the man, sir, that did rescue me.\n  DUKE. That face of his I do remember well;\n    Yet when I saw it last it was besmear\'d\n    As black as Vulcan in the smoke of war.\n    A baubling vessel was he captain of,\n    For shallow draught and bulk unprizable,\n    With which such scathful grapple did he make\n    With the most noble bottom of our fleet\n    That very envy and the tongue of los  \n    Cried fame and honour on him. What\'s the matter?\n  FIRST OFFICER. Orsino, this is that Antonio\n    That took the Phoenix and her fraught from Candy;\n    And this is he that did the Tiger board\n    When your young nephew Titus lost his leg.\n    Here in the streets, desperate of shame and state,\n    In private brabble did we apprehend him.\n  VIOLA. He did me kindness, sir; drew on my side;\n    But in conclusion put strange speech upon me.\n    I know not what \'twas but distraction.\n  DUKE. Notable pirate, thou salt-water thief!\n    What foolish boldness brought thee to their mercies\n    Whom thou, in terms so bloody and so dear,\n    Hast made thine enemies?\n  ANTONIO. Orsino, noble sir,\n    Be pleas\'d that I shake off these names you give me:\n    Antonio never yet was thief or pirate,\n    Though I confess, on base and ground enough,\n    Orsino\'s enemy. A witchcraft drew me hither:\n    That most ingrateful boy there by your side  \n    From the rude sea\'s enrag\'d and foamy mouth\n    Did I redeem; a wreck past hope he was.\n    His life I gave him, and did thereto ad\n    My love without retention or restraint,\n    All his in dedication; for his sake,\n    Did I expose myself, pure for his love,\n    Into the danger of this adverse town;\n    Drew to defend him when he was beset;\n    Where being apprehended, his false cunning,\n    Not meaning to partake with me in danger,\n    Taught him to face me out of his acquaintance,\n    And grew a twenty years removed thing\n    While one would wink; denied me mine own purse,\n    Which I had recommended to his use\n    Not half an hour before.\n  VIOLA. How can this be?\n  DUKE. When came he to this town?\n  ANTONIO. To-day, my lord; and for three months before,\n    No int\'rim, not a minute\'s vacancy,\n    Both day and night did we keep company.  \n\n              Enter OLIVIA and ATTENDANTS\n\n  DUKE. Here comes the Countess; now heaven walks on earth.\n    But for thee, fellow- fellow, thy words are madness.\n    Three months this youth hath tended upon me-\n    But more of that anon. Take him aside.\n  OLIVIA. What would my lord, but that he may not have,\n    Wherein Olivia may seem serviceable?\n    Cesario, you do not keep promise with me.\n  VIOLA. Madam?\n  DUKE. Gracious Olivia-\n  OLIVIA. What do you say, Cesario? Good my lord-\n  VIOLA. My lord would speak; my duty hushes me.\n  OLIVIA. If it be aught to the old tune, my lord,\n    It is as fat and fulsome to mine ear\n    As howling after music.\n  DUKE. Still so cruel?\n  OLIVIA. Still so constant, lord.\n  DUKE. What, to perverseness? You uncivil lady,  \n    To whose ingrate and unauspicious altars\n    My soul the faithfull\'st off\'rings hath breath\'d out\n    That e\'er devotion tender\'d! What shall I do?\n  OLIVIA. Even what it please my lord, that shall become him.\n  DUKE. Why should I not, had I the heart to do it,\n    Like to the Egyptian thief at point of death,\n    Kill what I love?- a savage jealousy\n    That sometime savours nobly. But hear me this:\n    Since you to non-regardance cast my faith,\n    And that I partly know the instrument\n    That screws me from my true place in your favour,\n    Live you the marble-breasted tyrant still;\n    But this your minion, whom I know you love,\n    And whom, by heaven I swear, I tender dearly,\n    Him will I tear out of that cruel eye\n    Where he sits crowned in his master\'s spite.\n    Come, boy, with me; my thoughts are ripe in mischief:\n    I\'ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love\n    To spite a raven\'s heart within a dove.\n  VIOLA. And I, most jocund, apt, and willingly,  \n    To do you rest, a thousand deaths would die.\n  OLIVIA. Where goes Cesario?\n  VIOLA. After him I love\n    More than I love these eyes, more than my life,\n    More, by all mores, than e\'er I shall love wife.\n    If I do feign, you witnesses above\n    Punish my life for tainting of my love!\n  OLIVIA. Ay me, detested! How am I beguil\'d!\n  VIOLA. Who does beguile you? Who does do you wrong?\n  OLIVIA. Hast thou forgot thyself? Is it so long?\n    Call forth the holy father.                Exit an ATTENDANT\n  DUKE. Come, away!\n  OLIVIA. Whither, my lord? Cesario, husband, stay.\n  DUKE. Husband?\n  OLIVIA. Ay, husband; can he that deny?\n  DUKE. Her husband, sirrah?\n  VIOLA. No, my lord, not I.\n  OLIVIA. Alas, it is the baseness of thy fear\n    That makes thee strangle thy propriety.\n    Fear not, Cesario, take thy fortunes up;  \n    Be that thou know\'st thou art, and then thou art\n    As great as that thou fear\'st.\n\n                   Enter PRIEST\n\n    O, welcome, father!\n    Father, I charge thee, by thy reverence,\n    Here to unfold- though lately we intended\n    To keep in darkness what occasion now\n    Reveals before \'tis ripe- what thou dost know\n    Hath newly pass\'d between this youth and me.\n  PRIEST. A contract of eternal bond of love,\n    Confirm\'d by mutual joinder of your hands,\n    Attested by the holy close of lips,\n    Strength\'ned by interchangement of your rings;\n    And all the ceremony of this compact\n    Seal\'d in my function, by my testimony;\n    Since when, my watch hath told me, toward my grave,\n    I have travell\'d but two hours.\n  DUKE. O thou dissembling cub! What wilt thou be,  \n    When time hath sow\'d a grizzle on thy case?\n    Or will not else thy craft so quickly grow\n    That thine own trip shall be thine overthrow?\n    Farewell, and take her; but direct thy feet\n    Where thou and I henceforth may never meet.\n  VIOLA. My lord, I do protest-\n  OLIVIA. O, do not swear!\n    Hold little faith, though thou has too much fear.\n\n                  Enter SIR ANDREW\n\n  AGUECHEEK. For the love of God, a surgeon!\n    Send one presently to Sir Toby.\n  OLIVIA. What\'s the matter?\n  AGUECHEEK. Has broke my head across, and has given Sir Toby a\n    bloody coxcomb too. For the love of God, your help! I had rather\n    than forty pound I were at home.\n  OLIVIA. Who has done this, Sir Andrew?\n  AGUECHEEK. The Count\'s gentleman, one Cesario. We took him for a\n    coward, but he\'s the very devil incardinate.  \n  DUKE. My gentleman, Cesario?\n  AGUECHEEK. Od\'s lifelings, here he is! You broke my head for\n    nothing; and that that did, I was set on to do\'t by Sir Toby.\n  VIOLA. Why do you speak to me? I never hurt you.\n    You drew your sword upon me without cause;\n    But I bespake you fair and hurt you not.\n\n                Enter SIR TOBY and CLOWN\n\n  AGUECHEEK. If a bloody coxcomb be a hurt, you have hurt me; I think\n    you set nothing by a bloody coxcomb. Here comes Sir Toby halting;\n    you shall hear more; but if he had not been in drink, he would\n    have tickl\'d you othergates than he did.\n  DUKE. How now, gentleman? How is\'t with you?\n  SIR TOBY. That\'s all one; has hurt me, and there\'s th\' end on\'t.\n    Sot, didst see Dick Surgeon, sot?\n  CLOWN. O, he\'s drunk, Sir Toby, an hour agone; his eyes were set at\n    eight i\' th\' morning.\n  SIR TOBY. Then he\'s a rogue and a passy measures pavin. I hate a\n    drunken rogue.  \n  OLIVIA. Away with him. Who hath made this havoc with them?\n  AGUECHEEK. I\'ll help you, Sir Toby, because we\'ll be dress\'d\n    together.\n  SIR TOBY. Will you help- an ass-head and a coxcomb and a knave, a\n    thin fac\'d knave, a gull?\n  OLIVIA. Get him to bed, and let his hurt be look\'d to.\n                  Exeunt CLOWN, FABIAN, SIR TOBY, and SIR ANDREW\n\n                      Enter SEBASTIAN\n\n  SEBASTIAN. I am sorry, madam, I have hurt your kinsman;\n    But, had it been the brother of my blood,\n    I must have done no less with wit and safety.\n    You throw a strange regard upon me, and by that\n    I do perceive it hath offended you.\n    Pardon me, sweet one, even for the vows\n    We made each other but so late ago.\n  DUKE. One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons!\n    A natural perspective, that is and is not.\n  SEBASTIAN. Antonio, O my dear Antonio!  \n    How have the hours rack\'d and tortur\'d me\n    Since I have lost thee!\n  ANTONIO. Sebastian are you?\n  SEBASTIAN. Fear\'st thou that, Antonio?\n  ANTONIO. How have you made division of yourself?\n    An apple cleft in two is not more twin\n    Than these two creatures. Which is Sebastian?\n  OLIVIA. Most wonderful!\n  SEBASTIAN. Do I stand there? I never had a brother;\n    Nor can there be that deity in my nature\n    Of here and everywhere. I had a sister\n    Whom the blind waves and surges have devour\'d.\n    Of charity, what kin are you to me?\n    What countryman, what name, what parentage?\n  VIOLA. Of Messaline; Sebastian was my father.\n    Such a Sebastian was my brother too;\n    So went he suited to his watery tomb;\n    If spirits can assume both form and suit,\n    You come to fright us.\n  SEBASTIAN. A spirit I am indeed,  \n    But am in that dimension grossly clad\n    Which from the womb I did participate.\n    Were you a woman, as the rest goes even,\n    I should my tears let fall upon your cheek,\n    And say \'Thrice welcome, drowned Viola!\'\n  VIOLA. My father had a mole upon his brow.\n  SEBASTIAN. And so had mine.\n  VIOLA. And died that day when Viola from her birth\n    Had numb\'red thirteen years.\n  SEBASTIAN. O, that record is lively in my soul!\n    He finished indeed his mortal act\n    That day that made my sister thirteen years.\n  VIOLA. If nothing lets to make us happy both\n    But this my masculine usurp\'d attire,\n    Do not embrace me till each circumstance\n    Of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump\n    That I am Viola; which to confirm,\n    I\'ll bring you to a captain in this town,\n    Where lie my maiden weeds; by whose gentle help\n    I was preserv\'d to serve this noble Count.  \n    All the occurrence of my fortune since\n    Hath been between this lady and this lord.\n  SEBASTIAN. [To OLIVIA] So Comes it, lady, you have been mistook;\n    But nature to her bias drew in that.\n    You would have been contracted to a maid;\n    Nor are you therein, by my life, deceiv\'d;\n    You are betroth\'d both to a maid and man.\n  DUKE. Be not amaz\'d; right noble is his blood.\n    If this be so, as yet the glass seems true,\n    I shall have share in this most happy wreck.\n    [To VIOLA] Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times\n    Thou never shouldst love woman like to me.\n  VIOLA. And all those sayings will I overswear;\n    And all those swearings keep as true in soul\n    As doth that orbed continent the fire\n    That severs day from night.\n  DUKE. Give me thy hand;\n    And let me see thee in thy woman\'s weeds.\n  VIOLA. The captain that did bring me first on shore\n    Hath my maid\'s garments. He, upon some action,  \n    Is now in durance, at Malvolio\'s suit,\n    A gentleman and follower of my lady\'s.\n  OLIVIA. He shall enlarge him. Fetch Malvolio hither;\n    And yet, alas, now I remember me,\n    They say, poor gentleman, he\'s much distract.\n\n        Re-enter CLOWN, with a letter, and FABIAN\n\n    A most extracting frenzy of mine own\n    From my remembrance clearly banish\'d his.\n    How does he, sirrah?\n  CLOWN. Truly, madam, he holds Belzebub at the stave\'s end as well\n    as a man in his case may do. Has here writ a letter to you; I\n    should have given \'t you to-day morning, but as a madman\'s\n    epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much when they are\n    deliver\'d.\n  OLIVIA. Open\'t, and read it.\n  CLOWN. Look then to be well edified when the fool delivers the\n    madman. [Reads madly ] \'By the Lord, madam-\'\n  OLIVIA. How now! Art thou mad?  \n  CLOWN. No, madam, I do but read madness. An your ladyship will have\n    it as it ought to be, you must allow vox.\n  OLIVIA. Prithee read i\' thy right wits.\n  CLOWN. So I do, madonna; but to read his right wits is to read\n    thus; therefore perpend, my Princess, and give ear.\n  OLIVIA. [To FABIAN] Read it you, sirrah.\n  FABIAN. [Reads] \'By the Lord, madam, you wrong me, and the world\n    shall know it. Though you have put me into darkness and given\n    your drunken cousin rule over me, yet have I the benefit of my\n    senses as well as your ladyship. I have your own letter that\n    induced me to the semblance I put on, with the which I doubt not\n    but to do myself much right or you much shame. Think of me as you\n    please. I leave my duty a little unthought of, and speak out of\n    my injury.\n                                        THE MADLY-US\'D MALVOLIO\'\n\n  OLIVIA. Did he write this?\n  CLOWN. Ay, Madam.\n  DUKE. This savours not much of distraction.\n  OLIVIA. See him deliver\'d, Fabian; bring him hither.  \n                                                     Exit FABIAN\n    My lord, so please you, these things further thought on,\n    To think me as well a sister as a wife,\n    One day shall crown th\' alliance on\'t, so please you,\n    Here at my house, and at my proper cost.\n  DUKE. Madam, I am most apt t\' embrace your offer.\n    [To VIOLA] Your master quits you; and, for your service done\n      him,\n    So much against the mettle of your sex,\n    So far beneath your soft and tender breeding,\n    And since you call\'d me master for so long,\n    Here is my hand; you shall from this time be\n    You master\'s mistress.\n  OLIVIA. A sister! You are she.\n\n                Re-enter FABIAN, with MALVOLIO\n\n  DUKE. Is this the madman?\n  OLIVIA. Ay, my lord, this same.\n    How now, Malvolio!  \n  MALVOLIO. Madam, you have done me wrong,\n    Notorious wrong.\n  OLIVIA. Have I, Malvolio? No.\n  MALVOLIO. Lady, you have. Pray you peruse that letter.\n    You must not now deny it is your hand;\n    Write from it if you can, in hand or phrase;\n    Or say \'tis not your seal, not your invention;\n    You can say none of this. Well, grant it then,\n    And tell me, in the modesty of honour,\n    Why you have given me such clear lights of favour,\n    Bade me come smiling and cross-garter\'d to you,\n    To put on yellow stockings, and to frown\n    Upon Sir Toby and the lighter people;\n    And, acting this in an obedient hope,\n    Why have you suffer\'d me to be imprison\'d,\n    Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,\n    And made the most notorious geck and gul\n    That e\'er invention play\'d on? Tell me why.\n  OLIVIA. Alas, Malvolio, this is not my writing,\n    Though, I confess, much like the character;  \n    But out of question \'tis Maria\'s hand.\n    And now I do bethink me, it was she\n    First told me thou wast mad; then cam\'st in smiling,\n    And in such forms which here were presuppos\'d\n    Upon thee in the letter. Prithee, be content;\n    This practice hath most shrewdly pass\'d upon thee,\n    But, when we know the grounds and authors of it,\n    Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge\n    Of thine own cause.\n  FABIAN. Good madam, hear me speak,\n    And let no quarrel nor no brawl to come\n    Taint the condition of this present hour,\n    Which I have wond\'red at. In hope it shall not,\n    Most freely I confess myself and Toby\n    Set this device against Malvolio here,\n    Upon some stubborn and uncourteous parts\n    We had conceiv\'d against him. Maria writ\n    The letter, at Sir Toby\'s great importance,\n    In recompense whereof he hath married her.\n    How with a sportful malice it was follow\'d  \n    May rather pluck on laughter than revenge,\n    If that the injuries be justly weigh\'d\n    That have on both sides pass\'d.\n  OLIVIA. Alas, poor fool, how have they baffl\'d thee!\n  CLOWN. Why, \'Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some\n    have greatness thrown upon them.\' I was one, sir, in this\n    interlude- one Sir Topas, sir; but that\'s all one. \'By the Lord,\n    fool, I am not mad!\' But do you remember- \'Madam, why laugh you\n    at such a barren rascal? An you smile not, he\'s gagg\'d\'? And thus\n    the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.\n  MALVOLIO. I\'ll be reveng\'d on the whole pack of you.\n Exit\n  OLIVIA. He hath been most notoriously abus\'d.\n  DUKE. Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace;\n    He hath not told us of the captain yet.\n    When that is known, and golden time convents,\n    A solemn combination shall be made\n    Of our dear souls. Meantime, sweet sister,\n    We will not part from hence. Cesario, come;\n    For so you shall be while you are a man;  \n    But when in other habits you are seen,\n    Orsino\'s mistress, and his fancy\'s queen.\n                                        Exeunt all but the CLOWN\n\n                        CLOWN sings\n\n           When that I was and a little tiny boy,\n             With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,\n           A foolish thing was but a toy,\n             For the rain it raineth every day.\n\n           But when I came to man\'s estate,\n             With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,\n           \'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,\n             For the rain it raineth every day.\n\n           But when I came, alas! to wive,\n             With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,\n           By swaggering could I never thrive,\n             For the rain it raineth every day.  \n\n           But when I came unto my beds,\n             With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,\n           With toss-pots still had drunken heads,\n             For the rain it raineth every day.\n\n           A great while ago the world begun,\n             With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,\n           But that\'s all one, our play is done,\n           And we\'ll strive to please you every day.\n Exit\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n1595\n\nTHE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDRAMATIS PERSONAE\n\n  DUKE OF MILAN, father to Silvia\n  VALENTINE, one of the two gentlemen\n  PROTEUS,    "  "   "   "     "\n  ANTONIO, father to Proteus\n  THURIO, a foolish rival to Valentine\n  EGLAMOUR, agent for Silvia in her escape\n  SPEED, a clownish servant to Valentine\n  LAUNCE, the like to Proteus\n  PANTHINO, servant to Antonio\n  HOST, where Julia lodges in Milan\n  OUTLAWS, with Valentine\n\n  JULIA, a lady of Verona, beloved of Proteus\n  SILVIA, the Duke\'s daughter, beloved of Valentine\n  LUCETTA, waiting-woman to Julia\n\n  SERVANTS\n  MUSICIANS\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nSCENE:  \nVerona; Milan; the frontiers of Mantua\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nVerona. An open place\n\nEnter VALENTINE and PROTEUS\n\n  VALENTINE. Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus:\n    Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.\n    Were\'t not affection chains thy tender days\n    To the sweet glances of thy honour\'d love,\n    I rather would entreat thy company\n    To see the wonders of the world abroad,\n    Than, living dully sluggardiz\'d at home,\n    Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.\n    But since thou lov\'st, love still, and thrive therein,\n    Even as I would, when I to love begin.\n  PROTEUS. Wilt thou be gone? Sweet Valentine, adieu!\n    Think on thy Proteus, when thou haply seest\n    Some rare noteworthy object in thy travel.\n    Wish me partaker in thy happiness\n    When thou dost meet good hap; and in thy danger,\n    If ever danger do environ thee,\n    Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers,  \n    For I will be thy headsman, Valentine.\n  VALENTINE. And on a love-book pray for my success?\n  PROTEUS. Upon some book I love I\'ll pray for thee.\n  VALENTINE. That\'s on some shallow story of deep love:\n    How young Leander cross\'d the Hellespont.\n  PROTEUS. That\'s a deep story of a deeper love;\n    For he was more than over shoes in love.\n  VALENTINE. \'Tis true; for you are over boots in love,\n    And yet you never swum the Hellespont.\n  PROTEUS. Over the boots! Nay, give me not the boots.\n  VALENTINE. No, I will not, for it boots thee not.\n  PROTEUS. What?\n  VALENTINE. To be in love- where scorn is bought with groans,\n    Coy looks with heart-sore sighs, one fading moment\'s mirth\n    With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights;\n    If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain;\n    If lost, why then a grievous labour won;\n    However, but a folly bought with wit,\n    Or else a wit by folly vanquished.\n  PROTEUS. So, by your circumstance, you call me fool.  \n  VALENTINE. So, by your circumstance, I fear you\'ll prove.\n  PROTEUS. \'Tis love you cavil at; I am not Love.\n  VALENTINE. Love is your master, for he masters you;\n    And he that is so yoked by a fool,\n    Methinks, should not be chronicled for wise.\n  PROTEUS. Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud\n    The eating canker dwells, so eating love\n    Inhabits in the finest wits of all.\n  VALENTINE. And writers say, as the most forward bud\n    Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,\n    Even so by love the young and tender wit\n    Is turn\'d to folly, blasting in the bud,\n    Losing his verdure even in the prime,\n    And all the fair effects of future hopes.\n    But wherefore waste I time to counsel the\n    That art a votary to fond desire?\n    Once more adieu. My father at the road\n    Expects my coming, there to see me shipp\'d.\n  PROTEUS. And thither will I bring thee, Valentine.\n  VALENTINE. Sweet Proteus, no; now let us take our leave.  \n    To Milan let me hear from thee by letters\n    Of thy success in love, and what news else\n    Betideth here in absence of thy friend;\n    And I likewise will visit thee with mine.\n  PROTEUS. All happiness bechance to thee in Milan!\n  VALENTINE. As much to you at home; and so farewell!\n                                                  Exit VALENTINE\n  PROTEUS. He after honour hunts, I after love;\n    He leaves his friends to dignify them more:\n    I leave myself, my friends, and all for love.\n    Thou, Julia, thou hast metamorphis\'d me,\n    Made me neglect my studies, lose my time,\n    War with good counsel, set the world at nought;\n    Made wit with musing weak, heart sick with thought.\n\n                         Enter SPEED\n\n  SPEED. Sir Proteus, save you! Saw you my master?\n  PROTEUS. But now he parted hence to embark for Milan.\n  SPEED. Twenty to one then he is shipp\'d already,  \n    And I have play\'d the sheep in losing him.\n  PROTEUS. Indeed a sheep doth very often stray,\n    An if the shepherd be awhile away.\n  SPEED. You conclude that my master is a shepherd then, and\n    I a sheep?\n  PROTEUS. I do.\n  SPEED. Why then, my horns are his horns, whether I wake or sleep.\n  PROTEUS. A silly answer, and fitting well a sheep.\n  SPEED. This proves me still a sheep.\n  PROTEUS. True; and thy master a shepherd.\n  SPEED. Nay, that I can deny by a circumstance.\n  PROTEUS. It shall go hard but I\'ll prove it by another.\n  SPEED. The shepherd seeks the sheep, and not the sheep the\n    shepherd; but I seek my master, and my master seeks not me;\n    therefore, I am no sheep.\n  PROTEUS. The sheep for fodder follow the shepherd; the shepherd for\n    food follows not the sheep: thou for wages followest thy master;\n    thy master for wages follows not thee. Therefore, thou art a\n    sheep.\n  SPEED. Such another proof will make me cry \'baa.\'  \n  PROTEUS. But dost thou hear? Gav\'st thou my letter to Julia?\n  SPEED. Ay, sir; I, a lost mutton, gave your letter to her, a lac\'d\n    mutton; and she, a lac\'d mutton, gave me, a lost mutton, nothing\n    for my labour.\n  PROTEUS. Here\'s too small a pasture for such store of muttons.\n  SPEED. If the ground be overcharg\'d, you were best stick her.\n  PROTEUS. Nay, in that you are astray: \'twere best pound you.\n  SPEED. Nay, sir, less than a pound shall serve me for carrying your\n    letter.\n  PROTEUS. You mistake; I mean the pound- a pinfold.\n  SPEED. From a pound to a pin? Fold it over and over,\n    \'Tis threefold too little for carrying a letter to your lover.\n  PROTEUS. But what said she?\n  SPEED.  [Nodding]  Ay.\n  PROTEUS. Nod- ay. Why, that\'s \'noddy.\'\n  SPEED. You mistook, sir; I say she did nod; and you ask me if she\n    did nod; and I say \'Ay.\'\n  PROTEUS. And that set together is \'noddy.\'\n  SPEED. Now you have taken the pains to set it together, take it for\n    your pains.  \n  PROTEUS. No, no; you shall have it for bearing the letter.\n  SPEED. Well, I perceive I must be fain to bear with you.\n  PROTEUS. Why, sir, how do you bear with me?\n  SPEED. Marry, sir, the letter, very orderly; having nothing but the\n    word \'noddy\' for my pains.\n  PROTEUS. Beshrew me, but you have a quick wit.\n  SPEED. And yet it cannot overtake your slow purse.\n  PROTEUS. Come, come, open the matter; in brief, what said she?\n  SPEED. Open your purse, that the money and the matter may be both\n    at once delivered.\n  PROTEUS. Well, sir, here is for your pains. What said she?\n  SPEED. Truly, sir, I think you\'ll hardly win her.\n  PROTEUS. Why, couldst thou perceive so much from her?\n  SPEED. Sir, I could perceive nothing at all from her; no, not so\n    much as a ducat for delivering your letter; and being so hard to\n    me that brought your mind, I fear she\'ll prove as hard to you in\n    telling your mind. Give her no token but stones, for she\'s as\n    hard as steel.\n  PROTEUS. What said she? Nothing?\n  SPEED. No, not so much as \'Take this for thy pains.\' To testify  \n    your bounty, I thank you, you have testern\'d me; in requital\n    whereof, henceforth carry your letters yourself; and so, sir,\n    I\'ll commend you to my master.\n  PROTEUS. Go, go, be gone, to save your ship from wreck,\n    Which cannot perish, having thee aboard,\n    Being destin\'d to a drier death on shore.         Exit SPEED\n    I must go send some better messenger.\n    I fear my Julia would not deign my lines,\n    Receiving them from such a worthless post.              Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nVerona. The garden Of JULIA\'S house\n\nEnter JULIA and LUCETTA\n\n  JULIA. But say, Lucetta, now we are alone,\n    Wouldst thou then counsel me to fall in love?\n  LUCETTA. Ay, madam; so you stumble not unheedfully.\n  JULIA. Of all the fair resort of gentlemen\n    That every day with parle encounter me,\n    In thy opinion which is worthiest love?\n  LUCETTA. Please you, repeat their names; I\'ll show my mind\n    According to my shallow simple skill.\n  JULIA. What think\'st thou of the fair Sir Eglamour?\n  LUCETTA. As of a knight well-spoken, neat, and fine;\n    But, were I you, he never should be mine.\n  JULIA. What think\'st thou of the rich Mercatio?\n  LUCETTA. Well of his wealth; but of himself, so so.\n  JULIA. What think\'st thou of the gentle Proteus?\n  LUCETTA. Lord, Lord! to see what folly reigns in us!\n  JULIA. How now! what means this passion at his name?\n  LUCETTA. Pardon, dear madam; \'tis a passing shame  \n    That I, unworthy body as I am,\n    Should censure thus on lovely gentlemen.\n  JULIA. Why not on Proteus, as of all the rest?\n  LUCETTA. Then thus: of many good I think him best.\n  JULIA. Your reason?\n  LUCETTA. I have no other but a woman\'s reason:\n    I think him so, because I think him so.\n  JULIA. And wouldst thou have me cast my love on him?\n  LUCETTA. Ay, if you thought your love not cast away.\n  JULIA. Why, he, of all the rest, hath never mov\'d me.\n  LUCETTA. Yet he, of all the rest, I think, best loves ye.\n  JULIA. His little speaking shows his love but small.\n  LUCETTA. Fire that\'s closest kept burns most of all.\n  JULIA. They do not love that do not show their love.\n  LUCETTA. O, they love least that let men know their love.\n  JULIA. I would I knew his mind.\n  LUCETTA. Peruse this paper, madam.\n  JULIA. \'To Julia\'- Say, from whom?\n  LUCETTA. That the contents will show.\n  JULIA. Say, say, who gave it thee?  \n  LUCETTA. Sir Valentine\'s page; and sent, I think, from Proteus.\n    He would have given it you; but I, being in the way,\n    Did in your name receive it; pardon the fault, I pray.\n  JULIA. Now, by my modesty, a goodly broker!\n    Dare you presume to harbour wanton lines?\n    To whisper and conspire against my youth?\n    Now, trust me, \'tis an office of great worth,\n    And you an officer fit for the place.\n    There, take the paper; see it be return\'d;\n    Or else return no more into my sight.\n  LUCETTA. To plead for love deserves more fee than hate.\n  JULIA. Will ye be gone?\n  LUCETTA. That you may ruminate.                           Exit\n  JULIA. And yet, I would I had o\'erlook\'d the letter.\n    It were a shame to call her back again,\n    And pray her to a fault for which I chid her.\n    What fool is she, that knows I am a maid\n    And would not force the letter to my view!\n    Since maids, in modesty, say \'No\' to that\n    Which they would have the profferer construe \'Ay.\'  \n    Fie, fie, how wayward is this foolish love,\n    That like a testy babe will scratch the nurse,\n    And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod!\n    How churlishly I chid Lucetta hence,\n    When willingly I would have had her here!\n    How angerly I taught my brow to frown,\n    When inward joy enforc\'d my heart to smile!\n    My penance is to call Lucetta back\n    And ask remission for my folly past.\n    What ho! Lucetta!\n\n                     Re-enter LUCETTA\n\n  LUCETTA. What would your ladyship?\n  JULIA. Is\'t near dinner time?\n  LUCETTA. I would it were,\n    That you might kill your stomach on your meat\n    And not upon your maid.\n  JULIA. What is\'t that you took up so gingerly?\n  LUCETTA. Nothing.  \n  JULIA. Why didst thou stoop then?\n  LUCETTA. To take a paper up that I let fall.\n  JULIA. And is that paper nothing?\n  LUCETTA. Nothing concerning me.\n  JULIA. Then let it lie for those that it concerns.\n  LUCETTA. Madam, it will not lie where it concerns,\n    Unless it have a false interpreter.\n  JULIA. Some love of yours hath writ to you in rhyme.\n  LUCETTA. That I might sing it, madam, to a tune.\n    Give me a note; your ladyship can set.\n  JULIA. As little by such toys as may be possible.\n    Best sing it to the tune of \'Light o\' Love.\'\n  LUCETTA. It is too heavy for so light a tune.\n  JULIA. Heavy! belike it hath some burden then.\n  LUCETTA. Ay; and melodious were it, would you sing it.\n  JULIA. And why not you?\n  LUCETTA. I cannot reach so high.\n  JULIA. Let\'s see your song.     [LUCETTA withholds the letter]\n    How now, minion!\n  LUCETTA. Keep tune there still, so you will sing it out.  \n    And yet methinks I do not like this tune.\n  JULIA. You do not!\n  LUCETTA. No, madam; \'tis too sharp.\n  JULIA. You, minion, are too saucy.\n  LUCETTA. Nay, now you are too flat\n    And mar the concord with too harsh a descant;\n    There wanteth but a mean to fill your song.\n  JULIA. The mean is drown\'d with your unruly bass.\n  LUCETTA. Indeed, I bid the base for Proteus.\n  JULIA. This babble shall not henceforth trouble me.\n    Here is a coil with protestation!         [Tears the letter]\n    Go, get you gone; and let the papers lie.\n    You would be fing\'ring them, to anger me.\n  LUCETTA. She makes it strange; but she would be best pleas\'d\n    To be so ang\'red with another letter.                   Exit\n  JULIA. Nay, would I were so ang\'red with the same!\n    O hateful hands, to tear such loving words!\n    Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey\n    And kill the bees that yield it with your stings!\n    I\'ll kiss each several paper for amends.  \n    Look, here is writ \'kind Julia.\' Unkind Julia,\n    As in revenge of thy ingratitude,\n    I throw thy name against the bruising stones,\n    Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain.\n    And here is writ \'love-wounded Proteus.\'\n    Poor wounded name! my bosom,,as a bed,\n    Shall lodge thee till thy wound be throughly heal\'d;\n    And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss.\n    But twice or thrice was \'Proteus\' written down.\n    Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away\n    Till I have found each letter in the letter-\n    Except mine own name; that some whirlwind bear\n    Unto a ragged, fearful, hanging rock,\n    And throw it thence into the raging sea.\n    Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ:\n    \'Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus,\n    To the sweet Julia.\' That I\'ll tear away;\n    And yet I will not, sith so prettily\n    He couples it to his complaining names.\n    Thus will I fold them one upon another;  \n    Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will.\n\n                        Re-enter LUCETTA\n\n  LUCETTA. Madam,\n    Dinner is ready, and your father stays.\n  JULIA. Well, let us go.\n  LUCETTA. What, shall these papers lie like tell-tales here?\n  JULIA. If you respect them, best to take them up.\n  LUCETTA. Nay, I was taken up for laying them down;\n    Yet here they shall not lie for catching cold.\n  JULIA. I see you have a month\'s mind to them.\n  LUCETTA. Ay, madam, you may say what sights you see;\n    I see things too, although you judge I wink.\n  JULIA. Come, come; will\'t please you go?                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nVerona. ANTONIO\'S house\n\nEnter ANTONIO and PANTHINO\n\n  ANTONIO. Tell me, Panthino, what sad talk was that\n    Wherewith my brother held you in the cloister?\n  PANTHINO. \'Twas of his nephew Proteus, your son.\n  ANTONIO. Why, what of him?\n  PANTHINO. He wond\'red that your lordship\n    Would suffer him to spend his youth at home,\n    While other men, of slender reputation,\n    Put forth their sons to seek preferment out:\n    Some to the wars, to try their fortune there;\n    Some to discover islands far away;\n    Some to the studious universities.\n    For any, or for all these exercises,\n    He said that Proteus, your son, was meet;\n    And did request me to importune you\n    To let him spend his time no more at home,\n    Which would be great impeachment to his age,\n    In having known no travel in his youth.  \n  ANTONIO. Nor need\'st thou much importune me to that\n    Whereon this month I have been hammering.\n    I have consider\'d well his loss of time,\n    And how he cannot be a perfect man,\n    Not being tried and tutor\'d in the world:\n    Experience is by industry achiev\'d,\n    And perfected by the swift course of time.\n    Then tell me whither were I best to send him.\n  PANTHINO. I think your lordship is not ignorant\n    How his companion, youthful Valentine,\n    Attends the Emperor in his royal court.\n  ANTONIO. I know it well.\n  PANTHINO. \'Twere good, I think, your lordship sent him thither:\n    There shall he practise tilts and tournaments,\n    Hear sweet discourse, converse with noblemen,\n    And be in eye of every exercise\n    Worthy his youth and nobleness of birth.\n  ANTONIO. I like thy counsel; well hast thou advis\'d;\n    And that thou mayst perceive how well I like it,\n    The execution of it shall make known:  \n    Even with the speediest expedition\n    I will dispatch him to the Emperor\'s court.\n  PANTHINO. To-morrow, may it please you, Don Alphonso\n    With other gentlemen of good esteem\n    Are journeying to salute the Emperor,\n    And to commend their service to his will.\n  ANTONIO. Good company; with them shall Proteus go.\n\n                        Enter PROTEUS\n\n    And- in good time!- now will we break with him.\n  PROTEUS. Sweet love! sweet lines! sweet life!\n    Here is her hand, the agent of her heart;\n    Here is her oath for love, her honour\'s pawn.\n    O that our fathers would applaud our loves,\n    To seal our happiness with their consents!\n    O heavenly Julia!\n  ANTONIO. How now! What letter are you reading there?\n  PROTEUS. May\'t please your lordship, \'tis a word or two\n    Of commendations sent from Valentine,  \n    Deliver\'d by a friend that came from him.\n  ANTONIO. Lend me the letter; let me see what news.\n  PROTEUS. There is no news, my lord; but that he writes\n    How happily he lives, how well-belov\'d\n    And daily graced by the Emperor;\n    Wishing me with him, partner of his fortune.\n  ANTONIO. And how stand you affected to his wish?\n  PROTEUS. As one relying on your lordship\'s will,\n    And not depending on his friendly wish.\n  ANTONIO. My will is something sorted with his wish.\n    Muse not that I thus suddenly proceed;\n    For what I will, I will, and there an end.\n    I am resolv\'d that thou shalt spend some time\n    With Valentinus in the Emperor\'s court;\n    What maintenance he from his friends receives,\n    Like exhibition thou shalt have from me.\n    To-morrow be in readiness to go-\n    Excuse it not, for I am peremptory.\n  PROTEUS. My lord, I cannot be so soon provided;\n    Please you, deliberate a day or two.  \n  ANTONIO. Look what thou want\'st shall be sent after thee.\n    No more of stay; to-morrow thou must go.\n    Come on, Panthino; you shall be employ\'d\n    To hasten on his expedition.\n                                     Exeunt ANTONIO and PANTHINO\n  PROTEUS. Thus have I shunn\'d the fire for fear of burning,\n    And drench\'d me in the sea, where I am drown\'d.\n    I fear\'d to show my father Julia\'s letter,\n    Lest he should take exceptions to my love;\n    And with the vantage of mine own excuse\n    Hath he excepted most against my love.\n    O, how this spring of love resembleth\n    The uncertain glory of an April day,\n    Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,\n    And by an by a cloud takes all away!\n\n                       Re-enter PANTHINO\n\n  PANTHINO. Sir Proteus, your father calls for you;\n    He is in haste; therefore, I pray you, go.  \n  PROTEUS. Why, this it is: my heart accords thereto;\n    And yet a thousand times it answers \'No.\'             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nMilan. The DUKE\'S palace\n\nEnter VALENTINE and SPEED\n\n  SPEED. Sir, your glove.\n  VALENTINE. Not mine: my gloves are on.\n  SPEED. Why, then, this may be yours; for this is but one.\n  VALENTINE. Ha! let me see; ay, give it me, it\'s mine;\n    Sweet ornament that decks a thing divine!\n    Ah, Silvia! Silvia!\n  SPEED.  [Calling]  Madam Silvia! Madam Silvia!\n  VALENTINE. How now, sirrah?\n  SPEED. She is not within hearing, sir.\n  VALENTINE. Why, sir, who bade you call her?\n  SPEED. Your worship, sir; or else I mistook.\n  VALENTINE. Well, you\'ll still be too forward.\n  SPEED. And yet I was last chidden for being too slow.\n  VALENTINE. Go to, sir; tell me, do you know Madam Silvia?\n  SPEED. She that your worship loves?\n  VALENTINE. Why, how know you that I am in love?\n  SPEED. Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learn\'d, like  \n    Sir Proteus, to wreath your arms like a malcontent; to relish a\n    love-song, like a robin redbreast; to walk alone, like one that\n    had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his\n    A B C; to weep, like a young wench that had buried her grandam;\n    to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch, like one that fears\n    robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were\n    wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walk\'d, to\n    walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently\n    after dinner; when you look\'d sadly, it was for want of money.\n    And now you are metamorphis\'d with a mistress, that, when I look\n    on you, I can hardly think you my master.\n  VALENTINE. Are all these things perceiv\'d in me?\n  SPEED. They are all perceiv\'d without ye.\n  VALENTINE. Without me? They cannot.\n  SPEED. Without you! Nay, that\'s certain; for, without you were so\n    simple, none else would; but you are so without these follies\n    that these follies are within you, and shine through you like the\n    water in an urinal, that not an eye that sees you but is a\n    physician to comment on your malady.\n  VALENTINE. But tell me, dost thou know my lady Silvia?  \n  SPEED. She that you gaze on so, as she sits at supper?\n  VALENTINE. Hast thou observ\'d that? Even she, I mean.\n  SPEED. Why, sir, I know her not.\n  VALENTINE. Dost thou know her by my gazing on her, and yet know\'st\n    her not?\n  SPEED. Is she not hard-favour\'d, sir?\n  VALENTINE. Not so fair, boy, as well-favour\'d.\n  SPEED. Sir, I know that well enough.\n  VALENTINE. What dost thou know?\n  SPEED. That she is not so fair as, of you, well-favour\'d.\n  VALENTINE. I mean that her beauty is exquisite, but her favour\n    infinite.\n  SPEED. That\'s because the one is painted, and the other out of all\n    count.\n  VALENTINE. How painted? and how out of count?\n  SPEED. Marry, sir, so painted, to make her fair, that no man counts\n    of her beauty.\n  VALENTINE. How esteem\'st thou me? I account of her beauty.\n  SPEED. You never saw her since she was deform\'d.\n  VALENTINE. How long hath she been deform\'d?  \n  SPEED. Ever since you lov\'d her.\n  VALENTINE. I have lov\'d her ever since I saw her, and still\n    I see her beautiful.\n  SPEED. If you love her, you cannot see her.\n  VALENTINE. Why?\n  SPEED. Because Love is blind. O that you had mine eyes; or your own\n    eyes had the lights they were wont to have when you chid at Sir\n    Proteus for going ungarter\'d!\n  VALENTINE. What should I see then?\n  SPEED. Your own present folly and her passing deformity; for he,\n    being in love, could not see to garter his hose; and you, being\n    in love, cannot see to put on your hose.\n  VALENTINE. Belike, boy, then you are in love; for last morning you\n    could not see to wipe my shoes.\n  SPEED. True, sir; I was in love with my bed. I thank you, you\n    swing\'d me for my love, which makes me the bolder to chide you\n    for yours.\n  VALENTINE. In conclusion, I stand affected to her.\n  SPEED. I would you were set, so your affection would cease.\n  VALENTINE. Last night she enjoin\'d me to write some lines to one  \n    she loves.\n  SPEED. And have you?\n  VALENTINE. I have.\n  SPEED. Are they not lamely writ?\n  VALENTINE. No, boy, but as well as I can do them.\n\n                           Enter SILVIA\n\n    Peace! here she comes.\n  SPEED.  [Aside]  O excellent motion! O exceeding puppet!\n    Now will he interpret to her.\n  VALENTINE. Madam and mistress, a thousand good morrows.\n  SPEED.  [Aside]  O, give ye good ev\'n!\n    Here\'s a million of manners.\n  SILVIA. Sir Valentine and servant, to you two thousand.\n  SPEED.  [Aside]  He should give her interest, and she gives it him.\n  VALENTINE. As you enjoin\'d me, I have writ your letter\n    Unto the secret nameless friend of yours;\n    Which I was much unwilling to proceed in,\n    But for my duty to your ladyship.  \n  SILVIA. I thank you, gentle servant. \'Tis very clerkly done.\n  VALENTINE. Now trust me, madam, it came hardly off;\n    For, being ignorant to whom it goes,\n    I writ at random, very doubtfully.\n  SILVIA. Perchance you think too much of so much pains?\n  VALENTINE. No, madam; so it stead you, I will write,\n    Please you command, a thousand times as much;\n    And yet-\n  SILVIA. A pretty period! Well, I guess the sequel;\n    And yet I will not name it- and yet I care not.\n    And yet take this again- and yet I thank you-\n    Meaning henceforth to trouble you no more.\n  SPEED.  [Aside]  And yet you will; and yet another\' yet.\'\n  VALENTINE. What means your ladyship? Do you not like it?\n  SILVIA. Yes, yes; the lines are very quaintly writ;\n    But, since unwillingly, take them again.\n    Nay, take them.                      [Gives hack the letter]\n  VALENTINE. Madam, they are for you.\n  SILVIA. Ay, ay, you writ them, sir, at my request;\n    But I will none of them; they are for you:  \n    I would have had them writ more movingly.\n  VALENTINE. Please you, I\'ll write your ladyship another.\n  SILVIA. And when it\'s writ, for my sake read it over;\n    And if it please you, so; if not, why, so.\n  VALENTINE. If it please me, madam, what then?\n  SILVIA. Why, if it please you, take it for your labour.\n    And so good morrow, servant.                     Exit SILVIA\n  SPEED. O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible,\n    As a nose on a man\'s face, or a weathercock on a steeple!\n    My master sues to her; and she hath taught her suitor,\n    He being her pupil, to become her tutor.\n    O excellent device! Was there ever heard a better,\n    That my master, being scribe, to himself should write the letter?\n  VALENTINE. How now, sir! What are you reasoning with yourself?\n  SPEED. Nay, I was rhyming: \'tis you that have the reason.\n  VALENTINE. To do what?\n  SPEED. To be a spokesman from Madam Silvia?\n  VALENTINE. To whom?\n  SPEED. To yourself; why, she woos you by a figure.\n  VALENTINE. What figure?  \n  SPEED. By a letter, I should say.\n  VALENTINE. Why, she hath not writ to me.\n  SPEED. What need she, when she hath made you write to yourself?\n    Why, do you not perceive the jest?\n  VALENTINE. No, believe me.\n  SPEED. No believing you indeed, sir. But did you perceive her\n    earnest?\n  VALENTINE. She gave me none except an angry word.\n  SPEED. Why, she hath given you a letter.\n  VALENTINE. That\'s the letter I writ to her friend.\n  SPEED. And that letter hath she deliver\'d, and there an end.\n  VALENTINE. I would it were no worse.\n  SPEED. I\'ll warrant you \'tis as well.\n    \'For often have you writ to her; and she, in modesty,\n    Or else for want of idle time, could not again reply;\n    Or fearing else some messenger that might her mind discover,\n    Herself hath taught her love himself to write unto her lover.\'\n    All this I speak in print, for in print I found it. Why muse you,\n    sir? \'Tis dinner time.\n  VALENTINE. I have din\'d.  \n  SPEED. Ay, but hearken, sir; though the chameleon Love can feed on\n    the air, I am one that am nourish\'d by my victuals, and would\n    fain have meat. O, be not like your mistress! Be moved, be moved.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nVerona. JULIA\'S house\n\nEnter PROTEUS and JULIA\n\n  PROTEUS. Have patience, gentle Julia.\n  JULIA. I must, where is no remedy.\n  PROTEUS. When possibly I can, I will return.\n  JULIA. If you turn not, you will return the sooner.\n    Keep this remembrance for thy Julia\'s sake.\n                                                 [Giving a ring]\n  PROTEUS. Why, then, we\'ll make exchange. Here, take you this.\n  JULIA. And seal the bargain with a holy kiss.\n  PROTEUS. Here is my hand for my true constancy;\n    And when that hour o\'erslips me in the day\n    Wherein I sigh not, Julia, for thy sake,\n    The next ensuing hour some foul mischance\n    Torment me for my love\'s forgetfulness!\n    My father stays my coming; answer not;\n    The tide is now- nay, not thy tide of tears:\n    That tide will stay me longer than I should.\n    Julia, farewell!                                  Exit JULIA  \n    What, gone without a word?\n    Ay, so true love should do: it cannot speak;\n    For truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.\n\n                          Enter PANTHINO\n\n  PANTHINO. Sir Proteus, you are stay\'d for.\n  PROTEUS. Go; I come, I come.\n    Alas! this parting strikes poor lovers dumb.          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nVerona. A street\n\nEnter LAUNCE, leading a dog\n\n  LAUNCE. Nay, \'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping; all the\n    kind of the Launces have this very fault. I have receiv\'d my\n    proportion, like the Prodigious Son, and am going with Sir\n    Proteus to the Imperial\'s court. I think Crab my dog be the\n    sourest-natured dog that lives: my mother weeping, my father\n    wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her\n    hands, and all our house in a great perplexity; yet did not this\n    cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebble\n    stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog. A Jew would have\n    wept to have seen our parting; why, my grandam having no eyes,\n    look you, wept herself blind at my parting. Nay, I\'ll show you\n    the manner of it. This shoe is my father; no, this left shoe is\n    my father; no, no, left shoe is my mother; nay, that cannot be so\n    neither; yes, it is so, it is so, it hath the worser sole. This\n    shoe with the hole in it is my mother, and this my father. A\n    vengeance on \'t! There \'tis. Now, sir, this staff is my sister,\n    for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a wand;  \n    this hat is Nan our maid; I am the dog; no, the dog is himself,\n    and I am the dog- O, the dog is me, and I am myself; ay, so, so.\n    Now come I to my father: \'Father, your blessing.\' Now should not\n    the shoe speak a word for weeping; now should I kiss my father;\n    well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother. O that she could\n    speak now like a wood woman! Well, I kiss her- why there \'tis;\n    here\'s my mother\'s breath up and down. Now come I to my sister;\n    mark the moan she makes. Now the dog all this while sheds not a\n    tear, nor speaks a word; but see how I lay the dust with my\n    tears.\n\n                            Enter PANTHINO\n\n  PANTHINO. Launce, away, away, aboard! Thy master is shipp\'d, and\n    thou art to post after with oars. What\'s the matter? Why weep\'st\n    thou, man? Away, ass! You\'ll lose the tide if you tarry any\n    longer.\n  LAUNCE. It is no matter if the tied were lost; for it is the\n    unkindest tied that ever any man tied.\n  PANTHINO. What\'s the unkindest tide?  \n  LAUNCE. Why, he that\'s tied here, Crab, my dog.\n  PANTHINO. Tut, man, I mean thou\'lt lose the flood, and, in losing\n    the flood, lose thy voyage, and, in losing thy voyage, lose thy\n    master, and, in losing thy master, lose thy service, and, in\n    losing thy service- Why dost thou stop my mouth?\n  LAUNCE. For fear thou shouldst lose thy tongue.\n  PANTHINO. Where should I lose my tongue?\n  LAUNCE. In thy tale.\n  PANTHINO. In thy tail!\n  LAUNCE. Lose the tide, and the voyage, and the master, and the\n    service, and the tied! Why, man, if the river were dry, I am able\n    to fill it with my tears; if the wind were down, I could drive\n    the boat with my sighs.\n  PANTHINO. Come, come away, man; I was sent to call thee.\n  LAUNCE. Sir, call me what thou dar\'st.\n  PANTHINO. Will thou go?\n  LAUNCE. Well, I will go.                                Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nMilan. The DUKE\'S palace\n\nEnter SILVIA, VALENTINE, THURIO, and SPEED\n\n  SILVIA. Servant!\n  VALENTINE. Mistress?\n  SPEED. Master, Sir Thurio frowns on you.\n  VALENTINE. Ay, boy, it\'s for love.\n  SPEED. Not of you.\n  VALENTINE. Of my mistress, then.\n  SPEED. \'Twere good you knock\'d him.                       Exit\n  SILVIA. Servant, you are sad.\n  VALENTINE. Indeed, madam, I seem so.\n  THURIO. Seem you that you are not?\n  VALENTINE. Haply I do.\n  THURIO. So do counterfeits.\n  VALENTINE. So do you.\n  THURIO. What seem I that I am not?\n  VALENTINE. Wise.\n  THURIO. What instance of the contrary?\n  VALENTINE. Your folly.  \n  THURIO. And how quote you my folly?\n  VALENTINE. I quote it in your jerkin.\n  THURIO. My jerkin is a doublet.\n  VALENTINE. Well, then, I\'ll double your folly.\n  THURIO. How?\n  SILVIA. What, angry, Sir Thurio! Do you change colour?\n  VALENTINE. Give him leave, madam; he is a kind of chameleon.\n  THURIO. That hath more mind to feed on your blood than live in your\n    air.\n  VALENTINE. You have said, sir.\n  THURIO. Ay, sir, and done too, for this time.\n  VALENTINE. I know it well, sir; you always end ere you begin.\n  SILVIA. A fine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly shot off.\n  VALENTINE. \'Tis indeed, madam; we thank the giver.\n  SILVIA. Who is that, servant?\n  VALENTINE. Yourself, sweet lady; for you gave the fire. Sir Thurio\n    borrows his wit from your ladyship\'s looks, and spends what he\n    borrows kindly in your company.\n  THURIO. Sir, if you spend word for word with me, I shall make your\n    wit bankrupt.  \n  VALENTINE. I know it well, sir; you have an exchequer of words,\n    and, I think, no other treasure to give your followers; for it\n    appears by their bare liveries that they live by your bare words.\n\n                             Enter DUKE\n\n  SILVIA. No more, gentlemen, no more. Here comes my father.\n  DUKE. Now, daughter Silvia, you are hard beset.\n    Sir Valentine, your father is in good health.\n    What say you to a letter from your friends\n    Of much good news?\n  VALENTINE. My lord, I will be thankful\n    To any happy messenger from thence.\n  DUKE. Know ye Don Antonio, your countryman?\n  VALENTINE. Ay, my good lord, I know the gentleman\n    To be of worth and worthy estimation,\n    And not without desert so well reputed.\n  DUKE. Hath he not a son?\n  VALENTINE. Ay, my good lord; a son that well deserves\n    The honour and regard of such a father.  \n  DUKE. You know him well?\n  VALENTINE. I knew him as myself; for from our infancy\n    We have convers\'d and spent our hours together;\n    And though myself have been an idle truant,\n    Omitting the sweet benefit of time\n    To clothe mine age with angel-like perfection,\n    Yet hath Sir Proteus, for that\'s his name,\n    Made use and fair advantage of his days:\n    His years but young, but his experience old;\n    His head unmellowed, but his judgment ripe;\n    And, in a word, for far behind his worth\n    Comes all the praises that I now bestow,\n    He is complete in feature and in mind,\n    With all good grace to grace a gentleman.\n  DUKE. Beshrew me, sir, but if he make this good,\n    He is as worthy for an empress\' love\n    As meet to be an emperor\'s counsellor.\n    Well, sir, this gentleman is come to me\n    With commendation from great potentates,\n    And here he means to spend his time awhile.  \n    I think \'tis no unwelcome news to you.\n  VALENTINE. Should I have wish\'d a thing, it had been he.\n  DUKE. Welcome him, then, according to his worth-\n    Silvia, I speak to you, and you, Sir Thurio;\n    For Valentine, I need not cite him to it.\n    I will send him hither to you presently.           Exit DUKE\n  VALENTINE. This is the gentleman I told your ladyship\n    Had come along with me but that his mistresss\n    Did hold his eyes lock\'d in her crystal looks.\n  SILVIA. Belike that now she hath enfranchis\'d them\n    Upon some other pawn for fealty.\n  VALENTINE. Nay, sure, I think she holds them prisoners still.\n  SILVIA. Nay, then, he should be blind; and, being blind,\n    How could he see his way to seek out you?\n  VALENTINE. Why, lady, Love hath twenty pair of eyes.\n  THURIO. They say that Love hath not an eye at all.\n  VALENTINE. To see such lovers, Thurio, as yourself;\n    Upon a homely object Love can wink.              Exit THURIO\n\n                         Enter PROTEUS  \n\n  SILVIA. Have done, have done; here comes the gentleman.\n  VALENTINE. Welcome, dear Proteus! Mistress, I beseech you\n    Confirm his welcome with some special favour.\n  SILVIA. His worth is warrant for his welcome hither,\n    If this be he you oft have wish\'d to hear from.\n  VALENTINE. Mistress, it is; sweet lady, entertain him\n    To be my fellow-servant to your ladyship.\n  SILVIA. Too low a mistress for so high a servant.\n  PROTEUS. Not so, sweet lady; but too mean a servant\n    To have a look of such a worthy mistress.\n  VALENTINE. Leave off discourse of disability;\n    Sweet lady, entertain him for your servant.\n  PROTEUS. My duty will I boast of, nothing else.\n  SILVIA. And duty never yet did want his meed.\n    Servant, you are welcome to a worthless mistress.\n  PROTEUS. I\'ll die on him that says so but yourself.\n  SILVIA. That you are welcome?\n  PROTEUS. That you are worthless.\n  \n                          Re-enter THURIO\n\n  THURIO. Madam, my lord your father would speak with you.\n  SILVIA. I wait upon his pleasure. Come, Sir Thurio,\n    Go with me. Once more, new servant, welcome.\n    I\'ll leave you to confer of home affairs;\n    When you have done we look to hear from you.\n  PROTEUS. We\'ll both attend upon your ladyship.\n                                        Exeunt SILVIA and THURIO\n  VALENTINE. Now, tell me, how do all from whence you came?\n  PROTEUS. Your friends are well, and have them much commended.\n  VALENTINE. And how do yours?\n  PROTEUS. I left them all in health.\n  VALENTINE. How does your lady, and how thrives your love?\n  PROTEUS. My tales of love were wont to weary you;\n    I know you joy not in a love-discourse.\n  VALENTINE. Ay, Proteus, but that life is alter\'d now;\n    I have done penance for contemning Love,\n    Whose high imperious thoughts have punish\'d me\n    With bitter fasts, with penitential groans,  \n    With nightly tears, and daily heart-sore sighs;\n    For, in revenge of my contempt of love,\n    Love hath chas\'d sleep from my enthralled eyes\n    And made them watchers of mine own heart\'s sorrow.\n    O gentle Proteus, Love\'s a mighty lord,\n    And hath so humbled me as I confess\n    There is no woe to his correction,\n    Nor to his service no such joy on earth.\n    Now no discourse, except it be of love;\n    Now can I break my fast, dine, sup, and sleep,\n    Upon the very naked name of love.\n  PROTEUS. Enough; I read your fortune in your eye.\n    Was this the idol that you worship so?\n  VALENTINE. Even she; and is she not a heavenly saint?\n  PROTEUS. No; but she is an earthly paragon.\n  VALENTINE. Call her divine.\n  PROTEUS. I will not flatter her.\n  VALENTINE. O, flatter me; for love delights in praises!\n  PROTEUS. When I was sick you gave me bitter pills,\n    And I must minister the like to you.  \n  VALENTINE. Then speak the truth by her; if not divine,\n    Yet let her be a principality,\n    Sovereign to all the creatures on the earth.\n  PROTEUS. Except my mistress.\n  VALENTINE. Sweet, except not any;\n    Except thou wilt except against my love.\n  PROTEUS. Have I not reason to prefer mine own?\n  VALENTINE. And I will help thee to prefer her too:\n    She shall be dignified with this high honour-\n    To bear my lady\'s train, lest the base earth\n    Should from her vesture chance to steal a kiss\n    And, of so great a favour growing proud,\n    Disdain to root the summer-swelling flow\'r\n    And make rough winter everlastingly.\n  PROTEUS. Why, Valentine, what braggardism is this?\n  VALENTINE. Pardon me, Proteus; all I can is nothing\n    To her, whose worth makes other worthies nothing;\n    She is alone.\n  PROTEUS. Then let her alone.\n  VALENTINE. Not for the world! Why, man, she is mine own;  \n    And I as rich in having such a jewel\n    As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,\n    The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.\n    Forgive me that I do not dream on thee,\n    Because thou seest me dote upon my love.\n    My foolish rival, that her father likes\n    Only for his possessions are so huge,\n    Is gone with her along; and I must after,\n    For love, thou know\'st, is full of jealousy.\n  PROTEUS. But she loves you?\n  VALENTINE. Ay, and we are betroth\'d; nay more, our marriage-hour,\n    With all the cunning manner of our flight,\n    Determin\'d of- how I must climb her window,\n    The ladder made of cords, and all the means\n    Plotted and \'greed on for my happiness.\n    Good Proteus, go with me to my chamber,\n    In these affairs to aid me with thy counsel.\n  PROTEUS. Go on before; I shall enquire you forth;\n    I must unto the road to disembark\n    Some necessaries that I needs must use;  \n    And then I\'ll presently attend you.\n  VALENTINE. Will you make haste?\n  PROTEUS. I will.                                Exit VALENTINE\n    Even as one heat another heat expels\n    Or as one nail by strength drives out another,\n    So the remembrance of my former love\n    Is by a newer object quite forgotten.\n    Is it my mind, or Valentinus\' praise,\n    Her true perfection, or my false transgression,\n    That makes me reasonless to reason thus?\n    She is fair; and so is Julia that I love-\n    That I did love, for now my love is thaw\'d;\n    Which like a waxen image \'gainst a fire\n    Bears no impression of the thing it was.\n    Methinks my zeal to Valentine is cold,\n    And that I love him not as I was wont.\n    O! but I love his lady too too much,\n    And that\'s the reason I love him so little.\n    How shall I dote on her with more advice\n    That thus without advice begin to love her!  \n    \'Tis but her picture I have yet beheld,\n    And that hath dazzled my reason\'s light;\n    But when I look on her perfections,\n    There is no reason but I shall be blind.\n    If I can check my erring love, I will;\n    If not, to compass her I\'ll use my skill.               Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE V.\nMilan. A street\n\nEnter SPEED and LAUNCE severally\n\n  SPEED. Launce! by mine honesty, welcome to Padua.\n  LAUNCE. Forswear not thyself, sweet youth, for I am not welcome. I\n    reckon this always, that a man is never undone till he be hang\'d,\n    nor never welcome to a place till some certain shot be paid, and\n    the hostess say \'Welcome!\'\n  SPEED. Come on, you madcap; I\'ll to the alehouse with you\n    presently; where, for one shot of five pence, thou shalt have\n    five thousand welcomes. But, sirrah, how did thy master part with\n    Madam Julia?\n  LAUNCE. Marry, after they clos\'d in earnest, they parted very\n    fairly in jest.\n  SPEED. But shall she marry him?\n  LAUNCE. No.\n  SPEED. How then? Shall he marry her?\n  LAUNCE. No, neither.\n  SPEED. What, are they broken?\n  LAUNCE. No, they are both as whole as a fish.  \n  SPEED. Why then, how stands the matter with them?\n  LAUNCE. Marry, thus: when it stands well with him, it stands well\n    with her.\n  SPEED. What an ass art thou! I understand thee not.\n  LAUNCE. What a block art thou that thou canst not! My staff\n    understands me.\n  SPEED. What thou say\'st?\n  LAUNCE. Ay, and what I do too; look thee, I\'ll but lean, and my\n    staff understands me.\n  SPEED. It stands under thee, indeed.\n  LAUNCE. Why, stand-under and under-stand is all one.\n  SPEED. But tell me true, will\'t be a match?\n  LAUNCE. Ask my dog. If he say ay, it will; if he say no, it will;\n    if he shake his tail and say nothing, it will.\n  SPEED. The conclusion is, then, that it will.\n  LAUNCE. Thou shalt never get such a secret from me but by a\n    parable.\n  SPEED. \'Tis well that I get it so. But, Launce, how say\'st thou\n    that my master is become a notable lover?\n  LAUNCE. I never knew him otherwise.  \n  SPEED. Than how?\n  LAUNCE. A notable lubber, as thou reportest him to be.\n  SPEED. Why, thou whoreson ass, thou mistak\'st me.\n  LAUNCE. Why, fool, I meant not thee, I meant thy master.\n  SPEED. I tell thee my master is become a hot lover.\n  LAUNCE. Why, I tell thee I care not though he burn himself in love.\n    If thou wilt, go with me to the alehouse; if not, thou art an\n    Hebrew, a Jew, and not worth the name of a Christian.\n  SPEED. Why?\n  LAUNCE. Because thou hast not so much charity in thee as to go to\n    the ale with a Christian. Wilt thou go?\n  SPEED. At thy service.                                  Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VI.\nMilan. The DUKE\'s palace\n\nEnter PROTEUS\n\n  PROTEUS. To leave my Julia, shall I be forsworn;\n    To love fair Silvia, shall I be forsworn;\n    To wrong my friend, I shall be much forsworn;\n    And ev\'n that pow\'r which gave me first my oath\n    Provokes me to this threefold perjury:\n    Love bade me swear, and Love bids me forswear.\n    O sweet-suggesting Love, if thou hast sinn\'d,\n    Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it!\n    At first I did adore a twinkling star,\n    But now I worship a celestial sun.\n    Unheedful vows may heedfully be broken;\n    And he wants wit that wants resolved will\n    To learn his wit t\' exchange the bad for better.\n    Fie, fie, unreverend tongue, to call her bad\n    Whose sovereignty so oft thou hast preferr\'d\n    With twenty thousand soul-confirming oaths!\n    I cannot leave to love, and yet I do;  \n    But there I leave to love where I should love.\n    Julia I lose, and Valentine I lose;\n    If I keep them, I needs must lose myself;\n    If I lose them, thus find I by their loss:\n    For Valentine, myself; for Julia, Silvia.\n    I to myself am dearer than a friend;\n    For love is still most precious in itself;\n    And Silvia- witness heaven, that made her fair!-\n    Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope.\n    I will forget that Julia is alive,\n    Rememb\'ring that my love to her is dead;\n    And Valentine I\'ll hold an enemy,\n    Aiming at Silvia as a sweeter friend.\n    I cannot now prove constant to myself\n    Without some treachery us\'d to Valentine.\n    This night he meaneth with a corded ladder\n    To climb celestial Silvia\'s chamber window,\n    Myself in counsel, his competitor.\n    Now presently I\'ll give her father notice\n    Of their disguising and pretended flight,  \n    Who, all enrag\'d, will banish Valentine,\n    For Thurio, he intends, shall wed his daughter;\n    But, Valentine being gone, I\'ll quickly cross\n    By some sly trick blunt Thurio\'s dull proceeding.\n    Love, lend me wings to make my purpose swift,\n    As thou hast lent me wit to plot this drift.            Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE VII.\nVerona. JULIA\'S house\n\nEnter JULIA and LUCETTA\n\n  JULIA. Counsel, Lucetta; gentle girl, assist me;\n    And, ev\'n in kind love, I do conjure thee,\n    Who art the table wherein all my thoughts\n    Are visibly character\'d and engrav\'d,\n    To lesson me and tell me some good mean\n    How, with my honour, I may undertake\n    A journey to my loving Proteus.\n  LUCETTA. Alas, the way is wearisome and long!\n  JULIA. A true-devoted pilgrim is not weary\n    To measure kingdoms with his feeble steps;\n    Much less shall she that hath Love\'s wings to fly,\n    And when the flight is made to one so dear,\n    Of such divine perfection, as Sir Proteus.\n  LUCETTA. Better forbear till Proteus make return.\n  JULIA. O, know\'st thou not his looks are my soul\'s food?\n    Pity the dearth that I have pined in\n    By longing for that food so long a time.  \n    Didst thou but know the inly touch of love.\n    Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow\n    As seek to quench the fire of love with words.\n  LUCETTA. I do not seek to quench your love\'s hot fire,\n    But qualify the fire\'s extreme rage,\n    Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason.\n  JULIA. The more thou dam\'st it up, the more it burns.\n    The current that with gentle murmur glides,\n    Thou know\'st, being stopp\'d, impatiently doth rage;\n    But when his fair course is not hindered,\n    He makes sweet music with th\' enamell\'d stones,\n    Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge\n    He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;\n    And so by many winding nooks he strays,\n    With willing sport, to the wild ocean.\n    Then let me go, and hinder not my course.\n    I\'ll be as patient as a gentle stream,\n    And make a pastime of each weary step,\n    Till the last step have brought me to my love;\n    And there I\'ll rest as, after much turmoil,  \n    A blessed soul doth in Elysium.\n  LUCETTA. But in what habit will you go along?\n  JULIA. Not like a woman, for I would prevent\n    The loose encounters of lascivious men;\n    Gentle Lucetta, fit me with such weeds\n    As may beseem some well-reputed page.\n  LUCETTA. Why then, your ladyship must cut your hair.\n  JULIA. No, girl; I\'ll knit it up in silken strings\n    With twenty odd-conceited true-love knots-\n    To be fantastic may become a youth\n    Of greater time than I shall show to be.\n  LUCETTA. What fashion, madam, shall I make your breeches?\n  JULIA. That fits as well as \'Tell me, good my lord,\n    What compass will you wear your farthingale.\'\n    Why ev\'n what fashion thou best likes, Lucetta.\n  LUCETTA. You must needs have them with a codpiece, madam.\n  JULIA. Out, out, Lucetta, that will be ill-favour\'d.\n  LUCETTA. A round hose, madam, now\'s not worth a pin,\n    Unless you have a codpiece to stick pins on.\n  JULIA. Lucetta, as thou lov\'st me, let me have  \n    What thou think\'st meet, and is most mannerly.\n    But tell me, wench, how will the world repute me\n    For undertaking so unstaid a journey?\n    I fear me it will make me scandaliz\'d.\n  LUCETTA. If you think so, then stay at home and go not.\n  JULIA. Nay, that I will not.\n  LUCETTA. Then never dream on infamy, but go.\n    If Proteus like your journey when you come,\n    No matter who\'s displeas\'d when you are gone.\n    I fear me he will scarce be pleas\'d withal.\n  JULIA. That is the least, Lucetta, of my fear:\n    A thousand oaths, an ocean of his tears,\n    And instances of infinite of love,\n    Warrant me welcome to my Proteus.\n  LUCETTA. All these are servants to deceitful men.\n  JULIA. Base men that use them to so base effect!\n    But truer stars did govern Proteus\' birth;\n    His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles,\n    His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate,\n    His tears pure messengers sent from his heart,  \n    His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.\n  LUCETTA. Pray heav\'n he prove so when you come to him.\n  JULIA. Now, as thou lov\'st me, do him not that wrong\n    To bear a hard opinion of his truth;\n    Only deserve my love by loving him.\n    And presently go with me to my chamber,\n    To take a note of what I stand in need of\n    To furnish me upon my longing journey.\n    All that is mine I leave at thy dispose,\n    My goods, my lands, my reputation;\n    Only, in lieu thereof, dispatch me hence.\n    Come, answer not, but to it presently;\n    I am impatient of my tarriance.                       Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nMilan. The DUKE\'S palace\n\nEnter DUKE, THURIO, and PROTEUS\n\n  DUKE. Sir Thurio, give us leave, I pray, awhile;\n    We have some secrets to confer about.            Exit THURIO\n    Now tell me, Proteus, what\'s your will with me?\n  PROTEUS. My gracious lord, that which I would discover\n    The law of friendship bids me to conceal;\n    But, when I call to mind your gracious favours\n    Done to me, undeserving as I am,\n    My duty pricks me on to utter that\n    Which else no worldly good should draw from me.\n    Know, worthy prince, Sir Valentine, my friend,\n    This night intends to steal away your daughter;\n    Myself am one made privy to the plot.\n    I know you have determin\'d to bestow her\n    On Thurio, whom your gentle daughter hates;\n    And should she thus be stol\'n away from you,\n    It would be much vexation to your age.\n    Thus, for my duty\'s sake, I rather chose  \n    To cross my friend in his intended drift\n    Than, by concealing it, heap on your head\n    A pack of sorrows which would press you down,\n    Being unprevented, to your timeless grave.\n  DUKE. Proteus, I thank thee for thine honest care,\n    Which to requite, command me while I live.\n    This love of theirs myself have often seen,\n    Haply when they have judg\'d me fast asleep,\n    And oftentimes have purpos\'d to forbid\n    Sir Valentine her company and my court;\n    But, fearing lest my jealous aim might err\n    And so, unworthily, disgrace the man,\n    A rashness that I ever yet have shunn\'d,\n    I gave him gentle looks, thereby to find\n    That which thyself hast now disclos\'d to me.\n    And, that thou mayst perceive my fear of this,\n    Knowing that tender youth is soon suggested,\n    I nightly lodge her in an upper tow\'r,\n    The key whereof myself have ever kept;\n    And thence she cannot be convey\'d away.  \n  PROTEUS. Know, noble lord, they have devis\'d a mean\n    How he her chamber window will ascend\n    And with a corded ladder fetch her down;\n    For which the youthful lover now is gone,\n    And this way comes he with it presently;\n    Where, if it please you, you may intercept him.\n    But, good my lord, do it so cunningly\n    That my discovery be not aimed at;\n    For love of you, not hate unto my friend,\n    Hath made me publisher of this pretence.\n  DUKE. Upon mine honour, he shall never know\n    That I had any light from thee of this.\n  PROTEUS. Adieu, my lord; Sir Valentine is coming.         Exit\n\n                        Enter VALENTINE\n\n  DUKE. Sir Valentine, whither away so fast?\n  VALENTINE. Please it your Grace, there is a messenger\n    That stays to bear my letters to my friends,\n    And I am going to deliver them.  \n  DUKE. Be they of much import?\n  VALENTINE. The tenour of them doth but signify\n    My health and happy being at your court.\n  DUKE. Nay then, no matter; stay with me awhile;\n    I am to break with thee of some affairs\n    That touch me near, wherein thou must be secret.\n    \'Tis not unknown to thee that I have sought\n    To match my friend Sir Thurio to my daughter.\n  VALENTINE. I know it well, my lord; and, sure, the match\n    Were rich and honourable; besides, the gentleman\n    Is full of virtue, bounty, worth, and qualities\n    Beseeming such a wife as your fair daughter.\n    Cannot your grace win her to fancy him?\n  DUKE. No, trust me; she is peevish, sullen, froward,\n    Proud, disobedient, stubborn, lacking duty;\n    Neither regarding that she is my child\n    Nor fearing me as if I were her father;\n    And, may I say to thee, this pride of hers,\n    Upon advice, hath drawn my love from her;\n    And, where I thought the remnant of mine age  \n    Should have been cherish\'d by her childlike duty,\n    I now am full resolv\'d to take a wife\n    And turn her out to who will take her in.\n    Then let her beauty be her wedding-dow\'r;\n    For me and my possessions she esteems not.\n  VALENTINE. What would your Grace have me to do in this?\n  DUKE. There is a lady, in Verona here,\n    Whom I affect; but she is nice, and coy,\n    And nought esteems my aged eloquence.\n    Now, therefore, would I have thee to my tutor-\n    For long agone I have forgot to court;\n    Besides, the fashion of the time is chang\'d-\n    How and which way I may bestow myself\n    To be regarded in her sun-bright eye.\n  VALENTINE. Win her with gifts, if she respect not words:\n    Dumb jewels often in their silent kind\n    More than quick words do move a woman\'s mind.\n  DUKE. But she did scorn a present that I sent her.\n  VALENTINE. A woman sometime scorns what best contents her.\n    Send her another; never give her o\'er,  \n    For scorn at first makes after-love the more.\n    If she do frown, \'tis not in hate of you,\n    But rather to beget more love in you;\n    If she do chide, \'tis not to have you gone,\n    For why, the fools are mad if left alone.\n    Take no repulse, whatever she doth say;\n    For \'Get you gone\' she doth not mean \'Away!\'\n    Flatter and praise, commend, extol their graces;\n    Though ne\'er so black, say they have angels\' faces.\n    That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man,\n    If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.\n  DUKE. But she I mean is promis\'d by her friends\n    Unto a youthful gentleman of worth;\n    And kept severely from resort of men,\n    That no man hath access by day to her.\n  VALENTINE. Why then I would resort to her by night.\n  DUKE. Ay, but the doors be lock\'d and keys kept safe,\n    That no man hath recourse to her by night.\n  VALENTINE. What lets but one may enter at her window?\n  DUKE. Her chamber is aloft, far from the ground,  \n    And built so shelving that one cannot climb it\n    Without apparent hazard of his life.\n  VALENTINE. Why then a ladder, quaintly made of cords,\n    To cast up with a pair of anchoring hooks,\n    Would serve to scale another Hero\'s tow\'r,\n    So bold Leander would adventure it.\n  DUKE. Now, as thou art a gentleman of blood,\n    Advise me where I may have such a ladder.\n  VALENTINE. When would you use it? Pray, sir, tell me that.\n  DUKE. This very night; for Love is like a child,\n    That longs for everything that he can come by.\n  VALENTINE. By seven o\'clock I\'ll get you such a ladder.\n  DUKE. But, hark thee; I will go to her alone;\n    How shall I best convey the ladder thither?\n  VALENTINE. It will be light, my lord, that you may bear it\n    Under a cloak that is of any length.\n  DUKE. A cloak as long as thine will serve the turn?\n  VALENTINE. Ay, my good lord.\n  DUKE. Then let me see thy cloak.\n    I\'ll get me one of such another length.  \n  VALENTINE. Why, any cloak will serve the turn, my lord.\n  DUKE. How shall I fashion me to wear a cloak?\n    I pray thee, let me feel thy cloak upon me.\n    What letter is this same? What\'s here? \'To Silvia\'!\n    And here an engine fit for my proceeding!\n    I\'ll be so bold to break the seal for once.          [Reads]\n      \'My thoughts do harbour with my Silvia nightly,\n        And slaves they are to me, that send them flying.\n      O, could their master come and go as lightly,\n        Himself would lodge where, senseless, they are lying!\n      My herald thoughts in thy pure bosom rest them,\n        While I, their king, that thither them importune,\n      Do curse the grace that with such grace hath blest them,\n        Because myself do want my servants\' fortune.\n      I curse myself, for they are sent by me,\n        That they should harbour where their lord should be.\'\n    What\'s here?\n      \'Silvia, this night I will enfranchise thee.\'\n    \'Tis so; and here\'s the ladder for the purpose.\n    Why, Phaethon- for thou art Merops\' son-  \n    Wilt thou aspire to guide the heavenly car,\n    And with thy daring folly burn the world?\n    Wilt thou reach stars because they shine on thee?\n    Go, base intruder, over-weening slave,\n    Bestow thy fawning smiles on equal mates;\n    And think my patience, more than thy desert,\n    Is privilege for thy departure hence.\n    Thank me for this more than for all the favours\n    Which, all too much, I have bestow\'d on thee.\n    But if thou linger in my territories\n    Longer than swiftest expedition\n    Will give thee time to leave our royal court,\n    By heaven! my wrath shall far exceed the love\n    I ever bore my daughter or thyself.\n    Be gone; I will not hear thy vain excuse,\n    But, as thou lov\'st thy life, make speed from hence.    Exit\n  VALENTINE. And why not death rather than living torment?\n    To die is to be banish\'d from myself,\n    And Silvia is myself; banish\'d from her\n    Is self from self, a deadly banishment.  \n    What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?\n    What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?\n    Unless it be to think that she is by,\n    And feed upon the shadow of perfection.\n    Except I be by Silvia in the night,\n    There is no music in the nightingale;\n    Unless I look on Silvia in the day,\n    There is no day for me to look upon.\n    She is my essence, and I leave to be\n    If I be not by her fair influence\n    Foster\'d, illumin\'d, cherish\'d, kept alive.\n    I fly not death, to fly his deadly doom:\n    Tarry I here, I but attend on death;\n    But fly I hence, I fly away from life.\n\n                      Enter PROTEUS and LAUNCE\n\n  PROTEUS. Run, boy, run, run, seek him out.\n  LAUNCE. So-ho, so-ho!\n  PROTEUS. What seest thou?  \n  LAUNCE. Him we go to find: there\'s not a hair on \'s head but \'tis a\n    Valentine.\n  PROTEUS. Valentine?\n  VALENTINE. No.\n  PROTEUS. Who then? his spirit?\n  VALENTINE. Neither.\n  PROTEUS. What then?\n  VALENTINE. Nothing.\n  LAUNCE. Can nothing speak? Master, shall I strike?\n  PROTEUS. Who wouldst thou strike?\n  LAUNCE. Nothing.\n  PROTEUS. Villain, forbear.\n  LAUNCE. Why, sir, I\'ll strike nothing. I pray you-\n  PROTEUS. Sirrah, I say, forbear. Friend Valentine, a word.\n  VALENTINE. My ears are stopp\'d and cannot hear good news,\n    So much of bad already hath possess\'d them.\n  PROTEUS. Then in dumb silence will I bury mine,\n    For they are harsh, untuneable, and bad.\n  VALENTINE. Is Silvia dead?\n  PROTEUS. No, Valentine.  \n  VALENTINE. No Valentine, indeed, for sacred Silvia.\n    Hath she forsworn me?\n  PROTEUS. No, Valentine.\n  VALENTINE. No Valentine, if Silvia have forsworn me.\n    What is your news?\n  LAUNCE. Sir, there is a proclamation that you are vanished.\n  PROTEUS. That thou art banished- O, that\'s the news!-\n    From hence, from Silvia, and from me thy friend.\n  VALENTINE. O, I have fed upon this woe already,\n    And now excess of it will make me surfeit.\n    Doth Silvia know that I am banished?\n  PROTEUS. Ay, ay; and she hath offered to the doom-\n    Which, unrevers\'d, stands in effectual force-\n    A sea of melting pearl, which some call tears;\n    Those at her father\'s churlish feet she tender\'d;\n    With them, upon her knees, her humble self,\n    Wringing her hands, whose whiteness so became them\n    As if but now they waxed pale for woe.\n    But neither bended knees, pure hands held up,\n    Sad sighs, deep groans, nor silver-shedding tears,  \n    Could penetrate her uncompassionate sire-\n    But Valentine, if he be ta\'en, must die.\n    Besides, her intercession chaf\'d him so,\n    When she for thy repeal was suppliant,\n    That to close prison he commanded her,\n    With many bitter threats of biding there.\n  VALENTINE. No more; unless the next word that thou speak\'st\n    Have some malignant power upon my life:\n    If so, I pray thee breathe it in mine ear,\n    As ending anthem of my endless dolour.\n  PROTEUS. Cease to lament for that thou canst not help,\n    And study help for that which thou lament\'st.\n    Time is the nurse and breeder of all good.\n    Here if thou stay thou canst not see thy love;\n    Besides, thy staying will abridge thy life.\n    Hope is a lover\'s staff; walk hence with that,\n    And manage it against despairing thoughts.\n    Thy letters may be here, though thou art hence,\n    Which, being writ to me, shall be deliver\'d\n    Even in the milk-white bosom of thy love.  \n    The time now serves not to expostulate.\n    Come, I\'ll convey thee through the city gate;\n    And, ere I part with thee, confer at large\n    Of all that may concern thy love affairs.\n    As thou lov\'st Silvia, though not for thyself,\n    Regard thy danger, and along with me.\n  VALENTINE. I pray thee, Launce, an if thou seest my boy,\n    Bid him make haste and meet me at the Northgate.\n  PROTEUS. Go, sirrah, find him out. Come, Valentine.\n  VALENTINE. O my dear Silvia! Hapless Valentine!\n                                    Exeunt VALENTINE and PROTEUS\n  LAUNCE. I am but a fool, look you, and yet I have the wit to think\n    my master is a kind of a knave; but that\'s all one if he be but\n    one knave. He lives not now that knows me to be in love; yet I am\n    in love; but a team of horse shall not pluck that from me; nor\n    who \'tis I love; and yet \'tis a woman; but what woman I will not\n    tell myself; and yet \'tis a milkmaid; yet \'tis not a maid, for\n    she hath had gossips; yet \'tis a maid, for she is her master\'s\n    maid and serves for wages. She hath more qualities than a\n    water-spaniel- which is much in a bare Christian. Here is the  \n    cate-log  [Pulling out a paper]  of her condition. \'Inprimis: She\n    can fetch and carry.\' Why, a horse can do no more; nay, a horse\n    cannot fetch, but only carry; therefore is she better than a\n    jade. \'Item: She can milk.\' Look you, a sweet virtue in a maid\n    with clean hands.\n\n                             Enter SPEED\n\n  SPEED. How now, Signior Launce! What news with your mastership?\n  LAUNCE. With my master\'s ship? Why, it is at sea.\n  SPEED. Well, your old vice still: mistake the word. What news,\n    then, in your paper?\n  LAUNCE. The black\'st news that ever thou heard\'st.\n  SPEED. Why, man? how black?\n  LAUNCE. Why, as black as ink.\n  SPEED. Let me read them.\n  LAUNCE. Fie on thee, jolt-head; thou canst not read.\n  SPEED. Thou liest; I can.\n  LAUNCE. I will try thee. Tell me this: Who begot thee?\n  SPEED. Marry, the son of my grandfather.  \n  LAUNCE. O illiterate loiterer. It was the son of thy grandmother.\n    This proves that thou canst not read.\n  SPEED. Come, fool, come; try me in thy paper.\n  LAUNCE.  [Handing over the paper]  There; and Saint Nicholas be thy\n    speed.\n  SPEED.  [Reads]  \'Inprimis: She can milk.\'\n  LAUNCE. Ay, that she can.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She brews good ale.\'\n  LAUNCE. And thereof comes the proverb: Blessing of your heart, you\n    brew good ale.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She can sew.\'\n  LAUNCE. That\'s as much as to say \'Can she so?\'\n  SPEED. \'Item: She can knit.\'\n  LAUNCE. What need a man care for a stock with a wench, when she can\n    knit him a stock.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She can wash and scour.\'\n  LAUNCE. A special virtue; for then she need not be wash\'d and\n    scour\'d.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She can spin.\'\n  LAUNCE. Then may I set the world on wheels, when she can spin for  \n    her living.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She hath many nameless virtues.\'\n  LAUNCE. That\'s as much as to say \'bastard virtues\'; that indeed\n    know not their fathers, and therefore have no names.\n  SPEED. \'Here follow her vices.\'\n  LAUNCE. Close at the heels of her virtues.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She is not to be kiss\'d fasting, in respect of her\n    breath.\'\n  LAUNCE. Well, that fault may be mended with a breakfast.\n    Read on.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She hath a sweet mouth.\'\n  LAUNCE. That makes amends for her sour breath.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She doth talk in her sleep.\'\n  LAUNCE. It\'s no matter for that, so she sleep not in her talk.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She is slow in words.\'\n  LAUNCE. O villain, that set this down among her vices! To be slow\n    in words is a woman\'s only virtue. I pray thee, out with\'t; and\n    place it for her chief virtue.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She is proud.\'\n  LAUNCE. Out with that too; it was Eve\'s legacy, and cannot be ta\'en  \n    from her.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She hath no teeth.\'\n  LAUNCE. I care not for that neither, because I love crusts.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She is curst.\'\n  LAUNCE. Well, the best is, she hath no teeth to bite.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She will often praise her liquor.\'\n  LAUNCE. If her liquor be good, she shall; if she will not, I will;\n    for good things should be praised.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She is too liberal.\'\n  LAUNCE. Of her tongue she cannot, for that\'s writ down she is slow\n    of; of her purse she shall not, for that I\'ll keep shut. Now of\n    another thing she may, and that cannot I help. Well, proceed.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She hath more hair than wit, and more faults\n    than hairs, and more wealth than faults.\'\n  LAUNCE. Stop there; I\'ll have her; she was mine, and not mine,\n    twice or thrice in that last article. Rehearse that once more.\n  SPEED. \'Item: She hath more hair than wit\'-\n  LAUNCE. More hair than wit. It may be; I\'ll prove it: the cover of\n    the salt hides the salt, and therefore it is more than the salt;\n    the hair that covers the wit is more than the wit, for the  \n    greater hides the less. What\'s next?\n  SPEED. \'And more faults than hairs\'-\n  LAUNCE. That\'s monstrous. O that that were out!\n  SPEED. \'And more wealth than faults.\'\n  LAUNCE. Why, that word makes the faults gracious. Well, I\'ll have\n    her; an if it be a match, as nothing is impossible-\n  SPEED. What then?\n  LAUNCE. Why, then will I tell thee- that thy master stays for thee\n    at the Northgate.\n  SPEED. For me?\n  LAUNCE. For thee! ay, who art thou? He hath stay\'d for a better man\n    than thee.\n  SPEED. And must I go to him?\n  LAUNCE. Thou must run to him, for thou hast stay\'d so long that\n    going will scarce serve the turn.\n  SPEED. Why didst not tell me sooner? Pox of your love letters!\n Exit\n  LAUNCE. Now will he be swing\'d for reading my letter. An unmannerly\n    slave that will thrust himself into secrets! I\'ll after, to\n    rejoice in the boy\'s correction.                        Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nMilan. The DUKE\'S palace\n\nEnter DUKE and THURIO\n\n  DUKE. Sir Thurio, fear not but that she will love you\n    Now Valentine is banish\'d from her sight.\n  THURIO. Since his exile she hath despis\'d me most,\n    Forsworn my company and rail\'d at me,\n    That I am desperate of obtaining her.\n  DUKE. This weak impress of love is as a figure\n    Trenched in ice, which with an hour\'s heat\n    Dissolves to water and doth lose his form.\n    A little time will melt her frozen thoughts,\n    And worthless Valentine shall be forgot.\n\n                          Enter PROTEUS\n\n    How now, Sir Proteus! Is your countryman,\n    According to our proclamation, gone?\n  PROTEUS. Gone, my good lord.\n  DUKE. My daughter takes his going grievously.  \n  PROTEUS. A little time, my lord, will kill that grief.\n  DUKE. So I believe; but Thurio thinks not so.\n    Proteus, the good conceit I hold of thee-\n    For thou hast shown some sign of good desert-\n    Makes me the better to confer with thee.\n  PROTEUS. Longer than I prove loyal to your Grace\n    Let me not live to look upon your Grace.\n  DUKE. Thou know\'st how willingly I would effect\n    The match between Sir Thurio and my daughter.\n  PROTEUS. I do, my lord.\n  DUKE. And also, I think, thou art not ignorant\n    How she opposes her against my will.\n  PROTEUS. She did, my lord, when Valentine was here.\n  DUKE. Ay, and perversely she persevers so.\n    What might we do to make the girl forget\n    The love of Valentine, and love Sir Thurio?\n  PROTEUS. The best way is to slander Valentine\n    With falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent-\n    Three things that women highly hold in hate.\n  DUKE. Ay, but she\'ll think that it is spoke in hate.  \n  PROTEUS. Ay, if his enemy deliver it;\n    Therefore it must with circumstance be spoken\n    By one whom she esteemeth as his friend.\n  DUKE. Then you must undertake to slander him.\n  PROTEUS. And that, my lord, I shall be loath to do:\n    \'Tis an ill office for a gentleman,\n    Especially against his very friend.\n  DUKE. Where your good word cannot advantage him,\n    Your slander never can endamage him;\n    Therefore the office is indifferent,\n    Being entreated to it by your friend.\n  PROTEUS. You have prevail\'d, my lord; if I can do it\n    By aught that I can speak in his dispraise,\n    She shall not long continue love to him.\n    But say this weed her love from Valentine,\n    It follows not that she will love Sir Thurio.\n  THURIO. Therefore, as you unwind her love from him,\n    Lest it should ravel and be good to none,\n    You must provide to bottom it on me;\n    Which must be done by praising me as much  \n    As you in worth dispraise Sir Valentine.\n  DUKE. And, Proteus, we dare trust you in this kind,\n    Because we know, on Valentine\'s report,\n    You are already Love\'s firm votary\n    And cannot soon revolt and change your mind.\n    Upon this warrant shall you have access\n    Where you with Silvia may confer at large-\n    For she is lumpish, heavy, melancholy,\n    And, for your friend\'s sake, will be glad of you-\n    Where you may temper her by your persuasion\n    To hate young Valentine and love my friend.\n  PROTEUS. As much as I can do I will effect.\n    But you, Sir Thurio, are not sharp enough;\n    You must lay lime to tangle her desires\n    By wailful sonnets, whose composed rhymes\n    Should be full-fraught with serviceable vows.\n  DUKE. Ay,\n    Much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.\n  PROTEUS. Say that upon the altar of her beauty\n    You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart;  \n    Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears\n    Moist it again, and frame some feeling line\n    That may discover such integrity;\n    For Orpheus\' lute was strung with poets\' sinews,\n    Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,\n    Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans\n    Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.\n    After your dire-lamenting elegies,\n    Visit by night your lady\'s chamber window\n    With some sweet consort; to their instruments\n    Tune a deploring dump- the night\'s dead silence\n    Will well become such sweet-complaining grievance.\n    This, or else nothing, will inherit her.\n  DUKE. This discipline shows thou hast been in love.\n  THURIO. And thy advice this night I\'ll put in practice;\n    Therefore, sweet Proteus, my direction-giver,\n    Let us into the city presently\n    To sort some gentlemen well skill\'d in music.\n    I have a sonnet that will serve the turn\n    To give the onset to thy good advice.  \n  DUKE. About it, gentlemen!\n  PROTEUS. We\'ll wait upon your Grace till after supper,\n    And afterward determine our proceedings.\n  DUKE. Even now about it! I will pardon you.             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nACT_4|SC_1\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\nThe frontiers of Mantua. A forest\n\nEnter certain OUTLAWS\n\n  FIRST OUTLAW. Fellows, stand fast; I see a passenger.\n  SECOND OUTLAW. If there be ten, shrink not, but down with \'em.\n\n                  Enter VALENTINE and SPEED\n\n  THIRD OUTLAW. Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about ye;\n    If not, we\'ll make you sit, and rifle you.\n  SPEED. Sir, we are undone; these are the villains\n    That all the travellers do fear so much.\n  VALENTINE. My friends-\n  FIRST OUTLAW. That\'s not so, sir; we are your enemies.\n  SECOND OUTLAW. Peace! we\'ll hear him.\n  THIRD OUTLAW. Ay, by my beard, will we; for he is a proper man.\n  VALENTINE. Then know that I have little wealth to lose;\n    A man I am cross\'d with adversity;\n    My riches are these poor habiliments,\n    Of which if you should here disfurnish me,  \n    You take the sum and substance that I have.\n  SECOND OUTLAW. Whither travel you?\n  VALENTINE. To Verona.\n  FIRST OUTLAW. Whence came you?\n  VALENTINE. From Milan.\n  THIRD OUTLAW. Have you long sojourn\'d there?\n  VALENTINE. Some sixteen months, and longer might have stay\'d,\n    If crooked fortune had not thwarted me.\n  FIRST OUTLAW. What, were you banish\'d thence?\n  VALENTINE. I was.\n  SECOND OUTLAW. For what offence?\n  VALENTINE. For that which now torments me to rehearse:\n    I kill\'d a man, whose death I much repent;\n    But yet I slew him manfully in fight,\n    Without false vantage or base treachery.\n  FIRST OUTLAW. Why, ne\'er repent it, if it were done so.\n    But were you banish\'d for so small a fault?\n  VALENTINE. I was, and held me glad of such a doom.\n  SECOND OUTLAW. Have you the tongues?\n  VALENTINE. My youthful travel therein made me happy,  \n    Or else I often had been miserable.\n  THIRD OUTLAW. By the bare scalp of Robin Hood\'s fat friar,\n    This fellow were a king for our wild faction!\n  FIRST OUTLAW. We\'ll have him. Sirs, a word.\n  SPEED. Master, be one of them; it\'s an honourable kind of thievery.\n  VALENTINE. Peace, villain!\n  SECOND OUTLAW. Tell us this: have you anything to take to?\n  VALENTINE. Nothing but my fortune.\n  THIRD OUTLAW. Know, then, that some of us are gentlemen,\n    Such as the fury of ungovern\'d youth\n    Thrust from the company of awful men;\n    Myself was from Verona banished\n    For practising to steal away a lady,\n    An heir, and near allied unto the Duke.\n  SECOND OUTLAW. And I from Mantua, for a gentleman\n    Who, in my mood, I stabb\'d unto the heart.\n  FIRST OUTLAW. And I for such-like petty crimes as these.\n    But to the purpose- for we cite our faults\n    That they may hold excus\'d our lawless lives;\n    And, partly, seeing you are beautified  \n    With goodly shape, and by your own report\n    A linguist, and a man of such perfection\n    As we do in our quality much want-\n  SECOND OUTLAW. Indeed, because you are a banish\'d man,\n    Therefore, above the rest, we parley to you.\n    Are you content to be our general-\n    To make a virtue of necessity,\n    And live as we do in this wilderness?\n  THIRD OUTLAW. What say\'st thou? Wilt thou be of our consort?\n    Say \'ay\' and be the captain of us all.\n    We\'ll do thee homage, and be rul\'d by thee,\n    Love thee as our commander and our king.\n  FIRST OUTLAW. But if thou scorn our courtesy thou diest.\n  SECOND OUTLAW. Thou shalt not live to brag what we have offer\'d.\n  VALENTINE. I take your offer, and will live with you,\n    Provided that you do no outrages\n    On silly women or poor passengers.\n  THIRD OUTLAW. No, we detest such vile base practices.\n    Come, go with us; we\'ll bring thee to our crews,\n    And show thee all the treasure we have got;  \n    Which, with ourselves, all rest at thy dispose.       Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nMilan. Outside the DUKE\'S palace, under SILVIA\'S window\n\nEnter PROTEUS\n\n  PROTEUS. Already have I been false to Valentine,\n    And now I must be as unjust to Thurio.\n    Under the colour of commending him\n    I have access my own love to prefer;\n    But Silvia is too fair, too true, too holy,\n    To be corrupted with my worthless gifts.\n    When I protest true loyalty to her,\n    She twits me with my falsehood to my friend;\n    When to her beauty I commend my vows,\n    She bids me think how I have been forsworn\n    In breaking faith with Julia whom I lov\'d;\n    And notwithstanding all her sudden quips,\n    The least whereof would quell a lover\'s hope,\n    Yet, spaniel-like, the more she spurns my love\n    The more it grows and fawneth on her still.\n\n                 Enter THURIO and MUSICIANS  \n\n    But here comes Thurio. Now must we to her window,\n    And give some evening music to her ear.\n  THURIO. How now, Sir Proteus, are you crept before us?\n  PROTEUS. Ay, gentle Thurio; for you know that love\n    Will creep in service where it cannot go.\n  THURIO. Ay, but I hope, sir, that you love not here.\n  PROTEUS. Sir, but I do; or else I would be hence.\n  THURIO. Who? Silvia?\n  PROTEUS. Ay, Silvia- for your sake.\n  THURIO. I thank you for your own. Now, gentlemen,\n    Let\'s tune, and to it lustily awhile.\n\n    Enter at a distance, HOST, and JULIA in boy\'s clothes\n\n  HOST. Now, my young guest, methinks you\'re allycholly; I pray you,\n    why is it?\n  JULIA. Marry, mine host, because I cannot be merry.\n  HOST. Come, we\'ll have you merry; I\'ll bring you where you shall\n    hear music, and see the gentleman that you ask\'d for.  \n  JULIA. But shall I hear him speak?\n  HOST. Ay, that you shall.                        [Music plays]\n  JULIA. That will be music.\n  HOST. Hark, hark!\n  JULIA. Is he among these?\n  HOST. Ay; but peace! let\'s hear \'em.\n\n                   SONG\n         Who is Silvia? What is she,\n           That all our swains commend her?\n         Holy, fair, and wise is she;\n           The heaven such grace did lend her,\n         That she might admired be.\n\n         Is she kind as she is fair?\n           For beauty lives with kindness.\n         Love doth to her eyes repair,\n           To help him of his blindness;\n         And, being help\'d, inhabits there.\n  \n         Then to Silvia let us sing\n           That Silvia is excelling;\n         She excels each mortal thing\n           Upon the dull earth dwelling.\n         \'To her let us garlands bring.\n\n  HOST. How now, are you sadder than you were before?\n    How do you, man? The music likes you not.\n  JULIA. You mistake; the musician likes me not.\n  HOST. Why, my pretty youth?\n  JULIA. He plays false, father.\n  HOST. How, out of tune on the strings?\n  JULIA. Not so; but yet so false that he grieves my very\n    heart-strings.\n  HOST. You have a quick ear.\n  JULIA. Ay, I would I were deaf; it makes me have a slow heart.\n  HOST. I perceive you delight not in music.\n  JULIA. Not a whit, when it jars so.\n  HOST. Hark, what fine change is in the music!\n  JULIA. Ay, that change is the spite.  \n  HOST. You would have them always play but one thing?\n  JULIA. I would always have one play but one thing.\n    But, Host, doth this Sir Proteus, that we talk on,\n    Often resort unto this gentlewoman?\n  HOST. I tell you what Launce, his man, told me: he lov\'d her out of\n    all nick.\n  JULIA. Where is Launce?\n  HOST. Gone to seek his dog, which to-morrow, by his master\'s\n    command, he must carry for a present to his lady.\n  JULIA. Peace, stand aside; the company parts.\n  PROTEUS. Sir Thurio, fear not you; I will so plead\n    That you shall say my cunning drift excels.\n  THURIO. Where meet we?\n  PROTEUS. At Saint Gregory\'s well.\n  THURIO. Farewell.                  Exeunt THURIO and MUSICIANS\n\n                  Enter SILVIA above, at her window\n\n  PROTEUS. Madam, good ev\'n to your ladyship.\n  SILVIA. I thank you for your music, gentlemen.  \n    Who is that that spake?\n  PROTEUS. One, lady, if you knew his pure heart\'s truth,\n    You would quickly learn to know him by his voice.\n  SILVIA. Sir Proteus, as I take it.\n  PROTEUS. Sir Proteus, gentle lady, and your servant.\n  SILVIA. What\'s your will?\n  PROTEUS. That I may compass yours.\n  SILVIA. You have your wish; my will is even this,\n    That presently you hie you home to bed.\n    Thou subtle, perjur\'d, false, disloyal man,\n    Think\'st thou I am so shallow, so conceitless,\n    To be seduced by thy flattery\n    That hast deceiv\'d so many with thy vows?\n    Return, return, and make thy love amends.\n    For me, by this pale queen of night I swear,\n    I am so far from granting thy request\n    That I despise thee for thy wrongful suit,\n    And by and by intend to chide myself\n    Even for this time I spend in talking to thee.\n  PROTEUS. I grant, sweet love, that I did love a lady;  \n    But she is dead.\n  JULIA.  [Aside]  \'Twere false, if I should speak it;\n    For I am sure she is not buried.\n  SILVIA. Say that she be; yet Valentine, thy friend,\n    Survives, to whom, thyself art witness,\n    I am betroth\'d; and art thou not asham\'d\n    To wrong him with thy importunacy?\n  PROTEUS. I likewise hear that Valentine is dead.\n  SILVIA. And so suppose am I; for in his grave\n    Assure thyself my love is buried.\n  PROTEUS. Sweet lady, let me rake it from the earth.\n  SILVIA. Go to thy lady\'s grave, and call hers thence;\n    Or, at the least, in hers sepulchre thine.\n  JULIA.  [Aside]  He heard not that.\n  PROTEUS. Madam, if your heart be so obdurate,\n    Vouchsafe me yet your picture for my love,\n    The picture that is hanging in your chamber;\n    To that I\'ll speak, to that I\'ll sigh and weep;\n    For, since the substance of your perfect self\n    Is else devoted, I am but a shadow;  \n    And to your shadow will I make true love.\n  JULIA.  [Aside]  If \'twere a substance, you would, sure, deceive it\n    And make it but a shadow, as I am.\n  SILVIA. I am very loath to be your idol, sir;\n    But since your falsehood shall become you well\n    To worship shadows and adore false shapes,\n    Send to me in the morning, and I\'ll send it;\n    And so, good rest.\n  PROTEUS. As wretches have o\'ernight\n    That wait for execution in the morn.\n                                       Exeunt PROTEUS and SILVIA\n  JULIA. Host, will you go?\n  HOST. By my halidom, I was fast asleep.\n  JULIA. Pray you, where lies Sir Proteus?\n  HOST. Marry, at my house. Trust me, I think \'tis almost day.\n  JULIA. Not so; but it hath been the longest night\n    That e\'er I watch\'d, and the most heaviest.           Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nUnder SILVIA\'S window\n\nEnter EGLAMOUR\n\n  EGLAMOUR. This is the hour that Madam Silvia\n    Entreated me to call and know her mind;\n    There\'s some great matter she\'d employ me in.\n    Madam, madam!\n\n             Enter SILVIA above, at her window\n\n  SILVIA. Who calls?\n  EGLAMOUR. Your servant and your friend;\n    One that attends your ladyship\'s command.\n  SILVIA. Sir Eglamour, a thousand times good morrow!\n  EGLAMOUR. As many, worthy lady, to yourself!\n    According to your ladyship\'s impose,\n    I am thus early come to know what service\n    It is your pleasure to command me in.\n  SILVIA. O Eglamour, thou art a gentleman-\n    Think not I flatter, for I swear I do not-  \n    Valiant, wise, remorseful, well accomplish\'d.\n    Thou art not ignorant what dear good will\n    I bear unto the banish\'d Valentine;\n    Nor how my father would enforce me marry\n    Vain Thurio, whom my very soul abhors.\n    Thyself hast lov\'d; and I have heard thee say\n    No grief did ever come so near thy heart\n    As when thy lady and thy true love died,\n    Upon whose grave thou vow\'dst pure chastity.\n    Sir Eglamour, I would to Valentine,\n    To Mantua, where I hear he makes abode;\n    And, for the ways are dangerous to pass,\n    I do desire thy worthy company,\n    Upon whose faith and honour I repose.\n    Urge not my father\'s anger, Eglamour,\n    But think upon my grief, a lady\'s grief,\n    And on the justice of my flying hence\n    To keep me from a most unholy match,\n    Which heaven and fortune still rewards with plagues.\n    I do desire thee, even from a heart  \n    As full of sorrows as the sea of sands,\n    To bear me company and go with me;\n    If not, to hide what I have said to thee,\n    That I may venture to depart alone.\n  EGLAMOUR. Madam, I pity much your grievances;\n    Which since I know they virtuously are plac\'d,\n    I give consent to go along with you,\n    Recking as little what betideth me\n    As much I wish all good befortune you.\n    When will you go?\n  SILVIA. This evening coming.\n  EGLAMOUR. Where shall I meet you?\n  SILVIA. At Friar Patrick\'s cell,\n    Where I intend holy confession.\n  EGLAMOUR. I will not fail your ladyship. Good morrow, gentle lady.\n  SILVIA. Good morrow, kind Sir Eglamour.                 Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nUnder SILVIA\'S Window\n\nEnter LAUNCE with his dog\n\n  LAUNCE. When a man\'s servant shall play the cur with him, look you,\n    it goes hard- one that I brought up of a puppy; one that I sav\'d\n    from drowning, when three or four of his blind brothers and\n    sisters went to it. I have taught him, even as one would say\n    precisely \'Thus I would teach a dog.\' I was sent to deliver him\n    as a present to Mistress Silvia from my master; and I came no\n    sooner into the dining-chamber, but he steps me to her trencher\n    and steals her capon\'s leg. O, \'tis a foul thing when a cur\n    cannot keep himself in all companies! I would have, as one should\n    say, one that takes upon him to be a dog indeed, to be, as it\n    were, a dog at all things. If I had not had more wit than he, to\n    take a fault upon me that he did, I think verily he had been\n    hang\'d for\'t; sure as I live, he had suffer\'d for\'t. You shall\n    judge. He thrusts me himself into the company of three or four\n    gentleman-like dogs under the Duke\'s table; he had not been\n    there, bless the mark, a pissing while but all the chamber smelt\n    him. \'Out with the dog\' says one; \'What cur is that?\' says  \n    another; \'Whip him out\' says the third; \'Hang him up\' says the\n    Duke. I, having been acquainted with the smell before, knew it\n    was Crab, and goes me to the fellow that whips the dogs.\n    \'Friend,\' quoth I \'you mean to whip the dog.\' \'Ay, marry do I\'\n    quoth he. \'You do him the more wrong,\' quoth I; "twas I did the\n    thing you wot of.\' He makes me no more ado, but whips me out of\n    the chamber. How many masters would do this for his servant? Nay,\n    I\'ll be sworn, I have sat in the stock for puddings he hath\n    stol\'n, otherwise he had been executed; I have stood on the\n    pillory for geese he hath kill\'d, otherwise he had suffer\'d\n    for\'t. Thou think\'st not of this now. Nay, I remember the trick\n    you serv\'d me when I took my leave of Madam Silvia. Did not I bid\n    thee still mark me and do as I do? When didst thou see me heave\n    up my leg and make water against a gentlewoman\'s farthingale?\n    Didst thou ever see me do such a trick?\n\n               Enter PROTEUS, and JULIA in boy\'s clothes\n\n  PROTEUS. Sebastian is thy name? I like thee well,\n    And will employ thee in some service presently.  \n  JULIA. In what you please; I\'ll do what I can.\n  PROTEUS..I hope thou wilt.  [To LAUNCE]  How now, you whoreson\n      peasant!\n    Where have you been these two days loitering?\n  LAUNCE. Marry, sir, I carried Mistress Silvia the dog you bade me.\n  PROTEUS. And what says she to my little jewel?\n  LAUNCE. Marry, she says your dog was a cur, and tells you currish\n    thanks is good enough for such a present.\n  PROTEUS. But she receiv\'d my dog?\n  LAUNCE. No, indeed, did she not; here have I brought him back\n    again.\n  PROTEUS. What, didst thou offer her this from me?\n  LAUNCE. Ay, sir; the other squirrel was stol\'n from me by the\n    hangman\'s boys in the market-place; and then I offer\'d her mine\n    own, who is a dog as big as ten of yours, and therefore the gift\n    the greater.\n  PROTEUS. Go, get thee hence and find my dog again,\n    Or ne\'er return again into my sight.\n    Away, I say. Stayest thou to vex me here?        Exit LAUNCE\n    A slave that still an end turns me to shame!  \n    Sebastian, I have entertained thee\n    Partly that I have need of such a youth\n    That can with some discretion do my business,\n    For \'tis no trusting to yond foolish lout,\n    But chiefly for thy face and thy behaviour,\n    Which, if my augury deceive me not,\n    Witness good bringing up, fortune, and truth;\n    Therefore, know thou, for this I entertain thee.\n    Go presently, and take this ring with thee,\n    Deliver it to Madam Silvia-\n    She lov\'d me well deliver\'d it to me.\n  JULIA. It seems you lov\'d not her, to leave her token.\n    She is dead, belike?\n  PROTEUS. Not so; I think she lives.\n  JULIA. Alas!\n  PROTEUS. Why dost thou cry \'Alas\'?\n  JULIA. I cannot choose\n    But pity her.\n  PROTEUS. Wherefore shouldst thou pity her?\n  JULIA. Because methinks that she lov\'d you as well  \n    As you do love your lady Silvia.\n    She dreams on him that has forgot her love:\n    You dote on her that cares not for your love.\n    \'Tis pity love should be so contrary;\n    And thinking on it makes me cry \'Alas!\'\n  PROTEUS. Well, give her that ring, and therewithal\n    This letter. That\'s her chamber. Tell my lady\n    I claim the promise for her heavenly picture.\n    Your message done, hie home unto my chamber,\n    Where thou shalt find me sad and solitary.      Exit PROTEUS\n  JULIA. How many women would do such a message?\n    Alas, poor Proteus, thou hast entertain\'d\n    A fox to be the shepherd of thy lambs.\n    Alas, poor fool, why do I pity him\n    That with his very heart despiseth me?\n    Because he loves her, he despiseth me;\n    Because I love him, I must pity him.\n    This ring I gave him, when he parted from me,\n    To bind him to remember my good will;\n    And now am I, unhappy messenger,  \n    To plead for that which I would not obtain,\n    To carry that which I would have refus\'d,\n    To praise his faith, which I would have disprais\'d.\n    I am my master\'s true confirmed love,\n    But cannot be true servant to my master\n    Unless I prove false traitor to myself.\n    Yet will I woo for him, but yet so coldly\n    As, heaven it knows, I would not have him speed.\n\n                     Enter SILVIA, attended\n\n    Gentlewoman, good day! I pray you be my mean\n    To bring me where to speak with Madam Silvia.\n  SILVIA. What would you with her, if that I be she?\n  JULIA. If you be she, I do entreat your patience\n    To hear me speak the message I am sent on.\n  SILVIA. From whom?\n  JULIA. From my master, Sir Proteus, madam.\n  SILVIA. O, he sends you for a picture?\n  JULIA. Ay, madam.  \n  SILVIA. Ursula, bring my picture there.\n    Go, give your master this. Tell him from me,\n    One Julia, that his changing thoughts forget,\n    Would better fit his chamber than this shadow.\n  JULIA. Madam, please you peruse this letter.\n    Pardon me, madam; I have unadvis\'d\n    Deliver\'d you a paper that I should not.\n    This is the letter to your ladyship.\n  SILVIA. I pray thee let me look on that again.\n  JULIA. It may not be; good madam, pardon me.\n  SILVIA. There, hold!\n    I will not look upon your master\'s lines.\n    I know they are stuff\'d with protestations,\n    And full of new-found oaths, which he wul break\n    As easily as I do tear his paper.\n  JULIA. Madam, he sends your ladyship this ring.\n  SILVIA. The more shame for him that he sends it me;\n    For I have heard him say a thousand times\n    His Julia gave it him at his departure.\n    Though his false finger have profan\'d the ring,  \n    Mine shall not do his Julia so much wrong.\n  JULIA. She thanks you.\n  SILVIA. What say\'st thou?\n  JULIA. I thank you, madam, that you tender her.\n    Poor gentlewoman, my master wrongs her much.\n  SILVIA. Dost thou know her?\n  JULIA. Almost as well as I do know myself.\n    To think upon her woes, I do protest\n    That I have wept a hundred several times.\n  SILVIA. Belike she thinks that Proteus hath forsook her.\n  JULIA. I think she doth, and that\'s her cause of sorrow.\n  SILVIA. Is she not passing fair?\n  JULIA. She hath been fairer, madam, than she is.\n    When she did think my master lov\'d her well,\n    She, in my judgment, was as fair as you;\n    But since she did neglect her looking-glass\n    And threw her sun-expelling mask away,\n    The air hath starv\'d the roses in her cheeks\n    And pinch\'d the lily-tincture of her face,\n    That now she is become as black as I.  \n  SILVIA. How tall was she?\n  JULIA. About my stature; for at Pentecost,\n    When all our pageants of delight were play\'d,\n    Our youth got me to play the woman\'s part,\n    And I was trimm\'d in Madam Julia\'s gown;\n    Which served me as fit, by all men\'s judgments,\n    As if the garment had been made for me;\n    Therefore I know she is about my height.\n    And at that time I made her weep a good,\n    For I did play a lamentable part.\n    Madam, \'twas Ariadne passioning\n    For Theseus\' perjury and unjust flight;\n    Which I so lively acted with my tears\n    That my poor mistress, moved therewithal,\n    Wept bitterly; and would I might be dead\n    If I in thought felt not her very sorrow.\n  SILVIA. She is beholding to thee, gentle youth.\n    Alas, poor lady, desolate and left!\n    I weep myself, to think upon thy words.\n    Here, youth, there is my purse; I give thee this  \n    For thy sweet mistress\' sake, because thou lov\'st her.\n    Farewell.                        Exit SILVIA with ATTENDANTS\n  JULIA. And she shall thank you for\'t, if e\'er you know her.\n    A virtuous gentlewoman, mild and beautiful!\n    I hope my master\'s suit will be but cold,\n    Since she respects my mistress\' love so much.\n    Alas, how love can trifle with itself!\n    Here is her picture; let me see. I think,\n    If I had such a tire, this face of mine\n    Were full as lovely as is this of hers;\n    And yet the painter flatter\'d her a little,\n    Unless I flatter with myself too much.\n    Her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow;\n    If that be all the difference in his love,\n    I\'ll get me such a colour\'d periwig.\n    Her eyes are grey as glass, and so are mine;\n    Ay, but her forehead\'s low, and mine\'s as high.\n    What should it be that he respects in her\n    But I can make respective in myself,\n    If this fond Love were not a blinded god?  \n    Come, shadow, come, and take this shadow up,\n    For \'tis thy rival. O thou senseless form,\n    Thou shalt be worshipp\'d, kiss\'d, lov\'d, and ador\'d!\n    And were there sense in his idolatry\n    My substance should be statue in thy stead.\n    I\'ll use thee kindly for thy mistress\' sake,\n    That us\'d me so; or else, by Jove I vow,\n    I should have scratch\'d out your unseeing eyes,\n    To make my master out of love with thee.                Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nMilan. An abbey\n\nEnter EGLAMOUR\n\n  EGLAMOUR. The sun begins to gild the western sky,\n    And now it is about the very hour\n    That Silvia at Friar Patrick\'s cell should meet me.\n    She will not fail, for lovers break not hours\n    Unless it be to come before their time,\n    So much they spur their expedition.\n\n                         Enter SILVIA\n\n    See where she comes. Lady, a happy evening!\n  SILVIA. Amen, amen! Go on, good Eglamour,\n    Out at the postern by the abbey wall;\n    I fear I am attended by some spies.\n  EGLAMOUR. Fear not. The forest is not three leagues off;\n    If we recover that, we are sure enough.               Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nMilan. The DUKE\'S palace\n\nEnter THURIO, PROTEUS, and JULIA as SEBASTIAN\n\n  THURIO. Sir Proteus, what says Silvia to my suit?\n  PROTEUS. O, sir, I find her milder than she was;\n    And yet she takes exceptions at your person.\n  THURIO. What, that my leg is too long?\n  PROTEUS. No; that it is too little.\n  THURIO. I\'ll wear a boot to make it somewhat rounder.\n  JULIA.  [Aside]  But love will not be spurr\'d to what it loathes.\n  THURIO. What says she to my face?\n  PROTEUS. She says it is a fair one.\n  THURIO. Nay, then, the wanton lies; my face is black.\n  PROTEUS. But pearls are fair; and the old saying is:\n    Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies\' eyes.\n  JULIA.  [Aside]  \'Tis true, such pearls as put out ladies\' eyes;\n    For I had rather wink than look on them.\n  THURIO. How likes she my discourse?\n  PROTEUS. Ill, when you talk of war.\n  THURIO. But well when I discourse of love and peace?  \n  JULIA.  [Aside]  But better, indeed, when you hold your peace.\n  THURIO. What says she to my valour?\n  PROTEUS. O, sir, she makes no doubt of that.\n  JULIA.  [Aside]  She needs not, when she knows it cowardice.\n  THURIO. What says she to my birth?\n  PROTEUS. That you are well deriv\'d.\n  JULIA.  [Aside]  True; from a gentleman to a fool.\n  THURIO. Considers she my possessions?\n  PROTEUS. O, ay; and pities them.\n  THURIO. Wherefore?\n  JULIA.  [Aside]  That such an ass should owe them.\n  PROTEUS. That they are out by lease.\n  JULIA. Here comes the Duke.\n\n                          Enter DUKE\n\n  DUKE. How now, Sir Proteus! how now, Thurio!\n    Which of you saw Sir Eglamour of late?\n  THURIO. Not I.\n  PROTEUS. Nor I.  \n  DUKE. Saw you my daughter?\n  PROTEUS. Neither.\n  DUKE. Why then,\n    She\'s fled unto that peasant Valentine;\n    And Eglamour is in her company.\n    \'Tis true; for Friar Lawrence met them both\n    As he in penance wander\'d through the forest;\n    Him he knew well, and guess\'d that it was she,\n    But, being mask\'d, he was not sure of it;\n    Besides, she did intend confession\n    At Patrick\'s cell this even; and there she was not.\n    These likelihoods confirm her flight from hence;\n    Therefore, I pray you, stand not to discourse,\n    But mount you presently, and meet with me\n    Upon the rising of the mountain foot\n    That leads toward Mantua, whither they are fled.\n    Dispatch, sweet gentlemen, and follow me.               Exit\n  THURIO. Why, this it is to be a peevish girl\n    That flies her fortune when it follows her.\n    I\'ll after, more to be reveng\'d on Eglamour  \n    Than for the love of reckless Silvia.                   Exit\n  PROTEUS. And I will follow, more for Silvia\'s love\n    Than hate of Eglamour, that goes with her.              Exit\n  JULIA. And I will follow, more to cross that love\n    Than hate for Silvia, that is gone for love.            Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nThe frontiers of Mantua. The forest\n\nEnter OUTLAWS with SILVA\n\n  FIRST OUTLAW. Come, come.\n    Be patient; we must bring you to our captain.\n  SILVIA. A thousand more mischances than this one\n    Have learn\'d me how to brook this patiently.\n  SECOND OUTLAW. Come, bring her away.\n  FIRST OUTLAW. Where is the gentleman that was with her?\n  SECOND OUTLAW. Being nimble-footed, he hath outrun us,\n    But Moyses and Valerius follow him.\n    Go thou with her to the west end of the wood;\n    There is our captain; we\'ll follow him that\'s fled.\n    The thicket is beset; he cannot \'scape.\n  FIRST OUTLAW. Come, I must bring you to our captain\'s cave;\n    Fear not; he bears an honourable mind,\n    And will not use a woman lawlessly.\n  SILVIA. O Valentine, this I endure for thee!            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nAnother part of the forest\n\nEnter VALENTINE\n\n  VALENTINE. How use doth breed a habit in a man!\n    This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,\n    I better brook than flourishing peopled towns.\n    Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,\n    And to the nightingale\'s complaining notes\n    Tune my distresses and record my woes.\n    O thou that dost inhabit in my breast,\n    Leave not the mansion so long tenantless,\n    Lest, growing ruinous, the building fall\n    And leave no memory of what it was!\n    Repair me with thy presence, Silvia:\n    Thou gentle nymph, cherish thy forlorn swain.\n    What halloing and what stir is this to-day?\n    These are my mates, that make their wills their law,\n    Have some unhappy passenger in chase.\n    They love me well; yet I have much to do\n    To keep them from uncivil outrages.  \n    Withdraw thee, Valentine. Who\'s this comes here?\n                                                   [Steps aside]\n\n          Enter PROTEUS, SILVIA, and JULIA as Sebastian\n\n  PROTEUS. Madam, this service I have done for you,\n    Though you respect not aught your servant doth,\n    To hazard life, and rescue you from him\n    That would have forc\'d your honour and your love.\n    Vouchsafe me, for my meed, but one fair look;\n    A smaller boon than this I cannot beg,\n    And less than this, I am sure, you cannot give.\n  VALENTINE.  [Aside]  How like a dream is this I see and hear!\n    Love, lend me patience to forbear awhile.\n  SILVIA. O miserable, unhappy that I am!\n  PROTEUS. Unhappy were you, madam, ere I came;\n    But by my coming I have made you happy.\n  SILVIA. By thy approach thou mak\'st me most unhappy.\n  JULIA.  [Aside]  And me, when he approacheth to your presence.\n  SILVIA. Had I been seized by a hungry lion,  \n    I would have been a breakfast to the beast\n    Rather than have false Proteus rescue me.\n    O, heaven be judge how I love Valentine,\n    Whose life\'s as tender to me as my soul!\n    And full as much, for more there cannot be,\n    I do detest false, perjur\'d Proteus.\n    Therefore be gone; solicit me no more.\n  PROTEUS. What dangerous action, stood it next to death,\n    Would I not undergo for one calm look?\n    O, \'tis the curse in love, and still approv\'d,\n    When women cannot love where they\'re belov\'d!\n  SILVIA. When Proteus cannot love where he\'s belov\'d!\n    Read over Julia\'s heart, thy first best love,\n    For whose dear sake thou didst then rend thy faith\n    Into a thousand oaths; and all those oaths\n    Descended into perjury, to love me.\n    Thou hast no faith left now, unless thou\'dst two,\n    And that\'s far worse than none; better have none\n    Than plural faith, which is too much by one.\n    Thou counterfeit to thy true friend!  \n  PROTEUS. In love,\n    Who respects friend?\n  SILVIA. All men but Proteus.\n  PROTEUS. Nay, if the gentle spirit of moving words\n    Can no way change you to a milder form,\n    I\'ll woo you like a soldier, at arms\' end,\n    And love you \'gainst the nature of love- force ye.\n  SILVIA. O heaven!\n  PROTEUS. I\'ll force thee yield to my desire.\n  VALENTINE. Ruffian! let go that rude uncivil touch;\n    Thou friend of an ill fashion!\n  PROTEUS. Valentine!\n  VALENTINE. Thou common friend, that\'s without faith or love-\n    For such is a friend now; treacherous man,\n    Thou hast beguil\'d my hopes; nought but mine eye\n    Could have persuaded me. Now I dare not say\n    I have one friend alive: thou wouldst disprove me.\n    Who should be trusted, when one\'s own right hand\n    Is perjured to the bosom? Proteus,\n    I am sorry I must never trust thee more,  \n    But count the world a stranger for thy sake.\n    The private wound is deepest. O time most accurst!\n    \'Mongst all foes that a friend should be the worst!\n  PROTEUS. My shame and guilt confounds me.\n    Forgive me, Valentine; if hearty sorrow\n    Be a sufficient ransom for offence,\n    I tender \'t here; I do as truly suffer\n    As e\'er I did commit.\n  VALENTINE. Then I am paid;\n    And once again I do receive thee honest.\n    Who by repentance is not satisfied\n    Is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleas\'d;\n    By penitence th\' Eternal\'s wrath\'s appeas\'d.\n    And, that my love may appear plain and free,\n    All that was mine in Silvia I give thee.\n  JULIA. O me unhappy!                                  [Swoons]\n  PROTEUS. Look to the boy.\n  VALENTINE. Why, boy! why, wag! how now!\n    What\'s the matter? Look up; speak.\n  JULIA. O good sir, my master charg\'d me to deliver a ring to Madam  \n    Silvia, which, out of my neglect, was never done.\n  PROTEUS. Where is that ring, boy?\n  JULIA. Here \'tis; this is it.\n  PROTEUS. How! let me see. Why, this is the ring I gave to Julia.\n  JULIA. O, cry you mercy, sir, I have mistook;\n    This is the ring you sent to Silvia.\n  PROTEUS. But how cam\'st thou by this ring?\n    At my depart I gave this unto Julia.\n  JULIA. And Julia herself did give it me;\n    And Julia herself have brought it hither.\n  PROTEUS. How! Julia!\n  JULIA. Behold her that gave aim to all thy oaths,\n    And entertain\'d \'em deeply in her heart.\n    How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root!\n    O Proteus, let this habit make thee blush!\n    Be thou asham\'d that I have took upon me\n    Such an immodest raiment- if shame live\n    In a disguise of love.\n    It is the lesser blot, modesty finds,\n    Women to change their shapes than men their minds.  \n  PROTEUS. Than men their minds! \'tis true. O heaven, were man\n    But constant, he were perfect! That one error\n    Fills him with faults; makes him run through all th\' sins:\n    Inconstancy falls off ere it begins.\n    What is in Silvia\'s face but I may spy\n    More fresh in Julia\'s with a constant eye?\n  VALENTINE. Come, come, a hand from either.\n    Let me be blest to make this happy close;\n    \'Twere pity two such friends should be long foes.\n  PROTEUS. Bear witness, heaven, I have my wish for ever.\n  JULIA. And I mine.\n\n                Enter OUTLAWS, with DUKE and THURIO\n\n  OUTLAW. A prize, a prize, a prize!\n  VALENTINE. Forbear, forbear, I say; it is my lord the Duke.\n    Your Grace is welcome to a man disgrac\'d,\n    Banished Valentine.\n  DUKE. Sir Valentine!\n  THURIO. Yonder is Silvia; and Silvia\'s mine.  \n  VALENTINE. Thurio, give back, or else embrace thy death;\n    Come not within the measure of my wrath;\n    Do not name Silvia thine; if once again,\n    Verona shall not hold thee. Here she stands\n    Take but possession of her with a touch-\n    I dare thee but to breathe upon my love.\n  THURIO. Sir Valentine, I care not for her, I;\n    I hold him but a fool that will endanger\n    His body for a girl that loves him not.\n    I claim her not, and therefore she is thine.\n  DUKE. The more degenerate and base art thou\n    To make such means for her as thou hast done\n    And leave her on such slight conditions.\n    Now, by the honour of my ancestry,\n    I do applaud thy spirit, Valentine,\n    And think thee worthy of an empress\' love.\n    Know then, I here forget all former griefs,\n    Cancel all grudge, repeal thee home again,\n    Plead a new state in thy unrivall\'d merit,\n    To which I thus subscribe: Sir Valentine,  \n    Thou art a gentleman, and well deriv\'d;\n    Take thou thy Silvia, for thou hast deserv\'d her.\n  VALENTINE. I thank your Grace; the gift hath made me happy.\n    I now beseech you, for your daughter\'s sake,\n    To grant one boon that I shall ask of you.\n  DUKE. I grant it for thine own, whate\'er it be.\n  VALENTINE. These banish\'d men, that I have kept withal,\n    Are men endu\'d with worthy qualities;\n    Forgive them what they have committed here,\n    And let them be recall\'d from their exile:\n    They are reformed, civil, full of good,\n    And fit for great employment, worthy lord.\n  DUKE. Thou hast prevail\'d; I pardon them, and thee;\n    Dispose of them as thou know\'st their deserts.\n    Come, let us go; we will include all jars\n    With triumphs, mirth, and rare solemnity.\n  VALENTINE. And, as we walk along, I dare be bold\n    With our discourse to make your Grace to smile.\n    What think you of this page, my lord?\n  DUKE. I think the boy hath grace in him; he blushes.  \n  VALENTINE. I warrant you, my lord- more grace than boy.\n  DUKE. What mean you by that saying?\n  VALENTINE. Please you, I\'ll tell you as we pass along,\n    That you will wonder what hath fortuned.\n    Come, Proteus, \'tis your penance but to hear\n    The story of your loves discovered.\n    That done, our day of marriage shall be yours;\n    One feast, one house, one mutual happiness!     Exeunt\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1611\n\nTHE WINTER\'S TALE\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\nDramatis Personae\n\n  LEONTES, King of Sicilia\n  MAMILLIUS, his son, the young Prince of Sicilia\n  CAMILLO,    lord of Sicilia\n  ANTIGONUS,    "   "     "\n  CLEOMENES,    "   "     "\n  DION,         "   "     "\n  POLIXENES, King of Bohemia\n  FLORIZEL, his son, Prince of Bohemia\n  ARCHIDAMUS, a lord of Bohemia\n  OLD SHEPHERD, reputed father of Perdita\n  CLOWN, his son\n  AUTOLYCUS, a rogue\n  A MARINER\n  A GAOLER\n  TIME, as Chorus\n\n  HERMIONE, Queen to Leontes\n  PERDITA, daughter to Leontes and Hermione\n  PAULINA, wife to Antigonus\n  EMILIA, a lady attending on the Queen  \n  MOPSA,   shepherdess\n  DORCAS,        "\n\n  Other Lords, Gentlemen, Ladies, Officers, Servants, Shepherds,\n    Shepherdesses\n\n                              SCENE:\n                       Sicilia and Bohemia\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT I. SCENE I.\nSicilia. The palace of LEONTES\n\nEnter CAMILLO and ARCHIDAMUS\n\n  ARCHIDAMUS. If you shall chance, Camillo, to visit Bohemia, on the\n    like occasion whereon my services are now on foot, you shall see,\n    as I have said, great difference betwixt our Bohemia and your\n    Sicilia.\n  CAMILLO. I think this coming summer the King of Sicilia means to\n    pay Bohemia the visitation which he justly owes him.\n  ARCHIDAMUS. Wherein our entertainment shall shame us we will be\n    justified in our loves; for indeed-\n  CAMILLO. Beseech you-\n  ARCHIDAMUS. Verily, I speak it in the freedom of my knowledge: we\n    cannot with such magnificence, in so rare- I know not what to\n    say. We will give you sleepy drinks, that your senses,\n    unintelligent of our insufficience, may, though they cannot\n    praise us, as little accuse us.\n  CAMILLO. You pay a great deal too dear for what\'s given freely.\n  ARCHIDAMUS. Believe me, I speak as my understanding instructs me\n    and as mine honesty puts it to utterance.  \n  CAMILLO. Sicilia cannot show himself overkind to Bohemia. They were\n    train\'d together in their childhoods; and there rooted betwixt\n    them then such an affection which cannot choose but branch now.\n    Since their more mature dignities and royal necessities made\n    separation of their society, their encounters, though not\n    personal, have been royally attorneyed with interchange of gifts,\n    letters, loving embassies; that they have seem\'d to be together,\n    though absent; shook hands, as over a vast; and embrac\'d as it\n    were from the ends of opposed winds. The heavens continue their\n    loves!\n  ARCHIDAMUS. I think there is not in the world either malice or\n    matter to alter it. You have an unspeakable comfort of your young\n    Prince Mamillius; it is a gentleman of the greatest promise that\n    ever came into my note.\n  CAMILLO. I very well agree with you in the hopes of him. It is a\n    gallant child; one that indeed physics the subject, makes old\n    hearts fresh; they that went on crutches ere he was born desire\n    yet their life to see him a man.\n  ARCHIDAMUS. Would they else be content to die?\n  CAMILLO. Yes; if there were no other excuse why they should desire  \n    to live.\n  ARCHIDAMUS. If the King had no son, they would desire to live on\n    crutches till he had one.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nSicilia. The palace of LEONTES\n\nEnter LEONTES, POLIXENES, HERMIONE, MAMILLIUS, CAMILLO, and ATTENDANTS\n\n  POLIXENES. Nine changes of the wat\'ry star hath been\n    The shepherd\'s note since we have left our throne\n    Without a burden. Time as long again\n    Would be fill\'d up, my brother, with our thanks;\n    And yet we should for perpetuity\n    Go hence in debt. And therefore, like a cipher,\n    Yet standing in rich place, I multiply\n    With one \'We thank you\' many thousands moe\n    That go before it.\n  LEONTES. Stay your thanks a while,\n    And pay them when you part.\n  POLIXENES. Sir, that\'s to-morrow.\n    I am question\'d by my fears of what may chance\n    Or breed upon our absence, that may blow\n    No sneaping winds at home, to make us say\n    \'This is put forth too truly.\' Besides, I have stay\'d  \n    To tire your royalty.\n  LEONTES. We are tougher, brother,\n    Than you can put us to\'t.\n  POLIXENES. No longer stay.\n  LEONTES. One sev\'night longer.\n  POLIXENES. Very sooth, to-morrow.\n  LEONTES. We\'ll part the time between\'s then; and in that\n    I\'ll no gainsaying.\n  POLIXENES. Press me not, beseech you, so.\n    There is no tongue that moves, none, none i\' th\' world,\n    So soon as yours could win me. So it should now,\n    Were there necessity in your request, although\n    \'Twere needful I denied it. My affairs\n    Do even drag me homeward; which to hinder\n    Were in your love a whip to me; my stay\n    To you a charge and trouble. To save both,\n    Farewell, our brother.\n  LEONTES. Tongue-tied, our Queen? Speak you.\n  HERMIONE. I had thought, sir, to have held my peace until\n    You had drawn oaths from him not to stay. You, sir,  \n    Charge him too coldly. Tell him you are sure\n    All in Bohemia\'s well- this satisfaction\n    The by-gone day proclaim\'d. Say this to him,\n    He\'s beat from his best ward.\n  LEONTES. Well said, Hermione.\n  HERMIONE. To tell he longs to see his son were strong;\n    But let him say so then, and let him go;\n    But let him swear so, and he shall not stay;\n    We\'ll thwack him hence with distaffs.\n    [To POLIXENES]  Yet of your royal presence I\'ll\n    adventure the borrow of a week. When at Bohemia\n    You take my lord, I\'ll give him my commission\n    To let him there a month behind the gest\n    Prefix\'d for\'s parting.- Yet, good deed, Leontes,\n    I love thee not a jar o\' th\' clock behind\n    What lady she her lord.- You\'ll stay?\n  POLIXENES. No, madam.\n  HERMIONE. Nay, but you will?\n  POLIXENES. I may not, verily.\n  HERMIONE. Verily!  \n    You put me off with limber vows; but I,\n    Though you would seek t\' unsphere the stars with oaths,\n    Should yet say \'Sir, no going.\' Verily,\n    You shall not go; a lady\'s \'verily\' is\n    As potent as a lord\'s. Will go yet?\n    Force me to keep you as a prisoner,\n    Not like a guest; so you shall pay your fees\n    When you depart, and save your thanks. How say you?\n    My prisoner or my guest? By your dread \'verily,\'\n    One of them you shall be.\n  POLIXENES. Your guest, then, madam:\n    To be your prisoner should import offending;\n    Which is for me less easy to commit\n    Than you to punish.\n  HERMIONE. Not your gaoler then,\n    But your kind. hostess. Come, I\'ll question you\n    Of my lord\'s tricks and yours when you were boys.\n    You were pretty lordings then!\n  POLIXENES. We were, fair Queen,\n    Two lads that thought there was no more behind  \n    But such a day to-morrow as to-day,\n    And to be boy eternal.\n  HERMIONE. Was not my lord\n    The verier wag o\' th\' two?\n  POLIXENES. We were as twinn\'d lambs that did frisk i\' th\' sun\n    And bleat the one at th\' other. What we chang\'d\n    Was innocence for innocence; we knew not\n    The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream\'d\n    That any did. Had we pursu\'d that life,\n    And our weak spirits ne\'er been higher rear\'d\n    With stronger blood, we should have answer\'d heaven\n    Boldly \'Not guilty,\' the imposition clear\'d\n    Hereditary ours.\n  HERMIONE. By this we gather\n    You have tripp\'d since.\n  POLIXENES. O my most sacred lady,\n    Temptations have since then been born to \'s, for\n    In those unfledg\'d days was my wife a girl;\n    Your precious self had then not cross\'d the eyes\n    Of my young playfellow.  \n  HERMIONE. Grace to boot!\n    Of this make no conclusion, lest you say\n    Your queen and I are devils. Yet, go on;\n    Th\' offences we have made you do we\'ll answer,\n    If you first sinn\'d with us, and that with us\n    You did continue fault, and that you slipp\'d not\n    With any but with us.\n  LEONTES. Is he won yet?\n  HERMIONE. He\'ll stay, my lord.\n  LEONTES. At my request he would not.\n    Hermione, my dearest, thou never spok\'st\n    To better purpose.\n  HERMIONE. Never?\n  LEONTES. Never but once.\n  HERMIONE. What! Have I twice said well? When was\'t before?\n    I prithee tell me; cram\'s with praise, and make\'s\n    As fat as tame things. One good deed dying tongueless\n    Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that.\n    Our praises are our wages; you may ride\'s\n    With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere  \n    With spur we heat an acre. But to th\' goal:\n    My last good deed was to entreat his stay;\n    What was my first? It has an elder sister,\n    Or I mistake you. O, would her name were Grace!\n    But once before I spoke to th\' purpose- When?\n    Nay, let me have\'t; I long.\n  LEONTES. Why, that was when\n    Three crabbed months had sour\'d themselves to death,\n    Ere I could make thee open thy white hand\n    And clap thyself my love; then didst thou utter\n    \'I am yours for ever.\'\n  HERMIONE. \'Tis Grace indeed.\n    Why, lo you now, I have spoke to th\' purpose twice:\n    The one for ever earn\'d a royal husband;\n    Th\' other for some while a friend.\n                                  [Giving her hand to POLIXENES]\n  LEONTES.  [Aside]  Too hot, too hot!\n    To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods.\n    I have tremor cordis on me; my heart dances,\n    But not for joy, not joy. This entertainment  \n    May a free face put on; derive a liberty\n    From heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom,\n    And well become the agent. \'T may, I grant;\n    But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers,\n    As now they are, and making practis\'d smiles\n    As in a looking-glass; and then to sigh, as \'twere\n    The mort o\' th\' deer. O, that is entertainment\n    My bosom likes not, nor my brows! Mamillius,\n    Art thou my boy?\n  MAMILLIUS. Ay, my good lord.\n  LEONTES. I\' fecks!\n    Why, that\'s my bawcock. What! hast smutch\'d thy nose?\n    They say it is a copy out of mine. Come, Captain,\n    We must be neat- not neat, but cleanly, Captain.\n    And yet the steer, the heifer, and the calf,\n    Are all call\'d neat.- Still virginalling\n    Upon his palm?- How now, you wanton calf,\n    Art thou my calf?\n  MAMILLIUS. Yes, if you will, my lord.\n  LEONTES. Thou want\'st a rough pash and the shoots that I have,  \n    To be full like me; yet they say we are\n    Almost as like as eggs. Women say so,\n    That will say anything. But were they false\n    As o\'er-dy\'d blacks, as wind, as waters- false\n    As dice are to be wish\'d by one that fixes\n    No bourn \'twixt his and mine; yet were it true\n    To say this boy were like me. Come, sir page,\n    Look on me with your welkin eye. Sweet villain!\n    Most dear\'st! my collop! Can thy dam?- may\'t be?\n    Affection! thy intention stabs the centre.\n    Thou dost make possible things not so held,\n    Communicat\'st with dreams- how can this be?-\n    With what\'s unreal thou coactive art,\n    And fellow\'st nothing. Then \'tis very credent\n    Thou mayst co-join with something; and thou dost-\n    And that beyond commission; and I find it,\n    And that to the infection of my brains\n    And hard\'ning of my brows.\n  POLIXENES. What means Sicilia?\n  HERMIONE. He something seems unsettled.  \n  POLIXENES. How, my lord!\n    What cheer? How is\'t with you, best brother?\n  HERMIONE. You look\n    As if you held a brow of much distraction.\n    Are you mov\'d, my lord?\n  LEONTES. No, in good earnest.\n    How sometimes nature will betray its folly,\n    Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime\n    To harder bosoms! Looking on the lines\n    Of my boy\'s face, methoughts I did recoil\n    Twenty-three years; and saw myself unbreech\'d,\n    In my green velvet coat; my dagger muzzl\'d,\n    Lest it should bite its master and so prove,\n    As ornaments oft do, too dangerous.\n    How like, methought, I then was to this kernel,\n    This squash, this gentleman. Mine honest friend,\n    Will you take eggs for money?\n  MAMILLIUS. No, my lord, I\'ll fight.\n  LEONTES. You will? Why, happy man be\'s dole! My brother,\n    Are you so fond of your young prince as we  \n    Do seem to be of ours?\n  POLIXENES. If at home, sir,\n    He\'s all my exercise, my mirth, my matter;\n    Now my sworn friend, and then mine enemy;\n    My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all.\n    He makes a July\'s day short as December,\n    And with his varying childness cures in me\n    Thoughts that would thick my blood.\n  LEONTES. So stands this squire\n    Offic\'d with me. We two will walk, my lord,\n    And leave you to your graver steps. Hermione,\n    How thou lov\'st us show in our brother\'s welcome;\n    Let what is dear in Sicily be cheap;\n    Next to thyself and my young rover, he\'s\n    Apparent to my heart.\n  HERMIONE. If you would seek us,\n    We are yours i\' th\' garden. Shall\'s attend you there?\n  LEONTES. To your own bents dispose you; you\'ll be found,\n    Be you beneath the sky.  [Aside]  I am angling now,\n    Though you perceive me not how I give line.  \n    Go to, go to!\n    How she holds up the neb, the bill to him!\n    And arms her with the boldness of a wife\n    To her allowing husband!\n\n                      Exeunt POLIXENES, HERMIONE, and ATTENDANTS\n\n    Gone already!\n    Inch-thick, knee-deep, o\'er head and ears a fork\'d one!\n    Go, play, boy, play; thy mother plays, and I\n    Play too; but so disgrac\'d a part, whose issue\n    Will hiss me to my grave. Contempt and clamour\n    Will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play. There have been,\n    Or I am much deceiv\'d, cuckolds ere now;\n    And many a man there is, even at this present,\n    Now while I speak this, holds his wife by th\' arm\n    That little thinks she has been sluic\'d in\'s absence,\n    And his pond fish\'d by his next neighbour, by\n    Sir Smile, his neighbour. Nay, there\'s comfort in\'t,\n    Whiles other men have gates and those gates open\'d,  \n    As mine, against their will. Should all despair\n    That hath revolted wives, the tenth of mankind\n    Would hang themselves. Physic for\'t there\'s none;\n    It is a bawdy planet, that will strike\n    Where \'tis predominant; and \'tis pow\'rfull, think it,\n    From east, west, north, and south. Be it concluded,\n    No barricado for a belly. Know\'t,\n    It will let in and out the enemy\n    With bag and baggage. Many thousand on\'s\n    Have the disease, and feel\'t not. How now, boy!\n  MAMILLIUS. I am like you, they say.\n  LEONTES. Why, that\'s some comfort.\n    What! Camillo there?\n  CAMILLO. Ay, my good lord.\n  LEONTES. Go play, Mamillius; thou\'rt an honest man.\n                                                  Exit MAMILLIUS\n    Camillo, this great sir will yet stay longer.\n  CAMILLO. You had much ado to make his anchor hold;\n    When you cast out, it still came home.\n  LEONTES. Didst note it?  \n  CAMILLO. He would not stay at your petitions; made\n    His business more material.\n  LEONTES. Didst perceive it?\n    [Aside]  They\'re here with me already; whisp\'ring, rounding,\n    \'Sicilia is a so-forth.\' \'Tis far gone\n    When I shall gust it last.- How came\'t, Camillo,\n    That he did stay?\n  CAMILLO. At the good Queen\'s entreaty.\n  LEONTES. \'At the Queen\'s\' be\'t. \'Good\' should be pertinent;\n    But so it is, it is not. Was this taken\n    By any understanding pate but thine?\n    For thy conceit is soaking, will draw in\n    More than the common blocks. Not noted, is\'t,\n    But of the finer natures, by some severals\n    Of head-piece extraordinary? Lower messes\n    Perchance are to this business purblind? Say.\n  CAMILLO. Business, my lord? I think most understand\n    Bohemia stays here longer.\n  LEONTES. Ha?\n  CAMILLO. Stays here longer.  \n  LEONTES. Ay, but why?\n  CAMILLO. To satisfy your Highness, and the entreaties\n    Of our most gracious mistress.\n  LEONTES. Satisfy\n    Th\' entreaties of your mistress! Satisfy!\n    Let that suffice. I have trusted thee, Camillo,\n    With all the nearest things to my heart, as well\n    My chamber-councils, wherein, priest-like, thou\n    Hast cleans\'d my bosom- I from thee departed\n    Thy penitent reform\'d; but we have been\n    Deceiv\'d in thy integrity, deceiv\'d\n    In that which seems so.\n  CAMILLO. Be it forbid, my lord!\n  LEONTES. To bide upon\'t: thou art not honest; or,\n    If thou inclin\'st that way, thou art a coward,\n    Which hoxes honesty behind, restraining\n    From course requir\'d; or else thou must be counted\n    A servant grafted in my serious trust,\n    And therein negligent; or else a fool\n    That seest a game play\'d home, the rich stake drawn,  \n    And tak\'st it all for jest.\n  CAMILLO. My gracious lord,\n    I may be negligent, foolish, and fearful:\n    In every one of these no man is free\n    But that his negligence, his folly, fear,\n    Among the infinite doings of the world,\n    Sometime puts forth. In your affairs, my lord,\n    If ever I were wilfull-negligent,\n    It was my folly; if industriously\n    I play\'d the fool, it was my negligence,\n    Not weighing well the end; if ever fearful\n    To do a thing where I the issue doubted,\n    Whereof the execution did cry out\n    Against the non-performance, \'twas a fear\n    Which oft infects the wisest. These, my lord,\n    Are such allow\'d infirmities that honesty\n    Is never free of. But, beseech your Grace,\n    Be plainer with me; let me know my trespass\n    By its own visage; if I then deny it,\n    \'Tis none of mine.  \n  LEONTES. Ha\' not you seen, Camillo-\n    But that\'s past doubt; you have, or your eye-glass\n    Is thicker than a cuckold\'s horn- or heard-\n    For to a vision so apparent rumour\n    Cannot be mute- or thought- for cogitation\n    Resides not in that man that does not think-\n    My wife is slippery? If thou wilt confess-\n    Or else be impudently negative,\n    To have nor eyes nor ears nor thought- then say\n    My wife\'s a hobby-horse, deserves a name\n    As rank as any flax-wench that puts to\n    Before her troth-plight. Say\'t and justify\'t.\n  CAMILLO. I would not be a stander-by to hear\n    My sovereign mistress clouded so, without\n    My present vengeance taken. Shrew my heart!\n    You never spoke what did become you less\n    Than this; which to reiterate were sin\n    As deep as that, though true.\n  LEONTES. Is whispering nothing?\n    Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses?  \n    Kissing with inside lip? Stopping the career\n    Of laughter with a sigh?- a note infallible\n    Of breaking honesty. Horsing foot on foot?\n    Skulking in corners? Wishing clocks more swift;\n    Hours, minutes; noon, midnight? And all eyes\n    Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,\n    That would unseen be wicked- is this nothing?\n    Why, then the world and all that\'s in\'t is nothing;\n    The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing;\n    My is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings,\n    If this be nothing.\n  CAMILLO. Good my lord, be cur\'d\n    Of this diseas\'d opinion, and betimes;\n    For \'tis most dangerous.\n  LEONTES. Say it be, \'tis true.\n  CAMILLO. No, no, my lord.\n  LEONTES. It is; you lie, you lie.\n    I say thou liest, Camillo, and I hate thee;\n    Pronounce thee a gross lout, a mindless slave,\n    Or else a hovering temporizer that  \n    Canst with thine eyes at once see good and evil,\n    Inclining to them both. Were my wife\'s liver\n    Infected as her life, she would not live\n    The running of one glass.\n  CAMILLO. Who does her?\n  LEONTES. Why, he that wears her like her medal, hanging\n    About his neck, Bohemia; who- if I\n    Had servants true about me that bare eyes\n    To see alike mine honour as their profits,\n    Their own particular thrifts, they would do that\n    Which should undo more doing. Ay, and thou,\n    His cupbearer- whom I from meaner form\n    Have bench\'d and rear\'d to worship; who mayst see,\n    Plainly as heaven sees earth and earth sees heaven,\n    How I am gall\'d- mightst bespice a cup\n    To give mine enemy a lasting wink;\n    Which draught to me were cordial.\n  CAMILLO. Sir, my lord,\n    I could do this; and that with no rash potion,\n    But with a ling\'ring dram that should not work  \n    Maliciously like poison. But I cannot\n    Believe this crack to be in my dread mistress,\n    So sovereignly being honourable.\n    I have lov\'d thee-\n  LEONTES. Make that thy question, and go rot!\n    Dost think I am so muddy, so unsettled,\n    To appoint myself in this vexation; sully\n    The purity and whiteness of my sheets-\n    Which to preserve is sleep, which being spotted\n    Is goads, thorns, nettles, tails of wasps;\n    Give scandal to the blood o\' th\' Prince, my son-\n    Who I do think is mine, and love as mine-\n    Without ripe moving to \'t? Would I do this?\n    Could man so blench?\n  CAMILLO. I must believe you, sir.\n    I do; and will fetch off Bohemia for\'t;\n    Provided that, when he\'s remov\'d, your Highness\n    Will take again your queen as yours at first,\n    Even for your son\'s sake; and thereby for sealing\n    The injury of tongues in courts and kingdoms  \n    Known and allied to yours.\n  LEONTES. Thou dost advise me\n    Even so as I mine own course have set down.\n    I\'ll give no blemish to her honour, none.\n  CAMILLO. My lord,\n    Go then; and with a countenance as clear\n    As friendship wears at feasts, keep with Bohemia\n    And with your queen. I am his cupbearer;\n    If from me he have wholesome beverage,\n    Account me not your servant.\n  LEONTES. This is all:\n    Do\'t, and thou hast the one half of my heart;\n    Do\'t not, thou split\'st thine own.\n  CAMILLO. I\'ll do\'t, my lord.\n  LEONTES. I will seem friendly, as thou hast advis\'d me.   Exit\n  CAMILLO. O miserable lady! But, for me,\n    What case stand I in? I must be the poisoner\n    Of good Polixenes; and my ground to do\'t\n    Is the obedience to a master; one\n    Who, in rebellion with himself, will have  \n    All that are his so too. To do this deed,\n    Promotion follows. If I could find example\n    Of thousands that had struck anointed kings\n    And flourish\'d after, I\'d not do\'t; but since\n    Nor brass, nor stone, nor parchment, bears not one,\n    Let villainy itself forswear\'t. I must\n    Forsake the court. To do\'t, or no, is certain\n    To me a break-neck. Happy star reign now!\n    Here comes Bohemia.\n\n                     Enter POLIXENES\n\n  POLIXENES. This is strange. Methinks\n    My favour here begins to warp. Not speak?\n    Good day, Camillo.\n  CAMILLO. Hail, most royal sir!\n  POLIXENES. What is the news i\' th\' court?\n  CAMILLO. None rare, my lord.\n  POLIXENES. The King hath on him such a countenance\n    As he had lost some province, and a region  \n    Lov\'d as he loves himself; even now I met him\n    With customary compliment, when he,\n    Wafting his eyes to th\' contrary and falling\n    A lip of much contempt, speeds from me;\n    So leaves me to consider what is breeding\n    That changes thus his manners.\n  CAMILLO. I dare not know, my lord.\n  POLIXENES. How, dare not! Do not. Do you know, and dare not\n    Be intelligent to me? \'Tis thereabouts;\n    For, to yourself, what you do know, you must,\n    And cannot say you dare not. Good Camillo,\n    Your chang\'d complexions are to me a mirror\n    Which shows me mine chang\'d too; for I must be\n    A party in this alteration, finding\n    Myself thus alter\'d with\'t.\n  CAMILLO. There is a sickness\n    Which puts some of us in distemper; but\n    I cannot name the disease; and it is caught\n    Of you that yet are well.\n  POLIXENES. How! caught of me?  \n    Make me not sighted like the basilisk;\n    I have look\'d on thousands who have sped the better\n    By my regard, but kill\'d none so. Camillo-\n    As you are certainly a gentleman; thereto\n    Clerk-like experienc\'d, which no less adorns\n    Our gentry than our parents\' noble names,\n    In whose success we are gentle- I beseech you,\n    If you know aught which does behove my knowledge\n    Thereof to be inform\'d, imprison\'t not\n    In ignorant concealment.\n  CAMILLO. I may not answer.\n  POLIXENES. A sickness caught of me, and yet I well?\n    I must be answer\'d. Dost thou hear, Camillo?\n    I conjure thee, by all the parts of man\n    Which honour does acknowledge, whereof the least\n    Is not this suit of mine, that thou declare\n    What incidency thou dost guess of harm\n    Is creeping toward me; how far off, how near;\n    Which way to be prevented, if to be;\n    If not, how best to bear it.  \n  CAMILLO. Sir, I will tell you;\n    Since I am charg\'d in honour, and by him\n    That I think honourable. Therefore mark my counsel,\n    Which must be ev\'n as swiftly followed as\n    I mean to utter it, or both yourself and me\n    Cry lost, and so goodnight.\n  POLIXENES. On, good Camillo.\n  CAMILLO. I am appointed him to murder you.\n  POLIXENES. By whom, Camillo?\n  CAMILLO. By the King.\n  POLIXENES. For what?\n  CAMILLO. He thinks, nay, with all confidence he swears,\n    As he had seen \'t or been an instrument\n    To vice you to\'t, that you have touch\'d his queen\n    Forbiddenly.\n  POLIXENES. O, then my best blood turn\n    To an infected jelly, and my name\n    Be yok\'d with his that did betray the Best!\n    Turn then my freshest reputation to\n    A savour that may strike the dullest nostril  \n    Where I arrive, and my approach be shunn\'d,\n    Nay, hated too, worse than the great\'st infection\n    That e\'er was heard or read!\n  CAMILLO. Swear his thought over\n    By each particular star in heaven and\n    By all their influences, you may as well\n    Forbid the sea for to obey the moon\n    As or by oath remove or counsel shake\n    The fabric of his folly, whose foundation\n    Is pil\'d upon his faith and will continue\n    The standing of his body.\n  POLIXENES. How should this grow?\n  CAMILLO. I know not; but I am sure \'tis safer to\n    Avoid what\'s grown than question how \'tis born.\n    If therefore you dare trust my honesty,\n    That lies enclosed in this trunk which you\n    Shall bear along impawn\'d, away to-night.\n    Your followers I will whisper to the business;\n    And will, by twos and threes, at several posterns,\n    Clear them o\' th\' city. For myself, I\'ll put  \n    My fortunes to your service, which are here\n    By this discovery lost. Be not uncertain,\n    For, by the honour of my parents, I\n    Have utt\'red truth; which if you seek to prove,\n    I dare not stand by; nor shall you be safer\n    Than one condemn\'d by the King\'s own mouth, thereon\n    His execution sworn.\n  POLIXENES. I do believe thee:\n    I saw his heart in\'s face. Give me thy hand;\n    Be pilot to me, and thy places shall\n    Still neighbour mine. My ships are ready, and\n    My people did expect my hence departure\n    Two days ago. This jealousy\n    Is for a precious creature; as she\'s rare,\n    Must it be great; and, as his person\'s mighty,\n    Must it be violent; and as he does conceive\n    He is dishonour\'d by a man which ever\n    Profess\'d to him, why, his revenges must\n    In that be made more bitter. Fear o\'ershades me.\n    Good expedition be my friend, and comfort  \n    The gracious Queen, part of this theme, but nothing\n    Of his ill-ta\'en suspicion! Come, Camillo;\n    I will respect thee as a father, if\n    Thou bear\'st my life off hence. Let us avoid.\n  CAMILLO. It is in mine authority to command\n    The keys of all the posterns. Please your Highness\n    To take the urgent hour. Come, sir, away.             Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT II. SCENE I.\nSicilia. The palace of LEONTES\n\nEnter HERMIONE, MAMILLIUS, and LADIES\n\n  HERMIONE. Take the boy to you; he so troubles me,\n    \'Tis past enduring.\n  FIRST LADY. Come, my gracious lord,\n    Shall I be your playfellow?\n  MAMILLIUS. No, I\'ll none of you.\n  FIRST LADY. Why, my sweet lord?\n  MAMILLIUS. You\'ll kiss me hard, and speak to me as if\n    I were a baby still. I love you better.\n  SECOND LADY. And why so, my lord?\n  MAMILLIUS. Not for because\n    Your brows are blacker; yet black brows, they say,\n    Become some women best; so that there be not\n    Too much hair there, but in a semicircle\n    Or a half-moon made with a pen.\n  SECOND LADY. Who taught\'t this?\n  MAMILLIUS. I learn\'d it out of women\'s faces. Pray now,\n    What colour are your eyebrows?  \n  FIRST LADY. Blue, my lord.\n  MAMILLIUS. Nay, that\'s a mock. I have seen a lady\'s nose\n    That has been blue, but not her eyebrows.\n  FIRST LADY. Hark ye:\n    The Queen your mother rounds apace. We shall\n    Present our services to a fine new prince\n    One of these days; and then you\'d wanton with us,\n    If we would have you.\n  SECOND LADY. She is spread of late\n    Into a goodly bulk. Good time encounter her!\n  HERMIONE. What wisdom stirs amongst you? Come, sir, now\n    I am for you again. Pray you sit by us,\n    And tell\'s a tale.\n  MAMILLIUS. Merry or sad shall\'t be?\n  HERMIONE. As merry as you will.\n  MAMILLIUS. A sad tale\'s best for winter. I have one\n    Of sprites and goblins.\n  HERMIONE. Let\'s have that, good sir.\n    Come on, sit down; come on, and do your best\n    To fright me with your sprites; you\'re pow\'rfull at it.  \n  MAMILLIUS. There was a man-\n  HERMIONE. Nay, come, sit down; then on.\n  MAMILLIUS. Dwelt by a churchyard- I will tell it softly;\n    Yond crickets shall not hear it.\n  HERMIONE. Come on then,\n    And give\'t me in mine ear.\n\n             Enter LEONTES, ANTIGONUS, LORDS, and OTHERS\n\n  LEONTES. he met there? his train? Camillo with him?\n  FIRST LORD. Behind the tuft of pines I met them; never\n    Saw I men scour so on their way. I ey\'d them\n    Even to their ships.\n  LEONTES. How blest am I\n    In my just censure, in my true opinion!\n    Alack, for lesser knowledge! How accurs\'d\n    In being so blest! There may be in the cup\n    A spider steep\'d, and one may drink, depart,\n    And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge\n    Is not infected; but if one present  \n    Th\' abhorr\'d ingredient to his eye, make known\n    How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,\n    With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider.\n    Camillo was his help in this, his pander.\n    There is a plot against my life, my crown;\n    All\'s true that is mistrusted. That false villain\n    Whom I employ\'d was pre-employ\'d by him;\n    He has discover\'d my design, and I\n    Remain a pinch\'d thing; yea, a very trick\n    For them to play at will. How came the posterns\n    So easily open?\n  FIRST LORD. By his great authority;\n    Which often hath no less prevail\'d than so\n    On your command.\n  LEONTES. I know\'t too well.\n    Give me the boy. I am glad you did not nurse him;\n    Though he does bear some signs of me, yet you\n    Have too much blood in him.\n  HERMIONE. What is this? Sport?\n  LEONTES. Bear the boy hence; he shall not come about her;  \n    Away with him; and let her sport herself\n                                          [MAMILLIUS is led out]\n    With that she\'s big with- for \'tis Polixenes\n    Has made thee swell thus.\n  HERMIONE. But I\'d say he had not,\n    And I\'ll be sworn you would believe my saying,\n    Howe\'er you lean to th\' nayward.\n  LEONTES. You, my lords,\n    Look on her, mark her well; be but about\n    To say \'She is a goodly lady\' and\n    The justice of your hearts will thereto ad\n    \'Tis pity she\'s not honest- honourable.\'\n    Praise her but for this her without-door form,\n    Which on my faith deserves high speech, and straight\n    The shrug, the hum or ha, these petty brands\n    That calumny doth use- O, I am out!-\n    That mercy does, for calumny will sear\n    Virtue itself- these shrugs, these hum\'s and ha\'s,\n    When you have said she\'s goodly, come between,\n    Ere you can say she\'s honest. But be\'t known,  \n    From him that has most cause to grieve it should be,\n    She\'s an adultress.\n  HERMIONE. Should a villain say so,\n    The most replenish\'d villain in the world,\n    He were as much more villain: you, my lord,\n    Do but mistake.\n  LEONTES. You have mistook, my lady,\n    Polixenes for Leontes. O thou thing!\n    Which I\'ll not call a creature of thy place,\n    Lest barbarism, making me the precedent,\n    Should a like language use to all degrees\n    And mannerly distinguishment leave out\n    Betwixt the prince and beggar. I have said\n    She\'s an adultress; I have said with whom.\n    More, she\'s a traitor; and Camillo is\n    A federary with her, and one that knows\n    What she should shame to know herself\n    But with her most vile principal- that she\'s\n    A bed-swerver, even as bad as those\n    That vulgars give bold\'st titles; ay, and privy  \n    To this their late escape.\n  HERMIONE. No, by my life,\n    Privy to none of this. How will this grieve you,\n    When you shall come to clearer knowledge, that\n    You thus have publish\'d me! Gentle my lord,\n    You scarce can right me throughly then to say\n    You did mistake.\n  LEONTES. No; if I mistake\n    In those foundations which I build upon,\n    The centre is not big enough to bear\n    A school-boy\'s top. Away with her to prison.\n    He who shall speak for her is afar off guilty\n    But that he speaks.\n  HERMIONE. There\'s some ill planet reigns.\n    I must be patient till the heavens look\n    With an aspect more favourable. Good my lords,\n    I am not prone to weeping, as our sex\n    Commonly are- the want of which vain dew\n    Perchance shall dry your pities- but I have\n    That honourable grief lodg\'d here which burns  \n    Worse than tears drown. Beseech you all, my lords,\n    With thoughts so qualified as your charities\n    Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so\n    The King\'s will be perform\'d!\n  LEONTES.  [To the GUARD]  Shall I be heard?\n  HERMIONE. Who is\'t that goes with me? Beseech your highness\n    My women may be with me, for you see\n    My plight requires it. Do not weep, good fools;\n    There is no cause; when you shall know your mistress\n    Has deserv\'d prison, then abound in tears\n    As I come out: this action I now go on\n    Is for my better grace. Adieu, my lord.\n    I never wish\'d to see you sorry; now\n    I trust I shall. My women, come; you have leave.\n  LEONTES. Go, do our bidding; hence!\n                            Exeunt HERMIONE, guarded, and LADIES\n  FIRST LORD. Beseech your Highness, call the Queen again.\n  ANTIGONUS. Be certain what you do, sir, lest your justice\n    Prove violence, in the which three great ones suffer,\n    Yourself, your queen, your son.  \n  FIRST LORD. For her, my lord,\n    I dare my life lay down- and will do\'t, sir,\n    Please you t\' accept it- that the Queen is spotless\n    I\' th\' eyes of heaven and to you- I mean\n    In this which you accuse her.\n  ANTIGONUS. If it prove\n    She\'s otherwise, I\'ll keep my stables where\n    I lodge my wife; I\'ll go in couples with her;\n    Than when I feel and see her no farther trust her;\n    For every inch of woman in the world,\n    Ay, every dram of woman\'s flesh is false,\n    If she be.\n  LEONTES. Hold your peaces.\n  FIRST LORD. Good my lord-\n  ANTIGONUS. It is for you we speak, not for ourselves.\n    You are abus\'d, and by some putter-on\n    That will be damn\'d for\'t. Would I knew the villain!\n    I would land-damn him. Be she honour-flaw\'d-\n    I have three daughters: the eldest is eleven;\n    The second and the third, nine and some five;  \n    If this prove true, they\'ll pay for \'t. By mine honour,\n    I\'ll geld \'em all; fourteen they shall not see\n    To bring false generations. They are co-heirs;\n    And I had rather glib myself than they\n    Should not produce fair issue.\n  LEONTES. Cease; no more.\n    You smell this business with a sense as cold\n    As is a dead man\'s nose; but I do see\'t and feel\'t\n    As you feel doing thus; and see withal\n    The instruments that feel.\n  ANTIGONUS. If it be so,\n    We need no grave to bury honesty;\n    There\'s not a grain of it the face to sweeten\n    Of the whole dungy earth.\n  LEONTES. What! Lack I credit?\n  FIRST LORD. I had rather you did lack than I, my lord,\n    Upon this ground; and more it would content me\n    To have her honour true than your suspicion,\n    Be blam\'d for\'t how you might.\n  LEONTES. Why, what need we  \n    Commune with you of this, but rather follow\n    Our forceful instigation? Our prerogative\n    Calls not your counsels; but our natural goodness\n    Imparts this; which, if you- or stupified\n    Or seeming so in skill- cannot or will not\n    Relish a truth like us, inform yourselves\n    We need no more of your advice. The matter,\n    The loss, the gain, the ord\'ring on\'t, is all\n    Properly ours.\n  ANTIGONUS. And I wish, my liege,\n    You had only in your silent judgment tried it,\n    Without more overture.\n  LEONTES. How could that be?\n    Either thou art most ignorant by age,\n    Or thou wert born a fool. Camillo\'s flight,\n    Added to their familiarity-\n    Which was as gross as ever touch\'d conjecture,\n    That lack\'d sight only, nought for approbation\n    But only seeing, all other circumstances\n    Made up to th\' deed- doth push on this proceeding.  \n    Yet, for a greater confirmation-\n    For, in an act of this importance, \'twere\n    Most piteous to be wild- I have dispatch\'d in post\n    To sacred Delphos, to Apollo\'s temple,\n    Cleomenes and Dion, whom you know\n    Of stuff\'d sufficiency. Now, from the oracle\n    They will bring all, whose spiritual counsel had,\n    Shall stop or spur me. Have I done well?\n  FIRST LORD. Well done, my lord.\n  LEONTES. Though I am satisfied, and need no more\n    Than what I know, yet shall the oracle\n    Give rest to th\' minds of others such as he\n    Whose ignorant credulity will not\n    Come up to th\' truth. So have we thought it good\n    From our free person she should be confin\'d,\n    Lest that the treachery of the two fled hence\n    Be left her to perform. Come, follow us;\n    We are to speak in public; for this business\n    Will raise us all.\n  ANTIGONUS.  [Aside]  To laughter, as I take it,  \n    If the good truth were known.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nSicilia. A prison\n\nEnter PAULINA, a GENTLEMAN, and ATTENDANTS\n\n  PAULINA. The keeper of the prison- call to him;\n    Let him have knowledge who I am.              Exit GENTLEMAN\n    Good lady!\n    No court in Europe is too good for thee;\n    What dost thou then in prison?\n\n                 Re-enter GENTLEMAN with the GAOLER\n\n    Now, good sir,\n    You know me, do you not?\n  GAOLER. For a worthy lady,\n    And one who much I honour.\n  PAULINA. Pray you, then,\n    Conduct me to the Queen.\n  GAOLER. I may not, madam;\n    To the contrary I have express commandment.\n  PAULINA. Here\'s ado, to lock up honesty and honour from  \n    Th\' access of gentle visitors! Is\'t lawful, pray you,\n    To see her women- any of them? Emilia?\n  GAOLER. So please you, madam,\n    To put apart these your attendants,\n    Shall bring Emilia forth.\n  PAULINA. I pray now, call her.\n    Withdraw yourselves.                       Exeunt ATTENDANTS\n  GAOLER. And, madam,\n    I must be present at your conference.\n  PAULINA. Well, be\'t so, prithee.                   Exit GAOLER\n    Here\'s such ado to make no stain a stain\n    As passes colouring.\n\n                 Re-enter GAOLER, with EMILIA\n\n    Dear gentlewoman,\n    How fares our gracious lady?\n  EMILIA. As well as one so great and so forlorn\n    May hold together. On her frights and griefs,\n    Which never tender lady hath borne greater,  \n    She is, something before her time, deliver\'d.\n  PAULINA. A boy?\n  EMILIA. A daughter, and a goodly babe,\n    Lusty, and like to live. The Queen receives\n    Much comfort in\'t; says \'My poor prisoner,\n    I am as innocent as you.\'\n  PAULINA. I dare be sworn.\n    These dangerous unsafe lunes i\' th\' King, beshrew them!\n    He must be told on\'t, and he shall. The office\n    Becomes a woman best; I\'ll take\'t upon me;\n    If I prove honey-mouth\'d, let my tongue blister,\n    And never to my red-look\'d anger be\n    The trumpet any more. Pray you, Emilia,\n    Commend my best obedience to the Queen;\n    If she dares trust me with her little babe,\n    I\'ll show\'t the King, and undertake to be\n    Her advocate to th\' loud\'st. We do not know\n    How he may soften at the sight o\' th\' child:\n    The silence often of pure innocence\n    Persuades when speaking fails.  \n  EMILIA. Most worthy madam,\n    Your honour and your goodness is so evident\n    That your free undertaking cannot miss\n    A thriving issue; there is no lady living\n    So meet for this great errand. Please your ladyship\n    To visit the next room, I\'ll presently\n    Acquaint the Queen of your most noble offer\n    Who but to-day hammer\'d of this design,\n    But durst not tempt a minister of honour,\n    Lest she should be denied.\n  PAULINA. Tell her, Emilia,\n    I\'ll use that tongue I have; if wit flow from\'t\n    As boldness from my bosom, let\'t not be doubted\n    I shall do good.\n  EMILIA. Now be you blest for it!\n    I\'ll to the Queen. Please you come something nearer.\n  GAOLER. Madam, if\'t please the Queen to send the babe,\n    I know not what I shall incur to pass it,\n    Having no warrant.\n  PAULINA. You need not fear it, sir.  \n    This child was prisoner to the womb, and is\n    By law and process of great Nature thence\n    Freed and enfranchis\'d- not a party to\n    The anger of the King, nor guilty of,\n    If any be, the trespass of the Queen.\n  GAOLER. I do believe it.\n  PAULINA. Do not you fear. Upon mine honour, I\n    Will stand betwixt you and danger.                    Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nSicilia. The palace of LEONTES\n\nEnter LEONTES, ANTIGONUS, LORDS, and SERVANTS\n\n  LEONTES. Nor night nor day no rest! It is but weakness\n    To bear the matter thus- mere weakness. If\n    The cause were not in being- part o\' th\' cause,\n    She, th\' adultress; for the harlot king\n    Is quite beyond mine arm, out of the blank\n    And level of my brain, plot-proof; but she\n    I can hook to me- say that she were gone,\n    Given to the fire, a moiety of my rest\n    Might come to me again. Who\'s there?\n  FIRST SERVANT. My lord?\n  LEONTES. How does the boy?\n  FIRST SERVANT. He took good rest to-night;\n    \'Tis hop\'d his sickness is discharg\'d.\n  LEONTES. To see his nobleness!\n    Conceiving the dishonour of his mother,\n    He straight declin\'d, droop\'d, took it deeply,\n    Fasten\'d and fix\'d the shame on\'t in himself,  \n    Threw off his spirit, his appetite, his sleep,\n    And downright languish\'d. Leave me solely. Go,\n    See how he fares.  [Exit SERVANT]  Fie, fie! no thought of him!\n    The very thought of my revenges that way\n    Recoil upon me- in himself too mighty,\n    And in his parties, his alliance. Let him be,\n    Until a time may serve; for present vengeance,\n    Take it on her. Camillo and Polixenes\n    Laugh at me, make their pastime at my sorrow.\n    They should not laugh if I could reach them; nor\n    Shall she, within my pow\'r.\n\n                 Enter PAULINA, with a CHILD\n\n  FIRST LORD. You must not enter.\n  PAULINA. Nay, rather, good my lords, be second to me.\n    Fear you his tyrannous passion more, alas,\n    Than the Queen\'s life? A gracious innocent soul,\n    More free than he is jealous.\n  ANTIGONUS. That\'s enough.  \n  SECOND SERVANT. Madam, he hath not slept to-night; commanded\n    None should come at him.\n  PAULINA. Not so hot, good sir;\n    I come to bring him sleep. \'Tis such as you,\n    That creep like shadows by him, and do sigh\n    At each his needless heavings- such as you\n    Nourish the cause of his awaking: I\n    Do come with words as medicinal as true,\n    Honest as either, to purge him of that humour\n    That presses him from sleep.\n  LEONTES. What noise there, ho?\n  PAULINA. No noise, my lord; but needful conference\n    About some gossips for your Highness.\n  LEONTES. How!\n    Away with that audacious lady! Antigonus,\n    I charg\'d thee that she should not come about me;\n    I knew she would.\n  ANTIGONUS. I told her so, my lord,\n    On your displeasure\'s peril, and on mine,\n    She should not visit you.  \n  LEONTES. What, canst not rule her?\n  PAULINA. From all dishonesty he can: in this,\n    Unless he take the course that you have done-\n    Commit me for committing honour- trust it,\n    He shall not rule me.\n  ANTIGONUS. La you now, you hear!\n    When she will take the rein, I let her run;\n    But she\'ll not stumble.\n  PAULINA. Good my liege, I come-\n    And I beseech you hear me, who professes\n    Myself your loyal servant, your physician,\n    Your most obedient counsellor; yet that dares\n    Less appear so, in comforting your evils,\n    Than such as most seem yours- I say I come\n    From your good Queen.\n  LEONTES. Good Queen!\n  PAULINA. Good Queen, my lord, good Queen- I say good Queen;\n    And would by combat make her good, so were I\n    A man, the worst about you.\n  LEONTES. Force her hence.  \n  PAULINA. Let him that makes but trifles of his eyes\n    First hand me. On mine own accord I\'ll off;\n    But first I\'ll do my errand. The good Queen,\n    For she is good, hath brought you forth a daughter;\n    Here \'tis; commends it to your blessing.\n                                         [Laying down the child]\n  LEONTES. Out!\n    A mankind witch! Hence with her, out o\' door!\n    A most intelligencing bawd!\n  PAULINA. Not so.\n    I am as ignorant in that as you\n    In so entitling me; and no less honest\n    Than you are mad; which is enough, I\'ll warrant,\n    As this world goes, to pass for honest.\n  LEONTES. Traitors!\n    Will you not push her out? Give her the bastard.\n    [To ANTIGONUS]  Thou dotard, thou art woman-tir\'d, unroosted\n    By thy Dame Partlet here. Take up the bastard;\n    Take\'t up, I say; give\'t to thy crone.\n  PAULINA. For ever  \n    Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou\n    Tak\'st up the Princess by that forced baseness\n    Which he has put upon\'t!\n  LEONTES. He dreads his wife.\n  PAULINA. So I would you did; then \'twere past all doubt\n    You\'d call your children yours.\n  LEONTES. A nest of traitors!\n  ANTIGONUS. I am none, by this good light.\n  PAULINA. Nor I; nor any\n    But one that\'s here; and that\'s himself; for he\n    The sacred honour of himself, his Queen\'s,\n    His hopeful son\'s, his babe\'s, betrays to slander,\n    Whose sting is sharper than the sword\'s; and will not-\n    For, as the case now stands, it is a curse\n    He cannot be compell\'d to \'t- once remove\n    The root of his opinion, which is rotten\n    As ever oak or stone was sound.\n  LEONTES. A callat\n    Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband,\n    And now baits me! This brat is none of mine;  \n    It is the issue of Polixenes.\n    Hence with it, and together with the dam\n    Commit them to the fire.\n  PAULINA. It is yours.\n    And, might we lay th\' old proverb to your charge,\n    So like you \'tis the worse. Behold, my lords,\n    Although the print be little, the whole matter\n    And copy of the father- eye, nose, lip,\n    The trick of\'s frown, his forehead; nay, the valley,\n    The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek; his smiles;\n    The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger.\n    And thou, good goddess Nature, which hast made it\n    So like to him that got it, if thou hast\n    The ordering of the mind too, \'mongst all colours\n    No yellow in\'t, lest she suspect, as he does,\n    Her children not her husband\'s!\n  LEONTES. A gross hag!\n    And, lozel, thou art worthy to be hang\'d\n    That wilt not stay her tongue.\n  ANTIGONUS. Hang all the husbands  \n    That cannot do that feat, you\'ll leave yourself\n    Hardly one subject.\n  LEONTES. Once more, take her hence.\n  PAULINA. A most unworthy and unnatural lord\n    Can do no more.\n  LEONTES. I\'ll ha\' thee burnt.\n  PAULINA. I care not.\n    It is an heretic that makes the fire,\n    Not she which burns in\'t. I\'ll not call you tyrant\n    But this most cruel usage of your Queen-\n    Not able to produce more accusation\n    Than your own weak-hing\'d fancy- something savours\n    Of tyranny, and will ignoble make you,\n    Yea, scandalous to the world.\n  LEONTES. On your allegiance,\n    Out of the chamber with her! Were I a tyrant,\n    Where were her life? She durst not call me so,\n    If she did know me one. Away with her!\n  PAULINA. I pray you, do not push me; I\'ll be gone.\n    Look to your babe, my lord; \'tis yours. Jove send her  \n    A better guiding spirit! What needs these hands?\n    You that are thus so tender o\'er his follies\n    Will never do him good, not one of you.\n    So, so. Farewell; we are gone.                          Exit\n  LEONTES. Thou, traitor, hast set on thy wife to this.\n    My child! Away with\'t. Even thou, that hast\n    A heart so tender o\'er it, take it hence,\n    And see it instantly consum\'d with fire;\n    Even thou, and none but thou. Take it up straight.\n    Within this hour bring me word \'tis done,\n    And by good testimony, or I\'ll seize thy life,\n    With that thou else call\'st thine. If thou refuse,\n    And wilt encounter with my wrath, say so;\n    The bastard brains with these my proper hands\n    Shall I dash out. Go, take it to the fire;\n    For thou set\'st on thy wife.\n  ANTIGONUS. I did not, sir.\n    These lords, my noble fellows, if they please,\n    Can clear me in\'t.\n  LORDS. We can. My royal liege,  \n    He is not guilty of her coming hither.\n  LEONTES. You\'re liars all.\n  FIRST LORD. Beseech your Highness, give us better credit.\n    We have always truly serv\'d you; and beseech\n    So to esteem of us; and on our knees we beg,\n    As recompense of our dear services\n    Past and to come, that you do change this purpose,\n    Which being so horrible, so bloody, must\n    Lead on to some foul issue. We all kneel.\n  LEONTES. I am a feather for each wind that blows.\n    Shall I live on to see this bastard kneel\n    And call me father? Better burn it now\n    Than curse it then. But be it; let it live.\n    It shall not neither.  [To ANTIGONUS]  You, Sir, come you hither.\n    You that have been so tenderly officious\n    With Lady Margery, your midwife there,\n    To save this bastard\'s life- for \'tis a bastard,\n    So sure as this beard\'s grey- what will you adventure\n    To save this brat\'s life?\n  ANTIGONUS. Anything, my lord,  \n    That my ability may undergo,\n    And nobleness impose. At least, thus much:\n    I\'ll pawn the little blood which I have left\n    To save the innocent- anything possible.\n  LEONTES. It shall be possible. Swear by this sword\n    Thou wilt perform my bidding.\n  ANTIGONUS. I will, my lord.\n  LEONTES. Mark, and perform it- seest thou? For the fail\n    Of any point in\'t shall not only be\n    Death to thyself, but to thy lewd-tongu\'d wife,\n    Whom for this time we pardon. We enjoin thee,\n    As thou art liegeman to us, that thou carry\n    This female bastard hence; and that thou bear it\n    To some remote and desert place, quite out\n    Of our dominions; and that there thou leave it,\n    Without more mercy, to it own protection\n    And favour of the climate. As by strange fortune\n    It came to us, I do in justice charge thee,\n    On thy soul\'s peril and thy body\'s torture,\n    That thou commend it strangely to some place  \n    Where chance may nurse or end it. Take it up.\n  ANTIGONUS. I swear to do this, though a present death\n    Had been more merciful. Come on, poor babe.\n    Some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens\n    To be thy nurses! Wolves and bears, they say,\n    Casting their savageness aside, have done\n    Like offices of pity. Sir, be prosperous\n    In more than this deed does require! And blessing\n    Against this cruelty fight on thy side,\n    Poor thing, condemn\'d to loss!           Exit with the child\n  LEONTES. No, I\'ll not rear\n    Another\'s issue.\n\n                         Enter a SERVANT\n\n  SERVANT. Please your Highness, posts\n    From those you sent to th\' oracle are come\n    An hour since. Cleomenes and Dion,\n    Being well arriv\'d from Delphos, are both landed,\n    Hasting to th\' court.  \n  FIRST LORD. So please you, sir, their speed\n    Hath been beyond account.\n  LEONTES. Twenty-three days\n    They have been absent; \'tis good speed; foretells\n    The great Apollo suddenly will have\n    The truth of this appear. Prepare you, lords;\n    Summon a session, that we may arraign\n    Our most disloyal lady; for, as she hath\n    Been publicly accus\'d, so shall she have\n    A just and open trial. While she lives,\n    My heart will be a burden to me. Leave me;\n    And think upon my bidding.                            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT III. SCENE I.\nSicilia. On the road to the Capital\n\nEnter CLEOMENES and DION\n\n  CLEOMENES. The climate\'s delicate, the air most sweet,\n    Fertile the isle, the temple much surpassing\n    The common praise it bears.\n  DION. I shall report,\n    For most it caught me, the celestial habits-\n    Methinks I so should term them- and the reverence\n    Of the grave wearers. O, the sacrifice!\n    How ceremonious, solemn, and unearthly,\n    It was i\' th\' off\'ring!\n  CLEOMENES. But of all, the burst\n    And the ear-deaf\'ning voice o\' th\' oracle,\n    Kin to Jove\'s thunder, so surpris\'d my sense\n    That I was nothing.\n  DION. If th\' event o\' th\' journey\n    Prove as successful to the Queen- O, be\'t so!-\n    As it hath been to us rare, pleasant, speedy,\n    The time is worth the use on\'t.  \n  CLEOMENES. Great Apollo\n    Turn all to th\' best! These proclamations,\n    So forcing faults upon Hermione,\n    I little like.\n  DION. The violent carriage of it\n    Will clear or end the business. When the oracle-\n    Thus by Apollo\'s great divine seal\'d up-\n    Shall the contents discover, something rare\n    Even then will rush to knowledge. Go; fresh horses.\n    And gracious be the issue!                            Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nSicilia. A court of justice\n\nEnter LEONTES, LORDS, and OFFICERS\n\n  LEONTES. This sessions, to our great grief we pronounce,\n    Even pushes \'gainst our heart- the party tried,\n    The daughter of a king, our wife, and one\n    Of us too much belov\'d. Let us be clear\'d\n    Of being tyrannous, since we so openly\n    Proceed in justice, which shall have due course,\n    Even to the guilt or the purgation.\n    Produce the prisoner.\n  OFFICER. It is his Highness\' pleasure that the Queen\n    Appear in person here in court.\n\n         Enter HERMIONE, as to her trial, PAULINA, and LADIES\n\n    Silence!\n  LEONTES. Read the indictment.\n  OFFICER.  [Reads]  \'Hermione, Queen to the worthy Leontes, King of\n    Sicilia, thou art here accused and arraigned of high treason, in  \n    committing adultery with Polixenes, King of Bohemia; and\n    conspiring with Camillo to take away the life of our sovereign\n    lord the King, thy royal husband: the pretence whereof being by\n    circumstances partly laid open, thou, Hermione, contrary to the\n    faith and allegiance of true subject, didst counsel and aid them,\n    for their better safety, to fly away by night.\'\n  HERMIONE. Since what I am to say must be but that\n    Which contradicts my accusation, and\n    The testimony on my part no other\n    But what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me\n    To say \'Not guilty.\' Mine integrity\n    Being counted falsehood shall, as I express it,\n    Be so receiv\'d. But thus- if pow\'rs divine\n    Behold our human actions, as they do,\n    I doubt not then but innocence shall make\n    False accusation blush, and tyranny\n    Tremble at patience. You, my lord, best know-\n    Who least will seem to do so- my past life\n    Hath been as continent, as chaste, as true,\n    As I am now unhappy; which is more  \n    Than history can pattern, though devis\'d\n    And play\'d to take spectators; for behold me-\n    A fellow of the royal bed, which owe\n    A moiety of the throne, a great king\'s daughter,\n    The mother to a hopeful prince- here standing\n    To prate and talk for life and honour fore\n    Who please to come and hear. For life, I prize it\n    As I weigh grief, which I would spare; for honour,\n    \'Tis a derivative from me to mine,\n    And only that I stand for. I appeal\n    To your own conscience, sir, before Polixenes\n    Came to your court, how I was in your grace,\n    How merited to be so; since he came,\n    With what encounter so uncurrent I\n    Have strain\'d t\' appear thus; if one jot beyond\n    The bound of honour, or in act or will\n    That way inclining, hard\'ned be the hearts\n    Of all that hear me, and my near\'st of kin\n    Cry fie upon my grave!\n  LEONTES. I ne\'er heard yet  \n    That any of these bolder vices wanted\n    Less impudence to gainsay what they did\n    Than to perform it first.\n  HERMIONE. That\'s true enough;\n    Though \'tis a saying, sir, not due to me.\n  LEONTES. You will not own it.\n  HERMIONE. More than mistress of\n    Which comes to me in name of fault, I must not\n    At all acknowledge. For Polixenes,\n    With whom I am accus\'d, I do confess\n    I lov\'d him as in honour he requir\'d;\n    With such a kind of love as might become\n    A lady like me; with a love even such,\n    So and no other, as yourself commanded;\n    Which not to have done, I think had been in me\n    Both disobedience and ingratitude\n    To you and toward your friend; whose love had spoke,\n    Ever since it could speak, from an infant, freely,\n    That it was yours. Now for conspiracy:\n    I know not how it tastes, though it be dish\'d  \n    For me to try how; all I know of it\n    Is that Camillo was an honest man;\n    And why he left your court, the gods themselves,\n    Wotting no more than I, are ignorant.\n  LEONTES. You knew of his departure, as you know\n    What you have underta\'en to do in\'s absence.\n  HERMIONE. Sir,\n    You speak a language that I understand not.\n    My life stands in the level of your dreams,\n    Which I\'ll lay down.\n  LEONTES. Your actions are my dreams.\n    You had a bastard by Polixenes,\n    And I but dream\'d it. As you were past all shame-\n    Those of your fact are so- so past all truth;\n    Which to deny concerns more than avails; for as\n    Thy brat hath been cast out, like to itself,\n    No father owning it- which is indeed\n    More criminal in thee than it- so thou\n    Shalt feel our justice; in whose easiest passage\n    Look for no less than death.  \n  HERMIONE. Sir, spare your threats.\n    The bug which you would fright me with I seek.\n    To me can life be no commodity.\n    The crown and comfort of my life, your favour,\n    I do give lost, for I do feel it gone,\n    But know not how it went; my second joy\n    And first fruits of my body, from his presence\n    I am barr\'d, like one infectious; my third comfort,\n    Starr\'d most unluckily, is from my breast-\n    The innocent milk in it most innocent mouth-\n    Hal\'d out to murder; myself on every post\n    Proclaim\'d a strumpet; with immodest hatred\n    The child-bed privilege denied, which \'longs\n    To women of all fashion; lastly, hurried\n    Here to this place, i\' th\' open air, before\n    I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege,\n    Tell me what blessings I have here alive\n    That I should fear to die. Therefore proceed.\n    But yet hear this- mistake me not: no life,\n    I prize it not a straw, but for mine honour  \n    Which I would free- if I shall be condemn\'d\n    Upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else\n    But what your jealousies awake, I tell you\n    \'Tis rigour, and not law. Your honours all,\n    I do refer me to the oracle:\n    Apollo be my judge!\n  FIRST LORD. This your request\n    Is altogether just. Therefore, bring forth,\n    And in Apollo\'s name, his oracle.\n                                         Exeunt certain OFFICERS\n  HERMIONE. The Emperor of Russia was my father;\n    O that he were alive, and here beholding\n    His daughter\'s trial! that he did but see\n    The flatness of my misery; yet with eyes\n    Of pity, not revenge!\n\n           Re-enter OFFICERS, with CLEOMENES and DION\n\n  OFFICER. You here shall swear upon this sword of justice\n    That you, Cleomenes and Dion, have  \n    Been both at Delphos, and from thence have brought\n    This seal\'d-up oracle, by the hand deliver\'d\n    Of great Apollo\'s priest; and that since then\n    You have not dar\'d to break the holy seal\n    Nor read the secrets in\'t.\n  CLEOMENES, DION. All this we swear.\n  LEONTES. Break up the seals and read.\n  OFFICER.  [Reads]  \'Hermione is chaste; Polixenes blameless;\n    Camillo a true subject; Leontes a jealous tyrant; his innocent\n    babe truly begotten; and the King shall live without an heir, if\n    that which is lost be not found.\'\n  LORDS. Now blessed be the great Apollo!\n  HERMIONE. Praised!\n  LEONTES. Hast thou read truth?\n  OFFICER. Ay, my lord; even so\n    As it is here set down.\n  LEONTES. There is no truth at all i\' th\' oracle.\n    The sessions shall proceed. This is mere falsehood.\n\n                        Enter a SERVANT  \n\n  SERVANT. My lord the King, the King!\n  LEONTES. What is the business?\n  SERVANT. O sir, I shall be hated to report it:\n    The Prince your son, with mere conceit and fear\n    Of the Queen\'s speed, is gone.\n  LEONTES. How! Gone?\n  SERVANT. Is dead.\n  LEONTES. Apollo\'s angry; and the heavens themselves\n    Do strike at my injustice.                 [HERMIONE swoons]\n    How now, there!\n  PAULINA. This news is mortal to the Queen. Look down\n    And see what death is doing.\n  LEONTES. Take her hence.\n    Her heart is but o\'ercharg\'d; she will recover.\n    I have too much believ\'d mine own suspicion.\n    Beseech you tenderly apply to her\n    Some remedies for life.\n                         Exeunt PAULINA and LADIES with HERMIONE\n    Apollo, pardon  \n    My great profaneness \'gainst thine oracle.\n    I\'ll reconcile me to Polixenes,\n    New woo my queen, recall the good Camillo-\n    Whom I proclaim a man of truth, of mercy.\n    For, being transported by my jealousies\n    To bloody thoughts and to revenge, I chose\n    Camillo for the minister to poison\n    My friend Polixenes; which had been done\n    But that the good mind of Camillo tardied\n    My swift command, though I with death and with\n    Reward did threaten and encourage him,\n    Not doing it and being done. He, most humane\n    And fill\'d with honour, to my kingly guest\n    Unclasp\'d my practice, quit his fortunes here,\n    Which you knew great, and to the certain hazard\n    Of all incertainties himself commended,\n    No richer than his honour. How he glisters\n    Thorough my rust! And how his piety\n    Does my deeds make the blacker!\n  \n                      Re-enter PAULINA\n\n  PAULINA. Woe the while!\n    O, cut my lace, lest my heart, cracking it,\n    Break too!\n  FIRST LORD. What fit is this, good lady?\n  PAULINA. What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?\n    What wheels, racks, fires? what flaying, boiling\n    In leads or oils? What old or newer torture\n    Must I receive, whose every word deserves\n    To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny\n    Together working with thy jealousies,\n    Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle\n    For girls of nine- O, think what they have done,\n    And then run mad indeed, stark mad; for all\n    Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it.\n    That thou betray\'dst Polixenes, \'twas nothing;\n    That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant,\n    And damnable ingrateful. Nor was\'t much\n    Thou wouldst have poison\'d good Camillo\'s honour,  \n    To have him kill a king- poor trespasses,\n    More monstrous standing by; whereof I reckon\n    The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter\n    To be or none or little, though a devil\n    Would have shed water out of fire ere done\'t;\n    Nor is\'t directly laid to thee, the death\n    Of the young Prince, whose honourable thoughts-\n    Thoughts high for one so tender- cleft the heart\n    That could conceive a gross and foolish sire\n    Blemish\'d his gracious dam. This is not, no,\n    Laid to thy answer; but the last- O lords,\n    When I have said, cry \'Woe!\'- the Queen, the Queen,\n    The sweet\'st, dear\'st creature\'s dead; and vengeance\n    For\'t not dropp\'d down yet.\n  FIRST LORD. The higher pow\'rs forbid!\n  PAULINA. I say she\'s dead; I\'ll swear\'t. If word nor oath\n    Prevail not, go and see. If you can bring\n    Tincture or lustre in her lip, her eye,\n    Heat outwardly or breath within, I\'ll serve you\n    As I would do the gods. But, O thou tyrant!  \n    Do not repent these things, for they are heavier\n    Than all thy woes can stir; therefore betake thee\n    To nothing but despair. A thousand knees\n    Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting,\n    Upon a barren mountain, and still winter\n    In storm perpetual, could not move the gods\n    To look that way thou wert.\n  LEONTES. Go on, go on.\n    Thou canst not speak too much; I have deserv\'d\n    All tongues to talk their bitt\'rest.\n  FIRST LORD. Say no more;\n    Howe\'er the business goes, you have made fault\n    I\' th\' boldness of your speech.\n  PAULINA. I am sorry for\'t.\n    All faults I make, when I shall come to know them.\n    I do repent. Alas, I have show\'d too much\n    The rashness of a woman! He is touch\'d\n    To th\' noble heart. What\'s gone and what\'s past help\n    Should be past grief. Do not receive affliction\n    At my petition; I beseech you, rather  \n    Let me be punish\'d that have minded you\n    Of what you should forget. Now, good my liege,\n    Sir, royal sir, forgive a foolish woman.\n    The love I bore your queen- lo, fool again!\n    I\'ll speak of her no more, nor of your children;\n    I\'ll not remember you of my own lord,\n    Who is lost too. Take your patience to you,\n    And I\'ll say nothing.\n  LEONTES. Thou didst speak but well\n    When most the truth; which I receive much better\n    Than to be pitied of thee. Prithee, bring me\n    To the dead bodies of my queen and son.\n    One grave shall be for both. Upon them shall\n    The causes of their death appear, unto\n    Our shame perpetual. Once a day I\'ll visit\n    The chapel where they lie; and tears shed there\n    Shall be my recreation. So long as nature\n    Will bear up with this exercise, so long\n    I daily vow to use it. Come, and lead me\n    To these sorrows.                                     Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nBohemia. The sea-coast\n\nEnter ANTIGONUS with the CHILD, and a MARINER\n\n  ANTIGONUS. Thou art perfect then our ship hath touch\'d upon\n    The deserts of Bohemia?\n  MARINER. Ay, my lord, and fear\n    We have landed in ill time; the skies look grimly\n    And threaten present blusters. In my conscience,\n    The heavens with that we have in hand are angry\n    And frown upon \'s.\n  ANTIGONUS. Their sacred wills be done! Go, get aboard;\n    Look to thy bark. I\'ll not be long before\n    I call upon thee.\n  MARINER. Make your best haste; and go not\n    Too far i\' th\' land; \'tis like to be loud weather;\n    Besides, this place is famous for the creatures\n    Of prey that keep upon\'t.\n  ANTIGONUS. Go thou away;\n    I\'ll follow instantly.\n  MARINER. I am glad at heart  \n    To be so rid o\' th\' business.                           Exit\n  ANTIGONUS. Come, poor babe.\n    I have heard, but not believ\'d, the spirits o\' th\' dead\n    May walk again. If such thing be, thy mother\n    Appear\'d to me last night; for ne\'er was dream\n    So like a waking. To me comes a creature,\n    Sometimes her head on one side some another-\n    I never saw a vessel of like sorrow,\n    So fill\'d and so becoming; in pure white robes,\n    Like very sanctity, she did approach\n    My cabin where I lay; thrice bow\'d before me;\n    And, gasping to begin some speech, her eyes\n    Became two spouts; the fury spent, anon\n    Did this break from her: \'Good Antigonus,\n    Since fate, against thy better disposition,\n    Hath made thy person for the thrower-out\n    Of my poor babe, according to thine oath,\n    Places remote enough are in Bohemia,\n    There weep, and leave it crying; and, for the babe\n    Is counted lost for ever, Perdita  \n    I prithee call\'t. For this ungentle business,\n    Put on thee by my lord, thou ne\'er shalt see\n    Thy wife Paulina more.\' so, with shrieks,\n    She melted into air. Affrighted much,\n    I did in time collect myself, and thought\n    This was so and no slumber. Dreams are toys;\n    Yet, for this once, yea, superstitiously,\n    I will be squar\'d by this. I do believe\n    Hermione hath suffer\'d death, and that\n    Apollo would, this being indeed the issue\n    Of King Polixenes, it should here be laid,\n    Either for life or death, upon the earth\n    Of its right father. Blossom, speed thee well!\n                                         [Laying down the child]\n    There lie, and there thy character; there these\n                                          [Laying down a bundle]\n    Which may, if fortune please, both breed thee, pretty,\n    And still rest thine. The storm begins. Poor wretch,\n    That for thy mother\'s fault art thus expos\'d\n    To loss and what may follow! Weep I cannot,  \n    But my heart bleeds; and most accurs\'d am I\n    To be by oath enjoin\'d to this. Farewell!\n    The day frowns more and more. Thou\'rt like to have\n    A lullaby too rough; I never saw\n    The heavens so dim by day.  [Noise of hunt within]  A savage\n      clamour!\n    Well may I get aboard! This is the chase;\n    I am gone for ever.                  Exit, pursued by a bear\n\n                      Enter an old SHEPHERD\n\n  SHEPHERD. I would there were no age between ten and three and\n    twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is\n    nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging\n    the ancientry, stealing, fighting-  [Horns]  Hark you now! Would\n    any but these boil\'d brains of nineteen and two and twenty hunt\n    this weather? They have scar\'d away two of my best sheep, which I\n    fear the wolf will sooner find than the master. If any where I\n    have them, \'tis by the sea-side, browsing of ivy. Good luck, an\'t\n    be thy will! What have we here?  [Taking up the child]  Mercy  \n    on\'s, a barne! A very pretty barne. A boy or a child, I wonder? A\n    pretty one; a very pretty one- sure, some scape. Though I am not\n    bookish, yet I can read waiting-gentlewoman in the scape. This\n    has been some stair-work, some trunk-work, some behind-door-work;\n    they were warmer that got this than the poor thing is here. I\'ll\n    take it up for pity; yet I\'ll tarry till my son come; he halloo\'d\n    but even now. Whoa-ho-hoa!\n\n                          Enter CLOWN\n\n  CLOWN. Hilloa, loa!\n  SHEPHERD. What, art so near? If thou\'lt see a thing to talk on when\n    thou art dead and rotten, come hither. What ail\'st thou, man?\n  CLOWN. I have seen two such sights, by sea and by land! But I am\n    not to say it is a sea, for it is now the sky; betwixt the\n    firmament and it you cannot thrust a bodkin\'s point.\n  SHEPHERD. Why, boy, how is it?\n  CLOWN. I would you did but see how it chafes, how it rages, how it\n    takes up the shore! But that\'s not to the point. O, the most\n    piteous cry of the poor souls! Sometimes to see \'em, and not to  \n    see \'em; now the ship boring the moon with her mainmast, and anon\n    swallowed with yeast and froth, as you\'d thrust a cork into a\n    hogshead. And then for the land service- to see how the bear tore\n    out his shoulder-bone; how he cried to me for help, and said his\n    name was Antigonus, a nobleman! But to make an end of the ship-\n    to see how the sea flap-dragon\'d it; but first, how the poor\n    souls roared, and the sea mock\'d them; and how the poor gentleman\n    roared, and the bear mock\'d him, both roaring louder than the sea\n    or weather.\n  SHEPHERD. Name of mercy, when was this, boy?\n  CLOWN. Now, now; I have not wink\'d since I saw these sights; the\n    men are not yet cold under water, nor the bear half din\'d on the\n    gentleman; he\'s at it now.\n  SHEPHERD. Would I had been by to have help\'d the old man!\n  CLOWN. I would you had been by the ship-side, to have help\'d her;\n    there your charity would have lack\'d footing.\n  SHEPHERD. Heavy matters, heavy matters! But look thee here, boy.\n    Now bless thyself; thou met\'st with things dying, I with things\n    new-born. Here\'s a sight for thee; look thee, a bearing-cloth for\n    a squire\'s child! Look thee here; take up, take up, boy; open\'t.  \n    So, let\'s see- it was told me I should be rich by the fairies.\n    This is some changeling. Open\'t. What\'s within, boy?\n  CLOWN. You\'re a made old man; if the sins of your youth are\n    forgiven you, you\'re well to live. Gold! all gold!\n  SHEPHERD. This is fairy gold, boy, and \'twill prove so. Up with\'t,\n    keep it close. Home, home, the next way! We are lucky, boy; and\n    to be so still requires nothing but secrecy. Let my sheep go.\n    Come, good boy, the next way home.\n  CLOWN. Go you the next way with your findings. I\'ll go see if the\n    bear be gone from the gentleman, and how much he hath eaten. They\n    are never curst but when they are hungry. If there be any of him\n    left, I\'ll bury it.\n  SHEPHERD. That\'s a good deed. If thou mayest discern by that which\n    is left of him what he is, fetch me to th\' sight of him.\n  CLOWN. Marry, will I; and you shall help to put him i\' th\' ground.\n  SHEPHERD. \'Tis a lucky day, boy; and we\'ll do good deeds on\'t.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT IV. SCENE I.\n\nEnter TIME, the CHORUS\n\n  TIME. I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror\n    Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error,\n    Now take upon me, in the name of Time,\n    To use my wings. Impute it not a crime\n    To me or my swift passage that I slide\n    O\'er sixteen years, and leave the growth untried\n    Of that wide gap, since it is in my pow\'r\n    To o\'erthrow law, and in one self-born hour\n    To plant and o\'erwhelm custom. Let me pass\n    The same I am, ere ancient\'st order was\n    Or what is now receiv\'d. I witness to\n    The times that brought them in; so shall I do\n    To th\' freshest things now reigning, and make stale\n    The glistering of this present, as my tale\n    Now seems to it. Your patience this allowing,\n    I turn my glass, and give my scene such growing\n    As you had slept between. Leontes leaving-\n    Th\' effects of his fond jealousies so grieving  \n    That he shuts up himself- imagine me,\n    Gentle spectators, that I now may be\n    In fair Bohemia; and remember well\n    I mention\'d a son o\' th\' King\'s, which Florizel\n    I now name to you; and with speed so pace\n    To speak of Perdita, now grown in grace\n    Equal with wond\'ring. What of her ensues\n    I list not prophesy; but let Time\'s news\n    Be known when \'tis brought forth. A shepherd\'s daughter,\n    And what to her adheres, which follows after,\n    Is th\' argument of Time. Of this allow,\n    If ever you have spent time worse ere now;\n    If never, yet that Time himself doth say\n    He wishes earnestly you never may.                      Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nBohemia. The palace of POLIXENES\n\nEnter POLIXENES and CAMILLO\n\n  POLIXENES. I pray thee, good Camillo, be no more importunate: \'tis\n    a sickness denying thee anything; a death to grant this.\n  CAMILLO. It is fifteen years since I saw my country; though I have\n    for the most part been aired abroad, I desire to lay my bones\n    there. Besides, the penitent King, my master, hath sent for me;\n    to whose feeling sorrows I might be some allay, or I o\'erween to\n    think so, which is another spur to my departure.\n  POLIXENES. As thou lov\'st me, Camillo, wipe not out the rest of thy\n    services by leaving me now. The need I have of thee thine own\n    goodness hath made. Better not to have had thee than thus to want\n    thee; thou, having made me businesses which none without thee can\n    sufficiently manage, must either stay to execute them thyself, or\n    take away with thee the very services thou hast done; which if I\n    have not enough considered- as too much I cannot- to be more\n    thankful to thee shall be my study; and my profit therein the\n    heaping friendships. Of that fatal country Sicilia, prithee,\n    speak no more; whose very naming punishes me with the remembrance  \n    of that penitent, as thou call\'st him, and reconciled king, my\n    brother; whose loss of his most precious queen and children are\n    even now to be afresh lamented. Say to me, when saw\'st thou the\n    Prince Florizel, my son? Kings are no less unhappy, their issue\n    not being gracious, than they are in losing them when they have\n    approved their virtues.\n  CAMILLO. Sir, it is three days since I saw the Prince. What his\n    happier affairs may be are to me unknown; but I have missingly\n    noted he is of late much retired from court, and is less frequent\n    to his princely exercises than formerly he hath appeared.\n  POLIXENES. I have considered so much, Camillo, and with some care,\n    so far that I have eyes under my service which look upon his\n    removedness; from whom I have this intelligence, that he is\n    seldom from the house of a most homely shepherd- a man, they say,\n    that from very nothing, and beyond the imagination of his\n    neighbours, is grown into an unspeakable estate.\n  CAMILLO. I have heard, sir, of such a man, who hath a daughter of\n    most rare note. The report of her is extended more than can be\n    thought to begin from such a cottage.\n  POLIXENES. That\'s likewise part of my intelligence; but, I fear, the  \n    angle that plucks our son thither. Thou shalt accompany us to the\n    place; where we will, not appearing what we are, have some\n    question with the shepherd; from whose simplicity I think it not\n    uneasy to get the cause of my son\'s resort thither. Prithee be my\n    present partner in this business, and lay aside the thoughts of\n    Sicilia.\n  CAMILLO. I willingly obey your command.\n  POLIXENES. My best Camillo! We must disguise ourselves.\n                                                          Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nBohemia. A road near the SHEPHERD\'S cottage\n\nEnter AUTOLYCUS, singing\n\n      When daffodils begin to peer,\n        With heigh! the doxy over the dale,\n      Why, then comes in the sweet o\' the year,\n        For the red blood reigns in the winter\'s pale.\n\n      The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,\n        With heigh! the sweet birds, O, how they sing!\n      Doth set my pugging tooth on edge,\n        For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.\n\n      The lark, that tirra-lirra chants,\n        With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay,\n      Are summer songs for me and my aunts,\n        While we lie tumbling in the hay.\n\n    I have serv\'d Prince Florizel, and in my time wore three-pile;\n    but now I am out of service.  \n\n      But shall I go mourn for that, my dear?\n        The pale moon shines by night;\n      And when I wander here and there,\n        I then do most go right.\n\n      If tinkers may have leave to live,\n        And bear the sow-skin budget,\n      Then my account I well may give\n        And in the stocks avouch it.\n\n    My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen.\n    My father nam\'d me Autolycus; who, being, I as am, litter\'d under\n    Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. With\n    die and drab I purchas\'d this caparison; and my revenue is the\n    silly-cheat. Gallows and knock are too powerful on the highway;\n    beating and hanging are terrors to me; for the life to come, I\n    sleep out the thought of it. A prize! a prize!\n\n                            Enter CLOWN  \n\n  CLOWN. Let me see: every \'leven wether tods; every tod yields pound\n    and odd shilling; fifteen hundred shorn, what comes the wool to?\n  AUTOLYCUS.  [Aside]  If the springe hold, the cock\'s mine.\n  CLOWN. I cannot do \'t without counters. Let me see: what am I to\n    buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pound of sugar, five\n    pound of currants, rice- what will this sister of mine do with\n    rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she\n    lays it on. She hath made me four and twenty nosegays for the\n    shearers- three-man song-men all, and very good ones; but they\n    are most of them means and bases; but one Puritan amongst them,\n    and he sings psalms to hornpipes. I must have saffron to colour\n    the warden pies; mace; dates- none, that\'s out of my note;\n    nutmegs, seven; race or two of ginger, but that I may beg; four\n    pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o\' th\' sun.\n  AUTOLYCUS.  [Grovelling on the ground]  O that ever I was born!\n  CLOWN. I\' th\' name of me!\n  AUTOLYCUS. O, help me, help me! Pluck but off these rags; and then,\n    death, death!\n  CLOWN. Alack, poor soul! thou hast need of more rags to lay on  \n    thee, rather than have these off.\n  AUTOLYCUS. O sir, the loathsomeness of them offend me more than the\n    stripes I have received, which are mighty ones and millions.\n  CLOWN. Alas, poor man! a million of beating may come to a great\n    matter.\n  AUTOLYCUS. I am robb\'d, sir, and beaten; my money and apparel ta\'en\n    from me, and these detestable things put upon me.\n  CLOWN. What, by a horseman or a footman?\n  AUTOLYCUS. A footman, sweet sir, a footman.\n  CLOWN. Indeed, he should be a footman, by the garments he has left\n    with thee; if this be a horseman\'s coat, it hath seen very hot\n    service. Lend me thy hand, I\'ll help thee. Come, lend me thy\n    hand.                                       [Helping him up]\n  AUTOLYCUS. O, good sir, tenderly, O!\n  CLOWN. Alas, poor soul!\n  AUTOLYCUS. O, good sir, softly, good sir; I fear, sir, my shoulder\n    blade is out.\n  CLOWN. How now! Canst stand?\n  AUTOLYCUS. Softly, dear sir  [Picks his pocket];  good sir, softly.\n    You ha\' done me a charitable office.  \n  CLOWN. Dost lack any money? I have a little money for thee.\n  AUTOLYCUS. No, good sweet sir; no, I beseech you, sir. I have a\n    kinsman not past three quarters of a mile hence, unto whom I was\n    going; I shall there have money or anything I want. Offer me no\n    money, I pray you; that kills my heart.\n  CLOWN. What manner of fellow was he that robb\'d you?\n  AUTOLYCUS. A fellow, sir, that I have known to go about with\n    troll-my-dames; I knew him once a servant of the Prince. I cannot\n    tell, good sir, for which of his virtues it was, but he was\n    certainly whipt out of the court.\n  CLOWN. His vices, you would say; there\'s no virtue whipt out of the\n    court. They cherish it to make it stay there; and yet it will no\n    more but abide.\n  AUTOLYCUS. Vices, I would say, sir. I know this man well; he hath\n    been since an ape-bearer; then a process-server, a bailiff; then\n    he compass\'d a motion of the Prodigal Son, and married a tinker\'s\n    wife within a mile where my land and living lies; and, having\n    flown over many knavish professions, he settled only in rogue.\n    Some call him Autolycus.\n  CLOWN. Out upon him! prig, for my life, prig! He haunts wakes,  \n    fairs, and bear-baitings.\n  AUTOLYCUS. Very true, sir; he, sir, he; that\'s the rogue that put\n    me into this apparel.\n  CLOWN. Not a more cowardly rogue in all Bohemia; if you had but\n    look\'d big and spit at him, he\'d have run.\n  AUTOLYCUS. I must confess to you, sir, I am no fighter; I am false\n    of heart that way, and that he knew, I warrant him.\n  CLOWN. How do you now?\n  AUTOLYCUS. Sweet sir, much better than I was; I can stand and walk.\n    I will even take my leave of you and pace softly towards my\n    kinsman\'s.\n  CLOWN. Shall I bring thee on the way?\n  AUTOLYCUS. No, good-fac\'d sir; no, sweet sir.\n  CLOWN. Then fare thee well. I must go buy spices for our\n    sheep-shearing.\n  AUTOLYCUS. Prosper you, sweet sir!                  Exit CLOWN\n    Your purse is not hot enough to purchase your spice. I\'ll be with\n    you at your sheep-shearing too. If I make not this cheat bring\n    out another, and the shearers prove sheep, let me be unroll\'d,\n    and my name put in the book of virtue!  \n                                                         [Sings]\n            Jog on, jog on, the footpath way,\n              And merrily hent the stile-a;\n            A merry heart goes all the day,\n              Your sad tires in a mile-a.                   Exit\n\n\n\n\nSCENE IV.\nBohemia. The SHEPHERD\'S cottage\n\nEnter FLORIZEL and PERDITA\n\n  FLORIZEL. These your unusual weeds to each part of you\n    Do give a life- no shepherdess, but Flora\n    Peering in April\'s front. This your sheep-shearing\n    Is as a meeting of the petty gods,\n    And you the Queen on\'t.\n  PERDITA. Sir, my gracious lord,\n    To chide at your extremes it not becomes me-\n    O, pardon that I name them! Your high self,\n    The gracious mark o\' th\' land, you have obscur\'d\n    With a swain\'s wearing; and me, poor lowly maid,\n    Most goddess-like prank\'d up. But that our feasts\n    In every mess have folly, and the feeders\n    Digest it with a custom, I should blush\n    To see you so attir\'d; swoon, I think,\n    To show myself a glass.\n  FLORIZEL. I bless the time\n    When my good falcon made her flight across  \n    Thy father\'s ground.\n  PERDITA. Now Jove afford you cause!\n    To me the difference forges dread; your greatness\n    Hath not been us\'d to fear. Even now I tremble\n    To think your father, by some accident,\n    Should pass this way, as you did. O, the Fates!\n    How would he look to see his work, so noble,\n    Vilely bound up? What would he say? Or how\n    Should I, in these my borrowed flaunts, behold\n    The sternness of his presence?\n  FLORIZEL. Apprehend\n    Nothing but jollity. The gods themselves,\n    Humbling their deities to love, have taken\n    The shapes of beasts upon them: Jupiter\n    Became a bull and bellow\'d; the green Neptune\n    A ram and bleated; and the fire-rob\'d god,\n    Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain,\n    As I seem now. Their transformations\n    Were never for a piece of beauty rarer,\n    Nor in a way so chaste, since my desires  \n    Run not before mine honour, nor my lusts\n    Burn hotter than my faith.\n  PERDITA. O, but, sir,\n    Your resolution cannot hold when \'tis\n    Oppos\'d, as it must be, by th\' pow\'r of the King.\n    One of these two must be necessities,\n    Which then will speak, that you must change this purpose,\n    Or I my life.\n  FLORIZEL. Thou dearest Perdita,\n    With these forc\'d thoughts, I prithee, darken not\n    The mirth o\' th\' feast. Or I\'ll be thine, my fair,\n    Or not my father\'s; for I cannot be\n    Mine own, nor anything to any, if\n    I be not thine. To this I am most constant,\n    Though destiny say no. Be merry, gentle;\n    Strangle such thoughts as these with any thing\n    That you behold the while. Your guests are coming.\n    Lift up your countenance, as it were the day\n    Of celebration of that nuptial which\n    We two have sworn shall come.  \n  PERDITA. O Lady Fortune,\n    Stand you auspicious!\n  FLORIZEL. See, your guests approach.\n    Address yourself to entertain them sprightly,\n    And let\'s be red with mirth.\n\n        Enter SHEPHERD, with POLIXENES and CAMILLO, disguised;\n                 CLOWN, MOPSA, DORCAS, with OTHERS\n\n  SHEPHERD. Fie, daughter! When my old wife liv\'d, upon\n    This day she was both pantler, butler, cook;\n    Both dame and servant; welcom\'d all; serv\'d all;\n    Would sing her song and dance her turn; now here\n    At upper end o\' th\' table, now i\' th\' middle;\n    On his shoulder, and his; her face o\' fire\n    With labour, and the thing she took to quench it\n    She would to each one sip. You are retired,\n    As if you were a feasted one, and not\n    The hostess of the meeting. Pray you bid\n    These unknown friends to\'s welcome, for it is  \n    A way to make us better friends, more known.\n    Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself\n    That which you are, Mistress o\' th\' Feast. Come on,\n    And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing,\n    As your good flock shall prosper.\n  PERDITA.  [To POLIXENES]  Sir, welcome.\n    It is my father\'s will I should take on me\n    The hostess-ship o\' th\' day.  [To CAMILLO]\n    You\'re welcome, sir.\n    Give me those flow\'rs there, Dorcas. Reverend sirs,\n    For you there\'s rosemary and rue; these keep\n    Seeming and savour all the winter long.\n    Grace and remembrance be to you both!\n    And welcome to our shearing.\n  POLIXENES. Shepherdess-\n    A fair one are you- well you fit our ages\n    With flow\'rs of winter.\n  PERDITA. Sir, the year growing ancient,\n    Not yet on summer\'s death nor on the birth\n    Of trembling winter, the fairest flow\'rs o\' th\' season  \n    Are our carnations and streak\'d gillyvors,\n    Which some call nature\'s bastards. Of that kind\n    Our rustic garden\'s barren; and I care not\n    To get slips of them.\n  POLIXENES. Wherefore, gentle maiden,\n    Do you neglect them?\n  PERDITA. For I have heard it said\n    There is an art which in their piedness shares\n    With great creating nature.\n  POLIXENES. Say there be;\n    Yet nature is made better by no mean\n    But nature makes that mean; so over that art\n    Which you say adds to nature, is an art\n    That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry\n    A gentler scion to the wildest stock,\n    And make conceive a bark of baser kind\n    By bud of nobler race. This is an art\n    Which does mend nature- change it rather; but\n    The art itself is nature.\n  PERDITA. So it is.  \n  POLIXENES. Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,\n    And do not call them bastards.\n  PERDITA. I\'ll not put\n    The dibble in earth to set one slip of them;\n    No more than were I painted I would wish\n    This youth should say \'twere well, and only therefore\n    Desire to breed by me. Here\'s flow\'rs for you:\n    Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram;\n    The marigold, that goes to bed wi\' th\' sun,\n    And with him rises weeping; these are flow\'rs\n    Of middle summer, and I think they are given\n    To men of middle age. Y\'are very welcome.\n  CAMILLO. I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,\n    And only live by gazing.\n  PERDITA. Out, alas!\n    You\'d be so lean that blasts of January\n    Would blow you through and through. Now, my fair\'st friend,\n    I would I had some flow\'rs o\' th\' spring that might\n    Become your time of day- and yours, and yours,\n    That wear upon your virgin branches yet  \n    Your maidenheads growing. O Proserpina,\n    From the flowers now that, frighted, thou let\'st fall\n    From Dis\'s waggon!- daffodils,\n    That come before the swallow dares, and take\n    The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim\n    But sweeter than the lids of Juno\'s eyes\n    Or Cytherea\'s breath; pale primroses,\n    That die unmarried ere they can behold\n    Bright Phoebus in his strength- a malady\n    Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and\n    The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,\n    The flow\'r-de-luce being one. O, these I lack\n    To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend\n    To strew him o\'er and o\'er!\n  FLORIZEL. What, like a corse?\n  PERDITA. No; like a bank for love to lie and play on;\n    Not like a corse; or if- not to be buried,\n    But quick, and in mine arms. Come, take your flow\'rs.\n    Methinks I play as I have seen them do\n    In Whitsun pastorals. Sure, this robe of mine  \n    Does change my disposition.\n  FLORIZEL. What you do\n    Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,\n    I\'d have you do it ever. When you sing,\n    I\'d have you buy and sell so; so give alms;\n    Pray so; and, for the ord\'ring your affairs,\n    To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you\n    A wave o\' th\' sea, that you might ever do\n    Nothing but that; move still, still so,\n    And own no other function. Each your doing,\n    So singular in each particular,\n    Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds,\n    That all your acts are queens.\n  PERDITA. O Doricles,\n    Your praises are too large. But that your youth,\n    And the true blood which peeps fairly through\'t,\n    Do plainly give you out an unstain\'d shepherd,\n    With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles,\n    You woo\'d me the false way.\n  FLORIZEL. I think you have  \n    As little skill to fear as I have purpose\n    To put you to\'t. But, come; our dance, I pray.\n    Your hand, my Perdita; so turtles pair\n    That never mean to part.\n  PERDITA. I\'ll swear for \'em.\n  POLIXENES. This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever\n    Ran on the green-sward; nothing she does or seems\n    But smacks of something greater than herself,\n    Too noble for this place.\n  CAMILLO. He tells her something\n    That makes her blood look out. Good sooth, she is\n    The queen of curds and cream.\n  CLOWN. Come on, strike up.\n  DORCAS. Mopsa must be your mistress; marry, garlic,\n    To mend her kissing with!\n  MOPSA. Now, in good time!\n  CLOWN. Not a word, a word; we stand upon our manners.\n    Come, strike up.                                     [Music]\n\n          Here a dance Of SHEPHERDS and SHEPHERDESSES  \n\n  POLIXENES. Pray, good shepherd, what fair swain is this\n    Which dances with your daughter?\n  SHEPHERD. They call him Doricles, and boasts himself\n    To have a worthy feeding; but I have it\n    Upon his own report, and I believe it:\n    He looks like sooth. He says he loves my daughter;\n    I think so too; for never gaz\'d the moon\n    Upon the water as he\'ll stand and read,\n    As \'twere my daughter\'s eyes; and, to be plain,\n    I think there is not half a kiss to choose\n    Who loves another best.\n  POLIXENES. She dances featly.\n  SHEPHERD. So she does any thing; though I report it\n    That should be silent. If young Doricles\n    Do light upon her, she shall bring him that\n    Which he not dreams of.\n\n                      Enter a SERVANT\n  \n  SERVANT. O master, if you did but hear the pedlar at the door, you\n    would never dance again after a tabor and pipe; no, the bagpipe\n    could not move you. He sings several tunes faster than you\'ll\n    tell money; he utters them as he had eaten ballads, and all men\'s\n    ears grew to his tunes.\n  CLOWN. He could never come better; he shall come in. I love a\n    ballad but even too well, if it be doleful matter merrily set\n    down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.\n  SERVANT. He hath songs for man or woman of all sizes; no milliner\n    can so fit his customers with gloves. He has the prettiest\n    love-songs for maids; so without bawdry, which is strange; with\n    such delicate burdens of dildos and fadings, \'jump her and thump\n    her\'; and where some stretch-mouth\'d rascal would, as it were,\n    mean mischief, and break a foul gap into the matter, he makes the\n    maid to answer \'Whoop, do me no harm, good man\'- puts him off,\n    slights him, with \'Whoop, do me no harm, good man.\'\n  POLIXENES. This is a brave fellow.\n  CLOWN. Believe me, thou talkest of an admirable conceited fellow.\n    Has he any unbraided wares?\n  SERVANT. He hath ribbons of all the colours i\' th\' rainbow; points,  \n    more than all the lawyers in Bohemia can learnedly handle, though\n    they come to him by th\' gross; inkles, caddisses, cambrics,\n    lawns. Why he sings \'em over as they were gods or goddesses; you\n    would think a smock were she-angel, he so chants to the\n    sleeve-hand and the work about the square on\'t.\n  CLOWN. Prithee bring him in; and let him approach singing.\n  PERDITA. Forewarn him that he use no scurrilous words in\'s tunes.\n                                                    Exit SERVANT\n  CLOWN. You have of these pedlars that have more in them than you\'d\n    think, sister.\n  PERDITA. Ay, good brother, or go about to think.\n\n                   Enter AUTOLYCUS, Singing\n\n           Lawn as white as driven snow;\n           Cypress black as e\'er was crow;\n           Gloves as sweet as damask roses;\n           Masks for faces and for noses;\n           Bugle bracelet, necklace amber,\n           Perfume for a lady\'s chamber;  \n           Golden quoifs and stomachers,\n           For my lads to give their dears;\n           Pins and poking-sticks of steel-\n           What maids lack from head to heel.\n           Come, buy of me, come; come buy, come buy;\n           Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry.\n           Come, buy.\n\n  CLOWN. If I were not in love with Mopsa, thou shouldst take no\n    money of me; but being enthrall\'d as I am, it will also be the\n    bondage of certain ribbons and gloves.\n  MOPSA. I was promis\'d them against the feast; but they come not too\n    late now.\n  DORCAS. He hath promis\'d you more than that, or there be liars.\n  MOPSA. He hath paid you all he promis\'d you. May be he has paid you\n    more, which will shame you to give him again.\n  CLOWN. Is there no manners left among maids? Will they wear their\n    plackets where they should bear their faces? Is there not\n    milking-time, when you are going to bed, or kiln-hole, to whistle\n    off these secrets, but you must be tittle-tattling before all our  \n    guests? \'Tis well they are whisp\'ring. Clammer your tongues, and\n    not a word more.\n  MOPSA. I have done. Come, you promis\'d me a tawdry-lace, and a pair\n    of sweet gloves.\n  CLOWN. Have I not told thee how I was cozen\'d by the way, and lost\n    all my money?\n  AUTOLYCUS. And indeed, sir, there are cozeners abroad; therefore it\n    behoves men to be wary.\n  CLOWN. Fear not thou, man; thou shalt lose nothing here.\n  AUTOLYCUS. I hope so, sir; for I have about me many parcels of\n    charge.\n  CLOWN. What hast here? Ballads?\n  MOPSA. Pray now, buy some. I love a ballad in print a-life, for\n    then we are sure they are true.\n  AUTOLYCUS. Here\'s one to a very doleful tune: how a usurer\'s wife\n    was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, and how she\n    long\'d to eat adders\' heads and toads carbonado\'d.\n  MOPSA. Is it true, think you?\n  AUTOLYCUS. Very true, and but a month old.\n  DORCAS. Bless me from marrying a usurer!  \n  AUTOLYCUS. Here\'s the midwife\'s name to\'t, one Mistress Taleporter,\n    and five or six honest wives that were present. Why should I\n    carry lies abroad?\n  MOPSA. Pray you now, buy it.\n  CLOWN. Come on, lay it by; and let\'s first see moe ballads; we\'ll\n    buy the other things anon.\n  AUTOLYCUS. Here\'s another ballad, of a fish that appeared upon the\n    coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom\n    above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of\n    maids. It was thought she was a woman, and was turn\'d into a cold\n    fish for she would not exchange flesh with one that lov\'d her.\n    The ballad is very pitiful, and as true.\n  DORCAS. Is it true too, think you?\n  AUTOLYCUS. Five justices\' hands at it; and witnesses more than my\n    pack will hold.\n  CLOWN. Lay it by too. Another.\n  AUTOLYCUS. This is a merry ballad, but a very pretty one.\n  MOPSA. Let\'s have some merry ones.\n  AUTOLYCUS. Why, this is a passing merry one, and goes to the tune\n    of \'Two maids wooing a man.\' There\'s scarce a maid westward but  \n    she sings it; \'tis in request, I can tell you.\n  MOPSA. can both sing it. If thou\'lt bear a part, thou shalt hear;\n    \'tis in three parts.\n  DORCAS. We had the tune on\'t a month ago.\n  AUTOLYCUS. I can bear my part; you must know \'tis my occupation.\n    Have at it with you.\n\n                        SONG\n\n  AUTOLYCUS. Get you hence, for I must go\n             Where it fits not you to know.\n  DORCAS.    Whither?\n  MOPSA.       O, whither?\n  DORCAS.        Whither?\n  MOPSA.     It becomes thy oath full well\n             Thou to me thy secrets tell.\n  DORCAS.    Me too! Let me go thither\n  MOPSA.     Or thou goest to th\' grange or mill.\n  DORCAS.    If to either, thou dost ill.\n  AUTOLYCUS. Neither.  \n  DORCAS.    What, neither?\n  AUTOLYCUS. Neither.\n  DORCAS.    Thou hast sworn my love to be.\n  MOPSA.     Thou hast sworn it more to me.\n             Then whither goest? Say, whither?\n\n  CLOWN. We\'ll have this song out anon by ourselves; my father and\n    the gentlemen are in sad talk, and we\'ll not trouble them. Come,\n    bring away thy pack after me. Wenches, I\'ll buy for you both.\n    Pedlar, let\'s have the first choice. Follow me, girls.\n                                      Exit with DORCAS and MOPSA\n  AUTOLYCUS. And you shall pay well for \'em.\n                                         Exit AUTOLYCUS, Singing\n\n             Will you buy any tape,\n             Or lace for your cape,\n           My dainty duck, my dear-a?\n             Any silk, any thread,\n             Any toys for your head,\n           Of the new\'st and fin\'st, fin\'st wear-a?  \n             Come to the pedlar;\n             Money\'s a meddler\n           That doth utter all men\'s ware-a.\n\n                   Re-enter SERVANT\n\n  SERVANT. Master, there is three carters, three shepherds, three\n    neat-herds, three swineherds, that have made themselves all men\n    of hair; they call themselves Saltiers, and they have dance which\n    the wenches say is a gallimaufry of gambols, because they are not\n    in\'t; but they themselves are o\' th\' mind, if it be not too rough\n    for some that know little but bowling, it will please\n    plentifully.\n  SHEPHERD. Away! We\'ll none on\'t; here has been too much homely\n    foolery already. I know, sir, we weary you.\n  POLIXENES. You weary those that refresh us. Pray, let\'s see these\n    four threes of herdsmen.\n  SERVANT. One three of them, by their own report, sir, hath danc\'d\n    before the King; and not the worst of the three but jumps twelve\n    foot and a half by th\' squier.  \n  SHEPHERD. Leave your prating; since these good men are pleas\'d, let\n    them come in; but quickly now.\n  SERVANT. Why, they stay at door, sir.                     Exit\n\n                    Here a dance of twelve SATYRS\n\n  POLIXENES.  [To SHEPHERD]  O, father, you\'ll know more of that\n      hereafter.\n    [To CAMILLO]  Is it not too far gone? \'Tis time to part them.\n    He\'s simple and tells much.  [To FLORIZEL]  How now, fair\n      shepherd!\n    Your heart is full of something that does take\n    Your mind from feasting. Sooth, when I was young\n    And handed love as you do, I was wont\n    To load my she with knacks; I would have ransack\'d\n    The pedlar\'s silken treasury and have pour\'d it\n    To her acceptance: you have let him go\n    And nothing marted with him. If your lass\n    Interpretation should abuse and call this\n    Your lack of love or bounty, you were straited  \n    For a reply, at least if you make a care\n    Of happy holding her.\n  FLORIZEL. Old sir, I know\n    She prizes not such trifles as these are.\n    The gifts she looks from me are pack\'d and lock\'d\n    Up in my heart, which I have given already,\n    But not deliver\'d. O, hear me breathe my life\n    Before this ancient sir, whom, it should seem,\n    Hath sometime lov\'d. I take thy hand- this hand,\n    As soft as dove\'s down and as white as it,\n    Or Ethiopian\'s tooth, or the fann\'d snow that\'s bolted\n    By th\' northern blasts twice o\'er.\n  POLIXENES. What follows this?\n    How prettily the young swain seems to wash\n    The hand was fair before! I have put you out.\n    But to your protestation; let me hear\n    What you profess.\n  FLORIZEL. Do, and be witness to\'t.\n  POLIXENES. And this my neighbour too?\n  FLORIZEL. And he, and more  \n    Than he, and men- the earth, the heavens, and all:\n    That, were I crown\'d the most imperial monarch,\n    Thereof most worthy, were I the fairest youth\n    That ever made eye swerve, had force and knowledge\n    More than was ever man\'s, I would not prize them\n    Without her love; for her employ them all;\n    Commend them and condemn them to her service\n    Or to their own perdition.\n  POLIXENES. Fairly offer\'d.\n  CAMILLO. This shows a sound affection.\n  SHEPHERD. But, my daughter,\n    Say you the like to him?\n  PERDITA. I cannot speak\n    So well, nothing so well; no, nor mean better.\n    By th\' pattern of mine own thoughts I cut out\n    The purity of his.\n  SHEPHERD. Take hands, a bargain!\n    And, friends unknown, you shall bear witness to\'t:\n    I give my daughter to him, and will make\n    Her portion equal his.  \n  FLORIZEL. O, that must be\n    I\' th\' virtue of your daughter. One being dead,\n    I shall have more than you can dream of yet;\n    Enough then for your wonder. But come on,\n    Contract us fore these witnesses.\n  SHEPHERD. Come, your hand;\n    And, daughter, yours.\n  POLIXENES. Soft, swain, awhile, beseech you;\n    Have you a father?\n  FLORIZEL. I have, but what of him?\n  POLIXENES. Knows he of this?\n  FLORIZEL. He neither does nor shall.\n  POLIXENES. Methinks a father\n    Is at the nuptial of his son a guest\n    That best becomes the table. Pray you, once more,\n    Is not your father grown incapable\n    Of reasonable affairs? Is he not stupid\n    With age and alt\'ring rheums? Can he speak, hear,\n    Know man from man, dispute his own estate?\n    Lies he not bed-rid, and again does nothing  \n    But what he did being childish?\n  FLORIZEL. No, good sir;\n    He has his health, and ampler strength indeed\n    Than most have of his age.\n  POLIXENES. By my white beard,\n    You offer him, if this be so, a wrong\n    Something unfilial. Reason my son\n    Should choose himself a wife; but as good reason\n    The father- all whose joy is nothing else\n    But fair posterity- should hold some counsel\n    In such a business.\n  FLORIZEL. I yield all this;\n    But, for some other reasons, my grave sir,\n    Which \'tis not fit you know, I not acquaint\n    My father of this business.\n  POLIXENES. Let him know\'t.\n  FLORIZEL. He shall not.\n  POLIXENES. Prithee let him.\n  FLORIZEL. No, he must not.\n  SHEPHERD. Let him, my son; he shall not need to grieve  \n    At knowing of thy choice.\n  FLORIZEL. Come, come, he must not.\n    Mark our contract.\n  POLIXENES.  [Discovering himself]  Mark your divorce, young sir,\n    Whom son I dare not call; thou art too base\n    To be acknowledg\'d- thou a sceptre\'s heir,\n    That thus affects a sheep-hook! Thou, old traitor,\n    I am sorry that by hanging thee I can but\n    Shorten thy life one week. And thou, fresh piece\n    Of excellent witchcraft, who of force must know\n    The royal fool thou cop\'st with-\n  SHEPHERD. O, my heart!\n  POLIXENES. I\'ll have thy beauty scratch\'d with briers and made\n    More homely than thy state. For thee, fond boy,\n    If I may ever know thou dost but sigh\n    That thou no more shalt see this knack- as never\n    I mean thou shalt- we\'ll bar thee from succession;\n    Not hold thee of our blood, no, not our kin,\n    Farre than Deucalion off. Mark thou my words.\n    Follow us to the court. Thou churl, for this time,  \n    Though full of our displeasure, yet we free thee\n    From the dead blow of it. And you, enchantment,\n    Worthy enough a herdsman- yea, him too\n    That makes himself, but for our honour therein,\n    Unworthy thee- if ever henceforth thou\n    These rural latches to his entrance open,\n    Or hoop his body more with thy embraces,\n    I will devise a death as cruel for thee\n    As thou art tender to\'t.                                Exit\n  PERDITA. Even here undone!\n    I was not much afeard; for once or twice\n    I was about to speak and tell him plainly\n    The self-same sun that shines upon his court\n    Hides not his visage from our cottage, but\n    Looks on alike.  [To FLORIZEL]  Will\'t please you, sir, be gone?\n    I told you what would come of this. Beseech you,\n    Of your own state take care. This dream of mine-\n    Being now awake, I\'ll queen it no inch farther,\n    But milk my ewes and weep.\n  CAMILLO. Why, how now, father!  \n    Speak ere thou diest.\n  SHEPHERD. I cannot speak nor think,\n    Nor dare to know that which I know.  [To FLORIZEL]  O sir,\n    You have undone a man of fourscore-three\n    That thought to fill his grave in quiet, yea,\n    To die upon the bed my father died,\n    To lie close by his honest bones; but now\n    Some hangman must put on my shroud and lay me\n    Where no priest shovels in dust. [To PERDITA] O cursed wretch,\n    That knew\'st this was the Prince, and wouldst adventure\n    To mingle faith with him!- Undone, undone!\n    If I might die within this hour, I have liv\'d\n    To die when I desire.                                   Exit\n  FLORIZEL. Why look you so upon me?\n    I am but sorry, not afeard; delay\'d,\n    But nothing alt\'red. What I was, I am:\n    More straining on for plucking back; not following\n    My leash unwillingly.\n  CAMILLO. Gracious, my lord,\n    You know your father\'s temper. At this time  \n    He will allow no speech- which I do guess\n    You do not purpose to him- and as hardly\n    Will he endure your sight as yet, I fear;\n    Then, till the fury of his Highness settle,\n    Come not before him.\n  FLORIZEL. I not purpose it.\n    I think Camillo?\n  CAMILLO. Even he, my lord.\n  PERDITA. How often have I told you \'twould be thus!\n    How often said my dignity would last\n    But till \'twere known!\n  FLORIZEL. It cannot fail but by\n    The violation of my faith; and then\n    Let nature crush the sides o\' th\' earth together\n    And mar the seeds within! Lift up thy looks.\n    From my succession wipe me, father; I\n    Am heir to my affection.\n  CAMILLO. Be advis\'d.\n  FLORIZEL. I am- and by my fancy; if my reason\n    Will thereto be obedient, I have reason;  \n    If not, my senses, better pleas\'d with madness,\n    Do bid it welcome.\n  CAMILLO. This is desperate, sir.\n  FLORIZEL. So call it; but it does fulfil my vow:\n    I needs must think it honesty. Camillo,\n    Not for Bohemia, nor the pomp that may\n    Be thereat glean\'d, for all the sun sees or\n    The close earth wombs, or the profound seas hides\n    In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath\n    To this my fair belov\'d. Therefore, I pray you,\n    As you have ever been my father\'s honour\'d friend,\n    When he shall miss me- as, in faith, I mean not\n    To see him any more- cast your good counsels\n    Upon his passion. Let myself and Fortune\n    Tug for the time to come. This you may know,\n    And so deliver: I am put to sea\n    With her who here I cannot hold on shore.\n    And most opportune to her need I have\n    A vessel rides fast by, but not prepar\'d\n    For this design. What course I mean to hold  \n    Shall nothing benefit your knowledge, nor\n    Concern me the reporting.\n  CAMILLO. O my lord,\n    I would your spirit were easier for advice.\n    Or stronger for your need.\n  FLORIZEL. Hark, Perdita.                     [Takes her aside]\n    [To CAMILLO]  I\'ll hear you by and by.\n  CAMILLO. He\'s irremovable,\n    Resolv\'d for flight. Now were I happy if\n    His going I could frame to serve my turn,\n    Save him from danger, do him love and honour,\n    Purchase the sight again of dear Sicilia\n    And that unhappy king, my master, whom\n    I so much thirst to see.\n  FLORIZEL. Now, good Camillo,\n    I am so fraught with curious business that\n    I leave out ceremony.\n  CAMILLO. Sir, I think\n    You have heard of my poor services i\' th\' love\n    That I have borne your father?  \n  FLORIZEL. Very nobly\n    Have you deserv\'d. It is my father\'s music\n    To speak your deeds; not little of his care\n    To have them recompens\'d as thought on.\n  CAMILLO. Well, my lord,\n    If you may please to think I love the King,\n    And through him what\'s nearest to him, which is\n    Your gracious self, embrace but my direction.\n    If your more ponderous and settled project\n    May suffer alteration, on mine honour,\n    I\'ll point you where you shall have such receiving\n    As shall become your Highness; where you may\n    Enjoy your mistress, from the whom, I see,\n    There\'s no disjunction to be made but by,\n    As heavens forfend! your ruin- marry her;\n    And with my best endeavours in your absence\n    Your discontenting father strive to qualify,\n    And bring him up to liking.\n  FLORIZEL. How, Camillo,\n    May this, almost a miracle, be done?  \n    That I may call thee something more than man,\n    And after that trust to thee.\n  CAMILLO. Have you thought on\n    A place whereto you\'ll go?\n  FLORIZEL. Not any yet;\n    But as th\' unthought-on accident is guilty\n    To what we wildly do, so we profess\n    Ourselves to be the slaves of chance and flies\n    Of every wind that blows.\n  CAMILLO. Then list to me.\n    This follows, if you will not change your purpose\n    But undergo this flight: make for Sicilia,\n    And there present yourself and your fair princess-\n    For so, I see, she must be- fore Leontes.\n    She shall be habited as it becomes\n    The partner of your bed. Methinks I see\n    Leontes opening his free arms and weeping\n    His welcomes forth; asks thee there \'Son, forgiveness!\'\n    As \'twere i\' th\' father\'s person; kisses the hands\n    Of your fresh princess; o\'er and o\'er divides him  \n    \'Twixt his unkindness and his kindness- th\' one\n    He chides to hell, and bids the other grow\n    Faster than thought or time.\n  FLORIZEL. Worthy Camillo,\n    What colour for my visitation shall I\n    Hold up before him?\n  CAMILLO. Sent by the King your father\n    To greet him and to give him comforts. Sir,\n    The manner of your bearing towards him, with\n    What you as from your father shall deliver,\n    Things known betwixt us three, I\'ll write you down;\n    The which shall point you forth at every sitting\n    What you must say, that he shall not perceive\n    But that you have your father\'s bosom there\n    And speak his very heart.\n  FLORIZEL. I am bound to you.\n    There is some sap in this.\n  CAMILLO. A course more promising\n    Than a wild dedication of yourselves\n    To unpath\'d waters, undream\'d shores, most certain  \n    To miseries enough; no hope to help you,\n    But as you shake off one to take another;\n    Nothing so certain as your anchors, who\n    Do their best office if they can but stay you\n    Where you\'ll be loath to be. Besides, you know\n    Prosperity\'s the very bond of love,\n    Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together\n    Affliction alters.\n  PERDITA. One of these is true:\n    I think affliction may subdue the cheek,\n    But not take in the mind.\n  CAMILLO. Yea, say you so?\n    There shall not at your father\'s house these seven years\n    Be born another such.\n  FLORIZEL. My good Camillo,\n    She is as forward of her breeding as\n    She is i\' th\' rear o\' our birth.\n  CAMILLO. I cannot say \'tis pity\n    She lacks instructions, for she seems a mistress\n    To most that teach.  \n  PERDITA. Your pardon, sir; for this\n    I\'ll blush you thanks.\n  FLORIZEL. My prettiest Perdita!\n    But, O, the thorns we stand upon! Camillo-\n    Preserver of my father, now of me;\n    The medicine of our house- how shall we do?\n    We are not furnish\'d like Bohemia\'s son;\n    Nor shall appear in Sicilia.\n  CAMILLO. My lord,\n    Fear none of this. I think you know my fortunes\n    Do all lie there. It shall be so my care\n    To have you royally appointed as if\n    The scene you play were mine. For instance, sir,\n    That you may know you shall not want- one word.\n                                               [They talk aside]\n\n                     Re-enter AUTOLYCUS\n\n  AUTOLYCUS. Ha, ha! what a fool Honesty is! and Trust, his sworn\n    brother, a very simple gentleman! I have sold all my trumpery;  \n    not a counterfeit stone, not a ribbon, glass, pomander, brooch,\n    table-book, ballad, knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet,\n    horn-ring, to keep my pack from fasting. They throng who should\n    buy first, as if my trinkets had been hallowed and brought a\n    benediction to the buyer; by which means I saw whose purse was\n    best in picture; and what I saw, to my good use I rememb\'red. My\n    clown, who wants but something to be a reasonable man, grew so in\n    love with the wenches\' song that he would not stir his pettitoes\n    till he had both tune and words, which so drew the rest of the\n    herd to me that all their other senses stuck in ears. You might\n    have pinch\'d a placket, it was senseless; \'twas nothing to geld a\n    codpiece of a purse; I would have fil\'d keys off that hung in\n    chains. No hearing, no feeling, but my sir\'s song, and admiring\n    the nothing of it. So that in this time of lethargy I pick\'d and\n    cut most of their festival purses; and had not the old man come\n    in with whoobub against his daughter and the King\'s son and\n    scar\'d my choughs from the chaff, I had not left a purse alive in\n    the whole army.\n\n              CAMILLO, FLORIZEL, and PERDITA come forward  \n\n  CAMILLO. Nay, but my letters, by this means being there\n    So soon as you arrive, shall clear that doubt.\n  FLORIZEL. And those that you\'ll procure from King Leontes?\n  CAMILLO. Shall satisfy your father.\n  PERDITA. Happy be you!\n    All that you speak shows fair.\n  CAMILLO.  [seeing AUTOLYCUS]  Who have we here?\n    We\'ll make an instrument of this; omit\n    Nothing may give us aid.\n  AUTOLYCUS.  [Aside]  If they have overheard me now- why, hanging.\n  CAMILLO. How now, good fellow! Why shak\'st thou so?\n    Fear not, man; here\'s no harm intended to thee.\n  AUTOLYCUS. I am a poor fellow, sir.\n  CAMILLO. Why, be so still; here\'s nobody will steal that from thee.\n    Yet for the outside of thy poverty we must make an exchange;\n    therefore discase thee instantly- thou must think there\'s a\n    necessity in\'t- and change garments with this gentleman. Though\n    the pennyworth on his side be the worst, yet hold thee, there\'s\n    some boot.  [Giving money]  \n  AUTOLYCUS. I am a poor fellow, sir.  [Aside]  I know ye well\n    enough.\n  CAMILLO. Nay, prithee dispatch. The gentleman is half flay\'d\n    already.\n  AUTOLYCUS. Are you in camest, sir?  [Aside]  I smell the trick\n    on\'t.\n  FLORIZEL. Dispatch, I prithee.\n  AUTOLYCUS. Indeed, I have had earnest; but I cannot with conscience\n    take it.\n  CAMILLO. Unbuckle, unbuckle.\n\n             FLORIZEL and AUTOLYCUS exchange garments\n\n    Fortunate mistress- let my prophecy\n    Come home to ye!- you must retire yourself\n    Into some covert; take your sweetheart\'s hat\n    And pluck it o\'er your brows, muffle your face,\n    Dismantle you, and, as you can, disliken\n    The truth of your own seeming, that you may-\n    For I do fear eyes over- to shipboard  \n    Get undescried.\n  PERDITA. I see the play so lies\n    That I must bear a part.\n  CAMILLO. No remedy.\n    Have you done there?\n  FLORIZEL. Should I now meet my father,\n    He would not call me son.\n  CAMILLO. Nay, you shall have no hat.\n                                          [Giving it to PERDITA]\n    Come, lady, come. Farewell, my friend.\n  AUTOLYCUS. Adieu, sir.\n  FLORIZEL. O Perdita, what have we twain forgot!\n    Pray you a word.                       [They converse apart]\n  CAMILLO.  [Aside]  What I do next shall be to tell the King\n    Of this escape, and whither they are bound;\n    Wherein my hope is I shall so prevail\n    To force him after; in whose company\n    I shall re-view Sicilia, for whose sight\n    I have a woman\'s longing.\n  FLORIZEL. Fortune speed us!  \n    Thus we set on, Camillo, to th\' sea-side.\n  CAMILLO. The swifter speed the better.\n                           Exeunt FLORIZEL, PERDITA, and CAMILLO\n  AUTOLYCUS. I understand the business, I hear it. To have an open\n    ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is necessary for a\n    cut-purse; a good nose is requisite also, to smell out work for\n    th\' other senses. I see this is the time that the unjust man doth\n    thrive. What an exchange had this been without boot! What a boot\n    is here with this exchange! Sure, the gods do this year connive\n    at us, and we may do anything extempore. The Prince himself is\n    about a piece of iniquity- stealing away from his father with his\n    clog at his heels. If I thought it were a piece of honesty to\n    acquaint the King withal, I would not do\'t. I hold it the more\n    knavery to conceal it; and therein am I constant to my\n    profession.\n\n                   Re-enter CLOWN and SHEPHERD\n\n    Aside, aside- here is more matter for a hot brain. Every lane\'s\n    end, every shop, church, session, hanging, yields a careful man  \n    work.\n  CLOWN. See, see; what a man you are now! There is no other way but\n    to tell the King she\'s a changeling and none of your flesh and\n    blood.\n  SHEPHERD. Nay, but hear me.\n  CLOWN. Nay- but hear me.\n  SHEPHERD. Go to, then.\n  CLOWN. She being none of your flesh and blood, your flesh and blood\n    has not offended the King; and so your flesh and blood is not to\n    be punish\'d by him. Show those things you found about her, those\n    secret things- all but what she has with her. This being done,\n    let the law go whistle; I warrant you.\n  SHEPHERD. I will tell the King all, every word- yea, and his son\'s\n    pranks too; who, I may say, is no honest man, neither to his\n    father nor to me, to go about to make me the King\'s\n    brother-in-law.\n  CLOWN. Indeed, brother-in-law was the farthest off you could have\n    been to him; and then your blood had been the dearer by I know\n    how much an ounce.\n  AUTOLYCUS.  [Aside]  Very wisely, puppies!  \n  SHEPHERD. Well, let us to the King. There is that in this fardel\n    will make him scratch his beard.\n  AUTOLYCUS.  [Aside]  I know not what impediment this complaint may\n    be to the flight of my master.\n  CLOWN. Pray heartily he be at palace.\n  AUTOLYCUS.  [Aside]  Though I am not naturally honest, I am so\n    sometimes by chance. Let me pocket up my pedlar\'s excrement.\n    [Takes off his false beard]  How now, rustics! Whither are you\n    bound?\n  SHEPHERD. To th\' palace, an it like your worship.\n  AUTOLYCUS. Your affairs there, what, with whom, the condition of\n    that fardel, the place of your dwelling, your names, your ages,\n    of what having, breeding, and anything that is fitting to be\n    known- discover.\n  CLOWN. We are but plain fellows, sir.\n  AUTOLYCUS. A lie: you are rough and hairy. Let me have no lying; it\n    becomes none but tradesmen, and they often give us soldiers the\n    lie; but we pay them for it with stamped coin, not stabbing\n    steel; therefore they do not give us the lie.\n  CLOWN. Your worship had like to have given us one, if you had not  \n    taken yourself with the manner.\n  SHEPHERD. Are you a courtier, an\'t like you, sir?\n  AUTOLYCUS. Whether it like me or no, I am a courtier. Seest thou\n    not the air of the court in these enfoldings? Hath not my gait in\n    it the measure of the court? Receives not thy nose court-odour\n    from me? Reflect I not on thy baseness court-contempt? Think\'st\n    thou, for that I insinuate, that toaze from thee thy business, I\n    am therefore no courtier? I am courtier cap-a-pe, and one that\n    will either push on or pluck back thy business there; whereupon I\n    command the to open thy affair.\n  SHEPHERD. My business, sir, is to the King.\n  AUTOLYCUS. What advocate hast thou to him?\n  SHEPHERD. I know not, an\'t like you.\n  CLOWN. Advocate\'s the court-word for a pheasant; say you have none.\n  SHEPHERD. None, sir; I have no pheasant, cock nor hen.\n  AUTOLYCUS. How blessed are we that are not simple men!\n    Yet nature might have made me as these are,\n    Therefore I will not disdain.\n  CLOWN. This cannot be but a great courtier.\n  SHEPHERD. His garments are rich, but he wears them not handsomely.  \n  CLOWN. He seems to be the more noble in being fantastical.\n    A great man, I\'ll warrant; I know by the picking on\'s teeth.\n  AUTOLYCUS. The fardel there? What\'s i\' th\' fardel? Wherefore that\n    box?\n  SHEPHERD. Sir, there lies such secrets in this fardel and box which\n    none must know but the King; and which he shall know within this\n    hour, if I may come to th\' speech of him.\n  AUTOLYCUS. Age, thou hast lost thy labour.\n  SHEPHERD. Why, Sir?\n  AUTOLYCUS. The King is not at the palace; he is gone aboard a new\n    ship to purge melancholy and air himself; for, if thou be\'st\n    capable of things serious, thou must know the King is full of\n    grief.\n  SHEPHERD. So \'tis said, sir- about his son, that should have\n    married a shepherd\'s daughter.\n  AUTOLYCUS. If that shepherd be not in hand-fast, let him fly; the\n    curses he shall have, the tortures he shall feel, will break the\n    back of man, the heart of monster.\n  CLOWN. Think you so, sir?\n  AUTOLYCUS. Not he alone shall suffer what wit can make heavy and  \n    vengeance bitter; but those that are germane to him, though\n    remov\'d fifty times, shall all come under the hangman- which,\n    though it be great pity, yet it is necessary. An old\n    sheep-whistling rogue, a ram-tender, to offer to have his\n    daughter come into grace! Some say he shall be ston\'d; but that\n    death is too soft for him, say I. Draw our throne into a\n    sheep-cote!- all deaths are too few, the sharpest too easy.\n  CLOWN. Has the old man e\'er a son, sir, do you hear, an\'t like you,\n    sir?\n  AUTOLYCUS. He has a son- who shall be flay\'d alive; then \'nointed\n    over with honey, set on the head of a wasp\'s nest; then stand\n    till he be three quarters and a dram dead; then recover\'d again\n    with aqua-vitae or some other hot infusion; then, raw as he is,\n    and in the hottest day prognostication proclaims, shall he be set\n    against a brick wall, the sun looking with a southward eye upon\n    him, where he is to behold him with flies blown to death. But\n    what talk we of these traitorly rascals, whose miseries are to be\n    smil\'d at, their offences being so capital? Tell me, for you seem\n    to be honest plain men, what you have to the King. Being\n    something gently consider\'d, I\'ll bring you where he is aboard,  \n    tender your persons to his presence, whisper him in your behalfs;\n    and if it be in man besides the King to effect your suits, here\n    is man shall do it.\n  CLOWN. He seems to be of great authority. Close with him, give him\n    gold; and though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft led\n    by the nose with gold. Show the inside of your purse to the\n    outside of his hand, and no more ado. Remember- ston\'d and flay\'d\n    alive.\n  SHEPHERD. An\'t please you, sir, to undertake the business for us,\n    here is that gold I have. I\'ll make it as much more, and leave\n    this young man in pawn till I bring it you.\n  AUTOLYCUS. After I have done what I promised?\n  SHEPHERD. Ay, sir.\n  AUTOLYCUS. Well, give me the moiety. Are you a party in this\n    business?\n  CLOWN. In some sort, sir; but though my case be a pitiful one, I\n    hope I shall not be flay\'d out of it.\n  AUTOLYCUS. O, that\'s the case of the shepherd\'s son! Hang him,\n    he\'ll be made an example.\n  CLOWN. Comfort, good comfort! We must to the King and show our  \n    strange sights. He must know \'tis none of your daughter nor my\n    sister; we are gone else. Sir, I will give you as much as this\n    old man does, when the business is performed; and remain, as he\n    says, your pawn till it be brought you.\n  AUTOLYCUS. I will trust you. Walk before toward the sea-side; go on\n    the right-hand; I will but look upon the hedge, and follow you.\n  CLOWN. We are blest in this man, as I may say, even blest.\n  SHEPHERD. Let\'s before, as he bids us. He was provided to do us\n    good.                              Exeunt SHEPHERD and CLOWN\n  AUTOLYCUS. If I had a mind to be honest, I see Fortune would not\n    suffer me: she drops booties in my mouth. I am courted now with a\n    double occasion- gold, and a means to do the Prince my master\n    good; which who knows how that may turn back to my advancement? I\n    will bring these two moles, these blind ones, aboard him. If he\n    think it fit to shore them again, and that the complaint they\n    have to the King concerns him nothing, let him call me rogue for\n    being so far officious; for I am proof against that title, and\n    what shame else belongs to\'t. To him will I present them. There\n    may be matter in it.                                    Exit\n\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nACT V. SCENE I.\nSicilia. The palace of LEONTES\n\nEnter LEONTES, CLEOMENES, DION, PAULINA, and OTHERS\n\n  CLEOMENES. Sir, you have done enough, and have perform\'d\n    A saint-like sorrow. No fault could you make\n    Which you have not redeem\'d; indeed, paid down\n    More penitence than done trespass. At the last,\n    Do as the heavens have done: forget your evil;\n    With them forgive yourself.\n  LEONTES. Whilst I remember\n    Her and her virtues, I cannot forget\n    My blemishes in them, and so still think of\n    The wrong I did myself; which was so much\n    That heirless it hath made my kingdom, and\n    Destroy\'d the sweet\'st companion that e\'er man\n    Bred his hopes out of.\n  PAULINA. True, too true, my lord.\n    If, one by one, you wedded all the world,\n    Or from the all that are took something good\n    To make a perfect woman, she you kill\'d  \n    Would be unparallel\'d.\n  LEONTES. I think so. Kill\'d!\n    She I kill\'d! I did so; but thou strik\'st me\n    Sorely, to say I did. It is as bitter\n    Upon thy tongue as in my thought. Now, good now,\n    Say so but seldom.\n  CLEOMENES. Not at all, good lady.\n    You might have spoken a thousand things that would\n    Have done the time more benefit, and grac\'d\n    Your kindness better.\n  PAULINA. You are one of those\n    Would have him wed again.\n  DION. If you would not so,\n    You pity not the state, nor the remembrance\n    Of his most sovereign name; consider little\n    What dangers, by his Highness\' fail of issue,\n    May drop upon his kingdom and devour\n    Incertain lookers-on. What were more holy\n    Than to rejoice the former queen is well?\n    What holier than, for royalty\'s repair,  \n    For present comfort, and for future good,\n    To bless the bed of majesty again\n    With a sweet fellow to\'t?\n  PAULINA. There is none worthy,\n    Respecting her that\'s gone. Besides, the gods\n    Will have fulfill\'d their secret purposes;\n    For has not the divine Apollo said,\n    Is\'t not the tenour of his oracle,\n    That King Leontes shall not have an heir\n    Till his lost child be found? Which that it shall,\n    Is all as monstrous to our human reason\n    As my Antigonus to break his grave\n    And come again to me; who, on my life,\n    Did perish with the infant. \'Tis your counsel\n    My lord should to the heavens be contrary,\n    Oppose against their wills.  [To LEONTES]  Care not for issue;\n    The crown will find an heir. Great Alexander\n    Left his to th\' worthiest; so his successor\n    Was like to be the best.\n  LEONTES. Good Paulina,  \n    Who hast the memory of Hermione,\n    I know, in honour, O that ever I\n    Had squar\'d me to thy counsel! Then, even now,\n    I might have look\'d upon my queen\'s full eyes,\n    Have taken treasure from her lips-\n  PAULINA. And left them\n    More rich for what they yielded.\n  LEONTES. Thou speak\'st truth.\n    No more such wives; therefore, no wife. One worse,\n    And better us\'d, would make her sainted spirit\n    Again possess her corpse, and on this stage,\n    Where we offend her now, appear soul-vex\'d,\n    And begin \'Why to me\'-\n  PAULINA. Had she such power,\n    She had just cause.\n  LEONTES. She had; and would incense me\n    To murder her I married.\n  PAULINA. I should so.\n    Were I the ghost that walk\'d, I\'d bid you mark\n    Her eye, and tell me for what dull part in\'t  \n    You chose her; then I\'d shriek, that even your ears\n    Should rift to hear me; and the words that follow\'d\n    Should be \'Remember mine.\'\n  LEONTES. Stars, stars,\n    And all eyes else dead coals! Fear thou no wife;\n    I\'ll have no wife, Paulina.\n  PAULINA. Will you swear\n    Never to marry but by my free leave?\n  LEONTES. Never, Paulina; so be blest my spirit!\n  PAULINA. Then, good my lords, bear witness to his oath.\n  CLEOMENES. You tempt him over-much.\n  PAULINA. Unless another,\n    As like Hermione as is her picture,\n    Affront his eye.\n  CLEOMENES. Good madam-\n  PAULINA. I have done.\n    Yet, if my lord will marry- if you will, sir,\n    No remedy but you will- give me the office\n    To choose you a queen. She shall not be so young\n    As was your former; but she shall be such  \n    As, walk\'d your first queen\'s ghost, it should take joy\n    To see her in your arms.\n  LEONTES. My true Paulina,\n    We shall not marry till thou bid\'st us.\n  PAULINA. That\n    Shall be when your first queen\'s again in breath;\n    Never till then.\n\n                       Enter a GENTLEMAN\n\n  GENTLEMAN. One that gives out himself Prince Florizel,\n    Son of Polixenes, with his princess- she\n    The fairest I have yet beheld- desires access\n    To your high presence.\n  LEONTES. What with him? He comes not\n    Like to his father\'s greatness. His approach,\n    So out of circumstance and sudden, tells us\n    \'Tis not a visitation fram\'d, but forc\'d\n    By need and accident. What train?\n  GENTLEMAN. But few,  \n    And those but mean.\n  LEONTES. His princess, say you, with him?\n  GENTLEMAN. Ay; the most peerless piece of earth, I think,\n    That e\'er the sun shone bright on.\n  PAULINA. O Hermione,\n    As every present time doth boast itself\n    Above a better gone, so must thy grave\n    Give way to what\'s seen now! Sir, you yourself\n    Have said and writ so, but your writing now\n    Is colder than that theme: \'She had not been,\n    Nor was not to be equall\'d.\' Thus your verse\n    Flow\'d with her beauty once; \'tis shrewdly ebb\'d,\n    To say you have seen a better.\n  GENTLEMAN. Pardon, madam.\n    The one I have almost forgot- your pardon;\n    The other, when she has obtain\'d your eye,\n    Will have your tongue too. This is a creature,\n    Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal\n    Of all professors else, make proselytes\n    Of who she but bid follow.  \n  PAULINA. How! not women?\n  GENTLEMAN. Women will love her that she is a woman\n    More worth than any man; men, that she is\n    The rarest of all women.\n  LEONTES. Go, Cleomenes;\n    Yourself, assisted with your honour\'d friends,\n    Bring them to our embracement.                        Exeunt\n    Still, \'tis strange\n    He thus should steal upon us.\n  PAULINA. Had our prince,\n    Jewel of children, seen this hour, he had pair\'d\n    Well with this lord; there was not full a month\n    Between their births.\n  LEONTES. Prithee no more; cease. Thou know\'st\n    He dies to me again when talk\'d of. Sure,\n    When I shall see this gentleman, thy speeches\n    Will bring me to consider that which may\n    Unfurnish me of reason.\n\n         Re-enter CLEOMENES, with FLORIZEL, PERDITA, and  \n                            ATTENDANTS\n\n    They are come.\n    Your mother was most true to wedlock, Prince;\n    For she did print your royal father off,\n    Conceiving you. Were I but twenty-one,\n    Your father\'s image is so hit in you\n    His very air, that I should call you brother,\n    As I did him, and speak of something wildly\n    By us perform\'d before. Most dearly welcome!\n    And your fair princess- goddess! O, alas!\n    I lost a couple that \'twixt heaven and earth\n    Might thus have stood begetting wonder as\n    You, gracious couple, do. And then I lost-\n    All mine own folly- the society,\n    Amity too, of your brave father, whom,\n    Though bearing misery, I desire my life\n    Once more to look on him.\n  FLORIZEL. By his command\n    Have I here touch\'d Sicilia, and from him  \n    Give you all greetings that a king, at friend,\n    Can send his brother; and, but infirmity,\n    Which waits upon worn times, hath something seiz\'d\n    His wish\'d ability, he had himself\n    The lands and waters \'twixt your throne and his\n    Measur\'d, to look upon you; whom he loves,\n    He bade me say so, more than all the sceptres\n    And those that bear them living.\n  LEONTES. O my brother-\n    Good gentleman!- the wrongs I have done thee stir\n    Afresh within me; and these thy offices,\n    So rarely kind, are as interpreters\n    Of my behind-hand slackness! Welcome hither,\n    As is the spring to th\' earth. And hath he too\n    Expos\'d this paragon to th\' fearful usage,\n    At least ungentle, of the dreadful Neptune,\n    To greet a man not worth her pains, much less\n    Th\' adventure of her person?\n  FLORIZEL. Good, my lord,\n    She came from Libya.  \n  LEONTES. Where the warlike Smalus,\n    That noble honour\'d lord, is fear\'d and lov\'d?\n  FLORIZEL. Most royal sir, from thence; from him whose daughter\n    His tears proclaim\'d his, parting with her; thence,\n    A prosperous south-wind friendly, we have cross\'d,\n    To execute the charge my father gave me\n    For visiting your Highness. My best train\n    I have from your Sicilian shores dismiss\'d;\n    Who for Bohemia bend, to signify\n    Not only my success in Libya, sir,\n    But my arrival and my wife\'s in safety\n    Here where we are.\n  LEONTES. The blessed gods\n    Purge all infection from our air whilst you\n    Do climate here! You have a holy father,\n    A graceful gentleman, against whose person,\n    So sacred as it is, I have done sin,\n    For which the heavens, taking angry note,\n    Have left me issueless; and your father\'s blest,\n    As he from heaven merits it, with you,  \n    Worthy his goodness. What might I have been,\n    Might I a son and daughter now have look\'d on,\n    Such goodly things as you!\n\n                      Enter a LORD\n\n  LORD. Most noble sir,\n    That which I shall report will bear no credit,\n    Were not the proof so nigh. Please you, great sir,\n    Bohemia greets you from himself by me;\n    Desires you to attach his son, who has-\n    His dignity and duty both cast off-\n    Fled from his father, from his hopes, and with\n    A shepherd\'s daughter.\n  LEONTES. Where\'s Bohemia? Speak.\n  LORD. Here in your city; I now came from him.\n    I speak amazedly; and it becomes\n    My marvel and my message. To your court\n    Whiles he was hast\'ning- in the chase, it seems,\n    Of this fair couple- meets he on the way  \n    The father of this seeming lady and\n    Her brother, having both their country quitted\n    With this young prince.\n  FLORIZEL. Camillo has betray\'d me;\n    Whose honour and whose honesty till now\n    Endur\'d all weathers.\n  LORD. Lay\'t so to his charge;\n    He\'s with the King your father.\n  LEONTES. Who? Camillo?\n  LORD. Camillo, sir; I spake with him; who now\n    Has these poor men in question. Never saw I\n    Wretches so quake. They kneel, they kiss the earth;\n    Forswear themselves as often as they speak.\n    Bohemia stops his ears, and threatens them\n    With divers deaths in death.\n  PERDITA. O my poor father!\n    The heaven sets spies upon us, will not have\n    Our contract celebrated.\n  LEONTES. You are married?\n  FLORIZEL. We are not, sir, nor are we like to be;  \n    The stars, I see, will kiss the valleys first.\n    The odds for high and low\'s alike.\n  LEONTES. My lord,\n    Is this the daughter of a king?\n  FLORIZEL. She is,\n    When once she is my wife.\n  LEONTES. That \'once,\' I see by your good father\'s speed,\n    Will come on very slowly. I am sorry,\n    Most sorry, you have broken from his liking\n    Where you were tied in duty; and as sorry\n    Your choice is not so rich in worth as beauty,\n    That you might well enjoy her.\n  FLORIZEL. Dear, look up.\n    Though Fortune, visible an enemy,\n    Should chase us with my father, pow\'r no jot\n    Hath she to change our loves. Beseech you, sir,\n    Remember since you ow\'d no more to time\n    Than I do now. With thought of such affections,\n    Step forth mine advocate; at your request\n    My father will grant precious things as trifles.  \n  LEONTES. Would he do so, I\'d beg your precious mistress,\n    Which he counts but a trifle.\n  PAULINA. Sir, my liege,\n    Your eye hath too much youth in\'t. Not a month\n    Fore your queen died, she was more worth such gazes\n    Than what you look on now.\n  LEONTES. I thought of her\n    Even in these looks I made.  [To FLORIZEL]  But your petition\n    Is yet unanswer\'d. I will to your father.\n    Your honour not o\'erthrown by your desires,\n    I am friend to them and you. Upon which errand\n    I now go toward him; therefore, follow me,\n    And mark what way I make. Come, good my lord.         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE II.\nSicilia. Before the palace of LEONTES\n\nEnter AUTOLYCUS and a GENTLEMAN\n\n  AUTOLYCUS. Beseech you, sir, were you present at this relation?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. I was by at the opening of the fardel, heard the\n    old shepherd deliver the manner how he found it; whereupon, after\n    a little amazedness, we were all commanded out of the chamber;\n    only this, methought I heard the shepherd say he found the child.\n  AUTOLYCUS. I would most gladly know the issue of it.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. I make a broken delivery of the business; but the\n    changes I perceived in the King and Camillo were very notes of\n    admiration. They seem\'d almost, with staring on one another, to\n    tear the cases of their eyes; there was speech in their dumbness,\n    language in their very gesture; they look\'d as they had heard of\n    a world ransom\'d, or one destroyed. A notable passion of wonder\n    appeared in them; but the wisest beholder that knew no more but\n    seeing could not say if th\' importance were joy or sorrow- but in\n    the extremity of the one it must needs be.\n\n                    Enter another GENTLEMAN  \n\n    Here comes a gentleman that happily knows more. The news, Rogero?\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. Nothing but bonfires. The oracle is fulfill\'d:\n    the King\'s daughter is found. Such a deal of wonder is broken out\n    within this hour that ballad-makers cannot be able to express it.\n\n                    Enter another GENTLEMAN\n\n    Here comes the Lady Paulina\'s steward; he can deliver you more.\n    How goes it now, sir? This news, which is call\'d true, is so like\n    an old tale that the verity of it is in strong suspicion. Has the\n    King found his heir?\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. Most true, if ever truth were pregnant by\n    circumstance. That which you hear you\'ll swear you see, there is\n    such unity in the proofs. The mantle of Queen Hermione\'s; her\n    jewel about the neck of it; the letters of Antigonus found with\n    it, which they know to be his character; the majesty of the\n    creature in resemblance of the mother; the affection of nobleness\n    which nature shows above her breeding; and many other evidences-\n    proclaim her with all certainty to be the King\'s daughter. Did  \n    you see the meeting of the two kings?\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. No.\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. Then you have lost a sight which was to be seen,\n    cannot be spoken of. There might you have beheld one joy crown\n    another, so and in such manner that it seem\'d sorrow wept to take\n    leave of them; for their joy waded in tears. There was casting up\n    of eyes, holding up of hands, with countenance of such\n    distraction that they were to be known by garment, not by favour.\n    Our king, being ready to leap out of himself for joy of his found\n    daughter, as if that joy were now become a loss, cries \'O, thy\n    mother, thy mother!\' then asks Bohemia forgiveness; then embraces\n    his son-in-law; then again worries he his daughter with clipping\n    her. Now he thanks the old shepherd, which stands by like a\n    weather-bitten conduit of many kings\' reigns. I never heard of\n    such another encounter, which lames report to follow it and\n    undoes description to do it.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. What, pray you, became of Antigonus, that carried\n    hence the child?\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. Like an old tale still, which will have matter to\n    rehearse, though credit be asleep and not an ear open: he was  \n    torn to pieces with a bear. This avouches the shepherd\'s son, who\n    has not only his innocence, which seems much, to justify him, but\n    a handkerchief and rings of his that Paulina knows.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. What became of his bark and his followers?\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. Wreck\'d the same instant of their master\'s death,\n    and in the view of the shepherd; so that all the instruments\n    which aided to expose the child were even then lost when it was\n    found. But, O, the noble combat that \'twixt joy and sorrow was\n    fought in Paulina! She had one eye declin\'d for the loss of her\n    husband, another elevated that the oracle was fulfill\'d. She\n    lifted the Princess from the earth, and so locks her in embracing\n    as if she would pin her to her heart, that she might no more be\n    in danger of losing.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. The dignity of this act was worth the audience of\n    kings and princes; for by such was it acted.\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. One of the prettiest touches of all, and that\n    which angl\'d for mine eyes- caught the water, though not the\n    fish- was, when at the relation of the Queen\'s death, with the\n    manner how she came to\'t bravely confess\'d and lamented by the\n    King, how attentivenes wounded his daughter; till, from one sign  \n    of dolour to another, she did with an \'Alas!\'- I would fain say-\n    bleed tears; for I am sure my heart wept blood. Who was most\n    marble there changed colour; some swooned, all sorrowed. If all\n    the world could have seen\'t, the woe had been universal.\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Are they returned to the court?\n  THIRD GENTLEMAN. No. The Princess hearing of her mother\'s statue,\n    which is in the keeping of Paulina- a piece many years in doing\n    and now newly perform\'d by that rare Italian master, Julio\n    Romano, who, had he himself eternity and could put breath into\n    his work, would beguile nature of her custom, so perfectly he is\n    her ape. He so near to Hermione hath done Hermione that they say\n    one would speak to her and stand in hope of answer- thither with\n    all greediness of affection are they gone, and there they intend\n    to sup.\n  SECOND GENTLEMAN. I thought she had some great matter there in\n    hand; for she hath privately twice or thrice a day, ever since\n    the death of Hermione, visited that removed house. Shall we\n    thither, and with our company piece the rejoicing?\n  FIRST GENTLEMAN. Who would be thence that has the benefit of\n    access? Every wink of an eye some new grace will be born. Our  \n    absence makes us unthrifty to our knowledge. Let\'s along.\n                                                Exeunt GENTLEMEN\n  AUTOLYCUS. Now, had I not the dash of my former life in me, would\n    preferment drop on my head. I brought the old man and his son\n    aboard the Prince; told him I heard them talk of a fardel and I\n    know not what; but he at that time over-fond of the shepherd\'s\n    daughter- so he then took her to be- who began to be much\n    sea-sick, and himself little better, extremity of weather\n    continuing, this mystery remained undiscover\'d. But \'tis all one\n    to me; for had I been the finder-out of this secret, it would not\n    have relish\'d among my other discredits.\n\n                    Enter SHEPHERD and CLOWN\n\n    Here come those I have done good to against my will, and already\n    appearing in the blossoms of their fortune.\n  SHEPHERD. Come, boy; I am past moe children, but thy sons and\n    daughters will be all gentlemen born.\n  CLOWN. You are well met, sir. You denied to fight with me this\n    other day, because I was no gentleman born. See you these  \n    clothes? Say you see them not and think me still no gentleman\n    born. You were best say these robes are not gentlemen born. Give\n    me the lie, do; and try whether I am not now a gentleman born.\n  AUTOLYCUS. I know you are now, sir, a gentleman born.\n  CLOWN. Ay, and have been so any time these four hours.\n  SHEPHERD. And so have I, boy.\n  CLOWN. So you have; but I was a gentleman born before my father;\n    for the King\'s son took me by the hand and call\'d me brother; and\n    then the two kings call\'d my father brother; and then the Prince,\n    my brother, and the Princess, my sister, call\'d my father father.\n    And so we wept; and there was the first gentleman-like tears that\n    ever we shed.\n  SHEPHERD. We may live, son, to shed many more.\n  CLOWN. Ay; or else \'twere hard luck, being in so preposterous\n    estate as we are.\n  AUTOLYCUS. I humbly beseech you, sir, to pardon me all the faults I\n    have committed to your worship, and to give me your good report\n    to the Prince my master.\n  SHEPHERD. Prithee, son, do; for we must be gentle, now we are\n    gentlemen.  \n  CLOWN. Thou wilt amend thy life?\n  AUTOLYCUS. Ay, an it like your good worship.\n  CLOWN. Give me thy hand. I will swear to the Prince thou art as\n    honest a true fellow as any is in Bohemia.\n  SHEPHERD. You may say it, but not swear it.\n  CLOWN. Not swear it, now I am a gentleman? Let boors and franklins\n    say it: I\'ll swear it.\n  SHEPHERD. How if it be false, son?\n  CLOWN. If it be ne\'er so false, a true gentleman may swear it in\n    the behalf of his friend. And I\'ll swear to the Prince thou art a\n    tall fellow of thy hands and that thou wilt not be drunk; but I\n    know thou art no tall fellow of thy hands and that thou wilt be\n    drunk. But I\'ll swear it; and I would thou wouldst be a tall\n    fellow of thy hands.\n  AUTOLYCUS. I will prove so, sir, to my power.\n  CLOWN. Ay, by any means, prove a tall fellow. If I do not wonder\n    how thou dar\'st venture to be drunk not being a tall fellow,\n    trust me not. Hark! the kings and the princes, our kindred, are\n    going to see the Queen\'s picture. Come, follow us; we\'ll be thy\n    good masters.                                         Exeunt\n\n\n\n\nSCENE III.\nSicilia. A chapel in PAULINA\'s house\n\nEnter LEONTES, POLIXENES, FLORIZEL, PERDITA, CAMILLO, PAULINA,\nLORDS and ATTENDANTS\n\n  LEONTES. O grave and good Paulina, the great comfort\n    That I have had of thee!\n  PAULINA. What, sovereign sir,\n    I did not well, I meant well. All my services\n    You have paid home; but that you have vouchsaf\'d,\n    With your crown\'d brother and these your contracted\n    Heirs of your kingdoms, my poor house to visit,\n    It is a surplus of your grace, which never\n    My life may last to answer.\n  LEONTES. O Paulina,\n    We honour you with trouble; but we came\n    To see the statue of our queen. Your gallery\n    Have we pass\'d through, not without much content\n    In many singularities; but we saw not\n    That which my daughter came to look upon,\n    The statue of her mother.  \n  PAULINA. As she liv\'d peerless,\n    So her dead likeness, I do well believe,\n    Excels whatever yet you look\'d upon\n    Or hand of man hath done; therefore I keep it\n    Lonely, apart. But here it is. Prepare\n    To see the life as lively mock\'d as ever\n    Still sleep mock\'d death. Behold; and say \'tis well.\n                [PAULINA draws a curtain, and discovers HERMIONE\n                                         standing like a statue]\n    I like your silence; it the more shows off\n    Your wonder; but yet speak. First, you, my liege.\n    Comes it not something near?\n  LEONTES. Her natural posture!\n    Chide me, dear stone, that I may say indeed\n    Thou art Hermione; or rather, thou art she\n    In thy not chiding; for she was as tender\n    As infancy and grace. But yet, Paulina,\n    Hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing\n    So aged as this seems.\n  POLIXENES. O, not by much!  \n  PAULINA. So much the more our carver\'s excellence,\n    Which lets go by some sixteen years and makes her\n    As she liv\'d now.\n  LEONTES. As now she might have done,\n    So much to my good comfort as it is\n    Now piercing to my soul. O, thus she stood,\n    Even with such life of majesty- warm life,\n    As now it coldly stands- when first I woo\'d her!\n    I am asham\'d. Does not the stone rebuke me\n    For being more stone than it? O royal piece,\n    There\'s magic in thy majesty, which has\n    My evils conjur\'d to remembrance, and\n    From thy admiring daughter took the spirits,\n    Standing like stone with thee!\n  PERDITA. And give me leave,\n    And do not say \'tis superstition that\n    I kneel, and then implore her blessing. Lady,\n    Dear queen, that ended when I but began,\n    Give me that hand of yours to kiss.\n  PAULINA. O, patience!  \n    The statue is but newly fix\'d, the colour\'s\n    Not dry.\n  CAMILLO. My lord, your sorrow was too sore laid on,\n    Which sixteen winters cannot blow away,\n    So many summers dry. Scarce any joy\n    Did ever so long live; no sorrow\n    But kill\'d itself much sooner.\n  POLIXENES. Dear my brother,\n    Let him that was the cause of this have pow\'r\n    To take off so much grief from you as he\n    Will piece up in himself.\n  PAULINA. Indeed, my lord,\n    If I had thought the sight of my poor image\n    Would thus have wrought you- for the stone is mine-\n    I\'d not have show\'d it.\n  LEONTES. Do not draw the curtain.\n  PAULINA. No longer shall you gaze on\'t, lest your fancy\n    May think anon it moves.\n  LEONTES. Let be, let be.\n    Would I were dead, but that methinks already-  \n    What was he that did make it? See, my lord,\n    Would you not deem it breath\'d, and that those veins\n    Did verily bear blood?\n  POLIXENES. Masterly done!\n    The very life seems warm upon her lip.\n  LEONTES. The fixture of her eye has motion in\'t,\n    As we are mock\'d with art.\n  PAULINA. I\'ll draw the curtain.\n    My lord\'s almost so far transported that\n    He\'ll think anon it lives.\n  LEONTES. O sweet Paulina,\n    Make me to think so twenty years together!\n    No settled senses of the world can match\n    The pleasure of that madness. Let \'t alone.\n  PAULINA. I am sorry, sir, I have thus far stirr\'d you; but\n    I could afflict you farther.\n  LEONTES. Do, Paulina;\n    For this affliction has a taste as sweet\n    As any cordial comfort. Still, methinks,\n    There is an air comes from her. What fine chisel  \n    Could ever yet cut breath? Let no man mock me,\n    For I will kiss her.\n  PAULINA. Good my lord, forbear.\n    The ruddiness upon her lip is wet;\n    You\'ll mar it if you kiss it; stain your own\n    With oily painting. Shall I draw the curtain?\n  LEONTES. No, not these twenty years.\n  PERDITA. So long could I\n    Stand by, a looker-on.\n  PAULINA. Either forbear,\n    Quit presently the chapel, or resolve you\n    For more amazement. If you can behold it,\n    I\'ll make the statue move indeed, descend,\n    And take you by the hand, but then you\'ll think-\n    Which I protest against- I am assisted\n    By wicked powers.\n  LEONTES. What you can make her do\n    I am content to look on; what to speak\n    I am content to hear; for \'tis as easy\n    To make her speak as move.  \n  PAULINA. It is requir\'d\n    You do awake your faith. Then all stand still;\n    Or those that think it is unlawful business\n    I am about, let them depart.\n  LEONTES. Proceed.\n    No foot shall stir.\n  PAULINA. Music, awake her: strike.                     [Music]\n    \'Tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach;\n    Strike all that look upon with marvel. Come;\n    I\'ll fill your grave up. Stir; nay, come away.\n    Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him\n    Dear life redeems you. You perceive she stirs.\n                         [HERMIONE comes down from the pedestal]\n    Start not; her actions shall be holy as\n    You hear my spell is lawful. Do not shun her\n    Until you see her die again; for then\n    You kill her double. Nay, present your hand.\n    When she was young you woo\'d her; now in age\n    Is she become the suitor?\n  LEONTES. O, she\'s warm!  \n    If this be magic, let it be an art\n    Lawful as eating.\n  POLIXENES. She embraces him.\n  CAMILLO. She hangs about his neck.\n    If she pertain to life, let her speak too.\n  POLIXENES. Ay, and make it manifest where she has liv\'d,\n    Or how stol\'n from the dead.\n  PAULINA. That she is living,\n    Were it but told you, should be hooted at\n    Like an old tale; but it appears she lives\n    Though yet she speak not. Mark a little while.\n    Please you to interpose, fair madam. Kneel,\n    And pray your mother\'s blessing. Turn, good lady;\n    Our Perdita is found.\n  HERMIONE. You gods, look down,\n    And from your sacred vials pour your graces\n    Upon my daughter\'s head! Tell me, mine own,\n    Where hast thou been preserv\'d? Where liv\'d? How found\n    Thy father\'s court? For thou shalt hear that I,\n    Knowing by Paulina that the oracle  \n    Gave hope thou wast in being, have preserv\'d\n    Myself to see the issue.\n  PAULINA. There\'s time enough for that,\n    Lest they desire upon this push to trouble\n    Your joys with like relation. Go together,\n    You precious winners all; your exultation\n    Partake to every one. I, an old turtle,\n    Will wing me to some wither\'d bough, and there\n    My mate, that\'s never to be found again,\n    Lament till I am lost.\n  LEONTES. O peace, Paulina!\n    Thou shouldst a husband take by my consent,\n    As I by thine a wife. This is a match,\n    And made between\'s by vows. Thou hast found mine;\n    But how, is to be question\'d; for I saw her,\n    As I thought, dead; and have, in vain, said many\n    A prayer upon her grave. I\'ll not seek far-\n    For him, I partly know his mind- to find thee\n    An honourable husband. Come, Camillo,\n    And take her by the hand whose worth and honesty  \n    Is richly noted, and here justified\n    By us, a pair of kings. Let\'s from this place.\n    What! look upon my brother. Both your pardons,\n    That e\'er I put between your holy looks\n    My ill suspicion. This your son-in-law,\n    And son unto the King, whom heavens directing,\n    Is troth-plight to your daughter. Good Paulina,\n    Lead us from hence where we may leisurely\n    Each one demand and answer to his part\n    Perform\'d in this wide gap of time since first\n    We were dissever\'d. Hastily lead away.                Exeunt\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\n\n\n1609\n\nA LOVER\'S COMPLAINT\n\nby William Shakespeare\n\n\n\n  From off a hill whose concave womb reworded\n  A plaintful story from a sist\'ring vale,\n  My spirits t\'attend this double voice accorded,\n  And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale,\n  Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,\n  Tearing of papers, breaking rings atwain,\n  Storming her world with sorrow\'s wind and rain.\n\n  Upon her head a platted hive of straw,\n  Which fortified her visage from the sun,\n  Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw\n  The carcase of a beauty spent and done.\n  Time had not scythed all that youth begun,\n  Nor youth all quit, but spite of heaven\'s fell rage\n  Some beauty peeped through lattice of seared age.\n\n  Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,\n  Which on it had conceited characters,\n  Laund\'ring the silken figures in the brine\n  That seasoned woe had pelleted in tears,\n  And often reading what contents it bears;  \n  As often shrieking undistinguished woe,\n  In clamours of all size, both high and low.\n\n  Sometimes her levelled eyes their carriage ride,\n  As they did batt\'ry to the spheres intend;\n  Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied\n  To th\' orbed earth; sometimes they do extend\n  Their view right on; anon their gazes lend\n  To every place at once, and nowhere fixed,\n  The mind and sight distractedly commixed.\n\n  Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat,\n  Proclaimed in her a careless hand of pride;\n  For some, untucked, descended her sheaved hat,\n  Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside;\n  Some in her threaden fillet still did bide,\n  And, true to bondage, would not break from thence,\n  Though slackly braided in loose negligence.\n\n  A thousand favours from a maund she drew  \n  Of amber, crystal, and of beaded jet,\n  Which one by one she in a river threw,\n  Upon whose weeping margent she was set;\n  Like usury applying wet to wet,\n  Or monarchs\' hands that lets not bounty fall\n  Where want cries some, but where excess begs all.\n\n  Of folded schedules had she many a one,\n  Which she perused, sighed, tore, and gave the flood;\n  Cracked many a ring of posied gold and bone,\n  Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;\n  Found yet moe letters sadly penned in blood,\n  With sleided silk feat and affectedly\n  Enswathed and sealed to curious secrecy.\n\n  These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes,\n  And often kissed, and often \'gan to tear;\n  Cried, \'O false blood, thou register of lies,\n  What unapproved witness dost thou bear!\n  Ink would have seemed more black and damned here!  \n  This said, in top of rage the lines she rents,\n  Big discontents so breaking their contents.\n\n  A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh,\n  Sometime a blusterer that the ruffle knew\n  Of court, of city, and had let go by\n  The swiftest hours observed as they flew,\n  Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew;\n  And, privileged by age, desires to know\n  In brief the grounds and motives of her woe.\n\n  So slides he down upon his grained bat,\n  And comely distant sits he by her side;\n  When he again desires her, being sat,\n  Her grievance with his hearing to divide.\n  If that from him there may be aught applied\n  Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,\n  \'Tis promised in the charity of age.\n\n  \'Father,\' she says, \'though in me you behold  \n  The injury of many a blasting hour,\n  Let it not tell your judgement I am old:\n  Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power.\n  I might as yet have been a spreading flower,\n  Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied\n  Love to myself, and to no love beside.\n\n  \'But woe is me! too early I attended\n  A youthful suit- it was to gain my grace-\n  O, one by nature\'s outwards so commended\n  That maidens\' eyes stuck over all his face.\n  Love lacked a dwelling and made him her place;\n  And when in his fair parts she did abide,\n  She was new lodged and newly deified.\n\n  \'His browny locks did hang in crooked curls;\n  And every light occasion of the wind\n  Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls.\n  What\'s sweet to do, to do will aptly find:\n  Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind;  \n  For on his visage was in little drawn\n  What largeness thinks in Paradise was sawn.\n\n  \'Small show of man was yet upon his chin;\n  His phoenix down began but to appear,\n  Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin,\n  Whose bare out-bragged the web it seemed to wear:\n  Yet showed his visage by that cost more dear;\n  And nice affections wavering stood in doubt\n  If best were as it was, or best without.\n\n  \'His qualities were beauteous as his form,\n  For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;\n  Yet if men moved him, was he such a storm\n  As oft \'twixt May and April is to see,\n  When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.\n  His rudeness so with his authorized youth\n  Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.\n\n  \'Well could he ride, and often men would say,  \n  "That horse his mettle from his rider takes:\n  Proud of subjection, noble by the sway,\n  What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop he makes!"\n  And controversy hence a question takes\n  Whether the horse by him became his deed,\n  Or he his manage by th\' well-doing steed.\n\n  \'But quickly on this side the verdict went:\n  His real habitude gave life and grace\n  To appertainings and to ornament,\n  Accomplished in himself, not in his case,\n  All aids, themselves made fairer by their place,\n  Came for additions; yet their purposed trim\n  Pierced not his grace, but were all graced by him.\n\n  \'So on the tip of his subduing tongue\n  All kind of arguments and question deep,\n  All replication prompt, and reason strong,\n  For his advantage still did wake and sleep.\n  To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,  \n  He had the dialect and different skill,\n  Catching all passions in his craft of will,\n\n  \'That he did in the general bosom reign\n  Of young, of old, and sexes both enchanted,\n  To dwell with him in thoughts, or to remain\n  In personal duty, following where he haunted.\n  Consents bewitched, ere he desire, have granted,\n  And dialogued for him what he would say,\n  Asked their own wills, and made their wills obey.\n\n  \'Many there were that did his picture get,\n  To serve their eyes, and in it put their mind;\n  Like fools that in th\' imagination set\n  The goodly objects which abroad they find\n  Of lands and mansions, theirs in thought assigned;\n  And labouring in moe pleasures to bestow them\n  Than the true gouty landlord which doth owe them.\n\n  \'So many have, that never touched his hand,  \n  Sweetly supposed them mistress of his heart.\n  My woeful self, that did in freedom stand,\n  And was my own fee-simple, not in part,\n  What with his art in youth, and youth in art,\n  Threw my affections in his charmed power\n  Reserved the stalk and gave him all my flower.\n\n  \'Yet did I not, as some my equals did,\n  Demand of him, nor being desired yielded;\n  Finding myself in honour so forbid,\n  With safest distance I mine honour shielded.\n  Experience for me many bulwarks builded\n  Of proofs new-bleeding, which remained the foil\n  Of this false jewel, and his amorous spoil.\n\n  \'But ah, who ever shunned by precedent\n  The destined ill she must herself assay?\n  Or forced examples, \'gainst her own content,\n  To put the by-past perils in her way?\n  Counsel may stop awhile what will not stay;  \n  For when we rage, advice is often seen\n  By blunting us to make our wills more keen.\n\n  \'Nor gives it satisfaction to our blood\n  That we must curb it upon others\' proof,\n  To be forbod the sweets that seems so good\n  For fear of harms that preach in our behoof.\n  O appetite, from judgement stand aloof!\n  The one a palate hath that needs will taste,\n  Though Reason weep, and cry it is thy last.\n\n  \'For further I could say this man\'s untrue,\n  And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling;\n  Heard where his plants in others\' orchards grew;\n  Saw how deceits were gilded in his smiling;\n  Knew vows were ever brokers to defiling;\n  Thought characters and words merely but art,\n  And bastards of his foul adulterate heart.\n\n  \'And long upon these terms I held my city,  \n  Till thus he \'gan besiege me: "Gentle maid,\n  Have of my suffering youth some feeling pity,\n  And be not of my holy vows afraid.\n  That\'s to ye sworn to none was ever said;\n  For feasts of love I have been called unto,\n  Till now did ne\'er invite nor never woo.\n\n  \'"All my offences that abroad you see\n  Are errors of the blood, none of the mind;\n  Love made them not; with acture they may be,\n  Where neither party is nor true nor kind.\n  They sought their shame that so their shame did find;\n  And so much less of shame in me remains\n  By how much of me their reproach contains.\n\n  \'"Among the many that mine eyes have seen,\n  Not one whose flame my heart so much as warmed,\n  Or my affection put to th\' smallest teen,\n  Or any of my leisures ever charmed.\n  Harm have I done to them, but ne\'er was harmed;  \n  Kept hearts in liveries, but mine own was free,\n  And reigned commanding in his monarchy.\n\n  \'"Look here what tributes wounded fancies sent me,\n  Of paled pearls and rubies red as blood;\n  Figuring that they their passions likewise lent me\n  Of grief and blushes, aptly understood\n  In bloodless white and the encrimsoned mood-\n  Effects of terror and dear modesty,\n  Encamped in hearts, but fighting outwardly.\n\n  \'"And, lo, behold these talents of their hair,\n  With twisted metal amorously empleached,\n  I have receiv\'d from many a several fair,\n  Their kind acceptance weepingly beseeched,\n  With the annexions of fair gems enriched,\n  And deep-brained sonnets that did amplify\n  Each stone\'s dear nature, worth, and quality.\n\n  \'"The diamond? why, \'twas beautiful and hard,  \n  Whereto his invised properties did tend;\n  The deep-green em\'rald, in whose fresh regard\n  Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend;\n  The heaven-hued sapphire and the opal blend\n  With objects manifold; each several stone,\n  With wit well blazoned, smiled, or made some moan.\n\n  \'"Lo, all these trophies of affections hot,\n  Of pensived and subdued desires the tender,\n  Nature hath charged me that I hoard them not,\n  But yield them up where I myself must render-\n  That is, to you, my origin and ender;\n  For these, of force, must your oblations be,\n  Since I their altar, you enpatron me.\n\n  \'"O then advance of yours that phraseless hand\n  Whose white weighs down the airy scale of praise;\n  Take all these similes to your own command,\n  Hallowed with sighs that burning lungs did raise;\n  What me your minister for you obeys  \n  Works under you; and to your audit comes\n  Their distract parcels in combined sums.\n\n  \'"Lo, this device was sent me from a nun,\n  Or sister sanctified, of holiest note,\n  Which late her noble suit in court did shun,\n  Whose rarest havings made the blossoms dote;\n  For she was sought by spirits of richest coat,\n  But kept cold distance, and did thence remove\n  To spend her living in eternal love.\n\n  \'"But, O my sweet, what labour is\'t to leave\n  The thing we have not, mast\'ring what not strives,\n  Playing the place which did no form receive,\n  Playing patient sports in unconstrained gyves!\n  She that her fame so to herself contrives,\n  The scars of battle scapeth by the flight,\n  And makes her absence valiant, not her might.\n\n  \'"O pardon me in that my boast is true!  \n  The accident which brought me to her eye\n  Upon the moment did her force subdue,\n  And now she would the caged cloister fly.\n  Religious love put out religion\'s eye.\n  Not to be tempted, would she be immured,\n  And now to tempt all liberty procured.\n\n  \'"How mighty then you are, O hear me tell!\n  The broken bosoms that to me belong\n  Have emptied all their fountains in my well,\n  And mine I pour your ocean all among.\n  I strong o\'er them, and you o\'er me being strong,\n  Must for your victory us all congest,\n  As compound love to physic your cold breast.\n\n  \'"My parts had pow\'r to charm a sacred nun,\n  Who, disciplined, ay, dieted in grace,\n  Believed her eyes when they t\'assail begun,\n  All vows and consecrations giving place,\n  O most potential love, vow, bond, nor space,  \n  In thee hath neither sting, knot, nor confine,\n  For thou art all, and all things else are thine.\n\n  \'"When thou impressest, what are precepts worth\n  Of stale example? When thou wilt inflame,\n  How coldly those impediments stand forth,\n  Of wealth, of filial fear, law, kindred, fame!\n  Love\'s arms are peace, \'gainst rule, \'gainst sense, \'gainst shame.\n  And sweetens, in the suff\'ring pangs it bears,\n  The aloes of all forces, shocks and fears.\n\n  \'"Now all these hearts that do on mine depend,\n  Feeling it break, with bleeding groans they pine,\n  And supplicant their sighs to your extend,\n  To leave the batt\'ry that you make \'gainst mine,\n  Lending soft audience to my sweet design,\n  And credent soul to that strong-bonded oath,\n  That shall prefer and undertake my troth."\n\n  \'This said, his wat\'ry eyes he did dismount,  \n  Whose sights till then were levelled on my face;\n  Each cheek a river running from a fount\n  With brinish current downward flowed apace.\n  O, how the channel to the stream gave grace!\n  Who glazed with crystal gate the glowing roses\n  That flame through water which their hue encloses.\n\n  \'O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies\n  In the small orb of one particular tear!\n  But with the inundation of the eyes\n  What rocky heart to water will not wear?\n  What breast so cold that is not warmed here?\n  O cleft effect! cold modesty, hot wrath,\n  Both fire from hence and chill extincture hath.\n\n  \'For lo, his passion, but an art of craft,\n  Even there resolved my reason into tears;\n  There my white stole of chastity I daffed,\n  Shook off my sober guards and civil fears;\n  Appear to him as he to me appears,  \n  All melting; though our drops this diff\'rence bore:\n  His poisoned me, and mine did him restore.\n\n  \'In him a plenitude of subtle matter,\n  Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives,\n  Of burning blushes or of weeping water,\n  Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves,\n  In either\'s aptness, as it best deceives,\n  To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes,\n  Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows;\n\n  \'That not a heart which in his level came\n  Could scape the hail of his all-hurting aim,\n  Showing fair nature is both kind and tame;\n  And, veiled in them, did win whom he would maim.\n  Against the thing he sought he would exclaim;\n  When he most burned in heart-wished luxury,\n  He preached pure maid and praised cold chastity.\n\n  \'Thus merely with the garment of a Grace  \n  The naked and concealed fiend he covered,\n  That th\' unexperient gave the tempter place,\n  Which, like a cherubin, above them hovered.\n  Who, young and simple, would not be so lovered?\n  Ay me, I fell, and yet do question make\n  What I should do again for such a sake.\n\n  \'O, that infected moisture of his eye,\n  O, that false fire which in his cheek so glowed,\n  O, that forced thunder from his heart did fly,\n  O, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestowed,\n  O, all that borrowed motion, seeming owed,\n  Would yet again betray the fore-betrayed,\n  And new pervert a reconciled maid.\'\n\nTHE END\n\n\n\n<<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM\nSHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS\nPROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE\nWITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE\nDISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS\nPERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED\nCOMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY\nSERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>\n\n\n\nEnd of this Etext of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare\n\n\n\n'

'This is the 100th Etext file presented by Project Gutenberg, and'

'  From fairest creatures we desire increase,'

'  From fairest creatures we desire increase,'

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'  From fairest creatures we desire increase,   That thereby beauty\'s rose might never die,   But as the riper should by time decease,   His tender heir might bear his memory:   But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,   Feed\'st thy light\'s flame with self-substantial fuel,   Making a famine where abundance lies,   Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:   Thou that art now the world\'s fresh ornament,   And only herald to the gaudy spring,   Within thine own bud buriest thy content,   And tender churl mak\'st waste in niggarding:     Pity the world, or else this glutton be,     To eat the world\'s due, by the grave and thee.                        2   When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,   And dig deep trenches in thy beauty\'s field,   Thy youth\'s proud livery so gazed on now,   Will be a tattered weed of small worth held:     Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,   Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;   To say within thine own deep sunken eyes,   Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.   How much more praise deserved thy beauty\'s use,   If thou couldst answer \'This fair child of mine   Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse\'   Proving his beauty by succession thine.     This were to be new made when thou art old,     And see thy blood warm when thou feel\'st it cold.                        3   Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,   Now is the time that face should form another,   Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,   Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.   For where is she so fair whose uneared womb   Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?   Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,   Of his self-love to stop posterity?     Thou art thy mother\'s glass and she in thee   Calls back the lovely April of her prime,   So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,   Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.     But if thou live remembered not to be,     Die single and thine image dies with thee.                        4   Unthrifty loveliness why dost thou spend,   Upon thy self thy beauty\'s legacy?   Nature\'s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,   And being frank she lends to those are free:   Then beauteous niggard why dost thou abuse,   The bounteous largess given thee to give?   Profitless usurer why dost thou use   So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?   For having traffic with thy self alone,   Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive,   Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,   What acceptable audit canst thou leave?       Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,     Which used lives th\' executor to be.                        5   Those hours that with gentle work did frame   The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell   Will play the tyrants to the very same,   And that unfair which fairly doth excel:   For never-resting time leads summer on   To hideous winter and confounds him there,   Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,   Beauty o\'er-snowed and bareness every where:   Then were not summer\'s distillation left   A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,   Beauty\'s effect with beauty were bereft,   Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.     But flowers distilled though they with winter meet,     Leese but their show, their substance still lives sweet.                        6     Then let not winter\'s ragged hand deface,   In thee thy summer ere thou be distilled:   Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place,   With beauty\'s treasure ere it be self-killed:   That use is not forbidden usury,   Which happies those that pay the willing loan;   That\'s for thy self to breed another thee,   Or ten times happier be it ten for one,   Ten times thy self were happier than thou art,   If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:   Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,   Leaving thee living in posterity?     Be not self-willed for thou art much too fair,     To be death\'s conquest and make worms thine heir.                        7   Lo in the orient when the gracious light   Lifts up his burning head, each under eye   Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,   Serving with looks his sacred majesty,     And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,   Resembling strong youth in his middle age,   Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,   Attending on his golden pilgrimage:   But when from highmost pitch with weary car,   Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,   The eyes (fore duteous) now converted are   From his low tract and look another way:     So thou, thy self out-going in thy noon:     Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.                        8   Music to hear, why hear\'st thou music sadly?   Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:   Why lov\'st thou that which thou receiv\'st not gladly,   Or else receiv\'st with pleasure thine annoy?   If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,   By unions married do offend thine ear,   They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds   In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear:     Mark how one string sweet husband to another,   Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;   Resembling sire, and child, and happy mother,   Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:     Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,     Sings this to thee, \'Thou single wilt prove none\'.                        9   Is it for fear to wet a widow\'s eye,   That thou consum\'st thy self in single life?   Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,   The world will wail thee like a makeless wife,   The world will be thy widow and still weep,   That thou no form of thee hast left behind,   When every private widow well may keep,   By children\'s eyes, her husband\'s shape in mind:   Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend   Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;   But beauty\'s waste hath in the world an end,   And kept unused the user so destroys it:       No love toward others in that bosom sits     That on himself such murd\'rous shame commits.                        10   For shame deny that thou bear\'st love to any   Who for thy self art so unprovident.   Grant if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,   But that thou none lov\'st is most evident:   For thou art so possessed with murd\'rous hate,   That \'gainst thy self thou stick\'st not to conspire,   Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate   Which to repair should be thy chief desire:   O change thy thought, that I may change my mind,   Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?   Be as thy presence is gracious and kind,   Or to thy self at least kind-hearted prove,     Make thee another self for love of me,     That beauty still may live in thine or thee.                        11     As fast as thou shalt wane so fast thou grow\'st,   In one of thine, from that which thou departest,   And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow\'st,   Thou mayst call thine, when thou from youth convertest,   Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase,   Without this folly, age, and cold decay,   If all were minded so, the times should cease,   And threescore year would make the world away:   Let those whom nature hath not made for store,   Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:   Look whom she best endowed, she gave thee more;   Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:     She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby,     Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.                        12   When I do count the clock that tells the time,   And see the brave day sunk in hideous night,   When I behold the violet past prime,   And sable curls all silvered o\'er with white:     When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,   Which erst from heat did canopy the herd   And summer\'s green all girded up in sheaves   Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard:   Then of thy beauty do I question make   That thou among the wastes of time must go,   Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,   And die as fast as they see others grow,     And nothing \'gainst Time\'s scythe can make defence     Save breed to brave him, when he takes thee hence.                        13   O that you were your self, but love you are   No longer yours, than you your self here live,   Against this coming end you should prepare,   And your sweet semblance to some other give.   So should that beauty which you hold in lease   Find no determination, then you were   Your self again after your self\'s decease,   When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.     Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,   Which husbandry in honour might uphold,   Against the stormy gusts of winter\'s day   And barren rage of death\'s eternal cold?     O none but unthrifts, dear my love you know,     You had a father, let your son say so.                        14   Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,   And yet methinks I have astronomy,   But not to tell of good, or evil luck,   Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons\' quality,   Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell;   Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,   Or say with princes if it shall go well   By oft predict that I in heaven find.   But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,   And constant stars in them I read such art   As truth and beauty shall together thrive   If from thy self, to store thou wouldst convert:       Or else of thee this I prognosticate,     Thy end is truth\'s and beauty\'s doom and date.                        15   When I consider every thing that grows   Holds in perfection but a little moment.   That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows   Whereon the stars in secret influence comment.   When I perceive that men as plants increase,   Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky:   Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,   And wear their brave state out of memory.   Then the conceit of this inconstant stay,   Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,   Where wasteful time debateth with decay   To change your day of youth to sullied night,     And all in war with Time for love of you,     As he takes from you, I engraft you new.                        16     But wherefore do not you a mightier way   Make war upon this bloody tyrant Time?   And fortify your self in your decay   With means more blessed than my barren rhyme?   Now stand you on the top of happy hours,   And many maiden gardens yet unset,   With virtuous wish would bear you living flowers,   Much liker than your painted counterfeit:   So should the lines of life that life repair   Which this (Time\'s pencil) or my pupil pen   Neither in inward worth nor outward fair   Can make you live your self in eyes of men.     To give away your self, keeps your self still,     And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.                        17   Who will believe my verse in time to come   If it were filled with your most high deserts?   Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb   Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:     If I could write the beauty of your eyes,   And in fresh numbers number all your graces,   The age to come would say this poet lies,   Such heavenly touches ne\'er touched earthly faces.   So should my papers (yellowed with their age)   Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,   And your true rights be termed a poet\'s rage,   And stretched metre of an antique song.     But were some child of yours alive that time,     You should live twice in it, and in my rhyme.                        18   Shall I compare thee to a summer\'s day?   Thou art more lovely and more temperate:   Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,   And summer\'s lease hath all too short a date:   Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,   And often is his gold complexion dimmed,   And every fair from fair sometime declines,   By chance, or nature\'s changing course untrimmed:     But thy eternal summer shall not fade,   Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow\'st,   Nor shall death brag thou wand\'rest in his shade,   When in eternal lines to time thou grow\'st,     So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,     So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.                        19   Devouring Time blunt thou the lion\'s paws,   And make the earth devour her own sweet brood,   Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger\'s jaws,   And burn the long-lived phoenix, in her blood,   Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet\'st,   And do whate\'er thou wilt swift-footed Time   To the wide world and all her fading sweets:   But I forbid thee one most heinous crime,   O carve not with thy hours my love\'s fair brow,   Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen,   Him in thy course untainted do allow,   For beauty\'s pattern to succeeding men.       Yet do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,     My love shall in my verse ever live young.                        20   A woman\'s face with nature\'s own hand painted,   Hast thou the master mistress of my passion,   A woman\'s gentle heart but not acquainted   With shifting change as is false women\'s fashion,   An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling:   Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth,   A man in hue all hues in his controlling,   Which steals men\'s eyes and women\'s souls amazeth.   And for a woman wert thou first created,   Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,   And by addition me of thee defeated,   By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.     But since she pricked thee out for women\'s pleasure,     Mine be thy love and thy love\'s use their treasure.                        21     So is it not with me as with that muse,   Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,   Who heaven it self for ornament doth use,   And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,   Making a couplement of proud compare   With sun and moon, with earth and sea\'s rich gems:   With April\'s first-born flowers and all things rare,   That heaven\'s air in this huge rondure hems.   O let me true in love but truly write,   And then believe me, my love is as fair,   As any mother\'s child, though not so bright   As those gold candles fixed in heaven\'s air:     Let them say more that like of hearsay well,     I will not praise that purpose not to sell.                        22   My glass shall not persuade me I am old,   So long as youth and thou are of one date,   But when in thee time\'s furrows I behold,   Then look I death my days should expiate.     For all that beauty that doth cover thee,   Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,   Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me,   How can I then be elder than thou art?   O therefore love be of thyself so wary,   As I not for my self, but for thee will,   Bearing thy heart which I will keep so chary   As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.     Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,     Thou gav\'st me thine not to give back again.                        23   As an unperfect actor on the stage,   Who with his fear is put beside his part,   Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,   Whose strength\'s abundance weakens his own heart;   So I for fear of trust, forget to say,   The perfect ceremony of love\'s rite,   And in mine own love\'s strength seem to decay,   O\'ercharged with burthen of mine own love\'s might:     O let my looks be then the eloquence,   And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,   Who plead for love, and look for recompense,   More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.     O learn to read what silent love hath writ,     To hear with eyes belongs to love\'s fine wit.                        24   Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled,   Thy beauty\'s form in table of my heart,   My body is the frame wherein \'tis held,   And perspective it is best painter\'s art.   For through the painter must you see his skill,   To find where your true image pictured lies,   Which in my bosom\'s shop is hanging still,   That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes:   Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done,   Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me   Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun   Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;       Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art,     They draw but what they see, know not the heart.                        25   Let those who are in favour with their stars,   Of public honour and proud titles boast,   Whilst I whom fortune of such triumph bars   Unlooked for joy in that I honour most;   Great princes\' favourites their fair leaves spread,   But as the marigold at the sun\'s eye,   And in themselves their pride lies buried,   For at a frown they in their glory die.   The painful warrior famoused for fight,   After a thousand victories once foiled,   Is from the book of honour razed quite,   And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:     Then happy I that love and am beloved     Where I may not remove nor be removed.                        26     Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage   Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit;   To thee I send this written embassage   To witness duty, not to show my wit.   Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine   May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it;   But that I hope some good conceit of thine   In thy soul\'s thought (all naked) will bestow it:   Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,   Points on me graciously with fair aspect,   And puts apparel on my tattered loving,   To show me worthy of thy sweet respect,     Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee,     Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me.                        27   Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,   The dear respose for limbs with travel tired,   But then begins a journey in my head   To work my mind, when body\'s work\'s expired.     For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)   Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,   And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,   Looking on darkness which the blind do see.   Save that my soul\'s imaginary sight   Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,   Which like a jewel (hung in ghastly night)   Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.     Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,     For thee, and for my self, no quiet find.                        28   How can I then return in happy plight   That am debarred the benefit of rest?   When day\'s oppression is not eased by night,   But day by night and night by day oppressed.   And each (though enemies to either\'s reign)   Do in consent shake hands to torture me,   The one by toil, the other to complain   How far I toil, still farther off from thee.     I tell the day to please him thou art bright,   And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:   So flatter I the swart-complexioned night,   When sparkling stars twire not thou gild\'st the even.     But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,     And night doth nightly make grief\'s length seem stronger                        29   When in disgrace with Fortune and men\'s eyes,   I all alone beweep my outcast state,   And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,   And look upon my self and curse my fate,   Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,   Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,   Desiring this man\'s art, and that man\'s scope,   With what I most enjoy contented least,   Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,   Haply I think on thee, and then my state,   (Like to the lark at break of day arising   From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven\'s gate,       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,     That then I scorn to change my state with kings.                        30   When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,   I summon up remembrance of things past,   I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,   And with old woes new wail my dear time\'s waste:   Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow)   For precious friends hid in death\'s dateless night,   And weep afresh love\'s long since cancelled woe,   And moan th\' expense of many a vanished sight.   Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,   And heavily from woe to woe tell o\'er   The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,   Which I new pay as if not paid before.     But if the while I think on thee (dear friend)     All losses are restored, and sorrows end.                        31     Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,   Which I by lacking have supposed dead,   And there reigns love and all love\'s loving parts,   And all those friends which I thought buried.   How many a holy and obsequious tear   Hath dear religious love stol\'n from mine eye,   As interest of the dead, which now appear,   But things removed that hidden in thee lie.   Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,   Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,   Who all their parts of me to thee did give,   That due of many, now is thine alone.     Their images I loved, I view in thee,     And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.                        32   If thou survive my well-contented day,   When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover   And shalt by fortune once more re-survey   These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover:     Compare them with the bett\'ring of the time,   And though they be outstripped by every pen,   Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,   Exceeded by the height of happier men.   O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought,   \'Had my friend\'s Muse grown with this growing age,   A dearer birth than this his love had brought   To march in ranks of better equipage:     But since he died and poets better prove,     Theirs for their style I\'ll read, his for his love\'.                        33   Full many a glorious morning have I seen,   Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,   Kissing with golden face the meadows green;   Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy:   Anon permit the basest clouds to ride,   With ugly rack on his celestial face,   And from the forlorn world his visage hide   Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:     Even so my sun one early morn did shine,   With all triumphant splendour on my brow,   But out alack, he was but one hour mine,   The region cloud hath masked him from me now.     Yet him for this, my love no whit disdaineth,     Suns of the world may stain, when heaven\'s sun staineth.                        34   Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,   And make me travel forth without my cloak,   To let base clouds o\'ertake me in my way,   Hiding thy brav\'ry in their rotten smoke?   \'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,   To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,   For no man well of such a salve can speak,   That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:   Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief,   Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss,   Th\' offender\'s sorrow lends but weak relief   To him that bears the strong offence\'s cross.       Ah but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,     And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.                        35   No more be grieved at that which thou hast done,   Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,   Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,   And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.   All men make faults, and even I in this,   Authorizing thy trespass with compare,   My self corrupting salving thy amiss,   Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are:   For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,   Thy adverse party is thy advocate,   And \'gainst my self a lawful plea commence:   Such civil war is in my love and hate,     That I an accessary needs must be,     To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.                        36     Let me confess that we two must be twain,   Although our undivided loves are one:   So shall those blots that do with me remain,   Without thy help, by me be borne alone.   In our two loves there is but one respect,   Though in our lives a separable spite,   Which though it alter not love\'s sole effect,   Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love\'s delight.   I may not evermore acknowledge thee,   Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,   Nor thou with public kindness honour me,   Unless thou take that honour from thy name:     But do not so, I love thee in such sort,     As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.                        37   As a decrepit father takes delight,   To see his active child do deeds of youth,   So I, made lame by Fortune\'s dearest spite   Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.     For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,   Or any of these all, or all, or more   Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit,   I make my love engrafted to this store:   So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,   Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give,   That I in thy abundance am sufficed,   And by a part of all thy glory live:     Look what is best, that best I wish in thee,     This wish I have, then ten times happy me.                        38   How can my muse want subject to invent   While thou dost breathe that pour\'st into my verse,   Thine own sweet argument, too excellent,   For every vulgar paper to rehearse?   O give thy self the thanks if aught in me,   Worthy perusal stand against thy sight,   For who\'s so dumb that cannot write to thee,   When thou thy self dost give invention light?     Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth   Than those old nine which rhymers invocate,   And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth   Eternal numbers to outlive long date.     If my slight muse do please these curious days,     The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.                        39   O how thy worth with manners may I sing,   When thou art all the better part of me?   What can mine own praise to mine own self bring:   And what is\'t but mine own when I praise thee?   Even for this, let us divided live,   And our dear love lose name of single one,   That by this separation I may give:   That due to thee which thou deserv\'st alone:   O absence what a torment wouldst thou prove,   Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave,   To entertain the time with thoughts of love,   Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive.       And that thou teachest how to make one twain,     By praising him here who doth hence remain.                        40   Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all,   What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?   No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call,   All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more:   Then if for my love, thou my love receivest,   I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest,   But yet be blamed, if thou thy self deceivest   By wilful taste of what thy self refusest.   I do forgive thy robbery gentle thief   Although thou steal thee all my poverty:   And yet love knows it is a greater grief   To bear greater wrong, than hate\'s known injury.     Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,     Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes.                        41     Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits,   When I am sometime absent from thy heart,   Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits,   For still temptation follows where thou art.   Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,   Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed.   And when a woman woos, what woman\'s son,   Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed?   Ay me, but yet thou mightst my seat forbear,   And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,   Who lead thee in their riot even there   Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth:     Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,     Thine by thy beauty being false to me.                        42   That thou hast her it is not all my grief,   And yet it may be said I loved her dearly,   That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,   A loss in love that touches me more nearly.     Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye,   Thou dost love her, because thou know\'st I love her,   And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,   Suff\'ring my friend for my sake to approve her.   If I lose thee, my loss is my love\'s gain,   And losing her, my friend hath found that loss,   Both find each other, and I lose both twain,   And both for my sake lay on me this cross,     But here\'s the joy, my friend and I are one,     Sweet flattery, then she loves but me alone.                        43   When most I wink then do mine eyes best see,   For all the day they view things unrespected,   But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,   And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.   Then thou whose shadow shadows doth make bright   How would thy shadow\'s form, form happy show,   To the clear day with thy much clearer light,   When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!     How would (I say) mine eyes be blessed made,   By looking on thee in the living day,   When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade,   Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!     All days are nights to see till I see thee,     And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.                        44   If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,   Injurious distance should not stop my way,   For then despite of space I would be brought,   From limits far remote, where thou dost stay,   No matter then although my foot did stand   Upon the farthest earth removed from thee,   For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,   As soon as think the place where he would be.   But ah, thought kills me that I am not thought   To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,   But that so much of earth and water wrought,   I must attend, time\'s leisure with my moan.       Receiving nought by elements so slow,     But heavy tears, badges of either\'s woe.                        45   The other two, slight air, and purging fire,   Are both with thee, wherever I abide,   The first my thought, the other my desire,   These present-absent with swift motion slide.   For when these quicker elements are gone   In tender embassy of love to thee,   My life being made of four, with two alone,   Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy.   Until life\'s composition be recured,   By those swift messengers returned from thee,   Who even but now come back again assured,   Of thy fair health, recounting it to me.     This told, I joy, but then no longer glad,     I send them back again and straight grow sad.                        46     Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,   How to divide the conquest of thy sight,   Mine eye, my heart thy picture\'s sight would bar,   My heart, mine eye the freedom of that right,   My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,   (A closet never pierced with crystal eyes)   But the defendant doth that plea deny,   And says in him thy fair appearance lies.   To side this title is impanelled   A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,   And by their verdict is determined   The clear eye\'s moiety, and the dear heart\'s part.     As thus, mine eye\'s due is thy outward part,     And my heart\'s right, thy inward love of heart.                        47   Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,   And each doth good turns now unto the other,   When that mine eye is famished for a look,   Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother;     With my love\'s picture then my eye doth feast,   And to the painted banquet bids my heart:   Another time mine eye is my heart\'s guest,   And in his thoughts of love doth share a part.   So either by thy picture or my love,   Thy self away, art present still with me,   For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,   And I am still with them, and they with thee.     Or if they sleep, thy picture in my sight     Awakes my heart, to heart\'s and eye\'s delight.                        48   How careful was I when I took my way,   Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,   That to my use it might unused stay   From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust!   But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,   Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,   Thou best of dearest, and mine only care,   Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.     Thee have I not locked up in any chest,   Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,   Within the gentle closure of my breast,   From whence at pleasure thou mayst come and part,     And even thence thou wilt be stol\'n I fear,     For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.                        49   Against that time (if ever that time come)   When I shall see thee frown on my defects,   When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,   Called to that audit by advised respects,   Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,   And scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye,   When love converted from the thing it was   Shall reasons find of settled gravity;   Against that time do I ensconce me here   Within the knowledge of mine own desert,   And this my hand, against my self uprear,   To guard the lawful reasons on thy part,       To leave poor me, thou hast the strength of laws,     Since why to love, I can allege no cause.                        50   How heavy do I journey on the way,   When what I seek (my weary travel\'s end)   Doth teach that case and that repose to say   \'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.\'   The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,   Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,   As if by some instinct the wretch did know   His rider loved not speed being made from thee:   The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,   That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,   Which heavily he answers with a groan,   More sharp to me than spurring to his side,     For that same groan doth put this in my mind,     My grief lies onward and my joy behind.                        51     Thus can my love excuse the slow offence,   Of my dull bearer, when from thee I speed,   From where thou art, why should I haste me thence?   Till I return of posting is no need.   O what excuse will my poor beast then find,   When swift extremity can seem but slow?   Then should I spur though mounted on the wind,   In winged speed no motion shall I know,   Then can no horse with my desire keep pace,   Therefore desire (of perfect\'st love being made)   Shall neigh (no dull flesh) in his fiery race,   But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade,     Since from thee going, he went wilful-slow,     Towards thee I\'ll run, and give him leave to go.                        52   So am I as the rich whose blessed key,   Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,   The which he will not every hour survey,   For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.     Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,   Since seldom coming in that long year set,   Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,   Or captain jewels in the carcanet.   So is the time that keeps you as my chest   Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,   To make some special instant special-blest,   By new unfolding his imprisoned pride.     Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope,     Being had to triumph, being lacked to hope.                        53   What is your substance, whereof are you made,   That millions of strange shadows on you tend?   Since every one, hath every one, one shade,   And you but one, can every shadow lend:   Describe Adonis and the counterfeit,   Is poorly imitated after you,   On Helen\'s cheek all art of beauty set,   And you in Grecian tires are painted new:     Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,   The one doth shadow of your beauty show,   The other as your bounty doth appear,   And you in every blessed shape we know.     In all external grace you have some part,     But you like none, none you for constant heart.                        54   O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,   By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!   The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem   For that sweet odour, which doth in it live:   The canker blooms have full as deep a dye,   As the perfumed tincture of the roses,   Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,   When summer\'s breath their masked buds discloses:   But for their virtue only is their show,   They live unwooed, and unrespected fade,   Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so,   Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:       And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,     When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.                        55   Not marble, nor the gilded monuments   Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,   But you shall shine more bright in these contents   Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.   When wasteful war shall statues overturn,   And broils root out the work of masonry,   Nor Mars his sword, nor war\'s quick fire shall burn:   The living record of your memory.   \'Gainst death, and all-oblivious enmity   Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room,   Even in the eyes of all posterity   That wear this world out to the ending doom.     So till the judgment that your self arise,     You live in this, and dwell in lovers\' eyes.                        56     Sweet love renew thy force, be it not said   Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,   Which but to-day by feeding is allayed,   To-morrow sharpened in his former might.   So love be thou, although to-day thou fill   Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,   To-morrow see again, and do not kill   The spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness:   Let this sad interim like the ocean be   Which parts the shore, where two contracted new,   Come daily to the banks, that when they see:   Return of love, more blest may be the view.     Or call it winter, which being full of care,     Makes summer\'s welcome, thrice more wished, more rare.                        57   Being your slave what should I do but tend,   Upon the hours, and times of your desire?   I have no precious time at all to spend;   Nor services to do till you require.     Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour,   Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you,   Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,   When you have bid your servant once adieu.   Nor dare I question with my jealous thought,   Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,   But like a sad slave stay and think of nought   Save where you are, how happy you make those.     So true a fool is love, that in your will,     (Though you do any thing) he thinks no ill.                        58   That god forbid, that made me first your slave,   I should in thought control your times of pleasure,   Or at your hand th\' account of hours to crave,   Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure.   O let me suffer (being at your beck)   Th\' imprisoned absence of your liberty,   And patience tame to sufferance bide each check,   Without accusing you of injury.     Be where you list, your charter is so strong,   That you your self may privilage your time   To what you will, to you it doth belong,   Your self to pardon of self-doing crime.     I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,     Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.                        59   If there be nothing new, but that which is,   Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,   Which labouring for invention bear amis   The second burthen of a former child!   O that record could with a backward look,   Even of five hundred courses of the sun,   Show me your image in some antique book,   Since mind at first in character was done.   That I might see what the old world could say,   To this composed wonder of your frame,   Whether we are mended, or whether better they,   Or whether revolution be the same.       O sure I am the wits of former days,     To subjects worse have given admiring praise.                        60   Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,   So do our minutes hasten to their end,   Each changing place with that which goes before,   In sequent toil all forwards do contend.   Nativity once in the main of light,   Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,   Crooked eclipses \'gainst his glory fight,   And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound.   Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,   And delves the parallels in beauty\'s brow,   Feeds on the rarities of nature\'s truth,   And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.     And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand     Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.                        61     Is it thy will, thy image should keep open   My heavy eyelids to the weary night?   Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,   While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?   Is it thy spirit that thou send\'st from thee   So far from home into my deeds to pry,   To find out shames and idle hours in me,   The scope and tenure of thy jealousy?   O no, thy love though much, is not so great,   It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,   Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,   To play the watchman ever for thy sake.     For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,     From me far off, with others all too near.                        62   Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,   And all my soul, and all my every part;   And for this sin there is no remedy,   It is so grounded inward in my heart.     Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,   No shape so true, no truth of such account,   And for my self mine own worth do define,   As I all other in all worths surmount.   But when my glass shows me my self indeed   beated and chopt with tanned antiquity,   Mine own self-love quite contrary I read:   Self, so self-loving were iniquity.     \'Tis thee (my self) that for my self I praise,     Painting my age with beauty of thy days.                        63   Against my love shall be as I am now   With Time\'s injurious hand crushed and o\'erworn,   When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow   With lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn   Hath travelled on to age\'s steepy night,   And all those beauties whereof now he\'s king   Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,   Stealing away the treasure of his spring:     For such a time do I now fortify   Against confounding age\'s cruel knife,   That he shall never cut from memory   My sweet love\'s beauty, though my lover\'s life.     His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,     And they shall live, and he in them still green.                        64   When I have seen by Time\'s fell hand defaced   The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age,   When sometime lofty towers I see down-rased,   And brass eternal slave to mortal rage.   When I have seen the hungry ocean gain   Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,   And the firm soil win of the watery main,   Increasing store with loss, and loss with store.   When I have seen such interchange of State,   Or state it self confounded, to decay,   Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate   That Time will come and take my love away.       This thought is as a death which cannot choose     But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.                        65   Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,   But sad mortality o\'ersways their power,   How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,   Whose action is no stronger than a flower?   O how shall summer\'s honey breath hold out,   Against the wrackful siege of batt\'ring days,   When rocks impregnable are not so stout,   Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?   O fearful meditation, where alack,   Shall Time\'s best jewel from Time\'s chest lie hid?   Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,   Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?     O none, unless this miracle have might,     That in black ink my love may still shine bright.                        66     Tired with all these for restful death I cry,   As to behold desert a beggar born,   And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,   And purest faith unhappily forsworn,   And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,   And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,   And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,   And strength by limping sway disabled   And art made tongue-tied by authority,   And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,   And simple truth miscalled simplicity,   And captive good attending captain ill.     Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,     Save that to die, I leave my love alone.                        67   Ah wherefore with infection should he live,   And with his presence grace impiety,   That sin by him advantage should achieve,   And lace it self with his society?     Why should false painting imitate his cheek,   And steal dead seeming of his living hue?   Why should poor beauty indirectly seek,   Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?   Why should he live, now nature bankrupt is,   Beggared of blood to blush through lively veins,   For she hath no exchequer now but his,   And proud of many, lives upon his gains?     O him she stores, to show what wealth she had,     In days long since, before these last so bad.                        68   Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,   When beauty lived and died as flowers do now,   Before these bastard signs of fair were born,   Or durst inhabit on a living brow:   Before the golden tresses of the dead,   The right of sepulchres, were shorn away,   To live a second life on second head,   Ere beauty\'s dead fleece made another gay:     In him those holy antique hours are seen,   Without all ornament, it self and true,   Making no summer of another\'s green,   Robbing no old to dress his beauty new,     And him as for a map doth Nature store,     To show false Art what beauty was of yore.                        69   Those parts of thee that the world\'s eye doth view,   Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend:   All tongues (the voice of souls) give thee that due,   Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend.   Thy outward thus with outward praise is crowned,   But those same tongues that give thee so thine own,   In other accents do this praise confound   By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.   They look into the beauty of thy mind,   And that in guess they measure by thy deeds,   Then churls their thoughts (although their eyes were kind)   To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds:       But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,     The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.                        70   That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,   For slander\'s mark was ever yet the fair,   The ornament of beauty is suspect,   A crow that flies in heaven\'s sweetest air.   So thou be good, slander doth but approve,   Thy worth the greater being wooed of time,   For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,   And thou present\'st a pure unstained prime.   Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days,   Either not assailed, or victor being charged,   Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,   To tie up envy, evermore enlarged,     If some suspect of ill masked not thy show,     Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.                        71     No longer mourn for me when I am dead,   Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell   Give warning to the world that I am fled   From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:   Nay if you read this line, remember not,   The hand that writ it, for I love you so,   That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,   If thinking on me then should make you woe.   O if (I say) you look upon this verse,   When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay,   Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;   But let your love even with my life decay.     Lest the wise world should look into your moan,     And mock you with me after I am gone.                        72   O lest the world should task you to recite,   What merit lived in me that you should love   After my death (dear love) forget me quite,   For you in me can nothing worthy prove.     Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,   To do more for me than mine own desert,   And hang more praise upon deceased I,   Than niggard truth would willingly impart:   O lest your true love may seem false in this,   That you for love speak well of me untrue,   My name be buried where my body is,   And live no more to shame nor me, nor you.     For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,     And so should you, to love things nothing worth.                        73   That time of year thou mayst in me behold,   When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang   Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,   Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.   In me thou seest the twilight of such day,   As after sunset fadeth in the west,   Which by and by black night doth take away,   Death\'s second self that seals up all in rest.     In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,   That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,   As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,   Consumed with that which it was nourished by.     This thou perceiv\'st, which makes thy love more strong,     To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.                        74   But be contented when that fell arrest,   Without all bail shall carry me away,   My life hath in this line some interest,   Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.   When thou reviewest this, thou dost review,   The very part was consecrate to thee,   The earth can have but earth, which is his due,   My spirit is thine the better part of me,   So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,   The prey of worms, my body being dead,   The coward conquest of a wretch\'s knife,   Too base of thee to be remembered,       The worth of that, is that which it contains,     And that is this, and this with thee remains.                        75   So are you to my thoughts as food to life,   Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground;   And for the peace of you I hold such strife   As \'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.   Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon   Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,   Now counting best to be with you alone,   Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure,   Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,   And by and by clean starved for a look,   Possessing or pursuing no delight   Save what is had, or must from you be took.     Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,     Or gluttoning on all, or all away.                        76     Why is my verse so barren of new pride?   So far from variation or quick change?   Why with the time do I not glance aside   To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?   Why write I still all one, ever the same,   And keep invention in a noted weed,   That every word doth almost tell my name,   Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?   O know sweet love I always write of you,   And you and love are still my argument:   So all my best is dressing old words new,   Spending again what is already spent:     For as the sun is daily new and old,     So is my love still telling what is told.                        77   Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,   Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste,   These vacant leaves thy mind\'s imprint will bear,   And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.     The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show,   Of mouthed graves will give thee memory,   Thou by thy dial\'s shady stealth mayst know,   Time\'s thievish progress to eternity.   Look what thy memory cannot contain,   Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find   Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,   To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.     These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,     Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.                        78   So oft have I invoked thee for my muse,   And found such fair assistance in my verse,   As every alien pen hath got my use,   And under thee their poesy disperse.   Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing,   And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,   Have added feathers to the learned\'s wing,   And given grace a double majesty.   Yet be most proud of that which I compile,   Whose influence is thine, and born of thee,   In others\' works thou dost but mend the style,   And arts with thy sweet graces graced be.     But thou art all my art, and dost advance     As high as learning, my rude ignorance.                        79   Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,   My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,   But now my gracious numbers are decayed,   And my sick muse doth give an other place.   I grant (sweet love) thy lovely argument   Deserves the travail of a worthier pen,   Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent,   He robs thee of, and pays it thee again,   He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word,   From thy behaviour, beauty doth he give   And found it in thy cheek: he can afford   No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live.       Then thank him not for that which he doth say,     Since what he owes thee, thou thy self dost pay.                        80   O how I faint when I of you do write,   Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,   And in the praise thereof spends all his might,   To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.   But since your worth (wide as the ocean is)   The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,   My saucy bark (inferior far to his)   On your broad main doth wilfully appear.   Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,   Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride,   Or (being wrecked) I am a worthless boat,   He of tall building, and of goodly pride.     Then if he thrive and I be cast away,     The worst was this, my love was my decay.                        81     Or I shall live your epitaph to make,   Or you survive when I in earth am rotten,   From hence your memory death cannot take,   Although in me each part will be forgotten.   Your name from hence immortal life shall have,   Though I (once gone) to all the world must die,   The earth can yield me but a common grave,   When you entombed in men\'s eyes shall lie,   Your monument shall be my gentle verse,   Which eyes not yet created shall o\'er-read,   And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,   When all the breathers of this world are dead,     You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen)     Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.                        82   I grant thou wert not married to my muse,   And therefore mayst without attaint o\'erlook   The dedicated words which writers use   Of their fair subject, blessing every book.     Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue,   Finding thy worth a limit past my praise,   And therefore art enforced to seek anew,   Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days.   And do so love, yet when they have devised,   What strained touches rhetoric can lend,   Thou truly fair, wert truly sympathized,   In true plain words, by thy true-telling friend.     And their gross painting might be better used,     Where cheeks need blood, in thee it is abused.                        83   I never saw that you did painting need,   And therefore to your fair no painting set,   I found (or thought I found) you did exceed,   That barren tender of a poet\'s debt:   And therefore have I slept in your report,   That you your self being extant well might show,   How far a modern quill doth come too short,   Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.     This silence for my sin you did impute,   Which shall be most my glory being dumb,   For I impair not beauty being mute,   When others would give life, and bring a tomb.     There lives more life in one of your fair eyes,     Than both your poets can in praise devise.                        84   Who is it that says most, which can say more,   Than this rich praise, that you alone, are you?   In whose confine immured is the store,   Which should example where your equal grew.   Lean penury within that pen doth dwell,   That to his subject lends not some small glory,   But he that writes of you, if he can tell,   That you are you, so dignifies his story.   Let him but copy what in you is writ,   Not making worse what nature made so clear,   And such a counterpart shall fame his wit,   Making his style admired every where.       You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,     Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.                        85   My tongue-tied muse in manners holds her still,   While comments of your praise richly compiled,   Reserve their character with golden quill,   And precious phrase by all the Muses filed.   I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words,   And like unlettered clerk still cry Amen,   To every hymn that able spirit affords,   In polished form of well refined pen.   Hearing you praised, I say \'tis so, \'tis true,   And to the most of praise add something more,   But that is in my thought, whose love to you   (Though words come hindmost) holds his rank before,     Then others, for the breath of words respect,     Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.                        86     Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,   Bound for the prize of (all too precious) you,   That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,   Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?   Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,   Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?   No, neither he, nor his compeers by night   Giving him aid, my verse astonished.   He nor that affable familiar ghost   Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,   As victors of my silence cannot boast,   I was not sick of any fear from thence.     But when your countenance filled up his line,     Then lacked I matter, that enfeebled mine.                        87   Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,   And like enough thou know\'st thy estimate,   The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing:   My bonds in thee are all determinate.     For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,   And for that riches where is my deserving?   The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,   And so my patent back again is swerving.   Thy self thou gav\'st, thy own worth then not knowing,   Or me to whom thou gav\'st it, else mistaking,   So thy great gift upon misprision growing,   Comes home again, on better judgement making.     Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,     In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.                        88   When thou shalt be disposed to set me light,   And place my merit in the eye of scorn,   Upon thy side, against my self I\'ll fight,   And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn:   With mine own weakness being best acquainted,   Upon thy part I can set down a story   Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted:   That thou in losing me, shalt win much glory:     And I by this will be a gainer too,   For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,   The injuries that to my self I do,   Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me.     Such is my love, to thee I so belong,     That for thy right, my self will bear all wrong.                        89   Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,   And I will comment upon that offence,   Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt:   Against thy reasons making no defence.   Thou canst not (love) disgrace me half so ill,   To set a form upon desired change,   As I\'ll my self disgrace, knowing thy will,   I will acquaintance strangle and look strange:   Be absent from thy walks and in my tongue,   Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,   Lest I (too much profane) should do it wronk:   And haply of our old acquaintance tell.       For thee, against my self I\'ll vow debate,     For I must ne\'er love him whom thou dost hate.                        90   Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now,   Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross,   join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,   And do not drop in for an after-loss:   Ah do not, when my heart hath \'scaped this sorrow,   Come in the rearward of a conquered woe,   Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,   To linger out a purposed overthrow.   If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,   When other petty griefs have done their spite,   But in the onset come, so shall I taste   At first the very worst of fortune\'s might.     And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,     Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so.                        91     Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,   Some in their wealth, some in their body\'s force,   Some in their garments though new-fangled ill:   Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse.   And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,   Wherein it finds a joy above the rest,   But these particulars are not my measure,   All these I better in one general best.   Thy love is better than high birth to me,   Richer than wealth, prouder than garments\' costs,   Of more delight than hawks and horses be:   And having thee, of all men\'s pride I boast.     Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take,     All this away, and me most wretchcd make.                        92   But do thy worst to steal thy self away,   For term of life thou art assured mine,   And life no longer than thy love will stay,   For it depends upon that love of thine.     Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,   When in the least of them my life hath end,   I see, a better state to me belongs   Than that, which on thy humour doth depend.   Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind,   Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie,   O what a happy title do I find,   Happy to have thy love, happy to die!     But what\'s so blessed-fair that fears no blot?     Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not.                        93   So shall I live, supposing thou art true,   Like a deceived husband, so love\'s face,   May still seem love to me, though altered new:   Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place.   For there can live no hatred in thine eye,   Therefore in that I cannot know thy change,   In many\'s looks, the false heart\'s history   Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange.     But heaven in thy creation did decree,   That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell,   Whate\'er thy thoughts, or thy heart\'s workings be,   Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.     How like Eve\'s apple doth thy beauty grow,     If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show.                        94   They that have power to hurt, and will do none,   That do not do the thing, they most do show,   Who moving others, are themselves as stone,   Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:   They rightly do inherit heaven\'s graces,   And husband nature\'s riches from expense,   Tibey are the lords and owners of their faces,   Others, but stewards of their excellence:   The summer\'s flower is to the summer sweet,   Though to it self, it only live and die,   But if that flower with base infection meet,   The basest weed outbraves his dignity:       For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds,     Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.                        95   How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,   Which like a canker in the fragrant rose,   Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!   O in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!   That tongue that tells the story of thy days,   (Making lascivious comments on thy sport)   Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise,   Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.   O what a mansion have those vices got,   Which for their habitation chose out thee,   Where beauty\'s veil doth cover every blot,   And all things turns to fair, that eyes can see!     Take heed (dear heart) of this large privilege,     The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.                        96     Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness,   Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport,   Both grace and faults are loved of more and less:   Thou mak\'st faults graces, that to thee resort:   As on the finger of a throned queen,   The basest jewel will be well esteemed:   So are those errors that in thee are seen,   To truths translated, and for true things deemed.   How many lambs might the stern wolf betray,   If like a lamb he could his looks translate!   How many gazers mightst thou lead away,   if thou wouldst use the strength of all thy state!     But do not so, I love thee in such sort,     As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.                        97   How like a winter hath my absence been   From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!   What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!   What old December\'s bareness everywhere!     And yet this time removed was summer\'s time,   The teeming autumn big with rich increase,   Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,   Like widowed wombs after their lords\' decease:   Yet this abundant issue seemed to me   But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit,   For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,   And thou away, the very birds are mute.     Or if they sing, \'tis with so dull a cheer,     That leaves look pale, dreading the winter\'s near.                        98   From you have I been absent in the spring,   When proud-pied April (dressed in all his trim)   Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing:   That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.   Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell   Of different flowers in odour and in hue,   Could make me any summer\'s story tell:   Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:     Nor did I wonder at the lily\'s white,   Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose,   They were but sweet, but figures of delight:   Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.     Yet seemed it winter still, and you away,     As with your shadow I with these did play.                        99   The forward violet thus did I chide,   Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,   If not from my love\'s breath? The purple pride   Which on thy soft check for complexion dwells,   In my love\'s veins thou hast too grossly dyed.   The lily I condemned for thy hand,   And buds of marjoram had stol\'n thy hair,   The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,   One blushing shame, another white despair:   A third nor red, nor white, had stol\'n of both,   And to his robbery had annexed thy breath,   But for his theft in pride of all his growth     A vengeful canker eat him up to death.     More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,     But sweet, or colour it had stol\'n from thee.                        100   Where art thou Muse that thou forget\'st so long,   To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?   Spend\'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,   Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?   Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,   In gentle numbers time so idly spent,   Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,   And gives thy pen both skill and argument.   Rise resty Muse, my love\'s sweet face survey,   If time have any wrinkle graven there,   If any, be a satire to decay,   And make time\'s spoils despised everywhere.     Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life,     So thou prevent\'st his scythe, and crooked knife.                          101   O truant Muse what shall be thy amends,   For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed?   Both truth and beauty on my love depends:   So dost thou too, and therein dignified:   Make answer Muse, wilt thou not haply say,   \'Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,   Beauty no pencil, beauty\'s truth to lay:   But best is best, if never intermixed\'?   Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?   Excuse not silence so, for\'t lies in thee,   To make him much outlive a gilded tomb:   And to be praised of ages yet to be.     Then do thy office Muse, I teach thee how,     To make him seem long hence, as he shows now.                        102   My love is strengthened though more weak in seeming,   I love not less, though less the show appear,   That love is merchandized, whose rich esteeming,     The owner\'s tongue doth publish every where.   Our love was new, and then but in the spring,   When I was wont to greet it with my lays,   As Philomel in summer\'s front doth sing,   And stops her pipe in growth of riper days:   Not that the summer is less pleasant now   Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,   But that wild music burthens every bough,   And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.     Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue:     Because I would not dull you with my song.                        103   Alack what poverty my muse brings forth,   That having such a scope to show her pride,   The argument all bare is of more worth   Than when it hath my added praise beside.   O blame me not if I no more can write!   Look in your glass and there appears a face,   That over-goes my blunt invention quite,     Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.   Were it not sinful then striving to mend,   To mar the subject that before was well?   For to no other pass my verses tend,   Than of your graces and your gifts to tell.     And more, much more than in my verse can sit,     Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.                        104   To me fair friend you never can be old,   For as you were when first your eye I eyed,   Such seems your beauty still: three winters cold,   Have from the forests shook three summers\' pride,   Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned,   In process of the seasons have I seen,   Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,   Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green.   Ah yet doth beauty like a dial hand,   Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived,   So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand     Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.     For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred,     Ere you were born was beauty\'s summer dead.                        105   Let not my love be called idolatry,   Nor my beloved as an idol show,   Since all alike my songs and praises be   To one, of one, still such, and ever so.   Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,   Still constant in a wondrous excellence,   Therefore my verse to constancy confined,   One thing expressing, leaves out difference.   Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,   Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words,   And in this change is my invention spent,   Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.     Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone.     Which three till now, never kept seat in one.                          106   When in the chronicle of wasted time,   I see descriptions of the fairest wights,   And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,   In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights,   Then in the blazon of sweet beauty\'s best,   Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,   I see their antique pen would have expressed,   Even such a beauty as you master now.   So all their praises are but prophecies   Of this our time, all you prefiguring,   And for they looked but with divining eyes,   They had not skill enough your worth to sing:     For we which now behold these present days,     Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.                        107   Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul,   Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,   Can yet the lease of my true love control,     Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.   The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,   And the sad augurs mock their own presage,   Incertainties now crown themselves assured,   And peace proclaims olives of endless age.   Now with the drops of this most balmy time,   My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,   Since spite of him I\'ll live in this poor rhyme,   While he insults o\'er dull and speechless tribes.     And thou in this shalt find thy monument,     When tyrants\' crests and tombs of brass are spent.                        108   What\'s in the brain that ink may character,   Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit,   What\'s new to speak, what now to register,   That may express my love, or thy dear merit?   Nothing sweet boy, but yet like prayers divine,   I must each day say o\'er the very same,   Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,     Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.   So that eternal love in love\'s fresh case,   Weighs not the dust and injury of age,   Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,   But makes antiquity for aye his page,     Finding the first conceit of love there bred,     Where time and outward form would show it dead.                        109   O never say that I was false of heart,   Though absence seemed my flame to qualify,   As easy might I from my self depart,   As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:   That is my home of love, if I have ranged,   Like him that travels I return again,   Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,   So that my self bring water for my stain,   Never believe though in my nature reigned,   All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,   That it could so preposterously be stained,     To leave for nothing all thy sum of good:     For nothing this wide universe I call,     Save thou my rose, in it thou art my all.                        110   Alas \'tis true, I have gone here and there,   And made my self a motley to the view,   Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,   Made old offences of affections new.   Most true it is, that I have looked on truth   Askance and strangely: but by all above,   These blenches gave my heart another youth,   And worse essays proved thee my best of love.   Now all is done, have what shall have no end,   Mine appetite I never more will grind   On newer proof, to try an older friend,   A god in love, to whom I am confined.     Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,     Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.                          111   O for my sake do you with Fortune chide,   The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,   That did not better for my life provide,   Than public means which public manners breeds.   Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,   And almost thence my nature is subdued   To what it works in, like the dyer\'s hand:   Pity me then, and wish I were renewed,   Whilst like a willing patient I will drink,   Potions of eisel \'gainst my strong infection,   No bitterness that I will bitter think,   Nor double penance to correct correction.     Pity me then dear friend, and I assure ye,     Even that your pity is enough to cure me.                        112   Your love and pity doth th\' impression fill,   Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow,   For what care I who calls me well or ill,     So you o\'er-green my bad, my good allow?   You are my all the world, and I must strive,   To know my shames and praises from your tongue,   None else to me, nor I to none alive,   That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.   In so profound abysm I throw all care   Of others\' voices, that my adder\'s sense,   To critic and to flatterer stopped are:   Mark how with my neglect I do dispense.     You are so strongly in my purpose bred,     That all the world besides methinks are dead.                        113   Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind,   And that which governs me to go about,   Doth part his function, and is partly blind,   Seems seeing, but effectually is out:   For it no form delivers to the heart   Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch,   Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,     Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:   For if it see the rud\'st or gentlest sight,   The most sweet favour or deformed\'st creature,   The mountain, or the sea, the day, or night:   The crow, or dove, it shapes them to your feature.     Incapable of more, replete with you,     My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.                        114   Or whether doth my mind being crowned with you   Drink up the monarch\'s plague this flattery?   Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true,   And that your love taught it this alchemy?   To make of monsters, and things indigest,   Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,   Creating every bad a perfect best   As fast as objects to his beams assemble:   O \'tis the first, \'tis flattery in my seeing,   And my great mind most kingly drinks it up,   Mine eye well knows what with his gust is \'greeing,     And to his palate doth prepare the cup.     If it be poisoned, \'tis the lesser sin,     That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.                        115   Those lines that I before have writ do lie,   Even those that said I could not love you dearer,   Yet then my judgment knew no reason why,   My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer,   But reckoning time, whose millioned accidents   Creep in \'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings,   Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp\'st intents,   Divert strong minds to the course of alt\'ring things:   Alas why fearing of time\'s tyranny,   Might I not then say \'Now I love you best,\'   When I was certain o\'er incertainty,   Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?     Love is a babe, then might I not say so     To give full growth to that which still doth grow.                          116   Let me not to the marriage of true minds   Admit impediments, love is not love   Which alters when it alteration finds,   Or bends with the remover to remove.   O no, it is an ever-fixed mark   That looks on tempests and is never shaken;   It is the star to every wand\'ring bark,   Whose worth\'s unknown, although his height be taken.   Love\'s not Time\'s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks   Within his bending sickle\'s compass come,   Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,   But bears it out even to the edge of doom:     If this be error and upon me proved,     I never writ, nor no man ever loved.                        117   Accuse me thus, that I have scanted all,   Wherein I should your great deserts repay,   Forgot upon your dearest love to call,     Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day,   That I have frequent been with unknown minds,   And given to time your own dear-purchased right,   That I have hoisted sail to all the winds   Which should transport me farthest from your sight.   Book both my wilfulness and errors down,   And on just proof surmise, accumulate,   Bring me within the level of your frown,   But shoot not at me in your wakened hate:     Since my appeal says I did strive to prove     The constancy and virtue of your love.                        118   Like as to make our appetite more keen   With eager compounds we our palate urge,   As to prevent our maladies unseen,   We sicken to shun sickness when we purge.   Even so being full of your ne\'er-cloying sweetness,   To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;   And sick of welfare found a kind of meetness,     To be diseased ere that there was true needing.   Thus policy in love t\' anticipate   The ills that were not, grew to faults assured,   And brought to medicine a healthful state   Which rank of goodness would by ill be cured.     But thence I learn and find the lesson true,     Drugs poison him that so feil sick of you.                        119   What potions have I drunk of Siren tears   Distilled from limbecks foul as hell within,   Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,   Still losing when I saw my self to win!   What wretched errors hath my heart committed,   Whilst it hath thought it self so blessed never!   How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted   In the distraction of this madding fever!   O benefit of ill, now I find true   That better is, by evil still made better.   And ruined love when it is built anew     Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.     So I return rebuked to my content,     And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.                        120   That you were once unkind befriends me now,   And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,   Needs must I under my transgression bow,   Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.   For if you were by my unkindness shaken   As I by yours, y\'have passed a hell of time,   And I a tyrant have no leisure taken   To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.   O that our night of woe might have remembered   My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,   And soon to you, as you to me then tendered   The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!     But that your trespass now becomes a fee,     Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.                          121   \'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed,   When not to be, receives reproach of being,   And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed,   Not by our feeling, but by others\' seeing.   For why should others\' false adulterate eyes   Give salutation to my sportive blood?   Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,   Which in their wills count bad what I think good?   No, I am that I am, and they that level   At my abuses, reckon up their own,   I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;   By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown     Unless this general evil they maintain,     All men are bad and in their badness reign.                        122   Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain   Full charactered with lasting memory,   Which shall above that idle rank remain     Beyond all date even to eternity.   Or at the least, so long as brain and heart   Have faculty by nature to subsist,   Till each to razed oblivion yield his part   Of thee, thy record never can be missed:   That poor retention could not so much hold,   Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score,   Therefore to give them from me was I bold,   To trust those tables that receive thee more:     To keep an adjunct to remember thee     Were to import forgetfulness in me.                        123   No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change,   Thy pyramids built up with newer might   To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,   They are but dressings Of a former sight:   Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire,   What thou dost foist upon us that is old,   And rather make them born to our desire,     Than think that we before have heard them told:   Thy registers and thee I both defy,   Not wond\'ring at the present, nor the past,   For thy records, and what we see doth lie,   Made more or less by thy continual haste:     This I do vow and this shall ever be,     I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.                        124   If my dear love were but the child of state,   It might for Fortune\'s bastard be unfathered,   As subject to time\'s love or to time\'s hate,   Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.   No it was builded far from accident,   It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls   Under the blow of thralled discontent,   Whereto th\' inviting time our fashion calls:   It fears not policy that heretic,   Which works on leases of short-numbered hours,   But all alone stands hugely politic,     That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.     To this I witness call the fools of time,     Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.                        125   Were\'t aught to me I bore the canopy,   With my extern the outward honouring,   Or laid great bases for eternity,   Which proves more short than waste or ruining?   Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour   Lose all, and more by paying too much rent   For compound sweet; forgoing simple savour,   Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent?   No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,   And take thou my oblation, poor but free,   Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art,   But mutual render, only me for thee.     Hence, thou suborned informer, a true soul     When most impeached, stands least in thy control.                          126   O thou my lovely boy who in thy power,   Dost hold Time\'s fickle glass his fickle hour:   Who hast by waning grown, and therein show\'st,   Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow\'st.   If Nature (sovereign mistress over wrack)   As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,   She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill   May time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill.   Yet fear her O thou minion of her pleasure,   She may detain, but not still keep her treasure!     Her audit (though delayed) answered must be,     And her quietus is to render thee.                        127   In the old age black was not counted fair,   Or if it were it bore not beauty\'s name:   But now is black beauty\'s successive heir,   And beauty slandered with a bastard shame,   For since each hand hath put on nature\'s power,     Fairing the foul with art\'s false borrowed face,   Sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower,   But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.   Therefore my mistress\' eyes are raven black,   Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem,   At such who not born fair no beauty lack,   Slandering creation with a false esteem,     Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,     That every tongue says beauty should look so.                        128   How oft when thou, my music, music play\'st,   Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds   With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway\'st   The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,   Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,   To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,   Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,   At the wood\'s boldness by thee blushing stand.   To be so tickled they would change their state     And situation with those dancing chips,   O\'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,   Making dead wood more blest than living lips,     Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,     Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.                        129   Th\' expense of spirit in a waste of shame   Is lust in action, and till action, lust   Is perjured, murd\'rous, bloody full of blame,   Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,   Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,   Past reason hunted, and no sooner had   Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,   On purpose laid to make the taker mad.   Mad in pursuit and in possession so,   Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme,   A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe,   Before a joy proposed behind a dream.     All this the world well knows yet none knows well,       To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.                        130   My mistress\' eyes are nothing like the sun,   Coral is far more red, than her lips red,   If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:   If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head:   I have seen roses damasked, red and white,   But no such roses see I in her cheeks,   And in some perfumes is there more delight,   Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.   I love to hear her speak, yet well I know,   That music hath a far more pleasing sound:   I grant I never saw a goddess go,   My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.     And yet by heaven I think my love as rare,     As any she belied with false compare.                        131   Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art,     As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;   For well thou know\'st to my dear doting heart   Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.   Yet in good faith some say that thee behold,   Thy face hath not the power to make love groan;   To say they err, I dare not be so bold,   Although I swear it to my self alone.   And to be sure that is not false I swear,   A thousand groans but thinking on thy face,   One on another\'s neck do witness bear   Thy black is fairest in my judgment\'s place.     In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,     And thence this slander as I think proceeds.                        132   Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me,   Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain,   Have put on black, and loving mourners be,   Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.   And truly not the morning sun of heaven     Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east,   Nor that full star that ushers in the even   Doth half that glory to the sober west   As those two mourning eyes become thy face:   O let it then as well beseem thy heart   To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,   And suit thy pity like in every part.     Then will I swear beauty herself is black,     And all they foul that thy complexion lack.                        133   Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan   For that deep wound it gives my friend and me;   Is\'t not enough to torture me alone,   But slave to slavery my sweet\'st friend must be?   Me from my self thy cruel eye hath taken,   And my next self thou harder hast engrossed,   Of him, my self, and thee I am forsaken,   A torment thrice three-fold thus to be crossed:   Prison my heart in thy steel bosom\'s ward,     But then my friend\'s heart let my poor heart bail,   Whoe\'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard,   Thou canst not then use rigour in my gaol.     And yet thou wilt, for I being pent in thee,     Perforce am thine and all that is in me.                        134   So now I have confessed that he is thine,   And I my self am mortgaged to thy will,   My self I\'ll forfeit, so that other mine,   Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still:   But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,   For thou art covetous, and he is kind,   He learned but surety-like to write for me,   Under that bond that him as fist doth bind.   The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,   Thou usurer that put\'st forth all to use,   And sue a friend, came debtor for my sake,   So him I lose through my unkind abuse.     Him have I lost, thou hast both him and me,       He pays the whole, and yet am I not free.                        135   Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will,   And \'Will\' to boot, and \'Will\' in over-plus,   More than enough am I that vex thee still,   To thy sweet will making addition thus.   Wilt thou whose will is large and spacious,   Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?   Shall will in others seem right gracious,   And in my will no fair acceptance shine?   The sea all water, yet receives rain still,   And in abundance addeth to his store,   So thou being rich in will add to thy will   One will of mine to make thy large will more.     Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill,     Think all but one, and me in that one \'Will.\'                        136   If thy soul check thee that I come so near,     Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy \'Will\',   And will thy soul knows is admitted there,   Thus far for love, my love-suit sweet fulfil.   \'Will\', will fulfil the treasure of thy love,   Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one,   In things of great receipt with case we prove,   Among a number one is reckoned none.   Then in the number let me pass untold,   Though in thy store\'s account I one must be,   For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold,   That nothing me, a something sweet to thee.     Make but my name thy love, and love that still,     And then thou lov\'st me for my name is Will.                        137   Thou blind fool Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,   That they behold and see not what they see?   They know what beauty is, see where it lies,   Yet what the best is, take the worst to be.   If eyes corrupt by over-partial looks,     Be anchored in the bay where all men ride,   Why of eyes\' falsehood hast thou forged hooks,   Whereto the judgment of my heart is tied?   Why should my heart think that a several plot,   Which my heart knows the wide world\'s common place?   Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not   To put fair truth upon so foul a face?     In things right true my heart and eyes have erred,     And to this false plague are they now transferred.                        138   When my love swears that she is made of truth,   I do believe her though I know she lies,   That she might think me some untutored youth,   Unlearned in the world\'s false subtleties.   Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,   Although she knows my days are past the best,   Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue,   On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed:   But wherefore says she not she is unjust?     And wherefore say not I that I am old?   O love\'s best habit is in seeming trust,   And age in love, loves not to have years told.     Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,     And in our faults by lies we flattered be.                        139   O call not me to justify the wrong,   That thy unkindness lays upon my heart,   Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue,   Use power with power, and slay me not by art,   Tell me thou lov\'st elsewhere; but in my sight,   Dear heart forbear to glance thine eye aside,   What need\'st thou wound with cunning when thy might   Is more than my o\'erpressed defence can bide?   Let me excuse thee, ah my love well knows,   Her pretty looks have been mine enemies,   And therefore from my face she turns my foes,   That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:     Yet do not so, but since I am near slain,       Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.                        140   Be wise as thou art cruel, do not press   My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain:   Lest sorrow lend me words and words express,   The manner of my pity-wanting pain.   If I might teach thee wit better it were,   Though not to love, yet love to tell me so,   As testy sick men when their deaths be near,   No news but health from their physicians know.   For if I should despair I should grow mad,   And in my madness might speak ill of thee,   Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,   Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.     That I may not be so, nor thou belied,     Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.                        141   In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,     For they in thee a thousand errors note,   But \'tis my heart that loves what they despise,   Who in despite of view is pleased to dote.   Nor are mine cars with thy tongue\'s tune delighted,   Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,   Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited   To any sensual feast with thee alone:   But my five wits, nor my five senses can   Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,   Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,   Thy proud heart\'s slave and vassal wretch to be:     Only my plague thus far I count my gain,     That she that makes me sin, awards me pain.                        142   Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate,   Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving,   O but with mine, compare thou thine own state,   And thou shalt find it merits not reproving,   Or if it do, not from those lips of thine,     That have profaned their scarlet ornaments,   And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine,   Robbed others\' beds\' revenues of their rents.   Be it lawful I love thee as thou lov\'st those,   Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee,   Root pity in thy heart that when it grows,   Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.     If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,     By self-example mayst thou be denied.                        143   Lo as a careful huswife runs to catch,   One of her feathered creatures broke away,   Sets down her babe and makes all swift dispatch   In pursuit of the thing she would have stay:   Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,   Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent,   To follow that which flies before her face:   Not prizing her poor infant\'s discontent;   So run\'st thou after that which flies from thee,     Whilst I thy babe chase thee afar behind,   But if thou catch thy hope turn back to me:   And play the mother\'s part, kiss me, be kind.     So will I pray that thou mayst have thy Will,     If thou turn back and my loud crying still.                        144   Two loves I have of comfort and despair,   Which like two spirits do suggest me still,   The better angel is a man right fair:   The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.   To win me soon to hell my female evil,   Tempteth my better angel from my side,   And would corrupt my saint to be a devil:   Wooing his purity with her foul pride.   And whether that my angel be turned fiend,   Suspect I may, yet not directly tell,   But being both from me both to each friend,   I guess one angel in another\'s hell.     Yet this shall I ne\'er know but live in doubt,       Till my bad angel fire my good one out.                        145   Those lips that Love\'s own hand did make,   Breathed forth the sound that said \'I hate\',   To me that languished for her sake:   But when she saw my woeful state,   Straight in her heart did mercy come,   Chiding that tongue that ever sweet,   Was used in giving gentle doom:   And taught it thus anew to greet:   \'I hate\' she altered with an end,   That followed it as gentle day,   Doth follow night who like a fiend   From heaven to hell is flown away.     \'I hate\', from hate away she threw,     And saved my life saying \'not you\'.                        146   Poor soul the centre of my sinful earth,     My sinful earth these rebel powers array,   Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth   Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?   Why so large cost having so short a lease,   Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?   Shall worms inheritors of this excess   Eat up thy charge? is this thy body\'s end?   Then soul live thou upon thy servant\'s loss,   And let that pine to aggravate thy store;   Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;   Within be fed, without be rich no more,     So shall thou feed on death, that feeds on men,     And death once dead, there\'s no more dying then.                        147   My love is as a fever longing still,   For that which longer nurseth the disease,   Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,   Th\' uncertain sickly appetite to please:   My reason the physician to my love,     Angry that his prescriptions are not kept   Hath left me, and I desperate now approve,   Desire is death, which physic did except.   Past cure I am, now reason is past care,   And frantic-mad with evermore unrest,   My thoughts and my discourse as mad men\'s are,   At random from the truth vainly expressed.     For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,     Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.                        148   O me! what eyes hath love put in my head,   Which have no correspondence with true sight,   Or if they have, where is my judgment fled,   That censures falsely what they see aright?   If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,   What means the world to say it is not so?   If it be not, then love doth well denote,   Love\'s eye is not so true as all men\'s: no,   How can it? O how can love\'s eye be true,     That is so vexed with watching and with tears?   No marvel then though I mistake my view,   The sun it self sees not, till heaven clears.     O cunning love, with tears thou keep\'st me blind,     Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.                        149   Canst thou O cruel, say I love thee not,   When I against my self with thee partake?   Do I not think on thee when I forgot   Am of my self, all-tyrant, for thy sake?   Who hateth thee that I do call my friend,   On whom frown\'st thou that I do fawn upon,   Nay if thou lour\'st on me do I not spend   Revenge upon my self with present moan?   What merit do I in my self respect,   That is so proud thy service to despise,   When all my best doth worship thy defect,   Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?     But love hate on for now I know thy mind,       Those that can see thou lov\'st, and I am blind.                        150   O from what power hast thou this powerful might,   With insufficiency my heart to sway,   To make me give the lie to my true sight,   And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?   Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,   That in the very refuse of thy deeds,   There is such strength and warrantise of skill,   That in my mind thy worst all best exceeds?   Who taught thee how to make me love thee more,   The more I hear and see just cause of hate?   O though I love what others do abhor,   With others thou shouldst not abhor my state.     If thy unworthiness raised love in me,     More worthy I to be beloved of thee.                        151   Love is too young to know what conscience is,     Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?   Then gentle cheater urge not my amiss,   Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove.   For thou betraying me, I do betray   My nobler part to my gross body\'s treason,   My soul doth tell my body that he may,   Triumph in love, flesh stays no farther reason,   But rising at thy name doth point out thee,   As his triumphant prize, proud of this pride,   He is contented thy poor drudge to be,   To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.     No want of conscience hold it that I call,     Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall.                        152   In loving thee thou know\'st I am forsworn,   But thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing,   In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,   In vowing new hate after new love bearing:   But why of two oaths\' breach do I accuse thee,     When I break twenty? I am perjured most,   For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee:   And all my honest faith in thee is lost.   For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness:   Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,   And to enlighten thee gave eyes to blindness,   Or made them swear against the thing they see.     For I have sworn thee fair: more perjured I,     To swear against the truth so foul a be.                        153   Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep,   A maid of Dian\'s this advantage found,   And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep   In a cold valley-fountain of that ground:   Which borrowed from this holy fire of Love,   A dateless lively heat still to endure,   And grew a seeting bath which yet men prove,   Against strange maladies a sovereign cure:   But at my mistress\' eye Love\'s brand new-fired,     The boy for trial needs would touch my breast,   I sick withal the help of bath desired,   And thither hied a sad distempered guest.     But found no cure, the bath for my help lies,     Where Cupid got new fire; my mistress\' eyes.                        154   The little Love-god lying once asleep,   Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,   Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep,   Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand,   The fairest votary took up that fire,   Which many legions of true hearts had warmed,   And so the general of hot desire,   Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarmed.   This brand she quenched in a cool well by,   Which from Love\'s fire took heat perpetual,   Growing a bath and healthful remedy,   For men discased, but I my mistress\' thrall,     Came there for cure and this by that I prove,       Love\'s fire heats water, water cools not love.   THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1603  ALLS WELL THAT ENDS WELL  by William Shakespeare   Dramatis Personae    KING OF FRANCE   THE DUKE OF FLORENCE   BERTRAM, Count of Rousillon   LAFEU, an old lord   PAROLLES, a follower of Bertram   TWO FRENCH LORDS, serving with Bertram    STEWARD, Servant to the Countess of Rousillon   LAVACHE, a clown and Servant to the Countess of Rousillon   A PAGE, Servant to the Countess of Rousillon    COUNTESS OF ROUSILLON, mother to Bertram   HELENA, a gentlewoman protected by the Countess   A WIDOW OF FLORENCE.   DIANA, daughter to the Widow     VIOLENTA, neighbour and friend to the Widow   MARIANA, neighbour and friend to the Widow    Lords, Officers, Soldiers, etc., French and Florentine      <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>     SCENE: Rousillon; Paris; Florence; Marseilles   ACT I. SCENE 1. Rousillon. The COUNT\'S palace  Enter BERTRAM, the COUNTESS OF ROUSILLON, HELENA, and LAFEU, all in black    COUNTESS. In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband.   BERTRAM. And I in going, madam, weep o\'er my father\'s death anew;     but I must attend his Majesty\'s command, to whom I am now in     ward, evermore in subjection.   LAFEU. You shall find of the King a husband, madam; you, sir, a     father. He that so generally is at all times good must of     necessity hold his virtue to you, whose worthiness would stir it     up where it wanted, rather than lack it where there is such     abundance.   COUNTESS. What hope is there of his Majesty\'s amendment?   LAFEU. He hath abandon\'d his physicians, madam; under whose     practices he hath persecuted time with hope, and finds no other     advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time.   COUNTESS. This young gentlewoman had a father- O, that \'had,\' how     sad a passage \'tis!-whose skill was almost as great as his     honesty; had it stretch\'d so far, would have made nature       immortal, and death should have play for lack of work. Would, for     the King\'s sake, he were living! I think it would be the death of     the King\'s disease.   LAFEU. How call\'d you the man you speak of, madam?   COUNTESS. He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his     great right to be so- Gerard de Narbon.   LAFEU. He was excellent indeed, madam; the King very lately spoke     of him admiringly and mourningly; he was skilful enough to have     liv\'d still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality.   BERTRAM. What is it, my good lord, the King languishes of?   LAFEU. A fistula, my lord.   BERTRAM. I heard not of it before.   LAFEU. I would it were not notorious. Was this gentlewoman the     daughter of Gerard de Narbon?   COUNTESS. His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to my     overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that her education     promises; her dispositions she inherits, which makes fair gifts     fairer; for where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities,     there commendations go with pity-they are virtues and traitors     too. In her they are the better for their simpleness; she derives       her honesty, and achieves her goodness.   LAFEU. Your commendations, madam, get from her tears.   COUNTESS. \'Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in.     The remembrance of her father never approaches her heart but the     tyranny of her sorrows takes all livelihood from her cheek. No     more of this, Helena; go to, no more, lest it be rather thought     you affect a sorrow than to have-   HELENA. I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too.   LAFEU. Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead: excessive     grief the enemy to the living.   COUNTESS. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it     soon mortal.   BERTRAM. Madam, I desire your holy wishes.   LAFEU. How understand we that?   COUNTESS. Be thou blest, Bertram, and succeed thy father     In manners, as in shape! Thy blood and virtue     Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness     Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few,     Do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy     Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend       Under thy own life\'s key; be check\'d for silence,     But never tax\'d for speech. What heaven more will,     That thee may furnish, and my prayers pluck down,     Fall on thy head! Farewell. My lord,     \'Tis an unseason\'d courtier; good my lord,     Advise him.   LAFEU. He cannot want the best     That shall attend his love.   COUNTESS. Heaven bless him! Farewell, Bertram.            Exit   BERTRAM. The best wishes that can be forg\'d in your thoughts be     servants to you!  [To HELENA]  Be comfortable to my mother, your     mistress, and make much of her.   LAFEU. Farewell, pretty lady; you must hold the credit of your     father.                             Exeunt BERTRAM and LAFEU   HELENA. O, were that all! I think not on my father;     And these great tears grace his remembrance more     Than those I shed for him. What was he like?     I have forgot him; my imagination     Carries no favour in\'t but Bertram\'s.     I am undone; there is no living, none,       If Bertram be away. \'Twere all one     That I should love a bright particular star     And think to wed it, he is so above me.     In his bright radiance and collateral light     Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.     Th\' ambition in my love thus plagues itself:     The hind that would be mated by the lion     Must die for love. \'Twas pretty, though a plague,     To see him every hour; to sit and draw     His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,     In our heart\'s table-heart too capable     Of every line and trick of his sweet favour.     But now he\'s gone, and my idolatrous fancy     Must sanctify his relics. Who comes here?                         Enter PAROLLES      [Aside]  One that goes with him. I love him for his sake;     And yet I know him a notorious liar,     Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;       Yet these fix\'d evils sit so fit in him     That they take place when virtue\'s steely bones     Looks bleak i\' th\' cold wind; withal, full oft we see     Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.   PAROLLES. Save you, fair queen!   HELENA. And you, monarch!   PAROLLES. No.   HELENA. And no.   PAROLLES. Are you meditating on virginity?   HELENA. Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you; let me ask you a     question. Man is enemy to virginity; how may we barricado it     against him?   PAROLLES. Keep him out.   HELENA. But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant in the     defence, yet is weak. Unfold to us some warlike resistance.   PAROLLES. There is none. Man, setting down before you, will     undermine you and blow you up.   HELENA. Bless our poor virginity from underminers and blowers-up!     Is there no military policy how virgins might blow up men?   PAROLLES. Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be blown       up; marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves      made, you lose your city. It is not politic in the commonwealth     of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational     increase; and there was never virgin got till virginity was first     lost. That you were made of is metal to make virgins. Virginity     by being once lost may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it     is ever lost. \'Tis too cold a companion; away with\'t.   HELENA. I will stand for \'t a little, though therefore I die a     virgin.   PAROLLES. There\'s little can be said in \'t; \'tis against the rule     of nature. To speak on the part of virginity is to accuse your     mothers; which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs     himself is a virgin; virginity murders itself, and should be     buried in highways, out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate     offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a     cheese; consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with     feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud,     idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the     canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by\'t. Out with\'t.     Within ten year it will make itself ten, which is a goodly       increase; and the principal itself not much the worse. Away     with\'t.   HELENA. How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?   PAROLLES. Let me see. Marry, ill to like him that ne\'er it likes.     \'Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept,     the less worth. Off with\'t while \'tis vendible; answer the time     of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of     fashion, richly suited but unsuitable; just like the brooch and     the toothpick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your     pie and your porridge than in your cheek. And your virginity,     your old virginity, is like one of our French wither\'d pears: it     looks ill, it eats drily; marry, \'tis a wither\'d pear; it was     formerly better; marry, yet \'tis a wither\'d pear. Will you     anything with it?   HELENA. Not my virginity yet.     There shall your master have a thousand loves,     A mother, and a mistress, and a friend,     A phoenix, captain, and an enemy,     A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign,     A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear;       His humble ambition, proud humility,     His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet,     His faith, his sweet disaster; with a world     Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms     That blinking Cupid gossips. Now shall he-     I know not what he shall. God send him well!     The court\'s a learning-place, and he is one-   PAROLLES. What one, i\' faith?   HELENA. That I wish well. \'Tis pity-   PAROLLES. What\'s pity?   HELENA. That wishing well had not a body in\'t     Which might be felt; that we, the poorer born,     Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes,     Might with effects of them follow our friends     And show what we alone must think, which never     Returns us thanks.                        Enter PAGE    PAGE. Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you.      Exit PAGE     PAROLLES. Little Helen, farewell; if I can remember thee, I will     think of thee at court.   HELENA. Monsieur Parolles, you were born under a charitable star.   PAROLLES. Under Mars, I.   HELENA. I especially think, under Mars.   PAROLLES. Why under Man?   HELENA. The wars hath so kept you under that you must needs be born     under Mars.   PAROLLES. When he was predominant.   HELENA. When he was retrograde, I think, rather.   PAROLLES. Why think you so?   HELENA. You go so much backward when you fight.   PAROLLES. That\'s for advantage.   HELENA. So is running away, when fear proposes the safety: but the     composition that your valour and fear makes in you is a virtue of     a good wing, and I like the wear well.   PAROLLES. I am so full of business I cannot answer thee acutely. I     will return perfect courtier; in the which my instruction shall     serve to naturalize thee, so thou wilt be capable of a courtier\'s     counsel, and understand what advice shall thrust upon thee; else       thou diest in thine unthankfulness, and thine ignorance makes     thee away. Farewell. When thou hast leisure, say thy prayers;     when thou hast none, remember thy friends. Get thee a good     husband and use him as he uses thee. So, farewell.  Exit   HELENA. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,     Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky     Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull     Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.     What power is it which mounts my love so high,     That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?     The mightiest space in fortune nature brings     To join like likes, and kiss like native things.     Impossible be strange attempts to those     That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose     What hath been cannot be. Who ever strove     To show her merit that did miss her love?     The King\'s disease-my project may deceive me,     But my intents are fix\'d, and will not leave me.        Exit     ACT I. SCENE 2. Paris. The KING\'S palace  Flourish of cornets. Enter the KING OF FRANCE, with letters, and divers ATTENDANTS    KING. The Florentines and Senoys are by th\' ears;     Have fought with equal fortune, and continue     A braving war.   FIRST LORD. So \'tis reported, sir.   KING. Nay, \'tis most credible. We here receive it,     A certainty, vouch\'d from our cousin Austria,     With caution, that the Florentine will move us     For speedy aid; wherein our dearest friend     Prejudicates the business, and would seem     To have us make denial.   FIRST LORD. His love and wisdom,     Approv\'d so to your Majesty, may plead     For amplest credence.   KING. He hath arm\'d our answer,     And Florence is denied before he comes;     Yet, for our gentlemen that mean to see       The Tuscan service, freely have they leave     To stand on either part.   SECOND LORD. It well may serve     A nursery to our gentry, who are sick     For breathing and exploit.   KING. What\'s he comes here?                Enter BERTRAM, LAFEU, and PAROLLES    FIRST LORD. It is the Count Rousillon, my good lord,     Young Bertram.   KING. Youth, thou bear\'st thy father\'s face;     Frank nature, rather curious than in haste,     Hath well compos\'d thee. Thy father\'s moral parts     Mayst thou inherit too! Welcome to Paris.   BERTRAM. My thanks and duty are your Majesty\'s.   KING. I would I had that corporal soundness now,     As when thy father and myself in friendship     First tried our soldiership. He did look far     Into the service of the time, and was       Discipled of the bravest. He lasted long;     But on us both did haggish age steal on,     And wore us out of act. It much repairs me     To talk of your good father. In his youth     He had the wit which I can well observe     To-day in our young lords; but they may jest     Till their own scorn return to them unnoted     Ere they can hide their levity in honour.     So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness     Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were,     His equal had awak\'d them; and his honour,     Clock to itself, knew the true minute when     Exception bid him speak, and at this time     His tongue obey\'d his hand. Who were below him     He us\'d as creatures of another place;     And bow\'d his eminent top to their low ranks,     Making them proud of his humility     In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man     Might be a copy to these younger times;     Which, followed well, would demonstrate them now       But goers backward.   BERTRAM. His good remembrance, sir,     Lies richer in your thoughts than on his tomb;     So in approof lives not his epitaph     As in your royal speech.   KING. Would I were with him! He would always say-     Methinks I hear him now; his plausive words     He scatter\'d not in ears, but grafted them     To grow there, and to bear- \'Let me not live\'-     This his good melancholy oft began,     On the catastrophe and heel of pastime,     When it was out-\'Let me not live\' quoth he     \'After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff     Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses     All but new things disdain; whose judgments are     Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies     Expire before their fashions.\' This he wish\'d.     I, after him, do after him wish too,     Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home,     I quickly were dissolved from my hive,       To give some labourers room.   SECOND LORD. You\'re loved, sir;     They that least lend it you shall lack you first.   KING. I fill a place, I know\'t. How long is\'t, Count,     Since the physician at your father\'s died?     He was much fam\'d.   BERTRAM. Some six months since, my lord.   KING. If he were living, I would try him yet-     Lend me an arm-the rest have worn me out     With several applications. Nature and sickness     Debate it at their leisure. Welcome, Count;     My son\'s no dearer.   BERTRAM. Thank your Majesty.                 Exeunt [Flourish]     ACT I. SCENE 3. Rousillon. The COUNT\'S palace  Enter COUNTESS, STEWARD, and CLOWN    COUNTESS. I will now hear; what say you of this gentlewoman?   STEWARD. Madam, the care I have had to even your content I wish     might be found in the calendar of my past endeavours; for then we     wound our modesty, and make foul the clearness of our deservings,     when of ourselves we publish them.   COUNTESS. What does this knave here? Get you gone, sirrah. The     complaints I have heard of you I do not all believe; \'tis my     slowness that I do not, for I know you lack not folly to commit     them and have ability enough to make such knaveries yours.   CLOWN. \'Tis not unknown to you, madam, I am a poor fellow.   COUNTESS. Well, sir.   CLOWN. No, madam, \'tis not so well that I am poor, though many of     the rich are damn\'d; but if I may have your ladyship\'s good will     to go to the world, Isbel the woman and I will do as we may.   COUNTESS. Wilt thou needs be a beggar?   CLOWN. I do beg your good will in this case.   COUNTESS. In what case?     CLOWN. In Isbel\'s case and mine own. Service is no heritage; and I     think I shall never have the blessing of God till I have issue o\'     my body; for they say bames are blessings.   COUNTESS. Tell me thy reason why thou wilt marry.   CLOWN. My poor body, madam, requires it. I am driven on by the     flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives.   COUNTESS. Is this all your worship\'s reason?   CLOWN. Faith, madam, I have other holy reasons, such as they are.   COUNTESS. May the world know them?   CLOWN. I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and all flesh     and blood are; and, indeed, I do marry that I may repent.   COUNTESS. Thy marriage, sooner than thy wickedness.   CLOWN. I am out o\' friends, madam, and I hope to have friends for     my wife\'s sake.   COUNTESS. Such friends are thine enemies, knave.   CLOWN. Y\'are shallow, madam-in great friends; for the knaves come     to do that for me which I am aweary of. He that ears my land     spares my team, and gives me leave to in the crop. If I be his     cuckold, he\'s my drudge. He that comforts my wife is the     cherisher of my flesh and blood; he that cherishes my flesh and       blood loves my flesh and blood; he that loves my flesh and blood     is my friend; ergo, he that kisses my wife is my friend. If men     could be contented to be what they are, there were no fear in     marriage; for young Charbon the puritan and old Poysam the     papist, howsome\'er their hearts are sever\'d in religion, their     heads are both one; they may jowl horns together like any deer     i\' th\' herd.   COUNTESS. Wilt thou ever be a foul-mouth\'d and calumnious knave?   CLOWN. A prophet I, madam; and I speak the truth the next way:                For I the ballad will repeat,                 Which men full true shall find:               Your marriage comes by destiny,                 Your cuckoo sings by kind.    COUNTESS. Get you gone, sir; I\'ll talk with you more anon.   STEWARD. May it please you, madam, that he bid Helen come to you.     Of her I am to speak.   COUNTESS. Sirrah, tell my gentlewoman I would speak with her; Helen     I mean.     CLOWN.  [Sings]                 \'Was this fair face the cause\' quoth she                  \'Why the Grecians sacked Troy?                Fond done, done fond,                  Was this King Priam\'s joy?\'                With that she sighed as she stood,                With that she sighed as she stood,                  And gave this sentence then:                \'Among nine bad if one be good,                Among nine bad if one be good,                  There\'s yet one good in ten.\'    COUNTESS. What, one good in ten? You corrupt the song, sirrah.   CLOWN. One good woman in ten, madam, which is a purifying o\' th\'     song. Would God would serve the world so all the year! We\'d find     no fault with the tithe-woman, if I were the parson. One in ten,     quoth \'a! An we might have a good woman born before every blazing     star, or at an earthquake, \'twould mend the lottery well: a man     may draw his heart out ere \'a pluck one.   COUNTESS. You\'ll be gone, sir knave, and do as I command you.     CLOWN. That man should be at woman\'s command, and yet no hurt done!     Though honesty be no puritan, yet it will do no hurt; it will     wear the surplice of humility over the black gown of a big heart.     I am going, forsooth. The business is for Helen to come hither.  Exit   COUNTESS. Well, now.   STEWARD. I know, madam, you love your gentlewoman entirely.   COUNTESS. Faith I do. Her father bequeath\'d her to me; and she     herself, without other advantage, may lawfully make title to as     much love as she finds. There is more owing her than is paid; and     more shall be paid her than she\'ll demand.   STEWARD. Madam, I was very late more near her than I think she     wish\'d me. Alone she was, and did communicate to herself her own     words to her own ears; she thought, I dare vow for her, they     touch\'d not any stranger sense. Her matter was, she loved your     son. Fortune, she said, was no goddess, that had put such     difference betwixt their two estates; Love no god, that would not     extend his might only where qualities were level; Diana no queen     of virgins, that would suffer her poor knight surpris\'d without     rescue in the first assault, or ransom afterward. This she       deliver\'d in the most bitter touch of sorrow that e\'er I heard     virgin exclaim in; which I held my duty speedily to acquaint you     withal; sithence, in the loss that may happen, it concerns you     something to know it.   COUNTESS. YOU have discharg\'d this honestly; keep it to yourself.     Many likelihoods inform\'d me of this before, which hung so     tott\'ring in the balance that I could neither believe nor     misdoubt. Pray you leave me. Stall this in your bosom; and I     thank you for your honest care. I will speak with you further     anon.                                           Exit STEWARD                              Enter HELENA      Even so it was with me when I was young.     If ever we are nature\'s, these are ours; this thorn     Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong;     Our blood to us, this to our blood is born.     It is the show and seal of nature\'s truth,     Where love\'s strong passion is impress\'d in youth.     By our remembrances of days foregone,       Such were our faults, or then we thought them none.     Her eye is sick on\'t; I observe her now.   HELENA. What is your pleasure, madam?   COUNTESS. You know, Helen,     I am a mother to you.   HELENA. Mine honourable mistress.   COUNTESS. Nay, a mother.     Why not a mother? When I said \'a mother,\'     Methought you saw a serpent. What\'s in \'mother\'     That you start at it? I say I am your mother,     And put you in the catalogue of those     That were enwombed mine. \'Tis often seen     Adoption strives with nature, and choice breeds     A native slip to us from foreign seeds.     You ne\'er oppress\'d me with a mother\'s groan,     Yet I express to you a mother\'s care.     God\'s mercy, maiden! does it curd thy blood     To say I am thy mother? What\'s the matter,     That this distempered messenger of wet,     The many-colour\'d Iris, rounds thine eye?       Why, that you are my daughter?   HELENA. That I am not.   COUNTESS. I say I am your mother.   HELENA. Pardon, madam.     The Count Rousillon cannot be my brother:     I am from humble, he from honoured name;     No note upon my parents, his all noble.     My master, my dear lord he is; and I     His servant live, and will his vassal die.     He must not be my brother.   COUNTESS. Nor I your mother?   HELENA. You are my mother, madam; would you were-     So that my lord your son were not my brother-     Indeed my mother! Or were you both our mothers,     I care no more for than I do for heaven,     So I were not his sister. Can\'t no other,     But, I your daughter, he must be my brother?   COUNTESS. Yes, Helen, you might be my daughter-in-law.     God shield you mean it not! \'daughter\' and \'mother\'     So strive upon your pulse. What! pale again?       My fear hath catch\'d your fondness. Now I see     The myst\'ry of your loneliness, and find     Your salt tears\' head. Now to all sense \'tis gross     You love my son; invention is asham\'d,     Against the proclamation of thy passion,     To say thou dost not. Therefore tell me true;     But tell me then, \'tis so; for, look, thy cheeks     Confess it, th\' one to th\' other; and thine eyes     See it so grossly shown in thy behaviours     That in their kind they speak it; only sin     And hellish obstinacy tie thy tongue,     That truth should be suspected. Speak, is\'t so?     If it be so, you have wound a goodly clew;     If it be not, forswear\'t; howe\'er, I charge thee,     As heaven shall work in me for thine avail,     To tell me truly.   HELENA. Good madam, pardon me.   COUNTESS. Do you love my son?   HELENA. Your pardon, noble mistress.   COUNTESS. Love you my son?     HELENA. Do not you love him, madam?   COUNTESS. Go not about; my love hath in\'t a bond     Whereof the world takes note. Come, come, disclose     The state of your affection; for your passions     Have to the full appeach\'d.   HELENA. Then I confess,     Here on my knee, before high heaven and you,     That before you, and next unto high heaven,     I love your son.     My friends were poor, but honest; so\'s my love.     Be not offended, for it hurts not him     That he is lov\'d of me; I follow him not     By any token of presumptuous suit,     Nor would I have him till I do deserve him;     Yet never know how that desert should be.     I know I love in vain, strive against hope;     Yet in this captious and intenible sieve     I still pour in the waters of my love,     And lack not to lose still. Thus, Indian-like,     Religious in mine error, I adore       The sun that looks upon his worshipper     But knows of him no more. My dearest madam,     Let not your hate encounter with my love,     For loving where you do; but if yourself,     Whose aged honour cites a virtuous youth,     Did ever in so true a flame of liking     Wish chastely and love dearly that your Dian     Was both herself and Love; O, then, give pity     To her whose state is such that cannot choose     But lend and give where she is sure to lose;     That seeks not to find that her search implies,     But, riddle-like, lives sweetly where she dies!   COUNTESS. Had you not lately an intent-speak truly-     To go to Paris?   HELENA. Madam, I had.   COUNTESS. Wherefore? Tell true.   HELENA. I will tell truth; by grace itself I swear.     You know my father left me some prescriptions     Of rare and prov\'d effects, such as his reading     And manifest experience had collected       For general sovereignty; and that he will\'d me     In heedfull\'st reservation to bestow them,     As notes whose faculties inclusive were     More than they were in note. Amongst the rest     There is a remedy, approv\'d, set down,     To cure the desperate languishings whereof     The King is render\'d lost.   COUNTESS. This was your motive     For Paris, was it? Speak.   HELENA. My lord your son made me to think of this,     Else Paris, and the medicine, and the King,     Had from the conversation of my thoughts     Haply been absent then.   COUNTESS. But think you, Helen,     If you should tender your supposed aid,     He would receive it? He and his physicians     Are of a mind: he, that they cannot help him;     They, that they cannot help. How shall they credit     A poor unlearned virgin, when the schools,     Embowell\'d of their doctrine, have let off       The danger to itself?   HELENA. There\'s something in\'t     More than my father\'s skill, which was the great\'st     Of his profession, that his good receipt     Shall for my legacy be sanctified     By th\' luckiest stars in heaven; and, would your honour     But give me leave to try success, I\'d venture     The well-lost life of mine on his Grace\'s cure.     By such a day and hour.   COUNTESS. Dost thou believe\'t?   HELENA. Ay, madam, knowingly.   COUNTESS. Why, Helen, thou shalt have my leave and love,     Means and attendants, and my loving greetings     To those of mine in court. I\'ll stay at home,     And pray God\'s blessing into thy attempt.     Be gone to-morrow; and be sure of this,     What I can help thee to thou shalt not miss.          Exeunt    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>     ACT II. SCENE 1. Paris. The KING\'S palace  Flourish of cornets. Enter the KING with divers young LORDS taking leave for the Florentine war; BERTRAM and PAROLLES; ATTENDANTS    KING. Farewell, young lords; these war-like principles     Do not throw from you. And you, my lords, farewell;     Share the advice betwixt you; if both gain all,     The gift doth stretch itself as \'tis receiv\'d,     And is enough for both.   FIRST LORD. \'Tis our hope, sir,     After well-ent\'red soldiers, to return     And find your Grace in health.   KING. No, no, it cannot be; and yet my heart     Will not confess he owes the malady     That doth my life besiege. Farewell, young lords;     Whether I live or die, be you the sons     Of worthy Frenchmen; let higher Italy-     Those bated that inherit but the fall     Of the last monarchy-see that you come       Not to woo honour, but to wed it; when     The bravest questant shrinks, find what you seek,     That fame may cry you aloud. I say farewell.   SECOND LORD. Health, at your bidding, serve your Majesty!   KING. Those girls of Italy, take heed of them;     They say our French lack language to deny,     If they demand; beware of being captives     Before you serve.     BOTH. Our hearts receive your warnings.   KING. Farewell.  [To ATTENDANTS]  Come hither to me.                                        The KING retires attended   FIRST LORD. O my sweet lord, that you will stay behind us!   PAROLLES. \'Tis not his fault, the spark.     SECOND LORD. O, \'tis brave wars!   PAROLLES. Most admirable! I have seen those wars.   BERTRAM. I am commanded here and kept a coil with     \'Too young\' and next year\' and "Tis too early.\'   PAROLLES. An thy mind stand to \'t, boy, steal away bravely.   BERTRAM. I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock,     Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry,       Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn     But one to dance with. By heaven, I\'ll steal away.   FIRST LORD. There\'s honour in the theft.   PAROLLES. Commit it, Count.   SECOND LORD. I am your accessary; and so farewell.   BERTRAM. I grow to you, and our parting is a tortur\'d body.   FIRST LORD. Farewell, Captain.   SECOND LORD. Sweet Monsieur Parolles!   PAROLLES. Noble heroes, my sword and yours are kin. Good sparks and     lustrous, a word, good metals: you shall find in the regiment of     the Spinii one Captain Spurio, with his cicatrice, an emblem of     war, here on his sinister cheek; it was this very sword     entrench\'d it. Say to him I live; and observe his reports for me.   FIRST LORD. We shall, noble Captain.   PAROLLES. Mars dote on you for his novices!       Exeunt LORDS     What will ye do?                              Re-enter the KING    BERTRAM. Stay; the King!     PAROLLES. Use a more spacious ceremony to the noble lords; you have     restrain\'d yourself within the list of too cold an adieu. Be more     expressive to them; for they wear themselves in the cap of the     time; there do muster true gait; eat, speak, and move, under the     influence of the most receiv\'d star; and though the devil lead     the measure, such are to be followed. After them, and take a more     dilated farewell.   BERTRAM. And I will do so.   PAROLLES. Worthy fellows; and like to prove most sinewy sword-men.                                      Exeunt BERTRAM and PAROLLES                                Enter LAFEU    LAFEU.  [Kneeling]  Pardon, my lord, for me and for my tidings.   KING. I\'ll fee thee to stand up.   LAFEU. Then here\'s a man stands that has brought his pardon.     I would you had kneel\'d, my lord, to ask me mercy;     And that at my bidding you could so stand up.   KING. I would I had; so I had broke thy pate,     And ask\'d thee mercy for\'t.     LAFEU. Good faith, across!     But, my good lord, \'tis thus: will you be cur\'d     Of your infirmity?   KING. No.   LAFEU. O, will you eat     No grapes, my royal fox? Yes, but you will     My noble grapes, an if my royal fox     Could reach them: I have seen a medicine     That\'s able to breathe life into a stone,     Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary     With spritely fire and motion; whose simple touch     Is powerful to araise King Pepin, nay,     To give great Charlemain a pen in\'s hand     And write to her a love-line.   KING. What her is this?   LAFEU. Why, Doctor She! My lord, there\'s one arriv\'d,     If you will see her. Now, by my faith and honour,     If seriously I may convey my thoughts     In this my light deliverance, I have spoke     With one that in her sex, her years, profession,       Wisdom, and constancy, hath amaz\'d me more     Than I dare blame my weakness. Will you see her,     For that is her demand, and know her business?     That done, laugh well at me.   KING. Now, good Lafeu,     Bring in the admiration, that we with the     May spend our wonder too, or take off thine     By wond\'ring how thou took\'st it.   LAFEU. Nay, I\'ll fit you,     And not be all day neither.                       Exit LAFEU   KING. Thus he his special nothing ever prologues.                     Re-enter LAFEU with HELENA    LAFEU. Nay, come your ways.   KING. This haste hath wings indeed.   LAFEU. Nay, come your ways;     This is his Majesty; say your mind to him.     A traitor you do look like; but such traitors     His Majesty seldom fears. I am Cressid\'s uncle,       That dare leave two together. Fare you well.            Exit   KING. Now, fair one, does your business follow us?   HELENA. Ay, my good lord.     Gerard de Narbon was my father,     In what he did profess, well found.   KING. I knew him.   HELENA. The rather will I spare my praises towards him;     Knowing him is enough. On\'s bed of death     Many receipts he gave me; chiefly one,     Which, as the dearest issue of his practice,     And of his old experience th\' only darling,     He bade me store up as a triple eye,     Safer than mine own two, more dear. I have so:     And, hearing your high Majesty is touch\'d     With that malignant cause wherein the honour     Of my dear father\'s gift stands chief in power,     I come to tender it, and my appliance,     With all bound humbleness.   KING. We thank you, maiden;     But may not be so credulous of cure,       When our most learned doctors leave us, and     The congregated college have concluded     That labouring art can never ransom nature     From her inaidable estate-I say we must not     So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope,     To prostitute our past-cure malady     To empirics; or to dissever so     Our great self and our credit to esteem     A senseless help, when help past sense we deem.   HELENA. My duty then shall pay me for my pains.     I will no more enforce mine office on you;     Humbly entreating from your royal thoughts     A modest one to bear me back again.   KING. I cannot give thee less, to be call\'d grateful.     Thou thought\'st to help me; and such thanks I give     As one near death to those that wish him live.     But what at full I know, thou know\'st no part;     I knowing all my peril, thou no art.   HELENA. What I can do can do no hurt to try,     Since you set up your rest \'gainst remedy.       He that of greatest works is finisher     Oft does them by the weakest minister.     So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,     When judges have been babes. Great floods have flown     From simple sources, and great seas have dried     When miracles have by the greatest been denied.     Oft expectation fails, and most oft there     Where most it promises; and oft it hits     Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.   KING. I must not hear thee. Fare thee well, kind maid;     Thy pains, not us\'d, must by thyself be paid;     Proffers not took reap thanks for their reward.   HELENA. Inspired merit so by breath is barr\'d.     It is not so with Him that all things knows,     As \'tis with us that square our guess by shows;     But most it is presumption in us when     The help of heaven we count the act of men.     Dear sir, to my endeavours give consent;     Of heaven, not me, make an experiment.     I am not an impostor, that proclaim       Myself against the level of mine aim;     But know I think, and think I know most sure,     My art is not past power nor you past cure.   KING. Art thou so confident? Within what space     Hop\'st thou my cure?   HELENA. The greatest Grace lending grace.     Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring     Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring,     Ere twice in murk and occidental damp     Moist Hesperus hath quench\'d his sleepy lamp,     Or four and twenty times the pilot\'s glass     Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass,     What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly,     Health shall live free, and sickness freely die.   KING. Upon thy certainty and confidence     What dar\'st thou venture?   HELENA. Tax of impudence,     A strumpet\'s boldness, a divulged shame,     Traduc\'d by odious ballads; my maiden\'s name     Sear\'d otherwise; ne worse of worst-extended       With vilest torture let my life be ended.   KING. Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak     His powerful sound within an organ weak;     And what impossibility would slay     In common sense, sense saves another way.     Thy life is dear; for all that life can rate     Worth name of life in thee hath estimate:     Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, all     That happiness and prime can happy call.     Thou this to hazard needs must intimate     Skill infinite or monstrous desperate.     Sweet practiser, thy physic I will try,     That ministers thine own death if I die.   HELENA. If I break time, or flinch in property     Of what I spoke, unpitied let me die;     And well deserv\'d. Not helping, death\'s my fee;     But, if I help, what do you promise me?   KING. Make thy demand.   HELENA. But will you make it even?   KING. Ay, by my sceptre and my hopes of heaven.     HELENA. Then shalt thou give me with thy kingly hand     What husband in thy power I will command.     Exempted be from me the arrogance     To choose from forth the royal blood of France,     My low and humble name to propagate     With any branch or image of thy state;     But such a one, thy vassal, whom I know     Is free for me to ask, thee to bestow.   KING. Here is my hand; the premises observ\'d,     Thy will by my performance shall be serv\'d.     So make the choice of thy own time, for I,     Thy resolv\'d patient, on thee still rely.     More should I question thee, and more I must,     Though more to know could not be more to trust,     From whence thou cam\'st, how tended on. But rest     Unquestion\'d welcome and undoubted blest.     Give me some help here, ho! If thou proceed     As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.                                               [Flourish. Exeunt]     ACT II. SCENE 2. Rousillon. The COUNT\'S palace  Enter COUNTESS and CLOWN    COUNTESS. Come on, sir; I shall now put you to the height of your     breeding.   CLOWN. I will show myself highly fed and lowly taught. I know my     business is but to the court.   COUNTESS. To the court! Why, what place make you special, when you     put off that with such contempt? But to the court!   CLOWN. Truly, madam, if God have lent a man any manners, he may     easily put it off at court. He that cannot make a leg, put off\'s     cap, kiss his hand, and say nothing, has neither leg, hands, lip,     nor cap; and indeed such a fellow, to say precisely, were not for     the court; but for me, I have an answer will serve all men.   COUNTESS. Marry, that\'s a bountiful answer that fits all questions.   CLOWN. It is like a barber\'s chair, that fits all buttocks-the pin     buttock, the quatch buttock, the brawn buttock, or any buttock.   COUNTESS. Will your answer serve fit to all questions?   CLOWN. As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as your     French crown for your taffety punk, as Tib\'s rush for Tom\'s     forefinger, as a pancake for Shrove Tuesday, a morris for Mayday,     as the nail to his hole, the cuckold to his horn, as a scolding     quean to a wrangling knave, as the nun\'s lip to the friar\'s     mouth; nay, as the pudding to his skin.   COUNTESS. Have you, I, say, an answer of such fitness for all     questions?   CLOWN. From below your duke to beneath your constable, it will fit     any question.   COUNTESS. It must be an answer of most monstrous size that must fit     all demands.   CLOWN. But a trifle neither, in good faith, if the learned should     speak truth of it. Here it is, and all that belongs to\'t. Ask me     if I am a courtier: it shall do you no harm to learn.   COUNTESS. To be young again, if we could, I will be a fool in     question, hoping to be the wiser by your answer. I pray you, sir,     are you a courtier?   CLOWN. O Lord, sir!-There\'s a simple putting off. More, more, a     hundred of them.   COUNTESS. Sir, I am a poor friend of yours, that loves you.   CLOWN. O Lord, sir!-Thick, thick; spare not me.     COUNTESS. I think, sir, you can eat none of this homely meat.   CLOWN. O Lord, sir!-Nay, put me to\'t, I warrant you.   COUNTESS. You were lately whipp\'d, sir, as I think.   CLOWN. O Lord, sir!-Spare not me.   COUNTESS. Do you cry \'O Lord, sir!\' at your whipping, and \'spare     not me\'? Indeed your \'O Lord, sir!\' is very sequent to your     whipping. You would answer very well to a whipping, if you were     but bound to\'t.   CLOWN. I ne\'er had worse luck in my life in my \'O Lord, sir!\' I see     thing\'s may serve long, but not serve ever.   COUNTESS. I play the noble housewife with the time,     To entertain it so merrily with a fool.   CLOWN. O Lord, sir!-Why, there\'t serves well again.   COUNTESS. An end, sir! To your business: give Helen this,     And urge her to a present answer back;     Commend me to my kinsmen and my son. This is not much.   CLOWN. Not much commendation to them?   COUNTESS. Not much employment for you. You understand me?   CLOWN. Most fruitfully; I am there before my legs.   COUNTESS. Haste you again.                              Exeunt     ACT II. SCENE 3. Paris. The KING\'S palace  Enter BERTRAM, LAFEU, and PAROLLES    LAFEU. They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical     persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and     causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors,     ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge when we should submit     ourselves to an unknown fear.   PAROLLES. Why, \'tis the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot     out in our latter times.   BERTRAM. And so \'tis.   LAFEU. To be relinquish\'d of the artists-   PAROLLES. So I say-both of Galen and Paracelsus.   LAFEU. Of all the learned and authentic fellows-   PAROLLES. Right; so I say.   LAFEU. That gave him out incurable-   PAROLLES. Why, there \'tis; so say I too.   LAFEU. Not to be help\'d-   PAROLLES. Right; as \'twere a man assur\'d of a-   LAFEU. Uncertain life and sure death.     PAROLLES. Just; you say well; so would I have said.   LAFEU. I may truly say it is a novelty to the world.   PAROLLES. It is indeed. If you will have it in showing, you shall     read it in what-do-ye-call\'t here.   LAFEU.  [Reading the ballad title]  \'A Showing of a Heavenly     Effect in an Earthly Actor.\'   PAROLLES. That\'s it; I would have said the very same.   LAFEU. Why, your dolphin is not lustier. \'Fore me, I speak in     respect-   PAROLLES. Nay, \'tis strange, \'tis very strange; that is the brief     and the tedious of it; and he\'s of a most facinerious spirit that     will not acknowledge it to be the-   LAFEU. Very hand of heaven.   PAROLLES. Ay; so I say.   LAFEU. In a most weak-   PAROLLES. And debile minister, great power, great transcendence;     which should, indeed, give us a further use to be made than alone     the recov\'ry of the King, as to be-   LAFEU. Generally thankful.                     Enter KING, HELENA, and ATTENDANTS    PAROLLES. I would have said it; you say well. Here comes the King.   LAFEU. Lustig, as the Dutchman says. I\'ll like a maid the better,     whilst I have a tooth in my head. Why, he\'s able to lead her a     coranto.   PAROLLES. Mort du vinaigre! Is not this Helen?   LAFEU. \'Fore God, I think so.   KING. Go, call before me all the lords in court.                                                Exit an ATTENDANT     Sit, my preserver, by thy patient\'s side;     And with this healthful hand, whose banish\'d sense     Thou has repeal\'d, a second time receive     The confirmation of my promis\'d gift,     Which but attends thy naming.                       Enter three or four LORDS      Fair maid, send forth thine eye. This youthful parcel     Of noble bachelors stand at my bestowing,       O\'er whom both sovereign power and father\'s voice     I have to use. Thy frank election make;     Thou hast power to choose, and they none to forsake.   HELENA. To each of you one fair and virtuous mistress     Fall, when love please. Marry, to each but one!   LAFEU. I\'d give bay Curtal and his furniture     My mouth no more were broken than these boys\',     And writ as little beard.   KING. Peruse them well.     Not one of those but had a noble father.   HELENA. Gentlemen,     Heaven hath through me restor\'d the King to health.   ALL. We understand it, and thank heaven for you.   HELENA. I am a simple maid, and therein wealthiest     That I protest I simply am a maid.     Please it your Majesty, I have done already.     The blushes in my cheeks thus whisper me:     \'We blush that thou shouldst choose; but, be refused,     Let the white death sit on thy cheek for ever,     We\'ll ne\'er come there again.\'     KING. Make choice and see:     Who shuns thy love shuns all his love in me.   HELENA. Now, Dian, from thy altar do I fly,     And to imperial Love, that god most high,     Do my sighs stream. Sir, will you hear my suit?   FIRST LORD. And grant it.   HELENA. Thanks, sir; all the rest is mute.   LAFEU. I had rather be in this choice than throw ames-ace for my     life.   HELENA. The honour, sir, that flames in your fair eyes,     Before I speak, too threat\'ningly replies.     Love make your fortunes twenty times above     Her that so wishes, and her humble love!   SECOND LORD. No better, if you please.   HELENA. My wish receive,     Which great Love grant; and so I take my leave.   LAFEU. Do all they deny her? An they were sons of mine I\'d have     them whipt; or I would send them to th\' Turk to make eunuchs of.   HELENA. Be not afraid that I your hand should take;     I\'ll never do you wrong for your own sake.       Blessing upon your vows; and in your bed     Find fairer fortune, if you ever wed!   LAFEU. These boys are boys of ice; they\'ll none have her.     Sure, they are bastards to the English; the French ne\'er got \'em.   HELENA. You are too young, too happy, and too good,     To make yourself a son out of my blood.   FOURTH LORD. Fair one, I think not so.   LAFEU. There\'s one grape yet; I am sure thy father drunk wine-but     if thou be\'st not an ass, I am a youth of fourteen; I have known     thee already.   HELENA.  [To BERTRAM]  I dare not say I take you; but I give     Me and my service, ever whilst I live,     Into your guiding power. This is the man.   KING. Why, then, young Bertram, take her; she\'s thy wife.   BERTRAM. My wife, my liege! I shall beseech your Highness,     In such a business give me leave to use     The help of mine own eyes.   KING. Know\'st thou not, Bertram,     What she has done for me?   BERTRAM. Yes, my good lord;       But never hope to know why I should marry her.   KING. Thou know\'st she has rais\'d me from my sickly bed.   BERTRAM. But follows it, my lord, to bring me down     Must answer for your raising? I know her well:     She had her breeding at my father\'s charge.     A poor physician\'s daughter my wife! Disdain     Rather corrupt me ever!   KING. \'Tis only title thou disdain\'st in her, the which     I can build up. Strange is it that our bloods,     Of colour, weight, and heat, pour\'d all together,     Would quite confound distinction, yet stand off     In differences so mighty. If she be     All that is virtuous-save what thou dislik\'st,     A poor physician\'s daughter-thou dislik\'st     Of virtue for the name; but do not so.     From lowest place when virtuous things proceed,     The place is dignified by the doer\'s deed;     Where great additions swell\'s, and virtue none,     It is a dropsied honour. Good alone     Is good without a name. Vileness is so:       The property by what it is should go,     Not by the title. She is young, wise, fair;     In these to nature she\'s immediate heir;     And these breed honour. That is honour\'s scorn     Which challenges itself as honour\'s born     And is not like the sire. Honours thrive     When rather from our acts we them derive     Than our fore-goers. The mere word\'s a slave,     Debauch\'d on every tomb, on every grave     A lying trophy; and as oft is dumb     Where dust and damn\'d oblivion is the tomb     Of honour\'d bones indeed. What should be said?     If thou canst like this creature as a maid,     I can create the rest. Virtue and she     Is her own dower; honour and wealth from me.   BERTRAM. I cannot love her, nor will strive to do \'t.   KING. Thou wrong\'st thyself, if thou shouldst strive to choose.   HELENA. That you are well restor\'d, my lord, I\'m glad.     Let the rest go.   KING. My honour\'s at the stake; which to defeat,       I must produce my power. Here, take her hand,     Proud scornful boy, unworthy this good gift,     That dost in vile misprision shackle up     My love and her desert; that canst not dream     We, poising us in her defective scale,     Shall weigh thee to the beam; that wilt not know     It is in us to plant thine honour where     We please to have it grow. Check thy contempt;     Obey our will, which travails in thy good;     Believe not thy disdain, but presently     Do thine own fortunes that obedient right     Which both thy duty owes and our power claims;     Or I will throw thee from my care for ever     Into the staggers and the careless lapse     Of youth and ignorance; both my revenge and hate     Loosing upon thee in the name of justice,     Without all terms of pity. Speak; thine answer.   BERTRAM. Pardon, my gracious lord; for I submit     My fancy to your eyes. When I consider     What great creation and what dole of honour       Flies where you bid it, I find that she which late     Was in my nobler thoughts most base is now     The praised of the King; who, so ennobled,     Is as \'twere born so.   KING. Take her by the hand,     And tell her she is thine; to whom I promise     A counterpoise, if not to thy estate     A balance more replete.   BERTRAM. I take her hand.   KING. Good fortune and the favour of the King     Smile upon this contract; whose ceremony     Shall seem expedient on the now-born brief,     And be perform\'d to-night. The solemn feast     Shall more attend upon the coming space,     Expecting absent friends. As thou lov\'st her,     Thy love\'s to me religious; else, does err.               Exeunt all but LAFEU and PAROLLES who stay behind,                                       commenting of this wedding   LAFEU. Do you hear, monsieur? A word with you.   PAROLLES. Your pleasure, sir?     LAFEU. Your lord and master did well to make his recantation.   PAROLLES. Recantation! My Lord! my master!   LAFEU. Ay; is it not a language I speak?   PAROLLES. A most harsh one, and not to be understood without bloody     succeeding. My master!   LAFEU. Are you companion to the Count Rousillon?   PAROLLES. To any count; to all counts; to what is man.   LAFEU. To what is count\'s man: count\'s master is of another style.   PAROLLES. You are too old, sir; let it satisfy you, you are too     old.   LAFEU. I must tell thee, sirrah, I write man; to which title age     cannot bring thee.   PAROLLES. What I dare too well do, I dare not do.   LAFEU. I did think thee, for two ordinaries, to be a pretty wise     fellow; thou didst make tolerable vent of thy travel; it might     pass. Yet the scarfs and the bannerets about thee did manifoldly     dissuade me from believing thee a vessel of too great a burden. I     have now found thee; when I lose thee again I care not; yet art     thou good for nothing but taking up; and that thou\'rt scarce     worth.     PAROLLES. Hadst thou not the privilege of antiquity upon thee-   LAFEU. Do not plunge thyself too far in anger, lest thou hasten thy     trial; which if-Lord have mercy on thee for a hen! So, my good     window of lattice, fare thee well; thy casement I need not open,     for I look through thee. Give me thy hand.   PAROLLES. My lord, you give me most egregious indignity.   LAFEU. Ay, with all my heart; and thou art worthy of it.   PAROLLES. I have not, my lord, deserv\'d it.   LAFEU. Yes, good faith, ev\'ry dram of it; and I will not bate thee     a scruple.   PAROLLES. Well, I shall be wiser.   LAFEU. Ev\'n as soon as thou canst, for thou hast to pull at a smack     o\' th\' contrary. If ever thou be\'st bound in thy scarf and     beaten, thou shalt find what it is to be proud of thy bondage. I     have a desire to hold my acquaintance with thee, or rather my     knowledge, that I may say in the default \'He is a man I know.\'   PAROLLES. My lord, you do me most insupportable vexation.   LAFEU. I would it were hell pains for thy sake, and my poor doing     eternal; for doing I am past, as I will by thee, in what motion     age will give me leave.                                 Exit     PAROLLES. Well, thou hast a son shall take this disgrace off me:     scurvy, old, filthy, scurvy lord! Well, I must be patient; there     is no fettering of authority. I\'ll beat him, by my life, if I can     meet him with any convenience, an he were double and double a     lord. I\'ll have no more pity of his age than I would have of-     I\'ll beat him, and if I could but meet him again.                           Re-enter LAFEU    LAFEU. Sirrah, your lord and master\'s married; there\'s news for     you; you have a new mistress.   PAROLLES. I most unfeignedly beseech your lordship to make some     reservation of your wrongs. He is my good lord: whom I serve     above is my master.   LAFEU. Who? God?   PAROLLES. Ay, sir.   LAFEU. The devil it is that\'s thy master. Why dost thou garter up     thy arms o\' this fashion? Dost make hose of thy sleeves? Do other     servants so? Thou wert best set thy lower part where thy nose     stands. By mine honour, if I were but two hours younger, I\'d beat       thee. Methink\'st thou art a general offence, and every man should     beat thee. I think thou wast created for men to breathe     themselves upon thee.   PAROLLES. This is hard and undeserved measure, my lord.   LAFEU. Go to, sir; you were beaten in Italy for picking a kernel     out of a pomegranate; you are a vagabond, and no true traveller;     you are more saucy with lords and honourable personages than the     commission of your birth and virtue gives you heraldry. You are     not worth another word, else I\'d call you knave. I leave you.  Exit                             Enter BERTRAM    PAROLLES. Good, very, good, it is so then. Good, very good; let it     be conceal\'d awhile.   BERTRAM. Undone, and forfeited to cares for ever!   PAROLLES. What\'s the matter, sweetheart?   BERTRAM. Although before the solemn priest I have sworn,     I will not bed her.   PAROLLES. What, what, sweetheart?     BERTRAM. O my Parolles, they have married me!     I\'ll to the Tuscan wars, and never bed her.   PAROLLES. France is a dog-hole, and it no more merits     The tread of a man\'s foot. To th\' wars!   BERTRAM. There\'s letters from my mother; what th\' import is I know     not yet.   PAROLLES. Ay, that would be known. To th\' wars, my boy, to th\'       wars!     He wears his honour in a box unseen     That hugs his kicky-wicky here at home,     Spending his manly marrow in her arms,     Which should sustain the bound and high curvet     Of Mars\'s fiery steed. To other regions!     France is a stable; we that dwell in\'t jades;     Therefore, to th\' war!   BERTRAM. It shall be so; I\'ll send her to my house,     Acquaint my mother with my hate to her,     And wherefore I am fled; write to the King     That which I durst not speak. His present gift     Shall furnish me to those Italian fields       Where noble fellows strike. War is no strife     To the dark house and the detested wife.   PAROLLES. Will this capriccio hold in thee, art sure?   BERTRAM. Go with me to my chamber and advise me.     I\'ll send her straight away. To-morrow     I\'ll to the wars, she to her single sorrow.   PAROLLES. Why, these balls bound; there\'s noise in it. \'Tis hard:     A young man married is a man that\'s marr\'d.     Therefore away, and leave her bravely; go.     The King has done you wrong; but, hush, \'tis so.      Exeunt     ACT II. SCENE 4. Paris. The KING\'S palace  Enter HELENA and CLOWN    HELENA. My mother greets me kindly; is she well?   CLOWN. She is not well, but yet she has her health; she\'s very     merry, but yet she is not well. But thanks be given, she\'s very     well, and wants nothing i\' th\' world; but yet she is not well.   HELENA. If she be very well, what does she ail that she\'s not very     well?   CLOWN. Truly, she\'s very well indeed, but for two things.   HELENA. What two things?   CLOWN. One, that she\'s not in heaven, whither God send her quickly!     The other, that she\'s in earth, from whence God send her quickly!                          Enter PAROLLES    PAROLLES. Bless you, my fortunate lady!   HELENA. I hope, sir, I have your good will to have mine own good     fortunes.   PAROLLES. You had my prayers to lead them on; and to keep them on,       have them still. O, my knave, how does my old lady?   CLOWN. So that you had her wrinkles and I her money, I would she     did as you say.   PAROLLES. Why, I say nothing.   CLOWN. Marry, you are the wiser man; for many a man\'s tongue shakes     out his master\'s undoing. To say nothing, to do nothing, to know     nothing, and to have nothing, is to be a great part of your     title, which is within a very little of nothing.   PAROLLES. Away! th\'art a knave.   CLOWN. You should have said, sir, \'Before a knave th\'art a knave\';     that\'s \'Before me th\'art a knave.\' This had been truth, sir.   PAROLLES. Go to, thou art a witty fool; I have found thee.   CLOWN. Did you find me in yourself, sir, or were you taught to find     me? The search, sir, was profitable; and much fool may you find     in you, even to the world\'s pleasure and the increase of     laughter.   PAROLLES. A good knave, i\' faith, and well fed.     Madam, my lord will go away to-night:     A very serious business calls on him.     The great prerogative and rite of love,       Which, as your due, time claims, he does acknowledge;     But puts it off to a compell\'d restraint;     Whose want, and whose delay, is strew\'d with sweets,     Which they distil now in the curbed time,     To make the coming hour o\'erflow with joy     And pleasure drown the brim.   HELENA. What\'s his else?   PAROLLES. That you will take your instant leave o\' th\' King,     And make this haste as your own good proceeding,     Strength\'ned with what apology you think     May make it probable need.   HELENA. What more commands he?   PAROLLES. That, having this obtain\'d, you presently     Attend his further pleasure.   HELENA. In everything I wait upon his will.   PAROLLES. I shall report it so.   HELENA. I pray you.                              Exit PAROLLES     Come, sirrah.                                         Exeunt     ACT II. SCENE 5. Paris. The KING\'S palace  Enter LAFEU and BERTRAM    LAFEU. But I hope your lordship thinks not him a soldier.   BERTRAM. Yes, my lord, and of very valiant approof.   LAFEU. You have it from his own deliverance.   BERTRAM. And by other warranted testimony.   LAFEU. Then my dial goes not true; I took this lark for a bunting.   BERTRAM. I do assure you, my lord, he is very great in knowledge,     and accordingly valiant.   LAFEU. I have then sinn\'d against his experience and transgress\'d     against his valour; and my state that way is dangerous, since I     cannot yet find in my heart to repent. Here he comes; I pray you     make us friends; I will pursue the amity                           Enter PAROLLES    PAROLLES.  [To BERTRAM]  These things shall be done, sir.   LAFEU. Pray you, sir, who\'s his tailor?   PAROLLES. Sir!     LAFEU. O, I know him well. Ay, sir; he, sir, \'s a good workman, a     very good tailor.   BERTRAM.  [Aside to PAROLLES]  Is she gone to the King?   PAROLLES. She is.   BERTRAM. Will she away to-night?   PAROLLES. As you\'ll have her.   BERTRAM. I have writ my letters, casketed my treasure,     Given order for our horses; and to-night,     When I should take possession of the bride,     End ere I do begin.   LAFEU. A good traveller is something at the latter end of a dinner;     but one that lies three-thirds and uses a known truth to pass a     thousand nothings with, should be once heard and thrice beaten.     God save you, Captain.   BERTRAM. Is there any unkindness between my lord and you, monsieur?   PAROLLES. I know not how I have deserved to run into my lord\'s     displeasure.   LAFEU. You have made shift to run into \'t, boots and spurs and all,     like him that leapt into the custard; and out of it you\'ll run     again, rather than suffer question for your residence.     BERTRAM. It may be you have mistaken him, my lord.   LAFEU. And shall do so ever, though I took him at\'s prayers.     Fare you well, my lord; and believe this of me: there can be no     kernal in this light nut; the soul of this man is his clothes;     trust him not in matter of heavy consequence; I have kept of them     tame, and know their natures. Farewell, monsieur; I have spoken     better of you than you have or will to deserve at my hand; but we     must do good against evil.                              Exit   PAROLLES. An idle lord, I swear.   BERTRAM. I think so.   PAROLLES. Why, do you not know him?   BERTRAM. Yes, I do know him well; and common speech     Gives him a worthy pass. Here comes my clog.                            Enter HELENA    HELENA. I have, sir, as I was commanded from you,     Spoke with the King, and have procur\'d his leave     For present parting; only he desires     Some private speech with you.     BERTRAM. I shall obey his will.     You must not marvel, Helen, at my course,     Which holds not colour with the time, nor does     The ministration and required office     On my particular. Prepar\'d I was not     For such a business; therefore am I found     So much unsettled. This drives me to entreat you     That presently you take your way for home,     And rather muse than ask why I entreat you;     For my respects are better than they seem,     And my appointments have in them a need     Greater than shows itself at the first view     To you that know them not. This to my mother.                                                [Giving a letter]     \'Twill be two days ere I shall see you; so     I leave you to your wisdom.   HELENA. Sir, I can nothing say     But that I am your most obedient servant.   BERTRAM. Come, come, no more of that.   HELENA. And ever shall       With true observance seek to eke out that     Wherein toward me my homely stars have fail\'d     To equal my great fortune.   BERTRAM. Let that go.     My haste is very great. Farewell; hie home.   HELENA. Pray, sir, your pardon.   BERTRAM. Well, what would you say?   HELENA. I am not worthy of the wealth I owe,     Nor dare I say \'tis mine, and yet it is;     But, like a timorous thief, most fain would steal     What law does vouch mine own.   BERTRAM. What would you have?   HELENA. Something; and scarce so much; nothing, indeed.     I would not tell you what I would, my lord.     Faith, yes:     Strangers and foes do sunder and not kiss.   BERTRAM. I pray you, stay not, but in haste to horse.   HELENA. I shall not break your bidding, good my lord.   BERTRAM. Where are my other men, monsieur?     Farewell!                                        Exit HELENA       Go thou toward home, where I will never come     Whilst I can shake my sword or hear the drum.     Away, and for our flight.   PAROLLES. Bravely, coragio!                             Exeunt    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>     ACT III. SCENE 1. Florence. The DUKE\'s palace          Flourish. Enter the DUKE OF FLORENCE, attended; two                FRENCH LORDS, with a TROOP OF SOLDIERS    DUKE. So that, from point to point, now have you hear     The fundamental reasons of this war;     Whose great decision hath much blood let forth     And more thirsts after.   FIRST LORD. Holy seems the quarrel     Upon your Grace\'s part; black and fearful     On the opposer.   DUKE. Therefore we marvel much our cousin France     Would in so just a business shut his bosom     Against our borrowing prayers.   SECOND LORD. Good my lord,     The reasons of our state I cannot yield,     But like a common and an outward man     That the great figure of a council frames     By self-unable motion; therefore dare not     Say what I think of it, since I have found       Myself in my incertain grounds to fail     As often as I guess\'d.   DUKE. Be it his pleasure.   FIRST LORD. But I am sure the younger of our nature,     That surfeit on their ease, will day by day     Come here for physic.   DUKE. Welcome shall they be     And all the honours that can fly from us     Shall on them settle. You know your places well;     When better fall, for your avails they fell.     To-morrow to th\' field. Flourish.                     Exeunt     ACT III. SCENE 2. Rousillon. The COUNT\'S palace  Enter COUNTESS and CLOWN    COUNTESS. It hath happen\'d all as I would have had it, save that he     comes not along with her.   CLOWN. By my troth, I take my young lord to be a very melancholy     man.   COUNTESS. By what observance, I pray you?   CLOWN. Why, he will look upon his boot and sing; mend the ruff and     sing; ask questions and sing; pick his teeth and sing. I know a     man that had this trick of melancholy sold a goodly manor for a     song.   COUNTESS. Let me see what he writes, and when he means to come.                                               [Opening a letter]   CLOWN. I have no mind to Isbel since I was at court. Our old ling     and our Isbels o\' th\' country are nothing like your old ling and     your Isbels o\' th\' court. The brains of my Cupid\'s knock\'d out;     and I begin to love, as an old man loves money, with no stomach.   COUNTESS. What have we here?   CLOWN. E\'en that you have there.                          Exit     COUNTESS.  [Reads]  \'I have sent you a daughter-in-law; she hath     recovered the King and undone me. I have wedded her, not bedded     her; and sworn to make the "not" eternal. You shall hear I am run     away; know it before the report come. If there be breadth enough     in the world, I will hold a long distance. My duty to you.                                            Your unfortunate son,                                                        BERTRAM.\'     This is not well, rash and unbridled boy,     To fly the favours of so good a king,     To pluck his indignation on thy head     By the misprizing of a maid too virtuous     For the contempt of empire.                             Re-enter CLOWN    CLOWN. O madam, yonder is heavy news within between two soldiers     and my young lady.   COUNTESS. What is the -matter?   CLOWN. Nay, there is some comfort in the news, some comfort; your     son will not be kill\'d so soon as I thought he would.     COUNTESS. Why should he be kill\'d?   CLOWN. So say I, madam, if he run away, as I hear he does the     danger is in standing to \'t; that\'s the loss of men, though it be     the getting of children. Here they come will tell you more. For my     part, I only hear your son was run away.                Exit                Enter HELENA and the two FRENCH GENTLEMEN    SECOND GENTLEMAN. Save you, good madam.   HELENA. Madam, my lord is gone, for ever gone.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Do not say so.   COUNTESS. Think upon patience. Pray you, gentlemen-     I have felt so many quirks of joy and grief     That the first face of neither, on the start,     Can woman me unto \'t. Where is my son, I pray you?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Madam, he\'s gone to serve the Duke of Florence.     We met him thitherward; for thence we came,     And, after some dispatch in hand at court,     Thither we bend again.   HELENA. Look on this letter, madam; here\'s my passport.       [Reads]  \'When thou canst get the ring upon my finger, which     never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body     that I am father to, then call me husband; but in such a "then" I     write a "never."     This is a dreadful sentence.   COUNTESS. Brought you this letter, gentlemen?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Ay, madam;     And for the contents\' sake are sorry for our pains.   COUNTESS. I prithee, lady, have a better cheer;     If thou engrossest all the griefs are thine,     Thou robb\'st me of a moiety. He was my son;     But I do wash his name out of my blood,     And thou art all my child. Towards Florence is he?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Ay, madam.   COUNTESS. And to be a soldier?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Such is his noble purpose; and, believe \'t,     The Duke will lay upon him all the honour     That good convenience claims.   COUNTESS. Return you thither?   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Ay, madam, with the swiftest wing of speed.     HELENA.  [Reads]  \'Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France.\'     \'Tis bitter.   COUNTESS. Find you that there?   HELENA. Ay, madam.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. \'Tis but the boldness of his hand haply, which     his heart was not consenting to.   COUNTESS. Nothing in France until he have no wife!     There\'s nothing here that is too good for him     But only she; and she deserves a lord     That twenty such rude boys might tend upon,     And call her hourly mistress. Who was with him?   SECOND GENTLEMAN. A servant only, and a gentleman     Which I have sometime known.   COUNTESS. Parolles, was it not?   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Ay, my good lady, he.   COUNTESS. A very tainted fellow, and full of wickedness.     My son corrupts a well-derived nature     With his inducement.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Indeed, good lady,     The fellow has a deal of that too much       Which holds him much to have.   COUNTESS. Y\'are welcome, gentlemen.     I will entreat you, when you see my son,     To tell him that his sword can never win     The honour that he loses. More I\'ll entreat you     Written to bear along.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. We serve you, madam,     In that and all your worthiest affairs.   COUNTESS. Not so, but as we change our courtesies.     Will you draw near?            Exeunt COUNTESS and GENTLEMEN   HELENA. \'Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France.\'     Nothing in France until he has no wife!     Thou shalt have none, Rousillon, none in France     Then hast thou all again. Poor lord! is\'t     That chase thee from thy country, and expose     Those tender limbs of thine to the event     Of the non-sparing war? And is it I     That drive thee from the sportive court, where thou     Wast shot at with fair eyes, to be the mark     Of smoky muskets? O you leaden messengers,       That ride upon the violent speed of fire,     Fly with false aim; move the still-piecing air,     That sings with piercing; do not touch my lord.     Whoever shoots at him, I set him there;     Whoever charges on his forward breast,     I am the caitiff that do hold him to\'t;     And though I kill him not, I am the cause     His death was so effected. Better \'twere     I met the ravin lion when he roar\'d     With sharp constraint of hunger; better \'twere     That all the miseries which nature owes     Were mine at once. No; come thou home, Rousillon,     Whence honour but of danger wins a scar,     As oft it loses all. I will be gone.     My being here it is that holds thee hence.     Shall I stay here to do \'t? No, no, although     The air of paradise did fan the house,     And angels offic\'d all. I will be gone,     That pitiful rumour may report my flight     To consolate thine ear. Come, night; end, day.       For with the dark, poor thief, I\'ll steal away.         Exit     ACT III. SCENE 3. Florence. Before the DUKE\'s palace  Flourish. Enter the DUKE OF FLORENCE, BERTRAM, PAROLLES, SOLDIERS, drum and trumpets    DUKE. The General of our Horse thou art; and we,     Great in our hope, lay our best love and credence     Upon thy promising fortune.   BERTRAM. Sir, it is     A charge too heavy for my strength; but yet     We\'ll strive to bear it for your worthy sake     To th\' extreme edge of hazard.   DUKE. Then go thou forth;     And Fortune play upon thy prosperous helm,     As thy auspicious mistress!   BERTRAM. This very day,     Great Mars, I put myself into thy file;     Make me but like my thoughts, and I shall prove     A lover of thy drum, hater of love.                   Exeunt     ACT III. SCENE 4. Rousillon. The COUNT\'S palace  Enter COUNTESS and STEWARD    COUNTESS. Alas! and would you take the letter of her?     Might you not know she would do as she has done     By sending me a letter? Read it again.   STEWARD.  [Reads]  \'I am Saint Jaques\' pilgrim, thither gone.     Ambitious love hath so in me offended     That barefoot plod I the cold ground upon,     With sainted vow my faults to have amended.     Write, write, that from the bloody course of war     My dearest master, your dear son, may hie.     Bless him at home in peace, whilst I from far     His name with zealous fervour sanctify.     His taken labours bid him me forgive;     I, his despiteful Juno, sent him forth     From courtly friends, with camping foes to live,     Where death and danger dogs the heels of worth.     He is too good and fair for death and me;     Whom I myself embrace to set him free.\'     COUNTESS. Ah, what sharp stings are in her mildest words!     Rinaldo, you did never lack advice so much     As letting her pass so; had I spoke with her,     I could have well diverted her intents,     Which thus she hath prevented.   STEWARD. Pardon me, madam;     If I had given you this at over-night,     She might have been o\'er ta\'en; and yet she writes     Pursuit would be but vain.   COUNTESS. What angel shall     Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive,     Unless her prayers, whom heaven delights to hear     And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath     Of greatest justice. Write, write, Rinaldo,     To this unworthy husband of his wife;     Let every word weigh heavy of her worth     That he does weigh too light. My greatest grief,     Though little he do feel it, set down sharply.     Dispatch the most convenient messenger.     When haply he shall hear that she is gone       He will return; and hope I may that she,     Hearing so much, will speed her foot again,     Led hither by pure love. Which of them both     Is dearest to me I have no skill in sense     To make distinction. Provide this messenger.     My heart is heavy, and mine age is weak;     Grief would have tears, and sorrow bids me speak.     Exeunt     ACT III. SCENE 5.  Without the walls of Florence A tucket afar off. Enter an old WIDOW OF FLORENCE, her daughter DIANA, VIOLENTA, and MARIANA, with other CITIZENS    WIDOW. Nay, come; for if they do approach the city we shall lose     all the sight.   DIANA. They say the French count has done most honourable service.   WIDOW. It is reported that he has taken their great\'st commander;     and that with his own hand he slew the Duke\'s brother.  [Tucket]     We have lost our labour; they are gone a contrary way. Hark! you     may know by their trumpets.   MARIANA. Come, let\'s return again, and suffice ourselves with the     report of it. Well, Diana, take heed of this French earl; the     honour of a maid is her name, and no legacy is so rich as     honesty.   WIDOW. I have told my neighbour how you have been solicited by a     gentleman his companion.   MARIANA. I know that knave, hang him! one Parolles; a filthy     officer he is in those suggestions for the young earl. Beware of       them, Diana: their promises, enticements, oaths, tokens, and all     these engines of lust, are not the things they go under; many a     maid hath been seduced by them; and the misery is, example, that     so terrible shows in the wreck of maidenhood, cannot for all that     dissuade succession, but that they are limed with the twigs that     threatens them. I hope I need not to advise you further; but I     hope your own grace will keep you where you are, though there     were no further danger known but the modesty which is so lost.   DIANA. You shall not need to fear me.              Enter HELENA in the dress of a pilgrim    WIDOW. I hope so. Look, here comes a pilgrim. I know she will lie     at my house: thither they send one another. I\'ll question her.     God save you, pilgrim! Whither are bound?   HELENA. To Saint Jaques le Grand.     Where do the palmers lodge, I do beseech you?   WIDOW. At the Saint Francis here, beside the port.   HELENA. Is this the way?                                                   [A march afar]     WIDOW. Ay, marry, is\'t. Hark you! They come this way.     If you will tarry, holy pilgrim,     But till the troops come by,     I will conduct you where you shall be lodg\'d;     The rather for I think I know your hostess     As ample as myself.   HELENA. Is it yourself?   WIDOW. If you shall please so, pilgrim.   HELENA. I thank you, and will stay upon your leisure.   WIDOW. You came, I think, from France?   HELENA. I did so.   WIDOW. Here you shall see a countryman of yours     That has done worthy service.   HELENA. His name, I pray you.   DIANA. The Count Rousillon. Know you such a one?   HELENA. But by the ear, that hears most nobly of him;     His face I know not.   DIANA. What some\'er he is,     He\'s bravely taken here. He stole from France,     As \'tis reported, for the King had married him       Against his liking. Think you it is so?   HELENA. Ay, surely, mere the truth; I know his lady.   DIANA. There is a gentleman that serves the Count     Reports but coarsely of her.   HELENA. What\'s his name?   DIANA. Monsieur Parolles.   HELENA. O, I believe with him,     In argument of praise, or to the worth     Of the great Count himself, she is too mean     To have her name repeated; all her deserving     Is a reserved honesty, and that     I have not heard examin\'d.   DIANA. Alas, poor lady!     \'Tis a hard bondage to become the wife     Of a detesting lord.   WIDOW. I sweet, good creature, wheresoe\'er she is     Her heart weighs sadly. This young maid might do her     A shrewd turn, if she pleas\'d.   HELENA. How do you mean?     May be the amorous Count solicits her       In the unlawful purpose.   WIDOW. He does, indeed;     And brokes with all that can in such a suit     Corrupt the tender honour of a maid;     But she is arm\'d for him, and keeps her guard     In honestest defence.      Enter, with drum and colours, BERTRAM, PAROLLES, and the                           whole ARMY    MARIANA. The gods forbid else!   WIDOW. So, now they come.     That is Antonio, the Duke\'s eldest son;     That, Escalus.   HELENA. Which is the Frenchman?   DIANA. He-     That with the plume; \'tis a most gallant fellow.     I would he lov\'d his wife; if he were honester     He were much goodlier. Is\'t not a handsome gentleman?   HELENA. I like him well.     DIANA. \'Tis pity he is not honest. Yond\'s that same knave     That leads him to these places; were I his lady     I would poison that vile rascal.   HELENA. Which is he?   DIANA. That jack-an-apes with scarfs. Why is he melancholy?   HELENA. Perchance he\'s hurt i\' th\' battle.   PAROLLES. Lose our drum! well.   MARIANA. He\'s shrewdly vex\'d at something.     Look, he has spied us.   WIDOW. Marry, hang you!   MARIANA. And your courtesy, for a ring-carrier!                               Exeunt BERTRAM, PAROLLES, and ARMY   WIDOW. The troop is past. Come, pilgrim, I will bring you     Where you shall host. Of enjoin\'d penitents     There\'s four or five, to great Saint Jaques bound,     Already at my house.   HELENA. I humbly thank you.     Please it this matron and this gentle maid     To eat with us to-night; the charge and thanking     Shall be for me, and, to requite you further,       I will bestow some precepts of this virgin,     Worthy the note.     BOTH. We\'ll take your offer kindly.                   Exeunt     ACT III. SCENE 6. Camp before Florence  Enter BERTRAM, and the two FRENCH LORDS    SECOND LORD. Nay, good my lord, put him to\'t; let him have his way.   FIRST LORD. If your lordship find him not a hiding, hold me no more     in your respect.   SECOND LORD. On my life, my lord, a bubble.   BERTRAM. Do you think I am so far deceived in him?   SECOND LORD. Believe it, my lord, in mine own direct knowledge,     without any malice, but to speak of him as my kinsman, he\'s a     most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly     promise-breaker, the owner of no one good quality worthy your     lordship\'s entertainment.   FIRST LORD. It were fit you knew him; lest, reposing too far in his     virtue, which he hath not, he might at some great and trusty     business in a main danger fail you.   BERTRAM. I would I knew in what particular action to try him.   FIRST LORD. None better than to let him fetch off his drum, which     you hear him so confidently undertake to do.   SECOND LORD. I with a troop of Florentines will suddenly surprise       him; such I will have whom I am sure he knows not from the enemy.     We will bind and hoodwink him so that he shall suppose no other     but that he is carried into the leaguer of the adversaries when     we bring him to our own tents. Be but your lordship present at     his examination; if he do not, for the promise of his life and in     the highest compulsion of base fear, offer to betray you and     deliver all the intelligence in his power against you, and that     with the divine forfeit of his soul upon oath, never trust my     judgment in anything.   FIRST LORD. O, for the love of laughter, let him fetch his drum; he     says he has a stratagem for\'t. When your lordship sees the bottom     of his success in\'t, and to what metal this counterfeit lump of     ore will be melted, if you give him not John Drum\'s     entertainment, your inclining cannot be removed. Here he comes.                        Enter PAROLLES    SECOND LORD. O, for the love of laughter, hinder not the honour of     his design; let him fetch off his drum in any hand.   BERTRAM. How now, monsieur! This drum sticks sorely in your       disposition.   FIRST LORD. A pox on \'t; let it go; \'tis but a drum.   PAROLLES. But a drum! Is\'t but a drum? A drum so lost! There was     excellent command: to charge in with our horse upon our own     wings, and to rend our own soldiers!   FIRST LORD. That was not to be blam\'d in the command of the     service; it was a disaster of war that Caesar himself could not     have prevented, if he had been there to command.   BERTRAM. Well, we cannot greatly condemn our success.     Some dishonour we had in the loss of that drum; but it is not to     be recovered.   PAROLLES. It might have been recovered.   BERTRAM. It might, but it is not now.   PAROLLES. It is to be recovered. But that the merit of service is     seldom attributed to the true and exact performer, I would have     that drum or another, or \'hic jacet.\'   BERTRAM. Why, if you have a stomach, to\'t, monsieur. If you think     your mystery in stratagem can bring this instrument of honour     again into his native quarter, be magnanimous in the enterprise,     and go on; I will grace the attempt for a worthy exploit. If you       speed well in it, the Duke shall both speak of it and extend to     you what further becomes his greatness, even to the utmost     syllable of our worthiness.   PAROLLES. By the hand of a soldier, I will undertake it.   BERTRAM. But you must not now slumber in it.   PAROLLES. I\'ll about it this evening; and I will presently pen     down my dilemmas, encourage myself in my certainty, put myself     into my mortal preparation; and by midnight look to hear further     from me.   BERTRAM. May I be bold to acquaint his Grace you are gone about it?   PAROLLES. I know not what the success will be, my lord, but the     attempt I vow.   BERTRAM. I know th\' art valiant; and, to the of thy soldiership,     will subscribe for thee. Farewell.   PAROLLES. I love not many words.                          Exit   SECOND LORD. No more than a fish loves water. Is not this a strange     fellow, my lord, that so confidently seems to undertake this     business, which he knows is not to be done; damns himself to do,     and dares better be damn\'d than to do \'t.   FIRST LORD. You do not know him, my lord, as we do. Certain it is       that he will steal himself into a man\'s favour, and for a week     escape a great deal of discoveries; but when you find him out,     you have him ever after.   BERTRAM. Why, do you think he will make no deed at all of this that     so seriously he does address himself unto?   SECOND LORD. None in the world; but return with an invention, and     clap upon you two or three probable lies. But we have almost     emboss\'d him. You shall see his fall to-night; for indeed he is     not for your lordship\'s respect.   FIRST LORD. We\'ll make you some sport with the fox ere we case him.     He was first smok\'d by the old Lord Lafeu. When his disguise and     he is parted, tell me what a sprat you shall find him; which you     shall see this very night.   SECOND LORD. I must go look my twigs; he shall be caught.   BERTRAM. Your brother, he shall go along with me.   SECOND LORD. As\'t please your lordship. I\'ll leave you.   Exit   BERTRAM. Now will I lead you to the house, and show you     The lass I spoke of.   FIRST LORD. But you say she\'s honest.   BERTRAM. That\'s all the fault. I spoke with her but once,       And found her wondrous cold; but I sent to her,     By this same coxcomb that we have i\' th\' wind,     Tokens and letters which she did re-send;     And this is all I have done. She\'s a fair creature;     Will you go see her?   FIRST LORD. With all my heart, my lord.                 Exeunt     ACT III. SCENE 7. Florence. The WIDOW\'S house  Enter HELENA and WIDOW    HELENA. If you misdoubt me that I am not she,     I know not how I shall assure you further     But I shall lose the grounds I work upon.   WIDOW. Though my estate be fall\'n, I was well born,     Nothing acquainted with these businesses;     And would not put my reputation now     In any staining act.   HELENA. Nor would I wish you.   FIRST give me trust the Count he is my husband,     And what to your sworn counsel I have spoken     Is so from word to word; and then you cannot,     By the good aid that I of you shall borrow,     Err in bestowing it.   WIDOW. I should believe you;     For you have show\'d me that which well approves     Y\'are great in fortune.   HELENA. Take this purse of gold,       And let me buy your friendly help thus far,     Which I will over-pay and pay again     When I have found it. The Count he woos your daughter     Lays down his wanton siege before her beauty,     Resolv\'d to carry her. Let her in fine consent,     As we\'ll direct her how \'tis best to bear it.     Now his important blood will nought deny     That she\'ll demand. A ring the County wears     That downward hath succeeded in his house     From son to son some four or five descents     Since the first father wore it. This ring he holds     In most rich choice; yet, in his idle fire,     To buy his will, it would not seem too dear,     Howe\'er repented after.   WIDOW. Now I see     The bottom of your purpose.   HELENA. You see it lawful then. It is no more     But that your daughter, ere she seems as won,     Desires this ring; appoints him an encounter;     In fine, delivers me to fill the time,       Herself most chastely absent. After this,     To marry her, I\'ll add three thousand crowns     To what is pass\'d already.   WIDOW. I have yielded.     Instruct my daughter how she shall persever,     That time and place with this deceit so lawful     May prove coherent. Every night he comes     With musics of all sorts, and songs compos\'d     To her unworthiness. It nothing steads us     To chide him from our eaves, for he persists     As if his life lay on \'t.   HELENA. Why then to-night     Let us assay our plot; which, if it speed,     Is wicked meaning in a lawful deed,     And lawful meaning in a lawful act;     Where both not sin, and yet a sinful fact.     But let\'s about it.                                   Exeunt    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>     ACT IV. SCENE 1. Without the Florentine camp  Enter SECOND FRENCH LORD with five or six other SOLDIERS in ambush    SECOND LORD. He can come no other way but by this hedge-corner.     When you sally upon him, speak what terrible language you will;     though you understand it not yourselves, no matter; for we must     not seem to understand him, unless some one among us, whom we     must produce for an interpreter.   FIRST SOLDIER. Good captain, let me be th\' interpreter.   SECOND LORD. Art not acquainted with him? Knows he not thy voice?   FIRST SOLDIER. No, sir, I warrant you.   SECOND LORD. But what linsey-woolsey has thou to speak to us again?   FIRST SOLDIER. E\'en such as you speak to me.   SECOND LORD. He must think us some band of strangers i\' th\'     adversary\'s entertainment. Now he hath a smack of all     neighbouring languages, therefore we must every one be a man of     his own fancy; not to know what we speak one to another, so we     seem to know, is to know straight our purpose: choughs\' language,     gabble enough, and good enough. As for you, interpreter, you must       seem very politic. But couch, ho! here he comes; to beguile two     hours in a sleep, and then to return and swear the lies he forges.                           Enter PAROLLES    PAROLLES. Ten o\'clock. Within these three hours \'twill be time     enough to go home. What shall I say I have done? It must be a     very plausive invention that carries it. They begin to smoke me;     and disgraces have of late knock\'d to often at my door. I find my     tongue is too foolhardy; but my heart hath the fear of Mars     before it, and of his creatures, not daring the reports of my     tongue.   SECOND LORD. This is the first truth that e\'er thine own tongue was     guilty of.   PAROLLES. What the devil should move me to undertake the recovery     of this drum, being not ignorant of the impossibility, and     knowing I had no such purpose? I must give myself some hurts, and     say I got them in exploit. Yet slight ones will not carry it.     They will say \'Came you off with so little?\' And great ones I     dare not give. Wherefore, what\'s the instance? Tongue, I must put       you into a butterwoman\'s mouth, and buy myself another of     Bajazet\'s mule, if you prattle me into these perils.   SECOND LORD. Is it possible he should know what he is, and be that     he is?   PAROLLES. I would the cutting of my garments would serve the turn,     or the breaking of my Spanish sword.   SECOND LORD. We cannot afford you so.   PAROLLES. Or the baring of my beard; and to say it was in     stratagem.   SECOND LORD. \'Twould not do.   PAROLLES. Or to drown my clothes, and say I was stripp\'d.   SECOND LORD. Hardly serve.   PAROLLES. Though I swore I leap\'d from the window of the citadel-   SECOND LORD. How deep?   PAROLLES. Thirty fathom.   SECOND LORD. Three great oaths would scarce make that be believed.   PAROLLES. I would I had any drum of the enemy\'s; I would swear I     recover\'d it.   SECOND LORD. You shall hear one anon.          [Alarum within]   PAROLLES. A drum now of the enemy\'s!     SECOND LORD. Throca movousus, cargo, cargo, cargo.   ALL. Cargo, cargo, cargo, villianda par corbo, cargo.   PAROLLES. O, ransom, ransom! Do not hide mine eyes.                                             [They blindfold him]   FIRST SOLDIER. Boskos thromuldo boskos.   PAROLLES. I know you are the Muskos\' regiment,     And I shall lose my life for want of language.     If there be here German, or Dane, Low Dutch,     Italian, or French, let him speak to me;     I\'ll discover that which shall undo the Florentine.   FIRST SOLDIER. Boskos vauvado. I understand thee, and can speak thy     tongue. Kerely-bonto, sir, betake thee to thy faith, for     seventeen poniards are at thy bosom.   PAROLLES. O!   FIRST SOLDIER. O, pray, pray, pray! Manka revania dulche.   SECOND LORD. Oscorbidulchos volivorco.   FIRST SOLDIER. The General is content to spare thee yet;     And, hoodwink\'d as thou art, will lead thee on     To gather from thee. Haply thou mayst inform     Something to save thy life.     PAROLLES. O, let me live,     And all the secrets of our camp I\'ll show,     Their force, their purposes. Nay, I\'ll speak that     Which you will wonder at.   FIRST SOLDIER. But wilt thou faithfully?   PAROLLES. If I do not, damn me.   FIRST SOLDIER. Acordo linta.     Come on; thou art granted space.                    Exit, PAROLLES guarded. A short alarum within   SECOND LORD. Go, tell the Count Rousillon and my brother     We have caught the woodcock, and will keep him muffled     Till we do hear from them.   SECOND SOLDIER. Captain, I will.   SECOND LORD. \'A will betray us all unto ourselves-     Inform on that.   SECOND SOLDIER. So I will, sir.   SECOND LORD. Till then I\'ll keep him dark and safely lock\'d.                                                           Exeunt     ACT IV. SCENE 2. Florence. The WIDOW\'S house  Enter BERTRAM and DIANA    BERTRAM. They told me that your name was Fontibell.   DIANA. No, my good lord, Diana.   BERTRAM. Titled goddess;     And worth it, with addition! But, fair soul,     In your fine frame hath love no quality?     If the quick fire of youth light not your mind,     You are no maiden, but a monument;     When you are dead, you should be such a one     As you are now, for you are cold and stern;     And now you should be as your mother was     When your sweet self was got.   DIANA. She then was honest.   BERTRAM. So should you be.   DIANA. No.     My mother did but duty; such, my lord,     As you owe to your wife.   BERTRAM. No more o\'that!       I prithee do not strive against my vows.     I was compell\'d to her; but I love the     By love\'s own sweet constraint, and will for ever     Do thee all rights of service.   DIANA. Ay, so you serve us     Till we serve you; but when you have our roses     You barely leave our thorns to prick ourselves,     And mock us with our bareness.   BERTRAM. How have I sworn!   DIANA. \'Tis not the many oaths that makes the truth,     But the plain single vow that is vow\'d true.     What is not holy, that we swear not by,     But take the High\'st to witness. Then, pray you, tell me:     If I should swear by Jove\'s great attributes     I lov\'d you dearly, would you believe my oaths     When I did love you ill? This has no holding,     To swear by him whom I protest to love     That I will work against him. Therefore your oaths     Are words and poor conditions, but unseal\'d-     At least in my opinion.     BERTRAM. Change it, change it;     Be not so holy-cruel. Love is holy;     And my integrity ne\'er knew the crafts     That you do charge men with. Stand no more off,     But give thyself unto my sick desires,     Who then recovers. Say thou art mine, and ever     My love as it begins shall so persever.   DIANA. I see that men make ropes in such a scarre     That we\'ll forsake ourselves. Give me that ring.   BERTRAM. I\'ll lend it thee, my dear, but have no power     To give it from me.   DIANA. Will you not, my lord?   BERTRAM. It is an honour \'longing to our house,     Bequeathed down from many ancestors;     Which were the greatest obloquy i\' th\' world     In me to lose.   DIANA. Mine honour\'s such a ring:     My chastity\'s the jewel of our house,     Bequeathed down from many ancestors;     Which were the greatest obloquy i\' th\' world       In me to lose. Thus your own proper wisdom     Brings in the champion Honour on my part     Against your vain assault.   BERTRAM. Here, take my ring;     My house, mine honour, yea, my life, be thine,     And I\'ll be bid by thee.   DIANA. When midnight comes, knock at my chamber window;     I\'ll order take my mother shall not hear.     Now will I charge you in the band of truth,     When you have conquer\'d my yet maiden bed,     Remain there but an hour, nor speak to me:     My reasons are most strong; and you shall know them     When back again this ring shall be deliver\'d.     And on your finger in the night I\'ll put     Another ring, that what in time proceeds     May token to the future our past deeds.     Adieu till then; then fail not. You have won     A wife of me, though there my hope be done.   BERTRAM. A heaven on earth I have won by wooing thee.  Exit     DIANA. For which live long to thank both heaven and me!     You may so in the end.     My mother told me just how he would woo,     As if she sat in\'s heart; she says all men     Have the like oaths. He had sworn to marry me     When his wife\'s dead; therefore I\'ll lie with him     When I am buried. Since Frenchmen are so braid,     Marry that will, I live and die a maid.     Only, in this disguise, I think\'t no sin     To cozen him that would unjustly win.                   Exit     ACT IV. SCENE 3. The Florentine camp  Enter the two FRENCH LORDS, and two or three SOLDIERS    SECOND LORD. You have not given him his mother\'s letter?   FIRST LORD. I have deliv\'red it an hour since. There is something     in\'t that stings his nature; for on the reading it he chang\'d     almost into another man.   SECOND LORD. He has much worthy blame laid upon him for shaking off     so good a wife and so sweet a lady.   FIRST LORD. Especially he hath incurred the everlasting displeasure     of the King, who had even tun\'d his bounty to sing happiness to     him. I will tell you a thing, but you shall let it dwell darkly     with you.   SECOND LORD. When you have spoken it, \'tis dead, and I am the grave     of it.   FIRST LORD. He hath perverted a young gentlewoman here in Florence,     of a most chaste renown; and this night he fleshes his will in     the spoil of her honour. He hath given her his monumental ring,     and thinks himself made in the unchaste composition.   SECOND LORD. Now, God delay our rebellion! As we are ourselves,       what things are we!   FIRST LORD. Merely our own traitors. And as in the common course of     all treasons we still see them reveal themselves till they attain     to their abhorr\'d ends; so he that in this action contrives     against his own nobility, in his proper stream, o\'erflows     himself.   SECOND LORD. Is it not meant damnable in us to be trumpeters of our     unlawful intents? We shall not then have his company to-night?   FIRST LORD. Not till after midnight; for he is dieted to his hour.   SECOND LORD. That approaches apace. I would gladly have him see his     company anatomiz\'d, that he might take a measure of his own     judgments, wherein so curiously he had set this counterfeit.   FIRST LORD. We will not meddle with him till he come; for his     presence must be the whip of the other.   SECOND LORD. In the meantime, what hear you of these wars?   FIRST LORD. I hear there is an overture of peace.   SECOND LORD. Nay, I assure you, a peace concluded.   FIRST LORD. What will Count Rousillon do then? Will he travel     higher, or return again into France?   SECOND LORD. I perceive, by this demand, you are not altogether       of his counsel.   FIRST LORD. Let it be forbid, sir! So should I be a great deal     of his act.   SECOND LORD. Sir, his wife, some two months since, fled from his     house. Her pretence is a pilgrimage to Saint Jaques le Grand;     which holy undertaking with most austere sanctimony she     accomplish\'d; and, there residing, the tenderness of her nature     became as a prey to her grief; in fine, made a groan of her last     breath, and now she sings in heaven.   FIRST LORD. How is this justified?   SECOND LORD. The stronger part of it by her own letters, which     makes her story true even to the point of her death. Her death     itself, which could not be her office to say is come, was     faithfully confirm\'d by the rector of the place.   FIRST LORD. Hath the Count all this intelligence?   SECOND LORD. Ay, and the particular confirmations, point from     point, to the full arming of the verity.   FIRST LORD. I am heartily sorry that he\'ll be glad of this.   SECOND LORD. How mightily sometimes we make us comforts of our     losses!     FIRST LORD. And how mightily some other times we drown our gain in     tears! The great dignity that his valour hath here acquir\'d for     him shall at home be encount\'red with a shame as ample.   SECOND LORD. The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill     together. Our virtues would be proud if our faults whipt them     not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherish\'d by     our virtues.                        Enter a MESSENGER      How now? Where\'s your master?   SERVANT. He met the Duke in the street, sir; of whom he hath taken     a solemn leave. His lordship will next morning for France. The     Duke hath offered him letters of commendations to the King.   SECOND LORD. They shall be no more than needful there, if they were     more than they can commend.   FIRST LORD. They cannot be too sweet for the King\'s tartness.     Here\'s his lordship now.                          Enter BERTRAM        How now, my lord, is\'t not after midnight?   BERTRAM. I have to-night dispatch\'d sixteen businesses, a month\'s     length apiece; by an abstract of success: I have congied with the     Duke, done my adieu with his nearest; buried a wife, mourn\'d for     her; writ to my lady mother I am returning; entertain\'d my     convoy; and between these main parcels of dispatch effected many     nicer needs. The last was the greatest, but that I have not ended     yet.   SECOND LORD. If the business be of any difficulty and this morning     your departure hence, it requires haste of your lordship.   BERTRAM. I mean the business is not ended, as fearing to hear of it     hereafter. But shall we have this dialogue between the Fool and     the Soldier? Come, bring forth this counterfeit module has     deceiv\'d me like a double-meaning prophesier.   SECOND LORD. Bring him forth.  [Exeunt SOLDIERS]  Has sat i\' th\'     stocks all night, poor gallant knave.   BERTRAM. No matter; his heels have deserv\'d it, in usurping his     spurs so long. How does he carry himself?   SECOND LORD. I have told your lordship already the stocks carry       him. But to answer you as you would be understood: he weeps like     a wench that had shed her milk; he hath confess\'d himself to     Morgan, whom he supposes to be a friar, from the time of his     remembrance to this very instant disaster of his setting i\' th\'     stocks. And what think you he hath confess\'d?   BERTRAM. Nothing of me, has \'a?   SECOND LORD. His confession is taken, and it shall be read to his     face; if your lordship be in\'t, as I believe you are, you must     have the patience to hear it.                     Enter PAROLLES guarded, and                   FIRST SOLDIER as interpreter    BERTRAM. A plague upon him! muffled! He can say nothing of me.   SECOND LORD. Hush, hush! Hoodman comes. Portotartarossa.   FIRST SOLDIER. He calls for the tortures. What will you say without     \'em?   PAROLLES. I will confess what I know without constraint; if ye     pinch me like a pasty, I can say no more.   FIRST SOLDIER. Bosko chimurcho.     SECOND LORD. Boblibindo chicurmurco.   FIRST SOLDIER. YOU are a merciful general. Our General bids you     answer to what I shall ask you out of a note.   PAROLLES. And truly, as I hope to live.   FIRST SOLDIER. \'First demand of him how many horse the Duke is     strong.\' What say you to that?   PAROLLES. Five or six thousand; but very weak and unserviceable.     The troops are all scattered, and the commanders very poor     rogues, upon my reputation and credit, and as I hope to live.   FIRST SOLDIER. Shall I set down your answer so?   PAROLLES. Do; I\'ll take the sacrament on \'t, how and which way you     will.   BERTRAM. All\'s one to him. What a past-saving slave is this!   SECOND LORD. Y\'are deceiv\'d, my lord; this is Monsieur Parolles,     the gallant militarist-that was his own phrase-that had the whole     theoric of war in the knot of his scarf, and the practice in the     chape of his dagger.   FIRST LORD. I will never trust a man again for keeping his sword     clean; nor believe he can have everything in him by wearing his     apparel neatly.     FIRST SOLDIER. Well, that\'s set down.   PAROLLES. \'Five or six thousand horse\' I said-I will say true- \'or     thereabouts\' set down, for I\'ll speak truth.   SECOND LORD. He\'s very near the truth in this.   BERTRAM. But I con him no thanks for\'t in the nature he delivers it.   PAROLLES. \'Poor rogues\' I pray you say.   FIRST SOLDIER. Well, that\'s set down.   PAROLLES. I humbly thank you, sir. A truth\'s a truth-the rogues are     marvellous poor.   FIRST SOLDIER. \'Demand of him of what strength they are a-foot.\'     What say you to that?   PAROLLES. By my troth, sir, if I were to live this present hour, I     will tell true. Let me see: Spurio, a hundred and fifty;     Sebastian, so many; Corambus, so many; Jaques, so many; Guiltian,     Cosmo, Lodowick, and Gratii, two hundred fifty each; mine own     company, Chitopher, Vaumond, Bentii, two hundred fifty each; so     that the muster-file, rotten and sound, upon my life, amounts not     to fifteen thousand poll; half of the which dare not shake the     snow from off their cassocks lest they shake themselves to     pieces.     BERTRAM. What shall be done to him?   SECOND LORD. Nothing, but let him have thanks. Demand of him my     condition, and what credit I have with the Duke.   FIRST SOLDIER. Well, that\'s set down. \'You shall demand of him     whether one Captain Dumain be i\' th\' camp, a Frenchman; what his     reputation is with the Duke, what his valour, honesty, expertness     in wars; or whether he thinks it were not possible, with     well-weighing sums of gold, to corrupt him to a revolt.\' What say     you to this? What do you know of it?   PAROLLES. I beseech you, let me answer to the particular of the     inter\'gatories. Demand them singly.   FIRST SOLDIER. Do you know this Captain Dumain?   PAROLLES. I know him: \'a was a botcher\'s prentice in Paris, from     whence he was whipt for getting the shrieve\'s fool with child-a     dumb innocent that could not say him nay.   BERTRAM. Nay, by your leave, hold your hands; though I know his     brains are forfeit to the next tile that falls.   FIRST SOLDIER. Well, is this captain in the Duke of Florence\'s     camp?   PAROLLES. Upon my knowledge, he is, and lousy.     SECOND LORD. Nay, look not so upon me; we shall hear of your     lordship anon.   FIRST SOLDIER. What is his reputation with the Duke?   PAROLLES. The Duke knows him for no other but a poor officer of     mine; and writ to me this other day to turn him out o\' th\' band.     I think I have his letter in my pocket.   FIRST SOLDIER. Marry, we\'ll search.   PAROLLES. In good sadness, I do not know; either it is there or it     is upon a file with the Duke\'s other letters in my tent.   FIRST SOLDIER. Here \'tis; here\'s a paper. Shall I read it to you?   PAROLLES. I do not know if it be it or no.   BERTRAM. Our interpreter does it well.   SECOND LORD. Excellently.   FIRST SOLDIER.  [Reads]  \'Dian, the Count\'s a fool, and full of     gold.\'   PAROLLES. That is not the Duke\'s letter, sir; that is an     advertisement to a proper maid in Florence, one Diana, to take     heed of the allurement of one Count Rousillon, a foolish idle     boy, but for all that very ruttish. I pray you, sir, put it up     again.     FIRST SOLDIER. Nay, I\'ll read it first by your favour.   PAROLLES. My meaning in\'t, I protest, was very honest in the behalf     of the maid; for I knew the young Count to be a dangerous and     lascivious boy, who is a whale to virginity, and devours up all     the fry it finds.   BERTRAM. Damnable both-sides rogue!   FIRST SOLDIER.                                         [Reads]     \'When he swears oaths, bid him drop gold, and take it;     After he scores, he never pays the score.     Half won is match well made; match, and well make it;     He ne\'er pays after-debts, take it before.     And say a soldier, Dian, told thee this:     Men are to mell with, boys are not to kiss;     For count of this, the Count\'s a fool, I know it,     Who pays before, but not when he does owe it.     Thine, as he vow\'d to thee in thine ear,                                                    PAROLLES.\'   BERTRAM. He shall be whipt through the army with this rhyme in\'s     forehead.   FIRST LORD. This is your devoted friend, sir, the manifold       linguist, and the amnipotent soldier.   BERTRAM. I could endure anything before but a cat, and now he\'s a     cat to me.   FIRST SOLDIER. I perceive, sir, by our General\'s looks we shall be     fain to hang you.   PAROLLES. My life, sir, in any case! Not that I am afraid to die,     but that, my offences being many, I would repent out the     remainder of nature. Let me live, sir, in a dungeon, i\' th\'     stocks, or anywhere, so I may live.   FIRST SOLDIER. We\'ll see what may be done, so you confess freely;     therefore, once more to this Captain Dumain: you have answer\'d to     his reputation with the Duke, and to his valour; what is his     honesty?   PAROLLES. He will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister; for rapes     and ravishments he parallels Nessus. He professes not keeping of     oaths; in breaking \'em he is stronger than Hercules. He will lie,     sir, with such volubility that you would think truth were a fool.     Drunkenness is his best virtue, for he will be swine-drunk; and     in his sleep he does little harm, save to his bedclothes about     him; but they know his conditions and lay him in straw. I have       but little more to say, sir, of his honesty. He has everything     that an honest man should not have; what an honest man should     have he has nothing.   SECOND LORD. I begin to love him for this.   BERTRAM. For this description of thine honesty? A pox upon him! For     me, he\'s more and more a cat.   FIRST SOLDIER. What say you to his expertness in war?   PAROLLES. Faith, sir, has led the drum before the English     tragedians-to belie him I will not-and more of his soldier-ship     I know not, except in that country he had the honour to be the     officer at a place there called Mile-end to instruct for the     doubling of files-I would do the man what honour I can-but of     this I am not certain.   SECOND LORD. He hath out-villain\'d villainy so far that the rarity     redeems him.   BERTRAM. A pox on him! he\'s a cat still.   FIRST SOLDIER. His qualities being at this poor price, I need not     to ask you if gold will corrupt him to revolt.   PAROLLES. Sir, for a cardecue he will sell the fee-simple of his     salvation, the inheritance of it; and cut th\' entail from all       remainders and a perpetual succession for it perpetually.   FIRST SOLDIER. What\'s his brother, the other Captain Dumain?   FIRST LORD. Why does he ask him of me?   FIRST SOLDIER. What\'s he?   PAROLLES. E\'en a crow o\' th\' same nest; not altogether so great as     the first in goodness, but greater a great deal in evil. He     excels his brother for a coward; yet his brother is reputed one     of the best that is. In a retreat he outruns any lackey: marry,     in coming on he has the cramp.   FIRST SOLDIER. If your life be saved, will you undertake to betray     the Florentine?   PAROLLES. Ay, and the Captain of his Horse, Count Rousillon.   FIRST SOLDIER. I\'ll whisper with the General, and know his     pleasure.   PAROLLES.  [Aside]  I\'ll no more drumming. A plague of all drums!     Only to seem to deserve well, and to beguile the supposition of     that lascivious young boy the Count, have I run into this danger.     Yet who would have suspected an ambush where I was taken?   FIRST SOLDIER. There is no remedy, sir, but you must die.     The General says you that have so traitorously discover\'d the       secrets of your army, and made such pestiferous reports of men     very nobly held, can serve the world for no honest use; therefore     you must die. Come, headsman, of with his head.   PAROLLES. O Lord, sir, let me live, or let me see my death!   FIRST SOLDIER. That shall you, and take your leave of all your     friends.  [Unmuffling him]  So look about you; know you any here?   BERTRAM. Good morrow, noble Captain.   FIRST LORD. God bless you, Captain Parolles.   SECOND LORD. God save you, noble Captain.   FIRST LORD. Captain, what greeting will you to my Lord Lafeu? I am     for France.   SECOND LORD. Good Captain, will you give me a copy of the sonnet     you writ to Diana in behalf of the Count Rousillon? An I were not     a very coward I\'d compel it of you; but fare you well.                                         Exeunt BERTRAM and LORDS   FIRST SOLDIER. You are undone, Captain, all but your scarf; that     has a knot on \'t yet.   PAROLLES. Who cannot be crush\'d with a plot?   FIRST SOLDIER. If you could find out a country where but women were     that had received so much shame, you might begin an impudent       nation. Fare ye well, sir; I am for France too; we shall speak of     you there.                                Exit with SOLDIERS   PAROLLES. Yet am I thankful. If my heart were great,     \'Twould burst at this. Captain I\'ll be no more;     But I will eat, and drink, and sleep as soft     As captain shall. Simply the thing I am     Shall make me live. Who knows himself a braggart,     Let him fear this; for it will come to pass     That every braggart shall be found an ass.     Rust, sword; cool, blushes; and, Parolles, live     Safest in shame. Being fool\'d, by fool\'ry thrive.     There\'s place and means for every man alive.     I\'ll after them.                                        Exit     ACT IV SCENE 4. The WIDOW\'S house  Enter HELENA, WIDOW, and DIANA    HELENA. That you may well perceive I have not wrong\'d you!     One of the greatest in the Christian world     Shall be my surety; fore whose throne \'tis needful,     Ere I can perfect mine intents, to kneel.     Time was I did him a desired office,     Dear almost as his life; which gratitude     Through flinty Tartar\'s bosom would peep forth,     And answer \'Thanks.\' I duly am inform\'d     His Grace is at Marseilles, to which place     We have convenient convoy. You must know     I am supposed dead. The army breaking,     My husband hies him home; where, heaven aiding,     And by the leave of my good lord the King,     We\'ll be before our welcome.   WIDOW. Gentle madam,     You never had a servant to whose trust     Your business was more welcome.     HELENA. Nor you, mistress,     Ever a friend whose thoughts more truly labour     To recompense your love. Doubt not but heaven     Hath brought me up to be your daughter\'s dower,     As it hath fated her to be my motive     And helper to a husband. But, O strange men!     That can such sweet use make of what they hate,     When saucy trusting of the cozen\'d thoughts     Defiles the pitchy night. So lust doth play     With what it loathes, for that which is away.     But more of this hereafter. You, Diana,     Under my poor instructions yet must suffer     Something in my behalf.   DIANA. Let death and honesty     Go with your impositions, I am yours     Upon your will to suffer.   HELENA. Yet, I pray you:     But with the word the time will bring on summer,     When briers shall have leaves as well as thorns     And be as sweet as sharp. We must away;       Our waggon is prepar\'d, and time revives us.     All\'s Well that Ends Well. Still the fine\'s the crown.     Whate\'er the course, the end is the renown.           Exeunt     ACT IV SCENE 5. Rousillon. The COUNT\'S palace  Enter COUNTESS, LAFEU, and CLOWN    LAFEU. No, no, no, son was misled with a snipt-taffeta fellow     there, whose villainous saffron would have made all the unbak\'d     and doughy youth of a nation in his colour. Your daughter-in-law     had been alive at this hour, and your son here at home, more     advanc\'d by the King than by that red-tail\'d humble-bee I speak     of.   COUNTESS. I would I had not known him. It was the death of the most     virtuous gentlewoman that ever nature had praise for creating. If     she had partaken of my flesh, and cost me the dearest groans of a     mother. I could not have owed her a more rooted love.   LAFEU. \'Twas a good lady, \'twas a good lady. We may pick a thousand     sallets ere we light on such another herb.   CLOWN. Indeed, sir, she was the sweet-marjoram of the sallet, or,     rather, the herb of grace.   LAFEU. They are not sallet-herbs, you knave; they are nose-herbs.   CLOWN. I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, sir; I have not much skill in     grass.     LAFEU. Whether dost thou profess thyself-a knave or a fool?   CLOWN. A fool, sir, at a woman\'s service, and a knave at a man\'s.   LAFEU. Your distinction?   CLOWN. I would cozen the man of his wife, and do his service.   LAFEU. So you were a knave at his service, indeed.   CLOWN. And I would give his wife my bauble, sir, to do her service.   LAFEU. I will subscribe for thee; thou art both knave and fool.   CLOWN. At your service.   LAFEU. No, no, no.   CLOWN. Why, sir, if I cannot serve you, I can serve as great a     prince as you are.   LAFEU. Who\'s that? A Frenchman?   CLOWN. Faith, sir, \'a has an English name; but his fisnomy is more     hotter in France than there.   LAFEU. What prince is that?   CLOWN. The Black Prince, sir; alias, the Prince of Darkness; alias,     the devil.   LAFEU. Hold thee, there\'s my purse. I give thee not this to suggest     thee from thy master thou talk\'st of; serve him still.   CLOWN. I am a woodland fellow, sir, that always loved a great fire;       and the master I speak of ever keeps a good fire. But, sure, he     is the prince of the world; let his nobility remain in\'s court. I     am for the house with the narrow gate, which I take to be too     little for pomp to enter. Some that humble themselves may; but     the many will be too chill and tender: and they\'ll be for the     flow\'ry way that leads to the broad gate and the great fire.   LAFEU. Go thy ways, I begin to be aweary of thee; and I tell thee     so before, because I would not fall out with thee. Go thy ways;     let my horses be well look\'d to, without any tricks.   CLOWN. If I put any tricks upon \'em, sir, they shall be jades\'     tricks, which are their own right by the law of nature.  Exit   LAFEU. A shrewd knave, and an unhappy.   COUNTESS. So \'a is. My lord that\'s gone made himself much  sport     out of him. By his authority he remains here, which he thinks is     a patent for his sauciness; and indeed he has no pace, but runs     where he will.   LAFEU. I like him well; \'tis not amiss. And I was about to tell     you, since I heard of the good lady\'s death, and that my lord     your son was upon his return home, I moved the King my master to       speak in the behalf of my daughter; which, in the minority of     them both, his Majesty out of a self-gracious remembrance did     first propose. His Highness hath promis\'d me to do it; and, to     stop up the displeasure he hath conceived against your son, there     is no fitter matter. How does your ladyship like it?   COUNTESS. With very much content, my lord; and I wish it happily     effected.   LAFEU. His Highness comes post from Marseilles, of as able body as     when he number\'d thirty; \'a will be here to-morrow, or I am     deceiv\'d by him that in such intelligence hath seldom fail\'d.   COUNTESS. It rejoices me that I hope I shall see him ere I die.     I have letters that my son will be here to-night. I shall beseech     your lordship to remain with me tal they meet together.   LAFEU. Madam, I was thinking with what manners I might safely be     admitted.   COUNTESS. You need but plead your honourable privilege.   LAFEU. Lady, of that I have made a bold charter; but, I thank my     God, it holds yet.                           Re-enter CLOWN      CLOWN. O madam, yonder\'s my lord your son with a patch of velvet     on\'s face; whether there be a scar under \'t or no, the velvet     knows; but \'tis a goodly patch of velvet. His left cheek is a     cheek of two pile and a half, but his right cheek is worn bare.   LAFEU. A scar nobly got, or a noble scar, is a good liv\'ry of     honour; so belike is that.   CLOWN. But it is your carbonado\'d face.   LAFEU. Let us go see your son, I pray you;     I long to talk with the young noble soldier.   CLOWN. Faith, there\'s a dozen of \'em, with delicate fine hats, and     most courteous feathers, which bow the head and nod at every man.                                                           Exeunt    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>     ACT V. SCENE 1. Marseilles. A street  Enter HELENA, WIDOW, and DIANA, with two ATTENDANTS    HELENA. But this exceeding posting day and night     Must wear your spirits low; we cannot help it.     But since you have made the days and nights as one,     To wear your gentle limbs in my affairs,     Be bold you do so grow in my requital     As nothing can unroot you.                        Enter a GENTLEMAN      In happy time!     This man may help me to his Majesty\'s ear,     If he would spend his power. God save you, sir.   GENTLEMAN. And you.   HELENA. Sir, I have seen you in the court of France.   GENTLEMAN. I have been sometimes there.   HELENA. I do presume, sir, that you are not fall\'n     From the report that goes upon your goodness;       And therefore, goaded with most sharp occasions,     Which lay nice manners by, I put you to     The use of your own virtues, for the which     I shall continue thankful.   GENTLEMAN. What\'s your will?   HELENA. That it will please you     To give this poor petition to the King;     And aid me with that store of power you have     To come into his presence.   GENTLEMAN. The King\'s not here.   HELENA. Not here, sir?   GENTLEMAN. Not indeed.     He hence remov\'d last night, and with more haste     Than is his use.   WIDOW. Lord, how we lose our pains!   HELENA. All\'s Well That Ends Well yet,     Though time seem so adverse and means unfit.     I do beseech you, whither is he gone?   GENTLEMAN. Marry, as I take it, to Rousillon;     Whither I am going.     HELENA. I do beseech you, sir,     Since you are like to see the King before me,     Commend the paper to his gracious hand;     Which I presume shall render you no blame,     But rather make you thank your pains for it.     I will come after you with what good speed     Our means will make us means.   GENTLEMAN. This I\'ll do for you.   HELENA. And you shall find yourself to be well thank\'d,     Whate\'er falls more. We must to horse again;     Go, go, provide.                                      Exeunt     ACT V SCENE 2. Rousillon. The inner court of the COUNT\'S palace  Enter CLOWN and PAROLLES    PAROLLES. Good Monsieur Lavache, give my Lord Lafeu this letter. I     have ere now, sir, been better known to you, when I have held     familiarity with fresher clothes; but I am now, sir, muddied in     Fortune\'s mood, and smell somewhat strong of her strong     displeasure.   CLOWN. Truly, Fortune\'s displeasure is but sluttish, if it smell     so strongly as thou speak\'st of. I will henceforth eat no fish     of Fortune\'s butt\'ring. Prithee, allow the wind.   PAROLLES. Nay, you need not to stop your nose, sir; I spake but by     a metaphor.   CLOWN. Indeed, sir, if your metaphor stink, I will stop my nose; or     against any man\'s metaphor. Prithee, get thee further.   PAROLLES. Pray you, sir, deliver me this paper.   CLOWN. Foh! prithee stand away. A paper from Fortune\'s close-stool     to give to a nobleman! Look here he comes himself.                             Enter LAFEU        Here is a pur of Fortune\'s, sir, or of Fortune\'s cat, but not     a musk-cat, that has fall\'n into the unclean fishpond of her     displeasure, and, as he says, is muddied withal. Pray you, sir,     use the carp as you may; for he looks like a poor, decayed,     ingenious, foolish, rascally knave. I do pity his distress     in my similes of comfort, and leave him to your lordship.  Exit   PAROLLES. My lord, I am a man whom Fortune hath cruelly scratch\'d.   LAFEU. And what would you have me to do? \'Tis too late to pare her     nails now. Wherein have you played the knave with Fortune, that     she should scratch you, who of herself is a good lady and would     not have knaves thrive long under her? There\'s a cardecue for     you. Let the justices make you and Fortune friends; I am for     other business.   PAROLLES. I beseech your honour to hear me one single word.   LAFEU. You beg a single penny more; come, you shall ha\'t; save your     word.   PAROLLES. My name, my good lord, is Parolles.   LAFEU. You beg more than word then. Cox my passion! give me your       hand. How does your drum?   PAROLLES. O my good lord, you were the first that found me.   LAFEU. Was I, in sooth? And I was the first that lost thee.   PAROLLES. It lies in you, my lord, to bring me in some grace, for     you did bring me out.   LAFEU. Out upon thee, knave! Dost thou put upon me at once both the     office of God and the devil? One brings the in grace, and the     other brings thee out.    [Trumpets sound]  The King\'s coming; I     know by his trumpets. Sirrah, inquire further after me; I had     talk of you last night. Though you are a fool and a knave, you     shall eat. Go to; follow.   PAROLLES. I praise God for you.                         Exeunt     ACT V SCENE 3. Rousillon. The COUNT\'S palace  Flourish. Enter KING, COUNTESS, LAFEU, the two FRENCH LORDS, with ATTENDANTS    KING. We lost a jewel of her, and our esteem     Was made much poorer by it; but your son,     As mad in folly, lack\'d the sense to know     Her estimation home.   COUNTESS. \'Tis past, my liege;     And I beseech your Majesty to make it     Natural rebellion, done i\' th\' blaze of youth,     When oil and fire, too strong for reason\'s force,     O\'erbears it and burns on.   KING. My honour\'d lady,     I have forgiven and forgotten all;     Though my revenges were high bent upon him     And watch\'d the time to shoot.   LAFEU. This I must say-     But first, I beg my pardon: the young lord     Did to his Majesty, his mother, and his lady,       Offence of mighty note; but to himself     The greatest wrong of all. He lost a wife     Whose beauty did astonish the survey     Of richest eyes; whose words all ears took captive;     Whose dear perfection hearts that scorn\'d to serve     Humbly call\'d mistress.   KING. Praising what is lost     Makes the remembrance dear. Well, call him hither;     We are reconcil\'d, and the first view shall kill     All repetition. Let him not ask our pardon;     The nature of his great offence is dead,     And deeper than oblivion do we bury     Th\' incensing relics of it; let him approach,     A stranger, no offender; and inform him     So \'tis our will he should.   GENTLEMAN. I shall, my liege.                 Exit GENTLEMAN   KING. What says he to your daughter? Have you spoke?   LAFEU. All that he is hath reference to your Highness.   KING. Then shall we have a match. I have letters sent me     That sets him high in fame.                              Enter BERTRAM    LAFEU. He looks well on \'t.   KING. I am not a day of season,     For thou mayst see a sunshine and a hail     In me at once. But to the brightest beams     Distracted clouds give way; so stand thou forth;     The time is fair again.   BERTRAM. My high-repented blames,     Dear sovereign, pardon to me.   KING. All is whole;     Not one word more of the consumed time.     Let\'s take the instant by the forward top;     For we are old, and on our quick\'st decrees     Th\' inaudible and noiseless foot of Time     Steals ere we can effect them. You remember     The daughter of this lord?   BERTRAM. Admiringly, my liege. At first     I stuck my choice upon her, ere my heart       Durst make too bold herald of my tongue;     Where the impression of mine eye infixing,     Contempt his scornful perspective did lend me,     Which warp\'d the line of every other favour,     Scorn\'d a fair colour or express\'d it stol\'n,     Extended or contracted all proportions     To a most hideous object. Thence it came     That she whom all men prais\'d, and whom myself,     Since I have lost, have lov\'d, was in mine eye     The dust that did offend it.   KING. Well excus\'d.     That thou didst love her, strikes some scores away     From the great compt; but love that comes too late,     Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried,     To the great sender turns a sour offence,     Crying \'That\'s good that\'s gone.\' Our rash faults     Make trivial price of serious things we have,     Not knowing them until we know their grave.     Oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust,     Destroy our friends, and after weep their dust;       Our own love waking cries to see what\'s done,     While shameful hate sleeps out the afternoon.     Be this sweet Helen\'s knell. And now forget her.     Send forth your amorous token for fair Maudlin.     The main consents are had; and here we\'ll stay     To see our widower\'s second marriage-day.   COUNTESS. Which better than the first, O dear heaven, bless!     Or, ere they meet, in me, O nature, cesse!   LAFEU. Come on, my son, in whom my house\'s name     Must be digested; give a favour from you,     To sparkle in the spirits of my daughter,     That she may quickly come.                                           [BERTRAM gives a ring]     By my old beard,     And ev\'ry hair that\'s on \'t, Helen, that\'s dead,     Was a sweet creature; such a ring as this,     The last that e\'er I took her leave at court,     I saw upon her finger.   BERTRAM. Hers it was not.   KING. Now, pray you, let me see it; for mine eye,       While I was speaking, oft was fasten\'d to\'t.     This ring was mine; and when I gave it Helen     I bade her, if her fortunes ever stood     Necessitied to help, that by this token     I would relieve her. Had you that craft to reave her     Of what should stead her most?   BERTRAM. My gracious sovereign,     Howe\'er it pleases you to take it so,     The ring was never hers.   COUNTESS. Son, on my life,     I have seen her wear it; and she reckon\'d it     At her life\'s rate.   LAFEU. I am sure I saw her wear it.   BERTRAM. You are deceiv\'d, my lord; she never saw it.     In Florence was it from a casement thrown me,     Wrapp\'d in a paper, which contain\'d the name     Of her that threw it. Noble she was, and thought     I stood engag\'d; but when I had subscrib\'d     To mine own fortune, and inform\'d her fully     I could not answer in that course of honour       As she had made the overture, she ceas\'d,     In heavy satisfaction, and would never     Receive the ring again.   KING. Plutus himself,     That knows the tinct and multiplying med\'cine,     Hath not in nature\'s mystery more science     Than I have in this ring. \'Twas mine, \'twas Helen\'s,     Whoever gave it you. Then, if you know     That you are well acquainted with yourself,     Confess \'twas hers, and by what rough enforcement     You got it from her. She call\'d the saints to surety     That she would never put it from her finger     Unless she gave it to yourself in bed-     Where you have never come- or sent it us     Upon her great disaster.   BERTRAM. She never saw it.   KING. Thou speak\'st it falsely, as I love mine honour;     And mak\'st conjectural fears to come into me     Which I would fain shut out. If it should prove     That thou art so inhuman- \'twill not prove so.       And yet I know not- thou didst hate her deadly,     And she is dead; which nothing, but to close     Her eyes myself, could win me to believe     More than to see this ring. Take him away.                                           [GUARDS seize BERTRAM]     My fore-past proofs, howe\'er the matter fall,     Shall tax my fears of little vanity,     Having vainly fear\'d too little. Away with him.     We\'ll sift this matter further.   BERTRAM. If you shall prove     This ring was ever hers, you shall as easy     Prove that I husbanded her bed in Florence,     Where she yet never was.                       Exit, guarded   KING. I am wrapp\'d in dismal thinkings.                          Enter a GENTLEMAN    GENTLEMAN. Gracious sovereign,     Whether I have been to blame or no, I know not:     Here\'s a petition from a Florentine,       Who hath, for four or five removes, come short     To tender it herself. I undertook it,     Vanquish\'d thereto by the fair grace and speech     Of the poor suppliant, who by this, I know,     Is here attending; her business looks in her     With an importing visage; and she told me     In a sweet verbal brief it did concern     Your Highness with herself.   KING.  [Reads the letter]  \'Upon his many protestations to marry me     when his wife was dead, I blush to say it, he won me. Now is the     Count Rousillon a widower; his vows are forfeited to me, and my     honour\'s paid to him. He stole from Florence, taking no leave,     and I follow him to his country for justice. Grant it me, O King!     in you it best lies; otherwise a seducer flourishes, and a poor     maid is undone.                                                 DIANA CAPILET.\'   LAFEU. I will buy me a son-in-law in a fair, and toll for this.     I\'ll none of him.   KING. The heavens have thought well on thee, Lafeu,     To bring forth this discov\'ry. Seek these suitors.       Go speedily, and bring again the Count.                                                Exeunt ATTENDANTS     I am afeard the life of Helen, lady,     Was foully snatch\'d.   COUNTESS. Now, justice on the doers!                         Enter BERTRAM, guarded    KING. I wonder, sir, sith wives are monsters to you.     And that you fly them as you swear them lordship,     Yet you desire to marry.                                            Enter WIDOW and DIANA     What woman\'s that?   DIANA. I am, my lord, a wretched Florentine,     Derived from the ancient Capilet.     My suit, as I do understand, you know,     And therefore know how far I may be pitied.   WIDOW. I am her mother, sir, whose age and honour     Both suffer under this complaint we bring,     And both shall cease, without your remedy.     KING. Come hither, Count; do you know these women?   BERTRAM. My lord, I neither can nor will deny     But that I know them. Do they charge me further?   DIANA. Why do you look so strange upon your wife?   BERTRAM. She\'s none of mine, my lord.   DIANA. If you shall marry,     You give away this hand, and that is mine;     You give away heaven\'s vows, and those are mine;     You give away myself, which is known mine;     For I by vow am so embodied yours     That she which marries you must marry me,     Either both or none.   LAFEU.  [To BERTRAM]  Your reputation comes too short for     my daughter; you are no husband for her.   BERTRAM. My lord, this is a fond and desp\'rate creature     Whom sometime I have laugh\'d with. Let your Highness     Lay a more noble thought upon mine honour     Than for to think that I would sink it here.   KING. Sir, for my thoughts, you have them ill to friend     Till your deeds gain them. Fairer prove your honour       Than in my thought it lies!   DIANA. Good my lord,     Ask him upon his oath if he does think     He had not my virginity.   KING. What say\'st thou to her?   BERTRAM. She\'s impudent, my lord,     And was a common gamester to the camp.   DIANA. He does me wrong, my lord; if I were so     He might have bought me at a common price.     Do not believe him. o, behold this ring,     Whose high respect and rich validity     Did lack a parallel; yet, for all that,     He gave it to a commoner o\' th\' camp,     If I be one.   COUNTESS. He blushes, and \'tis it.     Of six preceding ancestors, that gem     Conferr\'d by testament to th\' sequent issue,     Hath it been ow\'d and worn. This is his wife:     That ring\'s a thousand proofs.   KING. Methought you said       You saw one here in court could witness it.   DIANA. I did, my lord, but loath am to produce     So bad an instrument; his name\'s Parolles.   LAFEU. I saw the man to-day, if man he be.   KING. Find him, and bring him hither.        Exit an ATTENDANT   BERTRAM. What of him?     He\'s quoted for a most perfidious slave,     With all the spots o\' th\' world tax\'d and debauch\'d,     Whose nature sickens but to speak a truth.     Am I or that or this for what he\'ll utter     That will speak anything?   KING. She hath that ring of yours.   BERTRAM. I think she has. Certain it is I lik\'d her,     And boarded her i\' th\' wanton way of youth.     She knew her distance, and did angle for me,     Madding my eagerness with her restraint,     As all impediments in fancy\'s course     Are motives of more fancy; and, in fine,     Her infinite cunning with her modern grace     Subdu\'d me to her rate. She got the ring;       And I had that which any inferior might     At market-price have bought.   DIANA. I must be patient.     You that have turn\'d off a first so noble wife     May justly diet me. I pray you yet-     Since you lack virtue, I will lose a husband-     Send for your ring, I will return it home,     And give me mine again.   BERTRAM. I have it not.   KING. What ring was yours, I pray you?   DIANA. Sir, much like     The same upon your finger.   KING. Know you this ring? This ring was his of late.   DIANA. And this was it I gave him, being abed.   KING. The story, then, goes false you threw it him     Out of a casement.   DIANA. I have spoke the truth.                         Enter PAROLLES      BERTRAM. My lord, I do confess the ring was hers.   KING. You boggle shrewdly; every feather starts you.     Is this the man you speak of?   DIANA. Ay, my lord.   KING. Tell me, sirrah-but tell me true I charge you,     Not fearing the displeasure of your master,     Which, on your just proceeding, I\'ll keep off-     By him and by this woman here what know you?   PAROLLES. So please your Majesty, my master hath been an honourable     gentleman; tricks he hath had in him, which gentlemen have.   KING. Come, come, to th\' purpose. Did he love this woman?   PAROLLES. Faith, sir, he did love her; but how?   KING. How, I pray you?   PAROLLES. He did love her, sir, as a gentleman loves a woman.   KING. How is that?   PAROLLES. He lov\'d her, sir, and lov\'d her not.   KING. As thou art a knave and no knave.     What an equivocal companion is this!   PAROLLES. I am a poor man, and at your Majesty\'s command.   LAFEU. He\'s a good drum, my lord, but a naughty orator.     DIANA. Do you know he promis\'d me marriage?   PAROLLES. Faith, I know more than I\'ll speak.   KING. But wilt thou not speak all thou know\'st?   PAROLLES. Yes, so please your Majesty. I did go between them, as I     said; but more than that, he loved her-for indeed he was mad for     her, and talk\'d of Satan, and of Limbo, and of Furies, and I know     not what. Yet I was in that credit with them at that time that I     knew of their going to bed; and of other motions, as promising     her marriage, and things which would derive me ill will to speak     of; therefore I will not speak what I know.   KING. Thou hast spoken all already, unless thou canst say they are     married; but thou art too fine in thy evidence; therefore stand     aside.     This ring, you say, was yours?   DIANA. Ay, my good lord.   KING. Where did you buy it? Or who gave it you?   DIANA. It was not given me, nor I did not buy it.   KING. Who lent it you?   DIANA. It was not lent me neither.   KING. Where did you find it then?     DIANA. I found it not.   KING. If it were yours by none of all these ways,     How could you give it him?   DIANA. I never gave it him.   LAFEU. This woman\'s an easy glove, my lord; she goes of and on at     pleasure.   KING. This ring was mine, I gave it his first wife.   DIANA. It might be yours or hers, for aught I know.   KING. Take her away, I do not like her now;     To prison with her. And away with him.     Unless thou tell\'st me where thou hadst this ring,     Thou diest within this hour.   DIANA. I\'ll never tell you.   KING. Take her away.   DIANA. I\'ll put in bail, my liege.   KING. I think thee now some common customer.   DIANA. By Jove, if ever I knew man, \'twas you.   KING. Wherefore hast thou accus\'d him all this while?   DIANA. Because he\'s guilty, and he is not guilty.     He knows I am no maid, and he\'ll swear to\'t:       I\'ll swear I am a maid, and he knows not.     Great King, I am no strumpet, by my life;     I am either maid, or else this old man\'s wife.                                              [Pointing to LAFEU]   KING. She does abuse our ears; to prison with her.   DIANA. Good mother, fetch my bail. Stay, royal sir;                                                       Exit WIDOW     The jeweller that owes the ring is sent for,     And he shall surety me. But for this lord     Who hath abus\'d me as he knows himself,     Though yet he never harm\'d me, here I quit him.     He knows himself my bed he hath defil\'d;     And at that time he got his wife with child.     Dead though she be, she feels her young one kick;     So there\'s my riddle: one that\'s dead is quick-     And now behold the meaning.                       Re-enter WIDOW with HELENA    KING. Is there no exorcist       Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes?     Is\'t real that I see?   HELENA. No, my good lord;     \'Tis but the shadow of a wife you see,     The name and not the thing.   BERTRAM. Both, both; o, pardon!   HELENA. O, my good lord, when I was like this maid,     I found you wondrous kind. There is your ring,     And, look you, here\'s your letter. This it says:     \'When from my finger you can get this ring,     And are by me with child,\' etc. This is done.     Will you be mine now you are doubly won?   BERTRAM. If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly,     I\'ll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly.   HELENA. If it appear not plain, and prove untrue,     Deadly divorce step between me and you!     O my dear mother, do I see you living?   LAFEU. Mine eyes smell onions; I shall weep anon. [To PAROLLES]     Good Tom Drum, lend me a handkercher. So, I     thank thee. Wait on me home, I\'ll make sport with thee;       let thy curtsies alone, they are scurvy ones.   KING. Let us from point to point this story know,     To make the even truth in pleasure flow.     [To DIANA]  If thou beest yet a fresh uncropped flower,     Choose thou thy husband, and I\'ll pay thy dower;     For I can guess that by thy honest aid     Thou kept\'st a wife herself, thyself a maid.-     Of that and all the progress, more and less,     Resolvedly more leisure shall express.     All yet seems well; and if it end so meet,     The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.       [Flourish]  EPILOGUE                              EPILOGUE.    KING. The King\'s a beggar, now the play is done.     All is well ended if this suit be won,     That you express content; which we will pay     With strife to please you, day exceeding day.     Ours be your patience then, and yours our parts;     Your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts.                                                     Exeunt omnes   THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1607  THE TRAGEDY OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA  by William Shakespeare    DRAMATIS PERSONAE    MARK ANTONY,         Triumvirs   OCTAVIUS CAESAR,         "   M. AEMILIUS LEPIDUS,     "   SEXTUS POMPEIUS,         "   DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS, friend to Antony   VENTIDIUS,             "    "   "   EROS,                  "    "   "   SCARUS,                "    "   "   DERCETAS,              "    "   "   DEMETRIUS,             "    "   "   PHILO,                 "    "   "   MAECENAS,   friend to Caesar   AGRIPPA,       "    "   "   DOLABELLA,     "    "   "   PROCULEIUS,    "    "   "   THYREUS,       "    "   "   GALLUS,        "    "   "   MENAS,      friend to Pompey   MENECRATES,    "    "    "   VARRIUS,       "    "    "     TAURUS, Lieutenant-General to Caesar   CANIDIUS, Lieutenant-General to Antony   SILIUS, an Officer in Ventidius\'s army   EUPHRONIUS, an Ambassador from Antony to Caesar   ALEXAS,   attendant on Cleopatra   MARDIAN,      "     "      "   SELEUCUS,     "     "      "   DIOMEDES,     "     "      "   A SOOTHSAYER   A CLOWN    CLEOPATRA, Queen of Egypt   OCTAVIA, sister to Caesar and wife to Antony   CHARMIAN, lady attending on Cleopatra   IRAS,       "      "      "     "      Officers, Soldiers, Messengers, and Attendants    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>     SCENE: The Roman Empire  ACT I. SCENE I. Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace  Enter DEMETRIUS and PHILO    PHILO. Nay, but this dotage of our general\'s     O\'erflows the measure. Those his goodly eyes,     That o\'er the files and musters of the war     Have glow\'d like plated Mars, now bend, now turn,     The office and devotion of their view     Upon a tawny front. His captain\'s heart,     Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst     The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,     And is become the bellows and the fan     To cool a gipsy\'s lust.       Flourish. Enter ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, her LADIES, the train,                     with eunuchs fanning her      Look where they come!     Take but good note, and you shall see in him     The triple pillar of the world transform\'d       Into a strumpet\'s fool. Behold and see.   CLEOPATRA. If it be love indeed, tell me how much.   ANTONY. There\'s beggary in the love that can be reckon\'d.   CLEOPATRA. I\'ll set a bourn how far to be belov\'d.   ANTONY. Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.                         Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. News, my good lord, from Rome.   ANTONY. Grates me the sum.   CLEOPATRA. Nay, hear them, Antony.     Fulvia perchance is angry; or who knows     If the scarce-bearded Caesar have not sent     His pow\'rful mandate to you: \'Do this or this;     Take in that kingdom and enfranchise that;     Perform\'t, or else we damn thee.\'   ANTONY. How, my love?   CLEOPATRA. Perchance? Nay, and most like,     You must not stay here longer; your dismission     Is come from Caesar; therefore hear it, Antony.       Where\'s Fulvia\'s process? Caesar\'s I would say? Both?     Call in the messengers. As I am Egypt\'s Queen,     Thou blushest, Antony, and that blood of thine     Is Caesar\'s homager. Else so thy cheek pays shame     When shrill-tongu\'d Fulvia scolds. The messengers!   ANTONY. Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch     Of the rang\'d empire fall! Here is my space.     Kingdoms are clay; our dungy earth alike     Feeds beast as man. The nobleness of life     Is to do thus [emhracing], when such a mutual pair     And such a twain can do\'t, in which I bind,     On pain of punishment, the world to weet     We stand up peerless.   CLEOPATRA. Excellent falsehood!     Why did he marry Fulvia, and not love her?     I\'ll seem the fool I am not. Antony     Will be himself.   ANTONY. But stirr\'d by Cleopatra.     Now for the love of Love and her soft hours,     Let\'s not confound the time with conference harsh;       There\'s not a minute of our lives should stretch     Without some pleasure now. What sport to-night?   CLEOPATRA. Hear the ambassadors.   ANTONY. Fie, wrangling queen!     Whom everything becomes- to chide, to laugh,     To weep; whose every passion fully strives     To make itself in thee fair and admir\'d.     No messenger but thine, and all alone     To-night we\'ll wander through the streets and note     The qualities of people. Come, my queen;     Last night you did desire it. Speak not to us.                      Exeunt ANTONY and CLEOPATRA, with the train   DEMETRIUS. Is Caesar with Antonius priz\'d so slight?   PHILO. Sir, sometimes when he is not Antony,     He comes too short of that great property     Which still should go with Antony.   DEMETRIUS. I am full sorry     That he approves the common liar, who     Thus speaks of him at Rome; but I will hope     Of better deeds to-morrow. Rest you happy!            Exeunt     SCENE II. Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace  Enter CHARMIAN, IRAS, ALEXAS, and a SOOTHSAYER    CHARMIAN. Lord Alexas, sweet Alexas, most anything Alexas, almost     most absolute Alexas, where\'s the soothsayer that you prais\'d so     to th\' Queen? O that I knew this husband, which you say must     charge his horns with garlands!   ALEXAS. Soothsayer!   SOOTHSAYER. Your will?   CHARMIAN. Is this the man? Is\'t you, sir, that know things?   SOOTHSAYER. In nature\'s infinite book of secrecy     A little I can read.   ALEXAS. Show him your hand.                         Enter ENOBARBUS    ENOBARBUS. Bring in the banquet quickly; wine enough     Cleopatra\'s health to drink.   CHARMIAN. Good, sir, give me good fortune.   SOOTHSAYER. I make not, but foresee.     CHARMIAN. Pray, then, foresee me one.   SOOTHSAYER. You shall be yet far fairer than you are.   CHARMIAN. He means in flesh.   IRAS. No, you shall paint when you are old.   CHARMIAN. Wrinkles forbid!   ALEXAS. Vex not his prescience; be attentive.   CHARMIAN. Hush!   SOOTHSAYER. You shall be more beloving than beloved.   CHARMIAN. I had rather heat my liver with drinking.   ALEXAS. Nay, hear him.   CHARMIAN. Good now, some excellent fortune! Let me be married to     three kings in a forenoon, and widow them all. Let me have a     child at fifty, to whom Herod of Jewry may do homage. Find me to     marry me with Octavius Caesar, and companion me with my mistress.   SOOTHSAYER. You shall outlive the lady whom you serve.   CHARMIAN. O, excellent! I love long life better than figs.   SOOTHSAYER. You have seen and prov\'d a fairer former fortune     Than that which is to approach.   CHARMIAN. Then belike my children shall have no names.     Prithee, how many boys and wenches must I have?     SOOTHSAYER. If every of your wishes had a womb,     And fertile every wish, a million.   CHARMIAN. Out, fool! I forgive thee for a witch.   ALEXAS. You think none but your sheets are privy to your wishes.   CHARMIAN. Nay, come, tell Iras hers.   ALEXAS. We\'ll know all our fortunes.   ENOBARBUS. Mine, and most of our fortunes, to-night, shall be-     drunk to bed.   IRAS. There\'s a palm presages chastity, if nothing else.   CHARMIAN. E\'en as the o\'erflowing Nilus presageth famine.   IRAS. Go, you wild bedfellow, you cannot soothsay.   CHARMIAN. Nay, if an oily palm be not a fruitful prognostication, I     cannot scratch mine ear. Prithee, tell her but worky-day fortune.   SOOTHSAYER. Your fortunes are alike.   IRAS. But how, but how? Give me particulars.   SOOTHSAYER. I have said.   IRAS. Am I not an inch of fortune better than she?   CHARMIAN. Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I,     where would you choose it?   IRAS. Not in my husband\'s nose.     CHARMIAN. Our worser thoughts heavens mend! Alexas- come, his     fortune, his fortune! O, let him marry a woman that cannot go,     sweet Isis, I beseech thee! And let her die too, and give him a     worse! And let worse follow worse, till the worst of all follow     him laughing to his grave, fiftyfold a cuckold! Good Isis, hear     me this prayer, though thou deny me a matter of more weight; good     Isis, I beseech thee!   IRAS. Amen. Dear goddess, hear that prayer of the people! For, as     it is a heartbreaking to see a handsome man loose-wiv\'d, so it is     a deadly sorrow to behold a foul knave uncuckolded. Therefore,     dear Isis, keep decorum, and fortune him accordingly!   CHARMIAN. Amen.   ALEXAS. Lo now, if it lay in their hands to make me a cuckold, they     would make themselves whores but they\'ld do\'t!                            Enter CLEOPATRA    ENOBARBUS. Hush! Here comes Antony.   CHARMIAN. Not he; the Queen.   CLEOPATRA. Saw you my lord?     ENOBARBUS. No, lady.   CLEOPATRA. Was he not here?   CHARMIAN. No, madam.   CLEOPATRA. He was dispos\'d to mirth; but on the sudden     A Roman thought hath struck him. Enobarbus!   ENOBARBUS. Madam?   CLEOPATRA. Seek him, and bring him hither. Where\'s Alexas?   ALEXAS. Here, at your service. My lord approaches.            Enter ANTONY, with a MESSENGER and attendants    CLEOPATRA. We will not look upon him. Go with us.                        Exeunt CLEOPATRA, ENOBARBUS, and the rest   MESSENGER. Fulvia thy wife first came into the field.   ANTONY. Against my brother Lucius?   MESSENGER. Ay.     But soon that war had end, and the time\'s state     Made friends of them, jointing their force \'gainst Caesar,     Whose better issue in the war from Italy     Upon the first encounter drave them.     ANTONY. Well, what worst?   MESSENGER. The nature of bad news infects the teller.   ANTONY. When it concerns the fool or coward. On!     Things that are past are done with me. \'Tis thus:     Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death,     I hear him as he flatter\'d.   MESSENGER. Labienus-     This is stiff news- hath with his Parthian force     Extended Asia from Euphrates,     His conquering banner shook from Syria     To Lydia and to Ionia,     Whilst-   ANTONY. Antony, thou wouldst say.   MESSENGER. O, my lord!   ANTONY. Speak to me home; mince not the general tongue;     Name Cleopatra as she is call\'d in Rome.     Rail thou in Fulvia\'s phrase, and taunt my faults     With such full licence as both truth and malice     Have power to utter. O, then we bring forth weeds     When our quick minds lie still, and our ills told us       Is as our earing. Fare thee well awhile.   MESSENGER. At your noble pleasure.                        Exit   ANTONY. From Sicyon, ho, the news! Speak there!   FIRST ATTENDANT. The man from Sicyon- is there such an one?   SECOND ATTENDANT. He stays upon your will.   ANTONY. Let him appear.     These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,     Or lose myself in dotage.                   Enter another MESSENGER with a letter      What are you?   SECOND MESSENGER. Fulvia thy wife is dead.   ANTONY. Where died she?   SECOND MESSENGER. In Sicyon.     Her length of sickness, with what else more serious     Importeth thee to know, this bears.       [Gives the letter]   ANTONY. Forbear me.                             Exit MESSENGER     There\'s a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it.     What our contempts doth often hurl from us       We wish it ours again; the present pleasure,     By revolution low\'ring, does become     The opposite of itself. She\'s good, being gone;     The hand could pluck her back that shov\'d her on.     I must from this enchanting queen break off.     Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,     My idleness doth hatch. How now, Enobarbus!                      Re-enter ENOBARBUS    ENOBARBUS. What\'s your pleasure, sir?   ANTONY. I must with haste from hence.   ENOBARBUS. Why, then we kill all our women. We see how mortal an     unkindness is to them; if they suffer our departure, death\'s the     word.   ANTONY. I must be gone.   ENOBARBUS. Under a compelling occasion, let women die. It were pity     to cast them away for nothing, though between them and a great     cause they should be esteemed nothing. Cleopatra, catching but     the least noise of this, dies instantly; I have seen her die       twenty times upon far poorer moment. I do think there is mettle     in death, which commits some loving act upon her, she hath such a     celerity in dying.   ANTONY. She is cunning past man\'s thought.   ENOBARBUS. Alack, sir, no! Her passions are made of nothing but the     finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters     sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than     almanacs can report. This cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she     makes a show\'r of rain as well as Jove.   ANTONY. Would I had never seen her!   ENOBARBUS. O Sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of     work, which not to have been blest withal would have discredited     your travel.   ANTONY. Fulvia is dead.   ENOBARBUS. Sir?   ANTONY. Fulvia is dead.   ENOBARBUS. Fulvia?   ANTONY. Dead.   ENOBARBUS. Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When it     pleaseth their deities to take the wife of a man from him, it       shows to man the tailors of the earth; comforting therein that     when old robes are worn out there are members to make new. If     there were no more women but Fulvia, then had you indeed a cut,     and the case to be lamented. This grief is crown\'d with     consolation: your old smock brings forth a new petticoat; and     indeed the tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow.   ANTONY. The business she hath broached in the state     Cannot endure my absence.   ENOBARBUS. And the business you have broach\'d here cannot be     without you; especially that of Cleopatra\'s, which wholly depends     on your abode.   ANTONY. No more light answers. Let our officers     Have notice what we purpose. I shall break     The cause of our expedience to the Queen,     And get her leave to part. For not alone     The death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches,     Do strongly speak to us; but the letters to     Of many our contriving friends in Rome     Petition us at home. Sextus Pompeius     Hath given the dare to Caesar, and commands       The empire of the sea; our slippery people,     Whose love is never link\'d to the deserver     Till his deserts are past, begin to throw     Pompey the Great and all his dignities     Upon his son; who, high in name and power,     Higher than both in blood and life, stands up     For the main soldier; whose quality, going on,     The sides o\' th\' world may danger. Much is breeding     Which, like the courser\'s hair, hath yet but life     And not a serpent\'s poison. Say our pleasure,     To such whose place is under us, requires     Our quick remove from hence.   ENOBARBUS. I shall do\'t.                                Exeunt     SCENE III. Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace  Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and ALEXAS    CLEOPATRA. Where is he?   CHARMIAN. I did not see him since.   CLEOPATRA. See where he is, who\'s with him, what he does.     I did not send you. If you find him sad,     Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report     That I am sudden sick. Quick, and return.        Exit ALEXAS   CHARMIAN. Madam, methinks, if you did love him dearly,     You do not hold the method to enforce     The like from him.   CLEOPATRA. What should I do I do not?   CHARMIAN. In each thing give him way; cross him in nothing.   CLEOPATRA. Thou teachest like a fool- the way to lose him.   CHARMIAN. Tempt him not so too far; I wish, forbear;     In time we hate that which we often fear.                              Enter ANTONY        But here comes Antony.   CLEOPATRA. I am sick and sullen.   ANTONY. I am sorry to give breathing to my purpose-   CLEOPATRA. Help me away, dear Charmian; I shall fall.     It cannot be thus long; the sides of nature     Will not sustain it.   ANTONY. Now, my dearest queen-   CLEOPATRA. Pray you, stand farther from me.   ANTONY. What\'s the matter?   CLEOPATRA. I know by that same eye there\'s some good news.     What says the married woman? You may go.     Would she had never given you leave to come!     Let her not say \'tis I that keep you here-     I have no power upon you; hers you are.   ANTONY. The gods best know-   CLEOPATRA. O, never was there queen     So mightily betray\'d! Yet at the first     I saw the treasons planted.   ANTONY. Cleopatra-   CLEOPATRA. Why should I think you can be mine and true,       Though you in swearing shake the throned gods,     Who have been false to Fulvia? Riotous madness,     To be entangled with those mouth-made vows,     Which break themselves in swearing!   ANTONY. Most sweet queen-   CLEOPATRA. Nay, pray you seek no colour for your going,     But bid farewell, and go. When you sued staying,     Then was the time for words. No going then!     Eternity was in our lips and eyes,     Bliss in our brows\' bent, none our parts so poor     But was a race of heaven. They are so still,     Or thou, the greatest soldier of the world,     Art turn\'d the greatest liar.   ANTONY. How now, lady!   CLEOPATRA. I would I had thy inches. Thou shouldst know     There were a heart in Egypt.   ANTONY. Hear me, queen:     The strong necessity of time commands     Our services awhile; but my full heart     Remains in use with you. Our Italy       Shines o\'er with civil swords: Sextus Pompeius     Makes his approaches to the port of Rome;     Equality of two domestic powers     Breed scrupulous faction; the hated, grown to strength,     Are newly grown to love. The condemn\'d Pompey,     Rich in his father\'s honour, creeps apace     Into the hearts of such as have not thrived     Upon the present state, whose numbers threaten;     And quietness, grown sick of rest, would purge     By any desperate change. My more particular,     And that which most with you should safe my going,     Is Fulvia\'s death.   CLEOPATRA. Though age from folly could not give me freedom,      It does from childishness. Can Fulvia die?   ANTONY. She\'s dead, my Queen.     Look here, and at thy sovereign leisure read     The garboils she awak\'d. At the last, best.     See when and where she died.   CLEOPATRA. O most false love!     Where be the sacred vials thou shouldst fill       With sorrowful water? Now I see, I see,     In Fulvia\'s death how mine receiv\'d shall be.   ANTONY. Quarrel no more, but be prepar\'d to know     The purposes I bear; which are, or cease,     As you shall give th\' advice. By the fire     That quickens Nilus\' slime, I go from hence     Thy soldier, servant, making peace or war     As thou affects.   CLEOPATRA. Cut my lace, Charmian, come!     But let it be; I am quickly ill and well-     So Antony loves.   ANTONY. My precious queen, forbear,     And give true evidence to his love, which stands     An honourable trial.   CLEOPATRA. So Fulvia told me.     I prithee turn aside and weep for her;     Then bid adieu to me, and say the tears     Belong to Egypt. Good now, play one scene     Of excellent dissembling, and let it look     Like perfect honour.     ANTONY. You\'ll heat my blood; no more.   CLEOPATRA. You can do better yet; but this is meetly.   ANTONY. Now, by my sword-   CLEOPATRA. And target. Still he mends;     But this is not the best. Look, prithee, Charmian,     How this Herculean Roman does become     The carriage of his chafe.   ANTONY. I\'ll leave you, lady.   CLEOPATRA. Courteous lord, one word.     Sir, you and I must part- but that\'s not it.     Sir, you and I have lov\'d- but there\'s not it.     That you know well. Something it is I would-     O, my oblivion is a very Antony,     And I am all forgotten!   ANTONY. But that your royalty     Holds idleness your subject, I should take you     For idleness itself.   CLEOPATRA. \'Tis sweating labour     To bear such idleness so near the heart     As Cleopatra this. But, sir, forgive me;       Since my becomings kill me when they do not     Eye well to you. Your honour calls you hence;     Therefore be deaf to my unpitied folly,     And all the gods go with you! Upon your sword     Sit laurel victory, and smooth success     Be strew\'d before your feet!   ANTONY. Let us go. Come.     Our separation so abides and flies     That thou, residing here, goes yet with me,     And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee.     Away!                                                 Exeunt     SCENE IV. Rome. CAESAR\'S house  Enter OCTAVIUS CAESAR, reading a letter; LEPIDUS, and their train    CAESAR. You may see, Lepidus, and henceforth know,     It is not Caesar\'s natural vice to hate     Our great competitor. From Alexandria     This is the news: he fishes, drinks, and wastes     The lamps of night in revel; is not more manlike     Than Cleopatra, nor the queen of Ptolemy     More womanly than he; hardly gave audience, or     Vouchsaf\'d to think he had partners. You shall find there     A man who is the abstract of all faults     That all men follow.   LEPIDUS. I must not think there are     Evils enow to darken all his goodness.     His faults, in him, seem as the spots of heaven,     More fiery by night\'s blackness; hereditary     Rather than purchas\'d; what he cannot change     Than what he chooses.     CAESAR. You are too indulgent. Let\'s grant it is not     Amiss to tumble on the bed of Ptolemy,     To give a kingdom for a mirth, to sit     And keep the turn of tippling with a slave,     To reel the streets at noon, and stand the buffet     With knaves that smell of sweat. Say this becomes him-     As his composure must be rare indeed     Whom these things cannot blemish- yet must Antony     No way excuse his foils when we do bear     So great weight in his lightness. If he fill\'d     His vacancy with his voluptuousness,     Full surfeits and the dryness of his bones     Call on him for\'t! But to confound such time     That drums him from his sport and speaks as loud     As his own state and ours- \'tis to be chid     As we rate boys who, being mature in knowledge,     Pawn their experience to their present pleasure,     And so rebel to judgment.                     Enter a MESSENGER      LEPIDUS. Here\'s more news.   MESSENGER. Thy biddings have been done; and every hour,     Most noble Caesar, shalt thou have report     How \'tis abroad. Pompey is strong at sea,     And it appears he is belov\'d of those     That only have fear\'d Caesar. To the ports     The discontents repair, and men\'s reports     Give him much wrong\'d.   CAESAR. I should have known no less.     It hath been taught us from the primal state     That he which is was wish\'d until he were;     And the ebb\'d man, ne\'er lov\'d till ne\'er worth love,     Comes dear\'d by being lack\'d. This common body,     Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,     Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide,     To rot itself with motion.   MESSENGER. Caesar, I bring thee word     Menecrates and Menas, famous pirates,     Make the sea serve them, which they ear and wound       With keels of every kind. Many hot inroads     They make in Italy; the borders maritime     Lack blood to think on\'t, and flush youth revolt.     No vessel can peep forth but \'tis as soon     Taken as seen; for Pompey\'s name strikes more     Than could his war resisted.   CAESAR. Antony,     Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once     Was beaten from Modena, where thou slew\'st     Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel     Did famine follow; whom thou fought\'st against,     Though daintily brought up, with patience more     Than savages could suffer. Thou didst drink     The stale of horses and the gilded puddle     Which beasts would cough at. Thy palate then did deign     The roughest berry on the rudest hedge;     Yea, like the stag when snow the pasture sheets,     The barks of trees thou brows\'d. On the Alps     It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,     Which some did die to look on. And all this-       It wounds thine honour that I speak it now-     Was borne so like a soldier that thy cheek     So much as lank\'d not.   LEPIDUS. \'Tis pity of him.   CAESAR. Let his shames quickly     Drive him to Rome. \'Tis time we twain     Did show ourselves i\' th\' field; and to that end     Assemble we immediate council. Pompey     Thrives in our idleness.   LEPIDUS. To-morrow, Caesar,     I shall be furnish\'d to inform you rightly     Both what by sea and land I can be able     To front this present time.   CAESAR. Till which encounter     It is my business too. Farewell.   LEPIDUS. Farewell, my lord. What you shall know meantime     Of stirs abroad, I shall beseech you, sir,     To let me be partaker.   CAESAR. Doubt not, sir;     I knew it for my bond.                                Exeunt     SCENE V. Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace  Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and MARDIAN    CLEOPATRA. Charmian!   CHARMIAN. Madam?   CLEOPATRA. Ha, ha!     Give me to drink mandragora.   CHARMIAN. Why, madam?   CLEOPATRA. That I might sleep out this great gap of time     My Antony is away.   CHARMIAN. You think of him too much.   CLEOPATRA. O, \'tis treason!   CHARMIAN. Madam, I trust, not so.   CLEOPATRA. Thou, eunuch Mardian!   MARDIAN. What\'s your Highness\' pleasure?   CLEOPATRA. Not now to hear thee sing; I take no pleasure     In aught an eunuch has. \'Tis well for thee     That, being unseminar\'d, thy freer thoughts     May not fly forth of Egypt. Hast thou affections?   MARDIAN. Yes, gracious madam.     CLEOPATRA. Indeed?   MARDIAN. Not in deed, madam; for I can do nothing     But what indeed is honest to be done.     Yet have I fierce affections, and think     What Venus did with Mars.   CLEOPATRA. O Charmian,     Where think\'st thou he is now? Stands he or sits he?     Or does he walk? or is he on his horse?     O happy horse, to bear the weight of Antony!     Do bravely, horse; for wot\'st thou whom thou mov\'st?     The demi-Atlas of this earth, the arm     And burgonet of men. He\'s speaking now,     Or murmuring \'Where\'s my serpent of old Nile?\'     For so he calls me. Now I feed myself     With most delicious poison. Think on me,     That am with Phoebus\' amorous pinches black,     And wrinkled deep in time? Broad-fronted Caesar,     When thou wast here above the ground, I was     A morsel for a monarch; and great Pompey     Would stand and make his eyes grow in my brow;       There would he anchor his aspect and die     With looking on his life.                           Enter ALEXAS    ALEXAS. Sovereign of Egypt, hail!   CLEOPATRA. How much unlike art thou Mark Antony!     Yet, coming from him, that great med\'cine hath     With his tinct gilded thee.     How goes it with my brave Mark Antony?   ALEXAS. Last thing he did, dear Queen,     He kiss\'d- the last of many doubled kisses-     This orient pearl. His speech sticks in my heart.   CLEOPATRA. Mine ear must pluck it thence.   ALEXAS. \'Good friend,\' quoth he     \'Say the firm Roman to great Egypt sends     This treasure of an oyster; at whose foot,     To mend the petty present, I will piece     Her opulent throne with kingdoms. All the East,     Say thou, shall call her mistress.\' So he nodded,       And soberly did mount an arm-gaunt steed,     Who neigh\'d so high that what I would have spoke     Was beastly dumb\'d by him.   CLEOPATRA. What, was he sad or merry?   ALEXAS. Like to the time o\' th\' year between the extremes     Of hot and cold; he was nor sad nor merry.   CLEOPATRA. O well-divided disposition! Note him,     Note him, good Charmian; \'tis the man; but note him!     He was not sad, for he would shine on those     That make their looks by his; he was not merry,     Which seem\'d to tell them his remembrance lay     In Egypt with his joy; but between both.     O heavenly mingle! Be\'st thou sad or merry,     The violence of either thee becomes,     So does it no man else. Met\'st thou my posts?   ALEXAS. Ay, madam, twenty several messengers.     Why do you send so thick?   CLEOPATRA. Who\'s born that day     When I forget to send to Antony     Shall die a beggar. Ink and paper, Charmian.       Welcome, my good Alexas. Did I, Charmian,     Ever love Caesar so?   CHARMIAN. O that brave Caesar!   CLEOPATRA. Be chok\'d with such another emphasis!     Say \'the brave Antony.\'   CHARMIAN. The valiant Caesar!   CLEOPATRA. By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth     If thou with Caesar paragon again     My man of men.   CHARMIAN. By your most gracious pardon,     I sing but after you.   CLEOPATRA. My salad days,     When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,     To say as I said then. But come, away!     Get me ink and paper.     He shall have every day a several greeting,     Or I\'ll unpeople Egypt.                               Exeunt    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>     ACT II. SCENE I. Messina. POMPEY\'S house  Enter POMPEY, MENECRATES, and MENAS, in warlike manner    POMPEY. If the great gods be just, they shall assist     The deeds of justest men.   MENECRATES. Know, worthy Pompey,     That what they do delay they not deny.   POMPEY. Whiles we are suitors to their throne, decays     The thing we sue for.   MENECRATES. We, ignorant of ourselves,     Beg often our own harms, which the wise pow\'rs     Deny us for our good; so find we profit     By losing of our prayers.   POMPEY. I shall do well.     The people love me, and the sea is mine;     My powers are crescent, and my auguring hope     Says it will come to th\' full. Mark Antony     In Egypt sits at dinner, and will make     No wars without doors. Caesar gets money where       He loses hearts. Lepidus flatters both,     Of both is flatter\'d; but he neither loves,     Nor either cares for him.   MENAS. Caesar and Lepidus     Are in the field. A mighty strength they carry.   POMPEY. Where have you this? \'Tis false.   MENAS. From Silvius, sir.   POMPEY. He dreams. I know they are in Rome together,     Looking for Antony. But all the charms of love,     Salt Cleopatra, soften thy wan\'d lip!     Let witchcraft join with beauty, lust with both;     Tie up the libertine in a field of feasts,     Keep his brain fuming. Epicurean cooks     Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite,     That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour     Even till a Lethe\'d dullness-                         Enter VARRIUS      How now, Varrius!     VARRIUS. This is most certain that I shall deliver:     Mark Antony is every hour in Rome     Expected. Since he went from Egypt \'tis     A space for farther travel.   POMPEY. I could have given less matter     A better ear. Menas, I did not think     This amorous surfeiter would have donn\'d his helm     For such a petty war; his soldiership     Is twice the other twain. But let us rear     The higher our opinion, that our stirring     Can from the lap of Egypt\'s widow pluck     The ne\'er-lust-wearied Antony.   MENAS. I cannot hope     Caesar and Antony shall well greet together.     His wife that\'s dead did trespasses to Caesar;     His brother warr\'d upon him; although, I think,     Not mov\'d by Antony.   POMPEY. I know not, Menas,     How lesser enmities may give way to greater.     Were\'t not that we stand up against them all,       \'Twere pregnant they should square between themselves;     For they have entertained cause enough     To draw their swords. But how the fear of us     May cement their divisions, and bind up     The petty difference we yet not know.     Be\'t as our gods will have\'t! It only stands     Our lives upon to use our strongest hands.     Come, Menas.                                          Exeunt     SCENE II. Rome. The house of LEPIDUS  Enter ENOBARBUS and LEPIDUS    LEPIDUS. Good Enobarbus, \'tis a worthy deed,     And shall become you well, to entreat your captain     To soft and gentle speech.   ENOBARBUS. I shall entreat him     To answer like himself. If Caesar move him,     Let Antony look over Caesar\'s head     And speak as loud as Mars. By Jupiter,     Were I the wearer of Antonius\' beard,     I would not shave\'t to-day.   LEPIDUS. \'Tis not a time     For private stomaching.   ENOBARBUS. Every time     Serves for the matter that is then born in\'t.   LEPIDUS. But small to greater matters must give way.   ENOBARBUS. Not if the small come first.   LEPIDUS. Your speech is passion;     But pray you stir no embers up. Here comes       The noble Antony.                  Enter ANTONY and VENTIDIUS    ENOBARBUS. And yonder, Caesar.              Enter CAESAR, MAECENAS, and AGRIPPA    ANTONY. If we compose well here, to Parthia.     Hark, Ventidius.   CAESAR. I do not know, Maecenas. Ask Agrippa.   LEPIDUS. Noble friends,     That which combin\'d us was most great, and let not     A leaner action rend us. What\'s amiss,     May it be gently heard. When we debate     Our trivial difference loud, we do commit     Murder in healing wounds. Then, noble partners,     The rather for I earnestly beseech,     Touch you the sourest points with sweetest terms,     Nor curstness grow to th\' matter.     ANTONY. \'Tis spoken well.     Were we before our arinies, and to fight,     I should do thus.                                 [Flourish]   CAESAR. Welcome to Rome.   ANTONY. Thank you.   CAESAR. Sit.   ANTONY. Sit, sir.   CAESAR. Nay, then.                                  [They sit]   ANTONY. I learn you take things ill which are not so,     Or being, concern you not.   CAESAR. I must be laugh\'d at     If, or for nothing or a little,     Should say myself offended, and with you     Chiefly i\' the world; more laugh\'d at that I should     Once name you derogately when to sound your name     It not concern\'d me.   ANTONY. My being in Egypt, Caesar,     What was\'t to you?   CAESAR. No more than my residing here at Rome     Might be to you in Egypt. Yet, if you there       Did practise on my state, your being in Egypt     Might be my question.   ANTONY. How intend you- practis\'d?   CAESAR. You may be pleas\'d to catch at mine intent     By what did here befall me. Your wife and brother     Made wars upon me, and their contestation     Was theme for you; you were the word of war.   ANTONY. You do mistake your business; my brother never     Did urge me in his act. I did inquire it,     And have my learning from some true reports     That drew their swords with you. Did he not rather     Discredit my authority with yours,     And make the wars alike against my stomach,     Having alike your cause? Of this my letters     Before did satisfy you. If you\'ll patch a quarrel,     As matter whole you have not to make it with,     It must not be with this.   CAESAR. You praise yourself     By laying defects of judgment to me; but     You patch\'d up your excuses.     ANTONY. Not so, not so;     I know you could not lack, I am certain on\'t,     Very necessity of this thought, that I,     Your partner in the cause \'gainst which he fought,     Could not with graceful eyes attend those wars     Which fronted mine own peace. As for my wife,     I would you had her spirit in such another!     The third o\' th\' world is yours, which with a snaffle     You may pace easy, but not such a wife.   ENOBARBUS. Would we had all such wives, that the men might go to     wars with the women!   ANTONY. So much uncurbable, her garboils, Caesar,     Made out of her impatience- which not wanted     Shrewdness of policy too- I grieving grant     Did you too much disquiet. For that you must     But say I could not help it.   CAESAR. I wrote to you     When rioting in Alexandria; you     Did pocket up my letters, and with taunts     Did gibe my missive out of audience.     ANTONY. Sir,     He fell upon me ere admitted. Then     Three kings I had newly feasted, and did want     Of what I was i\' th\' morning; but next day     I told him of myself, which was as much     As to have ask\'d him pardon. Let this fellow     Be nothing of our strife; if we contend,     Out of our question wipe him.   CAESAR. You have broken     The article of your oath, which you shall never     Have tongue to charge me with.   LEPIDUS. Soft, Caesar!   ANTONY. No;     Lepidus, let him speak.     The honour is sacred which he talks on now,     Supposing that I lack\'d it. But on, Caesar:     The article of my oath-   CAESAR. To lend me arms and aid when I requir\'d them,     The which you both denied.   ANTONY. Neglected, rather;       And then when poisoned hours had bound me up     From mine own knowledge. As nearly as I may,     I\'ll play the penitent to you; but mine honesty     Shall not make poor my greatness, nor my power     Work without it. Truth is, that Fulvia,     To have me out of Egypt, made wars here;     For which myself, the ignorant motive, do     So far ask pardon as befits mine honour     To stoop in such a case.   LEPIDUS. \'Tis noble spoken.   MAECENAS. If it might please you to enforce no further     The griefs between ye- to forget them quite     Were to remember that the present need     Speaks to atone you.   LEPIDUS. Worthily spoken, Maecenas.   ENOBARBUS. Or, if you borrow one another\'s love for the instant,     you may, when you hear no more words of Pompey, return it again.     You shall have time to wrangle in when you have nothing else to     do.   ANTONY. Thou art a soldier only. Speak no more.     ENOBARBUS. That truth should be silent I had almost forgot.   ANTONY. You wrong this presence; therefore speak no more.   ENOBARBUS. Go to, then- your considerate stone!   CAESAR. I do not much dislike the matter, but     The manner of his speech; for\'t cannot be     We shall remain in friendship, our conditions     So diff\'ring in their acts. Yet if I knew     What hoop should hold us stanch, from edge to edge     O\' th\' world, I would pursue it.   AGRIPPA. Give me leave, Caesar.   CAESAR. Speak, Agrippa.   AGRIPPA. Thou hast a sister by the mother\'s side,     Admir\'d Octavia. Great Mark Antony     Is now a widower.   CAESAR. Say not so, Agrippa.     If Cleopatra heard you, your reproof     Were well deserv\'d of rashness.   ANTONY. I am not married, Caesar. Let me hear     Agrippa further speak.   AGRIPPA. To hold you in perpetual amity,       To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts     With an unslipping knot, take Antony     Octavia to his wife; whose beauty claims     No worse a husband than the best of men;     Whose virtue and whose general graces speak     That which none else can utter. By this marriage     All little jealousies, which now seem great,     And all great fears, which now import their dangers,     Would then be nothing. Truths would be tales,     Where now half tales be truths. Her love to both     Would each to other, and all loves to both,     Draw after her. Pardon what I have spoke;     For \'tis a studied, not a present thought,     By duty ruminated.   ANTONY. Will Caesar speak?   CAESAR. Not till he hears how Antony is touch\'d     With what is spoke already.   ANTONY. What power is in Agrippa,     If I would say \'Agrippa, be it so,\'     To make this good?     CAESAR. The power of Caesar, and     His power unto Octavia.   ANTONY. May I never     To this good purpose, that so fairly shows,     Dream of impediment! Let me have thy hand.     Further this act of grace; and from this hour     The heart of brothers govern in our loves     And sway our great designs!   CAESAR. There is my hand.     A sister I bequeath you, whom no brother     Did ever love so dearly. Let her live     To join our kingdoms and our hearts; and never     Fly off our loves again!   LEPIDUS. Happily, amen!   ANTONY. I did not think to draw my sword \'gainst Pompey;     For he hath laid strange courtesies and great     Of late upon me. I must thank him only,     Lest my remembrance suffer ill report;     At heel of that, defy him.   LEPIDUS. Time calls upon\'s.       Of us must Pompey presently be sought,     Or else he seeks out us.   ANTONY. Where lies he?   CAESAR. About the Mount Misenum.   ANTONY. What is his strength by land?   CAESAR. Great and increasing; but by sea     He is an absolute master.   ANTONY. So is the fame.     Would we had spoke together! Haste we for it.     Yet, ere we put ourselves in arms, dispatch we     The business we have talk\'d of.   CAESAR. With most gladness;     And do invite you to my sister\'s view,     Whither straight I\'ll lead you.   ANTONY. Let us, Lepidus,     Not lack your company.   LEPIDUS. Noble Antony,     Not sickness should detain me.                    [Flourish]                      Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS, AGRIPPA, MAECENAS   MAECENAS. Welcome from Egypt, sir.     ENOBARBUS. Half the heart of Caesar, worthy Maecenas! My honourable     friend, Agrippa!   AGRIPPA. Good Enobarbus!   MAECENAS. We have cause to be glad that matters are so well     digested. You stay\'d well by\'t in Egypt.   ENOBARBUS. Ay, sir; we did sleep day out of countenance and made     the night light with drinking.   MAECENAS. Eight wild boars roasted whole at a breakfast, and but     twelve persons there. Is this true?   ENOBARBUS. This was but as a fly by an eagle. We had much more     monstrous matter of feast, which worthily deserved noting.   MAECENAS. She\'s a most triumphant lady, if report be square to her.   ENOBARBUS. When she first met Mark Antony she purs\'d up his heart,     upon the river of Cydnus.   AGRIPPA. There she appear\'d indeed! Or my reporter devis\'d well for     her.   ENOBARBUS. I will tell you.     The barge she sat in, like a burnish\'d throne,     Burn\'d on the water. The poop was beaten gold;     Purple the sails, and so perfumed that       The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,     Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made     The water which they beat to follow faster,     As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,     It beggar\'d all description. She did lie     In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold, of tissue,     O\'erpicturing that Venus where we see     The fancy out-work nature. On each side her     Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,     With divers-colour\'d fans, whose wind did seem     To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,     And what they undid did.   AGRIPPA. O, rare for Antony!   ENOBARBUS. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,     So many mermaids, tended her i\' th\' eyes,     And made their bends adornings. At the helm     A seeming mermaid steers. The silken tackle     Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands     That yarely frame the office. From the barge     A strange invisible perfume hits the sense       Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast     Her people out upon her; and Antony,     Enthron\'d i\' th\' market-place, did sit alone,     Whistling to th\' air; which, but for vacancy,     Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,     And made a gap in nature.   AGRIPPA. Rare Egyptian!   ENOBARBUS. Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,     Invited her to supper. She replied     It should be better he became her guest;     Which she entreated. Our courteous Antony,     Whom ne\'er the word of \'No\' woman heard speak,     Being barber\'d ten times o\'er, goes to the feast,     And for his ordinary pays his heart     For what his eyes eat only.   AGRIPPA. Royal wench!     She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed.     He ploughed her, and she cropp\'d.   ENOBARBUS. I saw her once     Hop forty paces through the public street;       And, having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,     That she did make defect perfection,     And, breathless, pow\'r breathe forth.   MAECENAS. Now Antony must leave her utterly.   ENOBARBUS. Never! He will not.     Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale     Her infinite variety. Other women cloy     The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry     Where most she satisfies; for vilest things     Become themselves in her, that the holy priests     Bless her when she is riggish.   MAECENAS. If beauty, wisdom, modesty, can settle     The heart of Antony, Octavia is     A blessed lottery to him.   AGRIPPA. Let us go.     Good Enobarbus, make yourself my guest     Whilst you abide here.   ENOBARBUS. Humbly, sir, I thank you.                    Exeunt     SCENE III. Rome. CAESAR\'S house  Enter ANTONY, CAESAR, OCTAVIA between them    ANTONY. The world and my great office will sometimes     Divide me from your bosom.   OCTAVIA. All which time     Before the gods my knee shall bow my prayers     To them for you.   ANTONY. Good night, sir. My Octavia,     Read not my blemishes in the world\'s report.     I have not kept my square; but that to come     Shall all be done by th\' rule. Good night, dear lady.   OCTAVIA. Good night, sir.   CAESAR. Good night.                  Exeunt CAESAR and OCTAVIA                          Enter SOOTHSAYER    ANTONY. Now, sirrah, you do wish yourself in Egypt?   SOOTHSAYER. Would I had never come from thence, nor you thither!   ANTONY. If you can- your reason.     SOOTHSAYER. I see it in my motion, have it not in my tongue; but     yet hie you to Egypt again.   ANTONY. Say to me,     Whose fortunes shall rise higher, Caesar\'s or mine?   SOOTHSAYER. Caesar\'s.     Therefore, O Antony, stay not by his side.     Thy daemon, that thy spirit which keeps thee, is     Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,     Where Caesar\'s is not; but near him thy angel     Becomes a fear, as being o\'erpow\'r\'d. Therefore     Make space enough between you.   ANTONY. Speak this no more.   SOOTHSAYER. To none but thee; no more but when to thee.     If thou dost play with him at any game,     Thou art sure to lose; and of that natural luck     He beats thee \'gainst the odds. Thy lustre thickens     When he shines by. I say again, thy spirit     Is all afraid to govern thee near him;     But, he away, \'tis noble.   ANTONY. Get thee gone.       Say to Ventidius I would speak with him.                                                  Exit SOOTHSAYER     He shall to Parthia.- Be it art or hap,     He hath spoken true. The very dice obey him;     And in our sports my better cunning faints     Under his chance. If we draw lots, he speeds;     His cocks do win the battle still of mine,     When it is all to nought, and his quails ever     Beat mine, inhoop\'d, at odds. I will to Egypt;     And though I make this marriage for my peace,     I\' th\' East my pleasure lies.                         Enter VENTIDIUS      O, come, Ventidius,     You must to Parthia. Your commission\'s ready;     Follow me and receive\'t.                              Exeunt     SCENE IV. Rome. A street  Enter LEPIDUS, MAECENAS, and AGRIPPA    LEPIDUS. Trouble yourselves no further. Pray you hasten     Your generals after.   AGRIPPA. Sir, Mark Antony     Will e\'en but kiss Octavia, and we\'ll follow.   LEPIDUS. Till I shall see you in your soldier\'s dress,     Which will become you both, farewell.   MAECENAS. We shall,     As I conceive the journey, be at th\' Mount     Before you, Lepidus.   LEPIDUS. Your way is shorter;     My purposes do draw me much about.     You\'ll win two days upon me.   BOTH. Sir, good success!   LEPIDUS. Farewell.                                      Exeunt     SCENE V. Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace  Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and ALEXAS    CLEOPATRA. Give me some music- music, moody food     Of us that trade in love.   ALL. The music, ho!                      Enter MARDIAN the eunuch    CLEOPATRA. Let it alone! Let\'s to billiards. Come, Charmian.   CHARMIAN. My arm is sore; best play with Mardian.   CLEOPATRA. As well a woman with an eunuch play\'d     As with a woman. Come, you\'ll play with me, sir?   MARDIAN. As well as I can, madam.   CLEOPATRA. And when good will is show\'d, though\'t come too short,     The actor may plead pardon. I\'ll none now.     Give me mine angle- we\'ll to th\' river. There,     My music playing far off, I will betray     Tawny-finn\'d fishes; my bended hook shall pierce     Their slimy jaws; and as I draw them up     I\'ll think them every one an Antony,     And say \'Ah ha! Y\'are caught.\'   CHARMIAN. \'Twas merry when     You wager\'d on your angling; when your diver     Did hang a salt fish on his hook, which he     With fervency drew up.   CLEOPATRA. That time? O times     I laughed him out of patience; and that night     I laugh\'d him into patience; and next morn,     Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed,     Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst     I wore his sword Philippan.                      Enter a MESSENGER      O! from Italy?     Ram thou thy fruitful tidings in mine ears,     That long time have been barren.   MESSENGER. Madam, madam-   CLEOPATRA. Antony\'s dead! If thou say so, villain,       Thou kill\'st thy mistress; but well and free,     If thou so yield him, there is gold, and here     My bluest veins to kiss- a hand that kings     Have lipp\'d, and trembled kissing.   MESSENGER. First, madam, he is well.   CLEOPATRA. Why, there\'s more gold.     But, sirrah, mark, we use     To say the dead are well. Bring it to that,     The gold I give thee will I melt and pour     Down thy ill-uttering throat.   MESSENGER. Good madam, hear me.   CLEOPATRA. Well, go to, I will.     But there\'s no goodness in thy face. If Antony     Be free and healthful- why so tart a favour     To trumpet such good tidings? If not well,     Thou shouldst come like a Fury crown\'d with snakes,     Not like a formal man.   MESSENGER. Will\'t please you hear me?   CLEOPATRA. I have a mind to strike thee ere thou speak\'st.     Yet, if thou say Antony lives, is well,       Or friends with Caesar, or not captive to him,     I\'ll set thee in a shower of gold, and hail     Rich pearls upon thee.   MESSENGER. Madam, he\'s well.   CLEOPATRA. Well said.   MESSENGER. And friends with Caesar.   CLEOPATRA. Th\'art an honest man.   MESSENGER. Caesar and he are greater friends than ever.   CLEOPATRA. Make thee a fortune from me.   MESSENGER. But yet, madam-   CLEOPATRA. I do not like \'but yet.\' It does allay     The good precedence; fie upon \'but yet\'!     \'But yet\' is as a gaoler to bring forth     Some monstrous malefactor. Prithee, friend,     Pour out the pack of matter to mine ear,     The good and bad together. He\'s friends with Caesar;     In state of health, thou say\'st; and, thou say\'st, free.   MESSENGER. Free, madam! No; I made no such report.     He\'s bound unto Octavia.   CLEOPATRA. For what good turn?     MESSENGER. For the best turn i\' th\' bed.   CLEOPATRA. I am pale, Charmian.   MESSENGER. Madam, he\'s married to Octavia.   CLEOPATRA. The most infectious pestilence upon thee!                                               [Strikes him down]   MESSENGER. Good madam, patience.   CLEOPATRA. What say you? Hence,                  [Strikes him]     Horrible villain! or I\'ll spurn thine eyes     Like balls before me; I\'ll unhair thy head;                                      [She hales him up and down]     Thou shalt be whipp\'d with wire and stew\'d in brine,     Smarting in ling\'ring pickle.   MESSENGER. Gracious madam,     I that do bring the news made not the match.   CLEOPATRA. Say \'tis not so, a province I will give thee,     And make thy fortunes proud. The blow thou hadst     Shall make thy peace for moving me to rage;     And I will boot thee with what gift beside     Thy modesty can beg.   MESSENGER. He\'s married, madam.     CLEOPATRA. Rogue, thou hast liv\'d too long.    [Draws a knife]   MESSENGER. Nay, then I\'ll run.     What mean you, madam? I have made no fault.             Exit   CHARMIAN. Good madam, keep yourself within yourself:     The man is innocent.   CLEOPATRA. Some innocents scape not the thunderbolt.     Melt Egypt into Nile! and kindly creatures     Turn all to serpents! Call the slave again.     Though I am mad, I will not bite him. Call!   CHARMIAN. He is afear\'d to come.   CLEOPATRA. I will not hurt him.     These hands do lack nobility, that they strike     A meaner than myself; since I myself     Have given myself the cause.                      Enter the MESSENGER again      Come hither, sir.     Though it be honest, it is never good     To bring bad news. Give to a gracious message       An host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell     Themselves when they be felt.   MESSENGER. I have done my duty.   CLEOPATRA. Is he married?     I cannot hate thee worser than I do     If thou again say \'Yes.\'   MESSENGER. He\'s married, madam.   CLEOPATRA. The gods confound thee! Dost thou hold there still?   MESSENGER. Should I lie, madam?   CLEOPATRA. O, I would thou didst,     So half my Egypt were submerg\'d and made     A cistern for scal\'d snakes! Go, get thee hence.     Hadst thou Narcissus in thy face, to me     Thou wouldst appear most ugly. He is married?   MESSENGER. I crave your Highness\' pardon.   CLEOPATRA. He is married?   MESSENGER. Take no offence that I would not offend you;     To punish me for what you make me do     Seems much unequal. He\'s married to Octavia.   CLEOPATRA. O, that his fault should make a knave of thee       That art not what th\'art sure of! Get thee hence.     The merchandise which thou hast brought from Rome     Are all too dear for me. Lie they upon thy hand,     And be undone by \'em!                         Exit MESSENGER   CHARMIAN. Good your Highness, patience.   CLEOPATRA. In praising Antony I have disprais\'d Caesar.   CHARMIAN. Many times, madam.   CLEOPATRA. I am paid for\'t now. Lead me from hence,     I faint. O Iras, Charmian! \'Tis no matter.     Go to the fellow, good Alexas; bid him     Report the feature of Octavia, her years,     Her inclination; let him not leave out     The colour of her hair. Bring me word quickly.                                                      Exit ALEXAS     Let him for ever go- let him not, Charmian-     Though he be painted one way like a Gorgon,     The other way\'s a Mars.                         [To MARDIAN]     Bid you Alexas     Bring me word how tall she is.- Pity me, Charmian,     But do not speak to me. Lead me to my chamber.        Exeunt     SCENE VI. Near Misenum  Flourish. Enter POMPEY and MENAS at one door, with drum and trumpet; at another, CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS, ENOBARBUS, MAECENAS, AGRIPPA, with soldiers marching    POMPEY. Your hostages I have, so have you mine;     And we shall talk before we fight.   CAESAR. Most meet     That first we come to words; and therefore have we     Our written purposes before us sent;     Which if thou hast considered, let us know     If \'twill tie up thy discontented sword     And carry back to Sicily much tall youth     That else must perish here.   POMPEY. To you all three,     The senators alone of this great world,     Chief factors for the gods: I do not know     Wherefore my father should revengers want,     Having a son and friends, since Julius Caesar,       Who at Philippi the good Brutus ghosted,     There saw you labouring for him. What was\'t     That mov\'d pale Cassius to conspire? and what     Made the all-honour\'d honest Roman, Brutus,     With the arm\'d rest, courtiers of beauteous freedom,     To drench the Capitol, but that they would     Have one man but a man? And that is it     Hath made me rig my navy, at whose burden     The anger\'d ocean foams; with which I meant     To scourge th\' ingratitude that despiteful Rome     Cast on my noble father.   CAESAR. Take your time.   ANTONY. Thou canst not fear us, Pompey, with thy sails;     We\'ll speak with thee at sea; at land thou know\'st     How much we do o\'er-count thee.   POMPEY. At land, indeed,     Thou dost o\'er-count me of my father\'s house.     But since the cuckoo builds not for himself,     Remain in\'t as thou mayst.   LEPIDUS. Be pleas\'d to tell us-       For this is from the present- how you take     The offers we have sent you.   CAESAR. There\'s the point.   ANTONY. Which do not be entreated to, but weigh     What it is worth embrac\'d.   CAESAR. And what may follow,     To try a larger fortune.   POMPEY. You have made me offer     Of Sicily, Sardinia; and I must     Rid all the sea of pirates; then to send     Measures of wheat to Rome; this \'greed upon,     To part with unhack\'d edges and bear back     Our targes undinted.   ALL. That\'s our offer.   POMPEY. Know, then,     I came before you here a man prepar\'d     To take this offer; but Mark Antony     Put me to some impatience. Though I lose     The praise of it by telling, you must know,     When Caesar and your brother were at blows,       Your mother came to Sicily and did find     Her welcome friendly.   ANTONY. I have heard it, Pompey,     And am well studied for a liberal thanks     Which I do owe you.   POMPEY. Let me have your hand.     I did not think, sir, to have met you here.   ANTONY. The beds i\' th\' East are soft; and thanks to you,     That call\'d me timelier than my purpose hither;     For I have gained by\'t.   CAESAR. Since I saw you last     There is a change upon you.   POMPEY. Well, I know not     What counts harsh fortune casts upon my face;     But in my bosom shall she never come     To make my heart her vassal.   LEPIDUS. Well met here.   POMPEY. I hope so, Lepidus. Thus we are agreed.     I crave our composition may be written,     And seal\'d between us.     CAESAR. That\'s the next to do.   POMPEY. We\'ll feast each other ere we part, and let\'s     Draw lots who shall begin.   ANTONY. That will I, Pompey.   POMPEY. No, Antony, take the lot;     But, first or last, your fine Egyptian cookery     Shall have the fame. I have heard that Julius Caesar     Grew fat with feasting there.   ANTONY. You have heard much.   POMPEY. I have fair meanings, sir.   ANTONY. And fair words to them.   POMPEY. Then so much have I heard;     And I have heard Apollodorus carried-   ENOBARBUS. No more of that! He did so.   POMPEY. What, I pray you?   ENOBARBUS. A certain queen to Caesar in a mattress.   POMPEY. I know thee now. How far\'st thou, soldier?   ENOBARBUS. Well;     And well am like to do, for I perceive     Four feasts are toward.     POMPEY. Let me shake thy hand.     I never hated thee; I have seen thee fight,     When I have envied thy behaviour.   ENOBARBUS. Sir,     I never lov\'d you much; but I ha\' prais\'d ye     When you have well deserv\'d ten times as much     As I have said you did.   POMPEY. Enjoy thy plainness;     It nothing ill becomes thee.     Aboard my galley I invite you all.     Will you lead, lords?   ALL. Show\'s the way, sir.   POMPEY. Come.               Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS and MENAS   MENAS. [Aside] Thy father, Pompey, would ne\'er have made this     treaty.- You and I have known, sir.   ENOBARBUS. At sea, I think.   MENAS. We have, sir.   ENOBARBUS. You have done well by water.   MENAS. And you by land.   ENOBARBUS. I Will praise any man that will praise me; though it       cannot be denied what I have done by land.   MENAS. Nor what I have done by water.   ENOBARBUS. Yes, something you can deny for your own safety: you     have been a great thief by sea.   MENAS. And you by land.   ENOBARBUS. There I deny my land service. But give me your hand,     Menas; if our eyes had authority, here they might take two     thieves kissing.   MENAS. All men\'s faces are true, whatsome\'er their hands are.   ENOBARBUS. But there is never a fair woman has a true face.   MENAS. No slander: they steal hearts.   ENOBARBUS. We came hither to fight with you.   MENAS. For my part, I am sorry it is turn\'d to a drinking.     Pompey doth this day laugh away his fortune.   ENOBARBUS. If he do, sure he cannot weep\'t back again.   MENAS. Y\'have said, sir. We look\'d not for Mark Antony here. Pray     you, is he married to Cleopatra?   ENOBARBUS. Caesar\' sister is call\'d Octavia.   MENAS. True, sir; she was the wife of Caius Marcellus.   ENOBARBUS. But she is now the wife of Marcus Antonius.     MENAS. Pray ye, sir?   ENOBARBUS. \'Tis true.   MENAS. Then is Caesar and he for ever knit together.   ENOBARBUS. If I were bound to divine of this unity, I would not     prophesy so.   MENAS. I think the policy of that purpose made more in the marriage     than the love of the parties.   ENOBARBUS. I think so too. But you shall find the band that seems     to tie their friendship together will be the very strangler of     their amity: Octavia is of a holy, cold, and still conversation.   MENAS. Who would not have his wife so?   ENOBARBUS. Not he that himself is not so; which is Mark Antony. He     will to his Egyptian dish again; then shall the sighs of Octavia     blow the fire up in Caesar, and, as I said before, that which is     the strength of their amity shall prove the immediate author of     their variance. Antony will use his affection where it is; he     married but his occasion here.   MENAS. And thus it may be. Come, sir, will you aboard? I have a     health for you.   ENOBARBUS. I shall take it, sir. We have us\'d our throats in Egypt.     MENAS. Come, let\'s away.                                Exeunt  ACT_2|SC_7                            SCENE VII.              On board POMPEY\'S galley, off Misenum       Music plays. Enter two or three SERVANTS with a banquet    FIRST SERVANT. Here they\'ll be, man. Some o\' their plants are     ill-rooted already; the least wind i\' th\' world will blow them     down.   SECOND SERVANT. Lepidus is high-colour\'d.   FIRST SERVANT. They have made him drink alms-drink.   SECOND SERVANT. As they pinch one another by the disposition, he     cries out \'No more!\'; reconciles them to his entreaty and himself     to th\' drink.   FIRST SERVANT. But it raises the greater war between him and his     discretion.   SECOND SERVANT. Why, this it is to have a name in great men\'s     fellowship. I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service     as a partizan I could not heave.   FIRST SERVANT. To be call\'d into a huge sphere, and not to be seen     to move in\'t, are the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully     disaster the cheeks.               A sennet sounded. Enter CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS,             POMPEY, AGRIPPA, MAECENAS, ENOBARBUS, MENAS,                          with other CAPTAINS    ANTONY. [To CAESAR] Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o\' th\'       Nile     By certain scales i\' th\' pyramid; they know     By th\' height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth     Or foison follow. The higher Nilus swells     The more it promises; as it ebbs, the seedsman     Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain,     And shortly comes to harvest.   LEPIDUS. Y\'have strange serpents there.   ANTONY. Ay, Lepidus.   LEPIDUS. Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the     operation of your sun; so is your crocodile.   ANTONY. They are so.   POMPEY. Sit- and some wine! A health to Lepidus!   LEPIDUS. I am not so well as I should be, but I\'ll ne\'er out.   ENOBARBUS. Not till you have slept. I fear me you\'ll be in till       then.   LEPIDUS. Nay, certainly, I have heard the Ptolemies\' pyramises are     very goodly things. Without contradiction I have heard that.   MENAS. [Aside to POMPEY] Pompey, a word.   POMPEY. [Aside to MENAS] Say in mine ear; what is\'t?   MENAS. [Aside to POMPEY] Forsake thy seat, I do beseech thee,       Captain,     And hear me speak a word.   POMPEY. [ Whispers in\'s ear ] Forbear me till anon-     This wine for Lepidus!   LEPIDUS. What manner o\' thing is your crocodile?   ANTONY. It is shap\'d, sir, like itself, and it is as broad as it     hath breadth; it is just so high as it is, and moves with it own     organs. It lives by that which nourisheth it, and the elements     once out of it, it transmigrates.   LEPIDUS. What colour is it of?   ANTONY. Of it own colour too.   LEPIDUS. \'Tis a strange serpent.   ANTONY. \'Tis so. And the tears of it are wet.   CAESAR. Will this description satisfy him?     ANTONY. With the health that Pompey gives him, else he is a very     epicure.   POMPEY. [Aside to MENAS] Go, hang, sir, hang! Tell me of that!       Away!     Do as I bid you.- Where\'s this cup I call\'d for?   MENAS. [Aside to POMPEY] If for the sake of merit thou wilt hear       me,     Rise from thy stool.   POMPEY. [Aside to MENAS] I think th\'art mad. [Rises and walks     aside] The matter?   MENAS. I have ever held my cap off to thy fortunes.   POMPEY. Thou hast serv\'d me with much faith. What\'s else to say?-     Be jolly, lords.   ANTONY. These quicksands, Lepidus,     Keep off them, for you sink.   MENAS. Wilt thou be lord of all the world?   POMPEY. What say\'st thou?   MENAS. Wilt thou be lord of the whole world? That\'s twice.   POMPEY. How should that be?   MENAS. But entertain it,       And though you think me poor, I am the man     Will give thee all the world.   POMPEY. Hast thou drunk well?   MENAS. No, Pompey, I have kept me from the cup.     Thou art, if thou dar\'st be, the earthly Jove;     Whate\'er the ocean pales or sky inclips     Is thine, if thou wilt ha\'t.   POMPEY. Show me which way.   MENAS. These three world-sharers, these competitors,     Are in thy vessel. Let me cut the cable;     And when we are put off, fall to their throats.     All there is thine.   POMPEY. Ah, this thou shouldst have done,     And not have spoke on\'t. In me \'tis villainy:     In thee\'t had been good service. Thou must know     \'Tis not my profit that does lead mine honour:     Mine honour, it. Repent that e\'er thy tongue     Hath so betray\'d thine act. Being done unknown,     I should have found it afterwards well done,     But must condemn it now. Desist, and drink.     MENAS. [Aside] For this,     I\'ll never follow thy pall\'d fortunes more.     Who seeks, and will not take when once \'tis offer\'d,     Shall never find it more.   POMPEY. This health to Lepidus!   ANTONY. Bear him ashore. I\'ll pledge it for him, Pompey.   ENOBARBUS. Here\'s to thee, Menas!   MENAS. Enobarbus, welcome!   POMPEY. Fill till the cup be hid.   ENOBARBUS. There\'s a strong fellow, Menas.                [Pointing to the servant who carries off LEPIDUS]   MENAS. Why?   ENOBARBUS. \'A bears the third part of the world, man; see\'st not?   MENAS. The third part, then, is drunk. Would it were all,     That it might go on wheels!   ENOBARBUS. Drink thou; increase the reels.   MENAS. Come.   POMPEY. This is not yet an Alexandrian feast.   ANTONY. It ripens towards it. Strike the vessels, ho!     Here\'s to Caesar!     CAESAR. I could well forbear\'t.     It\'s monstrous labour when I wash my brain     And it grows fouler.   ANTONY. Be a child o\' th\' time.   CAESAR. Possess it, I\'ll make answer.     But I had rather fast from all four days     Than drink so much in one.   ENOBARBUS. [To ANTONY] Ha, my brave emperor!     Shall we dance now the Egyptian Bacchanals     And celebrate our drink?   POMPEY. Let\'s ha\'t, good soldier.   ANTONY. Come, let\'s all take hands,     Till that the conquering wine hath steep\'d our sense     In soft and delicate Lethe.   ENOBARBUS. All take hands.     Make battery to our ears with the loud music,     The while I\'ll place you; then the boy shall sing;     The holding every man shall bear as loud     As his strong sides can volley.                [Music plays. ENOBARBUS places them hand in hand]                            THE SONG             Come, thou monarch of the vine,             Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne!             In thy fats our cares be drown\'d,             With thy grapes our hairs be crown\'d.             Cup us till the world go round,             Cup us till the world go round!    CAESAR. What would you more? Pompey, good night. Good brother,     Let me request you off; our graver business     Frowns at this levity. Gentle lords, let\'s part;     You see we have burnt our cheeks. Strong Enobarb     Is weaker than the wine, and mine own tongue     Splits what it speaks. The wild disguise hath almost     Antick\'d us all. What needs more words? Good night.     Good Antony, your hand.   POMPEY. I\'ll try you on the shore.   ANTONY. And shall, sir. Give\'s your hand.   POMPEY. O Antony,       You have my father\'s house- but what? We are friends.     Come, down into the boat.   ENOBARBUS. Take heed you fall not.                               Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS and MENAS     Menas, I\'ll not on shore.   MENAS. No, to my cabin.     These drums! these trumpets, flutes! what!     Let Neptune hear we bid a loud farewell     To these great fellows. Sound and be hang\'d, sound out!                                   [Sound a flourish, with drums]   ENOBARBUS. Hoo! says \'a. There\'s my cap.   MENAS. Hoo! Noble Captain, come.                        Exeunt ACT_3|SC_1                      ACT III. SCENE I.                      A plain in Syria         Enter VENTIDIUS, as it were in triumph, with SILIUS       and other Romans, OFFICERS and soldiers; the dead body                 of PACORUS borne before him    VENTIDIUS. Now, darting Parthia, art thou struck, and now     Pleas\'d fortune does of Marcus Crassus\' death     Make me revenger. Bear the King\'s son\'s body     Before our army. Thy Pacorus, Orodes,     Pays this for Marcus Crassus.   SILIUS. Noble Ventidius,     Whilst yet with Parthian blood thy sword is warm     The fugitive Parthians follow; spur through Media,     Mesopotamia, and the shelters whither     The routed fly. So thy grand captain, Antony,     Shall set thee on triumphant chariots and     Put garlands on thy head.   VENTIDIUS. O Silius, Silius,     I have done enough. A lower place, note well,     May make too great an act; for learn this, Silius:       Better to leave undone than by our deed     Acquire too high a fame when him we serve\'s away.     Caesar and Antony have ever won     More in their officer, than person. Sossius,     One of my place in Syria, his lieutenant,     For quick accumulation of renown,     Which he achiev\'d by th\' minute, lost his favour.     Who does i\' th\' wars more than his captain can     Becomes his captain\'s captain; and ambition,     The soldier\'s virtue, rather makes choice of loss     Than gain which darkens him.     I could do more to do Antonius good,     But \'twould offend him; and in his offence     Should my performance perish.   SILIUS. Thou hast, Ventidius, that     Without the which a soldier and his sword     Grants scarce distinction. Thou wilt write to Antony?   VENTIDIUS. I\'ll humbly signify what in his name,     That magical word of war, we have effected;     How, with his banners, and his well-paid ranks,       The ne\'er-yet-beaten horse of Parthia     We have jaded out o\' th\' field.   SILIUS. Where is he now?   VENTIDIUS. He purposeth to Athens; whither, with what haste     The weight we must convey with\'s will permit,     We shall appear before him.- On, there; pass along.                                                           Exeunt  ACT_3|SC_2                             SCENE II. Rome. CAESAR\'S house          Enter AGRIPPA at one door, ENOBARBUS at another    AGRIPPA. What, are the brothers parted?   ENOBARBUS. They have dispatch\'d with Pompey; he is gone;     The other three are sealing. Octavia weeps     To part from Rome; Caesar is sad; and Lepidus,     Since Pompey\'s feast, as Menas says, is troubled     With the green sickness.   AGRIPPA. \'Tis a noble Lepidus.   ENOBARBUS. A very fine one. O, how he loves Caesar!   AGRIPPA. Nay, but how dearly he adores Mark Antony!   ENOBARBUS. Caesar? Why he\'s the Jupiter of men.   AGRIPPA. What\'s Antony? The god of Jupiter.   ENOBARBUS. Spake you of Caesar? How! the nonpareil!   AGRIPPA. O, Antony! O thou Arabian bird!   ENOBARBUS. Would you praise Caesar, say \'Caesar\'- go no further.   AGRIPPA. Indeed, he plied them both with excellent praises.   ENOBARBUS. But he loves Caesar best. Yet he loves Antony.     Hoo! hearts, tongues, figures, scribes, bards, poets, cannot       Think, speak, cast, write, sing, number- hoo!-     His love to Antony. But as for Caesar,     Kneel down, kneel down, and wonder.   AGRIPPA. Both he loves.   ENOBARBUS. They are his shards, and he their beetle. [Trumpets       within] So-     This is to horse. Adieu, noble Agrippa.   AGRIPPA. Good fortune, worthy soldier, and farewell.             Enter CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS, and OCTAVIA    ANTONY. No further, sir.   CAESAR. You take from me a great part of myself;     Use me well in\'t. Sister, prove such a wife     As my thoughts make thee, and as my farthest band     Shall pass on thy approof. Most noble Antony,     Let not the piece of virtue which is set     Betwixt us as the cement of our love     To keep it builded be the ram to batter     The fortress of it; for better might we       Have lov\'d without this mean, if on both parts     This be not cherish\'d.   ANTONY. Make me not offended     In your distrust.   CAESAR. I have said.   ANTONY. You shall not find,     Though you be therein curious, the least cause     For what you seem to fear. So the gods keep you,     And make the hearts of Romans serve your ends!     We will here part.   CAESAR. Farewell, my dearest sister, fare thee well.     The elements be kind to thee and make     Thy spirits all of comfort! Fare thee well.   OCTAVIA. My noble brother!   ANTONY. The April\'s in her eyes. It is love\'s spring,     And these the showers to bring it on. Be cheerful.   OCTAVIA. Sir, look well to my husband\'s house; and-   CAESAR. What, Octavia?   OCTAVIA. I\'ll tell you in your ear.   ANTONY. Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can       Her heart inform her tongue- the swan\'s down feather,     That stands upon the swell at the full of tide,     And neither way inclines.   ENOBARBUS. [Aside to AGRIPPA] Will Caesar weep?   AGRIPPA. [Aside to ENOBARBUS] He has a cloud in\'s face.   ENOBARBUS. [Aside to AGRIPPA] He were the worse for that, were he a       horse;     So is he, being a man.   AGRIPPA. [Aside to ENOBARBUS] Why, Enobarbus,     When Antony found Julius Caesar dead,     He cried almost to roaring; and he wept     When at Philippi he found Brutus slain.   ENOBARBUS. [Aside to AGRIPPA] That year, indeed, he was troubled       with a rheum;     What willingly he did confound he wail\'d,     Believe\'t- till I weep too.   CAESAR. No, sweet Octavia,     You shall hear from me still; the time shall not     Out-go my thinking on you.   ANTONY. Come, sir, come;       I\'ll wrestle with you in my strength of love.     Look, here I have you; thus I let you go,     And give you to the gods.   CAESAR. Adieu; be happy!   LEPIDUS. Let all the number of the stars give light     To thy fair way!   CAESAR. Farewell, farewell!                   [Kisses OCTAVIA]   ANTONY. Farewell!                       Trumpets sound. Exeunt  ACT_3|SC_3                           SCENE III.               Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace           Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and ALEXAS    CLEOPATRA. Where is the fellow?   ALEXAS. Half afeard to come.   CLEOPATRA. Go to, go to.                  Enter the MESSENGER as before      Come hither, sir.   ALEXAS. Good Majesty,     Herod of Jewry dare not look upon you     But when you are well pleas\'d.   CLEOPATRA. That Herod\'s head     I\'ll have. But how, when Antony is gone,     Through whom I might command it? Come thou near.   MESSENGER. Most gracious Majesty!   CLEOPATRA. Didst thou behold Octavia?   MESSENGER. Ay, dread Queen.   CLEOPATRA. Where?     MESSENGER. Madam, in Rome     I look\'d her in the face, and saw her led     Between her brother and Mark Antony.   CLEOPATRA. Is she as tall as me?   MESSENGER. She is not, madam.   CLEOPATRA. Didst hear her speak? Is she shrill-tongu\'d or low?   MESSENGER. Madam, I heard her speak: she is low-voic\'d.   CLEOPATRA. That\'s not so good. He cannot like her long.   CHARMIAN. Like her? O Isis! \'tis impossible.   CLEOPATRA. I think so, Charmian. Dull of tongue and dwarfish!     What majesty is in her gait? Remember,     If e\'er thou look\'dst on majesty.   MESSENGER. She creeps.     Her motion and her station are as one;     She shows a body rather than a life,     A statue than a breather.   CLEOPATRA. Is this certain?   MESSENGER. Or I have no observance.   CHARMIAN. Three in Egypt     Cannot make better note.     CLEOPATRA. He\'s very knowing;     I do perceive\'t. There\'s nothing in her yet.     The fellow has good judgment.   CHARMIAN. Excellent.   CLEOPATRA. Guess at her years, I prithee.   MESSENGER. Madam,     She was a widow.   CLEOPATRA. Widow? Charmian, hark!   MESSENGER. And I do think she\'s thirty.   CLEOPATRA. Bear\'st thou her face in mind? Is\'t long or round?   MESSENGER. Round even to faultiness.   CLEOPATRA. For the most part, too, they are foolish that are so.     Her hair, what colour?   MESSENGER. Brown, madam; and her forehead     As low as she would wish it.   CLEOPATRA. There\'s gold for thee.     Thou must not take my former sharpness ill.     I will employ thee back again; I find thee     Most fit for business. Go make thee ready;     Our letters are prepar\'d.                   Exeunt MESSENGER     CHARMIAN. A proper man.   CLEOPATRA. Indeed, he is so. I repent me much     That so I harried him. Why, methinks, by him,     This creature\'s no such thing.   CHARMIAN. Nothing, madam.   CLEOPATRA. The man hath seen some majesty, and should know.   CHARMIAN. Hath he seen majesty? Isis else defend,     And serving you so long!   CLEOPATRA. I have one thing more to ask him yet, good Charmian.     But \'tis no matter; thou shalt bring him to me     Where I will write. All may be well enough.   CHARMIAN. I warrant you, madam.                         Exeunt  ACT_3|SC_4                           SCENE IV.                   Athens. ANTONY\'S house                   Enter ANTONY and OCTAVIA    ANTONY. Nay, nay, Octavia, not only that-     That were excusable, that and thousands more     Of semblable import- but he hath wag\'d     New wars \'gainst Pompey; made his will, and read it     To public ear;     Spoke scandy of me; when perforce he could not     But pay me terms of honour, cold and sickly     He vented them, most narrow measure lent me;     When the best hint was given him, he not took\'t,     Or did it from his teeth.   OCTAVIA. O my good lord,     Believe not all; or if you must believe,     Stomach not all. A more unhappy lady,     If this division chance, ne\'er stood between,     Praying for both parts.     The good gods will mock me presently     When I shall pray \'O, bless my lord and husband!\'       Undo that prayer by crying out as loud     \'O, bless my brother!\' Husband win, win brother,     Prays, and destroys the prayer; no mid-way     \'Twixt these extremes at all.   ANTONY. Gentle Octavia,     Let your best love draw to that point which seeks     Best to preserve it. If I lose mine honour,     I lose myself; better I were not yours     Than yours so branchless. But, as you requested,     Yourself shall go between\'s. The meantime, lady,     I\'ll raise the preparation of a war     Shall stain your brother. Make your soonest haste;     So your desires are yours.   OCTAVIA. Thanks to my lord.     The Jove of power make me, most weak, most weak,     Your reconciler! Wars \'twixt you twain would be     As if the world should cleave, and that slain men     Should solder up the rift.   ANTONY. When it appears to you where this begins,     Turn your displeasure that way, for our faults       Can never be so equal that your love     Can equally move with them. Provide your going;     Choose your own company, and command what cost     Your heart has mind to.                               Exeunt  ACT_3|SC_5                            SCENE V.                    Athens. ANTONY\'S house               Enter ENOBARBUS and EROS, meeting    ENOBARBUS. How now, friend Eros!   EROS. There\'s strange news come, sir.   ENOBARBUS. What, man?   EROS. Caesar and Lepidus have made wars upon Pompey.   ENOBARBUS. This is old. What is the success?   EROS. Caesar, having made use of him in the wars \'gainst Pompey,     presently denied him rivality, would not let him partake in the     glory of the action; and not resting here, accuses him of letters     he had formerly wrote to Pompey; upon his own appeal, seizes him.     So the poor third is up, till death enlarge his confine.   ENOBARBUS. Then, world, thou hast a pair of chaps- no more;     And throw between them all the food thou hast,     They\'ll grind the one the other. Where\'s Antony?   EROS. He\'s walking in the garden- thus, and spurns     The rush that lies before him; cries \'Fool Lepidus!\'     And threats the throat of that his officer     That murd\'red Pompey.     ENOBARBUS. Our great navy\'s rigg\'d.   EROS. For Italy and Caesar. More, Domitius:     My lord desires you presently; my news     I might have told hereafter.   ENOBARBUS. \'Twill be naught;     But let it be. Bring me to Antony.   EROS. Come, sir.                                        Exeunt  ACT_3|SC_6                           SCENE VI.                    Rome. CAESAR\'S house               Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, and MAECENAS    CAESAR. Contemning Rome, he has done all this and more     In Alexandria. Here\'s the manner of\'t:     I\' th\' market-place, on a tribunal silver\'d,     Cleopatra and himself in chairs of gold     Were publicly enthron\'d; at the feet sat     Caesarion, whom they call my father\'s son,     And all the unlawful issue that their lust     Since then hath made between them. Unto her     He gave the stablishment of Egypt; made her     Of lower Syria, Cyprus, Lydia,     Absolute queen.   MAECENAS. This in the public eye?   CAESAR. I\' th\' common show-place, where they exercise.     His sons he there proclaim\'d the kings of kings:     Great Media, Parthia, and Armenia,     He gave to Alexander; to Ptolemy he assign\'d     Syria, Cilicia, and Phoenicia. She       In th\' habiliments of the goddess Isis     That day appear\'d; and oft before gave audience,     As \'tis reported, so.   MAECENAS. Let Rome be thus     Inform\'d.   AGRIPPA. Who, queasy with his insolence     Already, will their good thoughts call from him.   CAESAR. The people knows it, and have now receiv\'d     His accusations.   AGRIPPA. Who does he accuse?   CAESAR. Caesar; and that, having in Sicily     Sextus Pompeius spoil\'d, we had not rated him     His part o\' th\' isle. Then does he say he lent me     Some shipping, unrestor\'d. Lastly, he frets     That Lepidus of the triumvirate     Should be depos\'d; and, being, that we detain     All his revenue.   AGRIPPA. Sir, this should be answer\'d.   CAESAR. \'Tis done already, and messenger gone.     I have told him Lepidus was grown too cruel,       That he his high authority abus\'d,     And did deserve his change. For what I have conquer\'d     I grant him part; but then, in his Armenia     And other of his conquer\'d kingdoms,     Demand the like.   MAECENAS. He\'ll never yield to that.   CAESAR. Nor must not then be yielded to in this.                  Enter OCTAVIA, with her train    OCTAVIA. Hail, Caesar, and my lord! hail, most dear Caesar!   CAESAR. That ever I should call thee cast-away!   OCTAVIA. You have not call\'d me so, nor have you cause.   CAESAR. Why have you stol\'n upon us thus? You come not     Like Caesar\'s sister. The wife of Antony     Should have an army for an usher, and     The neighs of horse to tell of her approach     Long ere she did appear. The trees by th\' way     Should have borne men, and expectation fainted,     Longing for what it had not. Nay, the dust       Should have ascended to the roof of heaven,     Rais\'d by your populous troops. But you are come     A market-maid to Rome, and have prevented     The ostentation of our love, which left unshown     Is often left unlov\'d. We should have met you     By sea and land, supplying every stage     With an augmented greeting.   OCTAVIA. Good my lord,     To come thus was I not constrain\'d, but did it     On my free will. My lord, Mark Antony,     Hearing that you prepar\'d for war, acquainted     My grieved ear withal; whereon I begg\'d     His pardon for return.   CAESAR. Which soon he granted,     Being an obstruct \'tween his lust and him.   OCTAVIA. Do not say so, my lord.   CAESAR. I have eyes upon him,     And his affairs come to me on the wind.     Where is he now?   OCTAVIA. My lord, in Athens.     CAESAR. No, my most wronged sister: Cleopatra     Hath nodded him to her. He hath given his empire     Up to a whore, who now are levying     The kings o\' th\' earth for war. He hath assembled     Bocchus, the king of Libya; Archelaus     Of Cappadocia; Philadelphos, king     Of Paphlagonia; the Thracian king, Adallas;     King Manchus of Arabia; King of Pont;     Herod of Jewry; Mithridates, king     Of Comagene; Polemon and Amyntas,     The kings of Mede and Lycaonia, with     More larger list of sceptres.   OCTAVIA. Ay me most wretched,     That have my heart parted betwixt two friends,     That does afflict each other!   CAESAR. Welcome hither.     Your letters did withhold our breaking forth,     Till we perceiv\'d both how you were wrong led     And we in negligent danger. Cheer your heart;     Be you not troubled with the time, which drives       O\'er your content these strong necessities,     But let determin\'d things to destiny     Hold unbewail\'d their way. Welcome to Rome;     Nothing more dear to me. You are abus\'d     Beyond the mark of thought, and the high gods,     To do you justice, make their ministers     Of us and those that love you. Best of comfort,     And ever welcome to us.   AGRIPPA. Welcome, lady.   MAECENAS. Welcome, dear madam.     Each heart in Rome does love and pity you;     Only th\' adulterous Antony, most large     In his abominations, turns you off,     And gives his potent regiment to a trull     That noises it against us.   OCTAVIA. Is it so, sir?   CAESAR. Most certain. Sister, welcome. Pray you     Be ever known to patience. My dear\'st sister!         Exeunt  ACT_3|SC_7                           SCENE VII.                   ANTONY\'S camp near Actium                  Enter CLEOPATRA and ENOBARBUS    CLEOPATRA. I will be even with thee, doubt it not.   ENOBARBUS. But why, why,   CLEOPATRA. Thou hast forspoke my being in these wars,     And say\'st it is not fit.   ENOBARBUS. Well, is it, is it?   CLEOPATRA. Is\'t not denounc\'d against us? Why should not we     Be there in person?   ENOBARBUS. [Aside] Well, I could reply:     If we should serve with horse and mares together     The horse were merely lost; the mares would bear     A soldier and his horse.   CLEOPATRA. What is\'t you say?   ENOBARBUS. Your presence needs must puzzle Antony;     Take from his heart, take from his brain, from\'s time,     What should not then be spar\'d. He is already     Traduc\'d for levity; and \'tis said in Rome     That Photinus an eunuch and your maids       Manage this war.   CLEOPATRA. Sink Rome, and their tongues rot     That speak against us! A charge we bear i\' th\' war,     And, as the president of my kingdom, will     Appear there for a man. Speak not against it;     I will not stay behind.                     Enter ANTONY and CANIDIUS    ENOBARBUS. Nay, I have done.     Here comes the Emperor.   ANTONY. Is it not strange, Canidius,     That from Tarentum and Brundusium     He could so quickly cut the Ionian sea,     And take in Toryne?- You have heard on\'t, sweet?   CLEOPATRA. Celerity is never more admir\'d     Than by the negligent.   ANTONY. A good rebuke,     Which might have well becom\'d the best of men     To taunt at slackness. Canidius, we       Will fight with him by sea.   CLEOPATRA. By sea! What else?   CANIDIUS. Why will my lord do so?   ANTONY. For that he dares us to\'t.   ENOBARBUS. So hath my lord dar\'d him to single fight.   CANIDIUS. Ay, and to wage this battle at Pharsalia,     Where Caesar fought with Pompey. But these offers,     Which serve not for his vantage, he shakes off;     And so should you.   ENOBARBUS. Your ships are not well mann\'d;     Your mariners are muleteers, reapers, people     Ingross\'d by swift impress. In Caesar\'s fleet     Are those that often have \'gainst Pompey fought;     Their ships are yare; yours heavy. No disgrace     Shall fall you for refusing him at sea,     Being prepar\'d for land.   ANTONY. By sea, by sea.   ENOBARBUS. Most worthy sir, you therein throw away     The absolute soldiership you have by land;     Distract your army, which doth most consist       Of war-mark\'d footmen; leave unexecuted     Your own renowned knowledge; quite forgo     The way which promises assurance; and     Give up yourself merely to chance and hazard     From firm security.   ANTONY. I\'ll fight at sea.   CLEOPATRA. I have sixty sails, Caesar none better.   ANTONY. Our overplus of shipping will we burn,     And, with the rest full-mann\'d, from th\' head of Actium     Beat th\' approaching Caesar. But if we fail,     We then can do\'t at land.                         Enter a MESSENGER      Thy business?   MESSENGER. The news is true, my lord: he is descried;     Caesar has taken Toryne.   ANTONY. Can he be there in person? \'Tis impossible-     Strange that his power should be. Canidius,     Our nineteen legions thou shalt hold by land,       And our twelve thousand horse. We\'ll to our ship.     Away, my Thetis!                         Enter a SOLDIER      How now, worthy soldier?   SOLDIER. O noble Emperor, do not fight by sea;     Trust not to rotten planks. Do you misdoubt     This sword and these my wounds? Let th\' Egyptians     And the Phoenicians go a-ducking; we     Have us\'d to conquer standing on the earth     And fighting foot to foot.   ANTONY. Well, well- away.                          Exeunt ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, and ENOBARBUS   SOLDIER. By Hercules, I think I am i\' th\' right.   CANIDIUS. Soldier, thou art; but his whole action grows     Not in the power on\'t. So our leader\'s led,     And we are women\'s men.   SOLDIER. You keep by land     The legions and the horse whole, do you not?     CANIDIUS. Marcus Octavius, Marcus Justeius,     Publicola, and Caelius are for sea;     But we keep whole by land. This speed of Caesar\'s     Carries beyond belief.   SOLDIER. While he was yet in Rome,     His power went out in such distractions as     Beguil\'d all spies.   CANIDIUS. Who\'s his lieutenant, hear you?   SOLDIER. They say one Taurus.   CANIDIUS. Well I know the man.                          Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. The Emperor calls Canidius.   CANIDIUS. With news the time\'s with labour and throes forth     Each minute some.                                     Exeunt  ACT_3|SC_8                           SCENE VIII.                       A plain near Actium               Enter CAESAR, with his army, marching    CAESAR. Taurus!   TAURUS. My lord?   CAESAR. Strike not by land; keep whole; provoke not battle     Till we have done at sea. Do not exceed     The prescript of this scroll. Our fortune lies     Upon this jump.                                       Exeunt  ACT_3|SC_9                            SCENE IX.                   Another part of the plain                    Enter ANTONY and ENOBARBUS    ANTONY. Set we our squadrons on yon side o\' th\' hill,     In eye of Caesar\'s battle; from which place     We may the number of the ships behold,     And so proceed accordingly.                           Exeunt  ACT_3|SC_10                            SCENE X.                  Another part of the plain          CANIDIUS marcheth with his land army one way         over the stage, and TAURUS, the Lieutenant of       CAESAR, the other way. After their going in is heard                    the noise of a sea-fight                      Alarum. Enter ENOBARBUS    ENOBARBUS. Naught, naught, all naught! I can behold no longer.     Th\' Antoniad, the Egyptian admiral,     With all their sixty, fly and turn the rudder.     To see\'t mine eyes are blasted.                          Enter SCARUS    SCARUS. Gods and goddesses,     All the whole synod of them!   ENOBARBUS. What\'s thy passion?   SCARUS. The greater cantle of the world is lost     With very ignorance; we have kiss\'d away       Kingdoms and provinces.   ENOBARBUS. How appears the fight?   SCARUS. On our side like the token\'d pestilence,     Where death is sure. Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt-     Whom leprosy o\'ertake!- i\' th\' midst o\' th\' fight,     When vantage like a pair of twins appear\'d,     Both as the same, or rather ours the elder-     The breese upon her, like a cow in June-     Hoists sails and flies.   ENOBARBUS. That I beheld;     Mine eyes did sicken at the sight and could not     Endure a further view.   SCARUS. She once being loof\'d,     The noble ruin of her magic, Antony,     Claps on his sea-wing, and, like a doting mallard,     Leaving the fight in height, flies after her.     I never saw an action of such shame;     Experience, manhood, honour, ne\'er before     Did violate so itself.   ENOBARBUS. Alack, alack!                           Enter CANIDIUS    CANIDIUS. Our fortune on the sea is out of breath,     And sinks most lamentably. Had our general     Been what he knew himself, it had gone well.     O, he has given example for our flight     Most grossly by his own!   ENOBARBUS. Ay, are you thereabouts?     Why then, good night indeed.   CANIDIUS. Toward Peloponnesus are they fled.   SCARUS. \'Tis easy to\'t; and there I will attend     What further comes.   CANIDIUS. To Caesar will I render     My legions and my horse; six kings already     Show me the way of yielding.   ENOBARBUS. I\'ll yet follow     The wounded chance of Antony, though my reason     Sits in the wind against me.                          Exeunt  ACT_3|SC_11                          SCENE XI.               Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace                 Enter ANTONY With attendants    ANTONY. Hark! the land bids me tread no more upon\'t;     It is asham\'d to bear me. Friends, come hither.     I am so lated in the world that I     Have lost my way for ever. I have a ship     Laden with gold; take that; divide it. Fly,     And make your peace with Caesar.   ALL. Fly? Not we!   ANTONY. I have fled myself, and have instructed cowards     To run and show their shoulders. Friends, be gone;     I have myself resolv\'d upon a course     Which has no need of you; be gone.     My treasure\'s in the harbour, take it. O,     I follow\'d that I blush to look upon.     My very hairs do mutiny; for the white     Reprove the brown for rashness, and they them     For fear and doting. Friends, be gone; you shall     Have letters from me to some friends that will       Sweep your way for you. Pray you look not sad,     Nor make replies of loathness; take the hint     Which my despair proclaims. Let that be left     Which leaves itself. To the sea-side straight way.     I will possess you of that ship and treasure.     Leave me, I pray, a little; pray you now;     Nay, do so, for indeed I have lost command;     Therefore I pray you. I\'ll see you by and by.    [Sits down]              Enter CLEOPATRA, led by CHARMIAN and IRAS,                          EROS following    EROS. Nay, gentle madam, to him! Comfort him.   IRAS. Do, most dear Queen.   CHARMIAN. Do? Why, what else?   CLEOPATRA. Let me sit down. O Juno!   ANTONY. No, no, no, no, no.   EROS. See you here, sir?   ANTONY. O, fie, fie, fie!   CHARMIAN. Madam!     IRAS. Madam, O good Empress!   EROS. Sir, sir!   ANTONY. Yes, my lord, yes. He at Philippi kept     His sword e\'en like a dancer, while I struck     The lean and wrinkled Cassius; and \'twas I     That the mad Brutus ended; he alone     Dealt on lieutenantry, and no practice had     In the brave squares of war. Yet now- no matter.   CLEOPATRA. Ah, stand by!   EROS. The Queen, my lord, the Queen!   IRAS. Go to him, madam, speak to him.     He is unqualitied with very shame.   CLEOPATRA. Well then, sustain me. O!  EROS. Most noble sir, arise; the Queen approaches.     Her head\'s declin\'d, and death will seize her but     Your comfort makes the rescue.   ANTONY. I have offended reputation-     A most unnoble swerving.   EROS. Sir, the Queen.   ANTONY. O, whither hast thou led me, Egypt? See     How I convey my shame out of thine eyes       By looking back what I have left behind     \'Stroy\'d in dishonour.   CLEOPATRA. O my lord, my lord,     Forgive my fearful sails! I little thought     You would have followed.   ANTONY. Egypt, thou knew\'st too well     My heart was to thy rudder tied by th\' strings,     And thou shouldst tow me after. O\'er my spirit     Thy full supremacy thou knew\'st, and that     Thy beck might from the bidding of the gods     Command me.   CLEOPATRA. O, my pardon!   ANTONY. Now I must     To the young man send humble treaties, dodge     And palter in the shifts of lowness, who     With half the bulk o\' th\' world play\'d as I pleas\'d,     Making and marring fortunes. You did know     How much you were my conqueror, and that     My sword, made weak by my affection, would     Obey it on all cause.     CLEOPATRA. Pardon, pardon!   ANTONY. Fall not a tear, I say; one of them rates     All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss;     Even this repays me.     We sent our schoolmaster; is \'a come back?     Love, I am full of lead. Some wine,     Within there, and our viands! Fortune knows     We scorn her most when most she offers blows.         Exeunt  ACT_3|SC_12                          SCENE XII.                    CAESAR\'S camp in Egypt     Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, DOLABELLA, THYREUS, with others    CAESAR. Let him appear that\'s come from Antony.     Know you him?   DOLABELLA. Caesar, \'tis his schoolmaster:     An argument that he is pluck\'d, when hither     He sends so poor a pinion of his wing,     Which had superfluous kings for messengers     Not many moons gone by.              Enter EUPHRONIUS, Ambassador from ANTONY    CAESAR. Approach, and speak.   EUPHRONIUS. Such as I am, I come from Antony.     I was of late as petty to his ends     As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf     To his grand sea.   CAESAR. Be\'t so. Declare thine office.   EUPHRONIUS. Lord of his fortunes he salutes thee, and       Requires to live in Egypt; which not granted,     He lessens his requests and to thee sues     To let him breathe between the heavens and earth,     A private man in Athens. This for him.     Next, Cleopatra does confess thy greatness,     Submits her to thy might, and of thee craves     The circle of the Ptolemies for her heirs,     Now hazarded to thy grace.   CAESAR. For Antony,     I have no ears to his request. The Queen     Of audience nor desire shall fail, so she     From Egypt drive her all-disgraced friend,     Or take his life there. This if she perform,     She shall not sue unheard. So to them both.   EUPHRONIUS. Fortune pursue thee!   CAESAR. Bring him through the bands.           Exit EUPHRONIUS     [To THYREUS] To try thy eloquence, now \'tis time. Dispatch;     From Antony win Cleopatra. Promise,     And in our name, what she requires; add more,     From thine invention, offers. Women are not       In their best fortunes strong; but want will perjure     The ne\'er-touch\'d vestal. Try thy cunning, Thyreus;     Make thine own edict for thy pains, which we     Will answer as a law.   THYREUS. Caesar, I go.   CAESAR. Observe how Antony becomes his flaw,     And what thou think\'st his very action speaks     In every power that moves.   THYREUS. Caesar, I shall.                               Exeunt  ACT_3|SC_13                            SCENE XIII.                Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'S palace          Enter CLEOPATRA, ENOBARBUS, CHARMIAN, and IRAS    CLEOPATRA. What shall we do, Enobarbus?   ENOBARBUS. Think, and die.   CLEOPATRA. Is Antony or we in fault for this?   ENOBARBUS. Antony only, that would make his will     Lord of his reason. What though you fled     From that great face of war, whose several ranges     Frighted each other? Why should he follow?     The itch of his affection should not then     Have nick\'d his captainship, at such a point,     When half to half the world oppos\'d, he being     The mered question. \'Twas a shame no less     Than was his loss, to course your flying flags     And leave his navy gazing.   CLEOPATRA. Prithee, peace.            Enter EUPHRONIUS, the Ambassador; with ANTONY      ANTONY. Is that his answer?   EUPHRONIUS. Ay, my lord.   ANTONY. The Queen shall then have courtesy, so she     Will yield us up.   EUPHRONIUS. He says so.   ANTONY. Let her know\'t.     To the boy Caesar send this grizzled head,     And he will fill thy wishes to the brim     With principalities.   CLEOPATRA. That head, my lord?   ANTONY. To him again. Tell him he wears the rose     Of youth upon him; from which the world should note     Something particular. His coin, ships, legions,     May be a coward\'s whose ministers would prevail     Under the service of a child as soon     As i\' th\' command of Caesar. I dare him therefore     To lay his gay comparisons apart,     And answer me declin\'d, sword against sword,     Ourselves alone. I\'ll write it. Follow me.                                     Exeunt ANTONY and EUPHRONIUS     EUPHRONIUS. [Aside] Yes, like enough high-battled Caesar will     Unstate his happiness, and be stag\'d to th\' show     Against a sworder! I see men\'s judgments are     A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward     Do draw the inward quality after them,     To suffer all alike. That he should dream,     Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will     Answer his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdu\'d     His judgment too.                         Enter a SERVANT    SERVANT. A messenger from Caesar.   CLEOPATRA. What, no more ceremony? See, my women!     Against the blown rose may they stop their nose     That kneel\'d unto the buds. Admit him, sir.     Exit SERVANT   ENOBARBUS. [Aside] Mine honesty and I begin to square.     The loyalty well held to fools does make     Our faith mere folly. Yet he that can endure     To follow with allegiance a fall\'n lord       Does conquer him that did his master conquer,     And earns a place i\' th\' story.                         Enter THYREUS    CLEOPATRA. Caesar\'s will?   THYREUS. Hear it apart.   CLEOPATRA. None but friends: say boldly.   THYREUS. So, haply, are they friends to Antony.   ENOBARBUS. He needs as many, sir, as Caesar has,     Or needs not us. If Caesar please, our master     Will leap to be his friend. For us, you know     Whose he is we are, and that is Caesar\'s.   THYREUS. So.     Thus then, thou most renown\'d: Caesar entreats     Not to consider in what case thou stand\'st     Further than he is Caesar.   CLEOPATRA. Go on. Right royal!   THYREUS. He knows that you embrace not Antony     As you did love, but as you fear\'d him.     CLEOPATRA. O!   THYREUS. The scars upon your honour, therefore, he     Does pity, as constrained blemishes,     Not as deserv\'d.   CLEOPATRA. He is a god, and knows     What is most right. Mine honour was not yielded,     But conquer\'d merely.   ENOBARBUS. [Aside] To be sure of that,     I will ask Antony. Sir, sir, thou art so leaky     That we must leave thee to thy sinking, for     Thy dearest quit thee.                                  Exit   THYREUS. Shall I say to Caesar     What you require of him? For he partly begs     To be desir\'d to give. It much would please him     That of his fortunes you should make a staff     To lean upon. But it would warm his spirits     To hear from me you had left Antony,     And put yourself under his shroud,     The universal landlord.   CLEOPATRA. What\'s your name?     THYREUS. My name is Thyreus.   CLEOPATRA. Most kind messenger,     Say to great Caesar this: in deputation     I kiss his conquring hand. Tell him I am prompt     To lay my crown at \'s feet, and there to kneel.     Tell him from his all-obeying breath I hear     The doom of Egypt.   THYREUS. \'Tis your noblest course.     Wisdom and fortune combating together,     If that the former dare but what it can,     No chance may shake it. Give me grace to lay     My duty on your hand.   CLEOPATRA. Your Caesar\'s father oft,     When he hath mus\'d of taking kingdoms in,     Bestow\'d his lips on that unworthy place,     As it rain\'d kisses.                  Re-enter ANTONY and ENOBARBUS    ANTONY. Favours, by Jove that thunders!       What art thou, fellow?   THYREUS. One that but performs     The bidding of the fullest man, and worthiest     To have command obey\'d.   ENOBARBUS. [Aside] You will be whipt.   ANTONY. Approach there.- Ah, you kite!- Now, gods and devils!     Authority melts from me. Of late, when I cried \'Ho!\'     Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth     And cry \'Your will?\' Have you no ears? I am     Antony yet.                         Enter servants      Take hence this Jack and whip him.   ENOBARBUS. \'Tis better playing with a lion\'s whelp     Than with an old one dying.   ANTONY. Moon and stars!     Whip him. Were\'t twenty of the greatest tributaries     That do acknowledge Caesar, should I find them     So saucy with the hand of she here- what\'s her name       Since she was Cleopatra? Whip him, fellows,     Till like a boy you see him cringe his face,     And whine aloud for mercy. Take him hence.   THYMUS. Mark Antony-   ANTONY. Tug him away. Being whipt,     Bring him again: the Jack of Caesar\'s shall     Bear us an errand to him.       Exeunt servants with THYREUS     You were half blasted ere I knew you. Ha!     Have I my pillow left unpress\'d in Rome,     Forborne the getting of a lawful race,     And by a gem of women, to be abus\'d     By one that looks on feeders?   CLEOPATRA. Good my lord-   ANTONY. You have been a boggler ever.     But when we in our viciousness grow hard-     O misery on\'t!- the wise gods seel our eyes,     In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us     Adore our errors, laugh at\'s while we strut     To our confusion.   CLEOPATRA. O, is\'t come to this?     ANTONY. I found you as a morsel cold upon     Dead Caesar\'s trencher. Nay, you were a fragment     Of Cneius Pompey\'s, besides what hotter hours,     Unregist\'red in vulgar fame, you have     Luxuriously pick\'d out; for I am sure,     Though you can guess what temperance should be,     You know not what it is.   CLEOPATRA. Wherefore is this?   ANTONY. To let a fellow that will take rewards,     And say \'God quit you!\' be familiar with     My playfellow, your hand, this kingly seal     And plighter of high hearts! O that I were     Upon the hill of Basan to outroar     The horned herd! For I have savage cause,     And to proclaim it civilly were like     A halter\'d neck which does the hangman thank     For being yare about him.                Re-enter a SERVANT with THYREUS        Is he whipt?   SERVANT. Soundly, my lord.   ANTONY. Cried he? and begg\'d \'a pardon?   SERVANT. He did ask favour.   ANTONY. If that thy father live, let him repent     Thou wast not made his daughter; and be thou sorry     To follow Caesar in his triumph, since     Thou hast been whipt for following him. Henceforth     The white hand of a lady fever thee!     Shake thou to look on\'t. Get thee back to Caesar;     Tell him thy entertainment; look thou say     He makes me angry with him; for he seems     Proud and disdainful, harping on what I am,     Not what he knew I was. He makes me angry;     And at this time most easy \'tis to do\'t,     When my good stars, that were my former guides,     Have empty left their orbs and shot their fires     Into th\' abysm of hell. If he mislike     My speech and what is done, tell him he has     Hipparchus, my enfranched bondman, whom       He may at pleasure whip or hang or torture,     As he shall like, to quit me. Urge it thou.     Hence with thy stripes, be gone.                Exit THYREUS   CLEOPATRA. Have you done yet?   ANTONY. Alack, our terrene moon     Is now eclips\'d, and it portends alone     The fall of Antony.   CLEOPATRA. I must stay his time.   ANTONY. To flatter Caesar, would you mingle eyes     With one that ties his points?   CLEOPATRA. Not know me yet?   ANTONY. Cold-hearted toward me?   CLEOPATRA. Ah, dear, if I be so,     From my cold heart let heaven engender hail,     And poison it in the source, and the first stone     Drop in my neck; as it determines, so     Dissolve my life! The next Caesarion smite!     Till by degrees the memory of my womb,     Together with my brave Egyptians all,     By the discandying of this pelleted storm,       Lie graveless, till the flies and gnats of Nile     Have buried them for prey.   ANTONY. I am satisfied.     Caesar sits down in Alexandria, where     I will oppose his fate. Our force by land     Hath nobly held; our sever\'d navy to     Have knit again, and fleet, threat\'ning most sea-like.     Where hast thou been, my heart? Dost thou hear, lady?     If from the field I shall return once more     To kiss these lips, I will appear in blood.     I and my sword will earn our chronicle.     There\'s hope in\'t yet.   CLEOPATRA. That\'s my brave lord!   ANTONY. I will be treble-sinew\'d, hearted, breath\'d,     And fight maliciously. For when mine hours     Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives     Of me for jests; but now I\'ll set my teeth,     And send to darkness all that stop me. Come,     Let\'s have one other gaudy night. Call to me     All my sad captains; fill our bowls once more;       Let\'s mock the midnight bell.   CLEOPATRA. It is my birthday.     I had thought t\'have held it poor; but since my lord     Is Antony again, I will be Cleopatra.   ANTONY. We will yet do well.   CLEOPATRA. Call all his noble captains to my lord.   ANTONY. Do so, we\'ll speak to them; and to-night I\'ll force     The wine peep through their scars. Come on, my queen,     There\'s sap in\'t yet. The next time I do fight     I\'ll make death love me; for I will contend     Even with his pestilent scythe.     Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS   ENOBARBUS. Now he\'ll outstare the lightning. To be furious     Is to be frighted out of fear, and in that mood     The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still     A diminution in our captain\'s brain     Restores his heart. When valour preys on reason,     It eats the sword it fights with. I will seek     Some way to leave him.                                  Exit  ACT_4|SC_1                       ACT IV. SCENE I.               CAESAR\'S camp before Alexandria        Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, and MAECENAS, with his army;                  CAESAR reading a letter    CAESAR. He calls me boy, and chides as he had power     To beat me out of Egypt. My messenger     He hath whipt with rods; dares me to personal combat,     Caesar to Antony. Let the old ruffian know     I have many other ways to die, meantime     Laugh at his challenge.   MAECENAS. Caesar must think     When one so great begins to rage, he\'s hunted     Even to falling. Give him no breath, but now     Make boot of his distraction. Never anger     Made good guard for itself.   CAESAR. Let our best heads     Know that to-morrow the last of many battles     We mean to fight. Within our files there are     Of those that serv\'d Mark Antony but late     Enough to fetch him in. See it done;       And feast the army; we have store to do\'t,     And they have earn\'d the waste. Poor Antony!          Exeunt  ACT_4|SC_2                           SCENE II.                Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'s palace        Enter ANTONY, CLEOPATRA, ENOBARBUS, CHARMIAN, IRAS,                      ALEXAS, with others    ANTONY. He will not fight with me, Domitius?   ENOBARBUS. No.   ANTONY. Why should he not?   ENOBARBUS. He thinks, being twenty times of better fortune,     He is twenty men to one.   ANTONY. To-morrow, soldier,     By sea and land I\'ll fight. Or I will live,     Or bathe my dying honour in the blood     Shall make it live again. Woo\'t thou fight well?   ENOBARBUS. I\'ll strike, and cry \'Take all.\'   ANTONY. Well said; come on.     Call forth my household servants; let\'s to-night     Be bounteous at our meal.                  Enter three or four servitors        Give me thy hand,     Thou has been rightly honest. So hast thou;     Thou, and thou, and thou. You have serv\'d me well,     And kings have been your fellows.   CLEOPATRA. [Aside to ENOBARBUS] What means this?   ENOBARBUS. [Aside to CLEOPATRA] \'Tis one of those odd tricks which       sorrow shoots     Out of the mind.   ANTONY. And thou art honest too.     I wish I could be made so many men,     And all of you clapp\'d up together in     An Antony, that I might do you service     So good as you have done.   SERVANT. The gods forbid!   ANTONY. Well, my good fellows, wait on me to-night.     Scant not my cups, and make as much of me     As when mine empire was your fellow too,     And suffer\'d my command.   CLEOPATRA. [Aside to ENOBARBUS] What does he mean?     ENOBARBUS. [Aside to CLEOPATRA] To make his followers weep.     ANTONY. Tend me to-night;     May be it is the period of your duty.     Haply you shall not see me more; or if,     A mangled shadow. Perchance to-morrow     You\'ll serve another master. I look on you     As one that takes his leave. Mine honest friends,     I turn you not away; but, like a master     Married to your good service, stay till death.     Tend me to-night two hours, I ask no more,     And the gods yield you for\'t!   ENOBARBUS. What mean you, sir,     To give them this discomfort? Look, they weep;     And I, an ass, am onion-ey\'d. For shame!     Transform us not to women.   ANTONY. Ho, ho, ho!     Now the witch take me if I meant it thus!     Grace grow where those drops fall! My hearty friends,     You take me in too dolorous a sense;     For I spake to you for your comfort, did desire you     To burn this night with torches. Know, my hearts,       I hope well of to-morrow, and will lead you     Where rather I\'ll expect victorious life     Than death and honour. Let\'s to supper, come,     And drown consideration.                              Exeunt  ACT_4|SC_3                           SCENE III.              Alexandria. Before CLEOPATRA\'s palace                   Enter a company of soldiers    FIRST SOLDIER. Brother, good night. To-morrow is the day.   SECOND SOLDIER. It will determine one way. Fare you well.     Heard you of nothing strange about the streets?   FIRST SOLDIER. Nothing. What news?   SECOND SOLDIER. Belike \'tis but a rumour. Good night to you.   FIRST SOLDIER. Well, sir, good night.                                       [They meet other soldiers]   SECOND SOLDIER. Soldiers, have careful watch.   FIRST SOLDIER. And you. Good night, good night.                 [The two companies separate and place themselves                                    in every corner of the stage]   SECOND SOLDIER. Here we. And if to-morrow     Our navy thrive, I have an absolute hope     Our landmen will stand up.   THIRD SOLDIER. \'Tis a brave army,     And full of purpose.                       [Music of the hautboys is under the stage]     SECOND SOLDIER. Peace, what noise?   THIRD SOLDIER. List, list!   SECOND SOLDIER. Hark!   THIRD SOLDIER. Music i\' th\' air.   FOURTH SOLDIER. Under the earth.   THIRD SOLDIER. It signs well, does it not?   FOURTH SOLDIER. No.   THIRD SOLDIER. Peace, I say!     What should this mean?   SECOND SOLDIER. \'Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony lov\'d,     Now leaves him.   THIRD SOLDIER. Walk; let\'s see if other watchmen     Do hear what we do.   SECOND SOLDIER. How now, masters!   SOLDIERS. [Speaking together] How now!     How now! Do you hear this?   FIRST SOLDIER. Ay; is\'t not strange?   THIRD SOLDIER. Do you hear, masters? Do you hear?   FIRST SOLDIER. Follow the noise so far as we have quarter;     Let\'s see how it will give off.     SOLDIERS. Content. \'Tis strange.                        Exeunt  ACT_4|SC_4                            SCENE IV.                Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'s palace           Enter ANTONY and CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS,                           with others    ANTONY. Eros! mine armour, Eros!   CLEOPATRA. Sleep a little.   ANTONY. No, my chuck. Eros! Come, mine armour, Eros!                     Enter EROS with armour      Come, good fellow, put mine iron on.     If fortune be not ours to-day, it is     Because we brave her. Come.   CLEOPATRA. Nay, I\'ll help too.     What\'s this for?   ANTONY. Ah, let be, let be! Thou art     The armourer of my heart. False, false; this, this.   CLEOPATRA. Sooth, la, I\'ll help. Thus it must be.   ANTONY. Well, well;     We shall thrive now. Seest thou, my good fellow?       Go put on thy defences.   EROS. Briefly, sir.   CLEOPATRA. Is not this buckled well?   ANTONY. Rarely, rarely!     He that unbuckles this, till we do please     To daff\'t for our repose, shall hear a storm.     Thou fumblest, Eros, and my queen\'s a squire     More tight at this than thou. Dispatch. O love,     That thou couldst see my wars to-day, and knew\'st     The royal occupation! Thou shouldst see     A workman in\'t.                     Enter an armed SOLDIER      Good-morrow to thee. Welcome.     Thou look\'st like him that knows a warlike charge.     To business that we love we rise betime,     And go to\'t with delight.   SOLDIER. A thousand, sir,     Early though\'t be, have on their riveted trim,       And at the port expect you.                             [Shout. Flourish of trumpets within]                   Enter CAPTAINS and soldiers    CAPTAIN. The morn is fair. Good morrow, General.   ALL. Good morrow, General.   ANTONY. \'Tis well blown, lads.     This morning, like the spirit of a youth     That means to be of note, begins betimes.     So, so. Come, give me that. This way. Well said.     Fare thee well, dame, whate\'er becomes of me.     This is a soldier\'s kiss. Rebukeable,     And worthy shameful check it were, to stand     On more mechanic compliment; I\'ll leave thee     Now like a man of steel. You that will fight,     Follow me close; I\'ll bring you to\'t. Adieu.                       Exeunt ANTONY, EROS, CAPTAINS and soldiers   CHARMIAN. Please you retire to your chamber?   CLEOPATRA. Lead me.     He goes forth gallantly. That he and Caesar might     Determine this great war in single fight!     Then, Antony- but now. Well, on.                      Exeunt  ACT_4|SC_5                           SCENE V.                   Alexandria. ANTONY\'S camp          Trumpets sound. Enter ANTONY and EROS, a SOLDIER                        meeting them    SOLDIER. The gods make this a happy day to Antony!   ANTONY. Would thou and those thy scars had once prevail\'d     To make me fight at land!   SOLDIER. Hadst thou done so,     The kings that have revolted, and the soldier     That has this morning left thee, would have still     Followed thy heels.   ANTONY. Who\'s gone this morning?   SOLDIER. Who?     One ever near thee. Call for Enobarbus,     He shall not hear thee; or from Caesar\'s camp     Say \'I am none of thine.\'   ANTONY. What say\'st thou?   SOLDIER. Sir,     He is with Caesar.   EROS. Sir, his chests and treasure       He has not with him.   ANTONY. Is he gone?   SOLDIER. Most certain.   ANTONY. Go, Eros, send his treasure after; do it;     Detain no jot, I charge thee. Write to him-     I will subscribe- gentle adieus and greetings;     Say that I wish he never find more cause     To change a master. O, my fortunes have     Corrupted honest men! Dispatch. Enobarbus!            Exeunt  ACT_4|SC_6                          SCENE VI.                  Alexandria. CAESAR\'S camp         Flourish. Enter AGRIPPA, CAESAR, With DOLABELLA                        and ENOBARBUS    CAESAR. Go forth, Agrippa, and begin the fight.     Our will is Antony be took alive;     Make it so known.   AGRIPPA. Caesar, I shall.                                 Exit   CAESAR. The time of universal peace is near.     Prove this a prosp\'rous day, the three-nook\'d world     Shall bear the olive freely.                       Enter A MESSENGER    MESSENGER. Antony     Is come into the field.   CAESAR. Go charge Agrippa     Plant those that have revolted in the vant,     That Antony may seem to spend his fury     Upon himself.                       Exeunt all but ENOBARBUS     ENOBARBUS. Alexas did revolt and went to Jewry on     Affairs of Antony; there did dissuade     Great Herod to incline himself to Caesar     And leave his master Antony. For this pains     Casaer hath hang\'d him. Canidius and the rest     That fell away have entertainment, but     No honourable trust. I have done ill,     Of which I do accuse myself so sorely     That I will joy no more.                    Enter a SOLDIER of CAESAR\'S    SOLDIER. Enobarbus, Antony     Hath after thee sent all thy treasure, with     His bounty overplus. The messenger     Came on my guard, and at thy tent is now     Unloading of his mules.   ENOBARBUS. I give it you.   SOLDIER. Mock not, Enobarbus.     I tell you true. Best you saf\'d the bringer       Out of the host. I must attend mine office,     Or would have done\'t myself. Your emperor     Continues still a Jove.                                 Exit   ENOBARBUS. I am alone the villain of the earth,     And feel I am so most. O Antony,     Thou mine of bounty, how wouldst thou have paid     My better service, when my turpitude     Thou dost so crown with gold! This blows my heart.     If swift thought break it not, a swifter mean     Shall outstrike thought; but thought will do\'t, I feel.     I fight against thee? No! I will go seek     Some ditch wherein to die; the foul\'st best fits     My latter part of life.                                 Exit  ACT_4|SC_7                           SCENE VII.              Field of battle between the camps           Alarum. Drums and trumpets. Enter AGRIPPA                         and others    AGRIPPA. Retire. We have engag\'d ourselves too far.     Caesar himself has work, and our oppression     Exceeds what we expected.                             Exeunt            Alarums. Enter ANTONY, and SCARUS wounded    SCARUS. O my brave Emperor, this is fought indeed!     Had we done so at first, we had droven them home     With clouts about their heads.   ANTONY. Thou bleed\'st apace.   SCARUS. I had a wound here that was like a T,     But now \'tis made an H.   ANTONY. They do retire.   SCARUS. We\'ll beat\'em into bench-holes. I have yet     Room for six scotches more.                            Enter EROS    EROS. They are beaten, sir, and our advantage serves     For a fair victory.   SCARUS. Let us score their backs     And snatch \'em up, as we take hares, behind.     \'Tis sport to maul a runner.   ANTONY. I will reward thee     Once for thy sprightly comfort, and tenfold     For thy good valour. Come thee on.     SCARUS. I\'ll halt after.                              Exeunt  ACT_4|SC_8                          SCENE VIII.                Under the walls of Alexandria          Alarum. Enter ANTONY, again in a march; SCARUS                         with others    ANTONY. We have beat him to his camp. Run one before     And let the Queen know of our gests. To-morrow,     Before the sun shall see\'s, we\'ll spill the blood     That has to-day escap\'d. I thank you all;     For doughty-handed are you, and have fought     Not as you serv\'d the cause, but as\'t had been     Each man\'s like mine; you have shown all Hectors.     Enter the city, clip your wives, your friends,     Tell them your feats; whilst they with joyful tears     Wash the congealment from your wounds and kiss     The honour\'d gashes whole.                   Enter CLEOPATRA, attended      [To SCARUS] Give me thy hand-     To this great fairy I\'ll commend thy acts,       Make her thanks bless thee. O thou day o\' th\' world,     Chain mine arm\'d neck. Leap thou, attire and all,     Through proof of harness to my heart, and there     Ride on the pants triumphing.   CLEOPATRA. Lord of lords!     O infinite virtue, com\'st thou smiling from     The world\'s great snare uncaught?   ANTONY. Mine nightingale,     We have beat them to their beds. What, girl! though grey     Do something mingle with our younger brown, yet ha\' we     A brain that nourishes our nerves, and can     Get goal for goal of youth. Behold this man;     Commend unto his lips thy favouring hand-     Kiss it, my warrior- he hath fought to-day     As if a god in hate of mankind had     Destroyed in such a shape.   CLEOPATRA. I\'ll give thee, friend,     An armour all of gold; it was a king\'s.   ANTONY. He has deserv\'d it, were it carbuncled     Like holy Phoebus\' car. Give me thy hand.       Through Alexandria make a jolly march;     Bear our hack\'d targets like the men that owe them.     Had our great palace the capacity     To camp this host, we all would sup together,     And drink carouses to the next day\'s fate,     Which promises royal peril. Trumpeters,     With brazen din blast you the city\'s ear;     Make mingle with our rattling tabourines,     That heaven and earth may strike their sounds together     Applauding our approach.                              Exeunt  ACT_4|SC_9                          SCENE IX.                       CAESAR\'S camp        Enter a CENTURION and his company; ENOBARBUS follows    CENTURION. If we be not reliev\'d within this hour,     We must return to th\' court of guard. The night     Is shiny, and they say we shall embattle     By th\' second hour i\' th\' morn.   FIRST WATCH. This last day was     A shrewd one to\'s.   ENOBARBUS. O, bear me witness, night-   SECOND WATCH. What man is this?   FIRST WATCH. Stand close and list him.   ENOBARBUS. Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon,     When men revolted shall upon record     Bear hateful memory, poor Enobarbus did     Before thy face repent!   CENTURION. Enobarbus?   SECOND WATCH. Peace!     Hark further.   ENOBARBUS. O sovereign mistress of true melancholy,       The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me,     That life, a very rebel to my will,     May hang no longer on me. Throw my heart     Against the flint and hardness of my fault,     Which, being dried with grief, will break to powder,     And finish all foul thoughts. O Antony,     Nobler than my revolt is infamous,     Forgive me in thine own particular,     But let the world rank me in register     A master-leaver and a fugitive!     O Antony! O Antony!                                   [Dies]   FIRST WATCH. Let\'s speak to him.   CENTURION. Let\'s hear him, for the things he speaks     May concern Caesar.   SECOND WATCH. Let\'s do so. But he sleeps.   CENTURION. Swoons rather; for so bad a prayer as his     Was never yet for sleep.   FIRST WATCH. Go we to him.   SECOND WATCH. Awake, sir, awake; speak to us.   FIRST WATCH. Hear you, sir?     CENTURION. The hand of death hath raught him.     [Drums afar off ] Hark! the drums     Demurely wake the sleepers. Let us bear him     To th\' court of guard; he is of note. Our hour     Is fully out.   SECOND WATCH. Come on, then;     He may recover yet.                     Exeunt with the body  ACT_4|SC_10                           SCENE X.                     Between the two camps              Enter ANTONY and SCARUS, with their army    ANTONY. Their preparation is to-day by sea;     We please them not by land.   SCARUS. For both, my lord.   ANTONY. I would they\'d fight i\' th\' fire or i\' th\' air;     We\'d fight there too. But this it is, our foot     Upon the hills adjoining to the city     Shall stay with us- Order for sea is given;     They have put forth the haven-     Where their appointment we may best discover     And look on their endeavour.                          Exeunt  ACT_4|SC_11                          SCENE XI.                     Between the camps                  Enter CAESAR and his army    CAESAR. But being charg\'d, we will be still by land,     Which, as I take\'t, we shall; for his best force     Is forth to man his galleys. To the vales,     And hold our best advantage.                          Exeunt  ACT_4|SC_12                          SCENE XII.                   A hill near Alexandria                    Enter ANTONY and SCARUS    ANTONY. Yet they are not join\'d. Where yond pine does stand     I shall discover all. I\'ll bring thee word     Straight how \'tis like to go.                           Exit   SCARUS. Swallows have built     In Cleopatra\'s sails their nests. The augurers     Say they know not, they cannot tell; look grimly,     And dare not speak their knowledge. Antony     Is valiant and dejected; and by starts     His fretted fortunes give him hope and fear     Of what he has and has not.                             [Alarum afar off, as at a sea-fight]                        Re-enter ANTONY    ANTONY. All is lost!     This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me.     My fleet hath yielded to the foe, and yonder       They cast their caps up and carouse together     Like friends long lost. Triple-turn\'d whore! \'tis thou     Hast sold me to this novice; and my heart     Makes only wars on thee. Bid them all fly;     For when I am reveng\'d upon my charm,     I have done all. Bid them all fly; begone.       Exit SCARUS     O sun, thy uprise shall I see no more!     Fortune and Antony part here; even here     Do we shake hands. All come to this? The hearts     That spaniel\'d me at heels, to whom I gave     Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets     On blossoming Caesar; and this pine is bark\'d     That overtopp\'d them all. Betray\'d I am.     O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm-     Whose eye beck\'d forth my wars and call\'d them home,     Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end-     Like a right gypsy hath at fast and loose     Beguil\'d me to the very heart of loss.     What, Eros, Eros!                          Enter CLEOPATRA      Ah, thou spell! Avaunt!   CLEOPATRA. Why is my lord enrag\'d against his love?   ANTONY. Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving     And blemish Caesar\'s triumph. Let him take thee     And hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians;     Follow his chariot, like the greatest spot     Of all thy sex; most monster-like, be shown     For poor\'st diminutives, for doits, and let     Patient Octavia plough thy visage up     With her prepared nails.                      Exit CLEOPATRA     \'Tis well th\'art gone,     If it be well to live; but better \'twere     Thou fell\'st into my fury, for one death     Might have prevented many. Eros, ho!     The shirt of Nessus is upon me; teach me,     Alcides, thou mine ancestor, thy rage;     Let me lodge Lichas on the horns o\' th\' moon,     And with those hands that grasp\'d the heaviest club     Subdue my worthiest self. The witch shall die.     To the young Roman boy she hath sold me, and I fall     Under this plot. She dies for\'t. Eros, ho!              Exit  ACT_4|SC_13                           SCENE XIII.                Alexandria. CLEOPATRA\'s palace        Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and MARDIAN    CLEOPATRA. Help me, my women. O, he is more mad     Than Telamon for his shield; the boar of Thessaly     Was never so emboss\'d.   CHARMIAN. To th\'monument!     There lock yourself, and send him word you are dead.     The soul and body rive not more in parting     Than greatness going off.   CLEOPATRA. To th\' monument!     Mardian, go tell him I have slain myself;     Say that the last I spoke was \'Antony\'     And word it, prithee, piteously. Hence, Mardian,     And bring me how he takes my death. To th\' monument!                                                           Exeunt  ACT_4|SC_14                           SCENE XIV.                      CLEOPATRA\'S palace                     Enter ANTONY and EROS    ANTONY. Eros, thou yet behold\'st me?   EROS. Ay, noble lord.   ANTONY. Sometime we see a cloud that\'s dragonish;     A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,     A tower\'d citadel, a pendent rock,     A forked mountain, or blue promontory     With trees upon\'t that nod unto the world     And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs;     They are black vesper\'s pageants.   EROS. Ay, my lord.   ANTONY. That which is now a horse, even with a thought     The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct,     As water is in water.   EROS. It does, my lord.   ANTONY. My good knave Eros, now thy captain is     Even such a body. Here I am Antony;     Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave.       I made these wars for Egypt; and the Queen-     Whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine,     Which, whilst it was mine, had annex\'d unto\'t     A million moe, now lost- she, Eros, has     Pack\'d cards with Caesar, and false-play\'d my glory     Unto an enemy\'s triumph.     Nay, weep not, gentle Eros; there is left us     Ourselves to end ourselves.                           Enter MARDIAN      O, thy vile lady!     She has robb\'d me of my sword.   MARDIAN. No, Antony;     My mistress lov\'d thee, and her fortunes mingled     With thine entirely.   ANTONY. Hence, saucy eunuch; peace!     She hath betray\'d me, and shall die the death.   MARDIAN. Death of one person can be paid but once,     And that she has discharg\'d. What thou wouldst do       Is done unto thy hand. The last she spake     Was \'Antony! most noble Antony!\'     Then in the midst a tearing groan did break     The name of Antony; it was divided     Between her heart and lips. She rend\'red life,     Thy name so buried in her.   ANTONY. Dead then?   MARDIAN. Dead.   ANTONY. Unarm, Eros; the long day\'s task is done,     And we must sleep. That thou depart\'st hence safe     Does pay thy labour richly. Go.                 Exit MARDIAN     Off, pluck off!     The sevenfold shield of Ajax cannot keep     The battery from my heart. O, cleave, my sides!     Heart, once be stronger than thy continent,     Crack thy frail case. Apace, Eros, apace.-     No more a soldier. Bruised pieces, go;     You have been nobly borne.- From me awhile.        Exit EROS     I will o\'ertake thee, Cleopatra, and     Weep for my pardon. So it must be, for now       All length is torture. Since the torch is out,     Lie down, and stray no farther. Now all labour     Mars what it does; yea, very force entangles     Itself with strength. Seal then, and all is done.     Eros!- I come, my queen.- Eros!- Stay for me;     Where souls do couch on flowers, we\'ll hand in hand,     And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze.     Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,     And all the haunt be ours.- Come, Eros, Eros!                         Re-enter EROS    EROS. What would my lord?   ANTONY. Since Cleopatra died,     I have liv\'d in such dishonour that the gods     Detest my baseness. I, that with my sword     Quarter\'d the world, and o\'er green Neptune\'s back     With ships made cities, condemn myself to lack     The courage of a woman; less noble mind     Than she which by her death our Caesar tells       \'I am conqueror of myself.\' Thou art sworn, Eros,     That, when the exigent should come- which now     Is come indeed- when I should see behind me     Th\' inevitable prosecution of     Disgrace and horror, that, on my command,     Thou then wouldst kill me. Do\'t; the time is come.     Thou strik\'st not me; \'tis Caesar thou defeat\'st.     Put colour in thy cheek.   EROS. The gods withhold me!     Shall I do that which all the Parthian darts,     Though enemy, lost aim and could not?   ANTONY. Eros,     Wouldst thou be window\'d in great Rome and see     Thy master thus with pleach\'d arms, bending down     His corrigible neck, his face subdu\'d     To penetrative shame, whilst the wheel\'d seat     Of fortunate Caesar, drawn before him, branded     His baseness that ensued?   EROS. I would not see\'t.   ANTONY. Come, then; for with a wound I must be cur\'d.       Draw that thy honest sword, which thou hast worn     Most useful for thy country.   EROS. O, sir, pardon me!   ANTONY. When I did make thee free, swor\'st thou not then     To do this when I bade thee? Do it at once,     Or thy precedent services are all     But accidents unpurpos\'d. Draw, and come.   EROS. Turn from me then that noble countenance,     Wherein the worship of the whole world lies.   ANTONY. Lo thee!                            [Turning from him]   EROS. My sword is drawn.   ANTONY. Then let it do at once     The thing why thou hast drawn it.   EROS. My dear master,     My captain and my emperor, let me say,     Before I strike this bloody stroke, farewell.   ANTONY. \'Tis said, man; and farewell.   EROS. Farewell, great chief. Shall I strike now?   ANTONY. Now, Eros.   EROS. Why, there then! Thus do I escape the sorrow       Of Antony\'s death.                            [Kills himself   ANTONY. Thrice nobler than myself!     Thou teachest me, O valiant Eros, what     I should, and thou couldst not. My queen and Eros     Have, by their brave instruction, got upon me     A nobleness in record. But I will be     A bridegroom in my death, and run into\'t     As to a lover\'s bed. Come, then; and, Eros,     Thy master dies thy scholar. To do thus                                           [Falling on his sword]     I learn\'d of thee. How? not dead? not dead?-     The guard, ho! O, dispatch me!                    Enter DERCETAS and a guard    FIRST GUARD. What\'s the noise?   ANTONY. I have done my work ill, friends. O, make an end     Of what I have begun.   SECOND GUARD. The star is fall\'n.   FIRST GUARD. And time is at his period.     ALL. Alas, and woe!   ANTONY. Let him that loves me, strike me dead.   FIRST GUARD. Not I.   SECOND GUARD. Nor I.   THIRD GUARD. Nor any one.                         Exeunt guard   DERCETAS. Thy death and fortunes bid thy followers fly.     This sword but shown to Caesar, with this tidings,     Shall enter me with him.                         Enter DIOMEDES    DIOMEDES. Where\'s Antony?   DERCETAS. There, Diomed, there.   DIOMEDES. Lives he?     Wilt thou not answer, man?                     Exit DERCETAS   ANTONY. Art thou there, Diomed? Draw thy sword and give me     Sufficing strokes for death.   DIOMEDES. Most absolute lord,     My mistress Cleopatra sent me to thee.   ANTONY. When did she send thee?     DIOMEDES. Now, my lord.   ANTONY. Where is she?   DIOMEDES. Lock\'d in her monument. She had a prophesying fear     Of what hath come to pass; for when she saw-     Which never shall be found- you did suspect     She had dispos\'d with Caesar, and that your rage     Would not be purg\'d, she sent you word she was dead;     But fearing since how it might work, hath sent     Me to proclaim the truth; and I am come,     I dread, too late.   ANTONY. Too late, good Diomed. Call my guard, I prithee.   DIOMEDES. What, ho! the Emperor\'s guard! The guard, what ho!     Come, your lord calls!               Enter four or five of the guard of ANTONY    ANTONY. Bear me, good friends, where Cleopatra bides;     \'Tis the last service that I shall command you.   FIRST GUARD. Woe, woe are we, sir, you may not live to wear     All your true followers out.     ALL. Most heavy day!   ANTONY. Nay, good my fellows, do not please sharp fate     To grace it with your sorrows. Bid that welcome     Which comes to punish us, and we punish it,     Seeming to bear it lightly. Take me up.     I have led you oft; carry me now, good friends,     And have my thanks for all.           Exeunt, hearing ANTONY ACT_4|SC_15                          SCENE XV.                    Alexandria. A monument        Enter CLEOPATRA and her maids aloft, with CHARMIAN                          and IRAS    CLEOPATRA. O Charmian, I will never go from hence!   CHARMIAN. Be comforted, dear madam.   CLEOPATRA. No, I will not.     All strange and terrible events are welcome,     But comforts we despise; our size of sorrow,     Proportion\'d to our cause, must be as great     As that which makes it.                     Enter DIOMEDES, below      How now! Is he dead?   DIOMEDES. His death\'s upon him, but not dead.     Look out o\' th\' other side your monument;     His guard have brought him thither.              Enter, below, ANTONY, borne by the guard      CLEOPATRA. O sun,     Burn the great sphere thou mov\'st in! Darkling stand     The varying shore o\' th\' world. O Antony,     Antony, Antony! Help, Charmian; help, Iras, help;     Help, friends below! Let\'s draw him hither.   ANTONY. Peace!     Not Caesar\'s valour hath o\'erthrown Antony,     But Antony\'s hath triumph\'d on itself.   CLEOPATRA. So it should be, that none but Antony     Should conquer Antony; but woe \'tis so!   ANTONY. I am dying, Egypt, dying; only     I here importune death awhile, until     Of many thousand kisses the poor last     I lay upon thy lips.   CLEOPATRA. I dare not, dear.     Dear my lord, pardon! I dare not,     Lest I be taken. Not th\' imperious show     Of the full-fortun\'d Caesar ever shall     Be brooch\'d with me. If knife, drugs, serpents, have       Edge, sting, or operation, I am safe.     Your wife Octavia, with her modest eyes     And still conclusion, shall acquire no honour     Demuring upon me. But come, come, Antony-     Help me, my women- we must draw thee up;     Assist, good friends.   ANTONY. O, quick, or I am gone.   CLEOPATRA. Here\'s sport indeed! How heavy weighs my lord!     Our strength is all gone into heaviness;     That makes the weight. Had I great Juno\'s power,     The strong-wing\'d Mercury should fetch thee up,     And set thee by Jove\'s side. Yet come a little.     Wishers were ever fools. O come, come,                           [They heave ANTONY aloft to CLEOPATRA]     And welcome, welcome! Die where thou hast liv\'d.     Quicken with kissing. Had my lips that power,     Thus would I wear them out.   ALL. A heavy sight!   ANTONY. I am dying, Egypt, dying.     Give me some wine, and let me speak a little.     CLEOPATRA. No, let me speak; and let me rail so high     That the false huswife Fortune break her wheel,     Provok\'d by my offence.   ANTONY. One word, sweet queen:     Of Caesar seek your honour, with your safety. O!   CLEOPATRA. They do not go together.   ANTONY. Gentle, hear me:     None about Caesar trust but Proculeius.   CLEOPATRA. My resolution and my hands I\'ll trust;     None about Caesar   ANTONY. The miserable change now at my end     Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts     In feeding them with those my former fortunes     Wherein I liv\'d the greatest prince o\' th\' world,     The noblest; and do now not basely die,     Not cowardly put off my helmet to     My countryman- a Roman by a Roman     Valiantly vanquish\'d. Now my spirit is going     I can no more.   CLEOPATRA. Noblest of men, woo\'t die?       Hast thou no care of me? Shall I abide     In this dull world, which in thy absence is     No better than a sty? O, see, my women,        [Antony dies]     The crown o\' th\' earth doth melt. My lord!     O, wither\'d is the garland of the war,     The soldier\'s pole is fall\'n! Young boys and girls     Are level now with men. The odds is gone,     And there is nothing left remarkable     Beneath the visiting moon.                          [Swoons]   CHARMIAN. O, quietness, lady!   IRAS. She\'s dead too, our sovereign.   CHARMIAN. Lady!   IRAS. Madam!   CHARMIAN. O madam, madam, madam!   IRAS. Royal Egypt, Empress!   CHARMIAN. Peace, peace, Iras!   CLEOPATRA. No more but e\'en a woman, and commanded     By such poor passion as the maid that milks     And does the meanest chares. It were for me     To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods;       To tell them that this world did equal theirs     Till they had stol\'n our jewel. All\'s but nought;     Patience is sottish, and impatience does     Become a dog that\'s mad. Then is it sin     To rush into the secret house of death     Ere death dare come to us? How do you, women?     What, what! good cheer! Why, how now, Charmian!     My noble girls! Ah, women, women, look,     Our lamp is spent, it\'s out! Good sirs, take heart.     We\'ll bury him; and then, what\'s brave, what\'s noble,     Let\'s do it after the high Roman fashion,     And make death proud to take us. Come, away;     This case of that huge spirit now is cold.     Ah, women, women! Come; we have no friend     But resolution and the briefest end.                    Exeunt; those above hearing off ANTONY\'S body  ACT_5|SC_1                        ACT V. SCENE I.                   Alexandria. CAESAR\'S camp        Enter CAESAR, AGRIPPA, DOLABELLA, MAECENAS, GALLUS,           PROCULEIUS, and others, his Council of War    CAESAR. Go to him, Dolabella, bid him yield;     Being so frustrate, tell him he mocks     The pauses that he makes.   DOLABELLA. Caesar, I shall.                               Exit               Enter DERCETAS With the sword of ANTONY    CAESAR. Wherefore is that? And what art thou that dar\'st     Appear thus to us?   DERCETAS. I am call\'d Dercetas;     Mark Antony I serv\'d, who best was worthy     Best to be serv\'d. Whilst he stood up and spoke,     He was my master, and I wore my life     To spend upon his haters. If thou please     To take me to thee, as I was to him     I\'ll be to Caesar; if thou pleasest not,       I yield thee up my life.   CAESAR. What is\'t thou say\'st?   DERCETAS. I say, O Caesar, Antony is dead.   CAESAR. The breaking of so great a thing should make     A greater crack. The round world     Should have shook lions into civil streets,     And citizens to their dens. The death of Antony     Is not a single doom; in the name lay     A moiety of the world.   DERCETAS. He is dead, Caesar,     Not by a public minister of justice,     Nor by a hired knife; but that self hand     Which writ his honour in the acts it did     Hath, with the courage which the heart did lend it,     Splitted the heart. This is his sword;     I robb\'d his wound of it; behold it stain\'d     With his most noble blood.   CAESAR. Look you sad, friends?     The gods rebuke me, but it is tidings     To wash the eyes of kings.     AGRIPPA. And strange it is     That nature must compel us to lament     Our most persisted deeds.   MAECENAS. His taints and honours     Wag\'d equal with him.   AGRIPPA. A rarer spirit never     Did steer humanity. But you gods will give us     Some faults to make us men. Caesar is touch\'d.   MAECENAS. When such a spacious mirror\'s set before him,     He needs must see himself.   CAESAR. O Antony,     I have follow\'d thee to this! But we do lance     Diseases in our bodies. I must perforce     Have shown to thee such a declining day     Or look on thine; we could not stall together     In the whole world. But yet let me lament,     With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts,     That thou, my brother, my competitor     In top of all design, my mate in empire,     Friend and companion in the front of war,       The arm of mine own body, and the heart     Where mine his thoughts did kindle- that our stars,     Unreconciliable, should divide     Our equalness to this. Hear me, good friends-                      Enter an EGYPTIAN      But I will tell you at some meeter season.     The business of this man looks out of him;     We\'ll hear him what he says. Whence are you?   EGYPTIAN. A poor Egyptian, yet the Queen, my mistress,     Confin\'d in all she has, her monument,     Of thy intents desires instruction,     That she preparedly may frame herself     To th\' way she\'s forc\'d to.   CAESAR. Bid her have good heart.     She soon shall know of us, by some of ours,     How honourable and how kindly we     Determine for her; for Caesar cannot learn     To be ungentle.     EGYPTIAN. So the gods preserve thee!                      Exit   CAESAR. Come hither, Proculeius. Go and say     We purpose her no shame. Give her what comforts     The quality of her passion shall require,     Lest, in her greatness, by some mortal stroke     She do defeat us; for her life in Rome     Would be eternal in our triumph. Go,     And with your speediest bring us what she says,     And how you find her.   PROCULEIUS. Caesar, I shall.                              Exit   CAESAR. Gallus, go you along.                      Exit GALLUS     Where\'s Dolabella, to second Proculeius?   ALL. Dolabella!   CAESAR. Let him alone, for I remember now     How he\'s employ\'d; he shall in time be ready.     Go with me to my tent, where you shall see     How hardly I was drawn into this war,     How calm and gentle I proceeded still     In all my writings. Go with me, and see     What I can show in this.                              Exeunt  ACT_5|SC_2                          SCENE II.                 Alexandria. The monument        Enter CLEOPATRA, CHARMIAN, IRAS, and MARDIAN    CLEOPATRA. My desolation does begin to make     A better life. \'Tis paltry to be Caesar:     Not being Fortune, he\'s but Fortune\'s knave,     A minister of her will; and it is great     To do that thing that ends all other deeds,     Which shackles accidents and bolts up change,     Which sleeps, and never palates more the dug,     The beggar\'s nurse and Caesar\'s.         Enter, to the gates of the monument, PROCULEIUS, GALLUS,                           and soldiers    PROCULEIUS. Caesar sends greetings to the Queen of Egypt,     And bids thee study on what fair demands     Thou mean\'st to have him grant thee.   CLEOPATRA. What\'s thy name?   PROCULEIUS. My name is Proculeius.     CLEOPATRA. Antony     Did tell me of you, bade me trust you; but     I do not greatly care to be deceiv\'d,     That have no use for trusting. If your master     Would have a queen his beggar, you must tell him     That majesty, to keep decorum, must     No less beg than a kingdom. If he please     To give me conquer\'d Egypt for my son,     He gives me so much of mine own as I     Will kneel to him with thanks.   PROCULEIUS. Be of good cheer;     Y\'are fall\'n into a princely hand; fear nothing.     Make your full reference freely to my lord,     Who is so full of grace that it flows over     On all that need. Let me report to him     Your sweet dependency, and you shall find     A conqueror that will pray in aid for kindness     Where he for grace is kneel\'d to.   CLEOPATRA. Pray you tell him     I am his fortune\'s vassal and I send him       The greatness he has got. I hourly learn     A doctrine of obedience, and would gladly     Look him i\' th\' face.   PROCULEIUS. This I\'ll report, dear lady.     Have comfort, for I know your plight is pitied     Of him that caus\'d it.   GALLUS. You see how easily she may be surpris\'d.        Here PROCULEIUS and two of the guard ascend the        monument by a ladder placed against a window,        and come behind CLEOPATRA. Some of the guard                 unbar and open the gates      Guard her till Caesar come.                             Exit   IRAS. Royal Queen!   CHARMIAN. O Cleopatra! thou art taken, Queen!   CLEOPATRA. Quick, quick, good hands.        [Drawing a dagger]   PROCULEIUS. Hold, worthy lady, hold,             [Disarms her]     Do not yourself such wrong, who are in this     Reliev\'d, but not betray\'d.     CLEOPATRA. What, of death too,     That rids our dogs of languish?   PROCULEIUS. Cleopatra,     Do not abuse my master\'s bounty by     Th\' undoing of yourself. Let the world see     His nobleness well acted, which your death     Will never let come forth.   CLEOPATRA. Where art thou, death?     Come hither, come! Come, come, and take a queen     Worth many babes and beggars!   PROCULEIUS. O, temperance, lady!   CLEOPATRA. Sir, I will eat no meat; I\'ll not drink, sir;     If idle talk will once be necessary,     I\'ll not sleep neither. This mortal house I\'ll ruin,     Do Caesar what he can. Know, sir, that I     Will not wait pinion\'d at your master\'s court,     Nor once be chastis\'d with the sober eye     Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up,     And show me to the shouting varletry     Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt       Be gentle grave unto me! Rather on Nilus\' mud     Lay me stark-nak\'d, and let the water-flies     Blow me into abhorring! Rather make     My country\'s high pyramides my gibbet,     And hang me up in chains!   PROCULEIUS. You do extend     These thoughts of horror further than you shall     Find cause in Caesar.                        Enter DOLABELLA    DOLABELLA. Proculeius,     What thou hast done thy master Caesar knows,     And he hath sent for thee. For the Queen,     I\'ll take her to my guard.   PROCULEIUS. So, Dolabella,     It shall content me best. Be gentle to her.     [To CLEOPATRA] To Caesar I will speak what you shall please,     If you\'ll employ me to him.   CLEOPATRA. Say I would die.                                     Exeunt PROCULEIUS and soldiers   DOLABELLA. Most noble Empress, you have heard of me?   CLEOPATRA. I cannot tell.   DOLABELLA. Assuredly you know me.   CLEOPATRA. No matter, sir, what I have heard or known.     You laugh when boys or women tell their dreams;     Is\'t not your trick?   DOLABELLA. I understand not, madam.   CLEOPATRA. I dreamt there was an Emperor Antony-     O, such another sleep, that I might see     But such another man!   DOLABELLA. If it might please ye-   CLEOPATRA. His face was as the heav\'ns, and therein stuck     A sun and moon, which kept their course and lighted     The little O, the earth.   DOLABELLA. Most sovereign creature-   CLEOPATRA. His legs bestrid the ocean; his rear\'d arm     Crested the world. His voice was propertied     As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;     But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,       He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,     There was no winter in\'t; an autumn \'twas     That grew the more by reaping. His delights     Were dolphin-like: they show\'d his back above     The element they liv\'d in. In his livery     Walk\'d crowns and crownets; realms and islands were     As plates dropp\'d from his pocket.   DOLABELLA. Cleopatra-   CLEOPATRA. Think you there was or might be such a man     As this I dreamt of?   DOLABELLA. Gentle madam, no.   CLEOPATRA. You lie, up to the hearing of the gods.     But if there be nor ever were one such,     It\'s past the size of drearning. Nature wants stuff     To vie strange forms with fancy; yet t\' imagine     An Antony were nature\'s piece \'gainst fancy,     Condemning shadows quite.   DOLABELLA. Hear me, good madam.     Your loss is, as yourself, great; and you bear it     As answering to the weight. Would I might never       O\'ertake pursu\'d success, but I do feel,     By the rebound of yours, a grief that smites     My very heart at root.   CLEOPATRA. I thank you, sir.     Know you what Caesar means to do with me?   DOLABELLA. I am loath to tell you what I would you knew.   CLEOPATRA. Nay, pray you, sir.   DOLABELLA. Though he be honourable-   CLEOPATRA. He\'ll lead me, then, in triumph?   DOLABELLA. Madam, he will. I know\'t.                [Flourish]                               [Within: \'Make way there-Caesar!\']         Enter CAESAR; GALLUS, PROCULEIUS, MAECENAS, SELEUCUS,                      and others of his train    CAESAR. Which is the Queen of Egypt?   DOLABELLA. It is the Emperor, madam.        [CLEOPATPA kneels]   CAESAR. Arise, you shall not kneel.     I pray you, rise; rise, Egypt.   CLEOPATRA. Sir, the gods       Will have it thus; my master and my lord     I must obey.   CAESAR. Take to you no hard thoughts.     The record of what injuries you did us,     Though written in our flesh, we shall remember     As things but done by chance.   CLEOPATRA. Sole sir o\' th\' world,     I cannot project mine own cause so well     To make it clear, but do confess I have     Been laden with like frailties which before     Have often sham\'d our sex.   CAESAR. Cleopatra, know     We will extenuate rather than enforce.     If you apply yourself to our intents-     Which towards you are most gentle- you shall find     A benefit in this change; but if you seek     To lay on me a cruelty by taking     Antony\'s course, you shall bereave yourself     Of my good purposes, and put your children     To that destruction which I\'ll guard them from,       If thereon you rely. I\'ll take my leave.   CLEOPATRA. And may, through all the world. \'Tis yours, and we,     Your scutcheons and your signs of conquest, shall     Hang in what place you please. Here, my good lord.   CAESAR. You shall advise me in all for Cleopatra.   CLEOPATRA. This is the brief of money, plate, and jewels,     I am possess\'d of. \'Tis exactly valued,     Not petty things admitted. Where\'s Seleucus?   SELEUCUS. Here, madam.   CLEOPATRA. This is my treasurer; let him speak, my lord,     Upon his peril, that I have reserv\'d     To myself nothing. Speak the truth, Seleucus.   SELEUCUS. Madam,     I had rather seal my lips than to my peril     Speak that which is not.   CLEOPATRA. What have I kept back?   SELEUCUS. Enough to purchase what you have made known.   CAESAR. Nay, blush not, Cleopatra; I approve     Your wisdom in the deed.   CLEOPATRA. See, Caesar! O, behold,       How pomp is followed! Mine will now be yours;     And, should we shift estates, yours would be mine.     The ingratitude of this Seleucus does     Even make me wild. O slave, of no more trust     Than love that\'s hir\'d! What, goest thou back? Thou shalt     Go back, I warrant thee; but I\'ll catch thine eyes     Though they had wings. Slave, soulless villain, dog!     O rarely base!   CAESAR. Good Queen, let us entreat you.   CLEOPATRA. O Caesar, what a wounding shame is this,     That thou vouchsafing here to visit me,     Doing the honour of thy lordliness     To one so meek, that mine own servant should     Parcel the sum of my disgraces by     Addition of his envy! Say, good Caesar,     That I some lady trifles have reserv\'d,     Immoment toys, things of such dignity     As we greet modern friends withal; and say     Some nobler token I have kept apart     For Livia and Octavia, to induce       Their mediation- must I be unfolded     With one that I have bred? The gods! It smites me     Beneath the fall I have. [To SELEUCUS] Prithee go hence;     Or I shall show the cinders of my spirits     Through th\' ashes of my chance. Wert thou a man,     Thou wouldst have mercy on me.   CAESAR. Forbear, Seleucus.                       Exit SELEUCUS   CLEOPATRA. Be it known that we, the greatest, are misthought     For things that others do; and when we fall     We answer others\' merits in our name,     Are therefore to be pitied.   CAESAR. Cleopatra,     Not what you have reserv\'d, nor what acknowledg\'d,     Put we i\' th\' roll of conquest. Still be\'t yours,     Bestow it at your pleasure; and believe     Caesar\'s no merchant, to make prize with you     Of things that merchants sold. Therefore be cheer\'d;     Make not your thoughts your prisons. No, dear Queen;     For we intend so to dispose you as     Yourself shall give us counsel. Feed and sleep.       Our care and pity is so much upon you     That we remain your friend; and so, adieu.   CLEOPATRA. My master and my lord!   CAESAR. Not so. Adieu.                            Flourish. Exeunt CAESAR and his train   CLEOPATRA. He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not     Be noble to myself. But hark thee, Charmian!                                              [Whispers CHARMIAN]   IRAS. Finish, good lady; the bright day is done,     And we are for the dark.   CLEOPATRA. Hie thee again.     I have spoke already, and it is provided;     Go put it to the haste.   CHARMIAN. Madam, I will.                        Re-enter DOLABELLA    DOLABELLA. Where\'s the Queen?   CHARMIAN. Behold, sir.                                    Exit   CLEOPATRA. Dolabella!     DOLABELLA. Madam, as thereto sworn by your command,     Which my love makes religion to obey,     I tell you this: Caesar through Syria     Intends his journey, and within three days     You with your children will he send before.     Make your best use of this; I have perform\'d     Your pleasure and my promise.   CLEOPATRA. Dolabella,     I shall remain your debtor.   DOLABELLA. I your servant.     Adieu, good Queen; I must attend on Caesar.   CLEOPATRA. Farewell, and thanks.                Exit DOLABELLA     Now, Iras, what think\'st thou?     Thou an Egyptian puppet shall be shown     In Rome as well as I. Mechanic slaves,     With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall     Uplift us to the view; in their thick breaths,     Rank of gross diet, shall we be enclouded,     And forc\'d to drink their vapour.   IRAS. The gods forbid!     CLEOPATRA. Nay, \'tis most certain, Iras. Saucy lictors     Will catch at us like strumpets, and scald rhymers     Ballad us out o\' tune; the quick comedians     Extemporally will stage us, and present     Our Alexandrian revels; Antony     Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see     Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness     I\' th\' posture of a whore.   IRAS. O the good gods!   CLEOPATRA. Nay, that\'s certain.   IRAS. I\'ll never see\'t, for I am sure mine nails     Are stronger than mine eyes.   CLEOPATRA. Why, that\'s the way     To fool their preparation and to conquer     Their most absurd intents.                        Enter CHARMIAN      Now, Charmian!     Show me, my women, like a queen. Go fetch       My best attires. I am again for Cydnus,     To meet Mark Antony. Sirrah, Iras, go.     Now, noble Charmian, we\'ll dispatch indeed;     And when thou hast done this chare, I\'ll give thee leave     To play till doomsday. Bring our crown and all.                                        Exit IRAS. A noise within     Wherefore\'s this noise?                       Enter a GUARDSMAN    GUARDSMAN. Here is a rural fellow     That will not be denied your Highness\' presence.     He brings you figs.   CLEOPATRA. Let him come in.                     Exit GUARDSMAN     What poor an instrument     May do a noble deed! He brings me liberty.     My resolution\'s plac\'d, and I have nothing     Of woman in me. Now from head to foot     I am marble-constant; now the fleeting moon     No planet is of mine.              Re-enter GUARDSMAN and CLOWN, with a basket    GUARDSMAN. This is the man.   CLEOPATRA. Avoid, and leave him.                Exit GUARDSMAN     Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there     That kills and pains not?   CLOWN. Truly, I have him. But I would not be the party that should     desire you to touch him, for his biting is immortal; those that     do die of it do seldom or never recover.   CLEOPATRA. Remember\'st thou any that have died on\'t?   CLOWN. Very many, men and women too. I heard of one of them no     longer than yesterday: a very honest woman, but something given     to lie, as a woman should not do but in the way of honesty; how     she died of the biting of it, what pain she felt- truly she makes     a very good report o\' th\' worm. But he that will believe all that     they say shall never be saved by half that they do. But this is     most falliable, the worm\'s an odd worm.   CLEOPATRA. Get thee hence; farewell.   CLOWN. I wish you all joy of the worm.                                             [Sets down the basket]   CLEOPATRA. Farewell.   CLOWN. You must think this, look you, that the worm will do his     kind.   CLEOPATRA. Ay, ay; farewell.   CLOWN. Look you, the worm is not to be trusted but in the keeping     of wise people; for indeed there is no goodness in the worm.   CLEOPATRA. Take thou no care; it shall be heeded.   CLOWN. Very good. Give it nothing, I pray you, for it is not worth     the feeding.   CLEOPATRA. Will it eat me?   CLOWN. You must not think I am so simple but I know the devil     himself will not eat a woman. I know that a woman is a dish for     the gods, if the devil dress her not. But truly, these same     whoreson devils do the gods great harm in their women, for in     every ten that they make the devils mar five.   CLEOPATRA. Well, get thee gone; farewell.   CLOWN. Yes, forsooth. I wish you joy o\' th\' worm.         Exit               Re-enter IRAS, with a robe, crown, &c.      CLEOPATRA. Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have     Immortal longings in me. Now no more     The juice of Egypt\'s grape shall moist this lip.     Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear     Antony call. I see him rouse himself     To praise my noble act. I hear him mock     The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men     To excuse their after wrath. Husband, I come.     Now to that name my courage prove my title!     I am fire and air; my other elements     I give to baser life. So, have you done?     Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips.     Farewell, kind Charmian. Iras, long farewell.                               [Kisses them. IRAS falls and dies]     Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?     If thus thou and nature can so gently part,     The stroke of death is as a lover\'s pinch,     Which hurts and is desir\'d. Dost thou lie still?     If thou vanishest, thou tell\'st the world       It is not worth leave-taking.   CHARMIAN. Dissolve, thick cloud, and rain, that I may say     The gods themselves do weep.   CLEOPATRA. This proves me base.     If she first meet the curled Antony,     He\'ll make demand of her, and spend that kiss     Which is my heaven to have. Come, thou mortal wretch,                     [To an asp, which she applies to her breast]     With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate     Of life at once untie. Poor venomous fool,     Be angry and dispatch. O couldst thou speak,     That I might hear thee call great Caesar ass     Unpolicied!   CHARMIAN. O Eastern star!   CLEOPATRA. Peace, peace!     Dost thou not see my baby at my breast     That sucks the nurse asleep?   CHARMIAN. O, break! O, break!   CLEOPATRA. As sweet as balm, as soft as air, as gentle-     O Antony! Nay, I will take thee too:                                  [Applying another asp to her arm]     What should I stay-                                   [Dies]   CHARMIAN. In this vile world? So, fare thee well.     Now boast thee, death, in thy possession lies     A lass unparallel\'d. Downy windows, close;     And golden Phoebus never be beheld     Of eyes again so royal! Your crown\'s awry;     I\'ll mend it and then play-                    Enter the guard, rushing in    FIRST GUARD. Where\'s the Queen?   CHARMIAN. Speak softly, wake her not.   FIRST GUARD. Caesar hath sent-   CHARMIAN. Too slow a messenger.               [Applies an asp]     O, come apace, dispatch. I partly feel thee.   FIRST GUARD. Approach, ho! All\'s not well: Caesar\'s beguil\'d.   SECOND GUARD. There\'s Dolabella sent from Caesar; call him.   FIRST GUARD. What work is here! Charmian, is this well done?   CHARMIAN. It is well done, and fitting for a princes       Descended of so many royal kings.     Ah, soldier!                                 [CHARMIAN dies]                        Re-enter DOLABELLA    DOLABELLA. How goes it here?   SECOND GUARD. All dead.   DOLABELLA. Caesar, thy thoughts     Touch their effects in this. Thyself art coming     To see perform\'d the dreaded act which thou     So sought\'st to hinder.                       [Within: \'A way there, a way for Caesar!\']                Re-enter CAESAR and all his train    DOLABELLA. O sir, you are too sure an augurer:     That you did fear is done.   CAESAR. Bravest at the last,     She levell\'d at our purposes, and being royal,     Took her own way. The manner of their deaths?       I do not see them bleed.   DOLABELLA. Who was last with them?   FIRST GUARD. A simple countryman that brought her figs.     This was his basket.   CAESAR. Poison\'d then.   FIRST GUARD. O Caesar,     This Charmian liv\'d but now; she stood and spake.     I found her trimming up the diadem     On her dead mistress. Tremblingly she stood,     And on the sudden dropp\'d.   CAESAR. O noble weakness!     If they had swallow\'d poison \'twould appear     By external swelling; but she looks like sleep,     As she would catch another Antony     In her strong toil of grace.   DOLABELLA. Here on her breast     There is a vent of blood, and something blown;     The like is on her arm.   FIRST GUARD. This is an aspic\'s trail; and these fig-leaves     Have slime upon them, such as th\' aspic leaves       Upon the caves of Nile.   CAESAR. Most probable     That so she died; for her physician tells me     She hath pursu\'d conclusions infinite     Of easy ways to die. Take up her bed,     And bear her women from the monument.     She shall be buried by her Antony;     No grave upon the earth shall clip in it     A pair so famous. High events as these     Strike those that make them; and their story is     No less in pity than his glory which     Brought them to be lamented. Our army shall     In solemn show attend this funeral,     And then to Rome. Come, Dolabella, see     High order in this great solemnity.                   Exeunt   THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1601  AS YOU LIKE IT  by William Shakespeare    DRAMATIS PERSONAE.    DUKE, living in exile   FREDERICK, his brother, and usurper of his dominions   AMIENS, lord attending on the banished Duke   JAQUES,   "      "       "  "     "      "   LE BEAU, a courtier attending upon Frederick   CHARLES, wrestler to Frederick   OLIVER, son of Sir Rowland de Boys   JAQUES,   "   "  "    "     "  "   ORLANDO,  "   "  "    "     "  "   ADAM,   servant to Oliver   DENNIS,     "     "   "   TOUCHSTONE, the court jester   SIR OLIVER MARTEXT, a vicar   CORIN,    shepherd   SILVIUS,     "   WILLIAM, a country fellow, in love with Audrey   A person representing HYMEN    ROSALIND, daughter to the banished Duke   CELIA, daughter to Frederick   PHEBE, a shepherdes     AUDREY, a country wench    Lords, Pages, Foresters, and Attendants     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: OLIVER\'S house; FREDERICK\'S court; and the Forest of Arden  ACT I. SCENE I. Orchard of OLIVER\'S house  Enter ORLANDO and ADAM    ORLANDO. As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed     me by will but poor a thousand crowns, and, as thou say\'st,     charged my brother, on his blessing, to breed me well; and there     begins my sadness. My brother Jaques he keeps at school, and     report speaks goldenly of his profit. For my part, he keeps me     rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays me here at     home unkept; for call you that keeping for a gentleman of my     birth that differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are     bred better; for, besides that they are fair with their feeding,     they are taught their manage, and to that end riders dearly     hir\'d; but I, his brother, gain nothing under him but growth; for     the which his animals on his dunghills are as much bound to him     as I. Besides this nothing that he so plentifully gives me, the     something that nature gave me his countenance seems to take from     me. He lets me feed with his hinds, bars me the place of a     brother, and as much as in him lies, mines my gentility with my     education. This is it, Adam, that grieves me; and the spirit of       my father, which I think is within me, begins to mutiny against     this servitude. I will no longer endure it, though yet I know no     wise remedy how to avoid it.                             Enter OLIVER    ADAM. Yonder comes my master, your brother.   ORLANDO. Go apart, Adam, and thou shalt hear how he will shake me     up.                                           [ADAM retires]   OLIVER. Now, sir! what make you here?   ORLANDO. Nothing; I am not taught to make any thing.   OLIVER. What mar you then, sir?   ORLANDO. Marry, sir, I am helping you to mar that which God made, a     poor unworthy brother of yours, with idleness.   OLIVER. Marry, sir, be better employed, and be nought awhile.   ORLANDO. Shall I keep your hogs, and eat husks with them? What     prodigal portion have I spent that I should come to such penury?   OLIVER. Know you where you are, sir?   ORLANDO. O, sir, very well; here in your orchard.   OLIVER. Know you before whom, sir?     ORLANDO. Ay, better than him I am before knows me. I know you are     my eldest brother; and in the gentle condition of blood, you     should so know me. The courtesy of nations allows you my better     in that you are the first-born; but the same tradition takes not     away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us. I have as     much of my father in me as you, albeit I confess your coming     before me is nearer to his reverence.   OLIVER. What, boy!                               [Strikes him]   ORLANDO. Come, come, elder brother, you are too young in this.   OLIVER. Wilt thou lay hands on me, villain?   ORLANDO. I am no villain; I am the youngest son of Sir Rowland de     Boys. He was my father; and he is thrice a villain that says such     a father begot villains. Wert thou not my brother, I would not     take this hand from thy throat till this other had pull\'d out thy     tongue for saying so. Thou has rail\'d on thyself.   ADAM. [Coming forward] Sweet masters, be patient; for your father\'s     remembrance, be at accord.   OLIVER. Let me go, I say.   ORLANDO. I will not, till I please; you shall hear me. My father     charg\'d you in his will to give me good education: you have       train\'d me like a peasant, obscuring and hiding from me all     gentleman-like qualities. The spirit of my father grows strong in     me, and I will no longer endure it; therefore allow me such     exercises as may become a gentleman, or give me the poor     allottery my father left me by testament; with that I will go buy     my fortunes.   OLIVER. And what wilt thou do? Beg, when that is spent? Well, sir,     get you in. I will not long be troubled with you; you shall have     some part of your will. I pray you leave me.   ORLANDO. I no further offend you than becomes me for my good.   OLIVER. Get you with him, you old dog.   ADAM. Is \'old dog\' my reward? Most true, I have lost my teeth in     your service. God be with my old master! He would not have spoke     such a word.                                          Exeunt ORLANDO and ADAM   OLIVER. Is it even so? Begin you to grow upon me? I will physic     your rankness, and yet give no thousand crowns neither. Holla,     Dennis!                            Enter DENNIS      DENNIS. Calls your worship?   OLIVER. not Charles, the Duke\'s wrestler, here to speak with me?   DENNIS. So please you, he is here at the door and importunes access     to you.   OLIVER. Call him in. [Exit DENNIS] \'Twill be a good way; and     to-morrow the wrestling is.                            Enter CHARLES    CHARLES. Good morrow to your worship.   OLIVER. Good Monsieur Charles! What\'s the new news at the new     court?   CHARLES. There\'s no news at the court, sir, but the old news; that     is, the old Duke is banished by his younger brother the new Duke;     and three or four loving lords have put themselves into voluntary     exile with him, whose lands and revenues enrich the new Duke;     therefore he gives them good leave to wander.   OLIVER. Can you tell if Rosalind, the Duke\'s daughter, be banished     with her father?     CHARLES. O, no; for the Duke\'s daughter, her cousin, so loves her,     being ever from their cradles bred together, that she would have     followed her exile, or have died to stay behind her. She is at     the court, and no less beloved of her uncle than his own     daughter; and never two ladies loved as they do.   OLIVER. Where will the old Duke live?   CHARLES. They say he is already in the Forest of Arden, and a many     merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood     of England. They say many young gentlemen flock to him every day,     and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.   OLIVER. What, you wrestle to-morrow before the new Duke?   CHARLES. Marry, do I, sir; and I came to acquaint you with a     matter. I am given, sir, secretly to understand that your younger     brother, Orlando, hath a disposition to come in disguis\'d against     me to try a fall. To-morrow, sir, I wrestle for my credit; and he     that escapes me without some broken limb shall acquit him well.     Your brother is but young and tender; and, for your love, I would     be loath to foil him, as I must, for my own honour, if he come     in; therefore, out of my love to you, I came hither to acquaint     you withal, that either you might stay him from his intendment,       or brook such disgrace well as he shall run into, in that it is     thing of his own search and altogether against my will.   OLIVER. Charles, I thank thee for thy love to me, which thou shalt     find I will most kindly requite. I had myself notice of my     brother\'s purpose herein, and have by underhand means laboured to     dissuade him from it; but he is resolute. I\'ll tell thee,     Charles, it is the stubbornest young fellow of France; full of     ambition, an envious emulator of every man\'s good parts, a secret     and villainous contriver against me his natural brother.     Therefore use thy discretion: I had as lief thou didst break his     neck as his finger. And thou wert best look to\'t; for if thou     dost him any slight disgrace, or if he do not mightily grace     himself on thee, he will practise against thee by poison, entrap     thee by some treacherous device, and never leave thee till he     hath ta\'en thy life by some indirect means or other; for, I     assure thee, and almost with tears I speak it, there is not one     so young and so villainous this day living. I speak but brotherly     of him; but should I anatomize him to thee as he is, I must blush     and weep, and thou must look pale and wonder.   CHARLES. I am heartily glad I came hither to you. If he come       to-morrow I\'ll give him his payment. If ever he go alone again,     I\'ll never wrestle for prize more. And so, God keep your worship!  Exit   OLIVER. Farewell, good Charles. Now will I stir this gamester. I     hope I shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why,     hates nothing more than he. Yet he\'s gentle; never school\'d and     yet learned; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly     beloved; and, indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and     especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am     altogether misprised. But it shall not be so long; this wrestler     shall clear all. Nothing remains but that I kindle the boy     thither, which now I\'ll go about.                       Exit    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>     SCENE II. A lawn before the DUKE\'S palace  Enter ROSALIND and CELIA    CELIA. I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry.   ROSALIND. Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of; and     would you yet I were merrier? Unless you could teach me to forget     a banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any     extraordinary pleasure.   CELIA. Herein I see thou lov\'st me not with the full weight that I     love thee. If my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy     uncle, the Duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me, I     could have taught my love to take thy father for mine; so wouldst     thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteously temper\'d     as mine is to thee.   ROSALIND. Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to     rejoice in yours.   CELIA. You know my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to     have; and, truly, when he dies thou shalt be his heir; for what     he hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render thee     again in affection. By mine honour, I will; and when I break that       oath, let me turn monster; therefore, my sweet Rose, my dear     Rose, be merry.   ROSALIND. From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports.     Let me see; what think you of falling in love?   CELIA. Marry, I prithee, do, to make sport withal; but love no man     in good earnest, nor no further in sport neither than with safety     of a pure blush thou mayst in honour come off again.   ROSALIND. What shall be our sport, then?   CELIA. Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her     wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.   ROSALIND. I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightily     misplaced; and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her     gifts to women.   CELIA. \'Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce makes     honest; and those that she makes honest she makes very     ill-favouredly.   ROSALIND. Nay; now thou goest from Fortune\'s office to Nature\'s:     Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of     Nature.                             Enter TOUCHSTONE    CELIA. No; when Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by     Fortune fall into the fire? Though Nature hath given us wit to     flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut off     the argument?   ROSALIND. Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature, when     Fortune makes Nature\'s natural the cutter-off of Nature\'s wit.   CELIA. Peradventure this is not Fortune\'s work neither, but     Nature\'s, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of     such goddesses, and hath sent this natural for our whetstone; for     always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits. How     now, wit! Whither wander you?   TOUCHSTONE. Mistress, you must come away to your father.   CELIA. Were you made the messenger?   TOUCHSTONE. No, by mine honour; but I was bid to come for you.   ROSALIND. Where learned you that oath, fool?   TOUCHSTONE. Of a certain knight that swore by his honour they were     good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught.     Now I\'ll stand to it, the pancakes were naught and the mustard       was good, and yet was not the knight forsworn.   CELIA. How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge?   ROSALIND. Ay, marry, now unmuzzle your wisdom.   TOUCHSTONE. Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear     by your beards that I am a knave.   CELIA. By our beards, if we had them, thou art.   TOUCHSTONE. By my knavery, if I had it, then I were. But if you     swear by that that not, you are not forsworn; no more was this     knight, swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he     had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those pancackes or     that mustard.   CELIA. Prithee, who is\'t that thou mean\'st?   TOUCHSTONE. One that old Frederick, your father, loves.   CELIA. My father\'s love is enough to honour him. Enough, speak no     more of him; you\'ll be whipt for taxation one of these days.   TOUCHSTONE. The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise     men do foolishly.   CELIA. By my troth, thou sayest true; for since the little wit that     fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have     makes a great show. Here comes Monsieur Le Beau.                               Enter LE BEAU    ROSALIND. With his mouth full of news.   CELIA. Which he will put on us as pigeons feed their young.   ROSALIND. Then shall we be news-cramm\'d.   CELIA. All the better; we shall be the more marketable. Bon jour,     Monsieur Le Beau. What\'s the news?   LE BEAU. Fair Princess, you have lost much good sport.   CELIA. Sport! of what colour?   LE BEAU. What colour, madam? How shall I answer you?   ROSALIND. As wit and fortune will.   TOUCHSTONE. Or as the Destinies decrees.   CELIA. Well said; that was laid on with a trowel.   TOUCHSTONE. Nay, if I keep not my rank-   ROSALIND. Thou losest thy old smell.   LE BEAU. You amaze me, ladies. I would have told you of good     wrestling, which you have lost the sight of.   ROSALIND. Yet tell us the manner of the wrestling.   LE BEAU. I will tell you the beginning, and, if it please your       ladyships, you may see the end; for the best is yet to do; and     here, where you are, they are coming to perform it.   CELIA. Well, the beginning, that is dead and buried.   LE BEAU. There comes an old man and his three sons-   CELIA. I could match this beginning with an old tale.   LE BEAU. Three proper young men, of excellent growth and presence.   ROSALIND. With bills on their necks: \'Be it known unto all men by     these presents\'-   LE BEAU. The eldest of the three wrestled with Charles, the Duke\'s     wrestler; which Charles in a moment threw him, and broke three of     his ribs, that there is little hope of life in him. So he serv\'d     the second, and so the third. Yonder they lie; the poor old man,     their father, making such pitiful dole over them that all the     beholders take his part with weeping.   ROSALIND. Alas!   TOUCHSTONE. But what is the sport, monsieur, that the ladies have     lost?   LE BEAU. Why, this that I speak of.   TOUCHSTONE. Thus men may grow wiser every day. It is the first time     that ever I heard breaking of ribs was sport for ladies.     CELIA. Or I, I promise thee.   ROSALIND. But is there any else longs to see this broken music in     his sides? Is there yet another dotes upon rib-breaking? Shall we     see this wrestling, cousin?   LE BEAU. You must, if you stay here; for here is the place     appointed for the wrestling, and they are ready to perform it.   CELIA. Yonder, sure, they are coming. Let us now stay and see it.             Flourish. Enter DUKE FREDERICK, LORDS, ORLANDO,                      CHARLES, and ATTENDANTS    FREDERICK. Come on; since the youth will not be entreated, his own     peril on his forwardness.   ROSALIND. Is yonder the man?   LE BEAU. Even he, madam.   CELIA. Alas, he is too young; yet he looks successfully.   FREDERICK. How now, daughter and cousin! Are you crept hither to     see the wrestling?   ROSALIND. Ay, my liege; so please you give us leave.   FREDERICK. You will take little delight in it, I can tell you,       there is such odds in the man. In pity of the challenger\'s youth     I would fain dissuade him, but he will not be entreated. Speak to     him, ladies; see if you can move him.   CELIA. Call him hither, good Monsieur Le Beau.   FREDERICK. Do so; I\'ll not be by.                                      [DUKE FREDERICK goes apart]   LE BEAU. Monsieur the Challenger, the Princess calls for you.   ORLANDO. I attend them with all respect and duty.   ROSALIND. Young man, have you challeng\'d Charles the wrestler?   ORLANDO. No, fair Princess; he is the general challenger. I come     but in, as others do, to try with him the strength of my youth.   CELIA. Young gentleman, your spirits are too bold for your years.     You have seen cruel proof of this man\'s strength; if you saw     yourself with your eyes, or knew yourself with your judgment, the     fear of your adventure would counsel you to a more equal     enterprise. We pray you, for your own sake, to embrace your own     safety and give over this attempt.   ROSALIND. Do, young sir; your reputation shall not therefore be     misprised: we will make it our suit to the Duke that the     wrestling might not go forward.     ORLANDO. I beseech you, punish me not with your hard thoughts,     wherein I confess me much guilty to deny so fair and excellent     ladies any thing. But let your fair eyes and gentle wishes go     with me to my trial; wherein if I be foil\'d there is but one     sham\'d that was never gracious; if kill\'d, but one dead that is     willing to be so. I shall do my friends no wrong, for I have none     to lament me; the world no injury, for in it I have nothing; only     in the world I fill up a place, which may be better supplied when     I have made it empty.   ROSALIND. The little strength that I have, I would it were with     you.   CELIA. And mine to eke out hers.   ROSALIND. Fare you well. Pray heaven I be deceiv\'d in you!   CELIA. Your heart\'s desires be with you!   CHARLES. Come, where is this young gallant that is so desirous to     lie with his mother earth?   ORLANDO. Ready, sir; but his will hath in it a more modest working.   FREDERICK. You shall try but one fall.   CHARLES. No, I warrant your Grace, you shall not entreat him to a     second, that have so mightily persuaded him from a first.     ORLANDO. You mean to mock me after; you should not have mock\'d me     before; but come your ways.   ROSALIND. Now, Hercules be thy speed, young man!   CELIA. I would I were invisible, to catch the strong fellow by the     leg.                                          [They wrestle]   ROSALIND. O excellent young man!   CELIA. If I had a thunderbolt in mine eye, I can tell who should     down.                                       [CHARLES is thrown. Shout]   FREDERICK. No more, no more.   ORLANDO. Yes, I beseech your Grace; I am not yet well breath\'d.   FREDERICK. How dost thou, Charles?   LE BEAU. He cannot speak, my lord.   FREDERICK. Bear him away. What is thy name, young man?   ORLANDO. Orlando, my liege; the youngest son of Sir Rowland de     Boys.   FREDERICK. I would thou hadst been son to some man else.     The world esteem\'d thy father honourable,     But I did find him still mine enemy.     Thou shouldst have better pleas\'d me with this deed,       Hadst thou descended from another house.     But fare thee well; thou art a gallant youth;     I would thou hadst told me of another father.                                  Exeunt DUKE, train, and LE BEAU   CELIA. Were I my father, coz, would I do this?   ORLANDO. I am more proud to be Sir Rowland\'s son,     His youngest son- and would not change that calling     To be adopted heir to Frederick.   ROSALIND. My father lov\'d Sir Rowland as his soul,     And all the world was of my father\'s mind;     Had I before known this young man his son,     I should have given him tears unto entreaties     Ere he should thus have ventur\'d.   CELIA. Gentle cousin,     Let us go thank him, and encourage him;     My father\'s rough and envious disposition     Sticks me at heart. Sir, you have well deserv\'d;     If you do keep your promises in love     But justly as you have exceeded all promise,     Your mistress shall be happy.     ROSALIND. Gentleman,        [Giving him a chain from her neck]     Wear this for me; one out of suits with fortune,     That could give more, but that her hand lacks means.     Shall we go, coz?   CELIA. Ay. Fare you well, fair gentleman.   ORLANDO. Can I not say \'I thank you\'? My better parts     Are all thrown down; and that which here stands up     Is but a quintain, a mere lifeless block.   ROSALIND. He calls us back. My pride fell with my fortunes;     I\'ll ask him what he would. Did you call, sir?     Sir, you have wrestled well, and overthrown     More than your enemies.   CELIA. Will you go, coz?   ROSALIND. Have with you. Fare you well.                                        Exeunt ROSALIND and CELIA   ORLANDO. What passion hangs these weights upon my tongue?     I cannot speak to her, yet she urg\'d conference.     O poor Orlando, thou art overthrown!     Or Charles or something weaker masters thee.                          Re-enter LE BEAU    LE BEAU. Good sir, I do in friendship counsel you     To leave this place. Albeit you have deserv\'d     High commendation, true applause, and love,     Yet such is now the Duke\'s condition     That he misconstrues all that you have done.     The Duke is humorous; what he is, indeed,     More suits you to conceive than I to speak of.   ORLANDO. I thank you, sir; and pray you tell me this:     Which of the two was daughter of the Duke     That here was at the wrestling?   LE BEAU. Neither his daughter, if we judge by manners;     But yet, indeed, the smaller is his daughter;     The other is daughter to the banish\'d Duke,     And here detain\'d by her usurping uncle,     To keep his daughter company; whose loves     Are dearer than the natural bond of sisters.     But I can tell you that of late this Duke     Hath ta\'en displeasure \'gainst his gentle niece,       Grounded upon no other argument     But that the people praise her for her virtues     And pity her for her good father\'s sake;     And, on my life, his malice \'gainst the lady     Will suddenly break forth. Sir, fare you well.     Hereafter, in a better world than this,     I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.   ORLANDO. I rest much bounden to you; fare you well.                                                     Exit LE BEAU     Thus must I from the smoke into the smother;     From tyrant Duke unto a tyrant brother.     But heavenly Rosalind!                                  Exit     SCENE III. The DUKE\'s palace  Enter CELIA and ROSALIND    CELIA. Why, cousin! why, Rosalind! Cupid have mercy!     Not a word?   ROSALIND. Not one to throw at a dog.   CELIA. No, thy words are too precious to be cast away upon curs;     throw some of them at me; come, lame me with reasons.   ROSALIND. Then there were two cousins laid up, when the one should     be lam\'d with reasons and the other mad without any.   CELIA. But is all this for your father?   ROSALIND. No, some of it is for my child\'s father. O, how full of     briers is this working-day world!   CELIA. They are but burs, cousin, thrown upon thee in holiday     foolery; if we walk not in the trodden paths, our very petticoats     will catch them.   ROSALIND. I could shake them off my coat: these burs are in my     heart.   CELIA. Hem them away.   ROSALIND. I would try, if I could cry \'hem\' and have him.     CELIA. Come, come, wrestle with thy affections.   ROSALIND. O, they take the part of a better wrestler than myself.   CELIA. O, a good wish upon you! You will try in time, in despite of     a fall. But, turning these jests out of service, let us talk in     good earnest. Is it possible, on such a sudden, you should fall     into so strong a liking with old Sir Rowland\'s youngest son?   ROSALIND. The Duke my father lov\'d his father dearly.   CELIA. Doth it therefore ensue that you should love his son dearly?     By this kind of chase I should hate him, for my father hated his     father dearly; yet I hate not Orlando.   ROSALIND. No, faith, hate him not, for my sake.   CELIA. Why should I not? Doth he not deserve well?                      Enter DUKE FREDERICK, with LORDS    ROSALIND. Let me love him for that; and do you love him because I     do. Look, here comes the Duke.   CELIA. With his eyes full of anger.   FREDERICK. Mistress, dispatch you with your safest haste,     And get you from our court.     ROSALIND. Me, uncle?   FREDERICK. You, cousin.     Within these ten days if that thou beest found     So near our public court as twenty miles,     Thou diest for it.   ROSALIND. I do beseech your Grace,     Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me.     If with myself I hold intelligence,     Or have acquaintance with mine own desires;     If that I do not dream, or be not frantic-     As I do trust I am not- then, dear uncle,     Never so much as in a thought unborn     Did I offend your Highness.   FREDERICK. Thus do all traitors;     If their purgation did consist in words,     They are as innocent as grace itself.     Let it suffice thee that I trust thee not.   ROSALIND. Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor.     Tell me whereon the likelihood depends.   FREDERICK. Thou art thy father\'s daughter; there\'s enough.     ROSALIND. SO was I when your Highness took his dukedom;     So was I when your Highness banish\'d him.     Treason is not inherited, my lord;     Or, if we did derive it from our friends,     What\'s that to me? My father was no traitor.     Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much     To think my poverty is treacherous.   CELIA. Dear sovereign, hear me speak.   FREDERICK. Ay, Celia; we stay\'d her for your sake,     Else had she with her father rang\'d along.   CELIA. I did not then entreat to have her stay;     It was your pleasure, and your own remorse;     I was too young that time to value her,     But now I know her. If she be a traitor,     Why so am I: we still have slept together,     Rose at an instant, learn\'d, play\'d, eat together;     And wheresoe\'er we went, like Juno\'s swans,     Still we went coupled and inseparable.   FREDERICK. She is too subtle for thee; and her smoothness,     Her very silence and her patience,       Speak to the people, and they pity her.     Thou art a fool. She robs thee of thy name;     And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous     When she is gone. Then open not thy lips.     Firm and irrevocable is my doom     Which I have pass\'d upon her; she is banish\'d.   CELIA. Pronounce that sentence, then, on me, my liege;     I cannot live out of her company.   FREDERICK. You are a fool. You, niece, provide yourself.     If you outstay the time, upon mine honour,     And in the greatness of my word, you die.                                            Exeunt DUKE and LORDS   CELIA. O my poor Rosalind! Whither wilt thou go?     Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine.     I charge thee be not thou more griev\'d than I am.   ROSALIND. I have more cause.   CELIA. Thou hast not, cousin.     Prithee be cheerful. Know\'st thou not the Duke     Hath banish\'d me, his daughter?   ROSALIND. That he hath not.     CELIA. No, hath not? Rosalind lacks, then, the love     Which teacheth thee that thou and I am one.     Shall we be sund\'red? Shall we part, sweet girl?     No; let my father seek another heir.     Therefore devise with me how we may fly,     Whither to go, and what to bear with us;     And do not seek to take your charge upon you,     To bear your griefs yourself, and leave me out;     For, by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale,     Say what thou canst, I\'ll go along with thee.   ROSALIND. Why, whither shall we go?   CELIA. To seek my uncle in the Forest of Arden.   ROSALIND. Alas, what danger will it be to us,     Maids as we are, to travel forth so far!     Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.   CELIA. I\'ll put myself in poor and mean attire,     And with a kind of umber smirch my face;     The like do you; so shall we pass along,     And never stir assailants.   ROSALIND. Were it not better,       Because that I am more than common tall,     That I did suit me all points like a man?     A gallant curtle-axe upon my thigh,     A boar spear in my hand; and- in my heart     Lie there what hidden woman\'s fear there will-     We\'ll have a swashing and a martial outside,     As many other mannish cowards have     That do outface it with their semblances.   CELIA. What shall I call thee when thou art a man?   ROSALIND. I\'ll have no worse a name than Jove\'s own page,     And therefore look you call me Ganymede.     But what will you be call\'d?   CELIA. Something that hath a reference to my state:     No longer Celia, but Aliena.   ROSALIND. But, cousin, what if we assay\'d to steal     The clownish fool out of your father\'s court?     Would he not be a comfort to our travel?   CELIA. He\'ll go along o\'er the wide world with me;     Leave me alone to woo him. Let\'s away,     And get our jewels and our wealth together;       Devise the fittest time and safest way     To hide us from pursuit that will be made     After my flight. Now go we in content     To liberty, and not to banishment.                    Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. The Forest of Arden  Enter DUKE SENIOR, AMIENS, and two or three LORDS, like foresters    DUKE SENIOR. Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,     Hath not old custom made this life more sweet     Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods     More free from peril than the envious court?     Here feel we not the penalty of Adam,     The seasons\' difference; as the icy fang     And churlish chiding of the winter\'s wind,     Which when it bites and blows upon my body,     Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say     \'This is no flattery; these are counsellors     That feelingly persuade me what I am.\'     Sweet are the uses of adversity,     Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,     Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;     And this our life, exempt from public haunt,     Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,       Sermons in stones, and good in everything.     I would not change it.   AMIENS. Happy is your Grace,     That can translate the stubbornness of fortune     Into so quiet and so sweet a style.   DUKE SENIOR. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?     And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,     Being native burghers of this desert city,     Should, in their own confines, with forked heads     Have their round haunches gor\'d.   FIRST LORD. Indeed, my lord,     The melancholy Jaques grieves at that;     And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp     Than doth your brother that hath banish\'d you.     To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself     Did steal behind him as he lay along     Under an oak whose antique root peeps out     Upon the brook that brawls along this wood!     To the which place a poor sequest\'red stag,     That from the hunter\'s aim had ta\'en a hurt,       Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord,     The wretched animal heav\'d forth such groans     That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat     Almost to bursting; and the big round tears     Cours\'d one another down his innocent nose     In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,     Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,     Stood on th\' extremest verge of the swift brook,     Augmenting it with tears.   DUKE SENIOR. But what said Jaques?     Did he not moralize this spectacle?   FIRST LORD. O, yes, into a thousand similes.     First, for his weeping into the needless stream:     \'Poor deer,\' quoth he \'thou mak\'st a testament     As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more     To that which had too much.\' Then, being there alone,     Left and abandoned of his velvet friends:     \'\'Tis right\'; quoth he \'thus misery doth part     The flux of company.\' Anon, a careless herd,     Full of the pasture, jumps along by him       And never stays to greet him. \'Ay,\' quoth Jaques     \'Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;     \'Tis just the fashion. Wherefore do you look     Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?\'     Thus most invectively he pierceth through     The body of the country, city, court,     Yea, and of this our life; swearing that we     Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what\'s worse,     To fright the animals, and to kill them up     In their assign\'d and native dwelling-place.   DUKE SENIOR. And did you leave him in this contemplation?   SECOND LORD. We did, my lord, weeping and commenting     Upon the sobbing deer.   DUKE SENIOR. Show me the place;     I love to cope him in these sullen fits,     For then he\'s full of matter.   FIRST LORD. I\'ll bring you to him straight.             Exeunt     SCENE II. The DUKE\'S palace  Enter DUKE FREDERICK, with LORDS    FREDERICK. Can it be possible that no man saw them?     It cannot be; some villains of my court     Are of consent and sufferance in this.   FIRST LORD. I cannot hear of any that did see her.     The ladies, her attendants of her chamber,     Saw her abed, and in the morning early     They found the bed untreasur\'d of their mistress.   SECOND LORD. My lord, the roynish clown, at whom so oft     Your Grace was wont to laugh, is also missing.     Hisperia, the Princess\' gentlewoman,     Confesses that she secretly o\'erheard     Your daughter and her cousin much commend     The parts and graces of the wrestler     That did but lately foil the sinewy Charles;     And she believes, wherever they are gone,     That youth is surely in their company.   FREDERICK. Send to his brother; fetch that gallant hither.       If he be absent, bring his brother to me;     I\'ll make him find him. Do this suddenly;     And let not search and inquisition quail     To bring again these foolish runaways.                Exeunt     SCENE III. Before OLIVER\'S house  Enter ORLANDO and ADAM, meeting    ORLANDO. Who\'s there?   ADAM. What, my young master? O my gentle master!     O my sweet master! O you memory     Of old Sir Rowland! Why, what make you here?     Why are you virtuous? Why do people love you?     And wherefore are you gentle, strong, and valiant?     Why would you be so fond to overcome     The bonny prizer of the humorous Duke?     Your praise is come too swiftly home before you.     Know you not, master, to some kind of men     Their graces serve them but as enemies?     No more do yours. Your virtues, gentle master,     Are sanctified and holy traitors to you.     O, what a world is this, when what is comely     Envenoms him that bears it!   ORLANDO. Why, what\'s the matter?   ADAM. O unhappy youth!       Come not within these doors; within this roof     The enemy of all your graces lives.     Your brother- no, no brother; yet the son-     Yet not the son; I will not call him son     Of him I was about to call his father-     Hath heard your praises; and this night he means     To burn the lodging where you use to lie,     And you within it. If he fail of that,     He will have other means to cut you off;     I overheard him and his practices.     This is no place; this house is but a butchery;     Abhor it, fear it, do not enter it.   ORLANDO. Why, whither, Adam, wouldst thou have me go?   ADAM. No matter whither, so you come not here.   ORLANDO. What, wouldst thou have me go and beg my food,     Or with a base and boist\'rous sword enforce     A thievish living on the common road?     This I must do, or know not what to do;     Yet this I will not do, do how I can.     I rather will subject me to the malice       Of a diverted blood and bloody brother.   ADAM. But do not so. I have five hundred crowns,     The thrifty hire I sav\'d under your father,     Which I did store to be my foster-nurse,     When service should in my old limbs lie lame,     And unregarded age in corners thrown.     Take that, and He that doth the ravens feed,     Yea, providently caters for the sparrow,     Be comfort to my age! Here is the gold;     All this I give you. Let me be your servant;     Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;     For in my youth I never did apply     Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood,     Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo     The means of weakness and debility;     Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,     Frosty, but kindly. Let me go with you;     I\'ll do the service of a younger man     In all your business and necessities.   ORLANDO. O good old man, how well in thee appears       The constant service of the antique world,     When service sweat for duty, not for meed!     Thou art not for the fashion of these times,     Where none will sweat but for promotion,     And having that do choke their service up     Even with the having; it is not so with thee.     But, poor old man, thou prun\'st a rotten tree     That cannot so much as a blossom yield     In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry.     But come thy ways, we\'ll go along together,     And ere we have thy youthful wages spent     We\'ll light upon some settled low content.   ADAM. Master, go on; and I will follow the     To the last gasp, with truth and loyalty.     From seventeen years till now almost four-score     Here lived I, but now live here no more.     At seventeen years many their fortunes seek,     But at fourscore it is too late a week;     Yet fortune cannot recompense me better     Than to die well and not my master\'s debtor.          Exeunt     SCENE IV. The Forest of Arden  Enter ROSALIND for GANYMEDE, CELIA for ALIENA, and CLOWN alias TOUCHSTONE    ROSALIND. O Jupiter, how weary are my spirits!   TOUCHSTONE. I Care not for my spirits, if my legs were not weary.   ROSALIND. I could find in my heart to disgrace my man\'s apparel,     and to cry like a woman; but I must comfort the weaker vessel, as     doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat;     therefore, courage, good Aliena.   CELIA. I pray you bear with me; I cannot go no further.   TOUCHSTONE. For my part, I had rather bear with you than bear you;     yet I should bear no cross if I did bear you; for I think you     have no money in your purse.   ROSALIND. Well,. this is the Forest of Arden.   TOUCHSTONE. Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I; when I was at     home I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.                          Enter CORIN and SILVIUS      ROSALIND. Ay, be so, good Touchstone. Look you, who comes here, a     young man and an old in solemn talk.   CORIN. That is the way to make her scorn you still.   SILVIUS. O Corin, that thou knew\'st how I do love her!   CORIN. I partly guess; for I have lov\'d ere now.   SILVIUS. No, Corin, being old, thou canst not guess,     Though in thy youth thou wast as true a lover     As ever sigh\'d upon a midnight pillow.     But if thy love were ever like to mine,     As sure I think did never man love so,     How many actions most ridiculous     Hast thou been drawn to by thy fantasy?   CORIN. Into a thousand that I have forgotten.   SILVIUS. O, thou didst then never love so heartily!     If thou rememb\'rest not the slightest folly     That ever love did make thee run into,     Thou hast not lov\'d;     Or if thou hast not sat as I do now,     Wearing thy hearer in thy mistress\' praise,     Thou hast not lov\'d;       Or if thou hast not broke from company     Abruptly, as my passion now makes me,     Thou hast not lov\'d.     O Phebe, Phebe, Phebe!                          Exit Silvius   ROSALIND. Alas, poor shepherd! searching of thy wound,     I have by hard adventure found mine own.   TOUCHSTONE. And I mine. I remember, when I was in love, I broke my     sword upon a stone, and bid him take that for coming a-night to     Jane Smile; and I remember the kissing of her batler, and the     cow\'s dugs that her pretty chopt hands had milk\'d; and I remember     the wooing of  peascod instead of her; from whom I took two cods,     and giving her them again, said with weeping tears \'Wear these     for my sake.\' We that are true lovers run into strange capers;     but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal     in folly.   ROSALIND. Thou speak\'st wiser than thou art ware of.   TOUCHSTONE. Nay, I shall ne\'er be ware of mine own wit till I break     my shins against it.   ROSALIND. Jove, Jove! this shepherd\'s passion     Is much upon my fashion.     TOUCHSTONE. And mine; but it grows something stale with me.   CELIA. I pray you, one of you question yond man     If he for gold will give us any food;     I faint almost to death.   TOUCHSTONE. Holla, you clown!   ROSALIND. Peace, fool; he\'s not thy Ensman.   CORIN. Who calls?   TOUCHSTONE. Your betters, sir.   CORIN. Else are they very wretched.   ROSALIND. Peace, I say. Good even to you, friend.   CORIN. And to you, gentle sir, and to you all.   ROSALIND. I prithee, shepherd, if that love or gold     Can in this desert place buy entertainment,     Bring us where we may rest ourselves and feed.     Here\'s a young maid with travel much oppress\'d,     And faints for succour.   CORIN. Fair sir, I pity her,     And wish, for her sake more than for mine own,     My fortunes were more able to relieve her;     But I am shepherd to another man,       And do not shear the fleeces that I graze.     My master is of churlish disposition,     And little recks to find the way to heaven     By doing deeds of hospitality.     Besides, his cote, his flocks, and bounds of feed,     Are now on sale; and at our sheepcote now,     By reason of his absence, there is nothing     That you will feed on; but what is, come see,     And in my voice most welcome shall you be.   ROSALIND. What is he that shall buy his flock and pasture?   CORIN. That young swain that you saw here but erewhile,     That little cares for buying any thing.   ROSALIND. I pray thee, if it stand with honesty,     Buy thou the cottage, pasture, and the flock,     And thou shalt have to pay for it of us.   CELIA. And we will mend thy wages. I like this place,     And willingly could waste my time in it.   CORIN. Assuredly the thing is to be sold.     Go with me; if you like upon report     The soil, the profit, and this kind of life,       I will your very faithful feeder be,     And buy it with your gold right suddenly.             Exeunt     SCENE V. Another part of the forest  Enter AMIENS, JAQUES, and OTHERS                         SONG   AMIENS.    Under the greenwood tree                Who loves to lie with me,                And turn his merry note                Unto the sweet bird\'s throat,              Come hither, come hither, come hither.                Here shall he see                No enemy              But winter and rough weather.    JAQUES. More, more, I prithee, more.   AMIENS. It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jaques.   JAQUES. I thank it. More, I prithee, more. I can suck melancholy     out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs. More, I prithee, more.   AMIENS. My voice is ragged; I know I cannot please you.   JAQUES. I do not desire you to please me; I do desire you to sing.     Come, more; another stanzo. Call you \'em stanzos?     AMIENS. What you will, Monsieur Jaques.   JAQUES. Nay, I care not for their names; they owe me nothing. Will     you sing?   AMIENS. More at your request than to please myself.   JAQUES. Well then, if ever I thank any man, I\'ll thank you; but     that they call compliment is like th\' encounter of two dog-apes;     and when a man thanks me heartily, methinks have given him a     penny, and he renders me the beggarly thanks. Come, sing; and you     that will not, hold your tongues.   AMIENS. Well, I\'ll end the song. Sirs, cover the while; the Duke     will drink under this tree. He hath been all this day to look     you.   JAQUES. And I have been all this day to avoid him. He is to     disputable for my company. I think of as many matters as he; but     I give heaven thanks, and make no boast of them. Come, warble,     come.                         SONG               [All together here]               Who doth ambition shun,            And loves to live i\' th\' sun,            Seeking the food he eats,            And pleas\'d with what he gets,          Come hither, come hither, come hither.            Here shall he see            No enemy            But winter and rough weather.    JAQUES. I\'ll give you a verse to this note that I made yesterday in     despite of my invention.   AMIENS. And I\'ll sing it.   JAQUES. Thus it goes:               If it do come to pass              That any man turn ass,              Leaving his wealth and ease              A stubborn will to please,            Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame;              Here shall he see                Gross fools as he,              An if he will come to me.    AMIENS. What\'s that \'ducdame\'?   JAQUES. \'Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle. I\'ll     go sleep, if I can; if I cannot, I\'ll rail against all the     first-born of Egypt.   AMIENS. And I\'ll go seek the Duke; his banquet is prepar\'d.                                                 Exeunt severally     SCENE VI. The forest  Enter ORLANDO and ADAM    ADAM. Dear master, I can go no further. O, I die for food! Here lie     I down, and measure out my grave. Farewell, kind master.   ORLANDO. Why, how now, Adam! No greater heart in thee? Live a     little; comfort a little; cheer thyself a little. If this uncouth     forest yield anything savage, I will either be food for it or     bring it for food to thee. Thy conceit is nearer death than thy     powers. For my sake be comfortable; hold death awhile at the     arm\'s end. I will here be with the presently; and if I bring thee     not something to eat, I will give thee leave to die; but if thou     diest before I come, thou art a mocker of my labour. Well said!     thou look\'st cheerly; and I\'ll be with thee quickly. Yet thou     liest in the bleak air. Come, I will bear thee to some shelter;     and thou shalt not die for lack of a dinner, if there live     anything in this desert. Cheerly, good Adam!          Exeunt     SCENE VII. The forest  A table set out. Enter DUKE SENIOR, AMIENS, and LORDS, like outlaws    DUKE SENIOR. I think he be transform\'d into a beast;     For I can nowhere find him like a man.   FIRST LORD. My lord, he is but even now gone hence;     Here was he merry, hearing of a song.   DUKE SENIOR. If he, compact of jars, grow musical,     We shall have shortly discord in the spheres.     Go seek him; tell him I would speak with him.                           Enter JAQUES    FIRST LORD. He saves my labour by his own approach.   DUKE SENIOR. Why, how now, monsieur! what a life is this,     That your poor friends must woo your company?     What, you look merrily!   JAQUES. A fool, a fool! I met a fool i\' th\' forest,     A motley fool. A miserable world!       As I do live by food, I met a fool,     Who laid him down and bask\'d him in the sun,     And rail\'d on Lady Fortune in good terms,     In good set terms- and yet a motley fool.     \'Good morrow, fool,\' quoth I; \'No, sir,\' quoth he,     \'Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune.\'     And then he drew a dial from his poke,     And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye,     Says very wisely, \'It is ten o\'clock;     Thus we may see,\' quoth he, \'how the world wags;     \'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine;     And after one hour more \'twill be eleven;     And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,     And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;     And thereby hangs a tale.\' When I did hear     The motley fool thus moral on the time,     My lungs began to crow like chanticleer     That fools should be so deep contemplative;     And I did laugh sans intermission     An hour by his dial. O noble fool!       A worthy fool! Motley\'s the only wear.   DUKE SENIOR. What fool is this?   JAQUES. O worthy fool! One that hath been a courtier,     And says, if ladies be but young and fair,     They have the gift to know it; and in his brain,     Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit     After a voyage, he hath strange places cramm\'d     With observation, the which he vents     In mangled forms. O that I were a fool!     I am ambitious for a motley coat.   DUKE SENIOR. Thou shalt have one.   JAQUES. It is my only suit,     Provided that you weed your better judgments     Of all opinion that grows rank in them     That I am wise. I must have liberty     Withal, as large a charter as the wind,     To blow on whom I please, for so fools have;     And they that are most galled with my folly,     They most must laugh. And why, sir, must they so?     The why is plain as way to parish church:       He that a fool doth very wisely hit     Doth very foolishly, although he smart,     Not to seem senseless of the bob; if not,     The wise man\'s folly is anatomiz\'d     Even by the squand\'ring glances of the fool.     Invest me in my motley; give me leave     To speak my mind, and I will through and through     Cleanse the foul body of th\' infected world,     If they will patiently receive my medicine.   DUKE SENIOR. Fie on thee! I can tell what thou wouldst do.   JAQUES. What, for a counter, would I do but good?   DUKE SENIOR. Most Mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin;     For thou thyself hast been a libertine,     As sensual as the brutish sting itself;     And all th\' embossed sores and headed evils     That thou with license of free foot hast caught     Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world.   JAQUES. Why, who cries out on pride     That can therein tax any private party?     Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea,       Till that the wearer\'s very means do ebb?     What woman in the city do I name     When that I say the city-woman bears     The cost of princes on unworthy shoulders?     Who can come in and say that I mean her,     When such a one as she such is her neighbour?     Or what is he of basest function     That says his bravery is not on my cost,     Thinking that I mean him, but therein suits     His folly to the mettle of my speech?     There then! how then? what then? Let me see wherein     My tongue hath wrong\'d him: if it do him right,     Then he hath wrong\'d himself; if he be free,     Why then my taxing like a wild-goose flies,     Unclaim\'d of any man. But who comes here?               Enter ORLANDO with his sword drawn    ORLANDO. Forbear, and eat no more.   JAQUES. Why, I have eat none yet.     ORLANDO. Nor shalt not, till necessity be serv\'d.   JAQUES. Of what kind should this cock come of?   DUKE SENIOR. Art thou thus bolden\'d, man, by thy distress?     Or else a rude despiser of good manners,     That in civility thou seem\'st so empty?   ORLANDO. You touch\'d my vein at first: the thorny point     Of bare distress hath ta\'en from me the show     Of smooth civility; yet arn I inland bred,     And know some nurture. But forbear, I say;     He dies that touches any of this fruit     Till I and my affairs are answered.   JAQUES. An you will not be answer\'d with reason, I must die.   DUKE SENIOR. What would you have? Your gentleness shall force     More than your force move us to gentleness.   ORLANDO. I almost die for food, and let me have it.   DUKE SENIOR. Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table.   ORLANDO. Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you;     I thought that all things had been savage here,     And therefore put I on the countenance     Of stern commandment. But whate\'er you are       That in this desert inaccessible,     Under the shade of melancholy boughs,     Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time;     If ever you have look\'d on better days,     If ever been where bells have knoll\'d to church,     If ever sat at any good man\'s feast,     If ever from your eyelids wip\'d a tear,     And know what \'tis to pity and be pitied,     Let gentleness my strong enforcement be;     In the which hope I blush, and hide my sword.   DUKE SENIOR. True is it that we have seen better days,     And have with holy bell been knoll\'d to church,     And sat at good men\'s feasts, and wip\'d our eyes     Of drops that sacred pity hath engend\'red;     And therefore sit you down in gentleness,     And take upon command what help we have     That to your wanting may be minist\'red.   ORLANDO. Then but forbear your food a little while,     Whiles, like a doe, I go to find my fawn,     And give it food. There is an old poor man       Who after me hath many a weary step     Limp\'d in pure love; till he be first suffic\'d,     Oppress\'d with two weak evils, age and hunger,     I will not touch a bit.   DUKE SENIOR. Go find him out.     And we will nothing waste till you return.   ORLANDO. I thank ye; and be blest for your good comfort!  Exit   DUKE SENIOR. Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:     This wide and universal theatre     Presents more woeful pageants than the scene     Wherein we play in.   JAQUES. All the world\'s a stage,     And all the men and women merely players;     They have their exits and their entrances;     And one man in his time plays many parts,     His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,     Mewling and puking in the nurse\'s arms;     Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel     And shining morning face, creeping like snail       Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,     Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad     Made to his mistress\' eyebrow. Then a soldier,     Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,     Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,     Seeking the bubble reputation     Even in the cannon\'s mouth. And then the justice,     In fair round belly with good capon lin\'d,     With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,     Full of wise saws and modern instances;     And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts     Into the lean and slipper\'d pantaloon,     With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,     His youthful hose, well sav\'d, a world too wide     For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,     Turning again toward childish treble, pipes     And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,     That ends this strange eventful history,     Is second childishness and mere oblivion;     Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.                      Re-enter ORLANDO with ADAM    DUKE SENIOR. Welcome. Set down your venerable burden.     And let him feed.   ORLANDO. I thank you most for him.   ADAM. So had you need;     I scarce can speak to thank you for myself.   DUKE SENIOR. Welcome; fall to. I will not trouble you     As yet to question you about your fortunes.     Give us some music; and, good cousin, sing.                           SONG             Blow, blow, thou winter wind,             Thou art not so unkind               As man\'s ingratitude;             Thy tooth is not so keen,             Because thou art not seen,               Although thy breath be rude.     Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly.       Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.             Then, heigh-ho, the holly!               This life is most jolly.              Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,             That dost not bite so nigh               As benefits forgot;             Though thou the waters warp,             Thy sting is not so sharp               As friend rememb\'red not.     Heigh-ho! sing, &c.    DUKE SENIOR. If that you were the good Sir Rowland\'s son,     As you have whisper\'d faithfully you were,     And as mine eye doth his effigies witness     Most truly limn\'d and living in your face,     Be truly welcome hither. I am the Duke     That lov\'d your father. The residue of your fortune,     Go to my cave and tell me. Good old man,     Thou art right welcome as thy master is.       Support him by the arm. Give me your hand,     And let me all your fortunes understand.              Exeunt     ACT III. SCENE I. The palace  Enter DUKE FREDERICK, OLIVER, and LORDS    FREDERICK. Not see him since! Sir, sir, that cannot be.     But were I not the better part made mercy,     I should not seek an absent argument     Of my revenge, thou present. But look to it:     Find out thy brother wheresoe\'er he is;     Seek him with candle; bring him dead or living     Within this twelvemonth, or turn thou no more     To seek a living in our territory.     Thy lands and all things that thou dost call thine     Worth seizure do we seize into our hands,     Till thou canst quit thee by thy brother\'s mouth     Of what we think against thee.   OLIVER. O that your Highness knew my heart in this!     I never lov\'d my brother in my life.   FREDERICK. More villain thou. Well, push him out of doors;     And let my officers of such a nature     Make an extent upon his house and lands.       Do this expediently, and turn him going.              Exeunt     SCENE II. The forest  Enter ORLANDO, with a paper    ORLANDO. Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love;     And thou, thrice-crowned Queen of Night, survey     With thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above,     Thy huntress\' name that my full life doth sway.     O Rosalind! these trees shall be my books,     And in their barks my thoughts I\'ll character,     That every eye which in this forest looks     Shall see thy virtue witness\'d every where.     Run, run, Orlando; carve on every tree,     The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she.             Exit                       Enter CORIN and TOUCHSTONE    CORIN. And how like you this shepherd\'s life, Master Touchstone?   TOUCHSTONE. Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good     life; but in respect that it is a shepherd\'s life, it is nought.     In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in       respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in     respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect     it is not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life,     look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no more plenty     in it, it goes much against my stomach. Hast any philosophy in     thee, shepherd?   CORIN. No more but that I know the more one sickens the worse at     ease he is; and that he that wants money, means, and content, is     without three good friends; that the property of rain is to wet,     and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep; and that a     great cause of the night is lack of the sun; that he that hath     learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding,     or comes of a very dull kindred.   TOUCHSTONE. Such a one is a natural philosopher. Wast ever in     court, shepherd?   CORIN. No, truly.   TOUCHSTONE. Then thou art damn\'d.   CORIN. Nay, I hope.   TOUCHSTONE. Truly, thou art damn\'d, like an ill-roasted egg, all on     one side.     CORIN. For not being at court? Your reason.   TOUCHSTONE. Why, if thou never wast at court thou never saw\'st good     manners; if thou never saw\'st good manners, then thy manners must     be wicked; and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation. Thou art     in a parlous state, shepherd.   CORIN. Not a whit, Touchstone. Those that are good manners at the     court are as ridiculous in the country as the behaviour of the     country is most mockable at the court. You told me you salute not     at the court, but you kiss your hands; that courtesy would be     uncleanly if courtiers were shepherds.   TOUCHSTONE. Instance, briefly; come, instance.   CORIN. Why, we are still handling our ewes; and their fells, you     know, are greasy.   TOUCHSTONE. Why, do not your courtier\'s hands sweat? And is not the     grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man? Shallow,     shallow. A better instance, I say; come.   CORIN. Besides, our hands are hard.   TOUCHSTONE. Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow again. A     more sounder instance; come.   CORIN. And they are often tarr\'d over with the surgery of our       sheep; and would you have us kiss tar? The courtier\'s hands are     perfum\'d with civet.   TOUCHSTONE. Most shallow man! thou worm\'s meat in respect of a good     piece of flesh indeed! Learn of the wise, and perpend: civet is     of a baser birth than tar- the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend     the instance, shepherd.   CORIN. You have too courtly a wit for me; I\'ll rest.   TOUCHSTONE. Wilt thou rest damn\'d? God help thee, shallow man! God     make incision in thee! thou art raw.   CORIN. Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I     wear; owe no man hate, envy no man\'s happiness; glad of other     men\'s good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my pride is     to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.   TOUCHSTONE. That is another simple sin in you: to bring the ewes     and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the     copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether, and to betray     a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to crooked-pated, old, cuckoldly ram,     out of all reasonable match. If thou beest not damn\'d for this,     the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how     thou shouldst scape.     CORIN. Here comes young Master Ganymede, my new mistress\'s brother.                    Enter ROSALIND, reading a paper    ROSALIND.   \'From the east to western Inde,               No jewel is like Rosalinde.               Her worth, being mounted on the wind,               Through all the world bears Rosalinde.               All the pictures fairest lin\'d               Are but black to Rosalinde.               Let no face be kept in mind               But the fair of Rosalinde.\'   TOUCHSTONE. I\'ll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners, and     suppers, and sleeping hours, excepted. It is the right     butter-women\'s rank to market.   ROSALIND. Out, fool!   TOUCHSTONE.   For a taste:                 If a hart do lack a hind,                 Let him seek out Rosalinde.                 If the cat will after kind,                   So be sure will Rosalinde.                 Winter garments must be lin\'d,                 So must slender Rosalinde.                 They that reap must sheaf and bind,                 Then to cart with Rosalinde.                 Sweetest nut hath sourest rind,                 Such a nut is Rosalinde.                 He that sweetest rose will find                 Must find love\'s prick and Rosalinde.     This is the very false gallop of verses; why do you infect     yourself with them?   ROSALIND. Peace, you dull fool! I found them on a tree.   TOUCHSTONE. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit.   ROSALIND. I\'ll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a     medlar. Then it will be the earliest fruit i\' th\' country; for     you\'ll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that\'s the right     virtue of the medlar.   TOUCHSTONE. You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest     judge.                          Enter CELIA, with a writing    ROSALIND. Peace!     Here comes my sister, reading; stand aside.   CELIA.   \'Why should this a desert be?              For it is unpeopled? No;            Tongues I\'ll hang on every tree              That shall civil sayings show.            Some, how brief the life of man              Runs his erring pilgrimage,            That the streching of a span              Buckles in his sum of age;            Some, of violated vows              \'Twixt the souls of friend and friend;            But upon the fairest boughs,              Or at every sentence end,            Will I Rosalinda write,              Teaching all that read to know            The quintessence of every sprite              Heaven would in little show.              Therefore heaven Nature charg\'d              That one body should be fill\'d            With all graces wide-enlarg\'d.              Nature presently distill\'d            Helen\'s cheek, but not her heart,              Cleopatra\'s majesty,            Atalanta\'s better part,              Sad Lucretia\'s modesty.            Thus Rosalinde of many parts              By heavenly synod was devis\'d,            Of many faces, eyes, and hearts,              To have the touches dearest priz\'d.            Heaven would that she these gifts should have,            And I to live and die her slave.\'   ROSALIND. O most gentle pulpiter! What tedious homily of love have     you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried \'Have     patience, good people.\'   CELIA. How now! Back, friends; shepherd, go off a little; go with     him, sirrah.   TOUCHSTONE. Come, shepherd, let us make an honourable retreat;       though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.                                      Exeunt CORIN and TOUCHSTONE   CELIA. Didst thou hear these verses?   ROSALIND. O, yes, I heard them all, and more too; for some of them     had in them more feet than the verses would bear.   CELIA. That\'s no matter; the feet might bear the verses.   ROSALIND. Ay, but the feet were lame, and could not bear themselves     without the verse, and therefore stood lamely in the verse.   CELIA. But didst thou hear without wondering how thy name should be     hang\'d and carved upon these trees?   ROSALIND. I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before you     came; for look here what I found on a palm-tree. I was never so     berhym\'d since Pythagoras\' time that I was an Irish rat, which I     can hardly remember.   CELIA. Trow you who hath done this?   ROSALIND. Is it a man?   CELIA. And a chain, that you once wore, about his neck.     Change you colour?   ROSALIND. I prithee, who?   CELIA. O Lord, Lord! it is a hard matter for friends to meet; but       mountains may be remov\'d with earthquakes, and so encounter.   ROSALIND. Nay, but who is it?   CELIA. Is it possible?   ROSALIND. Nay, I prithee now, with most petitionary vehemence, tell     me who it is.   CELIA. O wonderful, wonderful, most wonderful wonderful, and yet     again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!   ROSALIND. Good my complexion! dost thou think, though I am     caparison\'d like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my     disposition? One inch of delay more is a South Sea of discovery.     I prithee tell me who is it quickly, and speak apace. I would     thou could\'st stammer, that thou mightst pour this conceal\'d man     out of thy mouth, as wine comes out of narrow-mouth\'d bottle-     either too much at once or none at all. I prithee take the cork     out of thy mouth that I may drink thy tidings.   CELIA. So you may put a man in your belly.   ROSALIND. Is he of God\'s making? What manner of man?     Is his head worth a hat or his chin worth a beard?   CELIA. Nay, he hath but a little beard.   ROSALIND. Why, God will send more if the man will be thankful. Let       me stay the growth of his beard, if thou delay me not the     knowledge of his chin.   CELIA. It is young Orlando, that tripp\'d up the wrestler\'s heels     and your heart both in an instant.   ROSALIND. Nay, but the devil take mocking! Speak sad brow and true     maid.   CELIA. I\' faith, coz, \'tis he.   ROSALIND. Orlando?   CELIA. Orlando.   ROSALIND. Alas the day! what shall I do with my doublet and hose?     What did he when thou saw\'st him? What said he? How look\'d he?     Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where     remains he? How parted he with thee? And when shalt thou see him     again? Answer me in one word.   CELIA. You must borrow me Gargantua\'s mouth first; \'tis a word too     great for any mouth of this age\'s size. To say ay and no to these     particulars is more than to answer in a catechism.   ROSALIND. But doth he know that I am in this forest, and in man\'s     apparel? Looks he as freshly as he did the day he wrestled?   CELIA. It is as easy to count atomies as to resolve the       propositions of a lover; but take a taste of my finding him, and     relish it with good observance. I found him under a tree, like a     dropp\'d acorn.   ROSALIND. It may well be call\'d Jove\'s tree, when it drops forth     such fruit.   CELIA. Give me audience, good madam.   ROSALIND. Proceed.   CELIA. There lay he, stretch\'d along like a wounded knight.   ROSALIND. Though it be pity to see such a sight, it well becomes     the ground.   CELIA. Cry \'Holla\' to thy tongue, I prithee; it curvets     unseasonably. He was furnish\'d like a hunter.   ROSALIND. O, ominous! he comes to kill my heart.   CELIA. I would sing my song without a burden; thou bring\'st me out     of tune.   ROSALIND. Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak.     Sweet, say on.   CELIA. You bring me out. Soft! comes he not here?                     Enter ORLANDO and JAQUES      ROSALIND. \'Tis he; slink by, and note him.   JAQUES. I thank you for your company; but, good faith, I had as     lief have been myself alone.   ORLANDO. And so had I; but yet, for fashion sake, I thank you too     for your society.   JAQUES. God buy you; let\'s meet as little as we can.   ORLANDO. I do desire we may be better strangers.   JAQUES. I pray you mar no more trees with writing love songs in     their barks.   ORLANDO. I pray you mar no more of my verses with reading them     ill-favouredly.   JAQUES. Rosalind is your love\'s name?   ORLANDO. Yes, just.   JAQUES. I do not like her name.   ORLANDO. There was no thought of pleasing you when she was     christen\'d.   JAQUES. What stature is she of?   ORLANDO. Just as high as my heart.   JAQUES. You are full of pretty answers. Have you not been       acquainted with goldsmiths\' wives, and conn\'d them out of rings?   ORLANDO. Not so; but I answer you right painted cloth, from whence     you have studied your questions.   JAQUES. You have a nimble wit; I think \'twas made of Atalanta\'s     heels. Will you sit down with me? and we two will rail against     our mistress the world, and all our misery.   ORLANDO. I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against     whom I know most faults.   JAQUES. The worst fault you have is to be in love.   ORLANDO. \'Tis a fault I will not change for your best virtue. I am     weary of you.   JAQUES. By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you.   ORLANDO. He is drown\'d in the brook; look but in, and you shall see     him.   JAQUES. There I shall see mine own figure.   ORLANDO. Which I take to be either a fool or a cipher.   JAQUES. I\'ll tarry no longer with you; farewell, good Signior Love.   ORLANDO. I am glad of your departure; adieu, good Monsieur     Melancholy.                                                      Exit JAQUES     ROSALIND. [Aside to CELIA] I will speak to him like a saucy lackey,     and under that habit play the knave with him.- Do you hear,     forester?   ORLANDO. Very well; what would you?   ROSALIND. I pray you, what is\'t o\'clock?   ORLANDO. You should ask me what time o\' day; there\'s no clock in     the forest.   ROSALIND. Then there is no true lover in the forest, else sighing     every minute and groaning every hour would detect the lazy foot     of Time as well as a clock.   ORLANDO. And why not the swift foot of Time? Had not that been as     proper?   ROSALIND. By no means, sir. Time travels in divers paces with     divers persons. I\'ll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time     trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still     withal.   ORLANDO. I prithee, who doth he trot withal?   ROSALIND. Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the     contract of her marriage and the day it is solemniz\'d; if the     interim be but a se\'nnight, Time\'s pace is so hard that it seems       the length of seven year.   ORLANDO. Who ambles Time withal?   ROSALIND. With a priest that lacks Latin and a rich man that hath     not the gout; for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study,     and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain; the one     lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning, the other     knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury. These Time ambles     withal.   ORLANDO. Who doth he gallop withal?   ROSALIND. With a thief to the gallows; for though he go as softly     as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there.   ORLANDO. Who stays it still withal?   ROSALIND. With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term     and term, and then they perceive not how Time moves.   ORLANDO. Where dwell you, pretty youth?   ROSALIND. With this shepherdess, my sister; here in the skirts of     the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat.   ORLANDO. Are you native of this place?   ROSALIND. As the coney that you see dwell where she is kindled.   ORLANDO. Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in       so removed a dwelling.   ROSALIND. I have been told so of many; but indeed an old religious     uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland     man; one that knew courtship too well, for there he fell in love.     I have heard him read many lectures against it; and I thank God I     am not a woman, to be touch\'d with so many giddy offences as he     hath generally tax\'d their whole sex withal.   ORLANDO. Can you remember any of the principal evils that he laid     to the charge of women?   ROSALIND. There were none principal; they were all like one another     as halfpence are; every one fault seeming monstrous till his     fellow-fault came to match it.   ORLANDO. I prithee recount some of them.   ROSALIND. No; I will not cast away my physic but on those that are     sick. There is a man haunts the forest that abuses our young     plants with carving \'Rosalind\' on their barks; hangs odes upon     hawthorns and elegies on brambles; all, forsooth, deifying the     name of Rosalind. If I could meet that fancy-monger, I would give     him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love     upon him.     ORLANDO. I am he that is so love-shak\'d; I pray you tell me your     remedy.   ROSALIND. There is none of my uncle\'s marks upon you; he taught me     how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes I am sure you     are not prisoner.   ORLANDO. What were his marks?   ROSALIND. A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye and sunken,     which you have not; an unquestionable spirit, which you have not;     a beard neglected, which you have not; but I pardon you for that,     for simply your having in beard is a younger brother\'s revenue.     Then your hose should be ungarter\'d, your bonnet unbanded, your     sleeve unbutton\'d, your shoe untied, and every thing about you     demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such man; you     are rather point-device in your accoutrements, as loving yourself     than seeming the lover of any other.   ORLANDO. Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love.   ROSALIND. Me believe it! You may as soon make her that you love     believe it; which, I warrant, she is apter to do than to confess     she does. That is one of the points in the which women still give     the lie to their consciences. But, in good sooth, are you he that       hangs the verses on the trees wherein Rosalind is so admired?   ORLANDO. I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I     am that he, that unfortunate he.   ROSALIND. But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?   ORLANDO. Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.   ROSALIND. Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as     well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why     they are not so punish\'d and cured is that the lunacy is so     ordinary that the whippers are in love too. Yet I profess curing     it by counsel.   ORLANDO. Did you ever cure any so?   ROSALIND. Yes, one; and in this manner. He was to imagine me his     love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me; at which     time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate,     changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish,     shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles; for every     passion something and for no passion truly anything, as boys and     women are for the most part cattle of this colour; would now like     him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now     weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his       mad humour of love to a living humour of madness; which was, to     forswear the full stream of the world and to live in a nook     merely monastic. And thus I cur\'d him; and this way will I take     upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep\'s heart,     that there shall not be one spot of love in \'t.   ORLANDO. I would not be cured, youth.   ROSALIND. I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind, and     come every day to my cote and woo me.   ORLANDO. Now, by the faith of my love, I will. Tell me where it is.   ROSALIND. Go with me to it, and I\'ll show it you; and, by the way,     you shall tell me where in the forest you live. Will you go?   ORLANDO. With all my heart, good youth.   ROSALIND. Nay, you must call me Rosalind. Come, sister, will you     go?                                                   Exeunt     SCENE III. The forest  Enter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY; JAQUES behind    TOUCHSTONE. Come apace, good Audrey; I will fetch up your goats,     Audrey. And how, Audrey, am I the man yet? Doth my simple feature     content you?   AUDREY. Your features! Lord warrant us! What features?   TOUCHSTONE. I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most     capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths.   JAQUES. [Aside] O knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than Jove in a     thatch\'d house!   TOUCHSTONE. When a man\'s verses cannot be understood, nor a man\'s     good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it     strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.     Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.   AUDREY. I do not know what \'poetical\' is. Is it honest in deed and     word? Is it a true thing?   TOUCHSTONE. No, truly; for the truest poetry is the most feigning,     and lovers are given to poetry; and what they swear in poetry may     be said as lovers they do feign.     AUDREY. Do you wish, then, that the gods had made me poetical?   TOUCHSTONE. I do, truly, for thou swear\'st to me thou art honest;     now, if thou wert a poet, I might have some hope thou didst     feign.   AUDREY. Would you not have me honest?   TOUCHSTONE. No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favour\'d; for honesty     coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar.   JAQUES. [Aside] A material fool!   AUDREY. Well, I am not fair; and therefore I pray the gods make me     honest.   TOUCHSTONE. Truly, and to cast away honesty upon a foul slut were     to put good meat into an unclean dish.   AUDREY. I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am foul.   TOUCHSTONE. Well, praised be the gods for thy foulness;     sluttishness may come hereafter. But be it as it may be, I will     marry thee; and to that end I have been with Sir Oliver Martext,     the vicar of the next village, who hath promis\'d to meet me in     this place of the forest, and to couple us.   JAQUES. [Aside] I would fain see this meeting.   AUDREY. Well, the gods give us joy!     TOUCHSTONE. Amen. A man may, if he were of a fearful heart, stagger     in this attempt; for here we have no temple but the wood, no     assembly but horn-beasts. But what though? Courage! As horns are     odious, they are necessary. It is said: \'Many a man knows no end     of his goods.\' Right! Many a man has good horns and knows no end     of them. Well, that is the dowry of his wife; \'tis none of his     own getting. Horns? Even so. Poor men alone? No, no; the noblest     deer hath them as huge as the rascal. Is the single man therefore     blessed? No; as a wall\'d town is more worthier than a village, so     is the forehead of a married man more honourable than the bare     brow of a bachelor; and by how much defence is better than no     skill, by so much is horn more precious than to want. Here comes     Sir Oliver.                         Enter SIR OLIVER MARTEXT      Sir Oliver Martext, you are well met. Will you dispatch us here     under this tree, or shall we go with you to your chapel?   MARTEXT. Is there none here to give the woman?   TOUCHSTONE. I will not take her on gift of any man.     MARTEXT. Truly, she must be given, or the marriage is not lawful.   JAQUES. [Discovering himself] Proceed, proceed; I\'ll give her.   TOUCHSTONE. Good even, good Master What-ye-call\'t; how do you, sir?     You are very well met. Goddild you for your last company. I am     very glad to see you. Even a toy in hand here, sir. Nay; pray be     cover\'d.   JAQUES. Will you be married, motley?   TOUCHSTONE. As the ox hath his bow, sir, the horse his curb, and     the falcon her bells, so man hath his desires; and as pigeons     bill, so wedlock would be nibbling.   JAQUES. And will you, being a man of your breeding, be married     under a bush, like a beggar? Get you to church and have a good     priest that can tell you what marriage is; this fellow will but     join you together as they join wainscot; then one of you will     prove a shrunk panel, and like green timber warp, warp.   TOUCHSTONE. [Aside] I am not in the mind but I were better to be     married of him than of another; for he is not like to marry me     well; and not being well married, it will be a good excuse for me     hereafter to leave my wife.   JAQUES. Go thou with me, and let me counsel thee.     TOUCHSTONE. Come, sweet Audrey;     We must be married or we must live in bawdry.     Farewell, good Master Oliver. Not-                O sweet Oliver,                O brave Oliver,            Leave me not behind thee.     But-                  Wind away,                Begone, I say,            I will not to wedding with thee.                            Exeunt JAQUES, TOUCHSTONE, and AUDREY   MARTEXT. \'Tis no matter; ne\'er a fantastical knave of them all     shall flout me out of my calling.                       Exit     SCENE IV. The forest  Enter ROSALIND and CELIA    ROSALIND. Never talk to me; I will weep.   CELIA. Do, I prithee; but yet have the grace to consider that tears     do not become a man.   ROSALIND. But have I not cause to weep?   CELIA. As good cause as one would desire; therefore weep.   ROSALIND. His very hair is of the dissembling colour.   CELIA. Something browner than Judas\'s.     Marry, his kisses are Judas\'s own children.   ROSALIND. I\' faith, his hair is of a good colour.   CELIA. An excellent colour: your chestnut was ever the only colour.   ROSALIND. And his kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of     holy bread.   CELIA. He hath bought a pair of cast lips of Diana. A nun of     winter\'s sisterhood kisses not more religiously; the very ice of     chastity is in them.   ROSALIND. But why did he swear he would come this morning, and     comes not?   CELIA. Nay, certainly, there is no truth in him.     ROSALIND. Do you think so?   CELIA. Yes; I think he is not a pick-purse nor a horse-stealer; but     for his verity in love, I do think him as concave as covered     goblet or a worm-eaten nut.   ROSALIND. Not true in love?   CELIA. Yes, when he is in; but I think he is not in.   ROSALIND. You have heard him swear downright he was.   CELIA. \'Was\' is not \'is\'; besides, the oath of a lover is no     stronger than the word of a tapster; they are both the confirmer     of false reckonings. He attends here in the forest on the Duke,     your father.   ROSALIND. I met the Duke yesterday, and had much question with him.     He asked me of what parentage I was; I told him, of as good as     he; so he laugh\'d and let me go. But what talk we of fathers when     there is such a man as Orlando?   CELIA. O, that\'s a brave man! He writes brave verses, speaks brave     words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely, quite     traverse, athwart the heart of his lover; as a puny tilter, that     spurs his horse but on one side, breaks his staff like a noble     goose. But all\'s brave that youth mounts and folly guides. Who       comes here?                           Enter CORIN    CORIN. Mistress and master, you have oft enquired     After the shepherd that complain\'d of love,     Who you saw sitting by me on the turf,     Praising the proud disdainful shepherdess     That was his mistress.   CELIA. Well, and what of him?   CORIN. If you will see a pageant truly play\'d     Between the pale complexion of true love     And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain,     Go hence a little, and I shall conduct you,     If you will mark it.   ROSALIND. O, come, let us remove!     The sight of lovers feedeth those in love.     Bring us to this sight, and you shall say     I\'ll prove a busy actor in their play.                Exeunt     SCENE V. Another part of the forest  Enter SILVIUS and PHEBE    SILVIUS. Sweet Phebe, do not scorn me; do not, Phebe.     Say that you love me not; but say not so     In bitterness. The common executioner,     Whose heart th\' accustom\'d sight of death makes hard,     Falls not the axe upon the humbled neck     But first begs pardon. Will you sterner be     Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops?            Enter ROSALIND, CELIA, and CORIN, at a distance    PHEBE. I would not be thy executioner;     I fly thee, for I would not injure thee.     Thou tell\'st me there is murder in mine eye.     \'Tis pretty, sure, and very probable,     That eyes, that are the frail\'st and softest things,     Who shut their coward gates on atomies,     Should be call\'d tyrants, butchers, murderers!       Now I do frown on thee with all my heart;     And if mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee.     Now counterfeit to swoon; why, now fall down;     Or, if thou canst not, O, for shame, for shame,     Lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers.     Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee.     Scratch thee but with a pin, and there remains     Some scar of it; lean upon a rush,     The cicatrice and capable impressure     Thy palm some moment keeps; but now mine eyes,     Which I have darted at thee, hurt thee not;     Nor, I am sure, there is not force in eyes     That can do hurt.   SILVIUS. O dear Phebe,     If ever- as that ever may be near-     You meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy,     Then shall you know the wounds invisible     That love\'s keen arrows make.   PHEBE. But till that time     Come not thou near me; and when that time comes,       Afflict me with thy mocks, pity me not;     As till that time I shall not pity thee.   ROSALIND. [Advancing] And why, I pray you? Who might be your       mother,     That you insult, exult, and all at once,     Over the wretched? What though you have no beauty-     As, by my faith, I see no more in you     Than without candle may go dark to bed-     Must you be therefore proud and pitiless?     Why, what means this? Why do you look on me?     I see no more in you than in the ordinary     Of nature\'s sale-work. \'Od\'s my little life,     I think she means to tangle my eyes too!     No faith, proud mistress, hope not after it;     \'Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair,     Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream,     That can entame my spirits to your worship.     You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her,     Like foggy south, puffing with wind and rain?     You are a thousand times a properer man       Than she a woman. \'Tis such fools as you     That makes the world full of ill-favour\'d children.     \'Tis not her glass, but you, that flatters her;     And out of you she sees herself more proper     Than any of her lineaments can show her.     But, mistress, know yourself. Down on your knees,     And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man\'s love;     For I must tell you friendly in your ear:     Sell when you can; you are not for all markets.     Cry the man mercy, love him, take his offer;     Foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer.     So take her to thee, shepherd. Fare you well.   PHEBE. Sweet youth, I pray you chide a year together;     I had rather hear you chide than this man woo.   ROSALIND. He\'s fall\'n in love with your foulness, and she\'ll fall     in love with my anger. If it be so, as fast as she answers thee     with frowning looks, I\'ll sauce her with bitter words. Why look     you so upon me?   PHEBE. For no ill will I bear you.   ROSALIND. I pray you do not fall in love with me,       For I am falser than vows made in wine;     Besides, I like you not. If you will know my house,     \'Tis at the tuft of olives here hard by.     Will you go, sister? Shepherd, ply her hard.     Come, sister. Shepherdess, look on him better,     And be not proud; though all the world could see,     None could be so abus\'d in sight as he.     Come, to our flock.        Exeunt ROSALIND, CELIA, and CORIN   PHEBE. Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might:     \'Who ever lov\'d that lov\'d not at first sight?\'   SILVIUS. Sweet Phebe.   PHEBE. Ha! what say\'st thou, Silvius?   SILVIUS. Sweet Phebe, pity me.   PHEBE. Why, I arn sorry for thee, gentle Silvius.   SILVIUS. Wherever sorrow is, relief would be.     If you do sorrow at my grief in love,     By giving love, your sorrow and my grief     Were both extermin\'d.   PHEBE. Thou hast my love; is not that neighbourly?   SILVIUS. I would have you.     PHEBE. Why, that were covetousness.     Silvius, the time was that I hated thee;     And yet it is not that I bear thee love;     But since that thou canst talk of love so well,     Thy company, which erst was irksome to me,     I will endure; and I\'ll employ thee too.     But do not look for further recompense     Than thine own gladness that thou art employ\'d.   SILVIUS. So holy and so perfect is my love,     And I in such a poverty of grace,     That I shall think it a most plenteous crop     To glean the broken ears after the man     That the main harvest reaps; loose now and then     A scatt\'red smile, and that I\'ll live upon.   PHEBE. Know\'st thou the youth that spoke to me erewhile?   SILVIUS. Not very well; but I have met him oft;     And he hath bought the cottage and the bounds     That the old carlot once was master of.   PHEBE. Think not I love him, though I ask for him;     \'Tis but a peevish boy; yet he talks well.       But what care I for words? Yet words do well     When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.     It is a pretty youth- not very pretty;     But, sure, he\'s proud; and yet his pride becomes him.     He\'ll make a proper man. The best thing in him     Is his complexion; and faster than his tongue     Did make offence, his eye did heal it up.     He is not very tall; yet for his years he\'s tall;     His leg is but so-so; and yet \'tis well.     There was a pretty redness in his lip,     A little riper and more lusty red     Than that mix\'d in his cheek; \'twas just the difference     Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask.     There be some women, Silvius, had they mark\'d him     In parcels as I did, would have gone near     To fall in love with him; but, for my part,     I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet     I have more cause to hate him than to love him;     For what had he to do to chide at me?     He said mine eyes were black, and my hair black,       And, now I am rememb\'red, scorn\'d at me.     I marvel why I answer\'d not again;     But that\'s all one: omittance is no quittance.     I\'ll write to him a very taunting letter,     And thou shalt bear it; wilt thou, Silvius?   SILVIUS. Phebe, with all my heart.   PHEBE. I\'ll write it straight;     The matter\'s in my head and in my heart;     I will be bitter with him and passing short.     Go with me, Silvius.                                  Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. The forest  Enter ROSALIND, CELIA, and JAQUES    JAQUES. I prithee, pretty youth, let me be better acquainted with     thee.   ROSALIND. They say you are a melancholy fellow.   JAQUES. I am so; I do love it better than laughing.   ROSALIND. Those that are in extremity of either are abominable     fellows, and betray themselves to every modern censure worse than     drunkards.   JAQUES. Why, \'tis good to be sad and say nothing.   ROSALIND. Why then, \'tis good to be a post.   JAQUES. I have neither the scholar\'s melancholy, which is     emulation; nor the musician\'s, which is fantastical; nor the     courtier\'s, which is proud; nor the soldier\'s, which is     ambitious; nor the lawyer\'s, which is politic; nor the lady\'s,     which is nice; nor the lover\'s, which is all these; but it is a     melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted     from many objects, and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my     travels; in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous       sadness.   ROSALIND. A traveller! By my faith, you have great reason to be     sad. I fear you have sold your own lands to see other men\'s; then     to have seen much and to have nothing is to have rich eyes and     poor hands.   JAQUES. Yes, I have gain\'d my experience.                          Enter ORLANDO    ROSALIND. And your experience makes you sad. I had rather have a     fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad- and to     travel for it too.   ORLANDO. Good day, and happiness, dear Rosalind!   JAQUES. Nay, then, God buy you, an you talk in blank verse.   ROSALIND. Farewell, Monsieur Traveller; look you lisp and wear     strange suits, disable all the benefits of your own country, be     out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making     you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think you have     swam in a gondola. [Exit JAQUES] Why, how now, Orlando! where     have you been all this while? You a lover! An you serve me such       another trick, never come in my sight more.   ORLANDO. My fair Rosalind, I come within an hour of my promise.   ROSALIND. Break an hour\'s promise in love! He that will divide a     minute into a thousand parts, and break but a part of the     thousand part of a minute in the affairs of love, it may be said     of him that Cupid hath clapp\'d him o\' th\' shoulder, but I\'ll     warrant him heart-whole.   ORLANDO. Pardon me, dear Rosalind.   ROSALIND. Nay, an you be so tardy, come no more in my sight. I had     as lief be woo\'d of a snail.   ORLANDO. Of a snail!   ROSALIND. Ay, of a snail; for though he comes slowly, he carries     his house on his head- a better jointure, I think, than you make     a woman; besides, he brings his destiny with him.   ORLANDO. What\'s that?   ROSALIND. Why, horns; which such as you are fain to be beholding to     your wives for; but he comes armed in his fortune, and prevents     the slander of his wife.   ORLANDO. Virtue is no horn-maker; and my Rosalind is virtuous.   ROSALIND. And I am your Rosalind.     CELIA. It pleases him to call you so; but he hath a Rosalind of a     better leer than you.   ROSALIND. Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in a holiday humour,     and like enough to consent. What would you say to me now, an I     were your very very Rosalind?   ORLANDO. I would kiss before I spoke.   ROSALIND. Nay, you were better speak first; and when you were     gravell\'d for lack of matter, you might take occasion to kiss.     Very good orators, when they are out, they will spit; and for     lovers lacking- God warn us!- matter, the cleanliest shift is to     kiss.   ORLANDO. How if the kiss be denied?   ROSALIND. Then she puts you to entreaty, and there begins new     matter.   ORLANDO. Who could be out, being before his beloved mistress?   ROSALIND. Marry, that should you, if I were your mistress; or I     should think my honesty ranker than my wit.   ORLANDO. What, of my suit?   ROSALIND. Not out of your apparel, and yet out of your suit.     Am not I your Rosalind?     ORLANDO. I take some joy to say you are, because I would be talking     of her.   ROSALIND. Well, in her person, I say I will not have you.   ORLANDO. Then, in mine own person, I die.   ROSALIND. No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is almost six     thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any man     died in his own person, videlicet, in a love-cause. Troilus had     his brains dash\'d out with a Grecian club; yet he did what he     could to die before, and he is one of the patterns of love.     Leander, he would have liv\'d many a fair year, though Hero had     turn\'d nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer night; for,     good youth, he went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont, and,     being taken with the cramp, was drown\'d; and the foolish     chroniclers of that age found it was- Hero of Sestos. But these     are all lies: men have died from time to time, and worms have     eaten them, but not for love.   ORLANDO. I would not have my right Rosalind of this mind; for, I     protest, her frown might kill me.   ROSALIND. By this hand, it will not kill a fly. But come, now I     will be your Rosalind in a more coming-on disposition; and ask me       what you will, I will grant it.   ORLANDO. Then love me, Rosalind.   ROSALIND. Yes, faith, will I, Fridays and Saturdays, and all.   ORLANDO. And wilt thou have me?   ROSALIND. Ay, and twenty such.   ORLANDO. What sayest thou?   ROSALIND. Are you not good?   ORLANDO. I hope so.   ROSALIND. Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing? Come,     sister, you shall be the priest, and marry us. Give me your hand,     Orlando. What do you say, sister?   ORLANDO. Pray thee, marry us.   CELIA. I cannot say the words.   ROSALIND. You must begin \'Will you, Orlando\'-   CELIA. Go to. Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosalind?   ORLANDO. I will.   ROSALIND. Ay, but when?   ORLANDO. Why, now; as fast as she can marry us.   ROSALIND. Then you must say \'I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.\'   ORLANDO. I take thee, Rosalind, for wife.     ROSALIND. I might ask you for your commission; but- I do take thee,     Orlando, for my husband. There\'s a girl goes before the priest;     and, certainly, a woman\'s thought runs before her actions.   ORLANDO. So do all thoughts; they are wing\'d.   ROSALIND. Now tell me how long you would have her, after you have     possess\'d her.   ORLANDO. For ever and a day.   ROSALIND. Say \'a day\' without the \'ever.\' No, no, Orlando; men are     April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when     they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. I will     be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen,     more clamorous than a parrot against rain, more new-fangled than     an ape, more giddy in my desires than a monkey. I will weep for     nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you     are dispos\'d to be merry; I will laugh like a hyen, and that when     thou are inclin\'d to sleep.   ORLANDO. But will my Rosalind do so?   ROSALIND. By my life, she will do as I do.   ORLANDO. O, but she is wise.   ROSALIND. Or else she could not have the wit to do this. The wiser,       the waywarder. Make the doors upon a woman\'s wit, and it will out     at the casement; shut that, and \'twill out at the key-hole; stop     that, \'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.   ORLANDO. A man that had a wife with such a wit, he might say \'Wit,     whither wilt?\' ROSALIND. Nay, you might keep that check for it, till you met your     wife\'s wit going to your neighbour\'s bed.   ORLANDO. And what wit could wit have to excuse that?   ROSALIND. Marry, to say she came to seek you there. You shall never     take her without her answer, unless you take her without her     tongue. O, that woman that cannot make her fault her husband\'s     occasion, let her never nurse her child herself, for she will     breed it like a fool!   ORLANDO. For these two hours, Rosalind, I will leave thee.   ROSALIND. Alas, dear love, I cannot lack thee two hours!   ORLANDO. I must attend the Duke at dinner; by two o\'clock I will be     with thee again.   ROSALIND. Ay, go your ways, go your ways. I knew what you would     prove; my friends told me as much, and I thought no less. That     flattering tongue of yours won me. \'Tis but one cast away, and       so, come death! Two o\'clock is your hour?   ORLANDO. Ay, sweet Rosalind.   ROSALIND. By my troth, and in good earnest, and so God mend me, and     by all pretty oaths that are not dangerous, if you break one jot     of your promise, or come one minute behind your hour, I will     think you the most pathetical break-promise, and the most hollow     lover, and the most unworthy of her you call Rosalind, that may     be chosen out of the gross band of the unfaithful. Therefore     beware my censure, and keep your promise.   ORLANDO. With no less religion than if thou wert indeed my     Rosalind; so, adieu.   ROSALIND. Well, Time is the old justice that examines all such     offenders, and let Time try. Adieu.             Exit ORLANDO   CELIA. You have simply misus\'d our sex in your love-prate. We must     have your doublet and hose pluck\'d over your head, and show the     world what the bird hath done to her own nest.   ROSALIND. O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst     know how many fathom deep I am in love! But it cannot be sounded;     my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.   CELIA. Or rather, bottomless; that as fast as you pour affection       in, it runs out.   ROSALIND. No; that same wicked bastard of Venus, that was begot of     thought, conceiv\'d of spleen, and born of madness; that blind     rascally boy, that abuses every one\'s eyes, because his own are     out- let him be judge how deep I am in love. I\'ll tell thee,     Aliena, I cannot be out of the sight of Orlando. I\'ll go find a     shadow, and sigh till he come.   CELIA. And I\'ll sleep.                                  Exeunt     SCENE II. The forest          Enter JAQUES and LORDS, in the habit of foresters    JAQUES. Which is he that killed the deer?   LORD. Sir, it was I.   JAQUES. Let\'s present him to the Duke, like a Roman conqueror; and     it would do well to set the deer\'s horns upon his head for a     branch of victory. Have you no song, forester, for this purpose?   LORD. Yes, sir.   JAQUES. Sing it; \'tis no matter how it be in tune, so it make noise     enough.                      SONG.        What shall he have that kill\'d the deer?       His leather skin and horns to wear.                               [The rest shall hear this burden:]            Then sing him home.        Take thou no scorn to wear the horn;         It was a crest ere thou wast born.            Thy father\'s father wore it;            And thy father bore it.       The horn, the horn, the lusty horn,       Is not a thing to laugh to scorn.                   Exeunt     SCENE III. The forest  Enter ROSALIND and CELIA    ROSALIND. How say you now? Is it not past two o\'clock?     And here much Orlando!   CELIA. I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain, he hath     ta\'en his bow and arrows, and is gone forth- to sleep. Look, who     comes here.                        Enter SILVIUS    SILVIUS. My errand is to you, fair youth;     My gentle Phebe did bid me give you this.     I know not the contents; but, as I guess     By the stern brow and waspish action     Which she did use as she was writing of it,     It bears an angry tenour. Pardon me,     I am but as a guiltless messenger.   ROSALIND. Patience herself would startle at this letter,     And play the swaggerer. Bear this, bear all.     She says I am not fair, that I lack manners;       She calls me proud, and that she could not love me,     Were man as rare as Phoenix. \'Od\'s my will!     Her love is not the hare that I do hunt;     Why writes she so to me? Well, shepherd, well,     This is a letter of your own device.   SILVIUS. No, I protest, I know not the contents;     Phebe did write it.   ROSALIND. Come, come, you are a fool,     And turn\'d into the extremity of love.     I saw her hand; she has a leathern hand,     A freestone-colour\'d hand; I verily did think     That her old gloves were on, but \'twas her hands;     She has a huswife\'s hand- but that\'s no matter.     I say she never did invent this letter:     This is a man\'s invention, and his hand.   SILVIUS. Sure, it is hers.   ROSALIND. Why, \'tis a boisterous and a cruel style;     A style for challengers. Why, she defies me,     Like Turk to Christian. Women\'s gentle brain     Could not drop forth such giant-rude invention,       Such Ethiope words, blacker in their effect     Than in their countenance. Will you hear the letter?   SILVIUS. So please you, for I never heard it yet;     Yet heard too much of Phebe\'s cruelty.   ROSALIND. She Phebes me: mark how the tyrant writes.                                                          [Reads]              \'Art thou god to shepherd turn\'d,             That a maiden\'s heart hath burn\'d?\'      Can a woman rail thus?   SILVIUS. Call you this railing?   ROSALIND. \'Why, thy godhead laid apart,              Warr\'st thou with a woman\'s heart?\'      Did you ever hear such railing?              \'Whiles the eye of man did woo me,             That could do no vengeance to me.\'        Meaning me a beast.              \'If the scorn of your bright eyne             Have power to raise such love in mine,             Alack, in me what strange effect             Would they work in mild aspect!             Whiles you chid me, I did love;             How then might your prayers move!             He that brings this love to the             Little knows this love in me;             And by him seal up thy mind,             Whether that thy youth and kind             Will the faithful offer take             Of me and all that I can make;             Or else by him my love deny,             And then I\'ll study how to die.\'   SILVIUS. Call you this chiding?   CELIA. Alas, poor shepherd!   ROSALIND. Do you pity him? No, he deserves no pity. Wilt thou love     such a woman? What, to make thee an instrument, and play false       strains upon thee! Not to be endur\'d! Well, go your way to her,     for I see love hath made thee tame snake, and say this to her-     that if she love me, I charge her to love thee; if she will not,     I will never have her unless thou entreat for her. If you be a     true lover, hence, and not a word; for here comes more company.                                                     Exit SILVIUS                           Enter OLIVER    OLIVER. Good morrow, fair ones; pray you, if you know,     Where in the purlieus of this forest stands     A sheep-cote fenc\'d about with olive trees?   CELIA. West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom.     The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream     Left on your right hand brings you to the place.     But at this hour the house doth keep itself;     There\'s none within.   OLIVER. If that an eye may profit by a tongue,     Then should I know you by description-     Such garments, and such years: \'The boy is fair,       Of female favour, and bestows himself     Like a ripe sister; the woman low,     And browner than her brother.\' Are not you     The owner of the house I did inquire for?   CELIA. It is no boast, being ask\'d, to say we are.   OLIVER. Orlando doth commend him to you both;     And to that youth he calls his Rosalind     He sends this bloody napkin. Are you he?   ROSALIND. I am. What must we understand by this?   OLIVER. Some of my shame; if you will know of me     What man I am, and how, and why, and where,     This handkercher was stain\'d.   CELIA. I pray you, tell it.   OLIVER. When last the young Orlando parted from you,     He left a promise to return again     Within an hour; and, pacing through the forest,     Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy,     Lo, what befell! He threw his eye aside,     And mark what object did present itself.     Under an oak, whose boughs were moss\'d with age,       And high top bald with dry antiquity,     A wretched ragged man, o\'ergrown with hair,     Lay sleeping on his back. About his neck     A green and gilded snake had wreath\'d itself,     Who with her head nimble in threats approach\'d     The opening of his mouth; but suddenly,     Seeing Orlando, it unlink\'d itself,     And with indented glides did slip away     Into a bush; under which bush\'s shade     A lioness, with udders all drawn dry,     Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch,     When that the sleeping man should stir; for \'tis     The royal disposition of that beast     To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.     This seen, Orlando did approach the man,     And found it was his brother, his elder brother.   CELIA. O, I have heard him speak of that same brother;     And he did render him the most unnatural     That liv\'d amongst men.   OLIVER. And well he might so do,       For well I know he was unnatural.   ROSALIND. But, to Orlando: did he leave him there,     Food to the suck\'d and hungry lioness?   OLIVER. Twice did he turn his back, and purpos\'d so;     But kindness, nobler ever than revenge,     And nature, stronger than his just occasion,     Made him give battle to the lioness,     Who quickly fell before him; in which hurtling     From miserable slumber I awak\'d.   CELIA. Are you his brother?   ROSALIND. Was\'t you he rescu\'d?   CELIA. Was\'t you that did so oft contrive to kill him?   OLIVER. \'Twas I; but \'tis not I. I do not shame     To tell you what I was, since my conversion     So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am.   ROSALIND. But for the bloody napkin?   OLIVER. By and by.     When from the first to last, betwixt us two,     Tears our recountments had most kindly bath\'d,     As how I came into that desert place-       In brief, he led me to the gentle Duke,     Who gave me fresh array and entertainment,     Committing me unto my brother\'s love;     Who led me instantly unto his cave,     There stripp\'d himself, and here upon his arm     The lioness had torn some flesh away,     Which all this while had bled; and now he fainted,     And cried, in fainting, upon Rosalind.     Brief, I recover\'d him, bound up his wound,     And, after some small space, being strong at heart,     He sent me hither, stranger as I am,     To tell this story, that you might excuse     His broken promise, and to give this napkin,     Dy\'d in his blood, unto the shepherd youth     That he in sport doth call his Rosalind.                                                [ROSALIND swoons]   CELIA. Why, how now, Ganymede! sweet Ganymede!   OLIVER. Many will swoon when they do look on blood.   CELIA. There is more in it. Cousin Ganymede!   OLIVER. Look, he recovers.     ROSALIND. I would I were at home.   CELIA. We\'ll lead you thither.     I pray you, will you take him by the arm?   OLIVER. Be of good cheer, youth. You a man!     You lack a man\'s heart.   ROSALIND. I do so, I confess it. Ah, sirrah, a body would think     this was well counterfeited. I pray you tell your brother how     well I counterfeited. Heigh-ho!   OLIVER. This was not counterfeit; there is too great testimony in     your complexion that it was a passion of earnest.   ROSALIND. Counterfeit, I assure you.   OLIVER. Well then, take a good heart and counterfeit to be a man.   ROSALIND. So I do; but, i\' faith, I should have been a woman by     right.   CELIA. Come, you look paler and paler; pray you draw homewards.     Good sir, go with us.   OLIVER. That will I, for I must bear answer back     How you excuse my brother, Rosalind.   ROSALIND. I shall devise something; but, I pray you, commend my     counterfeiting to him. Will you go?                   Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. The forest  Enter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY    TOUCHSTONE. We shall find a time, Audrey; patience, gentle Audrey.   AUDREY. Faith, the priest was good enough, for all the old     gentleman\'s saying.   TOUCHSTONE. A most wicked Sir Oliver, Audrey, a most vile Martext.     But, Audrey, there is a youth here in the forest lays claim to     you.   AUDREY. Ay, I know who \'tis; he hath no interest in me in the     world; here comes the man you mean.                           Enter WILLIAM    TOUCHSTONE. It is meat and drink to me to see a clown. By my troth,     we that have good wits have much to answer for: we shall be     flouting; we cannot hold.   WILLIAM. Good ev\'n, Audrey.   AUDREY. God ye good ev\'n, William.   WILLIAM. And good ev\'n to you, sir.     TOUCHSTONE. Good ev\'n, gentle friend. Cover thy head, cover thy     head; nay, prithee be cover\'d. How old are you, friend?   WILLIAM. Five and twenty, sir.   TOUCHSTONE. A ripe age. Is thy name William?   WILLIAM. William, sir.   TOUCHSTONE. A fair name. Wast born i\' th\' forest here?   WILLIAM. Ay, sir, I thank God.   TOUCHSTONE. \'Thank God.\' A good answer.     Art rich?   WILLIAM. Faith, sir, so so.   TOUCHSTONE. \'So so\' is good, very good, very excellent good; and     yet it is not; it is but so so. Art thou wise?   WILLIAM. Ay, sir, I have a pretty wit.   TOUCHSTONE. Why, thou say\'st well. I do now remember a saying: \'The     fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be     a fool.\' The heathen philosopher, when he had a desire to eat a     grape, would open his lips when he put it into his mouth; meaning     thereby that grapes were made to eat and lips to open. You do     love this maid?   WILLIAM. I do, sir.     TOUCHSTONE. Give me your hand. Art thou learned?   WILLIAM. No, sir.   TOUCHSTONE. Then learn this of me: to have is to have; for it is a     figure in rhetoric that drink, being pour\'d out of cup into a     glass, by filling the one doth empty the other; for all your     writers do consent that ipse is he; now, you are not ipse, for I     am he.   WILLIAM. Which he, sir?   TOUCHSTONE. He, sir, that must marry this woman. Therefore, you     clown, abandon- which is in the vulgar leave- the society- which     in the boorish is company- of this female- which in the common is     woman- which together is: abandon the society of this female; or,     clown, thou perishest; or, to thy better understanding, diest;     or, to wit, I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy life into     death, thy liberty into bondage. I will deal in poison with thee,     or in bastinado, or in steel; I will bandy with thee in faction;     will o\'er-run thee with policy; I will kill thee a hundred and     fifty ways; therefore tremble and depart.   AUDREY. Do, good William.   WILLIAM. God rest you merry, sir.                         Exit                              Enter CORIN    CORIN. Our master and mistress seeks you; come away, away.   TOUCHSTONE. Trip, Audrey, trip, Audrey. I attend, I attend.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE II. The forest  Enter ORLANDO and OLIVER    ORLANDO. Is\'t possible that on so little acquaintance you should     like her? that but seeing you should love her? and loving woo?     and, wooing, she should grant? and will you persever to enjoy     her?   OLIVER. Neither call the giddiness of it in question, the poverty     of her, the small acquaintance, my sudden wooing, nor her sudden     consenting; but say with me, I love Aliena; say with her that she     loves me; consent with both that we may enjoy each other. It     shall be to your good; for my father\'s house and all the revenue     that was old Sir Rowland\'s will I estate upon you, and here live     and die a shepherd.   ORLANDO. You have my consent. Let your wedding be to-morrow.     Thither will I invite the Duke and all\'s contented followers. Go     you and prepare Aliena; for, look you, here comes my Rosalind.                          Enter ROSALIND      ROSALIND. God save you, brother.   OLIVER. And you, fair sister.                             Exit   ROSALIND. O, my dear Orlando, how it grieves me to see thee wear     thy heart in a scarf!   ORLANDO. It is my arm.   ROSALIND. I thought thy heart had been wounded with the claws of a     lion.   ORLANDO. Wounded it is, but with the eyes of a lady.   ROSALIND. Did your brother tell you how I counterfeited to swoon     when he show\'d me your handkercher?   ORLANDO. Ay, and greater wonders than that.   ROSALIND. O, I know where you are. Nay, \'tis true. There was never     any thing so sudden but the fight of two rams and Caesar\'s     thrasonical brag of \'I came, saw, and overcame.\' For your brother     and my sister no sooner met but they look\'d; no sooner look\'d but     they lov\'d; no sooner lov\'d but they sigh\'d; no sooner sigh\'d but     they ask\'d one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but     they sought the remedy- and in these degrees have they made pair     of stairs to marriage, which they will climb incontinent, or else     be incontinent before marriage. They are in the very wrath of       love, and they will together. Clubs cannot part them.   ORLANDO. They shall be married to-morrow; and I will bid the Duke     to the nuptial. But, O, how bitter a thing it is to look into     happiness through another man\'s eyes! By so much the more shall I     to-morrow be at the height of heart-heaviness, by how much I     shall think my brother happy in having what he wishes for.   ROSALIND. Why, then, to-morrow I cannot serve your turn for     Rosalind?   ORLANDO. I can live no longer by thinking.   ROSALIND. I will weary you, then, no longer with idle talking. Know     of me then- for now I speak to some purpose- that I know you are     a gentleman of good conceit. I speak not this that you should     bear a good opinion of my knowledge, insomuch I say I know you     are; neither do I labour for a greater esteem than may in some     little measure draw a belief from you, to do yourself good, and     not to grace me. Believe then, if you please, that I can do     strange things. I have, since I was three year old, convers\'d     with a magician, most profound in his art and yet not damnable.     If you do love Rosalind so near the heart as your gesture cries     it out, when your brother marries Aliena shall you marry her. I       know into what straits of fortune she is driven; and it is not     impossible to me, if it appear not inconvenient to you, to set     her before your eyes to-morrow, human as she is, and without any     danger.   ORLANDO. Speak\'st thou in sober meanings?   ROSALIND. By my life, I do; which I tender dearly, though I say I     am a magician. Therefore put you in your best array, bid your     friends; for if you will be married to-morrow, you shall; and to     Rosalind, if you will.                       Enter SILVIUS and PHEBE      Look, here comes a lover of mine, and a lover of hers.   PHEBE. Youth, you have done me much ungentleness     To show the letter that I writ to you.   ROSALIND. I care not if I have. It is my study     To seem despiteful and ungentle to you.     You are there follow\'d by a faithful shepherd;     Look upon him, love him; he worships you.   PHEBE. Good shepherd, tell this youth what \'tis to love.     SILVIUS. It is to be all made of sighs and tears;     And so am I for Phebe.   PHEBE. And I for Ganymede.   ORLANDO. And I for Rosalind.   ROSALIND. And I for no woman.   SILVIUS. It is to be all made of faith and service;     And so am I for Phebe.   PHEBE. And I for Ganymede.   ORLANDO. And I for Rosalind.   ROSALIND. And I for no woman.   SILVIUS. It is to be all made of fantasy,     All made of passion, and all made of wishes;     All adoration, duty, and observance,     All humbleness, all patience, and impatience,     All purity, all trial, all obedience;     And so am I for Phebe.   PHEBE. And so am I for Ganymede.   ORLANDO. And so am I for Rosalind.   ROSALIND. And so am I for no woman.   PHEBE. If this be so, why blame you me to love you?     SILVIUS. If this be so, why blame you me to love you?   ORLANDO. If this be so, why blame you me to love you?   ROSALIND. Why do you speak too, \'Why blame you me to love you?\'   ORLANDO. To her that is not here, nor doth not hear.   ROSALIND. Pray you, no more of this; \'tis like the howling of Irish     wolves against the moon. [To SILVIUS] I will help you if I can.     [To PHEBE] I would love you if I could.- To-morrow meet me all     together. [ To PHEBE ] I will marry you if ever I marry woman,     and I\'ll be married to-morrow. [To ORLANDO] I will satisfy you if     ever I satisfied man, and you shall be married to-morrow. [To     Silvius] I will content you if what pleases you contents you, and     you shall be married to-morrow. [To ORLANDO] As you love     Rosalind, meet. [To SILVIUS] As you love Phebe, meet;- and as I     love no woman, I\'ll meet. So, fare you well; I have left you     commands.   SILVIUS. I\'ll not fail, if I live.   PHEBE. Nor I.   ORLANDO. Nor I.                                         Exeunt     SCENE III. The forest  Enter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY    TOUCHSTONE. To-morrow is the joyful day, Audre\'y; to-morrow will we     be married.   AUDREY. I do desire it with all my heart; and I hope it is no     dishonest desire to desire to be a woman of the world. Here come     two of the banish\'d Duke\'s pages.                              Enter two PAGES    FIRST PAGE. Well met, honest gentleman.   TOUCHSTONE. By my troth, well met. Come sit, sit, and a song.   SECOND PAGE. We are for you; sit i\' th\' middle.   FIRST PAGE. Shall we clap into\'t roundly, without hawking, or     spitting, or saying we are hoarse, which are the only prologues     to a bad voice?   SECOND PAGE. I\'faith, i\'faith; and both in a tune, like two gipsies     on a horse.                          SONG.         It was a lover and his lass,           With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,         That o\'er the green corn-field did pass           In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,         When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding.         Sweet lovers love the spring.          Between the acres of the rye,           With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,         These pretty country folks would lie,           In the spring time, &c.          This carol they began that hour,           With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,         How that a life was but a flower,           In the spring time, &c.          And therefore take the present time,           With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,           For love is crowned with the prime,           In the spring time, &c.    TOUCHSTONE. Truly, young gentlemen, though there was no great     matter in the ditty, yet the note was very untuneable.   FIRST PAGE. YOU are deceiv\'d, sir; we kept time, we lost not our     time.   TOUCHSTONE. By my troth, yes; I count it but time lost to hear such     a foolish song. God buy you; and God mend your voices. Come,     Audrey.                                               Exeunt     SCENE IV. The forest  Enter DUKE SENIOR, AMIENS, JAQUES, ORLANDO, OLIVER, and CELIA    DUKE SENIOR. Dost thou believe, Orlando, that the boy     Can do all this that he hath promised?   ORLANDO. I sometimes do believe and sometimes do not:     As those that fear they hope, and know they fear.                 Enter ROSALIND, SILVIUS, and PHEBE    ROSALIND. Patience once more, whiles our compact is urg\'d:     You say, if I bring in your Rosalind,     You will bestow her on Orlando here?   DUKE SENIOR. That would I, had I kingdoms to give with her.   ROSALIND. And you say you will have her when I bring her?   ORLANDO. That would I, were I of all kingdoms king.   ROSALIND. You say you\'ll marry me, if I be willing?   PHEBE. That will I, should I die the hour after.   ROSALIND. But if you do refuse to marry me,       You\'ll give yourself to this most faithful shepherd?   PHEBE. So is the bargain.   ROSALIND. You say that you\'ll have Phebe, if she will?   SILVIUS. Though to have her and death were both one thing.   ROSALIND. I have promis\'d to make all this matter even.     Keep you your word, O Duke, to give your daughter;     You yours, Orlando, to receive his daughter;     Keep your word, Phebe, that you\'ll marry me,     Or else, refusing me, to wed this shepherd;     Keep your word, Silvius, that you\'ll marry her     If she refuse me; and from hence I go,     To make these doubts all even.                                        Exeunt ROSALIND and CELIA   DUKE SENIOR. I do remember in this shepherd boy     Some lively touches of my daughter\'s favour.   ORLANDO. My lord, the first time that I ever saw him     Methought he was a brother to your daughter.     But, my good lord, this boy is forest-born,     And hath been tutor\'d in the rudiments     Of many desperate studies by his uncle,       Whom he reports to be a great magician,     Obscured in the circle of this forest.                      Enter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY    JAQUES. There is, sure, another flood toward, and these couples are     coming to the ark. Here comes a pair of very strange beasts which     in all tongues are call\'d fools.   TOUCHSTONE. Salutation and greeting to you all!   JAQUES. Good my lord, bid him welcome. This is the motley-minded     gentleman that I have so often met in the forest. He hath been a      courtier, he swears.   TOUCHSTONE. If any man doubt that, let him put me to my purgation.     I have trod a measure; I have flatt\'red a lady; I have been     politic with my friend, smooth with mine enemy; I have undone     three tailors; I have had four quarrels, and like to have fought     one.   JAQUES. And how was that ta\'en up?   TOUCHSTONE. Faith, we met, and found the quarrel was upon the     seventh cause.     JAQUES. How seventh cause? Good my lord, like this fellow.   DUKE SENIOR. I like him very well.   TOUCHSTONE. God \'ild you, sir; I desire you of the like. I press in     here, sir, amongst the rest of the country copulatives, to swear     and to forswear, according as marriage binds and blood breaks. A     poor virgin, sir, an ill-favour\'d thing, sir, but mine own; a     poor humour of mine, sir, to take that that man else will. Rich     honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house; as your pearl     in your foul oyster.   DUKE SENIOR. By my faith, he is very swift and sententious.   TOUCHSTONE. According to the fool\'s bolt, sir, and such dulcet     diseases.   JAQUES. But, for the seventh cause: how did you find the quarrel on     the seventh cause?   TOUCHSTONE. Upon a lie seven times removed- bear your body more     seeming, Audrey- as thus, sir. I did dislike the cut of a certain     courtier\'s beard; he sent me word, if I said his beard was not     cut well, he was in the mind it was. This is call\'d the Retort     Courteous. If I sent him word again it was not well cut, he would     send me word he cut it to please himself. This is call\'d the Quip       Modest. If again it was not well cut, he disabled my judgment.     This is call\'d the Reply Churlish. If again it was not well cut,     he would answer I spake not true. This is call\'d the Reproof     Valiant. If again it was not well cut, he would say I lie. This     is call\'d the Countercheck Quarrelsome. And so to the Lie     Circumstantial and the Lie Direct.   JAQUES. And how oft did you say his beard was not well cut?   TOUCHSTONE. I durst go no further than the Lie Circumstantial, nor     he durst not give me the Lie Direct; and so we measur\'d swords     and parted.   JAQUES. Can you nominate in order now the degrees of the lie?   TOUCHSTONE. O, sir, we quarrel in print by the book, as you have     books for good manners. I will name you the degrees. The first,     the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the     Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the     Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance;     the seventh, the Lie Direct. All these you may avoid but the Lie     Direct; and you may avoid that too with an If. I knew when seven     justices could not take up a quarrel; but when the parties were     met themselves, one of them thought but of an If, as: \'If you       said so, then I said so.\' And they shook hands, and swore     brothers. Your If is the only peace-maker; much virtue in If.   JAQUES. Is not this a rare fellow, my lord?     He\'s as good at any thing, and yet a fool.   DUKE SENIOR. He uses his folly like a stalking-horse, and under the     presentation of that he shoots his wit:            Enter HYMEN, ROSALIND, and CELIA. Still MUSIC      HYMEN.    Then is there mirth in heaven,               When earthly things made even                 Atone together.               Good Duke, receive thy daughter;               Hymen from heaven brought her,                 Yea, brought her hither,               That thou mightst join her hand with his,               Whose heart within his bosom is.   ROSALIND. [To DUKE] To you I give myself, for I am yours.     [To ORLANDO] To you I give myself, for I am yours.   DUKE SENIOR. If there be truth in sight, you are my daughter.     ORLANDO. If there be truth in sight, you are my Rosalind.   PHEBE. If sight and shape be true,     Why then, my love adieu!   ROSALIND. I\'ll have no father, if you be not he;     I\'ll have no husband, if you be not he;     Nor ne\'er wed woman, if you be not she.   HYMEN.    Peace, ho! I bar confusion;             \'Tis I must make conclusion               Of these most strange events.             Here\'s eight that must take hands             To join in Hymen\'s bands,               If truth holds true contents.             You and you no cross shall part;             You and you are heart in heart;             You to his love must accord,             Or have a woman to your lord;             You and you are sure together,             As the winter to foul weather.             Whiles a wedlock-hymn we sing,             Feed yourselves with questioning,               That reason wonder may diminish,             How thus we met, and these things finish.                         SONG             Wedding is great Juno\'s crown;               O blessed bond of board and bed!             \'Tis Hymen peoples every town;               High wedlock then be honoured.             Honour, high honour, and renown,             To Hymen, god of every town!    DUKE SENIOR. O my dear niece, welcome thou art to me!     Even daughter, welcome in no less degree.   PHEBE. I will not eat my word, now thou art mine;     Thy faith my fancy to thee doth combine.                   Enter JAQUES de BOYS    JAQUES de BOYS. Let me have audience for a word or two.     I am the second son of old Sir Rowland,       That bring these tidings to this fair assembly.     Duke Frederick, hearing how that every day     Men of great worth resorted to this forest,     Address\'d a mighty power; which were on foot,     In his own conduct, purposely to take     His brother here, and put him to the sword;     And to the skirts of this wild wood he came,     Where, meeting with an old religious man,     After some question with him, was converted     Both from his enterprise and from the world;     His crown bequeathing to his banish\'d brother,     And all their lands restor\'d to them again     That were with him exil\'d. This to be true     I do engage my life.   DUKE SENIOR. Welcome, young man.     Thou offer\'st fairly to thy brothers\' wedding:     To one, his lands withheld; and to the other,     A land itself at large, a potent dukedom.     First, in this forest let us do those ends     That here were well begun and well begot;       And after, every of this happy number,     That have endur\'d shrewd days and nights with us,     Shall share the good of our returned fortune,     According to the measure of their states.     Meantime, forget this new-fall\'n dignity,     And fall into our rustic revelry.     Play, music; and you brides and bridegrooms all,     With measure heap\'d in joy, to th\' measures fall.   JAQUES. Sir, by your patience. If I heard you rightly,     The Duke hath put on a religious life,     And thrown into neglect the pompous court.   JAQUES DE BOYS. He hath.   JAQUES. To him will I. Out of these convertites     There is much matter to be heard and learn\'d.     [To DUKE] You to your former honour I bequeath;     Your patience and your virtue well deserves it.     [To ORLANDO] You to a love that your true faith doth merit;     [To OLIVER] You to your land, and love, and great allies     [To SILVIUS] You to a long and well-deserved bed;     [To TOUCHSTONE] And you to wrangling; for thy loving voyage       Is but for two months victuall\'d.- So to your pleasures;     I am for other than for dancing measures.   DUKE SENIOR. Stay, Jaques, stay.   JAQUES. To see no pastime I. What you would have     I\'ll stay to know at your abandon\'d cave.               Exit   DUKE SENIOR. Proceed, proceed. We will begin these rites,     As we do trust they\'ll end, in true delights.    [A dance] Exeunt  EPILOGUE                            EPILOGUE.   ROSALIND. It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but     it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue. If it     be true that good wine needs no bush, \'tis true that a good play     needs no epilogue. Yet to good wine they do use good bushes; and     good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a     case am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue, nor cannot     insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play! I am not     furnish\'d like a beggar; therefore to beg will not become me. My     way is to conjure you; and I\'ll begin with the women. I charge     you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of     this play as please you; and I charge you, O men, for the love     you bear to women- as I perceive by your simp\'ring none of you     hates them- that between you and the women the play may please.     If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that     pleas\'d me, complexions that lik\'d me, and breaths that I defied     not; and, I am sure, as many as have good beards, or good faces,     or sweet breaths, will, for my kind offer, when I make curtsy,     bid me farewell.  THE END      1593  THE COMEDY OF ERRORS  by William Shakespeare    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>   DRAMATIS PERSONAE  SOLINUS, Duke of Ephesus AEGEON, a merchant of Syracuse  ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS twin brothers and sons to ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE Aegion and Aemelia  DROMIO OF EPHESUS twin brothers, and attendants on DROMIO OF SYRACUSE the two Antipholuses  BALTHAZAR, a merchant ANGELO, a goldsmith FIRST MERCHANT, friend to Antipholus of Syracuse SECOND MERCHANT, to whom Angelo is a debtor PINCH, a schoolmaster  AEMILIA, wife to AEgeon; an abbess at Ephesus ADRIANA, wife to Antipholus of Ephesus LUCIANA, her sister LUCE, servant to Adriana  A COURTEZAN  Gaoler, Officers, Attendants      SCENE: Ephesus   <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>     THE COMEDY OF ERRORS  ACT I. SCENE 1  A hall in the DUKE\'S palace  Enter the DUKE OF EPHESUS, AEGEON, the Merchant of Syracuse, GAOLER, OFFICERS, and other ATTENDANTS  AEGEON. Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall,   And by the doom of death end woes and all. DUKE. Merchant of Syracuse, plead no more;   I am not partial to infringe our laws.   The enmity and discord which of late   Sprung from the rancorous outrage of your duke   To merchants, our well-dealing countrymen,   Who, wanting guilders to redeem their lives,   Have seal\'d his rigorous statutes with their bloods,   Excludes all pity from our threat\'ning looks.   For, since the mortal and intestine jars   \'Twixt thy seditious countrymen and us,   It hath in solemn synods been decreed,   Both by the Syracusians and ourselves,   To admit no traffic to our adverse towns;   Nay, more: if any born at Ephesus   Be seen at any Syracusian marts and fairs;   Again, if any Syracusian born   Come to the bay of Ephesus-he dies,   His goods confiscate to the Duke\'s dispose,   Unless a thousand marks be levied,   To quit the penalty and to ransom him.   Thy substance, valued at the highest rate,   Cannot amount unto a hundred marks;   Therefore by law thou art condemn\'d to die. AEGEON. Yet this my comfort: when your words are done,   My woes end likewise with the evening sun. DUKE. Well, Syracusian, say in brief the cause   Why thou departed\'st from thy native home,   And for what cause thou cam\'st to Ephesus. AEGEON. A heavier task could not have been impos\'d   Than I to speak my griefs unspeakable;   Yet, that the world may witness that my end   Was wrought by nature, not by vile offence,   I\'ll utter what my sorrow gives me leave.   In Syracuse was I born, and wed   Unto a woman, happy but for me,   And by me, had not our hap been bad.   With her I liv\'d in joy; our wealth increas\'d   By prosperous voyages I often made   To Epidamnum; till my factor\'s death,   And the great care of goods at random left,   Drew me from kind embracements of my spouse:   From whom my absence was not six months old,   Before herself, almost at fainting under   The pleasing punishment that women bear,   Had made provision for her following me,   And soon and safe arrived where I was.   There had she not been long but she became   A joyful mother of two goodly sons;   And, which was strange, the one so like the other   As could not be disdnguish\'d but by names.   That very hour, and in the self-same inn,   A mean woman was delivered   Of such a burden, male twins, both alike.   Those, for their parents were exceeding poor,   I bought, and brought up to attend my sons.   My wife, not meanly proud of two such boys,   Made daily motions for our home return;   Unwilling, I agreed. Alas! too soon   We came aboard.   A league from Epidamnum had we sail\'d   Before the always-wind-obeying deep   Gave any tragic instance of our harm:   But longer did we not retain much hope,   For what obscured light the heavens did grant   Did but convey unto our fearful minds   A doubtful warrant of immediate death;   Which though myself would gladly have embrac\'d,   Yet the incessant weepings of my wife,   Weeping before for what she saw must come,   And piteous plainings of the pretty babes,   That mourn\'d for fashion, ignorant what to fear,   Forc\'d me to seek delays for them and me.   And this it was, for other means was none:   The sailors sought for safety by our boat,   And left the ship, then sinking-ripe, to us;   My wife, more careful for the latter-born,   Had fast\'ned him unto a small spare mast,   Such as sea-faring men provide for storms;   To him one of the other twins was bound,   Whilst I had been like heedful of the other.   The children thus dispos\'d, my wife and I,   Fixing our eyes on whom our care was fix\'d,   Fast\'ned ourselves at either end the mast,   And, floating straight, obedient to the stream,   Was carried towards Corinth, as we thought.   At length the sun, gazing upon the earth,   Dispers\'d those vapours that offended us;   And, by the benefit of his wished light,   The seas wax\'d calm, and we discovered   Two ships from far making amain to us-   Of Corinth that, of Epidaurus this.   But ere they came-O, let me say no more!   Gather the sequel by that went before. DUKE. Nay, forward, old man, do not break off so;   For we may pity, though not pardon thee. AEGEON. O, had the gods done so, I had not now   Worthily term\'d them merciless to us!   For, ere the ships could meet by twice five leagues,   We were encount\'red by a mighty rock,   Which being violently borne upon,   Our helpful ship was splitted in the midst;   So that, in this unjust divorce of us,   Fortune had left to both of us alike   What to delight in, what to sorrow for.   Her part, poor soul, seeming as burdened   With lesser weight, but not with lesser woe,   Was carried with more speed before the wind;   And in our sight they three were taken up   By fishermen of Corinth, as we thought.   At length another ship had seiz\'d on us;   And, knowing whom it was their hap to save,   Gave healthful welcome to their ship-wreck\'d guests,   And would have reft the fishers of their prey,   Had not their bark been very slow of sail;   And therefore homeward did they bend their course.   Thus have you heard me sever\'d from my bliss,   That by misfortunes was my life prolong\'d,   To tell sad stories of my own mishaps. DUKE. And, for the sake of them thou sorrowest for,   Do me the favour to dilate at full   What have befall\'n of them and thee till now. AEGEON. My youngest boy, and yet my eldest care,   At eighteen years became inquisitive   After his brother, and importun\'d me   That his attendant-so his case was like,   Reft of his brother, but retain\'d his name-   Might bear him company in the quest of him;   Whom whilst I laboured of a love to see,   I hazarded the loss of whom I lov\'d.   Five summers have I spent in farthest Greece,   Roaming clean through the bounds of Asia,   And, coasting homeward, came to Ephesus;   Hopeless to find, yet loath to leave unsought   Or that or any place that harbours men.   But here must end the story of my life;   And happy were I in my timely death,   Could all my travels warrant me they live. DUKE. Hapless, Aegeon, whom the fates have mark\'d   To bear the extremity of dire mishap!   Now, trust me, were it not against our laws,   Against my crown, my oath, my dignity,   Which princes, would they, may not disannul,   My soul should sue as advocate for thee.   But though thou art adjudged to the death,   And passed sentence may not be recall\'d   But to our honour\'s great disparagement,   Yet will I favour thee in what I can.   Therefore, merchant, I\'ll limit thee this day   To seek thy help by beneficial hap.   Try all the friends thou hast in Ephesus;   Beg thou, or borrow, to make up the sum,   And live; if no, then thou art doom\'d to die.   Gaoler, take him to thy custody. GAOLER. I will, my lord. AEGEON. Hopeless and helpless doth Aegeon wend,   But to procrastinate his lifeless end. <Exeunt   SCENE 2  The mart  Enter ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE, DROMIO OF SYRACUSE, and FIRST MERCHANT  FIRST MERCHANT. Therefore, give out you are of Epidamnum,   Lest that your goods too soon be confiscate.   This very day a Syracusian merchant   Is apprehended for arrival here;   And, not being able to buy out his life,   According to the statute of the town,   Dies ere the weary sun set in the west.   There is your money that I had to keep. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Go bear it to the Centaur, where we host.   And stay there, Dromio, till I come to thee.   Within this hour it will be dinner-time;   Till that, I\'ll view the manners of the town,   Peruse the traders, gaze upon the buildings,   And then return and sleep within mine inn;   For with long travel I am stiff and weary.   Get thee away. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Many a man would take you at your word,   And go indeed, having so good a mean. <Exit ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. A trusty villain, sir, that very oft,   When I am dull with care and melancholy,   Lightens my humour with his merry jests.   What, will you walk with me about the town,   And then go to my inn and dine with me? FIRST MERCHANT. I am invited, sir, to certain merchants,   Of whom I hope to make much benefit;   I crave your pardon. Soon at five o\'clock,   Please you, I\'ll meet with you upon the mart,   And afterward consort you till bed time.   My present business calls me from you now. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Farewell till then. I will go lose myself,   And wander up and down to view the city. FIRST MERCHANT. Sir, I commend you to your own content. <Exit FIRST MERCHANT ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. He that commends me to mine own content   Commends me to the thing I cannot get.   I to the world am like a drop of water   That in the ocean seeks another drop,   Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,   Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.   So I, to find a mother and a brother,   In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.  Enter DROMIO OF EPHESUS    Here comes the almanac of my true date.   What now? How chance thou art return\'d so soon? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Return\'d so soon! rather approach\'d too late.   The capon burns, the pig falls from the spit;   The clock hath strucken twelve upon the bell-   My mistress made it one upon my cheek;   She is so hot because the meat is cold,   The meat is cold because you come not home,   You come not home because you have no stomach,   You have no stomach, having broke your fast;   But we, that know what \'tis to fast and pray,   Are penitent for your default to-day. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Stop in your wind, sir; tell me this, I pray:   Where have you left the money that I gave you? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. O-Sixpence that I had a Wednesday last   To pay the saddler for my mistress\' crupper?   The saddler had it, sir; I kept it not. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I am not in a sportive humour now;   Tell me, and dally not, where is the money?   We being strangers here, how dar\'st thou trust   So great a charge from thine own custody? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I pray you jest, sir, as you sit at dinner.   I from my mistress come to you in post;   If I return, I shall be post indeed,   For she will score your fault upon my pate.   Methinks your maw, like mine, should be your clock,   And strike you home without a messenger. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Come, Dromio, come, these jests are out of season;   Reserve them till a merrier hour than this.   Where is the gold I gave in charge to thee? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. To me, sir? Why, you gave no gold to me.   ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Come on, sir knave, have done your foolishness,   And tell me how thou hast dispos\'d thy charge. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. My charge was but to fetch you from the mart   Home to your house, the Phoenix, sir, to dinner.   My mistress and her sister stays for you. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Now, as I am a Christian, answer me   In what safe place you have bestow\'d my money,   Or I shall break that merry sconce of yours,   That stands on tricks when I am undispos\'d.   Where is the thousand marks thou hadst of me? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I have some marks of yours upon my pate,   Some of my mistress\' marks upon my shoulders,   But not a thousand marks between you both.   If I should pay your worship those again,   Perchance you will not bear them patiently. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thy mistress\' marks! What mistress, slave, hast thou? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Your worship\'s wife, my mistress at the Phoenix;   She that doth fast till you come home to dinner,   And prays that you will hie you home to dinner. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What, wilt thou flout me thus unto my face,   Being forbid? There, take you that, sir knave. [Beats him] DROMIO OF EPHESUS. What mean you, sir? For God\'s sake hold your hands!   Nay, an you will not, sir, I\'ll take my heels. <Exit ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Upon my life, by some device or other   The villain is o\'erraught of all my money.   They say this town is full of cozenage;   As, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,   Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,   Soul-killing witches that deform the body,   Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,   And many such-like liberties of sin;   If it prove so, I will be gone the sooner.   I\'ll to the Centaur to go seek this slave.   I greatly fear my money is not safe. <Exit   <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      ACT Il. SCENE 1  The house of ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS  Enter ADRIANA, wife to ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS, with LUCIANA, her sister  ADRIANA. Neither my husband nor the slave return\'d   That in such haste I sent to seek his master!   Sure, Luciana, it is two o\'clock. LUCIANA. Perhaps some merchant hath invited him,   And from the mart he\'s somewhere gone to dinner;   Good sister, let us dine, and never fret.   A man is master of his liberty;   Time is their master, and when they see time,   They\'ll go or come. If so, be patient, sister. ADRIANA. Why should their liberty than ours be more? LUCIANA. Because their business still lies out o\' door. ADRIANA. Look when I serve him so, he takes it ill. LUCIANA. O, know he is the bridle of your will. ADRIANA. There\'s none but asses will be bridled so. LUCIANA. Why, headstrong liberty is lash\'d with woe.   There\'s nothing situate under heaven\'s eye   But hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky.   The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls,   Are their males\' subjects, and at their controls.   Man, more divine, the master of all these,   Lord of the wide world and wild wat\'ry seas,   Indu\'d with intellectual sense and souls,   Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls,   Are masters to their females, and their lords;   Then let your will attend on their accords. ADRIANA. This servitude makes you to keep unwed. LUCIANA. Not this, but troubles of the marriage-bed. ADRIANA. But, were you wedded, you would bear some sway. LUCIANA. Ere I learn love, I\'ll practise to obey. ADRIANA. How if your husband start some other where? LUCIANA. Till he come home again, I would forbear. ADRIANA. Patience unmov\'d! no marvel though she pause:   They can be meek that have no other cause.   A wretched soul, bruis\'d with adversity,   We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;   But were we burd\'ned with like weight of pain,   As much, or more, we should ourselves complain.   So thou, that hast no unkind mate to grieve thee,   With urging helpless patience would relieve me;   But if thou live to see like right bereft,   This fool-begg\'d patience in thee will be left. LUCIANA. Well, I will marry one day, but to try.   Here comes your man, now is your husband nigh.  Enter DROMIO OF EPHESUS  ADRIANA. Say, is your tardy master now at hand? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, he\'s at two hands with me, and that my two   ears can witness. ADRIANA. Say, didst thou speak with him? Know\'st thou his mind? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Ay, ay, he told his mind upon mine ear.   Beshrew his hand, I scarce could understand it. LUCIANA. Spake he so doubtfully thou could\'st not feel his meaning? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, he struck so plainly I could to   well feel his blows; and withal so doubtfully that I could   scarce understand them. ADRIANA. But say, I prithee, is he coming home?   It seems he hath great care to please his wife. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Why, mistress, sure my master is horn-mad. ADRIANA. Horn-mad, thou villain! DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I mean not cuckold-mad;   But, sure, he is stark mad.   When I desir\'d him to come home to dinner,   He ask\'d me for a thousand marks in gold.   "Tis dinner time\' quoth I; \'My gold!\' quoth he.   \'Your meat doth burn\' quoth I; \'My gold!\' quoth he.   \'Will you come home?\' quoth I; \'My gold!\' quoth he.   \'Where is the thousand marks I gave thee, villain?\'   \'The pig\' quoth I \'is burn\'d\'; \'My gold!\' quoth he.   \'My mistress, sir,\' quoth I; \'Hang up thy mistress;   I know not thy mistress; out on thy mistress.\' LUCIANA. Quoth who? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Quoth my master.   \'I know\' quoth he \'no house, no wife, no mistress.\'   So that my errand, due unto my tongue,   I thank him, I bare home upon my shoulders;   For, in conclusion, he did beat me there. ADRIANA. Go back again, thou slave, and fetch him home. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Go back again, and be new beaten home?   For God\'s sake, send some other messenger. ADRIANA. Back, slave, or I will break thy pate across. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. And he will bless that cross with other beating;   Between you I shall have a holy head. ADRIANA. Hence, prating peasant! Fetch thy master home. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Am I so round with you, as you with me,   That like a football you do spurn me thus?   You spurn me hence, and he will spurn me hither;   If I last in this service, you must case me in leather. <Exit LUCIANA. Fie, how impatience loureth in your face! ADRIANA. His company must do his minions grace,   Whilst I at home starve for a merry look.   Hath homely age th\' alluring beauty took   From my poor cheek? Then he hath wasted it.   Are my discourses dull? Barren my wit?   If voluble and sharp discourse be marr\'d,   Unkindness blunts it more than marble hard.   Do their gay vestments his affections bait?   That\'s not my fault; he\'s master of my state.   What ruins are in me that can be found   By him not ruin\'d? Then is he the ground   Of my defeatures. My decayed fair   A sunny look of his would soon repair.   But, too unruly deer, he breaks the pale,   And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale. LUCIANA. Self-harming jealousy! fie, beat it hence. ADRIANA. Unfeeling fools can with such wrongs dispense.   I know his eye doth homage otherwhere;   Or else what lets it but he would be here?   Sister, you know he promis\'d me a chain;   Would that alone a love he would detain,   So he would keep fair quarter with his bed!   I see the jewel best enamelled   Will lose his beauty; yet the gold bides still   That others touch and, often touching, will   Where gold; and no man that hath a name   By falsehood and corruption doth it shame.   Since that my beauty cannot please his eye,   I\'ll weep what\'s left away, and weeping die. LUCIANA. How many fond fools serve mad jealousy! <Exeunt   SCENE 2  The mart  Enter ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE  ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. The gold I gave to Dromio is laid up   Safe at the Centaur, and the heedful slave   Is wand\'red forth in care to seek me out.   By computation and mine host\'s report   I could not speak with Dromio since at first   I sent him from the mart. See, here he comes.  Enter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE    How now, sir, is your merry humour alter\'d?   As you love strokes, so jest with me again.   You know no Centaur! You receiv\'d no gold!   Your mistress sent to have me home to dinner!   My house was at the Phoenix! Wast thou mad,   That thus so madly thou didst answer me? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. What answer, sir? When spake I such a word? ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Even now, even here, not half an hour since. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I did not see you since you sent me hence,   Home to the Centaur, with the gold you gave me. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Villain, thou didst deny the gold\'s receipt,   And told\'st me of a mistress and a dinner;   For which, I hope, thou felt\'st I was displeas\'d. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I am glad to see you in this merry vein.   What means this jest? I pray you, master, tell me. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Yea, dost thou jeer and flout me in the teeth?   Think\'st thou I jest? Hold, take thou that, and that. [Beating him] DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Hold, sir, for God\'s sake! Now your jest is earnest.   Upon what bargain do you give it me? ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Because that I familiarly sometimes   Do use you for my fool and chat with you,   Your sauciness will jest upon my love,   And make a common of my serious hours.   When the sun shines let foolish gnats make sport,   But creep in crannies when he hides his beams.   If you will jest with me, know my aspect,   And fashion your demeanour to my looks,   Or I will beat this method in your sconce. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Sconce, call you it? So you would   leave battering, I had rather have it a head. An you use   these blows long, I must get a sconce for my head, and   insconce it too; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders.   But I pray, sir, why am I beaten? ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Dost thou not know? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Nothing, sir, but that I am beaten. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Shall I tell you why? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Ay, sir, and wherefore; for they say   every why hath a wherefore. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, first for flouting me; and then wherefore,   For urging it the second time to me. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Was there ever any man thus beaten out of season,   When in the why and the wherefore is neither rhyme nor reason?   Well, sir, I thank you. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thank me, sir! for what? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, for this something that you gave   me for nothing. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I\'ll make you amends next, to   give you nothing for something. But say, sir, is it dinnertime? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, sir; I think the meat wants that I have. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. In good time, sir, what\'s that? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Basting. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Well, sir, then \'twill be dry. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. If it be, sir, I pray you eat none of it. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Your reason? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Lest it make you choleric, and purchase me   another dry basting. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Well, sir, learn to jest in good time;   there\'s a time for all things. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I durst have denied that, before you   were so choleric. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. By what rule, sir? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the   plain bald pate of Father Time himself. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Let\'s hear it. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. There\'s no time for a man to recover   his hair that grows bald by nature. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. May he not do it by fine and recovery? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and   recover the lost hair of another man. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why is Time such a niggard of   hair, being, as it is, so plentiful an excrement? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Because it is a blessing that he bestows   on beasts, and what he hath scanted men in hair he hath   given them in wit. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, but there\'s many a man   hath more hair than wit. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Not a man of those but he hath the   wit to lose his hair. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, thou didst conclude hairy   men plain dealers without wit. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. The plainer dealer, the sooner lost;   yet he loseth it in a kind of jollity. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. For what reason? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. For two; and sound ones too. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Nay, not sound I pray you. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Sure ones, then. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Nay, not sure, in a thing falsing. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Certain ones, then. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Name them. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. The one, to save the money that he spends in   tiring; the other, that at dinner they should not drop in his   porridge. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. You would all this time have prov\'d there   is no time for all things. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, and did, sir; namely, no time to recover   hair lost by nature. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. But your reason was not substantial, why   there is no time to recover. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Thus I mend it: Time himself is bald,   and therefore to the world\'s end will have bald followers. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I knew \'t\'would be a bald conclusion. But,   soft, who wafts us yonder?  Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA  ADRIANA. Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown.   Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects;   I am not Adriana, nor thy wife.   The time was once when thou unurg\'d wouldst vow   That never words were music to thine ear,   That never object pleasing in thine eye,   That never touch well welcome to thy hand,   That never meat sweet-savour\'d in thy taste,   Unless I spake, or look\'d, or touch\'d, or carv\'d to thee.   How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,   That thou art then estranged from thyself?   Thyself I call it, being strange to me,   That, undividable, incorporate,   Am better than thy dear self\'s better part.   Ah, do not tear away thyself from me;   For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall   A drop of water in the breaking gulf,   And take unmingled thence that drop again   Without addition or diminishing,   As take from me thyself, and not me too.   How dearly would it touch thee to the quick,   Should\'st thou but hear I were licentious,   And that this body, consecrate to thee,   By ruffian lust should be contaminate!   Wouldst thou not spit at me and spurn at me,   And hurl the name of husband in my face,   And tear the stain\'d skin off my harlot-brow,   And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring,   And break it with a deep-divorcing vow?   I know thou canst, and therefore see thou do it.   I am possess\'d with an adulterate blot;   My blood is mingled with the crime of lust;   For if we two be one, and thou play false,   I do digest the poison of thy flesh,   Being strumpeted by thy contagion.   Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed;   I live dis-stain\'d, thou undishonoured. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Plead you to me, fair dame? I know you not:   In Ephesus I am but two hours old,   As strange unto your town as to your talk,   Who, every word by all my wit being scann\'d,   Wants wit in all one word to understand. LUCIANA. Fie, brother, how the world is chang\'d with you!   When were you wont to use my sister thus?   She sent for you by Dromio home to dinner. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. By Dromio? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. By me? ADRIANA. By thee; and this thou didst return from him-   That he did buffet thee, and in his blows   Denied my house for his, me for his wife. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Did you converse, sir, with this gentlewoman?   What is the course and drift of your compact? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I, Sir? I never saw her till this time. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Villain, thou liest; for even her very words   Didst thou deliver to me on the mart. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I never spake with her in all my life. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. How can she thus, then, call us by our names,   Unless it be by inspiration? ADRIANA. How ill agrees it with your gravity   To counterfeit thus grossly with your slave,   Abetting him to thwart me in my mood!   Be it my wrong you are from me exempt,   But wrong not that wrong with a more contempt.   Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine;   Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,   Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state,   Makes me with thy strength to communicate.   If aught possess thee from me, it is dross,   Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss;   Who all, for want of pruning, with intrusion   Infect thy sap, and live on thy confusion. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. To me she speaks; she moves me for her theme.   What, was I married to her in my dream?   Or sleep I now, and think I hear all this?   What error drives our eyes and ears amiss?   Until I know this sure uncertainty,   I\'ll entertain the offer\'d fallacy. LUCIANA. Dromio, go bid the servants spread for dinner. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O, for my beads! I cross me for sinner.   This is the fairy land. O spite of spites!   We talk with goblins, owls, and sprites.   If we obey them not, this will ensue:   They\'ll suck our breath, or pinch us black and blue. LUCIANA. Why prat\'st thou to thyself, and answer\'st not?   Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot! DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I am transformed, master, am not I? ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I think thou art in mind, and so am I. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Nay, master, both in mind and in my shape. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thou hast thine own form. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, I am an ape. LUCIANA. If thou art chang\'d to aught, \'tis to an ass. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. \'Tis true; she rides me, and I long for grass.   \'Tis so, I am an ass; else it could never be   But I should know her as well as she knows me. ADRIANA. Come, come, no longer will I be a fool,   To put the finger in the eye and weep,   Whilst man and master laughs my woes to scorn.   Come, sir, to dinner. Dromio, keep the gate.   Husband, I\'ll dine above with you to-day,   And shrive you of a thousand idle pranks.   Sirrah, if any ask you for your master,   Say he dines forth, and let no creature enter.   Come, sister. Dromio, play the porter well. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?   Sleeping or waking, mad or well-advis\'d?   Known unto these, and to myself disguis\'d!   I\'ll say as they say, and persever so,   And in this mist at all adventures go. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, shall I be porter at the gate? ADRIANA. Ay; and let none enter, lest I break your pate. LUCIANA. Come, come, Antipholus, we dine too late. <Exeunt   <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      ACT III. SCENE 1  Before the house of ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS  Enter ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS, DROMIO OF EPHESUS, ANGELO, and BALTHAZAR  ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Good Signior Angelo, you must excuse us all;   My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours.   Say that I linger\'d with you at your shop   To see the making of her carcanet,   And that to-morrow you will bring it home.   But here\'s a villain that would face me down   He met me on the mart, and that I beat him,   And charg\'d him with a thousand marks in gold,   And that I did deny my wife and house.   Thou drunkard, thou, what didst thou mean by this? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Say what you will, sir, but I know what I know.   That you beat me at the mart I have your hand to show;   If the skin were parchment, and the blows you gave were ink,   Your own handwriting would tell you what I think. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I think thou art an ass. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Marry, so it doth appear   By the wrongs I suffer and the blows I bear.   I should kick, being kick\'d; and being at that pass,   You would keep from my heels, and beware of an ass. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Y\'are sad, Signior Balthazar; pray God our cheer   May answer my good will and your good welcome here. BALTHAZAR. I hold your dainties cheap, sir, and your welcome dear. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. O, Signior Balthazar, either at flesh or fish,   A table full of welcome makes scarce one dainty dish. BALTHAZAR. Good meat, sir, is common; that every churl affords. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And welcome more common; for that\'s nothing   but words. BALTHAZAR. Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Ay, to a niggardly host and more sparing guest.   But though my cates be mean, take them in good part;   Better cheer may you have, but not with better heart.   But, soft, my door is lock\'d; go bid them let us in. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Maud, Bridget, Marian, Cicely, Gillian, Ginn! DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. [Within] Mome, malt-horse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch!   Either get thee from the door, or sit down at the hatch.   Dost thou conjure for wenches, that thou call\'st for such store,   When one is one too many? Go get thee from the door. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. What patch is made our porter?   My master stays in the street. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  Let him walk from whence he came,     lest he catch cold on\'s feet. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Who talks within there? Ho, open the door! DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  Right, sir; I\'ll tell you when,     an you\'ll tell me wherefore. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Wherefore? For my dinner;     I have not din\'d to-day. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  Nor to-day here you must not;     come again when you may. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. What art thou that keep\'st me out     from the house I owe? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  The porter for this time,     sir, and my name is Dromio. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. O Villain, thou hast stol\'n both mine     office and my name!   The one ne\'er got me credit, the other mickle blame.   If thou hadst been Dromio to-day in my place,   Thou wouldst have chang\'d thy face for a name, or thy name for an ass.  Enter LUCE, within  LUCE.  [Within]  What a coil is there, Dromio? Who are those at the gate? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Let my master in, Luce. LUCE.  [Within]  Faith, no, he comes too late;   And so tell your master. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. O Lord, I must laugh!   Have at you with a proverb: Shall I set in my staff? LUCE.  [Within]  Have at you with another: that\'s-when? can you tell? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  If thy name be called Luce     -Luce, thou hast answer\'d him well. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Do you hear, you minion? You\'ll let us in, I hope? LUCE.  [Within]  I thought to have ask\'d you. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  And you said no. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. SO, Come, help: well struck! there was blow for blow. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Thou baggage, let me in. LUCE.  [Within]  Can you tell for whose sake? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Master, knock the door hard. LUCE.  [Within]  Let him knock till it ache. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. You\'ll cry for this, minion, if beat the door down. LUCE.  [Within] What needs all that, and a pair of stocks in the town?  Enter ADRIANA, within  ADRIANA.  [Within]  Who is that at the door, that keeps all this noise? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  By my troth, your town is     troubled with unruly boys. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Are you there, wife? You might     have come before. ADRIANA.  [Within]  Your wife, sir knave! Go get you from the door. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. If YOU went in pain, master, this \'knave\' would go sore. ANGELO. Here is neither cheer, sir, nor welcome; we would fain have either. BALTHAZAR. In debating which was best, we shall part with neither. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. They stand at the door, master; bid them welcome hither. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. There is something in the wind, that we cannot get in. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. You would say so, master, if your garments were thin.   Your cake here is warm within; you stand here in the cold;   It would make a man mad as a buck to be so bought and sold. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Go fetch me something; I\'ll break ope the gate. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  Break any breaking here,     and I\'ll break your knave\'s pate. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. A man may break a word with you,     sir; and words are but wind;   Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  It seems thou want\'st breaking;     out upon thee, hind! DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Here\'s too much \'out upon thee!\' pray thee let me in. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  [Within]  Ay, when fowls have no     feathers and fish have no fin. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Well, I\'ll break in; go borrow me a crow. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. A crow without feather? Master, mean you so?   For a fish without a fin, there\'s a fowl without a feather;   If a crow help us in, sirrah, we\'ll pluck a crow together. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Go get thee gone; fetch me an iron crow. BALTHAZAR. Have patience, sir; O, let it not be so!   Herein you war against your reputation,   And draw within the compass of suspect   Th\' unviolated honour of your wife.   Once this-your long experience of her wisdom,   Her sober virtue, years, and modesty,   Plead on her part some cause to you unknown;   And doubt not, sir, but she will well excuse   Why at this time the doors are made against you.   Be rul\'d by me: depart in patience,   And let us to the Tiger all to dinner;   And, about evening, come yourself alone   To know the reason of this strange restraint.   If by strong hand you offer to break in   Now in the stirring passage of the day,   A vulgar comment will be made of it,   And that supposed by the common rout   Against your yet ungalled estimation   That may with foul intrusion enter in   And dwell upon your grave when you are dead;   For slander lives upon succession,   For ever hous\'d where it gets possession. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. You have prevail\'d. I will depart in quiet,   And in despite of mirth mean to be merry.   I know a wench of excellent discourse,   Pretty and witty; wild, and yet, too, gentle;   There will we dine. This woman that I mean,   My wife-but, I protest, without desert-   Hath oftentimes upbraided me withal;   To her will we to dinner.  [To ANGELO]  Get you home   And fetch the chain; by this I know \'tis made.   Bring it, I pray you, to the Porpentine;   For there\'s the house. That chain will I bestow-   Be it for nothing but to spite my wife-   Upon mine hostess there; good sir, make haste.   Since mine own doors refuse to entertain me,   I\'ll knock elsewhere, to see if they\'ll disdain me. ANGELO. I\'ll meet you at that place some hour hence. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Do so; this jest shall cost me some expense. <Exeunt   SCENE 2  Before the house of ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS  Enter LUCIANA with ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE  LUCIANA. And may it be that you have quite forgot   A husband\'s office? Shall, Antipholus,   Even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot?   Shall love, in building, grow so ruinous?   If you did wed my sister for her wealth,   Then for her wealth\'s sake use her with more kindness;   Or, if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth;   Muffle your false love with some show of blindness;   Let not my sister read it in your eye;   Be not thy tongue thy own shame\'s orator;   Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty;   Apparel vice like virtue\'s harbinger;   Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted;   Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint;   Be secret-false. What need she be acquainted?   What simple thief brags of his own attaint?   \'Tis double wrong to truant with your bed   And let her read it in thy looks at board;   Shame hath a bastard fame, well managed;   Ill deeds is doubled with an evil word.   Alas, poor women! make us but believe,   Being compact of credit, that you love us;   Though others have the arm, show us the sleeve;   We in your motion turn, and you may move us.   Then, gentle brother, get you in again;   Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife.   \'Tis holy sport to be a little vain   When the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Sweet mistress-what your name is else, I know not,   Nor by what wonder you do hit of mine-   Less in your knowledge and your grace you show not   Than our earth\'s wonder-more than earth, divine.   Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak;   Lay open to my earthy-gross conceit,   Smoth\'red in errors, feeble, shallow, weak,   The folded meaning of your words\' deceit.   Against my soul\'s pure truth why labour you   To make it wander in an unknown field?   Are you a god? Would you create me new?   Transform me, then, and to your pow\'r I\'ll yield.   But if that I am I, then well I know   Your weeping sister is no wife of mine,   Nor to her bed no homage do I owe;   Far more, far more, to you do I decline.   O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,   To drown me in thy sister\'s flood of tears.   Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote;   Spread o\'er the silver waves thy golden hairs,   And as a bed I\'ll take them, and there he;   And in that glorious supposition think   He gains by death that hath such means to die.   Let Love, being light, be drowned if she sink. LUCIANA. What, are you mad, that you do reason so? ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Not mad, but mated; how, I do not know. LUCIANA. It is a fault that springeth from your eye. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. For gazing on your beams, fair sun, being by. LUCIANA. Gaze where you should, and that will clear your sight. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. As good to wink, sweet love, as look on night. LUCIANA. Why call you me love? Call my sister so. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thy sister\'s sister. LUCIANA. That\'s my sister. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. No;   It is thyself, mine own self\'s better part;   Mine eye\'s clear eye, my dear heart\'s dearer heart,   My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope\'s aim,   My sole earth\'s heaven, and my heaven\'s claim. LUCIANA. All this my sister is, or else should be. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Call thyself sister, sweet, for I am thee;   Thee will I love, and with thee lead my life;   Thou hast no husband yet, nor I no wife.   Give me thy hand. LUCIANA. O, soft, sir, hold you still;   I\'ll fetch my sister to get her good will. <Exit LUCIANA  Enter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, how now, Dromio! Where run\'st thou   so fast? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Do you know me, sir? Am I Dromio?   Am I your man? Am I myself? ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thou art Dromio, thou art my   man, thou art thyself. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I am an ass, I am a woman\'s man, and besides   myself. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What woman\'s man, and how besides thyself? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, besides myself, I am due   to a woman-one that claims me, one that haunts me, one   that will have me. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What claim lays she to thee? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, such claim as you would   lay to your horse; and she would have me as a beast: not   that, I being a beast, she would have me; but that she,   being a very beastly creature, lays claim to me. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What is she? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. A very reverent body; ay, such a one   as a man may not speak of without he say \'Sir-reverence.\'   I have but lean luck in the match, and yet is she a   wondrous fat marriage. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. How dost thou mean a fat marriage? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, she\'s the kitchen-wench,   and all grease; and I know not what use to put her to but   to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light.   I warrant, her rags and the tallow in them will burn   Poland winter. If she lives till doomsday, she\'ll burn   week longer than the whole world. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What complexion is she of? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Swart, like my shoe; but her face   nothing like so clean kept; for why, she sweats, a man may   go over shoes in the grime of it. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. That\'s a fault that water will mend. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, sir, \'tis in grain; Noah\'s flood   could not do it. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What\'s her name? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Nell, sir; but her name and three   quarters, that\'s an ell and three quarters, will not measure   her from hip to hip. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Then she bears some breadth? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No longer from head to foot than   from hip to hip: she is spherical, like a globe; I could find   out countries in her. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. In what part of her body stands Ireland? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, sir, in her buttocks; I found it out by   the bogs. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where Scotland? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I found it by the barrenness, hard in   the palm of the hand. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where France? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. In her forehead, arm\'d and reverted,   making war against her heir. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where England? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I look\'d for the chalky cliffs, but I   could find no whiteness in them; but I guess it stood in her   chin, by the salt rheum that ran between France and it. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where Spain? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Faith, I saw it not, but I felt it hot in   her breath. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where America, the Indies? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O, sir, upon her nose, an o\'er embellished with   rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect to the   hot breath of Spain; who sent whole armadoes of caracks to be   ballast at her nose. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Where stood Belgia, the Netherlands? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O, Sir, I did not look so low. To   conclude: this drudge or diviner laid claim to me; call\'d me   Dromio; swore I was assur\'d to her; told me what privy   marks I had about me, as, the mark of my shoulder, the   mole in my neck, the great wart on my left arm, that I,   amaz\'d, ran from her as a witch.   And, I think, if my breast had not been made of faith,     and my heart of steel,   She had transform\'d me to a curtal dog, and made me turn i\' th\' wheel. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Go hie thee presently post to the road;   An if the wind blow any way from shore,   I will not harbour in this town to-night.   If any bark put forth, come to the mart,   Where I will walk till thou return to me.   If every one knows us, and we know none,   \'Tis time, I think, to trudge, pack and be gone. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. As from a bear a man would run for life,   So fly I from her that would be my wife. <Exit ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. There\'s none but witches do inhabit here,   And therefore \'tis high time that I were hence.   She that doth call me husband, even my soul   Doth for a wife abhor. But her fair sister,   Possess\'d with such a gentle sovereign grace,   Of such enchanting presence and discourse,   Hath almost made me traitor to myself;   But, lest myself be guilty to self-wrong,   I\'ll stop mine ears against the mermaid\'s song.  Enter ANGELO with the chain  ANGELO. Master Antipholus! ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Ay, that\'s my name. ANGELO. I know it well, sir. Lo, here is the chain.   I thought to have ta\'en you at the Porpentine;   The chain unfinish\'d made me stay thus long. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What is your will that I shall do with this? ANGELO. What please yourself, sir; I have made it for you. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Made it for me, sir! I bespoke it not. ANGELO. Not once nor twice, but twenty times you have.   Go home with it, and please your wife withal;   And soon at supper-time I\'ll visit you,   And then receive my money for the chain. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I pray you, sir, receive the money now,   For fear you ne\'er see chain nor money more. ANGELO. You are a merry man, sir; fare you well. <Exit ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What I should think of this cannot tell:   But this I think, there\'s no man is so vain   That would refuse so fair an offer\'d chain.   I see a man here needs not live by shifts,   When in the streets he meets such golden gifts.   I\'ll to the mart, and there for Dromio stay;   If any ship put out, then straight away. <Exit   <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      ACT IV. SCENE 1  A public place  Enter SECOND MERCHANT, ANGELO, and an OFFICER  SECOND MERCHANT. You know since Pentecost the sum is due,   And since I have not much importun\'d you;   Nor now I had not, but that I am bound   To Persia, and want guilders for my voyage.   Therefore make present satisfaction,   Or I\'ll attach you by this officer. ANGELO. Even just the sum that I do owe to you   Is growing to me by Antipholus;   And in the instant that I met with you   He had of me a chain; at five o\'clock   I shall receive the money for the same.   Pleaseth you walk with me down to his house,   I will discharge my bond, and thank you too.  Enter ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS, and DROMIO OF EPHESUS, from the COURTEZAN\'S  OFFICER. That labour may you save; see where he comes. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. While I go to the goldsmith\'s house, go thou   And buy a rope\'s end; that will I bestow   Among my wife and her confederates,   For locking me out of my doors by day.   But, soft, I see the goldsmith. Get thee gone;   Buy thou a rope, and bring it home to me. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I buy a thousand pound a year; I buy a rope. <Exit DROMIO ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. A man is well holp up that trusts to you!   I promised your presence and the chain;   But neither chain nor goldsmith came to me.   Belike you thought our love would last too long,   If it were chain\'d together, and therefore came not. ANGELO. Saving your merry humour, here\'s the note   How much your chain weighs to the utmost carat,   The fineness of the gold, and chargeful fashion,   Which doth amount to three odd ducats more   Than I stand debted to this gentleman.   I pray you see him presently discharg\'d,   For he is bound to sea, and stays but for it. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I am not furnish\'d with the present money;   Besides, I have some business in the town.   Good signior, take the stranger to my house,   And with you take the chain, and bid my wife   Disburse the sum on the receipt thereof.   Perchance I will be there as soon as you. ANGELO. Then you will bring the chain to her yourself? ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. No; bear it with you, lest I come not time enough. ANGELO. Well, sir, I will. Have you the chain about you? ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. An if I have not, sir, I hope you have;   Or else you may return without your money. ANGELO. Nay, come, I pray you, sir, give me the chain;   Both wind and tide stays for this gentleman,   And I, to blame, have held him here too long. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Good Lord! you use this dalliance to excuse   Your breach of promise to the Porpentine;   I should have chid you for not bringing it,   But, like a shrew, you first begin to brawl. SECOND MERCHANT. The hour steals on; I pray you, sir, dispatch. ANGELO. You hear how he importunes me-the chain! ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Why, give it to my wife, and fetch your money. ANGELO. Come, come, you know I gave it you even now.   Either send the chain or send by me some token. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Fie, now you run this humour out of breath!   Come, where\'s the chain? I pray you let me see it. SECOND MERCHANT. My business cannot brook this dalliance.   Good sir, say whe\'r you\'ll answer me or no;   If not, I\'ll leave him to the officer. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I answer you! What should I answer you? ANGELO. The money that you owe me for the chain. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I owe you none till I receive the chain. ANGELO. You know I gave it you half an hour since. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. You gave me none; you wrong me much to say so. ANGELO. You wrong me more, sir, in denying it.   Consider how it stands upon my credit. SECOND MERCHANT. Well, officer, arrest him at my suit. OFFICER. I do; and charge you in the Duke\'s name to obey me. ANGELO. This touches me in reputation.   Either consent to pay this sum for me,   Or I attach you by this officer. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Consent to pay thee that I never had!   Arrest me, foolish fellow, if thou dar\'st. ANGELO. Here is thy fee; arrest him, officer.   I would not spare my brother in this case,   If he should scorn me so apparently. OFFICER. I do arrest you, sir; you hear the suit. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I do obey thee till I give thee bail.   But, sirrah, you shall buy this sport as dear   As all the metal in your shop will answer. ANGELO. Sir, sir, I shall have law in Ephesus,   To your notorious shame, I doubt it not.  Enter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE, from the bay  DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, there\'s a bark of Epidamnum   That stays but till her owner comes aboard,   And then, sir, she bears away. Our fraughtage, sir,   I have convey\'d aboard; and I have bought   The oil, the balsamum, and aqua-vitx.   The ship is in her trim; the merry wind   Blows fair from land; they stay for nought at an   But for their owner, master, and yourself. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. How now! a madman? Why, thou peevish sheep,   What ship of Epidamnum stays for me? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. A ship you sent me to, to hire waftage. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. THOU drunken slave! I sent the for a rope;   And told thee to what purpose and what end. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. YOU sent me for a rope\'s end as soon-   You sent me to the bay, sir, for a bark. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I Will debate this matter at more leisure,   And teach your ears to list me with more heed.   To Adriana, villain, hie thee straight;   Give her this key, and tell her in the desk   That\'s cover\'d o\'er with Turkish tapestry   There is a purse of ducats; let her send it.   Tell her I am arrested in the street,   And that shall bail me; hie thee, slave, be gone.   On, officer, to prison till it come. <Exeunt all but DROMIO DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. To Adriana! that is where we din\'d,   Where Dowsabel did claim me for her husband.   She is too big, I hope, for me to compass.   Thither I must, although against my will,   For servants must their masters\' minds fulfil. <Exit   SCENE 2  The house of ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS  Enter ADRIANA and LUCIANA  ADRIANA. Ah, Luciana, did he tempt thee so?   Might\'st thou perceive austerely in his eye   That he did plead in earnest? Yea or no?   Look\'d he or red or pale, or sad or merrily?   What observation mad\'st thou in this case   Of his heart\'s meteors tilting in his face? LUCIANA. First he denied you had in him no right. ADRIANA. He meant he did me none-the more my spite. LUCIANA. Then swore he that he was a stranger here. ADRIANA. And true he swore, though yet forsworn he were. LUCIANA. Then pleaded I for you. ADRIANA. And what said he? LUCIANA. That love I begg\'d for you he begg\'d of me. ADRIANA. With what persuasion did he tempt thy love? LUCIANA. With words that in an honest suit might move.   First he did praise my beauty, then my speech. ADRIANA. Didst speak him fair? LUCIANA. Have patience, I beseech. ADRIANA. I cannot, nor I will not hold me still;   My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will.   He is deformed, crooked, old, and sere,   Ill-fac\'d, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere;   Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind;   Stigmatical in making, worse in mind. LUCIANA. Who would be jealous then of such a one?   No evil lost is wail\'d when it is gone. ADRIANA. Ah, but I think him better than I say,   And yet would herein others\' eyes were worse.   Far from her nest the lapwing cries away;   My heart prays for him, though my tongue do curse.  Enter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Here go-the desk, the purse. Sweet   now, make haste. LUCIANA. How hast thou lost thy breath? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. By running fast. ADRIANA. Where is thy master, Dromio? Is he well? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, he\'s in Tartar limbo, worse than hell.   A devil in an everlasting garment hath him;   One whose hard heart is button\'d up with steel;   A fiend, a fairy, pitiless and rough;   A wolf, nay worse, a fellow all in buff;   A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that countermands   The passages of alleys, creeks, and narrow lands;   A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry-foot well;   One that, before the Judgment, carries poor souls to hell. ADRIANA. Why, man, what is the matter? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I do not know the matter; he is rested on the case. ADRIANA. What, is he arrested? Tell me, at whose suit? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I know not at whose suit he is arrested well;   But he\'s in a suit of buff which \'rested him, that can I tell.   Will you send him, mistress, redemption, the money in his desk? ADRIANA. Go fetch it, sister.  [Exit LUCIANA]  This I wonder at:   Thus he unknown to me should be in debt.   Tell me, was he arrested on a band? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. on a band, but on a stronger thing,   A chain, a chain. Do you not hear it ring? ADRIANA. What, the chain? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No, no, the bell; \'tis time that I were gone.   It was two ere I left him, and now the clock strikes one. ADRIANA. The hours come back! That did I never hear. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O yes. If any hour meet a sergeant,     \'a turns back for very fear. ADRIANA. As if Time were in debt! How fondly dost thou reason! DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Time is a very bankrupt, and owes     more than he\'s worth to season.   Nay, he\'s a thief too: have you not heard men say   That Time comes stealing on by night and day?   If \'a be in debt and theft, and a sergeant in the way,   Hath he not reason to turn back an hour in a day?  Re-enter LUCIANA with a purse  ADRIANA. Go, Dromio, there\'s the money; bear it straight,   And bring thy master home immediately.   Come, sister; I am press\'d down with conceit-   Conceit, my comfort and my injury. <Exeunt   SCENE 3  The mart  Enter ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE  ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. There\'s not a man I meet but doth salute me   As if I were their well-acquainted friend;   And every one doth call me by my name.   Some tender money to me, some invite me,   Some other give me thanks for kindnesses,   Some offer me commodities to buy;   Even now a tailor call\'d me in his shop,   And show\'d me silks that he had bought for me,   And therewithal took measure of my body.   Sure, these are but imaginary wiles,   And Lapland sorcerers inhabit here.  Enter DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, here\'s the gold you sent me   for. What, have you got the picture of old Adam new-apparell\'d? ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What gold is this? What Adam dost thou mean? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Not that Adam that kept the Paradise,   but that Adam that keeps the prison; he that goes in the   calf\'s skin that was kill\'d for the Prodigal; he that came behind   you, sir, like an evil angel, and bid you forsake your liberty. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I understand thee not. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. No? Why, \'tis a plain case: he that   went, like a bass-viol, in a case of leather; the man, sir,   that, when gentlemen are tired, gives them a sob, and rest   them; he, sir, that takes pity on decayed men, and give   them suits of durance; he that sets up his rest to do more   exploits with his mace than a morris-pike. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. What, thou mean\'st an officer? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Ay, sir, the sergeant of the band;   that brings any man to answer it that breaks his band; on   that thinks a man always going to bed, and says \'God give   you good rest!\' ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Well, sir, there rest in your foolery. Is   there any ship puts forth to-night? May we be gone? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Why, sir, I brought you word an   hour since that the bark Expedition put forth to-night; and   then were you hind\'red by the sergeant, to tarry for the   boy Delay. Here are the angels that you sent for to deliver you. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. The fellow is distract, and so am I;   And here we wander in illusions.   Some blessed power deliver us from hence!  Enter a COURTEZAN  COURTEZAN. Well met, well met, Master Antipholus.   I see, sir, you have found the goldsmith now.   Is that the chain you promis\'d me to-day? ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Satan, avoid! I charge thee, tempt me not. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, is this Mistress Satan? ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. It is the devil. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Nay, she is worse, she is the devil\'s   dam, and here she comes in the habit of a light wench; and   thereof comes that the wenches say \'God damn me!\' That\'s   as much to say \'God make me a light wench!\' It is written   they appear to men like angels of light; light is an effect   of fire, and fire will burn; ergo, light wenches will burn.   Come not near her. COURTEZAN. Your man and you are marvellous merry, sir.   Will you go with me? We\'ll mend our dinner here. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, if you do, expect spoon-meat,   or bespeak a long spoon. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Why, Dromio? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Marry, he must have a long spoon   that must eat with the devil. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Avoid then, fiend! What tell\'st thou me of supping?   Thou art, as you are all, a sorceress;   I conjure thee to leave me and be gone. COURTEZAN. Give me the ring of mine you had at dinner,   Or, for my diamond, the chain you promis\'d,   And I\'ll be gone, sir, and not trouble you. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Some devils ask but the parings of one\'s nail,   A rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin,   A nut, a cherry-stone;   But she, more covetous, would have a chain.   Master, be wise; an if you give it her,   The devil will shake her chain, and fright us with it. COURTEZAN. I pray you, sir, my ring, or else the chain;   I hope you do not mean to cheat me so. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Avaunt, thou witch! Come, Dromio, let us go. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. \'Fly pride\' says the peacock. Mistress, that you know. <Exeunt ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE and DROMIO OF SYRACUSE COURTEZAN. Now, out of doubt, Antipholus is mad,   Else would he never so demean himself.   A ring he hath of mine worth forty ducats,   And for the same he promis\'d me a chain;   Both one and other he denies me now.   The reason that I gather he is mad,   Besides this present instance of his rage,   Is a mad tale he told to-day at dinner   Of his own doors being shut against his entrance.   Belike his wife, acquainted with his fits,   On purpose shut the doors against his way.   My way is now to hie home to his house,   And tell his wife that, being lunatic,   He rush\'d into my house and took perforce   My ring away. This course I fittest choose,   For forty ducats is too much to lose. <Exit   SCENE 4  A street  Enter ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS with the OFFICER  ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Fear me not, man; I will not break away.   I\'ll give thee, ere I leave thee, so much money,   To warrant thee, as I am \'rested for.   My wife is in a wayward mood to-day,   And will not lightly trust the messenger.   That I should be attach\'d in Ephesus,   I tell you \'twill sound harshly in her cars.  Enter DROMIO OF EPHESUS, with a rope\'s-end    Here comes my man; I think he brings the money.   How now, sir! Have you that I sent you for? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Here\'s that, I warrant you, will pay them all. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. But where\'s the money? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Why, sir, I gave the money for the rope. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Five hundred ducats, villain, for rope? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I\'ll serve you, sir, five hundred at the rate. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. To what end did I bid thee hie thee home? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. To a rope\'s-end, sir; and to that end am I   return\'d. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And to that end, sir, I will welcome you. [Beating him] OFFICER. Good sir, be patient. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, \'tis for me to be patient; I am in   adversity. OFFICER. Good now, hold thy tongue. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, rather persuade him to hold his hands. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Thou whoreson, senseless villain! DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I would I were senseless, sir, that I   might not feel your blows. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Thou art sensible in nothing but   blows, and so is an ass. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I am an ass indeed; you may prove it   by my long \'ears. I have served him from the hour of my   nativity to this instant, and have nothing at his hands for   my service but blows. When I am cold he heats me with   beating; when I am warm he cools me with beating. I am   wak\'d with it when I sleep; rais\'d with it when I sit; driven   out of doors with it when I go from home; welcom\'d home   with it when I return; nay, I bear it on my shoulders as   beggar wont her brat; and I think, when he hath lam\'d me,   I shall beg with it from door to door.  Enter ADRIANA, LUCIANA, the COURTEZAN, and a SCHOOLMASTER call\'d PINCH  ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Come, go along; my wife is coming yonder. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Mistress, \'respice finem,\' respect your end; or   rather, to prophesy like the parrot, \'Beware the rope\'s-end.\' ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Wilt thou still talk? [Beating him] COURTEZAN. How say you now? Is not your husband mad? ADRIANA. His incivility confirms no less.   Good Doctor Pinch, you are a conjurer:   Establish him in his true sense again,   And I will please you what you will demand. LUCIANA. Alas, how fiery and how sharp he looks! COURTEZAN. Mark how he trembles in his ecstasy. PINCH. Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. There is my hand, and let it feel your ear. [Striking him] PINCH. I charge thee, Satan, hous\'d within this man,   To yield possession to my holy prayers,   And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight.   I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Peace, doting wizard, peace! I am not mad. ADRIANA. O, that thou wert not, poor distressed soul! ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. You minion, you, are these your customers?   Did this companion with the saffron face   Revel and feast it at my house to-day,   Whilst upon me the guilty doors were shut,   And I denied to enter in my house? ADRIANA. O husband, God doth know you din\'d at home,   Where would you had remain\'d until this time,   Free from these slanders and this open shame! ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Din\'d at home! Thou villain, what sayest thou? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Sir, Sooth to say, you did not dine at home. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Were not my doors lock\'d up and I shut out? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Perdie, your doors were lock\'d and you shut out. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And did not she herself revile me there? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Sans fable, she herself revil\'d you there. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Did not her kitchen-maid rail, taunt, and scorn me? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Certes, she did; the kitchen-vestal scorn\'d you. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And did not I in rage depart from thence? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. In verity, you did. My bones bear witness,   That since have felt the vigour of his rage. ADRIANA. Is\'t good to soothe him in these contraries? PINCH. It is no shame; the fellow finds his vein,   And, yielding to him, humours well his frenzy. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Thou hast suborn\'d the goldsmith to arrest me. ADRIANA. Alas, I sent you money to redeem you,   By Dromio here, who came in haste for it. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Money by me! Heart and goodwill you might,   But surely, master, not a rag of money. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Went\'st not thou to her for purse of ducats? ADRIANA. He came to me, and I deliver\'d it. LUCIANA. And I am witness with her that she did. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. God and the rope-maker bear me witness   That I was sent for nothing but a rope! PINCH. Mistress, both man and master is possess\'d;   I know it by their pale and deadly looks.   They must be bound, and laid in some dark room. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Say, wherefore didst thou lock me forth to-day?   And why dost thou deny the bag of gold? ADRIANA. I did not, gentle husband, lock thee forth. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. And, gentle master, I receiv\'d no gold;   But I confess, sir, that we were lock\'d out. ADRIANA. Dissembling villain, thou speak\'st false in both. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Dissembling harlot, thou art false in all,   And art confederate with a damned pack   To make a loathsome abject scorn of me;   But with these nails I\'ll pluck out these false eyes   That would behold in me this shameful sport. ADRIANA. O, bind him, bind him; let him not come near me. PINCH. More company! The fiend is strong within him.  Enter three or four, and offer to bind him. He strives  LUCIANA. Ay me, poor man, how pale and wan he looks! ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. What, will you murder me? Thou gaoler, thou,   I am thy prisoner. Wilt thou suffer them   To make a rescue? OFFICER. Masters, let him go;   He is my prisoner, and you shall not have him. PINCH. Go bind this man, for he is frantic too. [They bind DROMIO] ADRIANA. What wilt thou do, thou peevish officer?   Hast thou delight to see a wretched man   Do outrage and displeasure to himself? OFFICER. He is my prisoner; if I let him go,   The debt he owes will be requir\'d of me. ADRIANA. I will discharge thee ere I go from thee;   Bear me forthwith unto his creditor,   And, knowing how the debt grows, I will pay it.   Good Master Doctor, see him safe convey\'d   Home to my house. O most unhappy day! ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. O most unhappy strumpet! DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Master, I am here ent\'red in bond for you. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Out on thee, villian! Wherefore   dost thou mad me? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Will you be bound for nothing?   Be mad, good master; cry \'The devil!\' LUCIANA. God help, poor souls, how idly do they talk! ADRIANA. Go bear him hence. Sister, go you with me. <Exeunt all but ADRIANA, LUCIANA, OFFICERS, and COURTEZAN   Say now, whose suit is he arrested at? OFFICER. One Angelo, a goldsmith; do you know him? ADRIANA. I know the man. What is the sum he owes? OFFICER. Two hundred ducats. ADRIANA. Say, how grows it due? OFFICER. Due for a chain your husband had of him. ADRIANA. He did bespeak a chain for me, but had it not. COURTEZAN. When as your husband, all in rage, to-day   Came to my house, and took away my ring-   The ring I saw upon his finger now-   Straight after did I meet him with a chain. ADRIANA. It may be so, but I did never see it.   Come, gaoler, bring me where the goldsmith is;   I long to know the truth hereof at large.  Enter ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE, with his rapier drawn, and DROMIO OF SYRACUSE.  LUCIANA. God, for thy mercy! they are loose again. ADRIANA. And come with naked swords.   Let\'s call more help to have them bound again. OFFICER. Away, they\'ll kill us! <Exeunt all but ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE and DROMIO OF SYRACUSE as fast as may be, frighted ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I see these witches are afraid of swords. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. She that would be your wife now ran from you. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Come to the Centaur; fetch our stuff from thence.   I long that we were safe and sound aboard. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Faith, stay here this night; they will   surely do us no harm; you saw they speak us fair, give us   gold; methinks they are such a gentle nation that, but for   the mountain of mad flesh that claims marriage of me,   could find in my heart to stay here still and turn witch. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I will not stay to-night for all the town;   Therefore away, to get our stuff aboard. <Exeunt   <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      ACT V. SCENE 1  A street before a priory  Enter SECOND MERCHANT and ANGELO  ANGELO. I am sorry, sir, that I have hind\'red you;   But I protest he had the chain of me,   Though most dishonestly he doth deny it. SECOND MERCHANT. How is the man esteem\'d here in the city? ANGELO. Of very reverend reputation, sir,   Of credit infinite, highly belov\'d,   Second to none that lives here in the city;   His word might bear my wealth at any time. SECOND MERCHANT. Speak softly; yonder, as I think, he walks.  Enter ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE and DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  ANGELO. \'Tis so; and that self chain about his neck   Which he forswore most monstrously to have.   Good sir, draw near to me, I\'ll speak to him.   Signior Andpholus, I wonder much   That you would put me to this shame and trouble;   And, not without some scandal to yourself,   With circumstance and oaths so to deny   This chain, which now you wear so openly.   Beside the charge, the shame, imprisonment,   You have done wrong to this my honest friend;   Who, but for staying on our controversy,   Had hoisted sail and put to sea to-day.   This chain you had of me; can you deny it? ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I think I had; I never did deny it. SECOND MERCHANT. Yes, that you did, sir, and forswore it too. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Who heard me to deny it or forswear it? SECOND MERCHANT. These ears of mine, thou know\'st, did hear thee.   Fie on thee, wretch! \'tis pity that thou liv\'st   To walk where any honest men resort. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Thou art a villain to impeach me thus;   I\'ll prove mine honour and mine honesty   Against thee presently, if thou dar\'st stand. SECOND MERCHANT. I dare, and do defy thee for a villain. [They draw]  Enter ADRIANA, LUCIANA, the COURTEZAN, and OTHERS  ADRIANA. Hold, hurt him not, for God\'s sake! He is mad.   Some get within him, take his sword away;   Bind Dromio too, and bear them to my house. DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Run, master, run; for God\'s sake take a house.   This is some priory. In, or we are spoil\'d. <Exeunt ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE and DROMIO OF SYRACUSE to the priory  Enter the LADY ABBESS  ABBESS. Be quiet, people. Wherefore throng you hither? ADRIANA. To fetch my poor distracted husband hence.   Let us come in, that we may bind him fast,   And bear him home for his recovery. ANGELO. I knew he was not in his perfect wits. SECOND MERCHANT. I am sorry now that I did draw on him. ABBESS. How long hath this possession held the man? ADRIANA. This week he hath been heavy, sour, sad,   And much different from the man he was;   But till this afternoon his passion   Ne\'er brake into extremity of rage. ABBESS. Hath he not lost much wealth by wreck of sea?   Buried some dear friend? Hath not else his eye   Stray\'d his affection in unlawful love?   A sin prevailing much in youthful men   Who give their eyes the liberty of gazing.   Which of these sorrows is he subject to? ADRIANA. To none of these, except it be the last;   Namely, some love that drew him oft from home. ABBESS. You should for that have reprehended him. ADRIANA. Why, so I did. ABBESS. Ay, but not rough enough. ADRIANA. As roughly as my modesty would let me. ABBESS. Haply in private. ADRIANA. And in assemblies too. ABBESS. Ay, but not enough. ADRIANA. It was the copy of our conference.   In bed, he slept not for my urging it;   At board, he fed not for my urging it;   Alone, it was the subject of my theme;   In company, I often glanced it;   Still did I tell him it was vile and bad. ABBESS. And thereof came it that the man was mad.   The venom clamours of a jealous woman   Poisons more deadly than a mad dog\'s tooth.   It seems his sleeps were hind\'red by thy railing,   And thereof comes it that his head is light.   Thou say\'st his meat was sauc\'d with thy upbraidings:   Unquiet meals make ill digestions;   Thereof the raging fire of fever bred;   And what\'s a fever but a fit of madness?   Thou say\'st his sports were hind\'red by thy brawls.   Sweet recreation barr\'d, what doth ensue   But moody and dull melancholy,   Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair,   And at her heels a huge infectious troop   Of pale distemperatures and foes to life?   In food, in sport, and life-preserving rest,   To be disturb\'d would mad or man or beast.   The consequence is, then, thy jealous fits   Hath scar\'d thy husband from the use of wits. LUCIANA. She never reprehended him but mildly,   When he demean\'d himself rough, rude, and wildly.   Why bear you these rebukes, and answer not? ADRIANA. She did betray me to my own reproof.   Good people, enter, and lay hold on him. ABBESS. No, not a creature enters in my house. ADRIANA. Then let your servants bring my husband forth. ABBESS. Neither; he took this place for sanctuary,   And it shall privilege him from your hands   Till I have brought him to his wits again,   Or lose my labour in assaying it. ADRIANA. I will attend my husband, be his nurse,   Diet his sickness, for it is my office,   And will have no attorney but myself;   And therefore let me have him home with me. ABBESS. Be patient; for I will not let him stir   Till I have us\'d the approved means I have,   With wholesome syrups, drugs, and holy prayers,   To make of him a formal man again.   It is a branch and parcel of mine oath,   A charitable duty of my order;   Therefore depart, and leave him here with me. ADRIANA. I will not hence and leave my husband here;   And ill it doth beseem your holiness   To separate the husband and the wife. ABBESS. Be quiet, and depart; thou shalt not have him. <Exit LUCIANA. Complain unto the Duke of this indignity. ADRIANA. Come, go; I will fall prostrate at his feet,   And never rise until my tears and prayers   Have won his Grace to come in person hither   And take perforce my husband from the Abbess. SECOND MERCHANT. By this, I think, the dial points at five;   Anon, I\'m sure, the Duke himself in person   Comes this way to the melancholy vale,   The place of death and sorry execution,   Behind the ditches of the abbey here. ANGELO. Upon what cause? SECOND MERCHANT. To see a reverend Syracusian merchant,   Who put unluckily into this bay   Against the laws and statutes of this town,   Beheaded publicly for his offence. ANGELO. See where they come; we will behold his death. LUCIANA. Kneel to the Duke before he pass the abbey.  Enter the DUKE, attended; AEGEON, bareheaded; with the HEADSMAN and other OFFICERS  DUKE. Yet once again proclaim it publicly,   If any friend will pay the sum for him,   He shall not die; so much we tender him. ADRIANA. Justice, most sacred Duke, against the Abbess! DUKE. She is a virtuous and a reverend lady;   It cannot be that she hath done thee wrong. ADRIANA. May it please your Grace, Antipholus, my husband,   Who I made lord of me and all I had   At your important letters-this ill day   A most outrageous fit of madness took him,   That desp\'rately he hurried through the street,   With him his bondman all as mad as he,   Doing displeasure to the citizens   By rushing in their houses, bearing thence   Rings, jewels, anything his rage did like.   Once did I get him bound and sent him home,   Whilst to take order for the wrongs I went,   That here and there his fury had committed.   Anon, I wot not by what strong escape,   He broke from those that had the guard of him,   And with his mad attendant and himself,   Each one with ireful passion, with drawn swords,   Met us again and, madly bent on us,   Chas\'d us away; till, raising of more aid,   We came again to bind them. Then they fled   Into this abbey, whither we pursu\'d them;   And here the Abbess shuts the gates on us,   And will not suffer us to fetch him out,   Nor send him forth that we may bear him hence.   Therefore, most gracious Duke, with thy command   Let him be brought forth and borne hence for help. DUKE. Long since thy husband serv\'d me in my wars,   And I to thee engag\'d a prince\'s word,   When thou didst make him master of thy bed,   To do him all the grace and good I could.   Go, some of you, knock at the abbey gate,   And bid the Lady Abbess come to me,   I will determine this before I stir.  Enter a MESSENGER  MESSENGER. O mistress, mistress, shift and save yourself!   My master and his man are both broke loose,   Beaten the maids a-row and bound the doctor,   Whose beard they have sing\'d off with brands of fire;   And ever, as it blaz\'d, they threw on him   Great pails of puddled mire to quench the hair.   My master preaches patience to him, and the while   His man with scissors nicks him like a fool;   And sure, unless you send some present help,   Between them they will kill the conjurer. ADRIANA. Peace, fool! thy master and his man are here,   And that is false thou dost report to us. MESSENGER. Mistress, upon my life, I tell you true;   I have not breath\'d almost since I did see it.   He cries for you, and vows, if he can take you,   To scorch your face, and to disfigure you. [Cry within]   Hark, hark, I hear him, mistress; fly, be gone! DUKE. Come, stand by me; fear nothing. Guard with halberds. ADRIANA. Ay me, it is my husband! Witness you   That he is borne about invisible.   Even now we hous\'d him in the abbey here,   And now he\'s there, past thought of human reason.  Enter ANTIPHOLUS OFEPHESUS and DROMIO OFEPHESUS  ANTIPHOLUS OFEPHESUS. Justice, most gracious Duke; O, grant me justice!   Even for the service that long since I did thee,   When I bestrid thee in the wars, and took   Deep scars to save thy life; even for the blood   That then I lost for thee, now grant me justice. AEGEON. Unless the fear of death doth make me dote,   I see my son Antipholus, and Dromio. ANTIPHOLUS OFEPHESUS. Justice, sweet Prince, against that woman there!   She whom thou gav\'st to me to be my wife,   That hath abused and dishonoured me   Even in the strength and height of injury.   Beyond imagination is the wrong   That she this day hath shameless thrown on me. DUKE. Discover how, and thou shalt find me just. ANTIPHOLUS OFEPHESUS. This day, great Duke, she shut the doors upon me,   While she with harlots feasted in my house. DUKE. A grievous fault. Say, woman, didst thou so? ADRIANA. No, my good lord. Myself, he, and my sister,   To-day did dine together. So befall my soul   As this is false he burdens me withal! LUCIANA. Ne\'er may I look on day nor sleep on night   But she tells to your Highness simple truth! ANGELO. O peflur\'d woman! They are both forsworn.   In this the madman justly chargeth them. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. My liege, I am advised what I say;   Neither disturbed with the effect of wine,   Nor heady-rash, provok\'d with raging ire,   Albeit my wrongs might make one wiser mad.   This woman lock\'d me out this day from dinner;   That goldsmith there, were he not pack\'d with her,   Could witness it, for he was with me then;   Who parted with me to go fetch a chain,   Promising to bring it to the Porpentine,   Where Balthazar and I did dine together.   Our dinner done, and he not coming thither,   I went to seek him. In the street I met him,   And in his company that gentleman.   There did this perjur\'d goldsmith swear me down   That I this day of him receiv\'d the chain,   Which, God he knows, I saw not; for the which   He did arrest me with an officer.   I did obey, and sent my peasant home   For certain ducats; he with none return\'d.   Then fairly I bespoke the officer   To go in person with me to my house.   By th\' way we met my wife, her sister, and a rabble more   Of vile confederates. Along with them   They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-fac\'d villain,   A mere anatomy, a mountebank,   A threadbare juggler, and a fortune-teller,   A needy, hollow-ey\'d, sharp-looking wretch,   A living dead man. This pernicious slave,   Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer,   And gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,   And with no face, as \'twere, outfacing me,   Cries out I was possess\'d. Then all together   They fell upon me, bound me, bore me thence,   And in a dark and dankish vault at home   There left me and my man, both bound together;   Till, gnawing with my teeth my bonds in sunder,   I gain\'d my freedom, and immediately   Ran hither to your Grace; whom I beseech   To give me ample satisfaction   For these deep shames and great indignities. ANGELO. My lord, in truth, thus far I witness with him,   That he din\'d not at home, but was lock\'d out. DUKE. But had he such a chain of thee, or no? ANGELO. He had, my lord, and when he ran in here,   These people saw the chain about his neck. SECOND MERCHANT. Besides, I will be sworn these ears of mine   Heard you confess you had the chain of him,   After you first forswore it on the mart;   And thereupon I drew my sword on you,   And then you fled into this abbey here,   From whence, I think, you are come by miracle. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I never came within these abbey walls,   Nor ever didst thou draw thy sword on me;   I never saw the chain, so help me Heaven!   And this is false you burden me withal. DUKE. Why, what an intricate impeach is this!   I think you all have drunk of Circe\'s cup.   If here you hous\'d him, here he would have been;   If he were mad, he would not plead so coldly.   You say he din\'d at home: the goldsmith here   Denies that saying. Sirrah, what say you? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Sir, he din\'d with her there, at the Porpentine. COURTEZAN. He did; and from my finger snatch\'d that ring. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. \'Tis true, my liege; this ring I had of her. DUKE. Saw\'st thou him enter at the abbey here? COURTEZAN. As sure, my liege, as I do see your Grace. DUKE. Why, this is strange. Go call the Abbess hither.   I think you are all mated or stark mad. <Exit one to the ABBESS AEGEON. Most mighty Duke, vouchsafe me speak a word:   Haply I see a friend will save my life   And pay the sum that may deliver me. DUKE. Speak freely, Syracusian, what thou wilt. AEGEON. Is not your name, sir, call\'d Antipholus?   And is not that your bondman Dromio? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Within this hour I was his bondman, sir,   But he, I thank him, gnaw\'d in two my cords   Now am I Dromio and his man unbound. AEGEON. I am sure you both of you remember me. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Ourselves we do remember, sir, by you;   For lately we were bound as you are now.   You are not Pinch\'s patient, are you, sir? AEGEON. Why look you strange on me? You know me well. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I never saw you in my life till now. AEGEON. O! grief hath chang\'d me since you saw me last;   And careful hours with time\'s deformed hand   Have written strange defeatures in my face.   But tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice? ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Neither. AEGEON. Dromio, nor thou? DROMIO OF EPHESUS. No, trust me, sir, nor I. AEGEON. I am sure thou dost. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Ay, sir, but I am sure I do not; and   whatsoever a man denies, you are now bound to believe him. AEGEON. Not know my voice! O time\'s extremity,   Hast thou so crack\'d and splitted my poor tongue   In seven short years that here my only son   Knows not my feeble key of untun\'d cares?   Though now this grained face of mine be hid   In sap-consuming winter\'s drizzled snow,   And all the conduits of my blood froze up,   Yet hath my night of life some memory,   My wasting lamps some fading glimmer left,   My dull deaf ears a little use to hear;   All these old witnesses-I cannot err-   Tell me thou art my son Antipholus. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I never saw my father in my life. AEGEON. But seven years since, in Syracuse, boy,   Thou know\'st we parted; but perhaps, my son,   Thou sham\'st to acknowledge me in misery. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. The Duke and all that know me in   the city Can witness with me that it is not so:   I ne\'er saw Syracuse in my life. DUKE. I tell thee, Syracusian, twenty years   Have I been patron to Antipholus,   During which time he ne\'er saw Syracuse.   I see thy age and dangers make thee dote.  Re-enter the ABBESS, with ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE and DROMIO OF SYRACUSE  ABBESS. Most mighty Duke, behold a man much wrong\'d. [All gather to see them] ADRIANA. I see two husbands, or mine eyes deceive me. DUKE. One of these men is genius to the other;   And so of these. Which is the natural man,   And which the spirit? Who deciphers them? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. I, sir, am Dromio; command him away. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. I, Sir, am Dromio; pray let me stay. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. Aegeon, art thou not? or else his DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. O, my old master! who hath bound ABBESS. Whoever bound him, I will loose his bonds,   And gain a husband by his liberty.   Speak, old Aegeon, if thou be\'st the man   That hadst a wife once call\'d Aemilia,   That bore thee at a burden two fair sons.   O, if thou be\'st the same Aegeon, speak,   And speak unto the same Aemilia! AEGEON. If I dream not, thou art Aemilia.   If thou art she, tell me where is that son   That floated with thee on the fatal raft? ABBESS. By men of Epidamnum he and I   And the twin Dromio, all were taken up;   But by and by rude fishermen of Corinth   By force took Dromio and my son from them,   And me they left with those of Epidamnum.   What then became of them I cannot tell;   I to this fortune that you see me in. DUKE. Why, here begins his morning story right.   These two Antipholus\', these two so like,   And these two Dromios, one in semblance-   Besides her urging of her wreck at sea-   These are the parents to these children,   Which accidentally are met together.   Antipholus, thou cam\'st from Corinth first? ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. No, sir, not I; I came from Syracuse. DUKE. Stay, stand apart; I know not which is which. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. I came from Corinth, my most gracious lord. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. And I with him. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Brought to this town by that most famous warrior,   Duke Menaphon, your most renowned uncle. ADRIANA. Which of you two did dine with me to-day? ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I, gentle mistress. ADRIANA. And are not you my husband? ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. No; I say nay to that. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. And so do I, yet did she call me so;   And this fair gentlewoman, her sister here,   Did call me brother.  [To LUCIANA]  What I told you then,   I hope I shall have leisure to make good;   If this be not a dream I see and hear. ANGELO. That is the chain, sir, which you had of me. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. I think it be, sir; I deny it not. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. And you, sir, for this chain arrested me. ANGELO. I think I did, sir; I deny it not. ADRIANA. I sent you money, sir, to be your bail,   By Dromio; but I think he brought it not. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. No, none by me. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. This purse of ducats I receiv\'d from you,   And Dromio my man did bring them me.   I see we still did meet each other\'s man,   And I was ta\'en for him, and he for me,   And thereupon these ERRORS are arose. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. These ducats pawn I for my father here. DUKE. It shall not need; thy father hath his life. COURTEZAN. Sir, I must have that diamond from you. ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. There, take it; and much thanks for my   good cheer. ABBESS. Renowned Duke, vouchsafe to take the pains   To go with us into the abbey here,   And hear at large discoursed all our fortunes;   And all that are assembled in this place   That by this sympathized one day\'s error   Have suffer\'d wrong, go keep us company,   And we shall make full satisfaction.   Thirty-three years have I but gone in travail   Of you, my sons; and till this present hour   My heavy burden ne\'er delivered.   The Duke, my husband, and my children both,   And you the calendars of their nativity,   Go to a gossips\' feast, and go with me;   After so long grief, such nativity! DUKE. With all my heart, I\'ll gossip at this feast. <Exeunt all but ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE, ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS, DROMIO OF SYRACUSE, and DROMIO OF EPHESUS DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Master, shall I fetch your stuff from shipboard? ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS. Dromio, what stuff of mine hast thou embark\'d? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Your goods that lay at host, sir, in the Centaur. ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE. He speaks to me. I am your master, Dromio.   Come, go with us; we\'ll look to that anon.   Embrace thy brother there; rejoice with him. <Exeunt ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE and ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. There is a fat friend at your master\'s house,   That kitchen\'d me for you to-day at dinner;   She now shall be my sister, not my wife. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother;   I see by you I am a sweet-fac\'d youth.   Will you walk in to see their gossiping? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. Not I, sir; you are my elder. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. That\'s a question; how shall we try it? DROMIO OF SYRACUSE. We\'ll draw cuts for the senior; till then,     lead thou first. DROMIO OF EPHESUS. Nay, then, thus:   We came into the world like brother and brother,   And now let\'s go hand in hand, not one before another. <Exeunt   THE END   <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1608  THE TRAGEDY OF CORIOLANUS  by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae    CAIUS MARCIUS, afterwards CAIUS MARCIUS CORIOLANUS      Generals against the Volscians   TITUS LARTIUS   COMINIUS    MENENIUS AGRIPPA, friend to Coriolanus      Tribunes of the People   SICINIUS VELUTUS   JUNIUS BRUTUS    YOUNG MARCIUS, son to Coriolanus   A ROMAN HERALD   NICANOR, a Roman   TULLUS AUFIDIUS, General of the Volscians   LIEUTENANT, to Aufidius   CONSPIRATORS, With Aufidius   ADRIAN, a Volscian   A CITIZEN of Antium     TWO VOLSCIAN GUARDS    VOLUMNIA, mother to Coriolanus   VIRGILIA, wife to Coriolanus   VALERIA, friend to Virgilia   GENTLEWOMAN attending on Virgilia    Roman and Volscian Senators, Patricians, Aediles, Lictors,     Soldiers, Citizens, Messengers, Servants to Aufidius, and other     Attendants     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: Rome and the neighbourhood; Corioli and the neighbourhood; Antium    ACT I. SCENE I. Rome. A street  Enter a company of mutinous citizens, with staves, clubs, and other weapons    FIRST CITIZEN. Before we proceed any further, hear me speak.   ALL. Speak, speak.   FIRST CITIZEN. YOU are all resolv\'d rather to die than to famish?   ALL. Resolv\'d, resolv\'d.   FIRST CITIZEN. First, you know Caius Marcius is chief enemy to the     people.   ALL. We know\'t, we know\'t.   FIRST CITIZEN. Let us kill him, and we\'ll have corn at our own     price. Is\'t a verdict?   ALL. No more talking on\'t; let it be done. Away, away!   SECOND CITIZEN. One word, good citizens.   FIRST CITIZEN. We are accounted poor citizens, the patricians good.     What authority surfeits on would relieve us; if they would yield     us but the superfluity while it were wholesome, we might guess     they relieved us humanely; but they think we are too dear. The     leanness that afflicts us, the object of our misery, is as an       inventory to particularize their abundance; our sufferance is a     gain to them. Let us revenge this with our pikes ere we become     rakes; for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not in     thirst for revenge.   SECOND CITIZEN. Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius?   FIRST CITIZEN. Against him first; he\'s a very dog to the     commonalty.   SECOND CITIZEN. Consider you what services he has done for his     country?   FIRST CITIZEN. Very well, and could be content to give him good     report for\'t but that he pays himself with being proud.   SECOND CITIZEN. Nay, but speak not maliciously.   FIRST CITIZEN. I say unto you, what he hath done famously he did it     to that end; though soft-conscienc\'d men can be content to say it     was for his country, he did it to please his mother and to be     partly proud, which he is, even to the altitude of his virtue.   SECOND CITIZEN. What he cannot help in his nature you account a     vice in him. You must in no way say he is covetous.   FIRST CITIZEN. If I must not, I need not be barren of accusations;     he hath faults, with surplus, to tire in repetition.  [Shouts       within]  What shouts are these? The other side o\' th\' city is     risen. Why stay we prating here? To th\' Capitol!   ALL. Come, come.   FIRST CITIZEN. Soft! who comes here?                         Enter MENENIUS AGRIPPA    SECOND CITIZEN. Worthy Menenius Agrippa; one that hath always lov\'d     the people.   FIRST CITIZEN. He\'s one honest enough; would all the rest were so!   MENENIUS. What work\'s, my countrymen, in hand? Where go you     With bats and clubs? The matter? Speak, I pray you.   FIRST CITIZEN. Our business is not unknown to th\' Senate; they have     had inkling this fortnight what we intend to do, which now we\'ll     show \'em in deeds. They say poor suitors have strong breaths;     they shall know we have strong arms too.   MENENIUS. Why, masters, my good friends, mine honest neighbours,     Will you undo yourselves?   FIRST CITIZEN. We cannot, sir; we are undone already.   MENENIUS. I tell you, friends, most charitable care       Have the patricians of you. For your wants,     Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well     Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them     Against the Roman state; whose course will on     The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs     Of more strong link asunder than can ever     Appear in your impediment. For the dearth,     The gods, not the patricians, make it, and     Your knees to them, not arms, must help. Alack,     You are transported by calamity     Thither where more attends you; and you slander     The helms o\' th\' state, who care for you like fathers,     When you curse them as enemies.   FIRST CITIZEN. Care for us! True, indeed! They ne\'er car\'d for us     yet. Suffer us to famish, and their storehouses cramm\'d with     grain; make edicts for usury, to support usurers; repeal daily     any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more     piercing statutes daily to chain up and restrain the poor. If the     wars eat us not up, they will; and there\'s all the love they bear     us.     MENENIUS. Either you must     Confess yourselves wondrous malicious,     Or be accus\'d of folly. I shall tell you     A pretty tale. It may be you have heard it;     But, since it serves my purpose, I will venture     To stale\'t a little more.   FIRST CITIZEN. Well, I\'ll hear it, sir; yet you must not think to     fob off our disgrace with a tale. But, an\'t please you, deliver.   MENENIUS. There was a time when all the body\'s members     Rebell\'d against the belly; thus accus\'d it:     That only like a gulf it did remain     I\' th\' midst o\' th\' body, idle and unactive,     Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing     Like labour with the rest; where th\' other instruments     Did see and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel,     And, mutually participate, did minister     Unto the appetite and affection common     Of the whole body. The belly answer\'d-   FIRST CITIZEN. Well, sir, what answer made the belly?   MENENIUS. Sir, I shall tell you. With a kind of smile,       Which ne\'er came from the lungs, but even thus-     For look you, I may make the belly smile     As well as speak- it tauntingly replied     To th\' discontented members, the mutinous parts     That envied his receipt; even so most fitly     As you malign our senators for that     They are not such as you.   FIRST CITIZEN. Your belly\'s answer- What?     The kingly crowned head, the vigilant eye,     The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier,     Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter,     With other muniments and petty helps     Is this our fabric, if that they-   MENENIUS. What then?     Fore me, this fellow speaks! What then? What then?   FIRST CITIZEN. Should by the cormorant belly be restrain\'d,     Who is the sink o\' th\' body-   MENENIUS. Well, what then?   FIRST CITIZEN. The former agents, if they did complain,     What could the belly answer?     MENENIUS. I will tell you;     If you\'ll bestow a small- of what you have little-     Patience awhile, you\'st hear the belly\'s answer.   FIRST CITIZEN. Y\'are long about it.   MENENIUS. Note me this, good friend:     Your most grave belly was deliberate,     Not rash like his accusers, and thus answered.     \'True is it, my incorporate friends,\' quoth he     \'That I receive the general food at first     Which you do live upon; and fit it is,     Because I am the storehouse and the shop     Of the whole body. But, if you do remember,     I send it through the rivers of your blood,     Even to the court, the heart, to th\' seat o\' th\' brain;     And, through the cranks and offices of man,     The strongest nerves and small inferior veins     From me receive that natural competency     Whereby they live. And though that all at once     You, my good friends\'- this says the belly; mark me.   FIRST CITIZEN. Ay, sir; well, well.     MENENIUS. \'Though all at once cannot     See what I do deliver out to each,     Yet I can make my audit up, that all     From me do back receive the flour of all,     And leave me but the bran.\' What say you to\' t?   FIRST CITIZEN. It was an answer. How apply you this?   MENENIUS. The senators of Rome are this good belly,     And you the mutinous members; for, examine     Their counsels and their cares, digest things rightly     Touching the weal o\' th\' common, you shall find     No public benefit which you receive     But it proceeds or comes from them to you,     And no way from yourselves. What do you think,     You, the great toe of this assembly?   FIRST CITIZEN. I the great toe? Why the great toe?   MENENIUS. For that, being one o\' th\' lowest, basest, poorest,     Of this most wise rebellion, thou goest foremost.     Thou rascal, that art worst in blood to run,     Lead\'st first to win some vantage.     But make you ready your stiff bats and clubs.       Rome and her rats are at the point of battle;     The one side must have bale.                        Enter CAIUS MARCIUS      Hail, noble Marcius!   MARCIUS. Thanks. What\'s the matter, you dissentious rogues     That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion,     Make yourselves scabs?   FIRST CITIZEN. We have ever your good word.   MARCIUS. He that will give good words to thee will flatter     Beneath abhorring. What would you have, you curs,     That like nor peace nor war? The one affrights you,     The other makes you proud. He that trusts to you,     Where he should find you lions, finds you hares;     Where foxes, geese; you are no surer, no,     Than is the coal of fire upon the ice     Or hailstone in the sun. Your virtue is     To make him worthy whose offence subdues him,     And curse that justice did it. Who deserves greatness       Deserves your hate; and your affections are     A sick man\'s appetite, who desires most that     Which would increase his evil. He that depends     Upon your favours swims with fins of lead,     And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?     With every minute you do change a mind     And call him noble that was now your hate,     Him vile that was your garland. What\'s the matter     That in these several places of the city     You cry against the noble Senate, who,     Under the gods, keep you in awe, which else     Would feed on one another? What\'s their seeking?   MENENIUS. For corn at their own rates, whereof they say     The city is well stor\'d.   MARCIUS. Hang \'em! They say!     They\'ll sit by th\' fire and presume to know     What\'s done i\' th\' Capitol, who\'s like to rise,     Who thrives and who declines; side factions, and give out     Conjectural marriages, making parties strong,     And feebling such as stand not in their liking       Below their cobbled shoes. They say there\'s grain enough!     Would the nobility lay aside their ruth     And let me use my sword, I\'d make a quarry     With thousands of these quarter\'d slaves, as high     As I could pick my lance.   MENENIUS. Nay, these are almost thoroughly persuaded;     For though abundantly they lack discretion,     Yet are they passing cowardly. But, I beseech you,     What says the other troop?   MARCIUS. They are dissolv\'d. Hang \'em!     They said they were an-hungry; sigh\'d forth proverbs-     That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs must eat,     That meat was made for mouths, that the gods sent not     Corn for the rich men only. With these shreds     They vented their complainings; which being answer\'d,     And a petition granted them- a strange one,     To break the heart of generosity     And make bold power look pale- they threw their caps     As they would hang them on the horns o\' th\' moon,     Shouting their emulation.     MENENIUS. What is granted them?   MARCIUS. Five tribunes, to defend their vulgar wisdoms,     Of their own choice. One\'s Junius Brutus-     Sicinius Velutus, and I know not. \'Sdeath!     The rabble should have first unroof\'d the city     Ere so prevail\'d with me; it will in time     Win upon power and throw forth greater themes     For insurrection\'s arguing.   MENENIUS. This is strange.   MARCIUS. Go get you home, you fragments.                       Enter a MESSENGER, hastily    MESSENGER. Where\'s Caius Marcius?   MARCIUS. Here. What\'s the matter?   MESSENGER. The news is, sir, the Volsces are in arms.   MARCIUS. I am glad on\'t; then we shall ha\' means to vent     Our musty superfluity. See, our best elders.           Enter COMINIUS, TITUS LARTIUS, with other SENATORS;                     JUNIUS BRUTUS and SICINIUS VELUTUS    FIRST SENATOR. Marcius, \'tis true that you have lately told us:     The Volsces are in arms.   MARCIUS. They have a leader,     Tullus Aufidius, that will put you to\'t.     I sin in envying his nobility;     And were I anything but what I am,     I would wish me only he.   COMINIUS. You have fought together?   MARCIUS. Were half to half the world by th\' ears, and he     Upon my party, I\'d revolt, to make     Only my wars with him. He is a lion     That I am proud to hunt.   FIRST SENATOR. Then, worthy Marcius,     Attend upon Cominius to these wars.   COMINIUS. It is your former promise.   MARCIUS. Sir, it is;     And I am constant. Titus Lartius, thou     Shalt see me once more strike at Tullus\' face.       What, art thou stiff? Stand\'st out?   LARTIUS. No, Caius Marcius;     I\'ll lean upon one crutch and fight with t\'other     Ere stay behind this business.   MENENIUS. O, true bred!   FIRST SENATOR. Your company to th\' Capitol; where, I know,     Our greatest friends attend us.   LARTIUS.  [To COMINIUS]  Lead you on.     [To MARCIUS]  Follow Cominius; we must follow you;     Right worthy you priority.   COMINIUS. Noble Marcius!   FIRST SENATOR.  [To the Citizens]  Hence to your homes; be gone.   MARCIUS. Nay, let them follow.     The Volsces have much corn: take these rats thither     To gnaw their garners. Worshipful mutineers,     Your valour puts well forth; pray follow.          Ciitzens steal away. Exeunt all but SICINIUS and BRUTUS   SICINIUS. Was ever man so proud as is this Marcius?   BRUTUS. He has no equal.   SICINIUS. When we were chosen tribunes for the people-     BRUTUS. Mark\'d you his lip and eyes?   SICINIUS. Nay, but his taunts!   BRUTUS. Being mov\'d, he will not spare to gird the gods.   SICINIUS. Bemock the modest moon.   BRUTUS. The present wars devour him! He is grown     Too proud to be so valiant.   SICINIUS. Such a nature,     Tickled with good success, disdains the shadow     Which he treads on at noon. But I do wonder     His insolence can brook to be commanded     Under Cominius.   BRUTUS. Fame, at the which he aims-     In whom already he is well grac\'d- cannot     Better be held nor more attain\'d than by     A place below the first; for what miscarries     Shall be the general\'s fault, though he perform     To th\' utmost of a man, and giddy censure     Will then cry out of Marcius \'O, if he     Had borne the business!\'   SICINIUS. Besides, if things go well,       Opinion, that so sticks on Marcius, shall     Of his demerits rob Cominius.   BRUTUS. Come.     Half all Cominius\' honours are to Marcius,     Though Marcius earn\'d them not; and all his faults     To Marcius shall be honours, though indeed     In aught he merit not.   SICINIUS. Let\'s hence and hear     How the dispatch is made, and in what fashion,     More than his singularity, he goes     Upon this present action.   BRUTUS. Let\'s along.                                    Exeunt     SCENE II. Corioli. The Senate House.  Enter TULLUS AUFIDIUS with SENATORS of Corioli    FIRST SENATOR. So, your opinion is, Aufidius,     That they of Rome are ent\'red in our counsels     And know how we proceed.   AUFIDIUS. Is it not yours?     What ever have been thought on in this state     That could be brought to bodily act ere Rome     Had circumvention? \'Tis not four days gone     Since I heard thence; these are the words- I think     I have the letter here;.yes, here it is:     [Reads]  \'They have press\'d a power, but it is not known     Whether for east or west. The dearth is great;     The people mutinous; and it is rumour\'d,     Cominius, Marcius your old enemy,     Who is of Rome worse hated than of you,     And Titus Lartius, a most valiant Roman,     These three lead on this preparation     Whither \'tis bent. Most likely \'tis for you;       Consider of it.\'   FIRST SENATOR. Our army\'s in the field;     We never yet made doubt but Rome was ready     To answer us.   AUFIDIUS. Nor did you think it folly     To keep your great pretences veil\'d till when     They needs must show themselves; which in the hatching,     It seem\'d, appear\'d to Rome. By the discovery     We shall be short\'ned in our aim, which was     To take in many towns ere almost Rome     Should know we were afoot.   SECOND SENATOR. Noble Aufidius,     Take your commission; hie you to your bands;     Let us alone to guard Corioli.     If they set down before\'s, for the remove     Bring up your army; but I think you\'ll find     Th\' have not prepar\'d for us.   AUFIDIUS. O, doubt not that!     I speak from certainties. Nay more,     Some parcels of their power are forth already,       And only hitherward. I leave your honours.     If we and Caius Marcius chance to meet,     \'Tis sworn between us we shall ever strike     Till one can do no more.   ALL. The gods assist you!   AUFIDIUS. And keep your honours safe!   FIRST SENATOR. Farewell.   SECOND SENATOR. Farewell.   ALL. Farewell.                                           Exeunt     SCENE III. Rome. MARCIUS\' house  Enter VOLUMNIA and VIRGILIA, mother and wife to MARCIUS; they set them down on two low stools and sew    VOLUMNIA. I pray you, daughter, sing, or express yourself in a more     comfortable sort. If my son were my husband, I should freelier     rejoice in that absence wherein he won honour than in the     embracements of his bed where he would show most love. When yet     he was but tender-bodied, and the only son of my womb; when youth     with comeliness pluck\'d all gaze his way; when, for a day of     kings\' entreaties, a mother should not sell him an hour from her     beholding; I, considering how honour would become such a person-     that it was no better than picture-like to hang by th\' wall, if     renown made it not stir- was pleas\'d to let him seek danger where     he was to find fame. To a cruel war I sent him, from whence he     return\'d his brows bound with oak. I tell thee, daughter, I     sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child than     now in first seeing he had proved himself a man.   VIRGILIA. But had he died in the business, madam, how then?   VOLUMNIA. Then his good report should have been my son; I therein       would have found issue. Hear me profess sincerely: had I a dozen     sons, each in my love alike, and none less dear than thine and my     good Marcius, I had rather had eleven die nobly for their country     than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.                          Enter a GENTLEWOMAN    GENTLEWOMAN. Madam, the Lady Valeria is come to visit you.   VIRGILIA. Beseech you give me leave to retire myself.   VOLUMNIA. Indeed you shall not.     Methinks I hear hither your husband\'s drum;     See him pluck Aufidius down by th\' hair;     As children from a bear, the Volsces shunning him.     Methinks I see him stamp thus, and call thus:     \'Come on, you cowards! You were got in fear,     Though you were born in Rome.\' His bloody brow     With his mail\'d hand then wiping, forth he goes,     Like to a harvest-man that\'s task\'d to mow     Or all or lose his hire.   VIRGILIA. His bloody brow? O Jupiter, no blood!     VOLUMNIA. Away, you fool! It more becomes a man     Than gilt his trophy. The breasts of Hecuba,     When she did suckle Hector, look\'d not lovelier     Than Hector\'s forehead when it spit forth blood     At Grecian sword, contemning. Tell Valeria     We are fit to bid her welcome.              Exit GENTLEWOMAN   VIRGILIA. Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius!   VOLUMNIA. He\'ll beat Aufidius\' head below his knee     And tread upon his neck.           Re-enter GENTLEWOMAN, With VALERIA and an usher    VALERIA. My ladies both, good day to you.   VOLUMNIA. Sweet madam!   VIRGILIA. I am glad to see your ladyship.   VALERIA. How do you both? You are manifest housekeepers. What are     you sewing here? A fine spot, in good faith. How does your little     son?   VIRGILIA. I thank your ladyship; well, good madam.   VOLUMNIA. He had rather see the swords and hear a drum than look       upon his schoolmaster.   VALERIA. O\' my word, the father\'s son! I\'ll swear \'tis a very     pretty boy. O\' my troth, I look\'d upon him a Wednesday half an     hour together; has such a confirm\'d countenance! I saw him run     after a gilded butterfly; and when he caught it he let it go     again, and after it again, and over and over he comes, and up     again, catch\'d it again; or whether his fall enrag\'d him, or how     \'twas, he did so set his teeth and tear it. O, I warrant, how he     mammock\'d it!   VOLUMNIA. One on\'s father\'s moods.   VALERIA. Indeed, la, \'tis a noble child.   VIRGILIA. A crack, madam.   VALERIA. Come, lay aside your stitchery; I must have you play the     idle huswife with me this afternoon.   VIRGILIA. No, good madam; I will not out of doors.   VALERIA. Not out of doors!   VOLUMNIA. She shall, she shall.   VIRGILIA. Indeed, no, by your patience; I\'ll not over the threshold     till my lord return from the wars.   VALERIA. Fie, you confine yourself most unreasonably; come, you       must go visit the good lady that lies in.   VIRGILIA. I will wish her speedy strength, and visit her with my     prayers; but I cannot go thither.   VOLUMNIA. Why, I pray you?   VIRGILIA. \'Tis not to save labour, nor that I want love.   VALERIA. You would be another Penelope; yet they say all the yarn     she spun in Ulysses\' absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths.     Come, I would your cambric were sensible as your finger, that you     might leave pricking it for pity. Come, you shall go with us.   VIRGILIA. No, good madam, pardon me; indeed I will not forth.   VALERIA. In truth, la, go with me; and I\'ll tell you excellent news     of your husband.   VIRGILIA. O, good madam, there can be none yet.   VALERIA. Verily, I do not jest with you; there came news from him     last night.   VIRGILIA. Indeed, madam?   VALERIA. In earnest, it\'s true; I heard a senator speak it. Thus it     is: the Volsces have an army forth; against whom Cominius the     general is gone, with one part of our Roman power. Your lord and     Titus Lartius are set down before their city Corioli; they       nothing doubt prevailing and to make it brief wars. This is true,     on mine honour; and so, I pray, go with us.   VIRGILIA. Give me excuse, good madam; I will obey you in everything     hereafter.   VOLUMNIA. Let her alone, lady; as she is now, she will but disease     our better mirth.   VALERIA. In troth, I think she would. Fare you well, then. Come,     good sweet lady. Prithee, Virgilia, turn thy solemness out o\'     door and go along with us.   VIRGILIA. No, at a word, madam; indeed I must not. I wish you much     mirth.   VALERIA. Well then, farewell.                           Exeunt     SCENE IV. Before Corioli  Enter MARCIUS, TITUS LARTIUS, with drum and colours, with CAPTAINS and soldiers. To them a MESSENGER    MARCIUS. Yonder comes news; a wager- they have met.   LARTIUS. My horse to yours- no.   MARCIUS. \'Tis done.   LARTIUS. Agreed.   MARCIUS. Say, has our general met the enemy?   MESSENGER. They lie in view, but have not spoke as yet.   LARTIUS. So, the good horse is mine.   MARCIUS. I\'ll buy him of you.   LARTIUS. No, I\'ll nor sell nor give him; lend you him I will     For half a hundred years. Summon the town.   MARCIUS. How far off lie these armies?   MESSENGER. Within this mile and half.   MARCIUS. Then shall we hear their \'larum, and they ours.     Now, Mars, I prithee, make us quick in work,     That we with smoking swords may march from hence     To help our fielded friends! Come, blow thy blast.              They sound a parley. Enter two SENATORS with others,                       on the walls of Corioli      Tullus Aufidius, is he within your walls?   FIRST SENATOR. No, nor a man that fears you less than he:     That\'s lesser than a little.  [Drum afar off]  Hark, our drums     Are bringing forth our youth. We\'ll break our walls     Rather than they shall pound us up; our gates,     Which yet seem shut, we have but pinn\'d with rushes;     They\'ll open of themselves.  [Alarum far off]  Hark you far off!     There is Aufidius. List what work he makes     Amongst your cloven army.   MARCIUS. O, they are at it!   LARTIUS. Their noise be our instruction. Ladders, ho!                     Enter the army of the Volsces    MARCIUS. They fear us not, but issue forth their city.     Now put your shields before your hearts, and fight       With hearts more proof than shields. Advance, brave Titus.     They do disdain us much beyond our thoughts,     Which makes me sweat with wrath. Come on, my fellows.     He that retires, I\'ll take him for a Volsce,     And he shall feel mine edge.            Alarum. The Romans are beat back to their trenches.                       Re-enter MARCIUS, cursing    MARCIUS. All the contagion of the south light on you,     You shames of Rome! you herd of- Boils and plagues     Plaster you o\'er, that you may be abhorr\'d     Farther than seen, and one infect another     Against the wind a mile! You souls of geese     That bear the shapes of men, how have you run     From slaves that apes would beat! Pluto and hell!     All hurt behind! Backs red, and faces pale     With flight and agued fear! Mend and charge home,     Or, by the fires of heaven, I\'ll leave the foe     And make my wars on you. Look to\'t. Come on;       If you\'ll stand fast we\'ll beat them to their wives,     As they us to our trenches. Follow me.           Another alarum. The Volsces fly, and MARCIUS follows                           them to the gates      So, now the gates are ope; now prove good seconds;     \'Tis for the followers fortune widens them,     Not for the fliers. Mark me, and do the like.                      [MARCIUS enters the gates]    FIRST SOLDIER. Fool-hardiness; not I.   SECOND SOLDIER. Not I.                    [MARCIUS is shut in]   FIRST SOLDIER. See, they have shut him in.   ALL. To th\' pot, I warrant him.             [Alarum continues]                        Re-enter TITUS LARTIUS    LARTIUS. What is become of Marcius?     ALL. Slain, sir, doubtless.   FIRST SOLDIER. Following the fliers at the very heels,     With them he enters; who, upon the sudden,     Clapp\'d to their gates. He is himself alone,     To answer all the city.   LARTIUS. O noble fellow!     Who sensibly outdares his senseless sword,     And when it bows stand\'st up. Thou art left, Marcius;     A carbuncle entire, as big as thou art,     Were not so rich a jewel. Thou wast a soldier     Even to Cato\'s wish, not fierce and terrible     Only in strokes; but with thy grim looks and     The thunder-like percussion of thy sounds     Thou mad\'st thine enemies shake, as if the world     Were feverous and did tremble.            Re-enter MARCIUS, bleeding, assaulted by the enemy    FIRST SOLDIER. Look, sir.   LARTIUS. O, \'tis Marcius!       Let\'s fetch him off, or make remain alike.                             [They fight, and all enter the city]     SCENE V. Within Corioli. A street  Enter certain Romans, with spoils    FIRST ROMAN. This will I carry to Rome.   SECOND ROMAN. And I this.   THIRD ROMAN. A murrain on \'t! I took this for silver.                                [Alarum continues still afar off]            Enter MARCIUS and TITUS LARTIUS With a trumpeter    MARCIUS. See here these movers that do prize their hours     At a crack\'d drachma! Cushions, leaden spoons,     Irons of a doit, doublets that hangmen would     Bury with those that wore them, these base slaves,     Ere yet the fight be done, pack up. Down with them!                                                 Exeunt pillagers     And hark, what noise the general makes! To him!     There is the man of my soul\'s hate, Aufidius,     Piercing our Romans; then, valiant Titus, take     Convenient numbers to make good the city;       Whilst I, with those that have the spirit, will haste     To help Cominius.   LARTIUS. Worthy sir, thou bleed\'st;     Thy exercise hath been too violent     For a second course of fight.   MARCIUS. Sir, praise me not;     My work hath yet not warm\'d me. Fare you well;     The blood I drop is rather physical     Than dangerous to me. To Aufidius thus     I will appear, and fight.   LARTIUS. Now the fair goddess, Fortune,     Fall deep in love with thee, and her great charms     Misguide thy opposers\' swords! Bold gentleman,     Prosperity be thy page!   MARCIUS. Thy friend no less     Than those she placeth highest! So farewell.   LARTIUS. Thou worthiest Marcius!                  Exit MARCIUS     Go sound thy trumpet in the market-place;     Call thither all the officers o\' th\' town,     Where they shall know our mind. Away!                 Exeunt     SCENE VI. Near the camp of COMINIUS  Enter COMINIUS, as it were in retire, with soldiers    COMINIUS. Breathe you, my friends. Well fought; we are come off     Like Romans, neither foolish in our stands     Nor cowardly in retire. Believe me, sirs,     We shall be charg\'d again. Whiles we have struck,     By interims and conveying gusts we have heard     The charges of our friends. The Roman gods,     Lead their successes as we wish our own,     That both our powers, with smiling fronts encount\'ring,     May give you thankful sacrifice!                           Enter A MESSENGER      Thy news?   MESSENGER. The citizens of Corioli have issued     And given to Lartius and to Marcius battle;     I saw our party to their trenches driven,     And then I came away.     COMINIUS. Though thou speak\'st truth,     Methinks thou speak\'st not well. How long is\'t since?   MESSENGER. Above an hour, my lord.   COMINIUS. \'Tis not a mile; briefly we heard their drums.     How couldst thou in a mile confound an hour,     And bring thy news so late?   MESSENGER. Spies of the Volsces     Held me in chase, that I was forc\'d to wheel     Three or four miles about; else had I, sir,     Half an hour since brought my report.                             Enter MARCIUS    COMINIUS. Who\'s yonder     That does appear as he were flay\'d? O gods!     He has the stamp of Marcius, and I have     Before-time seen him thus.   MARCIUS. Come I too late?   COMINIUS. The shepherd knows not thunder from a tabor     More than I know the sound of Marcius\' tongue       From every meaner man.   MARCIUS. Come I too late?   COMINIUS. Ay, if you come not in the blood of others,     But mantled in your own.   MARCIUS. O! let me clip ye     In arms as sound as when I woo\'d, in heart     As merry as when our nuptial day was done,     And tapers burn\'d to bedward.   COMINIUS. Flower of warriors,     How is\'t with Titus Lartius?   MARCIUS. As with a man busied about decrees:     Condemning some to death and some to exile;     Ransoming him or pitying, threat\'ning th\' other;     Holding Corioli in the name of Rome     Even like a fawning greyhound in the leash,     To let him slip at will.   COMINIUS. Where is that slave     Which told me they had beat you to your trenches?     Where is he? Call him hither.   MARCIUS. Let him alone;       He did inform the truth. But for our gentlemen,     The common file- a plague! tribunes for them!     The mouse ne\'er shunn\'d the cat as they did budge     From rascals worse than they.   COMINIUS. But how prevail\'d you?   MARCIUS. Will the time serve to tell? I do not think.     Where is the enemy? Are you lords o\' th\' field?     If not, why cease you till you are so?   COMINIUS. Marcius,     We have at disadvantage fought, and did     Retire to win our purpose.   MARCIUS. How lies their battle? Know you on which side     They have plac\'d their men of trust?   COMINIUS. As I guess, Marcius,     Their bands i\' th\' vaward are the Antiates,     Of their best trust; o\'er them Aufidius,     Their very heart of hope.   MARCIUS. I do beseech you,     By all the battles wherein we have fought,     By th\' blood we have shed together, by th\' vows       We have made to endure friends, that you directly     Set me against Aufidius and his Antiates;     And that you not delay the present, but,     Filling the air with swords advanc\'d and darts,     We prove this very hour.   COMINIUS. Though I could wish     You were conducted to a gentle bath     And balms applied to you, yet dare I never     Deny your asking: take your choice of those     That best can aid your action.   MARCIUS. Those are they     That most are willing. If any such be here-     As it were sin to doubt- that love this painting     Wherein you see me smear\'d; if any fear     Lesser his person than an ill report;     If any think brave death outweighs bad life     And that his country\'s dearer than himself;     Let him alone, or so many so minded,     Wave thus to express his disposition,     And follow Marcius.           [They all shout and wave their          swords, take him up in their arms and cast up their caps]     O, me alone! Make you a sword of me?     If these shows be not outward, which of you     But is four Volsces? None of you but is     Able to bear against the great Aufidius     A shield as hard as his. A certain number,     Though thanks to all, must I select from all; the rest     Shall bear the business in some other fight,     As cause will be obey\'d. Please you to march;     And four shall quickly draw out my command,     Which men are best inclin\'d.   COMINIUS. March on, my fellows;     Make good this ostentation, and you shall     Divide in all with us.                                Exeunt     SCENE VII. The gates of Corioli  TITUS LARTIUS, having set a guard upon Corioli, going with drum and trumpet toward COMINIUS and CAIUS MARCIUS, enters with a LIEUTENANT, other soldiers, and a scout    LARTIUS. So, let the ports be guarded; keep your duties     As I have set them down. If I do send, dispatch     Those centuries to our aid; the rest will serve     For a short holding. If we lose the field     We cannot keep the town.   LIEUTENANT. Fear not our care, sir.   LARTIUS. Hence, and shut your gates upon\'s.     Our guider, come; to th\' Roman camp conduct us.       Exeunt     SCENE VIII. A field of battle between the Roman and the Volscian camps  Alarum, as in battle. Enter MARCIUS and AUFIDIUS at several doors    MARCIUS. I\'ll fight with none but thee, for I do hate thee     Worse than a promise-breaker.   AUFIDIUS. We hate alike:     Not Afric owns a serpent I abhor     More than thy fame and envy. Fix thy foot.   MARCIUS. Let the first budger die the other\'s slave,     And the gods doom him after!   AUFIDIUS. If I fly, Marcius,     Halloa me like a hare.   MARCIUS. Within these three hours, Tullus,     Alone I fought in your Corioli walls,     And made what work I pleas\'d. \'Tis not my blood     Wherein thou seest me mask\'d. For thy revenge     Wrench up thy power to th\' highest.   AUFIDIUS. Wert thou the Hector     That was the whip of your bragg\'d progeny,       Thou shouldst not scape me here.         Here they fight, and certain Volsces come in the aid         of AUFIDIUS. MARCIUS fights till they be driven in                              breathless      Officious, and not valiant, you have sham\'d me     In your condemned seconds.                            Exeunt     SCENE IX. The Roman camp  Flourish. Alarum. A retreat is sounded. Enter, at one door, COMINIUS with the Romans; at another door, MARCIUS, with his arm in a scarf    COMINIUS. If I should tell thee o\'er this thy day\'s work,     Thou\'t not believe thy deeds; but I\'ll report it     Where senators shall mingle tears with smiles;     Where great patricians shall attend, and shrug,     I\' th\' end admire; where ladies shall be frighted     And, gladly quak\'d, hear more; where the dull tribunes,     That with the fusty plebeians hate thine honours,     Shall say against their hearts \'We thank the gods     Our Rome hath such a soldier.\'     Yet cam\'st thou to a morsel of this feast,     Having fully din\'d before.           Enter TITUS LARTIUS, with his power, from the pursuit    LARTIUS. O General,       Here is the steed, we the caparison.     Hadst thou beheld-   MARCIUS. Pray now, no more; my mother,     Who has a charter to extol her blood,     When she does praise me grieves me. I have done     As you have done- that\'s what I can; induc\'d     As you have been- that\'s for my country.     He that has but effected his good will     Hath overta\'en mine act.   COMINIUS. You shall not be     The grave of your deserving; Rome must know     The value of her own. \'Twere a concealment     Worse than a theft, no less than a traducement,     To hide your doings and to silence that     Which, to the spire and top of praises vouch\'d,     Would seem but modest. Therefore, I beseech you,     In sign of what you are, not to reward     What you have done, before our army hear me.   MARCIUS. I have some wounds upon me, and they smart     To hear themselves rememb\'red.     COMINIUS. Should they not,     Well might they fester \'gainst ingratitude     And tent themselves with death. Of all the horses-     Whereof we have ta\'en good, and good store- of all     The treasure in this field achiev\'d and city,     We render you the tenth; to be ta\'en forth     Before the common distribution at     Your only choice.   MARCIUS. I thank you, General,     But cannot make my heart consent to take     A bribe to pay my sword. I do refuse it,     And stand upon my common part with those     That have beheld the doing.             A long flourish. They all cry \'Marcius, Marcius!\'    cast up their caps and lances. COMINIUS and LARTIUS stand bare      May these same instruments which you profane     Never sound more! When drums and trumpets shall     I\' th\' field prove flatterers, let courts and cities be       Made all of false-fac\'d soothing. When steel grows     Soft as the parasite\'s silk, let him be made     An overture for th\' wars. No more, I say.     For that I have not wash\'d my nose that bled,     Or foil\'d some debile wretch, which without note     Here\'s many else have done, you shout me forth     In acclamations hyperbolical,     As if I lov\'d my little should be dieted     In praises sauc\'d with lies.   COMINIUS. Too modest are you;     More cruel to your good report than grateful     To us that give you truly. By your patience,     If \'gainst yourself you be incens\'d, we\'ll put you-     Like one that means his proper harm- in manacles,     Then reason safely with you. Therefore be it known,     As to us, to all the world, that Caius Marcius     Wears this war\'s garland; in token of the which,     My noble steed, known to the camp, I give him,     With all his trim belonging; and from this time,     For what he did before Corioli, can him       With all th\' applause-and clamour of the host,     Caius Marcius Coriolanus.     Bear th\' addition nobly ever!                            [Flourish. Trumpets sound, and drums]   ALL. Caius Marcius Coriolanus!   CORIOLANUS. I will go wash;     And when my face is fair you shall perceive     Whether I blush or no. Howbeit, I thank you;     I mean to stride your steed, and at all times     To undercrest your good addition     To th\' fairness of my power.   COMINIUS. So, to our tent;     Where, ere we do repose us, we will write     To Rome of our success. You, Titus Lartius,     Must to Corioli back. Send us to Rome     The best, with whom we may articulate     For their own good and ours.   LARTIUS. I shall, my lord.   CORIOLANUS. The gods begin to mock me. I, that now     Refus\'d most princely gifts, am bound to beg       Of my Lord General.   COMINIUS. Take\'t- \'tis yours; what is\'t?   CORIOLANUS. I sometime lay here in Corioli     At a poor man\'s house; he us\'d me kindly.     He cried to me; I saw him prisoner;     But then Aufidius was within my view,     And wrath o\'erwhelm\'d my pity. I request you     To give my poor host freedom.   COMINIUS. O, well begg\'d!     Were he the butcher of my son, he should     Be free as is the wind. Deliver him, Titus.   LARTIUS. Marcius, his name?   CORIOLANUS. By Jupiter, forgot!     I am weary; yea, my memory is tir\'d.     Have we no wine here?   COMINIUS. Go we to our tent.     The blood upon your visage dries; \'tis time     It should be look\'d to. Come.                         Exeunt     SCENE X. The camp of the Volsces  A flourish. Cornets. Enter TULLUS AUFIDIUS bloody, with two or three soldiers    AUFIDIUS. The town is ta\'en.   FIRST SOLDIER. \'Twill be deliver\'d back on good condition.   AUFIDIUS. Condition!     I would I were a Roman; for I cannot,     Being a Volsce, be that I am. Condition?     What good condition can a treaty find     I\' th\' part that is at mercy? Five times, Marcius,     I have fought with thee; so often hast thou beat me;     And wouldst do so, I think, should we encounter     As often as we eat. By th\' elements,     If e\'er again I meet him beard to beard,     He\'s mine or I am his. Mine emulation     Hath not that honour in\'t it had; for where     I thought to crush him in an equal force,     True sword to sword, I\'ll potch at him some way,     Or wrath or craft may get him.     FIRST SOLDIER. He\'s the devil.   AUFIDIUS. Bolder, though not so subtle. My valour\'s poison\'d     With only suff\'ring stain by him; for him     Shall fly out of itself. Nor sleep nor sanctuary,     Being naked, sick, nor fane nor Capitol,     The prayers of priests nor times of sacrifice,     Embarquements all of fury, shall lift up     Their rotten privilege and custom \'gainst     My hate to Marcius. Where I find him, were it     At home, upon my brother\'s guard, even there,     Against the hospitable canon, would I     Wash my fierce hand in\'s heart. Go you to th\' city;     Learn how \'tis held, and what they are that must     Be hostages for Rome.   FIRST SOLDIER. Will not you go?   AUFIDIUS. I am attended at the cypress grove; I pray you-     \'Tis south the city mills- bring me word thither     How the world goes, that to the pace of it     I may spur on my journey.   FIRST SOLDIER. I shall, sir.                            Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. Rome. A public place  Enter MENENIUS, with the two Tribunes of the people, SICINIUS and BRUTUS    MENENIUS. The augurer tells me we shall have news tonight.   BRUTUS. Good or bad?   MENENIUS. Not according to the prayer of the people, for they love     not Marcius.   SICINIUS. Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.   MENENIUS. Pray you, who does the wolf love?   SICINIUS. The lamb.   MENENIUS. Ay, to devour him, as the hungry plebeians would the     noble Marcius.   BRUTUS. He\'s a lamb indeed, that baes like a bear.   MENENIUS. He\'s a bear indeed, that lives fike a lamb. You two are     old men; tell me one thing that I shall ask you.   BOTH TRIBUNES. Well, sir.   MENENIUS. In what enormity is Marcius poor in that you two have not     in abundance?   BRUTUS. He\'s poor in no one fault, but stor\'d with all.     SICINIUS. Especially in pride.   BRUTUS. And topping all others in boasting.   MENENIUS. This is strange now. Do you two know how you are censured     here in the city- I mean of us o\' th\' right-hand file? Do you?   BOTH TRIBUNES. Why, how are we censur\'d?   MENENIUS. Because you talk of pride now- will you not be angry?   BOTH TRIBUNES. Well, well, sir, well.   MENENIUS. Why, \'tis no great matter; for a very little thief of     occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience. Give your     dispositions the reins, and be angry at your pleasures- at the     least, if you take it as a pleasure to you in being so. You blame     Marcius for being proud?   BRUTUS. We do it not alone, sir.   MENENIUS. I know you can do very little alone; for your helps are     many, or else your actions would grow wondrous single: your     abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone. You talk of     pride. O that you could turn your eyes toward the napes of your     necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves! O     that you could!   BOTH TRIBUNES. What then, sir?     MENENIUS. Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting,     proud, violent, testy magistrates-alias fools- as any in Rome.   SICINIUS. Menenius, you are known well enough too.   MENENIUS. I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves     a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in\'t; said to     be something imperfect in favouring the first complaint, hasty     and tinder-like upon too trivial motion; one that converses more     with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the     morning. What I think I utter, and spend my malice in my breath.     Meeting two such wealsmen as you are- I cannot call you     Lycurguses- if the drink you give me touch my palate adversely, I     make a crooked face at it. I cannot say your worships have     deliver\'d the matter well, when I find the ass in compound with     the major part of your syllables; and though I must be content to     bear with those that say you are reverend grave men, yet they lie     deadly that tell you you have good faces. If you see this in the     map of my microcosm, follows it that I am known well enough too?     What harm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this     character, if I be known well enough too?   BRUTUS. Come, sir, come, we know you well enough.     MENENIUS. You know neither me, yourselves, nor any thing. You are     ambitious for poor knaves\' caps and legs; you wear out a good     wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and     a fosset-seller, and then rejourn the controversy of threepence     to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a matter     between party and party, if you chance to be pinch\'d with the     colic, you make faces like mummers, set up the bloody flag     against all patience, and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss     the controversy bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing. All     the peace you make in their cause is calling both the parties     knaves. You are a pair of strange ones.   BRUTUS. Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter giber     for the table than a necessary bencher in the Capitol.   MENENIUS. Our very priests must become mockers, if they shall     encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak     best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your     beards; and your beards deserve not so honourable a grave as to     stuff a botcher\'s cushion or to be entomb\'d in an ass\'s     pack-saddle. Yet you must be saying Marcius is proud; who, in a     cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion;       though peradventure some of the best of \'em were hereditary     hangmen. God-den to your worships. More of your conversation     would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly     plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave of you.                                   [BRUTUS and SICINIUS go aside]                 Enter VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, and VALERIA      How now, my as fair as noble ladies- and the moon, were she     earthly, no nobler- whither do you follow your eyes so fast?   VOLUMNIA. Honourable Menenius, my boy Marcius approaches; for the     love of Juno, let\'s go.   MENENIUS. Ha! Marcius coming home?   VOLUMNIA. Ay, worthy Menenius, and with most prosperous     approbation.   MENENIUS. Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee. Hoo!     Marcius coming home!   VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA. Nay, \'tis true.   VOLUMNIA. Look, here\'s a letter from him; the state hath another,     his wife another; and I think there\'s one at home for you.     MENENIUS. I will make my very house reel to-night. A letter for me?   VIRGILIA. Yes, certain, there\'s a letter for you; I saw\'t.   MENENIUS. A letter for me! It gives me an estate of seven years\'     health; in which time I will make a lip at the physician. The     most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic and, to     this preservative, of no better report than a horse-drench. Is he     not wounded? He was wont to come home wounded.   VIRGILIA. O, no, no, no.   VOLUMNIA. O, he is wounded, I thank the gods for\'t.   MENENIUS. So do I too, if it be not too much. Brings a victory in     his pocket? The wounds become him.   VOLUMNIA. On\'s brows, Menenius, he comes the third time home with     the oaken garland.   MENENIUS. Has he disciplin\'d Aufidius soundly?   VOLUMNIA. Titus Lartius writes they fought together, but Aufidius     got off.   MENENIUS. And \'twas time for him too, I\'ll warrant him that; an he     had stay\'d by him, I would not have been so fidius\'d for all the     chests in Corioli and the gold that\'s in them. Is the Senate     possess\'d of this?     VOLUMNIA. Good ladies, let\'s go. Yes, yes, yes: the Senate has     letters from the general, wherein he gives my son the whole name     of the war; he hath in this action outdone his former deeds     doubly.   VALERIA. In troth, there\'s wondrous things spoke of him.   MENENIUS. Wondrous! Ay, I warrant you, and not without his true     purchasing.   VIRGILIA. The gods grant them true!   VOLUMNIA. True! pow, waw.   MENENIUS. True! I\'ll be sworn they are true. Where is he wounded?     [To the TRIBUNES]  God save your good worships! Marcius is coming     home; he has more cause to be proud. Where is he wounded?   VOLUMNIA. I\' th\' shoulder and i\' th\' left arm; there will be large     cicatrices to show the people when he shall stand for his place.     He received in the repulse of Tarquin seven hurts i\' th\' body.   MENENIUS. One i\' th\' neck and two i\' th\' thigh- there\'s nine that I     know.   VOLUMNIA. He had before this last expedition twenty-five wounds     upon him.   MENENIUS. Now it\'s twenty-seven; every gash was an enemy\'s grave.       [A shout and flourish]  Hark! the trumpets.   VOLUMNIA. These are the ushers of Marcius. Before him he carries       noise, and behind him he leaves tears;     Death, that dark spirit, in\'s nervy arm doth lie,     Which, being advanc\'d, declines, and then men die.              A sennet. Trumpets sound. Enter COMINIUS the               GENERAL, and TITUS LARTIUS; between them,            CORIOLANUS, crown\'d with an oaken garland; with                    CAPTAINS and soldiers and a HERALD    HERALD. Know, Rome, that all alone Marcius did fight     Within Corioli gates, where he hath won,     With fame, a name to Caius Marcius; these     In honour follows Coriolanus.     Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!             [Flourish]   ALL. Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!   CORIOLANUS. No more of this, it does offend my heart.     Pray now, no more.   COMINIUS. Look, sir, your mother!     CORIOLANUS. O,     You have, I know, petition\'d all the gods     For my prosperity!                                  [Kneels]   VOLUMNIA. Nay, my good soldier, up;     My gentle Marcius, worthy Caius, and     By deed-achieving honour newly nam\'d-     What is it? Coriolanus must I can thee?     But, O, thy wife!   CORIOLANUS. My gracious silence, hail!     Wouldst thou have laugh\'d had I come coffin\'d home,     That weep\'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear,     Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear,     And mothers that lack sons.   MENENIUS. Now the gods crown thee!   CORIOLANUS. And live you yet?  [To VALERIA]  O my sweet lady,     pardon.   VOLUMNIA. I know not where to turn.     O, welcome home! And welcome, General.     And y\'are welcome all.   MENENIUS. A hundred thousand welcomes. I could weep       And I could laugh; I am light and heavy. Welcome!     A curse begin at very root on\'s heart     That is not glad to see thee! You are three     That Rome should dote on; yet, by the faith of men,     We have some old crab trees here at home that will not     Be grafted to your relish. Yet welcome, warriors.     We call a nettle but a nettle, and     The faults of fools but folly.   COMINIUS. Ever right.   CORIOLANUS. Menenius ever, ever.   HERALD. Give way there, and go on.   CORIOLANUS.  [To his wife and mother]  Your hand, and yours.     Ere in our own house I do shade my head,     The good patricians must be visited;     From whom I have receiv\'d not only greetings,     But with them change of honours.   VOLUMNIA. I have lived     To see inherited my very wishes,     And the buildings of my fancy; only     There\'s one thing wanting, which I doubt not but       Our Rome will cast upon thee.   CORIOLANUS. Know, good mother,     I had rather be their servant in my way     Than sway with them in theirs.   COMINIUS. On, to the Capitol.                  [Flourish. Cornets. Exeunt in state, as before]                  BRUTUS and SICINIUS come forward    BRUTUS. All tongues speak of him and the bleared sights     Are spectacled to see him. Your prattling nurse     Into a rapture lets her baby cry     While she chats him; the kitchen malkin pins     Her richest lockram \'bout her reechy neck,     Clamb\'ring the walls to eye him; stalls, bulks, windows,     Are smother\'d up, leads fill\'d and ridges hors\'d     With variable complexions, all agreeing     In earnestness to see him. Seld-shown flamens     Do press among the popular throngs and puff     To win a vulgar station; our veil\'d dames       Commit the war of white and damask in     Their nicely gawded cheeks to th\' wanton spoil     Of Phoebus\' burning kisses. Such a pother,     As if that whatsoever god who leads him     Were slily crept into his human powers,     And gave him graceful posture.   SICINIUS. On the sudden     I warrant him consul.   BRUTUS. Then our office may     During his power go sleep.   SICINIUS. He cannot temp\'rately transport his honours     From where he should begin and end, but will     Lose those he hath won.   BRUTUS. In that there\'s comfort.   SICINIUS. Doubt not     The commoners, for whom we stand, but they     Upon their ancient malice will forget     With the least cause these his new honours; which     That he will give them make I as little question     As he is proud to do\'t.     BRUTUS. I heard him swear,     Were he to stand for consul, never would he     Appear i\' th\' market-place, nor on him put     The napless vesture of humility;     Nor, showing, as the manner is, his wounds     To th\' people, beg their stinking breaths.   SICINIUS. \'Tis right.   BRUTUS. It was his word. O, he would miss it rather     Than carry it but by the suit of the gentry to him     And the desire of the nobles.   SICINIUS. I wish no better     Than have him hold that purpose, and to put it     In execution.   BRUTUS. \'Tis most like he will.   SICINIUS. It shall be to him then as our good wills:     A sure destruction.   BRUTUS. So it must fall out     To him or our authorities. For an end,     We must suggest the people in what hatred     He still hath held them; that to\'s power he would       Have made them mules, silenc\'d their pleaders, and     Dispropertied their freedoms; holding them     In human action and capacity     Of no more soul nor fitness for the world     Than camels in their war, who have their provand     Only for bearing burdens, and sore blows     For sinking under them.   SICINIUS. This, as you say, suggested     At some time when his soaring insolence     Shall touch the people- which time shall not want,     If he be put upon\'t, and that\'s as easy     As to set dogs on sheep- will be his fire     To kindle their dry stubble; and their blaze     Shall darken him for ever.                             Enter A MESSENGER    BRUTUS. What\'s the matter?   MESSENGER. You are sent for to the Capitol. \'Tis thought     That Marcius shall be consul.       I have seen the dumb men throng to see him and     The blind to hear him speak; matrons flung gloves,     Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers,     Upon him as he pass\'d; the nobles bended     As to Jove\'s statue, and the commons made     A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts.     I never saw the like.   BRUTUS. Let\'s to the Capitol,     And carry with us ears and eyes for th\' time,     But hearts for the event.   SICINIUS. Have with you.                                Exeunt     SCENE II. Rome. The Capitol  Enter two OFFICERS, to lay cushions, as it were in the Capitol    FIRST OFFICER. Come, come, they are almost here. How many stand for     consulships?   SECOND OFFICER. Three, they say; but \'tis thought of every one     Coriolanus will carry it.   FIRST OFFICER. That\'s a brave fellow; but he\'s vengeance proud and     loves not the common people.   SECOND OFFICER. Faith, there have been many great men that have     flatter\'d the people, who ne\'er loved them; and there be many     that they have loved, they know not wherefore; so that, if they     love they know not why, they hate upon no better a ground.     Therefore, for Coriolanus neither to care whether they love or     hate him manifests the true knowledge he has in their     disposition, and out of his noble carelessness lets them plainly     see\'t.   FIRST OFFICER. If he did not care whether he had their love or no,     he waved indifferently \'twixt doing them neither good nor harm;       but he seeks their hate with greater devotion than they can     render it him, and leaves nothing undone that may fully discover     him their opposite. Now to seem to affect the malice and     displeasure of the people is as bad as that which he dislikes- to     flatter them for their love.   SECOND OFFICER. He hath deserved worthily of his country; and his     ascent is not by such easy degrees as those who, having been     supple and courteous to the people, bonneted, without any further     deed to have them at all, into their estimation and report; but     he hath so planted his honours in their eyes and his actions in     their hearts that for their tongues to be silent and not confess     so much were a kind of ingrateful injury; to report otherwise     were a malice that, giving itself the lie, would pluck reproof     and rebuke from every car that heard it.   FIRST OFFICER. No more of him; he\'s a worthy man. Make way, they     are coming.           A sennet. Enter the PATRICIANS and the TRIBUNES          OF THE PEOPLE, LICTORS before them; CORIOLANUS,             MENENIUS, COMINIUS the Consul. SICINIUS and                  BRUTUS take their places by themselves.                          CORIOLANUS stands    MENENIUS. Having determin\'d of the Volsces, and     To send for Titus Lartius, it remains,     As the main point of this our after-meeting,     To gratify his noble service that     Hath thus stood for his country. Therefore please you,     Most reverend and grave elders, to desire     The present consul and last general     In our well-found successes to report     A little of that worthy work perform\'d     By Caius Marcius Coriolanus; whom     We met here both to thank and to remember     With honours like himself.                 [CORIOLANUS sits]   FIRST SENATOR. Speak, good Cominius.     Leave nothing out for length, and make us think     Rather our state\'s defective for requital     Than we to stretch it out. Masters o\' th\' people,     We do request your kindest ears; and, after,       Your loving motion toward the common body,     To yield what passes here.   SICINIUS. We are convented     Upon a pleasing treaty, and have hearts     Inclinable to honour and advance     The theme of our assembly.   BRUTUS. Which the rather     We shall be bless\'d to do, if he remember     A kinder value of the people than     He hath hereto priz\'d them at.   MENENIUS. That\'s off, that\'s off;     I would you rather had been silent. Please you     To hear Cominius speak?   BRUTUS. Most willingly.     But yet my caution was more pertinent     Than the rebuke you give it.   MENENIUS. He loves your people;     But tie him not to be their bedfellow.     Worthy Cominius, speak.                        [CORIOLANUS rises, and offers to go away]       Nay, keep your place.   FIRST SENATOR. Sit, Coriolanus, never shame to hear     What you have nobly done.   CORIOLANUS. Your Honours\' pardon.     I had rather have my wounds to heal again     Than hear say how I got them.   BRUTUS. Sir, I hope     My words disbench\'d you not.   CORIOLANUS. No, sir; yet oft,     When blows have made me stay, I fled from words.     You sooth\'d not, therefore hurt not. But your people,     I love them as they weigh-   MENENIUS. Pray now, sit down.   CORIOLANUS. I had rather have one scratch my head i\' th\' sun     When the alarum were struck than idly sit     To hear my nothings monster\'d.                          Exit   MENENIUS. Masters of the people,     Your multiplying spawn how can he flatter-     That\'s thousand to one good one- when you now see     He had rather venture all his limbs for honour       Than one on\'s ears to hear it? Proceed, Cominius.   COMINIUS. I shall lack voice; the deeds of Coriolanus     Should not be utter\'d feebly. It is held     That valour is the chiefest virtue and     Most dignifies the haver. If it be,     The man I speak of cannot in the world     Be singly counterpois\'d. At sixteen years,     When Tarquin made a head for Rome, he fought     Beyond the mark of others; our then Dictator,     Whom with all praise I point at, saw him fight     When with his Amazonian chin he drove     The bristled lips before him; he bestrid     An o\'erpress\'d Roman and i\' th\' consul\'s view     Slew three opposers; Tarquin\'s self he met,     And struck him on his knee. In that day\'s feats,     When he might act the woman in the scene,     He prov\'d best man i\' th\' field, and for his meed     Was brow-bound with the oak. His pupil age     Man-ent\'red thus, he waxed like a sea,     And in the brunt of seventeen battles since       He lurch\'d all swords of the garland. For this last,     Before and in Corioli, let me say     I cannot speak him home. He stopp\'d the fliers,     And by his rare example made the coward     Turn terror into sport; as weeds before     A vessel under sail, so men obey\'d     And fell below his stem. His sword, death\'s stamp,     Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot     He was a thing of blood, whose every motion     Was tim\'d with dying cries. Alone he ent\'red     The mortal gate of th\' city, which he painted     With shunless destiny; aidless came off,     And with a sudden re-enforcement struck     Corioli like a planet. Now all\'s his.     When by and by the din of war \'gan pierce     His ready sense, then straight his doubled spirit     Re-quick\'ned what in flesh was fatigate,     And to the battle came he; where he did     Run reeking o\'er the lives of men, as if     \'Twere a perpetual spoil; and till we call\'d       Both field and city ours he never stood     To ease his breast with panting.   MENENIUS. Worthy man!   FIRST SENATOR. He cannot but with measure fit the honours     Which we devise him.   COMINIUS. Our spoils he kick\'d at,     And look\'d upon things precious as they were     The common muck of the world. He covets less     Than misery itself would give, rewards     His deeds with doing them, and is content     To spend the time to end it.   MENENIUS. He\'s right noble;     Let him be call\'d for.   FIRST SENATOR. Call Coriolanus.     OFFICER. He doth appear.                              Re-enter CORIOLANUS    MENENIUS. The Senate, Coriolanus, are well pleas\'d     To make thee consul.     CORIOLANUS. I do owe them still     My life and services.   MENENIUS. It then remains     That you do speak to the people.   CORIOLANUS. I do beseech you     Let me o\'erleap that custom; for I cannot     Put on the gown, stand naked, and entreat them     For my wounds\' sake to give their suffrage. Please you     That I may pass this doing.   SICINIUS. Sir, the people     Must have their voices; neither will they bate     One jot of ceremony.   MENENIUS. Put them not to\'t.     Pray you go fit you to the custom, and     Take to you, as your predecessors have,     Your honour with your form.   CORIOLANUS. It is a part     That I shall blush in acting, and might well     Be taken from the people.   BRUTUS. Mark you that?     CORIOLANUS. To brag unto them \'Thus I did, and thus!\'     Show them th\' unaching scars which I should hide,     As if I had receiv\'d them for the hire     Of their breath only!   MENENIUS. Do not stand upon\'t.     We recommend to you, Tribunes of the People,     Our purpose to them; and to our noble consul     Wish we all joy and honour.   SENATORS. To Coriolanus come all joy and honour!                              [Flourish. Cornets. Then exeunt all                                         but SICINIUS and BRUTUS]   BRUTUS. You see how he intends to use the people.   SICINIUS. May they perceive\'s intent! He will require them     As if he did contemn what he requested     Should be in them to give.   BRUTUS. Come, we\'ll inform them     Of our proceedings here. On th\' market-place     I know they do attend us.                             Exeunt     SCENE III. Rome. The Forum  Enter seven or eight citizens    FIRST CITIZEN. Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to     deny him.   SECOND CITIZEN. We may, sir, if we will.   THIRD CITIZEN. We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a     power that we have no power to do; for if he show us his wounds     and tell us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into those     wounds and speak for them; so, if he tell us his noble deeds, we     must also tell him our noble acceptance of them. Ingratitude is     monstrous, and for the multitude to be ingrateful were to make a     monster of the multitude; of the which we being members should     bring ourselves to be monstrous members.   FIRST CITIZEN. And to make us no better thought of, a little help     will serve; for once we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck     not to call us the many-headed multitude.   THIRD CITIZEN. We have been call\'d so of many; not that our heads     are some brown, some black, some abram, some bald, but that our     wits are so diversely colour\'d; and truly I think if all our wits       were to issue out of one skull, they would fly east, west, north,     south, and their consent of one direct way should be at once to     all the points o\' th\' compass.   SECOND CITIZEN. Think you so? Which way do you judge my wit would     fly?   THIRD CITIZEN. Nay, your wit will not so soon out as another man\'s     will- \'tis strongly wedg\'d up in a block-head; but if it were at     liberty \'twould sure southward.   SECOND CITIZEN. Why that way?   THIRD CITIZEN. To lose itself in a fog; where being three parts    melted away with rotten dews, the fourth would return for     conscience\' sake, to help to get thee a wife.   SECOND CITIZEN. YOU are never without your tricks; you may, you     may.   THIRD CITIZEN. Are you all resolv\'d to give your voices? But that\'s     no matter, the greater part carries it. I say, if he would     incline to the people, there was never a worthier man.                  Enter CORIOLANUS, in a gown of humility,                                with MENENIUS        Here he comes, and in the gown of humility. Mark his behaviour.     We are not to stay all together, but to come by him where he     stands, by ones, by twos, and by threes. He\'s to make his     requests by particulars, wherein every one of us has a single     honour, in giving him our own voices with our own tongues;     therefore follow me, and I\'ll direct you how you shall go by him.   ALL. Content, content.                         Exeunt citizens   MENENIUS. O sir, you are not right; have you not known     The worthiest men have done\'t?   CORIOLANUS. What must I say?     \'I pray, sir\'- Plague upon\'t! I cannot bring     My tongue to such a pace. \'Look, sir, my wounds     I got them in my country\'s service, when     Some certain of your brethren roar\'d and ran     From th\' noise of our own drums.\'   MENENIUS. O me, the gods!     You must not speak of that. You must desire them     To think upon you.   CORIOLANUS. Think upon me? Hang \'em!       I would they would forget me, like the virtues     Which our divines lose by \'em.   MENENIUS. You\'ll mar all.     I\'ll leave you. Pray you speak to \'em, I pray you,     In wholesome manner.                                    Exit                         Re-enter three of the citizens    CORIOLANUS. Bid them wash their faces     And keep their teeth clean. So, here comes a brace.     You know the cause, sir, of my standing here.   THIRD CITIZEN. We do, sir; tell us what hath brought you to\'t.   CORIOLANUS. Mine own desert.   SECOND CITIZEN. Your own desert?   CORIOLANUS. Ay, not mine own desire.   THIRD CITIZEN. How, not your own desire?   CORIOLANUS. No, sir, \'twas never my desire yet to trouble the poor     with begging.   THIRD CITIZEN. YOU MUST think, if we give you anything, we hope to     gain by you.     CORIOLANUS. Well then, I pray, your price o\' th\' consulship?   FIRST CITIZEN. The price is to ask it kindly.   CORIOLANUS. Kindly, sir, I pray let me ha\'t. I have wounds to show     you, which shall be yours in private. Your good voice, sir; what     say you?   SECOND CITIZEN. You shall ha\' it, worthy sir.   CORIOLANUS. A match, sir. There\'s in all two worthy voices begg\'d.     I have your alms. Adieu.   THIRD CITIZEN. But this is something odd.   SECOND CITIZEN. An \'twere to give again- but \'tis no matter.                                        Exeunt the three citizens                        Re-enter two other citizens    CORIOLANUS. Pray you now, if it may stand with the tune of your     voices that I may be consul, I have here the customary gown.   FOURTH CITIZEN. You have deserved nobly of your country, and you     have not deserved nobly.   CORIOLANUS. Your enigma?   FOURTH CITIZEN. You have been a scourge to her enemies; you have       been a rod to her friends. You have not indeed loved the common     people.   CORIOLANUS. You should account me the more virtuous, that I have     not been common in my love. I will, sir, flatter my sworn     brother, the people, to earn a dearer estimation of them; \'tis a     condition they account gentle; and since the wisdom of their     choice is rather to have my hat than my heart, I will practise     the insinuating nod and be off to them most counterfeitly. That     is, sir, I will counterfeit the bewitchment of some popular man     and give it bountiful to the desirers. Therefore, beseech you I     may be consul.   FIFTH CITIZEN. We hope to find you our friend; and therefore give     you our voices heartily.   FOURTH CITIZEN. You have received many wounds for your country.   CORIOLANUS. I will not seal your knowledge with showing them. I     will make much of your voices, and so trouble you no farther.   BOTH CITIZENS. The gods give you joy, sir, heartily!                                                  Exeunt citizens   CORIOLANUS. Most sweet voices!     Better it is to die, better to starve,       Than crave the hire which first we do deserve.     Why in this wolvish toge should I stand here     To beg of Hob and Dick that do appear     Their needless vouches? Custom calls me to\'t.     What custom wills, in all things should we do\'t,     The dust on antique time would lie unswept,     And mountainous error be too highly heap\'d     For truth to o\'erpeer. Rather than fool it so,     Let the high office and the honour go     To one that would do thus. I am half through:     The one part suffered, the other will I do.                        Re-enter three citizens more      Here come moe voices.     Your voices. For your voices I have fought;     Watch\'d for your voices; for your voices bear     Of wounds two dozen odd; battles thrice six     I have seen and heard of; for your voices have     Done many things, some less, some more. Your voices?       Indeed, I would be consul.   SIXTH CITIZEN. He has done nobly, and cannot go without any honest     man\'s voice.   SEVENTH CITIZEN. Therefore let him be consul. The gods give him     joy, and make him good friend to the people!   ALL. Amen, amen. God save thee, noble consul!                                                  Exeunt citizens   CORIOLANUS. Worthy voices!               Re-enter MENENIUS with BRUTUS and SICINIUS    MENENIUS. You have stood your limitation, and the tribunes     Endue you with the people\'s voice. Remains     That, in th\' official marks invested, you     Anon do meet the Senate.   CORIOLANUS. Is this done?   SICINIUS. The custom of request you have discharg\'d.     The people do admit you, and are summon\'d     To meet anon, upon your approbation.   CORIOLANUS. Where? At the Senate House?     SICINIUS. There, Coriolanus.   CORIOLANUS. May I change these garments?   SICINIUS. You may, sir.   CORIOLANUS. That I\'ll straight do, and, knowing myself again,     Repair to th\' Senate House.   MENENIUS. I\'ll keep you company. Will you along?   BRUTUS. We stay here for the people.   SICINIUS. Fare you well.                                   Exeunt CORIOLANUS and MENENIUS     He has it now; and by his looks methinks     \'Tis warm at\'s heart.   BRUTUS. With a proud heart he wore     His humble weeds. Will you dismiss the people?                              Re-enter citizens    SICINIUS. How now, my masters! Have you chose this man?   FIRST CITIZEN. He has our voices, sir.   BRUTUS. We pray the gods he may deserve your loves.   SECOND CITIZEN. Amen, sir. To my poor unworthy notice,       He mock\'d us when he begg\'d our voices.   THIRD CITIZEN. Certainly;     He flouted us downright.   FIRST CITIZEN. No, \'tis his kind of speech- he did not mock us.   SECOND CITIZEN. Not one amongst us, save yourself, but says     He us\'d us scornfully. He should have show\'d us     His marks of merit, wounds receiv\'d for\'s country.   SICINIUS. Why, so he did, I am sure.   ALL. No, no; no man saw \'em.   THIRD CITIZEN. He said he had wounds which he could show in       private,     And with his hat, thus waving it in scorn,     \'I would be consul,\' says he; \'aged custom     But by your voices will not so permit me;     Your voices therefore.\' When we granted that,     Here was \'I thank you for your voices. Thank you,     Your most sweet voices. Now you have left your voices,     I have no further with you.\' Was not this mockery?   SICINIUS. Why either were you ignorant to see\'t,     Or, seeing it, of such childish friendliness       To yield your voices?   BRUTUS. Could you not have told him-     As you were lesson\'d- when he had no power     But was a petty servant to the state,     He was your enemy; ever spake against     Your liberties and the charters that you bear     I\' th\' body of the weal; and now, arriving     A place of potency and sway o\' th\' state,     If he should still malignantly remain     Fast foe to th\' plebeii, your voices might     Be curses to yourselves? You should have said     That as his worthy deeds did claim no less     Than what he stood for, so his gracious nature     Would think upon you for your voices, and     Translate his malice towards you into love,     Standing your friendly lord.   SICINIUS. Thus to have said,     As you were fore-advis\'d, had touch\'d his spirit     And tried his inclination; from him pluck\'d     Either his gracious promise, which you might,       As cause had call\'d you up, have held him to;     Or else it would have gall\'d his surly nature,     Which easily endures not article     Tying him to aught. So, putting him to rage,     You should have ta\'en th\' advantage of his choler     And pass\'d him unelected.   BRUTUS. Did you perceive     He did solicit you in free contempt     When he did need your loves; and do you think     That his contempt shall not be bruising to you     When he hath power to crush? Why, had your bodies     No heart among you? Or had you tongues to cry     Against the rectorship of judgment?   SICINIUS. Have you     Ere now denied the asker, and now again,     Of him that did not ask but mock, bestow     Your su\'d-for tongues?   THIRD CITIZEN. He\'s not confirm\'d: we may deny him yet.   SECOND CITIZENS. And will deny him;     I\'ll have five hundred voices of that sound.     FIRST CITIZEN. I twice five hundred, and their friends to piece     \'em.   BRUTUS. Get you hence instantly, and tell those friends     They have chose a consul that will from them take     Their liberties, make them of no more voice     Than dogs, that are as often beat for barking     As therefore kept to do so.   SICINIUS. Let them assemble;     And, on a safer judgment, all revoke     Your ignorant election. Enforce his pride     And his old hate unto you; besides, forget not     With what contempt he wore the humble weed;     How in his suit he scorn\'d you; but your loves,     Thinking upon his services, took from you     Th\' apprehension of his present portance,     Which, most gibingly, ungravely, he did fashion     After the inveterate hate he bears you.   BRUTUS. Lay     A fault on us, your tribunes, that we labour\'d,     No impediment between, but that you must       Cast your election on him.   SICINIUS. Say you chose him     More after our commandment than as guided     By your own true affections; and that your minds,     Pre-occupied with what you rather must do     Than what you should, made you against the grain     To voice him consul. Lay the fault on us.   BRUTUS. Ay, spare us not. Say we read lectures to you,     How youngly he began to serve his country,     How long continued; and what stock he springs of-     The noble house o\' th\' Marcians; from whence came     That Ancus Marcius, Numa\'s daughter\'s son,     Who, after great Hostilius, here was king;     Of the same house Publius and Quintus were,     That our best water brought by conduits hither;     And Censorinus, nobly named so,     Twice being by the people chosen censor,     Was his great ancestor.   SICINIUS. One thus descended,     That hath beside well in his person wrought       To be set high in place, we did commend     To your remembrances; but you have found,     Scaling his present bearing with his past,     That he\'s your fixed enemy, and revoke     Your sudden approbation.   BRUTUS. Say you ne\'er had done\'t-     Harp on that still- but by our putting on;     And presently, when you have drawn your number,     Repair to th\' Capitol.   CITIZENS. will will so; almost all     Repent in their election.                   Exeunt plebeians   BRUTUS. Let them go on;     This mutiny were better put in hazard     Than stay, past doubt, for greater.     If, as his nature is, he fall in rage     With their refusal, both observe and answer     The vantage of his anger.   SICINIUS. To th\' Capitol, come.     We will be there before the stream o\' th\' people;     And this shall seem, as partly \'tis, their own,       Which we have goaded onward.                          Exeunt     ACT III. SCENE I. Rome. A street  Cornets. Enter CORIOLANUS, MENENIUS, all the GENTRY, COMINIUS, TITUS LARTIUS, and other SENATORS    CORIOLANUS. Tullus Aufidius, then, had made new head?   LARTIUS. He had, my lord; and that it was which caus\'d     Our swifter composition.   CORIOLANUS. So then the Volsces stand but as at first,     Ready, when time shall prompt them, to make road     Upon\'s again.   COMINIUS. They are worn, Lord Consul, so     That we shall hardly in our ages see     Their banners wave again.   CORIOLANUS. Saw you Aufidius?   LARTIUS. On safeguard he came to me, and did curse     Against the Volsces, for they had so vilely     Yielded the town. He is retir\'d to Antium.   CORIOLANUS. Spoke he of me?   LARTIUS. He did, my lord.   CORIOLANUS. How? What?     LARTIUS. How often he had met you, sword to sword;     That of all things upon the earth he hated     Your person most; that he would pawn his fortunes     To hopeless restitution, so he might     Be call\'d your vanquisher.   CORIOLANUS. At Antium lives he?   LARTIUS. At Antium.   CORIOLANUS. I wish I had a cause to seek him there,     To oppose his hatred fully. Welcome home.                         Enter SICINIUS and BRUTUS      Behold, these are the tribunes of the people,     The tongues o\' th\' common mouth. I do despise them,     For they do prank them in authority,     Against all noble sufferance.   SICINIUS. Pass no further.   CORIOLANUS. Ha! What is that?   BRUTUS. It will be dangerous to go on- no further.   CORIOLANUS. What makes this change?     MENENIUS. The matter?   COMINIUS. Hath he not pass\'d the noble and the common?   BRUTUS. Cominius, no.   CORIOLANUS. Have I had children\'s voices?   FIRST SENATOR. Tribunes, give way: he shall to th\' market-place.   BRUTUS. The people are incens\'d against him.   SICINIUS. Stop,     Or all will fall in broil.   CORIOLANUS. Are these your herd?     Must these have voices, that can yield them now     And straight disclaim their tongues? What are your offices?     You being their mouths, why rule you not their teeth?     Have you not set them on?   MENENIUS. Be calm, be calm.   CORIOLANUS. It is a purpos\'d thing, and grows by plot,     To curb the will of the nobility;     Suffer\'t, and live with such as cannot rule     Nor ever will be rul\'d.   BRUTUS. Call\'t not a plot.     The people cry you mock\'d them; and of late,       When corn was given them gratis, you repin\'d;     Scandal\'d the suppliants for the people, call\'d them     Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness.   CORIOLANUS. Why, this was known before.   BRUTUS. Not to them all.   CORIOLANUS. Have you inform\'d them sithence?   BRUTUS. How? I inform them!   COMINIUS. You are like to do such business.   BRUTUS. Not unlike     Each way to better yours.   CORIOLANUS. Why then should I be consul? By yond clouds,     Let me deserve so ill as you, and make me     Your fellow tribune.   SICINIUS. You show too much of that     For which the people stir; if you will pass     To where you are bound, you must enquire your way,     Which you are out of, with a gentler spirit,     Or never be so noble as a consul,     Nor yoke with him for tribune.   MENENIUS. Let\'s be calm.     COMINIUS. The people are abus\'d; set on. This palt\'ring     Becomes not Rome; nor has Coriolanus     Deserved this so dishonour\'d rub, laid falsely     I\' th\' plain way of his merit.   CORIOLANUS. Tell me of corn!     This was my speech, and I will speak\'t again-   MENENIUS. Not now, not now.   FIRST SENATOR. Not in this heat, sir, now.   CORIOLANUS. Now, as I live, I will.     My nobler friends, I crave their pardons.     For the mutable, rank-scented meiny, let them     Regard me as I do not flatter, and     Therein behold themselves. I say again,     In soothing them we nourish \'gainst our Senate     The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,     Which we ourselves have plough\'d for, sow\'d, and scatter\'d,     By mingling them with us, the honour\'d number,     Who lack not virtue, no, nor power, but that     Which they have given to beggars.   MENENIUS. Well, no more.     FIRST SENATOR. No more words, we beseech you.   CORIOLANUS. How? no more!     As for my country I have shed my blood,     Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs     Coin words till their decay against those measles     Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought     The very way to catch them.   BRUTUS. You speak o\' th\' people     As if you were a god, to punish; not     A man of their infirmity.   SICINIUS. \'Twere well     We let the people know\'t.   MENENIUS. What, what? his choler?   CORIOLANUS. Choler!     Were I as patient as the midnight sleep,     By Jove, \'twould be my mind!   SICINIUS. It is a mind     That shall remain a poison where it is,     Not poison any further.   CORIOLANUS. Shall remain!       Hear you this Triton of the minnows? Mark you     His absolute \'shall\'?   COMINIUS. \'Twas from the canon.   CORIOLANUS. \'Shall\'!     O good but most unwise patricians! Why,     You grave but reckless senators, have you thus     Given Hydra here to choose an officer     That with his peremptory \'shall,\' being but     The horn and noise o\' th\' monster\'s, wants not spirit     To say he\'ll turn your current in a ditch,     And make your channel his? If he have power,     Then vail your ignorance; if none, awake     Your dangerous lenity. If you are learn\'d,     Be not as common fools; if you are not,     Let them have cushions by you. You are plebeians,     If they be senators; and they are no less,     When, both your voices blended, the great\'st taste     Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate;     And such a one as he, who puts his \'shall,\'     His popular \'shall,\' against a graver bench       Than ever frown\'d in Greece. By Jove himself,     It makes the consuls base; and my soul aches     To know, when two authorities are up,     Neither supreme, how soon confusion     May enter \'twixt the gap of both and take     The one by th\' other.   COMINIUS. Well, on to th\' market-place.   CORIOLANUS. Whoever gave that counsel to give forth     The corn o\' th\' storehouse gratis, as \'twas us\'d     Sometime in Greece-   MENENIUS. Well, well, no more of that.   CORIOLANUS. Though there the people had more absolute pow\'r-     I say they nourish\'d disobedience, fed     The ruin of the state.   BRUTUS. Why shall the people give     One that speaks thus their voice?   CORIOLANUS. I\'ll give my reasons,     More worthier than their voices. They know the corn     Was not our recompense, resting well assur\'d     They ne\'er did service for\'t; being press\'d to th\' war       Even when the navel of the state was touch\'d,     They would not thread the gates. This kind of service     Did not deserve corn gratis. Being i\' th\' war,     Their mutinies and revolts, wherein they show\'d     Most valour, spoke not for them. Th\' accusation     Which they have often made against the Senate,     All cause unborn, could never be the native     Of our so frank donation. Well, what then?     How shall this bosom multiplied digest     The Senate\'s courtesy? Let deeds express     What\'s like to be their words: \'We did request it;     We are the greater poll, and in true fear     They gave us our demands.\' Thus we debase     The nature of our seats, and make the rabble     Call our cares fears; which will in time     Break ope the locks o\' th\' Senate and bring in     The crows to peck the eagles.   MENENIUS. Come, enough.   BRUTUS. Enough, with over measure.   CORIOLANUS. No, take more.       What may be sworn by, both divine and human,     Seal what I end withal! This double worship,     Where one part does disdain with cause, the other     Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom,     Cannot conclude but by the yea and no     Of general ignorance- it must omit     Real necessities, and give way the while     To unstable slightness. Purpose so barr\'d, it follows     Nothing is done to purpose. Therefore, beseech you-     You that will be less fearful than discreet;     That love the fundamental part of state     More than you doubt the change on\'t; that prefer     A noble life before a long, and wish     To jump a body with a dangerous physic     That\'s sure of death without it- at once pluck out     The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick     The sweet which is their poison. Your dishonour     Mangles true judgment, and bereaves the state     Of that integrity which should become\'t,     Not having the power to do the good it would,       For th\' ill which doth control\'t.   BRUTUS. Has said enough.   SICINIUS. Has spoken like a traitor and shall answer     As traitors do.   CORIOLANUS. Thou wretch, despite o\'erwhelm thee!     What should the people do with these bald tribunes,     On whom depending, their obedience fails     To the greater bench? In a rebellion,     When what\'s not meet, but what must be, was law,     Then were they chosen; in a better hour     Let what is meet be said it must be meet,     And throw their power i\' th\' dust.   BRUTUS. Manifest treason!   SICINIUS. This a consul? No.   BRUTUS. The aediles, ho!                             Enter an AEDILE      Let him be apprehended.   SICINIUS. Go call the people,  [Exit AEDILE]  in whose name myself       Attach thee as a traitorous innovator,     A foe to th\' public weal. Obey, I charge thee,     And follow to thine answer.   CORIOLANUS. Hence, old goat!   PATRICIANS. We\'ll surety him.   COMINIUS. Ag\'d sir, hands off.   CORIOLANUS. Hence, rotten thing! or I shall shake thy bones     Out of thy garments.   SICINIUS. Help, ye citizens!                Enter a rabble of plebeians, with the AEDILES    MENENIUS. On both sides more respect.   SICINIUS. Here\'s he that would take from you all your power.   BRUTUS. Seize him, aediles.     PLEBEIANS. Down with him! down with him!   SECOND SENATOR. Weapons, weapons, weapons!                               [They all bustle about CORIOLANUS]   ALL. Tribunes! patricians! citizens! What, ho! Sicinius!     Brutus! Coriolanus! Citizens!     PATRICIANS. Peace, peace, peace; stay, hold, peace!   MENENIUS. What is about to be? I am out of breath;     Confusion\'s near; I cannot speak. You tribunes     To th\' people- Coriolanus, patience!     Speak, good Sicinius.   SICINIUS. Hear me, people; peace!   PLEBEIANS. Let\'s hear our tribune. Peace! Speak, speak, speak.   SICINIUS. You are at point to lose your liberties.     Marcius would have all from you; Marcius,     Whom late you have nam\'d for consul.   MENENIUS. Fie, fie, fie!     This is the way to kindle, not to quench.   FIRST SENATOR. To unbuild the city, and to lay all flat.   SICINIUS. What is the city but the people?   PLEBEIANS. True,     The people are the city.   BRUTUS. By the consent of all we were establish\'d     The people\'s magistrates.   PLEBEIANS. You so remain.   MENENIUS. And so are like to do.     COMINIUS. That is the way to lay the city flat,     To bring the roof to the foundation,     And bury all which yet distinctly ranges     In heaps and piles of ruin.   SICINIUS. This deserves death.   BRUTUS. Or let us stand to our authority     Or let us lose it. We do here pronounce,     Upon the part o\' th\' people, in whose power     We were elected theirs: Marcius is worthy     Of present death.   SICINIUS. Therefore lay hold of him;     Bear him to th\' rock Tarpeian, and from thence     Into destruction cast him.   BRUTUS. AEdiles, seize him.   PLEBEIANS. Yield, Marcius, yield.   MENENIUS. Hear me one word; beseech you, Tribunes,     Hear me but a word.   AEDILES. Peace, peace!   MENENIUS. Be that you seem, truly your country\'s friend,     And temp\'rately proceed to what you would       Thus violently redress.   BRUTUS. Sir, those cold ways,     That seem like prudent helps, are very poisonous     Where the disease is violent. Lay hands upon him     And bear him to the rock.                                     [CORIOLANUS draws his sword]   CORIOLANUS. No: I\'ll die here.     There\'s some among you have beheld me fighting;     Come, try upon yourselves what you have seen me.   MENENIUS. Down with that sword! Tribunes, withdraw awhile.   BRUTUS. Lay hands upon him.   MENENIUS. Help Marcius, help,     You that be noble; help him, young and old.   PLEBEIANS. Down with him, down with him!                       [In this mutiny the TRIBUNES, the AEDILES,                                      and the people are beat in]   MENENIUS. Go, get you to your house; be gone, away.     All will be nought else.   SECOND SENATOR. Get you gone.   CORIOLANUS. Stand fast;       We have as many friends as enemies.   MENENIUS. Shall it be put to that?   FIRST SENATOR. The gods forbid!     I prithee, noble friend, home to thy house;     Leave us to cure this cause.   MENENIUS. For \'tis a sore upon us     You cannot tent yourself; be gone, beseech you.   COMINIUS. Come, sir, along with us.   CORIOLANUS. I would they were barbarians, as they are,     Though in Rome litter\'d; not Romans, as they are not,     Though calved i\' th\' porch o\' th\' Capitol.   MENENIUS. Be gone.     Put not your worthy rage into your tongue;     One time will owe another.   CORIOLANUS. On fair ground     I could beat forty of them.   MENENIUS. I could myself     Take up a brace o\' th\' best of them; yea, the two tribunes.   COMINIUS. But now \'tis odds beyond arithmetic,     And manhood is call\'d foolery when it stands       Against a falling fabric. Will you hence,     Before the tag return? whose rage doth rend     Like interrupted waters, and o\'erbear     What they are us\'d to bear.   MENENIUS. Pray you be gone.     I\'ll try whether my old wit be in request     With those that have but little; this must be patch\'d     With cloth of any colour.   COMINIUS. Nay, come away.                      Exeunt CORIOLANUS and COMINIUS, with others   PATRICIANS. This man has marr\'d his fortune.   MENENIUS. His nature is too noble for the world:     He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,     Or Jove for\'s power to thunder. His heart\'s his mouth;     What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent;     And, being angry, does forget that ever     He heard the name of death.                 [A noise within]     Here\'s goodly work!   PATRICIANS. I would they were a-bed.   MENENIUS. I would they were in Tiber.       What the vengeance, could he not speak \'em fair?              Re-enter BRUTUS and SICINIUS, the rabble again    SICINIUS. Where is this viper     That would depopulate the city and     Be every man himself?   MENENIUS. You worthy Tribunes-   SICINIUS. He shall be thrown down the Tarpeian rock     With rigorous hands; he hath resisted law,     And therefore law shall scorn him further trial     Than the severity of the public power,     Which he so sets at nought.   FIRST CITIZEN. He shall well know     The noble tribunes are the people\'s mouths,     And we their hands.   PLEBEIANS. He shall, sure on\'t.   MENENIUS. Sir, sir-   SICINIUS. Peace!   MENENIUS. Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt       With modest warrant.   SICINIUS. Sir, how comes\'t that you     Have holp to make this rescue?   MENENIUS. Hear me speak.     As I do know the consul\'s worthiness,     So can I name his faults.   SICINIUS. Consul! What consul?   MENENIUS. The consul Coriolanus.   BRUTUS. He consul!   PLEBEIANS. No, no, no, no, no.   MENENIUS. If, by the tribunes\' leave, and yours, good people,     I may be heard, I would crave a word or two;     The which shall turn you to no further harm     Than so much loss of time.   SICINIUS. Speak briefly, then,     For we are peremptory to dispatch     This viperous traitor; to eject him hence     Were but one danger, and to keep him here     Our certain death; therefore it is decreed     He dies to-night.     MENENIUS. Now the good gods forbid     That our renowned Rome, whose gratitude     Towards her deserved children is enroll\'d     In Jove\'s own book, like an unnatural dam     Should now eat up her own!   SICINIUS. He\'s a disease that must be cut away.   MENENIUS. O, he\'s a limb that has but a disease-     Mortal, to cut it off: to cure it, easy.     What has he done to Rome that\'s worthy death?     Killing our enemies, the blood he hath lost-     Which I dare vouch is more than that he hath     By many an ounce- he dropt it for his country;     And what is left, to lose it by his country     Were to us all that do\'t and suffer it     A brand to th\' end o\' th\' world.   SICINIUS. This is clean kam.   BRUTUS. Merely awry. When he did love his country,     It honour\'d him.   SICINIUS. The service of the foot,     Being once gangren\'d, is not then respected       For what before it was.   BRUTUS. We\'ll hear no more.     Pursue him to his house and pluck him thence,     Lest his infection, being of catching nature,     Spread further.   MENENIUS. One word more, one word     This tiger-footed rage, when it shall find     The harm of unscann\'d swiftness, will, too late,     Tie leaden pounds to\'s heels. Proceed by process,     Lest parties- as he is belov\'d- break out,     And sack great Rome with Romans.   BRUTUS. If it were so-   SICINIUS. What do ye talk?     Have we not had a taste of his obedience-     Our aediles smote, ourselves resisted? Come!   MENENIUS. Consider this: he has been bred i\' th\' wars     Since \'a could draw a sword, and is ill school\'d     In bolted language; meal and bran together     He throws without distinction. Give me leave,     I\'ll go to him and undertake to bring him       Where he shall answer by a lawful form,     In peace, to his utmost peril.   FIRST SENATOR. Noble Tribunes,     It is the humane way; the other course     Will prove too bloody, and the end of it     Unknown to the beginning.   SICINIUS. Noble Menenius,     Be you then as the people\'s officer.     Masters, lay down your weapons.   BRUTUS. Go not home.   SICINIUS. Meet on the market-place. We\'ll attend you there;     Where, if you bring not Marcius, we\'ll proceed     In our first way.   MENENIUS. I\'ll bring him to you.     [To the SENATORS]  Let me desire your company; he must come,     Or what is worst will follow.   FIRST SENATOR. Pray you let\'s to him.                   Exeunt     SCENE II. Rome. The house of CORIOLANUS  Enter CORIOLANUS with NOBLES    CORIOLANUS. Let them pull all about mine ears, present me     Death on the wheel or at wild horses\' heels;     Or pile ten hills on the Tarpeian rock,     That the precipitation might down stretch     Below the beam of sight; yet will I still     Be thus to them.   FIRST PATRICIAN. You do the nobler.   CORIOLANUS. I muse my mother     Does not approve me further, who was wont     To call them woollen vassals, things created     To buy and sell with groats; to show bare heads     In congregations, to yawn, be still, and wonder,     When one but of my ordinance stood up     To speak of peace or war.                            Enter VOLUMNIA        I talk of you:     Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me     False to my nature? Rather say I play     The man I am.   VOLUMNIA. O, sir, sir, sir,     I would have had you put your power well on     Before you had worn it out.   CORIOLANUS. Let go.   VOLUMNIA. You might have been enough the man you are     With striving less to be so; lesser had been     The thwartings of your dispositions, if     You had not show\'d them how ye were dispos\'d,     Ere they lack\'d power to cross you.   CORIOLANUS. Let them hang.   VOLUMNIA. Ay, and burn too.                      Enter MENENIUS with the SENATORS    MENENIUS. Come, come, you have been too rough, something too rough;     You must return and mend it.     FIRST SENATOR. There\'s no remedy,     Unless, by not so doing, our good city     Cleave in the midst and perish.   VOLUMNIA. Pray be counsell\'d;     I have a heart as little apt as yours,     But yet a brain that leads my use of anger     To better vantage.   MENENIUS. Well said, noble woman!     Before he should thus stoop to th\' herd, but that     The violent fit o\' th\' time craves it as physic     For the whole state, I would put mine armour on,     Which I can scarcely bear.   CORIOLANUS. What must I do?   MENENIUS. Return to th\' tribunes.   CORIOLANUS. Well, what then, what then?   MENENIUS. Repent what you have spoke.   CORIOLANUS. For them! I cannot do it to the gods;     Must I then do\'t to them?   VOLUMNIA. You are too absolute;     Though therein you can never be too noble       But when extremities speak. I have heard you say     Honour and policy, like unsever\'d friends,     I\' th\' war do grow together; grant that, and tell me     In peace what each of them by th\' other lose     That they combine not there.   CORIOLANUS. Tush, tush!   MENENIUS. A good demand.   VOLUMNIA. If it be honour in your wars to seem     The same you are not, which for your best ends     You adopt your policy, how is it less or worse     That it shall hold companionship in peace     With honour as in war; since that to both     It stands in like request?   CORIOLANUS. Why force you this?   VOLUMNIA. Because that now it lies you on to speak     To th\' people, not by your own instruction,     Nor by th\' matter which your heart prompts you,     But with such words that are but roted in     Your tongue, though but bastards and syllables     Of no allowance to your bosom\'s truth.       Now, this no more dishonours you at all     Than to take in a town with gentle words,     Which else would put you to your fortune and     The hazard of much blood.     I would dissemble with my nature where     My fortunes and my friends at stake requir\'d     I should do so in honour. I am in this     Your wife, your son, these senators, the nobles;     And you will rather show our general louts     How you can frown, than spend a fawn upon \'em     For the inheritance of their loves and safeguard     Of what that want might ruin.   MENENIUS. Noble lady!     Come, go with us, speak fair; you may salve so,     Not what is dangerous present, but the los     Of what is past.   VOLUMNIA. I prithee now, My son,     Go to them with this bonnet in thy hand;     And thus far having stretch\'d it- here be with them-     Thy knee bussing the stones- for in such busines       Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th\' ignorant     More learned than the ears- waving thy head,     Which often thus correcting thy-stout heart,     Now humble as the ripest mulberry     That will not hold the handling. Or say to them     Thou art their soldier and, being bred in broils,     Hast not the soft way which, thou dost confess,     Were fit for thee to use, as they to claim,     In asking their good loves; but thou wilt frame     Thyself, forsooth, hereafter theirs, so far     As thou hast power and person.   MENENIUS. This but done     Even as she speaks, why, their hearts were yours;     For they have pardons, being ask\'d, as free     As words to little purpose.   VOLUMNIA. Prithee now,     Go, and be rul\'d; although I know thou hadst rather     Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf     Than flatter him in a bower.                               Enter COMINIUS      Here is Cominius.   COMINIUS. I have been i\' th\' market-place; and, sir, \'tis fit     You make strong party, or defend yourself     By calmness or by absence; all\'s in anger.   MENENIUS. Only fair speech.   COMINIUS. I think \'twill serve, if he     Can thereto frame his spirit.   VOLUMNIA. He must and will.     Prithee now, say you will, and go about it.   CORIOLANUS. Must I go show them my unbarb\'d sconce? Must I     With my base tongue give to my noble heart     A lie that it must bear? Well, I will do\'t;     Yet, were there but this single plot to lose,     This mould of Marcius, they to dust should grind it,     And throw\'t against the wind. To th\' market-place!     You have put me now to such a part which never     I shall discharge to th\' life.   COMINIUS. Come, come, we\'ll prompt you.     VOLUMNIA. I prithee now, sweet son, as thou hast said     My praises made thee first a soldier, so,     To have my praise for this, perform a part     Thou hast not done before.   CORIOLANUS. Well, I must do\'t.     Away, my disposition, and possess me     Some harlot\'s spirit! My throat of war be turn\'d,     Which quier\'d with my drum, into a pipe     Small as an eunuch or the virgin voice     That babies lulls asleep! The smiles of knaves     Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys\' tears take up     The glasses of my sight! A beggar\'s tongue     Make motion through my lips, and my arm\'d knees,     Who bow\'d but in my stirrup, bend like his     That hath receiv\'d an alms! I will not do\'t,     Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth,     And by my body\'s action teach my mind     A most inherent baseness.   VOLUMNIA. At thy choice, then.     To beg of thee, it is my more dishonour       Than thou of them. Come all to ruin. Let     Thy mother rather feel thy pride than fear     Thy dangerous stoutness; for I mock at death     With as big heart as thou. Do as thou list.     Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck\'dst it from me;     But owe thy pride thyself.   CORIOLANUS. Pray be content.     Mother, I am going to the market-place;     Chide me no more. I\'ll mountebank their loves,     Cog their hearts from them, and come home belov\'d     Of all the trades in Rome. Look, I am going.     Commend me to my wife. I\'ll return consul,     Or never trust to what my tongue can do     I\' th\' way of flattery further.   VOLUMNIA. Do your will.                                   Exit   COMINIUS. Away! The tribunes do attend you. Arm yourself     To answer mildly; for they are prepar\'d     With accusations, as I hear, more strong     Than are upon you yet.   CORIOLANUS. The word is \'mildly.\' Pray you let us go.       Let them accuse me by invention; I     Will answer in mine honour.   MENENIUS. Ay, but mildly.   CORIOLANUS. Well, mildly be it then- mildly.            Exeunt     SCENE III. Rome. The Forum  Enter SICINIUS and BRUTUS    BRUTUS. In this point charge him home, that he affects     Tyrannical power. If he evade us there,     Enforce him with his envy to the people,     And that the spoil got on the Antiates     Was ne\'er distributed.                             Enter an AEDILE      What, will he come?   AEDILE. He\'s coming.   BRUTUS. How accompanied?   AEDILE. With old Menenius, and those senators     That always favour\'d him.   SICINIUS. Have you a catalogue     Of all the voices that we have procur\'d,     Set down by th\' poll?   AEDILE. I have; \'tis ready.     SICINIUS. Have you corrected them by tribes?   AEDILE. I have.   SICINIUS. Assemble presently the people hither;     And when they hear me say \'It shall be so     I\' th\' right and strength o\' th\' commons\' be it either     For death, for fine, or banishment, then let them,     If I say fine, cry \'Fine!\'- if death, cry \'Death!\'     Insisting on the old prerogative     And power i\' th\' truth o\' th\' cause.   AEDILE. I shall inform them.   BRUTUS. And when such time they have begun to cry,     Let them not cease, but with a din confus\'d     Enforce the present execution     Of what we chance to sentence.   AEDILE. Very well.   SICINIUS. Make them be strong, and ready for this hint,     When we shall hap to give\'t them.   BRUTUS. Go about it.                               Exit AEDILE     Put him to choler straight. He hath been us\'d     Ever to conquer, and to have his worth       Of contradiction; being once chaf\'d, he cannot     Be rein\'d again to temperance; then he speaks     What\'s in his heart, and that is there which looks     With us to break his neck.            Enter CORIOLANUS, MENENIUS and COMINIUS, with others    SICINIUS. Well, here he comes.   MENENIUS. Calmly, I do beseech you.   CORIOLANUS. Ay, as an ostler, that for th\' poorest piece     Will bear the knave by th\' volume. Th\' honour\'d gods     Keep Rome in safety, and the chairs of justice     Supplied with worthy men! plant love among\'s!     Throng our large temples with the shows of peace,     And not our streets with war!   FIRST SENATOR. Amen, amen!   MENENIUS. A noble wish.                    Re-enter the.AEDILE,with the plebeians      SICINIUS. Draw near, ye people.   AEDILE. List to your tribunes. Audience! peace, I say!   CORIOLANUS. First, hear me speak.   BOTH TRIBUNES. Well, say. Peace, ho!   CORIOLANUS. Shall I be charg\'d no further than this present?     Must all determine here?   SICINIUS. I do demand,     If you submit you to the people\'s voices,     Allow their officers, and are content     To suffer lawful censure for such faults     As shall be prov\'d upon you.   CORIOLANUS. I am content.   MENENIUS. Lo, citizens, he says he is content.     The warlike service he has done, consider; think     Upon the wounds his body bears, which show     Like graves i\' th\' holy churchyard.   CORIOLANUS. Scratches with briers,     Scars to move laughter only.   MENENIUS. Consider further,     That when he speaks not like a citizen,       You find him like a soldier; do not take     His rougher accents for malicious sounds,     But, as I say, such as become a soldier     Rather than envy you.   COMINIUS. Well, well! No more.   CORIOLANUS. What is the matter,     That being pass\'d for consul with full voice,     I am so dishonour\'d that the very hour     You take it off again?   SICINIUS. Answer to us.   CORIOLANUS. Say then; \'tis true, I ought so.   SICINIUS. We charge you that you have contriv\'d to take     From Rome all season\'d office, and to wind     Yourself into a power tyrannical;     For which you are a traitor to the people.   CORIOLANUS. How- traitor?   MENENIUS. Nay, temperately! Your promise.   CORIOLANUS. The fires i\' th\' lowest hell fold in the people!     Call me their traitor! Thou injurious tribune!     Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,       In thy hands clutch\'d as many millions, in     Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say     \'Thou liest\' unto thee with a voice as free     As I do pray the gods.   SICINIUS. Mark you this, people?   PLEBEIANS. To th\' rock, to th\' rock, with him!   SICINIUS. Peace!     We need not put new matter to his charge.     What you have seen him do and heard him speak,     Beating your officers, cursing yourselves,     Opposing laws with strokes, and here defying     Those whose great power must try him- even this,     So criminal and in such capital kind,     Deserves th\' extremest death.   BRUTUS. But since he hath     Serv\'d well for Rome-   CORIOLANUS. What do you prate of service?   BRUTUS. I talk of that that know it.   CORIOLANUS. You!   MENENIUS. Is this the promise that you made your mother?     COMINIUS. Know, I pray you-   CORIOLANUS. I\'ll know no further.     Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death,     Vagabond exile, flaying, pent to linger     But with a grain a day, I would not buy     Their mercy at the price of one fair word,     Nor check my courage for what they can give,     To have\'t with saying \'Good morrow.\'   SICINIUS. For that he has-     As much as in him lies- from time to time     Envied against the people, seeking means     To pluck away their power; as now at last     Given hostile strokes, and that not in the presence     Of dreaded justice, but on the ministers     That do distribute it- in the name o\' th\' people,     And in the power of us the tribunes, we,     Ev\'n from this instant, banish him our city,     In peril of precipitation     From off the rock Tarpeian, never more     To enter our Rome gates. I\' th\' people\'s name,       I say it shall be so.   PLEBEIANS. It shall be so, it shall be so! Let him away!     He\'s banish\'d, and it shall be so.   COMINIUS. Hear me, my masters and my common friends-   SICINIUS. He\'s sentenc\'d; no more hearing.   COMINIUS. Let me speak.     I have been consul, and can show for Rome     Her enemies\' marks upon me. I do love     My country\'s good with a respect more tender,     More holy and profound, than mine own life,     My dear wife\'s estimate, her womb\'s increase     And treasure of my loins. Then if I would     Speak that-   SICINIUS. We know your drift. Speak what?   BRUTUS. There\'s no more to be said, but he is banish\'d,     As enemy to the people and his country.     It shall be so.   PLEBEIANS. It shall be so, it shall be so.   CORIOLANUS. YOU common cry of curs, whose breath I hate     As reek o\' th\' rotten fens, whose loves I prize       As the dead carcasses of unburied men     That do corrupt my air- I banish you.     And here remain with your uncertainty!     Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts;     Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,     Fan you into despair! Have the power still     To banish your defenders, till at length     Your ignorance- which finds not till it feels,     Making but reservation of yourselves     Still your own foes- deliver you     As most abated captives to some nation     That won you without blows! Despising     For you the city, thus I turn my back;     There is a world elsewhere.                                               Exeunt CORIOLANUS,                    COMINIUS, MENENIUS, with the other PATRICIANS   AEDILE. The people\'s enemy is gone, is gone!                         [They all shout and throw up their caps]   PLEBEIANS. Our enemy is banish\'d, he is gone! Hoo-oo!   SICINIUS. Go see him out at gates, and follow him,       As he hath follow\'d you, with all despite;     Give him deserv\'d vexation. Let a guard     Attend us through the city.   PLEBEIANS. Come, come, let\'s see him out at gates; come!     The gods preserve our noble tribunes! Come.           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. Rome. Before a gate of the city  Enter CORIOLANUS, VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, MENENIUS, COMINIUS, with the young NOBILITY of Rome    CORIOLANUS. Come, leave your tears; a brief farewell. The beast     With many heads butts me away. Nay, mother,     Where is your ancient courage? You were us\'d     To say extremities was the trier of spirits;     That common chances common men could bear;     That when the sea was calm all boats alike     Show\'d mastership in floating; fortune\'s blows,     When most struck home, being gentle wounded craves     A noble cunning. You were us\'d to load me     With precepts that would make invincible     The heart that conn\'d them.   VIRGILIA. O heavens! O heavens!   CORIOLANUS. Nay, I prithee, woman-   VOLUMNIA. Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome,     And occupations perish!   CORIOLANUS. What, what, what!       I shall be lov\'d when I am lack\'d. Nay, mother,     Resume that spirit when you were wont to say,     If you had been the wife of Hercules,     Six of his labours you\'d have done, and sav\'d     Your husband so much sweat. Cominius,     Droop not; adieu. Farewell, my wife, my mother.     I\'ll do well yet. Thou old and true Menenius,     Thy tears are salter than a younger man\'s     And venomous to thine eyes. My sometime General,     I have seen thee stern, and thou hast oft beheld     Heart-hard\'ning spectacles; tell these sad women     \'Tis fond to wail inevitable strokes,     As \'tis to laugh at \'em. My mother, you wot well     My hazards still have been your solace; and     Believe\'t not lightly- though I go alone,     Like to a lonely dragon, that his fen     Makes fear\'d and talk\'d of more than seen- your son     Will or exceed the common or be caught     With cautelous baits and practice.   VOLUMNIA. My first son,       Whither wilt thou go? Take good Cominius     With thee awhile; determine on some course     More than a wild exposture to each chance     That starts i\' th\' way before thee.   VIRGILIA. O the gods!   COMINIUS. I\'ll follow thee a month, devise with the     Where thou shalt rest, that thou mayst hear of us,     And we of thee; so, if the time thrust forth     A cause for thy repeal, we shall not send     O\'er the vast world to seek a single man,     And lose advantage, which doth ever cool     I\' th\' absence of the needer.   CORIOLANUS. Fare ye well;     Thou hast years upon thee, and thou art too full     Of the wars\' surfeits to go rove with one     That\'s yet unbruis\'d; bring me but out at gate.     Come, my sweet wife, my dearest mother, and     My friends of noble touch; when I am forth,     Bid me farewell, and smile. I pray you come.     While I remain above the ground you shall       Hear from me still, and never of me aught     But what is like me formerly.   MENENIUS. That\'s worthily     As any ear can hear. Come, let\'s not weep.     If I could shake off but one seven years     From these old arms and legs, by the good gods,     I\'d with thee every foot.   CORIOLANUS. Give me thy hand.     Come.                                                 Exeunt     SCENE II. Rome. A street near the gate  Enter the two Tribunes, SICINIUS and BRUTUS with the AEDILE    SICINIUS. Bid them all home; he\'s gone, and we\'ll no further.     The nobility are vex\'d, whom we see have sided     In his behalf.   BRUTUS. Now we have shown our power,     Let us seem humbler after it is done     Than when it was a-doing.   SICINIUS. Bid them home.     Say their great enemy is gone, and they     Stand in their ancient strength.   BRUTUS. Dismiss them home.                         Exit AEDILE     Here comes his mother.                     Enter VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, and MENENIUS    SICINIUS. Let\'s not meet her.   BRUTUS. Why?     SICINIUS. They say she\'s mad.   BRUTUS. They have ta\'en note of us; keep on your way.   VOLUMNIA. O, Y\'are well met; th\' hoarded plague o\' th\' gods     Requite your love!   MENENIUS. Peace, peace, be not so loud.   VOLUMNIA. If that I could for weeping, you should hear-     Nay, and you shall hear some.  [To BRUTUS] Will you be gone?   VIRGILIA.  [To SICINIUS]  You shall stay too. I would I had the       power     To say so to my husband.   SICINIUS. Are you mankind?   VOLUMNIA. Ay, fool; is that a shame? Note but this, fool:     Was not a man my father? Hadst thou foxship     To banish him that struck more blows for Rome     Than thou hast spoken words?   SICINIUS. O blessed heavens!   VOLUMNIA. Moe noble blows than ever thou wise words;     And for Rome\'s good. I\'ll tell thee what- yet go!     Nay, but thou shalt stay too. I would my son     Were in Arabia, and thy tribe before him,       His good sword in his hand.   SICINIUS. What then?   VIRGILIA. What then!     He\'d make an end of thy posterity.   VOLUMNIA. Bastards and all.     Good man, the wounds that he does bear for Rome!   MENENIUS. Come, come, peace.   SICINIUS. I would he had continued to his country     As he began, and not unknit himself     The noble knot he made.   BRUTUS. I would he had.   VOLUMNIA. \'I would he had!\' \'Twas you incens\'d the rabble-     Cats that can judge as fitly of his worth     As I can of those mysteries which heaven     Will not have earth to know.   BRUTUS. Pray, let\'s go.   VOLUMNIA. Now, pray, sir, get you gone;     You have done a brave deed. Ere you go, hear this:     As far as doth the Capitol exceed     The meanest house in Rome, so far my son-       This lady\'s husband here, this, do you see?-     Whom you have banish\'d does exceed you an.   BRUTUS. Well, well, we\'ll leave you.   SICINIUS. Why stay we to be baited     With one that wants her wits?                Exeunt TRIBUNES   VOLUMNIA. Take my prayers with you.     I would the gods had nothing else to do     But to confirm my curses. Could I meet \'em     But once a day, it would unclog my heart     Of what lies heavy to\'t.   MENENIUS. You have told them home,     And, by my troth, you have cause. You\'ll sup with me?   VOLUMNIA. Anger\'s my meat; I sup upon myself,     And so shall starve with feeding. Come, let\'s go.     Leave this faint puling and lament as I do,     In anger, Juno-like. Come, come, come.                                     Exeunt VOLUMNIA and VIRGILIA   MENENIUS. Fie, fie, fie!                                  Exit     SCENE III. A highway between Rome and Antium  Enter a ROMAN and a VOLSCE, meeting    ROMAN. I know you well, sir, and you know me; your name, I think,     is Adrian.   VOLSCE. It is so, sir. Truly, I have forgot you.   ROMAN. I am a Roman; and my services are, as you are, against \'em.     Know you me yet?   VOLSCE. Nicanor? No!   ROMAN. The same, sir.   VOLSCE. YOU had more beard when I last saw you, but your favour is     well appear\'d by your tongue. What\'s the news in Rome? I have a     note from the Volscian state, to find you out there. You have     well saved me a day\'s journey.   ROMAN. There hath been in Rome strange insurrections: the people     against the senators, patricians, and nobles.   VOLSCE. Hath been! Is it ended, then? Our state thinks not so; they     are in a most warlike preparation, and hope to come upon them in     the heat of their division.   ROMAN. The main blaze of it is past, but a small thing would make       it flame again; for the nobles receive so to heart the banishment     of that worthy Coriolanus that they are in a ripe aptness to take     all power from the people, and to pluck from them their tribunes     for ever. This lies glowing, I can tell you, and is almost mature     for the violent breaking out.   VOLSCE. Coriolanus banish\'d!   ROMAN. Banish\'d, sir.   VOLSCE. You will be welcome with this intelligence, Nicanor.   ROMAN. The day serves well for them now. I have heard it said the     fittest time to corrupt a man\'s wife is when she\'s fall\'n out     with her husband. Your noble Tullus Aufidius will appear well in     these wars, his great opposer, Coriolanus, being now in no     request of his country.   VOLSCE. He cannot choose. I am most fortunate thus accidentally to     encounter you; you have ended my business, and I will merrily     accompany you home.   ROMAN. I shall between this and supper tell you most strange things     from Rome, all tending to the good of their adversaries. Have you     an army ready, say you?   VOLSCE. A most royal one: the centurions and their charges,       distinctly billeted, already in th\' entertainment, and to be on     foot at an hour\'s warning.   ROMAN. I am joyful to hear of their readiness, and am the man, I     think, that shall set them in present action. So, sir, heartily     well met, and most glad of your company.   VOLSCE. You take my part from me, sir. I have the most cause to be     glad of yours.   ROMAN. Well, let us go together.     SCENE IV. Antium. Before AUFIDIUS\' house  Enter CORIOLANUS, in mean apparel, disguis\'d and muffled    CORIOLANUS. A goodly city is this Antium. City,     \'Tis I that made thy widows: many an heir     Of these fair edifices fore my wars     Have I heard groan and drop. Then know me not.     Lest that thy wives with spits and boys with stones,     In puny battle slay me.                             Enter A CITIZEN      Save you, sir.   CITIZEN. And you.   CORIOLANUS. Direct me, if it be your will,     Where great Aufidius lies. Is he in Antium?   CITIZEN. He is, and feasts the nobles of the state     At his house this night.   CORIOLANUS. Which is his house, beseech you?   CITIZEN. This here before you.     CORIOLANUS. Thank you, sir; farewell.             Exit CITIZEN     O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn,     Whose double bosoms seems to wear one heart,     Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal and exercise     Are still together, who twin, as \'twere, in love,     Unseparable, shall within this hour,     On a dissension of a doit, break out     To bitterest enmity; so fellest foes,     Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep     To take the one the other, by some chance,     Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends     And interjoin their issues. So with me:     My birthplace hate I, and my love\'s upon     This enemy town. I\'ll enter. If he slay me,     He does fair justice: if he give me way,     I\'ll do his country service.     SCENE V. Antium. AUFIDIUS\' house  Music plays. Enter A SERVINGMAN    FIRST SERVANT. Wine, wine, wine! What service is here! I think our     fellows are asleep.                                     Exit                       Enter another SERVINGMAN    SECOND SERVANT.Where\'s Cotus? My master calls for him.     Cotus!                                                  Exit                         Enter CORIOLANUS    CORIOLANUS. A goodly house. The feast smells well, but I     Appear not like a guest.                   Re-enter the first SERVINGMAN    FIRST SERVANT. What would you have, friend?     Whence are you? Here\'s no place for you: pray go to the door.    Exit   CORIOLANUS. I have deserv\'d no better entertainment     In being Coriolanus.                     Re-enter second SERVINGMAN    SECOND SERVANT. Whence are you, sir? Has the porter his eyes in his     head that he gives entrance to such companions? Pray get you out.   CORIOLANUS. Away!   SECOND SERVANT. Away? Get you away.   CORIOLANUS. Now th\' art troublesome.   SECOND SERVANT. Are you so brave? I\'ll have you talk\'d with anon.            Enter a third SERVINGMAN. The first meets him    THIRD SERVANT. What fellow\'s this?   FIRST SERVANT. A strange one as ever I look\'d on. I cannot get him     out o\' th\' house. Prithee call my master to him.   THIRD SERVANT. What have you to do here, fellow? Pray you avoid the     house.     CORIOLANUS. Let me but stand- I will not hurt your hearth.   THIRD SERVANT. What are you?   CORIOLANUS. A gentleman.   THIRD SERVANT. A marv\'llous poor one.   CORIOLANUS. True, so I am.   THIRD SERVANT. Pray you, poor gentleman, take up some other     station; here\'s no place for you. Pray you avoid. Come.   CORIOLANUS. Follow your function, go and batten on cold bits.                                       [Pushes him away from him]   THIRD SERVANT. What, you will not? Prithee tell my master what a     strange guest he has here.   SECOND SERVANT. And I shall.                              Exit   THIRD SERVANT. Where dwell\'st thou?   CORIOLANUS. Under the canopy.   THIRD SERVANT. Under the canopy?   CORIOLANUS. Ay.   THIRD SERVANT. Where\'s that?   CORIOLANUS. I\' th\' city of kites and crows.   THIRD SERVANT. I\' th\' city of kites and crows!     What an ass it is! Then thou dwell\'st with daws too?     CORIOLANUS. No, I serve not thy master.   THIRD SERVANT. How, sir! Do you meddle with my master?   CORIOLANUS. Ay; \'tis an honester service than to meddle with thy     mistress. Thou prat\'st and prat\'st; serve with thy trencher;     hence!                                      [Beats him away]               Enter AUFIDIUS with the second SERVINGMAN    AUFIDIUS. Where is this fellow?   SECOND SERVANT. Here, sir; I\'d have beaten him like a dog, but for     disturbing the lords within.   AUFIDIUS. Whence com\'st thou? What wouldst thou? Thy name?     Why speak\'st not? Speak, man. What\'s thy name?   CORIOLANUS.  [Unmuffling]  If, Tullus,     Not yet thou know\'st me, and, seeing me, dost not     Think me for the man I am, necessity     Commands me name myself.   AUFIDIUS. What is thy name?   CORIOLANUS. A name unmusical to the Volscians\' ears,     And harsh in sound to thine.     AUFIDIUS. Say, what\'s thy name?     Thou has a grim appearance, and thy face     Bears a command in\'t; though thy tackle\'s torn,     Thou show\'st a noble vessel. What\'s thy name?   CORIOLANUS. Prepare thy brow to frown- know\'st thou me yet?   AUFIDIUS. I know thee not. Thy name?   CORIOLANUS. My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done     To thee particularly, and to all the Volsces,     Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may     My surname, Coriolanus. The painful service,     The extreme dangers, and the drops of blood     Shed for my thankless country, are requited     But with that surname- a good memory     And witness of the malice and displeasure     Which thou shouldst bear me. Only that name remains;     The cruelty and envy of the people,     Permitted by our dastard nobles, who     Have all forsook me, hath devour\'d the rest,     An suffer\'d me by th\' voice of slaves to be     Whoop\'d out of Rome. Now this extremity       Hath brought me to thy hearth; not out of hope,     Mistake me not, to save my life; for if     I had fear\'d death, of all the men i\' th\' world     I would have \'voided thee; but in mere spite,     To be full quit of those my banishers,     Stand I before thee here. Then if thou hast     A heart of wreak in thee, that wilt revenge     Thine own particular wrongs and stop those maims     Of shame seen through thy country, speed thee straight     And make my misery serve thy turn. So use it     That my revengeful services may prove     As benefits to thee; for I will fight     Against my cank\'red country with the spleen     Of all the under fiends. But if so be     Thou dar\'st not this, and that to prove more fortunes     Th\'art tir\'d, then, in a word, I also am     Longer to live most weary, and present     My throat to thee and to thy ancient malice;     Which not to cut would show thee but a fool,     Since I have ever followed thee with hate,       Drawn tuns of blood out of thy country\'s breast,     And cannot live but to thy shame, unless     It be to do thee service.   AUFIDIUS. O Marcius, Marcius!     Each word thou hast spoke hath weeded from my heart     A root of ancient envy. If Jupiter     Should from yond cloud speak divine things,     And say \'\'Tis true,\' I\'d not believe them more     Than thee, all noble Marcius. Let me twine     Mine arms about that body, where against     My grained ash an hundred times hath broke     And scarr\'d the moon with splinters; here I clip     The anvil of my sword, and do contest     As hotly and as nobly with thy love     As ever in ambitious strength I did     Contend against thy valour. Know thou first,     I lov\'d the maid I married; never man     Sigh\'d truer breath; but that I see thee here,     Thou noble thing, more dances my rapt heart     Than when I first my wedded mistress saw       Bestride my threshold. Why, thou Mars, I tell the     We have a power on foot, and I had purpose     Once more to hew thy target from thy brawn,     Or lose mine arm for\'t. Thou hast beat me out     Twelve several times, and I have nightly since     Dreamt of encounters \'twixt thyself and me-     We have been down together in my sleep,     Unbuckling helms, fisting each other\'s throat-     And wak\'d half dead with nothing. Worthy Marcius,     Had we no other quarrel else to Rome but that     Thou art thence banish\'d, we would muster all     From twelve to seventy, and, pouring war     Into the bowels of ungrateful Rome,     Like a bold flood o\'erbeat. O, come, go in,     And take our friendly senators by th\' hands,     Who now are here, taking their leaves of me     Who am prepar\'d against your territories,     Though not for Rome itself.   CORIOLANUS. You bless me, gods!   AUFIDIUS. Therefore, most. absolute sir, if thou wilt have       The leading of thine own revenges, take     Th\' one half of my commission, and set down-     As best thou art experienc\'d, since thou know\'st     Thy country\'s strength and weakness- thine own ways,     Whether to knock against the gates of Rome,     Or rudely visit them in parts remote     To fright them ere destroy. But come in;     Let me commend thee first to those that shall     Say yea to thy desires. A thousand welcomes!     And more a friend than e\'er an enemy;     Yet, Marcius, that was much. Your hand; most welcome!                                   Exeunt CORIOLANUS and AUFIDIUS                      The two SERVINGMEN come forward    FIRST SERVANT. Here\'s a strange alteration!   SECOND SERVANT. By my hand, I had thought to have strucken him with     a cudgel; and yet my mind gave me his clothes made a false report     of him.   FIRST SERVANT. What an arm he has! He turn\'d me about with his       finger and his thumb, as one would set up a top.   SECOND SERVANT. Nay, I knew by his face that there was something in     him; he had, sir, a kind of face, methought- I cannot tell how to     term it.   FIRST SERVANT. He had so, looking as it were- Would I were hang\'d,     but I thought there was more in him than I could think.   SECOND SERVANT. So did I, I\'ll be sworn. He is simply the rarest     man i\' th\' world.   FIRST SERVANT. I think he is; but a greater soldier than he you wot     on.   SECOND SERVANT. Who, my master?   FIRST SERVANT. Nay, it\'s no matter for that.   SECOND SERVANT. Worth six on him.   FIRST SERVANT. Nay, not so neither; but I take him to be the     greater soldier.   SECOND SERVANT. Faith, look you, one cannot tell how to say that;     for the defence of a town our general is excellent.   FIRST SERVANT. Ay, and for an assault too.                         Re-enter the third SERVINGMAN      THIRD SERVANT. O slaves, I can tell you news- news, you rascals!   BOTH. What, what, what? Let\'s partake.   THIRD SERVANT. I would not be a Roman, of all nations;     I had as lief be a condemn\'d man.   BOTH. Wherefore? wherefore?   THIRD SERVANT. Why, here\'s he that was wont to thwack our general-     Caius Marcius.   FIRST SERVANT. Why do you say \'thwack our general\'?   THIRD SERVANT. I do not say \'thwack our general,\' but he was always     good enough for him.   SECOND SERVANT. Come, we are fellows and friends. He was ever too     hard for him, I have heard him say so himself.   FIRST SERVANT. He was too hard for him directly, to say the troth     on\'t; before Corioli he scotch\'d him and notch\'d him like a     carbonado.   SECOND SERVANT. An he had been cannibally given, he might have     broil\'d and eaten him too.   FIRST SERVANT. But more of thy news!   THIRD SERVANT. Why, he is so made on here within as if he were son       and heir to Mars; set at upper end o\' th\' table; no question     asked him by any of the senators but they stand bald before him.     Our general himself makes a mistress of him, sanctifies himself     with\'s hand, and turns up the white o\' th\' eye to his discourse.     But the bottom of the news is, our general is cut i\' th\' middle     and but one half of what he was yesterday, for the other has half     by the entreaty and grant of the whole table. He\'ll go, he says,     and sowl the porter of Rome gates by th\' ears; he will mow all     down before him, and leave his passage poll\'d.   SECOND SERVANT. And he\'s as like to do\'t as any man I can imagine.   THIRD SERVANT. Do\'t! He will do\'t; for look you, sir, he has as     many friends as enemies; which friends, sir, as it were, durst     not- look you, sir- show themselves, as we term it, his friends,     whilst he\'s in directitude.   FIRST SERVANT. Directitude? What\'s that?   THIRD SERVANT. But when they shall see, sir, his crest up again and     the man in blood, they will out of their burrows, like conies     after rain, and revel an with him.   FIRST SERVANT. But when goes this forward?   THIRD SERVANT. To-morrow, to-day, presently. You shall have the       drum struck up this afternoon; \'tis as it were parcel of their     feast, and to be executed ere they wipe their lips.   SECOND SERVANT. Why, then we shall have a stirring world again.     This peace is nothing but to rust iron, increase tailors, and     breed ballad-makers.   FIRST SERVANT. Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as     day does night; it\'s spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent.     Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mull\'d, deaf, sleepy,     insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war\'s a     destroyer of men.   SECOND SERVANT. \'Tis so; and as war in some sort may be said to be     a ravisher, so it cannot be denied but peace is a great maker of     cuckolds.   FIRST SERVANT. Ay, and it makes men hate one another.   THIRD SERVANT. Reason: because they then less need one another. The     wars for my money. I hope to see Romans as cheap as Volscians.     They are rising, they are rising.   BOTH. In, in, in, in!                                   Exeunt     SCENE VI. Rome. A public place  Enter the two Tribunes, SICINIUS and BRUTUS    SICINIUS. We hear not of him, neither need we fear him.     His remedies are tame. The present peace     And quietness of the people, which before     Were in wild hurry, here do make his friends     Blush that the world goes well; who rather had,     Though they themselves did suffer by\'t, behold     Dissentious numbers pest\'ring streets than see     Our tradesmen singing in their shops, and going     About their functions friendly.                            Enter MENENIUS    BRUTUS. We stood to\'t in good time. Is this Menenius?   SICINIUS. \'Tis he, \'tis he. O, he is grown most kind     Of late. Hail, sir!   MENENIUS. Hail to you both!   SICINIUS. Your Coriolanus is not much miss\'d       But with his friends. The commonwealth doth stand,     And so would do, were he more angry at it.   MENENIUS. All\'s well, and might have been much better     He could have temporiz\'d.   SICINIUS. Where is he, hear you?   MENENIUS. Nay, I hear nothing; his mother and his wife     Hear nothing from him.                       Enter three or four citizens    CITIZENS. The gods preserve you both!   SICINIUS. God-den, our neighbours.   BRUTUS. God-den to you all, god-den to you an.   FIRST CITIZEN. Ourselves, our wives, and children, on our knees     Are bound to pray for you both.   SICINIUS. Live and thrive!   BRUTUS. Farewell, kind neighbours; we wish\'d Coriolanus     Had lov\'d you as we did.   CITIZENS. Now the gods keep you!   BOTH TRIBUNES. Farewell, farewell.             Exeunt citizens     SICINIUS. This is a happier and more comely time     Than when these fellows ran about the streets     Crying confusion.   BRUTUS. Caius Marcius was     A worthy officer i\' the war, but insolent,     O\'ercome with pride, ambitious past all thinking,     Self-loving-   SICINIUS. And affecting one sole throne,     Without assistance.   MENENIUS. I think not so.   SICINIUS. We should by this, to all our lamentation,     If he had gone forth consul, found it so.   BRUTUS. The gods have well prevented it, and Rome     Sits safe and still without him.                               Enter an AEDILE    AEDILE. Worthy tribunes,     There is a slave, whom we have put in prison,     Reports the Volsces with several powers       Are ent\'red in the Roman territories,     And with the deepest malice of the war     Destroy what lies before \'em.   MENENIUS. \'Tis Aufidius,     Who, hearing of our Marcius\' banishment,     Thrusts forth his horns again into the world,     Which were inshell\'d when Marcius stood for Rome,     And durst not once peep out.   SICINIUS. Come, what talk you of Marcius?   BRUTUS. Go see this rumourer whipp\'d. It cannot be     The Volsces dare break with us.   MENENIUS. Cannot be!     We have record that very well it can;     And three examples of the like hath been     Within my age. But reason with the fellow     Before you punish him, where he heard this,     Lest you shall chance to whip your information     And beat the messenger who bids beware     Of what is to be dreaded.   SICINIUS. Tell not me.       I know this cannot be.   BRUTUS. Not Possible.                             Enter A MESSENGER    MESSENGER. The nobles in great earnestness are going     All to the Senate House; some news is come     That turns their countenances.   SICINIUS. \'Tis this slave-     Go whip him fore the people\'s eyes- his raising,     Nothing but his report.   MESSENGER. Yes, worthy sir,     The slave\'s report is seconded, and more,     More fearful, is deliver\'d.   SICINIUS. What more fearful?   MESSENGER. It is spoke freely out of many mouths-     How probable I do not know- that Marcius,     Join\'d with Aufidius, leads a power \'gainst Rome,     And vows revenge as spacious as between     The young\'st and oldest thing.     SICINIUS. This is most likely!   BRUTUS. Rais\'d only that the weaker sort may wish     Good Marcius home again.   SICINIUS. The very trick on \'t.   MENENIUS. This is unlikely.     He and Aufidius can no more atone     Than violent\'st contrariety.                        Enter a second MESSENGER    SECOND MESSENGER. You are sent for to the Senate.     A fearful army, led by Caius Marcius     Associated with Aufidius, rages     Upon our territories, and have already     O\'erborne their way, consum\'d with fire and took     What lay before them.                              Enter COMINIUS    COMINIUS. O, you have made good work!     MENENIUS. What news? what news?   COMINIUS. You have holp to ravish your own daughters and     To melt the city leads upon your pates,     To see your wives dishonour\'d to your noses-   MENENIUS. What\'s the news? What\'s the news?   COMINIUS. Your temples burned in their cement, and     Your franchises, whereon you stood, confin\'d     Into an auger\'s bore.   MENENIUS. Pray now, your news?     You have made fair work, I fear me. Pray, your news.     If Marcius should be join\'d wi\' th\' Volscians-   COMINIUS. If!     He is their god; he leads them like a thing     Made by some other deity than Nature,     That shapes man better; and they follow him     Against us brats with no less confidence     Than boys pursuing summer butterflies,     Or butchers killing flies.   MENENIUS. You have made good work,     You and your apron men; you that stood so much       Upon the voice of occupation and     The breath of garlic-eaters!   COMINIUS. He\'ll shake     Your Rome about your ears.   MENENIUS. As Hercules     Did shake down mellow fruit. You have made fair work!   BRUTUS. But is this true, sir?   COMINIUS. Ay; and you\'ll look pale     Before you find it other. All the regions     Do smilingly revolt, and who resists     Are mock\'d for valiant ignorance,     And perish constant fools. Who is\'t can blame him?     Your enemies and his find something in him.   MENENIUS. We are all undone unless     The noble man have mercy.   COMINIUS. Who shall ask it?     The tribunes cannot do\'t for shame; the people     Deserve such pity of him as the wolf     Does of the shepherds; for his best friends, if they     Should say \'Be good to Rome\'- they charg\'d him even       As those should do that had deserv\'d his hate,     And therein show\'d fike enemies.   MENENIUS. \'Tis true;     If he were putting to my house the brand     That should consume it, I have not the face     To say \'Beseech you, cease.\' You have made fair hands,     You and your crafts! You have crafted fair!   COMINIUS. You have brought     A trembling upon Rome, such as was never     S\' incapable of help.   BOTH TRIBUNES. Say not we brought it.   MENENIUS. How! Was\'t we? We lov\'d him, but, like beasts     And cowardly nobles, gave way unto your clusters,     Who did hoot him out o\' th\' city.   COMINIUS. But I fear     They\'ll roar him in again. Tullus Aufidius,     The second name of men, obeys his points     As if he were his officer. Desperation     Is all the policy, strength, and defence,     That Rome can make against them.                           Enter a troop of citizens    MENENIUS. Here comes the clusters.     And is Aufidius with him? You are they     That made the air unwholesome when you cast     Your stinking greasy caps in hooting at     Coriolanus\' exile. Now he\'s coming,     And not a hair upon a soldier\'s head     Which will not prove a whip; as many coxcombs     As you threw caps up will he tumble down,     And pay you for your voices. \'Tis no matter;     If he could burn us all into one coal     We have deserv\'d it.   PLEBEIANS. Faith, we hear fearful news.   FIRST CITIZEN. For mine own part,     When I said banish him, I said \'twas pity.   SECOND CITIZEN. And so did I.   THIRD CITIZEN. And so did I; and, to say the truth, so did very     many of us. That we did, we did for the best; and though we       willingly consented to his banishment, yet it was against our     will.   COMINIUS. Y\'are goodly things, you voices!   MENENIUS. You have made     Good work, you and your cry! Shall\'s to the Capitol?   COMINIUS. O, ay, what else?                                     Exeunt COMINIUS and MENENIUS   SICINIUS. Go, masters, get you be not dismay\'d;     These are a side that would be glad to have     This true which they so seem to fear. Go home,     And show no sign of fear.   FIRST CITIZEN. The gods be good to us! Come, masters, let\'s home. I     ever said we were i\' th\' wrong when we banish\'d him.   SECOND CITIZEN. So did we all. But come, let\'s home.                                                  Exeunt citizens   BRUTUS. I do not like this news.   SICINIUS. Nor I.   BRUTUS. Let\'s to the Capitol. Would half my wealth     Would buy this for a lie!   SICINIUS. Pray let\'s go.                                Exeunt     SCENE VII. A camp at a short distance from Rome  Enter AUFIDIUS with his LIEUTENANT    AUFIDIUS. Do they still fly to th\' Roman?   LIEUTENANT. I do not know what witchcraft\'s in him, but     Your soldiers use him as the grace fore meat,     Their talk at table, and their thanks at end;     And you are dark\'ned in this action, sir,     Even by your own.   AUFIDIUS. I cannot help it now,     Unless by using means I lame the foot     Of our design. He bears himself more proudlier,     Even to my person, than I thought he would     When first I did embrace him; yet his nature     In that\'s no changeling, and I must excuse     What cannot be amended.   LIEUTENANT. Yet I wish, sir-     I mean, for your particular- you had not     Join\'d in commission with him, but either     Had borne the action of yourself, or else       To him had left it solely.   AUFIDIUS. I understand thee well; and be thou sure,     When he shall come to his account, he knows not     What I can urge against him. Although it seems,     And so he thinks, and is no less apparent     To th\' vulgar eye, that he bears all things fairly     And shows good husbandry for the Volscian state,     Fights dragon-like, and does achieve as soon     As draw his sword; yet he hath left undone     That which shall break his neck or hazard mine     Whene\'er we come to our account.   LIEUTENANT. Sir, I beseech you, think you he\'ll carry Rome?   AUFIDIUS. All places yield to him ere he sits down,     And the nobility of Rome are his;     The senators and patricians love him too.     The tribunes are no soldiers, and their people     Will be as rash in the repeal as hasty     To expel him thence. I think he\'ll be to Rome     As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it     By sovereignty of nature. First he was       A noble servant to them, but he could not     Carry his honours even. Whether \'twas pride,     Which out of daily fortune ever taints     The happy man; whether defect of judgment,     To fail in the disposing of those chances     Which he was lord of; or whether nature,     Not to be other than one thing, not moving     From th\' casque to th\' cushion, but commanding peace     Even with the same austerity and garb     As he controll\'d the war; but one of these-     As he hath spices of them all- not all,     For I dare so far free him- made him fear\'d,     So hated, and so banish\'d. But he has a merit     To choke it in the utt\'rance. So our virtues     Lie in th\' interpretation of the time;     And power, unto itself most commendable,     Hath not a tomb so evident as a chair     T\' extol what it hath done.     One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail;     Rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail.       Come, let\'s away. When, Caius, Rome is thine,     Thou art poor\'st of all; then shortly art thou mine.                                                           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. Rome. A public place  Enter MENENIUS, COMINIUS, SICINIUS and BRUTUS, the two Tribunes, with others    MENENIUS. No, I\'ll not go. You hear what he hath said     Which was sometime his general, who lov\'d him     In a most dear particular. He call\'d me father;     But what o\' that? Go, you that banish\'d him:     A mile before his tent fall down, and knee     The way into his mercy. Nay, if he coy\'d     To hear Cominius speak, I\'ll keep at home.   COMINIUS. He would not seem to know me.   MENENIUS. Do you hear?   COMINIUS. Yet one time he did call me by my name.     I urg\'d our old acquaintance, and the drops     That we have bled together. \'Coriolanus\'     He would not answer to; forbid all names;     He was a kind of nothing, titleless,     Till he had forg\'d himself a name i\' th\' fire     Of burning Rome.     MENENIUS. Why, so! You have made good work.     A pair of tribunes that have wrack\'d for Rome     To make coals cheap- a noble memory!   COMINIUS. I minded him how royal \'twas to pardon     When it was less expected; he replied,     It was a bare petition of a state     To one whom they had punish\'d.   MENENIUS. Very well.     Could he say less?   COMINIUS. I offer\'d to awaken his regard     For\'s private friends; his answer to me was,     He could not stay to pick them in a pile     Of noisome musty chaff. He said \'twas folly,     For one poor grain or two, to leave unburnt     And still to nose th\' offence.   MENENIUS. For one poor grain or two!     I am one of those. His mother, wife, his child,     And this brave fellow too- we are the grains:     You are the musty chaff, and you are smelt     Above the moon. We must be burnt for you.     SICINIUS. Nay, pray be patient; if you refuse your aid     In this so never-needed help, yet do not     Upbraid\'s with our distress. But sure, if you     Would be your country\'s pleader, your good tongue,     More than the instant army we can make,     Might stop our countryman.   MENENIUS. No; I\'ll not meddle.   SICINIUS. Pray you go to him.   MENENIUS. What should I do?   BRUTUS. Only make trial what your love can do     For Rome, towards Marcius.   MENENIUS. Well, and say that Marcius     Return me, as Cominius is return\'d,     Unheard- what then?     But as a discontented friend, grief-shot     With his unkindness? Say\'t be so?   SICINIUS. Yet your good will     Must have that thanks from Rome after the measure     As you intended well.   MENENIUS. I\'ll undertake\'t;       I think he\'ll hear me. Yet to bite his lip     And hum at good Cominius much unhearts me.     He was not taken well: he had not din\'d;     The veins unfill\'d, our blood is cold, and then     We pout upon the morning, are unapt     To give or to forgive; but when we have stuff\'d     These pipes and these conveyances of our blood     With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls     Than in our priest-like fasts. Therefore I\'ll watch him     Till he be dieted to my request,     And then I\'ll set upon him.   BRUTUS. You know the very road into his kindness     And cannot lose your way.   MENENIUS. Good faith, I\'ll prove him,     Speed how it will. I shall ere long have knowledge     Of my success.                                          Exit   COMINIUS. He\'ll never hear him.   SICINIUS. Not?   COMINIUS. I tell you he does sit in gold, his eye     Red as \'twould burn Rome, and his injury       The gaoler to his pity. I kneel\'d before him;     \'Twas very faintly he said \'Rise\'; dismiss\'d me     Thus with his speechless hand. What he would do,     He sent in writing after me; what he would not,     Bound with an oath to yield to his conditions;     So that all hope is vain,     Unless his noble mother and his wife,     Who, as I hear, mean to solicit him     For mercy to his country. Therefore let\'s hence,     And with our fair entreaties haste them on.           Exeunt     SCENE II. The Volscian camp before Rome  Enter MENENIUS to the WATCH on guard    FIRST WATCH. Stay. Whence are you?   SECOND WATCH. Stand, and go back.   MENENIUS. You guard like men, \'tis well; but, by your leave,     I am an officer of state and come     To speak with Coriolanus.   FIRST WATCH. From whence?   MENENIUS. From Rome.   FIRST WATCH. YOU may not pass; you must return. Our general     Will no more hear from thence.   SECOND WATCH. You\'ll see your Rome embrac\'d with fire before     You\'ll speak with Coriolanus.   MENENIUS. Good my friends,     If you have heard your general talk of Rome     And of his friends there, it is lots to blanks     My name hath touch\'d your ears: it is Menenius.   FIRST WATCH. Be it so; go back. The virtue of your name     Is not here passable.     MENENIUS. I tell thee, fellow,     Thy general is my lover. I have been     The book of his good acts whence men have read     His fame unparallel\'d haply amplified;     For I have ever verified my friends-     Of whom he\'s chief- with all the size that verity     Would without lapsing suffer. Nay, sometimes,     Like to a bowl upon a subtle ground,     I have tumbled past the throw, and in his praise     Have almost stamp\'d the leasing; therefore, fellow,     I must have leave to pass.   FIRST WATCH. Faith, sir, if you had told as many lies in his behalf     as you have uttered words in your own, you should not pass here;     no, though it were as virtuous to lie as to live chastely.     Therefore go back.   MENENIUS. Prithee, fellow, remember my name is Menenius, always     factionary on the party of your general.   SECOND WATCH. Howsoever you have been his liar, as you say you     have, I am one that, telling true under him, must say you cannot     pass. Therefore go back.     MENENIUS. Has he din\'d, canst thou tell? For I would not speak with     him till after dinner.   FIRST WATCH. You are a Roman, are you?   MENENIUS. I am as thy general is.   FIRST WATCH. Then you should hate Rome, as he does. Can you, when     you have push\'d out your gates the very defender of them, and in     a violent popular ignorance given your enemy your shield, think     to front his revenges with the easy groans of old women, the     virginal palms of your daughters, or with the palsied     intercession of such a decay\'d dotant as you seem to be? Can you     think to blow out the intended fire your city is ready to flame     in with such weak breath as this? No, you are deceiv\'d; therefore     back to Rome and prepare for your execution. You are condemn\'d;     our general has sworn you out of reprieve and pardon.   MENENIUS. Sirrah, if thy captain knew I were here, he would use me     with estimation.   FIRST WATCH. Come, my captain knows you not.   MENENIUS. I mean thy general.   FIRST WATCH. My general cares not for you. Back, I say; go, lest I     let forth your half pint of blood. Back- that\'s the utmost of       your having. Back.   MENENIUS. Nay, but fellow, fellow-                        Enter CORIOLANUS with AUFIDIUS    CORIOLANUS. What\'s the matter?   MENENIUS. Now, you companion, I\'ll say an errand for you; you shall     know now that I am in estimation; you shall perceive that a Jack     guardant cannot office me from my son Coriolanus. Guess but by my     entertainment with him if thou stand\'st not i\' th\' state of     hanging, or of some death more long in spectatorship and crueller     in suffering; behold now presently, and swoon for what\'s to come     upon thee. The glorious gods sit in hourly synod about thy     particular prosperity, and love thee no worse than thy old father     Menenius does! O my son! my son! thou art preparing fire for us;     look thee, here\'s water to quench it. I was hardly moved to come     to thee; but being assured none but myself could move thee, I     have been blown out of your gates with sighs, and conjure thee to     pardon Rome and thy petitionary countrymen. The good gods assuage     thy wrath, and turn the dregs of it upon this varlet here; this,       who, like a block, hath denied my access to thee.   CORIOLANUS. Away!   MENENIUS. How! away!   CORIOLANUS. Wife, mother, child, I know not. My affairs     Are servanted to others. Though I owe     My revenge properly, my remission lies     In Volscian breasts. That we have been familiar,     Ingrate forgetfulness shall poison rather     Than pity note how much. Therefore be gone.     Mine ears against your suits are stronger than     Your gates against my force. Yet, for I lov\'d thee,     Take this along; I writ it for thy sake     [Gives a letter]     And would have sent it. Another word, Menenius,     I will not hear thee speak. This man, Aufidius,     Was my belov\'d in Rome; yet thou behold\'st.   AUFIDIUS. You keep a constant temper.                                   Exeunt CORIOLANUS and Aufidius   FIRST WATCH. Now, sir, is your name Menenius?   SECOND WATCH. \'Tis a spell, you see, of much power! You know the     way home again.     FIRST WATCH. Do you hear how we are shent for keeping your     greatness back?   SECOND WATCH. What cause, do you think, I have to swoon?   MENENIUS. I neither care for th\' world nor your general; for such     things as you, I can scarce think there\'s any, y\'are so slight.     He that hath a will to die by himself fears it not from another.     Let your general do his worst. For you, be that you are, long;     and your misery increase with your age! I say to you, as I was     said to: Away!                                          Exit   FIRST WATCH. A noble fellow, I warrant him.   SECOND WATCH. The worthy fellow is our general; he\'s the rock, the     oak not to be wind-shaken.                            Exeunt     SCENE III. The tent of CORIOLANUS  Enter CORIOLANUS, AUFIDIUS, and others    CORIOLANUS. We will before the walls of Rome to-morrow     Set down our host. My partner in this action,     You must report to th\' Volscian lords how plainly     I have borne this business.   AUFIDIUS. Only their ends     You have respected; stopp\'d your ears against     The general suit of Rome; never admitted     A private whisper- no, not with such friends     That thought them sure of you.   CORIOLANUS. This last old man,     Whom with crack\'d heart I have sent to Rome,     Lov\'d me above the measure of a father;     Nay, godded me indeed. Their latest refuge     Was to send him; for whose old love I have-     Though I show\'d sourly to him- once more offer\'d     The first conditions, which they did refuse     And cannot now accept. To grace him only,       That thought he could do more, a very little     I have yielded to; fresh embassies and suits,     Nor from the state nor private friends, hereafter     Will I lend ear to.  [Shout within]  Ha! what shout is this?     Shall I be tempted to infringe my vow     In the same time \'tis made? I will not.         Enter, in mourning habits, VIRGILIA, VOLUMNIA, VALERIA,                    YOUNG MARCIUS, with attendants      My wife comes foremost, then the honour\'d mould     Wherein this trunk was fram\'d, and in her hand     The grandchild to her blood. But out, affection!     All bond and privilege of nature, break!     Let it be virtuous to be obstinate.     What is that curtsy worth? or those doves\' eyes,     Which can make gods forsworn? I melt, and am not     Of stronger earth than others. My mother bows,     As if Olympus to a molehill should     In supplication nod; and my young boy       Hath an aspect of intercession which     Great nature cries \'Deny not.\' Let the Volsces     Plough Rome and harrow Italy; I\'ll never     Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand     As if a man were author of himself     And knew no other kin.   VIRGILIA. My lord and husband!   CORIOLANUS. These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome.   VIRGILIA. The sorrow that delivers us thus chang\'d     Makes you think so.   CORIOLANUS. Like a dull actor now     I have forgot my part and I am out,     Even to a full disgrace. Best of my flesh,     Forgive my tyranny; but do not say,     For that, \'Forgive our Romans.\' O, a kiss     Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!     Now, by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss     I carried from thee, dear, and my true lip     Hath virgin\'d it e\'er since. You gods! I prate,     And the most noble mother of the world       Leave unsaluted. Sink, my knee, i\' th\' earth;       [Kneels]     Of thy deep duty more impression show     Than that of common sons.   VOLUMNIA. O, stand up blest!     Whilst with no softer cushion than the flint     I kneel before thee, and unproperly     Show duty, as mistaken all this while     Between the child and parent.                       [Kneels]   CORIOLANUS. What\'s this?     Your knees to me, to your corrected son?     Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach     Fillip the stars; then let the mutinous winds     Strike the proud cedars \'gainst the fiery sun,     Murd\'ring impossibility, to make     What cannot be slight work.   VOLUMNIA. Thou art my warrior;     I holp to frame thee. Do you know this lady?   CORIOLANUS. The noble sister of Publicola,     The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle     That\'s curdied by the frost from purest snow,       And hangs on Dian\'s temple- dear Valeria!   VOLUMNIA. This is a poor epitome of yours,     Which by th\' interpretation of full time     May show like all yourself.   CORIOLANUS. The god of soldiers,     With the consent of supreme Jove, inform     Thy thoughts with nobleness, that thou mayst prove     To shame unvulnerable, and stick i\' th\' wars     Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw,     And saving those that eye thee!   VOLUMNIA. Your knee, sirrah.   CORIOLANUS. That\'s my brave boy.   VOLUMNIA. Even he, your wife, this lady, and myself,     Are suitors to you.   CORIOLANUS. I beseech you, peace!     Or, if you\'d ask, remember this before:     The thing I have forsworn to grant may never     Be held by you denials. Do not bid me     Dismiss my soldiers, or capitulate     Again with Rome\'s mechanics. Tell me not       Wherein I seem unnatural; desire not     T\'allay my rages and revenges with     Your colder reasons.   VOLUMNIA. O, no more, no more!     You have said you will not grant us any thing-     For we have nothing else to ask but that     Which you deny already; yet we will ask,     That, if you fail in our request, the blame     May hang upon your hardness; therefore hear us.   CORIOLANUS. Aufidius, and you Volsces, mark; for we\'ll     Hear nought from Rome in private. Your request?   VOLUMNIA. Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment     And state of bodies would bewray what life     We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself     How more unfortunate than all living women     Are we come hither; since that thy sight, which should     Make our eyes flow with joy, hearts dance with comforts,     Constrains them weep and shake with fear and sorrow,     Making the mother, wife, and child, to see     The son, the husband, and the father, tearing       His country\'s bowels out. And to poor we     Thine enmity\'s most capital: thou bar\'st us     Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort     That all but we enjoy. For how can we,     Alas, how can we for our country pray,     Whereto we are bound, together with thy victory,     Whereto we are bound? Alack, or we must lose     The country, our dear nurse, or else thy person,     Our comfort in the country. We must find     An evident calamity, though we had     Our wish, which side should win; for either thou     Must as a foreign recreant be led     With manacles through our streets, or else     Triumphantly tread on thy country\'s ruin,     And bear the palm for having bravely shed     Thy wife and children\'s blood. For myself, son,     I purpose not to wait on fortune till     These wars determine; if I can not persuade thee     Rather to show a noble grace to both parts     Than seek the end of one, thou shalt no sooner       March to assault thy country than to tread-     Trust to\'t, thou shalt not- on thy mother\'s womb     That brought thee to this world.   VIRGILIA. Ay, and mine,     That brought you forth this boy to keep your name     Living to time.   BOY. \'A shall not tread on me!     I\'ll run away till I am bigger, but then I\'ll fight.   CORIOLANUS. Not of a woman\'s tenderness to be     Requires nor child nor woman\'s face to see.     I have sat too long.                                [Rising]   VOLUMNIA. Nay, go not from us thus.     If it were so that our request did tend     To save the Romans, thereby to destroy     The Volsces whom you serve, you might condemn us     As poisonous of your honour. No, our suit     Is that you reconcile them: while the Volsces     May say \'This mercy we have show\'d,\' the Romans     \'This we receiv\'d,\' and each in either side     Give the all-hail to thee, and cry \'Be blest       For making up this peace!\' Thou know\'st, great son,     The end of war\'s uncertain; but this certain,     That, if thou conquer Rome, the benefit     Which thou shalt thereby reap is such a name     Whose repetition will be dogg\'d with curses;     Whose chronicle thus writ: \'The man was noble,     But with his last attempt he wip\'d it out,     Destroy\'d his country, and his name remains     To th\' ensuing age abhorr\'d.\' Speak to me, son.     Thou hast affected the fine strains of honour,     To imitate the graces of the gods,     To tear with thunder the wide cheeks o\' th\' air,     And yet to charge thy sulphur with a bolt     That should but rive an oak. Why dost not speak?     Think\'st thou it honourable for a noble man     Still to remember wrongs? Daughter, speak you:     He cares not for your weeping. Speak thou, boy;     Perhaps thy childishness will move him more     Than can our reasons. There\'s no man in the world     More bound to\'s mother, yet here he lets me prate       Like one i\' th\' stocks. Thou hast never in thy life     Show\'d thy dear mother any courtesy,     When she, poor hen, fond of no second brood,     Has cluck\'d thee to the wars, and safely home     Loaden with honour. Say my request\'s unjust,     And spurn me back; but if it he not so,     Thou art not honest, and the gods will plague thee,     That thou restrain\'st from me the duty which     To a mother\'s part belongs. He turns away.     Down, ladies; let us shame him with our knees.     To his surname Coriolanus \'longs more pride     Than pity to our prayers. Down. An end;     This is the last. So we will home to Rome,     And die among our neighbours. Nay, behold\'s!     This boy, that cannot tell what he would have     But kneels and holds up hands for fellowship,     Does reason our petition with more strength     Than thou hast to deny\'t. Come, let us go.     This fellow had a Volscian to his mother;     His wife is in Corioli, and his child       Like him by chance. Yet give us our dispatch.     I am hush\'d until our city be afire,     And then I\'ll speak a little.                               [He holds her by the hand, silent]   CORIOLANUS. O mother, mother!     What have you done? Behold, the heavens do ope,     The gods look down, and this unnatural scene     They laugh at. O my mother, mother! O!     You have won a happy victory to Rome;     But for your son- believe it, O, believe it!-     Most dangerously you have with him prevail\'d,     If not most mortal to him. But let it come.     Aufidius, though I cannot make true wars,     I\'ll frame convenient peace. Now, good Aufidius,     Were you in my stead, would you have heard     A mother less, or granted less, Aufidius?   AUFIDIUS. I was mov\'d withal.   CORIOLANUS. I dare be sworn you were!     And, sir, it is no little thing to make     Mine eyes to sweat compassion. But, good sir,       What peace you\'fl make, advise me. For my part,     I\'ll not to Rome, I\'ll back with you; and pray you     Stand to me in this cause. O mother! wife!   AUFIDIUS.  [Aside]  I am glad thou hast set thy mercy and thy       honour     At difference in thee. Out of that I\'ll work     Myself a former fortune.   CORIOLANUS.  [To the ladies]  Ay, by and by;     But we will drink together; and you shall bear     A better witness back than words, which we,     On like conditions, will have counter-seal\'d.     Come, enter with us. Ladies, you deserve     To have a temple built you. All the swords     In Italy, and her confederate arms,     Could not have made this peace.                       Exeunt     SCENE IV. Rome. A public place  Enter MENENIUS and SICINIUS    MENENIUS. See you yond coign o\' th\' Capitol, yond cornerstone?   SICINIUS. Why, what of that?   MENENIUS. If it be possible for you to displace it with your little     finger, there is some hope the ladies of Rome, especially his     mother, may prevail with him. But I say there is no hope in\'t;     our throats are sentenc\'d, and stay upon execution.   SICINIUS. Is\'t possible that so short a time can alter the     condition of a man?   MENENIUS. There is differency between a grub and a butterfly; yet     your butterfly was a grub. This Marcius is grown from man to     dragon; he has wings, he\'s more than a creeping thing.   SICINIUS. He lov\'d his mother dearly.   MENENIUS. So did he me; and he no more remembers his mother now     than an eight-year-old horse. The tartness of his face sours ripe     grapes; when he walks, he moves like an engine and the ground     shrinks before his treading. He is able to pierce a corslet with     his eye, talks like a knell, and his hum is a battery. He sits in       his state as a thing made for Alexander. What he bids be done is     finish\'d with his bidding. He wants nothing of a god but     eternity, and a heaven to throne in.   SICINIUS. Yes- mercy, if you report him truly.   MENENIUS. I paint him in the character. Mark what mercy his mother     shall bring from him. There is no more mercy in him than there is     milk in a male tiger; that shall our poor city find. And all this     is \'long of you.   SICINIUS. The gods be good unto us!   MENENIUS. No, in such a case the gods will not be good unto us.     When we banish\'d him we respected not them; and, he returning to     break our necks, they respect not us.                             Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. Sir, if you\'d save your life, fly to your house.     The plebeians have got your fellow tribune     And hale him up and down; all swearing if     The Roman ladies bring not comfort home     They\'ll give him death by inches.                             Enter another MESSENGER    SICINIUS. What\'s the news?   SECOND MESSENGER. Good news, good news! The ladies have prevail\'d,     The Volscians are dislodg\'d, and Marcius gone.     A merrier day did never yet greet Rome,     No, not th\' expulsion of the Tarquins.   SICINIUS. Friend,     Art thou certain this is true? Is\'t most certain?   SECOND MESSENGER. As certain as I know the sun is fire.     Where have you lurk\'d, that you make doubt of it?     Ne\'er through an arch so hurried the blown tide     As the recomforted through th\' gates. Why, hark you!                   [Trumpets, hautboys, drums beat, all together]     The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries, and fifes,     Tabors and cymbals, and the shouting Romans,     Make the sun dance. Hark you!               [A shout within]   MENENIUS. This is good news.     I will go meet the ladies. This Volumnia       Is worth of consuls, senators, patricians,     A city full; of tribunes such as you,     A sea and land full. You have pray\'d well to-day:     This morning for ten thousand of your throats     I\'d not have given a doit. Hark, how they joy!                                    [Sound still with the shouts]   SICINIUS. First, the gods bless you for your tidings; next,     Accept my thankfulness.   SECOND MESSENGER. Sir, we have all     Great cause to give great thanks.   SICINIUS. They are near the city?   MESSENGER. Almost at point to enter.   SICINIUS. We\'ll meet them,     And help the joy.                                     Exeunt     SCENE V. Rome. A street near the gate  Enter two SENATORS With VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, VALERIA, passing over the stage, \'With other LORDS    FIRST SENATOR. Behold our patroness, the life of Rome!     Call all your tribes together, praise the gods,     And make triumphant fires; strew flowers before them.     Unshout the noise that banish\'d Marcius,     Repeal him with the welcome of his mother;   ALL. Welcome, ladies, welcome!                     [A flourish with drums and trumpets. Exeunt]     SCENE VI. Corioli. A public place  Enter TULLUS AUFIDIUS with attendents    AUFIDIUS. Go tell the lords o\' th\' city I am here;     Deliver them this paper\' having read it,     Bid them repair to th\' market-place, where I,     Even in theirs and in the commons\' ears,     Will vouch the truth of it. Him I accuse     The city ports by this hath enter\'d and     Intends t\' appear before the people, hoping     To purge himself with words. Dispatch.                                                Exeunt attendants             Enter three or four CONSPIRATORS of AUFIDIUS\' faction      Most welcome!   FIRST CONSPIRATOR. How is it with our general?   AUFIDIUS. Even so     As with a man by his own alms empoison\'d,     And with his charity slain.     SECOND CONSPIRATOR. Most noble sir,     If you do hold the same intent wherein     You wish\'d us parties, we\'ll deliver you     Of your great danger.   AUFIDIUS. Sir, I cannot tell;     We must proceed as we do find the people.   THIRD CONSPIRATOR. The people will remain uncertain whilst     \'Twixt you there\'s difference; but the fall of either     Makes the survivor heir of all.   AUFIDIUS. I know it;     And my pretext to strike at him admits     A good construction. I rais\'d him, and I pawn\'d     Mine honour for his truth; who being so heighten\'d,     He watered his new plants with dews of flattery,     Seducing so my friends; and to this end     He bow\'d his nature, never known before     But to be rough, unswayable, and free.   THIRD CONSPIRATOR. Sir, his stoutness     When he did stand for consul, which he lost     By lack of stooping-     AUFIDIUS. That I would have spoken of.     Being banish\'d for\'t, he came unto my hearth,     Presented to my knife his throat. I took him;     Made him joint-servant with me; gave him way     In all his own desires; nay, let him choose     Out of my files, his projects to accomplish,     My best and freshest men; serv\'d his designments     In mine own person; holp to reap the fame     Which he did end all his, and took some pride     To do myself this wrong. Till, at the last,     I seem\'d his follower, not partner; and     He wag\'d me with his countenance as if     I had been mercenary.   FIRST CONSPIRATOR. So he did, my lord.     The army marvell\'d at it; and, in the last,     When he had carried Rome and that we look\'d     For no less spoil than glory-   AUFIDIUS. There was it;     For which my sinews shall be stretch\'d upon him.     At a few drops of women\'s rheum, which are       As cheap as lies, he sold the blood and labour     Of our great action; therefore shall he die,     And I\'ll renew me in his fall. But, hark!                                                       [Drums and                 trumpets sound, with great shouts of the people]   FIRST CONSPIRATOR. Your native town you enter\'d like a post,     And had no welcomes home; but he returns     Splitting the air with noise.   SECOND CONSPIRATOR. And patient fools,     Whose children he hath slain, their base throats tear     With giving him glory.   THIRD CONSPIRATOR. Therefore, at your vantage,     Ere he express himself or move the people     With what he would say, let him feel your sword,     Which we will second. When he lies along,     After your way his tale pronounc\'d shall bury     His reasons with his body.   AUFIDIUS. Say no more:     Here come the lords.                         Enter the LORDS of the city    LORDS. You are most welcome home.   AUFIDIUS. I have not deserv\'d it.     But, worthy lords, have you with heed perused     What I have written to you?   LORDS. We have.   FIRST LORD. And grieve to hear\'t.     What faults he made before the last, I think     Might have found easy fines; but there to end     Where he was to begin, and give away     The benefit of our levies, answering us     With our own charge, making a treaty where     There was a yielding- this admits no excuse.   AUFIDIUS. He approaches; you shall hear him.              Enter CORIOLANUS, marching with drum and colours;                       the commoners being with him    CORIOLANUS. Hail, lords! I am return\'d your soldier;       No more infected with my country\'s love     Than when I parted hence, but still subsisting     Under your great command. You are to know     That prosperously I have attempted, and     With bloody passage led your wars even to     The gates of Rome. Our spoils we have brought home     Doth more than counterpoise a full third part     The charges of the action. We have made peace     With no less honour to the Antiates     Than shame to th\' Romans; and we here deliver,     Subscrib\'d by th\' consuls and patricians,     Together with the seal o\' th\' Senate, what     We have compounded on.   AUFIDIUS. Read it not, noble lords;     But tell the traitor in the highest degree     He hath abus\'d your powers.   CORIOLANUS. Traitor! How now?   AUFIDIUS. Ay, traitor, Marcius.   CORIOLANUS. Marcius!   AUFIDIUS. Ay, Marcius, Caius Marcius! Dost thou think       I\'ll grace thee with that robbery, thy stol\'n name     Coriolanus, in Corioli?     You lords and heads o\' th\' state, perfidiously     He has betray\'d your business and given up,     For certain drops of salt, your city Rome-     I say your city- to his wife and mother;     Breaking his oath and resolution like     A twist of rotten silk; never admitting     Counsel o\' th\' war; but at his nurse\'s tears     He whin\'d and roar\'d away your victory,     That pages blush\'d at him, and men of heart     Look\'d wond\'ring each at others.   CORIOLANUS. Hear\'st thou, Mars?   AUFIDIUS. Name not the god, thou boy of tears-   CORIOLANUS. Ha!   AUFIDIUS. -no more.   CORIOLANUS. Measureless liar, thou hast made my heart     Too great for what contains it. \'Boy\'! O slave!     Pardon me, lords, \'tis the first time that ever     I was forc\'d to scold. Your judgments, my grave lords,       Must give this cur the lie; and his own notion-     Who wears my stripes impress\'d upon him, that     Must bear my beating to his grave- shall join     To thrust the lie unto him.   FIRST LORD. Peace, both, and hear me speak.   CORIOLANUS. Cut me to pieces, Volsces; men and lads,     Stain all your edges on me. \'Boy\'! False hound!     If you have writ your annals true, \'tis there     That, like an eagle in a dove-cote, I     Flutter\'d your Volscians in Corioli.     Alone I did it. \'Boy\'!   AUFIDIUS. Why, noble lords,     Will you be put in mind of his blind fortune,     Which was your shame, by this unholy braggart,     Fore your own eyes and ears?   CONSPIRATORS. Let him die for\'t.   ALL THE PEOPLE. Tear him to pieces. Do it presently. He kill\'d my     son. My daughter. He kill\'d my cousin Marcus. He kill\'d my     father.   SECOND LORD. Peace, ho! No outrage- peace!       The man is noble, and his fame folds in     This orb o\' th\' earth. His last offences to us     Shall have judicious hearing. Stand, Aufidius,     And trouble not the peace.   CORIOLANUS. O that I had him,     With six Aufidiuses, or more- his tribe,     To use my lawful sword!   AUFIDIUS. Insolent villain!   CONSPIRATORS. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him!            [The CONSPIRATORS draw and kill CORIOLANUS,who falls.                                          AUFIDIUS stands on him]   LORDS. Hold, hold, hold, hold!   AUFIDIUS. My noble masters, hear me speak.   FIRST LORD. O Tullus!   SECOND LORD. Thou hast done a deed whereat valour will weep.   THIRD LORD. Tread not upon him. Masters all, be quiet;     Put up your swords.   AUFIDIUS. My lords, when you shall know- as in this rage,     Provok\'d by him, you cannot- the great danger     Which this man\'s life did owe you, you\'ll rejoice       That he is thus cut off. Please it your honours     To call me to your Senate, I\'ll deliver     Myself your loyal servant, or endure     Your heaviest censure.   FIRST LORD. Bear from hence his body,     And mourn you for him. Let him be regarded     As the most noble corse that ever herald     Did follow to his um.   SECOND LORD. His own impatience     Takes from Aufidius a great part of blame.     Let\'s make the best of it.   AUFIDIUS. My rage is gone,     And I am struck with sorrow. Take him up.     Help, three o\' th\' chiefest soldiers; I\'ll be one.     Beat thou the drum, that it speak mournfully;     Trail your steel pikes. Though in this city he     Hath widowed and unchilded many a one,     Which to this hour bewail the injury,     Yet he shall have a noble memory.     Assist.               Exeunt, bearing the body of CORIOLANUS                                             [A dead march sounded]   THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1609  CYMBELINE  by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae    CYMBELINE, King of Britain   CLOTEN, son to the Queen by a former husband   POSTHUMUS LEONATUS, a gentleman, husband to Imogen   BELARIUS, a banished lord, disguised under the name of Morgan    GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS, sons to Cymbeline, disguised under the             names of POLYDORE and CADWAL, supposed sons to Belarius   PHILARIO, Italian, friend to Posthumus   IACHIMO,  Italian, friend to Philario   A FRENCH GENTLEMAN, friend to Philario   CAIUS LUCIUS, General of the Roman Forces   A ROMAN CAPTAIN   TWO BRITISH CAPTAINS   PISANIO, servant to Posthumus   CORNELIUS, a physician   TWO LORDS of Cymbeline\'s court   TWO GENTLEMEN of the same   TWO GAOLERS    QUEEN, wife to Cymbeline     IMOGEN, daughter to Cymbeline by a former queen   HELEN, a lady attending on Imogen    APPARITIONS    Lords, Ladies, Roman Senators, Tribunes, a Soothsayer, a     Dutch Gentleman, a Spanish Gentleman, Musicians, Officers,     Captains, Soldiers, Messengers, and Attendants    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>     SCENE: Britain; Italy    ACT I. SCENE I. Britain. The garden of CYMBELINE\'S palace    FIRST GENTLEMAN. You do not meet a man but frowns; our bloods     No more obey the heavens than our courtiers     Still seem as does the King\'s.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. But what\'s the matter?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. His daughter, and the heir of\'s kingdom, whom     He purpos\'d to his wife\'s sole son- a widow     That late he married- hath referr\'d herself     Unto a poor but worthy gentleman. She\'s wedded;     Her husband banish\'d; she imprison\'d. All     Is outward sorrow, though I think the King     Be touch\'d at very heart.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. None but the King?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. He that hath lost her too. So is the Queen,     That most desir\'d the match. But not a courtier,     Although they wear their faces to the bent     Of the King\'s looks, hath a heart that is not     Glad at the thing they scowl at.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. And why so?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. He that hath miss\'d the Princess is a thing       Too bad for bad report; and he that hath her-     I mean that married her, alack, good man!     And therefore banish\'d- is a creature such     As, to seek through the regions of the earth     For one his like, there would be something failing     In him that should compare. I do not think     So fair an outward and such stuff within     Endows a man but he.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. You speak him far.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. I do extend him, sir, within himself;     Crush him together rather than unfold     His measure duly.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. What\'s his name and birth?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. I cannot delve him to the root; his father     Was call\'d Sicilius, who did join his honour     Against the Romans with Cassibelan,     But had his titles by Tenantius, whom     He serv\'d with glory and admir\'d success,     So gain\'d the sur-addition Leonatus;     And had, besides this gentleman in question,       Two other sons, who, in the wars o\' th\' time,     Died with their swords in hand; for which their father,     Then old and fond of issue, took such sorrow     That he quit being; and his gentle lady,     Big of this gentleman, our theme, deceas\'d     As he was born. The King he takes the babe     To his protection, calls him Posthumus Leonatus,     Breeds him and makes him of his bed-chamber,     Puts to him all the learnings that his time     Could make him the receiver of; which he took,     As we do air, fast as \'twas minist\'red,     And in\'s spring became a harvest, liv\'d in court-     Which rare it is to do- most prais\'d, most lov\'d,     A sample to the youngest; to th\' more mature     A glass that feated them; and to the graver     A child that guided dotards. To his mistress,     For whom he now is banish\'d- her own price     Proclaims how she esteem\'d him and his virtue;     By her election may be truly read     What kind of man he is.     SECOND GENTLEMAN. I honour him     Even out of your report. But pray you tell me,     Is she sole child to th\' King?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. His only child.     He had two sons- if this be worth your hearing,     Mark it- the eldest of them at three years old,     I\' th\' swathing clothes the other, from their nursery     Were stol\'n; and to this hour no guess in knowledge     Which way they went.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. How long is this ago?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Some twenty years.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. That a king\'s children should be so convey\'d,     So slackly guarded, and the search so slow     That could not trace them!   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Howsoe\'er \'tis strange,     Or that the negligence may well be laugh\'d at,     Yet is it true, sir.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. I do well believe you.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. We must forbear; here comes the gentleman,     The Queen, and Princess.                              Exeunt                  Enter the QUEEN, POSTHUMUS, and IMOGEN    QUEEN. No, be assur\'d you shall not find me, daughter,     After the slander of most stepmothers,     Evil-ey\'d unto you. You\'re my prisoner, but     Your gaoler shall deliver you the keys     That lock up your restraint. For you, Posthumus,     So soon as I can win th\' offended King,     I will be known your advocate. Marry, yet     The fire of rage is in him, and \'twere good     You lean\'d unto his sentence with what patience     Your wisdom may inform you.   POSTHUMUS. Please your Highness,     I will from hence to-day.   QUEEN. You know the peril.     I\'ll fetch a turn about the garden, pitying     The pangs of barr\'d affections, though the King     Hath charg\'d you should not speak together.             Exit   IMOGEN. O dissembling courtesy! How fine this tyrant       Can tickle where she wounds! My dearest husband,     I something fear my father\'s wrath, but nothing-     Always reserv\'d my holy duty- what     His rage can do on me. You must be gone;     And I shall here abide the hourly shot     Of angry eyes, not comforted to live     But that there is this jewel in the world     That I may see again.   POSTHUMUS. My queen! my mistress!     O lady, weep no more, lest I give cause     To be suspected of more tenderness     Than doth become a man. I will remain     The loyal\'st husband that did e\'er plight troth;     My residence in Rome at one Philario\'s,     Who to my father was a friend, to me     Known but by letter; thither write, my queen,     And with mine eyes I\'ll drink the words you send,     Though ink be made of gall.                       Re-enter QUEEN      QUEEN. Be brief, I pray you.     If the King come, I shall incur I know not     How much of his displeasure. [Aside] Yet I\'ll move him     To walk this way. I never do him wrong     But he does buy my injuries, to be friends;     Pays dear for my offences.                              Exit   POSTHUMUS. Should we be taking leave     As long a term as yet we have to live,     The loathness to depart would grow. Adieu!   IMOGEN. Nay, stay a little.     Were you but riding forth to air yourself,     Such parting were too petty. Look here, love:     This diamond was my mother\'s; take it, heart;     But keep it till you woo another wife,     When Imogen is dead.   POSTHUMUS. How, how? Another?     You gentle gods, give me but this I have,     And sear up my embracements from a next     With bonds of death! Remain, remain thou here                                                 [Puts on the ring]     While sense can keep it on. And, sweetest, fairest,     As I my poor self did exchange for you,     To your so infinite loss, so in our trifles     I still win of you. For my sake wear this;     It is a manacle of love; I\'ll place it     Upon this fairest prisoner.     [Puts a bracelet on her arm]   IMOGEN. O the gods!     When shall we see again?                    Enter CYMBELINE and LORDS    POSTHUMUS. Alack, the King!   CYMBELINE. Thou basest thing, avoid; hence from my sight     If after this command thou fraught the court     With thy unworthiness, thou diest. Away!     Thou\'rt poison to my blood.   POSTHUMUS. The gods protect you,     And bless the good remainders of the court!     I am gone.                                              Exit     IMOGEN. There cannot be a pinch in death     More sharp than this is.   CYMBELINE. O disloyal thing,     That shouldst repair my youth, thou heap\'st     A year\'s age on me!   IMOGEN. I beseech you, sir,     Harm not yourself with your vexation.     I am senseless of your wrath; a touch more rare     Subdues all pangs, all fears.   CYMBELINE. Past grace? obedience?   IMOGEN. Past hope, and in despair; that way past grace.   CYMBELINE. That mightst have had the sole son of my queen!   IMOGEN. O blessed that I might not! I chose an eagle,     And did avoid a puttock.   CYMBELINE. Thou took\'st a beggar, wouldst have made my throne     A seat for baseness.   IMOGEN. No; I rather added     A lustre to it.   CYMBELINE. O thou vile one!   IMOGEN. Sir,       It is your fault that I have lov\'d Posthumus.     You bred him as my playfellow, and he is     A man worth any woman; overbuys me     Almost the sum he pays.   CYMBELINE. What, art thou mad?   IMOGEN. Almost, sir. Heaven restore me! Would I were     A neat-herd\'s daughter, and my Leonatus     Our neighbour shepherd\'s son!                            Re-enter QUEEN    CYMBELINE. Thou foolish thing!     [To the QUEEN] They were again together. You have done     Not after our command. Away with her,     And pen her up.   QUEEN. Beseech your patience.- Peace,     Dear lady daughter, peace!- Sweet sovereign,     Leave us to ourselves, and make yourself some comfort     Out of your best advice.   CYMBELINE. Nay, let her languish       A drop of blood a day and, being aged,     Die of this folly.                          Exit, with LORDS                            Enter PISANIO    QUEEN. Fie! you must give way.     Here is your servant. How now, sir! What news?   PISANIO. My lord your son drew on my master.   QUEEN. Ha!     No harm, I trust, is done?   PISANIO. There might have been,     But that my master rather play\'d than fought,     And had no help of anger; they were parted     By gentlemen at hand.   QUEEN. I am very glad on\'t.   IMOGEN. Your son\'s my father\'s friend; he takes his part     To draw upon an exile! O brave sir!     I would they were in Afric both together;     Myself by with a needle, that I might prick     The goer-back. Why came you from your master?     PISANIO. On his command. He would not suffer me     To bring him to the haven; left these notes     Of what commands I should be subject to,     When\'t pleas\'d you to employ me.   QUEEN. This hath been     Your faithful servant. I dare lay mine honour     He will remain so.   PISANIO. I humbly thank your Highness.   QUEEN. Pray walk awhile.   IMOGEN. About some half-hour hence,     Pray you speak with me. You shall at least     Go see my lord aboard. For this time leave me.        Exeunt     SCENE II. Britain. A public place  Enter CLOTEN and two LORDS    FIRST LORD. Sir, I would advise you to shift a shirt; the violence     of action hath made you reek as a sacrifice. Where air comes out,     air comes in; there\'s none abroad so wholesome as that you vent.   CLOTEN. If my shirt were bloody, then to shift it. Have I hurt him?   SECOND LORD. [Aside] No, faith; not so much as his patience.   FIRST LORD. Hurt him! His body\'s a passable carcass if he be not     hurt. It is a throughfare for steel if it be not hurt.   SECOND LORD. [Aside] His steel was in debt; it went o\' th\' back     side the town.   CLOTEN. The villain would not stand me.   SECOND LORD. [Aside] No; but he fled forward still, toward your     face.   FIRST LORD. Stand you? You have land enough of your own; but he     added to your having, gave you some ground.   SECOND LORD. [Aside] As many inches as you have oceans.     Puppies!   CLOTEN. I would they had not come between us.     SECOND LORD. [Aside] So would I, till you had measur\'d how long a     fool you were upon the ground.   CLOTEN. And that she should love this fellow, and refuse me!   SECOND LORD. [Aside] If it be a sin to make a true election, she is     damn\'d.   FIRST LORD. Sir, as I told you always, her beauty and her brain go     not together; she\'s a good sign, but I have seen small reflection     of her wit.   SECOND LORD. [Aside] She shines not upon fools, lest the reflection     should hurt her.   CLOTEN. Come, I\'ll to my chamber. Would there had been some hurt     done!   SECOND LORD. [Aside] I wish not so; unless it had been the fall of     an ass, which is no great hurt.   CLOTEN. You\'ll go with us?   FIRST LORD. I\'ll attend your lordship.   CLOTEN. Nay, come, let\'s go together.   SECOND LORD. Well, my lord.                             Exeunt     SCENE III. Britain. CYMBELINE\'S palace  Enter IMOGEN and PISANIO    IMOGEN. I would thou grew\'st unto the shores o\' th\' haven,     And questioned\'st every sail; if he should write,     And I not have it, \'twere a paper lost,     As offer\'d mercy is. What was the last     That he spake to thee?   PISANIO. It was: his queen, his queen!   IMOGEN. Then wav\'d his handkerchief?   PISANIO. And kiss\'d it, madam.   IMOGEN. Senseless linen, happier therein than I!     And that was all?   PISANIO. No, madam; for so long     As he could make me with his eye, or care     Distinguish him from others, he did keep     The deck, with glove, or hat, or handkerchief,     Still waving, as the fits and stirs of\'s mind     Could best express how slow his soul sail\'d on,     How swift his ship.     IMOGEN. Thou shouldst have made him     As little as a crow, or less, ere left     To after-eye him.   PISANIO. Madam, so I did.   IMOGEN. I would have broke mine eyestrings, crack\'d them but     To look upon him, till the diminution     Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle;     Nay, followed him till he had melted from     The smallness of a gnat to air, and then     Have turn\'d mine eye and wept. But, good Pisanio,     When shall we hear from him?   PISANIO. Be assur\'d, madam,     With his next vantage.   IMOGEN. I did not take my leave of him, but had     Most pretty things to say. Ere I could tell him     How I would think on him at certain hours     Such thoughts and such; or I could make him swear     The shes of Italy should not betray     Mine interest and his honour; or have charg\'d him,     At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight,       T\' encounter me with orisons, for then     I am in heaven for him; or ere I could     Give him that parting kiss which I had set     Betwixt two charming words, comes in my father,     And like the tyrannous breathing of the north     Shakes all our buds from growing.                          Enter a LADY    LADY. The Queen, madam,     Desires your Highness\' company.   IMOGEN. Those things I bid you do, get them dispatch\'d.     I will attend the Queen.   PISANIO. Madam, I shall.                                Exeunt     SCENE IV. Rome. PHILARIO\'S house  Enter PHILARIO, IACHIMO, a FRENCHMAN, a DUTCHMAN, and a SPANIARD    IACHIMO. Believe it, sir, I have seen him in Britain. He was then     of a crescent note, expected to prove so worthy as since he hath     been allowed the name of. But I could then have look\'d on him     without the help of admiration, though the catalogue of his     endowments had been tabled by his side, and I to peruse him by     items.   PHILARIO. You speak of him when he was less furnish\'d than now he     is with that which makes him both without and within.   FRENCHMAN. I have seen him in France; we had very many there could     behold the sun with as firm eyes as he.   IACHIMO. This matter of marrying his king\'s daughter, wherein he     must be weighed rather by her value than his own, words him, I     doubt not, a great deal from the matter.   FRENCHMAN. And then his banishment.   IACHIMO. Ay, and the approbation of those that weep this lamentable     divorce under her colours are wonderfully to extend him, be it     but to fortify her judgment, which else an easy battery might lay       flat, for taking a beggar, without less quality. But how comes it     he is to sojourn with you? How creeps acquaintance?   PHILARIO. His father and I were soldiers together, to whom I have     been often bound for no less than my life.                         Enter POSTHUMUS      Here comes the Briton. Let him be so entertained amongst you as     suits with gentlemen of your knowing to a stranger of his     quality. I beseech you all be better known to this gentleman,     whom I commend to you as a noble friend of mine. How worthy he is     I will leave to appear hereafter, rather than story him in his     own hearing.   FRENCHMAN. Sir, we have known together in Orleans.   POSTHUMUS. Since when I have been debtor to you for courtesies,     which I will be ever to pay and yet pay still.   FRENCHMAN. Sir, you o\'errate my poor kindness. I was glad I did     atone my countryman and you; it had been pity you should have     been put together with so mortal a purpose as then each bore,     upon importance of so slight and trivial a nature.     POSTHUMUS. By your pardon, sir. I was then a young traveller;     rather shunn\'d to go even with what I heard than in my every     action to be guided by others\' experiences; but upon my mended     judgment- if I offend not to say it is mended- my quarrel was not     altogether slight.   FRENCHMAN. Faith, yes, to be put to the arbitrement of swords, and     by such two that would by all likelihood have confounded one the     other or have fall\'n both.   IACHIMO. Can we, with manners, ask what was the difference?   FRENCHMAN. Safely, I think. \'Twas a contention in public, which     may, without contradiction, suffer the report. It was much like     an argument that fell out last night, where each of us fell in     praise of our country mistresses; this gentleman at that time     vouching- and upon warrant of bloody affirmation- his to be more     fair, virtuous, wise, chaste, constant, qualified, and less     attemptable, than any the rarest of our ladies in France.   IACHIMO. That lady is not now living, or this gentleman\'s opinion,     by this, worn out.   POSTHUMUS. She holds her virtue still, and I my mind.   IACHIMO. You must not so far prefer her fore ours of Italy.     POSTHUMUS. Being so far provok\'d as I was in France, I would abate     her nothing, though I profess myself her adorer, not her friend.   IACHIMO. As fair and as good- a kind of hand-in-hand comparison-     had been something too fair and too good for any lady in Britain.     If she went before others I have seen as that diamond of yours     outlustres many I have beheld, I could not but believe she     excelled many; but I have not seen the most precious diamond that     is, nor you the lady.   POSTHUMUS. I prais\'d her as I rated her. So do I my stone.   IACHIMO. What do you esteem it at?   POSTHUMUS. More than the world enjoys.   IACHIMO. Either your unparagon\'d mistress is dead, or she\'s     outpriz\'d by a trifle.   POSTHUMUS. You are mistaken: the one may be sold or given, if there     were wealth enough for the purchase or merit for the gift; the     other is not a thing for sale, and only the gift of the gods.   IACHIMO. Which the gods have given you?   POSTHUMUS. Which by their graces I will keep.   IACHIMO. You may wear her in title yours; but you know strange fowl     light upon neighbouring ponds. Your ring may be stol\'n too. So       your brace of unprizable estimations, the one is but frail and     the other casual; a cunning thief, or a that-way-accomplish\'d     courtier, would hazard the winning both of first and last.   POSTHUMUS. Your Italy contains none so accomplish\'d a courtier to     convince the honour of my mistress, if in the holding or loss of     that you term her frail. I do nothing doubt you have store of     thieves; notwithstanding, I fear not my ring.   PHILARIO. Let us leave here, gentlemen.   POSTHUMUS. Sir, with all my heart. This worthy signior, I thank     him, makes no stranger of me; we are familiar at first.   IACHIMO. With five times so much conversation I should get ground     of your fair mistress; make her go back even to the yielding, had     I admittance and opportunity to friend.   POSTHUMUS. No, no.   IACHIMO. I dare thereupon pawn the moiety of my estate to your     ring, which, in my opinion, o\'ervalues it something. But I make     my wager rather against your confidence than her reputation; and,     to bar your offence herein too, I durst attempt it against any     lady in the world.   POSTHUMUS. You are a great deal abus\'d in too bold a persuasion,       and I doubt not you sustain what y\'are worthy of by your attempt.   IACHIMO. What\'s that?   POSTHUMUS. A repulse; though your attempt, as you call it, deserve     more- a punishment too.   PHILARIO. Gentlemen, enough of this. It came in too suddenly; let     it die as it was born, and I pray you be better acquainted.   IACHIMO. Would I had put my estate and my neighbour\'s on th\'     approbation of what I have spoke!   POSTHUMUS. What lady would you choose to assail?   IACHIMO. Yours, whom in constancy you think stands so safe. I will     lay you ten thousand ducats to your ring that, commend me to the     court where your lady is, with no more advantage than the     opportunity of a second conference, and I will bring from thence     that honour of hers which you imagine so reserv\'d.   POSTHUMUS. I will wage against your gold, gold to it. My ring I     hold dear as my finger; \'tis part of it.   IACHIMO. You are a friend, and therein the wiser. If you buy     ladies\' flesh at a million a dram, you cannot preserve it from     tainting. But I see you have some religion in you, that you fear.   POSTHUMUS. This is but a custom in your tongue; you bear a graver       purpose, I hope.   IACHIMO. I am the master of my speeches, and would undergo what\'s     spoken, I swear.   POSTHUMUS. Will you? I Shall but lend my diamond till your return.     Let there be covenants drawn between\'s. My mistress exceeds in     goodness the hugeness of your unworthy thinking. I dare you to     this match: here\'s my ring.   PHILARIO. I will have it no lay.   IACHIMO. By the gods, it is one. If I bring you no sufficient     testimony that I have enjoy\'d the dearest bodily part of your     mistress, my ten thousand ducats are yours; so is your diamond     too. If I come off, and leave her in such honour as you have     trust in, she your jewel, this your jewel, and my gold are yours-     provided I have your commendation for my more free entertainment.   POSTHUMUS. I embrace these conditions; let us have articles betwixt     us. Only, thus far you shall answer: if you make your voyage upon     her, and give me directly to understand you have prevail\'d, I am     no further your enemy- she is not worth our debate; if she remain     unseduc\'d, you not making it appear otherwise, for your ill     opinion and th\' assault you have made to her chastity you shall       answer me with your sword.   IACHIMO. Your hand- a covenant! We will have these things set down     by lawful counsel, and straight away for Britain, lest the     bargain should catch cold and starve. I will fetch my gold and     have our two wagers recorded.   POSTHUMUS. Agreed.                Exeunt POSTHUMUS and IACHIMO   FRENCHMAN. Will this hold, think you?   PHILARIO. Signior Iachimo will not from it. Pray let us follow \'em.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE V. Britain. CYMBELINE\'S palace  Enter QUEEN, LADIES, and CORNELIUS    QUEEN. Whiles yet the dew\'s on ground, gather those flowers;     Make haste; who has the note of them?   LADY. I, madam.   QUEEN. Dispatch.                                 Exeunt LADIES     Now, Master Doctor, have you brought those drugs?   CORNELIUS. Pleaseth your Highness, ay. Here they are, madam.                                               [Presenting a box]     But I beseech your Grace, without offence-     My conscience bids me ask- wherefore you have     Commanded of me these most poisonous compounds     Which are the movers of a languishing death,     But, though slow, deadly?   QUEEN. I wonder, Doctor,     Thou ask\'st me such a question. Have I not been     Thy pupil long? Hast thou not learn\'d me how     To make perfumes? distil? preserve? yea, so     That our great king himself doth woo me oft       For my confections? Having thus far proceeded-     Unless thou think\'st me devilish- is\'t not meet     That I did amplify my judgment in     Other conclusions? I will try the forces     Of these thy compounds on such creatures as     We count not worth the hanging- but none human-     To try the vigour of them, and apply     Allayments to their act, and by them gather     Their several virtues and effects.   CORNELIUS. Your Highness     Shall from this practice but make hard your heart;     Besides, the seeing these effects will be     Both noisome and infectious.   QUEEN. O, content thee.                          Enter PISANIO      [Aside] Here comes a flattering rascal; upon him     Will I first work. He\'s for his master,     An enemy to my son.- How now, Pisanio!       Doctor, your service for this time is ended;     Take your own way.   CORNELIUS. [Aside] I do suspect you, madam;     But you shall do no harm.   QUEEN. [To PISANIO] Hark thee, a word.   CORNELIUS. [Aside] I do not like her. She doth think she has     Strange ling\'ring poisons. I do know her spirit,     And will not trust one of her malice with     A drug of such damn\'d nature. Those she has     Will stupefy and dull the sense awhile,     Which first perchance she\'ll prove on cats and dogs,     Then afterward up higher; but there is     No danger in what show of death it makes,     More than the locking up the spirits a time,     To be more fresh, reviving. She is fool\'d     With a most false effect; and I the truer     So to be false with her.   QUEEN. No further service, Doctor,     Until I send for thee.   CORNELIUS. I humbly take my leave.                        Exit     QUEEN. Weeps she still, say\'st thou? Dost thou think in time     She will not quench, and let instructions enter     Where folly now possesses? Do thou work.     When thou shalt bring me word she loves my son,     I\'ll tell thee on the instant thou art then     As great as is thy master; greater, for     His fortunes all lie speechless, and his name     Is at last gasp. Return he cannot, nor     Continue where he is. To shift his being     Is to exchange one misery with another,     And every day that comes comes comes to     A day\'s work in him. What shalt thou expect     To be depender on a thing that leans,     Who cannot be new built, nor has no friends     So much as but to prop him?                   [The QUEEN drops the box. PISANIO takes it up]     Thou tak\'st up     Thou know\'st not what; but take it for thy labour.     It is a thing I made, which hath the King     Five times redeem\'d from death. I do not know       What is more cordial. Nay, I prithee take it;     It is an earnest of a further good     That I mean to thee. Tell thy mistress how     The case stands with her; do\'t as from thyself.     Think what a chance thou changest on; but think     Thou hast thy mistress still; to boot, my son,     Who shall take notice of thee. I\'ll move the King     To any shape of thy preferment, such     As thou\'lt desire; and then myself, I chiefly,     That set thee on to this desert, am bound     To load thy merit richly. Call my women.     Think on my words.                              Exit PISANIO     A sly and constant knave,     Not to be shak\'d; the agent for his master,     And the remembrancer of her to hold     The hand-fast to her lord. I have given him that     Which, if he take, shall quite unpeople her     Of leigers for her sweet; and which she after,     Except she bend her humour, shall be assur\'d     To taste of too.                       Re-enter PISANIO and LADIES      So, so. Well done, well done.     The violets, cowslips, and the primroses,     Bear to my closet. Fare thee well, Pisanio;     Think on my words.                   Exeunt QUEEN and LADIES   PISANIO. And shall do.     But when to my good lord I prove untrue     I\'ll choke myself- there\'s all I\'ll do for you.         Exit     SCENE VI. Britain. The palace  Enter IMOGEN alone    IMOGEN. A father cruel and a step-dame false;     A foolish suitor to a wedded lady     That hath her husband banish\'d. O, that husband!     My supreme crown of grief! and those repeated     Vexations of it! Had I been thief-stol\'n,     As my two brothers, happy! but most miserable     Is the desire that\'s glorious. Blessed be those,     How mean soe\'er, that have their honest wills,     Which seasons comfort. Who may this be? Fie!                      Enter PISANIO and IACHIMO    PISANIO. Madam, a noble gentleman of Rome     Comes from my lord with letters.   IACHIMO. Change you, madam?     The worthy Leonatus is in safety,     And greets your Highness dearly.         [Presents a letter]     IMOGEN. Thanks, good sir.     You\'re kindly welcome.   IACHIMO. [Aside] All of her that is out of door most rich!     If she be furnish\'d with a mind so rare,     She is alone th\' Arabian bird, and I     Have lost the wager. Boldness be my friend!     Arm me, audacity, from head to foot!     Or, like the Parthian, I shall flying fight;     Rather, directly fly.   IMOGEN. [Reads] \'He is one of the noblest note, to whose     kindnesses I am most infinitely tied. Reflect upon him     accordingly, as you value your trust.       LEONATUS.\'      So far I read aloud;     But even the very middle of my heart     Is warm\'d by th\' rest and takes it thankfully.     You are as welcome, worthy sir, as I     Have words to bid you; and shall find it so     In all that I can do.   IACHIMO. Thanks, fairest lady.       What, are men mad? Hath nature given them eyes     To see this vaulted arch and the rich crop     Of sea and land, which can distinguish \'twixt     The fiery orbs above and the twinn\'d stones     Upon the number\'d beach, and can we not     Partition make with spectacles so precious     \'Twixt fair and foul?   IMOGEN. What makes your admiration?   IACHIMO. It cannot be i\' th\' eye, for apes and monkeys,     \'Twixt two such shes, would chatter this way and     Contemn with mows the other; nor i\' th\' judgment,     For idiots in this case of favour would     Be wisely definite; nor i\' th\' appetite;     Sluttery, to such neat excellence oppos\'d,     Should make desire vomit emptiness,     Not so allur\'d to feed.   IMOGEN. What is the matter, trow?   IACHIMO. The cloyed will-     That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub     Both fill\'d and running- ravening first the lamb,       Longs after for the garbage.   IMOGEN. What, dear sir,     Thus raps you? Are you well?   IACHIMO. Thanks, madam; well.- Beseech you, sir,     Desire my man\'s abode where I did leave him.     He\'s strange and peevish.   PISANIO. I was going, sir,     To give him welcome.                                    Exit   IMOGEN. Continues well my lord? His health beseech you?   IACHIMO. Well, madam.   IMOGEN. Is he dispos\'d to mirth? I hope he is.   IACHIMO. Exceeding pleasant; none a stranger there     So merry and so gamesome. He is call\'d     The Britain reveller.   IMOGEN. When he was here     He did incline to sadness, and oft-times     Not knowing why.   IACHIMO. I never saw him sad.     There is a Frenchman his companion, one     An eminent monsieur that, it seems, much loves       A Gallian girl at home. He furnaces     The thick sighs from him; whiles the jolly Briton-     Your lord, I mean- laughs from\'s free lungs, cries \'O,     Can my sides hold, to think that man- who knows     By history, report, or his own proof,     What woman is, yea, what she cannot choose     But must be- will\'s free hours languish for     Assured bondage?\'   IMOGEN. Will my lord say so?   IACHIMO. Ay, madam, with his eyes in flood with laughter.     It is a recreation to be by     And hear him mock the Frenchman. But heavens know     Some men are much to blame.   IMOGEN. Not he, I hope.   IACHIMO. Not he; but yet heaven\'s bounty towards him might     Be us\'d more thankfully. In himself, \'tis much;     In you, which I account his, beyond all talents.     Whilst I am bound to wonder, I am bound     To pity too.   IMOGEN. What do you pity, sir?     IACHIMO. Two creatures heartily.   IMOGEN. Am I one, sir?     You look on me: what wreck discern you in me     Deserves your pity?   IACHIMO. Lamentable! What,     To hide me from the radiant sun and solace     I\' th\' dungeon by a snuff?   IMOGEN. I pray you, sir,     Deliver with more openness your answers     To my demands. Why do you pity me?   IACHIMO. That others do,     I was about to say, enjoy your- But     It is an office of the gods to venge it,     Not mine to speak on\'t.   IMOGEN. You do seem to know     Something of me, or what concerns me; pray you-     Since doubting things go ill often hurts more     Than to be sure they do; for certainties     Either are past remedies, or, timely knowing,     The remedy then born- discover to me       What both you spur and stop.   IACHIMO. Had I this cheek     To bathe my lips upon; this hand, whose touch,     Whose every touch, would force the feeler\'s soul     To th\' oath of loyalty; this object, which     Takes prisoner the wild motion of mine eye,     Fixing it only here; should I, damn\'d then,     Slaver with lips as common as the stairs     That mount the Capitol; join gripes with hands     Made hard with hourly falsehood- falsehood as     With labour; then by-peeping in an eye     Base and illustrious as the smoky light     That\'s fed with stinking tallow- it were fit     That all the plagues of hell should at one time     Encounter such revolt.   IMOGEN. My lord, I fear,     Has forgot Britain.   IACHIMO. And himself. Not I     Inclin\'d to this intelligence pronounce     The beggary of his change; but \'tis your graces       That from my mutest conscience to my tongue     Charms this report out.   IMOGEN. Let me hear no more.   IACHIMO. O dearest soul, your cause doth strike my heart     With pity that doth make me sick! A lady     So fair, and fasten\'d to an empery,     Would make the great\'st king double, to be partner\'d     With tomboys hir\'d with that self exhibition     Which your own coffers yield! with diseas\'d ventures     That play with all infirmities for gold     Which rottenness can lend nature! such boil\'d stuff     As well might poison poison! Be reveng\'d;     Or she that bore you was no queen, and you     Recoil from your great stock.   IMOGEN. Reveng\'d?     How should I be reveng\'d? If this be true-     As I have such a heart that both mine ears     Must not in haste abuse- if it be true,     How should I be reveng\'d?   IACHIMO. Should he make me       Live like Diana\'s priest betwixt cold sheets,     Whiles he is vaulting variable ramps,     In your despite, upon your purse? Revenge it.     I dedicate myself to your sweet pleasure,     More noble than that runagate to your bed,     And will continue fast to your affection,     Still close as sure.   IMOGEN. What ho, Pisanio!   IACHIMO. Let me my service tender on your lips.   IMOGEN. Away! I do condemn mine ears that have     So long attended thee. If thou wert honourable,     Thou wouldst have told this tale for virtue, not     For such an end thou seek\'st, as base as strange.     Thou wrong\'st a gentleman who is as far     From thy report as thou from honour; and     Solicits here a lady that disdains     Thee and the devil alike.- What ho, Pisanio!-     The King my father shall be made acquainted     Of thy assault. If he shall think it fit     A saucy stranger in his court to mart       As in a Romish stew, and to expound     His beastly mind to us, he hath a court     He little cares for, and a daughter who     He not respects at all.- What ho, Pisanio!   IACHIMO. O happy Leonatus! I may say     The credit that thy lady hath of thee     Deserves thy trust, and thy most perfect goodness     Her assur\'d credit. Blessed live you long,     A lady to the worthiest sir that ever     Country call\'d his! and you his mistress, only     For the most worthiest fit! Give me your pardon.     I have spoke this to know if your affiance     Were deeply rooted, and shall make your lord     That which he is new o\'er; and he is one     The truest manner\'d, such a holy witch     That he enchants societies into him,     Half all men\'s hearts are his.   IMOGEN. You make amends.   IACHIMO. He sits \'mongst men like a descended god:     He hath a kind of honour sets him of       More than a mortal seeming. Be not angry,     Most mighty Princess, that I have adventur\'d     To try your taking of a false report, which hath     Honour\'d with confirmation your great judgment     In the election of a sir so rare,     Which you know cannot err. The love I bear him     Made me to fan you thus; but the gods made you,     Unlike all others, chaffless. Pray your pardon.   IMOGEN. All\'s well, sir; take my pow\'r i\' th\' court for yours.   IACHIMO. My humble thanks. I had almost forgot     T\' entreat your Grace but in a small request,     And yet of moment too, for it concerns     Your lord; myself and other noble friends     Are partners in the business.   IMOGEN. Pray what is\'t?   IACHIMO. Some dozen Romans of us, and your lord-     The best feather of our wing- have mingled sums     To buy a present for the Emperor;     Which I, the factor for the rest, have done     In France. \'Tis plate of rare device, and jewels       Of rich and exquisite form, their values great;     And I am something curious, being strange,     To have them in safe stowage. May it please you     To take them in protection?   IMOGEN. Willingly;     And pawn mine honour for their safety. Since     My lord hath interest in them, I will keep them     In my bedchamber.   IACHIMO. They are in a trunk,     Attended by my men. I will make bold     To send them to you only for this night;     I must aboard to-morrow.   IMOGEN. O, no, no.   IACHIMO. Yes, I beseech; or I shall short my word     By length\'ning my return. From Gallia     I cross\'d the seas on purpose and on promise     To see your Grace.   IMOGEN. I thank you for your pains.     But not away to-morrow!   IACHIMO. O, I must, madam.       Therefore I shall beseech you, if you please     To greet your lord with writing, do\'t to-night.     I have outstood my time, which is material     \'To th\' tender of our present.   IMOGEN. I will write.     Send your trunk to me; it shall safe be kept     And truly yielded you. You\'re very welcome.           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. Britain. Before CYMBELINE\'S palace  Enter CLOTEN and the two LORDS    CLOTEN. Was there ever man had such luck! When I kiss\'d the jack,     upon an up-cast to be hit away! I had a hundred pound on\'t; and     then a whoreson jackanapes must take me up for swearing, as if I     borrowed mine oaths of him, and might not spend them at my     pleasure.   FIRST LORD. What got he by that? You have broke his pate with your     bowl.   SECOND LORD. [Aside] If his wit had been like him that broke it, it     would have run all out.   CLOTEN. When a gentleman is dispos\'d to swear, it is not for any     standers-by to curtail his oaths. Ha?   SECOND LORD. No, my lord; [Aside] nor crop the ears of them.   CLOTEN. Whoreson dog! I give him satisfaction? Would he had been     one of my rank!   SECOND LORD. [Aside] To have smell\'d like a fool.   CLOTEN. I am not vex\'d more at anything in th\' earth. A pox on\'t! I     had rather not be so noble as I am; they dare not fight with me,       because of the Queen my mother. Every jackslave hath his bellyful     of fighting, and I must go up and down like a cock that nobody     can match.   SECOND LORD. [Aside] You are cock and capon too; and you crow,     cock, with your comb on.   CLOTEN. Sayest thou?   SECOND LORD. It is not fit your lordship should undertake every     companion that you give offence to.   CLOTEN. No, I know that; but it is fit I should commit offence to     my inferiors.   SECOND LORD. Ay, it is fit for your lordship only.   CLOTEN. Why, so I say.   FIRST LORD. Did you hear of a stranger that\'s come to court     to-night?   CLOTEN. A stranger, and I not known on\'t?   SECOND LORD. [Aside] He\'s a strange fellow himself, and knows it     not.   FIRST LORD. There\'s an Italian come, and, \'tis thought, one of     Leonatus\' friends.   CLOTEN. Leonatus? A banish\'d rascal; and he\'s another, whatsoever       he be. Who told you of this stranger?   FIRST LORD. One of your lordship\'s pages.   CLOTEN. Is it fit I went to look upon him? Is there no derogation     in\'t?   SECOND LORD. You cannot derogate, my lord.   CLOTEN. Not easily, I think.   SECOND LORD. [Aside] You are a fool granted; therefore your issues,     being foolish, do not derogate.   CLOTEN. Come, I\'ll go see this Italian. What I have lost to-day at     bowls I\'ll win to-night of him. Come, go.   SECOND LORD. I\'ll attend your lordship.                                     Exeunt CLOTEN and FIRST LORD     That such a crafty devil as is his mother     Should yield the world this ass! A woman that     Bears all down with her brain; and this her son     Cannot take two from twenty, for his heart,     And leave eighteen. Alas, poor princess,     Thou divine Imogen, what thou endur\'st,     Betwixt a father by thy step-dame govern\'d,     A mother hourly coining plots, a wooer       More hateful than the foul expulsion is     Of thy dear husband, than that horrid act     Of the divorce he\'d make! The heavens hold firm     The walls of thy dear honour, keep unshak\'d     That temple, thy fair mind, that thou mayst stand     T\' enjoy thy banish\'d lord and this great land!         Exit     SCENE II. Britain. IMOGEN\'S bedchamber in CYMBELINE\'S palace; a trunk in one corner  Enter IMOGEN in her bed, and a LADY attending    IMOGEN. Who\'s there? My woman? Helen?   LADY. Please you, madam.   IMOGEN. What hour is it?   LADY. Almost midnight, madam.   IMOGEN. I have read three hours then. Mine eyes are weak;     Fold down the leaf where I have left. To bed.     Take not away the taper, leave it burning;     And if thou canst awake by four o\' th\' clock,     I prithee call me. Sleep hath seiz\'d me wholly.    Exit LADY     To your protection I commend me, gods.     From fairies and the tempters of the night     Guard me, beseech ye!                           [Sleeps. IACHIMO comes from the trunk]   IACHIMO. The crickets sing, and man\'s o\'er-labour\'d sense     Repairs itself by rest. Our Tarquin thus     Did softly press the rushes ere he waken\'d       The chastity he wounded. Cytherea,     How bravely thou becom\'st thy bed! fresh lily,     And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch!     But kiss; one kiss! Rubies unparagon\'d,     How dearly they do\'t! \'Tis her breathing that     Perfumes the chamber thus. The flame o\' th\' taper     Bows toward her and would under-peep her lids     To see th\' enclosed lights, now canopied     Under these windows white and azure, lac\'d     With blue of heaven\'s own tinct. But my design     To note the chamber. I will write all down:     Such and such pictures; there the window; such     Th\' adornment of her bed; the arras, figures-     Why, such and such; and the contents o\' th\' story.     Ah, but some natural notes about her body     Above ten thousand meaner movables     Would testify, t\' enrich mine inventory.     O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her!     And be her sense but as a monument,     Thus in a chapel lying! Come off, come off;                                          [Taking off her bracelet]     As slippery as the Gordian knot was hard!     \'Tis mine; and this will witness outwardly,     As strongly as the conscience does within,     To th\' madding of her lord. On her left breast     A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops     I\' th\' bottom of a cowslip. Here\'s a voucher     Stronger than ever law could make; this secret     Will force him think I have pick\'d the lock and ta\'en     The treasure of her honour. No more. To what end?     Why should I write this down that\'s riveted,     Screw\'d to my memory? She hath been reading late     The tale of Tereus; here the leaf\'s turn\'d down     Where Philomel gave up. I have enough.     To th\' trunk again, and shut the spring of it.     Swift, swift, you dragons of the night, that dawning     May bare the raven\'s eye! I lodge in fear;     Though this a heavenly angel, hell is here.  [Clock strikes]     One, two, three. Time, time!             Exit into the trunk     SCENE III. CYMBELINE\'S palace. An ante-chamber adjoining IMOGEN\'S apartments  Enter CLOTEN and LORDS    FIRST LORD. Your lordship is the most patient man in loss, the most     coldest that ever turn\'d up ace.   CLOTEN. It would make any man cold to lose.   FIRST LORD. But not every man patient after the noble temper of     your lordship. You are most hot and furious when you win.   CLOTEN. Winning will put any man into courage. If I could get this     foolish Imogen, I should have gold enough. It\'s almost morning,     is\'t not?   FIRST LORD. Day, my lord.   CLOTEN. I would this music would come. I am advised to give her     music a mornings; they say it will penetrate.                         Enter musicians      Come on, tune. If you can penetrate her with your fingering, so.     We\'ll try with tongue too. If none will do, let her remain; but       I\'ll never give o\'er. First, a very excellent good-conceited     thing; after, a wonderful sweet air, with admirable rich words to     it- and then let her consider.                   SONG        Hark, hark! the lark at heaven\'s gate sings,         And Phoebus \'gins arise,       His steeds to water at those springs         On chalic\'d flow\'rs that lies;       And winking Mary-buds begin         To ope their golden eyes.       With everything that pretty bin,         My lady sweet, arise;           Arise, arise!      So, get you gone. If this penetrate, I will consider your music     the better; if it do not, it is a vice in her ears which     horsehairs and calves\' guts, nor the voice of unpaved eunuch to     boot, can never amend.                      Exeunt musicians                        Enter CYMBELINE and QUEEN    SECOND LORD. Here comes the King.   CLOTEN. I am glad I was up so late, for that\'s the reason I was up     so early. He cannot choose but take this service I have done     fatherly.- Good morrow to your Majesty and to my gracious mother.   CYMBELINE. Attend you here the door of our stern daughter?     Will she not forth?   CLOTEN. I have assail\'d her with musics, but she vouchsafes no     notice.   CYMBELINE. The exile of her minion is too new;     She hath not yet forgot him; some more time     Must wear the print of his remembrance out,     And then she\'s yours.   QUEEN. You are most bound to th\' King,     Who lets go by no vantages that may     Prefer you to his daughter. Frame yourself     To orderly soliciting, and be friended     With aptness of the season; make denials       Increase your services; so seem as if     You were inspir\'d to do those duties which     You tender to her; that you in all obey her,     Save when command to your dismission tends,     And therein you are senseless.   CLOTEN. Senseless? Not so.                      Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. So like you, sir, ambassadors from Rome;     The one is Caius Lucius.   CYMBELINE. A worthy fellow,     Albeit he comes on angry purpose now;     But that\'s no fault of his. We must receive him     According to the honour of his sender;     And towards himself, his goodness forespent on us,     We must extend our notice. Our dear son,     When you have given good morning to your mistress,     Attend the Queen and us; we shall have need     T\' employ you towards this Roman. Come, our queen.                                              Exeunt all but CLOTEN   CLOTEN. If she be up, I\'ll speak with her; if not,     Let her lie still and dream. By your leave, ho!     [Knocks]     I know her women are about her; what     If I do line one of their hands? \'Tis gold     Which buys admittance; oft it doth-yea, and makes     Diana\'s rangers false themselves, yield up     Their deer to th\' stand o\' th\' stealer; and \'tis gold     Which makes the true man kill\'d and saves the thief;     Nay, sometime hangs both thief and true man. What     Can it not do and undo? I will make     One of her women lawyer to me, for     I yet not understand the case myself.     By your leave.                                      [Knocks]                              Enter a LADY    LADY. Who\'s there that knocks?   CLOTEN. A gentleman.   LADY. No more?     CLOTEN. Yes, and a gentlewoman\'s son.   LADY. That\'s more     Than some whose tailors are as dear as yours     Can justly boast of. What\'s your lordship\'s pleasure?   CLOTEN. Your lady\'s person; is she ready?   LADY. Ay,     To keep her chamber.   CLOTEN. There is gold for you; sell me your good report.   LADY. How? My good name? or to report of you     What I shall think is good? The Princess!                          Enter IMOGEN    CLOTEN. Good morrow, fairest sister. Your sweet hand.                                                        Exit LADY   IMOGEN. Good morrow, sir. You lay out too much pains     For purchasing but trouble. The thanks I give     Is telling you that I am poor of thanks,     And scarce can spare them.   CLOTEN. Still I swear I love you.     IMOGEN. If you but said so, \'twere as deep with me.     If you swear still, your recompense is still     That I regard it not.   CLOTEN. This is no answer.   IMOGEN. But that you shall not say I yield, being silent,     I would not speak. I pray you spare me. Faith,     I shall unfold equal discourtesy     To your best kindness; one of your great knowing     Should learn, being taught, forbearance.   CLOTEN. To leave you in your madness \'twere my sin;     I will not.   IMOGEN. Fools are not mad folks.   CLOTEN. Do you call me fool?   IMOGEN. As I am mad, I do;     If you\'ll be patient, I\'ll no more be mad;     That cures us both. I am much sorry, sir,     You put me to forget a lady\'s manners     By being so verbal; and learn now, for all,     That I, which know my heart, do here pronounce,     By th\' very truth of it, I care not for you,       And am so near the lack of charity     To accuse myself I hate you; which I had rather     You felt than make\'t my boast.   CLOTEN. You sin against     Obedience, which you owe your father. For     The contract you pretend with that base wretch,     One bred of alms and foster\'d with cold dishes,     With scraps o\' th\' court- it is no contract, none.     And though it be allowed in meaner parties-     Yet who than he more mean?- to knit their souls-     On whom there is no more dependency     But brats and beggary- in self-figur\'d knot,     Yet you are curb\'d from that enlargement by     The consequence o\' th\' crown, and must not foil     The precious note of it with a base slave,     A hilding for a livery, a squire\'s cloth,     A pantler- not so eminent!   IMOGEN. Profane fellow!     Wert thou the son of Jupiter, and no more     But what thou art besides, thou wert too base       To be his groom. Thou wert dignified enough,     Even to the point of envy, if \'twere made     Comparative for your virtues to be styl\'d     The under-hangman of his kingdom, and hated     For being preferr\'d so well.   CLOTEN. The south fog rot him!   IMOGEN. He never can meet more mischance than come     To be but nam\'d of thee. His mean\'st garment     That ever hath but clipp\'d his body is dearer     In my respect than all the hairs above thee,     Were they all made such men. How now, Pisanio!                      Enter PISANIO    CLOTEN. \'His garments\'! Now the devil-   IMOGEN. To Dorothy my woman hie thee presently.   CLOTEN. \'His garment\'!   IMOGEN. I am sprited with a fool;     Frighted, and ang\'red worse. Go bid my woman     Search for a jewel that too casually       Hath left mine arm. It was thy master\'s; shrew me,     If I would lose it for a revenue     Of any king\'s in Europe! I do think     I saw\'t this morning; confident I am     Last night \'twas on mine arm; I kiss\'d it.     I hope it be not gone to tell my lord     That I kiss aught but he.   PISANIO. \'Twill not be lost.   IMOGEN. I hope so. Go and search.                 Exit PISANIO   CLOTEN. You have abus\'d me.     \'His meanest garment\'!   IMOGEN. Ay, I said so, sir.     If you will make \'t an action, call witness to \'t.   CLOTEN. I will inform your father.   IMOGEN. Your mother too.     She\'s my good lady and will conceive, I hope,     But the worst of me. So I leave you, sir,     To th\' worst of discontent.                             Exit   CLOTEN. I\'ll be reveng\'d.     \'His mean\'st garment\'! Well.                            Exit     SCENE IV. Rome. PHILARIO\'S house  Enter POSTHUMUS and PHILARIO    POSTHUMUS. Fear it not, sir; I would I were so sure     To win the King as I am bold her honour     Will remain hers.   PHILARIO. What means do you make to him?   POSTHUMUS. Not any; but abide the change of time,     Quake in the present winter\'s state, and wish     That warmer days would come. In these fear\'d hopes     I barely gratify your love; they failing,     I must die much your debtor.   PHILARIO. Your very goodness and your company     O\'erpays all I can do. By this your king     Hath heard of great Augustus. Caius Lucius     Will do\'s commission throughly; and I think     He\'ll grant the tribute, send th\' arrearages,     Or look upon our Romans, whose remembrance     Is yet fresh in their grief.   POSTHUMUS. I do believe       Statist though I am none, nor like to be,     That this will prove a war; and you shall hear     The legions now in Gallia sooner landed     In our not-fearing Britain than have tidings     Of any penny tribute paid. Our countrymen     Are men more order\'d than when Julius Caesar     Smil\'d at their lack of skill, but found their courage     Worthy his frowning at. Their discipline,     Now mingled with their courages, will make known     To their approvers they are people such     That mend upon the world.                        Enter IACHIMO    PHILARIO. See! Iachimo!   POSTHUMUS. The swiftest harts have posted you by land,     And winds of all the comers kiss\'d your sails,     To make your vessel nimble.   PHILARIO. Welcome, sir.   POSTHUMUS. I hope the briefness of your answer made       The speediness of your return.   IACHIMO. Your lady     Is one of the fairest that I have look\'d upon.   POSTHUMUS. And therewithal the best; or let her beauty     Look through a casement to allure false hearts,     And be false with them.   IACHIMO. Here are letters for you.   POSTHUMUS. Their tenour good, I trust.   IACHIMO. \'Tis very like.   PHILARIO. Was Caius Lucius in the Britain court     When you were there?   IACHIMO. He was expected then,     But not approach\'d.   POSTHUMUS. All is well yet.     Sparkles this stone as it was wont, or is\'t not     Too dull for your good wearing?   IACHIMO. If I have lost it,     I should have lost the worth of it in gold.     I\'ll make a journey twice as far t\' enjoy     A second night of such sweet shortness which       Was mine in Britain; for the ring is won.   POSTHUMUS. The stone\'s too hard to come by.   IACHIMO. Not a whit,     Your lady being so easy.   POSTHUMUS. Make not, sir,     Your loss your sport. I hope you know that we     Must not continue friends.   IACHIMO. Good sir, we must,     If you keep covenant. Had I not brought     The knowledge of your mistress home, I grant     We were to question farther; but I now     Profess myself the winner of her honour,     Together with your ring; and not the wronger     Of her or you, having proceeded but     By both your wills.   POSTHUMUS. If you can make\'t apparent     That you have tasted her in bed, my hand     And ring is yours. If not, the foul opinion     You had of her pure honour gains or loses     Your sword or mine, or masterless leaves both       To who shall find them.   IACHIMO. Sir, my circumstances,     Being so near the truth as I will make them,     Must first induce you to believe- whose strength     I will confirm with oath; which I doubt not     You\'ll give me leave to spare when you shall find     You need it not.   POSTHUMUS. Proceed.   IACHIMO. First, her bedchamber,     Where I confess I slept not, but profess     Had that was well worth watching-it was hang\'d     With tapestry of silk and silver; the story,     Proud Cleopatra when she met her Roman     And Cydnus swell\'d above the banks, or for     The press of boats or pride. A piece of work     So bravely done, so rich, that it did strive     In workmanship and value; which I wonder\'d     Could be so rarely and exactly wrought,     Since the true life on\'t was-   POSTHUMUS. This is true;       And this you might have heard of here, by me     Or by some other.   IACHIMO. More particulars     Must justify my knowledge.   POSTHUMUS. So they must,     Or do your honour injury.   IACHIMO. The chimney     Is south the chamber, and the chimneypiece     Chaste Dian bathing. Never saw I figures     So likely to report themselves. The cutter     Was as another nature, dumb; outwent her,     Motion and breath left out.   POSTHUMUS. This is a thing     Which you might from relation likewise reap,     Being, as it is, much spoke of.   IACHIMO. The roof o\' th\' chamber     With golden cherubins is fretted; her andirons-     I had forgot them- were two winking Cupids     Of silver, each on one foot standing, nicely     Depending on their brands.     POSTHUMUS. This is her honour!     Let it be granted you have seen all this, and praise     Be given to your remembrance; the description     Of what is in her chamber nothing saves     The wager you have laid.   IACHIMO. Then, if you can,                [Shows the bracelet]     Be pale. I beg but leave to air this jewel. See!     And now \'tis up again. It must be married     To that your diamond; I\'ll keep them.   POSTHUMUS. Jove!     Once more let me behold it. Is it that     Which I left with her?   IACHIMO. Sir- I thank her- that.     She stripp\'d it from her arm; I see her yet;     Her pretty action did outsell her gift,     And yet enrich\'d it too. She gave it me, and said     She priz\'d it once.   POSTHUMUS. May be she pluck\'d it of     To send it me.   IACHIMO. She writes so to you, doth she?     POSTHUMUS. O, no, no, no! \'tis true. Here, take this too;                                                 [Gives the ring]     It is a basilisk unto mine eye,     Kills me to look on\'t. Let there be no honour     Where there is beauty; truth where semblance; love     Where there\'s another man. The vows of women     Of no more bondage be to where they are made     Than they are to their virtues, which is nothing.     O, above measure false!   PHILARIO. Have patience, sir,     And take your ring again; \'tis not yet won.     It may be probable she lost it, or     Who knows if one her women, being corrupted     Hath stol\'n it from her?   POSTHUMUS. Very true;     And so I hope he came by\'t. Back my ring.     Render to me some corporal sign about her,     More evident than this; for this was stol\'n.   IACHIMO. By Jupiter, I had it from her arm!   POSTHUMUS. Hark you, he swears; by Jupiter he swears.       \'Tis true- nay, keep the ring, \'tis true. I am sure     She would not lose it. Her attendants are     All sworn and honourable- they induc\'d to steal it!     And by a stranger! No, he hath enjoy\'d her.     The cognizance of her incontinency     Is this: she hath bought the name of whore thus dearly.     There, take thy hire; and all the fiends of hell     Divide themselves between you!   PHILARIO. Sir, be patient;     This is not strong enough to be believ\'d     Of one persuaded well of.   POSTHUMUS. Never talk on\'t;     She hath been colted by him.   IACHIMO. If you seek     For further satisfying, under her breast-     Worthy the pressing- lies a mole, right proud     Of that most delicate lodging. By my life,     I kiss\'d it; and it gave me present hunger     To feed again, though full. You do remember     This stain upon her?     POSTHUMUS. Ay, and it doth confirm     Another stain, as big as hell can hold,     Were there no more but it.   IACHIMO. Will you hear more?   POSTHUMUS. Spare your arithmetic; never count the turns.     Once, and a million!   IACHIMO. I\'ll be sworn-   POSTHUMUS. No swearing.     If you will swear you have not done\'t, you lie;     And I will kill thee if thou dost deny     Thou\'st made me cuckold.   IACHIMO. I\'ll deny nothing.   POSTHUMUS. O that I had her here to tear her limb-meal!     I will go there and do\'t, i\' th\' court, before     Her father. I\'ll do something-                          Exit   PHILARIO. Quite besides     The government of patience! You have won.     Let\'s follow him and pervert the present wrath     He hath against himself.   IACHIMO. With all my heart.                             Exeunt     SCENE V. Rome. Another room in PHILARIO\'S house  Enter POSTHUMUS    POSTHUMUS. Is there no way for men to be, but women     Must be half-workers? We are all bastards,     And that most venerable man which I     Did call my father was I know not where     When I was stamp\'d. Some coiner with his tools     Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seem\'d     The Dian of that time. So doth my wife     The nonpareil of this. O, vengeance, vengeance!     Me of my lawful pleasure she restrain\'d,     And pray\'d me oft forbearance; did it with     A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on\'t     Might well have warm\'d old Saturn; that I thought her     As chaste as unsunn\'d snow. O, all the devils!     This yellow Iachimo in an hour- was\'t not?     Or less!- at first? Perchance he spoke not, but,     Like a full-acorn\'d boar, a German one,     Cried \'O!\' and mounted; found no opposition       But what he look\'d for should oppose and she     Should from encounter guard. Could I find out     The woman\'s part in me! For there\'s no motion     That tends to vice in man but I affirm     It is the woman\'s part. Be it lying, note it,     The woman\'s; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers;     Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;     Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,     Nice longing, slanders, mutability,     All faults that man may name, nay, that hell knows,     Why, hers, in part or all; but rather all;     For even to vice     They are not constant, but are changing still     One vice but of a minute old for one     Not half so old as that. I\'ll write against them,     Detest them, curse them. Yet \'tis greater skill     In a true hate to pray they have their will:     The very devils cannot plague them better.              Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. Britain. A hall in CYMBELINE\'S palace  Enter in state, CYMBELINE, QUEEN, CLOTEN, and LORDS at one door, and at another CAIUS LUCIUS and attendants    CYMBELINE. Now say, what would Augustus Caesar with us?   LUCIUS. When Julius Caesar- whose remembrance yet     Lives in men\'s eyes, and will to ears and tongues     Be theme and hearing ever- was in this Britain,     And conquer\'d it, Cassibelan, thine uncle,     Famous in Caesar\'s praises no whit less     Than in his feats deserving it, for him     And his succession granted Rome a tribute,     Yearly three thousand pounds, which by thee lately     Is left untender\'d.   QUEEN. And, to kill the marvel,     Shall be so ever.   CLOTEN. There be many Caesars     Ere such another Julius. Britain is     A world by itself, and we will nothing pay     For wearing our own noses.     QUEEN. That opportunity,     Which then they had to take from \'s, to resume     We have again. Remember, sir, my liege,     The kings your ancestors, together with     The natural bravery of your isle, which stands     As Neptune\'s park, ribb\'d and pal\'d in     With rocks unscalable and roaring waters,     With sands that will not bear your enemies\' boats     But suck them up to th\' top-mast. A kind of conquest     Caesar made here; but made not here his brag     Of \'came, and saw, and overcame.\' With shame-     The first that ever touch\'d him- he was carried     From off our coast, twice beaten; and his shipping-     Poor ignorant baubles!- on our terrible seas,     Like egg-shells mov\'d upon their surges, crack\'d     As easily \'gainst our rocks; for joy whereof     The fam\'d Cassibelan, who was once at point-     O, giglot fortune!- to master Caesar\'s sword,     Made Lud\'s Town with rejoicing fires bright     And Britons strut with courage.     CLOTEN. Come, there\'s no more tribute to be paid. Our kingdom is     stronger than it was at that time; and, as I said, there is no     moe such Caesars. Other of them may have crook\'d noses; but to     owe such straight arms, none.   CYMBELINE. Son, let your mother end.   CLOTEN. We have yet many among us can gripe as hard as Cassibelan.     I do not say I am one; but I have a hand. Why tribute? Why should     we pay tribute? If Caesar can hide the sun from us with a blanket,     or put the moon in his pocket, we will pay him tribute for light;     else, sir, no more tribute, pray you now.   CYMBELINE. You must know,     Till the injurious Romans did extort     This tribute from us, we were free. Caesar\'s ambition-     Which swell\'d so much that it did almost stretch     The sides o\' th\' world- against all colour here     Did put the yoke upon\'s; which to shake of     Becomes a warlike people, whom we reckon     Ourselves to be.   CLOTEN. We do.   CYMBELINE. Say then to Caesar,       Our ancestor was that Mulmutius which     Ordain\'d our laws- whose use the sword of Caesar     Hath too much mangled; whose repair and franchise     Shall, by the power we hold, be our good deed,     Though Rome be therefore angry. Mulmutius made our laws,     Who was the first of Britain which did put     His brows within a golden crown, and call\'d     Himself a king.   LUCIUS. I am sorry, Cymbeline,     That I am to pronounce Augustus Caesar-     Caesar, that hath moe kings his servants than     Thyself domestic officers- thine enemy.     Receive it from me, then: war and confusion     In Caesar\'s name pronounce I \'gainst thee; look     For fury not to be resisted. Thus defied,     I thank thee for myself.   CYMBELINE. Thou art welcome, Caius.     Thy Caesar knighted me; my youth I spent     Much under him; of him I gather\'d honour,     Which he to seek of me again, perforce,       Behoves me keep at utterance. I am perfect     That the Pannonians and Dalmatians for     Their liberties are now in arms, a precedent     Which not to read would show the Britons cold;     So Caesar shall not find them.   LUCIUS. Let proof speak.   CLOTEN. His majesty bids you welcome. Make pastime with us a day or     two, or longer. If you seek us afterwards in other terms, you     shall find us in our salt-water girdle. If you beat us out of it,     it is yours; if you fall in the adventure, our crows shall fare     the better for you; and there\'s an end.   LUCIUS. So, sir.   CYMBELINE. I know your master\'s pleasure, and he mine;     All the remain is, welcome.                           Exeunt     SCENE II. Britain. Another room in CYMBELINE\'S palace  Enter PISANIO reading of a letter    PISANIO. How? of adultery? Wherefore write you not     What monsters her accuse? Leonatus!     O master, what a strange infection     Is fall\'n into thy ear! What false Italian-     As poisonous-tongu\'d as handed- hath prevail\'d     On thy too ready hearing? Disloyal? No.     She\'s punish\'d for her truth, and undergoes,     More goddess-like than wife-like, such assaults     As would take in some virtue. O my master!     Thy mind to her is now as low as were     Thy fortunes. How? that I should murder her?     Upon the love, and truth, and vows, which I     Have made to thy command? I, her? Her blood?     If it be so to do good service, never     Let me be counted serviceable. How look I     That I should seem to lack humanity     So much as this fact comes to? [Reads] \'Do\'t. The letter       That I have sent her, by her own command     Shall give thee opportunity.\' O damn\'d paper,     Black as the ink that\'s on thee! Senseless bauble,     Art thou a fedary for this act, and look\'st     So virgin-like without? Lo, here she comes.                        Enter IMOGEN      I am ignorant in what I am commanded.   IMOGEN. How now, Pisanio!   PISANIO. Madam, here is a letter from my lord.   IMOGEN. Who? thy lord? That is my lord- Leonatus?     O, learn\'d indeed were that astronomer     That knew the stars as I his characters-     He\'d lay the future open. You good gods,     Let what is here contain\'d relish of love,     Of my lord\'s health, of his content; yet not     That we two are asunder- let that grieve him!     Some griefs are med\'cinable; that is one of them,     For it doth physic love- of his content,       All but in that. Good wax, thy leave. Blest be     You bees that make these locks of counsel! Lovers     And men in dangerous bonds pray not alike;     Though forfeiters you cast in prison, yet     You clasp young Cupid\'s tables. Good news, gods!                                                          [Reads]     \'Justice and your father\'s wrath, should he take me in his     dominion, could not be so cruel to me as you, O the dearest of     creatures, would even renew me with your eyes. Take notice that I     am in Cambria, at Milford Haven. What your own love will out of     this advise you, follow. So he wishes you all happiness that     remains loyal to his vow, and your increasing in love                                             LEONATUS POSTHUMUS.\'      O for a horse with wings! Hear\'st thou, Pisanio?     He is at Milford Haven. Read, and tell me     How far \'tis thither. If one of mean affairs     May plod it in a week, why may not I     Glide thither in a day? Then, true Pisanio-     Who long\'st like me to see thy lord, who long\'st-       O, let me \'bate!- but not like me, yet long\'st,     But in a fainter kind- O, not like me,     For mine\'s beyond beyond!-say, and speak thick-     Love\'s counsellor should fill the bores of hearing     To th\' smothering of the sense- how far it is     To this same blessed Milford. And by th\' way     Tell me how Wales was made so happy as     T\' inherit such a haven. But first of all,     How we may steal from hence; and for the gap     That we shall make in time from our hence-going     And our return, to excuse. But first, how get hence.     Why should excuse be born or ere begot?     We\'ll talk of that hereafter. Prithee speak,     How many score of miles may we well ride     \'Twixt hour and hour?   PISANIO. One score \'twixt sun and sun,     Madam, \'s enough for you, and too much too.   IMOGEN. Why, one that rode to\'s execution, man,     Could never go so slow. I have heard of riding wagers     Where horses have been nimbler than the sands       That run i\' th\' clock\'s behalf. But this is fool\'ry.     Go bid my woman feign a sickness; say     She\'ll home to her father; and provide me presently     A riding suit, no costlier than would fit     A franklin\'s huswife.   PISANIO. Madam, you\'re best consider.   IMOGEN. I see before me, man. Nor here, nor here,     Nor what ensues, but have a fog in them     That I cannot look through. Away, I prithee;     Do as I bid thee. There\'s no more to say;     Accessible is none but Milford way.                   Exeunt     SCENE III. Wales. A mountainous country with a cave  Enter from the cave BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, and ARVIRAGUS    BELARIUS. A goodly day not to keep house with such     Whose roof\'s as low as ours! Stoop, boys; this gate     Instructs you how t\' adore the heavens, and bows you     To a morning\'s holy office. The gates of monarchs     Are arch\'d so high that giants may jet through     And keep their impious turbans on without     Good morrow to the sun. Hail, thou fair heaven!     We house i\' th\' rock, yet use thee not so hardly     As prouder livers do.   GUIDERIUS. Hail, heaven!   ARVIRAGUS. Hail, heaven!   BELARIUS. Now for our mountain sport. Up to yond hill,     Your legs are young; I\'ll tread these flats. Consider,     When you above perceive me like a crow,     That it is place which lessens and sets off;     And you may then revolve what tales I have told you     Of courts, of princes, of the tricks in war.       This service is not service so being done,     But being so allow\'d. To apprehend thus     Draws us a profit from all things we see,     And often to our comfort shall we find     The sharded beetle in a safer hold     Than is the full-wing\'d eagle. O, this life     Is nobler than attending for a check,     Richer than doing nothing for a bribe,     Prouder than rustling in unpaid-for silk:     Such gain the cap of him that makes him fine,     Yet keeps his book uncross\'d. No life to ours!   GUIDERIUS. Out of your proof you speak. We, poor unfledg\'d,     Have never wing\'d from view o\' th\' nest, nor know not     What air\'s from home. Haply this life is best,     If quiet life be best; sweeter to you     That have a sharper known; well corresponding     With your stiff age. But unto us it is     A cell of ignorance, travelling abed,     A prison for a debtor that not dares     To stride a limit.     ARVIRAGUS. What should we speak of     When we are old as you? When we shall hear     The rain and wind beat dark December, how,     In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse.     The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing;     We are beastly: subtle as the fox for prey,     Like warlike as the wolf for what we eat.     Our valour is to chase what flies; our cage     We make a choir, as doth the prison\'d bird,     And sing our bondage freely.   BELARIUS. How you speak!     Did you but know the city\'s usuries,     And felt them knowingly- the art o\' th\' court,     As hard to leave as keep, whose top to climb     Is certain falling, or so slipp\'ry that     The fear\'s as bad as falling; the toil o\' th\' war,     A pain that only seems to seek out danger     I\' th\'name of fame and honour, which dies i\' th\'search,     And hath as oft a sland\'rous epitaph     As record of fair act; nay, many times,       Doth ill deserve by doing well; what\'s worse-     Must curtsy at the censure. O, boys, this story     The world may read in me; my body\'s mark\'d     With Roman swords, and my report was once     first with the best of note. Cymbeline lov\'d me;     And when a soldier was the theme, my name     Was not far off. Then was I as a tree     Whose boughs did bend with fruit; but in one night     A storm, or robbery, call it what you will,     Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves,     And left me bare to weather.   GUIDERIUS. Uncertain favour!   BELARIUS. My fault being nothing- as I have told you oft-     But that two villains, whose false oaths prevail\'d     Before my perfect honour, swore to Cymbeline     I was confederate with the Romans. So     Follow\'d my banishment, and this twenty years     This rock and these demesnes have been my world,     Where I have liv\'d at honest freedom, paid     More pious debts to heaven than in all       The fore-end of my time. But up to th\' mountains!     This is not hunters\' language. He that strikes     The venison first shall be the lord o\' th\' feast;     To him the other two shall minister;     And we will fear no poison, which attends     In place of greater state. I\'ll meet you in the valleys.                                   Exeunt GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS     How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature!     These boys know little they are sons to th\' King,     Nor Cymbeline dreams that they are alive.     They think they are mine; and though train\'d up thus meanly     I\' th\' cave wherein they bow, their thoughts do hit     The roofs of palaces, and nature prompts them     In simple and low things to prince it much     Beyond the trick of others. This Polydore,     The heir of Cymbeline and Britain, who     The King his father call\'d Guiderius- Jove!     When on my three-foot stool I sit and tell     The warlike feats I have done, his spirits fly out     Into my story; say \'Thus mine enemy fell,       And thus I set my foot on\'s neck\'; even then     The princely blood flows in his cheek, he sweats,     Strains his young nerves, and puts himself in posture     That acts my words. The younger brother, Cadwal,     Once Arviragus, in as like a figure     Strikes life into my speech, and shows much more     His own conceiving. Hark, the game is rous\'d!     O Cymbeline, heaven and my conscience knows     Thou didst unjustly banish me! Whereon,     At three and two years old, I stole these babes,     Thinking to bar thee of succession as     Thou refts me of my lands. Euriphile,     Thou wast their nurse; they took thee for their mother,     And every day do honour to her grave.     Myself, Belarius, that am Morgan call\'d,     They take for natural father. The game is up.           Exit     SCENE IV. Wales, near Milford Haven  Enter PISANIO and IMOGEN    IMOGEN. Thou told\'st me, when we came from horse, the place     Was near at hand. Ne\'er long\'d my mother so     To see me first as I have now. Pisanio! Man!     Where is Posthumus? What is in thy mind     That makes thee stare thus? Wherefore breaks that sigh     From th\' inward of thee? One but painted thus     Would be interpreted a thing perplex\'d     Beyond self-explication. Put thyself     Into a haviour of less fear, ere wildness     Vanquish my staider senses. What\'s the matter?     Why tender\'st thou that paper to me with     A look untender! If\'t be summer news,     Smile to\'t before; if winterly, thou need\'st     But keep that count\'nance still. My husband\'s hand?     That drug-damn\'d Italy hath out-craftied him,     And he\'s at some hard point. Speak, man; thy tongue     May take off some extremity, which to read       Would be even mortal to me.   PISANIO. Please you read,     And you shall find me, wretched man, a thing     The most disdain\'d of fortune.   IMOGEN. [Reads] \'Thy mistress, Pisanio, hath play\'d the strumpet in     my bed, the testimonies whereof lie bleeding in me. I speak not     out of weak surmises, but from proof as strong as my grief and as     certain as I expect my revenge. That part thou, Pisanio, must act     for me, if thy faith be not tainted with the breach of hers. Let     thine own hands take away her life; I shall give thee opportunity     at Milford Haven; she hath my letter for the purpose; where, if     thou fear to strike, and to make me certain it is done, thou art     the pander to her dishonour, and equally to me disloyal.\'   PISANIO. What shall I need to draw my sword? The paper     Hath cut her throat already. No, \'tis slander,     Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue     Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath     Rides on the posting winds and doth belie     All corners of the world. Kings, queens, and states,     Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave,       This viperous slander enters. What cheer, madam?   IMOGEN. False to his bed? What is it to be false?     To lie in watch there, and to think on him?     To weep twixt clock and clock? If sleep charge nature,     To break it with a fearful dream of him,     And cry myself awake? That\'s false to\'s bed,     Is it?   PISANIO. Alas, good lady!   IMOGEN. I false! Thy conscience witness! Iachimo,     Thou didst accuse him of incontinency;     Thou then look\'dst like a villain; now, methinks,     Thy favour\'s good enough. Some jay of Italy,     Whose mother was her painting, hath betray\'d him.     Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion,     And for I am richer than to hang by th\' walls     I must be ripp\'d. To pieces with me! O,     Men\'s vows are women\'s traitors! All good seeming,     By thy revolt, O husband, shall be thought     Put on for villainy; not born where\'t grows,     But worn a bait for ladies.     PISANIO. Good madam, hear me.   IMOGEN. True honest men being heard, like false Aeneas,     Were, in his time, thought false; and Sinon\'s weeping     Did scandal many a holy tear, took pity     From most true wretchedness. So thou, Posthumus,     Wilt lay the leaven on all proper men:     Goodly and gallant shall be false and perjur\'d     From thy great fail. Come, fellow, be thou honest;     Do thou thy master\'s bidding; when thou seest him,     A little witness my obedience. Look!     I draw the sword myself; take it, and hit     The innocent mansion of my love, my heart.     Fear not; \'tis empty of all things but grief;     Thy master is not there, who was indeed     The riches of it. Do his bidding; strike.     Thou mayst be valiant in a better cause,     But now thou seem\'st a coward.   PISANIO. Hence, vile instrument!     Thou shalt not damn my hand.   IMOGEN. Why, I must die;       And if I do not by thy hand, thou art     No servant of thy master\'s. Against self-slaughter     There is a prohibition so divine     That cravens my weak hand. Come, here\'s my heart-     Something\'s afore\'t. Soft, soft! we\'ll no defence!-     Obedient as the scabbard. What is here?     The scriptures of the loyal Leonatus     All turn\'d to heresy? Away, away,     Corrupters of my faith! you shall no more     Be stomachers to my heart. Thus may poor fools     Believe false teachers; though those that are betray\'d     Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor     Stands in worse case of woe. And thou, Posthumus,     That didst set up my disobedience \'gainst the King     My father, and make me put into contempt the suits     Of princely fellows, shalt hereafter find     It is no act of common passage but     A strain of rareness; and I grieve myself     To think, when thou shalt be disedg\'d by her     That now thou tirest on, how thy memory       Will then be pang\'d by me. Prithee dispatch.     The lamp entreats the butcher. Where\'s thy knife?     Thou art too slow to do thy master\'s bidding,     When I desire it too.   PISANIO. O gracious lady,     Since I receiv\'d command to do this busines     I have not slept one wink.   IMOGEN. Do\'t, and to bed then.   PISANIO. I\'ll wake mine eyeballs first.   IMOGEN. Wherefore then     Didst undertake it? Why hast thou abus\'d     So many miles with a pretence? This place?     Mine action and thine own? our horses\' labour?     The time inviting thee? the perturb\'d court,     For my being absent?- whereunto I never     Purpose return. Why hast thou gone so far     To be unbent when thou hast ta\'en thy stand,     Th\' elected deer before thee?   PISANIO. But to win time     To lose so bad employment, in the which       I have consider\'d of a course. Good lady,     Hear me with patience.   IMOGEN. Talk thy tongue weary- speak.     I have heard I am a strumpet, and mine ear,     Therein false struck, can take no greater wound,     Nor tent to bottom that. But speak.   PISANIO. Then, madam,     I thought you would not back again.   IMOGEN. Most like-     Bringing me here to kill me.   PISANIO. Not so, neither;     But if I were as wise as honest, then     My purpose would prove well. It cannot be     But that my master is abus\'d. Some villain,     Ay, and singular in his art, hath done you both     This cursed injury.   IMOGEN. Some Roman courtezan!   PISANIO. No, on my life!     I\'ll give but notice you are dead, and send him     Some bloody sign of it, for \'tis commanded       I should do so. You shall be miss\'d at court,     And that will well confirm it.   IMOGEN. Why, good fellow,     What shall I do the while? where bide? how live?     Or in my life what comfort, when I am     Dead to my husband?   PISANIO. If you\'ll back to th\' court-   IMOGEN. No court, no father, nor no more ado     With that harsh, noble, simple nothing-     That Cloten, whose love-suit hath been to me     As fearful as a siege.   PISANIO. If not at court,     Then not in Britain must you bide.   IMOGEN. Where then?     Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night,     Are they not but in Britain? I\' th\' world\'s volume     Our Britain seems as of it, but not in\'t;     In a great pool a swan\'s nest. Prithee think     There\'s livers out of Britain.   PISANIO. I am most glad       You think of other place. Th\' ambassador,   LUCIUS the Roman, comes to Milford Haven     To-morrow. Now, if you could wear a mind     Dark as your fortune is, and but disguise     That which t\' appear itself must not yet be     But by self-danger, you should tread a course     Pretty and full of view; yea, happily, near     The residence of Posthumus; so nigh, at least,     That though his actions were not visible, yet     Report should render him hourly to your ear     As truly as he moves.   IMOGEN. O! for such means,     Though peril to my modesty, not death on\'t,     I would adventure.   PISANIO. Well then, here\'s the point:     You must forget to be a woman; change     Command into obedience; fear and niceness-     The handmaids of all women, or, more truly,     Woman it pretty self- into a waggish courage;     Ready in gibes, quick-answer\'d, saucy, and       As quarrelous as the weasel. Nay, you must     Forget that rarest treasure of your cheek,     Exposing it- but, O, the harder heart!     Alack, no remedy!- to the greedy touch     Of common-kissing Titan, and forget     Your laboursome and dainty trims wherein     You made great Juno angry.   IMOGEN. Nay, be brief;     I see into thy end, and am almost     A man already.   PISANIO. First, make yourself but like one.     Fore-thinking this, I have already fit-     \'Tis in my cloak-bag- doublet, hat, hose, all     That answer to them. Would you, in their serving,     And with what imitation you can borrow     From youth of such a season, fore noble Lucius     Present yourself, desire his service, tell him     Wherein you\'re happy- which will make him know     If that his head have ear in music; doubtless     With joy he will embrace you; for he\'s honourable,       And, doubling that, most holy. Your means abroad-     You have me, rich; and I will never fail     Beginning nor supplyment.   IMOGEN. Thou art all the comfort     The gods will diet me with. Prithee away!     There\'s more to be consider\'d; but we\'ll even     All that good time will give us. This attempt     I am soldier to, and will abide it with     A prince\'s courage. Away, I prithee.   PISANIO. Well, madam, we must take a short farewell,     Lest, being miss\'d, I be suspected of     Your carriage from the court. My noble mistress,     Here is a box; I had it from the Queen.     What\'s in\'t is precious. If you are sick at sea     Or stomach-qualm\'d at land, a dram of this     Will drive away distemper. To some shade,     And fit you to your manhood. May the gods     Direct you to the best!   IMOGEN. Amen. I thank thee.                   Exeunt severally     SCENE V. Britain. CYMBELINE\'S palace  Enter CYMBELINE, QUEEN, CLOTEN, LUCIUS, and LORDS    CYMBELINE. Thus far; and so farewell.   LUCIUS. Thanks, royal sir.     My emperor hath wrote; I must from hence,     And am right sorry that I must report ye     My master\'s enemy.   CYMBELINE. Our subjects, sir,     Will not endure his yoke; and for ourself     To show less sovereignty than they, must needs     Appear unkinglike.   LUCIUS. So, sir. I desire of you     A conduct overland to Milford Haven.     Madam, all joy befall your Grace, and you!   CYMBELINE. My lords, you are appointed for that office;     The due of honour in no point omit.     So farewell, noble Lucius.   LUCIUS. Your hand, my lord.   CLOTEN. Receive it friendly; but from this time forth       I wear it as your enemy.   LUCIUS. Sir, the event     Is yet to name the winner. Fare you well.   CYMBELINE. Leave not the worthy Lucius, good my lords,     Till he have cross\'d the Severn. Happiness!                                          Exeunt LUCIUS and LORDS   QUEEN. He goes hence frowning; but it honours us     That we have given him cause.   CLOTEN. \'Tis all the better;     Your valiant Britons have their wishes in it.   CYMBELINE. Lucius hath wrote already to the Emperor     How it goes here. It fits us therefore ripely     Our chariots and our horsemen be in readiness.     The pow\'rs that he already hath in Gallia     Will soon be drawn to head, from whence he moves     His war for Britain.   QUEEN. \'Tis not sleepy business,     But must be look\'d to speedily and strongly.   CYMBELINE. Our expectation that it would be thus     Hath made us forward. But, my gentle queen,       Where is our daughter? She hath not appear\'d     Before the Roman, nor to us hath tender\'d     The duty of the day. She looks us like     A thing more made of malice than of duty;     We have noted it. Call her before us, for     We have been too slight in sufferance.      Exit a MESSENGER   QUEEN. Royal sir,     Since the exile of Posthumus, most retir\'d     Hath her life been; the cure whereof, my lord,     \'Tis time must do. Beseech your Majesty,     Forbear sharp speeches to her; she\'s a lady     So tender of rebukes that words are strokes,     And strokes death to her.                   Re-enter MESSENGER    CYMBELINE. Where is she, sir? How     Can her contempt be answer\'d?   MESSENGER. Please you, sir,     Her chambers are all lock\'d, and there\'s no answer       That will be given to th\' loud of noise we make.   QUEEN. My lord, when last I went to visit her,     She pray\'d me to excuse her keeping close;     Whereto constrain\'d by her infirmity     She should that duty leave unpaid to you     Which daily she was bound to proffer. This     She wish\'d me to make known; but our great court     Made me to blame in memory.   CYMBELINE. Her doors lock\'d?     Not seen of late? Grant, heavens, that which I fear     Prove false!                                            Exit   QUEEN. Son, I say, follow the King.   CLOTEN. That man of hers, Pisanio, her old servant,     I have not seen these two days.   QUEEN. Go, look after.                             Exit CLOTEN     Pisanio, thou that stand\'st so for Posthumus!     He hath a drug of mine. I pray his absence     Proceed by swallowing that; for he believes     It is a thing most precious. But for her,     Where is she gone? Haply despair hath seiz\'d her;       Or, wing\'d with fervour of her love, she\'s flown     To her desir\'d Posthumus. Gone she is     To death or to dishonour, and my end     Can make good use of either. She being down,     I have the placing of the British crown.                     Re-enter CLOTEN      How now, my son?   CLOTEN. \'Tis certain she is fled.     Go in and cheer the King. He rages; none     Dare come about him.   QUEEN. All the better. May     This night forestall him of the coming day!             Exit   CLOTEN. I love and hate her; for she\'s fair and royal,     And that she hath all courtly parts more exquisite     Than lady, ladies, woman. From every one     The best she hath, and she, of all compounded,     Outsells them all. I love her therefore; but     Disdaining me and throwing favours on       The low Posthumus slanders so her judgment     That what\'s else rare is chok\'d; and in that point     I will conclude to hate her, nay, indeed,     To be reveng\'d upon her. For when fools     Shall-                      Enter PISANIO      Who is here? What, are you packing, sirrah?     Come hither. Ah, you precious pander! Villain,     Where is thy lady? In a word, or else     Thou art straightway with the fiends.   PISANIO. O good my lord!   CLOTEN. Where is thy lady? or, by Jupiter-     I will not ask again. Close villain,     I\'ll have this secret from thy heart, or rip     Thy heart to find it. Is she with Posthumus?     From whose so many weights of baseness cannot     A dram of worth be drawn.   PISANIO. Alas, my lord,       How can she be with him? When was she miss\'d?     He is in Rome.   CLOTEN. Where is she, sir? Come nearer.     No farther halting! Satisfy me home     What is become of her.   PISANIO. O my all-worthy lord!   CLOTEN. All-worthy villain!     Discover where thy mistress is at once,     At the next word. No more of \'worthy lord\'!     Speak, or thy silence on the instant is     Thy condemnation and thy death.   PISANIO. Then, sir,     This paper is the history of my knowledge     Touching her flight.                   [Presenting a letter]   CLOTEN. Let\'s see\'t. I will pursue her     Even to Augustus\' throne.   PISANIO. [Aside] Or this or perish.     She\'s far enough; and what he learns by this     May prove his travel, not her danger.   CLOTEN. Humh!     PISANIO. [Aside] I\'ll write to my lord she\'s dead. O Imogen,     Safe mayst thou wander, safe return again!   CLOTEN. Sirrah, is this letter true?   PISANIO. Sir, as I think.   CLOTEN. It is Posthumus\' hand; I know\'t. Sirrah, if thou wouldst     not be a villain, but do me true service, undergo those     employments wherein I should have cause to use thee with a     serious industry- that is, what villainy soe\'er I bid thee do, to     perform it directly and truly- I would think thee an honest man;     thou shouldst neither want my means for thy relief nor my voice     for thy preferment.   PISANIO. Well, my good lord.   CLOTEN. Wilt thou serve me? For since patiently and constantly thou     hast stuck to the bare fortune of that beggar Posthumus, thou     canst not, in the course of gratitude, but be a diligent follower     of mine. Wilt thou serve me?   PISANIO. Sir, I will.   CLOTEN. Give me thy hand; here\'s my purse. Hast any of thy late     master\'s garments in thy possession?   PISANIO. I have, my lord, at my lodging, the same suit he wore when       he took leave of my lady and mistress.   CLOTEN. The first service thou dost me, fetch that suit hither. Let     it be thy first service; go.   PISANIO. I shall, my lord.                                Exit   CLOTEN. Meet thee at Milford Haven! I forgot to ask him one thing;     I\'ll remember\'t anon. Even there, thou villain Posthumus, will I     kill thee. I would these garments were come. She said upon a     time- the bitterness of it I now belch from my heart- that she     held the very garment of Posthumus in more respect than my noble     and natural person, together with the adornment of my qualities.     With that suit upon my back will I ravish her; first kill him,     and in her eyes. There shall she see my valour, which will then     be a torment to her contempt. He on the ground, my speech of     insultment ended on his dead body, and when my lust hath dined-     which, as I say, to vex her I will execute in the clothes that     she so prais\'d- to the court I\'ll knock her back, foot her home     again. She hath despis\'d me rejoicingly, and I\'ll be merry in my     revenge.                  Re-enter PISANIO, with the clothes        Be those the garments?   PISANIO. Ay, my noble lord.   CLOTEN. How long is\'t since she went to Milford Haven?   PISANIO. She can scarce be there yet.   CLOTEN. Bring this apparel to my chamber; that is the second thing     that I have commanded thee. The third is that thou wilt be a     voluntary mute to my design. Be but duteous and true, preferment     shall tender itself to thee. My revenge is now at Milford, would     I had wings to follow it! Come, and be true.            Exit   PISANIO. Thou bid\'st me to my loss; for true to thee     Were to prove false, which I will never be,     To him that is most true. To Milford go,     And find not her whom thou pursuest. Flow, flow,     You heavenly blessings, on her! This fool\'s speed     Be cross\'d with slowness! Labour be his meed!           Exit     SCENE VI. Wales. Before the cave of BELARIUS  Enter IMOGEN alone, in boy\'s clothes    IMOGEN. I see a man\'s life is a tedious one.     I have tir\'d myself, and for two nights together     Have made the ground my bed. I should be sick     But that my resolution helps me. Milford,     When from the mountain-top Pisanio show\'d thee,     Thou wast within a ken. O Jove! I think     Foundations fly the wretched; such, I mean,     Where they should be reliev\'d. Two beggars told me     I could not miss my way. Will poor folks lie,     That have afflictions on them, knowing \'tis     A punishment or trial? Yes; no wonder,     When rich ones scarce tell true. To lapse in fulness     Is sorer than to lie for need; and falsehood     Is worse in kings than beggars. My dear lord!     Thou art one o\' th\' false ones. Now I think on thee     My hunger\'s gone; but even before, I was     At point to sink for food. But what is this?       Here is a path to\'t; \'tis some savage hold.     I were best not call; I dare not call. Yet famine,     Ere clean it o\'erthrow nature, makes it valiant.     Plenty and peace breeds cowards; hardness ever     Of hardiness is mother. Ho! who\'s here?     If anything that\'s civil, speak; if savage,     Take or lend. Ho! No answer? Then I\'ll enter.     Best draw my sword; and if mine enemy     But fear the sword, like me, he\'ll scarcely look on\'t.     Such a foe, good heavens!                 Exit into the cave              Enter BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, and ARVIRAGUS    BELARIUS. You, Polydore, have prov\'d best woodman and     Are master of the feast. Cadwal and I     Will play the cook and servant; \'tis our match.     The sweat of industry would dry and die     But for the end it works to. Come, our stomachs     Will make what\'s homely savoury; weariness     Can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth       Finds the down pillow hard. Now, peace be here,     Poor house, that keep\'st thyself!   GUIDERIUS. I am thoroughly weary.   ARVIRAGUS. I am weak with toil, yet strong in appetite.   GUIDERIUS. There is cold meat i\' th\' cave; we\'ll browse on that     Whilst what we have kill\'d be cook\'d.   BELARIUS. [Looking into the cave] Stay, come not in.     But that it eats our victuals, I should think     Here were a fairy.   GUIDERIUS. What\'s the matter, sir?   BELARIUS.. By Jupiter, an angel! or, if not,     An earthly paragon! Behold divineness     No elder than a boy!                         Re-enter IMOGEN    IMOGEN. Good masters, harm me not.     Before I enter\'d here I call\'d, and thought     To have begg\'d or bought what I have took. Good troth,     I have stol\'n nought; nor would not though I had found       Gold strew\'d i\' th\' floor. Here\'s money for my meat.     I would have left it on the board, so soon     As I had made my meal, and parted     With pray\'rs for the provider.   GUIDERIUS. Money, youth?   ARVIRAGUS. All gold and silver rather turn to dirt,     As \'tis no better reckon\'d but of those     Who worship dirty gods.   IMOGEN. I see you\'re angry.     Know, if you kill me for my fault, I should     Have died had I not made it.   BELARIUS. Whither bound?   IMOGEN. To Milford Haven.   BELARIUS. What\'s your name?   IMOGEN. Fidele, sir. I have a kinsman who     Is bound for Italy; he embark\'d at Milford;     To whom being going, almost spent with hunger,     I am fall\'n in this offence.   BELARIUS. Prithee, fair youth,     Think us no churls, nor measure our good minds       By this rude place we live in. Well encounter\'d!     \'Tis almost night; you shall have better cheer     Ere you depart, and thanks to stay and eat it.     Boys, bid him welcome.   GUIDERIUS. Were you a woman, youth,     I should woo hard but be your groom. In honesty     I bid for you as I\'d buy.   ARVIRAGUS. I\'ll make\'t my comfort     He is a man. I\'ll love him as my brother;     And such a welcome as I\'d give to him     After long absence, such is yours. Most welcome!     Be sprightly, for you fall \'mongst friends.   IMOGEN. \'Mongst friends,     If brothers. [Aside] Would it had been so that they     Had been my father\'s sons! Then had my prize     Been less, and so more equal ballasting     To thee, Posthumus.   BELARIUS. He wrings at some distress.   GUIDERIUS. Would I could free\'t!   ARVIRAGUS. Or I, whate\'er it be,       What pain it cost, what danger! Gods!   BELARIUS. [Whispering] Hark, boys.   IMOGEN. [Aside] Great men,     That had a court no bigger than this cave,     That did attend themselves, and had the virtue     Which their own conscience seal\'d them, laying by     That nothing-gift of differing multitudes,     Could not out-peer these twain. Pardon me, gods!     I\'d change my sex to be companion with them,     Since Leonatus\' false.   BELARIUS. It shall be so.     Boys, we\'ll go dress our hunt. Fair youth, come in.     Discourse is heavy, fasting; when we have supp\'d,     We\'ll mannerly demand thee of thy story,     So far as thou wilt speak it.   GUIDERIUS. Pray draw near.   ARVIRAGUS. The night to th\' owl and morn to th\' lark less welcome.   IMOGEN. Thanks, sir.   ARVIRAGUS. I pray draw near.                            Exeunt     SCENE VII. Rome. A public place  Enter two ROMAN SENATORS and TRIBUNES    FIRST SENATOR. This is the tenour of the Emperor\'s writ:     That since the common men are now in action     \'Gainst the Pannonians and Dalmatians,     And that the legions now in Gallia are     Full weak to undertake our wars against     The fall\'n-off Britons, that we do incite     The gentry to this business. He creates     Lucius proconsul; and to you, the tribunes,     For this immediate levy, he commands     His absolute commission. Long live Caesar!   TRIBUNE. Is Lucius general of the forces?   SECOND SENATOR. Ay.   TRIBUNE. Remaining now in Gallia?   FIRST SENATOR. With those legions     Which I have spoke of, whereunto your levy     Must be supplyant. The words of your commission     Will tie you to the numbers and the time       Of their dispatch.   TRIBUNE. We will discharge our duty.                    Exeunt     ACT IV. SCENE I. Wales. Near the cave of BELARIUS  Enter CLOTEN alone    CLOTEN. I am near to th\' place where they should meet, if Pisanio     have mapp\'d it truly. How fit his garments serve me! Why should     his mistress, who was made by him that made the tailor, not be     fit too? The rather- saving reverence of the word- for \'tis said     a woman\'s fitness comes by fits. Therein I must play the workman.     I dare speak it to myself, for it is not vain-glory for a man and     his glass to confer in his own chamber- I mean, the lines of my     body are as well drawn as his; no less young, more strong, not     beneath him in fortunes, beyond him in the advantage of the time,     above him in birth, alike conversant in general services, and     more remarkable in single oppositions. Yet this imperceiverant     thing loves him in my despite. What mortality is! Posthumus, thy     head, which now is growing upon thy shoulders, shall within this     hour be off; thy mistress enforced; thy garments cut to pieces     before her face; and all this done, spurn her home to her father,     who may, haply, be a little angry for my so rough usage; but my     mother, having power of his testiness, shall turn all into my       commendations. My horse is tied up safe. Out, sword, and to a     sore purpose! Fortune, put them into my hand. This is the very     description of their meeting-place; and the fellow dares not     deceive me.                                             Exit     SCENE II. Wales. Before the cave of BELARIUS  Enter, from the cave, BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, ARVIRAGUS, and IMOGEN    BELARIUS. [To IMOGEN] You are not well. Remain here in the cave;     We\'ll come to you after hunting.   ARVIRAGUS. [To IMOGEN] Brother, stay here.     Are we not brothers?   IMOGEN. So man and man should be;     But clay and clay differs in dignity,     Whose dust is both alike. I am very sick.   GUIDERIUS. Go you to hunting; I\'ll abide with him.   IMOGEN. So sick I am not, yet I am not well;     But not so citizen a wanton as     To seem to die ere sick. So please you, leave me;     Stick to your journal course. The breach of custom     Is breach of all. I am ill, but your being by me     Cannot amend me; society is no comfort     To one not sociable. I am not very sick,     Since I can reason of it. Pray you trust me here.       I\'ll rob none but myself; and let me die,     Stealing so poorly.   GUIDERIUS. I love thee; I have spoke it.     How much the quantity, the weight as much     As I do love my father.   BELARIUS. What? how? how?   ARVIRAGUS. If it be sin to say so, sir, I yoke me     In my good brother\'s fault. I know not why     I love this youth, and I have heard you say     Love\'s reason\'s without reason. The bier at door,     And a demand who is\'t shall die, I\'d say     \'My father, not this youth.\'   BELARIUS. [Aside] O noble strain!     O worthiness of nature! breed of greatness!     Cowards father cowards and base things sire base.     Nature hath meal and bran, contempt and grace.     I\'m not their father; yet who this should be     Doth miracle itself, lov\'d before me.-     \'Tis the ninth hour o\' th\' morn.   ARVIRAGUS. Brother, farewell.     IMOGEN. I wish ye sport.   ARVIRAGUS. Your health. [To BELARIUS] So please you, sir.   IMOGEN. [Aside] These are kind creatures. Gods, what lies I have       heard!     Our courtiers say all\'s savage but at court.     Experience, O, thou disprov\'st report!     Th\' imperious seas breed monsters; for the dish,     Poor tributary rivers as sweet fish.     I am sick still; heart-sick. Pisanio,     I\'ll now taste of thy drug.                  [Swallows some]   GUIDERIUS. I could not stir him.     He said he was gentle, but unfortunate;     Dishonestly afflicted, but yet honest.   ARVIRAGUS. Thus did he answer me; yet said hereafter     I might know more.   BELARIUS. To th\' field, to th\' field!     We\'ll leave you for this time. Go in and rest.   ARVIRAGUS. We\'ll not be long away.   BELARIUS. Pray be not sick,     For you must be our huswife.     IMOGEN. Well, or ill,     I am bound to you.   BELARIUS. And shalt be ever.         Exit IMOGEN into the cave     This youth, howe\'er distress\'d, appears he hath had     Good ancestors.   ARVIRAGUS. How angel-like he sings!   GUIDERIUS. But his neat cookery! He cut our roots in characters,     And sauc\'d our broths as Juno had been sick,     And he her dieter.   ARVIRAGUS. Nobly he yokes     A smiling with a sigh, as if the sigh     Was that it was for not being such a smile;     The smile mocking the sigh that it would fly     From so divine a temple to commix     With winds that sailors rail at.   GUIDERIUS. I do note     That grief and patience, rooted in him both,     Mingle their spurs together.   ARVIRAGUS. Grow patience!     And let the stinking elder, grief, untwine       His perishing root with the increasing vine!   BELARIUS. It is great morning. Come, away! Who\'s there?                        Enter CLOTEN    CLOTEN. I cannot find those runagates; that villain     Hath mock\'d me. I am faint.   BELARIUS. Those runagates?     Means he not us? I partly know him; \'tis     Cloten, the son o\' th\' Queen. I fear some ambush.     I saw him not these many years, and yet     I know \'tis he. We are held as outlaws. Hence!   GUIDERIUS. He is but one; you and my brother search     What companies are near. Pray you away;     Let me alone with him.         Exeunt BELARIUS and ARVIRAGUS   CLOTEN. Soft! What are you     That fly me thus? Some villain mountaineers?     I have heard of such. What slave art thou?   GUIDERIUS. A thing     More slavish did I ne\'er than answering       \'A slave\' without a knock.   CLOTEN. Thou art a robber,     A law-breaker, a villain. Yield thee, thief.   GUIDERIUS. To who? To thee? What art thou? Have not I     An arm as big as thine, a heart as big?     Thy words, I grant, are bigger, for I wear not     My dagger in my mouth. Say what thou art;     Why I should yield to thee.   CLOTEN. Thou villain base,     Know\'st me not by my clothes?   GUIDERIUS. No, nor thy tailor, rascal,     Who is thy grandfather; he made those clothes,     Which, as it seems, make thee.   CLOTEN. Thou precious varlet,     My tailor made them not.   GUIDERIUS. Hence, then, and thank     The man that gave them thee. Thou art some fool;     I am loath to beat thee.   CLOTEN. Thou injurious thief,     Hear but my name, and tremble.     GUIDERIUS. What\'s thy name?   CLOTEN. Cloten, thou villain.   GUIDERIUS. Cloten, thou double villain, be thy name,     I cannot tremble at it. Were it toad, or adder, spider,     \'Twould move me sooner.   CLOTEN. To thy further fear,     Nay, to thy mere confusion, thou shalt know     I am son to th\' Queen.   GUIDERIUS. I\'m sorry for\'t; not seeming     So worthy as thy birth.   CLOTEN. Art not afeard?   GUIDERIUS. Those that I reverence, those I fear- the wise:     At fools I laugh, not fear them.   CLOTEN. Die the death.     When I have slain thee with my proper hand,     I\'ll follow those that even now fled hence,     And on the gates of Lud\'s Town set your heads.     Yield, rustic mountaineer.                  Exeunt, fighting                  Re-enter BELARIUS and ARVIRAGUS      BELARIUS. No company\'s abroad.   ARVIRAGUS. None in the world; you did mistake him, sure.   BELARIUS. I cannot tell; long is it since I saw him,     But time hath nothing blurr\'d those lines of favour     Which then he wore; the snatches in his voice,     And burst of speaking, were as his. I am absolute     \'Twas very Cloten.   ARVIRAGUS. In this place we left them.     I wish my brother make good time with him,     You say he is so fell.   BELARIUS. Being scarce made up,     I mean to man, he had not apprehension     Or roaring terrors; for defect of judgment     Is oft the cease of fear.                Re-enter GUIDERIUS with CLOTEN\'S head      But, see, thy brother.   GUIDERIUS. This Cloten was a fool, an empty purse;       There was no money in\'t. Not Hercules     Could have knock\'d out his brains, for he had none;     Yet I not doing this, the fool had borne     My head as I do his.   BELARIUS. What hast thou done?   GUIDERIUS. I am perfect what: cut off one Cloten\'s head,     Son to the Queen, after his own report;     Who call\'d me traitor, mountaineer, and swore     With his own single hand he\'d take us in,     Displace our heads where- thank the gods!- they grow,     And set them on Lud\'s Town.   BELARIUS. We are all undone.   GUIDERIUS. Why, worthy father, what have we to lose     But that he swore to take, our lives? The law     Protects not us; then why should we be tender     To let an arrogant piece of flesh threat us,     Play judge and executioner all himself,     For we do fear the law? What company     Discover you abroad?   BELARIUS. No single soul       Can we set eye on, but in an safe reason     He must have some attendants. Though his humour     Was nothing but mutation- ay, and that     From one bad thing to worse- not frenzy, not     Absolute madness could so far have rav\'d,     To bring him here alone. Although perhaps     It may be heard at court that such as we     Cave here, hunt here, are outlaws, and in time     May make some stronger head- the which he hearing,     As it is like him, might break out and swear     He\'d fetch us in; yet is\'t not probable     To come alone, either he so undertaking     Or they so suffering. Then on good ground we fear,     If we do fear this body hath a tail     More perilous than the head.   ARVIRAGUS. Let ordinance     Come as the gods foresay it. Howsoe\'er,     My brother hath done well.   BELARIUS. I had no mind     To hunt this day; the boy Fidele\'s sickness       Did make my way long forth.   GUIDERIUS. With his own sword,     Which he did wave against my throat, I have ta\'en     His head from him. I\'ll throw\'t into the creek     Behind our rock, and let it to the sea     And tell the fishes he\'s the Queen\'s son, Cloten.     That\'s all I reck.                                      Exit   BELARIUS. I fear\'twill be reveng\'d.     Would, Polydore, thou hadst not done\'t! though valour     Becomes thee well enough.   ARVIRAGUS. Would I had done\'t,     So the revenge alone pursu\'d me! Polydore,     I love thee brotherly, but envy much     Thou hast robb\'d me of this deed. I would revenges,     That possible strength might meet, would seek us through,     And put us to our answer.   BELARIUS. Well, \'tis done.     We\'ll hunt no more to-day, nor seek for danger     Where there\'s no profit. I prithee to our rock.     You and Fidele play the cooks; I\'ll stay       Till hasty Polydore return, and bring him     To dinner presently.   ARVIRAGUS. Poor sick Fidele!     I\'ll willingly to him; to gain his colour     I\'d let a parish of such Cloten\'s blood,     And praise myself for charity.                          Exit   BELARIUS. O thou goddess,     Thou divine Nature, thou thyself thou blazon\'st     In these two princely boys! They are as gentle     As zephyrs blowing below the violet,     Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough,     Their royal blood enchaf\'d, as the rud\'st wind     That by the top doth take the mountain pine     And make him stoop to th\' vale. \'Tis wonder     That an invisible instinct should frame them     To royalty unlearn\'d, honour untaught,     Civility not seen from other, valour     That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop     As if it had been sow\'d. Yet still it\'s strange     What Cloten\'s being here to us portends,       Or what his death will bring us.                      Re-enter GUIDERIUS    GUIDERIUS. Where\'s my brother?     I have sent Cloten\'s clotpoll down the stream,     In embassy to his mother; his body\'s hostage     For his return.                               [Solemn music]   BELARIUS. My ingenious instrument!     Hark, Polydore, it sounds. But what occasion     Hath Cadwal now to give it motion? Hark!   GUIDERIUS. Is he at home?   BELARIUS. He went hence even now.   GUIDERIUS. What does he mean? Since death of my dear\'st mother     It did not speak before. All solemn things     Should answer solemn accidents. The matter?     Triumphs for nothing and lamenting toys     Is jollity for apes and grief for boys.     Is Cadwal mad?           Re-enter ARVIRAGUS, with IMOGEN as dead, bearing                          her in his arms    BELARIUS. Look, here he comes,     And brings the dire occasion in his arms     Of what we blame him for!   ARVIRAGUS. The bird is dead     That we have made so much on. I had rather     Have skipp\'d from sixteen years of age to sixty,     To have turn\'d my leaping time into a crutch,     Than have seen this.   GUIDERIUS. O sweetest, fairest lily!     My brother wears thee not the one half so well     As when thou grew\'st thyself.   BELARIUS. O melancholy!     Who ever yet could sound thy bottom? find     The ooze to show what coast thy sluggish crare     Might\'st easiliest harbour in? Thou blessed thing!     Jove knows what man thou mightst have made; but I,     Thou diedst, a most rare boy, of melancholy.       How found you him?   ARVIRAGUS. Stark, as you see;     Thus smiling, as some fly had tickled slumber,     Not as death\'s dart, being laugh\'d at; his right cheek     Reposing on a cushion.   GUIDERIUS. Where?   ARVIRAGUS. O\' th\' floor;     His arms thus leagu\'d. I thought he slept, and put     My clouted brogues from off my feet, whose rudeness     Answer\'d my steps too loud.   GUIDERIUS. Why, he but sleeps.     If he be gone he\'ll make his grave a bed;     With female fairies will his tomb be haunted,     And worms will not come to thee.   ARVIRAGUS. With fairest flowers,     Whilst summer lasts and I live here, Fidele,     I\'ll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack     The flower that\'s like thy face, pale primrose; nor     The azur\'d hare-bell, like thy veins; no, nor     The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,       Out-sweet\'ned not thy breath. The ruddock would,     With charitable bill- O bill, sore shaming     Those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie     Without a monument!- bring thee all this;     Yea, and furr\'d moss besides, when flow\'rs are none,     To winter-ground thy corse-   GUIDERIUS. Prithee have done,     And do not play in wench-like words with that     Which is so serious. Let us bury him,     And not protract with admiration what     Is now due debt. To th\' grave.   ARVIRAGUS. Say, where shall\'s lay him?   GUIDERIUS. By good Euriphile, our mother.   ARVIRAGUS. Be\'t so;     And let us, Polydore, though now our voices     Have got the mannish crack, sing him to th\' ground,     As once to our mother; use like note and words,     Save that Euriphile must be Fidele.   GUIDERIUS. Cadwal,     I cannot sing. I\'ll weep, and word it with thee;       For notes of sorrow out of tune are worse     Than priests and fanes that lie.   ARVIRAGUS. We\'ll speak it, then.   BELARIUS. Great griefs, I see, med\'cine the less, for Cloten     Is quite forgot. He was a queen\'s son, boys;     And though he came our enemy, remember     He was paid for that. Though mean and mighty rotting     Together have one dust, yet reverence-     That angel of the world- doth make distinction     Of place \'tween high and low. Our foe was princely;     And though you took his life, as being our foe,     Yet bury him as a prince.   GUIDERIUS. Pray you fetch him hither.     Thersites\' body is as good as Ajax\',     When neither are alive.   ARVIRAGUS. If you\'ll go fetch him,     We\'ll say our song the whilst. Brother, begin.                                                    Exit BELARIUS   GUIDERIUS. Nay, Cadwal, we must lay his head to th\' East;     My father hath a reason for\'t.     ARVIRAGUS. \'Tis true.   GUIDERIUS. Come on, then, and remove him.   ARVIRAGUS. So. Begin.                        SONG    GUIDERIUS. Fear no more the heat o\' th\' sun                Nor the furious winter\'s rages;              Thou thy worldly task hast done,                Home art gone, and ta\'en thy wages.              Golden lads and girls all must,              As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.    ARVIRAGUS. Fear no more the frown o\' th\' great;                Thou art past the tyrant\'s stroke.              Care no more to clothe and eat;                To thee the reed is as the oak.              The sceptre, learning, physic, must              All follow this and come to dust.      GUIDERIUS. Fear no more the lightning flash,   ARVIRAGUS.   Nor th\' all-dreaded thunder-stone;   GUIDERIUS. Fear not slander, censure rash;   ARVIRAGUS.   Thou hast finish\'d joy and moan.   BOTH.      All lovers young, all lovers must              Consign to thee and come to dust.    GUIDERIUS. No exorciser harm thee!   ARVIRAGUS. Nor no witchcraft charm thee!   GUIDERIUS. Ghost unlaid forbear thee!   ARVIRAGUS. Nothing ill come near thee!   BOTH.      Quiet consummation have,              And renowned be thy grave!           Re-enter BELARIUS with the body of CLOTEN    GUIDERIUS. We have done our obsequies. Come, lay him down.   BELARIUS. Here\'s a few flowers; but \'bout midnight, more.     The herbs that have on them cold dew o\' th\' night     Are strewings fit\'st for graves. Upon their faces.       You were as flow\'rs, now wither\'d. Even so     These herblets shall which we upon you strew.     Come on, away. Apart upon our knees.     The ground that gave them first has them again.     Their pleasures here are past, so is their pain.                                            Exeunt all but IMOGEN   IMOGEN. [Awaking] Yes, sir, to Milford Haven. Which is the way?     I thank you. By yond bush? Pray, how far thither?     \'Ods pittikins! can it be six mile yet?     I have gone all night. Faith, I\'ll lie down and sleep.     But, soft! no bedfellow. O gods and goddesses!                                                [Seeing the body]     These flow\'rs are like the pleasures of the world;     This bloody man, the care on\'t. I hope I dream;     For so I thought I was a cave-keeper,     And cook to honest creatures. But \'tis not so;     \'Twas but a bolt of nothing, shot at nothing,     Which the brain makes of fumes. Our very eyes     Are sometimes, like our judgments, blind. Good faith,     I tremble still with fear; but if there be       Yet left in heaven as small a drop of pity     As a wren\'s eye, fear\'d gods, a part of it!     The dream\'s here still. Even when I wake it is     Without me, as within me; not imagin\'d, felt.     A headless man? The garments of Posthumus?     I know the shape of\'s leg; this is his hand,     His foot Mercurial, his Martial thigh,     The brawns of Hercules; but his Jovial face-     Murder in heaven! How! \'Tis gone. Pisanio,     All curses madded Hecuba gave the Greeks,     And mine to boot, be darted on thee! Thou,     Conspir\'d with that irregulous devil, Cloten,     Hath here cut off my lord. To write and read     Be henceforth treacherous! Damn\'d Pisanio     Hath with his forged letters- damn\'d Pisanio-     From this most bravest vessel of the world     Struck the main-top. O Posthumus! alas,     Where is thy head? Where\'s that? Ay me! where\'s that?     Pisanio might have kill\'d thee at the heart,     And left this head on. How should this be? Pisanio?       \'Tis he and Cloten; malice and lucre in them     Have laid this woe here. O, \'tis pregnant, pregnant!     The drug he gave me, which he said was precious     And cordial to me, have I not found it     Murd\'rous to th\' senses? That confirms it home.     This is Pisanio\'s deed, and Cloten. O!     Give colour to my pale cheek with thy blood,     That we the horrider may seem to those     Which chance to find us. O, my lord, my lord!                                     [Falls fainting on the body]             Enter LUCIUS, CAPTAINS, and a SOOTHSAYER    CAPTAIN. To them the legions garrison\'d in Gallia,     After your will, have cross\'d the sea, attending     You here at Milford Haven; with your ships,     They are in readiness.   LUCIUS. But what from Rome?   CAPTAIN. The Senate hath stirr\'d up the confiners     And gentlemen of Italy, most willing spirits,       That promise noble service; and they come     Under the conduct of bold Iachimo,     Sienna\'s brother.   LUCIUS. When expect you them?   CAPTAIN. With the next benefit o\' th\' wind.   LUCIUS. This forwardness     Makes our hopes fair. Command our present numbers     Be muster\'d; bid the captains look to\'t. Now, sir,     What have you dream\'d of late of this war\'s purpose?   SOOTHSAYER. Last night the very gods show\'d me a vision-     I fast and pray\'d for their intelligence- thus:     I saw Jove\'s bird, the Roman eagle, wing\'d     From the spongy south to this part of the west,     There vanish\'d in the sunbeams; which portends,     Unless my sins abuse my divination,     Success to th\' Roman host.   LUCIUS. Dream often so,     And never false. Soft, ho! what trunk is here     Without his top? The ruin speaks that sometime     It was a worthy building. How? a page?       Or dead or sleeping on him? But dead, rather;     For nature doth abhor to make his bed     With the defunct, or sleep upon the dead.     Let\'s see the boy\'s face.   CAPTAIN. He\'s alive, my lord.   LUCIUS. He\'ll then instruct us of this body. Young one,     Inform us of thy fortunes; for it seems     They crave to be demanded. Who is this     Thou mak\'st thy bloody pillow? Or who was he     That, otherwise than noble nature did,     Hath alter\'d that good picture? What\'s thy interest     In this sad wreck? How came\'t? Who is\'t? What art thou?   IMOGEN. I am nothing; or if not,     Nothing to be were better. This was my master,     A very valiant Briton and a good,     That here by mountaineers lies slain. Alas!     There is no more such masters. I may wander     From east to occident; cry out for service;     Try many, all good; serve truly; never     Find such another master.     LUCIUS. \'Lack, good youth!     Thou mov\'st no less with thy complaining than     Thy master in bleeding. Say his name, good friend.   IMOGEN. Richard du Champ. [Aside] If I do lie, and do     No harm by it, though the gods hear, I hope     They\'ll pardon it.- Say you, sir?   LUCIUS. Thy name?   IMOGEN. Fidele, sir.   LUCIUS. Thou dost approve thyself the very same;     Thy name well fits thy faith, thy faith thy name.     Wilt take thy chance with me? I will not say     Thou shalt be so well master\'d; but, be sure,     No less belov\'d. The Roman Emperor\'s letters,     Sent by a consul to me, should not sooner     Than thine own worth prefer thee. Go with me.   IMOGEN. I\'ll follow, sir. But first, an\'t please the gods,     I\'ll hide my master from the flies, as deep     As these poor pickaxes can dig; and when     With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha\' strew\'d his grave,     And on it said a century of prayers,       Such as I can, twice o\'er, I\'ll weep and sigh;     And leaving so his service, follow you,     So please you entertain me.   LUCIUS. Ay, good youth;     And rather father thee than master thee.     My friends,     The boy hath taught us manly duties; let us     Find out the prettiest daisied plot we can,     And make him with our pikes and partisans     A grave. Come, arm him. Boy, he is preferr\'d     By thee to us; and he shall be interr\'d     As soldiers can. Be cheerful; wipe thine eyes.     Some falls are means the happier to arise.            Exeunt     SCENE III. Britain. CYMBELINE\'S palace  Enter CYMBELINE, LORDS, PISANIO, and attendants    CYMBELINE. Again! and bring me word how \'tis with her.                                                Exit an attendant     A fever with the absence of her son;     A madness, of which her life\'s in danger. Heavens,     How deeply you at once do touch me! Imogen,     The great part of my comfort, gone; my queen     Upon a desperate bed, and in a time     When fearful wars point at me; her son gone,     So needful for this present. It strikes me past     The hope of comfort. But for thee, fellow,     Who needs must know of her departure and     Dost seem so ignorant, we\'ll enforce it from thee     By a sharp torture.   PISANIO. Sir, my life is yours;     I humbly set it at your will; but for my mistress,     I nothing know where she remains, why gone,     Nor when she purposes return. Beseech your Highness,       Hold me your loyal servant.   LORD. Good my liege,     The day that she was missing he was here.     I dare be bound he\'s true and shall perform     All parts of his subjection loyally. For Cloten,     There wants no diligence in seeking him,     And will no doubt be found.   CYMBELINE. The time is troublesome.     [To PISANIO] We\'ll slip you for a season; but our jealousy     Does yet depend.   LORD. So please your Majesty,     The Roman legions, all from Gallia drawn,     Are landed on your coast, with a supply     Of Roman gentlemen by the Senate sent.   CYMBELINE. Now for the counsel of my son and queen!     I am amaz\'d with matter.   LORD. Good my liege,     Your preparation can affront no less     Than what you hear of. Come more, for more you\'re ready.     The want is but to put those pow\'rs in motion       That long to move.   CYMBELINE. I thank you. Let\'s withdraw,     And meet the time as it seeks us. We fear not     What can from Italy annoy us; but     We grieve at chances here. Away!      Exeunt all but PISANIO   PISANIO. I heard no letter from my master since     I wrote him Imogen was slain. \'Tis strange.     Nor hear I from my mistress, who did promise     To yield me often tidings. Neither know     What is betid to Cloten, but remain     Perplex\'d in all. The heavens still must work.     Wherein I am false I am honest; not true, to be true.     These present wars shall find I love my country,     Even to the note o\' th\' King, or I\'ll fall in them.     All other doubts, by time let them be clear\'d:     Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer\'d.      Exit     SCENE IV. Wales. Before the cave of BELARIUS  Enter BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, and ARVIRAGUS    GUIDERIUS. The noise is round about us.   BELARIUS. Let us from it.   ARVIRAGUS. What pleasure, sir, find we in life, to lock it     From action and adventure?   GUIDERIUS. Nay, what hope     Have we in hiding us? This way the Romans     Must or for Britons slay us, or receive us     For barbarous and unnatural revolts     During their use, and slay us after.   BELARIUS. Sons,     We\'ll higher to the mountains; there secure us.     To the King\'s party there\'s no going. Newness     Of Cloten\'s death- we being not known, not muster\'d     Among the bands-may drive us to a render     Where we have liv\'d, and so extort from\'s that     Which we have done, whose answer would be death,     Drawn on with torture.     GUIDERIUS. This is, sir, a doubt     In such a time nothing becoming you     Nor satisfying us.   ARVIRAGUS. It is not likely     That when they hear the Roman horses neigh,     Behold their quarter\'d fires, have both their eyes     And ears so cloy\'d importantly as now,     That they will waste their time upon our note,     To know from whence we are.   BELARIUS. O, I am known     Of many in the army. Many years,     Though Cloten then but young, you see, not wore him     From my remembrance. And, besides, the King     Hath not deserv\'d my service nor your loves,     Who find in my exile the want of breeding,     The certainty of this hard life; aye hopeless     To have the courtesy your cradle promis\'d,     But to be still hot summer\'s tanlings and     The shrinking slaves of winter.   GUIDERIUS. Than be so,       Better to cease to be. Pray, sir, to th\' army.     I and my brother are not known; yourself     So out of thought, and thereto so o\'ergrown,     Cannot be questioned.   ARVIRAGUS. By this sun that shines,     I\'ll thither. What thing is\'t that I never     Did see man die! scarce ever look\'d on blood     But that of coward hares, hot goats, and venison!     Never bestrid a horse, save one that had     A rider like myself, who ne\'er wore rowel     Nor iron on his heel! I am asham\'d     To look upon the holy sun, to have     The benefit of his blest beams, remaining     So long a poor unknown.   GUIDERIUS. By heavens, I\'ll go!     If you will bless me, sir, and give me leave,     I\'ll take the better care; but if you will not,     The hazard therefore due fall on me by     The hands of Romans!   ARVIRAGUS. So say I. Amen.     BELARIUS. No reason I, since of your lives you set     So slight a valuation, should reserve     My crack\'d one to more care. Have with you, boys!     If in your country wars you chance to die,     That is my bed too, lads, and there I\'ll lie.     Lead, lead. [Aside] The time seems long; their blood thinks scorn     Till it fly out and show them princes born.           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. Britain. The Roman camp  Enter POSTHUMUS alone, with a bloody handkerchief    POSTHUMUS. Yea, bloody cloth, I\'ll keep thee; for I wish\'d     Thou shouldst be colour\'d thus. You married ones,     If each of you should take this course, how many     Must murder wives much better than themselves     For wrying but a little! O Pisanio!     Every good servant does not all commands;     No bond but to do just ones. Gods! if you     Should have ta\'en vengeance on my faults, I never     Had liv\'d to put on this; so had you saved     The noble Imogen to repent, and struck     Me, wretch more worth your vengeance. But alack,     You snatch some hence for little faults; that\'s love,     To have them fall no more. You some permit     To second ills with ills, each elder worse,     And make them dread it, to the doer\'s thrift.     But Imogen is your own. Do your best wills,     And make me blest to obey. I am brought hither       Among th\' Italian gentry, and to fight     Against my lady\'s kingdom. \'Tis enough     That, Britain, I have kill\'d thy mistress; peace!     I\'ll give no wound to thee. Therefore, good heavens,     Hear patiently my purpose. I\'ll disrobe me     Of these Italian weeds, and suit myself     As does a Britain peasant. So I\'ll fight     Against the part I come with; so I\'ll die     For thee, O Imogen, even for whom my life     Is every breath a death. And thus unknown,     Pitied nor hated, to the face of peril     Myself I\'ll dedicate. Let me make men know     More valour in me than my habits show.     Gods, put the strength o\' th\' Leonati in me!     To shame the guise o\' th\' world, I will begin     The fashion- less without and more within.              Exit     SCENE II. Britain. A field of battle between the British and Roman camps  Enter LUCIUS, IACHIMO, and the Roman army at one door, and the British army at another, LEONATUS POSTHUMUS following like a poor soldier. They march over and go out.  Alarums.  Then enter again, in skirmish, IACHIMO and POSTHUMUS.  He vanquisheth and disarmeth IACHIMO, and then leaves him    IACHIMO. The heaviness and guilt within my bosom     Takes off my manhood. I have belied a lady,     The Princess of this country, and the air on\'t     Revengingly enfeebles me; or could this carl,     A very drudge of nature\'s, have subdu\'d me     In my profession? Knighthoods and honours borne     As I wear mine are titles but of scorn.     If that thy gentry, Britain, go before     This lout as he exceeds our lords, the odds     Is that we scarce are men, and you are gods.            Exit      The battle continues; the BRITONS fly; CYMBELINE is taken.     Then enter to his rescue BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, and ARVIRAGUS      BELARIUS. Stand, stand! We have th\' advantage of the ground;     The lane is guarded; nothing routs us but     The villainy of our fears.   GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS. Stand, stand, and fight!      Re-enter POSTHUMUS, and seconds the Britons; they rescue     CYMBELINE, and exeunt. Then re-enter LUCIUS and IACHIMO,                          with IMOGEN    LUCIUS. Away, boy, from the troops, and save thyself;     For friends kill friends, and the disorder\'s such     As war were hoodwink\'d.   IACHIMO. \'Tis their fresh supplies.   LUCIUS. It is a day turn\'d strangely. Or betimes     Let\'s reinforce or fly.                               Exeunt     SCENE III. Another part of the field  Enter POSTHUMUS and a Britain LORD    LORD. Cam\'st thou from where they made the stand?   POSTHUMUS. I did:     Though you, it seems, come from the fliers.   LORD. I did.   POSTHUMUS. No blame be to you, sir, for all was lost,     But that the heavens fought. The King himself     Of his wings destitute, the army broken,     And but the backs of Britons seen, an flying,     Through a strait lane- the enemy, full-hearted,     Lolling the tongue with slaught\'ring, having work     More plentiful than tools to do\'t, struck down     Some mortally, some slightly touch\'d, some falling     Merely through fear, that the strait pass was damm\'d     With dead men hurt behind, and cowards living     To die with length\'ned shame.   LORD. Where was this lane?   POSTHUMUS. Close by the battle, ditch\'d, and wall\'d with turf,       Which gave advantage to an ancient soldier-     An honest one, I warrant, who deserv\'d     So long a breeding as his white beard came to,     In doing this for\'s country. Athwart the lane     He, with two striplings- lads more like to run     The country base than to commit such slaughter;     With faces fit for masks, or rather fairer     Than those for preservation cas\'d or shame-     Made good the passage, cried to those that fled     \'Our Britain\'s harts die flying, not our men.     To darkness fleet souls that fly backwards! Stand;     Or we are Romans and will give you that,     Like beasts, which you shun beastly, and may save     But to look back in frown. Stand, stand!\' These three,     Three thousand confident, in act as many-     For three performers are the file when all     The rest do nothing- with this word \'Stand, stand!\'     Accommodated by the place, more charming     With their own nobleness, which could have turn\'d     A distaff to a lance, gilded pale looks,       Part shame, part spirit renew\'d; that some turn\'d coward     But by example- O, a sin in war     Damn\'d in the first beginners!- gan to look     The way that they did and to grin like lions     Upon the pikes o\' th\' hunters. Then began     A stop i\' th\' chaser, a retire; anon     A rout, confusion thick. Forthwith they fly,     Chickens, the way which they stoop\'d eagles; slaves,     The strides they victors made; and now our cowards,     Like fragments in hard voyages, became     The life o\' th\' need. Having found the back-door open     Of the unguarded hearts, heavens, how they wound!     Some slain before, some dying, some their friends     O\'erborne i\' th\' former wave. Ten chas\'d by one     Are now each one the slaughterman of twenty.     Those that would die or ere resist are grown     The mortal bugs o\' th\' field.   LORD. This was strange chance:     A narrow lane, an old man, and two boys.   POSTHUMUS. Nay, do not wonder at it; you are made       Rather to wonder at the things you hear     Than to work any. Will you rhyme upon\'t,     And vent it for a mock\'ry? Here is one:     \'Two boys, an old man (twice a boy), a lane,     Preserv\'d the Britons, was the Romans\' bane.\'   LORD. Nay, be not angry, sir.   POSTHUMUS. \'Lack, to what end?     Who dares not stand his foe I\'ll be his friend;     For if he\'ll do as he is made to do,     I know he\'ll quickly fly my friendship too.     You have put me into rhyme.   LORD. Farewell; you\'re angry.                             Exit   POSTHUMUS. Still going? This is a lord! O noble misery,     To be i\' th\' field and ask \'What news?\' of me!     To-day how many would have given their honours     To have sav\'d their carcasses! took heel to do\'t,     And yet died too! I, in mine own woe charm\'d,     Could not find death where I did hear him groan,     Nor feel him where he struck. Being an ugly monster,     \'Tis strange he hides him in fresh cups, soft beds,       Sweet words; or hath moe ministers than we     That draw his knives i\' th\' war. Well, I will find him;     For being now a favourer to the Briton,     No more a Briton, I have resum\'d again     The part I came in. Fight I will no more,     But yield me to the veriest hind that shall     Once touch my shoulder. Great the slaughter is     Here made by th\' Roman; great the answer be     Britons must take. For me, my ransom\'s death;     On either side I come to spend my breath,     Which neither here I\'ll keep nor bear again,     But end it by some means for Imogen.              Enter two BRITISH CAPTAINS and soldiers    FIRST CAPTAIN. Great Jupiter be prais\'d! Lucius is taken.     \'Tis thought the old man and his sons were angels.   SECOND CAPTAIN. There was a fourth man, in a silly habit,     That gave th\' affront with them.   FIRST CAPTAIN. So \'tis reported;       But none of \'em can be found. Stand! who\'s there?   POSTHUMUS. A Roman,     Who had not now been drooping here if seconds     Had answer\'d him.   SECOND CAPTAIN. Lay hands on him; a dog!     A leg of Rome shall not return to tell     What crows have peck\'d them here. He brags his service,     As if he were of note. Bring him to th\' King.     Enter CYMBELINE, BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, ARVIRAGUS, PISANIO, and Roman    captives. The CAPTAINS present POSTHUMUS to CYMBELINE, who delivers             him over to a gaoler. Exeunt omnes     SCENE IV. Britain. A prison  Enter POSTHUMUS and two GAOLERS    FIRST GAOLER. You shall not now be stol\'n, you have locks upon you;     So graze as you find pasture.   SECOND GAOLER. Ay, or a stomach.                Exeunt GAOLERS   POSTHUMUS. Most welcome, bondage! for thou art a way,     I think, to liberty. Yet am I better     Than one that\'s sick o\' th\' gout, since he had rather     Groan so in perpetuity than be cur\'d     By th\' sure physician death, who is the key     T\' unbar these locks. My conscience, thou art fetter\'d     More than my shanks and wrists; you good gods, give me     The penitent instrument to pick that bolt,     Then, free for ever! Is\'t enough I am sorry?     So children temporal fathers do appease;     Gods are more full of mercy. Must I repent,     I cannot do it better than in gyves,     Desir\'d more than constrain\'d. To satisfy,     If of my freedom \'tis the main part, take       No stricter render of me than my all.     I know you are more clement than vile men,     Who of their broken debtors take a third,     A sixth, a tenth, letting them thrive again     On their abatement; that\'s not my desire.     For Imogen\'s dear life take mine; and though     \'Tis not so dear, yet \'tis a life; you coin\'d it.     \'Tween man and man they weigh not every stamp;     Though light, take pieces for the figure\'s sake;     You rather mine, being yours. And so, great pow\'rs,     If you will take this audit, take this life,     And cancel these cold bonds. O Imogen!     I\'ll speak to thee in silence.                      [Sleeps]          Solemn music. Enter, as in an apparition, SICILIUS         LEONATUS, father to POSTHUMUS, an old man attired          like a warrior; leading in his hand an ancient           matron, his WIFE, and mother to POSTHUMUS, with         music before them. Then, after other music, follows            the two young LEONATI, brothers to POSTHUMUS,                 with wounds, as they died in the wars.           They circle POSTHUMUS round as he lies sleeping    SICILIUS. No more, thou thunder-master, show               Thy spite on mortal flies.             With Mars fall out, with Juno chide,               That thy adulteries                 Rates and revenges.             Hath my poor boy done aught but well,               Whose face I never saw?             I died whilst in the womb he stay\'d               Attending nature\'s law;             Whose father then, as men report               Thou orphans\' father art,             Thou shouldst have been, and shielded him               From this earth-vexing smart.    MOTHER.   Lucina lent not me her aid,               But took me in my throes,             That from me was Posthumus ripp\'d,                 Came crying \'mongst his foes,                 A thing of pity.    SICILIUS. Great Nature like his ancestry               Moulded the stuff so fair             That he deserv\'d the praise o\' th\' world               As great Sicilius\' heir.    FIRST BROTHER. When once he was mature for man,               In Britain where was he             That could stand up his parallel,               Or fruitful object be             In eye of Imogen, that best               Could deem his dignity?    MOTHER.   With marriage wherefore was he mock\'d,               To be exil\'d and thrown             From Leonati seat and cast             From her his dearest one,               Sweet Imogen?      SICILIUS. Why did you suffer Iachimo,               Slight thing of Italy,             To taint his nobler heart and brain               With needless jealousy,             And to become the geck and scorn               O\' th\' other\'s villainy?    SECOND BROTHER. For this from stiller seats we came,               Our parents and us twain,             That, striking in our country\'s cause,               Fell bravely and were slain,             Our fealty and Tenantius\' right               With honour to maintain.    FIRST BROTHER. Like hardiment Posthumus hath               To Cymbeline perform\'d.             Then, Jupiter, thou king of gods,               Why hast thou thus adjourn\'d             The graces for his merits due,                 Being all to dolours turn\'d?    SICILIUS. Thy crystal window ope; look out;               No longer exercise             Upon a valiant race thy harsh               And potent injuries.    MOTHER.   Since, Jupiter, our son is good,               Take off his miseries.    SICILIUS. Peep through thy marble mansion. Help!               Or we poor ghosts will cry             To th\' shining synod of the rest               Against thy deity.    BROTHERS. Help, Jupiter! or we appeal,               And from thy justice fly.         JUPITER descends-in thunder and lightning, sitting        upon an eagle. He throws a thunderbolt. The GHOSTS                        fall on their knees    JUPITER. No more, you petty spirits of region low,     Offend our hearing; hush! How dare you ghosts     Accuse the Thunderer whose bolt, you know,     Sky-planted, batters all rebelling coasts?     Poor shadows of Elysium, hence and rest     Upon your never-withering banks of flow\'rs.     Be not with mortal accidents opprest:     No care of yours it is; you know \'tis ours.     Whom best I love I cross; to make my gift,     The more delay\'d, delighted. Be content;     Your low-laid son our godhead will uplift;     His comforts thrive, his trials well are spent.     Our Jovial star reign\'d at his birth, and in     Our temple was he married. Rise and fade!     He shall be lord of Lady Imogen,     And happier much by his affliction made.     This tablet lay upon his breast, wherein     Our pleasure his full fortune doth confine;       And so, away; no farther with your din     Express impatience, lest you stir up mine.     Mount, eagle, to my palace crystalline.            [Ascends]   SICILIUS. He came in thunder; his celestial breath     Was sulpherous to smell; the holy eagle     Stoop\'d as to foot us. His ascension is     More sweet than our blest fields. His royal bird     Prunes the immortal wing, and cloys his beak,     As when his god is pleas\'d.   ALL. Thanks, Jupiter!   SICILIUS. The marble pavement closes, he is enter\'d     His radiant roof. Away! and, to be blest,     Let us with care perform his great behest.   [GHOSTS vanish]    POSTHUMUS. [Waking] Sleep, thou has been a grandsire and begot     A father to me; and thou hast created     A mother and two brothers. But, O scorn,     Gone! They went hence so soon as they were born.     And so I am awake. Poor wretches, that depend     On greatness\' favour, dream as I have done;       Wake and find nothing. But, alas, I swerve;     Many dream not to find, neither deserve,     And yet are steep\'d in favours; so am I,     That have this golden chance, and know not why.     What fairies haunt this ground? A book? O rare one!     Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment     Nobler than that it covers. Let thy effects     So follow to be most unlike our courtiers,     As good as promise.      [Reads] \'When as a lion\'s whelp shall, to himself unknown,     without seeking find, and be embrac\'d by a piece of tender air;     and when from a stately cedar shall be lopp\'d branches which,     being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old     stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries,     Britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty.\'      \'Tis still a dream, or else such stuff as madmen     Tongue, and brain not; either both or nothing,     Or senseless speaking, or a speaking such       As sense cannot untie. Be what it is,     The action of my life is like it, which     I\'ll keep, if but for sympathy.                    Re-enter GAOLER    GAOLER. Come, sir, are you ready for death?   POSTHUMUS. Over-roasted rather; ready long ago.   GAOLER. Hanging is the word, sir; if you be ready for that, you are     well cook\'d.   POSTHUMUS. So, if I prove a good repast to the spectators, the dish     pays the shot.   GAOLER. A heavy reckoning for you, sir. But the comfort is, you     shall be called to no more payments, fear no more tavern bills,     which are often the sadness of parting, as the procuring of mirth.     You come in faint for want of meat, depart reeling with too much     drink; sorry that you have paid too much, and sorry that you are     paid too much; purse and brain both empty; the brain the heavier     for being too light, the purse too light, being drawn of     heaviness. O, of this contradiction you shall now be quit. O, the       charity of a penny cord! It sums up thousands in a trice. You     have no true debitor and creditor but it; of what\'s past, is, and     to come, the discharge. Your neck, sir, is pen, book, and     counters; so the acquittance follows.   POSTHUMUS. I am merrier to die than thou art to live.   GAOLER. Indeed, sir, he that sleeps feels not the toothache. But a     man that were to sleep your sleep, and a hangman to help him to     bed, I think he would change places with his officer; for look     you, sir, you know not which way you shall go.   POSTHUMUS. Yes indeed do I, fellow.   GAOLER. Your death has eyes in\'s head, then; I have not seen him so     pictur\'d. You must either be directed by some that take upon them     to know, or to take upon yourself that which I am sure you do not     know, or jump the after-inquiry on your own peril. And how you     shall speed in your journey\'s end, I think you\'ll never return to     tell one.   POSTHUMUS. I tell thee, fellow, there are none want eyes to direct     them the way I am going, but such as wink and will not use them.   GAOLER. What an infinite mock is this, that a man should have the     best use of eyes to see the way of blindness! I am sure hanging\'s       the way of winking.                          Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. Knock off his manacles; bring your prisoner to the King.   POSTHUMUS. Thou bring\'st good news: I am call\'d to be made free.   GAOLER. I\'ll be hang\'d then.   POSTHUMUS. Thou shalt be then freer than a gaoler; no bolts for the     dead.                         Exeunt POSTHUMUS and MESSENGER   GAOLER. Unless a man would marry a gallows and beget young gibbets,     I never saw one so prone. Yet, on my conscience, there are verier     knaves desire to live, for all he be a Roman; and there be some     of them too that die against their wills; so should I, if I were     one. I would we were all of one mind, and one mind good. O, there     were desolation of gaolers and gallowses! I speak against my     present profit, but my wish hath a preferment in\'t.     Exit     SCENE V. Britain. CYMBELINE\'S tent  Enter CYMBELINE, BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, ARVIRAGUS, PISANIO, LORDS, OFFICERS, and attendants    CYMBELINE. Stand by my side, you whom the gods have made     Preservers of my throne. Woe is my heart     That the poor soldier that so richly fought,     Whose rags sham\'d gilded arms, whose naked breast     Stepp\'d before targes of proof, cannot be found.     He shall be happy that can find him, if     Our grace can make him so.   BELARIUS. I never saw     Such noble fury in so poor a thing;     Such precious deeds in one that promis\'d nought     But beggary and poor looks.   CYMBELINE. No tidings of him?   PISANIO. He hath been search\'d among the dead and living,     But no trace of him.   CYMBELINE. To my grief, I am     The heir of his reward; [To BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, and ARVIRAGUS]         which I will add     To you, the liver, heart, and brain, of Britain,     By whom I grant she lives. \'Tis now the time     To ask of whence you are. Report it.   BELARIUS. Sir,     In Cambria are we born, and gentlemen;     Further to boast were neither true nor modest,     Unless I add we are honest.   CYMBELINE. Bow your knees.     Arise my knights o\' th\' battle; I create you     Companions to our person, and will fit you     With dignities becoming your estates.               Enter CORNELIUS and LADIES      There\'s business in these faces. Why so sadly     Greet you our victory? You look like Romans,     And not o\' th\' court of Britain.   CORNELIUS. Hail, great King!     To sour your happiness I must report       The Queen is dead.   CYMBELINE. Who worse than a physician     Would this report become? But I consider     By med\'cine\'life may be prolong\'d, yet death     Will seize the doctor too. How ended she?   CORNELIUS. With horror, madly dying, like her life;     Which, being cruel to the world, concluded     Most cruel to herself. What she confess\'d     I will report, so please you; these her women     Can trip me if I err, who with wet cheeks     Were present when she finish\'d.   CYMBELINE. Prithee say.   CORNELIUS. First, she confess\'d she never lov\'d you; only     Affected greatness got by you, not you;     Married your royalty, was wife to your place;     Abhorr\'d your person.   CYMBELINE. She alone knew this;     And but she spoke it dying, I would not     Believe her lips in opening it. Proceed.   CORNELIUS. Your daughter, whom she bore in hand to love       With such integrity, she did confess     Was as a scorpion to her sight; whose life,     But that her flight prevented it, she had     Ta\'en off by poison.   CYMBELINE. O most delicate fiend!     Who is\'t can read a woman? Is there more?   CORNELIUS. More, sir, and worse. She did confess she had     For you a mortal mineral, which, being took,     Should by the minute feed on life, and ling\'ring,     By inches waste you. In which time she purpos\'d,     By watching, weeping, tendance, kissing, to     O\'ercome you with her show; and in time,     When she had fitted you with her craft, to work     Her son into th\' adoption of the crown;     But failing of her end by his strange absence,     Grew shameless-desperate, open\'d, in despite     Of heaven and men, her purposes, repented     The evils she hatch\'d were not effected; so,     Despairing, died.   CYMBELINE. Heard you all this, her women?     LADY. We did, so please your Highness.   CYMBELINE. Mine eyes     Were not in fault, for she was beautiful;     Mine ears, that heard her flattery; nor my heart     That thought her like her seeming. It had been vicious     To have mistrusted her; yet, O my daughter!     That it was folly in me thou mayst say,     And prove it in thy feeling. Heaven mend all!           Enter LUCIUS, IACHIMO, the SOOTHSAYER, and other       Roman prisoners, guarded; POSTHUMUS behind, and IMOGEN      Thou com\'st not, Caius, now for tribute; that     The Britons have raz\'d out, though with the loss     Of many a bold one, whose kinsmen have made suit     That their good souls may be appeas\'d with slaughter     Of you their captives, which ourself have granted;     So think of your estate.   LUCIUS. Consider, sir, the chance of war. The day     Was yours by accident; had it gone with us,       We should not, when the blood was cool, have threaten\'d     Our prisoners with the sword. But since the gods     Will have it thus, that nothing but our lives     May be call\'d ransom, let it come. Sufficeth     A Roman with a Roman\'s heart can suffer.     Augustus lives to think on\'t; and so much     For my peculiar care. This one thing only     I will entreat: my boy, a Briton born,     Let him be ransom\'d. Never master had     A page so kind, so duteous, diligent,     So tender over his occasions, true,     So feat, so nurse-like; let his virtue join     With my request, which I\'ll make bold your Highness     Cannot deny; he hath done no Briton harm     Though he have serv\'d a Roman. Save him, sir,     And spare no blood beside.   CYMBELINE. I have surely seen him;     His favour is familiar to me. Boy,     Thou hast look\'d thyself into my grace,     And art mine own. I know not why, wherefore       To say \'Live, boy.\' Ne\'er thank thy master. Live;     And ask of Cymbeline what boon thou wilt,     Fitting my bounty and thy state, I\'ll give it;     Yea, though thou do demand a prisoner,     The noblest ta\'en.   IMOGEN. I humbly thank your Highness.   LUCIUS. I do not bid thee beg my life, good lad,     And yet I know thou wilt.   IMOGEN. No, no! Alack,     There\'s other work in hand. I see a thing     Bitter to me as death; your life, good master,     Must shuffle for itself.   LUCIUS. The boy disdains me,     He leaves me, scorns me. Briefly die their joys     That place them on the truth of girls and boys.     Why stands he so perplex\'d?   CYMBELINE. What wouldst thou, boy?     I love thee more and more; think more and more     What\'s best to ask. Know\'st him thou look\'st on? Speak,     Wilt have him live? Is he thy kin? thy friend?     IMOGEN. He is a Roman, no more kin to me     Than I to your Highness; who, being born your vassal,     Am something nearer.   CYMBELINE. Wherefore ey\'st him so?   IMOGEN. I\'ll tell you, sir, in private, if you please     To give me hearing.   CYMBELINE. Ay, with all my heart,     And lend my best attention. What\'s thy name?   IMOGEN. Fidele, sir.   CYMBELINE. Thou\'rt my good youth, my page;     I\'ll be thy master. Walk with me; speak freely.                            [CYMBELINE and IMOGEN converse apart]   BELARIUS. Is not this boy reviv\'d from death?   ARVIRAGUS. One sand another     Not more resembles- that sweet rosy lad     Who died and was Fidele. What think you?   GUIDERIUS. The same dead thing alive.   BELARIUS. Peace, peace! see further. He eyes us not; forbear.     Creatures may be alike; were\'t he, I am sure     He would have spoke to us.     GUIDERIUS. But we saw him dead.   BELARIUS. Be silent; let\'s see further.   PISANIO. [Aside] It is my mistress.     Since she is living, let the time run on     To good or bad.               [CYMBELINE and IMOGEN advance]   CYMBELINE. Come, stand thou by our side;     Make thy demand aloud. [To IACHIMO] Sir, step you forth;     Give answer to this boy, and do it freely,     Or, by our greatness and the grace of it,     Which is our honour, bitter torture shall     Winnow the truth from falsehood. On, speak to him.   IMOGEN. My boon is that this gentleman may render     Of whom he had this ring.   POSTHUMUS. [Aside] What\'s that to him?   CYMBELINE. That diamond upon your finger, say     How came it yours?   IACHIMO. Thou\'lt torture me to leave unspoken that     Which to be spoke would torture thee.   CYMBELINE. How? me?   IACHIMO. I am glad to be constrain\'d to utter that       Which torments me to conceal. By villainy     I got this ring; \'twas Leonatus\' jewel,     Whom thou didst banish; and- which more may grieve thee,     As it doth me- a nobler sir ne\'er liv\'d     \'Twixt sky and ground. Wilt thou hear more, my lord?   CYMBELINE. All that belongs to this.   IACHIMO. That paragon, thy daughter,     For whom my heart drops blood and my false spirits     Quail to remember- Give me leave, I faint.   CYMBELINE. My daughter? What of her? Renew thy strength;     I had rather thou shouldst live while nature will     Than die ere I hear more. Strive, man, and speak.   IACHIMO. Upon a time- unhappy was the clock     That struck the hour!- was in Rome- accurs\'d     The mansion where!- \'twas at a feast- O, would     Our viands had been poison\'d, or at least     Those which I heav\'d to head!- the good Posthumus-     What should I say? he was too good to be     Where ill men were, and was the best of all     Amongst the rar\'st of good ones- sitting sadly       Hearing us praise our loves of Italy     For beauty that made barren the swell\'d boast     Of him that best could speak; for feature, laming     The shrine of Venus or straight-pight Minerva,     Postures beyond brief nature; for condition,     A shop of all the qualities that man     Loves woman for; besides that hook of wiving,     Fairness which strikes the eye-   CYMBELINE. I stand on fire.     Come to the matter.   IACHIMO. All too soon I shall,     Unless thou wouldst grieve quickly. This Posthumus,     Most like a noble lord in love and one     That had a royal lover, took his hint;     And not dispraising whom we prais\'d- therein     He was as calm as virtue- he began     His mistress\' picture; which by his tongue being made,     And then a mind put in\'t, either our brags     Were crack\'d of kitchen trulls, or his description     Prov\'d us unspeaking sots.     CYMBELINE. Nay, nay, to th\' purpose.   IACHIMO. Your daughter\'s chastity- there it begins.     He spake of her as Dian had hot dreams     And she alone were cold; whereat I, wretch,     Made scruple of his praise, and wager\'d with him     Pieces of gold \'gainst this which then he wore     Upon his honour\'d finger, to attain     In suit the place of\'s bed, and win this ring     By hers and mine adultery. He, true knight,     No lesser of her honour confident     Than I did truly find her, stakes this ring;     And would so, had it been a carbuncle     Of Phoebus\' wheel; and might so safely, had it     Been all the worth of\'s car. Away to Britain     Post I in this design. Well may you, sir,     Remember me at court, where I was taught     Of your chaste daughter the wide difference     \'Twixt amorous and villainous. Being thus quench\'d     Of hope, not longing, mine Italian brain     Gan in your duller Britain operate       Most vilely; for my vantage, excellent;     And, to be brief, my practice so prevail\'d     That I return\'d with simular proof enough     To make the noble Leonatus mad,     By wounding his belief in her renown     With tokens thus and thus; averring notes     Of chamber-hanging, pictures, this her bracelet-     O cunning, how I got it!- nay, some marks     Of secret on her person, that he could not     But think her bond of chastity quite crack\'d,     I having ta\'en the forfeit. Whereupon-     Methinks I see him now-   POSTHUMUS. [Coming forward] Ay, so thou dost,     Italian fiend! Ay me, most credulous fool,     Egregious murderer, thief, anything     That\'s due to all the villains past, in being,     To come! O, give me cord, or knife, or poison,     Some upright justicer! Thou, King, send out     For torturers ingenious. It is I     That all th\' abhorred things o\' th\' earth amend       By being worse than they. I am Posthumus,     That kill\'d thy daughter; villain-like, I lie-     That caus\'d a lesser villain than myself,     A sacrilegious thief, to do\'t. The temple     Of virtue was she; yea, and she herself.     Spit, and throw stones, cast mire upon me, set     The dogs o\' th\' street to bay me. Every villain     Be call\'d Posthumus Leonatus, and     Be villainy less than \'twas! O Imogen!     My queen, my life, my wife! O Imogen,     Imogen, Imogen!   IMOGEN. Peace, my lord. Hear, hear!   POSTHUMUS. Shall\'s have a play of this? Thou scornful page,     There lies thy part.                [Strikes her. She falls]   PISANIO. O gentlemen, help!     Mine and your mistress! O, my lord Posthumus!     You ne\'er kill\'d Imogen till now. Help, help!     Mine honour\'d lady!   CYMBELINE. Does the world go round?   POSTHUMUS. How comes these staggers on me?     PISANIO. Wake, my mistress!   CYMBELINE. If this be so, the gods do mean to strike me     To death with mortal joy.   PISANIO. How fares my mistress?   IMOGEN. O, get thee from my sight;     Thou gav\'st me poison. Dangerous fellow, hence!     Breathe not where princes are.   CYMBELINE. The tune of Imogen!   PISANIO. Lady,     The gods throw stones of sulphur on me, if     That box I gave you was not thought by me     A precious thing! I had it from the Queen.   CYMBELINE. New matter still?   IMOGEN. It poison\'d me.   CORNELIUS. O gods!     I left out one thing which the Queen confess\'d,     Which must approve thee honest. \'If Pisanio     Have\' said she \'given his mistress that confection     Which I gave him for cordial, she is serv\'d     As I would serve a rat.\'     CYMBELINE. What\'s this, Cornelius?   CORNELIUS. The Queen, sir, very oft importun\'d me     To temper poisons for her; still pretending     The satisfaction of her knowledge only     In killing creatures vile, as cats and dogs,     Of no esteem. I, dreading that her purpose     Was of more danger, did compound for her     A certain stuff, which, being ta\'en would cease     The present pow\'r of life, but in short time     All offices of nature should again     Do their due functions. Have you ta\'en of it?   IMOGEN. Most like I did, for I was dead.   BELARIUS. My boys,     There was our error.   GUIDERIUS. This is sure Fidele.   IMOGEN. Why did you throw your wedded lady from you?     Think that you are upon a rock, and now     Throw me again.                              [Embracing him]   POSTHUMUS. Hang there like fruit, my soul,     Till the tree die!     CYMBELINE. How now, my flesh? my child?     What, mak\'st thou me a dullard in this act?     Wilt thou not speak to me?   IMOGEN. [Kneeling] Your blessing, sir.   BELARIUS. [To GUIDERIUS and ARVIRAGUS] Though you did love this       youth, I blame ye not;     You had a motive for\'t.   CYMBELINE. My tears that fall     Prove holy water on thee! Imogen,     Thy mother\'s dead.   IMOGEN. I am sorry for\'t, my lord.   CYMBELINE. O, she was naught, and long of her it was     That we meet here so strangely; but her son     Is gone, we know not how nor where.   PISANIO. My lord,     Now fear is from me, I\'ll speak troth. Lord Cloten,     Upon my lady\'s missing, came to me     With his sword drawn, foam\'d at the mouth, and swore,     If I discover\'d not which way she was gone,     It was my instant death. By accident       I had a feigned letter of my master\'s     Then in my pocket, which directed him     To seek her on the mountains near to Milford;     Where, in a frenzy, in my master\'s garments,     Which he enforc\'d from me, away he posts     With unchaste purpose, and with oath to violate     My lady\'s honour. What became of him     I further know not.   GUIDERIUS. Let me end the story:     I slew him there.   CYMBELINE. Marry, the gods forfend!     I would not thy good deeds should from my lips     Pluck a hard sentence. Prithee, valiant youth,     Deny\'t again.   GUIDERIUS. I have spoke it, and I did it.   CYMBELINE. He was a prince.   GUIDERIUS. A most incivil one. The wrongs he did me     Were nothing prince-like; for he did provoke me     With language that would make me spurn the sea,     If it could so roar to me. I cut off\'s head,       And am right glad he is not standing here     To tell this tale of mine.   CYMBELINE. I am sorry for thee.     By thine own tongue thou art condemn\'d, and must     Endure our law. Thou\'rt dead.   IMOGEN. That headless man     I thought had been my lord.   CYMBELINE. Bind the offender,     And take him from our presence.   BELARIUS. Stay, sir King.     This man is better than the man he slew,     As well descended as thyself, and hath     More of thee merited than a band of Clotens     Had ever scar for. [To the guard] Let his arms alone;     They were not born for bondage.   CYMBELINE. Why, old soldier,     Wilt thou undo the worth thou art unpaid for     By tasting of our wrath? How of descent     As good as we?   ARVIRAGUS. In that he spake too far.     CYMBELINE. And thou shalt die for\'t.   BELARIUS. We will die all three;     But I will prove that two on\'s are as good     As I have given out him. My sons, I must     For mine own part unfold a dangerous speech,     Though haply well for you.   ARVIRAGUS. Your danger\'s ours.   GUIDERIUS. And our good his.   BELARIUS. Have at it then by leave!     Thou hadst, great King, a subject who     Was call\'d Belarius.   CYMBELINE. What of him? He is     A banish\'d traitor.   BELARIUS. He it is that hath     Assum\'d this age; indeed a banish\'d man;     I know not how a traitor.   CYMBELINE. Take him hence,     The whole world shall not save him.   BELARIUS. Not too hot.     First pay me for the nursing of thy sons,       And let it be confiscate all, so soon     As I have receiv\'d it.   CYMBELINE. Nursing of my sons?   BELARIUS. I am too blunt and saucy: here\'s my knee.     Ere I arise I will prefer my sons;     Then spare not the old father. Mighty sir,     These two young gentlemen that call me father,     And think they are my sons, are none of mine;     They are the issue of your loins, my liege,     And blood of your begetting.   CYMBELINE. How? my issue?   BELARIUS. So sure as you your father\'s. I, old Morgan,     Am that Belarius whom you sometime banish\'d.     Your pleasure was my mere offence, my punishment     Itself, and all my treason; that I suffer\'d     Was all the harm I did. These gentle princes-     For such and so they are- these twenty years     Have I train\'d up; those arts they have as     Could put into them. My breeding was, sir, as     Your Highness knows. Their nurse, Euriphile,       Whom for the theft I wedded, stole these children     Upon my banishment; I mov\'d her to\'t,     Having receiv\'d the punishment before     For that which I did then. Beaten for loyalty     Excited me to treason. Their dear loss,     The more of you \'twas felt, the more it shap\'d     Unto my end of stealing them. But, gracious sir,     Here are your sons again, and I must lose     Two of the sweet\'st companions in the world.     The benediction of these covering heavens     Fall on their heads like dew! for they are worthy     To inlay heaven with stars.   CYMBELINE. Thou weep\'st and speak\'st.     The service that you three have done is more     Unlike than this thou tell\'st. I lost my children.     If these be they, I know not how to wish     A pair of worthier sons.   BELARIUS. Be pleas\'d awhile.     This gentleman, whom I call Polydore,     Most worthy prince, as yours, is true Guiderius;       This gentleman, my Cadwal, Arviragus,     Your younger princely son; he, sir, was lapp\'d     In a most curious mantle, wrought by th\' hand     Of his queen mother, which for more probation     I can with ease produce.   CYMBELINE. Guiderius had     Upon his neck a mole, a sanguine star;     It was a mark of wonder.   BELARIUS. This is he,     Who hath upon him still that natural stamp.     It was wise nature\'s end in the donation,     To be his evidence now.   CYMBELINE. O, what am I?     A mother to the birth of three? Ne\'er mother     Rejoic\'d deliverance more. Blest pray you be,     That, after this strange starting from your orbs,     You may reign in them now! O Imogen,     Thou hast lost by this a kingdom.   IMOGEN. No, my lord;     I have got two worlds by\'t. O my gentle brothers,       Have we thus met? O, never say hereafter     But I am truest speaker! You call\'d me brother,     When I was but your sister: I you brothers,     When we were so indeed.   CYMBELINE. Did you e\'er meet?   ARVIRAGUS. Ay, my good lord.   GUIDERIUS. And at first meeting lov\'d,     Continu\'d so until we thought he died.   CORNELIUS. By the Queen\'s dram she swallow\'d.   CYMBELINE. O rare instinct!     When shall I hear all through? This fierce abridgment     Hath to it circumstantial branches, which     Distinction should be rich in. Where? how liv\'d you?     And when came you to serve our Roman captive?     How parted with your brothers? how first met them?     Why fled you from the court? and whither? These,     And your three motives to the battle, with     I know not how much more, should be demanded,     And all the other by-dependences,     From chance to chance; but nor the time nor place       Will serve our long interrogatories. See,     Posthumus anchors upon Imogen;     And she, like harmless lightning, throws her eye     On him, her brothers, me, her master, hitting     Each object with a joy; the counterchange     Is severally in all. Let\'s quit this ground,     And smoke the temple with our sacrifices.     [To BELARIUS] Thou art my brother; so we\'ll hold thee ever.   IMOGEN. You are my father too, and did relieve me     To see this gracious season.   CYMBELINE. All o\'erjoy\'d     Save these in bonds. Let them be joyful too,     For they shall taste our comfort.   IMOGEN. My good master,     I will yet do you service.   LUCIUS. Happy be you!   CYMBELINE. The forlorn soldier, that so nobly fought,     He would have well becom\'d this place and grac\'d     The thankings of a king.   POSTHUMUS. I am, sir,       The soldier that did company these three     In poor beseeming; \'twas a fitment for     The purpose I then follow\'d. That I was he,     Speak, Iachimo. I had you down, and might     Have made you finish.   IACHIMO. [Kneeling] I am down again;     But now my heavy conscience sinks my knee,     As then your force did. Take that life, beseech you,     Which I so often owe; but your ring first,     And here the bracelet of the truest princess     That ever swore her faith.   POSTHUMUS. Kneel not to me.     The pow\'r that I have on you is to spare you;     The malice towards you to forgive you. Live,     And deal with others better.   CYMBELINE. Nobly doom\'d!     We\'ll learn our freeness of a son-in-law;     Pardon\'s the word to all.   ARVIRAGUS. You holp us, sir,     As you did mean indeed to be our brother;       Joy\'d are we that you are.   POSTHUMUS. Your servant, Princes. Good my lord of Rome,     Call forth your soothsayer. As I slept, methought     Great Jupiter, upon his eagle back\'d,     Appear\'d to me, with other spritely shows     Of mine own kindred. When I wak\'d, I found     This label on my bosom; whose containing     Is so from sense in hardness that I can     Make no collection of it. Let him show     His skill in the construction.   LUCIUS. Philarmonus!   SOOTHSAYER. Here, my good lord.   LUCIUS. Read, and declare the meaning.   SOOTHSAYER. [Reads] \'When as a lion\'s whelp shall, to himself     unknown, without seeking find, and be embrac\'d by     a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall     be lopp\'d branches which, being dead many years, shall     after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow;     then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate     and flourish in peace and plenty.\'       Thou, Leonatus, art the lion\'s whelp;     The fit and apt construction of thy name,     Being Leo-natus, doth import so much.     [To CYMBELINE] The piece of tender air, thy virtuous daughter,     Which we call \'mollis aer,\' and \'mollis aer\'     We term it \'mulier\'; which \'mulier\' I divine     Is this most constant wife, who even now     Answering the letter of the oracle,     Unknown to you, unsought, were clipp\'d about     With this most tender air.   CYMBELINE. This hath some seeming.   SOOTHSAYER. The lofty cedar, royal Cymbeline,     Personates thee; and thy lopp\'d branches point     Thy two sons forth, who, by Belarius stol\'n,     For many years thought dead, are now reviv\'d,     To the majestic cedar join\'d, whose issue     Promises Britain peace and plenty.   CYMBELINE. Well,     My peace we will begin. And, Caius Lucius,     Although the victor, we submit to Caesar       And to the Roman empire, promising     To pay our wonted tribute, from the which     We were dissuaded by our wicked queen,     Whom heavens in justice, both on her and hers,     Have laid most heavy hand.   SOOTHSAYER. The fingers of the pow\'rs above do tune     The harmony of this peace. The vision     Which I made known to Lucius ere the stroke     Of yet this scarce-cold battle, at this instant     Is full accomplish\'d; for the Roman eagle,     From south to west on wing soaring aloft,     Lessen\'d herself and in the beams o\' th\' sun     So vanish\'d; which foreshow\'d our princely eagle,     Th\'imperial Caesar, Caesar, should again unite     His favour with the radiant Cymbeline,     Which shines here in the west.   CYMBELINE. Laud we the gods;     And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils     From our bless\'d altars. Publish we this peace     To all our subjects. Set we forward; let       A Roman and a British ensign wave     Friendly together. So through Lud\'s Town march;     And in the temple of great Jupiter     Our peace we\'ll ratify; seal it with feasts.     Set on there! Never was a war did cease,     Ere bloody hands were wash\'d, with such a peace.      Exeunt  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1604   THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK   by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae    Claudius, King of Denmark.   Marcellus, Officer.   Hamlet, son to the former, and nephew to the present king.   Polonius, Lord Chamberlain.   Horatio, friend to Hamlet.   Laertes, son to Polonius.   Voltemand, courtier.   Cornelius, courtier.   Rosencrantz, courtier.   Guildenstern, courtier.   Osric, courtier.   A Gentleman, courtier.   A Priest.   Marcellus, officer.   Bernardo, officer.   Francisco, a soldier   Reynaldo, servant to Polonius.   Players.   Two Clowns, gravediggers.   Fortinbras, Prince of Norway.     A Norwegian Captain.   English Ambassadors.    Getrude, Queen of Denmark, mother to Hamlet.   Ophelia, daughter to Polonius.    Ghost of Hamlet\'s Father.    Lords, ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers, Attendants.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE.- Elsinore.   ACT I. Scene I. Elsinore. A platform before the Castle.  Enter two Sentinels-[first,] Francisco, [who paces up and down at his post; then] Bernardo, [who approaches him].    Ber. Who\'s there.?   Fran. Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.   Ber. Long live the King!   Fran. Bernardo?   Ber. He.   Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour.   Ber. \'Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, Francisco.   Fran. For this relief much thanks. \'Tis bitter cold,     And I am sick at heart.   Ber. Have you had quiet guard?   Fran. Not a mouse stirring.   Ber. Well, good night.     If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,     The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.                      Enter Horatio and Marcellus.      Fran. I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who is there?   Hor. Friends to this ground.   Mar. And liegemen to the Dane.   Fran. Give you good night.   Mar. O, farewell, honest soldier.     Who hath reliev\'d you?   Fran. Bernardo hath my place.     Give you good night.                                   Exit.   Mar. Holla, Bernardo!   Ber. Say-     What, is Horatio there ?   Hor. A piece of him.   Ber. Welcome, Horatio. Welcome, good Marcellus.   Mar. What, has this thing appear\'d again to-night?   Ber. I have seen nothing.   Mar. Horatio says \'tis but our fantasy,     And will not let belief take hold of him     Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us.     Therefore I have entreated him along,       With us to watch the minutes of this night,     That, if again this apparition come,     He may approve our eyes and speak to it.   Hor. Tush, tush, \'twill not appear.   Ber. Sit down awhile,     And let us once again assail your ears,     That are so fortified against our story,     What we two nights have seen.   Hor. Well, sit we down,     And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.   Ber. Last night of all,     When yond same star that\'s westward from the pole     Had made his course t\' illume that part of heaven     Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,     The bell then beating one-                          Enter Ghost.    Mar. Peace! break thee off! Look where it comes again!   Ber. In the same figure, like the King that\'s dead.     Mar. Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.   Ber. Looks it not like the King? Mark it, Horatio.   Hor. Most like. It harrows me with fear and wonder.   Ber. It would be spoke to.   Mar. Question it, Horatio.   Hor. What art thou that usurp\'st this time of night     Together with that fair and warlike form     In which the majesty of buried Denmark     Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee speak!   Mar. It is offended.   Ber. See, it stalks away!   Hor. Stay! Speak, speak! I charge thee speak!                                                      Exit Ghost.   Mar. \'Tis gone and will not answer.   Ber. How now, Horatio? You tremble and look pale.     Is not this something more than fantasy?     What think you on\'t?   Hor. Before my God, I might not this believe     Without the sensible and true avouch     Of mine own eyes.     Mar. Is it not like the King?   Hor. As thou art to thyself.     Such was the very armour he had on     When he th\' ambitious Norway combated.     So frown\'d he once when, in an angry parle,     He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.     \'Tis strange.   Mar. Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,     With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.   Hor. In what particular thought to work I know not;     But, in the gross and scope of my opinion,     This bodes some strange eruption to our state.   Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me he that knows,     Why this same strict and most observant watch     So nightly toils the subject of the land,     And why such daily cast of brazen cannon     And foreign mart for implements of war;     Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task     Does not divide the Sunday from the week.     What might be toward, that this sweaty haste       Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day?     Who is\'t that can inform me?   Hor. That can I.     At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king,     Whose image even but now appear\'d to us,     Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,     Thereto prick\'d on by a most emulate pride,     Dar\'d to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet     (For so this side of our known world esteem\'d him)     Did slay this Fortinbras; who, by a seal\'d compact,     Well ratified by law and heraldry,     Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands     Which he stood seiz\'d of, to the conqueror;     Against the which a moiety competent     Was gaged by our king; which had return\'d     To the inheritance of Fortinbras,     Had he been vanquisher, as, by the same comart     And carriage of the article design\'d,     His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,     Of unimproved mettle hot and full,       Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,     Shark\'d up a list of lawless resolutes,     For food and diet, to some enterprise     That hath a stomach in\'t; which is no other,     As it doth well appear unto our state,     But to recover of us, by strong hand     And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands     So by his father lost; and this, I take it,     Is the main motive of our preparations,     The source of this our watch, and the chief head     Of this post-haste and romage in the land.   Ber. I think it be no other but e\'en so.     Well may it sort that this portentous figure     Comes armed through our watch, so like the King     That was and is the question of these wars.   Hor. A mote it is to trouble the mind\'s eye.     In the most high and palmy state of Rome,     A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,     The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead     Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;       As stars with trains of fire, and dews of blood,     Disasters in the sun; and the moist star     Upon whose influence Neptune\'s empire stands     Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.     And even the like precurse of fierce events,     As harbingers preceding still the fates     And prologue to the omen coming on,     Have heaven and earth together demonstrated     Unto our climature and countrymen.                        Enter Ghost again.      But soft! behold! Lo, where it comes again!     I\'ll cross it, though it blast me.- Stay illusion!                                                Spreads his arms.     If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,     Speak to me.     If there be any good thing to be done,     That may to thee do ease, and, race to me,     Speak to me.       If thou art privy to thy country\'s fate,     Which happily foreknowing may avoid,     O, speak!     Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life     Extorted treasure in the womb of earth     (For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death),                                                  The cock crows.     Speak of it! Stay, and speak!- Stop it, Marcellus!   Mar. Shall I strike at it with my partisan?   Hor. Do, if it will not stand.   Ber. \'Tis here!   Hor. \'Tis here!   Mar. \'Tis gone!                                                      Exit Ghost.     We do it wrong, being so majestical,     To offer it the show of violence;     For it is as the air, invulnerable,     And our vain blows malicious mockery.   Ber. It was about to speak, when the cock crew.   Hor. And then it started, like a guilty thing       Upon a fearful summons. I have heard     The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,     Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat     Awake the god of day; and at his warning,     Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,     Th\' extravagant and erring spirit hies     To his confine; and of the truth herein     This present object made probation.   Mar. It faded on the crowing of the cock.     Some say that ever, \'gainst that season comes     Wherein our Saviour\'s birth is celebrated,     The bird of dawning singeth all night long;     And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,     The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,     No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,     So hallow\'d and so gracious is the time.   Hor. So have I heard and do in part believe it.     But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,     Walks o\'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.     Break we our watch up; and by my advice       Let us impart what we have seen to-night     Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,     This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.     Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,     As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?     Let\'s do\'t, I pray; and I this morning know     Where we shall find him most conveniently.           Exeunt.     Scene II. Elsinore. A room of state in the Castle.  Flourish. [Enter Claudius, King of Denmark, Gertrude the Queen, Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes and his sister Ophelia, [Voltemand, Cornelius,] Lords Attendant.    King. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother\'s death     The memory be green, and that it us befitted     To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom     To be contracted in one brow of woe,     Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature     That we with wisest sorrow think on him     Together with remembrance of ourselves.     Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,     Th\' imperial jointress to this warlike state,     Have we, as \'twere with a defeated joy,     With an auspicious, and a dropping eye,     With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,     In equal scale weighing delight and dole,     Taken to wife; nor have we herein barr\'d     Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone       With this affair along. For all, our thanks.     Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,     Holding a weak supposal of our worth,     Or thinking by our late dear brother\'s death     Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,     Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,     He hath not fail\'d to pester us with message     Importing the surrender of those lands     Lost by his father, with all bands of law,     To our most valiant brother. So much for him.     Now for ourself and for this time of meeting.     Thus much the business is: we have here writ     To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,     Who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears     Of this his nephew\'s purpose, to suppress     His further gait herein, in that the levies,     The lists, and full proportions are all made     Out of his subject; and we here dispatch     You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand,     For bearers of this greeting to old Norway,       Giving to you no further personal power     To business with the King, more than the scope     Of these dilated articles allow.            [Gives a paper.]     Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.   Cor., Volt. In that, and all things, will we show our duty.   King. We doubt it nothing. Heartily farewell.                                  Exeunt Voltemand and Cornelius.     And now, Laertes, what\'s the news with you?     You told us of some suit. What is\'t, Laertes?     You cannot speak of reason to the Dane     And lose your voice. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes,     That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?     The head is not more native to the heart,     The hand more instrumental to the mouth,     Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.     What wouldst thou have, Laertes?   Laer. My dread lord,     Your leave and favour to return to France;     From whence though willingly I came to Denmark     To show my duty in your coronation,       Yet now I must confess, that duty done,     My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France     And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.   King. Have you your father\'s leave? What says Polonius?   Pol. He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave     By laboursome petition, and at last     Upon his will I seal\'d my hard consent.     I do beseech you give him leave to go.   King. Take thy fair hour, Laertes. Time be thine,     And thy best graces spend it at thy will!     But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son-   Ham. [aside] A little more than kin, and less than kind!   King. How is it that the clouds still hang on you?   Ham. Not so, my lord. I am too much i\' th\' sun.   Queen. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,     And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.     Do not for ever with thy vailed lids     Seek for thy noble father in the dust.     Thou know\'st \'tis common. All that lives must die,     Passing through nature to eternity.     Ham. Ay, madam, it is common.   Queen. If it be,     Why seems it so particular with thee?   Ham. Seems, madam, Nay, it is. I know not \'seems.\'     \'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,     Nor customary suits of solemn black,     Nor windy suspiration of forc\'d breath,     No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,     Nor the dejected havior of the visage,     Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,     \'That can denote me truly. These indeed seem,     For they are actions that a man might play;     But I have that within which passeth show-     These but the trappings and the suits of woe.   King. \'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,     To give these mourning duties to your father;     But you must know, your father lost a father;     That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound     In filial obligation for some term     To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever       In obstinate condolement is a course     Of impious stubbornness. \'Tis unmanly grief;     It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,     A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,     An understanding simple and unschool\'d;     For what we know must be, and is as common     As any the most vulgar thing to sense,     Why should we in our peevish opposition     Take it to heart? Fie! \'tis a fault to heaven,     A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,     To reason most absurd, whose common theme     Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,     From the first corse till he that died to-day,     \'This must be so.\' We pray you throw to earth     This unprevailing woe, and think of us     As of a father; for let the world take note     You are the most immediate to our throne,     And with no less nobility of love     Than that which dearest father bears his son     Do I impart toward you. For your intent       In going back to school in Wittenberg,     It is most retrograde to our desire;     And we beseech you, bend you to remain     Here in the cheer and comfort of our eye,     Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.   Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet.     I pray thee stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.   Ham. I shall in all my best obey you, madam.   King. Why, \'tis a loving and a fair reply.     Be as ourself in Denmark. Madam, come.     This gentle and unforc\'d accord of Hamlet     Sits smiling to my heart; in grace whereof,     No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day     But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell,     And the King\'s rouse the heaven shall bruit again,     Respeaking earthly thunder. Come away.                                 Flourish. Exeunt all but Hamlet.   Ham. O that this too too solid flesh would melt,     Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!     Or that the Everlasting had not fix\'d       His canon \'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!     How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable     Seem to me all the uses of this world!     Fie on\'t! ah, fie! \'Tis an unweeded garden     That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature     Possess it merely. That it should come to this!     But two months dead! Nay, not so much, not two.     So excellent a king, that was to this     Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother     That he might not beteem the winds of heaven     Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!     Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him     As if increase of appetite had grown     By what it fed on; and yet, within a month-     Let me not think on\'t! Frailty, thy name is woman!-     A little month, or ere those shoes were old     With which she followed my poor father\'s body     Like Niobe, all tears- why she, even she     (O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason     Would have mourn\'d longer) married with my uncle;       My father\'s brother, but no more like my father     Than I to Hercules. Within a month,     Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears     Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,     She married. O, most wicked speed, to post     With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!     It is not, nor it cannot come to good.     But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue!            Enter Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo.    Hor. Hail to your lordship!   Ham. I am glad to see you well.     Horatio!- or I do forget myself.   Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.   Ham. Sir, my good friend- I\'ll change that name with you.     And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?     Marcellus?   Mar. My good lord!   Ham. I am very glad to see you.- [To Bernardo] Good even, sir.-       But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?   Hor. A truant disposition, good my lord.   Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so,     Nor shall you do my ear that violence     To make it truster of your own report     Against yourself. I know you are no truant.     But what is your affair in Elsinore?     We\'ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.   Hor. My lord, I came to see your father\'s funeral.   Ham. I prithee do not mock me, fellow student.     I think it was to see my mother\'s wedding.   Hor. Indeed, my lord, it followed hard upon.   Ham. Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak\'d meats     Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.     Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven     Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio!     My father- methinks I see my father.   Hor. O, where, my lord?   Ham. In my mind\'s eye, Horatio.   Hor. I saw him once. He was a goodly king.     Ham. He was a man, take him for all in all.     I shall not look upon his like again.   Hor. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.   Ham. Saw? who?   Hor. My lord, the King your father.   Ham. The King my father?   Hor. Season your admiration for a while     With an attent ear, till I may deliver     Upon the witness of these gentlemen,     This marvel to you.   Ham. For God\'s love let me hear!   Hor. Two nights together had these gentlemen     (Marcellus and Bernardo) on their watch     In the dead vast and middle of the night     Been thus encount\'red. A figure like your father,     Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,     Appears before them and with solemn march     Goes slow and stately by them. Thrice he walk\'d     By their oppress\'d and fear-surprised eyes,     Within his truncheon\'s length; whilst they distill\'d       Almost to jelly with the act of fear,     Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me     In dreadful secrecy impart they did,     And I with them the third night kept the watch;     Where, as they had deliver\'d, both in time,     Form of the thing, each word made true and good,     The apparition comes. I knew your father.     These hands are not more like.   Ham. But where was this?   Mar. My lord, upon the platform where we watch\'d.   Ham. Did you not speak to it?   Hor. My lord, I did;     But answer made it none. Yet once methought     It lifted up it head and did address     Itself to motion, like as it would speak;     But even then the morning cock crew loud,     And at the sound it shrunk in haste away     And vanish\'d from our sight.   Ham. \'Tis very strange.   Hor. As I do live, my honour\'d lord, \'tis true;       And we did think it writ down in our duty     To let you know of it.   Ham. Indeed, indeed, sirs. But this troubles me.     Hold you the watch to-night?   Both [Mar. and Ber.] We do, my lord.   Ham. Arm\'d, say you?   Both. Arm\'d, my lord.   Ham. From top to toe?   Both. My lord, from head to foot.   Ham. Then saw you not his face?   Hor. O, yes, my lord! He wore his beaver up.   Ham. What, look\'d he frowningly.   Hor. A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.   Ham. Pale or red?   Hor. Nay, very pale.   Ham. And fix\'d his eyes upon you?   Hor. Most constantly.   Ham. I would I had been there.   Hor. It would have much amaz\'d you.   Ham. Very like, very like. Stay\'d it long?     Hor. While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.   Both. Longer, longer.   Hor. Not when I saw\'t.   Ham. His beard was grizzled- no?   Hor. It was, as I have seen it in his life,     A sable silver\'d.   Ham. I will watch to-night.     Perchance \'twill walk again.   Hor. I warr\'nt it will.   Ham. If it assume my noble father\'s person,     I\'ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape     And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,     If you have hitherto conceal\'d this sight,     Let it be tenable in your silence still;     And whatsoever else shall hap to-night,     Give it an understanding but no tongue.     I will requite your loves. So, fare you well.     Upon the platform, \'twixt eleven and twelve,     I\'ll visit you.   All. Our duty to your honour.     Ham. Your loves, as mine to you. Farewell.                                         Exeunt [all but Hamlet].     My father\'s spirit- in arms? All is not well.     I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come!     Till then sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise,     Though all the earth o\'erwhelm them, to men\'s eyes. Exit.     Scene III. Elsinore. A room in the house of Polonius.  Enter Laertes and Ophelia.    Laer. My necessaries are embark\'d. Farewell.     And, sister, as the winds give benefit     And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,     But let me hear from you.   Oph. Do you doubt that?   Laer. For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour,     Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood;     A violet in the youth of primy nature,     Forward, not permanent- sweet, not lasting;     The perfume and suppliance of a minute;     No more.   Oph. No more but so?   Laer. Think it no more.     For nature crescent does not grow alone     In thews and bulk; but as this temple waxes,     The inward service of the mind and soul     Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now,       And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch     The virtue of his will; but you must fear,     His greatness weigh\'d, his will is not his own;     For he himself is subject to his birth.     He may not, as unvalued persons do,     Carve for himself, for on his choice depends     The safety and health of this whole state,     And therefore must his choice be circumscrib\'d     Unto the voice and yielding of that body     Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you,     It fits your wisdom so far to believe it     As he in his particular act and place     May give his saying deed; which is no further     Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.     Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain     If with too credent ear you list his songs,     Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open     To his unmast\'red importunity.     Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,     And keep you in the rear of your affection,       Out of the shot and danger of desire.     The chariest maid is prodigal enough     If she unmask her beauty to the moon.     Virtue itself scopes not calumnious strokes.     The canker galls the infants of the spring     Too oft before their buttons be disclos\'d,     And in the morn and liquid dew of youth     Contagious blastments are most imminent.     Be wary then; best safety lies in fear.     Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.   Oph. I shall th\' effect of this good lesson keep     As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother,     Do not as some ungracious pastors do,     Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,     Whiles, like a puff\'d and reckless libertine,     Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads     And recks not his own rede.   Laer. O, fear me not!                         Enter Polonius.        I stay too long. But here my father comes.     A double blessing is a double grace;     Occasion smiles upon a second leave.   Pol. Yet here, Laertes? Aboard, aboard, for shame!     The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,     And you are stay\'d for. There- my blessing with thee!     And these few precepts in thy memory     Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,     Nor any unproportion\'d thought his act.     Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:     Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,     Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;     But do not dull thy palm with entertainment     Of each new-hatch\'d, unfledg\'d comrade. Beware     Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,     Bear\'t that th\' opposed may beware of thee.     Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;     Take each man\'s censure, but reserve thy judgment.     Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,       But not express\'d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;     For the apparel oft proclaims the man,     And they in France of the best rank and station     Are most select and generous, chief in that.     Neither a borrower nor a lender be;     For loan oft loses both itself and friend,     And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.     This above all- to thine own self be true,     And it must follow, as the night the day,     Thou canst not then be false to any man.     Farewell. My blessing season this in thee!   Laer. Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.   Pol. The time invites you. Go, your servants tend.   Laer. Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well     What I have said to you.   Oph. \'Tis in my memory lock\'d,     And you yourself shall keep the key of it.   Laer. Farewell.                                          Exit.   Pol. What is\'t, Ophelia, he hath said to you?   Oph. So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet.     Pol. Marry, well bethought!     \'Tis told me he hath very oft of late     Given private time to you, and you yourself     Have of your audience been most free and bounteous.     If it be so- as so \'tis put on me,     And that in way of caution- I must tell you     You do not understand yourself so clearly     As it behooves my daughter and your honour.     What is between you? Give me up the truth.   Oph. He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders     Of his affection to me.   Pol. Affection? Pooh! You speak like a green girl,     Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.     Do you believe his tenders, as you call them?   Oph. I do not know, my lord, what I should think,   Pol. Marry, I will teach you! Think yourself a baby     That you have ta\'en these tenders for true pay,     Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly,     Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,     Running it thus) you\'ll tender me a fool.     Oph. My lord, he hath importun\'d me with love     In honourable fashion.   Pol. Ay, fashion you may call it. Go to, go to!   Oph. And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord,     With almost all the holy vows of heaven.   Pol. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks! I do know,     When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul     Lends the tongue vows. These blazes, daughter,     Giving more light than heat, extinct in both     Even in their promise, as it is a-making,     You must not take for fire. From this time     Be something scanter of your maiden presence.     Set your entreatments at a higher rate     Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet,     Believe so much in him, that he is young,     And with a larger tether may he walk     Than may be given you. In few, Ophelia,     Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers,     Not of that dye which their investments show,     But mere implorators of unholy suits,       Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds,     The better to beguile. This is for all:     I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth     Have you so slander any moment leisure     As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.     Look to\'t, I charge you. Come your ways.   Oph. I shall obey, my lord.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene IV. Elsinore. The platform before the Castle.  Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.    Ham. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.   Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air.   Ham. What hour now?   Hor. I think it lacks of twelve.   Mar. No, it is struck.   Hor. Indeed? I heard it not. It then draws near the season     Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk.                    A flourish of trumpets, and two pieces go off.     What does this mean, my lord?   Ham. The King doth wake to-night and takes his rouse,     Keeps wassail, and the swagg\'ring upspring reels,     And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down,     The kettledrum and trumpet thus bray out     The triumph of his pledge.   Hor. Is it a custom?   Ham. Ay, marry, is\'t;     But to my mind, though I am native here       And to the manner born, it is a custom     More honour\'d in the breach than the observance.     This heavy-headed revel east and west     Makes us traduc\'d and tax\'d of other nations;     They clip us drunkards and with swinish phrase     Soil our addition; and indeed it takes     From our achievements, though perform\'d at height,     The pith and marrow of our attribute.     So oft it chances in particular men     That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,     As in their birth,- wherein they are not guilty,     Since nature cannot choose his origin,-     By the o\'ergrowth of some complexion,     Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,     Or by some habit that too much o\'erleavens     The form of plausive manners, that these men     Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,     Being nature\'s livery, or fortune\'s star,     Their virtues else- be they as pure as grace,     As infinite as man may undergo-       Shall in the general censure take corruption     From that particular fault. The dram of e\'il     Doth all the noble substance often dout To his own scandal.                           Enter Ghost.    Hor. Look, my lord, it comes!   Ham. Angels and ministers of grace defend us!     Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn\'d,     Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,     Be thy intents wicked or charitable,     Thou com\'st in such a questionable shape     That I will speak to thee. I\'ll call thee Hamlet,     King, father, royal Dane. O, answer me?     Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell     Why thy canoniz\'d bones, hearsed in death,     Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre     Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn\'d,     Hath op\'d his ponderous and marble jaws     To cast thee up again. What may this mean       That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel,     Revisits thus the glimpses of the moon,     Making night hideous, and we fools of nature     So horridly to shake our disposition     With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?     Say, why is this? wherefore? What should we do?                                            Ghost beckons Hamlet.   Hor. It beckons you to go away with it,     As if it some impartment did desire     To you alone.   Mar. Look with what courteous action     It waves you to a more removed ground.     But do not go with it!   Hor. No, by no means!   Ham. It will not speak. Then will I follow it.   Hor. Do not, my lord!   Ham. Why, what should be the fear?     I do not set my life at a pin\'s fee;     And for my soul, what can it do to that,     Being a thing immortal as itself?       It waves me forth again. I\'ll follow it.   Hor. What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,     Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff     That beetles o\'er his base into the sea,     And there assume some other, horrible form     Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason     And draw you into madness? Think of it.     The very place puts toys of desperation,     Without more motive, into every brain     That looks so many fadoms to the sea     And hears it roar beneath.   Ham. It waves me still.     Go on. I\'ll follow thee.   Mar. You shall not go, my lord.   Ham. Hold off your hands!   Hor. Be rul\'d. You shall not go.   Ham. My fate cries out     And makes each petty artire in this body     As hardy as the Nemean lion\'s nerve.                                                 [Ghost beckons.]       Still am I call\'d. Unhand me, gentlemen.     By heaven, I\'ll make a ghost of him that lets me!-     I say, away!- Go on. I\'ll follow thee.                                         Exeunt Ghost and Hamlet.   Hor. He waxes desperate with imagination.   Mar. Let\'s follow. \'Tis not fit thus to obey him.   Hor. Have after. To what issue wail this come?   Mar. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.   Hor. Heaven will direct it.   Mar. Nay, let\'s follow him.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene V. Elsinore. The Castle. Another part of the fortifications.  Enter Ghost and Hamlet.    Ham. Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak! I\'ll go no further.   Ghost. Mark me.   Ham. I will.   Ghost. My hour is almost come,     When I to sulph\'rous and tormenting flames     Must render up myself.   Ham. Alas, poor ghost!   Ghost. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing     To what I shall unfold.   Ham. Speak. I am bound to hear.   Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.   Ham. What?   Ghost. I am thy father\'s spirit,     Doom\'d for a certain term to walk the night,     And for the day confin\'d to fast in fires,     Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature     Are burnt and purg\'d away. But that I am forbid       To tell the secrets of my prison house,     I could a tale unfold whose lightest word     Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,     Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,     Thy knotted and combined locks to part,     And each particular hair to stand an end     Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.     But this eternal blazon must not be     To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!     If thou didst ever thy dear father love-   Ham. O God!   Ghost. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murther.   Ham. Murther?   Ghost. Murther most foul, as in the best it is;     But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.   Ham. Haste me to know\'t, that I, with wings as swift     As meditation or the thoughts of love,     May sweep to my revenge.   Ghost. I find thee apt;     And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed       That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,     Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear.     \'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,     A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark     Is by a forged process of my death     Rankly abus\'d. But know, thou noble youth,     The serpent that did sting thy father\'s life     Now wears his crown.   Ham. O my prophetic soul!     My uncle?   Ghost. Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,     With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts-     O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power     So to seduce!- won to his shameful lust     The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.     O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there,     From me, whose love was of that dignity     That it went hand in hand even with the vow     I made to her in marriage, and to decline     Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor       To those of mine!     But virtue, as it never will be mov\'d,     Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,     So lust, though to a radiant angel link\'d,     Will sate itself in a celestial bed     And prey on garbage.     But soft! methinks I scent the morning air.     Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,     My custom always of the afternoon,     Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,     With juice of cursed hebona in a vial,     And in the porches of my ears did pour     The leperous distilment; whose effect     Holds such an enmity with blood of man     That swift as quicksilverr it courses through     The natural gates and alleys of the body,     And with a sudden vigour it doth posset     And curd, like eager droppings into milk,     The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine;     And a most instant tetter bark\'d about,       Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust     All my smooth body.     Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother\'s hand     Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch\'d;     Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,     Unhous\'led, disappointed, unanel\'d,     No reckoning made, but sent to my account     With all my imperfections on my head.   Ham. O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!   Ghost. If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.     Let not the royal bed of Denmark be     A couch for luxury and damned incest.     But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,     Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive     Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven,     And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge     To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once.     The glowworm shows the matin to be near     And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.     Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me.                      Exit.     Ham. O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?     And shall I couple hell? Hold, hold, my heart!     And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,     But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?     Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat     In this distracted globe. Remember thee?     Yea, from the table of my memory     I\'ll wipe away all trivial fond records,     All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past     That youth and observation copied there,     And thy commandment all alone shall live     Within the book and volume of my brain,     Unmix\'d with baser matter. Yes, by heaven!     O most pernicious woman!     O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!     My tables! Meet it is I set it down     That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;     At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark.        [Writes.]     So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word:     It is \'Adieu, adieu! Remember me.\'       I have sworn\'t.   Hor. (within) My lord, my lord!                     Enter Horatio and Marcellus.    Mar. Lord Hamlet!   Hor. Heaven secure him!   Ham. So be it!   Mar. Illo, ho, ho, my lord!   Ham. Hillo, ho, ho, boy! Come, bird, come.   Mar. How is\'t, my noble lord?   Hor. What news, my lord?   Mar. O, wonderful!   Hor. Good my lord, tell it.   Ham. No, you will reveal it.   Hor. Not I, my lord, by heaven!   Mar. Nor I, my lord.   Ham. How say you then? Would heart of man once think it?     But you\'ll be secret?   Both. Ay, by heaven, my lord.     Ham. There\'s neer a villain dwelling in all Denmark     But he\'s an arrant knave.   Hor. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave     To tell us this.   Ham. Why, right! You are in the right!     And so, without more circumstance at all,     I hold it fit that we shake hands and part;     You, as your business and desires shall point you,     For every man hath business and desire,     Such as it is; and for my own poor part,     Look you, I\'ll go pray.   Hor. These are but wild and whirling words, my lord.   Ham. I am sorry they offend you, heartily;     Yes, faith, heartily.   Hor. There\'s no offence, my lord.   Ham. Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Horatio,     And much offence too. Touching this vision here,     It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you.     For your desire to know what is between us,     O\'ermaster\'t as you may. And now, good friends,       As you are friends, scholars, and soldiers,     Give me one poor request.   Hor. What is\'t, my lord? We will.   Ham. Never make known what you have seen to-night.   Both. My lord, we will not.   Ham. Nay, but swear\'t.   Hor. In faith,     My lord, not I.   Mar. Nor I, my lord- in faith.   Ham. Upon my sword.   Mar. We have sworn, my lord, already.   Ham. Indeed, upon my sword, indeed.                   Ghost cries under the stage.    Ghost. Swear.   Ham. Aha boy, say\'st thou so? Art thou there, truepenny?     Come on! You hear this fellow in the cellarage.     Consent to swear.   Hor. Propose the oath, my lord.     Ham. Never to speak of this that you have seen.     Swear by my sword.   Ghost. [beneath] Swear.   Ham. Hic et ubique? Then we\'ll shift our ground.     Come hither, gentlemen,     And lay your hands again upon my sword.     Never to speak of this that you have heard:     Swear by my sword.   Ghost. [beneath] Swear by his sword.   Ham. Well said, old mole! Canst work i\' th\' earth so fast?     A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends."   Hor. O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!   Ham. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.     There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,     Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.     But come!     Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,     How strange or odd soe\'er I bear myself     (As I perchance hereafter shall think meet     To put an antic disposition on),       That you, at such times seeing me, never shall,     With arms encumb\'red thus, or this head-shake,     Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,     As \'Well, well, we know,\' or \'We could, an if we would,\'     Or \'If we list to speak,\' or \'There be, an if they might,\'     Or such ambiguous giving out, to note     That you know aught of me- this is not to do,     So grace and mercy at your most need help you,     Swear.   Ghost. [beneath] Swear.                                                    [They swear.]   Ham. Rest, rest, perturbed spirit! So, gentlemen,     With all my love I do commend me to you;     And what so poor a man as Hamlet is     May do t\' express his love and friending to you,     God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;     And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.     The time is out of joint. O cursed spite     That ever I was born to set it right!     Nay, come, let\'s go together.                                                            Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    Act II. Scene I. Elsinore. A room in the house of Polonius.  Enter Polonius and Reynaldo.    Pol. Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.   Rey. I will, my lord.   Pol. You shall do marvell\'s wisely, good Reynaldo,     Before You visit him, to make inquire     Of his behaviour.   Rey. My lord, I did intend it.   Pol. Marry, well said, very well said. Look you, sir,     Enquire me first what Danskers are in Paris;     And how, and who, what means, and where they keep,     What company, at what expense; and finding     By this encompassment and drift of question     That they do know my son, come you more nearer     Than your particular demands will touch it.     Take you, as \'twere, some distant knowledge of him;     As thus, \'I know his father and his friends,     And in part him.\' Do you mark this, Reynaldo?   Rey. Ay, very well, my lord.     Pol. \'And in part him, but,\' you may say, \'not well.     But if\'t be he I mean, he\'s very wild     Addicted so and so\'; and there put on him     What forgeries you please; marry, none so rank     As may dishonour him- take heed of that;     But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips     As are companions noted and most known     To youth and liberty.   Rey. As gaming, my lord.   Pol. Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling,     Drabbing. You may go so far.   Rey. My lord, that would dishonour him.   Pol. Faith, no, as you may season it in the charge.     You must not put another scandal on him,     That he is open to incontinency.     That\'s not my meaning. But breathe his faults so quaintly     That they may seem the taints of liberty,     The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,     A savageness in unreclaimed blood,     Of general assault.     Rey. But, my good lord-   Pol. Wherefore should you do this?   Rey. Ay, my lord,     I would know that.   Pol. Marry, sir, here\'s my drift,     And I believe it is a fetch of warrant.     You laying these slight sullies on my son     As \'twere a thing a little soil\'d i\' th\' working,     Mark you,     Your party in converse, him you would sound,     Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes     The youth you breathe of guilty, be assur\'d     He closes with you in this consequence:     \'Good sir,\' or so, or \'friend,\' or \'gentleman\'-     According to the phrase or the addition     Of man and country-   Rey. Very good, my lord.   Pol. And then, sir, does \'a this- \'a does- What was I about to say?     By the mass, I was about to say something! Where did I leave?   Rey. At \'closes in the consequence,\' at \'friend or so,\' and       gentleman.\'   Pol. At \'closes in the consequence\'- Ay, marry!     He closes thus: \'I know the gentleman.     I saw him yesterday, or t\'other day,     Or then, or then, with such or such; and, as you say,     There was \'a gaming; there o\'ertook in\'s rouse;     There falling out at tennis\'; or perchance,     \'I saw him enter such a house of sale,\'     Videlicet, a brothel, or so forth.     See you now-     Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth;     And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,     With windlasses and with assays of bias,     By indirections find directions out.     So, by my former lecture and advice,     Shall you my son. You have me, have you not   Rey. My lord, I have.   Pol. God b\' wi\' ye, fare ye well!   Rey. Good my lord!                                    [Going.]   Pol. Observe his inclination in yourself.     Rey. I shall, my lord.   Pol. And let him ply his music.   Rey. Well, my lord.   Pol. Farewell!                                                   Exit Reynaldo.                         Enter Ophelia.      How now, Ophelia? What\'s the matter?   Oph. O my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted!   Pol. With what, i\' th\' name of God I   Oph. My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,     Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac\'d,     No hat upon his head, his stockings foul\'d,     Ungart\'red, and down-gyved to his ankle;     Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,     And with a look so piteous in purport     As if he had been loosed out of hell     To speak of horrors- he comes before me.   Pol. Mad for thy love?     Oph. My lord, I do not know,     But truly I do fear it.   Pol. What said he?   Oph. He took me by the wrist and held me hard;     Then goes he to the length of all his arm,     And, with his other hand thus o\'er his brow,     He falls to such perusal of my face     As he would draw it. Long stay\'d he so.     At last, a little shaking of mine arm,     And thrice his head thus waving up and down,     He rais\'d a sigh so piteous and profound     As it did seem to shatter all his bulk     And end his being. That done, he lets me go,     And with his head over his shoulder turn\'d     He seem\'d to find his way without his eyes,     For out o\' doors he went without their help     And to the last bended their light on me.   Pol. Come, go with me. I will go seek the King.     This is the very ecstasy of love,     Whose violent property fordoes itself       And leads the will to desperate undertakings     As oft as any passion under heaven     That does afflict our natures. I am sorry.     What, have you given him any hard words of late?   Oph. No, my good lord; but, as you did command,     I did repel his letters and denied     His access to me.   Pol. That hath made him mad.     I am sorry that with better heed and judgment     I had not quoted him. I fear\'d he did but trifle     And meant to wrack thee; but beshrew my jealousy!     By heaven, it is as proper to our age     To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions     As it is common for the younger sort     To lack discretion. Come, go we to the King.     This must be known; which, being kept close, might move     More grief to hide than hate to utter love.     Come.                                                          Exeunt.  Scene II. Elsinore. A room in the Castle.  Flourish. [Enter King and Queen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, cum aliis.    King. Welcome, dear Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.     Moreover that we much did long to see you,     The need we have to use you did provoke     Our hasty sending. Something have you heard     Of Hamlet\'s transformation. So I call it,     Sith nor th\' exterior nor the inward man     Resembles that it was. What it should be,     More than his father\'s death, that thus hath put him     So much from th\' understanding of himself,     I cannot dream of. I entreat you both     That, being of so young clays brought up with him,     And since so neighbour\'d to his youth and haviour,     That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court     Some little time; so by your companies     To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather     So much as from occasion you may glean,       Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus     That, open\'d, lies within our remedy.   Queen. Good gentlemen, he hath much talk\'d of you,     And sure I am two men there are not living     To whom he more adheres. If it will please you     To show us so much gentry and good will     As to expend your time with us awhile     For the supply and profit of our hope,     Your visitation shall receive such thanks     As fits a king\'s remembrance.   Ros. Both your Majesties     Might, by the sovereign power you have of us,     Put your dread pleasures more into command     Than to entreaty.   Guil. But we both obey,     And here give up ourselves, in the full bent,     To lay our service freely at your feet,     To be commanded.   King. Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.   Queen. Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.       And I beseech you instantly to visit     My too much changed son.- Go, some of you,     And bring these gentlemen where Hamlet is.   Guil. Heavens make our presence and our practices     Pleasant and helpful to him!   Queen. Ay, amen!                  Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, [with some                                                     Attendants].                           Enter Polonius.    Pol. Th\' ambassadors from Norway, my good lord,     Are joyfully return\'d.   King. Thou still hast been the father of good news.   Pol. Have I, my lord? Assure you, my good liege,     I hold my duty as I hold my soul,     Both to my God and to my gracious king;     And I do think- or else this brain of mine     Hunts not the trail of policy so sure     As it hath us\'d to do- that I have found       The very cause of Hamlet\'s lunacy.   King. O, speak of that! That do I long to hear.   Pol. Give first admittance to th\' ambassadors.     My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.   King. Thyself do grace to them, and bring them in.                                                 [Exit Polonius.]     He tells me, my dear Gertrude, he hath found     The head and source of all your son\'s distemper.   Queen. I doubt it is no other but the main,     His father\'s death and our o\'erhasty marriage.   King. Well, we shall sift him.                Enter Polonius, Voltemand, and Cornelius.      Welcome, my good friends.     Say, Voltemand, what from our brother Norway?   Volt. Most fair return of greetings and desires.     Upon our first, he sent out to suppress     His nephew\'s levies; which to him appear\'d     To be a preparation \'gainst the Polack,       But better look\'d into, he truly found     It was against your Highness; whereat griev\'d,     That so his sickness, age, and impotence     Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests     On Fortinbras; which he, in brief, obeys,     Receives rebuke from Norway, and, in fine,     Makes vow before his uncle never more     To give th\' assay of arms against your Majesty.     Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy,     Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee     And his commission to employ those soldiers,     So levied as before, against the Polack;     With an entreaty, herein further shown,                                                 [Gives a paper.]     That it might please you to give quiet pass     Through your dominions for this enterprise,     On such regards of safety and allowance     As therein are set down.   King. It likes us well;     And at our more consider\'d time we\'ll read,       Answer, and think upon this business.     Meantime we thank you for your well-took labour.     Go to your rest; at night we\'ll feast together.     Most welcome home!                       Exeunt Ambassadors.   Pol. This business is well ended.     My liege, and madam, to expostulate     What majesty should be, what duty is,     Why day is day, night is night, and time is time.     Were nothing but to waste night, day, and time.     Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,     And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,     I will be brief. Your noble son is mad.     Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,     What is\'t but to be nothing else but mad?     But let that go.   Queen. More matter, with less art.   Pol. Madam, I swear I use no art at all.     That he is mad, \'tis true: \'tis true \'tis pity;     And pity \'tis \'tis true. A foolish figure!     But farewell it, for I will use no art.       Mad let us grant him then. And now remains     That we find out the cause of this effect-     Or rather say, the cause of this defect,     For this effect defective comes by cause.     Thus it remains, and the remainder thus.     Perpend.     I have a daughter (have while she is mine),     Who in her duty and obedience, mark,     Hath given me this. Now gather, and surmise.                                              [Reads] the letter.     \'To the celestial, and my soul\'s idol, the most beautified       Ophelia,\'-      That\'s an ill phrase, a vile phrase; \'beautified\' is a vile       phrase.     But you shall hear. Thus:                                                         [Reads.]     \'In her excellent white bosom, these, &c.\'   Queen. Came this from Hamlet to her?   Pol. Good madam, stay awhile. I will be faithful.     [Reads.]              \'Doubt thou the stars are fire;             Doubt that the sun doth move;           Doubt truth to be a liar;             But never doubt I love.       \'O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers; I have not art to     reckon my groans; but that I love thee best, O most best, believe     it. Adieu.       \'Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him,                                                           HAMLET.\'      This, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me;     And more above, hath his solicitings,     As they fell out by time, by means, and place,     All given to mine ear.   King. But how hath she     Receiv\'d his love?   Pol. What do you think of me?   King. As of a man faithful and honourable.   Pol. I would fain prove so. But what might you think,       When I had seen this hot love on the wing     (As I perceiv\'d it, I must tell you that,     Before my daughter told me), what might you,     Or my dear Majesty your queen here, think,     If I had play\'d the desk or table book,     Or given my heart a winking, mute and dumb,     Or look\'d upon this love with idle sight?     What might you think? No, I went round to work     And my young mistress thus I did bespeak:     \'Lord Hamlet is a prince, out of thy star.     This must not be.\' And then I prescripts gave her,     That she should lock herself from his resort,     Admit no messengers, receive no tokens.     Which done, she took the fruits of my advice,     And he, repulsed, a short tale to make,     Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,     Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,     Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension,     Into the madness wherein now he raves,     And all we mourn for.     King. Do you think \'tis this?   Queen. it may be, very like.   Pol. Hath there been such a time- I would fain know that-     That I have Positively said \'\'Tis so,\'     When it prov\'d otherwise.?   King. Not that I know.   Pol. [points to his head and shoulder] Take this from this, if this       be otherwise.     If circumstances lead me, I will find     Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed     Within the centre.   King. How may we try it further?   Pol. You know sometimes he walks four hours together     Here in the lobby.   Queen. So he does indeed.   Pol. At such a time I\'ll loose my daughter to him.     Be you and I behind an arras then.     Mark the encounter. If he love her not,     And he not from his reason fall\'n thereon     Let me be no assistant for a state,       But keep a farm and carters.   King. We will try it.                   Enter Hamlet, reading on a book.    Queen. But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading.   Pol. Away, I do beseech you, both away     I\'ll board him presently. O, give me leave.                        Exeunt King and Queen, [with Attendants].     How does my good Lord Hamlet?   Ham. Well, God-a-mercy.   Pol. Do you know me, my lord?   Ham. Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.   Pol. Not I, my lord.   Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man.   Pol. Honest, my lord?   Ham. Ay, sir. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man     pick\'d out of ten thousand.   Pol. That\'s very true, my lord.   Ham. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god       kissing carrion- Have you a daughter?   Pol. I have, my lord.   Ham. Let her not walk i\' th\' sun. Conception is a blessing, but not     as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to\'t.   Pol. [aside] How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter. Yet     he knew me not at first. He said I was a fishmonger. He is far     gone, far gone! And truly in my youth I suff\'red much extremity     for love- very near this. I\'ll speak to him again.- What do you     read, my lord?   Ham. Words, words, words.   Pol. What is the matter, my lord?   Ham. Between who?   Pol. I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.   Ham. Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here that old men     have grey beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes     purging thick amber and plum-tree gum; and that they have a     plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams. All which,     sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it     not honesty to have it thus set down; for you yourself, sir,     should be old as I am if, like a crab, you could go backward.     Pol. [aside] Though this be madness, yet there is a method in\'t.-    Will You walk out of the air, my lord?   Ham. Into my grave?   Pol. Indeed, that is out o\' th\' air. [Aside] How pregnant sometimes     his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which     reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I     will leave him and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between     him and my daughter.- My honourable lord, I will most humbly take     my leave of you.   Ham. You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more     willingly part withal- except my life, except my life, except my     life,                      Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.    Pol. Fare you well, my lord.   Ham. These tedious old fools!   Pol. You go to seek the Lord Hamlet. There he is.   Ros. [to Polonius] God save you, sir!                                                 Exit [Polonius].     Guil. My honour\'d lord!   Ros. My most dear lord!   Ham. My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah,     Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?   Ros. As the indifferent children of the earth.   Guil. Happy in that we are not over-happy.     On Fortune\'s cap we are not the very button.   Ham. Nor the soles of her shoe?   Ros. Neither, my lord.   Ham. Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her     favours?   Guil. Faith, her privates we.   Ham. In the secret parts of Fortune? O! most true! she is a     strumpet. What news ?   Ros. None, my lord, but that the world\'s grown honest.   Ham. Then is doomsday near! But your news is not true. Let me     question more in particular. What have you, my good friends,     deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison     hither?   Guil. Prison, my lord?     Ham. Denmark\'s a prison.   Ros. Then is the world one.   Ham. A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and     dungeons, Denmark being one o\' th\' worst.   Ros. We think not so, my lord.   Ham. Why, then \'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good     or bad but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.   Ros. Why, then your ambition makes it one. \'Tis too narrow for your     mind.   Ham. O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a     king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.   Guil. Which dreams indeed are ambition; for the very substance of     the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.   Ham. A dream itself is but a shadow.   Ros. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that     it is but a shadow\'s shadow.   Ham. Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and outstretch\'d     heroes the beggars\' shadows. Shall we to th\' court? for, by my     fay, I cannot reason.   Both. We\'ll wait upon you.     Ham. No such matter! I will not sort you with the rest of my     servants; for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most     dreadfully attended. But in the beaten way of friendship, what     make you at Elsinore?   Ros. To visit you, my lord; no other occasion.   Ham. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you;     and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny. Were     you not sent for? Is it your own inclining? Is it a free     visitation? Come, deal justly with me. Come, come! Nay, speak.   Guil. What should we say, my lord?   Ham. Why, anything- but to th\' purpose. You were sent for; and     there is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties     have not craft enough to colour. I know the good King and Queen     have sent for you.   Ros. To what end, my lord?   Ham. That you must teach me. But let me conjure you by the rights     of our fellowship, by the consonancy of our youth, by the     obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by what more dear a     better proposer could charge you withal, be even and direct with     me, whether you were sent for or no.     Ros. [aside to Guildenstern] What say you?   Ham. [aside] Nay then, I have an eye of you.- If you love me, hold     not off.   Guil. My lord, we were sent for.   Ham. I will tell you why. So shall my anticipation prevent your     discovery, and your secrecy to the King and Queen moult no     feather. I have of late- but wherefore I know not- lost all my     mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so     heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth,     seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the     air, look you, this brave o\'erhanging firmament, this majestical     roof fretted with golden fire- why, it appeareth no other thing     to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a     piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in     faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in     action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the     beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what     is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me- no, nor woman     neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.   Ros. My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts.     Ham. Why did you laugh then, when I said \'Man delights not me\'?   Ros. To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what lenten     entertainment the players shall receive from you. We coted them     on the way, and hither are they coming to offer you service.   Ham. He that plays the king shall be welcome- his Majesty shall     have tribute of me; the adventurous knight shall use his foil and     target; the lover shall not sigh gratis; the humorous man shall     end his part in peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose     lungs are tickle o\' th\' sere; and the lady shall say her mind     freely, or the blank verse shall halt fort. What players are     they?   Ros. Even those you were wont to take such delight in, the     tragedians of the city.   Ham. How chances it they travel? Their residence, both in     reputation and profit, was better both ways.   Ros. I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late     innovation.   Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the     city? Are they so follow\'d?   Ros. No indeed are they not.     Ham. How comes it? Do they grow rusty?   Ros. Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace; but there is,     sir, an eyrie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top     of question and are most tyrannically clapp\'d fort. These are now     the fashion, and so berattle the common stages (so they call     them) that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills and     dare scarce come thither.   Ham. What, are they children? Who maintains \'em? How are they     escoted? Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can     sing? Will they not say afterwards, if they should grow     themselves to common players (as it is most like, if their means     are no better), their writers do them wrong to make them exclaim     against their own succession.   Ros. Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and the nation     holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy. There was, for a     while, no money bid for argument unless the poet and the player     went to cuffs in the question.   Ham. Is\'t possible?   Guil. O, there has been much throwing about of brains.   Ham. Do the boys carry it away?     Ros. Ay, that they do, my lord- Hercules and his load too.   Ham. It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark, and     those that would make mows at him while my father lived give     twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in     little. \'Sblood, there is something in this more than natural, if     philosophy could find it out.                       Flourish for the Players.    Guil. There are the players.   Ham. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsinore. Your hands, come! Th\'     appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply     with you in this garb, lest my extent to the players (which I     tell you must show fairly outwards) should more appear like     entertainment than yours. You are welcome. But my uncle-father     and aunt-mother are deceiv\'d.   Guil. In what, my dear lord?   Ham. I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly I     know a hawk from a handsaw.                                Enter Polonius.    Pol. Well be with you, gentlemen!   Ham. Hark you, Guildenstern- and you too- at each ear a hearer!     That great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling     clouts.   Ros. Happily he\'s the second time come to them; for they say an old     man is twice a child.   Ham. I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players. Mark it.-    You say right, sir; a Monday morning; twas so indeed.   Pol. My lord, I have news to tell you.   Ham. My lord, I have news to tell you. When Roscius was an actor in     Rome-   Pol. The actors are come hither, my lord.   Ham. Buzz, buzz!   Pol. Upon my honour-   Ham. Then came each actor on his ass-   Pol. The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy,     history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral,     tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral; scene       individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor     Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are     the only men.   Ham. O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou!   Pol. What treasure had he, my lord?   Ham. Why,           \'One fair daughter, and no more,            The which he loved passing well.\'    Pol. [aside] Still on my daughter.   Ham. Am I not i\' th\' right, old Jephthah?   Pol. If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I     love passing well.   Ham. Nay, that follows not.   Pol. What follows then, my lord?   Ham. Why,             \'As by lot, God wot,\'   and then, you know,               \'It came to pass, as most like it was.\'      The first row of the pious chanson will show you more; for look     where my abridgment comes.                       Enter four or five Players.      You are welcome, masters; welcome, all.- I am glad to see thee     well.- Welcome, good friends.- O, my old friend? Why, thy face is     valanc\'d since I saw thee last. Com\'st\' thou to\' beard me in     Denmark?- What, my young lady and mistress? By\'r Lady, your     ladyship is nearer to heaven than when I saw you last by the     altitude of a chopine. Pray God your voice, like a piece of     uncurrent gold, be not crack\'d within the ring.- Masters, you are     all welcome. We\'ll e\'en to\'t like French falconers, fly at     anything we see. We\'ll have a speech straight. Come, give us a     taste of your quality. Come, a passionate speech.   1. Play. What speech, my good lord?   Ham. I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted;     or if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleas\'d       not the million, \'twas caviary to the general; but it was (as I     receiv\'d it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in     the top of mine) an excellent play, well digested in the scenes,     set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember one said     there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury,     nor no matter in the phrase that might indict the author of     affectation; but call\'d it an honest method, as wholesome as     sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in\'t     I chiefly lov\'d. \'Twas AEneas\' tale to Dido, and thereabout of it     especially where he speaks of Priam\'s slaughter. If it live in     your memory, begin at this line- let me see, let me see:           \'The rugged Pyrrhus, like th\' Hyrcanian beast-\'      \'Tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus:           \'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms,          Black as his purpose, did the night resemble          When he lay couched in the ominous horse,          Hath now this dread and black complexion smear\'d            With heraldry more dismal. Head to foot          Now is be total gules, horridly trick\'d          With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,          Bak\'d and impasted with the parching streets,          That lend a tyrannous and a damned light          To their lord\'s murther. Roasted in wrath and fire,          And thus o\'ersized with coagulate gore,          With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus          Old grandsire Priam seeks.\'      So, proceed you.   Pol. Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and good      discretion.    1. Play. \'Anon he finds him,       Striking too short at Greeks. His antique sword,       Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,       Repugnant to command. Unequal match\'d,       Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide;       But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword         Th\' unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,       Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top       Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash       Takes prisoner Pyrrhus\' ear. For lo! his sword,       Which was declining on the milky head       Of reverend Priam, seem\'d i\' th\' air to stick.       So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,       And, like a neutral to his will and matter,       Did nothing.       But, as we often see, against some storm,       A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,       The bold winds speechless, and the orb below       As hush as death- anon the dreadful thunder       Doth rend the region; so, after Pyrrhus\' pause,       Aroused vengeance sets him new awork;       And never did the Cyclops\' hammers fall       On Mars\'s armour, forg\'d for proof eterne,       With less remorse than Pyrrhus\' bleeding sword       Now falls on Priam.       Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods,         In general synod take away her power;       Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,       And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,       As low as to the fiends!    Pol. This is too long.   Ham. It shall to the barber\'s, with your beard.- Prithee say on.     He\'s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps. Say on; come to     Hecuba.    1. Play. \'But who, O who, had seen the mobled queen-\'    Ham. \'The mobled queen\'?   Pol. That\'s good! \'Mobled queen\' is good.    1. Play. \'Run barefoot up and down, threat\'ning the flames       With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head       Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,       About her lank and all o\'erteemed loins,       A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up-         Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep\'d       \'Gainst Fortune\'s state would treason have pronounc\'d.       But if the gods themselves did see her then,       When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport       In Mincing with his sword her husband\'s limbs,       The instant burst of clamour that she made       (Unless things mortal move them not at all)       Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven       And passion in the gods.\'    Pol. Look, whe\'r he has not turn\'d his colour, and has tears in\'s     eyes. Prithee no more!   Ham. \'Tis well. I\'ll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.-     Good my lord, will you see the players well bestow\'d? Do you     hear? Let them be well us\'d; for they are the abstract and brief     chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a     bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.   Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert.   Ham. God\'s bodykins, man, much better! Use every man after his     desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own       honour and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in     your bounty. Take them in.   Pol. Come, sirs.   Ham. Follow him, friends. We\'ll hear a play to-morrow.                  Exeunt Polonius and Players [except the First].     Dost thou hear me, old friend? Can you play \'The Murther of     Gonzago\'?   1. Play. Ay, my lord.   Ham. We\'ll ha\'t to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a     speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down and     insert in\'t, could you not?   1. Play. Ay, my lord.   Ham. Very well. Follow that lord- and look you mock him not.                                             [Exit First Player.]     My good friends, I\'ll leave you till night. You are welcome to     Elsinore.   Ros. Good my lord!   Ham. Ay, so, God b\' wi\' ye!                             [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern     Now I am alone.       O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!     Is it not monstrous that this player here,     But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,     Could force his soul so to his own conceit     That, from her working, all his visage wann\'d,     Tears in his eyes, distraction in\'s aspect,     A broken voice, and his whole function suiting     With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!     For Hecuba!     What\'s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,     That he should weep for her? What would he do,     Had he the motive and the cue for passion     That I have? He would drown the stage with tears     And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;     Make mad the guilty and appal the free,     Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed     The very faculties of eyes and ears.     Yet I,     A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak     Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,       And can say nothing! No, not for a king,     Upon whose property and most dear life     A damn\'d defeat was made. Am I a coward?     Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?     Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?     Tweaks me by th\' nose? gives me the lie i\' th\' throat     As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this, ha?     \'Swounds, I should take it! for it cannot be     But I am pigeon-liver\'d and lack gall     To make oppression bitter, or ere this     I should have fatted all the region kites     With this slave\'s offal. Bloody bawdy villain!     Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!     O, vengeance!     Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,     That I, the son of a dear father murther\'d,     Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,     Must (like a whore) unpack my heart with words     And fall a-cursing like a very drab,     A scullion!       Fie upon\'t! foh! About, my brain! Hum, I have heard     That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,     Have by the very cunning of the scene     Been struck so to the soul that presently     They have proclaim\'d their malefactions;     For murther, though it have no tongue, will speak     With most miraculous organ, I\'ll have these Players     Play something like the murther of my father     Before mine uncle. I\'ll observe his looks;     I\'ll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,     I know my course. The spirit that I have seen     May be a devil; and the devil hath power     T\' assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps     Out of my weakness and my melancholy,     As he is very potent with such spirits,     Abuses me to damn me. I\'ll have grounds     More relative than this. The play\'s the thing     Wherein I\'ll catch the conscience of the King.         Exit.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. Scene I. Elsinore. A room in the Castle.  Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Lords.    King. And can you by no drift of circumstance     Get from him why he puts on this confusion,     Grating so harshly all his days of quiet     With turbulent and dangerous lunacy?   Ros. He does confess he feels himself distracted,     But from what cause he will by no means speak.   Guil. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded,     But with a crafty madness keeps aloof     When we would bring him on to some confession     Of his true state.   Queen. Did he receive you well?   Ros. Most like a gentleman.   Guil. But with much forcing of his disposition.   Ros. Niggard of question, but of our demands     Most free in his reply.   Queen. Did you assay him       To any pastime?   Ros. Madam, it so fell out that certain players     We o\'erraught on the way. Of these we told him,     And there did seem in him a kind of joy     To hear of it. They are here about the court,     And, as I think, they have already order     This night to play before him.   Pol. \'Tis most true;     And he beseech\'d me to entreat your Majesties     To hear and see the matter.   King. With all my heart, and it doth much content me     To hear him so inclin\'d.     Good gentlemen, give him a further edge     And drive his purpose on to these delights.   Ros. We shall, my lord.                             Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.   King. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too;     For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,     That he, as \'twere by accident, may here     Affront Ophelia.       Her father and myself (lawful espials)     Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen,     We may of their encounter frankly judge     And gather by him, as he is behav\'d,     If\'t be th\' affliction of his love, or no,     That thus he suffers for.   Queen. I shall obey you;     And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish     That your good beauties be the happy cause     Of Hamlet\'s wildness. So shall I hope your virtues     Will bring him to his wonted way again,     To both your honours.   Oph. Madam, I wish it may.                                                    [Exit Queen.]   Pol. Ophelia, walk you here.- Gracious, so please you,     We will bestow ourselves.- [To Ophelia] Read on this book,     That show of such an exercise may colour     Your loneliness.- We are oft to blame in this,     \'Tis too much prov\'d, that with devotion\'s visage     And pious action we do sugar o\'er       The Devil himself.   King. [aside] O, \'tis too true!     How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience!     The harlot\'s cheek, beautied with plast\'ring art,     Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it     Than is my deed to my most painted word.     O heavy burthen!   Pol. I hear him coming. Let\'s withdraw, my lord.                                       Exeunt King and Polonius].                             Enter Hamlet.    Ham. To be, or not to be- that is the question:     Whether \'tis nobler in the mind to suffer     The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune     Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,     And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep-     No more; and by a sleep to say we end     The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks     That flesh is heir to. \'Tis a consummation       Devoutly to be wish\'d. To die- to sleep.     To sleep- perchance to dream: ay, there\'s the rub!     For in that sleep of death what dreams may come     When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,     Must give us pause. There\'s the respect     That makes calamity of so long life.     For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,     Th\' oppressor\'s wrong, the proud man\'s contumely,     The pangs of despis\'d love, the law\'s delay,     The insolence of office, and the spurns     That patient merit of th\' unworthy takes,     When he himself might his quietus make     With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,     To grunt and sweat under a weary life,     But that the dread of something after death-     The undiscover\'d country, from whose bourn     No traveller returns- puzzles the will,     And makes us rather bear those ills we have     Than fly to others that we know not of?     Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,       And thus the native hue of resolution     Is sicklied o\'er with the pale cast of thought,     And enterprises of great pith and moment     With this regard their currents turn awry     And lose the name of action.- Soft you now!     The fair Ophelia!- Nymph, in thy orisons     Be all my sins rememb\'red.   Oph. Good my lord,     How does your honour for this many a day?   Ham. I humbly thank you; well, well, well.   Oph. My lord, I have remembrances of yours     That I have longed long to re-deliver.     I pray you, now receive them.   Ham. No, not I!     I never gave you aught.   Oph. My honour\'d lord, you know right well you did,     And with them words of so sweet breath compos\'d     As made the things more rich. Their perfume lost,     Take these again; for to the noble mind     Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.       There, my lord.   Ham. Ha, ha! Are you honest?   Oph. My lord?   Ham. Are you fair?   Oph. What means your lordship?   Ham. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no     discourse to your beauty.   Oph. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?   Ham. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform     honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can     translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox,     but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.   Oph. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.   Ham. You should not have believ\'d me; for virtue cannot so     inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you     not.   Oph. I was the more deceived.   Ham. Get thee to a nunnery! Why wouldst thou be a breeder of     sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse     me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.       I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my     beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give     them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I     do, crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all;     believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where\'s your     father?   Oph. At home, my lord.   Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool     nowhere but in\'s own house. Farewell.   Oph. O, help him, you sweet heavens!   Ham. If thou dost marry, I\'ll give thee this plague for thy dowry:     be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape     calumny. Get thee to a nunnery. Go, farewell. Or if thou wilt     needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what     monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too.     Farewell.   Oph. O heavenly powers, restore him!   Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath     given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you     amble, and you lisp; you nickname God\'s creatures and make your       wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I\'ll no more on\'t! it hath made     me mad. I say, we will have no moe marriages. Those that are     married already- all but one- shall live; the rest shall keep as     they are. To a nunnery, go.                            Exit.   Oph. O, what a noble mind is here o\'erthrown!     The courtier\'s, scholar\'s, soldier\'s, eye, tongue, sword,     Th\' expectancy and rose of the fair state,     The glass of fashion and the mould of form,     Th\' observ\'d of all observers- quite, quite down!     And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,     That suck\'d the honey of his music vows,     Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,     Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;     That unmatch\'d form and feature of blown youth     Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me     T\' have seen what I have seen, see what I see!                     Enter King and Polonius.    King. Love? his affections do not that way tend;       Nor what he spake, though it lack\'d form a little,     Was not like madness. There\'s something in his soul     O\'er which his melancholy sits on brood;     And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose     Will be some danger; which for to prevent,     I have in quick determination     Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England     For the demand of our neglected tribute.     Haply the seas, and countries different,     With variable objects, shall expel     This something-settled matter in his heart,     Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus     From fashion of himself. What think you on\'t?   Pol. It shall do well. But yet do I believe     The origin and commencement of his grief     Sprung from neglected love.- How now, Ophelia?     You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said.     We heard it all.- My lord, do as you please;     But if you hold it fit, after the play     Let his queen mother all alone entreat him       To show his grief. Let her be round with him;     And I\'ll be plac\'d so please you, in the ear     Of all their conference. If she find him not,     To England send him; or confine him where     Your wisdom best shall think.   King. It shall be so.     Madness in great ones must not unwatch\'d go.         Exeunt.     Scene II. Elsinore. hall in the Castle.  Enter Hamlet and three of the Players.    Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc\'d it to you,     trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our     players do, I had as live the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do     not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all     gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say)     whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a     temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the     soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to     tatters, to very rags, to split the cars of the groundlings, who     (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb     shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipp\'d for o\'erdoing     Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.   Player. I warrant your honour.   Ham. Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your     tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with     this special observance, that you o\'erstep not the modesty of     nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing,       whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as     \'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show Virtue her own feature,     scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his     form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though     it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious     grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance     o\'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I     have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to     speak it profanely), that, neither having the accent of     Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so     strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature\'s     journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated     humanity so abominably.   Player. I hope we have reform\'d that indifferently with us, sir.   Ham. O, reform it altogether! And let those that play your clowns     speak no more than is set down for them. For there be of them     that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren     spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary     question of the play be then to be considered. That\'s villanous     and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go       make you ready.                                                  Exeunt Players.              Enter Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.      How now, my lord? Will the King hear this piece of work?   Pol. And the Queen too, and that presently.   Ham. Bid the players make haste, [Exit Polonius.] Will you two     help to hasten them?   Both. We will, my lord.                       Exeunt they two.   Ham. What, ho, Horatio!                        Enter Horatio.    Hor. Here, sweet lord, at your service.   Ham. Horatio, thou art e\'en as just a man     As e\'er my conversation cop\'d withal.   Hor. O, my dear lord!   Ham. Nay, do not think I flatter;     For what advancement may I hope from thee,       That no revenue hast but thy good spirits     To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter\'d?     No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,     And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee     Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?     Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice     And could of men distinguish, her election     Hath scald thee for herself. For thou hast been     As one, in suff\'ring all, that suffers nothing;     A man that Fortune\'s buffets and rewards     Hast ta\'en with equal thanks; and blest are those     Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled     That they are not a pipe for Fortune\'s finger     To sound what stop she please. Give me that man     That is not passion\'s slave, and I will wear him     In my heart\'s core, ay, in my heart of heart,     As I do thee. Something too much of this I     There is a play to-night before the King.     One scene of it comes near the circumstance,     Which I have told thee, of my father\'s death.       I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,     Even with the very comment of thy soul     Observe my uncle. If his occulted guilt     Do not itself unkennel in one speech,     It is a damned ghost that we have seen,     And my imaginations are as foul     As Vulcan\'s stithy. Give him heedful note;     For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,     And after we will both our judgments join     In censure of his seeming.   Hor. Well, my lord.     If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,     And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.      Sound a flourish. [Enter Trumpets and Kettledrums. Danish     march. [Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz,       Guildenstern, and other Lords attendant, with the Guard                        carrying torches.    Ham. They are coming to the play. I must be idle.       Get you a place.   King. How fares our cousin Hamlet?   Ham. Excellent, i\' faith; of the chameleon\'s dish. I eat the air,     promise-cramm\'d. You cannot feed capons so.   King. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet. These words are not     mine.   Ham. No, nor mine now. [To Polonius] My lord, you play\'d once     i\' th\' university, you say?   Pol. That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.   Ham. What did you enact?   Pol. I did enact Julius Caesar; I was kill\'d i\' th\' Capitol; Brutus     kill\'d me.   Ham. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there. Be     the players ready.   Ros. Ay, my lord. They stay upon your patience.   Queen. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.   Ham. No, good mother. Here\'s metal more attractive.   Pol. [to the King] O, ho! do you mark that?   Ham. Lady, shall I lie in your lap?                                   [Sits down at Ophelia\'s feet.]     Oph. No, my lord.   Ham. I mean, my head upon your lap?   Oph. Ay, my lord.   Ham. Do you think I meant country matters?   Oph. I think nothing, my lord.   Ham. That\'s a fair thought to lie between maids\' legs.   Oph. What is, my lord?   Ham. Nothing.   Oph. You are merry, my lord.   Ham. Who, I?   Oph. Ay, my lord.   Ham. O God, your only jig-maker! What should a man do but be merry?     For look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died     within \'s two hours.   Oph. Nay \'tis twice two months, my lord.   Ham. So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I\'ll have a     suit of sables. O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten     yet? Then there\'s hope a great man\'s memory may outlive his life     half a year. But, by\'r Lady, he must build churches then; or else     shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose       epitaph is \'For O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot!\'                 Hautboys play. The dumb show enters.      Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen embracing     him and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation     unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her     neck. He lays him down upon a bank of flowers. She, seeing     him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his     crown, kisses it, pours poison in the sleeper\'s ears, and     leaves him. The Queen returns, finds the King dead, and makes     passionate action. The Poisoner with some three or four Mutes,     comes in again, seem to condole with her. The dead body is     carried away. The Poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts; she     seems harsh and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts     his love.                                                          Exeunt.    Oph. What means this, my lord?   Ham. Marry, this is miching malhecho; it means mischief.     Oph. Belike this show imports the argument of the play.                        Enter Prologue.    Ham. We shall know by this fellow. The players cannot keep counsel;     they\'ll tell all.   Oph. Will he tell us what this show meant?   Ham. Ay, or any show that you\'ll show him. Be not you asham\'d to     show, he\'ll not shame to tell you what it means.   Oph. You are naught, you are naught! I\'ll mark the play.      Pro. For us, and for our tragedy,       Here stooping to your clemency,       We beg your hearing patiently.                     [Exit.]    Ham. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?   Oph. \'Tis brief, my lord.   Ham. As woman\'s love.                Enter [two Players as] King and Queen.        King. Full thirty times hath Phoebus\' cart gone round       Neptune\'s salt wash and Tellus\' orbed ground,       And thirty dozed moons with borrowed sheen       About the world have times twelve thirties been,       Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands,       Unite comutual in most sacred bands.     Queen. So many journeys may the sun and moon       Make us again count o\'er ere love be done!       But woe is me! you are so sick of late,       So far from cheer and from your former state.       That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,       Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must;       For women\'s fear and love holds quantity,       In neither aught, or in extremity.       Now what my love is, proof hath made you know;       And as my love is siz\'d, my fear is so.       Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;       Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.     King. Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;         My operant powers their functions leave to do.       And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,       Honour\'d, belov\'d, and haply one as kind       For husband shalt thou-     Queen. O, confound the rest!       Such love must needs be treason in my breast.       When second husband let me be accurst!       None wed the second but who killed the first.    Ham. [aside] Wormwood, wormwood!      Queen. The instances that second marriage move       Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.       A second time I kill my husband dead       When second husband kisses me in bed.     King. I do believe you think what now you speak;       But what we do determine oft we break.       Purpose is but the slave to memory,       Of violent birth, but poor validity;       Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,         But fill unshaken when they mellow be.       Most necessary \'tis that we forget       To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.       What to ourselves in passion we propose,       The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.       The violence of either grief or joy       Their own enactures with themselves destroy.       Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;       Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.       This world is not for aye, nor \'tis not strange       That even our loves should with our fortunes change;       For \'tis a question left us yet to prove,       Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.       The great man down, you mark his favourite flies,       The poor advanc\'d makes friends of enemies;       And hitherto doth love on fortune tend,       For who not needs shall never lack a friend,       And who in want a hollow friend doth try,       Directly seasons him his enemy.       But, orderly to end where I begun,         Our wills and fates do so contrary run       That our devices still are overthrown;       Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.       So think thou wilt no second husband wed;       But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.     Queen. Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light,       Sport and repose lock from me day and night,       To desperation turn my trust and hope,       An anchor\'s cheer in prison be my scope,       Each opposite that blanks the face of joy       Meet what I would have well, and it destroy,       Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,       If, once a widow, ever I be wife!    Ham. If she should break it now!      King. \'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile.       My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile       The tedious day with sleep.     Queen. Sleep rock thy brain,                                                       [He] sleeps.       And never come mischance between us twain! Exit.    Ham. Madam, how like you this play?   Queen. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.   Ham. O, but she\'ll keep her word.   King. Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in\'t?   Ham. No, no! They do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i\' th\'     world.   King. What do you call the play?   Ham. \'The Mousetrap.\' Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the     image of a murther done in Vienna. Gonzago is the duke\'s name;     his wife, Baptista. You shall see anon. \'Tis a knavish piece of     work; but what o\' that? Your Majesty, and we that have free     souls, it touches us not. Let the gall\'d jade winch; our withers     are unwrung.                           Enter Lucianus.        This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.   Oph. You are as good as a chorus, my lord.   Ham. I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see     the puppets dallying.   Oph. You are keen, my lord, you are keen.   Ham. It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.   Oph. Still better, and worse.   Ham. So you must take your husbands.- Begin, murtherer. Pox, leave     thy damnable faces, and begin! Come, the croaking raven doth     bellow for revenge.      Luc. Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;       Confederate season, else no creature seeing;       Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected,       With Hecate\'s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected,       Thy natural magic and dire property       On wholesome life usurp immediately.                                    Pours the poison in his ears.    Ham. He poisons him i\' th\' garden for\'s estate. His name\'s Gonzago.       The story is extant, and written in very choice Italian. You     shall see anon how the murtherer gets the love of Gonzago\'s wife.   Oph. The King rises.   Ham. What, frighted with false fire?   Queen. How fares my lord?   Pol. Give o\'er the play.   King. Give me some light! Away!   All. Lights, lights, lights!                               Exeunt all but Hamlet and Horatio.   Ham.   Why, let the strucken deer go weep,           The hart ungalled play;          For some must watch, while some must sleep:           Thus runs the world away.     Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers- if the rest of my     fortunes turn Turk with me-with two Provincial roses on my raz\'d     shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?   Hor. Half a share.   Ham.   A whole one I!          For thou dost know, O Damon dear,            This realm dismantled was            Of Jove himself; and now reigns here            A very, very- pajock.   Hor. You might have rhym\'d.   Ham. O good Horatio, I\'ll take the ghost\'s word for a thousand     pound! Didst perceive?   Hor. Very well, my lord.   Ham. Upon the talk of the poisoning?   Hor. I did very well note him.   Ham.   Aha! Come, some music! Come, the recorders!          For if the King like not the comedy,          Why then, belike he likes it not, perdy.     Come, some music!                  Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.    Guil. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.   Ham. Sir, a whole history.   Guil. The King, sir-   Ham. Ay, sir, what of him?   Guil. Is in his retirement, marvellous distemper\'d.     Ham. With drink, sir?   Guil. No, my lord; rather with choler.   Ham. Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to     the doctor; for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps     plunge him into far more choler.   Guil. Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start     not so wildly from my affair.   Ham. I am tame, sir; pronounce.   Guil. The Queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit     hath sent me to you.   Ham. You are welcome.   Guil. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed.     If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do     your mother\'s commandment; if not, your pardon and my return     shall be the end of my business.   Ham. Sir, I cannot.   Guil. What, my lord?   Ham. Make you a wholesome answer; my wit\'s diseas\'d. But, sir, such     answer is I can make, you shall command; or rather, as you say,     my mother. Therefore no more, but to the matter! My mother, you       say-   Ros. Then thus she says: your behaviour hath struck her into     amazement and admiration.   Ham. O wonderful son, that can so stonish a mother! But is there no     sequel at the heels of this mother\'s admiration? Impart.   Ros. She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to bed.   Ham. We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any     further trade with us?   Ros. My lord, you once did love me.   Ham. And do still, by these pickers and stealers!   Ros. Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do surely     bar the door upon your own liberty, if you deny your griefs to     your friend.   Ham. Sir, I lack advancement.   Ros. How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself     for your succession in Denmark?   Ham. Ay, sir, but \'while the grass grows\'- the proverb is something     musty.                       Enter the Players with recorders.        O, the recorders! Let me see one. To withdraw with you- why do     you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me     into a toil?   Guil. O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.   Ham. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?   Guil. My lord, I cannot.   Ham. I pray you.   Guil. Believe me, I cannot.   Ham. I do beseech you.   Guil. I know, no touch of it, my lord.   Ham. It is as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your     fingers and thumbs, give it breath with your mouth, and it will     discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.   Guil. But these cannot I command to any utt\'rance of harmony. I     have not the skill.   Ham. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You     would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would     pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my     lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music,       excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it     speak. \'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be play\'d on than a     pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me,     you cannot play upon me.                          Enter Polonius.      God bless you, sir!   Pol. My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.   Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that\'s almost in shape of a camel?   Pol. By th\' mass, and \'tis like a camel indeed.   Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel.   Pol. It is back\'d like a weasel.   Ham. Or like a whale.   Pol. Very like a whale.   Ham. Then will I come to my mother by-and-by.- They fool me to the     top of my bent.- I will come by-and-by.   Pol. I will say so.                                      Exit.   Ham. \'By-and-by\' is easily said.- Leave me, friends.                                         [Exeunt all but Hamlet.]       \'Tis now the very witching time of night,     When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out     Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood     And do such bitter business as the day     Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother!     O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever     The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom.     Let me be cruel, not unnatural;     I will speak daggers to her, but use none.     My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites-     How in my words somever she be shent,     To give them seals never, my soul, consent!             Exit.     Scene III. A room in the Castle.  Enter King, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern.    King. I like him not, nor stands it safe with us     To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you;     I your commission will forthwith dispatch,     And he to England shall along with you.     The terms of our estate may not endure     Hazard so near us as doth hourly grow     Out of his lunacies.   Guil. We will ourselves provide.     Most holy and religious fear it is     To keep those many many bodies safe     That live and feed upon your Majesty.   Ros. The single and peculiar life is bound     With all the strength and armour of the mind     To keep itself from noyance; but much more     That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests     The lives of many. The cesse of majesty     Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw       What\'s near it with it. It is a massy wheel,     Fix\'d on the summit of the highest mount,     To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things     Are mortis\'d and adjoin\'d; which when it falls,     Each small annexment, petty consequence,     Attends the boist\'rous ruin. Never alone     Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.   King. Arm you, I pray you, to th\', speedy voyage;     For we will fetters put upon this fear,     Which now goes too free-footed.   Both. We will haste us.                                                Exeunt Gentlemen.                     Enter Polonius.    Pol. My lord, he\'s going to his mother\'s closet.     Behind the arras I\'ll convey myself     To hear the process. I\'ll warrant she\'ll tax him home;     And, as you said, and wisely was it said,     \'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,       Since nature makes them partial, should o\'erhear     The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege.     I\'ll call upon you ere you go to bed     And tell you what I know.   King. Thanks, dear my lord.                                                 Exit [Polonius].     O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;     It hath the primal eldest curse upon\'t,     A brother\'s murther! Pray can I not,     Though inclination be as sharp as will.     My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,     And, like a man to double business bound,     I stand in pause where I shall first begin,     And both neglect. What if this cursed hand     Were thicker than itself with brother\'s blood,     Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens     To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy     But to confront the visage of offence?     And what\'s in prayer but this twofold force,     To be forestalled ere we come to fall,       Or pardon\'d being down? Then I\'ll look up;     My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer     Can serve my turn? \'Forgive me my foul murther\'?     That cannot be; since I am still possess\'d     Of those effects for which I did the murther-     My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen.     May one be pardon\'d and retain th\' offence?     In the corrupted currents of this world     Offence\'s gilded hand may shove by justice,     And oft \'tis seen the wicked prize itself     Buys out the law; but \'tis not so above.     There is no shuffling; there the action lies     In his true nature, and we ourselves compell\'d,     Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,     To give in evidence. What then? What rests?     Try what repentance can. What can it not?     Yet what can it when one cannot repent?     O wretched state! O bosom black as death!     O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,     Art more engag\'d! Help, angels! Make assay.       Bow, stubborn knees; and heart with strings of steel,     Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!     All may be well.                                  He kneels.                           Enter Hamlet.    Ham. Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;     And now I\'ll do\'t. And so he goes to heaven,     And so am I reveng\'d. That would be scann\'d.     A villain kills my father; and for that,     I, his sole son, do this same villain send     To heaven.     Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge!     He took my father grossly, full of bread,     With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;     And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?     But in our circumstance and course of thought,     \'Tis heavy with him; and am I then reveng\'d,     To take him in the purging of his soul,     When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?       No.     Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent.     When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage;     Or in th\' incestuous pleasure of his bed;     At gaming, swearing, or about some act     That has no relish of salvation in\'t-     Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,     And that his soul may be as damn\'d and black     As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.     This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.              Exit.   King. [rises] My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.     Words without thoughts never to heaven go.             Exit.     Scene IV. The Queen\'s closet.  Enter Queen and Polonius.    Pol. He will come straight. Look you lay home to him.     Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with,     And that your Grace hath screen\'d and stood between     Much heat and him. I\'ll silence me even here.     Pray you be round with him.   Ham. (within) Mother, mother, mother!   Queen. I\'ll warrant you; fear me not. Withdraw; I hear him coming.                               [Polonius hides behind the arras.]                            Enter Hamlet.    Ham. Now, mother, what\'s the matter?   Queen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.   Ham. Mother, you have my father much offended.   Queen. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.   Ham. Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.   Queen. Why, how now, Hamlet?     Ham. What\'s the matter now?   Queen. Have you forgot me?   Ham. No, by the rood, not so!     You are the Queen, your husband\'s brother\'s wife,     And (would it were not so!) you are my mother.   Queen. Nay, then I\'ll set those to you that can speak.   Ham. Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge I     You go not till I set you up a glass     Where you may see the inmost part of you.   Queen. What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murther me?     Help, help, ho!   Pol. [behind] What, ho! help, help, help!   Ham. [draws] How now? a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!             [Makes a pass through the arras and] kills Polonius.   Pol. [behind] O, I am slain!   Queen. O me, what hast thou done?   Ham. Nay, I know not. Is it the King?   Queen. O, what a rash and bloody deed is this!   Ham. A bloody deed- almost as bad, good mother,     As kill a king, and marry with his brother.     Queen. As kill a king?   Ham. Ay, lady, it was my word.                          [Lifts up the arras and sees Polonius.]     Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!     I took thee for thy better. Take thy fortune.     Thou find\'st to be too busy is some danger.     Leave wringing of your hinds. Peace! sit you down     And let me wring your heart; for so I shall     If it be made of penetrable stuff;     If damned custom have not braz\'d it so     That it is proof and bulwark against sense.   Queen. What have I done that thou dar\'st wag thy tongue     In noise so rude against me?   Ham. Such an act     That blurs the grace and blush of modesty;     Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose     From the fair forehead of an innocent love,     And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows     As false as dicers\' oaths. O, such a deed     As from the body of contraction plucks       The very soul, and sweet religion makes     A rhapsody of words! Heaven\'s face doth glow;     Yea, this solidity and compound mass,     With tristful visage, as against the doom,     Is thought-sick at the act.   Queen. Ay me, what act,     That roars so loud and thunders in the index?   Ham. Look here upon th\'s picture, and on this,     The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.     See what a grace was seated on this brow;     Hyperion\'s curls; the front of Jove himself;     An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;     A station like the herald Mercury     New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill:     A combination and a form indeed     Where every god did seem to set his seal     To give the world assurance of a man.     This was your husband. Look you now what follows.     Here is your husband, like a mildew\'d ear     Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?       Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,     And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes     You cannot call it love; for at your age     The heyday in the blood is tame, it\'s humble,     And waits upon the judgment; and what judgment     Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,     Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense     Is apoplex\'d; for madness would not err,     Nor sense to ecstacy was ne\'er so thrall\'d     But it reserv\'d some quantity of choice     To serve in such a difference. What devil was\'t     That thus hath cozen\'d you at hoodman-blind?     Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,     Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,     Or but a sickly part of one true sense     Could not so mope.     O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,     If thou canst mutine in a matron\'s bones,     To flaming youth let virtue be as wax     And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame       When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,     Since frost itself as actively doth burn,     And reason panders will.   Queen. O Hamlet, speak no more!     Thou turn\'st mine eyes into my very soul,     And there I see such black and grained spots     As will not leave their tinct.   Ham. Nay, but to live     In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,     Stew\'d in corruption, honeying and making love     Over the nasty sty!   Queen. O, speak to me no more!     These words like daggers enter in mine ears.     No more, sweet Hamlet!   Ham. A murtherer and a villain!     A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe     Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;     A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,     That from a shelf the precious diadem stole     And put it in his pocket!     Queen. No more!                  Enter the Ghost in his nightgown.    Ham. A king of shreds and patches!-     Save me and hover o\'er me with your wings,     You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure?   Queen. Alas, he\'s mad!   Ham. Do you not come your tardy son to chide,     That, laps\'d in time and passion, lets go by     Th\' important acting of your dread command?     O, say!   Ghost. Do not forget. This visitation     Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.     But look, amazement on thy mother sits.     O, step between her and her fighting soul     Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.     Speak to her, Hamlet.   Ham. How is it with you, lady?   Queen. Alas, how is\'t with you,       That you do bend your eye on vacancy,     And with th\' encorporal air do hold discourse?     Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;     And, as the sleeping soldiers in th\' alarm,     Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements,     Start up and stand an end. O gentle son,     Upon the beat and flame of thy distemper     Sprinkle cool patience! Whereon do you look?   Ham. On him, on him! Look you how pale he glares!     His form and cause conjoin\'d, preaching to stones,     Would make them capable.- Do not look upon me,     Lest with this piteous action you convert     My stern effects. Then what I have to do     Will want true colour- tears perchance for blood.   Queen. To whom do you speak this?   Ham. Do you see nothing there?   Queen. Nothing at all; yet all that is I see.   Ham. Nor did you nothing hear?   Queen. No, nothing but ourselves.   Ham. Why, look you there! Look how it steals away!       My father, in his habit as he liv\'d!     Look where he goes even now out at the portal!                                                      Exit Ghost.   Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain.     This bodiless creation ecstasy     Is very cunning in.   Ham. Ecstasy?     My pulse as yours doth temperately keep time     And makes as healthful music. It is not madness     That I have utt\'red. Bring me to the test,     And I the matter will reword; which madness     Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,     Lay not that flattering unction to your soul     That not your trespass but my madness speaks.     It will but skin and film the ulcerous place,     Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,     Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;     Repent what\'s past; avoid what is to come;     And do not spread the compost on the weeds     To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue;       For in the fatness of these pursy times     Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg-     Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good.   Queen. O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain.   Ham. O, throw away the worser part of it,     And live the purer with the other half,     Good night- but go not to my uncle\'s bed.     Assume a virtue, if you have it not.     That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat     Of habits evil, is angel yet in this,     That to the use of actions fair and good     He likewise gives a frock or livery,     That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night,     And that shall lend a kind of easiness     To the next abstinence; the next more easy;     For use almost can change the stamp of nature,     And either [master] the devil, or throw him out     With wondrous potency. Once more, good night;     And when you are desirous to be blest,     I\'ll blessing beg of you.- For this same lord,       I do repent; but heaven hath pleas\'d it so,     To punish me with this, and this with me,     That I must be their scourge and minister.     I will bestow him, and will answer well     The death I gave him. So again, good night.     I must be cruel, only to be kind;     Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.     One word more, good lady.   Queen. What shall I do?   Ham. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do:     Let the bloat King tempt you again to bed;     Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse;     And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses,     Or paddling in your neck with his damn\'d fingers,     Make you to ravel all this matter out,     That I essentially am not in madness,     But mad in craft. \'Twere good you let him know;     For who that\'s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,     Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib     Such dear concernings hide? Who would do so?       No, in despite of sense and secrecy,     Unpeg the basket on the house\'s top,     Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,     To try conclusions, in the basket creep     And break your own neck down.   Queen. Be thou assur\'d, if words be made of breath,     And breath of life, I have no life to breathe     What thou hast said to me.   Ham. I must to England; you know that?   Queen. Alack,     I had forgot! \'Tis so concluded on.   Ham. There\'s letters seal\'d; and my two schoolfellows,     Whom I will trust as I will adders fang\'d,     They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way     And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;     For \'tis the sport to have the enginer     Hoist with his own petar; and \'t shall go hard     But I will delve one yard below their mines     And blow them at the moon. O, \'tis most sweet     When in one line two crafts directly meet.       This man shall set me packing.     I\'ll lug the guts into the neighbour room.-     Mother, good night.- Indeed, this counsellor     Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,     Who was in life a foolish peating knave.     Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you.     Good night, mother.                   [Exit the Queen. Then] Exit Hamlet, tugging in                                                        Polonius.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. Scene I. Elsinore. A room in the Castle.  Enter King and Queen, with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.    King. There\'s matter in these sighs. These profound heaves     You must translate; \'tis fit we understand them.     Where is your son?   Queen. Bestow this place on us a little while.                           [Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]     Ah, mine own lord, what have I seen to-night!   King. What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?   Queen. Mad as the sea and wind when both contend     Which is the mightier. In his lawless fit     Behind the arras hearing something stir,     Whips out his rapier, cries \'A rat, a rat!\'     And in this brainish apprehension kills     The unseen good old man.   King. O heavy deed!     It had been so with us, had we been there.     His liberty is full of threats to all-     To you yourself, to us, to every one.       Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer\'d?     It will be laid to us, whose providence     Should have kept short, restrain\'d, and out of haunt     This mad young man. But so much was our love     We would not understand what was most fit,     But, like the owner of a foul disease,     To keep it from divulging, let it feed     Even on the pith of life. Where is he gone?   Queen. To draw apart the body he hath kill\'d;     O\'er whom his very madness, like some ore     Among a mineral of metals base,     Shows itself pure. He weeps for what is done.   King. O Gertrude, come away!     The sun no sooner shall the mountains touch     But we will ship him hence; and this vile deed     We must with all our majesty and skill     Both countenance and excuse. Ho, Guildenstern!               Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.        Friends both, go join you with some further aid.     Hamlet in madness hath Polonius slain,     And from his mother\'s closet hath he dragg\'d him.     Go seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body     Into the chapel. I pray you haste in this.                           Exeunt [Rosencrantz and Guildenstern].     Come, Gertrude, we\'ll call up our wisest friends     And let them know both what we mean to do     And what\'s untimely done. [So haply slander-]     Whose whisper o\'er the world\'s diameter,     As level as the cannon to his blank,     Transports his poisoned shot- may miss our name     And hit the woundless air.- O, come away!     My soul is full of discord and dismay.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene II. Elsinore. A passage in the Castle.  Enter Hamlet.    Ham. Safely stow\'d.   Gentlemen. (within) Hamlet! Lord Hamlet!   Ham. But soft! What noise? Who calls on Hamlet? O, here they come.                 Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.    Ros. What have you done, my lord, with the dead body?   Ham. Compounded it with dust, whereto \'tis kin.   Ros. Tell us where \'tis, that we may take it thence     And bear it to the chapel.   Ham. Do not believe it.   Ros. Believe what?   Ham. That I can keep your counsel, and not mine own. Besides, to be     demanded of a sponge, what replication should be made by the son     of a king?   Ros. Take you me for a sponge, my lord?   Ham. Ay, sir; that soaks up the King\'s countenance, his rewards,       his authorities. But such officers do the King best service in     the end. He keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw;     first mouth\'d, to be last Swallowed. When he needs what you have     glean\'d, it is but squeezing you and, sponge, you shall be dry     again.   Ros. I understand you not, my lord.   Ham. I am glad of it. A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.   Ros. My lord, you must tell us where the body is and go with us to     the King.   Ham. The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body.     The King is a thing-   Guil. A thing, my lord?   Ham. Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene III. Elsinore. A room in the Castle.  Enter King.    King. I have sent to seek him and to find the body.     How dangerous is it that this man goes loose!     Yet must not we put the strong law on him.     He\'s lov\'d of the distracted multitude,     Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes;     And where \'tis so, th\' offender\'s scourge is weigh\'d,     But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even,     This sudden sending him away must seem     Deliberate pause. Diseases desperate grown     By desperate appliance are reliev\'d,     Or not at all.                      Enter Rosencrantz.      How now O What hath befall\'n?   Ros. Where the dead body is bestow\'d, my lord,     We cannot get from him.     King. But where is he?   Ros. Without, my lord; guarded, to know your pleasure.   King. Bring him before us.   Ros. Ho, Guildenstern! Bring in my lord.          Enter Hamlet and Guildenstern [with Attendants].    King. Now, Hamlet, where\'s Polonius?   Ham. At supper.   King. At supper? Where?   Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain     convocation of politic worms are e\'en at him. Your worm is your     only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and     we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar     is but variable service- two dishes, but to one table. That\'s the     end.   King. Alas, alas!   Ham. A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat     of the fish that hath fed of that worm.   King. What dost thou mean by this?     Ham. Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through     the guts of a beggar.   King. Where is Polonius?   Ham. In heaven. Send thither to see. If your messenger find him not     there, seek him i\' th\' other place yourself. But indeed, if you     find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up     the stair, into the lobby.   King. Go seek him there. [To Attendants.]   Ham. He will stay till you come.                                             [Exeunt Attendants.]   King. Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,-     Which we do tender as we dearly grieve     For that which thou hast done,- must send thee hence     With fiery quickness. Therefore prepare thyself.     The bark is ready and the wind at help,     Th\' associates tend, and everything is bent     For England.   Ham. For England?   King. Ay, Hamlet.   Ham. Good.     King. So is it, if thou knew\'st our purposes.   Ham. I see a cherub that sees them. But come, for England!     Farewell, dear mother.   King. Thy loving father, Hamlet.   Ham. My mother! Father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is     one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England! Exit.   King. Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard.     Delay it not; I\'ll have him hence to-night.     Away! for everything is seal\'d and done     That else leans on th\' affair. Pray you make haste.                             Exeunt Rosencrantz and Guildenstern]     And, England, if my love thou hold\'st at aught,-     As my great power thereof may give thee sense,     Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red     After the Danish sword, and thy free awe     Pays homage to us,- thou mayst not coldly set     Our sovereign process, which imports at full,     By letters congruing to that effect,     The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England;       For like the hectic in my blood he rages,     And thou must cure me. Till I know \'tis done,     Howe\'er my haps, my joys were ne\'er begun.             Exit.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    Scene IV. Near Elsinore.  Enter Fortinbras with his Army over the stage.    For. Go, Captain, from me greet the Danish king.     Tell him that by his license Fortinbras     Craves the conveyance of a promis\'d march     Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous.     if that his Majesty would aught with us,     We shall express our duty in his eye;     And let him know so.   Capt. I will do\'t, my lord.   For. Go softly on.                                    Exeunt [all but the Captain].         Enter Hamlet, Rosencrantz, [Guildenstern,] and others.    Ham. Good sir, whose powers are these?   Capt. They are of Norway, sir.   Ham. How purpos\'d, sir, I pray you?   Capt. Against some part of Poland.     Ham. Who commands them, sir?   Capt. The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.   Ham. Goes it against the main of Poland, sir,     Or for some frontier?   Capt. Truly to speak, and with no addition,     We go to gain a little patch of ground     That hath in it no profit but the name.     To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it;     Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole     A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee.   Ham. Why, then the Polack never will defend it.   Capt. Yes, it is already garrison\'d.   Ham. Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats     Will not debate the question of this straw.     This is th\' imposthume of much wealth and peace,     That inward breaks, and shows no cause without     Why the man dies.- I humbly thank you, sir.   Capt. God b\' wi\' you, sir.                             [Exit.]   Ros. Will\'t please you go, my lord?   Ham. I\'ll be with you straight. Go a little before.                                           [Exeunt all but Hamlet.]     How all occasions do inform against me     And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,     If his chief good and market of his time     Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.     Sure he that made us with such large discourse,     Looking before and after, gave us not     That capability and godlike reason     To fust in us unus\'d. Now, whether it be     Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple     Of thinking too precisely on th\' event,-     A thought which, quarter\'d, hath but one part wisdom     And ever three parts coward,- I do not know     Why yet I live to say \'This thing\'s to do,\'     Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means     To do\'t. Examples gross as earth exhort me.     Witness this army of such mass and charge,     Led by a delicate and tender prince,     Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff\'d,     Makes mouths at the invisible event,       Exposing what is mortal and unsure     To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,     Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great     Is not to stir without great argument,     But greatly to find quarrel in a straw     When honour\'s at the stake. How stand I then,     That have a father klll\'d, a mother stain\'d,     Excitements of my reason and my blood,     And let all sleep, while to my shame I see     The imminent death of twenty thousand men     That for a fantasy and trick of fame     Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot     Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,     Which is not tomb enough and continent     To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,     My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!            Exit.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    Scene V. Elsinore. A room in the Castle.  Enter Horatio, Queen, and a Gentleman.    Queen. I will not speak with her.   Gent. She is importunate, indeed distract.     Her mood will needs be pitied.   Queen. What would she have?   Gent. She speaks much of her father; says she hears     There\'s tricks i\' th\' world, and hems, and beats her heart;     Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt,     That carry but half sense. Her speech is nothing,     Yet the unshaped use of it doth move     The hearers to collection; they aim at it,     And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;     Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,     Indeed would make one think there might be thought,     Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.   Hor. \'Twere good she were spoken with; for she may strew     Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds.   Queen. Let her come in.                                                  [Exit Gentleman.]     [Aside] To my sick soul (as sin\'s true nature is)     Each toy seems Prologue to some great amiss.     So full of artless jealousy is guilt     It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.                   Enter Ophelia distracted.    Oph. Where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?   Queen. How now, Ophelia?   Oph. (sings)          How should I your true-love know            From another one?          By his cockle bat and\' staff            And his sandal shoon.    Queen. Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?   Oph. Say you? Nay, pray You mark.      (Sings) He is dead and gone, lady,                 He is dead and gone;             At his head a grass-green turf,               At his heels a stone.      O, ho!   Queen. Nay, but Ophelia-   Oph. Pray you mark.      (Sings) White his shroud as the mountain snow-                      Enter King.    Queen. Alas, look here, my lord!   Oph. (Sings)            Larded all with sweet flowers;          Which bewept to the grave did not go            With true-love showers.    King. How do you, pretty lady?   Oph. Well, God dild you! They say the owl was a baker\'s daughter.       Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at     your table!   King. Conceit upon her father.   Oph. Pray let\'s have no words of this; but when they ask, you what     it means, say you this:      (Sings) To-morrow is Saint Valentine\'s day,               All in the morning bedtime,             And I a maid at your window,               To be your Valentine.              Then up he rose and donn\'d his clo\'es               And dupp\'d the chamber door,             Let in the maid, that out a maid               Never departed more.    King. Pretty Ophelia!   Oph. Indeed, la, without an oath, I\'ll make an end on\'t!      [Sings] By Gis and by Saint Charity,                 Alack, and fie for shame!             Young men will do\'t if they come to\'t               By Cock, they are to blame.              Quoth she, \'Before you tumbled me,               You promis\'d me to wed.\'      He answers:              \'So would I \'a\' done, by yonder sun,               An thou hadst not come to my bed.\'    King. How long hath she been thus?   Oph. I hope all will be well. We must be patient; but I cannot     choose but weep to think they would lay him i\' th\' cold ground.     My brother shall know of it; and so I thank you for your good     counsel. Come, my coach! Good night, ladies. Good night, sweet     ladies. Good night, good night.                         Exit   King. Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.                                                  [Exit Horatio.]       O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs     All from her father\'s death. O Gertrude, Gertrude,     When sorrows come, they come not single spies.     But in battalions! First, her father slain;     Next, Your son gone, and he most violent author     Of his own just remove; the people muddied,     Thick and and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers     For good Polonius\' death, and we have done but greenly     In hugger-mugger to inter him; Poor Ophelia     Divided from herself and her fair-judgment,     Without the which we are Pictures or mere beasts;     Last, and as such containing as all these,     Her brother is in secret come from France;     And wants not buzzers to infect his ear     Feeds on his wonder, keep, himself in clouds,     With pestilent speeches of his father\'s death,     Wherein necessity, of matter beggar\'d,     Will nothing stick Our person to arraign     In ear and ear. O my dear Gertrude, this,     Like to a murd\'ring piece, in many places       Give, me superfluous death.                  A noise within.   Queen. Alack, what noise is this?   King. Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.                       Enter a Messenger.      What is the matter?   Mess. Save Yourself, my lord:     The ocean, overpeering of his list,     Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste     Than Young Laertes, in a riotous head,     O\'erbears Your offices. The rabble call him lord;     And, as the world were now but to begin,     Antiquity forgot, custom not known,     The ratifiers and props of every word,     They cry \'Choose we! Laertes shall be king!\'     Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,     \'Laertes shall be king! Laertes king!\'                                                  A noise within.   Queen. How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!       O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs!   King. The doors are broke.                      Enter Laertes with others.    Laer. Where is this king?- Sirs, staid you all without.   All. No, let\'s come in!   Laer. I pray you give me leave.   All. We will, we will!   Laer. I thank you. Keep the door.      [Exeunt his Followers.]     O thou vile king,     Give me my father!   Queen. Calmly, good Laertes.   Laer. That drop of blood that\'s calm proclaims me bastard;     Cries cuckold to my father; brands the harlot     Even here between the chaste unsmirched brows     Of my true mother.   King. What is the cause, Laertes,     That thy rebellion looks so giantlike?     Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.       There\'s such divinity doth hedge a king     That treason can but peep to what it would,     Acts little of his will. Tell me, Laertes,     Why thou art thus incens\'d. Let him go, Gertrude.     Speak, man.   Laer. Where is my father?   King. Dead.   Queen. But not by him!   King. Let him demand his fill.   Laer. How came he dead? I\'ll not be juggled with:     To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil     Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!     I dare damnation. To this point I stand,     That both the world, I give to negligence,     Let come what comes; only I\'ll be reveng\'d     Most throughly for my father.   King. Who shall stay you?   Laer. My will, not all the world!     And for my means, I\'ll husband them so well     They shall go far with little.     King. Good Laertes,     If you desire to know the certainty     Of your dear father\'s death, is\'t writ in Your revenge     That swoopstake you will draw both friend and foe,     Winner and loser?   Laer. None but his enemies.   King. Will you know them then?   Laer. To his good friends thus wide I\'ll ope my arms     And, like the kind life-rend\'ring pelican,     Repast them with my blood.   King. Why, now You speak     Like a good child and a true gentleman.     That I am guiltless of your father\'s death,     And am most sensibly in grief for it,     It shall as level to your judgment pierce     As day does to your eye.                               A noise within: \'Let her come in.\'   Laer. How now? What noise is that?                        Enter Ophelia.        O heat, dry up my brains! Tears seven times salt     Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!     By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight     Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!     Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!     O heavens! is\'t possible a young maid\'s wits     Should be as mortal as an old man\'s life?     Nature is fine in love, and where \'tis fine,     It sends some precious instance of itself     After the thing it loves.    Oph. (sings)          They bore him barefac\'d on the bier            (Hey non nony, nony, hey nony)          And in his grave rain\'d many a tear.      Fare you well, my dove!   Laer. Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,     It could not move thus.     Oph. You must sing \'A-down a-down, and you call him a-down-a.\' O,     how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward, that stole his     master\'s daughter.   Laer. This nothing\'s more than matter.   Oph. There\'s rosemary, that\'s for remembrance. Pray you, love,     remember. And there is pansies, that\'s for thoughts.   Laer. A document in madness! Thoughts and remembrance fitted.   Oph. There\'s fennel for you, and columbines. There\'s rue for you,     and here\'s some for me. We may call it herb of grace o\' Sundays.     O, you must wear your rue with a difference! There\'s a daisy. I     would give you some violets, but they wither\'d all when my father     died. They say he made a good end.      [Sings] For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.    Laer. Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,     She turns to favour and to prettiness.   Oph. (sings)          And will he not come again?          And will he not come again?            No, no, he is dead;              Go to thy deathbed;          He never will come again.           His beard was as white as snow,          All flaxen was his poll.            He is gone, he is gone,            And we cast away moan.          God \'a\'mercy on his soul!      And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God b\' wi\', you. Exit.   Laer. Do you see this, O God?   King. Laertes, I must commune with your grief,     Or you deny me right. Go but apart,     Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will,     And they shall hear and judge \'twixt you and me.     If by direct or by collateral hand     They find us touch\'d, we will our kingdom give,     Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,     To you in satisfaction; but if not,       Be you content to lend your patience to us,     And we shall jointly labour with your soul     To give it due content.   Laer. Let this be so.     His means of death, his obscure funeral-     No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o\'er his bones,     No noble rite nor formal ostentation,-     Cry to be heard, as \'twere from heaven to earth,     That I must call\'t in question.   King. So you shall;     And where th\' offence is let the great axe fall.     I pray you go with me.                                                           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    Scene VI. Elsinore. Another room in the Castle.  Enter Horatio with an Attendant.    Hor. What are they that would speak with me?   Servant. Seafaring men, sir. They say they have letters for you.   Hor. Let them come in.                                                [Exit Attendant.]     I do not know from what part of the world     I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.                            Enter Sailors.    Sailor. God bless you, sir.   Hor. Let him bless thee too.   Sailor. \'A shall, sir, an\'t please him. There\'s a letter for you,     sir,- it comes from th\' ambassador that was bound for England- if     your name be Horatio, as I am let to know it is.   Hor. (reads the letter) \'Horatio, when thou shalt have overlook\'d     this, give these fellows some means to the King. They have     letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of       very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too     slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour, and in the grapple I     boarded them. On the instant they got clear of our ship; so I     alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves     of mercy; but they knew what they did: I am to do a good turn for     them. Let the King have the letters I have sent, and repair thou     to me with as much speed as thou wouldst fly death. I have words     to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb; yet are they much too     light for the bore of the matter. These good fellows will bring     thee where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course     for England. Of them I have much to tell thee. Farewell.                             \'He that thou knowest thine, HAMLET.\'      Come, I will give you way for these your letters,     And do\'t the speedier that you may direct me     To him from whom you brought them.                   Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    Scene VII. Elsinore. Another room in the Castle.  Enter King and Laertes.    King. Now must your conscience my acquittance seal,     And You must put me in your heart for friend,     Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,     That he which hath your noble father slain     Pursued my life.   Laer. It well appears. But tell me     Why you proceeded not against these feats     So crimeful and so capital in nature,     As by your safety, wisdom, all things else,     You mainly were stirr\'d up.   King. O, for two special reasons,     Which may to you, perhaps, seein much unsinew\'d,     But yet to me they are strong. The Queen his mother     Lives almost by his looks; and for myself,-     My virtue or my plague, be it either which,-     She\'s so conjunctive to my life and soul     That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,       I could not but by her. The other motive     Why to a public count I might not go     Is the great love the general gender bear him,     Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,     Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,     Convert his gives to graces; so that my arrows,     Too slightly timber\'d for so loud a wind,     Would have reverted to my bow again,     And not where I had aim\'d them.   Laer. And so have I a noble father lost;     A sister driven into desp\'rate terms,     Whose worth, if praises may go back again,     Stood challenger on mount of all the age     For her perfections. But my revenge will come.   King. Break not your sleeps for that. You must not think     That we are made of stuff so flat and dull     That we can let our beard be shook with danger,     And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more.     I lov\'d your father, and we love ourself,     And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine-                     Enter a Messenger with letters.      How now? What news?   Mess. Letters, my lord, from Hamlet:     This to your Majesty; this to the Queen.   King. From Hamlet? Who brought them?   Mess. Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not.     They were given me by Claudio; he receiv\'d them     Of him that brought them.   King. Laertes, you shall hear them.     Leave us.                                                  Exit Messenger.     [Reads]\'High and Mighty,-You shall know I am set naked on your     kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes;     when I shall (first asking your pardon thereunto) recount the     occasion of my sudden and more strange return.                                                      \'HAMLET.\'     What should this mean? Are all the rest come back?     Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?     Laer. Know you the hand?   King. \'Tis Hamlet\'s character. \'Naked!\'     And in a postscript here, he says \'alone.\'     Can you advise me?   Laer. I am lost in it, my lord. But let him come!     It warms the very sickness in my heart     That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,     \'Thus didest thou.\'   King. If it be so, Laertes     (As how should it be so? how otherwise?),     Will you be rul\'d by me?   Laer. Ay my lord,     So you will not o\'errule me to a peace.   King. To thine own peace. If he be now return\'d     As checking at his voyage, and that he means     No more to undertake it, I will work him     To exploit now ripe in my device,     Under the which he shall not choose but fall;     And for his death no wind     But even his mother shall uncharge the practice       And call it accident.   Laer. My lord, I will be rul\'d;     The rather, if you could devise it so     That I might be the organ.   King. It falls right.     You have been talk\'d of since your travel much,     And that in Hamlet\'s hearing, for a quality     Wherein they say you shine, Your sun of parts     Did not together pluck such envy from him     As did that one; and that, in my regard,     Of the unworthiest siege.   Laer. What part is that, my lord?   King. A very riband in the cap of youth-     Yet needfull too; for youth no less becomes     The light and careless livery that it wears     Thin settled age his sables and his weeds,     Importing health and graveness. Two months since     Here was a gentleman of Normandy.     I have seen myself, and serv\'d against, the French,     And they can well on horseback; but this gallant       Had witchcraft in\'t. He grew unto his seat,     And to such wondrous doing brought his horse     As had he been incorps\'d and demi-natur\'d     With the brave beast. So far he topp\'d my thought     That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,     Come short of what he did.   Laer. A Norman was\'t?   King. A Norman.   Laer. Upon my life, Lamound.   King. The very same.   Laer. I know him well. He is the broach indeed     And gem of all the nation.   King. He made confession of you;     And gave you such a masterly report     For art and exercise in your defence,     And for your rapier most especially,     That he cried out \'twould be a sight indeed     If one could match you. The scrimers of their nation     He swore had neither motion, guard, nor eye,     If you oppos\'d them. Sir, this report of his       Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy     That he could nothing do but wish and beg     Your sudden coming o\'er to play with you.     Now, out of this-   Laer. What out of this, my lord?   King. Laertes, was your father dear to you?     Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,     A face without a heart,\'   Laer. Why ask you this?   King. Not that I think you did not love your father;     But that I know love is begun by time,     And that I see, in passages of proof,     Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.     There lives within the very flame of love     A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;     And nothing is at a like goodness still;     For goodness, growing to a plurisy,     Dies in his own too-much. That we would do,     We should do when we would; for this \'would\' changes,     And hath abatements and delays as many       As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;     And then this \'should\' is like a spendthrift sigh,     That hurts by easing. But to the quick o\' th\' ulcer!     Hamlet comes back. What would you undertake     To show yourself your father\'s son in deed     More than in words?   Laer. To cut his throat i\' th\' church!   King. No place indeed should murther sanctuarize;     Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes,     Will you do this? Keep close within your chamber.     Will return\'d shall know you are come home.     We\'ll put on those shall praise your excellence     And set a double varnish on the fame     The Frenchman gave you; bring you in fine together     And wager on your heads. He, being remiss,     Most generous, and free from all contriving,     Will not peruse the foils; so that with ease,     Or with a little shuffling, you may choose     A sword unbated, and, in a pass of practice,     Requite him for your father.     Laer. I will do\'t!     And for that purpose I\'ll anoint my sword.     I bought an unction of a mountebank,     So mortal that, but dip a knife in it,     Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,     Collected from all simples that have virtue     Under the moon, can save the thing from death     This is but scratch\'d withal. I\'ll touch my point     With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly,     It may be death.   King. Let\'s further think of this,     Weigh what convenience both of time and means     May fit us to our shape. If this should fall,     And that our drift look through our bad performance.     \'Twere better not assay\'d. Therefore this project     Should have a back or second, that might hold     If this did blast in proof. Soft! let me see.     We\'ll make a solemn wager on your cunnings-     I ha\'t!     When in your motion you are hot and dry-       As make your bouts more violent to that end-     And that he calls for drink, I\'ll have prepar\'d him     A chalice for the nonce; whereon but sipping,     If he by chance escape your venom\'d stuck,     Our purpose may hold there.- But stay, what noise,                             Enter Queen.      How now, sweet queen?   Queen. One woe doth tread upon another\'s heel,     So fast they follow. Your sister\'s drown\'d, Laertes.   Laer. Drown\'d! O, where?   Queen. There is a willow grows aslant a brook,     That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.     There with fantastic garlands did she come     Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,     That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,     But our cold maids do dead men\'s fingers call them.     There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds     Clamb\'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,       When down her weedy trophies and herself     Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide     And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up;     Which time she chaunted snatches of old tunes,     As one incapable of her own distress,     Or like a creature native and indued     Unto that element; but long it could not be     Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,     Pull\'d the poor wretch from her melodious lay     To muddy death.   Laer. Alas, then she is drown\'d?   Queen. Drown\'d, drown\'d.   Laer. Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,     And therefore I forbid my tears; but yet     It is our trick; nature her custom holds,     Let shame say what it will. When these are gone,     The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord.     I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze     But that this folly douts it.                          Exit.   King. Let\'s follow, Gertrude.       How much I had to do to calm his rage I     Now fear I this will give it start again;     Therefore let\'s follow.                                                          Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. Scene I. Elsinore. A churchyard.  Enter two Clowns, [with spades and pickaxes].    Clown. Is she to be buried in Christian burial when she wilfully     seeks her own salvation?   Other. I tell thee she is; therefore make her grave straight.     The crowner hath sate on her, and finds it Christian burial.   Clown. How can that be, unless she drown\'d herself in her own     defence?   Other. Why, \'tis found so.   Clown. It must be se offendendo; it cannot be else. For here lies     the point: if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act; and an     act hath three branches-it is to act, to do, and to perform;     argal, she drown\'d herself wittingly.   Other. Nay, but hear you, Goodman Delver!   Clown. Give me leave. Here lies the water; good. Here stands the     man; good. If the man go to this water and drown himself, it is,     will he nill he, he goes- mark you that. But if the water come to     him and drown him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he that is not     guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.     Other. But is this law?   Clown. Ay, marry, is\'t- crowner\'s quest law.   Other. Will you ha\' the truth an\'t? If this had not been a     gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o\' Christian burial.   Clown. Why, there thou say\'st! And the more pity that great folk     should have count\'nance in this world to drown or hang themselves     more than their even-Christen. Come, my spade! There is no     ancient gentlemen but gard\'ners, ditchers, and grave-makers. They     hold up Adam\'s profession.   Other. Was he a gentleman?   Clown. \'A was the first that ever bore arms.   Other. Why, he had none.   Clown. What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the Scripture?     The Scripture says Adam digg\'d. Could he dig without arms? I\'ll     put another question to thee. If thou answerest me not to the     purpose, confess thyself-   Other. Go to!   Clown. What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the     shipwright, or the carpenter?   Other. The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand       tenants.   Clown. I like thy wit well, in good faith. The gallows does well.     But how does it well? It does well to those that do ill. Now,     thou dost ill to say the gallows is built stronger than the     church. Argal, the gallows may do well to thee. To\'t again, come!   Other. Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or a     carpenter?   Clown. Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.   Other. Marry, now I can tell!   Clown. To\'t.   Other. Mass, I cannot tell.                   Enter Hamlet and Horatio afar off.    Clown. Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will     not mend his pace with beating; and when you are ask\'d this     question next, say \'a grave-maker.\' The houses he makes lasts     till doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan; fetch me a stoup of     liquor.                                             [Exit Second Clown.]                           [Clown digs and] sings.         In youth when I did love, did love,          Methought it was very sweet;        To contract- O- the time for- a- my behove,          O, methought there- a- was nothing- a- meet.    Ham. Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at     grave-making?   Hor. Custom hath made it in him a Property of easiness.   Ham. \'Tis e\'en so. The hand of little employment hath the daintier     sense.   Clown. (sings)          But age with his stealing steps            Hath clawed me in his clutch,          And hath shipped me intil the land,            As if I had never been such.                                             [Throws up a skull.]      Ham. That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once. How the     knave jowls it to the ground,as if \'twere Cain\'s jawbone, that     did the first murther! This might be the pate of a Politician,     which this ass now o\'erreaches; one that would circumvent God,     might it not?   Hor. It might, my lord.   Ham. Or of a courtier, which could say \'Good morrow, sweet lord!     How dost thou, good lord?\' This might be my Lord Such-a-one, that     prais\'d my Lord Such-a-one\'s horse when he meant to beg it- might     it not?   Hor. Ay, my lord.   Ham. Why, e\'en so! and now my Lady Worm\'s, chapless, and knock\'d     about the mazzard with a sexton\'s spade. Here\'s fine revolution,     and we had the trick to see\'t. Did these bones cost no more the     breeding but to play at loggets with \'em? Mine ache to think     on\'t.   Clown. (Sings)          A pickaxe and a spade, a spade,            For and a shrouding sheet;          O, a Pit of clay for to be made              For such a guest is meet.                                       Throws up [another skull].    Ham. There\'s another. Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer?     Where be his quiddits now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures,     and his tricks? Why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock     him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him     of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in\'s time a     great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his     fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries. Is this the fine of     his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine     pate full of fine dirt? Will his vouchers vouch him no more of     his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth     of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will     scarcely lie in this box; and must th\' inheritor himself have no     more, ha?   Hor. Not a jot more, my lord.   Ham. Is not parchment made of sheepskins?   Hor. Ay, my lord, And of calveskins too.   Ham. They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that. I       will speak to this fellow. Whose grave\'s this, sirrah?   Clown. Mine, sir.      [Sings] O, a pit of clay for to be made               For such a guest is meet.    Ham. I think it be thine indeed, for thou liest in\'t.   Clown. You lie out on\'t, sir, and therefore \'tis not yours.     For my part, I do not lie in\'t, yet it is mine.   Ham. Thou dost lie in\'t, to be in\'t and say it is thine. \'Tis for     the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.   Clown. \'Tis a quick lie, sir; \'twill away again from me to you.   Ham. What man dost thou dig it for?   Clown. For no man, sir.   Ham. What woman then?   Clown. For none neither.   Ham. Who is to be buried in\'t?   Clown. One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she\'s dead.   Ham. How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or     equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, Horatio, this three years     I have taken note of it, the age is grown so picked that the toe       of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier he galls     his kibe.- How long hast thou been a grave-maker?   Clown. Of all the days i\' th\' year, I came to\'t that day that our     last king Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.   Ham. How long is that since?   Clown. Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that. It was the     very day that young Hamlet was born- he that is mad, and sent     into England.   Ham. Ay, marry, why was be sent into England?   Clown. Why, because \'a was mad. \'A shall recover his wits there;     or, if \'a do not, \'tis no great matter there.   Ham. Why?   Clown. \'Twill not he seen in him there. There the men are as mad as     he.   Ham. How came he mad?   Clown. Very strangely, they say.   Ham. How strangely?   Clown. Faith, e\'en with losing his wits.   Ham. Upon what ground?   Clown. Why, here in Denmark. I have been sexton here, man and boy       thirty years.   Ham. How long will a man lie i\' th\' earth ere he rot?   Clown. Faith, if \'a be not rotten before \'a die (as we have many     pocky corses now-a-days that will scarce hold the laying in, I     will last you some eight year or nine year. A tanner will last     you nine year.   Ham. Why he more than another?   Clown. Why, sir, his hide is so tann\'d with his trade that \'a will     keep out water a great while; and your water is a sore decayer of     your whoreson dead body. Here\'s a skull now. This skull hath lien     you i\' th\' earth three-and-twenty years.   Ham. Whose was it?   Clown. A whoreson, mad fellow\'s it was. Whose do you think it was?   Ham. Nay, I know not.   Clown. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! \'A pour\'d a flagon of     Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Yorick\'s     skull, the King\'s jester.   Ham. This?   Clown. E\'en that.   Ham. Let me see. [Takes the skull.] Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him,       Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He     hath borne me on his back a thousand tunes. And now how abhorred     in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those     lips that I have kiss\'d I know not how oft. Where be your gibes     now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that     were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your     own grinning? Quite chap- fall\'n? Now get you to my lady\'s     chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this     favour she must come. Make her laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio,     tell me one thing.   Hor. What\'s that, my lord?   Ham. Dost thou think Alexander look\'d o\' this fashion i\' th\' earth?   Hor. E\'en so.   Ham. And smelt so? Pah!                                           [Puts down the skull.]   Hor. E\'en so, my lord.   Ham. To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not     imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander till he find it     stopping a bunghole?   Hor. \'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so.     Ham. No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty     enough, and likelihood to lead it; as thus: Alexander died,     Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is     earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam (whereto he     was converted) might they not stop a beer barrel?     Imperious Caesar, dead and turn\'d to clay,     Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.     O, that that earth which kept the world in awe     Should patch a wall t\' expel the winter\'s flaw!     But soft! but soft! aside! Here comes the King-      Enter [priests with] a coffin [in funeral procession], King,              Queen, Laertes, with Lords attendant.]      The Queen, the courtiers. Who is this they follow?     And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken     The corse they follow did with desp\'rate hand     Fordo it own life. \'Twas of some estate.     Couch we awhile, and mark.                                          [Retires with Horatio.]     Laer. What ceremony else?   Ham. That is Laertes,     A very noble youth. Mark.   Laer. What ceremony else?   Priest. Her obsequies have been as far enlarg\'d     As we have warranty. Her death was doubtful;     And, but that great command o\'ersways the order,     She should in ground unsanctified have lodg\'d     Till the last trumpet. For charitable prayers,     Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.     Yet here she is allow\'d her virgin crants,     Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home     Of bell and burial.   Laer. Must there no more be done?   Priest. No more be done.     We should profane the service of the dead     To sing a requiem and such rest to her     As to peace-parted souls.   Laer. Lay her i\' th\' earth;     And from her fair and unpolluted flesh       May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,     A minist\'ring angel shall my sister be     When thou liest howling.   Ham. What, the fair Ophelia?   Queen. Sweets to the sweet! Farewell.                                              [Scatters flowers.]     I hop\'d thou shouldst have been my Hamlet\'s wife;     I thought thy bride-bed to have deck\'d, sweet maid,     And not have strew\'d thy grave.   Laer. O, treble woe     Fall ten times treble on that cursed head     Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense     Depriv\'d thee of! Hold off the earth awhile,     Till I have caught her once more in mine arms.                                              Leaps in the grave.     Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead     Till of this flat a mountain you have made     T\' o\'ertop old Pelion or the skyish head     Of blue Olympus.   Ham. [comes forward] What is he whose grief       Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow     Conjures the wand\'ring stars, and makes them stand     Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I,     Hamlet the Dane.                    [Leaps in after Laertes.   Laer. The devil take thy soul!                                             [Grapples with him].   Ham. Thou pray\'st not well.     I prithee take thy fingers from my throat;     For, though I am not splenitive and rash,     Yet have I in me something dangerous,     Which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy hand!   King. Pluck thein asunder.   Queen. Hamlet, Hamlet!   All. Gentlemen!   Hor. Good my lord, be quiet.              [The Attendants part them, and they come out of the                                                          grave.]   Ham. Why, I will fight with him upon this theme     Until my eyelids will no longer wag.   Queen. O my son, what theme?     Ham. I lov\'d Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers     Could not (with all their quantity of love)     Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?   King. O, he is mad, Laertes.   Queen. For love of God, forbear him!   Ham. \'Swounds, show me what thou\'t do.     Woo\'t weep? woo\'t fight? woo\'t fast? woo\'t tear thyself?     Woo\'t drink up esill? eat a crocodile?     I\'ll do\'t. Dost thou come here to whine?     To outface me with leaping in her grave?     Be buried quick with her, and so will I.     And if thou prate of mountains, let them throw     Millions of acres on us, till our ground,     Singeing his pate against the burning zone,     Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou\'lt mouth,     I\'ll rant as well as thou.   Queen. This is mere madness;     And thus a while the fit will work on him.     Anon, as patient as the female dove     When that her golden couplets are disclos\'d,       His silence will sit drooping.   Ham. Hear you, sir!     What is the reason that you use me thus?     I lov\'d you ever. But it is no matter.     Let Hercules himself do what he may,     The cat will mew, and dog will have his day. Exit.   King. I pray thee, good Horatio, wait upon him.                                                    Exit Horatio.     [To Laertes] Strengthen your patience in our last night\'s speech.     We\'ll put the matter to the present push.-     Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.-     This grave shall have a living monument.     An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;     Till then in patience our proceeding be.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene II. Elsinore. A hall in the Castle.  Enter Hamlet and Horatio.    Ham. So much for this, sir; now shall you see the other.     You do remember all the circumstance?   Hor. Remember it, my lord!   Ham. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting     That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay     Worse than the mutinies in the bilboes. Rashly-     And prais\'d be rashness for it; let us know,     Our indiscretion sometime serves us well     When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us     There\'s a divinity that shapes our ends,     Rough-hew them how we will-   Hor. That is most certain.   Ham. Up from my cabin,     My sea-gown scarf\'d about me, in the dark     Grop\'d I to find out them; had my desire,     Finger\'d their packet, and in fine withdrew     To mine own room again; making so bold       (My fears forgetting manners) to unseal     Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio     (O royal knavery!), an exact command,     Larded with many several sorts of reasons,     Importing Denmark\'s health, and England\'s too,     With, hoo! such bugs and goblins in my life-     That, on the supervise, no leisure bated,     No, not to stay the finding of the axe,     My head should be struck off.   Hor. Is\'t possible?   Ham. Here\'s the commission; read it at more leisure.     But wilt thou bear me how I did proceed?   Hor. I beseech you.   Ham. Being thus benetted round with villanies,     Or I could make a prologue to my brains,     They had begun the play. I sat me down;     Devis\'d a new commission; wrote it fair.     I once did hold it, as our statists do,     A baseness to write fair, and labour\'d much     How to forget that learning; but, sir, now       It did me yeoman\'s service. Wilt thou know     Th\' effect of what I wrote?   Hor. Ay, good my lord.   Ham. An earnest conjuration from the King,     As England was his faithful tributary,     As love between them like the palm might flourish,     As peace should still her wheaten garland wear     And stand a comma \'tween their amities,     And many such-like as\'s of great charge,     That, on the view and knowing of these contents,     Without debatement further, more or less,     He should the bearers put to sudden death,     Not shriving time allow\'d.   Hor. How was this seal\'d?   Ham. Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.     I had my father\'s signet in my purse,     which was the model of that Danish seal;     Folded the writ up in the form of th\' other,     Subscrib\'d it, gave\'t th\' impression, plac\'d it safely,     The changeling never known. Now, the next day       Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent     Thou know\'st already.   Hor. So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to\'t.   Ham. Why, man, they did make love to this employment!     They are not near my conscience; their defeat     Does by their own insinuation grow.     \'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes     Between the pass and fell incensed points     Of mighty opposites.   Hor. Why, what a king is this!   Ham. Does it not, thinks\'t thee, stand me now upon-     He that hath kill\'d my king, and whor\'d my mother;     Popp\'d in between th\' election and my hopes;     Thrown out his angle for my Proper life,     And with such coz\'nage- is\'t not perfect conscience     To quit him with this arm? And is\'t not to be damn\'d     To let this canker of our nature come     In further evil?   Hor. It must be shortly known to him from England     What is the issue of the business there.     Ham. It will be short; the interim is mine,     And a man\'s life is no more than to say \'one.\'     But I am very sorry, good Horatio,     That to Laertes I forgot myself,     For by the image of my cause I see     The portraiture of his. I\'ll court his favours.     But sure the bravery of his grief did put me     Into a tow\'ring passion.   Hor. Peace! Who comes here?                   Enter young Osric, a courtier.    Osr. Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.   Ham. I humbly thank you, sir. [Aside to Horatio] Dost know this     waterfly?   Hor. [aside to Hamlet] No, my good lord.   Ham. [aside to Horatio] Thy state is the more gracious; for \'tis a     vice to know him. He hath much land, and fertile. Let a beast be     lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king\'s mess. \'Tis     a chough; but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt.     Osr. Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I should impart     a thing to you from his Majesty.   Ham. I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of spirit. Put your     bonnet to his right use. \'Tis for the head.   Osr. I thank your lordship, it is very hot.   Ham. No, believe me, \'tis very cold; the wind is northerly.   Osr. It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.   Ham. But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my complexion.   Osr. Exceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry, as \'twere- I cannot     tell how. But, my lord, his Majesty bade me signify to you that     he has laid a great wager on your head. Sir, this is the matter-   Ham. I beseech you remember.                            [Hamlet moves him to put on his hat.]   Osr. Nay, good my lord; for mine ease, in good faith. Sir, here is     newly come to court Laertes; believe me, an absolute gentleman,     full of most excellent differences, of very soft society and     great showing. Indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is the card     or calendar of gentry; for you shall find in him the continent of     what part a gentleman would see.   Ham. Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you; though, I       know, to divide him inventorially would dozy th\' arithmetic of     memory, and yet but yaw neither in respect of his quick sail.     But, in the verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of great     article, and his infusion of such dearth and rareness as, to make     true diction of him, his semblable is his mirror, and who else     would trace him, his umbrage, nothing more.   Osr. Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him.   Ham. The concernancy, sir? Why do we wrap the gentleman in our more     rawer breath   Osr. Sir?   Hor [aside to Hamlet] Is\'t not possible to understand in another     tongue? You will do\'t, sir, really.   Ham. What imports the nomination of this gentleman   Osr. Of Laertes?   Hor. [aside] His purse is empty already. All\'s golden words are     spent.   Ham. Of him, sir.   Osr. I know you are not ignorant-   Ham. I would you did, sir; yet, in faith, if you did, it would not     much approve me. Well, sir?     Osr. You are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes is-   Ham. I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with him in     excellence; but to know a man well were to know himself.   Osr. I mean, sir, for his weapon; but in the imputation laid on him     by them, in his meed he\'s unfellowed.   Ham. What\'s his weapon?   Osr. Rapier and dagger.   Ham. That\'s two of his weapons- but well.   Osr. The King, sir, hath wager\'d with him six Barbary horses;     against the which he has impon\'d, as I take it, six French     rapiers and poniards, with their assigns, as girdle, hangers, and     so. Three of the carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy,     very responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, and of     very liberal conceit.   Ham. What call you the carriages?   Hor. [aside to Hamlet] I knew you must be edified by the margent     ere you had done.   Osr. The carriages, sir, are the hangers.   Ham. The phrase would be more germane to the matter if we could     carry cannon by our sides. I would it might be hangers till then.       But on! Six Barbary horses against six French swords, their     assigns, and three liberal-conceited carriages: that\'s the French     bet against the Danish. Why is this all impon\'d, as you call it?   Osr. The King, sir, hath laid that, in a dozen passes between     yourself and him, he shall not exceed you three hits; he hath     laid on twelve for nine, and it would come to immediate trial     if your lordship would vouchsafe the answer.   Ham. How if I answer no?   Osr. I mean, my lord, the opposition of your person in trial.   Ham. Sir, I will walk here in the hall. If it please his Majesty,     it is the breathing time of day with me. Let the foils be     brought, the gentleman willing, and the King hold his purpose,     I will win for him if I can; if not, I will gain nothing but my     shame and the odd hits.   Osr. Shall I redeliver you e\'en so?   Ham. To this effect, sir, after what flourish your nature will.   Osr. I commend my duty to your lordship.   Ham. Yours, yours. [Exit Osric.] He does well to commend it     himself; there are no tongues else for\'s turn.   Hor. This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head.     Ham. He did comply with his dug before he suck\'d it. Thus has he,     and many more of the same bevy that I know the drossy age dotes     on, only got the tune of the time and outward habit of encounter-     a kind of yesty collection, which carries them through and     through the most fann\'d and winnowed opinions; and do but blow     them to their trial-the bubbles are out,                              Enter a Lord.    Lord. My lord, his Majesty commended him to you by young Osric, who     brings back to him, that you attend him in the hall. He sends to     know if your pleasure hold to play with Laertes, or that you will     take longer time.   Ham. I am constant to my purposes; they follow the King\'s pleasure.     If his fitness speaks, mine is ready; now or whensoever, provided     I be so able as now.   Lord. The King and Queen and all are coming down.   Ham. In happy time.   Lord. The Queen desires you to use some gentle entertainment to     Laertes before you fall to play.     Ham. She well instructs me.                                                     [Exit Lord.]   Hor. You will lose this wager, my lord.   Ham. I do not think so. Since he went into France I have been in     continual practice. I shall win at the odds. But thou wouldst not     think how ill all\'s here about my heart. But it is no matter.   Hor. Nay, good my lord -   Ham. It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of gaingiving as     would perhaps trouble a woman.   Hor. If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will forestall their     repair hither and say you are not fit.   Ham. Not a whit, we defy augury; there\'s a special providence in     the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, \'tis not to come\', if it be     not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come:     the readiness is all. Since no man knows aught of what he leaves,     what is\'t to leave betimes? Let be.      Enter King, Queen, Laertes, Osric, and Lords, with other               Attendants with foils and gauntlets.                A table and flagons of wine on it.      King. Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand from me.                     [The King puts Laertes\' hand into Hamlet\'s.]   Ham. Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong;     But pardon\'t, as you are a gentleman.     This presence knows,     And you must needs have heard, how I am punish\'d     With sore distraction. What I have done     That might your nature, honour, and exception     Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.     Was\'t Hamlet wrong\'d Laertes? Never Hamlet.     If Hamlet from himself be taken away,     And when he\'s not himself does wrong Laertes,     Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.     Who does it, then? His madness. If\'t be so,     Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong\'d;     His madness is poor Hamlet\'s enemy.     Sir, in this audience,     Let my disclaiming from a purpos\'d evil     Free me so far in your most generous thoughts       That I have shot my arrow o\'er the house     And hurt my brother.   Laer. I am satisfied in nature,     Whose motive in this case should stir me most     To my revenge. But in my terms of honour     I stand aloof, and will no reconcilement     Till by some elder masters of known honour     I have a voice and precedent of peace     To keep my name ungor\'d. But till that time     I do receive your offer\'d love like love,     And will not wrong it.   Ham. I embrace it freely,     And will this brother\'s wager frankly play.     Give us the foils. Come on.   Laer. Come, one for me.   Ham. I\'ll be your foil, Laertes. In mine ignorance     Your skill shall, like a star i\' th\' darkest night,     Stick fiery off indeed.   Laer. You mock me, sir.   Ham. No, by this bad.     King. Give them the foils, young Osric. Cousin Hamlet,     You know the wager?   Ham. Very well, my lord.     Your Grace has laid the odds o\' th\' weaker side.   King. I do not fear it, I have seen you both;     But since he is better\'d, we have therefore odds.   Laer. This is too heavy; let me see another.   Ham. This likes me well. These foils have all a length?                                                 Prepare to play.   Osr. Ay, my good lord.   King. Set me the stoups of wine upon that table.     If Hamlet give the first or second hit,     Or quit in answer of the third exchange,     Let all the battlements their ordnance fire;     The King shall drink to Hamlet\'s better breath,     And in the cup an union shall he throw     Richer than that which four successive kings     In Denmark\'s crown have worn. Give me the cups;     And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,     The trumpet to the cannoneer without,       The cannons to the heavens, the heaven to earth,     \'Now the King drinks to Hamlet.\' Come, begin.     And you the judges, bear a wary eye.   Ham. Come on, sir.   Laer. Come, my lord.                                They play.   Ham. One.   Laer. No.   Ham. Judgment!   Osr. A hit, a very palpable hit.   Laer. Well, again!   King. Stay, give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine;     Here\'s to thy health.                [Drum; trumpets sound; a piece goes off [within].     Give him the cup.   Ham. I\'ll play this bout first; set it by awhile.     Come. (They play.) Another hit. What say you?   Laer. A touch, a touch; I do confess\'t.   King. Our son shall win.   Queen. He\'s fat, and scant of breath.     Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows.       The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.   Ham. Good madam!   King. Gertrude, do not drink.   Queen. I will, my lord; I pray you pardon me.          Drinks.   King. [aside] It is the poison\'d cup; it is too late.   Ham. I dare not drink yet, madam; by-and-by.   Queen. Come, let me wipe thy face.   Laer. My lord, I\'ll hit him now.   King. I do not think\'t.   Laer. [aside] And yet it is almost against my conscience.   Ham. Come for the third, Laertes! You but dally.     pray You Pass with your best violence;     I am afeard You make a wanton of me.   Laer. Say you so? Come on.                               Play.   Osr. Nothing neither way.   Laer. Have at you now!                 [Laertes wounds Hamlet; then] in scuffling, they                     change rapiers, [and Hamlet wounds Laertes].   King. Part them! They are incens\'d.   Ham. Nay come! again!                         The Queen falls.     Osr. Look to the Queen there, ho!   Hor. They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?   Osr. How is\'t, Laertes?   Laer. Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric.     I am justly kill\'d with mine own treachery.   Ham. How does the Queen?   King. She sounds to see them bleed.   Queen. No, no! the drink, the drink! O my dear Hamlet!     The drink, the drink! I am poison\'d.                 [Dies.]   Ham. O villany! Ho! let the door be lock\'d.     Treachery! Seek it out.                                                 [Laertes falls.]   Laer. It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art slain;     No medicine in the world can do thee good.     In thee there is not half an hour of life.     The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,     Unbated and envenom\'d. The foul practice     Hath turn\'d itself on me. Lo, here I lie,     Never to rise again. Thy mother\'s poison\'d.     I can no more. The King, the King\'s to blame.     Ham. The point envenom\'d too?     Then, venom, to thy work.                    Hurts the King.   All. Treason! treason!   King. O, yet defend me, friends! I am but hurt.   Ham. Here, thou incestuous, murd\'rous, damned Dane,     Drink off this potion! Is thy union here?     Follow my mother.                                 King dies.   Laer. He is justly serv\'d.     It is a poison temper\'d by himself.     Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet.     Mine and my father\'s death come not upon thee,     Nor thine on me!                                       Dies.   Ham. Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.     I am dead, Horatio. Wretched queen, adieu!     You that look pale and tremble at this chance,     That are but mutes or audience to this act,     Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death,     Is strict in his arrest) O, I could tell you-     But let it be. Horatio, I am dead;     Thou liv\'st; report me and my cause aright       To the unsatisfied.   Hor. Never believe it.     I am more an antique Roman than a Dane.     Here\'s yet some liquor left.   Ham. As th\'art a man,     Give me the cup. Let go! By heaven, I\'ll ha\'t.     O good Horatio, what a wounded name     (Things standing thus unknown) shall live behind me!     If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,     Absent thee from felicity awhile,     And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,     To tell my story.         [March afar off, and shot within.]     What warlike noise is this?   Osr. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland,     To the ambassadors of England gives     This warlike volley.   Ham. O, I die, Horatio!     The potent poison quite o\'ercrows my spirit.     I cannot live to hear the news from England,     But I do prophesy th\' election lights       On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice.     So tell him, with th\' occurrents, more and less,     Which have solicited- the rest is silence.             Dies.   Hor. Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,     And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!                                                  [March within.]     Why does the drum come hither?      Enter Fortinbras and English Ambassadors, with Drum,                   Colours, and Attendants.    Fort. Where is this sight?   Hor. What is it you will see?     If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.   Fort. This quarry cries on havoc. O proud Death,     What feast is toward in thine eternal cell     That thou so many princes at a shot     So bloodily hast struck.   Ambassador. The sight is dismal;     And our affairs from England come too late.       The ears are senseless that should give us bearing     To tell him his commandment is fulfill\'d     That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.     Where should We have our thanks?   Hor. Not from his mouth,     Had it th\' ability of life to thank you.     He never gave commandment for their death.     But since, so jump upon this bloody question,     You from the Polack wars, and you from England,     Are here arriv\'d, give order that these bodies     High on a stage be placed to the view;     And let me speak to the yet unknowing world     How these things came about. So shall You hear     Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts;     Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;     Of deaths put on by cunning and forc\'d cause;     And, in this upshot, purposes mistook     Fall\'n on th\' inventors\' heads. All this can I     Truly deliver.   Fort. Let us haste to hear it,       And call the noblest to the audience.     For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune.     I have some rights of memory in this kingdom     Which now, to claim my vantage doth invite me.   Hor. Of that I shall have also cause to speak,     And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more.     But let this same be presently perform\'d,     Even while men\'s minds are wild, lest more mischance     On plots and errors happen.   Fort. Let four captains     Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage;     For he was likely, had he been put on,     To have prov\'d most royally; and for his passage     The soldiers\' music and the rites of war     Speak loudly for him.     Take up the bodies. Such a sight as this     Becomes the field but here shows much amiss.     Go, bid the soldiers shoot.             Exeunt marching; after the which a peal of ordnance                                                    are shot off.     THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1598  THE FIRST PART OF KING HENRY THE FOURTH   by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae    King Henry the Fourth.   Henry, Prince of Wales, son to the King.   Prince John of Lancaster, son to the King.   Earl of Westmoreland.   Sir Walter Blunt.   Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester.   Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland.   Henry Percy, surnamed Hotspur, his son.   Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March.   Richard Scroop, Archbishop of York.   Archibald, Earl of Douglas.   Owen Glendower.   Sir Richard Vernon.   Sir John Falstaff.   Sir Michael, a friend to the Archbishop of York.   Poins.   Gadshill   Peto.   Bardolph.      Lady Percy, wife to Hotspur, and sister to Mortimer.   Lady Mortimer, daughter to Glendower, and wife to Mortimer.   Mistress Quickly, hostess of the Boar\'s Head in Eastcheap.    Lords, Officers, Sheriff, Vintner, Chamberlain, Drawers, two     Carriers, Travellers, and Attendants.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE.--England and Wales.   ACT I. Scene I. London. The Palace.  Enter the King, Lord John of Lancaster, Earl of Westmoreland, [Sir Walter Blunt,] with others.    King. So shaken as we are, so wan with care,     Find we a time for frighted peace to pant     And breathe short-winded accents of new broils     To be commenc\'d in stronds afar remote.     No more the thirsty entrance of this soil     Shall daub her lips with her own children\'s blood.     No more shall trenching war channel her fields,     Nor Bruise her flow\'rets with the armed hoofs     Of hostile paces. Those opposed eyes     Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven,     All of one nature, of one substance bred,     Did lately meet in the intestine shock     And furious close of civil butchery,     Shall now in mutual well-beseeming ranks     March all one way and be no more oppos\'d     Against acquaintance, kindred, and allies.       The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife,     No more shall cut his master. Therefore, friends,     As far as to the sepulchre of Christ-     Whose soldier now, under whose blessed cross     We are impressed and engag\'d to fight-     Forthwith a power of English shall we levy,     Whose arms were moulded in their mother\'s womb     To chase these pagans in those holy fields     Over whose acres walk\'d those blessed feet     Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail\'d     For our advantage on the bitter cross.     But this our purpose now is twelvemonth old,     And bootless \'tis to tell you we will go.     Therefore we meet not now. Then let me hear     Of you, my gentle cousin Westmoreland,     What yesternight our Council did decree     In forwarding this dear expedience.   West. My liege, this haste was hot in question     And many limits of the charge set down     But yesternight; when all athwart there came       A post from Wales, loaden with heavy news;     Whose worst was that the noble Mortimer,     Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight     Against the irregular and wild Glendower,     Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken,     A thousand of his people butchered;     Upon whose dead corpse there was such misuse,     Such beastly shameless transformation,     By those Welshwomen done as may not be     Without much shame retold or spoken of.   King. It seems then that the tidings of this broil     Brake off our business for the Holy Land.   West. This, match\'d with other, did, my gracious lord;     For more uneven and unwelcome news     Came from the North, and thus it did import:     On Holy-rood Day the gallant Hotspur there,     Young Harry Percy, and brave Archibald,     That ever-valiant and approved Scot,     At Holmedon met,     Where they did spend a sad and bloody hour;       As by discharge of their artillery     And shape of likelihood the news was told;     For he that brought them, in the very heat     And pride of their contention did take horse,     Uncertain of the issue any way.   King. Here is a dear, a true-industrious friend,     Sir Walter Blunt, new lighted from his horse,     Stain\'d with the variation of each soil     Betwixt that Holmedon and this seat of ours,     And he hath brought us smooth and welcome news.     The Earl of Douglas is discomfited;     Ten thousand bold Scots, two-and-twenty knights,     Balk\'d in their own blood did Sir Walter see     On Holmedon\'s plains. Of prisoners, Hotspur took     Mordake Earl of Fife and eldest son     To beaten Douglas, and the Earl of Athol,     Of Murray, Angus, and Menteith.     And is not this an honourable spoil?     A gallant prize? Ha, cousin, is it not?   West. In faith,       It is a conquest for a prince to boast of.   King. Yea, there thou mak\'st me sad, and mak\'st me sin     In envy that my Lord Northumberland     Should be the father to so blest a son-     A son who is the theme of honour\'s tongue,     Amongst a grove the very straightest plant;     Who is sweet Fortune\'s minion and her pride;     Whilst I, by looking on the praise of him,     See riot and dishonour stain the brow     Of my young Harry. O that it could be prov\'d     That some night-tripping fairy had exchang\'d     In cradle clothes our children where they lay,     And call\'d mine Percy, his Plantagenet!     Then would I have his Harry, and he mine.     But let him from my thoughts. What think you, coz,     Of this young Percy\'s pride? The prisoners     Which he in this adventure hath surpris\'d     To his own use he keeps, and sends me word     I shall have none but Mordake Earl of Fife.   West. This is his uncle\'s teaching, this Worcester,       Malevolent to you In all aspects,     Which makes him prune himself and bristle up     The crest of youth against your dignity.   King. But I have sent for him to answer this;     And for this cause awhile we must neglect     Our holy purpose to Jerusalem.     Cousin, on Wednesday next our council we     Will hold at Windsor. So inform the lords;     But come yourself with speed to us again;     For more is to be said and to be done     Than out of anger can be uttered.   West. I will my liege.                                 Exeunt.     Scene II. London. An apartment of the Prince\'s.  Enter Prince of Wales and Sir John Falstaff.    Fal. Now, Hal, what time of day is it, lad?   Prince. Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack, and     unbuttoning thee after supper, and sleeping upon benches after     noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou     wouldest truly know. What a devil hast thou to do with the time     of the day, Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons,     and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping     houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair hot wench in     flame-coloured taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so     superfluous to demand the time of the day.   Fal. Indeed you come near me now, Hal; for we that take purses go     by the moon And the seven stars, and not by Phoebus, he, that     wand\'ring knight so fair. And I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art     king, as, God save thy Grace-Majesty I should say, for grace thou     wilt have none-   Prince. What, none?   Fal. No, by my troth; not so much as will serve to be prologue to       an egg and butter.   Prince. Well, how then? Come, roundly, roundly.   Fal. Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us that     are squires of the night\'s body be called thieves of the day\'s     beauty. Let us be Diana\'s Foresters, Gentlemen of the Shade,     Minions of the Moon; and let men say we be men of good     government, being governed as the sea is, by our noble and chaste     mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.   Prince. Thou sayest well, and it holds well too; for the fortune of     us that are the moon\'s men doth ebb and flow like the sea, being     governed, as the sea is, by the moon. As, for proof now: a purse     of gold most resolutely snatch\'d on Monday night and most     dissolutely spent on Tuesday morning; got with swearing \'Lay by,\'     and spent with crying \'Bring in\'; now ill as low an ebb as the     foot of the ladder, and by-and-by in as high a flow as the ridge     of the gallows.   Fal. By the Lord, thou say\'st true, lad- and is not my hostess of     the tavern a most sweet wench?   Prince. As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle- and is not     a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?     Fal. How now, how now, mad wag? What, in thy quips and thy     quiddities? What a plague have I to do with a buff jerkin?   Prince. Why, what a pox have I to do with my hostess of the tavern?   Fal. Well, thou hast call\'d her to a reckoning many a time and oft.   Prince. Did I ever call for thee to pay thy part?   Fal. No; I\'ll give thee thy due, thou hast paid all there.   Prince. Yea, and elsewhere, so far as my coin would stretch; and     where it would not, I have used my credit.   Fal. Yea, and so us\'d it that, were it not here apparent that thou     art heir apparent- But I prithee, sweet wag, shall there be     gallows standing in England when thou art king? and resolution     thus fubb\'d as it is with the rusty curb of old father antic the     law? Do not thou, when thou art king, hang a thief.   Prince. No; thou shalt.   Fal. Shall I? O rare! By the Lord, I\'ll be a brave judge.   Prince. Thou judgest false already. I mean, thou shalt have the     hanging of the thieves and so become a rare hangman.   Fal. Well, Hal, well; and in some sort it jumps with my humour as     well as waiting in the court, I can tell you.   Prince. For obtaining of suits?     Fal. Yea, for obtaining of suits, whereof the hangman hath no lean     wardrobe. \'Sblood, I am as melancholy as a gib-cat or a lugg\'d     bear.   Prince. Or an old lion, or a lover\'s lute.   Fal. Yea, or the drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe.   Prince. What sayest thou to a hare, or the melancholy of Moor     Ditch?   Fal. Thou hast the most unsavoury similes, and art indeed the most     comparative, rascalliest, sweet young prince. But, Hal, I prithee     trouble me no more with vanity. I would to God thou and I knew     where a commodity of good names were to be bought. An old lord of     the Council rated me the other day in the street about you, sir,     but I mark\'d him not; and yet he talked very wisely, but I     regarded him not; and yet he talk\'d wisely, and in the street     too.   Prince. Thou didst well; for wisdom cries out in the streets, and     no man regards it.   Fal. O, thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able to     corrupt a saint. Thou hast done much harm upon me, Hal- God     forgive thee for it! Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing; and       now am I, if a man should speak truly, little better than one of     the wicked. I must give over this life, and I will give it over!     By the Lord, an I do not, I am a villain! I\'ll be damn\'d for     never a king\'s son in Christendom.   Prince. Where shall we take a purse tomorrow, Jack?   Fal. Zounds, where thou wilt, lad! I\'ll make one. An I do not, call     me villain and baffle me.   Prince. I see a good amendment of life in thee- from praying to     purse-taking.   Fal. Why, Hal, \'tis my vocation, Hal. \'Tis no sin for a man to     labour in his vocation.                               Enter Poins.      Poins! Now shall we know if Gadshill have set a match. O, if men     were to be saved by merit, what hole in hell were hot enough for     him? This is the most omnipotent villain that ever cried \'Stand!\'     to a true man.   Prince. Good morrow, Ned.   Poins. Good morrow, sweet Hal. What says Monsieur Remorse? What       says Sir John Sack and Sugar? Jack, how agrees the devil and thee     about thy soul, that thou soldest him on Good Friday last for a     cup of Madeira and a cold capon\'s leg?   Prince. Sir John stands to his word, the devil shall have his     bargain; for he was never yet a breaker of proverbs. He will give     the devil his due.   Poins. Then art thou damn\'d for keeping thy word with the devil.   Prince. Else he had been damn\'d for cozening the devil.   Poins. But, my lads, my lads, to-morrow morning, by four o\'clock     early, at Gadshill! There are pilgrims gong to Canterbury with     rich offerings, and traders riding to London with fat purses. I     have vizards for you all; you have horses for yourselves.     Gadshill lies to-night in Rochester. I have bespoke supper     to-morrow night in Eastcheap. We may do it as secure as sleep. If     you will go, I will stuff your purses full of crowns; if you will     not, tarry at home and be hang\'d!   Fal. Hear ye, Yedward: if I tarry at home and go not, I\'ll hang you     for going.   Poins. You will, chops?   Fal. Hal, wilt thou make one?     Prince. Who, I rob? I a thief? Not I, by my faith.   Fal. There\'s neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee,     nor thou cam\'st not of the blood royal if thou darest not stand     for ten shillings.   Prince. Well then, once in my days I\'ll be a madcap.   Fal. Why, that\'s well said.   Prince. Well, come what will, I\'ll tarry at home.   Fal. By the Lord, I\'ll be a traitor then, when thou art king.   Prince. I care not.   Poins. Sir John, I prithee, leave the Prince and me alone. I will     lay him down such reasons for this adventure that he shall go.   Fal. Well, God give thee the spirit of persuasion and him the ears     of profiting, that what thou speakest may move and what he hears     may be believed, that the true prince may (for recreation sake)     prove a false thief; for the poor abuses of the time want     countenance. Farewell; you shall find me in Eastcheap.   Prince. Farewell, thou latter spring! farewell, All-hallown summer!                                                   Exit Falstaff.   Poins. Now, my good sweet honey lord, ride with us to-morrow. I     have a jest to execute that I cannot manage alone. Falstaff,       Bardolph, Peto, and Gadshill shall rob those men that we have     already waylaid; yourself and I will not be there; and when they     have the booty, if you and I do not rob them, cut this head off     from my shoulders.   Prince. How shall we part with them in setting forth?   Poins. Why, we will set forth before or after them and appoint them     a place of meeting, wherein it is at our pleasure to fail; and     then will they adventure upon the exploit themselves; which they     shall have no sooner achieved, but we\'ll set upon them.   Prince. Yea, but \'tis like that they will know us by our horses, by     our habits, and by every other appointment, to be ourselves.   Poins. Tut! our horses they shall not see- I\'ll tie them in the     wood; our wizards we will change after we leave them; and,     sirrah, I have cases of buckram for the nonce, to immask our     noted outward garments.   Prince. Yea, but I doubt they will be too hard for us.   Poins. Well, for two of them, I know them to be as true-bred     cowards as ever turn\'d back; and for the third, if he fight     longer than he sees reason, I\'ll forswear arms. The virtue of     this jest will lie the incomprehensible lies that this same fat       rogue will tell us when we meet at supper: how thirty, at least,     he fought with; what wards, what blows, what extremities he     endured; and in the reproof of this lies the jest.   Prince. Well, I\'ll go with thee. Provide us all things necessary     and meet me to-night in Eastcheap. There I\'ll sup. Farewell.   Poins. Farewell, my lord.                                Exit.   Prince. I know you all, and will awhile uphold     The unyok\'d humour of your idleness.     Yet herein will I imitate the sun,     Who doth permit the base contagious clouds     To smother up his beauty from the world,     That, when he please again to lie himself,     Being wanted, he may be more wond\'red at     By breaking through the foul and ugly mists     Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.     If all the year were playing holidays,     To sport would be as tedious as to work;     But when they seldom come, they wish\'d-for come,     And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.     So, when this loose behaviour I throw off       And pay the debt I never promised,     By how much better than my word I am,     By so much shall I falsify men\'s hopes;     And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,     My reformation, glitt\'ring o\'er my fault,     Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes     Than that which hath no foil to set it off.     I\'ll so offend to make offence a skill,     Redeeming time when men think least I will.            Exit.     Scene III. London. The Palace.  Enter the King, Northumberland, Worcester, Hotspur, Sir Walter Blunt, with others.    King. My blood hath been too cold and temperate,     Unapt to stir at these indignities,     And you have found me, for accordingly     You tread upon my patience; but be sure     I will from henceforth rather be myself,     Mighty and to be fear\'d, than my condition,     Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down,     And therefore lost that title of respect     Which the proud soul ne\'er pays but to the proud.   Wor. Our house, my sovereign liege, little deserves     The scourge of greatness to be us\'d on it-     And that same greatness too which our own hands     Have holp to make so portly.   North. My lord-   King. Worcester, get thee gone; for I do see     Danger and disobedience in thine eye.       O, sir, your presence is too bold and peremptory,     And majesty might never yet endure     The moody frontier of a servant brow.     Tou have good leave to leave us. When we need     \'Your use and counsel, we shall send for you.                                                  Exit Worcester.     You were about to speak.   North. Yea, my good lord.     Those prisoners in your Highness\' name demanded     Which Harry Percy here at Holmedon took,     Were, as he says, not with such strength denied     As is delivered to your Majesty.     Either envy, therefore, or misprision     Is guilty of this fault, and not my son.   Hot. My liege, I did deny no prisoners.     But I remember, when the fight was done,     When I was dry with rage and extreme toll,     Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,     Came there a certain lord, neat and trimly dress\'d,     Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin new reap\'d       Show\'d like a stubble land at harvest home.     He was perfumed like a milliner,     And \'twixt his finger and his thumb he held     A pouncet box, which ever and anon     He gave his nose, and took\'t away again;     Who therewith angry, when it next came there,     Took it in snuff; and still he smil\'d and talk\'d;     And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,     He call\'d them untaught knaves, unmannerly,     To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse     Betwixt the wind and his nobility.     With many holiday and lady terms     He questioned me, amongst the rest demanded     My prisoners in your Majesty\'s behalf.     I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,     To be so pest\'red with a popingay,     Out of my grief and my impatience     Answer\'d neglectingly, I know not what-     He should, or he should not; for he made me mad     To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,       And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman     Of guns and drums and wounds- God save the mark!-     And telling me the sovereignest thing on earth     Was parmacity for an inward bruise;     And that it was great pity, so it was,     This villanous saltpetre should be digg\'d     Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,     Which many a good tall fellow had destroy\'d     So cowardly; and but for these vile \'guns,     He would himself have been a soldier.     This bald unjointed chat of his, my lord,     I answered indirectly, as I said,     And I beseech you, let not his report     Come current for an accusation     Betwixt my love and your high majesty.   Blunt. The circumstance considered, good my lord,     Whate\'er Lord Harry Percy then had said     To such a person, and in such a place,     At such a time, with all the rest retold,     May reasonably die, and never rise       To do him wrong, or any way impeach     What then he said, so he unsay it now.   King. Why, yet he doth deny his prisoners,     But with proviso and exception,     That we at our own charge shall ransom straight     His brother-in-law, the foolish Mortimer;     Who, on my soul, hath wilfully betray\'d     The lives of those that he did lead to fight     Against that great magician, damn\'d Glendower,     Whose daughter, as we hear, the Earl of March     Hath lately married. Shall our coffers, then,     Be emptied to redeem a traitor home?     Shall we buy treason? and indent with fears     When they have lost and forfeited themselves?     No, on the barren mountains let him starve!     For I shall never hold that man my friend     Whose tongue shall ask me for one penny cost     To ransom home revolted Mortimer.   Hot. Revolted Mortimer?     He never did fall off, my sovereign liege,       But by the chance of war. To prove that true     Needs no more but one tongue for all those wounds,     Those mouthed wounds, which valiantly he took     When on the gentle Severn\'s sedgy bank,     In single opposition hand to hand,     He did confound the best part of an hour     In changing hardiment with great Glendower.     Three times they breath\'d, and three times did they drink,     Upon agreement, of swift Severn\'s flood;     Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks,     Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds     And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank,     Bloodstained with these valiant cohabitants.     Never did base and rotten policy     Colour her working with such deadly wounds;     Nor never could the noble Mortimer     Receive so many, and all willingly.     Then let not him be slandered with revolt.   King. Thou dost belie him, Percy, thou dost belie him!     He never did encounter with Glendower.       I tell thee     He durst as well have met the devil alone     As Owen Glendower for an enemy.     Art thou not asham\'d? But, sirrah, henceforth     Let me not hear you speak of Mortimer.     Send me your prisoners with the speediest means,     Or you shall hear in such a kind from me     As will displease you. My Lord Northumberland,     We license your departure with your son.-     Send us your prisoners, or you will hear of it.                                  Exeunt King, [Blunt, and Train]   Hot. An if the devil come and roar for them,     I will not send them. I will after straight     And tell him so; for I will else my heart,     Albeit I make a hazard of my head.   North. What, drunk with choler? Stay, and pause awhile.     Here comes your uncle.                            Enter Worcester.      Hot. Speak of Mortimer?     Zounds, I will speak of him, and let my soul     Want mercy if I do not join with him!     Yea, on his part I\'ll empty all these veins,     And shed my dear blood drop by drop in the dust,     But I will lift the downtrod Mortimer     As high in the air as this unthankful king,     As this ingrate and cank\'red Bolingbroke.   North. Brother, the King hath made your nephew mad.   Wor. Who struck this heat up after I was gone?   Hot. He will (forsooth) have all my prisoners;     And when I urg\'d the ransom once again     Of my wive\'s brother, then his cheek look\'d pale,     And on my face he turn\'d an eye of death,     Trembling even at the name of Mortimer.   Wor. I cannot blame him. Was not he proclaim\'d     By Richard that dead is, the next of blood?   North. He was; I heard the proclamation.     And then it was when the unhappy King     (Whose wrongs in us God pardon!) did set forth       Upon his Irish expedition;     From whence he intercepted did return     To be depos\'d, and shortly murdered.   Wor. And for whose death we in the world\'s wide mouth     Live scandaliz\'d and foully spoken of.   Hot. But soft, I pray you. Did King Richard then     Proclaim my brother Edmund Mortimer     Heir to the crown?   North. He did; myself did hear it.   Hot. Nay, then I cannot blame his cousin king,     That wish\'d him on the barren mountains starve.     But shall it be that you, that set the crown     Upon the head of this forgetful man,     And for his sake wear the detested blot     Of murtherous subornation- shall it be     That you a world of curses undergo,     Being the agents or base second means,     The cords, the ladder, or the hangman rather?     O, pardon me that I descend so low     To show the line and the predicament       Wherein you range under this subtile king!     Shall it for shame be spoken in these days,     Or fill up chronicles in time to come,     That men of your nobility and power     Did gage them both in an unjust behalf     (As both of you, God pardon it! have done)     To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose,     And plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke?     And shall it in more shame be further spoken     That you are fool\'d, discarded, and shook off     By him for whom these shames ye underwent?     No! yet time serves wherein you may redeem     Your banish\'d honours and restore yourselves     Into the good thoughts of the world again;     Revenge the jeering and disdain\'d contempt     Of this proud king, who studies day and night     To answer all the debt he owes to you     Even with the bloody payment of your deaths.     Therefore I say-   Wor. Peace, cousin, say no more;       And now, I will unclasp a secret book,     And to your quick-conceiving discontents     I\'ll read you matter deep and dangerous,     As full of peril and adventurous spirit     As to o\'erwalk a current roaring loud     On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.   Hot. If he fall in, good night, or sink or swim!     Send danger from the east unto the west,     So honour cross it from the north to south,     And let them grapple. O, the blood more stirs     To rouse a lion than to start a hare!   North. Imagination of some great exploit     Drives him beyond the bounds of patience.   Hot. By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap     To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac\'d moon,     Or dive into the bottom of the deep,     Where fadom line could never touch the ground,     And pluck up drowned honour by the locks,     So he that doth redeem her thence might wear     Without corrival all her dignities;       But out upon this half-fac\'d fellowship!   Wor. He apprehends a world of figures here,     But not the form of what he should attend.     Good cousin, give me audience for a while.   Hot. I cry you mercy.   Wor. Those same noble Scots     That are your prisoners-   Hot. I\'ll keep them all.     By God, he shall not have a Scot of them!     No, if a Scot would save his soul, he shall not.     I\'ll keep them, by this hand!   Wor. You start away.     And lend no ear unto my purposes.     Those prisoners you shall keep.   Hot. Nay, I will! That is flat!     He said he would not ransom Mortimer,     Forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer,     But I will find him when he lies asleep,     And in his ear I\'ll holloa \'Mortimer.\'     Nay;       I\'ll have a starling shall be taught to speak     Nothing but \'Mortimer,\' and give it him     To keep his anger still in motion.   Wor. Hear you, cousin, a word.   Hot. All studies here I solemnly defy     Save how to gall and pinch this Bolingbroke;     And that same sword-and-buckler Prince of Wales-     But that I think his father loves him not     And would be glad he met with some mischance,     I would have him poisoned with a pot of ale.   Wor. Farewell, kinsman. I will talk to you     When you are better temper\'d to attend.   North. Why, what a wasp-stung and impatient fool     Art thou to break into this woman\'s mood,     Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own!   Hot. Why, look you, I am whipp\'d and scourg\'d with rods,     Nettled, and stung with pismires when I hear     Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke.     In Richard\'s time- what do you call the place-     A plague upon it! it is in GIoucestershire-       \'Twas where the madcap Duke his uncle kept-     His uncle York- where I first bow\'d my knee     Unto this king of smiles, this Bolingbroke-     \'S blood!     When you and he came back from Ravenspurgh-   North. At Berkeley Castle.   Hot. You say true.     Why, what a candy deal of courtesy     This fawning greyhound then did proffer me!     Look, \'when his infant fortune came to age,\'     And \'gentle Harry Percy,\' and \'kind cousin\'-     O, the devil take such cozeners!- God forgive me!     Good uncle, tell your tale, for I have done.   Wor. Nay, if you have not, to it again.     We will stay your leisure.   Hot. I have done, i\' faith.   Wor. Then once more to your Scottish prisoners.     Deliver them up without their ransom straight,     And make the Douglas\' son your only mean     For powers In Scotland; which, for divers reasons       Which I shall send you written, be assur\'d     Will easily be granted. [To Northumberland] You, my lord,     Your son in Scotland being thus employ\'d,     Shall secretly into the bosom creep     Of that same noble prelate well-belov\'d,     The Archbishop.   Hot. Of York, is it not?   Wor. True; who bears hard     His brother\'s death at Bristow, the Lord Scroop.     I speak not this in estimation,     As what I think might be, but what I know     Is ruminated, plotted, and set down,     And only stays but to behold the face     Of that occasion that shall bring it on.   Hot. I smell it. Upon my life, it will do well.   North. Before the game is afoot thou still let\'st slip.   Hot. Why, it cannot choose but be a noble plot.     And then the power of Scotland and of York     To join with Mortimer, ha?   Wor. And so they shall.     Hot. In faith, it is exceedingly well aim\'d.   Wor. And \'tis no little reason bids us speed,     To save our heads by raising of a head;     For, bear ourselves as even as we can,     The King will always think him in our debt,     And think we think ourselves unsatisfied,     Till he hath found a time to pay us home.     And see already how he doth begin     To make us strangers to his looks of love.   Hot. He does, he does! We\'ll be reveng\'d on him.   Wor. Cousin, farewell. No further go in this     Than I by letters shall direct your course.     When time is ripe, which will be suddenly,     I\'ll steal to Glendower and Lord Mortimer,     Where you and Douglas, and our pow\'rs at once,     As I will fashion it, shall happily meet,     To bear our fortunes in our own strong arms,     Which now we hold at much uncertainty.   North. Farewell, good brother. We shall thrive, I trust.   Hot. Uncle, adieu. O, let the hours be short       Till fields and blows and groans applaud our sport!    Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. Scene I. Rochester. An inn yard.  Enter a Carrier with a lantern in his hand.    1. Car. Heigh-ho! an it be not four by the day, I\'ll be hang\'d.     Charles\' wain is over the new chimney, and yet our horse not     pack\'d.- What, ostler!   Ost. [within] Anon, anon.   1. Car. I prithee, Tom, beat Cut\'s saddle, put a few flocks in the     point. Poor jade is wrung in the withers out of all cess.                          Enter another Carrier.    2. Car. Peas and beans are as dank here as a dog, and that is the     next way to give poor jades the bots. This house is turned upside     down since Robin Ostler died.   1. Car. Poor fellow never joyed since the price of oats rose. It     was the death of him.   2. Car. I think this be the most villanous house in all London road     for fleas. I am stung like a tench.   1. Car. Like a tench I By the mass, there is ne\'er a king christen       could be better bit than I have been since the first cock.   2. Car. Why, they will allow us ne\'er a jordan, and then we leak in     your chimney, and your chamber-lye breeds fleas like a loach.   1. Car. What, ostler! come away and be hang\'d! come away!   2. Car. I have a gammon of bacon and two razes of ginger, to be     delivered as far as Charing Cross.   1. Car. God\'s body! the turkeys in my pannier are quite starved.     What, ostler! A plague on thee! hast thou never an eye in thy     head? Canst not hear? An \'twere not as good deed as drink to     break the pate on thee, I am a very villain. Come, and be hang\'d!     Hast no faith in thee?                             Enter Gadshill.    Gads. Good morrow, carriers. What\'s o\'clock?   1. Car. I think it be two o\'clock.   Gads. I prithee lend me this lantern to see my gelding in the     stable.   1. Car. Nay, by God, soft! I know a trick worth two of that,     i\' faith.     Gads. I pray thee lend me thine.   2. Car. Ay, when? canst tell? Lend me thy lantern, quoth he? Marry,     I\'ll see thee hang\'d first!   Gads. Sirrah carrier, what time do you mean to come to London?   2. Car. Time enough to go to bed with a candle, I warrant thee.     Come, neighbour Mugs, we\'ll call up the gentlemen. They will     along with company, for they have great charge.                                               Exeunt [Carriers].   Gads. What, ho! chamberlain!                              Enter Chamberlain.    Cham. At hand, quoth pickpurse.   Gads. That\'s even as fair as- \'at hand, quoth the chamberlain\'; for     thou variest no more from picking of purses than giving direction     doth from labouring: thou layest the plot how.   Cham. Good morrow, Master Gadshill. It holds current that I told     you yesternight. There\'s a franklin in the Wild of Kent hath     brought three hundred marks with him in gold. I heard him tell it     to one of his company last night at supper- a kind of auditor;       one that hath abundance of charge too, God knows what. They are     up already and call for eggs and butter. They will away     presently.   Gads. Sirrah, if they meet not with Saint Nicholas\' clerks, I\'ll     give thee this neck.   Cham. No, I\'ll none of it. I pray thee keep that for the hangman;     for I know thou worshippest Saint Nicholas as truly as a man of     falsehood may.   Gads. What talkest thou to me of the hangman? If I hang, I\'ll make     a fat pair of gallows; for if I hang, old Sir John hangs with me,     and thou knowest he is no starveling. Tut! there are other     Troyans that thou dream\'st not of, the which for sport sake are     content to do the profession some grace; that would (if matters     should be look\'d into) for their own credit sake make all whole.     I am joined with no foot land-rakers, no long-staff sixpenny     strikers, none of these mad mustachio purple-hued maltworms; but     with nobility, and tranquillity, burgomasters and great oneyers,     such as can hold in, such as will strike sooner than speak, and     speak sooner than drink, and drink sooner than pray; and yet,     zounds, I lie; for they pray continually to their saint, the       commonwealth, or rather, not pray to her, but prey on her, for     they ride up and down on her and make her their boots.   Cham. What, the commonwealth their boots? Will she hold out water     in foul way?   Gads. She will, she will! Justice hath liquor\'d her. We steal as in     a castle, cocksure. We have the receipt of fernseed, we walk     invisible.   Cham. Nay, by my faith, I think you are more beholding to the night     than to fernseed for your walking invisible.   Gads. Give me thy hand. Thou shalt have a share in our purchase, as     I and a true man.   Cham. Nay, rather let me have it, as you are a false thief.   Gads. Go to; \'homo\' is a common name to all men. Bid the ostler     bring my gelding out of the stable. Farewell, you muddy knave.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene II. The highway near Gadshill.  Enter Prince and Poins.    Poins. Come, shelter, shelter! I have remov\'d Falstaff\'s horse, and     he frets like a gumm\'d velvet.   Prince. Stand close.                        [They step aside.]                               Enter Falstaff.    Fal. Poins! Poins, and be hang\'d! Poins!   Prince. I comes forward I Peace, ye fat-kidney\'d rascal! What a     brawling dost thou keep!   Fal. Where\'s Poins, Hal?   Prince. He is walk\'d up to the top of the hill. I\'ll go seek him.                                                   [Steps aside.]   Fal. I am accurs\'d to rob in that thief\'s company. The rascal hath     removed my horse and tied him I know not where. If I travel but     four foot by the squire further afoot, I shall break my wind.     Well, I doubt not but to die a fair death for all this, if I     scape hanging for killing that rogue. I have forsworn his company       hourly any time this two-and-twenty years, and yet I am bewitch\'d     with the rogue\'s company. If the rascal have not given me     medicines to make me love him, I\'ll be hang\'d. It could not be     else. I have drunk medicines. Poins! Hal! A plague upon you both!     Bardolph! Peto! I\'ll starve ere I\'ll rob a foot further. An     \'twere not as good a deed as drink to turn true man and to leave     these rogues, I am the veriest varlet that ever chewed with a     tooth. Eight yards of uneven ground is threescore and ten miles     afoot with me, and the stony-hearted villains know it well     enough. A plague upon it when thieves cannot be true one to     another! (They whistle.) Whew! A plague upon you all! Give me my     horse, you rogues! give me my horse and be hang\'d!   Prince. [comes forward] Peace, ye fat-guts! Lie down, lay thine ear     close to the ground, and list if thou canst hear the tread of     travellers.   Fal. Have you any levers to lift me up again, being down? \'Sblood,     I\'ll not bear mine own flesh so far afoot again for all the coin     in thy father\'s exchequer. What a plague mean ye to colt me thus?   Prince. Thou liest; thou art not colted, thou art uncolted.   Fal. I prithee, good Prince Hal, help me to my horse, good king\'s       son.   Prince. Out, ye rogue! Shall I be your ostler?   Fal. Go hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent garters! If I be     ta\'en, I\'ll peach for this. An I have not ballads made on you     all, and sung to filthy tunes, let a cup of sack be my poison.     When a jest is so forward- and afoot too- I hate it.               Enter Gadshill, [Bardolph and Peto with him].    Gads. Stand!   Fal. So I do, against my will.   Poins. [comes fortward] O, \'tis our setter. I know his voice.     Bardolph, what news?   Bar. Case ye, case ye! On with your vizards! There\'s money of the     King\'s coming down the hill; \'tis going to the King\'s exchequer.   Fal. You lie, ye rogue! \'Tis going to the King\'s tavern.   Gads. There\'s enough to make us all.   Fal. To be hang\'d.   Prince. Sirs, you four shall front them in the narrow lane; Ned     Poins and I will walk lower. If they scape from your encounter,       then they light on us.   Peto. How many be there of them?   Gads. Some eight or ten.   Fal. Zounds, will they not rob us?   Prince. What, a coward, Sir John Paunch?   Fal. Indeed, I am not John of Gaunt, your grandfather; but yet no     coward, Hal.   Prince. Well, we leave that to the proof.   Poins. Sirrah Jack, thy horse stands behind the hedge. When thou     need\'st him, there thou shalt find him. Farewell and stand fast.   Fal. Now cannot I strike him, if I should be hang\'d.   Prince. [aside to Poins] Ned, where are our disguises?   Poins. [aside to Prince] Here, hard by. Stand close.                                       [Exeunt Prince and Poins.]   Fal. Now, my masters, happy man be his dole, say I. Every man to     his business.                           Enter the Travellers.    Traveller. Come, neighbour.       The boy shall lead our horses down the hill;     We\'ll walk afoot awhile and ease our legs.   Thieves. Stand!   Traveller. Jesus bless us!   Fal. Strike! down with them! cut the villains\' throats! Ah,     whoreson caterpillars! bacon-fed knaves! they hate us youth. Down     with them! fleece them!   Traveller. O, we are undone, both we and ours for ever!   Fal. Hang ye, gorbellied knaves, are ye undone? No, ye fat chuffs;     I would your store were here! On, bacons on! What, ye knaves!     young men must live. You are grandjurors, are ye? We\'ll jure ye,     faith!                             Here they rob and bind them. Exeunt.              Enter the Prince and Poins [in buckram suits].    Prince. The thieves have bound the true men. Now could thou and I     rob the thieves and go merrily to London, it would be argument     for a week, laughter for a month, and a good jest for ever.   Poins. Stand close! I hear them coming.                                                [They stand aside.]                         Enter the Thieves again.    Fal. Come, my masters, let us share, and then to horse before day.     An the Prince and Poins be not two arrant cowards, there\'s no     equity stirring. There\'s no more valour in that Poins than in a     wild duck.          [As they are sharing, the Prince and Poins set upon         them. THey all run away, and Falstaff, after a blow or         two, runs awasy too, leaving the booty behind them.]    Prince. Your money!   Poins. Villains!    Prince. Got with much ease. Now merrily to horse.     The thieves are scattered, and possess\'d with fear     So strongly that they dare not meet each other.     Each takes his fellow for an officer.       Away, good Ned. Falstaff sweats to death     And lards the lean earth as he walks along.     Were\'t not for laughing, I should pity him.   Poins. How the rogue roar\'d!                           Exeunt.     Scene III. Warkworth Castle.  Enter Hotspur solus, reading a letter.    Hot. \'But, for mine own part, my lord, I could be well contented to     be there, in respect of the love I bear your house.\' He could be     contented- why is he not then? In respect of the love he bears     our house! He shows in this he loves his own barn better than he     loves our house. Let me see some more. \'The purpose you undertake     is dangerous\'- Why, that\'s certain! \'Tis dangerous to take a     cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, out of     this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety. \'The purpose     you undertake is dangerous, the friends you have named uncertain,     the time itself unsorted, and your whole plot too light for the     counterpoise of so great an opposition.\' Say you so, say you so?     I say unto you again, you are a shallow, cowardly hind, and you     lie. What a lack-brain is this! By the Lord, our plot is a good     plot as ever was laid; our friends true and constant: a good     plot, good friends, and full of expectation; an excellent plot,     very good friends. What a frosty-spirited rogue is this! Why, my     Lord of York commends the plot and the general course of the       action. Zounds, an I were now by this rascal, I could brain him     with his lady\'s fan. Is there not my father, my uncle, and     myself; Lord Edmund Mortimer, my Lord of York, and Owen     Glendower? Is there not, besides, the Douglas? Have I not all     their letters to meet me in arms by the ninth of the next month,     and are they not some of them set forward already? What a pagan     rascal is this! an infidel! Ha! you shall see now, in very     sincerity of fear and cold heart will he to the King and lay open     all our proceedings. O, I could divide myself and go to buffets     for moving such a dish of skim milk with so honourable an action!     Hang him, let him tell the King! we are prepared. I will set     forward to-night.                           Enter his Lady.      How now, Kate? I must leave you within these two hours.   Lady. O my good lord, why are you thus alone?     For what offence have I this fortnight been     A banish\'d woman from my Harry\'s bed,     Tell me, sweet lord, what is\'t that takes from thee       Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?     Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth,     And start so often when thou sit\'st alone?     Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks     And given my treasures and my rights of thee     To thick-ey\'d musing and curs\'d melancholy?     In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch\'d,     And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars,     Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed,     Cry \'Courage! to the field!\' And thou hast talk\'d     Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tent,     Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets,     Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin,     Of prisoners\' ransom, and of soldiers slain,     And all the currents of a heady fight.     Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war,     And thus hath so bestirr\'d thee in thy sleep,     That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow     Like bubbles ill a late-disturbed stream,     And in thy face strange motions have appear\'d,       Such as we see when men restrain their breath     On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these?     Some heavy business hath my lord in hand,     And I must know it, else he loves me not.   Hot. What, ho!                      [Enter a Servant.]      Is Gilliams with the packet gone?   Serv. He is, my lord, an hour ago.   Hot. Hath Butler brought those horses from the sheriff?   Serv. One horse, my lord, he brought even now.   Hot. What horse? A roan, a crop-ear, is it not?   Serv. It is, my lord.   Hot. That roan shall be my throne.     Well, I will back him straight. O esperance!     Bid Butler lead him forth into the park.                                                  [Exit Servant.]   Lady. But hear you, my lord.   Hot. What say\'st thou, my lady?     Lady. What is it carries you away?   Hot. Why, my horse, my love- my horse!   Lady. Out, you mad-headed ape!     A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen     As you are toss\'d with. In faith,     I\'ll know your business, Harry; that I will!     I fear my brother Mortimer doth stir     About his title and hath sent for you     To line his enterprise; but if you go-   Hot. So far afoot, I shall be weary, love.   Lady. Come, come, you paraquito, answer me     Directly unto this question that I ask.     I\'ll break thy little finger, Harry,     An if thou wilt not tell my all things true.   Hot. Away.     Away, you trifler! Love? I love thee not;     I care not for thee, Kate. This is no world     To play with mammets and to tilt with lips.     We must have bloody noses and crack\'d crowns,     And pass them current too. Gods me, my horse!       What say\'st thou, Kate? What wouldst thou have with me?   Lady. Do you not love me? do you not indeed?     Well, do not then; for since you love me not,     I will not love myself. Do you not love me?     Nay, tell me if you speak in jest or no.   Hot. Come, wilt thou see me ride?     And when I am a-horseback, I will swear     I love thee infinitely. But hark you. Kate:     I must not have you henceforth question me     Whither I go, nor reason whereabout.     Whither I must, I must; and to conclude,     This evening must I leave you, gentle Kate.     I know you wise; but yet no farther wise     Than Harry Percy\'s wife; constant you are,     But yet a woman; and for secrecy,     No lady closer, for I well believe     Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know,     And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate.   Lady. How? so far?   Hot. Not an inch further. But hark you, Kate:       Whither I go, thither shall you go too;     To-day will I set forth, to-morrow you.     Will this content you, Kate,?   Lady. It must of force.                                Exeunt.     Scene IV. Eastcheap. The Boar\'s Head Tavern.  Enter Prince and Poins.    Prince. Ned, prithee come out of that fat-room and lend me thy hand     to laugh a little.   Poins. Where hast been, Hal?     Prince,. With three or four loggerheads amongst three or     fourscore hogsheads. I have sounded the very bass-string of     humility. Sirrah, I am sworn brother to a leash of drawers and     can call them all by their christen names, as Tom, Dick, and     Francis. They take it already upon their salvation that, though     I be but Prince of Wales, yet I am the king of courtesy; and tell     me flatly I am no proud Jack like Falstaff, but a Corinthian, a     lad of mettle, a good boy (by the Lord, so they call me!), and     when I am King of England I shall command all the good lads     Eastcheap. They call drinking deep, dying scarlet; and when     you breathe in your watering, they cry \'hem!\' and bid you play it     off. To conclude, I am so good a proficient in one quarter of an     hour that I can drink with any tinker in his own language during     my life. I tell thee, Ned, thou hast lost much honour that thou     wert not with me in this action. But, sweet Ned- to sweeten which       name of Ned, I give thee this pennyworth of sugar, clapp\'d even     now into my hand by an under-skinker, one that never spake other     English in his life than \'Eight shillings and sixpence,\' and \'You     are welcome,\' with this shrill addition, \'Anon, anon, sir! Score     a pint of bastard in the Half-moon,\' or so- but, Ned, to drive     away the time till Falstaff come, I prithee do thou stand in some     by-room while I question my puny drawer to what end be gave me     the sugar; and do thou never leave calling \'Francis!\' that his     tale to me may be nothing but \'Anon!\' Step aside, and I\'ll show     thee a precedent.   Poins. Francis!   Prince. Thou art perfect.   Poins. Francis!                                  [Exit Poins.]                      Enter [Francis, a] Drawer.    Fran. Anon, anon, sir.- Look down into the Pomgarnet, Ralph.   Prince. Come hither, Francis.   Fran. My lord?   Prince. How long hast thou to serve, Francis?     Fran. Forsooth, five years, and as much as to-   Poins. [within] Francis!   Fran. Anon, anon, sir.   Prince. Five year! by\'r Lady, a long lease for the clinking of     Pewter. But, Francis, darest thou be so valiant as to play the     coward with thy indenture and show it a fair pair of heels and     run from it?   Fran. O Lord, sir, I\'ll be sworn upon all the books in England I     could find in my heart-   Poins. [within] Francis!   Fran. Anon, sir.   Prince. How old art thou, Francis?   Fran. Let me see. About Michaelmas next I shall be-   Poins. [within] Francis!   Fran. Anon, sir. Pray stay a little, my lord.   Prince. Nay, but hark you, Francis. For the sugar thou gavest me-     \'twas a pennyworth, wast not?   Fran. O Lord! I would it had been two!   Prince. I will give thee for it a thousand pound. Ask me when thou     wilt, and, thou shalt have it.     Poins. [within] Francis!   Fran. Anon, anon.   Prince. Anon, Francis? No, Francis; but to-morrow, Francis; or,     Francis, a Thursday; or indeed, Francis, when thou wilt. But     Francis-   Fran. My lord?   Prince. Wilt thou rob this leathern-jerkin, crystal-button,     not-pated, agate-ring, puke-stocking, caddis-garter,     smooth-tongue, Spanish-pouch-   Fran. O Lord, sir, who do you mean?   Prince. Why then, your brown bastard is your only drink; for look     you, Francis, your white canvas doublet will sully. In Barbary,     sir, it cannot come to so much.   Fran. What, sir?   Poins. [within] Francis!   Prince. Away, you rogue! Dost thou not hear them call?               Here they both call him. The Drawer stands amazed,                                     not knowing which way to go.                           Enter Vintner.      Vint. What, stand\'st thou still, and hear\'st such a calling? Look     to the guests within. [Exit Francis.] My lord, old Sir John, with     half-a-dozen more, are at the door. Shall I let them in?   Prince. Let them alone awhile, and then open the door.                                                   [Exit Vintner.]     Poins!   Poins. [within] Anon, anon, sir.                            Enter Poins.    Prince. Sirrah, Falstaff and the rest of the thieves are at the     door. Shall we be merry?   Poins. As merry as crickets, my lad. But hark ye; what cunning     match have you made with this jest of the drawer? Come, what\'s     the issue?   Prince. I am now of all humours that have showed themselves humours     since the old days of goodman Adam to the pupil age of this     present this twelve o\'clock at midnight.                             [Enter Francis.]      What\'s o\'clock, Francis?   Fran. Anon, anon, sir.                                 [Exit.]   Prince. That ever this fellow should have fewer words than a     parrot, and yet the son of a woman! His industry is upstairs and     downstairs, his eloquence the parcel of a reckoning. I am not yet     of Percy\'s mind, the Hotspur of the North; he that kills me some     six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and     says to his wife, \'Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.\' \'O my     sweet Harry,\' says she, \'how many hast thou  kill\'d to-day?\'     \'Give my roan horse a drench,\' says he, and answers \'Some     fourteen,\' an hour after, \'a trifle, a trifle.\' I prithee call in     Falstaff. I\'ll play Percy, and that damn\'d brawn shall play Dame     Mortimer his wife. \'Rivo!\' says the drunkard. Call in ribs, call     in tallow.             Enter Falstaff, [Gadshill, Bardolph, and Peto;                    Francis follows with wine].      Poins. Welcome, Jack. Where hast thou been?   Fal. A plague of all cowards, I say, and a vengeance too! Marry and     amen! Give me a cup of sack, boy. Ere I lead this life long, I\'ll     sew nether-stocks, and mend them and foot them too. A plague of     all cowards! Give me a cup of sack, rogue. Is there no virtue     extant?                                                     He drinketh.   Prince. Didst thou never see Titan kiss a dish of butter?     Pitiful-hearted butter, that melted at the sweet tale of the sun!     If thou didst, then behold that compound.   Fal. You rogue, here\'s lime in this sack too! There is nothing but     roguery to be found in villanous man. Yet a coward is worse than     a cup of sack with lime in it- a villanous coward! Go thy ways,     old Jack, die when thou wilt; if manhood, good manhood, be not     forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a shotten herring.     There lives not three good men unhang\'d in England; and one of     them is fat, and grows old. God help the while! A bad world, I     say. I would I were a weaver; I could sing psalms or anything. A     plague of all cowards I say still!   Prince. How now, woolsack? What mutter you?     Fal. A king\'s son! If I do not beat thee out of thy kingdom with a     dagger of lath and drive all thy subjects afore thee like a flock     of wild geese, I\'ll never wear hair on my face more. You Prince     of Wales?   Prince. Why, you whoreson round man, what\'s the matter?   Fal. Are not you a coward? Answer me to that- and Poins there?   Poins. Zounds, ye fat paunch, an ye call me coward, by the     Lord, I\'ll stab thee.   Fal. I call thee coward? I\'ll see thee damn\'d ere I call thee     coward, but I would give a thousand pound I could run as fast as     thou canst. You are straight enough in the shoulders; you care     not who sees Your back. Call you that backing of your friends? A     plague upon such backing! Give me them that will face me. Give me     a cup of sack. I am a rogue if I drunk to-day.   Prince. O villain! thy lips are scarce wip\'d since thou drunk\'st     last.   Fal. All is one for that. (He drinketh.) A plague of all cowards     still say I.   Prince. What\'s the matter?   Fal. What\'s the matter? There be four of us here have ta\'en a       thousand pound this day morning.   Prince. Where is it, Jack? Where is it?   Fal. Where is it, Taken from us it is. A hundred upon poor four of     us!   Prince. What, a hundred, man?   Fal. I am a rogue if I were not at half-sword with a dozen of them     two hours together. I have scap\'d by miracle. I am eight times     thrust through the doublet, four through the hose; my buckler cut     through and through; my sword hack\'d like a handsaw- ecce signum!     I never dealt better since I was a man. All would not do. A     plague of all cowards! Let them speak, If they speak more or less     than truth, they are villains and the sons of darkness.   Prince. Speak, sirs. How was it?   Gads. We four set upon some dozen-   Fal. Sixteen at least, my lord.   Gads. And bound them.   Peto. No, no, they were not bound.   Fal. You rogue, they were bound, every man of them, or I am a Jew     else- an Ebrew Jew.   Gads. As we were sharing, some six or seven fresh men sea upon us-     Fal. And unbound the rest, and then come in the other.   Prince. What, fought you with them all?   Fal. All? I know not what you call all, but if I fought not with     fifty of them, I am a bunch of radish! If there were not two or     three and fifty upon poor old Jack, then am I no two-legg\'d     creature.   Prince. Pray God you have not murd\'red some of them.   Fal. Nay, that\'s past praying for. I have pepper\'d two of them. Two     I am sure I have paid, two rogues in buckram suits. I tell thee     what, Hal- if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse.     Thou knowest my old ward. Here I lay, and thus I bore my point.     Four rogues in buckram let drive at me.   Prince. What, four? Thou saidst but two even now.   Fal. Four, Hal. I told thee four.   Poins. Ay, ay, he said four.   Fal. These four came all afront and mainly thrust at me. I made me     no more ado but took all their seven points in my target, thus.   Prince. Seven? Why, there were but four even now.   Fal. In buckram?   Poins. Ay, four, in buckram suits.     Fal. Seven, by these hilts, or I am a villain else.   Prince. [aside to Poins] Prithee let him alone. We shall have more     anon.   Fal. Dost thou hear me, Hal?   Prince. Ay, and mark thee too, Jack.   Fal. Do so, for it is worth the list\'ning to. These nine in buckram     that I told thee of-   Prince. So, two more already.   Fal. Their points being broken-   Poins. Down fell their hose.   Fal. Began to give me ground; but I followed me close, came in,     foot and hand, and with a thought seven of the eleven I paid.   Prince. O monstrous! Eleven buckram men grown out of two!   Fal. But, as the devil would have it, three misbegotten knaves in     Kendal green came at my back and let drive at me; for it was so     dark, Hal, that thou couldst not see thy hand.   Prince. These lies are like their father that begets them- gross as     a mountain, open, palpable. Why, thou clay-brain\'d guts, thou     knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch-   Fal. What, art thou mad? art thou mad? Is not the truth the truth?     Prince. Why, how couldst thou know these men in Kendal green when     it was so dark thou couldst not see thy hand? Come, tell us your     reason. What sayest thou to this?   Poins. Come, your reason, Jack, your reason.   Fal. What, upon compulsion? Zounds, an I were at the strappado or     all the racks in the world, I would not tell you on compulsion.     Give you a reason on compulsion? If reasons were as plentiful as     blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I.   Prince. I\'ll be no longer guilty, of this sin; this sanguine     coward, this bed-presser, this horseback-breaker, this huge hill     of flesh-   Fal. \'Sblood, you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried     neat\'s-tongue, you bull\'s sizzle, you stockfish- O for breath to     utter what is like thee!- you tailor\'s yard, you sheath, you     bowcase, you vile standing tuck!   Prince. Well, breathe awhile, and then to it again; and when thou     hast tired thyself in base comparisons, hear me speak but this.   Poins. Mark, Jack.   Prince. We two saw you four set on four, and bound them and were     masters of their wealth. Mark now how a plain tale shall put you       down. Then did we two set on you four and, with a word, outfac\'d     you from your prize, and have it; yea, and can show it you here     in the house. And, Falstaff, you carried your guts away as     nimbly, with as quick dexterity, and roar\'d for mercy, and still     run and roar\'d, as ever I heard bullcalf. What a slave art thou     to hack thy sword as thou hast done, and then say it was in     fight! What trick, what device, what starting hole canst thou now     find out to hide thee from this open and apparent shame?   Poins. Come, let\'s hear, Jack. What trick hast thou now?   Fal. By the Lord, I knew ye as well as he that made ye. Why, hear     you, my masters. Was it for me to kill the heir apparent? Should     I turn upon the true prince? Why, thou knowest I am as valiant as     Hercules; but beware instinct. The lion will not touch the true     prince. Instinct is a great matter. I was now a coward on     instinct. I shall think the better of myself, and thee, during my     life- I for a valiant lion, and thou for a true prince. But, by     the Lord, lads, I am glad you have the money. Hostess, clap to     the doors. Watch to-night, pray to-morrow. Gallants, lads, boys,     hearts of gold, all the titles of good fellowship come to you!     What, shall we be merry? Shall we have a play extempore?     Prince. Content- and the argument shall be thy running away.   Fal. Ah, no more of that, Hal, an thou lovest me!                               Enter Hostess.    Host. O Jesu, my lord the Prince!   Prince. How now, my lady the hostess? What say\'st thou to me?   Host. Marry, my lord, there is a nobleman of the court at door     would speak with you. He says he comes from your father.   Prince. Give him as much as will make him a royal man, and send him     back again to my mother.   Fal. What manner of man is he?   Host. An old man.   Fal. What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight? Shall I give him     his answer?   Prince. Prithee do, Jack.   Fal. Faith, and I\'ll send him packing. Exit.   Prince. Now, sirs. By\'r Lady, you fought fair; so did you, Peto; so     did you, Bardolph. You are lions too, you ran away upon instinct,       you will not touch the true prince; no- fie!   Bard. Faith, I ran when I saw others run.   Prince. Tell me now in earnest, how came Falstaff\'s sword so     hack\'d?   Peto. Why, he hack\'d it with his dagger, and said he would swear     truth out of England but he would make you believe it was done in     fight, and persuaded us to do the like.   Bard. Yea, and to tickle our noses with speargrass to make them     bleed, and then to beslubber our garments with it and swear it     was the blood of true men. I did that I did not this seven year     before- I blush\'d to hear his monstrous devices.   Prince. O villain! thou stolest a cup of sack eighteen years ago     and wert taken with the manner, and ever since thou hast blush\'d     extempore. Thou hadst fire and sword on thy side, and yet thou     ran\'st away. What instinct hadst thou for it?   Bard. My lord, do you see these meteors? Do you behold these     exhalations?   Prince. I do.   Bard. What think you they portend?   Prince. Hot livers and cold purses.     Bard. Choler, my lord, if rightly taken.   Prince. No, if rightly taken, halter.                           Enter Falstaff.      Here comes lean Jack; here comes bare-bone. How now, my sweet     creature of bombast? How long is\'t ago, Jack, since thou sawest     thine own knee?   Fal. My own knee? When I was about thy years, Hal, I was not an     eagle\'s talent in the waist; I could have crept into any     alderman\'s thumb-ring. A plague of sighing and grief! It blows a     man up like a bladder. There\'s villanous news abroad. Here was     Sir John Bracy from your father. You must to the court in the     morning. That same mad fellow of the North, Percy, and he of     Wales that gave Amamon the bastinado, and made Lucifer cuckold,     and swore the devil his true liegeman upon the cross of a Welsh     hook- what a plague call you him?   Poins. O, Glendower.   Fal. Owen, Owen- the same; and his son-in-law Mortimer, and old     Northumberland, and that sprightly Scot of Scots, Douglas, that       runs a-horseback up a hill perpendicular-   Prince. He that rides at high speed and with his pistol kills a     sparrow flying.   Fal. You have hit it.   Prince. So did he never the sparrow.   Fal. Well, that rascal hath good metal in him; he will not run.   Prince. Why, what a rascal art thou then, to praise him so for     running!   Fal. A-horseback, ye cuckoo! but afoot he will not budge a foot.   Prince. Yes, Jack, upon instinct.   Fal. I grant ye, upon instinct. Well, he is there too, and one     Mordake, and a thousand bluecaps more. Worcester is stol\'n away     to-night; thy father\'s beard is turn\'d white with the news; you     may buy land now as cheap as stinking mack\'rel.   Prince. Why then, it is like, if there come a hot June, and this     civil buffeting hold, we shall buy maidenheads as they buy     hobnails, by the hundreds.   Fal. By the mass, lad, thou sayest true; it is like we shall have     good trading that way. But tell me, Hal, art not thou horrible     afeard? Thou being heir apparent, could the world pick thee out       three such enemies again as that fiend Douglas, that spirit     Percy, and that devil Glendower? Art thou not horribly afraid?     Doth not thy blood thrill at it?   Prince. Not a whit, i\' faith. I lack some of thy instinct.   Fal. Well, thou wilt be horribly chid to-morrow when thou comest to     thy father. If thou love file, practise an answer.   Prince. Do thou stand for my father and examine me upon the     particulars of my life.   Fal. Shall I? Content. This chair shall be my state, this dagger my     sceptre, and this cushion my, crown.   Prince. Thy state is taken for a join\'d-stool, thy golden sceptre     for a leaden dagger, and thy precious rich crown for a pitiful     bald crown.   Fal. Well, an the fire of grace be not quite out of thee, now shalt     thou be moved. Give me a cup of sack to make my eyes look red,     that it may be thought I have wept; for I must speak in passion,     and I will do it in King Cambyses\' vein.   Prince. Well, here is my leg.   Fal. And here is my speech. Stand aside, nobility.   Host. O Jesu, this is excellent sport, i\' faith!     Fal. Weep not, sweet queen, for trickling tears are vain.   Host. O, the Father, how he holds his countenance!   Fal. For God\'s sake, lords, convey my tristful queen!     For tears do stop the floodgates of her eyes.   Host. O Jesu, he doth it as like one of these harlotry players as     ever I see!   Fal. Peace, good pintpot. Peace, good tickle-brain.- Harry, I do     not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also how thou     art accompanied. For though the camomile, the more it is trodden     on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the     sooner it wears. That thou art my son I have partly thy mother\'s     word, partly my own opinion, but chiefly a villanous trick of     thine eye and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip that doth     warrant me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the point: why,     being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of     heaven prove a micher and eat blackberries? A question not to be     ask\'d. Shall the son of England prove a thief and take purses? A     question to be ask\'d. There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast     often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name     of pitch. This pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile;       so doth the company thou keepest. For, Harry, now I do not speak     to thee in drink, but in tears; not in pleasure, but in passion;     not in words only, but in woes also: and yet there is a virtuous     man whom I have often noted in thy company, but I know not  his     name.   Prince. What manner of man, an it like your Majesty?   Fal. A goodly portly man, i\' faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful     look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage; and, as I think,     his age some fifty, or, by\'r Lady, inclining to threescore; and     now I remember me, his name is Falstaff. If that man should be     lewdly, given, he deceiveth me; for, Harry, I see virtue in his     looks. If then the tree may be known by the fruit, as the fruit     by the tree, then, peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue in     that Falstaff. Him keep with, the rest banish. And tell me now,     thou naughty varlet, tell me where hast thou been this month?   Prince. Dost thou speak like a king? Do thou stand for me, and I\'ll     play my father.   Fal. Depose me? If thou dost it half so gravely, so majestically,     both in word and matter, hang me up by the heels for a     rabbit-sucker or a poulter\'s hare.     Prince. Well, here I am set.   Fal. And here I stand. Judge, my masters.   Prince. Now, Harry, whence come you?   Fal. My noble lord, from Eastcheap.   Prince. The complaints I hear of thee are grievous.   Fal. \'Sblood, my lord, they are false! Nay, I\'ll tickle ye for a     young prince, i\' faith.   Prince. Swearest thou, ungracious boy? Henceforth ne\'er look on me.     Thou art violently carried away from grace. There is a devil     haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man; a tun of man is     thy companion. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours,     that bolting hutch of beastliness, that swoll\'n parcel of     dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuff\'d cloakbag of     guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly,     that reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that     vanity in years? Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink     it? wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it?     wherein cunning, but in craft? wherein crafty, but in villany?     wherein villanous, but in all things? wherein worthy, but in     nothing?     Fal. I would your Grace would take me with you. Whom means your     Grace?   Prince. That villanous abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff,     that old white-bearded Satan.   Fal. My lord, the man I know.   Prince. I know thou dost.   Fal. But to say I know more harm in him than in myself were to say     more than I know. That he is old (the more the pity) his white     hairs do witness it; but that he is (saving your reverence) a     whoremaster, that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault,     God help the wicked! If to be old and merry be a sin, then many     an old host that I know is damn\'d. If to be fat be to be hated,     then Pharaoh\'s lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord.     Banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins; but for sweet Jack     Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack     Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being, as he is, old Jack     Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry\'s company, banish not him thy     Harry\'s company. Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world!   Prince. I do, I will.                      [A knocking heard.]                         [Exeunt Hostess, Francis, and Bardolph.]                         Enter Bardolph, running.    Bard. O, my lord, my lord! the sheriff with a most monstrous watch     is at the door.   Fal. Out, ye rogue! Play out the play. I have much to say in the     behalf of that Falstaff.                         Enter the Hostess.    Host. O Jesu, my lord, my lord!   Prince. Heigh, heigh, the devil rides upon a fiddlestick!     What\'s the matter?   Host. The sheriff and all the watch are at the door. They are come     to search the house. Shall I let them in?   Fal. Dost thou hear, Hal? Never call a true piece of gold a     counterfeit. Thou art essentially mad without seeming so.   Prince. And thou a natural coward without instinct.   Fal. I deny your major. If you will deny the sheriff, so; if not,     let him enter. If I become not a cart as well as another man, a       plague on my bringing up! I hope I shall as soon be strangled     with a halter as another.   Prince. Go hide thee behind the arras. The rest walk, up above.     Now, my masters, for a true face and good conscience.   Fal. Both which I have had; but their date is out, and therefore     I\'ll hide me.                                          Exit.   Prince. Call in the sheriff.                             [Exeunt Manent the Prince and Peto.]                      Enter Sheriff and the Carrier.      Now, Master Sheriff, what is your will with me?   Sher. First, pardon me, my lord. A hue and cry     Hath followed certain men unto this house.   Prince. What men?   Sher. One of them is well known, my gracious lord-     A gross fat man.   Carrier. As fat as butter.   Prince. The man, I do assure you, is not here,     For I myself at this time have employ\'d him.       And, sheriff, I will engage my word to thee     That I will by to-morrow dinner time     Send him to answer thee, or any man,     For anything he shall be charg\'d withal;     And so let me entreat you leave the house.   Sher. I will, my lord. There are two gentlemen     Have in this robbery lost three hundred marks.   Prince. It may be so. If he have robb\'d these men,     He shall be answerable; and so farewell.   Sher. Good night, my noble lord.   Prince. I think it is good morrow, is it not?   Sher. Indeed, my lord, I think it be two o\'clock.                                             Exit [with Carrier].   Prince. This oily rascal is known as well as Paul\'s. Go call him     forth.   Peto. Falstaff! Fast asleep behind the arras, and snorting like a     horse.   Prince. Hark how hard he fetches breath. Search his pockets.             He searcheth his pockets and findeth certain papers.     What hast thou found?     Peto. Nothing but papers, my lord.   Prince. Let\'s see whit they be. Read them.    Peto. [reads] \'Item. A capon. . . . . . . . . . . . .  ii s. ii d.                  Item, Sauce. . . . . . . . . . . . . .      iiii d.                  Item, Sack two gallons . . . . . . . . v s. viii d.                  Item, Anchovies and sack after supper.  ii s. vi d.                  Item, Bread. . . . . . . . . . . . . .          ob.\'    Prince. O monstrous! but one halfpennyworth of bread to this     intolerable deal of sack! What there is else, keep close; we\'ll     read it at more advantage. There let him sleep till day. I\'ll to     the court in the morning . We must all to the wars. and thy place     shall be honourable. I\'ll procure this fat rogue a charge of     foot; and I know, his death will be a march of twelve score. The     money shall be paid back again with advantage. Be with me betimes     in the morning, and so good morrow, Peto.   Peto. Good morrow, good my lord.                                                          Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. Scene I. Bangor. The Archdeacon\'s house.  Enter Hotspur, Worcester, Lord Mortimer, Owen Glendower.    Mort. These promises are fair, the parties sure,     And our induction full of prosperous hope.   Hot. Lord Mortimer, and cousin Glendower,     Will you sit down?     And uncle Worcester. A plague upon it!     I have forgot the map.   Glend. No, here it is.     Sit, cousin Percy; sit, good cousin Hotspur,     For by that name as oft as Lancaster     Doth speak of you, his cheek looks pale, and with     A rising sigh he wisheth you in heaven.   Hot. And you in hell, as oft as he hears     Owen Glendower spoke of.   Glend. I cannot blame him. At my nativity     The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes     Of burning cressets, and at my birth     The frame and huge foundation of the earth       Shak\'d like a coward.   Hot. Why, so it would have done at the same season, if your     mother\'s cat had but kitten\'d, though yourself had never been     born.   Glend. I say the earth did shake when I was born.   Hot. And I say the earth was not of my mind,     If you suppose as fearing you it shook.   Glend. The heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble.   Hot. O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire,     And not in fear of your nativity.     Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth     In strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth     Is with a kind of colic pinch\'d and vex\'d     By the imprisoning of unruly wind     Within her womb, which, for enlargement striving,     Shakes the old beldame earth and topples down     Steeples and mossgrown towers. At your birth     Our grandam earth, having this distemp\'rature,     In passion shook.   Glend. Cousin, of many men       I do not bear these crossings. Give me leave     To tell you once again that at my birth     The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,     The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds     Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields.     These signs have mark\'d me extraordinary,     And all the courses of my life do show     I am not in the roll of common men.     Where is he living, clipp\'d in with the sea     That chides the banks of England, Scotland, Wales,     Which calls me pupil or hath read to me?     And bring him out that is but woman\'s son     Can trace me in the tedious ways of art     And hold me pace in deep experiments.   Hot. I think there\'s no man speaks better Welsh. I\'ll to dinner.   Mort. Peace, cousin Percy; you will make him mad.   Glend. I can call spirits from the vasty deep.   Hot. Why, so can I, or so can any man;     But will they come when you do call for them?   Glend. Why, I can teach you, cousin, to command the devil.     Hot. And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil-     By telling truth. Tell truth and shame the devil.     If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither,     And I\'ll be sworn I have power to shame him hence.     O, while you live, tell truth and shame the devil!   Mort. Come, come, no more of this unprofitable chat.   Glend. Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head     Against my power; thrice from the banks of Wye     And sandy-bottom\'d Severn have I sent him     Bootless home and weather-beaten back.   Hot. Home without boots, and in foul weather too?     How scapes he agues, in the devil\'s name   Glend. Come, here\'s the map. Shall we divide our right     According to our threefold order ta\'en?   Mort. The Archdeacon hath divided it     Into three limits very equally.     England, from Trent and Severn hitherto,     By south and east is to my part assign\'d;     All westward, Wales beyond the Severn shore,     And all the fertile land within that bound,       To Owen Glendower; and, dear coz, to you     The remnant northward lying off from Trent.     And our indentures tripartite are drawn;     Which being sealed interchangeably     (A business that this night may execute),     To-morrow, cousin Percy, you and I     And my good Lord of Worcester will set forth     To meet your father and the Scottish bower,     As is appointed us, at Shrewsbury.     My father Glendower is not ready yet,     Nor shall we need his help these fourteen days.     [To Glend.] Within that space you may have drawn together     Your tenants, friends, and neighbouring gentlemen.   Glend. A shorter time shall send me to you, lords;     And in my conduct shall your ladies come,     From whom you now must steal and take no leave,     For there will be a world of water shed     Upon the parting of your wives and you.   Hot. Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,     In quantity equals not one of yours.       See how this river comes me cranking in     And cuts me from the best of all my land     A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.     I\'ll have the current ill this place damm\'d up,     And here the smug and sliver Trent shall run     In a new channel fair and evenly.     It shall not wind with such a deep indent     To rob me of so rich a bottom here.   Glend. Not wind? It shall, it must! You see it doth.   Mort. Yea, but     Mark how he bears his course, and runs me up     With like advantage on the other side,     Gelding the opposed continent as much     As on the other side it takes from you.   Wor. Yea, but a little charge will trench him here     And on this north side win this cape of land;     And then he runs straight and even.   Hot. I\'ll have it so. A little charge will do it.   Glend. I will not have it alt\'red.   Hot. Will not you?     Glend. No, nor you shall not.   Hot. Who shall say me nay?   Glend. No, that will I.   Hot. Let me not understand you then; speak it in Welsh.   Glend. I can speak English, lord, as well as you;     For I was train\'d up in the English court,     Where, being but young, I framed to the harp     Many an English ditty lovely well,     And gave the tongue a helpful ornament-     A virtue that was never seen in you.   Hot. Marry,     And I am glad of it with all my heart!     I had rather be a kitten and cry mew     Than one of these same metre ballet-mongers.     I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn\'d     Or a dry wheel grate on the axletree,     And that would set my teeth nothing on edge,     Nothing so much as mincing poetry.     \'Tis like the forc\'d gait of a shuffling nag,   Glend. Come, you shall have Trent turn\'d.     Hot. I do not care. I\'ll give thrice so much land     To any well-deserving friend;     But in the way of bargain, mark ye me,     I\'ll cavil on the ninth part of a hair     Are the indentures drawn? Shall we be gone?   Glend. The moon shines fair; you may away by night.     I\'ll haste the writer, and withal     Break with your wives of your departure hence.     I am afraid my daughter will run mad,     So much she doteth on her Mortimer.                    Exit.   Mort. Fie, cousin Percy! how you cross my father!   Hot. I cannot choose. Sometimes he angers me     With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant,     Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies,     And of a dragon and a finless fish,     A clip-wing\'d griffin and a moulten raven,     A couching lion and a ramping cat,     And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff     As puts me from my faith. I tell you what-     He held me last night at least nine hours       In reckoning up the several devils\' names     That were his lackeys. I cried \'hum,\' and \'Well, go to!\'     But mark\'d him not a word. O, he is as tedious     As a tired horse, a railing wife;     Worse than a smoky house. I had rather live     With cheese and garlic in a windmill far     Than feed on cates and have him talk to me     In any summer house in Christendom).   Mort. In faith, he is a worthy gentleman,     Exceedingly well read, and profited     In strange concealments, valiant as a lion,     And wondrous affable, and as bountiful     As mines of India. Shall I tell you, cousin?     He holds your temper in a high respect     And curbs himself even of his natural scope     When you come \'cross his humour. Faith, he does.     I warrant you that man is not alive     Might so have tempted him as you have done     Without the taste of danger and reproof.     But do not use it oft, let me entreat you.     Wor. In faith, my lord, you are too wilful-blame,     And since your coming hither have done enough     To put him quite besides his patience.     You must needs learn, lord, to amend this fault.     Though sometimes it show greatness, courage, blood-     And that\'s the dearest grace it renders you-     Yet oftentimes it doth present harsh rage,     Defect of manners, want of government,     Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain;     The least of which haunting a nobleman     Loseth men\'s hearts, and leaves behind a stain     Upon the beauty of all parts besides,     Beguiling them of commendation.   Hot. Well, I am school\'d. Good manners be your speed!     Here come our wives, and let us take our leave.              Enter Glendower with the Ladies.    Mort. This is the deadly spite that angers me-     My wife can speak no English, I no Welsh.     Glend. My daughter weeps; she will not part with you;     She\'ll be a soldier too, she\'ll to the wars.   Mort. Good father, tell her that she and my aunt Percy     Shall follow in your conduct speedily.                Glendower speaks to her in Welsh, and she answers                                                 him in the same.   Glend. She is desperate here. A peevish self-will\'d harlotry,     One that no persuasion can do good upon.                                        The Lady speaks in Welsh.   Mort. I understand thy looks. That pretty Welsh     Which thou pourest down from these swelling heavens     I am too perfect in; and, but for shame,     In such a Barley should I answer thee.                                         The Lady again in Welsh.     I understand thy kisses, and thou mine,     And that\'s a feeling disputation.     But I will never be a truant, love,     Till I have learnt thy language: for thy tongue     Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penn\'d,     Sung by a fair queen in a summer\'s bow\'r,       With ravishing division, to her lute.   Glend. Nay, if you melt, then will she run mad.                                  The Lady speaks again in Welsh.   Mort. O, I am ignorance itself in this!   Glend. She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down     And rest your gentle head upon her lap,     And she will sing the song that pleaseth you     And on your eyelids crown the god of sleep,     Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness,     Making such difference \'twixt wake and sleep     As is the difference betwixt day and night     The hour before the heavenly-harness\'d team     Begins his golden progress in the East.   Mort. With all my heart I\'ll sit and hear her sing.     By that time will our book, I think, be drawn.   Glend. Do so,     And those musicians that shall play to you     Hang in the air a thousand leagues from hence,     And straight they shall be here. Sit, and attend.   Hot. Come, Kate, thou art perfect in lying down. Come, quick,       quick, that I may lay my head in thy lap.   Lady P. Go, ye giddy goose.                                                 The music plays.   Hot. Now I perceive the devil understands Welsh;     And \'tis no marvel, be is so humorous.     By\'r Lady, he is a good musician.   Lady P. Then should you be nothing but musical; for you are     altogether govern\'d by humours. Lie still, ye thief, and hear the     lady sing in Welsh.   Hot. I had rather hear Lady, my brach, howl in Irish.   Lady P. Wouldst thou have thy head broken?   Hot. No.   Lady P. Then be still.   Hot. Neither! \'Tis a woman\'s fault.   Lady P. Now God help thee!   Hot. To the Welsh lady\'s bed.   Lady P. What\'s that?   Hot. Peace! she sings.                                Here the Lady sings a Welsh song.     Come, Kate, I\'ll have your song too.     Lady P. Not mine, in good sooth.   Hot. Not yours, in good sooth? Heart! you swear like a     comfit-maker\'s wife. \'Not you, in good sooth!\' and \'as true as I     live!\' and \'as God shall mend me!\' and \'as sure as day!\'     And givest such sarcenet surety for thy oaths     As if thou ne\'er walk\'st further than Finsbury.     Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art,     A good mouth-filling oath; and leave \'in sooth\'     And such protest of pepper gingerbread     To velvet guards and Sunday citizens. Come, sing.   Lady P. I will not sing.   Hot. \'Tis the next way to turn tailor or be redbreast-teacher. An     the indentures be drawn, I\'ll away within these two hours; and so     come in when ye will.                                  Exit.   Glend. Come, come, Lord Mortimer. You are as slow     As hot Lord Percy is on fire to go.     By this our book is drawn; we\'ll but seal,     And then to horse immediately.   Mort. With all my heart.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene II. London. The Palace.  Enter the King, Prince of Wales, and others.    King. Lords, give us leave. The Prince of Wales and I     Must have some private conference; but be near at hand,     For we shall presently have need of you.                                                    Exeunt Lords.     I know not whether God will have it so,     For some displeasing service I have done,     That, in his secret doom, out of my blood     He\'ll breed revengement and a scourge for me;     But thou dost in thy passages of life     Make me believe that thou art only mark\'d     For the hot vengeance and the rod of heaven     To punish my mistreadings. Tell me else,     Could such inordinate and low desires,     Such poor, such bare, such lewd, such mean attempts,     Such barren pleasures, rude society,     As thou art match\'d withal and grafted to,     Accompany the greatness of thy blood       And hold their level with thy princely heart?   Prince. So please your Majesty, I would I could     Quit all offences with as clear excuse     As well as I am doubtless I can purge     Myself of many I am charged withal.     Yet such extenuation let me beg     As, in reproof of many tales devis\'d,     Which oft the ear of greatness needs must bear     By, smiling pickthanks and base newsmongers,     I may, for some things true wherein my youth     Hath faulty wand\'red and irregular,     And pardon on lily true submission.   King. God pardon thee! Yet let me wonder, Harry,     At thy affections, which do hold a wing,     Quite from the flight of all thy ancestors.     Thy place in Council thou hast rudely lost,     Which by thy younger brother is supplied,     And art almost an alien to the hearts     Of all the court and princes of my blood.     The hope and expectation of thy time       Is ruin\'d, and the soul of every man     Prophetically do forethink thy fall.     Had I so lavish of my presence been,     So common-hackney\'d in the eyes of men,     So stale and cheap to vulgar company,     Opinion, that did help me to the crown,     Had still kept loyal to possession     And left me in reputeless banishment,     A fellow of no mark nor likelihood.     By being seldom seen, I could not stir     But, like a comet, I Was wond\'red at;     That men would tell their children, \'This is he!\'     Others would say, \'Where? Which is Bolingbroke?\'     And then I stole all courtesy from heaven,     And dress\'d myself in such humility     That I did pluck allegiance from men\'s hearts,     Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths     Even in the presence of the crowned King.     Thus did I keep my person fresh and new,     My presence, like a robe pontifical,       Ne\'er seen but wond\'red at; and so my state,     Seldom but sumptuous, show\'d like a feast     And won by rareness such solemnity.     The skipping King, he ambled up and down     With shallow jesters and rash bavin wits,     Soon kindled and soon burnt; carded his state;     Mingled his royalty with cap\'ring fools;     Had his great name profaned with their scorns     And gave his countenance, against his name,     To laugh at gibing boys and stand the push     Of every beardless vain comparative;     Grew a companion to the common streets,     Enfeoff\'d himself to popularity;     That, being dally swallowed by men\'s eyes,     They surfeited with honey and began     To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little     More than a little is by much too much.     So, when he had occasion to be seen,     He was but as the cuckoo is in June,     Heard, not regarded- seen, but with such eyes       As, sick and blunted with community,     Afford no extraordinary gaze,     Such as is bent on unlike majesty     When it shines seldom in admiring eyes;     But rather drows\'d and hung their eyelids down,     Slept in his face, and rend\'red such aspect     As cloudy men use to their adversaries,     Being with his presence glutted, gorg\'d, and full.     And in that very line, Harry, standest thou;     For thou hast lost thy princely privilege     With vile participation. Not an eye     But is aweary of thy common sight,     Save mine, which hath desir\'d to see thee more;     Which now doth that I would not have it do-     Make blind itself with foolish tenderness.   Prince. I shall hereafter, my thrice-gracious lord,     Be more myself.   King. For all the world,     As thou art to this hour, was Richard then     When I from France set foot at Ravenspurgh;       And even as I was then is Percy now.     Now, by my sceptre, and my soul to boot,     He hath more worthy interest to the state     Than thou, the shadow of succession;     For of no right, nor colour like to right,     He doth fill fields with harness in the realm,     Turns head against the lion\'s armed jaws,     And, Being no more in debt to years than thou,     Leads ancient lords and reverend Bishops on     To bloody battles and to bruising arms.     What never-dying honour hath he got     Against renowmed Douglas! whose high deeds,     Whose hot incursions and great name in arms     Holds from all soldiers chief majority     And military title capital     Through all the kingdoms that acknowledge Christ.     Thrice hath this Hotspur, Mars in swathling clothes,     This infant warrior, in his enterprises     Discomfited great Douglas; ta\'en him once,     Enlarged him, and made a friend of him,       To fill the mouth of deep defiance up     And shake the peace and safety of our throne.     And what say you to this? Percy, Northumberland,     The Archbishop\'s Grace of York, Douglas, Mortimer     Capitulate against us and are up.     But wherefore do I tell these news to thee     Why, Harry, do I tell thee of my foes,     Which art my nearest and dearest enemy\'     Thou that art like enough, through vassal fear,     Base inclination, and the start of spleen,     To fight against me under Percy\'s pay,     To dog his heels and curtsy at his frowns,     To show how much thou art degenerate.   Prince. Do not think so. You shall not find it so.     And God forgive them that so much have sway\'d     Your Majesty\'s good thoughts away from me!     I will redeem all this on Percy\'s head     And, in the closing of some glorious day,     Be bold to tell you that I am your son,     When I will wear a garment all of blood,       And stain my favours in a bloody mask,     Which, wash\'d away, shall scour my shame with it.     And that shall be the day, whene\'er it lights,     That this same child of honour and renown,     This gallant Hotspur, this all-praised knight,     And your unthought of Harry chance to meet.     For every honour sitting on his helm,     Would they were multitudes, and on my head     My shames redoubled! For the time will come     That I shall make this Northern youth exchange     His glorious deeds for my indignities.     Percy is but my factor, good my lord,     To engross up glorious deeds on my behalf;     And I will call hall to so strict account     That he shall render every glory up,     Yea, even the slightest worship of his time,     Or I will tear the reckoning from his heart.     This in the name of God I promise here;     The which if he be pleas\'d I shall perform,     I do beseech your Majesty may salve       The long-grown wounds of my intemperance.     If not, the end of life cancels all bands,     And I will die a hundred thousand deaths     Ere break the smallest parcel of this vow.   King. A hundred thousand rebels die in this!     Thou shalt have charge and sovereign trust herein.                          Enter Blunt.      How now, good Blunt? Thy looks are full of speed.   Blunt. So hath the business that I come to speak of.     Lord Mortimer of Scotland hath sent word     That Douglas and the English rebels met     The eleventh of this month at Shrewsbury.     A mighty and a fearful head they are,     If promises be kept oil every hand,     As ever off\'red foul play in a state.   King. The Earl of Westmoreland set forth to-day;     With him my son, Lord John of Lancaster;     For this advertisement is five days old.       On Wednesday next, Harry, you shall set forward;     On Thursday we ourselves will march. Our meeting     Is Bridgenorth; and, Harry, you shall march     Through Gloucestershire; by which account,     Our business valued, some twelve days hence     Our general forces at Bridgenorth shall meet.     Our hands are full of business. Let\'s away.     Advantage feeds him fat while men delay.            Exeunt.     Scene III. Eastcheap. The Boar\'s Head Tavern.  Enter Falstaff and Bardolph.    Fal. Bardolph, am I not fall\'n away vilely since this last action?     Do I not bate? Do I not dwindle? Why, my skin hangs about me like     an old lady\'s loose gown! I am withered like an old apple John.     Well, I\'ll repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some liking.     I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no     strength to repent. An I have not forgotten what the inside of a     church is made of, I am a peppercorn, a brewer\'s horse. The     inside of a church! Company, villanous company, hath been the     spoil of me.   Bard. Sir John, you are so fretful you cannot live long.   Fal. Why, there is it! Come, sing me a bawdy song; make me merry. I     was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be, virtuous     enough: swore little, dic\'d not above seven times a week, went to     a bawdy house not above once in a quarter- of an hour, paid money     that I borrowed- three or four times, lived well, and in good     compass; and now I live out of all order, out of all compass.   Bard. Why, you are so fat, Sir John, that you must needs be out of       all compass- out of all reasonable compass, Sir John.   Fal. Do thou amend thy face, and I\'ll amend my life. Thou art our     admiral, thou bearest the lantern in the poop- but \'tis in the     nose of thee. Thou art the Knight of the Burning Lamp.   Bard. Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm.   Fal. No, I\'ll be sworn. I make as good use of it as many a man doth     of a death\'s-head or a memento mori. I never see thy face but I     think upon hellfire and Dives that lived in purple; for there he     is in his robes, burning, burning. if thou wert any way given to     virtue, I would swear by thy face; my oath should be \'By this     fire, that\'s God\'s angel.\' But thou art altogether given over,     and wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter     darkness. When thou ran\'st up Gadshill in the night to catch my     horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus or a     ball of wildfire, there\'s no purchase in money. O, thou art a     perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light! Thou hast saved     me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in     the night betwixt tavern and tavern; but the sack that thou hast     drunk me would have bought me lights as good cheap at the dearest     chandler\'s in Europe. I have maintained that salamander of yours       with fire any time this two-and-thirty years. God reward me for     it!   Bard. \'Sblood, I would my face were in your belly!   Fal. God-a-mercy! so should I be sure to be heart-burn\'d.                            Enter Hostess.      How now, Dame Partlet the hen? Have you enquir\'d yet who pick\'d     my pocket?   Host. Why, Sir John, what do you think, Sir John? Do you think I     keep thieves in my house? I have search\'d, I have enquired, so     has my husband, man by man, boy by boy, servant by servant. The     tithe of a hair was never lost in my house before.   Fal. Ye lie, hostess. Bardolph was shav\'d and lost many a hair, and     I\'ll be sworn my pocket was pick\'d. Go to, you are a woman, go!   Host. Who, I? No; I defy thee! God\'s light, I was never call\'d so     in mine own house before!   Fal. Go to, I know you well enough.   Host. No, Sir John; you do not know me, Sir John. I know you, Sir     John. You owe me money, Sir John, and now you pick a quarrel to       beguile me of it. I bought you a dozen of shirts to your back.   Fal. Dowlas, filthy dowlas! I have given them away to bakers\'     wives; they have made bolters of them.   Host. Now, as I am a true woman, holland of eight shillings an ell.     You owe money here besides, Sir John, for your diet and     by-drinkings, and money lent you, four-and-twenty pound.   Fal. He had his part of it; let him pay.   Host. He? Alas, he is poor; he hath nothing.   Fal. How? Poor? Look upon his face. What call you rich? Let them     coin his nose, let them coin his cheeks. I\'ll not pay a denier.     What, will you make a younker of me? Shall I not take mine ease     in mine inn but I shall have my pocket pick\'d? I have lost a     seal-ring of my grandfather\'s worth forty mark.   Host. O Jesu, I have heard the Prince tell him, I know not how oft,     that that ring was copper!   Fal. How? the Prince is a Jack, a sneak-cup. \'Sblood, an he were     here, I would cudgel him like a dog if he would say so.        Enter the Prince [and Poins], marching; and Falstaff meets           them, playing upon his truncheon like a fife.        How now, lad? Is the wind in that door, i\' faith? Must we all     march?   Bard. Yea, two and two, Newgate fashion.   Host. My lord, I pray you hear me.   Prince. What say\'st thou, Mistress Quickly? How doth thy husband?     I love him well; he is an honest man.   Host. Good my lord, hear me.   Fal. Prithee let her alone and list to me.   Prince. What say\'st thou, Jack?   Fal. The other night I fell asleep here behind the arras and had my     pocket pick\'d. This house is turn\'d bawdy house; they pick     pockets.   Prince. What didst thou lose, Jack?   Fal. Wilt thou believe me, Hal? Three or four bonds of forty pound     apiece and a seal-ring of my grandfather\'s.   Prince. A trifle, some eightpenny matter.   Host. So I told him, my lord, and I said I heard your Grace say so;     and, my lord, he speaks most vilely of you, like a foul-mouth\'d     man as he is, and said he would cudgel you.     Prince. What! he did not?   Host. There\'s neither faith, truth, nor womanhood in me else.   Fal. There\'s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune, nor no     more truth in thee than in a drawn fox; and for woman-hood, Maid     Marian may be the deputy\'s wife of the ward to thee. Go, you     thing, go!   Host. Say, what thing? what thing?   Fal. What thing? Why, a thing to thank God on.   Host. I am no thing to thank God on, I would thou shouldst know it!     I am an honest man\'s wife, and, setting thy knight-hood aside,     thou art a knave to call me so.   Fal. Setting thy womanhood aside, thou art a beast to say     otherwise.   Host. Say, what beast, thou knave, thou?   Fal. What beast? Why, an otter.   Prince. An otter, Sir John? Why an otter?   Fal. Why, she\'s neither fish nor flesh; a man knows not where to     have her.   Host. Thou art an unjust man in saying so. Thou or any man knows     where to have me, thou knave, thou!     Prince. Thou say\'st true, hostess, and he slanders thee most     grossly.   Host. So he doth you, my lord, and said this other day you ought     him a thousand pound.   Prince. Sirrah, do I owe you a thousand pound?   Fal. A thousand pound, Hal? A million! Thy love is worth a million;     thou owest me thy love.   Host. Nay, my lord, he call\'d you Jack and said he would cudgel     you.   Fal. Did I, Bardolph?   Bard. Indeed, Sir John, you said so.   Fal. Yea. if he said my ring was copper.   Prince. I say, \'tis copper. Darest thou be as good as thy word now?   Fal. Why, Hal, thou knowest, as thou art but man, I dare; but as     thou art Prince, I fear thee as I fear the roaring of the lion\'s     whelp.   Prince. And why not as the lion?   Fal. The King himself is to be feared as the lion. Dost thou think     I\'ll fear thee as I fear thy father? Nay, an I do, I pray God my     girdle break.     Prince. O, if it should, how would thy guts fall about thy knees!     But, sirrah, there\'s no room for faith, truth, nor honesty in     this bosom of thine. It is all fill\'d up with guts and midriff.     Charge an honest woman with picking thy pocket? Why, thou     whoreson, impudent, emboss\'d rascal, if there were anything in     thy pocket but tavern reckonings, memorandums of bawdy houses,     and one poor pennyworth of sugar candy to make thee long-winded-     if thy pocket were enrich\'d with any other injuries but these, I     am a villain. And yet you will stand to it; you will not pocket     up wrong. Art thou not ashamed?   Fal. Dost thou hear, Hal? Thou knowest in the state of innocency     Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of     villany? Thou seest I have more flesh than another man, and     therefore more frailty. You confess then, you pick\'d my pocket?   Prince. It appears so by the story.   Fal. Hostess, I forgive thee. Go make ready breakfast. Love thy     husband, look to thy servants, cherish thy guests. Thou shalt     find me tractable to any honest reason. Thou seest I am pacified.     -Still?- Nay, prithee be gone. [Exit Hostess.] Now, Hal, to the     news at court. For the robbery, lad- how is that answered?     Prince. O my sweet beef, I must still be good angel to thee.     The money is paid back again.   Fal. O, I do not like that paying back! \'Tis a double labour.   Prince. I am good friends with my father, and may do anything.   Fal. Rob me the exchequer the first thing thou doest, and do it     with unwash\'d hands too.   Bard. Do, my lord.   Prince. I have procured thee, Jack, a charge of foot.   Fal. I would it had been of horse. Where shall I find one that can     steal well? O for a fine thief of the age of two-and-twenty or     thereabouts! I am heinously unprovided. Well, God be thanked for     these rebels. They offend none but the virtuous. I laud them, I     praise them.   Prince. Bardolph!   Bard. My lord?   Prince. Go bear this letter to Lord John of Lancaster,     To my brother John; this to my Lord of Westmoreland.                                                 [Exit Bardolph.]     Go, Poins, to horse, to horse; for thou and I     Have thirty miles to ride yet ere dinner time.                                                      [Exit Poins.]     Jack, meet me to-morrow in the Temple Hall     At two o\'clock in the afternoon.     There shalt thou know thy charge. and there receive     Money and order for their furniture.     The land is burning; Percy stands on high;     And either they or we must lower lie.                [Exit.]   Fal. Rare words! brave world! Hostess, my breakfast, come.     O, I could wish this tavern were my drum! Exit.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. Scene I. The rebel camp near Shrewsbury.  Enter Harry Hotspur, Worcester, and Douglas.    Hot. Well said, my noble Scot. If speaking truth     In this fine age were not thought flattery,     Such attribution should the Douglas have     As not a soldier of this season\'s stamp     Should go so general current through the world.     By God, I cannot flatter, I defy     The tongues of soothers! but a braver place     In my heart\'s love hath no man than yourself.     Nay, task me to my word; approve me, lord.   Doug. Thou art the king of honour.     No man so potent breathes upon the ground     But I will beard him.                       Enter one with letters.    Hot. Do so, and \'tis well.-     What letters hast thou there?- I can but thank you.     Messenger. These letters come from your father.   Hot. Letters from him? Why comes he not himself?   Mess. He cannot come, my lord; he is grievous sick.   Hot. Zounds! how has he the leisure to be sick     In such a justling time? Who leads his power?     Under whose government come they along?   Mess. His letters bears his mind, not I, my lord.   Wor. I prithee tell me, doth he keep his bed?   Mess. He did, my lord, four days ere I set forth,     And at the time of my departure thence     He was much fear\'d by his physicians.   Wor. I would the state of time had first been whole     Ere he by sickness had been visited.     His health was never better worth than now.   Hot. Sick now? droop now? This sickness doth infect     The very lifeblood of our enterprise.     \'Tis catching hither, even to our camp.     He writes me here that inward sickness-     And that his friends by deputation could not     So soon be drawn; no did he think it meet       To lay so dangerous and dear a trust     On any soul remov\'d but on his own.     Yet doth he give us bold advertisement,     That with our small conjunction we should on,     To see how fortune is dispos\'d to us;     For, as he writes, there is no quailing now,     Because the King is certainly possess\'d     Of all our purposes. What say you to it?   Wor. Your father\'s sickness is a maim to us.   Hot. A perilous gash, a very limb lopp\'d off.     And yet, in faith, it is not! His present want     Seems more than we shall find it. Were it good     To set the exact wealth of all our states     All at one cast? to set so rich a man     On the nice hazard of one doubtful hour?     It were not good; for therein should we read     The very bottom and the soul of hope,     The very list, the very utmost bound     Of all our fortunes.   Doug. Faith, and so we should;       Where now remains a sweet reversion.     We may boldly spend upon the hope of what     Is to come in.     A comfort of retirement lives in this.   Hot. A rendezvous, a home to fly unto,     If that the devil and mischance look big     Upon the maidenhead of our affairs.   Wor. But yet I would your father had been here.     The quality and hair of our attempt     Brooks no division. It will be thought     By some that know not why he is away,     That wisdom, loyalty, and mere dislike     Of our proceedings kept the Earl from hence.     And think how such an apprehension     May turn the tide of fearful faction     And breed a kind of question in our cause.     For well you know we of the off\'ring side     Must keep aloof from strict arbitrement,     And stop all sight-holes, every loop from whence     The eye of reason may pry in upon us.       This absence of your father\'s draws a curtain     That shows the ignorant a kind of fear     Before not dreamt of.   Hot. You strain too far.     I rather of his absence make this use:     It lends a lustre and more great opinion,     A larger dare to our great enterprise,     Than if the Earl were here; for men must think,     If we, without his help, can make a head     To push against a kingdom, with his help     We shall o\'erturn it topsy-turvy down.     Yet all goes well; yet all our joints are whole.   Doug. As heart can think. There is not such a word     Spoke of in Scotland as this term of fear.                   Enter Sir Richard Vernon.    Hot. My cousin Vernon! welcome, by my soul.   Ver. Pray God my news be worth a welcome, lord.     The Earl of Westmoreland, seven thousand strong,       Is marching hitherwards; with him Prince John.   Hot. No harm. What more?   Ver. And further, I have learn\'d     The King himself in person is set forth,     Or hitherwards intended speedily,     With strong and mighty preparation.   Hot. He shall be welcome too. Where is his son,     The nimble-footed madcap Prince of Wales,     And his comrades, that daff\'d the world aside     And bid it pass?   Ver. All furnish\'d, all in arms;     All plum\'d like estridges that with the wind     Bated like eagles having lately bath\'d;     Glittering in golden coats like images;     As full of spirit as the month of May     And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;     Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.     I saw young Harry with his beaver on     His cushes on his thighs, gallantly arm\'d,     Rise from the ground like feathered Mercury,       And vaulted with such ease into his seat     As if an angel dropp\'d down from the clouds     To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus     And witch the world with noble horsemanship.   Hot. No more, no more! Worse than the sun in March,     This praise doth nourish agues. Let them come.     They come like sacrifices in their trim,     And to the fire-ey\'d maid of smoky war     All hot and bleeding Will we offer them.     The mailed Mars Shall on his altar sit     Up to the ears in blood. I am on fire     To hear this rich reprisal is so nigh,     And yet not ours. Come, let me taste my horse,     Who is to bear me like a thunderbolt     Against the bosom of the Prince of Wales.     Harry to Harry shall, hot horse to horse,     Meet, and ne\'er part till one drop down a corse.     that Glendower were come!   Ver. There is more news.     I learn\'d in Worcester, as I rode along,       He cannot draw his power this fourteen days.   Doug. That\'s the worst tidings that I hear of yet.   Wor. Ay, by my faith, that bears a frosty sound.   Hot. What may the King\'s whole battle reach unto?   Ver. To thirty thousand.   Hot. Forty let it be.     My father and Glendower being both away,     The powers of us may serve so great a day.     Come, let us take a muster speedily.     Doomsday is near. Die all, die merrily.   Doug. Talk not of dying. I am out of fear     Of death or death\'s hand for this one half-year.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene II. A public road near Coventry.  Enter Falstaff and Bardolph.    Fal. Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me a bottle of     sack. Our soldiers shall march through. We\'ll to Sutton Co\'fil\'     to-night.   Bard. Will you give me money, Captain?   Fal. Lay out, lay out.   Bald. This bottle makes an angel.   Fal. An if it do, take it for thy labour; an if it make twenty,     take them all; I\'ll answer the coinage. Bid my lieutenant Peto     meet me at town\'s end.   Bard. I Will, Captain. Farewell.                         Exit.   Fal. If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a sous\'d gurnet. I     have misused the King\'s press damnably. I have got in exchange of     a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I     press me none but good householders, yeomen\'s sons; inquire me     out contracted bachelors, such as had been ask\'d twice on the     banes- such a commodity of warm slaves as had as lieve hear the     devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a caliver worse than       a struck fowl or a hurt wild duck. I press\'d me none but such     toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than     pins\' heads, and they have bought out their services; and now my     whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants,     gentlemen of companies- slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the     painted cloth, where the glutton\'s dogs licked his sores; and     such as indeed were never soldiers, but discarded unjust     serving-men, younger sons to Younger brothers, revolted tapsters,     and ostlers trade-fall\'n; the cankers of a calm world and a long     peace; ten times more dishonourable ragged than an old fac\'d     ancient; and such have I to fill up the rooms of them that have     bought out their services that you would think that I had a     hundred and fifty tattered Prodigals lately come from     swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me     on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets and     press\'d the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I\'ll     not march through Coventry with them, that\'s flat. Nay, and the     villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on;     for indeed I had the most of them out of prison. There\'s but a     shirt and a half in all my company; and the half-shirt is two       napkins tack\'d together and thrown over the shoulders like a     herald\'s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth,     stol\'n from my host at Saint Alban\'s, or the red-nose innkeeper     of Daventry. But that\'s all one; they\'ll find linen enough on     every hedge.                Enter the Prince and the Lord of Westmoreland.    Prince. How now, blown Jack? How now, quilt?   Fal. What, Hal? How now, mad wag? What a devil dost thou in     Warwickshire? My good Lord of Westmoreland, I cry you mercy. I     thought your honour had already been at Shrewsbury.   West. Faith, Sir John, \'tis more than time that I were there, and     you too; but my powers are there already. The King, I can tell     you, looks for us all. We must away all, to-night.   Fal. Tut, never fear me. I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.   Prince. I think, to steal cream indeed, for thy theft hath already     made thee butter. But tell me, Jack, whose fellows are these that     come after?   Fal. Mine, Hal, mine.     Prince. I did never see such pitiful rascals.   Fal. Tut, tut! good enough to toss; food for powder, food for     powder. They\'ll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal     men, mortal men.   West. Ay, but, Sir John, methinks they are exceeding poor and bare-     too beggarly.   Fal. Faith, for their poverty, I know, not where they had that; and     for their bareness, I am surd they never learn\'d that of me.   Prince. No, I\'ll be sworn, unless you call three fingers on the     ribs bare. But, sirrah, make haste. Percy \'s already in the     field. Exit.   Fal. What, is the King encamp\'d?   West. He is, Sir John. I fear we shall stay too long.                                                          [Exit.]   Fal. Well,     To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast     Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.                  Exit.     Scene III. The rebel camp near Shrewsbury.  Enter Hotspur, Worcester, Douglas, Vernon.    Hot. We\'ll fight with him to-night.   Wor. It may not be.   Doug. You give him then advantage.   Ver. Not a whit.   Hot. Why say you so? Looks he no for supply?   Ver. So do we.   Hot. His is certain, ours \'s doubtful.   Wor. Good cousin, be advis\'d; stir not to-night.   Ver. Do not, my lord.   Doug. You do not counsel well.     You speak it out of fear and cold heart.   Ver. Do me no slander, Douglas. By my life-     And I dare well maintain it with my life-     If well-respected honour bid me on     I hold as little counsel with weak fear     As you, my lord, or any Scot that this day lives.     Let it be seen to-morrow in the battle       Which of us fears.   Doug. Yea, or to-night.   Ver. Content.   Hot. To-night, say I.     Come, come, it may not be. I wonder much,     Being men of such great leading as you are,     That you foresee not what impediments     Drag back our expedition. Certain horse     Of my cousin Vernon\'s are not yet come up.     Your uncle Worcester\'s horse came but to-day;     And now their pride and mettle is asleep,     Their courage with hard labour tame and dull,     That not a horse is half the half of himself.   Hot. So are the horses of the enemy,     In general journey-bated and brought low.     The better part of ours are full of rest.   Wor. The number of the King exceedeth ours.     For God\'s sake, cousin, stay till all come in.                The trumpet sounds a parley.                     Enter Sir Walter Blunt.    Blunt. I come with gracious offers from the King,     If you vouchsafe me hearing and respect.   Hot. Welcome, Sir Walter Blunt, and would to God     You were of our determination!     Some of us love you well; and even those some     Envy your great deservings and good name,     Because you are not of our quality,     But stand against us like an enemy.   Blunt. And God defend but still I should stand so,     So long as out of limit and true rule     You stand against anointed majesty!     But to my charge. The King hath sent to know     The nature of your griefs; and whereupon     You conjure from the breast of civil peace     Such bold hostility, teaching his duteous land     Audacious cruelty. If that the King     Have any way your good deserts forgot,       Which he confesseth to be manifold,     He bids you name your griefs, and with all speed     You shall have your desires with interest,     And pardon absolute for yourself and these     Herein misled by your suggestion.   Hot. The King is kind; and well we know the King     Knows at what time to promise, when to pay.     My father and my uncle and myself     Did give him that same royalty he wears;     And when he was not six-and-twenty strong,     Sick in the world\'s regard, wretched and low,     A poor unminded outlaw sneaking home,     My father gave him welcome to the shore;     And when he heard him swear and vow to God     He came but to be Duke of Lancaster,     To sue his livery and beg his peace,     With tears of innocency and terms of zeal,     My father, in kind heart and pity mov\'d,     Swore him assistance, and performed it too.     Now, when the lords and barons of the realm       Perceiv\'d Northumberland did lean to him,     The more and less came in with cap and knee;     Met him on boroughs, cities, villages,     Attended him on bridges, stood in lanes,     Laid gifts before him, proffer\'d him their oaths,     Give him their heirs as pages, followed him     Even at the heels in golden multitudes.     He presently, as greatness knows itself,     Steps me a little higher than his vow     Made to my father, while his blood was poor,     Upon the naked shore at Ravenspurgh;     And now, forsooth, takes on him to reform     Some certain edicts and some strait decrees     That lie too heavy on the commonwealth;     Cries out upon abuses, seems to weep     Over his country\'s wrongs; and by this face,     This seeming brow of justice, did he win     The hearts of all that he did angle for;     Proceeded further- cut me off the heads     Of all the favourites that the absent King       In deputation left behind him here     When he was personal in the Irish war.     But. Tut! I came not to hear this.   Hot. Then to the point.     In short time after lie depos\'d the King;     Soon after that depriv\'d him of his life;     And in the neck of that task\'d the whole state;     To make that worse, suff\'red his kinsman March     (Who is, if every owner were well placid,     Indeed his king) to be engag\'d in Wales,     There without ransom to lie forfeited;     Disgrac\'d me in my happy victories,     Sought to entrap me by intelligence;     Rated mine uncle from the Council board;     In rage dismiss\'d my father from the court;     Broke an oath on oath, committed wrong on wrong;     And in conclusion drove us to seek out     This head of safety, and withal to pry     Into his title, the which we find     Too indirect for long continuance.     Blunt. Shall I return this answer to the King?   Hot. Not so, Sir Walter. We\'ll withdraw awhile.     Go to the King; and let there be impawn\'d     Some surety for a safe return again,     And In the morning early shall mine uncle     Bring him our purposes; and so farewell.   Blunt. I would you would accept of grace and love.   Hot. And may be so we shall.   Blunt. Pray God you do.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene IV. York. The Archbishop\'s Palace.  Enter the Archbishop of York and Sir Michael.    Arch. Hie, good Sir Michael; bear this sealed brief     With winged haste to the Lord Marshal;     This to my cousin Scroop; and all the rest     To whom they are directed. If you knew     How much they do import, you would make haste.   Sir M. My good lord,     I guess their tenour.   Arch. Like enough you do.     To-morrow, good Sir Michael, is a day     Wherein the fortune of ten thousand men     Must bide the touch; for, sir, at Shrewsbury,     As I am truly given to understand,     The King with mighty and quick-raised power     Meets with Lord Harry; and I fear, Sir Michael,     What with the sickness of Northumberland,     Whose power was in the first proportion,     And what with Owen Glendower\'s absence thence,       Who with them was a rated sinew too     And comes not in, overrul\'d by prophecies-     I fear the power of Percy is too weak     To wage an instant trial with the King.   Sir M. Why, my good lord, you need not fear;     There is Douglas and Lord Mortimer.   Arch. No, Mortimer is not there.   Sir M. But there is Mordake, Vernon, Lord Harry Percy,     And there is my Lord of Worcester, and a head     Of gallant warriors, noble gentlemen.   Arch. And so there is; but yet the King hath drawn     The special head of all the land together-     The Prince of Wales, Lord John of Lancaster,     The noble Westmoreland and warlike Blunt,     And many moe corrivals and dear men     Of estimation and command in arms.   Sir M. Doubt not, my lord, they shall be well oppos\'d.   Arch. I hope no less, yet needful \'tis to fear;     And, to prevent the worst, Sir Michael, speed.     For if Lord Percy thrive not, ere the King       Dismiss his power, he means to visit us,     For he hath heard of our confederacy,     And \'tis but wisdom to make strong against him.     Therefore make haste. I must go write again     To other friends; and so farewell, Sir Michael.                                                          Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. Scene I. The King\'s camp near Shrewsbury.  Enter the King, Prince of Wales, Lord John of Lancaster, Sir Walter Blunt, Falstaff.    King. How bloodily the sun begins to peer     Above yon busky hill! The day looks pale     At his distemp\'rature.   Prince. The southern wind     Doth play the trumpet to his purposes     And by his hollow whistling in the leaves     Foretells a tempest and a blust\'ring day.   King. Theft with the losers let it sympathize,     For nothing can seem foul to those that win.       The trumpet sounds. Enter Worcester [and Vernon].      How, now, my Lord of Worcester? \'Tis not well     That you and I should meet upon such terms     As now we meet. You have deceiv\'d our trust     And made us doff our easy robes of peace       To crush our old limbs in ungentle steel.     This is not well, my lord; this is not well.     What say you to it? Will you again unknit     This churlish knot of all-abhorred war,     And move in that obedient orb again     Where you did give a fair and natural light,     And be no more an exhal\'d meteor,     A prodigy of fear, and a portent     Of broached mischief to the unborn times?   Wor. Hear me, my liege.     For mine own part, I could be well content     To entertain the lag-end of my life     With quiet hours; for I do protest     I have not sought the day of this dislike.   King. You have not sought it! How comes it then,   Fal. Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.   Prince. Peace, chewet, peace!   Wor. It pleas\'d your Majesty to turn your looks     Of favour from myself and all our house;     And yet I must remember you, my lord,       We were the first and dearest of your friends.     For you my staff of office did I break     In Richard\'s time, and posted day and night     To meet you on the way and kiss your hand     When yet you were in place and in account     Nothing so strong and fortunate as I.     It was myself, my brother, and his son     That brought you home and boldly did outdare     The dangers of the time. You swore to us,     And you did swear that oath at Doncaster,     That you did nothing purpose \'gainst the state,     Nor claim no further than your new-fall\'n right,     The seat of Gaunt, dukedom of Lancaster.     To this we swore our aid. But in short space     It it rain\'d down fortune show\'ring on your head,     And such a flood of greatness fell on you-     What with our help, what with the absent King,     What with the injuries of a wanton time,     The seeming sufferances that you had borne,     And the contrarious winds that held the King       So long in his unlucky Irish wars     That all in England did repute him dead-     And from this swarm of fair advantages     You took occasion to be quickly woo\'d     To gripe the general sway into your hand;     Forgot your oath to us at Doncaster;     And, being fed by us, you us\'d us so     As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo\'s bird,     Useth the sparrow- did oppress our nest;     Grew, by our feeding to so great a bulk     That even our love thirst not come near your sight     For fear of swallowing; but with nimble wing     We were enforc\'d for safety sake to fly     Out of your sight and raise this present head;     Whereby we stand opposed by such means     As you yourself have forg\'d against yourself     By unkind usage, dangerous countenance,     And violation of all faith and troth     Sworn to tis in your younger enterprise.   King. These things, indeed, you have articulate,       Proclaim\'d at market crosses, read in churches,     To face the garment of rebellion     With some fine colour that may please the eye     Of fickle changelings and poor discontents,     Which gape and rub the elbow at the news     Of hurlyburly innovation.     And never yet did insurrection want     Such water colours to impaint his cause,     Nor moody beggars, starving for a time     Of pell-mell havoc and confusion.   Prince. In both our armies there is many a soul     Shall pay full dearly for this encounter,     If once they join in trial. Tell your nephew     The Prince of Wales doth join with all the world     In praise of Henry Percy. By my hopes,     This present enterprise set off his head,     I do not think a braver gentleman,     More active-valiant or more valiant-young,     More daring or more bold, is now alive     To grace this latter age with noble deeds.       For my part, I may speak it to my shame,     I have a truant been to chivalry;     And so I hear he doth account me too.     Yet this before my father\'s Majesty-     I am content that he shall take the odds     Of his great name and estimation,     And will to save the blood on either side,     Try fortune with him in a single fight.   King. And, Prince of Wales, so dare we venture thee,     Albeit considerations infinite     Do make against it. No, good Worcester, no!     We love our people well; even those we love     That are misled upon your cousin\'s part;     And, will they take the offer of our grace,     Both he, and they, and you, yea, every man     Shall be my friend again, and I\'ll be his.     So tell your cousin, and bring me word     What he will do. But if he will not yield,     Rebuke and dread correction wait on us,     And they shall do their office. So be gone.       We will not now be troubled with reply.     We offer fair; take it advisedly.                                     Exit Worcester [with Vernon]   Prince. It will not be accepted, on my life.     The Douglas and the Hotspur both together     Are confident against the world in arms.   King. Hence, therefore, every leader to his charge;     For, on their answer, will we set on them,     And God befriend us as our cause is just!                                 Exeunt. Manent Prince, Falstaff.   Fal. Hal, if thou see me down in the battle and bestride me, so!     \'Tis a point of friendship.   Prince. Nothing but a Colossus can do thee that friendship.     Say thy prayers, and farewell.   Fal. I would \'twere bedtime, Hal, and all well.   Prince. Why, thou owest God a death. Exit.   Fal. \'Tis not due yet. I would be loath to pay him before his day.     What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well,     \'tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick       me off when I come on? How then? Can honor set to a leg? No. Or     an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no     skill in surgery then? No. What is honour? A word. What is that     word honour? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died a     Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth be bear it? No. \'Tis     insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the     living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I\'ll     none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon- and so ends my catechism. Exit.     Scene II. The rebel camp.  Enter Worcester and Sir Richard Vernon.    Wor. O no, my nephew must not know, Sir Richard,     The liberal and kind offer of the King.   Ver. \'Twere best he did.   Wor. Then are we all undone.     It is not possible, it cannot be     The King should keep his word in loving us.     He will suspect us still and find a time     To punish this offence in other faults.     Suspicion all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes;     For treason is but trusted like the fox     Who, ne\'er so tame, so cherish\'d and lock\'d up,     Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.     Look how we can, or sad or merrily,     Interpretation will misquote our looks,     And we shall feed like oxen at a stall,     The better cherish\'d, still the nearer death.     My nephew\'s trespass may be well forgot;       It hath the excuse of youth and heat of blood,     And an adopted name of privilege-     A hare-brained Hotspur govern\'d by a spleen.     All his offences live upon my head     And on his father\'s. We did train him on;     And, his corruption being taken from us,     We, as the spring of all, shall pay for all.     Therefore, good cousin, let not Harry know,     In any case, the offer of the King.                 Enter Hotspur [and Douglas].    Ver. Deliver what you will, I\'ll say \'tis so.     Here comes your cousin.   Hot. My uncle is return\'d.     Deliver up my Lord of Westmoreland.     Uncle, what news?   Wor. The King will bid you battle presently.   Doug. Defy him by the Lord Of Westmoreland.   Hot. Lord Douglas, go you and tell him so.     Doug. Marry, and shall, and very willingly. Exit.   Wor. There is no seeming mercy in the King.   Hot. Did you beg any, God forbid!   Wor. I told him gently of our grievances,     Of his oath-breaking; which he mended thus,     By now forswearing that he is forsworn.     He calls us rebels, traitors, aid will scourge     With haughty arms this hateful name in us.                         Enter Douglas.    Doug. Arm, gentlemen! to arms! for I have thrown     A brave defiance in King Henry\'s teeth,     And Westmoreland, that was engag\'d, did bear it;     Which cannot choose but bring him quickly on.   Wor. The Prince of Wales stepp\'d forth before the King     And, nephew, challeng\'d you to single fight.   Hot. O, would the quarrel lay upon our heads,     And that no man might draw short breath to-day       But I and Harry Monmouth! Tell me, tell me,     How show\'d his tasking? Seem\'d it in contempt?     No, by my soul. I never in my life     Did hear a challenge urg\'d more modestly,     Unless a brother should a brother dare     To gentle exercise and proof of arms.     He gave you all the duties of a man;     Trimm\'d up your praises with a princely tongue;     Spoke your deservings like a chronicle;     Making you ever better than his praise     By still dispraising praise valued with you;     And, which became him like a prince indeed,     He made a blushing cital of himself,     And chid his truant youth with such a grace     As if lie mast\'red there a double spirit     Of teaching and of learning instantly.     There did he pause; but let me tell the world,     If he outlive the envy of this day,     England did never owe so sweet a hope,     So much misconstrued in his wantonness.     Hot. Cousin, I think thou art enamoured     Upon his follies. Never did I hear     Of any prince so wild a libertine.     But be he as he will, yet once ere night     I will embrace him with a soldier\'s arm,     That he shall shrink under my courtesy.     Arm, arm with speed! and, fellows, soldiers, friends,     Better consider what you have to do     Than I, that have not well the gift of tongue,     Can lift your blood up with persuasion.                         Enter a Messenger.    Mess. My lord, here are letters for you.   Hot. I cannot read them now.-     O gentlemen, the time of life is short!     To spend that shortness basely were too long     If life did ride upon a dial\'s point,     Still ending at the arrival of an hour.     An if we live, we live to tread on kings;       If die, brave death, when princes die with us!     Now for our consciences, the arms are fair,     When the intent of bearing them is just.                    Enter another Messenger.    Mess. My lord, prepare. The King comes on apace.   Hot. I thank him that he cuts me from my tale,     For I profess not talking. Only this-     Let each man do his best; and here draw I     A sword whose temper I intend to stain     With the best blood that I can meet withal     In the adventure of this perilous day.     Now, Esperance! Percy! and set on.     Sound all the lofty instruments of war,     And by that music let us all embrace;     For, heaven to earth, some of us never shall     A second time do such a courtesy.                           Here they embrace. The trumpets sound.                                                        [Exeunt.]     Scene III. Plain between the camps.  The King enters with his Power.  Alarum to the battle.  Then enter Douglas and Sir Walter Blunt.    Blunt. What is thy name, that in the battle thus     Thou crossest me? What honour dost thou seek     Upon my head?   Doug. Know then my name is Douglas,     And I do haunt thee in the battle thus     Because some tell me that thou art a king.   Blunt. They tell thee true.   Doug. The Lord of Stafford dear to-day hath bought     Thy likeness; for instead of thee, King Harry,     This sword hath ended him. So shall it thee,     Unless thou yield thee as my prisoner.   Blunt. I was not born a yielder, thou proud Scot;     And thou shalt find a king that will revenge     Lord Stafford\'s death.      They fight. Douglas kills Blunt. Then enter Hotspur.      Hot. O Douglas, hadst thou fought at Holmedon thus,     I never had triumph\'d upon a Scot.   Doug. All\'s done, all\'s won. Here breathless lies the King.   Hot. Where?   Doug. Here.   Hot. This, Douglas? No. I know this face full well.     A gallant knight he was, his name was Blunt;     Semblably furnish\'d like the King himself.   Doug. A fool go with thy soul, whither it goes!     A borrowed title hast thou bought too dear:     Why didst thou tell me that thou wert a king?   Hot. The King hath many marching in his coats.   Doug. Now, by my sword, I will kill all his coats;     I\'ll murder all his wardrop, piece by piece,     Until I meet the King.   Hot. Up and away!     Our soldiers stand full fairly for the day.                                                          Exeunt.                     Alarum. Enter Falstaff solus.    Fal. Though I could scape shot-free at London, I fear the shot     here. Here\'s no scoring but upon the pate. Soft! who are you?     Sir Walter Blunt. There\'s honour for you! Here\'s no vanity! I am     as hot as molten lead, and as heavy too. God keep lead out of me!     I need no more weight than mine own bowels. I have led my     rag-of-muffins where they are pepper\'d. There\'s not three of my     hundred and fifty left alive; and they are for the town\'s end, to     beg during life. But who comes here?                           Enter the Prince.    Prince. What, stand\'st thou idle here? Lend me thy sword.     Many a nobleman lies stark and stiff     Under the hoofs of vaunting enemies,     Whose deaths are yet unreveng\'d. I prithee     Rend me thy sword.   Fal. O Hal, I prithee give me leave to breathe awhile. Turk Gregory     never did such deeds in arms as I have done this day. I have paid       Percy; I have made him sure.   Prince. He is indeed, and living to kill thee.     I prithee lend me thy sword.   Fal. Nay, before God, Hal, if Percy be alive, thou get\'st not my     sword; but take my pistol, if thou wilt.   Prince. Give it me. What, is it in the case?   Fal. Ay, Hal. \'Tis hot, \'tis hot. There\'s that will sack a city.      The Prince draws it out and finds it to he a bottle of sack.      What, is it a time to jest and dally now?                               He throws the bottle at him. Exit.   Fal. Well, if Percy be alive, I\'ll pierce him. If he do come in my     way, so; if he do not, if I come in his willingly, let him make a     carbonado of me. I like not such grinning honour as Sir Walter     hath. Give me life; which if I can save, so; if not, honour comes     unlook\'d for, and there\'s an end.                      Exit.     Scene IV. Another part of the field.  Alarum. Excursions. Enter the King, the Prince, Lord John of Lancaster, Earl of Westmoreland    King. I prithee,     Harry, withdraw thyself; thou bleedest too much.     Lord John of Lancaster, go you unto him.   John. Not I, my lord, unless I did bleed too.   Prince. I do beseech your Majesty make up,     Lest Your retirement do amaze your friends.   King. I will do so.     My Lord of Westmoreland, lead him to his tent.   West. Come, my lord, I\'ll lead you to your tent.   Prince. Lead me, my lord, I do not need your help;     And God forbid a shallow scratch should drive     The Prince of Wales from such a field as this,     Where stain\'d nobility lies trodden on,     And rebels\' arms triumph in massacres!   John. We breathe too long. Come, cousin Westmoreland,     Our duty this way lies. For God\'s sake, come.                             [Exeunt Prince John and Westmoreland.]   Prince. By God, thou hast deceiv\'d me, Lancaster!     I did not think thee lord of such a spirit.     Before, I lov\'d thee as a brother, John;     But now, I do respect thee as my soul.   King. I saw him hold Lord Percy at the point     With lustier maintenance than I did look for     Of such an ungrown warrior.   Prince. O, this boy     Lends mettle to us all!                                Exit.                           Enter Douglas.    Doug. Another king? They grow like Hydra\'s heads.     I am the Douglas, fatal to all those     That wear those colours on them. What art thou     That counterfeit\'st the person of a king?   King. The King himself, who, Douglas, grieves at heart     So many of his shadows thou hast met,     And not the very King. I have two boys       Seek Percy and thyself about the field;     But, seeing thou fall\'st on me so luckily,     I will assay thee. So defend thyself.   Doug. I fear thou art another counterfeit;     And yet, in faith, thou bearest thee like a king.     But mine I am sure thou art, whoe\'er thou be,     And thus I win thee.     They fight. The King being in danger, enter Prince of Wales.    Prince. Hold up thy head, vile Scot, or thou art like     Never to hold it up again! The spirits     Of valiant Shirley, Stafford, Blunt are in my arms.     It is the Prince of Wales that threatens thee,     Who never promiseth but he means to pay.                                      They fight. Douglas flieth.     Cheerly, my lord. How fares your Grace?     Sir Nicholas Gawsey hath for succour sent,     And so hath Clifton. I\'ll to Clifton straight.   King. Stay and breathe awhile.       Thou hast redeem\'d thy lost opinion,     And show\'d thou mak\'st some tender of my life,     In this fair rescue thou hast brought to me.   Prince. O God! they did me too much injury     That ever said I heark\'ned for your death.     If it were so, I might have let alone     The insulting hand of Douglas over you,     Which would have been as speedy in your end     As all the poisonous potions in the world,     And sav\'d the treacherous labour of your son.   King. Make up to Clifton; I\'ll to Sir Nicholas Gawsey. Exit.                        Enter Hotspur.    Hot. If I mistake not, thou art Harry Monmouth.   Prince. Thou speak\'st as if I would deny my name.   Hot. My name is Harry Percy.   Prince. Why, then I see     A very valiant rebel of the name.       I am the Prince of Wales; and think not, Percy,     To share with me in glory any more.     Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere,     Nor can one England brook a double reign     Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales.   Hot. Nor shall it, Harry; for the hour is come     To end the one of us and would to God     Thy name in arms were now as great as mine!   Prince. I\'ll make it greater ere I part from thee,     And all the budding honours on thy crest     I\'ll crop to make a garland for my head.   Hot. I can no longer brook thy vanities.                                                      They fight.                        Enter Falstaff.    Fal. Well said, Hal! to it, Hal! Nay, you shall find no boy\'s play     here, I can tell you.     Enter Douglas. He fighteth with Falstaff, who falls down as if         he were dead. [Exit Douglas.] The Prince killeth Percy.    Hot. O Harry, thou hast robb\'d me of my youth!     I better brook the loss of brittle life     Than those proud titles thou hast won of me.     They wound my thoughts worse than thy sword my flesh.     But thoughts the slave, of life, and life time\'s fool,     And time, that takes survey of all the world,     Must have a stop. O, I could prophesy,     But that the earthy and cold hand of death     Lies on my tongue. No, Percy, thou art dust,     And food for-                                        [Dies.]   Prince. For worms, brave Percy. Fare thee well, great heart!     Ill-weav\'d ambition, how much art thou shrunk!     When that this body did contain a spirit,     A kingdom for it was too small a bound;     But now two paces of the vilest earth     Is room enough. This earth that bears thee dead     Bears not alive so stout a gentleman.     If thou wert sensible of courtesy,       I should not make so dear a show of zeal.     But let my favours hide thy mangled face;     And, even in thy behalf, I\'ll thank myself     For doing these fair rites of tenderness.     Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heaven!     Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave,     But not rememb\'red in thy epitaph!                                He spieth Falstaff on the ground.     What, old acquaintance? Could not all this flesh     Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell!     I could have better spar\'d a better man.     O, I should have a heavy miss of thee     If I were much in love with vanity!     Death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day,     Though many dearer, in this bloody fray.     Embowell\'d will I see thee by-and-by;     Till then in blood by noble Percy lie.                 Exit.                       Falstaff riseth up.      Fal. Embowell\'d? If thou embowel me to-day, I\'ll give you leave to     powder me and eat me too to-morrow. \'Sblood, \'twas time to     counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me scot and lot     too. Counterfeit? I lie; I am no counterfeit. To die is to be a     counterfeit; for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not     the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying when a man thereby     liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image     of life indeed. The better part of valour is discretion; in the     which better part I have saved my life. Zounds, I am afraid of     this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead. How if he should     counterfeit too, and rise? By my faith, I am afraid he would     prove the better counterfeit. Therefore I\'ll make him sure; yea,     and I\'ll swear I kill\'d him. Why may not he rise as well as I?     Nothing confutes me but eyes, and nobody sees me. Therefore,     sirrah [stabs him], with a new wound in your thigh, come you     along with me.     He takes up Hotspur on his hack. [Enter Prince, and John of                             Lancaster.      Prince. Come, brother John; full bravely hast thou flesh\'d     Thy maiden sword.   John. But, soft! whom have we here?     Did you not tell me this fat man was dead?   Prince. I did; I saw him dead,     Breathless and bleeding on the ground. Art thou alive,     Or is it fantasy that plays upon our eyesight?     I prithee speak. We will not trust our eyes     Without our ears. Thou art not what thou seem\'st.   Fal. No, that\'s certain! I am not a double man; but if I be not     Jack Falstaff, then am I a Jack. There \'s Percy. If your father     will do me any honour, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy     himself. I look to be either earl or duke, I can assure you.   Prince. Why, Percy I kill\'d myself, and saw thee dead!   Fal. Didst thou? Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! I     grant you I was down, and out of breath, and so was he; but we     rose both at an instant and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury     clock. If I may be believ\'d, so; if not, let them that should     reward valour bear the sin upon their own heads. I\'ll take it     upon my death, I gave him this wound in the thigh. If the man       were alive and would deny it, zounds! I would make him eat a     piece of my sword.   John. This is the strangest tale that ever I beard.   Prince. This is the strangest fellow, brother John.     Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back.     For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,     I\'ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.                                            A retreat is sounded.     The trumpet sounds retreat; the day is ours.     Come, brother, let\'s to the highest of the field,     To see what friends are living, who are dead.                           Exeunt [Prince Henry and Prince John].   Fal. I\'ll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, God     reward him! If I do grow great, I\'ll grow less; for I\'ll purge,     and leave sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should do.                                     Exit [bearing off the body].     Scene V. Another part of the field.  The trumpets sound. [Enter the King, Prince of Wales, Lord John of Lancaster, Earl of Westmoreland, with Worcester and Vernon prisoners.    King. Thus ever did rebellion find rebuke.     Ill-spirited Worcester! did not we send grace,     Pardon, and terms of love to all of you?     And wouldst thou turn our offers contrary?     Misuse the tenour of thy kinsman\'s trust?     Three knights upon our party slain to-day,     A noble earl, and many a creature else     Had been alive this hour,     If like a Christian thou hadst truly borne     Betwixt our armies true intelligence.   Wor. What I have done my safety urg\'d me to;     And I embrace this fortune patiently,     Since not to be avoided it fails on me.   King. Bear Worcester to the death, and Vernon too;     Other offenders we will pause upon.                            Exeunt Worcester and Vernon, [guarded].     How goes the field?   Prince. The noble Scot, Lord Douglas, when he saw     The fortune of the day quite turn\'d from him,     The Noble Percy slain and all his men     Upon the foot of fear, fled with the rest;     And falling from a hill,he was so bruis\'d     That the pursuers took him. At my tent     The Douglas is, and I beseech Your Grace     I may dispose of him.   King. With all my heart.   Prince. Then brother John of Lancaster, to you     This honourable bounty shall belong.     Go to the Douglas and deliver him     Up to his pleasure, ransomless and free.     His valour shown upon our crests today     Hath taught us how to cherish such high deeds,     Even in the bosom of our adversaries.   John. I thank your Grace for this high courtesy,     Which I shall give away immediately.     King. Then this remains, that we divide our power.     You, son John, and my cousin Westmoreland,     Towards York shall bend you with your dearest speed     To meet Northumberland and the prelate Scroop,     Who, as we hear, are busily in arms.     Myself and you, son Harry, will towards Wales     To fight with Glendower and the Earl of March.     Rebellion in this laud shall lose his sway,     Meeting the check of such another day;     And since this business so fair is done,     Let us not leave till all our own be won.                                                          Exeunt.   THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1598   SECOND PART OF KING HENRY IV  by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae    RUMOUR, the Presenter   KING HENRY THE FOURTH    HENRY, PRINCE OF WALES, afterwards HENRY   PRINCE JOHN OF LANCASTER   PRINCE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER   THOMAS, DUKE OF CLARENCE     Sons of Henry IV    EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND   SCROOP, ARCHBISHOP OF YORK   LORD MOWBRAY   LORD HASTINGS   LORD BARDOLPH   SIR JOHN COLVILLE   TRAVERS and MORTON, retainers of Northumberland     Opposites against King Henry IV    EARL OF WARWICK   EARL OF WESTMORELAND     EARL OF SURREY   EARL OF KENT   GOWER   HARCOURT   BLUNT     Of the King\'s party    LORD CHIEF JUSTICE   SERVANT, to Lord Chief Justice    SIR JOHN FALSTAFF   EDWARD POINS   BARDOLPH   PISTOL   PETO     Irregular humourists    PAGE, to Falstaff    ROBERT SHALLOW and SILENCE, country Justices     DAVY, servant to Shallow    FANG and SNARE, Sheriff\'s officers    RALPH MOULDY   SIMON SHADOW   THOMAS WART   FRANCIS FEEBLE   PETER BULLCALF     Country soldiers    FRANCIS, a drawer    LADY NORTHUMBERLAND   LADY PERCY, Percy\'s widow   HOSTESS QUICKLY, of the Boar\'s Head, Eastcheap   DOLL TEARSHEET    LORDS, Attendants, Porter, Drawers, Beadles, Grooms, Servants,     Speaker of the Epilogue                           SCENE: England  INDUCTION                          INDUCTION.            Warkworth. Before NORTHUMBERLAND\'S Castle              Enter RUMOUR, painted full of tongues    RUMOUR. Open your ears; for which of you will stop     The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?     I, from the orient to the drooping west,     Making the wind my post-horse, still unfold     The acts commenced on this ball of earth.     Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,     The which in every language I pronounce,     Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.     I speak of peace while covert emnity,     Under the smile of safety, wounds the world;     And who but Rumour, who but only I,     Make fearful musters and prepar\'d defence,     Whiles the big year, swoln with some other grief,     Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war,     And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe     Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures,     And of so easy and so plain a stop       That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,     The still-discordant wav\'ring multitude,     Can play upon it. But what need I thus     My well-known body to anatomize     Among my household? Why is Rumour here?     I run before King Harry\'s victory,     Who, in a bloody field by Shrewsbury,     Hath beaten down young Hotspur and his troops,     Quenching the flame of bold rebellion     Even with the rebels\' blood. But what mean I     To speak so true at first? My office is     To noise abroad that Harry Monmouth fell     Under the wrath of noble Hotspur\'s sword,     And that the King before the Douglas\' rage     Stoop\'d his anointed head as low as death.     This have I rumour\'d through the peasant towns     Between that royal field of Shrewsbury     And this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone,     Where Hotspur\'s father, old Northumberland,     Lies crafty-sick. The posts come tiring on,       And not a man of them brings other news     Than they have learnt of me. From Rumour\'s tongues     They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs.  Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT I. SCENE I. Warkworth. Before NORTHUMBERLAND\'S Castle  Enter LORD BARDOLPH    LORD BARDOLPH. Who keeps the gate here, ho?                     The PORTER opens the gate      Where is the Earl?   PORTER. What shall I say you are?   LORD BARDOLPH. Tell thou the Earl     That the Lord Bardolph doth attend him here.   PORTER. His lordship is walk\'d forth into the orchard.     Please it your honour knock but at the gate,     And he himself will answer.                        Enter NORTHUMBERLAND    LORD BARDOLPH. Here comes the Earl.                Exit PORTER   NORTHUMBERLAND. What news, Lord Bardolph? Every minute now     Should be the father of some stratagem.       The times are wild; contention, like a horse     Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose     And bears down all before him.   LORD BARDOLPH. Noble Earl,     I bring you certain news from Shrewsbury.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Good, an God will!   LORD BARDOLPH. As good as heart can wish.     The King is almost wounded to the death;     And, in the fortune of my lord your son,     Prince Harry slain outright; and both the Blunts     Kill\'d by the hand of Douglas; young Prince John,     And Westmoreland, and Stafford, fled the field;     And Harry Monmouth\'s brawn, the hulk Sir John,     Is prisoner to your son. O, such a day,     So fought, so followed, and so fairly won,     Came not till now to dignify the times,     Since Cxsar\'s fortunes!   NORTHUMBERLAND. How is this deriv\'d?     Saw you the field? Came you from Shrewsbury?   LORD BARDOLPH. I spake with one, my lord, that came from thence;       A gentleman well bred and of good name,     That freely rend\'red me these news for true.                           Enter TRAVERS    NORTHUMBERLAND. Here comes my servant Travers, whom I sent     On Tuesday last to listen after news.   LORD BARDOLPH. My lord, I over-rode him on the way;     And he is furnish\'d with no certainties     More than he haply may retail from me.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Now, Travers, what good tidings comes with you?   TRAVERS. My lord, Sir John Umfrevile turn\'d me back     With joyful tidings; and, being better hors\'d,     Out-rode me. After him came spurring hard     A gentleman, almost forspent with speed,     That stopp\'d by me to breathe his bloodied horse.     He ask\'d the way to Chester; and of him     I did demand what news from Shrewsbury.     He told me that rebellion had bad luck,     And that young Harry Percy\'s spur was cold.       With that he gave his able horse the head     And, bending forward, struck his armed heels     Against the panting sides of his poor jade     Up to the rowel-head; and starting so,     He seem\'d in running to devour the way,     Staying no longer question.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Ha! Again:     Said he young Harry Percy\'s spur was cold?     Of Hotspur, Coldspur? that rebellion     Had met ill luck?   LORD BARDOLPH. My lord, I\'ll tell you what:     If my young lord your son have not the day,     Upon mine honour, for a silken point     I\'ll give my barony. Never talk of it.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Why should that gentleman that rode by Travers     Give then such instances of loss?   LORD BARDOLPH. Who- he?     He was some hilding fellow that had stol\'n     The horse he rode on and, upon my life,     Spoke at a venture. Look, here comes more news.                            Enter Morton    NORTHUMBERLAND. Yea, this man\'s brow, like to a title-leaf,     Foretells the nature of a tragic volume.     So looks the strand whereon the imperious flood     Hath left a witness\'d usurpation.     Say, Morton, didst thou come from Shrewsbury?   MORTON. I ran from Shrewsbury, my noble lord;     Where hateful death put on his ugliest mask     To fright our party.   NORTHUMBERLAND. How doth my son and brother?     Thou tremblest; and the whiteness in thy cheek     Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.     Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,     So dull, so dread in look, so woe-begone,     Drew Priam\'s curtain in the dead of night     And would have told him half his Troy was burnt;     But Priam found the fire ere he his tongue,     And I my Percy\'s death ere thou report\'st it.       This thou wouldst say: \'Your son did thus and thus;     Your brother thus; so fought the noble Douglas\'-     Stopping my greedy ear with their bold deeds;     But in the end, to stop my ear indeed,     Thou hast a sigh to blow away this praise,     Ending with \'Brother, son, and all, are dead.\'   MORTON. Douglas is living, and your brother, yet;     But for my lord your son-   NORTHUMBERLAND. Why, he is dead.     See what a ready tongue suspicion hath!     He that but fears the thing he would not know     Hath by instinct knowledge from others\' eyes     That what he fear\'d is chanced. Yet speak, Morton;     Tell thou an earl his divination lies,     And I will take it as a sweet disgrace     And make thee rich for doing me such wrong.   MORTON. You are too great to be by me gainsaid;     Your spirit is too true, your fears too certain.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Yet, for all this, say not that Percy\'s dead.     I see a strange confession in thine eye;       Thou shak\'st thy head, and hold\'st it fear or sin     To speak a truth. If he be slain, say so:     The tongue offends not that reports his death;     And he doth sin that doth belie the dead,     Not he which says the dead is not alive.     Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news     Hath but a losing office, and his tongue     Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,     Rememb\'red tolling a departing friend.   LORD BARDOLPH. I cannot think, my lord, your son is dead.   MORTON. I am sorry I should force you to believe     That which I would to God I had not seen;     But these mine eyes saw him in bloody state,     Rend\'ring faint quittance, wearied and out-breath\'d,     To Harry Monmouth, whose swift wrath beat down     The never-daunted Percy to the earth,     From whence with life he never more sprung up.     In few, his death- whose spirit lent a fire     Even to the dullest peasant in his camp-     Being bruited once, took fire and heat away       From the best-temper\'d courage in his troops;     For from his metal was his party steeled;     Which once in him abated, an the rest     Turn\'d on themselves, like dull and heavy lead.     And as the thing that\'s heavy in itself     Upon enforcement flies with greatest speed,     So did our men, heavy in Hotspur\'s loss,     Lend to this weight such lightness with their fear     That arrows fled not swifter toward their aim     Than did our soldiers, aiming at their safety,     Fly from the field. Then was that noble Worcester     Too soon ta\'en prisoner; and that furious Scot,     The bloody Douglas, whose well-labouring sword     Had three times slain th\' appearance of the King,     Gan vail his stomach and did grace the shame     Of those that turn\'d their backs, and in his flight,     Stumbling in fear, was took. The sum of all     Is that the King hath won, and hath sent out     A speedy power to encounter you, my lord,     Under the conduct of young Lancaster       And Westmoreland. This is the news at full.   NORTHUMBERLAND. For this I shall have time enough to mourn.     In poison there is physic; and these news,     Having been well, that would have made me sick,     Being sick, have in some measure made me well;     And as the wretch whose fever-weak\'ned joints,     Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life,     Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire     Out of his keeper\'s arms, even so my limbs,     Weak\'ned with grief, being now enrag\'d with grief,     Are thrice themselves. Hence, therefore, thou nice crutch!     A scaly gauntlet now with joints of steel     Must glove this hand; and hence, thou sickly coif!     Thou art a guard too wanton for the head     Which princes, flesh\'d with conquest, aim to hit.     Now bind my brows with iron; and approach     The ragged\'st hour that time and spite dare bring     To frown upon th\' enrag\'d Northumberland!     Let heaven kiss earth! Now let not Nature\'s hand     Keep the wild flood confin\'d! Let order die!       And let this world no longer be a stage     To feed contention in a ling\'ring act;     But let one spirit of the first-born Cain     Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set     On bloody courses, the rude scene may end     And darkness be the burier of the dead!   LORD BARDOLPH. This strained passion doth you wrong, my lord.   MORTON. Sweet Earl, divorce not wisdom from your honour.     The lives of all your loving complices     Lean on your health; the which, if you give o\'er     To stormy passion, must perforce decay.     You cast th\' event of war, my noble lord,     And summ\'d the account of chance before you said     \'Let us make head.\' It was your pre-surmise     That in the dole of blows your son might drop.     You knew he walk\'d o\'er perils on an edge,     More likely to fall in than to get o\'er;     You were advis\'d his flesh was capable     Of wounds and scars, and that his forward spirit     Would lift him where most trade of danger rang\'d;       Yet did you say \'Go forth\'; and none of this,     Though strongly apprehended, could restrain     The stiff-borne action. What hath then befall\'n,     Or what hath this bold enterprise brought forth     More than that being which was like to be?   LORD BARDOLPH. We all that are engaged to this loss     Knew that we ventured on such dangerous seas     That if we wrought out life \'twas ten to one;     And yet we ventur\'d, for the gain propos\'d     Chok\'d the respect of likely peril fear\'d;     And since we are o\'erset, venture again.     Come, we will put forth, body and goods.   MORTON. \'Tis more than time. And, my most noble lord,     I hear for certain, and dare speak the truth:     The gentle Archbishop of York is up     With well-appointed pow\'rs. He is a man     Who with a double surety binds his followers.     My lord your son had only but the corpse,     But shadows and the shows of men, to fight;     For that same word \'rebellion\' did divide       The action of their bodies from their souls;     And they did fight with queasiness, constrain\'d,     As men drink potions; that their weapons only     Seem\'d on our side, but for their spirits and souls     This word \'rebellion\'- it had froze them up,     As fish are in a pond. But now the Bishop     Turns insurrection to religion.     Suppos\'d sincere and holy in his thoughts,     He\'s follow\'d both with body and with mind;     And doth enlarge his rising with the blood     Of fair King Richard, scrap\'d from Pomfret stones;     Derives from heaven his quarrel and his cause;     Tells them he doth bestride a bleeding land,     Gasping for life under great Bolingbroke;     And more and less do flock to follow him.   NORTHUMBERLAND. I knew of this before; but, to speak truth,     This present grief had wip\'d it from my mind.     Go in with me; and counsel every man     The aptest way for safety and revenge.     Get posts and letters, and make friends with speed-       Never so few, and never yet more need.                Exeunt     SCENE II. London. A street  Enter SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, with his PAGE bearing his sword and buckler    FALSTAFF. Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water?   PAGE. He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water; but     for the party that owed it, he might have moe diseases than he     knew for.   FALSTAFF. Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me. The brain of     this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything     that intends to laughter, more than I invent or is invented on     me. I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in     other men. I do here walk before thee like a sow that hath     overwhelm\'d all her litter but one. If the Prince put thee into     my service for any other reason than to set me off, why then I     have no judgment. Thou whoreson mandrake, thou art fitter to be     worn in my cap than to wait at my heels. I was never mann\'d with     an agate till now; but I will inset you neither in gold nor     silver, but in vile apparel, and send you back again to your     master, for a jewel- the juvenal, the Prince your master, whose       chin is not yet fledge. I will sooner have a beard grow in the     palm of my hand than he shall get one off his cheek; and yet he     will not stick to say his face is a face-royal. God may finish it     when he will, \'tis not a hair amiss yet. He may keep it still at     a face-royal, for a barber shall never earn sixpence out of it;     and yet he\'ll be crowing as if he had writ man ever since his     father was a bachelor. He may keep his own grace, but he\'s almost     out of mine, I can assure him. What said Master Dommelton about     the satin for my short cloak and my slops?   PAGE. He said, sir, you should procure him better assurance than     Bardolph. He would not take his band and yours; he liked not the     security.   FALSTAFF. Let him be damn\'d, like the Glutton; pray God his tongue     be hotter! A whoreson Achitophel! A rascal-yea-forsooth knave, to     bear a gentleman in hand, and then stand upon security! The     whoreson smooth-pates do now wear nothing but high shoes, and     bunches of keys at their girdles; and if a man is through with     them in honest taking-up, then they must stand upon security. I     had as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth as offer to stop     it with security. I look\'d \'a should have sent me two and twenty       yards of satin, as I am a true knight, and he sends me security.     Well, he may sleep in security; for he hath the horn of     abundance, and the lightness of his wife shines through it; and     yet cannot he see, though he have his own lanthorn to light him.     Where\'s Bardolph?   PAGE. He\'s gone into Smithfield to buy your worship horse.   FALSTAFF. I bought him in Paul\'s, and he\'ll buy me a horse in     Smithfield. An I could get me but a wife in the stews, I were     mann\'d, hors\'d, and wiv\'d.                Enter the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE and SERVANT    PAGE. Sir, here comes the nobleman that committed the     Prince for striking him about Bardolph.   FALSTAFF. Wait close; I will not see him.   CHIEF JUSTICE. What\'s he that goes there?   SERVANT. Falstaff, an\'t please your lordship.   CHIEF JUSTICE. He that was in question for the robb\'ry?   SERVANT. He, my lord; but he hath since done good service at     Shrewsbury, and, as I hear, is now going with some charge to the       Lord John of Lancaster.   CHIEF JUSTICE. What, to York? Call him back again.   SERVANT. Sir John Falstaff!   FALSTAFF. Boy, tell him I am deaf.   PAGE. You must speak louder; my master is deaf.   CHIEF JUSTICE. I am sure he is, to the hearing of anything good.     Go, pluck him by the elbow; I must speak with him.   SERVANT. Sir John!   FALSTAFF. What! a young knave, and begging! Is there not wars? Is     there not employment? Doth not the King lack subjects? Do not the     rebels need soldiers? Though it be a shame to be on any side but     one, it is worse shame to beg than to be on the worst side, were     it worse than the name of rebellion can tell how to make it.   SERVANT. You mistake me, sir.   FALSTAFF. Why, sir, did I say you were an honest man? Setting my     knighthood and my soldiership aside, I had lied in my throat if I     had said so.   SERVANT. I pray you, sir, then set your knighthood and your     soldiership aside; and give me leave to tell you you in your     throat, if you say I am any other than an honest man.     FALSTAFF. I give thee leave to tell me so! I lay aside that which     grows to me! If thou get\'st any leave of me, hang me; if thou     tak\'st leave, thou wert better be hang\'d. You hunt counter.     Hence! Avaunt!   SERVANT. Sir, my lord would speak with you.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Sir John Falstaff, a word with you.   FALSTAFF. My good lord! God give your lordship good time of day. I     am glad to see your lordship abroad. I heard say your lordship     was sick; I hope your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your     lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack     of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I most     humbly beseech your lordship to have a reverend care of your     health.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to     Shrewsbury.   FALSTAFF. An\'t please your lordship, I hear his Majesty is return\'d     with some discomfort from Wales.   CHIEF JUSTICE. I talk not of his Majesty. You would not come when I     sent for you.   FALSTAFF. And I hear, moreover, his Highness is fall\'n into this       same whoreson apoplexy.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Well God mend him! I pray you let me speak with you.   FALSTAFF. This apoplexy, as I take it, is a kind of lethargy, an\'t     please your lordship, a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson     tingling.   CHIEF JUSTICE. What tell you me of it? Be it as it is.   FALSTAFF. It hath it original from much grief, from study, and     perturbation of the brain. I have read the cause of his effects     in Galen; it is a kind of deafness.   CHIEF JUSTICE. I think you are fall\'n into the disease, for you     hear not what I say to you.   FALSTAFF. Very well, my lord, very well. Rather an\'t please you, it     is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that     I am troubled withal.   CHIEF JUSTICE. To punish you by the heels would amend the attention     of your ears; and I care not if I do become your physician.   FALSTAFF. I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient. Your     lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me in respect     of poverty; but how I should be your patient to follow your     prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or       indeed a scruple itself.   CHIEF JUSTICE. I sent for you, when there were matters against you     for your life, to come speak with me.   FALSTAFF. As I was then advis\'d by my learned counsel in the laws     of this land-service, I did not come.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great     infamy.   FALSTAFF. He that buckles himself in my belt cannot live in less.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Your means are very slender, and your waste is     great.   FALSTAFF. I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater     and my waist slenderer.   CHIEF JUSTICE. You have misled the youthful Prince.   FALSTAFF. The young Prince hath misled me. I am the fellow with the     great belly, and he my dog.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, I am loath to gall a new-heal\'d wound. Your     day\'s service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your     night\'s exploit on Gadshill. You may thank th\' unquiet time for     your quiet o\'erposting that action.   FALSTAFF. My lord-     CHIEF JUSTICE. But since all is well, keep it so: wake not a     sleeping wolf.   FALSTAFF. To wake a wolf is as bad as smell a fox.   CHIEF JUSTICE. What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt     out.   FALSTAFF. A wassail candle, my lord- all tallow; if I did say of     wax, my growth would approve the truth.   CHIEF JUSTICE. There is not a white hair in your face but should     have his effect of gravity.   FALSTAFF. His effect of gravy, gravy,   CHIEF JUSTICE. You follow the young Prince up and down, like his     ill angel.   FALSTAFF. Not so, my lord. Your ill angel is light; but  hope he     that looks upon me will take me without weighing. And yet in some     respects, I grant, I cannot go- I cannot tell. Virtue is of so     little regard in these costermongers\' times that true valour is     turn\'d berod; pregnancy is made a tapster, and his quick wit     wasted in giving reckonings; all the other gifts appertinent to     man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a     gooseberry. You that are old consider not the capacities of us       that are young; you do measure the heat of our livers with the     bitterness of your galls; and we that are in the vaward of our     youth, must confess, are wags too.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth,     that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have     you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a     decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken,     your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every     part about you blasted with antiquity? And will you yet call     yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!   FALSTAFF. My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the     afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly. For my     voice- I have lost it with hallooing and singing of anthems. To     approve my youth further, I will not. The truth is, I am only old     in judgment and understanding; and he that will caper with me for     a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him. For     the box of the ear that the Prince gave you- he gave it like a     rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have check\'d     him for it; and the young lion repents- marry, not in ashes and     sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.     CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, God send the Prince a better companion!   FALSTAFF. God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my     hands of him.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, the King hath sever\'d you. I hear you are     going with Lord John of Lancaster against the Archbishop and the     Earl of Northumberland.   FALSTAFF. Yea; I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look you     pray, all you that kiss my Lady Peace at home, that our armies     join not in a hot day; for, by the Lord, I take but two shirts     out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily. If it be a     hot day, and I brandish anything but a bottle, I would I might     never spit white again. There is not a dangerous action can peep     out his head but I am thrust upon it. Well, I cannot last ever;     but it was alway yet the trick of our English nation, if they     have a good thing, to make it too common. If ye will needs say I     am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God my name     were not so terrible to the enemy as it is. I were better to be     eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with     perpetual motion.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Well, be honest, be honest; and God bless your       expedition!   FALSTAFF. Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to furnish me     forth?   CHIEF JUSTICE. Not a penny, not a penny; you are too impatient to     bear crosses. Fare you well. Commend me to my cousin     Westmoreland.                                 Exeunt CHIEF JUSTICE and SERVANT   FALSTAFF. If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle. A man can no     more separate age and covetousness than \'a can part young limbs     and lechery; but the gout galls the one, and the pox pinches the     other; and so both the degrees prevent my curses. Boy!   PAGE. Sir?   FALSTAFF. What money is in my purse?   PAGE. Seven groats and two pence.   FALSTAFF. I can get no remedy against this consumption of the     purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease     is incurable. Go bear this letter to my Lord of Lancaster; this     to the Prince; this to the Earl of Westmoreland; and this to old     Mistress Ursula, whom I have weekly sworn to marry since I     perceiv\'d the first white hair of my chin. About it; you know       where to find me.  [Exit PAGE]  A pox of this gout! or, a gout of     this pox! for the one or the other plays the rogue with my great     toe. \'Tis no matter if I do halt; I have the wars for my colour,     and my pension shall seem the more reasonable. A good wit will     make use of anything. I will turn diseases to commodity.  Exit     SCENE III. York. The ARCHBISHOP\'S palace  Enter the ARCHBISHOP, THOMAS MOWBRAY the EARL MARSHAL, LORD HASTINGS, and LORD BARDOLPH    ARCHBISHOP. Thus have you heard our cause and known our means;     And, my most noble friends, I pray you all     Speak plainly your opinions of our hopes-     And first, Lord Marshal, what say you to it?   MOWBRAY. I well allow the occasion of our amis;     But gladly would be better satisfied     How, in our means, we should advance ourselves     To look with forehead bold and big enough     Upon the power and puissance of the King.   HASTINGS. Our present musters grow upon the file     To five and twenty thousand men of choice;     And our supplies live largely in the hope     Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns     With an incensed fire of injuries.   LORD BARDOLPH. The question then, Lord Hastings, standeth thus:     Whether our present five and twenty thousand       May hold up head without Northumberland?   HASTINGS. With him, we may.   LORD BARDOLPH. Yea, marry, there\'s the point;     But if without him we be thought too feeble,     My judgment is we should not step too far     Till we had his assistance by the hand;     For, in a theme so bloody-fac\'d as this,     Conjecture, expectation, and surmise     Of aids incertain, should not be admitted.   ARCHBISHOP. \'Tis very true, Lord Bardolph; for indeed     It was young Hotspur\'s case at Shrewsbury.   LORD BARDOLPH. It was, my lord; who lin\'d himself with hope,     Eating the air and promise of supply,     Flatt\'ring himself in project of a power     Much smaller than the smallest of his thoughts;     And so, with great imagination     Proper to madmen, led his powers to death,     And, winking, leapt into destruction.   HASTINGS. But, by your leave, it never yet did hurt     To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope.     LORD BARDOLPH. Yes, if this present quality of war-     Indeed the instant action, a cause on foot-     Lives so in hope, as in an early spring     We see th\' appearing buds; which to prove fruit     Hope gives not so much warrant, as despair     That frosts will bite them. When we mean to build,     We first survey the plot, then draw the model;     And when we see the figure of the house,     Then we must rate the cost of the erection;     Which if we find outweighs ability,     What do we then but draw anew the model     In fewer offices, or at least desist     To build at all? Much more, in this great work-     Which is almost to pluck a kingdom down     And set another up- should we survey     The plot of situation and the model,     Consent upon a sure foundation,     Question surveyors, know our own estate     How able such a work to undergo-     To weigh against his opposite; or else       We fortify in paper and in figures,     Using the names of men instead of men;     Like one that draws the model of a house     Beyond his power to build it; who, half through,     Gives o\'er and leaves his part-created cost     A naked subject to the weeping clouds     And waste for churlish winter\'s tyranny.   HASTINGS. Grant that our hopes- yet likely of fair birth-     Should be still-born, and that we now possess\'d     The utmost man of expectation,     I think we are so a body strong enough,     Even as we are, to equal with the King.   LORD BARDOLPH. What, is the King but five and twenty thousand?   HASTINGS. To us no more; nay, not so much, Lord Bardolph;     For his divisions, as the times do brawl,     Are in three heads: one power against the French,     And one against Glendower; perforce a third     Must take up us. So is the unfirm King     In three divided; and his coffers sound     With hollow poverty and emptiness.     ARCHBISHOP. That he should draw his several strengths together     And come against us in full puissance     Need not be dreaded.   HASTINGS. If he should do so,     He leaves his back unarm\'d, the French and Welsh     Baying at his heels. Never fear that.   LORD BARDOLPH. Who is it like should lead his forces hither?   HASTINGS. The Duke of Lancaster and Westmoreland;     Against the Welsh, himself and Harry Monmouth;     But who is substituted against the French     I have no certain notice.   ARCHBISHOP. Let us on,     And publish the occasion of our arms.     The commonwealth is sick of their own choice;     Their over-greedy love hath surfeited.     An habitation giddy and unsure     Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.     O thou fond many, with what loud applause     Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke     Before he was what thou wouldst have him be!       And being now trimm\'d in thine own desires,     Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him     That thou provok\'st thyself to cast him up.     So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge     Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard;     And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up,     And howl\'st to find it. What trust is in these times?     They that, when Richard liv\'d, would have him die     Are now become enamour\'d on his grave.     Thou that threw\'st dust upon his goodly head,     When through proud London he came sighing on     After th\' admired heels of Bolingbroke,     Criest now \'O earth, yield us that king again,     And take thou this!\' O thoughts of men accurs\'d!     Past and to come seems best; things present, worst.   MOWBRAY. Shall we go draw our numbers, and set on?   HASTINGS. We are time\'s subjects, and time bids be gone.                                                           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. London. A street  Enter HOSTESS with two officers, FANG and SNARE    HOSTESS. Master Fang, have you ent\'red the action?   FANG. It is ent\'red.   HOSTESS. Where\'s your yeoman? Is\'t a lusty yeoman? Will \'a stand     to\'t?   FANG. Sirrah, where\'s Snare?   HOSTESS. O Lord, ay! good Master Snare.   SNARE. Here, here.   FANG. Snare, we must arrest Sir John Falstaff.   HOSTESS. Yea, good Master Snare; I have ent\'red him and all.   SNARE. It may chance cost some of our lives, for he will stab.   HOSTESS. Alas the day! take heed of him; he stabb\'d me in mine own     house, and that most beastly. In good faith, \'a cares not what     mischief he does, if his weapon be out; he will foin like any     devil; he will spare neither man, woman, nor child.   FANG. If I can close with him, I care not for his thrust.   HOSTESS. No, nor I neither; I\'ll be at your elbow.   FANG. An I but fist him once; an \'a come but within my vice!     HOSTESS. I am undone by his going; I warrant you, he\'s an     infinitive thing upon my score. Good Master Fang, hold him sure.     Good Master Snare, let him not scape. \'A comes continuantly to     Pie-corner- saving your manhoods- to buy a saddle; and he is     indited to dinner to the Lubber\'s Head in Lumbert Street, to     Master Smooth\'s the silkman. I pray you, since my exion is     ent\'red, and my case so openly known to the world, let him be     brought in to his answer. A hundred mark is a long one for a poor     lone woman to bear; and I have borne, and borne, and borne; and     have been fubb\'d off, and fubb\'d off, and fubb\'d off, from this     day to that day, that it is a shame to be thought on. There is no     honesty in such dealing; unless a woman should be made an ass and     a beast, to bear every knave\'s wrong.              Enter SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, PAGE, and BARDOLPH      Yonder he comes; and that arrant malmsey-nose knave, Bardolph,     with him. Do your offices, do your offices, Master Fang and     Master Snare; do me, do me, do me your offices.   FALSTAFF. How now! whose mare\'s dead? What\'s the matter?     FANG. Sir John, I arrest you at the suit of Mistress Quickly.   FALSTAFF. Away, varlets! Draw, Bardolph. Cut me off the villian\'s     head. Throw the quean in the channel.   HOSTESS. Throw me in the channel! I\'ll throw thee in the channel.     Wilt thou? wilt thou? thou bastardly rogue! Murder, murder! Ah,     thou honeysuckle villain! wilt thou kill God\'s officers and the     King\'s? Ah, thou honey-seed rogue! thou art a honey-seed; a     man-queller and a woman-queller.   FALSTAFF. Keep them off, Bardolph.   FANG. A rescue! a rescue!   HOSTESS. Good people, bring a rescue or two. Thou wot, wot thou!     thou wot, wot ta? Do, do, thou rogue! do, thou hemp-seed!   PAGE. Away, you scullion! you rampallian! you fustilarian!     I\'ll tickle your catastrophe.                Enter the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE and his men    CHIEF JUSTICE. What is the matter? Keep the peace here, ho!   HOSTESS. Good my lord, be good to me. I beseech you, stand to me.   CHIEF JUSTICE. How now, Sir John! what, are you brawling here?       Doth this become your place, your time, and business?     You should have been well on your way to York.     Stand from him, fellow; wherefore hang\'st thou upon him?   HOSTESS. O My most worshipful lord, an\'t please your Grace, I am a     poor widow of Eastcheap, and he is arrested at my suit.   CHIEF JUSTICE. For what sum?   HOSTESS. It is more than for some, my lord; it is for all- all I     have. He hath eaten me out of house and home; he hath put all my     substance into that fat belly of his. But I will have some of it     out again, or I will ride thee a nights like a mare.   FALSTAFF. I think I am as like to ride the mare, if I have any     vantage of ground to get up.   CHIEF JUSTICE. How comes this, Sir John? Fie! What man of good     temper would endure this tempest of exclamation? Are you not     ashamed to enforce a poor widow to so rough a course to come by     her own?   FALSTAFF. What is the gross sum that I owe thee?   HOSTESS. Marry, if thou wert an honest man, thyself and the money     too. Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in     my Dolphin chamber, at the round table, by a sea-coal fire, upon       Wednesday in Wheeson week, when the Prince broke thy head for     liking his father to singing-man of Windsor- thou didst swear to     me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my     lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the     butcher\'s wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? Coming     in to borrow a mess of vinegar, telling us she had a good dish of     prawns, whereby thou didst desire to eat some, whereby I told     thee they were ill for green wound? And didst thou not, when she     was gone down stairs, desire me to be no more so familiarity with     such poor people, saying that ere long they should call me madam?     And didst thou not kiss me, and bid me fetch the thirty     shillings? I put thee now to thy book-oath. Deny it, if thou     canst.   FALSTAFF. My lord, this is a poor mad soul, and she says up and     down the town that her eldest son is like you. She hath been in     good case, and, the truth is, poverty hath distracted her. But     for these foolish officers, I beseech you I may have redress     against them.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Sir John, Sir John, I am well acquainted with your     manner of wrenching the true cause the false way. It is not a       confident brow, nor the throng of words that come with such more     than impudent sauciness from you, can thrust me from a level     consideration. You have, as it appears to me, practis\'d upon the     easy yielding spirit of this woman, and made her serve your uses     both in purse and in person.   HOSTESS. Yea, in truth, my lord.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Pray thee, peace. Pay her the debt you owe her, and     unpay the villainy you have done with her; the one you may do     with sterling money, and the other with current repentance.   FALSTAFF. My lord, I will not undergo this sneap without reply. You     call honourable boldness impudent sauciness; if a man will make     curtsy and say nothing, he is virtuous. No, my lord, my humble     duty rememb\'red, I will not be your suitor. I say to you I do     desire deliverance from these officers, being upon hasty     employment in the King\'s affairs.   CHIEF JUSTICE. You speak as having power to do wrong; but answer in     th\' effect of your reputation, and satisfy the poor woman.   FALSTAFF. Come hither, hostess.                                 Enter GOWER      CHIEF JUSTICE. Now, Master Gower, what news?   GOWER. The King, my lord, and Harry Prince of Wales     Are near at hand. The rest the paper tells. [Gives a letter]   FALSTAFF. As I am a gentleman!   HOSTESS. Faith, you said so before.   FALSTAFF. As I am a gentleman! Come, no more words of it.   HOSTESS. By this heavenly ground I tread on, I must be fain to pawn     both my plate and the tapestry of my dining-chambers.   FALSTAFF. Glasses, glasses, is the only drinking; and for thy     walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the Prodigal, or     the German hunting, in water-work, is worth a thousand of these     bed-hangers and these fly-bitten tapestries. Let it be ten pound,     if thou canst. Come, and \'twere not for thy humours, there\'s not     a better wench in England. Go, wash thy face, and draw the     action. Come, thou must not be in this humour with me; dost not     know me? Come, come, I know thou wast set on to this.   HOSTESS. Pray thee, Sir John, let it be but twenty nobles;     i\' faith, I am loath to pawn my plate, so God save me, la!   FALSTAFF. Let it alone; I\'ll make other shift. You\'ll be a fool       still.   HOSTESS. Well, you shall have it, though I pawn my gown.     I hope you\'ll come to supper. you\'ll pay me all together?   FALSTAFF. Will I live?  [To BARDOLPH]  Go, with her, with her; hook     on, hook on.   HOSTESS. Will you have Doll Tearsheet meet you at supper?   FALSTAFF. No more words; let\'s have her.                           Exeunt HOSTESS, BARDOLPH, and OFFICERS   CHIEF JUSTICE. I have heard better news.   FALSTAFF. What\'s the news, my lord?   CHIEF JUSTICE. Where lay the King to-night?   GOWER. At Basingstoke, my lord.   FALSTAFF. I hope, my lord, all\'s well. What is the news, my lord?   CHIEF JUSTICE. Come all his forces back?   GOWER. No; fifteen hundred foot, five hundred horse,     Are march\'d up to my Lord of Lancaster,     Against Northumberland and the Archbishop.   FALSTAFF. Comes the King back from Wales, my noble lord?   CHIEF JUSTICE. You shall have letters of me presently.     Come, go along with me, good Master Gower.     FALSTAFF. My lord!   CHIEF JUSTICE. What\'s the matter?   FALSTAFF. Master Gower, shall I entreat you with me to dinner?   GOWER. I must wait upon my good lord here, I thank you, good Sir     John.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Sir John, you loiter here too long, being you are to     take soldiers up in counties as you go.   FALSTAFF. Will you sup with me, Master Gower?   CHIEF JUSTICE. What foolish master taught you these manners, Sir     John?   FALSTAFF. Master Gower, if they become me not, he was a fool that     taught them me. This is the right fencing grace, my lord; tap for     tap, and so part fair.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Now, the Lord lighten thee! Thou art a great fool.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE II. London. Another street  Enter PRINCE HENRY and POINS    PRINCE. Before God, I am exceeding weary.   POINS. Is\'t come to that? I had thought weariness durst not have     attach\'d one of so high blood.   PRINCE. Faith, it does me; though it discolours the complexion of     my greatness to acknowledge it. Doth it not show vilely in me to     desire small beer?   POINS. Why, a prince should not be so loosely studied as to     remember so weak a composition.   PRINCE. Belike then my appetite was not-princely got; for, by my     troth, I do now remember the poor creature, small beer. But     indeed these humble considerations make me out of love with my     greatness. What a disgrace is it to me to remember thy name, or     to know thy face to-morrow, or to take note how many pair of silk     stockings thou hast- viz., these, and those that were thy     peach-colour\'d ones- or to bear the inventory of thy shirts- as,     one for superfluity, and another for use! But that the     tennis-court-keeper knows better than I; for it is a low ebb of       linen with thee when thou keepest not racket there; as thou hast     not done a great while, because the rest of thy low countries     have made a shift to eat up thy holland. And God knows whether     those that bawl out of the ruins of thy linen shall inherit his     kingdom; but the midwives say the children are not in the fault;     whereupon the world increases, and kindreds are mightily     strengthened.   POINS. How ill it follows, after you have laboured so hard, you     should talk so idly! Tell me, how many good young princes would     do so, their fathers being so sick as yours at this time is?   PRINCE. Shall I tell thee one thing, Poins?   POINS. Yes, faith; and let it be an excellent good thing.   PRINCE. It shall serve among wits of no higher breeding than thine.   POINS. Go to; I stand the push of your one thing that you will     tell.   PRINCE. Marry, I tell thee it is not meet that I should be sad, now     my father is sick; albeit I could tell to thee- as to one it     pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my friend- I could be     sad and sad indeed too.   POINS. Very hardly upon such a subject.     PRINCE. By this hand, thou thinkest me as far in the devil\'s book     as thou and Falstaff for obduracy and persistency: let the end     try the man. But I tell thee my heart bleeds inwardly that my     father is so sick; and keeping such vile company as thou art hath     in reason taken from me all ostentation of sorrow.   POINS. The reason?   PRINCE. What wouldst thou think of me if I should weep?   POINS. I would think thee a most princely hypocrite.   PRINCE. It would be every man\'s thought; and thou art a blessed     fellow to think as every man thinks. Never a man\'s thought in the     world keeps the road-way better than thine. Every man would think     me an hypocrite indeed. And what accites your most worshipful     thought to think so?   POINS. Why, because you have been so lewd and so much engraffed to     Falstaff.   PRINCE. And to thee.   POINS. By this light, I am well spoke on; I can hear it with mine     own ears. The worst that they can say of me is that I am a second     brother and that I am a proper fellow of my hands; and those two     things, I confess, I cannot help. By the mass, here comes       Bardolph.                           Enter BARDOLPH and PAGE    PRINCE. And the boy that I gave Falstaff. \'A had him from me     Christian; and look if the fat villain have not transform\'d him     ape.   BARDOLPH. God save your Grace!   PRINCE. And yours, most noble Bardolph!   POINS. Come, you virtuous ass, you bashful fool, must you be     blushing? Wherefore blush you now? What a maidenly man-at-arms     are you become! Is\'t such a matter to get a pottle-pot\'s     maidenhead?   PAGE. \'A calls me e\'en now, my lord, through a red lattice, and I     could discern no part of his face from the window. At last I     spied his eyes; and methought he had made two holes in the     alewife\'s new petticoat, and so peep\'d through.   PRINCE. Has not the boy profited?   BARDOLPH. Away, you whoreson upright rabbit, away!   PAGE. Away, you rascally Althaea\'s dream, away!     PRINCE. Instruct us, boy; what dream, boy?   PAGE. Marry, my lord, Althaea dreamt she was delivered of a     firebrand; and therefore I call him her dream.   PRINCE. A crown\'s worth of good interpretation. There \'tis, boy.                                                 [Giving a crown]   POINS. O that this blossom could be kept from cankers!     Well, there is sixpence to preserve thee.   BARDOLPH. An you do not make him be hang\'d among you, the gallows     shall have wrong.   PRINCE. And how doth thy master, Bardolph?   BARDOLPH. Well, my lord. He heard of your Grace\'s coming to town.     There\'s a letter for you.   POINS. Deliver\'d with good respect. And how doth the martlemas,     your master?   BARDOLPH. In bodily health, sir.   POINS. Marry, the immortal part needs a physician; but that moves     not him. Though that be sick, it dies not.   PRINCE. I do allow this well to be as familiar with me as my dog;     and he holds his place, for look you how he writes.   POINS.  [Reads]  \'John Falstaff, knight\'- Every man must know that       as oft as he has occasion to name himself, even like those that     are kin to the King; for they never prick their finger but they     say \'There\'s some of the King\'s blood spilt.\' \'How comes that?\'     says he that takes upon him not to conceive. The answer is as     ready as a borrower\'s cap: \'I am the King\'s poor cousin, sir.\'   PRINCE. Nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from     Japhet. But the letter:  [Reads]  \'Sir John Falstaff, knight, to     the son of the King nearest his father, Harry Prince of Wales,     greeting.\'   POINS. Why, this is a certificate.   PRINCE. Peace!  [Reads]  \'I will imitate the honourable Romans in     brevity.\'-   POINS. He sure means brevity in breath, short-winded.   PRINCE.  [Reads]  \'I commend me to thee, I commend thee, and I     leave thee. Be not too familiar with Poins; for he misuses thy     favours so much that he swears thou art to marry his sister Nell.     Repent at idle times as thou mayst, and so farewell.       Thine, by yea and no- which is as much as to say as         thou usest him- JACK FALSTAFF with my familiars,         JOHN with my brothers and sisters, and SIR JOHN with           all Europe.\'   POINS. My lord, I\'ll steep this letter in sack and make him eat it.   PRINCE. That\'s to make him eat twenty of his words. But do you use     me thus, Ned? Must I marry your sister?   POINS. God send the wench no worse fortune! But I never said so.   PRINCE. Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits     of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us. Is your master here in     London?   BARDOLPH. Yea, my lord.   PRINCE. Where sups he? Doth the old boar feed in the old frank?   BARDOLPH. At the old place, my lord, in Eastcheap.   PRINCE. What company?   PAGE. Ephesians, my lord, of the old church.   PRINCE. Sup any women with him?   PAGE. None, my lord, but old Mistress Quickly and Mistress Doll     Tearsheet.   PRINCE. What pagan may that be?   PAGE. A proper gentlewoman, sir, and a kinswoman of my master\'s.   PRINCE. Even such kin as the parish heifers are to the town bull.     Shall we steal upon them, Ned, at supper?     POINS. I am your shadow, my lord; I\'ll follow you.   PRINCE. Sirrah, you boy, and Bardolph, no word to your master that     I am yet come to town. There\'s for your silence.   BARDOLPH. I have no tongue, sir.   PAGE. And for mine, sir, I will govern it.   PRINCE. Fare you well; go.            Exeunt BARDOLPH and PAGE     This Doll Tearsheet should be some road.   POINS. I warrant you, as common as the way between Saint Albans and     London.   PRINCE. How might we see Falstaff bestow himself to-night in his     true colours, and not ourselves be seen?   POINS. Put on two leathern jerkins and aprons, and wait upon him at     his table as drawers.   PRINCE. From a god to a bull? A heavy descension! It was Jove\'s     case. From a prince to a prentice? A low transformation! That     shall be mine; for in everything the purpose must weigh with the     folly. Follow me, Ned.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE III. Warkworth. Before the castle  Enter NORTHUMBERLAND, LADY NORTHUMBERLAND, and LADY PERCY    NORTHUMBERLAND. I pray thee, loving wife, and gentle daughter,     Give even way unto my rough affairs;     Put not you on the visage of the times     And be, like them, to Percy troublesome.   LADY NORTHUMBERLAND. I have given over, I will speak no more.     Do what you will; your wisdom be your guide.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Alas, sweet wife, my honour is at pawn;     And but my going nothing can redeem it.   LADY PERCY. O, yet, for God\'s sake, go not to these wars!     The time was, father, that you broke your word,     When you were more endear\'d to it than now;     When your own Percy, when my heart\'s dear Harry,     Threw many a northward look to see his father     Bring up his powers; but he did long in vain.     Who then persuaded you to stay at home?     There were two honours lost, yours and your son\'s.       For yours, the God of heaven brighten it!     For his, it stuck upon him as the sun     In the grey vault of heaven; and by his light     Did all the chivalry of England move     To do brave acts. He was indeed the glass     Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.     He had no legs that practis\'d not his gait;     And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,     Became the accents of the valiant;     For those who could speak low and tardily     Would turn their own perfection to abuse     To seem like him: so that in speech, in gait,     In diet, in affections of delight,     In military rules, humours of blood,     He was the mark and glass, copy and book,     That fashion\'d others. And him- O wondrous him!     O miracle of men!- him did you leave-     Second to none, unseconded by you-     To look upon the hideous god of war     In disadvantage, to abide a field       Where nothing but the sound of Hotspur\'s name     Did seem defensible. So you left him.     Never, O never, do his ghost the wrong     To hold your honour more precise and nice     With others than with him! Let them alone.     The Marshal and the Archbishop are strong.     Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers,     To-day might I, hanging on Hotspur\'s neck,     Have talk\'d of Monmouth\'s grave.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Beshrew your heart,     Fair daughter, you do draw my spirits from me     With new lamenting ancient oversights.     But I must go and meet with danger there,     Or it will seek me in another place,     And find me worse provided.   LADY NORTHUMBERLAND. O, fly to Scotland     Till that the nobles and the armed commons     Have of their puissance made a little taste.   LADY PERCY. If they get ground and vantage of the King,     Then join you with them, like a rib of steel,       To make strength stronger; but, for all our loves,     First let them try themselves. So did your son;     He was so suff\'red; so came I a widow;     And never shall have length of life enough     To rain upon remembrance with mine eyes,     That it may grow and sprout as high as heaven,     For recordation to my noble husband.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Come, come, go in with me. \'Tis with my mind     As with the tide swell\'d up unto his height,     That makes a still-stand, running neither way.     Fain would I go to meet the Archbishop,     But many thousand reasons hold me back.     I will resolve for Scotland. There am I,     Till time and vantage crave my company.               Exeunt     SCENE IV. London. The Boar\'s Head Tavern in Eastcheap  Enter FRANCIS and another DRAWER    FRANCIS. What the devil hast thou brought there-apple-johns? Thou     knowest Sir John cannot endure an apple-john.   SECOND DRAWER. Mass, thou say\'st true. The Prince once set a dish     of apple-johns before him, and told him there were five more Sir     Johns; and, putting off his hat, said \'I will now take my leave     of these six dry, round, old, withered knights.\' It ang\'red him     to the heart; but he hath forgot that.   FRANCIS. Why, then, cover and set them down; and see if thou canst     find out Sneak\'s noise; Mistress Tearsheet would fain hear some     music.                          Enter third DRAWER    THIRD DRAWER. Dispatch! The room where they supp\'d is too hot;     they\'ll come in straight.   FRANCIS. Sirrah, here will be the Prince and Master Poins anon; and     they will put on two of our jerkins and aprons; and Sir John must       not know of it. Bardolph hath brought word.   THIRD DRAWER. By the mass, here will be old uds; it will be an     excellent stratagem.   SECOND DRAWER. I\'ll see if I can find out Sneak.                                  Exeunt second and third DRAWERS                  Enter HOSTESS and DOLL TEARSHEET    HOSTESS. I\' faith, sweetheart, methinks now you are in an excellent     good temperality. Your pulsidge beats as extraordinarily as heart     would desire; and your colour, I warrant you, is as red as any     rose, in good truth, la! But, i\' faith, you have drunk too much     canaries; and that\'s a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes     the blood ere one can say \'What\'s this?\' How do you now?   DOLL. Better than I was- hem.   HOSTESS. Why, that\'s well said; a good heart\'s worth gold.     Lo, here comes Sir John.                            Enter FALSTAFF      FALSTAFF.  [Singing]  \'When Arthur first in court\'- Empty the     jordan.  [Exit FRANCIS]- [Singing]  \'And was a worthy king\'- How     now, Mistress Doll!   HOSTESS. Sick of a calm; yea, good faith.   FALSTAFF. So is all her sect; and they be once in a calm, they are     sick.   DOLL. A pox damn you, you muddy rascal! Is that all the comfort you     give me?   FALSTAFF. You make fat rascals, Mistress Doll.   DOLL. I make them! Gluttony and diseases make them: I make them     not.   FALSTAFF. If the cook help to make the gluttony, you help to make     the diseases, Doll. We catch of you, Doll, we catch of you; grant     that, my poor virtue, grant that.   DOLL. Yea, joy, our chains and our jewels.   FALSTAFF. \'Your brooches, pearls, and ouches.\' For to serve bravely     is to come halting off; you know, to come off the breach with his     pike bent bravely, and to surgery bravely; to venture upon the     charg\'d chambers bravely-   DOLL. Hang yourself, you muddy conger, hang yourself!     HOSTESS. By my troth, this is the old fashion; you two never meet     but you fall to some discord. You are both, i\' good truth, as     rheumatic as two dry toasts; you cannot one bear with another\'s     confirmities. What the good-year! one must bear, and that must be     you. You are the weaker vessel, as as they say, the emptier     vessel.   DOLL. Can a weak empty vessel bear such a huge full hogs-head?     There\'s a whole merchant\'s venture of Bourdeaux stuff in him; you     have not seen a hulk better stuff\'d in the hold. Come, I\'ll be     friends with thee, Jack. Thou art going to the wars; and whether     I shall ever see thee again or no, there is nobody cares.                              Re-enter FRANCIS    FRANCIS. Sir, Ancient Pistol\'s below and would speak with you.   DOLL. Hang him, swaggering rascal! Let him not come hither; it is     the foul-mouth\'dst rogue in England.   HOSTESS. If he swagger, let him not come here. No, by my faith! I     must live among my neighbours; I\'ll no swaggerers. I am in good     name and fame with the very best. Shut the door. There comes no       swaggerers here; I have not liv\'d all this while to have     swaggering now. Shut the door, I pray you.   FALSTAFF. Dost thou hear, hostess?   HOSTESS. Pray ye, pacify yourself, Sir John; there comes no     swaggerers here.   FALSTAFF. Dost thou hear? It is mine ancient.   HOSTESS. Tilly-fally, Sir John, ne\'er tell me; and your ancient     swagg\'rer comes not in my doors. I was before Master Tisick, the     debuty, t\' other day; and, as he said to me- \'twas no longer ago     than Wednesday last, i\' good faith!- \'Neighbour Quickly,\' says     he- Master Dumbe, our minister, was by then- \'Neighbour Quickly,\'     says he \'receive those that are civil, for\' said he \'you are in     an ill name.\' Now \'a said so, I can tell whereupon. \'For\' says he     \'you are an honest woman and well thought on, therefore take heed     what guests you receive. Receive\' says he \'no swaggering     companions.\' There comes none here. You would bless you to hear     what he said. No, I\'ll no swagg\'rers.   FALSTAFF. He\'s no swagg\'rer, hostess; a tame cheater, i\' faith; you     may stroke him as gently as a puppy greyhound. He\'ll not swagger     with a Barbary hen, if her feathers turn back in any show of       resistance. Call him up, drawer.                                                     Exit FRANCIS   HOSTESS. Cheater, call you him? I will bar no honest man my house,     nor no cheater; but I do not love swaggering, by my troth. I am     the worse when one says \'swagger.\' Feel, masters, how I shake;     look you, I warrant you.   DOLL. So you do, hostess.   HOSTESS. Do I? Yea, in very truth, do I, an \'twere an aspen leaf. I     cannot abide swagg\'rers.                     Enter PISTOL, BARDOLPH, and PAGE    PISTOL. God save you, Sir John!   FALSTAFF. Welcome, Ancient Pistol. Here, Pistol, I charge you with     a cup of sack; do you discharge upon mine hostess.   PISTOL. I will discharge upon her, Sir John, with two bullets.   FALSTAFF. She is pistol-proof, sir; you shall not hardly offend     her.   HOSTESS. Come, I\'ll drink no proofs nor no bullets. I\'ll drink no     more than will do me good, for no man\'s pleasure, I.     PISTOL. Then to you, Mistress Dorothy; I will charge you.   DOLL. Charge me! I scorn you, scurvy companion. What! you poor,     base, rascally, cheating, lack-linen mate! Away, you mouldy     rogue, away! I am meat for your master.   PISTOL. I know you, Mistress Dorothy.   DOLL. Away, you cut-purse rascal! you filthy bung, away! By this     wine, I\'ll thrust my knife in your mouldy chaps, an you play the     saucy cuttle with me. Away, you bottle-ale rascal! you     basket-hilt stale juggler, you! Since when, I pray you, sir?     God\'s light, with two points on your shoulder? Much!   PISTOL. God let me not live but I will murder your ruff for this.   FALSTAFF. No more, Pistol; I would not have you go off here.     Discharge yourself of our company, Pistol.   HOSTESS. No, good Captain Pistol; not here, sweet captain.   DOLL. Captain! Thou abominable damn\'d cheater, art thou not ashamed     to be called captain? An captains were of my mind, they would     truncheon you out, for taking their names upon you before you     have earn\'d them. You a captain! you slave, for what? For tearing     a poor whore\'s ruff in a bawdy-house? He a captain! hang him,     rogue! He lives upon mouldy stew\'d prunes and dried cakes. A       captain! God\'s light, these villains will make the word as odious     as the word \'occupy\'; which was an excellent good word before it     was ill sorted. Therefore captains had need look to\'t.   BARDOLPH. Pray thee go down, good ancient.   FALSTAFF. Hark thee hither, Mistress Doll.   PISTOL. Not I! I tell thee what, Corporal Bardolph, I could tear     her; I\'ll be reveng\'d of her.   PAGE. Pray thee go down.   PISTOL. I\'ll see her damn\'d first; to Pluto\'s damn\'d lake, by this     hand, to th\' infernal deep, with Erebus and tortures vile also.     Hold hook and line, say I. Down, down, dogs! down, faitors! Have     we not Hiren here?   HOSTESS. Good Captain Peesel, be quiet; \'tis very late, i\' faith; I     beseek you now, aggravate your choler.   PISTOL. These be good humours, indeed! Shall packhorses,     And hollow pamper\'d jades of Asia,     Which cannot go but thirty mile a day,     Compare with Caesars, and with Cannibals,     And Troiant Greeks? Nay, rather damn them with     King Cerberus; and let the welkin roar.       Shall we fall foul for toys?   HOSTESS. By my troth, Captain, these are very bitter words.   BARDOLPH. Be gone, good ancient; this will grow to a brawl anon.   PISTOL. Die men like dogs! Give crowns like pins! Have we not Hiren     here?   HOSTESS. O\' my word, Captain, there\'s none such here. What the     good-year! do you think I would deny her? For God\'s sake, be     quiet.   PISTOL. Then feed and be fat, my fair Calipolis.     Come, give\'s some sack.     \'Si fortune me tormente sperato me contento.\'     Fear we broadsides? No, let the fiend give fire.     Give me some sack; and, sweetheart, lie thou there.                                          [Laying down his sword]     Come we to full points here, and are etceteras nothings?   FALSTAFF. Pistol, I would be quiet.   PISTOL. Sweet knight, I kiss thy neaf. What! we have seen the seven     stars.   DOLL. For God\'s sake thrust him down stairs; I cannot endure such a     fustian rascal.     PISTOL. Thrust him down stairs! Know we not Galloway nags?   FALSTAFF. Quoit him down, Bardolph, like a shove-groat shilling.     Nay, an \'a do nothing but speak nothing, \'a shall be nothing     here.   BARDOLPH. Come, get you down stairs.   PISTOL. What! shall we have incision? Shall we imbrue?                                         [Snatching up his sword]     Then death rock me asleep, abridge my doleful days!     Why, then, let grievous, ghastly, gaping wounds     Untwine the Sisters Three! Come, Atropos, I say!   HOSTESS. Here\'s goodly stuff toward!   FALSTAFF. Give me my rapier, boy.   DOLL. I pray thee, Jack, I pray thee, do not draw.   FALSTAFF. Get you down stairs.                                 [Drawing and driving PISTOL out]   HOSTESS. Here\'s a goodly tumult! I\'ll forswear keeping house afore     I\'ll be in these tirrits and frights. So; murder, I warrant now.     Alas, alas! put up your naked weapons, put up your naked weapons.                                       Exeunt PISTOL and BARDOLPH   DOLL. I pray thee, Jack, be quiet; the rascal\'s gone. Ah, you       whoreson little valiant villain, you!   HOSTESS. Are you not hurt i\' th\' groin? Methought \'a made a shrewd     thrust at your belly.                          Re-enter BARDOLPH    FALSTAFF. Have you turn\'d him out a doors?   BARDOLPH. Yea, sir. The rascal\'s drunk. You have hurt him, sir, i\'     th\' shoulder.   FALSTAFF. A rascal! to brave me!   DOLL. Ah, you sweet little rogue, you! Alas, poor ape, how thou     sweat\'st! Come, let me wipe thy face. Come on, you whoreson     chops. Ah, rogue! i\' faith, I love thee. Thou art as valorous as     Hector of Troy, worth five of Agamemnon, and ten times better     than the Nine Worthies. Ah, villain!   FALSTAFF. A rascally slave! I will toss the rogue in a blanket.   DOLL. Do, an thou dar\'st for thy heart. An thou dost, I\'ll canvass     thee between a pair of sheets.                            Enter musicians      PAGE. The music is come, sir.   FALSTAFF. Let them play. Play, sirs. Sit on my knee, Don. A rascal     bragging slave! The rogue fled from me like quick-silver.   DOLL. I\' faith, and thou follow\'dst him like a church. Thou     whoreson little tidy Bartholomew boar-pig, when wilt thou leave     fighting a days and foining a nights, and begin to patch up thine     old body for heaven?         Enter, behind, PRINCE HENRY and POINS disguised as drawers    FALSTAFF. Peace, good Doll! Do not speak like a death\'s-head; do     not bid me remember mine end.   DOLL. Sirrah, what humour\'s the Prince of?   FALSTAFF. A good shallow young fellow. \'A would have made a good     pantler; \'a would ha\' chipp\'d bread well.   DOLL. They say Poins has a good wit.   FALSTAFF. He a good wit! hang him, baboon! His wit\'s as thick as     Tewksbury mustard; there\'s no more conceit in him than is in a     mallet.     DOLL. Why does the Prince love him so, then?   FALSTAFF. Because their legs are both of a bigness, and \'a plays at     quoits well, and eats conger and fennel, and drinks off candles\'     ends for flap-dragons, and rides the wild mare with the boys, and     jumps upon join\'d-stools, and swears with a good grace, and wears     his boots very smooth, like unto the sign of the Leg, and breeds     no bate with telling of discreet stories; and such other gambol     faculties \'a has, that show a weak mind and an able body, for the     which the Prince admits him. For the Prince himself is such     another; the weight of a hair will turn the scales between their     avoirdupois.   PRINCE. Would not this nave of a wheel have his ears cut off?   POINS. Let\'s beat him before his whore.   PRINCE. Look whe\'er the wither\'d elder hath not his poll claw\'d     like a parrot.   POINS. Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive     performance?   FALSTAFF. Kiss me, Doll.   PRINCE. Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction! What says th\'     almanac to that?     POINS. And look whether the fiery Trigon, his man, be not lisping     to his master\'s old tables, his note-book, his counsel-keeper.   FALSTAFF. Thou dost give me flattering busses.   DOLL. By my troth, I kiss thee with a most constant heart.   FALSTAFF. I am old, I am old.   DOLL. I love thee better than I love e\'er a scurvy young boy of     them all.   FALSTAFF. What stuff wilt have a kirtle of? I shall receive money a     Thursday. Shalt have a cap to-morrow. A merry song, come. \'A     grows late; we\'ll to bed. Thou\'t forget me when I am gone.   DOLL. By my troth, thou\'t set me a-weeping, an thou say\'st so.     Prove that ever I dress myself handsome till thy return. Well,     hearken a\' th\' end.   FALSTAFF. Some sack, Francis.   PRINCE & POINS. Anon, anon, sir.                   [Advancing]   FALSTAFF. Ha! a bastard son of the King\'s? And art thou not Poins     his brother?   PRINCE. Why, thou globe of sinful continents, what a life dost thou     lead!   FALSTAFF. A better than thou. I am a gentleman: thou art a drawer.     PRINCE. Very true, sir, and I come to draw you out by the ears.   HOSTESS. O, the Lord preserve thy Grace! By my troth, welcome to     London. Now the Lord bless that sweet face of thine. O Jesu, are     you come from Wales?   FALSTAFF. Thou whoreson mad compound of majesty, by this light     flesh and corrupt blood, thou art welcome.                                     [Leaning his band upon DOLL]   DOLL. How, you fat fool! I scorn you.   POINS. My lord, he will drive you out of your revenge and turn all     to a merriment, if you take not the heat.   PRINCE. YOU whoreson candle-mine, you, how vilely did you speak of     me even now before this honest, virtuous, civil gentlewoman!   HOSTESS. God\'s blessing of your good heart! and so she is, by my     troth.   FALSTAFF. Didst thou hear me?   PRINCE. Yea; and you knew me, as you did when you ran away by     Gadshill. You knew I was at your back, and spoke it on purpose to     try my patience.   FALSTAFF. No, no, no; not so; I did not think thou wast within     hearing.     PRINCE. I shall drive you then to confess the wilful abuse, and     then I know how to handle you.   FALSTAFF. No abuse, Hal, o\' mine honour; no abuse.   PRINCE. Not- to dispraise me, and call me pander, and     bread-chipper, and I know not what!   FALSTAFF. No abuse, Hal.   POINS. No abuse!   FALSTAFF. No abuse, Ned, i\' th\' world; honest Ned, none. I     disprais\'d him before the wicked- that the wicked might not fall     in love with thee; in which doing, I have done the part of a     careful friend and a true subject; and thy father is to give me     thanks for it. No abuse, Hal; none, Ned, none; no, faith, boys,     none.   PRINCE. See now, whether pure fear and entire cowardice doth not     make thee wrong this virtuous gentlewoman to close with us? Is     she of the wicked? Is thine hostess here of the wicked? Or is thy     boy of the wicked? Or honest Bardolph, whose zeal burns in his     nose, of the wicked?   POINS. Answer, thou dead elm, answer.   FALSTAFF. The fiend hath prick\'d down Bardolph irrecoverable; and       his face is Lucifer\'s privy-kitchen, where he doth nothing but     roast malt-worms. For the boy- there is a good angel about him;     but the devil outbids him too.   PRINCE. For the women?   FALSTAFF. For one of them- she\'s in hell already, and burns poor     souls. For th\' other- I owe her money; and whether she be damn\'d     for that, I know not.   HOSTESS. No, I warrant you.   FALSTAFF. No, I think thou art not; I think thou art quit for that.     Marry, there is another indictment upon thee for suffering flesh     to be eaten in thy house, contrary to the law; for the which I     think thou wilt howl.   HOSTESS. All vict\'lers do so. What\'s a joint of mutton or two in a     whole Lent?   PRINCE. You, gentlewoman-   DOLL. What says your Grace?   FALSTAFF. His Grace says that which his flesh rebels against.                                                [Knocking within]   HOSTESS. Who knocks so loud at door? Look to th\' door there,     Francis.                                  Enter PETO    PRINCE. Peto, how now! What news?   PETO. The King your father is at Westminster;     And there are twenty weak and wearied posts     Come from the north; and as I came along     I met and overtook a dozen captains,     Bare-headed, sweating, knocking at the taverns,     And asking every one for Sir John Falstaff.   PRINCE. By heaven, Poins, I feel me much to blame     So idly to profane the precious time,     When tempest of commotion, like the south,     Borne with black vapour, doth begin to melt     And drop upon our bare unarmed heads.     Give me my sword and cloak. Falstaff, good night.                          Exeunt PRINCE, POINS, PETO, and BARDOLPH    FALSTAFF. Now comes in the sweetest morsel of the night, and we       must hence, and leave it unpick\'d.  [Knocking within]  More     knocking at the door!                        Re-enter BARDOLPH      How now! What\'s the matter?   BARDOLPH. You must away to court, sir, presently;     A dozen captains stay at door for you.   FALSTAFF.  [To the PAGE]. Pay the musicians, sirrah.- Farewell,     hostess; farewell, Doll. You see, my good wenches, how men of     merit are sought after; the undeserver may sleep, when the man of     action is call\'d on. Farewell, good wenches. If I be not sent     away post, I will see you again ere I go.   DOLL. I cannot speak. If my heart be not ready to burst!     Well, sweet Jack, have a care of thyself.   FALSTAFF. Farewell, farewell.                                     Exeunt FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH   HOSTESS. Well, fare thee well. I have known thee these twenty-nine     years, come peascod-time; but an honester and truer-hearted man     -well fare thee well.     BARDOLPH.  [ Within]  Mistress Tearsheet!   HOSTESS. What\'s the matter?   BARDOLPH.  [ Within]  Bid Mistress Tearsheet come to my master.   HOSTESS. O, run Doll, run, run, good Come.  [To BARDOLPH]  She     comes blubber\'d.- Yea, will you come, Doll?           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. Westminster. The palace  Enter the KING in his nightgown, with a page    KING. Go call the Earls of Surrey and of Warwick;     But, ere they come, bid them o\'er-read these letters     And well consider of them. Make good speed.        Exit page     How many thousands of my poorest subjects     Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,     Nature\'s soft nurse, how have I frightened thee,     That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down,     And steep my senses in forgetfulness?     Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,     Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,     And hush\'d with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,     Than in the perfum\'d chambers of the great,     Under the canopies of costly state,     And lull\'d with sound of sweetest melody?     O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile     In loathsome beds, and leav\'st the kingly couch     A watch-case or a common \'larum-bell?       Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast     Seal up the ship-boy\'s eyes, and rock his brains     In cradle of the rude imperious surge,     And in the visitation of the winds,     Who take the ruffian billows by the top,     Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them     With deafing clamour in the slippery clouds,     That with the hurly death itself awakes?     Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose     To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;     And in the calmest and most stillest night,     With all appliances and means to boot,     Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down!     Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.                      Enter WARWICK and Surrey    WARWICK. Many good morrows to your Majesty!   KING. Is it good morrow, lords?   WARWICK. \'Tis one o\'clock, and past.     KING. Why then, good morrow to you all, my lords.     Have you read o\'er the letters that I sent you?   WARWICK. We have, my liege.   KING. Then you perceive the body of our kingdom     How foul it is; what rank diseases grow,     And with what danger, near the heart of it.   WARWICK. It is but as a body yet distempered;     Which to his former strength may be restored     With good advice and little medicine.     My Lord Northumberland will soon be cool\'d.   KING. O God! that one might read the book of fate,     And see the revolution of the times     Make mountains level, and the continent,     Weary of solid firmness, melt itself     Into the sea; and other times to see     The beachy girdle of the ocean     Too wide for Neptune\'s hips; how chances mock,     And changes fill the cup of alteration     With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,     The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,       What perils past, what crosses to ensue,     Would shut the book and sit him down and die.     \'Tis not ten years gone     Since Richard and Northumberland, great friends,     Did feast together, and in two years after     Were they at wars. It is but eight years since     This Percy was the man nearest my soul;     Who like a brother toil\'d in my affairs     And laid his love and life under my foot;     Yea, for my sake, even to the eyes of Richard     Gave him defiance. But which of you was by-     [To WARWICK]  You, cousin Nevil, as I may remember-     When Richard, with his eye brim full of tears,     Then check\'d and rated by Northumberland,     Did speak these words, now prov\'d a prophecy?     \'Northumberland, thou ladder by the which     My cousin Bolingbroke ascends my throne\'-     Though then, God knows, I had no such intent     But that necessity so bow\'d the state     That I and greatness were compell\'d to kiss-       \'The time shall come\'- thus did he follow it-     \'The time will come that foul sin, gathering head,     Shall break into corruption\' so went on,     Foretelling this same time\'s condition     And the division of our amity.   WARWICK. There is a history in all men\'s lives,     Figuring the natures of the times deceas\'d;     The which observ\'d, a man may prophesy,     With a near aim, of the main chance of things     As yet not come to life, who in their seeds     And weak beginning lie intreasured.     Such things become the hatch and brood of time;     And, by the necessary form of this,     King Richard might create a perfect guess     That great Northumberland, then false to him,     Would of that seed grow to a greater falseness;     Which should not find a ground to root upon     Unless on you.   KING. Are these things then necessities?     Then let us meet them like necessities;       And that same word even now cries out on us.     They say the Bishop and Northumberland     Are fifty thousand strong.   WARWICK. It cannot be, my lord.     Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo,     The numbers of the feared. Please it your Grace     To go to bed. Upon my soul, my lord,     The powers that you already have sent forth     Shall bring this prize in very easily.     To comfort you the more, I have receiv\'d     A certain instance that Glendower is dead.     Your Majesty hath been this fortnight ill;     And these unseasoned hours perforce must ad     Unto your sickness.   KING. I will take your counsel.     And, were these inward wars once out of hand,     We would, dear lords, unto the Holy Land.            Exeunt     SCENE II. Gloucestershire. Before Justice, SHALLOW\'S house  Enter SHALLOW and SILENCE, meeting; MOULDY, SHADOW, WART, FEEBLE, BULLCALF, and servants behind    SHALLOW. Come on, come on, come on; give me your hand, sir; give me     your hand, sir. An early stirrer, by the rood! And how doth my     good cousin Silence?   SILENCE. Good morrow, good cousin Shallow.   SHALLOW. And how doth my cousin, your bed-fellow? and your fairest     daughter and mine, my god-daughter Ellen?   SILENCE. Alas, a black ousel, cousin Shallow!   SHALLOW. By yea and no, sir. I dare say my cousin William is become     a good scholar; he is at Oxford still, is he not?   SILENCE. Indeed, sir, to my cost.   SHALLOW. \'A must, then, to the Inns o\' Court shortly. I was once of     Clement\'s Inn; where I think they will talk of mad Shallow yet.   SILENCE. You were call\'d \'lusty Shallow\' then, cousin.   SHALLOW. By the mass, I was call\'d anything; and I would have done     anything indeed too, and roundly too. There was I, and little     John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes, and Francis       Pickbone, and Will Squele a Cotsole man- you had not four such     swinge-bucklers in all the Inns of Court again. And I may say to     you we knew where the bona-robas were, and had the best of them     all at commandment. Then was Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, boy,     and page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk.   SILENCE. This Sir John, cousin, that comes hither anon about     soldiers?   SHALLOW. The same Sir John, the very same. I see him break     Scoggin\'s head at the court gate, when \'a was a crack not thus     high; and the very same day did I fight with one Sampson     Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind Gray\'s Inn. Jesu, Jesu, the mad     days that I have spent! and to see how many of my old     acquaintance are dead!   SILENCE. We shall all follow, cousin.   SHALLOW. Certain, \'tis certain; very sure, very sure. Death, as the     Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. How a good yoke     of bullocks at Stamford fair?   SILENCE. By my troth, I was not there.   SHALLOW. Death is certain. Is old Double of your town living yet?   SILENCE. Dead, sir.     SHALLOW. Jesu, Jesu, dead! drew a good bow; and dead! \'A shot a     fine shoot. John a Gaunt loved him well, and betted much money on     his head. Dead! \'A would have clapp\'d i\' th\' clout at twelve     score, and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen     and a half, that it would have done a man\'s heart good to see.     How a score of ewes now?   SILENCE. Thereafter as they be- a score of good ewes may be worth     ten pounds.   SHALLOW. And is old Double dead?                      Enter BARDOLPH, and one with him    SILENCE. Here come two of Sir John Falstaffs men, as I think.   SHALLOW. Good morrow, honest gentlemen.   BARDOLPH. I beseech you, which is Justice Shallow?   SHALLOW. I am Robert Shallow, sir, a poor esquire of this county,     and one of the King\'s justices of the peace. What is your good     pleasure with me?   BARDOLPH. My captain, sir, commends him to you; my captain, Sir     John Falstaff- a tall gentleman, by heaven, and a most gallant       leader.   SHALLOW. He greets me well, sir; I knew him a good back-sword man.     How doth the good knight? May I ask how my lady his wife doth?   BARDOLPH. Sir, pardon; a soldier is better accommodated than with a     wife.   SHALLOW. It is well said, in faith, sir; and it is well said indeed     too. \'Better accommodated!\' It is good; yea, indeed, is it. Good     phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable.     \'Accommodated!\' It comes of accommodo. Very good; a good phrase.   BARDOLPH. Pardon, sir; I have heard the word. \'Phrase\' call you it?     By this day, I know not the phrase; but I will maintain the word     with my sword to be a soldier-like word, and a word of exceeding     good command, by heaven. Accommodated: that is, when a man is, as     they say, accommodated; or, when a man is being-whereby \'a may be     thought to be accommodated; which is an excellent thing.                                Enter FALSTAFF    SHALLOW. It is very just. Look, here comes good Sir John. Give me     your good hand, give me your worship\'s good hand. By my troth,       you like well and bear your years very well. Welcome, good Sir     John.   FALSTAFF. I am glad to see you well, good Master Robert Shallow.     Master Surecard, as I think?   SHALLOW. No, Sir John; it is my cousin Silence, in commission with    me.   FALSTAFF. Good Master Silence, it well befits you should be of the     peace.   SILENCE. Your good worship is welcome.   FALSTAFF. Fie! this is hot weather. Gentlemen, have you provided me     here half a dozen sufficient men?   SHALLOW. Marry, have we, sir. Will you sit?   FALSTAFF. Let me see them, I beseech you.   SHALLOW. Where\'s the roll? Where\'s the roll? Where\'s the roll? Let     me see, let me see, let me see. So, so, so, so,- so, so- yea,     marry, sir. Rafe Mouldy! Let them appear as I call; let them do     so, let them do so. Let me see; where is Mouldy?   MOULDY. Here, an\'t please you.   SHALLOW. What think you, Sir John? A good-limb\'d fellow; young,     strong, and of good friends.     FALSTAFF. Is thy name Mouldy?   MOULDY. Yea, an\'t please you.   FALSTAFF. \'Tis the more time thou wert us\'d.   SHALLOW. Ha, ha, ha! most excellent, i\' faith! Things that are     mouldy lack use. Very singular good! In faith, well said, Sir     John; very well said.   FALSTAFF. Prick him.   MOULDY. I was prick\'d well enough before, an you could have let me     alone. My old dame will be undone now for one to do her husbandry     and her drudgery. You need not to have prick\'d me; there are     other men fitter to go out than I.   FALSTAFF. Go to; peace, Mouldy; you shall go. Mouldy, it is time     you were spent.   MOULDY. Spent!   SHALLOW. Peace, fellow, peace; stand aside; know you where you are?     For th\' other, Sir John- let me see. Simon Shadow!   FALSTAFF. Yea, marry, let me have him to sit under. He\'s like to be     a cold soldier.   SHALLOW. Where\'s Shadow?   SHADOW. Here, sir.     FALSTAFF. Shadow, whose son art thou?   SHADOW. My mother\'s son, sir.   FALSTAFF. Thy mother\'s son! Like enough; and thy father\'s shadow.     So the son of the female is the shadow of the male. It is often     so indeed; but much of the father\'s substance!   SHALLOW. Do you like him, Sir John?   FALSTAFF. Shadow will serve for summer. Prick him; for we have a     number of shadows fill up the muster-book.   SHALLOW. Thomas Wart!   FALSTAFF. Where\'s he?   WART. Here, sir.   FALSTAFF. Is thy name Wart?   WART. Yea, sir.   FALSTAFF. Thou art a very ragged wart.   SHALLOW. Shall I prick him, Sir John?   FALSTAFF. It were superfluous; for his apparel is built upon his     back, and the whole frame stands upon pins. Prick him no more.   SHALLOW. Ha, ha, ha! You can do it, sir; you can do it. I commend     you well. Francis Feeble!   FEEBLE. Here, sir.     FALSTAFF. What trade art thou, Feeble?   FEEBLE. A woman\'s tailor, sir.   SHALLOW. Shall I prick him, sir?   FALSTAFF. You may; but if he had been a man\'s tailor, he\'d ha\'     prick\'d you. Wilt thou make as many holes in an enemy\'s battle as     thou hast done in a woman\'s petticoat?   FEEBLE. I will do my good will, sir; you can have no more.   FALSTAFF. Well said, good woman\'s tailor! well said, courageous     Feeble! Thou wilt be as valiant as the wrathful dove or most     magnanimous mouse. Prick the woman\'s tailor- well, Master     Shallow, deep, Master Shallow.   FEEBLE. I would Wart might have gone, sir.   FALSTAFF. I would thou wert a man\'s tailor, that thou mightst mend     him and make him fit to go. I cannot put him to a private     soldier, that is the leader of so many thousands. Let that     suffice, most forcible Feeble.   FEEBLE. It shall suffice, sir.   FALSTAFF. I am bound to thee, reverend Feeble. Who is next?   SHALLOW. Peter Bullcalf o\' th\' green!   FALSTAFF. Yea, marry, let\'s see Bullcalf.     BULLCALF. Here, sir.   FALSTAFF. Fore God, a likely fellow! Come, prick me Bullcalf till     he roar again.   BULLCALF. O Lord! good my lord captain-   FALSTAFF. What, dost thou roar before thou art prick\'d?   BULLCALF. O Lord, sir! I am a diseased man.   FALSTAFF. What disease hast thou?   BULLCALF. A whoreson cold, sir, a cough, sir, which I caught with     ringing in the King\'s affairs upon his coronation day, sir.   FALSTAFF. Come, thou shalt go to the wars in a gown. We will have     away thy cold; and I will take such order that thy friends shall     ring for thee. Is here all?   SHALLOW. Here is two more call\'d than your number. You must have     but four here, sir; and so, I pray you, go in with me to dinner.   FALSTAFF. Come, I will go drink with you, but I cannot tarry     dinner. I am glad to see you, by my troth, Master Shallow.   SHALLOW. O, Sir John, do you remember since we lay all night in the     windmill in Saint George\'s Field?   FALSTAFF. No more of that, Master Shallow, no more of that.   SHALLOW. Ha, \'twas a merry night. And is Jane Nightwork alive?     FALSTAFF. She lives, Master Shallow.   SHALLOW. She never could away with me.   FALSTAFF. Never, never; she would always say she could not abide     Master Shallow.   SHALLOW. By the mass, I could anger her to th\' heart. She was then     a bona-roba. Doth she hold her own well?   FALSTAFF. Old, old, Master Shallow.   SHALLOW. Nay, she must be old; she cannot choose but be old;     certain she\'s old; and had Robin Nightwork, by old Nightwork,     before I came to Clement\'s Inn.   SILENCE. That\'s fifty-five year ago.   SHALLOW. Ha, cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this     knight and I have seen! Ha, Sir John, said I well?   FALSTAFF. We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.   SHALLOW. That we have, that we have, that we have; in faith, Sir     John, we have. Our watchword was \'Hem, boys!\' Come, let\'s to     dinner; come, let\'s to dinner. Jesus, the days that we have seen!     Come, come.                                 Exeunt FALSTAFF and the JUSTICES   BULLCALF. Good Master Corporate Bardolph, stand my friend; and       here\'s four Harry ten shillings in French crowns for you. In very     truth, sir, I had as lief be hang\'d, sir, as go. And yet, for     mine own part, sir, I do not care; but rather because I am     unwilling and, for mine own part, have a desire to stay with my     friends; else, sir, I did not care for mine own part so much.   BARDOLPH. Go to; stand aside.   MOULDY. And, good Master Corporal Captain, for my old dame\'s sake,     stand my friend. She has nobody to do anything about her when I     am gone; and she is old, and cannot help herself. You shall have     forty, sir.   BARDOLPH. Go to; stand aside.   FEEBLE. By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God     a death. I\'ll ne\'er bear a base mind. An\'t be my destiny, so;     an\'t be not, so. No man\'s too good to serve \'s Prince; and, let     it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the     next.   BARDOLPH. Well said; th\'art a good fellow.   FEEBLE. Faith, I\'ll bear no base mind.                      Re-enter FALSTAFF and the JUSTICES      FALSTAFF. Come, sir, which men shall I have?   SHALLOW. Four of which you please.   BARDOLPH. Sir, a word with you. I have three pound to free Mouldy     and Bullcalf.   FALSTAFF. Go to; well.   SHALLOW. Come, Sir John, which four will you have?   FALSTAFF. Do you choose for me.   SHALLOW. Marry, then- Mouldy, Bullcalf, Feeble, and Shadow.   FALSTAFF. Mouldy and Bullcalf: for you, Mouldy, stay at home till     you are past service; and for your part, Bullcalf, grow you come     unto it. I will none of you.   SHALLOW. Sir John, Sir John, do not yourself wrong. They are your     likeliest men, and I would have you serv\'d with the best.   FALSTAFF. Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to choose a man?     Care I for the limb, the thews, the stature, bulk, and big     assemblance of a man! Give me the spirit, Master Shallow. Here\'s     Wart; you see what a ragged appearance it is. \'A shall charge you     and discharge you with the motion of a pewterer\'s hammer, come     off and on swifter than he that gibbets on the brewer\'s bucket.       And this same half-fac\'d fellow, Shadow- give me this man. He     presents no mark to the enemy; the foeman may with as great aim     level at the edge of a penknife. And, for a retreat- how swiftly     will this Feeble, the woman\'s tailor, run off! O, give me the     spare men, and spare me the great ones. Put me a caliver into     Wart\'s hand, Bardolph.   BARDOLPH. Hold, Wart. Traverse- thus, thus, thus.   FALSTAFF. Come, manage me your caliver. So- very well. Go to; very     good; exceeding good. O, give me always a little, lean, old,     chopt, bald shot. Well said, i\' faith, Wart; th\'art a good scab.     Hold, there\'s a tester for thee.   SHALLOW. He is not his craft\'s master, he doth not do it right. I     remember at Mile-end Green, when I lay at Clement\'s Inn- I was     then Sir Dagonet in Arthur\'s show- there was a little quiver     fellow, and \'a would manage you his piece thus; and \'a would     about and about, and come you in and come you in. \'Rah, tah,     tah!\' would \'a say; \'Bounce!\' would \'a say; and away again would     \'a go, and again would \'a come. I shall ne\'er see such a fellow.   FALSTAFF. These fellows will do well. Master Shallow, God keep you!     Master Silence, I will not use many words with you: Fare you       well! Gentlemen both, I thank you. I must a dozen mile to-night.     Bardolph, give the soldiers coats.   SHALLOW. Sir John, the Lord bless you; God prosper your affairs;     God send us peace! At your return, visit our house; let our old     acquaintance be renewed. Peradventure I will with ye to the     court.   FALSTAFF. Fore God, would you would.   SHALLOW. Go to; I have spoke at a word. God keep you.   FALSTAFF. Fare you well, gentle gentlemen.  [Exeunt JUSTICES]  On,     Bardolph; lead the men away.  [Exeunt all but FALSTAFF]  As I     return, I will fetch off these justices. I do see the bottom of     justice Shallow. Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this     vice of lying! This same starv\'d justice hath done nothing but     prate to me of the wildness of his youth and the feats he hath     done about Turnbull Street; and every third word a lie, duer paid     to the hearer than the Turk\'s tribute. I do remember him at     Clement\'s Inn, like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring.     When \'a was naked, he was for all the world like a fork\'d radish,     with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife. \'A was so     forlorn that his dimensions to any thick sight were invisible. \'A       was the very genius of famine; yet lecherous as a monkey, and the     whores call\'d him mandrake. \'A came ever in the rearward of the     fashion, and sung those tunes to the overscutch\'d huswifes that     he heard the carmen whistle, and sware they were his fancies or     his good-nights. And now is this Vice\'s dagger become a squire,     and talks as familiarly of John a Gaunt as if he had been sworn     brother to him; and I\'ll be sworn \'a ne\'er saw him but once in     the Tiltyard; and then he burst his head for crowding among the     marshal\'s men. I saw it, and told John a Gaunt he beat his own     name; for you might have thrust him and all his apparel into an     eel-skin; the case of a treble hautboy was a mansion for him, a     court- and now has he land and beeves. Well, I\'ll be acquainted     with him if I return; and \'t shall go hard but I\'ll make him a     philosopher\'s two stones to me. If the young dace be a bait for     the old pike, I see no reason in the law of nature but I may snap     at him. Let time shape, and there an end.               Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. Yorkshire. Within the Forest of Gaultree  Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, MOWBRAY, HASTINGS, and others    ARCHBISHOP. What is this forest call\'d   HASTINGS. \'Tis Gaultree Forest, an\'t shall please your Grace.   ARCHBISHOP. Here stand, my lords, and send discoverers forth     To know the numbers of our enemies.   HASTINGS. We have sent forth already.   ARCHBISHOP. \'Tis well done.     My friends and brethren in these great affairs,     I must acquaint you that I have receiv\'d     New-dated letters from Northumberland;     Their cold intent, tenour, and substance, thus:     Here doth he wish his person, with such powers     As might hold sortance with his quality,     The which he could not levy; whereupon     He is retir\'d, to ripe his growing fortunes,     To Scotland; and concludes in hearty prayers     That your attempts may overlive the hazard       And fearful meeting of their opposite.   MOWBRAY. Thus do the hopes we have in him touch ground     And dash themselves to pieces.                            Enter A MESSENGER    HASTINGS. Now, what news?   MESSENGER. West of this forest, scarcely off a mile,     In goodly form comes on the enemy;     And, by the ground they hide, I judge their number     Upon or near the rate of thirty thousand.   MOWBRAY. The just proportion that we gave them out.     Let us sway on and face them in the field.                          Enter WESTMORELAND    ARCHBISHOP. What well-appointed leader fronts us here?   MOWBRAY. I think it is my Lord of Westmoreland.   WESTMORELAND. Health and fair greeting from our general,     The Prince, Lord John and Duke of Lancaster.     ARCHBISHOP. Say on, my Lord of Westmoreland, in peace,     What doth concern your coming.   WESTMORELAND. Then, my lord,     Unto your Grace do I in chief address     The substance of my speech. If that rebellion     Came like itself, in base and abject routs,     Led on by bloody youth, guarded with rags,     And countenanc\'d by boys and beggary-     I say, if damn\'d commotion so appear\'d     In his true, native, and most proper shape,     You, reverend father, and these noble lords,     Had not been here to dress the ugly form     Of base and bloody insurrection     With your fair honours. You, Lord Archbishop,     Whose see is by a civil peace maintain\'d,     Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touch\'d,     Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutor\'d,     Whose white investments figure innocence,     The dove, and very blessed spirit of peace-     Wherefore you do so ill translate yourself       Out of the speech of peace, that bears such grace,     Into the harsh and boist\'rous tongue of war;     Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood,     Your pens to lances, and your tongue divine     To a loud trumpet and a point of war?   ARCHBISHOP. Wherefore do I this? So the question stands.     Briefly to this end: we are all diseas\'d     And with our surfeiting and wanton hours     Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,     And we must bleed for it; of which disease     Our late King, Richard, being infected, died.     But, my most noble Lord of Westmoreland,     I take not on me here as a physician;     Nor do I as an enemy to peace     Troop in the throngs of military men;     But rather show awhile like fearful war     To diet rank minds sick of happiness,     And purge th\' obstructions which begin to stop     Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.     I have in equal balance justly weigh\'d       What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,     And find our griefs heavier than our offences.     We see which way the stream of time doth run     And are enforc\'d from our most quiet there     By the rough torrent of occasion;     And have the summary of all our griefs,     When time shall serve, to show in articles;     Which long ere this we offer\'d to the King,     And might by no suit gain our audience:     When we are wrong\'d, and would unfold our griefs,     We are denied access unto his person,     Even by those men that most have done us wrong.     The dangers of the days but newly gone,     Whose memory is written on the earth     With yet appearing blood, and the examples     Of every minute\'s instance, present now,     Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms;     Not to break peace, or any branch of it,     But to establish here a peace indeed,     Concurring both in name and quality.     WESTMORELAND. When ever yet was your appeal denied;     Wherein have you been galled by the King;     What peer hath been suborn\'d to grate on you     That you should seal this lawless bloody book     Of forg\'d rebellion with a seal divine,     And consecrate commotion\'s bitter edge?   ARCHBISHOP. My brother general, the commonwealth,     To brother horn an household cruelty,     I make my quarrel in particular.   WESTMORELAND. There is no need of any such redress;     Or if there were, it not belongs to you.   MOWBRAY. Why not to him in part, and to us all     That feel the bruises of the days before,     And suffer the condition of these times     To lay a heavy and unequal hand     Upon our honours?   WESTMORELAND. O my good Lord Mowbray,     Construe the times to their necessities,     And you shall say, indeed, it is the time,     And not the King, that doth you injuries.       Yet, for your part, it not appears to me,     Either from the King or in the present time,     That you should have an inch of any ground     To build a grief on. Were you not restor\'d     To all the Duke of Norfolk\'s signiories,     Your noble and right well-rememb\'red father\'s?   MOWBRAY. What thing, in honour, had my father lost     That need to be reviv\'d and breath\'d in me?     The King that lov\'d him, as the state stood then,     Was force perforce compell\'d to banish him,     And then that Henry Bolingbroke and he,     Being mounted and both roused in their seats,     Their neighing coursers daring of the spur,     Their armed staves in charge, their beavers down,     Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of steel,     And the loud trumpet blowing them together-     Then, then, when there was nothing could have stay\'d     My father from the breast of Bolingbroke,     O, when the King did throw his warder down-     His own life hung upon the staff he threw-       Then threw he down himself, and all their lives     That by indictment and by dint of sword     Have since miscarried under Bolingbroke.   WESTMORELAND. You speak, Lord Mowbray, now you know not what.     The Earl of Hereford was reputed then     In England the most valiant gentleman.     Who knows on whom fortune would then have smil\'d?     But if your father had been victor there,     He ne\'er had borne it out of Coventry;     For all the country, in a general voice,     Cried hate upon him; and all their prayers and love     Were set on Hereford, whom they doted on,     And bless\'d and grac\'d indeed more than the King.     But this is mere digression from my purpose.     Here come I from our princely general     To know your griefs; to tell you from his Grace     That he will give you audience; and wherein     It shall appear that your demands are just,     You shall enjoy them, everything set off     That might so much as think you enemies.     MOWBRAY. But he hath forc\'d us to compel this offer;     And it proceeds from policy, not love.   WESTMORELAND. Mowbray. you overween to take it so.     This offer comes from mercy, not from fear;     For, lo! within a ken our army lies-     Upon mine honour, all too confident     To give admittance to a thought of fear.     Our battle is more full of names than yours,     Our men more perfect in the use of arms,     Our armour all as strong, our cause the best;     Then reason will our hearts should be as good.     Say you not, then, our offer is compell\'d.   MOWBRAY. Well, by my will we shall admit no parley.   WESTMORELAND. That argues but the shame of your offence:     A rotten case abides no handling.   HASTINGS. Hath the Prince John a full commission,     In very ample virtue of his father,     To hear and absolutely to determine     Of what conditions we shall stand upon?   WESTMORELAND. That is intended in the general\'s name.       I muse you make so slight a question.   ARCHBISHOP. Then take, my Lord of Westmoreland, this schedule,     For this contains our general grievances.     Each several article herein redress\'d,     All members of our cause, both here and hence,     That are insinewed to this action,     Acquitted by a true substantial form,     And present execution of our wills     To us and to our purposes confin\'d-     We come within our awful banks again,     And knit our powers to the arm of peace.   WESTMORELAND. This will I show the general. Please you, lords,     In sight of both our battles we may meet;     And either end in peace- which God so frame!-     Or to the place of diff\'rence call the swords     Which must decide it.   ARCHBISHOP. My lord, we will do so.          Exit WESTMORELAND   MOWBRAY. There is a thing within my bosom tells me     That no conditions of our peace can stand.   HASTINGS. Fear you not that: if we can make our peace       Upon such large terms and so absolute     As our conditions shall consist upon,     Our peace shall stand as firm as rocky mountains.   MOWBRAY. Yea, but our valuation shall be such     That every slight and false-derived cause,     Yea, every idle, nice, and wanton reason,     Shall to the King taste of this action;     That, were our royal faiths martyrs in love,     We shall be winnow\'d with so rough a wind     That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff,     And good from bad find no partition.   ARCHBISHOP. No, no, my lord. Note this: the King is weary     Of dainty and such picking grievances;     For he hath found to end one doubt by death     Revives two greater in the heirs of life;     And therefore will he wipe his tables clean,     And keep no tell-tale to his memory     That may repeat and history his los     To new remembrance. For full well he knows     He cannot so precisely weed this land       As his misdoubts present occasion:     His foes are so enrooted with his friends     That, plucking to unfix an enemy,     He doth unfasten so and shake a friend.     So that this land, like an offensive wife     That hath enrag\'d him on to offer strokes,     As he is striking, holds his infant up,     And hangs resolv\'d correction in the arm     That was uprear\'d to execution.   HASTINGS. Besides, the King hath wasted all his rods     On late offenders, that he now doth lack     The very instruments of chastisement;     So that his power, like to a fangless lion,     May offer, but not hold.   ARCHBISHOP. \'Tis very true;     And therefore be assur\'d, my good Lord Marshal,     If we do now make our atonement well,     Our peace will, like a broken limb united,     Grow stronger for the breaking.   MOWBRAY. Be it so.       Here is return\'d my Lord of Westmoreland.                         Re-enter WESTMORELAND    WESTMORELAND. The Prince is here at hand. Pleaseth your lordship     To meet his Grace just distance \'tween our armies?   MOWBRAY. Your Grace of York, in God\'s name then, set forward.   ARCHBISHOP. Before, and greet his Grace. My lord, we come.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE II. Another part of the forest  Enter, from one side, MOWBRAY, attended; afterwards, the ARCHBISHOP, HASTINGS, and others; from the other side, PRINCE JOHN of LANCASTER, WESTMORELAND, OFFICERS, and others    PRINCE JOHN. You are well encount\'red here, my cousin Mowbray.     Good day to you, gentle Lord Archbishop;     And so to you, Lord Hastings, and to all.     My Lord of York, it better show\'d with you     When that your flock, assembled by the bell,     Encircled you to hear with reverence     Your exposition on the holy text     Than now to see you here an iron man,     Cheering a rout of rebels with your drum,     Turning the word to sword, and life to death.     That man that sits within a monarch\'s heart     And ripens in the sunshine of his favour,     Would he abuse the countenance of the king,     Alack, what mischiefs might he set abroach     In shadow of such greatness! With you, Lord Bishop,       It is even so. Who hath not heard it spoken     How deep you were within the books of God?     To us the speaker in His parliament,     To us th\' imagin\'d voice of God himself,     The very opener and intelligencer     Between the grace, the sanctities of heaven,     And our dull workings. O, who shall believe     But you misuse the reverence of your place,     Employ the countenance and grace of heav\'n     As a false favourite doth his prince\'s name,     In deeds dishonourable? You have ta\'en up,     Under the counterfeited zeal of God,     The subjects of His substitute, my father,     And both against the peace of heaven and him     Have here up-swarm\'d them.   ARCHBISHOP. Good my Lord of Lancaster,     I am not here against your father\'s peace;     But, as I told my Lord of Westmoreland,     The time misord\'red doth, in common sense,     Crowd us and crush us to this monstrous form       To hold our safety up. I sent your Grace     The parcels and particulars of our grief,     The which hath been with scorn shov\'d from the court,     Whereon this hydra son of war is born;     Whose dangerous eyes may well be charm\'d asleep     With grant of our most just and right desires;     And true obedience, of this madness cur\'d,     Stoop tamely to the foot of majesty.   MOWBRAY. If not, we ready are to try our fortunes     To the last man.   HASTINGS. And though we here fall down,     We have supplies to second our attempt.     If they miscarry, theirs shall second them;     And so success of mischief shall be born,     And heir from heir shall hold this quarrel up     Whiles England shall have generation.   PRINCE JOHN. YOU are too shallow, Hastings, much to shallow,     To sound the bottom of the after-times.   WESTMORELAND. Pleaseth your Grace to answer them directly     How far forth you do like their articles.     PRINCE JOHN. I like them all and do allow them well;     And swear here, by the honour of my blood,     My father\'s purposes have been mistook;     And some about him have too lavishly     Wrested his meaning and authority.     My lord, these griefs shall be with speed redress\'d;     Upon my soul, they shall. If this may please you,     Discharge your powers unto their several counties,     As we will ours; and here, between the armies,     Let\'s drink together friendly and embrace,     That all their eyes may bear those tokens home     Of our restored love and amity.   ARCHBISHOP. I take your princely word for these redresses.   PRINCE JOHN. I give it you, and will maintain my word;     And thereupon I drink unto your Grace.   HASTINGS. Go, Captain, and deliver to the army     This news of peace. Let them have pay, and part.     I know it will please them. Hie thee, Captain.                                                     Exit Officer   ARCHBISHOP. To you, my noble Lord of Westmoreland.     WESTMORELAND. I pledge your Grace; and if you knew what pains     I have bestow\'d to breed this present peace,     You would drink freely; but my love to ye     Shall show itself more openly hereafter.   ARCHBISHOP. I do not doubt you.   WESTMORELAND. I am glad of it.     Health to my lord and gentle cousin, Mowbray.   MOWBRAY. You wish me health in very happy season,     For I am on the sudden something ill.   ARCHBISHOP. Against ill chances men are ever merry;     But heaviness foreruns the good event.   WESTMORELAND. Therefore be merry, coz; since sudden sorrow     Serves to say thus, \'Some good thing comes to-morrow.\'   ARCHBISHOP. Believe me, I am passing light in spirit.   MOWBRAY. So much the worse, if your own rule be true.                                                  [Shouts within]   PRINCE JOHN. The word of peace is rend\'red. Hark, how they shout!   MOWBRAY. This had been cheerful after victory.   ARCHBISHOP. A peace is of the nature of a conquest;     For then both parties nobly are subdu\'d,       And neither party loser.   PRINCE JOHN. Go, my lord,     And let our army be discharged too.                                                Exit WESTMORELAND     And, good my lord, so please you let our trains     March by us, that we may peruse the men     We should have cop\'d withal.   ARCHBISHOP. Go, good Lord Hastings,     And, ere they be dismiss\'d, let them march by.                                                    Exit HASTINGS   PRINCE JOHN. I trust, lords, we shall lie to-night together.                        Re-enter WESTMORELAND      Now, cousin, wherefore stands our army still?   WESTMORELAND. The leaders, having charge from you to stand,     Will not go off until they hear you speak.   PRINCE JOHN. They know their duties.                          Re-enter HASTINGS      HASTINGS. My lord, our army is dispers\'d already.     Like youthful steers unyok\'d, they take their courses     East, west, north, south; or like a school broke up,     Each hurries toward his home and sporting-place.   WESTMORELAND. Good tidings, my Lord Hastings; for the which     I do arrest thee, traitor, of high treason;     And you, Lord Archbishop, and you, Lord Mowbray,     Of capital treason I attach you both.   MOWBRAY. Is this proceeding just and honourable?   WESTMORELAND. Is your assembly so?   ARCHBISHOP. Will you thus break your faith?   PRINCE JOHN. I pawn\'d thee none:     I promis\'d you redress of these same grievances     Whereof you did complain; which, by mine honour,     I will perform with a most Christian care.     But for you, rebels- look to taste the due     Meet for rebellion and such acts as yours.     Most shallowly did you these arms commence,     Fondly brought here, and foolishly sent hence.       Strike up our drums, pursue the scatt\'red stray.     God, and not we, hath safely fought to-day.     Some guard these traitors to the block of death,     Treason\'s true bed and yielder-up of breath.          Exeunt     SCENE III. Another part of the forest  Alarum; excursions. Enter FALSTAFF and COLVILLE, meeting    FALSTAFF. What\'s your name, sir? Of what condition are you, and of     what place, I pray?   COLVILLE. I am a knight sir; and my name is Colville of the Dale.   FALSTAFF. Well then, Colville is your name, a knight is your     degree, and your place the Dale. Colville shall still be your     name, a traitor your degree, and the dungeon your place- a place     deep enough; so shall you be still Colville of the Dale.   COLVILLE. Are not you Sir John Falstaff?   FALSTAFF. As good a man as he, sir, whoe\'er I am. Do you yield,     sir, or shall I sweat for you? If I do sweat, they are the drops     of thy lovers, and they weep for thy death; therefore rouse up     fear and trembling, and do observance to my mercy.   COLVILLE. I think you are Sir John Falstaff, and in that thought     yield me.   FALSTAFF. I have a whole school of tongues in this belly of mine;     and not a tongue of them all speaks any other word but my name.       An I had but a belly of any indifferency, I were simply the most     active fellow in Europe. My womb, my womb, my womb undoes me.     Here comes our general.              Enter PRINCE JOHN OF LANCASTER, WESTMORELAND,                             BLUNT, and others    PRINCE JOHN. The heat is past; follow no further now.     Call in the powers, good cousin Westmoreland.                                                Exit WESTMORELAND     Now, Falstaff, where have you been all this while?     When everything is ended, then you come.     These tardy tricks of yours will, on my life,     One time or other break some gallows\' back.   FALSTAFF. I would be sorry, my lord, but it should be thus: I never     knew yet but rebuke and check was the reward of valour. Do you     think me a swallow, an arrow, or a bullet? Have I, in my poor and     old motion, the expedition of thought? I have speeded hither with     the very extremest inch of possibility; I have found\'red nine     score and odd posts; and here, travel tainted as I am, have, in       my pure and immaculate valour, taken Sir John Colville of the     Dale,a most furious knight and valorous enemy. But what of that?     He saw me, and yielded; that I may justly say with the hook-nos\'d     fellow of Rome-I came, saw, and overcame.   PRINCE JOHN. It was more of his courtesy than your deserving.   FALSTAFF. I know not. Here he is, and here I yield him; and I     beseech your Grace, let it be book\'d with the rest of this day\'s     deeds; or, by the Lord, I will have it in a particular ballad     else, with mine own picture on the top on\'t, Colville kissing my     foot; to the which course if I be enforc\'d, if you do not all     show like gilt twopences to me, and I, in the clear sky of fame,     o\'ershine you as much as the full moon doth the cinders of the     element, which show like pins\' heads to her, believe not the word     of the noble. Therefore let me have right, and let desert mount.   PRINCE JOHN. Thine\'s too heavy to mount.   FALSTAFF. Let it shine, then.   PRINCE JOHN. Thine\'s too thick to shine.   FALSTAFF. Let it do something, my good lord, that may do me good,     and call it what you will.   PRINCE JOHN. Is thy name Colville?     COLVILLE. It is, my lord.   PRINCE JOHN. A famous rebel art thou, Colville.   FALSTAFF. And a famous true subject took him.   COLVILLE. I am, my lord, but as my betters are     That led me hither. Had they been rul\'d by me,     You should have won them dearer than you have.   FALSTAFF. I know not how they sold themselves; but thou, like a     kind fellow, gavest thyself away gratis; and I thank thee for     thee.                         Re-enter WESTMORELAND    PRINCE JOHN. Now, have you left pursuit?   WESTMORELAND. Retreat is made, and execution stay\'d.   PRINCE JOHN. Send Colville, with his confederates,     To York, to present execution.     Blunt, lead him hence; and see you guard him sure.                                          Exeunt BLUNT and others     And now dispatch we toward the court, my lords.     I hear the King my father is sore sick.       Our news shall go before us to his Majesty,     Which, cousin, you shall bear to comfort him     And we with sober speed will follow you.   FALSTAFF. My lord, I beseech you, give me leave to go through     Gloucestershire; and, when you come to court, stand my good lord,     pray, in your good report.   PRINCE JOHN. Fare you well, Falstaff. I, in my condition,     Shall better speak of you than you deserve.                                          Exeunt all but FALSTAFF   FALSTAFF. I would you had but the wit; \'twere better than your     dukedom. Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not     love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh- but that\'s no marvel;     he drinks no wine. There\'s never none of these demure boys come     to any proof; for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and     making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of male     green-sickness; and then, when they marry, they get wenches. They     are generally fools and cowards-which some of us should be too,     but for inflammation. A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold     operation in it. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all     the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it; makes it       apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and     delectable shapes; which delivered o\'er to the voice, the tongue,     which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of     your excellent sherris is the warming of the blood; which before,     cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the     badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms it,     and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extremes. It     illumineth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the     rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital     commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their     captain, the heart, who, great and puff\'d up with this retinue,     doth any deed of courage- and this valour comes of sherris. So     that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets     it a-work; and learning, a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil     till sack commences it and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes     it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did     naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, sterile, and     bare land, manured, husbanded, and till\'d, with excellent     endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris,     that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons,       the first humane principle I would teach them should be to     forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.                             Enter BARDOLPH      How now, Bardolph!   BARDOLPH. The army is discharged all and gone.   FALSTAFF. Let them go. I\'ll through Gloucestershire, and there will     I visit Master Robert Shallow, Esquire. I have him already     temp\'ring between my finger and my thumb, and shortly will I seal     with him. Come away.                                  Exeunt     SCENE IV. Westminster. The Jerusalem Chamber  Enter the KING, PRINCE THOMAS OF CLARENCE, PRINCE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER, WARWICK, and others    KING. Now, lords, if God doth give successful end     To this debate that bleedeth at our doors,     We will our youth lead on to higher fields,     And draw no swords but what are sanctified.     Our navy is address\'d, our power connected,     Our substitutes in absence well invested,     And everything lies level to our wish.     Only we want a little personal strength;     And pause us till these rebels, now afoot,     Come underneath the yoke of government.   WARWICK. Both which we doubt not but your Majesty     Shall soon enjoy.   KING. Humphrey, my son of Gloucester,     Where is the Prince your brother?   PRINCE HUMPHREY. I think he\'s gone to hunt, my lord, at Windsor.   KING. And how accompanied?     PRINCE HUMPHREY. I do not know, my lord.   KING. Is not his brother, Thomas of Clarence, with him?   PRINCE HUMPHREY. No, my good lord, he is in presence here.   CLARENCE. What would my lord and father?   KING. Nothing but well to thee, Thomas of Clarence.     How chance thou art not with the Prince thy brother?     He loves thee, and thou dost neglect him, Thomas.     Thou hast a better place in his affection     Than all thy brothers; cherish it, my boy,     And noble offices thou mayst effect     Of mediation, after I am dead,     Between his greatness and thy other brethren.     Therefore omit him not; blunt not his love,     Nor lose the good advantage of his grace     By seeming cold or careless of his will;     For he is gracious if he be observ\'d.     He hath a tear for pity and a hand     Open as day for melting charity;     Yet notwithstanding, being incens\'d, he is flint;     As humorous as winter, and as sudden       As flaws congealed in the spring of day.     His temper, therefore, must be well observ\'d.     Chide him for faults, and do it reverently,     When you perceive his blood inclin\'d to mirth;     But, being moody, give him line and scope     Till that his passions, like a whale on ground,     Confound themselves with working. Learn this, Thomas,     And thou shalt prove a shelter to thy friends,     A hoop of gold to bind thy brothers in,     That the united vessel of their blood,     Mingled with venom of suggestion-     As, force perforce, the age will pour it in-     Shall never leak, though it do work as strong     As aconitum or rash gunpowder.   CLARENCE. I shall observe him with all care and love.   KING. Why art thou not at Windsor with him, Thomas?   CLARENCE. He is not there to-day; he dines in London.   KING. And how accompanied? Canst thou tell that?   CLARENCE. With Poins, and other his continual followers.   KING. Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds;       And he, the noble image of my youth,     Is overspread with them; therefore my grief     Stretches itself beyond the hour of death.     The blood weeps from my heart when I do shape,     In forms imaginary, th\'unguided days     And rotten times that you shall look upon     When I am sleeping with my ancestors.     For when his headstrong riot hath no curb,     When rage and hot blood are his counsellors     When means and lavish manners meet together,     O, with what wings shall his affections fly     Towards fronting peril and oppos\'d decay!   WARWICK. My gracious lord, you look beyond him quite.     The Prince but studies his companions     Like a strange tongue, wherein, to gain the language,     \'Tis needful that the most immodest word     Be look\'d upon and learnt; which once attain\'d,     Your Highness knows, comes to no further use     But to be known and hated. So, like gross terms,     The Prince will, in the perfectness of time,       Cast off his followers; and their memory     Shall as a pattern or a measure live     By which his Grace must mete the lives of other,     Turning past evils to advantages.   KING. \'Tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb     In the dead carrion.                        Enter WESTMORELAND      Who\'s here? Westmoreland?   WESTMORELAND. Health to my sovereign, and new happiness     Added to that that am to deliver!     Prince John, your son, doth kiss your Grace\'s hand.     Mowbray, the Bishop Scroop, Hastings, and all,     Are brought to the correction of your law.     There is not now a rebel\'s sword unsheath\'d,     But Peace puts forth her olive everywhere.     The manner how this action hath been borne     Here at more leisure may your Highness read,     With every course in his particular.     KING. O Westmoreland, thou art a summer bird,     Which ever in the haunch of winter sings     The lifting up of day.                          Enter HARCOURT      Look here\'s more news.   HARCOURT. From enemies heaven keep your Majesty;     And, when they stand against you, may they fall     As those that I am come to tell you of!     The Earl Northumberland and the Lord Bardolph,     With a great power of English and of Scots,     Are by the shrieve of Yorkshire overthrown.     The manner and true order of the fight     This packet, please it you, contains at large.   KING. And wherefore should these good news make me sick?     Will Fortune never come with both hands full,     But write her fair words still in foulest letters?     She either gives a stomach and no food-     Such are the poor, in health- or else a feast,       And takes away the stomach- such are the rich     That have abundance and enjoy it not.     I should rejoice now at this happy news;     And now my sight fails, and my brain is giddy.     O me! come near me now I am much ill.   PRINCE HUMPHREY. Comfort, your Majesty!   CLARENCE. O my royal father!   WESTMORELAND. My sovereign lord, cheer up yourself, look up.   WARWICK. Be patient, Princes; you do know these fits     Are with his Highness very ordinary.     Stand from him, give him air; he\'ll straight be well.   CLARENCE. No, no; he cannot long hold out these pangs.     Th\' incessant care and labour of his mind     Hath wrought the mure that should confine it in     So thin that life looks through, and will break out.   PRINCE HUMPHREY. The people fear me; for they do observe     Unfather\'d heirs and loathly births of nature.     The seasons change their manners, as the year     Had found some months asleep, and leapt them over.   CLARENCE. The river hath thrice flow\'d, no ebb between;       And the old folk, Time\'s doting chronicles,     Say it did so a little time before     That our great grandsire, Edward, sick\'d and died.   WARWICK. Speak lower, Princes, for the King recovers.   PRINCE HUMPHREY. This apoplexy will certain be his end.   KING. I pray you take me up, and bear me hence     Into some other chamber. Softly, pray.                Exeunt     SCENE V. Westminster. Another chamber  The KING lying on a bed; CLARENCE, GLOUCESTER, WARWICK, and others in attendance    KING. Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends;     Unless some dull and favourable hand     Will whisper music to my weary spirit.   WARWICK. Call for the music in the other room.   KING. Set me the crown upon my pillow here.   CLARENCE. His eye is hollow, and he changes much.   WARWICK. Less noise! less noise!                          Enter PRINCE HENRY    PRINCE. Who saw the Duke of Clarence?   CLARENCE. I am here, brother, full of heaviness.   PRINCE. How now! Rain within doors, and none abroad!     How doth the King?   PRINCE HUMPHREY. Exceeding ill.   PRINCE. Heard he the good news yet? Tell it him.     PRINCE HUMPHREY. He alt\'red much upon the hearing it.   PRINCE. If he be sick with joy, he\'ll recover without physic.   WARWICK. Not so much noise, my lords. Sweet Prince, speak low;     The King your father is dispos\'d to sleep.   CLARENCE. Let us withdraw into the other room.   WARWICK. Will\'t please your Grace to go along with us?   PRINCE. No; I will sit and watch here by the King.                                        Exeunt all but the PRINCE     Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow,     Being so troublesome a bedfellow?     O polish\'d perturbation! golden care!     That keep\'st the ports of slumber open wide     To many a watchful night! Sleep with it now!     Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet     As he whose brow with homely biggen bound     Snores out the watch of night. O majesty!     When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit     Like a rich armour worn in heat of day     That scald\'st with safety. By his gates of breath     There lies a downy feather which stirs not.       Did he suspire, that light and weightless down     Perforce must move. My gracious lord! my father!     This sleep is sound indeed; this is a sleep     That from this golden rigol hath divorc\'d     So many English kings. Thy due from me     Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood     Which nature, love, and filial tenderness,     Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously.     My due from thee is this imperial crown,     Which, as immediate from thy place and blood,     Derives itself to me.  [Putting on the crown]  Lo where it sits-     Which God shall guard; and put the world\'s whole strength     Into one giant arm, it shall not force     This lineal honour from me. This from thee     Will I to mine leave as \'tis left to me.                Exit   KING. Warwick! Gloucester! Clarence!             Re-enter WARWICK, GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE    CLARENCE. Doth the King call?     WARWICK. What would your Majesty? How fares your Grace?   KING. Why did you leave me here alone, my lords?   CLARENCE. We left the Prince my brother here, my liege,     Who undertook to sit and watch by you.   KING. The Prince of Wales! Where is he? Let me see him.     He is not here.   WARWICK. This door is open; he is gone this way.   PRINCE HUMPHREY. He came not through the chamber where we stay\'d.   KING. Where is the crown? Who took it from my pillow?   WARWICK. When we withdrew, my liege, we left it here.   KING. The Prince hath ta\'en it hence. Go, seek him out.     Is he so hasty that he doth suppose     My sleep my death?     Find him, my lord of Warwick; chide him hither.                                                     Exit WARWICK     This part of his conjoins with my disease     And helps to end me. See, sons, what things you are!     How quickly nature falls into revolt     When gold becomes her object!     For this the foolish over-careful fathers       Have broke their sleep with thoughts,     Their brains with care, their bones with industry;     For this they have engrossed and pil\'d up     The cank\'red heaps of strange-achieved gold;     For this they have been thoughtful to invest     Their sons with arts and martial exercises;     When, like the bee, tolling from every flower     The virtuous sweets,     Our thighs with wax, our mouths with honey pack\'d,     We bring it to the hive, and, like the bees,     Are murd\'red for our pains. This bitter taste     Yields his engrossments to the ending father.                           Re-enter WARWICK      Now where is he that will not stay so long     Till his friend sickness hath determin\'d me?   WARWICK. My lord, I found the Prince in the next room,     Washing with kindly tears his gentle cheeks,     With such a deep demeanour in great sorrow,       That tyranny, which never quaff\'d but blood,     Would, by beholding him, have wash\'d his knife     With gentle eye-drops. He is coming hither.   KING. But wherefore did he take away the crown?                          Re-enter PRINCE HENRY      Lo where he comes. Come hither to me, Harry.     Depart the chamber, leave us here alone.                           Exeunt all but the KING and the PRINCE   PRINCE. I never thought to hear you speak again.   KING. Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought.     I stay too long by thee, I weary thee.     Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair     That thou wilt needs invest thee with my honours     Before thy hour be ripe? O foolish youth!     Thou seek\'st the greatness that will overwhelm thee.     Stay but a little, for my cloud of dignity     Is held from falling with so weak a wind     That it will quickly drop; my day is dim.       Thou hast stol\'n that which, after some few hours,     Were thine without offense; and at my death     Thou hast seal\'d up my expectation.     Thy life did manifest thou lov\'dst me not,     And thou wilt have me die assur\'d of it.     Thou hid\'st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts,     Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart,     To stab at half an hour of my life.     What, canst thou not forbear me half an hour?     Then get thee gone, and dig my grave thyself;     And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear     That thou art crowned, not that I am dead.     Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse     Be drops of balm to sanctify thy head;     Only compound me with forgotten dust;     Give that which gave thee life unto the worms.     Pluck down my officers, break my decrees;     For now a time is come to mock at form-     Harry the Fifth is crown\'d. Up, vanity:     Down, royal state. All you sage counsellors, hence.       And to the English court assemble now,     From every region, apes of idleness.     Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum.     Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance,     Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit     The oldest sins the newest kind of ways?     Be happy, he will trouble you no more.     England shall double gild his treble guilt;     England shall give him office, honour, might;     For the fifth Harry from curb\'d license plucks     The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog     Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent.     O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows!     When that my care could not withhold thy riots,     What wilt thou do when riot is thy care?     O, thou wilt be a wilderness again.     Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!   PRINCE. O, pardon me, my liege! But for my tears,     The moist impediments unto my speech,     I had forestall\'d this dear and deep rebuke       Ere you with grief had spoke and I had heard     The course of it so far. There is your crown,     And he that wears the crown immortally     Long guard it yours!  [Kneeling]  If I affect it more     Than as your honour and as your renown,     Let me no more from this obedience rise,     Which my most inward true and duteous spirit     Teacheth this prostrate and exterior bending!     God witness with me, when I here came in     And found no course of breath within your Majesty,     How cold it struck my heart! If I do feign,     O, let me in my present wildness die,     And never live to show th\' incredulous world     The noble change that I have purposed!     Coming to look on you, thinking you dead-     And dead almost, my liege, to think you were-     I spake unto this crown as having sense,     And thus upbraided it: \'The care on thee depending     Hath fed upon the body of my father;     Therefore thou best of gold art worst of gold.       Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,     Preserving life in med\'cine potable;     But thou, most fine, most honour\'d, most renown\'d,     Hast eat thy bearer up.\' Thus, my most royal liege,     Accusing it, I put it on my head,     To try with it- as with an enemy     That had before my face murd\'red my father-     The quarrel of a true inheritor.     But if it did infect my blood with joy,     Or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride;     If any rebel or vain spirit of mine     Did with the least affection of a welcome     Give entertainment to the might of it,     Let God for ever keep it from my head,     And make me as the poorest vassal is,     That doth with awe and terror kneel to it!   KING. O my son,     God put it in thy mind to take it hence,     That thou mightst win the more thy father\'s love,     Pleading so wisely in excuse of it!       Come hither, Harry; sit thou by my bed,     And hear, I think, the very latest counsel     That ever I shall breathe. God knows, my son,     By what by-paths and indirect crook\'d ways     I met this crown; and I myself know well     How troublesome it sat upon my head:     To thee it shall descend with better quiet,     Better opinion, better confirmation;     For all the soil of the achievement goes     With me into the earth. It seem\'d in me     But as an honour snatch\'d with boist\'rous hand;     And I had many living to upbraid     My gain of it by their assistances;     Which daily grew to quarrel and to bloodshed,     Wounding supposed peace. All these bold fears     Thou seest with peril I have answered;     For all my reign hath been but as a scene     Acting that argument. And now my death     Changes the mood; for what in me was purchas\'d     Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort;       So thou the garland wear\'st successively.     Yet, though thou stand\'st more sure than I could do,     Thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green;     And all my friends, which thou must make thy friends,     Have but their stings and teeth newly ta\'en out;     By whose fell working I was first advanc\'d,     And by whose power I well might lodge a fear     To be again displac\'d; which to avoid,     I cut them off; and had a purpose now     To lead out many to the Holy Land,     Lest rest and lying still might make them look     Too near unto my state. Therefore, my Harry,     Be it thy course to busy giddy minds     With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out,     May waste the memory of the former days.     More would I, but my lungs are wasted so     That strength of speech is utterly denied me.     How I came by the crown, O God, forgive;     And grant it may with thee in true peace live!   PRINCE. My gracious liege,       You won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me;     Then plain and right must my possession be;     Which I with more than with a common pain     \'Gainst all the world will rightfully maintain.         Enter PRINCE JOHN OF LANCASTER, WARWICK, LORDS, and others    KING. Look, look, here comes my John of Lancaster.   PRINCE JOHN. Health, peace, and happiness, to my royal father!   KING. Thou bring\'st me happiness and peace, son John;     But health, alack, with youthful wings is flown     From this bare wither\'d trunk. Upon thy sight     My worldly business makes a period.     Where is my Lord of Warwick?   PRINCE. My Lord of Warwick!   KING. Doth any name particular belong     Unto the lodging where I first did swoon?   WARWICK. \'Tis call\'d Jerusalem, my noble lord.   KING. Laud be to God! Even there my life must end.     It hath been prophesied to me many years,       I should not die but in Jerusalem;     Which vainly I suppos\'d the Holy Land.     But bear me to that chamber; there I\'ll lie;     In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.                    Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. Gloucestershire. SHALLOW\'S house  Enter SHALLOW, FALSTAFF, BARDOLPH, and PAGE    SHALLOW. By cock and pie, sir, you shall not away to-night.     What, Davy, I say!   FALSTAFF. You must excuse me, Master Robert Shallow.   SHALLOW. I will not excuse you; you shall not be excus\'d; excuses     shall not be admitted; there is no excuse shall serve; you shall     not be excus\'d. Why, Davy!                              Enter DAVY    DAVY. Here, sir.   SHALLOW. Davy, Davy, Davy, Davy; let me see, Davy; let me see,     Davy; let me see- yea, marry, William cook, bid him come hither.     Sir John, you shall not be excus\'d.   DAVY. Marry, sir, thus: those precepts cannot be served; and,     again, sir- shall we sow the headland with wheat?   SHALLOW. With red wheat, Davy. But for William cook- are there no     young pigeons?     DAVY. Yes, sir. Here is now the smith\'s note for shoeing and     plough-irons.   SHALLOW. Let it be cast, and paid. Sir John, you shall not be     excused.   DAVY. Now, sir, a new link to the bucket must needs be had; and,     sir, do you mean to stop any of William\'s wages about the sack he     lost the other day at Hinckley fair?   SHALLOW. \'A shall answer it. Some pigeons, Davy, a couple of     short-legg\'d hens, a joint of mutton, and any pretty little tiny     kickshaws, tell William cook.   DAVY. Doth the man of war stay all night, sir?   SHALLOW. Yea, Davy; I will use him well. A friend i\' th\' court is     better than a penny in purse. Use his men well, Davy; for they     are arrant knaves and will backbite.   DAVY. No worse than they are backbitten, sir; for they have     marvellous foul linen.   SHALLOW. Well conceited, Davy- about thy business, Davy.   DAVY. I beseech you, sir, to countenance William Visor of Woncot     against Clement Perkes o\' th\' hill.   SHALLOW. There, is many complaints, Davy, against that Visor. That       Visor is an arrant knave, on my knowledge.   DAVY. I grant your worship that he is a knave, sir; but yet God     forbid, sir, but a knave should have some countenance at his     friend\'s request. An honest man, sir, is able to speak for     himself, when a knave is not. I have serv\'d your worship truly,     sir, this eight years; an I cannot once or twice in a quarter     bear out a knave against an honest man, I have but a very little     credit with your worship. The knave is mine honest friend, sir;     therefore, I beseech you, let him be countenanc\'d.   SHALLOW. Go to; I say he shall have no wrong. Look about,   DAVY.  [Exit DAVY]  Where are you, Sir John? Come, come, come, off     with your boots. Give me your hand, Master Bardolph.   BARDOLPH. I am glad to see your worship.   SHALLOW. I thank thee with all my heart, kind Master Bardolph.     [To the PAGE]  And welcome, my tall fellow. Come, Sir John.   FALSTAFF. I\'ll follow you, good Master Robert Shallow.     [Exit SHALLOW]  Bardolph, look to our horses.  [Exeunt BARDOLPH     and PAGE]  If I were sawed into quantities, I should make four     dozen of such bearded hermits\' staves as Master Shallow. It is a     wonderful thing to see the semblable coherence of his men\'s       spirits and his. They, by observing of him, do bear themselves     like foolish justices: he, by conversing with them, is turned     into a justice-like serving-man. Their spirits are so married in     conjunction with the participation of society that they flock     together in consent, like so many wild geese. If I had a suit to     Master Shallow, I would humour his men with the imputation of     being near their master; if to his men, I would curry with Master     Shallow that no man could better command his servants. It is     certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught,     as men take diseases, one of another; therefore let men take heed     of their company. I will devise matter enough out of this Shallow     to keep Prince Harry in continual laughter the wearing out of six     fashions, which is four terms, or two actions; and \'a shall laugh     without intervallums. O, it is much that a lie with a slight     oath, and a jest with a sad brow will do with a fellow that never     had the ache in his shoulders! O, you shall see him laugh till     his face be like a wet cloak ill laid up!   SHALLOW.  [Within]  Sir John!   FALSTAFF. I come, Master Shallow; I come, Master Shallow.  Exit     SCENE II. Westminster. The palace  Enter, severally, WARWICK, and the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE    WARWICK. How now, my Lord Chief Justice; whither away?   CHIEF JUSTICE. How doth the King?   WARWICK. Exceeding well; his cares are now all ended.   CHIEF JUSTICE. I hope, not dead.   WARWICK. He\'s walk\'d the way of nature;     And to our purposes he lives no more.   CHIEF JUSTICE. I would his Majesty had call\'d me with him.     The service that I truly did his life     Hath left me open to all injuries.   WARWICK. Indeed, I think the young king loves you not.   CHIEF JUSTICE. I know he doth not, and do arm myself     To welcome the condition of the time,     Which cannot look more hideously upon me     Than I have drawn it in my fantasy.                Enter LANCASTER, CLARENCE, GLOUCESTER,                        WESTMORELAND, and others    WARWICK. Here comes the heavy issue of dead Harry.     O that the living Harry had the temper     Of he, the worst of these three gentlemen!     How many nobles then should hold their places     That must strike sail to spirits of vile sort!   CHIEF JUSTICE. O God, I fear all will be overturn\'d.   PRINCE JOHN. Good morrow, cousin Warwick, good morrow.   GLOUCESTER & CLARENCE. Good morrow, cousin.   PRINCE JOHN. We meet like men that had forgot to speak.   WARWICK. We do remember; but our argument     Is all too heavy to admit much talk.   PRINCE JOHN. Well, peace be with him that hath made us heavy!   CHIEF JUSTICE. Peace be with us, lest we be heavier!   PRINCE HUMPHREY. O, good my lord, you have lost a friend indeed;     And I dare swear you borrow not that face     Of seeming sorrow- it is sure your own.   PRINCE JOHN. Though no man be assur\'d what grace to find,     You stand in coldest expectation.       I am the sorrier; would \'twere otherwise.   CLARENCE. Well, you must now speak Sir John Falstaff fair;     Which swims against your stream of quality.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Sweet Princes, what I did, I did in honour,     Led by th\' impartial conduct of my soul;     And never shall you see that I will beg     A ragged and forestall\'d remission.     If truth and upright innocency fail me,     I\'ll to the King my master that is dead,     And tell him who hath sent me after him.   WARWICK. Here comes the Prince.              Enter KING HENRY THE FIFTH, attended    CHIEF JUSTICE. Good morrow, and God save your Majesty!   KING. This new and gorgeous garment, majesty,     Sits not so easy on me as you think.     Brothers, you mix your sadness with some fear.     This is the English, not the Turkish court;     Not Amurath an Amurath succeeds,       But Harry Harry. Yet be sad, good brothers,     For, by my faith, it very well becomes you.     Sorrow so royally in you appears     That I will deeply put the fashion on,     And wear it in my heart. Why, then, be sad;     But entertain no more of it, good brothers,     Than a joint burden laid upon us all.     For me, by heaven, I bid you be assur\'d,     I\'ll be your father and your brother too;     Let me but bear your love, I\'ll bear your cares.     Yet weep that Harry\'s dead, and so will I;     But Harry lives that shall convert those tears     By number into hours of happiness.   BROTHERS. We hope no otherwise from your Majesty.   KING. You all look strangely on me; and you most.     You are, I think, assur\'d I love you not.   CHIEF JUSTICE. I am assur\'d, if I be measur\'d rightly,     Your Majesty hath no just cause to hate me.   KING. No?     How might a prince of my great hopes forget       So great indignities you laid upon me?     What, rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison,     Th\' immediate heir of England! Was this easy?     May this be wash\'d in Lethe and forgotten?   CHIEF JUSTICE. I then did use the person of your father;     The image of his power lay then in me;     And in th\' administration of his law,     Whiles I was busy for the commonwealth,     Your Highness pleased to forget my place,     The majesty and power of law and justice,     The image of the King whom I presented,     And struck me in my very seat of judgment;     Whereon, as an offender to your father,     I gave bold way to my authority     And did commit you. If the deed were ill,     Be you contented, wearing now the garland,     To have a son set your decrees at nought,     To pluck down justice from your awful bench,     To trip the course of law, and blunt the sword     That guards the peace and safety of your person;       Nay, more, to spurn at your most royal image,     And mock your workings in a second body.     Question your royal thoughts, make the case yours;     Be now the father, and propose a son;     Hear your own dignity so much profan\'d,     See your most dreadful laws so loosely slighted,     Behold yourself so by a son disdain\'d;     And then imagine me taking your part     And, in your power, soft silencing your son.     After this cold considerance, sentence me;     And, as you are a king, speak in your state     What I have done that misbecame my place,     My person, or my liege\'s sovereignty.   KING. You are right, Justice, and you weigh this well;     Therefore still bear the balance and the sword;     And I do wish your honours may increase     Till you do live to see a son of mine     Offend you, and obey you, as I did.     So shall I live to speak my father\'s words:     \'Happy am I that have a man so bold       That dares do justice on my proper son;     And not less happy, having such a son     That would deliver up his greatness so     Into the hands of justice.\' You did commit me;     For which I do commit into your hand     Th\' unstained sword that you have us\'d to bear;     With this remembrance- that you use the same     With the like bold, just, and impartial spirit     As you have done \'gainst me. There is my hand.     You shall be as a father to my youth;     My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear;     And I will stoop and humble my intents     To your well-practis\'d wise directions.     And, Princes all, believe me, I beseech you,     My father is gone wild into his grave,     For in his tomb lie my affections;     And with his spirits sadly I survive,     To mock the expectation of the world,     To frustrate prophecies, and to raze out     Rotten opinion, who hath writ me down       After my seeming. The tide of blood in me     Hath proudly flow\'d in vanity till now.     Now doth it turn and ebb back to the sea,     Where it shall mingle with the state of floods,     And flow henceforth in formal majesty.     Now call we our high court of parliament;     And let us choose such limbs of noble counsel,     That the great body of our state may go     In equal rank with the best govern\'d nation;     That war, or peace, or both at once, may be     As things acquainted and familiar to us;     In which you, father, shall have foremost hand.     Our coronation done, we will accite,     As I before rememb\'red, all our state;     And- God consigning to my good intents-     No prince nor peer shall have just cause to say,     God shorten Harry\'s happy life one day.               Exeunt     SCENE III. Gloucestershire. SHALLOW\'S orchard  Enter FALSTAFF, SHALLOW, SILENCE, BARDOLPH, the PAGE, and DAVY    SHALLOW. Nay, you shall see my orchard, where, in an arbour, we     will eat a last year\'s pippin of mine own graffing, with a dish     of caraways, and so forth. Come, cousin Silence. And then to bed.   FALSTAFF. Fore God, you have here a goodly dwelling and rich.   SHALLOW. Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all, Sir John     -marry, good air. Spread, Davy, spread, Davy; well said, Davy.   FALSTAFF. This Davy serves you for good uses; he is your     serving-man and your husband.   SHALLOW. A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet, Sir     John. By the mass, I have drunk too much sack at supper. A good     varlet. Now sit down, now sit down; come, cousin.   SILENCE. Ah, sirrah! quoth-a- we shall               [Singing]                Do nothing but eat and make good cheer,               And praise God for the merry year;               When flesh is cheap and females dear,                 And lusty lads roam here and there,                   So merrily,                 And ever among so merrily.    FALSTAFF. There\'s a merry heart! Good Master Silence, I\'ll give you     a health for that anon.   SHALLOW. Give Master Bardolph some wine, Davy.   DAVY. Sweet sir, sit; I\'ll be with you anon; most sweet sir, sit.     Master Page, good Master Page, sit. Proface! What you want in     meat, we\'ll have in drink. But you must bear; the heart\'s all.  Exit   SHALLOW. Be merry, Master Bardolph; and, my little soldier there,     be merry.   SILENCE.  [Singing]           Be merry, be merry, my wife has all;          For women are shrews, both short and tall;          \'Tis merry in hall when beards wag an;            And welcome merry Shrove-tide.          Be merry, be merry.      FALSTAFF. I did not think Master Silence had been a man of this     mettle.   SILENCE. Who, I? I have been merry twice and once ere now.                            Re-enter DAVY    DAVY.  [To BARDOLPH]  There\'s a dish of leather-coats for you.   SHALLOW. Davy!   DAVY. Your worship! I\'ll be with you straight.  [To BARDOLPH]     A cup of wine, sir?   SILENCE.  [Singing]           A cup of wine that\'s brisk and fine,          And drink unto the leman mine;            And a merry heart lives long-a.    FALSTAFF. Well said, Master Silence.   SILENCE. An we shall be merry, now comes in the sweet o\' th\' night.   FALSTAFF. Health and long life to you, Master Silence!     SILENCE.  [Singing]           Fill the cup, and let it come,          I\'ll pledge you a mile to th\' bottom.    SHALLOW. Honest Bardolph, welcome; if thou want\'st anything and     wilt not call, beshrew thy heart. Welcome, my little tiny thief     and welcome indeed too. I\'ll drink to Master Bardolph, and to all     the cabileros about London.   DAVY. I hope to see London once ere I die.   BARDOLPH. An I might see you there, Davy!   SHALLOW. By the mass, you\'R crack a quart together- ha! will you     not, Master Bardolph?   BARDOLPH. Yea, sir, in a pottle-pot.   SHALLOW. By God\'s liggens, I thank thee. The knave will stick by     thee, I can assure thee that. \'A will not out, \'a; \'tis true     bred.   BARDOLPH. And I\'ll stick by him, sir.   SHALLOW. Why, there spoke a king. Lack nothing; be merry.     [One knocks at door]  Look who\'s at door there, ho! Who knocks?                                                          Exit DAVY   FALSTAFF.  [To SILENCE, who has drunk a bumper]  Why, now you have     done me right.   SILENCE.  [Singing]           Do me right,          And dub me knight.            Samingo.      Is\'t not so?   FALSTAFF. \'Tis so.   SILENCE. Is\'t so? Why then, say an old man can do somewhat.                          Re-enter DAVY    DAVY. An\'t please your worship, there\'s one Pistol come from the     court with news.   FALSTAFF. From the court? Let him come in.                          Enter PISTOL        How now, Pistol?   PISTOL. Sir John, God save you!   FALSTAFF. What wind blew you hither, Pistol?   PISTOL. Not the ill wind which blows no man to good. Sweet knight,     thou art now one of the greatest men in this realm.   SILENCE. By\'r lady, I think \'a be, but goodman Puff of Barson.   PISTOL. Puff!     Puff in thy teeth, most recreant coward base!     Sir John, I am thy Pistol and thy friend,     And helter-skelter have I rode to thee;     And tidings do I bring, and lucky joys,     And golden times, and happy news of price.   FALSTAFF. I pray thee now, deliver them like a man of this world.   PISTOL. A foutra for the world and worldlings base!     I speak of Africa and golden joys.   FALSTAFF. O base Assyrian knight, what is thy news?     Let King Cophetua know the truth thereof.   SILENCE.  [Singing]  And Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John.   PISTOL. Shall dunghill curs confront the Helicons?       And shall good news be baffled?     Then, Pistol, lay thy head in Furies\' lap.   SHALLOW. Honest gentleman, I know not your breeding.   PISTOL. Why, then, lament therefore.   SHALLOW. Give me pardon, sir. If, sir, you come with news from the     court, I take it there\'s but two ways- either to utter them or     conceal them. I am, sir, under the King, in some authority.   PISTOL. Under which king, Bezonian? Speak, or die.   SHALLOW. Under King Harry.   PISTOL. Harry the Fourth- or Fifth?   SHALLOW. Harry the Fourth.   PISTOL. A foutra for thine office!     Sir John, thy tender lambkin now is King;     Harry the Fifth\'s the man. I speak the truth.     When Pistol lies, do this; and fig me, like     The bragging Spaniard.   FALSTAFF. What, is the old king dead?   PISTOL. As nail in door. The things I speak are just.   FALSTAFF. Away, Bardolph! saddle my horse. Master Robert Shallow,     choose what office thou wilt in the land, \'tis thine. Pistol, I       will double-charge thee with dignities.   BARDOLPH. O joyful day!     I would not take a knighthood for my fortune.   PISTOL. What, I do bring good news?   FALSTAFF. Carry Master Silence to bed. Master Shallow, my Lord     Shallow, be what thou wilt- I am Fortune\'s steward. Get on thy     boots; we\'ll ride all night. O sweet Pistol! Away, Bardolph!     [Exit BARDOLPH]  Come, Pistol, utter more to me; and withal     devise something to do thyself good. Boot, boot, Master Shallow!     I know the young King is sick for me. Let us take any man\'s     horses: the laws of England are at my commandment. Blessed are     they that have been my friends; and woe to my Lord Chief Justice!   PISTOL. Let vultures vile seize on his lungs also!     \'Where is the life that late I led?\' say they.     Why, here it is; welcome these pleasant days!         Exeunt     SCENE IV. London. A street  Enter BEADLES, dragging in HOSTESS QUICKLY and DOLL TEARSHEET    HOSTESS. No, thou arrant knave; I would to God that I might die,     that I might have thee hang\'d. Thou hast drawn my shoulder out of     joint.   FIRST BEADLE. The constables have delivered her over to me; and she     shall have whipping-cheer enough, I warrant her. There hath been     a man or two lately kill\'d about her.   DOLL. Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie. Come on; I\'ll tell thee what,     thou damn\'d tripe-visag\'d rascal, an the child I now go with do     miscarry, thou wert better thou hadst struck thy mother, thou     paper-fac\'d villain.   HOSTESS. O the Lord, that Sir John were come! He would make this a     bloody day to somebody. But I pray God the fruit of her womb     miscarry!   FIRST BEADLE. If it do, you shall have a dozen of cushions again;     you have but eleven now. Come, I charge you both go with me; for     the man is dead that you and Pistol beat amongst you.     DOLL. I\'ll tell you what, you thin man in a censer, I will have you     as soundly swing\'d for this- you blue-bottle rogue, you filthy     famish\'d correctioner, if you be not swing\'d, I\'ll forswear     half-kirtles.   FIRST BEADLE. Come, come, you she knight-errant, come.   HOSTESS. O God, that right should thus overcome might!     Well, of sufferance comes ease.   DOLL. Come, you rogue, come; bring me to a justice.   HOSTESS. Ay, come, you starv\'d bloodhound.   DOLL. Goodman death, goodman bones!   HOSTESS. Thou atomy, thou!   DOLL. Come, you thin thing! come, you rascal!   FIRST BEADLE. Very well.                                Exeunt     SCENE V. Westminster. Near the Abbey  Enter GROOMS, strewing rushes    FIRST GROOM. More rushes, more rushes!   SECOND GROOM. The trumpets have sounded twice.   THIRD GROOM. \'Twill be two o\'clock ere they come from the     coronation. Dispatch, dispatch.                       Exeunt          Trumpets sound, and the KING and his train pass        over the stage. After them enter FALSTAFF, SHALLOW,                   PISTOL, BARDOLPH, and page    FALSTAFF. Stand here by me, Master Robert Shallow; I will make the     King do you grace. I will leer upon him, as \'a comes by; and do     but mark the countenance that he will give me.   PISTOL. God bless thy lungs, good knight!   FALSTAFF. Come here, Pistol; stand behind me.  [To SHALLOW]  O, if     I had had to have made new liveries, I would have bestowed the     thousand pound I borrowed of you. But \'tis no matter; this poor     show doth better; this doth infer the zeal I had to see him.     SHALLOW. It doth so.   FALSTAFF. It shows my earnestness of affection-   SHALLOW. It doth so.   FALSTAFF. My devotion-   SHALLOW. It doth, it doth, it doth.   FALSTAFF. As it were, to ride day and night; and not to deliberate,     not to remember, not to have patience to shift me-   SHALLOW. It is best, certain.   FALSTAFF. But to stand stained with travel, and sweating with     desire to see him; thinking of nothing else, putting all affairs     else in oblivion, as if there were nothing else to be done but to     see him.   PISTOL. \'Tis \'semper idem\' for \'obsque hoc nihil est.\' \'Tis all in     every part.   SHALLOW. \'Tis so, indeed.   PISTOL. My knight, I will inflame thy noble liver     And make thee rage.     Thy Doll, and Helen of thy noble thoughts,     Is in base durance and contagious prison;     Hal\'d thither       By most mechanical and dirty hand.     Rouse up revenge from ebon den with fell Alecto\'s snake,     For Doll is in. Pistol speaks nought but truth.   FALSTAFF. I will deliver her.                          [Shouts,within, and the trumpets sound]   PISTOL. There roar\'d the sea, and trumpet-clangor sounds.          Enter the KING and his train, the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE                                among them    FALSTAFF. God save thy Grace, King Hal; my royal Hal!   PISTOL. The heavens thee guard and keep, most royal imp of fame!   FALSTAFF. God save thee, my sweet boy!   KING. My Lord Chief Justice, speak to that vain man.   CHIEF JUSTICE. Have you your wits? Know you what \'tis you speak?   FALSTAFF. My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!   KING. I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers.     How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!     I have long dreamt of such a kind of man,     So surfeit-swell\'d, so old, and so profane;       But being awak\'d, I do despise my dream.     Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;     Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape     For thee thrice wider than for other men-     Reply not to me with a fool-born jest;     Presume not that I am the thing I was,     For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,     That I have turn\'d away my former self;     So will I those that kept me company.     When thou dost hear I am as I have been,     Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,     The tutor and the feeder of my riots.     Till then I banish thee, on pain of death,     As I have done the rest of my misleaders,     Not to come near our person by ten mile.     For competence of life I will allow you,     That lack of means enforce you not to evils;     And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,     We will, according to your strengths and qualities,     Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,       To see perform\'d the tenour of our word.     Set on.                        Exeunt the KING and his train   FALSTAFF. Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pounds.   SHALLOW. Yea, marry, Sir John; which I beseech you to let me have     home with me.   FALSTAFF. That can hardly be, Master Shallow. Do not you grieve at     this; I shall be sent for in private to him. Look you, he must     seem thus to the world. Fear not your advancements; I will be the     man yet that shall make you great.   SHALLOW. I cannot perceive how, unless you give me your doublet,     and stuff me out with straw. I beseech you, good Sir John, let me     have five hundred of my thousand.   FALSTAFF. Sir, I will be as good as my word. This that you heard     was but a colour.   SHALLOW. A colour that I fear you will die in, Sir John.   FALSTAFF. Fear no colours; go with me to dinner. Come, Lieutenant     Pistol; come, Bardolph. I shall be sent for soon at night.              Re-enter PRINCE JOHN, the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE,                             with officers      CHIEF JUSTICE. Go, carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet;     Take all his company along with him.   FALSTAFF. My lord, my lord-   CHIEF JUSTICE. I cannot now speak. I will hear you soon.     Take them away.   PISTOL. Si fortuna me tormenta, spero me contenta.            Exeunt all but PRINCE JOHN and the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE   PRINCE JOHN. I like this fair proceeding of the King\'s.     He hath intent his wonted followers     Shall all be very well provided for;     But all are banish\'d till their conversations     Appear more wise and modest to the world.   CHIEF JUSTICE. And so they are.   PRINCE JOHN. The King hath call\'d his parliament, my lord.   CHIEF JUSTICE. He hath.   PRINCE JOHN. I will lay odds that, ere this year expire,     We bear our civil swords and native fire     As far as France. I heard a bird so sing,     Whose music, to my thinking, pleas\'d the King.       Come, will you hence?                                 Exeunt  EPILOGUE                            EPILOGUE.    First my fear, then my curtsy, last my speech. My fear, is your displeasure; my curtsy, my duty; and my speech, to beg your pardons. If you look for a good speech now, you undo me; for what I have to say is of mine own making; and what, indeed, I should say will, I doubt, prove mine own marring. But to the purpose, and so to the venture. Be it known to you, as it is very well, I was lately here in the end of a displeasing play, to pray your patience for it and to promise you a better. I meant, indeed, to pay you with this; which if like an ill venture it come unluckily home, I break, and you, my gentle creditors, lose. Here I promis\'d you I would be, and here I commit my body to your mercies. Bate me some, and I will pay you some, and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely; and so I kneel down before you- but, indeed, to pray for the Queen.   If my tongue cannot entreat you to acquit me, will you command me to use my legs? And yet that were but light payment-to dance out of your debt. But a good conscience will make any possible satisfaction, and so would I. All the gentlewomen here have forgiven me. If the gentlemen will not, then the gentlemen do not agree with the gentlewomen, which was never seen before in such an assembly.   One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloy\'d with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katherine of France; where, for anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already \'a be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr and this is not the man. My tongue is weary; when my legs are too, I will bid you good night.   THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1599  THE LIFE OF KING HENRY THE FIFTH  by William Shakespeare    DRAMATIS PERSONAE    CHORUS   KING HENRY THE FIFTH   DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, brother to the King   DUKE OF BEDFORD,       "     "  "    "   DUKE OF EXETER, Uncle to the King   DUKE OF YORK, cousin to the King   EARL OF SALISBURY   EARL OF WESTMORELAND   EARL OF WARWICK   ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY   BISHOP OF ELY    EARL OF CAMBRIDGE, conspirator against the King   LORD SCROOP,            "         "     "    "   SIR THOMAS GREY,        "         "     "    "   SIR THOMAS ERPINGHAM, officer in the King\'s army   GOWER,                  "      "  "    "     "   FLUELLEN,               "      "  "    "     "   MACMORRIS,              "      "  "    "     "   JAMY,                   "      "  "    "     "      BATES,    soldier in the King\'s army   COURT,       "    "   "    "     "   WILLIAMS,    "    "   "    "     "   NYM,         "    "   "    "     "   BARDOLPH,    "    "   "    "     "   PISTOL,      "    "   "    "     "    BOY                               A HERALD    CHARLES THE SIXTH, King of France   LEWIS, the Dauphin                DUKE OF BURGUNDY   DUKE OF ORLEANS                   DUKE OF BRITAINE   DUKE OF BOURBON                   THE CONSTABLE OF FRANCE   RAMBURES, French Lord   GRANDPRE,    "    "   GOVERNOR OF HARFLEUR              MONTJOY, a French herald   AMBASSADORS to the King of England    ISABEL, Queen of France     KATHERINE, daughter to Charles and Isabel   ALICE, a lady attending her   HOSTESS of the Boar\'s Head, Eastcheap; formerly Mrs. Quickly, now     married to Pistol    Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Messengers, Attendants                                 SCENE:                         England and France  PROLOGUE                             PROLOGUE.                            Enter CHORUS   CHORUS. O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend    The brightest heaven of invention,    A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,    And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!    Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,    Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,    Leash\'d in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire,    Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all,    The flat unraised spirits that hath dar\'d    On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth    So great an object. Can this cockpit hold    The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram    Within this wooden O the very casques    That did affright the air at Agincourt?    O, pardon! since a crooked figure may    Attest in little place a million;    And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,    On your imaginary forces work.    Suppose within the girdle of these walls      Are now confin\'d two mighty monarchies,    Whose high upreared and abutting fronts    The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.    Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts:    Into a thousand parts divide one man,    And make imaginary puissance;    Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them    Printing their proud hoofs i\' th\' receiving earth;    For \'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,    Carry them here and there, jumping o\'er times,    Turning th\' accomplishment of many years    Into an hour-glass; for the which supply,    Admit me Chorus to this history;    Who prologue-like, your humble patience pray    Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.               Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT I. SCENE I. London. An ante-chamber in the KING\'S palace  Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY and the BISHOP OF ELY   CANTERBURY. My lord, I\'ll tell you: that self bill is urg\'d    Which in th\' eleventh year of the last king\'s reign    Was like, and had indeed against us pass\'d    But that the scambling and unquiet time    Did push it out of farther question.  ELY. But how, my lord, shall we resist it now?  CANTERBURY. It must be thought on. If it pass against us,    We lose the better half of our possession;    For all the temporal lands which men devout    By testament have given to the church    Would they strip from us; being valu\'d thus-    As much as would maintain, to the King\'s honour,    Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,    Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;    And, to relief of lazars and weak age,    Of indigent faint souls, past corporal toil,    A hundred alms-houses right well supplied;    And to the coffers of the King, beside,    A thousand pounds by th\' year: thus runs the bill.  ELY. This would drink deep.  CANTERBURY. \'T would drink the cup and all.  ELY. But what prevention?  CANTERBURY. The King is full of grace and fair regard.  ELY. And a true lover of the holy Church.  CANTERBURY. The courses of his youth promis\'d it not.    The breath no sooner left his father\'s body      But that his wildness, mortified in him,    Seem\'d to die too; yea, at that very moment,    Consideration like an angel came    And whipp\'d th\' offending Adam out of him,    Leaving his body as a paradise    T\'envelop and contain celestial spirits.    Never was such a sudden scholar made;    Never came reformation in a flood,    With such a heady currance, scouring faults;    Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulnes    So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,    As in this king.  ELY. We are blessed in the change.  CANTERBURY. Hear him but reason in divinity,    And, all-admiring, with an inward wish    You would desire the King were made a prelate;    Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,    You would say it hath been all in all his study;    List his discourse of war, and you shall hear    A fearful battle rend\'red you in music.    Turn him to any cause of policy,    The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,      Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks,    The air, a charter\'d libertine, is still,    And the mute wonder lurketh in men\'s ears    To steal his sweet and honey\'d sentences;    So that the art and practic part of life    Must be the mistress to this theoric;    Which is a wonder how his Grace should glean it,    Since his addiction was to courses vain,    His companies unletter\'d, rude, and shallow,    His hours fill\'d up with riots, banquets, sports;    And never noted in him any study,    Any retirement, any sequestration    From open haunts and popularity.  ELY. The strawberry grows underneath the nettle,    And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best    Neighbour\'d by fruit of baser quality;    And so the Prince obscur\'d his contemplation    Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt,    Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,    Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.  CANTERBURY. It must be so; for miracles are ceas\'d;    And therefore we must needs admit the means      How things are perfected.  ELY. But, my good lord,    How now for mitigation of this bill    Urg\'d by the Commons? Doth his Majesty    Incline to it, or no?  CANTERBURY. He seems indifferent    Or rather swaying more upon our part    Than cherishing th\' exhibiters against us;    For I have made an offer to his Majesty-    Upon our spiritual convocation    And in regard of causes now in hand,    Which I have open\'d to his Grace at large,    As touching France- to give a greater sum    Than ever at one time the clergy yet    Did to his predecessors part withal.  ELY. How did this offer seem receiv\'d, my lord?  CANTERBURY. With good acceptance of his Majesty;    Save that there was not time enough to hear,    As I perceiv\'d his Grace would fain have done,    The severals and unhidden passages    Of his true tides to some certain dukedoms,    And generally to the crown and seat of France,    Deriv\'d from Edward, his great-grandfather.  ELY. What was th\' impediment that broke this off?  CANTERBURY. The French ambassador upon that instant    Crav\'d audience; and the hour, I think, is come      To give him hearing: is it four o\'clock?  ELY. It is.  CANTERBURY. Then go we in, to know his embassy;    Which I could with a ready guess declare,    Before the Frenchman speak a word of it.  ELY. I\'ll wait upon you, and I long to hear it.          Exeunt     SCENE II. London. The Presence Chamber in the KING\'S palace  Enter the KING, GLOUCESTER, BEDFORD, EXETER, WARWICK, WESTMORELAND, and attendants    KING HENRY. Where is my gracious Lord of Canterbury?   EXETER. Not here in presence.   KING HENRY. Send for him, good uncle.   WESTMORELAND. Shall we call in th\' ambassador, my liege?   KING HENRY. Not yet, my cousin; we would be resolv\'d,     Before we hear him, of some things of weight     That task our thoughts, concerning us and France.                Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY and                        the BISHOP OF ELY    CANTERBURY. God and his angels guard your sacred throne,     And make you long become it!   KING HENRY. Sure, we thank you.     My learned lord, we pray you to proceed,     And justly and religiously unfold       Why the law Salique, that they have in France,     Or should or should not bar us in our claim;     And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord,     That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading,     Or nicely charge your understanding soul     With opening titles miscreate whose right     Suits not in native colours with the truth;     For God doth know how many, now in health,     Shall drop their blood in approbation     Of what your reverence shall incite us to.     Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,     How you awake our sleeping sword of war-     We charge you, in the name of God, take heed;     For never two such kingdoms did contend     Without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops     Are every one a woe, a sore complaint,     \'Gainst him whose wrongs gives edge unto the swords     That makes such waste in brief mortality.     Under this conjuration speak, my lord;     For we will hear, note, and believe in heart,       That what you speak is in your conscience wash\'d     As pure as sin with baptism.   CANTERBURY. Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you peers,     That owe yourselves, your lives, and services,     To this imperial throne. There is no bar     To make against your Highness\' claim to France     But this, which they produce from Pharamond:     \'In terram Salicam mulieres ne succedant\'-     \'No woman shall succeed in Salique land\';     Which Salique land the French unjustly gloze     To be the realm of France, and Pharamond     The founder of this law and female bar.     Yet their own authors faithfully affirm     That the land Salique is in Germany,     Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe;     Where Charles the Great, having subdu\'d the Saxons,     There left behind and settled certain French;     Who, holding in disdain the German women     For some dishonest manners of their life,     Establish\'d then this law: to wit, no female       Should be inheritrix in Salique land;     Which Salique, as I said, \'twixt Elbe and Sala,     Is at this day in Germany call\'d Meisen.     Then doth it well appear the Salique law     Was not devised for the realm of France;     Nor did the French possess the Salique land     Until four hundred one and twenty years     After defunction of King Pharamond,     Idly suppos\'d the founder of this law;     Who died within the year of our redemption     Four hundred twenty-six; and Charles the Great     Subdu\'d the Saxons, and did seat the French     Beyond the river Sala, in the year     Eight hundred five. Besides, their writers say,     King Pepin, which deposed Childeric,     Did, as heir general, being descended     Of Blithild, which was daughter to King Clothair,     Make claim and title to the crown of France.     Hugh Capet also, who usurp\'d the crown     Of Charles the Duke of Lorraine, sole heir male       Of the true line and stock of Charles the Great,     To find his title with some shows of truth-     Though in pure truth it was corrupt and naught-     Convey\'d himself as th\' heir to th\' Lady Lingare,     Daughter to Charlemain, who was the son     To Lewis the Emperor, and Lewis the son     Of Charles the Great. Also King Lewis the Tenth,     Who was sole heir to the usurper Capet,     Could not keep quiet in his conscience,     Wearing the crown of France, till satisfied     That fair Queen Isabel, his grandmother,     Was lineal of the Lady Ermengare,     Daughter to Charles the foresaid Duke of Lorraine;     By the which marriage the line of Charles the Great     Was re-united to the Crown of France.     So that, as clear as is the summer\'s sun,     King Pepin\'s title, and Hugh Capet\'s claim,     King Lewis his satisfaction, all appear     To hold in right and tide of the female;     So do the kings of France unto this day,       Howbeit they would hold up this Salique law     To bar your Highness claiming from the female;     And rather choose to hide them in a net     Than amply to imbar their crooked tides     Usurp\'d from you and your progenitors.   KING HENRY. May I with right and conscience make this claim?   CANTERBURY. The sin upon my head, dread sovereign!     For in the book of Numbers is it writ,     When the man dies, let the inheritance     Descend unto the daughter. Gracious lord,     Stand for your own, unwind your bloody flag,     Look back into your mighty ancestors.     Go, my dread lord, to your great-grandsire\'s tomb,     From whom you claim; invoke his warlike spirit,     And your great-uncle\'s, Edward the Black Prince,     Who on the French ground play\'d a tragedy,     Making defeat on the fun power of France,     Whiles his most mighty father on a hill     Stood smiling to behold his lion\'s whelp     Forage in blood of French nobility.       O noble English, that could entertain     With half their forces the full pride of France,     And let another half stand laughing by,     All out of work and cold for action!   ELY. Awake remembrance of these valiant dead,     And with your puissant arm renew their feats.     You are their heir; you sit upon their throne;     The blood and courage that renowned them     Runs in your veins; and my thrice-puissant liege     Is in the very May-morn of his youth,     Ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises.   EXETER. Your brother kings and monarchs of the earth     Do all expect that you should rouse yourself,     As did the former lions of your blood.   WESTMORELAND. They know your Grace hath cause and means and might-     So hath your Highness; never King of England     Had nobles richer and more loyal subjects,     Whose hearts have left their bodies here in England     And lie pavilion\'d in the fields of France.   CANTERBURY. O, let their bodies follow, my dear liege,       With blood and sword and fire to win your right!     In aid whereof we of the spiritualty     Will raise your Highness such a mighty sum     As never did the clergy at one time     Bring in to any of your ancestors.   KING HENRY. We must not only arm t\' invade the French,     But lay down our proportions to defend     Against the Scot, who will make road upon us     With all advantages.   CANTERBURY. They of those marches, gracious sovereign,     Shall be a wall sufficient to defend     Our inland from the pilfering borderers.   KING HENRY. We do not mean the coursing snatchers only,     But fear the main intendment of the Scot,     Who hath been still a giddy neighbour to us;     For you shall read that my great-grandfather     Never went with his forces into France     But that the Scot on his unfurnish\'d kingdom     Came pouring, like the tide into a breach,     With ample and brim fulness of his force,       Galling the gleaned land with hot assays,     Girdling with grievous siege castles and towns;     That England, being empty of defence,     Hath shook and trembled at th\' ill neighbourhood.   CANTERBURY. She hath been then more fear\'d than harm\'d, my liege;     For hear her but exampled by herself:     When all her chivalry hath been in France,     And she a mourning widow of her nobles,     She hath herself not only well defended     But taken and impounded as a stray     The King of Scots; whom she did send to France,     To fill King Edward\'s fame with prisoner kings,     And make her chronicle as rich with praise     As is the ooze and bottom of the sea     With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries.   WESTMORELAND. But there\'s a saying, very old and true:            \'If that you will France win,           Then with Scotland first begin.\'        For once the eagle England being in prey,     To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot     Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs,     Playing the mouse in absence of the cat,     To tear and havoc more than she can eat.   EXETER. It follows, then, the cat must stay at home;     Yet that is but a crush\'d necessity,     Since we have locks to safeguard necessaries     And pretty traps to catch the petty thieves.     While that the armed hand doth fight abroad,     Th\' advised head defends itself at home;     For government, though high, and low, and lower,     Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,     Congreeing in a full and natural close,     Like music.   CANTERBURY. Therefore doth heaven divide     The state of man in divers functions,     Setting endeavour in continual motion;     To which is fixed as an aim or but     Obedience; for so work the honey bees,       Creatures that by a rule in nature teach     The act of order to a peopled kingdom.     They have a king, and officers of sorts,     Where some like magistrates correct at home;     Others like merchants venture trade abroad;     Others like soldiers, armed in their stings,     Make boot upon the summer\'s velvet buds,     Which pillage they with merry march bring home     To the tent-royal of their emperor;     Who, busied in his majesty, surveys     The singing masons building roofs of gold,     The civil citizens kneading up the honey,     The poor mechanic porters crowding in     Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,     The sad-ey\'d justice, with his surly hum,     Delivering o\'er to executors pale     The lazy yawning drone. I this infer,     That many things, having full reference     To one consent, may work contrariously;     As many arrows loosed several ways       Come to one mark, as many ways meet in one town,     As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea,     As many lines close in the dial\'s centre;     So many a thousand actions, once afoot,     End in one purpose, and be all well home     Without defeat. Therefore to France, my liege.     Divide your happy England into four;     Whereof take you one quarter into France,     And you withal shall make all Gallia shake.     If we, with thrice such powers left at home,     Cannot defend our own doors from the dog,     Let us be worried, and our nation lose     The name of hardiness and policy.   KING HENRY. Call in the messengers sent from the Dauphin.                                           Exeunt some attendants     Now are we well resolv\'d; and, by God\'s help     And yours, the noble sinews of our power,     France being ours, we\'ll bend it to our awe,     Or break it all to pieces; or there we\'ll sit,     Ruling in large and ample empery       O\'er France and all her almost kingly dukedoms,     Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn,     Tombless, with no remembrance over them.     Either our history shall with full mouth     Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave,     Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,     Not worshipp\'d with a waxen epitaph.                    Enter AMBASSADORS of France      Now are we well prepar\'d to know the pleasure     Of our fair cousin Dauphin; for we hear     Your greeting is from him, not from the King.   AMBASSADOR. May\'t please your Majesty to give us leave     Freely to render what we have in charge;     Or shall we sparingly show you far of     The Dauphin\'s meaning and our embassy?   KING HENRY. We are no tyrant, but a Christian king,     Unto whose grace our passion is as subject     As are our wretches fett\'red in our prisons;       Therefore with frank and with uncurbed plainness     Tell us the Dauphin\'s mind.   AMBASSADOR. Thus then, in few.     Your Highness, lately sending into France,     Did claim some certain dukedoms in the right     Of your great predecessor, King Edward the Third.     In answer of which claim, the Prince our master     Says that you savour too much of your youth,     And bids you be advis\'d there\'s nought in France     That can be with a nimble galliard won;     You cannot revel into dukedoms there.     He therefore sends you, meeter for your spirit,     This tun of treasure; and, in lieu of this,     Desires you let the dukedoms that you claim     Hear no more of you. This the Dauphin speaks.   KING HENRY. What treasure, uncle?   EXETER. Tennis-balls, my liege.   KING HENRY. We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;     His present and your pains we thank you for.     When we have match\'d our rackets to these balls,       We will in France, by God\'s grace, play a set     Shall strike his father\'s crown into the hazard.     Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler     That all the courts of France will be disturb\'d     With chaces. And we understand him well,     How he comes o\'er us with our wilder days,     Not measuring what use we made of them.     We never valu\'d this poor seat of England;     And therefore, living hence, did give ourself     To barbarous licence; as \'tis ever common     That men are merriest when they are from home.     But tell the Dauphin I will keep my state,     Be like a king, and show my sail of greatness,     When I do rouse me in my throne of France;     For that I have laid by my majesty     And plodded like a man for working-days;     But I will rise there with so full a glory     That I will dazzle all the eyes of France,     Yea, strike the Dauphin blind to look on us.     And tell the pleasant Prince this mock of his       Hath turn\'d his balls to gun-stones, and his soul     Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance     That shall fly with them; for many a thousand widows     Shall this his mock mock of their dear husbands;     Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down;     And some are yet ungotten and unborn     That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin\'s scorn.     But this lies all within the will of God,     To whom I do appeal; and in whose name,     Tell you the Dauphin, I am coming on,     To venge me as I may and to put forth     My rightful hand in a well-hallow\'d cause.     So get you hence in peace; and tell the Dauphin     His jest will savour but of shallow wit,     When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.     Convey them with safe conduct. Fare you well.                                               Exeunt AMBASSADORS   EXETER. This was a merry message.   KING HENRY. We hope to make the sender blush at it.     Therefore, my lords, omit no happy hour       That may give furth\'rance to our expedition;     For we have now no thought in us but France,     Save those to God, that run before our business.     Therefore let our proportions for these wars     Be soon collected, and all things thought upon     That may with reasonable swiftness ad     More feathers to our wings; for, God before,     We\'ll chide this Dauphin at his father\'s door.     Therefore let every man now task his thought     That this fair action may on foot be brought.         Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. PROLOGUE.  Flourish. Enter CHORUS    CHORUS. Now all the youth of England are on fire,     And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;     Now thrive the armourers, and honour\'s thought     Reigns solely in the breast of every man;     They sell the pasture now to buy the horse,     Following the mirror of all Christian kings     With winged heels, as English Mercuries.     For now sits Expectation in the air,     And hides a sword from hilts unto the point     With crowns imperial, crowns, and coronets,     Promis\'d to Harry and his followers.     The French, advis\'d by good intelligence     Of this most dreadful preparation,     Shake in their fear and with pale policy     Seek to divert the English purposes.     O England! model to thy inward greatness,     Like little body with a mighty heart,     What mightst thou do that honour would thee do,       Were all thy children kind and natural!     But see thy fault! France hath in thee found out     A nest of hollow bosoms, which he fills     With treacherous crowns; and three corrupted men-     One, Richard Earl of Cambridge, and the second,     Henry Lord Scroop of Masham, and the third,     Sir Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland,     Have, for the gilt of France- O guilt indeed!-     Confirm\'d conspiracy with fearful France;     And by their hands this grace of kings must die-     If hell and treason hold their promises,     Ere he take ship for France- and in Southampton.     Linger your patience on, and we\'ll digest     Th\' abuse of distance, force a play.     The sum is paid, the traitors are agreed,     The King is set from London, and the scene     Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton;     There is the play-house now, there must you sit,     And thence to France shall we convey you safe     And bring you back, charming the narrow seas       To give you gentle pass; for, if we may,     We\'ll not offend one stomach with our play.     But, till the King come forth, and not till then,     Unto Southampton do we shift our scene.                 Exit     SCENE I. London. Before the Boar\'s Head Tavern, Eastcheap  Enter CORPORAL NYM and LIEUTENANT BARDOLPH    BARDOLPH. Well met, Corporal Nym.   NYM. Good morrow, Lieutenant Bardolph.   BARDOLPH. What, are Ancient Pistol and you friends yet?   NYM. For my part, I care not; I say little, but when time shall     serve, there shall be smiles- but that shall be as it may. I dare     not fight; but I will wink and hold out mine iron. It is a simple     one; but what though? It will toast cheese, and it will endure     cold as another man\'s sword will; and there\'s an end.   BARDOLPH. I will bestow a breakfast to make you friends; and we\'ll     be all three sworn brothers to France. Let\'t be so, good Corporal     Nym.   NYM. Faith, I will live so long as I may, that\'s the certain of it;     and when I cannot live any longer, I will do as I may. That is my     rest, that is the rendezvous of it.   BARDOLPH. It is certain, Corporal, that he is married to Nell     Quickly; and certainly she did you wrong, for you were     troth-plight to her.     NYM. I cannot tell; things must be as they may. Men may sleep, and     they may have their throats about them at that time; and some say     knives have edges. It must be as it may; though patience be a     tired mare, yet she will plod. There must be conclusions. Well, I     cannot tell.                       Enter PISTOL and HOSTESS    BARDOLPH. Here comes Ancient Pistol and his wife. Good Corporal, be     patient here.   NYM. How now, mine host Pistol!   PISTOL. Base tike, call\'st thou me host?     Now by this hand, I swear I scorn the term;     Nor shall my Nell keep lodgers.   HOSTESS. No, by my troth, not long; for we cannot lodge and board a     dozen or fourteen gentlewomen that live honestly by the prick of     their needles, but it will be thought we keep a bawdy-house     straight. [Nym draws] O well-a-day, Lady, if he be not drawn! Now     we shall see wilful adultery and murder committed.   BARDOLPH. Good Lieutenant, good Corporal, offer nothing here.   NYM. Pish!     PISTOL. Pish for thee, Iceland dog! thou prick-ear\'d cur of     Iceland!   HOSTESS. Good Corporal Nym, show thy valour, and put up your sword.   NYM. Will you shog off? I would have you solus.   PISTOL. \'Solus,\' egregious dog? O viper vile!     The \'solus\' in thy most mervailous face;     The \'solus\' in thy teeth, and in thy throat,     And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy;     And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth!     I do retort the \'solus\' in thy bowels;     For I can take, and Pistol\'s cock is up,     And flashing fire will follow.   NYM. I am not Barbason: you cannot conjure me. I have an humour to     knock you indifferently well. If you grow foul with me, Pistol, I     will scour you with my rapier, as I may, in fair terms; if you     would walk off I would prick your guts a little, in good terms,     as I may, and thaes the humour of it.   PISTOL. O braggart vile and damned furious wight!     The grave doth gape and doting death is near;     Therefore exhale.                             [PISTOL draws]     BARDOLPH. Hear me, hear me what I say: he that strikes the first     stroke I\'ll run him up to the hilts, as I am a soldier.                                                          [Draws]   PISTOL. An oath of mickle might; and fury shall abate.                            [PISTOL and Nym sheathe their swords]     Give me thy fist, thy fore-foot to me give;     Thy spirits are most tall.   NYM. I will cut thy throat one time or other, in fair terms; that     is the humour of it.   PISTOL. \'Couple a gorge!\'     That is the word. I thee defy again.     O hound of Crete, think\'st thou my spouse to get?     No; to the spital go,     And from the powd\'ring tub of infamy     Fetch forth the lazar kite of Cressid\'s kind,     Doll Tearsheet she by name, and her espouse.     I have, and I will hold, the quondam Quickly     For the only she; and- pauca, there\'s enough.     Go to.                            Enter the Boy    BOY. Mine host Pistol, you must come to my master; and your     hostess- he is very sick, and would to bed. Good Bardolph, put     thy face between his sheets, and do the office of a warming-pan.     Faith, he\'s very ill.   BARDOLPH. Away, you rogue.   HOSTESS. By my troth, he\'ll yield the crow a pudding one of these     days: the King has kill\'d his heart. Good husband, come home     presently.                            Exeunt HOSTESS and BOY   BARDOLPH. Come, shall I make you two friends? We must to France     together; why the devil should we keep knives to cut one     another\'s throats?   PISTOL. Let floods o\'erswell, and fiends for food howl on!   NYM. You\'ll pay me the eight shillings I won of you at betting?   PISTOL. Base is the slave that pays.   NYM. That now I will have; that\'s the humour of it.   PISTOL. As manhood shall compound: push home.                                            [PISTOL and Nym draw]   BARDOLPH. By this sword, he that makes the first thrust I\'ll kill       him; by this sword, I will.   PISTOL. Sword is an oath, and oaths must have their course.                                             [Sheathes his sword]   BARDOLPH. Corporal Nym, an thou wilt be friends, be friends; an     thou wilt not, why then be enemies with me too. Prithee put up.   NYM. I shall have my eight shillings I won of you at betting?   PISTOL. A noble shalt thou have, and present pay;     And liquor likewise will I give to thee,     And friendship shall combine, and brotherhood.     I\'ll live by Nym and Nym shall live by me.     Is not this just? For I shall sutler be     Unto the camp, and profits will accrue.     Give me thy hand.   NYM. [Sheathing his sword] I shall have my noble?   PISTOL. In cash most justly paid.   NYM. [Shaking hands] Well, then, that\'s the humour of\'t.                         Re-enter HOSTESS    HOSTESS. As ever you come of women, come in quickly to Sir John.       Ah, poor heart! he is so shak\'d of a burning quotidian tertian     that it is most lamentable to behold. Sweet men, come to him.   NYM. The King hath run bad humours on the knight; that\'s the even     of it.   PISTOL. Nym, thou hast spoke the right;     His heart is fracted and corroborate.   NYM. The King is a good king, but it must be as it may; he passes     some humours and careers.   PISTOL. Let us condole the knight; for, lambkins, we will live.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE II. Southampton. A council-chamber  Enter EXETER, BEDFORD, and WESTMORELAND    BEDFORD. Fore God, his Grace is bold, to trust these traitors.   EXETER. They shall be apprehended by and by.   WESTMORELAND. How smooth and even they do bear themselves,     As if allegiance in their bosoms sat,     Crowned with faith and constant loyalty!   BEDFORD. The King hath note of all that they intend,     By interception which they dream not of.   EXETER. Nay, but the man that was his bedfellow,     Whom he hath dull\'d and cloy\'d with gracious favours-     That he should, for a foreign purse, so sell     His sovereign\'s life to death and treachery!                 Trumpets sound. Enter the KING, SCROOP,                   CAMBRIDGE, GREY, and attendants    KING HENRY. Now sits the wind fair, and we will aboard.     My Lord of Cambridge, and my kind Lord of Masham,       And you, my gentle knight, give me your thoughts.     Think you not that the pow\'rs we bear with us     Will cut their passage through the force of France,     Doing the execution and the act     For which we have in head assembled them?   SCROOP. No doubt, my liege, if each man do his best.   KING HENRY. I doubt not that, since we are well persuaded     We carry not a heart with us from hence     That grows not in a fair consent with ours;     Nor leave not one behind that doth not wish     Success and conquest to attend on us.   CAMBRIDGE. Never was monarch better fear\'d and lov\'d     Than is your Majesty. There\'s not, I think, a subject     That sits in heart-grief and uneasines     Under the sweet shade of your government.   GREY. True: those that were your father\'s enemies     Have steep\'d their galls in honey, and do serve you     With hearts create of duty and of zeal.   KING HENRY. We therefore have great cause of thankfulness,     And shall forget the office of our hand       Sooner than quittance of desert and merit     According to the weight and worthiness.   SCROOP. So service shall with steeled sinews toil,     And labour shall refresh itself with hope,     To do your Grace incessant services.   KING HENRY. We judge no less. Uncle of Exeter,     Enlarge the man committed yesterday     That rail\'d against our person. We consider     It was excess of wine that set him on;     And on his more advice we pardon him.   SCROOP. That\'s mercy, but too much security.     Let him be punish\'d, sovereign, lest example     Breed, by his sufferance, more of such a kind.   KING HENRY. O, let us yet be merciful!   CAMBRIDGE. So may your Highness, and yet punish too.   GREY. Sir,     You show great mercy if you give him life,     After the taste of much correction.   KING HENRY. Alas, your too much love and care of me     Are heavy orisons \'gainst this poor wretch!       If little faults proceeding on distemper     Shall not be wink\'d at, how shall we stretch our eye     When capital crimes, chew\'d, swallow\'d, and digested,     Appear before us? We\'ll yet enlarge that man,     Though Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, in their dear care     And tender preservation of our person,     Would have him punish\'d. And now to our French causes:     Who are the late commissioners?   CAMBRIDGE. I one, my lord.     Your Highness bade me ask for it to-day.   SCROOP. So did you me, my liege.   GREY. And I, my royal sovereign.   KING HENRY. Then, Richard Earl of Cambridge, there is yours;     There yours, Lord Scroop of Masham; and, Sir Knight,     Grey of Northumberland, this same is yours.     Read them, and know I know your worthiness.     My Lord of Westmoreland, and uncle Exeter,     We will aboard to-night. Why, how now, gentlemen?     What see you in those papers, that you lose     So much complexion? Look ye how they change!       Their cheeks are paper. Why, what read you there     That have so cowarded and chas\'d your blood     Out of appearance?   CAMBRIDGE. I do confess my fault,     And do submit me to your Highness\' mercy.   GREY, SCROOP. To which we all appeal.   KING HENRY. The mercy that was quick in us but late    By your own counsel is suppress\'d and kill\'d.     You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy;     For your own reasons turn into your bosoms     As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.     See you, my princes and my noble peers,     These English monsters! My Lord of Cambridge here-     You know how apt our love was to accord     To furnish him with an appertinents     Belonging to his honour; and this man     Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspir\'d,     And sworn unto the practices of France     To kill us here in Hampton; to the which     This knight, no less for bounty bound to us       Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But, O,     What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop, thou cruel,     Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature?     Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,     That knew\'st the very bottom of my soul,     That almost mightst have coin\'d me into gold,     Wouldst thou have practis\'d on me for thy use-     May it be possible that foreign hire     Could out of thee extract one spark of evil     That might annoy my finger? \'Tis so strange     That, though the truth of it stands off as gross     As black and white, my eye will scarcely see it.     Treason and murder ever kept together,     As two yoke-devils sworn to either\'s purpose,     Working so grossly in a natural cause     That admiration did not whoop at them;     But thou, \'gainst all proportion, didst bring in     Wonder to wait on treason and on murder;     And whatsoever cunning fiend it was     That wrought upon thee so preposterously       Hath got the voice in hell for excellence;     And other devils that suggest by treasons     Do botch and bungle up damnation     With patches, colours, and with forms, being fetch\'d     From glist\'ring semblances of piety;     But he that temper\'d thee bade thee stand up,     Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason,     Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.     If that same demon that hath gull\'d thee thus     Should with his lion gait walk the whole world,     He might return to vasty Tartar back,     And tell the legions \'I can never win     A soul so easy as that Englishman\'s.\'     O, how hast thou with jealousy infected     The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?     Why, so didst thou. Seem they grave and learned?     Why, so didst thou. Come they of noble family?     Why, so didst thou. Seem they religious?     Why, so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet,     Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,       Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,     Garnish\'d and deck\'d in modest complement,     Not working with the eye without the ear,     And but in purged judgment trusting neither?     Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem;     And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot     To mark the full-fraught man and best indued     With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;     For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like     Another fall of man. Their faults are open.     Arrest them to the answer of the law;     And God acquit them of their practices!   EXETER. I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Richard Earl       of Cambridge.     I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Henry Lord Scroop       of Masham.     I arrest thee of high treason, by the name of Thomas Grey,       knight, of Northumberland.   SCROOP. Our purposes God justly hath discover\'d,     And I repent my fault more than my death;       Which I beseech your Highness to forgive,     Although my body pay the price of it.   CAMBRIDGE. For me, the gold of France did not seduce,     Although I did admit it as a motive     The sooner to effect what I intended;     But God be thanked for prevention,     Which I in sufferance heartily will rejoice,     Beseeching God and you to pardon me.   GREY. Never did faithful subject more rejoice     At the discovery of most dangerous treason     Than I do at this hour joy o\'er myself,     Prevented from a damned enterprise.     My fault, but not my body, pardon, sovereign.   KING HENRY. God quit you in his mercy! Hear your sentence.     You have conspir\'d against our royal person,     Join\'d with an enemy proclaim\'d, and from his coffers     Receiv\'d the golden earnest of our death;     Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter,     His princes and his peers to servitude,     His subjects to oppression and contempt,       And his whole kingdom into desolation.     Touching our person seek we no revenge;     But we our kingdom\'s safety must so tender,     Whose ruin you have sought, that to her laws     We do deliver you. Get you therefore hence,     Poor miserable wretches, to your death;     The taste whereof God of his mercy give     You patience to endure, and true repentance     Of all your dear offences. Bear them hence.                      Exeunt CAMBRIDGE, SCROOP, and GREY, guarded     Now, lords, for France; the enterprise whereof     Shall be to you as us like glorious.     We doubt not of a fair and lucky war,     Since God so graciously hath brought to light     This dangerous treason, lurking in our way     To hinder our beginnings; we doubt not now     But every rub is smoothed on our way.     Then, forth, dear countrymen; let us deliver     Our puissance into the hand of God,     Putting it straight in expedition.       Cheerly to sea; the signs of war advance;     No king of England, if not king of France!                                                 Flourish. Exeunt     SCENE III. Eastcheap. Before the Boar\'s Head tavern  Enter PISTOL, HOSTESS, NYM, BARDOLPH, and Boy    HOSTESS. Prithee, honey-sweet husband, let me bring thee to      Staines.   PISTOL. No; for my manly heart doth earn.     Bardolph, be blithe; Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins;     Boy, bristle thy courage up. For Falstaff he is dead,     And we must earn therefore.   BARDOLPH. Would I were with him, wheresome\'er he is, either in     heaven or in hell!   HOSTESS. Nay, sure, he\'s not in hell: he\'s in Arthur\'s bosom, if     ever man went to Arthur\'s bosom. \'A made a finer end, and went     away an it had been any christom child; \'a parted ev\'n just     between twelve and one, ev\'n at the turning o\' th\' tide; for     after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers,     and smile upon his fingers\' end, I knew there was but one way;     for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and \'a babbl\'d of green     fields. \'How now, Sir John!\' quoth I \'What, man, be o\' good     cheer.\' So \'a cried out \'God, God, God!\' three or four times. Now       I, to comfort him, bid him \'a should not think of God; I hop\'d     there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet.     So \'a bade me lay more clothes on his feet; I put my hand into     the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I     felt to his knees, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold     as any stone.   NYM. They say he cried out of sack.   HOSTESS. Ay, that \'a did.   BARDOLPH. And of women.   HOSTESS. Nay, that \'a did not.   BOY. Yes, that \'a did, and said they were devils incarnate.   HOSTESS. \'A could never abide carnation; \'twas a colour he never     liked.   BOY. \'A said once the devil would have him about women.   HOSTESS. \'A did in some sort, indeed, handle women; but then he was     rheumatic, and talk\'d of the Whore of Babylon.   BOY. Do you not remember \'a saw a flea stick upon Bardolph\'s nose,     and \'a said it was a black soul burning in hell?   BARDOLPH. Well, the fuel is gone that maintain\'d that fire: that\'s     all the riches I got in his service.     NYM. Shall we shog? The King will be gone from Southampton.   PISTOL. Come, let\'s away. My love, give me thy lips.     Look to my chattles and my moveables;     Let senses rule. The word is \'Pitch and Pay.\'     Trust none;     For oaths are straws, men\'s faiths are wafer-cakes,     And Holdfast is the only dog, my duck.     Therefore, Caveto be thy counsellor.     Go, clear thy crystals. Yoke-fellows in arms,     Let us to France, like horse-leeches, my boys,     To suck, to suck, the very blood to suck.   BOY. And that\'s but unwholesome food, they say.   PISTOL. Touch her soft mouth and march.   BARDOLPH. Farewell, hostess.                     [Kissing her]   NYM. I cannot kiss, that is the humour of it; but adieu.   PISTOL. Let housewifery appear; keep close, I thee command.   HOSTESS. Farewell; adieu.                               Exeunt     SCENE IV. France. The KING\'S palace  Flourish. Enter the FRENCH KING, the DAUPHIN, the DUKES OF BERRI and BRITAINE, the CONSTABLE, and others    FRENCH KING. Thus comes the English with full power upon us;     And more than carefully it us concerns     To answer royally in our defences.     Therefore the Dukes of Berri and of Britaine,     Of Brabant and of Orleans, shall make forth,     And you, Prince Dauphin, with all swift dispatch,     To line and new repair our towns of war     With men of courage and with means defendant;     For England his approaches makes as fierce     As waters to the sucking of a gulf.     It fits us, then, to be as provident     As fear may teach us, out of late examples     Left by the fatal and neglected English     Upon our fields.   DAUPHIN. My most redoubted father,     It is most meet we arm us \'gainst the foe;       For peace itself should not so dull a kingdom,     Though war nor no known quarrel were in question,     But that defences, musters, preparations,     Should be maintain\'d, assembled, and collected,     As were a war in expectation.     Therefore, I say, \'tis meet we all go forth     To view the sick and feeble parts of France;     And let us do it with no show of fear-     No, with no more than if we heard that England     Were busied with a Whitsun morris-dance;     For, my good liege, she is so idly king\'d,     Her sceptre so fantastically borne     By a vain, giddy, shallow, humorous youth,     That fear attends her not.   CONSTABLE. O peace, Prince Dauphin!     You are too much mistaken in this king.     Question your Grace the late ambassadors     With what great state he heard their embassy,     How well supplied with noble counsellors,     How modest in exception, and withal       How terrible in constant resolution,     And you shall find his vanities forespent     Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus,     Covering discretion with a coat of folly;     As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots     That shall first spring and be most delicate.   DAUPHIN. Well, \'tis not so, my Lord High Constable;     But though we think it so, it is no matter.     In cases of defence \'tis best to weigh     The enemy more mighty than he seems;     So the proportions of defence are fill\'d;     Which of a weak and niggardly projection     Doth like a miser spoil his coat with scanting     A little cloth.   FRENCH KING. Think we King Harry strong;     And, Princes, look you strongly arm to meet him.     The kindred of him hath been flesh\'d upon us;     And he is bred out of that bloody strain     That haunted us in our familiar paths.     Witness our too much memorable shame       When Cressy battle fatally was struck,     And all our princes capdv\'d by the hand     Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales;     Whiles that his mountain sire- on mountain standing,     Up in the air, crown\'d with the golden sun-     Saw his heroical seed, and smil\'d to see him,     Mangle the work of nature, and deface     The patterns that by God and by French fathers     Had twenty years been made. This is a stern     Of that victorious stock; and let us fear     The native mightiness and fate of him.                        Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. Ambassadors from Harry King of England     Do crave admittance to your Majesty.   FRENCH KING. We\'ll give them present audience. Go and bring them.                               Exeunt MESSENGER and certain LORDS     You see this chase is hotly followed, friends.   DAUPHIN. Turn head and stop pursuit; for coward dogs       Most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten     Runs far before them. Good my sovereign,     Take up the English short, and let them know     Of what a monarchy you are the head.     Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin     As self-neglecting.                 Re-enter LORDS, with EXETER and train    FRENCH KING. From our brother of England?   EXETER. From him, and thus he greets your Majesty:     He wills you, in the name of God Almighty,     That you divest yourself, and lay apart     The borrowed glories that by gift of heaven,     By law of nature and of nations, \'longs     To him and to his heirs- namely, the crown,     And all wide-stretched honours that pertain,     By custom and the ordinance of times,     Unto the crown of France. That you may know     \'Tis no sinister nor no awkward claim,       Pick\'d from the worm-holes of long-vanish\'d days,     Nor from the dust of old oblivion rak\'d,     He sends you this most memorable line,       [Gives a paper]     In every branch truly demonstrative;     Willing you overlook this pedigree.     And when you find him evenly deriv\'d     From his most fam\'d of famous ancestors,     Edward the Third, he bids you then resign     Your crown and kingdom, indirectly held     From him, the native and true challenger.   FRENCH KING. Or else what follows?   EXETER. Bloody constraint; for if you hide the crown     Even in your hearts, there will he rake for it.     Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,     In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,     That if requiring fail, he will compel;     And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,     Deliver up the crown; and to take mercy     On the poor souls for whom this hungry war     Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head       Turning the widows\' tears, the orphans\' cries,     The dead men\'s blood, the privy maidens\' groans,     For husbands, fathers, and betrothed lovers,     That shall be swallowed in this controversy.     This is his claim, his threat\'ning, and my message;     Unless the Dauphin be in presence here,     To whom expressly I bring greeting too.   FRENCH KING. For us, we will consider of this further;     To-morrow shall you bear our full intent     Back to our brother of England.   DAUPHIN. For the Dauphin:     I stand here for him. What to him from England?   EXETER. Scorn and defiance, slight regard, contempt,     And anything that may not misbecome     The mighty sender, doth he prize you at.     Thus says my king: an if your father\'s Highness     Do not, in grant of all demands at large,     Sweeten the bitter mock you sent his Majesty,     He\'ll call you to so hot an answer of it     That caves and womby vaultages of France       Shall chide your trespass and return your mock     In second accent of his ordinance.   DAUPHIN. Say, if my father render fair return,     It is against my will; for I desire     Nothing but odds with England. To that end,     As matching to his youth and vanity,     I did present him with the Paris balls.   EXETER. He\'ll make your Paris Louvre shake for it,     Were it the mistress court of mighty Europe;     And be assur\'d you\'ll find a difference,     As we his subjects have in wonder found,     Between the promise of his greener days     And these he masters now. Now he weighs time     Even to the utmost grain; that you shall read     In your own losses, if he stay in France.   FRENCH KING. To-morrow shall you know our mind at full.   EXETER. Dispatch us with all speed, lest that our king     Come here himself to question our delay;     For he is footed in this land already.   FRENCH KING. You shall be soon dispatch\'d with fair conditions.       A night is but small breath and little pause     To answer matters of this consequence.      Flourish. Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. PROLOGUE.  Flourish. Enter CHORUS    CHORUS. Thus with imagin\'d wing our swift scene flies,     In motion of no less celerity     Than that of thought. Suppose that you have seen     The well-appointed King at Hampton pier     Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet     With silken streamers the young Phorbus fanning.     Play with your fancies; and in them behold     Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing;     Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give     To sounds confus\'d; behold the threaden sails,     Borne with th\' invisible and creeping wind,     Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea,     Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think     You stand upon the rivage and behold     A city on th\' inconstant billows dancing;     For so appears this fleet majestical,     Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow!     Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy       And leave your England as dead midnight still,     Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old women,     Either past or not arriv\'d to pith and puissance;     For who is he whose chin is but enrich\'d     With one appearing hair that will not follow     These cull\'d and choice-drawn cavaliers to France?     Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege;     Behold the ordnance on their carriages,     With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.     Suppose th\' ambassador from the French comes back;     Tells Harry that the King doth offer him     Katherine his daughter, and with her to dowry     Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms.     The offer likes not; and the nimble gunner     With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,                                    [Alarum, and chambers go off]     And down goes an before them. Still be kind,     And eke out our performance with your mind.             Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE I. France. Before Harfleur  Alarum. Enter the KING, EXETER, BEDFORD, GLOUCESTER, and soldiers with scaling-ladders    KING. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;     Or close the wall up with our English dead.     In peace there\'s nothing so becomes a man     As modest stillness and humility;     But when the blast of war blows in our ears,     Then imitate the action of the tiger:     Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,     Disguise fair nature with hard-favour\'d rage;     Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;     Let it pry through the portage of the head     Like the brass cannon: let the brow o\'erwhelm it     As fearfully as doth a galled rock     O\'erhang and jutty his confounded base,     Swill\'d with the wild and wasteful ocean.     Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide;     Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit       To his full height. On, on, you noblest English,     Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof-     Fathers that like so many Alexanders     Have in these parts from morn till even fought,     And sheath\'d their swords for lack of argument.     Dishonour not your mothers; now attest     That those whom you call\'d fathers did beget you.     Be copy now to men of grosser blood,     And teach them how to war. And you, good yeomen,     Whose limbs were made in England, show us here     The mettle of your pasture; let us swear     That you are worth your breeding- which I doubt not;     For there is none of you so mean and base     That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.     I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,     Straining upon the start. The game\'s afoot:     Follow your spirit; and upon this charge     Cry \'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!\'                            [Exeunt. Alarum, and chambers go off]     SCENE II. Before Harfleur  Enter NYM, BARDOLPH, PISTOL, and BOY    BARDOLPH. On, on, on, on, on! to the breach, to the breach!   NYM. Pray thee, Corporal, stay; the knocks are too hot, and for     mine own part I have not a case of lives. The humour of it is too     hot; that is the very plain-song of it.   PISTOL. The plain-song is most just; for humours do abound:          Knocks go and come; God\'s vassals drop and die;                     And sword and shield                     In bloody field                  Doth win immortal fame.    BOY. Would I were in an alehouse in London! I wouid give all my     fame for a pot of ale and safety.   PISTOL. And I:                 If wishes would prevail with me,                My purpose should not fail with me,                    But thither would I hie.      BOY.             As duly, but not as truly,                    As bird doth sing on bough.                           Enter FLUELLEN    FLUELLEN. Up to the breach, you dogs!     Avaunt, you cullions!                 [Driving them forward]   PISTOL. Be merciful, great duke, to men of mould.     Abate thy rage, abate thy manly rage;     Abate thy rage, great duke.     Good bawcock, bate thy rage. Use lenity, sweet chuck.   NYM. These be good humours. Your honour wins bad humours.                                               Exeunt all but BOY   BOY. As young as I am, I have observ\'d these three swashers. I am     boy to them all three; but all they three, though they would     serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do     not amount to a man. For Bardolph, he is white-liver\'d and     red-fac\'d; by the means whereof \'a faces it out, but fights not.     For Pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the       means whereof \'a breaks words and keeps whole weapons. For Nym,     he hath heard that men of few words are the best men, and     therefore he scorns to say his prayers lest \'a should be thought     a coward; but his few bad words are match\'d with as few good     deeds; for \'a never broke any man\'s head but his own, and that     was against a post when he was drunk. They will steal anything,     and call it purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-case, bore it twelve     leagues, and sold it for three halfpence. Nym and Bardolph are     sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais they stole a     fire-shovel; I knew by that piece of service the men would carry     coals. They would have me as familiar with men\'s pockets as their     gloves or their handkerchers; which makes much against my     manhood, if I should take from another\'s pocket to put into mine;     for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. I must leave them and     seek some better service; their villainy goes against my weak     stomach, and therefore I must cast it up.               Exit                   Re-enter FLUELLEN, GOWER following    GOWER. Captain Fluellen, you must come presently to the mines; the       Duke of Gloucester would speak with you.   FLUELLEN. To the mines! Tell you the Duke it is not so good to come     to the mines; for, look you, the mines is not according to the     disciplines of the war; the concavities of it is not sufficient.     For, look you, th\' athversary- you may discuss unto the Duke,     look you- is digt himself four yard under the countermines; by     Cheshu, I think \'a will plow up all, if there is not better     directions.   GOWER. The Duke of Gloucester, to whom the order of the siege is     given, is altogether directed by an Irishman- a very vallant     gentleman, i\' faith.   FLUELLEN. It is Captain Macmorris, is it not?   GOWER. I think it be.   FLUELLEN. By Cheshu, he is an ass, as in the world: I will verify     as much in his beard; he has no more directions in the true     disciplines of the wars, look you, of the Roman disciplines, than     is a puppy-dog.                   Enter MACMORRIS and CAPTAIN JAMY      GOWER. Here \'a comes; and the Scots captain, Captain Jamy, with     him.   FLUELLEN. Captain Jamy is a marvellous falorous gentleman, that is     certain, and of great expedition and knowledge in th\' aunchient     wars, upon my particular knowledge of his directions. By Cheshu,     he will maintain his argument as well as any military man in the     world, in the disciplines of the pristine wars of the Romans.   JAMY. I say gud day, Captain Fluellen.   FLUELLEN. God-den to your worship, good Captain James.   GOWER. How now, Captain Macmorris! Have you quit the mines? Have     the pioneers given o\'er?   MACMORRIS. By Chrish, la, tish ill done! The work ish give over,     the trompet sound the retreat. By my hand, I swear, and my     father\'s soul, the work ish ill done; it ish give over; I would     have blowed up the town, so Chrish save me, la, in an hour. O,     tish ill done, tish ill done; by my hand, tish ill done!   FLUELLEN. Captain Macmorris, I beseech you now, will you voutsafe     me, look you, a few disputations with you, as partly touching or     concerning the disciplines of the war, the Roman wars, in the way     of argument, look you, and friendly communication; partly to       satisfy my opinion, and partly for the satisfaction, look you, of     my mind, as touching the direction of the military discipline,     that is the point.   JAMY. It sall be vary gud, gud feith, gud captains bath; and I sall     quit you with gud leve, as I may pick occasion; that sall I,     marry.   MACMORRIS. It is no time to discourse, so Chrish save me. The day     is hot, and the weather, and the wars, and the King, and the     Dukes; it is no time to discourse. The town is beseech\'d, and the     trumpet call us to the breach; and we talk and, be Chrish, do     nothing. \'Tis shame for us all, so God sa\' me, \'tis shame to     stand still; it is shame, by my hand; and there is throats to be     cut, and works to be done; and there ish nothing done, so Chrish     sa\' me, la.   JAMY. By the mess, ere theise eyes of mine take themselves to     slomber, ay\'ll de gud service, or I\'ll lig i\' th\' grund for it;     ay, or go to death. And I\'ll pay\'t as valorously as I may, that     sall I suerly do, that is the breff and the long. Marry, I wad     full fain heard some question \'tween you tway.   FLUELLEN. Captain Macmorris, I think, look you, under your       correction, there is not many of your nation-   MACMORRIS. Of my nation? What ish my nation? Ish a villain, and a     bastard, and a knave, and a rascal. What ish my nation? Who talks     of my nation?   FLUELLEN. Look you, if you take the matter otherwise than is meant,     Captain Macmorris, peradventure I shall think you do not use me     with that affability as in discretion you ought to use me, look     you; being as good a man as yourself, both in the disciplines of     war and in the derivation of my birth, and in other     particularities.   MACMORRIS. I do not know you so good a man as myself; so     Chrish save me, I will cut off your head.   GOWER. Gentlemen both, you will mistake each other.   JAMY. Ah! that\'s a foul fault.              [A parley sounded]   GOWER. The town sounds a parley.   FLUELLEN. Captain Macmorris, when there is more better opportunity     to be required, look you, I will be so bold as to tell you I know     the disciplines of war; and there is an end.          Exeunt     SCENE III. Before the gates of Harfleur  Enter the GOVERNOR and some citizens on the walls.  Enter the KING and all his train before the gates    KING HENRY. How yet resolves the Governor of the town?     This is the latest parle we will admit;     Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves     Or, like to men proud of destruction,     Defy us to our worst; for, as I am a soldier,     A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,     If I begin the batt\'ry once again,     I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur     Till in her ashes she lie buried.     The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,     And the flesh\'d soldier, rough and hard of heart,     In liberty of bloody hand shall range     With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass     Your fresh fair virgins and your flow\'ring infants.     What is it then to me if impious war,     Array\'d in flames, like to the prince of fiends,     Do, with his smirch\'d complexion, all fell feats       Enlink\'d to waste and desolation?     What is\'t to me when you yourselves are cause,     If your pure maidens fall into the hand     Of hot and forcing violation?     What rein can hold licentious wickednes     When down the hill he holds his fierce career?     We may as bootless spend our vain command     Upon th\' enraged soldiers in their spoil,     As send precepts to the Leviathan     To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,     Take pity of your town and of your people     Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;     Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace     O\'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds     Of heady murder, spoil, and villainy.     If not- why, in a moment look to see     The blind and bloody with foul hand     Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;     Your fathers taken by the silver beards,     And their most reverend heads dash\'d to the walls;       Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,     Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confus\'d     Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry     At Herod\'s bloody-hunting slaughtermen.     What say you? Will you yield, and this avoid?     Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy\'d?   GOVERNOR. Our expectation hath this day an end:     The Dauphin, whom of succours we entreated,     Returns us that his powers are yet not ready     To raise so great a siege. Therefore, great King,     We yield our town and lives to thy soft mercy.     Enter our gates; dispose of us and ours;     For we no longer are defensible.   KING HENRY. Open your gates. [Exit GOVERNOR] Come, uncle Exeter,     Go you and enter Harfleur; there remain,     And fortify it strongly \'gainst the French;     Use mercy to them all. For us, dear uncle,     The winter coming on, and sickness growing     Upon our soldiers, we will retire to Calais.     To-night in Harfleur will we be your guest;       To-morrow for the march are we addrest.                [Flourish. The KING and his train enter the town]     SCENE IV. Rouen. The FRENCH KING\'S palace  Enter KATHERINE and ALICE    KATHERINE. Alice, tu as ete en Angleterre, et tu parles bien le     langage.   ALICE. Un peu, madame.   KATHERINE. Je te prie, m\'enseignez; il faut que j\'apprenne a     parler. Comment appelez-vous la main en Anglais?   ALICE. La main? Elle est appelee de hand.   KATHERINE. De hand. Et les doigts?   ALICE. Les doigts? Ma foi, j\'oublie les doigts; mais je me     souviendrai. Les doigts? Je pense qu\'ils sont appeles de fingres;     oui, de fingres.   KATHERINE. La main, de hand; les doigts, de fingres. Je pense que     je suis le bon ecolier; j\'ai gagne deux mots d\'Anglais vitement.     Comment appelez-vous les ongles?   ALICE. Les ongles? Nous les appelons de nails.   KATHERINE. De nails. Ecoutez; dites-moi si je parle bien: de hand,     de fingres, et de nails.   ALICE. C\'est bien dit, madame; il est fort bon Anglais.     KATHERINE. Dites-moi l\'Anglais pour le bras.   ALICE. De arm, madame.   KATHERINE. Et le coude?   ALICE. D\'elbow.   KATHERINE. D\'elbow. Je m\'en fais la repetition de tous les mots que     vous m\'avez appris des a present.   ALICE. Il est trop difficile, madame, comme je pense.   KATHERINE. Excusez-moi, Alice; ecoutez: d\'hand, de fingre, de     nails, d\'arma, de bilbow.   ALICE. D\'elbow, madame.   KATHERINE. O Seigneur Dieu, je m\'en oublie! D\'elbow.     Comment appelez-vous le col?   ALICE. De nick, madame.   KATHERINE. De nick. Et le menton?   ALICE. De chin.   KATHERINE. De sin. Le col, de nick; le menton, de sin.   ALICE. Oui. Sauf votre honneur, en verite, vous prononcez les mots     aussi droit que les natifs d\'Angleterre.   KATHERINE. Je ne doute point d\'apprendre, par la grace de Dieu, et     en peu de temps.     ALICE. N\'avez-vous pas deja oublie ce que je vous ai enseigne?   KATHERINE. Non, je reciterai a vous promptement: d\'hand, de fingre,     de mails-   ALICE. De nails, madame.   KATHERINE. De nails, de arm, de ilbow.   ALICE. Sauf votre honneur, d\'elbow.   KATHERINE. Ainsi dis-je; d\'elbow, de nick, et de sin. Comment     appelez-vous le pied et la robe?   ALICE. Le foot, madame; et le count.   KATHERINE. Le foot et le count. O Seigneur Dieu! ils sont mots de     son mauvais, corruptible, gros, et impudique, et non pour les     dames d\'honneur d\'user: je ne voudrais prononcer ces mots devant     les seigneurs de France pour tout le monde. Foh! le foot et le     count! Neanmoins, je reciterai une autre fois ma lecon ensemble:     d\'hand, de fingre, de nails, d\'arm, d\'elbow, de nick, de sin, de     foot, le count.   ALICE. Excellent, madame!   KATHERINE. C\'est assez pour une fois: allons-nous a diner.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE V. The FRENCH KING\'S palace  Enter the KING OF FRANCE, the DAUPHIN, DUKE OF BRITAINE, the CONSTABLE OF FRANCE, and others    FRENCH KING. \'Tis certain he hath pass\'d the river Somme.   CONSTABLE. And if he be not fought withal, my lord,     Let us not live in France; let us quit an,     And give our vineyards to a barbarous people.   DAUPHIN. O Dieu vivant! Shall a few sprays of us,     The emptying of our fathers\' luxury,     Our scions, put in wild and savage stock,     Spirt up so suddenly into the clouds,     And overlook their grafters?   BRITAINE. Normans, but bastard Normans, Norman bastards!     Mort Dieu, ma vie! if they march along     Unfought withal, but I will sell my dukedom     To buy a slobb\'ry and a dirty farm     In that nook-shotten isle of Albion.   CONSTABLE. Dieu de batailles! where have they this mettle?     Is not their climate foggy, raw, and dull;       On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale,     Killing their fruit with frowns? Can sodden water,     A drench for sur-rein\'d jades, their barley-broth,     Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat?     And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine,     Seem frosty? O, for honour of our land,     Let us not hang like roping icicles     Upon our houses\' thatch, whiles a more frosty people     Sweat drops of gallant youth in our rich fields-     Poor we call them in their native lords!   DAUPHIN. By faith and honour,     Our madams mock at us and plainly say     Our mettle is bred out, and they will give     Their bodies to the lust of English youth     To new-store France with bastard warriors.   BRITAINE. They bid us to the English dancing-schools     And teach lavoltas high and swift corantos,     Saying our grace is only in our heels     And that we are most lofty runaways.   FRENCH KING. Where is Montjoy the herald? Speed him hence;       Let him greet England with our sharp defiance.     Up, Princes, and, with spirit of honour edged     More sharper than your swords, hie to the field:     Charles Delabreth, High Constable of France;     You Dukes of Orleans, Bourbon, and of Berri,     Alengon, Brabant, Bar, and Burgundy;     Jaques Chatillon, Rambures, Vaudemont,     Beaumont, Grandpre, Roussi, and Fauconbridge,     Foix, Lestrake, Bouciqualt, and Charolois;     High dukes, great princes, barons, lords, and knights,     For your great seats now quit you of great shames.     Bar Harry England, that sweeps through our land     With pennons painted in the blood of Harfleur.     Rush on his host as doth the melted snow     Upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat     The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon;     Go down upon him, you have power enough,     And in a captive chariot into Rouen     Bring him our prisoner.   CONSTABLE. This becomes the great.       Sorry am I his numbers are so few,     His soldiers sick and famish\'d in their march;     For I am sure, when he shall see our army,     He\'ll drop his heart into the sink of fear,     And for achievement offer us his ransom.   FRENCH KING. Therefore, Lord Constable, haste on Montjoy,     And let him say to England that we send     To know what willing ransom he will give.     Prince Dauphin, you shall stay with us in Rouen.   DAUPHIN. Not so, I do beseech your Majesty.   FRENCH KING. Be patient, for you shall remain with us.     Now forth, Lord Constable and Princes all,     And quickly bring us word of England\'s fall.          Exeunt     SCENE VI. The English camp in Picardy  Enter CAPTAINS, English and Welsh, GOWER and FLUELLEN    GOWER. How now, Captain Fluellen! Come you from the bridge?   FLUELLEN. I assure you there is very excellent services committed     at the bridge.   GOWER. Is the Duke of Exeter safe?   FLUELLEN. The Duke of Exeter is as magnanimous as Agamemnon; and a     man that I love and honour with my soul, and my heart, and my     duty, and my live, and my living, and my uttermost power. He is     not- God be praised and blessed!- any hurt in the world, but     keeps the bridge most valiantly, with excellent discipline. There     is an aunchient Lieutenant there at the bridge- I think in my     very conscience he is as valiant a man as Mark Antony; and he is     man of no estimation in the world; but I did see him do as     gallant service.   GOWER. What do you call him?   FLUELLEN. He is call\'d Aunchient Pistol.   GOWER. I know him not.                                Enter PISTOL    FLUELLEN. Here is the man.   PISTOL. Captain, I thee beseech to do me favours.     The Duke of Exeter doth love thee well.   FLUELLEN. Ay, I praise God; and I have merited some love at his     hands.   PISTOL. Bardolph, a soldier, firm and sound of heart,     And of buxom valour, hath by cruel fate     And giddy Fortune\'s furious fickle wheel,     That goddess blind,     That stands upon the rolling restless stone-   FLUELLEN. By your patience, Aunchient Pistol. Fortune is painted     blind, with a muffler afore her eyes, to signify to you that     Fortune is blind; and she is painted also with a wheel, to     signify to you, which is the moral of it, that she is turning,     and inconstant, and mutability, and variation; and her foot, look     you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and     rolls. In good truth, the poet makes a most excellent description     of it: Fortune is an excellent moral.     PISTOL. Fortune is Bardolph\'s foe, and frowns on him;     For he hath stol\'n a pax, and hanged must \'a be-     A damned death!     Let gallows gape for dog; let man go free,     And let not hemp his windpipe suffocate.     But Exeter hath given the doom of death     For pax of little price.     Therefore, go speak- the Duke will hear thy voice;     And let not Bardolph\'s vital thread be cut     With edge of penny cord and vile reproach.     Speak, Captain, for his life, and I will thee requite.   FLUELLEN. Aunchient Pistol, I do partly understand your meaning.   PISTOL. Why then, rejoice therefore.   FLUELLEN. Certainly, Aunchient, it is not a thing to rejoice at;     for if, look you, he were my brother, I would desire the Duke to     use his good pleasure, and put him to execution; for discipline     ought to be used.   PISTOL. Die and be damn\'d! and figo for thy friendship!   FLUELLEN. It is well.   PISTOL. The fig of Spain!                                 Exit     FLUELLEN. Very good.   GOWER. Why, this is an arrant counterfeit rascal; I remember him     now- a bawd, a cutpurse.   FLUELLEN. I\'ll assure you, \'a utt\'red as prave words at the pridge     as you shall see in a summer\'s day. But it is very well; what he     has spoke to me, that is well, I warrant you, when time is serve.   GOWER. Why, \'tis a gull a fool a rogue, that now and then goes to     the wars to grace himself, at his return into London, under the     form of a soldier. And such fellows are perfect in the great     commanders\' names; and they will learn you by rote where services     were done- at such and such a sconce, at such a breach, at such a     convoy; who came off bravely, who was shot, who disgrac\'d, what     terms the enemy stood on; and this they con perfectly in the     phrase of war, which they trick up with new-tuned oaths; and what     a beard of the General\'s cut and a horrid suit of the camp will     do among foaming bottles and ale-wash\'d wits is wonderful to be     thought on. But you must learn to know such slanders of the age,     or else you may be marvellously mistook.   FLUELLEN. I tell you what, Captain Gower, I do perceive he is not     the man that he would gladly make show to the world he is; if I       find a hole in his coat I will tell him my mind. [Drum within]     Hark you, the King is coming; and I must speak with him from the     pridge.           Drum and colours. Enter the KING and his poor soldiers,                           and GLOUCESTER      God pless your Majesty!   KING HENRY. How now, Fluellen! Cam\'st thou from the bridge?   FLUELLEN. Ay, so please your Majesty. The Duke of Exeter has very     gallantly maintain\'d the pridge; the French is gone off, look     you, and there is gallant and most prave passages. Marry, th\'     athversary was have possession of the pridge; but he is enforced     to retire, and the Duke of Exeter is master of the pridge; I can     tell your Majesty the Duke is a prave man.   KING HENRY. What men have you lost, Fluellen!   FLUELLEN. The perdition of th\' athversary hath been very great,     reasonable great; marry, for my part, I think the Duke hath lost     never a man, but one that is like to be executed for robbing a     church- one Bardolph, if your Majesty know the man; his face is       all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o\' fire; and his     lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes     plue and sometimes red; but his nose is executed and his fire\'s     out.   KING HENRY. We would have all such offenders so cut off. And we     give express charge that in our marches through the country there     be nothing compell\'d from the villages, nothing taken but paid     for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful     language; for when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom the     gentler gamester is the soonest winner.                          Tucket. Enter MONTJOY    MONTJOY. You know me by my habit.   KING HENRY. Well then, I know thee; what shall I know of thee?   MONTJOY. My master\'s mind.   KING HENRY. Unfold it.   MONTJOY. Thus says my king. Say thou to Harry of England: Though we     seem\'d dead we did but sleep; advantage is a better soldier than     rashness. Tell him we could have rebuk\'d him at Harfleur, but       that we thought not good to bruise an injury till it were full     ripe. Now we speak upon our cue, and our voice is imperial:     England shall repent his folly, see his weakness, and admire our     sufferance. Bid him therefore consider of his ransom, which must     proportion the losses we have borne, the subjects we have lost,     the disgrace we have digested; which, in weight to re-answer, his     pettiness would bow under. For our losses his exchequer is too     poor; for th\' effusion of our blood, the muster of his kingdom     too faint a number; and for our disgrace, his own person kneeling     at our feet but a weak and worthless satisfaction. To this add     defiance; and tell him, for conclusion, he hath betrayed his     followers, whose condemnation is pronounc\'d. So far my king and     master; so much my office.   KING HENRY. What is thy name? I know thy quality.   MONTJOY. Montjoy.   KING HENRY. Thou dost thy office fairly. Turn thee back,     And tell thy king I do not seek him now,     But could be willing to march on to Calais     Without impeachment; for, to say the sooth-     Though \'tis no wisdom to confess so much       Unto an enemy of craft and vantage-     My people are with sickness much enfeebled;     My numbers lessen\'d; and those few I have     Almost no better than so many French;     Who when they were in health, I tell thee, herald,     I thought upon one pair of English legs     Did march three Frenchmen. Yet forgive me, God,     That I do brag thus; this your air of France     Hath blown that vice in me; I must repent.     Go, therefore, tell thy master here I am;     My ransom is this frail and worthless trunk;     My army but a weak and sickly guard;     Yet, God before, tell him we will come on,     Though France himself and such another neighbour     Stand in our way. There\'s for thy labour, Montjoy.     Go, bid thy master well advise himself.     If we may pass, we will; if we be hind\'red,     We shall your tawny ground with your red blood     Discolour; and so, Montjoy, fare you well.     The sum of all our answer is but this:       We would not seek a battle as we are;     Nor as we are, we say, we will not shun it.     So tell your master.   MONTJOY. I shall deliver so. Thanks to your Highness.     Exit   GLOUCESTER. I hope they will not come upon us now.   KING HENRY. We are in God\'s hand, brother, not in theirs.     March to the bridge, it now draws toward night;     Beyond the river we\'ll encamp ourselves,     And on to-morrow bid them march away.                 Exeunt     SCENE VII. The French camp near Agincourt  Enter the CONSTABLE OF FRANCE, the LORD RAMBURES, the DUKE OF ORLEANS, the DAUPHIN, with others    CONSTABLE. Tut! I have the best armour of the world.     Would it were day!   ORLEANS. You have an excellent armour; but let my horse have his     due.   CONSTABLE. It is the best horse of Europe.   ORLEANS. Will it never be morning?   DAUPHIN. My Lord of Orleans and my Lord High Constable, you talk of     horse and armour?   ORLEANS. You are as well provided of both as any prince in the     world.   DAUPHIN. What a long night is this! I will not change my horse with     any that treads but on four pasterns. Ca, ha! he bounds from the     earth as if his entrails were hairs; le cheval volant, the     Pegasus, chez les narines de feu! When I bestride him I soar, I     am a hawk. He trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it;     the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of       Hermes.   ORLEANS. He\'s of the colour of the nutmeg.   DAUPHIN. And of the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for Perseus:     he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water     never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his     rider mounts him; he is indeed a horse, and all other jades you     may call beasts.   CONSTABLE. Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent     horse.   DAUPHIN. It is the prince of palfreys; his neigh is like the     bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage.   ORLEANS. No more, cousin.   DAUPHIN. Nay, the man hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of     the lark to the lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my     palfrey. It is a theme as fluent as the sea: turn the sands into     eloquent tongues, and my horse is argument for them all: \'tis a     subject for a sovereign to reason on, and for a sovereign\'s     sovereign to ride on; and for the world- familiar to us and     unknown- to lay apart their particular functions and wonder at     him. I once writ a sonnet in his praise and began thus: \'Wonder       of nature\'-   ORLEANS. I have heard a sonnet begin so to one\'s mistress.   DAUPHIN. Then did they imitate that which I compos\'d to my courser;     for my horse is my mistress.   ORLEANS. Your mistress bears well.   DAUPHIN. Me well; which is the prescript praise and perfection of a     good and particular mistress.   CONSTABLE. Nay, for methought yesterday your mistress shrewdly     shook your back.   DAUPHIN. So perhaps did yours.   CONSTABLE. Mine was not bridled.   DAUPHIN. O, then belike she was old and gentle; and you rode like a     kern of Ireland, your French hose off and in your strait     strossers.   CONSTABLE. You have good judgment in horsemanship.   DAUPHIN. Be warn\'d by me, then: they that ride so, and ride not     warily, fall into foul bogs. I had rather have my horse to my     mistress.   CONSTABLE. I had as lief have my mistress a jade.   DAUPHIN. I tell thee, Constable, my mistress wears his own hair.     CONSTABLE. I could make as true a boast as that, if I had a sow to     my mistress.   DAUPHIN. \'Le chien est retourne a son propre vomissement, et la     truie lavee au bourbier.\' Thou mak\'st use of anything.   CONSTABLE. Yet do I not use my horse for my mistress, or any such     proverb so little kin to the purpose.   RAMBURES. My Lord Constable, the armour that I saw in your tent     to-night- are those stars or suns upon it?   CONSTABLE. Stars, my lord.   DAUPHIN. Some of them will fall to-morrow, I hope.   CONSTABLE. And yet my sky shall not want.   DAUPHIN. That may be, for you bear a many superfluously, and \'twere     more honour some were away.   CONSTABLE. Ev\'n as your horse bears your praises, who would trot as     well were some of your brags dismounted.   DAUPHIN. Would I were able to load him with his desert! Will it     never be day? I will trot to-morrow a mile, and my way shall be     paved with English faces.   CONSTABLE. I will not say so, for fear I should be fac\'d out of my     way; but I would it were morning, for I would fain be about the       ears of the English.   RAMBURES. Who will go to hazard with me for twenty prisoners?   CONSTABLE. You must first go yourself to hazard ere you have them.   DAUPHIN. \'Tis midnight; I\'ll go arm myself.               Exit   ORLEANS. The Dauphin longs for morning.   RAMBURES. He longs to eat the English.   CONSTABLE. I think he will eat all he kills.   ORLEANS. By the white hand of my lady, he\'s a gallant prince.   CONSTABLE. Swear by her foot, that she may tread out the oath.   ORLEANS. He is simply the most active gentleman of France.   CONSTABLE. Doing is activity, and he will still be doing.   ORLEANS. He never did harm that I heard of.   CONSTABLE. Nor will do none to-morrow: he will keep that good name     still.   ORLEANS. I know him to be valiant.   CONSTABLE. I was told that by one that knows him better than you.   ORLEANS. What\'s he?   CONSTABLE. Marry, he told me so himself; and he said he car\'d not     who knew it.   ORLEANS. He needs not; it is no hidden virtue in him.     CONSTABLE. By my faith, sir, but it is; never anybody saw it but       his lackey.     \'Tis a hooded valour, and when it appears it will bate.   ORLEANS. Ill-wind never said well.   CONSTABLE. I will cap that proverb with \'There is flattery in     friendship.\'   ORLEANS. And I will take up that with \'Give the devil his due.\'   CONSTABLE. Well plac\'d! There stands your friend for the devil;     have at the very eye of that proverb with \'A pox of the devil!\'   ORLEANS. You are the better at proverbs by how much \'A fool\'s bolt     is soon shot.\'   CONSTABLE. You have shot over.   ORLEANS. \'Tis not the first time you were overshot.                            Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. My Lord High Constable, the English lie within fifteen     hundred paces of your tents.   CONSTABLE. Who hath measur\'d the ground?   MESSENGER. The Lord Grandpre.     CONSTABLE. A valiant and most expert gentleman. Would it were day!     Alas, poor Harry of England! he longs not for the dawning as we     do.   ORLEANS. What a wretched and peevish fellow is this King of     England, to mope with his fat-brain\'d followers so far out of his     knowledge!   CONSTABLE. If the English had any apprehension, they would run     away.   ORLEANS. That they lack; for if their heads had any intellectual     armour, they could never wear such heavy head-pieces.   RAMBURES. That island of England breeds very valiant creatures;     their mastiffs are of unmatchable courage.   ORLEANS. Foolish curs, that run winking into the mouth of a Russian     bear, and have their heads crush\'d like rotten apples! You may as     well say that\'s a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the     lip of a lion.   CONSTABLE. Just, just! and the men do sympathise with the mastiffs     in robustious and rough coming on, leaving their wits with their     wives; and then give them great meals of beef and iron and steel;     they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.     ORLEANS. Ay, but these English are shrewdly out of beef.   CONSTABLE. Then shall we find to-morrow they have only stomachs to     eat, and none to fight. Now is it time to arm. Come, shall we     about it?   ORLEANS. It is now two o\'clock; but let me see- by ten     We shall have each a hundred Englishmen.              Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. PROLOGUE.  Enter CHORUS    CHORUS. Now entertain conjecture of a time     When creeping murmur and the poring dark     Fills the wide vessel of the universe.     From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night,     The hum of either army stilly sounds,     That the fix\'d sentinels almost receive     The secret whispers of each other\'s watch.     Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames     Each battle sees the other\'s umber\'d face;     Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs     Piercing the night\'s dull ear; and from the tents     The armourers accomplishing the knights,     With busy hammers closing rivets up,     Give dreadful note of preparation.     The country cocks do crow, the clocks do ton,     And the third hour of drowsy morning name.     Proud of their numbers and secure in soul,     The confident and over-lusty French       Do the low-rated English play at dice;     And chide the cripple tardy-gaited night     Who like a foul and ugly witch doth limp     So tediously away. The poor condemned English,     Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires     Sit patiently and inly ruminate     The morning\'s danger; and their gesture sad     Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-worn coats     Presenteth them unto the gazing moon     So many horrid ghosts. O, now, who will behold     The royal captain of this ruin\'d band     Walking from watch to watch, from tent to tent,     Let him cry \'Praise and glory on his head!\'     For forth he goes and visits all his host;     Bids them good morrow with a modest smile,     And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen.     Upon his royal face there is no note     How dread an army hath enrounded him;     Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour     Unto the weary and all-watched night;       But freshly looks, and over-bears attaint     With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty;     That every wretch, pining and pale before,     Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks;     A largess universal, like the sun,     His liberal eye doth give to every one,     Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all     Behold, as may unworthiness define,     A little touch of Harry in the night.     And so our scene must to the battle fly;     Where- O for pity!- we shall much disgrace     With four or five most vile and ragged foils,     Right ill-dispos\'d in brawl ridiculous,     The name of Agincourt. Yet sit and see,     Minding true things by what their mock\'ries be.         Exit     SCENE I. France. The English camp at Agincourt  Enter the KING, BEDFORD, and GLOUCESTER    KING HENRY. Gloucester, \'tis true that we are in great danger;     The greater therefore should our courage be.     Good morrow, brother Bedford. God Almighty!     There is some soul of goodness in things evil,     Would men observingly distil it out;     For our bad neighbour makes us early stirrers,     Which is both healthful and good husbandry.     Besides, they are our outward consciences     And preachers to us all, admonishing     That we should dress us fairly for our end.     Thus may we gather honey from the weed,     And make a moral of the devil himself.                          Enter ERPINGHAM      Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham:     A good soft pillow for that good white head       Were better than a churlish turf of France.   ERPINGHAM. Not so, my liege; this lodging likes me better,     Since I may say \'Now lie I like a king.\'   KING HENRY. \'Tis good for men to love their present pains     Upon example; so the spirit is eased;     And when the mind is quick\'ned, out of doubt     The organs, though defunct and dead before,     Break up their drowsy grave and newly move     With casted slough and fresh legerity.     Lend me thy cloak, Sir Thomas. Brothers both,     Commend me to the princes in our camp;     Do my good morrow to them, and anon     Desire them all to my pavilion.   GLOUCESTER. We shall, my liege.   ERPINGHAM. Shall I attend your Grace?   KING HENRY. No, my good knight:     Go with my brothers to my lords of England;     I and my bosom must debate awhile,     And then I would no other company.   ERPINGHAM. The Lord in heaven bless thee, noble Harry!                                            Exeunt all but the KING   KING HENRY. God-a-mercy, old heart! thou speak\'st cheerfully.                            Enter PISTOL    PISTOL. Qui va la?   KING HENRY. A friend.   PISTOL. Discuss unto me: art thou officer,     Or art thou base, common, and popular?   KING HENRY. I am a gentleman of a company.   PISTOL. Trail\'st thou the puissant pike?   KING HENRY. Even so. What are you?   PISTOL. As good a gentleman as the Emperor.   KING HENRY. Then you are a better than the King.   PISTOL. The King\'s a bawcock and a heart of gold,     A lad of life, an imp of fame;     Of parents good, of fist most valiant.     I kiss his dirty shoe, and from heart-string     I love the lovely bully. What is thy name?   KING HENRY. Harry le Roy.     PISTOL. Le Roy! a Cornish name; art thou of Cornish crew?   KING HENRY. No, I am a Welshman.   PISTOL. Know\'st thou Fluellen?   KING HENRY. Yes.   PISTOL. Tell him I\'ll knock his leek about his pate     Upon Saint Davy\'s day.   KING HENRY. Do not you wear your dagger in your cap that day, lest     he knock that about yours.   PISTOL. Art thou his friend?   KING HENRY. And his kinsman too.   PISTOL. The figo for thee, then!   KING HENRY. I thank you; God be with you!   PISTOL. My name is Pistol call\'d.                         Exit   KING HENRY. It sorts well with your fierceness.                      Enter FLUELLEN and GOWER    GOWER. Captain Fluellen!   FLUELLEN. So! in the name of Jesu Christ, speak fewer. It is the     greatest admiration in the universal world, when the true and       aunchient prerogatifes and laws of the wars is not kept: if you     would take the pains but to examine the wars of Pompey the Great,     you shall find, I warrant you, that there is no tiddle-taddle nor     pibble-pabble in Pompey\'s camp; I warrant you, you shall find the     ceremonies of the wars, and the cares of it, and the forms of it,     and the sobriety of it, and the modesty of it, to be otherwise.   GOWER. Why, the enemy is loud; you hear him all night.   FLUELLEN. If the enemy is an ass, and a fool, and a prating     coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be     an ass, and a fool, and a prating coxcomb? In your own     conscience, now?   GOWER. I will speak lower.   FLUELLEN. I pray you and beseech you that you will.                                        Exeunt GOWER and FLUELLEN   KING HENRY. Though it appear a little out of fashion,     There is much care and valour in this Welshman.            Enter three soldiers: JOHN BATES, ALEXANDER COURT,                        and MICHAEL WILLIAMS      COURT. Brother John Bates, is not that the morning which breaks     yonder?   BATES. I think it be; but we have no great cause to desire the     approach of day.   WILLIAMS. We see yonder the beginning of the day, but I think we     shall never see the end of it. Who goes there?   KING HENRY. A friend.   WILLIAMS. Under what captain serve you?   KING HENRY. Under Sir Thomas Erpingham.   WILLIAMS. A good old commander and a most kind gentleman. I pray     you, what thinks he of our estate?   KING HENRY. Even as men wreck\'d upon a sand, that look to be wash\'d     off the next tide.   BATES. He hath not told his thought to the King?   KING HENRY. No; nor it is not meet he should. For though I speak it     to you, I think the King is but a man as I am: the violet smells     to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to     me; all his senses have but human conditions; his ceremonies laid     by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his     affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop,       they stoop with the like wing. Therefore, when he sees reason of     fears, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish     as ours are; yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any     appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his     army.   BATES. He may show what outward courage he will; but I believe, as     cold a night as \'tis, he could wish himself in Thames up to the     neck; and so I would he were, and I by him, at all adventures, so     we were quit here.   KING HENRY. By my troth, I will speak my conscience of the King: I     think he would not wish himself anywhere but where he is.   BATES. Then I would he were here alone; so should he be sure to be     ransomed, and a many poor men\'s lives saved.   KING HENRY. I dare say you love him not so ill to wish him here     alone, howsoever you speak this, to feel other men\'s minds;     methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King\'s     company, his cause being just and his quarrel honourable.   WILLIAMS. That\'s more than we know.   BATES. Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough if     we know we are the King\'s subjects. If his cause be wrong, our       obedience to the King wipes the crime of it out of us.   WILLIAMS. But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a     heavy reckoning to make when all those legs and arms and heads,     chopp\'d off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day     and cry all \'We died at such a place\'- some swearing, some crying     for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some     upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I     am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how     can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their     argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black     matter for the King that led them to it; who to disobey were     against all proportion of subjection.   KING HENRY. So, if a son that is by his father sent about     merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of     his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father     that sent him; or if a servant, under his master\'s command     transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in     many irreconcil\'d iniquities, you may call the business of the     master the author of the servant\'s damnation. But this is not so:     the King is not bound to answer the particular endings of his       soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant;     for they purpose not their death when they purpose their     services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so     spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out     with all unspotted soldiers: some peradventure have on them the     guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling     virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars     their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace     with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law     and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men they     have no wings to fly from God: war is His beadle, war is His     vengeance; so that here men are punish\'d for before-breach of the     King\'s laws in now the King\'s quarrel. Where they feared the     death they have borne life away; and where they would be safe     they perish. Then if they die unprovided, no more is the King     guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those     impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject\'s     duty is the King\'s; but every subject\'s soul is his own.     Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man     in his bed- wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so,       death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly     lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes     it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He     let him outlive that day to see His greatness, and to teach     others how they should prepare.   WILLIAMS. \'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon his     own head- the King is not to answer for it.   BATES. I do not desire he should answer for me, and yet I determine     to fight lustily for him.   KING HENRY. I myself heard the King say he would not be ransom\'d.   WILLIAMS. Ay, he said so, to make us fight cheerfully; but when our     throats are cut he may be ransom\'d, and we ne\'er the wiser.   KING HENRY. If I live to see it, I will never trust his word after.   WILLIAMS. You pay him then! That\'s a perilous shot out of an     elder-gun, that a poor and a private displeasure can do against a     monarch! You may as well go about to turn the sun to ice with     fanning in his face with a peacock\'s feather. You\'ll never trust     his word after! Come, \'tis a foolish saying.   KING HENRY. Your reproof is something too round; I should be angry     with you, if the time were convenient.     WILLIAMS. Let it be a quarrel between us if you live.   KING HENRY. I embrace it.   WILLIAMS. How shall I know thee again?   KING HENRY. Give me any gage of thine, and I will wear it in my     bonnet; then if ever thou dar\'st acknowledge it, I will make it     my quarrel.   WILLIAMS. Here\'s my glove; give me another of thine.   KING HENRY. There.   WILLIAMS. This will I also wear in my cap; if ever thou come to me     and say, after to-morrow, \'This is my glove,\' by this hand I will     take thee a box on the ear.   KING HENRY. If ever I live to see it, I will challenge it.   WILLIAMS. Thou dar\'st as well be hang\'d.   KING HENRY. Well, I will do it, though I take thee in the King\'s     company.   WILLIAMS. Keep thy word. Fare thee well.   BATES. Be friends, you English fools, be friends; we have     French quarrels enow, if you could tell how to reckon.   KING HENRY. Indeed, the French may lay twenty French crowns to one     they will beat us, for they bear them on their shoulders; but it       is no English treason to cut French crowns, and to-morrow the     King himself will be a clipper.                                                  Exeunt soldiers     Upon the King! Let us our lives, our souls,     Our debts, our careful wives,     Our children, and our sins, lay on the King!     We must bear all. O hard condition,     Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath     Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel     But his own wringing! What infinite heart\'s ease     Must kings neglect that private men enjoy!     And what have kings that privates have not too,     Save ceremony- save general ceremony?     And what art thou, thou idol Ceremony?     What kind of god art thou, that suffer\'st more     Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?     What are thy rents? What are thy comings-in?     O Ceremony, show me but thy worth!     What is thy soul of adoration?     Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form,       Creating awe and fear in other men?     Wherein thou art less happy being fear\'d     Than they in fearing.     What drink\'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,     But poison\'d flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,     And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!     Thinks thou the fiery fever will go out     With titles blown from adulation?     Will it give place to flexure and low bending?     Canst thou, when thou command\'st the beggar\'s knee,     Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,     That play\'st so subtly with a king\'s repose.     I am a king that find thee; and I know     \'Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball,     The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,     The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,     The farced tide running fore the king,     The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp     That beats upon the high shore of this world-     No, not all these, thrice gorgeous ceremony,       Not all these, laid in bed majestical,     Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave     Who, with a body fill\'d and vacant mind,     Gets him to rest, cramm\'d with distressful bread;     Never sees horrid night, the child of hell;     But, like a lackey, from the rise to set     Sweats in the eye of Pheebus, and all night     Sleeps in Elysium; next day, after dawn,     Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse;     And follows so the ever-running year     With profitable labour, to his grave.     And but for ceremony, such a wretch,     Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,     Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.     The slave, a member of the country\'s peace,     Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots     What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace     Whose hours the peasant best advantages.                         Enter ERPINGHAM      ERPINGHAM. My lord, your nobles, jealous of your absence,     Seek through your camp to find you.   KING. Good old knight,     Collect them all together at my tent:     I\'ll be before thee.   ERPINGHAM. I shall do\'t, my lord.                         Exit   KING. O God of battles, steel my soldiers\' hearts,     Possess them not with fear! Take from them now     The sense of reck\'ning, if th\' opposed numbers     Pluck their hearts from them! Not to-day, O Lord,     O, not to-day, think not upon the fault     My father made in compassing the crown!     I Richard\'s body have interred new,     And on it have bestowed more contrite tears     Than from it issued forced drops of blood;     Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,     Who twice a day their wither\'d hands hold up     Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built     Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests       Sing still for Richard\'s soul. More will I do;     Though all that I can do is nothing worth,     Since that my penitence comes after all,     Imploring pardon.                           Enter GLOUCESTER    GLOUCESTER. My liege!   KING HENRY. My brother Gloucester\'s voice? Ay;     I know thy errand, I will go with thee;     The day, my friends, and all things, stay for me.     Exeunt     SCENE II. The French camp  Enter the DAUPHIN, ORLEANS, RAMBURES, and others    ORLEANS. The sun doth gild our armour; up, my lords!   DAUPHIN. Montez a cheval! My horse! Varlet, laquais! Ha!   ORLEANS. O brave spirit!   DAUPHIN. Via! Les eaux et la terre-   ORLEANS. Rien puis? L\'air et le feu.   DAUPHIN. Ciel! cousin Orleans.                          Enter CONSTABLE      Now, my Lord Constable!   CONSTABLE. Hark how our steeds for present service neigh!   DAUPHIN. Mount them, and make incision in their hides,     That their hot blood may spin in English eyes,     And dout them with superfluous courage, ha!   RAMBURES. What, will you have them weep our horses\' blood?     How shall we then behold their natural tears?                            Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. The English are embattl\'d, you French peers.   CONSTABLE. To horse, you gallant Princes! straight to horse!     Do but behold yon poor and starved band,     And your fair show shall suck away their souls,     Leaving them but the shales and husks of men.     There is not work enough for all our hands;     Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins     To give each naked curtle-axe a stain     That our French gallants shall to-day draw out,     And sheathe for lack of sport. Let us but blow on them,     The vapour of our valour will o\'erturn them.     \'Tis positive \'gainst all exceptions, lords,     That our superfluous lackeys and our peasants-     Who in unnecessary action swarm     About our squares of battle- were enow     To purge this field of, such a hilding foe;     Though we upon this mountain\'s basis by     Took stand for idle speculation-       But that our honours must not. What\'s to say?     A very little little let us do,     And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound     The tucket sonance and the note to mount;     For our approach shall so much dare the field     That England shall couch down in fear and yield.                          Enter GRANDPRE    GRANDPRE. Why do you stay so long, my lords of France?     Yond island carrions, desperate of their bones,     Ill-favouredly become the morning field;     Their ragged curtains poorly are let loose,     And our air shakes them passing scornfully;     Big Mars seems bankrupt in their beggar\'d host,     And faintly through a rusty beaver peeps.     The horsemen sit like fixed candlesticks     With torch-staves in their hand; and their poor jades     Lob down their heads, dropping the hides and hips,     The gum down-roping from their pale-dead eyes,       And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal\'d bit     Lies foul with chaw\'d grass, still and motionless;     And their executors, the knavish crows,     Fly o\'er them, all impatient for their hour.     Description cannot suit itself in words     To demonstrate the life of such a battle     In life so lifeless as it shows itself.   CONSTABLE. They have said their prayers and they stay for death.   DAUPHIN. Shall we go send them dinners and fresh suits,     And give their fasting horses provender,     And after fight with them?   CONSTABLE. I stay but for my guidon. To the field!     I will the banner from a trumpet take,     And use it for my haste. Come, come, away!     The sun is high, and we outwear the day.              Exeunt     SCENE III. The English camp  Enter GLOUCESTER, BEDFORD, EXETER, ERPINGHAM, with all his host; SALISBURY and WESTMORELAND    GLOUCESTER. Where is the King?   BEDFORD. The King himself is rode to view their battle.   WESTMORELAND. Of fighting men they have full three-score thousand.   EXETER. There\'s five to one; besides, they all are fresh.   SALISBURY. God\'s arm strike with us! \'tis a fearful odds.     God bye you, Princes all; I\'ll to my charge.     If we no more meet till we meet in heaven,     Then joyfully, my noble Lord of Bedford,     My dear Lord Gloucester, and my good Lord Exeter,     And my kind kinsman- warriors all, adieu!   BEDFORD. Farewell, good Salisbury; and good luck go with thee!   EXETER. Farewell, kind lord. Fight valiantly to-day;     And yet I do thee wrong to mind thee of it,     For thou art fram\'d of the firm truth of valour.                                                   Exit SALISBURY   BEDFORD. He is as full of valour as of kindness;       Princely in both.                              Enter the KING    WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here     But one ten thousand of those men in England     That do no work to-day!   KING. What\'s he that wishes so?     My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;     If we are mark\'d to die, we are enow     To do our country loss; and if to live,     The fewer men, the greater share of honour.     God\'s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.     By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,     Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;     It yearns me not if men my garments wear;     Such outward things dwell not in my desires.     But if it be a sin to covet honour,     I am the most offending soul alive.     No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.     God\'s peace! I would not lose so great an honour       As one man more methinks would share from me     For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!     Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,     That he which hath no stomach to this fight,     Let him depart; his passport shall be made,     And crowns for convoy put into his purse;     We would not die in that man\'s company     That fears his fellowship to die with us.     This day is call\'d the feast of Crispian.     He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,     Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam\'d,     And rouse him at the name of Crispian.     He that shall live this day, and see old age,     Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,     And say \'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.\'     Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,     And say \'These wounds I had on Crispian\'s day.\'     Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,     But he\'ll remember, with advantages,     What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,       Familiar in his mouth as household words-     Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,     Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-     Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb\'red.     This story shall the good man teach his son;     And Crispin Crispian shall ne\'er go by,     From this day to the ending of the world,     But we in it shall be remembered-     We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;     For he to-day that sheds his blood with me     Shall be my brother; be he ne\'er so vile,     This day shall gentle his condition;     And gentlemen in England now-a-bed     Shall think themselves accurs\'d they were not here,     And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks     That fought with us upon Saint Crispin\'s day.                        Re-enter SALISBURY    SALISBURY. My sovereign lord, bestow yourself with speed:       The French are bravely in their battles set,     And will with all expedience charge on us.   KING HENRY. All things are ready, if our minds be so.   WESTMORELAND. Perish the man whose mind is backward now!   KING HENRY. Thou dost not wish more help from England, coz?   WESTMORELAND. God\'s will, my liege! would you and I alone,     Without more help, could fight this royal battle!   KING HENRY. Why, now thou hast unwish\'d five thousand men;     Which likes me better than to wish us one.     You know your places. God be with you all!                       Tucket. Enter MONTJOY    MONTJOY. Once more I come to know of thee, King Harry,     If for thy ransom thou wilt now compound,     Before thy most assured overthrow;     For certainly thou art so near the gulf     Thou needs must be englutted. Besides, in mercy,     The constable desires thee thou wilt mind     Thy followers of repentance, that their souls       May make a peaceful and a sweet retire     From off these fields, where, wretches, their poor bodies     Must lie and fester.   KING HENRY. Who hath sent thee now?   MONTJOY. The Constable of France.   KING HENRY. I pray thee bear my former answer back:     Bid them achieve me, and then sell my bones.     Good God! why should they mock poor fellows thus?     The man that once did sell the lion\'s skin     While the beast liv\'d was kill\'d with hunting him.     A many of our bodies shall no doubt     Find native graves; upon the which, I trust,     Shall witness live in brass of this day\'s work.     And those that leave their valiant bones in France,     Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills,     They shall be fam\'d; for there the sun shall greet them     And draw their honours reeking up to heaven,     Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime,     The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France.     Mark then abounding valour in our English,       That, being dead, like to the bullet\'s grazing     Break out into a second course of mischief,     Killing in relapse of mortality.     Let me speak proudly: tell the Constable     We are but warriors for the working-day;     Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch\'d     With rainy marching in the painful field;     There\'s not a piece of feather in our host-     Good argument, I hope, we will not fly-     And time hath worn us into slovenry.     But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim;     And my poor soldiers tell me yet ere night     They\'ll be in fresher robes, or they will pluck     The gay new coats o\'er the French soldiers\' heads     And turn them out of service. If they do this-     As, if God please, they shall- my ransom then     Will soon be levied. Herald, save thou thy labour;     Come thou no more for ransom, gentle herald;     They shall have none, I swear, but these my joints;     Which if they have, as I will leave \'em them,       Shall yield them little, tell the Constable.   MONTJOY. I shall, King Harry. And so fare thee well:     Thou never shalt hear herald any more.                  Exit   KING HENRY. I fear thou wilt once more come again for a ransom.                      Enter the DUKE OF YORK    YORK. My lord, most humbly on my knee I beg     The leading of the vaward.   KING HENRY. Take it, brave York. Now, soldiers, march away;     And how thou pleasest, God, dispose the day!          Exeunt     SCENE IV. The field of battle  Alarum.  Excursions.  Enter FRENCH SOLDIER, PISTOL, and BOY    PISTOL. Yield, cur!   FRENCH SOLDIER. Je pense que vous etes le gentilhomme de bonne     qualite.   PISTOL. Cality! Calen o custure me! Art thou a gentleman?     What is thy name? Discuss.   FRENCH SOLDIER. O Seigneur Dieu!   PISTOL. O, Signieur Dew should be a gentleman.     Perpend my words, O Signieur Dew, and mark:     O Signieur Dew, thou diest on point of fox,     Except, O Signieur, thou do give to me     Egregious ransom.   FRENCH SOLDIER. O, prenez misericorde; ayez pitie de moi!   PISTOL. Moy shall not serve; I will have forty moys;     Or I will fetch thy rim out at thy throat     In drops of crimson blood.   FRENCH SOLDIER. Est-il impossible d\'echapper la force de ton bras?     PISTOL. Brass, cur?     Thou damned and luxurious mountain-goat,     Offer\'st me brass?   FRENCH SOLDIER. O, pardonnez-moi!   PISTOL. Say\'st thou me so? Is that a ton of moys?     Come hither, boy; ask me this slave in French     What is his name.   BOY. Ecoutez: comment etes-vous appele?   FRENCH SOLDIER. Monsieur le Fer.   BOY. He says his name is Master Fer.   PISTOL. Master Fer! I\'ll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him-    discuss the same in French unto him.   BOY. I do not know the French for fer, and ferret, and firk.   PISTOL. Bid him prepare; for I will cut his throat.   FRENCH SOLDIER. Que dit-il, monsieur?   BOY. Il me commande a vous dire que vous faites vous pret; car ce     soldat ici est dispose tout a cette heure de couper votre gorge.   PISTOL. Owy, cuppele gorge, permafoy!     Peasant, unless thou give me crowns, brave crowns;     Or mangled shalt thou be by this my sword.     FRENCH SOLDIER. O, je vous supplie, pour l\'amour de Dieu, me     pardonner! Je suis gentilhomme de bonne maison. Gardez ma vie, et     je vous donnerai deux cents ecus.   PISTOL. What are his words?   BOY. He prays you to save his life; he is a gentleman of a good     house, and for his ransom he will give you two hundred crowns.   PISTOL. Tell him my fury shall abate, and I     The crowns will take.   FRENCH SOLDIER. Petit monsieur, que dit-il?   BOY. Encore qu\'il est contre son jurement de pardonner aucun     prisonnier, neamnoins, pour les ecus que vous l\'avez promis, il     est content a vous donner la liberte, le franchisement.   FRENCH SOLDIER. Sur mes genoux je vous donne mille remercimens; et     je m\'estime heureux que je suis tombe entre les mains d\'un     chevalier, je pense, le plus brave, vaillant, et tres distingue     seigneur d\'Angleterre.   PISTOL. Expound unto me, boy.   BOY. He gives you, upon his knees, a thousand thanks; and he     esteems himself happy that he hath fall\'n into the hands of one-     as he thinks- the most brave, valorous, and thrice-worthy       signieur of England.   PISTOL. As I suck blood, I will some mercy show.     Follow me.                                              Exit   BOY. Suivez-vous le grand capitaine.       Exit FRENCH SOLDIER     I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart; but     the saying is true- the empty vessel makes the greatest sound.     Bardolph and Nym had ten times more valour than this roaring     devil i\' th\' old play, that every one may pare his nails with a     wooden dagger; and they are both hang\'d; and so would this be, if     he durst steal anything adventurously. I must stay with the     lackeys, with the luggage of our camp. The French might have a     good prey of us, if he knew of it; for there is none to guard it     but boys.                                               Exit     SCENE V. Another part of the field of battle  Enter CONSTABLE, ORLEANS, BOURBON, DAUPHIN, and RAMBURES    CONSTABLE. O diable!   ORLEANS. O Seigneur! le jour est perdu, tout est perdu!   DAUPHIN. Mort Dieu, ma vie! all is confounded, all!     Reproach and everlasting shame     Sits mocking in our plumes.                 [A short alarum]     O mechante fortune! Do not run away.   CONSTABLE. Why, an our ranks are broke.   DAUPHIN. O perdurable shame! Let\'s stab ourselves.     Be these the wretches that we play\'d at dice for?   ORLEANS. Is this the king we sent to for his ransom?   BOURBON. Shame, and eternal shame, nothing but shame!     Let us die in honour: once more back again;     And he that will not follow Bourbon now,     Let him go hence and, with his cap in hand     Like a base pander, hold the chamber-door     Whilst by a slave, no gender than my dog,       His fairest daughter is contaminated.   CONSTABLE. Disorder, that hath spoil\'d us, friend us now!     Let us on heaps go offer up our lives.   ORLEANS. We are enow yet living in the field     To smother up the English in our throngs,     If any order might be thought upon.   BOURBON. The devil take order now! I\'ll to the throng.     Let life be short, else shame will be too long.       Exeunt     SCENE VI. Another part of the field  Alarum. Enter the KING and his train, with prisoners; EXETER, and others    KING HENRY. Well have we done, thrice-valiant countrymen;     But all\'s not done- yet keep the French the field.   EXETER. The Duke of York commends him to your Majesty.   KING HENRY. Lives he, good uncle? Thrice within this hour     I saw him down; thrice up again, and fighting;     From helmet to the spur all blood he was.   EXETER. In which array, brave soldier, doth he lie     Larding the plain; and by his bloody side,     Yoke-fellow to his honour-owing wounds,     The noble Earl of Suffolk also lies.     Suffolk first died; and York, all haggled over,     Comes to him, where in gore he lay insteeped,     And takes him by the beard, kisses the gashes     That bloodily did yawn upon his face,     He cries aloud \'Tarry, my cousin Suffolk.     My soul shall thine keep company to heaven;       Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast;     As in this glorious and well-foughten field     We kept together in our chivalry.\'     Upon these words I came and cheer\'d him up;     He smil\'d me in the face, raught me his hand,     And, with a feeble grip, says \'Dear my lord,     Commend my service to my sovereign.\'     So did he turn, and over Suffolk\'s neck     He threw his wounded arm and kiss\'d his lips;     And so, espous\'d to death, with blood he seal\'d     A testament of noble-ending love.     The pretty and sweet manner of it forc\'d     Those waters from me which I would have stopp\'d;     But I had not so much of man in me,     And all my mother came into mine eyes     And gave me up to tears.   KING HENRY. I blame you not;     For, hearing this, I must perforce compound     With mistful eyes, or they will issue too.          [Alarum]     But hark! what new alarum is this same?       The French have reinforc\'d their scatter\'d men.     Then every soldier kill his prisoners;     Give the word through.                                Exeunt     SCENE VII. Another part of the field  Enter FLUELLEN and GOWER    FLUELLEN. Kill the poys and the luggage! \'Tis expressly against the     law of arms; \'tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now, as     can be offert; in your conscience, now, is it not?   GOWER. \'Tis certain there\'s not a boy left alive; and the cowardly     rascals that ran from the battle ha\' done this slaughter;     besides, they have burned and carried away all that was in the     King\'s tent; wherefore the King most worthily hath caus\'d every     soldier to cut his prisoner\'s throat. O, \'tis a gallant King!   FLUELLEN. Ay, he was porn at Monmouth, Captain Gower. What call you     the town\'s name where Alexander the Pig was born?   GOWER. Alexander the Great.   FLUELLEN. Why, I pray you, is not \'pig\' great? The pig, or great,     or the mighty, or the huge, or the magnanimous, are all one     reckonings, save the phrase is a little variations.   GOWER. I think Alexander the Great was born in Macedon; his father     was called Philip of Macedon, as I take it.   FLUELLEN. I think it is in Macedon where Alexander is porn. I tell       you, Captain, if you look in the maps of the \'orld, I warrant you     sall find, in the comparisons between Macedon and Monmouth, that     the situations, look you, is both alike. There is a river in     Macedon; and there is also moreover a river at Monmouth; it is     call\'d Wye at Monmouth, but it is out of my prains what is the     name of the other river; but \'tis all one, \'tis alike as my     fingers is to my fingers, and there is salmons in both. If you     mark Alexander\'s life well, Harry of Monmouth\'s life is come     after it indifferent well; for there is figures in all things.     Alexander- God knows, and you know- in his rages, and his furies,     and his wraths, and his cholers, and his moods, and his     displeasures, and his indignations, and also being a little     intoxicates in his prains, did, in his ales and his angers, look     you, kill his best friend, Cleitus.   GOWER. Our king is not like him in that: he never kill\'d any of his     friends.   FLUELLEN. It is not well done, mark you now, to take the tales out     of my mouth ere it is made and finished. I speak but in the     figures and comparisons of it; as Alexander kill\'d his friend     Cleitus, being in his ales and his cups, so also Harry Monmouth,       being in his right wits and his good judgments, turn\'d away the     fat knight with the great belly doublet; he was full of jests,     and gipes, and knaveries, and mocks; I have forgot his name.   GOWER. Sir John Falstaff.   FLUELLEN. That is he. I\'ll tell you there is good men porn at     Monmouth.   GOWER. Here comes his Majesty.              Alarum. Enter the KING, WARWICK, GLOUCESTER,             EXETER, and others, with prisoners. Flourish    KING HENRY. I was not angry since I came to France     Until this instant. Take a trumpet, herald,     Ride thou unto the horsemen on yond hill;     If they will fight with us, bid them come down     Or void the field; they do offend our sight.     If they\'ll do neither, we will come to them     And make them skirr away as swift as stones     Enforced from the old Assyrian slings;     Besides, we\'ll cut the throats of those we have,       And not a man of them that we shall take     Shall taste our mercy. Go and tell them so.                        Enter MONTJOY    EXETER. Here comes the herald of the French, my liege.   GLOUCESTER. His eyes are humbler than they us\'d to be.   KING HENRY. How now! What means this, herald? know\'st thou not     That I have fin\'d these bones of mine for ransom?     Com\'st thou again for ransom?   MONTJOY. No, great King;     I come to thee for charitable licence,     That we may wander o\'er this bloody field     To book our dead, and then to bury them;     To sort our nobles from our common men;     For many of our princes- woe the while!-     Lie drown\'d and soak\'d in mercenary blood;     So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbs     In blood of princes; and their wounded steeds     Fret fetlock deep in gore, and with wild rage       Yerk out their armed heels at their dead masters,     Killing them twice. O, give us leave, great King,     To view the field in safety, and dispose     Of their dead bodies!   KING HENRY. I tell thee truly, herald,     I know not if the day be ours or no;     For yet a many of your horsemen peer     And gallop o\'er the field.   MONTJOY. The day is yours.   KING HENRY. Praised be God, and not our strength, for it!     What is this castle call\'d that stands hard by?   MONTJOY. They call it Agincourt.   KING HENRY. Then call we this the field of Agincourt,     Fought on the day of Crispin Crispianus.   FLUELLEN. Your grandfather of famous memory, an\'t please your     Majesty, and your great-uncle Edward the Plack Prince of Wales,     as I have read in the chronicles, fought a most prave pattle here     in France.   KING HENRY. They did, Fluellen.   FLUELLEN. Your Majesty says very true; if your Majesties is       rememb\'red of it, the Welshmen did good service in garden where     leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps; which your     Majesty know to this hour is an honourable badge of the service;     and I do believe your Majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek     upon Saint Tavy\'s day.   KING HENRY. I wear it for a memorable honour;     For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman.   FLUELLEN. All the water in Wye cannot wash your Majesty\'s Welsh     plood out of your pody, I can tell you that. Got pless it and     preserve it as long as it pleases his Grace and his Majesty too!   KING HENRY. Thanks, good my countryman.   FLUELLEN. By Jeshu, I am your Majesty\'s countryman, care not who     know it; I will confess it to all the \'orld: I need not be     asham\'d of your Majesty, praised be Got, so long as your Majesty     is an honest man.                         Enter WILLIAMS    KING HENRY. God keep me so! Our heralds go with him:     Bring me just notice of the numbers dead       On both our parts. Call yonder fellow hither.                                      Exeunt heralds with MONTJOY   EXETER. Soldier, you must come to the King.   KING HENRY. Soldier, why wear\'st thou that glove in thy cap?   WILLIAMS. An\'t please your Majesty, \'tis the gage of one that I     should fight withal, if he be alive.   KING HENRY. An Englishman?   WILLIAMS. An\'t please your Majesty, a rascal that swagger\'d with me     last night; who, if \'a live and ever dare to challenge this     glove, I have sworn to take him a box o\' th\' ear; or if I can see     my glove in his cap- which he swore, as he was a soldier, he     would wear if alive- I will strike it out soundly.   KING HENRY. What think you, Captain Fluellen, is it fit this     soldier keep his oath?   FLUELLEN. He is a craven and a villain else, an\'t please your     Majesty, in my conscience.   KING HENRY. It may be his enemy is a gentlemen of great sort, quite     from the answer of his degree.   FLUELLEN. Though he be as good a gentleman as the Devil is, as     Lucifier and Belzebub himself, it is necessary, look your Grace,       that he keep his vow and his oath; if he be perjur\'d, see you     now, his reputation is as arrant a villain and a Jacksauce as     ever his black shoe trod upon God\'s ground and his earth, in my     conscience, la.   KING HENRY. Then keep thy vow, sirrah, when thou meet\'st the     fellow.   WILLIAMS. So I Will, my liege, as I live.   KING HENRY. Who serv\'st thou under?   WILLIAMS. Under Captain Gower, my liege.   FLUELLEN. Gower is a good captain, and is good knowledge and     literatured in the wars.   KING HENRY. Call him hither to me, soldier.   WILLIAMS. I will, my liege.                               Exit   KING HENRY. Here, Fluellen; wear thou this favour for me, and stick     it in thy cap; when Alencon and myself were down together, I     pluck\'d this glove from his helm. If any man challenge this, he     is a friend to Alencon and an enemy to our person; if thou     encounter any such, apprehend him, an thou dost me love.   FLUELLEN. Your Grace does me as great honours as can be desir\'d in     the hearts of his subjects. I would fain see the man that has but       two legs that shall find himself aggrief\'d at this glove, that is     all; but I would fain see it once, an please God of his grace     that I might see.   KING HENRY. Know\'st thou Gower?   FLUELLEN. He is my dear friend, an please you.   KING HENRY. Pray thee, go seek him, and bring him to my tent.   FLUELLEN. I will fetch him.                               Exit   KING HENRY. My Lord of Warwick and my brother Gloucester,     Follow Fluellen closely at the heels;     The glove which I have given him for a favour     May haply purchase him a box o\' th\' ear.     It is the soldier\'s: I, by bargain, should     Wear it myself. Follow, good cousin Warwick;     If that the soldier strike him, as I judge     By his blunt bearing he will keep his word,     Some sudden mischief may arise of it;     For I do know Fluellen valiant,     And touch\'d with choler, hot as gunpowder,     And quickly will return an injury;     Follow, and see there be no harm between them.       Go you with me, uncle of Exeter.                      Exeunt     SCENE VIII. Before KING HENRY\'S PAVILION  Enter GOWER and WILLIAMS    WILLIAMS. I warrant it is to knight you, Captain.                           Enter FLUELLEN    FLUELLEN. God\'s will and his pleasure, Captain, I beseech you now,     come apace to the King: there is more good toward you     peradventure than is in your knowledge to dream of.   WILLIAMS. Sir, know you this glove?   FLUELLEN. Know the glove? I know the glove is a glove.   WILLIAMS. I know this; and thus I challenge it.  [Strikes him]   FLUELLEN. \'Sblood, an arrant traitor as any\'s in the universal     world, or in France, or in England!   GOWER. How now, sir! you villain!   WILLIAMS. Do you think I\'ll be forsworn?   FLUELLEN. Stand away, Captain Gower; I will give treason his     payment into plows, I warrant you.   WILLIAMS. I am no traitor.     FLUELLEN. That\'s a lie in thy throat. I charge you in his Majesty\'s     name, apprehend him: he\'s a friend of the Duke Alencon\'s.                    Enter WARWICK and GLOUCESTER    WARWICK. How now! how now! what\'s the matter?   FLUELLEN. My Lord of Warwick, here is- praised be God for it!- a     most contagious treason come to light, look you, as you shall     desire in a summer\'s day. Here is his Majesty.                    Enter the KING and EXETER    KING HENRY. How now! what\'s the matter?   FLUELLEN. My liege, here is a villain and a traitor, that, look     your Grace, has struck the glove which your Majesty is take out     of the helmet of Alencon.   WILLIAMS. My liege, this was my glove: here is the fellow of it;     and he that I gave it to in change promis\'d to wear it in his     cap; I promis\'d to strike him if he did; I met this man with my     glove in his cap, and I have been as good as my word.     FLUELLEN. Your Majesty hear now, saving your Majesty\'s manhood,     what an arrant, rascally, beggarly, lousy knave it is; I hope     your Majesty is pear me testimony and witness, and will     avouchment, that this is the glove of Alencon that your Majesty     is give me; in your conscience, now.   KING HENRY. Give me thy glove, soldier; look, here is the fellow of       it.     \'Twas I, indeed, thou promised\'st to strike,     And thou hast given me most bitter terms.   FLUELLEN. An please your Majesty, let his neck answer for it, if     there is any martial law in the world.   KING HENRY. How canst thou make me satisfaction?   WILLIAMS. All offences, my lord, come from the heart; never came     any from mine that might offend your Majesty.   KING HENRY. It was ourself thou didst abuse.   WILLIAMS. Your Majesty came not like yourself: you appear\'d to me     but as a common man; witness the night, your garments, your     lowliness; and what your Highness suffer\'d under that shape I     beseech you take it for your own fault, and not mine; for had you     been as I took you for, I made no offence; therefore, I beseech       your Highness pardon me.   KING HENRY. Here, uncle Exeter, fill this glove with crowns,     And give it to this fellow. Keep it, fellow;     And wear it for an honour in thy cap     Till I do challenge it. Give him the crowns;     And, Captain, you must needs be friends with him.   FLUELLEN. By this day and this light, the fellow has mettle enough     in his belly: hold, there is twelve pence for you; and I pray you     to serve God, and keep you out of prawls, and prabbles, and     quarrels, and dissensions, and, I warrant you, it is the better     for you.   WILLIAMS. I will none of your money.   FLUELLEN. It is with a good will; I can tell you it will serve you     to mend your shoes. Come, wherefore should you be so pashful?     Your shoes is not so good. \'Tis a good silling, I warrant you, or     I will change it.                        Enter an ENGLISH HERALD    KING HENRY. Now, herald, are the dead numb\'red?     HERALD. Here is the number of the slaught\'red French.                                                  [Gives a paper]   KING HENRY. What prisoners of good sort are taken, uncle?   EXETER. Charles Duke of Orleans, nephew to the King;     John Duke of Bourbon, and Lord Bouciqualt;     Of other lords and barons, knights and squires,     Full fifteen hundred, besides common men.   KING HENRY. This note doth tell me of ten thousand French     That in the field lie slain; of princes in this number,     And nobles bearing banners, there lie dead     One hundred twenty-six; added to these,     Of knights, esquires, and gallant gentlemen,     Eight thousand and four hundred; of the which     Five hundred were but yesterday dubb\'d knights.     So that, in these ten thousand they have lost,     There are but sixteen hundred mercenaries;     The rest are princes, barons, lords, knights, squires,     And gentlemen of blood and quality.     The names of those their nobles that lie dead:     Charles Delabreth, High Constable of France;       Jaques of Chatillon, Admiral of France;     The master of the cross-bows, Lord Rambures;     Great Master of France, the brave Sir Guichard Dolphin;     John Duke of Alencon; Antony Duke of Brabant,     The brother to the Duke of Burgundy;     And Edward Duke of Bar. Of lusty earls,     Grandpre and Roussi, Fauconbridge and Foix,     Beaumont and Marle, Vaudemont and Lestrake.     Here was a royal fellowship of death!     Where is the number of our English dead?                                  [HERALD presents another paper]     Edward the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk,     Sir Richard Kikely, Davy Gam, Esquire;     None else of name; and of all other men     But five and twenty. O God, thy arm was here!     And not to us, but to thy arm alone,     Ascribe we all. When, without stratagem,     But in plain shock and even play of battle,     Was ever known so great and little los     On one part and on th\' other? Take it, God,       For it is none but thine.   EXETER. \'Tis wonderful!   KING HENRY. Come, go we in procession to the village;     And be it death proclaimed through our host     To boast of this or take that praise from God     Which is his only.   FLUELLEN. Is it not lawful, an please your Majesty, to tell how     many is kill\'d?   KING HENRY. Yes, Captain; but with this acknowledgment,     That God fought for us.   FLUELLEN. Yes, my conscience, he did us great good.   KING HENRY. Do we all holy rites:     Let there be sung \'Non nobis\' and \'Te Deum\';     The dead with charity enclos\'d in clay-     And then to Calais; and to England then;     Where ne\'er from France arriv\'d more happy men.       Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. PROLOGUE.  Enter CHORUS    CHORUS. Vouchsafe to those that have not read the story     That I may prompt them; and of such as have,     I humbly pray them to admit th\' excuse     Of time, of numbers, and due course of things,     Which cannot in their huge and proper life     Be here presented. Now we bear the King     Toward Calais. Grant him there. There seen,     Heave him away upon your winged thoughts     Athwart the sea. Behold, the English beach     Pales in the flood with men, with wives, and boys,     Whose shouts and claps out-voice the deep-mouth\'d sea,     Which, like a mighty whiffler, fore the King     Seems to prepare his way. So let him land,     And solemnly see him set on to London.     So swift a pace hath thought that even now     You may imagine him upon Blackheath;     Where that his lords desire him to have borne     His bruised helmet and his bended sword       Before him through the city. He forbids it,     Being free from vainness and self-glorious pride;     Giving full trophy, signal, and ostent,     Quite from himself to God. But now behold     In the quick forge and working-house of thought,     How London doth pour out her citizens!     The mayor and all his brethren in best sort-     Like to the senators of th\' antique Rome,     With the plebeians swarming at their heels-     Go forth and fetch their conqu\'ring Caesar in;     As, by a lower but loving likelihood,     Were now the General of our gracious Empress-     As in good time he may- from Ireland coming,     Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,     How many would the peaceful city quit     To welcome him! Much more, and much more cause,     Did they this Harry. Now in London place him-     As yet the lamentation of the French     Invites the King of England\'s stay at home;     The Emperor\'s coming in behalf of France       To order peace between them; and omit     All the occurrences, whatever chanc\'d,     Till Harry\'s back-return again to France.     There must we bring him; and myself have play\'d     The interim, by rememb\'ring you \'tis past.     Then brook abridgment; and your eyes advance,     After your thoughts, straight back again to France.     Exit     SCENE I. France.  The English camp  Enter FLUELLEN and GOWER    GOWER. Nay, that\'s right; but why wear you your leek to-day? Saint     Davy\'s day is past.   FLUELLEN. There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all     things. I will tell you, ass my friend, Captain Gower: the     rascally, scald, beggarly, lousy, pragging knave, Pistol- which     you and yourself and all the world know to be no petter than a     fellow, look you now, of no merits- he is come to me, and prings     me pread and salt yesterday, look you, and bid me eat my leek; it     was in a place where I could not breed no contendon with him; but     I will be so bold as to wear it in my cap till I see him once     again, and then I will tell him a little piece of my desires.                            Enter PISTOL    GOWER. Why, here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock.   FLUELLEN. \'Tis no matter for his swellings nor his turkey-cocks.     God pless you, Aunchient Pistol! you scurvy, lousy knave, God       pless you!   PISTOL. Ha! art thou bedlam? Dost thou thirst, base Troyan,     To have me fold up Parca\'s fatal web?     Hence! I am qualmish at the smell of leek.   FLUELLEN. I peseech you heartily, scurvy, lousy knave, at my     desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, look you,     this leek; because, look you, you do not love it, nor your     affections, and your appetites, and your digestions, does not     agree with it, I would desire you to eat it.   PISTOL. Not for Cadwallader and all his goats.   FLUELLEN. There is one goat for you.  [Strikes him]  Will you be so     good, scald knave, as eat it?   PISTOL. Base Troyan, thou shalt die.   FLUELLEN. You say very true, scald knave- when God\'s will is. I     will desire you to live in the meantime, and eat your victuals;     come, there is sauce for it.  [Striking him again]  You call\'d me     yesterday mountain-squire; but I will make you to-day a squire of     low degree. I pray you fall to; if you can mock a leek, you can     eat a leek.   GOWER. Enough, Captain, you have astonish\'d him.     FLUELLEN. I say I will make him eat some part of my leek, or I will     peat his pate four days. Bite, I pray you, it is good for your     green wound and your ploody coxcomb.   PISTOL. Must I bite?   FLUELLEN. Yes, certainly, and out of doubt, and out of question     too, and ambiguides.   PISTOL. By this leek, I will most horribly revenge- I eat and eat,     I swear-   FLUELLEN. Eat, I pray you; will you have some more sauce to your     leek? There is not enough leek to swear by.   PISTOL. Quiet thy cudgel: thou dost see I eat.   FLUELLEN. Much good do you, scald knave, heartily. Nay, pray you     throw none away; the skin is good for your broken coxcomb. When     you take occasions to see leeks hereafter, I pray you mock at     \'em; that is all.   PISTOL. Good.   FLUELLEN. Ay, leeks is good. Hold you, there is a groat to heal     your pate.   PISTOL. Me a groat!   FLUELLEN. Yes, verily and in truth, you shall take it; or I have       another leek in my pocket which you shall eat.   PISTOL. I take thy groat in earnest of revenge.   FLUELLEN. If I owe you anything I will pay you in cudgels; you     shall be a woodmonger, and buy nothing of me but cudgels. God bye     you, and keep you, and heal your pate.  Exit   PISTOL. All hell shall stir for this.   GOWER. Go, go: you are a couterfeit cowardly knave. Will you mock     at an ancient tradition, begun upon an honourable respect, and     worn as a memorable trophy of predeceased valour, and dare not     avouch in your deeds any of your words? I have seen you gleeking     and galling at this gentleman twice or thrice. You thought,     because he could not speak English in the native garb, he could     not therefore handle an English cudgel; you find it otherwise,     and henceforth let a Welsh correction teach you a good English     condition. Fare ye well.                                Exit   PISTOL. Doth Fortune play the huswife with me now?     News have I that my Nell is dead i\' th\' spital     Of malady of France;     And there my rendezvous is quite cut off.       Old I do wax; and from my weary limbs     Honour is cudgell\'d. Well, bawd I\'ll turn,     And something lean to cutpurse of quick hand.     To England will I steal, and there I\'ll steal;     And patches will I get unto these cudgell\'d scars,     And swear I got them in the Gallia wars.                Exit     SCENE II. France. The FRENCH KING\'S palace  Enter at one door, KING HENRY, EXETER, BEDFORD, GLOUCESTER, WARWICK, WESTMORELAND, and other LORDS; at another, the FRENCH KING, QUEEN ISABEL, the PRINCESS KATHERINE, ALICE, and other LADIES; the DUKE OF BURGUNDY, and his train    KING HENRY. Peace to this meeting, wherefore we are met!     Unto our brother France, and to our sister,     Health and fair time of day; joy and good wishes     To our most fair and princely cousin Katherine.     And, as a branch and member of this royalty,     By whom this great assembly is contriv\'d,     We do salute you, Duke of Burgundy.     And, princes French, and peers, health to you all!   FRENCH KING. Right joyous are we to behold your face,     Most worthy brother England; fairly met!     So are you, princes English, every one.   QUEEN ISABEL. So happy be the issue, brother England,     Of this good day and of this gracious meeting       As we are now glad to behold your eyes-     Your eyes, which hitherto have home in them,     Against the French that met them in their bent,     The fatal balls of murdering basilisks;     The venom of such looks, we fairly hope,     Have lost their quality; and that this day     Shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.   KING HENRY. To cry amen to that, thus we appear.   QUEEN ISABEL. You English princes an, I do salute you.   BURGUNDY. My duty to you both, on equal love,     Great Kings of France and England! That I have labour\'d     With all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavours,     To bring your most imperial Majesties     Unto this bar and royal interview,     Your mightiness on both parts best can witness.     Since then my office hath so far prevail\'d     That face to face and royal eye to eye     You have congreeted, let it not disgrace me     If I demand, before this royal view,     What rub or what impediment there is       Why that the naked, poor, and mangled Peace,     Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births,     Should not in this best garden of the world,     Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?     Alas, she hath from France too long been chas\'d!     And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps,     Corrupting in it own fertility.     Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,     Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleach\'d,     Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,     Put forth disorder\'d twigs; her fallow leas     The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory,     Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts     That should deracinate such savagery;     The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth     The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,     Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,     Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems     But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,     Losing both beauty and utility.       And as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,     Defective in their natures, grow to wildness;     Even so our houses and ourselves and children     Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,     The sciences that should become our country;     But grow, like savages- as soldiers will,     That nothing do but meditate on blood-     To swearing and stern looks, diffus\'d attire,     And everything that seems unnatural.     Which to reduce into our former favout     You are assembled; and my speech entreats     That I may know the let why gentle Peace     Should not expel these inconveniences     And bless us with her former qualities.   KING HENRY. If, Duke of Burgundy, you would the peace     Whose want gives growth to th\' imperfections     Which you have cited, you must buy that peace     With full accord to all our just demands;     Whose tenours and particular effects     You have, enschedul\'d briefly, in your hands.     BURGUNDY. The King hath heard them; to the which as yet     There is no answer made.   KING HENRY. Well then, the peace,     Which you before so urg\'d, lies in his answer.   FRENCH KING. I have but with a cursorary eye     O\'erglanced the articles; pleaseth your Grace     To appoint some of your council presently     To sit with us once more, with better heed     To re-survey them, we will suddenly     Pass our accept and peremptory answer.   KING HENRY. Brother, we shall. Go, uncle Exeter,     And brother Clarence, and you, brother Gloucester,     Warwick, and Huntington, go with the King;     And take with you free power to ratify,     Augment, or alter, as your wisdoms best     Shall see advantageable for our dignity,     Any thing in or out of our demands;     And we\'ll consign thereto. Will you, fair sister,     Go with the princes or stay here with us?   QUEEN ISABEL. Our gracious brother, I will go with them;       Haply a woman\'s voice may do some good,     When articles too nicely urg\'d be stood on.   KING HENRY. Yet leave our cousin Katherine here with us;     She is our capital demand, compris\'d     Within the fore-rank of our articles.   QUEEN ISABEL. She hath good leave.                    Exeunt all but the KING, KATHERINE, and ALICE   KING HENRY. Fair Katherine, and most fair,     Will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms     Such as will enter at a lady\'s ear,     And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?   KATHERINE. Your Majesty shall mock me; I cannot speak your England.   KING HENRY. O fair Katherine, if you will love me soundly with your     French heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with     your English tongue. Do you like me, Kate?   KATHERINE. Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell vat is like me.   KING HENRY. An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an angel.   KATHERINE. Que dit-il? que je suis semblable a les anges?   ALICE. Oui, vraiment, sauf votre grace, ainsi dit-il.   KING HENRY. I said so, dear Katherine, and I must not blush to       affirm it.   KATHERINE. O bon Dieu! les langues des hommes sont pleines de     tromperies.   KING HENRY. What says she, fair one? that the tongues of men are     full of deceits?   ALICE. Oui, dat de tongues of de mans is be full of deceits- dat is     de Princess.   KING HENRY. The Princess is the better English-woman. I\' faith,     Kate, my wooing is fit for thy understanding: I am glad thou     canst speak no better English; for if thou couldst, thou wouldst     find me such a plain king that thou wouldst think I had sold my     farm to buy my crown. I know no ways to mince it in love, but     directly to say \'I love you.\' Then, if you urge me farther than     to say \'Do you in faith?\' I wear out my suit. Give me your     answer; i\' faith, do; and so clap hands and a bargain. How say     you, lady?   KATHERINE. Sauf votre honneur, me understand well.   KING HENRY. Marry, if you would put me to verses or to dance for     your sake, Kate, why you undid me; for the one I have neither     words nor measure, and for the other I have no strength in       measure, yet a reasonable measure in strength. If I could win a     lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armour     on my back, under the correction of bragging be it spoken, I     should quickly leap into wife. Or if I might buffet for my love,     or bound my horse for her favours, I could lay on like a butcher,     and sit like a jack-an-apes, never off. But, before God, Kate, I     cannot look greenly, nor gasp out my cloquence, nor I have no     cunning in protestation; only downright oaths, which I never use     till urg\'d, nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a     fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sunburning,     that never looks in his glass for love of anything he sees there,     let thine eye be thy cook. I speak to thee plain soldier. If thou     canst love me for this, take me; if not, to say to thee that I     shall die is true- but for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love     thee too. And while thou liv\'st, dear Kate, take a fellow of     plain and uncoined constancy; for he perforce must do thee right,     because he hath not the gift to woo in other places; for these     fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into     ladies\' favours, they do always reason themselves out again.     What! a speaker is but a prater: a rhyme is but a ballad. A good       leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a black beard will     turn white; a curl\'d pate will grow bald; a fair face will     wither; a full eye will wax hollow. But a good heart, Kate, is     the sun and the moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon- for     it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly.     If thou would have such a one, take me; and take me, take a     soldier; take a soldier, take a king. And what say\'st thou, then,     to my love? Speak, my fair, and fairly, I pray thee.   KATHERINE. Is it possible dat I sould love de enemy of France?   KING HENRY. No, it is not possible you should love the enemy of     France, Kate, but in loving me you should love the friend of     France; for I love France so well that I will not part with a     village of it; I will have it all mine. And, Kate, when France is     mine and I am yours, then yours is France and you are mine.   KATHERINE. I cannot tell vat is dat.   KING HENRY. No, Kate? I will tell thee in French, which I am sure     will hang upon my tongue like a new-married wife about her     husband\'s neck, hardly to be shook off. Je quand sur le     possession de France, et quand vous avez le possession de moi-     let me see, what then? Saint Denis be my speed!- donc votre est       France et vous etes mienne. It is as easy for me, Kate, to     conquer the kingdom as to speak so much more French: I shall     never move thee in French, unless it be to laugh at me.   KATHERINE. Sauf votre honneur, le Francais que vous parlez, il est     meilleur que l\'Anglais lequel je parle.   KING HENRY. No, faith, is\'t not, Kate; but thy speaking of my     tongue, and I thine, most truly falsely, must needs be granted to     be much at one. But, Kate, dost thou understand thus much     English- Canst thou love me?   KATHERINE. I cannot tell.   KING HENRY. Can any of your neighbours tell, Kate? I\'ll ask them.     Come, I know thou lovest me; and at night, when you come into     your closet, you\'ll question this gentlewoman about me; and I     know, Kate, you will to her dispraise those parts in me that you     love with your heart. But, good Kate, mock me mercifully; the     rather, gentle Princess, because I love thee cruelly. If ever     thou beest mine, Kate, as I have a saving faith within me tells     me thou shalt, I get thee with scambling, and thou must therefore     needs prove a good soldier-breeder. Shall not thou and I, between     Saint Denis and Saint George, compound a boy, half French, half       English, that shall go to Constantinople and take the Turk by the     beard? Shall we not? What say\'st thou, my fair flower-de-luce?   KATHERINE. I do not know dat.   KING HENRY. No: \'tis hereafter to know, but now to promise; do but     now promise, Kate, you will endeavour for your French part of     such a boy; and for my English moiety take the word of a king and     a bachelor. How answer you, la plus belle Katherine du monde, mon    tres cher et divin deesse?   KATHERINE. Your Majestee ave fausse French enough to deceive de     most sage damoiselle dat is en France.   KING HENRY. Now, fie upon my false French! By mine honour, in true     English, I love thee, Kate; by which honour I dare not swear thou     lovest me; yet my blood begins to flatter me that thou dost,     notwithstanding the poor and untempering effect of my visage. Now     beshrew my father\'s ambition! He was thinking of civil wars when     he got me; therefore was I created with a stubborn outside, with     an aspect of iron, that when I come to woo ladies I fright them.     But, in faith, Kate, the elder I wax, the better I shall appear:     my comfort is, that old age, that in layer-up of beauty, can do     no more spoil upon my face; thou hast me, if thou hast me, at the       worst; and thou shalt wear me, if thou wear me, better and     better. And therefore tell me, most fair Katherine, will you have     me? Put off your maiden blushes; avouch the thoughts of your     heart with the looks of an empress; take me by the hand and say     \'Harry of England, I am thine.\' Which word thou shalt no sooner     bless mine ear withal but I will tell thee aloud \'England is     thine, Ireland is thine, France is thine, and Henry Plantagenet     is thine\'; who, though I speak it before his face, if he be not     fellow with the best king, thou shalt find the best king of good     fellows. Come, your answer in broken music- for thy voice is     music and thy English broken; therefore, Queen of all, Katherine,     break thy mind to me in broken English, wilt thou have me?   KATHERINE. Dat is as it shall please de roi mon pere.   KING HENRY. Nay, it will please him well, Kate- it shall please     him, Kate.   KATHERINE. Den it sall also content me.   KING HENRY. Upon that I kiss your hand, and I can you my queen.   KATHERINE. Laissez, mon seigneur, laissez, laissez! Ma foi, je ne     veux point que vous abaissiez votre grandeur en baisant la main     d\'une, notre seigneur, indigne serviteur; excusez-moi, je vous       supplie, mon tres puissant seigneur.   KING HENRY. Then I will kiss your lips, Kate.   KATHERINE. Les dames et demoiselles pour etre baisees devant leur     noces, il n\'est pas la coutume de France.   KING HENRY. Madame my interpreter, what says she?   ALICE. Dat it is not be de fashion pour le ladies of France- I     cannot tell vat is baiser en Anglish.   KING HENRY. To kiss.   ALICE. Your Majestee entendre bettre que moi.   KING HENRY. It is not a fashion for the maids in France to kiss     before they are married, would she say?   ALICE. Oui, vraiment.   KING HENRY. O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate,     you and I cannot be confin\'d within the weak list of a country\'s     fashion; we are the makers of manners, Kate; and the liberty that     follows our places stops the mouth of all find-faults- as I will     do yours for upholding the nice fashion of your country in     denying me a kiss; therefore, patiently and yielding.  [Kissing     her]  You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate: there is more     eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the       French council; and they should sooner persuade Henry of England     than a general petition of monarchs. Here comes your father.               Enter the FRENCH POWER and the ENGLISH LORDS    BURGUNDY. God save your Majesty! My royal cousin,     Teach you our princess English?   KING HENRY. I would have her learn, my fair cousin, how perfectly I     love her; and that is good English.   BURGUNDY. Is she not apt?   KING HENRY. Our tongue is rough, coz, and my condition is not     smooth; so that, having neither the voice nor the heart of     flattery about me, I cannot so conjure up the spirit of love in     her that he will appear in his true likeness.   BURGUNDY. Pardon the frankness of my mirth, if I answer you for     that. If you would conjure in her, you must make a circle; if     conjure up love in her in his true likeness, he must appear naked     and blind. Can you blame her, then, being a maid yet ros\'d over     with the virgin crimson of modesty, if she deny the appearance of     a naked blind boy in her naked seeing self? It were, my lord, a       hard condition for a maid to consign to.   KING HENRY. Yet they do wink and yield, as love is blind and     enforces.   BURGUNDY. They are then excus\'d, my lord, when they see not what     they do.   KING HENRY. Then, good my lord, teach your cousin to consent     winking.   BURGUNDY. I will wink on her to consent, my lord, if you will teach     her to know my meaning; for maids well summer\'d and warm kept are     like flies at Bartholomew-tide, blind, though they have their     eyes; and then they will endure handling, which before would not     abide looking on.   KING HENRY. This moral ties me over to time and a hot summer; and     so I shall catch the fly, your cousin, in the latter end, and she     must be blind too.   BURGUNDY. As love is, my lord, before it loves.   KING HENRY. It is so; and you may, some of you, thank love for my     blindness, who cannot see many a fair French city for one fair     French maid that stands in my way.   FRENCH KING. Yes, my lord, you see them perspectively, the cities       turned into a maid; for they are all girdled with maiden walls     that war hath never ent\'red.   KING HENRY. Shall Kate be my wife?   FRENCH KING. So please you.   KING HENRY. I am content, so the maiden cities you talk of may wait     on her; so the maid that stood in the way for my wish shall show     me the way to my will.   FRENCH KING. We have consented to all terms of reason.   KING HENRY. Is\'t so, my lords of England?   WESTMORELAND. The king hath granted every article:     His daughter first; and then in sequel, all,     According to their firm proposed natures.   EXETER. Only he hath not yet subscribed this:       Where your Majesty demands that the King of France, having any     occasion to write for matter of grant, shall name your Highness     in this form and with this addition, in French, Notre tres cher     fils Henri, Roi d\'Angleterre, Heritier de France; and thus in     Latin, Praeclarissimus filius noster Henricus, Rex Angliae et     Haeres Franciae.   FRENCH KING. Nor this I have not, brother, so denied       But our request shall make me let it pass.   KING HENRY. I pray you, then, in love and dear alliance,     Let that one article rank with the rest;     And thereupon give me your daughter.   FRENCH KING. Take her, fair son, and from her blood raise up     Issue to me; that the contending kingdoms     Of France and England, whose very shores look pale     With envy of each other\'s happiness,     May cease their hatred; and this dear conjunction     Plant neighbourhood and Christian-like accord     In their sweet bosoms, that never war advance     His bleeding sword \'twixt England and fair France.   LORDS. Amen!   KING HENRY. Now, welcome, Kate; and bear me witness all,     That here I kiss her as my sovereign queen.       [Floulish]   QUEEN ISABEL. God, the best maker of all marriages,     Combine your hearts in one, your realms in one!     As man and wife, being two, are one in love,     So be there \'twixt your kingdoms such a spousal     That never may ill office or fell jealousy,       Which troubles oft the bed of blessed marriage,     Thrust in between the paction of these kingdoms,     To make divorce of their incorporate league;     That English may as French, French Englishmen,     Receive each other. God speak this Amen!   ALL. Amen!   KING HENRY. Prepare we for our marriage; on which day,     My Lord of Burgundy, we\'ll take your oath,     And all the peers\', for surety of our leagues.     Then shall I swear to Kate, and you to me,     And may our oaths well kept and prosp\'rous be!                                                   Sennet. Exeunt  EPILOGUE                            EPILOGUE.                            Enter CHORUS    CHORUS. Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen,     Our bending author hath pursu\'d the story,     In little room confining mighty men,     Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.     Small time, but, in that small, most greatly lived     This star of England. Fortune made his sword;     By which the world\'s best garden he achieved,     And of it left his son imperial lord.     Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown\'d king     Of France and England, did this king succeed;     Whose state so many had the managing     That they lost France and made his England bleed;     Which oft our stage hath shown; and, for their sake,     In your fair minds let this acceptance take.            Exit  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1592  THE FIRST PART OF HENRY THE SIXTH  by William Shakespeare   Dramatis Personae    KING HENRY THE SIXTH   DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, uncle to the King, and Protector   DUKE OF BEDFORD, uncle to the King, and Regent of France   THOMAS BEAUFORT, DUKE OF EXETER, great-uncle to the king   HENRY BEAUFORT, great-uncle to the King, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER,      and afterwards CARDINAL   JOHN BEAUFORT, EARL OF SOMERSET, afterwards Duke   RICHARD PLANTAGENET, son of Richard late Earl of Cambridge,     afterwards DUKE OF YORK   EARL OF WARWICK   EARL OF SALISBURY   EARL OF SUFFOLK   LORD TALBOT, afterwards EARL OF SHREWSBURY   JOHN TALBOT, his son   EDMUND MORTIMER, EARL OF MARCH   SIR JOHN FASTOLFE   SIR WILLIAM LUCY   SIR WILLIAM GLANSDALE   SIR THOMAS GARGRAVE   MAYOR of LONDON     WOODVILLE, Lieutenant of the Tower   VERNON, of the White Rose or York faction   BASSET, of the Red Rose or Lancaster faction   A LAWYER   GAOLERS, to Mortimer   CHARLES, Dauphin, and afterwards King of France   REIGNIER, DUKE OF ANJOU, and titular King of Naples   DUKE OF BURGUNDY   DUKE OF ALENCON   BASTARD OF ORLEANS   GOVERNOR OF PARIS   MASTER-GUNNER OF ORLEANS, and his SON   GENERAL OF THE FRENCH FORCES in Bordeaux   A FRENCH SERGEANT   A PORTER   AN OLD SHEPHERD, father to Joan la Pucelle   MARGARET, daughter to Reignier, afterwards married to     King Henry   COUNTESS OF AUVERGNE   JOAN LA PUCELLE, Commonly called JOAN OF ARC      Lords, Warders of the Tower, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers,   Messengers, English and French Attendants. Fiends appearing     to La Pucelle     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: England and France     The First Part of King Henry the Sixth   ACT I. SCENE 1.  Westminster Abbey  Dead March. Enter the funeral of KING HENRY THE FIFTH, attended on by the DUKE OF BEDFORD, Regent of France, the DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, Protector, the DUKE OF EXETER, the EARL OF WARWICK, the BISHOP OF WINCHESTER    BEDFORD. Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to     night! Comets, importing change of times and states,     Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky     And with them scourge the bad revolting stars     That have consented unto Henry\'s death!     King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long!     England ne\'er lost a king of so much worth.   GLOUCESTER. England ne\'er had a king until his time.     Virtue he had, deserving to command;     His brandish\'d sword did blind men with his beams;       His arms spread wider than a dragon\'s wings;     His sparkling eyes, replete with wrathful fire,     More dazzled and drove back his enemies     Than mid-day sun fierce bent against their faces.     What should I say? His deeds exceed all speech:     He ne\'er lift up his hand but conquered.   EXETER. We mourn in black; why mourn we not in blood?     Henry is dead and never shall revive.     Upon a wooden coffin we attend;     And death\'s dishonourable victory     We with our stately presence glorify,     Like captives bound to a triumphant car.     What! shall we curse the planets of mishap     That plotted thus our glory\'s overthrow?     Or shall we think the subtle-witted French     Conjurers and sorcerers, that, afraid of him,     By magic verses have contriv\'d his end?   WINCHESTER. He was a king bless\'d of the King of kings;     Unto the French the dreadful judgment-day     So dreadful will not be as was his sight.       The battles of the Lord of Hosts he fought;     The Church\'s prayers made him so prosperous.   GLOUCESTER. The Church! Where is it? Had not churchmen     pray\'d,     His thread of life had not so soon decay\'d.     None do you like but an effeminate prince,     Whom like a school-boy you may overawe.   WINCHESTER. Gloucester, whate\'er we like, thou art     Protector     And lookest to command the Prince and realm.     Thy wife is proud; she holdeth thee in awe     More than God or religious churchmen may.   GLOUCESTER. Name not religion, for thou lov\'st the flesh;     And ne\'er throughout the year to church thou go\'st,     Except it be to pray against thy foes.   BEDFORD. Cease, cease these jars and rest your minds in peace;     Let\'s to the altar. Heralds, wait on us.     Instead of gold, we\'ll offer up our arms,     Since arms avail not, now that Henry\'s dead.     Posterity, await for wretched years,       When at their mothers\' moist\'ned eyes babes shall suck,     Our isle be made a nourish of salt tears,     And none but women left to wail the dead.   HENRY the Fifth, thy ghost I invocate:     Prosper this realm, keep it from civil broils,     Combat with adverse planets in the heavens.     A far more glorious star thy soul will make     Than Julius Caesar or bright                            Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. My honourable lords, health to you all!     Sad tidings bring I to you out of France,     Of loss, of slaughter, and discomfiture:     Guienne, Champagne, Rheims, Orleans,     Paris, Guysors, Poictiers, are all quite lost.   BEDFORD. What say\'st thou, man, before dead Henry\'s corse?     Speak softly, or the loss of those great towns     Will make him burst his lead and rise from death.   GLOUCESTER. Is Paris lost? Is Rouen yielded up?       If Henry were recall\'d to life again,     These news would cause him once more yield the ghost.   EXETER. How were they lost? What treachery was us\'d?   MESSENGER. No treachery, but want of men and money.     Amongst the soldiers this is muttered     That here you maintain several factions;     And whilst a field should be dispatch\'d and fought,     You are disputing of your generals:     One would have ling\'ring wars, with little cost;     Another would fly swift, but wanteth wings;     A third thinks, without expense at all,     By guileful fair words peace may be obtain\'d.     Awake, awake, English nobility!     Let not sloth dim your honours, new-begot.     Cropp\'d are the flower-de-luces in your arms;     Of England\'s coat one half is cut away.   EXETER. Were our tears wanting to this funeral,     These tidings would call forth their flowing tides.   BEDFORD. Me they concern; Regent I am of France.     Give me my steeled coat; I\'ll fight for France.       Away with these disgraceful wailing robes!     Wounds will I lend the French instead of eyes,     To weep their intermissive miseries.                     Enter a second MESSENGER    SECOND MESSENGER. Lords, view these letters full of bad     mischance.     France is revolted from the English quite,     Except some petty towns of no import.     The Dauphin Charles is crowned king in Rheims;     The Bastard of Orleans with him is join\'d;     Reignier, Duke of Anjou, doth take his part;     The Duke of Alencon flieth to his side.   EXETER. The Dauphin crowned king! all fly to him!     O, whither shall we fly from this reproach?   GLOUCESTER. We will not fly but to our enemies\' throats.     Bedford, if thou be slack I\'ll fight it out.   BEDFORD. Gloucester, why doubt\'st thou of my forwardness?     An army have I muster\'d in my thoughts,       Wherewith already France is overrun.                     Enter a third MESSENGER    THIRD MESSENGER. My gracious lords, to add to your     laments,     Wherewith you now bedew King Henry\'s hearse,     I must inform you of a dismal fight     Betwixt the stout Lord Talbot and the French.   WINCHESTER. What! Wherein Talbot overcame? Is\'t so?   THIRD MESSENGER. O, no; wherein Lord Talbot was     o\'erthrown.     The circumstance I\'ll tell you more at large.     The tenth of August last this dreadful lord,     Retiring from the siege of Orleans,     Having full scarce six thousand in his troop,     By three and twenty thousand of the French     Was round encompassed and set upon.     No leisure had he to enrank his men;     He wanted pikes to set before his archers;       Instead whereof sharp stakes pluck\'d out of hedges     They pitched in the ground confusedly     To keep the horsemen off from breaking in.     More than three hours the fight continued;     Where valiant Talbot, above human thought,     Enacted wonders with his sword and lance:     Hundreds he sent to hell, and none durst stand him;     Here, there, and everywhere, enrag\'d he slew     The French exclaim\'d the devil was in arms;     All the whole army stood agaz\'d on him.     His soldiers, spying his undaunted spirit,     \'A Talbot! a Talbot!\' cried out amain,     And rush\'d into the bowels of the battle.     Here had the conquest fully been seal\'d up     If Sir John Fastolfe had not play\'d the coward.     He, being in the vaward plac\'d behind     With purpose to relieve and follow them-     Cowardly fled, not having struck one stroke;     Hence grew the general wreck and massacre.     Enclosed were they with their enemies.       A base Walloon, to win the Dauphin\'s grace,     Thrust Talbot with a spear into the back;     Whom all France, with their chief assembled strength,     Durst not presume to look once in the face.   BEDFORD. Is Talbot slain? Then I will slay myself,     For living idly here in pomp and ease,     Whilst such a worthy leader, wanting aid,     Unto his dastard foemen is betray\'d.   THIRD MESSENGER. O no, he lives, but is took prisoner,     And Lord Scales with him, and Lord Hungerford;     Most of the rest slaughter\'d or took likewise.   BEDFORD. His ransom there is none but I shall pay.     I\'ll hale the Dauphin headlong from his throne;     His crown shall be the ransom of my friend;     Four of their lords I\'ll change for one of ours.     Farewell, my masters; to my task will I;     Bonfires in France forthwith I am to make     To keep our great Saint George\'s feast withal.     Ten thousand soldiers with me I will take,     Whose bloody deeds shall make an Europe quake.     THIRD MESSENGER. So you had need; for Orleans is besieg\'d;     The English army is grown weak and faint;     The Earl of Salisbury craveth supply     And hardly keeps his men from mutiny,     Since they, so few, watch such a multitude.   EXETER. Remember, lords, your oaths to Henry sworn,     Either to quell the Dauphin utterly,     Or bring him in obedience to your yoke.   BEDFORD. I do remember it, and here take my leave     To go about my preparation.                             Exit   GLOUCESTER. I\'ll to the Tower with all the haste I can     To view th\' artillery and munition;     And then I will proclaim young Henry king.              Exit   EXETER. To Eltham will I, where the young King is,     Being ordain\'d his special governor;     And for his safety there I\'ll best devise.              Exit   WINCHESTER.  [Aside]  Each hath his place and function to     attend:     I am left out; for me nothing remains.     But long I will not be Jack out of office.       The King from Eltham I intend to steal,     And sit at chiefest stern of public weal.             Exeunt                               SCENE 2.                    France. Before Orleans        Sound a flourish. Enter CHARLES THE DAUPHIN, ALENCON,            and REIGNIER, marching with drum and soldiers    CHARLES. Mars his true moving, even as in the heavens     So in the earth, to this day is not known.     Late did he shine upon the English side;     Now we are victors, upon us he smiles.     What towns of any moment but we have?     At pleasure here we lie near Orleans;     Otherwhiles the famish\'d English, like pale ghosts,     Faintly besiege us one hour in a month.   ALENCON. They want their porridge and their fat bull     beeves.     Either they must be dieted like mules     And have their provender tied to their mouths,     Or piteous they will look, like drowned mice.   REIGNIER. Let\'s raise the siege. Why live we idly here?     Talbot is taken, whom we wont to fear;       Remaineth none but mad-brain\'d Salisbury,     And he may well in fretting spend his gall     Nor men nor money hath he to make war.   CHARLES. Sound, sound alarum; we will rush on them.     Now for the honour of the forlorn French!     Him I forgive my death that killeth me,     When he sees me go back one foot or flee.             Exeunt         Here alarum. They are beaten hack by the English, with          great loss. Re-enter CHARLES, ALENCON, and REIGNIER    CHARLES. Who ever saw the like? What men have I!     Dogs! cowards! dastards! I would ne\'er have fled     But that they left me midst my enemies.   REIGNIER. Salisbury is a desperate homicide;     He fighteth as one weary of his life.     The other lords, like lions wanting food,     Do rush upon us as their hungry prey.   ALENCON. Froissart, a countryman of ours, records     England all Olivers and Rowlands bred       During the time Edward the Third did reign.     More truly now may this be verified;     For none but Samsons and Goliases     It sendeth forth to skirmish. One to ten!     Lean raw-bon\'d rascals! Who would e\'er suppose     They had such courage and audacity?   CHARLES. Let\'s leave this town; for they are hare-brain\'d     slaves,     And hunger will enforce them to be more eager.     Of old I know them; rather with their teeth     The walls they\'ll tear down than forsake the siege.   REIGNIER. I think by some odd gimmers or device     Their arms are set, like clocks, still to strike on;     Else ne\'er could they hold out so as they do.     By my consent, we\'ll even let them alone.   ALENCON. Be it so.                     Enter the BASTARD OF ORLEANS    BASTARD. Where\'s the Prince Dauphin? I have news for him.     CHARLES. Bastard of Orleans, thrice welcome to us.   BASTARD. Methinks your looks are sad, your cheer appall\'d.     Hath the late overthrow wrought this offence?     Be not dismay\'d, for succour is at hand.     A holy maid hither with me I bring,     Which, by a vision sent to her from heaven,     Ordained is to raise this tedious siege     And drive the English forth the bounds of France.     The spirit of deep prophecy she hath,     Exceeding the nine sibyls of old Rome:     What\'s past and what\'s to come she can descry.     Speak, shall I call her in? Believe my words,     For they are certain and unfallible.   CHARLES. Go, call her in.                       [Exit BASTARD]     But first, to try her skill,     Reignier, stand thou as Dauphin in my place;     Question her proudly; let thy looks be stern;     By this means shall we sound what skill she hath.                    Re-enter the BASTARD OF ORLEANS with                             JOAN LA PUCELLE    REIGNIER. Fair maid, is \'t thou wilt do these wondrous feats?   PUCELLE. Reignier, is \'t thou that thinkest to beguile me?     Where is the Dauphin? Come, come from behind;     I know thee well, though never seen before.     Be not amaz\'d, there\'s nothing hid from me.     In private will I talk with thee apart.     Stand back, you lords, and give us leave awhile.   REIGNIER. She takes upon her bravely at first dash.   PUCELLE. Dauphin, I am by birth a shepherd\'s daughter,     My wit untrain\'d in any kind of art.     Heaven and our Lady gracious hath it pleas\'d     To shine on my contemptible estate.     Lo, whilst I waited on my tender lambs     And to sun\'s parching heat display\'d my cheeks,     God\'s Mother deigned to appear to me,     And in a vision full of majesty     Will\'d me to leave my base vocation     And free my country from calamity       Her aid she promis\'d and assur\'d success.     In complete glory she reveal\'d herself;     And whereas I was black and swart before,     With those clear rays which she infus\'d on me     That beauty am I bless\'d with which you may see.     Ask me what question thou canst possible,     And I will answer unpremeditated.     My courage try by combat if thou dar\'st,     And thou shalt find that I exceed my sex.     Resolve on this: thou shalt be fortunate     If thou receive me for thy warlike mate.   CHARLES. Thou hast astonish\'d me with thy high terms.     Only this proof I\'ll of thy valour make     In single combat thou shalt buckle with me;     And if thou vanquishest, thy words are true;     Otherwise I renounce all confidence.   PUCELLE. I am prepar\'d; here is my keen-edg\'d sword,     Deck\'d with five flower-de-luces on each side,     The which at Touraine, in Saint Katherine\'s churchyard,     Out of a great deal of old iron I chose forth.     CHARLES. Then come, o\' God\'s name; I fear no woman.   PUCELLE. And while I live I\'ll ne\'er fly from a man.                  [Here they fight and JOAN LA PUCELLE overcomes]   CHARLES. Stay, stay thy hands; thou art an Amazon,     And fightest with the sword of Deborah.   PUCELLE. Christ\'s Mother helps me, else I were too weak.   CHARLES. Whoe\'er helps thee, \'tis thou that must help me.     Impatiently I burn with thy desire;     My heart and hands thou hast at once subdu\'d.     Excellent Pucelle, if thy name be so,     Let me thy servant and not sovereign be.     \'Tis the French Dauphin sueth to thee thus.   PUCELLE. I must not yield to any rites of love,     For my profession\'s sacred from above.     When I have chased all thy foes from hence,     Then will I think upon a recompense.   CHARLES. Meantime look gracious on thy prostrate thrall.   REIGNIER. My lord, methinks, is very long in talk.   ALENCON. Doubtless he shrives this woman to her smock;     Else ne\'er could he so long protract his speech.     REIGNIER. Shall we disturb him, since he keeps no mean?   ALENCON. He may mean more than we poor men do know;     These women are shrewd tempters with their tongues.   REIGNIER. My lord, where are you? What devise you on?     Shall we give o\'er Orleans, or no?   PUCELLE. Why, no, I say; distrustful recreants!     Fight till the last gasp; I will be your guard.   CHARLES. What she says I\'ll confirm; we\'ll fight it out.   PUCELLE. Assign\'d am I to be the English scourge.     This night the siege assuredly I\'ll raise.     Expect Saint Martin\'s summer, halcyon days,     Since I have entered into these wars.     Glory is like a circle in the water,     Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself     Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.     With Henry\'s death the English circle ends;     Dispersed are the glories it included.     Now am I like that proud insulting ship     Which Caesar and his fortune bare at once.   CHARLES. Was Mahomet inspired with a dove?       Thou with an eagle art inspired then.     Helen, the mother of great Constantine,     Nor yet Saint Philip\'s daughters were like thee.     Bright star of Venus, fall\'n down on the earth,     How may I reverently worship thee enough?   ALENCON. Leave off delays, and let us raise the siege.   REIGNIER. Woman, do what thou canst to save our honours;     Drive them from Orleans, and be immortaliz\'d.   CHARLES. Presently we\'ll try. Come, let\'s away about it.     No prophet will I trust if she prove false.           Exeunt                               SCENE 3.                  London. Before the Tower gates         Enter the DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, with his serving-men                        in blue coats    GLOUCESTER. I am come to survey the Tower this day;     Since Henry\'s death, I fear, there is conveyance.     Where be these warders that they wait not here?     Open the gates; \'tis Gloucester that calls.   FIRST WARDER.  [Within]  Who\'s there that knocks so     imperiously?   FIRST SERVING-MAN. It is the noble Duke of Gloucester.   SECOND WARDER.  [Within]  Whoe\'er he be, you may not be     let in.   FIRST SERVING-MAN. Villains, answer you so the Lord     Protector?   FIRST WARDER.  [Within]  The Lord protect him! so we     answer him.     We do no otherwise than we are will\'d.   GLOUCESTER. Who willed you, or whose will stands but       mine?     There\'s none Protector of the realm but I.     Break up the gates, I\'ll be your warrantize.     Shall I be flouted thus by dunghill grooms?                   [GLOUCESTER\'S men rush at the Tower gates, and                          WOODVILLE the Lieutenant speaks within]   WOODVILLE.  [Within]  What noise is this? What traitors     have we here?   GLOUCESTER. Lieutenant, is it you whose voice I hear?     Open the gates; here\'s Gloucester that would enter.   WOODVILLE.  [Within]  Have patience, noble Duke, I may     not open;     The Cardinal of Winchester forbids.     From him I have express commandment     That thou nor none of thine shall be let in.   GLOUCESTER. Faint-hearted Woodville, prizest him fore me?     Arrogant Winchester, that haughty prelate     Whom Henry, our late sovereign, ne\'er could brook!     Thou art no friend to God or to the King.     Open the gates, or I\'ll shut thee out shortly.     SERVING-MEN. Open the gates unto the Lord Protector,     Or we\'ll burst them open, if that you come not quickly.         Enter to the PROTECTOR at the Tower gates WINCHESTER                    and his men in tawny coats    WINCHESTER. How now, ambitious Humphry! What means     this?   GLOUCESTER. Peel\'d priest, dost thou command me to be     shut out?   WINCHESTER. I do, thou most usurping proditor,     And not Protector of the King or realm.   GLOUCESTER. Stand back, thou manifest conspirator,     Thou that contrived\'st to murder our dead lord;     Thou that giv\'st whores indulgences to sin.     I\'ll canvass thee in thy broad cardinal\'s hat,     If thou proceed in this thy insolence.   WINCHESTER. Nay, stand thou back; I will not budge a foot.     This be Damascus; be thou cursed Cain,     To slay thy brother Abel, if thou wilt.     GLOUCESTER. I will not slay thee, but I\'ll drive thee back.     Thy scarlet robes as a child\'s bearing-cloth     I\'ll use to carry thee out of this place.   WINCHESTER. Do what thou dar\'st; I beard thee to thy face.   GLOUCESTER. What! am I dar\'d and bearded to my face?     Draw, men, for all this privileged place     Blue-coats to tawny-coats. Priest, beware your beard;     I mean to tug it, and to cuff you soundly;     Under my feet I stamp thy cardinal\'s hat;     In spite of Pope or dignities of church,     Here by the cheeks I\'ll drag thee up and down.   WINCHESTER. Gloucester, thou wilt answer this before the     Pope.   GLOUCESTER. Winchester goose! I cry \'A rope, a rope!\'     Now beat them hence; why do you let them stay?     Thee I\'ll chase hence, thou wolf in sheep\'s array.     Out, tawny-coats! Out, scarlet hypocrite!           Here GLOUCESTER\'S men beat out the CARDINAL\'S         men; and enter in the hurly burly the MAYOR OF                     LONDON and his OFFICERS    MAYOR. Fie, lords! that you, being supreme magistrates,     Thus contumeliously should break the peace!   GLOUCESTER. Peace, Mayor! thou know\'st little of my wrongs:     Here\'s Beaufort, that regards nor God nor King,     Hath here distrain\'d the Tower to his use.   WINCHESTER. Here\'s Gloucester, a foe to citizens;     One that still motions war and never peace,     O\'ercharging your free purses with large fines;     That seeks to overthrow religion,     Because he is Protector of the realm,     And would have armour here out of the Tower,     To crown himself King and suppress the Prince.   GLOUCESTER. I Will not answer thee with words, but blows.                                       [Here they skirmish again]   MAYOR. Nought rests for me in this tumultuous strife     But to make open proclamation.     Come, officer, as loud as e\'er thou canst,     Cry.     OFFICER.  [Cries]  All manner of men assembled here in arms     this day against God\'s peace and the King\'s, we charge     and command you, in his Highness\' name, to repair to     your several dwelling-places; and not to wear, handle, or     use, any sword, weapon, or dagger, henceforward, upon     pain of death.   GLOUCESTER. Cardinal, I\'ll be no breaker of the law;     But we shall meet and break our minds at large.   WINCHESTER. Gloucester, we\'ll meet to thy cost, be sure;     Thy heart-blood I will have for this day\'s work.   MAYOR. I\'ll call for clubs if you will not away.     This Cardinal\'s more haughty than the devil.   GLOUCESTER. Mayor, farewell; thou dost but what thou     mayst.   WINCHESTER. Abominable Gloucester, guard thy head,     For I intend to have it ere long.                     Exeunt, severally, GLOUCESTER and WINCHESTER                                              with their servants   MAYOR. See the coast clear\'d, and then we will depart.     Good God, these nobles should such stomachs bear!       I myself fight not once in forty year.                Exeunt                                    SCENE 4.                          France. Before Orleans                 Enter, on the walls, the MASTER-GUNNER                        OF ORLEANS and his BOY    MASTER-GUNNER. Sirrah, thou know\'st how Orleans is     besieg\'d,     And how the English have the suburbs won.   BOY. Father, I know; and oft have shot at them,     Howe\'er unfortunate I miss\'d my aim.   MASTER-GUNNER. But now thou shalt not. Be thou rul\'d     by me.     Chief master-gunner am I of this town;     Something I must do to procure me grace.     The Prince\'s espials have informed me     How the English, in the suburbs close intrench\'d,     Wont, through a secret grate of iron bars     In yonder tower, to overpeer the city,     And thence discover how with most advantage     They may vex us with shot or with assault.       To intercept this inconvenience,     A piece of ordnance \'gainst it I have plac\'d;     And even these three days have I watch\'d     If I could see them. Now do thou watch,     For I can stay no longer.     If thou spy\'st any, run and bring me word;     And thou shalt find me at the Governor\'s.               Exit   BOY. Father, I warrant you; take you no care;     I\'ll never trouble you, if I may spy them.              Exit            Enter SALISBURY and TALBOT on the turrets, with             SIR WILLIAM GLANSDALE, SIR THOMAS GARGRAVE,                             and others    SALISBURY. Talbot, my life, my joy, again return\'d!     How wert thou handled being prisoner?     Or by what means got\'st thou to be releas\'d?     Discourse, I prithee, on this turret\'s top.   TALBOT. The Earl of Bedford had a prisoner     Call\'d the brave Lord Ponton de Santrailles;       For him was I exchang\'d and ransomed.     But with a baser man of arms by far     Once, in contempt, they would have barter\'d me;     Which I disdaining scorn\'d, and craved death     Rather than I would be so vile esteem\'d.     In fine, redeem\'d I was as I desir\'d.     But, O! the treacherous Fastolfe wounds my heart     Whom with my bare fists I would execute,     If I now had him brought into my power.   SALISBURY. Yet tell\'st thou not how thou wert entertain\'d.   TALBOT. With scoffs, and scorns, and contumelious taunts,     In open market-place produc\'d they me     To be a public spectacle to all;     Here, said they, is the terror of the French,     The scarecrow that affrights our children so.     Then broke I from the officers that led me,     And with my nails digg\'d stones out of the ground     To hurl at the beholders of my shame;     My grisly countenance made others fly;     None durst come near for fear of sudden death.       In iron walls they deem\'d me not secure;     So great fear of my name \'mongst them was spread     That they suppos\'d I could rend bars of steel     And spurn in pieces posts of adamant;     Wherefore a guard of chosen shot I had     That walk\'d about me every minute-while;     And if I did but stir out of my bed,     Ready they were to shoot me to the heart.                  Enter the BOY with a linstock    SALISBURY. I grieve to hear what torments you endur\'d;     But we will be reveng\'d sufficiently.     Now it is supper-time in Orleans:     Here, through this grate, I count each one     And view the Frenchmen how they fortify.     Let us look in; the sight will much delight thee.     Sir Thomas Gargrave and Sir William Glansdale,     Let me have your express opinions     Where is best place to make our batt\'ry next.     GARGRAVE. I think at the North Gate; for there stand lords.   GLANSDALE. And I here, at the bulwark of the bridge.   TALBOT. For aught I see, this city must be famish\'d,     Or with light skirmishes enfeebled.                      [Here they shoot and SALISBURY and GARGRAVE                                                       fall down]   SALISBURY. O Lord, have mercy on us, wretched sinners!   GARGRAVE. O Lord, have mercy on me, woeful man!   TALBOT. What chance is this that suddenly hath cross\'d us?     Speak, Salisbury; at least, if thou canst speak.     How far\'st thou, mirror of all martial men?     One of thy eyes and thy cheek\'s side struck off!     Accursed tower! accursed fatal hand     That hath contriv\'d this woeful tragedy!     In thirteen battles Salisbury o\'ercame;     Henry the Fifth he first train\'d to the wars;     Whilst any trump did sound or drum struck up,     His sword did ne\'er leave striking in the field.     Yet liv\'st thou, Salisbury? Though thy speech doth fail,     One eye thou hast to look to heaven for grace;       The sun with one eye vieweth all the world.     Heaven, be thou gracious to none alive     If Salisbury wants mercy at thy hands!     Bear hence his body; I will help to bury it.     Sir Thomas Gargrave, hast thou any life?     Speak unto Talbot; nay, look up to him.     Salisbury, cheer thy spirit with this comfort,     Thou shalt not die whiles     He beckons with his hand and smiles on me,     As who should say \'When I am dead and gone,     Remember to avenge me on the French.\'     Plantagenet, I will; and like thee, Nero,     Play on the lute, beholding the towns burn.     Wretched shall France be only in my name.                   [Here an alarum, and it thunders and lightens]     What stir is this? What tumult\'s in the heavens?     Whence cometh this alarum and the noise?                            Enter a MESSENGER      MESSENGER. My lord, my lord, the French have gather\'d     head     The Dauphin, with one Joan la Pucelle join\'d,     A holy prophetess new risen up,     Is come with a great power to raise the siege.                   [Here SALISBURY lifteth himself up and groans]   TALBOT. Hear, hear how dying Salisbury doth groan.     It irks his heart he cannot be reveng\'d.     Frenchmen, I\'ll be a Salisbury to you.     Pucelle or puzzel, dolphin or dogfish,     Your hearts I\'ll stamp out with my horse\'s heels     And make a quagmire of your mingled brains.     Convey me Salisbury into his tent,     And then we\'ll try what these dastard Frenchmen dare.                                                   Alarum. Exeunt                                  SCENE 5.                            Before Orleans           Here an alarum again, and TALBOT pursueth the       DAUPHIN and driveth him. Then enter JOAN LA PUCELLE        driving Englishmen before her. Then enter TALBOT    TALBOT. Where is my strength, my valour, and my force?     Our English troops retire, I cannot stay them;     A woman clad in armour chaseth them.                            Enter LA PUCELLE      Here, here she comes. I\'ll have a bout with thee.     Devil or devil\'s dam, I\'ll conjure thee;     Blood will I draw on thee-thou art a witch     And straightway give thy soul to him thou serv\'st.   PUCELLE. Come, come, \'tis only I that must disgrace thee.                                                [Here they fight]   TALBOT. Heavens, can you suffer hell so to prevail?     My breast I\'ll burst with straining of my courage.       And from my shoulders crack my arms asunder,     But I will chastise this high minded strumpet.                                               [They fight again]   PUCELLE. Talbot, farewell; thy hour is not yet come.     I must go victual Orleans forthwith.              [A short alarum; then enter the town with soldiers]     O\'ertake me if thou canst; I scorn thy strength.     Go, go, cheer up thy hungry starved men;     Help Salisbury to make his testament.     This day is ours, as many more shall be.                Exit   TALBOT. My thoughts are whirled like a potter\'s wheel;     I know not where I am nor what I do.     A witch by fear, not force, like Hannibal,     Drives back our troops and conquers as she lists.     So bees with smoke and doves with noisome stench     Are from their hives and houses driven away.     They call\'d us, for our fierceness, English dogs;     Now like to whelps we crying run away.                                                 [A short alarum]     Hark, countrymen! Either renew the fight       Or tear the lions out of England\'s coat;     Renounce your soil, give sheep in lions\' stead:     Sheep run not half so treacherous from the wolf,     Or horse or oxen from the leopard,     As you fly from your oft subdued slaves.                                  [Alarum. Here another skirmish]     It will not be-retire into your trenches.     You all consented unto Salisbury\'s death,     For none would strike a stroke in his revenge.     Pucelle is ent\'red into Orleans     In spite of us or aught that we could do.     O, would I were to die with Salisbury!     The shame hereof will make me hide my head.                                     Exit TALBOT. Alarum; retreat                                 SCENE 6.                                ORLEANS          Flourish. Enter on the walls, LA PUCELLE, CHARLES,                 REIGNIER, ALENCON, and soldiers    PUCELLE. Advance our waving colours on the walls;     Rescu\'d is Orleans from the English.     Thus Joan la Pucelle hath perform\'d her word.   CHARLES. Divinest creature, Astraea\'s daughter,     How shall I honour thee for this success?     Thy promises are like Adonis\' gardens,     That one day bloom\'d and fruitful were the next.     France, triumph in thy glorious prophetess.     Recover\'d is the town of Orleans.     More blessed hap did ne\'er befall our state.   REIGNIER. Why ring not out the bells aloud throughout the     town?     Dauphin, command the citizens make bonfires     And feast and banquet in the open streets     To celebrate the joy that God hath given us.     ALENCON. All France will be replete with mirth and joy     When they shall hear how we have play\'d the men.   CHARLES. \'Tis Joan, not we, by whom the day is won;     For which I will divide my crown with her;     And all the priests and friars in my realm     Shall in procession sing her endless praise.     A statelier pyramis to her I\'ll rear     Than Rhodope\'s of Memphis ever was.     In memory of her, when she is dead,     Her ashes, in an urn more precious     Than the rich jewel\'d coffer of Darius,     Transported shall be at high festivals     Before the kings and queens of France.     No longer on Saint Denis will we cry,     But Joan la Pucelle shall be France\'s saint.     Come in, and let us banquet royally     After this golden day of victory. Flourish.           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE 1.  Before Orleans  Enter a FRENCH SERGEANT and two SENTINELS    SERGEANT. Sirs, take your places and be vigilant.     If any noise or soldier you perceive     Near to the walls, by some apparent sign     Let us have knowledge at the court of guard.   FIRST SENTINEL. Sergeant, you shall.           [Exit SERGEANT]     Thus are poor servitors,     When others sleep upon their quiet beds,     Constrain\'d to watch in darkness, rain, and cold.               Enter TALBOT, BEDFORD, BURGUNDY, and forces,           with scaling-ladders; their drums beating a dead                               march    TALBOT. Lord Regent, and redoubted Burgundy,     By whose approach the regions of Artois,     Wallon, and Picardy, are friends to us,       This happy night the Frenchmen are secure,     Having all day carous\'d and banqueted;     Embrace we then this opportunity,     As fitting best to quittance their deceit,     Contriv\'d by art and baleful sorcery.   BEDFORD. Coward of France, how much he wrongs his fame,     Despairing of his own arm\'s fortitude,     To join with witches and the help of hell!   BURGUNDY. Traitors have never other company.     But what\'s that Pucelle whom they term so pure?   TALBOT. A maid, they say.   BEDFORD. A maid! and be so martial!   BURGUNDY. Pray God she prove not masculine ere long,     If underneath the standard of the French     She carry armour as she hath begun.   TALBOT. Well, let them practise and converse with spirits:     God is our fortress, in whose conquering name     Let us resolve to scale their flinty bulwarks.   BEDFORD. Ascend, brave Talbot; we will follow thee.   TALBOT. Not all together; better far, I guess,       That we do make our entrance several ways;     That if it chance the one of us do fail     The other yet may rise against their force.   BEDFORD. Agreed; I\'ll to yond corner.   BURGUNDY. And I to this.   TALBOT. And here will Talbot mount or make his grave.     Now, Salisbury, for thee, and for the right     Of English Henry, shall this night appear     How much in duty I am bound to both.              [The English scale the walls and cry \'Saint George!                                                      a Talbot!\']     SENTINEL. Arm! arm! The enemy doth make assault.             The French leap o\'er the walls in their shirts.            Enter, several ways, BASTARD, ALENCON, REIGNIER,                      half ready and half unready    ALENCON. How now, my lords? What, all unready so?   BASTARD. Unready! Ay, and glad we \'scap\'d so well.   REIGNIER. \'Twas time, I trow, to wake and leave our beds,       Hearing alarums at our chamber doors.   ALENCON. Of all exploits since first I follow\'d arms     Ne\'er heard I of a warlike enterprise     More venturous or desperate than this.   BASTARD. I think this Talbot be a fiend of hell.   REIGNIER. If not of hell, the heavens, sure, favour him   ALENCON. Here cometh Charles; I marvel how he sped.                      Enter CHARLES and LA PUCELLE    BASTARD. Tut! holy Joan was his defensive guard.   CHARLES. Is this thy cunning, thou deceitful dame?     Didst thou at first, to flatter us withal,     Make us partakers of a little gain     That now our loss might be ten times so much?   PUCELLE. Wherefore is Charles impatient with his friend?     At all times will you have my power alike?     Sleeping or waking, must I still prevail     Or will you blame and lay the fault on me?     Improvident soldiers! Had your watch been good       This sudden mischief never could have fall\'n.   CHARLES. Duke of Alencon, this was your default     That, being captain of the watch to-night,     Did look no better to that weighty charge.   ALENCON. Had all your quarters been as safely kept     As that whereof I had the government,     We had not been thus shamefully surpris\'d.   BASTARD. Mine was secure.   REIGNIER. And so was mine, my lord.   CHARLES. And, for myself, most part of all this night,     Within her quarter and mine own precinct     I was employ\'d in passing to and fro     About relieving of the sentinels.     Then how or which way should they first break in?   PUCELLE. Question, my lords, no further of the case,     How or which way; \'tis sure they found some place     But weakly guarded, where the breach was made.     And now there rests no other shift but this     To gather our soldiers, scatter\'d and dispers\'d,     And lay new platforms to endamage them.                   Alarum. Enter an ENGLISH SOLDIER, crying             \'A Talbot! A Talbot!\' They fly, leaving their                            clothes behind    SOLDIER. I\'ll be so bold to take what they have left.     The cry of Talbot serves me for a sword;     For I have loaden me with many spoils,     Using no other weapon but his name.                     Exit                                  SCENE 2.                        ORLEANS. Within the town              Enter TALBOT, BEDFORD, BURGUNDY, a CAPTAIN,                            and others    BEDFORD. The day begins to break, and night is fled     Whose pitchy mantle over-veil\'d the earth.     Here sound retreat and cease our hot pursuit.                                                [Retreat sounded]   TALBOT. Bring forth the body of old Salisbury     And here advance it in the market-place,     The middle centre of this cursed town.     Now have I paid my vow unto his soul;     For every drop of blood was drawn from him     There hath at least five Frenchmen died to-night.     And that hereafter ages may behold     What ruin happened in revenge of him,     Within their chiefest temple I\'ll erect     A tomb, wherein his corpse shall be interr\'d;     Upon the which, that every one may read,       Shall be engrav\'d the sack of Orleans,     The treacherous manner of his mournful death,     And what a terror he had been to France.     But, lords, in all our bloody massacre,     I muse we met not with the Dauphin\'s grace,     His new-come champion, virtuous Joan of Arc,     Nor any of his false confederates.   BEDFORD. \'Tis thought, Lord Talbot, when the fight began,     Rous\'d on the sudden from their drowsy beds,     They did amongst the troops of armed men     Leap o\'er the walls for refuge in the field.   BURGUNDY. Myself, as far as I could well discern     For smoke and dusky vapours of the night,     Am sure I scar\'d the Dauphin and his trull,     When arm in arm they both came swiftly running,     Like to a pair of loving turtle-doves     That could not live asunder day or night.     After that things are set in order here,     We\'ll follow them with all the power we have.                              Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. All hail, my lords! Which of this princely train     Call ye the warlike Talbot, for his acts     So much applauded through the realm of France?   TALBOT. Here is the Talbot; who would speak with him?   MESSENGER. The virtuous lady, Countess of Auvergne,     With modesty admiring thy renown,     By me entreats, great lord, thou wouldst vouchsafe     To visit her poor castle where she lies,     That she may boast she hath beheld the man     Whose glory fills the world with loud report.   BURGUNDY. Is it even so? Nay, then I see our wars     Will turn into a peaceful comic sport,     When ladies crave to be encount\'red with.     You may not, my lord, despise her gentle suit.   TALBOT. Ne\'er trust me then; for when a world of men     Could not prevail with all their oratory,     Yet hath a woman\'s kindness overrul\'d;     And therefore tell her I return great thanks       And in submission will attend on her.     Will not your honours bear me company?   BEDFORD. No, truly; \'tis more than manners will;     And I have heard it said unbidden guests     Are often welcomest when they are gone.   TALBOT. Well then, alone, since there\'s no remedy,     I mean to prove this lady\'s courtesy.     Come hither, Captain.  [Whispers]   You perceive my mind?   CAPTAIN. I do, my lord, and mean accordingly.           Exeunt                                  SCENE 3.                        AUVERGNE. The Castle                 Enter the COUNTESS and her PORTER    COUNTESS. Porter, remember what I gave in charge;     And when you have done so, bring the keys to me.   PORTER. Madam, I will.   COUNTESS. The plot is laid; if all things fall out right,     I shall as famous be by this exploit.     As Scythian Tomyris by Cyrus\' death.     Great is the rumour of this dreadful knight,     And his achievements of no less account.     Fain would mine eyes be witness with mine ears     To give their censure of these rare reports.      Enter MESSENGER and TALBOT.    MESSENGER. Madam, according as your ladyship desir\'d,     By message crav\'d, so is Lord Talbot come.   COUNTESS. And he is welcome. What! is this the man?     MESSENGER. Madam, it is.   COUNTESS. Is this the scourge of France?     Is this Talbot, so much fear\'d abroad     That with his name the mothers still their babes?     I see report is fabulous and false.     I thought I should have seen some Hercules,     A second Hector, for his grim aspect     And large proportion of his strong-knit limbs.     Alas, this is a child, a silly dwarf!     It cannot be this weak and writhled shrimp     Should strike such terror to his enemies.   TALBOT. Madam, I have been bold to trouble you;     But since your ladyship is not at leisure,     I\'ll sort some other time to visit you.              [Going]   COUNTESS. What means he now? Go ask him whither he     goes.   MESSENGER. Stay, my Lord Talbot; for my lady craves     To know the cause of your abrupt departure.   TALBOT. Marry, for that she\'s in a wrong belief,     I go to certify her Talbot\'s here.                          Re-enter PORTER With keys    COUNTESS. If thou be he, then art thou prisoner.   TALBOT. Prisoner! To whom?   COUNTESS. To me, blood-thirsty lord     And for that cause I train\'d thee to my house.     Long time thy shadow hath been thrall to me,     For in my gallery thy picture hangs;     But now the substance shall endure the like     And I will chain these legs and arms of thine     That hast by tyranny these many years     Wasted our country, slain our citizens,     And sent our sons and husbands captivate.   TALBOT. Ha, ha, ha!   COUNTESS. Laughest thou, wretch? Thy mirth shall turn to     moan.   TALBOT. I laugh to see your ladyship so fond     To think that you have aught but Talbot\'s shadow     Whereon to practise your severity.     COUNTESS. Why, art not thou the man?   TALBOT. I am indeed.   COUNTESS. Then have I substance too.   TALBOT. No, no, I am but shadow of myself.     You are deceiv\'d, my substance is not here;     For what you see is but the smallest part     And least proportion of humanity.     I tell you, madam, were the whole frame here,     It is of such a spacious lofty pitch     Your roof were not sufficient to contain \'t.   COUNTESS. This is a riddling merchant for the nonce;     He will be here, and yet he is not here.     How can these contrarieties agree?   TALBOT. That will I show you presently.                     Winds his horn; drums strike up;                   a peal of ordnance. Enter soldiers      How say you, madam? Are you now persuaded     That Talbot is but shadow of himself?       These are his substance, sinews, arms, and strength,     With which he yoketh your rebellious necks,     Razeth your cities, and subverts your towns,     And in a moment makes them desolate.   COUNTESS. Victorious Talbot! pardon my abuse.     I find thou art no less than fame hath bruited,     And more than may be gathered by thy shape.     Let my presumption not provoke thy wrath,     For I am sorry that with reverence     I did not entertain thee as thou art.   TALBOT. Be not dismay\'d, fair lady; nor misconster     The mind of Talbot as you did mistake     The outward composition of his body.     What you have done hath not offended me.     Nor other satisfaction do I crave     But only, with your patience, that we may     Taste of your wine and see what cates you have,     For soldiers\' stomachs always serve them well.   COUNTESS. With all my heart, and think me honoured     To feast so great a warrior in my house.              Exeunt                                   SCENE 4.                     London. The Temple garden           Enter the EARLS OF SOMERSET, SUFFOLK, and WARWICK;            RICHARD PLANTAGENET, VERNON, and another LAWYER    PLANTAGENET. Great lords and gentlemen, what means this     silence?     Dare no man answer in a case of truth?   SUFFOLK. Within the Temple Hall we were too loud;     The garden here is more convenient.   PLANTAGENET. Then say at once if I maintain\'d the truth;     Or else was wrangling Somerset in th\' error?   SUFFOLK. Faith, I have been a truant in the law     And never yet could frame my will to it;     And therefore frame the law unto my will.   SOMERSET. Judge you, my Lord of Warwick, then, between us.   WARWICK. Between two hawks, which flies the higher pitch;     Between two dogs, which hath the deeper mouth;     Between two blades, which bears the better temper;     Between two horses, which doth bear him best;       Between two girls, which hath the merriest eye     I have perhaps some shallow spirit of judgment;     But in these nice sharp quillets of the law,     Good faith, I am no wiser than a daw.   PLANTAGENET. Tut, tut, here is a mannerly forbearance:     The truth appears so naked on my side     That any purblind eye may find it out.   SOMERSET. And on my side it is so well apparell\'d,     So clear, so shining, and so evident,     That it will glimmer through a blind man\'s eye.   PLANTAGENET. Since you are tongue-tied and so loath to speak,     In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts.     Let him that is a true-born gentleman     And stands upon the honour of his birth,     If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,     From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.   SOMERSET. Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer,     But dare maintain the party of the truth,     Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.   WARWICK. I love no colours; and, without all colour       Of base insinuating flattery,     I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.   SUFFOLK. I pluck this red rose with young Somerset,     And say withal I think he held the right.   VERNON. Stay, lords and gentlemen, and pluck no more     Till you conclude that he upon whose side     The fewest roses are cropp\'d from the tree     Shall yield the other in the right opinion.   SOMERSET. Good Master Vernon, it is well objected;     If I have fewest, I subscribe in silence.   PLANTAGENET. And I.   VERNON. Then, for the truth and plainness of the case,     I pluck this pale and maiden blossom here,     Giving my verdict on the white rose side.   SOMERSET. Prick not your finger as you pluck it off,     Lest, bleeding, you do paint the white rose red,     And fall on my side so, against your will.   VERNON. If I, my lord, for my opinion bleed,     Opinion shall be surgeon to my hurt     And keep me on the side where still I am.     SOMERSET. Well, well, come on; who else?   LAWYER.  [To Somerset]  Unless my study and my books be     false,     The argument you held was wrong in you;     In sign whereof I pluck a white rose too.   PLANTAGENET. Now, Somerset, where is your argument?   SOMERSET. Here in my scabbard, meditating that     Shall dye your white rose in a bloody red.   PLANTAGENET. Meantime your cheeks do counterfeit our     roses;     For pale they look with fear, as witnessing     The truth on our side.   SOMERSET. No, Plantagenet,     \'Tis not for fear but anger that thy cheeks     Blush for pure shame to counterfeit our roses,     And yet thy tongue will not confess thy error.   PLANTAGENET. Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset?   SOMERSET. Hath not thy rose a thorn, Plantagenet?   PLANTAGENET. Ay, sharp and piercing, to maintain his truth;     Whiles thy consuming canker eats his falsehood.     SOMERSET. Well, I\'ll find friends to wear my bleeding roses,     That shall maintain what I have said is true,     Where false Plantagenet dare not be seen.   PLANTAGENET. Now, by this maiden blossom in my hand,     I scorn thee and thy fashion, peevish boy.   SUFFOLK. Turn not thy scorns this way, Plantagenet.   PLANTAGENET. Proud Pole, I will, and scorn both him and     thee.   SUFFOLK. I\'ll turn my part thereof into thy throat.   SOMERSET. Away, away, good William de la Pole!     We grace the yeoman by conversing with him.   WARWICK. Now, by God\'s will, thou wrong\'st him, Somerset;     His grandfather was Lionel Duke of Clarence,     Third son to the third Edward, King of England.     Spring crestless yeomen from so deep a root?   PLANTAGENET. He bears him on the place\'s privilege,     Or durst not for his craven heart say thus.   SOMERSET. By Him that made me, I\'ll maintain my words     On any plot of ground in Christendom.     Was not thy father, Richard Earl of Cambridge,       For treason executed in our late king\'s days?     And by his treason stand\'st not thou attainted,     Corrupted, and exempt from ancient gentry?     His trespass yet lives guilty in thy blood;     And till thou be restor\'d thou art a yeoman.   PLANTAGENET. My father was attached, not attainted;     Condemn\'d to die for treason, but no traitor;     And that I\'ll prove on better men than Somerset,     Were growing time once ripened to my will.     For your partaker Pole, and you yourself,     I\'ll note you in my book of memory     To scourge you for this apprehension.     Look to it well, and say you are well warn\'d.   SOMERSET. Ay, thou shalt find us ready for thee still;     And know us by these colours for thy foes     For these my friends in spite of thee shall wear.   PLANTAGENET. And, by my soul, this pale and angry rose,     As cognizance of my blood-drinking hate,     Will I for ever, and my faction, wear,     Until it wither with me to my grave,       Or flourish to the height of my degree.   SUFFOLK. Go forward, and be chok\'d with thy ambition!     And so farewell until I meet thee next.                 Exit   SOMERSET. Have with thee, Pole. Farewell, ambitious     Richard.                                                Exit   PLANTAGENET. How I am brav\'d, and must perforce endure     it!   WARWICK. This blot that they object against your house     Shall be wip\'d out in the next Parliament,     Call\'d for the truce of Winchester and Gloucester;     And if thou be not then created York,     I will not live to be accounted Warwick.     Meantime, in signal of my love to thee,     Against proud Somerset and William Pole,     Will I upon thy party wear this rose;     And here I prophesy: this brawl to-day,     Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden,     Shall send between the Red Rose and the White     A thousand souls to death and deadly night.   PLANTAGENET. Good Master Vernon, I am bound to you       That you on my behalf would pluck a flower.   VERNON. In your behalf still will I wear the same.   LAWYER. And so will I.   PLANTAGENET. Thanks, gentle sir.     Come, let us four to dinner. I dare say     This quarrel will drink blood another day.            Exeunt                                  SCENE 5.                         The Tower of London           Enter MORTIMER, brought in a chair, and GAOLERS    MORTIMER. Kind keepers of my weak decaying age,     Let dying Mortimer here rest himself.     Even like a man new haled from the rack,     So fare my limbs with long imprisonment;     And these grey locks, the pursuivants of death,     Nestor-like aged in an age of care,     Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer.     These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent,     Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent;     Weak shoulders, overborne with burdening grief,     And pithless arms, like to a withered vine     That droops his sapless branches to the ground.     Yet are these feet, whose strengthless stay is numb,     Unable to support this lump of clay,     Swift-winged with desire to get a grave,     As witting I no other comfort have.       But tell me, keeper, will my nephew come?   FIRST KEEPER. Richard Plantagenet, my lord, will come.     We sent unto the Temple, unto his chamber;     And answer was return\'d that he will come.   MORTIMER. Enough; my soul shall then be satisfied.     Poor gentleman! his wrong doth equal mine.     Since Henry Monmouth first began to reign,     Before whose glory I was great in arms,     This loathsome sequestration have I had;     And even since then hath Richard been obscur\'d,     Depriv\'d of honour and inheritance.     But now the arbitrator of despairs,     Just Death, kind umpire of men\'s miseries,     With sweet enlargement doth dismiss me hence.     I would his troubles likewise were expir\'d,     That so he might recover what was lost.                       Enter RICHARD PLANTAGENET    FIRST KEEPER. My lord, your loving nephew now is come.     MORTIMER. Richard Plantagenet, my friend, is he come?   PLANTAGENET. Ay, noble uncle, thus ignobly us\'d,     Your nephew, late despised Richard, comes.   MORTIMER. Direct mine arms I may embrace his neck     And in his bosom spend my latter gasp.     O, tell me when my lips do touch his cheeks,     That I may kindly give one fainting kiss.     And now declare, sweet stem from York\'s great stock,     Why didst thou say of late thou wert despis\'d?   PLANTAGENET. First, lean thine aged back against mine arm;     And, in that ease, I\'ll tell thee my disease.     This day, in argument upon a case,     Some words there grew \'twixt Somerset and me;     Among which terms he us\'d his lavish tongue     And did upbraid me with my father\'s death;     Which obloquy set bars before my tongue,     Else with the like I had requited him.     Therefore, good uncle, for my father\'s sake,     In honour of a true Plantagenet,     And for alliance sake, declare the cause       My father, Earl of Cambridge, lost his head.   MORTIMER. That cause, fair nephew, that imprison\'d me     And hath detain\'d me all my flow\'ring youth     Within a loathsome dungeon, there to pine,     Was cursed instrument of his decease.   PLANTAGENET. Discover more at large what cause that was,     For I am ignorant and cannot guess.   MORTIMER. I will, if that my fading breath permit     And death approach not ere my tale be done.     Henry the Fourth, grandfather to this king,     Depos\'d his nephew Richard, Edward\'s son,     The first-begotten and the lawful heir     Of Edward king, the third of that descent;     During whose reign the Percies of the north,     Finding his usurpation most unjust,     Endeavour\'d my advancement to the throne.     The reason mov\'d these warlike lords to this     Was, for that-young Richard thus remov\'d,     Leaving no heir begotten of his body-     I was the next by birth and parentage;       For by my mother I derived am     From Lionel Duke of Clarence, third son     To King Edward the Third; whereas he     From John of Gaunt doth bring his pedigree,     Being but fourth of that heroic line.     But mark: as in this haughty great attempt     They laboured to plant the rightful heir,     I lost my liberty, and they their lives.     Long after this, when Henry the Fifth,     Succeeding his father Bolingbroke, did reign,     Thy father, Earl of Cambridge, then deriv\'d     From famous Edmund Langley, Duke of York,     Marrying my sister, that thy mother was,     Again, in pity of my hard distress,     Levied an army, weening to redeem     And have install\'d me in the diadem;     But, as the rest, so fell that noble earl,     And was beheaded. Thus the Mortimers,     In whom the title rested, were suppress\'d.   PLANTAGENET. Of Which, my lord, your honour is the last.     MORTIMER. True; and thou seest that I no issue have,     And that my fainting words do warrant death.     Thou art my heir; the rest I wish thee gather;     But yet be wary in thy studious care.   PLANTAGENET. Thy grave admonishments prevail with me.     But yet methinks my father\'s execution     Was nothing less than bloody tyranny.   MORTIMER. With silence, nephew, be thou politic;     Strong fixed is the house of Lancaster     And like a mountain not to be remov\'d.     But now thy uncle is removing hence,     As princes do their courts when they are cloy\'d     With long continuance in a settled place.   PLANTAGENET. O uncle, would some part of my young years     Might but redeem the passage of your age!   MORTIMER. Thou dost then wrong me, as that slaughterer     doth     Which giveth many wounds when one will kill.     Mourn not, except thou sorrow for my good;     Only give order for my funeral.       And so, farewell; and fair be all thy hopes,     And prosperous be thy life in peace and war!          [Dies]   PLANTAGENET. And peace, no war, befall thy parting soul!     In prison hast thou spent a pilgrimage,     And like a hermit overpass\'d thy days.     Well, I will lock his counsel in my breast;     And what I do imagine, let that rest.     Keepers, convey him hence; and I myself     Will see his burial better than his life.                 Exeunt GAOLERS, hearing out the body of MORTIMER     Here dies the dusky torch of Mortimer,     Chok\'d with ambition of the meaner sort;     And for those wrongs, those bitter injuries,     Which Somerset hath offer\'d to my house,     I doubt not but with honour to redress;     And therefore haste I to the Parliament,     Either to be restored to my blood,     Or make my ill th\' advantage of my good.                Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE 1.  London. The Parliament House  Flourish. Enter the KING, EXETER, GLOUCESTER, WARWICK, SOMERSET, and SUFFOLK; the BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, RICHARD PLANTAGENET, and others. GLOUCESTER offers to put up a bill; WINCHESTER snatches it, and tears it    WINCHESTER. Com\'st thou with deep premeditated lines,     With written pamphlets studiously devis\'d?     Humphrey of Gloucester, if thou canst accuse     Or aught intend\'st to lay unto my charge,     Do it without invention, suddenly;     I with sudden and extemporal speech     Purpose to answer what thou canst object.   GLOUCESTER. Presumptuous priest, this place commands my     patience,     Or thou shouldst find thou hast dishonour\'d me.     Think not, although in writing I preferr\'d     The manner of thy vile outrageous crimes,       That therefore I have forg\'d, or am not able     Verbatim to rehearse the method of my pen.     No, prelate; such is thy audacious wickedness,     Thy lewd, pestiferous, and dissentious pranks,     As very infants prattle of thy pride.     Thou art a most pernicious usurer;     Froward by nature, enemy to peace;     Lascivious, wanton, more than well beseems     A man of thy profession and degree;     And for thy treachery, what\'s more manifest     In that thou laid\'st a trap to take my life,     As well at London Bridge as at the Tower?     Beside, I fear me, if thy thoughts were sifted,     The King, thy sovereign, is not quite exempt     From envious malice of thy swelling heart.   WINCHESTER. Gloucester, I do defy thee. Lords, vouchsafe     To give me hearing what I shall reply.     If I were covetous, ambitious, or perverse,     As he will have me, how am I so poor?     Or how haps it I seek not to advance       Or raise myself, but keep my wonted calling?     And for dissension, who preferreth peace     More than I do, except I be provok\'d?     No, my good lords, it is not that offends;     It is not that that incens\'d hath incens\'d the Duke:     It is because no one should sway but he;     No one but he should be about the King;     And that engenders thunder in his breast     And makes him roar these accusations forth.     But he shall know I am as good   GLOUCESTER. As good!     Thou bastard of my grandfather!   WINCHESTER. Ay, lordly sir; for what are you, I pray,     But one imperious in another\'s throne?   GLOUCESTER. Am I not Protector, saucy priest?   WINCHESTER. And am not I a prelate of the church?   GLOUCESTER. Yes, as an outlaw in a castle keeps,     And useth it to patronage his theft.   WINCHESTER. Unreverent Gloucester!   GLOUCESTER. Thou art reverend       Touching thy spiritual function, not thy life.   WINCHESTER. Rome shall remedy this.   WARWICK. Roam thither then.   SOMERSET. My lord, it were your duty to forbear.   WARWICK. Ay, see the bishop be not overborne.   SOMERSET. Methinks my lord should be religious,     And know the office that belongs to such.   WARWICK. Methinks his lordship should be humbler;     It fitteth not a prelate so to plead.   SOMERSET. Yes, when his holy state is touch\'d so near.   WARWICK. State holy or unhallow\'d, what of that?     Is not his Grace Protector to the King?   PLANTAGENET.  [Aside]  Plantagenet, I see, must hold his     tongue,     Lest it be said \'Speak, sirrah, when you should;     Must your bold verdict enter talk with lords?\'     Else would I have a fling at Winchester.   KING HENRY. Uncles of Gloucester and of Winchester,     The special watchmen of our English weal,     I would prevail, if prayers might prevail       To join your hearts in love and amity.     O, what a scandal is it to our crown     That two such noble peers as ye should jar!     Believe me, lords, my tender years can tell     Civil dissension is a viperous worm     That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth.                   [A noise within: \'Down with the tawny coats!\']     What tumult\'s this?   WARWICK. An uproar, I dare warrant,     Begun through malice of the Bishop\'s men.                               [A noise again: \'Stones! Stones!\']                  Enter the MAYOR OF LONDON, attended    MAYOR. O, my good lords, and virtuous Henry,     Pity the city of London, pity us!     The Bishop and the Duke of Gloucester\'s men,     Forbidden late to carry any weapon,     Have fill\'d their pockets full of pebble stones     And, banding themselves in contrary parts,       Do pelt so fast at one another\'s pate     That many have their giddy brains knock\'d out.     Our windows are broke down in every street,     And we for fear compell\'d to shut our shops.          Enter in skirmish, the retainers of GLOUCESTER and                WINCHESTER, with bloody pates    KING HENRY. We charge you, on allegiance to ourself,     To hold your slaught\'ring hands and keep the peace.     Pray, uncle Gloucester, mitigate this strife.   FIRST SERVING-MAN. Nay, if we be forbidden stones, we\'ll     fall to it with our teeth.   SECOND SERVING-MAN. Do what ye dare, we are as resolute.                                                 [Skirmish again]   GLOUCESTER. You of my household, leave this peevish broil,     And set this unaccustom\'d fight aside.   THIRD SERVING-MAN. My lord, we know your Grace to be a     man     Just and upright, and for your royal birth       Inferior to none but to his Majesty;     And ere that we will suffer such a prince,     So kind a father of the commonweal,     To be disgraced by an inkhorn mate,     We and our wives and children all will fight     And have our bodies slaught\'red by thy foes.   FIRST SERVING-MAN. Ay, and the very parings of our nails     Shall pitch a field when we are dead.          [Begin again]   GLOUCESTER. Stay, stay, I say!     And if you love me, as you say you do,     Let me persuade you to forbear awhile.   KING HENRY. O, how this discord doth afflict my soul!     Can you, my Lord of Winchester, behold     My sighs and tears and will not once relent?     Who should be pitiful, if you be not?     Or who should study to prefer a peace,     If holy churchmen take delight in broils?   WARWICK. Yield, my Lord Protector; yield, Winchester;     Except you mean with obstinate repulse     To slay your sovereign and destroy the realm.       You see what mischief, and what murder too,     Hath been enacted through your enmity;     Then be at peace, except ye thirst for blood.   WINCHESTER. He shall submit, or I will never yield.   GLOUCESTER. Compassion on the King commands me stoop,     Or I would see his heart out ere the priest     Should ever get that privilege of me.   WARWICK. Behold, my Lord of Winchester, the Duke     Hath banish\'d moody discontented fury,     As by his smoothed brows it doth appear;     Why look you still so stem and tragical?   GLOUCESTER. Here, Winchester, I offer thee my hand.   KING HENRY. Fie, uncle Beaufort! I have heard you preach     That malice was a great and grievous sin;     And will not you maintain the thing you teach,     But prove a chief offender in the same?   WARWICK. Sweet King! The Bishop hath a kindly gird.     For shame, my Lord of Winchester, relent;     What, shall a child instruct you what to do?   WINCHESTER. Well, Duke of Gloucester, I will yield to thee;       Love for thy love and hand for hand I give.   GLOUCESTER  [Aside]  Ay, but, I fear me, with a hollow     heart.     See here, my friends and loving countrymen:     This token serveth for a flag of truce     Betwixt ourselves and all our followers.     So help me God, as I dissemble not!   WINCHESTER  [Aside]  So help me God, as I intend it not!   KING HENRY. O loving uncle, kind Duke of Gloucester,     How joyful am I made by this contract!     Away, my masters! trouble us no more;     But join in friendship, as your lords have done.   FIRST SERVING-MAN. Content: I\'ll to the surgeon\'s.   SECOND SERVING-MAN. And so will I.   THIRD SERVING-MAN. And I will see what physic the tavern     affords.                         Exeunt servants, MAYOR, &C.   WARWICK. Accept this scroll, most gracious sovereign;     Which in the right of Richard Plantagenet     We do exhibit to your Majesty.   GLOUCESTER. Well urg\'d, my Lord of Warwick; for, sweet       prince,     An if your Grace mark every circumstance,     You have great reason to do Richard right;     Especially for those occasions     At Eltham Place I told your Majesty.   KING HENRY. And those occasions, uncle, were of force;     Therefore, my loving lords, our pleasure is     That Richard be restored to his blood.   WARWICK. Let Richard be restored to his blood;     So shall his father\'s wrongs be recompens\'d.   WINCHESTER. As will the rest, so willeth Winchester.   KING HENRY. If Richard will be true, not that alone     But all the whole inheritance I give     That doth belong unto the house of York,     From whence you spring by lineal descent.   PLANTAGENET. Thy humble servant vows obedience     And humble service till the point of death.   KING HENRY. Stoop then and set your knee against my foot;     And in reguerdon of that duty done     I girt thee with the valiant sword of York.       Rise, Richard, like a true Plantagenet,     And rise created princely Duke of York.   PLANTAGENET. And so thrive Richard as thy foes may fall!     And as my duty springs, so perish they     That grudge one thought against your Majesty!   ALL. Welcome, high Prince, the mighty Duke of York!   SOMERSET.  [Aside]  Perish, base Prince, ignoble Duke of     York!   GLOUCESTER. Now will it best avail your Majesty     To cross the seas and to be crown\'d in France:     The presence of a king engenders love     Amongst his subjects and his loyal friends,     As it disanimates his enemies.   KING HENRY. When Gloucester says the word, King Henry     goes;     For friendly counsel cuts off many foes.   GLOUCESTER. Your ships already are in readiness.                          Sennet. Flourish. Exeunt all but EXETER   EXETER. Ay, we may march in England or in France,     Not seeing what is likely to ensue.       This late dissension grown betwixt the peers     Burns under feigned ashes of forg\'d love     And will at last break out into a flame;     As fest\'red members rot but by degree     Till bones and flesh and sinews fall away,     So will this base and envious discord breed.     And now I fear that fatal prophecy.     Which in the time of Henry nam\'d the Fifth     Was in the mouth of every sucking babe:     That Henry born at Monmouth should win all,     And Henry born at Windsor should lose all.     Which is so plain that Exeter doth wish     His days may finish ere that hapless time.              Exit                                  SCENE 2.                        France. Before Rouen         Enter LA PUCELLE disguis\'d, with four soldiers dressed             like countrymen, with sacks upon their backs    PUCELLE. These are the city gates, the gates of Rouen,     Through which our policy must make a breach.     Take heed, be wary how you place your words;     Talk like the vulgar sort of market-men     That come to gather money for their corn.     If we have entrance, as I hope we shall,     And that we find the slothful watch but weak,     I\'ll by a sign give notice to our friends,     That Charles the Dauphin may encounter them.   FIRST SOLDIER. Our sacks shall be a mean to sack the city,     And we be lords and rulers over Rouen;     Therefore we\'ll knock.                              [Knocks]   WATCH.  [Within]  Qui est la?   PUCELLE. Paysans, pauvres gens de France     Poor market-folks that come to sell their corn.     WATCH. Enter, go in; the market-bell is rung.   PUCELLE. Now, Rouen, I\'ll shake thy bulwarks to the     ground.                                 [LA PUCELLE, &c., enter the town]          Enter CHARLES, BASTARD, ALENCON, REIGNIER, and forces    CHARLES. Saint Denis bless this happy stratagem!     And once again we\'ll sleep secure in Rouen.   BASTARD. Here ent\'red Pucelle and her practisants;     Now she is there, how will she specify     Here is the best and safest passage in?   ALENCON. By thrusting out a torch from yonder tower;     Which once discern\'d shows that her meaning is     No way to that, for weakness, which she ent\'red.               Enter LA PUCELLE, on the top, thrusting out                          a torch burning      PUCELLE. Behold, this is the happy wedding torch     That joineth Rouen unto her countrymen,     But burning fatal to the Talbotites.                    Exit   BASTARD. See, noble Charles, the beacon of our friend;     The burning torch in yonder turret stands.   CHARLES. Now shine it like a comet of revenge,     A prophet to the fall of all our foes!   ALENCON. Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends;     Enter, and cry \'The Dauphin!\' presently,     And then do execution on the watch. Alarum.           Exeunt                An alarum. Enter TALBOT in an excursion    TALBOT. France, thou shalt rue this treason with thy tears,     If Talbot but survive thy treachery.   PUCELLE, that witch, that damned sorceress,     Hath wrought this hellish mischief unawares,     That hardly we escap\'d the pride of France.             Exit          An alarum; excursions. BEDFORD brought in sick in             a chair. Enter TALBOT and BURGUNDY without;          within, LA PUCELLE, CHARLES, BASTARD, ALENCON,                  and REIGNIER, on the walls    PUCELLE. Good morrow, gallants! Want ye corn for bread?     I think the Duke of Burgundy will fast     Before he\'ll buy again at such a rate.     \'Twas full of darnel-do you like the taste?   BURGUNDY. Scoff on, vile fiend and shameless courtezan.     I trust ere long to choke thee with thine own,     And make thee curse the harvest of that corn.   CHARLES. Your Grace may starve, perhaps, before that time.   BEDFORD. O, let no words, but deeds, revenge this treason!   PUCELLE. What you do, good grey beard? Break a     lance,     And run a tilt at death within a chair?   TALBOT. Foul fiend of France and hag of all despite,     Encompass\'d with thy lustful paramours,     Becomes it thee to taunt his valiant age     And twit with cowardice a man half dead?       Damsel, I\'ll have a bout with you again,     Or else let Talbot perish with this shame.   PUCELLE. Are ye so hot, sir? Yet, Pucelle, hold thy peace;     If Talbot do but thunder, rain will follow.                  [The English party whisper together in council]     God speed the parliament! Who shall be the Speaker?   TALBOT. Dare ye come forth and meet us in the field?   PUCELLE. Belike your lordship takes us then for fools,     To try if that our own be ours or no.   TALBOT. I speak not to that railing Hecate,     But unto thee, Alencon, and the rest.     Will ye, like soldiers, come and fight it out?   ALENCON. Signior, no.   TALBOT. Signior, hang! Base muleteers of France!     Like peasant foot-boys do they keep the walls,     And dare not take up arms like gentlemen.   PUCELLE. Away, captains! Let\'s get us from the walls;     For Talbot means no goodness by his looks.     God b\'uy, my lord; we came but to tell you     That we are here.                      Exeunt from the walls     TALBOT. And there will we be too, ere it be long,     Or else reproach be Talbot\'s greatest fame!     Vow, Burgundy, by honour of thy house,     Prick\'d on by public wrongs sustain\'d in France,     Either to get the town again or die;     And I, as sure as English Henry lives     And as his father here was conqueror,     As sure as in this late betrayed town     Great Coeur-de-lion\'s heart was buried     So sure I swear to get the town or die.   BURGUNDY. My vows are equal partners with thy vows.   TALBOT. But ere we go, regard this dying prince,     The valiant Duke of Bedford. Come, my lord,     We will bestow you in some better place,     Fitter for sickness and for crazy age.   BEDFORD. Lord Talbot, do not so dishonour me;     Here will I sit before the walls of Rouen,     And will be partner of your weal or woe.   BURGUNDY. Courageous Bedford, let us now persuade you.   BEDFORD. Not to be gone from hence; for once I read       That stout Pendragon in his litter sick     Came to the field, and vanquished his foes.     Methinks I should revive the soldiers\' hearts,     Because I ever found them as myself.   TALBOT. Undaunted spirit in a dying breast!     Then be it so. Heavens keep old Bedford safe!     And now no more ado, brave Burgundy,     But gather we our forces out of hand     And set upon our boasting enemy.           Exeunt against the town all but BEDFORD and attendants             An alarum; excursions. Enter SIR JOHN FASTOLFE,                            and a CAPTAIN    CAPTAIN. Whither away, Sir John Fastolfe, in such haste?   FASTOLFE. Whither away? To save myself by flight:     We are like to have the overthrow again.   CAPTAIN. What! Will you and leave Lord Talbot?   FASTOLFE. Ay,     All the Talbots in the world, to save my life.          Exit     CAPTAIN. Cowardly knight! ill fortune follow thee!                                               Exit into the town           Retreat; excursions. LA PUCELLE, ALENCON,                       and CHARLES fly    BEDFORD. Now, quiet soul, depart when heaven please,     For I have seen our enemies\' overthrow.     What is the trust or strength of foolish man?     They that of late were daring with their scoffs     Are glad and fain by flight to save themselves.             [BEDFORD dies and is carried in by two in his chair]            An alarum. Re-enter TALBOT, BURGUNDY, and the rest    TALBOT. Lost and recovered in a day again!     This is a double honour, Burgundy.     Yet heavens have glory for this victory!   BURGUNDY. Warlike and martial Talbot, Burgundy     Enshrines thee in his heart, and there erects       Thy noble deeds as valour\'s monuments.   TALBOT. Thanks, gentle Duke. But where is Pucelle now?     I think her old familiar is asleep.     Now where\'s the Bastard\'s braves, and Charles his gleeks?     What, all amort? Rouen hangs her head for grief     That such a valiant company are fled.     Now will we take some order in the town,     Placing therein some expert officers;     And then depart to Paris to the King,     For there young Henry with his nobles lie.   BURGUNDY. What Lord Talbot pleaseth Burgundy.   TALBOT. But yet, before we go, let\'s not forget     The noble Duke of Bedford, late deceas\'d,     But see his exequies fulfill\'d in Rouen.     A braver soldier never couched lance,     A gentler heart did never sway in court;     But kings and mightiest potentates must die,     For that\'s the end of human misery.                   Exeunt                                  SCENE 3.                        The plains near Rouen          Enter CHARLES, the BASTARD, ALENCON, LA PUCELLE,                           and forces    PUCELLE. Dismay not, Princes, at this accident,     Nor grieve that Rouen is so recovered.     Care is no cure, but rather corrosive,     For things that are not to be remedied.     Let frantic Talbot triumph for a while     And like a peacock sweep along his tail;     We\'ll pull his plumes and take away his train,     If Dauphin and the rest will be but rul\'d.   CHARLES. We have guided by thee hitherto,     And of thy cunning had no diffidence;     One sudden foil shall never breed distrust   BASTARD. Search out thy wit for secret policies,     And we will make thee famous through the world.     ALENCON. We\'ll set thy statue in some holy place,     And have thee reverenc\'d like a blessed saint.       Employ thee, then, sweet virgin, for our good.   PUCELLE. Then thus it must be; this doth Joan devise:     By fair persuasions, mix\'d with sug\'red words,     We will entice the Duke of Burgundy     To leave the Talbot and to follow us.   CHARLES. Ay, marry, sweeting, if we could do that,     France were no place for Henry\'s warriors;     Nor should that nation boast it so with us,     But be extirped from our provinces.   ALENCON. For ever should they be expuls\'d from France,     And not have tide of an earldom here.   PUCELLE. Your honours shall perceive how I will work     To bring this matter to the wished end.                                           [Drum sounds afar off]     Hark! by the sound of drum you may perceive     Their powers are marching unto Paris-ward.            Here sound an English march. Enter, and pass over                 at a distance, TALBOT and his forces        There goes the Talbot, with his colours spread,     And all the troops of English after him.              French march. Enter the DUKE OF BURGUNDY and                          his forces      Now in the rearward comes the Duke and his.     Fortune in favour makes him lag behind.     Summon a parley; we will talk with him.                                        [Trumpets sound a parley]   CHARLES. A parley with the Duke of Burgundy!   BURGUNDY. Who craves a parley with the Burgundy?   PUCELLE. The princely Charles of France, thy countryman.   BURGUNDY. What say\'st thou, Charles? for I am marching     hence.   CHARLES. Speak, Pucelle, and enchant him with thy words.   PUCELLE. Brave Burgundy, undoubted hope of France!     Stay, let thy humble handmaid speak to thee.   BURGUNDY. Speak on; but be not over-tedious.   PUCELLE. Look on thy country, look on fertile France,       And see the cities and the towns defac\'d     By wasting ruin of the cruel foe;     As looks the mother on her lowly babe     When death doth close his tender dying eyes,     See, see the pining malady of France;     Behold the wounds, the most unnatural wounds,     Which thou thyself hast given her woeful breast.     O, turn thy edged sword another way;     Strike those that hurt, and hurt not those that help!     One drop of blood drawn from thy country\'s bosom     Should grieve thee more than streams of foreign gore.     Return thee therefore with a flood of tears,     And wash away thy country\'s stained spots.   BURGUNDY. Either she hath bewitch\'d me with her words,     Or nature makes me suddenly relent.   PUCELLE. Besides, all French and France exclaims on thee,     Doubting thy birth and lawful progeny.     Who join\'st thou with but with a lordly nation     That will not trust thee but for profit\'s sake?     When Talbot hath set footing once in France,       And fashion\'d thee that instrument of ill,     Who then but English Henry will be lord,     And thou be thrust out like a fugitive?     Call we to mind-and mark but this for proof:     Was not the Duke of Orleans thy foe?     And was he not in England prisoner?     But when they heard he was thine enemy     They set him free without his ransom paid,     In spite of Burgundy and all his friends.     See then, thou fight\'st against thy countrymen,     And join\'st with them will be thy slaughtermen.     Come, come, return; return, thou wandering lord;     Charles and the rest will take thee in their arms.   BURGUNDY. I am vanquished; these haughty words of hers     Have batt\'red me like roaring cannon-shot     And made me almost yield upon my knees.     Forgive me, country, and sweet countrymen     And, lords, accept this hearty kind embrace.     My forces and my power of men are yours;     So, farewell, Talbot; I\'ll no longer trust thee.     PUCELLE. Done like a Frenchman-  [Aside]  turn and turn     again.   CHARLES. Welcome, brave Duke! Thy friendship makes us     fresh.   BASTARD. And doth beget new courage in our breasts.   ALENCON. Pucelle hath bravely play\'d her part in this,     And doth deserve a coronet of gold.   CHARLES. Now let us on, my lords, and join our powers,     And seek how we may prejudice the foe.                Exeunt                               SCENE 4.                       Paris. The palace           Enter the KING, GLOUCESTER, WINCHESTER, YORK,              SUFFOLK, SOMERSET, WARWICK, EXETER,            VERNON, BASSET, and others. To them, with                      his soldiers, TALBOT    TALBOT. My gracious Prince, and honourable peers,     Hearing of your arrival in this realm,     I have awhile given truce unto my wars     To do my duty to my sovereign;     In sign whereof, this arm that hath reclaim\'d     To your obedience fifty fortresses,     Twelve cities, and seven walled towns of strength,     Beside five hundred prisoners of esteem,     Lets fall his sword before your Highness\' feet,     And with submissive loyalty of heart     Ascribes the glory of his conquest got     First to my God and next unto your Grace.           [Kneels]   KING HENRY. Is this the Lord Talbot, uncle Gloucester,       That hath so long been resident in France?   GLOUCESTER. Yes, if it please your Majesty, my liege.   KING HENRY. Welcome, brave captain and victorious lord!     When I was young, as yet I am not old,     I do remember how my father said     A stouter champion never handled sword.     Long since we were resolved of your truth,     Your faithful service, and your toil in war;     Yet never have you tasted our reward,     Or been reguerdon\'d with so much as thanks,     Because till now we never saw your face.     Therefore stand up; and for these good deserts     We here create you Earl of Shrewsbury;     And in our coronation take your place.               Sennet. Flourish. Exeunt all but VERNON and BASSET   VERNON. Now, sir, to you, that were so hot at sea,     Disgracing of these colours that I wear     In honour of my noble Lord of York     Dar\'st thou maintain the former words thou spak\'st?   BASSET. Yes, sir; as well as you dare patronage       The envious barking of your saucy tongue     Against my lord the Duke of Somerset.   VERNON. Sirrah, thy lord I honour as he is.   BASSET. Why, what is he? As good a man as York!   VERNON. Hark ye: not so. In witness, take ye that.                                                    [Strikes him]   BASSET. Villain, thou knowest the law of arms is such     That whoso draws a sword \'tis present death,     Or else this blow should broach thy dearest blood.     But I\'ll unto his Majesty and crave     I may have liberty to venge this wrong;     When thou shalt see I\'ll meet thee to thy cost.   VERNON. Well, miscreant, I\'ll be there as soon as you;     And, after, meet you sooner than you would.           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE 1.  Park. The palace  Enter the KING, GLOUCESTER, WINCHESTER, YORK, SUFFOLK, SOMERSET, WARWICK, TALBOT, EXETER, the GOVERNOR OF PARIS, and others    GLOUCESTER. Lord Bishop, set the crown upon his head.   WINCHESTER. God save King Henry, of that name the Sixth!   GLOUCESTER. Now, Governor of Paris, take your oath                                                [GOVERNOR kneels]     That you elect no other king but him,     Esteem none friends but such as are his friends,     And none your foes but such as shall pretend     Malicious practices against his state.     This shall ye do, so help you righteous God!                                    Exeunt GOVERNOR and his train                      Enter SIR JOHN FASTOLFE    FASTOLFE. My gracious sovereign, as I rode from Calais,       To haste unto your coronation,     A letter was deliver\'d to my hands,     Writ to your Grace from th\' Duke of Burgundy.   TALBOT. Shame to the Duke of Burgundy and thee!     I vow\'d, base knight, when I did meet thee next     To tear the Garter from thy craven\'s leg,  [Plucking it off]     Which I have done, because unworthily     Thou wast installed in that high degree.     Pardon me, princely Henry, and the rest:     This dastard, at the battle of Patay,     When but in all I was six thousand strong,     And that the French were almost ten to one,     Before we met or that a stroke was given,     Like to a trusty squire did run away;     In which assault we lost twelve hundred men;     Myself and divers gentlemen beside     Were there surpris\'d and taken prisoners.     Then judge, great lords, if I have done amiss,     Or whether that such cowards ought to wear     This ornament of knighthood-yea or no.     GLOUCESTER. To say the truth, this fact was infamous     And ill beseeming any common man,     Much more a knight, a captain, and a leader.   TALBOT. When first this order was ordain\'d, my lords,     Knights of the Garter were of noble birth,     Valiant and virtuous, full of haughty courage,     Such as were grown to credit by the wars;     Not fearing death nor shrinking for distress,     But always resolute in most extremes.     He then that is not furnish\'d in this sort     Doth but usurp the sacred name of knight,     Profaning this most honourable order,     And should, if I were worthy to be judge,     Be quite degraded, like a hedge-born swain     That doth presume to boast of gentle blood.   KING HENRY. Stain to thy countrymen, thou hear\'st thy     doom.     Be packing, therefore, thou that wast a knight;     Henceforth we banish thee on pain of death.                                                    Exit FASTOLFE       And now, my Lord Protector, view the letter     Sent from our uncle Duke of Burgundy.   GLOUCESTER.  [Viewing the superscription]  What means his     Grace, that he hath chang\'d his style?     No more but plain and bluntly \'To the King!\'     Hath he forgot he is his sovereign?     Or doth this churlish superscription     Pretend some alteration in good-will?     What\'s here?  [Reads]  \'I have, upon especial cause,     Mov\'d with compassion of my country\'s wreck,     Together with the pitiful complaints     Of such as your oppression feeds upon,     Forsaken your pernicious faction,     And join\'d with Charles, the rightful King of France.\'     O monstrous treachery! Can this be so     That in alliance, amity, and oaths,     There should be found such false dissembling guile?   KING HENRY. What! Doth my uncle Burgundy revolt?   GLOUCESTER. He doth, my lord, and is become your foe.   KING HENRY. Is that the worst this letter doth contain?     GLOUCESTER. It is the worst, and all, my lord, he writes.   KING HENRY. Why then Lord Talbot there shall talk with     him     And give him chastisement for this abuse.     How say you, my lord, are you not content?   TALBOT. Content, my liege! Yes; but that I am prevented,     I should have begg\'d I might have been employ\'d.   KING HENRY. Then gather strength and march unto him     straight;     Let him perceive how ill we brook his treason.     And what offence it is to flout his friends.   TALBOT. I go, my lord, in heart desiring still     You may behold confusion of your foes.                  Exit                         Enter VERNON and BASSET    VERNON. Grant me the combat, gracious sovereign.   BASSET. And me, my lord, grant me the combat too.   YORK. This is my servant: hear him, noble Prince.   SOMERSET. And this is mine: sweet Henry, favour him.     KING HENRY. Be patient, lords, and give them leave to speak.     Say, gentlemen, what makes you thus exclaim,     And wherefore crave you combat, or with whom?   VERNON. With him, my lord; for he hath done me wrong.   BASSET. And I with him; for he hath done me wrong.   KING HENRY. What is that wrong whereof you both     complain? First let me know, and then I\'ll answer you.   BASSET. Crossing the sea from England into France,     This fellow here, with envious carping tongue,     Upbraided me about the rose I wear,     Saying the sanguine colour of the leaves     Did represent my master\'s blushing cheeks     When stubbornly he did repugn the truth     About a certain question in the law     Argu\'d betwixt the Duke of York and him;     With other vile and ignominious terms     In confutation of which rude reproach     And in defence of my lord\'s worthiness,     I crave the benefit of law of arms.   VERNON. And that is my petition, noble lord;       For though he seem with forged quaint conceit     To set a gloss upon his bold intent,     Yet know, my lord, I was provok\'d by him,     And he first took exceptions at this badge,     Pronouncing that the paleness of this flower     Bewray\'d the faintness of my master\'s heart.   YORK. Will not this malice, Somerset, be left?   SOMERSET. Your private grudge, my Lord of York, will out,     Though ne\'er so cunningly you smother it.   KING HENRY. Good Lord, what madness rules in brainsick     men, When for so slight and frivolous a cause     Such factious emulations shall arise!     Good cousins both, of York and Somerset,     Quiet yourselves, I pray, and be at peace.   YORK. Let this dissension first be tried by fight,     And then your Highness shall command a peace.   SOMERSET. The quarrel toucheth none but us alone;     Betwixt ourselves let us decide it then.   YORK. There is my pledge; accept it, Somerset.   VERNON. Nay, let it rest where it began at first.     BASSET. Confirm it so, mine honourable lord.   GLOUCESTER. Confirm it so? Confounded be your strife;     And perish ye, with your audacious prate!     Presumptuous vassals, are you not asham\'d     With this immodest clamorous outrage     To trouble and disturb the King and us?     And you, my lords- methinks you do not well     To bear with their perverse objections,     Much less to take occasion from their mouths     To raise a mutiny betwixt yourselves.     Let me persuade you take a better course.   EXETER. It grieves his Highness. Good my lords, be friends.   KING HENRY. Come hither, you that would be combatants:     Henceforth I charge you, as you love our favour,     Quite to forget this quarrel and the cause.     And you, my lords, remember where we are:     In France, amongst a fickle wavering nation;     If they perceive dissension in our looks     And that within ourselves we disagree,     How will their grudging stomachs be provok\'d       To wilful disobedience, and rebel!     Beside, what infamy will there arise     When foreign princes shall be certified     That for a toy, a thing of no regard,     King Henry\'s peers and chief nobility     Destroy\'d themselves and lost the realm of France!     O, think upon the conquest of my father,     My tender years; and let us not forgo     That for a trifle that was bought with blood!     Let me be umpire in this doubtful strife.     I see no reason, if I wear this rose,                                          [Putting on a red rose]     That any one should therefore be suspicious     I more incline to Somerset than York:     Both are my kinsmen, and I love them both.     As well they may upbraid me with my crown,     Because, forsooth, the King of Scots is crown\'d.     But your discretions better can persuade     Than I am able to instruct or teach;     And, therefore, as we hither came in peace,       So let us still continue peace and love.     Cousin of York, we institute your Grace     To be our Regent in these parts of France.     And, good my Lord of Somerset, unite     Your troops of horsemen with his bands of foot;     And like true subjects, sons of your progenitors,     Go cheerfully together and digest     Your angry choler on your enemies.     Ourself, my Lord Protector, and the rest,     After some respite will return to Calais;     From thence to England, where I hope ere long     To be presented by your victories     With Charles, Alencon, and that traitorous rout.                          Flourish. Exeunt all but YORK, WARWICK,                                                   EXETER, VERNON   WARWICK. My Lord of York, I promise you, the King     Prettily, methought, did play the orator.   YORK. And so he did; but yet I like it not,     In that he wears the badge of Somerset.   WARWICK. Tush, that was but his fancy; blame him not;       I dare presume, sweet prince, he thought no harm.   YORK. An if I wist he did-but let it rest;     Other affairs must now be managed.                                            Exeunt all but EXETER   EXETER. Well didst thou, Richard, to suppress thy voice;     For had the passions of thy heart burst out,     I fear we should have seen decipher\'d there     More rancorous spite, more furious raging broils,     Than yet can be imagin\'d or suppos\'d.     But howsoe\'er, no simple man that sees     This jarring discord of nobility,     This shouldering of each other in the court,     This factious bandying of their favourites,     But that it doth presage some ill event.     \'Tis much when sceptres are in children\'s hands;     But more when envy breeds unkind division:     There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.           Exit                                    SCENE 2.                          France. Before Bordeaux                     Enter TALBOT, with trump and drum    TALBOT. Go to the gates of Bordeaux, trumpeter;     Summon their general unto the wall.               Trumpet sounds a parley. Enter, aloft, the                  GENERAL OF THE FRENCH, and others      English John Talbot, Captains, calls you forth,     Servant in arms to Harry King of England;     And thus he would open your city gates,     Be humble to us, call my sovereignvours     And do him homage as obedient subjects,     And I\'ll withdraw me and my bloody power;     But if you frown upon this proffer\'d peace,     You tempt the fury of my three attendants,     Lean famine, quartering steel, and climbing fire;     Who in a moment even with the earth       Shall lay your stately and air braving towers,     If you forsake the offer of their love.   GENERAL OF THE FRENCH. Thou ominous and fearful owl of     death,     Our nation\'s terror and their bloody scourge!     The period of thy tyranny approacheth.     On us thou canst not enter but by death;     For, I protest, we are well fortified,     And strong enough to issue out and fight.     If thou retire, the Dauphin, well appointed,     Stands with the snares of war to tangle thee.     On either hand thee there are squadrons pitch\'d     To wall thee from the liberty of flight,     And no way canst thou turn thee for redress     But death doth front thee with apparent spoil     And pale destruction meets thee in the face.     Ten thousand French have ta\'en the sacrament     To rive their dangerous artillery     Upon no Christian soul but English Talbot.     Lo, there thou stand\'st, a breathing valiant man,       Of an invincible unconquer\'d spirit!     This is the latest glory of thy praise     That I, thy enemy, due thee withal;     For ere the glass that now begins to run     Finish the process of his sandy hour,     These eyes that see thee now well coloured     Shall see thee withered, bloody, pale, and dead.                                                  [Drum afar off]     Hark! hark! The Dauphin\'s drum, a warning bell,     Sings heavy music to thy timorous soul;     And mine shall ring thy dire departure out.             Exit   TALBOT. He fables not; I hear the enemy.     Out, some light horsemen, and peruse their wings.     O, negligent and heedless discipline!     How are we park\'d and bounded in a pale     A little herd of England\'s timorous deer,     Maz\'d with a yelping kennel of French curs!     If we be English deer, be then in blood;     Not rascal-like to fall down with a pinch,     But rather, moody-mad and desperate stags,       Turn on the bloody hounds with heads of steel     And make the cowards stand aloof at bay.     Sell every man his life as dear as mine,     And they shall find dear deer of us, my friends.     God and Saint George, Talbot and England\'s right,     Prosper our colours in this dangerous fight!          Exeunt                               SCENE 3.                        Plains in Gascony          Enter YORK, with trumpet and many soldiers. A                    MESSENGER meets him    YORK. Are not the speedy scouts return\'d again     That dogg\'d the mighty army of the Dauphin?   MESSENGER. They are return\'d, my lord, and give it out     That he is march\'d to Bordeaux with his power     To fight with Talbot; as he march\'d along,     By your espials were discovered     Two mightier troops than that the Dauphin led,     Which join\'d with him and made their march for     Bordeaux.   YORK. A plague upon that villain Somerset     That thus delays my promised supply     Of horsemen that were levied for this siege!     Renowned Talbot doth expect my aid,     And I am louted by a traitor villain     And cannot help the noble chevalier.       God comfort him in this necessity!     If he miscarry, farewell wars in France.                        Enter SIR WILLIAM LUCY    LUCY. Thou princely leader of our English strength,     Never so needful on the earth of France,     Spur to the rescue of the noble Talbot,     Who now is girdled with a waist of iron     And hemm\'d about with grim destruction.     To Bordeaux, warlike Duke! to Bordeaux, York!     Else, farewell Talbot, France, and England\'s honour.   YORK. O God, that Somerset, who in proud heart     Doth stop my cornets, were in Talbot\'s place!     So should we save a valiant gentleman     By forfeiting a traitor and a coward.     Mad ire and wrathful fury makes me weep     That thus we die while remiss traitors sleep.   LUCY. O, send some succour to the distress\'d lord!   YORK. He dies; we lose; I break my warlike word.       We mourn: France smiles. We lose: they daily get-     All long of this vile traitor Somerset.   LUCY. Then God take mercy on brave Talbot\'s soul,     And on his son, young John, who two hours since     I met in travel toward his warlike father.     This seven years did not Talbot see his son;     And now they meet where both their lives are done.   YORK. Alas, what joy shall noble Talbot have     To bid his young son welcome to his grave?     Away! vexation almost stops my breath,     That sund\'red friends greet in the hour of death.     Lucy, farewell; no more my fortune can     But curse the cause I cannot aid the man.     Maine, Blois, Poictiers, and Tours, are won away     Long all of Somerset and his delay.         Exit with forces   LUCY. Thus, while the vulture of sedition     Feeds in the bosom of such great commanders,     Sleeping neglection doth betray to loss     The conquest of our scarce cold conqueror,     That ever-living man of memory,       Henry the Fifth. Whiles they each other cross,     Lives, honours, lands, and all, hurry to loss.          Exit                                  SCENE 4.                       Other plains of Gascony          Enter SOMERSET, With his forces; an OFFICER of                      TALBOT\'S with him    SOMERSET. It is too late; I cannot send them now.     This expedition was by York and Talbot     Too rashly plotted; all our general force     Might with a sally of the very town     Be buckled with. The over daring Talbot     Hath sullied all his gloss of former honour     By this unheedful, desperate, wild adventure.     York set him on to fight and die in shame.     That, Talbot dead, great York might bear the name.   OFFICER. Here is Sir William Lucy, who with me     Set from our o\'er-match\'d forces forth for aid.                         Enter SIR WILLIAM LUCY    SOMERSET. How now, Sir William! Whither were you sent?     LUCY. Whither, my lord! From bought and sold Lord     Talbot,     Who, ring\'d about with bold adversity,     Cries out for noble York and Somerset     To beat assailing death from his weak legions;     And whiles the honourable captain there     Drops bloody sweat from his war-wearied limbs     And, in advantage ling\'ring, looks for rescue,     You, his false hopes, the trust of England\'s honour,     Keep off aloof with worthless emulation.     Let not your private discord keep away     The levied succours that should lend him aid,     While he, renowned noble gentleman,     Yield up his life unto a world of odds.     Orleans the Bastard, Charles, Burgundy,     Alencon, Reignier, compass him about,     And Talbot perisheth by your default.   SOMERSET. York set him on; York should have sent him aid.   LUCY. And York as fast upon your Grace exclaims,     Swearing that you withhold his levied host,       Collected for this expedition.   SOMERSET. York lies; he might have sent and had the horse.     I owe him little duty and less love,     And take foul scorn to fawn on him by sending.   LUCY. The fraud of England, not the force of France,     Hath now entrapp\'d the noble minded Talbot.     Never to England shall he bear his life,     But dies betray\'d to fortune by your strife.   SOMERSET. Come, go; I will dispatch the horsemen straight;     Within six hours they will be at his aid.   LUCY. Too late comes rescue; he is ta\'en or slain,     For fly he could not if he would have fled;     And fly would Talbot never, though he might.   SOMERSET. If he be dead, brave Talbot, then, adieu!   LUCY. His fame lives in the world, his shame in you.       Exeunt                                  SCENE 5.                     The English camp near Bordeaux                      Enter TALBOT and JOHN his son    TALBOT. O young John Talbot! I did send for thee     To tutor thee in stratagems of war,     That Talbot\'s name might be in thee reviv\'d     When sapless age and weak unable limbs     Should bring thy father to his drooping chair.     But, O malignant and ill-boding stars!     Now thou art come unto a feast of death,     A terrible and unavoided danger;     Therefore, dear boy, mount on my swiftest horse,     And I\'ll direct thee how thou shalt escape     By sudden flight. Come, dally not, be gone.   JOHN. Is my name Talbot, and am I your son?     And shall I fly? O, if you love my mother,     Dishonour not her honourable name,     To make a bastard and a slave of me!     The world will say he is not Talbot\'s blood       That basely fled when noble Talbot stood.   TALBOT. Fly to revenge my death, if I be slain.   JOHN. He that flies so will ne\'er return again.   TALBOT. If we both stay, we both are sure to die.   JOHN. Then let me stay; and, father, do you fly.     Your loss is great, so your regard should be;     My worth unknown, no loss is known in me;     Upon my death the French can little boast;     In yours they will, in you all hopes are lost.     Flight cannot stain the honour you have won;     But mine it will, that no exploit have done;     You fled for vantage, every one will swear;     But if I bow, they\'ll say it was for fear.     There is no hope that ever I will stay     If the first hour I shrink and run away.     Here, on my knee, I beg mortality,     Rather than life preserv\'d with infamy.   TALBOT. Shall all thy mother\'s hopes lie in one tomb?   JOHN. Ay, rather than I\'ll shame my mother\'s womb.   TALBOT. Upon my blessing I command thee go.     JOHN. To fight I will, but not to fly the foe.   TALBOT. Part of thy father may be sav\'d in thee.   JOHN. No part of him but will be shame in me.   TALBOT. Thou never hadst renown, nor canst not lose it.   JOHN. Yes, your renowned name; shall flight abuse it?   TALBOT. Thy father\'s charge shall clear thee from that stain.   JOHN. You cannot witness for me, being slain.     If death be so apparent, then both fly.   TALBOT. And leave my followers here to fight and die?     My age was never tainted with such shame.   JOHN. And shall my youth be guilty of such blame?     No more can I be severed from your side     Than can yourself yourself yourself in twain divide.     Stay, go, do what you will, the like do I;     For live I will not if my father die.   TALBOT. Then here I take my leave of thee, fair son,     Born to eclipse thy life this afternoon.     Come, side by side together live and die;     And soul with soul from France to heaven fly.         Exeunt                                  SCENE 6.                           A field of battle           Alarum: excursions wherein JOHN TALBOT is hemm\'d                   about, and TALBOT rescues him    TALBOT. Saint George and victory! Fight, soldiers, fight.     The Regent hath with Talbot broke his word     And left us to the rage of France his sword.     Where is John Talbot? Pause and take thy breath;     I gave thee life and rescu\'d thee from death.   JOHN. O, twice my father, twice am I thy son!     The life thou gav\'st me first was lost and done     Till with thy warlike sword, despite of fate,     To my determin\'d time thou gav\'st new date.   TALBOT. When from the Dauphin\'s crest thy sword struck     fire,     It warm\'d thy father\'s heart with proud desire     Of bold-fac\'d victory. Then leaden age,     Quicken\'d with youthful spleen and warlike rage,     Beat down Alencon, Orleans, Burgundy,       And from the pride of Gallia rescued thee.     The ireful bastard Orleans, that drew blood     From thee, my boy, and had the maidenhood     Of thy first fight, I soon encountered     And, interchanging blows, I quickly shed     Some of his bastard blood; and in disgrace     Bespoke him thus: \'Contaminated, base,     And misbegotten blood I spill of thine,     Mean and right poor, for that pure blood of mine     Which thou didst force from Talbot, my brave boy.\'     Here purposing the Bastard to destroy,     Came in strong rescue. Speak, thy father\'s care;     Art thou not weary, John? How dost thou fare?     Wilt thou yet leave the battle, boy, and fly,     Now thou art seal\'d the son of chivalry?     Fly, to revenge my death when I am dead:     The help of one stands me in little stead.     O, too much folly is it, well I wot,     To hazard all our lives in one small boat!     If I to-day die not with Frenchmen\'s rage,       To-morrow I shall die with mickle age.     By me they nothing gain an if I stay:     \'Tis but the short\'ning of my life one day.     In thee thy mother dies, our household\'s name,     My death\'s revenge, thy youth, and England\'s fame.     All these and more we hazard by thy stay;     All these are sav\'d if thou wilt fly away.   JOHN. The sword of Orleans hath not made me smart;     These words of yours draw life-blood from my heart.     On that advantage, bought with such a shame,     To save a paltry life and slay bright fame,     Before young Talbot from old Talbot fly,     The coward horse that bears me fall and die!     And like me to the peasant boys of France,     To be shame\'s scorn and subject of mischance!     Surely, by all the glory you have won,     An if I fly, I am not Talbot\'s son;     Then talk no more of flight, it is no boot;     If son to Talbot, die at Talbot\'s foot.   TALBOT. Then follow thou thy desp\'rate sire of Crete,       Thou Icarus; thy life to me is sweet.     If thou wilt fight, fight by thy father\'s side;     And, commendable prov\'d, let\'s die in pride.          Exeunt                                    SCENE 7.                        Another part of the field         Alarum; excursions. Enter old TALBOT led by a SERVANT    TALBOT. Where is my other life? Mine own is gone.     O, where\'s young Talbot? Where is valiant John?     Triumphant death, smear\'d with captivity,     Young Talbot\'s valour makes me smile at thee.     When he perceiv\'d me shrink and on my knee,     His bloody sword he brandish\'d over me,     And like a hungry lion did commence     Rough deeds of rage and stern impatience;     But when my angry guardant stood alone,     Tend\'ring my ruin and assail\'d of none,     Dizzy-ey\'d fury and great rage of heart     Suddenly made him from my side to start     Into the clust\'ring battle of the French;     And in that sea of blood my boy did drench     His overmounting spirit; and there died,     My Icarus, my blossom, in his pride.             Enter soldiers, bearing the body of JOHN TALBOT    SERVANT. O my dear lord, lo where your son is borne!   TALBOT. Thou antic Death, which laugh\'st us here to scorn,     Anon, from thy insulting tyranny,     Coupled in bonds of perpetuity,     Two Talbots, winged through the lither sky,     In thy despite shall scape mortality.     O thou whose wounds become hard-favoured Death,     Speak to thy father ere thou yield thy breath!     Brave Death by speaking, whether he will or no;     Imagine him a Frenchman and thy foe.     Poor boy! he smiles, methinks, as who should say,     Had Death been French, then Death had died to-day.     Come, come, and lay him in his father\'s arms.     My spirit can no longer bear these harms.     Soldiers, adieu! I have what I would have,     Now my old arms are young John Talbot\'s grave.        [Dies]                Enter CHARLES, ALENCON, BURGUNDY, BASTARD,                      LA PUCELLE, and forces    CHARLES. Had York and Somerset brought rescue in,     We should have found a bloody day of this.   BASTARD. How the young whelp of Talbot\'s, raging wood,     Did flesh his puny sword in Frenchmen\'s blood!   PUCELLE. Once I encount\'red him, and thus I said:     \'Thou maiden youth, be vanquish\'d by a maid.\'     But with a proud majestical high scorn     He answer\'d thus: \'Young Talbot was not born     To be the pillage of a giglot wench.\'     So, rushing in the bowels of the French,     He left me proudly, as unworthy fight.   BURGUNDY. Doubtless he would have made a noble knight.     See where he lies inhearsed in the arms     Of the most bloody nurser of his harms!   BASTARD. Hew them to pieces, hack their bones asunder,     Whose life was England\'s glory, Gallia\'s wonder.   CHARLES. O, no; forbear! For that which we have fled       During the life, let us not wrong it dead.              Enter SIR WILLIAM Lucy, attended; a FRENCH                          HERALD preceding    LUCY. Herald, conduct me to the Dauphin\'s tent,     To know who hath obtain\'d the glory of the day.   CHARLES. On what submissive message art thou sent?   LUCY. Submission, Dauphin! \'Tis a mere French word:     We English warriors wot not what it means.     I come to know what prisoners thou hast ta\'en,     And to survey the bodies of the dead.   CHARLES. For prisoners ask\'st thou? Hell our prison is.     But tell me whom thou seek\'st.   LUCY. But where\'s the great Alcides of the field,     Valiant Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury,     Created for his rare success in arms     Great Earl of Washford, Waterford, and Valence,     Lord Talbot of Goodrig and Urchinfield,     Lord Strange of Blackmere, Lord Verdun of Alton,       Lord Cromwell of Wingfield, Lord Furnival of Sheffield,     The thrice victorious Lord of Falconbridge,     Knight of the noble order of Saint George,     Worthy Saint Michael, and the Golden Fleece,     Great Marshal to Henry the Sixth     Of all his wars within the realm of France?   PUCELLE. Here\'s a silly-stately style indeed!     The Turk, that two and fifty kingdoms hath,     Writes not so tedious a style as this.     Him that thou magnifi\'st with all these tides,     Stinking and fly-blown lies here at our feet.   LUCY. Is Talbot slain-the Frenchmen\'s only scourge,     Your kingdom\'s terror and black Nemesis?     O, were mine eye-bans into bullets turn\'d,     That I in rage might shoot them at your faces!     O that I could but can these dead to life!     It were enough to fright the realm of France.     Were but his picture left amongst you here,     It would amaze the proudest of you all.     Give me their bodies, that I may bear them hence       And give them burial as beseems their worth.   PUCELLE. I think this upstart is old Talbot\'s ghost,     He speaks with such a proud commanding spirit.     For God\'s sake, let him have them; to keep them here,     They would but stink, and putrefy the air.   CHARLES. Go, take their bodies hence.   LUCY. I\'ll bear them hence; but from their ashes shall be     rear\'d     A phoenix that shall make all France afeard.   CHARLES. So we be rid of them, do with them what thou     wilt.     And now to Paris in this conquering vein!     All will be ours, now bloody Talbot\'s slain.          Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE 1.  London. The palace  Sennet. Enter the KING, GLOUCESTER, and EXETER    KING HENRY. Have you perus\'d the letters from the Pope,     The Emperor, and the Earl of Armagnac?   GLOUCESTER. I have, my lord; and their intent is this:     They humbly sue unto your Excellence     To have a godly peace concluded of     Between the realms of England and of France.   KING HENRY. How doth your Grace affect their motion?   GLOUCESTER. Well, my good lord, and as the only means     To stop effusion of our Christian blood     And stablish quietness on every side.   KING HENRY. Ay, marry, uncle; for I always thought     It was both impious and unnatural     That such immanity and bloody strife     Should reign among professors of one faith.   GLOUCESTER. Beside, my lord, the sooner to effect     And surer bind this knot of amity,       The Earl of Armagnac, near knit to Charles,     A man of great authority in France,     Proffers his only daughter to your Grace     In marriage, with a large and sumptuous dowry.   KING HENRY. Marriage, uncle! Alas, my years are young     And fitter is my study and my books     Than wanton dalliance with a paramour.     Yet call th\' ambassadors, and, as you please,     So let them have their answers every one.     I shall be well content with any choice     Tends to God\'s glory and my country\'s weal.                     Enter in Cardinal\'s habit         BEAUFORT, the PAPAL LEGATE, and two AMBASSADORS    EXETER. What! Is my Lord of Winchester install\'d     And call\'d unto a cardinal\'s degree?     Then I perceive that will be verified     Henry the Fifth did sometime prophesy:     \'If once he come to be a cardinal,       He\'ll make his cap co-equal with the crown.\'   KING HENRY. My Lords Ambassadors, your several suits     Have been consider\'d and debated on.     Your purpose is both good and reasonable,     And therefore are we certainly resolv\'d     To draw conditions of a friendly peace,     Which by my Lord of Winchester we mean     Shall be transported presently to France.   GLOUCESTER. And for the proffer of my lord your master,     I have inform\'d his Highness so at large,     As, liking of the lady\'s virtuous gifts,     Her beauty, and the value of her dower,     He doth intend she shall be England\'s Queen.   KING HENRY.  [To AMBASSADOR]  In argument and proof of     which contract,     Bear her this jewel, pledge of my affection.     And so, my Lord Protector, see them guarded     And safely brought to Dover; where inshipp\'d,     Commit them to the fortune of the sea.                            Exeunt all but WINCHESTER and the LEGATE   WINCHESTER. Stay, my Lord Legate; you shall first receive     The sum of money which I promised     Should be delivered to his Holiness     For clothing me in these grave ornaments.   LEGATE. I will attend upon your lordship\'s leisure.   WINCHESTER.  [Aside]  Now Winchester will not submit, I     trow,     Or be inferior to the proudest peer.     Humphrey of Gloucester, thou shalt well perceive     That neither in birth or for authority     The Bishop will be overborne by thee.     I\'ll either make thee stoop and bend thy knee,     Or sack this country with a mutiny.                   Exeunt                                 SCENE 2.                         France. Plains in Anjou                Enter CHARLES, BURGUNDY, ALENCON, BASTARD,                    REIGNIER, LA PUCELLE, and forces    CHARLES. These news, my lords, may cheer our drooping     spirits:     \'Tis said the stout Parisians do revolt     And turn again unto the warlike French.   ALENCON. Then march to Paris, royal Charles of France,     And keep not back your powers in dalliance.   PUCELLE. Peace be amongst them, if they turn to us;     Else ruin combat with their palaces!                              Enter a SCOUT    SCOUT. Success unto our valiant general,     And happiness to his accomplices!   CHARLES. What tidings send our scouts? I prithee speak.   SCOUT. The English army, that divided was       Into two parties, is now conjoin\'d in one,     And means to give you battle presently.   CHARLES. Somewhat too sudden, sirs, the warning is;     But we will presently provide for them.   BURGUNDY. I trust the ghost of Talbot is not there.     Now he is gone, my lord, you need not fear.   PUCELLE. Of all base passions fear is most accurs\'d.     Command the conquest, Charles, it shall be thine,     Let Henry fret and all the world repine.   CHARLES. Then on, my lords; and France be fortunate!                                                           Exeunt                                 SCENE 3.                           Before Angiers                Alarum, excursions. Enter LA PUCELLE    PUCELLE. The Regent conquers and the Frenchmen fly.     Now help, ye charming spells and periapts;     And ye choice spirits that admonish me     And give me signs of future accidents;             [Thunder]     You speedy helpers that are substitutes     Under the lordly monarch of the north,     Appear and aid me in this enterprise!                            Enter FIENDS      This speedy and quick appearance argues proof     Of your accustom\'d diligence to me.     Now, ye familiar spirits that are cull\'d     Out of the powerful regions under earth,     Help me this once, that France may get the field.                                        [They walk and speak not]       O, hold me not with silence over-long!     Where I was wont to feed you with my blood,     I\'ll lop a member off and give it you     In earnest of a further benefit,     So you do condescend to help me now.                                          [They hang their heads]     No hope to have redress? My body shall     Pay recompense, if you will grant my suit.                                         [They shake their heads]     Cannot my body nor blood sacrifice     Entreat you to your wonted furtherance?     Then take my soul-my body, soul, and all,     Before that England give the French the foil.                                                    [They depart]     See! they forsake me. Now the time is come     That France must vail her lofty-plumed crest     And let her head fall into England\'s lap.     My ancient incantations are too weak,     And hell too strong for me to buckle with.     Now, France, thy glory droopeth to the dust.            Exit              Excursions. Enter French and English, fighting.          LA PUCELLE and YORK fight hand to hand; LA PUCELLE                     is taken. The French fly    YORK. Damsel of France, I think I have you fast.     Unchain your spirits now with spelling charms,     And try if they can gain your liberty.     A goodly prize, fit for the devil\'s grace!     See how the ugly witch doth bend her brows     As if, with Circe, she would change my shape!   PUCELLE. Chang\'d to a worser shape thou canst not be.   YORK. O, Charles the Dauphin is a proper man:     No shape but his can please your dainty eye.   PUCELLE. A plaguing mischief fight on Charles and thee!     And may ye both be suddenly surpris\'d     By bloody hands, in sleeping on your beds!   YORK. Fell banning hag; enchantress, hold thy tongue.   PUCELLE. I prithee give me leave to curse awhile.   YORK. Curse, miscreant, when thou comest to the stake.                                                             Exeunt            Alarum. Enter SUFFOLK, with MARGARET in his hand    SUFFOLK. Be what thou wilt, thou art my prisoner.                                                   [Gazes on her]     O fairest beauty, do not fear nor fly!     For I will touch thee but with reverent hands;     I kiss these fingers for eternal peace,     And lay them gently on thy tender side.     Who art thou? Say, that I may honour thee.   MARGARET. Margaret my name, and daughter to a king,     The King of Naples-whosoe\'er thou art.   SUFFOLK. An earl I am, and Suffolk am I call\'d.     Be not offended, nature\'s miracle,     Thou art allotted to be ta\'en by me.     So doth the swan her downy cygnets save,     Keeping them prisoner underneath her wings.     Yet, if this servile usage once offend,     Go and be free again as Suffolk\'s friend.     [She is going]       O, stay!  [Aside]  I have no power to let her pass;     My hand would free her, but my heart says no.     As plays the sun upon the glassy streams,     Twinkling another counterfeited beam,     So seems this gorgeous beauty to mine eyes.     Fain would I woo her, yet I dare not speak.     I\'ll call for pen and ink, and write my mind.     Fie, de la Pole! disable not thyself;     Hast not a tongue? Is she not here thy prisoner?     Wilt thou be daunted at a woman\'s sight?     Ay, beauty\'s princely majesty is such     Confounds the tongue and makes the senses rough.   MARGARET. Say, Earl of Suffolk, if thy name be so,     What ransom must I pay before I pass?     For I perceive I am thy prisoner.   SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  How canst thou tell she will deny thy     suit,     Before thou make a trial of her love?   MARGARET. Why speak\'st thou not? What ransom must I     pay?     SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  She\'s beautiful, and therefore to be woo\'d;     She is a woman, therefore to be won.   MARGARET. Wilt thou accept of ransom-yea or no?   SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  Fond man, remember that thou hast a     wife;     Then how can Margaret be thy paramour?   MARGARET. I were best leave him, for he will not hear.   SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  There all is marr\'d; there lies a cooling     card.   MARGARET. He talks at random; sure, the man is mad.   SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  And yet a dispensation may be had.   MARGARET. And yet I would that you would answer me.   SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  I\'ll win this Lady Margaret. For whom?     Why, for my King! Tush, that\'s a wooden thing!   MARGARET. He talks of wood. It is some carpenter.   SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  Yet so my fancy may be satisfied,     And peace established between these realms.     But there remains a scruple in that too;     For though her father be the King of Naples,     Duke of Anjou and Maine, yet is he poor,       And our nobility will scorn the match.   MARGARET. Hear ye, Captain-are you not at leisure?   SUFFOLK.  [Aside]  It shall be so, disdain they ne\'er so much.     Henry is youthful, and will quickly yield.     Madam, I have a secret to reveal.   MARGARET.  [Aside]  What though I be enthrall\'d? He seems     a knight,     And will not any way dishonour me.   SUFFOLK. Lady, vouchsafe to listen what I say.   MARGARET.  [Aside]  Perhaps I shall be rescu\'d by the French;     And then I need not crave his courtesy.   SUFFOLK. Sweet madam, give me hearing in a cause   MARGARET.  [Aside]  Tush! women have been captivate ere     now.   SUFFOLK. Lady, wherefore talk you so?   MARGARET. I cry you mercy, \'tis but quid for quo.   SUFFOLK. Say, gentle Princess, would you not suppose     Your bondage happy, to be made a queen?   MARGARET. To be a queen in bondage is more vile     Than is a slave in base servility;       For princes should be free.   SUFFOLK. And so shall you,     If happy England\'s royal king be free.   MARGARET. Why, what concerns his freedom unto me?   SUFFOLK. I\'ll undertake to make thee Henry\'s queen,     To put a golden sceptre in thy hand     And set a precious crown upon thy head,     If thou wilt condescend to be my-   MARGARET. What?   SUFFOLK. His love.   MARGARET. I am unworthy to be Henry\'s wife.   SUFFOLK. No, gentle madam; I unworthy am     To woo so fair a dame to be his wife     And have no portion in the choice myself.     How say you, madam? Are ye so content?   MARGARET. An if my father please, I am content.   SUFFOLK. Then call our captains and our colours forth!     And, madam, at your father\'s castle walls     We\'ll crave a parley to confer with him.               Sound a parley. Enter REIGNIER on the walls      See, Reignier, see, thy daughter prisoner!   REIGNIER. To whom?   SUFFOLK. To me.   REIGNIER. Suffolk, what remedy?     I am a soldier and unapt to weep     Or to exclaim on fortune\'s fickleness.   SUFFOLK. Yes, there is remedy enough, my lord.     Consent, and for thy honour give consent,     Thy daughter shall be wedded to my king,     Whom I with pain have woo\'d and won thereto;     And this her easy-held imprisonment     Hath gain\'d thy daughter princely liberty.   REIGNIER. Speaks Suffolk as he thinks?   SUFFOLK. Fair Margaret knows     That Suffolk doth not flatter, face, or feign.   REIGNIER. Upon thy princely warrant I descend     To give thee answer of thy just demand.                                     Exit REIGNIER from the walls     SUFFOLK. And here I will expect thy coming.                  Trumpets sound. Enter REIGNIER below    REIGNIER. Welcome, brave Earl, into our territories;     Command in Anjou what your Honour pleases.   SUFFOLK. Thanks, Reignier, happy for so sweet a child,     Fit to be made companion with a king.     What answer makes your Grace unto my suit?   REIGNIER. Since thou dost deign to woo her little worth     To be the princely bride of such a lord,     Upon condition I may quietly     Enjoy mine own, the country Maine and Anjou,     Free from oppression or the stroke of war,     My daughter shall be Henry\'s, if he please.   SUFFOLK. That is her ransom; I deliver her.     And those two counties I will undertake     Your Grace shall well and quietly enjoy.   REIGNIER. And I again, in Henry\'s royal name,     As deputy unto that gracious king,       Give thee her hand for sign of plighted faith.   SUFFOLK. Reignier of France, I give thee kingly thanks,     Because this is in traffic of a king.     [Aside]  And yet, methinks, I could be well content     To be mine own attorney in this case.     I\'ll over then to England with this news,     And make this marriage to be solemniz\'d.     So, farewell, Reignier. Set this diamond safe     In golden palaces, as it becomes.   REIGNIER. I do embrace thee as I would embrace     The Christian prince, King Henry, were he here.   MARGARET. Farewell, my lord. Good wishes, praise, and     prayers,     Shall Suffolk ever have of Margaret.          [She is going]   SUFFOLK. Farewell, sweet madam. But hark you, Margaret     No princely commendations to my king?   MARGARET. Such commendations as becomes a maid,     A virgin, and his servant, say to him.   SUFFOLK. Words sweetly plac\'d and modestly directed.     But, madam, I must trouble you again       No loving token to his Majesty?   MARGARET. Yes, my good lord: a pure unspotted heart,     Never yet taint with love, I send the King.   SUFFOLK. And this withal.                         [Kisses her]   MARGARET. That for thyself, I will not so presume     To send such peevish tokens to a king.                                     Exeunt REIGNIER and MARGARET   SUFFOLK. O, wert thou for myself! But, Suffolk, stay;     Thou mayst not wander in that labyrinth:     There Minotaurs and ugly treasons lurk.     Solicit Henry with her wondrous praise.     Bethink thee on her virtues that surmount,     And natural graces that extinguish art;     Repeat their semblance often on the seas,     That, when thou com\'st to kneel at Henry\'s feet,     Thou mayst bereave him of his wits with wonder.         Exit                                    SCENE 4.                    Camp of the DUKE OF YORK in Anjou                     Enter YORK, WARWICK, and others   YORK. Bring forth that sorceress, condemn\'d to burn.                Enter LA PUCELLE, guarded, and a SHEPHERD    SHEPHERD. Ah, Joan, this kills thy father\'s heart outright!     Have I sought every country far and near,     And, now it is my chance to find thee out,     Must I behold thy timeless cruel death?     Ah, Joan, sweet daughter Joan, I\'ll die with thee!   PUCELLE. Decrepit miser! base ignoble wretch!     I am descended of a gentler blood;     Thou art no father nor no friend of mine.   SHEPHERD. Out, out! My lords, an please you, \'tis not so;     I did beget her, all the parish knows.     Her mother liveth yet, can testify     She was the first fruit of my bach\'lorship.   WARWICK. Graceless, wilt thou deny thy parentage?     YORK. This argues what her kind of life hath been-     Wicked and vile; and so her death concludes.   SHEPHERD. Fie, Joan, that thou wilt be so obstacle!     God knows thou art a collop of my flesh;     And for thy sake have I shed many a tear.     Deny me not, I prithee, gentle Joan.   PUCELLE. Peasant, avaunt! You have suborn\'d this man     Of purpose to obscure my noble birth.   SHEPHERD. \'Tis true, I gave a noble to the priest     The morn that I was wedded to her mother.     Kneel down and take my blessing, good my girl.     Wilt thou not stoop? Now cursed be the time     Of thy nativity. I would the milk     Thy mother gave thee when thou suck\'dst her breast     Had been a little ratsbane for thy sake.     Or else, when thou didst keep my lambs afield,     I wish some ravenous wolf had eaten thee.     Dost thou deny thy father, cursed drab?     O, burn her, burn her! Hanging is too good.             Exit   YORK. Take her away; for she hath liv\'d too long,       To fill the world with vicious qualities.   PUCELLE. First let me tell you whom you have condemn\'d:     Not me begotten of a shepherd swain,     But issued from the progeny of kings;     Virtuous and holy, chosen from above     By inspiration of celestial grace,     To work exceeding miracles on earth.     I never had to do with wicked spirits.     But you, that are polluted with your lusts,     Stain\'d with the guiltless blood of innocents,     Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices,     Because you want the grace that others have,     You judge it straight a thing impossible     To compass wonders but by help of devils.     No, misconceived! Joan of Arc hath been     A virgin from her tender infancy,     Chaste and immaculate in very thought;     Whose maiden blood, thus rigorously effus\'d,     Will cry for vengeance at the gates of heaven.   YORK. Ay, ay. Away with her to execution!     WARWICK. And hark ye, sirs; because she is a maid,     Spare for no fagots, let there be enow.     Place barrels of pitch upon the fatal stake,     That so her torture may be shortened.   PUCELLE. Will nothing turn your unrelenting hearts?     Then, Joan, discover thine infirmity     That warranteth by law to be thy privilege:     I am with child, ye bloody homicides;     Murder not then the fruit within my womb,     Although ye hale me to a violent death.   YORK. Now heaven forfend! The holy maid with child!   WARWICK. The greatest miracle that e\'er ye wrought:     Is all your strict preciseness come to this?   YORK. She and the Dauphin have been juggling.     I did imagine what would be her refuge.   WARWICK. Well, go to; we\'ll have no bastards live;     Especially since Charles must father it.   PUCELLE. You are deceiv\'d; my child is none of his:     It was Alencon that enjoy\'d my love.   YORK. Alencon, that notorious Machiavel!       It dies, an if it had a thousand lives.   PUCELLE. O, give me leave, I have deluded you.     \'Twas neither Charles nor yet the Duke I nam\'d,     But Reignier, King of Naples, that prevail\'d.   WARWICK. A married man! That\'s most intolerable.   YORK. Why, here\'s a girl! I think she knows not well     There were so many-whom she may accuse.   WARWICK. It\'s sign she hath been liberal and free.   YORK. And yet, forsooth, she is a virgin pure.     Strumpet, thy words condemn thy brat and thee.     Use no entreaty, for it is in vain.   PUCELLE. Then lead me hence-with whom I leave my     curse:     May never glorious sun reflex his beams     Upon the country where you make abode;     But darkness and the gloomy shade of death     Environ you, till mischief and despair     Drive you to break your necks or hang yourselves!                                                    Exit, guarded   YORK. Break thou in pieces and consume to ashes,       Thou foul accursed minister of hell!                 Enter CARDINAL BEAUFORT, attended    CARDINAL. Lord Regent, I do greet your Excellence     With letters of commission from the King.     For know, my lords, the states of Christendom,     Mov\'d with remorse of these outrageous broils,     Have earnestly implor\'d a general peace     Betwixt our nation and the aspiring French;     And here at hand the Dauphin and his train     Approacheth, to confer about some matter.   YORK. Is all our travail turn\'d to this effect?     After the slaughter of so many peers,     So many captains, gentlemen, and soldiers,     That in this quarrel have been overthrown     And sold their bodies for their country\'s benefit,     Shall we at last conclude effeminate peace?     Have we not lost most part of all the towns,     By treason, falsehood, and by treachery,       Our great progenitors had conquered?     O Warwick, Warwick! I foresee with grief     The utter loss of all the realm of France.   WARWICK. Be patient, York. If we conclude a peace,     It shall be with such strict and severe covenants     As little shall the Frenchmen gain thereby.          Enter CHARLES, ALENCON, BASTARD, REIGNIER, and others    CHARLES. Since, lords of England, it is thus agreed     That peaceful truce shall be proclaim\'d in France,     We come to be informed by yourselves     What the conditions of that league must be.   YORK. Speak, Winchester; for boiling choler chokes     The hollow passage of my poison\'d voice,     By sight of these our baleful enemies.   CARDINAL. Charles, and the rest, it is enacted thus:     That, in regard King Henry gives consent,     Of mere compassion and of lenity,     To ease your country of distressful war,       An suffer you to breathe in fruitful peace,     You shall become true liegemen to his crown;     And, Charles, upon condition thou wilt swear     To pay him tribute and submit thyself,     Thou shalt be plac\'d as viceroy under him,     And still enjoy thy regal dignity.   ALENCON. Must he be then as shadow of himself?     Adorn his temples with a coronet     And yet, in substance and authority,     Retain but privilege of a private man?     This proffer is absurd and reasonless.   CHARLES. \'Tis known already that I am possess\'d     With more than half the Gallian territories,     And therein reverenc\'d for their lawful king.     Shall I, for lucre of the rest unvanquish\'d,     Detract so much from that prerogative     As to be call\'d but viceroy of the whole?     No, Lord Ambassador; I\'ll rather keep     That which I have than, coveting for more,     Be cast from possibility of all.     YORK. Insulting Charles! Hast thou by secret means     Us\'d intercession to obtain a league,     And now the matter grows to compromise     Stand\'st thou aloof upon comparison?     Either accept the title thou usurp\'st,     Of benefit proceeding from our king     And not of any challenge of desert,     Or we will plague thee with incessant wars.   REIGNIER.  [To CHARLES]  My lord, you do not well in     obstinacy     To cavil in the course of this contract.     If once it be neglected, ten to one     We shall not find like opportunity.   ALENCON.  [To CHARLES]  To say the truth, it is your policy     To save your subjects from such massacre     And ruthless slaughters as are daily seen     By our proceeding in hostility;     And therefore take this compact of a truce,     Although you break it when your pleasure serves.   WARWICK. How say\'st thou, Charles? Shall our condition       stand?   CHARLES. It shall;     Only reserv\'d, you claim no interest     In any of our towns of garrison.   YORK. Then swear allegiance to his Majesty:     As thou art knight, never to disobey     Nor be rebellious to the crown of England     Thou, nor thy nobles, to the crown of England.                     [CHARLES and the rest give tokens of fealty]     So, now dismiss your army when ye please;     Hang up your ensigns, let your drums be still,     For here we entertain a solemn peace.                 Exeunt                                   SCENE 5.                           London. The palace              Enter SUFFOLK, in conference with the KING,                      GLOUCESTER and EXETER    KING HENRY. Your wondrous rare description, noble Earl,     Of beauteous Margaret hath astonish\'d me.     Her virtues, graced with external gifts,     Do breed love\'s settled passions in my heart;     And like as rigour of tempestuous gusts     Provokes the mightiest hulk against the tide,     So am I driven by breath of her renown     Either to suffer shipwreck or arrive     Where I may have fruition of her love.   SUFFOLK. Tush, my good lord! This superficial tale     Is but a preface of her worthy praise.     The chief perfections of that lovely dame,     Had I sufficient skill to utter them,     Would make a volume of enticing lines,     Able to ravish any dull conceit;       And, which is more, she is not so divine,     So full-replete with choice of all delights,     But with as humble lowliness of mind     She is content to be at your command     Command, I mean, of virtuous intents,     To love and honour Henry as her lord.   KING HENRY. And otherwise will Henry ne\'er presume.     Therefore, my Lord Protector, give consent     That Margaret may be England\'s royal Queen.   GLOUCESTER. So should I give consent to flatter sin.     You know, my lord, your Highness is betroth\'d     Unto another lady of esteem.     How shall we then dispense with that contract,     And not deface your honour with reproach?   SUFFOLK. As doth a ruler with unlawful oaths;     Or one that at a triumph, having vow\'d     To try his strength, forsaketh yet the lists     By reason of his adversary\'s odds:     A poor earl\'s daughter is unequal odds,     And therefore may be broke without offence.     GLOUCESTER. Why, what, I pray, is Margaret more than     that?     Her father is no better than an earl,     Although in glorious titles he excel.   SUFFOLK. Yes, my lord, her father is a king,     The King of Naples and Jerusalem;     And of such great authority in France     As his alliance will confirm our peace,     And keep the Frenchmen in allegiance.   GLOUCESTER. And so the Earl of Armagnac may do,     Because he is near kinsman unto Charles.   EXETER. Beside, his wealth doth warrant a liberal dower;     Where Reignier sooner will receive than give.   SUFFOLK. A dow\'r, my lords! Disgrace not so your king,     That he should be so abject, base, and poor,     To choose for wealth and not for perfect love.     Henry is able to enrich his queen,     And not to seek a queen to make him rich.     So worthless peasants bargain for their wives,     As market-men for oxen, sheep, or horse.       Marriage is a matter of more worth     Than to be dealt in by attorneyship;     Not whom we will, but whom his Grace affects,     Must be companion of his nuptial bed.     And therefore, lords, since he affects her most,     It most of all these reasons bindeth us     In our opinions she should be preferr\'d;     For what is wedlock forced but a hell,     An age of discord and continual strife?     Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss,     And is a pattern of celestial peace.     Whom should we match with Henry, being a king,     But Margaret, that is daughter to a king?     Her peerless feature, joined with her birth,     Approves her fit for none but for a king;     Her valiant courage and undaunted spirit,     More than in women commonly is seen,     Will answer our hope in issue of a king;     For Henry, son unto a conqueror,     Is likely to beget more conquerors,       If with a lady of so high resolve     As is fair Margaret he be link\'d in love.     Then yield, my lords; and here conclude with me     That Margaret shall be Queen, and none but she.   KING HENRY. Whether it be through force of your report,     My noble Lord of Suffolk, or for that     My tender youth was never yet attaint     With any passion of inflaming love,     I cannot tell; but this I am assur\'d,     I feel such sharp dissension in my breast,     Such fierce alarums both of hope and fear,     As I am sick with working of my thoughts.     Take therefore shipping; post, my lord, to France;     Agree to any covenants; and procure     That Lady Margaret do vouchsafe to come     To cross the seas to England, and be crown\'d     King Henry\'s faithful and anointed queen.     For your expenses and sufficient charge,     Among the people gather up a tenth.     Be gone, I say; for till you do return       I rest perplexed with a thousand cares.     And you, good uncle, banish all offence:     If you do censure me by what you were,     Not what you are, I know it will excuse     This sudden execution of my will.     And so conduct me where, from company,     I may revolve and ruminate my grief.                    Exit   GLOUCESTER. Ay, grief, I fear me, both at first and last.                                     Exeunt GLOUCESTER and EXETER   SUFFOLK. Thus Suffolk hath prevail\'d; and thus he goes,     As did the youthful Paris once to Greece,     With hope to find the like event in love     But prosper better than the Troyan did.     Margaret shall now be Queen, and rule the King;     But I will rule both her, the King, and realm.          Exit   THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1591  THE SECOND PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH  by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae    KING HENRY THE SIXTH   HUMPHREY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, his uncle   CARDINAL BEAUFORT, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, great-uncle to the King   RICHARD PLANTAGENET, DUKE OF YORK   EDWARD and RICHARD, his sons   DUKE OF SOMERSET   DUKE OF SUFFOLK   DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM   LORD CLIFFORD   YOUNG CLIFFORD, his son   EARL OF SALISBURY   EARL OF WARWICK   LORD SCALES   LORD SAY   SIR HUMPHREY STAFFORD   WILLIAM STAFFORD, his brother   SIR JOHN STANLEY   VAUX   MATTHEW GOFFE   A LIEUTENANT, a SHIPMASTER, a MASTER\'S MATE, and WALTER WHITMORE     TWO GENTLEMEN, prisoners with Suffolk   JOHN HUME and JOHN SOUTHWELL, two priests   ROGER BOLINGBROKE, a conjurer   A SPIRIT raised by him   THOMAS HORNER, an armourer   PETER, his man   CLERK OF CHATHAM   MAYOR OF SAINT ALBANS   SAUNDER SIMPCOX, an impostor   ALEXANDER IDEN, a Kentish gentleman   JACK CADE, a rebel   GEORGE BEVIS, JOHN HOLLAND, DICK THE BUTCHER, SMITH THE WEAVER,     MICHAEL, &c., followers of Cade   TWO MURDERERS    MARGARET, Queen to King Henry   ELEANOR, Duchess of Gloucester   MARGERY JOURDAIN, a witch   WIFE to SIMPCOX      Lords, Ladies, and Attendants; Petitioners, Aldermen, a Herald,     a Beadle, a Sheriff, Officers, Citizens, Prentices, Falconers,     Guards, Soldiers, Messengers, &c.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: England   ACT I. SCENE I. London. The palace  Flourish of trumpets; then hautboys. Enter the KING, DUKE HUMPHREY OF GLOUCESTER, SALISBURY, WARWICK, and CARDINAL BEAUFORT, on the one side; the QUEEN, SUFFOLK, YORK, SOMERSET, and BUCKINGHAM, on the other    SUFFOLK. As by your high imperial Majesty     I had in charge at my depart for France,     As procurator to your Excellence,     To marry Princess Margaret for your Grace;     So, in the famous ancient city Tours,     In presence of the Kings of France and Sicil,     The Dukes of Orleans, Calaber, Bretagne, and Alencon,     Seven earls, twelve barons, and twenty reverend bishops,     I have perform\'d my task, and was espous\'d;     And humbly now upon my bended knee,     In sight of England and her lordly peers,     Deliver up my title in the Queen     To your most gracious hands, that are the substance     Of that great shadow I did represent:       The happiest gift that ever marquis gave,     The fairest queen that ever king receiv\'d.   KING HENRY. Suffolk, arise. Welcome, Queen Margaret:     I can express no kinder sign of love     Than this kind kiss. O Lord, that lends me life,     Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!     For thou hast given me in this beauteous face     A world of earthly blessings to my soul,     If sympathy of love unite our thoughts.   QUEEN. Great King of England, and my gracious lord,     The mutual conference that my mind hath had,     By day, by night, waking and in my dreams,     In courtly company or at my beads,     With you, mine alder-liefest sovereign,     Makes me the bolder to salute my king     With ruder terms, such as my wit affords     And over-joy of heart doth minister.   KING HENRY. Her sight did ravish, but her grace in speech,     Her words y-clad with wisdom\'s majesty,     Makes me from wond\'ring fall to weeping joys,       Such is the fulness of my heart\'s content.     Lords, with one cheerful voice welcome my love.   ALL. [Kneeling] Long live Queen Margaret, England\'s happiness!   QUEEN. We thank you all.                            [Flourish]   SUFFOLK. My Lord Protector, so it please your Grace,     Here are the articles of contracted peace     Between our sovereign and the French King Charles,     For eighteen months concluded by consent.   GLOUCESTER. [Reads] \'Imprimis: It is agreed between the French King     Charles and William de la Pole, Marquess of Suffolk, ambassador     for Henry King of England, that the said Henry shall espouse the     Lady Margaret, daughter unto Reignier King of Naples, Sicilia,     and Jerusalem, and crown her Queen of England ere the thirtieth     of May next ensuing.       Item: That the duchy of Anjou and the county of Maine shall be     released and delivered to the King her father\'-                                            [Lets the paper fall]   KING HENRY. Uncle, how now!   GLOUCESTER. Pardon me, gracious lord;     Some sudden qualm hath struck me at the heart,       And dimm\'d mine eyes, that I can read no further.   KING HENRY. Uncle of Winchester, I pray read on.   CARDINAL. [Reads] \'Item: It is further agreed between them that the     duchies of Anjou and Maine shall be released and delivered over     to the King her father, and she sent over of the King of     England\'s own proper cost and charges, without having any dowry.\'   KING HENRY. They please us well. Lord Marquess, kneel down.     We here create thee the first Duke of Suffolk,     And girt thee with the sword. Cousin of York,     We here discharge your Grace from being Regent     I\' th\' parts of France, till term of eighteen months     Be full expir\'d. Thanks, uncle Winchester,     Gloucester, York, Buckingham, Somerset,     Salisbury, and Warwick;     We thank you all for this great favour done     In entertainment to my princely queen.     Come, let us in, and with all speed provide     To see her coronation be perform\'d.                                  Exeunt KING, QUEEN, and SUFFOLK   GLOUCESTER. Brave peers of England, pillars of the state,       To you Duke Humphrey must unload his grief     Your grief, the common grief of all the land.     What! did my brother Henry spend his youth,     His valour, coin, and people, in the wars?     Did he so often lodge in open field,     In winter\'s cold and summer\'s parching heat,     To conquer France, his true inheritance?     And did my brother Bedford toil his wits     To keep by policy what Henry got?     Have you yourselves, Somerset, Buckingham,     Brave York, Salisbury, and victorious Warwick,     Receiv\'d deep scars in France and Normandy?     Or hath mine uncle Beaufort and myself,     With all the learned Council of the realm,     Studied so long, sat in the Council House     Early and late, debating to and fro     How France and Frenchmen might be kept in awe?     And had his Highness in his infancy     Crowned in Paris, in despite of foes?     And shall these labours and these honours die?       Shall Henry\'s conquest, Bedford\'s vigilance,     Your deeds of war, and all our counsel die?     O peers of England, shameful is this league!     Fatal this marriage, cancelling your fame,     Blotting your names from books of memory,     Razing the characters of your renown,     Defacing monuments of conquer\'d France,     Undoing all, as all had never been!   CARDINAL. Nephew, what means this passionate discourse,     This peroration with such circumstance?     For France, \'tis ours; and we will keep it still.   GLOUCESTER. Ay, uncle, we will keep it if we can;     But now it is impossible we should.     Suffolk, the new-made duke that rules the roast,     Hath given the duchy of Anjou and Maine     Unto the poor King Reignier, whose large style     Agrees not with the leanness of his purse.   SALISBURY. Now, by the death of Him that died for all,     These counties were the keys of Normandy!     But wherefore weeps Warwick, my valiant son?     WARWICK. For grief that they are past recovery;     For were there hope to conquer them again     My sword should shed hot blood, mine eyes no tears.     Anjou and Maine! myself did win them both;     Those provinces these arms of mine did conquer;     And are the cities that I got with wounds     Deliver\'d up again with peaceful words?     Mort Dieu!   YORK. For Suffolk\'s duke, may he be suffocate,     That dims the honour of this warlike isle!     France should have torn and rent my very heart     Before I would have yielded to this league.     I never read but England\'s kings have had     Large sums of gold and dowries with their wives;     And our King Henry gives away his own     To match with her that brings no vantages.   GLOUCESTER. A proper jest, and never heard before,     That Suffolk should demand a whole fifteenth     For costs and charges in transporting her!     She should have stay\'d in France, and starv\'d in France,       Before-   CARDINAL. My Lord of Gloucester, now ye grow too hot:     It was the pleasure of my lord the King.   GLOUCESTER. My Lord of Winchester, I know your mind;     \'Tis not my speeches that you do mislike,     But \'tis my presence that doth trouble ye.     Rancour will out: proud prelate, in thy face     I see thy fury; if I longer stay     We shall begin our ancient bickerings.     Lordings, farewell; and say, when I am gone,     I prophesied France will be lost ere long.              Exit   CARDINAL. So, there goes our Protector in a rage.     \'Tis known to you he is mine enemy;     Nay, more, an enemy unto you all,     And no great friend, I fear me, to the King.     Consider, lords, he is the next of blood     And heir apparent to the English crown.     Had Henry got an empire by his marriage     And all the wealthy kingdoms of the west,     There\'s reason he should be displeas\'d at it.       Look to it, lords; let not his smoothing words     Bewitch your hearts; be wise and circumspect.     What though the common people favour him,     Calling him \'Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester,\'     Clapping their hands, and crying with loud voice     \'Jesu maintain your royal excellence!\'     With \'God preserve the good Duke Humphrey!\'     I fear me, lords, for all this flattering gloss,     He will be found a dangerous Protector.   BUCKINGHAM. Why should he then protect our sovereign,     He being of age to govern of himself?     Cousin of Somerset, join you with me,     And all together, with the Duke of Suffolk,     We\'ll quickly hoise Duke Humphrey from his seat.   CARDINAL. This weighty business will not brook delay;     I\'ll to the Duke of Suffolk presently.                  Exit   SOMERSET. Cousin of Buckingham, though Humphrey\'s pride     And greatness of his place be grief to us,     Yet let us watch the haughty cardinal;     His insolence is more intolerable       Than all the princes in the land beside;     If Gloucester be displac\'d, he\'ll be Protector.   BUCKINGHAM. Or thou or I, Somerset, will be Protector,     Despite Duke Humphrey or the Cardinal.                                   Exeunt BUCKINGHAM and SOMERSET   SALISBURY. Pride went before, ambition follows him.     While these do labour for their own preferment,     Behoves it us to labour for the realm.     I never saw but Humphrey Duke of Gloucester     Did bear him like a noble gentleman.     Oft have I seen the haughty Cardinal-     More like a soldier than a man o\' th\' church,     As stout and proud as he were lord of all-     Swear like a ruffian and demean himself     Unlike the ruler of a commonweal.     Warwick my son, the comfort of my age,     Thy deeds, thy plainness, and thy housekeeping,     Hath won the greatest favour of the commons,     Excepting none but good Duke Humphrey.     And, brother York, thy acts in Ireland,       In bringing them to civil discipline,     Thy late exploits done in the heart of France     When thou wert Regent for our sovereign,     Have made thee fear\'d and honour\'d of the people:     Join we together for the public good,     In what we can, to bridle and suppress     The pride of Suffolk and the Cardinal,     With Somerset\'s and Buckingham\'s ambition;     And, as we may, cherish Duke Humphrey\'s deeds     While they do tend the profit of the land.   WARWICK. So God help Warwick, as he loves the land     And common profit of his country!   YORK. And so says York- [Aside] for he hath greatest cause.   SALISBURY. Then let\'s make haste away and look unto the main.   WARWICK. Unto the main! O father, Maine is lost-     That Maine which by main force Warwick did win,     And would have kept so long as breath did last.     Main chance, father, you meant; but I meant Maine,     Which I will win from France, or else be slain.                                     Exeunt WARWICK and SALISBURY     YORK. Anjou and Maine are given to the French;     Paris is lost; the state of Normandy     Stands on a tickle point now they are gone.     Suffolk concluded on the articles;     The peers agreed; and Henry was well pleas\'d     To changes two dukedoms for a duke\'s fair daughter.     I cannot blame them all: what is\'t to them?     \'Tis thine they give away, and not their own.     Pirates may make cheap pennyworths of their pillage,     And purchase friends, and give to courtezans,     Still revelling like lords till all be gone;     While as the silly owner of the goods     Weeps over them and wrings his hapless hands     And shakes his head and trembling stands aloof,     While all is shar\'d and all is borne away,     Ready to starve and dare not touch his own.     So York must sit and fret and bite his tongue,     While his own lands are bargain\'d for and sold.     Methinks the realms of England, France, and Ireland,     Bear that proportion to my flesh and blood       As did the fatal brand Althaea burnt     Unto the prince\'s heart of Calydon.     Anjou and Maine both given unto the French!     Cold news for me, for I had hope of France,     Even as I have of fertile England\'s soil.     A day will come when York shall claim his own;     And therefore I will take the Nevils\' parts,     And make a show of love to proud Duke Humphrey,     And when I spy advantage, claim the crown,     For that\'s the golden mark I seek to hit.     Nor shall proud Lancaster usurp my right,     Nor hold the sceptre in his childish fist,     Nor wear the diadem upon his head,     Whose church-like humours fits not for a crown.     Then, York, be still awhile, till time do serve;     Watch thou and wake, when others be asleep,     To pry into the secrets of the state;     Till Henry, surfeiting in joys of love     With his new bride and England\'s dear-bought queen,     And Humphrey with the peers be fall\'n at jars;       Then will I raise aloft the milk-white rose,     With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfum\'d,     And in my standard bear the arms of York,     To grapple with the house of Lancaster;     And force perforce I\'ll make him yield the crown,     Whose bookish rule hath pull\'d fair England down.       Exit     SCENE II. The DUKE OF GLOUCESTER\'S house  Enter DUKE and his wife ELEANOR    DUCHESS. Why droops my lord, like over-ripen\'d corn     Hanging the head at Ceres\' plenteous load?     Why doth the great Duke Humphrey knit his brows,     As frowning at the favours of the world?     Why are thine eyes fix\'d to the sullen earth,     Gazing on that which seems to dim thy sight?     What see\'st thou there? King Henry\'s diadem,     Enchas\'d with all the honours of the world?     If so, gaze on, and grovel on thy face     Until thy head be circled with the same.     Put forth thy hand, reach at the glorious gold.     What, is\'t too short? I\'ll lengthen it with mine;     And having both together heav\'d it up,     We\'ll both together lift our heads to heaven,     And never more abase our sight so low     As to vouchsafe one glance unto the ground.   GLOUCESTER. O Nell, sweet Nell, if thou dost love thy lord,       Banish the canker of ambitious thoughts!     And may that thought, when I imagine ill     Against my king and nephew, virtuous Henry,     Be my last breathing in this mortal world!     My troublous dreams this night doth make me sad.   DUCHESS. What dream\'d my lord? Tell me, and I\'ll requite it     With sweet rehearsal of my morning\'s dream.   GLOUCESTER. Methought this staff, mine office-badge in court,     Was broke in twain; by whom I have forgot,     But, as I think, it was by th\' Cardinal;     And on the pieces of the broken wand     Were plac\'d the heads of Edmund Duke of Somerset     And William de la Pole, first Duke of Suffolk.     This was my dream; what it doth bode God knows.   DUCHESS. Tut, this was nothing but an argument     That he that breaks a stick of Gloucester\'s grove     Shall lose his head for his presumption.     But list to me, my Humphrey, my sweet Duke:     Methought I sat in seat of majesty     In the cathedral church of Westminster,       And in that chair where kings and queens were crown\'d;     Where Henry and Dame Margaret kneel\'d to me,     And on my head did set the diadem.   GLOUCESTER. Nay, Eleanor, then must I chide outright.     Presumptuous dame, ill-nurtur\'d Eleanor!     Art thou not second woman in the realm,     And the Protector\'s wife, belov\'d of him?     Hast thou not worldly pleasure at command     Above the reach or compass of thy thought?     And wilt thou still be hammering treachery     To tumble down thy husband and thyself     From top of honour to disgrace\'s feet?     Away from me, and let me hear no more!   DUCHESS. What, what, my lord! Are you so choleric     With Eleanor for telling but her dream?     Next time I\'ll keep my dreams unto myself     And not be check\'d.   GLOUCESTER. Nay, be not angry; I am pleas\'d again.                         Enter a MESSENGER      MESSENGER. My Lord Protector, \'tis his Highness\' pleasure     You do prepare to ride unto Saint Albans,     Where as the King and Queen do mean to hawk.   GLOUCESTER. I go. Come, Nell, thou wilt ride with us?   DUCHESS. Yes, my good lord, I\'ll follow presently.                                  Exeunt GLOUCESTER and MESSENGER     Follow I must; I cannot go before,     While Gloucester bears this base and humble mind.     Were I a man, a duke, and next of blood,     I would remove these tedious stumbling-blocks     And smooth my way upon their headless necks;     And, being a woman, I will not be slack     To play my part in Fortune\'s pageant.     Where are you there, Sir John? Nay, fear not, man,     We are alone; here\'s none but thee and I.                             Enter HUME    HUME. Jesus preserve your royal Majesty!     DUCHESS. What say\'st thou? Majesty! I am but Grace.   HUME. But, by the grace of God and Hume\'s advice,     Your Grace\'s title shall be multiplied.   DUCHESS. What say\'st thou, man? Hast thou as yet conferr\'d     With Margery Jourdain, the cunning witch of Eie,     With Roger Bolingbroke, the conjurer?     And will they undertake to do me good?   HUME. This they have promised, to show your Highness     A spirit rais\'d from depth of underground     That shall make answer to such questions     As by your Grace shall be propounded him   DUCHESS. It is enough; I\'ll think upon the questions;     When from Saint Albans we do make return     We\'ll see these things effected to the full.     Here, Hume, take this reward; make merry, man,     With thy confederates in this weighty cause.            Exit   HUME. Hume must make merry with the Duchess\' gold;     Marry, and shall. But, how now, Sir John Hume!     Seal up your lips and give no words but mum:     The business asketh silent secrecy.       Dame Eleanor gives gold to bring the witch:     Gold cannot come amiss were she a devil.     Yet have I gold flies from another coast-     I dare not say from the rich Cardinal,     And from the great and new-made Duke of Suffolk;     Yet I do find it so; for, to be plain,     They, knowing Dame Eleanor\'s aspiring humour,     Have hired me to undermine the Duchess,     And buzz these conjurations in her brain.     They say \'A crafty knave does need no broker\';     Yet am I Suffolk and the Cardinal\'s broker.     Hume, if you take not heed, you shall go near     To call them both a pair of crafty knaves.     Well, so its stands; and thus, I fear, at last     Hume\'s knavery will be the Duchess\' wreck,     And her attainture will be Humphrey\'s fall     Sort how it will, I shall have gold for all.            Exit     SCENE III. London. The palace  Enter three or four PETITIONERS, PETER, the Armourer\'s man, being one    FIRST PETITIONER. My masters, let\'s stand close; my Lord Protector     will come this way by and by, and then we may deliver our     supplications in the quill.   SECOND PETITIONER. Marry, the Lord protect him, for he\'s a good     man, Jesu bless him!                         Enter SUFFOLK and QUEEN    FIRST PETITIONER. Here \'a comes, methinks, and the Queen with him.     I\'ll be the first, sure.   SECOND PETITIONER. Come back, fool; this is the Duke of Suffolk and     not my Lord Protector.   SUFFOLK. How now, fellow! Wouldst anything with me?   FIRST PETITIONER. I pray, my lord, pardon me; I took ye for my Lord     Protector.   QUEEN. [Reads] \'To my Lord Protector!\' Are your supplications to       his lordship? Let me see them. What is thine?   FIRST PETITIONER. Mine is, an\'t please your Grace, against John     Goodman, my Lord Cardinal\'s man, for keeping my house and lands,     and wife and all, from me.   SUFFOLK. Thy wife too! That\'s some wrong indeed. What\'s yours?     What\'s here! [Reads] \'Against the Duke of Suffolk, for enclosing     the commons of Melford.\' How now, sir knave!   SECOND PETITIONER. Alas, sir, I am but a poor petitioner of our     whole township.   PETER. [Presenting his petition] Against my master, Thomas Horner,     for saying that the Duke of York was rightful heir to the crown.   QUEEN. What say\'st thou? Did the Duke of York say he was rightful     heir to the crown?   PETER. That my master was? No, forsooth. My master said that he     was, and that the King was an usurper.   SUFFOLK. Who is there? [Enter servant] Take this fellow in, and     send for his master with a pursuivant presently. We\'ll hear more     of your matter before the King.                                          Exit servant with PETER   QUEEN. And as for you, that love to be protected       Under the wings of our Protector\'s grace,     Begin your suits anew, and sue to him.                                        [Tears the supplications]     Away, base cullions! Suffolk, let them go.   ALL. Come, let\'s be gone.                               Exeunt   QUEEN. My Lord of Suffolk, say, is this the guise,     Is this the fashions in the court of England?     Is this the government of Britain\'s isle,     And this the royalty of Albion\'s king?     What, shall King Henry be a pupil still,     Under the surly Gloucester\'s governance?     Am I a queen in title and in style,     And must be made a subject to a duke?     I tell thee, Pole, when in the city Tours     Thou ran\'st a tilt in honour of my love     And stol\'st away the ladies\' hearts of France,     I thought King Henry had resembled thee     In courage, courtship, and proportion;     But all his mind is bent to holiness,     To number Ave-Maries on his beads;       His champions are the prophets and apostles;     His weapons, holy saws of sacred writ;     His study is his tilt-yard, and his loves     Are brazen images of canonized saints.     I would the college of the Cardinals     Would choose him Pope, and carry him to Rome,     And set the triple crown upon his head;     That were a state fit for his holiness.   SUFFOLK. Madam, be patient. As I was cause     Your Highness came to England, so will I     In England work your Grace\'s full content.   QUEEN. Beside the haughty Protector, have we Beaufort     The imperious churchman; Somerset, Buckingham,     And grumbling York; and not the least of these     But can do more in England than the King.   SUFFOLK. And he of these that can do most of all     Cannot do more in England than the Nevils;     Salisbury and Warwick are no simple peers.   QUEEN. Not all these lords do vex me half so much     As that proud dame, the Lord Protector\'s wife.       She sweeps it through the court with troops of ladies,     More like an empress than Duke Humphrey\'s wife.     Strangers in court do take her for the Queen.     She bears a duke\'s revenues on her back,     And in her heart she scorns our poverty;     Shall I not live to be aveng\'d on her?     Contemptuous base-born callet as she is,     She vaunted \'mongst her minions t\' other day     The very train of her worst wearing gown     Was better worth than all my father\'s lands,     Till Suffolk gave two dukedoms for his daughter.   SUFFOLK. Madam, myself have lim\'d a bush for her,     And plac\'d a quire of such enticing birds     That she will light to listen to the lays,     And never mount to trouble you again.     So, let her rest. And, madam, list to me,     For I am bold to counsel you in this:     Although we fancy not the Cardinal,     Yet must we join with him and with the lords,     Till we have brought Duke Humphrey in disgrace.       As for the Duke of York, this late complaint     Will make but little for his benefit.     So one by one we\'ll weed them all at last,     And you yourself shall steer the happy helm.            Sound a sennet. Enter the KING, DUKE HUMPHREY,      CARDINAL BEAUFORT, BUCKINGHAM, YORK, SOMERSET, SALISBURY,               WARWICK, and the DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER    KING HENRY. For my part, noble lords, I care not which:     Or Somerset or York, all\'s one to me.   YORK. If York have ill demean\'d himself in France,     Then let him be denay\'d the regentship.   SOMERSET. If Somerset be unworthy of the place,     Let York be Regent; I will yield to him.   WARWICK. Whether your Grace be worthy, yea or no,     Dispute not that; York is the worthier.   CARDINAL. Ambitious Warwick, let thy betters speak.   WARWICK. The Cardinal\'s not my better in the field.   BUCKINGHAM. All in this presence are thy betters, Warwick.     WARWICK. Warwick may live to be the best of all.   SALISBURY. Peace, son! And show some reason, Buckingham,     Why Somerset should be preferr\'d in this.   QUEEN. Because the King, forsooth, will have it so.   GLOUCESTER. Madam, the King is old enough himself     To give his censure. These are no women\'s matters.   QUEEN. If he be old enough, what needs your Grace     To be Protector of his Excellence?   GLOUCESTER. Madam, I am Protector of the realm;     And at his pleasure will resign my place.   SUFFOLK. Resign it then, and leave thine insolence.     Since thou wert king- as who is king but thou?-     The commonwealth hath daily run to wrack,     The Dauphin hath prevail\'d beyond the seas,     And all the peers and nobles of the realm     Have been as bondmen to thy sovereignty.   CARDINAL. The commons hast thou rack\'d; the clergy\'s bags     Are lank and lean with thy extortions.   SOMERSET. Thy sumptuous buildings and thy wife\'s attire     Have cost a mass of public treasury.     BUCKINGHAM. Thy cruelty in execution     Upon offenders hath exceeded law,     And left thee to the mercy of the law.   QUEEN. Thy sale of offices and towns in France,     If they were known, as the suspect is great,     Would make thee quickly hop without thy head.                   Exit GLOUCESTER. The QUEEN drops QUEEN her fan     Give me my fan. What, minion, can ye not?                         [She gives the DUCHESS a box on the ear]     I cry your mercy, madam; was it you?   DUCHESS. Was\'t I? Yea, I it was, proud Frenchwoman.     Could I come near your beauty with my nails,     I could set my ten commandments in your face.   KING HENRY. Sweet aunt, be quiet; \'twas against her will.   DUCHESS. Against her will, good King? Look to \'t in time;     She\'ll hamper thee and dandle thee like a baby.     Though in this place most master wear no breeches,     She shall not strike Dame Eleanor unreveng\'d.           Exit   BUCKINGHAM. Lord Cardinal, I will follow Eleanor,     And listen after Humphrey, how he proceeds.       She\'s tickled now; her fume needs no spurs,     She\'ll gallop far enough to her destruction.            Exit                        Re-enter GLOUCESTER    GLOUCESTER. Now, lords, my choler being overblown     With walking once about the quadrangle,     I come to talk of commonwealth affairs.     As for your spiteful false objections,     Prove them, and I lie open to the law;     But God in mercy so deal with my soul     As I in duty love my king and country!     But to the matter that we have in hand:     I say, my sovereign, York is meetest man     To be your Regent in the realm of France.   SUFFOLK. Before we make election, give me leave     To show some reason, of no little force,     That York is most unmeet of any man.   YORK. I\'ll tell thee, Suffolk, why I am unmeet:     First, for I cannot flatter thee in pride;       Next, if I be appointed for the place,     My Lord of Somerset will keep me here     Without discharge, money, or furniture,     Till France be won into the Dauphin\'s hands.     Last time I danc\'d attendance on his will     Till Paris was besieg\'d, famish\'d, and lost.   WARWICK. That can I witness; and a fouler fact     Did never traitor in the land commit.   SUFFOLK. Peace, headstrong Warwick!   WARWICK. Image of pride, why should I hold my peace?          Enter HORNER, the Armourer, and his man PETER, guarded    SUFFOLK. Because here is a man accus\'d of treason:     Pray God the Duke of York excuse himself!   YORK. Doth any one accuse York for a traitor?   KING HENRY. What mean\'st thou, Suffolk? Tell me, what are these?   SUFFOLK. Please it your Majesty, this is the man     That doth accuse his master of high treason;     His words were these: that Richard Duke of York       Was rightful heir unto the English crown,     And that your Majesty was an usurper.   KING HENRY. Say, man, were these thy words?   HORNER. An\'t shall please your Majesty, I never said nor thought     any such matter. God is my witness, I am falsely accus\'d by the     villain.   PETER. [Holding up his hands] By these ten bones, my lords, he did     speak them to me in the garret one night, as we were scouring my     Lord of York\'s armour.   YORK. Base dunghill villain and mechanical,     I\'ll have thy head for this thy traitor\'s speech.     I do beseech your royal Majesty,     Let him have all the rigour of the law.   HORNER`. Alas, my lord, hang me if ever I spake the words. My     accuser is my prentice; and when I did correct him for his fault     the other day, he did vow upon his knees he would be even with     me. I have good witness of this; therefore I beseech your     Majesty, do not cast away an honest man for a villain\'s     accusation.   KING HENRY. Uncle, what shall we say to this in law?     GLOUCESTER. This doom, my lord, if I may judge:     Let Somerset be Regent o\'er the French,     Because in York this breeds suspicion;     And let these have a day appointed them     For single combat in convenient place,     For he hath witness of his servant\'s malice.     This is the law, and this Duke Humphrey\'s doom.   SOMERSET. I humbly thank your royal Majesty.   HORNER. And I accept the combat willingly.   PETER. Alas, my lord, I cannot fight; for God\'s sake, pity my case!     The spite of man prevaileth against me. O Lord, have mercy upon     me, I shall never be able to fight a blow! O Lord, my heart!   GLOUCESTER. Sirrah, or you must fight or else be hang\'d.   KING HENRY. Away with them to prison; and the day of combat shall     be the last of the next month.     Come, Somerset, we\'ll see thee sent away.   Flourish. Exeunt     SCENE IV. London. The DUKE OF GLOUCESTER\'S garden  Enter MARGERY JOURDAIN, the witch; the two priests, HUME and SOUTHWELL; and BOLINGBROKE    HUME. Come, my masters; the Duchess, I tell you, expects     performance of your promises.   BOLINGBROKE. Master Hume, we are therefore provided; will her     ladyship behold and hear our exorcisms?   HUME. Ay, what else? Fear you not her courage.   BOLINGBROKE. I have heard her reported to be a woman of an     invincible spirit; but it shall be convenient, Master Hume, that     you be by her aloft while we be busy below; and so I pray you go,     in God\'s name, and leave us. [Exit HUME] Mother Jourdain, be you     prostrate and grovel on the earth; John Southwell, read you; and     let us to our work.                   Enter DUCHESS aloft, followed by HUME    DUCHESS. Well said, my masters; and welcome all. To this gear, the     sooner the better.     BOLINGBROKE. Patience, good lady; wizards know their times:     Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night,     The time of night when Troy was set on fire;     The time when screech-owls cry and ban-dogs howl,     And spirits walk and ghosts break up their graves-     That time best fits the work we have in hand.     Madam, sit you, and fear not: whom we raise     We will make fast within a hallow\'d verge.       [Here they do the ceremonies belonging, and make the circle;           BOLINGBROKE or SOUTHWELL reads: \'Conjuro te,\' &c.      It thunders and lightens terribly; then the SPIRIT riseth]    SPIRIT. Adsum.   MARGERY JOURDAIN. Asmath,     By the eternal God, whose name and power     Thou tremblest at, answer that I shall ask;     For till thou speak thou shalt not pass from hence.   SPIRIT. Ask what thou wilt; that I had said and done.   BOLINGBROKE. [Reads] \'First of the king: what shall of him become?\'     SPIRIT. The Duke yet lives that Henry shall depose;     But him outlive, and die a violent death.              [As the SPIRIT speaks, SOUTHWELL writes the answer]   BOLINGBROKE. \'What fates await the Duke of Suffolk?\'   SPIRIT. By water shall he die and take his end.   BOLINGBROKE. \'What shall befall the Duke of Somerset?\'   SPIRIT. Let him shun castles:     Safer shall he be upon the sandy plains     Than where castles mounted stand.     Have done, for more I hardly can endure.   BOLINGBROKE. Descend to darkness and the burning lake;     False fiend, avoid!       Thunder and lightning. Exit SPIRIT                 Enter the DUKE OF YORK and the DUKE OF                  BUCKINGHAM with guard, and break in    YORK. Lay hands upon these traitors and their trash.     Beldam, I think we watch\'d you at an inch.     What, madam, are you there? The King and commonweal     Are deeply indebted for this piece of pains;       My Lord Protector will, I doubt it not,     See you well guerdon\'d for these good deserts.   DUCHESS. Not half so bad as thine to England\'s king,     Injurious Duke, that threatest where\'s no cause.   BUCKINGHAM. True, madam, none at all. What can you this?     Away with them! let them be clapp\'d up close,     And kept asunder. You, madam, shall with us.     Stafford, take her to thee.     We\'ll see your trinkets here all forthcoming.     All, away!                 Exeunt, above, DUCHESS and HUME, guarded; below,                        WITCH, SOUTHWELL and BOLINGBROKE, guarded   YORK. Lord Buckingham, methinks you watch\'d her well.     A pretty plot, well chosen to build upon!     Now, pray, my lord, let\'s see the devil\'s writ.     What have we here?                                   [Reads]     \'The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose;     But him outlive, and die a violent death.\'     Why, this is just     \'Aio te, Aeacida, Romanos vincere posse.\'       Well, to the rest:     \'Tell me what fate awaits the Duke of Suffolk?\'     \'By water shall he die and take his end.\'     \'What shall betide the Duke of Somerset?\'     \'Let him shun castles;     Safer shall he be upon the sandy plains     Than where castles mounted stand.\'     Come, come, my lords;     These oracles are hardly attain\'d,     And hardly understood.     The King is now in progress towards Saint Albans,     With him the husband of this lovely lady;     Thither go these news as fast as horse can carry them-     A sorry breakfast for my Lord Protector.   BUCKINGHAM. Your Grace shall give me leave, my Lord of York,     To be the post, in hope of his reward.   YORK. At your pleasure, my good lord.     Who\'s within there, ho?                         Enter a serving-man        Invite my Lords of Salisbury and Warwick     To sup with me to-morrow night. Away!                 Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. Saint Albans  Enter the KING, QUEEN, GLOUCESTER, CARDINAL, and SUFFOLK, with Falconers halloing    QUEEN. Believe me, lords, for flying at the brook,     I saw not better sport these seven years\' day;     Yet, by your leave, the wind was very high,     And ten to one old Joan had not gone out.   KING HENRY. But what a point, my lord, your falcon made,     And what a pitch she flew above the rest!     To see how God in all His creatures works!     Yea, man and birds are fain of climbing high.   SUFFOLK. No marvel, an it like your Majesty,     My Lord Protector\'s hawks do tow\'r so well;     They know their master loves to be aloft,     And bears his thoughts above his falcon\'s pitch.   GLOUCESTER. My lord, \'tis but a base ignoble mind     That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.   CARDINAL. I thought as much; he would be above the clouds.   GLOUCESTER. Ay, my lord Cardinal, how think you by that?       Were it not good your Grace could fly to heaven?   KING HENRY. The treasury of everlasting joy!   CARDINAL. Thy heaven is on earth; thine eyes and thoughts     Beat on a crown, the treasure of thy heart;     Pernicious Protector, dangerous peer,     That smooth\'st it so with King and commonweal.   GLOUCESTER. What, Cardinal, is your priesthood grown peremptory?     Tantaene animis coelestibus irae?     Churchmen so hot? Good uncle, hide such malice;     With such holiness can you do it?   SUFFOLK. No malice, sir; no more than well becomes     So good a quarrel and so bad a peer.   GLOUCESTER. As who, my lord?   SUFFOLK. Why, as you, my lord,     An\'t like your lordly Lord\'s Protectorship.   GLOUCESTER. Why, Suffolk, England knows thine insolence.   QUEEN. And thy ambition, Gloucester.   KING HENRY. I prithee, peace,     Good Queen, and whet not on these furious peers;     For blessed are the peacemakers on earth.     CARDINAL. Let me be blessed for the peace I make     Against this proud Protector with my sword!   GLOUCESTER. [Aside to CARDINAL] Faith, holy uncle, would \'twere     come to that!   CARDINAL. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] Marry, when thou dar\'st.   GLOUCESTER. [Aside to CARDINAL] Make up no factious numbers for the       matter;     In thine own person answer thy abuse.   CARDINAL. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] Ay, where thou dar\'st not peep; an       if thou dar\'st,     This evening on the east side of the grove.   KING HENRY. How now, my lords!   CARDINAL. Believe me, cousin Gloucester,     Had not your man put up the fowl so suddenly,     We had had more sport. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] Come with thy       two-hand sword.   GLOUCESTER. True, uncle.   CARDINAL. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] Are ye advis\'d? The east side of     the grove?   GLOUCESTER. [Aside to CARDINAL] Cardinal, I am with you.     KING HENRY. Why, how now, uncle Gloucester!   GLOUCESTER. Talking of hawking; nothing else, my lord.     [Aside to CARDINAL] Now, by God\'s Mother, priest,     I\'ll shave your crown for this,     Or all my fence shall fail.   CARDINAL. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] Medice, teipsum;     Protector, see to\'t well; protect yourself.   KING HENRY. The winds grow high; so do your stomachs, lords.     How irksome is this music to my heart!     When such strings jar, what hope of harmony?     I pray, my lords, let me compound this strife.           Enter a TOWNSMAN of Saint Albans, crying \'A miracle!\'    GLOUCESTER. What means this noise?     Fellow, what miracle dost thou proclaim?   TOWNSMAN. A miracle! A miracle!   SUFFOLK. Come to the King, and tell him what miracle.   TOWNSMAN. Forsooth, a blind man at Saint Albans shrine     Within this half hour hath receiv\'d his sight;       A man that ne\'er saw in his life before.   KING HENRY. Now God be prais\'d that to believing souls     Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair!             Enter the MAYOR OF SAINT ALBANS and his brethren,                bearing Simpcox between two in a chair;                  his WIFE and a multitude following    CARDINAL. Here comes the townsmen on procession     To present your Highness with the man.   KING HENRY. Great is his comfort in this earthly vale,     Although by his sight his sin be multiplied.   GLOUCESTER. Stand by, my masters; bring him near the King;     His Highness\' pleasure is to talk with him.   KING HENRY. Good fellow, tell us here the circumstance,     That we for thee may glorify the Lord.     What, hast thou been long blind and now restor\'d?   SIMPCOX. Born blind, an\'t please your Grace.   WIFE. Ay indeed was he.   SUFFOLK. What woman is this?     WIFE. His wife, an\'t like your worship.   GLOUCESTER. Hadst thou been his mother, thou couldst have better     told.   KING HENRY. Where wert thou born?   SIMPCOX. At Berwick in the north, an\'t like your Grace.   KING HENRY. Poor soul, God\'s goodness hath been great to thee.     Let never day nor night unhallowed pass,     But still remember what the Lord hath done.   QUEEN. Tell me, good fellow, cam\'st thou here by chance,     Or of devotion, to this holy shrine?   SIMPCOX. God knows, of pure devotion; being call\'d     A hundred times and oft\'ner, in my sleep,     By good Saint Alban, who said \'Simpcox, come,     Come, offer at my shrine, and I will help thee.\'   WIFE. Most true, forsooth; and many time and oft     Myself have heard a voice to call him so.   CARDINAL. What, art thou lame?   SIMPCOX. Ay, God Almighty help me!   SUFFOLK. How cam\'st thou so?   SIMPCOX. A fall off of a tree.     WIFE. A plum tree, master.   GLOUCESTER. How long hast thou been blind?   SIMPCOX. O, born so, master!   GLOUCESTER. What, and wouldst climb a tree?   SIMPCOX. But that in all my life, when I was a youth.   WIFE. Too true; and bought his climbing very dear.   GLOUCESTER. Mass, thou lov\'dst plums well, that wouldst venture so.   SIMPCOX. Alas, good master, my wife desir\'d some damsons     And made me climb, With danger of my life.   GLOUCESTER. A subtle knave! But yet it shall not serve:     Let me see thine eyes; wink now; now open them;     In my opinion yet thou seest not well.   SIMPCOX. Yes, master, clear as day, I thank God and Saint Alban.   GLOUCESTER. Say\'st thou me so? What colour is this cloak of?   SIMPCOX. Red, master; red as blood.   GLOUCESTER. Why, that\'s well said. What colour is my gown of?   SIMPCOX. Black, forsooth; coal-black as jet.   KING HENRY. Why, then, thou know\'st what colour jet is of?   SUFFOLK. And yet, I think, jet did he never see.   GLOUCESTER. But cloaks and gowns before this day a many.     WIFE. Never before this day in all his life.   GLOUCESTER. Tell me, sirrah, what\'s my name?   SIMPCOX. Alas, master, I know not.   GLOUCESTER. What\'s his name?   SIMPCOX. I know not.   GLOUCESTER. Nor his?   SIMPCOX. No, indeed, master.   GLOUCESTER. What\'s thine own name?   SIMPCOX. Saunder Simpcox, an if it please you, master.   GLOUCESTER. Then, Saunder, sit there, the lying\'st knave in     Christendom. If thou hadst been born blind, thou mightst as well     have known all our names as thus to name the several colours we     do wear. Sight may distinguish of colours; but suddenly to     nominate them all, it is impossible. My lords, Saint Alban here     hath done a miracle; and would ye not think his cunning to be     great that could restore this cripple to his legs again?   SIMPCOX. O master, that you could!   GLOUCESTER. My masters of Saint Albans, have you not beadles in     your town, and things call\'d whips?   MAYOR. Yes, my lord, if it please your Grace.     GLOUCESTER. Then send for one presently.   MAYOR. Sirrah, go fetch the beadle hither straight.                                                Exit an attendant   GLOUCESTER. Now fetch me a stool hither by and by. [A stool     brought] Now, sirrah, if you mean to save yourself from whipping,     leap me over this stool and run away.   SIMPCOX. Alas, master, I am not able to stand alone!     You go about to torture me in vain.                           Enter a BEADLE with whips    GLOUCESTER. Well, sir, we must have you find your legs.     Sirrah beadle, whip him till he leap over that same stool.   BEADLE. I will, my lord. Come on, sirrah; off with your doublet     quickly.   SIMPCOX. Alas, master, what shall I do? I am not able to stand.             After the BEADLE hath hit him once, he leaps over            the stool and runs away; and they follow and cry                              \'A miracle!\'      KING HENRY. O God, seest Thou this, and bearest so long?   QUEEN. It made me laugh to see the villain run.   GLOUCESTER. Follow the knave, and take this drab away.   WIFE. Alas, sir, we did it for pure need!   GLOUCESTER. Let them be whipp\'d through every market town till they     come to Berwick, from whence they came.                                  Exeunt MAYOR, BEADLE, WIFE, &c.   CARDINAL. Duke Humphrey has done a miracle to-day.   SUFFOLK. True; made the lame to leap and fly away.   GLOUCESTER. But you have done more miracles than I:     You made in a day, my lord, whole towns to fly.                           Enter BUCKINGHAM    KING HENRY. What tidings with our cousin Buckingham?   BUCKINGHAM. Such as my heart doth tremble to unfold:     A sort of naughty persons, lewdly bent,     Under the countenance and confederacy     Of Lady Eleanor, the Protector\'s wife,       The ringleader and head of all this rout,     Have practis\'d dangerously against your state,     Dealing with witches and with conjurers,     Whom we have apprehended in the fact,     Raising up wicked spirits from under ground,     Demanding of King Henry\'s life and death     And other of your Highness\' Privy Council,     As more at large your Grace shall understand.   CARDINAL. And so, my Lord Protector, by this means     Your lady is forthcoming yet at London.     This news, I think, hath turn\'d your weapon\'s edge;     \'Tis like, my lord, you will not keep your hour.   GLOUCESTER. Ambitious churchman, leave to afflict my heart.     Sorrow and grief have vanquish\'d all my powers;     And, vanquish\'d as I am, I yield to the     Or to the meanest groom.   KING HENRY. O God, what mischiefs work the wicked ones,     Heaping confusion on their own heads thereby!   QUEEN. Gloucester, see here the tainture of thy nest;     And look thyself be faultless, thou wert best.     GLOUCESTER. Madam, for myself, to heaven I do appeal     How I have lov\'d my King and commonweal;     And for my wife I know not how it stands.     Sorry I am to hear what I have heard.     Noble she is; but if she have forgot     Honour and virtue, and convers\'d with such     As, like to pitch, defile nobility,     I banish her my bed and company     And give her as a prey to law and shame,     That hath dishonoured Gloucester\'s honest name.   KING HENRY. Well, for this night we will repose us here.     To-morrow toward London back again     To look into this business thoroughly     And call these foul offenders to their answers,     And poise the cause in justice\' equal scales,     Whose beam stands sure, whose rightful cause prevails.                                                 Flourish. Exeunt     SCENE II. London. The DUKE OF YORK\'S garden  Enter YORK, SALISBURY, and WARWICK    YORK. Now, my good Lords of Salisbury and Warwick,     Our simple supper ended, give me leave     In this close walk to satisfy myself     In craving your opinion of my tide,     Which is infallible, to England\'s crown.   SALISBURY. My lord, I long to hear it at full.   WARWICK. Sweet York, begin; and if thy claim be good,     The Nevils are thy subjects to command.   YORK. Then thus:     Edward the Third, my lords, had seven sons;     The first, Edward the Black Prince, Prince of Wales;     The second, William of Hatfield; and the third,     Lionel Duke of Clarence; next to whom     Was John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster;     The fifth was Edmund Langley, Duke of York;     The sixth was Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester;     William of Windsor was the seventh and last.       Edward the Black Prince died before his father     And left behind him Richard, his only son,     Who, after Edward the Third\'s death, reign\'d as king     Till Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster,     The eldest son and heir of John of Gaunt,     Crown\'d by the name of Henry the Fourth,     Seiz\'d on the realm, depos\'d the rightful king,     Sent his poor queen to France, from whence she came.     And him to Pomfret, where, as all you know,     Harmless Richard was murdered traitorously.   WARWICK. Father, the Duke hath told the truth;     Thus got the house of Lancaster the crown.   YORK. Which now they hold by force, and not by right;     For Richard, the first son\'s heir, being dead,     The issue of the next son should have reign\'d.   SALISBURY. But William of Hatfield died without an heir.   YORK. The third son, Duke of Clarence, from whose line     I claim the crown, had issue Philippe, a daughter,     Who married Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March;     Edmund had issue, Roger Earl of March;       Roger had issue, Edmund, Anne, and Eleanor.   SALISBURY. This Edmund, in the reign of Bolingbroke,     As I have read, laid claim unto the crown;     And, but for Owen Glendower, had been king,     Who kept him in captivity till he died.     But, to the rest.   YORK. His eldest sister, Anne,     My mother, being heir unto the crown,     Married Richard Earl of Cambridge, who was     To Edmund Langley, Edward the Third\'s fifth son, son.     By her I claim the kingdom: she was heir     To Roger Earl of March, who was the son     Of Edmund Mortimer, who married Philippe,     Sole daughter unto Lionel Duke of Clarence;     So, if the issue of the elder son     Succeed before the younger, I am King.   WARWICK. What plain proceedings is more plain than this?     Henry doth claim the crown from John of Gaunt,     The fourth son: York claims it from the third.     Till Lionel\'s issue fails, his should not reign.       It fails not yet, but flourishes in thee     And in thy sons, fair slips of such a stock.     Then, father Salisbury, kneel we together,     And in this private plot be we the first     That shall salute our rightful sovereign     With honour of his birthright to the crown.   BOTH. Long live our sovereign Richard, England\'s King!   YORK. We thank you, lords. But I am not your king     Till I be crown\'d, and that my sword be stain\'d     With heart-blood of the house of Lancaster;     And that\'s not suddenly to be perform\'d,     But with advice and silent secrecy.     Do you as I do in these dangerous days:     Wink at the Duke of Suffolk\'s insolence,     At Beaufort\'s pride, at Somerset\'s ambition,     At Buckingham, and all the crew of them,     Till they have snar\'d the shepherd of the flock,     That virtuous prince, the good Duke Humphrey;     \'Tis that they seek; and they, in seeking that,     Shall find their deaths, if York can prophesy.     SALISBURY. My lord, break we off; we know your mind at full.   WARWICK. My heart assures me that the Earl of Warwick     Shall one day make the Duke of York a king.   YORK. And, Nevil, this I do assure myself,     Richard shall live to make the Earl of Warwick     The greatest man in England but the King.             Exeunt     SCENE III. London. A hall of justice  Sound trumpets. Enter the KING and State: the QUEEN, GLOUCESTER, YORK, SUFFOLK, and SALISBURY, with guard, to banish the DUCHESS. Enter, guarded, the DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER, MARGERY JOURDAIN, HUME, SOUTHWELL, and BOLINGBROKE    KING HENRY. Stand forth, Dame Eleanor Cobham, Gloucester\'s wife:     In sight of God and us, your guilt is great;     Receive the sentence of the law for sins     Such as by God\'s book are adjudg\'d to death.     You four, from hence to prison back again;     From thence unto the place of execution:     The witch in Smithfield shall be burnt to ashes,     And you three shall be strangled on the gallows.     You, madam, for you are more nobly born,     Despoiled of your honour in your life,     Shall, after three days\' open penance done,     Live in your country here in banishment     With Sir John Stanley in the Isle of Man.     DUCHESS. Welcome is banishment; welcome were my death.   GLOUCESTER. Eleanor, the law, thou seest, hath judged thee.     I cannot justify whom the law condemns.              Exeunt the DUCHESS and the other prisoners, guarded     Mine eyes are full of tears, my heart of grief.     Ah, Humphrey, this dishonour in thine age     Will bring thy head with sorrow to the ground!     I beseech your Majesty give me leave to go;     Sorrow would solace, and mine age would ease.   KING HENRY. Stay, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester; ere thou go,     Give up thy staff; Henry will to himself     Protector be; and God shall be my hope,     My stay, my guide, and lantern to my feet.     And go in peace, Humphrey, no less belov\'d     Than when thou wert Protector to thy King.   QUEEN. I see no reason why a king of years     Should be to be protected like a child.     God and King Henry govern England\'s realm!     Give up your staff, sir, and the King his realm.   GLOUCESTER. My staff! Here, noble Henry, is my staff.       As willingly do I the same resign     As ere thy father Henry made it mine;     And even as willingly at thy feet I leave it     As others would ambitiously receive it.     Farewell, good King; when I am dead and gone,     May honourable peace attend thy throne!                 Exit   QUEEN. Why, now is Henry King, and Margaret Queen,     And Humphrey Duke of Gloucester scarce himself,     That bears so shrewd a maim: two pulls at once-     His lady banish\'d and a limb lopp\'d off.     This staff of honour raught, there let it stand     Where it best fits to be, in Henry\'s hand.   SUFFOLK. Thus droops this lofty pine and hangs his sprays;     Thus Eleanor\'s pride dies in her youngest days.   YORK. Lords, let him go. Please it your Majesty,     This is the day appointed for the combat;     And ready are the appellant and defendant,     The armourer and his man, to enter the lists,     So please your Highness to behold the fight.   QUEEN. Ay, good my lord; for purposely therefore       Left I the court, to see this quarrel tried.   KING HENRY. A God\'s name, see the lists and all things fit;     Here let them end it, and God defend the right!   YORK. I never saw a fellow worse bested,     Or more afraid to fight, than is the appellant,     The servant of his armourer, my lords.          Enter at one door, HORNER, the Armourer, and his          NEIGHBOURS, drinking to him so much that he is         drunk; and he enters with a drum before him and        his staff with a sand-bag fastened to it; and at the         other door PETER, his man, with a drum and sandbag,                   and PRENTICES drinking to him    FIRST NEIGHBOUR. Here, neighbour Horner, I drink to you in a cup of     sack; and fear not, neighbour, you shall do well enough.   SECOND NEIGHBOUR. And here, neighbour, here\'s a cup of charneco.   THIRD NEIGHBOUR. And here\'s a pot of good double beer, neighbour;     drink, and fear not your man.   HORNER. Let it come, i\' faith, and I\'ll pledge you all; and a fig       for Peter!   FIRST PRENTICE. Here, Peter, I drink to thee; and be not afraid.   SECOND PRENTICE. Be merry, Peter, and fear not thy master: fight     for credit of the prentices.   PETER. I thank you all. Drink, and pray for me, I pray you; for I     think I have taken my last draught in this world. Here, Robin, an     if I die, I give thee my apron; and, Will, thou shalt have my     hammer; and here, Tom, take all the money that I have. O Lord     bless me, I pray God! for I am never able to deal with my master,     he hath learnt so much fence already.   SALISBURY. Come, leave your drinking and fall to blows.     Sirrah, what\'s thy name?   PETER. Peter, forsooth.   SALISBURY. Peter? What more?   PETER. Thump.   SALISBURY. Thump? Then see thou thump thy master well.   HORNER. Masters, I am come hither, as it were, upon my man\'s     instigation, to prove him a knave and myself an honest man; and     touching the Duke of York, I will take my death I never meant him     any ill, nor the King, nor the Queen; and therefore, Peter, have       at thee with a down right blow!   YORK. Dispatch- this knave\'s tongue begins to double.     Sound, trumpets, alarum to the combatants!                  [Alarum. They fight and PETER strikes him down]   HORNER. Hold, Peter, hold! I confess, I confess treason.                                                           [Dies]   YORK. Take away his weapon. Fellow, thank God, and the good wine in     thy master\'s way.   PETER. O God, have I overcome mine enemies in this presence? O     Peter, thou hast prevail\'d in right!   KING HENRY. Go, take hence that traitor from our sight,     For by his death we do perceive his guilt;     And God in justice hath reveal\'d to us     The truth and innocence of this poor fellow,     Which he had thought to have murder\'d wrongfully.     Come, fellow, follow us for thy reward.                                         Sound a flourish. Exeunt     SCENE IV. London. A street  Enter DUKE HUMPHREY and his men, in mourning cloaks    GLOUCESTER. Thus sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud,     And after summer evermore succeeds     Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold;     So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.     Sirs, what\'s o\'clock?   SERVING-MAN. Ten, my lord.   GLOUCESTER. Ten is the hour that was appointed me     To watch the coming of my punish\'d duchess.     Uneath may she endure the flinty streets     To tread them with her tender-feeling feet.     Sweet Nell, ill can thy noble mind abrook     The abject people gazing on thy face,     With envious looks, laughing at thy shame,     That erst did follow thy proud chariot wheels     When thou didst ride in triumph through the streets.     But, soft! I think she comes, and I\'ll prepare     My tear-stain\'d eyes to see her miseries.              Enter the DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER in a white sheet,             and a taper burning in her hand, with SIR JOHN                STANLEY, the SHERIFF, and OFFICERS    SERVING-MAN. So please your Grace, we\'ll take her from the sheriff.   GLOUCESTER. No, stir not for your lives; let her pass by.   DUCHESS. Come you, my lord, to see my open shame?     Now thou dost penance too. Look how they gaze!     See how the giddy multitude do point     And nod their heads and throw their eyes on thee;     Ah, Gloucester, hide thee from their hateful looks,     And, in thy closet pent up, rue my shame     And ban thine enemies, both mine and thine!   GLOUCESTER. Be patient, gentle Nell; forget this grief.   DUCHESS. Ah, Gloucester, teach me to forget myself!     For whilst I think I am thy married wife     And thou a prince, Protector of this land,     Methinks I should not thus be led along,     Mail\'d up in shame, with papers on my back,       And follow\'d with a rabble that rejoice     To see my tears and hear my deep-fet groans.     The ruthless flint doth cut my tender feet,     And when I start, the envious people laugh     And bid me be advised how I tread.     Ah, Humphrey, can I bear this shameful yoke?     Trowest thou that e\'er I\'ll look upon the world     Or count them happy that enjoy the sun?     No; dark shall be my light and night my day;     To think upon my pomp shall be my hell.     Sometimes I\'ll say I am Duke Humphrey\'s wife,     And he a prince, and ruler of the land;     Yet so he rul\'d, and such a prince he was,     As he stood by whilst I, his forlorn duchess,     Was made a wonder and a pointing-stock     To every idle rascal follower.     But be thou mild, and blush not at my shame,     Nor stir at nothing till the axe of death     Hang over thee, as sure it shortly will.     For Suffolk- he that can do all in all       With her that hateth thee and hates us all-     And York, and impious Beaufort, that false priest,     Have all lim\'d bushes to betray thy wings,     And, fly thou how thou canst, they\'ll tangle thee.     But fear not thou until thy foot be snar\'d,     Nor never seek prevention of thy foes.   GLOUCESTER. Ah, Nell, forbear! Thou aimest all awry.     I must offend before I be attainted;     And had I twenty times so many foes,     And each of them had twenty times their power,     All these could not procure me any scathe     So long as I am loyal, true, and crimeless.     Wouldst have me rescue thee from this reproach?     Why, yet thy scandal were not wip\'d away,     But I in danger for the breach of law.     Thy greatest help is quiet, gentle Nell.     I pray thee sort thy heart to patience;     These few days\' wonder will be quickly worn.                            Enter a HERALD      HERALD. I summon your Grace to his Majesty\'s Parliament,     Holden at Bury the first of this next month.   GLOUCESTER. And my consent ne\'er ask\'d herein before!     This is close dealing. Well, I will be there.    Exit HERALD     My Nell, I take my leave- and, master sheriff,     Let not her penance exceed the King\'s commission.   SHERIFF. An\'t please your Grace, here my commission stays;     And Sir John Stanley is appointed now     To take her with him to the Isle of Man.   GLOUCESTER. Must you, Sir John, protect my lady here?   STANLEY. So am I given in charge, may\'t please your Grace.   GLOUCESTER. Entreat her not the worse in that I pray     You use her well; the world may laugh again,     And I may live to do you kindness if     You do it her. And so, Sir John, farewell.   DUCHESS. What, gone, my lord, and bid me not farewell!   GLOUCESTER. Witness my tears, I cannot stay to speak.                                   Exeunt GLOUCESTER and servants   DUCHESS. Art thou gone too? All comfort go with thee!       For none abides with me. My joy is death-     Death, at whose name I oft have been afeard,     Because I wish\'d this world\'s eternity.     Stanley, I prithee go, and take me hence;     I care not whither, for I beg no favour,     Only convey me where thou art commanded.   STANLEY. Why, madam, that is to the Isle of Man,     There to be us\'d according to your state.   DUCHESS. That\'s bad enough, for I am but reproach-     And shall I then be us\'d reproachfully?   STANLEY. Like to a duchess and Duke Humphrey\'s lady;     According to that state you shall be us\'d.   DUCHESS. Sheriff, farewell, and better than I fare,     Although thou hast been conduct of my shame.   SHERIFF. It is my office; and, madam, pardon me.   DUCHESS. Ay, ay, farewell; thy office is discharg\'d.     Come, Stanley, shall we go?   STANLEY. Madam, your penance done, throw off this sheet,     And go we to attire you for our journey.   DUCHESS. My shame will not be shifted with my sheet.       No, it will hang upon my richest robes     And show itself, attire me how I can.     Go, lead the way; I long to see my prison.            Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. The Abbey at Bury St. Edmunds  Sound a sennet. Enter the KING, the QUEEN, CARDINAL, SUFFOLK, YORK, BUCKINGHAM, SALISBURY, and WARWICK, to the Parliament    KING HENRY. I muse my Lord of Gloucester is not come.     \'Tis not his wont to be the hindmost man,     Whate\'er occasion keeps him from us now.   QUEEN. Can you not see, or will ye not observe     The strangeness of his alter\'d countenance?     With what a majesty he bears himself;     How insolent of late he is become,     How proud, how peremptory, and unlike himself?     We know the time since he was mild and affable,     And if we did but glance a far-off look     Immediately he was upon his knee,     That all the court admir\'d him for submission.     But meet him now and be it in the morn,     When every one will give the time of day,     He knits his brow and shows an angry eye     And passeth by with stiff unbowed knee,       Disdaining duty that to us belongs.     Small curs are not regarded when they grin,     But great men tremble when the lion roars,     And Humphrey is no little man in England.     First note that he is near you in descent,     And should you fall he is the next will mount;     Me seemeth, then, it is no policy-     Respecting what a rancorous mind he bears,     And his advantage following your decease-     That he should come about your royal person     Or be admitted to your Highness\' Council.     By flattery hath he won the commons\' hearts;     And when he please to make commotion,     \'Tis to be fear\'d they all will follow him.     Now \'tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;     Suffer them now, and they\'ll o\'ergrow the garden     And choke the herbs for want of husbandry.     The reverent care I bear unto my lord     Made me collect these dangers in the Duke.     If it be fond, can it a woman\'s fear;       Which fear if better reasons can supplant,     I will subscribe, and say I wrong\'d the Duke.     My Lord of Suffolk, Buckingham, and York,     Reprove my allegation if you can,     Or else conclude my words effectual.   SUFFOLK. Well hath your Highness seen into this duke;     And had I first been put to speak my mind,     I think I should have told your Grace\'s tale.     The Duchess, by his subornation,     Upon my life, began her devilish practices;     Or if he were not privy to those faults,     Yet by reputing of his high descent-     As next the King he was successive heir-     And such high vaunts of his nobility,     Did instigate the bedlam brainsick Duchess     By wicked means to frame our sovereign\'s fall.     Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep,     And in his simple show he harbours treason.     The fox barks not when he would steal the lamb.     No, no, my sovereign, Gloucester is a man       Unsounded yet, and full of deep deceit.   CARDINAL. Did he not, contrary to form of law,     Devise strange deaths for small offences done?   YORK. And did he not, in his protectorship,     Levy great sums of money through the realm     For soldiers\' pay in France, and never sent it?     By means whereof the towns each day revolted.   BUCKINGHAM. Tut, these are petty faults to faults unknown     Which time will bring to light in smooth Duke Humphrey.   KING HENRY. My lords, at once: the care you have of us,     To mow down thorns that would annoy our foot,     Is worthy praise; but shall I speak my conscience?     Our kinsman Gloucester is as innocent     From meaning treason to our royal person     As is the sucking lamb or harmless dove:     The Duke is virtuous, mild, and too well given     To dream on evil or to work my downfall.   QUEEN. Ah, what\'s more dangerous than this fond affiance?     Seems he a dove? His feathers are but borrow\'d,     For he\'s disposed as the hateful raven.       Is he a lamb? His skin is surely lent him,     For he\'s inclin\'d as is the ravenous wolf.     Who cannot steal a shape that means deceit?     Take heed, my lord; the welfare of us all     Hangs on the cutting short that fraudful man.                            Enter SOMERSET    SOMERSET. All health unto my gracious sovereign!   KING HENRY. Welcome, Lord Somerset. What news from France?   SOMERSET. That all your interest in those territories     Is utterly bereft you; all is lost.   KING HENRY. Cold news, Lord Somerset; but God\'s will be done!   YORK. [Aside] Cold news for me; for I had hope of France     As firmly as I hope for fertile England.     Thus are my blossoms blasted in the bud,     And caterpillars eat my leaves away;     But I will remedy this gear ere long,     Or sell my title for a glorious grave.                             Enter GLOUCESTER    GLOUCESTER. All happiness unto my lord the King!     Pardon, my liege, that I have stay\'d so long.   SUFFOLK. Nay, Gloucester, know that thou art come too soon,     Unless thou wert more loyal than thou art.     I do arrest thee of high treason here.   GLOUCESTER. Well, Suffolk, thou shalt not see me blush     Nor change my countenance for this arrest:     A heart unspotted is not easily daunted.     The purest spring is not so free from mud     As I am clear from treason to my sovereign.     Who can accuse me? Wherein am I guilty?   YORK. \'Tis thought, my lord, that you took bribes of France     And, being Protector, stay\'d the soldiers\' pay;     By means whereof his Highness hath lost France.   GLOUCESTER. Is it but thought so? What are they that think it?     I never robb\'d the soldiers of their pay     Nor ever had one penny bribe from France.     So help me God, as I have watch\'d the night-       Ay, night by night- in studying good for England!     That doit that e\'er I wrested from the King,     Or any groat I hoarded to my use,     Be brought against me at my trial-day!     No; many a pound of mine own proper store,     Because I would not tax the needy commons,     Have I dispursed to the garrisons,     And never ask\'d for restitution.   CARDINAL. It serves you well, my lord, to say so much.   GLOUCESTER. I say no more than truth, so help me God!   YORK. In your protectorship you did devise     Strange tortures for offenders, never heard of,     That England was defam\'d by tyranny.   GLOUCESTER. Why, \'tis well known that whiles I was Protector     Pity was all the fault that was in me;     For I should melt at an offender\'s tears,     And lowly words were ransom for their fault.     Unless it were a bloody murderer,     Or foul felonious thief that fleec\'d poor passengers,     I never gave them condign punishment.       Murder indeed, that bloody sin, I tortur\'d     Above the felon or what trespass else.   SUFFOLK. My lord, these faults are easy, quickly answer\'d;     But mightier crimes are laid unto your charge,     Whereof you cannot easily purge yourself.     I do arrest you in His Highness\' name,     And here commit you to my Lord Cardinal     To keep until your further time of trial.   KING HENRY. My Lord of Gloucester, \'tis my special hope     That you will clear yourself from all suspense.     My conscience tells me you are innocent.   GLOUCESTER. Ah, gracious lord, these days are dangerous!     Virtue is chok\'d with foul ambition,     And charity chas\'d hence by rancour\'s hand;     Foul subornation is predominant,     And equity exil\'d your Highness\' land.     I know their complot is to have my life;     And if my death might make this island happy     And prove the period of their tyranny,     I would expend it with all willingness.       But mine is made the prologue to their play;     For thousands more that yet suspect no peril     Will not conclude their plotted tragedy.     Beaufort\'s red sparkling eyes blab his heart\'s malice,     And Suffolk\'s cloudy brow his stormy hate;     Sharp Buckingham unburdens with his tongue     The envious load that lies upon his heart;     And dogged York, that reaches at the moon,     Whose overweening arm I have pluck\'d back,     By false accuse doth level at my life.     And you, my sovereign lady, with the rest,     Causeless have laid disgraces on my head,     And with your best endeavour have stirr\'d up     My liefest liege to be mine enemy;     Ay, all of you have laid your heads together-     Myself had notice of your conventicles-     And all to make away my guiltless life.     I shall not want false witness to condemn me     Nor store of treasons to augment my guilt.     The ancient proverb will be well effected:       \'A staff is quickly found to beat a dog.\'   CARDINAL. My liege, his railing is intolerable.     If those that care to keep your royal person     From treason\'s secret knife and traitor\'s rage     Be thus upbraided, chid, and rated at,     And the offender granted scope of speech,     \'Twill make them cool in zeal unto your Grace.   SUFFOLK. Hath he not twit our sovereign lady here     With ignominious words, though clerkly couch\'d,     As if she had suborned some to swear     False allegations to o\'erthrow his state?   QUEEN. But I can give the loser leave to chide.   GLOUCESTER. Far truer spoke than meant: I lose indeed.     Beshrew the winners, for they play\'d me false!     And well such losers may have leave to speak.   BUCKINGHAM. He\'ll wrest the sense, and hold us here all day.     Lord Cardinal, he is your prisoner.   CARDINAL. Sirs, take away the Duke, and guard him sure.   GLOUCESTER. Ah, thus King Henry throws away his crutch     Before his legs be firm to bear his body!       Thus is the shepherd beaten from thy side,     And wolves are gnarling who shall gnaw thee first.     Ah, that my fear were false! ah, that it were!     For, good King Henry, thy decay I fear.        Exit, guarded   KING HENRY. My lords, what to your wisdoms seemeth best     Do or undo, as if ourself were here.   QUEEN. What, will your Highness leave the Parliament?   KING HENRY. Ay, Margaret; my heart is drown\'d with grief,     Whose flood begins to flow within mine eyes;     My body round engirt with misery-     For what\'s more miserable than discontent?     Ah, uncle Humphrey, in thy face I see     The map of honour, truth, and loyalty!     And yet, good Humphrey, is the hour to come     That e\'er I prov\'d thee false or fear\'d thy faith.     What louring star now envies thy estate     That these great lords, and Margaret our Queen,     Do seek subversion of thy harmless life?     Thou never didst them wrong, nor no man wrong;     And as the butcher takes away the calf,       And binds the wretch, and beats it when it strays,     Bearing it to the bloody slaughter-house,     Even so, remorseless, have they borne him hence;     And as the dam runs lowing up and down,     Looking the way her harmless young one went,     And can do nought but wail her darling\'s loss,     Even so myself bewails good Gloucester\'s case     With sad unhelpful tears, and with dimm\'d eyes     Look after him, and cannot do him good,     So mighty are his vowed enemies.     His fortunes I will weep, and \'twixt each groan     Say \'Who\'s a traitor? Gloucester he is none.\'           Exit   QUEEN. Free lords, cold snow melts with the sun\'s hot beams:     Henry my lord is cold in great affairs,     Too full of foolish pity; and Gloucester\'s show     Beguiles him as the mournful crocodile     With sorrow snares relenting passengers;     Or as the snake, roll\'d in a flow\'ring bank,     With shining checker\'d slough, doth sting a child     That for the beauty thinks it excellent.       Believe me, lords, were none more wise than I-     And yet herein I judge mine own wit good-     This Gloucester should be quickly rid the world     To rid us from the fear we have of him.   CARDINAL. That he should die is worthy policy;     But yet we want a colour for his death.     \'Tis meet he be condemn\'d by course of law.   SUFFOLK. But, in my mind, that were no policy:     The King will labour still to save his life;     The commons haply rise to save his life;     And yet we have but trivial argument,     More than mistrust, that shows him worthy death.   YORK. So that, by this, you would not have him die.   SUFFOLK. Ah, York, no man alive so fain as I!   YORK. \'Tis York that hath more reason for his death.     But, my Lord Cardinal, and you, my Lord of Suffolk,     Say as you think, and speak it from your souls:     Were\'t not all one an empty eagle were set     To guard the chicken from a hungry kite     As place Duke Humphrey for the King\'s Protector?     QUEEN. So the poor chicken should be sure of death.   SUFFOLK. Madam, \'tis true; and were\'t not madness then     To make the fox surveyor of the fold?     Who being accus\'d a crafty murderer,     His guilt should be but idly posted over,     Because his purpose is not executed.     No; let him die, in that he is a fox,     By nature prov\'d an enemy to the flock,     Before his chaps be stain\'d with crimson blood,     As Humphrey, prov\'d by reasons, to my liege.     And do not stand on quillets how to slay him;     Be it by gins, by snares, by subtlety,     Sleeping or waking, \'tis no matter how,     So he be dead; for that is good deceit     Which mates him first that first intends deceit.   QUEEN. Thrice-noble Suffolk, \'tis resolutely spoke.   SUFFOLK. Not resolute, except so much were done,     For things are often spoke and seldom meant;     But that my heart accordeth with my tongue,     Seeing the deed is meritorious,       And to preserve my sovereign from his foe,     Say but the word, and I will be his priest.   CARDINAL. But I would have him dead, my Lord of Suffolk,     Ere you can take due orders for a priest;     Say you consent and censure well the deed,     And I\'ll provide his executioner-     I tender so the safety of my liege.   SUFFOLK. Here is my hand the deed is worthy doing.   QUEEN. And so say I.   YORK. And I. And now we three have spoke it,     It skills not greatly who impugns our doom.                            Enter a POST    POST. Great lords, from Ireland am I come amain     To signify that rebels there are up     And put the Englishmen unto the sword.     Send succours, lords, and stop the rage betime,     Before the wound do grow uncurable;     For, being green, there is great hope of help.     CARDINAL. A breach that craves a quick expedient stop!     What counsel give you in this weighty cause?   YORK. That Somerset be sent as Regent thither;     \'Tis meet that lucky ruler be employ\'d,     Witness the fortune he hath had in France.   SOMERSET. If York, with all his far-fet policy,     Had been the Regent there instead of me,     He never would have stay\'d in France so long.   YORK. No, not to lose it all as thou hast done.     I rather would have lost my life betimes     Than bring a burden of dishonour home     By staying there so long till all were lost.     Show me one scar character\'d on thy skin:     Men\'s flesh preserv\'d so whole do seldom win.   QUEEN. Nay then, this spark will prove a raging fire,     If wind and fuel be brought to feed it with;     No more, good York; sweet Somerset, be still.     Thy fortune, York, hadst thou been Regent there,     Might happily have prov\'d far worse than his.   YORK. What, worse than nought? Nay, then a shame take all!     SOMERSET. And in the number, thee that wishest shame!   CARDINAL. My Lord of York, try what your fortune is.     Th\' uncivil kerns of Ireland are in arms     And temper clay with blood of Englishmen;     To Ireland will you lead a band of men,     Collected choicely, from each county some,     And try your hap against the Irishmen?   YORK. I will, my lord, so please his Majesty.   SUFFOLK. Why, our authority is his consent,     And what we do establish he confirms;     Then, noble York, take thou this task in hand.   YORK. I am content; provide me soldiers, lords,     Whiles I take order for mine own affairs.   SUFFOLK. A charge, Lord York, that I will see perform\'d.     But now return we to the false Duke Humphrey.   CARDINAL. No more of him; for I will deal with him     That henceforth he shall trouble us no more.     And so break off; the day is almost spent.     Lord Suffolk, you and I must talk of that event.   YORK. My Lord of Suffolk, within fourteen days       At Bristol I expect my soldiers;     For there I\'ll ship them all for Ireland.   SUFFOLK. I\'ll see it truly done, my Lord of York.                                              Exeunt all but YORK   YORK. Now, York, or never, steel thy fearful thoughts     And change misdoubt to resolution;     Be that thou hop\'st to be; or what thou art     Resign to death- it is not worth th\' enjoying.     Let pale-fac\'d fear keep with the mean-born man     And find no harbour in a royal heart.     Faster than spring-time show\'rs comes thought on thought,     And not a thought but thinks on dignity.     My brain, more busy than the labouring spider,     Weaves tedious snares to trap mine enemies.     Well, nobles, well, \'tis politicly done     To send me packing with an host of men.     I fear me you but warm the starved snake,     Who, cherish\'d in your breasts, will sting your hearts.     \'Twas men I lack\'d, and you will give them me;     I take it kindly. Yet be well assur\'d       You put sharp weapons in a madman\'s hands.     Whiles I in Ireland nourish a mighty band,     I will stir up in England some black storm     Shall blow ten thousand souls to heaven or hell;     And this fell tempest shall not cease to rage     Until the golden circuit on my head,     Like to the glorious sun\'s transparent beams,     Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw.     And for a minister of my intent     I have seduc\'d a headstrong Kentishman,     John Cade of Ashford,     To make commotion, as full well he can,     Under the tide of John Mortimer.     In Ireland have I seen this stubborn Cade     Oppose himself against a troop of kerns,     And fought so long tiff that his thighs with darts     Were almost like a sharp-quill\'d porpentine;     And in the end being rescu\'d, I have seen     Him caper upright like a wild Morisco,     Shaking the bloody darts as he his bells.       Full often, like a shag-hair\'d crafty kern,     Hath he conversed with the enemy,     And undiscover\'d come to me again     And given me notice of their villainies.     This devil here shall be my substitute;     For that John Mortimer, which now is dead,     In face, in gait, in speech, he doth resemble.     By this I shall perceive the commons\' mind,     How they affect the house and claim of York.     Say he be taken, rack\'d, and tortured;     I know no pain they can inflict upon him     Will make him say I mov\'d him to those arms.     Say that he thrive, as \'tis great like he will,     Why, then from Ireland come I with my strength,     And reap the harvest which that rascal sow\'d;     For Humphrey being dead, as he shall be,     And Henry put apart, the next for me.                   Exit     SCENE II. Bury St. Edmunds. A room of state  Enter two or three MURDERERS running over the stage, from the murder of DUKE HUMPHREY    FIRST MURDERER. Run to my Lord of Suffolk; let him know     We have dispatch\'d the Duke, as he commanded.   SECOND MURDERER. O that it were to do! What have we done?     Didst ever hear a man so penitent?                             Enter SUFFOLK    FIRST MURDERER. Here comes my lord.   SUFFOLK. Now, sirs, have you dispatch\'d this thing?   FIRST MURDERER. Ay, my good lord, he\'s dead.   SUFFOLK. Why, that\'s well said. Go, get you to my house;     I will reward you for this venturous deed.     The King and all the peers are here at hand.     Have you laid fair the bed? Is all things well,     According as I gave directions?   FIRST MURDERER. \'Tis, my good lord.     SUFFOLK. Away! be gone.                       Exeunt MURDERERS               Sound trumpets. Enter the KING, the QUEEN,                 CARDINAL, SOMERSET, with attendants    KING HENRY. Go call our uncle to our presence straight;     Say we intend to try his Grace to-day,     If he be guilty, as \'tis published.   SUFFOLK. I\'ll call him presently, my noble lord.          Exit   KING HENRY. Lords, take your places; and, I pray you all,     Proceed no straiter \'gainst our uncle Gloucester     Than from true evidence, of good esteem,     He be approv\'d in practice culpable.   QUEEN. God forbid any malice should prevail     That faultless may condemn a nobleman!     Pray God he may acquit him of suspicion!   KING HENRY. I thank thee, Meg; these words content me much.                             Re-enter SUFFOLK        How now! Why look\'st thou pale? Why tremblest thou?     Where is our uncle? What\'s the matter, Suffolk?   SUFFOLK. Dead in his bed, my lord; Gloucester is dead.   QUEEN. Marry, God forfend!   CARDINAL. God\'s secret judgment! I did dream to-night     The Duke was dumb and could not speak a word.                                                [The KING swoons]   QUEEN. How fares my lord? Help, lords! The King is dead.   SOMERSET. Rear up his body; wring him by the nose.   QUEEN. Run, go, help, help! O Henry, ope thine eyes!   SUFFOLK. He doth revive again; madam, be patient.   KING. O heavenly God!   QUEEN. How fares my gracious lord?   SUFFOLK. Comfort, my sovereign! Gracious Henry, comfort!   KING HENRY. What, doth my Lord of Suffolk comfort me?     Came he right now to sing a raven\'s note,     Whose dismal tune bereft my vital pow\'rs;     And thinks he that the chirping of a wren,     By crying comfort from a hollow breast,     Can chase away the first conceived sound?       Hide not thy poison with such sug\'red words;     Lay not thy hands on me; forbear, I say,     Their touch affrights me as a serpent\'s sting.     Thou baleful messenger, out of my sight!     Upon thy eye-balls murderous tyranny     Sits in grim majesty to fright the world.     Look not upon me, for thine eyes are wounding;     Yet do not go away; come, basilisk,     And kill the innocent gazer with thy sight;     For in the shade of death I shall find joy-     In life but double death,\'now Gloucester\'s dead.   QUEEN. Why do you rate my Lord of Suffolk thus?     Although the Duke was enemy to him,     Yet he most Christian-like laments his death;     And for myself- foe as he was to me-     Might liquid tears, or heart-offending groans,     Or blood-consuming sighs, recall his life,     I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans,     Look pale as primrose with blood-drinking sighs,     And all to have the noble Duke alive.       What know I how the world may deem of me?     For it is known we were but hollow friends:     It may be judg\'d I made the Duke away;     So shall my name with slander\'s tongue be wounded,     And princes\' courts be fill\'d with my reproach.     This get I by his death. Ay me, unhappy!     To be a queen and crown\'d with infamy!   KING HENRY. Ah, woe is me for Gloucester, wretched man!   QUEEN. Be woe for me, more wretched than he is.     What, dost thou turn away, and hide thy face?     I am no loathsome leper- look on me.     What, art thou like the adder waxen deaf?     Be poisonous too, and kill thy forlorn Queen.     Is all thy comfort shut in Gloucester\'s tomb?     Why, then Dame Margaret was ne\'er thy joy.     Erect his statue and worship it,     And make my image but an alehouse sign.     Was I for this nigh wreck\'d upon the sea,     And twice by awkward wind from England\'s bank     Drove back again unto my native clime?       What boded this but well-forewarning wind     Did seem to say \'Seek not a scorpion\'s nest,     Nor set no footing on this unkind shore\'?     What did I then but curs\'d the gentle gusts,     And he that loos\'d them forth their brazen caves;     And bid them blow towards England\'s blessed shore,     Or turn our stern upon a dreadful rock?     Yet Aeolus would not be a murderer,     But left that hateful office unto thee.     The pretty-vaulting sea refus\'d to drown me,     Knowing that thou wouldst have me drown\'d on shore     With tears as salt as sea through thy unkindness;     The splitting rocks cow\'r\'d in the sinking sands     And would not dash me with their ragged sides,     Because thy flinty heart, more hard than they,     Might in thy palace perish Margaret.     As far as I could ken thy chalky cliffs,     When from thy shore the tempest beat us back,     I stood upon the hatches in the storm;     And when the dusky sky began to rob       My earnest-gaping sight of thy land\'s view,     I took a costly jewel from my neck-     A heart it was, bound in with diamonds-     And threw it towards thy land. The sea receiv\'d it;     And so I wish\'d thy body might my heart.     And even with this I lost fair England\'s view,     And bid mine eyes be packing with my heart,     And call\'d them blind and dusky spectacles     For losing ken of Albion\'s wished coast.     How often have I tempted Suffolk\'s tongue-     The agent of thy foul inconstancy-     To sit and witch me, as Ascanius did     When he to madding Dido would unfold     His father\'s acts commenc\'d in burning Troy!     Am I not witch\'d like her? Or thou not false like him?     Ay me, I can no more! Die, Margaret,     For Henry weeps that thou dost live so long.                 Noise within. Enter WARWICK, SALISBURY,                           and many commons      WARWICK. It is reported, mighty sovereign,     That good Duke Humphrey traitorously is murd\'red     By Suffolk and the Cardinal Beaufort\'s means.     The commons, like an angry hive of bees     That want their leader, scatter up and down     And care not who they sting in his revenge.     Myself have calm\'d their spleenful mutiny     Until they hear the order of his death.   KING HENRY. That he is dead, good Warwick, \'tis too true;     But how he died God knows, not Henry.     Enter his chamber, view his breathless corpse,     And comment then upon his sudden death.   WARWICK. That shall I do, my liege. Stay, Salisbury,     With the rude multitude till I return.                  Exit                                    Exit SALISBURY with the commons   KING HENRY. O Thou that judgest all things, stay my thoughts-     My thoughts that labour to persuade my soul     Some violent hands were laid on Humphrey\'s life!     If my suspect be false, forgive me, God;       For judgment only doth belong to Thee.     Fain would I go to chafe his paly lips     With twenty thousand kisses and to drain     Upon his face an ocean of salt tears     To tell my love unto his dumb deaf trunk;     And with my fingers feel his hand un-feeling;     But all in vain are these mean obsequies;     And to survey his dead and earthy image,     What were it but to make my sorrow greater?                 Bed put forth with the body. Enter WARWICK    WARWICK. Come hither, gracious sovereign, view this body.   KING HENRY. That is to see how deep my grave is made;     For with his soul fled all my worldly solace,     For, seeing him, I see my life in death.   WARWICK. As surely as my soul intends to live     With that dread King that took our state upon Him     To free us from his Father\'s wrathful curse,     I do believe that violent hands were laid       Upon the life of this thrice-famed Duke.   SUFFOLK. A dreadful oath, sworn with a solemn tongue!     What instance gives Lord Warwick for his vow?   WARWICK. See how the blood is settled in his face.     Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost,     Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless,     Being all descended to the labouring heart,     Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,     Attracts the same for aidance \'gainst the enemy,     Which with the heart there cools, and ne\'er returneth     To blush and beautify the cheek again.     But see, his face is black and full of blood;     His eye-balls further out than when he liv\'d,     Staring full ghastly like a strangled man;     His hair uprear\'d, his nostrils stretch\'d with struggling;     His hands abroad display\'d, as one that grasp\'d     And tugg\'d for life, and was by strength subdu\'d.     Look, on the sheets his hair, you see, is sticking;     His well-proportion\'d beard made rough and rugged,     Like to the summer\'s corn by tempest lodged.       It cannot be but he was murd\'red here:     The least of all these signs were probable.   SUFFOLK. Why, Warwick, who should do the Duke to death?     Myself and Beaufort had him in protection;     And we, I hope, sir, are no murderers.   WARWICK. But both of you were vow\'d Duke Humphrey\'s foes;     And you, forsooth, had the good Duke to keep.     \'Tis like you would not feast him like a friend;     And \'tis well seen he found an enemy.   QUEEN. Then you, belike, suspect these noblemen     As guilty of Duke Humphrey\'s timeless death.   WARWICK. Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh,     And sees fast by a butcher with an axe,     But will suspect \'twas he that made the slaughter?     Who finds the partridge in the puttock\'s nest     But may imagine how the bird was dead,     Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?     Even so suspicious is this tragedy.   QUEEN. Are you the butcher, Suffolk? Where\'s your knife?     Is Beaufort term\'d a kite? Where are his talons?     SUFFOLK. I wear no knife to slaughter sleeping men;     But here\'s a vengeful sword, rusted with ease,     That shall be scoured in his rancorous heart     That slanders me with murder\'s crimson badge.     Say if thou dar\'st, proud Lord of Warwickshire,     That I am faulty in Duke Humphrey\'s death.                            Exeunt CARDINAL, SOMERSET, and others   WARWICK. What dares not Warwick, if false Suffolk dare him?   QUEEN. He dares not calm his contumelious spirit,     Nor cease to be an arrogant controller,     Though Suffolk dare him twenty thousand times.   WARWICK. Madam, be still- with reverence may I say;     For every word you speak in his behalf     Is slander to your royal dignity.   SUFFOLK. Blunt-witted lord, ignoble in demeanour,     If ever lady wrong\'d her lord so much,     Thy mother took into her blameful bed     Some stern untutor\'d churl, and noble stock     Was graft with crab-tree slip, whose fruit thou art,     And never of the Nevils\' noble race.     WARWICK. But that the guilt of murder bucklers thee,     And I should rob the deathsman of his fee,     Quitting thee thereby of ten thousand shames,     And that my sovereign\'s presence makes me mild,     I would, false murd\'rous coward, on thy knee     Make thee beg pardon for thy passed speech     And say it was thy mother that thou meant\'st,     That thou thyself was born in bastardy;     And, after all this fearful homage done,     Give thee thy hire and send thy soul to hell,     Pernicious blood-sucker of sleeping men.   SUFFOLK. Thou shalt be waking while I shed thy blood,     If from this presence thou dar\'st go with me.   WARWICK. Away even now, or I will drag thee hence.     Unworthy though thou art, I\'ll cope with thee,     And do some service to Duke Humphrey\'s ghost.                                       Exeunt SUFFOLK and WARWICK   KING HENRY. What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?     Thrice is he arm\'d that hath his quarrel just;     And he but naked, though lock\'d up in steel,       Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.                                                 [A noise within]   QUEEN. What noise is this?         Re-enter SUFFOLK and WARWICK, with their weapons drawn    KING. Why, how now, lords, your wrathful weapons drawn     Here in our presence! Dare you be so bold?     Why, what tumultuous clamour have we here?   SUFFOLK. The trait\'rous Warwick, with the men of Bury,     Set all upon me, mighty sovereign.                          Re-enter SALISBURY    SALISBURY. [To the Commons within] Sirs, stand apart, the King       shall know your mind.     Dread lord, the commons send you word by me     Unless Lord Suffolk straight be done to death,     Or banished fair England\'s territories,     They will by violence tear him from your palace       And torture him with grievous ling\'ring death.     They say by him the good Duke Humphrey died;     They say in him they fear your Highness\' death;     And mere instinct of love and loyalty,     Free from a stubborn opposite intent,     As being thought to contradict your liking,     Makes them thus forward in his banishment.     They say, in care of your most royal person,     That if your Highness should intend to sleep     And charge that no man should disturb your rest,     In pain of your dislike or pain of death,     Yet, notwithstanding such a strait edict,     Were there a serpent seen with forked tongue     That slily glided towards your Majesty,     It were but necessary you were wak\'d,     Lest, being suffer\'d in that harmful slumber,     The mortal worm might make the sleep eternal.     And therefore do they cry, though you forbid,     That they will guard you, whe\'er you will or no,     From such fell serpents as false Suffolk is;       With whose envenomed and fatal sting     Your loving uncle, twenty times his worth,     They say, is shamefully bereft of life.   COMMONS. [Within] An answer from the King, my Lord of Salisbury!   SUFFOLK. \'Tis like the commons, rude unpolish\'d hinds,     Could send such message to their sovereign;     But you, my lord, were glad to be employ\'d,     To show how quaint an orator you are.     But all the honour Salisbury hath won     Is that he was the lord ambassador     Sent from a sort of tinkers to the King.   COMMONS. [Within] An answer from the King, or we will all break in!   KING HENRY. Go, Salisbury, and tell them all from me     I thank them for their tender loving care;     And had I not been cited so by them,     Yet did I purpose as they do entreat;     For sure my thoughts do hourly prophesy     Mischance unto my state by Suffolk\'s means.     And therefore by His Majesty I swear,     Whose far unworthy deputy I am,       He shall not breathe infection in this air     But three days longer, on the pain of death.                                                   Exit SALISBURY   QUEEN. O Henry, let me plead for gentle Suffolk!   KING HENRY. Ungentle Queen, to call him gentle Suffolk!     No more, I say; if thou dost plead for him,     Thou wilt but add increase unto my wrath.     Had I but said, I would have kept my word;     But when I swear, it is irrevocable.     If after three days\' space thou here be\'st found     On any ground that I am ruler of,     The world shall not be ransom for thy life.     Come, Warwick, come, good Warwick, go with me;     I have great matters to impart to thee.                                 Exeunt all but QUEEN and SUFFOLK   QUEEN. Mischance and sorrow go along with you!     Heart\'s discontent and sour affliction     Be playfellows to keep you company!     There\'s two of you; the devil make a third,     And threefold vengeance tend upon your steps!     SUFFOLK. Cease, gentle Queen, these execrations,     And let thy Suffolk take his heavy leave.   QUEEN. Fie, coward woman and soft-hearted wretch,     Has thou not spirit to curse thine enemy?   SUFFOLK. A plague upon them! Wherefore should I curse them?     Would curses kill as doth the mandrake\'s groan,     I would invent as bitter searching terms,     As curst, as harsh, and horrible to hear,     Deliver\'d strongly through my fixed teeth,     With full as many signs of deadly hate,     As lean-fac\'d Envy in her loathsome cave.     My tongue should stumble in mine earnest words,     Mine eyes should sparkle like the beaten flint,     Mine hair be fix\'d an end, as one distract;     Ay, every joint should seem to curse and ban;     And even now my burden\'d heart would break,     Should I not curse them. Poison be their drink!     Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest that they taste!     Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress trees!     Their chiefest prospect murd\'ring basilisks!       Their softest touch as smart as lizards\' stings!     Their music frightful as the serpent\'s hiss,     And boding screech-owls make the consort full!     all the foul terrors in dark-seated hell-   QUEEN. Enough, sweet Suffolk, thou torment\'st thyself;     And these dread curses, like the sun \'gainst glass,     Or like an overcharged gun, recoil,     And turns the force of them upon thyself.   SUFFOLK. You bade me ban, and will you bid me leave?     Now, by the ground that I am banish\'d from,     Well could I curse away a winter\'s night,     Though standing naked on a mountain top     Where biting cold would never let grass grow,     And think it but a minute spent in sport.   QUEEN. O, let me entreat thee cease! Give me thy hand,     That I may dew it with my mournful tears;     Nor let the rain of heaven wet this place     To wash away my woeful monuments.     O, could this kiss be printed in thy hand,     That thou might\'st think upon these by the seal,       Through whom a thousand sighs are breath\'d for thee!     So, get thee gone, that I may know my grief;     \'Tis but surmis\'d whiles thou art standing by,     As one that surfeits thinking on a want.     I will repeal thee or, be well assur\'d,     Adventure to be banished myself;     And banished I am, if but from thee.     Go, speak not to me; even now be gone.     O, go not yet! Even thus two friends condemn\'d     Embrace, and kiss, and take ten thousand leaves,     Loather a hundred times to part than die.     Yet now, farewell; and farewell life with thee!   SUFFOLK. Thus is poor Suffolk ten times banished,     Once by the King and three times thrice by thee,     \'Tis not the land I care for, wert thou thence;     A wilderness is populous enough,     So Suffolk had thy heavenly company;     For where thou art, there is the world itself,     With every several pleasure in the world;     And where thou art not, desolation.       I can no more: Live thou to joy thy life;     Myself no joy in nought but that thou liv\'st.                             Enter VAUX    QUEEN. Whither goes Vaux so fast? What news, I prithee?   VAUX. To signify unto his Majesty     That Cardinal Beaufort is at point of death;     For suddenly a grievous sickness took him     That makes him gasp, and stare, and catch the air,     Blaspheming God, and cursing men on earth.     Sometime he talks as if Duke Humphrey\'s ghost     Were by his side; sometime he calls the King     And whispers to his pillow, as to him,     The secrets of his overcharged soul;     And I am sent to tell his Majesty     That even now he cries aloud for him.   QUEEN. Go tell this heavy message to the King.       Exit VAUX     Ay me! What is this world! What news are these!     But wherefore grieve I at an hour\'s poor loss,       Omitting Suffolk\'s exile, my soul\'s treasure?     Why only, Suffolk, mourn I not for thee,     And with the southern clouds contend in tears-     Theirs for the earth\'s increase, mine for my sorrows?     Now get thee hence: the King, thou know\'st, is coming;     If thou be found by me; thou art but dead.   SUFFOLK. If I depart from thee I cannot live;     And in thy sight to die, what were it else     But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?     Here could I breathe my soul into the air,     As mild and gentle as the cradle-babe     Dying with mother\'s dug between its lips;     Where, from thy sight, I should be raging mad     And cry out for thee to close up mine eyes,     To have thee with thy lips to stop my mouth;     So shouldst thou either turn my flying soul,     Or I should breathe it so into thy body,     And then it liv\'d in sweet Elysium.     To die by thee were but to die in jest:     From thee to die were torture more than death.       O, let me stay, befall what may befall!   QUEEN. Away! Though parting be a fretful corrosive,     It is applied to a deathful wound.     To France, sweet Suffolk. Let me hear from thee;     For whereso\'er thou art in this world\'s globe     I\'ll have an Iris that shall find thee out.   SUFFOLK. I go.   QUEEN. And take my heart with thee.           [She kisses him]   SUFFOLK. A jewel, lock\'d into the woefull\'st cask     That ever did contain a thing of worth.     Even as a splitted bark, so sunder we:     This way fall I to death.   QUEEN. This way for me.                       Exeunt severally     SCENE III. London. CARDINAL BEAUFORT\'S bedchamber  Enter the KING, SALISBURY, and WARWICK, to the CARDINAL in bed    KING HENRY. How fares my lord? Speak, Beaufort, to thy sovereign.   CARDINAL. If thou be\'st Death I\'ll give thee England\'s treasure,     Enough to purchase such another island,     So thou wilt let me live and feel no pain.   KING HENRY. Ah, what a sign it is of evil life     Where death\'s approach is seen so terrible!   WARWICK. Beaufort, it is thy sovereign speaks to thee.   CARDINAL. Bring me unto my trial when you will.     Died he not in his bed? Where should he die?     Can I make men live, whe\'er they will or no?     O, torture me no more! I will confess.     Alive again? Then show me where he is;     I\'ll give a thousand pound to look upon him.     He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them.     Comb down his hair; look, look! it stands upright,     Like lime-twigs set to catch my winged soul!     Give me some drink; and bid the apothecary       Bring the strong poison that I bought of him.   KING HENRY. O Thou eternal Mover of the heavens,     Look with a gentle eye upon this wretch!     O, beat away the busy meddling fiend     That lays strong siege unto this wretch\'s soul,     And from his bosom purge this black despair!   WARWICK. See how the pangs of death do make him grin   SALISBURY. Disturb him not, let him pass peaceably.   KING HENRY. Peace to his soul, if God\'s good pleasure be!     Lord Card\'nal, if thou think\'st on heaven\'s bliss,     Hold up thy hand, make signal of thy hope.     He dies, and makes no sign: O God, forgive him!   WARWICK. So bad a death argues a monstrous life.   KING HENRY. Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.     Close up his eyes, and draw the curtain close;     And let us all to meditation.                         Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. The coast of Kent  Alarum.  Fight at sea.  Ordnance goes off.  Enter a LIEUTENANT, a SHIPMASTER and his MATE, and WALTER WHITMORE, with sailors; SUFFOLK and other GENTLEMEN, as prisoners    LIEUTENANT. The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day     Is crept into the bosom of the sea;     And now loud-howling wolves arouse the jades     That drag the tragic melancholy night;     Who with their drowsy, slow, and flagging wings     Clip dead men\'s graves, and from their misty jaws     Breathe foul contagious darkness in the air.     Therefore bring forth the soldiers of our prize;     For, whilst our pinnace anchors in the Downs,     Here shall they make their ransom on the sand,     Or with their blood stain this discoloured shore.     Master, this prisoner freely give I thee;     And thou that art his mate make boot of this;     The other, Walter Whitmore, is thy share.     FIRST GENTLEMAN. What is my ransom, master, let me know?   MASTER. A thousand crowns, or else lay down your head.   MATE. And so much shall you give, or off goes yours.   LIEUTENANT. What, think you much to pay two thousand crowns,     And bear the name and port of gentlemen?     Cut both the villains\' throats- for die you shall;     The lives of those which we have lost in fight     Be counterpois\'d with such a petty sum!   FIRST GENTLEMAN. I\'ll give it, sir: and therefore spare my life.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. And so will I, and write home for it straight.   WHITMORE. I lost mine eye in laying the prize aboard,     [To SUFFOLK] And therefore, to revenge it, shalt thou die;     And so should these, if I might have my will.   LIEUTENANT. Be not so rash; take ransom, let him live.   SUFFOLK. Look on my George, I am a gentleman:     Rate me at what thou wilt, thou shalt be paid.   WHITMORE. And so am I: my name is Walter Whitmore.     How now! Why start\'st thou? What, doth death affright?   SUFFOLK. Thy name affrights me, in whose sound is death.     A cunning man did calculate my birth       And told me that by water I should die;     Yet let not this make thee be bloody-minded;     Thy name is Gualtier, being rightly sounded.   WHITMORE. Gualtier or Walter, which it is I care not:     Never yet did base dishonour blur our name     But with our sword we wip\'d away the blot;     Therefore, when merchant-like I sell revenge,     Broke be my sword, my arms torn and defac\'d,     And I proclaim\'d a coward through the world.   SUFFOLK. Stay, Whitmore, for thy prisoner is a prince,     The Duke of Suffolk, William de la Pole.   WHITMORE. The Duke of Suffolk muffled up in rags?   SUFFOLK. Ay, but these rags are no part of the Duke:     Jove sometime went disguis\'d, and why not I?   LIEUTENANT. But Jove was never slain, as thou shalt be.   SUFFOLK. Obscure and lowly swain, King Henry\'s blood,     The honourable blood of Lancaster,     Must not be shed by such a jaded groom.     Hast thou not kiss\'d thy hand and held my stirrup,     Bareheaded plodded by my foot-cloth mule,       And thought thee happy when I shook my head?     How often hast thou waited at my cup,     Fed from my trencher, kneel\'d down at the board,     When I have feasted with Queen Margaret?     Remember it, and let it make thee crestfall\'n,     Ay, and allay thus thy abortive pride,     How in our voiding-lobby hast thou stood     And duly waited for my coming forth.     This hand of mine hath writ in thy behalf,     And therefore shall it charm thy riotous tongue.   WHITMORE. Speak, Captain, shall I stab the forlorn swain?   LIEUTENANT. First let my words stab him, as he hath me.   SUFFOLK. Base slave, thy words are blunt, and so art thou.   LIEUTENANT. Convey him hence, and on our longboat\'s side     Strike off his head.   SUFFOLK. Thou dar\'st not, for thy own.   LIEUTENANT. Poole!   SUFFOLK. Poole?   LIEUTENANT. Ay, kennel, puddle, sink, whose filth and dirt     Troubles the silver spring where England drinks;       Now will I dam up this thy yawning mouth     For swallowing the treasure of the realm.     Thy lips, that kiss\'d the Queen, shall sweep the ground;     And thou that smil\'dst at good Duke Humphrey\'s death     Against the senseless winds shalt grin in vain,     Who in contempt shall hiss at thee again;     And wedded be thou to the hags of hell     For daring to affy a mighty lord     Unto the daughter of a worthless king,     Having neither subject, wealth, nor diadem.     By devilish policy art thou grown great,     And, like ambitious Sylla, overgorg\'d     With gobbets of thy mother\'s bleeding heart.     By thee Anjou and Maine were sold to France;     The false revolting Normans thorough thee     Disdain to call us lord; and Picardy     Hath slain their governors, surpris\'d our forts,     And sent the ragged soldiers wounded home.     The princely Warwick, and the Nevils all,     Whose dreadful swords were never drawn in vain,       As hating thee, are rising up in arms;     And now the house of York- thrust from the crown     By shameful murder of a guiltless king     And lofty proud encroaching tyranny-     Burns with revenging fire, whose hopeful colours     Advance our half-fac\'d sun, striving to shine,     Under the which is writ \'Invitis nubibus.\'     The commons here in Kent are up in arms;     And to conclude, reproach and beggary     Is crept into the palace of our King,     And all by thee. Away! convey him hence.   SUFFOLK. O that I were a god, to shoot forth thunder     Upon these paltry, servile, abject drudges!     Small things make base men proud: this villain here,     Being captain of a pinnace, threatens more     Than Bargulus, the strong Illyrian pirate.     Drones suck not eagles\' blood but rob beehives.     It is impossible that I should die     By such a lowly vassal as thyself.     Thy words move rage and not remorse in me.       I go of message from the Queen to France:     I charge thee waft me safely cross the Channel.   LIEUTENANT. Walter-   WHITMORE. Come, Suffolk, I must waft thee to thy death.   SUFFOLK. Gelidus timor occupat artus: it is thee I fear.   WHITMORE. Thou shalt have cause to fear before I leave thee.     What, are ye daunted now? Now will ye stoop?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. My gracious lord, entreat him, speak him fair.   SUFFOLK. Suffolk\'s imperial tongue is stem and rough,     Us\'d to command, untaught to plead for favour.     Far be it we should honour such as these     With humble suit: no, rather let my head     Stoop to the block than these knees bow to any     Save to the God of heaven and to my king;     And sooner dance upon a bloody pole     Than stand uncover\'d to the vulgar groom.     True nobility is exempt from fear:     More can I bear than you dare execute.   LIEUTENANT. Hale him away, and let him talk no more.   SUFFOLK. Come, soldiers, show what cruelty ye can,       That this my death may never be forgot-     Great men oft die by vile bezonians:     A Roman sworder and banditto slave     Murder\'d sweet Tully; Brutus\' bastard hand     Stabb\'d Julius Caesar; savage islanders     Pompey the Great; and Suffolk dies by pirates.                                         Exit WALTER with SUFFOLK   LIEUTENANT. And as for these, whose ransom we have set,     It is our pleasure one of them depart;     Therefore come you with us, and let him go.                               Exeunt all but the FIRST GENTLEMAN                  Re-enter WHITMORE with SUFFOLK\'S body    WHITMORE. There let his head and lifeless body lie,     Until the Queen his mistress bury it.                   Exit   FIRST GENTLEMAN. O barbarous and bloody spectacle!     His body will I bear unto the King.     If he revenge it not, yet will his friends;     So will the Queen, that living held him dear.                                                 Exit with the body     SCENE II. Blackheath  Enter GEORGE BEVIS and JOHN HOLLAND    GEORGE. Come and get thee a sword, though made of a lath; they have     been up these two days.   JOHN. They have the more need to sleep now, then.   GEORGE. I tell thee Jack Cade the clothier means to dress the     commonwealth, and turn it, and set a new nap upon it.   JOHN. So he had need, for \'tis threadbare. Well, I say it was never     merry world in England since gentlemen came up.   GEORGE. O miserable age! Virtue is not regarded in handicraftsmen.   JOHN. The nobility think scorn to go in leather aprons.   GEORGE. Nay, more, the King\'s Council are no good workmen.   JOHN. True; and yet it is said \'Labour in thy vocation\'; which is     as much to say as \'Let the magistrates be labouring men\'; and     therefore should we be magistrates.   GEORGE. Thou hast hit it; for there\'s no better sign of a brave     mind than a hard hand.   JOHN. I see them! I see them! There\'s Best\'s son, the tanner of     Wingham-     GEORGE. He shall have the skins of our enemies to make dog\'s     leather of.   JOHN. And Dick the butcher-   GEORGE. Then is sin struck down, like an ox, and iniquity\'s throat     cut like a calf.   JOHN. And Smith the weaver-   GEORGE. Argo, their thread of life is spun.   JOHN. Come, come, let\'s fall in with them.                  Drum. Enter CADE, DICK THE BUTCHER, SMITH              THE WEAVER, and a SAWYER, with infinite numbers    CADE. We John Cade, so term\'d of our supposed father-   DICK. [Aside] Or rather, of stealing a cade of herrings.   CADE. For our enemies shall fall before us, inspired with the     spirit of putting down kings and princes- command silence.   DICK. Silence!   CADE. My father was a Mortimer-   DICK. [Aside] He was an honest man and a good bricklayer.   CADE. My mother a Plantagenet-     DICK. [Aside] I knew her well; she was a midwife.   CADE. My wife descended of the Lacies-   DICK. [Aside] She was, indeed, a pedlar\'s daughter, and sold many     laces.   SMITH. [Aside] But now of late, not able to travel with her furr\'d     pack, she washes bucks here at home.   CADE. Therefore am I of an honourable house.   DICK. [Aside] Ay, by my faith, the field is honourable, and there     was he born, under a hedge, for his father had never a house but     the cage.   CADE. Valiant I am.   SMITH. [Aside] \'A must needs; for beggary is valiant.   CADE. I am able to endure much.   DICK. [Aside] No question of that; for I have seen him whipt three     market days together.   CADE. I fear neither sword nor fire.   SMITH. [Aside] He need not fear the sword, for his coat is of     proof.   DICK. [Aside] But methinks he should stand in fear of fire, being     burnt i\' th\' hand for stealing of sheep.     CADE. Be brave, then, for your captain is brave, and vows     reformation. There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves     sold for a penny; the three-hoop\'d pot shall have ten hoops; and     I will make it felony to drink small beer. All the realm shall be     in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass. And     when I am king- as king I will be   ALL. God save your Majesty!   CADE. I thank you, good people- there shall be no money; all shall     eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in one     livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship me their     lord.   DICK. The first thing we do, let\'s kill all the lawyers.   CADE. Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that     of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? That     parchment, being scribbl\'d o\'er, should undo a man? Some say the     bee stings; but I say \'tis the bee\'s wax; for I did but seal once     to a thing, and I was never mine own man since. How now! Who\'s     there?                Enter some, bringing in the CLERK OF CHATHAM      SMITH. The clerk of Chatham. He can write and read and cast     accompt.   CADE. O monstrous!   SMITH. We took him setting of boys\' copies.   CADE. Here\'s a villain!   SMITH. Has a book in his pocket with red letters in\'t.   CADE. Nay, then he is a conjurer.   DICK. Nay, he can make obligations and write court-hand.   CADE. I am sorry for\'t; the man is a proper man, of mine honour;     unless I find him guilty, he shall not die. Come hither, sirrah,     I must examine thee. What is thy name?   CLERK. Emmanuel.   DICK. They use to write it on the top of letters; \'twill go hard     with you.   CADE. Let me alone. Dost thou use to write thy name, or hast thou a     mark to thyself, like a honest plain-dealing man?   CLERK. Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up that I can     write my name.   ALL. He hath confess\'d. Away with him! He\'s a villain and a       traitor.   CADE. Away with him, I say! Hang him with his pen and inkhorn about     his neck.                            Exit one with the CLERK                             Enter MICHAEL    MICHAEL. Where\'s our General?   CADE. Here I am, thou particular fellow.   MICHAEL. Fly, fly, fly! Sir Humphrey Stafford and his brother are     hard by, with the King\'s forces.   CADE. Stand, villain, stand, or I\'ll fell thee down. He shall be     encount\'red with a man as good as himself. He is but a knight,     is \'a?   MICHAEL. No.   CADE. To equal him, I will make myself a knight presently.     [Kneels] Rise up, Sir John Mortimer. [Rises] Now have at him!                  Enter SIR HUMPHREY STAFFORD and WILLIAM                   his brother, with drum and soldiers      STAFFORD. Rebellious hinds, the filth and scum of Kent,     Mark\'d for the gallows, lay your weapons down;     Home to your cottages, forsake this groom;     The King is merciful if you revolt.   WILLIAM STAFFORD. But angry, wrathful, and inclin\'d to blood,     If you go forward; therefore yield or die.   CADE. As for these silken-coated slaves, I pass not;     It is to you, good people, that I speak,     O\'er whom, in time to come, I hope to reign;     For I am rightful heir unto the crown.   STAFFORD. Villain, thy father was a plasterer;     And thou thyself a shearman, art thou not?   CADE. And Adam was a gardener.   WILLIAM STAFFORD. And what of that?   CADE. Marry, this: Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March,     Married the Duke of Clarence\' daughter, did he not?   STAFFORD. Ay, sir.   CADE. By her he had two children at one birth.   WILLIAM STAFFORD. That\'s false.   CADE. Ay, there\'s the question; but I say \'tis true.       The elder of them being put to nurse,     Was by a beggar-woman stol\'n away,     And, ignorant of his birth and parentage,     Became a bricklayer when he came to age.     His son am I; deny it if you can.   DICK. Nay, \'tis too true; therefore he shall be king.   SMITH. Sir, he made a chimney in my father\'s house, and the bricks     are alive at this day to testify it; therefore deny it not.   STAFFORD. And will you credit this base drudge\'s words     That speaks he knows not what?   ALL. Ay, marry, will we; therefore get ye gone.   WILLIAM STAFFORD. Jack Cade, the Duke of York hath taught you this.   CADE. [Aside] He lies, for I invented it myself- Go to, sirrah,     tell the King from me that for his father\'s sake, Henry the     Fifth, in whose time boys went to span-counter for French crowns,     I am content he shall reign; but I\'ll be Protector over him.   DICK. And furthermore, we\'ll have the Lord Say\'s head for selling     the dukedom of Maine.   CADE. And good reason; for thereby is England main\'d and fain to go     with a staff, but that my puissance holds it up. Fellow kings, I       tell you that that Lord Say hath gelded the commonwealth and made     it an eunuch; and more than that, he can speak French, and     therefore he is a traitor.   STAFFORD. O gross and miserable ignorance!   CADE. Nay, answer if you can; the Frenchmen are our enemies. Go to,     then, I ask but this: can he that speaks with the tongue of an     enemy be a good counsellor, or no?   ALL. No, no; and therefore we\'ll have his head.   WILLIAM STAFFORD. Well, seeing gentle words will not prevail,     Assail them with the army of the King.   STAFFORD. Herald, away; and throughout every town     Proclaim them traitors that are up with Cade;     That those which fly before the battle ends     May, even in their wives\'and children\'s sight,     Be hang\'d up for example at their doors.     And you that be the King\'s friends, follow me.                            Exeunt the TWO STAFFORDS and soldiers   CADE. And you that love the commons follow me.     Now show yourselves men; \'tis for liberty.     We will not leave one lord, one gentleman;       Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon,     For they are thrifty honest men and such     As would- but that they dare not- take our parts.   DICK. They are all in order, and march toward us.   CADE. But then are we in order when we are most out of order. Come,     march forward.                                        Exeunt     SCENE III. Another part of Blackheath  Alarums to the fight, wherein both the STAFFORDS are slain. Enter CADE and the rest    CADE. Where\'s Dick, the butcher of Ashford?   DICK. Here, sir.   CADE. They fell before thee like sheep and oxen, and thou behavedst     thyself as if thou hadst been in thine own slaughter-house;     therefore thus will I reward thee- the Lent shall be as long     again as it is, and thou shalt have a licence to kill for a     hundred lacking one.   DICK. I desire no more.   CADE. And, to speak truth, thou deserv\'st no less. [Putting on SIR     HUMPHREY\'S brigandine] This monument of the victory will I bear,     and the bodies shall be dragged at my horse heels till I do come     to London, where we will have the mayor\'s sword borne before us.   DICK. If we mean to thrive and do good, break open the gaols and     let out the prisoners.   CADE. Fear not that, I warrant thee. Come, let\'s march towards     London.                                               Exeunt     SCENE IV. London. The palace  Enter the KING with a supplication, and the QUEEN with SUFFOLK\'S head; the DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, and the LORD SAY    QUEEN. Oft have I heard that grief softens the mind     And makes it fearful and degenerate;     Think therefore on revenge and cease to weep.     But who can cease to weep, and look on this?     Here may his head lie on my throbbing breast;     But where\'s the body that I should embrace?   BUCKINGHAM. What answer makes your Grace to the rebels\'     supplication?   KING HENRY. I\'ll send some holy bishop to entreat;     For God forbid so many simple souls     Should perish by the sword! And I myself,     Rather than bloody war shall cut them short,     Will parley with Jack Cade their general.     But stay, I\'ll read it over once again.   QUEEN. Ah, barbarous villains! Hath this lovely face       Rul\'d like a wandering planet over me,     And could it not enforce them to relent     That were unworthy to behold the same?   KING HENRY. Lord Say, Jack Cade hath sworn to have thy head.   SAY. Ay, but I hope your Highness shall have his.   KING HENRY. How now, madam!     Still lamenting and mourning for Suffolk\'s death?     I fear me, love, if that I had been dead,     Thou wouldst not have mourn\'d so much for me.   QUEEN. No, my love, I should not mourn, but die for thee.                          Enter A MESSENGER    KING HENRY. How now! What news? Why com\'st thou in such haste?   MESSENGER. The rebels are in Southwark; fly, my lord!     Jack Cade proclaims himself Lord Mortimer,     Descended from the Duke of Clarence\' house,     And calls your Grace usurper, openly,     And vows to crown himself in Westminster.     His army is a ragged multitude       Of hinds and peasants, rude and merciless;     Sir Humphrey Stafford and his brother\'s death     Hath given them heart and courage to proceed.     All scholars, lawyers, courtiers, gentlemen,     They call false caterpillars and intend their death.   KING HENRY. O graceless men! they know not what they do.   BUCKINGHAM. My gracious lord, retire to Killingworth     Until a power be rais\'d to put them down.   QUEEN. Ah, were the Duke of Suffolk now alive,     These Kentish rebels would be soon appeas\'d!   KING HENRY. Lord Say, the traitors hate thee;     Therefore away with us to Killingworth.   SAY. So might your Grace\'s person be in danger.     The sight of me is odious in their eyes;     And therefore in this city will I stay     And live alone as secret as I may.                        Enter another MESSENGER    SECOND MESSENGER. Jack Cade hath gotten London Bridge.       The citizens fly and forsake their houses;     The rascal people, thirsting after prey,     Join with the traitor; and they jointly swear     To spoil the city and your royal court.   BUCKINGHAM. Then linger not, my lord; away, take horse.   KING HENRY. Come Margaret; God, our hope, will succour us.   QUEEN. My hope is gone, now Suffolk is deceas\'d.   KING HENRY. [To LORD SAY] Farewell, my lord, trust not the Kentish     rebels.   BUCKINGHAM. Trust nobody, for fear you be betray\'d.   SAY. The trust I have is in mine innocence,     And therefore am I bold and resolute.                 Exeunt     SCENE V. London. The Tower  Enter LORD SCALES Upon the Tower, walking. Then enter two or three CITIZENS, below    SCALES. How now! Is Jack Cade slain?   FIRST CITIZEN. No, my lord, nor likely to be slain; for they have     won the bridge, killing all those that withstand them.     The Lord Mayor craves aid of your honour from the     Tower, to defend the city from the rebels.   SCALES. Such aid as I can spare you shall command,     But I am troubled here with them myself;     The rebels have assay\'d to win the Tower.     But get you to Smithfield, and gather head,     And thither I will send you Matthew Goffe;     Fight for your King, your country, and your lives;     And so, farewell, for I must hence again.             Exeunt     SCENE VI. London. Cannon street  Enter JACK CADE and the rest, and strikes his staff on London Stone    CADE. Now is Mortimer lord of this city. And here, sitting upon     London Stone, I charge and command that, of the city\'s cost, the     pissing conduit run nothing but claret wine this first year of     our reign. And now henceforward it shall be treason for any that     calls me other than Lord Mortimer.                      Enter a SOLDIER, running    SOLDIER. Jack Cade! Jack Cade!   CADE. Knock him down there.                    [They kill him]   SMITH. If this fellow be wise, he\'ll never call ye Jack Cade more;     I think he hath a very fair warning.   DICK. My lord, there\'s an army gathered together in Smithfield.   CADE. Come then, let\'s go fight with them. But first go and set     London Bridge on fire; and, if you can, burn down the Tower too.     Come, let\'s away.                                     Exeunt     SCENE VII. London. Smithfield  Alarums. MATTHEW GOFFE is slain, and all the rest.  Then enter JACK CADE, with his company    CADE. So, sirs. Now go some and pull down the Savoy; others to th\'     Inns of Court; down with them all.   DICK. I have a suit unto your lordship.   CADE. Be it a lordship, thou shalt have it for that word.   DICK. Only that the laws of England may come out of your mouth.   JOHN. [Aside] Mass, \'twill be sore law then; for he was thrust in     the mouth with a spear, and \'tis not whole yet.   SMITH. [Aside] Nay, John, it will be stinking law; for his breath     stinks with eating toasted cheese.   CADE. I have thought upon it; it shall be so. Away, burn all the     records of the realm. My mouth shall be the Parliament of     England.   JOHN. [Aside] Then we are like to have biting statutes, unless his     teeth be pull\'d out.   CADE. And henceforward all things shall be in common.                              Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. My lord, a prize, a prize! Here\'s the Lord Say, which     sold the towns in France; he that made us pay one and twenty     fifteens, and one shining to the pound, the last subsidy.                  Enter GEORGE BEVIS, with the LORD SAY    CADE. Well, he shall be beheaded for it ten times. Ah, thou say,     thou serge, nay, thou buckram lord! Now art thou within point     blank of our jurisdiction regal. What canst thou answer to my     Majesty for giving up of Normandy unto Mounsieur Basimecu the     Dauphin of France? Be it known unto thee by these presence, even     the presence of Lord Mortimer, that I am the besom that must     sweep the court clean of such filth as thou art. Thou hast most     traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a     grammar school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other     books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to     be us\'d, and, contrary to the King, his crown, and dignity, thou     hast built a paper-mill. It will be proved to thy face that thou       hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and     such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear.     Thou hast appointed justices of peace, to call poor men before     them about matters they were not able to answer. Moreover, thou     hast put them in prison, and because they could not read, thou     hast hang\'d them, when, indeed, only for that cause they have     been most worthy to live. Thou dost ride in a foot-cloth, dost     thou not?   SAY. What of that?   CADE. Marry, thou ought\'st not to let thy horse wear a cloak, when     honester men than thou go in their hose and doublets.   DICK. And work in their shirt too, as myself, for example, that am     a butcher.   SAY. You men of Kent-   DICK. What say you of Kent?   SAY. Nothing but this: \'tis \'bona terra, mala gens.\'   CADE. Away with him, away with him! He speaks Latin.   SAY. Hear me but speak, and bear me where you will.     Kent, in the Commentaries Caesar writ,     Is term\'d the civil\'st place of all this isle.       Sweet is the country, because full of riches;     The people liberal valiant, active, wealthy;     Which makes me hope you are not void of pity.     I sold not Maine, I lost not Normandy;     Yet, to recover them, would lose my life.     Justice with favour have I always done;     Pray\'rs and tears have mov\'d me, gifts could never.     When have I aught exacted at your hands,     But to maintain the King, the realm, and you?     Large gifts have I bestow\'d on learned clerks,     Because my book preferr\'d me to the King,     And seeing ignorance is the curse of God,     Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven,     Unless you be possess\'d with devilish spirits     You cannot but forbear to murder me.     This tongue hath parley\'d unto foreign kings     For your behoof.   CADE. Tut, when struck\'st thou one blow in the field?   SAY. Great men have reaching hands. Oft have I struck     Those that I never saw, and struck them dead.     GEORGE. O monstrous coward! What, to come behind folks?   SAY. These cheeks are pale for watching for your good.   CADE. Give him a box o\' th\' ear, and that will make \'em red again.   SAY. Long sitting to determine poor men\'s causes     Hath made me full of sickness and diseases.   CADE. Ye shall have a hempen caudle then, and the help of hatchet.   DICK. Why dost thou quiver, man?   SAY. The palsy, and not fear, provokes me.   CADE. Nay, he nods at us, as who should say \'I\'ll be even with     you\'; I\'ll see if his head will stand steadier on a pole, or no.     Take him away, and behead him.   SAY. Tell me: wherein have I offended most?     Have I affected wealth or honour? Speak.     Are my chests fill\'d up with extorted gold?     Is my apparel sumptuous to behold?     Whom have I injur\'d, that ye seek my death?     These hands are free from guiltless bloodshedding,     This breast from harbouring foul deceitful thoughts.     O, let me live!   CADE. [Aside] I feel remorse in myself with his words; but I\'ll       bridle it. He shall die, an it be but for pleading so well for     his life.- Away with him! He has a familiar under his tongue; he     speaks not o\' God\'s name. Go, take him away, I say, and strike     off his head presently, and then break into his son-in-law\'s     house, Sir James Cromer, and strike off his head, and bring them     both upon two poles hither.   ALL. It shall be done.   SAY. Ah, countrymen! if when you make your pray\'rs,     God should be so obdurate as yourselves,     How would it fare with your departed souls?     And therefore yet relent and save my life.   CADE. Away with him, and do as I command ye.  [Exeunt some with     LORD SAY]  The proudest peer in the realm shall not wear a head     on his shoulders, unless he pay me tribute; there shall not a     maid be married, but she shall pay to me her maidenhead ere they     have it. Men shall hold of me in capite; and we charge and     command that their wives be as free as heart can wish or tongue     can tell.   DICK. My lord, when shall we go to Cheapside, and take up     commodities upon our bills?     CADE. Marry, presently.   ALL. O, brave!                        Re-enter one with the heads    CADE. But is not this braver? Let them kiss one another, for they     lov\'d well when they were alive. Now part them again, lest they     consult about the giving up of some more towns in France.     Soldiers, defer the spoil of the city until night; for with these     borne before us instead of maces will we ride through the     streets, and at every corner have them kiss. Away!     Exeunt     SCENE VIII. Southwark  Alarum and retreat. Enter again CADE and all his rabblement    CADE. Up Fish Street! down Saint Magnus\' Corner! Kill and knock     down! Throw them into Thames!               [Sound a parley]     What noise is this I hear? Dare any be so bold to sound retreat     or parley when I command them kill?              Enter BUCKINGHAM and old CLIFFORD, attended    BUCKINGHAM. Ay, here they be that dare and will disturb thee.     And therefore yet relent, and save my life.     Know, Cade, we come ambassadors from the King     Unto the commons whom thou hast misled;     And here pronounce free pardon to them all     That will forsake thee and go home in peace.   CLIFFORD. What say ye, countrymen? Will ye relent     And yield to mercy whilst \'tis offer\'d you,     Or let a rebel lead you to your deaths?     Who loves the King, and will embrace his pardon,       Fling up his cap and say \'God save his Majesty!\'     Who hateth him and honours not his father,     Henry the Fifth, that made all France to quake,     Shake he his weapon at us and pass by.   ALL. God save the King! God save the King!   CADE. What, Buckingham and Clifford, are ye so brave?     And you, base peasants, do ye believe him? Will you needs be     hang\'d with your about your necks? Hath my sword therefore broke     through London gates, that you should leave me at the White Hart     in Southwark? I thought ye would never have given out these arms     till you had recovered your ancient freedom. But you are all     recreants and dastards, and delight to live in slavery to the     nobility. Let them break your backs with burdens, take your     houses over your heads, ravish your wives and daughters before     your faces. For me, I will make shift for one; and so God\'s curse     light upon you all!   ALL. We\'ll follow Cade, we\'ll follow Cade!   CLIFFORD. Is Cade the son of Henry the Fifth,     That thus you do exclaim you\'ll go with him?     Will he conduct you through the heart of France,       And make the meanest of you earls and dukes?     Alas, he hath no home, no place to fly to;     Nor knows he how to live but by the spoil,     Unless by robbing of your friends and us.     Were\'t not a shame that whilst you live at jar     The fearful French, whom you late vanquished,     Should make a start o\'er seas and vanquish you?     Methinks already in this civil broil     I see them lording it in London streets,     Crying \'Villiago!\' unto all they meet.     Better ten thousand base-born Cades miscarry     Than you should stoop unto a Frenchman\'s mercy.     To France, to France, and get what you have lost;     Spare England, for it is your native coast.     Henry hath money; you are strong and manly.     God on our side, doubt not of victory.   ALL. A Clifford! a Clifford! We\'ll follow the King and Clifford.   CADE. Was ever feather so lightly blown to and fro as this     multitude? The name of Henry the Fifth hales them to an hundred     mischiefs, and makes them leave me desolate. I see them lay their       heads together to surprise me. My sword make way for me for here     is no staying. In despite of the devils and hell, have through     the very middest of you! and heavens and honour be witness that     no want of resolution in me, but only my followers\' base and     ignominious treasons, makes me betake me to my heels.  Exit   BUCKINGHAM. What, is he fled? Go some, and follow him;     And he that brings his head unto the King     Shall have a thousand crowns for his reward.                                              Exeunt some of them     Follow me, soldiers; we\'ll devise a mean     To reconcile you all unto the King.                   Exeunt     SCENE IX. Killing, worth Castle  Sound trumpets. Enter KING, QUEEN, and SOMERSET, on the terrace    KING HENRY. Was ever king that joy\'d an earthly throne     And could command no more content than I?     No sooner was I crept out of my cradle     But I was made a king, at nine months old.     Was never subject long\'d to be a King     As I do long and wish to be a subject.                 Enter BUCKINGHAM and old CLIFFORD    BUCKINGHAM. Health and glad tidings to your Majesty!   KING HENRY. Why, Buckingham, is the traitor Cade surpris\'d?     Or is he but retir\'d to make him strong?       Enter, below, multitudes, with halters about their necks    CLIFFORD. He is fled, my lord, and all his powers do yield,       And humbly thus, with halters on their necks,     Expect your Highness\' doom of life or death.   KING HENRY. Then, heaven, set ope thy everlasting gates,     To entertain my vows of thanks and praise!     Soldiers, this day have you redeem\'d your lives,     And show\'d how well you love your Prince and country.     Continue still in this so good a mind,     And Henry, though he be infortunate,     Assure yourselves, will never be unkind.     And so, with thanks and pardon to you all,     I do dismiss you to your several countries.   ALL. God save the King! God save the King!                       Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. Please it your Grace to be advertised     The Duke of York is newly come from Ireland     And with a puissant and a mighty power     Of gallowglasses and stout kerns     Is marching hitherward in proud array,       And still proclaimeth, as he comes along,     His arms are only to remove from thee     The Duke of Somerset, whom he terms a traitor.   KING HENRY. Thus stands my state, \'twixt Cade and York distress\'d;     Like to a ship that, having scap\'d a tempest,     Is straightway calm\'d, and boarded with a pirate;     But now is Cade driven back, his men dispers\'d,     And now is York in arms to second him.     I pray thee, Buckingham, go and meet him     And ask him what\'s the reason of these arms.     Tell him I\'ll send Duke Edmund to the Tower-     And Somerset, we will commit thee thither     Until his army be dismiss\'d from him.   SOMERSET. My lord,     I\'ll yield myself to prison willingly,     Or unto death, to do my country good.   KING HENRY. In any case be not too rough in terms,     For he is fierce and cannot brook hard language.   BUCKINGHAM. I will, my lord, and doubt not so to deal     As all things shall redound unto your good.     KING HENRY. Come, wife, let\'s in, and learn to govern better;     For yet may England curse my wretched reign.                                                 Flourish. Exeunt     SCENE X. Kent. Iden\'s garden  Enter CADE    CADE. Fie on ambitions! Fie on myself, that have a sword and yet am     ready to famish! These five days have I hid me in these woods and     durst not peep out, for all the country is laid for me; but now     am I so hungry that, if I might have a lease of my life for a     thousand years, I could stay no longer. Wherefore, on a brick     wall have I climb\'d into this garden, to see if I can eat grass     or pick a sallet another while, which is not amiss to cool a     man\'s stomach this hot weather. And I think this word \'sallet\'     was born to do me good; for many a time, but for a sallet, my     brain-pain had been cleft with a brown bill; and many a time,     when I have been dry, and bravely marching, it hath serv\'d me     instead of a quart-pot to drink in; and now the word \'sallet\'     must serve me to feed on.                               Enter IDEN    IDEN. Lord, who would live turmoiled in the court       And may enjoy such quiet walks as these?     This small inheritance my father left me     Contenteth me, and worth a monarchy.     I seek not to wax great by others\' waning     Or gather wealth I care not with what envy;     Sufficeth that I have maintains my state,     And sends the poor well pleased from my gate.   CADE. Here\'s the lord of the soil come to seize me for a stray, for     entering his fee-simple without leave. Ah, villain, thou wilt     betray me, and get a thousand crowns of the King by carrying my     head to him; but I\'ll make thee eat iron like an ostrich and     swallow my sword like a great pin ere thou and I part.   IDEN. Why, rude companion, whatsoe\'er thou be,     I know thee not; why then should I betray thee?     Is\'t not enough to break into my garden     And like a thief to come to rob my grounds,     Climbing my walls in spite of me the owner,     But thou wilt brave me with these saucy terms?   CADE. Brave thee? Ay, by the best blood that ever was broach\'d, and     beard thee too. Look on me well: I have eat no meat these five       days, yet come thou and thy five men and if I do not leave you     all as dead as a door-nail, I pray God I may never eat grass     more.   IDEN. Nay, it shall ne\'er be said, while England stands,     That Alexander Iden, an esquire of Kent,     Took odds to combat a poor famish\'d man.     Oppose thy steadfast-gazing eyes to mine;     See if thou canst outface me with thy looks;     Set limb to limb, and thou art far the lesser;     Thy hand is but a finger to my fist,     Thy leg a stick compared with this truncheon;     My foot shall fight with all the strength thou hast,     And if mine arm be heaved in the air,     Thy grave is digg\'d already in the earth.     As for words, whose greatness answers words,     Let this my sword report what speech forbears.   CADE. By my valour, the most complete champion that ever I heard!     Steel, if thou turn the edge, or cut not out the burly bon\'d     clown in chines of beef ere thou sleep in thy sheath, I beseech     God on my knees thou mayst be turn\'d to hobnails. [Here they       fight; CADE falls] O, I am slain! famine and no other hath slain     me. Let ten thousand devils come against me, and give me but the     ten meals I have lost, and I\'d defy them all. Wither, garden, and     be henceforth a burying place to all that do dwell in this house,     because the unconquered soul of Cade is fled.   IDEN. Is\'t Cade that I have slain, that monstrous traitor?     Sword, I will hallow thee for this thy deed     And hang thee o\'er my tomb when I am dead.     Ne\'er shall this blood be wiped from thy point,     But thou shalt wear it as a herald\'s coat     To emblaze the honour that thy master got.   CADE. Iden, farewell; and be proud of thy victory. Tell Kent from     me she hath lost her best man, and exhort all the world to be     cowards; for I, that never feared any, am vanquished by famine,     not by valour.                                        [Dies]   IDEN. How much thou wrong\'st me, heaven be my judge.     Die, damned wretch, the curse of her that bare thee!     And as I thrust thy body in with my sword,     So wish I, I might thrust thy soul to hell.     Hence will I drag thee headlong by the heels       Unto a dunghill, which shall be thy grave,     And there cut off thy most ungracious head,     Which I will bear in triumph to the King,     Leaving thy trunk for crows to feed upon.               Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. Fields between Dartford and Blackheath  Enter YORK, and his army of Irish, with drum and colours    YORK. From Ireland thus comes York to claim his right     And pluck the crown from feeble Henry\'s head:     Ring bells aloud, burn bonfires clear and bright,     To entertain great England\'s lawful king.     Ah, sancta majestas! who would not buy thee dear?     Let them obey that knows not how to rule;     This hand was made to handle nought but gold.     I cannot give due action to my words     Except a sword or sceptre balance it.     A sceptre shall it have, have I a soul     On which I\'ll toss the flower-de-luce of France.                           Enter BUCKINGHAM      [Aside] Whom have we here? Buckingham, to disturb me?     The King hath sent him, sure: I must dissemble.   BUCKINGHAM. York, if thou meanest well I greet thee well.     YORK. Humphrey of Buckingham, I accept thy greeting.     Art thou a messenger, or come of pleasure?   BUCKINGHAM. A messenger from Henry, our dread liege,     To know the reason of these arms in peace;     Or why thou, being a subject as I am,     Against thy oath and true allegiance sworn,     Should raise so great a power without his leave,     Or dare to bring thy force so near the court.   YORK. [Aside] Scarce can I speak, my choler is so great.     O, I could hew up rocks and fight with flint,     I am so angry at these abject terms;     And now, like Ajax Telamonius,     On sheep or oxen could I spend my fury.     I am far better born than is the King,     More like a king, more kingly in my thoughts;     But I must make fair weather yet awhile,     Till Henry be more weak and I more strong.-     Buckingham, I prithee, pardon me     That I have given no answer all this while;     My mind was troubled with deep melancholy.       The cause why I have brought this army hither     Is to remove proud Somerset from the King,     Seditious to his Grace and to the state.   BUCKINGHAM. That is too much presumption on thy part;     But if thy arms be to no other end,     The King hath yielded unto thy demand:     The Duke of Somerset is in the Tower.   YORK. Upon thine honour, is he prisoner?   BUCKINGHAM. Upon mine honour, he is prisoner.   YORK. Then, Buckingham, I do dismiss my pow\'rs.     Soldiers, I thank you all; disperse yourselves;     Meet me to-morrow in Saint George\'s field,     You shall have pay and everything you wish.     And let my sovereign, virtuous Henry,     Command my eldest son, nay, all my sons,     As pledges of my fealty and love.     I\'ll send them all as willing as I live:     Lands, goods, horse, armour, anything I have,     Is his to use, so Somerset may die.   BUCKINGHAM. York, I commend this kind submission.       We twain will go into his Highness\' tent.                    Enter the KING, and attendants    KING HENRY. Buckingham, doth York intend no harm to us,     That thus he marcheth with thee arm in arm?   YORK. In all submission and humility     York doth present himself unto your Highness.   KING HENRY. Then what intends these forces thou dost bring?   YORK. To heave the traitor Somerset from hence,     And fight against that monstrous rebel Cade,     Who since I heard to be discomfited.                      Enter IDEN, with CADE\'s head    IDEN. If one so rude and of so mean condition     May pass into the presence of a king,     Lo, I present your Grace a traitor\'s head,     The head of Cade, whom I in combat slew.   KING HENRY. The head of Cade! Great God, how just art Thou!       O, let me view his visage, being dead,     That living wrought me such exceeding trouble.     Tell me, my friend, art thou the man that slew him?   IDEN. I was, an\'t like your Majesty.   KING HENRY. How art thou call\'d? And what is thy degree?   IDEN. Alexander Iden, that\'s my name;     A poor esquire of Kent that loves his king.   BUCKINGHAM. So please it you, my lord, \'twere not amiss     He were created knight for his good service.   KING HENRY. Iden, kneel down. [He kneels] Rise up a knight.     We give thee for reward a thousand marks,     And will that thou thenceforth attend on us.   IDEN. May Iden live to merit such a bounty,     And never live but true unto his liege!                      Enter the QUEEN and SOMERSET    KING HENRY. See, Buckingham! Somerset comes with th\' Queen:     Go, bid her hide him quickly from the Duke.   QUEEN. For thousand Yorks he shall not hide his head,       But boldly stand and front him to his face.   YORK. How now! Is Somerset at liberty?     Then, York, unloose thy long-imprisoned thoughts     And let thy tongue be equal with thy heart.     Shall I endure the sight of Somerset?     False king, why hast thou broken faith with me,     Knowing how hardly I can brook abuse?     King did I call thee? No, thou art not king;     Not fit to govern and rule multitudes,     Which dar\'st not, no, nor canst not rule a traitor.     That head of thine doth not become a crown;     Thy hand is made to grasp a palmer\'s staff,     And not to grace an awful princely sceptre.     That gold must round engirt these brows of mine,     Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles\' spear,     Is able with the change to kill and cure.     Here is a hand to hold a sceptre up,     And with the same to act controlling laws.     Give place. By heaven, thou shalt rule no more     O\'er him whom heaven created for thy ruler.     SOMERSET. O monstrous traitor! I arrest thee, York,     Of capital treason \'gainst the King and crown.     Obey, audacious traitor; kneel for grace.   YORK. Wouldst have me kneel? First let me ask of these,     If they can brook I bow a knee to man.     Sirrah, call in my sons to be my bail:        Exit attendant     I know, ere thy will have me go to ward,     They\'ll pawn their swords for my enfranchisement.   QUEEN. Call hither Clifford; bid him come amain,     To say if that the bastard boys of York     Shall be the surety for their traitor father.                                                  Exit BUCKINGHAM   YORK. O blood-bespotted Neapolitan,     Outcast of Naples, England\'s bloody scourge!     The sons of York, thy betters in their birth,     Shall be their father\'s bail; and bane to those     That for my surety will refuse the boys!                 Enter EDWARD and RICHARD PLANTAGENET        See where they come: I\'ll warrant they\'ll make it good.                       Enter CLIFFORD and his SON    QUEEN. And here comes Clifford to deny their bail.   CLIFFORD. Health and all happiness to my lord the King!                                                         [Kneels]   YORK. I thank thee, Clifford. Say, what news with thee?     Nay, do not fright us with an angry look.     We are thy sovereign, Clifford, kneel again;     For thy mistaking so, we pardon thee.   CLIFFORD. This is my King, York, I do not mistake;     But thou mistakes me much to think I do.     To Bedlam with him! Is the man grown mad?   KING HENRY. Ay, Clifford; a bedlam and ambitious humour     Makes him oppose himself against his king.   CLIFFORD. He is a traitor; let him to the Tower,     And chop away that factious pate of his.   QUEEN. He is arrested, but will not obey;     His sons, he says, shall give their words for him.     YORK. Will you not, sons?   EDWARD. Ay, noble father, if our words will serve.   RICHARD. And if words will not, then our weapons shall.   CLIFFORD. Why, what a brood of traitors have we here!   YORK. Look in a glass, and call thy image so:     I am thy king, and thou a false-heart traitor.     Call hither to the stake my two brave bears,     That with the very shaking of their chains     They may astonish these fell-lurking curs.     Bid Salisbury and Warwick come to me.                 Enter the EARLS OF WARWICK and SALISBURY    CLIFFORD. Are these thy bears? We\'ll bait thy bears to death,     And manacle the berard in their chains,     If thou dar\'st bring them to the baiting-place.   RICHARD. Oft have I seen a hot o\'er weening cur     Run back and bite, because he was withheld;     Who, being suffer\'d, with the bear\'s fell paw,     Hath clapp\'d his tail between his legs and cried;       And such a piece of service will you do,     If you oppose yourselves to match Lord Warwick.   CLIFFORD. Hence, heap of wrath, foul indigested lump,     As crooked in thy manners as thy shape!   YORK. Nay, we shall heat you thoroughly anon.   CLIFFORD. Take heed, lest by your heat you burn yourselves.   KING HENRY. Why, Warwick, hath thy knee forgot to bow?     Old Salisbury, shame to thy silver hair,     Thou mad misleader of thy brainsick son!     What, wilt thou on thy death-bed play the ruffian     And seek for sorrow with thy spectacles?     O, where is faith? O, where is loyalty?     If it be banish\'d from the frosty head,     Where shall it find a harbour in the earth?     Wilt thou go dig a grave to find out war     And shame thine honourable age with blood?     Why art thou old, and want\'st experience?     Or wherefore dost abuse it, if thou hast it?     For shame! In duty bend thy knee to me,     That bows unto the grave with mickle age.     SALISBURY. My lord, I have considered with myself     The tide of this most renowned duke,     And in my conscience do repute his Grace     The rightful heir to England\'s royal seat.   KING HENRY. Hast thou not sworn allegiance unto me?   SALISBURY. I have.   KING HENRY. Canst thou dispense with heaven for such an oath?   SALISBURY. It is great sin to swear unto a sin;     But greater sin to keep a sinful oath.     Who can be bound by any solemn vow     To do a murd\'rous deed, to rob a man,     To force a spotless virgin\'s chastity,     To reave the orphan of his patrimony,     To wring the widow from her custom\'d right,     And have no other reason for this wrong     But that he was bound by a solemn oath?   QUEEN. A subtle traitor needs no sophister.   KING HENRY. Call Buckingham, and bid him arm himself.   YORK. Call Buckingham, and all the friends thou hast,     I am resolv\'d for death or dignity.     CLIFFORD. The first I warrant thee, if dreams prove true.   WARWICK. You were best to go to bed and dream again     To keep thee from the tempest of the field.   CLIFFORD. I am resolv\'d to bear a greater storm     Than any thou canst conjure up to-day;     And that I\'ll write upon thy burgonet,     Might I but know thee by thy household badge.   WARWICK. Now, by my father\'s badge, old Nevil\'s crest,     The rampant bear chain\'d to the ragged staff,     This day I\'ll wear aloft my burgonet,     As on a mountain-top the cedar shows,     That keeps his leaves in spite of any storm,     Even to affright thee with the view thereof.   CLIFFORD. And from thy burgonet I\'ll rend thy bear     And tread it under foot with all contempt,     Despite the berard that protects the bear.   YOUNG CLIFFORD. And so to arms, victorious father,     To quell the rebels and their complices.   RICHARD. Fie! charity, for shame! Speak not in spite,     For you shall sup with Jesu Christ to-night.     YOUNG CLIFFORD. Foul stigmatic, that\'s more than thou canst tell.   RICHARD. If not in heaven, you\'ll surely sup in hell.                                                 Exeunt severally     SCENE II. Saint Albans  Alarums to the battle. Enter WARWICK    WARWICK. Clifford of Cumberland, \'tis Warwick calls;     And if thou dost not hide thee from the bear,     Now, when the angry trumpet sounds alarum     And dead men\'s cries do fill the empty air,     Clifford, I say, come forth and fight with me.     Proud northern lord, Clifford of Cumberland,   WARWICK is hoarse with calling thee to arms.                            Enter YORK      How now, my noble lord! what, all a-foot?   YORK. The deadly-handed Clifford slew my steed;     But match to match I have encount\'red him,     And made a prey for carrion kites and crows     Even of the bonny beast he lov\'d so well.                        Enter OLD CLIFFORD      WARWICK. Of one or both of us the time is come.   YORK. Hold, Warwick, seek thee out some other chase,     For I myself must hunt this deer to death.   WARWICK. Then, nobly, York; \'tis for a crown thou fight\'st.     As I intend, Clifford, to thrive to-day,     It grieves my soul to leave thee unassail\'d.            Exit   CLIFFORD. What seest thou in me, York? Why dost thou pause?   YORK. With thy brave bearing should I be in love     But that thou art so fast mine enemy.   CLIFFORD. Nor should thy prowess want praise and esteem     But that \'tis shown ignobly and in treason.   YORK. So let it help me now against thy sword,     As I in justice and true right express it!   CLIFFORD. My soul and body on the action both!   YORK. A dreadful lay! Address thee instantly.                                  [They fight and CLIFFORD falls]   CLIFFORD. La fin couronne les oeuvres.                  [Dies]   YORK. Thus war hath given thee peace, for thou art still.     Peace with his soul, heaven, if it be thy will!         Exit                         Enter YOUNG CLIFFORD    YOUNG CLIFFORD. Shame and confusion! All is on the rout;     Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds     Where it should guard. O war, thou son of hell,     Whom angry heavens do make their minister,     Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part     Hot coals of vengeance! Let no soldier fly.     He that is truly dedicate to war     Hath no self-love; nor he that loves himself     Hath not essentially, but by circumstance,     The name of valour.                 [Sees his father\'s body]     O, let the vile world end     And the premised flames of the last day     Knit earth and heaven together!     Now let the general trumpet blow his blast,     Particularities and petty sounds     To cease! Wast thou ordain\'d, dear father,     To lose thy youth in peace and to achieve       The silver livery of advised age,     And in thy reverence and thy chair-days thus     To die in ruffian battle? Even at this sight     My heart is turn\'d to stone; and while \'tis mine     It shall be stony. York not our old men spares;     No more will I their babes. Tears virginal     Shall be to me even as the dew to fire;     And beauty, that the tyrant oft reclaims,     Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax.     Henceforth I will not have to do with pity:     Meet I an infant of the house of York,     Into as many gobbets will I cut it     As wild Medea young Absyrtus did;     In cruelty will I seek out my fame.     Come, thou new ruin of old Clifford\'s house;     As did Aeneas old Anchises bear,     So bear I thee upon my manly shoulders;     But then Aeneas bare a living load,     Nothing so heavy as these woes of mine.                                               Exit with the body           Enter RICHARD and SOMERSET to fight. SOMERSET is killed    RICHARD. So, lie thou there;     For underneath an alehouse\' paltry sign,     The Castle in Saint Albans, Somerset     Hath made the wizard famous in his death.     Sword, hold thy temper; heart, be wrathful still:     Priests pray for enemies, but princes kill.             Exit          Fight. Excursions. Enter KING, QUEEN, and others    QUEEN. Away, my lord! You are slow; for shame, away!   KING HENRY. Can we outrun the heavens? Good Margaret, stay.   QUEEN. What are you made of? You\'ll nor fight nor fly.     Now is it manhood, wisdom, and defence,     To give the enemy way, and to secure us     By what we can, which can no more but fly.                                                [Alarum afar off]     If you be ta\'en, we then should see the bottom       Of all our fortunes; but if we haply scape-     As well we may, if not through your neglect-     We shall to London get, where you are lov\'d,     And where this breach now in our fortunes made     May readily be stopp\'d.                       Re-enter YOUNG CLIFFORD    YOUNG CLIFFORD. But that my heart\'s on future mischief set,     I would speak blasphemy ere bid you fly;     But fly you must; uncurable discomfit     Reigns in the hearts of all our present parts.     Away, for your relief! and we will live     To see their day and them our fortune give.     Away, my lord, away!                                  Exeunt     SCENE III. Fields near Saint Albans  Alarum. Retreat. Enter YORK, RICHARD, WARWICK, and soldiers, with drum and colours    YORK. Of Salisbury, who can report of him,     That winter lion, who in rage forgets     Aged contusions and all brush of time     And, like a gallant in the brow of youth,     Repairs him with occasion? This happy day     Is not itself, nor have we won one foot,     If Salisbury be lost.   RICHARD. My noble father,     Three times to-day I holp him to his horse,     Three times bestrid him, thrice I led him off,     Persuaded him from any further act;     But still where danger was, still there I met him;     And like rich hangings in a homely house,     So was his will in his old feeble body.     But, noble as he is, look where he comes.                             Enter SALISBURY    SALISBURY. Now, by my sword, well hast thou fought to-day!     By th\' mass, so did we all. I thank you, Richard:     God knows how long it is I have to live,     And it hath pleas\'d Him that three times to-day     You have defended me from imminent death.     Well, lords, we have not got that which we have;     \'Tis not enough our foes are this time fled,     Being opposites of such repairing nature.   YORK. I know our safety is to follow them;     For, as I hear, the King is fled to London     To call a present court of Parliament.     Let us pursue him ere the writs go forth.     What says Lord Warwick? Shall we after them?   WARWICK. After them? Nay, before them, if we can.     Now, by my faith, lords, \'twas a glorious day:     Saint Albans\' battle, won by famous York,     Shall be eterniz\'d in all age to come.     Sound drum and trumpets and to London all;       And more such days as these to us befall!             Exeunt   THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1591  THE THIRD PART OF KING HENRY THE SIXTH  by William Shakespeare    DRAMATIS PERSONAE    KING HENRY THE SIXTH   EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES, his son   LEWIS XI, King of France           DUKE OF SOMERSET   DUKE OF EXETER                     EARL OF OXFORD   EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND             EARL OF WESTMORELAND   LORD CLIFFORD   RICHARD PLANTAGENET, DUKE OF YORK   EDWARD, EARL OF MARCH, afterwards KING EDWARD IV, his son   EDMUND, EARL OF RUTLAND, his son   GEORGE, afterwards DUKE OF CLARENCE, his son   RICHARD, afterwards DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, his son   DUKE OF NORFOLK                    MARQUIS OF MONTAGUE   EARL OF WARWICK                    EARL OF PEMBROKE   LORD HASTINGS                      LORD STAFFORD   SIR JOHN MORTIMER, uncle to the Duke of York   SIR HUGH MORTIMER, uncle to the Duke of York   HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND, a youth   LORD RIVERS, brother to Lady Grey   SIR WILLIAM STANLEY                SIR JOHN MONTGOMERY   SIR JOHN SOMERVILLE                TUTOR, to Rutland     MAYOR OF YORK                      LIEUTENANT OF THE TOWER   A NOBLEMAN                         TWO KEEPERS   A HUNTSMAN   A SON that has killed his father   A FATHER that has killed his son    QUEEN MARGARET   LADY GREY, afterwards QUEEN to Edward IV   BONA, sister to the French Queen    Soldiers, Attendants, Messengers, Watchmen, etc.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: England and France  ACT I. SCENE I. London. The Parliament House  Alarum. Enter DUKE OF YORK, EDWARD, RICHARD, NORFOLK, MONTAGUE, WARWICK, and soldiers, with white roses in their hats    WARWICK. I wonder how the King escap\'d our hands.   YORK. While we pursu\'d the horsemen of the north,     He slily stole away and left his men;     Whereat the great Lord of Northumberland,     Whose warlike ears could never brook retreat,     Cheer\'d up the drooping army, and himself,     Lord Clifford, and Lord Stafford, all abreast,     Charg\'d our main battle\'s front, and, breaking in,     Were by the swords of common soldiers slain.   EDWARD. Lord Stafford\'s father, Duke of Buckingham,     Is either slain or wounded dangerous;     I cleft his beaver with a downright blow.     That this is true, father, behold his blood.   MONTAGUE. And, brother, here\'s the Earl of Wiltshire\'s blood,     Whom I encount\'red as the battles join\'d.     RICHARD. Speak thou for me, and tell them what I did.                                  [Throwing down SOMERSET\'S head]   YORK. Richard hath best deserv\'d of all my sons.     But is your Grace dead, my Lord of Somerset?   NORFOLK. Such hope have all the line of John of Gaunt!   RICHARD. Thus do I hope to shake King Henry\'s head.   WARWICK. And so do I. Victorious Prince of York,     Before I see thee seated in that throne     Which now the house of Lancaster usurps,     I vow by heaven these eyes shall never close.     This is the palace of the fearful King,     And this the regal seat. Possess it, York;     For this is thine, and not King Henry\'s heirs\'.   YORK. Assist me then, sweet Warwick, and I will;     For hither we have broken in by force.   NORFOLK. We\'ll all assist you; he that flies shall die.   YORK. Thanks, gentle Norfolk. Stay by me, my lords;     And, soldiers, stay and lodge by me this night.                                                     [They go up]   WARWICK. And when the King comes, offer him no violence.       Unless he seek to thrust you out perforce.   YORK. The Queen this day here holds her parliament,     But little thinks we shall be of her council.     By words or blows here let us win our right.   RICHARD. Arm\'d as we are, let\'s stay within this house.   WARWICK. The bloody parliament shall this be call\'d,     Unless Plantagenet, Duke of York, be King,     And bashful Henry depos\'d, whose cowardice     Hath made us by-words to our enemies.   YORK. Then leave me not, my lords; be resolute:     I mean to take possession of my right.   WARWICK. Neither the King, nor he that loves him best,     The proudest he that holds up Lancaster,     Dares stir a wing if Warwick shake his bells.     I\'ll plant Plantagenet, root him up who dares.     Resolve thee, Richard; claim the English crown.                                       [YORK occupies the throne]         Flourish. Enter KING HENRY, CLIFFORD, NORTHUMBERLAND,         WESTMORELAND, EXETER, and others, with red roses in                               their hats    KING HENRY. My lords, look where the sturdy rebel sits,     Even in the chair of state! Belike he means,     Back\'d by the power of Warwick, that false peer,     To aspire unto the crown and reign as king.     Earl of Northumberland, he slew thy father;     And thine, Lord Clifford; and you both have vow\'d revenge     On him, his sons, his favourites, and his friends.   NORTHUMBERLAND. If I be not, heavens be reveng\'d on me!   CLIFFORD. The hope thereof makes Clifford mourn in steel.   WESTMORELAND. What, shall we suffer this? Let\'s pluck him down;     My heart for anger burns; I cannot brook it.   KING HENRY. Be patient, gentle Earl of Westmoreland.   CLIFFORD. Patience is for poltroons such as he;     He durst not sit there had your father liv\'d.     My gracious lord, here in the parliament     Let us assail the family of York.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Well hast thou spoken, cousin; be it so.   KING HENRY. Ah, know you not the city favours them,       And they have troops of soldiers at their beck?   EXETER. But when the Duke is slain they\'ll quickly fly.   KING HENRY. Far be the thought of this from Henry\'s heart,     To make a shambles of the parliament house!     Cousin of Exeter, frowns, words, and threats,     Shall be the war that Henry means to use.     Thou factious Duke of York, descend my throne     And kneel for grace and mercy at my feet;     I am thy sovereign.   YORK. I am thine.   EXETER. For shame, come down; he made thee Duke of York.   YORK. \'Twas my inheritance, as the earldom was.   EXETER. Thy father was a traitor to the crown.   WARWICK. Exeter, thou art a traitor to the crown     In following this usurping Henry.   CLIFFORD. Whom should he follow but his natural king?   WARWICK. True, Clifford; and that\'s Richard Duke of York.   KING HENRY. And shall I stand, and thou sit in my throne?   YORK. It must and shall be so; content thyself.   WARWICK. Be Duke of Lancaster; let him be King.     WESTMORELAND. He is both King and Duke of Lancaster;     And that the Lord of Westmoreland shall maintain.   WARWICK. And Warwick shall disprove it. You forget     That we are those which chas\'d you from the field,     And slew your fathers, and with colours spread     March\'d through the city to the palace gates.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Yes, Warwick, I remember it to my grief;     And, by his soul, thou and thy house shall rue it.   WESTMORELAND. Plantagenet, of thee, and these thy sons,     Thy kinsmen, and thy friends, I\'ll have more lives     Than drops of blood were in my father\'s veins.   CLIFFORD. Urge it no more; lest that instead of words     I send thee, Warwick, such a messenger     As shall revenge his death before I stir.   WARWICK. Poor Clifford, how I scorn his worthless threats!   YORK. Will you we show our title to the crown?     If not, our swords shall plead it in the field.   KING HENRY. What title hast thou, traitor, to the crown?     Thy father was, as thou art, Duke of York;     Thy grandfather, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March:       I am the son of Henry the Fifth,     Who made the Dauphin and the French to stoop,     And seiz\'d upon their towns and provinces.   WARWICK. Talk not of France, sith thou hast lost it all.   KING HENRY. The Lord Protector lost it, and not I:     When I was crown\'d, I was but nine months old.   RICHARD. You are old enough now, and yet methinks you lose.     Father, tear the crown from the usurper\'s head.   EDWARD. Sweet father, do so; set it on your head.   MONTAGUE. Good brother, as thou lov\'st and honourest arms,     Let\'s fight it out and not stand cavilling thus.   RICHARD. Sound drums and trumpets, and the King will fly.   YORK. Sons, peace!   KING HENRY. Peace thou! and give King Henry leave to speak.   WARWICK. Plantagenet shall speak first. Hear him, lords;     And be you silent and attentive too,     For he that interrupts him shall not live.   KING HENRY. Think\'st thou that I will leave my kingly throne,     Wherein my grandsire and my father sat?     No; first shall war unpeople this my realm;       Ay, and their colours, often borne in France,     And now in England to our heart\'s great sorrow,     Shall be my winding-sheet. Why faint you, lords?     My title\'s good, and better far than his.   WARWICK. Prove it, Henry, and thou shalt be King.   KING HENRY. Henry the Fourth by conquest got the crown.   YORK. \'Twas by rebellion against his king.   KING HENRY. [Aside] I know not what to say; my title\'s weak.-     Tell me, may not a king adopt an heir?   YORK. What then?   KING HENRY. An if he may, then am I lawful King;     For Richard, in the view of many lords,     Resign\'d the crown to Henry the Fourth,     Whose heir my father was, and I am his.   YORK. He rose against him, being his sovereign,     And made him to resign his crown perforce.   WARWICK. Suppose, my lords, he did it unconstrain\'d,     Think you \'twere prejudicial to his crown?   EXETER. No; for he could not so resign his crown     But that the next heir should succeed and reign.     KING HENRY. Art thou against us, Duke of Exeter?   EXETER. His is the right, and therefore pardon me.   YORK. Why whisper you, my lords, and answer not?   EXETER. My conscience tells me he is lawful King.   KING HENRY. [Aside] All will revolt from me, and turn to him.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Plantagenet, for all the claim thou lay\'st,     Think not that Henry shall be so depos\'d.   WARWICK. Depos\'d he shall be, in despite of all.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Thou art deceiv\'d. \'Tis not thy southern power     Of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, nor of Kent,     Which makes thee thus presumptuous and proud,     Can set the Duke up in despite of me.   CLIFFORD. King Henry, be thy title right or wrong,     Lord Clifford vows to fight in thy defence.     May that ground gape, and swallow me alive,     Where I shall kneel to him that slew my father!   KING HENRY. O Clifford, how thy words revive my heart!   YORK. Henry of Lancaster, resign thy crown.     What mutter you, or what conspire you, lords?   WARWICK. Do right unto this princely Duke of York;       Or I will fill the house with armed men,     And over the chair of state, where now he sits,     Write up his title with usurping blood.                                 [He stamps with his foot and the                                        soldiers show themselves]   KING HENRY. My Lord of Warwick, hear but one word:     Let me for this my life-time reign as king.   YORK. Confirm the crown to me and to mine heirs,     And thou shalt reign in quiet while thou liv\'st.   KING HENRY. I am content. Richard Plantagenet,     Enjoy the kingdom after my decease.   CLIFFORD. What wrong is this unto the Prince your son!   WARWICK. What good is this to England and himself!   WESTMORELAND. Base, fearful, and despairing Henry!   CLIFFORD. How hast thou injur\'d both thyself and or us!   WESTMORELAND. I cannot stay to hear these articles.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Nor I.   CLIFFORD. Come, cousin, let us tell the Queen these news.   WESTMORELAND. Farewell, faint-hearted and degenerate king,     In whose cold blood no spark of honour bides.     NORTHUMBERLAND. Be thou a prey unto the house of York     And die in bands for this unmanly deed!   CLIFFORD. In dreadful war mayst thou be overcome,     Or live in peace abandon\'d and despis\'d!                                 Exeunt NORTHUMBERLAND, CLIFFORD,                                                 and WESTMORELAND   WARWICK. Turn this way, Henry, and regard them not.   EXETER. They seek revenge, and therefore will not yield.   KING HENRY. Ah, Exeter!   WARWICK. Why should you sigh, my lord?   KING HENRY. Not for myself, Lord Warwick, but my son,     Whom I unnaturally shall disinherit.     But be it as it may. [To YORK] I here entail     The crown to thee and to thine heirs for ever;     Conditionally, that here thou take an oath     To cease this civil war, and, whilst I live,     To honour me as thy king and sovereign,     And neither by treason nor hostility     To seek to put me down and reign thyself.   YORK. This oath I willingly take, and will perform.                                           [Coming from the throne]   WARWICK. Long live King Henry! Plantagenet, embrace him.   KING HENRY. And long live thou, and these thy forward sons!   YORK. Now York and Lancaster are reconcil\'d.   EXETER. Accurs\'d be he that seeks to make them foes!                                    [Sennet. Here they come down]   YORK. Farewell, my gracious lord; I\'ll to my castle.   WARWICK. And I\'ll keep London with my soldiers.   NORFOLK. And I to Norfolk with my followers.   MONTAGUE. And I unto the sea, from whence I came.                                              Exeunt the YORKISTS   KING HENRY. And I, with grief and sorrow, to the court.              Enter QUEEN MARGARET and the PRINCE OF WALES    EXETER. Here comes the Queen, whose looks bewray her anger.     I\'ll steal away.   KING HENRY. Exeter, so will I.   QUEEN MARGARET. Nay, go not from me; I will follow thee.   KING HENRY. Be patient, gentle queen, and I will stay.     QUEEN MARGARET. Who can be patient in such extremes?     Ah, wretched man! Would I had died a maid,     And never seen thee, never borne thee son,     Seeing thou hast prov\'d so unnatural a father!     Hath he deserv\'d to lose his birthright thus?     Hadst thou but lov\'d him half so well as I,     Or felt that pain which I did for him once,     Or nourish\'d him as I did with my blood,     Thou wouldst have left thy dearest heart-blood there     Rather than have made that savage duke thine heir,     And disinherited thine only son.   PRINCE OF WALES. Father, you cannot disinherit me.     If you be King, why should not I succeed?   KING HENRY. Pardon me, Margaret; pardon me, sweet son.     The Earl of Warwick and the Duke enforc\'d me.   QUEEN MARGARET. Enforc\'d thee! Art thou King and wilt be       forc\'d?     I shame to hear thee speak. Ah, timorous wretch!     Thou hast undone thyself, thy son, and me;     And giv\'n unto the house of York such head       As thou shalt reign but by their sufferance.     To entail him and his heirs unto the crown,     What is it but to make thy sepulchre     And creep into it far before thy time?     Warwick is Chancellor and the lord of Calais;     Stern Falconbridge commands the narrow seas;     The Duke is made Protector of the realm;     And yet shalt thou be safe? Such safety finds     The trembling lamb environed with wolves.     Had I been there, which am a silly woman,     The soldiers should have toss\'d me on their pikes     Before I would have granted to that act.     But thou prefer\'st thy life before thine honour;     And seeing thou dost, I here divorce myself,     Both from thy table, Henry, and thy bed,     Until that act of parliament be repeal\'d     Whereby my son is disinherited.     The northern lords that have forsworn thy colours     Will follow mine, if once they see them spread;     And spread they shall be, to thy foul disgrace       And utter ruin of the house of York.     Thus do I leave thee. Come, son, let\'s away;     Our army is ready; come, we\'ll after them.   KING HENRY. Stay, gentle Margaret, and hear me speak.   QUEEN MARGARET. Thou hast spoke too much already; get thee gone.   KING HENRY. Gentle son Edward, thou wilt stay with me?   QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, to be murder\'d by his enemies.   PRINCE OF WALES. When I return with victory from the field     I\'ll see your Grace; till then I\'ll follow her.   QUEEN MARGARET. Come, son, away; we may not linger thus.                             Exeunt QUEEN MARGARET and the PRINCE   KING HENRY. Poor queen! How love to me and to her son     Hath made her break out into terms of rage!     Reveng\'d may she be on that hateful Duke,     Whose haughty spirit, winged with desire,     Will cost my crown, and like an empty eagle     Tire on the flesh of me and of my son!     The loss of those three lords torments my heart.     I\'ll write unto them, and entreat them fair;     Come, cousin, you shall be the messenger.     EXETER. And I, I hope, shall reconcile them all.        Exeunt     SCENE II. Sandal Castle, near Wakefield, in Yorkshire  Flourish. Enter EDWARD, RICHARD, and MONTAGUE    RICHARD. Brother, though I be youngest, give me leave.   EDWARD. No, I can better play the orator.   MONTAGUE. But I have reasons strong and forcible.                       Enter the DUKE OF YORK    YORK. Why, how now, sons and brother! at a strife?     What is your quarrel? How began it first?   EDWARD. No quarrel, but a slight contention.   YORK. About what?   RICHARD. About that which concerns your Grace and us-     The crown of England, father, which is yours.   YORK. Mine, boy? Not till King Henry be dead.   RICHARD. Your right depends not on his life or death.   EDWARD. Now you are heir, therefore enjoy it now.     By giving the house of Lancaster leave to breathe,     It will outrun you, father, in the end.     YORK. I took an oath that he should quietly reign.   EDWARD. But for a kingdom any oath may be broken:     I would break a thousand oaths to reign one year.   RICHARD. No; God forbid your Grace should be forsworn.   YORK. I shall be, if I claim by open war.   RICHARD. I\'ll prove the contrary, if you\'ll hear me speak.   YORK. Thou canst not, son; it is impossible.   RICHARD. An oath is of no moment, being not took     Before a true and lawful magistrate     That hath authority over him that swears.     Henry had none, but did usurp the place;     Then, seeing \'twas he that made you to depose,     Your oath, my lord, is vain and frivolous.     Therefore, to arms. And, father, do but think     How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown,     Within whose circuit is Elysium     And all that poets feign of bliss and joy.     Why do we linger thus? I cannot rest     Until the white rose that I wear be dy\'d     Even in the lukewarm blood of Henry\'s heart.     YORK. Richard, enough; I will be King, or die.     Brother, thou shalt to London presently     And whet on Warwick to this enterprise.     Thou, Richard, shalt to the Duke of Norfolk     And tell him privily of our intent.     You, Edward, shall unto my Lord Cobham,     With whom the Kentishmen will willingly rise;     In them I trust, for they are soldiers,     Witty, courteous, liberal, full of spirit.     While you are thus employ\'d, what resteth more     But that I seek occasion how to rise,     And yet the King not privy to my drift,     Nor any of the house of Lancaster?                        Enter a MESSENGER      But, stay. What news? Why com\'st thou in such post?   MESSENGER. The Queen with all the northern earls and lords     Intend here to besiege you in your castle.     She is hard by with twenty thousand men;       And therefore fortify your hold, my lord.   YORK. Ay, with my sword. What! think\'st thou that we fear them?     Edward and Richard, you shall stay with me;     My brother Montague shall post to London.     Let noble Warwick, Cobham, and the rest,     Whom we have left protectors of the King,     With pow\'rful policy strengthen themselves     And trust not simple Henry nor his oaths.   MONTAGUE. Brother, I go; I\'ll win them, fear it not.     And thus most humbly I do take my leave.                Exit                Enter SIR JOHN and SIR HUGH MORTIMER    YORK. Sir john and Sir Hugh Mortimer, mine uncles!     You are come to Sandal in a happy hour;     The army of the Queen mean to besiege us.   SIR JOHN. She shall not need; we\'ll meet her in the field.   YORK. What, with five thousand men?   RICHARD. Ay, with five hundred, father, for a need.     A woman\'s general; what should we fear?                                                 [A march afar off]   EDWARD. I hear their drums. Let\'s set our men in order,     And issue forth and bid them battle straight.   YORK. Five men to twenty! Though the odds be great,     I doubt not, uncle, of our victory.     Many a battle have I won in France,     When as the enemy hath been ten to one;     Why should I not now have the like success?           Exeunt     SCENE III. Field of battle between Sandal Castle and Wakefield  Alarum. Enter RUTLAND and his TUTOR    RUTLAND. Ah, whither shall I fly to scape their hands?     Ah, tutor, look where bloody Clifford comes!                    Enter CLIFFORD and soldiers    CLIFFORD. Chaplain, away! Thy priesthood saves thy life.     As for the brat of this accursed duke,     Whose father slew my father, he shall die.   TUTOR. And I, my lord, will bear him company.   CLIFFORD. Soldiers, away with him!   TUTOR. Ah, Clifford, murder not this innocent child,     Lest thou be hated both of God and man.                                     Exit, forced off by soldiers   CLIFFORD. How now, is he dead already? Or is it fear     That makes him close his eyes? I\'ll open them.   RUTLAND. So looks the pent-up lion o\'er the wretch     That trembles under his devouring paws;       And so he walks, insulting o\'er his prey,     And so he comes, to rend his limbs asunder.     Ah, gentle Clifford, kill me with thy sword,     And not with such a cruel threat\'ning look!     Sweet Clifford, hear me speak before I die.     I am too mean a subject for thy wrath;     Be thou reveng\'d on men, and let me live.   CLIFFORD. In vain thou speak\'st, poor boy; my father\'s blood     Hath stopp\'d the passage where thy words should enter.   RUTLAND. Then let my father\'s blood open it again:     He is a man, and, Clifford, cope with him.   CLIFFORD. Had I thy brethren here, their lives and thine     Were not revenge sufficient for me;     No, if I digg\'d up thy forefathers\' graves     And hung their rotten coffins up in chains,     It could not slake mine ire nor ease my heart.     The sight of any of the house of York     Is as a fury to torment my soul;     And till I root out their accursed line     And leave not one alive, I live in hell.       Therefore-   RUTLAND. O, let me pray before I take my death!     To thee I pray: sweet Clifford, pity me.   CLIFFORD. Such pity as my rapier\'s point affords.   RUTLAND. I never did thee harm; why wilt thou slay me?   CLIFFORD. Thy father hath.   RUTLAND. But \'twas ere I was born.     Thou hast one son; for his sake pity me,     Lest in revenge thereof, sith God is just,     He be as miserably slain as I.     Ah, let me live in prison all my days;     And when I give occasion of offence     Then let me die, for now thou hast no cause.   CLIFFORD. No cause!     Thy father slew my father; therefore, die.       [Stabs him]   RUTLAND. Di faciant laudis summa sit ista tuae!         [Dies]   CLIFFORD. Plantagenet, I come, Plantagenet;     And this thy son\'s blood cleaving to my blade     Shall rust upon my weapon, till thy blood,     Congeal\'d with this, do make me wipe off both.          Exit     SCENE IV. Another part of the field  Alarum. Enter the DUKE OF YORK    YORK. The army of the Queen hath got the field.     My uncles both are slain in rescuing me;     And all my followers to the eager foe     Turn back and fly, like ships before the wind,     Or lambs pursu\'d by hunger-starved wolves.     My sons- God knows what hath bechanced them;     But this I know- they have demean\'d themselves     Like men born to renown by life or death.     Three times did Richard make a lane to me,     And thrice cried \'Courage, father! fight it out.\'     And full as oft came Edward to my side     With purple falchion, painted to the hilt     In blood of those that had encount\'red him.     And when the hardiest warriors did retire,     Richard cried \'Charge, and give no foot of ground!\'     And cried \'A crown, or else a glorious tomb!     A sceptre, or an earthly sepulchre!\'       With this we charg\'d again; but out alas!     We bodg\'d again; as I have seen a swan     With bootless labour swim against the tide     And spend her strength with over-matching waves.                                          [A short alarum within]     Ah, hark! The fatal followers do pursue,     And I am faint and cannot fly their fury;     And were I strong, I would not shun their fury.     The sands are numb\'red that make up my life;     Here must I stay, and here my life must end.           Enter QUEEN MARGARET, CLIFFORD, NORTHUMBERLAND,                the PRINCE OF WALES, and soldiers      Come, bloody Clifford, rough Northumberland,     I dare your quenchless fury to more rage;     I am your butt, and I abide your shot.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Yield to our mercy, proud Plantagenet.   CLIFFORD. Ay, to such mercy as his ruthless arm     With downright payment show\'d unto my father.       Now Phaethon hath tumbled from his car,     And made an evening at the noontide prick.   YORK. My ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth     A bird that will revenge upon you all;     And in that hope I throw mine eyes to heaven,     Scorning whate\'er you can afflict me with.     Why come you not? What! multitudes, and fear?   CLIFFORD. So cowards fight when they can fly no further;     So doves do peck the falcon\'s piercing talons;     So desperate thieves, all hopeless of their lives,     Breathe out invectives \'gainst the officers.   YORK. O Clifford, but bethink thee once again,     And in thy thought o\'errun my former time;     And, if thou canst for blushing, view this face,     And bite thy tongue that slanders him with cowardice     Whose frown hath made thee faint and fly ere this!   CLIFFORD. I will not bandy with thee word for word,     But buckler with thee blows, twice two for one.   QUEEN MARGARET. Hold, valiant Clifford; for a thousand causes     I would prolong awhile the traitor\'s life.       Wrath makes him deaf; speak thou, Northumberland.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Hold, Clifford! do not honour him so much     To prick thy finger, though to wound his heart.     What valour were it, when a cur doth grin,     For one to thrust his hand between his teeth,     When he might spurn him with his foot away?     It is war\'s prize to take all vantages;     And ten to one is no impeach of valour.                          [They lay hands on YORK, who struggles]   CLIFFORD. Ay, ay, so strives the woodcock with the gin.   NORTHUMBERLAND. So doth the cony struggle in the net.   YORK. So triumph thieves upon their conquer\'d booty;     So true men yield, with robbers so o\'er-match\'d.   NORTHUMBERLAND. What would your Grace have done unto him now?   QUEEN MARGARET. Brave warriors, Clifford and Northumberland,     Come, make him stand upon this molehill here     That raught at mountains with outstretched arms,     Yet parted but the shadow with his hand.     What, was it you that would be England\'s king?     Was\'t you that revell\'d in our parliament       And made a preachment of your high descent?     Where are your mess of sons to back you now?     The wanton Edward and the lusty George?     And where\'s that valiant crook-back prodigy,     Dicky your boy, that with his grumbling voice     Was wont to cheer his dad in mutinies?     Or, with the rest, where is your darling Rutland?     Look, York: I stain\'d this napkin with the blood     That valiant Clifford with his rapier\'s point     Made issue from the bosom of the boy;     And if thine eyes can water for his death,     I give thee this to dry thy cheeks withal.     Alas, poor York! but that I hate thee deadly,     I should lament thy miserable state.     I prithee grieve to make me merry, York.     What, hath thy fiery heart so parch\'d thine entrails     That not a tear can fall for Rutland\'s death?     Why art thou patient, man? Thou shouldst be mad;     And I to make thee mad do mock thee thus.     Stamp, rave, and fret, that I may sing and dance.       Thou wouldst be fee\'d, I see, to make me sport;     York cannot speak unless he wear a crown.     A crown for York!-and, lords, bow low to him.     Hold you his hands whilst I do set it on.                              [Putting a paper crown on his head]     Ay, marry, sir, now looks he like a king!     Ay, this is he that took King Henry\'s chair,     And this is he was his adopted heir.     But how is it that great Plantagenet     Is crown\'d so soon and broke his solemn oath?     As I bethink me, you should not be King     Till our King Henry had shook hands with death.     And will you pale your head in Henry\'s glory,     And rob his temples of the diadem,     Now in his life, against your holy oath?     O, \'tis a fault too too     Off with the crown and with the crown his head;     And, whilst we breathe, take time to do him dead.   CLIFFORD. That is my office, for my father\'s sake.   QUEEN MARGARET. Nay, stay; let\'s hear the orisons he makes.     YORK. She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France,     Whose tongue more poisons than the adder\'s tooth!     How ill-beseeming is it in thy sex     To triumph like an Amazonian trull     Upon their woes whom fortune captivates!     But that thy face is visard-like, unchanging,     Made impudent with use of evil deeds,     I would assay, proud queen, to make thee blush.     To tell thee whence thou cam\'st, of whom deriv\'d,     Were shame enough to shame thee, wert thou not shameless.     Thy father bears the type of King of Naples,     Of both the Sicils and Jerusalem,     Yet not so wealthy as an English yeoman.     Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult?     It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen;     Unless the adage must be verified,     That beggars mounted run their horse to death.     \'Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud;     But, God He knows, thy share thereof is small.     \'Tis virtue that doth make them most admir\'d;       The contrary doth make thee wond\'red at.     \'Tis government that makes them seem divine;     The want thereof makes thee abominable.     Thou art as opposite to every good     As the Antipodes are unto us,     Or as the south to the septentrion.     O tiger\'s heart wrapp\'d in a woman\'s hide!     How couldst thou drain the life-blood of the child,     To bid the father wipe his eyes withal,     And yet be seen to bear a woman\'s face?     Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible:     Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless.     Bid\'st thou me rage? Why, now thou hast thy wish;     Wouldst have me weep? Why, now thou hast thy will;     For raging wind blows up incessant showers,     And when the rage allays, the rain begins.     These tears are my sweet Rutland\'s obsequies;     And every drop cries vengeance for his death     \'Gainst thee, fell Clifford, and thee, false Frenchwoman.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Beshrew me, but his passions move me so       That hardly can I check my eyes from tears.   YORK. That face of his the hungry cannibals     Would not have touch\'d, would not have stain\'d with blood;     But you are more inhuman, more inexorable-     O, ten times more- than tigers of Hyrcania.     See, ruthless queen, a hapless father\'s tears.     This cloth thou dipp\'dst in blood of my sweet boy,     And I with tears do wash the blood away.     Keep thou the napkin, and go boast of this;     And if thou tell\'st the heavy story right,     Upon my soul, the hearers will shed tears;     Yea, even my foes will shed fast-falling tears     And say \'Alas, it was a piteous deed!\'     There, take the crown, and with the crown my curse;     And in thy need such comfort come to thee     As now I reap at thy too cruel hand!     Hard-hearted Clifford, take me from the world;     My soul to heaven, my blood upon your heads!   NORTHUMBERLAND. Had he been slaughter-man to all my kin,     I should not for my life but weep with him,       To see how inly sorrow gripes his soul.   QUEEN MARGARET. What, weeping-ripe, my Lord Northumberland?     Think but upon the wrong he did us all,     And that will quickly dry thy melting tears.   CLIFFORD. Here\'s for my oath, here\'s for my father\'s death.                                                   [Stabbing him]   QUEEN MARGARET. And here\'s to right our gentle-hearted king.                                                   [Stabbing him]   YORK. Open Thy gate of mercy, gracious God!     My soul flies through these wounds to seek out Thee.                                                           [Dies]   QUEEN MARGARET. Off with his head, and set it on York gates;     So York may overlook the town of York.                                                 Flourish. Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. A plain near Mortimer\'s Cross in Herefordshire  A march. Enter EDWARD, RICHARD, and their power    EDWARD. I wonder how our princely father scap\'d,     Or whether he be scap\'d away or no     From Clifford\'s and Northumberland\'s pursuit.     Had he been ta\'en, we should have heard the news;     Had he been slain, we should have heard the news;     Or had he scap\'d, methinks we should have heard     The happy tidings of his good escape.     How fares my brother? Why is he so sad?   RICHARD. I cannot joy until I be resolv\'d     Where our right valiant father is become.     I saw him in the battle range about,     And watch\'d him how he singled Clifford forth.     Methought he bore him in the thickest troop     As doth a lion in a herd of neat;     Or as a bear, encompass\'d round with dogs,     Who having pinch\'d a few and made them cry,     The rest stand all aloof and bark at him.       So far\'d our father with his enemies;     So fled his enemies my warlike father.     Methinks \'tis prize enough to be his son.     See how the morning opes her golden gates     And takes her farewell of the glorious sun.     How well resembles it the prime of youth,     Trimm\'d like a younker prancing to his love!   EDWARD. Dazzle mine eyes, or do I see three suns?   RICHARD. Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun;     Not separated with the racking clouds,     But sever\'d in a pale clear-shining sky.     See, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss,     As if they vow\'d some league inviolable.     Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun.     In this the heaven figures some event.   EDWARD. \'Tis wondrous strange, the like yet never heard of.     I think it cites us, brother, to the field,     That we, the sons of brave Plantagenet,     Each one already blazing by our meeds,     Should notwithstanding join our lights together       And overshine the earth, as this the world.     Whate\'er it bodes, henceforward will I bear     Upon my target three fair shining suns.   RICHARD. Nay, bear three daughters- by your leave I speak it,     You love the breeder better than the male.                   Enter a MESSENGER, blowing      But what art thou, whose heavy looks foretell     Some dreadful story hanging on thy tongue?   MESSENGER. Ah, one that was a woeful looker-on     When as the noble Duke of York was slain,     Your princely father and my loving lord!   EDWARD. O, speak no more! for I have heard too much.   RICHARD. Say how he died, for I will hear it all.   MESSENGER. Environed he was with many foes,     And stood against them as the hope of Troy     Against the Greeks that would have ent\'red Troy.     But Hercules himself must yield to odds;     And many strokes, though with a little axe,       Hews down and fells the hardest-timber\'d oak.     By many hands your father was subdu\'d;     But only slaught\'red by the ireful arm     Of unrelenting Clifford and the Queen,     Who crown\'d the gracious Duke in high despite,     Laugh\'d in his face; and when with grief he wept,     The ruthless Queen gave him to dry his cheeks     A napkin steeped in the harmless blood     Of sweet young Rutland, by rough Clifford slain;     And after many scorns, many foul taunts,     They took his head, and on the gates of York     They set the same; and there it doth remain,     The saddest spectacle that e\'er I view\'d.   EDWARD. Sweet Duke of York, our prop to lean upon,     Now thou art gone, we have no staff, no stay.     O Clifford, boist\'rous Clifford, thou hast slain     The flow\'r of Europe for his chivalry;     And treacherously hast thou vanquish\'d him,     For hand to hand he would have vanquish\'d thee.     Now my soul\'s palace is become a prison.       Ah, would she break from hence, that this my body     Might in the ground be closed up in rest!     For never henceforth shall I joy again;     Never, O never, shall I see more joy.   RICHARD. I cannot weep, for all my body\'s moisture     Scarce serves to quench my furnace-burning heart;     Nor can my tongue unload my heart\'s great burden,     For self-same wind that I should speak withal     Is kindling coals that fires all my breast,     And burns me up with flames that tears would quench.     To weep is to make less the depth of grief.     Tears then for babes; blows and revenge for me!     Richard, I bear thy name; I\'ll venge thy death,     Or die renowned by attempting it.   EDWARD. His name that valiant duke hath left with thee;     His dukedom and his chair with me is left.   RICHARD. Nay, if thou be that princely eagle\'s bird,     Show thy descent by gazing \'gainst the sun;     For chair and dukedom, throne and kingdom, say:     Either that is thine, or else thou wert not his.             March. Enter WARWICK, MONTAGUE, and their army    WARWICK. How now, fair lords! What fare? What news abroad?   RICHARD. Great Lord of Warwick, if we should recount     Our baleful news and at each word\'s deliverance     Stab poinards in our flesh till all were told,     The words would add more anguish than the wounds.     O valiant lord, the Duke of York is slain!   EDWARD. O Warwick, Warwick! that Plantagenet     Which held thee dearly as his soul\'s redemption     Is by the stern Lord Clifford done to death.   WARWICK. Ten days ago I drown\'d these news in tears;     And now, to add more measure to your woes,     I come to tell you things sith then befall\'n.     After the bloody fray at Wakefield fought,     Where your brave father breath\'d his latest gasp,     Tidings, as swiftly as the posts could run,     Were brought me of your loss and his depart.     I, then in London, keeper of the King,       Muster\'d my soldiers, gathered flocks of friends,     And very well appointed, as I thought,     March\'d toward Saint Albans to intercept the Queen,     Bearing the King in my behalf along;     For by my scouts I was advertised     That she was coming with a full intent     To dash our late decree in parliament     Touching King Henry\'s oath and your succession.     Short tale to make- we at Saint Albans met,     Our battles join\'d, and both sides fiercely fought;     But whether \'twas the coldness of the King,     Who look\'d full gently on his warlike queen,     That robb\'d my soldiers of their heated spleen,     Or whether \'twas report of her success,     Or more than common fear of Clifford\'s rigour,     Who thunders to his captives blood and death,     I cannot judge; but, to conclude with truth,     Their weapons like to lightning came and went:     Our soldiers\', like the night-owl\'s lazy flight     Or like an idle thresher with a flail,       Fell gently down, as if they struck their friends.     I cheer\'d them up with justice of our cause,     With promise of high pay and great rewards,     But all in vain; they had no heart to fight,     And we in them no hope to win the day;     So that we fled: the King unto the Queen;     Lord George your brother, Norfolk, and myself,     In haste post-haste are come to join with you;     For in the marches here we heard you were     Making another head to fight again.   EDWARD. Where is the Duke of Norfolk, gentle Warwick?     And when came George from Burgundy to England?   WARWICK. Some six miles off the Duke is with the soldiers;     And for your brother, he was lately sent     From your kind aunt, Duchess of Burgundy,     With aid of soldiers to this needful war.   RICHARD. \'Twas odds, belike, when valiant Warwick fled.     Oft have I heard his praises in pursuit,     But ne\'er till now his scandal of retire.   WARWICK. Nor now my scandal, Richard, dost thou hear;       For thou shalt know this strong right hand of mine     Can pluck the diadem from faint Henry\'s head     And wring the awful sceptre from his fist,     Were he as famous and as bold in war     As he is fam\'d for mildness, peace, and prayer.   RICHARD. I know it well, Lord Warwick; blame me not.     \'Tis love I bear thy glories makes me speak.     But in this troublous time what\'s to be done?     Shall we go throw away our coats of steel     And wrap our bodies in black mourning-gowns,     Numbering our Ave-Maries with our beads?     Or shall we on the helmets of our foes     Tell our devotion with revengeful arms?     If for the last, say \'Ay,\' and to it, lords.   WARWICK. Why, therefore Warwick came to seek you out;     And therefore comes my brother Montague.     Attend me, lords. The proud insulting Queen,     With Clifford and the haught Northumberland,     And of their feather many moe proud birds,     Have wrought the easy-melting King like wax.       He swore consent to your succession,     His oath enrolled in the parliament;     And now to London all the crew are gone     To frustrate both his oath and what beside     May make against the house of Lancaster.     Their power, I think, is thirty thousand strong.     Now if the help of Norfolk and myself,     With all the friends that thou, brave Earl of March,     Amongst the loving Welshmen canst procure,     Will but amount to five and twenty thousand,     Why, Via! to London will we march amain,     And once again bestride our foaming steeds,     And once again cry \'Charge upon our foes!\'     But never once again turn back and fly.   RICHARD. Ay, now methinks I hear great Warwick speak.     Ne\'er may he live to see a sunshine day     That cries \'Retire!\' if Warwick bid him stay.   EDWARD. Lord Warwick, on thy shoulder will I lean;     And when thou fail\'st- as God forbid the hour!-     Must Edward fall, which peril heaven forfend.     WARWICK. No longer Earl of March, but Duke of York;     The next degree is England\'s royal throne,     For King of England shalt thou be proclaim\'d     In every borough as we pass along;     And he that throws not up his cap for joy     Shall for the fault make forfeit of his head.     King Edward, valiant Richard, Montague,     Stay we no longer, dreaming of renown,     But sound the trumpets and about our task.   RICHARD. Then, Clifford, were thy heart as hard as steel,     As thou hast shown it flinty by thy deeds,     I come to pierce it or to give thee mine.   EDWARD. Then strike up drums. God and Saint George for us!                         Enter a MESSENGER    WARWICK. How now! what news?   MESSENGER. The Duke of Norfolk sends you word by me     The Queen is coming with a puissant host,     And craves your company for speedy counsel.     WARWICK. Why, then it sorts; brave warriors, let\'s away.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE II. Before York  Flourish. Enter KING HENRY, QUEEN MARGARET, the PRINCE OF WALES, CLIFFORD, NORTHUMBERLAND, with drum and trumpets    QUEEN MARGARET. Welcome, my lord, to this brave town of York.     Yonder\'s the head of that arch-enemy     That sought to be encompass\'d with your crown.     Doth not the object cheer your heart, my lord?   KING HENRY. Ay, as the rocks cheer them that fear their wreck-     To see this sight, it irks my very soul.     Withhold revenge, dear God; \'tis not my fault,     Nor wittingly have I infring\'d my vow.   CLIFFORD. My gracious liege, this too much lenity     And harmful pity must be laid aside.     To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?     Not to the beast that would usurp their den.     Whose hand is that the forest bear doth lick?     Not his that spoils her young before her face.     Who scapes the lurking serpent\'s mortal sting?       Not he that sets his foot upon her back,     The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on,     And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.     Ambitious York did level at thy crown,     Thou smiling while he knit his angry brows.     He, but a Duke, would have his son a king,     And raise his issue like a loving sire:     Thou, being a king, bless\'d with a goodly son,     Didst yield consent to disinherit him,     Which argued thee a most unloving father.     Unreasonable creatures feed their young;     And though man\'s face be fearful to their eyes,     Yet, in protection of their tender ones,     Who hath not seen them- even with those wings     Which sometime they have us\'d with fearful flight-     Make war with him that climb\'d unto their nest,     Offering their own lives in their young\'s defence     For shame, my liege, make them your precedent!     Were it not pity that this goodly boy     Should lose his birthright by his father\'s fault,       And long hereafter say unto his child     \'What my great-grandfather and grandsire got     My careless father fondly gave away\'?     Ah, what a shame were this! Look on the boy;     And let his manly face, which promiseth     Successful fortune, steel thy melting heart     To hold thine own and leave thine own with him.   KING HENRY. Full well hath Clifford play\'d the orator,     Inferring arguments of mighty force.     But, Clifford, tell me, didst thou never hear     That things ill got had ever bad success?     And happy always was it for that son     Whose father for his hoarding went to hell?     I\'ll leave my son my virtuous deeds behind;     And would my father had left me no more!     For all the rest is held at such a rate     As brings a thousand-fold more care to keep     Than in possession any jot of pleasure.     Ah, cousin York! would thy best friends did know     How it doth grieve me that thy head is here!     QUEEN MARGARET. My lord, cheer up your spirits; our foes are nigh,     And this soft courage makes your followers faint.     You promis\'d knighthood to our forward son:     Unsheathe your sword and dub him presently.     Edward, kneel down.   KING HENRY. Edward Plantagenet, arise a knight;     And learn this lesson: Draw thy sword in right.   PRINCE OF WALES. My gracious father, by your kingly leave,     I\'ll draw it as apparent to the crown,     And in that quarrel use it to the death.   CLIFFORD. Why, that is spoken like a toward prince.                        Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. Royal commanders, be in readiness;     For with a band of thirty thousand men     Comes Warwick, backing of the Duke of York,     And in the towns, as they do march along,     Proclaims him king, and many fly to him.     Darraign your battle, for they are at hand.     CLIFFORD. I would your Highness would depart the field:     The Queen hath best success when you are absent.   QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, good my lord, and leave us to our fortune.   KING HENRY. Why, that\'s my fortune too; therefore I\'ll stay.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Be it with resolution, then, to fight.   PRINCE OF WALES. My royal father, cheer these noble lords,     And hearten those that fight in your defence.     Unsheathe your sword, good father; cry \'Saint George!\'           March. Enter EDWARD, GEORGE, RICHARD, WARWICK,                 NORFOLK, MONTAGUE, and soldiers    EDWARD. Now, perjur\'d Henry, wilt thou kneel for grace     And set thy diadem upon my head,     Or bide the mortal fortune of the field?   QUEEN MARGARET. Go rate thy minions, proud insulting boy.     Becomes it thee to be thus bold in terms     Before thy sovereign and thy lawful king?   EDWARD. I am his king, and he should bow his knee.     I was adopted heir by his consent:       Since when, his oath is broke; for, as I hear,     You that are King, though he do wear the crown,     Have caus\'d him by new act of parliament     To blot out me and put his own son in.   CLIFFORD. And reason too:     Who should succeed the father but the son?   RICHARD. Are you there, butcher? O, I cannot speak!   CLIFFORD. Ay, crook-back, here I stand to answer thee,     Or any he, the proudest of thy sort.   RICHARD. \'Twas you that kill\'d young Rutland, was it not?   CLIFFORD. Ay, and old York, and yet not satisfied.   RICHARD. For God\'s sake, lords, give signal to the fight.   WARWICK. What say\'st thou, Henry? Wilt thou yield the crown?   QUEEN MARGARET. Why, how now, long-tongu\'d Warwick! Dare you speak?     When you and I met at Saint Albans last     Your legs did better service than your hands.   WARWICK. Then \'twas my turn to fly, and now \'tis thine.   CLIFFORD. You said so much before, and yet you fled.   WARWICK. \'Twas not your valour, Clifford, drove me thence.   NORTHUMBERLAND. No, nor your manhood that durst make you stay.     RICHARD. Northumberland, I hold thee reverently.     Break off the parley; for scarce I can refrain     The execution of my big-swol\'n heart     Upon that Clifford, that cruel child-killer.   CLIFFORD. I slew thy father; call\'st thou him a child?   RICHARD. Ay, like a dastard and a treacherous coward,     As thou didst kill our tender brother Rutland;     But ere sunset I\'ll make thee curse the deed.   KING HENRY. Have done with words, my lords, and hear me speak.   QUEEN MARGARET. Defy them then, or else hold close thy lips.   KING HENRY. I prithee give no limits to my tongue:     I am a king, and privileg\'d to speak.   CLIFFORD. My liege, the wound that bred this meeting here     Cannot be cur\'d by words; therefore be still.   RICHARD. Then, executioner, unsheathe thy sword.     By Him that made us all, I am resolv\'d     That Clifford\'s manhood lies upon his tongue.   EDWARD. Say, Henry, shall I have my right, or no?     A thousand men have broke their fasts to-day     That ne\'er shall dine unless thou yield the crown.     WARWICK. If thou deny, their blood upon thy head;     For York in justice puts his armour on.   PRINCE OF WALES. If that be right which Warwick says is right,     There is no wrong, but every thing is right.   RICHARD. Whoever got thee, there thy mother stands;     For well I wot thou hast thy mother\'s tongue.   QUEEN MARGARET. But thou art neither like thy sire nor dam;     But like a foul misshapen stigmatic,     Mark\'d by the destinies to be avoided,     As venom toads or lizards\' dreadful stings.   RICHARD. Iron of Naples hid with English gilt,     Whose father bears the title of a king-     As if a channel should be call\'d the sea-     Sham\'st thou not, knowing whence thou art extraught,     To let thy tongue detect thy base-born heart?   EDWARD. A wisp of straw were worth a thousand crowns     To make this shameless callet know herself.     Helen of Greece was fairer far than thou,     Although thy husband may be Menelaus;     And ne\'er was Agamemmon\'s brother wrong\'d       By that false woman as this king by thee.     His father revell\'d in the heart of France,     And tam\'d the King, and made the Dauphin stoop;     And had he match\'d according to his state,     He might have kept that glory to this day;     But when he took a beggar to his bed     And grac\'d thy poor sire with his bridal day,     Even then that sunshine brew\'d a show\'r for him     That wash\'d his father\'s fortunes forth of France     And heap\'d sedition on his crown at home.     For what hath broach\'d this tumult but thy pride?     Hadst thou been meek, our title still had slept;     And we, in pity of the gentle King,     Had slipp\'d our claim until another age.   GEORGE. But when we saw our sunshine made thy spring,     And that thy summer bred us no increase,     We set the axe to thy usurping root;     And though the edge hath something hit ourselves,     Yet know thou, since we have begun to strike,     We\'ll never leave till we have hewn thee down,       Or bath\'d thy growing with our heated bloods.   EDWARD. And in this resolution I defy thee;     Not willing any longer conference,     Since thou deniest the gentle King to speak.     Sound trumpets; let our bloody colours wave,     And either victory or else a grave!   QUEEN MARGARET. Stay, Edward.   EDWARD. No, wrangling woman, we\'ll no longer stay;     These words will cost ten thousand lives this day.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE III. A field of battle between Towton and Saxton, in Yorkshire  Alarum; excursions. Enter WARWICK    WARWICK. Forspent with toil, as runners with a race,     I lay me down a little while to breathe;     For strokes receiv\'d and many blows repaid     Have robb\'d my strong-knit sinews of their strength,     And spite of spite needs must I rest awhile.                       Enter EDWARD, running    EDWARD. Smile, gentle heaven, or strike, ungentle death;     For this world frowns, and Edward\'s sun is clouded.   WARWICK. How now, my lord. What hap? What hope of good?                           Enter GEORGE    GEORGE. Our hap is lost, our hope but sad despair;     Our ranks are broke, and ruin follows us.       What counsel give you? Whither shall we fly?   EDWARD. Bootless is flight: they follow us with wings;     And weak we are, and cannot shun pursuit.                           Enter RICHARD    RICHARD. Ah, Warwick, why hast thou withdrawn thyself?     Thy brother\'s blood the thirsty earth hath drunk,     Broach\'d with the steely point of Clifford\'s lance;     And in the very pangs of death he cried,     Like to a dismal clangor heard from far,     \'Warwick, revenge! Brother, revenge my death.\'     So, underneath the belly of their steeds,     That stain\'d their fetlocks in his smoking blood,     The noble gentleman gave up the ghost.   WARWICK. Then let the earth be drunken with our blood.     I\'ll kill my horse, because I will not fly.     Why stand we like soft-hearted women here,     Wailing our losses, whiles the foe doth rage,     And look upon, as if the tragedy       Were play\'d in jest by counterfeiting actors?     Here on my knee I vow to God above     I\'ll never pause again, never stand still,     Till either death hath clos\'d these eyes of mine     Or fortune given me measure of revenge.   EDWARD. O Warwick, I do bend my knee with thine,     And in this vow do chain my soul to thine!     And ere my knee rise from the earth\'s cold face     I throw my hands, mine eyes, my heart to Thee,     Thou setter-up and plucker-down of kings,     Beseeching Thee, if with Thy will it stands     That to my foes this body must be prey,     Yet that Thy brazen gates of heaven may ope     And give sweet passage to my sinful soul.     Now, lords, take leave until we meet again,     Where\'er it be, in heaven or in earth.   RICHARD. Brother, give me thy hand; and, gentle Warwick,     Let me embrace thee in my weary arms.     I that did never weep now melt with woe     That winter should cut off our spring-time so.     WARWICK. Away, away! Once more, sweet lords, farewell.   GEORGE. Yet let us all together to our troops,     And give them leave to fly that will not stay,     And call them pillars that will stand to us;     And if we thrive, promise them such rewards     As victors wear at the Olympian games.     This may plant courage in their quailing breasts,     For yet is hope of life and victory.     Forslow no longer; make we hence amain.               Exeunt     SCENE IV. Another part of the field  Excursions. Enter RICHARD and CLIFFORD    RICHARD. Now, Clifford, I have singled thee alone.     Suppose this arm is for the Duke of York,     And this for Rutland; both bound to revenge,     Wert thou environ\'d with a brazen wall.   CLIFFORD. Now, Richard, I am with thee here alone.     This is the hand that stabbed thy father York;     And this the hand that slew thy brother Rutland;     And here\'s the heart that triumphs in their death     And cheers these hands that slew thy sire and brother     To execute the like upon thyself;     And so, have at thee!                           [They fight]                   Enter WARWICK; CLIFFORD flies    RICHARD. Nay, Warwick, single out some other chase;     For I myself will hunt this wolf to death.            Exeunt     SCENE V. Another part of the field  Alarum. Enter KING HENRY alone    KING HENRY. This battle fares like to the morning\'s war,     When dying clouds contend with growing light,     What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,     Can neither call it perfect day nor night.     Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea     Forc\'d by the tide to combat with the wind;     Now sways it that way, like the selfsame sea     Forc\'d to retire by fury of the wind.     Sometime the flood prevails, and then the wind;     Now one the better, then another best;     Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast,     Yet neither conqueror nor conquered.     So is the equal poise of this fell war.     Here on this molehill will I sit me down.     To whom God will, there be the victory!     For Margaret my queen, and Clifford too,     Have chid me from the battle, swearing both       They prosper best of all when I am thence.     Would I were dead, if God\'s good will were so!     For what is in this world but grief and woe?     O God! methinks it were a happy life     To be no better than a homely swain;     To sit upon a hill, as I do now,     To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,     Thereby to see the minutes how they run-     How many makes the hour full complete,     How many hours brings about the day,     How many days will finish up the year,     How many years a mortal man may live.     When this is known, then to divide the times-     So many hours must I tend my flock;     So many hours must I take my rest;     So many hours must I contemplate;     So many hours must I sport myself;     So many days my ewes have been with young;     So many weeks ere the poor fools will can;     So many years ere I shall shear the fleece:       So minutes, hours, days, months, and years,     Pass\'d over to the end they were created,     Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.     Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely!     Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade     To shepherds looking on their silly sheep,     Than doth a rich embroider\'d canopy     To kings that fear their subjects\' treachery?     O yes, it doth; a thousand-fold it doth.     And to conclude: the shepherd\'s homely curds,     His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle,     His wonted sleep under a fresh tree\'s shade,     All which secure and sweetly he enjoys,     Is far beyond a prince\'s delicates-     His viands sparkling in a golden cup,     His body couched in a curious bed,     When care, mistrust, and treason waits on him.         Alarum. Enter a son that hath kill\'d his Father, at        one door; and a FATHER that hath kill\'d his Son, at                            another door    SON. Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.     This man whom hand to hand I slew in fight     May be possessed with some store of crowns;     And I, that haply take them from him now,     May yet ere night yield both my life and them     To some man else, as this dead man doth me.     Who\'s this? O God! It is my father\'s face,     Whom in this conflict I unwares have kill\'d.     O heavy times, begetting such events!     From London by the King was I press\'d forth;     My father, being the Earl of Warwick\'s man,     Came on the part of York, press\'d by his master;     And I, who at his hands receiv\'d my life,     Have by my hands of life bereaved him.     Pardon me, God, I knew not what I did.     And pardon, father, for I knew not thee.     My tears shall wipe away these bloody marks;     And no more words till they have flow\'d their fill.     KING HENRY. O piteous spectacle! O bloody times!     Whiles lions war and battle for their dens,     Poor harmless lambs abide their enmity.     Weep, wretched man; I\'ll aid thee tear for tear;     And let our hearts and eyes, like civil war,     Be blind with tears and break o\'ercharg\'d with grief.                 Enter FATHER, bearing of his SON    FATHER. Thou that so stoutly hath resisted me,     Give me thy gold, if thou hast any gold;     For I have bought it with an hundred blows.     But let me see. Is this our foeman\'s face?     Ah, no, no, no, no, it is mine only son!     Ah, boy, if any life be left in thee,     Throw up thine eye! See, see what show\'rs arise,     Blown with the windy tempest of my heart     Upon thy wounds, that kills mine eye and heart!     O, pity, God, this miserable age!     What stratagems, how fell, how butcherly,       Erroneous, mutinous, and unnatural,     This deadly quarrel daily doth beget!     O boy, thy father gave thee life too soon,     And hath bereft thee of thy life too late!   KING HENRY. Woe above woe! grief more than common grief!     O that my death would stay these ruthful deeds!     O pity, pity, gentle heaven, pity!     The red rose and the white are on his face,     The fatal colours of our striving houses:     The one his purple blood right well resembles;     The other his pale cheeks, methinks, presenteth.     Wither one rose, and let the other flourish!     If you contend, a thousand lives must perish.   SON. How will my mother for a father\'s death     Take on with me, and ne\'er be satisfied!   FATHER. How will my wife for slaughter of my son     Shed seas of tears, and ne\'er be satisfied!   KING HENRY. How will the country for these woeful chances     Misthink the King, and not be satisfied!   SON. Was ever son so rued a father\'s death?     FATHER. Was ever father so bemoan\'d his son?   KING HENRY. Was ever king so griev\'d for subjects\' woe?     Much is your sorrow; mine ten times so much.   SON. I\'ll bear thee hence, where I may weep my fill.                                               Exit with the body   FATHER. These arms of mine shall be thy winding-sheet;     My heart, sweet boy, shall be thy sepulchre,     For from my heart thine image ne\'er shall go;     My sighing breast shall be thy funeral bell;     And so obsequious will thy father be,     Even for the loss of thee, having no more,     As Priam was for all his valiant sons.     I\'ll bear thee hence; and let them fight that will,     For I have murdered where I should not kill.                                               Exit with the body   KING HENRY. Sad-hearted men, much overgone with care,     Here sits a king more woeful than you are.             Alarums, excursions. Enter QUEEN MARGARET,                   PRINCE OF WALES, and EXETER      PRINCE OF WALES. Fly, father, fly; for all your friends are fled,     And Warwick rages like a chafed bull.     Away! for death doth hold us in pursuit.   QUEEN MARGARET. Mount you, my lord; towards Berwick post amain.     Edward and Richard, like a brace of greyhounds     Having the fearful flying hare in sight,     With fiery eyes sparkling for very wrath,     And bloody steel grasp\'d in their ireful hands,     Are at our backs; and therefore hence amain.   EXETER. Away! for vengeance comes along with them.     Nay, stay not to expostulate; make speed;     Or else come after. I\'ll away before.   KING HENRY. Nay, take me with thee, good sweet Exeter.     Not that I fear to stay, but love to go     Whither the Queen intends. Forward; away!             Exeunt     SCENE VI. Another part of the field  A loud alarum. Enter CLIFFORD, wounded    CLIFFORD. Here burns my candle out; ay, here it dies,     Which, whiles it lasted, gave King Henry light.     O Lancaster, I fear thy overthrow     More than my body\'s parting with my soul!     My love and fear glu\'d many friends to thee;     And, now I fall, thy tough commixture melts,     Impairing Henry, strength\'ning misproud York.     The common people swarm like summer flies;     And whither fly the gnats but to the sun?     And who shines now but Henry\'s enemies?     O Phoebus, hadst thou never given consent     That Phaethon should check thy fiery steeds,     Thy burning car never had scorch\'d the earth!     And, Henry, hadst thou sway\'d as kings should do,     Or as thy father and his father did,     Giving no ground unto the house of York,     They never then had sprung like summer flies;       I and ten thousand in this luckless realm     Had left no mourning widows for our death;     And thou this day hadst kept thy chair in peace.     For what doth cherish weeds but gentle air?     And what makes robbers bold but too much lenity?     Bootless are plaints, and cureless are my wounds.     No way to fly, nor strength to hold out flight.     The foe is merciless and will not pity;     For at their hands I have deserv\'d no pity.     The air hath got into my deadly wounds,     And much effuse of blood doth make me faint.     Come, York and Richard, Warwick and the rest;     I stabb\'d your fathers\' bosoms: split my breast.                                                      [He faints]         Alarum and retreat. Enter EDWARD, GEORGE, RICHARD                MONTAGUE, WARWICK, and soldiers    EDWARD. Now breathe we, lords. Good fortune bids us pause     And smooth the frowns of war with peaceful looks.       Some troops pursue the bloody-minded Queen     That led calm Henry, though he were a king,     As doth a sail, fill\'d with a fretting gust,     Command an argosy to stern the waves.     But think you, lords, that Clifford fled with them?   WARWICK. No, \'tis impossible he should escape;     For, though before his face I speak the words,     Your brother Richard mark\'d him for the grave;     And, whereso\'er he is, he\'s surely dead.                                      [CLIFFORD groans, and dies]   RICHARD. Whose soul is that which takes her heavy leave?     A deadly groan, like life and death\'s departing.     See who it is.   EDWARD. And now the battle\'s ended,     If friend or foe, let him be gently used.   RICHARD. Revoke that doom of mercy, for \'tis Clifford;     Who not contented that he lopp\'d the branch     In hewing Rutland when his leaves put forth,     But set his murd\'ring knife unto the root     From whence that tender spray did sweetly spring-       I mean our princely father, Duke of York.   WARWICK. From off the gates of York fetch down the head,     Your father\'s head, which Clifford placed there;     Instead whereof let this supply the room.     Measure for measure must be answered.   EDWARD. Bring forth that fatal screech-owl to our house,     That nothing sung but death to us and ours.     Now death shall stop his dismal threat\'ning sound,     And his ill-boding tongue no more shall speak.   WARWICK. I think his understanding is bereft.     Speak, Clifford, dost thou know who speaks to thee?     Dark cloudy death o\'ershades his beams of life,     And he nor sees nor hears us what we say.   RICHARD. O, would he did! and so, perhaps, he doth.     \'Tis but his policy to counterfeit,     Because he would avoid such bitter taunts     Which in the time of death he gave our father.   GEORGE. If so thou think\'st, vex him with eager words.   RICHARD. Clifford, ask mercy and obtain no grace.   EDWARD. Clifford, repent in bootless penitence.     WARWICK. Clifford, devise excuses for thy faults.   GEORGE. While we devise fell tortures for thy faults.   RICHARD. Thou didst love York, and I am son to York.   EDWARD. Thou pitied\'st Rutland, I will pity thee.   GEORGE. Where\'s Captain Margaret, to fence you now?   WARWICK. They mock thee, Clifford; swear as thou wast wont.   RICHARD. What, not an oath? Nay, then the world goes hard     When Clifford cannot spare his friends an oath.     I know by that he\'s dead; and by my soul,     If this right hand would buy two hours\' life,     That I in all despite might rail at him,     This hand should chop it off, and with the issuing blood     Stifle the villain whose unstanched thirst     York and young Rutland could not satisfy.   WARWICK. Ay, but he\'s dead. Off with the traitor\'s head,     And rear it in the place your father\'s stands.     And now to London with triumphant march,     There to be crowned England\'s royal King;     From whence shall Warwick cut the sea to France,     And ask the Lady Bona for thy queen.       So shalt thou sinew both these lands together;     And, having France thy friend, thou shalt not dread     The scatt\'red foe that hopes to rise again;     For though they cannot greatly sting to hurt,     Yet look to have them buzz to offend thine ears.     First will I see the coronation;     And then to Brittany I\'ll cross the sea     To effect this marriage, so it please my lord.   EDWARD. Even as thou wilt, sweet Warwick, let it be;     For in thy shoulder do I build my seat,     And never will I undertake the thing     Wherein thy counsel and consent is wanting.     Richard, I will create thee Duke of Gloucester;     And George, of Clarence; Warwick, as ourself,     Shall do and undo as him pleaseth best.   RICHARD. Let me be Duke of Clarence, George of Gloucester;     For Gloucester\'s dukedom is too ominous.   WARWICK. Tut, that\'s a foolish observation.     Richard, be Duke of Gloucester. Now to London     To see these honours in possession.                   Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. A chase in the north of England  Enter two KEEPERS, with cross-bows in their hands    FIRST KEEPER. Under this thick-grown brake we\'ll shroud ourselves,     For through this laund anon the deer will come;     And in this covert will we make our stand,     Culling the principal of all the deer.   SECOND KEEPER. I\'ll stay above the hill, so both may shoot.   FIRST KEEPER. That cannot be; the noise of thy cross-bow     Will scare the herd, and so my shoot is lost.     Here stand we both, and aim we at the best;     And, for the time shall not seem tedious,     I\'ll tell thee what befell me on a day     In this self-place where now we mean to stand.   SECOND KEEPER. Here comes a man; let\'s stay till he be past.          Enter KING HENRY, disguised, with a prayer-book    KING HENRY. From Scotland am I stol\'n, even of pure love,     To greet mine own land with my wishful sight.       No, Harry, Harry, \'tis no land of thine;     Thy place is fill\'d, thy sceptre wrung from thee,     Thy balm wash\'d off wherewith thou wast anointed.     No bending knee will call thee Caesar now,     No humble suitors press to speak for right,     No, not a man comes for redress of thee;     For how can I help them and not myself?   FIRST KEEPER. Ay, here\'s a deer whose skin\'s a keeper\'s fee.     This is the quondam King; let\'s seize upon him.   KING HENRY. Let me embrace thee, sour adversity,     For wise men say it is the wisest course.   SECOND KEEPER. Why linger we? let us lay hands upon him.   FIRST KEEPER. Forbear awhile; we\'ll hear a little more.   KING HENRY. My Queen and son are gone to France for aid;     And, as I hear, the great commanding Warwick     Is thither gone to crave the French King\'s sister     To wife for Edward. If this news be true,     Poor queen and son, your labour is but lost;     For Warwick is a subtle orator,     And Lewis a prince soon won with moving words.       By this account, then, Margaret may win him;     For she\'s a woman to be pitied much.     Her sighs will make a batt\'ry in his breast;     Her tears will pierce into a marble heart;     The tiger will be mild whiles she doth mourn;     And Nero will be tainted with remorse     To hear and see her plaints, her brinish tears.     Ay, but she\'s come to beg: Warwick, to give.     She, on his left side, craving aid for Henry:     He, on his right, asking a wife for Edward.     She weeps, and says her Henry is depos\'d:     He smiles, and says his Edward is install\'d;     That she, poor wretch, for grief can speak no more;     Whiles Warwick tells his title, smooths the wrong,     Inferreth arguments of mighty strength,     And in conclusion wins the King from her     With promise of his sister, and what else,     To strengthen and support King Edward\'s place.     O Margaret, thus \'twill be; and thou, poor soul,     Art then forsaken, as thou went\'st forlorn!     SECOND KEEPER. Say, what art thou that talk\'st of kings and queens?   KING HENRY. More than I seem, and less than I was born to:     A man at least, for less I should not be;     And men may talk of kings, and why not I?   SECOND KEEPER. Ay, but thou talk\'st as if thou wert a king.   KING HENRY. Why, so I am- in mind; and that\'s enough.   SECOND KEEPER. But, if thou be a king, where is thy crown?   KING HENRY. My crown is in my heart, not on my head;     Not deck\'d with diamonds and Indian stones,     Not to be seen. My crown is call\'d content;     A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.   SECOND KEEPER. Well, if you be a king crown\'d with content,     Your crown content and you must be contented     To go along with us; for as we think,     You are the king King Edward hath depos\'d;     And we his subjects, sworn in all allegiance,     Will apprehend you as his enemy.   KING HENRY. But did you never swear, and break an oath?   SECOND KEEPER. No, never such an oath; nor will not now.   KING HENRY. Where did you dwell when I was King of England?     SECOND KEEPER. Here in this country, where we now remain.   KING HENRY. I was anointed king at nine months old;     My father and my grandfather were kings;     And you were sworn true subjects unto me;     And tell me, then, have you not broke your oaths?   FIRST KEEPER. No;     For we were subjects but while you were king.   KING HENRY. Why, am I dead? Do I not breathe a man?     Ah, simple men, you know not what you swear!     Look, as I blow this feather from my face,     And as the air blows it to me again,     Obeying with my wind when I do blow,     And yielding to another when it blows,     Commanded always by the greater gust,     Such is the lightness of you common men.     But do not break your oaths; for of that sin     My mild entreaty shall not make you guilty.     Go where you will, the King shall be commanded;     And be you kings: command, and I\'ll obey.   FIRST KEEPER. We are true subjects to the King, King Edward.     KING HENRY. So would you be again to Henry,     If he were seated as King Edward is.   FIRST KEEPER. We charge you, in God\'s name and the King\'s,     To go with us unto the officers.   KING HENRY. In God\'s name, lead; your King\'s name be obey\'d;     And what God will, that let your King perform;     And what he will, I humbly yield unto.                Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE II. London. The palace  Enter KING EDWARD, GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE, and LADY GREY    KING EDWARD. Brother of Gloucester, at Saint Albans\' field     This lady\'s husband, Sir Richard Grey, was slain,     His land then seiz\'d on by the conqueror.     Her suit is now to repossess those lands;     Which we in justice cannot well deny,     Because in quarrel of the house of York     The worthy gentleman did lose his life.   GLOUCESTER. Your Highness shall do well to grant her suit;     It were dishonour to deny it her.   KING EDWARD. It were no less; but yet I\'ll make a pause.   GLOUCESTER. [Aside to CLARENCE] Yea, is it so?     I see the lady hath a thing to grant,     Before the King will grant her humble suit.   CLARENCE. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] He knows the game; how true he     keeps the wind!   GLOUCESTER. [Aside to CLARENCE] Silence!   KING EDWARD. Widow, we will consider of your suit;       And come some other time to know our mind.   LADY GREY. Right gracious lord, I cannot brook delay.     May it please your Highness to resolve me now;     And what your pleasure is shall satisfy me.   GLOUCESTER. [Aside] Ay, widow? Then I\'ll warrant you all your       lands,     An if what pleases him shall pleasure you.     Fight closer or, good faith, you\'ll catch a blow.   CLARENCE. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] I fear her not, unless she chance     to fall.   GLOUCESTER. [Aside to CLARENCE] God forbid that, for he\'ll take     vantages.   KING EDWARD. How many children hast thou, widow, tell me.   CLARENCE. [Aside to GLOUCESTER] I think he means to beg a child of     her.   GLOUCESTER. [Aside to CLARENCE] Nay, then whip me; he\'ll rather     give her two.   LADY GREY. Three, my most gracious lord.   GLOUCESTER. [Aside] You shall have four if you\'ll be rul\'d by him.   KING EDWARD. \'Twere pity they should lose their father\'s lands.     LADY GREY. Be pitiful, dread lord, and grant it, then.   KING EDWARD. Lords, give us leave; I\'ll try this widow\'s wit.   GLOUCESTER. [Aside] Ay, good leave have you; for you will have       leave     Till youth take leave and leave you to the crutch.                               [GLOUCESTER and CLARENCE withdraw]   KING EDWARD. Now tell me, madam, do you love your children?   LADY GREY. Ay, full as dearly as I love myself.   KING EDWARD. And would you not do much to do them good?   LADY GREY. To do them good I would sustain some harm.   KING EDWARD. Then get your husband\'s lands, to do them good.   LADY GREY. Therefore I came unto your Majesty.   KING EDWARD. I\'ll tell you how these lands are to be got.   LADY GREY. So shall you bind me to your Highness\' service.   KING EDWARD. What service wilt thou do me if I give them?   LADY GREY. What you command that rests in me to do.   KING EDWARD. But you will take exceptions to my boon.   LADY GREY. No, gracious lord, except I cannot do it.   KING EDWARD. Ay, but thou canst do what I mean to ask.   LADY GREY. Why, then I will do what your Grace commands.     GLOUCESTER. He plies her hard; and much rain wears the marble.   CLARENCE. As red as fire! Nay, then her wax must melt.   LADY GREY. Why stops my lord? Shall I not hear my task?   KING EDWARD. An easy task; \'tis but to love a king.   LADY GREY. That\'s soon perform\'d, because I am a subject.   KING EDWARD. Why, then, thy husband\'s lands I freely give thee.   LADY GREY. I take my leave with many thousand thanks.   GLOUCESTER. The match is made; she seals it with a curtsy.   KING EDWARD. But stay thee- \'tis the fruits of love I mean.   LADY GREY. The fruits of love I mean, my loving liege.   KING EDWARD. Ay, but, I fear me, in another sense.     What love, thinkst thou, I sue so much to get?   LADY GREY. My love till death, my humble thanks, my prayers;     That love which virtue begs and virtue grants.   KING EDWARD. No, by my troth, I did not mean such love.   LADY GREY. Why, then you mean not as I thought you did.   KING EDWARD. But now you partly may perceive my mind.   LADY GREY. My mind will never grant what I perceive     Your Highness aims at, if I aim aright.   KING EDWARD. To tell thee plain, I aim to lie with thee.     LADY GREY. To tell you plain, I had rather lie in prison.   KING EDWARD. Why, then thou shalt not have thy husband\'s lands.   LADY GREY. Why, then mine honesty shall be my dower;     For by that loss I will not purchase them.   KING EDWARD. Therein thou wrong\'st thy children mightily.   LADY GREY. Herein your Highness wrongs both them and me.     But, mighty lord, this merry inclination     Accords not with the sadness of my suit.     Please you dismiss me, either with ay or no.   KING EDWARD. Ay, if thou wilt say ay to my request;     No, if thou dost say no to my demand.   LADY GREY. Then, no, my lord. My suit is at an end.   GLOUCESTER. The widow likes him not; she knits her brows.   CLARENCE. He is the bluntest wooer in Christendom.   KING EDWARD. [Aside] Her looks doth argue her replete with modesty;     Her words doth show her wit incomparable;     All her perfections challenge sovereignty.     One way or other, she is for a king;     And she shall be my love, or else my queen.     Say that King Edward take thee for his queen?     LADY GREY. \'Tis better said than done, my gracious lord.     I am a subject fit to jest withal,     But far unfit to be a sovereign.   KING EDWARD. Sweet widow, by my state I swear to thee     I speak no more than what my soul intends;     And that is to enjoy thee for my love.   LADY GREY. And that is more than I will yield unto.     I know I am too mean to be your queen,     And yet too good to be your concubine.   KING EDWARD. You cavil, widow; I did mean my queen.   LADY GREY. \'Twill grieve your Grace my sons should call you father.   KING EDWARD.No more than when my daughters call thee mother.     Thou art a widow, and thou hast some children;     And, by God\'s Mother, I, being but a bachelor,     Have other some. Why, \'tis a happy thing     To be the father unto many sons.     Answer no more, for thou shalt be my queen.   GLOUCESTER. The ghostly father now hath done his shrift.   CLARENCE. When he was made a shriver, \'twas for shrift.   KING EDWARD. Brothers, you muse what chat we two have had.     GLOUCESTER. The widow likes it not, for she looks very sad.   KING EDWARD. You\'d think it strange if I should marry her.   CLARENCE. To who, my lord?   KING EDWARD. Why, Clarence, to myself.   GLOUCESTER. That would be ten days\' wonder at the least.   CLARENCE. That\'s a day longer than a wonder lasts.   GLOUCESTER. By so much is the wonder in extremes.   KING EDWARD. Well, jest on, brothers; I can tell you both     Her suit is granted for her husband\'s lands.                         Enter a NOBLEMAN    NOBLEMAN. My gracious lord, Henry your foe is taken     And brought your prisoner to your palace gate.   KING EDWARD. See that he be convey\'d unto the Tower.     And go we, brothers, to the man that took him     To question of his apprehension.     Widow, go you along. Lords, use her honourably.                                        Exeunt all but GLOUCESTER   GLOUCESTER. Ay, Edward will use women honourably.       Would he were wasted, marrow, bones, and all,     That from his loins no hopeful branch may spring     To cross me from the golden time I look for!     And yet, between my soul\'s desire and me-     The lustful Edward\'s title buried-     Is Clarence, Henry, and his son young Edward,     And all the unlook\'d for issue of their bodies,     To take their rooms ere I can place myself.     A cold premeditation for my purpose!     Why, then I do but dream on sovereignty;     Like one that stands upon a promontory     And spies a far-off shore where he would tread,     Wishing his foot were equal with his eye;     And chides the sea that sunders him from thence,     Saying he\'ll lade it dry to have his way-     So do I wish the crown, being so far off;     And so I chide the means that keeps me from it;     And so I say I\'ll cut the causes off,     Flattering me with impossibilities.     My eye\'s too quick, my heart o\'erweens too much,       Unless my hand and strength could equal them.     Well, say there is no kingdom then for Richard;     What other pleasure can the world afford?     I\'ll make my heaven in a lady\'s lap,     And deck my body in gay ornaments,     And witch sweet ladies with my words and looks.     O miserable thought! and more unlikely     Than to accomplish twenty golden crowns.     Why, love forswore me in my mother\'s womb;     And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,     She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe     To shrink mine arm up like a wither\'d shrub     To make an envious mountain on my back,     Where sits deformity to mock my body;     To shape my legs of an unequal size;     To disproportion me in every part,     Like to a chaos, or an unlick\'d bear-whelp     That carries no impression like the dam.     And am I, then, a man to be belov\'d?     O monstrous fault to harbour such a thought!       Then, since this earth affords no joy to me     But to command, to check, to o\'erbear such     As are of better person than myself,     I\'ll make my heaven to dream upon the crown,     And whiles I live t\' account this world but hell,     Until my misshap\'d trunk that bear this head     Be round impaled with a glorious crown.     And yet I know not how to get the crown,     For many lives stand between me and home;     And I- like one lost in a thorny wood     That rents the thorns and is rent with the thorns,     Seeking a way and straying from the way     Not knowing how to find the open air,     But toiling desperately to find it out-     Torment myself to catch the English crown;     And from that torment I will free myself     Or hew my way out with a bloody axe.     Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,     And cry \'Content!\' to that which grieves my heart,     And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,       And frame my face to all occasions.     I\'ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall;     I\'ll slay more gazers than the basilisk;     I\'ll play the orator as well as Nestor,     Deceive more slily than Ulysses could,     And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.     I can add colours to the chameleon,     Change shapes with Protheus for advantages,     And set the murderous Machiavel to school.     Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?     Tut, were it farther off, I\'ll pluck it down.           Exit     SCENE III. France.  The KING\'S palace  Flourish.  Enter LEWIS the French King, his sister BONA, his Admiral call\'d BOURBON; PRINCE EDWARD, QUEEN MARGARET, and the EARL of OXFORD.  LEWIS sits, and riseth up again    LEWIS. Fair Queen of England, worthy Margaret,     Sit down with us. It ill befits thy state     And birth that thou shouldst stand while Lewis doth sit.   QUEEN MARGARET. No, mighty King of France. Now Margaret     Must strike her sail and learn a while to serve     Where kings command. I was, I must confess,     Great Albion\'s Queen in former golden days;     But now mischance hath trod my title down     And with dishonour laid me on the ground,     Where I must take like seat unto my fortune,     And to my humble seat conform myself.   LEWIS. Why, say, fair Queen, whence springs this deep despair?   QUEEN MARGARET. From such a cause as fills mine eyes with tears     And stops my tongue, while heart is drown\'d in cares.     LEWIS. Whate\'er it be, be thou still like thyself,     And sit thee by our side. [Seats her by him] Yield not thy neck     To fortune\'s yoke, but let thy dauntless mind     Still ride in triumph over all mischance.     Be plain, Queen Margaret, and tell thy grief;     It shall be eas\'d, if France can yield relief.   QUEEN MARGARET. Those gracious words revive my drooping thoughts     And give my tongue-tied sorrows leave to speak.     Now therefore be it known to noble Lewis     That Henry, sole possessor of my love,     Is, of a king, become a banish\'d man,     And forc\'d to live in Scotland a forlorn;     While proud ambitious Edward Duke of York     Usurps the regal title and the seat     Of England\'s true-anointed lawful King.     This is the cause that I, poor Margaret,     With this my son, Prince Edward, Henry\'s heir,     Am come to crave thy just and lawful aid;     And if thou fail us, all our hope is done.     Scotland hath will to help, but cannot help;       Our people and our peers are both misled,     Our treasure seiz\'d, our soldiers put to flight,     And, as thou seest, ourselves in heavy plight.   LEWIS. Renowned Queen, with patience calm the storm,     While we bethink a means to break it off.   QUEEN MARGARET. The more we stay, the stronger grows our foe.   LEWIS. The more I stay, the more I\'ll succour thee.   QUEEN MARGARET. O, but impatience waiteth on true sorrow.     And see where comes the breeder of my sorrow!                          Enter WARWICK    LEWIS. What\'s he approacheth boldly to our presence?   QUEEN MARGARET. Our Earl of Warwick, Edward\'s greatest friend.   LEWIS. Welcome, brave Warwick! What brings thee to France?                                       [He descends. She ariseth]   QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, now begins a second storm to rise;     For this is he that moves both wind and tide.   WARWICK. From worthy Edward, King of Albion,     My lord and sovereign, and thy vowed friend,       I come, in kindness and unfeigned love,     First to do greetings to thy royal person,     And then to crave a league of amity,     And lastly to confirm that amity     With nuptial knot, if thou vouchsafe to grant     That virtuous Lady Bona, thy fair sister,     To England\'s King in lawful marriage.   QUEEN MARGARET. [Aside] If that go forward, Henry\'s hope is done.   WARWICK. [To BONA] And, gracious madam, in our king\'s behalf,     I am commanded, with your leave and favour,     Humbly to kiss your hand, and with my tongue     To tell the passion of my sovereign\'s heart;     Where fame, late ent\'ring at his heedful ears,     Hath plac\'d thy beauty\'s image and thy virtue.   QUEEN MARGARET. King Lewis and Lady Bona, hear me speak     Before you answer Warwick. His demand     Springs not from Edward\'s well-meant honest love,     But from deceit bred by necessity;     For how can tyrants safely govern home     Unless abroad they purchase great alliance?       To prove him tyrant this reason may suffice,     That Henry liveth still; but were he dead,     Yet here Prince Edward stands, King Henry\'s son.     Look therefore, Lewis, that by this league and marriage     Thou draw not on thy danger and dishonour;     For though usurpers sway the rule a while     Yet heav\'ns are just, and time suppresseth wrongs.   WARWICK. Injurious Margaret!   PRINCE OF WALES. And why not Queen?   WARWICK. Because thy father Henry did usurp;     And thou no more art prince than she is queen.   OXFORD. Then Warwick disannuls great John of Gaunt,     Which did subdue the greatest part of Spain;     And, after John of Gaunt, Henry the Fourth,     Whose wisdom was a mirror to the wisest;     And, after that wise prince, Henry the Fifth,     Who by his prowess conquered all France.     From these our Henry lineally descends.   WARWICK. Oxford, how haps it in this smooth discourse     You told not how Henry the Sixth hath lost       All that which Henry the Fifth had gotten?     Methinks these peers of France should smile at that.     But for the rest: you tell a pedigree     Of threescore and two years- a silly time     To make prescription for a kingdom\'s worth.   OXFORD. Why, Warwick, canst thou speak against thy liege,     Whom thou obeyed\'st thirty and six years,     And not betray thy treason with a blush?   WARWICK. Can Oxford that did ever fence the right     Now buckler falsehood with a pedigree?     For shame! Leave Henry, and call Edward king.   OXFORD. Call him my king by whose injurious doom     My elder brother, the Lord Aubrey Vere,     Was done to death; and more than so, my father,     Even in the downfall of his mellow\'d years,     When nature brought him to the door of death?     No, Warwick, no; while life upholds this arm,     This arm upholds the house of Lancaster.   WARWICK. And I the house of York.   LEWIS. Queen Margaret, Prince Edward, and Oxford,       Vouchsafe at our request to stand aside     While I use further conference with Warwick.                                               [They stand aloof]   QUEEN MARGARET. Heavens grant that Warwick\'s words bewitch him not!   LEWIS. Now, Warwick, tell me, even upon thy conscience,     Is Edward your true king? for I were loath     To link with him that were not lawful chosen.   WARWICK. Thereon I pawn my credit and mine honour.   LEWIS. But is he gracious in the people\'s eye?   WARWICK. The more that Henry was unfortunate.   LEWIS. Then further: all dissembling set aside,     Tell me for truth the measure of his love     Unto our sister Bona.   WARWICK. Such it seems     As may beseem a monarch like himself.     Myself have often heard him say and swear     That this his love was an eternal plant     Whereof the root was fix\'d in virtue\'s ground,     The leaves and fruit maintain\'d with beauty\'s sun,     Exempt from envy, but not from disdain,       Unless the Lady Bona quit his pain.   LEWIS. Now, sister, let us hear your firm resolve.   BONA. Your grant or your denial shall be mine.     [To WARWICK] Yet I confess that often ere this day,     When I have heard your king\'s desert recounted,     Mine ear hath tempted judgment to desire.   LEWIS. Then, Warwick, thus: our sister shall be Edward\'s.     And now forthwith shall articles be drawn     Touching the jointure that your king must make,     Which with her dowry shall be counterpois\'d.     Draw near, Queen Margaret, and be a witness     That Bona shall be wife to the English king.   PRINCE OF WALES. To Edward, but not to the English king.   QUEEN MARGARET. Deceitful Warwick, it was thy device     By this alliance to make void my suit.     Before thy coming, Lewis was Henry\'s friend.   LEWIS. And still is friend to him and Margaret.     But if your title to the crown be weak,     As may appear by Edward\'s good success,     Then \'tis but reason that I be releas\'d       From giving aid which late I promised.     Yet shall you have all kindness at my hand     That your estate requires and mine can yield.   WARWICK. Henry now lives in Scotland at his case,     Where having nothing, nothing can he lose.     And as for you yourself, our quondam queen,     You have a father able to maintain you,     And better \'twere you troubled him than France.   QUEEN MARGARET. Peace, impudent and shameless Warwick,     Proud setter up and puller down of kings!     I will not hence till with my talk and tears,     Both full of truth, I make King Lewis behold     Thy sly conveyance and thy lord\'s false love;     For both of you are birds of self-same feather.                                     [POST blowing a horn within]   LEWIS. Warwick, this is some post to us or thee.                         Enter the POST    POST. My lord ambassador, these letters are for you,       Sent from your brother, Marquis Montague.     These from our King unto your Majesty.     And, madam, these for you; from whom I know not.                                    [They all read their letters]   OXFORD. I like it well that our fair Queen and mistress     Smiles at her news, while Warwick frowns at his.   PRINCE OF WALES. Nay, mark how Lewis stamps as he were nettled.     I hope all\'s for the best.   LEWIS. Warwick, what are thy news? And yours, fair Queen?   QUEEN MARGARET. Mine such as fill my heart with unhop\'d joys.   WARWICK. Mine, full of sorrow and heart\'s discontent.   LEWIS. What, has your king married the Lady Grey?     And now, to soothe your forgery and his,     Sends me a paper to persuade me patience?     Is this th\' alliance that he seeks with France?     Dare he presume to scorn us in this manner?   QUEEN MARGARET. I told your Majesty as much before.     This proveth Edward\'s love and Warwick\'s honesty.   WARWICK. King Lewis, I here protest in sight of heaven,     And by the hope I have of heavenly bliss,       That I am clear from this misdeed of Edward\'s-     No more my king, for he dishonours me,     But most himself, if he could see his shame.     Did I forget that by the house of York     My father came untimely to his death?     Did I let pass th\' abuse done to my niece?     Did I impale him with the regal crown?     Did I put Henry from his native right?     And am I guerdon\'d at the last with shame?     Shame on himself! for my desert is honour;     And to repair my honour lost for him     I here renounce him and return to Henry.     My noble Queen, let former grudges pass,     And henceforth I am thy true servitor.     I will revenge his wrong to Lady Bona,     And replant Henry in his former state.   QUEEN MARGARET. Warwick, these words have turn\'d my hate to love;     And I forgive and quite forget old faults,     And joy that thou becom\'st King Henry\'s friend.   WARWICK. So much his friend, ay, his unfeigned friend,       That if King Lewis vouchsafe to furnish us     With some few bands of chosen soldiers,     I\'ll undertake to land them on our coast     And force the tyrant from his seat by war.     \'Tis not his new-made bride shall succour him;     And as for Clarence, as my letters tell me,     He\'s very likely now to fall from him     For matching more for wanton lust than honour     Or than for strength and safety of our country.   BONA. Dear brother, how shall Bona be reveng\'d     But by thy help to this distressed queen?   QUEEN MARGARET. Renowned Prince, how shall poor Henry live     Unless thou rescue him from foul despair?   BONA. My quarrel and this English queen\'s are one.   WARWICK. And mine, fair Lady Bona, joins with yours.   LEWIS. And mine with hers, and thine, and Margaret\'s.     Therefore, at last, I firmly am resolv\'d     You shall have aid.   QUEEN MARGARET. Let me give humble thanks for all at once.   LEWIS. Then, England\'s messenger, return in post       And tell false Edward, thy supposed king,     That Lewis of France is sending over masquers     To revel it with him and his new bride.     Thou seest what\'s past; go fear thy king withal.   BONA. Tell him, in hope he\'ll prove a widower shortly,     I\'ll wear the willow-garland for his sake.   QUEEN MARGARET. Tell him my mourning weeds are laid aside,     And I am ready to put armour on.   WARWICK. Tell him from me that he hath done me wrong,     And therefore I\'ll uncrown him ere\'t be long.     There\'s thy reward; be gone.                       Exit POST   LEWIS. But, Warwick,     Thou and Oxford, with five thousand men,     Shall cross the seas and bid false Edward battle:     And, as occasion serves, this noble Queen     And Prince shall follow with a fresh supply.     Yet, ere thou go, but answer me one doubt:     What pledge have we of thy firm loyalty?   WARWICK. This shall assure my constant loyalty:     That if our Queen and this young Prince agree,       I\'ll join mine eldest daughter and my joy     To him forthwith in holy wedlock bands.   QUEEN MARGARET. Yes, I agree, and thank you for your motion.     Son Edward, she is fair and virtuous,     Therefore delay not- give thy hand to Warwick;     And with thy hand thy faith irrevocable     That only Warwick\'s daughter shall be thine.   PRINCE OF WALES. Yes, I accept her, for she well deserves it;     And here, to pledge my vow, I give my hand.                                   [He gives his hand to WARWICK]   LEWIS. stay we now? These soldiers shall be levied;     And thou, Lord Bourbon, our High Admiral,     Shall waft them over with our royal fleet.     I long till Edward fall by war\'s mischance     For mocking marriage with a dame of France.                                           Exeunt all but WARWICK   WARWICK. I came from Edward as ambassador,     But I return his sworn and mortal foe.     Matter of marriage was the charge he gave me,     But dreadful war shall answer his demand.       Had he none else to make a stale but me?     Then none but I shall turn his jest to sorrow.     I was the chief that rais\'d him to the crown,     And I\'ll be chief to bring him down again;     Not that I pity Henry\'s misery,     But seek revenge on Edward\'s mockery.                   Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. London. The palace  Enter GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE, SOMERSET, and MONTAGUE    GLOUCESTER. Now tell me, brother Clarence, what think you     Of this new marriage with the Lady Grey?     Hath not our brother made a worthy choice?   CLARENCE. Alas, you know \'tis far from hence to France!     How could he stay till Warwick made return?   SOMERSET. My lords, forbear this talk; here comes the King.             Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD, attended; LADY           GREY, as Queen; PEMBROKE, STAFFORD, HASTINGS,       and others. Four stand on one side, and four on the other    GLOUCESTER. And his well-chosen bride.   CLARENCE. I mind to tell him plainly what I think.   KING EDWARD. Now, brother of Clarence, how like you our choice     That you stand pensive as half malcontent?   CLARENCE. As well as Lewis of France or the Earl of Warwick,     Which are so weak of courage and in judgment       That they\'ll take no offence at our abuse.   KING EDWARD. Suppose they take offence without a cause;     They are but Lewis and Warwick: I am Edward,     Your King and Warwick\'s and must have my will.   GLOUCESTER. And shall have your will, because our King.     Yet hasty marriage seldom proveth well.   KING EDWARD. Yea, brother Richard, are you offended too?   GLOUCESTER. Not I.     No, God forbid that I should wish them sever\'d     Whom God hath join\'d together; ay, and \'twere pity     To sunder them that yoke so well together.   KING EDWARD. Setting your scorns and your mislike aside,     Tell me some reason why the Lady Grey     Should not become my wife and England\'s Queen.     And you too, Somerset and Montague,     Speak freely what you think.   CLARENCE. Then this is mine opinion: that King Lewis     Becomes your enemy for mocking him     About the marriage of the Lady Bona.   GLOUCESTER. And Warwick, doing what you gave in charge,       Is now dishonoured by this new marriage.   KING EDWARD. What if both Lewis and Warwick be appeas\'d     By such invention as I can devise?   MONTAGUE. Yet to have join\'d with France in such alliance     Would more have strength\'ned this our commonwealth     \'Gainst foreign storms than any home-bred marriage.   HASTINGS. Why, knows not Montague that of itself     England is safe, if true within itself?   MONTAGUE. But the safer when \'tis back\'d with France.   HASTINGS. \'Tis better using France than trusting France.     Let us be back\'d with God, and with the seas     Which He hath giv\'n for fence impregnable,     And with their helps only defend ourselves.     In them and in ourselves our safety lies.   CLARENCE. For this one speech Lord Hastings well deserves     To have the heir of the Lord Hungerford.   KING EDWARD. Ay, what of that? it was my will and grant;     And for this once my will shall stand for law.   GLOUCESTER. And yet methinks your Grace hath not done well     To give the heir and daughter of Lord Scales       Unto the brother of your loving bride.     She better would have fitted me or Clarence;     But in your bride you bury brotherhood.   CLARENCE. Or else you would not have bestow\'d the heir     Of the Lord Bonville on your new wife\'s son,     And leave your brothers to go speed elsewhere.   KING EDWARD. Alas, poor Clarence! Is it for a wife     That thou art malcontent? I will provide thee.   CLARENCE. In choosing for yourself you show\'d your judgment,     Which being shallow, you shall give me leave     To play the broker in mine own behalf;     And to that end I shortly mind to leave you.   KING EDWARD. Leave me or tarry, Edward will be King,     And not be tied unto his brother\'s will.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. My lords, before it pleas\'d his Majesty     To raise my state to title of a queen,     Do me but right, and you must all confess     That I was not ignoble of descent:     And meaner than myself have had like fortune.     But as this title honours me and mine,       So your dislikes, to whom I would be pleasing,     Doth cloud my joys with danger and with sorrow.   KING EDWARD. My love, forbear to fawn upon their frowns.     What danger or what sorrow can befall thee,     So long as Edward is thy constant friend     And their true sovereign whom they must obey?     Nay, whom they shall obey, and love thee too,     Unless they seek for hatred at my hands;     Which if they do, yet will I keep thee safe,     And they shall feel the vengeance of my wrath.   GLOUCESTER. [Aside] I hear, yet say not much, but think the more.                            Enter a POST    KING EDWARD. Now, messenger, what letters or what news     From France?   MESSENGER. My sovereign liege, no letters, and few words,     But such as I, without your special pardon,     Dare not relate.   KING EDWARD. Go to, we pardon thee; therefore, in brief,       Tell me their words as near as thou canst guess them.     What answer makes King Lewis unto our letters?   MESSENGER. At my depart, these were his very words:     \'Go tell false Edward, the supposed king,     That Lewis of France is sending over masquers     To revel it with him and his new bride.\'   KING EDWARD. IS Lewis so brave? Belike he thinks me Henry.     But what said Lady Bona to my marriage?   MESSENGER. These were her words, utt\'red with mild disdain:     \'Tell him, in hope he\'ll prove a widower shortly,     I\'ll wear the willow-garland for his sake.\'   KING EDWARD. I blame not her: she could say little less;     She had the wrong. But what said Henry\'s queen?     For I have heard that she was there in place.   MESSENGER. \'Tell him\' quoth she \'my mourning weeds are done,     And I am ready to put armour on.\'   KING EDWARD. Belike she minds to play the Amazon.     But what said Warwick to these injuries?   MESSENGER. He, more incens\'d against your Majesty     Than all the rest, discharg\'d me with these words:       \'Tell him from me that he hath done me wrong;     And therefore I\'ll uncrown him ere\'t be long.\'   KING EDWARD. Ha! durst the traitor breathe out so proud words?     Well, I will arm me, being thus forewarn\'d.     They shall have wars and pay for their presumption.     But say, is Warwick friends with Margaret?   MESSENGER. Ay, gracious sovereign; they are so link\'d in friendship     That young Prince Edward marries Warwick\'s daughter.   CLARENCE. Belike the elder; Clarence will have the younger.     Now, brother king, farewell, and sit you fast,     For I will hence to Warwick\'s other daughter;     That, though I want a kingdom, yet in marriage     I may not prove inferior to yourself.     You that love me and Warwick, follow me.                                       Exit, and SOMERSET follows   GLOUCESTER. [Aside] Not I.     My thoughts aim at a further matter; I     Stay not for the love of Edward but the crown.   KING EDWARD. Clarence and Somerset both gone to Warwick!     Yet am I arm\'d against the worst can happen;       And haste is needful in this desp\'rate case.     Pembroke and Stafford, you in our behalf     Go levy men and make prepare for war;     They are already, or quickly will be landed.     Myself in person will straight follow you.                                     Exeunt PEMBROKE and STAFFORD     But ere I go, Hastings and Montague,     Resolve my doubt. You twain, of all the rest,     Are near to Warwick by blood and by alliance.     Tell me if you love Warwick more than me?     If it be so, then both depart to him:     I rather wish you foes than hollow friends.     But if you mind to hold your true obedience,     Give me assurance with some friendly vow,     That I may never have you in suspect.   MONTAGUE. So God help Montague as he proves true!   HASTINGS. And Hastings as he favours Edward\'s cause!   KING EDWARD. Now, brother Richard, will you stand by us?   GLOUCESTER. Ay, in despite of all that shall withstand you.   KING EDWARD. Why, so! then am I sure of victory.       Now therefore let us hence, and lose no hour     Till we meet Warwick with his foreign pow\'r.          Exeunt     SCENE II. A plain in Warwickshire  Enter WARWICK and OXFORD, with French soldiers    WARWICK. Trust me, my lord, all hitherto goes well;     The common people by numbers swarm to us.                   Enter CLARENCE and SOMERSET      But see where Somerset and Clarence comes.     Speak suddenly, my lords- are we all friends?   CLARENCE. Fear not that, my lord.   WARWICK. Then, gentle Clarence, welcome unto Warwick;     And welcome, Somerset. I hold it cowardice     To rest mistrustful where a noble heart     Hath pawn\'d an open hand in sign of love;     Else might I think that Clarence, Edward\'s brother,     Were but a feigned friend to our proceedings.     But welcome, sweet Clarence; my daughter shall be thine.     And now what rests but, in night\'s coverture,     Thy brother being carelessly encamp\'d,       His soldiers lurking in the towns about,     And but attended by a simple guard,     We may surprise and take him at our pleasure?     Our scouts have found the adventure very easy;     That as Ulysses and stout Diomede     With sleight and manhood stole to Rhesus\' tents,     And brought from thence the Thracian fatal steeds,     So we, well cover\'d with the night\'s black mantle,     At unawares may beat down Edward\'s guard     And seize himself- I say not \'slaughter him,\'     For I intend but only to surprise him.     You that will follow me to this attempt,     Applaud the name of Henry with your leader.                                          [They all cry \'Henry!\']     Why then, let\'s on our way in silent sort.     For Warwick and his friends, God and Saint George!    Exeunt    SCENE III. Edward\'s camp, near Warwick  Enter three WATCHMEN, to guard the KING\'S tent    FIRST WATCHMAN. Come on, my masters, each man take his stand;     The King by this is set him down to sleep.   SECOND WATCHMAN. What, will he not to bed?   FIRST WATCHMAN. Why, no; for he hath made a solemn vow     Never to lie and take his natural rest     Till Warwick or himself be quite suppress\'d.   SECOND WATCHMAN. To-morrow then, belike, shall be the day,     If Warwick be so near as men report.   THIRD WATCHMAN. But say, I pray, what nobleman is that     That with the King here resteth in his tent?   FIRST WATCHMAN. \'Tis the Lord Hastings, the King\'s chiefest friend.   THIRD WATCHMAN. O, is it So? But why commands the King     That his chief followers lodge in towns about him,     While he himself keeps in the cold field?   SECOND WATCHMAN. \'Tis the more honour, because more dangerous.   THIRD WATCHMAN. Ay, but give me worship and quietness;     I like it better than dangerous honour.       If Warwick knew in what estate he stands,     \'Tis to be doubted he would waken him.   FIRST WATCHMAN. Unless our halberds did shut up his passage.   SECOND WATCHMAN. Ay, wherefore else guard we his royal tent     But to defend his person from night-foes?               Enter WARWICK, CLARENCE, OXFORD, SOMERSET,                    and French soldiers, silent all    WARWICK. This is his tent; and see where stand his guard.     Courage, my masters! Honour now or never!     But follow me, and Edward shall be ours.   FIRST WATCHMAN. Who goes there?   SECOND WATCHMAN. Stay, or thou diest.         WARWICK and the rest cry all \'Warwick! Warwick!\' and       set upon the guard, who fly, crying \'Arm! Arm!\' WARWICK                    and the rest following them        The drum playing and trumpet sounding, re-enter WARWICK            and the rest, bringing the KING out in his gown,    sitting in a chair. GLOUCESTER and HASTINGS fly over the stage    SOMERSET. What are they that fly there?   WARWICK. Richard and Hastings. Let them go; here is the Duke.   KING EDWARD. The Duke! Why, Warwick, when we parted,     Thou call\'dst me King?   WARWICK. Ay, but the case is alter\'d.     When you disgrac\'d me in my embassade,     Then I degraded you from being King,     And come now to create you Duke of York.     Alas, how should you govern any kingdom     That know not how to use ambassadors,     Nor how to be contented with one wife,     Nor how to use your brothers brotherly,     Nor how to study for the people\'s welfare,     Nor how to shroud yourself from enemies?   KING EDWARD. Yea, brother of Clarence, art thou here too?     Nay, then I see that Edward needs must down.     Yet, Warwick, in despite of all mischance,       Of thee thyself and all thy complices,     Edward will always bear himself as King.     Though fortune\'s malice overthrow my state,     My mind exceeds the compass of her wheel.   WARWICK. Then, for his mind, be Edward England\'s king;                                            [Takes off his crown]     But Henry now shall wear the English crown     And be true King indeed; thou but the shadow.     My Lord of Somerset, at my request,     See that forthwith Duke Edward be convey\'d     Unto my brother, Archbishop of York.     When I have fought with Pembroke and his fellows,     I\'ll follow you and tell what answer     Lewis and the Lady Bona send to him.     Now for a while farewell, good Duke of York.   KING EDWARD. What fates impose, that men must needs abide;     It boots not to resist both wind and tide.                                     [They lead him out forcibly]   OXFORD. What now remains, my lords, for us to do     But march to London with our soldiers?     WARWICK. Ay, that\'s the first thing that we have to do;     To free King Henry from imprisonment,     And see him seated in the regal throne.               Exeunt     SCENE IV. London. The palace  Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH and RIVERS    RIVERS. Madam, what makes you in this sudden change?   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Why, brother Rivers, are you yet to learn     What late misfortune is befall\'n King Edward?   RIVERS. What, loss of some pitch\'d battle against Warwick?   QUEEN ELIZABETH. No, but the loss of his own royal person.   RIVERS. Then is my sovereign slain?   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ay, almost slain, for he is taken prisoner;     Either betray\'d by falsehood of his guard     Or by his foe surpris\'d at unawares;     And, as I further have to understand,     Is new committed to the Bishop of York,     Fell Warwick\'s brother, and by that our foe.   RIVERS. These news, I must confess, are full of grief;     Yet, gracious madam, bear it as you may:     Warwick may lose that now hath won the day.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Till then, fair hope must hinder life\'s decay.     And I the rather wean me from despair       For love of Edward\'s offspring in my womb.     This is it that makes me bridle passion     And bear with mildness my misfortune\'s cross;     Ay, ay, for this I draw in many a tear     And stop the rising of blood-sucking sighs,     Lest with my sighs or tears I blast or drown     King Edward\'s fruit, true heir to th\' English crown.   RIVERS. But, madam, where is Warwick then become?   QUEEN ELIZABETH. I am inform\'d that he comes towards London     To set the crown once more on Henry\'s head.     Guess thou the rest: King Edward\'s friends must down.     But to prevent the tyrant\'s violence-     For trust not him that hath once broken faith-     I\'ll hence forthwith unto the sanctuary     To save at least the heir of Edward\'s right.     There shall I rest secure from force and fraud.     Come, therefore, let us fly while we may fly:     If Warwick take us, we are sure to die.               Exeunt     SCENE V. A park near Middleham Castle in Yorkshire  Enter GLOUCESTER, LORD HASTINGS, SIR WILLIAM STANLEY, and others    GLOUCESTER. Now, my Lord Hastings and Sir William Stanley,     Leave off to wonder why I drew you hither     Into this chiefest thicket of the park.     Thus stands the case: you know our King, my brother,     Is prisoner to the Bishop here, at whose hands     He hath good usage and great liberty;     And often but attended with weak guard     Comes hunting this way to disport himself.     I have advertis\'d him by secret means     That if about this hour he make this way,     Under the colour of his usual game,     He shall here find his friends, with horse and men,     To set him free from his captivity.               Enter KING EDWARD and a HUNTSMAN with him      HUNTSMAN. This way, my lord; for this way lies the game.   KING EDWARD. Nay, this way, man. See where the huntsmen stand.     Now, brother of Gloucester, Lord Hastings, and the rest,     Stand you thus close to steal the Bishop\'s deer?   GLOUCESTER. Brother, the time and case requireth haste;     Your horse stands ready at the park corner.   KING EDWARD. But whither shall we then?   HASTINGS. To Lynn, my lord; and shipt from thence to Flanders.   GLOUCESTER. Well guess\'d, believe me; for that was my meaning.   KING EDWARD. Stanley, I will requite thy forwardness.   GLOUCESTER. But wherefore stay we? \'Tis no time to talk.   KING EDWARD. Huntsman, what say\'st thou? Wilt thou go along?   HUNTSMAN. Better do so than tarry and be hang\'d.   GLOUCESTER. Come then, away; let\'s ha\' no more ado.   KING EDWARD. Bishop, farewell. Shield thee from Warwick\'s frown,     And pray that I may repossess the crown.              Exeunt     SCENE VI. London. The Tower  Flourish. Enter KING HENRY, CLARENCE, WARWICK, SOMERSET, young HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND, OXFORD, MONTAGUE, LIEUTENANT OF THE TOWER, and attendants    KING HENRY. Master Lieutenant, now that God and friends     Have shaken Edward from the regal seat     And turn\'d my captive state to liberty,     My fear to hope, my sorrows unto joys,     At our enlargement what are thy due fees?   LIEUTENANT. Subjects may challenge nothing of their sov\'reigns;     But if an humble prayer may prevail,     I then crave pardon of your Majesty.   KING HENRY. For what, Lieutenant? For well using me?     Nay, be thou sure I\'ll well requite thy kindness,     For that it made my imprisonment a pleasure;     Ay, such a pleasure as incaged birds     Conceive when, after many moody thoughts,     At last by notes of household harmony     They quite forget their loss of liberty.       But, Warwick, after God, thou set\'st me free,     And chiefly therefore I thank God and thee;     He was the author, thou the instrument.     Therefore, that I may conquer fortune\'s spite     By living low where fortune cannot hurt me,     And that the people of this blessed land     May not be punish\'d with my thwarting stars,     Warwick, although my head still wear the crown,     I here resign my government to thee,     For thou art fortunate in all thy deeds.   WARWICK. Your Grace hath still been fam\'d for virtuous,     And now may seem as wise as virtuous     By spying and avoiding fortune\'s malice,     For few men rightly temper with the stars;     Yet in this one thing let me blame your Grace,     For choosing me when Clarence is in place.   CLARENCE. No, Warwick, thou art worthy of the sway,     To whom the heav\'ns in thy nativity     Adjudg\'d an olive branch and laurel crown,     As likely to be blest in peace and war;       And therefore I yield thee my free consent.   WARWICK. And I choose Clarence only for Protector.   KING HENRY. Warwick and Clarence, give me both your hands.     Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts,     That no dissension hinder government.     I make you both Protectors of this land,     While I myself will lead a private life     And in devotion spend my latter days,     To sin\'s rebuke and my Creator\'s praise.   WARWICK. What answers Clarence to his sovereign\'s will?   CLARENCE. That he consents, if Warwick yield consent,     For on thy fortune I repose myself.   WARWICK. Why, then, though loath, yet must I be content.     We\'ll yoke together, like a double shadow     To Henry\'s body, and supply his place;     I mean, in bearing weight of government,     While he enjoys the honour and his ease.     And, Clarence, now then it is more than needful     Forthwith that Edward be pronounc\'d a traitor,     And all his lands and goods confiscated.     CLARENCE. What else? And that succession be determin\'d.   WARWICK. Ay, therein Clarence shall not want his part.   KING HENRY. But, with the first of all your chief affairs,     Let me entreat- for I command no more-     That Margaret your Queen and my son Edward     Be sent for to return from France with speed;     For till I see them here, by doubtful fear     My joy of liberty is half eclips\'d.   CLARENCE. It shall be done, my sovereign, with all speed.   KING HENRY. My Lord of Somerset, what youth is that,     Of whom you seem to have so tender care?   SOMERSET. My liege, it is young Henry, Earl of Richmond.   KING HENRY. Come hither, England\'s hope.                                      [Lays his hand on his head]     If secret powers     Suggest but truth to my divining thoughts,     This pretty lad will prove our country\'s bliss.     His looks are full of peaceful majesty;     His head by nature fram\'d to wear a crown,     His hand to wield a sceptre; and himself       Likely in time to bless a regal throne.     Make much of him, my lords; for this is he     Must help you more than you are hurt by me.                            Enter a POST    WARWICK. What news, my friend?   POST. That Edward is escaped from your brother     And fled, as he hears since, to Burgundy.   WARWICK. Unsavoury news! But how made he escape?   POST. He was convey\'d by Richard Duke of Gloucester     And the Lord Hastings, who attended him     In secret ambush on the forest side     And from the Bishop\'s huntsmen rescu\'d him;     For hunting was his daily exercise.   WARWICK. My brother was too careless of his charge.     But let us hence, my sovereign, to provide     A salve for any sore that may betide.                    Exeunt all but SOMERSET, RICHMOND, and OXFORD   SOMERSET. My lord, I like not of this flight of Edward\'s;       For doubtless Burgundy will yield him help,     And we shall have more wars befor\'t be long.     As Henry\'s late presaging prophecy     Did glad my heart with hope of this young Richmond,     So doth my heart misgive me, in these conflicts,     What may befall him to his harm and ours.     Therefore, Lord Oxford, to prevent the worst,     Forthwith we\'ll send him hence to Brittany,     Till storms be past of civil enmity.   OXFORD. Ay, for if Edward repossess the crown,     \'Tis like that Richmond with the rest shall down.   SOMERSET. It shall be so; he shall to Brittany.     Come therefore, let\'s about it speedily.              Exeunt     SCENE VII. Before York  Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD, GLOUCESTER, HASTINGS, and soldiers    KING EDWARD. Now, brother Richard, Lord Hastings, and the rest,     Yet thus far fortune maketh us amends,     And says that once more I shall interchange     My waned state for Henry\'s regal crown.     Well have we pass\'d and now repass\'d the seas,     And brought desired help from Burgundy;     What then remains, we being thus arriv\'d     From Ravenspurgh haven before the gates of York,     But that we enter, as into our dukedom?   GLOUCESTER. The gates made fast! Brother, I like not this;     For many men that stumble at the threshold     Are well foretold that danger lurks within.   KING EDWARD. Tush, man, abodements must not now affright us.     By fair or foul means we must enter in,     For hither will our friends repair to us.   HASTINGS. My liege, I\'ll knock once more to summon them.             Enter, on the walls, the MAYOR OF YORK and                        his BRETHREN    MAYOR. My lords, we were forewarned of your coming     And shut the gates for safety of ourselves,     For now we owe allegiance unto Henry.   KING EDWARD. But, Master Mayor, if Henry be your King,     Yet Edward at the least is Duke of York.   MAYOR. True, my good lord; I know you for no less.   KING EDWARD. Why, and I challenge nothing but my dukedom,     As being well content with that alone.   GLOUCESTER. [Aside] But when the fox hath once got in his nose,     He\'ll soon find means to make the body follow.   HASTINGS. Why, Master Mayor, why stand you in a doubt?     Open the gates; we are King Henry\'s friends.   MAYOR. Ay, say you so? The gates shall then be open\'d.                                                    [He descends]   GLOUCESTER. A wise stout captain, and soon persuaded!   HASTINGS. The good old man would fain that all were well,       So \'twere not long of him; but being ent\'red,     I doubt not, I, but we shall soon persuade     Both him and all his brothers unto reason.               Enter, below, the MAYOR and two ALDERMEN    KING EDWARD. So, Master Mayor. These gates must not be shut     But in the night or in the time of war.     What! fear not, man, but yield me up the keys;                                                 [Takes his keys]     For Edward will defend the town and thee,     And all those friends that deign to follow me.             March. Enter MONTGOMERY with drum and soldiers    GLOUCESTER. Brother, this is Sir John Montgomery,     Our trusty friend, unless I be deceiv\'d.   KING EDWARD. Welcome, Sir john! But why come you in arms?   MONTGOMERY. To help King Edward in his time of storm,     As every loyal subject ought to do.     KING EDWARD. Thanks, good Montgomery; but we now forget     Our title to the crown, and only claim     Our dukedom till God please to send the rest.   MONTGOMERY. Then fare you well, for I will hence again.     I came to serve a king and not a duke.     Drummer, strike up, and let us march away.                                       [The drum begins to march]   KING EDWARD. Nay, stay, Sir John, a while, and we\'ll debate     By what safe means the crown may be recover\'d.   MONTGOMERY. What talk you of debating? In few words:     If you\'ll not here proclaim yourself our King,     I\'ll leave you to your fortune and be gone     To keep them back that come to succour you.     Why shall we fight, if you pretend no title?   GLOUCESTER. Why, brother, wherefore stand you on nice points?   KING EDWARD. When we grow stronger, then we\'ll make our claim;     Till then \'tis wisdom to conceal our meaning.   HASTINGS. Away with scrupulous wit! Now arms must rule.   GLOUCESTER. And fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns.     Brother, we will proclaim you out of hand;       The bruit thereof will bring you many friends.   KING EDWARD. Then be it as you will; for \'tis my right,     And Henry but usurps the diadem.   MONTGOMERY. Ay, now my sovereign speaketh like himself;     And now will I be Edward\'s champion.   HASTINGS. Sound trumpet; Edward shall be here proclaim\'d.     Come, fellow soldier, make thou proclamation.                                    [Gives him a paper. Flourish]   SOLDIER. [Reads] \'Edward the Fourth, by the grace of God,     King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, &c.\'   MONTGOMERY. And whoso\'er gainsays King Edward\'s right,     By this I challenge him to single fight.                                           [Throws down gauntlet]   ALL. Long live Edward the Fourth!   KING EDWARD. Thanks, brave Montgomery, and thanks unto you all;     If fortune serve me, I\'ll requite this kindness.     Now for this night let\'s harbour here in York;     And when the morning sun shall raise his car     Above the border of this horizon,     We\'ll forward towards Warwick and his mates;       For well I wot that Henry is no soldier.     Ah, froward Clarence, how evil it beseems the     To flatter Henry and forsake thy brother!     Yet, as we may, we\'ll meet both thee and Warwick.     Come on, brave soldiers; doubt not of the day,     And, that once gotten, doubt not of large pay.        Exeunt     SCENE VIII. London. The palace  Flourish. Enter KING HENRY, WARWICK, MONTAGUE, CLARENCE, OXFORD, and EXETER    WARWICK. What counsel, lords? Edward from Belgia,     With hasty Germans and blunt Hollanders,     Hath pass\'d in safety through the narrow seas     And with his troops doth march amain to London;     And many giddy people flock to him.   KING HENRY. Let\'s levy men and beat him back again.   CLARENCE. A little fire is quickly trodden out,     Which, being suffer\'d, rivers cannot quench.   WARWICK. In Warwickshire I have true-hearted friends,     Not mutinous in peace, yet bold in war;     Those will I muster up, and thou, son Clarence,     Shalt stir up in Suffolk, Norfolk, and in Kent,     The knights and gentlemen to come with thee.     Thou, brother Montague, in Buckingham,     Northampton, and in Leicestershire, shalt find     Men well inclin\'d to hear what thou command\'st.       And thou, brave Oxford, wondrous well belov\'d,     In Oxfordshire shalt muster up thy friends.     My sovereign, with the loving citizens,     Like to his island girt in with the ocean     Or modest Dian circled with her nymphs,     Shall rest in London till we come to him.     Fair lords, take leave and stand not to reply.     Farewell, my sovereign.   KING HENRY. Farewell, my Hector and my Troy\'s true hope.   CLARENCE. In sign of truth, I kiss your Highness\' hand.   KING HENRY. Well-minded Clarence, be thou fortunate!   MONTAGUE. Comfort, my lord; and so I take my leave.   OXFORD. [Kissing the KING\'S band] And thus I seal my truth and bid     adieu.   KING HENRY. Sweet Oxford, and my loving Montague,     And all at once, once more a happy farewell.   WARWICK. Farewell, sweet lords; let\'s meet at Coventry.                               Exeunt all but the KING and EXETER   KING HENRY. Here at the palace will I rest a while.     Cousin of Exeter, what thinks your lordship?       Methinks the power that Edward hath in field     Should not be able to encounter mine.   EXETER. The doubt is that he will seduce the rest.   KING HENRY. That\'s not my fear; my meed hath got me fame:     I have not stopp\'d mine ears to their demands,     Nor posted off their suits with slow delays;     My pity hath been balm to heal their wounds,     My mildness hath allay\'d their swelling griefs,     My mercy dried their water-flowing tears;     I have not been desirous of their wealth,     Nor much oppress\'d them with great subsidies,     Nor forward of revenge, though they much err\'d.     Then why should they love Edward more than me?     No, Exeter, these graces challenge grace;     And, when the lion fawns upon the lamb,     The lamb will never cease to follow him.                       [Shout within \'A Lancaster! A Lancaster!\']   EXETER. Hark, hark, my lord! What shouts are these?              Enter KING EDWARD, GLOUCESTER, and soldiers      KING EDWARD. Seize on the shame-fac\'d Henry, bear him hence;     And once again proclaim us King of England.     You are the fount that makes small brooks to flow.     Now stops thy spring; my sea shall suck them dry,     And swell so much the higher by their ebb.     Hence with him to the Tower: let him not speak.                                      Exeunt some with KING HENRY     And, lords, towards Coventry bend we our course,     Where peremptory Warwick now remains.     The sun shines hot; and, if we use delay,     Cold biting winter mars our hop\'d-for hay.   GLOUCESTER. Away betimes, before his forces join,     And take the great-grown traitor unawares.     Brave warriors, march amain towards Coventry.         Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. Coventry  Enter WARWICK, the MAYOR OF COVENTRY, two MESSENGERS, and others upon the walls    WARWICK. Where is the post that came from valiant Oxford?     How far hence is thy lord, mine honest fellow?   FIRST MESSENGER. By this at Dunsmore, marching hitherward.   WARWICK. How far off is our brother Montague?     Where is the post that came from Montague?   SECOND MESSENGER. By this at Daintry, with a puissant troop.                     Enter SIR JOHN SOMERVILLE    WARWICK. Say, Somerville, what says my loving son?     And by thy guess how nigh is Clarence now?   SOMERVILLE. At Southam I did leave him with his forces,     And do expect him here some two hours hence.                                                     [Drum heard]   WARWICK. Then Clarence is at hand; I hear his drum.   SOMERVILLE. It is not his, my lord; here Southam lies.       The drum your Honour hears marcheth from Warwick.   WARWICK. Who should that be? Belike unlook\'d for friends.   SOMERVILLE. They are at hand, and you shall quickly know.          March. Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD, GLOUCESTER,                          and soldiers    KING EDWARD. Go, trumpet, to the walls, and sound a parle.   GLOUCESTER. See how the surly Warwick mans the wall.   WARWICK. O unbid spite! Is sportful Edward come?     Where slept our scouts or how are they seduc\'d     That we could hear no news of his repair?   KING EDWARD. Now, Warwick, wilt thou ope the city gates,     Speak gentle words, and humbly bend thy knee,     Call Edward King, and at his hands beg mercy?     And he shall pardon thee these outrages.   WARWICK. Nay, rather, wilt thou draw thy forces hence,     Confess who set thee up and pluck\'d thee down,     Call Warwick patron, and be penitent?     And thou shalt still remain the Duke of York.     GLOUCESTER. I thought, at least, he would have said the King;     Or did he make the jest against his will?   WARWICK. Is not a dukedom, sir, a goodly gift?   GLOUCESTER. Ay, by my faith, for a poor earl to give.     I\'ll do thee service for so good a gift.   WARWICK. \'Twas I that gave the kingdom to thy brother.   KING EDWARD. Why then \'tis mine, if but by Warwick\'s gift.   WARWICK. Thou art no Atlas for so great a weight;     And, weakling, Warwick takes his gift again;     And Henry is my King, Warwick his subject.   KING EDWARD. But Warwick\'s king is Edward\'s prisoner.     And, gallant Warwick, do but answer this:     What is the body when the head is off?   GLOUCESTER. Alas, that Warwick had no more forecast,     But, whiles he thought to steal the single ten,     The king was slily finger\'d from the deck!     You left poor Henry at the Bishop\'s palace,     And ten to one you\'ll meet him in the Tower.   KING EDWARD. \'Tis even so; yet you are Warwick still.   GLOUCESTER. Come, Warwick, take the time; kneel down, kneel down.       Nay, when? Strike now, or else the iron cools.   WARWICK. I had rather chop this hand off at a blow,     And with the other fling it at thy face,     Than bear so low a sail to strike to thee.   KING EDWARD. Sail how thou canst, have wind and tide thy friend,     This hand, fast wound about thy coal-black hair,     Shall, whiles thy head is warm and new cut off,     Write in the dust this sentence with thy blood:     \'Wind-changing Warwick now can change no more.\'                 Enter OXFORD, with drum and colours    WARWICK. O cheerful colours! See where Oxford comes.   OXFORD. Oxford, Oxford, for Lancaster!                               [He and his forces enter the city]   GLOUCESTER. The gates are open, let us enter too.   KING EDWARD. So other foes may set upon our backs.     Stand we in good array, for they no doubt     Will issue out again and bid us battle;     If not, the city being but of small defence,       We\'ll quietly rouse the traitors in the same.   WARWICK. O, welcome, Oxford! for we want thy help.               Enter MONTAGUE, with drum and colours    MONTAGUE. Montague, Montague, for Lancaster!                               [He and his forces enter the city]   GLOUCESTER. Thou and thy brother both shall buy this treason     Even with the dearest blood your bodies bear.   KING EDWARD. The harder match\'d, the greater victory.     My mind presageth happy gain and conquest.               Enter SOMERSET, with drum and colours    SOMERSET. Somerset, Somerset, for Lancaster!                               [He and his forces enter the city]   GLOUCESTER. Two of thy name, both Dukes of Somerset,     Have sold their lives unto the house of York;     And thou shalt be the third, if this sword hold.                 Enter CLARENCE, with drum and colours    WARWICK. And lo where George of Clarence sweeps along,     Of force enough to bid his brother battle;     With whom an upright zeal to right prevails     More than the nature of a brother\'s love.   CLARENCE. Clarence, Clarence, for Lancaster!   KING EDWARD. Et tu Brute- wilt thou stab Caesar too?     A parley, sirrah, to George of Clarence.                   [Sound a parley. RICHARD and CLARENCE whisper]   WARWICK. Come, Clarence, come. Thou wilt if Warwick call.   CLARENCE. [Taking the red rose from his hat and throwing       it at WARWICK]     Father of Warwick, know you what this means?     Look here, I throw my infamy at thee.     I will not ruinate my father\'s house,     Who gave his blood to lime the stones together,     And set up Lancaster. Why, trowest thou, Warwick,     That Clarence is so harsh, so blunt, unnatural,     To bend the fatal instruments of war       Against his brother and his lawful King?     Perhaps thou wilt object my holy oath.     To keep that oath were more impiety     Than Jephtha when he sacrific\'d his daughter.     I am so sorry for my trespass made     That, to deserve well at my brother\'s hands,     I here proclaim myself thy mortal foe;     With resolution whereso\'er I meet thee-     As I will meet thee, if thou stir abroad-     To plague thee for thy foul misleading me.     And so, proud-hearted Warwick, I defy thee,     And to my brother turn my blushing cheeks.     Pardon me, Edward, I will make amends;     And, Richard, do not frown upon my faults,     For I will henceforth be no more unconstant.   KING EDWARD. Now welcome more, and ten times more belov\'d,     Than if thou never hadst deserv\'d our hate.   GLOUCESTER. Welcome, good Clarence; this is brother-like.   WARWICK. O passing traitor, perjur\'d and unjust!   KING EDWARD. What, Warwick, wilt thou leave die town and fight?       Or shall we beat the stones about thine ears?   WARWICK. Alas, I am not coop\'d here for defence!     I will away towards Barnet presently     And bid thee battle, Edward, if thou dar\'st.   KING EDWARD. Yes, Warwick, Edward dares and leads the way.     Lords, to the field; Saint George and victory!                                                  Exeunt YORKISTS                          [March. WARWICK and his company follow]     SCENE II. A field of battle near Barnet  Alarum and excursions. Enter KING EDWARD, bringing forth WARWICK, wounded    KING EDWARD. So, lie thou there. Die thou, and die our fear;     For Warwick was a bug that fear\'d us all.     Now, Montague, sit fast; I seek for thee,     That Warwick\'s bones may keep thine company.            Exit   WARWICK. Ah, who is nigh? Come to me, friend or foe,     And tell me who is victor, York or Warwick?     Why ask I that? My mangled body shows,     My blood, my want of strength, my sick heart shows,     That I must yield my body to the earth     And, by my fall, the conquest to my foe.     Thus yields the cedar to the axe\'s edge,     Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle,     Under whose shade the ramping lion slept,     Whose top-branch overpeer\'d Jove\'s spreading tree     And kept low shrubs from winter\'s pow\'rful wind.     These eyes, that now are dimm\'d with death\'s black veil,       Have been as piercing as the mid-day sun     To search the secret treasons of the world;     The wrinkles in my brows, now fill\'d with blood,     Were lik\'ned oft to kingly sepulchres;     For who liv\'d King, but I could dig his grave?     And who durst smile when Warwick bent his brow?     Lo now my glory smear\'d in dust and blood!     My parks, my walks, my manors, that I had,     Even now forsake me; and of all my lands     Is nothing left me but my body\'s length.     what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?     And live we how we can, yet die we must.                    Enter OXFORD and SOMERSET    SOMERSET. Ah, Warwick, Warwick! wert thou as we are,     We might recover all our loss again.     The Queen from France hath brought a puissant power;     Even now we heard the news. Ah, couldst thou fly!   WARWICK. Why then, I would not fly. Ah, Montague,       If thou be there, sweet brother, take my hand,     And with thy lips keep in my soul a while!     Thou lov\'st me not; for, brother, if thou didst,     Thy tears would wash this cold congealed blood     That glues my lips and will not let me speak.     Come quickly, Montague, or I am dead.   SOMERSET. Ah, Warwick! Montague hath breath\'d his last;     And to the latest gasp cried out for Warwick,     And said \'Commend me to my valiant brother.\'     And more he would have said; and more he spoke,     Which sounded like a clamour in a vault,     That mought not be distinguish\'d; but at last,     I well might hear, delivered with a groan,     \'O farewell, Warwick!\'   WARWICK. Sweet rest his soul! Fly, lords, and save yourselves:     For Warwick bids you all farewell, to meet in heaven.                                                           [Dies]   OXFORD. Away, away, to meet the Queen\'s great power!                                   [Here they bear away his body]     SCENE III. Another part of the field  Flourish. Enter KING in triumph; with GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE, and the rest    KING EDWARD. Thus far our fortune keeps an upward course,     And we are grac\'d with wreaths of victory.     But in the midst of this bright-shining day     I spy a black, suspicious, threat\'ning cloud     That will encounter with our glorious sun     Ere he attain his easeful western bed-     I mean, my lords, those powers that the Queen     Hath rais\'d in Gallia have arriv\'d our coast     And, as we hear, march on to fight with us.   CLARENCE. A little gale will soon disperse that cloud     And blow it to the source from whence it came;     Thy very beams will dry those vapours up,     For every cloud engenders not a storm.   GLOUCESTER. The Queen is valued thirty thousand strong,     And Somerset, with Oxford, fled to her.     If she have time to breathe, be well assur\'d       Her faction will be full as strong as ours.   KING EDWARD. are advertis\'d by our loving friends     That they do hold their course toward Tewksbury;     We, having now the best at Barnet field,     Will thither straight, for willingness rids way;     And as we march our strength will be augmented     In every county as we go along.     Strike up the drum; cry \'Courage!\' and away.          Exeunt     SCENE IV. Plains wear Tewksbury  Flourish. March. Enter QUEEN MARGARET, PRINCE EDWARD, SOMERSET, OXFORD, and SOLDIERS    QUEEN MARGARET. Great lords, wise men ne\'er sit and wail their       loss,     But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.     What though the mast be now blown overboard,     The cable broke, the holding-anchor lost,     And half our sailors swallow\'d in the flood;     Yet lives our pilot still. Is\'t meet that he     Should leave the helm and, like a fearful lad,     With tearful eyes add water to the sea     And give more strength to that which hath too much;     Whiles, in his moan, the ship splits on the rock,     Which industry and courage might have sav\'d?     Ah, what a shame! ah, what a fault were this!     Say Warwick was our anchor; what of that?     And Montague our top-mast; what of him?     Our slaught\'red friends the tackles; what of these?       Why, is not Oxford here another anchor?     And Somerset another goodly mast?     The friends of France our shrouds and tacklings?     And, though unskilful, why not Ned and I     For once allow\'d the skilful pilot\'s charge?     We will not from the helm to sit and weep,     But keep our course, though the rough wind say no,     From shelves and rocks that threaten us with wreck,     As good to chide the waves as speak them fair.     And what is Edward but a ruthless sea?     What Clarence but a quicksand of deceit?     And Richard but a ragged fatal rock?     All these the enemies to our poor bark.     Say you can swim; alas, \'tis but a while!     Tread on the sand; why, there you quickly sink.     Bestride the rock; the tide will wash you off,     Or else you famish- that\'s a threefold death.     This speak I, lords, to let you understand,     If case some one of you would fly from us,     That there\'s no hop\'d-for mercy with the brothers       More than with ruthless waves, with sands, and rocks.     Why, courage then! What cannot be avoided     \'Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.   PRINCE OF WALES. Methinks a woman of this valiant spirit     Should, if a coward hear her speak these words,     Infuse his breast with magnanimity     And make him naked foil a man-at-arms.     I speak not this as doubting any here;     For did I but suspect a fearful man,     He should have leave to go away betimes,     Lest in our need he might infect another     And make him of the like spirit to himself.     If any such be here- as God forbid!-     Let him depart before we need his help.   OXFORD. Women and children of so high a courage,     And warriors faint! Why, \'twere perpetual shame.     O brave young Prince! thy famous grandfather     Doth live again in thee. Long mayst thou Eve     To bear his image and renew his glories!   SOMERSET. And he that will not fight for such a hope,       Go home to bed and, like the owl by day,     If he arise, be mock\'d and wond\'red at.   QUEEN MARGARET. Thanks, gentle Somerset; sweet Oxford, thanks.   PRINCE OF WALES. And take his thanks that yet hath nothing else.                          Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. Prepare you, lords, for Edward is at hand     Ready to fight; therefore be resolute.   OXFORD. I thought no less. It is his policy     To haste thus fast, to find us unprovided.   SOMERSET. But he\'s deceiv\'d; we are in readiness.   QUEEN MARGARET. This cheers my heart, to see your forwardness.   OXFORD. Here pitch our battle; hence we will not budge.        Flourish and march. Enter, at a distance, KING EDWARD,                GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE, and soldiers    KING EDWARD. Brave followers, yonder stands the thorny wood     Which, by the heavens\' assistance and your strength,       Must by the roots be hewn up yet ere night.     I need not add more fuel to your fire,     For well I wot ye blaze to burn them out.     Give signal to the fight, and to it, lords.   QUEEN MARGARET. Lords, knights, and gentlemen, what I should say     My tears gainsay; for every word I speak,     Ye see, I drink the water of my eye.     Therefore, no more but this: Henry, your sovereign,     Is prisoner to the foe; his state usurp\'d,     His realm a slaughter-house, his subjects slain,     His statutes cancell\'d, and his treasure spent;     And yonder is the wolf that makes this spoil.     You fight in justice. Then, in God\'s name, lords,     Be valiant, and give signal to the fight.                              Alarum, retreat, excursions. Exeunt     SCENE V. Another part of the field  Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD, GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE, and forces, With QUEEN MARGARET, OXFORD, and SOMERSET, prisoners    KING EDWARD. Now here a period of tumultuous broils.     Away with Oxford to Hames Castle straight;     For Somerset, off with his guilty head.     Go, bear them hence; I will not hear them speak.   OXFORD. For my part, I\'ll not trouble thee with words.   SOMERSET. Nor I, but stoop with patience to my fortune.                              Exeunt OXFORD and SOMERSET, guarded   QUEEN MARGARET. So part we sadly in this troublous world,     To meet with joy in sweet Jerusalem.   KING EDWARD. Is proclamation made that who finds Edward     Shall have a high reward, and he his life?   GLOUCESTER. It is; and lo where youthful Edward comes.                  Enter soldiers, with PRINCE EDWARD      KING EDWARD. Bring forth the gallant; let us hear him speak.     What, can so young a man begin to prick?     Edward, what satisfaction canst thou make     For bearing arms, for stirring up my subjects,     And all the trouble thou hast turn\'d me to?   PRINCE OF WALES. Speak like a subject, proud ambitious York.     Suppose that I am now my father\'s mouth;     Resign thy chair, and where I stand kneel thou,     Whilst I propose the self-same words to the     Which, traitor, thou wouldst have me answer to.   QUEEN MARGARET. Ah, that thy father had been so resolv\'d!   GLOUCESTER. That you might still have worn the petticoat     And ne\'er have stol\'n the breech from Lancaster.   PRINCE OF WALES. Let Aesop fable in a winter\'s night;     His currish riddle sorts not with this place.   GLOUCESTER. By heaven, brat, I\'ll plague ye for that word.   QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, thou wast born to be a plague to men.   GLOUCESTER. For God\'s sake, take away this captive scold.   PRINCE OF WALES. Nay, take away this scolding crookback rather.   KING EDWARD. Peace, wilful boy, or I will charm your tongue.     CLARENCE. Untutor\'d lad, thou art too malapert.   PRINCE OF WALES. I know my duty; you are all undutiful.     Lascivious Edward, and thou perjur\'d George,     And thou misshapen Dick, I tell ye all     I am your better, traitors as ye are;     And thou usurp\'st my father\'s right and mine.   KING EDWARD. Take that, the likeness of this railer here.                                                      [Stabs him]   GLOUCESTER. Sprawl\'st thou? Take that, to end thy agony.                                                      [Stabs him]   CLARENCE. And there\'s for twitting me with perjury.                                                      [Stabs him]   QUEEN MARGARET. O, kill me too!   GLOUCESTER. Marry, and shall.             [Offers to kill her]   KING EDWARD. Hold, Richard, hold; for we have done to much.   GLOUCESTER. Why should she live to fill the world with words?   KING EDWARD. What, doth she swoon? Use means for her recovery.   GLOUCESTER. Clarence, excuse me to the King my brother.     I\'ll hence to London on a serious matter;     Ere ye come there, be sure to hear some news.     CLARENCE. What? what?   GLOUCESTER. The Tower! the Tower!                         Exit   QUEEN MARGARET. O Ned, sweet Ned, speak to thy mother, boy!     Canst thou not speak? O traitors! murderers!     They that stabb\'d Caesar shed no blood at all,     Did not offend, nor were not worthy blame,     If this foul deed were by to equal it.     He was a man: this, in respect, a child;     And men ne\'er spend their fury on a child.     What\'s worse than murderer, that I may name it?     No, no, my heart will burst, an if I speak-     And I will speak, that so my heart may burst.     Butchers and villains! bloody cannibals!     How sweet a plant have you untimely cropp\'d!     You have no children, butchers, if you had,     The thought of them would have stirr\'d up remorse.     But if you ever chance to have a child,     Look in his youth to have him so cut off     As, deathsmen, you have rid this sweet young prince!   KING EDWARD. Away with her; go, bear her hence perforce.     QUEEN MARGARET. Nay, never bear me hence; dispatch me here.     Here sheathe thy sword; I\'ll pardon thee my death.     What, wilt thou not? Then, Clarence, do it thou.   CLARENCE. By heaven, I will not do thee so much ease.   QUEEN MARGARET. Good Clarence, do; sweet Clarence, do thou do it.   CLARENCE. Didst thou not hear me swear I would not do it?   QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, but thou usest to forswear thyself.     \'Twas sin before, but now \'tis charity.     What! wilt thou not? Where is that devil\'s butcher,     Hard-favour\'d Richard? Richard, where art thou?     Thou art not here. Murder is thy alms-deed;     Petitioners for blood thou ne\'er put\'st back.   KING EDWARD. Away, I say; I charge ye bear her hence.   QUEEN MARGARET. So come to you and yours as to this prince.                                           Exit, led out forcibly   KING EDWARD. Where\'s Richard gone?   CLARENCE. To London, all in post; and, as I guess,     To make a bloody supper in the Tower.   KING EDWARD. He\'s sudden, if a thing comes in his head.     Now march we hence. Discharge the common sort       With pay and thanks; and let\'s away to London     And see our gentle queen how well she fares.     By this, I hope, she hath a son for me.               Exeunt     SCENE VI. London. The Tower  Enter KING HENRY and GLOUCESTER with the LIEUTENANT, on the walls    GLOUCESTER. Good day, my lord. What, at your book so hard?   KING HENRY. Ay, my good lord- my lord, I should say rather.     \'Tis sin to flatter; \'good\' was little better.     \'Good Gloucester\' and \'good devil\' were alike,     And both preposterous; therefore, not \'good lord.\'   GLOUCESTER. Sirrah, leave us to ourselves; we must confer.                                                  Exit LIEUTENANT   KING HENRY. So flies the reckless shepherd from the wolf;     So first the harmless sheep doth yield his fleece,     And next his throat unto the butcher\'s knife.     What scene of death hath Roscius now to act?   GLOUCESTER. Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind:     The thief doth fear each bush an officer.   KING HENRY. The bird that hath been limed in a bush     With trembling wings misdoubteth every bush;     And I, the hapless male to one sweet bird,       Have now the fatal object in my eye     Where my poor young was lim\'d, was caught, and kill\'d.   GLOUCESTER. Why, what a peevish fool was that of Crete     That taught his son the office of a fowl!     And yet, for all his wings, the fool was drown\'d.   KING HENRY. I, Daedalus; my poor boy, Icarus;     Thy father, Minos, that denied our course;     The sun that sear\'d the wings of my sweet boy,     Thy brother Edward; and thyself, the sea     Whose envious gulf did swallow up his life.     Ah, kill me with thy weapon, not with words!     My breast can better brook thy dagger\'s point     Than can my ears that tragic history.     But wherefore dost thou come? Is\'t for my life?   GLOUCESTER. Think\'st thou I am an executioner?   KING HENRY. A persecutor I am sure thou art.     If murdering innocents be executing,     Why, then thou are an executioner.   GLOUCESTER. Thy son I kill\'d for his presumption.   KING HENRY. Hadst thou been kill\'d when first thou didst presume,       Thou hadst not liv\'d to kill a son of mine.     And thus I prophesy, that many a thousand     Which now mistrust no parcel of my fear,     And many an old man\'s sigh, and many a widow\'s,     And many an orphan\'s water-standing eye-     Men for their sons, wives for their husbands,     Orphans for their parents\' timeless death-     Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born.     The owl shriek\'d at thy birth- an evil sign;     The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time;     Dogs howl\'d, and hideous tempest shook down trees;     The raven rook\'d her on the chimney\'s top,     And chatt\'ring pies in dismal discords sung;     Thy mother felt more than a mother\'s pain,     And yet brought forth less than a mother\'s hope,     To wit, an indigest deformed lump,     Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree.     Teeth hadst thou in thy head when thou wast born,     To signify thou cam\'st to bite the world;     And if the rest be true which I have heard,       Thou cam\'st-   GLOUCESTER. I\'ll hear no more. Die, prophet, in thy speech.                                                      [Stabs him]     For this, amongst the rest, was I ordain\'d.   KING HENRY. Ay, and for much more slaughter after this.     O, God forgive my sins and pardon thee!               [Dies]   GLOUCESTER. What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster     Sink in the ground? I thought it would have mounted.     See how my sword weeps for the poor King\'s death.     O, may such purple tears be always shed     From those that wish the downfall of our house!     If any spark of life be yet remaining,     Down, down to hell; and say I sent thee thither-                                                [Stabs him again]     I, that have neither pity, love, nor fear.     Indeed, \'tis true that Henry told me of;     For I have often heard my mother say     I came into the world with my legs forward.     Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste     And seek their ruin that usurp\'d our right?       The midwife wonder\'d; and the women cried     \'O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!\'     And so I was, which plainly signified     That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog.     Then, since the heavens have shap\'d my body so,     Let hell make crook\'d my mind to answer it.     I have no brother, I am like no brother;     And this word \'love,\' which greybeards call divine,     Be resident in men like one another,     And not in me! I am myself alone.     Clarence, beware; thou keep\'st me from the light,     But I will sort a pitchy day for thee;     For I will buzz abroad such prophecies     That Edward shall be fearful of his life;     And then to purge his fear, I\'ll be thy death.     King Henry and the Prince his son are gone.     Clarence, thy turn is next, and then the rest;     Counting myself but bad till I be best.     I\'ll throw thy body in another room,     And triumph, Henry, in thy day of doom.                                                 Exit with the body     SCENE VII. London. The palace  Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD, QUEEN ELIZABETH, CLARENCE, GLOUCESTER, HASTINGS, NURSE, with the Young PRINCE, and attendants    KING EDWARD. Once more we sit in England\'s royal throne,     Repurchas\'d with the blood of enemies.     What valiant foemen, like to autumn\'s corn,     Have we mow\'d down in tops of all their pride!     Three Dukes of Somerset, threefold renown\'d     For hardy and undoubted champions;     Two Cliffords, as the father and the son;     And two Northumberlands- two braver men     Ne\'er spurr\'d their coursers at the trumpet\'s sound;     With them the two brave bears, Warwick and Montague,     That in their chains fetter\'d the kingly lion     And made the forest tremble when they roar\'d.     Thus have we swept suspicion from our seat     And made our footstool of security.     Come hither, Bess, and let me kiss my boy.       Young Ned, for thee thine uncles and myself     Have in our armours watch\'d the winter\'s night,     Went all afoot in summer\'s scalding heat,     That thou might\'st repossess the crown in peace;     And of our labours thou shalt reap the gain.   GLOUCESTER. [Aside] I\'ll blast his harvest if your head were laid;     For yet I am not look\'d on in the world.     This shoulder was ordain\'d so thick to heave;     And heave it shall some weight or break my back.     Work thou the way- and that shall execute.   KING EDWARD. Clarence and Gloucester, love my lovely queen;     And kiss your princely nephew, brothers both.   CLARENCE. The duty that I owe unto your Majesty     I seal upon the lips of this sweet babe.   KING EDWARD. Thanks, noble Clarence; worthy brother, thanks.   GLOUCESTER. And that I love the tree from whence thou sprang\'st,     Witness the loving kiss I give the fruit.     [Aside] To say the truth, so Judas kiss\'d his master     And cried \'All hail!\' when as he meant all harm.   KING EDWARD. Now am I seated as my soul delights,       Having my country\'s peace and brothers\' loves.   CLARENCE. What will your Grace have done with Margaret?     Reignier, her father, to the King of France     Hath pawn\'d the Sicils and Jerusalem,     And hither have they sent it for her ransom.   KING EDWARD. Away with her, and waft her hence to France.     And now what rests but that we spend the time     With stately triumphs, mirthful comic shows,     Such as befits the pleasure of the court?     Sound drums and trumpets. Farewell, sour annoy!     For here, I hope, begins our lasting joy.             Exeunt   THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1611  KING HENRY THE EIGHTH  by William Shakespeare   DRAMATIS PERSONAE    KING HENRY THE EIGHTH   CARDINAL WOLSEY               CARDINAL CAMPEIUS   CAPUCIUS, Ambassador from the Emperor Charles V   CRANMER, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY   DUKE OF NORFOLK               DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM   DUKE OF SUFFOLK               EARL OF SURREY   LORD CHAMBERLAIN              LORD CHANCELLOR   GARDINER, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER   BISHOP OF LINCOLN             LORD ABERGAVENNY   LORD SANDYS                   SIR HENRY GUILDFORD   SIR THOMAS LOVELL             SIR ANTHONY DENNY   SIR NICHOLAS VAUX             SECRETARIES to Wolsey   CROMWELL, servant to Wolsey   GRIFFITH, gentleman-usher to Queen Katharine   THREE GENTLEMEN   DOCTOR BUTTS, physician to the King   GARTER KING-AT-ARMS   SURVEYOR to the Duke of Buckingham   BRANDON, and a SERGEANT-AT-ARMS   DOORKEEPER Of the Council chamber     PORTER, and his MAN           PAGE to Gardiner   A CRIER    QUEEN KATHARINE, wife to King Henry, afterwards divorced   ANNE BULLEN, her Maid of Honour, afterwards Queen   AN OLD LADY, friend to Anne Bullen   PATIENCE, woman to Queen Katharine    Lord Mayor, Aldermen, Lords and Ladies in the Dumb        Shows; Women attending upon the Queen; Scribes,        Officers, Guards, and other Attendants; Spirits                            SCENE:                London; Westminster; Kimbolton                     KING HENRY THE EIGHTH                       THE PROLOGUE.      I come no more to make you laugh; things now     That bear a weighty and a serious brow,     Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,     Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow,     We now present. Those that can pity here     May, if they think it well, let fall a tear:     The subject will deserve it. Such as give     Their money out of hope they may believe     May here find truth too. Those that come to see     Only a show or two, and so agree     The play may pass, if they be still and willing,     I\'ll undertake may see away their shilling     Richly in two short hours. Only they     That come to hear a merry bawdy play,     A noise of targets, or to see a fellow     In a long motley coat guarded with yellow,     Will be deceiv\'d; for, gentle hearers, know,     To rank our chosen truth with such a show       As fool and fight is, beside forfeiting     Our own brains, and the opinion that we bring     To make that only true we now intend,     Will leave us never an understanding friend.     Therefore, for goodness sake, and as you are known     The first and happiest hearers of the town,     Be sad, as we would make ye. Think ye see     The very persons of our noble story     As they were living; think you see them great,     And follow\'d with the general throng and sweat     Of thousand friends; then, in a moment, see     How soon this mightiness meets misery.     And if you can be merry then, I\'ll say     A man may weep upon his wedding-day.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT I. SCENE 1.  London. The palace  Enter the DUKE OF NORFOLK at one door; at the other, the DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM and the LORD ABERGAVENNY    BUCKINGHAM. Good morrow, and well met. How have ye done     Since last we saw in France?   NORFOLK. I thank your Grace,     Healthful; and ever since a fresh admirer     Of what I saw there.   BUCKINGHAM. An untimely ague     Stay\'d me a prisoner in my chamber when     Those suns of glory, those two lights of men,     Met in the vale of Andren.   NORFOLK. \'Twixt Guynes and Arde-     I was then present, saw them salute on horseback;     Beheld them, when they lighted, how they clung     In their embracement, as they grew together;     Which had they, what four thron\'d ones could have weigh\'d       Such a compounded one?   BUCKINGHAM. All the whole time     I was my chamber\'s prisoner.   NORFOLK. Then you lost     The view of earthly glory; men might say,     Till this time pomp was single, but now married     To one above itself. Each following day     Became the next day\'s master, till the last     Made former wonders its. To-day the French,     All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods,     Shone down the English; and to-morrow they     Made Britain India: every man that stood     Show\'d like a mine. Their dwarfish pages were     As cherubins, an gilt; the madams too,     Not us\'d to toil, did almost sweat to bear     The pride upon them, that their very labour     Was to them as a painting. Now this masque     Was cried incomparable; and th\' ensuing night     Made it a fool and beggar. The two kings,     Equal in lustre, were now best, now worst,       As presence did present them: him in eye     still him in praise; and being present both,     \'Twas said they saw but one, and no discerner     Durst wag his tongue in censure. When these suns-     For so they phrase \'em-by their heralds challeng\'d     The noble spirits to arms, they did perform     Beyond thought\'s compass, that former fabulous story,     Being now seen possible enough, got credit,     That Bevis was believ\'d.   BUCKINGHAM. O, you go far!   NORFOLK. As I belong to worship, and affect     In honour honesty, the tract of ev\'rything     Would by a good discourser lose some life     Which action\'s self was tongue to. All was royal:     To the disposing of it nought rebell\'d;     Order gave each thing view. The office did     Distinctly his full function.   BUCKINGHAM. Who did guide-     I mean, who set the body and the limbs     Of this great sport together, as you guess?     NORFOLK. One, certes, that promises no element     In such a business.   BUCKINGHAM. I pray you, who, my lord?   NORFOLK. All this was ord\'red by the good discretion     Of the right reverend Cardinal of York.   BUCKINGHAM. The devil speed him! No man\'s pie is freed     From his ambitious finger. What had he     To do in these fierce vanities? I wonder     That such a keech can with his very bulk     Take up the rays o\' th\' beneficial sun,     And keep it from the earth.   NORFOLK. Surely, sir,     There\'s in him stuff that puts him to these ends;     For, being not propp\'d by ancestry, whose grace     Chalks successors their way, nor call\'d upon     For high feats done to th\' crown, neither allied     To eminent assistants, but spider-like,     Out of his self-drawing web, \'a gives us note     The force of his own merit makes his way-     A gift that heaven gives for him, which buys       A place next to the King.   ABERGAVENNY. I cannot tell     What heaven hath given him-let some graver eye     Pierce into that; but I can see his pride     Peep through each part of him. Whence has he that?     If not from hell, the devil is a niggard     Or has given all before, and he begins     A new hell in himself.   BUCKINGHAM. Why the devil,     Upon this French going out, took he upon him-     Without the privity o\' th\' King-t\' appoint     Who should attend on him? He makes up the file     Of all the gentry; for the most part such     To whom as great a charge as little honour     He meant to lay upon; and his own letter,     The honourable board of council out,     Must fetch him in he papers.   ABERGAVENNY. I do know     Kinsmen of mine, three at the least, that have     By this so sicken\'d their estates that never       They shall abound as formerly.   BUCKINGHAM. O, many     Have broke their backs with laying manors on \'em     For this great journey. What did this vanity     But minister communication of     A most poor issue?   NORFOLK. Grievingly I think     The peace between the French and us not values     The cost that did conclude it.   BUCKINGHAM. Every man,     After the hideous storm that follow\'d, was     A thing inspir\'d, and, not consulting, broke     Into a general prophecy-that this tempest,     Dashing the garment of this peace, aboded     The sudden breach on\'t.   NORFOLK. Which is budded out;     For France hath flaw\'d the league, and hath attach\'d     Our merchants\' goods at Bordeaux.   ABERGAVENNY. Is it therefore     Th\' ambassador is silenc\'d?     NORFOLK. Marry, is\'t.   ABERGAVENNY. A proper tide of a peace, and purchas\'d     At a superfluous rate!   BUCKINGHAM. Why, all this business     Our reverend Cardinal carried.   NORFOLK. Like it your Grace,     The state takes notice of the private difference     Betwixt you and the Cardinal. I advise you-     And take it from a heart that wishes towards you     Honour and plenteous safety-that you read     The Cardinal\'s malice and his potency     Together; to consider further, that     What his high hatred would effect wants not     A minister in his power. You know his nature,     That he\'s revengeful; and I know his sword     Hath a sharp edge-it\'s long and\'t may be said     It reaches far, and where \'twill not extend,     Thither he darts it. Bosom up my counsel     You\'ll find it wholesome. Lo, where comes that rock     That I advise your shunning.          Enter CARDINAL WOLSEY, the purse borne before       him, certain of the guard, and two SECRETARIES       with papers. The CARDINAL in his passage fixeth his       eye on BUCKINGHAM, and BUCKINGHAM on him,       both full of disdain    WOLSEY. The Duke of Buckingham\'s surveyor? Ha!     Where\'s his examination?   SECRETARY. Here, so please you.   WOLSEY. Is he in person ready?   SECRETARY. Ay, please your Grace.   WOLSEY. Well, we shall then know more, and Buckingham     shall lessen this big look.                                           Exeunt WOLSEY and his train   BUCKINGHAM. This butcher\'s cur is venom-mouth\'d, and I     Have not the power to muzzle him; therefore best     Not wake him in his slumber. A beggar\'s book     Outworths a noble\'s blood.   NORFOLK. What, are you chaf\'d?       Ask God for temp\'rance; that\'s th\' appliance only     Which your disease requires.   BUCKINGHAM. I read in\'s looks     Matter against me, and his eye revil\'d     Me as his abject object. At this instant     He bores me with some trick. He\'s gone to th\' King;     I\'ll follow, and outstare him.   NORFOLK. Stay, my lord,     And let your reason with your choler question     What \'tis you go about. To climb steep hills     Requires slow pace at first. Anger is like     A full hot horse, who being allow\'d his way,     Self-mettle tires him. Not a man in England     Can advise me like you; be to yourself     As you would to your friend.   BUCKINGHAM. I\'ll to the King,     And from a mouth of honour quite cry down     This Ipswich fellow\'s insolence; or proclaim     There\'s difference in no persons.   NORFOLK. Be advis\'d:       Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot     That it do singe yourself. We may outrun     By violent swiftness that which we run at,     And lose by over-running. Know you not     The fire that mounts the liquor till\'t run o\'er     In seeming to augment it wastes it? Be advis\'d.     I say again there is no English soul     More stronger to direct you than yourself,     If with the sap of reason you would quench     Or but allay the fire of passion.   BUCKINGHAM. Sir,     I am thankful to you, and I\'ll go along     By your prescription; but this top-proud fellow-     Whom from the flow of gan I name not, but     From sincere motions, by intelligence,     And proofs as clear as founts in July when     We see each grain of gravel-I do know     To be corrupt and treasonous.   NORFOLK. Say not treasonous.   BUCKINGHAM. To th\' King I\'ll say\'t, and make my vouch as strong       As shore of rock. Attend: this holy fox,     Or wolf, or both-for he is equal rav\'nous     As he is subtle, and as prone to mischief     As able to perform\'t, his mind and place     Infecting one another, yea, reciprocally-     Only to show his pomp as well in France     As here at home, suggests the King our master     To this last costly treaty, th\' interview     That swallowed so much treasure and like a glass     Did break i\' th\' wrenching.   NORFOLK. Faith, and so it did.   BUCKINGHAM. Pray, give me favour, sir; this cunning cardinal     The articles o\' th\' combination drew     As himself pleas\'d; and they were ratified     As he cried \'Thus let be\' to as much end     As give a crutch to th\' dead. But our Count-Cardinal     Has done this, and \'tis well; for worthy Wolsey,     Who cannot err, he did it. Now this follows,     Which, as I take it, is a kind of puppy     To th\' old dam treason: Charles the Emperor,       Under pretence to see the Queen his aunt-     For \'twas indeed his colour, but he came     To whisper Wolsey-here makes visitation-     His fears were that the interview betwixt     England and France might through their amity     Breed him some prejudice; for from this league     Peep\'d harms that menac\'d him-privily     Deals with our Cardinal; and, as I trow-     Which I do well, for I am sure the Emperor     Paid ere he promis\'d; whereby his suit was granted     Ere it was ask\'d-but when the way was made,     And pav\'d with gold, the Emperor thus desir\'d,     That he would please to alter the King\'s course,     And break the foresaid peace. Let the King know,     As soon he shall by me, that thus the Cardinal     Does buy and sell his honour as he pleases,     And for his own advantage.   NORFOLK. I am sorry     To hear this of him, and could wish he were     Something mistaken in\'t.     BUCKINGHAM. No, not a syllable:     I do pronounce him in that very shape     He shall appear in proof.         Enter BRANDON, a SERGEANT-AT-ARMS before him,               and two or three of the guard    BRANDON. Your office, sergeant: execute it.   SERGEANT. Sir,     My lord the Duke of Buckingham, and Earl     Of Hereford, Stafford, and Northampton, I     Arrest thee of high treason, in the name     Of our most sovereign King.   BUCKINGHAM. Lo you, my lord,     The net has fall\'n upon me! I shall perish     Under device and practice.   BRANDON. I am sorry     To see you ta\'en from liberty, to look on     The business present; \'tis his Highness\' pleasure     You shall to th\' Tower.     BUCKINGHAM. It will help nothing     To plead mine innocence; for that dye is on me     Which makes my whit\'st part black. The will of heav\'n     Be done in this and all things! I obey.     O my Lord Aberga\'ny, fare you well!   BRANDON. Nay, he must bear you company.     [To ABERGAVENNY]  The King     Is pleas\'d you shall to th\' Tower, till you know     How he determines further.   ABERGAVENNY. As the Duke said,     The will of heaven be done, and the King\'s pleasure     By me obey\'d.   BRANDON. Here is warrant from     The King t\' attach Lord Montacute and the bodies     Of the Duke\'s confessor, John de la Car,     One Gilbert Peck, his chancellor-   BUCKINGHAM. So, so!     These are the limbs o\' th\' plot; no more, I hope.   BRANDON. A monk o\' th\' Chartreux.   BUCKINGHAM. O, Nicholas Hopkins?     BRANDON. He.   BUCKINGHAM. My surveyor is false. The o\'er-great Cardinal     Hath show\'d him gold; my life is spann\'d already.     I am the shadow of poor Buckingham,     Whose figure even this instant cloud puts on     By dark\'ning my clear sun. My lord, farewell.     Exeunt     ACT I. SCENE 2.  London. The Council Chamber  Cornets. Enter KING HENRY, leaning on the CARDINAL\'S shoulder, the NOBLES, and SIR THOMAS LOVELL, with others. The CARDINAL places himself under the KING\'S feet on his right side    KING. My life itself, and the best heart of it,     Thanks you for this great care; I stood i\' th\' level     Of a full-charg\'d confederacy, and give thanks     To you that chok\'d it. Let be call\'d before us     That gentleman of Buckingham\'s. In person     I\'ll hear his confessions justify;     And point by point the treasons of his master     He shall again relate.        A noise within, crying \'Room for the Queen!\'       Enter the QUEEN, usher\'d by the DUKES OF NORFOLK       and SUFFOLK; she kneels. The KING riseth       from his state, takes her up, kisses and placeth her         by him    QUEEN KATHARINE. Nay, we must longer kneel: I am suitor.   KING. Arise, and take place by us. Half your suit     Never name to us: you have half our power.     The other moiety ere you ask is given;     Repeat your will, and take it.   QUEEN KATHARINE. Thank your Majesty.     That you would love yourself, and in that love     Not unconsidered leave your honour nor     The dignity of your office, is the point     Of my petition.   KING. Lady mine, proceed.   QUEEN KATHARINE. I am solicited, not by a few,     And those of true condition, that your subjects     Are in great grievance: there have been commissions     Sent down among \'em which hath flaw\'d the heart     Of all their loyalties; wherein, although,     My good Lord Cardinal, they vent reproaches     Most bitterly on you as putter-on       Of these exactions, yet the King our master-     Whose honour Heaven shield from soil!-even he escapes not     Language unmannerly; yea, such which breaks     The sides of loyalty, and almost appears     In loud rebellion.   NORFOLK. Not almost appears-     It doth appear; for, upon these taxations,     The clothiers all, not able to maintain     The many to them \'longing, have put of     The spinsters, carders, fullers, weavers, who     Unfit for other life, compell\'d by hunger     And lack of other means, in desperate manner     Daring th\' event to th\' teeth, are all in uproar,     And danger serves among them.   KING. Taxation!     Wherein? and what taxation? My Lord Cardinal,     You that are blam\'d for it alike with us,     Know you of this taxation?   WOLSEY. Please you, sir,     I know but of a single part in aught       Pertains to th\' state, and front but in that file     Where others tell steps with me.   QUEEN KATHARINE. No, my lord!     You know no more than others! But you frame     Things that are known alike, which are not wholesome     To those which would not know them, and yet must     Perforce be their acquaintance. These exactions,     Whereof my sovereign would have note, they are     Most pestilent to th\' hearing; and to bear \'em     The back is sacrifice to th\' load. They say     They are devis\'d by you, or else you suffer     Too hard an exclamation.   KING. Still exaction!     The nature of it? In what kind, let\'s know,     Is this exaction?   QUEEN KATHARINE. I am much too venturous     In tempting of your patience, but am bold\'ned     Under your promis\'d pardon. The subjects\' grief     Comes through commissions, which compels from each     The sixth part of his substance, to be levied       Without delay; and the pretence for this     Is nam\'d your wars in France. This makes bold mouths;     Tongues spit their duties out, and cold hearts freeze     Allegiance in them; their curses now     Live where their prayers did; and it\'s come to pass     This tractable obedience is a slave     To each incensed will. I would your Highness     Would give it quick consideration, for     There is no primer business.   KING. By my life,     This is against our pleasure.   WOLSEY. And for me,     I have no further gone in this than by     A single voice; and that not pass\'d me but     By learned approbation of the judges. If I am     Traduc\'d by ignorant tongues, which neither know     My faculties nor person, yet will be     The chronicles of my doing, let me say     \'Tis but the fate of place, and the rough brake     That virtue must go through. We must not stint       Our necessary actions in the fear     To cope malicious censurers, which ever     As rav\'nous fishes do a vessel follow     That is new-trimm\'d, but benefit no further     Than vainly longing. What we oft do best,     By sick interpreters, once weak ones, is     Not ours, or not allow\'d; what worst, as oft     Hitting a grosser quality, is cried up     For our best act. If we shall stand still,     In fear our motion will be mock\'d or carp\'d at,     We should take root here where we sit, or sit     State-statues only.   KING. Things done well     And with a care exempt themselves from fear:     Things done without example, in their issue     Are to be fear\'d. Have you a precedent     Of this commission? I believe, not any.     We must not rend our subjects from our laws,     And stick them in our will. Sixth part of each?     A trembling contribution! Why, we take       From every tree lop, bark, and part o\' th\' timber;     And though we leave it with a root, thus hack\'d,     The air will drink the sap. To every county     Where this is question\'d send our letters with     Free pardon to each man that has denied     The force of this commission. Pray, look tot;     I put it to your care.   WOLSEY. [Aside to the SECRETARY]  A word with you.     Let there be letters writ to every shire     Of the King\'s grace and pardon. The grieved commons     Hardly conceive of me-let it be nois\'d     That through our intercession this revokement     And pardon comes. I shall anon advise you     Further in the proceeding.                         Exit SECRETARY                      Enter SURVEYOR    QUEEN KATHARINE. I am sorry that the Duke of Buckingham     Is run in your displeasure.   KING. It grieves many.       The gentleman is learn\'d and a most rare speaker;     To nature none more bound; his training such     That he may furnish and instruct great teachers     And never seek for aid out of himself. Yet see,     When these so noble benefits shall prove     Not well dispos\'d, the mind growing once corrupt,     They turn to vicious forms, ten times more ugly     Than ever they were fair. This man so complete,     Who was enroll\'d \'mongst wonders, and when we,     Almost with ravish\'d list\'ning, could not find     His hour of speech a minute-he, my lady,     Hath into monstrous habits put the graces     That once were his, and is become as black     As if besmear\'d in hell. Sit by us; you shall hear-     This was his gentleman in trust-of him     Things to strike honour sad. Bid him recount     The fore-recited practices, whereof     We cannot feel too little, hear too much.   WOLSEY. Stand forth, and with bold spirit relate what you,     Most like a careful subject, have collected       Out of the Duke of Buckingham.   KING. Speak freely.   SURVEYOR. First, it was usual with him-every day     It would infect his speech-that if the King     Should without issue die, he\'ll carry it so     To make the sceptre his. These very words     I\'ve heard him utter to his son-in-law,     Lord Aberga\'ny, to whom by oath he menac\'d     Revenge upon the Cardinal.   WOLSEY. Please your Highness, note     This dangerous conception in this point:     Not friended by his wish, to your high person     His will is most malignant, and it stretches     Beyond you to your friends.   QUEEN KATHARINE. My learn\'d Lord Cardinal,     Deliver all with charity.   KING. Speak on.     How grounded he his title to the crown     Upon our fail? To this point hast thou heard him     At any time speak aught?     SURVEYOR. He was brought to this     By a vain prophecy of Nicholas Henton.   KING. What was that Henton?   SURVEYOR. Sir, a Chartreux friar,     His confessor, who fed him every minute     With words of sovereignty.   KING. How know\'st thou this?   SURVEYOR. Not long before your Highness sped to France,     The Duke being at the Rose, within the parish     Saint Lawrence Poultney, did of me demand     What was the speech among the Londoners     Concerning the French journey. I replied     Men fear\'d the French would prove perfidious,     To the King\'s danger. Presently the Duke     Said \'twas the fear indeed and that he doubted     \'Twould prove the verity of certain words     Spoke by a holy monk \'that oft\' says he     \'Hath sent to me, wishing me to permit     John de la Car, my chaplain, a choice hour     To hear from him a matter of some moment;       Whom after under the confession\'s seal     He solemnly had sworn that what he spoke     My chaplain to no creature living but     To me should utter, with demure confidence     This pausingly ensu\'d: "Neither the King nor\'s heirs,     Tell you the Duke, shall prosper; bid him strive     To gain the love o\' th\' commonalty; the Duke     Shall govern England."\'   QUEEN KATHARINE. If I know you well,     You were the Duke\'s surveyor, and lost your office     On the complaint o\' th\' tenants. Take good heed     You charge not in your spleen a noble person     And spoil your nobler soul. I say, take heed;     Yes, heartily beseech you.   KING. Let him on.     Go forward.   SURVEYOR. On my soul, I\'ll speak but truth.     I told my lord the Duke, by th\' devil\'s illusions     The monk might be deceiv\'d, and that \'twas dangerous       for him       To ruminate on this so far, until     It forg\'d him some design, which, being believ\'d,     It was much like to do. He answer\'d \'Tush,     It can do me no damage\'; adding further     That, had the King in his last sickness fail\'d,     The Cardinal\'s and Sir Thomas Lovell\'s heads     Should have gone off.   KING. Ha! what, so rank? Ah ha!     There\'s mischief in this man. Canst thou say further?   SURVEYOR. I can, my liege.   KING. Proceed.   SURVEYOR. Being at Greenwich,     After your Highness had reprov\'d the Duke     About Sir William Bulmer-   KING. I remember     Of such a time: being my sworn servant,     The Duke retain\'d him his. But on: what hence?   SURVEYOR. \'If\' quoth he \'I for this had been committed-     As to the Tower I thought-I would have play\'d     The part my father meant to act upon       Th\' usurper Richard; who, being at Salisbury,     Made suit to come in\'s presence, which if granted,     As he made semblance of his duty, would     Have put his knife into him.\'   KING. A giant traitor!   WOLSEY. Now, madam, may his Highness live in freedom,     And this man out of prison?   QUEEN KATHARINE. God mend all!   KING. There\'s something more would out of thee: what say\'st?   SURVEYOR. After \'the Duke his father\' with the \'knife,\'     He stretch\'d him, and, with one hand on his dagger,     Another spread on\'s breast, mounting his eyes,     He did discharge a horrible oath, whose tenour     Was, were he evil us\'d, he would outgo     His father by as much as a performance     Does an irresolute purpose.   KING. There\'s his period,     To sheath his knife in us. He is attach\'d;     Call him to present trial. If he may     Find mercy in the law, \'tis his; if none,       Let him not seek\'t of us. By day and night!     He\'s traitor to th\' height.                                Exeunt     ACT I. SCENE 3.  London. The palace  Enter the LORD CHAMBERLAIN and LORD SANDYS    CHAMBERLAIN. Is\'t possible the spells of France should juggle     Men into such strange mysteries?   SANDYS. New customs,     Though they be never so ridiculous,     Nay, let \'em be unmanly, yet are follow\'d.   CHAMBERLAIN. As far as I see, all the good our English     Have got by the late voyage is but merely     A fit or two o\' th\' face; but they are shrewd ones;     For when they hold \'em, you would swear directly     Their very noses had been counsellors     To Pepin or Clotharius, they keep state so.   SANDYS. They have all new legs, and lame ones. One would take it,     That never saw \'em pace before, the spavin     Or springhalt reign\'d among \'em.   CHAMBERLAIN. Death! my lord,     Their clothes are after such a pagan cut to\'t,       That sure th\' have worn out Christendom.             Enter SIR THOMAS LOVELL      How now?     What news, Sir Thomas Lovell?   LOVELL. Faith, my lord,     I hear of none but the new proclamation     That\'s clapp\'d upon the court gate.   CHAMBERLAIN. What is\'t for?   LOVELL. The reformation of our travell\'d gallants,     That fill the court with quarrels, talk, and tailors.   CHAMBERLAIN. I am glad \'tis there. Now I would pray our monsieurs     To think an English courtier may be wise,     And never see the Louvre.   LOVELL. They must either,     For so run the conditions, leave those remnants     Of fool and feather that they got in France,     With all their honourable points of ignorance     Pertaining thereunto-as fights and fireworks;       Abusing better men than they can be,     Out of a foreign wisdom-renouncing clean     The faith they have in tennis, and tall stockings,     Short blist\'red breeches, and those types of travel     And understand again like honest men,     Or pack to their old playfellows. There, I take it,     They may, cum privilegio, wear away     The lag end of their lewdness and be laugh\'d at.   SANDYS. \'Tis time to give \'em physic, their diseases     Are grown so catching.   CHAMBERLAIN. What a loss our ladies     Will have of these trim vanities!   LOVELL. Ay, marry,     There will be woe indeed, lords: the sly whoresons     Have got a speeding trick to lay down ladies.     A French song and a fiddle has no fellow.   SANDYS. The devil fiddle \'em! I am glad they are going,     For sure there\'s no converting \'em. Now     An honest country lord, as I am, beaten     A long time out of play, may bring his plainsong       And have an hour of hearing; and, by\'r Lady,     Held current music too.   CHAMBERLAIN. Well said, Lord Sandys;     Your colt\'s tooth is not cast yet.   SANDYS. No, my lord,     Nor shall not while I have a stamp.   CHAMBERLAIN. Sir Thomas,     Whither were you a-going?   LOVELL. To the Cardinal\'s;     Your lordship is a guest too.   CHAMBERLAIN. O, \'tis true;     This night he makes a supper, and a great one,     To many lords and ladies; there will be     The beauty of this kingdom, I\'ll assure you.   LOVELL. That churchman bears a bounteous mind indeed,     A hand as fruitful as the land that feeds us;     His dews fall everywhere.   CHAMBERLAIN. No doubt he\'s noble;     He had a black mouth that said other of him.   SANDYS. He may, my lord; has wherewithal. In him       Sparing would show a worse sin than ill doctrine:     Men of his way should be most liberal,     They are set here for examples.   CHAMBERLAIN. True, they are so;     But few now give so great ones. My barge stays;     Your lordship shall along. Come, good Sir Thomas,     We shall be late else; which I would not be,     For I was spoke to, with Sir Henry Guildford,     This night to be comptrollers.   SANDYS. I am your lordship\'s.                                Exeunt     ACT I. SCENE 4.  London. The Presence Chamber in York Place  Hautboys. A small table under a state for the Cardinal, a longer table for the guests. Then enter ANNE BULLEN, and divers other LADIES and GENTLEMEN, as guests, at one door; at another door enter SIR HENRY GUILDFORD    GUILDFORD. Ladies, a general welcome from his Grace     Salutes ye all; this night he dedicates     To fair content and you. None here, he hopes,     In all this noble bevy, has brought with her     One care abroad; he would have all as merry     As, first, good company, good wine, good welcome,     Can make good people.         Enter LORD CHAMBERLAIN, LORD SANDYS, and SIR                   THOMAS LOVELL      O, my lord, y\'are tardy,       The very thought of this fair company     Clapp\'d wings to me.   CHAMBERLAIN. You are young, Sir Harry Guildford.   SANDYS. Sir Thomas Lovell, had the Cardinal     But half my lay thoughts in him, some of these     Should find a running banquet ere they rested     I think would better please \'em. By my life,     They are a sweet society of fair ones.   LOVELL. O that your lordship were but now confessor     To one or two of these!   SANDYS. I would I were;     They should find easy penance.   LOVELL. Faith, how easy?   SANDYS. As easy as a down bed would afford it.   CHAMBERLAIN. Sweet ladies, will it please you sit? Sir Harry,     Place you that side; I\'ll take the charge of this.     His Grace is ent\'ring. Nay, you must not freeze:     Two women plac\'d together makes cold weather.     My Lord Sandys, you are one will keep \'em waking:     Pray sit between these ladies.     SANDYS. By my faith,     And thank your lordship. By your leave, sweet ladies.                  [Seats himself between ANNE BULLEN and another lady]     If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me;     I had it from my father.   ANNE. Was he mad, sir?   SANDYS. O, very mad, exceeding mad, in love too.     But he would bite none; just as I do now,     He would kiss you twenty with a breath.              [Kisses her]   CHAMBERLAIN. Well said, my lord.     So, now y\'are fairly seated. Gentlemen,     The penance lies on you if these fair ladies     Pass away frowning.   SANDYS. For my little cure,     Let me alone.           Hautboys. Enter CARDINAL WOLSEY, attended; and                          takes his state    WOLSEY. Y\'are welcome, my fair guests. That noble lady       Or gentleman that is not freely merry     Is not my friend. This, to confirm my welcome-     And to you all, good health!                             [Drinks]   SANDYS. Your Grace is noble.     Let me have such a bowl may hold my thanks     And save me so much talking.   WOLSEY. My Lord Sandys,     I am beholding to you. Cheer your neighbours.     Ladies, you are not merry. Gentlemen,     Whose fault is this?   SANDYS. The red wine first must rise     In their fair cheeks, my lord; then we shall have \'em     Talk us to silence.   ANNE. You are a merry gamester,     My Lord Sandys.   SANDYS. Yes, if I make my play.     Here\'s to your ladyship; and pledge it, madam,     For \'tis to such a thing-   ANNE. You cannot show me.   SANDYS. I told your Grace they would talk anon.                                [Drum and trumpet. Chambers discharg\'d]   WOLSEY. What\'s that?   CHAMBERLAIN. Look out there, some of ye.             Exit a SERVANT   WOLSEY. What warlike voice,     And to what end, is this? Nay, ladies, fear not:     By all the laws of war y\'are privileg\'d.              Re-enter SERVANT    CHAMBERLAIN. How now! what is\'t?   SERVANT. A noble troop of strangers-     For so they seem. Th\' have left their barge and landed,     And hither make, as great ambassadors     From foreign princes.   WOLSEY. Good Lord Chamberlain,     Go, give \'em welcome; you can speak the French tongue;     And pray receive \'em nobly and conduct \'em     Into our presence, where this heaven of beauty     Shall shine at full upon them. Some attend him.               Exit CHAMBERLAIN attended. All rise, and tables remov\'d       You have now a broken banquet, but we\'ll mend it.     A good digestion to you all; and once more     I show\'r a welcome on ye; welcome all.        Hautboys. Enter the KING, and others, as maskers,       habited like shepherds, usher\'d by the LORD CHAMBERLAIN.       They pass directly before the CARDINAL,       and gracefully salute him      A noble company! What are their pleasures?   CHAMBERLAIN. Because they speak no English, thus they pray\'d     To tell your Grace, that, having heard by fame     Of this so noble and so fair assembly     This night to meet here, they could do no less,     Out of the great respect they bear to beauty,     But leave their flocks and, under your fair conduct,     Crave leave to view these ladies and entreat     An hour of revels with \'em.   WOLSEY. Say, Lord Chamberlain,     They have done my poor house grace; for which I pay \'em       A thousand thanks, and pray \'em take their pleasures.                    [They choose ladies. The KING chooses ANNE BULLEN]   KING. The fairest hand I ever touch\'d! O beauty,     Till now I never knew thee!                        [Music. Dance]   WOLSEY. My lord!   CHAMBERLAIN. Your Grace?   WOLSEY. Pray tell \'em thus much from me:     There should be one amongst \'em, by his person,     More worthy this place than myself; to whom,     If I but knew him, with my love and duty     I would surrender it.   CHAMBERLAIN. I will, my lord.                                          [He whispers to the maskers]   WOLSEY. What say they?   CHAMBERLAIN. Such a one, they all confess,     There is indeed; which they would have your Grace     Find out, and he will take it.   WOLSEY. Let me see, then.                    [Comes from his state]     By all your good leaves, gentlemen, here I\'ll make     My royal choice.     KING.  [Unmasking]  Ye have found him, Cardinal.     You hold a fair assembly; you do well, lord.     You are a churchman, or, I\'ll tell you, Cardinal,     I should judge now unhappily.   WOLSEY. I am glad     Your Grace is grown so pleasant.   KING. My Lord Chamberlain,     Prithee come hither: what fair lady\'s that?   CHAMBERLAIN. An\'t please your Grace, Sir Thomas Bullen\'s       daughter-     The Viscount Rochford-one of her Highness\' women.   KING. By heaven, she is a dainty one. Sweet heart,     I were unmannerly to take you out     And not to kiss you. A health, gentlemen!     Let it go round.   WOLSEY. Sir Thomas Lovell, is the banquet ready     I\' th\' privy chamber?   LOVELL. Yes, my lord.   WOLSEY. Your Grace,     I fear, with dancing is a little heated.     KING. I fear, too much.   WOLSEY. There\'s fresher air, my lord,     In the next chamber.   KING. Lead in your ladies, ev\'ry one. Sweet partner,     I must not yet forsake you. Let\'s be merry:     Good my Lord Cardinal, I have half a dozen healths     To drink to these fair ladies, and a measure     To lead \'em once again; and then let\'s dream     Who\'s best in favour. Let the music knock it.                                                 Exeunt, with trumpets     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE 1.  Westminster. A street  Enter two GENTLEMEN, at several doors    FIRST GENTLEMAN. Whither away so fast?   SECOND GENTLEMAN. O, God save ye!     Ev\'n to the Hall, to hear what shall become     Of the great Duke of Buckingham.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. I\'ll save you     That labour, sir. All\'s now done but the ceremony     Of bringing back the prisoner.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Were you there?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes, indeed, was I.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Pray, speak what has happen\'d.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. You may guess quickly what.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Is he found guilty?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes, truly is he, and condemn\'d upon\'t.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. I am sorry for\'t.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. So are a number more.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. But, pray, how pass\'d it?     FIRST GENTLEMAN. I\'ll tell you in a little. The great Duke.     Came to the bar; where to his accusations     He pleaded still not guilty, and alleged     Many sharp reasons to defeat the law.     The King\'s attorney, on the contrary,     Urg\'d on the examinations, proofs, confessions,     Of divers witnesses; which the Duke desir\'d     To have brought, viva voce, to his face;     At which appear\'d against him his surveyor,     Sir Gilbert Peck his chancellor, and John Car,     Confessor to him, with that devil-monk,     Hopkins, that made this mischief.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. That was he     That fed him with his prophecies?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. The same.     All these accus\'d him strongly, which he fain     Would have flung from him; but indeed he could not;     And so his peers, upon this evidence,     Have found him guilty of high treason. Much     He spoke, and learnedly, for life; but all       Was either pitied in him or forgotten.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. After all this, how did he bear him-self   FIRST GENTLEMAN. When he was brought again to th\' bar to hear     His knell rung out, his judgment, he was stirr\'d     With such an agony he sweat extremely,     And something spoke in choler, ill and hasty;     But he fell to himself again, and sweetly     In all the rest show\'d a most noble patience.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. I do not think he fears death.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Sure, he does not;     He never was so womanish; the cause     He may a little grieve at.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Certainly     The Cardinal is the end of this.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. \'Tis likely,     By all conjectures: first, Kildare\'s attainder,     Then deputy of Ireland, who remov\'d,     Earl Surrey was sent thither, and in haste too,     Lest he should help his father.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. That trick of state       Was a deep envious one.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. At his return     No doubt he will requite it. This is noted,     And generally: whoever the King favours     The Cardinal instantly will find employment,     And far enough from court too.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. All the commons     Hate him perniciously, and, o\' my conscience,     Wish him ten fathom deep: this Duke as much     They love and dote on; call him bounteous Buckingham,     The mirror of all courtesy-        Enter BUCKINGHAM from his arraignment, tip-staves       before him; the axe with the edge towards him; halberds       on each side; accompanied with SIR THOMAS       LOVELL, SIR NICHOLAS VAUX, SIR WILLIAM SANDYS,       and common people, etc.    FIRST GENTLEMAN. Stay there, sir,     And see the noble ruin\'d man you speak of.     SECOND GENTLEMAN. Let\'s stand close, and behold him.   BUCKINGHAM. All good people,     You that thus far have come to pity me,     Hear what I say, and then go home and lose me.     I have this day receiv\'d a traitor\'s judgment,     And by that name must die; yet, heaven bear witness,     And if I have a conscience, let it sink me     Even as the axe falls, if I be not faithful!     The law I bear no malice for my death:     \'T has done, upon the premises, but justice.     But those that sought it I could wish more Christians.     Be what they will, I heartily forgive \'em;     Yet let \'em look they glory not in mischief     Nor build their evils on the graves of great men,     For then my guiltless blood must cry against \'em.     For further life in this world I ne\'er hope     Nor will I sue, although the King have mercies     More than I dare make faults. You few that lov\'d me     And dare be bold to weep for Buckingham,     His noble friends and fellows, whom to leave       Is only bitter to him, only dying,     Go with me like good angels to my end;     And as the long divorce of steel falls on me     Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice,     And lift my soul to heaven. Lead on, a God\'s name.   LOVELL. I do beseech your Grace, for charity,     If ever any malice in your heart     Were hid against me, now to forgive me frankly.   BUCKINGHAM. Sir Thomas Lovell, I as free forgive you     As I would be forgiven. I forgive all.     There cannot be those numberless offences     \'Gainst me that I cannot take peace with. No black envy     Shall mark my grave. Commend me to his Grace;     And if he speak of Buckingham, pray tell him     You met him half in heaven. My vows and prayers     Yet are the King\'s, and, till my soul forsake,     Shall cry for blessings on him. May he live     Longer than I have time to tell his years;     Ever belov\'d and loving may his rule be;     And when old time Shall lead him to his end,       Goodness and he fill up one monument!   LOVELL. To th\' water side I must conduct your Grace;     Then give my charge up to Sir Nicholas Vaux,     Who undertakes you to your end.   VAUX. Prepare there;     The Duke is coming; see the barge be ready;     And fit it with such furniture as suits     The greatness of his person.   BUCKINGHAM. Nay, Sir Nicholas,     Let it alone; my state now will but mock me.     When I came hither I was Lord High Constable     And Duke of Buckingham; now, poor Edward Bohun.     Yet I am richer than my base accusers     That never knew what truth meant; I now seal it;     And with that blood will make \'em one day groan fort.     My noble father, Henry of Buckingham,     Who first rais\'d head against usurping Richard,     Flying for succour to his servant Banister,     Being distress\'d, was by that wretch betray\'d     And without trial fell; God\'s peace be with him!       Henry the Seventh succeeding, truly pitying     My father\'s loss, like a most royal prince,     Restor\'d me to my honours, and out of ruins     Made my name once more noble. Now his son,     Henry the Eighth, life, honour, name, and all     That made me happy, at one stroke has taken     For ever from the world. I had my trial,     And must needs say a noble one; which makes me     A little happier than my wretched father;     Yet thus far we are one in fortunes: both     Fell by our servants, by those men we lov\'d most-     A most unnatural and faithless service.     Heaven has an end in all. Yet, you that hear me,     This from a dying man receive as certain:     Where you are liberal of your loves and counsels,     Be sure you be not loose; for those you make friends     And give your hearts to, when they once perceive     The least rub in your fortunes, fall away     Like water from ye, never found again     But where they mean to sink ye. All good people,       Pray for me! I must now forsake ye; the last hour     Of my long weary life is come upon me.     Farewell;     And when you would say something that is sad,     Speak how I fell. I have done; and God forgive me!                                           Exeunt BUCKINGHAM and train   FIRST GENTLEMAN. O, this is full of pity! Sir, it calls,     I fear, too many curses on their heads     That were the authors.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. If the Duke be guiltless,     \'Tis full of woe; yet I can give you inkling     Of an ensuing evil, if it fall,     Greater than this.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Good angels keep it from us!     What may it be? You do not doubt my faith, sir?   SECOND GENTLEMAN. This secret is so weighty, \'twill require     A strong faith to conceal it.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Let me have it;     I do not talk much.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. I am confident.       You shall, sir. Did you not of late days hear     A buzzing of a separation     Between the King and Katharine?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes, but it held not;     For when the King once heard it, out of anger     He sent command to the Lord Mayor straight     To stop the rumour and allay those tongues     That durst disperse it.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. But that slander, sir,     Is found a truth now; for it grows again     Fresher than e\'er it was, and held for certain     The King will venture at it. Either the Cardinal     Or some about him near have, out of malice     To the good Queen, possess\'d him with a scruple     That will undo her. To confirm this too,     Cardinal Campeius is arriv\'d and lately;     As all think, for this business.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. \'Tis the Cardinal;     And merely to revenge him on the Emperor     For not bestowing on him at his asking       The archbishopric of Toledo, this is purpos\'d.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. I think you have hit the mark; but is\'t         not cruel     That she should feel the smart of this? The Cardinal     Will have his will, and she must fall.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. \'Tis woeful.     We are too open here to argue this;     Let\'s think in private more.                               Exeunt     ACT II. SCENE 2.  London. The palace  Enter the LORD CHAMBERLAIN reading this letter    CHAMBERLAIN. \'My lord,     \'The horses your lordship sent for, with all the care     had, I saw well chosen, ridden, and furnish\'d. They were     young and handsome, and of the best breed in the north.     When they were ready to set out for London, a man of     my Lord Cardinal\'s, by commission, and main power, took     \'em from me, with this reason: his master would be serv\'d     before a subject, if not before the King; which stopp\'d     our mouths, sir.\'      I fear he will indeed. Well, let him have them.     He will have all, I think.      Enter to the LORD CHAMBERLAIN the DUKES OF NORFOLK and SUFFOLK    NORFOLK. Well met, my Lord Chamberlain.     CHAMBERLAIN. Good day to both your Graces.   SUFFOLK. How is the King employ\'d?   CHAMBERLAIN. I left him private,     Full of sad thoughts and troubles.   NORFOLK. What\'s the cause?   CHAMBERLAIN. It seems the marriage with his brother\'s wife     Has crept too near his conscience.   SUFFOLK. No, his conscience     Has crept too near another lady.   NORFOLK. \'Tis so;     This is the Cardinal\'s doing; the King-Cardinal,     That blind priest, like the eldest son of fortune,     Turns what he list. The King will know him one day.   SUFFOLK. Pray God he do! He\'ll never know himself else.   NORFOLK. How holily he works in all his business!     And with what zeal! For, now he has crack\'d the league     Between us and the Emperor, the Queen\'s great nephew,     He dives into the King\'s soul and there scatters     Dangers, doubts, wringing of the conscience,     Fears, and despairs-and all these for his marriage;       And out of all these to restore the King,     He counsels a divorce, a loss of her     That like a jewel has hung twenty years     About his neck, yet never lost her lustre;     Of her that loves him with that excellence     That angels love good men with; even of her     That, when the greatest stroke of fortune falls,     Will bless the King-and is not this course pious?   CHAMBERLAIN. Heaven keep me from such counsel! \'Tis most true     These news are everywhere; every tongue speaks \'em,     And every true heart weeps for \'t. All that dare     Look into these affairs see this main end-     The French King\'s sister. Heaven will one day open     The King\'s eyes, that so long have slept upon     This bold bad man.   SUFFOLK. And free us from his slavery.   NORFOLK. We had need pray, and heartily, for our deliverance;     Or this imperious man will work us an     From princes into pages. All men\'s honours     Lie like one lump before him, to be fashion\'d       Into what pitch he please.   SUFFOLK. For me, my lords,     I love him not, nor fear him-there\'s my creed;     As I am made without him, so I\'ll stand,     If the King please; his curses and his blessings     Touch me alike; th\' are breath I not believe in.     I knew him, and I know him; so I leave him     To him that made him proud-the Pope.   NORFOLK. Let\'s in;     And with some other business put the King     From these sad thoughts that work too much upon him.     My lord, you\'ll bear us company?   CHAMBERLAIN. Excuse me,     The King has sent me otherwhere; besides,     You\'ll find a most unfit time to disturb him.     Health to your lordships!   NORFOLK. Thanks, my good Lord Chamberlain.                             Exit LORD CHAMBERLAIN; and the KING draws                                the curtain and sits reading pensively   SUFFOLK. How sad he looks; sure, he is much afflicted.     KING. Who\'s there, ha?   NORFOLK. Pray God he be not angry.   KING HENRY. Who\'s there, I say? How dare you thrust yourselves     Into my private meditations?     Who am I, ha?   NORFOLK. A gracious king that pardons all offences     Malice ne\'er meant. Our breach of duty this way     Is business of estate, in which we come     To know your royal pleasure.   KING. Ye are too bold.     Go to; I\'ll make ye know your times of business.     Is this an hour for temporal affairs, ha?        Enter WOLSEY and CAMPEIUS with a commission      Who\'s there? My good Lord Cardinal? O my Wolsey,     The quiet of my wounded conscience,     Thou art a cure fit for a King.  [To CAMPEIUS]  You\'re       welcome,     Most learned reverend sir, into our kingdom.       Use us and it.  [To WOLSEY]  My good lord, have great care     I be not found a talker.   WOLSEY. Sir, you cannot.     I would your Grace would give us but an hour     Of private conference.   KING.  [To NORFOLK and SUFFOLK]  We are busy; go.   NORFOLK.  [Aside to SUFFOLK]  This priest has no pride in him!   SUFFOLK.  [Aside to NORFOLK]  Not to speak of!     I would not be so sick though for his place.     But this cannot continue.   NORFOLK.  [Aside to SUFFOLK]  If it do,     I\'ll venture one have-at-him.   SUFFOLK.  [Aside to NORFOLK]  I another.                                            Exeunt NORFOLK and SUFFOLK   WOLSEY. Your Grace has given a precedent of wisdom     Above all princes, in committing freely     Your scruple to the voice of Christendom.     Who can be angry now? What envy reach you?     The Spaniard, tied by blood and favour to her,     Must now confess, if they have any goodness,       The trial just and noble. All the clerks,     I mean the learned ones, in Christian kingdoms     Have their free voices. Rome the nurse of judgment,     Invited by your noble self, hath sent     One general tongue unto us, this good man,     This just and learned priest, Cardinal Campeius,     Whom once more I present unto your Highness.   KING. And once more in mine arms I bid him welcome,     And thank the holy conclave for their loves.     They have sent me such a man I would have wish\'d for.   CAMPEIUS. Your Grace must needs deserve an strangers\' loves,     You are so noble. To your Highness\' hand     I tender my commission; by whose virtue-     The court of Rome commanding-you, my Lord     Cardinal of York, are join\'d with me their servant     In the unpartial judging of this business.   KING. Two equal men. The Queen shall be acquainted     Forthwith for what you come. Where\'s Gardiner?   WOLSEY. I know your Majesty has always lov\'d her     So dear in heart not to deny her that       A woman of less place might ask by law-     Scholars allow\'d freely to argue for her.   KING. Ay, and the best she shall have; and my favour     To him that does best. God forbid else. Cardinal,     Prithee call Gardiner to me, my new secretary;     I find him a fit fellow.                              Exit WOLSEY            Re-enter WOLSEY with GARDINER    WOLSEY.  [Aside to GARDINER]  Give me your hand: much       joy and favour to you;     You are the King\'s now.   GARDINER.  [Aside to WOLSEY]  But to be commanded     For ever by your Grace, whose hand has rais\'d me.   KING. Come hither, Gardiner.                   [Walks and whispers]   CAMPEIUS. My Lord of York, was not one Doctor Pace     In this man\'s place before him?   WOLSEY. Yes, he was.   CAMPEIUS. Was he not held a learned man?   WOLSEY. Yes, surely.     CAMPEIUS. Believe me, there\'s an ill opinion spread then,     Even of yourself, Lord Cardinal.   WOLSEY. How! Of me?   CAMPEIUS. They will not stick to say you envied him     And, fearing he would rise, he was so virtuous,     Kept him a foreign man still; which so griev\'d him     That he ran mad and died.   WOLSEY. Heav\'n\'s peace be with him!     That\'s Christian care enough. For living murmurers     There\'s places of rebuke. He was a fool,     For he would needs be virtuous: that good fellow,     If I command him, follows my appointment.     I will have none so near else. Learn this, brother,     We live not to be grip\'d by meaner persons.   KING. Deliver this with modesty to th\' Queen.                                                         Exit GARDINER     The most convenient place that I can think of     For such receipt of learning is Blackfriars;     There ye shall meet about this weighty business-     My Wolsey, see it furnish\'d. O, my lord,       Would it not grieve an able man to leave     So sweet a bedfellow? But, conscience, conscience!     O, \'tis a tender place! and I must leave her.              Exeunt     ACT II. SCENE 3.  London. The palace  Enter ANNE BULLEN and an OLD LADY    ANNE. Not for that neither. Here\'s the pang that pinches:     His Highness having liv\'d so long with her, and she     So good a lady that no tongue could ever     Pronounce dishonour of her-by my life,     She never knew harm-doing-O, now, after     So many courses of the sun enthroned,     Still growing in a majesty and pomp, the which     To leave a thousand-fold more bitter than     \'Tis sweet at first t\' acquire-after this process,     To give her the avaunt, it is a pity     Would move a monster.   OLD LADY. Hearts of most hard temper     Melt and lament for her.   ANNE. O, God\'s will! much better     She ne\'er had known pomp; though\'t be temporal,     Yet, if that quarrel, fortune, do divorce       It from the bearer, \'tis a sufferance panging     As soul and body\'s severing.   OLD LADY. Alas, poor lady!     She\'s a stranger now again.   ANNE. So much the more     Must pity drop upon her. Verily,     I swear \'tis better to be lowly born     And range with humble livers in content     Than to be perk\'d up in a glist\'ring grief     And wear a golden sorrow.   OLD LADY. Our content     Is our best having.   ANNE. By my troth and maidenhead,     I would not be a queen.   OLD LADY. Beshrew me, I would,     And venture maidenhead for \'t; and so would you,     For all this spice of your hypocrisy.     You that have so fair parts of woman on you     Have too a woman\'s heart, which ever yet     Affected eminence, wealth, sovereignty;       Which, to say sooth, are blessings; and which gifts,     Saving your mincing, the capacity     Of your soft cheveril conscience would receive     If you might please to stretch it.   ANNE. Nay, good troth.   OLD LADY. Yes, troth and troth. You would not be a queen!   ANNE. No, not for all the riches under heaven.   OLD LADY. \'Tis strange: a threepence bow\'d would hire me,     Old as I am, to queen it. But, I pray you,     What think you of a duchess? Have you limbs     To bear that load of title?   ANNE. No, in truth.   OLD LADY. Then you are weakly made. Pluck off a little;     I would not be a young count in your way     For more than blushing comes to. If your back     Cannot vouchsafe this burden, \'tis too weak     Ever to get a boy.   ANNE. How you do talk!     I swear again I would not be a queen     For all the world.     OLD LADY. In faith, for little England     You\'d venture an emballing. I myself     Would for Carnarvonshire, although there long\'d     No more to th\' crown but that. Lo, who comes here?           Enter the LORD CHAMBERLAIN    CHAMBERLAIN. Good morrow, ladies. What were\'t worth to know     The secret of your conference?   ANNE. My good lord,     Not your demand; it values not your asking.     Our mistress\' sorrows we were pitying.   CHAMBERLAIN. It was a gentle business and becoming     The action of good women; there is hope     All will be well.   ANNE. Now, I pray God, amen!   CHAMBERLAIN. You bear a gentle mind, and heav\'nly blessings     Follow such creatures. That you may, fair lady,     Perceive I speak sincerely and high notes     Ta\'en of your many virtues, the King\'s Majesty       Commends his good opinion of you to you, and     Does purpose honour to you no less flowing     Than Marchioness of Pembroke; to which tide     A thousand pound a year, annual support,     Out of his grace he adds.   ANNE. I do not know     What kind of my obedience I should tender;     More than my all is nothing, nor my prayers     Are not words duly hallowed, nor my wishes     More worth than empty vanities; yet prayers and wishes     Are all I can return. Beseech your lordship,     Vouchsafe to speak my thanks and my obedience,     As from a blushing handmaid, to his Highness;     Whose health and royalty I pray for.   CHAMBERLAIN. Lady,     I shall not fail t\' approve the fair conceit     The King hath of you.  [Aside]  I have perus\'d her well:     Beauty and honour in her are so mingled     That they have caught the King; and who knows yet     But from this lady may proceed a gem       To lighten all this isle?-I\'ll to the King     And say I spoke with you.   ANNE. My honour\'d lord!                       Exit LORD CHAMBERLAIN   OLD LADY. Why, this it is: see, see!     I have been begging sixteen years in court-     Am yet a courtier beggarly-nor could     Come pat betwixt too early and too late     For any suit of pounds; and you, O fate!     A very fresh-fish here-fie, fie, fie upon     This compell\'d fortune!-have your mouth fill\'d up     Before you open it.   ANNE. This is strange to me.   OLD LADY. How tastes it? Is it bitter? Forty pence, no.     There was a lady once-\'tis an old story-     That would not be a queen, that would she not,     For all the mud in Egypt. Have you heard it?   ANNE. Come, you are pleasant.   OLD LADY. With your theme I could     O\'ermount the lark. The Marchioness of Pembroke!     A thousand pounds a year for pure respect!       No other obligation! By my life,     That promises moe thousands: honour\'s train     Is longer than his foreskirt. By this time     I know your back will bear a duchess. Say,     Are you not stronger than you were?   ANNE. Good lady,     Make yourself mirth with your particular fancy,     And leave me out on\'t. Would I had no being,     If this salute my blood a jot; it faints me     To think what follows.     The Queen is comfortless, and we forgetful     In our long absence. Pray, do not deliver     What here y\' have heard to her.   OLD LADY. What do you think me?                              Exeunt     ACT II. SCENE 4.  London. A hall in Blackfriars  Trumpets, sennet, and cornets. Enter two VERGERS, with short silver wands; next them, two SCRIBES, in the habit of doctors; after them, the ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY alone; after him, the BISHOPS OF LINCOLN, ELY, ROCHESTER, and SAINT ASAPH; next them, with some small distance, follows a GENTLEMAN bearing the purse, with the great seal, and a Cardinal\'s hat; then two PRIESTS, bearing each silver cross; then a GENTLEMAN USHER bareheaded, accompanied with a SERGEANT-AT-ARMS bearing a silver mace; then two GENTLEMEN bearing two great silver pillars; after them, side by side, the two CARDINALS, WOLSEY and CAMPEIUS; two NOBLEMEN with the sword and mace. Then enter the KING and QUEEN and their trains. The KING takes place under the cloth of state; the two CARDINALS sit under him as judges. The QUEEN takes place some distance from the KING. The BISHOPS place themselves on each side of the court, in manner of consistory; below them the SCRIBES. The LORDS sit next the BISHOPS. The rest of the attendants stand in convenient order about the stage    WOLSEY. Whilst our commission from Rome is read,     Let silence be commanded.   KING. What\'s the need?     It hath already publicly been read,     And on all sides th\' authority allow\'d;     You may then spare that time.   WOLSEY. Be\'t so; proceed.   SCRIBE. Say \'Henry King of England, come into the court.\'   CRIER. Henry King of England, &c.   KING. Here.   SCRIBE. Say \'Katharine Queen of England, come into the court.\'   CRIER. Katharine Queen of England, &c.       The QUEEN makes no answer, rises out of her chair,      goes about the court, comes to the KING, and kneels        at his feet; then speaks    QUEEN KATHARINE. Sir, I desire you do me right and justice,     And to bestow your pity on me; for     I am a most poor woman and a stranger,     Born out of your dominions, having here     No judge indifferent, nor no more assurance     Of equal friendship and proceeding. Alas, sir,     In what have I offended you? What cause     Hath my behaviour given to your displeasure     That thus you should proceed to put me of     And take your good grace from me? Heaven witness,     I have been to you a true and humble wife,     At all times to your will conformable,     Ever in fear to kindle your dislike,     Yea, subject to your countenance-glad or sorry     As I saw it inclin\'d. When was the hour     I ever contradicted your desire     Or made it not mine too? Or which of your friends     Have I not strove to love, although I knew       He were mine enemy? What friend of mine     That had to him deriv\'d your anger did     Continue in my liking? Nay, gave notice     He was from thence discharg\'d? Sir, call to mind     That I have been your wife in this obedience     Upward of twenty years, and have been blest     With many children by you. If, in the course     And process of this time, you can report,     And prove it too against mine honour, aught,     My bond to wedlock or my love and duty,     Against your sacred person, in God\'s name,     Turn me away and let the foul\'st contempt     Shut door upon me, and so give me up     To the sharp\'st kind of justice. Please you, sir,     The King, your father, was reputed for     A prince most prudent, of an excellent     And unmatch\'d wit and judgment; Ferdinand,     My father, King of Spain, was reckon\'d one     The wisest prince that there had reign\'d by many     A year before. It is not to be question\'d       That they had gather\'d a wise council to them     Of every realm, that did debate this business,     Who deem\'d our marriage lawful. Wherefore I humbly     Beseech you, sir, to spare me till I may     Be by my friends in Spain advis\'d, whose counsel     I will implore. If not, i\' th\' name of God,     Your pleasure be fulfill\'d!   WOLSEY. You have here, lady,     And of your choice, these reverend fathers-men     Of singular integrity and learning,     Yea, the elect o\' th\' land, who are assembled     To plead your cause. It shall be therefore bootless     That longer you desire the court, as well     For your own quiet as to rectify     What is unsettled in the King.   CAMPEIUS. His Grace     Hath spoken well and justly; therefore, madam,     It\'s fit this royal session do proceed     And that, without delay, their arguments     Be now produc\'d and heard.     QUEEN KATHARINE. Lord Cardinal,     To you I speak.   WOLSEY. Your pleasure, madam?   QUEEN KATHARINE. Sir,     I am about to weep; but, thinking that     We are a queen, or long have dream\'d so, certain     The daughter of a king, my drops of tears     I\'ll turn to sparks of fire.   WOLSEY. Be patient yet.   QUEEN KATHARINE. I Will, when you are humble; nay, before     Or God will punish me. I do believe,     Induc\'d by potent circumstances, that     You are mine enemy, and make my challenge     You shall not be my judge; for it is you     Have blown this coal betwixt my lord and me-     Which God\'s dew quench! Therefore I say again,     I utterly abhor, yea, from my soul     Refuse you for my judge, whom yet once more     I hold my most malicious foe and think not     At all a friend to truth.     WOLSEY. I do profess     You speak not like yourself, who ever yet     Have stood to charity and display\'d th\' effects     Of disposition gentle and of wisdom     O\'ertopping woman\'s pow\'r. Madam, you do me wrong:     I have no spleen against you, nor injustice     For you or any; how far I have proceeded,     Or how far further shall, is warranted     By a commission from the Consistory,     Yea, the whole Consistory of Rome. You charge me     That I have blown this coal: I do deny it.     The King is present; if it be known to him     That I gainsay my deed, how may he wound,     And worthily, my falsehood! Yea, as much     As you have done my truth. If he know     That I am free of your report, he knows     I am not of your wrong. Therefore in him     It lies to cure me, and the cure is to     Remove these thoughts from you; the which before     His Highness shall speak in, I do beseech       You, gracious madam, to unthink your speaking     And to say so no more.   QUEEN KATHARINE. My lord, my lord,     I am a simple woman, much too weak     T\' oppose your cunning. Y\'are meek and humble-mouth\'d;     You sign your place and calling, in full seeming,     With meekness and humility; but your heart     Is cramm\'d with arrogancy, spleen, and pride.     You have, by fortune and his Highness\' favours,     Gone slightly o\'er low steps, and now are mounted     Where pow\'rs are your retainers, and your words,     Domestics to you, serve your will as\'t please     Yourself pronounce their office. I must tell you     You tender more your person\'s honour than     Your high profession spiritual; that again     I do refuse you for my judge and here,     Before you all, appeal unto the Pope,     To bring my whole cause \'fore his Holiness     And to be judg\'d by him.                      [She curtsies to the KING, and offers to depart]     CAMPEIUS. The Queen is obstinate,     Stubborn to justice, apt to accuse it, and     Disdainful to be tried by\'t; \'tis not well.     She\'s going away.   KING. Call her again.   CRIER. Katharine Queen of England, come into the court.   GENTLEMAN USHER. Madam, you are call\'d back.   QUEEN KATHARINE. What need you note it? Pray you keep your way;     When you are call\'d, return. Now the Lord help!     They vex me past my patience. Pray you pass on.     I will not tarry; no, nor ever more     Upon this business my appearance make     In any of their courts.           Exeunt QUEEN and her attendants   KING. Go thy ways, Kate.     That man i\' th\' world who shall report he has     A better wife, let him in nought be trusted     For speaking false in that. Thou art, alone-     If thy rare qualities, sweet gentleness,     Thy meekness saint-like, wife-like government,     Obeying in commanding, and thy parts       Sovereign and pious else, could speak thee out-     The queen of earthly queens. She\'s noble born;     And like her true nobility she has     Carried herself towards me.   WOLSEY. Most gracious sir,     In humblest manner I require your Highness     That it shall please you to declare in hearing     Of all these ears-for where I am robb\'d and bound,     There must I be unloos\'d, although not there     At once and fully satisfied-whether ever I     Did broach this business to your Highness, or     Laid any scruple in your way which might     Induce you to the question on\'t, or ever     Have to you, but with thanks to God for such     A royal lady, spake one the least word that might     Be to the prejudice of her present state,     Or touch of her good person?   KING. My Lord Cardinal,     I do excuse you; yea, upon mine honour,     I free you from\'t. You are not to be taught       That you have many enemies that know not     Why they are so, but, like to village curs,     Bark when their fellows do. By some of these     The Queen is put in anger. Y\'are excus\'d.     But will you be more justified? You ever     Have wish\'d the sleeping of this business; never desir\'d     It to be stirr\'d; but oft have hind\'red, oft,     The passages made toward it. On my honour,     I speak my good Lord Cardinal to this point,     And thus far clear him. Now, what mov\'d me to\'t,     I will be bold with time and your attention.     Then mark th\' inducement. Thus it came-give heed to\'t:     My conscience first receiv\'d a tenderness,     Scruple, and prick, on certain speeches utter\'d     By th\' Bishop of Bayonne, then French ambassador,     Who had been hither sent on the debating     A marriage \'twixt the Duke of Orleans and     Our daughter Mary. I\' th\' progress of this business,     Ere a determinate resolution, he-     I mean the Bishop-did require a respite       Wherein he might the King his lord advertise     Whether our daughter were legitimate,     Respecting this our marriage with the dowager,     Sometimes our brother\'s wife. This respite shook     The bosom of my conscience, enter\'d me,     Yea, with a splitting power, and made to tremble     The region of my breast, which forc\'d such way     That many maz\'d considerings did throng     And press\'d in with this caution. First, methought     I stood not in the smile of heaven, who had     Commanded nature that my lady\'s womb,     If it conceiv\'d a male child by me, should     Do no more offices of life to\'t than     The grave does to the dead; for her male issue     Or died where they were made, or shortly after     This world had air\'d them. Hence I took a thought     This was a judgment on me, that my kingdom,     Well worthy the best heir o\' th\' world, should not     Be gladded in\'t by me. Then follows that     I weigh\'d the danger which my realms stood in       By this my issue\'s fail, and that gave to me     Many a groaning throe. Thus hulling in     The wild sea of my conscience, I did steer     Toward this remedy, whereupon we are     Now present here together; that\'s to say     I meant to rectify my conscience, which     I then did feel full sick, and yet not well,     By all the reverend fathers of the land     And doctors learn\'d. First, I began in private     With you, my Lord of Lincoln; you remember     How under my oppression I did reek,     When I first mov\'d you.   LINCOLN. Very well, my liege.   KING. I have spoke long; be pleas\'d yourself to say     How far you satisfied me.   LINCOLN. So please your Highness,     The question did at first so stagger me-     Bearing a state of mighty moment in\'t     And consequence of dread-that I committed     The daring\'st counsel which I had to doubt,       And did entreat your Highness to this course     Which you are running here.   KING. I then mov\'d you,     My Lord of Canterbury, and got your leave     To make this present summons. Unsolicited     I left no reverend person in this court,     But by particular consent proceeded     Under your hands and seals; therefore, go on,     For no dislike i\' th\' world against the person     Of the good Queen, but the sharp thorny points     Of my alleged reasons, drives this forward.     Prove but our marriage lawful, by my life     And kingly dignity, we are contented     To wear our moral state to come with her,     Katharine our queen, before the primest creature     That\'s paragon\'d o\' th\' world.   CAMPEIUS. So please your Highness,     The Queen being absent, \'tis a needful fitness     That we adjourn this court till further day;     Meanwhile must be an earnest motion       Made to the Queen to call back her appeal     She intends unto his Holiness.   KING.  [Aside]  I may perceive     These cardinals trifle with me. I abhor     This dilatory sloth and tricks of Rome.     My learn\'d and well-beloved servant, Cranmer,     Prithee return. With thy approach I know     My comfort comes along. -Break up the court;     I say, set on.                   Exuent in manner as they entered     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE 1.  London. The QUEEN\'S apartments  Enter the QUEEN and her women, as at work    QUEEN KATHARINE. Take thy lute, wench. My soul grows       sad with troubles;     Sing and disperse \'em, if thou canst. Leave working.                      SONG          Orpheus with his lute made trees,         And the mountain tops that freeze,           Bow themselves when he did sing;         To his music plants and flowers         Ever sprung, as sun and showers           There had made a lasting spring.          Every thing that heard him play,         Even the billows of the sea,           Hung their heads and then lay by.           In sweet music is such art,         Killing care and grief of heart           Fall asleep or hearing die.                Enter a GENTLEMAN    QUEEN KATHARINE. How now?   GENTLEMAN. An\'t please your Grace, the two great Cardinals     Wait in the presence.   QUEEN KATHARINE. Would they speak with me?   GENTLEMAN. They will\'d me say so, madam.   QUEEN KATHARINE. Pray their Graces     To come near. [Exit GENTLEMAN] What can be their business     With me, a poor weak woman, fall\'n from favour?     I do not like their coming. Now I think on\'t,     They should be good men, their affairs as righteous;     But all hoods make not monks.           Enter the two CARDINALS, WOLSEY and CAMPEIUS      WOLSEY. Peace to your Highness!   QUEEN KATHARINE. Your Graces find me here part of housewife;     I would be all, against the worst may happen.     What are your pleasures with me, reverend lords?   WOLSEY. May it please you, noble madam, to withdraw     Into your private chamber, we shall give you     The full cause of our coming.   QUEEN KATHARINE. Speak it here;     There\'s nothing I have done yet, o\' my conscience,     Deserves a corner. Would all other women     Could speak this with as free a soul as I do!     My lords, I care not-so much I am happy     Above a number-if my actions     Were tried by ev\'ry tongue, ev\'ry eye saw \'em,     Envy and base opinion set against \'em,     I know my life so even. If your business     Seek me out, and that way I am wife in,     Out with it boldly; truth loves open dealing.   WOLSEY. Tanta est erga te mentis integritas, regina serenis-sima-   QUEEN KATHARINE. O, good my lord, no Latin!       I am not such a truant since my coming,     As not to know the language I have liv\'d in;     A strange tongue makes my cause more strange, suspicious;     Pray speak in English. Here are some will thank you,     If you speak truth, for their poor mistress\' sake:     Believe me, she has had much wrong. Lord Cardinal,     The willing\'st sin I ever yet committed     May be absolv\'d in English.   WOLSEY. Noble lady,     I am sorry my integrity should breed,     And service to his Majesty and you,     So deep suspicion, where all faith was meant     We come not by the way of accusation     To taint that honour every good tongue blesses,     Nor to betray you any way to sorrow-     You have too much, good lady; but to know     How you stand minded in the weighty difference     Between the King and you, and to deliver,     Like free and honest men, our just opinions     And comforts to your cause.     CAMPEIUS. Most honour\'d madam,     My Lord of York, out of his noble nature,     Zeal and obedience he still bore your Grace,     Forgetting, like a good man, your late censure     Both of his truth and him-which was too far-     Offers, as I do, in a sign of peace,     His service and his counsel.   QUEEN KATHARINE.  [Aside]  To betray me.-     My lords, I thank you both for your good wins;     Ye speak like honest men-pray God ye prove so!     But how to make ye suddenly an answer,     In such a point of weight, so near mine honour,     More near my life, I fear, with my weak wit,     And to such men of gravity and learning,     In truth I know not. I was set at work     Among my maids, full little, God knows, looking     Either for such men or such business.     For her sake that I have been-for I feel     The last fit of my greatness-good your Graces,     Let me have time and counsel for my cause.       Alas, I am a woman, friendless, hopeless!   WOLSEY. Madam, you wrong the King\'s love with these fears;     Your hopes and friends are infinite.   QUEEN KATHARINE. In England     But little for my profit; can you think, lords,     That any Englishman dare give me counsel?     Or be a known friend, \'gainst his Highness\' pleasure-     Though he be grown so desperate to be honest-     And live a subject? Nay, forsooth, my friends,     They that must weigh out my afflictions,     They that my trust must grow to, live not here;     They are, as all my other comforts, far hence,     In mine own country, lords.   CAMPEIUS. I would your Grace     Would leave your griefs, and take my counsel.   QUEEN KATHARINE. How, sir?   CAMPEIUS. Put your main cause into the King\'s protection;     He\'s loving and most gracious. \'Twill be much     Both for your honour better and your cause;     For if the trial of the law o\'ertake ye       You\'ll part away disgrac\'d.   WOLSEY. He tells you rightly.   QUEEN KATHARINE. Ye tell me what ye wish for both-my ruin.     Is this your Christian counsel? Out upon ye!     Heaven is above all yet: there sits a Judge     That no king can corrupt.   CAMPEIUS. Your rage mistakes us.   QUEEN KATHARINE. The more shame for ye; holy men I thought ye,     Upon my soul, two reverend cardinal virtues;     But cardinal sins and hollow hearts I fear ye.     Mend \'em, for shame, my lords. Is this your comfort?     The cordial that ye bring a wretched lady-     A woman lost among ye, laugh\'d at, scorn\'d?     I will not wish ye half my miseries:     I have more charity; but say I warned ye.     Take heed, for heaven\'s sake take heed, lest at once     The burden of my sorrows fall upon ye.   WOLSEY. Madam, this is a mere distraction;     You turn the good we offer into envy.   QUEEN KATHARINE. Ye turn me into nothing. Woe upon ye,       And all such false professors! Would you have me-     If you have any justice, any pity,     If ye be any thing but churchmen\'s habits-     Put my sick cause into his hands that hates me?     Alas! has banish\'d me his bed already,     His love too long ago! I am old, my lords,     And all the fellowship I hold now with him     Is only my obedience. What can happen     To me above this wretchedness? All your studies     Make me a curse like this.   CAMPEIUS. Your fears are worse.   QUEEN KATHARINE. Have I liv\'d thus long-let me speak myself,     Since virtue finds no friends-a wife, a true one?     A woman, I dare say without vain-glory,     Never yet branded with suspicion?     Have I with all my full affections     Still met the King, lov\'d him next heav\'n, obey\'d him,     Been, out of fondness, superstitious to him,     Almost forgot my prayers to content him,     And am I thus rewarded? \'Tis not well, lords.       Bring me a constant woman to her husband,     One that ne\'er dream\'d a joy beyond his pleasure,     And to that woman, when she has done most,     Yet will I add an honour-a great patience.   WOLSEY. Madam, you wander from the good we aim at.   QUEEN KATHARINE. My lord, I dare not make myself so guilty,     To give up willingly that noble title     Your master wed me to: nothing but death     Shall e\'er divorce my dignities.   WOLSEY. Pray hear me.   QUEEN KATHARINE. Would I had never trod this English earth,     Or felt the flatteries that grow upon it!     Ye have angels\' faces, but heaven knows your hearts.     What will become of me now, wretched lady?     I am the most unhappy woman living.     [To her WOMEN]  Alas, poor wenches, where are now       your fortunes?     Shipwreck\'d upon a kingdom, where no pity,     No friends, no hope; no kindred weep for me;     Almost no grave allow\'d me. Like the My,       That once was mistress of the field, and flourish\'d,     I\'ll hang my head and perish.   WOLSEY. If your Grace     Could but be brought to know our ends are honest,     You\'d feel more comfort. Why should we, good lady,     Upon what cause, wrong you? Alas, our places,     The way of our profession is against it;     We are to cure such sorrows, not to sow \'em.     For goodness\' sake, consider what you do;     How you may hurt yourself, ay, utterly     Grow from the King\'s acquaintance, by this carriage.     The hearts of princes kiss obedience,     So much they love it; but to stubborn spirits     They swell and grow as terrible as storms.     I know you have a gentle, noble temper,     A soul as even as a calm. Pray think us     Those we profess, peace-makers, friends, and servants.   CAMPEIUS. Madam, you\'ll find it so. You wrong your virtues     With these weak women\'s fears. A noble spirit,     As yours was put into you, ever casts       Such doubts as false coin from it. The King loves you;     Beware you lose it not. For us, if you please     To trust us in your business, we are ready     To use our utmost studies in your service.   QUEEN KATHARINE. Do what ye will my lords; and pray       forgive me     If I have us\'d myself unmannerly;     You know I am a woman, lacking wit     To make a seemly answer to such persons.     Pray do my service to his Majesty;     He has my heart yet, and shall have my prayers     While I shall have my life. Come, reverend fathers,     Bestow your counsels on me; she now begs     That little thought, when she set footing here,     She should have bought her dignities so dear.              Exeunt    ACT III.SCENE 2.  London. The palace  Enter the DUKE OF NORFOLK, the DUKE OF SUFFOLK, the EARL OF SURREY, and the LORD CHAMBERLAIN    NORFOLK. If you will now unite in your complaints     And force them with a constancy, the Cardinal     Cannot stand under them: if you omit     The offer of this time, I cannot promise     But that you shall sustain moe new disgraces     With these you bear already.   SURREY. I am joyful     To meet the least occasion that may give me     Remembrance of my father-in-law, the Duke,     To be reveng\'d on him.   SUFFOLK. Which of the peers     Have uncontemn\'d gone by him, or at least     Strangely neglected? When did he regard     The stamp of nobleness in any person     Out of himself?     CHAMBERLAIN. My lords, you speak your pleasures.     What he deserves of you and me I know;     What we can do to him-though now the time     Gives way to us-I much fear. If you cannot     Bar his access to th\' King, never attempt     Anything on him; for he hath a witchcraft     Over the King in\'s tongue.   NORFOLK. O, fear him not!     His spell in that is out; the King hath found     Matter against him that for ever mars     The honey of his language. No, he\'s settled,     Not to come off, in his displeasure.   SURREY. Sir,     I should be glad to hear such news as this     Once every hour.   NORFOLK. Believe it, this is true:     In the divorce his contrary proceedings     Are all unfolded; wherein he appears     As I would wish mine enemy.   SURREY. How came       His practices to light?   SUFFOLK. Most Strangely.   SURREY. O, how, how?   SUFFOLK. The Cardinal\'s letters to the Pope miscarried,     And came to th\' eye o\' th\' King; wherein was read     How that the Cardinal did entreat his Holiness     To stay the judgment o\' th\' divorce; for if     It did take place, \'I do\' quoth he \'perceive     My king is tangled in affection to     A creature of the Queen\'s, Lady Anne Bullen.\'   SURREY. Has the King this?   SUFFOLK. Believe it.   SURREY. Will this work?   CHAMBERLAIN. The King in this perceives him how he coasts     And hedges his own way. But in this point     All his tricks founder, and he brings his physic     After his patient\'s death: the King already     Hath married the fair lady.   SURREY. Would he had!   SUFFOLK. May you be happy in your wish, my lord!       For, I profess, you have it.   SURREY. Now, all my joy     Trace the conjunction!   SUFFOLK. My amen to\'t!   NORFOLK. An men\'s!   SUFFOLK. There\'s order given for her coronation;     Marry, this is yet but young, and may be left     To some ears unrecounted. But, my lords,     She is a gallant creature, and complete     In mind and feature. I persuade me from her     Will fall some blessing to this land, which shall     In it be memoriz\'d.   SURREY. But will the King     Digest this letter of the Cardinal\'s?     The Lord forbid!   NORFOLK. Marry, amen!   SUFFOLK. No, no;     There be moe wasps that buzz about his nose     Will make this sting the sooner. Cardinal Campeius     Is stol\'n away to Rome; hath ta\'en no leave;       Has left the cause o\' th\' King unhandled, and     Is posted, as the agent of our Cardinal,     To second all his plot. I do assure you     The King cried \'Ha!\' at this.   CHAMBERLAIN. Now, God incense him,     And let him cry \'Ha!\' louder!   NORFOLK. But, my lord,     When returns Cranmer?   SUFFOLK. He is return\'d in his opinions; which     Have satisfied the King for his divorce,     Together with all famous colleges     Almost in Christendom. Shortly, I believe,     His second marriage shall be publish\'d, and     Her coronation. Katharine no more     Shall be call\'d queen, but princess dowager     And widow to Prince Arthur.   NORFOLK. This same Cranmer\'s     A worthy fellow, and hath ta\'en much pain     In the King\'s business.   SUFFOLK. He has; and we shall see him       For it an archbishop.   NORFOLK. So I hear.   SUFFOLK. \'Tis so.          Enter WOLSEY and CROMWELL      The Cardinal!   NORFOLK. Observe, observe, he\'s moody.   WOLSEY. The packet, Cromwell,     Gave\'t you the King?   CROMWELL. To his own hand, in\'s bedchamber.   WOLSEY. Look\'d he o\' th\' inside of the paper?   CROMWELL. Presently     He did unseal them; and the first he view\'d,     He did it with a serious mind; a heed     Was in his countenance. You he bade     Attend him here this morning.   WOLSEY. Is he ready     To come abroad?   CROMWELL. I think by this he is.     WOLSEY. Leave me awhile.                              Exit CROMWELL     [Aside]  It shall be to the Duchess of Alencon,     The French King\'s sister; he shall marry her.     Anne Bullen! No, I\'ll no Anne Bullens for him;     There\'s more in\'t than fair visage. Bullen!     No, we\'ll no Bullens. Speedily I wish     To hear from Rome. The Marchioness of Pembroke!   NORFOLK. He\'s discontented.   SUFFOLK. May be he hears the King     Does whet his anger to him.   SURREY. Sharp enough,     Lord, for thy justice!   WOLSEY.  [Aside]  The late Queen\'s gentlewoman, a knight\'s       daughter,     To be her mistress\' mistress! The Queen\'s queen!     This candle burns not clear. \'Tis I must snuff it;     Then out it goes. What though I know her virtuous     And well deserving? Yet I know her for     A spleeny Lutheran; and not wholesome to     Our cause that she should lie i\' th\' bosom of       Our hard-rul\'d King. Again, there is sprung up     An heretic, an arch one, Cranmer; one     Hath crawl\'d into the favour of the King,     And is his oracle.   NORFOLK. He is vex\'d at something.          Enter the KING, reading of a schedule, and LOVELL    SURREY. I would \'twere something that would fret the string,     The master-cord on\'s heart!   SUFFOLK. The King, the King!   KING. What piles of wealth hath he accumulated     To his own portion! And what expense by th\' hour     Seems to flow from him! How, i\' th\' name of thrift,     Does he rake this together?-Now, my lords,     Saw you the Cardinal?   NORFOLK. My lord, we have     Stood here observing him. Some strange commotion     Is in his brain: he bites his lip and starts,     Stops on a sudden, looks upon the ground,       Then lays his finger on his temple; straight     Springs out into fast gait; then stops again,     Strikes his breast hard; and anon he casts     His eye against the moon. In most strange postures     We have seen him set himself.   KING. It may well be     There is a mutiny in\'s mind. This morning     Papers of state he sent me to peruse,     As I requir\'d; and wot you what I found     There-on my conscience, put unwittingly?     Forsooth, an inventory, thus importing     The several parcels of his plate, his treasure,     Rich stuffs, and ornaments of household; which     I find at such proud rate that it outspeaks     Possession of a subject.   NORFOLK. It\'s heaven\'s will;     Some spirit put this paper in the packet     To bless your eye withal.   KING. If we did think     His contemplation were above the earth       And fix\'d on spiritual object, he should still     dwell in his musings; but I am afraid     His thinkings are below the moon, not worth     His serious considering.                         [The KING takes his seat and whispers LOVELL,                                            who goes to the CARDINAL]   WOLSEY. Heaven forgive me!     Ever God bless your Highness!   KING. Good, my lord,     You are full of heavenly stuff, and bear the inventory     Of your best graces in your mind; the which     You were now running o\'er. You have scarce time     To steal from spiritual leisure a brief span     To keep your earthly audit; sure, in that     I deem you an ill husband, and am glad     To have you therein my companion.   WOLSEY. Sir,     For holy offices I have a time; a time     To think upon the part of business which     I bear i\' th\' state; and nature does require       Her times of preservation, which perforce     I, her frail son, amongst my brethren mortal,     Must give my tendance to.   KING. You have said well.   WOLSEY. And ever may your Highness yoke together,     As I will lend you cause, my doing well     With my well saying!   KING. \'Tis well said again;     And \'tis a kind of good deed to say well;     And yet words are no deeds. My father lov\'d you:     He said he did; and with his deed did crown     His word upon you. Since I had my office     I have kept you next my heart; have not alone     Employ\'d you where high profits might come home,     But par\'d my present havings to bestow     My bounties upon you.   WOLSEY.  [Aside]  What should this mean?   SURREY.  [Aside]  The Lord increase this business!   KING. Have I not made you     The prime man of the state? I pray you tell me       If what I now pronounce you have found true;     And, if you may confess it, say withal     If you are bound to us or no. What say you?   WOLSEY. My sovereign, I confess your royal graces,     Show\'r\'d on me daily, have been more than could     My studied purposes requite; which went     Beyond all man\'s endeavours. My endeavours,     Have ever come too short of my desires,     Yet fil\'d with my abilities; mine own ends     Have been mine so that evermore they pointed     To th\' good of your most sacred person and     The profit of the state. For your great graces     Heap\'d upon me, poor undeserver, I     Can nothing render but allegiant thanks;     My pray\'rs to heaven for you; my loyalty,     Which ever has and ever shall be growing,     Till death, that winter, kill it.   KING. Fairly answer\'d!     A loyal and obedient subject is     Therein illustrated; the honour of it       Does pay the act of it, as, i\' th\' contrary,     The foulness is the punishment. I presume     That, as my hand has open\'d bounty to you,     My heart dropp\'d love, my pow\'r rain\'d honour, more     On you than any, so your hand and heart,     Your brain, and every function of your power,     Should, notwithstanding that your bond of duty,     As \'twere in love\'s particular, be more     To me, your friend, than any.   WOLSEY. I do profess     That for your Highness\' good I ever labour\'d     More than mine own; that am, have, and will be-     Though all the world should crack their duty to you,     And throw it from their soul; though perils did     Abound as thick as thought could make \'em, and     Appear in forms more horrid-yet my duty,     As doth a rock against the chiding flood,     Should the approach of this wild river break,     And stand unshaken yours.   KING. \'Tis nobly spoken.       Take notice, lords, he has a loyal breast,     For you have seen him open \'t. Read o\'er this;                                                   [Giving him papers]     And after, this; and then to breakfast with     What appetite you have.                 Exit the KING, frowning upon the CARDINAL; the NOBLES                              throng after him, smiling and whispering   WOLSEY. What should this mean?     What sudden anger\'s this? How have I reap\'d it?     He parted frowning from me, as if ruin     Leap\'d from his eyes; so looks the chafed lion     Upon the daring huntsman that has gall\'d him-     Then makes him nothing. I must read this paper;     I fear, the story of his anger. \'Tis so;     This paper has undone me. \'Tis th\' account     Of all that world of wealth I have drawn together     For mine own ends; indeed to gain the popedom,     And fee my friends in Rome. O negligence,     Fit for a fool to fall by! What cross devil     Made me put this main secret in the packet       I sent the King? Is there no way to cure this?     No new device to beat this from his brains?     I know \'twill stir him strongly; yet I know     A way, if it take right, in spite of fortune,     Will bring me off again. What\'s this? \'To th\' Pope.\'     The letter, as I live, with all the business     I writ to\'s Holiness. Nay then, farewell!     I have touch\'d the highest point of all my greatness,     And from that full meridian of my glory     I haste now to my setting. I shall fall     Like a bright exhalation in the evening,     And no man see me more.          Re-enter to WOLSEY the DUKES OF NORFOLK and         SUFFOLK, the EARL OF SURREY, and the LORD         CHAMBERLAIN    NORFOLK. Hear the King\'s pleasure, Cardinal, who commands you     To render up the great seal presently     Into our hands, and to confine yourself       To Asher House, my Lord of Winchester\'s,     Till you hear further from his Highness.   WOLSEY. Stay:     Where\'s your commission, lords? Words cannot carry     Authority so weighty.   SUFFOLK. Who dares cross \'em,     Bearing the King\'s will from his mouth expressly?   WOLSEY. Till I find more than will or words to do it-     I mean your malice-know, officious lords,     I dare and must deny it. Now I feel     Of what coarse metal ye are moulded-envy;     How eagerly ye follow my disgraces,     As if it fed ye; and how sleek and wanton     Ye appear in every thing may bring my ruin!     Follow your envious courses, men of malice;     You have Christian warrant for \'em, and no doubt     In time will find their fit rewards. That seal     You ask with such a violence, the King-     Mine and your master-with his own hand gave me;     Bade me enjoy it, with the place and honours,       During my life; and, to confirm his goodness,     Tied it by letters-patents. Now, who\'ll take it?   SURREY. The King, that gave it.   WOLSEY. It must be himself then.   SURREY. Thou art a proud traitor, priest.   WOLSEY. Proud lord, thou liest.     Within these forty hours Surrey durst better     Have burnt that tongue than said so.   SURREY. Thy ambition,     Thou scarlet sin, robb\'d this bewailing land     Of noble Buckingham, my father-in-law.     The heads of all thy brother cardinals,     With thee and all thy best parts bound together,     Weigh\'d not a hair of his. Plague of your policy!     You sent me deputy for Ireland;     Far from his succour, from the King, from all     That might have mercy on the fault thou gav\'st him;     Whilst your great goodness, out of holy pity,     Absolv\'d him with an axe.   WOLSEY. This, and all else       This talking lord can lay upon my credit,     I answer is most false. The Duke by law     Found his deserts; how innocent I was     From any private malice in his end,     His noble jury and foul cause can witness.     If I lov\'d many words, lord, I should tell you     You have as little honesty as honour,     That in the way of loyalty and truth     Toward the King, my ever royal master,     Dare mate a sounder man than Surrey can be     And an that love his follies.   SURREY. By my soul,     Your long coat, priest, protects you; thou shouldst feel     My sword i\' the life-blood of thee else. My lords     Can ye endure to hear this arrogance?     And from this fellow? If we live thus tamely,     To be thus jaded by a piece of scarlet,     Farewell nobility! Let his Grace go forward     And dare us with his cap like larks.   WOLSEY. All goodness       Is poison to thy stomach.   SURREY. Yes, that goodness     Of gleaning all the land\'s wealth into one,     Into your own hands, Cardinal, by extortion;     The goodness of your intercepted packets     You writ to th\' Pope against the King; your goodness,     Since you provoke me, shall be most notorious.     My Lord of Norfolk, as you are truly noble,     As you respect the common good, the state     Of our despis\'d nobility, our issues,     Whom, if he live, will scarce be gentlemen-     Produce the grand sum of his sins, the articles     Collected from his life. I\'ll startle you     Worse than the sacring bell, when the brown wench     Lay kissing in your arms, Lord Cardinal.   WOLSEY. How much, methinks, I could despise this man,     But that I am bound in charity against it!   NORFOLK. Those articles, my lord, are in the King\'s hand;     But, thus much, they are foul ones.   WOLSEY. So much fairer       And spotless shall mine innocence arise,     When the King knows my truth.   SURREY. This cannot save you.     I thank my memory I yet remember     Some of these articles; and out they shall.     Now, if you can blush and cry guilty, Cardinal,     You\'ll show a little honesty.   WOLSEY. Speak on, sir;     I dare your worst objections. If I blush,     It is to see a nobleman want manners.   SURREY. I had rather want those than my head. Have at you!     First, that without the King\'s assent or knowledge     You wrought to be a legate; by which power     You maim\'d the jurisdiction of all bishops.   NORFOLK. Then, that in all you writ to Rome, or else     To foreign princes, \'Ego et Rex meus\'     Was still inscrib\'d; in which you brought the King     To be your servant.   SUFFOLK. Then, that without the knowledge     Either of King or Council, when you went       Ambassador to the Emperor, you made bold     To carry into Flanders the great seal.   SURREY. Item, you sent a large commission     To Gregory de Cassado, to conclude,     Without the King\'s will or the state\'s allowance,     A league between his Highness and Ferrara.   SUFFOLK. That out of mere ambition you have caus\'d     Your holy hat to be stamp\'d on the King\'s coin.   SURREY. Then, that you have sent innumerable substance,     By what means got I leave to your own conscience,     To furnish Rome and to prepare the ways     You have for dignities, to the mere undoing     Of all the kingdom. Many more there are,     Which, since they are of you, and odious,     I will not taint my mouth with.   CHAMBERLAIN. O my lord,     Press not a falling man too far! \'Tis virtue.     His faults lie open to the laws; let them,     Not you, correct him. My heart weeps to see him     So little of his great self.     SURREY. I forgive him.   SUFFOLK. Lord Cardinal, the King\'s further pleasure is-     Because all those things you have done of late,     By your power legatine within this kingdom,     Fall into th\' compass of a praemunire-     That therefore such a writ be sued against you:     To forfeit all your goods, lands, tenements,     Chattels, and whatsoever, and to be     Out of the King\'s protection. This is my charge.   NORFOLK. And so we\'ll leave you to your meditations     How to live better. For your stubborn answer     About the giving back the great seal to us,     The King shall know it, and, no doubt, shall thank you.     So fare you well, my little good Lord Cardinal.                                                 Exeunt all but WOLSEY   WOLSEY. So farewell to the little good you bear me.     Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!     This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth     The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms     And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;       The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,     And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely     His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,     And then he falls, as I do. I have ventur\'d,     Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,     This many summers in a sea of glory;     But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride     At length broke under me, and now has left me,     Weary and old with service, to the mercy     Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.     Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye;     I feel my heart new open\'d. O, how wretched     Is that poor man that hangs on princes\' favours!     There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to,     That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin     More pangs and fears than wars or women have;     And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,     Never to hope again.           Enter CROMWELL, standing amazed        Why, how now, Cromwell!   CROMWELL. I have no power to speak, sir.   WOLSEY. What, amaz\'d     At my misfortunes? Can thy spirit wonder     A great man should decline? Nay, an you weep,     I am fall\'n indeed.   CROMWELL. How does your Grace?   WOLSEY. Why, well;     Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell.     I know myself now, and I feel within me     A peace above all earthly dignities,     A still and quiet conscience. The King has cur\'d me,     I humbly thank his Grace; and from these shoulders,     These ruin\'d pillars, out of pity, taken     A load would sink a navy-too much honour.     O, \'tis a burden, Cromwell, \'tis a burden     Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven!   CROMWELL. I am glad your Grace has made that right use of it.   WOLSEY. I hope I have. I am able now, methinks,       Out of a fortitude of soul I feel,     To endure more miseries and greater far     Than my weak-hearted enemies dare offer.     What news abroad?   CROMWELL. The heaviest and the worst     Is your displeasure with the King.   WOLSEY. God bless him!   CROMWELL. The next is that Sir Thomas More is chosen     Lord Chancellor in your place.   WOLSEY. That\'s somewhat sudden.     But he\'s a learned man. May he continue     Long in his Highness\' favour, and do justice     For truth\'s sake and his conscience; that his bones     When he has run his course and sleeps in blessings,     May have a tomb of orphans\' tears wept on him!     What more?   CROMWELL. That Cranmer is return\'d with welcome,     Install\'d Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.   WOLSEY. That\'s news indeed.   CROMWELL. Last, that the Lady Anne,       Whom the King hath in secrecy long married,     This day was view\'d in open as his queen,     Going to chapel; and the voice is now     Only about her coronation.   WOLSEY. There was the weight that pull\'d me down.       O Cromwell,     The King has gone beyond me. All my glories     In that one woman I have lost for ever.     No sun shall ever usher forth mine honours,     Or gild again the noble troops that waited     Upon my smiles. Go get thee from me, Cromwell;     I am a poor fall\'n man, unworthy now     To be thy lord and master. Seek the King;     That sun, I pray, may never set! I have told him     What and how true thou art. He will advance thee;     Some little memory of me will stir him-     I know his noble nature-not to let     Thy hopeful service perish too. Good Cromwell,     Neglect him not; make use now, and provide     For thine own future safety.     CROMWELL. O my lord,     Must I then leave you? Must I needs forgo     So good, so noble, and so true a master?     Bear witness, all that have not hearts of iron,     With what a sorrow Cromwell leaves his lord.     The King shall have my service; but my prayers     For ever and for ever shall be yours.   WOLSEY. Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear     In all my miseries; but thou hast forc\'d me,     Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman.     Let\'s dry our eyes; and thus far hear me, Cromwell,     And when I am forgotten, as I shall be,     And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention     Of me more must be heard of, say I taught thee-     Say Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory,     And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour,     Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise in-     A sure and safe one, though thy master miss\'d it.     Mark but my fall and that that ruin\'d me.     Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:       By that sin fell the angels. How can man then,     The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?     Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee;     Corruption wins not more than honesty.     Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace     To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not;     Let all the ends thou aim\'st at be thy country\'s,     Thy God\'s, and truth\'s; then, if thou fall\'st, O Cromwell,     Thou fall\'st a blessed martyr!     Serve the King, and-prithee lead me in.     There take an inventory of all I have     To the last penny; \'tis the King\'s. My robe,     And my integrity to heaven, is all     I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell!     Had I but serv\'d my God with half the zeal     I serv\'d my King, he would not in mine age     Have left me naked to mine enemies.   CROMWELL. Good sir, have patience.   WOLSEY. So I have. Farewell     The hopes of court! My hopes in heaven do dwell.           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE 1.  A street in Westminster  Enter two GENTLEMEN, meeting one another    FIRST GENTLEMAN. Y\'are well met once again.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. So are you.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. You come to take your stand here, and       behold     The Lady Anne pass from her coronation?   SECOND GENTLEMAN. \'Tis all my business. At our last encounter     The Duke of Buckingham came from his trial.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. \'Tis very true. But that time offer\'d       sorrow;     This, general joy.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. \'Tis well. The citizens,     I am sure, have shown at full their royal minds-     As, let \'em have their rights, they are ever forward-     In celebration of this day with shows,     Pageants, and sights of honour.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Never greater,       Nor, I\'ll assure you, better taken, sir.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. May I be bold to ask what that contains,     That paper in your hand?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes; \'tis the list     Of those that claim their offices this day,     By custom of the coronation.     The Duke of Suffolk is the first, and claims     To be High Steward; next, the Duke of Norfolk,     He to be Earl Marshal. You may read the rest.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. I thank you, sir; had I not known       those customs,     I should have been beholding to your paper.     But, I beseech you, what\'s become of Katharine,     The Princess Dowager? How goes her business?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. That I can tell you too. The Archbishop     Of Canterbury, accompanied with other     Learned and reverend fathers of his order,     Held a late court at Dunstable, six miles of     From Ampthill, where the Princess lay; to which     She was often cited by them, but appear\'d not.       And, to be short, for not appearance and     The King\'s late scruple, by the main assent     Of all these learned men, she was divorc\'d,     And the late marriage made of none effect;     Since which she was removed to Kimbolton,     Where she remains now sick.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Alas, good lady!                       [Trumpets]     The trumpets sound. Stand close, the Queen is coming. [Hautboys]                THE ORDER OF THE CORONATION.      1. A lively flourish of trumpets.     2. Then two JUDGES.     3. LORD CHANCELLOR, with purse and mace before him.     4. CHORISTERS singing.                                    [Music]     5. MAYOR OF LONDON, bearing the mace. Then GARTER, in        his coat of arms, and on his head he wore a gilt copper        crown.     6. MARQUIS DORSET, bearing a sceptre of gold, on his head a          demi-coronal of gold. With him, the EARL OF SURREY,        bearing the rod of silver with the dove, crowned with an        earl\'s coronet. Collars of Esses.     7. DUKE OF SUFFOLK, in his robe of estate, his coronet on        his head, bearing a long white wand, as High Steward.        With him, the DUKE OF NORFOLK, with the rod of        marshalship, a coronet on his head. Collars of Esses.     8. A canopy borne by four of the CINQUE-PORTS; under it        the QUEEN in her robe; in her hair richly adorned with        pearl, crowned. On each side her, the BISHOPS OF LONDON        and WINCHESTER.     9. The old DUCHESS OF NORFOLK, in a coronal of gold        wrought with flowers, bearing the QUEEN\'S train.    10. Certain LADIES or COUNTESSES, with plain circlets of gold        without flowers.               Exeunt, first passing over the stage in order and state,                                 and then a great flourish of trumpets    SECOND GENTLEMAN. A royal train, believe me. These know.       Who\'s that that bears the sceptre?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Marquis Dorset;     And that the Earl of Surrey, with the rod.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. A bold brave gentleman. That should be     The Duke of Suffolk?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. \'Tis the same-High Steward.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. And that my Lord of Norfolk?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Yes.   SECOND GENTLEMAN.  [Looking on the QUEEN]  Heaven       bless thee!     Thou hast the sweetest face I ever look\'d on.     Sir, as I have a soul, she is an angel;     Our king has all the Indies in his arms,     And more and richer, when he strains that lady;     I cannot blame his conscience.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. They that bear     The cloth of honour over her are four barons     Of the Cinque-ports.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Those men are happy; and so are all       are near her.       I take it she that carries up the train     Is that old noble lady, Duchess of Norfolk.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. It is; and all the rest are countesses.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Their coronets say so. These are stars indeed,     And sometimes falling ones.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. No more of that.                    Exit Procession, with a great flourish of trumpets                 Enter a third GENTLEMAN      God save you, sir! Where have you been broiling?   THIRD GENTLEMAN. Among the crowds i\' th\' Abbey, where a finger     Could not be wedg\'d in more; I am stifled     With the mere rankness of their joy.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. You saw     The ceremony?   THIRD GENTLEMAN. That I did.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. How was it?   THIRD GENTLEMAN. Well worth the seeing.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Good sir, speak it to us.     THIRD GENTLEMAN. As well as I am able. The rich stream     Of lords and ladies, having brought the Queen     To a prepar\'d place in the choir, fell of     A distance from her, while her Grace sat down     To rest awhile, some half an hour or so,     In a rich chair of state, opposing freely     The beauty of her person to the people.     Believe me, sir, she is the goodliest woman     That ever lay by man; which when the people     Had the full view of, such a noise arose     As the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest,     As loud, and to as many tunes; hats, cloaks-     Doublets, I think-flew up, and had their faces     Been loose, this day they had been lost. Such joy     I never saw before. Great-bellied women,     That had not half a week to go, like rams     In the old time of war, would shake the press,     And make \'em reel before \'em. No man living     Could say \'This is my wife\' there, all were woven     So strangely in one piece.     SECOND GENTLEMAN. But what follow\'d?   THIRD GENTLEMAN. At length her Grace rose, and with       modest paces     Came to the altar, where she kneel\'d, and saintlike     Cast her fair eyes to heaven, and pray\'d devoutly.     Then rose again, and bow\'d her to the people;     When by the Archbishop of Canterbury     She had all the royal makings of a queen:     As holy oil, Edward Confessor\'s crown,     The rod, and bird of peace, and all such emblems     Laid nobly on her; which perform\'d, the choir,     With all the choicest music of the kingdom,     Together sung \'Te Deum.\' So she parted,     And with the same full state pac\'d back again     To York Place, where the feast is held.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Sir,     You must no more call it York Place: that\'s past:     For since the Cardinal fell that title\'s lost.     \'Tis now the King\'s, and called Whitehall.   THIRD GENTLEMAN. I know it;       But \'tis so lately alter\'d that the old name     Is fresh about me.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. What two reverend bishops     Were those that went on each side of the Queen?   THIRD GENTLEMAN. Stokesly and Gardiner: the one of Winchester,     Newly preferr\'d from the King\'s secretary;     The other, London.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. He of Winchester     Is held no great good lover of the Archbishop\'s,     The virtuous Cranmer.   THIRD GENTLEMAN. All the land knows that;     However, yet there is no great breach. When it comes,     Cranmer will find a friend will not shrink from him.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Who may that be, I pray you?   THIRD GENTLEMAN. Thomas Cromwell,     A man in much esteem with th\' King, and truly     A worthy friend. The King has made him Master     O\' th\' jewel House,     And one, already, of the Privy Council.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. He will deserve more.     THIRD GENTLEMAN. Yes, without all doubt.     Come, gentlemen, ye shall go my way, which     Is to th\' court, and there ye shall be my guests:     Something I can command. As I walk thither,     I\'ll tell ye more.   BOTH. You may command us, sir.                               Exeunt     ACT IV. SCENE 2.  Kimbolton  Enter KATHARINE, Dowager, sick; led between GRIFFITH, her Gentleman Usher, and PATIENCE, her woman    GRIFFITH. How does your Grace?   KATHARINE. O Griffith, sick to death!     My legs like loaden branches bow to th\' earth,     Willing to leave their burden. Reach a chair.     So-now, methinks, I feel a little ease.     Didst thou not tell me, Griffith, as thou led\'st me,     That the great child of honour, Cardinal Wolsey,     Was dead?   GRIFFITH. Yes, madam; but I think your Grace,     Out of the pain you suffer\'d, gave no ear to\'t.   KATHARINE. Prithee, good Griffith, tell me how he died.     If well, he stepp\'d before me, happily,     For my example.   GRIFFITH. Well, the voice goes, madam;       For after the stout Earl Northumberland     Arrested him at York and brought him forward,     As a man sorely tainted, to his answer,     He fell sick suddenly, and grew so ill     He could not sit his mule.   KATHARINE. Alas, poor man!   GRIFFITH. At last, with easy roads, he came to Leicester,     Lodg\'d in the abbey; where the reverend abbot,     With all his covent, honourably receiv\'d him;     To whom he gave these words: \'O father Abbot,     An old man, broken with the storms of state,     Is come to lay his weary bones among ye;     Give him a little earth for charity!\'     So went to bed; where eagerly his sickness     Pursu\'d him still And three nights after this,     About the hour of eight-which he himself     Foretold should be his last-full of repentance,     Continual meditations, tears, and sorrows,     He gave his honours to the world again,     His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace.     KATHARINE. So may he rest; his faults lie gently on him!     Yet thus far, Griffith, give me leave to speak him,     And yet with charity. He was a man     Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking     Himself with princes; one that, by suggestion,     Tied all the kingdom. Simony was fair play;     His own opinion was his law. I\' th\' presence     He would say untruths, and be ever double     Both in his words and meaning. He was never,     But where he meant to ruin, pitiful.     His promises were, as he then was, mighty;     But his performance, as he is now, nothing.     Of his own body he was ill, and gave     The clergy ill example.   GRIFFITH. Noble madam,     Men\'s evil manners live in brass: their virtues     We write in water. May it please your Highness     To hear me speak his good now?   KATHARINE. Yes, good Griffith;     I were malicious else.     GRIFFITH. This Cardinal,     Though from an humble stock, undoubtedly     Was fashion\'d to much honour from his cradle.     He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one;     Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading;     Lofty and sour to them that lov\'d him not,     But to those men that sought him sweet as summer.     And though he were unsatisfied in getting-     Which was a sin-yet in bestowing, madam,     He was most princely: ever witness for him     Those twins of learning that he rais\'d in you,     Ipswich and Oxford! One of which fell with him,     Unwilling to outlive the good that did it;     The other, though unfinish\'d, yet so famous,     So excellent in art, and still so rising,     That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue.     His overthrow heap\'d happiness upon him;     For then, and not till then, he felt himself,     And found the blessedness of being little.     And, to add greater honours to his age       Than man could give him, he died fearing God.   KATHARINE. After my death I wish no other herald,     No other speaker of my living actions,     To keep mine honour from corruption,     But such an honest chronicler as Griffith.     Whom I most hated living, thou hast made me,     With thy religious truth and modesty,     Now in his ashes honour. Peace be with him!     patience, be near me still, and set me lower:     I have not long to trouble thee. Good Griffith,     Cause the musicians play me that sad note     I nam\'d my knell, whilst I sit meditating     On that celestial harmony I go to.                                               [Sad and solemn music]   GRIFFITH. She is asleep. Good wench, let\'s sit down quiet,     For fear we wake her. Softly, gentle Patience.                   THE VISION.        Enter, solemnly tripping one after another, six         PERSONAGES clad in white robes, wearing on their       heads garlands of bays, and golden vizards on their       faces; branches of bays or palm in their hands. They       first congee unto her, then dance; and, at certain       changes, the first two hold a spare garland over her       head, at which the other four make reverent curtsies.       Then the two that held the garland deliver the       same to the other next two, who observe the same       order in their changes, and holding the garland over       her head; which done, they deliver the same garland       to the last two, who likewise observe the same order;       at which, as it were by inspiration, she makes       in her sleep signs of rejoicing, and holdeth up her       hands to heaven. And so in their dancing vanish,       carrying the garland with them. The music continues    KATHARINE. Spirits of peace, where are ye? Are ye all gone?     And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye?   GRIFFITH. Madam, we are here.   KATHARINE. It is not you I call for.       Saw ye none enter since I slept?   GRIFFITH. None, madam.   KATHARINE. No? Saw you not, even now, a blessed troop     Invite me to a banquet; whose bright faces     Cast thousand beams upon me, like the sun?     They promis\'d me eternal happiness,     And brought me garlands, Griffith, which I feel     I am not worthy yet to wear. I shall, assuredly.   GRIFFITH. I am most joyful, madam, such good dreams     Possess your fancy.   KATHARINE. Bid the music leave,     They are harsh and heavy to me.                    [Music ceases]   PATIENCE. Do you note     How much her Grace is alter\'d on the sudden?     How long her face is drawn! How pale she looks,     And of an earthly cold! Mark her eyes.   GRIFFITH. She is going, wench. Pray, pray.   PATIENCE. Heaven comfort her!               Enter a MESSENGER      MESSENGER. An\'t like your Grace-   KATHARINE. You are a saucy fellow.     Deserve we no more reverence?   GRIFFITH. You are to blame,     Knowing she will not lose her wonted greatness,     To use so rude behaviour. Go to, kneel.   MESSENGER. I humbly do entreat your Highness\' pardon;     My haste made me unmannerly. There is staying     A gentleman, sent from the King, to see you.   KATHARINE. Admit him entrance, Griffith; but this fellow     Let me ne\'er see again.                            Exit MESSENGER                Enter LORD CAPUCIUS      If my sight fail not,     You should be Lord Ambassador from the Emperor,     My royal nephew, and your name Capucius.   CAPUCIUS. Madam, the same-your servant.   KATHARINE. O, my Lord,       The times and titles now are alter\'d strangely     With me since first you knew me. But, I pray you,     What is your pleasure with me?   CAPUCIUS. Noble lady,     First, mine own service to your Grace; the next,     The King\'s request that I would visit you,     Who grieves much for your weakness, and by me     Sends you his princely commendations     And heartily entreats you take good comfort.   KATHARINE. O my good lord, that comfort comes too late,     \'Tis like a pardon after execution:     That gentle physic, given in time, had cur\'d me;     But now I am past all comforts here, but prayers.     How does his Highness?   CAPUCIUS. Madam, in good health.   KATHARINE. So may he ever do! and ever flourish     When I shall dwell with worms, and my poor name     Banish\'d the kingdom! Patience, is that letter     I caus\'d you write yet sent away?   PATIENCE. No, madam.                       [Giving it to KATHARINE]     KATHARINE. Sir, I most humbly pray you to deliver     This to my lord the King.   CAPUCIUS. Most willing, madam.   KATHARINE. In which I have commended to his goodness     The model of our chaste loves, his young daughter-     The dews of heaven fall thick in blessings on her!-     Beseeching him to give her virtuous breeding-     She is young, and of a noble modest nature;     I hope she will deserve well-and a little     To love her for her mother\'s sake, that lov\'d him,     Heaven knows how dearly. My next poor petition     Is that his noble Grace would have some pity     Upon my wretched women that so long     Have follow\'d both my fortunes faithfully;     Of which there is not one, I dare avow-     And now I should not lie-but will deserve,     For virtue and true beauty of the soul,     For honesty and decent carriage,     A right good husband, let him be a noble;     And sure those men are happy that shall have \'em.       The last is for my men-they are the poorest,     But poverty could never draw \'em from me-     That they may have their wages duly paid \'em,     And something over to remember me by.     If heaven had pleas\'d to have given me longer life     And able means, we had not parted thus.     These are the whole contents; and, good my lord,     By that you love the dearest in this world,     As you wish Christian peace to souls departed,     Stand these poor people\'s friend, and urge the King     To do me this last right.   CAPUCIUS. By heaven, I will,     Or let me lose the fashion of a man!   KATHARINE. I thank you, honest lord. Remember me     In all humility unto his Highness;     Say his long trouble now is passing     Out of this world. Tell him in death I bless\'d him,     For so I will. Mine eyes grow dim. Farewell,     My lord. Griffith, farewell. Nay, Patience,     You must not leave me yet. I must to bed;       Call in more women. When I am dead, good wench,     Let me be us\'d with honour; strew me over     With maiden flowers, that all the world may know     I was a chaste wife to my grave. Embalm me,     Then lay me forth; although unqueen\'d, yet like     A queen, and daughter to a king, inter me.     I can no more.                          Exeunt, leading KATHARINE     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE 1.  London. A gallery in the palace  Enter GARDINER, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, a PAGE with a torch before him, met by SIR THOMAS LOVELL    GARDINER. It\'s one o\'clock, boy, is\'t not?   BOY. It hath struck.   GARDINER. These should be hours for necessities,     Not for delights; times to repair our nature     With comforting repose, and not for us     To waste these times. Good hour of night, Sir Thomas!     Whither so late?   LOVELL. Came you from the King, my lord?   GARDINER. I did, Sir Thomas, and left him at primero     With the Duke of Suffolk.   LOVELL. I must to him too,     Before he go to bed. I\'ll take my leave.   GARDINER. Not yet, Sir Thomas Lovell. What\'s the matter?     It seems you are in haste. An if there be       No great offence belongs to\'t, give your friend     Some touch of your late business. Affairs that walk-     As they say spirits do-at midnight, have     In them a wilder nature than the business     That seeks despatch by day.   LOVELL. My lord, I love you;     And durst commend a secret to your ear     Much weightier than this work. The Queen\'s in labour,     They say in great extremity, and fear\'d     She\'ll with the labour end.   GARDINER. The fruit she goes with     I pray for heartily, that it may find     Good time, and live; but for the stock, Sir Thomas,     I wish it grubb\'d up now.   LOVELL. Methinks I could     Cry thee amen; and yet my conscience says     She\'s a good creature, and, sweet lady, does     Deserve our better wishes.   GARDINER. But, sir, sir-     Hear me, Sir Thomas. Y\'are a gentleman       Of mine own way; I know you wise, religious;     And, let me tell you, it will ne\'er be well-     \'Twill not, Sir Thomas Lovell, take\'t of me-     Till Cranmer, Cromwell, her two hands, and she,     Sleep in their graves.   LOVELL. Now, sir, you speak of two     The most remark\'d i\' th\' kingdom. As for Cromwell,     Beside that of the Jewel House, is made Master     O\' th\' Rolls, and the King\'s secretary; further, sir,     Stands in the gap and trade of moe preferments,     With which the time will load him. Th\' Archbishop     Is the King\'s hand and tongue, and who dare speak     One syllable against him?   GARDINER. Yes, yes, Sir Thomas,     There are that dare; and I myself have ventur\'d     To speak my mind of him; and indeed this day,     Sir-I may tell it you-I think I have     Incens\'d the lords o\' th\' Council, that he is-     For so I know he is, they know he is-     A most arch heretic, a pestilence       That does infect the land; with which they moved     Have broken with the King, who hath so far     Given ear to our complaint-of his great grace     And princely care, foreseeing those fell mischiefs     Our reasons laid before him-hath commanded     To-morrow morning to the Council board     He be convented. He\'s a rank weed, Sir Thomas,     And we must root him out. From your affairs     I hinder you too long-good night, Sir Thomas.   LOVELL. Many good nights, my lord; I rest your servant.                                              Exeunt GARDINER and PAGE           Enter the KING and the DUKE OF SUFFOLK    KING. Charles, I will play no more to-night;     My mind\'s not on\'t; you are too hard for me.   SUFFOLK. Sir, I did never win of you before.   KING. But little, Charles;     Nor shall not, when my fancy\'s on my play.     Now, Lovell, from the Queen what is the news?     LOVELL. I could not personally deliver to her     What you commanded me, but by her woman     I sent your message; who return\'d her thanks     In the great\'st humbleness, and desir\'d your Highness     Most heartily to pray for her.   KING. What say\'st thou, ha?     To pray for her? What, is she crying out?   LOVELL. So said her woman; and that her suff\'rance made     Almost each pang a death.   KING. Alas, good lady!   SUFFOLK. God safely quit her of her burden, and     With gentle travail, to the gladding of     Your Highness with an heir!   KING. \'Tis midnight, Charles;     Prithee to bed; and in thy pray\'rs remember     Th\' estate of my poor queen. Leave me alone,     For I must think of that which company     Will not be friendly to.   SUFFOLK. I wish your Highness     A quiet night, and my good mistress will       Remember in my prayers.   KING. Charles, good night.                             Exit SUFFOLK           Enter SIR ANTHONY DENNY      Well, sir, what follows?   DENNY. Sir, I have brought my lord the Archbishop,     As you commanded me.   KING. Ha! Canterbury?   DENNY. Ay, my good lord.   KING. \'Tis true. Where is he, Denny?   DENNY. He attends your Highness\' pleasure.   KING. Bring him to us.                                   Exit DENNY   LOVELL.  [Aside]  This is about that which the bishop spake.     I am happily come hither.           Re-enter DENNY, With CRANMER    KING. Avoid the gallery.                     [LOVELL seems to stay]     Ha! I have said. Be gone.       What!                                     Exeunt LOVELL and DENNY   CRANMER.  [Aside]  I am fearful-wherefore frowns he thus?     \'Tis his aspect of terror. All\'s not well.   KING. How now, my lord? You do desire to know     Wherefore I sent for you.   CRANMER.  [Kneeling]  It is my duty     T\'attend your Highness\' pleasure.   KING. Pray you, arise,     My good and gracious Lord of Canterbury.     Come, you and I must walk a turn together;     I have news to tell you; come, come, me your hand.     Ah, my good lord, I grieve at what I speak,     And am right sorry to repeat what follows.     I have, and most unwillingly, of late     Heard many grievous-I do say, my lord,     Grievous-complaints of you; which, being consider\'d,     Have mov\'d us and our Council that you shall     This morning come before us; where I know     You cannot with such freedom purge yourself     But that, till further trial in those charges       Which will require your answer, you must take     Your patience to you and be well contented     To make your house our Tow\'r. You a brother of us,     It fits we thus proceed, or else no witness     Would come against you.   CRANMER. I humbly thank your Highness     And am right glad to catch this good occasion     Most throughly to be winnowed where my chaff     And corn shall fly asunder; for I know     There\'s none stands under more calumnious tongues     Than I myself, poor man.   KING. Stand up, good Canterbury;     Thy truth and thy integrity is rooted     In us, thy friend. Give me thy hand, stand up;     Prithee let\'s walk. Now, by my holidame,     What manner of man are you? My lord, I look\'d     You would have given me your petition that     I should have ta\'en some pains to bring together     Yourself and your accusers, and to have heard you     Without indurance further.     CRANMER. Most dread liege,     The good I stand on is my truth and honesty;     If they shall fail, I with mine enemies     Will triumph o\'er my person; which I weigh not,     Being of those virtues vacant. I fear nothing     What can be said against me.   KING. Know you not     How your state stands i\' th\' world, with the whole world?     Your enemies are many, and not small; their practices     Must bear the same proportion; and not ever     The justice and the truth o\' th\' question carries     The due o\' th\' verdict with it; at what ease     Might corrupt minds procure knaves as corrupt     To swear against you? Such things have been done.     You are potently oppos\'d, and with a malice     Of as great size. Ween you of better luck,     I mean in perjur\'d witness, than your Master,     Whose minister you are, whiles here He liv\'d     Upon this naughty earth? Go to, go to;     You take a precipice for no leap of danger,       And woo your own destruction.   CRANMER. God and your Majesty     Protect mine innocence, or I fall into     The trap is laid for me!   KING. Be of good cheer;     They shall no more prevail than we give way to.     Keep comfort to you, and this morning see     You do appear before them; if they shall chance,     In charging you with matters, to commit you,     The best persuasions to the contrary     Fail not to use, and with what vehemency     Th\' occasion shall instruct you. If entreaties     Will render you no remedy, this ring     Deliver them, and your appeal to us     There make before them. Look, the good man weeps!     He\'s honest, on mine honour. God\'s blest Mother!     I swear he is true-hearted, and a soul     None better in my kingdom. Get you gone,     And do as I have bid you.                                                          Exit CRANMER       He has strangled his language in his tears.             Enter OLD LADY    GENTLEMAN.  [Within]  Come back; what mean you?   OLD LADY. I\'ll not come back; the tidings that I bring     Will make my boldness manners. Now, good angels     Fly o\'er thy royal head, and shade thy person     Under their blessed wings!   KING. Now, by thy looks     I guess thy message. Is the Queen deliver\'d?     Say ay, and of a boy.   OLD LADY. Ay, ay, my liege;     And of a lovely boy. The God of Heaven     Both now and ever bless her! \'Tis a girl,     Promises boys hereafter. Sir, your queen     Desires your visitation, and to be     Acquainted with this stranger; \'tis as like you     As cherry is to cherry.   KING. Lovell!               Enter LOVELL    LOVELL. Sir?   KING. Give her an hundred marks. I\'ll to the Queen.            Exit   OLD LADY. An hundred marks? By this light, I\'ll ha\' more!     An ordinary groom is for such payment.     I will have more, or scold it out of him.     Said I for this the girl was like to him! I\'ll     Have more, or else unsay\'t; and now, while \'tis hot,     I\'ll put it to the issue.                                  Exeunt     ACT V. SCENE 2.  Lobby before the Council Chamber  Enter CRANMER, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY    CRANMER. I hope I am not too late; and yet the gentleman     That was sent to me from the Council pray\'d me     To make great haste. All fast? What means this? Ho!     Who waits there? Sure you know me?             Enter KEEPER    KEEPER. Yes, my lord;     But yet I cannot help you.   CRANMER. Why?   KEEPER. Your Grace must wait till you be call\'d for.             Enter DOCTOR BUTTS    CRANMER. So.   BUTTS.  [Aside]  This is a piece of malice. I am glad       I came this way so happily; the King     Shall understand it presently.                               Exit   CRANMER.  [Aside]  \'Tis Butts,     The King\'s physician; as he pass\'d along,     How earnestly he cast his eyes upon me!     Pray heaven he sound not my disgrace! For certain,     This is of purpose laid by some that hate me-     God turn their hearts! I never sought their malice-     To quench mine honour; they would shame to make me     Wait else at door, a fellow councillor,     \'Mong boys, grooms, and lackeys. But their pleasures     Must be fulfill\'d, and I attend with patience.           Enter the KING and BUTTS at window above    BUTTS. I\'ll show your Grace the strangest sight-   KING. What\'s that, Butts?   BUTTS. I think your Highness saw this many a day.   KING. Body a me, where is it?   BUTTS. There my lord:       The high promotion of his Grace of Canterbury;     Who holds his state at door, \'mongst pursuivants,     Pages, and footboys.   KING. Ha, \'tis he indeed.     Is this the honour they do one another?     \'Tis well there\'s one above \'em yet. I had thought     They had parted so much honesty among \'em-     At least good manners-as not thus to suffer     A man of his place, and so near our favour,     To dance attendance on their lordships\' pleasures,     And at the door too, like a post with packets.     By holy Mary, Butts, there\'s knavery!     Let \'em alone, and draw the curtain close;     We shall hear more anon.                                   Exeunt     ACT V. SCENE 3.  The Council Chamber  A Council table brought in, with chairs and stools, and placed under the state. Enter LORD CHANCELLOR, places himself at the upper end of the table on the left band, a seat being left void above him, as for Canterbury\'s seat. DUKE OF SUFFOLK, DUKE OF NORFOLK, SURREY, LORD CHAMBERLAIN, GARDINER, seat themselves in order on each side; CROMWELL at lower end, as secretary. KEEPER at the door    CHANCELLOR. Speak to the business, master secretary;     Why are we met in council?   CROMWELL. Please your honours,     The chief cause concerns his Grace of Canterbury.   GARDINER. Has he had knowledge of it?   CROMWELL. Yes.   NORFOLK. Who waits there?   KEEPER. Without, my noble lords?   GARDINER. Yes.     KEEPER. My Lord Archbishop;     And has done half an hour, to know your pleasures.   CHANCELLOR. Let him come in.   KEEPER. Your Grace may enter now.        CRANMER approaches the Council table    CHANCELLOR. My good Lord Archbishop, I am very sorry     To sit here at this present, and behold     That chair stand empty; but we all are men,     In our own natures frail and capable     Of our flesh; few are angels; out of which frailty     And want of wisdom, you, that best should teach us,     Have misdemean\'d yourself, and not a little,     Toward the King first, then his laws, in filling     The whole realm by your teaching and your chaplains-     For so we are inform\'d-with new opinions,     Divers and dangerous; which are heresies,     And, not reform\'d, may prove pernicious.   GARDINER. Which reformation must be sudden too,       My noble lords; for those that tame wild horses     Pace \'em not in their hands to make \'em gentle,     But stop their mouth with stubborn bits and spur \'em     Till they obey the manage. If we suffer,     Out of our easiness and childish pity     To one man\'s honour, this contagious sickness,     Farewell all physic; and what follows then?     Commotions, uproars, with a general taint     Of the whole state; as of late days our neighbours,     The upper Germany, can dearly witness,     Yet freshly pitied in our memories.   CRANMER. My good lords, hitherto in all the progress     Both of my life and office, I have labour\'d,     And with no little study, that my teaching     And the strong course of my authority     Might go one way, and safely; and the end     Was ever to do well. Nor is there living-     I speak it with a single heart, my lords-     A man that more detests, more stirs against,     Both in his private conscience and his place,       Defacers of a public peace than I do.     Pray heaven the King may never find a heart     With less allegiance in it! Men that make     Envy and crooked malice nourishment     Dare bite the best. I do beseech your lordships     That, in this case of justice, my accusers,     Be what they will, may stand forth face to face     And freely urge against me.   SUFFOLK. Nay, my lord,     That cannot be; you are a councillor,     And by that virtue no man dare accuse you.   GARDINER. My lord, because we have business of more moment,     We will be short with you. \'Tis his Highness\' pleasure     And our consent, for better trial of you,     From hence you be committed to the Tower;     Where, being but a private man again,     You shall know many dare accuse you boldly,     More than, I fear, you are provided for.   CRANMER. Ah, my good Lord of Winchester, I thank you;     You are always my good friend; if your will pass,       I shall both find your lordship judge and juror,     You are so merciful. I see your end-     \'Tis my undoing. Love and meekness, lord,     Become a churchman better than ambition;     Win straying souls with modesty again,     Cast none away. That I shall clear myself,     Lay all the weight ye can upon my patience,     I make as little doubt as you do conscience     In doing daily wrongs. I could say more,     But reverence to your calling makes me modest.   GARDINER. My lord, my lord, you are a sectary;     That\'s the plain truth. Your painted gloss discovers,     To men that understand you, words and weakness.   CROMWELL. My Lord of Winchester, y\'are a little,     By your good favour, too sharp; men so noble,     However faulty, yet should find respect     For what they have been; \'tis a cruelty     To load a falling man.   GARDINER. Good Master Secretary,     I cry your honour mercy; you may, worst       Of all this table, say so.   CROMWELL. Why, my lord?   GARDINER. Do not I know you for a favourer     Of this new sect? Ye are not sound.   CROMWELL. Not sound?   GARDINER. Not sound, I say.   CROMWELL. Would you were half so honest!     Men\'s prayers then would seek you, not their fears.   GARDINER. I shall remember this bold language.   CROMWELL. Do.     Remember your bold life too.   CHANCELLOR. This is too much;     Forbear, for shame, my lords.   GARDINER. I have done.   CROMWELL. And I.   CHANCELLOR. Then thus for you, my lord: it stands agreed,     I take it, by all voices, that forthwith     You be convey\'d to th\' Tower a prisoner;     There to remain till the King\'s further pleasure     Be known unto us. Are you all agreed, lords?     ALL. We are.   CRANMER. Is there no other way of mercy,     But I must needs to th\' Tower, my lords?   GARDINER. What other     Would you expect? You are strangely troublesome.     Let some o\' th\' guard be ready there.             Enter the guard    CRANMER. For me?     Must I go like a traitor thither?   GARDINER. Receive him,     And see him safe i\' th\' Tower.   CRANMER. Stay, good my lords,     I have a little yet to say. Look there, my lords;     By virtue of that ring I take my cause     Out of the gripes of cruel men and give it     To a most noble judge, the King my master.   CHAMBERLAIN. This is the King\'s ring.   SURREY. \'Tis no counterfeit.     SUFFOLK. \'Tis the right ring, by heav\'n. I told ye all,     When we first put this dangerous stone a-rolling,     \'Twould fall upon ourselves.   NORFOLK. Do you think, my lords,     The King will suffer but the little finger     Of this man to be vex\'d?   CHAMBERLAIN. \'Tis now too certain;     How much more is his life in value with him!     Would I were fairly out on\'t!   CROMWELL. My mind gave me,     In seeking tales and informations     Against this man-whose honesty the devil     And his disciples only envy at-     Ye blew the fire that burns ye. Now have at ye!        Enter the KING frowning on them; he takes his seat    GARDINER. Dread sovereign, how much are we bound to heaven     In daily thanks, that gave us such a prince;     Not only good and wise but most religious;       One that in all obedience makes the church     The chief aim of his honour and, to strengthen     That holy duty, out of dear respect,     His royal self in judgment comes to hear     The cause betwixt her and this great offender.   KING. You were ever good at sudden commendations,     Bishop of Winchester. But know I come not     To hear such flattery now, and in my presence     They are too thin and bare to hide offences.     To me you cannot reach you play the spaniel,     And think with wagging of your tongue to win me;     But whatsoe\'er thou tak\'st me for, I\'m sure     Thou hast a cruel nature and a bloody.     [To CRANMER]  Good man, sit down. Now let me see the proudest     He that dares most but wag his finger at thee.     By all that\'s holy, he had better starve     Than but once think this place becomes thee not.   SURREY. May it please your Grace-   KING. No, sir, it does not please me.     I had thought I had had men of some understanding       And wisdom of my Council; but I find none.     Was it discretion, lords, to let this man,     This good man-few of you deserve that title-     This honest man, wait like a lousy footboy     At chamber door? and one as great as you are?     Why, what a shame was this! Did my commission     Bid ye so far forget yourselves? I gave ye     Power as he was a councillor to try him,     Not as a groom. There\'s some of ye, I see,     More out of malice than integrity,     Would try him to the utmost, had ye mean;     Which ye shall never have while I live.   CHANCELLOR. Thus far,     My most dread sovereign, may it like your Grace     To let my tongue excuse all. What was purpos\'d     concerning his imprisonment was rather-     If there be faith in men-meant for his trial     And fair purgation to the world, than malice,     I\'m sure, in me.   KING. Well, well, my lords, respect him;       Take him, and use him well, he\'s worthy of it.     I will say thus much for him: if a prince     May be beholding to a subject,     Am for his love and service so to him.     Make me no more ado, but all embrace him;     Be friends, for shame, my lords! My Lord of Canterbury,     I have a suit which you must not deny me:     That is, a fair young maid that yet wants baptism;     You must be godfather, and answer for her.   CRANMER. The greatest monarch now alive may glory     In such an honour; how may I deserve it,     That am a poor and humble subject to you?   KING. Come, come, my lord, you\'d spare your spoons. You       shall have     Two noble partners with you: the old Duchess of Norfolk     And Lady Marquis Dorset. Will these please you?     Once more, my Lord of Winchester, I charge you,     Embrace and love this man.   GARDINER. With a true heart     And brother-love I do it.     CRANMER. And let heaven     Witness how dear I hold this confirmation.   KING. Good man, those joyful tears show thy true heart.     The common voice, I see, is verified     Of thee, which says thus: \'Do my Lord of Canterbury     A shrewd turn and he\'s your friend for ever.\'     Come, lords, we trifle time away; I long     To have this young one made a Christian.     As I have made ye one, lords, one remain;     So I grow stronger, you more honour gain.                  Exeunt     ACT V. SCENE 4.  The palace yard  Noise and tumult within. Enter PORTER and his MAN    PORTER. You\'ll leave your noise anon, ye rascals. Do you     take the court for Paris garden? Ye rude slaves, leave your     gaping.     [Within: Good master porter, I belong to th\' larder.]   PORTER. Belong to th\' gallows, and be hang\'d, ye rogue! Is     this a place to roar in? Fetch me a dozen crab-tree staves,     and strong ones; these are but switches to \'em. I\'ll scratch     your heads. You must be seeing christenings? Do you look     for ale and cakes here, you rude rascals?   MAN. Pray, sir, be patient; \'tis as much impossible,     Unless we sweep \'em from the door with cannons,     To scatter \'em as \'tis to make \'em sleep     On May-day morning; which will never be.     We may as well push against Paul\'s as stir \'em.   PORTER. How got they in, and be hang\'d?   MAN. Alas, I know not: how gets the tide in?       As much as one sound cudgel of four foot-     You see the poor remainder-could distribute,     I made no spare, sir.   PORTER. You did nothing, sir.   MAN. I am not Samson, nor Sir Guy, nor Colbrand,     To mow \'em down before me; but if I spar\'d any     That had a head to hit, either young or old,     He or she, cuckold or cuckold-maker,     Let me ne\'er hope to see a chine again;     And that I would not for a cow, God save her!     [ Within: Do you hear, master porter?]   PORTER. I shall be with you presently, good master puppy.     Keep the door close, sirrah.   MAN. What would you have me do?   PORTER. What should you do, but knock \'em down by th\'     dozens? Is this Moorfields to muster in? Or have we some     strange Indian with the great tool come to court, the     women so besiege us? Bless me, what a fry of fornication     is at door! On my Christian conscience, this one christening     will beget a thousand: here will be father, godfather,       and all together.   MAN. The spoons will be the bigger, sir. There is a fellow     somewhat near the door, he should be a brazier by his     face, for, o\' my conscience, twenty of the dog-days now     reign in\'s nose; all that stand about him are under the line,     they need no other penance. That fire-drake did I hit three     times on the head, and three times was his nose discharged     against me; he stands there like a mortar-piece, to blow us.     There was a haberdasher\'s wife of small wit near him, that     rail\'d upon me till her pink\'d porringer fell off her head,     for kindling such a combustion in the state. I miss\'d the     meteor once, and hit that woman, who cried out \'Clubs!\'     when I might see from far some forty truncheoners draw     to her succour, which were the hope o\' th\' Strand, where     she was quartered. They fell on; I made good my place.     At length they came to th\' broomstaff to me; I defied \'em     still; when suddenly a file of boys behind \'em, loose shot,     deliver\'d such a show\'r of pebbles that I was fain to draw     mine honour in and let \'em win the work: the devil was     amongst \'em, I think surely.     PORTER. These are the youths that thunder at a playhouse     and fight for bitten apples; that no audience but the tribulation     of Tower-hill or the limbs of Limehouse, their dear     brothers, are able to endure. I have some of \'em in Limbo     Patrum, and there they are like to dance these three days;     besides the running banquet of two beadles that is to come.            Enter the LORD CHAMBERLAIN    CHAMBERLAIN. Mercy o\' me, what a multitude are here!     They grow still too; from all parts they are coming,     As if we kept a fair here! Where are these porters,     These lazy knaves? Y\'have made a fine hand, fellows.     There\'s a trim rabble let in: are all these     Your faithful friends o\' th\' suburbs? We shall have     Great store of room, no doubt, left for the ladies,     When they pass back from the christening.   PORTER. An\'t please your honour,     We are but men; and what so many may do,     Not being torn a pieces, we have done.       An army cannot rule \'em.   CHAMBERLAIN. As I live,     If the King blame me for\'t, I\'ll lay ye an     By th\' heels, and suddenly; and on your heads     Clap round fines for neglect. Y\'are lazy knaves;     And here ye lie baiting of bombards, when     Ye should do service. Hark! the trumpets sound;     Th\' are come already from the christening.     Go break among the press and find a way out     To let the troops pass fairly, or I\'ll find     A Marshalsea shall hold ye play these two months.   PORTER. Make way there for the Princess.   MAN. You great fellow,     Stand close up, or I\'ll make your head ache.   PORTER. You i\' th\' camlet, get up o\' th\' rail;     I\'ll peck you o\'er the pales else.                         Exeunt     ACT V. SCENE 5.  The palace  Enter TRUMPETS, sounding; then two ALDERMEN, LORD MAYOR, GARTER, CRANMER, DUKE OF NORFOLK, with his marshal\'s staff, DUKE OF SUFFOLK, two Noblemen bearing great standing-bowls for the christening gifts; then four Noblemen bearing a canopy, under which the DUCHESS OF NORFOLK, godmother, bearing the CHILD richly habited in a mantle, etc., train borne by a LADY; then follows the MARCHIONESS DORSET, the other godmother, and LADIES. The troop pass once about the stage, and GARTER speaks    GARTER. Heaven, from thy endless goodness, send prosperous     life, long and ever-happy, to the high and mighty     Princess of England, Elizabeth!             Flourish. Enter KING and guard      CRANMER.  [Kneeling]  And to your royal Grace and the       good Queen!     My noble partners and myself thus pray:     All comfort, joy, in this most gracious lady,     Heaven ever laid up to make parents happy,     May hourly fall upon ye!   KING. Thank you, good Lord Archbishop.     What is her name?   CRANMER. Elizabeth.   KING. Stand up, lord.                   [The KING kisses the child]     With this kiss take my blessing: God protect thee!     Into whose hand I give thy life.   CRANMER. Amen.   KING. My noble gossips, y\'have been too prodigal;     I thank ye heartily. So shall this lady,     When she has so much English.   CRANMER. Let me speak, sir,     For heaven now bids me; and the words I utter     Let none think flattery, for they\'ll find \'em truth.     This royal infant-heaven still move about her!-       Though in her cradle, yet now promises     Upon this land a thousand blessings,     Which time shall bring to ripeness. She shall be-     But few now living can behold that goodness-     A pattern to all princes living with her,     And all that shall succeed. Saba was never     More covetous of wisdom and fair virtue     Than this pure soul shall be. All princely graces     That mould up such a mighty piece as this is,     With all the virtues that attend the good,     Shall still be doubled on her. Truth shall nurse her,     Holy and heavenly thoughts still counsel her;     She shall be lov\'d and fear\'d. Her own shall bless her:     Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn,     And hang their heads with sorrow. Good grows with her;     In her days every man shall eat in safety     Under his own vine what he plants, and sing     The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours.     God shall be truly known; and those about her     From her shall read the perfect ways of honour,       And by those claim their greatness, not by blood.     Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when     The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix     Her ashes new create another heir     As great in admiration as herself,     So shall she leave her blessedness to one-     When heaven shall call her from this cloud of darkness-     Who from the sacred ashes of her honour     Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she was,     And so stand fix\'d. Peace, plenty, love, truth, terror,     That were the servants to this chosen infant,     Shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him;     Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,     His honour and the greatness of his name     Shall be, and make new nations; he shall flourish,     And like a mountain cedar reach his branches     To all the plains about him; our children\'s children     Shall see this and bless heaven.   KING. Thou speakest wonders.   CRANMER. She shall be, to the happiness of England,       An aged princess; many days shall see her,     And yet no day without a deed to crown it.     Would I had known no more! But she must die-     She must, the saints must have her-yet a virgin;     A most unspotted lily shall she pass     To th\' ground, and all the world shall mourn her.   KING. O Lord Archbishop,     Thou hast made me now a man; never before     This happy child did I get anything.     This oracle of comfort has so pleas\'d me     That when I am in heaven I shall desire     To see what this child does, and praise my Maker.     I thank ye all. To you, my good Lord Mayor,     And you, good brethren, I am much beholding;     I have receiv\'d much honour by your presence,     And ye shall find me thankful. Lead the way, lords;     Ye must all see the Queen, and she must thank ye,     She will be sick else. This day, no man think     Has business at his house; for all shall stay.     This little one shall make it holiday.                     Exeunt  KING_HENRY_VIII|EPILOGUE               THE EPILOGUE.      \'Tis ten to one this play can never please     All that are here. Some come to take their ease     And sleep an act or two; but those, we fear,     W\'have frighted with our trumpets; so, \'tis clear,     They\'ll say \'tis nought; others to hear the city     Abus\'d extremely, and to cry \'That\'s witty!\'     Which we have not done neither; that, I fear,     All the expected good w\'are like to hear     For this play at this time is only in     The merciful construction of good women;     For such a one we show\'d \'em. If they smile     And say \'twill do, I know within a while     All the best men are ours; for \'tis ill hap     If they hold when their ladies bid \'em clap.  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1597  KING JOHN  by William Shakespeare    DRAMATIS PERSONAE      KING JOHN     PRINCE HENRY, his son     ARTHUR, DUKE OF BRITAINE, son of Geffrey, late Duke of       Britaine, the elder brother of King John     EARL OF PEMBROKE     EARL OF ESSEX     EARL OF SALISBURY     LORD BIGOT     HUBERT DE BURGH     ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE, son to Sir Robert Faulconbridge     PHILIP THE BASTARD, his half-brother     JAMES GURNEY, servant to Lady Faulconbridge     PETER OF POMFRET, a prophet      KING PHILIP OF FRANCE     LEWIS, the Dauphin     LYMOGES, Duke of Austria     CARDINAL PANDULPH, the Pope\'s legate     MELUN, a French lord     CHATILLON, ambassador from France to King John        QUEEN ELINOR, widow of King Henry II and mother to       King John     CONSTANCE, Mother to Arthur     BLANCH OF SPAIN, daughter to the King of Castile       and niece to King John     LADY FAULCONBRIDGE, widow of Sir Robert Faulconbridge      Lords, Citizens of Angiers, Sheriff, Heralds, Officers,       Soldiers, Executioners, Messengers, Attendants     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: England and France    ACT I. SCENE 1  KING JOHN\'s palace  Enter KING JOHN, QUEEN ELINOR, PEMBROKE, ESSEX, SALISBURY, and others, with CHATILLON    KING JOHN. Now, say, Chatillon, what would France with us?   CHATILLON. Thus, after greeting, speaks the King of France     In my behaviour to the majesty,     The borrowed majesty, of England here.   ELINOR. A strange beginning- \'borrowed majesty\'!   KING JOHN. Silence, good mother; hear the embassy.   CHATILLON. Philip of France, in right and true behalf     Of thy deceased brother Geffrey\'s son,     Arthur Plantagenet, lays most lawful claim     To this fair island and the territories,     To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine,     Desiring thee to lay aside the sword     Which sways usurpingly these several titles,     And put the same into young Arthur\'s hand,     Thy nephew and right royal sovereign.     KING JOHN. What follows if we disallow of this?   CHATILLON. The proud control of fierce and bloody war,     To enforce these rights so forcibly withheld.   KING JOHN. Here have we war for war, and blood for blood,     Controlment for controlment- so answer France.   CHATILLON. Then take my king\'s defiance from my mouth-     The farthest limit of my embassy.   KING JOHN. Bear mine to him, and so depart in peace;     Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France;     For ere thou canst report I will be there,     The thunder of my cannon shall be heard.     So hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath     And sullen presage of your own decay.     An honourable conduct let him have-     Pembroke, look to \'t. Farewell, Chatillon.                                         Exeunt CHATILLON and PEMBROKE   ELINOR. What now, my son! Have I not ever said     How that ambitious Constance would not cease     Till she had kindled France and all the world     Upon the right and party of her son?       This might have been prevented and made whole     With very easy arguments of love,     Which now the manage of two kingdoms must     With fearful bloody issue arbitrate.   KING JOHN. Our strong possession and our right for us!   ELINOR. Your strong possession much more than your right,     Or else it must go wrong with you and me;     So much my conscience whispers in your ear,     Which none but heaven and you and I shall hear.                    Enter a SHERIFF    ESSEX. My liege, here is the strangest controversy     Come from the country to be judg\'d by you     That e\'er I heard. Shall I produce the men?   KING JOHN. Let them approach.                          Exit SHERIFF     Our abbeys and our priories shall pay     This expedition\'s charge.       Enter ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE and PHILIP, his bastard                        brother      What men are you?   BASTARD. Your faithful subject I, a gentleman     Born in Northamptonshire, and eldest son,     As I suppose, to Robert Faulconbridge-     A soldier by the honour-giving hand     Of Coeur-de-lion knighted in the field.   KING JOHN. What art thou?   ROBERT. The son and heir to that same Faulconbridge.   KING JOHN. Is that the elder, and art thou the heir?     You came not of one mother then, it seems.   BASTARD. Most certain of one mother, mighty king-     That is well known- and, as I think, one father;     But for the certain knowledge of that truth     I put you o\'er to heaven and to my mother.     Of that I doubt, as all men\'s children may.   ELINOR. Out on thee, rude man! Thou dost shame thy mother,     And wound her honour with this diffidence.   BASTARD. I, madam? No, I have no reason for it-       That is my brother\'s plea, and none of mine;     The which if he can prove, \'a pops me out     At least from fair five hundred pound a year.     Heaven guard my mother\'s honour and my land!   KING JOHN. A good blunt fellow. Why, being younger born,     Doth he lay claim to thine inheritance?   BASTARD. I know not why, except to get the land.     But once he slander\'d me with bastardy;     But whe\'er I be as true begot or no,     That still I lay upon my mother\'s head;     But that I am as well begot, my liege-     Fair fall the bones that took the pains for me!-     Compare our faces and be judge yourself.     If old Sir Robert did beget us both     And were our father, and this son like him-     O old Sir Robert, father, on my knee     I give heaven thanks I was not like to thee!   KING JOHN. Why, what a madcap hath heaven lent us here!   ELINOR. He hath a trick of Coeur-de-lion\'s face;     The accent of his tongue affecteth him.       Do you not read some tokens of my son     In the large composition of this man?   KING JOHN. Mine eye hath well examined his parts     And finds them perfect Richard. Sirrah, speak,     What doth move you to claim your brother\'s land?   BASTARD. Because he hath a half-face, like my father.     With half that face would he have all my land:     A half-fac\'d groat five hundred pound a year!   ROBERT. My gracious liege, when that my father liv\'d,     Your brother did employ my father much-   BASTARD. Well, sir, by this you cannot get my land:     Your tale must be how he employ\'d my mother.   ROBERT. And once dispatch\'d him in an embassy     To Germany, there with the Emperor     To treat of high affairs touching that time.     Th\' advantage of his absence took the King,     And in the meantime sojourn\'d at my father\'s;     Where how he did prevail I shame to speak-     But truth is truth: large lengths of seas and shores     Between my father and my mother lay,       As I have heard my father speak himself,     When this same lusty gentleman was got.     Upon his death-bed he by will bequeath\'d     His lands to me, and took it on his death     That this my mother\'s son was none of his;     And if he were, he came into the world     Full fourteen weeks before the course of time.     Then, good my liege, let me have what is mine,     My father\'s land, as was my father\'s will.   KING JOHN. Sirrah, your brother is legitimate:     Your father\'s wife did after wedlock bear him,     And if she did play false, the fault was hers;     Which fault lies on the hazards of all husbands     That marry wives. Tell me, how if my brother,     Who, as you say, took pains to get this son,     Had of your father claim\'d this son for his?     In sooth, good friend, your father might have kept     This calf, bred from his cow, from all the world;     In sooth, he might; then, if he were my brother\'s,     My brother might not claim him; nor your father,       Being none of his, refuse him. This concludes:     My mother\'s son did get your father\'s heir;     Your father\'s heir must have your father\'s land.   ROBERT. Shall then my father\'s will be of no force     To dispossess that child which is not his?   BASTARD. Of no more force to dispossess me, sir,     Than was his will to get me, as I think.   ELINOR. Whether hadst thou rather be a Faulconbridge,     And like thy brother, to enjoy thy land,     Or the reputed son of Coeur-de-lion,     Lord of thy presence and no land beside?   BASTARD. Madam, an if my brother had my shape     And I had his, Sir Robert\'s his, like him;     And if my legs were two such riding-rods,     My arms such eel-skins stuff\'d, my face so thin     That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose     Lest men should say \'Look where three-farthings goes!\'     And, to his shape, were heir to all this land-     Would I might never stir from off this place,     I would give it every foot to have this face!       I would not be Sir Nob in any case.   ELINOR. I like thee well. Wilt thou forsake thy fortune,     Bequeath thy land to him and follow me?     I am a soldier and now bound to France.   BASTARD. Brother, take you my land, I\'ll take my chance.     Your face hath got five hundred pound a year,     Yet sell your face for fivepence and \'tis dear.     Madam, I\'ll follow you unto the death.   ELINOR. Nay, I would have you go before me thither.   BASTARD. Our country manners give our betters way.   KING JOHN. What is thy name?   BASTARD. Philip, my liege, so is my name begun:     Philip, good old Sir Robert\'s wife\'s eldest son.   KING JOHN. From henceforth bear his name whose form thou bearest:     Kneel thou down Philip, but rise more great-     Arise Sir Richard and Plantagenet.   BASTARD. Brother by th\' mother\'s side, give me your hand;     My father gave me honour, yours gave land.     Now blessed be the hour, by night or day,     When I was got, Sir Robert was away!     ELINOR. The very spirit of Plantagenet!     I am thy grandam, Richard: call me so.   BASTARD. Madam, by chance, but not by truth; what though?     Something about, a little from the right,     In at the window, or else o\'er the hatch;     Who dares not stir by day must walk by night;     And have is have, however men do catch.     Near or far off, well won is still well shot;     And I am I, howe\'er I was begot.   KING JOHN. Go, Faulconbridge; now hast thou thy desire:     A landless knight makes thee a landed squire.     Come, madam, and come, Richard, we must speed     For France, for France, for it is more than need.   BASTARD. Brother, adieu. Good fortune come to thee!     For thou wast got i\' th\' way of honesty.                                            Exeunt all but the BASTARD     A foot of honour better than I was;     But many a many foot of land the worse.     Well, now can I make any Joan a lady.     \'Good den, Sir Richard!\'-\'God-a-mercy, fellow!\'       And if his name be George, I\'ll call him Peter;     For new-made honour doth forget men\'s names:     \'Tis too respective and too sociable     For your conversion. Now your traveller,     He and his toothpick at my worship\'s mess-     And when my knightly stomach is suffic\'d,     Why then I suck my teeth and catechize     My picked man of countries: \'My dear sir,\'     Thus leaning on mine elbow I begin     \'I shall beseech you\'-That is question now;     And then comes answer like an Absey book:     \'O sir,\' says answer \'at your best command,     At your employment, at your service, sir!\'     \'No, sir,\' says question \'I, sweet sir, at yours.\'     And so, ere answer knows what question would,     Saving in dialogue of compliment,     And talking of the Alps and Apennines,     The Pyrenean and the river Po-     It draws toward supper in conclusion so.     But this is worshipful society,       And fits the mounting spirit like myself;     For he is but a bastard to the time     That doth not smack of observation-     And so am I, whether I smack or no;     And not alone in habit and device,     Exterior form, outward accoutrement,     But from the inward motion to deliver     Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age\'s tooth;     Which, though I will not practise to deceive,     Yet, to avoid deceit, I mean to learn;     For it shall strew the footsteps of my rising.     But who comes in such haste in riding-robes?     What woman-post is this? Hath she no husband     That will take pains to blow a horn before her?        Enter LADY FAULCONBRIDGE, and JAMES GURNEY      O me, \'tis my mother! How now, good lady!     What brings you here to court so hastily?   LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. Where is that slave, thy brother?         Where is he     That holds in chase mine honour up and down?   BASTARD. My brother Robert, old Sir Robert\'s son?     Colbrand the giant, that same mighty man?     Is it Sir Robert\'s son that you seek so?   LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. Sir Robert\'s son! Ay, thou unreverend boy,     Sir Robert\'s son! Why scorn\'st thou at Sir Robert?     He is Sir Robert\'s son, and so art thou.   BASTARD. James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave awhile?   GURNEY. Good leave, good Philip.   BASTARD. Philip-Sparrow! James,     There\'s toys abroad-anon I\'ll tell thee more.                                                           Exit GURNEY     Madam, I was not old Sir Robert\'s son;     Sir Robert might have eat his part in me     Upon Good Friday, and ne\'er broke his fast.     Sir Robert could do: well-marry, to confess-     Could he get me? Sir Robert could not do it:     We know his handiwork. Therefore, good mother,     To whom am I beholding for these limbs?       Sir Robert never holp to make this leg.   LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. Hast thou conspired with thy brother too,     That for thine own gain shouldst defend mine honour?     What means this scorn, thou most untoward knave?   BASTARD. Knight, knight, good mother, Basilisco-like.     What! I am dubb\'d; I have it on my shoulder.     But, mother, I am not Sir Robert\'s son:     I have disclaim\'d Sir Robert and my land;     Legitimation, name, and all is gone.     Then, good my mother, let me know my father-     Some proper man, I hope. Who was it, mother?   LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. Hast thou denied thyself a Faulconbridge?   BASTARD. As faithfully as I deny the devil.   LADY FAULCONBRIDGE. King Richard Coeur-de-lion was thy father.     By long and vehement suit I was seduc\'d     To make room for him in my husband\'s bed.     Heaven lay not my transgression to my charge!     Thou art the issue of my dear offence,     Which was so strongly urg\'d past my defence.   BASTARD. Now, by this light, were I to get again,       Madam, I would not wish a better father.     Some sins do bear their privilege on earth,     And so doth yours: your fault was not your folly;     Needs must you lay your heart at his dispose,     Subjected tribute to commanding love,     Against whose fury and unmatched force     The aweless lion could not wage the fight     Nor keep his princely heart from Richard\'s hand.     He that perforce robs lions of their hearts     May easily win a woman\'s. Ay, my mother,     With all my heart I thank thee for my father!     Who lives and dares but say thou didst not well     When I was got, I\'ll send his soul to hell.     Come, lady, I will show thee to my kin;     And they shall say when Richard me begot,     If thou hadst said him nay, it had been sin.     Who says it was, he lies; I say \'twas not.                 Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE 1  France. Before Angiers  Enter, on one side, AUSTRIA and forces; on the other, KING PHILIP OF FRANCE, LEWIS the Dauphin, CONSTANCE, ARTHUR, and forces    KING PHILIP. Before Angiers well met, brave Austria.     Arthur, that great forerunner of thy blood,     Richard, that robb\'d the lion of his heart     And fought the holy wars in Palestine,     By this brave duke came early to his grave;     And for amends to his posterity,     At our importance hither is he come     To spread his colours, boy, in thy behalf;     And to rebuke the usurpation     Of thy unnatural uncle, English John.     Embrace him, love him, give him welcome hither.   ARTHUR. God shall forgive you Coeur-de-lion\'s death     The rather that you give his offspring life,     Shadowing their right under your wings of war.     I give you welcome with a powerless hand,       But with a heart full of unstained love;     Welcome before the gates of Angiers, Duke.   KING PHILIP. A noble boy! Who would not do thee right?   AUSTRIA. Upon thy cheek lay I this zealous kiss     As seal to this indenture of my love:     That to my home I will no more return     Till Angiers and the right thou hast in France,     Together with that pale, that white-fac\'d shore,     Whose foot spurns back the ocean\'s roaring tides     And coops from other lands her islanders-     Even till that England, hedg\'d in with the main,     That water-walled bulwark, still secure     And confident from foreign purposes-     Even till that utmost corner of the west     Salute thee for her king. Till then, fair boy,     Will I not think of home, but follow arms.   CONSTANCE. O, take his mother\'s thanks, a widow\'s thanks,     Till your strong hand shall help to give him strength     To make a more requital to your love!   AUSTRIA. The peace of heaven is theirs that lift their swords       In such a just and charitable war.   KING PHILIP. Well then, to work! Our cannon shall be bent     Against the brows of this resisting town;     Call for our chiefest men of discipline,     To cull the plots of best advantages.     We\'ll lay before this town our royal bones,     Wade to the market-place in Frenchmen\'s blood,     But we will make it subject to this boy.   CONSTANCE. Stay for an answer to your embassy,     Lest unadvis\'d you stain your swords with blood;     My Lord Chatillon may from England bring     That right in peace which here we urge in war,     And then we shall repent each drop of blood     That hot rash haste so indirectly shed.                    Enter CHATILLON    KING PHILIP. A wonder, lady! Lo, upon thy wish,     Our messenger Chatillon is arriv\'d.     What England says, say briefly, gentle lord;       We coldly pause for thee. Chatillon, speak.   CHATILLON. Then turn your forces from this paltry siege     And stir them up against a mightier task.     England, impatient of your just demands,     Hath put himself in arms. The adverse winds,     Whose leisure I have stay\'d, have given him time     To land his legions all as soon as I;     His marches are expedient to this town,     His forces strong, his soldiers confident.     With him along is come the mother-queen,     An Ate, stirring him to blood and strife;     With her the Lady Blanch of Spain;     With them a bastard of the king\'s deceas\'d;     And all th\' unsettled humours of the land-     Rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntaries,     With ladies\' faces and fierce dragons\' spleens-     Have sold their fortunes at their native homes,     Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs,     To make a hazard of new fortunes here.     In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits       Than now the English bottoms have waft o\'er     Did never float upon the swelling tide     To do offence and scathe in Christendom.             [Drum beats]     The interruption of their churlish drums     Cuts off more circumstance: they are at hand;     To parley or to fight, therefore prepare.   KING PHILIP. How much unlook\'d for is this expedition!   AUSTRIA. By how much unexpected, by so much     We must awake endeavour for defence,     For courage mounteth with occasion.     Let them be welcome then; we are prepar\'d.         Enter KING JOHN, ELINOR, BLANCH, the BASTARD,                  PEMBROKE, and others    KING JOHN. Peace be to France, if France in peace permit     Our just and lineal entrance to our own!     If not, bleed France, and peace ascend to heaven,     Whiles we, God\'s wrathful agent, do correct     Their proud contempt that beats His peace to heaven!     KING PHILIP. Peace be to England, if that war return     From France to England, there to live in peace!     England we love, and for that England\'s sake     With burden of our armour here we sweat.     This toil of ours should be a work of thine;     But thou from loving England art so far     That thou hast under-wrought his lawful king,     Cut off the sequence of posterity,     Outfaced infant state, and done a rape     Upon the maiden virtue of the crown.     Look here upon thy brother Geffrey\'s face:     These eyes, these brows, were moulded out of his;     This little abstract doth contain that large     Which died in Geffrey, and the hand of time     Shall draw this brief into as huge a volume.     That Geffrey was thy elder brother born,     And this his son; England was Geffrey\'s right,     And this is Geffrey\'s. In the name of God,     How comes it then that thou art call\'d a king,     When living blood doth in these temples beat       Which owe the crown that thou o\'er-masterest?   KING JOHN. From whom hast thou this great commission, France,     To draw my answer from thy articles?   KING PHILIP. From that supernal judge that stirs good thoughts     In any breast of strong authority     To look into the blots and stains of right.     That judge hath made me guardian to this boy,     Under whose warrant I impeach thy wrong,     And by whose help I mean to chastise it.   KING JOHN. Alack, thou dost usurp authority.   KING PHILIP. Excuse it is to beat usurping down.   ELINOR. Who is it thou dost call usurper, France?   CONSTANCE. Let me make answer: thy usurping son.   ELINOR. Out, insolent! Thy bastard shall be king,     That thou mayst be a queen and check the world!   CONSTANCE. My bed was ever to thy son as true     As thine was to thy husband; and this boy     Liker in feature to his father Geffrey     Than thou and John in manners-being as Eke     As rain to water, or devil to his dam.       My boy a bastard! By my soul, I think     His father never was so true begot;     It cannot be, an if thou wert his mother.   ELINOR. There\'s a good mother, boy, that blots thy father.   CONSTANCE. There\'s a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee.   AUSTRIA. Peace!   BASTARD. Hear the crier.   AUSTRIA. What the devil art thou?   BASTARD. One that will play the devil, sir, with you,     An \'a may catch your hide and you alone.     You are the hare of whom the proverb goes,     Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard;     I\'ll smoke your skin-coat an I catch you right;     Sirrah, look to \'t; i\' faith I will, i\' faith.   BLANCH. O, well did he become that lion\'s robe     That did disrobe the lion of that robe!   BASTARD. It lies as sightly on the back of him     As great Alcides\' shows upon an ass;     But, ass, I\'ll take that burden from your back,     Or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack.     AUSTRIA. What cracker is this same that deafs our ears     With this abundance of superfluous breath?     King Philip, determine what we shall do straight.   KING PHILIP. Women and fools, break off your conference.     King John, this is the very sum of all:     England and Ireland, Anjou, Touraine, Maine,     In right of Arthur, do I claim of thee;     Wilt thou resign them and lay down thy arms?   KING JOHN. My life as soon. I do defy thee, France.     Arthur of Britaine, yield thee to my hand,     And out of my dear love I\'ll give thee more     Than e\'er the coward hand of France can win.     Submit thee, boy.   ELINOR. Come to thy grandam, child.   CONSTANCE. Do, child, go to it grandam, child;     Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will     Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig.     There\'s a good grandam!   ARTHUR. Good my mother, peace!     I would that I were low laid in my grave:       I am not worth this coil that\'s made for me.   ELINOR. His mother shames him so, poor boy, he weeps.   CONSTANCE. Now shame upon you, whe\'er she does or no!     His grandam\'s wrongs, and not his mother\'s shames,     Draws those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes,     Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee;     Ay, with these crystal beads heaven shall be brib\'d     To do him justice and revenge on you.   ELINOR. Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth!   CONSTANCE. Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and earth,     Call not me slanderer! Thou and thine usurp     The dominations, royalties, and rights,     Of this oppressed boy; this is thy eldest son\'s son,     Infortunate in nothing but in thee.     Thy sins are visited in this poor child;     The canon of the law is laid on him,     Being but the second generation     Removed from thy sin-conceiving womb.   KING JOHN. Bedlam, have done.   CONSTANCE. I have but this to say-       That he is not only plagued for her sin,     But God hath made her sin and her the plague     On this removed issue, plagued for her     And with her plague; her sin his injury,     Her injury the beadle to her sin;     All punish\'d in the person of this child,     And all for her-a plague upon her!   ELINOR. Thou unadvised scold, I can produce     A will that bars the title of thy son.   CONSTANCE. Ay, who doubts that? A will, a wicked will;     A woman\'s will; a cank\'red grandam\'s will!   KING PHILIP. Peace, lady! pause, or be more temperate.     It ill beseems this presence to cry aim     To these ill-tuned repetitions.     Some trumpet summon hither to the walls     These men of Angiers; let us hear them speak     Whose title they admit, Arthur\'s or John\'s.        Trumpet sounds. Enter citizens upon the walls      CITIZEN. Who is it that hath warn\'d us to the walls?   KING PHILIP. \'Tis France, for England.   KING JOHN. England for itself.     You men of Angiers, and my loving subjects-   KING PHILIP. You loving men of Angiers, Arthur\'s subjects,     Our trumpet call\'d you to this gentle parle-   KING JOHN. For our advantage; therefore hear us first.     These flags of France, that are advanced here     Before the eye and prospect of your town,     Have hither march\'d to your endamagement;     The cannons have their bowels full of wrath,     And ready mounted are they to spit forth     Their iron indignation \'gainst your walls;     All preparation for a bloody siege     And merciless proceeding by these French     Confront your city\'s eyes, your winking gates;     And but for our approach those sleeping stones     That as a waist doth girdle you about     By the compulsion of their ordinance     By this time from their fixed beds of lime       Had been dishabited, and wide havoc made     For bloody power to rush upon your peace.     But on the sight of us your lawful king,     Who painfully with much expedient march     Have brought a countercheck before your gates,     To save unscratch\'d your city\'s threat\'ned cheeks-     Behold, the French amaz\'d vouchsafe a parle;     And now, instead of bullets wrapp\'d in fire,     To make a shaking fever in your walls,     They shoot but calm words folded up in smoke,     To make a faithless error in your cars;     Which trust accordingly, kind citizens,     And let us in-your King, whose labour\'d spirits,     Forwearied in this action of swift speed,     Craves harbourage within your city walls.   KING PHILIP. When I have said, make answer to us both.     Lo, in this right hand, whose protection     Is most divinely vow\'d upon the right     Of him it holds, stands young Plantagenet,     Son to the elder brother of this man,       And king o\'er him and all that he enjoys;     For this down-trodden equity we tread     In warlike march these greens before your town,     Being no further enemy to you     Than the constraint of hospitable zeal     In the relief of this oppressed child     Religiously provokes. Be pleased then     To pay that duty which you truly owe     To him that owes it, namely, this young prince;     And then our arms, like to a muzzled bear,     Save in aspect, hath all offence seal\'d up;     Our cannons\' malice vainly shall be spent     Against th\' invulnerable clouds of heaven;     And with a blessed and unvex\'d retire,     With unhack\'d swords and helmets all unbruis\'d,     We will bear home that lusty blood again     Which here we came to spout against your town,     And leave your children, wives, and you, in peace.     But if you fondly pass our proffer\'d offer,     \'Tis not the roundure of your old-fac\'d walls       Can hide you from our messengers of war,     Though all these English and their discipline     Were harbour\'d in their rude circumference.     Then tell us, shall your city call us lord     In that behalf which we have challeng\'d it;     Or shall we give the signal to our rage,     And stalk in blood to our possession?   CITIZEN. In brief: we are the King of England\'s subjects;     For him, and in his right, we hold this town.   KING JOHN. Acknowledge then the King, and let me in.   CITIZEN. That can we not; but he that proves the King,     To him will we prove loyal. Till that time     Have we ramm\'d up our gates against the world.   KING JOHN. Doth not the crown of England prove the King?     And if not that, I bring you witnesses:     Twice fifteen thousand hearts of England\'s breed-   BASTARD. Bastards and else.   KING JOHN. To verify our title with their lives.   KING PHILIP. As many and as well-born bloods as those-   BASTARD. Some bastards too.     KING PHILIP. Stand in his face to contradict his claim.   CITIZEN. Till you compound whose right is worthiest,     We for the worthiest hold the right from both.   KING JOHN. Then God forgive the sin of all those souls     That to their everlasting residence,     Before the dew of evening fall shall fleet     In dreadful trial of our kingdom\'s king!   KING PHILIP. Amen, Amen! Mount, chevaliers; to arms!   BASTARD. Saint George, that swing\'d the dragon, and e\'er since     Sits on\'s horse back at mine hostess\' door,     Teach us some fence!  [To AUSTRIA]  Sirrah, were I at home,     At your den, sirrah, with your lioness,     I would set an ox-head to your lion\'s hide,     And make a monster of you.   AUSTRIA. Peace! no more.   BASTARD. O, tremble, for you hear the lion roar!   KING JOHN. Up higher to the plain, where we\'ll set forth     In best appointment all our regiments.   BASTARD. Speed then to take advantage of the field.   KING PHILIP. It shall be so; and at the other hill       Command the rest to stand. God and our right!              Exeunt      Here, after excursions, enter the HERALD OF FRANCE,               with trumpets, to the gates    FRENCH HERALD. You men of Angiers, open wide your gates     And let young Arthur, Duke of Britaine, in,     Who by the hand of France this day hath made     Much work for tears in many an English mother,     Whose sons lie scattered on the bleeding ground;     Many a widow\'s husband grovelling lies,     Coldly embracing the discoloured earth;     And victory with little loss doth play     Upon the dancing banners of the French,     Who are at hand, triumphantly displayed,     To enter conquerors, and to proclaim     Arthur of Britaine England\'s King and yours.           Enter ENGLISH HERALD, with trumpet      ENGLISH HERALD. Rejoice, you men of Angiers, ring your bells:     King John, your king and England\'s, doth approach,     Commander of this hot malicious day.     Their armours that march\'d hence so silver-bright     Hither return all gilt with Frenchmen\'s blood.     There stuck no plume in any English crest     That is removed by a staff of France;     Our colours do return in those same hands     That did display them when we first march\'d forth;     And like a jolly troop of huntsmen come     Our lusty English, all with purpled hands,     Dy\'d in the dying slaughter of their foes.     Open your gates and give the victors way.   CITIZEN. Heralds, from off our tow\'rs we might behold     From first to last the onset and retire     Of both your armies, whose equality     By our best eyes cannot be censured.     Blood hath bought blood, and blows have answer\'d blows;     Strength match\'d with strength, and power confronted power;     Both are alike, and both alike we like.       One must prove greatest. While they weigh so even,     We hold our town for neither, yet for both.      Enter the two KINGS, with their powers, at several doors    KING JOHN. France, hast thou yet more blood to cast away?     Say, shall the current of our right run on?     Whose passage, vex\'d with thy impediment,     Shall leave his native channel and o\'erswell     With course disturb\'d even thy confining shores,     Unless thou let his silver water keep     A peaceful progress to the ocean.   KING PHILIP. England, thou hast not sav\'d one drop of blood     In this hot trial more than we of France;     Rather, lost more. And by this hand I swear,     That sways the earth this climate overlooks,     Before we will lay down our just-borne arms,     We\'ll put thee down, \'gainst whom these arms we bear,     Or add a royal number to the dead,     Gracing the scroll that tells of this war\'s loss       With slaughter coupled to the name of kings.   BASTARD. Ha, majesty! how high thy glory tow\'rs     When the rich blood of kings is set on fire!     O, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel;     The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs;     And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men,     In undetermin\'d differences of kings.     Why stand these royal fronts amazed thus?     Cry \'havoc!\' kings; back to the stained field,     You equal potents, fiery kindled spirits!     Then let confusion of one part confirm     The other\'s peace. Till then, blows, blood, and death!   KING JOHN. Whose party do the townsmen yet admit?   KING PHILIP. Speak, citizens, for England; who\'s your king?   CITIZEN. The King of England, when we know the King.   KING PHILIP. Know him in us that here hold up his right.   KING JOHN. In us that are our own great deputy     And bear possession of our person here,     Lord of our presence, Angiers, and of you.   CITIZEN. A greater pow\'r than we denies all this;       And till it be undoubted, we do lock     Our former scruple in our strong-barr\'d gates;     King\'d of our fears, until our fears, resolv\'d,     Be by some certain king purg\'d and depos\'d.   BASTARD. By heaven, these scroyles of Angiers flout you, kings,     And stand securely on their battlements     As in a theatre, whence they gape and point     At your industrious scenes and acts of death.     Your royal presences be rul\'d by me:     Do like the mutines of Jerusalem,     Be friends awhile, and both conjointly bend     Your sharpest deeds of malice on this town.     By east and west let France and England mount     Their battering cannon, charged to the mouths,     Till their soul-fearing clamours have brawl\'d down     The flinty ribs of this contemptuous city.     I\'d play incessantly upon these jades,     Even till unfenced desolation     Leave them as naked as the vulgar air.     That done, dissever your united strengths       And part your mingled colours once again,     Turn face to face and bloody point to point;     Then in a moment Fortune shall cull forth     Out of one side her happy minion,     To whom in favour she shall give the day,     And kiss him with a glorious victory.     How like you this wild counsel, mighty states?     Smacks it not something of the policy?   KING JOHN. Now, by the sky that hangs above our heads,     I like it well. France, shall we knit our pow\'rs     And lay this Angiers even with the ground;     Then after fight who shall be king of it?   BASTARD. An if thou hast the mettle of a king,     Being wrong\'d as we are by this peevish town,     Turn thou the mouth of thy artillery,     As we will ours, against these saucy walls;     And when that we have dash\'d them to the ground,     Why then defy each other, and pell-mell     Make work upon ourselves, for heaven or hell.   KING PHILIP. Let it be so. Say, where will you assault?     KING JOHN. We from the west will send destruction     Into this city\'s bosom.   AUSTRIA. I from the north.   KING PHILIP. Our thunder from the south     Shall rain their drift of bullets on this town.   BASTARD.  [Aside]  O prudent discipline! From north to south,     Austria and France shoot in each other\'s mouth.     I\'ll stir them to it.-Come, away, away!   CITIZEN. Hear us, great kings: vouchsafe awhile to stay,     And I shall show you peace and fair-fac\'d league;     Win you this city without stroke or wound;     Rescue those breathing lives to die in beds     That here come sacrifices for the field.     Persever not, but hear me, mighty kings.   KING JOHN. Speak on with favour; we are bent to hear.   CITIZEN. That daughter there of Spain, the Lady Blanch,     Is niece to England; look upon the years     Of Lewis the Dauphin and that lovely maid.     If lusty love should go in quest of beauty,     Where should he find it fairer than in Blanch?       If zealous love should go in search of virtue,     Where should he find it purer than in Blanch?     If love ambitious sought a match of birth,     Whose veins bound richer blood than Lady Blanch?     Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth,     Is the young Dauphin every way complete-     If not complete of, say he is not she;     And she again wants nothing, to name want,     If want it be not that she is not he.     He is the half part of a blessed man,     Left to be finished by such as she;     And she a fair divided excellence,     Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.     O, two such silver currents, when they join,     Do glorify the banks that bound them in;     And two such shores to two such streams made one,     Two such controlling bounds, shall you be, Kings,     To these two princes, if you marry them.     This union shall do more than battery can     To our fast-closed gates; for at this match       With swifter spleen than powder can enforce,     The mouth of passage shall we fling wide ope     And give you entrance; but without this match,     The sea enraged is not half so deaf,     Lions more confident, mountains and rocks     More free from motion-no, not Death himself     In mortal fury half so peremptory     As we to keep this city.   BASTARD. Here\'s a stay     That shakes the rotten carcass of old Death     Out of his rags! Here\'s a large mouth, indeed,     That spits forth death and mountains, rocks and seas;     Talks as familiarly of roaring lions     As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs!     What cannoneer begot this lusty blood?     He speaks plain cannon-fire, and smoke and bounce;     He gives the bastinado with his tongue;     Our ears are cudgell\'d; not a word of his     But buffets better than a fist of France.     Zounds! I was never so bethump\'d with words       Since I first call\'d my brother\'s father dad.   ELINOR. Son, list to this conjunction, make this match;     Give with our niece a dowry large enough;     For by this knot thou shalt so surely tie     Thy now unsur\'d assurance to the crown     That yon green boy shall have no sun to ripe     The bloom that promiseth a mighty fruit.     I see a yielding in the looks of France;     Mark how they whisper. Urge them while their souls     Are capable of this ambition,     Lest zeal, now melted by the windy breath     Of soft petitions, pity, and remorse,     Cool and congeal again to what it was.   CITIZEN. Why answer not the double majesties     This friendly treaty of our threat\'ned town?   KING PHILIP. Speak England first, that hath been forward first     To speak unto this city: what say you?   KING JOHN. If that the Dauphin there, thy princely son,     Can in this book of beauty read \'I love,\'     Her dowry shall weigh equal with a queen;       For Anjou, and fair Touraine, Maine, Poictiers,     And all that we upon this side the sea-     Except this city now by us besieg\'d-     Find liable to our crown and dignity,     Shall gild her bridal bed, and make her rich     In titles, honours, and promotions,     As she in beauty, education, blood,     Holds hand with any princess of the world.   KING PHILIP. What say\'st thou, boy? Look in the lady\'s face.   LEWIS. I do, my lord, and in her eye I find     A wonder, or a wondrous miracle,     The shadow of myself form\'d in her eye;     Which, being but the shadow of your son,     Becomes a sun, and makes your son a shadow.     I do protest I never lov\'d myself     Till now infixed I beheld myself     Drawn in the flattering table of her eye.                                                [Whispers with BLANCH]   BASTARD.  [Aside]  Drawn in the flattering table of her eye,     Hang\'d in the frowning wrinkle of her brow,       And quarter\'d in her heart-he doth espy     Himself love\'s traitor. This is pity now,     That hang\'d and drawn and quarter\'d there should be     In such a love so vile a lout as he.   BLANCH. My uncle\'s will in this respect is mine.     If he see aught in you that makes him like,     That anything he sees which moves his liking     I can with ease translate it to my will;     Or if you will, to speak more properly,     I will enforce it eas\'ly to my love.     Further I will not flatter you, my lord,     That all I see in you is worthy love,     Than this: that nothing do I see in you-     Though churlish thoughts themselves should be your judge-     That I can find should merit any hate.   KING JOHN. What say these young ones? What say you, my niece?   BLANCH. That she is bound in honour still to do     What you in wisdom still vouchsafe to say.   KING JOHN. Speak then, Prince Dauphin; can you love this lady?   LEWIS. Nay, ask me if I can refrain from love;       For I do love her most unfeignedly.   KING JOHN. Then do I give Volquessen, Touraine, Maine,     Poictiers, and Anjou, these five provinces,     With her to thee; and this addition more,     Full thirty thousand marks of English coin.     Philip of France, if thou be pleas\'d withal,     Command thy son and daughter to join hands.   KING PHILIP. It likes us well; young princes, close your hands.   AUSTRIA. And your lips too; for I am well assur\'d     That I did so when I was first assur\'d.   KING PHILIP. Now, citizens of Angiers, ope your gates,     Let in that amity which you have made;     For at Saint Mary\'s chapel presently     The rites of marriage shall be solemniz\'d.     Is not the Lady Constance in this troop?     I know she is not; for this match made up     Her presence would have interrupted much.     Where is she and her son? Tell me, who knows.   LEWIS. She is sad and passionate at your Highness\' tent.   KING PHILIP. And, by my faith, this league that we have made       Will give her sadness very little cure.     Brother of England, how may we content     This widow lady? In her right we came;     Which we, God knows, have turn\'d another way,     To our own vantage.   KING JOHN. We will heal up all,     For we\'ll create young Arthur Duke of Britaine,     And Earl of Richmond; and this rich fair town     We make him lord of. Call the Lady Constance;     Some speedy messenger bid her repair     To our solemnity. I trust we shall,     If not fill up the measure of her will,     Yet in some measure satisfy her so     That we shall stop her exclamation.     Go we as well as haste will suffer us     To this unlook\'d-for, unprepared pomp.                                            Exeunt all but the BASTARD   BASTARD. Mad world! mad kings! mad composition!     John, to stop Arthur\'s tide in the whole,     Hath willingly departed with a part;       And France, whose armour conscience buckled on,     Whom zeal and charity brought to the field     As God\'s own soldier, rounded in the ear     With that same purpose-changer, that sly devil,     That broker that still breaks the pate of faith,     That daily break-vow, he that wins of all,     Of kings, of beggars, old men, young men, maids,     Who having no external thing to lose     But the word \'maid,\' cheats the poor maid of that;     That smooth-fac\'d gentleman, tickling commodity,     Commodity, the bias of the world-     The world, who of itself is peised well,     Made to run even upon even ground,     Till this advantage, this vile-drawing bias,     This sway of motion, this commodity,     Makes it take head from all indifferency,     From all direction, purpose, course, intent-     And this same bias, this commodity,     This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word,     Clapp\'d on the outward eye of fickle France,       Hath drawn him from his own determin\'d aid,     From a resolv\'d and honourable war,     To a most base and vile-concluded peace.     And why rail I on this commodity?     But for because he hath not woo\'d me yet;     Not that I have the power to clutch my hand     When his fair angels would salute my palm,     But for my hand, as unattempted yet,     Like a poor beggar raileth on the rich.     Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail     And say there is no sin but to be rich;     And being rich, my virtue then shall be     To say there is no vice but beggary.     Since kings break faith upon commodity,     Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee.                   Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE 1.  France. The FRENCH KING\'S camp  Enter CONSTANCE, ARTHUR, and SALISBURY    CONSTANCE. Gone to be married! Gone to swear a peace!     False blood to false blood join\'d! Gone to be friends!     Shall Lewis have Blanch, and Blanch those provinces?     It is not so; thou hast misspoke, misheard;     Be well advis\'d, tell o\'er thy tale again.     It cannot be; thou dost but say \'tis so;     I trust I may not trust thee, for thy word     Is but the vain breath of a common man:     Believe me I do not believe thee, man;     I have a king\'s oath to the contrary.     Thou shalt be punish\'d for thus frighting me,     For I am sick and capable of fears,     Oppress\'d with wrongs, and therefore full of fears;     A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;     A woman, naturally born to fears;     And though thou now confess thou didst but jest,       With my vex\'d spirits I cannot take a truce,     But they will quake and tremble all this day.     What dost thou mean by shaking of thy head?     Why dost thou look so sadly on my son?     What means that hand upon that breast of thine?     Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum,     Like a proud river peering o\'er his bounds?     Be these sad signs confirmers of thy words?     Then speak again-not all thy former tale,     But this one word, whether thy tale be true.   SALISBURY. As true as I believe you think them false     That give you cause to prove my saying true.   CONSTANCE. O, if thou teach me to believe this sorrow,     Teach thou this sorrow how to make me die;     And let belief and life encounter so     As doth the fury of two desperate men     Which in the very meeting fall and die!     Lewis marry Blanch! O boy, then where art thou?     France friend with England; what becomes of me?     Fellow, be gone: I cannot brook thy sight;       This news hath made thee a most ugly man.   SALISBURY. What other harm have I, good lady, done     But spoke the harm that is by others done?   CONSTANCE. Which harm within itself so heinous is     As it makes harmful all that speak of it.   ARTHUR. I do beseech you, madam, be content.   CONSTANCE. If thou that bid\'st me be content wert grim,     Ugly, and sland\'rous to thy mother\'s womb,     Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains,     Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious,     Patch\'d with foul moles and eye-offending marks,     I would not care, I then would be content;     For then I should not love thee; no, nor thou     Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown.     But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy,     Nature and Fortune join\'d to make thee great:     Of Nature\'s gifts thou mayst with lilies boast,     And with the half-blown rose; but Fortune, O!     She is corrupted, chang\'d, and won from thee;     Sh\' adulterates hourly with thine uncle John,       And with her golden hand hath pluck\'d on France     To tread down fair respect of sovereignty,     And made his majesty the bawd to theirs.     France is a bawd to Fortune and King John-     That strumpet Fortune, that usurping John!     Tell me, thou fellow, is not France forsworn?     Envenom him with words, or get thee gone     And leave those woes alone which I alone     Am bound to under-bear.   SALISBURY. Pardon me, madam,     I may not go without you to the kings.   CONSTANCE. Thou mayst, thou shalt; I will not go with thee;     I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,     For grief is proud, and makes his owner stoop.     To me, and to the state of my great grief,     Let kings assemble; for my grief\'s so great     That no supporter but the huge firm earth     Can hold it up.                     [Seats herself on the ground]     Here I and sorrows sit;     Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.           Enter KING JOHN, KING PHILIP, LEWIS, BLANCH,        ELINOR, the BASTARD, AUSTRIA, and attendants    KING PHILIP. \'Tis true, fair daughter, and this blessed day     Ever in France shall be kept festival.     To solemnize this day the glorious sun     Stays in his course and plays the alchemist,     Turning with splendour of his precious eye     The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold.     The yearly course that brings this day about     Shall never see it but a holiday.   CONSTANCE.  [Rising]  A wicked day, and not a holy day!     What hath this day deserv\'d? what hath it done     That it in golden letters should be set     Among the high tides in the calendar?     Nay, rather turn this day out of the week,     This day of shame, oppression, perjury;     Or, if it must stand still, let wives with child     Pray that their burdens may not fall this day,       Lest that their hopes prodigiously be cross\'d;     But on this day let seamen fear no wreck;     No bargains break that are not this day made;     This day, all things begun come to ill end,     Yea, faith itself to hollow falsehood change!   KING PHILIP. By heaven, lady, you shall have no cause     To curse the fair proceedings of this day.     Have I not pawn\'d to you my majesty?   CONSTANCE. You have beguil\'d me with a counterfeit     Resembling majesty, which, being touch\'d and tried,     Proves valueless; you are forsworn, forsworn;     You came in arms to spill mine enemies\' blood,     But now in arms you strengthen it with yours.     The grappling vigour and rough frown of war     Is cold in amity and painted peace,     And our oppression hath made up this league.     Arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjur\'d kings!     A widow cries: Be husband to me, heavens!     Let not the hours of this ungodly day     Wear out the day in peace; but, ere sunset,       Set armed discord \'twixt these perjur\'d kings!     Hear me, O, hear me!   AUSTRIA. Lady Constance, peace!   CONSTANCE. War! war! no peace! Peace is to me a war.     O Lymoges! O Austria! thou dost shame     That bloody spoil. Thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward!     Thou little valiant, great in villainy!     Thou ever strong upon the stronger side!     Thou Fortune\'s champion that dost never fight     But when her humorous ladyship is by     To teach thee safety! Thou art perjur\'d too,     And sooth\'st up greatness. What a fool art thou,     A ramping fool, to brag and stamp and swear     Upon my party! Thou cold-blooded slave,     Hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side,     Been sworn my soldier, bidding me depend     Upon thy stars, thy fortune, and thy strength,     And dost thou now fall over to my foes?     Thou wear a lion\'s hide! Doff it for shame,     And hang a calf\'s-skin on those recreant limbs.     AUSTRIA. O that a man should speak those words to me!   BASTARD. And hang a calf\'s-skin on those recreant limbs.   AUSTRIA. Thou dar\'st not say so, villain, for thy life.   BASTARD. And hang a calf\'s-skin on those recreant limbs.   KING JOHN. We like not this: thou dost forget thyself.                    Enter PANDULPH    KING PHILIP. Here comes the holy legate of the Pope.   PANDULPH. Hail, you anointed deputies of heaven!     To thee, King John, my holy errand is.     I Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal,     And from Pope Innocent the legate here,     Do in his name religiously demand     Why thou against the Church, our holy mother,     So wilfully dost spurn; and force perforce     Keep Stephen Langton, chosen Archbishop     Of Canterbury, from that holy see?     This, in our foresaid holy father\'s name,     Pope Innocent, I do demand of thee.     KING JOHN. What earthly name to interrogatories     Can task the free breath of a sacred king?     Thou canst not, Cardinal, devise a name     So slight, unworthy, and ridiculous,     To charge me to an answer, as the Pope.     Tell him this tale, and from the mouth of England     Add thus much more, that no Italian priest     Shall tithe or toll in our dominions;     But as we under heaven are supreme head,     So, under Him that great supremacy,     Where we do reign we will alone uphold,     Without th\' assistance of a mortal hand.     So tell the Pope, all reverence set apart     To him and his usurp\'d authority.   KING PHILIP. Brother of England, you blaspheme in this.   KING JOHN. Though you and all the kings of Christendom     Are led so grossly by this meddling priest,     Dreading the curse that money may buy out,     And by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust,     Purchase corrupted pardon of a man,       Who in that sale sells pardon from himself-     Though you and all the rest, so grossly led,     This juggling witchcraft with revenue cherish;     Yet I alone, alone do me oppose     Against the Pope, and count his friends my foes.   PANDULPH. Then by the lawful power that I have     Thou shalt stand curs\'d and excommunicate;     And blessed shall he be that doth revolt     From his allegiance to an heretic;     And meritorious shall that hand be call\'d,     Canonized, and worshipp\'d as a saint,     That takes away by any secret course     Thy hateful life.   CONSTANCE. O, lawful let it be     That I have room with Rome to curse awhile!     Good father Cardinal, cry thou \'amen\'     To my keen curses; for without my wrong     There is no tongue hath power to curse him right.   PANDULPH. There\'s law and warrant, lady, for my curse.   CONSTANCE. And for mine too; when law can do no right,       Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong;     Law cannot give my child his kingdom here,     For he that holds his kingdom holds the law;     Therefore, since law itself is perfect wrong,     How can the law forbid my tongue to curse?   PANDULPH. Philip of France, on peril of a curse,     Let go the hand of that arch-heretic,     And raise the power of France upon his head,     Unless he do submit himself to Rome.   ELINOR. Look\'st thou pale, France? Do not let go thy hand.   CONSTANCE. Look to that, devil, lest that France repent     And by disjoining hands hell lose a soul.   AUSTRIA. King Philip, listen to the Cardinal.   BASTARD. And hang a calf\'s-skin on his recreant limbs.   AUSTRIA. Well, ruffian, I must pocket up these wrongs,     Because-   BASTARD. Your breeches best may carry them.   KING JOHN. Philip, what say\'st thou to the Cardinal?   CONSTANCE. What should he say, but as the Cardinal?   LEWIS. Bethink you, father; for the difference       Is purchase of a heavy curse from Rome     Or the light loss of England for a friend.     Forgo the easier.   BLANCH. That\'s the curse of Rome.   CONSTANCE. O Lewis, stand fast! The devil tempts thee here     In likeness of a new untrimmed bride.   BLANCH. The Lady Constance speaks not from her faith,     But from her need.   CONSTANCE. O, if thou grant my need,     Which only lives but by the death of faith,     That need must needs infer this principle-     That faith would live again by death of need.     O then, tread down my need, and faith mounts up:     Keep my need up, and faith is trodden down!   KING JOHN. The King is mov\'d, and answers not to this.   CONSTANCE. O be remov\'d from him, and answer well!   AUSTRIA. Do so, King Philip; hang no more in doubt.   BASTARD. Hang nothing but a calf\'s-skin, most sweet lout.   KING PHILIP. I am perplex\'d and know not what to say.   PANDULPH. What canst thou say but will perplex thee more,       If thou stand excommunicate and curs\'d?   KING PHILIP. Good reverend father, make my person yours,     And tell me how you would bestow yourself.     This royal hand and mine are newly knit,     And the conjunction of our inward souls     Married in league, coupled and link\'d together     With all religious strength of sacred vows;     The latest breath that gave the sound of words     Was deep-sworn faith, peace, amity, true love,     Between our kingdoms and our royal selves;     And even before this truce, but new before,     No longer than we well could wash our hands,     To clap this royal bargain up of peace,     Heaven knows, they were besmear\'d and overstain\'d     With slaughter\'s pencil, where revenge did paint     The fearful difference of incensed kings.     And shall these hands, so lately purg\'d of blood,     So newly join\'d in love, so strong in both,     Unyoke this seizure and this kind regreet?     Play fast and loose with faith? so jest with heaven,       Make such unconstant children of ourselves,     As now again to snatch our palm from palm,     Unswear faith sworn, and on the marriage-bed     Of smiling peace to march a bloody host,     And make a riot on the gentle brow     Of true sincerity? O, holy sir,     My reverend father, let it not be so!     Out of your grace, devise, ordain, impose,     Some gentle order; and then we shall be blest     To do your pleasure, and continue friends.   PANDULPH. All form is formless, order orderless,     Save what is opposite to England\'s love.     Therefore, to arms! be champion of our church,     Or let the church, our mother, breathe her curse-     A mother\'s curse-on her revolting son.     France, thou mayst hold a serpent by the tongue,     A chafed lion by the mortal paw,     A fasting tiger safer by the tooth,     Than keep in peace that hand which thou dost hold.   KING PHILIP. I may disjoin my hand, but not my faith.     PANDULPH. So mak\'st thou faith an enemy to faith;     And like. a civil war set\'st oath to oath.     Thy tongue against thy tongue. O, let thy vow     First made to heaven, first be to heaven perform\'d,     That is, to be the champion of our Church.     What since thou swor\'st is sworn against thyself     And may not be performed by thyself,     For that which thou hast sworn to do amiss     Is not amiss when it is truly done;     And being not done, where doing tends to ill,     The truth is then most done not doing it;     The better act of purposes mistook     Is to mistake again; though indirect,     Yet indirection thereby grows direct,     And falsehood cures, as fire cools fire     Within the scorched veins of one new-burn\'d.     It is religion that doth make vows kept;     But thou hast sworn against religion     By what thou swear\'st against the thing thou swear\'st,     And mak\'st an oath the surety for thy truth       Against an oath; the truth thou art unsure     To swear swears only not to be forsworn;     Else what a mockery should it be to swear!     But thou dost swear only to be forsworn;     And most forsworn to keep what thou dost swear.     Therefore thy later vows against thy first     Is in thyself rebellion to thyself;     And better conquest never canst thou make     Than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts     Against these giddy loose suggestions;     Upon which better part our pray\'rs come in,     If thou vouchsafe them. But if not, then know     The peril of our curses fight on thee     So heavy as thou shalt not shake them off,     But in despair die under the black weight.   AUSTRIA. Rebellion, flat rebellion!   BASTARD. Will\'t not be?     Will not a calf\'s-skin stop that mouth of thine?   LEWIS. Father, to arms!   BLANCH. Upon thy wedding-day?       Against the blood that thou hast married?     What, shall our feast be kept with slaughtered men?     Shall braying trumpets and loud churlish drums,     Clamours of hell, be measures to our pomp?     O husband, hear me! ay, alack, how new     Is \'husband\' in my mouth! even for that name,     Which till this time my tongue did ne\'er pronounce,     Upon my knee I beg, go not to arms     Against mine uncle.   CONSTANCE. O, upon my knee,     Made hard with kneeling, I do pray to thee,     Thou virtuous Dauphin, alter not the doom     Forethought by heaven!   BLANCH. Now shall I see thy love. What motive may     Be stronger with thee than the name of wife?   CONSTANCE. That which upholdeth him that thee upholds,     His honour. O, thine honour, Lewis, thine honour!   LEWIS. I muse your Majesty doth seem so cold,     When such profound respects do pull you on.   PANDULPH. I will denounce a curse upon his head.     KING PHILIP. Thou shalt not need. England, I will fall from thee.   CONSTANCE. O fair return of banish\'d majesty!   ELINOR. O foul revolt of French inconstancy!   KING JOHN. France, thou shalt rue this hour within this hour.   BASTARD. Old Time the clock-setter, that bald sexton Time,     Is it as he will? Well then, France shall rue.   BLANCH. The sun\'s o\'ercast with blood. Fair day, adieu!     Which is the side that I must go withal?     I am with both: each army hath a hand;     And in their rage, I having hold of both,     They whirl asunder and dismember me.     Husband, I cannot pray that thou mayst win;     Uncle, I needs must pray that thou mayst lose;     Father, I may not wish the fortune thine;     Grandam, I will not wish thy wishes thrive.     Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose:     Assured loss before the match be play\'d.   LEWIS. Lady, with me, with me thy fortune lies.   BLANCH. There where my fortune lives, there my life dies.   KING JOHN. Cousin, go draw our puissance together.                                                            Exit BASTARD     France, I am burn\'d up with inflaming wrath,     A rage whose heat hath this condition     That nothing can allay, nothing but blood,     The blood, and dearest-valu\'d blood, of France.   KING PHILIP. Thy rage shall burn thee up, and thou shalt turn     To ashes, ere our blood shall quench that fire.     Look to thyself, thou art in jeopardy.   KING JOHN. No more than he that threats. To arms let\'s hie!                                                      Exeunt severally     SCENE 2.  France. Plains near Angiers  Alarums, excursions. Enter the BASTARD with AUSTRIA\'S head    BASTARD. Now, by my life, this day grows wondrous hot;     Some airy devil hovers in the sky     And pours down mischief. Austria\'s head lie there,     While Philip breathes.            Enter KING JOHN, ARTHUR, and HUBERT    KING JOHN. Hubert, keep this boy. Philip, make up:     My mother is assailed in our tent,     And ta\'en, I fear.   BASTARD. My lord, I rescued her;     Her Highness is in safety, fear you not;     But on, my liege, for very little pains     Will bring this labour to an happy end.                    Exeunt     SCENE 3.  France. Plains near Angiers  Alarums, excursions, retreat. Enter KING JOHN, ELINOR, ARTHUR, the BASTARD, HUBERT, and LORDS    KING JOHN.  [To ELINOR]  So shall it be; your Grace shall stay       behind,     So strongly guarded.  [To ARTHUR]  Cousin, look not sad;     Thy grandam loves thee, and thy uncle will     As dear be to thee as thy father was.   ARTHUR. O, this will make my mother die with grief!   KING JOHN.  [To the BASTARD]  Cousin, away for England! haste       before,     And, ere our coming, see thou shake the bags     Of hoarding abbots; imprisoned angels     Set at liberty; the fat ribs of peace     Must by the hungry now be fed upon.     Use our commission in his utmost force.   BASTARD. Bell, book, and candle, shall not drive me back,     When gold and silver becks me to come on.       I leave your Highness. Grandam, I will pray,     If ever I remember to be holy,     For your fair safety. So, I kiss your hand.   ELINOR. Farewell, gentle cousin.   KING JOHN. Coz, farewell.                                                          Exit BASTARD   ELINOR. Come hither, little kinsman; hark, a word.   KING JOHN. Come hither, Hubert. O my gentle Hubert,     We owe thee much! Within this wall of flesh     There is a soul counts thee her creditor,     And with advantage means to pay thy love;     And, my good friend, thy voluntary oath     Lives in this bosom, dearly cherished.     Give me thy hand. I had a thing to say-     But I will fit it with some better time.     By heaven, Hubert, I am almost asham\'d     To say what good respect I have of thee.   HUBERT. I am much bounden to your Majesty.   KING JOHN. Good friend, thou hast no cause to say so yet,     But thou shalt have; and creep time ne\'er so slow,       Yet it shall come for me to do thee good.     I had a thing to say-but let it go:     The sun is in the heaven, and the proud day,     Attended with the pleasures of the world,     Is all too wanton and too full of gawds     To give me audience. If the midnight bell     Did with his iron tongue and brazen mouth     Sound on into the drowsy race of night;     If this same were a churchyard where we stand,     And thou possessed with a thousand wrongs;     Or if that surly spirit, melancholy,     Had bak\'d thy blood and made it heavy-thick,     Which else runs tickling up and down the veins,     Making that idiot, laughter, keep men\'s eyes     And strain their cheeks to idle merriment,     A passion hateful to my purposes;     Or if that thou couldst see me without eyes,     Hear me without thine cars, and make reply     Without a tongue, using conceit alone,     Without eyes, ears, and harmful sound of words-       Then, in despite of brooded watchful day,     I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts.     But, ah, I will not! Yet I love thee well;     And, by my troth, I think thou lov\'st me well.   HUBERT. So well that what you bid me undertake,     Though that my death were adjunct to my act,     By heaven, I would do it.   KING JOHN. Do not I know thou wouldst?     Good Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, throw thine eye     On yon young boy. I\'ll tell thee what, my friend,     He is a very serpent in my way;     And wheresoe\'er this foot of mine doth tread,     He lies before me. Dost thou understand me?     Thou art his keeper.   HUBERT. And I\'ll keep him so     That he shall not offend your Majesty.   KING JOHN. Death.   HUBERT. My lord?   KING JOHN. A grave.   HUBERT. He shall not live.     KING JOHN. Enough!     I could be merry now. Hubert, I love thee.     Well, I\'ll not say what I intend for thee.     Remember. Madam, fare you well;     I\'ll send those powers o\'er to your Majesty.   ELINOR. My blessing go with thee!   KING JOHN.  [To ARTHUR]  For England, cousin, go;     Hubert shall be your man, attend on you     With all true duty. On toward Calais, ho!                  Exeunt     SCENE 4.  France. The FRENCH KING\'s camp  Enter KING PHILIP, LEWIS, PANDULPH, and attendants    KING PHILIP. So by a roaring tempest on the flood     A whole armado of convicted sail     Is scattered and disjoin\'d from fellowship.   PANDULPH. Courage and comfort! All shall yet go well.   KING PHILIP. What can go well, when we have run so ill.     Are we not beaten? Is not Angiers lost?     Arthur ta\'en prisoner? Divers dear friends slain?     And bloody England into England gone,     O\'erbearing interruption, spite of France?   LEWIS. he hath won, that hath he fortified;     So hot a speed with such advice dispos\'d,     Such temperate order in so fierce a cause,     Doth want example; who hath read or heard     Of any kindred action like to this?   KING PHILIP. Well could I bear that England had this praise,     So we could find some pattern of our shame.                       Enter CONSTANCE      Look who comes here! a grave unto a soul;     Holding th\' eternal spirit, against her will,     In the vile prison of afflicted breath.     I prithee, lady, go away with me.   CONSTANCE. Lo now! now see the issue of your peace!   KING PHILIP. Patience, good lady! Comfort, gentle Constance!   CONSTANCE. No, I defy all counsel, all redress,     But that which ends all counsel, true redress-     Death, death; O amiable lovely death!     Thou odoriferous stench! sound rottenness!     Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,     Thou hate and terror to prosperity,     And I will kiss thy detestable bones,     And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows,     And ring these fingers with thy household worms,     And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,     And be a carrion monster like thyself.       Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil\'st,     And buss thee as thy wife. Misery\'s love,     O, come to me!   KING PHILIP. O fair affliction, peace!   CONSTANCE. No, no, I will not, having breath to cry.     O that my tongue were in the thunder\'s mouth!     Then with a passion would I shake the world,     And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy     Which cannot hear a lady\'s feeble voice,     Which scorns a modern invocation.   PANDULPH. Lady, you utter madness and not sorrow.   CONSTANCE. Thou art not holy to belie me so.     I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine;     My name is Constance; I was Geffrey\'s wife;     Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost.     I am not mad-I would to heaven I were!     For then \'tis like I should forget myself.     O, if I could, what grief should I forget!     Preach some philosophy to make me mad,     And thou shalt be canoniz\'d, Cardinal;       For, being not mad, but sensible of grief,     My reasonable part produces reason     How I may be deliver\'d of these woes,     And teaches me to kill or hang myself.     If I were mad I should forget my son,     Or madly think a babe of clouts were he.     I am not mad; too well, too well I feel     The different plague of each calamity.   KING PHILIP. Bind up those tresses. O, what love I note     In the fair multitude of those her hairs!     Where but by a chance a silver drop hath fall\'n,     Even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends     Do glue themselves in sociable grief,     Like true, inseparable, faithful loves,     Sticking together in calamity.   CONSTANCE. To England, if you will.   KING PHILIP. Bind up your hairs.   CONSTANCE. Yes, that I will; and wherefore will I do it?     I tore them from their bonds, and cried aloud     \'O that these hands could so redeem my son,       As they have given these hairs their liberty!\'     But now I envy at their liberty,     And will again commit them to their bonds,     Because my poor child is a prisoner.     And, father Cardinal, I have heard you say     That we shall see and know our friends in heaven;     If that be true, I shall see my boy again;     For since the birth of Cain, the first male child,     To him that did but yesterday suspire,     There was not such a gracious creature born.     But now will canker sorrow eat my bud     And chase the native beauty from his cheek,     And he will look as hollow as a ghost,     As dim and meagre as an ague\'s fit;     And so he\'ll die; and, rising so again,     When I shall meet him in the court of heaven     I shall not know him. Therefore never, never     Must I behold my pretty Arthur more.   PANDULPH. You hold too heinous a respect of grief.   CONSTANCE. He talks to me that never had a son.     KING PHILIP. You are as fond of grief as of your child.   CONSTANCE. Grief fills the room up of my absent child,     Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,     Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,     Remembers me of all his gracious parts,     Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;     Then have I reason to be fond of grief.     Fare you well; had you such a loss as I,     I could give better comfort than you do.     I will not keep this form upon my head,                                                    [Tearing her hair]     When there is such disorder in my wit.     O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!     My life, my joy, my food, my ail the world!     My widow-comfort, and my sorrows\' cure!                      Exit   KING PHILIP. I fear some outrage, and I\'ll follow her.         Exit   LEWIS. There\'s nothing in this world can make me joy.     Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale     Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man;     And bitter shame hath spoil\'d the sweet world\'s taste,       That it yields nought but shame and bitterness.   PANDULPH. Before the curing of a strong disease,     Even in the instant of repair and health,     The fit is strongest; evils that take leave     On their departure most of all show evil;     What have you lost by losing of this day?   LEWIS. All days of glory, joy, and happiness.   PANDULPH. If you had won it, certainly you had.     No, no; when Fortune means to men most good,     She looks upon them with a threat\'ning eye.     \'Tis strange to think how much King John hath lost     In this which he accounts so clearly won.     Are not you griev\'d that Arthur is his prisoner?   LEWIS. As heartily as he is glad he hath him.   PANDULPH. Your mind is all as youthful as your blood.     Now hear me speak with a prophetic spirit;     For even the breath of what I mean to speak     Shall blow each dust, each straw, each little rub,     Out of the path which shall directly lead     Thy foot to England\'s throne. And therefore mark:       John hath seiz\'d Arthur; and it cannot be     That, whiles warm life plays in that infant\'s veins,     The misplac\'d John should entertain an hour,     One minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest.     A sceptre snatch\'d with an unruly hand     Must be boisterously maintain\'d as gain\'d,     And he that stands upon a slipp\'ry place     Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up;     That John may stand then, Arthur needs must fall;     So be it, for it cannot be but so.   LEWIS. But what shall I gain by young Arthur\'s fall?   PANDULPH. You, in the right of Lady Blanch your wife,     May then make all the claim that Arthur did.   LEWIS. And lose it, life and all, as Arthur did.   PANDULPH. How green you are and fresh in this old world!     John lays you plots; the times conspire with you;     For he that steeps his safety in true blood     Shall find but bloody safety and untrue.     This act, so evilly borne, shall cool the hearts     Of all his people and freeze up their zeal,       That none so small advantage shall step forth     To check his reign but they will cherish it;     No natural exhalation in the sky,     No scope of nature, no distemper\'d day,     No common wind, no customed event,     But they will pluck away his natural cause     And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs,     Abortives, presages, and tongues of heaven,     Plainly denouncing vengeance upon John.   LEWIS. May be he will not touch young Arthur\'s life,     But hold himself safe in his prisonment.   PANDULPH. O, Sir, when he shall hear of your approach,     If that young Arthur be not gone already,     Even at that news he dies; and then the hearts     Of all his people shall revolt from him,     And kiss the lips of unacquainted change,     And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath     Out of the bloody fingers\' ends of john.     Methinks I see this hurly all on foot;     And, O, what better matter breeds for you       Than I have nam\'d! The bastard Faulconbridge     Is now in England ransacking the Church,     Offending charity; if but a dozen French     Were there in arms, they would be as a can     To train ten thousand English to their side;     Or as a little snow, tumbled about,     Anon becomes a mountain. O noble Dauphin,     Go with me to the King. \'Tis wonderful     What may be wrought out of their discontent,     Now that their souls are topful of offence.     For England go; I will whet on the King.   LEWIS. Strong reasons makes strong actions. Let us go;     If you say ay, the King will not say no.                   Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE 1.  England. A castle  Enter HUBERT and EXECUTIONERS    HUBERT. Heat me these irons hot; and look thou stand     Within the arras. When I strike my foot     Upon the bosom of the ground, rush forth     And bind the boy which you shall find with me     Fast to the chair. Be heedful; hence, and watch.   EXECUTIONER. I hope your warrant will bear out the deed.   HUBERT. Uncleanly scruples! Fear not you. Look to\'t.                                                   Exeunt EXECUTIONERS     Young lad, come forth; I have to say with you.                      Enter ARTHUR    ARTHUR. Good morrow, Hubert.   HUBERT. Good morrow, little Prince.   ARTHUR. As little prince, having so great a tide     To be more prince, as may be. You are sad.     HUBERT. Indeed I have been merrier.   ARTHUR. Mercy on me!     Methinks no body should be sad but I;     Yet, I remember, when I was in France,     Young gentlemen would be as sad as night,     Only for wantonness. By my christendom,     So I were out of prison and kept sheep,     I should be as merry as the day is long;     And so I would be here but that I doubt     My uncle practises more harm to me;     He is afraid of me, and I of him.     Is it my fault that I was Geffrey\'s son?     No, indeed, ist not; and I would to heaven     I were your son, so you would love me, Hubert.   HUBERT.  [Aside]  If I talk to him, with his innocent prate     He will awake my mercy, which lies dead;     Therefore I will be sudden and dispatch.   ARTHUR. Are you sick, Hubert? You look pale to-day;     In sooth, I would you were a little sick,     That I might sit all night and watch with you.       I warrant I love you more than you do me.   HUBERT.  [Aside]  His words do take possession of my bosom.-     Read here, young Arthur.                        [Showing a paper]       [Aside]  How now, foolish rheum!     Turning dispiteous torture out of door!     I must be brief, lest resolution drop     Out at mine eyes in tender womanish tears.-     Can you not read it? Is it not fair writ?   ARTHUR. Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect.     Must you with hot irons burn out both mine eyes?   HUBERT. Young boy, I must.   ARTHUR. And will you?   HUBERT. And I will.   ARTHUR. Have you the heart? When your head did but ache,     I knit my handkerchief about your brows-     The best I had, a princess wrought it me-     And I did never ask it you again;     And with my hand at midnight held your head;     And, like the watchful minutes to the hour,     Still and anon cheer\'d up the heavy time,       Saying \'What lack you?\' and \'Where lies your grief?\'     Or \'What good love may I perform for you?\'     Many a poor man\'s son would have lyen still,     And ne\'er have spoke a loving word to you;     But you at your sick service had a prince.     Nay, you may think my love was crafty love,     And call it cunning. Do, an if you will.     If heaven be pleas\'d that you must use me ill,     Why, then you must. Will you put out mine eyes,     These eyes that never did nor never shall     So much as frown on you?   HUBERT. I have sworn to do it;     And with hot irons must I burn them out.   ARTHUR. Ah, none but in this iron age would do it!     The iron of itself, though heat red-hot,     Approaching near these eyes would drink my tears,     And quench his fiery indignation     Even in the matter of mine innocence;     Nay, after that, consume away in rust     But for containing fire to harm mine eye.       Are you more stubborn-hard than hammer\'d iron?     An if an angel should have come to me     And told me Hubert should put out mine eyes,     I would not have believ\'d him-no tongue but Hubert\'s.   HUBERT.  [Stamps]  Come forth.       Re-enter EXECUTIONERS, With cord, irons, etc.      Do as I bid you do.   ARTHUR. O, save me, Hubert, save me! My eyes are out     Even with the fierce looks of these bloody men.   HUBERT. Give me the iron, I say, and bind him here.   ARTHUR. Alas, what need you be so boist\'rous rough?     I will not struggle, I will stand stone-still.     For heaven sake, Hubert, let me not be bound!     Nay, hear me, Hubert! Drive these men away,     And I will sit as quiet as a lamb;     I will not stir, nor wince, nor speak a word,     Nor look upon the iron angrily;     Thrust but these men away, and I\'ll forgive you,       Whatever torment you do put me to.   HUBERT. Go, stand within; let me alone with him.   EXECUTIONER. I am best pleas\'d to be from such a deed.                                                   Exeunt EXECUTIONERS   ARTHUR. Alas, I then have chid away my friend!     He hath a stern look but a gentle heart.     Let him come back, that his compassion may     Give life to yours.   HUBERT. Come, boy, prepare yourself.   ARTHUR. Is there no remedy?   HUBERT. None, but to lose your eyes.   ARTHUR. O heaven, that there were but a mote in yours,     A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair,     Any annoyance in that precious sense!     Then, feeling what small things are boisterous there,     Your vile intent must needs seem horrible.   HUBERT. Is this your promise? Go to, hold your tongue.   ARTHUR. Hubert, the utterance of a brace of tongues     Must needs want pleading for a pair of eyes.     Let me not hold my tongue, let me not, Hubert;       Or, Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue,     So I may keep mine eyes. O, spare mine eyes,     Though to no use but still to look on you!     Lo, by my troth, the instrument is cold     And would not harm me.   HUBERT. I can heat it, boy.   ARTHUR. No, in good sooth; the fire is dead with grief,     Being create for comfort, to be us\'d     In undeserved extremes. See else yourself:     There is no malice in this burning coal;     The breath of heaven hath blown his spirit out,     And strew\'d repentant ashes on his head.   HUBERT. But with my breath I can revive it, boy.   ARTHUR. An if you do, you will but make it blush     And glow with shame of your proceedings, Hubert.     Nay, it perchance will sparkle in your eyes,     And, like a dog that is compell\'d to fight,     Snatch at his master that doth tarre him on.     All things that you should use to do me wrong     Deny their office; only you do lack       That mercy which fierce fire and iron extends,     Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses.   HUBERT. Well, see to live; I will not touch thine eye     For all the treasure that thine uncle owes.     Yet I am sworn, and I did purpose, boy,     With this same very iron to burn them out.   ARTHUR. O, now you look like Hubert! All this while     You were disguis\'d.   HUBERT. Peace; no more. Adieu.     Your uncle must not know but you are dead:     I\'ll fill these dogged spies with false reports;     And, pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure     That Hubert, for the wealth of all the world,     Will not offend thee.   ARTHUR. O heaven! I thank you, Hubert.   HUBERT. Silence; no more. Go closely in with me.     Much danger do I undergo for thee.                         Exeunt     SCENE 2.  England. KING JOHN\'S palace  Enter KING JOHN, PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, and other LORDS    KING JOHN. Here once again we sit, once again crown\'d,     And look\'d upon, I hope, with cheerful eyes.   PEMBROKE. This once again, but that your Highness pleas\'d,     Was once superfluous: you were crown\'d before,     And that high royalty was ne\'er pluck\'d off,     The faiths of men ne\'er stained with revolt;     Fresh expectation troubled not the land     With any long\'d-for change or better state.   SALISBURY. Therefore, to be possess\'d with double pomp,     To guard a title that was rich before,     To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,     To throw a perfume on the violet,     To smooth the ice, or add another hue     Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light     To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,     Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.   PEMBROKE. But that your royal pleasure must be done,     This act is as an ancient tale new told       And, in the last repeating, troublesome,     Being urged at a time unseasonable.   SALISBURY. In this the antique and well-noted face     Of plain old form is much disfigured;     And like a shifted wind unto a sail     It makes the course of thoughts to fetch about,     Startles and frights consideration,     Makes sound opinion sick, and truth suspected,     For putting on so new a fashion\'d robe.   PEMBROKE. When workmen strive to do better than well,     They do confound their skill in covetousness;     And oftentimes excusing of a fault     Doth make the fault the worse by th\' excuse,     As patches set upon a little breach     Discredit more in hiding of the fault     Than did the fault before it was so patch\'d.   SALISBURY. To this effect, before you were new-crown\'d,     We breath\'d our counsel; but it pleas\'d your Highness     To overbear it; and we are all well pleas\'d,     Since all and every part of what we would       Doth make a stand at what your Highness will.   KING JOHN. Some reasons of this double coronation     I have possess\'d you with, and think them strong;     And more, more strong, when lesser is my fear,     I shall indue you with. Meantime but ask     What you would have reform\'d that is not well,     And well shall you perceive how willingly     I will both hear and grant you your requests.   PEMBROKE. Then I, as one that am the tongue of these,     To sound the purposes of all their hearts,     Both for myself and them- but, chief of all,     Your safety, for the which myself and them     Bend their best studies, heartily request     Th\' enfranchisement of Arthur, whose restraint     Doth move the murmuring lips of discontent     To break into this dangerous argument:     If what in rest you have in right you hold,     Why then your fears-which, as they say, attend     The steps of wrong-should move you to mew up     Your tender kinsman, and to choke his days       With barbarous ignorance, and deny his youth     The rich advantage of good exercise?     That the time\'s enemies may not have this     To grace occasions, let it be our suit     That you have bid us ask his liberty;     Which for our goods we do no further ask     Than whereupon our weal, on you depending,     Counts it your weal he have his liberty.   KING JOHN. Let it be so. I do commit his youth     To your direction.                       Enter HUBERT      [Aside]  Hubert, what news with you?   PEMBROKE. This is the man should do the bloody deed:     He show\'d his warrant to a friend of mine;     The image of a wicked heinous fault     Lives in his eye; that close aspect of his     Doth show the mood of a much troubled breast,     And I do fearfully believe \'tis done       What we so fear\'d he had a charge to do.   SALISBURY. The colour of the King doth come and go     Between his purpose and his conscience,     Like heralds \'twixt two dreadful battles set.     His passion is so ripe it needs must break.   PEMBROKE. And when it breaks, I fear will issue thence     The foul corruption of a sweet child\'s death.   KING JOHN. We cannot hold mortality\'s strong hand.     Good lords, although my will to give is living,     The suit which you demand is gone and dead:     He tells us Arthur is deceas\'d to-night.   SALISBURY. Indeed, we fear\'d his sickness was past cure.   PEMBROKE. Indeed, we heard how near his death he was,     Before the child himself felt he was sick.     This must be answer\'d either here or hence.   KING JOHN. Why do you bend such solemn brows on me?     Think you I bear the shears of destiny?     Have I commandment on the pulse of life?   SALISBURY. It is apparent foul-play; and \'tis shame     That greatness should so grossly offer it.       So thrive it in your game! and so, farewell.   PEMBROKE. Stay yet, Lord Salisbury, I\'ll go with thee     And find th\' inheritance of this poor child,     His little kingdom of a forced grave.     That blood which ow\'d the breadth of all this isle     Three foot of it doth hold-bad world the while!     This must not be thus borne: this will break out     To all our sorrows, and ere long I doubt.            Exeunt LORDS   KING JOHN. They burn in indignation. I repent.     There is no sure foundation set on blood,     No certain life achiev\'d by others\' death.                   Enter a MESSENGER      A fearful eye thou hast; where is that blood     That I have seen inhabit in those cheeks?     So foul a sky clears not without a storm.     Pour down thy weather-how goes all in France?   MESSENGER. From France to England. Never such a pow\'r     For any foreign preparation       Was levied in the body of a land.     The copy of your speed is learn\'d by them,     For when you should be told they do prepare,     The tidings comes that they are all arriv\'d.   KING JOHN. O, where hath our intelligence been drunk?     Where hath it slept? Where is my mother\'s care,     That such an army could be drawn in France,     And she not hear of it?   MESSENGER. My liege, her ear     Is stopp\'d with dust: the first of April died     Your noble mother; and as I hear, my lord,     The Lady Constance in a frenzy died     Three days before; but this from rumour\'s tongue     I idly heard-if true or false I know not.   KING JOHN. Withhold thy speed, dreadful occasion!     O, make a league with me, till I have pleas\'d     My discontented peers! What! mother dead!     How wildly then walks my estate in France!     Under whose conduct came those pow\'rs of France     That thou for truth giv\'st out are landed here?     MESSENGER. Under the Dauphin.   KING JOHN. Thou hast made me giddy     With these in tidings.           Enter the BASTARD and PETER OF POMFRET      Now! What says the world     To your proceedings? Do not seek to stuff     My head with more ill news, for it is fun.   BASTARD. But if you be afear\'d to hear the worst,     Then let the worst, unheard, fall on your head.   KING JOHN. Bear with me, cousin, for I was amaz\'d     Under the tide; but now I breathe again     Aloft the flood, and can give audience     To any tongue, speak it of what it will.   BASTARD. How I have sped among the clergymen     The sums I have collected shall express.     But as I travell\'d hither through the land,     I find the people strangely fantasied;     Possess\'d with rumours, full of idle dreams.       Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear;     And here\'s a prophet that I brought with me     From forth the streets of Pomfret, whom I found     With many hundreds treading on his heels;     To whom he sung, in rude harsh-sounding rhymes,     That, ere the next Ascension-day at noon,     Your Highness should deliver up your crown.   KING JOHN. Thou idle dreamer, wherefore didst thou so?   PETER. Foreknowing that the truth will fall out so.   KING JOHN. Hubert, away with him; imprison him;     And on that day at noon whereon he says     I shall yield up my crown let him be hang\'d.     Deliver him to safety; and return,     For I must use thee.                                                Exit HUBERT with PETER     O my gentle cousin,     Hear\'st thou the news abroad, who are arriv\'d?   BASTARD. The French, my lord; men\'s mouths are full of it;     Besides, I met Lord Bigot and Lord Salisbury,     With eyes as red as new-enkindled fire,       And others more, going to seek the grave     Of Arthur, whom they say is kill\'d to-night     On your suggestion.   KING JOHN. Gentle kinsman, go     And thrust thyself into their companies.     I have a way to will their loves again;     Bring them before me.   BASTARD. I Will seek them out.   KING JOHN. Nay, but make haste; the better foot before.     O, let me have no subject enemies     When adverse foreigners affright my towns     With dreadful pomp of stout invasion!     Be Mercury, set feathers to thy heels,     And fly like thought from them to me again.   BASTARD. The spirit of the time shall teach me speed.   KING JOHN. Spoke like a sprightful noble gentleman.                                                          Exit BASTARD     Go after him; for he perhaps shall need     Some messenger betwixt me and the peers;     And be thou he.     MESSENGER. With all my heart, my liege.                        Exit   KING JOHN. My mother dead!                     Re-enter HUBERT    HUBERT. My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night;     Four fixed, and the fifth did whirl about     The other four in wondrous motion.   KING JOHN. Five moons!   HUBERT. Old men and beldams in the streets     Do prophesy upon it dangerously;     Young Arthur\'s death is common in their mouths;     And when they talk of him, they shake their heads,     And whisper one another in the ear;     And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer\'s wrist,     Whilst he that hears makes fearful action     With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes.     I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,     The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,     With open mouth swallowing a tailor\'s news;       Who, with his shears and measure in his hand,     Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste     Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet,     Told of a many thousand warlike French     That were embattailed and rank\'d in Kent.     Another lean unwash\'d artificer     Cuts off his tale, and talks of Arthur\'s death.   KING JOHN. Why seek\'st thou to possess me with these fears?     Why urgest thou so oft young Arthur\'s death?     Thy hand hath murd\'red him. I had a mighty cause     To wish him dead, but thou hadst none to kill him.   HUBERT. No had, my lord! Why, did you not provoke me?   KING JOHN. It is the curse of kings to be attended     By slaves that take their humours for a warrant     To break within the bloody house of life,     And on the winking of authority     To understand a law; to know the meaning     Of dangerous majesty, when perchance it frowns     More upon humour than advis\'d respect.   HUBERT. Here is your hand and seal for what I did.     KING JOHN. O, when the last account \'twixt heaven and earth     Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal     Witness against us to damnation!     How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds     Make deeds ill done! Hadst not thou been by,     A fellow by the hand of nature mark\'d,     Quoted and sign\'d to do a deed of shame,     This murder had not come into my mind;     But, taking note of thy abhorr\'d aspect,     Finding thee fit for bloody villainy,     Apt, liable to be employ\'d in danger,     I faintly broke with thee of Arthur\'s death;     And thou, to be endeared to a king,     Made it no conscience to destroy a prince.   HUBERT. My lord-   KING JOHN. Hadst thou but shook thy head or made pause,     When I spake darkly what I purposed,     Or turn\'d an eye of doubt upon my face,     As bid me tell my tale in express words,     Deep shame had struck me dumb, made me break off,       And those thy fears might have wrought fears in me.     But thou didst understand me by my signs,     And didst in signs again parley with sin;     Yea, without stop, didst let thy heart consent,     And consequently thy rude hand to act     The deed which both our tongues held vile to name.     Out of my sight, and never see me more!     My nobles leave me; and my state is braved,     Even at my gates, with ranks of foreign pow\'rs;     Nay, in the body of the fleshly land,     This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath,     Hostility and civil tumult reigns     Between my conscience and my cousin\'s death.   HUBERT. Arm you against your other enemies,     I\'ll make a peace between your soul and you.     Young Arthur is alive. This hand of mine     Is yet a maiden and an innocent hand,     Not painted with the crimson spots of blood.     Within this bosom never ent\'red yet     The dreadful motion of a murderous thought       And you have slander\'d nature in my form,     Which, howsoever rude exteriorly,     Is yet the cover of a fairer mind     Than to be butcher of an innocent child.   KING JOHN. Doth Arthur live? O, haste thee to the peers,     Throw this report on their incensed rage     And make them tame to their obedience!     Forgive the comment that my passion made     Upon thy feature; for my rage was blind,     And foul imaginary eyes of blood     Presented thee more hideous than thou art.     O, answer not; but to my closet bring     The angry lords with all expedient haste.     I conjure thee but slowly; run more fast.                  Exeunt     SCENE 3.  England. Before the castle  Enter ARTHUR, on the walls    ARTHUR. The wall is high, and yet will I leap down.     Good ground, be pitiful and hurt me not!     There\'s few or none do know me; if they did,     This ship-boy\'s semblance hath disguis\'d me quite.     I am afraid; and yet I\'ll venture it.     If I get down and do not break my limbs,     I\'ll find a thousand shifts to get away.     As good to die and go, as die and stay.              [Leaps down]     O me! my uncle\'s spirit is in these stones.     Heaven take my soul, and England keep my bones!     [Dies]            Enter PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, and BIGOT    SALISBURY. Lords, I will meet him at Saint Edmundsbury;     It is our safety, and we must embrace       This gentle offer of the perilous time.   PEMBROKE. Who brought that letter from the Cardinal?   SALISBURY. The Count Melun, a noble lord of France,     Whose private with me of the Dauphin\'s love     Is much more general than these lines import.   BIGOT. To-morrow morning let us meet him then.   SALISBURY. Or rather then set forward; for \'twill be     Two long days\' journey, lords, or ere we meet.                   Enter the BASTARD    BASTARD. Once more to-day well met, distemper\'d lords!     The King by me requests your presence straight.   SALISBURY. The King hath dispossess\'d himself of us.     We will not line his thin bestained cloak     With our pure honours, nor attend the foot     That leaves the print of blood where\'er it walks.     Return and tell him so. We know the worst.   BASTARD. Whate\'er you think, good words, I think, were best.   SALISBURY. Our griefs, and not our manners, reason now.     BASTARD. But there is little reason in your grief;     Therefore \'twere reason you had manners now.   PEMBROKE. Sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege.   BASTARD. \'Tis true-to hurt his master, no man else.   SALISBURY. This is the prison. What is he lies here?   PEMBROKE. O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty!     The earth had not a hole to hide this deed.   SALISBURY. Murder, as hating what himself hath done,     Doth lay it open to urge on revenge.   BIGOT. Or, when he doom\'d this beauty to a grave,     Found it too precious-princely for a grave.   SALISBURY. Sir Richard, what think you? Have you beheld,     Or have you read or heard, or could you think?     Or do you almost think, although you see,     That you do see? Could thought, without this object,     Form such another? This is the very top,     The height, the crest, or crest unto the crest,     Of murder\'s arms; this is the bloodiest shame,     The wildest savagery, the vilest stroke,     That ever wall-ey\'d wrath or staring rage       Presented to the tears of soft remorse.   PEMBROKE. All murders past do stand excus\'d in this;     And this, so sole and so unmatchable,     Shall give a holiness, a purity,     To the yet unbegotten sin of times,     And prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest,     Exampled by this heinous spectacle.   BASTARD. It is a damned and a bloody work;     The graceless action of a heavy hand,     If that it be the work of any hand.   SALISBURY. If that it be the work of any hand!     We had a kind of light what would ensue.     It is the shameful work of Hubert\'s hand;     The practice and the purpose of the King;     From whose obedience I forbid my soul     Kneeling before this ruin of sweet life,     And breathing to his breathless excellence     The incense of a vow, a holy vow,     Never to taste the pleasures of the world,     Never to be infected with delight,       Nor conversant with ease and idleness,     Till I have set a glory to this hand     By giving it the worship of revenge.   PEMBROKE. and BIGOT. Our souls religiously confirm thy words.                       Enter HUBERT    HUBERT. Lords, I am hot with haste in seeking you.     Arthur doth live; the King hath sent for you.   SALISBURY. O, he is bold, and blushes not at death!     Avaunt, thou hateful villain, get thee gone!   HUBERT. I am no villain.   SALISBURY. Must I rob the law?                  [Drawing his sword]   BASTARD. Your sword is bright, sir; put it up again.   SALISBURY. Not till I sheathe it in a murderer\'s skin.   HUBERT. Stand back, Lord Salisbury, stand back, I say;     By heaven, I think my sword\'s as sharp as yours.     I would not have you, lord, forget yourself,     Nor tempt the danger of my true defence;     Lest I, by marking of your rage, forget       Your worth, your greatness and nobility.   BIGOT. Out, dunghill! Dar\'st thou brave a nobleman?   HUBERT. Not for my life; but yet I dare defend     My innocent life against an emperor.   SALISBURY. Thou art a murderer.   HUBERT. Do not prove me so.     Yet I am none. Whose tongue soe\'er speaks false,     Not truly speaks; who speaks not truly, lies.   PEMBROKE. Cut him to pieces.   BASTARD. Keep the peace, I say.   SALISBURY. Stand by, or I shall gall you, Faulconbridge.   BASTARD. Thou wert better gall the devil, Salisbury.     If thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot,     Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame,     I\'ll strike thee dead. Put up thy sword betime;     Or I\'ll so maul you and your toasting-iron     That you shall think the devil is come from hell.   BIGOT. What wilt thou do, renowned Faulconbridge?     Second a villain and a murderer?   HUBERT. Lord Bigot, I am none.     BIGOT. Who kill\'d this prince?   HUBERT. \'Tis not an hour since I left him well.     I honour\'d him, I lov\'d him, and will weep     My date of life out for his sweet life\'s loss.   SALISBURY. Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes,     For villainy is not without such rheum;     And he, long traded in it, makes it seem     Like rivers of remorse and innocency.     Away with me, all you whose souls abhor     Th\' uncleanly savours of a slaughter-house;     For I am stifled with this smell of sin.   BIGOT. Away toward Bury, to the Dauphin there!   PEMBROKE. There tell the King he may inquire us out.                                                          Exeunt LORDS   BASTARD. Here\'s a good world! Knew you of this fair work?     Beyond the infinite and boundless reach     Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death,     Art thou damn\'d, Hubert.   HUBERT. Do but hear me, sir.   BASTARD. Ha! I\'ll tell thee what:       Thou\'rt damn\'d as black-nay, nothing is so black-     Thou art more deep damn\'d than Prince Lucifer;     There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell     As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.   HUBERT. Upon my soul-   BASTARD. If thou didst but consent     To this most cruel act, do but despair;     And if thou want\'st a cord, the smallest thread     That ever spider twisted from her womb     Will serve to strangle thee; a rush will be a beam     To hang thee on; or wouldst thou drown thyself,     Put but a little water in a spoon     And it shall be as all the ocean,     Enough to stifle such a villain up     I do suspect thee very grievously.   HUBERT. If I in act, consent, or sin of thought,     Be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath     Which was embounded in this beauteous clay,     Let hell want pains enough to torture me!     I left him well.     BASTARD. Go, bear him in thine arms.     I am amaz\'d, methinks, and lose my way     Among the thorns and dangers of this world.     How easy dost thou take all England up!     From forth this morsel of dead royalty     The life, the right, and truth of all this realm     Is fled to heaven; and England now is left     To tug and scamble, and to part by th\' teeth     The unowed interest of proud-swelling state.     Now for the bare-pick\'d bone of majesty     Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest     And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace;     Now powers from home and discontents at home     Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits,     As doth a raven on a sick-fall\'n beast,     The imminent decay of wrested pomp.     Now happy he whose cloak and cincture can     Hold out this tempest. Bear away that child,     And follow me with speed. I\'ll to the King;     A thousand businesses are brief in hand,       And heaven itself doth frown upon the land.                Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE 1. England. KING JOHN\'S palace  Enter KING JOHN, PANDULPH, and attendants    KING JOHN. Thus have I yielded up into your hand     The circle of my glory.   PANDULPH.  [Gives back the crown]  Take again     From this my hand, as holding of the Pope,     Your sovereign greatness and authority.   KING JOHN. Now keep your holy word; go meet the French;     And from his Holiness use all your power     To stop their marches fore we are inflam\'d.     Our discontented counties do revolt;     Our people quarrel with obedience,     Swearing allegiance and the love of soul     To stranger blood, to foreign royalty.     This inundation of mistemp\'red humour     Rests by you only to be qualified.     Then pause not; for the present time\'s so sick     That present med\'cine must be minist\'red       Or overthrow incurable ensues.   PANDULPH. It was my breath that blew this tempest up,     Upon your stubborn usage of the Pope;     But since you are a gentle convertite,     My tongue shall hush again this storm of war     And make fair weather in your blust\'ring land.     On this Ascension-day, remember well,     Upon your oath of service to the Pope,     Go I to make the French lay down their arms.                 Exit   KING JOHN. Is this Ascension-day? Did not the prophet     Say that before Ascension-day at noon     My crown I should give off? Even so I have.     I did suppose it should be on constraint;     But, heaven be thank\'d, it is but voluntary.                   Enter the BASTARD    BASTARD. All Kent hath yielded; nothing there holds out     But Dover Castle. London hath receiv\'d,     Like a kind host, the Dauphin and his powers.       Your nobles will not hear you, but are gone     To offer service to your enemy;     And wild amazement hurries up and down     The little number of your doubtful friends.   KING JOHN. Would not my lords return to me again     After they heard young Arthur was alive?     BASTARD. They found him dead, and cast into the streets,     An empty casket, where the jewel of life     By some damn\'d hand was robbed and ta\'en away.   KING JOHN. That villain Hubert told me he did live.   BASTARD. So, on my soul, he did, for aught he knew.     But wherefore do you droop? Why look you sad?     Be great in act, as you have been in thought;     Let not the world see fear and sad distrust     Govern the motion of a kingly eye.     Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire;     Threaten the threat\'ner, and outface the brow     Of bragging horror; so shall inferior eyes,     That borrow their behaviours from the great,     Grow great by your example and put on       The dauntless spirit of resolution.     Away, and glister like the god of war     When he intendeth to become the field;     Show boldness and aspiring confidence.     What, shall they seek the lion in his den,     And fright him there, and make him tremble there?     O, let it not be said! Forage, and run     To meet displeasure farther from the doors     And grapple with him ere he come so nigh.   KING JOHN. The legate of the Pope hath been with me,     And I have made a happy peace with him;     And he hath promis\'d to dismiss the powers     Led by the Dauphin.   BASTARD. O inglorious league!     Shall we, upon the footing of our land,     Send fair-play orders, and make compromise,     Insinuation, parley, and base truce,     To arms invasive? Shall a beardless boy,     A cock\'red silken wanton, brave our fields     And flesh his spirit in a warlike soil,       Mocking the air with colours idly spread,     And find no check? Let us, my liege, to arms.     Perchance the Cardinal cannot make your peace;     Or, if he do, let it at least be said     They saw we had a purpose of defence.   KING JOHN. Have thou the ordering of this present time.   BASTARD. Away, then, with good courage!     Yet, I know     Our party may well meet a prouder foe.                     Exeunt     SCENE 2. England. The DAUPHIN\'S camp at Saint Edmundsbury  Enter, in arms, LEWIS, SALISBURY, MELUN, PEMBROKE, BIGOT, and soldiers    LEWIS. My Lord Melun, let this be copied out     And keep it safe for our remembrance;     Return the precedent to these lords again,     That, having our fair order written down,     Both they and we, perusing o\'er these notes,     May know wherefore we took the sacrament,     And keep our faiths firm and inviolable.   SALISBURY. Upon our sides it never shall be broken.     And, noble Dauphin, albeit we swear     A voluntary zeal and an unurg\'d faith     To your proceedings; yet, believe me, Prince,     I am not glad that such a sore of time     Should seek a plaster by contemn\'d revolt,     And heal the inveterate canker of one wound     By making many. O, it grieves my soul       That I must draw this metal from my side     To be a widow-maker! O, and there     Where honourable rescue and defence     Cries out upon the name of Salisbury!     But such is the infection of the time     That, for the health and physic of our right,     We cannot deal but with the very hand     Of stern injustice and confused wrong.     And is\'t not pity, O my grieved friends!     That we, the sons and children of this isle,     Were born to see so sad an hour as this;     Wherein we step after a stranger-march     Upon her gentle bosom, and fill up     Her enemies\' ranks-I must withdraw and weep     Upon the spot of this enforced cause-     To grace the gentry of a land remote     And follow unacquainted colours here?     What, here? O nation, that thou couldst remove!     That Neptune\'s arms, who clippeth thee about,     Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself       And grapple thee unto a pagan shore,     Where these two Christian armies might combine     The blood of malice in a vein of league,     And not to spend it so unneighbourly!   LEWIS. A noble temper dost thou show in this;     And great affections wrestling in thy bosom     Doth make an earthquake of nobility.     O, what a noble combat hast thou fought     Between compulsion and a brave respect!     Let me wipe off this honourable dew     That silverly doth progress on thy cheeks.     My heart hath melted at a lady\'s tears,     Being an ordinary inundation;     But this effusion of such manly drops,     This show\'r, blown up by tempest of the soul,     Startles mine eyes and makes me more amaz\'d     Than had I seen the vaulty top of heaven     Figur\'d quite o\'er with burning meteors.     Lift up thy brow, renowned Salisbury,     And with a great heart heave away this storm;       Commend these waters to those baby eyes     That never saw the giant world enrag\'d,     Nor met with fortune other than at feasts,     Full of warm blood, of mirth, of gossiping.     Come, come; for thou shalt thrust thy hand as deep     Into the purse of rich prosperity     As Lewis himself. So, nobles, shall you all,     That knit your sinews to the strength of mine.                  Enter PANDULPH      And even there, methinks, an angel spake:     Look where the holy legate comes apace,     To give us warrant from the hand of heaven     And on our actions set the name of right     With holy breath.   PANDULPH. Hail, noble prince of France!     The next is this: King John hath reconcil\'d     Himself to Rome; his spirit is come in,     That so stood out against the holy Church,       The great metropolis and see of Rome.     Therefore thy threat\'ning colours now wind up     And tame the savage spirit of wild war,     That, like a lion fostered up at hand,     It may lie gently at the foot of peace     And be no further harmful than in show.   LEWIS. Your Grace shall pardon me, I will not back:     I am too high-born to be propertied,     To be a secondary at control,     Or useful serving-man and instrument     To any sovereign state throughout the world.     Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars     Between this chastis\'d kingdom and myself     And brought in matter that should feed this fire;     And now \'tis far too huge to be blown out     With that same weak wind which enkindled it.     You taught me how to know the face of right,     Acquainted me with interest to this land,     Yea, thrust this enterprise into my heart;     And come ye now to tell me John hath made       His peace with Rome? What is that peace to me?     I, by the honour of my marriage-bed,     After young Arthur, claim this land for mine;     And, now it is half-conquer\'d, must I back     Because that John hath made his peace with Rome?     Am I Rome\'s slave? What penny hath Rome borne,     What men provided, what munition sent,     To underprop this action? Is \'t not I     That undergo this charge? Who else but I,     And such as to my claim are liable,     Sweat in this business and maintain this war?     Have I not heard these islanders shout out     \'Vive le roi!\' as I have bank\'d their towns?     Have I not here the best cards for the game     To will this easy match, play\'d for a crown?     And shall I now give o\'er the yielded set?     No, no, on my soul, it never shall be said.   PANDULPH. You look but on the outside of this work.   LEWIS. Outside or inside, I will not return     Till my attempt so much be glorified       As to my ample hope was promised     Before I drew this gallant head of war,     And cull\'d these fiery spirits from the world     To outlook conquest, and to will renown     Even in the jaws of danger and of death.                                                      [Trumpet sounds]     What lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?               Enter the BASTARD, attended    BASTARD. According to the fair play of the world,     Let me have audience: I am sent to speak.     My holy lord of Milan, from the King     I come, to learn how you have dealt for him;     And, as you answer, I do know the scope     And warrant limited unto my tongue.   PANDULPH. The Dauphin is too wilful-opposite,     And will not temporize with my entreaties;     He flatly says he\'ll not lay down his arms.   BASTARD. By all the blood that ever fury breath\'d,       The youth says well. Now hear our English King;     For thus his royalty doth speak in me.     He is prepar\'d, and reason too he should.     This apish and unmannerly approach,     This harness\'d masque and unadvised revel     This unhair\'d sauciness and boyish troops,     The King doth smile at; and is well prepar\'d     To whip this dwarfish war, these pigmy arms,     From out the circle of his territories.     That hand which had the strength, even at your door.     To cudgel you and make you take the hatch,     To dive like buckets in concealed wells,     To crouch in litter of your stable planks,     To lie like pawns lock\'d up in chests and trunks,     To hug with swine, to seek sweet safety out     In vaults and prisons, and to thrill and shake     Even at the crying of your nation\'s crow,     Thinking this voice an armed Englishman-     Shall that victorious hand be feebled here     That in your chambers gave you chastisement?       No. Know the gallant monarch is in arms     And like an eagle o\'er his aery tow\'rs     To souse annoyance that comes near his nest.     And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts,     You bloody Neroes, ripping up the womb     Of your dear mother England, blush for shame;     For your own ladies and pale-visag\'d maids,     Like Amazons, come tripping after drums,     Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change,     Their needles to lances, and their gentle hearts     To fierce and bloody inclination.   LEWIS. There end thy brave, and turn thy face in peace;     We grant thou canst outscold us. Fare thee well;     We hold our time too precious to be spent     With such a brabbler.   PANDULPH. Give me leave to speak.   BASTARD. No, I will speak.   LEWIS. We will attend to neither.     Strike up the drums; and let the tongue of war,     Plead for our interest and our being here.     BASTARD. Indeed, your drums, being beaten, will cry out;     And so shall you, being beaten. Do but start     And echo with the clamour of thy drum,     And even at hand a drum is ready brac\'d     That shall reverberate all as loud as thine:     Sound but another, and another shall,     As loud as thine, rattle the welkin\'s ear     And mock the deep-mouth\'d thunder; for at hand-     Not trusting to this halting legate here,     Whom he hath us\'d rather for sport than need-     Is warlike John; and in his forehead sits     A bare-ribb\'d death, whose office is this day     To feast upon whole thousands of the French.   LEWIS. Strike up our drums to find this danger out.   BASTARD. And thou shalt find it, Dauphin, do not doubt.     Exeunt     SCENE 3.  England. The field of battle  Alarums. Enter KING JOHN and HUBERT    KING JOHN. How goes the day with us? O, tell me, Hubert.   HUBERT. Badly, I fear. How fares your Majesty?   KING JOHN. This fever that hath troubled me so long     Lies heavy on me. O, my heart is sick!                    Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. My lord, your valiant kinsman, Faulconbridge,     Desires your Majesty to leave the field     And send him word by me which way you go.   KING JOHN. Tell him, toward Swinstead, to the abbey there.   MESSENGER. Be of good comfort; for the great supply     That was expected by the Dauphin here     Are wreck\'d three nights ago on Goodwin Sands;     This news was brought to Richard but even now.     The French fight coldly, and retire themselves.     KING JOHN. Ay me, this tyrant fever burns me up     And will not let me welcome this good news.     Set on toward Swinstead; to my litter straight;     Weakness possesseth me, and I am faint.                    Exeunt     SCENE 4.  England. Another part of the battlefield  Enter SALISBURY, PEMBROKE, and BIGOT    SALISBURY. I did not think the King so stor\'d with friends.   PEMBROKE. Up once again; put spirit in the French;     If they miscarry, we miscarry too.   SALISBURY. That misbegotten devil, Faulconbridge,     In spite of spite, alone upholds the day.   PEMBROKE. They say King John, sore sick, hath left the field.                   Enter MELUN, wounded    MELUN. Lead me to the revolts of England here.   SALISBURY. When we were happy we had other names.   PEMBROKE. It is the Count Melun.   SALISBURY. Wounded to death.   MELUN. Fly, noble English, you are bought and sold;     Unthread the rude eye of rebellion,     And welcome home again discarded faith.       Seek out King John, and fall before his feet;     For if the French be lords of this loud day,     He means to recompense the pains you take     By cutting off your heads. Thus hath he sworn,     And I with him, and many moe with me,     Upon the altar at Saint Edmundsbury;     Even on that altar where we swore to you     Dear amity and everlasting love.   SALISBURY. May this be possible? May this be true?   MELUN. Have I not hideous death within my view,     Retaining but a quantity of life,     Which bleeds away even as a form of wax     Resolveth from his figure \'gainst the fire?     What in the world should make me now deceive,     Since I must lose the use of all deceit?     Why should I then be false, since it is true     That I must die here, and live hence by truth?     I say again, if Lewis do will the day,     He is forsworn if e\'er those eyes of yours     Behold another day break in the east;       But even this night, whose black contagious breath     Already smokes about the burning crest     Of the old, feeble, and day-wearied sun,     Even this ill night, your breathing shall expire,     Paying the fine of rated treachery     Even with a treacherous fine of all your lives.     If Lewis by your assistance win the day.     Commend me to one Hubert, with your King;     The love of him-and this respect besides,     For that my grandsire was an Englishman-     Awakes my conscience to confess all this.     In lieu whereof, I pray you, bear me hence     From forth the noise and rumour of the field,     Where I may think the remnant of my thoughts     In peace, and part this body and my soul     With contemplation and devout desires.   SALISBURY. We do believe thee; and beshrew my soul     But I do love the favour and the form     Of this most fair occasion, by the which     We will untread the steps of damned flight,       And like a bated and retired flood,     Leaving our rankness and irregular course,     Stoop low within those bounds we have o\'erlook\'d,     And calmly run on in obedience     Even to our ocean, to great King John.     My arm shall give thee help to bear thee hence;     For I do see the cruel pangs of death     Right in thine eye. Away, my friends! New flight,     And happy newness, that intends old right.                                             Exeunt, leading off MELUN     SCENE 5.  England. The French camp  Enter LEWIS and his train    LEWIS. The sun of heaven, methought, was loath to set,     But stay\'d and made the western welkin blush,     When English measure backward their own ground     In faint retire. O, bravely came we off,     When with a volley of our needless shot,     After such bloody toil, we bid good night;     And wound our tott\'ring colours clearly up,     Last in the field and almost lords of it!                   Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. Where is my prince, the Dauphin?   LEWIS. Here; what news?   MESSENGER. The Count Melun is slain; the English lords     By his persuasion are again fall\'n off,     And your supply, which you have wish\'d so long,       Are cast away and sunk on Goodwin Sands.   LEWIS. Ah, foul shrewd news! Beshrew thy very heart!     I did not think to be so sad to-night     As this hath made me. Who was he that said     King John did fly an hour or two before     The stumbling night did part our weary pow\'rs?   MESSENGER. Whoever spoke it, it is true, my lord.   LEWIS. keep good quarter and good care to-night;     The day shall not be up so soon as I     To try the fair adventure of to-morrow.                    Exeunt     SCENE 6.  An open place wear Swinstead Abbey  Enter the BASTARD and HUBERT, severally    HUBERT. Who\'s there? Speak, ho! speak quickly, or I shoot.   BASTARD. A friend. What art thou?   HUBERT. Of the part of England.   BASTARD. Whither dost thou go?   HUBERT. What\'s that to thee? Why may I not demand     Of thine affairs as well as thou of mine?   BASTARD. Hubert, I think.   HUBERT. Thou hast a perfect thought.     I will upon all hazards well believe     Thou art my friend that know\'st my tongue so well.     Who art thou?   BASTARD. Who thou wilt. And if thou please,     Thou mayst befriend me so much as to think     I come one way of the Plantagenets.   HUBERT. Unkind remembrance! thou and eyeless night     Have done me shame. Brave soldier, pardon me       That any accent breaking from thy tongue     Should scape the true acquaintance of mine ear.   BASTARD. Come, come; sans compliment, what news abroad?   HUBERT. Why, here walk I in the black brow of night     To find you out.   BASTARD. Brief, then; and what\'s the news?   HUBERT. O, my sweet sir, news fitting to the night,     Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible.   BASTARD. Show me the very wound of this ill news;     I am no woman, I\'ll not swoon at it.   HUBERT. The King, I fear, is poison\'d by a monk;     I left him almost speechless and broke out     To acquaint you with this evil, that you might     The better arm you to the sudden time     Than if you had at leisure known of this.   BASTARD. How did he take it; who did taste to him?   HUBERT. A monk, I tell you; a resolved villain,     Whose bowels suddenly burst out. The King     Yet speaks, and peradventure may recover.   BASTARD. Who didst thou leave to tend his Majesty?     HUBERT. Why, know you not? The lords are all come back,     And brought Prince Henry in their company;     At whose request the King hath pardon\'d them,     And they are all about his Majesty.   BASTARD. Withhold thine indignation, mighty heaven,     And tempt us not to bear above our power!     I\'ll tell thee, Hubert, half my power this night,     Passing these flats, are taken by the tide-     These Lincoln Washes have devoured them;     Myself, well-mounted, hardly have escap\'d.     Away, before! conduct me to the King;     I doubt he will be dead or ere I come.                     Exeunt     SCENE 7.  The orchard at Swinstead Abbey  Enter PRINCE HENRY, SALISBURY, and BIGOT    PRINCE HENRY. It is too late; the life of all his blood     Is touch\'d corruptibly, and his pure brain.     Which some suppose the soul\'s frail dwelling-house,     Doth by the idle comments that it makes     Foretell the ending of mortality.                     Enter PEMBROKE    PEMBROKE. His Highness yet doth speak, and holds belief     That, being brought into the open air,     It would allay the burning quality     Of that fell poison which assaileth him.   PRINCE HENRY. Let him be brought into the orchard here.     Doth he still rage?                                    Exit BIGOT   PEMBROKE. He is more patient     Than when you left him; even now he sung.     PRINCE HENRY. O vanity of sickness! Fierce extremes     In their continuance will not feel themselves.     Death, having prey\'d upon the outward parts,     Leaves them invisible, and his siege is now     Against the mind, the which he pricks and wounds     With many legions of strange fantasies,     Which, in their throng and press to that last hold,     Confound themselves. \'Tis strange that death should sing.     I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan     Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,     And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings     His soul and body to their lasting rest.   SALISBURY. Be of good comfort, Prince; for you are born     To set a form upon that indigest     Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude.         Re-enter BIGOT and attendants, who bring in                 KING JOHN in a chair    KING JOHN. Ay, marry, now my soul hath elbow-room;       It would not out at windows nor at doors.     There is so hot a summer in my bosom     That all my bowels crumble up to dust.     I am a scribbled form drawn with a pen     Upon a parchment, and against this fire     Do I shrink up.   PRINCE HENRY. How fares your Majesty?   KING JOHN. Poison\'d-ill-fare! Dead, forsook, cast off;     And none of you will bid the winter come     To thrust his icy fingers in my maw,     Nor let my kingdom\'s rivers take their course     Through my burn\'d bosom, nor entreat the north     To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips     And comfort me with cold. I do not ask you much;     I beg cold comfort; and you are so strait     And so ingrateful you deny me that.   PRINCE HENRY. O that there were some virtue in my tears,     That might relieve you!   KING JOHN. The salt in them is hot.     Within me is a hell; and there the poison       Is as a fiend confin\'d to tyrannize     On unreprievable condemned blood.                   Enter the BASTARD    BASTARD. O, I am scalded with my violent motion     And spleen of speed to see your Majesty!   KING JOHN. O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye!     The tackle of my heart is crack\'d and burnt,     And all the shrouds wherewith my life should sail     Are turned to one thread, one little hair;     My heart hath one poor string to stay it by,     Which holds but till thy news be uttered;     And then all this thou seest is but a clod     And module of confounded royalty.   BASTARD. The Dauphin is preparing hitherward,     Where God He knows how we shall answer him;     For in a night the best part of my pow\'r,     As I upon advantage did remove,     Were in the Washes all unwarily       Devoured by the unexpected flood.                 [The KING dies]   SALISBURY. You breathe these dead news in as dead an ear.     My liege! my lord! But now a king-now thus.   PRINCE HENRY. Even so must I run on, and even so stop.     What surety of the world, what hope, what stay,     When this was now a king, and now is clay?   BASTARD. Art thou gone so? I do but stay behind     To do the office for thee of revenge,     And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven,     As it on earth hath been thy servant still.     Now, now, you stars that move in your right spheres,     Where be your pow\'rs? Show now your mended faiths,     And instantly return with me again     To push destruction and perpetual shame     Out of the weak door of our fainting land.     Straight let us seek, or straight we shall be sought;     The Dauphin rages at our very heels.   SALISBURY. It seems you know not, then, so much as we:     The Cardinal Pandulph is within at rest,     Who half an hour since came from the Dauphin,       And brings from him such offers of our peace     As we with honour and respect may take,     With purpose presently to leave this war.   BASTARD. He will the rather do it when he sees     Ourselves well sinewed to our defence.   SALISBURY. Nay, \'tis in a manner done already;     For many carriages he hath dispatch\'d     To the sea-side, and put his cause and quarrel     To the disposing of the Cardinal;     With whom yourself, myself, and other lords,     If you think meet, this afternoon will post     To consummate this business happily.   BASTARD. Let it be so. And you, my noble Prince,     With other princes that may best be spar\'d,     Shall wait upon your father\'s funeral.   PRINCE HENRY. At Worcester must his body be interr\'d;     For so he will\'d it.   BASTARD. Thither shall it, then;     And happily may your sweet self put on     The lineal state and glory of the land!       To whom, with all submission, on my knee     I do bequeath my faithful services     And true subjection everlastingly.   SALISBURY. And the like tender of our love we make,     To rest without a spot for evermore.   PRINCE HENRY. I have a kind soul that would give you thanks,     And knows not how to do it but with tears.   BASTARD. O, let us pay the time but needful woe,     Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.     This England never did, nor never shall,     Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,     But when it first did help to wound itself.     Now these her princes are come home again,     Come the three corners of the world in arms,     And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,     If England to itself do rest but true.                     Exeunt  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>       1599   THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR  by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae    JULIUS CAESAR, Roman statesman and general   OCTAVIUS, Triumvir after Caesar\'s death, later Augustus Caesar,     first emperor of Rome   MARK ANTONY, general and friend of Caesar, a Triumvir after his death   LEPIDUS, third member of the Triumvirate   MARCUS BRUTUS, leader of the conspiracy against Caesar   CASSIUS, instigator of the conspiracy   CASCA,          conspirator against Caesar   TREBONIUS,           "          "     "   CAIUS LIGARIUS,      "          "     "   DECIUS BRUTUS,       "          "     "   METELLUS CIMBER,     "          "     "   CINNA,               "          "     "   CALPURNIA, wife of Caesar   PORTIA, wife of Brutus   CICERO,     senator   POPILIUS,      "   POPILIUS LENA, "   FLAVIUS, tribune     MARULLUS, tribune   CATO,     supportor of Brutus   LUCILIUS,     "     "    "   TITINIUS,     "     "    "   MESSALA,      "     "    "   VOLUMNIUS,    "     "    "   ARTEMIDORUS, a teacher of rhetoric   CINNA, a poet   VARRO,     servant to Brutus   CLITUS,       "    "     "   CLAUDIO,      "    "     "   STRATO,       "    "     "   LUCIUS,       "    "     "   DARDANIUS,    "    "     "   PINDARUS, servant to Cassius   The Ghost of Caesar   A Soothsayer   A Poet   Senators, Citizens, Soldiers, Commoners, Messengers, and Servants     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: Rome, the conspirators\' camp near Sardis,  and the plains of Philippi.   ACT I. SCENE I. Rome. A street.  Enter Flavius, Marullus, and certain Commoners.    FLAVIUS. Hence, home, you idle creatures, get you home.     Is this a holiday? What, know you not,     Being mechanical, you ought not walk     Upon a laboring day without the sign     Of your profession? Speak, what trade art thou?   FIRST COMMONER. Why, sir, a carpenter.   MARULLUS. Where is thy leather apron and thy rule?     What dost thou with thy best apparel on?     You, sir, what trade are you?   SECOND COMMONER. Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am     but, as you would say, a cobbler.   MARULLUS. But what trade art thou? Answer me directly.   SECOND COMMONER. A trade, sir, that, I hope, I may use with a safe     conscience, which is indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.   MARULLUS. What trade, thou knave? Thou naughty knave, what trade?   SECOND COMMONER. Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me; yet,     if you be out, sir, I can mend you.     MARULLUS. What mean\'st thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!   SECOND COMMONER. Why, sir, cobble you.   FLAVIUS. Thou art a cobbler, art thou?   SECOND COMMONER. Truly, Sir, all that I live by is with the awl; I     meddle with no tradesman\'s matters, nor women\'s matters, but with     awl. I am indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes; when they are in     great danger, I recover them. As proper men as ever trod upon     neat\'s leather have gone upon my handiwork.   FLAVIUS. But wherefore art not in thy shop today?     Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?   SECOND COMMONER. Truly, sir, to wear out their shoes to get myself     into more work. But indeed, sir, we make holiday to see Caesar     and to rejoice in his triumph.   MARULLUS. Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home?     What tributaries follow him to Rome     To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels?     You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!     O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,     Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft     Have you climb\'d up to walls and battlements,       To towers and windows, yea, to chimney tops,     Your infants in your arms, and there have sat     The livelong day with patient expectation     To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome.     And when you saw his chariot but appear,     Have you not made an universal shout     That Tiber trembled underneath her banks     To hear the replication of your sounds     Made in her concave shores?     And do you now put on your best attire?     And do you now cull out a holiday?     And do you now strew flowers in his way     That comes in triumph over Pompey\'s blood?     Be gone!     Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,     Pray to the gods to intermit the plague     That needs must light on this ingratitude.   FLAVIUS. Go, go, good countrymen, and, for this fault,     Assemble all the poor men of your sort,     Draw them to Tiber banks, and weep your tears       Into the channel, till the lowest stream     Do kiss the most exalted shores of all.                                            Exeunt all Commoners.     See whether their basest metal be not moved;     They vanish tongue-tied in their guiltiness.     Go you down that way towards the Capitol;     This way will I. Disrobe the images     If you do find them deck\'d with ceremonies.   MARULLUS. May we do so?     You know it is the feast of Lupercal.   FLAVIUS. It is no matter; let no images     Be hung with Caesar\'s trophies. I\'ll about     And drive away the vulgar from the streets;     So do you too, where you perceive them thick.     These growing feathers pluck\'d from Caesar\'s wing     Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,     Who else would soar above the view of men     And keep us all in servile fearfulness.              Exeunt.     SCENE II. A public place.  Flourish. Enter Caesar; Antony, for the course; Calpurnia, Portia, Decius, Cicero, Brutus, Cassius, and Casca; a great crowd follows, among them a Soothsayer.    CAESAR. Calpurnia!   CASCA. Peace, ho! Caesar speaks.                                                    Music ceases.   CAESAR. Calpurnia!   CALPURNIA. Here, my lord.   CAESAR. Stand you directly in Antonio\'s way,     When he doth run his course. Antonio!   ANTONY. Caesar, my lord?   CAESAR. Forget not in your speed, Antonio,     To touch Calpurnia, for our elders say     The barren, touched in this holy chase,     Shake off their sterile curse.   ANTONY. I shall remember.     When Caesar says "Do this," it is perform\'d.   CAESAR. Set on, and leave no ceremony out.           Flourish.     SOOTHSAYER. Caesar!   CAESAR. Ha! Who calls?   CASCA. Bid every noise be still. Peace yet again!   CAESAR. Who is it in the press that calls on me?     I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music,     Cry "Caesar." Speak, Caesar is turn\'d to hear.   SOOTHSAYER. Beware the ides of March.   CAESAR. What man is that?   BRUTUS. A soothsayer you beware the ides of March.   CAESAR. Set him before me let me see his face.   CASSIUS. Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.   CAESAR. What say\'st thou to me now? Speak once again.   SOOTHSAYER. Beware the ides of March.   CAESAR. He is a dreamer; let us leave him. Pass.                       Sennet. Exeunt all but Brutus and Cassius.   CASSIUS. Will you go see the order of the course?   BRUTUS. Not I.   CASSIUS. I pray you, do.   BRUTUS. I am not gamesome; I do lack some part     Of that quick spirit that is in Antony.       Let me not hinder, Cassius, your desires;     I\'ll leave you.   CASSIUS. Brutus, I do observe you now of late;     I have not from your eyes that gentleness     And show of love as I was wont to have;     You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand     Over your friend that loves you.   BRUTUS. Cassius,     Be not deceived; if I have veil\'d my look,     I turn the trouble of my countenance     Merely upon myself. Vexed I am     Of late with passions of some difference,     Conceptions only proper to myself,     Which give some soil perhaps to my behaviors;     But let not therefore my good friends be grieved-     Among which number, Cassius, be you one-     Nor construe any further my neglect     Than that poor Brutus with himself at war     Forgets the shows of love to other men.   CASSIUS. Then, Brutus, I have much mistook your passion,       By means whereof this breast of mine hath buried     Thoughts of great value, worthy cogitations.     Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?   BRUTUS. No, Cassius, for the eye sees not itself     But by reflection, by some other things.   CASSIUS. \'Tis just,     And it is very much lamented, Brutus,     That you have no such mirrors as will turn     Your hidden worthiness into your eye     That you might see your shadow. I have heard     Where many of the best respect in Rome,     Except immortal Caesar, speaking of Brutus     And groaning underneath this age\'s yoke,     Have wish\'d that noble Brutus had his eyes.   BRUTUS. Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius,     That you would have me seek into myself     For that which is not in me?   CASSIUS. Therefore, good Brutus, be prepared to hear,     And since you know you cannot see yourself     So well as by reflection, I your glass       Will modestly discover to yourself     That of yourself which you yet know not of.     And be not jealous on me, gentle Brutus;     Were I a common laugher, or did use     To stale with ordinary oaths my love     To every new protester, if you know     That I do fawn on men and hug them hard     And after scandal them, or if you know     That I profess myself in banqueting     To all the rout, then hold me dangerous.                                              Flourish and shout.   BRUTUS. What means this shouting? I do fear the people     Choose Caesar for their king.   CASSIUS. Ay, do you fear it?     Then must I think you would not have it so.   BRUTUS. I would not, Cassius, yet I love him well.     But wherefore do you hold me here so long?     What is it that you would impart to me?     If it be aught toward the general good,     Set honor in one eye and death i\' the other       And I will look on both indifferently.     For let the gods so speed me as I love     The name of honor more than I fear death.   CASSIUS. I know that virtue to be in you, Brutus,     As well as I do know your outward favor.     Well, honor is the subject of my story.     I cannot tell what you and other men     Think of this life, but, for my single self,     I had as lief not be as live to be     In awe of such a thing as I myself.     I was born free as Caesar, so were you;     We both have fed as well, and we can both     Endure the winter\'s cold as well as he.     For once, upon a raw and gusty day,     The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores,     Caesar said to me, "Darest thou, Cassius, now     Leap in with me into this angry flood     And swim to yonder point?" Upon the word,     Accoutred as I was, I plunged in     And bade him follow. So indeed he did.       The torrent roar\'d, and we did buffet it     With lusty sinews, throwing it aside     And stemming it with hearts of controversy.     But ere we could arrive the point proposed,     Caesar cried, "Help me, Cassius, or I sink!     I, as Aeneas our great ancestor     Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder     The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber     Did I the tired Caesar. And this man     Is now become a god, and Cassius is     A wretched creature and must bend his body     If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.     He had a fever when he was in Spain,     And when the fit was on him I did mark     How he did shake. \'Tis true, this god did shake;     His coward lips did from their color fly,     And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world     Did lose his luster. I did hear him groan.     Ay, and that tongue of his that bade the Romans     Mark him and write his speeches in their books,       Alas, it cried, "Give me some drink, Titinius,"     As a sick girl. Ye gods! It doth amaze me     A man of such a feeble temper should     So get the start of the majestic world     And bear the palm alone. Shout.                    Flourish.   BRUTUS. Another general shout!     I do believe that these applauses are     For some new honors that are heap\'d on Caesar.   CASSIUS. Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world     Like a Colossus, and we petty men     Walk under his huge legs and peep about     To find ourselves dishonorable graves.     Men at some time are masters of their fates:     The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,     But in ourselves that we are underlings.     Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that "Caesar"?     Why should that name be sounded more than yours?     Write them together, yours is as fair a name;     Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;     Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with \'em,       "Brutus" will start a spirit as soon as "Caesar."     Now, in the names of all the gods at once,     Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed     That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!     Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!     When went there by an age since the great flood     But it was famed with more than with one man?     When could they say till now that talk\'d of Rome     That her wide walls encompass\'d but one man?     Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough,     When there is in it but one only man.     O, you and I have heard our fathers say     There was a Brutus once that would have brook\'d     The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome     As easily as a king.   BRUTUS. That you do love me, I am nothing jealous;     What you would work me to, I have some aim.     How I have thought of this and of these times,     I shall recount hereafter; for this present,     I would not, so with love I might entreat you,       Be any further moved. What you have said     I will consider; what you have to say     I will with patience hear, and find a time     Both meet to hear and answer such high things.     Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this:     Brutus had rather be a villager     Than to repute himself a son of Rome     Under these hard conditions as this time     Is like to lay upon us.   CASSIUS. I am glad that my weak words     Have struck but thus much show of fire from Brutus.              Re-enter Caesar and his Train.    BRUTUS. The games are done, and Caesar is returning.   CASSIUS. As they pass by, pluck Casca by the sleeve,     And he will, after his sour fashion, tell you     What hath proceeded worthy note today.   BRUTUS. I will do so. But, look you, Cassius,     The angry spot doth glow on Caesar\'s brow,       And all the rest look like a chidden train:     Calpurnia\'s cheek is pale, and Cicero     Looks with such ferret and such fiery eyes     As we have seen him in the Capitol,     Being cross\'d in conference by some senators.   CASSIUS. Casca will tell us what the matter is.   CAESAR. Antonio!   ANTONY. Caesar?   CAESAR. Let me have men about me that are fat,     Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o\' nights:     Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;     He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.   ANTONY. Fear him not, Caesar; he\'s not dangerous;     He is a noble Roman and well given.   CAESAR. Would he were fatter! But I fear him not,     Yet if my name were liable to fear,     I do not know the man I should avoid     So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much,     He is a great observer, and he looks     Quite through the deeds of men. He loves no plays,       As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;     Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort     As if he mock\'d himself and scorn\'d his spirit     That could be moved to smile at anything.     Such men as he be never at heart\'s ease     Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,     And therefore are they very dangerous.     I rather tell thee what is to be fear\'d     Than what I fear, for always I am Caesar.     Come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf,     And tell me truly what thou think\'st of him.               Sennet. Exeunt Caesar and all his Train but Casca.   CASCA. You pull\'d me by the cloak; would you speak with me?   BRUTUS. Ay, Casca, tell us what hath chanced today     That Caesar looks so sad.   CASCA. Why, you were with him, were you not?   BRUTUS. I should not then ask Casca what had chanced.   CASCA. Why, there was a crown offered him, and being offered him,      he put it by with the back of his hand, thus, and then the      people fell ashouting.     BRUTUS. What was the second noise for?   CASCA. Why, for that too.   CASSIUS. They shouted thrice. What was the last cry for?   CASCA. Why, for that too.   BRUTUS. Was the crown offered him thrice?   CASCA. Ay, marry, wast, and he put it by thrice, every time gentler     than other, and at every putting by mine honest neighbors     shouted.   CASSIUS. Who offered him the crown?   CASCA. Why, Antony.   BRUTUS. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.   CASCA. I can as well be hang\'d as tell the manner of it. It was     mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a     crown (yet \'twas not a crown neither, \'twas one of these     coronets) and, as I told you, he put it by once. But for all     that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered     it to him again; then he put it by again. But, to my thinking, he     was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it     the third time; he put it the third time by; and still as he     refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chopped hands       and threw up their sweaty nightcaps and uttered such a deal of     stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown that it had     almost choked Caesar, for he swounded and fell down at it. And     for mine own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips     and receiving the bad air.   CASSIUS. But, soft, I pray you, what, did Caesars wound?   CASCA. He fell down in the marketplace and foamed at mouth and was     speechless.   BRUTUS. \'Tis very like. He hath the falling sickness.   CASSIUS. No, Caesar hath it not, but you, and I,     And honest Casca, we have the falling sickness.   CASCA. I know not what you mean by that, but I am sure Caesar fell     down. If the tagrag people did not clap him and hiss him     according as he pleased and displeased them, as they use to do     the players in the theatre, I am no true man.   BRUTUS. What said he when he came unto himself?   CASCA. Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the common     herd was glad he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his doublet     and offered them his throat to cut. An had been a man of any     occupation, if I would not have taken him at a word, I would I       might go to hell among the rogues. And so he fell. When he came     to himself again, he said, if he had done or said anything amiss,     he desired their worships to think it was his infirmity. Three or     four wenches where I stood cried, "Alas, good soul!" and forgave     him with all their hearts. But there\'s no heed to be taken of     them; if Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done     no less.   BRUTUS. And after that he came, thus sad, away?   CASCA. Ay.   CASSIUS. Did Cicero say anything?   CASCA. Ay, he spoke Greek.   CASSIUS. To what effect?   CASCA. Nay, an I tell you that, I\'ll ne\'er look you i\' the face     again; but those that understood him smiled at one another and     shook their heads; but for mine own part, it was Greek to me. I     could tell you more news too: Marullus and Flavius, for pulling     scarfs off Caesar\'s images, are put to silence. Fare you well.     There was more foolery yet, if could remember it.   CASSIUS. Will you sup with me tonight, Casca?   CASCA. No, I am promised forth.     CASSIUS. Will you dine with me tomorrow?   CASCA. Ay, if I be alive, and your mind hold, and your dinner worth     the eating.   CASSIUS. Good, I will expect you.   CASCA. Do so, farewell, both.                            Exit.   BRUTUS. What a blunt fellow is this grown to be!     He was quick mettle when he went to school.   CASSIUS. So is he now in execution     Of any bold or noble enterprise,     However he puts on this tardy form.     This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,     Which gives men stomach to digest his words     With better appetite.   BRUTUS. And so it is. For this time I will leave you.     Tomorrow, if you please to speak with me,     I will come home to you, or, if you will,     Come home to me and I will wait for you.   CASSIUS. I will do so. Till then, think of the world.                                                     Exit Brutus.     Well, Brutus, thou art noble; yet, I see       Thy honorable mettle may be wrought     From that it is disposed; therefore it is meet     That noble minds keep ever with their likes;     For who so firm that cannot be seduced?     Caesar doth bear me hard, but he loves Brutus.     If I were Brutus now and he were Cassius,     He should not humor me. I will this night,     In several hands, in at his windows throw,     As if they came from several citizens,     Writings, all tending to the great opinion     That Rome holds of his name, wherein obscurely     Caesar\'s ambition shall be glanced at.     And after this let Caesar seat him sure;     For we will shake him, or worse days endure.           Exit.     SCENE III. A street. Thunder and lightning.  Enter, from opposite sides, Casca, with his sword drawn, and Cicero.    CICERO. Good even, Casca. Brought you Caesar home?     Why are you breathless, and why stare you so?   CASCA. Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth     Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero,     I have seen tempests when the scolding winds     Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen     The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam     To be exalted with the threatening clouds,     But never till tonight, never till now,     Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.     Either there is a civil strife in heaven,     Or else the world too saucy with the gods     Incenses them to send destruction.   CICERO. Why, saw you anything more wonderful?   CASCA. A common slave- you know him well by sight-     Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn       Like twenty torches join\'d, and yet his hand     Not sensible of fire remain\'d unscorch\'d.     Besides- I ha\' not since put up my sword-     Against the Capitol I met a lion,     Who glaz\'d upon me and went surly by     Without annoying me. And there were drawn     Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women     Transformed with their fear, who swore they saw     Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.     And yesterday the bird of night did sit     Even at noonday upon the marketplace,     Howling and shrieking. When these prodigies     Do so conjointly meet, let not men say     "These are their reasons; they are natural":     For I believe they are portentous things     Unto the climate that they point upon.   CICERO. Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time.     But men may construe things after their fashion,     Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.     Comes Caesar to the Capitol tomorrow?     CASCA. He doth, for he did bid Antonio     Send word to you he would be there tomorrow.   CICERO. Good then, Casca. This disturbed sky     Is not to walk in.   CASCA. Farewell, Cicero.                          Exit Cicero.                          Enter Cassius.    CASSIUS. Who\'s there?   CASCA. A Roman.   CASSIUS. Casca, by your voice.   CASCA. Your ear is good. Cassius, what night is this!   CASSIUS. A very pleasing night to honest men.   CASCA. Who ever knew the heavens menace so?   CASSIUS. Those that have known the earth so full of faults.     For my part, I have walk\'d about the streets,     Submitting me unto the perilous night,     And thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,     Have bared my bosom to the thunderstone;     And when the cross blue lightning seem\'d to open       The breast of heaven, I did present myself     Even in the aim and very flash of it.   CASCA. But wherefore did you so much tempt the heavens?     It is the part of men to fear and tremble     When the most mighty gods by tokens send     Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.   CASSIUS. You are dull, Casca, and those sparks of life     That should be in a Roman you do want,     Or else you use not. You look pale and gaze     And put on fear and cast yourself in wonder     To see the strange impatience of the heavens.     But if you would consider the true cause     Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts,     Why birds and beasts from quality and kind,     Why old men, fools, and children calculate,     Why all these things change from their ordinance,     Their natures, and preformed faculties     To monstrous quality, why, you shall find     That heaven hath infused them with these spirits     To make them instruments of fear and warning       Unto some monstrous state.     Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man     Most like this dreadful night,     That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars     As doth the lion in the Capitol,     A man no mightier than thyself or me     In personal action, yet prodigious grown     And fearful, as these strange eruptions are.   CASCA. \'Tis Caesar that you mean, is it not, Cassius?   CASSIUS. Let it be who it is, for Romans now     Have thews and limbs like to their ancestors.     But, woe the while! Our fathers\' minds are dead,     And we are govern\'d with our mothers\' spirits;     Our yoke and sufferance show us womanish.   CASCA. Indeed they say the senators tomorrow     Mean to establish Caesar as a king,     And he shall wear his crown by sea and land     In every place save here in Italy.   CASSIUS. I know where I will wear this dagger then:     Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius.       Therein, ye gods, you make the weak most strong;     Therein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat.     Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,     Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron     Can be retentive to the strength of spirit;     But life, being weary of these worldly bars,     Never lacks power to dismiss itself.     If I know this, know all the world besides,     That part of tyranny that I do bear     I can shake off at pleasure.                  Thunder still.   CASCA. So can I.     So every bondman in his own hand bears     The power to cancel his captivity.   CASSIUS. And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?     Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf     But that he sees the Romans are but sheep.     He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.     Those that with haste will make a mighty fire     Begin it with weak straws. What trash is Rome,     What rubbish, and what offal, when it serves       For the base matter to illuminate     So vile a thing as Caesar? But, O grief,     Where hast thou led me? I perhaps speak this     Before a willing bondman; then I know     My answer must be made. But I am arm\'d,     And dangers are to me indifferent.   CASCA. You speak to Casca, and to such a man     That is no fleering tell-tale. Hold, my hand.     Be factious for redress of all these griefs,     And I will set this foot of mine as far     As who goes farthest.   CASSIUS. There\'s a bargain made.     Now know you, Casca, I have moved already     Some certain of the noblest-minded Romans     To undergo with me an enterprise     Of honorable-dangerous consequence;     And I do know by this, they stay for me     In Pompey\'s Porch. For now, this fearful night,     There is no stir or walking in the streets,     And the complexion of the element       In favor\'s like the work we have in hand,     Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible.                         Enter Cinna.    CASCA. Stand close awhile, for here comes one in haste.   CASSIUS. \'Tis Cinna, I do know him by his gait;     He is a friend. Cinna, where haste you so?   CINNA. To find out you. Who\'s that? Metellus Cimber?   CASSIUS. No, it is Casca, one incorporate     To our attempts. Am I not stay\'d for, Cinna?   CINNA. I am glad on\'t. What a fearful night is this!     There\'s two or three of us have seen strange sights.   CASSIUS. Am I not stay\'d for? Tell me.   CINNA. Yes, you are.     O Cassius, if you could     But win the noble Brutus to our party-   CASSIUS. Be you content. Good Cinna, take this paper,     And look you lay it in the praetor\'s chair,     Where Brutus may but find it; and throw this       In at his window; set this up with wax     Upon old Brutus\' statue. All this done,     Repair to Pompey\'s Porch, where you shall find us.     Is Decius Brutus and Trebonius there?   CINNA. All but Metellus Cimber, and he\'s gone     To seek you at your house. Well, I will hie     And so bestow these papers as you bade me.   CASSIUS. That done, repair to Pompey\'s Theatre.                                                      Exit Cinna.     Come, Casca, you and I will yet ere day     See Brutus at his house. Three parts of him     Is ours already, and the man entire     Upon the next encounter yields him ours.   CASCA. O, he sits high in all the people\'s hearts,     And that which would appear offense in us,     His countenance, like richest alchemy,     Will change to virtue and to worthiness.   CASSIUS. Him and his worth and our great need of him     You have right well conceited. Let us go,     For it is after midnight, and ere day       We will awake him and be sure of him.                Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I.  Enter Brutus in his orchard.    BRUTUS. What, Lucius, ho!     I cannot, by the progress of the stars,     Give guess how near to day. Lucius, I say!     I would it were my fault to sleep so soundly.     When, Lucius, when? Awake, I say! What, Lucius!                              Enter Lucius.    LUCIUS. Call\'d you, my lord?   BRUTUS. Get me a taper in my study, Lucius.     When it is lighted, come and call me here.   LUCIUS. I will, my lord.                                 Exit.   BRUTUS. It must be by his death, and, for my part,     I know no personal cause to spurn at him,     But for the general. He would be crown\'d:     How that might change his nature, there\'s the question.     It is the bright day that brings forth the adder     And that craves wary walking. Crown him that,       And then, I grant, we put a sting in him     That at his will he may do danger with.     The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins     Remorse from power, and, to speak truth of Caesar,     I have not known when his affections sway\'d     More than his reason. But \'tis a common proof     That lowliness is young ambition\'s ladder,     Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;     But when he once attains the upmost round,     He then unto the ladder turns his back,     Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees     By which he did ascend. So Caesar may;     Then, lest he may, prevent. And, since the quarrel     Will bear no color for the thing he is,     Fashion it thus, that what he is, augmented,     Would run to these and these extremities;     And therefore think him as a serpent\'s egg     Which hatch\'d would as his kind grow mischievous,     And kill him in the shell.                            Re-enter Lucius.    LUCIUS. The taper burneth in your closet, sir.     Searching the window for a flint I found     This paper thus seal\'d up, and I am sure     It did not lie there when I went to bed.                                            Gives him the letter.   BRUTUS. Get you to bed again, it is not day.     Is not tomorrow, boy, the ides of March?   LUCIUS. I know not, sir.   BRUTUS. Look in the calendar and bring me word.   LUCIUS. I will, sir.                                     Exit.   BRUTUS. The exhalations whizzing in the air     Give so much light that I may read by them.                                      Opens the letter and reads.     "Brutus, thou sleep\'st: awake and see thyself!     Shall Rome, etc. Speak, strike, redress!"      "Brutus, thou sleep\'st: awake!"     Such instigations have been often dropp\'d       Where I have took them up.     "Shall Rome, etc." Thus must I piece it out.     Shall Rome stand under one man\'s awe? What, Rome?     My ancestors did from the streets of Rome     The Tarquin drive, when he was call\'d a king.     "Speak, strike, redress!" Am I entreated     To speak and strike? O Rome, I make thee promise,     If the redress will follow, thou receivest     Thy full petition at the hand of Brutus!                          Re-enter Lucius.    LUCIUS. Sir, March is wasted fifteen days.                                                 Knocking within.   BRUTUS. \'Tis good. Go to the gate, somebody knocks.                                                     Exit Lucius.     Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar     I have not slept.     Between the acting of a dreadful thing     And the first motion, all the interim is       Like a phantasma or a hideous dream;     The genius and the mortal instruments     Are then in council, and the state of man,     Like to a little kingdom, suffers then     The nature of an insurrection.                           Re-enter Lucius.    LUCIUS. Sir, \'tis your brother Cassius at the door,     Who doth desire to see you.   BRUTUS. Is he alone?   LUCIUS. No, sir, there are more with him.   BRUTUS. Do you know them?   LUCIUS. No, sir, their hats are pluck\'d about their ears,     And half their faces buried in their cloaks,     That by no means I may discover them     By any mark of favor.   BRUTUS. Let \'em enter.                            Exit Lucius.     They are the faction. O Conspiracy,     Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,       When evils are most free? O, then, by day     Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough     To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, Conspiracy;     Hide it in smiles and affability;     For if thou path, thy native semblance on,     Not Erebus itself were dim enough     To hide thee from prevention.      Enter the conspirators, Cassius, Casca, Decius, Cinna,                 Metellus Cimber, and Trebonius.    CASSIUS. I think we are too bold upon your rest.     Good morrow, Brutus, do we trouble you?   BRUTUS. I have been up this hour, awake all night.     Know I these men that come along with you?   CASSIUS. Yes, every man of them, and no man here     But honors you, and every one doth wish     You had but that opinion of yourself     Which every noble Roman bears of you.     This is Trebonius.     BRUTUS. He is welcome hither.   CASSIUS. This, Decius Brutus.   BRUTUS. He is welcome too. CASSIUS. This, Casca; this, Cinna; and this, Metellus Cimber.   BRUTUS. They are all welcome.     What watchful cares do interpose themselves     Betwixt your eyes and night?   CASSIUS. Shall I entreat a word?                 They whisper.   DECIUS. Here lies the east. Doth not the day break here?   CASCA. No.   CINNA. O, pardon, sir, it doth, and yongrey lines     That fret the clouds are messengers of day.   CASCA. You shall confess that you are both deceived.     Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises,     Which is a great way growing on the south,     Weighing the youthful season of the year.     Some two months hence up higher toward the north     He first presents his fire, and the high east     Stands as the Capitol, directly here.   BRUTUS. Give me your hands all over, one by one.   CASSIUS. And let us swear our resolution.     BRUTUS. No, not an oath. If not the face of men,     The sufferance of our souls, the time\'s abuse-     If these be motives weak, break off betimes,     And every man hence to his idle bed;     So let high-sighted tyranny range on     Till each man drop by lottery. But if these,     As I am sure they do, bear fire enough     To kindle cowards and to steel with valor     The melting spirits of women, then, countrymen,     What need we any spur but our own cause     To prick us to redress? What other bond     Than secret Romans that have spoke the word     And will not palter? And what other oath     Than honesty to honesty engaged     That this shall be or we will fall for it?     Swear priests and cowards and men cautelous,     Old feeble carrions and such suffering souls     That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear     Such creatures as men doubt; but do not stain     The even virtue of our enterprise,       Nor the insuppressive mettle of our spirits,     To think that or our cause or our performance     Did need an oath; when every drop of blood     That every Roman bears, and nobly bears,     Is guilty of a several bastardy     If he do break the smallest particle     Of any promise that hath pass\'d from him.   CASSIUS. But what of Cicero? Shall we sound him?     I think he will stand very strong with us.   CASCA. Let us not leave him out.   CINNA. No, by no means.   METELLUS. O, let us have him, for his silver hairs     Will purchase us a good opinion,     And buy men\'s voices to commend our deeds.     It shall be said his judgement ruled our hands;     Our youths and wildness shall no whit appear,     But all be buried in his gravity.   BRUTUS. O, name him not; let us not break with him,     For he will never follow anything     That other men begin.     CASSIUS. Then leave him out.   CASCA. Indeed he is not fit.   DECIUS. Shall no man else be touch\'d but only Caesar?   CASSIUS. Decius, well urged. I think it is not meet     Mark Antony, so well beloved of Caesar,     Should outlive Caesar. We shall find of him     A shrewd contriver; and you know his means,     If he improve them, may well stretch so far     As to annoy us all, which to prevent,     Let Antony and Caesar fall together.   BRUTUS. Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius,     To cut the head off and then hack the limbs     Like wrath in death and envy afterwards;     For Antony is but a limb of Caesar.     Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.     We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar,     And in the spirit of men there is no blood.     O, that we then could come by Caesar\'s spirit,     And not dismember Caesar! But, alas,     Caesar must bleed for it! And, gentle friends,       Let\'s kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;     Let\'s carve him as a dish fit for the gods,     Not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds;     And let our hearts, as subtle masters do,     Stir up their servants to an act of rage     And after seem to chide \'em. This shall make     Our purpose necessary and not envious,     Which so appearing to the common eyes,     We shall be call\'d purgers, not murderers.     And for Mark Antony, think not of him,     For he can do no more than Caesar\'s arm     When Caesar\'s head is off.   CASSIUS. Yet I fear him,     For in the ingrated love he bears to Caesar-   BRUTUS. Alas, good Cassius, do not think of him.     If he love Caesar, all that he can do     Is to himself, take thought and die for Caesar.     And that were much he should, for he is given     To sports, to wildness, and much company.   TREBONIUS. There is no fear in him-let him not die,       For he will live and laugh at this hereafter.                                                   Clock strikes.   BRUTUS. Peace, count the clock.   CASSIUS. The clock hath stricken three.   TREBONIUS. \'Tis time to part.   CASSIUS. But it is doubtful yet     Whether Caesar will come forth today or no,     For he is superstitious grown of late,     Quite from the main opinion he held once     Of fantasy, of dreams, and ceremonies.     It may be these apparent prodigies,     The unaccustom\'d terror of this night,     And the persuasion of his augurers     May hold him from the Capitol today.   DECIUS. Never fear that. If he be so resolved,     I can o\'ersway him, for he loves to hear     That unicorns may be betray\'d with trees,     And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,     Lions with toils, and men with flatterers;     But when I tell him he hates flatterers,       He says he does, being then most flattered.     Let me work;     For I can give his humor the true bent,     And I will bring him to the Capitol.   CASSIUS. Nay, we will all of us be there to fetch him.   BRUTUS. By the eighth hour. Is that the utter most?   CINNA. Be that the uttermost, and fail not then.   METELLUS. Caius Ligarius doth bear Caesar hard,     Who rated him for speaking well of Pompey.     I wonder none of you have thought of him.   BRUTUS. Now, good Metellus, go along by him.     He loves me well, and I have given him reasons;     Send him but hither, and I\'ll fashion him.   CASSIUS. The morning comes upon \'s. We\'ll leave you, Brutus,     And, friends, disperse yourselves, but all remember     What you have said and show yourselves true Romans.   BRUTUS. Good gentlemen, look fresh and merrily;     Let not our looks put on our purposes,     But bear it as our Roman actors do,     With untired spirits and formal constancy.       And so, good morrow to you every one.                                           Exeunt all but Brutus.     Boy! Lucius! Fast asleep? It is no matter.     Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber;     Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies,     Which busy care draws in the brains of men;     Therefore thou sleep\'st so sound.                             Enter Portia.    PORTIA. Brutus, my lord!   BRUTUS. Portia, what mean you? Wherefore rise you now?     It is not for your health thus to commit     Your weak condition to the raw cold morning.   PORTIA. Nor for yours neither. have ungently, Brutus,     Stole from my bed; and yesternight at supper     You suddenly arose and walk\'d about,     Musing and sighing, with your arms across;     And when I ask\'d you what the matter was,     You stared upon me with ungentle looks.       I urged you further; then you scratch\'d your head,     And too impatiently stamp\'d with your foot.     Yet I insisted, yet you answer\'d not,     But with an angry waiter of your hand     Gave sign for me to leave you. So I did,     Fearing to strengthen that impatience     Which seem\'d too much enkindled, and withal     Hoping it was but an effect of humor,     Which sometime hath his hour with every man.     It will not let you eat, nor talk, nor sleep,     And, could it work so much upon your shape     As it hath much prevail\'d on your condition,     I should not know you, Brutus. Dear my lord,     Make me acquainted with your cause of grief.   BRUTUS. I am not well in health, and that is all.   PORTIA. Brutus is wise, and, were he not in health,     He would embrace the means to come by it.   BRUTUS. Why, so I do. Good Portia, go to bed.   PORTIA. Is Brutus sick, and is it physical     To walk unbraced and suck up the humors       Of the dank morning? What, is Brutus sick,     And will he steal out of his wholesome bed     To dare the vile contagion of the night     And tempt the rheumy and unpurged air     To add unto his sickness? No, my Brutus,     You have some sick offense within your mind,     Which by the right and virtue of my place     I ought to know of; and, upon my knees,     I charm you, by my once commended beauty,     By all your vows of love and that great vow     Which did incorporate and make us one,     That you unfold to me, yourself, your half,     Why you are heavy and what men tonight     Have had resort to you; for here have been     Some six or seven, who did hide their faces     Even from darkness.   BRUTUS. Kneel not, gentle Portia.   PORTIA. I should not need, if you were gentle Brutus.     Within the bond of marriage, tell me, Brutus,     Is it excepted I should know no secrets       That appertain to you? Am I yourself     But, as it were, in sort or limitation,     To keep with you at meals, comfort your bed,     And talk to you sometimes? Dwell I but in the suburbs     Of your good pleasure? If it be no more,     Portia is Brutus\' harlot, not his wife.   BRUTUS. You are my true and honorable wife,     As dear to me as are the ruddy drops     That visit my sad heart.   PORTIA. If this were true, then should I know this secret.     I grant I am a woman, but withal     A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife.     I grant I am a woman, but withal     A woman well reputed, Cato\'s daughter.     Think you I am no stronger than my sex,     Being so father\'d and so husbanded?     Tell me your counsels, I will not disclose \'em.     I have made strong proof of my constancy,     Giving myself a voluntary wound     Here in the thigh. Can I bear that with patience       And not my husband\'s secrets?   BRUTUS. O ye gods,     Render me worthy of this noble wife! Knocking within.     Hark, hark, one knocks. Portia, go in awhile,     And by and by thy bosom shall partake     The secrets of my heart.     All my engagements I will construe to thee,     All the charactery of my sad brows.     Leave me with haste. [Exit Portia.] Lucius, who\'s that knocks?                    Re-enter Lucius with Ligarius.    LUCIUS. Here is a sick man that would speak with you.   BRUTUS. Caius Ligarius, that Metellus spake of.     Boy, stand aside. Caius Ligarius, how?   LIGARIUS. Vouchsafe good morrow from a feeble tongue.   BRUTUS. O, what a time have you chose out, brave Caius,     To wear a kerchief! Would you were not sick!   LIGARIUS. I am not sick, if Brutus have in hand     Any exploit worthy the name of honor.     BRUTUS. Such an exploit have I in hand, Ligarius,     Had you a healthful ear to hear of it.   LIGARIUS. By all the gods that Romans bow before,     I here discard my sickness! Soul of Rome!     Brave son, derived from honorable loins!     Thou, like an exorcist, hast conjured up     My mortified spirit. Now bid me run,     And I will strive with things impossible,     Yea, get the better of them. What\'s to do?   BRUTUS. A piece of work that will make sick men whole.   LIGARIUS. But are not some whole that we must make sick?   BRUTUS. That must we also. What it is, my Caius,     I shall unfold to thee, as we are going     To whom it must be done.   LIGARIUS. Set on your foot,     And with a heart new-fired I follow you,     To do I know not what; but it sufficeth     That Brutus leads me on.   BRUTUS. Follow me then.                                Exeunt.     SCENE II. Caesar\'s house. Thunder and lightning.  Enter Caesar, in his nightgown.    CAESAR. Nor heaven nor earth have been at peace tonight.     Thrice hath Calpurnia in her sleep cried out,     "Help, ho! They murther Caesar!" Who\'s within?                           Enter a Servant.    SERVANT. My lord?   CAESAR. Go bid the priests do present sacrifice,     And bring me their opinions of success.   SERVANT. I will, my lord.                                Exit.                           Enter Calpurnia.    CALPURNIA. What mean you, Caesar? Think you to walk forth?     You shall not stir out of your house today.   CAESAR. Caesar shall forth: the things that threaten\'d me     Ne\'er look\'d but on my back; when they shall see       The face of Caesar, they are vanished.   CALPURNIA. Caesar, I I stood on ceremonies,     Yet now they fright me. There is one within,     Besides the things that we have heard and seen,     Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.     A lioness hath whelped in the streets;     And graves have yawn\'d, and yielded up their dead;     Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds,     In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,     Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;     The noise of battle hurtled in the air,     Horses did neigh and dying men did groan,     And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.     O Caesar! These things are beyond all use,     And I do fear them.   CAESAR. What can be avoided     Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?     Yet Caesar shall go forth, for these predictions     Are to the world in general as to Caesar.   CALPURNIA. When beggars die, there are no comets seen;       The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.   CAESAR. Cowards die many times before their deaths;     The valiant never taste of death but once.     Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,     It seems to me most strange that men should fear     Seeing that death, a necessary end,     Will come when it will come.                        Re-enter Servant.      What say the augurers?   SERVANT. They would not have you to stir forth today.     Plucking the entrails of an offering forth,     They could not find a heart within the beast.   CAESAR. The gods do this in shame of cowardice.     Caesar should be a beast without a heart     If he should stay at home today for fear.     No, Caesar shall not. Danger knows full well     That Caesar is more dangerous than he.     We are two lions litter\'d in one day,       And I the elder and more terrible.     And Caesar shall go forth.   CALPURNIA. Alas, my lord,     Your wisdom is consumed in confidence.     Do not go forth today. Call it my fear     That keeps you in the house and not your own.     We\'ll send Mark Antony to the Senate House,     And he shall say you are not well today.     Let me, upon my knee, prevail in this.   CAESAR. Mark Antony shall say I am not well,     And, for thy humor, I will stay at home.                          Enter Decius.      Here\'s Decius Brutus, he shall tell them so.   DECIUS. Caesar, all hail! Good morrow, worthy Caesar!     I come to fetch you to the Senate House.   CAESAR. And you are come in very happy time     To bear my greeting to the senators     And tell them that I will not come today.       Cannot, is false, and that I dare not, falser:     I will not come today. Tell them so, Decius.   CALPURNIA. Say he is sick.   CAESAR. Shall Caesar send a lie?     Have I in conquest stretch\'d mine arm so far     To be afeard to tell greybeards the truth?     Decius, go tell them Caesar will not come.   DECIUS. Most mighty Caesar, let me know some cause,     Lest I be laugh\'d at when I tell them so.   CAESAR. The cause is in my will: I will not come,     That is enough to satisfy the Senate.     But, for your private satisfaction,     Because I love you, I will let you know.     Calpurnia here, my wife, stays me at home;     She dreamt tonight she saw my statue,     Which, like a fountain with an hundred spouts,     Did run pure blood, and many lusty Romans     Came smiling and did bathe their hands in it.     And these does she apply for warnings and portents     And evils imminent, and on her knee       Hath begg\'d that I will stay at home today.   DECIUS. This dream is all amiss interpreted;     It was a vision fair and fortunate.     Your statue spouting blood in many pipes,     In which so many smiling Romans bathed,     Signifies that from you great Rome shall suck     Reviving blood, and that great men shall press     For tinctures, stains, relics, and cognizance.     This by Calpurnia\'s dream is signified.   CAESAR. And this way have you well expounded it.   DECIUS. I have, when you have heard what I can say.     And know it now, the Senate have concluded     To give this day a crown to mighty Caesar.     If you shall send them word you will not come,     Their minds may change. Besides, it were a mock     Apt to be render\'d, for someone to say     "Break up the Senate till another time,     When Caesar\'s wife shall meet with better dreams."     If Caesar hide himself, shall they not whisper     "Lo, Caesar is afraid"?       Pardon me, Caesar, for my dear dear love     To your proceeding bids me tell you this,     And reason to my love is liable.   CAESAR. How foolish do your fears seem now, Calpurnia!     I am ashamed I did yield to them.     Give me my robe, for I will go.           Enter Publius, Brutus, Ligarius, Metellus, Casca,                      Trebonius, and Cinna.      And look where Publius is come to fetch me.   PUBLIUS. Good morrow,Caesar.   CAESAR. Welcome, Publius.     What, Brutus, are you stirr\'d so early too?     Good morrow, Casca. Caius Ligarius,     Caesar was ne\'er so much your enemy     As that same ague which hath made you lean.     What is\'t o\'clock?   BRUTUS. Caesar, \'tis strucken eight.   CAESAR. I thank you for your pains and courtesy.                               Enter Antony.      See, Antony, that revels long o\' nights,     Is notwithstanding up. Good morrow, Antony.   ANTONY. So to most noble Caesar.   CAESAR. Bid them prepare within.     I am to blame to be thus waited for.     Now, Cinna; now, Metellus; what, Trebonius,     I have an hour\'s talk in store for you;     Remember that you call on me today;     Be near me, that I may remember you.   TREBONIUS. Caesar, I will. [Aside.] And so near will I be     That your best friends shall wish I had been further.   CAESAR. Good friends, go in and taste some wine with me,     And we like friends will straightway go together.   BRUTUS. [Aside.] That every like is not the same, O Caesar,     The heart of Brutus yearns to think upon!            Exeunt.     SCENE III. A street near the Capitol.  Enter Artemidorus, reading paper.    ARTEMIDORUS. "Caesar, beware of Brutus; take heed of Cassius; come     not near Casca; have an eye to Cinna; trust not Trebonius; mark     well Metellus Cimber; Decius Brutus loves thee not; thou hast     wronged Caius Ligarius. There is but one mind in all these men,     and it is bent against Caesar. If thou beest not immortal, look     about you. Security gives way to conspiracy. The mighty gods     defend thee!                                         Thy lover, Artemidorus."     Here will I stand till Caesar pass along,     And as a suitor will I give him this.     My heart laments that virtue cannot live     Out of the teeth of emulation.     If thou read this, O Caesar, thou mayest live;     If not, the Fates with traitors do contrive.           Exit.     SCENE IV. Another part of the same street, before the house of Brutus.  Enter Portia and Lucius.    PORTIA. I prithee, boy, run to the Senate House;     Stay not to answer me, but get thee gone.     Why dost thou stay?   LUCIUS. To know my errand, madam.   PORTIA. I would have had thee there, and here again,     Ere I can tell thee what thou shouldst do there.     O constancy, be strong upon my side!     Set a huge mountain \'tween my heart and tongue!     I have a man\'s mind, but a woman\'s might.     How hard it is for women to keep counsel!     Art thou here yet?   LUCIUS. Madam, what should I do?     Run to the Capitol, and nothing else?     And so return to you, and nothing else?   PORTIA. Yes, bring me word, boy, if thy lord look well,     For he went sickly forth; and take good note     What Caesar doth, what suitors press to him.       Hark, boy, what noise is that?   LUCIUS. I hear none, madam.   PORTIA. Prithee, listen well.     I heard a bustling rumor like a fray,     And the wind brings it from the Capitol.   LUCIUS. Sooth, madam, I hear nothing.                       Enter the Soothsayer.    PORTIA. Come hither, fellow;     Which way hast thou been?   SOOTHSAYER. At mine own house, good lady.   PORTIA. What is\'t o\'clock?   SOOTHSAYER. About the ninth hour, lady.   PORTIA. Is Caesar yet gone to the Capitol?   SOOTHSAYER. Madam, not yet. I go to take my stand     To see him pass on to the Capitol.   PORTIA. Thou hast some suit to Caesar, hast thou not?   SOOTHSAYER. That I have, lady. If it will please Caesar     To be so good to Caesar as to hear me,       I shall beseech him to befriend himself.   PORTIA. Why, know\'st thou any harm\'s intended towards him?   SOOTHSAYER. None that I know will be, much that I fear may chance.     Good morrow to you. Here the street is narrow,     The throng that follows Caesar at the heels,     Of senators, of praetors, common suitors,     Will crowd a feeble man almost to death.     I\'ll get me to a place more void and there     Speak to great Caesar as he comes along.               Exit.   PORTIA. I must go in. Ay me, how weak a thing     The heart of woman is! O Brutus,     The heavens speed thee in thine enterprise!     Sure, the boy heard me. Brutus hath a suit     That Caesar will not grant. O, I grow faint.     Run, Lucius, and commend me to my lord;     Say I am merry. Come to me again,     And bring me word what he doth say to thee.                                                Exeunt severally.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. Rome. Before the Capitol; the Senate sitting above. A crowd of people, among them Artemidorus and the Soothsayer.  Flourish. Enter Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Casca, Decius, Metellus, Trebonius, Cinna, Antony, Lepidus, Popilius, Publius, and others.    CAESAR. The ides of March are come.   SOOTHSAYER. Ay, Caesar, but not gone.   A Hail, Caesar! Read this schedule.   DECIUS. Trebonius doth desire you to o\'er read,     At your best leisure, this his humble suit.   ARTEMIDORUS. O Caesar, read mine first, for mine\'s a suit     That touches Caesar nearer. Read it, great Caesar.   CAESAR. What touches us ourself shall be last served.   ARTEMIDORUS. Delay not, Caesar; read it instantly.   CAESAR. What, is the fellow mad?   PUBLIUS. Sirrah, give place.   CASSIUS. What, urge you your petitions in the street?     Come to the Capitol.          Caesar goes up to the Senate House, the rest follow.    POPILIUS. I wish your enterprise today may thrive.   CASSIUS. What enterprise, Popilius?   POPILIUS. Fare you well.                                              Advances to Caesar.   BRUTUS. What said Popilius Lena?   CASSIUS. He wish\'d today our enterprise might thrive.     I fear our purpose is discovered.   BRUTUS. Look, how he makes to Caesar. Mark him.   CASSIUS. Casca,     Be sudden, for we fear prevention.     Brutus, what shall be done? If this be known,     Cassius or Caesar never shall turn back,     For I will slay myself.   BRUTUS. Cassius, be constant.     Popilius Lena speaks not of our purposes;     For, look, he smiles, and Caesar doth not change.   CASSIUS. Trebonius knows his time, for, look you, Brutus,     He draws Mark Antony out of the way.                                       Exeunt Antony and Trebonius.   DECIUS. Where is Metellus Cimber? Let him     And presently prefer his suit to Caesar.   BRUTUS. He is address\'d; press near and second him.   CINNA. Casca, you are the first that rears your hand.   CAESAR. Are we all ready? What is now amiss     That Caesar and his Senate must redress?   METELLUS. Most high, most mighty, and most puissant Caesar,     Metellus Cimber throws before thy seat     An humble heart.                                     Kneels.   CAESAR. I must prevent thee, Cimber.     These couchings and these lowly courtesies     Might fire the blood of ordinary men     And turn preordinance and first decree     Into the law of children. Be not fond     To think that Caesar bears such rebel blood     That will be thaw\'d from the true quality     With that which melteth fools- I mean sweet words,     Low-crooked court\'sies, and base spaniel-fawning.     Thy brother by decree is banished.       If thou dost bend and pray and fawn for him,     I spurn thee like a cur out of my way.     Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause     Will he be satisfied.   METELLUS. Is there no voice more worthy than my own,     To sound more sweetly in great Caesar\'s ear     For the repealing of my banish\'d brother?   BRUTUS. I kiss thy hand, but not in flattery, Caesar,     Desiring thee that Publius Cimber may     Have an immediate freedom of repeal.   CAESAR. What, Brutus?   CASSIUS. Pardon, Caesar! Caesar, pardon!     As low as to thy foot doth Cassius fall     To beg enfranchisement for Publius Cimber.   CAESAR. I could be well moved, if I were as you;     If I could pray to move, prayers would move me;     But I am constant as the northern star,     Of whose true-fix\'d and resting quality     There is no fellow in the firmament.     The skies are painted with unnumber\'d sparks;       They are all fire and every one doth shine;     But there\'s but one in all doth hold his place.     So in the world, \'tis furnish\'d well with men,     And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive;     Yet in the number I do know but one     That unassailable holds on his rank,     Unshaked of motion; and that I am he,     Let me a little show it, even in this;     That I was constant Cimber should be banish\'d,     And constant do remain to keep him so.   CINNA. O Caesar-   CAESAR. Hence! Wilt thou lift up Olympus?   DECIUS. Great Caesar-   CAESAR. Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?   CASCA. Speak, hands, for me!                         Casca first, then the other Conspirators                                   and Marcus Brutus stab Caesar.   CAESAR. Et tu, Brute?- Then fall, Caesar! Dies.   CINNA. Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!     Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets.     CASSIUS. Some to the common pulpits and cry out     "Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!"   BRUTUS. People and senators, be not affrighted,     Fly not, stand still; ambition\'s debt is paid.   CASCA. Go to the pulpit, Brutus.   DECIUS. And Cassius too.   BRUTUS. Where\'s Publius?   CINNA. Here, quite confounded with this mutiny.   METELLUS. Stand fast together, lest some friend of Caesar\'s     Should chance-   BRUTUS. Talk not of standing. Publius, good cheer,     There is no harm intended to your person,     Nor to no Roman else. So tell them, Publius.   CASSIUS. And leave us, Publius, lest that the people     Rushing on us should do your age some mischief.   BRUTUS. Do so, and let no man abide this deed     But we the doers.                          Re-enter Trebonius.      CASSIUS. Where is Antony?   TREBONIUS. Fled to his house amazed.     Men, wives, and children stare, cry out, and run     As it were doomsday.   BRUTUS. Fates, we will know your pleasures.     That we shall die, we know; \'tis but the time     And drawing days out that men stand upon.   CASSIUS. Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life     Cuts off so many years of fearing death.   BRUTUS. Grant that, and then is death a benefit;     So are we Caesar\'s friends that have abridged     His time of fearing death. Stoop, Romans, stoop,     And let us bathe our hands in Caesar\'s blood     Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords;     Then walk we forth, even to the marketplace,     And waving our red weapons o\'er our heads,     Let\'s all cry, "Peace, freedom, and liberty!"   CASSIUS. Stoop then, and wash. How many ages hence     Shall this our lofty scene be acted over     In states unborn and accents yet unknown!     BRUTUS. How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport,     That now on Pompey\'s basis lies along     No worthier than the dust!   CASSIUS. So oft as that shall be,     So often shall the knot of us be call\'d     The men that gave their country liberty.   DECIUS. What, shall we forth?   CASSIUS. Ay, every man away.     Brutus shall lead, and we will grace his heels     With the most boldest and best hearts of Rome.                          Enter a Servant.    BRUTUS. Soft, who comes here? A friend of Antony\'s.   SERVANT. Thus, Brutus, did my master bid me kneel,     Thus did Mark Antony bid me fall down,     And, being prostrate, thus he bade me say:     Brutus is noble, wise, valiant, and honest;     Caesar was mighty, bold, royal, and loving.     Say I love Brutus and I honor him;       Say I fear\'d Caesar, honor\'d him, and loved him.     If Brutus will vouchsafe that Antony     May safely come to him and be resolved     How Caesar hath deserved to lie in death,     Mark Antony shall not love Caesar dead     So well as Brutus living, but will follow     The fortunes and affairs of noble Brutus     Thorough the hazards of this untrod state     With all true faith. So says my master Antony.   BRUTUS. Thy master is a wise and valiant Roman;     I never thought him worse.     Tell him, so please him come unto this place,     He shall be satisfied and, by my honor,     Depart untouch\'d.   SERVANT. I\'ll fetch him presently.                       Exit.   BRUTUS. I know that we shall have him well to friend.   CASSIUS. I wish we may, but yet have I a mind     That fears him much, and my misgiving still     Falls shrewdly to the purpose.                              Re-enter Antony.    BRUTUS. But here comes Antony. Welcome, Mark Antony.   ANTONY. O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?     Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,     Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well.     I know not, gentlemen, what you intend,     Who else must be let blood, who else is rank.     If I myself, there is no hour so fit     As Caesar\'s death\'s hour, nor no instrument     Of half that worth as those your swords, made rich     With the most noble blood of all this world.     I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard,     Now, whilst your purpled hands do reek and smoke,     Fulfill your pleasure. Live a thousand years,     I shall not find myself so apt to die;     No place will please me so, no means of death,     As here by Caesar, and by you cut off,     The choice and master spirits of this age.   BRUTUS. O Antony, beg not your death of us!       Though now we must appear bloody and cruel,     As, by our hands and this our present act     You see we do, yet see you but our hands     And this the bleeding business they have done.     Our hearts you see not; they are pitiful;     And pity to the general wrong of Rome-     As fire drives out fire, so pity pity-     Hath done this deed on Caesar. For your part,     To you our swords have leaden points, Mark Antony;     Our arms in strength of malice, and our hearts     Of brothers\' temper, do receive you in     With all kind love, good thoughts, and reverence.   CASSIUS. Your voice shall be as strong as any man\'s     In the disposing of new dignities.   BRUTUS. Only be patient till we have appeased     The multitude, beside themselves with fear,     And then we will deliver you the cause     Why I, that did love Caesar when I struck him,     Have thus proceeded.   ANTONY. I doubt not of your wisdom.       Let each man render me his bloody hand.     First, Marcus Brutus, will I shake with you;     Next, Caius Cassius, do I take your hand;     Now, Decius Brutus, yours; now yours, Metellus;     Yours, Cinna; and, my valiant Casca, yours;     Though last, not least in love, yours, good Trebonius.     Gentlemen all- alas, what shall I say?     My credit now stands on such slippery ground,     That one of two bad ways you must conceit me,     Either a coward or a flatterer.     That I did love thee, Caesar, O, \'tis true!     If then thy spirit look upon us now,     Shall it not grieve thee dearer than thy death     To see thy Antony making his peace,     Shaking the bloody fingers of thy foes,     Most noble! In the presence of thy corse?     Had I as many eyes as thou hast wounds,     Weeping as fast as they stream forth thy blood,     It would become me better than to close     In terms of friendship with thine enemies.       Pardon me, Julius! Here wast thou bay\'d, brave hart,     Here didst thou fall, and here thy hunters stand,     Sign\'d in thy spoil, and crimson\'d in thy Lethe.     O world, thou wast the forest to this hart,     And this, indeed, O world, the heart of thee.     How like a deer strucken by many princes     Dost thou here lie!   CASSIUS. Mark Antony-   ANTONY. Pardon me, Caius Cassius.     The enemies of Caesar shall say this:     Then, in a friend, it is cold modesty.   CASSIUS. I blame you not for praising Caesar so;     But what compact mean you to have with us?     Will you be prick\'d in number of our friends,     Or shall we on, and not depend on you?   ANTONY. Therefore I took your hands, but was indeed     Sway\'d from the point by looking down on Caesar.     Friends am I with you all and love you all,     Upon this hope that you shall give me reasons     Why and wherein Caesar was dangerous.     BRUTUS. Or else were this a savage spectacle.     Our reasons are so full of good regard     That were you, Antony, the son of Caesar,     You should be satisfied.   ANTONY. That\'s all I seek;     And am moreover suitor that I may     Produce his body to the marketplace,     And in the pulpit, as becomes a friend,     Speak in the order of his funeral.   BRUTUS. You shall, Mark Antony.   CASSIUS. Brutus, a word with you.     [Aside to Brutus.] You know not what you do. Do not consent     That Antony speak in his funeral.     Know you how much the people may be moved     By that which he will utter?   BRUTUS. By your pardon,     I will myself into the pulpit first,     And show the reason of our Caesar\'s death.     What Antony shall speak, I will protest     He speaks by leave and by permission,       And that we are contented Caesar shall     Have all true rites and lawful ceremonies.     It shall advantage more than do us wrong.   CASSIUS. I know not what may fall; I like it not.   BRUTUS. Mark Antony, here, take you Caesar\'s body.     You shall not in your funeral speech blame us,     But speak all good you can devise of Caesar,     And say you do\'t by our permission,     Else shall you not have any hand at all     About his funeral. And you shall speak     In the same pulpit whereto I am going,     After my speech is ended.   ANTONY. Be it so,     I do desire no more.   BRUTUS. Prepare the body then, and follow us.                                           Exeunt all but Antony.   ANTONY. O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,     That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!     Thou art the ruins of the noblest man     That ever lived in the tide of times.       Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!     Over thy wounds now do I prophesy     (Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips     To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue)     A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;     Domestic fury and fierce civil strife     Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;     Blood and destruction shall be so in use,     And dreadful objects so familiar,     That mothers shall but smile when they behold     Their infants quarter\'d with the hands of war;     All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,     And Caesar\'s spirit ranging for revenge,     With Ate by his side come hot from hell,     Shall in these confines with a monarch\'s voice     Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war,     That this foul deed shall smell above the earth     With carrion men, groaning for burial.                          Enter a Servant.        You serve Octavius Caesar, do you not?   SERVANT. I do, Mark Antony.   ANTONY. Caesar did write for him to come to Rome.   SERVANT. He did receive his letters, and is coming,     And bid me say to you by word of mouth-     O Caesar!                                     Sees the body.   ANTONY. Thy heart is big; get thee apart and weep.     Passion, I see, is catching, for mine eyes,     Seeing those beads of sorrow stand in thine,     Began to water. Is thy master coming?   SERVANT. He lies tonight within seven leagues of Rome.   ANTONY. Post back with speed and tell him what hath chanced.     Here is a mourning Rome, a dangerous Rome,     No Rome of safety for Octavius yet;     Hie hence, and tell him so. Yet stay awhile,     Thou shalt not back till I have borne this corse     Into the marketplace. There shall I try,     In my oration, how the people take     The cruel issue of these bloody men,       According to the which thou shalt discourse     To young Octavius of the state of things.     Lend me your hand.                Exeunt with Caesar\'s body.     SCENE II. The Forum.  Enter Brutus and Cassius, and a throng of Citizens.    CITIZENS. We will be satisfied! Let us be satisfied!   BRUTUS. Then follow me and give me audience, friends.     Cassius, go you into the other street     And part the numbers.     Those that will hear me speak, let \'em stay here;     Those that will follow Cassius, go with him;     And public reasons shall be rendered     Of Caesar\'s death.   FIRST CITIZEN. I will hear Brutus speak.   SECOND CITIZEN. I will hear Cassius and compare their reasons,     When severally we hear them rendered.                                Exit Cassius, with some Citizens.                                     Brutus goes into the pulpit.   THIRD CITIZEN. The noble Brutus is ascended. Silence!   BRUTUS. Be patient till the last.     Romans, countrymen, and lovers! Hear me for my cause, and be     silent, that you may hear. Believe me for mine honor, and have       respect to mine honor, that you may believe. Censure me in your     wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. If     there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar\'s, to     him I say that Brutus\' love to Caesar was no less than his. If     then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is     my answer: Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome     more. Had you rather Caesar were living and die all slaves, than     that Caesar were dead to live all freemen? As Caesar loved me, I     weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was     valiant, I honor him; but as he was ambitious, I slew him. There     is tears for his love, joy for his fortune, honor for his valor,     and death for his ambition. Who is here so base that would be a     bondman? If any, speak, for him have I offended. Who is here so     rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak, for him have I     offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If     any, speak, for him have I offended. I pause for a reply.   ALL. None, Brutus, none.   BRUTUS. Then none have I offended. I have done no more to Caesar     than you shall do to Brutus. The question of his death is     enrolled in the Capitol, his glory not extenuated, wherein he was       worthy, nor his offenses enforced, for which he suffered death.                Enter Antony and others, with Caesar\'s body.      Here comes his body, mourned by Mark Antony, who, though he had     no hand in his death, shall receive the benefit of his dying, a     place in the commonwealth, as which of you shall not? With this I     depart- that, as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I     have the same dagger for myself, when it shall please my country     to need my death.   ALL. Live, Brutus, live, live!   FIRST CITIZEN. Bring him with triumph home unto his house.   SECOND CITIZEN. Give him a statue with his ancestors.   THIRD CITIZEN. Let him be Caesar.   FOURTH CITIZEN. Caesar\'s better parts     Shall be crown\'d in Brutus.   FIRST CITIZEN. We\'ll bring him to his house with shouts and     clamors.   BRUTUS. My countrymen-   SECOND CITIZEN. Peace! Silence! Brutus speaks.     FIRST CITIZEN. Peace, ho!   BRUTUS. Good countrymen, let me depart alone,     And, for my sake, stay here with Antony.     Do grace to Caesar\'s corse, and grace his speech     Tending to Caesar\'s glories, which Mark Antony,     By our permission, is allow\'d to make.     I do entreat you, not a man depart,     Save I alone, till Antony have spoke.                  Exit.   FIRST CITIZEN. Stay, ho, and let us hear Mark Antony.   THIRD CITIZEN. Let him go up into the public chair;     We\'ll hear him. Noble Antony, go up.   ANTONY. For Brutus\' sake, I am beholding to you.                                            Goes into the pulpit.   FOURTH CITIZEN. What does he say of Brutus?   THIRD CITIZEN. He says, for Brutus\' sake,     He finds himself beholding to us all.   FOURTH CITIZEN. \'Twere best he speak no harm of Brutus here.   FIRST CITIZEN. This Caesar was a tyrant.   THIRD CITIZEN. Nay, that\'s certain.     We are blest that Rome is rid of him.     SECOND CITIZEN. Peace! Let us hear what Antony can say.   ANTONY. You gentle Romans-   ALL. Peace, ho! Let us hear him.   ANTONY. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!     I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.     The evil that men do lives after them,     The good is oft interred with their bones;     So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus     Hath told you Caesar was ambitious;     If it were so, it was a grievous fault,     And grievously hath Caesar answer\'d it.     Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest-     For Brutus is an honorable man;     So are they all, all honorable men-     Come I to speak in Caesar\'s funeral.     He was my friend, faithful and just to me;     But Brutus says he was ambitious,     And Brutus is an honorable man.     He hath brought many captives home to Rome,     Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.       Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?     When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept;     Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:     Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,     And Brutus is an honorable man.     You all did see that on the Lupercal     I thrice presented him a kingly crown,     Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?     Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,     And sure he is an honorable man.     I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,     But here I am to speak what I do know.     You all did love him once, not without cause;     What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?     O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beasts,     And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;     My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,     And I must pause till it come back to me.   FIRST CITIZEN. Methinks there is much reason in his sayings.   SECOND CITIZEN. If thou consider rightly of the matter,       Caesar has had great wrong.   THIRD CITIZEN. Has he, masters?     I fear there will a worse come in his place.   FOURTH CITIZEN. Mark\'d ye his words? He would not take the crown;     Therefore \'tis certain he was not ambitious.   FIRST CITIZEN. If it be found so, some will dear abide it.   SECOND CITIZEN. Poor soul, his eyes are red as fire with weeping.   THIRD CITIZEN. There\'s not a nobler man in Rome than Antony.   FOURTH CITIZEN. Now mark him, he begins again to speak.   ANTONY. But yesterday the word of Caesar might     Have stood against the world. Now lies he there,     And none so poor to do him reverence.     O masters! If I were disposed to stir     Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,     I should do Brutus wrong and Cassius wrong,     Who, you all know, are honorable men.     I will not do them wrong; I rather choose     To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,     Than I will wrong such honorable men.     But here\'s a parchment with the seal of Caesar;       I found it in his closet, \'tis his will.     Let but the commons hear this testament-     Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read-     And they would go and kiss dead Caesar\'s wounds     And dip their napkins in his sacred blood,     Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,     And, dying, mention it within their wills,     Bequeathing it as a rich legacy     Unto their issue.   FOURTH CITIZEN. We\'ll hear the will. Read it, Mark Antony.   ALL. The will, the will! We will hear Caesar\'s will.   ANTONY. Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it;     It is not meet you know how Caesar loved you.     You are not wood, you are not stones, but men;     And, being men, hearing the will of Caesar,     It will inflame you, it will make you mad.     \'Tis good you know not that you are his heirs,     For if you should, O, what would come of it!   FOURTH CITIZEN. Read the will; we\'ll hear it, Antony.     You shall read us the will, Caesar\'s will.     ANTONY. Will you be patient? Will you stay awhile?     I have o\'ershot myself to tell you of it.     I fear I wrong the honorable men     Whose daggers have stabb\'d Caesar; I do fear it.   FOURTH CITIZEN. They were traitors. Honorable men!   ALL. The will! The testament!   SECOND CITIZEN. They were villains, murtherers. The will!     Read the will!   ANTONY. You will compel me then to read the will?     Then make a ring about the corse of Caesar,     And let me show you him that made the will.     Shall I descend? And will you give me leave?   ALL. Come down.   SECOND CITIZEN. Descend.                                   He comes down from the pulpit.   THIRD CITIZEN. You shall have leave.   FOURTH CITIZEN. A ring, stand round.   FIRST CITIZEN. Stand from the hearse, stand from the body.   SECOND CITIZEN. Room for Antony, most noble Antony.   ANTONY. Nay, press not so upon me, stand far off.     ALL. Stand back; room, bear back!   ANTONY. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.     You all do know this mantle. I remember     The first time ever Caesar put it on;     \'Twas on a summer\'s evening, in his tent,     That day he overcame the Nervii.     Look, in this place ran Cassius\' dagger through;     See what a rent the envious Casca made;     Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb\'d;     And as he pluck\'d his cursed steel away,     Mark how the blood of Caesar follow\'d it,     As rushing out of doors, to be resolved     If Brutus so unkindly knock\'d, or no;     For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar\'s angel.     Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him!     This was the most unkindest cut of all;     For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,     Ingratitude, more strong than traitors\' arms,     Quite vanquish\'d him. Then burst his mighty heart,     And, in his mantle muffling up his face,       Even at the base of Pompey\'s statue,     Which all the while ran blood, great Caesar fell.     O, what a fall was there, my countrymen!     Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,     Whilst bloody treason flourish\'d over us.     O, now you weep, and I perceive you feel     The dint of pity. These are gracious drops.     Kind souls, what weep you when you but behold     Our Caesar\'s vesture wounded? Look you here,     Here is himself, marr\'d, as you see, with traitors.   FIRST CITIZEN. O piteous spectacle!   SECOND CITIZEN. O noble Caesar!   THIRD CITIZEN. O woeful day!   FOURTH CITIZEN. O traitors villains!   FIRST CITIZEN. O most bloody sight!   SECOND CITIZEN. We will be revenged.   ALL. Revenge! About! Seek! Burn! Fire! Kill!     Slay! Let not a traitor live!   ANTONY. Stay, countrymen.   FIRST CITIZEN. Peace there! Hear the noble Antony.     SECOND CITIZEN. We\'ll hear him, we\'ll follow him, we\'ll die with     him.   ANTONY. Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up     To such a sudden flood of mutiny.     They that have done this deed are honorable.     What private griefs they have, alas, I know not,     That made them do it. They are wise and honorable,     And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.     I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts.     I am no orator, as Brutus is;     But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man,     That love my friend, and that they know full well     That gave me public leave to speak of him.     For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,     Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,     To stir men\'s blood. I only speak right on;     I tell you that which you yourselves do know;     Show you sweet Caesar\'s wounds, poor dumb mouths,     And bid them speak for me. But were I Brutus,     And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony       Would ruffle up your spirits and put a tongue     In every wound of Caesar that should move     The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.   ALL. We\'ll mutiny.   FIRST CITIZEN. We\'ll burn the house of Brutus.   THIRD CITIZEN. Away, then! Come, seek the conspirators.   ANTONY. Yet hear me, countrymen; yet hear me speak.   ALL. Peace, ho! Hear Antony, most noble Antony!   ANTONY. Why, friends, you go to do you know not what.     Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your loves?     Alas, you know not; I must tell you then.     You have forgot the will I told you of.   ALL. Most true, the will! Let\'s stay and hear the will.   ANTONY. Here is the will, and under Caesar\'s seal.     To every Roman citizen he gives,     To every several man, seventy-five drachmas.   SECOND CITIZEN. Most noble Caesar! We\'ll revenge his death.   THIRD CITIZEN. O royal Caesar!   ANTONY. Hear me with patience.   ALL. Peace, ho!     ANTONY. Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,     His private arbors, and new-planted orchards,     On this side Tiber; he hath left them you,     And to your heirs forever- common pleasures,     To walk abroad and recreate yourselves.     Here was a Caesar! When comes such another?   FIRST CITIZEN. Never, never. Come, away, away!     We\'ll burn his body in the holy place     And with the brands fire the traitors\' houses.     Take up the body.   SECOND CITIZEN. Go fetch fire.   THIRD CITIZEN. Pluck down benches.   FOURTH CITIZEN. Pluck down forms, windows, anything.                                   Exeunt Citizens with the body.   ANTONY. Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot,     Take thou what course thou wilt.                          Enter a Servant.      How now, fellow?     SERVANT. Sir, Octavius is already come to Rome.   ANTONY. Where is he?   SERVANT. He and Lepidus are at Caesar\'s house.   ANTONY. And thither will I straight to visit him.     He comes upon a wish. Fortune is merry,     And in this mood will give us anything.   SERVANT. I heard him say Brutus and Cassius     Are rid like madmen through the gates of Rome.   ANTONY. Be like they had some notice of the people,     How I had moved them. Bring me to Octavius.          Exeunt.     SCENE III. A street.  Enter Cinna the poet.    CINNA. I dreamt tonight that I did feast with Caesar,     And things unluckily charge my fantasy.     I have no will to wander forth of doors,     Yet something leads me forth.                          Enter Citizens.    FIRST CITIZEN. What is your name?   SECOND CITIZEN. Whither are you going?   THIRD CITIZEN. Where do you dwell?   FOURTH CITIZEN. Are you a married man or a bachelor?   SECOND CITIZEN. Answer every man directly.   FIRST CITIZEN. Ay, and briefly.   FOURTH CITIZEN. Ay, and wisely.   THIRD CITIZEN. Ay, and truly, you were best.   CINNA. What is my name? Whither am I going? Where do I dwell? Am I     a married man or a bachelor? Then, to answer every man directly       and briefly, wisely and truly: wisely I say, I am a bachelor.   SECOND CITIZEN. That\'s as much as to say they are fools that marry.     You\'ll bear me a bang for that, I fear. Proceed directly.   CINNA. Directly, I am going to Caesar\'s funeral.   FIRST CITIZEN. As a friend or an enemy?   CINNA. As a friend.   SECOND CITIZEN. That matter is answered directly.   FOURTH CITIZEN. For your dwelling, briefly.   CINNA. Briefly, I dwell by the Capitol.   THIRD CITIZEN. Your name, sir, truly.   CINNA. Truly, my name is Cinna.   FIRST CITIZEN. Tear him to pieces, he\'s a conspirator.   CINNA. I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.   FOURTH CITIZEN. Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad     verses.   CINNA. I am not Cinna the conspirator.   FOURTH CITIZEN. It is no matter, his name\'s Cinna. Pluck but his     name out of his heart, and turn him going.   THIRD CITIZEN. Tear him, tear him! Come, brands, ho, firebrands. To     Brutus\', to Cassius\'; burn all. Some to Decius\' house, and some       to Casca\'s, some to Ligarius\'. Away, go!             Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. A house in Rome. Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus, seated at a table.    ANTONY. These many then shall die, their names are prick\'d.   OCTAVIUS. Your brother too must die; consent you, Lepidus?   LEPIDUS. I do consent-   OCTAVIUS. Prick him down, Antony.   LEPIDUS. Upon condition Publius shall not live,     Who is your sister\'s son, Mark Antony.   ANTONY. He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him.     But, Lepidus, go you to Caesar\'s house,     Fetch the will hither, and we shall determine     How to cut off some charge in legacies.   LEPIDUS. What, shall I find you here?   OCTAVIUS. Or here, or at the Capitol.            Exit Lepidus.   ANTONY. This is a slight unmeritable man,     Meet to be sent on errands. Is it fit,     The three-fold world divided, he should stand     One of the three to share it?   OCTAVIUS. So you thought him,     And took his voice who should be prick\'d to die       In our black sentence and proscription.   ANTONY. Octavius, I have seen more days than you,     And though we lay these honors on this man     To ease ourselves of divers slanderous loads,     He shall but bear them as the ass bears gold,     To groan and sweat under the business,     Either led or driven, as we point the way;     And having brought our treasure where we will,     Then take we down his load and turn him off,     Like to the empty ass, to shake his ears     And graze in commons.   OCTAVIUS. You may do your will,     But he\'s a tried and valiant soldier.   ANTONY. So is my horse, Octavius, and for that     I do appoint him store of provender.     It is a creature that I teach to fight,     To wind, to stop, to run directly on,     His corporal motion govern\'d by my spirit.     And, in some taste, is Lepidus but so:     He must be taught, and train\'d, and bid go forth;       A barren-spirited fellow, one that feeds     On objects, arts, and imitations,     Which, out of use and staled by other men,     Begin his fashion. Do not talk of him     But as a property. And now, Octavius,     Listen great things. Brutus and Cassius     Are levying powers; we must straight make head;     Therefore let our alliance be combined,     Our best friends made, our means stretch\'d;     And let us presently go sit in council,     How covert matters may be best disclosed,     And open perils surest answered.   OCTAVIUS. Let us do so, for we are at the stake,     And bay\'d about with many enemies;     And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear,     Millions of mischiefs.                               Exeunt.     SCENE II. Camp near Sardis. Before Brutus\' tent. Drum.  Enter Brutus, Lucilius, Lucius, and Soldiers; Titinius and Pindarus meet them.    BRUTUS. Stand, ho!   LUCILIUS. Give the word, ho, and stand.   BRUTUS. What now, Lucilius, is Cassius near?   LUCILIUS. He is at hand, and Pindarus is come     To do you salutation from his master.   BRUTUS. He greets me well. Your master, Pindarus,     In his own change, or by ill officers,     Hath given me some worthy cause to wish     Things done undone; but if he be at hand,     I shall be satisfied.   PINDARUS. I do not doubt     But that my noble master will appear     Such as he is, full of regard and honor.   BRUTUS. He is not doubted. A word, Lucilius,     How he received you. Let me be resolved.   LUCILIUS. With courtesy and with respect enough,       But not with such familiar instances,     Nor with such free and friendly conference,     As he hath used of old.   BRUTUS. Thou hast described     A hot friend cooling. Ever note, Lucilius,     When love begins to sicken and decay     It useth an enforced ceremony.     There are no tricks in plain and simple faith;     But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,     Make gallant show and promise of their mettle;     But when they should endure the bloody spur,     They fall their crests and like deceitful jades     Sink in the trial. Comes his army on?   LUCILIUS. They meant his night in Sard is to be quarter\'d;     The greater part, the horse in general,     Are come with Cassius.                     Low march within.   BRUTUS. Hark, he is arrived.     March gently on to meet him.                    Enter Cassius and his Powers.      CASSIUS. Stand, ho!   BRUTUS. Stand, ho! Speak the word along.   FIRST SOLDIER. Stand!   SECOND SOLDIER. Stand!   THIRD SOLDIER. Stand!   CASSIUS. Most noble brother, you have done me wrong.   BRUTUS. Judge me, you gods! Wrong I mine enemies?     And, if not so, how should I wrong a brother?   CASSIUS. Brutus, this sober form of yours hides wrongs,     And when you do them-   BRUTUS. Cassius, be content,     Speak your griefs softly, I do know you well.     Before the eyes of both our armies here,     Which should perceive nothing but love from us,     Let us not wrangle. Bid them move away;     Then in my tent, Cassius, enlarge your griefs,     And I will give you audience.   CASSIUS. Pindarus,     Bid our commanders lead their charges off       A little from this ground.   BRUTUS. Lucilius, do you the like, and let no man     Come to our tent till we have done our conference.     Let Lucius and Titinius guard our door.             Exeunt.     SCENE III. Brutus\' tent.  Enter Brutus and Cassius.    CASSIUS. That you have wrong\'d me doth appear in this:     You have condemn\'d and noted Lucius Pella     For taking bribes here of the Sardians,     Wherein my letters, praying on his side,     Because I knew the man, were slighted off.   BRUTUS. You wrong\'d yourself to write in such a case.   CASSIUS. In such a time as this it is not meet     That every nice offense should bear his comment.   BRUTUS. Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself     Are much condemn\'d to have an itching palm,     To sell and mart your offices for gold     To undeservers.   CASSIUS. I an itching palm?     You know that you are Brutus that speaks this,     Or, by the gods, this speech were else your last.   BRUTUS. The name of Cassius honors this corruption,     And chastisement doth therefore hide his head.     CASSIUS. Chastisement?   BRUTUS. Remember March, the ides of March remember.     Did not great Julius bleed for justice\' sake?     What villain touch\'d his body, that did stab,     And not for justice? What, shall one of us,     That struck the foremost man of all this world     But for supporting robbers, shall we now     Contaminate our fingers with base bribes     And sell the mighty space of our large honors     For so much trash as may be grasped thus?     I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon,     Than such a Roman.   CASSIUS. Brutus, bait not me,     I\'ll not endure it. You forget yourself     To hedge me in. I am a soldier, I,     Older in practice, abler than yourself     To make conditions.   BRUTUS. Go to, you are not, Cassius.   CASSIUS. I am.   BRUTUS. I say you are not.     CASSIUS. Urge me no more, I shall forget myself;     Have mind upon your health, tempt me no farther.   BRUTUS. Away, slight man!   CASSIUS. Is\'t possible?   BRUTUS. Hear me, for I will speak.     Must I give way and room to your rash choler?     Shall I be frighted when a madman stares?   CASSIUS. O gods, ye gods! Must I endure all this?   BRUTUS. All this? Ay, more. Fret till your proud heart break.     Go show your slaves how choleric you are,     And make your bondmen tremble. Must I bouge?     Must I observe you? Must I stand and crouch     Under your testy humor? By the gods,     You shall digest the venom of your spleen,     Though it do split you, for, from this day forth,     I\'ll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter,     When you are waspish.   CASSIUS. Is it come to this?   BRUTUS. You say you are a better soldier:     Let it appear so, make your vaunting true,       And it shall please me well. For mine own part,     I shall be glad to learn of noble men.   CASSIUS. You wrong me every way, you wrong me, Brutus.     I said, an elder soldier, not a better.     Did I say "better"?   BRUTUS. If you did, I care not.   CASSIUS. When Caesar lived, he durst not thus have moved me.   BRUTUS. Peace, peace! You durst not so have tempted him.   CASSIUS. I durst not?   BRUTUS. No.   CASSIUS. What, durst not tempt him?   BRUTUS. For your life you durst not.   CASSIUS. Do not presume too much upon my love;     I may do that I shall be sorry for.   BRUTUS. You have done that you should be sorry for.     There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats,     For I am arm\'d so strong in honesty,     That they pass by me as the idle wind     Which I respect not. I did send to you     For certain sums of gold, which you denied me,       For I can raise no money by vile means.     By heaven, I had rather coin my heart     And drop my blood for drachmas than to wring     From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash     By any indirection. I did send     To you for gold to pay my legions,     Which you denied me. Was that done like Cassius?     Should I have answer\'d Caius Cassius so?     When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous     To lock such rascal counters from his friends,     Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts,     Dash him to pieces!   CASSIUS. I denied you not.   BRUTUS. You did.   CASSIUS. I did not. He was but a fool     That brought my answer back. Brutus hath rived my heart.     A friend should bear his friend\'s infirmities,     But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.   BRUTUS. I do not, till you practise them on me.   CASSIUS. You love me not.     BRUTUS. I do not like your faults.   CASSIUS. A friendly eye could never see such faults.   BRUTUS. A flatterer\'s would not, though they do appear     As huge as high Olympus.   CASSIUS. Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come,     Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius,     For Cassius is aweary of the world:     Hated by one he loves; braved by his brother;     Check\'d like a bondman; all his faults observed,     Set in a notebook, learn\'d and conn\'d by rote,     To cast into my teeth. O, I could weep     My spirit from mine eyes! There is my dagger,     And here my naked breast; within, a heart     Dearer than Pluto\'s mine, richer than gold.     If that thou best a Roman, take it forth;     I, that denied thee gold, will give my heart.     Strike, as thou didst at Caesar, for I know,     When thou didst hate him worst, thou lovedst him better     Than ever thou lovedst Cassius.   BRUTUS. Sheathe your dagger.       Be angry when you will, it shall have scope;     Do what you will, dishonor shall be humor.     O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb,     That carries anger as the flint bears fire,     Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark     And straight is cold again.   CASSIUS. Hath Cassius lived     To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus,     When grief and blood ill-temper\'d vexeth him?   BRUTUS. When I spoke that, I was ill-temper\'d too.   CASSIUS. Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.   BRUTUS. And my heart too.   CASSIUS. O Brutus!   BRUTUS. What\'s the matter?   CASSIUS. Have not you love enough to bear with me     When that rash humor which my mother gave me     Makes me forgetful?   BRUTUS. Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth,     When you are overearnest with your Brutus,     He\'ll think your mother chides, and leave you so.     POET. [Within.] Let me go in to see the generals.     There is some grudge between \'em, \'tis not meet     They be alone.   LUCILIUS. [Within.] You shall not come to them.   POET. [Within.] Nothing but death shall stay me.        Enter Poet, followed by Lucilius, Titinius, and Lucius.    CASSIUS. How now, what\'s the matter?   POET. For shame, you generals! What do you mean?     Love, and be friends, as two such men should be;     For I have seen more years, I\'m sure, than ye.   CASSIUS. Ha, ha! How vilely doth this cynic rhyme!   BRUTUS. Get you hence, sirrah; saucy fellow, hence!   CASSIUS. Bear with him, Brutus; \'tis his fashion.   BRUTUS. I\'ll know his humor when he knows his time.     What should the wars do with these jigging fools?     Companion, hence!   CASSIUS. Away, away, be gone!                       Exit Poet.   BRUTUS. Lucilius and Titinius, bid the commanders       Prepare to lodge their companies tonight.   CASSIUS. And come yourselves and bring Messala with you     Immediately to us.             Exeunt Lucilius and Titinius.   BRUTUS. Lucius, a bowl of wine!                   Exit Lucius.   CASSIUS. I did not think you could have been so angry.   BRUTUS. O Cassius, I am sick of many griefs.   CASSIUS. Of your philosophy you make no use,     If you give place to accidental evils.   BRUTUS. No man bears sorrow better. Portia is dead.   CASSIUS. Ha? Portia?   BRUTUS. She is dead.   CASSIUS. How \'scaped killing when I cross\'d you so?     O insupportable and touching loss!     Upon what sickness?   BRUTUS. Impatient of my absence,     And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony     Have made themselves so strong- for with her death     That tidings came- with this she fell distract,     And (her attendants absent) swallow\'d fire.   CASSIUS. And died so?     BRUTUS. Even so.   CASSIUS. O ye immortal gods!                 Re-enter Lucius, with wine and taper.    BRUTUS. Speak no more of her. Give me a bowl of wine.     In this I bury all unkindness, Cassius.              Drinks.   CASSIUS. My heart is thirsty for that noble pledge.   Fill, Lucius, till the wine o\'erswell the cup;   I cannot drink too much of Brutus\' love.               Drinks.   BRUTUS. Come in, Titinius!                        Exit Lucius.                   Re-enter Titinius, with Messala.      Welcome, good Messala.     Now sit we close about this taper here,     And call in question our necessities.   CASSIUS. Portia, art thou gone?   BRUTUS. No more, I pray you.     Messala, I have here received letters       That young Octavius and Mark Antony     Come down upon us with a mighty power,     Bending their expedition toward Philippi.   MESSALA. Myself have letters of the selfsame tenure.   BRUTUS. With what addition?   MESSALA. That by proscription and bills of outlawry     Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus     Have put to death an hundred senators.   BRUTUS. There in our letters do not well agree;     Mine speak of seventy senators that died     By their proscriptions, Cicero being one.   CASSIUS. Cicero one!   MESSALA. Cicero is dead,     And by that order of proscription.     Had you your letters from your wife, my lord?   BRUTUS. No, Messala.   MESSALA. Nor nothing in your letters writ of her?   BRUTUS. Nothing, Messala.   MESSALA. That, methinks, is strange.   BRUTUS. Why ask you? Hear you aught of her in yours?     MESSALA. No, my lord.   BRUTUS. Now, as you are a Roman, tell me true.   MESSALA. Then like a Roman bear the truth I tell:     For certain she is dead, and by strange manner.   BRUTUS. Why, farewell, Portia. We must die, Messala.     With meditating that she must die once     I have the patience to endure it now.   MESSALA. Even so great men great losses should endure.   CASSIUS. I have as much of this in art as you,     But yet my nature could not bear it so.   BRUTUS. Well, to our work alive. What do you think     Of marching to Philippi presently?   CASSIUS. I do not think it good.   BRUTUS. Your reason?   CASSIUS. This it is:     \'Tis better that the enemy seek us;     So shall he waste his means, weary his soldiers,     Doing himself offense, whilst we lying still     Are full of rest, defense, and nimbleness.   BRUTUS. Good reasons must of force give place to better.       The people \'twixt Philippi and this ground     Do stand but in a forced affection,     For they have grudged us contribution.     The enemy, marching along by them,     By them shall make a fuller number up,     Come on refresh\'d, new-added, and encouraged;     From which advantage shall we cut him off     If at Philippi we do face him there,     These people at our back.   CASSIUS. Hear me, good brother.   BRUTUS. Under your pardon. You must note beside     That we have tried the utmost of our friends,     Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe:     The enemy increaseth every day;     We, at the height, are ready to decline.     There is a tide in the affairs of men     Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune;     Omitted, all the voyage of their life     Is bound in shallows and in miseries.     On such a full sea are we now afloat,       And we must take the current when it serves,     Or lose our ventures.   CASSIUS. Then, with your will, go on;     We\'ll along ourselves and meet them at Philippi.   BRUTUS. The deep of night is crept upon our talk,     And nature must obey necessity,     Which we will niggard with a little rest.     There is no more to say?   CASSIUS. No more. Good night.     Early tomorrow will we rise and hence.   BRUTUS. Lucius!                         Re-enter Lucius.      My gown.                                        Exit Lucius.     Farewell, good Messala;     Good night, Titinius; noble, noble Cassius,     Good night and good repose.   CASSIUS. O my dear brother!     This was an ill beginning of the night.       Never come such division \'tween our souls!     Let it not, Brutus.   BRUTUS. Everything is well.   CASSIUS. Good night, my lord.   BRUTUS. Good night, good brother.   TITINIUS. MESSALA. Good night, Lord Brutus.   BRUTUS. Farewell, everyone.                                           Exeunt all but Brutus.                 Re-enter Lucius, with the gown.      Give me the gown. Where is thy instrument?   LUCIUS. Here in the tent.   BRUTUS. What, thou speak\'st drowsily?     Poor knave, I blame thee not, thou art o\'erwatch\'d.     Call Claudio and some other of my men,     I\'ll have them sleep on cushions in my tent.   LUCIUS. Varro and Claudio!                     Enter Varro and Claudio.      VARRO. Calls my lord?   BRUTUS. I pray you, sirs, lie in my tent and sleep;     It may be I shall raise you by and by     On business to my brother Cassius.   VARRO. So please you, we will stand and watch your pleasure.   BRUTUS. I would not have it so. Lie down, good sirs.     It may be I shall otherwise bethink me.     Look Lucius, here\'s the book I sought for so;     I put it in the pocket of my gown.                                      Varro and Claudio lie down.   LUCIUS. I was sure your lordship did not give it me.   BRUTUS. Bear with me, good boy, I am much forgetful.     Canst thou hold up thy heavy eyes awhile,     And touch thy instrument a strain or two?   LUCIUS. Ay, my lord, an\'t please you.   BRUTUS. It does, my boy.     I trouble thee too much, but thou art willing.   LUCIUS. It is my duty, sir.   BRUTUS. I should not urge thy duty past thy might;       I know young bloods look for a time of rest.   LUCIUS. I have slept, my lord, already.   BRUTUS. It was well done, and thou shalt sleep again;     I will not hold thee long. If I do live,     I will be good to thee.                   Music, and a song.     This is a sleepy tune. O murtherous slumber,     Layest thou thy leaden mace upon my boy     That plays thee music? Gentle knave, good night.     I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee.     If thou dost nod, thou break\'st thy instrument;     I\'ll take it from thee; and, good boy, good night.     Let me see, let me see; is not the leaf turn\'d down     Where I left reading? Here it is, I think.        Sits down.                   Enter the Ghost of Caesar.      How ill this taper burns! Ha, who comes here?     I think it is the weakness of mine eyes     That shapes this monstrous apparition.     It comes upon me. Art thou anything?       Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil     That makest my blood cold and my hair to stare?     Speak to me what thou art.   GHOST. Thy evil spirit, Brutus.   BRUTUS. Why comest thou?   GHOST. To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi.   BRUTUS. Well, then I shall see thee again?   GHOST. Ay, at Philippi.   BRUTUS. Why, I will see thee at Philippi then.     Exit Ghost.     Now I have taken heart thou vanishest.     Ill spirit, I would hold more talk with thee.     Boy! Lucius! Varro! Claudio! Sirs, awake!     Claudio!   LUCIUS. The strings, my lord, are false.   BRUTUS. He thinks he still is at his instrument.     Lucius, awake!   LUCIUS. My lord?   BRUTUS. Didst thou dream, Lucius, that thou so criedst out?   LUCIUS. My lord, I do not know that I did cry.   BRUTUS. Yes, that thou didst. Didst thou see anything?     LUCIUS. Nothing, my lord.   BRUTUS. Sleep again, Lucius. Sirrah Claudio!     [To Varro.] Fellow thou, awake!   VARRO. My lord?   CLAUDIO. My lord?   BRUTUS. Why did you so cry out, sirs, in your sleep?   VARRO. CLAUDIO. Did we, my lord?   BRUTUS. Ay, saw you anything?   VARRO. No, my lord, I saw nothing.   CLAUDIO. Nor I, my lord.   BRUTUS. Go and commend me to my brother Cassius;     Bid him set on his powers betimes before,     And we will follow.   VARRO. CLAUDIO. It shall be done, my lord.             Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. The plains of Philippi.  Enter Octavius, Antony, and their Army.    OCTAVIUS. Now, Antony, our hopes are answered.     You said the enemy would not come down,     But keep the hills and upper regions.     It proves not so. Their battles are at hand;     They mean to warn us at Philippi here,     Answering before we do demand of them.   ANTONY. Tut, I am in their bosoms, and I know     Wherefore they do it. They could be content     To visit other places, and come down     With fearful bravery, thinking by this face     To fasten in our thoughts that they have courage;     But \'tis not so.                      Enter a Messenger.    MESSENGER. Prepare you, generals.     The enemy comes on in gallant show;       Their bloody sign of battle is hung out,     And something to be done immediately.   ANTONY. Octavius, lead your battle softly on,     Upon the left hand of the even field.   OCTAVIUS. Upon the right hand I, keep thou the left.   ANTONY. Why do you cross me in this exigent?   OCTAVIUS. I do not cross you, but I will do so.        March. Drum. Enter Brutus, Cassius, and their Army;            Lucilius, Titinius, Messala, and others.    BRUTUS. They stand, and would have parley.   CASSIUS. Stand fast, Titinius; we must out and talk.   OCTAVIUS. Mark Antony, shall we give sign of battle?   ANTONY. No, Caesar, we will answer on their charge.     Make forth, the generals would have some words.   OCTAVIUS. Stir not until the signal not until the signal.   BRUTUS. Words before blows. Is it so, countrymen?   OCTAVIUS. Not that we love words better, as you do.   BRUTUS. Good words are better than bad strokes, Octavius.     ANTONY. In your bad strokes, Brutus, you give good words.     Witness the hole you made in Caesar\'s heart,     Crying "Long live! Hail, Caesar!"   CASSIUS. Antony,     The posture of your blows are yet unknown;     But for your words, they rob the Hybla bees,     And leave them honeyless.   ANTONY. Not stingless too.   BRUTUS. O, yes, and soundless too,     For you have stol\'n their buzzing, Antony,     And very wisely threat before you sting.   ANTONY. Villains! You did not so when your vile daggers     Hack\'d one another in the sides of Caesar.     You show\'d your teeth like apes, and fawn\'d like hounds,     And bow\'d like bondmen, kissing Caesar\'s feet;     Whilst damned Casca, like a cur, behind     Strooke Caesar on the neck. O you flatterers!   CASSIUS. Flatterers? Now, Brutus, thank yourself.     This tongue had not offended so today,     If Cassius might have ruled.     OCTAVIUS. Come, come, the cause. If arguing make us sweat,     The proof of it will turn to redder drops.     Look,     I draw a sword against conspirators;     When think you that the sword goes up again?     Never, till Caesar\'s three and thirty wounds     Be well avenged, or till another Caesar     Have added slaughter to the sword of traitors.   BRUTUS. Caesar, thou canst not die by traitors\' hands,     Unless thou bring\'st them with thee.   OCTAVIUS. So I hope,     I was not born to die on Brutus\' sword.   BRUTUS. O, if thou wert the noblest of thy strain,     Young man, thou couldst not die more honorable.   CASSIUS. A peevish school boy, worthless of such honor,     Join\'d with a masker and a reveler!   ANTONY. Old Cassius still!   OCTAVIUS. Come, Antony, away!     Defiance, traitors, hurl we in your teeth.     If you dare fight today, come to the field;       If not, when you have stomachs.                         Exeunt Octavius, Antony, and their Army.   CASSIUS. Why, now, blow and, swell billow, and swim bark!     The storm is up, and all is on the hazard.   BRUTUS. Ho, Lucilius! Hark, a word with you.   LUCILIUS. [Stands forth.] My lord?                              Brutus and Lucilius converse apart.   CASSIUS. Messala!   MESSALA. [Stands forth.] What says my general?   CASSIUS. Messala,     This is my birthday, as this very day     Was Cassius born. Give me thy hand, Messala.     Be thou my witness that, against my will,     As Pompey was, am I compell\'d to set     Upon one battle all our liberties.     You know that I held Epicurus strong,     And his opinion. Now I change my mind,     And partly credit things that do presage.     Coming from Sardis, on our former ensign     Two mighty eagles fell, and there they perch\'d,       Gorging and feeding from our soldiers\' hands,     Who to Philippi here consorted us.     This morning are they fled away and gone,     And in their steads do ravens, crows, and kites     Fly o\'er our heads and downward look on us,     As we were sickly prey. Their shadows seem     A canopy most fatal, under which     Our army lies, ready to give up the ghost.   MESSALA. Believe not so.   CASSIUS. I but believe it partly,     For I am fresh of spirit and resolved     To meet all perils very constantly.   BRUTUS. Even so, Lucilius.   CASSIUS. Now, most noble Brutus,     The gods today stand friendly that we may,     Lovers in peace, lead on our days to age!     But, since the affairs of men rest still incertain,     Let\'s reason with the worst that may befall.     If we do lose this battle, then is this     The very last time we shall speak together.       What are you then determined to do?   BRUTUS. Even by the rule of that philosophy     By which I did blame Cato for the death     Which he did give himself- I know not how,     But I do find it cowardly and vile,     For fear of what might fall, so to prevent     The time of life- arming myself with patience     To stay the providence of some high powers     That govern us below.   CASSIUS. Then, if we lose this battle,     You are contented to be led in triumph     Thorough the streets of Rome?   BRUTUS. No, Cassius, no. Think not, thou noble Roman,     That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome;     He bears too great a mind. But this same day     Must end that work the ides of March begun.     And whether we shall meet again I know not.     Therefore our everlasting farewell take.     Forever, and forever, farewell, Cassius!     If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;       If not, why then this parting was well made.   CASSIUS. Forever and forever farewell, Brutus!     If we do meet again, we\'ll smile indeed;     If not, \'tis true this parting was well made.   BRUTUS. Why then, lead on. O, that a man might know     The end of this day\'s business ere it come!     But it sufficeth that the day will end,     And then the end is known. Come, ho! Away!           Exeunt.     SCENE II. The field of battle.  Alarum. Enter Brutus and Messala.    BRUTUS. Ride, ride, Messala, ride, and give these bills     Unto the legions on the other side.             Loud alarum.     Let them set on at once, for I perceive     But cold demeanor in Octavia\'s wing,     And sudden push gives them the overthrow.     Ride, ride, Messala. Let them all come down.         Exeunt.     SCENE III. Another part of the field.  Alarums. Enter Cassius and Titinius.    CASSIUS. O, look, Titinius, look, the villains fly!     Myself have to mine own turn\'d enemy.     This ensign here of mine was turning back;     I slew the coward, and did take it from him.   TITINIUS. O Cassius, Brutus gave the word too early,     Who, having some advantage on Octavius,     Took it too eagerly. His soldiers fell to spoil,     Whilst we by Antony are all enclosed.                         Enter Pindarus.    PINDARUS. Fly further off, my lord, fly further off;     Mark Antony is in your tents, my lord;     Fly, therefore, noble Cassius, fly far off.   CASSIUS. This hill is far enough. Look, look, Titinius:     Are those my tents where I perceive the fire?   TITINIUS. They are, my lord.     CASSIUS. Titinius, if thou lovest me,     Mount thou my horse and hide thy spurs in him,     Till he have brought thee up to yonder troops     And here again, that I may rest assured     Whether yond troops are friend or enemy.   TITINIUS. I will be here again, even with a thought.     Exit.   CASSIUS. Go, Pindarus, get higher on that hill;     My sight was ever thick; regard Titinius,     And tell me what thou notest about the field.                                       Pindarus ascends the hill.     This day I breathed first: time is come round,     And where I did begin, there shall I end;     My life is run his compass. Sirrah, what news?   PINDARUS. [Above.] O my lord!   CASSIUS. What news?   PINDARUS. [Above.] Titinius is enclosed round about     With horsemen, that make to him on the spur;     Yet he spurs on. Now they are almost on him.     Now, Titinius! Now some light. O, he lights too.     He\'s ta\'en [Shout.] And, hark! They shout for joy.     CASSIUS. Come down; behold no more.     O, coward that I am, to live so long,     To see my best friend ta\'en before my face!                                               Pindarus descends.     Come hither, sirrah.     In Parthia did I take thee prisoner,     And then I swore thee, saving of thy life,     That whatsoever I did bid thee do,     Thou shouldst attempt it. Come now, keep thine oath;     Now be a freeman, and with this good sword,     That ran through Caesar\'s bowels, search this bosom.     Stand not to answer: here, take thou the hilts;     And when my face is cover\'d, as \'tis now,     Guide thou the sword. [Pindarus stabs him.] Caesar, thou art       revenged,     Even with the sword that kill\'d thee.                  Dies.   PINDARUS. So, I am free, yet would not so have been,     Durst I have done my will. O Cassius!     Far from this country Pindarus shall run,     Where never Roman shall take note of him.              Exit.                    Re-enter Titinius with Messala.    MESSALA. It is but change, Titinius, for Octavius     Is overthrown by noble Brutus\' power,     As Cassius\' legions are by Antony.   TITINIUS. These tidings would well comfort Cassius.   MESSALA. Where did you leave him?   TITINIUS. All disconsolate,     With Pindarus his bondman, on this hill.   MESSALA. Is not that he that lies upon the ground?   TITINIUS. He lies not like the living. O my heart!   MESSALA. Is not that he?   TITINIUS. No, this was he, Messala,     But Cassius is no more. O setting sun,     As in thy red rays thou dost sink to night,     So in his red blood Cassius\' day is set,     The sun of Rome is set! Our day is gone;     Clouds, dews, and dangers come; our deeds are done!     Mistrust of my success hath done this deed.     MESSALA. Mistrust of good success hath done this deed.     O hateful error, melancholy\'s child,     Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men     The things that are not? O error, soon conceived,     Thou never comest unto a happy birth,     But kill\'st the mother that engender\'d thee!   TITINIUS. What, Pindarus! Where art thou, Pindarus?   MESSALA. Seek him, Titinius, whilst I go to meet     The noble Brutus, thrusting this report     Into his ears. I may say "thrusting" it,     For piercing steel and darts envenomed     Shall be as welcome to the ears of Brutus     As tidings of this sight.   TITINIUS. Hie you, Messala,     And I will seek for Pindarus the while.        Exit Messala.     Why didst thou send me forth, brave Cassius?     Did I not meet thy friends? And did not they     Put on my brows this wreath of victory,     And bid me give it thee? Didst thou not hear their shouts?     Alas, thou hast misconstrued everything!       But, hold thee, take this garland on thy brow;     Thy Brutus bid me give it thee, and I     Will do his bidding. Brutus, come apace,     And see how I regarded Caius Cassius.     By your leave, gods, this is a Roman\'s part.     Come, Cassius\' sword, and find Titinius\' heart.                                                   Kills himself.         Alarum. Re-enter Messala, with Brutus, young Cato,                          and others.    BRUTUS. Where, where, Messala, doth his body lie?   MESSALA. Lo, yonder, and Titinius mourning it.   BRUTUS. Titinius\' face is upward.   CATO. He is slain.   BRUTUS. O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet!     Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords     In our own proper entrails.                     Low alarums.   CATO. Brave Titinius!     Look whe\'er he have not crown\'d dead Cassius!     BRUTUS. Are yet two Romans living such as these?     The last of all the Romans, fare thee well!     It is impossible that ever Rome     Should breed thy fellow. Friends, I owe moe tears     To this dead man than you shall see me pay.     I shall find time, Cassius, I shall find time.     Come therefore, and to Thasos send his body;     His funerals shall not be in our camp,     Lest it discomfort us. Lucilius, come,     And come, young Cato; let us to the field.     Labio and Flavio, set our battles on.     \'Tis three o\'clock, and Romans, yet ere night     We shall try fortune in a second fight.              Exeunt.     SCENE IV. Another part of the field.  Alarum. Enter, fighting, Soldiers of both armies; then Brutus, young Cato, Lucilius, and others.    BRUTUS. Yet, countrymen, O, yet hold up your heads!   CATO. What bastard doth not? Who will go with me?     I will proclaim my name about the field.     I am the son of Marcus Cato, ho!     A foe to tyrants, and my country\'s friend.     I am the son of Marcus Cato, ho!   BRUTUS. And I am Brutus, Marcus Brutus, I;     Brutus, my country\'s friend; know me for Brutus!       Exit.   LUCILIUS. O young and noble Cato, art thou down?     Why, now thou diest as bravely as Titinius,     And mayst be honor\'d, being Cato\'s son.   FIRST SOLDIER. Yield, or thou diest.   LUCILIUS. Only I yield to die.     [Offers money.] There is so much that thou wilt kill me straight:     Kill Brutus, and be honor\'d in his death.   FIRST SOLDIER. We must not. A noble prisoner!     SECOND SOLDIER. Room, ho! Tell Antony, Brutus is ta\'en.   FIRST SOLDIER. I\'ll tell the news. Here comes the general.                           Enter Antony.      Brutus is ta\'en, Brutus is ta\'en, my lord.   ANTONY. Where is he?   LUCILIUS. Safe, Antony, Brutus is safe enough.     I dare assure thee that no enemy     Shall ever take alive the noble Brutus;     The gods defend him from so great a shame!     When you do find him, or alive or dead,     He will be found like Brutus, like himself.   ANTONY. This is not Brutus, friend, but, I assure you,     A prize no less in worth. Keep this man safe,     Give him all kindness; I had rather have     Such men my friends than enemies. Go on,     And see wheer Brutus be alive or dead,     And bring us word unto Octavius\' tent     How everything is chanced.                           Exeunt.     SCENE V. Another part of the field.  Enter Brutus, Dardanius, Clitus, Strato, and Volumnius.    BRUTUS. Come, poor remains of friends, rest on this rock.   CLITUS. Statilius show\'d the torchlight, but, my lord,     He came not back. He is or ta\'en or slain.   BRUTUS. Sit thee down, Clitus. Slaying is the word:     It is a deed in fashion. Hark thee, Clitus.        Whispers.   CLITUS. What, I, my lord? No, not for all the world.   BRUTUS. Peace then, no words.   CLITUS. I\'ll rather kill myself.   BRUTUS. Hark thee, Dardanius.                        Whispers.   DARDANIUS. Shall I do such a deed?   CLITUS. O Dardanius!   DARDANIUS. O Clitus!   CLITUS. What ill request did Brutus make to thee?   DARDANIUS. To kill him, Clitus. Look, he meditates.   CLITUS. Now is that noble vessel full of grief,     That it runs over even at his eyes.   BRUTUS. Come hither, good Volumnius, list a word.     VOLUMNIUS. What says my lord?   BRUTUS. Why, this, Volumnius:     The ghost of Caesar hath appear\'d to me     Two several times by night; at Sardis once,     And this last night here in Philippi fields.     I know my hour is come.   VOLUMNIUS. Not so, my lord.   BRUTUS. Nay I am sure it is, Volumnius.     Thou seest the world, Volumnius, how it goes;     Our enemies have beat us to the pit;            Low alarums.     It is more worthy to leap in ourselves     Than tarry till they push us. Good Volumnius,     Thou know\'st that we two went to school together;     Even for that our love of old, I prithee,     Hold thou my sword-hilts, whilst I run on it.   VOLUMNIUS. That\'s not an office for a friend, my lord.                                                    Alarum still.   CLITUS. Fly, fly, my lord, there is no tarrying here.   BRUTUS. Farewell to you, and you, and you, Volumnius.     Strato, thou hast been all this while asleep;       Farewell to thee too, Strato. Countrymen,     My heart doth joy that yet in all my life     I found no man but he was true to me.     I shall have glory by this losing day,     More than Octavius and Mark Antony     By this vile conquest shall attain unto.     So, fare you well at once, for Brutus\' tongue     Hath almost ended his life\'s history.     Night hangs upon mine eyes, my bones would rest     That have but labor\'d to attain this hour.                             Alarum. Cry within, "Fly, fly, fly!"   CLITUS. Fly, my lord, fly.   BRUTUS. Hence! I will follow.                         Exeunt Clitus, Dardanius, and Volumnius.     I prithee, Strato, stay thou by thy lord.     Thou art a fellow of a good respect;     Thy life hath had some smatch of honor in it.     Hold then my sword, and turn away thy face,     While I do run upon it. Wilt thou, Strato?   STRATO. Give me your hand first. Fare you well, my lord.     BRUTUS. Farewell, good Strato.              Runs on his sword.     Caesar, now be still;     I kill\'d not thee with half so good a will.            Dies.       Alarum. Retreat. Enter Octavius, Antony, Messala,                  Lucilius, and the Army.    OCTAVIUS. What man is that?   MESSALA. My master\'s man. Strato, where is thy master?   STRATO. Free from the bondage you are in, Messala:     The conquerors can but make a fire of him;     For Brutus only overcame himself,     And no man else hath honor by his death.   LUCILIUS. So Brutus should be found. I thank thee, Brutus,     That thou hast proved Lucilius\' saying true.   OCTAVIUS. All that served Brutus, I will entertain them.     Fellow, wilt thou bestow thy time with me?   STRATO. Ay, if Messala will prefer me to you.   OCTAVIUS. Do so, good Messala.   MESSALA. How died my master, Strato?     STRATO. I held the sword, and he did run on it.   MESSALA. Octavius, then take him to follow thee     That did the latest service to my master.   ANTONY. This was the noblest Roman of them all.     All the conspirators, save only he,     Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;     He only, in a general honest thought     And common good to all, made one of them.     His life was gentle, and the elements     So mix\'d in him that Nature might stand up     And say to all the world, "This was a man!"   OCTAVIUS. According to his virtue let us use him     With all respect and rites of burial.     Within my tent his bones tonight shall lie,     Most like a soldier, ordered honorably.     So call the field to rest, and let\'s away,     To part the glories of this happy day.              Exeunt.   THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>       1606   THE TRAGEDY OF KING LEAR  by William Shakespeare     Dramatis Personae        Lear, King of Britain.       King of France.       Duke of Burgundy.       Duke of Cornwall.       Duke of Albany.       Earl of Kent.       Earl of Gloucester.       Edgar, son of Gloucester.       Edmund, bastard son to Gloucester.       Curan, a courtier.       Old Man, tenant to Gloucester.       Doctor.       Lear\'s Fool.       Oswald, steward to Goneril.       A Captain under Edmund\'s command.       Gentlemen.       A Herald.       Servants to Cornwall.        Goneril, daughter to Lear.       Regan, daughter to Lear.       Cordelia, daughter to Lear.        Knights attending on Lear, Officers, Messengers, Soldiers,         Attendants.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    Scene: - Britain.   ACT I. Scene I. [King Lear\'s Palace.]  Enter Kent, Gloucester, and Edmund. [Kent and Glouceste converse. Edmund stands back.]    Kent. I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albany than      Cornwall.   Glou. It did always seem so to us; but now, in the division of the      kingdom, it appears not which of the Dukes he values most, for      equalities are so weigh\'d that curiosity in neither can make      choice of either\'s moiety.   Kent. Is not this your son, my lord?   Glou. His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge. I have so often      blush\'d to acknowledge him that now I am braz\'d to\'t.   Kent. I cannot conceive you.   Glou. Sir, this young fellow\'s mother could; whereupon she grew      round-womb\'d, and had indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she      had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a fault?   Kent. I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so      proper.   Glou. But I have, sir, a son by order of law, some year elder than      this, who yet is no dearer in my account. Though this knave came      something saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was        his mother fair, there was good sport at his making, and the      whoreson must be acknowledged.- Do you know this noble gentleman,      Edmund?   Edm. [comes forward] No, my lord.   Glou. My Lord of Kent. Remember him hereafter as my honourable      friend.   Edm. My services to your lordship.   Kent. I must love you, and sue to know you better.   Edm. Sir, I shall study deserving.   Glou. He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again.                                                  Sound a sennet.      The King is coming.        Enter one bearing a coronet; then Lear; then the Dukes of       Albany and Cornwall; next, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia, with                               Followers.    Lear. Attend the lords of France and Burgundy, Gloucester.   Glou. I shall, my liege.                                  Exeunt [Gloucester and Edmund].   Lear. Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.      Give me the map there. Know we have divided        In three our kingdom; and \'tis our fast intent      To shake all cares and business from our age,      Conferring them on younger strengths while we      Unburthen\'d crawl toward death. Our son of Cornwall,      And you, our no less loving son of Albany,      We have this hour a constant will to publish      Our daughters\' several dowers, that future strife      May be prevented now. The princes, France and Burgundy,      Great rivals in our youngest daughter\'s love,      Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn,      And here are to be answer\'d. Tell me, my daughters      (Since now we will divest us both of rule,      Interest of territory, cares of state),      Which of you shall we say doth love us most?      That we our largest bounty may extend      Where nature doth with merit challenge. Goneril,      Our eldest-born, speak first.   Gon. Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter;      Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty;      Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;        No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour;      As much as child e\'er lov\'d, or father found;      A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable.      Beyond all manner of so much I love you.   Cor. [aside] What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent.   Lear. Of all these bounds, even from this line to this,      With shadowy forests and with champains rich\'d,      With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,      We make thee lady. To thine and Albany\'s issue      Be this perpetual.- What says our second daughter,      Our dearest Regan, wife to Cornwall? Speak.   Reg. Sir, I am made      Of the selfsame metal that my sister is,      And prize me at her worth. In my true heart      I find she names my very deed of love;      Only she comes too short, that I profess      Myself an enemy to all other joys      Which the most precious square of sense possesses,      And find I am alone felicitate      In your dear Highness\' love.     Cor. [aside] Then poor Cordelia!      And yet not so; since I am sure my love\'s      More richer than my tongue.   Lear. To thee and thine hereditary ever      Remain this ample third of our fair kingdom,      No less in space, validity, and pleasure      Than that conferr\'d on Goneril.- Now, our joy,      Although the last, not least; to whose young love      The vines of France and milk of Burgundy      Strive to be interest; what can you say to draw      A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.   Cor. Nothing, my lord.   Lear. Nothing?   Cor. Nothing.   Lear. Nothing can come of nothing. Speak again.   Cor. Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave      My heart into my mouth. I love your Majesty      According to my bond; no more nor less.   Lear. How, how, Cordelia? Mend your speech a little,      Lest it may mar your fortunes.     Cor. Good my lord,      You have begot me, bred me, lov\'d me; I      Return those duties back as are right fit,      Obey you, love you, and most honour you.      Why have my sisters husbands, if they say      They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed,      That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry      Half my love with him, half my care and duty.      Sure I shall never marry like my sisters,      To love my father all.   Lear. But goes thy heart with this?   Cor. Ay, good my lord.   Lear. So young, and so untender?   Cor. So young, my lord, and true.   Lear. Let it be so! thy truth then be thy dower!      For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,      The mysteries of Hecate and the night;      By all the operation of the orbs      From whom we do exist and cease to be;      Here I disclaim all my paternal care,        Propinquity and property of blood,      And as a stranger to my heart and me      Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,      Or he that makes his generation messes      To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom      Be as well neighbour\'d, pitied, and reliev\'d,      As thou my sometime daughter.   Kent. Good my liege-   Lear. Peace, Kent!      Come not between the dragon and his wrath.      I lov\'d her most, and thought to set my rest      On her kind nursery.- Hence and avoid my sight!-      So be my grave my peace as here I give      Her father\'s heart from her! Call France! Who stirs?      Call Burgundy! Cornwall and Albany,      With my two daughters\' dowers digest this third;      Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.      I do invest you jointly in my power,      Preeminence, and all the large effects      That troop with majesty. Ourself, by monthly course,        With reservation of an hundred knights,      By you to be sustain\'d, shall our abode      Make with you by due turns. Only we still retain      The name, and all th\' additions to a king. The sway,      Revenue, execution of the rest,      Beloved sons, be yours; which to confirm,      This coronet part betwixt you.   Kent. Royal Lear,      Whom I have ever honour\'d as my king,      Lov\'d as my father, as my master follow\'d,      As my great patron thought on in my prayers-   Lear. The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft.   Kent. Let it fall rather, though the fork invade      The region of my heart! Be Kent unmannerly      When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man?      Think\'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak      When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour\'s bound      When majesty falls to folly. Reverse thy doom;      And in thy best consideration check      This hideous rashness. Answer my life my judgment,        Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least,      Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound      Reverbs no hollowness.   Lear. Kent, on thy life, no more!   Kent. My life I never held but as a pawn      To wage against thine enemies; nor fear to lose it,      Thy safety being the motive.   Lear. Out of my sight!   Kent. See better, Lear, and let me still remain      The true blank of thine eye.   Lear. Now by Apollo-   Kent. Now by Apollo, King,      Thou swear\'st thy gods in vain.   Lear. O vassal! miscreant!                                    [Lays his hand on his sword.]   Alb., Corn. Dear sir, forbear!   Kent. Do!      Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow      Upon the foul disease. Revoke thy gift,      Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat,        I\'ll tell thee thou dost evil.   Lear. Hear me, recreant!      On thine allegiance, hear me!      Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow-      Which we durst never yet- and with strain\'d pride      To come between our sentence and our power,-      Which nor our nature nor our place can bear,-      Our potency made good, take thy reward.      Five days we do allot thee for provision      To shield thee from diseases of the world,      And on the sixth to turn thy hated back      Upon our kingdom. If, on the tenth day following,      Thy banish\'d trunk be found in our dominions,      The moment is thy death. Away! By Jupiter,      This shall not be revok\'d.   Kent. Fare thee well, King. Since thus thou wilt appear,      Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here.      [To Cordelia] The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid,      That justly think\'st and hast most rightly said!      [To Regan and Goneril] And your large speeches may your deeds           approve,      That good effects may spring from words of love.      Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu;      He\'ll shape his old course in a country new. Exit.    Flourish. Enter Gloucester, with France and Burgundy; Attendants.    Glou. Here\'s France and Burgundy, my noble lord.   Lear. My Lord of Burgundy,      We first address toward you, who with this king      Hath rivall\'d for our daughter. What in the least      Will you require in present dower with her,      Or cease your quest of love?   Bur. Most royal Majesty,      I crave no more than hath your Highness offer\'d,      Nor will you tender less.   Lear. Right noble Burgundy,      When she was dear to us, we did hold her so;      But now her price is fall\'n. Sir, there she stands.      If aught within that little seeming substance,      Or all of it, with our displeasure piec\'d,        And nothing more, may fitly like your Grace,      She\'s there, and she is yours.   Bur. I know no answer.   Lear. Will you, with those infirmities she owes,      Unfriended, new adopted to our hate,      Dow\'r\'d with our curse, and stranger\'d with our oath,      Take her, or leave her?   Bur. Pardon me, royal sir.      Election makes not up on such conditions.   Lear. Then leave her, sir; for, by the pow\'r that made me,      I tell you all her wealth. [To France] For you, great King,      I would not from your love make such a stray      To match you where I hate; therefore beseech you      T\' avert your liking a more worthier way      Than on a wretch whom nature is asham\'d      Almost t\' acknowledge hers.   France. This is most strange,      That she that even but now was your best object,      The argument of your praise, balm of your age,      Most best, most dearest, should in this trice of time        Commit a thing so monstrous to dismantle      So many folds of favour. Sure her offence      Must be of such unnatural degree      That monsters it, or your fore-vouch\'d affection      Fall\'n into taint; which to believe of her      Must be a faith that reason without miracle      Should never plant in me.   Cor. I yet beseech your Majesty,      If for I want that glib and oily art      To speak and purpose not, since what I well intend,      I\'ll do\'t before I speak- that you make known      It is no vicious blot, murther, or foulness,      No unchaste action or dishonoured step,      That hath depriv\'d me of your grace and favour;      But even for want of that for which I am richer-      A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue      As I am glad I have not, though not to have it      Hath lost me in your liking.   Lear. Better thou      Hadst not been born than not t\' have pleas\'d me better.     France. Is it but this- a tardiness in nature      Which often leaves the history unspoke      That it intends to do? My Lord of Burgundy,      What say you to the lady? Love\'s not love      When it is mingled with regards that stands      Aloof from th\' entire point. Will you have her?      She is herself a dowry.   Bur. Royal Lear,      Give but that portion which yourself propos\'d,      And here I take Cordelia by the hand,      Duchess of Burgundy.   Lear. Nothing! I have sworn; I am firm.   Bur. I am sorry then you have so lost a father      That you must lose a husband.   Cor. Peace be with Burgundy!      Since that respects of fortune are his love,      I shall not be his wife.   France. Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor;      Most choice, forsaken; and most lov\'d, despis\'d!      Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon.        Be it lawful I take up what\'s cast away.      Gods, gods! \'tis strange that from their cold\'st neglect      My love should kindle to inflam\'d respect.      Thy dow\'rless daughter, King, thrown to my chance,      Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France.      Not all the dukes in wat\'rish Burgundy      Can buy this unpriz\'d precious maid of me.      Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind.      Thou losest here, a better where to find.   Lear. Thou hast her, France; let her be thine; for we      Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see      That face of hers again. Therefore be gone      Without our grace, our love, our benison.      Come, noble Burgundy.              Flourish. Exeunt Lear, Burgundy, [Cornwall, Albany,                                     Gloucester, and Attendants].   France. Bid farewell to your sisters.   Cor. The jewels of our father, with wash\'d eyes      Cordelia leaves you. I know you what you are;      And, like a sister, am most loath to call        Your faults as they are nam\'d. Use well our father.      To your professed bosoms I commit him;      But yet, alas, stood I within his grace,      I would prefer him to a better place!      So farewell to you both.   Gon. Prescribe not us our duties.   Reg. Let your study      Be to content your lord, who hath receiv\'d you      At fortune\'s alms. You have obedience scanted,      And well are worth the want that you have wanted.   Cor. Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides.      Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.      Well may you prosper!   France. Come, my fair Cordelia.                                      Exeunt France and Cordelia.   Gon. Sister, it is not little I have to say of what most nearly      appertains to us both. I think our father will hence to-night.   Reg. That\'s most certain, and with you; next month with us.   Gon. You see how full of changes his age is. The observation we      have made of it hath not been little. He always lov\'d our        sister most, and with what poor judgment he hath now cast her      off appears too grossly.   Reg. \'Tis the infirmity of his age; yet he hath ever but slenderly      known himself.   Gon. The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash; then      must we look to receive from his age, not alone the      imperfections of long-ingraffed condition, but therewithal      the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with      them.   Reg. Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this      of Kent\'s banishment.   Gon. There is further compliment of leave-taking between France and      him. Pray you let\'s hit together. If our father carry authority      with such dispositions as he bears, this last surrender of his      will but offend us.   Reg. We shall further think on\'t.   Gon. We must do something, and i\' th\' heat.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene II. The Earl of Gloucester\'s Castle.  Enter [Edmund the] Bastard solus, [with a letter].    Edm. Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law      My services are bound. Wherefore should I      Stand in the plague of custom, and permit      The curiosity of nations to deprive me,      For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines      Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?      When my dimensions are as well compact,      My mind as generous, and my shape as true,      As honest madam\'s issue? Why brand they us      With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?      Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take      More composition and fierce quality      Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,      Go to th\' creating a whole tribe of fops      Got \'tween asleep and wake? Well then,      Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.      Our father\'s love is to the bastard Edmund      As to th\' legitimate. Fine word- \'legitimate\'!      Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,        And my invention thrive, Edmund the base      Shall top th\' legitimate. I grow; I prosper.      Now, gods, stand up for bastards!                            Enter Gloucester.    Glou. Kent banish\'d thus? and France in choler parted?      And the King gone to-night? subscrib\'d his pow\'r?      Confin\'d to exhibition? All this done      Upon the gad? Edmund, how now? What news?   Edm. So please your lordship, none.                                            [Puts up the letter.]   Glou. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?   Edm. I know no news, my lord.   Glou. What paper were you reading?   Edm. Nothing, my lord.   Glou. No? What needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your      pocket? The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide      itself. Let\'s see. Come, if it be nothing, I shall not need      spectacles.   Edm. I beseech you, sir, pardon me. It is a letter from my brother      that I have not all o\'er-read; and for so much as I have        perus\'d, I find it not fit for your o\'erlooking.   Glou. Give me the letter, sir.   Edm. I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The contents, as      in part I understand them, are to blame.   Glou. Let\'s see, let\'s see!   Edm. I hope, for my brother\'s justification, he wrote this but as      an essay or taste of my virtue.    Glou. (reads) \'This policy and reverence of age makes the world      bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us      till our oldness cannot relish them. I begin to find an idle      and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny, who sways,      not as it hath power, but as it is suffer\'d. Come to me, that      of this I may speak more. If our father would sleep till I      wak\'d him, you should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live      the beloved of your brother,                                                         \'EDGAR.\'       Hum! Conspiracy? \'Sleep till I wak\'d him, you should enjoy half      his revenue.\' My son Edgar! Had he a hand to write this? a heart      and brain to breed it in? When came this to you? Who brought it?   Edm. It was not brought me, my lord: there\'s the cunning of it. I        found it thrown in at the casement of my closet.   Glou. You know the character to be your brother\'s?   Edm. If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swear it were his;      but in respect of that, I would fain think it were not.   Glou. It is his.   Edm. It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is not in the      contents.   Glou. Hath he never before sounded you in this business?   Edm. Never, my lord. But I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit      that, sons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the father      should be as ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue.   Glou. O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter! Abhorred      villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain! worse than      brutish! Go, sirrah, seek him. I\'ll apprehend him. Abominable      villain! Where is he?   Edm. I do not well know, my lord. If it shall please you to suspend      your indignation against my brother till you can derive from him      better testimony of his intent, you should run a certain course;      where, if you violently proceed against him, mistaking his      purpose, it would make a great gap in your own honour and shake        in pieces the heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life      for him that he hath writ this to feel my affection to your      honour, and to no other pretence of danger.   Glou. Think you so?   Edm. If your honour judge it meet, I will place you where you shall      hear us confer of this and by an auricular assurance have your      satisfaction, and that without any further delay than this very      evening.   Glou. He cannot be such a monster.   Edm. Nor is not, sure.   Glou. To his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him.      Heaven and earth! Edmund, seek him out; wind me into him, I pray      you; frame the business after your own wisdom. I would unstate      myself to be in a due resolution.   Edm. I will seek him, sir, presently; convey the business as I      shall find means, and acquaint you withal.   Glou. These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to      us. Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet      nature finds itself scourg\'d by the sequent effects. Love cools,      friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in        countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crack\'d      \'twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under the      prediction; there\'s son against father: the King falls from bias      of nature; there\'s father against child. We have seen the best      of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all      ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves. Find out      this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it      carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banish\'d! his      offence, honesty! \'Tis strange.                       Exit.   Edm. This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are      sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make      guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if      we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion;      knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance;      drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc\'d obedience of      planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine      thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whore-master man, to lay      his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father      compounded with my mother under the Dragon\'s Tail, and my      nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and        lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am, had the      maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.      Edgar-                               Enter Edgar.       and pat! he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy. My      cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o\' Bedlam.      O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! Fa, sol, la, mi.   Edg. How now, brother Edmund? What serious contemplation are you      in?   Edm. I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day,      what should follow these eclipses.   Edg. Do you busy yourself with that?   Edm. I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed unhappily: as      of unnaturalness between the child and the parent; death,      dearth, dissolutions of ancient amities; divisions in state,      menaces and maledictions against king and nobles; needless      diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts,      nuptial breaches, and I know not what.   Edg. How long have you been a sectary astronomical?   Edm. Come, come! When saw you my father last?     Edg. The night gone by.   Edm. Spake you with him?   Edg. Ay, two hours together.   Edm. Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in him by      word or countenance   Edg. None at all.   Edm. Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him; and at my      entreaty forbear his presence until some little time hath      qualified the heat of his displeasure, which at this instant so      rageth in him that with the mischief of your person it would      scarcely allay.   Edg. Some villain hath done me wrong.   Edm. That\'s my fear. I pray you have a continent forbearance till      the speed of his rage goes slower; and, as I say, retire with me      to my lodging, from whence I will fitly bring you to hear my      lord speak. Pray ye, go! There\'s my key. If you do stir abroad,      go arm\'d.   Edg. Arm\'d, brother?   Edm. Brother, I advise you to the best. Go arm\'d. I am no honest man      if there be any good meaning toward you. I have told you what I        have seen and heard; but faintly, nothing like the image and      horror of it. Pray you, away!   Edg. Shall I hear from you anon?   Edm. I do serve you in this business.                                                      Exit Edgar.      A credulous father! and a brother noble,      Whose nature is so far from doing harms      That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty      My practices ride easy! I see the business.      Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit;      All with me\'s meet that I can fashion fit. Exit.     Scene III. The Duke of Albany\'s Palace.  Enter Goneril and [her] Steward [Oswald].    Gon. Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his fool?   Osw. Ay, madam.   Gon. By day and night, he wrongs me! Every hour      He flashes into one gross crime or other      That sets us all at odds. I\'ll not endure it.      His knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us      On every trifle. When he returns from hunting,      I will not speak with him. Say I am sick.      If you come slack of former services,      You shall do well; the fault of it I\'ll answer.                                                  [Horns within.]   Osw. He\'s coming, madam; I hear him.   Gon. Put on what weary negligence you please,      You and your fellows. I\'d have it come to question.      If he distaste it, let him to our sister,      Whose mind and mine I know in that are one,      Not to be overrul\'d. Idle old man,        That still would manage those authorities      That he hath given away! Now, by my life,      Old fools are babes again, and must be us\'d      With checks as flatteries, when they are seen abus\'d.      Remember what I have said.   Osw. Very well, madam.   Gon. And let his knights have colder looks among you.      What grows of it, no matter. Advise your fellows so.      I would breed from hence occasions, and I shall,      That I may speak. I\'ll write straight to my sister      To hold my very course. Prepare for dinner.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene IV. The Duke of Albany\'s Palace.  Enter Kent, [disguised].    Kent. If but as well I other accents borrow,      That can my speech defuse, my good intent      May carry through itself to that full issue      For which I raz\'d my likeness. Now, banish\'d Kent,      If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn\'d,      So may it come, thy master, whom thou lov\'st,      Shall find thee full of labours.           Horns within. Enter Lear, [Knights,] and Attendants.    Lear. Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go get it ready. [Exit      an Attendant.] How now? What art thou?   Kent. A man, sir.   Lear. What dost thou profess? What wouldst thou with us?   Kent. I do profess to be no less than I seem, to serve him truly      that will put me in trust, to love him that is honest, to      converse with him that is wise and says little, to fear        judgment, to fight when I cannot choose, and to eat no fish.   Lear. What art thou?   Kent. A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the King.   Lear. If thou be\'st as poor for a subject as he\'s for a king, thou      art poor enough. What wouldst thou?   Kent. Service.   Lear. Who wouldst thou serve?   Kent. You.   Lear. Dost thou know me, fellow?   Kent. No, sir; but you have that in your countenance which I would      fain call master.   Lear. What\'s that?   Kent. Authority.   Lear. What services canst thou do?   Kent. I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a curious tale in      telling it and deliver a plain message bluntly. That which      ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in, and the best of me      is diligence.   Lear. How old art thou?   Kent. Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing, nor so old to        dote on her for anything. I have years on my back forty-eight.   Lear. Follow me; thou shalt serve me. If I like thee no worse after      dinner, I will not part from thee yet. Dinner, ho, dinner!      Where\'s my knave? my fool? Go you and call my fool hither.                                              [Exit an attendant.]                       Enter [Oswald the] Steward.       You, you, sirrah, where\'s my daughter?   Osw. So please you-                                      Exit.   Lear. What says the fellow there? Call the clotpoll back.      [Exit a Knight.] Where\'s my fool, ho? I think the world\'s      asleep.                              [Enter Knight]       How now? Where\'s that mongrel?   Knight. He says, my lord, your daughter is not well.   Lear. Why came not the slave back to me when I call\'d him?     Knight. Sir, he answered me in the roundest manner, he would not.   Lear. He would not?   Knight. My lord, I know not what the matter is; but to my judgment      your Highness is not entertain\'d with that ceremonious affection      as you were wont. There\'s a great abatement of kindness appears      as well in the general dependants as in the Duke himself also      and your daughter.   Lear. Ha! say\'st thou so?   Knight. I beseech you pardon me, my lord, if I be mistaken; for      my duty cannot be silent when I think your Highness wrong\'d.   Lear. Thou but rememb\'rest me of mine own conception. I have      perceived a most faint neglect of late, which I have rather      blamed as mine own jealous curiosity than as a very pretence      and purpose of unkindness. I will look further into\'t. But      where\'s my fool? I have not seen him this two days.   Knight. Since my young lady\'s going into France, sir, the fool      hath much pined away.   Lear. No more of that; I have noted it well. Go you and tell my      daughter I would speak with her. [Exit Knight.] Go you, call      hither my fool.                                               [Exit an Attendant.]                       Enter [Oswald the] Steward.       O, you, sir, you! Come you hither, sir. Who am I, sir?   Osw. My lady\'s father.   Lear. \'My lady\'s father\'? My lord\'s knave! You whoreson dog! you      slave! you cur!   Osw. I am none of these, my lord; I beseech your pardon.   Lear. Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?                                                   [Strikes him.]   Osw. I\'ll not be strucken, my lord.   Kent. Nor tripp\'d neither, you base football player?                                             [Trips up his heels.   Lear. I thank thee, fellow. Thou serv\'st me, and I\'ll love thee.   Kent. Come, sir, arise, away! I\'ll teach you differences. Away,      away! If you will measure your lubber\'s length again, tarry; but      away! Go to! Have you wisdom? So.                                                [Pushes him out.]   Lear. Now, my friendly knave, I thank thee. There\'s earnest of thy        service.                                     [Gives money.]                               Enter Fool.    Fool. Let me hire him too. Here\'s my coxcomb.                                           [Offers Kent his cap.]   Lear. How now, my pretty knave? How dost thou?   Fool. Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb.   Kent. Why, fool?   Fool. Why? For taking one\'s part that\'s out of favour. Nay, an thou      canst not smile as the wind sits, thou\'lt catch cold shortly.      There, take my coxcomb! Why, this fellow hath banish\'d two on\'s      daughters, and did the third a blessing against his will. If      thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb.- How now,      nuncle? Would I had two coxcombs and two daughters!   Lear. Why, my boy?   Fool. If I gave them all my living, I\'ld keep my coxcombs myself.      There\'s mine! beg another of thy daughters.   Lear. Take heed, sirrah- the whip.   Fool. Truth\'s a dog must to kennel; he must be whipp\'d out, when        Lady the brach may stand by th\' fire and stink.   Lear. A pestilent gall to me!   Fool. Sirrah, I\'ll teach thee a speech.   Lear. Do.   Fool. Mark it, nuncle.           Have more than thou showest,           Speak less than thou knowest,           Lend less than thou owest,           Ride more than thou goest,           Learn more than thou trowest,           Set less than thou throwest;           Leave thy drink and thy whore,           And keep in-a-door,           And thou shalt have more           Than two tens to a score.   Kent. This is nothing, fool.   Fool. Then \'tis like the breath of an unfeed lawyer- you gave me      nothing for\'t. Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?   Lear. Why, no, boy. Nothing can be made out of nothing.   Fool. [to Kent] Prithee tell him, so much the rent of his land        comes to. He will not believe a fool.   Lear. A bitter fool!   Fool. Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter      fool and a sweet fool?   Lear. No, lad; teach me.   Fool.   That lord that counsell\'d thee             To give away thy land,           Come place him here by me-             Do thou for him stand.           The sweet and bitter fool             Will presently appear;           The one in motley here,             The other found out there.   Lear. Dost thou call me fool, boy?   Fool. All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast      born with.   Kent. This is not altogether fool, my lord.   Fool. No, faith; lords and great men will not let me. If I had a      monopoly out, they would have part on\'t. And ladies too, they      will not let me have all the fool to myself; they\'ll be        snatching. Give me an egg, nuncle, and I\'ll give thee two      crowns.   Lear. What two crowns shall they be?   Fool. Why, after I have cut the egg i\' th\' middle and eat up the      meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou clovest thy crown i\'      th\' middle and gav\'st away both parts, thou bor\'st thine ass on      thy back o\'er the dirt. Thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown      when thou gav\'st thy golden one away. If I speak like myself in      this, let him be whipp\'d that first finds it so.       [Sings]    Fools had ne\'er less grace in a year,                   For wise men are grown foppish;                 They know not how their wits to wear,                   Their manners are so apish.    Lear. When were you wont to be so full of songs, sirrah?   Fool. I have us\'d it, nuncle, ever since thou mad\'st thy daughters      thy mother; for when thou gav\'st them the rod, and put\'st down      thine own breeches,         [Sings]    Then they for sudden joy did weep,                   And I for sorrow sung,                 That such a king should play bo-peep                   And go the fools among.       Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to      lie. I would fain learn to lie.   Lear. An you lie, sirrah, we\'ll have you whipp\'d.   Fool. I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are. They\'ll have me      whipp\'d for speaking true; thou\'lt have me whipp\'d for lying;      and sometimes I am whipp\'d for holding my peace. I had rather be      any kind o\' thing than a fool! And yet I would not be thee,      nuncle. Thou hast pared thy wit o\' both sides and left nothing      i\' th\' middle. Here comes one o\' the parings.                              Enter Goneril.    Lear. How now, daughter? What makes that frontlet on? Methinks you      are too much o\' late i\' th\' frown.   Fool. Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for        her frowning. Now thou art an O without a figure. I am better      than thou art now: I am a fool, thou art nothing.      [To Goneril] Yes, forsooth, I will hold my tongue. So your face      bids me, though you say nothing. Mum, mum!              He that keeps nor crust nor crum,             Weary of all, shall want some.-       [Points at Lear] That\'s a sheal\'d peascod.   Gon. Not only, sir, this your all-licens\'d fool,      But other of your insolent retinue      Do hourly carp and quarrel, breaking forth      In rank and not-to-be-endured riots. Sir,      I had thought, by making this well known unto you,      To have found a safe redress, but now grow fearful,      By what yourself, too, late have spoke and done,      That you protect this course, and put it on      By your allowance; which if you should, the fault      Would not scape censure, nor the redresses sleep,      Which, in the tender of a wholesome weal,        Might in their working do you that offence      Which else were shame, that then necessity      Must call discreet proceeding.   Fool. For you know, nuncle,            The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long           That it had it head bit off by it young.       So out went the candle, and we were left darkling.   Lear. Are you our daughter?   Gon. Come, sir,      I would you would make use of that good wisdom      Whereof I know you are fraught, and put away      These dispositions that of late transform you      From what you rightly are.   Fool. May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse?      Whoop, Jug, I love thee!   Lear. Doth any here know me? This is not Lear.      Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?      Either his notion weakens, his discernings        Are lethargied- Ha! waking? \'Tis not so!      Who is it that can tell me who I am?   Fool. Lear\'s shadow.   Lear. I would learn that; for, by the marks of sovereignty,      Knowledge, and reason, I should be false persuaded      I had daughters.   Fool. Which they will make an obedient father.   Lear. Your name, fair gentlewoman?   Gon. This admiration, sir, is much o\' th\' savour      Of other your new pranks. I do beseech you      To understand my purposes aright.      As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.      Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires;      Men so disorder\'d, so debosh\'d, and bold      That this our court, infected with their manners,      Shows like a riotous inn. Epicurism and lust      Make it more like a tavern or a brothel      Than a grac\'d palace. The shame itself doth speak      For instant remedy. Be then desir\'d      By her that else will take the thing she begs        A little to disquantity your train,      And the remainder that shall still depend      To be such men as may besort your age,      Which know themselves, and you.   Lear. Darkness and devils!      Saddle my horses! Call my train together!      Degenerate bastard, I\'ll not trouble thee;      Yet have I left a daughter.   Gon. You strike my people, and your disorder\'d rabble      Make servants of their betters.                              Enter Albany.    Lear. Woe that too late repents!- O, sir, are you come?      Is it your will? Speak, sir!- Prepare my horses.      Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,      More hideous when thou show\'st thee in a child      Than the sea-monster!   Alb. Pray, sir, be patient.   Lear. [to Goneril] Detested kite, thou liest!        My train are men of choice and rarest parts,      That all particulars of duty know      And in the most exact regard support      The worships of their name.- O most small fault,      How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show!      Which, like an engine, wrench\'d my frame of nature      From the fix\'d place; drew from my heart all love      And added to the gall. O Lear, Lear, Lear!      Beat at this gate that let thy folly in  [Strikes his head.]      And thy dear judgment out! Go, go, my people.   Alb. My lord, I am guiltless, as I am ignorant      Of what hath mov\'d you.   Lear. It may be so, my lord.      Hear, Nature, hear! dear goddess, hear!      Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend      To make this creature fruitful.      Into her womb convey sterility;      Dry up in her the organs of increase;      And from her derogate body never spring      A babe to honour her! If she must teem,        Create her child of spleen, that it may live      And be a thwart disnatur\'d torment to her.      Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,      With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,      Turn all her mother\'s pains and benefits      To laughter and contempt, that she may feel      How sharper than a serpent\'s tooth it is      To have a thankless child! Away, away!                Exit.   Alb. Now, gods that we adore, whereof comes this?   Gon. Never afflict yourself to know the cause;      But let his disposition have that scope      That dotage gives it.                               Enter Lear.    Lear. What, fifty of my followers at a clap?      Within a fortnight?   Alb. What\'s the matter, sir?   Lear. I\'ll tell thee. [To Goneril] Life and death! I am asham\'d      That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus;        That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,      Should make thee worth them. Blasts and fogs upon thee!      Th\' untented woundings of a father\'s curse      Pierce every sense about thee!- Old fond eyes,      Beweep this cause again, I\'ll pluck ye out,      And cast you, with the waters that you lose,      To temper clay. Yea, is it come to this?      Let it be so. Yet have I left a daughter,      Who I am sure is kind and comfortable.      When she shall hear this of thee, with her nails      She\'ll flay thy wolvish visage. Thou shalt find      That I\'ll resume the shape which thou dost think      I have cast off for ever; thou shalt, I warrant thee.                             Exeunt [Lear, Kent, and Attendants].   Gon. Do you mark that, my lord?   Alb. I cannot be so partial, Goneril,      To the great love I bear you -   Gon. Pray you, content.- What, Oswald, ho!      [To the Fool] You, sir, more knave than fool, after your master!   Fool. Nuncle Lear, nuncle Lear, tarry! Take the fool with thee.              A fox when one has caught her,           And such a daughter,           Should sure to the slaughter,           If my cap would buy a halter.           So the fool follows after.                       Exit.   Gon. This man hath had good counsel! A hundred knights?      \'Tis politic and safe to let him keep      At point a hundred knights; yes, that on every dream,      Each buzz, each fancy, each complaint, dislike,      He may enguard his dotage with their pow\'rs      And hold our lives in mercy.- Oswald, I say!   Alb. Well, you may fear too far.   Gon. Safer than trust too far.      Let me still take away the harms I fear,      Not fear still to be taken. I know his heart.      What he hath utter\'d I have writ my sister.      If she sustain him and his hundred knights,      When I have show\'d th\' unfitness-                         Enter [Oswald the] Steward.       How now, Oswald?      What, have you writ that letter to my sister?   Osw. Yes, madam.   Gon. Take you some company, and away to horse!      Inform her full of my particular fear,      And thereto add such reasons of your own      As may compact it more. Get you gone,      And hasten your return. [Exit Oswald.] No, no, my lord!      This milky gentleness and course of yours,      Though I condemn it not, yet, under pardon,      You are much more at task for want of wisdom      Than prais\'d for harmful mildness.   Alb. How far your eyes may pierce I cannot tell.      Striving to better, oft we mar what\'s well.   Gon. Nay then-   Alb. Well, well; th\' event.                            Exeunt.     Scene V. Court before the Duke of Albany\'s Palace.  Enter Lear, Kent, and Fool.    Lear. Go you before to Gloucester with these letters. Acquaint my      daughter no further with anything you know than comes from her      demand out of the letter. If your diligence be not speedy, I      shall be there afore you.   Kent. I will not sleep, my lord, till I have delivered your letter. Exit.   Fool. If a man\'s brains were in\'s heels, were\'t not in danger of      kibes?   Lear. Ay, boy.   Fool. Then I prithee be merry. Thy wit shall ne\'er go slip-shod.   Lear. Ha, ha, ha!   Fool. Shalt see thy other daughter will use thee kindly; for though      she\'s as like this as a crab\'s like an apple, yet I can tell      what I can tell.   Lear. What canst tell, boy?   Fool. She\'ll taste as like this as a crab does to a crab. Thou      canst tell why one\'s nose stands i\' th\' middle on\'s face?     Lear. No.   Fool. Why, to keep one\'s eyes of either side\'s nose, that what a      man cannot smell out, \'a may spy into.   Lear. I did her wrong.   Fool. Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?   Lear. No.   Fool. Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house.   Lear. Why?   Fool. Why, to put\'s head in; not to give it away to his daughters,      and leave his horns without a case.   Lear. I will forget my nature. So kind a father!- Be my horses      ready?   Fool. Thy asses are gone about \'em. The reason why the seven stars      are no moe than seven is a pretty reason.   Lear. Because they are not eight?   Fool. Yes indeed. Thou wouldst make a good fool.   Lear. To tak\'t again perforce! Monster ingratitude!   Fool. If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I\'ld have thee beaten for being      old before thy time.   Lear. How\'s that?     Fool. Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.   Lear. O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!      Keep me in temper; I would not be mad!                           [Enter a Gentleman.]       How now? Are the horses ready?   Gent. Ready, my lord.   Lear. Come, boy.   Fool. She that\'s a maid now, and laughs at my departure,      Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter                                                          Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. Scene I. A court within the Castle of the Earl of Gloucester.  Enter [Edmund the] Bastard and Curan, meeting.    Edm. Save thee, Curan.   Cur. And you, sir. I have been with your father, and given him      notice that the Duke of Cornwall and Regan his Duchess will be      here with him this night.   Edm. How comes that?   Cur. Nay, I know not. You have heard of the news abroad- I mean the      whisper\'d ones, for they are yet but ear-kissing arguments?   Edm. Not I. Pray you, what are they?   Cur. Have you heard of no likely wars toward \'twixt the two Dukes      of Cornwall and Albany?   Edm. Not a word.   Cur. You may do, then, in time. Fare you well, sir.      Exit.   Edm. The Duke be here to-night? The better! best!      This weaves itself perforce into my business.      My father hath set guard to take my brother;      And I have one thing, of a queasy question,      Which I must act. Briefness and fortune, work!        Brother, a word! Descend! Brother, I say!                               Enter Edgar.       My father watches. O sir, fly this place!      Intelligence is given where you are hid.      You have now the good advantage of the night.      Have you not spoken \'gainst the Duke of Cornwall?      He\'s coming hither; now, i\' th\' night, i\' th\' haste,      And Regan with him. Have you nothing said      Upon his party \'gainst the Duke of Albany?      Advise yourself.   Edg. I am sure on\'t, not a word.   Edm. I hear my father coming. Pardon me!      In cunning I must draw my sword upon you.      Draw, seem to defend yourself; now quit you well.-      Yield! Come before my father. Light, ho, here!      Fly, brother.- Torches, torches!- So farewell.                                                      Exit Edgar.      Some blood drawn on me would beget opinion        Of my more fierce endeavour. [Stabs his arm.] I have seen         drunkards      Do more than this in sport.- Father, father!-      Stop, stop! No help?               Enter Gloucester, and Servants with torches.    Glou. Now, Edmund, where\'s the villain?   Edm. Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out,      Mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon      To stand \'s auspicious mistress.   Glou. But where is he?   Edm. Look, sir, I bleed.   Glou. Where is the villain, Edmund?   Edm. Fled this way, sir. When by no means he could-   Glou. Pursue him, ho! Go after.        [Exeunt some Servants].      By no means what?   Edm. Persuade me to the murther of your lordship;      But that I told him the revenging gods      \'Gainst parricides did all their thunders bend;        Spoke with how manifold and strong a bond      The child was bound to th\' father- sir, in fine,      Seeing how loathly opposite I stood      To his unnatural purpose, in fell motion      With his prepared sword he charges home      My unprovided body, lanch\'d mine arm;      But when he saw my best alarum\'d spirits,      Bold in the quarrel\'s right, rous\'d to th\' encounter,      Or whether gasted by the noise I made,      Full suddenly he fled.   Glou. Let him fly far.      Not in this land shall he remain uncaught;      And found- dispatch. The noble Duke my master,      My worthy arch and patron, comes to-night.      By his authority I will proclaim it      That he which find, him shall deserve our thanks,      Bringing the murderous caitiff to the stake;      He that conceals him, death.   Edm. When I dissuaded him from his intent      And found him pight to do it, with curst speech        I threaten\'d to discover him. He replied,      \'Thou unpossessing bastard, dost thou think,      If I would stand against thee, would the reposal      Of any trust, virtue, or worth in thee      Make thy words faith\'d? No. What I should deny      (As this I would; ay, though thou didst produce      My very character), I\'ld turn it all      To thy suggestion, plot, and damned practice;      And thou must make a dullard of the world,      If they not thought the profits of my death      Were very pregnant and potential spurs      To make thee seek it.\'   Glou. Strong and fast\'ned villain!      Would he deny his letter? I never got him.                                                   Tucket within.      Hark, the Duke\'s trumpets! I know not why he comes.      All ports I\'ll bar; the villain shall not scape;      The Duke must grant me that. Besides, his picture      I will send far and near, that all the kingdom      May have due note of him, and of my land,        Loyal and natural boy, I\'ll work the means      To make thee capable.                  Enter Cornwall, Regan, and Attendants.    Corn. How now, my noble friend? Since I came hither      (Which I can call but now) I have heard strange news.   Reg. If it be true, all vengeance comes too short      Which can pursue th\' offender. How dost, my lord?   Glou. O madam, my old heart is crack\'d, it\'s crack\'d!   Reg. What, did my father\'s godson seek your life?      He whom my father nam\'d? Your Edgar?   Glou. O lady, lady, shame would have it hid!   Reg. Was he not companion with the riotous knights      That tend upon my father?   Glou. I know not, madam. \'Tis too bad, too bad!   Edm. Yes, madam, he was of that consort.   Reg. No marvel then though he were ill affected.      \'Tis they have put him on the old man\'s death,      To have th\' expense and waste of his revenues.        I have this present evening from my sister      Been well inform\'d of them, and with such cautions      That, if they come to sojourn at my house,      I\'ll not be there.   Corn. Nor I, assure thee, Regan.      Edmund, I hear that you have shown your father      A childlike office.   Edm. \'Twas my duty, sir.   Glou. He did bewray his practice, and receiv\'d      This hurt you see, striving to apprehend him.   Corn. Is he pursued?   Glou. Ay, my good lord.   Corn. If he be taken, he shall never more      Be fear\'d of doing harm. Make your own purpose,      How in my strength you please. For you, Edmund,      Whose virtue and obedience doth this instant      So much commend itself, you shall be ours.      Natures of such deep trust we shall much need;      You we first seize on.   Edm. I shall serve you, sir,        Truly, however else.   Glou. For him I thank your Grace.   Corn. You know not why we came to visit you-   Reg. Thus out of season, threading dark-ey\'d night.      Occasions, noble Gloucester, of some poise,      Wherein we must have use of your advice.      Our father he hath writ, so hath our sister,      Of differences, which I best thought it fit      To answer from our home. The several messengers      From hence attend dispatch. Our good old friend,      Lay comforts to your bosom, and bestow      Your needful counsel to our business,      Which craves the instant use.   Glou. I serve you, madam.      Your Graces are right welcome.                                                Exeunt. Flourish.     Scene II. Before Gloucester\'s Castle.  Enter Kent and [Oswald the] Steward, severally.    Osw. Good dawning to thee, friend. Art of this house?   Kent. Ay.   Osw. Where may we set our horses?   Kent. I\' th\' mire.   Osw. Prithee, if thou lov\'st me, tell me.   Kent. I love thee not.   Osw. Why then, I care not for thee.   Kent. If I had thee in Lipsbury Pinfold, I would make thee care for      me.   Osw. Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not.   Kent. Fellow, I know thee.   Osw. What dost thou know me for?   Kent. A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud,      shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy,      worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver\'d, action-taking, whoreson,      glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue;      one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of      good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave,        beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch;      one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deny the      least syllable of thy addition.   Osw. Why, what a monstrous fellow art thou, thus to rail on one      that\'s neither known of thee nor knows thee!   Kent. What a brazen-fac\'d varlet art thou, to deny thou knowest me!      Is it two days ago since I beat thee and tripp\'d up thy heels      before the King? [Draws his sword.] Draw, you rogue! for, though      it be night, yet the moon shines. I\'ll make a sop o\' th\'      moonshine o\' you. Draw, you whoreson cullionly barbermonger!      draw!   Osw. Away! I have nothing to do with thee.   Kent. Draw, you rascal! You come with letters against the King, and      take Vanity the puppet\'s part against the royalty of her father.      Draw, you rogue, or I\'ll so carbonado your shanks! Draw, you      rascal! Come your ways!   Osw. Help, ho! murther! help!   Kent. Strike, you slave! Stand, rogue! Stand, you neat slave!      Strike!                                        [Beats him.]     Osw. Help, ho! murther! murther!        Enter Edmund, with his rapier drawn, Gloucester, Cornwall,                            Regan, Servants.    Edm. How now? What\'s the matter?                 Parts [them].   Kent. With you, goodman boy, an you please! Come, I\'ll flesh ye!      Come on, young master!   Glou. Weapons? arms? What\'s the matter here?   Corn. Keep peace, upon your lives!      He dies that strikes again. What is the matter?   Reg. The messengers from our sister and the King   Corn. What is your difference? Speak.   Osw. I am scarce in breath, my lord.   Kent. No marvel, you have so bestirr\'d your valour. You cowardly      rascal, nature disclaims in thee; a tailor made thee.   Corn. Thou art a strange fellow. A tailor make a man?   Kent. Ay, a tailor, sir. A stonecutter or a painter could not have      made him so ill, though he had been but two hours at the trade.   Corn. Speak yet, how grew your quarrel?     Osw. This ancient ruffian, sir, whose life I have spar\'d      At suit of his grey beard-   Kent. Thou whoreson zed! thou unnecessary letter! My lord, if      you\'ll give me leave, I will tread this unbolted villain into      mortar and daub the walls of a jakes with him. \'Spare my grey      beard,\' you wagtail?   Corn. Peace, sirrah!      You beastly knave, know you no reverence?   Kent. Yes, sir, but anger hath a privilege.   Corn. Why art thou angry?   Kent. That such a slave as this should wear a sword,      Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as these,      Like rats, oft bite the holy cords atwain      Which are too intrinse t\' unloose; smooth every passion      That in the natures of their lords rebel,      Bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods;      Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks      With every gale and vary of their masters,      Knowing naught (like dogs) but following.      A plague upon your epileptic visage!        Smile you my speeches, as I were a fool?      Goose, an I had you upon Sarum Plain,      I\'ld drive ye cackling home to Camelot.   Corn. What, art thou mad, old fellow?   Glou. How fell you out? Say that.   Kent. No contraries hold more antipathy      Than I and such a knave.   Corn. Why dost thou call him knave? What is his fault?   Kent. His countenance likes me not.   Corn. No more perchance does mine, or his, or hers.   Kent. Sir, \'tis my occupation to be plain.      I have seen better faces in my time      Than stands on any shoulder that I see      Before me at this instant.   Corn. This is some fellow      Who, having been prais\'d for bluntness, doth affect      A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb      Quite from his nature. He cannot flatter, he!      An honest mind and plain- he must speak truth!      An they will take it, so; if not, he\'s plain.        These kind of knaves I know which in this plainness      Harbour more craft and more corrupter ends      Than twenty silly-ducking observants      That stretch their duties nicely.   Kent. Sir, in good faith, in sincere verity,      Under th\' allowance of your great aspect,      Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire      On flickering Phoebus\' front-   Corn. What mean\'st by this?   Kent. To go out of my dialect, which you discommend so much. I      know, sir, I am no flatterer. He that beguil\'d you in a plain      accent was a plain knave, which, for my part, I will not be,      though I should win your displeasure to entreat me to\'t.   Corn. What was th\' offence you gave him?   Osw. I never gave him any.      It pleas\'d the King his master very late      To strike at me, upon his misconstruction;      When he, conjunct, and flattering his displeasure,      Tripp\'d me behind; being down, insulted, rail\'d      And put upon him such a deal of man        That worthied him, got praises of the King      For him attempting who was self-subdu\'d;      And, in the fleshment of this dread exploit,      Drew on me here again.   Kent. None of these rogues and cowards      But Ajax is their fool.   Corn. Fetch forth the stocks!      You stubborn ancient knave, you reverent braggart,      We\'ll teach you-   Kent. Sir, I am too old to learn.      Call not your stocks for me. I serve the King;      On whose employment I was sent to you.      You shall do small respect, show too bold malice      Against the grace and person of my master,      Stocking his messenger.   Corn. Fetch forth the stocks! As I have life and honour,      There shall he sit till noon.   Reg. Till noon? Till night, my lord, and all night too!   Kent. Why, madam, if I were your father\'s dog,      You should not use me so.     Reg. Sir, being his knave, I will.   Corn. This is a fellow of the selfsame colour      Our sister speaks of. Come, bring away the stocks!                                              Stocks brought out.   Glou. Let me beseech your Grace not to do so.      His fault is much, and the good King his master      Will check him for\'t. Your purpos\'d low correction      Is such as basest and contemn\'dest wretches      For pilf\'rings and most common trespasses      Are punish\'d with. The King must take it ill      That he, so slightly valued in his messenger,      Should have him thus restrain\'d.   Corn. I\'ll answer that.   Reg. My sister may receive it much more worse,      To have her gentleman abus\'d, assaulted,      For following her affairs. Put in his legs.-                                     [Kent is put in the stocks.]      Come, my good lord, away.                            Exeunt [all but Gloucester and Kent].   Glou. I am sorry for thee, friend. \'Tis the Duke\'s pleasure,        Whose disposition, all the world well knows,      Will not be rubb\'d nor stopp\'d. I\'ll entreat for thee.   Kent. Pray do not, sir. I have watch\'d and travell\'d hard.      Some time I shall sleep out, the rest I\'ll whistle.      A good man\'s fortune may grow out at heels.      Give you good morrow!   Glou. The Duke \'s to blame in this; \'twill be ill taken. Exit.   Kent. Good King, that must approve the common saw,      Thou out of heaven\'s benediction com\'st      To the warm sun!      Approach, thou beacon to this under globe,      That by thy comfortable beams I may      Peruse this letter. Nothing almost sees miracles      But misery. I know \'tis from Cordelia,      Who hath most fortunately been inform\'d      Of my obscured course- and [reads] \'shall find time      From this enormous state, seeking to give      Losses their remedies\'- All weary and o\'erwatch\'d,      Take vantage, heavy eyes, not to behold        This shameful lodging.      Fortune, good night; smile once more, turn thy wheel.                                                          Sleeps.     Scene III. The open country.  Enter Edgar.    Edg. I heard myself proclaim\'d,      And by the happy hollow of a tree      Escap\'d the hunt. No port is free, no place      That guard and most unusual vigilance      Does not attend my taking. Whiles I may scape,      I will preserve myself; and am bethought      To take the basest and most poorest shape      That ever penury, in contempt of man,      Brought near to beast. My face I\'ll grime with filth,      Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots,      And with presented nakedness outface      The winds and persecutions of the sky.      The country gives me proof and precedent      Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,      Strike in their numb\'d and mortified bare arms      Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;      And with this horrible object, from low farms,        Poor pelting villages, sheepcotes, and mills,      Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,      Enforce their charity. \'Poor Turlygod! poor Tom!\'      That\'s something yet! Edgar I nothing am.             Exit.     Scene IV. Before Gloucester\'s Castle; Kent in the stocks.  Enter Lear, Fool, and Gentleman.    Lear. \'Tis strange that they should so depart from home,      And not send back my messenger.   Gent. As I learn\'d,      The night before there was no purpose in them      Of this remove.   Kent. Hail to thee, noble master!   Lear. Ha!      Mak\'st thou this shame thy pastime?   Kent. No, my lord.   Fool. Ha, ha! look! he wears cruel garters. Horses are tied by the      head, dogs and bears by th\' neck, monkeys by th\' loins, and men      by th\' legs. When a man\'s over-lusty at legs, then he wears      wooden nether-stocks.   Lear. What\'s he that hath so much thy place mistook      To set thee here?   Kent. It is both he and she-      Your son and daughter.     Lear. No.   Kent. Yes.   Lear. No, I say.   Kent. I say yea.   Lear. No, no, they would not!   Kent. Yes, they have.   Lear. By Jupiter, I swear no!   Kent. By Juno, I swear ay!   Lear. They durst not do\'t;      They would not, could not do\'t. \'Tis worse than murther      To do upon respect such violent outrage.      Resolve me with all modest haste which way      Thou mightst deserve or they impose this usage,      Coming from us.   Kent. My lord, when at their home      I did commend your Highness\' letters to them,      Ere I was risen from the place that show\'d      My duty kneeling, came there a reeking post,      Stew\'d in his haste, half breathless, panting forth      From Goneril his mistress salutations;        Deliver\'d letters, spite of intermission,      Which presently they read; on whose contents,      They summon\'d up their meiny, straight took horse,      Commanded me to follow and attend      The leisure of their answer, gave me cold looks,      And meeting here the other messenger,      Whose welcome I perceiv\'d had poison\'d mine-      Being the very fellow which of late      Display\'d so saucily against your Highness-      Having more man than wit about me, drew.      He rais\'d the house with loud and coward cries.      Your son and daughter found this trespass worth      The shame which here it suffers.   Fool. Winter\'s not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way.            Fathers that wear rags             Do make their children blind;           But fathers that bear bags             Shall see their children kind.           Fortune, that arrant whore,             Ne\'er turns the key to th\' poor.       But for all this, thou shalt have as many dolours for thy      daughters as thou canst tell in a year.   Lear. O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!      Hysterica passio! Down, thou climbing sorrow!      Thy element\'s below! Where is this daughter?   Kent. With the Earl, sir, here within.   Lear. Follow me not;      Stay here.                                            Exit.   Gent. Made you no more offence but what you speak of?   Kent. None.      How chance the King comes with so small a number?   Fool. An thou hadst been set i\' th\' stocks for that question,      thou\'dst well deserv\'d it.   Kent. Why, fool?   Fool. We\'ll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there\'s no      labouring i\' th\' winter. All that follow their noses are led by      their eyes but blind men, and there\'s not a nose among twenty      but can smell him that\'s stinking. Let go thy hold when a great        wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following      it; but the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after.      When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again. I      would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it.           That sir which serves and seeks for gain,             And follows but for form,           Will pack when it begins to rain             And leave thee in the storm.           But I will tarry; the fool will stay,             And let the wise man fly.           The knave turns fool that runs away;             The fool no knave, perdy.   Kent. Where learn\'d you this, fool?   Fool. Not i\' th\' stocks, fool.                        Enter Lear and Gloucester    Lear. Deny to speak with me? They are sick? they are weary?      They have travell\'d all the night? Mere fetches-      The images of revolt and flying off!        Fetch me a better answer.   Glou. My dear lord,      You know the fiery quality of the Duke,      How unremovable and fix\'d he is      In his own course.   Lear. Vengeance! plague! death! confusion!      Fiery? What quality? Why, Gloucester, Gloucester,      I\'ld speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife.   Glou. Well, my good lord, I have inform\'d them so.   Lear. Inform\'d them? Dost thou understand me, man?   Glou. Ay, my good lord.   Lear. The King would speak with Cornwall; the dear father      Would with his daughter speak, commands her service.      Are they inform\'d of this? My breath and blood!      Fiery? the fiery Duke? Tell the hot Duke that-      No, but not yet! May be he is not well.      Infirmity doth still neglect all office      Whereto our health is bound. We are not ourselves      When nature, being oppress\'d, commands the mind      To suffer with the body. I\'ll forbear;        And am fallen out with my more headier will,      To take the indispos\'d and sickly fit      For the sound man.- Death on my state! Wherefore      Should be sit here? This act persuades me      That this remotion of the Duke and her      Is practice only. Give me my servant forth.      Go tell the Duke and \'s wife I\'ld speak with them-      Now, presently. Bid them come forth and hear me,      Or at their chamber door I\'ll beat the drum      Till it cry sleep to death.   Glou. I would have all well betwixt you.                 Exit.   Lear. O me, my heart, my rising heart! But down!   Fool. Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she      put \'em i\' th\' paste alive. She knapp\'d \'em o\' th\' coxcombs with      a stick and cried \'Down, wantons, down!\' \'Twas her brother that,      in pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay.               Enter Cornwall, Regan, Gloucester, Servants.    Lear. Good morrow to you both.     Corn. Hail to your Grace!                                        Kent here set at liberty.   Reg. I am glad to see your Highness.   Lear. Regan, I think you are; I know what reason      I have to think so. If thou shouldst not be glad,      I would divorce me from thy mother\'s tomb,      Sepulchring an adultress. [To Kent] O, are you free?      Some other time for that.- Beloved Regan,      Thy sister\'s naught. O Regan, she hath tied      Sharp-tooth\'d unkindness, like a vulture, here!                                    [Lays his hand on his heart.]      I can scarce speak to thee. Thou\'lt not believe      With how deprav\'d a quality- O Regan!   Reg. I pray you, sir, take patience. I have hope      You less know how to value her desert      Than she to scant her duty.   Lear. Say, how is that?   Reg. I cannot think my sister in the least      Would fail her obligation. If, sir, perchance      She have restrain\'d the riots of your followers,        \'Tis on such ground, and to such wholesome end,      As clears her from all blame.   Lear. My curses on her!   Reg. O, sir, you are old!      Nature in you stands on the very verge      Of her confine. You should be rul\'d, and led      By some discretion that discerns your state      Better than you yourself. Therefore I pray you      That to our sister you do make return;      Say you have wrong\'d her, sir.   Lear. Ask her forgiveness?      Do you but mark how this becomes the house:      \'Dear daughter, I confess that I am old.          [Kneels.]      Age is unnecessary. On my knees I beg      That you\'ll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food.\'   Reg. Good sir, no more! These are unsightly tricks.      Return you to my sister.   Lear. [rises] Never, Regan!      She hath abated me of half my train;      Look\'d black upon me; struck me with her tongue,        Most serpent-like, upon the very heart.      All the stor\'d vengeances of heaven fall      On her ingrateful top! Strike her young bones,      You taking airs, with lameness!   Corn. Fie, sir, fie!   Lear. You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames      Into her scornful eyes! Infect her beauty,      You fen-suck\'d fogs, drawn by the pow\'rful sun,      To fall and blast her pride!   Reg. O the blest gods! so will you wish on me      When the rash mood is on.   Lear. No, Regan, thou shalt never have my curse.      Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give      Thee o\'er to harshness. Her eyes are fierce; but thine      Do comfort, and not burn. \'Tis not in thee      To grudge my pleasures, to cut off my train,      To bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes,      And, in conclusion, to oppose the bolt      Against my coming in. Thou better know\'st      The offices of nature, bond of childhood,        Effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude.      Thy half o\' th\' kingdom hast thou not forgot,      Wherein I thee endow\'d.   Reg. Good sir, to th\' purpose.                                                   Tucket within.   Lear. Who put my man i\' th\' stocks?   Corn. What trumpet\'s that?   Reg. I know\'t- my sister\'s. This approves her letter,      That she would soon be here.                       Enter [Oswald the] Steward.       Is your lady come?   Lear. This is a slave, whose easy-borrowed pride      Dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows.      Out, varlet, from my sight!   Corn. What means your Grace?                              Enter Goneril.      Lear. Who stock\'d my servant? Regan, I have good hope      Thou didst not know on\'t.- Who comes here? O heavens!      If you do love old men, if your sweet sway      Allow obedience- if yourselves are old,      Make it your cause! Send down, and take my part!      [To Goneril] Art not asham\'d to look upon this beard?-      O Regan, wilt thou take her by the hand?   Gon. Why not by th\' hand, sir? How have I offended?      All\'s not offence that indiscretion finds      And dotage terms so.   Lear. O sides, you are too tough!      Will you yet hold? How came my man i\' th\' stocks?   Corn. I set him there, sir; but his own disorders      Deserv\'d much less advancement.   Lear. You? Did you?   Reg. I pray you, father, being weak, seem so.      If, till the expiration of your month,      You will return and sojourn with my sister,      Dismissing half your train, come then to me.      I am now from home, and out of that provision        Which shall be needful for your entertainment.   Lear. Return to her, and fifty men dismiss\'d?      No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose      To wage against the enmity o\' th\' air,      To be a comrade with the wolf and owl-      Necessity\'s sharp pinch! Return with her?      Why, the hot-blooded France, that dowerless took      Our youngest born, I could as well be brought      To knee his throne, and, squire-like, pension beg      To keep base life afoot. Return with her?      Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter      To this detested groom.                 [Points at Oswald.]   Gon. At your choice, sir.   Lear. I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad.      I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell.      We\'ll no more meet, no more see one another.      But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter;      Or rather a disease that\'s in my flesh,      Which I must needs call mine. Thou art a boil,      A plague sore, an embossed carbuncle        In my corrupted blood. But I\'ll not chide thee.      Let shame come when it will, I do not call it.      I do not bid the Thunder-bearer shoot      Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove.      Mend when thou canst; be better at thy leisure;      I can be patient, I can stay with Regan,      I and my hundred knights.   Reg. Not altogether so.      I look\'d not for you yet, nor am provided      For your fit welcome. Give ear, sir, to my sister;      For those that mingle reason with your passion      Must be content to think you old, and so-      But she knows what she does.   Lear. Is this well spoken?   Reg. I dare avouch it, sir. What, fifty followers?      Is it not well? What should you need of more?      Yea, or so many, sith that both charge and danger      Speak \'gainst so great a number? How in one house      Should many people, under two commands,      Hold amity? \'Tis hard; almost impossible.     Gon. Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance      From those that she calls servants, or from mine?   Reg. Why not, my lord? If then they chanc\'d to slack ye,      We could control them. If you will come to me      (For now I spy a danger), I entreat you      To bring but five-and-twenty. To no more      Will I give place or notice.   Lear. I gave you all-   Reg. And in good time you gave it!   Lear. Made you my guardians, my depositaries;      But kept a reservation to be followed      With such a number. What, must I come to you      With five-and-twenty, Regan? Said you so?   Reg. And speak\'t again my lord. No more with me.   Lear. Those wicked creatures yet do look well-favour\'d      When others are more wicked; not being the worst      Stands in some rank of praise. [To Goneril] I\'ll go with thee.      Thy fifty yet doth double five-and-twenty,      And thou art twice her love.   Gon. Hear, me, my lord.        What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five,      To follow in a house where twice so many      Have a command to tend you?   Reg. What need one?   Lear. O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars      Are in the poorest thing superfluous.      Allow not nature more than nature needs,      Man\'s life is cheap as beast\'s. Thou art a lady:      If only to go warm were gorgeous,      Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear\'st      Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need-      You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!      You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,      As full of grief as age; wretched in both.      If it be you that stirs these daughters\' hearts      Against their father, fool me not so much      To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,      And let not women\'s weapons, water drops,      Stain my man\'s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags!      I will have such revenges on you both        That all the world shall- I will do such things-      What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be      The terrors of the earth! You think I\'ll weep.      No, I\'ll not weep.      I have full cause of weeping, but this heart      Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws      Or ere I\'ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!               Exeunt Lear, Gloucester, Kent, and Fool. Storm and                                                         tempest.   Corn. Let us withdraw; \'twill be a storm.   Reg. This house is little; the old man and \'s people      Cannot be well bestow\'d.   Gon. \'Tis his own blame; hath put himself from rest      And must needs taste his folly.   Reg. For his particular, I\'ll receive him gladly,      But not one follower.   Gon. So am I purpos\'d.      Where is my Lord of Gloucester?   Corn. Followed the old man forth.                              Enter Gloucester.       He is return\'d.   Glou. The King is in high rage.   Corn. Whither is he going?   Glou. He calls to horse, but will I know not whither.   Corn. \'Tis best to give him way; he leads himself.   Gon. My lord, entreat him by no means to stay.   Glou. Alack, the night comes on, and the bleak winds      Do sorely ruffle. For many miles about      There\'s scarce a bush.   Reg. O, sir, to wilful men      The injuries that they themselves procure      Must be their schoolmasters. Shut up your doors.      He is attended with a desperate train,      And what they may incense him to, being apt      To have his ear abus\'d, wisdom bids fear.   Corn. Shut up your doors, my lord: \'tis a wild night.      My Regan counsels well. Come out o\' th\' storm.        [Exeunt.]     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. Scene I. A heath.  Storm still. Enter Kent and a Gentleman at several doors.    Kent. Who\'s there, besides foul weather?   Gent. One minded like the weather, most unquietly.   Kent. I know you. Where\'s the King?   Gent. Contending with the fretful elements;      Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,      Or swell the curled waters \'bove the main,      That things might change or cease; tears his white hair,      Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage,      Catch in their fury and make nothing of;      Strives in his little world of man to outscorn      The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain.      This night, wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch,      The lion and the belly-pinched wolf      Keep their fur dry, unbonneted he runs,      And bids what will take all.   Kent. But who is with him?   Gent. None but the fool, who labours to outjest        His heart-struck injuries.   Kent. Sir, I do know you,      And dare upon the warrant of my note      Commend a dear thing to you. There is division      (Although as yet the face of it be cover\'d      With mutual cunning) \'twixt Albany and Cornwall;      Who have (as who have not, that their great stars      Thron\'d and set high?) servants, who seem no less,      Which are to France the spies and speculations      Intelligent of our state. What hath been seen,      Either in snuffs and packings of the Dukes,      Or the hard rein which both of them have borne      Against the old kind King, or something deeper,      Whereof, perchance, these are but furnishings-      But, true it is, from France there comes a power      Into this scattered kingdom, who already,      Wise in our negligence, have secret feet      In some of our best ports and are at point      To show their open banner. Now to you:      If on my credit you dare build so far        To make your speed to Dover, you shall find      Some that will thank you, making just report      Of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow      The King hath cause to plain.      I am a gentleman of blood and breeding,      And from some knowledge and assurance offer      This office to you.   Gent. I will talk further with you.   Kent. No, do not.      For confirmation that I am much more      Than my out-wall, open this purse and take      What it contains. If you shall see Cordelia      (As fear not but you shall), show her this ring,      And she will tell you who your fellow is      That yet you do not know. Fie on this storm!      I will go seek the King.   Gent. Give me your hand. Have you no more to say?   Kent. Few words, but, to effect, more than all yet:      That, when we have found the King (in which your pain      That way, I\'ll this), he that first lights on him        Holla the other.                                              Exeunt [severally].     Scene II. Another part of the heath.  Storm still. Enter Lear and Fool.    Lear. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!      You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout      Till you have drench\'d our steeples, drown\'d the cocks!      You sulph\'rous and thought-executing fires,      Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,      Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,      Strike flat the thick rotundity o\' th\' world,      Crack Nature\'s moulds, all germains spill at once,      That makes ingrateful man!   Fool. O nuncle, court holy water in a dry house is better than this      rain water out o\' door. Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters      blessing! Here\'s a night pities nether wise men nor fools.   Lear. Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!      Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.      I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.      I never gave you kingdom, call\'d you children,      You owe me no subscription. Then let fall        Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,      A poor, infirm, weak, and despis\'d old man.      But yet I call you servile ministers,      That will with two pernicious daughters join      Your high-engender\'d battles \'gainst a head      So old and white as this! O! O! \'tis foul!   Fool. He that has a house to put \'s head in has a good head-piece.           The codpiece that will house             Before the head has any,           The head and he shall louse:             So beggars marry many.           The man that makes his toe             What he his heart should make           Shall of a corn cry woe,             And turn his sleep to wake.      For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a      glass.                               Enter Kent.      Lear. No, I will be the pattern of all patience;      I will say nothing.   Kent. Who\'s there?   Fool. Marry, here\'s grace and a codpiece; that\'s a wise man and a      fool.   Kent. Alas, sir, are you here? Things that love night      Love not such nights as these. The wrathful skies      Gallow the very wanderers of the dark      And make them keep their caves. Since I was man,      Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,      Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never      Remember to have heard. Man\'s nature cannot carry      Th\' affliction nor the fear.   Lear. Let the great gods,      That keep this dreadful pudder o\'er our heads,      Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,      That hast within thee undivulged crimes      Unwhipp\'d of justice. Hide thee, thou bloody hand;      Thou perjur\'d, and thou simular man of virtue      That art incestuous. Caitiff, in pieces shake        That under covert and convenient seeming      Hast practis\'d on man\'s life. Close pent-up guilts,      Rive your concealing continents, and cry      These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man      More sinn\'d against than sinning.   Kent. Alack, bareheaded?      Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;      Some friendship will it lend you \'gainst the tempest.      Repose you there, whilst I to this hard house      (More harder than the stones whereof \'tis rais\'d,      Which even but now, demanding after you,      Denied me to come in) return, and force      Their scanted courtesy.   Lear. My wits begin to turn.      Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold?      I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?      The art of our necessities is strange,      That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel.      Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart      That\'s sorry yet for thee.     Fool. [sings]            He that has and a little tiny wit-             With hey, ho, the wind and the rain-           Must make content with his fortunes fit,              For the rain it raineth every day.    Lear. True, my good boy. Come, bring us to this hovel.                                          Exeunt [Lear and Kent].   Fool. This is a brave night to cool a courtesan. I\'ll speak a      prophecy ere I go:           When priests are more in word than matter;           When brewers mar their malt with water;           When nobles are their tailors\' tutors,           No heretics burn\'d, but wenches\' suitors;           When every case in law is right,           No squire in debt nor no poor knight;           When slanders do not live in tongues,           Nor cutpurses come not to throngs;           When usurers tell their gold i\' th\' field,             And bawds and whores do churches build:           Then shall the realm of Albion           Come to great confusion.           Then comes the time, who lives to see\'t,           That going shall be us\'d with feet.      This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time. Exit.     Scene III. Gloucester\'s Castle.  Enter Gloucester and Edmund.    Glou. Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this unnatural dealing! When      I desir\'d their leave that I might pity him, they took from me      the use of mine own house, charg\'d me on pain of perpetual      displeasure neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor any      way sustain him.   Edm. Most savage and unnatural!   Glou. Go to; say you nothing. There is division betwixt the Dukes,      and a worse matter than that. I have received a letter this      night- \'tis dangerous to be spoken- I have lock\'d the letter in      my closet. These injuries the King now bears will be revenged      home; there\'s part of a power already footed; we must incline to      the King. I will seek him and privily relieve him. Go you and      maintain talk with the Duke, that my charity be not of him      perceived. If he ask for me, I am ill and gone to bed. Though I      die for\'t, as no less is threat\'ned me, the King my old master      must be relieved. There is some strange thing toward, Edmund.      Pray you be careful.                                  Exit.     Edm. This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the Duke      Instantly know, and of that letter too.      This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me      That which my father loses- no less than all.      The younger rises when the old doth fall.             Exit.     Scene IV. The heath. Before a hovel.  Storm still. Enter Lear, Kent, and Fool.    Kent. Here is the place, my lord. Good my lord, enter.      The tyranny of the open night \'s too rough      For nature to endure.   Lear. Let me alone.   Kent. Good my lord, enter here.   Lear. Wilt break my heart?   Kent. I had rather break mine own. Good my lord, enter.   Lear. Thou think\'st \'tis much that this contentious storm      Invades us to the skin. So \'tis to thee;      But where the greater malady is fix\'d,      The lesser is scarce felt. Thou\'dst shun a bear;      But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea,      Thou\'dst meet the bear i\' th\' mouth. When the mind\'s free,      The body\'s delicate. The tempest in my mind      Doth from my senses take all feeling else      Save what beats there. Filial ingratitude!      Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand        For lifting food to\'t? But I will punish home!      No, I will weep no more. In such a night      \'To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure.      In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!      Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all!      O, that way madness lies; let me shun that!      No more of that.   Kent. Good my lord, enter here.   Lear. Prithee go in thyself; seek thine own ease.      This tempest will not give me leave to ponder      On things would hurt me more. But I\'ll go in.      [To the Fool] In, boy; go first.- You houseless poverty-      Nay, get thee in. I\'ll pray, and then I\'ll sleep.                                                     Exit [Fool].      Poor naked wretches, wheresoe\'er you are,      That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,      How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,      Your loop\'d and window\'d raggedness, defend you      From seasons such as these? O, I have ta\'en      Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;        Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,      That thou mayst shake the superflux to them      And show the heavens more just.   Edg. [within] Fathom and half, fathom and half! Poor Tom!                       Enter Fool [from the hovel].    Fool. Come not in here, nuncle, here\'s a spirit. Help me, help me!   Kent. Give me thy hand. Who\'s there?   Fool. A spirit, a spirit! He says his name\'s poor Tom.   Kent. What art thou that dost grumble there i\' th\' straw?      Come forth.                   Enter Edgar [disguised as a madman].    Edg. Away! the foul fiend follows me! Through the sharp hawthorn      blows the cold wind. Humh! go to thy cold bed, and warm thee.   Lear. Hast thou given all to thy two daughters, and art thou come      to this?   Edg. Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led        through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlpool, o\'er      bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow and      halters in his pew, set ratsbane by his porridge, made him proud      of heart, to ride on a bay trotting horse over four-inch\'d      bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor. Bless thy five      wits! Tom \'s acold. O, do de, do de, do de. Bless thee from      whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking! Do poor Tom some charity,      whom the foul fiend vexes. There could I have him now- and there-      and there again- and there!                                                     Storm still.   Lear. What, have his daughters brought him to this pass?      Couldst thou save nothing? Didst thou give \'em all?   Fool. Nay, he reserv\'d a blanket, else we had been all sham\'d.   Lear. Now all the plagues that in the pendulous air      Hang fated o\'er men\'s faults light on thy daughters!   Kent. He hath no daughters, sir.   Lear. Death, traitor! nothing could have subdu\'d nature      To such a lowness but his unkind daughters.      Is it the fashion that discarded fathers      Should have thus little mercy on their flesh?        Judicious punishment! \'Twas this flesh begot      Those pelican daughters.   Edg. Pillicock sat on Pillicock\'s Hill. \'Allow, \'allow, loo, loo!   Fool. This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.   Edg. Take heed o\' th\' foul fiend; obey thy parents: keep thy word      justly; swear not; commit not with man\'s sworn spouse; set not      thy sweet heart on proud array. Tom \'s acold.   Lear. What hast thou been?   Edg. A servingman, proud in heart and mind; that curl\'d my hair,      wore gloves in my cap; serv\'d the lust of my mistress\' heart and      did the act of darkness with her; swore as many oaths as I spake      words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven; one that      slept in the contriving of lust, and wak\'d to do it. Wine lov\'d      I deeply, dice dearly; and in woman out-paramour\'d the Turk.      False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox      in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey.      Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks betray      thy poor heart to woman. Keep thy foot out of brothel, thy hand      out of placket, thy pen from lender\'s book, and defy the foul      fiend. Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind; says        suum, mun, hey, no, nonny. Dolphin my boy, my boy, sessa! let      him trot by.                                                     Storm still.   Lear. Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy      uncover\'d body this extremity of the skies. Is man no more than      this? Consider him well. Thou ow\'st the worm no silk, the beast      no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! Here\'s three      on\'s are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself;      unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked      animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! Come, unbutton      here.                                          [Tears at his clothes.]   Fool. Prithee, nuncle, be contented! \'Tis a naughty night to swim      in. Now a little fire in a wild field were like an old lecher\'s      heart- a small spark, all the rest on\'s body cold. Look, here      comes a walking fire.                      Enter Gloucester with a torch.    Edg. This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet. He begins at curfew,        and walks till the first cock. He gives the web and the pin,      squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat,      and hurts the poor creature of earth.             Saint Withold footed thrice the \'old;            He met the nightmare, and her nine fold;               Bid her alight               And her troth plight,            And aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!    Kent. How fares your Grace?   Lear. What\'s he?   Kent. Who\'s there? What is\'t you seek?   Glou. What are you there? Your names?   Edg. Poor Tom, that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the todpole,      the wall-newt and the water; that in the fury of his heart, when      the foul fiend rages, eats cow-dung for sallets, swallows the      old rat and the ditch-dog, drinks the green mantle of the      standing pool; who is whipp\'d from tithing to tithing, and      stock-punish\'d and imprison\'d; who hath had three suits to his        back, six shirts to his body, horse to ride, and weapons to      wear;            But mice and rats, and such small deer,           Have been Tom\'s food for seven long year.       Beware my follower. Peace, Smulkin! peace, thou fiend!   Glou. What, hath your Grace no better company?   Edg. The prince of darkness is a gentleman!      Modo he\'s call\'d, and Mahu.   Glou. Our flesh and blood is grown so vile, my lord,      That it doth hate what gets it.   Edg. Poor Tom \'s acold.   Glou. Go in with me. My duty cannot suffer      T\' obey in all your daughters\' hard commands.      Though their injunction be to bar my doors      And let this tyrannous night take hold upon you,      Yet have I ventur\'d to come seek you out      And bring you where both fire and food is ready.   Lear. First let me talk with this philosopher.        What is the cause of thunder?   Kent. Good my lord, take his offer; go into th\' house.   Lear. I\'ll talk a word with this same learned Theban.      What is your study?   Edg. How to prevent the fiend and to kill vermin.   Lear. Let me ask you one word in private.   Kent. Importune him once more to go, my lord.      His wits begin t\' unsettle.   Glou. Canst thou blame him?                                                     Storm still.      His daughters seek his death. Ah, that good Kent!      He said it would be thus- poor banish\'d man!      Thou say\'st the King grows mad: I\'ll tell thee, friend,      I am almost mad myself. I had a son,      Now outlaw\'d from my blood. He sought my life      But lately, very late. I lov\'d him, friend-      No father his son dearer. True to tell thee,      The grief hath craz\'d my wits. What a night \'s this!      I do beseech your Grace-   Lear. O, cry you mercy, sir.        Noble philosopher, your company.   Edg. Tom\'s acold.   Glou. In, fellow, there, into th\' hovel; keep thee warm.   Lear. Come, let\'s in all.   Kent. This way, my lord.   Lear. With him!      I will keep still with my philosopher.   Kent. Good my lord, soothe him; let him take the fellow.   Glou. Take him you on.   Kent. Sirrah, come on; go along with us.   Lear. Come, good Athenian.   Glou. No words, no words! hush.   Edg. Child Rowland to the dark tower came;      His word was still            Fie, foh, and fum!           I smell the blood of a British man.                                                          Exeunt.  Scene V. Gloucester\'s Castle.  Enter Cornwall and Edmund.    Corn. I will have my revenge ere I depart his house.   Edm. How, my lord, I may be censured, that nature thus gives way to      loyalty, something fears me to think of.   Corn. I now perceive it was not altogether your brother\'s evil      disposition made him seek his death; but a provoking merit, set      awork by a reproveable badness in himself.   Edm. How malicious is my fortune that I must repent to be just!      This is the letter he spoke of, which approves him an      intelligent party to the advantages of France. O heavens! that      this treason were not- or not I the detector!   Corn. Go with me to the Duchess.   Edm. If the matter of this paper be certain, you have mighty      business in hand.   Corn. True or false, it hath made thee Earl of Gloucester.      Seek out where thy father is, that he may be ready for our      apprehension.   Edm. [aside] If I find him comforting the King, it will stuff his        suspicion more fully.- I will persever in my course of loyalty,      though the conflict be sore between that and my blood.   Corn. I will lay trust upon thee, and thou shalt find a dearer      father in my love.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene VI. A farmhouse near Gloucester\'s Castle.  Enter Gloucester, Lear, Kent, Fool, and Edgar.    Glou. Here is better than the open air; take it thankfully. I will      piece out the comfort with what addition I can. I will not be      long from you.   Kent. All the power of his wits have given way to his impatience.      The gods reward your kindness!                                               Exit [Gloucester].   Edg. Frateretto calls me, and tells me Nero is an angler in the      lake of darkness. Pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend.   Fool. Prithee, nuncle, tell me whether a madman be a gentleman or a      yeoman.   Lear. A king, a king!   Fool. No, he\'s a yeoman that has a gentleman to his son; for he\'s a      mad yeoman that sees his son a gentleman before him.   Lear. To have a thousand with red burning spits      Come hizzing in upon \'em-   Edg. The foul fiend bites my back.   Fool. He\'s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse\'s      health, a boy\'s love, or a whore\'s oath.     Lear. It shall be done; I will arraign them straight.      [To Edgar] Come, sit thou here, most learned justicer.      [To the Fool] Thou, sapient sir, sit here. Now, you she-foxes!   Edg. Look, where he stands and glares! Want\'st thou eyes at trial,      madam?               Come o\'er the bourn, Bessy, to me.    Fool.      Her boat hath a leak,              And she must not speak            Why she dares not come over to thee.    Edg. The foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale.      Hoppedance cries in Tom\'s belly for two white herring. Croak      not, black angel; I have no food for thee.   Kent. How do you, sir? Stand you not so amaz\'d.      Will you lie down and rest upon the cushions?   Lear. I\'ll see their trial first. Bring in their evidence.      [To Edgar] Thou, robed man of justice, take thy place.      [To the Fool] And thou, his yokefellow of equity,        Bench by his side. [To Kent] You are o\' th\' commission,      Sit you too.   Edg. Let us deal justly.            Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd?             Thy sheep be in the corn;           And for one blast of thy minikin mouth             Thy sheep shall take no harm.       Purr! the cat is gray.   Lear. Arraign her first. \'Tis Goneril. I here take my oath before      this honourable assembly, she kicked the poor King her father.   Fool. Come hither, mistress. Is your name Goneril?   Lear. She cannot deny it.   Fool. Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool.   Lear. And here\'s another, whose warp\'d looks proclaim      What store her heart is made on. Stop her there!      Arms, arms! sword! fire! Corruption in the place!      False justicer, why hast thou let her scape?   Edg. Bless thy five wits!     Kent. O pity! Sir, where is the patience now      That you so oft have boasted to retain?   Edg. [aside] My tears begin to take his part so much      They\'ll mar my counterfeiting.   Lear. The little dogs and all,      Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.   Edg. Tom will throw his head at them. Avaunt, you curs!            Be thy mouth or black or white,            Tooth that poisons if it bite;            Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim,            Hound or spaniel, brach or lym,            Bobtail tyke or trundle-tall-            Tom will make them weep and wail;            For, with throwing thus my head,            Dogs leap the hatch, and all are fled.      Do de, de, de. Sessa! Come, march to wakes and fairs and market      towns. Poor Tom, thy horn is dry.   Lear. Then let them anatomize Regan. See what breeds about her      heart. Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard      hearts? [To Edgar] You, sir- I entertain you for one of my        hundred; only I do not like the fashion of your garments. You\'ll      say they are Persian attire; but let them be chang\'d.   Kent. Now, good my lord, lie here and rest awhile.   Lear. Make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains.      So, so, so. We\'ll go to supper i\' th\' morning. So, so, so.   Fool. And I\'ll go to bed at noon.                            Enter Gloucester.    Glou. Come hither, friend. Where is the King my master?   Kent. Here, sir; but trouble him not; his wits are gone.   Glou. Good friend, I prithee take him in thy arms.      I have o\'erheard a plot of death upon him.      There is a litter ready; lay him in\'t      And drive towards Dover, friend, where thou shalt meet      Both welcome and protection. Take up thy master.      If thou shouldst dally half an hour, his life,      With thine, and all that offer to defend him,      Stand in assured loss. Take up, take up!      And follow me, that will to some provision        Give thee quick conduct.   Kent. Oppressed nature sleeps.      This rest might yet have balm\'d thy broken senses,      Which, if convenience will not allow,      Stand in hard cure. [To the Fool] Come, help to bear thy master.      Thou must not stay behind.   Glou. Come, come, away!                                          Exeunt [all but Edgar].   Edg. When we our betters see bearing our woes,      We scarcely think our miseries our foes.      Who alone suffers suffers most i\' th\' mind,      Leaving free things and happy shows behind;      But then the mind much sufferance doth o\'erskip      When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.      How light and portable my pain seems now,      When that which makes me bend makes the King bow,      He childed as I fathered! Tom, away!      Mark the high noises, and thyself bewray      When false opinion, whose wrong thought defiles thee,      In thy just proof repeals and reconciles thee.        What will hap more to-night, safe scape the King!      Lurk, lurk.                                         [Exit.]     Scene VII. Gloucester\'s Castle.  Enter Cornwall, Regan, Goneril, [Edmund the] Bastard, and Servants.    Corn. [to Goneril] Post speedily to my lord your husband, show him      this letter. The army of France is landed.- Seek out the traitor      Gloucester.                                   [Exeunt some of the Servants.]   Reg. Hang him instantly.   Gon. Pluck out his eyes.   Corn. Leave him to my displeasure. Edmund, keep you our sister      company. The revenges we are bound to take upon your traitorous      father are not fit for your beholding. Advise the Duke where you      are going, to a most festinate preparation. We are bound to the      like. Our posts shall be swift and intelligent betwixt us.      Farewell, dear sister; farewell, my Lord of Gloucester.                       Enter [Oswald the] Steward.       How now? Where\'s the King?     Osw. My Lord of Gloucester hath convey\'d him hence.      Some five or six and thirty of his knights,      Hot questrists after him, met him at gate;      Who, with some other of the lord\'s dependants,      Are gone with him towards Dover, where they boast      To have well-armed friends.   Corn. Get horses for your mistress.   Gon. Farewell, sweet lord, and sister.   Corn. Edmund, farewell.                            Exeunt Goneril, [Edmund, and Oswald].      Go seek the traitor Gloucester,      Pinion him like a thief, bring him before us.                                         [Exeunt other Servants.]      Though well we may not pass upon his life      Without the form of justice, yet our power      Shall do a court\'sy to our wrath, which men      May blame, but not control.              Enter Gloucester, brought in by two or three.         Who\'s there? the traitor?   Reg. Ingrateful fox! \'tis he.   Corn. Bind fast his corky arms.   Glou. What mean, your Graces? Good my friends, consider      You are my guests. Do me no foul play, friends.   Corn. Bind him, I say.                                             [Servants bind him.]   Reg. Hard, hard. O filthy traitor!   Glou. Unmerciful lady as you are, I am none.   Corn. To this chair bind him. Villain, thou shalt find-                                        [Regan plucks his beard.]   Glou. By the kind gods, \'tis most ignobly done      To pluck me by the beard.   Reg. So white, and such a traitor!   Glou. Naughty lady,      These hairs which thou dost ravish from my chin      Will quicken, and accuse thee. I am your host.      With robber\'s hands my hospitable favours      You should not ruffle thus. What will you do?   Corn. Come, sir, what letters had you late from France?     Reg. Be simple-answer\'d, for we know the truth.   Corn. And what confederacy have you with the traitors      Late footed in the kingdom?   Reg. To whose hands have you sent the lunatic King?      Speak.   Glou. I have a letter guessingly set down,      Which came from one that\'s of a neutral heart,      And not from one oppos\'d.   Corn. Cunning.   Reg. And false.   Corn. Where hast thou sent the King?   Glou. To Dover.   Reg. Wherefore to Dover? Wast thou not charg\'d at peril-   Corn. Wherefore to Dover? Let him first answer that.   Glou. I am tied to th\' stake, and I must stand the course.   Reg. Wherefore to Dover, sir?   Glou. Because I would not see thy cruel nails      Pluck out his poor old eyes; nor thy fierce sister      In his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs.      The sea, with such a storm as his bare head        In hell-black night endur\'d, would have buoy\'d up      And quench\'d the steeled fires.      Yet, poor old heart, he holp the heavens to rain.      If wolves had at thy gate howl\'d that stern time,      Thou shouldst have said, \'Good porter, turn the key.\'      All cruels else subscrib\'d. But I shall see      The winged vengeance overtake such children.   Corn. See\'t shalt thou never. Fellows, hold the chair.      Upon these eyes of thine I\'ll set my foot.   Glou. He that will think to live till he be old,      Give me some help!- O cruel! O ye gods!   Reg. One side will mock another. Th\' other too!   Corn. If you see vengeance-   1. Serv. Hold your hand, my lord!      I have serv\'d you ever since I was a child;      But better service have I never done you      Than now to bid you hold.   Reg. How now, you dog?   1. Serv. If you did wear a beard upon your chin,      I\'ld shake it on this quarrel.     Reg. What do you mean?   Corn. My villain!                               Draw and fight.   1. Serv. Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger.   Reg. Give me thy sword. A peasant stand up thus?                         She takes a sword and runs at him behind.   1. Serv. O, I am slain! My lord, you have one eye left      To see some mischief on him. O!                     He dies.   Corn. Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly!      Where is thy lustre now?   Glou. All dark and comfortless! Where\'s my son Edmund?      Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature      To quit this horrid act.   Reg. Out, treacherous villain!      Thou call\'st on him that hates thee. It was he      That made the overture of thy treasons to us;      Who is too good to pity thee.   Glou. O my follies! Then Edgar was abus\'d.      Kind gods, forgive me that, and prosper him!   Reg. Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell      His way to Dover.                                        Exit [one] with Gloucester.      How is\'t, my lord? How look you?   Corn. I have receiv\'d a hurt. Follow me, lady.      Turn out that eyeless villain. Throw this slave      Upon the dunghill. Regan, I bleed apace.      Untimely comes this hurt. Give me your arm.                                   Exit [Cornwall, led by Regan].   2. Serv. I\'ll never care what wickedness I do,      If this man come to good.   3. Serv. If she live long,      And in the end meet the old course of death,      Women will all turn monsters.   2. Serv. Let\'s follow the old Earl, and get the bedlam      To lead him where he would. His roguish madness      Allows itself to anything.   3. Serv. Go thou. I\'ll fetch some flax and whites of eggs      To apply to his bleeding face. Now heaven help him!                                                          Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. Scene I. The heath.  Enter Edgar.    Edg. Yet better thus, and known to be contemn\'d,      Than still contemn\'d and flatter\'d. To be worst,      The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,      Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear.      The lamentable change is from the best;      The worst returns to laughter. Welcome then,      Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace!      The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst      Owes nothing to thy blasts.                   Enter Gloucester, led by an Old Man.       But who comes here?      My father, poorly led? World, world, O world!      But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee,      Life would not yield to age.   Old Man. O my good lord,        I have been your tenant, and your father\'s tenant,      These fourscore years.   Glou. Away, get thee away! Good friend, be gone.      Thy comforts can do me no good at all;      Thee they may hurt.   Old Man. You cannot see your way.   Glou. I have no way, and therefore want no eyes;      I stumbled when I saw. Full oft \'tis seen      Our means secure us, and our mere defects      Prove our commodities. Ah dear son Edgar,      The food of thy abused father\'s wrath!      Might I but live to see thee in my touch,      I\'ld say I had eyes again!   Old Man. How now? Who\'s there?   Edg. [aside] O gods! Who is\'t can say \'I am at the worst\'?      I am worse than e\'er I was.   Old Man. \'Tis poor mad Tom.   Edg. [aside] And worse I may be yet. The worst is not      So long as we can say \'This is the worst.\'   Old Man. Fellow, where goest?     Glou. Is it a beggarman?   Old Man. Madman and beggar too.   Glou. He has some reason, else he could not beg.      I\' th\' last night\'s storm I such a fellow saw,      Which made me think a man a worm. My son      Came then into my mind, and yet my mind      Was then scarce friends with him. I have heard more since.      As flies to wanton boys are we to th\' gods.      They kill us for their sport.   Edg. [aside] How should this be?      Bad is the trade that must play fool to sorrow,      Ang\'ring itself and others.- Bless thee, master!   Glou. Is that the naked fellow?   Old Man. Ay, my lord.   Glou. Then prithee get thee gone. If for my sake      Thou wilt o\'ertake us hence a mile or twain      I\' th\' way toward Dover, do it for ancient love;      And bring some covering for this naked soul,      Who I\'ll entreat to lead me.   Old Man. Alack, sir, he is mad!     Glou. \'Tis the time\'s plague when madmen lead the blind.      Do as I bid thee, or rather do thy pleasure.      Above the rest, be gone.   Old Man. I\'ll bring him the best \'parel that I have,      Come on\'t what will.                                  Exit.   Glou. Sirrah naked fellow-   Edg. Poor Tom\'s acold. [Aside] I cannot daub it further.   Glou. Come hither, fellow.   Edg. [aside] And yet I must.- Bless thy sweet eyes, they bleed.   Glou. Know\'st thou the way to Dover?   Edg. Both stile and gate, horseway and footpath. Poor Tom hath been      scar\'d out of his good wits. Bless thee, good man\'s son, from      the foul fiend! Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once: of      lust, as Obidicut; Hobbididence, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of      stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and      mowing, who since possesses chambermaids and waiting women. So,      bless thee, master!   Glou. Here, take this Purse, thou whom the heavens\' plagues      Have humbled to all strokes. That I am wretched      Makes thee the happier. Heavens, deal so still!        Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man,      That slaves your ordinance, that will not see      Because he does not feel, feel your pow\'r quickly;      So distribution should undo excess,      And each man have enough. Dost thou know Dover?   Edg. Ay, master.   Glou. There is a cliff, whose high and bending head      Looks fearfully in the confined deep.      Bring me but to the very brim of it,      And I\'ll repair the misery thou dost bear      With something rich about me. From that place      I shall no leading need.   Edg. Give me thy arm.      Poor Tom shall lead thee.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene II. Before the Duke of Albany\'s Palace.  Enter Goneril and [Edmund the] Bastard.    Gon. Welcome, my lord. I marvel our mild husband      Not met us on the way.                       Enter [Oswald the] Steward.       Now, where\'s your master?   Osw. Madam, within, but never man so chang\'d.      I told him of the army that was landed:      He smil\'d at it. I told him you were coming:      His answer was, \'The worse.\' Of Gloucester\'s treachery      And of the loyal service of his son      When I inform\'d him, then he call\'d me sot      And told me I had turn\'d the wrong side out.      What most he should dislike seems pleasant to him;      What like, offensive.   Gon. [to Edmund] Then shall you go no further.      It is the cowish terror of his spirit,        That dares not undertake. He\'ll not feel wrongs      Which tie him to an answer. Our wishes on the way      May prove effects. Back, Edmund, to my brother.      Hasten his musters and conduct his pow\'rs.      I must change arms at home and give the distaff      Into my husband\'s hands. This trusty servant      Shall pass between us. Ere long you are like to hear      (If you dare venture in your own behalf)      A mistress\'s command. Wear this.          [Gives a favour.]      Spare speech.      Decline your head. This kiss, if it durst speak,      Would stretch thy spirits up into the air.      Conceive, and fare thee well.   Edm. Yours in the ranks of death!                        Exit.   Gon. My most dear Gloucester!      O, the difference of man and man!      To thee a woman\'s services are due;      My fool usurps my body.   Osw. Madam, here comes my lord.                          Exit.                                Enter Albany.    Gon. I have been worth the whistle.   Alb. O Goneril,      You are not worth the dust which the rude wind      Blows in your face! I fear your disposition.      That nature which contemns it origin      Cannot be bordered certain in itself.      She that herself will sliver and disbranch      From her material sap, perforce must wither      And come to deadly use.   Gon. No more! The text is foolish.   Alb. Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;      Filths savour but themselves. What have you done?      Tigers, not daughters, what have you perform\'d?      A father, and a gracious aged man,      Whose reverence even the head-lugg\'d bear would lick,      Most barbarous, most degenerate, have you madded.      Could my good brother suffer you to do it?      A man, a prince, by him so benefited!        If that the heavens do not their visible spirits      Send quickly down to tame these vile offences,      It will come,      Humanity must perforce prey on itself,      Like monsters of the deep.   Gon. Milk-liver\'d man!      That bear\'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs;      Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning      Thine honour from thy suffering; that not know\'st      Fools do those villains pity who are punish\'d      Ere they have done their mischief. Where\'s thy drum?      France spreads his banners in our noiseless land,      With plumed helm thy state begins to threat,      Whiles thou, a moral fool, sit\'st still, and criest      \'Alack, why does he so?\'   Alb. See thyself, devil!      Proper deformity seems not in the fiend      So horrid as in woman.   Gon. O vain fool!   Alb. Thou changed and self-cover\'d thing, for shame!        Bemonster not thy feature! Were\'t my fitness      To let these hands obey my blood,      They are apt enough to dislocate and tear      Thy flesh and bones. Howe\'er thou art a fiend,      A woman\'s shape doth shield thee.   Gon. Marry, your manhood mew!                            Enter a Gentleman.    Alb. What news?   Gent. O, my good lord, the Duke of Cornwall \'s dead,      Slain by his servant, going to put out      The other eye of Gloucester.   Alb. Gloucester\'s eyes?   Gent. A servant that he bred, thrill\'d with remorse,      Oppos\'d against the act, bending his sword      To his great master; who, thereat enrag\'d,      Flew on him, and amongst them fell\'d him dead;      But not without that harmful stroke which since      Hath pluck\'d him after.     Alb. This shows you are above,      You justicers, that these our nether crimes      So speedily can venge! But O poor Gloucester!      Lose he his other eye?   Gent. Both, both, my lord.      This letter, madam, craves a speedy answer.      \'Tis from your sister.   Gon. [aside] One way I like this well;      But being widow, and my Gloucester with her,      May all the building in my fancy pluck      Upon my hateful life. Another way      The news is not so tart.- I\'ll read, and answer. Exit.   Alb. Where was his son when they did take his eyes?   Gent. Come with my lady hither.   Alb. He is not here.   Gent. No, my good lord; I met him back again.   Alb. Knows he the wickedness?   Gent. Ay, my good lord. \'Twas he inform\'d against him,      And quit the house on purpose, that their punishment        Might have the freer course.   Alb. Gloucester, I live      To thank thee for the love thou show\'dst the King,      And to revenge thine eyes. Come hither, friend.      Tell me what more thou know\'st.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene III. The French camp near Dover.  Enter Kent and a Gentleman.    Kent. Why the King of France is so suddenly gone back know you the      reason?   Gent. Something he left imperfect in the state, which since his      coming forth is thought of, which imports to the kingdom so much      fear and danger that his personal return was most required and      necessary.   Kent. Who hath he left behind him general?   Gent. The Marshal of France, Monsieur La Far.   Kent. Did your letters pierce the Queen to any demonstration of      grief?   Gent. Ay, sir. She took them, read them in my presence,      And now and then an ample tear trill\'d down      Her delicate cheek. It seem\'d she was a queen      Over her passion, who, most rebel-like,      Sought to be king o\'er her.   Kent. O, then it mov\'d her?   Gent. Not to a rage. Patience and sorrow strove        Who should express her goodliest. You have seen      Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears      Were like, a better way. Those happy smilets      That play\'d on her ripe lip seem\'d not to know      What guests were in her eyes, which parted thence      As pearls from diamonds dropp\'d. In brief,      Sorrow would be a rarity most belov\'d,      If all could so become it.   Kent. Made she no verbal question?   Gent. Faith, once or twice she heav\'d the name of father      Pantingly forth, as if it press\'d her heart;      Cried \'Sisters, sisters! Shame of ladies! Sisters!      Kent! father! sisters! What, i\' th\' storm? i\' th\' night?      Let pity not be believ\'d!\' There she shook      The holy water from her heavenly eyes,      And clamour moisten\'d. Then away she started      To deal with grief alone.   Kent. It is the stars,      The stars above us, govern our conditions;      Else one self mate and mate could not beget        Such different issues. You spoke not with her since?   Gent. No.   Kent. Was this before the King return\'d?   Gent. No, since.   Kent. Well, sir, the poor distressed Lear\'s i\' th\' town;      Who sometime, in his better tune, remembers      What we are come about, and by no means      Will yield to see his daughter.   Gent. Why, good sir?   Kent. A sovereign shame so elbows him; his own unkindness,      That stripp\'d her from his benediction, turn\'d her      To foreign casualties, gave her dear rights      To his dog-hearted daughters- these things sting      His mind so venomously that burning shame      Detains him from Cordelia.   Gent. Alack, poor gentleman!   Kent. Of Albany\'s and Cornwall\'s powers you heard not?   Gent. \'Tis so; they are afoot.   Kent. Well, sir, I\'ll bring you to our master Lear      And leave you to attend him. Some dear cause        Will in concealment wrap me up awhile.      When I am known aright, you shall not grieve      Lending me this acquaintance. I pray you go      Along with me.                                      Exeunt.     Scene IV. The French camp.  Enter, with Drum and Colours, Cordelia, Doctor, and Soldiers.    Cor. Alack, \'tis he! Why, he was met even now      As mad as the vex\'d sea, singing aloud,      Crown\'d with rank fumiter and furrow weeds,      With hardocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo flow\'rs,      Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow      In our sustaining corn. A century send forth.      Search every acre in the high-grown field      And bring him to our eye. [Exit an Officer.] What can man\'s         wisdom      In the restoring his bereaved sense?      He that helps him take all my outward worth.   Doct. There is means, madam.      Our foster nurse of nature is repose,      The which he lacks. That to provoke in him      Are many simples operative, whose power      Will close the eye of anguish.   Cor. All blest secrets,        All you unpublish\'d virtues of the earth,      Spring with my tears! be aidant and remediate      In the good man\'s distress! Seek, seek for him!      Lest his ungovern\'d rage dissolve the life      That wants the means to lead it.                             Enter Messenger.    Mess. News, madam.      The British pow\'rs are marching hitherward.   Cor. \'Tis known before. Our preparation stands      In expectation of them. O dear father,      It is thy business that I go about.      Therefore great France      My mourning and important tears hath pitied.      No blown ambition doth our arms incite,      But love, dear love, and our ag\'d father\'s right.      Soon may I hear and see him!                                                          Exeunt.     Scene V. Gloucester\'s Castle.  Enter Regan and [Oswald the] Steward.    Reg. But are my brother\'s pow\'rs set forth?   Osw. Ay, madam.   Reg. Himself in person there?   Osw. Madam, with much ado.      Your sister is the better soldier.   Reg. Lord Edmund spake not with your lord at home?   Osw. No, madam.   Reg. What might import my sister\'s letter to him?   Osw. I know not, lady.   Reg. Faith, he is posted hence on serious matter.      It was great ignorance, Gloucester\'s eyes being out,      To let him live. Where he arrives he moves      All hearts against us. Edmund, I think, is gone,      In pity of his misery, to dispatch      His nighted life; moreover, to descry      The strength o\' th\' enemy.   Osw. I must needs after him, madam, with my letter.     Reg. Our troops set forth to-morrow. Stay with us.      The ways are dangerous.   Osw. I may not, madam.      My lady charg\'d my duty in this business.   Reg. Why should she write to Edmund? Might not you      Transport her purposes by word? Belike,      Something- I know not what- I\'ll love thee much-      Let me unseal the letter.   Osw. Madam, I had rather-   Reg. I know your lady does not love her husband;      I am sure of that; and at her late being here      She gave strange eliads and most speaking looks      To noble Edmund. I know you are of her bosom.   Osw. I, madam?   Reg. I speak in understanding. Y\'are! I know\'t.      Therefore I do advise you take this note.      My lord is dead; Edmund and I have talk\'d,      And more convenient is he for my hand      Than for your lady\'s. You may gather more.      If you do find him, pray you give him this;        And when your mistress hears thus much from you,      I pray desire her call her wisdom to her.      So farewell.      If you do chance to hear of that blind traitor,      Preferment falls on him that cuts him off.   Osw. Would I could meet him, madam! I should show      What party I do follow.   Reg. Fare thee well.                                   Exeunt.     Scene VI. The country near Dover.  Enter Gloucester, and Edgar [like a Peasant].    Glou. When shall I come to th\' top of that same hill?   Edg. You do climb up it now. Look how we labour.   Glou. Methinks the ground is even.   Edg. Horrible steep.      Hark, do you hear the sea?   Glou. No, truly.   Edg. Why, then, your other senses grow imperfect      By your eyes\' anguish.   Glou. So may it be indeed.      Methinks thy voice is alter\'d, and thou speak\'st      In better phrase and matter than thou didst.   Edg. Y\'are much deceiv\'d. In nothing am I chang\'d      But in my garments.   Glou. Methinks y\'are better spoken.   Edg. Come on, sir; here\'s the place. Stand still. How fearful      And dizzy \'tis to cast one\'s eyes so low!      The crows and choughs that wing the midway air        Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down      Hangs one that gathers sampire- dreadful trade!      Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.      The fishermen that walk upon the beach      Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,      Diminish\'d to her cock; her cock, a buoy      Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge      That on th\' unnumb\'red idle pebble chafes      Cannot be heard so high. I\'ll look no more,      Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight      Topple down headlong.   Glou. Set me where you stand.   Edg. Give me your hand. You are now within a foot      Of th\' extreme verge. For all beneath the moon      Would I not leap upright.   Glou. Let go my hand.      Here, friend, is another purse; in it a jewel      Well worth a poor man\'s taking. Fairies and gods      Prosper it with thee! Go thou further off;      Bid me farewell, and let me hear thee going.     Edg. Now fare ye well, good sir.   Glou. With all my heart.   Edg. [aside]. Why I do trifle thus with his despair      Is done to cure it.   Glou. O you mighty gods!                            He kneels.      This world I do renounce, and, in your sights,      Shake patiently my great affliction off.      If I could bear it longer and not fall      To quarrel with your great opposeless wills,      My snuff and loathed part of nature should      Burn itself out. If Edgar live, O, bless him!      Now, fellow, fare thee well.                                   He falls [forward and swoons].   Edg. Gone, sir, farewell.-      And yet I know not how conceit may rob      The treasury of life when life itself      Yields to the theft. Had he been where he thought,      By this had thought been past.- Alive or dead?      Ho you, sir! friend! Hear you, sir? Speak!-      Thus might he pass indeed. Yet he revives.        What are you, sir?   Glou. Away, and let me die.   Edg. Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air,      So many fadom down precipitating,      Thou\'dst shiver\'d like an egg; but thou dost breathe;      Hast heavy substance; bleed\'st not; speak\'st; art sound.      Ten masts at each make not the altitude      Which thou hast perpendicularly fell.      Thy life is a miracle. Speak yet again.   Glou. But have I fall\'n, or no?   Edg. From the dread summit of this chalky bourn.      Look up a-height. The shrill-gorg\'d lark so far      Cannot be seen or heard. Do but look up.   Glou. Alack, I have no eyes!      Is wretchedness depriv\'d that benefit      To end itself by death? \'Twas yet some comfort      When misery could beguile the tyrant\'s rage      And frustrate his proud will.   Edg. Give me your arm.      Up- so. How is\'t? Feel you your legs? You stand.     Glou. Too well, too well.   Edg. This is above all strangeness.      Upon the crown o\' th\' cliff what thing was that      Which parted from you?   Glou. A poor unfortunate beggar.   Edg. As I stood here below, methought his eyes      Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses,      Horns whelk\'d and wav\'d like the enridged sea.      It was some fiend. Therefore, thou happy father,      Think that the clearest gods, who make them honours      Of men\'s impossibility, have preserv\'d thee.   Glou. I do remember now. Henceforth I\'ll bear      Affliction till it do cry out itself      \'Enough, enough,\' and die. That thing you speak of,      I took it for a man. Often \'twould say      \'The fiend, the fiend\'- he led me to that place.   Edg. Bear free and patient thoughts.           Enter Lear, mad, [fantastically dressed with weeds].         But who comes here?      The safer sense will ne\'er accommodate      His master thus.   Lear. No, they cannot touch me for coming;      I am the King himself.   Edg. O thou side-piercing sight!   Lear. Nature \'s above art in that respect. There\'s your press      money. That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper. Draw me      a clothier\'s yard. Look, look, a mouse! Peace, peace; this piece      of toasted cheese will do\'t. There\'s my gauntlet; I\'ll prove it      on a giant. Bring up the brown bills. O, well flown, bird! i\'      th\' clout, i\' th\' clout! Hewgh! Give the word.   Edg. Sweet marjoram.   Lear. Pass.   Glou. I know that voice.   Lear. Ha! Goneril with a white beard? They flatter\'d me like a dog,      and told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones      were there. To say \'ay\' and \'no\' to everything I said! \'Ay\' and      \'no\' too was no good divinity. When the rain came to wet me      once, and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would        not peace at my bidding; there I found \'em, there I smelt \'em      out. Go to, they are not men o\' their words! They told me I was      everything. \'Tis a lie- I am not ague-proof.   Glou. The trick of that voice I do well remember.      Is\'t not the King?   Lear. Ay, every inch a king!      When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.      I pardon that man\'s life. What was thy cause?      Adultery?      Thou shalt not die. Die for adultery? No.      The wren goes to\'t, and the small gilded fly      Does lecher in my sight.      Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester\'s bastard son      Was kinder to his father than my daughters      Got \'tween the lawful sheets.      To\'t, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers.      Behold yond simp\'ring dame,      Whose face between her forks presageth snow,      That minces virtue, and does shake the head      To hear of pleasure\'s name.        The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to\'t      With a more riotous appetite.      Down from the waist they are Centaurs,      Though women all above.      But to the girdle do the gods inherit,      Beneath is all the fiend\'s.      There\'s hell, there\'s darkness, there\'s the sulphurous pit;      burning, scalding, stench, consumption. Fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!      Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my      imagination. There\'s money for thee.   Glou. O, let me kiss that hand!   Lear. Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.   Glou. O ruin\'d piece of nature! This great world      Shall so wear out to naught. Dost thou know me?   Lear. I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny at me?      No, do thy worst, blind Cupid! I\'ll not love. Read thou this      challenge; mark but the penning of it.   Glou. Were all the letters suns, I could not see one.   Edg. [aside] I would not take this from report. It is,      And my heart breaks at it.     Lear. Read.   Glou. What, with the case of eyes?   Lear. O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your head, nor no      money in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse      in a light. Yet you see how this world goes.   Glou. I see it feelingly.   Lear. What, art mad? A man may see how the world goes with no eyes.      Look with thine ears. See how yond justice rails upon yond      simple thief. Hark in thine ear. Change places and, handy-dandy,      which is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen a      farmer\'s dog bark at a beggar?   Glou. Ay, sir.   Lear. And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold      the great image of authority: a dog\'s obeyed in office.      Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!      Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back.      Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind      For which thou whip\'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.      Through tatter\'d clothes small vices do appear;      Robes and furr\'d gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,        And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;      Arm it in rags, a pygmy\'s straw does pierce it.      None does offend, none- I say none! I\'ll able \'em.      Take that of me, my friend, who have the power      To seal th\' accuser\'s lips. Get thee glass eyes      And, like a scurvy politician, seem      To see the things thou dost not. Now, now, now, now!      Pull off my boots. Harder, harder! So.   Edg. O, matter and impertinency mix\'d!      Reason, in madness!   Lear. If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes.      I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloucester.      Thou must be patient. We came crying hither;      Thou know\'st, the first time that we smell the air      We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee. Mark.   Glou. Alack, alack the day!   Lear. When we are born, we cry that we are come      To this great stage of fools. This\' a good block.      It were a delicate stratagem to shoe      A troop of horse with felt. I\'ll put\'t in proof,        And when I have stol\'n upon these sons-in-law,      Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!                   Enter a Gentleman [with Attendants].    Gent. O, here he is! Lay hand upon him.- Sir,      Your most dear daughter-   Lear. No rescue? What, a prisoner? I am even      The natural fool of fortune. Use me well;      You shall have ransom. Let me have a surgeon;      I am cut to th\' brains.   Gent. You shall have anything.   Lear. No seconds? All myself?      Why, this would make a man a man of salt,      To use his eyes for garden waterpots,      Ay, and laying autumn\'s dust.   Gent. Good sir-   Lear. I will die bravely, like a smug bridegroom. What!      I will be jovial. Come, come, I am a king;      My masters, know you that?     Gent. You are a royal one, and we obey you.   Lear. Then there\'s life in\'t. Nay, an you get it, you shall get it      by running. Sa, sa, sa, sa!                               Exit running. [Attendants follow.]   Gent. A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch,      Past speaking of in a king! Thou hast one daughter      Who redeems nature from the general curse      Which twain have brought her to.   Edg. Hail, gentle sir.   Gent. Sir, speed you. What\'s your will?   Edg. Do you hear aught, sir, of a battle toward?   Gent. Most sure and vulgar. Every one hears that      Which can distinguish sound.   Edg. But, by your favour,      How near\'s the other army?   Gent. Near and on speedy foot. The main descry      Stands on the hourly thought.   Edg. I thank you sir. That\'s all.   Gent. Though that the Queen on special cause is here,      Her army is mov\'d on.     Edg. I thank you, sir                                                Exit [Gentleman].   Glou. You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me;      Let not my worser spirit tempt me again      To die before you please!   Edg. Well pray you, father.   Glou. Now, good sir, what are you?   Edg. A most poor man, made tame to fortune\'s blows,      Who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows,      Am pregnant to good pity. Give me your hand;      I\'ll lead you to some biding.   Glou. Hearty thanks.      The bounty and the benison of heaven      To boot, and boot!                       Enter [Oswald the] Steward.    Osw. A proclaim\'d prize! Most happy!      That eyeless head of thine was first fram\'d flesh      To raise my fortunes. Thou old unhappy traitor,        Briefly thyself remember. The sword is out      That must destroy thee.   Glou. Now let thy friendly hand      Put strength enough to\'t.                                              [Edgar interposes.]   Osw. Wherefore, bold peasant,      Dar\'st thou support a publish\'d traitor? Hence!      Lest that th\' infection of his fortune take      Like hold on thee. Let go his arm.   Edg. Chill not let go, zir, without vurther \'cagion.   Osw. Let go, slave, or thou diest!   Edg. Good gentleman, go your gait, and let poor voke pass. An chud      ha\' bin zwagger\'d out of my life, \'twould not ha\' bin zo long as      \'tis by a vortnight. Nay, come not near th\' old man. Keep out,      che vore ye, or Ise try whether your costard or my ballow be the      harder. Chill be plain with you.   Osw. Out, dunghill!                                                      They fight.   Edg. Chill pick your teeth, zir. Come! No matter vor your foins.                                                  [Oswald falls.]     Osw. Slave, thou hast slain me. Villain, take my purse.      If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body,      And give the letters which thou find\'st about me      To Edmund Earl of Gloucester. Seek him out      Upon the British party. O, untimely death! Death!                                                         He dies.   Edg. I know thee well. A serviceable villain,      As duteous to the vices of thy mistress      As badness would desire.   Glou. What, is he dead?   Edg. Sit you down, father; rest you.      Let\'s see his pockets; these letters that he speaks of      May be my friends. He\'s dead. I am only sorry      He had no other deathsman. Let us see.      Leave, gentle wax; and, manners, blame us not.      To know our enemies\' minds, we\'ld rip their hearts;      Their papers, is more lawful.             Reads the letter.         \'Let our reciprocal vows be rememb\'red. You have many      opportunities to cut him off. If your will want not, time and      place will be fruitfully offer\'d. There is nothing done, if he        return the conqueror. Then am I the prisoner, and his bed my      jail; from the loathed warmth whereof deliver me, and supply the      place for your labour.            \'Your (wife, so I would say) affectionate servant,                                                           \'Goneril.\'       O indistinguish\'d space of woman\'s will!      A plot upon her virtuous husband\'s life,      And the exchange my brother! Here in the sands      Thee I\'ll rake up, the post unsanctified      Of murtherous lechers; and in the mature time      With this ungracious paper strike the sight      Of the death-practis\'d Duke, For him \'tis well      That of thy death and business I can tell.   Glou. The King is mad. How stiff is my vile sense,      That I stand up, and have ingenious feeling      Of my huge sorrows! Better I were distract.      So should my thoughts be sever\'d from my griefs,      And woes by wrong imaginations lose        The knowledge of themselves.                                                 A drum afar off.   Edg. Give me your hand.      Far off methinks I hear the beaten drum.      Come, father, I\'ll bestow you with a friend.        Exeunt.     Scene VII. A tent in the French camp.  Enter Cordelia, Kent, Doctor, and Gentleman.    Cor. O thou good Kent, how shall I live and work      To match thy goodness? My life will be too short      And every measure fail me.   Kent. To be acknowledg\'d, madam, is o\'erpaid.      All my reports go with the modest truth;      Nor more nor clipp\'d, but so.   Cor. Be better suited.      These weeds are memories of those worser hours.      I prithee put them off.   Kent. Pardon, dear madam.      Yet to be known shortens my made intent.      My boon I make it that you know me not      Till time and I think meet.   Cor. Then be\'t so, my good lord. [To the Doctor] How, does the King?   Doct. Madam, sleeps still.   Cor. O you kind gods,      Cure this great breach in his abused nature!        Th\' untun\'d and jarring senses, O, wind up      Of this child-changed father!   Doct. So please your Majesty      That we may wake the King? He hath slept long.   Cor. Be govern\'d by your knowledge, and proceed      I\' th\' sway of your own will. Is he array\'d?                Enter Lear in a chair carried by Servants.    Gent. Ay, madam. In the heaviness of sleep      We put fresh garments on him.   Doct. Be by, good madam, when we do awake him.      I doubt not of his temperance.   Cor. Very well.                                                           Music.   Doct. Please you draw near. Louder the music there!   Cor. O my dear father, restoration hang      Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss      Repair those violent harms that my two sisters      Have in thy reverence made!     Kent. Kind and dear princess!   Cor. Had you not been their father, these white flakes      Had challeng\'d pity of them. Was this a face      To be oppos\'d against the warring winds?      To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder?      In the most terrible and nimble stroke      Of quick cross lightning? to watch- poor perdu!-      With this thin helm? Mine enemy\'s dog,      Though he had bit me, should have stood that night      Against my fire; and wast thou fain, poor father,      To hovel thee with swine and rogues forlorn,      In short and musty straw? Alack, alack!      \'Tis wonder that thy life and wits at once      Had not concluded all.- He wakes. Speak to him.   Doct. Madam, do you; \'tis fittest.   Cor. How does my royal lord? How fares your Majesty?   Lear. You do me wrong to take me out o\' th\' grave.      Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound      Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears      Do scald like molten lead.     Cor. Sir, do you know me?   Lear. You are a spirit, I know. When did you die?   Cor. Still, still, far wide!   Doct. He\'s scarce awake. Let him alone awhile.   Lear. Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight,      I am mightily abus\'d. I should e\'en die with pity,      To see another thus. I know not what to say.      I will not swear these are my hands. Let\'s see.      I feel this pin prick. Would I were assur\'d      Of my condition!   Cor. O, look upon me, sir,      And hold your hands in benediction o\'er me.      No, sir, you must not kneel.   Lear. Pray, do not mock me.      I am a very foolish fond old man,      Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;      And, to deal plainly,      I fear I am not in my perfect mind.      Methinks I should know you, and know this man;      Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant        What place this is; and all the skill I have      Remembers not these garments; nor I know not      Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;      For (as I am a man) I think this lady      To be my child Cordelia.   Cor. And so I am! I am!   Lear. Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray weep not.      If you have poison for me, I will drink it.      I know you do not love me; for your sisters      Have, as I do remember, done me wrong.      You have some cause, they have not.   Cor. No cause, no cause.   Lear. Am I in France?   Kent. In your own kingdom, sir.   Lear. Do not abuse me.   Doct. Be comforted, good madam. The great rage      You see is kill\'d in him; and yet it is danger      To make him even o\'er the time he has lost.      Desire him to go in. Trouble him no more      Till further settling.     Cor. Will\'t please your Highness walk?   Lear. You must bear with me.      Pray you now, forget and forgive. I am old and foolish.                               Exeunt. Manent Kent and Gentleman.   Gent. Holds it true, sir, that the Duke of Cornwall was so slain?   Kent. Most certain, sir.   Gent. Who is conductor of his people?   Kent. As \'tis said, the bastard son of Gloucester.   Gent. They say Edgar, his banish\'d son, is with the Earl of Kent      in Germany.   Kent. Report is changeable. \'Tis time to look about; the powers of      the kingdom approach apace.   Gent. The arbitrement is like to be bloody.      Fare you well, sir.                                 [Exit.]   Kent. My point and period will be throughly wrought,      Or well or ill, as this day\'s battle\'s fought.        Exit.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. Scene I. The British camp near Dover.  Enter, with Drum and Colours, Edmund, Regan, Gentleman, and Soldiers.    Edm. Know of the Duke if his last purpose hold,      Or whether since he is advis\'d by aught      To change the course. He\'s full of alteration      And self-reproving. Bring his constant pleasure.                                               [Exit an Officer.]   Reg. Our sister\'s man is certainly miscarried.   Edm. Tis to be doubted, madam.   Reg. Now, sweet lord,      You know the goodness I intend upon you.      Tell me- but truly- but then speak the truth-      Do you not love my sister?   Edm. In honour\'d love.   Reg. But have you never found my brother\'s way      To the forfended place?   Edm. That thought abuses you.   Reg. I am doubtful that you have been conjunct        And bosom\'d with her, as far as we call hers.   Edm. No, by mine honour, madam.   Reg. I never shall endure her. Dear my lord,      Be not familiar with her.   Edm. Fear me not.      She and the Duke her husband!         Enter, with Drum and Colours, Albany, Goneril, Soldiers.    Gon. [aside] I had rather lose the battle than that sister      Should loosen him and me.   Alb. Our very loving sister, well bemet.      Sir, this I hear: the King is come to his daughter,      With others whom the rigour of our state      Forc\'d to cry out. Where I could not be honest,      I never yet was valiant. For this business,      It toucheth us as France invades our land,      Not bolds the King, with others whom, I fear,      Most just and heavy causes make oppose.   Edm. Sir, you speak nobly.     Reg. Why is this reason\'d?   Gon. Combine together \'gainst the enemy;      For these domestic and particular broils      Are not the question here.   Alb. Let\'s then determine      With th\' ancient of war on our proceeding.   Edm. I shall attend you presently at your tent.   Reg. Sister, you\'ll go with us?   Gon. No.   Reg. \'Tis most convenient. Pray you go with us.   Gon. [aside] O, ho, I know the riddle.- I will go.            [As they are going out,] enter Edgar [disguised].    Edg. If e\'er your Grace had speech with man so poor,      Hear me one word.   Alb. I\'ll overtake you.- Speak.                               Exeunt [all but Albany and Edgar].   Edg. Before you fight the battle, ope this letter.      If you have victory, let the trumpet sound        For him that brought it. Wretched though I seem,      I can produce a champion that will prove      What is avouched there. If you miscarry,      Your business of the world hath so an end,      And machination ceases. Fortune love you!   Alb. Stay till I have read the letter.   Edg. I was forbid it.      When time shall serve, let but the herald cry,      And I\'ll appear again.   Alb. Why, fare thee well. I will o\'erlook thy paper.                                                    Exit [Edgar].                              Enter Edmund.    Edm. The enemy \'s in view; draw up your powers.      Here is the guess of their true strength and forces      By diligent discovery; but your haste      Is now urg\'d on you.   Alb. We will greet the time.                             Exit.   Edm. To both these sisters have I sworn my love;        Each jealous of the other, as the stung      Are of the adder. Which of them shall I take?      Both? one? or neither? Neither can be enjoy\'d,      If both remain alive. To take the widow      Exasperates, makes mad her sister Goneril;      And hardly shall I carry out my side,      Her husband being alive. Now then, we\'ll use      His countenance for the battle, which being done,      Let her who would be rid of him devise      His speedy taking off. As for the mercy      Which he intends to Lear and to Cordelia-      The battle done, and they within our power,      Shall never see his pardon; for my state      Stands on me to defend, not to debate.                Exit.     Scene II. A field between the two camps.  Alarum within. Enter, with Drum and Colours, the Powers of France over the stage, Cordelia with her Father in her hand, and exeunt.  Enter Edgar and Gloucester.    Edg. Here, father, take the shadow of this tree      For your good host. Pray that the right may thrive.      If ever I return to you again,      I\'ll bring you comfort.   Glou. Grace go with you, sir!                                                    Exit [Edgar].                 Alarum and retreat within. Enter Edgar,    Edg. Away, old man! give me thy hand! away!      King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta\'en.      Give me thy hand! come on!   Glou. No further, sir. A man may rot even here.     Edg. What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure      Their going hence, even as their coming hither;      Ripeness is all. Come on.   Glou. And that\'s true too.                             Exeunt.     Scene III. The British camp, near Dover.  Enter, in conquest, with Drum and Colours, Edmund; Lear and Cordelia as prisoners; Soldiers, Captain.    Edm. Some officers take them away. Good guard      Until their greater pleasures first be known      That are to censure them.   Cor. We are not the first      Who with best meaning have incurr\'d the worst.      For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down;      Myself could else outfrown false Fortune\'s frown.      Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?   Lear. No, no, no, no! Come, let\'s away to prison.      We two alone will sing like birds i\' th\' cage.      When thou dost ask me blessing, I\'ll kneel down      And ask of thee forgiveness. So we\'ll live,      And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh      At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues      Talk of court news; and we\'ll talk with them too-      Who loses and who wins; who\'s in, who\'s out-        And take upon \'s the mystery of things,      As if we were God\'s spies; and we\'ll wear out,      In a wall\'d prison, packs and sects of great ones      That ebb and flow by th\' moon.   Edm. Take them away.   Lear. Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,      The gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee?      He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven      And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes.      The goodyears shall devour \'em, flesh and fell,      Ere they shall make us weep! We\'ll see \'em starv\'d first.      Come.                  Exeunt [Lear and Cordelia, guarded].   Edm. Come hither, Captain; hark.      Take thou this note [gives a paper]. Go follow them to prison.      One step I have advanc\'d thee. If thou dost      As this instructs thee, thou dost make thy way      To noble fortunes. Know thou this, that men      Are as the time is. To be tender-minded      Does not become a sword. Thy great employment      Will not bear question. Either say thou\'lt do\'t,        Or thrive by other means.   Capt. I\'ll do\'t, my lord.   Edm. About it! and write happy when th\' hast done.      Mark- I say, instantly; and carry it so      As I have set it down.   Capt. I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats;      If it be man\'s work, I\'ll do\'t.                       Exit.            Flourish. Enter Albany, Goneril, Regan, Soldiers.    Alb. Sir, you have show\'d to-day your valiant strain,      And fortune led you well. You have the captives      Who were the opposites of this day\'s strife.      We do require them of you, so to use them      As we shall find their merits and our safety      May equally determine.   Edm. Sir, I thought it fit      To send the old and miserable King      To some retention and appointed guard;      Whose age has charms in it, whose title more,        To pluck the common bosom on his side      And turn our impress\'d lances in our eyes      Which do command them. With him I sent the Queen,      My reason all the same; and they are ready      To-morrow, or at further space, t\' appear      Where you shall hold your session. At this time      We sweat and bleed: the friend hath lost his friend;      And the best quarrels, in the heat, are curs\'d      By those that feel their sharpness.      The question of Cordelia and her father      Requires a fitter place.   Alb. Sir, by your patience,      I hold you but a subject of this war,      Not as a brother.   Reg. That\'s as we list to grace him.      Methinks our pleasure might have been demanded      Ere you had spoke so far. He led our powers,      Bore the commission of my place and person,      The which immediacy may well stand up      And call itself your brother.     Gon. Not so hot!      In his own grace he doth exalt himself      More than in your addition.   Reg. In my rights      By me invested, he compeers the best.   Gon. That were the most if he should husband you.   Reg. Jesters do oft prove prophets.   Gon. Holla, holla!      That eye that told you so look\'d but asquint.   Reg. Lady, I am not well; else I should answer      From a full-flowing stomach. General,      Take thou my soldiers, prisoners, patrimony;      Dispose of them, of me; the walls are thine.      Witness the world that I create thee here      My lord and master.   Gon. Mean you to enjoy him?   Alb. The let-alone lies not in your good will.   Edm. Nor in thine, lord.   Alb. Half-blooded fellow, yes.   Reg. [to Edmund] Let the drum strike, and prove my title thine.     Alb. Stay yet; hear reason. Edmund, I arrest thee      On capital treason; and, in thine attaint,      This gilded serpent [points to Goneril]. For your claim, fair         sister,      I bar it in the interest of my wife.      \'Tis she is subcontracted to this lord,      And I, her husband, contradict your banes.      If you will marry, make your loves to me;      My lady is bespoke.   Gon. An interlude!   Alb. Thou art arm\'d, Gloucester. Let the trumpet sound.      If none appear to prove upon thy person      Thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons,      There is my pledge [throws down a glove]! I\'ll prove it on thy         heart,      Ere I taste bread, thou art in nothing less      Than I have here proclaim\'d thee.   Reg. Sick, O, sick!   Gon. [aside] If not, I\'ll ne\'er trust medicine.   Edm. There\'s my exchange [throws down a glove]. What in the world           he is      That names me traitor, villain-like he lies.      Call by thy trumpet. He that dares approach,      On him, on you, who not? I will maintain      My truth and honour firmly.   Alb. A herald, ho!   Edm. A herald, ho, a herald!   Alb. Trust to thy single virtue; for thy soldiers,      All levied in my name, have in my name      Took their discharge.   Reg. My sickness grows upon me.   Alb. She is not well. Convey her to my tent.                                               [Exit Regan, led.]                             Enter a Herald.       Come hither, herald. Let the trumpet sound,      And read out this.   Capt. Sound, trumpet!                        A trumpet sounds.      Her. (reads) \'If any man of quality or degree within the lists of      the army will maintain upon Edmund, supposed Earl of Gloucester,      that he is a manifold traitor, let him appear by the third sound      of the trumpet. He is bold in his defence.\'    Edm. Sound!                                     First trumpet.   Her. Again!                                    Second trumpet.   Her. Again!                                     Third trumpet.                                          Trumpet answers within.      Enter Edgar, armed, at the third sound, a Trumpet before him.    Alb. Ask him his purposes, why he appears      Upon this call o\' th\' trumpet.   Her. What are you?      Your name, your quality? and why you answer      This present summons?   Edg. Know my name is lost;      By treason\'s tooth bare-gnawn and canker-bit.      Yet am I noble as the adversary        I come to cope.   Alb. Which is that adversary?   Edg. What\'s he that speaks for Edmund Earl of Gloucester?   Edm. Himself. What say\'st thou to him?   Edg. Draw thy sword,      That, if my speech offend a noble heart,      Thy arm may do thee justice. Here is mine.      Behold, it is the privilege of mine honours,      My oath, and my profession. I protest-      Maugre thy strength, youth, place, and eminence,      Despite thy victor sword and fire-new fortune,      Thy valour and thy heart- thou art a traitor;      False to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father;      Conspirant \'gainst this high illustrious prince;      And from th\' extremest upward of thy head      To the descent and dust beneath thy foot,      A most toad-spotted traitor. Say thou \'no,\'      This sword, this arm, and my best spirits are bent      To prove upon thy heart, whereto I speak,      Thou liest.     Edm. In wisdom I should ask thy name;      But since thy outside looks so fair and warlike,      And that thy tongue some say of breeding breathes,      What safe and nicely I might well delay      By rule of knighthood, I disdain and spurn.      Back do I toss those treasons to thy head;      With the hell-hated lie o\'erwhelm thy heart;      Which- for they yet glance by and scarcely bruise-      This sword of mine shall give them instant way      Where they shall rest for ever. Trumpets, speak!                                  Alarums. Fight. [Edmund falls.]   Alb. Save him, save him!   Gon. This is mere practice, Gloucester.      By th\' law of arms thou wast not bound to answer      An unknown opposite. Thou art not vanquish\'d,      But cozen\'d and beguil\'d.   Alb. Shut your mouth, dame,      Or with this paper shall I stop it. [Shows her her letter to      Edmund.]- [To Edmund]. Hold, sir.      [To Goneril] Thou worse than any name, read thine own evil.        No tearing, lady! I perceive you know it.   Gon. Say if I do- the laws are mine, not thine.      Who can arraign me for\'t?   Alb. Most monstrous!      Know\'st thou this paper?   Gon. Ask me not what I know.                             Exit.   Alb. Go after her. She\'s desperate; govern her.                                               [Exit an Officer.]   Edm. What, you have charg\'d me with, that have I done,      And more, much more. The time will bring it out.      \'Tis past, and so am I.- But what art thou      That hast this fortune on me? If thou\'rt noble,      I do forgive thee.   Edg. Let\'s exchange charity.      I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund;      If more, the more th\' hast wrong\'d me.      My name is Edgar and thy father\'s son.      The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices      Make instruments to scourge us.      The dark and vicious place where thee he got        Cost him his eyes.   Edm. Th\' hast spoken right; \'tis true.      The wheel is come full circle; I am here.   Alb. Methought thy very gait did prophesy      A royal nobleness. I must embrace thee.      Let sorrow split my heart if ever I      Did hate thee, or thy father!   Edg. Worthy prince, I know\'t.   Alb. Where have you hid yourself?      How have you known the miseries of your father?   Edg. By nursing them, my lord. List a brief tale;      And when \'tis told, O that my heart would burst!      The bloody proclamation to escape      That follow\'d me so near (O, our lives\' sweetness!      That with the pain of death would hourly die      Rather than die at once!) taught me to shift      Into a madman\'s rags, t\' assume a semblance      That very dogs disdain\'d; and in this habit      Met I my father with his bleeding rings,      Their precious stones new lost; became his guide,        Led him, begg\'d for him, sav\'d him from despair;      Never (O fault!) reveal\'d myself unto him      Until some half hour past, when I was arm\'d,      Not sure, though hoping of this good success,      I ask\'d his blessing, and from first to last      Told him my pilgrimage. But his flaw\'d heart      (Alack, too weak the conflict to support!)      \'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,      Burst smilingly.   Edm. This speech of yours hath mov\'d me,      And shall perchance do good; but speak you on;      You look as you had something more to say.   Alb. If there be more, more woful, hold it in;      For I am almost ready to dissolve,      Hearing of this.   Edg. This would have seem\'d a period      To such as love not sorrow; but another,      To amplify too much, would make much more,      And top extremity.      Whilst I was big in clamour, came there a man,        Who, having seen me in my worst estate,      Shunn\'d my abhorr\'d society; but then, finding      Who \'twas that so endur\'d, with his strong arms      He fastened on my neck, and bellowed out      As he\'d burst heaven; threw him on my father;      Told the most piteous tale of Lear and him      That ever ear receiv\'d; which in recounting      His grief grew puissant, and the strings of life      Began to crack. Twice then the trumpets sounded,      And there I left him tranc\'d.   Alb. But who was this?   Edg. Kent, sir, the banish\'d Kent; who in disguise      Followed his enemy king and did him service      Improper for a slave.                  Enter a Gentleman with a bloody knife.    Gent. Help, help! O, help!   Edg. What kind of help?   Alb. Speak, man.     Edg. What means that bloody knife?   Gent. \'Tis hot, it smokes.      It came even from the heart of- O! she\'s dead!   Alb. Who dead? Speak, man.   Gent. Your lady, sir, your lady! and her sister      By her is poisoned; she hath confess\'d it.   Edm. I was contracted to them both. All three      Now marry in an instant.                               Enter Kent.    Edg. Here comes Kent.   Alb. Produce their bodies, be they alive or dead.                                                [Exit Gentleman.]      This judgement of the heavens, that makes us tremble      Touches us not with pity. O, is this he?      The time will not allow the compliment      That very manners urges.   Kent. I am come      To bid my king and master aye good night.        Is he not here?   Alb. Great thing of us forgot!      Speak, Edmund, where\'s the King? and where\'s Cordelia?                  The bodies of Goneril and Regan are brought in.      Seest thou this object, Kent?   Kent. Alack, why thus?   Edm. Yet Edmund was belov\'d.      The one the other poisoned for my sake,      And after slew herself.   Alb. Even so. Cover their faces.   Edm. I pant for life. Some good I mean to do,      Despite of mine own nature. Quickly send      (Be brief in\'t) to the castle; for my writ      Is on the life of Lear and on Cordelia.      Nay, send in time.   Alb. Run, run, O, run!   Edg. To who, my lord? Who has the office? Send      Thy token of reprieve.   Edm. Well thought on. Take my sword;      Give it the Captain.     Alb. Haste thee for thy life.                    [Exit Edgar.]   Edm. He hath commission from thy wife and me      To hang Cordelia in the prison and      To lay the blame upon her own despair      That she fordid herself.   Alb. The gods defend her! Bear him hence awhile.                                           [Edmund is borne off.]      Enter Lear, with Cordelia [dead] in his arms, [Edgar, Captain,                         and others following].    Lear. Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stone.      Had I your tongues and eyes, I\'ld use them so      That heaven\'s vault should crack. She\'s gone for ever!      I know when one is dead, and when one lives.      She\'s dead as earth. Lend me a looking glass.      If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,      Why, then she lives.   Kent. Is this the promis\'d end?   Edg. Or image of that horror?     Alb. Fall and cease!   Lear. This feather stirs; she lives! If it be so,      It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows      That ever I have felt.   Kent. O my good master!   Lear. Prithee away!   Edg. \'Tis noble Kent, your friend.   Lear. A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!      I might have sav\'d her; now she\'s gone for ever!      Cordelia, Cordelia! stay a little. Ha!      What is\'t thou say\'st, Her voice was ever soft,      Gentle, and low- an excellent thing in woman.      I kill\'d the slave that was a-hanging thee.   Capt. \'Tis true, my lords, he did.   Lear. Did I not, fellow?      I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion      I would have made them skip. I am old now,      And these same crosses spoil me. Who are you?      Mine eyes are not o\' th\' best. I\'ll tell you straight.   Kent. If fortune brag of two she lov\'d and hated,        One of them we behold.   Lear. This\' a dull sight. Are you not Kent?   Kent. The same-      Your servant Kent. Where is your servant Caius?   Lear. He\'s a good fellow, I can tell you that.      He\'ll strike, and quickly too. He\'s dead and rotten.   Kent. No, my good lord; I am the very man-   Lear. I\'ll see that straight.   Kent. That from your first of difference and decay      Have followed your sad steps.   Lear. You\'re welcome hither.   Kent. Nor no man else! All\'s cheerless, dark, and deadly.      Your eldest daughters have fordone themselves,      And desperately are dead.   Lear. Ay, so I think.   Alb. He knows not what he says; and vain is it      That we present us to him.   Edg. Very bootless.                             Enter a Captain.      Capt. Edmund is dead, my lord.   Alb. That\'s but a trifle here.      You lords and noble friends, know our intent.      What comfort to this great decay may come      Shall be applied. For us, we will resign,      During the life of this old Majesty,      To him our absolute power; [to Edgar and Kent] you to your         rights;      With boot, and Such addition as your honours      Have more than merited.- All friends shall taste      The wages of their virtue, and all foes      The cup of their deservings.- O, see, see!   Lear. And my poor fool is hang\'d! No, no, no life!      Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,      And thou no breath at all? Thou\'lt come no more,      Never, never, never, never, never!      Pray you undo this button. Thank you, sir.      Do you see this? Look on her! look! her lips!      Look there, look there!                            He dies.     Edg. He faints! My lord, my lord!   Kent. Break, heart; I prithee break!   Edg. Look up, my lord.   Kent. Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass! He hates him      That would upon the rack of this tough world      Stretch him out longer.   Edg. He is gone indeed.   Kent. The wonder is, he hath endur\'d so long.      He but usurp\'d his life.   Alb. Bear them from hence. Our present business      Is general woe. [To Kent and Edgar] Friends of my soul, you         twain      Rule in this realm, and the gor\'d state sustain.   Kent. I have a journey, sir, shortly to go.      My master calls me; I must not say no.   Alb. The weight of this sad time we must obey,      Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.      The oldest have borne most; we that are young      Shall never see so much, nor live so long.                                        Exeunt with a dead march.   THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>       1595  LOVE\'S LABOUR\'S LOST  by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae.    FERDINAND, King of Navarre   BEROWNE,    lord attending on the King   LONGAVILLE,  "      "      "   "   "   DUMAIN,      "      "      "   "   "   BOYET,   lord attending on the Princess of France   MARCADE,   "     "       "  "     "      "    "   DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO, fantastical Spaniard   SIR NATHANIEL, a curate   HOLOFERNES, a schoolmaster   DULL, a constable   COSTARD, a clown   MOTH, page to Armado   A FORESTER    THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE   ROSALINE, lady attending on the Princess   MARIA,      "     "       "  "     "   KATHARINE, lady attending on the Princess   JAQUENETTA, a country wench      Lords, Attendants, etc.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: Navarre   ACT I. SCENE I. Navarre. The King\'s park  Enter the King, BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN    KING. Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,     Live regist\'red upon our brazen tombs,     And then grace us in the disgrace of death;     When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,     Th\' endeavour of this present breath may buy     That honour which shall bate his scythe\'s keen edge,     And make us heirs of all eternity.     Therefore, brave conquerors- for so you are     That war against your own affections     And the huge army of the world\'s desires-     Our late edict shall strongly stand in force:     Navarre shall be the wonder of the world;     Our court shall be a little Academe,     Still and contemplative in living art.     You three, Berowne, Dumain, and Longaville,     Have sworn for three years\' term to live with me     My fellow-scholars, and to keep those statutes       That are recorded in this schedule here.     Your oaths are pass\'d; and now subscribe your names,     That his own hand may strike his honour down     That violates the smallest branch herein.     If you are arm\'d to do as sworn to do,     Subscribe to your deep oaths, and keep it too.   LONGAVILLE. I am resolv\'d; \'tis but a three years\' fast.     The mind shall banquet, though the body pine.     Fat paunches have lean pates; and dainty bits     Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.   DUMAIN. My loving lord, Dumain is mortified.     The grosser manner of these world\'s delights     He throws upon the gross world\'s baser slaves;     To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die,     With all these living in philosophy.   BEROWNE. I can but say their protestation over;     So much, dear liege, I have already sworn,     That is, to live and study here three years.     But there are other strict observances,     As: not to see a woman in that term,       Which I hope well is not enrolled there;     And one day in a week to touch no food,     And but one meal on every day beside,     The which I hope is not enrolled there;     And then to sleep but three hours in the night     And not be seen to wink of all the day-     When I was wont to think no harm all night,     And make a dark night too of half the day-     Which I hope well is not enrolled there.     O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep,     Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep!   KING. Your oath is pass\'d to pass away from these.   BEROWNE. Let me say no, my liege, an if you please:     I only swore to study with your Grace,     And stay here in your court for three years\' space.   LONGAVILLE. You swore to that, Berowne, and to the rest.   BEROWNE. By yea and nay, sir, then I swore in jest.     What is the end of study, let me know.   KING. Why, that to know which else we should not know.   BEROWNE. Things hid and barr\'d, you mean, from common sense?     KING. Ay, that is study\'s god-like recompense.   BEROWNE. Come on, then; I will swear to study so,     To know the thing I am forbid to know,     As thus: to study where I well may dine,     When I to feast expressly am forbid;     Or study where to meet some mistress fine,     When mistresses from common sense are hid;     Or, having sworn too hard-a-keeping oath,     Study to break it, and not break my troth.     If study\'s gain be thus, and this be so,     Study knows that which yet it doth not know.     Swear me to this, and I will ne\'er say no.   KING. These be the stops that hinder study quite,     And train our intellects to vain delight.   BEROWNE. Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain     Which, with pain purchas\'d, doth inherit pain,     As painfully to pore upon a book     To seek the light of truth; while truth the while     Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.     Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile;       So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,     Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.     Study me how to please the eye indeed,     By fixing it upon a fairer eye;     Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed,     And give him light that it was blinded by.     Study is like the heaven\'s glorious sun,     That will not be deep-search\'d with saucy looks;     Small have continual plodders ever won,     Save base authority from others\' books.     These earthly godfathers of heaven\'s lights     That give a name to every fixed star     Have no more profit of their shining nights     Than those that walk and wot not what they are.     Too much to know is to know nought but fame;     And every godfather can give a name.   KING. How well he\'s read, to reason against reading!   DUMAIN. Proceeded well, to stop all good proceeding!   LONGAVILLE. He weeds the corn, and still lets grow the weeding.   BEROWNE. The spring is near, when green geese are a-breeding.     DUMAIN. How follows that?   BEROWNE. Fit in his place and time.   DUMAIN. In reason nothing.   BEROWNE. Something then in rhyme.   LONGAVILLE. Berowne is like an envious sneaping frost     That bites the first-born infants of the spring.   BEROWNE. Well, say I am; why should proud summer boast     Before the birds have any cause to sing?     Why should I joy in any abortive birth?     At Christmas I no more desire a rose     Than wish a snow in May\'s new-fangled shows;     But like of each thing that in season grows;     So you, to study now it is too late,     Climb o\'er the house to unlock the little gate.   KING. Well, sit out; go home, Berowne; adieu.   BEROWNE. No, my good lord; I have sworn to stay with you;     And though I have for barbarism spoke more     Than for that angel knowledge you can say,     Yet confident I\'ll keep what I have swore,     And bide the penance of each three years\' day.       Give me the paper; let me read the same;     And to the strictest decrees I\'ll write my name.   KING. How well this yielding rescues thee from shame!   BEROWNE. [Reads] \'Item. That no woman shall come within a mile of     my court\'- Hath this been proclaimed?   LONGAVILLE. Four days ago.   BEROWNE. Let\'s see the penalty. [Reads] \'-on pain of losing her     tongue.\' Who devis\'d this penalty?   LONGAVILLE. Marry, that did I.   BEROWNE. Sweet lord, and why?   LONGAVILLE. To fright them hence with that dread penalty.   BEROWNE. A dangerous law against gentility.     [Reads] \'Item. If any man be seen to talk with a woman within     the term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as the     rest of the court can possibly devise.\'     This article, my liege, yourself must break;     For well you know here comes in embassy     The French king\'s daughter, with yourself to speak-     A mild of grace and complete majesty-     About surrender up of Aquitaine       To her decrepit, sick, and bedrid father;     Therefore this article is made in vain,     Or vainly comes th\' admired princess hither.   KING. What say you, lords? Why, this was quite forgot.   BEROWNE. So study evermore is over-shot.     While it doth study to have what it would,     It doth forget to do the thing it should;     And when it hath the thing it hunteth most,     \'Tis won as towns with fire- so won, so lost.   KING. We must of force dispense with this decree;     She must lie here on mere necessity.   BEROWNE. Necessity will make us all forsworn     Three thousand times within this three years\' space;     For every man with his affects is born,     Not by might mast\'red, but by special grace.     If I break faith, this word shall speak for me:     I am forsworn on mere necessity.     So to the laws at large I write my name;        [Subscribes]     And he that breaks them in the least degree     Stands in attainder of eternal shame.       Suggestions are to other as to me;     But I believe, although I seem so loath,     I am the last that will last keep his oath.     But is there no quick recreation granted?   KING. Ay, that there is. Our court, you know, is haunted     With a refined traveller of Spain,     A man in all the world\'s new fashion planted,     That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;     One who the music of his own vain tongue     Doth ravish like enchanting harmony;     A man of complements, whom right and wrong     Have chose as umpire of their mutiny.     This child of fancy, that Armado hight,     For interim to our studies shall relate,     In high-born words, the worth of many a knight     From tawny Spain lost in the world\'s debate.     How you delight, my lords, I know not, I;     But I protest I love to hear him lie,     And I will use him for my minstrelsy.   BEROWNE. Armado is a most illustrious wight,       A man of fire-new words, fashion\'s own knight.   LONGAVILLE. Costard the swain and he shall be our sport;     And so to study three years is but short.        Enter DULL, a constable, with a letter, and COSTARD    DULL. Which is the Duke\'s own person?   BEROWNE. This, fellow. What wouldst?   DULL. I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his Grace\'s     farborough; but I would see his own person in flesh and blood.   BEROWNE. This is he.   DULL. Signior Arme- Arme- commends you. There\'s villainy abroad;     this letter will tell you more.   COSTARD. Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me.   KING. A letter from the magnificent Armado.   BEROWNE. How low soever the matter, I hope in God for high words.   LONGAVILLE. A high hope for a low heaven. God grant us patience!   BEROWNE. To hear, or forbear hearing?   LONGAVILLE. To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately; or, to     forbear both.     BEROWNE. Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to climb     in the merriness.   COSTARD. The matter is to me, sir, as concerning Jaquenetta.     The manner of it is, I was taken with the manner.   BEROWNE. In what manner?   COSTARD. In manner and form following, sir; all those three: I was     seen with her in the manor-house, sitting with her upon the form,     and taken following her into the park; which, put together, is in     manner and form following. Now, sir, for the manner- it is the     manner of a man to speak to a woman. For the form- in some form.   BEROWNE. For the following, sir?   COSTARD. As it shall follow in my correction; and God defend the     right!   KING. Will you hear this letter with attention?   BEROWNE. As we would hear an oracle.   COSTARD. Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.   KING. [Reads] \'Great deputy, the welkin\'s vicegerent and sole     dominator of Navarre, my soul\'s earth\'s god and body\'s fost\'ring     patron\'-   COSTARD. Not a word of Costard yet.     KING. [Reads] \'So it is\'-   COSTARD. It may be so; but if he say it is so, he is, in telling     true, but so.   KING. Peace!   COSTARD. Be to me, and every man that dares not fight!   KING. No words!   COSTARD. Of other men\'s secrets, I beseech you.   KING. [Reads] \'So it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I     did commend the black oppressing humour to the most wholesome     physic of thy health-giving air; and, as I am a gentleman, betook     myself to walk. The time When? About the sixth hour; when beasts     most graze, birds best peck, and men sit down to that nourishment     which is called supper. So much for the time When. Now for the     ground Which? which, I mean, I upon; it is ycleped thy park. Then     for the place Where? where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene     and most prepost\'rous event that draweth from my snow-white pen     the ebon-coloured ink which here thou viewest, beholdest,     surveyest, or seest. But to the place Where? It standeth     north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy     curious-knotted garden. There did I see that low-spirited swain,       that base minnow of thy mirth,\'   COSTARD. Me?   KING. \'that unlettered small-knowing soul,\'   COSTARD. Me?   KING. \'that shallow vassal,\'   COSTARD. Still me?   KING. \'which, as I remember, hight Costard,\'   COSTARD. O, me!   KING. \'sorted and consorted, contrary to thy established proclaimed     edict and continent canon; which, with, O, with- but with this I     passion to say wherewith-\'   COSTARD. With a wench.     King. \'with a child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy     more sweet understanding, a woman. Him I, as my ever-esteemed     duty pricks me on, have sent to thee, to receive the meed of     punishment, by thy sweet Grace\'s officer, Antony Dull, a man of     good repute, carriage, bearing, and estimation.\'   DULL. Me, an\'t shall please you; I am Antony Dull.   KING. \'For Jaquenetta- so is the weaker vessel called, which I     apprehended with the aforesaid swain- I keep her as a vessel of       thy law\'s fury; and shall, at the least of thy sweet notice,     bring her to trial. Thine, in all compliments of devoted and     heart-burning heat of duty,                                          DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO.\'    BEROWNE. This is not so well as I look\'d for, but the best that     ever I heard.   KING. Ay, the best for the worst. But, sirrah, what say you to     this?   COSTARD. Sir, I confess the wench.   KING. Did you hear the proclamation?   COSTARD. I do confess much of the hearing it, but little of the     marking of it.   KING. It was proclaimed a year\'s imprisonment to be taken with a     wench.   COSTARD. I was taken with none, sir; I was taken with a damsel.   KING. Well, it was proclaimed damsel.   COSTARD. This was no damsel neither, sir; she was a virgin.   KING. It is so varied too, for it was proclaimed virgin.   COSTARD. If it were, I deny her virginity; I was taken with a maid.     KING. This \'maid\' not serve your turn, sir.   COSTARD. This maid will serve my turn, sir.   KING. Sir, I will pronounce your sentence: you shall fast a week     with bran and water.   COSTARD. I had rather pray a month with mutton and porridge.   KING. And Don Armado shall be your keeper.     My Lord Berowne, see him delivered o\'er;     And go we, lords, to put in practice that     Which each to other hath so strongly sworn.                              Exeunt KING, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN   BEROWNE. I\'ll lay my head to any good man\'s hat     These oaths and laws will prove an idle scorn.     Sirrah, come on.   COSTARD. I suffer for the truth, sir; for true it is I was taken     with Jaquenetta, and Jaquenetta is a true girl; and therefore     welcome the sour cup of prosperity! Affliction may one day smile     again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE II. The park  Enter ARMADO and MOTH, his page    ARMADO. Boy, what sign is it when a man of great spirit grows     melancholy?   MOTH. A great sign, sir, that he will look sad.   ARMADO. Why, sadness is one and the self-same thing, dear imp.   MOTH. No, no; O Lord, sir, no!   ARMADO. How canst thou part sadness and melancholy, my tender     juvenal?   MOTH. By a familiar demonstration of the working, my tough signior.   ARMADO. Why tough signior? Why tough signior?   MOTH. Why tender juvenal? Why tender juvenal?   ARMADO. I spoke it, tender juvenal, as a congruent epitheton     appertaining to thy young days, which we may nominate tender.   MOTH. And I, tough signior, as an appertinent title to your old     time, which we may name tough.   ARMADO. Pretty and apt.   MOTH. How mean you, sir? I pretty, and my saying apt? or I apt, and     my saying pretty?     ARMADO. Thou pretty, because little.   MOTH. Little pretty, because little. Wherefore apt?   ARMADO. And therefore apt, because quick.   MOTH. Speak you this in my praise, master?   ARMADO. In thy condign praise.   MOTH. I will praise an eel with the same praise.   ARMADO. that an eel is ingenious?   MOTH. That an eel is quick.   ARMADO. I do say thou art quick in answers; thou heat\'st my blood.   MOTH. I am answer\'d, sir.   ARMADO. I love not to be cross\'d.   MOTH. [Aside] He speaks the mere contrary: crosses love not him.   ARMADO. I have promised to study three years with the Duke.   MOTH. You may do it in an hour, sir.   ARMADO. Impossible.   MOTH. How many is one thrice told?   ARMADO. I am ill at reck\'ning; it fitteth the spirit of a tapster.   MOTH. You are a gentleman and a gamester, sir.   ARMADO. I confess both; they are both the varnish of a complete     man.     MOTH. Then I am sure you know how much the gross sum of deuce-ace     amounts to.   ARMADO. It doth amount to one more than two.   MOTH. Which the base vulgar do call three.   ARMADO. True.   MOTH. Why, sir, is this such a piece of study? Now here is three     studied ere ye\'ll thrice wink; and how easy it is to put \'years\'     to the word \'three,\' and study three years in two words, the     dancing horse will tell you.   ARMADO. A most fine figure!   MOTH. [Aside] To prove you a cipher.   ARMADO. I will hereupon confess I am in love. And as it is base for     a soldier to love, so am I in love with a base wench. If drawing     my sword against the humour of affection would deliver me from     the reprobate thought of it, I would take Desire prisoner, and     ransom him to any French courtier for a new-devis\'d curtsy. I     think scorn to sigh; methinks I should out-swear Cupid. Comfort     me, boy; what great men have been in love?   MOTH. Hercules, master.   ARMADO. Most sweet Hercules! More authority, dear boy, name more;       and, sweet my child, let them be men of good repute and carriage.   MOTH. Samson, master; he was a man of good carriage, great     carriage, for he carried the town gates on his back like a     porter; and he was in love.   ARMADO. O well-knit Samson! strong-jointed Samson! I do excel thee     in my rapier as much as thou didst me in carrying gates. I am in     love too. Who was Samson\'s love, my dear Moth?   MOTH. A woman, master.   ARMADO. Of what complexion?   MOTH. Of all the four, or the three, or the two, or one of the     four.   ARMADO. Tell me precisely of what complexion.   MOTH. Of the sea-water green, sir.   ARMADO. Is that one of the four complexions?   MOTH. As I have read, sir; and the best of them too.   ARMADO. Green, indeed, is the colour of lovers; but to have a love     of that colour, methinks Samson had small reason for it. He     surely affected her for her wit.   MOTH. It was so, sir; for she had a green wit.   ARMADO. My love is most immaculate white and red.     MOTH. Most maculate thoughts, master, are mask\'d under such     colours.   ARMADO. Define, define, well-educated infant.   MOTH. My father\'s wit my mother\'s tongue assist me!   ARMADO. Sweet invocation of a child; most pretty, and pathetical!   MOTH.      If she be made of white and red,                Her faults will ne\'er be known;              For blushing cheeks by faults are bred,                And fears by pale white shown.              Then if she fear, or be to blame,                By this you shall not know;              For still her cheeks possess the same                Which native she doth owe.     A dangerous rhyme, master, against the reason of white and red.   ARMADO. Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar?   MOTH. The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages     since; but I think now \'tis not to be found; or if it were, it     would neither serve for the writing nor the tune.   ARMADO. I will have that subject newly writ o\'er, that I may     example my digression by some mighty precedent. Boy, I do love       that country girl that I took in the park with the rational hind     Costard; she deserves well.   MOTH. [Aside] To be whipt; and yet a better love than my master.   ARMADO. Sing, boy; my spirit grows heavy in love.   MOTH. And that\'s great marvel, loving a light wench.   ARMADO. I say, sing.   MOTH. Forbear till this company be past.                  Enter DULL, COSTARD, and JAQUENETTA    DULL. Sir, the Duke\'s pleasure is that you keep Costard safe; and     you must suffer him to take no delight nor no penance; but \'a     must fast three days a week. For this damsel, I must keep her at     the park; she is allow\'d for the day-woman. Fare you well.   ARMADO. I do betray myself with blushing. Maid!   JAQUENETTA. Man!   ARMADO. I will visit thee at the lodge.   JAQUENETTA. That\'s hereby.   ARMADO. I know where it is situate.   JAQUENETTA. Lord, how wise you are!     ARMADO. I will tell thee wonders.   JAQUENETTA. With that face?   ARMADO. I love thee.   JAQUENETTA. So I heard you say.   ARMADO. And so, farewell.   JAQUENETTA. Fair weather after you!   DULL. Come, Jaquenetta, away.             Exit with JAQUENETTA   ARMADO. Villain, thou shalt fast for thy offences ere thou be     pardoned.   COSTARD. Well, sir, I hope when I do it I shall do it on a full     stomach.   ARMADO. Thou shalt be heavily punished.   COSTARD. I am more bound to you than your fellows, for they are but     lightly rewarded.   ARMADO. Take away this villain; shut him up.   MOTH. Come, you transgressing slave, away.   COSTARD. Let me not be pent up, sir; I will fast, being loose.   MOTH. No, sir; that were fast, and loose. Thou shalt to prison.   COSTARD. Well, if ever I do see the merry days of desolation that I     have seen, some shall see.     MOTH. What shall some see?   COSTARD. Nay, nothing, Master Moth, but what they look upon. It is     not for prisoners to be too silent in their words, and therefore     I will say nothing. I thank God I have as little patience as     another man, and therefore I can be quiet.                                          Exeunt MOTH and COSTARD   ARMADO. I do affect the very ground, which is base, where her shoe,     which is baser, guided by her foot, which is basest, doth tread.     I shall be forsworn- which is a great argument of falsehood- if I     love. And how can that be true love which is falsely attempted?     Love is a familiar; Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but     Love. Yet was Samson so tempted, and he had an excellent     strength; yet was Solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit.     Cupid\'s butt-shaft is too hard for Hercules\' club, and therefore     too much odds for a Spaniard\'s rapier. The first and second cause     will not serve my turn; the passado he respects not, the duello     he regards not; his disgrace is to be called boy, but his glory     is to subdue men. Adieu, valour; rust, rapier; be still, drum;     for your manager is in love; yea, he loveth. Assist me, some     extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet.       Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.  Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE II. The park  Enter the PRINCESS OF FRANCE, with three attending ladies, ROSALINE, MARIA, KATHARINE, BOYET, and two other LORDS    BOYET. Now, madam, summon up your dearest spirits.     Consider who the King your father sends,     To whom he sends, and what\'s his embassy:     Yourself, held precious in the world\'s esteem,     To parley with the sole inheritor     Of all perfections that a man may owe,     Matchless Navarre; the plea of no less weight     Than Aquitaine, a dowry for a queen.     Be now as prodigal of all dear grace     As Nature was in making graces dear,     When she did starve the general world beside     And prodigally gave them all to you.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,     Needs not the painted flourish of your praise.     Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye,     Not utt\'red by base sale of chapmen\'s tongues;       I am less proud to hear you tell my worth     Than you much willing to be counted wise     In spending your wit in the praise of mine.     But now to task the tasker: good Boyet,     You are not ignorant all-telling fame     Doth noise abroad Navarre hath made a vow,     Till painful study shall outwear three years,     No woman may approach his silent court.     Therefore to\'s seemeth it a needful course,     Before we enter his forbidden gates,     To know his pleasure; and in that behalf,     Bold of your worthiness, we single you     As our best-moving fair solicitor.     Tell him the daughter of the King of France,     On serious business, craving quick dispatch,     Importunes personal conference with his Grace.     Haste, signify so much; while we attend,     Like humble-visag\'d suitors, his high will.   BOYET. Proud of employment, willingly I go.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. All pride is willing pride, and yours is so.                                                         Exit BOYET     Who are the votaries, my loving lords,     That are vow-fellows with this virtuous duke?   FIRST LORD. Lord Longaville is one.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Know you the man?   MARIA. I know him, madam; at a marriage feast,     Between Lord Perigort and the beauteous heir     Of Jaques Falconbridge, solemnized     In Normandy, saw I this Longaville.     A man of sovereign parts, peerless esteem\'d,     Well fitted in arts, glorious in arms;     Nothing becomes him ill that he would well.     The only soil of his fair virtue\'s gloss,     If virtue\'s gloss will stain with any soil,     Is a sharp wit match\'d with too blunt a will,     Whose edge hath power to cut, whose will still wills     It should none spare that come within his power.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Some merry mocking lord, belike; is\'t so?   MARIA. They say so most that most his humours know.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Such short-liv\'d wits do wither as they grow.       Who are the rest?   KATHARINE. The young Dumain, a well-accomplish\'d youth,     Of all that virtue love for virtue loved;     Most power to do most harm, least knowing ill,     For he hath wit to make an ill shape good,     And shape to win grace though he had no wit.     I saw him at the Duke Alencon\'s once;     And much too little of that good I saw     Is my report to his great worthiness.   ROSALINE. Another of these students at that time     Was there with him, if I have heard a truth.     Berowne they call him; but a merrier man,     Within the limit of becoming mirth,     I never spent an hour\'s talk withal.     His eye begets occasion for his wit,     For every object that the one doth catch     The other turns to a mirth-moving jest,     Which his fair tongue, conceit\'s expositor,     Delivers in such apt and gracious words     That aged ears play truant at his tales,       And younger hearings are quite ravished;     So sweet and voluble is his discourse.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. God bless my ladies! Are they all in love,     That every one her own hath garnished     With such bedecking ornaments of praise?   FIRST LORD. Here comes Boyet.                         Re-enter BOYET    PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Now, what admittance, lord?   BOYET. Navarre had notice of your fair approach,     And he and his competitors in oath     Were all address\'d to meet you, gentle lady,     Before I came. Marry, thus much I have learnt:     He rather means to lodge you in the field,     Like one that comes here to besiege his court,     Than seek a dispensation for his oath,     To let you enter his unpeopled house.                                     [The LADIES-IN-WAITING mask]                 Enter KING, LONGAVILLE, DUMAIN, BEROWNE,                          and ATTENDANTS      Here comes Navarre.   KING. Fair Princess, welcome to the court of Navarre.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. \'Fair\' I give you back again; and \'welcome\' I     have not yet. The roof of this court is too high to be yours, and     welcome to the wide fields too base to be mine.   KING. You shall be welcome, madam, to my court.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. I will be welcome then; conduct me thither.   KING. Hear me, dear lady: I have sworn an oath-   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Our Lady help my lord! He\'ll be forsworn.   KING. Not for the world, fair madam, by my will.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Why, will shall break it; will, and nothing     else.   KING. Your ladyship is ignorant what it is.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Were my lord so, his ignorance were wise,     Where now his knowledge must prove ignorance.     I hear your Grace hath sworn out house-keeping.     \'Tis deadly sin to keep that oath, my lord,       And sin to break it.     But pardon me, I am too sudden bold;     To teach a teacher ill beseemeth me.     Vouchsafe to read the purpose of my coming,     And suddenly resolve me in my suit.         [Giving a paper]   KING. Madam, I will, if suddenly I may.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. YOU Will the sooner that I were away,     For you\'ll prove perjur\'d if you make me stay.   BEROWNE. Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?   KATHARINE. Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?   BEROWNE. I know you did.   KATHARINE. How needless was it then to ask the question!   BEROWNE. You must not be so quick.   KATHARINE. \'Tis long of you, that spur me with such questions.   BEROWNE. Your wit \'s too hot, it speeds too fast, \'twill tire.   KATHARINE. Not till it leave the rider in the mire.   BEROWNE. What time o\' day?   KATHARINE. The hour that fools should ask.   BEROWNE. Now fair befall your mask!   KATHARINE. Fair fall the face it covers!     BEROWNE. And send you many lovers!   KATHARINE. Amen, so you be none.   BEROWNE. Nay, then will I be gone.   KING. Madam, your father here doth intimate     The payment of a hundred thousand crowns;     Being but the one half of an entire sum     Disbursed by my father in his wars.     But say that he or we, as neither have,     Receiv\'d that sum, yet there remains unpaid     A hundred thousand more, in surety of the which,     One part of Aquitaine is bound to us,     Although not valued to the money\'s worth.     If then the King your father will restore     But that one half which is unsatisfied,     We will give up our right in Aquitaine,     And hold fair friendship with his Majesty.     But that, it seems, he little purposeth,     For here he doth demand to have repaid     A hundred thousand crowns; and not demands,     On payment of a hundred thousand crowns,       To have his title live in Aquitaine;     Which we much rather had depart withal,     And have the money by our father lent,     Than Aquitaine so gelded as it is.     Dear Princess, were not his requests so far     From reason\'s yielding, your fair self should make     A yielding \'gainst some reason in my breast,     And go well satisfied to France again.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. You do the King my father too much wrong,     And wrong the reputation of your name,     In so unseeming to confess receipt     Of that which hath so faithfully been paid.   KING. I do protest I never heard of it;     And, if you prove it, I\'ll repay it back     Or yield up Aquitaine.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. We arrest your word.     Boyet, you can produce acquittances     For such a sum from special officers     Of Charles his father.   KING. Satisfy me so.     BOYET. So please your Grace, the packet is not come,     Where that and other specialties are bound;     To-morrow you shall have a sight of them.   KING. It shall suffice me; at which interview     All liberal reason I will yield unto.     Meantime receive such welcome at my hand     As honour, without breach of honour, may     Make tender of to thy true worthiness.     You may not come, fair Princess, within my gates;     But here without you shall be so receiv\'d     As you shall deem yourself lodg\'d in my heart,     Though so denied fair harbour in my house.     Your own good thoughts excuse me, and farewell.     To-morrow shall we visit you again.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Sweet health and fair desires consort your     Grace!   KING. Thy own wish wish I thee in every place.                                             Exit with attendants   BEROWNE. Lady, I will commend you to mine own heart.   ROSALINE. Pray you, do my commendations;       I would be glad to see it.   BEROWNE. I would you heard it groan.   ROSALINE. Is the fool sick?   BEROWNE. Sick at the heart.   ROSALINE. Alack, let it blood.   BEROWNE. Would that do it good?   ROSALINE. My physic says \'ay.\'   BEROWNE. Will YOU prick\'t with your eye?   ROSALINE. No point, with my knife.   BEROWNE. Now, God save thy life!   ROSALINE. And yours from long living!   BEROWNE. I cannot stay thanksgiving.                [Retiring]   DUMAIN. Sir, I pray you, a word: what lady is that same?   BOYET. The heir of Alencon, Katharine her name.   DUMAIN. A gallant lady! Monsieur, fare you well.          Exit   LONGAVILLE. I beseech you a word: what is she in the white?   BOYET. A woman sometimes, an you saw her in the light.   LONGAVILLE. Perchance light in the light. I desire her name.   BOYET. She hath but one for herself; to desire that were a shame.   LONGAVILLE. Pray you, sir, whose daughter?     BOYET. Her mother\'s, I have heard.   LONGAVILLE. God\'s blessing on your beard!   BOYET. Good sir, be not offended;     She is an heir of Falconbridge.   LONGAVILLE. Nay, my choler is ended.     She is a most sweet lady.   BOYET. Not unlike, sir; that may be.           Exit LONGAVILLE   BEROWNE. What\'s her name in the cap?   BOYET. Rosaline, by good hap.   BEROWNE. Is she wedded or no?   BOYET. To her will, sir, or so.   BEROWNE. You are welcome, sir; adieu!   BOYET. Farewell to me, sir, and welcome to you.                                      Exit BEROWNE. LADIES Unmask   MARIA. That last is Berowne, the merry mad-cap lord;     Not a word with him but a jest.   BOYET. And every jest but a word.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. It was well done of you to take him at his     word.   BOYET. I was as willing to grapple as he was to board.     KATHARINE. Two hot sheeps, marry!   BOYET. And wherefore not ships?     No sheep, sweet lamb, unless we feed on your lips.   KATHARINE. You sheep and I pasture- shall that finish the jest?   BOYET. So you grant pasture for me.     [Offering to kiss her]   KATHARINE. Not so, gentle beast;     My lips are no common, though several they be.   BOYET. Belonging to whom?   KATHARINE. To my fortunes and me.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Good wits will be jangling; but, gentles,       agree;     This civil war of wits were much better used     On Navarre and his book-men, for here \'tis abused.   BOYET. If my observation, which very seldom lies,     By the heart\'s still rhetoric disclosed with eyes,     Deceive me not now, Navarre is infected.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. With what?   BOYET. With that which we lovers entitle \'affected.\'   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Your reason?   BOYET. Why, all his behaviours did make their retire       To the court of his eye, peeping thorough desire.     His heart, like an agate, with your print impressed,     Proud with his form, in his eye pride expressed;     His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see,     Did stumble with haste in his eyesight to be;     All senses to that sense did make their repair,     To feel only looking on fairest of fair.     Methought all his senses were lock\'d in his eye,     As jewels in crystal for some prince to buy;     Who, tend\'ring their own worth from where they were glass\'d,     Did point you to buy them, along as you pass\'d.     His face\'s own margent did quote such amazes     That all eyes saw his eyes enchanted with gazes.     I\'ll give you Aquitaine and all that is his,     An you give him for my sake but one loving kiss.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Come, to our pavilion. Boyet is dispos\'d.   BOYET. But to speak that in words which his eye hath disclos\'d;     I only have made a mouth of his eye,     By adding a tongue which I know will not lie.   MARIA. Thou art an old love-monger, and speakest skilfully.     KATHARINE. He is Cupid\'s grandfather, and learns news of him.   ROSALINE. Then was Venus like her mother; for her father is but     grim.   BOYET. Do you hear, my mad wenches?   MARIA. No.   BOYET. What, then; do you see?   MARIA. Ay, our way to be gone.   BOYET. You are too hard for me.                         Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. The park  Enter ARMADO and MOTH    ARMADO. Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.                                          [MOTH sings Concolinel]   ARMADO. Sweet air! Go, tenderness of years, take this key, give     enlargement to the swain, bring him festinately hither; I must     employ him in a letter to my love.   MOTH. Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?   ARMADO. How meanest thou? Brawling in French?   MOTH. No, my complete master; but to jig off a tune at the tongue\'s     end, canary to it with your feet, humour it with turning up your     eyelids, sigh a note and sing a note, sometime through the     throat, as if you swallowed love with singing love, sometime     through the nose, as if you snuff\'d up love by smelling love,     with your hat penthouse-like o\'er the shop of your eyes, with     your arms cross\'d on your thin-belly doublet, like a rabbit on a     spit, or your hands in your pocket, like a man after the old     painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away.     These are complements, these are humours; these betray nice       wenches, that would be betrayed without these; and make them men     of note- do you note me?- that most are affected to these.   ARMADO. How hast thou purchased this experience?   MOTH. By my penny of observation.   ARMADO. But O- but O-   MOTH. The hobby-horse is forgot.   ARMADO. Call\'st thou my love \'hobby-horse\'?   MOTH. No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your love     perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love?   ARMADO. Almost I had.   MOTH. Negligent student! learn her by heart.   ARMADO. By heart and in heart, boy.   MOTH. And out of heart, master; all those three I will prove.   ARMADO. What wilt thou prove?   MOTH. A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and without, upon the     instant. By heart you love her, because your heart cannot come by     her; in heart you love her, because your heart is in love with     her; and out of heart you love her, being out of heart that you     cannot enjoy her.   ARMADO. I am all these three.     MOTH. And three times as much more, and yet nothing at all.   ARMADO. Fetch hither the swain; he must carry me a letter.   MOTH. A message well sympathiz\'d- a horse to be ambassador for an     ass.   ARMADO. Ha, ha, what sayest thou?   MOTH. Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse, for he is     very slow-gaited. But I go.   ARMADO. The way is but short; away.   MOTH. As swift as lead, sir.   ARMADO. The meaning, pretty ingenious?     Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?   MOTH. Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.   ARMADO. I say lead is slow.   MOTH. You are too swift, sir, to say so:     Is that lead slow which is fir\'d from a gun?   ARMADO. Sweet smoke of rhetoric!     He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that\'s he;     I shoot thee at the swain.   MOTH. Thump, then, and I flee.                            Exit   ARMADO. A most acute juvenal; volable and free of grace!       By thy favour, sweet welkin, I must sigh in thy face;     Most rude melancholy, valour gives thee place.     My herald is return\'d.                         Re-enter MOTH with COSTARD    MOTH. A wonder, master! here\'s a costard broken in a shin.   ARMADO. Some enigma, some riddle; come, thy l\'envoy; begin.   COSTARD. No egma, no riddle, no l\'envoy; no salve in the mail, sir.     O, sir, plantain, a plain plantain; no l\'envoy, no l\'envoy; no     salve, sir, but a plantain!   ARMADO. By virtue thou enforcest laughter; thy silly thought, my     spleen; the heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous     smiling. O, pardon me, my stars! Doth the inconsiderate take     salve for l\'envoy, and the word \'l\'envoy\' for a salve?   MOTH. Do the wise think them other? Is not l\'envoy a salve?   ARMADO. No, page; it is an epilogue or discourse to make plain     Some obscure precedence that hath tofore been sain.     I will example it:            The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,              Were still at odds, being but three.     There\'s the moral. Now the l\'envoy.   MOTH. I will add the l\'envoy. Say the moral again.   ARMADO.  The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,            Were still at odds, being but three.   MOTH.    Until the goose came out of door,            And stay\'d the odds by adding four.     Now will I begin your moral, and do you follow with my l\'envoy.            The fox, the ape, and the humble-bee,            Were still at odds, being but three.   ARMADO.  Until the goose came out of door,            Staying the odds by adding four.   MOTH. A good l\'envoy, ending in the goose; would you desire more?   COSTARD. The boy hath sold him a bargain, a goose, that\'s flat.     Sir, your pennyworth is good, an your goose be fat.     To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose;     Let me see: a fat l\'envoy; ay, that\'s a fat goose.   ARMADO. Come hither, come hither. How did this argument begin?   MOTH. By saying that a costard was broken in a shin.     Then call\'d you for the l\'envoy.     COSTARD. True, and I for a plantain. Thus came your argument in;     Then the boy\'s fat l\'envoy, the goose that you bought;     And he ended the market.   ARMADO. But tell me: how was there a costard broken in a shin?   MOTH. I will tell you sensibly.   COSTARD. Thou hast no feeling of it, Moth; I will speak that       l\'envoy.     I, Costard, running out, that was safely within,     Fell over the threshold and broke my shin.   ARMADO. We will talk no more of this matter.   COSTARD. Till there be more matter in the shin.   ARMADO. Sirrah Costard. I will enfranchise thee.   COSTARD. O, Marry me to one Frances! I smell some l\'envoy, some     goose, in this.   ARMADO. By my sweet soul, I mean setting thee at liberty,     enfreedoming thy person; thou wert immured, restrained,     captivated, bound.   COSTARD. True, true; and now you will be my purgation, and let me     loose.   ARMADO. I give thee thy liberty, set thee from durance; and, in       lieu thereof, impose on thee nothing but this: bear this     significant [giving a letter] to the country maid Jaquenetta;     there is remuneration, for the best ward of mine honour is     rewarding my dependents. Moth, follow.                  Exit   MOTH. Like the sequel, I. Signior Costard, adieu.   COSTARD. My sweet ounce of man\'s flesh, my incony Jew!                                                        Exit MOTH     Now will I look to his remuneration. Remuneration! O, that\'s the     Latin word for three farthings. Three farthings- remuneration.     \'What\'s the price of this inkle?\'- \'One penny.\'- \'No, I\'ll give     you a remuneration.\' Why, it carries it. Remuneration! Why, it is     a fairer name than French crown. I will never buy and sell out of     this word.                            Enter BEROWNE    BEROWNE. My good knave Costard, exceedingly well met!   COSTARD. Pray you, sir, how much carnation ribbon may a man buy for     a remuneration?   BEROWNE. What is a remuneration?     COSTARD. Marry, sir, halfpenny farthing.   BEROWNE. Why, then, three-farthing worth of silk.   COSTARD. I thank your worship. God be wi\' you!   BEROWNE. Stay, slave; I must employ thee.     As thou wilt win my favour, good my knave,     Do one thing for me that I shall entreat.   COSTARD. When would you have it done, sir?   BEROWNE. This afternoon.   COSTARD. Well, I will do it, sir; fare you well.   BEROWNE. Thou knowest not what it is.   COSTARD. I shall know, sir, when I have done it.   BEROWNE. Why, villain, thou must know first.   COSTARD. I will come to your worship to-morrow morning.   BEROWNE. It must be done this afternoon.     Hark, slave, it is but this:     The Princess comes to hunt here in the park,     And in her train there is a gentle lady;     When tongues speak sweetly, then they name her name,     And Rosaline they call her. Ask for her,     And to her white hand see thou do commend       This seal\'d-up counsel. There\'s thy guerdon; go.                                          [Giving him a shilling]   COSTARD. Gardon, O sweet gardon! better than remuneration; a     \'leven-pence farthing better; most sweet gardon! I will do it,     sir, in print. Gardon- remuneration!                    Exit   BEROWNE. And I, forsooth, in love; I, that have been love\'s whip;     A very beadle to a humorous sigh;     A critic, nay, a night-watch constable;     A domineering pedant o\'er the boy,     Than whom no mortal so magnificent!     This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,     This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;     Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,     Th\' anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,     Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,     Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,     Sole imperator, and great general     Of trotting paritors. O my little heart!     And I to be a corporal of his field,     And wear his colours like a tumbler\'s hoop!       What! I love, I sue, I seek a wife-     A woman, that is like a German clock,     Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,     And never going aright, being a watch,     But being watch\'d that it may still go right!     Nay, to be perjur\'d, which is worst of all;     And, among three, to love the worst of all,     A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,     With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes;     Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deed,     Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard.     And I to sigh for her! to watch for her!     To pray for her! Go to; it is a plague     That Cupid will impose for my neglect     Of his almighty dreadful little might.     Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, and groan:     Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.              Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. The park  Enter the PRINCESS, ROSALINE, MARIA, KATHARINE, BOYET, LORDS, ATTENDANTS, and a FORESTER    PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Was that the King that spurr\'d his horse so       hard     Against the steep uprising of the hill?   BOYET. I know not; but I think it was not he.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Whoe\'er \'a was, \'a show\'d a mounting mind.     Well, lords, to-day we shall have our dispatch;     On Saturday we will return to France.     Then, forester, my friend, where is the bush     That we must stand and play the murderer in?   FORESTER. Hereby, upon the edge of yonder coppice;     A stand where you may make the fairest shoot.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. I thank my beauty I am fair that shoot,     And thereupon thou speak\'st the fairest shoot.   FORESTER. Pardon me, madam, for I meant not so.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. What, what? First praise me, and again say no?     O short-liv\'d pride! Not fair? Alack for woe!     FORESTER. Yes, madam, fair.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Nay, never paint me now;     Where fair is not, praise cannot mend the brow.     Here, good my glass, take this for telling true:                                              [ Giving him money]     Fair payment for foul words is more than due.   FORESTER. Nothing but fair is that which you inherit.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. See, see, my beauty will be sav\'d by merit.     O heresy in fair, fit for these days!     A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise.     But come, the bow. Now mercy goes to kill,     And shooting well is then accounted ill;     Thus will I save my credit in the shoot:     Not wounding, pity would not let me do\'t;     If wounding, then it was to show my skill,     That more for praise than purpose meant to kill.     And, out of question, so it is sometimes:     Glory grows guilty of detested crimes,     When, for fame\'s sake, for praise, an outward part,     We bend to that the working of the heart;       As I for praise alone now seek to spill     The poor deer\'s blood that my heart means no ill.   BOYET. Do not curst wives hold that self-sovereignty     Only for praise sake, when they strive to be     Lords o\'er their lords?   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Only for praise; and praise we may afford     To any lady that subdues a lord.                         Enter COSTARD    BOYET. Here comes a member of the commonwealth.   COSTARD. God dig-you-den all! Pray you, which is the head lady?   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Thou shalt know her, fellow, by the rest that     have no heads.   COSTARD. Which is the greatest lady, the highest?   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. The thickest and the tallest.   COSTARD. The thickest and the tallest! It is so; truth is truth.     An your waist, mistress, were as slender as my wit,     One o\' these maids\' girdles for your waist should be fit.     Are not you the chief woman? You are the thickest here.     PRINCESS OF FRANCE. What\'s your will, sir? What\'s your will?   COSTARD. I have a letter from Monsieur Berowne to one     Lady Rosaline.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. O, thy letter, thy letter! He\'s a good friend       of mine.     Stand aside, good bearer. Boyet, you can carve.     Break up this capon.   BOYET. I am bound to serve.     This letter is mistook; it importeth none here.     It is writ to Jaquenetta.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. We will read it, I swear.     Break the neck of the wax, and every one give ear.   BOYET. [Reads] \'By heaven, that thou art fair is most infallible;     true that thou art beauteous; truth itself that thou art lovely.     More fairer than fair, beautiful than beauteous, truer than truth     itself, have commiseration on thy heroical vassal. The     magnanimous and most illustrate king Cophetua set eye upon the     pernicious and indubitate beggar Zenelophon; and he it was that     might rightly say, \'Veni, vidi, vici\'; which to annothanize in     the vulgar,- O base and obscure vulgar!- videlicet, He came, saw,       and overcame. He came, one; saw, two; overcame, three. Who came?-     the king. Why did he come?- to see. Why did he see?-to overcome.     To whom came he?- to the beggar. What saw he?- the beggar. Who     overcame he?- the beggar. The conclusion is victory; on whose     side?- the king\'s. The captive is enrich\'d; on whose side?- the     beggar\'s. The catastrophe is a nuptial; on whose side?- the     king\'s. No, on both in one, or one in both. I am the king, for so     stands the comparison; thou the beggar, for so witnesseth thy     lowliness. Shall I command thy love? I may. Shall I enforce thy     love? I could. Shall I entreat thy love? I will. What shalt thou     exchange for rags?- robes, for tittles?- titles, for thyself?     -me. Thus expecting thy reply, I profane my lips on thy foot, my     eyes on thy picture, and my heart on thy every part.                   Thine in the dearest design of industry,                                            DON ADRIANO DE ARMADO.      \'Thus dost thou hear the Nemean lion roar     \'Gainst thee, thou lamb, that standest as his prey;     Submissive fall his princely feet before,     And he from forage will incline to play.       But if thou strive, poor soul, what are thou then?     Food for his rage, repasture for his den.\'   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. What plume of feathers is he that indited this       letter?     What vane? What weathercock? Did you ever hear better?   BOYET. I am much deceived but I remember the style.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Else your memory is bad, going o\'er it     erewhile.   BOYET. This Armado is a Spaniard, that keeps here in court;     A phantasime, a Monarcho, and one that makes sport     To the Prince and his book-mates.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Thou fellow, a word.     Who gave thee this letter?   COSTARD. I told you: my lord.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. To whom shouldst thou give it?   COSTARD. From my lord to my lady.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. From which lord to which lady?   COSTARD. From my Lord Berowne, a good master of mine,     To a lady of France that he call\'d Rosaline.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Thou hast mistaken his letter. Come, lords,         away.     [To ROSALINE] Here, sweet, put up this; \'twill be thine another       day.                             Exeunt PRINCESS and TRAIN   BOYET. Who is the shooter? who is the shooter?   ROSALINE. Shall I teach you to know?   BOYET. Ay, my continent of beauty.   ROSALINE. Why, she that bears the bow.     Finely put off!   BOYET. My lady goes to kill horns; but, if thou marry,     Hang me by the neck, if horns that year miscarry.     Finely put on!   ROSALINE. Well then, I am the shooter.   BOYET. And who is your deer?   ROSALINE. If we choose by the horns, yourself come not near.     Finely put on indeed!   MARIA. You Still wrangle with her, Boyet, and she strikes at the     brow.   BOYET. But she herself is hit lower. Have I hit her now?   ROSALINE. Shall I come upon thee with an old saying, that was a man     when King Pepin of France was a little boy, as touching the hit       it?   BOYET. So I may answer thee with one as old, that was a woman when     Queen Guinever of Britain was a little wench, as touching the hit     it.   ROSALINE. [Singing]             Thou canst not hit it, hit it, hit it,             Thou canst not hit it, my good man.   BOYET.    An I cannot, cannot, cannot,             An I cannot, another can.                                    Exeunt ROSALINE and KATHARINE   COSTARD. By my troth, most pleasant! How both did fit it!   MARIA. A mark marvellous well shot; for they both did hit it.   BOYET. A mark! O, mark but that mark! A mark, says my lady!     Let the mark have a prick in\'t, to mete at, if it may be.   MARIA. Wide o\' the bow-hand! I\' faith, your hand is out.   COSTARD. Indeed, \'a must shoot nearer, or he\'ll ne\'er hit the     clout.   BOYET. An if my hand be out, then belike your hand is in.   COSTARD. Then will she get the upshoot by cleaving the pin.   MARIA. Come, come, you talk greasily; your lips grow foul.     COSTARD. She\'s too hard for you at pricks, sir; challenge her to     bowl.   BOYET. I fear too much rubbing; good-night, my good owl.                                           Exeunt BOYET and MARIA   COSTARD. By my soul, a swain, a most simple clown!     Lord, Lord! how the ladies and I have put him down!     O\' my troth, most sweet jests, most incony vulgar wit!     When it comes so smoothly off, so obscenely, as it were, so fit.     Armado a th\' t\'one side- O, a most dainty man!     To see him walk before a lady and to bear her fan!     To see him kiss his hand, and how most sweetly \'a will swear!     And his page a t\' other side, that handful of wit!     Ah, heavens, it is a most pathetical nit!     Sola, sola!                                     Exit COSTARD     SCENE II. The park  From the shooting within, enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL    NATHANIEL. Very reverent sport, truly; and done in the testimony of     a good conscience.   HOLOFERNES. The deer was, as you know, sanguis, in blood; ripe as     the pomewater, who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of caelo,     the sky, the welkin, the heaven; and anon falleth like a crab on     the face of terra, the soil, the land, the earth.   NATHANIEL. Truly, Master Holofernes, the epithets are sweetly     varied, like a scholar at the least; but, sir, I assure ye it was     a buck of the first head.   HOLOFERNES. Sir Nathaniel, haud credo.   DULL. \'Twas not a haud credo; \'twas a pricket.   HOLOFERNES. Most barbarous intimation! yet a kind of insinuation,     as it were, in via, in way, of explication; facere, as it were,     replication, or rather, ostentare, to show, as it were, his     inclination, after his undressed, unpolished, uneducated,     unpruned, untrained, or rather unlettered, or ratherest       unconfirmed fashion, to insert again my haud credo for a deer.   DULL. I Said the deer was not a haud credo; \'twas a pricket.   HOLOFERNES. Twice-sod simplicity, bis coctus!     O thou monster Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look!   NATHANIEL. Sir, he hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in       a book;     He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his     intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible     in the duller parts;     And such barren plants are set before us that we thankful should       be-     Which we of taste and feeling are- for those parts that do       fructify in us more than he.     For as it would ill become me to be vain, indiscreet, or a fool,     So, were there a patch set on learning, to see him in a school.     But, omne bene, say I, being of an old father\'s mind:     Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.   DULL. You two are book-men: can you tell me by your wit     What was a month old at Cain\'s birth that\'s not five weeks old as       yet?     HOLOFERNES. Dictynna, goodman Dull; Dictynna, goodman Dull.   DULL. What is Dictynna?   NATHANIEL. A title to Phoebe, to Luna, to the moon.   HOLOFERNES. The moon was a month old when Adam was no more,     And raught not to five weeks when he came to five-score.     Th\' allusion holds in the exchange.   DULL. \'Tis true, indeed; the collusion holds in the exchange.   HOLOFERNES. God comfort thy capacity! I say th\' allusion holds in     the exchange.   DULL. And I say the polusion holds in the exchange; for the moon is     never but a month old; and I say, beside, that \'twas a pricket     that the Princess kill\'d.   HOLOFERNES. Sir Nathaniel, will you hear an extemporal epitaph on     the death of the deer? And, to humour the ignorant, call the deer     the Princess kill\'d a pricket.   NATHANIEL. Perge, good Master Holofernes, perge, so it shall please     you to abrogate scurrility.   HOLOFERNES. I Will something affect the letter, for it argues     facility.        The preyful Princess pierc\'d and prick\'d a pretty pleasing       pricket.     Some say a sore; but not a sore till now made sore with shooting.     The dogs did yell; put el to sore, then sorel jumps from thicket-     Or pricket sore, or else sorel; the people fall a-hooting.     If sore be sore, then L to sore makes fifty sores o\' sorel.     Of one sore I an hundred make by adding but one more L.    NATHANIEL. A rare talent!   DULL. [Aside] If a talent be a claw, look how he claws him with a     talent.   HOLOFERNES. This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish     extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects,     ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions. These are begot in     the ventricle of memory, nourish\'d in the womb of pia mater, and     delivered upon the mellowing of occasion. But the gift is good in     those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it.   NATHANIEL. Sir, I praise the Lord for you, and so may my     parishioners; for their sons are well tutor\'d by you, and their     daughters profit very greatly under you. You are a good member of       the commonwealth.   HOLOFERNES. Mehercle, if their sons be ingenious, they shall want     no instruction; if their daughters be capable, I will put it to     them; but, vir sapit qui pauca loquitur. A soul feminine saluteth     us.                      Enter JAQUENETTA and COSTARD    JAQUENETTA. God give you good morrow, Master Person.   HOLOFERNES. Master Person, quasi pers-one. And if one should be     pierc\'d which is the one?   COSTARD. Marry, Master Schoolmaster, he that is likest to a     hogshead.   HOLOFERNES. Piercing a hogshead! A good lustre of conceit in a turf     of earth; fire enough for a flint, pearl enough for a swine; \'tis     pretty; it is well.   JAQUENETTA. Good Master Parson, be so good as read me this letter;     it was given me by Costard, and sent me from Don Armado. I     beseech you read it.   HOLOFERNES. Fauste, precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra       Ruminat-     and so forth. Ah, good old Mantuan! I may speak of thee as     the traveller doth of Venice:                    Venetia, Venetia,                    Chi non ti vede, non ti pretia.     Old Mantuan, old Mantuan! Who understandeth thee not,     loves thee not-                       Ut, re, sol, la, mi, fa.     Under pardon, sir, what are the contents? or rather as     Horace says in his- What, my soul, verses?   NATHANIEL. Ay, sir, and very learned.   HOLOFERNES. Let me hear a staff, a stanze, a verse; lege, domine.   NATHANIEL. [Reads] \'If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to       love?     Ah, never faith could hold, if not to beauty vowed!     Though to myself forsworn, to thee I\'ll faithful prove;     Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed.     Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes,     Where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend.     If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice;       Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend;     All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder;     Which is to me some praise that I thy parts admire.     Thy eye Jove\'s lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder,     Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire.     Celestial as thou art, O, pardon love this wrong,     That singes heaven\'s praise with such an earthly tongue.\'   HOLOFERNES. You find not the apostrophas, and so miss the accent:     let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified;     but, for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy,     caret. Ovidius Naso was the man. And why, indeed, \'Naso\' but for     smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of     invention? Imitari is nothing: so doth the hound his master, the     ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider. But, damosella virgin,     was this directed to you?   JAQUENETTA. Ay, sir, from one Monsieur Berowne, one of the strange     queen\'s lords.   HOLOFERNES. I will overglance the superscript: \'To the snow-white     hand of the most beauteous Lady Rosaline.\' I will look again on     the intellect of the letter, for the nomination of the party       writing to the person written unto: \'Your Ladyship\'s in all     desired employment, Berowne.\' Sir Nathaniel, this Berowne is one     of the votaries with the King; and here he hath framed a letter     to a sequent of the stranger queen\'s which accidentally, or by     the way of progression, hath miscarried. Trip and go, my sweet;     deliver this paper into the royal hand of the King; it may     concern much. Stay not thy compliment; I forgive thy duty. Adieu.   JAQUENETTA. Good Costard, go with me. Sir, God save your life!   COSTARD. Have with thee, my girl.                                    Exeunt COSTARD and JAQUENETTA   NATHANIEL. Sir, you have done this in the fear of God, very     religiously; and, as a certain father saith-   HOLOFERNES. Sir, tell not me of the father; I do fear colourable     colours. But to return to the verses: did they please you, Sir     Nathaniel?   NATHANIEL. Marvellous well for the pen.   HOLOFERNES. I do dine to-day at the father\'s of a certain pupil of     mine; where, if, before repast, it shall please you to gratify     the table with a grace, I will, on my privilege I have with the     parents of the foresaid child or pupil, undertake your ben       venuto; where I will prove those verses to be very unlearned,     neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention. I beseech your     society.   NATHANIEL. And thank you too; for society, saith the text, is the     happiness of life.   HOLOFERNES. And certes, the text most infallibly concludes it.     [To DULL] Sir, I do invite you too; you shall not say me nay:     pauca verba. Away; the gentles are at their game, and we will to     our recreation.                                       Exeunt     SCENE III. The park  Enter BEROWNE, with a paper his band, alone    BEROWNE. The King he is hunting the deer: I am coursing myself.     They have pitch\'d a toil: I am tolling in a pitch- pitch that     defiles. Defile! a foul word. Well, \'set thee down, sorrow!\' for     so they say the fool said, and so say I, and I am the fool. Well     proved, wit. By the Lord, this love is as mad as Ajax: it kills     sheep; it kills me- I a sheep. Well proved again o\' my side. I     will not love; if I do, hang me. I\' faith, I will not. O, but her     eye! By this light, but for her eye, I would not love her- yes,     for her two eyes. Well, I do nothing in the world but lie, and     lie in my throat. By heaven, I do love; and it hath taught me to     rhyme, and to be melancholy; and here is part of my rhyme, and     here my melancholy. Well, she hath one o\' my sonnets already; the     clown bore it, the fool sent it, and the lady hath it: sweet     clown, sweeter fool, sweetest lady! By the world, I would not     care a pin if the other three were in. Here comes one with a     paper; God give him grace to groan!                                             [Climbs into a tree]                          Enter the KING, with a paper    KING. Ay me!   BEROWNE. Shot, by heaven! Proceed, sweet Cupid; thou hast thump\'d     him with thy bird-bolt under the left pap. In faith, secrets!   KING. [Reads]       \'So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not       To those fresh morning drops upon the rose,       As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smote       The night of dew that on my cheeks down flows;       Nor shines the silver moon one half so bright       Through the transparent bosom of the deep,       As doth thy face through tears of mine give light.       Thou shin\'st in every tear that I do weep;       No drop but as a coach doth carry thee;       So ridest thou triumphing in my woe.       Do but behold the tears that swell in me,       And they thy glory through my grief will show.       But do not love thyself; then thou wilt keep         My tears for glasses, and still make me weep.       O queen of queens! how far dost thou excel       No thought can think nor tongue of mortal tell.\'     How shall she know my griefs? I\'ll drop the paper-     Sweet leaves, shade folly. Who is he comes here?                                                    [Steps aside]                    Enter LONGAVILLE, with a paper      What, Longaville, and reading! Listen, car.   BEROWNE. Now, in thy likeness, one more fool appear!   LONGAVILLE. Ay me, I am forsworn!   BEROWNE. Why, he comes in like a perjure, wearing papers.   KING. In love, I hope; sweet fellowship in shame!   BEROWNE. One drunkard loves another of the name.   LONGAVILLE. Am I the first that have been perjur\'d so?   BEROWNE. I could put thee in comfort: not by two that I know;     Thou makest the triumviry, the corner-cap of society,     The shape of Love\'s Tyburn that hangs up simplicity.   LONGAVILLE. I fear these stubborn lines lack power to move.       O sweet Maria, empress of my love!     These numbers will I tear, and write in prose.   BEROWNE. O, rhymes are guards on wanton Cupid\'s hose:     Disfigure not his slop.   LONGAVILLE. This same shall go.          [He reads the sonnet]       \'Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,       \'Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument,       Persuade my heart to this false perjury?       Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment.       A woman I forswore; but I will prove,       Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee:       My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love;       Thy grace being gain\'d cures all disgrace in me.       Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is;       Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine,       Exhal\'st this vapour-vow; in thee it is.       If broken, then it is no fault of mine;       If by me broke, what fool is not so wise       To lose an oath to win a paradise?\'   BEROWNE. This is the liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity,       A green goose a goddess- pure, pure idolatry.     God amend us, God amend! We are much out o\' th\' way.                        Enter DUMAIN, with a paper    LONGAVILLE. By whom shall I send this?- Company! Stay.                                                    [Steps aside]   BEROWNE. \'All hid, all hid\'- an old infant play.     Like a demigod here sit I in the sky,     And wretched fools\' secrets heedfully o\'er-eye.     More sacks to the mill! O heavens, I have my wish!     Dumain transformed! Four woodcocks in a dish!   DUMAIN. O most divine Kate!   BEROWNE. O most profane coxcomb!   DUMAIN. By heaven, the wonder in a mortal eye!   BEROWNE. By earth, she is not, corporal: there you lie.   DUMAIN. Her amber hairs for foul hath amber quoted.   BEROWNE. An amber-colour\'d raven was well noted.   DUMAIN. As upright as the cedar.   BEROWNE. Stoop, I say;       Her shoulder is with child.   DUMAIN. As fair as day.   BEROWNE. Ay, as some days; but then no sun must shine.   DUMAIN. O that I had my wish!   LONGAVILLE. And I had mine!   KING. And I mine too,.good Lord!   BEROWNE. Amen, so I had mine! Is not that a good word?   DUMAIN. I would forget her; but a fever she     Reigns in my blood, and will rememb\'red be.   BEROWNE. A fever in your blood? Why, then incision     Would let her out in saucers. Sweet misprision!   DUMAIN. Once more I\'ll read the ode that I have writ.   BEROWNE. Once more I\'ll mark how love can vary wit.   DUMAIN. [Reads]         \'On a day-alack the day!-         Love, whose month is ever May,         Spied a blossom passing fair         Playing in the wanton air.         Through the velvet leaves the wind,         All unseen, can passage find;           That the lover, sick to death,         Wish\'d himself the heaven\'s breath.         "Air," quoth he "thy cheeks may blow;         Air, would I might triumph so!         But, alack, my hand is sworn         Ne\'er to pluck thee from thy thorn;         Vow, alack, for youth unmeet,         Youth so apt to pluck a sweet.         Do not call it sin in me         That I am forsworn for thee;         Thou for whom Jove would swear         Juno but an Ethiope were;         And deny himself for Jove,         Turning mortal for thy love."\'     This will I send; and something else more plain     That shall express my true love\'s fasting pain.     O, would the King, Berowne and Longaville,     Were lovers too! Ill, to example ill,     Would from my forehead wipe a perjur\'d note;     For none offend where all alike do dote.     LONGAVILLE. [Advancing] Dumain, thy love is far from charity,     That in love\'s grief desir\'st society;     You may look pale, but I should blush, I know,     To be o\'erheard and taken napping so.   KING. [Advancing] Come, sir, you blush; as his, your case is such.     You chide at him, offending twice as much:     You do not love Maria! Longaville     Did never sonnet for her sake compile;     Nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart     His loving bosom, to keep down his heart.     I have been closely shrouded in this bush,     And mark\'d you both, and for you both did blush.     I heard your guilty rhymes, observ\'d your fashion,     Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion.     \'Ay me!\' says one. \'O Jove!\' the other cries.     One, her hairs were gold; crystal the other\'s eyes.     [To LONGAVILLE] You would for paradise break faith and troth;     [To Dumain] And Jove for your love would infringe an oath.     What will Berowne say when that he shall hear     Faith infringed which such zeal did swear?       How will he scorn, how will he spend his wit!     How will he triumph, leap, and laugh at it!     For all the wealth that ever I did see,     I would not have him know so much by me.   BEROWNE. [Descending] Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy,     Ah, good my liege, I pray thee pardon me.     Good heart, what grace hast thou thus to reprove     These worms for loving, that art most in love?     Your eyes do make no coaches; in your tears     There is no certain princess that appears;     You\'ll not be perjur\'d; \'tis a hateful thing;     Tush, none but minstrels like of sonneting.     But are you not ashamed? Nay, are you not,     All three of you, to be thus much o\'ershot?     You found his mote; the King your mote did see;     But I a beam do find in each of three.     O, what a scene of fool\'ry have I seen,     Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow, and of teen!     O, me, with what strict patience have I sat,     To see a king transformed to a gnat!       To see great Hercules whipping a gig,     And profound Solomon to tune a jig,     And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys,     And critic Timon laugh at idle toys!     Where lies thy grief, O, tell me, good Dumain?     And, gentle Longaville, where lies thy pain?     And where my liege\'s? All about the breast.     A caudle, ho!   KING. Too bitter is thy jest.     Are we betrayed thus to thy over-view?   BEROWNE. Not you by me, but I betrayed to you.     I that am honest, I that hold it sin     To break the vow I am engaged in;     I am betrayed by keeping company     With men like you, men of inconstancy.     When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme?     Or groan for Joan? or spend a minute\'s time     In pruning me? When shall you hear that I     Will praise a hand, a foot, a face, an eye,     A gait, a state, a brow, a breast, a waist,       A leg, a limb-   KING. Soft! whither away so fast?     A true man or a thief that gallops so?   BEROWNE. I post from love; good lover, let me go.                   Enter JAQUENETTA and COSTARD    JAQUENETTA. God bless the King!   KING. What present hast thou there?   COSTARD. Some certain treason.   KING. What makes treason here?   COSTARD. Nay, it makes nothing, sir.   KING. If it mar nothing neither,     The treason and you go in peace away together.   JAQUENETTA. I beseech your Grace, let this letter be read;     Our person misdoubts it: \'twas treason, he said.   KING. Berowne, read it over.        [BEROWNE reads the letter]     Where hadst thou it?   JAQUENETTA. Of Costard.   KING. Where hadst thou it?     COSTARD. Of Dun Adramadio, Dun Adramadio.                                       [BEROWNE tears the letter]   KING. How now! What is in you? Why dost thou tear it?   BEROWNE. A toy, my liege, a toy! Your Grace needs not fear it.   LONGAVILLE. It did move him to passion, and therefore let\'s hear      it.   DUMAIN. It is Berowne\'s writing, and here is his name.                                        [Gathering up the pieces]   BEROWNE. [ To COSTARD] Ah, you whoreson loggerhead, you were born       to do me shame.     Guilty, my lord, guilty! I confess, I confess.   KING. What?   BEROWNE. That you three fools lack\'d me fool to make up the mess;     He, he, and you- and you, my liege!- and I     Are pick-purses in love, and we deserve to die.     O, dismiss this audience, and I shall tell you more.     DUMAIN. Now the number is even.   BEROWNE. True, true, we are four.     Will these turtles be gone?   KING. Hence, sirs, away.     COSTARD. Walk aside the true folk, and let the traitors stay.                                    Exeunt COSTARD and JAQUENETTA   BEROWNE. Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O, let us embrace!     As true we are as flesh and blood can be.     The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face;     Young blood doth not obey an old decree.     We cannot cross the cause why we were born,     Therefore of all hands must we be forsworn.   KING. What, did these rent lines show some love of thine?   BEROWNE. \'Did they?\' quoth you. Who sees the heavenly Rosaline     That, like a rude and savage man of Inde     At the first op\'ning of the gorgeous east,     Bows not his vassal head and, strucken blind,     Kisses the base ground with obedient breast?     What peremptory eagle-sighted eye     Dares look upon the heaven of her brow     That is not blinded by her majesty?   KING. What zeal, what fury hath inspir\'d thee now?     My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon;     She, an attending star, scarce seen a light.     BEROWNE. My eyes are then no eyes, nor I Berowne.     O, but for my love, day would turn to night!     Of all complexions the cull\'d sovereignty     Do meet, as at a fair, in her fair cheek,     Where several worthies make one dignity,     Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek.     Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues-     Fie, painted rhetoric! O, she needs it not!     To things of sale a seller\'s praise belongs:     She passes praise; then praise too short doth blot.     A wither\'d hermit, five-score winters worn,     Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye.     Beauty doth varnish age, as if new-born,     And gives the crutch the cradle\'s infancy.     O, \'tis the sun that maketh all things shine!   KING. By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.   BEROWNE. Is ebony like her? O wood divine!     A wife of such wood were felicity.     O, who can give an oath? Where is a book?     That I may swear beauty doth beauty lack,       If that she learn not of her eye to look.     No face is fair that is not full so black.   KING. O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,     The hue of dungeons, and the school of night;     And beauty\'s crest becomes the heavens well.   BEROWNE. Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.     O, if in black my lady\'s brows be deckt,     It mourns that painting and usurping hair     Should ravish doters with a false aspect;     And therefore is she born to make black fair.     Her favour turns the fashion of the days;     For native blood is counted painting now;     And therefore red that would avoid dispraise     Paints itself black, to imitate her brow.   DUMAIN. To look like her are chimney-sweepers black.   LONGAVILLE. And since her time are colliers counted bright.   KING. And Ethiopes of their sweet complexion crack.   DUMAIN. Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light.   BEROWNE. Your mistresses dare never come in rain     For fear their colours should be wash\'d away.     KING. \'Twere good yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain,     I\'ll find a fairer face not wash\'d to-day.   BEROWNE. I\'ll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.   KING. No devil will fright thee then so much as she.   DUMAIN. I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear.   LONGAVILLE. Look, here\'s thy love: my foot and her face see.                                               [Showing his shoe]   BEROWNE. O, if the streets were paved with thine eyes,     Her feet were much too dainty for such tread!   DUMAIN. O vile! Then, as she goes, what upward lies     The street should see as she walk\'d overhead.   KING. But what of this? Are we not all in love?   BEROWNE. Nothing so sure; and thereby all forsworn.   KING. Then leave this chat; and, good Berowne, now prove     Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn.   DUMAIN. Ay, marry, there; some flattery for this evil.   LONGAVILLE. O, some authority how to proceed;     Some tricks, some quillets, how to cheat the devil!   DUMAIN. Some salve for perjury.   BEROWNE. \'Tis more than need.       Have at you, then, affection\'s men-at-arms.     Consider what you first did swear unto:     To fast, to study, and to see no woman-     Flat treason \'gainst the kingly state of youth.     Say, can you fast? Your stomachs are too young,     And abstinence engenders maladies.     And, where that you you have vow\'d to study, lords,     In that each of you have forsworn his book,     Can you still dream, and pore, and thereon look?     For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,     Have found the ground of study\'s excellence     Without the beauty of a woman\'s face?     From women\'s eyes this doctrine I derive:     They are the ground, the books, the academes,     From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.     Why, universal plodding poisons up     The nimble spirits in the arteries,     As motion and long-during action tires     The sinewy vigour of the traveller.     Now, for not looking on a woman\'s face,       You have in that forsworn the use of eyes,     And study too, the causer of your vow;     For where is author in the world     Teaches such beauty as a woman\'s eye?     Learning is but an adjunct to ourself,     And where we are our learning likewise is;     Then when ourselves we see in ladies\' eyes,     With ourselves.     Do we not likewise see our learning there?     O, we have made a vow to study, lords,     And in that vow we have forsworn our books.     For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,     In leaden contemplation have found out     Such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes     Of beauty\'s tutors have enrich\'d you with?     Other slow arts entirely keep the brain;     And therefore, finding barren practisers,     Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil;     But love, first learned in a lady\'s eyes,     Lives not alone immured in the brain,       But with the motion of all elements     Courses as swift as thought in every power,     And gives to every power a double power,     Above their functions and their offices.     It adds a precious seeing to the eye:     A lover\'s eyes will gaze an eagle blind.     A lover\'s ear will hear the lowest sound,     When the suspicious head of theft is stopp\'d.     Love\'s feeling is more soft and sensible     Than are the tender horns of cockled snails:     Love\'s tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.     For valour, is not Love a Hercules,     Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?     Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical     As bright Apollo\'s lute, strung with his hair.     And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods     Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.     Never durst poet touch a pen to write     Until his ink were temp\'red with Love\'s sighs;     O, then his lines would ravish savage ears,       And plant in tyrants mild humility.     From women\'s eyes this doctrine I derive.     They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;     They are the books, the arts, the academes,     That show, contain, and nourish, all the world,     Else none at all in aught proves excellent.     Then fools you were these women to forswear;     Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.     For wisdom\'s sake, a word that all men love;     Or for Love\'s sake, a word that loves all men;     Or for men\'s sake, the authors of these women;     Or women\'s sake, by whom we men are men-     Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,     Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.     It is religion to be thus forsworn;     For charity itself fulfils the law,     And who can sever love from charity?   KING. Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field!   BEROWNE. Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;     Pell-mell, down with them! be first advis\'d,       In conflict, that you get the sun of them.   LONGAVILLE. Now to plain-dealing; lay these glozes by.     Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?   KING. And win them too; therefore let us devise     Some entertainment for them in their tents.   BEROWNE. First, from the park let us conduct them thither;     Then homeward every man attach the hand     Of his fair mistress. In the afternoon     We will with some strange pastime solace them,     Such as the shortness of the time can shape;     For revels, dances, masks, and merry hours,     Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.   KING. Away, away! No time shall be omitted     That will betime, and may by us be fitted.   BEROWNE. Allons! allons! Sow\'d cockle reap\'d no corn,     And justice always whirls in equal measure.     Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn;     If so, our copper buys no better treasure.            Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. The park  Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL    HOLOFERNES. Satis quod sufficit.   NATHANIEL. I praise God for you, sir. Your reasons at dinner have     been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty     without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without     opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam     day with a companion of the King\'s who is intituled, nominated,     or called, Don Adriano de Armado.   HOLOFERNES. Novi hominem tanquam te. His humour is lofty, his     discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his     gait majestical and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and     thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd,     as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.   NATHANIEL. A most singular and choice epithet.                                       [Draws out his table-book]   HOLOFERNES. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than     the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes,     such insociable and point-devise companions; such rackers of       orthography, as to speak \'dout\' fine, when he should say \'doubt\';     \'det\' when he should pronounce \'debt\'- d, e, b, t, not d, e, t.     He clepeth a calf \'cauf,\' half \'hauf\'; neighbour vocatur     \'nebour\'; \'neigh\' abbreviated \'ne.\' This is abhominable- which he     would call \'abbominable.\' It insinuateth me of insanie: ne     intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic.   NATHANIEL. Laus Deo, bone intelligo.   HOLOFERNES. \'Bone\'?- \'bone\' for \'bene.\' Priscian a little     scratch\'d; \'twill serve.                   Enter ARMADO, MOTH, and COSTARD    NATHANIEL. Videsne quis venit?   HOLOFERNES. Video, et gaudeo.   ARMADO. [To MOTH] Chirrah!   HOLOFERNES. Quare \'chirrah,\' not \'sirrah\'?   ARMADO. Men of peace, well encount\'red.   HOLOFERNES. Most military sir, salutation.   MOTH. [Aside to COSTARD] They have been at a great feast of     languages and stol\'n the scraps.     COSTARD. O, they have liv\'d long on the alms-basket of words. I     marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word, for thou are     not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus; thou art     easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.   MOTH. Peace! the peal begins.   ARMADO. [To HOLOFERNES] Monsieur, are you not lett\'red?   MOTH. Yes, yes; he teaches boys the hornbook. What is a, b, spelt     backward with the horn on his head?   HOLOFERNES. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.   MOTH. Ba, most silly sheep with a horn. You hear his learning.   HOLOFERNES. Quis, quis, thou consonant?   MOTH. The third of the five vowels, if You repeat them; or the     fifth, if I.   HOLOFERNES. I will repeat them: a, e, I-   MOTH. The sheep; the other two concludes it: o, U.   ARMADO. Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch,     a quick venue of wit- snip, snap, quick and home. It rejoiceth my     intellect. True wit!   MOTH. Offer\'d by a child to an old man; which is wit-old.   HOLOFERNES. What is the figure? What is the figure?     MOTH. Horns.   HOLOFERNES. Thou disputes like an infant; go whip thy gig.   MOTH. Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your     infamy circum circa- a gig of a cuckold\'s horn.   COSTARD. An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it     to buy ginger-bread. Hold, there is the very remuneration I had     of thy master, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of     discretion. O, an the heavens were so pleased that thou wert but     my bastard, what a joyful father wouldst thou make me! Go to;     thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers\' ends, as they say.   HOLOFERNES. O, I smell false Latin; \'dunghill\' for unguem.   ARMADO. Arts-man, preambulate; we will be singuled from the     barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the charge-house on the     top of the mountain?   HOLOFERNES. Or mons, the hill.   ARMADO. At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.   HOLOFERNES. I do, sans question.   ARMADO. Sir, it is the King\'s most sweet pleasure and affection to     congratulate the Princess at her pavilion, in the posteriors of     this day; which the rude multitude call the afternoon.     HOLOFERNES. The posterior of the day, most generous sir, is liable,     congruent, and measurable, for the afternoon. The word is well     cull\'d, chose, sweet, and apt, I do assure you, sir, I do assure.   ARMADO. Sir, the King is a noble gentleman, and my familiar, I do     assure ye, very good friend. For what is inward between us, let     it pass. I do beseech thee, remember thy courtesy. I beseech     thee, apparel thy head. And among other importunate and most     serious designs, and of great import indeed, too- but let that     pass; for I must tell thee it will please his Grace, by the     world, sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder, and with his royal     finger thus dally with my excrement, with my mustachio; but,     sweet heart, let that pass. By the world, I recount no fable:     some certain special honours it pleaseth his greatness to impart     to Armado, a soldier, a man of travel, that hath seen the world;     but let that pass. The very all of all is- but, sweet heart, I do     implore secrecy- that the King would have me present the     Princess, sweet chuck, with some delightful ostentation, or show,     or pageant, or antic, or firework. Now, understanding that the     curate and your sweet self are good at such eruptions and sudden     breaking-out of mirth, as it were, I have acquainted you withal,       to the end to crave your assistance.   HOLOFERNES. Sir, you shall present before her the Nine Worthies.     Sir Nathaniel, as concerning some entertainment of time, some     show in the posterior of this day, to be rend\'red by our     assistance, the King\'s command, and this most gallant,     illustrate, and learned gentleman, before the Princess- I say     none so fit as to present the Nine Worthies.   NATHANIEL. Where will you find men worthy enough to present them?   HOLOFERNES. Joshua, yourself; myself, Alexander; this gallant     gentleman, Judas Maccabaeus; this swain, because of his great     limb or joint, shall pass Pompey the Great; the page, Hercules.   ARMADO. Pardon, sir; error: he is not quantity enough for that     Worthy\'s thumb; he is not so big as the end of his club.   HOLOFERNES. Shall I have audience? He shall present Hercules in     minority: his enter and exit shall be strangling a snake; and I     will have an apology for that purpose.   MOTH. An excellent device! So, if any of the audience hiss, you may     cry \'Well done, Hercules; now thou crushest the snake!\' That is     the way to make an offence gracious, though few have the grace to     do it.     ARMADO. For the rest of the Worthies?   HOLOFERNES. I will play three myself.   MOTH. Thrice-worthy gentleman!   ARMADO. Shall I tell you a thing?   HOLOFERNES. We attend.   ARMADO. We will have, if this fadge not, an antic. I beseech you,     follow.   HOLOFERNES. Via, goodman Dull! Thou has spoken no word all this     while.   DULL. Nor understood none neither, sir.   HOLOFERNES. Allons! we will employ thee.   DULL. I\'ll make one in a dance, or so, or I will play     On the tabor to the Worthies, and let them dance the hay.   HOLOFERNES. Most dull, honest Dull! To our sport, away.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE II. The park  Enter the PRINCESS, MARIA, KATHARINE, and ROSALINE    PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart,     If fairings come thus plentifully in.     A lady wall\'d about with diamonds!     Look you what I have from the loving King.   ROSALINE. Madam, came nothing else along with that?   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Nothing but this! Yes, as much love in rhyme     As would be cramm\'d up in a sheet of paper     Writ o\' both sides the leaf, margent and all,     That he was fain to seal on Cupid\'s name.   ROSALINE. That was the way to make his godhead wax;     For he hath been five thousand year a boy.   KATHARINE. Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too.   ROSALINE. You\'ll ne\'er be friends with him: \'a kill\'d your sister.   KATHARINE. He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy;     And so she died. Had she been light, like you,     Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit,     She might \'a been a grandam ere she died.       And so may you; for a light heart lives long.   ROSALINE. What\'s your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word?   KATHARINE. A light condition in a beauty dark.   ROSALINE. We need more light to find your meaning out.   KATHARINE. You\'ll mar the light by taking it in snuff;     Therefore I\'ll darkly end the argument.   ROSALINE. Look what you do, you do it still i\' th\' dark.   KATHARINE. So do not you; for you are a light wench.   ROSALINE. Indeed, I weigh not you; and therefore light.   KATHARINE. You weigh me not? O, that\'s you care not for me.   ROSALINE. Great reason; for \'past cure is still past care.\'   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Well bandied both; a set of wit well play\'d.     But, Rosaline, you have a favour too?     Who sent it? and what is it?   ROSALINE. I would you knew.     An if my face were but as fair as yours,     My favour were as great: be witness this.     Nay, I have verses too, I thank Berowne;     The numbers true, and, were the numb\'ring too,     I were the fairest goddess on the ground.       I am compar\'d to twenty thousand fairs.     O, he hath drawn my picture in his letter!   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Anything like?   ROSALINE. Much in the letters; nothing in the praise.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Beauteous as ink- a good conclusion.   KATHARINE. Fair as a text B in a copy-book.   ROSALINE. Ware pencils, ho! Let me not die your debtor,     My red dominical, my golden letter:     O that your face were not so full of O\'s!   KATHARINE. A pox of that jest! and I beshrew all shrows!   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. But, Katharine, what was sent to you from fair     Dumain?   KATHARINE. Madam, this glove.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Did he not send you twain?   KATHARINE. Yes, madam; and, moreover,     Some thousand verses of a faithful lover;     A huge translation of hypocrisy,     Vilely compil\'d, profound simplicity.   MARIA. This, and these pearl, to me sent Longaville;     The letter is too long by half a mile.     PRINCESS OF FRANCE. I think no less. Dost thou not wish in heart     The chain were longer and the letter short?   MARIA. Ay, or I would these hands might never part.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. We are wise girls to mock our lovers so.   ROSALINE. They are worse fools to purchase mocking so.     That same Berowne I\'ll torture ere I go.     O that I knew he were but in by th\' week!     How I would make him fawn, and beg, and seek,     And wait the season, and observe the times,     And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rhymes,     And shape his service wholly to my hests,     And make him proud to make me proud that jests!     So pertaunt-like would I o\'ersway his state     That he should be my fool, and I his fate.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. None are so surely caught, when they are       catch\'d,     As wit turn\'d fool; folly, in wisdom hatch\'d,     Hath wisdom\'s warrant and the help of school,     And wit\'s own grace to grace a learned fool.   ROSALINE. The blood of youth burns not with such excess       As gravity\'s revolt to wantonness.   MARIA. Folly in fools bears not so strong a note     As fool\'ry in the wise when wit doth dote,     Since all the power thereof it doth apply     To prove, by wit, worth in simplicity.                            Enter BOYET    PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Here comes Boyet, and mirth is in his face.   BOYET. O, I am stabb\'d with laughter! Where\'s her Grace?   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Thy news, Boyet?   BOYET. Prepare, madam, prepare!     Arm, wenches, arm! Encounters mounted are     Against your peace. Love doth approach disguis\'d,     Armed in arguments; you\'ll be surpris\'d.     Muster your wits; stand in your own defence;     Or hide your heads like cowards, and fly hence.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Saint Dennis to Saint Cupid! What are they     That charge their breath against us? Say, scout, say.   BOYET. Under the cool shade of a sycamore       I thought to close mine eyes some half an hour;     When, lo, to interrupt my purpos\'d rest,     Toward that shade I might behold addrest     The King and his companions; warily     I stole into a neighbour thicket by,     And overheard what you shall overhear-     That, by and by, disguis\'d they will be here.     Their herald is a pretty knavish page,     That well by heart hath conn\'d his embassage.     Action and accent did they teach him there:     \'Thus must thou speak\' and \'thus thy body bear,\'     And ever and anon they made a doubt     Presence majestical would put him out;     \'For\' quoth the King \'an angel shalt thou see;     Yet fear not thou, but speak audaciously.\'     The boy replied \'An angel is not evil;     I should have fear\'d her had she been a devil.\'     With that all laugh\'d, and clapp\'d him on the shoulder,     Making the bold wag by their praises bolder.     One rubb\'d his elbow, thus, and fleer\'d, and swore       A better speech was never spoke before.     Another with his finger and his thumb     Cried \'Via! we will do\'t, come what will come.\'     The third he caper\'d, and cried \'All goes well.\'     The fourth turn\'d on the toe, and down he fell.     With that they all did tumble on the ground,     With such a zealous laughter, so profound,     That in this spleen ridiculous appears,     To check their folly, passion\'s solemn tears.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. But what, but what, come they to visit us?   BOYET. They do, they do, and are apparell\'d thus,     Like Muscovites or Russians, as I guess.     Their purpose is to parley, court, and dance;     And every one his love-feat will advance     Unto his several mistress; which they\'ll know     By favours several which they did bestow.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. And will they so? The gallants shall be task\'d,     For, ladies, we will every one be mask\'d;     And not a man of them shall have the grace,     Despite of suit, to see a lady\'s face.       Hold, Rosaline, this favour thou shalt wear,     And then the King will court thee for his dear;     Hold, take thou this, my sweet, and give me thine,     So shall Berowne take me for Rosaline.     And change you favours too; so shall your loves     Woo contrary, deceiv\'d by these removes.   ROSALINE. Come on, then, wear the favours most in sight.   KATHARINE. But, in this changing, what is your intent?   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. The effect of my intent is to cross theirs.     They do it but in mocking merriment,     And mock for mock is only my intent.     Their several counsels they unbosom shall     To loves mistook, and so be mock\'d withal     Upon the next occasion that we meet     With visages display\'d to talk and greet.   ROSALINE. But shall we dance, if they desire us to\'t?   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. No, to the death, we will not move a foot,     Nor to their penn\'d speech render we no grace;     But while \'tis spoke each turn away her face.   BOYET. Why, that contempt will kill the speaker\'s heart,       And quite divorce his memory from his part.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Therefore I do it; and I make no doubt     The rest will ne\'er come in, if he be out.     There\'s no such sport as sport by sport o\'erthrown,     To make theirs ours, and ours none but our own;     So shall we stay, mocking intended game,     And they well mock\'d depart away with shame.                                          [Trumpet sounds within]   BOYET. The trumpet sounds; be mask\'d; the maskers come.                                                [The LADIES mask]            Enter BLACKAMOORS music, MOTH as Prologue, the      KING and his LORDS as maskers, in the guise of Russians    MOTH. All hail, the richest heauties on the earth!   BOYET. Beauties no richer than rich taffeta.   MOTH. A holy parcel of the fairest dames                             [The LADIES turn their backs to him]     That ever turn\'d their- backs- to mortal views!   BEROWNE. Their eyes, villain, their eyes.     MOTH. That ever turn\'d their eyes to mortal views!     Out-   BOYET. True; out indeed.   MOTH. Out of your favours, heavenly spirits, vouchsafe     Not to behold-   BEROWNE. Once to behold, rogue.   MOTH. Once to behold with your sun-beamed eyes- with your     sun-beamed eyes-   BOYET. They will not answer to that epithet;     You were best call it \'daughter-beamed eyes.\'   MOTH. They do not mark me, and that brings me out.   BEROWNE. Is this your perfectness? Be gone, you rogue.                                                        Exit MOTH   ROSALINE. What would these strangers? Know their minds, Boyet.     If they do speak our language, \'tis our will     That some plain man recount their purposes.     Know what they would.   BOYET. What would you with the Princess?   BEROWNE. Nothing but peace and gentle visitation.   ROSALINE. What would they, say they?     BOYET. Nothing but peace and gentle visitation.   ROSALINE. Why, that they have; and bid them so be gone.   BOYET. She says you have it, and you may be gone.   KING. Say to her we have measur\'d many miles     To tread a measure with her on this grass.   BOYET. They say that they have measur\'d many a mile     To tread a measure with you on this grass.   ROSALINE. It is not so. Ask them how many inches     Is in one mile? If they have measured many,     The measure, then, of one is eas\'ly told.   BOYET. If to come hither you have measur\'d miles,     And many miles, the Princess bids you tell     How many inches doth fill up one mile.   BEROWNE. Tell her we measure them by weary steps.   BOYET. She hears herself.   ROSALINE. How many weary steps     Of many weary miles you have o\'ergone     Are numb\'red in the travel of one mile?   BEROWNE. We number nothing that we spend for you;     Our duty is so rich, so infinite,       That we may do it still without accompt.     Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face,     That we, like savages, may worship it.   ROSALINE. My face is but a moon, and clouded too.   KING. Blessed are clouds, to do as such clouds do.     Vouchsafe, bright moon, and these thy stars, to shine,     Those clouds removed, upon our watery eyne.   ROSALINE. O vain petitioner! beg a greater matter;     Thou now requests but moonshine in the water.   KING. Then in our measure do but vouchsafe one change.     Thou bid\'st me beg; this begging is not strange.   ROSALINE. Play, music, then. Nay, you must do it soon.     Not yet? No dance! Thus change I like the moon.   KING. Will you not dance? How come you thus estranged?   ROSALINE. You took the moon at full; but now she\'s changed.   KING. Yet still she is the Moon, and I the Man.     The music plays; vouchsafe some motion to it.   ROSALINE. Our ears vouchsafe it.   KING. But your legs should do it.   ROSALINE. Since you are strangers, and come here by chance,       We\'ll not be nice; take hands. We will not dance.   KING. Why take we hands then?   ROSALINE. Only to part friends.     Curtsy, sweet hearts; and so the measure ends.   KING. More measure of this measure; be not nice.   ROSALINE. We can afford no more at such a price.   KING. Price you yourselves. What buys your company?   ROSALINE. Your absence only.   KING. That can never be.   ROSALINE. Then cannot we be bought; and so adieu-     Twice to your visor and half once to you.   KING. If you deny to dance, let\'s hold more chat.   ROSALINE. In private then.   KING. I am best pleas\'d with that.       [They converse apart]   BEROWNE. White-handed mistress, one sweet word with thee.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Honey, and milk, and sugar; there is three.   BEROWNE. Nay, then, two treys, an if you grow so nice,     Metheglin, wort, and malmsey; well run dice!     There\'s half a dozen sweets.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Seventh sweet, adieu!       Since you can cog, I\'ll play no more with you.   BEROWNE. One word in secret.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Let it not be sweet.   BEROWNE. Thou grievest my gall.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Gall! bitter.   BEROWNE. Therefore meet.                 [They converse apart]   DUMAIN. Will you vouchsafe with me to change a word?   MARIA. Name it.   DUMAIN. Fair lady-   MARIA. Say you so? Fair lord-     Take that for your fair lady.   DUMAIN. Please it you,     As much in private, and I\'ll bid adieu.                                            [They converse apart]   KATHARINE. What, was your vizard made without a tongue?   LONGAVILLE. I know the reason, lady, why you ask.   KATHARINE. O for your reason! Quickly, sir; I long.   LONGAVILLE. You have a double tongue within your mask,     And would afford my speechless vizard half.   KATHARINE. \'Veal\' quoth the Dutchman. Is not \'veal\' a calf?     LONGAVILLE. A calf, fair lady!   KATHARINE. No, a fair lord calf.   LONGAVILLE. Let\'s part the word.   KATHARINE. No, I\'ll not be your half.     Take all and wean it; it may prove an ox.   LONGAVILLE. Look how you butt yourself in these sharp mocks!     Will you give horns, chaste lady? Do not so.   KATHARINE. Then die a calf, before your horns do grow.   LONGAVILLE. One word in private with you ere I die.   KATHARINE. Bleat softly, then; the butcher hears you cry.                                            [They converse apart]   BOYET. The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen     As is the razor\'s edge invisible,     Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen,     Above the sense of sense; so sensible     Seemeth their conference; their conceits have wings,     Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things.   ROSALINE. Not one word more, my maids; break off, break off.   BEROWNE. By heaven, all dry-beaten with pure scoff!   KING. Farewell, mad wenches; you have simple wits.                                Exeunt KING, LORDS, and BLACKAMOORS   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Twenty adieus, my frozen Muscovits.     Are these the breed of wits so wondered at?   BOYET. Tapers they are, with your sweet breaths puff\'d out.   ROSALINE. Well-liking wits they have; gross, gross; fat, fat.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. O poverty in wit, kingly-poor flout!     Will they not, think you, hang themselves to-night?     Or ever but in vizards show their faces?     This pert Berowne was out of count\'nance quite.   ROSALINE. They were all in lamentable cases!     The King was weeping-ripe for a good word.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Berowne did swear himself out of all suit.   MARIA. Dumain was at my service, and his sword.     \'No point\' quoth I; my servant straight was mute.   KATHARINE. Lord Longaville said I came o\'er his heart;     And trow you what he call\'d me?   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Qualm, perhaps.   KATHARINE. Yes, in good faith.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Go, sickness as thou art!   ROSALINE. Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps.       But will you hear? The King is my love sworn.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. And quick Berowne hath plighted faith to me.   KATHARINE. And Longaville was for my service born.   MARIA. Dumain is mine, as sure as bark on tree.   BOYET. Madam, and pretty mistresses, give ear:     Immediately they will again be here     In their own shapes; for it can never be     They will digest this harsh indignity.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Will they return?   BOYET. They will, they will, God knows,     And leap for joy, though they are lame with blows;     Therefore, change favours; and, when they repair,     Blow like sweet roses in this summer air.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. How blow? how blow? Speak to be understood.   BOYET. Fair ladies mask\'d are roses in their bud:     Dismask\'d, their damask sweet commixture shown,     Are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Avaunt, perplexity! What shall we do     If they return in their own shapes to woo?   ROSALINE. Good madam, if by me you\'ll be advis\'d,       Let\'s mock them still, as well known as disguis\'d.     Let us complain to them what fools were here,     Disguis\'d like Muscovites, in shapeless gear;     And wonder what they were, and to what end     Their shallow shows and prologue vilely penn\'d,     And their rough carriage so ridiculous,     Should be presented at our tent to us.   BOYET. Ladies, withdraw; the gallants are at hand.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Whip to our tents, as roes run o\'er land.                  Exeunt PRINCESS, ROSALINE, KATHARINE, and MARIA           Re-enter the KING, BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAIN,                         in their proper habits    KING. Fair sir, God save you! Where\'s the Princess?   BOYET. Gone to her tent. Please it your Majesty     Command me any service to her thither?   KING. That she vouchsafe me audience for one word.   BOYET. I will; and so will she, I know, my lord.          Exit   BEROWNE. This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease,       And utters it again when God doth please.     He is wit\'s pedlar, and retails his wares     At wakes, and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs;     And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know,     Have not the grace to grace it with such show.     This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve;     Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve.     \'A can carve too, and lisp; why this is he     That kiss\'d his hand away in courtesy;     This is the ape of form, Monsieur the Nice,     That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice     In honourable terms; nay, he can sing     A mean most meanly; and in ushering,     Mend him who can. The ladies call him sweet;     The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet.     This is the flow\'r that smiles on every one,     To show his teeth as white as whales-bone;     And consciences that will not die in debt     Pay him the due of \'honey-tongued Boyet.\'   KING. A blister on his sweet tongue, with my heart,       That put Armado\'s page out of his part!          Re-enter the PRINCESS, ushered by BOYET; ROSALINE,                       MARIA, and KATHARINE    BEROWNE. See where it comes! Behaviour, what wert thou     Till this man show\'d thee? And what art thou now?   KING. All hail, sweet madam, and fair time of day!   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. \'Fair\' in \'all hail\' is foul, as I conceive.   KING. Construe my speeches better, if you may.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Then wish me better; I will give you leave.   KING. We came to visit you, and purpose now     To lead you to our court; vouchsafe it then.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. This field shall hold me, and so hold your vow:     Nor God, nor I, delights in perjur\'d men.   KING. Rebuke me not for that which you provoke.     The virtue of your eye must break my oath.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. You nickname virtue: vice you should have       spoke;     For virtue\'s office never breaks men\'s troth.       Now by my maiden honour, yet as pure     As the unsullied lily, I protest,     A world of torments though I should endure,     I would not yield to be your house\'s guest;     So much I hate a breaking cause to be     Of heavenly oaths, vowed with integrity.   KING. O, you have liv\'d in desolation here,     Unseen, unvisited, much to our shame.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Not so, my lord; it is not so, I swear;     We have had pastimes here, and pleasant game;     A mess of Russians left us but of late.   KING. How, madam! Russians!   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Ay, in truth, my lord;     Trim gallants, full of courtship and of state.   ROSALINE. Madam, speak true. It is not so, my lord.     My lady, to the manner of the days,     In courtesy gives undeserving praise.     We four indeed confronted were with four     In Russian habit; here they stayed an hour     And talk\'d apace; and in that hour, my lord,       They did not bless us with one happy word.     I dare not call them fools; but this I think,     When they are thirsty, fools would fain have drink.   BEROWNE. This jest is dry to me. Fair gentle sweet,     Your wit makes wise things foolish; when we greet,     With eyes best seeing, heaven\'s fiery eye,     By light we lose light; your capacity     Is of that nature that to your huge store     Wise things seem foolish and rich things but poor.   ROSALINE. This proves you wise and rich, for in my eye-   BEROWNE. I am a fool, and full of poverty.   ROSALINE. But that you take what doth to you belong,     It were a fault to snatch words from my tongue.   BEROWNE. O, I am yours, and all that I possess.   ROSALINE. All the fool mine?   BEROWNE. I cannot give you less.   ROSALINE. Which of the vizards was it that you wore?   BEROWNE. Where? when? what vizard? Why demand you this?   ROSALINE. There, then, that vizard; that superfluous case     That hid the worse and show\'d the better face.     KING. We were descried; they\'ll mock us now downright.   DUMAIN. Let us confess, and turn it to a jest.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Amaz\'d, my lord? Why looks your Highness sad?   ROSALINE. Help, hold his brows! he\'ll swoon! Why look you pale?     Sea-sick, I think, coming from Muscovy.   BEROWNE. Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury.     Can any face of brass hold longer out?     Here stand I, lady- dart thy skill at me,     Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout,     Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance,     Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit;     And I will wish thee never more to dance,     Nor never more in Russian habit wait.     O, never will I trust to speeches penn\'d,     Nor to the motion of a school-boy\'s tongue,     Nor never come in vizard to my friend,     Nor woo in rhyme, like a blind harper\'s song.     Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,     Three-pil\'d hyperboles, spruce affectation,     Figures pedantical- these summer-flies       Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.     I do forswear them; and I here protest,     By this white glove- how white the hand, God knows!-     Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express\'d     In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes.     And, to begin, wench- so God help me, law!-     My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw.   ROSALINE. Sans \'sans,\' I pray you.   BEROWNE. Yet I have a trick     Of the old rage; bear with me, I am sick;     I\'ll leave it by degrees. Soft, let us see-     Write \'Lord have mercy on us\' on those three;     They are infected; in their hearts it lies;     They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes.     These lords are visited; you are not free,     For the Lord\'s tokens on you do I see.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. No, they are free that gave these tokens to us.   BEROWNE. Our states are forfeit; seek not to undo us.   ROSALINE. It is not so; for how can this be true,     That you stand forfeit, being those that sue?     BEROWNE. Peace; for I will not have to do with you.   ROSALINE. Nor shall not, if I do as I intend.   BEROWNE. Speak for yourselves; my wit is at an end.   KING. Teach us, sweet madam, for our rude transgression     Some fair excuse.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. The fairest is confession.     Were not you here but even now, disguis\'d?   KING. Madam, I was.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. And were you well advis\'d?   KING. I was, fair madam.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. When you then were here,     What did you whisper in your lady\'s ear?   KING. That more than all the world I did respect her.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. When she shall challenge this, you will reject     her.   KING. Upon mine honour, no.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Peace, peace, forbear;     Your oath once broke, you force not to forswear.   KING. Despise me when I break this oath of mine.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. I will; and therefore keep it. Rosaline,       What did the Russian whisper in your ear?   ROSALINE. Madam, he swore that he did hold me dear     As precious eyesight, and did value me     Above this world; adding thereto, moreover,     That he would wed me, or else die my lover.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. God give thee joy of him! The noble lord      Most honourably doth uphold his word.   KING. What mean you, madam? By my life, my troth,     I never swore this lady such an oath.   ROSALINE. By heaven, you did; and, to confirm it plain,     You gave me this; but take it, sir, again.   KING. My faith and this the Princess I did give;     I knew her by this jewel on her sleeve.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Pardon me, sir, this jewel did she wear;     And Lord Berowne, I thank him, is my dear.     What, will you have me, or your pearl again?  BEROWNE. Neither of either; I remit both twain.     I see the trick on\'t: here was a consent,     Knowing aforehand of our merriment,     To dash it like a Christmas comedy.     Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany,       Some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick,     That smiles his cheek in years and knows the trick     To make my lady laugh when she\'s dispos\'d,     Told our intents before; which once disclos\'d,     The ladies did change favours; and then we,     Following the signs, woo\'d but the sign of she.     Now, to our perjury to add more terror,     We are again forsworn in will and error.     Much upon this it is; [To BOYET] and might not you     Forestall our sport, to make us thus untrue?     Do not you know my lady\'s foot by th\' squier,     And laugh upon the apple of her eye?     And stand between her back, sir, and the fire,     Holding a trencher, jesting merrily?     You put our page out. Go, you are allow\'d;     Die when you will, a smock shall be your shroud.     You leer upon me, do you? There\'s an eye     Wounds like a leaden sword.   BOYET. Full merrily     Hath this brave manage, this career, been run.     BEROWNE. Lo, he is tilting straight! Peace; I have done.                            Enter COSTARD      Welcome, pure wit! Thou part\'st a fair fray.   COSTARD. O Lord, sir, they would know      Whether the three Worthies shall come in or no?   BEROWNE. What, are there but three?   COSTARD. No, sir; but it is vara fine,     For every one pursents three.   BEROWNE. And three times thrice is nine.   COSTARD. Not so, sir; under correction, sir,     I hope it is not so.     You cannot beg us, sir, I can assure you, sir; we know what we       know;     I hope, sir, three times thrice, sir-   BEROWNE. Is not nine.   COSTARD. Under correction, sir, we know whereuntil it doth amount.   BEROWNE. By Jove, I always took three threes for nine.   COSTARD. O Lord, sir, it were pity you should get your living by       reck\'ning, sir.   BEROWNE. How much is it?   COSTARD. O Lord, sir, the parties themselves, the actors, sir, will     show whereuntil it doth amount. For mine own part, I am, as they     say, but to parfect one man in one poor man, Pompion the Great,     sir.   BEROWNE. Art thou one of the Worthies?   COSTARD. It pleased them to think me worthy of Pompey the Great;     for mine own part, I know not the degree of the Worthy; but I am     to stand for him.   BEROWNE. Go, bid them prepare.   COSTARD. We will turn it finely off, sir; we will take some care.                                                     Exit COSTARD   KING. Berowne, they will shame us; let them not approach.   BEROWNE. We are shame-proof, my lord, and \'tis some policy     To have one show worse than the King\'s and his company.   KING. I say they shall not come.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Nay, my good lord, let me o\'errule you now.     That sport best pleases that doth least know how;     Where zeal strives to content, and the contents       Dies in the zeal of that which it presents.     Their form confounded makes most form in mirth,     When great things labouring perish in their birth.   BEROWNE. A right description of our sport, my lord.                          Enter ARMADO    ARMADO. Anointed, I implore so much expense of thy royal sweet     breath as will utter a brace of words.            [Converses apart with the KING, and delivers a paper]   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Doth this man serve God?   BEROWNE. Why ask you?   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. \'A speaks not like a man of God his making.   ARMADO. That is all one, my fair, sweet, honey monarch; for, I     protest, the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical; too too vain,     too too vain; but we will put it, as they say, to fortuna de la     guerra. I wish you the peace of mind, most royal couplement!                                                      Exit ARMADO   KING. Here is like to be a good presence of Worthies. He presents     Hector of Troy; the swain, Pompey the Great; the parish curate,       Alexander; Arinado\'s page, Hercules; the pedant, Judas     Maccabaeus.     And if these four Worthies in their first show thrive,     These four will change habits and present the other five.   BEROWNE. There is five in the first show.   KING. You are deceived, \'tis not so.   BEROWNE. The pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool, and     the boy:     Abate throw at novum, and the whole world again     Cannot pick out five such, take each one in his vein.   KING. The ship is under sail, and here she comes amain.                     Enter COSTARD, armed for POMPEY    COSTARD. I Pompey am-   BEROWNE. You lie, you are not he.   COSTARD. I Pompey am-   BOYET. With libbard\'s head on knee.   BEROWNE. Well said, old mocker; I must needs be friends with thee.   COSTARD. I Pompey am, Pompey surnam\'d the Big-      DUMAIN. The Great.   COSTARD. It is Great, sir.     Pompey surnam\'d the Great,     That oft in field, with targe and shield, did make my foe to       sweat;     And travelling along this coast, I bere am come by chance,     And lay my arms before the legs of this sweet lass of France.      If your ladyship would say \'Thanks, Pompey,\' I had done.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Great thanks, great Pompey.   COSTARD. \'Tis not so much worth; but I hope I was perfect.     I made a little fault in Great.   BEROWNE. My hat to a halfpenny, Pompey proves the best Worthy.                   Enter SIR NATHANIEL, for ALEXANDER    NATHANIEL. When in the world I liv\'d, I was the world\'s commander;     By east, west, north, and south, I spread my conquering might.     My scutcheon plain declares that I am Alisander-   BOYET. Your nose says, no, you are not; for it stands to right.     BEROWNE. Your nose smells \'no\' in this, most tender-smelling     knight.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. The conqueror is dismay\'d. Proceed, good     Alexander.   NATHANIEL. When in the world I liv\'d, I was the world\'s commander-   BOYET. Most true, \'tis right, you were so, Alisander.   BEROWNE. Pompey the Great!   COSTARD. Your servant, and Costard.   BEROWNE. Take away the conqueror, take away Alisander.   COSTARD. [To Sir Nathaniel] O, Sir, you have overthrown Alisander     the conqueror! You will be scrap\'d out of the painted cloth for     this. Your lion, that holds his poleaxe sitting on a close-stool,     will be given to Ajax. He will be the ninth Worthy. A conqueror     and afeard to speak! Run away for shame, Alisander.     [Sir Nathaniel retires] There, an\'t shall please you, a foolish     mild man; an honest man, look you, and soon dash\'d. He is a     marvellous good neighbour, faith, and a very good bowler; but for     Alisander- alas! you see how \'tis- a little o\'erparted. But there     are Worthies a-coming will speak their mind in some other sort.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Stand aside, good Pompey.             Enter HOLOFERNES, for JUDAS; and MOTH, for HERCULES    HOLOFERNES. Great Hercules is presented by this imp,     Whose club kill\'d Cerberus, that three-headed canus;     And when be was a babe, a child, a shrimp,     Thus did he strangle serpents in his manus.     Quoniam he seemeth in minority,     Ergo I come with this apology.     Keep some state in thy exit, and vanish.      [MOTH retires]     Judas I am-   DUMAIN. A Judas!   HOLOFERNES. Not Iscariot, sir.     Judas I am, ycliped Maccabaeus.   DUMAIN. Judas Maccabaeus clipt is plain Judas.   BEROWNE. A kissing traitor. How art thou prov\'d Judas?   HOLOFERNES. Judas I am-   DUMAIN. The more shame for you, Judas!   HOLOFERNES. What mean you, sir?   BOYET. To make Judas hang himself.     HOLOFERNES. Begin, sir; you are my elder.   BEROWNE. Well followed: Judas was hanged on an elder.   HOLOFERNES. I will not be put out of countenance.   BEROWNE. Because thou hast no face.   HOLOFERNES. What is this?   BOYET. A cittern-head.   DUMAIN. The head of a bodkin.   BEROWNE. A death\'s face in a ring.   LONGAVILLE. The face of an old Roman coin, scarce seen.   BOYET. The pommel of Coesar\'s falchion.   DUMAIN. The carv\'d-bone face on a flask.   BEROWNE. Saint George\'s half-cheek in a brooch.   DUMAIN. Ay, and in a brooch of lead.   BEROWNE. Ay, and worn in the cap of a tooth-drawer. And now,     forward; for we have put thee in countenance.   HOLOFERNES. You have put me out of countenance.   BEROWNE. False: we have given thee faces.   HOLOFERNES. But you have outfac\'d them all.   BEROWNE. An thou wert a lion we would do so.   BOYET. Therefore, as he is an ass, let him go.       And so adieu, sweet Jude! Nay, why dost thou stay?   DUMAIN. For the latter end of his name.   BEROWNE. For the ass to the Jude; give it him- Jud-as, away.   HOLOFERNES. This is not generous, not gentle, not humble.   BOYET. A light for Monsieur Judas! It grows dark, he may stumble.                                             [HOLOFERNES retires]   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Alas, poor Maccabaeus, how hath he been baited!                     Enter ARMADO, for HECTOR    BEROWNE. Hide thy head, Achilles; here comes Hector in arms.   DUMAIN. Though my mocks come home by me, I will now be merry.   KING. Hector was but a Troyan in respect of this.   BOYET. But is this Hector?   DUMAIN. I think Hector was not so clean-timber\'d.   LONGAVILLE. His leg is too big for Hector\'s.   DUMAIN. More calf, certain.   BOYET. No; he is best indued in the small.   BEROWNE. This cannot be Hector.   DUMAIN. He\'s a god or a painter, for he makes faces.     ARMADO. The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty,     Gave Hector a gift-   DUMAIN. A gilt nutmeg.   BEROWNE. A lemon.   LONGAVILLE. Stuck with cloves.   DUMAIN. No, cloven.   ARMADO. Peace!     The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty,     Gave Hector a gift, the heir of Ilion;     A man so breathed that certain he would fight ye,     From morn till night out of his pavilion.     I am that flower-   DUMAIN. That mint.   LONGAVILLE. That columbine.   ARMADO. Sweet Lord Longaville, rein thy tongue.   LONGAVILLE. I must rather give it the rein, for it runs against     Hector.   DUMAIN. Ay, and Hector\'s a greyhound.   ARMADO. The sweet war-man is dead and rotten; sweet chucks, beat     not the bones of the buried; when he breathed, he was a man. But       I will forward with my device. [To the PRINCESS] Sweet royalty,     bestow on me the sense of hearing.            [BEROWNE steps forth, and speaks to COSTARD]    PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Speak, brave Hector; we are much delighted.   ARMADO. I do adore thy sweet Grace\'s slipper.   BOYET. [Aside to DUMAIN] Loves her by the foot.   DUMAIN. [Aside to BOYET] He may not by the yard.   ARMADO. This Hector far surmounted Hannibal-   COSTARD. The party is gone, fellow Hector, she is gone; she is two     months on her way.   ARMADO. What meanest thou?   COSTARD. Faith, unless you play the honest Troyan, the poor wench     is cast away. She\'s quick; the child brags in her belly already;     \'tis yours.   ARMADO. Dost thou infamonize me among potentates? Thou shalt die.   COSTARD. Then shall Hector be whipt for Jaquenetta that is quick by     him, and hang\'d for Pompey that is dead by him.   DUMAIN. Most rare Pompey!     BOYET. Renowned Pompey!   BEROWNE. Greater than Great! Great, great, great Pompey! Pompey the     Huge!   DUMAIN. Hector trembles.   BEROWNE. Pompey is moved. More Ates, more Ates! Stir them on! stir     them on!   DUMAIN. Hector will challenge him.   BEROWNE. Ay, if \'a have no more man\'s blood in his belly than will     sup a flea.   ARMADO. By the North Pole, I do challenge thee.   COSTARD. I will not fight with a pole, like a Northern man; I\'ll     slash; I\'ll do it by the sword. I bepray you, let me borrow my     arms again.   DUMAIN. Room for the incensed Worthies!   COSTARD. I\'ll do it in my shirt.   DUMAIN. Most resolute Pompey!   MOTH. Master, let me take you a buttonhole lower. Do you not see     Pompey is uncasing for the combat? What mean you? You will lose     your reputation.   ARMADO. Gentlemen and soldiers, pardon me; I will not combat in my       shirt.   DUMAIN. You may not deny it: Pompey hath made the challenge.   ARMADO. Sweet bloods, I both may and will.   BEROWNE. What reason have you for \'t?   ARMADO. The naked truth of it is: I have no shirt; I go woolward     for penance.   BOYET. True, and it was enjoined him in Rome for want of linen;     since when, I\'ll be sworn, he wore none but a dishclout of     Jaquenetta\'s, and that \'a wears next his heart for a favour.                   Enter as messenger, MONSIEUR MARCADE    MARCADE. God save you, madam!   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Welcome, Marcade;     But that thou interruptest our merriment.   MARCADE. I am sorry, madam; for the news I bring     Is heavy in my tongue. The King your father-   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Dead, for my life!   MARCADE. Even so; my tale is told.   BEROWNE. WOrthies away; the scene begins to cloud.     ARMADO. For mine own part, I breathe free breath. I have seen the     day of wrong through the little hole of discretion, and I will     right myself like a soldier.                 Exeunt WORTHIES   KING. How fares your Majesty?   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Boyet, prepare; I will away to-night.   KING. Madam, not so; I do beseech you stay.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Prepare, I say. I thank you, gracious lords,     For all your fair endeavours, and entreat,     Out of a new-sad soul, that you vouchsafe     In your rich wisdom to excuse or hide     The liberal opposition of our spirits,     If over-boldly we have borne ourselves     In the converse of breath- your gentleness     Was guilty of it. Farewell, worthy lord.     A heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue.     Excuse me so, coming too short of thanks     For my great suit so easily obtain\'d.   KING. The extreme parts of time extremely forms     All causes to the purpose of his speed;     And often at his very loose decides       That which long process could not arbitrate.     And though the mourning brow of progeny     Forbid the smiling courtesy of love     The holy suit which fain it would convince,     Yet, since love\'s argument was first on foot,     Let not the cloud of sorrow justle it     From what it purpos\'d; since to wail friends lost     Is not by much so wholesome-profitable     As to rejoice at friends but newly found.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. I understand you not; my griefs are double.   BEROWNE. Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief;     And by these badges understand the King.     For your fair sakes have we neglected time,     Play\'d foul play with our oaths; your beauty, ladies,     Hath much deformed us, fashioning our humours     Even to the opposed end of our intents;     And what in us hath seem\'d ridiculous,     As love is full of unbefitting strains,     All wanton as a child, skipping and vain;     Form\'d by the eye and therefore, like the eye,       Full of strange shapes, of habits, and of forms,     Varying in subjects as the eye doth roll     To every varied object in his glance;     Which parti-coated presence of loose love     Put on by us, if in your heavenly eyes     Have misbecom\'d our oaths and gravities,     Those heavenly eyes that look into these faults     Suggested us to make. Therefore, ladies,     Our love being yours, the error that love makes     Is likewise yours. We to ourselves prove false,     By being once false for ever to be true     To those that make us both- fair ladies, you;     And even that falsehood, in itself a sin,     Thus purifies itself and turns to grace.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. We have receiv\'d your letters, full of love;     Your favours, the ambassadors of love;     And, in our maiden council, rated them     At courtship, pleasant jest, and courtesy,     As bombast and as lining to the time;     But more devout than this in our respects       Have we not been; and therefore met your loves     In their own fashion, like a merriment.   DUMAIN. Our letters, madam, show\'d much more than jest.   LONGAVILLE. So did our looks.   ROSALINE. We did not quote them so.   KING. Now, at the latest minute of the hour,     Grant us your loves.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. A time, methinks, too short     To make a world-without-end bargain in.     No, no, my lord, your Grace is perjur\'d much,     Full of dear guiltiness; and therefore this,     If for my love, as there is no such cause,     You will do aught- this shall you do for me:     Your oath I will not trust; but go with speed     To some forlorn and naked hermitage,     Remote from all the pleasures of the world;     There stay until the twelve celestial signs     Have brought about the annual reckoning.     If this austere insociable life     Change not your offer made in heat of blood,       If frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin weeds,     Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,     But that it bear this trial, and last love,     Then, at the expiration of the year,     Come, challenge me, challenge me by these deserts;     And, by this virgin palm now kissing thine,     I will be thine; and, till that instant, shut     My woeful self up in a mournful house,     Raining the tears of lamentation     For the remembrance of my father\'s death.     If this thou do deny, let our hands part,     Neither intitled in the other\'s heart.   KING. If this, or more than this, I would deny,     To flatter up these powers of mine with rest,     The sudden hand of death close up mine eye!     Hence hermit then, my heart is in thy breast.   BEROWNE. And what to me, my love? and what to me?   ROSALINE. You must he purged too, your sins are rack\'d;     You are attaint with faults and perjury;     Therefore, if you my favour mean to get,       A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest,     But seek the weary beds of people sick.   DUMAIN. But what to me, my love? but what to me?     A wife?   KATHARINE. A beard, fair health, and honesty;     With threefold love I wish you all these three.   DUMAIN. O, shall I say I thank you, gentle wife?   KATHARINE. No so, my lord; a twelvemonth and a day     I\'ll mark no words that smooth-fac\'d wooers say.     Come when the King doth to my lady come;     Then, if I have much love, I\'ll give you some.   DUMAIN. I\'ll serve thee true and faithfully till then.   KATHARINE. Yet swear not, lest ye be forsworn again.   LONGAVILLE. What says Maria?   MARIA. At the twelvemonth\'s end     I\'ll change my black gown for a faithful friend.   LONGAVILLE. I\'ll stay with patience; but the time is long.   MARIA. The liker you; few taller are so young.   BEROWNE. Studies my lady? Mistress, look on me;     Behold the window of my heart, mine eye,       What humble suit attends thy answer there.     Impose some service on me for thy love.   ROSALINE. Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Berowne,     Before I saw you; and the world\'s large tongue     Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks,     Full of comparisons and wounding flouts,     Which you on all estates will execute     That lie within the mercy of your wit.     To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain,     And therewithal to win me, if you please,     Without the which I am not to be won,     You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day     Visit the speechless sick, and still converse     With groaning wretches; and your task shall be,     With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,     To enforce the pained impotent to smile.   BEROWNE. To move wild laughter in the throat of death?     It cannot be; it is impossible;     Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.   ROSALINE. Why, that\'s the way to choke a gibing spirit,       Whose influence is begot of that loose grace     Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools.     A jest\'s prosperity lies in the ear     Of him that hears it, never in the tongue     Of him that makes it; then, if sickly ears,     Deaf\'d with the clamours of their own dear groans,     Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,     And I will have you and that fault withal.     But if they will not, throw away that spirit,     And I shall find you empty of that fault,     Right joyful of your reformation.   BEROWNE. A twelvemonth? Well, befall what will befall,     I\'ll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. [ To the King] Ay, sweet my lord, and so I take     my leave.   KING. No, madam; we will bring you on your way.   BEROWNE. Our wooing doth not end like an old play:     Jack hath not Jill. These ladies\' courtesy     Might well have made our sport a comedy.   KING. Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth an\' a day,       And then \'twill end.   BEROWNE. That\'s too long for a play.                            Re-enter ARMADO    ARMADO. Sweet Majesty, vouchsafe me-   PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Was not that not Hector?   DUMAIN. The worthy knight of Troy.   ARMADO. I will kiss thy royal finger, and take leave. I am a     votary: I have vow\'d to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her     sweet love three year. But, most esteemed greatness, will you     hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled in     praise of the Owl and the Cuckoo? It should have followed in the     end of our show.   KING. Call them forth quickly; we will do so.   ARMADO. Holla! approach.                              Enter All      This side is Hiems, Winter; this Ver, the Spring- the one       maintained by the Owl, th\' other by the Cuckoo. Ver, begin.                        SPRING          When daisies pied and violets blue          And lady-smocks all silver-white          And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue          Do paint the meadows with delight,          The cuckoo then on every tree          Mocks married men, for thus sings he:               \'Cuckoo;          Cuckoo, cuckoo\'- O word of fear,          Unpleasing to a married ear!           When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,          And merry larks are ploughmen\'s clocks;          When turtles tread, and rooks and daws,          And maidens bleach their summer smocks;          The cuckoo then on every tree          Mocks married men, for thus sings he:               \'Cuckoo;            Cuckoo, cuckoo\'- O word of fear,          Unpleasing to a married ear!                       WINTER           When icicles hang by the wall,          And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,          And Tom bears logs into the hall,          And milk comes frozen home in pail,          When blood is nipp\'d, and ways be foul,          Then nightly sings the staring owl:               \'Tu-who;          Tu-whit, Tu-who\'- A merry note,          While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.           When all aloud the wind doth blow,          And coughing drowns the parson\'s saw,          And birds sit brooding in the snow,          And Marian\'s nose looks red and raw,          When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,            Then nightly sings the staring owl:               \'Tu-who;          Tu-whit, To-who\'- A merry note,          While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.    ARMADO. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.     You that way: we this way.                            Exeunt  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>       1606  THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH   by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae    DUNCAN, King of Scotland   MACBETH, Thane of Glamis and Cawdor, a general in the King\'s army   LADY MACBETH, his wife   MACDUFF, Thane of Fife, a nobleman of Scotland   LADY MACDUFF, his wife   MALCOLM, elder son of Duncan   DONALBAIN, younger son of Duncan   BANQUO, Thane of Lochaber, a general in the King\'s army   FLEANCE, his son   LENNOX, nobleman of Scotland   ROSS, nobleman of Scotland   MENTEITH nobleman of Scotland   ANGUS, nobleman of Scotland   CAITHNESS, nobleman of Scotland   SIWARD, Earl of Northumberland, general of the English forces   YOUNG SIWARD, his son   SEYTON, attendant to Macbeth   HECATE, Queen of the Witches   The Three Witches   Boy, Son of Macduff     Gentlewoman attending on Lady Macbeth   An English Doctor   A Scottish Doctor   A Sergeant   A Porter   An Old Man   The Ghost of Banquo and other Apparitions   Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldiers, Murtherers, Attendants,      and Messengers     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: Scotland and England   ACT I. SCENE I. A desert place. Thunder and lightning.  Enter three Witches.    FIRST WITCH. When shall we three meet again?     In thunder, lightning, or in rain?   SECOND WITCH. When the hurlyburly\'s done,     When the battle\'s lost and won.   THIRD WITCH. That will be ere the set of sun.   FIRST WITCH. Where the place?   SECOND WITCH. Upon the heath.   THIRD WITCH. There to meet with Macbeth.   FIRST WITCH. I come, Graymalkin.   ALL. Paddock calls. Anon!     Fair is foul, and foul is fair.     Hover through the fog and filthy air.                Exeunt.     SCENE II. A camp near Forres. Alarum within.  Enter Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox, with Attendants, meeting a bleeding Sergeant.    DUNCAN. What bloody man is that? He can report,     As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt     The newest state.   MALCOLM. This is the sergeant     Who like a good and hardy soldier fought     \'Gainst my captivity. Hail, brave friend!     Say to the King the knowledge of the broil     As thou didst leave it.   SERGEANT. Doubtful it stood,     As two spent swimmers that do cling together     And choke their art. The merciless Macdonwald-     Worthy to be a rebel, for to that     The multiplying villainies of nature     Do swarm upon him -from the Western Isles     Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied;     And Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,       Show\'d like a rebel\'s whore. But all\'s too weak;     For brave Macbeth -well he deserves that name-     Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish\'d steel,     Which smoked with bloody execution,     Like Valor\'s minion carved out his passage     Till he faced the slave,     Which ne\'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,     Till he unseam\'d him from the nave to the chaps,     And fix\'d his head upon our battlements.   DUNCAN. O valiant cousin! Worthy gentleman!   SERGEANT. As whence the sun \'gins his reflection     Shipwrecking storms and direful thunders break,     So from that spring whence comfort seem\'d to come     Discomfort swells. Mark, King of Scotland, mark.     No sooner justice had, with valor arm\'d,     Compell\'d these skipping kerns to trust their heels,     But the Norweyan lord, surveying vantage,     With furbish\'d arms and new supplies of men,     Began a fresh assault.   DUNCAN. Dismay\'d not this       Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo.?   SERGEANT. Yes,     As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion.     If I say sooth, I must report they were     As cannons overcharged with double cracks,     So they     Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe.     Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,     Or memorize another Golgotha,     I cannot tell-     But I am faint; my gashes cry for help.   DUNCAN. So well thy words become thee as thy wounds;     They smack of honor both. Go get him surgeons.                                         Exit Sergeant, attended.     Who comes here?                         Enter Ross.    MALCOLM The worthy Thane of Ross.   LENNOX. What a haste looks through his eyes! So should he look       That seems to speak things strange.   ROSS. God save the King!   DUNCAN. Whence camest thou, worthy Thane?   ROSS. From Fife, great King,     Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky     And fan our people cold.     Norway himself, with terrible numbers,     Assisted by that most disloyal traitor     The Thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict,     Till that Bellona\'s bridegroom, lapp\'d in proof,     Confronted him with self-comparisons,     Point against point rebellious, arm \'gainst arm,     Curbing his lavish spirit; and, to conclude,     The victory fell on us.   DUNCAN. Great happiness!   ROSS. That now     Sweno, the Norways\' king, craves composition;     Nor would we deign him burial of his men     Till he disbursed, at Saint Colme\'s Inch,     Ten thousand dollars to our general use.     DUNCAN. No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive     Our bosom interest. Go pronounce his present death,     And with his former title greet Macbeth.   ROSS. I\'ll see it done.   DUNCAN. What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won.                                                          Exeunt.     SCENE III. A heath. Thunder.  Enter the three Witches.    FIRST WITCH. Where hast thou been, sister?   SECOND WITCH. Killing swine.   THIRD WITCH. Sister, where thou?   FIRST WITCH. A sailor\'s wife had chestnuts in her lap,     And mounch\'d, and mounch\'d, and mounch\'d. "Give me," quoth I.     "Aroint thee, witch!" the rump-fed ronyon cries.     Her husband\'s to Aleppo gone, master the Tiger;     But in a sieve I\'ll thither sail,     And, like a rat without a tail,     I\'ll do, I\'ll do, and I\'ll do.   SECOND WITCH. I\'ll give thee a wind.   FIRST WITCH. Thou\'rt kind.   THIRD WITCH. And I another.   FIRST WITCH. I myself have all the other,     And the very ports they blow,     All the quarters that they know     I\' the shipman\'s card.       I will drain him dry as hay:     Sleep shall neither night nor day     Hang upon his penthouse lid;     He shall live a man forbid.     Weary se\'nnights nine times nine     Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine;     Though his bark cannot be lost,     Yet it shall be tempest-toss\'d.     Look what I have.   SECOND WITCH. Show me, show me.   FIRST WITCH. Here I have a pilot\'s thumb,     Wreck\'d as homeward he did come.                Drum within.   THIRD WITCH. A drum, a drum!     Macbeth doth come.   ALL. The weird sisters, hand in hand,     Posters of the sea and land,     Thus do go about, about,     Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine,     And thrice again, to make up nine.     Peace! The charm\'s wound up.                     Enter Macbeth and Banquo.    MACBETH. So foul and fair a day I have not seen.   BANQUO. How far is\'t call\'d to Forres? What are these     So wither\'d and so wild in their attire,     That look not like the inhabitants o\' the earth,     And yet are on\'t? Live you? or are you aught     That man may question? You seem to understand me,     By each at once her choppy finger laying     Upon her skinny lips. You should be women,     And yet your beards forbid me to interpret     That you are so.   MACBETH. Speak, if you can. What are you?   FIRST WITCH. All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!   SECOND WITCH. All hail, Macbeth, hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!   THIRD WITCH. All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be King hereafter!   BANQUO. Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear     Things that do sound so fair? I\' the name of truth,     Are ye fantastical or that indeed       Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner     You greet with present grace and great prediction     Of noble having and of royal hope,     That he seems rapt withal. To me you speak not.     If you can look into the seeds of time,     And say which grain will grow and which will not,     Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear     Your favors nor your hate.   FIRST WITCH. Hail!   SECOND WITCH. Hail!   THIRD WITCH. Hail!   FIRST WITCH. Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.   SECOND WITCH. Not so happy, yet much happier.   THIRD WITCH. Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.     So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!   FIRST WITCH. Banquo and Macbeth, all hail!   MACBETH. Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more.     By Sinel\'s death I know I am Thane of Glamis;     But how of Cawdor? The Thane of Cawdor lives,     A prosperous gentleman; and to be King       Stands not within the prospect of belief,     No more than to be Cawdor. Say from whence     You owe this strange intelligence, or why     Upon this blasted heath you stop our way     With such prophetic greeting? Speak, I charge you.                                                  Witches vanish.   BANQUO. The earth hath bubbles as the water has,     And these are of them. Whither are they vanish\'d?   MACBETH. Into the air, and what seem\'d corporal melted     As breath into the wind. Would they had stay\'d!   BANQUO. Were such things here as we do speak about?     Or have we eaten on the insane root     That takes the reason prisoner?   MACBETH. Your children shall be kings.   BANQUO. You shall be King.   MACBETH. And Thane of Cawdor too. Went it not so?   BANQUO. To the selfsame tune and words. Who\'s here?                  Enter Ross and Angus.      ROSS. The King hath happily received, Macbeth,     The news of thy success; and when he reads     Thy personal venture in the rebels\' fight,     His wonders and his praises do contend     Which should be thine or his. Silenced with that,     In viewing o\'er the rest o\' the selfsame day,     He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks,     Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make,     Strange images of death. As thick as hail     Came post with post, and every one did bear     Thy praises in his kingdom\'s great defense,     And pour\'d them down before him.   ANGUS. We are sent     To give thee, from our royal master, thanks;     Only to herald thee into his sight,     Not pay thee.   ROSS. And for an earnest of a greater honor,     He bade me, from him, call thee Thane of Cawdor.     In which addition, hail, most worthy Thane,     For it is thine.     BANQUO. What, can the devil speak true?   MACBETH. The Thane of Cawdor lives. Why do you dress me     In borrow\'d robes?   ANGUS. Who was the Thane lives yet,     But under heavy judgement bears that life     Which he deserves to lose. Whether he was combined     With those of Norway, or did line the rebel     With hidden help and vantage, or that with both     He labor\'d in his country\'s wreck, I know not;     But treasons capital, confess\'d and proved,     Have overthrown him.   MACBETH. [Aside.] Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor!     The greatest is behind. [To Ross and Angus] Thanks for your       pains.     [Aside to Banquo] Do you not hope your children shall be kings,     When those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me     Promised no less to them?   BANQUO. [Aside to Macbeth.] That, trusted home,     Might yet enkindle you unto the crown,     Besides the Thane of Cawdor. But \'tis strange;       And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,     The instruments of darkness tell us truths,     Win us with honest trifles, to betray\'s     In deepest consequence-     Cousins, a word, I pray you.   MACBETH. [Aside.] Two truths are told,     As happy prologues to the swelling act     Of the imperial theme-I thank you, gentlemen.     [Aside.] This supernatural soliciting     Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,     Why hath it given me earnest of success,     Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor.     If good, why do I yield to that suggestion     Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair     And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,     Against the use of nature? Present fears     Are less than horrible imaginings:     My thought, whose murther yet is but fantastical,     Shakes so my single state of man that function     Is smother\'d in surmise, and nothing is       But what is not.   BANQUO. Look, how our partner\'s rapt.   MACBETH. [Aside.] If chance will have me King, why, chance may       crown me     Without my stir.   BANQUO. New honors come upon him,     Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould     But with the aid of use.   MACBETH. [Aside.] Come what come may,     Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.   BANQUO. Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure.   MACBETH. Give me your favor; my dull brain was wrought     With things forgotten. Kind gentlemen, your pains     Are register\'d where every day I turn     The leaf to read them. Let us toward the King.     Think upon what hath chanced, and at more time,     The interim having weigh\'d it, let us speak     Our free hearts each to other.   BANQUO. Very gladly.   MACBETH. Till then, enough. Come, friends.             Exeunt.     SCENE IV. Forres. The palace.  Flourish. Enter Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Lennox, and Attendants.    DUNCAN. Is execution done on Cawdor? Are not     Those in commission yet return\'d?   MALCOLM. My liege,     They are not yet come back. But I have spoke     With one that saw him die, who did report     That very frankly he confess\'d his treasons,     Implored your Highness\' pardon, and set forth     A deep repentance. Nothing in his life     Became him like the leaving it; he died     As one that had been studied in his death,     To throw away the dearest thing he owed     As \'twere a careless trifle.   DUNCAN. There\'s no art     To find the mind\'s construction in the face:     He was a gentleman on whom I built     An absolute trust.                 Enter Macbeth, Banquo, Ross, and Angus.      O worthiest cousin!     The sin of my ingratitude even now     Was heavy on me. Thou art so far before,     That swiftest wing of recompense is slow     To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserved,     That the proportion both of thanks and payment     Might have been mine! Only I have left to say,     More is thy due than more than all can pay.   MACBETH. The service and the loyalty lowe,     In doing it, pays itself. Your Highness\' part     Is to receive our duties, and our duties     Are to your throne and state, children and servants,     Which do but what they should, by doing everything     Safe toward your love and honor.   DUNCAN. Welcome hither.     I have begun to plant thee, and will labor     To make thee full of growing. Noble Banquo,       That hast no less deserved, nor must be known     No less to have done so; let me infold thee     And hold thee to my heart.   BANQUO. There if I grow,     The harvest is your own.   DUNCAN. My plenteous joys,     Wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves     In drops of sorrow. Sons, kinsmen, thanes,     And you whose places are the nearest, know     We will establish our estate upon     Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter     The Prince of Cumberland; which honor must     Not unaccompanied invest him only,     But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine     On all deservers. From hence to Inverness,     And bind us further to you.   MACBETH. The rest is labor, which is not used for you.     I\'ll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful     The hearing of my wife with your approach;     So humbly take my leave.     DUNCAN. My worthy Cawdor!   MACBETH. [Aside.] The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step     On which I must fall down, or else o\'erleap,     For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;     Let not light see my black and deep desires.     The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be     Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.          Exit.   DUNCAN. True, worthy Banquo! He is full so valiant,     And in his commendations I am fed;     It is a banquet to me. Let\'s after him,     Whose care is gone before to bid us welcome.     It is a peerless kinsman.                  Flourish. Exeunt.     SCENE V. Inverness. Macbeth\'s castle.  Enter Lady Macbeth, reading a letter.    LADY MACBETH. "They met me in the day of success, and I have     learned by the perfectest report they have more in them than     mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to question them     further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished.     Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the     King, who all-hailed me \'Thane of Cawdor\'; by which title,     before, these weird sisters saluted me and referred me to the     coming on of time with \'Hail, King that shalt be!\' This have I     thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness,     that thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being     ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart,     and farewell."      Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be     What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature.     It is too full o\' the milk of human kindness     To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great;       Art not without ambition, but without     The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly,     That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,     And yet wouldst wrongly win. Thou\'ldst have, great Glamis,     That which cries, "Thus thou must do, if thou have it;     And that which rather thou dost fear to do     Than wishest should be undone." Hie thee hither,     That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,     And chastise with the valor of my tongue     All that impedes thee from the golden round,     Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem     To have thee crown\'d withal.                       Enter a Messenger.      What is your tidings?   MESSENGER. The King comes here tonight.   LADY MACBETH. Thou\'rt mad to say it!     Is not thy master with him? who, were\'t so,     Would have inform\'d for preparation.     MESSENGER. So please you, it is true; our Thane is coming.     One of my fellows had the speed of him,     Who, almost dead for breath, had scarcely more     Than would make up his message.   LADY MACBETH. Give him tending;     He brings great news.                        Exit Messenger.     The raven himself is hoarse     That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan     Under my battlements. Come, you spirits     That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here     And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full     Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,     Stop up the access and passage to remorse,     That no compunctious visitings of nature     Shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between     The effect and it! Come to my woman\'s breasts,     And take my milk for gall, your murthering ministers,     Wherever in your sightless substances     You wait on nature\'s mischief! Come, thick night,     And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell       That my keen knife see not the wound it makes     Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark     To cry, "Hold, hold!"                      Enter Macbeth.      Great Glamis! Worthy Cawdor!     Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter!     Thy letters have transported me beyond     This ignorant present, and I feel now     The future in the instant.   MACBETH. My dearest love,     Duncan comes here tonight.   LADY MACBETH. And when goes hence?   MACBETH. Tomorrow, as he purposes.   LADY MACBETH. O, never     Shall sun that morrow see!     Your face, my Thane, is as a book where men     May read strange matters. To beguile the time,     Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,       Your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower,     But be the serpent under it. He that\'s coming     Must be provided for; and you shall put     This night\'s great business into my dispatch,     Which shall to all our nights and days to come     Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.   MACBETH. We will speak further.   LADY MACBETH. Only look up clear;     To alter favor ever is to fear.     Leave all the rest to me.                            Exeunt.     SCENE VI. Before Macbeth\'s castle.  Hautboys and torches.  Enter Duncan, Malcolm, Donalbain, Banquo, Lennox, Macduff, Ross, Angus, and Attendants.    DUNCAN. This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air     Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself     Unto our gentle senses.   BANQUO. This guest of summer,     The temple-haunting martlet, does approve     By his loved mansionry that the heaven\'s breath     Smells wooingly here. No jutty, frieze,     Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird     Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle;     Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed     The air is delicate.                       Enter Lady Macbeth.    DUNCAN. See, see, our honor\'d hostess!     The love that follows us sometime is our trouble,       Which still we thank as love. Herein I teach you     How you shall bid God \'ield us for your pains,     And thank us for your trouble.   LADY MACBETH. All our service     In every point twice done, and then done double,     Were poor and single business to contend     Against those honors deep and broad wherewith     Your Majesty loads our house. For those of old,     And the late dignities heap\'d up to them,     We rest your hermits.   DUNCAN. Where\'s the Thane of Cawdor?     We coursed him at the heels and had a purpose     To be his purveyor; but he rides well,     And his great love, sharp as his spur, hath holp him     To his home before us. Fair and noble hostess,     We are your guest tonight.   LADY MACBETH. Your servants ever     Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs, in compt,     To make their audit at your Highness\' pleasure,     Still to return your own.     DUNCAN. Give me your hand;     Conduct me to mine host. We love him highly,     And shall continue our graces towards him.     By your leave, hostess.                              Exeunt.     SCENE VII Macbeth\'s castle.  Hautboys and torches.  Enter a Sewer and divers Servants with dishes and service, who pass over the stage.  Then enter Macbeth.    MACBETH. If it were done when \'tis done, then \'twere well     It were done quickly. If the assassination     Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,     With his surcease, success; that but this blow     Might be the be-all and the end-all -here,     But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,     We\'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases     We still have judgement here, that we but teach     Bloody instructions, which being taught return     To plague the inventor. This even-handed justice     Commends the ingredients of our poison\'d chalice     To our own lips. He\'s here in double trust:     First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,     Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,     Who should against his murtherer shut the door,       Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan     Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been     So clear in his great office, that his virtues     Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued against     The deep damnation of his taking-off,     And pity, like a naked new-born babe     Striding the blast, or heaven\'s cherubin horsed     Upon the sightless couriers of the air,     Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,     That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur     To prick the sides of my intent, but only     Vaulting ambition, which o\'erleaps itself     And falls on the other.                   Enter Lady Macbeth.      How now, what news?   LADY MACBETH. He has almost supp\'d. Why have you left the chamber?   MACBETH. Hath he ask\'d for me?   LADY MACBETH. Know you not he has?     MACBETH. We will proceed no further in this business:     He hath honor\'d me of late, and I have bought     Golden opinions from all sorts of people,     Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,     Not cast aside so soon.   LADY MACBETH. Was the hope drunk     Wherein you dress\'d yourself? Hath it slept since?     And wakes it now, to look so green and pale     At what it did so freely? From this time     Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard     To be the same in thine own act and valor     As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that     Which thou esteem\'st the ornament of life     And live a coward in thine own esteem,     Letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would"     Like the poor cat i\' the adage?   MACBETH. Prithee, peace!     I dare do all that may become a man;     Who dares do more is none.   LADY MACBETH. What beast wast then       That made you break this enterprise to me?     When you durst do it, then you were a man,     And, to be more than what you were, you would     Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place     Did then adhere, and yet you would make both.     They have made themselves, and that their fitness now     Does unmake you. I have given suck and know     How tender \'tis to love the babe that milks me-     I would, while it was smiling in my face,     Have pluck\'d my nipple from his boneless gums     And dash\'d the brains out had I so sworn as you     Have done to this.   MACBETH. If we should fail?   LADY MACBETH. We fail?     But screw your courage to the sticking-place     And we\'ll not fail. When Duncan is asleep-     Whereto the rather shall his day\'s hard journey     Soundly invite him- his two chamberlains     Will I with wine and wassail so convince     That memory, the warder of the brain,       Shall be a fume and the receipt of reason     A limbeck only. When in swinish sleep     Their drenched natures lie as in a death,     What cannot you and I perform upon     The unguarded Duncan? What not put upon     His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt     Of our great quell?   MACBETH. Bring forth men-children only,     For thy undaunted mettle should compose     Nothing but males. Will it not be received,     When we have mark\'d with blood those sleepy two     Of his own chamber and used their very daggers,     That they have done\'t?   LADY MACBETH. Who dares receive it other,     As we shall make our griefs and clamor roar     Upon his death?   MACBETH. I am settled and bend up     Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.     Away, and mock the time with fairest show:     False face must hide what the false heart doth know.                                                            Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. Inverness. Court of Macbeth\'s castle.  Enter Banquo and Fleance, bearing a torch before him.    BANQUO. How goes the night, boy?   FLEANCE. The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.   BANQUO. And she goes down at twelve.   FLEANCE. I take\'t \'tis later, sir.   BANQUO. Hold, take my sword. There\'s husbandry in heaven,     Their candles are all out. Take thee that too.     A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,     And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers,     Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature     Gives way to in repose!             Enter Macbeth and a Servant with a torch.      Give me my sword.     Who\'s there?   MACBETH. A friend.   BANQUO. What, sir, not yet at rest? The King\'s abed.       He hath been in unusual pleasure and     Sent forth great largess to your offices.     This diamond he greets your wife withal,     By the name of most kind hostess, and shut up     In measureless content.   MACBETH. Being unprepared,     Our will became the servant to defect,     Which else should free have wrought.   BANQUO. All\'s well.     I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters:     To you they have show\'d some truth.   MACBETH. I think not of them;     Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve,     We would spend it in some words upon that business,     If you would grant the time.   BANQUO. At your kind\'st leisure.   MACBETH. If you shall cleave to my consent, when \'tis,     It shall make honor for you.   BANQUO. So I lose none     In seeking to augment it, but still keep       My bosom franchised and allegiance clear,     I shall be counsel\'d.   MACBETH. Good repose the while.   BANQUO. Thanks, sir, the like to you.                                      Exeunt Banquo. and Fleance.   MACBETH. Go bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,     She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed.     Exit Servant.     Is this a dagger which I see before me,     The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.     I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.     Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible     To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but     A dagger of the mind, a false creation,     Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?     I see thee yet, in form as palpable     As this which now I draw.     Thou marshal\'st me the way that I was going,     And such an instrument I was to use.     Mine eyes are made the fools o\' the other senses,     Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still,       And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,     Which was not so before. There\'s no such thing:     It is the bloody business which informs     Thus to mine eyes. Now o\'er the one half-world     Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse     The curtain\'d sleep; witchcraft celebrates     Pale Hecate\'s offerings; and wither\'d Murther,     Alarum\'d by his sentinel, the wolf,     Whose howl\'s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,     With Tarquin\'s ravishing strides, towards his design     Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,     Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear     Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,     And take the present horror from the time,     Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives;     Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.                                                    A bell rings.     I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.     Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell     That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.               Exit.     SCENE II. The same.  Enter Lady Macbeth.    LADY MACBETH. That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold;     What hath quench\'d them hath given me fire. Hark! Peace!     It was the owl that shriek\'d, the fatal bellman,     Which gives the stern\'st good night. He is about it:     The doors are open, and the surfeited grooms     Do mock their charge with snores. I have drugg\'d their possets     That death and nature do contend about them,     Whether they live or die.   MACBETH. [Within.] Who\'s there\' what, ho!   LADY MACBETH. Alack, I am afraid they have awaked     And \'tis not done. The attempt and not the deed     Confounds us. Hark! I laid their daggers ready;     He could not miss \'em. Had he not resembled     My father as he slept, I had done\'t.                        Enter Macbeth,        My husband!   MACBETH. I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?   LADY MACBETH. I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.     Did not you speak?   MACBETH. When?   LADY MACBETH. Now.   MACBETH. As I descended?   LADY MACBETH. Ay.   MACBETH. Hark!     Who lies i\' the second chamber?   LADY MACBETH. Donalbain.   MACBETH. This is a sorry sight.           [Looks on his hands.   LADY MACBETH. A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.   MACBETH. There\'s one did laugh in \'s sleep, and one cried,       "Murther!"     That they did wake each other. I stood and heard them,     But they did say their prayers and address\'d them     Again to sleep.   LADY MACBETH. There are two lodged together.   MACBETH. One cried, "God bless us!" and "Amen" the other,       As they had seen me with these hangman\'s hands.     Listening their fear, I could not say "Amen,"     When they did say, "God bless us!"   LADY MACBETH. Consider it not so deeply.   MACBETH. But wherefore could not I pronounce "Amen"?     I had most need of blessing, and "Amen"     Stuck in my throat.   LADY MACBETH. These deeds must not be thought     After these ways; so, it will make us mad.   MACBETH. I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more!     Macbeth does murther sleep" -the innocent sleep,     Sleep that knits up the ravel\'d sleave of care,     The death of each day\'s life, sore labor\'s bath,     Balm of hurt minds, great nature\'s second course,     Chief nourisher in life\'s feast-   LADY MACBETH. What do you mean?   MACBETH. Still it cried, "Sleep no more!" to all the house;     "Glamis hath murther\'d sleep, and therefore Cawdor     Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more."   LADY MACBETH. Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy Thane,       You do unbend your noble strength, to think     So brainsickly of things. Go, get some water     And wash this filthy witness from your hand.     Why did you bring these daggers from the place?     They must lie there. Go carry them, and smear     The sleepy grooms with blood.   MACBETH. I\'ll go no more.     I am afraid to think what I have done;     Look on\'t again I dare not.   LADY MACBETH. Infirm of purpose!     Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead     Are but as pictures; \'tis the eye of childhood     That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,     I\'ll gild the faces of the grooms withal,     For it must seem their guilt.         Exit. Knocking within.   MACBETH. Whence is that knocking?     How is\'t with me, when every noise appals me?     What hands are here? Ha, they pluck out mine eyes!     Will all great Neptune\'s ocean wash this blood     Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather       The multitudinous seas incarnadine,     Making the green one red.                     Re-enter Lady Macbeth.    LADY MACBETH. My hands are of your color, but I shame     To wear a heart so white. [Knocking within.] I hear knocking     At the south entry. Retire we to our chamber.     A little water clears us of this deed.     How easy is it then! Your constancy     Hath left you unattended. [Knocking within.] Hark, more knocking.     Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us     And show us to be watchers. Be not lost     So poorly in your thoughts.   MACBETH. To know my deed, \'twere best not know myself.                                                 Knocking within.     Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!                                                          Exeunt.     SCENE III. The same.  Enter a Porter. Knocking within.    PORTER. Here\'s a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of Hell     Gate, he should have old turning the key. [Knocking within.]     Knock, knock, knock! Who\'s there, i\' the name of Belzebub? Here\'s     a farmer that hanged himself on th\' expectation of plenty. Come     in time! Have napkins enow about you; here you\'ll sweat fort.     [Knocking within.] Knock, knock! Who\'s there, in th\' other     devil\'s name? Faith, here\'s an equivocator that could swear in     both the scales against either scale, who committed treason     enough for God\'s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven. O,     come in, equivocator. [Knocking within.] Knock, knock, knock!     Who\'s there? Faith, here\'s an English tailor come hither, for     stealing out of a French hose. Come in, tailor; here you may     roast your goose. [Knocking within.] Knock, knock! Never at     quiet! What are you? But this place is too cold for hell. I\'ll     devil-porter it no further. I had thought to have let in some of     all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlasting     bonfire. [Knocking within.] Anon, anon! I pray you, remember the       porter.                                                  Opens the gate.                         Enter Macduff and Lennox.    MACDUFF. Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed,     That you do lie so late?   PORTER. Faith, sir, we were carousing till the second cock; and     drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.   MACDUFF. What three things does drink especially provoke?   PORTER. Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir,     it provokes and unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes     away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an     equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets     him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him and disheartens     him; makes him stand to and not stand to; in conclusion,     equivocates him in a sleep, and giving him the lie, leaves him.   MACDUFF. I believe drink gave thee the lie last night.   PORTER. That it did, sir, i\' the very throat on me; but requited     him for his lie, and, I think, being too strong for him, though       he took up my legs sometime, yet I made shift to cast him.   MACDUFF. Is thy master stirring?                               Enter Macbeth.      Our knocking has awaked him; here he comes.   LENNOX. Good morrow, noble sir.   MACBETH. morrow, both.   MACDUFF. Is the King stirring, worthy Thane?   MACBETH. Not yet.   MACDUFF. He did command me to call timely on him;     I have almost slipp\'d the hour.   MACBETH. I\'ll bring you to him.   MACDUFF. I know this is a joyful trouble to you,     But yet \'tis one.   MACBETH. The labor we delight in physics pain.     This is the door.   MACDUFF I\'ll make so bold to call,     For \'tis my limited service.                           Exit.   LENNOX. Goes the King hence today?     MACBETH. He does; he did appoint so.   LENNOX. The night has been unruly. Where we lay,     Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say,     Lamentings heard i\' the air, strange screams of death,     And prophesying with accents terrible     Of dire combustion and confused events     New hatch\'d to the woeful time. The obscure bird     Clamor\'d the livelong night. Some say the earth     Was feverous and did shake.   MACBETH. \'Twas a rough fight.   LENNOX. My young remembrance cannot parallel     A fellow to it.                        Re-enter Macduff.    MACDUFF. O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart     Cannot conceive nor name thee.   MACBETH. LENNOX. What\'s the matter?   MACDUFF. Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.     Most sacrilegious murther hath broke ope       The Lord\'s anointed temple and stole thence     The life o\' the building.   MACBETH. What is\'t you say? the life?   LENNOX. Mean you his Majesty?   MACDUFF. Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight     With a new Gorgon. Do not bid me speak;     See, and then speak yourselves.                                       Exeunt Macbeth and Lennox.     Awake, awake!     Ring the alarum bell. Murther and treason!     Banquo and Donalbain! Malcolm, awake!     Shake off this downy sleep, death\'s counterfeit,     And look on death itself! Up, up, and see     The great doom\'s image! Malcolm! Banquo!     As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites     To countenance this horror! Ring the bell.       Bell rings.                       Enter Lady Macbeth.    LADY MACBETH. What\'s the business,       That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley     The sleepers of the house? Speak, speak!   MACDUFF. O gentle lady,     \'Tis not for you to hear what I can speak:     The repetition in a woman\'s ear     Would murther as it fell.                       Enter Banquo.      O Banquo, Banquo!     Our royal master\'s murther\'d.   LADY MACBETH. Woe, alas!     What, in our house?   BANQUO. Too cruel anywhere.     Dear Duff, I prithee, contradict thyself,     And say it is not so.            Re-enter Macbeth and Lennox, with Ross.    MACBETH. Had I but died an hour before this chance,       I had lived a blessed time, for from this instant     There\'s nothing serious in mortality.     All is but toys; renown and grace is dead,     The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees     Is left this vault to brag of.                  Enter Malcolm and Donalbain.    DONALBAIN. What is amiss?   MACBETH. You are, and do not know\'t.     The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood     Is stopped, the very source of it is stopp\'d.   MACDUFF. Your royal father\'s murther\'d.    MALCOLM. O, by whom?   LENNOX. Those of his chamber, as it seem\'d, had done\'t.     Their hands and faces were all badged with blood;     So were their daggers, which unwiped we found     Upon their pillows.     They stared, and were distracted; no man\'s life     Was to be trusted with them.     MACBETH. O, yet I do repent me of my fury,     That I did kill them.   MACDUFF. Wherefore did you so?   MACBETH. Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,     Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.     The expedition of my violent love     Outrun the pauser reason. Here lay Duncan,     His silver skin laced with his golden blood,     And his gash\'d stabs look\'d like a breach in nature     For ruin\'s wasteful entrance; there, the murtherers,     Steep\'d in the colors of their trade, their daggers     Unmannerly breech\'d with gore. Who could refrain,     That had a heart to love, and in that heart     Courage to make \'s love known?   LADY MACBETH. Help me hence, ho!   MACDUFF. Look to the lady.   MALCOLM. [Aside to Donalbain.] Why do we hold our tongues,     That most may claim this argument for ours?   DONALBAIN. [Aside to Malcolm.] What should be spoken here, where       our fate,       Hid in an auger hole, may rush and seize us?     Let\'s away,     Our tears are not yet brew\'d.   MALCOLM. [Aside to Donalbain.] Nor our strong sorrow     Upon the foot of motion.   BANQUO. Look to the lady.                                     Lady Macbeth is carried out.     And when we have our naked frailties hid,     That suffer in exposure, let us meet     And question this most bloody piece of work     To know it further. Fears and scruples shake us.     In the great hand of God I stand, and thence     Against the undivulged pretense I fight     Of treasonous malice.   MACDUFF. And so do I.   ALL. So all.   MACBETH. Let\'s briefly put on manly readiness     And meet i\' the hall together.   ALL. Well contented.                            Exeunt all but Malcolm and Donalbain.     MALCOLM. What will you do? Let\'s not consort with them.     To show an unfelt sorrow is an office     Which the false man does easy. I\'ll to England.   DONALBAIN. To Ireland, I; our separated fortune     Shall keep us both the safer. Where we are     There\'s daggers in men\'s smiles; the near in blood,     The nearer bloody.   MALCOLM. This murtherous shaft that\'s shot     Hath not yet lighted, and our safest way     Is to avoid the aim. Therefore to horse;     And let us not be dainty of leave-taking,     But shift away. There\'s warrant in that theft     Which steals itself when there\'s no mercy left.                                                          Exeunt.     SCENE IV. Outside Macbeth\'s castle.  Enter Ross with an Old Man.    OLD MAN. Threescore and ten I can remember well,     Within the volume of which time I have seen     Hours dreadful and things strange, but this sore night     Hath trifled former knowings.   ROSS. Ah, good father,     Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man\'s act,     Threaten his bloody stage. By the clock \'tis day,     And yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp.     Is\'t night\'s predominance, or the day\'s shame,     That darkness does the face of earth entomb,     When living light should kiss it?   OLD MAN. \'Tis unnatural,     Even like the deed that\'s done. On Tuesday last     A falcon towering in her pride of place     Was by a mousing owl hawk\'d at and kill\'d.   ROSS. And Duncan\'s horses-a thing most strange and certain-     Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,       Turn\'d wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,     Contending \'gainst obedience, as they would make     War with mankind.   OLD MAN. \'Tis said they eat each other.   ROSS. They did so, to the amazement of mine eyes     That look\'d upon\'t.                       Enter Macduff.      Here comes the good Macduff.     How goes the world, sir, now?   MACDUFF. Why, see you not?   ROSS. Is\'t known who did this more than bloody deed?   MACDUFF. Those that Macbeth hath slain.   ROSS. Alas, the day!     What good could they pretend?   MACDUFF. They were suborn\'d:     Malcolm and Donalbain, the King\'s two sons,     Are stol\'n away and fled, which puts upon them     Suspicion of the deed.     ROSS. \'Gainst nature still!     Thriftless ambition, that wilt ravin up     Thine own life\'s means! Then \'tis most like     The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth.   MACDUFF. He is already named, and gone to Scone     To be invested.   ROSS. Where is Duncan\'s body?   MACDUFF. Carried to Colmekill,     The sacred storehouse of his predecessors     And guardian of their bones.   ROSS. Will you to Scone?   MACDUFF. No, cousin, I\'ll to Fife.   ROSS. Well, I will thither.   MACDUFF. Well, may you see things well done there.     Adieu,     Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!   ROSS. Farewell, father.   OLD MAN. God\'s benison go with you and with those     That would make good of bad and friends of foes!                                                          Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. Forres. The palace.  Enter Banquo.    BANQUO. Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all,     As the weird women promised, and I fear     Thou play\'dst most foully for\'t; yet it was said     It should not stand in thy posterity,     But that myself should be the root and father     Of many kings. If there come truth from them     (As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine)     Why, by the verities on thee made good,     May they not be my oracles as well     And set me up in hope? But hush, no more.        Sennet sounds. Enter Macbeth as King, Lady Macbeth     as Queen, Lennox, Ross, Lords, Ladies, and Attendants.    MACBETH. Here\'s our chief guest.   LADY MACBETH. If he had been forgotten,     It had been as a gap in our great feast       And all thing unbecoming.   MACBETH. Tonight we hold a solemn supper, sir,     And I\'ll request your presence.   BANQUO. Let your Highness     Command upon me, to the which my duties     Are with a most indissoluble tie     Forever knit.   MACBETH. Ride you this afternoon?   BANQUO. Ay, my good lord.   MACBETH. We should have else desired your good advice,     Which still hath been both grave and prosperous     In this day\'s council; but we\'ll take tomorrow.     Is\'t far you ride\'!   BANQUO. As far, my lord, as will fill up the time     \'Twixt this and supper. Go not my horse the better,     I must become a borrower of the night     For a dark hour or twain.   MACBETH. Fail not our feast.   BANQUO. My lord, I will not.   MACBETH. We hear our bloody cousins are bestow\'d       In England and in Ireland, not confessing     Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers     With strange invention. But of that tomorrow,     When therewithal we shall have cause of state     Craving us jointly. Hie you to horse; adieu,     Till you return at night. Goes Fleance with you?   BANQUO. Ay, my good lord. Our time does call upon \'s.   MACBETH. I wish your horses swift and sure of foot,     And so I do commend you to their backs.     Farewell.                                       Exit Banquo.     Let every man be master of his time     Till seven at night; to make society     The sweeter welcome, we will keep ourself     Till supper time alone. While then, God be with you!                         Exeunt all but Macbeth and an Attendant.     Sirrah, a word with you. Attend those men     Our pleasure?   ATTENDANT. They are, my lord, without the palace gate.   MACBETH. Bring them before us.                 Exit Attendant.     To be thus is nothing,       But to be safely thus. Our fears in Banquo.     Stick deep, and in his royalty of nature     Reigns that which would be fear\'d. \'Tis much he dares,     And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,     He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valor     To act in safety. There is none but he     Whose being I do fear; and under him     My genius is rebuked, as it is said     Mark Antony\'s was by Caesar. He chid the sisters     When first they put the name of King upon me     And bade them speak to him; then prophet-like     They hail\'d him father to a line of kings.     Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown     And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,     Thence to be wrench\'d with an unlineal hand,     No son of mine succeeding. If\'t be so,     For Banquo\'s issue have I filed my mind,     For them the gracious Duncan have I murther\'d,     Put rancors in the vessel of my peace     Only for them, and mine eternal jewel       Given to the common enemy of man,     To make them kings -the seed of Banquo kings!     Rather than so, come, Fate, into the list,     And champion me to the utterance! Who\'s there?          Re-enter Attendant, with two Murtherers.      Now go to the door, and stay there till we call.                                                  Exit Attendant.     Was it not yesterday we spoke together?   FIRST MURTHERER. It was, so please your Highness.   MACBETH. Well then, now     Have you consider\'d of my speeches? Know     That it was he in the times past which held you     So under fortune, which you thought had been     Our innocent self? This I made good to you     In our last conference, pass\'d in probation with you:     How you were borne in hand, how cross\'d, the instruments,     Who wrought with them, and all things else that might     To half a soul and to a notion crazed       Say, "Thus did Banquo."   FIRST MURTHERER. You made it known to us.   MACBETH. I did so, and went further, which is now     Our point of second meeting. Do you find     Your patience so predominant in your nature,     That you can let this go? Are you so gospel\'d,     To pray for this good man and for his issue,     Whose heavy hand hath bow\'d you to the grave     And beggar\'d yours forever?   FIRST MURTHERER. We are men, my liege.   MACBETH. Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men,     As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,     Shoughs, waterrugs, and demi-wolves are clept     All by the name of dogs. The valued file     Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,     The housekeeper, the hunter, every one     According to the gift which bounteous nature     Hath in him closed, whereby he does receive     Particular addition, from the bill     That writes them all alike; and so of men.       Now if you have a station in the file,     Not i\' the worst rank of manhood, say it,     And I will put that business in your bosoms     Whose execution takes your enemy off,     Grapples you to the heart and love of us,     Who wear our health but sickly in his life,     Which in his death were perfect.   SECOND MURTHERER. I am one, my liege,     Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world     Have so incensed that I am reckless what     I do to spite the world.   FIRST MURTHERER. And I another     So weary with disasters, tugg\'d with fortune,     That I would set my life on any chance,     To mend it or be rid on\'t.   MACBETH. Both of you     Know Banquo was your enemy.   BOTH MURTHERERS. True, my lord.   MACBETH. So is he mine, and in such bloody distance     That every minute of his being thrusts       Against my near\'st of life; and though I could     With barefaced power sweep him from my sight     And bid my will avouch it, yet I must not,     For certain friends that are both his and mine,     Whose loves I may not drop, but wail his fall     Who I myself struck down. And thence it is     That I to your assistance do make love,     Masking the business from the common eye     For sundry weighty reasons.   SECOND MURTHERER. We shall, my lord,     Perform what you command us.   FIRST MURTHERER. Though our lives-   MACBETH. Your spirits shine through you. Within this hour at most     I will advise you where to plant yourselves,     Acquaint you with the perfect spy o\' the time,     The moment on\'t; fort must be done tonight     And something from the palace (always thought     That I require a clearness); and with him-     To leave no rubs nor botches in the work-     Fleance his son, that keeps him company,       Whose absence is no less material to me     Than is his father\'s, must embrace the fate     Of that dark hour. Resolve yourselves apart;     I\'ll come to you anon.   BOTH MURTHERERS. We are resolved, my lord.   MACBETH. I\'ll call upon you straight. Abide within.                                               Exeunt Murtherers.     It is concluded: Banquo, thy soul\'s flight,     If it find heaven, must find it out tonight.           Exit.     SCENE II. The palace.  Enter Lady Macbeth and a Servant.    LADY MACBETH. Is Banquo gone from court?   SERVANT. Ay, madam, but returns again tonight.   LADY MACBETH. Say to the King I would attend his leisure     For a few words.   SERVANT. Madam, I will.                                  Exit.   LADY MACBETH. Nought\'s had, all\'s spent,     Where our desire is got without content.     \'Tis safer to be that which we destroy     Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.                      Enter Macbeth.      How now, my lord? Why do you keep alone,     Of sorriest fancies your companions making,     Using those thoughts which should indeed have died     With them they think on? Things without all remedy     Should be without regard. What\'s done is done.     MACBETH. We have scotch\'d the snake, not kill\'d it.     She\'ll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice     Remains in danger of her former tooth.     But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,     Ere we will eat our meal in fear and sleep     In the affliction of these terrible dreams     That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead,     Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,     Than on the torture of the mind to lie     In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;     After life\'s fitful fever he sleeps well.     Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,     Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,     Can touch him further.   LADY MACBETH. Come on,     Gentle my lord, sleek o\'er your rugged looks;     Be bright and jovial among your guests tonight.   MACBETH. So shall I, love, and so, I pray, be you.     Let your remembrance apply to Banquo;     Present him eminence, both with eye and tongue:       Unsafe the while, that we     Must lave our honors in these flattering streams,     And make our faces vizards to our hearts,     Disguising what they are.   LADY MACBETH. You must leave this.   MACBETH. O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!     Thou know\'st that Banquo and his Fleance lives.   LADY MACBETH. But in them nature\'s copy\'s not eterne.   MACBETH. There\'s comfort yet; they are assailable.     Then be thou jocund. Ere the bat hath flown     His cloister\'d flight, ere to black Hecate\'s summons     The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums     Hath rung night\'s yawning peal, there shall be done     A deed of dreadful note.   LADY MACBETH. What\'s to be done?   MACBETH. Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,     Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night,     Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,     And with thy bloody and invisible hand     Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond       Which keeps me pale! Light thickens, and the crow     Makes wing to the rooky wood;     Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,     Whiles night\'s black agents to their preys do rouse.     Thou marvel\'st at my words, but hold thee still:     Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.     So, prithee, go with me.                             Exeunt.     SCENE III. A park near the palace.  Enter three Murtherers.    FIRST MURTHERER. But who did bid thee join with us?   THIRD MURTHERER. Macbeth.   SECOND MURTHERER. He needs not our mistrust, since he delivers     Our offices and what we have to do     To the direction just.   FIRST MURTHERER. Then stand with us.     The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day;     Now spurs the lated traveler apace     To gain the timely inn, and near approaches     The subject of our watch.   THIRD MURTHERER. Hark! I hear horses.   BANQUO. [Within.] Give us a light there, ho!   SECOND MURTHERER. Then \'tis he; the rest     That are within the note of expectation     Already are i\' the court.   FIRST MURTHERER. His horses go about.   THIRD MURTHERER. Almost a mile, but he does usually-       So all men do -from hence to the palace gate     Make it their walk.   SECOND MURTHERER. A light, a light!                Enter Banquo, and Fleance with a torch.    THIRD MURTHERER. \'Tis he.   FIRST MURTHERER. Stand to\'t.   BANQUO. It will be rain tonight.   FIRST MURTHERER. Let it come down.                                            They set upon Banquo.   BANQUO. O, treachery! Fly, good Fleance, fly, fly, fly!     Thou mayst revenge. O slave!          Dies. Fleance escapes.   THIRD MURTHERER. Who did strike out the light?   FIRST MURTHERER. Wast not the way?   THIRD MURTHERER. There\'s but one down; the son is fled.   SECOND MURTHERER. We have lost     Best half of our affair.   FIRST MURTHERER. Well, let\'s away and say how much is done.                                                          Exeunt.     SCENE IV. A Hall in the palace. A banquet prepared.  Enter Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Ross, Lennox, Lords, and Attendants.    MACBETH. You know your own degrees; sit down. At first     And last the hearty welcome.   LORDS. Thanks to your Majesty.   MACBETH. Ourself will mingle with society     And play the humble host.     Our hostess keeps her state, but in best time     We will require her welcome.   LADY MACBETH. Pronounce it for me, sir, to all our friends,     For my heart speaks they are welcome.                  Enter first Murtherer to the door.    MACBETH. See, they encounter thee with their hearts\' thanks.     Both sides are even; here I\'ll sit i\' the midst.     Be large in mirth; anon we\'ll drink a measure     The table round. [Approaches the door.] There\'s blood upon thy         face.   MURTHERER. \'Tis Banquo\'s then.   MACBETH. \'Tis better thee without than he within.     Is he dispatch\'d?   MURTHERER. My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him.   MACBETH. Thou art the best o\' the cut-throats! Yet he\'s good     That did the like for Fleance. If thou didst it,     Thou art the nonpareil.   MURTHERER. Most royal sir,     Fleance is \'scaped.   MACBETH. [Aside.] Then comes my fit again. I had else been perfect,     Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,     As broad and general as the casing air;     But now I am cabin\'d, cribb\'d, confin\'d, bound in     To saucy doubts and fears -But Banquo\'s safe?   MURTHERER. Ay, my good lord. Safe in a ditch he bides,     With twenty trenched gashes on his head,     The least a death to nature.   MACBETH. Thanks for that.     There the grown serpent lies; the worm that\'s fled       Hath nature that in time will venom breed,     No teeth for the present. Get thee gone. Tomorrow     We\'ll hear ourselves again.                                                  Exit Murtherer.   LADY MACBETH. My royal lord,     You do not give the cheer. The feast is sold     That is not often vouch\'d, while \'tis amaking,     \'Tis given with welcome. To feed were best at home;     From thence the sauce to meat is ceremony;     Meeting were bare without it.   MACBETH. Sweet remembrancer!     Now good digestion wait on appetite,     And health on both!   LENNOX. May\'t please your Highness sit.        The Ghost of Banquo enters and sits in Macbeth\'s place.    MACBETH. Here had we now our country\'s honor roof\'d,     Were the graced person of our Banquo present,     Who may I rather challenge for unkindness       Than pity for mischance!   ROSS. His absence, sir,     Lays blame upon his promise. Please\'t your Highness     To grace us with your royal company?   MACBETH. The table\'s full.   LENNOX. Here is a place reserved, sir.   MACBETH. Where?   LENNOX. Here, my good lord. What is\'t that moves your Highness?   MACBETH. Which of you have done this?   LORDS. What, my good lord?   MACBETH. Thou canst not say I did it; never shake     Thy gory locks at me.   ROSS. Gentlemen, rise; his Highness is well.   LADY MACBETH. Sit, worthy friends; my lord is often thus,     And hath been from his youth. Pray you, keep seat.     The fit is momentary; upon a thought     He will again be well. If much you note him,     You shall offend him and extend his passion.     Feed, and regard him not-Are you a man?   MACBETH. Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that       Which might appal the devil.   LADY MACBETH. O proper stuff!     This is the very painting of your fear;     This is the air-drawn dagger which you said     Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts,     Impostors to true fear, would well become     A woman\'s story at a winter\'s fire,     Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself!     Why do you make such faces? When all\'s done,     You look but on a stool.   MACBETH. Prithee, see there! Behold! Look! Lo! How say you?     Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.     If charnel houses and our graves must send     Those that we bury back, our monuments     Shall be the maws of kites.                      Exit Ghost.   LADY MACBETH. What, quite unmann\'d in folly?   MACBETH. If I stand here, I saw him.   LADY MACBETH. Fie, for shame!   MACBETH. Blood hath been shed ere now, i\' the olden time,     Ere humane statute purged the gentle weal;       Ay, and since too, murthers have been perform\'d     Too terrible for the ear. The time has been,     That, when the brains were out, the man would die,     And there an end; but now they rise again,     With twenty mortal murthers on their crowns,     And push us from our stools. This is more strange     Than such a murther is.   LADY MACBETH. My worthy lord,     Your noble friends do lack you.   MACBETH. I do forget.     Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends.     I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing     To those that know me. Come, love and health to all;     Then I\'ll sit down. Give me some wine, fill full.     I drink to the general joy o\' the whole table,     And to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss.     Would he were here! To all and him we thirst,     And all to all.   LORDS. Our duties and the pledge.                         Re-enter Ghost.    MACBETH. Avaunt, and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!     Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;     Thou hast no speculation in those eyes     Which thou dost glare with.   LADY MACBETH. Think of this, good peers,     But as a thing of custom. \'Tis no other,     Only it spoils the pleasure of the time.   MACBETH. What man dare, I dare.     Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,     The arm\'d rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger;     Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves     Shall never tremble. Or be alive again,     And dare me to the desert with thy sword.     If trembling I inhabit then, protest me     The baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow!     Unreal mockery, hence!                           Exit Ghost.     Why, so, being gone,     I am a man again. Pray you sit still.     LADY MACBETH. You have displaced the mirth, broke the good meeting,     With most admired disorder.   MACBETH. Can such things be,     And overcome us like a summer\'s cloud,     Without our special wonder? You make me strange     Even to the disposition that I owe     When now I think you can behold such sights     And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks     When mine is blanch\'d with fear.   ROSS. What sights, my lord?   LADY MACBETH. I pray you, speak not; he grows worse and worse;     Question enrages him. At once, good night.     Stand not upon the order of your going,     But go at once.   LENNOX. Good night, and better health     Attend his Majesty!   LADY MACBETH. A kind good night to all!                         Exeunt all but Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.   MACBETH. will have blood; they say blood will have blood.     Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;       Augures and understood relations have     By maggot pies and choughs and rooks brought forth     The secret\'st man of blood. What is the night?   LADY MACBETH. Almost at odds with morning, which is which.   MACBETH. How say\'st thou, that Macduff denies his person     At our great bidding?   LADY MACBETH. Did you send to him, sir?   MACBETH. I hear it by the way, but I will send.     There\'s not a one of them but in his house     I keep a servant feed. I will tomorrow,     And betimes I will, to the weird sisters.     More shall they speak; for now I am bent to know,     By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good     All causes shall give way. I am in blood     Stepp\'d in so far that, should I wade no more,     Returning were as tedious as go o\'er.     Strange things I have in head that will to hand,     Which must be acted ere they may be scann\'d.   LADY MACBETH. You lack the season of all natures, sleep.   MACBETH. Come, we\'ll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse       Is the initiate fear that wants hard use.     We are yet but young in deed.                       Exeunt.     SCENE V. A heath. Thunder.  Enter the three Witches, meeting Hecate.    FIRST WITCH. Why, how now, Hecate? You look angerly.   HECATE. Have I not reason, beldams as you are,     Saucy and overbold? How did you dare     To trade and traffic with Macbeth     In riddles and affairs of death,     And I, the mistress of your charms,     The close contriver of all harms,     Was never call\'d to bear my part,     Or show the glory of our art?     And, which is worse, all you have done     Hath been but for a wayward son,     Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do,     Loves for his own ends, not for you.     But make amends now. Get you gone,     And at the pit of Acheron     Meet me i\' the morning. Thither he     Will come to know his destiny.       Your vessels and your spells provide,     Your charms and everything beside.     I am for the air; this night I\'ll spend     Unto a dismal and a fatal end.     Great business must be wrought ere noon:     Upon the corner of the moon     There hangs a vaporous drop profound;     I\'ll catch it ere it come to ground.     And that distill\'d by magic sleights     Shall raise such artificial sprites     As by the strength of their illusion     Shall draw him on to his confusion.     He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear     His hopes \'bove wisdom, grace, and fear.     And you all know security     Is mortals\' chiefest enemy.                                         Music and a song within,                                          "Come away, come away."     Hark! I am call\'d; my little spirit, see,     Sits in a foggy cloud and stays for me.                Exit.     FIRST WITCH. Come, let\'s make haste; she\'ll soon be back again.                                                          Exeunt.     SCENE VI. Forres. The palace.  Enter Lennox and another Lord.    LENNOX. My former speeches have but hit your thoughts,     Which can interpret farther; only I say     Thing\'s have been strangely borne. The gracious Duncan     Was pitied of Macbeth; marry, he was dead.     And the right valiant Banquo walk\'d too late,     Whom, you may say, if\'t please you, Fleance kill\'d,     For Fleance fled. Men must not walk too late.     Who cannot want the thought, how monstrous     It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain     To kill their gracious father? Damned fact!     How it did grieve Macbeth! Did he not straight,     In pious rage, the two delinquents tear     That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep?     Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too,     For \'twould have anger\'d any heart alive     To hear the men deny\'t. So that, I say,     He has borne all things well; and I do think       That, had he Duncan\'s sons under his key-     As, an\'t please heaven, he shall not -they should find     What \'twere to kill a father; so should Fleance.     But, peace! For from broad words, and \'cause he fail\'d     His presence at the tyrant\'s feast, I hear,     Macduff lives in disgrace. Sir, can you tell     Where he bestows himself?   LORD. The son of Duncan,     From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth,     Lives in the English court and is received     Of the most pious Edward with such grace     That the malevolence of fortune nothing     Takes from his high respect. Thither Macduff     Is gone to pray the holy King, upon his aid     To wake Northumberland and warlike Siward;     That by the help of these, with Him above     To ratify the work, we may again     Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights,     Free from our feasts and banquets bloody knives,     Do faithful homage, and receive free honors-       All which we pine for now. And this report     Hath so exasperate the King that he     Prepares for some attempt of war.   LENNOX. Sent he to Macduff?   LORD. He did, and with an absolute "Sir, not I,"     The cloudy messenger turns me his back,     And hums, as who should say, "You\'ll rue the time     That clogs me with this answer."   LENNOX. And that well might     Advise him to a caution, to hold what distance     His wisdom can provide. Some holy angel     Fly to the court of England and unfold     His message ere he come, that a swift blessing     May soon return to this our suffering country     Under a hand accursed!   LORD. I\'ll send my prayers with him.                                                          Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron. Thunder.  Enter the three Witches.   FIRST WITCH. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew\'d.   SECOND WITCH. Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.   THIRD WITCH. Harpier cries, "\'Tis time, \'tis time."   FIRST WITCH. Round about the cauldron go;     In the poison\'d entrails throw.     Toad, that under cold stone     Days and nights has thirty-one     Swelter\'d venom sleeping got,     Boil thou first i\' the charmed pot.   ALL. Double, double, toil and trouble;     Fire burn and cauldron bubble.   SECOND WITCH. Fillet of a fenny snake,     In the cauldron boil and bake;     Eye of newt and toe of frog,     Wool of bat and tongue of dog,     Adder\'s fork and blind-worm\'s sting,     Lizard\'s leg and howlet\'s wing,     For a charm of powerful trouble,       Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.   ALL. Double, double, toil and trouble;     Fire burn and cauldron bubble.   THIRD WITCH. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,     Witch\'s mummy, maw and gulf     Of the ravin\'d salt-sea shark,     Root of hemlock digg\'d i\' the dark,     Liver of blaspheming Jew,     Gall of goat and slips of yew     Sliver\'d in the moon\'s eclipse,     Nose of Turk and Tartar\'s lips,     Finger of birth-strangled babe     Ditch-deliver\'d by a drab,     Make the gruel thick and slab.     Add thereto a tiger\'s chawdron,     For the ingredients of our cawdron.   ALL. Double, double, toil and trouble;     Fire burn and cauldron bubble.   SECOND WITCH. Cool it with a baboon\'s blood,     Then the charm is firm and good.                Enter Hecate to the other three Witches.    HECATE. O, well done! I commend your pains,     And everyone shall share i\' the gains.     And now about the cauldron sing,     Like elves and fairies in a ring,     Enchanting all that you put in.                               Music and a song, "Black spirits."                                                  Hecate retires.   SECOND WITCH. By the pricking of my thumbs,     Something wicked this way comes.     Open, locks,     Whoever knocks!                        Enter Macbeth.    MACBETH. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags?     What is\'t you do?   ALL. A deed without a name.     MACBETH. I conjure you, by that which you profess     (Howeer you come to know it) answer me:     Though you untie the winds and let them fight     Against the churches, though the yesty waves     Confound and swallow navigation up,     Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down,     Though castles topple on their warders\' heads,     Though palaces and pyramids do slope     Their heads to their foundations, though the treasure     Of nature\'s germaines tumble all together     Even till destruction sicken, answer me     To what I ask you.   FIRST WITCH. Speak.   SECOND WITCH. Demand.   THIRD WITCH. We\'ll answer.   FIRST WITCH. Say, if thou\'dst rather hear it from our mouths,     Or from our masters\'?   MACBETH. Call \'em, let me see \'em.   FIRST WITCH. Pour in sow\'s blood that hath eaten     Her nine farrow; grease that\'s sweaten       From the murtherer\'s gibbet throw     Into the flame.   ALL. Come, high or low;     Thyself and office deftly show!              Thunder. First Apparition: an armed Head.    MACBETH. Tell me, thou unknown power-   FIRST WITCH. He knows thy thought:     Hear his speech, but say thou nought.   FIRST APPARITION. Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Beware Macduff,     Beware the Thane of Fife. Dismiss me. Enough.                                                        Descends.   MACBETH. Whate\'er thou art, for thy good caution, thanks;     Thou hast harp\'d my fear aright. But one word more-   FIRST WITCH. He will not be commanded. Here\'s another,     More potent than the first.            Thunder. Second Apparition: a bloody Child.      SECOND APPARITION. Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!   MACBETH. Had I three ears, I\'d hear thee.   SECOND APPARITION. Be bloody, bold, and resolute: laugh to scorn     The power of man, for none of woman born     Shall harm Macbeth.                                Descends.   MACBETH. Then live, Macduff. What need I fear of thee?     But yet I\'ll make assurance double sure,     And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live,     That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies,     And sleep in spite of thunder.         Thunder. Third Apparition: a Child crowned,                with a tree in his hand.      What is this,     That rises like the issue of a king,     And wears upon his baby brow the round     And top of sovereignty?   ALL. Listen, but speak not to\'t.   THIRD APPARITION. Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care       Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are.     Macbeth shall never vanquish\'d be until     Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill     Shall come against him.                            Descends.   MACBETH. That will never be.     Who can impress the forest, bid the tree     Unfix his earth-bound root? Sweet bodements, good!     Rebellion\'s head, rise never till the Wood     Of Birnam rise, and our high-placed Macbeth     Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath     To time and mortal custom. Yet my heart     Throbs to know one thing: tell me, if your art     Can tell so much, shall Banquo\'s issue ever     Reign in this kingdom?   ALL. Seek to know no more.   MACBETH. I will be satisfied! Deny me this,     And an eternal curse fall on you! Let me know.     Why sinks that cauldron, and what noise is this?                                                        Hautboys.   FIRST WITCH. Show!     SECOND WITCH. Show!   THIRD. WITCH. Show!   ALL. Show his eyes, and grieve his heart;     Come like shadows, so depart!      A show of eight Kings, the last with a glass in his hand;                    Banquo\'s Ghost following.    MACBETH. Thou are too like the spirit of Banquo Down!     Thy crown does sear mine eyeballs. And thy hair,     Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first.     A third is like the former. Filthy hags!     Why do you show me this? A fourth! Start, eyes!     What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?     Another yet! A seventh! I\'ll see no more!     And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass     Which shows me many more; and some I see     That twofold balls and treble sceptres carry.     Horrible sight! Now I see \'tis true;     For the blood-bolter\'d Banquo smiles upon me,       And points at them for his. What, is this so?   FIRST WITCH. Ay, sir, all this is so. But why     Stands Macbeth thus amazedly?     Come,sisters, cheer we up his sprites,     And show the best of our delights.     I\'ll charm the air to give a sound,     While you perform your antic round,     That this great King may kindly say     Our duties did his welcome pay.                                     Music. The Witches dance and                                         then vanish with Hecate.   MACBETH. are they? Gone? Let this pernicious hour     Stand ay accursed in the calendar!     Come in, without there!                      Enter Lennox.    LENNOX. What\'s your Grace\'s will?   MACBETH. Saw you the weird sisters?   LENNOX. No, my lord.     MACBETH. Came they not by you?   LENNOX. No indeed, my lord.   MACBETH. Infected be the \'air whereon they ride,     And damn\'d all those that trust them! I did hear     The galloping of horse. Who wast came by?   LENNOX. \'Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word     Macduff is fled to England.   MACBETH. Fled to England?   LENNOX. Ay, my good lord.   MACBETH. [Aside.] Time, thou anticipatest my dread exploits.     The flighty purpose never is o\'ertook     Unless the deed go with it. From this moment     The very firstlings of my heart shall be     The firstlings of my hand. And even now,     To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done:     The castle of Macduff I will surprise,     Seize upon Fife, give to the edge o\' the sword     His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls     That trace him in his line. No boasting like a fool;     This deed I\'ll do before this purpose cool.       But no more sights! -Where are these gentlemen?     Come, bring me where they are.                       Exeunt.     SCENE II. Fife. Macduff\'s castle.  Enter Lady Macduff, her Son, and Ross.    LADY MACDUFF. What had he done, to make him fly the land?   ROSS. You must have patience, madam.   LADY MACDUFF. He had none;     His flight was madness. When our actions do not,     Our fears do make us traitors.   ROSS. You know not     Whether it was his wisdom or his fear.   LADY MACDUFF. Wisdom? To leave his wife, to leave his babes,     His mansion, and his titles, in a place     From whence himself does fly? He loves us not;     He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren,     The most diminutive of birds, will fight,     Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.     All is the fear and nothing is the love;     As little is the wisdom, where the flight     So runs against all reason.   ROSS. My dearest coz,       I pray you, school yourself. But for your husband,     He is noble, wise, Judicious, and best knows     The fits o\' the season. I dare not speak much further;     But cruel are the times when we are traitors     And do not know ourselves; when we hold rumor     From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,     But float upon a wild and violent sea     Each way and move. I take my leave of you;     Shall not be long but I\'ll be here again.     Things at the worst will cease or else climb upward     To what they were before. My pretty cousin,     Blessing upon you!   LADY MACDUFF. Father\'d he is, and yet he\'s fatherless.   ROSS. I am so much a fool, should I stay longer,     It would be my disgrace and your discomfort.     I take my leave at once.                               Exit.   LADY MACDUFF. Sirrah, your father\'s dead.     And what will you do now? How will you live?   SON. As birds do, Mother.   LADY MACDUFF. What, with worms and flies?     SON. With what I get, I mean; and so do they.   LADY MACDUFF. Poor bird! Thou\'ldst never fear the net nor lime,     The pitfall nor the gin.   SON. Why should I, Mother? Poor birds they are not set for.     My father is not dead, for all your saying.   LADY MACDUFF. Yes, he is dead. How wilt thou do for father?   SON. Nay, how will you do for a husband?   LADY MACDUFF. Why, I can buy me twenty at any market.   SON. Then you\'ll buy \'em to sell again.   LADY MACDUFF. Thou speak\'st with all thy wit, and yet, i\' faith,     With wit enough for thee.   SON. Was my father a traitor, Mother?   LADY MACDUFF. Ay, that he was.   SON. What is a traitor?   LADY MACDUFF. Why one that swears and lies.   SON. And be all traitors that do so?   LADY MACDUFF. Everyone that does so is a traitor and must be      hanged.   SON. And must they all be hanged that swear and lie?   LADY MACDUFF. Everyone.     SON. Who must hang them?   LADY MACDUFF. Why, the honest men.   SON. Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and     swearers enow to beat the honest men and hang up them.   LADY MACDUFF. Now, God help thee, poor monkey! But how wilt thou do     for a father?   SON. If he were dead, you\'ld weep for him; if you would not, it     were a good sign that I should quickly have a new father.   LADY MACDUFF. Poor prattler, how thou talk\'st!                      Enter a Messenger.    MESSENGER. Bless you, fair dame! I am not to you known,     Though in your state of honor I am perfect.     I doubt some danger does approach you nearly.     If you will take a homely man\'s advice,     Be not found here; hence, with your little ones.     To fright you thus, methinks I am too savage;     To do worse to you were fell cruelty,     Which is too nigh your person. Heaven preserve you!       I dare abide no longer.                                Exit.   LADY MACDUFF. Whither should I fly?     I have done no harm. But I remember now     I am in this earthly world, where to do harm     Is often laudable, to do good sometime     Accounted dangerous folly. Why then, alas,     Do I put up that womanly defense,     To say I have done no harm -What are these faces?                        Enter Murtherers.    FIRST MURTHERER. Where is your husband?   LADY MACDUFF. I hope, in no place so unsanctified     Where such as thou mayst find him.   FIRST MURTHERER. He\'s a traitor.   SON. Thou liest, thou shag-ear\'d villain!   FIRST MURTHERER. What, you egg!                                                       Stabs him.     Young fry of treachery!   SON. He has kill\'d me, Mother.       Run away, I pray you!                                  Dies.                             Exit Lady Macduff, crying "Murther!"                                Exeunt Murtherers, following her.     SCENE III. England. Before the King\'s palace.  Enter Malcolm and Macduff.    MALCOLM. Let us seek out some desolate shade and there     Weep our sad bosoms empty.   MACDUFF. Let us rather     Hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men     Bestride our downfall\'n birthdom. Each new morn     New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows     Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds     As if it felt with Scotland and yell\'d out     Like syllable of dolor.   MALCOLM. What I believe, I\'ll wall;     What know, believe; and what I can redress,     As I shall find the time to friend, I will.     What you have spoke, it may be so perchance.     This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,     Was once thought honest. You have loved him well;     He hath not touch\'d you yet. I am young, but something     You may deserve of him through me, and wisdom       To offer up a weak, poor, innocent lamb     To appease an angry god.   MACDUFF. I am not treacherous.   MALCOLM. But Macbeth is.     A good and virtuous nature may recoil     In an imperial charge. But I shall crave your pardon;     That which you are, my thoughts cannot transpose.     Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.     Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,     Yet grace must still look so.   MACDUFF. I have lost my hopes.   MALCOLM. Perchance even there where I did find my doubts.     Why in that rawness left you wife and child,     Those precious motives, those strong knots of love,     Without leave-taking? I pray you,     Let not my jealousies be your dishonors,     But mine own safeties. You may be rightly just,     Whatever I shall think.   MACDUFF. Bleed, bleed, poor country!     Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,       For goodness dare not check thee. Wear thou thy wrongs;     The title is affeer\'d. Fare thee well, lord.     I would not be the villain that thou think\'st     For the whole space that\'s in the tyrant\'s grasp     And the rich East to boot.   MALCOLM. Be not offended;     I speak not as in absolute fear of you.     I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;     It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash     Is added to her wounds. I think withal     There would be hands uplifted in my right;     And here from gracious England have I offer     Of goodly thousands. But for all this,     When I shall tread upon the tyrant\'s head,     Or wear it on my sword, yet my poor country     Shall have more vices than it had before,     More suffer and more sundry ways than ever,     By him that shall succeed.   MACDUFF. What should he be?   MALCOLM. It is myself I mean, in whom I know       All the particulars of vice so grafted     That, when they shall be open\'d, black Macbeth     Will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state     Esteem him as a lamb, being compared     With my confineless harms.   MACDUFF. Not in the legions     Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn\'d     In evils to top Macbeth.   MALCOLM. I grant him bloody,     Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,     Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin     That has a name. But there\'s no bottom, none,     In my voluptuousness. Your wives, your daughters,     Your matrons, and your maids could not fill up     The cestern of my lust, and my desire     All continent impediments would o\'erbear     That did oppose my will. Better Macbeth     Than such an one to reign.   MACDUFF. Boundless intemperance     In nature is a tyranny; it hath been       The untimely emptying of the happy throne,     And fall of many kings. But fear not yet     To take upon you what is yours. You may     Convey your pleasures in a spacious plenty     And yet seem cold, the time you may so hoodwink.     We have willing dames enough; there cannot be     That vulture in you to devour so many     As will to greatness dedicate themselves,     Finding it so inclined.   MALCOLM. With this there grows     In my most ill-composed affection such     A stanchless avarice that, were I King,     I should cut off the nobles for their lands,     Desire his jewels and this other\'s house,     And my more-having would be as a sauce     To make me hunger more, that I should forge     Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal,     Destroying them for wealth.   MACDUFF. This avarice     Sticks deeper, grows with more pernicious root       Than summer-seeming lust, and it hath been     The sword of our slain kings. Yet do not fear;     Scotland hath foisons to fill up your will     Of your mere own. All these are portable,     With other graces weigh\'d.   MALCOLM. But I have none. The king-becoming graces,     As justice, verity, temperance, stableness,     Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,     Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,     I have no relish of them, but abound     In the division of each several crime,     Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should     Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,     Uproar the universal peace, confound     All unity on earth.   MACDUFF. O Scotland, Scotland!   MALCOLM. If such a one be fit to govern, speak.     I am as I have spoken.   MACDUFF. Fit to govern?     No, not to live. O nation miserable!       With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter\'d,     When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again,     Since that the truest issue of thy throne     By his own interdiction stands accursed     And does blaspheme his breed? Thy royal father     Was a most sainted king; the queen that bore thee,     Oftener upon her knees than on her feet,     Died every day she lived. Fare thee well!     These evils thou repeat\'st upon thyself     Have banish\'d me from Scotland. O my breast,     Thy hope ends here!   MALCOLM. Macduff, this noble passion,     Child of integrity, hath from my soul     Wiped the black scruples, reconciled my thoughts     To thy good truth and honor. Devilish Macbeth     By many of these trains hath sought to win me     Into his power, and modest wisdom plucks me     From over-credulous haste. But God above     Deal between thee and me! For even now     I put myself to thy direction and       Unspeak mine own detraction; here abjure     The taints and blames I laid upon myself,     For strangers to my nature. I am yet     Unknown to woman, never was forsworn,     Scarcely have coveted what was mine own,     At no time broke my faith, would not betray     The devil to his fellow, and delight     No less in truth than life. My first false speaking     Was this upon myself. What I am truly     Is thine and my poor country\'s to command.     Whither indeed, before thy here-approach,     Old Siward, with ten thousand warlike men     Already at a point, was setting forth.     Now we\'ll together, and the chance of goodness     Be like our warranted quarrel! Why are you silent?   MACDUFF. Such welcome and unwelcome things at once     \'Tis hard to reconcile.                       Enter a Doctor.      MALCOLM. Well, more anon. Comes the King forth, I pray you?   DOCTOR. Ay, sir, there are a crew of wretched souls     That stay his cure. Their malady convinces     The great assay of art, but at his touch,     Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand,     They presently amend.   MALCOLM. I thank you, Doctor.                     Exit Doctor.   MACDUFF. What\'s the disease he means?   MALCOLM. \'Tis call\'d the evil:     A most miraculous work in this good King,     Which often, since my here-remain in England,     I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven,     Himself best knows; but strangely-visited people,     All swol\'n and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye,     The mere despair of surgery, he cures,     Hanging a golden stamp about their necks     Put on with holy prayers; and \'tis spoken,     To the succeeding royalty he leaves     The healing benediction. With this strange virtue     He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy,       And sundry blessings hang about his throne     That speak him full of grace.                      Enter Ross.    MACDUFF. See, who comes here?   MALCOLM. My countryman, but yet I know him not.   MACDUFF. My ever gentle cousin, welcome hither.   MALCOLM. I know him now. Good God, betimes remove     The means that makes us strangers!   ROSS. Sir, amen.   MACDUFF. Stands Scotland where it did?   ROSS. Alas, poor country,     Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot     Be call\'d our mother, but our grave. Where nothing,     But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;     Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air,     Are made, not mark\'d; where violent sorrow seems     A modern ecstasy. The dead man\'s knell     Is there scarce ask\'d for who, and good men\'s lives       Expire before the flowers in their caps,     Dying or ere they sicken.   MACDUFF. O, relation     Too nice, and yet too true!   MALCOLM. What\'s the newest grief?   ROSS. That of an hour\'s age doth hiss the speaker;     Each minute teems a new one.   MACDUFF. How does my wife?   ROSS. Why, well.   MACDUFF. And all my children?   ROSS. Well too.   MACDUFF. The tyrant has not batter\'d at their peace?   ROSS. No, they were well at peace when I did leave \'em.   MACDUFF. Be not a niggard of your speech. How goest?   ROSS. When I came hither to transport the tidings,     Which I have heavily borne, there ran a rumor     Of many worthy fellows that were out,     Which was to my belief witness\'d the rather,     For that I saw the tyrant\'s power afoot.     Now is the time of help; your eye in Scotland       Would create soldiers, make our women fight,     To doff their dire distresses.   MALCOLM. Be\'t their comfort     We are coming thither. Gracious England hath     Lent us good Siward and ten thousand men;     An older and a better soldier none     That Christendom gives out.   ROSS. Would I could answer     This comfort with the like! But I have words     That would be howl\'d out in the desert air,     Where hearing should not latch them.   MACDUFF. What concern they?     The general cause? Or is it a fee-grief     Due to some single breast?   ROSS. No mind that\'s honest     But in it shares some woe, though the main part     Pertains to you alone.   MACDUFF. If it be mine,     Keep it not from me, quickly let me have it.   ROSS. Let not your ears despise my tongue forever,       Which shall possess them with the heaviest sound     That ever yet they heard.   MACDUFF. Humh! I guess at it.   ROSS. Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes     Savagely slaughter\'d. To relate the manner     Were, on the quarry of these murther\'d deer,     To add the death of you.   MALCOLM. Merciful heaven!     What, man! Neer pull your hat upon your brows;     Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak     Whispers the o\'erfraught heart, and bids it break.   MACDUFF. My children too?   ROSS. Wife, children, servants, all     That could be found.   MACDUFF. And I must be from thence!     My wife kill\'d too?   ROSS. I have said.   MALCOLM. Be comforted.     Let\'s make us medicines of our great revenge,     To cure this deadly grief.     MACDUFF. He has no children. All my pretty ones?     Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?     What, all my pretty chickens and their dam     At one fell swoop?   MALCOLM. Dispute it like a man.   MACDUFF. I shall do so,     But I must also feel it as a man.     I cannot but remember such things were     That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on,     And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff,     They were all struck for thee! Naught that I am,     Not for their own demerits, but for mine,     Fell slaughter on their souls. Heaven rest them now!   MALCOLM. Be this the whetstone of your sword. Let grief     Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.   MACDUFF. O, I could play the woman with mine eyes     And braggart with my tongue! But, gentle heavens,     Cut short all intermission; front to front     Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;     Within my sword\'s length set him; if he \'scape,       Heaven forgive him too!   MALCOLM. This tune goes manly.     Come, go we to the King; our power is ready,     Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth     Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above     Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may,     The night is long that never finds the day.          Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. Dunsinane. Anteroom in the castle.  Enter a Doctor of Physic and a Waiting Gentlewoman.    DOCTOR. I have two nights watched with you, but can perceive no     truth in your report. When was it she last walked?   GENTLEWOMAN. Since his Majesty went into the field, have seen her     rise from her bed, throw her nightgown upon her, unlock her     closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon\'t, read it,     afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while     in a most fast sleep.   DOCTOR. A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the     benefit of sleep and do the effects of watching! In this slumbery     agitation, besides her walking and other actual performances,     what, at any time, have you heard her say?   GENTLEWOMAN. That, sir, which I will not report after her.   DOCTOR. You may to me, and \'tis most meet you should.   GENTLEWOMAN. Neither to you nor anyone, having no witness to     confirm my speech.                  Enter Lady Macbeth with a taper.        Lo you, here she comes! This is her very guise, and, upon my     life, fast asleep. Observe her; stand close.   DOCTOR. How came she by that light?   GENTLEWOMAN. Why, it stood by her. She has light by her      continually; \'tis her command.   DOCTOR. You see, her eyes are open.   GENTLEWOMAN. Ay, but their sense is shut.   DOCTOR. What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands.   GENTLEWOMAN. It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus     washing her hands. I have known her continue in this a quarter of     an hour.   LADY MACBETH. Yet here\'s a spot.   DOCTOR. Hark, she speaks! I will set down what comes from her, to     satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.   LADY MACBETH. Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One- two -why then \'tis     time to do\'t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and     afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our     power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have     had so much blood in him?     DOCTOR. Do you mark that?   LADY MACBETH. The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now? What,     will these hands neer be clean? No more o\' that, my lord, no more     o\' that. You mar all with this starting.   DOCTOR. Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.   GENTLEWOMAN. She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that.     Heaven knows what she has known.   LADY MACBETH. Here\'s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes     of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!   DOCTOR. What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charged.   GENTLEWOMAN. I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the     dignity of the whole body.   DOCTOR. Well, well, well-   GENTLEWOMAN. Pray God it be, sir.   DOCTOR. This disease is beyond my practice. Yet I have known those     which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in their     beds.   LADY MACBETH. Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so     pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo\'s buried; he cannot come out     on\'s grave.     DOCTOR. Even so?   LADY MACBETH. To bed, to bed; there\'s knocking at the gate. Come,     come, come, come, give me your hand.What\'s done cannot be undone.     To bed, to bed, to bed. Exit.   DOCTOR. Will she go now to bed?   GENTLEWOMAN. Directly.   DOCTOR. Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds     Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds     To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.     More needs she the divine than the physician.     God, God, forgive us all! Look after her;     Remove from her the means of all annoyance,     And still keep eyes upon her. So good night.     My mind she has mated and amazed my sight.     I think, but dare not speak.   GENTLEWOMAN. Good night, good doctor.                                                          Exeunt.     SCENE II. The country near Dunsinane. Drum and colors.  Enter Menteith, Caithness, Angus, Lennox, and Soldiers.    MENTEITH. The English power is near, led on by Malcolm,     His uncle Siward, and the good Macduff.     Revenges burn in them, for their dear causes     Would to the bleeding and the grim alarm     Excite the mortified man.   ANGUS. Near Birnam Wood     Shall we well meet them; that way are they coming.   CAITHNESS. Who knows if Donalbain be with his brother?   LENNOX. For certain, sir, he is not; I have a file     Of all the gentry. There is Seward\'s son     And many unrough youths that even now     Protest their first of manhood.   MENTEITH. What does the tyrant?   CAITHNESS. Great Dunsinane he strongly fortifies.     Some say he\'s mad; others, that lesser hate him,     Do call it valiant fury; but, for certain,     He cannot buckle his distemper\'d cause       Within the belt of rule.   ANGUS. Now does he feel     His secret murthers sticking on his hands,     Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;     Those he commands move only in command,     Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title     Hang loose about him, like a giant\'s robe     Upon a dwarfish thief.   MENTEITH. Who then shall blame     His pester\'d senses to recoil and start,     When all that is within him does condemn     Itself for being there?   CAITHNESS. Well, march we on     To give obedience where \'tis truly owed.     Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal,     And with him pour we, in our country\'s purge,     Each drop of us.   LENNOX. Or so much as it needs     To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds.     Make we our march towards Birnam.           Exeunt marching.     SCENE III. Dunsinane. A room in the castle.  Enter Macbeth, Doctor, and Attendants.    MACBETH. Bring me no more reports; let them fly all!     Till Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane     I cannot taint with fear. What\'s the boy Malcolm?     Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know     All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:     "Fear not, Macbeth; no man that\'s born of woman     Shall e\'er have power upon thee." Then fly, false Thanes,     And mingle with the English epicures!     The mind I sway by and the heart I bear     Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.                         Enter a Servant.      The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!     Where got\'st thou that goose look?   SERVANT. There is ten thousand-   MACBETH. Geese, villain?     SERVANT. Soldiers, sir.   MACBETH. Go prick thy face and over-red thy fear,     Thou lily-liver\'d boy. What soldiers, patch?     Death of thy soul! Those linen cheeks of thine     Are counselors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face?   SERVANT. The English force, so please you.   MACBETH. Take thy face hence.                    Exit Servant.     Seyton-I am sick at heart,     When I behold- Seyton, I say!- This push     Will cheer me ever or disseat me now.     I have lived long enough. My way of life     Is fall\'n into the sear, the yellow leaf,     And that which should accompany old age,     As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,     I must not look to have; but in their stead,     Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath,     Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not.     Seyton!                         Enter Seyton.      SEYTON. What\'s your gracious pleasure?   MACBETH. What news more?   SEYTON. All is confirm\'d, my lord, which was reported.   MACBETH. I\'ll fight, \'til from my bones my flesh be hack\'d.     Give me my armor.   SEYTON. \'Tis not needed yet.   MACBETH. I\'ll put it on.     Send out more horses, skirr the country round,     Hang those that talk of fear. Give me mine armor.     How does your patient, doctor?   DOCTOR. Not so sick, my lord,     As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies,     That keep her from her rest.   MACBETH. Cure her of that.     Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,     Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,     Raze out the written troubles of the brain,     And with some sweet oblivious antidote     Cleanse the stuff\'d bosom of that perilous stuff       Which weighs upon the heart?   DOCTOR. Therein the patient     Must minister to himself.   MACBETH. Throw physic to the dogs, I\'ll none of it.     Come, put mine armor on; give me my staff.     Seyton, send out. Doctor, the Thanes fly from me.     Come, sir, dispatch. If thou couldst, doctor, cast     The water of my land, find her disease     And purge it to a sound and pristine health,     I would applaud thee to the very echo,     That should applaud again. Pull\'t off, I say.     What rhubarb, cyme, or what purgative drug     Would scour these English hence? Hearst thou of them?   DOCTOR. Ay, my good lord, your royal preparation     Makes us hear something.   MACBETH. Bring it after me.     I will not be afraid of death and bane     Till Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane.   DOCTOR. [Aside.] Were I from Dunsinane away and clear,     Profit again should hardly draw me here.             Exeunt.     SCENE IV. Country near Birnam Wood. Drum and colors.  Enter Malcolm, old Seward and his Son, Macduff, Menteith, Caithness, Angus, Lennox, Ross, and Soldiers, marching.    MALCOLM. Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand     That chambers will be safe.   MENTEITH. We doubt it nothing.   SIWARD. What wood is this before us?   MENTEITH. The Wood of Birnam.   MALCOLM. Let every soldier hew him down a bough,     And bear\'t before him; thereby shall we shadow     The numbers of our host, and make discovery     Err in report of us.   SOLDIERS. It shall be done.   SIWARD. We learn no other but the confident tyrant     Keeps still in Dunsinane and will endure     Our setting down before\'t.   MALCOLM. \'Tis his main hope;     For where there is advantage to be given,     Both more and less have given him the revolt,       And none serve with him but constrained things     Whose hearts are absent too.   MACDUFF. Let our just censures     Attend the true event, and put we on     Industrious soldiership.   SIWARD. The time approaches     That will with due decision make us know     What we shall say we have and what we owe.     Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,     But certain issue strokes must arbitrate.     Towards which advance the war.                                                 Exeunt Marching.     SCENE V. Dunsinane. Within the castle.  Enter Macbeth, Seyton, and Soldiers, with drum and colors.    MACBETH. Hang out our banners on the outward walls;     The cry is still, "They come!" Our castle\'s strength     Will laugh a siege to scorn. Here let them lie     Till famine and the ague eat them up.     Were they not forced with those that should be ours,     We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,     And beat them backward home.                                           A cry of women within.     What is that noise?   SEYTON. It is the cry of women, my good lord.            Exit.   MACBETH. I have almost forgot the taste of fears:     The time has been, my senses would have cool\'d     To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair     Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir     As life were in\'t. I have supp\'d full with horrors;     Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,     Cannot once start me.                      Re-enter Seyton.      Wherefore was that cry?   SEYTON. The Queen, my lord, is dead.   MACBETH. She should have died hereafter;     There would have been a time for such a word.     Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow     Creeps in this petty pace from day to day     To the last syllable of recorded time;     And all our yesterdays have lighted fools     The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!     Life\'s but a walking shadow, a poor player     That struts and frets his hour upon the stage     And then is heard no more. It is a tale     Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,     Signifying nothing.                   Enter a Messenger.      Thou comest to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.     MESSENGER. Gracious my lord,     I should report that which I say I saw,     But know not how to do it.   MACBETH. Well, say, sir.   MESSENGER. As I did stand my watch upon the hill,     I look\'d toward Birnam, and anon, methought,     The Wood began to move.   MACBETH. Liar and slave!   MESSENGER. Let me endure your wrath, if\'t be not so.     Within this three mile may you see it coming;     I say, a moving grove.   MACBETH. If thou speak\'st false,     Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,     Till famine cling thee; if thy speech be sooth,     I care not if thou dost for me as much.     I pull in resolution and begin     To doubt the equivocation of the fiend     That lies like truth. "Fear not, till Birnam Wood     Do come to Dunsinane," and now a wood     Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!       If this which he avouches does appear,     There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.     I \'gin to be aweary of the sun     And wish the estate o\' the world were now undone.     Ring the alarum bell! Blow, wind! Come, wrack!     At least we\'ll die with harness on our back.         Exeunt.     SCENE VI. Dunsinane.  Before the castle.  Enter Malcolm, old Siward, Macduff, and their Army, with boughs. Drum and colors.    MALCOLM. Now near enough; your leavy screens throw down,     And show like those you are. You, worthy uncle,     Shall with my cousin, your right noble son,     Lead our first battle. Worthy Macduff and we     Shall take upon \'s what else remains to do,     According to our order.   SIWARD. Fare you well.     Do we but find the tyrant\'s power tonight,     Let us be beaten if we cannot fight.   MACDUFF. Make all our trumpets speak, give them all breath,     Those clamorous harbingers of blood and death.                                                          Exeunt.     SCENE VII. Dunsinane.  Before the castle.  Alarums.  Enter Macbeth.    MACBETH. They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly,     But bear-like I must fight the course. What\'s he     That was not born of woman? Such a one     Am I to fear, or none.                       Enter young Siward.    YOUNG SIWARD. What is thy name?   MACBETH. Thou\'lt be afraid to hear it.   YOUNG SIWARD. No, though thou call\'st thyself a hotter name     Than any is in hell.   MACBETH. My name\'s Macbeth.   YOUNG SIWARD. The devil himself could not pronounce a title     More hateful to mine ear.   MACBETH. No, nor more fearful.   YOUNG SIWARD O Thou liest, abhorred tyrant; with my sword     I\'ll prove the lie thou speak\'st.                             They fight, and young Seward is slain.   MACBETH. Thou wast born of woman.     But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn,     Brandish\'d by man that\'s of a woman born.              Exit.                  Alarums. Enter Macduff.    MACDUFF. That way the noise is. Tyrant, show thy face!     If thou best slain and with no stroke of mine,     My wife and children\'s ghosts will haunt me still.     I cannot strike at wretched kerns, whose arms     Are hired to bear their staves. Either thou, Macbeth,     Or else my sword, with an unbatter\'d edge,     I sheathe again undeeded. There thou shouldst be;     By this great clatter, one of greatest note     Seems bruited. Let me find him, Fortune!     And more I beg not.                           Exit. Alarums.                  Enter Malcolm and old Siward.      SIWARD. This way, my lord; the castle\'s gently render\'d.     The tyrant\'s people on both sides do fight,     The noble Thanes do bravely in the war,     The day almost itself professes yours,     And little is to do.   MALCOLM. We have met with foes     That strike beside us.   SIWARD. Enter, sir, the castle.                                                  Exeunt. Alarum.     SCENE VIII. Another part of the field.  Enter Macbeth.    MACBETH. Why should I play the Roman fool and die     On mine own sword? Whiles I see lives, the gashes     Do better upon them.                        Enter Macduff.    MACDUFF. Turn, hell hound, turn!   MACBETH. Of all men else I have avoided thee.     But get thee back, my soul is too much charged     With blood of thine already.   MACDUFF. I have no words.     My voice is in my sword, thou bloodier villain     Than terms can give thee out!                    They fight.   MACBETH. Thou losest labor.     As easy mayst thou the intrenchant air     With thy keen sword impress as make me bleed.     Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests;       I bear a charmed life, which must not yield     To one of woman born.   MACDUFF. Despair thy charm,     And let the angel whom thou still hast served     Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother\'s womb     Untimely ripp\'d.   MACBETH. Accursed be that tongue that tells me so,     For it hath cow\'d my better part of man!     And be these juggling fiends no more believed     That patter with us in a double sense,     That keep the word of promise to our ear     And break it to our hope. I\'ll not fight with thee.   MACDUFF. Then yield thee, coward,     And live to be the show and gaze o\' the time.     We\'ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,     Painted upon a pole, and underwrit,     "Here may you see the tyrant."   MACBETH. I will not yield,     To kiss the ground before young Malcolm\'s feet,     And to be baited with the rabble\'s curse.       Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane,     And thou opposed, being of no woman born,     Yet I will try the last. Before my body     I throw my warlike shield! Lay on, Macduff,     And damn\'d be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"                                        Exeunt fighting. Alarums.     SCENE IX.  Retreat. Flourish. Enter, with drum and colors, Malcolm, old Siward, Ross, the other Thanes, and Soldiers.    MALCOLM. I would the friends we miss were safe arrived.   SIWARD. Some must go off, and yet, by these I see,     So great a day as this is cheaply bought.   MALCOLM. Macduff is missing, and your noble son.   ROSS. Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier\'s debt.     He only lived but till he was a man,     The which no sooner had his prowess confirm\'d     In the unshrinking station where he fought,     But like a man he died.   SIWARD. Then he is dead?   ROSS. Ay, and brought off the field. Your cause of sorrow     Must not be measured by his worth, for then     It hath no end.   SIWARD. Had he his hurts before?   ROSS. Ay, on the front.   SIWARD. Why then, God\'s soldier be he!     Had I as many sons as I have hairs,       I would not wish them to a fairer death.     And so his knell is knoll\'d.   MALCOLM. He\'s worth more sorrow,     And that I\'ll spend for him.   SIWARD. He\'s worth no more:     They say he parted well and paid his score,     And so God be with him! Here comes newer comfort.               Re-enter Macduff, with Macbeth\'s head.    MACDUFF. Hail, King, for so thou art. Behold where stands     The usurper\'s cursed head. The time is free.     I see thee compass\'d with thy kingdom\'s pearl     That speak my salutation in their minds,     Whose voices I desire aloud with mine-     Hail, King of Scotland!   ALL. Hail, King of Scotland!                         Flourish.   MALCOLM. We shall not spend a large expense of time     Before we reckon with your several loves     And make us even with you. My Thanes and kinsmen,       Henceforth be Earls, the first that ever Scotland     In such an honor named. What\'s more to do,     Which would be planted newly with the time,     As calling home our exiled friends abroad     That fled the snares of watchful tyranny,     Producing forth the cruel ministers     Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,     Who, as \'tis thought, by self and violent hands     Took off her life; this, and what needful else     That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace     We will perform in measure, time, and place.     So thanks to all at once and to each one,     Whom we invite to see us crown\'d at Scone.                                                Flourish. Exeunt.                  -THE END-    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1605   MEASURE FOR MEASURE  by William Shakespeare    DRAMATIS PERSONAE    VINCENTIO, the Duke   ANGELO, the Deputy   ESCALUS, an ancient Lord   CLAUDIO, a young gentleman   LUCIO, a fantastic   Two other like Gentlemen   VARRIUS, a gentleman, servant to the Duke   PROVOST   THOMAS, friar   PETER, friar   A JUSTICE   ELBOW, a simple constable   FROTH, a foolish gentleman   POMPEY, a clown and servant to Mistress Overdone   ABHORSON, an executioner   BARNARDINE, a dissolute prisoner    ISABELLA, sister to Claudio   MARIANA, betrothed to Angelo   JULIET, beloved of Claudio     FRANCISCA, a nun   MISTRESS OVERDONE, a bawd    Lords, Officers, Citizens, Boy, and Attendants     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: Vienna   ACT I. SCENE I. The DUKE\'S palace  Enter DUKE, ESCALUS, LORDS, and ATTENDANTS    DUKE. Escalus!   ESCALUS. My lord.   DUKE. Of government the properties to unfold     Would seem in me t\' affect speech and discourse,     Since I am put to know that your own science     Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice     My strength can give you; then no more remains     But that to your sufficiency- as your worth is able-     And let them work. The nature of our people,     Our city\'s institutions, and the terms     For common justice, y\'are as pregnant in     As art and practice hath enriched any     That we remember. There is our commission,     From which we would not have you warp. Call hither,     I say, bid come before us, Angelo.         Exit an ATTENDANT     What figure of us think you he will bear?     For you must know we have with special soul       Elected him our absence to supply;     Lent him our terror, dress\'d him with our love,     And given his deputation all the organs     Of our own power. What think you of it?   ESCALUS. If any in Vienna be of worth     To undergo such ample grace and honour,     It is Lord Angelo.                            Enter ANGELO    DUKE. Look where he comes.   ANGELO. Always obedient to your Grace\'s will,     I come to know your pleasure.   DUKE. Angelo,     There is a kind of character in thy life     That to th\' observer doth thy history     Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings     Are not thine own so proper as to waste     Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.     Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,       Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues     Did not go forth of us, \'twere all alike     As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch\'d     But to fine issues; nor Nature never lends     The smallest scruple of her excellence     But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines     Herself the glory of a creditor,     Both thanks and use. But I do bend my speech     To one that can my part in him advertise.     Hold, therefore, Angelo-     In our remove be thou at full ourself;     Mortality and mercy in Vienna     Live in thy tongue and heart. Old Escalus,     Though first in question, is thy secondary.     Take thy commission.   ANGELO. Now, good my lord,     Let there be some more test made of my metal,     Before so noble and so great a figure     Be stamp\'d upon it.   DUKE. No more evasion!       We have with a leaven\'d and prepared choice     Proceeded to you; therefore take your honours.     Our haste from hence is of so quick condition     That it prefers itself, and leaves unquestion\'d     Matters of needful value. We shall write to you,     As time and our concernings shall importune,     How it goes with us, and do look to know     What doth befall you here. So, fare you well.     To th\' hopeful execution do I leave you     Of your commissions.   ANGELO. Yet give leave, my lord,     That we may bring you something on the way.   DUKE. My haste may not admit it;     Nor need you, on mine honour, have to do     With any scruple: your scope is as mine own,     So to enforce or qualify the laws     As to your soul seems good. Give me your hand;     I\'ll privily away. I love the people,     But do not like to stage me to their eyes;     Though it do well, I do not relish well       Their loud applause and Aves vehement;     Nor do I think the man of safe discretion     That does affect it. Once more, fare you well.   ANGELO. The heavens give safety to your purposes!   ESCALUS. Lead forth and bring you back in happiness!   DUKE. I thank you. Fare you well.                         Exit   ESCALUS. I shall desire you, sir, to give me leave     To have free speech with you; and it concerns me     To look into the bottom of my place:     A pow\'r I have, but of what strength and nature     I am not yet instructed.   ANGELO. \'Tis so with me. Let us withdraw together,     And we may soon our satisfaction have     Touching that point.   ESCALUS. I\'ll wait upon your honour.                    Exeunt     SCENE II. A street  Enter Lucio and two other GENTLEMEN    LUCIO. If the Duke, with the other dukes, come not to composition     with the King of Hungary, why then all the dukes fall upon the     King.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of     Hungary\'s!   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Amen.   LUCIO. Thou conclud\'st like the sanctimonious pirate that went to     sea with the Ten Commandments, but scrap\'d one out of the table.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. \'Thou shalt not steal\'?   LUCIO. Ay, that he raz\'d.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Why, \'twas a commandment to command the captain     and all the rest from their functions: they put forth to steal.     There\'s not a soldier of us all that, in the thanksgiving before     meat, do relish the petition well that prays for peace.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. I never heard any soldier dislike it.   LUCIO. I believe thee; for I think thou never wast where grace was     said.     SECOND GENTLEMAN. No? A dozen times at least.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. What, in metre?   LUCIO. In any proportion or in any language.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. I think, or in any religion.   LUCIO. Ay, why not? Grace is grace, despite of all controversy; as,     for example, thou thyself art a wicked villain, despite of all     grace.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Well, there went but a pair of shears between us.   LUCIO. I grant; as there may between the lists and the velvet.     Thou art the list.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. And thou the velvet; thou art good velvet; thou\'rt     a three-pil\'d piece, I warrant thee. I had as lief be a list of     an English kersey as be pil\'d, as thou art pil\'d, for a French     velvet. Do I speak feelingly now?   LUCIO. I think thou dost; and, indeed, with most painful feeling of     thy speech. I will, out of thine own confession, learn to begin     thy health; but, whilst I live, forget to drink after thee.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. I think I have done myself wrong, have I not?   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Yes, that thou hast, whether thou art tainted or     free.                            Enter MISTRESS OVERDONE    LUCIO. Behold, behold, where Madam Mitigation comes! I have     purchas\'d as many diseases under her roof as come to-   SECOND GENTLEMAN. To what, I pray?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Judge.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. To three thousand dolours a year.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Ay, and more.   LUCIO. A French crown more.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Thou art always figuring diseases in me, but thou     art full of error; I am sound.   LUCIO. Nay, not, as one would say, healthy; but so sound as things     that are hollow: thy bones are hollow; impiety has made a feast     of thee.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. How now! which of your hips has the most profound     sciatica?   MRS. OVERDONE. Well, well! there\'s one yonder arrested and carried     to prison was worth five thousand of you all.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Who\'s that, I pray thee?     MRS. OVERDONE. Marry, sir, that\'s Claudio, Signior Claudio.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Claudio to prison? \'Tis not so.   MRS. OVERDONE. Nay, but I know \'tis so: I saw him arrested; saw him     carried away; and, which is more, within these three days his     head to be chopp\'d off.   LUCIO. But, after all this fooling, I would not have it so. Art     thou sure of this?   MRS. OVERDONE. I am too sure of it; and it is for getting Madam     Julietta with child.   LUCIO. Believe me, this may be; he promis\'d to meet me two hours     since, and he was ever precise in promise-keeping.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Besides, you know, it draws something near to the     speech we had to such a purpose.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. But most of all agreeing with the proclamation.   LUCIO. Away; let\'s go learn the truth of it.                                       Exeunt Lucio and GENTLEMEN   MRS. OVERDONE. Thus, what with the war, what with the sweat, what     with the gallows, and what with poverty, I am custom-shrunk.                                 Enter POMPEY        How now! what\'s the news with you?   POMPEY. Yonder man is carried to prison.   MRS. OVERDONE. Well, what has he done?   POMPEY. A woman.   MRS. OVERDONE. But what\'s his offence?   POMPEY. Groping for trouts in a peculiar river.   MRS. OVERDONE. What! is there a maid with child by him?   POMPEY. No; but there\'s a woman with maid by him. You have not    heard of the proclamation, have you?   MRS. OVERDONE. What proclamation, man?   POMPEY. All houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be pluck\'d down.   MRS. OVERDONE. And what shall become of those in the city?   POMPEY. They shall stand for seed; they had gone down too, but that     a wise burgher put in for them.   MRS. OVERDONE. But shall all our houses of resort in the suburbs be     pull\'d down?   POMPEY. To the ground, mistress.   MRS. OVERDONE. Why, here\'s a change indeed in the commonwealth!     What shall become of me?     POMPEY. Come, fear not you: good counsellors lack no clients.     Though you change your place you need not change your trade; I\'ll     be your tapster still. Courage, there will be pity taken on you;     you that have worn your eyes almost out in the service, you will     be considered.   MRS. OVERDONE. What\'s to do here, Thomas Tapster? Let\'s withdraw.   POMPEY. Here comes Signior Claudio, led by the provost to prison;     and there\'s Madam Juliet.                             Exeunt              Enter PROVOST, CLAUDIO, JULIET, and OFFICERS;                             LUCIO following    CLAUDIO. Fellow, why dost thou show me thus to th\' world?     Bear me to prison, where I am committed.   PROVOST. I do it not in evil disposition,     But from Lord Angelo by special charge.   CLAUDIO. Thus can the demigod Authority     Make us pay down for our offence by weight     The words of heaven: on whom it will, it will;     On whom it will not, so; yet still \'tis just.     LUCIO. Why, how now, Claudio, whence comes this restraint?   CLAUDIO. From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty;     As surfeit is the father of much fast,     So every scope by the immoderate use     Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue,     Like rats that ravin down their proper bane,     A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die.   LUCIO. If I could speak so wisely under an arrest, I would send for     certain of my creditors; and yet, to say the truth, I had as lief     have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment.     What\'s thy offence, Claudio?   CLAUDIO. What but to speak of would offend again.   LUCIO. What, is\'t murder?   CLAUDIO. No.   LUCIO. Lechery?   CLAUDIO. Call it so.   PROVOST. Away, sir; you must go.   CLAUDIO. One word, good friend. Lucio, a word with you.   LUCIO. A hundred, if they\'ll do you any good. Is lechery so look\'d     after?     CLAUDIO. Thus stands it with me: upon a true contract     I got possession of Julietta\'s bed.     You know the lady; she is fast my wife,     Save that we do the denunciation lack     Of outward order; this we came not to,     Only for propagation of a dow\'r     Remaining in the coffer of her friends.     From whom we thought it meet to hide our love     Till time had made them for us. But it chances     The stealth of our most mutual entertainment,     With character too gross, is writ on Juliet.   LUCIO. With child, perhaps?   CLAUDIO. Unhappily, even so.     And the new deputy now for the Duke-     Whether it be the fault and glimpse of newness,     Or whether that the body public be     A horse whereon the governor doth ride,     Who, newly in the seat, that it may know     He can command, lets it straight feel the spur;     Whether the tyranny be in his place,       Or in his eminence that fills it up,     I stagger in. But this new governor     Awakes me all the enrolled penalties     Which have, like unscour\'d armour, hung by th\' wall     So long that nineteen zodiacs have gone round     And none of them been worn; and, for a name,     Now puts the drowsy and neglected act     Freshly on me. \'Tis surely for a name.   LUCIO. I warrant it is; and thy head stands so tickle on thy     shoulders that a milkmaid, if she be in love, may sigh it off.     Send after the Duke, and appeal to him.   CLAUDIO. I have done so, but he\'s not to be found.     I prithee, Lucio, do me this kind service:     This day my sister should the cloister enter,     And there receive her approbation;     Acquaint her with the danger of my state;     Implore her, in my voice, that she make friends     To the strict deputy; bid herself assay him.     I have great hope in that; for in her youth     There is a prone and speechless dialect       Such as move men; beside, she hath prosperous art     When she will play with reason and discourse,     And well she can persuade.   LUCIO. I pray she may; as well for the encouragement of the like,     which else would stand under grievous imposition, as for the     enjoying of thy life, who I would be sorry should be thus     foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack. I\'ll to her.   CLAUDIO. I thank you, good friend Lucio.   LUCIO. Within two hours.   CLAUDIO. Come, officer, away.                           Exeunt     SCENE III. A monastery  Enter DUKE and FRIAR THOMAS    DUKE. No, holy father; throw away that thought;     Believe not that the dribbling dart of love     Can pierce a complete bosom. Why I desire thee     To give me secret harbour hath a purpose     More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends     Of burning youth.   FRIAR. May your Grace speak of it?   DUKE. My holy sir, none better knows than you     How I have ever lov\'d the life removed,     And held in idle price to haunt assemblies     Where youth, and cost, a witless bravery keeps.     I have deliver\'d to Lord Angelo,     A man of stricture and firm abstinence,     My absolute power and place here in Vienna,     And he supposes me travell\'d to Poland;     For so I have strew\'d it in the common ear,     And so it is received. Now, pious sir,       You will demand of me why I do this.   FRIAR. Gladly, my lord.   DUKE. We have strict statutes and most biting laws,     The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds,     Which for this fourteen years we have let slip;     Even like an o\'ergrown lion in a cave,     That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers,     Having bound up the threat\'ning twigs of birch,     Only to stick it in their children\'s sight     For terror, not to use, in time the rod     Becomes more mock\'d than fear\'d; so our decrees,     Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;     And liberty plucks justice by the nose;     The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart     Goes all decorum.   FRIAR. It rested in your Grace     To unloose this tied-up justice when you pleas\'d;     And it in you more dreadful would have seem\'d     Than in Lord Angelo.   DUKE. I do fear, too dreadful.       Sith \'twas my fault to give the people scope,     \'Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them     For what I bid them do; for we bid this be done,     When evil deeds have their permissive pass     And not the punishment. Therefore, indeed, my father,     I have on Angelo impos\'d the office;     Who may, in th\' ambush of my name, strike home,     And yet my nature never in the fight     To do in slander. And to behold his sway,     I will, as \'twere a brother of your order,     Visit both prince and people. Therefore, I prithee,     Supply me with the habit, and instruct me     How I may formally in person bear me     Like a true friar. Moe reasons for this action     At our more leisure shall I render you.     Only, this one: Lord Angelo is precise;     Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses     That his blood flows, or that his appetite     Is more to bread than stone. Hence shall we see,     If power change purpose, what our seemers be.         Exeunt     SCENE IV. A nunnery  Enter ISABELLA and FRANCISCA    ISABELLA. And have you nuns no farther privileges?   FRANCISCA. Are not these large enough?   ISABELLA. Yes, truly; I speak not as desiring more,     But rather wishing a more strict restraint     Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare.   LUCIO. [ Within] Ho! Peace be in this place!   ISABELLA. Who\'s that which calls?   FRANCISCA. It is a man\'s voice. Gentle Isabella,     Turn you the key, and know his business of him:     You may, I may not; you are yet unsworn;     When you have vow\'d, you must not speak with men     But in the presence of the prioress;     Then, if you speak, you must not show your face,     Or, if you show your face, you must not speak.     He calls again; I pray you answer him.        Exit FRANCISCA   ISABELLA. Peace and prosperity! Who is\'t that calls?                               Enter LUCIO    LUCIO. Hail, virgin, if you be, as those cheek-roses     Proclaim you are no less. Can you so stead me     As bring me to the sight of Isabella,     A novice of this place, and the fair sister     To her unhappy brother Claudio?   ISABELLA. Why her \'unhappy brother\'? Let me ask     The rather, for I now must make you know     I am that Isabella, and his sister.   LUCIO. Gentle and fair, your brother kindly greets you.     Not to be weary with you, he\'s in prison.   ISABELLA. Woe me! For what?   LUCIO. For that which, if myself might be his judge,     He should receive his punishment in thanks:     He hath got his friend with child.   ISABELLA. Sir, make me not your story.   LUCIO. It is true.     I would not- though \'tis my familiar sin     With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest,       Tongue far from heart- play with all virgins so:     I hold you as a thing enskied and sainted,     By your renouncement an immortal spirit,     And to be talk\'d with in sincerity,     As with a saint.   ISABELLA. You do blaspheme the good in mocking me.   LUCIO. Do not believe it. Fewness and truth, \'tis thus:     Your brother and his lover have embrac\'d.     As those that feed grow full, as blossoming time     That from the seedness the bare fallow brings     To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb     Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry.   ISABELLA. Some one with child by him? My cousin Juliet?   LUCIO. Is she your cousin?   ISABELLA. Adoptedly, as school-maids change their names     By vain though apt affection.   LUCIO. She it is.   ISABELLA. O, let him marry her!   LUCIO. This is the point.     The Duke is very strangely gone from hence;       Bore many gentlemen, myself being one,     In hand, and hope of action; but we do learn,     By those that know the very nerves of state,     His givings-out were of an infinite distance     From his true-meant design. Upon his place,     And with full line of his authority,     Governs Lord Angelo, a man whose blood     Is very snow-broth, one who never feels     The wanton stings and motions of the sense,     But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge     With profits of the mind, study and fast.     He- to give fear to use and liberty,     Which have for long run by the hideous law,     As mice by lions- hath pick\'d out an act     Under whose heavy sense your brother\'s life     Falls into forfeit; he arrests him on it,     And follows close the rigour of the statute     To make him an example. All hope is gone,     Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer     To soften Angelo. And that\'s my pith of business       \'Twixt you and your poor brother.   ISABELLA. Doth he so seek his life?   LUCIO. Has censur\'d him     Already, and, as I hear, the Provost hath     A warrant for his execution.   ISABELLA. Alas! what poor ability\'s in me     To do him good?   LUCIO. Assay the pow\'r you have.   ISABELLA. My power, alas, I doubt!   LUCIO. Our doubts are traitors,     And make us lose the good we oft might win     By fearing to attempt. Go to Lord Angelo,     And let him learn to know, when maidens sue,     Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel,     All their petitions are as freely theirs     As they themselves would owe them.   ISABELLA. I\'ll see what I can do.   LUCIO. But speedily.   ISABELLA. I will about it straight;     No longer staying but to give the Mother       Notice of my affair. I humbly thank you.     Commend me to my brother; soon at night     I\'ll send him certain word of my success.   LUCIO. I take my leave of you.   ISABELLA. Good sir, adieu.                              Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. Scene I. A hall in ANGELO\'S house  Enter ANGELO, ESCALUS, a JUSTICE, PROVOST, OFFICERS, and other ATTENDANTS    ANGELO. We must not make a scarecrow of the law,     Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,     And let it keep one shape till custom make it     Their perch, and not their terror.   ESCALUS. Ay, but yet     Let us be keen, and rather cut a little     Than fall and bruise to death. Alas! this gentleman,     Whom I would save, had a most noble father.     Let but your honour know,     Whom I believe to be most strait in virtue,     That, in the working of your own affections,     Had time coher\'d with place, or place with wishing,     Or that the resolute acting of our blood     Could have attain\'d th\' effect of your own purpose     Whether you had not sometime in your life     Err\'d in this point which now you censure him,       And pull\'d the law upon you.   ANGELO. \'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,     Another thing to fall. I not deny     The jury, passing on the prisoner\'s life,     May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two     Guiltier than him they try. What\'s open made to justice,     That justice seizes. What knows the laws     That thieves do pass on thieves? \'Tis very pregnant,     The jewel that we find, we stoop and take\'t,     Because we see it; but what we do not see     We tread upon, and never think of it.     You may not so extenuate his offence     For I have had such faults; but rather tell me,     When I, that censure him, do so offend,     Let mine own judgment pattern out my death,     And nothing come in partial. Sir, he must die.   ESCALUS. Be it as your wisdom will.   ANGELO. Where is the Provost?   PROVOST. Here, if it like your honour.   ANGELO. See that Claudio       Be executed by nine to-morrow morning;     Bring him his confessor; let him be prepar\'d;     For that\'s the utmost of his pilgrimage.        Exit PROVOST   ESCALUS. [Aside] Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all!     Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall;     Some run from breaks of ice, and answer none,     And some condemned for a fault alone.           Enter ELBOW and OFFICERS with FROTH and POMPEY    ELBOW. Come, bring them away; if these be good people in a     commonweal that do nothing but use their abuses in common houses,     I know no law; bring them away.   ANGELO. How now, sir! What\'s your name, and what\'s the matter?   ELBOW. If it please your honour, I am the poor Duke\'s constable,     and my name is Elbow; I do lean upon justice, sir, and do bring     in here before your good honour two notorious benefactors.   ANGELO. Benefactors! Well- what benefactors are they? Are they not     malefactors?   ELBOW. If it please your honour, I know not well what they are; but       precise villains they are, that I am sure of, and void of all     profanation in the world that good Christians ought to have.   ESCALUS. This comes off well; here\'s a wise officer.   ANGELO. Go to; what quality are they of? Elbow is your name? Why     dost thou not speak, Elbow?   POMPEY. He cannot, sir; he\'s out at elbow.   ANGELO. What are you, sir?   ELBOW. He, sir? A tapster, sir; parcel-bawd; one that serves a bad     woman; whose house, sir, was, as they say, pluck\'d down in the     suburbs; and now she professes a hot-house, which, I think, is a     very ill house too.   ESCALUS. How know you that?   ELBOW. My Wife, sir, whom I detest before heaven and your honour-   ESCALUS. How! thy wife!   ELBOW. Ay, sir; whom I thank heaven, is an honest woman-   ESCALUS. Dost thou detest her therefore?   ELBOW. I say, sir, I will detest myself also, as well as she, that     this house, if it be not a bawd\'s house, it is pity of her life,     for it is a naughty house.   ESCALUS. How dost thou know that, constable?     ELBOW. Marry, sir, by my wife; who, if she had been a woman     cardinally given, might have been accus\'d in fornication,     adultery, and all uncleanliness there.   ESCALUS. By the woman\'s means?   ELBOW. Ay, sir, by Mistress Overdone\'s means; but as she spit in     his face, so she defied him.   POMPEY. Sir, if it please your honour, this is not so.   ELBOW. Prove it before these varlets here, thou honourable man,     prove it.   ESCALUS. Do you hear how he misplaces?   POMPEY. Sir, she came in great with child; and longing, saving your     honour\'s reverence, for stew\'d prunes. Sir, we had but two in the     house, which at that very distant time stood, as it were, in a     fruit dish, a dish of some three pence; your honours have seen     such dishes; they are not China dishes, but very good dishes.   ESCALUS. Go to, go to; no matter for the dish, sir.   POMPEY. No, indeed, sir, not of a pin; you are therein in the     right; but to the point. As I say, this Mistress Elbow, being, as     I say, with child, and being great-bellied, and longing, as I     said, for prunes; and having but two in the dish, as I said,       Master Froth here, this very man, having eaten the rest, as I     said, and, as I say, paying for them very honestly; for, as you     know, Master Froth, I could not give you three pence again-   FROTH. No, indeed.   POMPEY. Very well; you being then, if you be rememb\'red, cracking     the stones of the foresaid prunes-   FROTH. Ay, so I did indeed.   POMPEY. Why, very well; I telling you then, if you be rememb\'red,     that such a one and such a one were past cure of the thing you     wot of, unless they kept very good diet, as I told you-   FROTH. All this is true.   POMPEY. Why, very well then-   ESCALUS. Come, you are a tedious fool. To the purpose: what was     done to Elbow\'s wife that he hath cause to complain of? Come me     to what was done to her.   POMPEY. Sir, your honour cannot come to that yet.   ESCALUS. No, sir, nor I mean it not.   POMPEY. Sir, but you shall come to it, by your honour\'s leave. And,     I beseech you, look into Master Froth here, sir, a man of     fourscore pound a year; whose father died at Hallowmas- was\'t not       at Hallowmas, Master Froth?   FROTH. All-hallond eve.   POMPEY. Why, very well; I hope here be truths. He, sir, sitting, as     I say, in a lower chair, sir; \'twas in the Bunch of Grapes,     where, indeed, you have a delight to sit, have you not?   FROTH. I have so; because it is an open room, and good for winter.   POMPEY. Why, very well then; I hope here be truths.   ANGELO. This will last out a night in Russia,     When nights are longest there; I\'ll take my leave,     And leave you to the hearing of the cause,     Hoping you\'ll find good cause to whip them all.   ESCALUS. I think no less. Good morrow to your lordship.     [Exit ANGELO] Now, sir, come on; what was done to Elbow\'s wife,     once more?   POMPEY. Once?- sir. There was nothing done to her once.   ELBOW. I beseech you, sir, ask him what this man did to my wife.   POMPEY. I beseech your honour, ask me.   ESCALUS. Well, sir, what did this gentleman to her?   POMPEY. I beseech you, sir, look in this gentleman\'s face. Good     Master Froth, look upon his honour; \'tis for a good purpose. Doth       your honour mark his face?   ESCALUS. Ay, sir, very well.   POMPEY. Nay, I beseech you, mark it well.   ESCALUS. Well, I do so.   POMPEY. Doth your honour see any harm in his face?   ESCALUS. Why, no.   POMPEY. I\'ll be suppos\'d upon a book his face is the worst thing     about him. Good then; if his face be the worst thing about him,     how could Master Froth do the constable\'s wife any harm? I would     know that of your honour.   ESCALUS. He\'s in the right, constable; what say you to it?   ELBOW. First, an it like you, the house is a respected house; next,     this is a respected fellow; and his mistress is a respected     woman.   POMPEY. By this hand, sir, his wife is a more respected person than     any of us all.   ELBOW. Varlet, thou liest; thou liest, wicket varlet; the time is     yet to come that she was ever respected with man, woman, or     child.   POMPEY. Sir, she was respected with him before he married with her.     ESCALUS. Which is the wiser here, Justice or Iniquity? Is this     true?   ELBOW. O thou caitiff! O thou varlet! O thou wicked Hannibal! I     respected with her before I was married to her! If ever I was     respected with her, or she with me, let not your worship think me     the poor Duke\'s officer. Prove this, thou wicked Hannibal, or     I\'ll have mine action of batt\'ry on thee.   ESCALUS. If he took you a box o\' th\' ear, you might have your     action of slander too.   ELBOW. Marry, I thank your good worship for it. What is\'t your     worship\'s pleasure I shall do with this wicked caitiff?   ESCALUS. Truly, officer, because he hath some offences in him that     thou wouldst discover if thou couldst, let him continue in his     courses till thou know\'st what they are.   ELBOW. Marry, I thank your worship for it. Thou seest, thou wicked     varlet, now, what\'s come upon thee: thou art to continue now,     thou varlet; thou art to continue.   ESCALUS. Where were you born, friend?   FROTH. Here in Vienna, sir.   ESCALUS. Are you of fourscore pounds a year?     FROTH. Yes, an\'t please you, sir.   ESCALUS. So. What trade are you of, sir?   POMPEY. A tapster, a poor widow\'s tapster.   ESCALUS. Your mistress\' name?   POMPEY. Mistress Overdone.   ESCALUS. Hath she had any more than one husband?   POMPEY. Nine, sir; Overdone by the last.   ESCALUS. Nine! Come hither to me, Master Froth. Master Froth, I     would not have you acquainted with tapsters: they will draw you,     Master Froth, and you will hang them. Get you gone, and let me     hear no more of you.   FROTH. I thank your worship. For mine own part, I never come into     any room in a taphouse but I am drawn in.   ESCALUS. Well, no more of it, Master Froth; farewell. [Exit FROTH]     Come you hither to me, Master Tapster; what\'s your name, Master     Tapster?   POMPEY. Pompey.   ESCALUS. What else?   POMPEY. Bum, sir.   ESCALUS. Troth, and your bum is the greatest thing about you; so       that, in the beastliest sense, you are Pompey the Great. Pompey,     you are partly a bawd, Pompey, howsoever you colour it in being a     tapster. Are you not? Come, tell me true; it shall be the better     for you.   POMPEY. Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live.   ESCALUS. How would you live, Pompey- by being a bawd? What do you     think of the trade, Pompey? Is it a lawful trade?   POMPEY. If the law would allow it, sir.   ESCALUS. But the law will not allow it, Pompey; nor it shall not be     allowed in Vienna.   POMPEY. Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the youth of     the city?   ESCALUS. No, Pompey.   POMPEY. Truly, sir, in my poor opinion, they will to\'t then. If     your worship will take order for the drabs and the knaves, you     need not to fear the bawds.   ESCALUS. There is pretty orders beginning, I can tell you: but it     is but heading and hanging.   POMPEY. If you head and hang all that offend that way but for ten     year together, you\'ll be glad to give out a commission for more       heads; if this law hold in Vienna ten year, I\'ll rent the fairest     house in it, after threepence a bay. If you live to see this come     to pass, say Pompey told you so.   ESCALUS. Thank you, good Pompey; and, in requital of your prophecy,     hark you: I advise you, let me not find you before me again upon     any complaint whatsoever- no, not for dwelling where you do; if I     do, Pompey, I shall beat you to your tent, and prove a shrewd     Caesar to you; in plain dealing, Pompey, I shall have you whipt.     So for this time, Pompey, fare you well.   POMPEY. I thank your worship for your good counsel; [Aside] but I     shall follow it as the flesh and fortune shall better determine.     Whip me? No, no; let carman whip his jade;     The valiant heart\'s not whipt out of his trade.         Exit   ESCALUS. Come hither to me, Master Elbow; come hither, Master     Constable. How long have you been in this place of constable?   ELBOW. Seven year and a half, sir.   ESCALUS. I thought, by the readiness in the office, you had     continued in it some time. You say seven years together?   ELBOW. And a half, sir.   ESCALUS. Alas, it hath been great pains to you! They do you wrong       to put you so oft upon\'t. Are there not men in your ward     sufficient to serve it?   ELBOW. Faith, sir, few of any wit in such matters; as they are     chosen, they are glad to choose me for them; I do it for some     piece of money, and go through with all.   ESCALUS. Look you, bring me in the names of some six or seven, the     most sufficient of your parish.   ELBOW. To your worship\'s house, sir?   ESCALUS. To my house. Fare you well.              [Exit ELBOW]     What\'s o\'clock, think you?   JUSTICE. Eleven, sir.   ESCALUS. I pray you home to dinner with me.   JUSTICE. I humbly thank you.   ESCALUS. It grieves me for the death of Claudio;     But there\'s no remedy.   JUSTICE. Lord Angelo is severe.   ESCALUS. It is but needful:     Mercy is not itself that oft looks so;     Pardon is still the nurse of second woe.     But yet, poor Claudio! There is no remedy.       Come, sir.                                            Exeunt     SCENE II. Another room in ANGELO\'S house  Enter PROVOST and a SERVANT    SERVANT. He\'s hearing of a cause; he will come straight.     I\'ll tell him of you.   PROVOST. Pray you do. [Exit SERVANT] I\'ll know     His pleasure; may be he will relent. Alas,     He hath but as offended in a dream!     All sects, all ages, smack of this vice; and he     To die for \'t!                              Enter ANGELO    ANGELO. Now, what\'s the matter, Provost?   PROVOST. Is it your will Claudio shall die to-morrow?   ANGELO. Did not I tell thee yea? Hadst thou not order?     Why dost thou ask again?   PROVOST. Lest I might be too rash;     Under your good correction, I have seen     When, after execution, judgment hath       Repented o\'er his doom.   ANGELO. Go to; let that be mine.     Do you your office, or give up your place,     And you shall well be spar\'d.   PROVOST. I crave your honour\'s pardon.     What shall be done, sir, with the groaning Juliet?     She\'s very near her hour.   ANGELO. Dispose of her     To some more fitter place, and that with speed.                             Re-enter SERVANT    SERVANT. Here is the sister of the man condemn\'d     Desires access to you.   ANGELO. Hath he a sister?   PROVOST. Ay, my good lord; a very virtuous maid,     And to be shortly of a sisterhood,     If not already.   ANGELO. Well, let her be admitted.                Exit SERVANT     See you the fornicatress be remov\'d;       Let her have needful but not lavish means;     There shall be order for\'t.                           Enter Lucio and ISABELLA    PROVOST. [Going] Save your honour!   ANGELO. Stay a little while. [To ISABELLA] Y\'are welcome; what\'s     your will?   ISABELLA. I am a woeful suitor to your honour,     Please but your honour hear me.   ANGELO. Well; what\'s your suit?   ISABELLA. There is a vice that most I do abhor,     And most desire should meet the blow of justice;     For which I would not plead, but that I must;     For which I must not plead, but that I am     At war \'twixt will and will not.   ANGELO. Well; the matter?   ISABELLA. I have a brother is condemn\'d to die;     I do beseech you, let it be his fault,     And not my brother.     PROVOST. [Aside] Heaven give thee moving graces.   ANGELO. Condemn the fault and not the actor of it!     Why, every fault\'s condemn\'d ere it be done;     Mine were the very cipher of a function,     To fine the faults whose fine stands in record,     And let go by the actor.   ISABELLA. O just but severe law!     I had a brother, then. Heaven keep your honour!   LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] Give\'t not o\'er so; to him again, entreat him,     Kneel down before him, hang upon his gown;     You are too cold: if you should need a pin,     You could not with more tame a tongue desire it.     To him, I say.   ISABELLA. Must he needs die?   ANGELO. Maiden, no remedy.   ISABELLA. Yes; I do think that you might pardon him.     And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy.   ANGELO. I will not do\'t.   ISABELLA. But can you, if you would?   ANGELO. Look, what I will not, that I cannot do.     ISABELLA. But might you do\'t, and do the world no wrong,     If so your heart were touch\'d with that remorse     As mine is to him?   ANGELO. He\'s sentenc\'d; \'tis too late.   LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] You are too cold.   ISABELLA. Too late? Why, no; I, that do speak a word,     May call it back again. Well, believe this:     No ceremony that to great ones longs,     Not the king\'s crown nor the deputed sword,     The marshal\'s truncheon nor the judge\'s robe,     Become them with one half so good a grace     As mercy does.     If he had been as you, and you as he,     You would have slipp\'d like him; but he, like you,     Would not have been so stern.   ANGELO. Pray you be gone.   ISABELLA. I would to heaven I had your potency,     And you were Isabel! Should it then be thus?     No; I would tell what \'twere to be a judge     And what a prisoner.     LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] Ay, touch him; there\'s the vein.   ANGELO. Your brother is a forfeit of the law,     And you but waste your words.   ISABELLA. Alas! Alas!     Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once;     And He that might the vantage best have took     Found out the remedy. How would you be     If He, which is the top of judgment, should     But judge you as you are? O, think on that;     And mercy then will breathe within your lips,     Like man new made.   ANGELO. Be you content, fair maid.     It is the law, not I condemn your brother.     Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son,     It should be thus with him. He must die to-morrow.   ISABELLA. To-morrow! O, that\'s sudden! Spare him, spare him.     He\'s not prepar\'d for death. Even for our kitchens     We kill the fowl of season; shall we serve heaven     With less respect than we do minister     To our gross selves? Good, good my lord, bethink you.       Who is it that hath died for this offence?     There\'s many have committed it.   LUCIO. [Aside] Ay, well said.   ANGELO. The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.     Those many had not dar\'d to do that evil     If the first that did th\' edict infringe     Had answer\'d for his deed. Now \'tis awake,     Takes note of what is done, and, like a prophet,     Looks in a glass that shows what future evils-     Either now or by remissness new conceiv\'d,     And so in progress to be hatch\'d and born-     Are now to have no successive degrees,     But here they live to end.   ISABELLA. Yet show some pity.   ANGELO. I show it most of all when I show justice;     For then I pity those I do not know,     Which a dismiss\'d offence would after gall,     And do him right that, answering one foul wrong,     Lives not to act another. Be satisfied;     Your brother dies to-morrow; be content.     ISABELLA. So you must be the first that gives this sentence,     And he that suffers. O, it is excellent     To have a giant\'s strength! But it is tyrannous     To use it like a giant.   LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] That\'s well said.   ISABELLA. Could great men thunder     As Jove himself does, Jove would never be quiet,     For every pelting petty officer     Would use his heaven for thunder,     Nothing but thunder. Merciful Heaven,     Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,     Splits the unwedgeable and gnarled oak     Than the soft myrtle. But man, proud man,     Dress\'d in a little brief authority,     Most ignorant of what he\'s most assur\'d,     His glassy essence, like an angry ape,     Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven     As makes the angels weep; who, with our speens,     Would all themselves laugh mortal.   LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] O, to him, to him, wench! He will relent;       He\'s coming; I perceive \'t.   PROVOST. [Aside] Pray heaven she win him.   ISABELLA. We cannot weigh our brother with ourself.     Great men may jest with saints: \'tis wit in them;     But in the less foul profanation.   LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] Thou\'rt i\' th\' right, girl; more o\' that.   ISABELLA. That in the captain\'s but a choleric word     Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.   LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] Art avis\'d o\' that? More on\'t.   ANGELO. Why do you put these sayings upon me?   ISABELLA. Because authority, though it err like others,     Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself     That skins the vice o\' th\' top. Go to your bosom,     Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know     That\'s like my brother\'s fault. If it confess     A natural guiltiness such as is his,     Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue     Against my brother\'s life.   ANGELO. [Aside] She speaks, and \'tis     Such sense that my sense breeds with it.- Fare you well.     ISABELLA. Gentle my lord, turn back.   ANGELO. I will bethink me. Come again to-morrow.   ISABELLA. Hark how I\'ll bribe you; good my lord, turn back.   ANGELO. How, bribe me?   ISABELLA. Ay, with such gifts that heaven shall share with you.   LUCIO. [To ISABELLA) You had marr\'d all else.   ISABELLA. Not with fond sicles of the tested gold,     Or stones, whose rate are either rich or poor     As fancy values them; but with true prayers     That shall be up at heaven and enter there     Ere sun-rise, prayers from preserved souls,     From fasting maids, whose minds are dedicate     To nothing temporal.   ANGELO. Well; come to me to-morrow.   LUCIO. [To ISABELLA] Go to; \'tis well; away.   ISABELLA. Heaven keep your honour safe!   ANGELO. [Aside] Amen; for I     Am that way going to temptation     Where prayers cross.   ISABELLA. At what hour to-morrow       Shall I attend your lordship?   ANGELO. At any time \'fore noon.   ISABELLA. Save your honour!              Exeunt all but ANGELO   ANGELO. From thee; even from thy virtue!     What\'s this, what\'s this? Is this her fault or mine?     The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?     Ha!     Not she; nor doth she tempt; but it is I     That, lying by the violet in the sun,     Do as the carrion does, not as the flow\'r,     Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be     That modesty may more betray our sense     Than woman\'s lightness? Having waste ground enough,     Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary,     And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!     What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?     Dost thou desire her foully for those things     That make her good? O, let her brother live!     Thieves for their robbery have authority     When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,       That I desire to hear her speak again,     And feast upon her eyes? What is\'t I dream on?     O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,     With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous     Is that temptation that doth goad us on     To sin in loving virtue. Never could the strumpet,     With all her double vigour, art and nature,     Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid     Subdues me quite. Ever till now,     When men were fond, I smil\'d and wond\'red how.          Exit     SCENE III. A prison  Enter, severally, DUKE, disguised as a FRIAR, and PROVOST    DUKE. Hail to you, Provost! so I think you are.   PROVOST. I am the Provost. What\'s your will, good friar?   DUKE. Bound by my charity and my blest order,     I come to visit the afflicted spirits     Here in the prison. Do me the common right     To let me see them, and to make me know     The nature of their crimes, that I may minister     To them accordingly.   PROVOST. I would do more than that, if more were needful.                            Enter JULIET      Look, here comes one; a gentlewoman of mine,     Who, falling in the flaws of her own youth,     Hath blister\'d her report. She is with child;     And he that got it, sentenc\'d- a young man     More fit to do another such offence       Than die for this.   DUKE. When must he die?   PROVOST. As I do think, to-morrow.     [To JULIET] I have provided for you; stay awhile     And you shall be conducted.   DUKE. Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry?   JULIET. I do; and bear the shame most patiently.   DUKE. I\'ll teach you how you shall arraign your conscience,     And try your penitence, if it be sound     Or hollowly put on.   JULIET. I\'ll gladly learn.   DUKE. Love you the man that wrong\'d you?   JULIET. Yes, as I love the woman that wrong\'d him.   DUKE. So then, it seems, your most offenceful act     Was mutually committed.   JULIET. Mutually.   DUKE. Then was your sin of heavier kind than his.   JULIET. I do confess it, and repent it, father.   DUKE. \'Tis meet so, daughter; but lest you do repent     As that the sin hath brought you to this shame,       Which sorrow is always toward ourselves, not heaven,     Showing we would not spare heaven as we love it,     But as we stand in fear-   JULIET. I do repent me as it is an evil,     And take the shame with joy.   DUKE. There rest.     Your partner, as I hear, must die to-morrow,     And I am going with instruction to him.     Grace go with you! Benedicite!                          Exit   JULIET. Must die to-morrow! O, injurious law,     That respites me a life whose very comfort     Is still a dying horror!   PROVOST. \'Tis pity of him.                              Exeunt     SCENE IV. ANGELO\'S house  Enter ANGELO    ANGELO. When I would pray and think, I think and pray     To several subjects. Heaven hath my empty words,     Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,     Anchors on Isabel. Heaven in my mouth,     As if I did but only chew his name,     And in my heart the strong and swelling evil     Of my conception. The state whereon I studied     Is, like a good thing being often read,     Grown sere and tedious; yea, my gravity,     Wherein- let no man hear me- I take pride,     Could I with boot change for an idle plume     Which the air beats for vain. O place, O form,     How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,     Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls     To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood.     Let\'s write \'good angel\' on the devil\'s horn;     \'Tis not the devil\'s crest.                               Enter SERVANT      How now, who\'s there?   SERVANT. One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you.   ANGELO. Teach her the way. [Exit SERVANT] O heavens!     Why does my blood thus muster to my heart,     Making both it unable for itself     And dispossessing all my other parts     Of necessary fitness?     So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons;     Come all to help him, and so stop the air     By which he should revive; and even so     The general subject to a well-wish\'d king     Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness     Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love     Must needs appear offence.                              Enter ISABELLA        How now, fair maid?   ISABELLA. I am come to know your pleasure.   ANGELO. That you might know it would much better please me     Than to demand what \'tis. Your brother cannot live.   ISABELLA. Even so! Heaven keep your honour!   ANGELO. Yet may he live awhile, and, it may be,     As long as you or I; yet he must die.   ISABELLA. Under your sentence?   ANGELO. Yea.   ISABELLA. When? I beseech you; that in his reprieve,     Longer or shorter, he may be so fitted     That his soul sicken not.   ANGELO. Ha! Fie, these filthy vices! It were as good     To pardon him that hath from nature stol\'n     A man already made, as to remit     Their saucy sweetness that do coin heaven\'s image     In stamps that are forbid; \'tis all as easy     Falsely to take away a life true made     As to put metal in restrained means     To make a false one.     ISABELLA. \'Tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth.   ANGELO. Say you so? Then I shall pose you quickly.     Which had you rather- that the most just law     Now took your brother\'s life; or, to redeem him,     Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness     As she that he hath stain\'d?   ISABELLA. Sir, believe this:     I had rather give my body than my soul.   ANGELO. I talk not of your soul; our compell\'d sins     Stand more for number than for accompt.   ISABELLA. How say you?   ANGELO. Nay, I\'ll not warrant that; for I can speak     Against the thing I say. Answer to this:     I, now the voice of the recorded law,     Pronounce a sentence on your brother\'s life;     Might there not be a charity in sin     To save this brother\'s life?   ISABELLA. Please you to do\'t,     I\'ll take it as a peril to my soul     It is no sin at all, but charity.     ANGELO. Pleas\'d you to do\'t at peril of your soul,     Were equal poise of sin and charity.   ISABELLA. That I do beg his life, if it be sin,     Heaven let me bear it! You granting of my suit,     If that be sin, I\'ll make it my morn prayer     To have it added to the faults of mine,     And nothing of your answer.   ANGELO. Nay, but hear me;     Your sense pursues not mine; either you are ignorant     Or seem so, craftily; and that\'s not good.   ISABELLA. Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good     But graciously to know I am no better.   ANGELO. Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright     When it doth tax itself; as these black masks     Proclaim an enshielded beauty ten times louder     Than beauty could, display\'d. But mark me:     To be received plain, I\'ll speak more gross-     Your brother is to die.   ISABELLA. So.   ANGELO. And his offence is so, as it appears,       Accountant to the law upon that pain.   ISABELLA. True.   ANGELO. Admit no other way to save his life,     As I subscribe not that, nor any other,     But, in the loss of question, that you, his sister,     Finding yourself desir\'d of such a person     Whose credit with the judge, or own great place,     Could fetch your brother from the manacles     Of the all-binding law; and that there were     No earthly mean to save him but that either     You must lay down the treasures of your body     To this supposed, or else to let him suffer-     What would you do?   ISABELLA. As much for my poor brother as myself;     That is, were I under the terms of death,     Th\' impression of keen whips I\'d wear as rubies,     And strip myself to death as to a bed     That longing have been sick for, ere I\'d yield     My body up to shame.   ANGELO. Then must your brother die.     ISABELLA. And \'twere the cheaper way:     Better it were a brother died at once     Than that a sister, by redeeming him,     Should die for ever.   ANGELO. Were not you, then, as cruel as the sentence     That you have slander\'d so?   ISABELLA. Ignominy in ransom and free pardon     Are of two houses: lawful mercy     Is nothing kin to foul redemption.   ANGELO. You seem\'d of late to make the law a tyrant;     And rather prov\'d the sliding of your brother     A merriment than a vice.   ISABELLA. O, pardon me, my lord! It oft falls out,     To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean:     I something do excuse the thing I hate     For his advantage that I dearly love.   ANGELO. We are all frail.   ISABELLA. Else let my brother die,     If not a fedary but only he     Owe and succeed thy weakness.     ANGELO. Nay, women are frail too.   ISABELLA. Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves,     Which are as easy broke as they make forms.     Women, help heaven! Men their creation mar     In profiting by them. Nay, call us ten times frail;     For we are soft as our complexions are,     And credulous to false prints.   ANGELO. I think it well;     And from this testimony of your own sex,     Since I suppose we are made to be no stronger     Than faults may shake our frames, let me be bold.     I do arrest your words. Be that you are,     That is, a woman; if you be more, you\'re none;     If you be one, as you are well express\'d     By all external warrants, show it now     By putting on the destin\'d livery.   ISABELLA. I have no tongue but one; gentle, my lord,     Let me intreat you speak the former language.   ANGELO. Plainly conceive, I love you.   ISABELLA. My brother did love Juliet,       And you tell me that he shall die for\'t.   ANGELO. He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love.   ISABELLA. I know your virtue hath a license in\'t,     Which seems a little fouler than it is,     To pluck on others.   ANGELO. Believe me, on mine honour,     My words express my purpose.   ISABELLA. Ha! little honour to be much believ\'d,     And most pernicious purpose! Seeming, seeming!     I will proclaim thee, Angelo, look for\'t.     Sign me a present pardon for my brother     Or, with an outstretch\'d throat, I\'ll tell the world aloud     What man thou art.   ANGELO. Who will believe thee, Isabel?     My unsoil\'d name, th\' austereness of my life,     My vouch against you, and my place i\' th\' state,     Will so your accusation overweigh     That you shall stifle in your own report,     And smell of calumny. I have begun,     And now I give my sensual race the rein:       Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite;     Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes     That banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother     By yielding up thy body to my will;     Or else he must not only die the death,     But thy unkindness shall his death draw out     To ling\'ring sufferance. Answer me to-morrow,     Or, by the affection that now guides me most,     I\'ll prove a tyrant to him. As for you,     Say what you can: my false o\'erweighs your true.        Exit   ISABELLA. To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,     Who would believe me? O perilous mouths     That bear in them one and the self-same tongue     Either of condemnation or approof,     Bidding the law make curtsy to their will;     Hooking both right and wrong to th\' appetite,     To follow as it draws! I\'ll to my brother.     Though he hath fall\'n by prompture of the blood,     Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour     That, had he twenty heads to tender down       On twenty bloody blocks, he\'d yield them up     Before his sister should her body stoop     To such abhorr\'d pollution.     Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die:     More than our brother is our chastity.     I\'ll tell him yet of Angelo\'s request,     And fit his mind to death, for his soul\'s rest.         Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. The prison  Enter DUKE, disguised as before, CLAUDIO, and PROVOST    DUKE. So, then you hope of pardon from Lord Angelo?   CLAUDIO. The miserable have no other medicine     But only hope:     I have hope to Eve, and am prepar\'d to die.   DUKE. Be absolute for death; either death or life     Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life.     If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing     That none but fools would keep. A breath thou art,     Servile to all the skyey influences,     That dost this habitation where thou keep\'st     Hourly afflict. Merely, thou art Death\'s fool;     For him thou labour\'st by thy flight to shun     And yet run\'st toward him still. Thou art not noble;     For all th\' accommodations that thou bear\'st     Are nurs\'d by baseness. Thou \'rt by no means valiant;     For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork     Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,       And that thou oft provok\'st; yet grossly fear\'st     Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself;     For thou exists on many a thousand grains     That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;     For what thou hast not, still thou striv\'st to get,     And what thou hast, forget\'st. Thou art not certain;     For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,     After the moon. If thou art rich, thou\'rt poor;     For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,     Thou bear\'st thy heavy riches but a journey,     And Death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none;     For thine own bowels which do call thee sire,     The mere effusion of thy proper loins,     Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,     For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age,     But, as it were, an after-dinner\'s sleep,     Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth     Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms     Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,     Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,       To make thy riches pleasant. What\'s yet in this     That bears the name of life? Yet in this life     Lie hid moe thousand deaths; yet death we fear,     That makes these odds all even.   CLAUDIO. I humbly thank you.     To sue to live, I find I seek to die;     And, seeking death, find life. Let it come on.   ISABELLA. [Within] What, ho! Peace here; grace and good company!   PROVOST. Who\'s there? Come in; the wish deserves a welcome.   DUKE. Dear sir, ere long I\'ll visit you again.   CLAUDIO. Most holy sir, I thank you.                          Enter ISABELLA    ISABELLA. My business is a word or two with Claudio.   PROVOST. And very welcome. Look, signior, here\'s your sister.   DUKE. Provost, a word with you.   PROVOST. As many as you please.   DUKE. Bring me to hear them speak, where I may be conceal\'d.                                          Exeunt DUKE and PROVOST     CLAUDIO. Now, sister, what\'s the comfort?   ISABELLA. Why,     As all comforts are; most good, most good, indeed.     Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven,     Intends you for his swift ambassador,     Where you shall be an everlasting leiger.     Therefore, your best appointment make with speed;     To-morrow you set on.   CLAUDIO. Is there no remedy?   ISABELLA. None, but such remedy as, to save a head,     To cleave a heart in twain.   CLAUDIO. But is there any?   ISABELLA. Yes, brother, you may live:     There is a devilish mercy in the judge,     If you\'ll implore it, that will free your life,     But fetter you till death.   CLAUDIO. Perpetual durance?   ISABELLA. Ay, just; perpetual durance, a restraint,     Though all the world\'s vastidity you had,     To a determin\'d scope.     CLAUDIO. But in what nature?   ISABELLA. In such a one as, you consenting to\'t,     Would bark your honour from that trunk you bear,     And leave you naked.   CLAUDIO. Let me know the point.   ISABELLA. O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake,     Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain,     And six or seven winters more respect     Than a perpetual honour. Dar\'st thou die?     The sense of death is most in apprehension;     And the poor beetle that we tread upon     In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great     As when a giant dies.   CLAUDIO. Why give you me this shame?     Think you I can a resolution fetch     From flow\'ry tenderness? If I must die,     I will encounter darkness as a bride     And hug it in mine arms.   ISABELLA. There spake my brother; there my father\'s grave     Did utter forth a voice. Yes, thou must die:       Thou art too noble to conserve a life     In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy,     Whose settled visage and deliberate word     Nips youth i\' th\' head, and follies doth enew     As falcon doth the fowl, is yet a devil;     His filth within being cast, he would appear     A pond as deep as hell.   CLAUDIO. The precise Angelo!   ISABELLA. O, \'tis the cunning livery of hell     The damned\'st body to invest and cover     In precise guards! Dost thou think, Claudio,     If I would yield him my virginity     Thou mightst be freed?   CLAUDIO. O heavens! it cannot be.   ISABELLA. Yes, he would give\'t thee, from this rank offence,     So to offend him still. This night\'s the time     That I should do what I abhor to name,     Or else thou diest to-morrow.   CLAUDIO. Thou shalt not do\'t.   ISABELLA. O, were it but my life!       I\'d throw it down for your deliverance     As frankly as a pin.   CLAUDIO. Thanks, dear Isabel.   ISABELLA. Be ready, Claudio, for your death to-morrow.   CLAUDIO. Yes. Has he affections in him     That thus can make him bite the law by th\' nose     When he would force it? Sure it is no sin;     Or of the deadly seven it is the least.   ISABELLA. Which is the least?   CLAUDIO. If it were damnable, he being so wise,     Why would he for the momentary trick     Be perdurably fin\'d?- O Isabel!   ISABELLA. What says my brother?   CLAUDIO. Death is a fearful thing.   ISABELLA. And shamed life a hateful.   CLAUDIO. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;     To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;     This sensible warm motion to become     A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit     To bathe in fiery floods or to reside       In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;     To be imprison\'d in the viewless winds,     And blown with restless violence round about     The pendent world; or to be worse than worst     Of those that lawless and incertain thought     Imagine howling- \'tis too horrible.     The weariest and most loathed worldly life     That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment,     Can lay on nature is a paradise     To what we fear of death.   ISABELLA. Alas, alas!   CLAUDIO. Sweet sister, let me live.     What sin you do to save a brother\'s life,     Nature dispenses with the deed so far     That it becomes a virtue.   ISABELLA. O you beast!     O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!     Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?     Is\'t not a kind of incest to take life     From thine own sister\'s shame? What should I think?       Heaven shield my mother play\'d my father fair!     For such a warped slip of wilderness     Ne\'er issu\'d from his blood. Take my defiance;     Die; perish. Might but my bending down     Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed.     I\'ll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,     No word to save thee.   CLAUDIO. Nay, hear me, Isabel.   ISABELLA. O fie, fie, fie!     Thy sin\'s not accidental, but a trade.     Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd;     \'Tis best that thou diest quickly.   CLAUDIO. O, hear me, Isabella.                              Re-enter DUKE    DUKE. Vouchsafe a word, young sister, but one word.   ISABELLA. What is your will?   DUKE. Might you dispense with your leisure, I would by and by have     some speech with you; the satisfaction I would require is       likewise your own benefit.   ISABELLA. I have no superfluous leisure; my stay must be stolen out     of other affairs; but I will attend you awhile.                                                    [Walks apart]   DUKE. Son, I have overheard what hath pass\'d between you and your     sister. Angelo had never the purpose to corrupt her; only he hath     made an assay of her virtue to practise his judgment with the     disposition of natures. She, having the truth of honour in her,     hath made him that gracious denial which he is most glad to     receive. I am confessor to Angelo, and I know this to be true;     therefore prepare yourself to death. Do not satisfy your     resolution with hopes that are fallible; to-morrow you must die;     go to your knees and make ready.   CLAUDIO. Let me ask my sister pardon. I am so out of love with life     that I will sue to be rid of it.   DUKE. Hold you there. Farewell. [Exit CLAUDIO] Provost, a word with     you.                            Re-enter PROVOST      PROVOST. What\'s your will, father?   DUKE. That, now you are come, you will be gone. Leave me a while     with the maid; my mind promises with my habit no loss shall touch     her by my company.   PROVOST. In good time.                            Exit PROVOST   DUKE. The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good; the     goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness;     but grace, being the soul of your complexion, shall keep the body     of it ever fair. The assault that Angelo hath made to you,     fortune hath convey\'d to my understanding; and, but that frailty     hath examples for his falling, I should wonder at Angelo. How     will you do to content this substitute, and to save your brother?   ISABELLA. I am now going to resolve him; I had rather my brother     die by the law than my son should be unlawfully born. But, O, how     much is the good Duke deceiv\'d in Angelo! If ever he return, and     I can speak to him, I will open my lips in vain, or discover his     government.   DUKE. That shall not be much amiss; yet, as the matter now stands,     he will avoid your accusation: he made trial of you only.     Therefore fasten your ear on my advisings; to the love I have in       doing good a remedy presents itself. I do make myself believe     that you may most uprighteously do a poor wronged lady a merited     benefit; redeem your brother from the angry law; do no stain to     your own gracious person; and much please the absent Duke, if     peradventure he shall ever return to have hearing of this     business.   ISABELLA. Let me hear you speak farther; I have spirit to do     anything that appears not foul in the truth of my spirit.   DUKE. Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful. Have you not     heard speak of Mariana, the sister of Frederick, the great     soldier who miscarried at sea?   ISABELLA. I have heard of the lady, and good words went with her     name.   DUKE. She should this Angelo have married; was affianced to her by     oath, and the nuptial appointed; between which time of the     contract and limit of the solemnity her brother Frederick was     wreck\'d at sea, having in that perished vessel the dowry of his     sister. But mark how heavily this befell to the poor gentlewoman:     there she lost a noble and renowned brother, in his love toward     her ever most kind and natural; with him the portion and sinew of       her fortune, her marriage-dowry; with both, her combinate     husband, this well-seeming Angelo.   ISABELLA. Can this be so? Did Angelo so leave her?   DUKE. Left her in her tears, and dried not one of them with his     comfort; swallowed his vows whole, pretending in her discoveries     of dishonour; in few, bestow\'d her on her own lamentation, which     she yet wears for his sake; and he, a marble to her tears, is     washed with them, but relents not.   ISABELLA. What a merit were it in death to take this poor maid from     the world! What corruption in this life that it will let this man     live! But how out of this can she avail?   DUKE. It is a rupture that you may easily heal; and the cure of it     not only saves your brother, but keeps you from dishonour in     doing it.   ISABELLA. Show me how, good father.   DUKE. This forenamed maid hath yet in her the continuance of her     first affection; his unjust unkindness, that in all reason should     have quenched her love, hath, like an impediment in the current,     made it more violent and unruly. Go you to Angelo; answer his     requiring with a plausible obedience; agree with his demands to       the point; only refer yourself to this advantage: first, that     your stay with him may not be long; that the time may have all     shadow and silence in it; and the place answer to convenience.     This being granted in course- and now follows all: we shall     advise this wronged maid to stead up your appointment, go in your     place. If the encounter acknowledge itself hereafter, it may     compel him to her recompense; and here, by this, is your brother     saved, your honour untainted, the poor Mariana advantaged, and     the corrupt deputy scaled. The maid will I frame and make fit for     his attempt. If you think well to carry this as you may, the     doubleness of the benefit defends the deceit from reproof. What     think you of it?   ISABELLA. The image of it gives me content already; and I trust it     will grow to a most prosperous perfection.   DUKE. It lies much in your holding up. Haste you speedily to     Angelo; if for this night he entreat you to his bed, give him     promise of satisfaction. I will presently to Saint Luke\'s; there,     at the moated grange, resides this dejected Mariana. At that     place call upon me; and dispatch with Angelo, that it may be     quickly.     ISABELLA. I thank you for this comfort. Fare you well, good father.                                                 Exeunt severally     Scene II. The street before the prison  Enter, on one side, DUKE disguised as before; on the other, ELBOW, and OFFICERS with POMPEY    ELBOW. Nay, if there be no remedy for it, but that you will needs     buy and sell men and women like beasts, we shall have all the     world drink brown and white bastard.   DUKE. O heavens! what stuff is here?   POMPEY. \'Twas never merry world since, of two usuries, the merriest     was put down, and the worser allow\'d by order of law a furr\'d     gown to keep him warm; and furr\'d with fox on lamb-skins too, to     signify that craft, being richer than innocency, stands for the     facing.   ELBOW. Come your way, sir. Bless you, good father friar.   DUKE. And you, good brother father. What offence hath this man made     you, sir?   ELBOW. Marry, sir, he hath offended the law; and, sir, we take him     to be a thief too, sir, for we have found upon him, sir, a     strange picklock, which we have sent to the deputy.   DUKE. Fie, sirrah, a bawd, a wicked bawd!       The evil that thou causest to be done,     That is thy means to live. Do thou but think     What \'tis to cram a maw or clothe a back     From such a filthy vice; say to thyself     \'From their abominable and beastly touches     I drink, I eat, array myself, and live.\'     Canst thou believe thy living is a life,     So stinkingly depending? Go mend, go mend.   POMPEY. Indeed, it does stink in some sort, sir; but yet, sir,     I would prove-   DUKE. Nay, if the devil have given thee proofs for sin,     Thou wilt prove his. Take him to prison, officer;     Correction and instruction must both work     Ere this rude beast will profit.   ELBOW. He must before the deputy, sir; he has given him warning.     The deputy cannot abide a whoremaster; if he be a whoremonger,     and comes before him, he were as good go a mile on his errand.   DUKE. That we were all, as some would seem to be,     From our faults, as his faults from seeming, free.   ELBOW. His neck will come to your waist- a cord, sir.                              Enter LUCIO    POMPEY. I spy comfort; I cry bail. Here\'s a gentleman, and a friend     of mine.   LUCIO. How now, noble Pompey! What, at the wheels of Caesar? Art     thou led in triumph? What, is there none of Pygmalion\'s images,     newly made woman, to be had now for putting the hand in the     pocket and extracting it clutch\'d? What reply, ha? What say\'st     thou to this tune, matter, and method? Is\'t not drown\'d i\' th\'     last rain, ha? What say\'st thou, trot? Is the world as it was,     man? Which is the way? Is it sad, and few words? or how? The     trick of it?   DUKE. Still thus, and thus; still worse!   LUCIO. How doth my dear morsel, thy mistress? Procures she still,     ha?   POMPEY. Troth, sir, she hath eaten up all her beef, and she is     herself in the tub.   LUCIO. Why, \'tis good; it is the right of it; it must be so; ever     your fresh whore and your powder\'d bawd- an unshunn\'d       consequence; it must be so. Art going to prison, Pompey?   POMPEY. Yes, faith, sir.   LUCIO. Why, \'tis not amiss, Pompey. Farewell; go, say I sent thee     thither. For debt, Pompey- or how?   ELBOW. For being a bawd, for being a bawd.   LUCIO. Well, then, imprison him. If imprisonment be the due of a     bawd, why, \'tis his right. Bawd is he doubtless, and of     antiquity, too; bawd-born. Farewell, good Pompey. Commend me to     the prison, Pompey. You will turn good husband now, Pompey; you     will keep the house.   POMPEY. I hope, sir, your good worship will be my bail.   LUCIO. No, indeed, will I not, Pompey; it is not the wear. I will     pray, Pompey, to increase your bondage. If you take it not     patiently, why, your mettle is the more. Adieu trusty Pompey.     Bless you, friar.   DUKE. And you.   LUCIO. Does Bridget paint still, Pompey, ha?   ELBOW. Come your ways, sir; come.   POMPEY. You will not bail me then, sir?   LUCIO. Then, Pompey, nor now. What news abroad, friar? what news?     ELBOW. Come your ways, sir; come.   LUCIO. Go to kennel, Pompey, go.                                 Exeunt ELBOW, POMPEY and OFFICERS      What news, friar, of the Duke?   DUKE. I know none. Can you tell me of any?   LUCIO. Some say he is with the Emperor of Russia; other some, he is     in Rome; but where is he, think you?   DUKE. I know not where; but wheresoever, I wish him well.   LUCIO. It was a mad fantastical trick of him to steal from the     state and usurp the beggary he was never born to. Lord Angelo     dukes it well in his absence; he puts transgression to\'t.   DUKE. He does well in\'t.   LUCIO. A little more lenity to lechery would do no harm in him;     something too crabbed that way, friar.   DUKE. It is too general a vice, and severity must cure it.   LUCIO. Yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great kindred; it is     well allied; but it is impossible to extirp it quite, friar, till     eating and drinking be put down. They say this Angelo was not       made by man and woman after this downright way of creation. Is it     true, think you?   DUKE. How should he be made, then?   LUCIO. Some report a sea-maid spawn\'d him; some, that he was begot     between two stock-fishes. But it is certain that when he makes     water his urine is congeal\'d ice; that I know to be true. And he     is a motion generative; that\'s infallible.   DUKE. You are pleasant, sir, and speak apace.   LUCIO. Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the rebellion     of a codpiece to take away the life of a man! Would the Duke that     is absent have done this? Ere he would have hang\'d a man for the     getting a hundred bastards, he would have paid for the nursing a     thousand. He had some feeling of the sport; he knew the service,     and that instructed him to mercy.   DUKE. I never heard the absent Duke much detected for women; he was     not inclin\'d that way.   LUCIO. O, sir, you are deceiv\'d.   DUKE. \'Tis not possible.   LUCIO. Who- not the Duke? Yes, your beggar of fifty; and his use     was to put a ducat in her clack-dish. The Duke had crotchets in       him. He would be drunk too; that let me inform you.   DUKE. You do him wrong, surely.   LUCIO. Sir, I was an inward of his. A shy fellow was the Duke; and     I believe I know the cause of his withdrawing.   DUKE. What, I prithee, might be the cause?   LUCIO. No, pardon; \'tis a secret must be lock\'d within the teeth     and the lips; but this I can let you understand: the greater file     of the subject held the Duke to be wise.   DUKE. Wise? Why, no question but he was.   LUCIO. A very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow.   DUKE. Either this is envy in you, folly, or mistaking; the very     stream of his life, and the business he hath helmed, must, upon a     warranted need, give him a better proclamation. Let him be but     testimonied in his own bringings-forth, and he shall appear to     the envious a scholar, a statesman, and a soldier. Therefore you     speak unskilfully; or, if your knowledge be more, it is much     dark\'ned in your malice.   LUCIO. Sir, I know him, and I love him.   DUKE. Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer     love.     LUCIO. Come, sir, I know what I know.   DUKE. I can hardly believe that, since you know not what you speak.     But, if ever the Duke return, as our prayers are he may, let me     desire you to make your answer before him. If it be honest you     have spoke, you have courage to maintain it; I am bound to call     upon you; and I pray you your name?   LUCIO. Sir, my name is Lucio, well known to the Duke.   DUKE. He shall know you better, sir, if I may live to report you.   LUCIO. I fear you not.   DUKE. O, you hope the Duke will return no more; or you imagine me     too unhurtful an opposite. But, indeed, I can do you little harm:     you\'ll forswear this again.   LUCIO. I\'ll be hang\'d first. Thou art deceiv\'d in me, friar. But no     more of this. Canst thou tell if Claudio die to-morrow or no?   DUKE. Why should he die, sir?   LUCIO. Why? For filling a bottle with a tun-dish. I would the Duke     we talk of were return\'d again. This ungenitur\'d agent will     unpeople the province with continency; sparrows must not build in     his house-eaves because they are lecherous. The Duke yet would     have dark deeds darkly answered; he would never bring them to       light. Would he were return\'d! Marry, this Claudio is condemned     for untrussing. Farewell, good friar; I prithee pray for me. The     Duke, I say to thee again, would eat mutton on Fridays. He\'s not     past it yet; and, I say to thee, he would mouth with a beggar     though she smelt brown bread and garlic. Say that I said so.     Farewell.                                               Exit   DUKE. No might nor greatness in mortality     Can censure scape; back-wounding calumny     The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong     Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?     But who comes here?               Enter ESCALUS, PROVOST, and OFFICERS with                            MISTRESS OVERDONE    ESCALUS. Go, away with her to prison.   MRS. OVERDONE. Good my lord, be good to me; your honour is     accounted a merciful man; good my lord.   ESCALUS. Double and treble admonition, and still forfeit in the     same kind! This would make mercy swear and play the tyrant.     PROVOST. A bawd of eleven years\' continuance, may it please your     honour.   MRS. OVERDONE. My lord, this is one Lucio\'s information against me.     Mistress Kate Keepdown was with child by him in the Duke\'s time;     he promis\'d her marriage. His child is a year and a quarter old     come Philip and Jacob; I have kept it myself; and see how he goes     about to abuse me.   ESCALUS. That fellow is a fellow of much license. Let him be call\'d     before us. Away with her to prison. Go to; no more words. [Exeunt     OFFICERS with MISTRESS OVERDONE]  Provost, my brother Angelo will     not be alter\'d: Claudio must die to-morrow. Let him be furnish\'d     with divines, and have all charitable preparation. If my brother     wrought by my pity, it should not be so with him.   PROVOST. So please you, this friar hath been with him, and advis\'d     him for th\' entertainment of death.   ESCALUS. Good even, good father.   DUKE. Bliss and goodness on you!   ESCALUS. Of whence are you?   DUKE. Not of this country, though my chance is now     To use it for my time. I am a brother       Of gracious order, late come from the See     In special business from his Holiness.   ESCALUS. What news abroad i\' th\' world?   DUKE. None, but that there is so great a fever on goodness that the     dissolution of it must cure it. Novelty is only in request; and,     as it is, as dangerous to be aged in any kind of course as it is     virtuous to be constant in any undertakeing. There is scarce     truth enough alive to make societies secure; but security enough     to make fellowships accurst. Much upon this riddle runs the     wisdom of the world. This news is old enough, yet it is every     day\'s news. I pray you, sir, of what disposition was the Duke?   ESCALUS. One that, above all other strifes, contended especially to     know himself.   DUKE. What pleasure was he given to?   ESCALUS. Rather rejoicing to see another merry than merry at     anything which profess\'d to make him rejoice; a gentleman of all     temperance. But leave we him to his events, with a prayer they     may prove prosperous; and let me desire to know how you find     Claudio prepar\'d. I am made to understand that you have lent him     visitation.     DUKE. He professes to have received no sinister measure from his     judge, but most willingly humbles himself to the determination of     justice. Yet had he framed to himself, by the instruction of his     frailty, many deceiving promises of life; which I, by my good     leisure, have discredited to him, and now he is resolv\'d to die.   ESCALUS. You have paid the heavens your function, and the prisoner     the very debt of your calling. I have labour\'d for the poor     gentleman to the extremest shore of my modesty; but my brother     justice have I found so severe that he hath forc\'d me to tell him     he is indeed Justice.   DUKE. If his own life answer the straitness of his proceeding, it     shall become him well; wherein if he chance to fail, he hath     sentenc\'d himself.   ESCALUS. I am going to visit the prisoner. Fare you well.   DUKE. Peace be with you!            Exeunt ESCALUS and PROVOST           He who the sword of heaven will bear          Should be as holy as severe;          Pattern in himself to know,          Grace to stand, and virtue go;            More nor less to others paying          Than by self-offences weighing.          Shame to him whose cruel striking          Kills for faults of his own liking!          Twice treble shame on Angelo,          To weed my vice and let his grow!          O, what may man within him hide,          Though angel on the outward side!          How may likeness, made in crimes,          Make a practice on the times,          To draw with idle spiders\' strings          Most ponderous and substantial things!          Craft against vice I must apply.          With Angelo to-night shall lie          His old betrothed but despised;          So disguise shall, by th\' disguised,          Pay with falsehood false exacting,          And perform an old contracting.                    Exit     Act IV. Scene I. The moated grange at Saint Duke\'s  Enter MARIANA; and BOY singing                               SONG             Take, O, take those lips away,              That so sweetly were forsworn;            And those eyes, the break of day,              Lights that do mislead the morn;            But my kisses bring again, bring again;            Seals of love, but seal\'d in vain, seal\'d in vain.                    Enter DUKE, disguised as before    MARIANA. Break off thy song, and haste thee quick away;     Here comes a man of comfort, whose advice     Hath often still\'d my brawling discontent.          Exit BOY     I cry you mercy, sir, and well could wish     You had not found me here so musical.     Let me excuse me, and believe me so,       My mirth it much displeas\'d, but pleas\'d my woe.   DUKE. \'Tis good; though music oft hath such a charm     To make bad good and good provoke to harm.     I pray you tell me hath anybody inquir\'d for me here to-day. Much     upon this time have I promis\'d here to meet.   MARIANA. You have not been inquir\'d after; I have sat here all day.                           Enter ISABELLA    DUKE. I do constantly believe you. The time is come even now. I     shall crave your forbearance a little. May be I will call upon     you anon, for some advantage to yourself.   MARIANA. I am always bound to you.                        Exit   DUKE. Very well met, and well come.     What is the news from this good deputy?   ISABELLA. He hath a garden circummur\'d with brick,     Whose western side is with a vineyard back\'d;     And to that vineyard is a planched gate     That makes his opening with this bigger key;     This other doth command a little door       Which from the vineyard to the garden leads.     There have I made my promise     Upon the heavy middle of the night     To call upon him.   DUKE. But shall you on your knowledge find this way?   ISABELLA. I have ta\'en a due and wary note upon\'t;     With whispering and most guilty diligence,     In action all of precept, he did show me     The way twice o\'er.   DUKE. Are there no other tokens     Between you \'greed concerning her observance?   ISABELLA. No, none, but only a repair i\' th\' dark;     And that I have possess\'d him my most stay     Can be but brief; for I have made him know     I have a servant comes with me along,     That stays upon me; whose persuasion is     I come about my brother.   DUKE. \'Tis well borne up.     I have not yet made known to Mariana     A word of this. What ho, within! come forth.                           Re-enter MARIANA      I pray you be acquainted with this maid;     She comes to do you good.   ISABELLA. I do desire the like.   DUKE. Do you persuade yourself that I respect you?   MARIANA. Good friar, I know you do, and have found it.   DUKE. Take, then, this your companion by the hand,     Who hath a story ready for your ear.     I shall attend your leisure; but make haste;     The vaporous night approaches.   MARIANA. Will\'t please you walk aside?                                      Exeunt MARIANA and ISABELLA   DUKE. O place and greatness! Millions of false eyes     Are stuck upon thee. Volumes of report     Run with these false, and most contrarious quest     Upon thy doings. Thousand escapes of wit     Make thee the father of their idle dream,     And rack thee in their fancies.                     Re-enter MARIANA and ISABELLA      Welcome, how agreed?   ISABELLA. She\'ll take the enterprise upon her, father,     If you advise it.   DUKE. It is not my consent,     But my entreaty too.   ISABELLA. Little have you to say,     When you depart from him, but, soft and low,     \'Remember now my brother.\'   MARIANA. Fear me not.   DUKE. Nor, gentle daughter, fear you not at all.     He is your husband on a pre-contract.     To bring you thus together \'tis no sin,     Sith that the justice of your title to him     Doth flourish the deceit. Come, let us go;     Our corn\'s to reap, for yet our tithe\'s to sow.       Exeunt     SCENE II. The prison  Enter PROVOST and POMPEY    PROVOST. Come hither, sirrah. Can you cut off a man\'s head?   POMPEY. If the man be a bachelor, sir, I can; but if he be a     married man, he\'s his wife\'s head, and I can never cut of a     woman\'s head.   PROVOST. Come, sir, leave me your snatches and yield me a direct     answer. To-morrow morning are to die Claudio and Barnardine. Here     is in our prison a common executioner, who in his office lacks a     helper; if you will take it on you to assist him, it shall redeem     you from your gyves; if not, you shall have your full time of     imprisonment, and your deliverance with an unpitied whipping, for     you have been a notorious bawd.   POMPEY. Sir, I have been an unlawful bawd time out of mind; but yet     I will be content to be a lawful hangman. I would be glad to     receive some instructions from my fellow partner.   PROVOST. What ho, Abhorson! Where\'s Abhorson there?                            Enter ABHORSON      ABHORSON. Do you call, sir?   PROVOST. Sirrah, here\'s a fellow will help you to-morrow in your     execution. If you think it meet, compound with him by the year,     and let him abide here with you; if not, use him for the present,     and dismiss him. He cannot plead his estimation with you; he hath     been a bawd.   ABHORSON. A bawd, sir? Fie upon him! He will discredit our mystery.   PROVOST. Go to, sir; you weigh equally; a feather will turn the     scale.                                                  Exit   POMPEY. Pray, sir, by your good favour- for surely, sir, a good     favour you have but that you have a hanging look- do you call,     sir, your occupation a mystery?   ABHORSON. Ay, sir; a mystery.   POMPEY. Painting, sir, I have heard say, is a mystery; and your     whores, sir, being members of my occupation, using painting, do     prove my occupation a mystery; but what mystery there should be     in hanging, if I should be hang\'d, I cannot imagine.   ABHORSON. Sir, it is a mystery.   POMPEY. Proof?     ABHORSON. Every true man\'s apparel fits your thief: if it be too     little for your thief, your true man thinks it big enough; if it     be too big for your thief, your thief thinks it little enough; so     every true man\'s apparel fits your thief.                            Re-enter PROVOST    PROVOST. Are you agreed?   POMPEY. Sir, I will serve him; for I do find your hangman is a more     penitent trade than your bawd; he doth oftener ask forgiveness.   PROVOST. You, sirrah, provide your block and your axe to-morrow     four o\'clock.   ABHORSON. Come on, bawd; I will instruct thee in my trade; follow.   POMPEY. I do desire to learn, sir; and I hope, if you have occasion     to use me for your own turn, you shall find me yare; for truly,     sir, for your kindness I owe you a good turn.   PROVOST. Call hither Barnardine and Claudio.                                       Exeunt ABHORSON and POMPEY     Th\' one has my pity; not a jot the other,     Being a murderer, though he were my brother.                               Enter CLAUDIO      Look, here\'s the warrant, Claudio, for thy death;     \'Tis now dead midnight, and by eight to-morrow     Thou must be made immortal. Where\'s Barnardine?   CLAUDIO. As fast lock\'d up in sleep as guiltless labour     When it lies starkly in the traveller\'s bones.     He will not wake.   PROVOST. Who can do good on him?     Well, go, prepare yourself. [Knocking within] But hark, what       noise?     Heaven give your spirits comfort!               Exit CLAUDIO     [Knocking continues] By and by.     I hope it is some pardon or reprieve     For the most gentle Claudio.                   Enter DUKE, disguised as before      Welcome, father.     DUKE. The best and wholesom\'st spirits of the night     Envelop you, good Provost! Who call\'d here of late?   PROVOST. None, since the curfew rung.   DUKE. Not Isabel?   PROVOST. No.   DUKE. They will then, ere\'t be long.   PROVOST. What comfort is for Claudio?   DUKE. There\'s some in hope.   PROVOST. It is a bitter deputy.   DUKE. Not so, not so; his life is parallel\'d     Even with the stroke and line of his great justice;     He doth with holy abstinence subdue     That in himself which he spurs on his pow\'r     To qualify in others. Were he meal\'d with that     Which he corrects, then were he tyrannous;     But this being so, he\'s just. [Knocking within] Now are they       come.                                         Exit PROVOST     This is a gentle provost; seldom when     The steeled gaoler is the friend of men. [Knocking within]     How now, what noise! That spirit\'s possess\'d with haste       That wounds th\' unsisting postern with these strokes.                          Re-enter PROVOST    PROVOST. There he must stay until the officer     Arise to let him in; he is call\'d up.   DUKE. Have you no countermand for Claudio yet     But he must die to-morrow?   PROVOST. None, sir, none.   DUKE. As near the dawning, Provost, as it is,     You shall hear more ere morning.   PROVOST. Happily     You something know; yet I believe there comes     No countermand; no such example have we.     Besides, upon the very siege of justice,     Lord Angelo hath to the public ear     Profess\'d the contrary.                           Enter a MESSENGER       This is his lordship\'s man.   DUKE. And here comes Claudio\'s pardon.   MESSENGER. My lord hath sent you this note; and by me this further     charge, that you swerve not from the smallest article of it,     neither in time, matter, or other circumstance. Good morrow; for     as I take it, it is almost day.   PROVOST. I shall obey him.                      Exit MESSENGER   DUKE. [Aside] This is his pardon, purchas\'d by such sin     For which the pardoner himself is in;     Hence hath offence his quick celerity,     When it is borne in high authority.     When vice makes mercy, mercy\'s so extended     That for the fault\'s love is th\' offender friended.     Now, sir, what news?   PROVOST. I told you: Lord Angelo, belike thinking me remiss in mine     office, awakens me with this unwonted putting-on; methinks     strangely, for he hath not us\'d it before.   DUKE. Pray you, let\'s hear.   PROVOST. [Reads] \'Whatsoever you may hear to the contrary, let     Claudio be executed by four of the clock, and, in the afternoon,       Barnardine. For my better satisfaction, let me have Claudio\'s     head sent me by five. Let this be duly performed, with a thought     that more depends on it than we must yet deliver. Thus fail not     to do your office, as you will answer it at your peril.\'     What say you to this, sir?   DUKE. What is that Barnardine who is to be executed in th\'     afternoon?   PROVOST. A Bohemian born; but here nurs\'d up and bred.     One that is a prisoner nine years old.   DUKE. How came it that the absent Duke had not either deliver\'d him     to his liberty or executed him? I have heard it was ever his     manner to do so.   PROVOST. His friends still wrought reprieves for him; and, indeed,     his fact, till now in the government of Lord Angelo, came not to     an undoubted proof.   DUKE. It is now apparent?   PROVOST. Most manifest, and not denied by himself.   DUKE. Hath he borne himself penitently in prison? How seems he to     be touch\'d?   PROVOST. A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a       drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless, of what\'s past,     present, or to come; insensible of mortality and desperately     mortal.   DUKE. He wants advice.   PROVOST. He will hear none. He hath evermore had the liberty of the     prison; give him leave to escape hence, he would not; drunk many     times a day, if not many days entirely drunk. We have very oft     awak\'d him, as if to carry him to execution, and show\'d him a     seeming warrant for it; it hath not moved him at all.   DUKE. More of him anon. There is written in your brow, Provost,     honesty and constancy. If I read it not truly, my ancient skill     beguiles me; but in the boldness of my cunning I will lay myself     in hazard. Claudio, whom here you have warrant to execute, is no     greater forfeit to the law than Angelo who hath sentenc\'d him. To     make you understand this in a manifested effect, I crave but four     days\' respite; for the which you are to do me both a present and     a dangerous courtesy.   PROVOST. Pray, sir, in what?   DUKE. In the delaying death.   PROVOST. Alack! How may I do it, having the hour limited, and an       express command, under penalty, to deliver his head in the view     of Angelo? I may make my case as Claudio\'s, to cross this in the     smallest.   DUKE. By the vow of mine order, I warrant you, if my instructions     may be your guide. Let this Barnardine be this morning executed,     and his head borne to Angelo.   PROVOST. Angelo hath seen them both, and will discover the favour.   DUKE. O, death\'s a great disguiser; and you may add to it. Shave     the head and tie the beard; and say it was the desire of the     penitent to be so bar\'d before his death. You know the course is     common. If anything fall to you upon this more than thanks and     good fortune, by the saint whom I profess, I will plead against     it with my life.   PROVOST. Pardon me, good father; it is against my oath.   DUKE. Were you sworn to the Duke, or to the deputy?   PROVOST. To him and to his substitutes.   DUKE. You will think you have made no offence if the Duke avouch     the justice of your dealing?   PROVOST. But what likelihood is in that?   DUKE. Not a resemblance, but a certainty. Yet since I see you       fearful, that neither my coat, integrity, nor persuasion, can     with ease attempt you, I will go further than I meant, to pluck     all fears out of you. Look you, sir, here is the hand and seal of     the Duke. You know the character, I doubt not; and the signet is     not strange to you.   PROVOST. I know them both.   DUKE. The contents of this is the return of the Duke; you shall     anon over-read it at your pleasure, where you shall find within     these two days he will be here. This is a thing that Angelo knows     not; for he this very day receives letters of strange tenour,     perchance of the Duke\'s death, perchance entering into some     monastery; but, by chance, nothing of what is writ. Look, th\'     unfolding star calls up the shepherd. Put not yourself into     amazement how these things should be: all difficulties are but     easy when they are known. Call your executioner, and off with     Barnardine\'s head. I will give him a present shrift, and advise     him for a better place. Yet you are amaz\'d, but this shall     absolutely resolve you. Come away; it is almost clear dawn.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE III. The prison  Enter POMPEY    POMPEY. I am as well acquainted here as I was in our house of     profession; one would think it were Mistress Overdone\'s own     house, for here be many of her old customers. First, here\'s young     Master Rash; he\'s in for a commodity of brown paper and old     ginger, nine score and seventeen pounds, of which he made five     marks ready money. Marry, then ginger was not much in request,     for the old women were all dead. Then is there here one Master     Caper, at the suit of Master Threepile the mercer, for some four     suits of peach-colour\'d satin, which now peaches him a beggar.     Then have we here young Dizy, and young Master Deepvow, and     Master Copperspur, and Master Starvelackey, the rapier and dagger     man, and young Dropheir that kill\'d lusty Pudding, and Master     Forthlight the tilter, and brave Master Shootie the great     traveller, and wild Halfcan that stabb\'d Pots, and, I think,     forty more- all great doers in our trade, and are now \'for the     Lord\'s sake.\'                                Enter ABHORSON    ABHORSON. Sirrah, bring Barnardine hither.   POMPEY. Master Barnardine! You must rise and be hang\'d, Master     Barnardine!   ABHORSON. What ho, Barnardine!   BARNARDINE. [Within] A pox o\' your throats! Who makes that noise     there? What are you?   POMPEY. Your friends, sir; the hangman. You must be so good, sir,     to rise and be put to death.   BARNARDINE. [ Within ] Away, you rogue, away; I am sleepy.   ABHORSON. Tell him he must awake, and that quickly too.   POMPEY. Pray, Master Barnardine, awake till you are executed, and     sleep afterwards.   ABHORSON. Go in to him, and fetch him out.   POMPEY. He is coming, sir, he is coming; I hear his straw rustle.                               Enter BARNARDINE    ABHORSON. Is the axe upon the block, sirrah?     POMPEY. Very ready, sir.   BARNARDINE. How now, Abhorson, what\'s the news with you?   ABHORSON. Truly, sir, I would desire you to clap into your prayers;     for, look you, the warrant\'s come.   BARNARDINE. You rogue, I have been drinking all night; I am not     fitted for\'t.   POMPEY. O, the better, sir! For he that drinks all night and is     hanged betimes in the morning may sleep the sounder all the next     day.                    Enter DUKE, disguised as before    ABHORSON. Look you, sir, here comes your ghostly father.     Do we jest now, think you?   DUKE. Sir, induced by my charity, and hearing how hastily you are     to depart, I am come to advise you, comfort you, and pray with     you.   BARNARDINE. Friar, not I; I have been drinking hard all night, and     I will have more time to prepare me, or they shall beat out my     brains with billets. I will not consent to die this day, that\'s       certain.   DUKE. O, Sir, you must; and therefore I beseech you     Look forward on the journey you shall go.   BARNARDINE. I swear I will not die to-day for any man\'s persuasion.   DUKE. But hear you-   BARNARDINE. Not a word; if you have anything to say to me, come to     my ward; for thence will not I to-day.                  Exit   DUKE. Unfit to live or die. O gravel heart!     After him, fellows; bring him to the block.                                       Exeunt ABHORSON and POMPEY                              Enter PROVOST    PROVOST. Now, sir, how do you find the prisoner?   DUKE. A creature unprepar\'d, unmeet for death;     And to transport him in the mind he is     Were damnable.   PROVOST. Here in the prison, father,     There died this morning of a cruel fever     One Ragozine, a most notorious pirate,       A man of Claudio\'s years; his beard and head     Just of his colour. What if we do omit     This reprobate till he were well inclin\'d,     And satisfy the deputy with the visage     Of Ragozine, more like to Claudio?   DUKE. O, \'tis an accident that heaven provides!     Dispatch it presently; the hour draws on     Prefix\'d by Angelo. See this be done,     And sent according to command; whiles I     Persuade this rude wretch willingly to die.   PROVOST. This shall be done, good father, presently.     But Barnardine must die this afternoon;     And how shall we continue Claudio,     To save me from the danger that might come     If he were known alive?   DUKE. Let this be done:     Put them in secret holds, both Barnardine and Claudio.     Ere twice the sun hath made his journal greeting     To the under generation, you shall find     Your safety manifested.     PROVOST. I am your free dependant.   DUKE. Quick, dispatch, and send the head to Angelo.                                                     Exit PROVOST     Now will I write letters to Angelo-     The Provost, he shall bear them- whose contents     Shall witness to him I am near at home,     And that, by great injunctions, I am bound     To enter publicly. Him I\'ll desire     To meet me at the consecrated fount,     A league below the city; and from thence,     By cold gradation and well-balanc\'d form.     We shall proceed with Angelo.                           Re-enter PROVOST    PROVOST. Here is the head; I\'ll carry it myself.   DUKE. Convenient is it. Make a swift return;     For I would commune with you of such things     That want no ear but yours.   PROVOST. I\'ll make all speed.                             Exit     ISABELLA. [ Within ] Peace, ho, be here!   DUKE. The tongue of Isabel. She\'s come to know     If yet her brother\'s pardon be come hither;     But I will keep her ignorant of her good,     To make her heavenly comforts of despair     When it is least expected.                             Enter ISABELLA    ISABELLA. Ho, by your leave!   DUKE. Good morning to you, fair and gracious daughter.   ISABELLA. The better, given me by so holy a man.     Hath yet the deputy sent my brother\'s pardon?   DUKE. He hath releas\'d him, Isabel, from the world.     His head is off and sent to Angelo.   ISABELLA. Nay, but it is not so.   DUKE. It is no other.     Show your wisdom, daughter, in your close patience,   ISABELLA. O, I will to him and pluck out his eyes!   DUKE. You shall not be admitted to his sight.     ISABELLA. Unhappy Claudio! Wretched Isabel!     Injurious world! Most damned Angelo!   DUKE. This nor hurts him nor profits you a jot;     Forbear it, therefore; give your cause to heaven.     Mark what I say, which you shall find     By every syllable a faithful verity.     The Duke comes home to-morrow. Nay, dry your eyes.     One of our covent, and his confessor,     Gives me this instance. Already he hath carried     Notice to Escalus and Angelo,     Who do prepare to meet him at the gates,     There to give up their pow\'r. If you can, pace your wisdom     In that good path that I would wish it go,     And you shall have your bosom on this wretch,     Grace of the Duke, revenges to your heart,     And general honour.   ISABELLA. I am directed by you.   DUKE. This letter, then, to Friar Peter give;     \'Tis that he sent me of the Duke\'s return.     Say, by this token, I desire his company       At Mariana\'s house to-night. Her cause and yours     I\'ll perfect him withal; and he shall bring you     Before the Duke; and to the head of Angelo     Accuse him home and home. For my poor self,     I am combined by a sacred vow,     And shall be absent. Wend you with this letter.     Command these fretting waters from your eyes     With a light heart; trust not my holy order,     If I pervert your course. Who\'s here?                             Enter LUCIO    LUCIO. Good even. Friar, where\'s the Provost?   DUKE. Not within, sir.   LUCIO. O pretty Isabella, I am pale at mine heart to see thine eyes     so red. Thou must be patient. I am fain to dine and sup with     water and bran; I dare not for my head fill my belly; one     fruitful meal would set me to\'t. But they say the Duke will be     here to-morrow. By my troth, Isabel, I lov\'d thy brother. If the     old fantastical Duke of dark corners had been at home, he had       lived.                                         Exit ISABELLA   DUKE. Sir, the Duke is marvellous little beholding to your reports;     but the best is, he lives not in them.   LUCIO. Friar, thou knowest not the Duke so well as I do; he\'s a     better woodman than thou tak\'st him for.   DUKE. Well, you\'ll answer this one day. Fare ye well.   LUCIO. Nay, tarry; I\'ll go along with thee; I can tell thee pretty     tales of the Duke.   DUKE. You have told me too many of him already, sir, if they be     true; if not true, none were enough.   LUCIO. I was once before him for getting a wench with child.   DUKE. Did you such a thing?   LUCIO. Yes, marry, did I; but I was fain to forswear it: they would     else have married me to the rotten medlar.   DUKE. Sir, your company is fairer than honest. Rest you well.   LUCIO. By my troth, I\'ll go with thee to the lane\'s end. If bawdy     talk offend you, we\'ll have very little of it. Nay, friar, I am a     kind of burr; I shall stick.                          Exeunt     SCENE IV. ANGELO\'S house  Enter ANGELO and ESCALUS    ESCALUS. Every letter he hath writ hath disvouch\'d other.   ANGELO. In most uneven and distracted manner. His actions show much     like to madness; pray heaven his wisdom be not tainted! And why     meet him at the gates, and redeliver our authorities there?   ESCALUS. I guess not.   ANGELO. And why should we proclaim it in an hour before his     ent\'ring that, if any crave redress of injustice, they should     exhibit their petitions in the street?   ESCALUS. He shows his reason for that: to have a dispatch of      complaints; and to deliver us from devices hereafter, which     shall then have no power to stand against us.   ANGELO. Well, I beseech you, let it be proclaim\'d;     Betimes i\' th\' morn I\'ll call you at your house;     Give notice to such men of sort and suit     As are to meet him.   ESCALUS. I shall, sir; fare you well.   ANGELO. Good night.                               Exit ESCALUS       This deed unshapes me quite, makes me unpregnant     And dull to all proceedings. A deflow\'red maid!     And by an eminent body that enforc\'d     The law against it! But that her tender shame     Will not proclaim against her maiden loss,     How might she tongue me! Yet reason dares her no;     For my authority bears a so credent bulk     That no particular scandal once can touch     But it confounds the breather. He should have liv\'d,     Save that his riotous youth, with dangerous sense,     Might in the times to come have ta\'en revenge,     By so receiving a dishonour\'d life     With ransom of such shame. Would yet he had liv\'d!     Alack, when once our grace we have forgot,     Nothing goes right; we would, and we would not.         Exit     SCENE V. Fields without the town  Enter DUKE in his own habit, and Friar PETER    DUKE. These letters at fit time deliver me.   [Giving letters]     The Provost knows our purpose and our plot.     The matter being afoot, keep your instruction     And hold you ever to our special drift;     Though sometimes you do blench from this to that     As cause doth minister. Go, call at Flavius\' house,     And tell him where I stay; give the like notice     To Valentinus, Rowland, and to Crassus,     And bid them bring the trumpets to the gate;     But send me Flavius first.     PETER. It shall be speeded well.                  Exit FRIAR                               Enter VARRIUS    DUKE. I thank thee, Varrius; thou hast made good haste.     Come, we will walk. There\'s other of our friends     Will greet us here anon. My gentle Varrius!           Exeunt     SCENE VI. A street near the city gate  Enter ISABELLA and MARIANA    ISABELLA. To speak so indirectly I am loath;     I would say the truth; but to accuse him so,     That is your part. Yet I am advis\'d to do it;     He says, to veil full purpose.   MARIANA. Be rul\'d by him.   ISABELLA. Besides, he tells me that, if peradventure     He speak against me on the adverse side,     I should not think it strange; for \'tis a physic     That\'s bitter to sweet end.   MARIANA. I would Friar Peter-                           Enter FRIAR PETER    ISABELLA. O, peace! the friar is come.   PETER. Come, I have found you out a stand most fit,     Where you may have such vantage on the Duke     He shall not pass you. Twice have the trumpets sounded;       The generous and gravest citizens     Have hent the gates, and very near upon     The Duke is ent\'ring; therefore, hence, away.         Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. The city gate  Enter at several doors DUKE, VARRIUS, LORDS; ANGELO, ESCALUS, Lucio, PROVOST, OFFICERS, and CITIZENS    DUKE. My very worthy cousin, fairly met!     Our old and faithful friend, we are glad to see you.   ANGELO, ESCALUS. Happy return be to your royal Grace!   DUKE. Many and hearty thankings to you both.     We have made inquiry of you, and we hear     Such goodness of your justice that our soul     Cannot but yield you forth to public thanks,     Forerunning more requital.   ANGELO. You make my bonds still greater.   DUKE. O, your desert speaks loud; and I should wrong it     To lock it in the wards of covert bosom,     When it deserves, with characters of brass,     A forted residence \'gainst the tooth of time     And razure of oblivion. Give me your hand.     And let the subject see, to make them know     That outward courtesies would fain proclaim       Favours that keep within. Come, Escalus,     You must walk by us on our other hand,     And good supporters are you.                   Enter FRIAR PETER and ISABELLA    PETER. Now is your time; speak loud, and kneel before him.   ISABELLA. Justice, O royal Duke! Vail your regard     Upon a wrong\'d- I would fain have said a maid!     O worthy Prince, dishonour not your eye     By throwing it on any other object     Till you have heard me in my true complaint,     And given me justice, justice, justice, justice.   DUKE. Relate your wrongs. In what? By whom? Be brief.     Here is Lord Angelo shall give you justice;     Reveal yourself to him.   ISABELLA. O worthy Duke,     You bid me seek redemption of the devil!     Hear me yourself; for that which I must speak     Must either punish me, not being believ\'d,       Or wring redress from you. Hear me, O, hear me, here!   ANGELO. My lord, her wits, I fear me, are not firm;     She hath been a suitor to me for her brother,     Cut off by course of justice-   ISABELLA. By course of justice!   ANGELO. And she will speak most bitterly and strange.   ISABELLA. Most strange, but yet most truly, will I speak.     That Angelo\'s forsworn, is it not strange?     That Angelo\'s a murderer, is\'t not strange?     That Angelo is an adulterous thief,     An hypocrite, a virgin-violator,     Is it not strange and strange?   DUKE. Nay, it is ten times strange.   ISABELLA. It is not truer he is Angelo     Than this is all as true as it is strange;     Nay, it is ten times true; for truth is truth     To th\' end of reck\'ning.   DUKE. Away with her. Poor soul,     She speaks this in th\' infirmity of sense.   ISABELLA. O Prince! I conjure thee, as thou believ\'st       There is another comfort than this world,     That thou neglect me not with that opinion     That I am touch\'d with madness. Make not impossible     That which but seems unlike: \'tis not impossible     But one, the wicked\'st caitiff on the ground,     May seem as shy, as grave, as just, as absolute,     As Angelo; even so may Angelo,     In all his dressings, characts, titles, forms,     Be an arch-villain. Believe it, royal Prince,     If he be less, he\'s nothing; but he\'s more,     Had I more name for badness.   DUKE. By mine honesty,     If she be mad, as I believe no other,     Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense,     Such a dependency of thing on thing,     As e\'er I heard in madness.   ISABELLA. O gracious Duke,     Harp not on that; nor do not banish reason     For inequality; but let your reason serve     To make the truth appear where it seems hid,       And hide the false seems true.   DUKE. Many that are not mad     Have, sure, more lack of reason. What would you say?   ISABELLA. I am the sister of one Claudio,     Condemn\'d upon the act of fornication     To lose his head; condemn\'d by Angelo.     I, in probation of a sisterhood,     Was sent to by my brother; one Lucio     As then the messenger-   LUCIO. That\'s I, an\'t like your Grace.     I came to her from Claudio, and desir\'d her     To try her gracious fortune with Lord Angelo     For her poor brother\'s pardon.   ISABELLA. That\'s he, indeed.   DUKE. You were not bid to speak.   LUCIO. No, my good lord;     Nor wish\'d to hold my peace.   DUKE. I wish you now, then;     Pray you take note of it; and when you have     A business for yourself, pray heaven you then       Be perfect.   LUCIO. I warrant your honour.   DUKE. The warrant\'s for yourself; take heed to\'t.   ISABELLA. This gentleman told somewhat of my tale.   LUCIO. Right.   DUKE. It may be right; but you are i\' the wrong     To speak before your time. Proceed.   ISABELLA. I went     To this pernicious caitiff deputy.   DUKE. That\'s somewhat madly spoken.   ISABELLA. Pardon it;     The phrase is to the matter.   DUKE. Mended again. The matter- proceed.   ISABELLA. In brief- to set the needless process by,     How I persuaded, how I pray\'d, and kneel\'d,     How he refell\'d me, and how I replied,     For this was of much length- the vile conclusion     I now begin with grief and shame to utter:     He would not, but by gift of my chaste body     To his concupiscible intemperate lust,       Release my brother; and, after much debatement,     My sisterly remorse confutes mine honour,     And I did yield to him. But the next morn betimes,     His purpose surfeiting, he sends a warrant     For my poor brother\'s head.   DUKE. This is most likely!   ISABELLA. O that it were as like as it is true!   DUKE. By heaven, fond wretch, thou know\'st not what thou speak\'st,     Or else thou art suborn\'d against his honour     In hateful practice. First, his integrity     Stands without blemish; next, it imports no reason     That with such vehemency he should pursue     Faults proper to himself. If he had so offended,     He would have weigh\'d thy brother by himself,     And not have cut him off. Some one hath set you on;     Confess the truth, and say by whose advice     Thou cam\'st here to complain.   ISABELLA. And is this all?     Then, O you blessed ministers above,     Keep me in patience; and, with ripened time,       Unfold the evil which is here wrapt up     In countenance! Heaven shield your Grace from woe,     As I, thus wrong\'d, hence unbelieved go!   DUKE. I know you\'d fain be gone. An officer!     To prison with her! Shall we thus permit     A blasting and a scandalous breath to fall     On him so near us? This needs must be a practice.     Who knew of your intent and coming hither?   ISABELLA. One that I would were here, Friar Lodowick.   DUKE. A ghostly father, belike. Who knows that Lodowick?   LUCIO. My lord, I know him; \'tis a meddling friar.     I do not like the man; had he been lay, my lord,     For certain words he spake against your Grace     In your retirement, I had swing\'d him soundly.   DUKE. Words against me? This\'s a good friar, belike!     And to set on this wretched woman here     Against our substitute! Let this friar be found.   LUCIO. But yesternight, my lord, she and that friar,     I saw them at the prison; a saucy friar,     A very scurvy fellow.     PETER. Blessed be your royal Grace!     I have stood by, my lord, and I have heard     Your royal ear abus\'d. First, hath this woman     Most wrongfully accus\'d your substitute;     Who is as free from touch or soil with her     As she from one ungot.   DUKE. We did believe no less.     Know you that Friar Lodowick that she speaks of?   PETER. I know him for a man divine and holy;     Not scurvy, nor a temporary meddler,     As he\'s reported by this gentleman;     And, on my trust, a man that never yet     Did, as he vouches, misreport your Grace.   LUCIO. My lord, most villainously; believe it.   PETER. Well, he in time may come to clear himself;     But at this instant he is sick, my lord,     Of a strange fever. Upon his mere request-     Being come to knowledge that there was complaint     Intended \'gainst Lord Angelo- came I hither     To speak, as from his mouth, what he doth know       Is true and false; and what he, with his oath     And all probation, will make up full clear,     Whensoever he\'s convented. First, for this woman-     To justify this worthy nobleman,     So vulgarly and personally accus\'d-     Her shall you hear disproved to her eyes,     Till she herself confess it.   DUKE. Good friar, let\'s hear it.         Exit ISABELLA guarded     Do you not smile at this, Lord Angelo?     O heaven, the vanity of wretched fools!     Give us some seats. Come, cousin Angelo;     In this I\'ll be impartial; be you judge     Of your own cause.                       Enter MARIANA veiled      Is this the witness, friar?   FIRST let her show her face, and after speak.   MARIANA. Pardon, my lord; I will not show my face     Until my husband bid me.     DUKE. What, are you married?   MARIANA. No, my lord.   DUKE. Are you a maid?   MARIANA. No, my lord.   DUKE. A widow, then?   MARIANA. Neither, my lord.   DUKE. Why, you are nothing then; neither maid, widow, nor wife.   LUCIO. My lord, she may be a punk; for many of them are neither     maid, widow, nor wife.   DUKE. Silence that fellow. I would he had some cause     To prattle for himself.   LUCIO. Well, my lord.   MARIANA. My lord, I do confess I ne\'er was married,     And I confess, besides, I am no maid.     I have known my husband; yet my husband     Knows not that ever he knew me.   LUCIO. He was drunk, then, my lord; it can be no better.   DUKE. For the benefit of silence, would thou wert so too!   LUCIO. Well, my lord.   DUKE. This is no witness for Lord Angelo.     MARIANA. Now I come to\'t, my lord:     She that accuses him of fornication,     In self-same manner doth accuse my husband;     And charges him, my lord, with such a time     When I\'ll depose I had him in mine arms,     With all th\' effect of love.   ANGELO. Charges she moe than me?   MARIANA. Not that I know.   DUKE. No? You say your husband.   MARIANA. Why, just, my lord, and that is Angelo,     Who thinks he knows that he ne\'er knew my body,     But knows he thinks that he knows Isabel\'s.   ANGELO. This is a strange abuse. Let\'s see thy face.   MARIANA. My husband bids me; now I will unmask.                                                      [Unveiling]     This is that face, thou cruel Angelo,     Which once thou swor\'st was worth the looking on;     This is the hand which, with a vow\'d contract,     Was fast belock\'d in thine; this is the body     That took away the match from Isabel,       And did supply thee at thy garden-house     In her imagin\'d person.   DUKE. Know you this woman?   LUCIO. Carnally, she says.   DUKE. Sirrah, no more.   LUCIO. Enough, my lord.   ANGELO. My lord, I must confess I know this woman;     And five years since there was some speech of marriage     Betwixt myself and her; which was broke off,     Partly for that her promised proportions     Came short of composition; but in chief     For that her reputation was disvalued     In levity. Since which time of five years     I never spake with her, saw her, nor heard from her,     Upon my faith and honour.   MARIANA. Noble Prince,     As there comes light from heaven and words from breath,     As there is sense in truth and truth in virtue,     I am affianc\'d this man\'s wife as strongly     As words could make up vows. And, my good lord,       But Tuesday night last gone, in\'s garden-house,     He knew me as a wife. As this is true,     Let me in safety raise me from my knees,     Or else for ever be confixed here,     A marble monument!   ANGELO. I did but smile till now.     Now, good my lord, give me the scope of justice;     My patience here is touch\'d. I do perceive     These poor informal women are no more     But instruments of some more mightier member     That sets them on. Let me have way, my lord,     To find this practice out.   DUKE. Ay, with my heart;     And punish them to your height of pleasure.     Thou foolish friar, and thou pernicious woman,     Compact with her that\'s gone, think\'st thou thy oaths,     Though they would swear down each particular saint,     Were testimonies against his worth and credit,     That\'s seal\'d in approbation? You, Lord Escalus,     Sit with my cousin; lend him your kind pains       To find out this abuse, whence \'tis deriv\'d.     There is another friar that set them on;     Let him be sent for.   PETER. Would lie were here, my lord! For he indeed     Hath set the women on to this complaint.     Your provost knows the place where he abides,     And he may fetch him.   DUKE. Go, do it instantly.                        Exit PROVOST     And you, my noble and well-warranted cousin,     Whom it concerns to hear this matter forth,     Do with your injuries as seems you best     In any chastisement. I for a while will leave you;     But stir not you till you have well determin\'d     Upon these slanderers.   ESCALUS. My lord, we\'ll do it throughly.             Exit DUKE     Signior Lucio, did not you say you knew that Friar Lodowick to be     a dishonest person?   LUCIO. \'Cucullus non facit monachum\': honest in nothing but in his     clothes; and one that hath spoke most villainous speeches of the     Duke.     ESCALUS. We shall entreat you to abide here till he come and     enforce them against him. We shall find this friar a notable     fellow.   LUCIO. As any in Vienna, on my word.   ESCALUS. Call that same Isabel here once again; I would speak with     her. [Exit an ATTENDANT] Pray you, my lord, give me leave to     question; you shall see how I\'ll handle her.   LUCIO. Not better than he, by her own report.   ESCALUS. Say you?   LUCIO. Marry, sir, I think, if you handled her privately, she would     sooner confess; perchance, publicly, she\'ll be asham\'d.         Re-enter OFFICERS with ISABELLA; and PROVOST with the                     DUKE in his friar\'s habit    ESCALUS. I will go darkly to work with her.   LUCIO. That\'s the way; for women are light at midnight.   ESCALUS. Come on, mistress; here\'s a gentlewoman denies all that     you have said.   LUCIO. My lord, here comes the rascal I spoke of, here with the       Provost.   ESCALUS. In very good time. Speak not you to him till we call upon     you.   LUCIO. Mum.   ESCALUS. Come, sir; did you set these women on to slander Lord     Angelo? They have confess\'d you did.   DUKE. \'Tis false.   ESCALUS. How! Know you where you are?   DUKE. Respect to your great place! and let the devil     Be sometime honour\'d for his burning throne!     Where is the Duke? \'Tis he should hear me speak.   ESCALUS. The Duke\'s in us; and we will hear you speak;     Look you speak justly.   DUKE. Boldly, at least. But, O, poor souls,     Come you to seek the lamb here of the fox,     Good night to your redress! Is the Duke gone?     Then is your cause gone too. The Duke\'s unjust     Thus to retort your manifest appeal,     And put your trial in the villain\'s mouth     Which here you come to accuse.     LUCIO. This is the rascal; this is he I spoke of.   ESCALUS. Why, thou unreverend and unhallowed friar,     Is\'t not enough thou hast suborn\'d these women     To accuse this worthy man, but, in foul mouth,     And in the witness of his proper ear,     To call him villain; and then to glance from him     To th\' Duke himself, to tax him with injustice?     Take him hence; to th\' rack with him! We\'ll touze you     Joint by joint, but we will know his purpose.     What, \'unjust\'!   DUKE. Be not so hot; the Duke     Dare no more stretch this finger of mine than he     Dare rack his own; his subject am I not,     Nor here provincial. My business in this state     Made me a looker-on here in Vienna,     Where I have seen corruption boil and bubble     Till it o\'errun the stew: laws for all faults,     But faults so countenanc\'d that the strong statutes     Stand like the forfeits in a barber\'s shop,     As much in mock as mark.     ESCALUS. Slander to th\' state! Away with him to prison!   ANGELO. What can you vouch against him, Signior Lucio?     Is this the man that you did tell us of?   LUCIO. \'Tis he, my lord. Come hither, good-man bald-pate.     Do you know me?   DUKE. I remember you, sir, by the sound of your voice. I met you at     the prison, in the absence of the Duke.   LUCIO. O did you so? And do you remember what you said of the Duke?   DUKE. Most notedly, sir.   LUCIO. Do you so, sir? And was the Duke a fleshmonger, a fool, and     a coward, as you then reported him to be?   DUKE. You must, sir, change persons with me ere you make that my     report; you, indeed, spoke so of him; and much more, much worse.   LUCIO. O thou damnable fellow! Did not I pluck thee by the nose for     thy speeches?   DUKE. I protest I love the Duke as I love myself.   ANGELO. Hark how the villain would close now, after his treasonable     abuses!   ESCALUS. Such a fellow is not to be talk\'d withal. Away with him to     prison! Where is the Provost? Away with him to prison! Lay bolts       enough upon him; let him speak no more. Away with those giglets     too, and with the other confederate companion!                             [The PROVOST lays bands on the DUKE]   DUKE. Stay, sir; stay awhile.   ANGELO. What, resists he? Help him, Lucio.   LUCIO. Come, sir; come, sir; come, sir; foh, sir! Why, you     bald-pated lying rascal, you must be hooded, must you? Show your     knave\'s visage, with a pox to you! Show your sheep-biting face,     and be hang\'d an hour! Will\'t not off?              [Pulls off the FRIAR\'S bood and discovers the DUKE]   DUKE. Thou art the first knave that e\'er mad\'st a duke.     First, Provost, let me bail these gentle three.     [To Lucio] Sneak not away, sir, for the friar and you     Must have a word anon. Lay hold on him.   LUCIO. This may prove worse than hanging.   DUKE. [To ESCALUS] What you have spoke I pardon; sit you down.     We\'ll borrow place of him. [To ANGELO] Sir, by your leave.     Hast thou or word, or wit, or impudence,     That yet can do thee office? If thou hast,     Rely upon it till my tale be heard,       And hold no longer out.   ANGELO. O my dread lord,     I should be guiltier than my guiltiness,     To think I can be undiscernible,     When I perceive your Grace, like pow\'r divine,     Hath look\'d upon my passes. Then, good Prince,     No longer session hold upon my shame,     But let my trial be mine own confession;     Immediate sentence then, and sequent death,     Is all the grace I beg.   DUKE. Come hither, Mariana.     Say, wast thou e\'er contracted to this woman?   ANGELO. I was, my lord.   DUKE. Go, take her hence and marry her instantly.     Do you the office, friar; which consummate,     Return him here again. Go with him, Provost.                 Exeunt ANGELO, MARIANA, FRIAR PETER, and PROVOST   ESCALUS. My lord, I am more amaz\'d at his dishonour     Than at the strangeness of it.   DUKE. Come hither, Isabel.       Your friar is now your prince. As I was then     Advertising and holy to your business,     Not changing heart with habit, I am still     Attorney\'d at your service.   ISABELLA. O, give me pardon,     That I, your vassal have employ\'d and pain\'d     Your unknown sovereignty.   DUKE. You are pardon\'d, Isabel.     And now, dear maid, be you as free to us.     Your brother\'s death, I know, sits at your heart;     And you may marvel why I obscur\'d myself,     Labouring to save his life, and would not rather     Make rash remonstrance of my hidden pow\'r     Than let him so be lost. O most kind maid,     It was the swift celerity of his death,     Which I did think with slower foot came on,     That brain\'d my purpose. But peace be with him!     That life is better life, past fearing death,     Than that which lives to fear. Make it your comfort,     So happy is your brother.     ISABELLA. I do, my lord.         Re-enter ANGELO, MARIANA, FRIAR PETER, and PROVOST    DUKE. For this new-married man approaching here,     Whose salt imagination yet hath wrong\'d     Your well-defended honour, you must pardon     For Mariana\'s sake; but as he adjudg\'d your brother-     Being criminal in double violation     Of sacred chastity and of promise-breach,     Thereon dependent, for your brother\'s life-     The very mercy of the law cries out     Most audible, even from his proper tongue,     \'An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!\'     Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;     Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.     Then, Angelo, thy fault\'s thus manifested,     Which, though thou wouldst deny, denies thee vantage.     We do condemn thee to the very block     Where Claudio stoop\'d to death, and with like haste.       Away with him!   MARIANA. O my most gracious lord,     I hope you will not mock me with a husband.   DUKE. It is your husband mock\'d you with a husband.     Consenting to the safeguard of your honour,     I thought your marriage fit; else imputation,     For that he knew you, might reproach your life,     And choke your good to come. For his possessions,     Although by confiscation they are ours,     We do instate and widow you withal     To buy you a better husband.   MARIANA. O my dear lord,     I crave no other, nor no better man.   DUKE. Never crave him; we are definitive.   MARIANA. Gentle my liege-                           [Kneeling]   DUKE. You do but lose your labour.     Away with him to death! [To LUCIO] Now, sir, to you.   MARIANA. O my good lord! Sweet Isabel, take my part;     Lend me your knees, and all my life to come     I\'ll lend you all my life to do you service.     DUKE. Against all sense you do importune her.     Should she kneel down in mercy of this fact,     Her brother\'s ghost his paved bed would break,     And take her hence in horror.   MARIANA. Isabel,     Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me;     Hold up your hands, say nothing; I\'ll speak all.     They say best men moulded out of faults;     And, for the most, become much more the better     For being a little bad; so may my husband.     O Isabel, will you not lend a knee?   DUKE. He dies for Claudio\'s death.   ISABELLA. [Kneeling] Most bounteous sir,     Look, if it please you, on this man condemn\'d,     As if my brother liv\'d. I partly think     A due sincerity govern\'d his deeds     Till he did look on me; since it is so,     Let him not die. My brother had but justice,     In that he did the thing for which he died;     For Angelo,       His act did not o\'ertake his bad intent,     And must be buried but as an intent     That perish\'d by the way. Thoughts are no subjects;     Intents but merely thoughts.   MARIANA. Merely, my lord.   DUKE. Your suit\'s unprofitable; stand up, I say.     I have bethought me of another fault.     Provost, how came it Claudio was beheaded     At an unusual hour?   PROVOST. It was commanded so.   DUKE. Had you a special warrant for the deed?   PROVOST. No, my good lord; it was by private message.   DUKE. For which I do discharge you of your office;     Give up your keys.   PROVOST. Pardon me, noble lord;     I thought it was a fault, but knew it not;     Yet did repent me, after more advice;     For testimony whereof, one in the prison,     That should by private order else have died,     I have reserv\'d alive.     DUKE. What\'s he?   PROVOST. His name is Barnardine.   DUKE. I would thou hadst done so by Claudio.     Go fetch him hither; let me look upon him.      Exit PROVOST   ESCALUS. I am sorry one so learned and so wise     As you, Lord Angelo, have still appear\'d,     Should slip so grossly, both in the heat of blood     And lack of temper\'d judgment afterward.   ANGELO. I am sorry that such sorrow I procure;     And so deep sticks it in my penitent heart     That I crave death more willingly than mercy;     \'Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it.         Re-enter PROVOST, with BARNARDINE, CLAUDIO (muffled)                             and JULIET    DUKE. Which is that Barnardine?   PROVOST. This, my lord.   DUKE. There was a friar told me of this man.     Sirrah, thou art said to have a stubborn soul,       That apprehends no further than this world,     And squar\'st thy life according. Thou\'rt condemn\'d;     But, for those earthly faults, I quit them all,     And pray thee take this mercy to provide     For better times to come. Friar, advise him;     I leave him to your hand. What muffl\'d fellow\'s that?   PROVOST. This is another prisoner that I sav\'d,     Who should have died when Claudio lost his head;     As like almost to Claudio as himself.    [Unmuffles CLAUDIO]   DUKE. [To ISABELLA] If he be like your brother, for his sake     Is he pardon\'d; and for your lovely sake,     Give me your hand and say you will be mine,     He is my brother too. But fitter time for that.     By this Lord Angelo perceives he\'s safe;     Methinks I see a quick\'ning in his eye.     Well, Angelo, your evil quits you well.     Look that you love your wife; her worth worth yours.     I find an apt remission in myself;     And yet here\'s one in place I cannot pardon.     To Lucio] You, sirrah, that knew me for a fool, a coward,       One all of luxury, an ass, a madman!     Wherein have I so deserv\'d of you     That you extol me thus?   LUCIO. Faith, my lord, I spoke it but according to the trick.     If you will hang me for it, you may; but I had rather it would     please you I might be whipt.   DUKE. Whipt first, sir, and hang\'d after.     Proclaim it, Provost, round about the city,     If any woman wrong\'d by this lewd fellow-     As I have heard him swear himself there\'s one     Whom he begot with child, let her appear,     And he shall marry her. The nuptial finish\'d,     Let him be whipt and hang\'d.   LUCIO. I beseech your Highness, do not marry me to a whore. Your     Highness said even now I made you a duke; good my lord, do not     recompense me in making me a cuckold.   DUKE. Upon mine honour, thou shalt marry her.     Thy slanders I forgive; and therewithal     Remit thy other forfeits. Take him to prison;     And see our pleasure herein executed.     LUCIO. Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, whipping,     and hanging.   DUKE. Slandering a prince deserves it.                                       Exeunt OFFICERS with LUCIO     She, Claudio, that you wrong\'d, look you restore.     Joy to you, Mariana! Love her, Angelo;     I have confess\'d her, and I know her virtue.     Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness;     There\'s more behind that is more gratulate.     Thanks, Provost, for thy care and secrecy;     We shall employ thee in a worthier place.     Forgive him, Angelo, that brought you home     The head of Ragozine for Claudio\'s:     Th\' offence pardons itself. Dear Isabel,     I have a motion much imports your good;     Whereto if you\'ll a willing ear incline,     What\'s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.     So, bring us to our palace, where we\'ll show     What\'s yet behind that\'s meet you all should know.                                                           Exeunt    THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1597  THE MERCHANT OF VENICE  by William Shakespeare    DRAMATIS PERSONAE    THE DUKE OF VENICE   THE PRINCE OF MOROCCO, suitor to Portia   THE PRINCE OF ARRAGON,    "    "    "   ANTONIO, a merchant of Venice   BASSANIO, his friend, suitor to Portia   SOLANIO,   friend to Antonio and Bassanio   SALERIO,      "    "    "     "     "   GRATIANO,     "    "    "     "     "   LORENZO, in love with Jessica   SHYLOCK, a rich Jew   TUBAL, a Jew, his friend   LAUNCELOT GOBBO, a clown, servant to Shylock   OLD GOBBO, father to Launcelot   LEONARDO, servant to Bassanio   BALTHASAR, servant to Portia   STEPHANO,     "     "    "    PORTIA, a rich heiress   NERISSA, her waiting-maid   JESSICA, daughter to Shylock      Magnificoes of Venice, Officers of the Court of Justice,     Gaoler, Servants, and other Attendants     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: Venice, and PORTIA\'S house at Belmont   ACT I. SCENE I. Venice. A street  Enter ANTONIO, SALERIO, and SOLANIO    ANTONIO. In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.     It wearies me; you say it wearies you;     But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,     What stuff \'tis made of, whereof it is born,     I am to learn;     And such a want-wit sadness makes of me     That I have much ado to know myself.   SALERIO. Your mind is tossing on the ocean;     There where your argosies, with portly sail-     Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood,     Or as it were the pageants of the sea-     Do overpeer the petty traffickers,     That curtsy to them, do them reverence,     As they fly by them with their woven wings.   SOLANIO. Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth,     The better part of my affections would     Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still       Plucking the grass to know where sits the wind,     Peering in maps for ports, and piers, and roads;     And every object that might make me fear     Misfortune to my ventures, out of doubt,     Would make me sad.   SALERIO. My wind, cooling my broth,     Would blow me to an ague when I thought     What harm a wind too great might do at sea.     I should not see the sandy hour-glass run     But I should think of shallows and of flats,     And see my wealthy Andrew dock\'d in sand,     Vailing her high top lower than her ribs     To kiss her burial. Should I go to church     And see the holy edifice of stone,     And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks,     Which, touching but my gentle vessel\'s side,     Would scatter all her spices on the stream,     Enrobe the roaring waters with my silks,     And, in a word, but even now worth this,     And now worth nothing? Shall I have the thought       To think on this, and shall I lack the thought     That such a thing bechanc\'d would make me sad?     But tell not me; I know Antonio     Is sad to think upon his merchandise.   ANTONIO. Believe me, no; I thank my fortune for it,     My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,     Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate     Upon the fortune of this present year;     Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad.   SOLANIO. Why then you are in love.   ANTONIO. Fie, fie!   SOLANIO. Not in love neither? Then let us say you are sad     Because you are not merry; and \'twere as easy     For you to laugh and leap and say you are merry,     Because you are not sad. Now, by two-headed Janus,     Nature hath fram\'d strange fellows in her time:     Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,     And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper;     And other of such vinegar aspect     That they\'ll not show their teeth in way of smile       Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.                 Enter BASSANIO, LORENZO, and GRATIANO      Here comes Bassanio, your most noble kinsman,     Gratiano and Lorenzo. Fare ye well;     We leave you now with better company.   SALERIO. I would have stay\'d till I had made you merry,     If worthier friends had not prevented me.   ANTONIO. Your worth is very dear in my regard.     I take it your own business calls on you,     And you embrace th\' occasion to depart.   SALERIO. Good morrow, my good lords.   BASSANIO. Good signiors both, when shall we laugh? Say when.     You grow exceeding strange; must it be so?   SALERIO. We\'ll make our leisures to attend on yours.                                       Exeunt SALERIO and SOLANIO   LORENZO. My Lord Bassanio, since you have found Antonio,     We two will leave you; but at dinner-time,     I pray you, have in mind where we must meet.     BASSANIO. I will not fail you.   GRATIANO. You look not well, Signior Antonio;     You have too much respect upon the world;     They lose it that do buy it with much care.     Believe me, you are marvellously chang\'d.   ANTONIO. I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano-     A stage, where every man must play a part,     And mine a sad one.   GRATIANO. Let me play the fool.     With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;     And let my liver rather heat with wine     Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.     Why should a man whose blood is warm within     Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster,     Sleep when he wakes, and creep into the jaundice     By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio-     I love thee, and \'tis my love that speaks-     There are a sort of men whose visages     Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,     And do a wilful stillness entertain,       With purpose to be dress\'d in an opinion     Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;     As who should say \'I am Sir Oracle,     And when I ope my lips let no dog bark.\'     O my Antonio, I do know of these     That therefore only are reputed wise     For saying nothing; when, I am very sure,     If they should speak, would almost damn those ears     Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools.     I\'ll tell thee more of this another time.     But fish not with this melancholy bait     For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.     Come, good Lorenzo. Fare ye well awhile;     I\'ll end my exhortation after dinner.   LORENZO. Well, we will leave you then till dinner-time.     I must be one of these same dumb wise men,     For Gratiano never lets me speak.   GRATIANO. Well, keep me company but two years moe,     Thou shalt not know the sound of thine own tongue.   ANTONIO. Fare you well; I\'ll grow a talker for this gear.     GRATIANO. Thanks, i\' faith, for silence is only commendable     In a neat\'s tongue dried, and a maid not vendible.                                      Exeunt GRATIANO and LORENZO   ANTONIO. Is that anything now?   BASSANIO. Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than     any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid     in, two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find     them, and when you have them they are not worth the search.   ANTONIO. Well; tell me now what lady is the same     To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage,     That you to-day promis\'d to tell me of?   BASSANIO. \'Tis not unknown to you, Antonio,     How much I have disabled mine estate     By something showing a more swelling port     Than my faint means would grant continuance;     Nor do I now make moan to be abridg\'d     From such a noble rate; but my chief care     Is to come fairly off from the great debts     Wherein my time, something too prodigal,     Hath left me gag\'d. To you, Antonio,       I owe the most, in money and in love;     And from your love I have a warranty     To unburden all my plots and purposes     How to get clear of all the debts I owe.   ANTONIO. I pray you, good Bassanio, let me know it;     And if it stand, as you yourself still do,     Within the eye of honour, be assur\'d     My purse, my person, my extremest means,     Lie all unlock\'d to your occasions.   BASSANIO. In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft,     I shot his fellow of the self-same flight     The self-same way, with more advised watch,     To find the other forth; and by adventuring both     I oft found both. I urge this childhood proof,     Because what follows is pure innocence.     I owe you much; and, like a wilful youth,     That which I owe is lost; but if you please     To shoot another arrow that self way     Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt,     As I will watch the aim, or to find both,       Or bring your latter hazard back again     And thankfully rest debtor for the first.   ANTONIO. You know me well, and herein spend but time     To wind about my love with circumstance;     And out of doubt you do me now more wrong     In making question of my uttermost     Than if you had made waste of all I have.     Then do but say to me what I should do     That in your knowledge may by me be done,     And I am prest unto it; therefore, speak.   BASSANIO. In Belmont is a lady richly left,     And she is fair and, fairer than that word,     Of wondrous virtues. Sometimes from her eyes     I did receive fair speechless messages.     Her name is Portia- nothing undervalu\'d     To Cato\'s daughter, Brutus\' Portia.     Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth;     For the four winds blow in from every coast     Renowned suitors, and her sunny locks     Hang on her temples like a golden fleece,       Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos\' strond,     And many Jasons come in quest of her.     O my Antonio, had I but the means     To hold a rival place with one of them,     I have a mind presages me such thrift     That I should questionless be fortunate.   ANTONIO. Thou know\'st that all my fortunes are at sea;     Neither have I money nor commodity     To raise a present sum; therefore go forth,     Try what my credit can in Venice do;     That shall be rack\'d, even to the uttermost,     To furnish thee to Belmont to fair Portia.     Go presently inquire, and so will I,     Where money is; and I no question make     To have it of my trust or for my sake.                Exeunt      SCENE II. Belmont. PORTIA\'S house  Enter PORTIA with her waiting-woman, NERISSA    PORTIA. By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this     great world.   NERISSA. You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in the     same abundance as your good fortunes are; and yet, for aught I     see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that     starve with nothing. It is no mean happiness, therefore, to be     seated in the mean: superfluity come sooner by white hairs, but     competency lives longer.   PORTIA. Good sentences, and well pronounc\'d.   NERISSA. They would be better, if well followed.   PORTIA. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do,     chapels had been churches, and poor men\'s cottages princes\'     palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions; I     can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one     of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may devise     laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o\'er a cold decree;     such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o\'er the meshes of good       counsel the cripple. But this reasoning is not in the fashion to     choose me a husband. O me, the word \'choose\'! I may neither     choose who I would nor refuse who I dislike; so is the will of a     living daughter curb\'d by the will of a dead father. Is it not     hard, Nerissa, that I cannot choose one, nor refuse none?   NERISSA. Your father was ever virtuous, and holy men at their death     have good inspirations; therefore the lott\'ry that he hath     devised in these three chests, of gold, silver, and lead- whereof     who chooses his meaning chooses you- will no doubt never be     chosen by any rightly but one who you shall rightly love. But     what warmth is there in your affection towards any of these     princely suitors that are already come?   PORTIA. I pray thee over-name them; and as thou namest them, I will     describe them; and according to my description, level at my     affection.   NERISSA. First, there is the Neapolitan prince.   PORTIA. Ay, that\'s a colt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of     his horse; and he makes it a great appropriation to his own good     parts that he can shoe him himself; I am much afear\'d my lady his     mother play\'d false with a smith.     NERISSA. Then is there the County Palatine.   PORTIA. He doth nothing but frown, as who should say \'An you will     not have me, choose.\' He hears merry tales and smiles not. I fear     he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old, being so     full of unmannerly sadness in his youth. I had rather be married     to a death\'s-head with a bone in his mouth than to either of     these. God defend me from these two!   NERISSA. How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le Bon?   PORTIA. God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man. In     truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker, but he- why, he hath a     horse better than the Neapolitan\'s, a better bad habit of     frowning than the Count Palatine; he is every man in no man. If a     throstle sing he falls straight a-cap\'ring; he will fence with     his own shadow; if I should marry him, I should marry twenty     husbands. If he would despise me, I would forgive him; for if he     love me to madness, I shall never requite him.   NERISSA. What say you then to Falconbridge, the young baron of     England?   PORTIA. You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me,     nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian, and you       will come into the court and swear that I have a poor pennyworth     in the English. He is a proper man\'s picture; but alas, who can     converse with a dumb-show? How oddly he is suited! I think he     bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet     in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere.   NERISSA. What think you of the Scottish lord, his neighbour?   PORTIA. That he hath a neighbourly charity in him, for he borrowed     a box of the ear of the Englishman, and swore he would pay him     again when he was able; I think the Frenchman became his surety,     and seal\'d under for another.   NERISSA. How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony\'s     nephew?   PORTIA. Very vilely in the morning when he is sober; and most     vilely in the afternoon when he is drunk. When he is best, he is     a little worse than a man, and when he is worst, he is little     better than a beast. An the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I     shall make shift to go without him.   NERISSA. If he should offer to choose, and choose the right casket,     you should refuse to perform your father\'s will, if you should     refuse to accept him.     PORTIA. Therefore, for fear of the worst, I pray thee set a deep     glass of Rhenish wine on the contrary casket; for if the devil be     within and that temptation without, I know he will choose it. I     will do anything, Nerissa, ere I will be married to a sponge.   NERISSA. You need not fear, lady, the having any of these lords;     they have acquainted me with their determinations, which is     indeed to return to their home, and to trouble you with no more     suit, unless you may be won by some other sort than your father\'s     imposition, depending on the caskets.   PORTIA. If I live to be as old as Sibylla, I will die as chaste as     Diana, unless I be obtained by the manner of my father\'s will. I     am glad this parcel of wooers are so reasonable; for there is not     one among them but I dote on his very absence, and I pray God     grant them a fair departure.   NERISSA. Do you not remember, lady, in your father\'s time, a     Venetian, a scholar and a soldier, that came hither in company of     the Marquis of Montferrat?   PORTIA. Yes, yes, it was Bassanio; as I think, so was he call\'d.   NERISSA. True, madam; he, of all the men that ever my foolish eyes     look\'d upon, was the best deserving a fair lady.     PORTIA. I remember him well, and I remember him worthy of thy     praise.                           Enter a SERVINGMAN      How now! what news?   SERVINGMAN. The four strangers seek for you, madam, to take their     leave; and there is a forerunner come from a fifth, the Prince of     Morocco, who brings word the Prince his master will be here     to-night.   PORTIA. If I could bid the fifth welcome with so good heart as I     can bid the other four farewell, I should be glad of his     approach; if he have the condition of a saint and the complexion     of a devil, I had rather he should shrive me than wive me.     Come, Nerissa. Sirrah, go before.     Whiles we shut the gate upon one wooer, another knocks at the       door.                                               Exeunt     SCENE III. Venice. A public place  Enter BASSANIO With SHYLOCK the Jew    SHYLOCK. Three thousand ducats- well.   BASSANIO. Ay, sir, for three months.   SHYLOCK. For three months- well.   BASSANIO. For the which, as I told you, Antonio shall be bound.   SHYLOCK. Antonio shall become bound- well.   BASSANIO. May you stead me? Will you pleasure me? Shall I know your     answer?   SHYLOCK. Three thousand ducats for three months, and Antonio bound.   BASSANIO. Your answer to that.   SHYLOCK. Antonio is a good man.   BASSANIO. Have you heard any imputation to the contrary?   SHYLOCK. Ho, no, no, no, no; my meaning in saying he is a good man     is to have you understand me that he is sufficient; yet his means     are in supposition: he hath an argosy bound to Tripolis, another     to the Indies; I understand, moreover, upon the Rialto, he hath a     third at Mexico, a fourth for England- and other ventures he     hath, squand\'red abroad. But ships are but boards, sailors but       men; there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and     land-thieves- I mean pirates; and then there is the peril of     waters, winds, and rocks. The man is, notwithstanding,     sufficient. Three thousand ducats- I think I may take his bond.   BASSANIO. Be assur\'d you may.   SHYLOCK. I will be assur\'d I may; and, that I may be assured, I     will bethink me. May I speak with Antonio?   BASSANIO. If it please you to dine with us.   SHYLOCK. Yes, to smell pork, to eat of the habitation which your     prophet, the Nazarite, conjured the devil into! I will buy with     you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so     following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray     with you. What news on the Rialto? Who is he comes here?                              Enter ANTONIO    BASSANIO. This is Signior Antonio.   SHYLOCK.  [Aside]  How like a fawning publican he looks!     I hate him for he is a Christian;     But more for that in low simplicity       He lends out money gratis, and brings down     The rate of usance here with us in Venice.     If I can catch him once upon the hip,     I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.     He hates our sacred nation; and he rails,     Even there where merchants most do congregate,     On me, my bargains, and my well-won thrift,     Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe     If I forgive him!   BASSANIO. Shylock, do you hear?   SHYLOCK. I am debating of my present store,     And, by the near guess of my memory,     I cannot instantly raise up the gross     Of full three thousand ducats. What of that?     Tubal, a wealthy Hebrew of my tribe,     Will furnish me. But soft! how many months     Do you desire?  [To ANTONIO]  Rest you fair, good signior;     Your worship was the last man in our mouths.   ANTONIO. Shylock, albeit I neither lend nor borrow     By taking nor by giving of excess,       Yet, to supply the ripe wants of my friend,     I\'ll break a custom.  [To BASSANIO]  Is he yet possess\'d     How much ye would?   SHYLOCK. Ay, ay, three thousand ducats.   ANTONIO. And for three months.   SHYLOCK. I had forgot- three months; you told me so.     Well then, your bond; and, let me see- but hear you,     Methoughts you said you neither lend nor borrow     Upon advantage.   ANTONIO. I do never use it.   SHYLOCK. When Jacob graz\'d his uncle Laban\'s sheep-     This Jacob from our holy Abram was,     As his wise mother wrought in his behalf,     The third possessor; ay, he was the third-   ANTONIO. And what of him? Did he take interest?   SHYLOCK. No, not take interest; not, as you would say,     Directly int\'rest; mark what Jacob did:     When Laban and himself were compromis\'d     That all the eanlings which were streak\'d and pied     Should fall as Jacob\'s hire, the ewes, being rank,       In end of autumn turned to the rams;     And when the work of generation was     Between these woolly breeders in the act,     The skilful shepherd pill\'d me certain wands,     And, in the doing of the deed of kind,     He stuck them up before the fulsome ewes,     Who, then conceiving, did in eaning time     Fall parti-colour\'d lambs, and those were Jacob\'s.     This was a way to thrive, and he was blest;     And thrift is blessing, if men steal it not.   ANTONIO. This was a venture, sir, that Jacob serv\'d for;     A thing not in his power to bring to pass,     But sway\'d and fashion\'d by the hand of heaven.     Was this inserted to make interest good?     Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams?   SHYLOCK. I cannot tell; I make it breed as fast.     But note me, signior.   ANTONIO.  [Aside]  Mark you this, Bassanio,     The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.     An evil soul producing holy witness       Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,     A goodly apple rotten at the heart.     O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!   SHYLOCK. Three thousand ducats- \'tis a good round sum.     Three months from twelve; then let me see, the rate-   ANTONIO. Well, Shylock, shall we be beholding to you?   SHYLOCK. Signior Antonio, many a time and oft     In the Rialto you have rated me     About my moneys and my usances;     Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,     For suff\'rance is the badge of all our tribe;     You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog,     And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,     And all for use of that which is mine own.     Well then, it now appears you need my help;     Go to, then; you come to me, and you say     \'Shylock, we would have moneys.\' You say so-     You that did void your rheum upon my beard     And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur     Over your threshold; moneys is your suit.       What should I say to you? Should I not say     \'Hath a dog money? Is it possible     A cur can lend three thousand ducats?\' Or     Shall I bend low and, in a bondman\'s key,     With bated breath and whisp\'ring humbleness,     Say this:     \'Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last,     You spurn\'d me such a day; another time     You call\'d me dog; and for these courtesies     I\'ll lend you thus much moneys\'?   ANTONIO. I am as like to call thee so again,     To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.     If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not     As to thy friends- for when did friendship take     A breed for barren metal of his friend?-     But lend it rather to thine enemy,     Who if he break thou mayst with better face     Exact the penalty.   SHYLOCK. Why, look you, how you storm!     I would be friends with you, and have your love,       Forget the shames that you have stain\'d me with,     Supply your present wants, and take no doit     Of usance for my moneys, and you\'ll not hear me.     This is kind I offer.   BASSANIO. This were kindness.   SHYLOCK. This kindness will I show.     Go with me to a notary, seal me there     Your single bond, and, in a merry sport,     If you repay me not on such a day,     In such a place, such sum or sums as are     Express\'d in the condition, let the forfeit     Be nominated for an equal pound     Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken     In what part of your body pleaseth me.   ANTONIO. Content, in faith; I\'ll seal to such a bond,     And say there is much kindness in the Jew.   BASSANIO. You shall not seal to such a bond for me;     I\'ll rather dwell in my necessity.   ANTONIO. Why, fear not, man; I will not forfeit it;     Within these two months- that\'s a month before       This bond expires- I do expect return     Of thrice three times the value of this bond.   SHYLOCK. O father Abram, what these Christians are,     Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect     The thoughts of others! Pray you, tell me this:     If he should break his day, what should I gain     By the exaction of the forfeiture?     A pound of man\'s flesh taken from a man     Is not so estimable, profitable neither,     As flesh of muttons, beefs, or goats. I say,     To buy his favour, I extend this friendship;     If he will take it, so; if not, adieu;     And, for my love, I pray you wrong me not.   ANTONIO. Yes, Shylock, I will seal unto this bond.   SHYLOCK. Then meet me forthwith at the notary\'s;     Give him direction for this merry bond,     And I will go and purse the ducats straight,     See to my house, left in the fearful guard     Of an unthrifty knave, and presently     I\'ll be with you.     ANTONIO. Hie thee, gentle Jew.                    Exit SHYLOCK     The Hebrew will turn Christian: he grows kind.   BASSANIO. I like not fair terms and a villain\'s mind.   ANTONIO. Come on; in this there can be no dismay;     My ships come home a month before the day.            Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. Belmont. PORTIA\'S house  Flourish of cornets. Enter the PRINCE of MOROCCO, a tawny Moor all in white, and three or four FOLLOWERS accordingly, with PORTIA, NERISSA, and train    PRINCE OF Morocco. Mislike me not for my complexion,     The shadowed livery of the burnish\'d sun,     To whom I am a neighbour, and near bred.     Bring me the fairest creature northward born,     Where Phoebus\' fire scarce thaws the icicles,     And let us make incision for your love     To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.     I tell thee, lady, this aspect of mine     Hath fear\'d the valiant; by my love, I swear     The best-regarded virgins of our clime     Have lov\'d it too. I would not change this hue,     Except to steal your thoughts, my gentle queen.   PORTIA. In terms of choice I am not solely led     By nice direction of a maiden\'s eyes;     Besides, the lott\'ry of my destiny       Bars me the right of voluntary choosing.     But, if my father had not scanted me,     And hedg\'d me by his wit to yield myself     His wife who wins me by that means I told you,     Yourself, renowned Prince, then stood as fair     As any comer I have look\'d on yet     For my affection.   PRINCE OF MOROCCO. Even for that I thank you.     Therefore, I pray you, lead me to the caskets     To try my fortune. By this scimitar,     That slew the Sophy and a Persian prince,     That won three fields of Sultan Solyman,     I would o\'erstare the sternest eyes that look,     Outbrave the heart most daring on the earth,     Pluck the young sucking cubs from the she-bear,     Yea, mock the lion when \'a roars for prey,     To win thee, lady. But, alas the while!     If Hercules and Lichas play at dice     Which is the better man, the greater throw     May turn by fortune from the weaker band.       So is Alcides beaten by his page;     And so may I, blind Fortune leading me,     Miss that which one unworthier may attain,     And die with grieving.   PORTIA. You must take your chance,     And either not attempt to choose at all,     Or swear before you choose, if you choose wrong,     Never to speak to lady afterward     In way of marriage; therefore be advis\'d.   PRINCE OF MOROCCO. Nor will not; come, bring me unto my chance.   PORTIA. First, forward to the temple. After dinner     Your hazard shall be made.   PRINCE OF MOROCCO. Good fortune then,     To make me blest or cursed\'st among men!                                            [Cornets, and exeunt]     SCENE II. Venice. A street  Enter LAUNCELOT GOBBO    LAUNCELOT. Certainly my conscience will serve me to run from this     Jew my master. The fiend is at mine elbow and tempts me, saying     to me \'Gobbo, Launcelot Gobbo, good Launcelot\' or \'good Gobbo\' or     \'good Launcelot Gobbo, use your legs, take the start, run away.\'     My conscience says \'No; take heed, honest Launcelot, take heed,     honest Gobbo\' or, as aforesaid, \'honest Launcelot Gobbo, do not     run; scorn running with thy heels.\' Well, the most courageous     fiend bids me pack. \'Via!\' says the fiend; \'away!\' says the     fiend. \'For the heavens, rouse up a brave mind\' says the fiend     \'and run.\' Well, my conscience, hanging about the neck of my     heart, says very wisely to me \'My honest friend Launcelot, being     an honest man\'s son\' or rather \'an honest woman\'s son\'; for     indeed my father did something smack, something grow to, he had a     kind of taste- well, my conscience says \'Launcelot, budge not.\'     \'Budge,\' says the fiend. \'Budge not,\' says my conscience.     \'Conscience,\' say I, (you counsel well.\' \'Fiend,\' say I, \'you     counsel well.\' To be rul\'d by my conscience, I should stay with       the Jew my master, who- God bless the mark!- is a kind of devil;     and, to run away from the Jew, I should be ruled by the fiend,     who- saving your reverence!- is the devil himself. Certainly the     Jew is the very devil incarnation; and, in my conscience, my     conscience is but a kind of hard conscience to offer to counsel     me to stay with the Jew. The fiend gives the more friendly     counsel. I will run, fiend; my heels are at your commandment; I     will run.                       Enter OLD GOBBO, with a basket    GOBBO. Master young man, you, I pray you, which is the way to     master Jew\'s?   LAUNCELOT.  [Aside]  O heavens! This is my true-begotten father,     who, being more than sand-blind, high-gravel blind, knows me not.     I will try confusions with him.   GOBBO. Master young gentleman, I pray you, which is the way to     master Jew\'s?   LAUNCELOT. Turn up on your right hand at the next turning, but, at     the next turning of all, on your left; marry, at the very next       turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the Jew\'s     house.   GOBBO. Be God\'s sonties, \'twill be a hard way to hit! Can you tell     me whether one Launcelot, that dwells with him, dwell with him or     no?   LAUNCELOT. Talk you of young Master Launcelot?  [Aside]  Mark me     now; now will I raise the waters.- Talk you of young Master     Launcelot?   GOBBO. No master, sir, but a poor man\'s son; his father, though I     say\'t, is an honest exceeding poor man, and, God be thanked, well     to live.   LAUNCELOT. Well, let his father be what \'a will, we talk of young     Master Launcelot.   GOBBO. Your worship\'s friend, and Launcelot, sir.   LAUNCELOT. But I pray you, ergo, old man, ergo, I beseech you, talk     you of young Master Launcelot?   GOBBO. Of Launcelot, an\'t please your mastership.   LAUNCELOT. Ergo, Master Launcelot. Talk not of Master Launcelot,     father; for the young gentleman, according to Fates and Destinies     and such odd sayings, the Sisters Three and such branches of       learning, is indeed deceased; or, as you would say in plain     terms, gone to heaven.   GOBBO. Marry, God forbid! The boy was the very staff of my age, my     very prop.   LAUNCELOT. Do I look like a cudgel or a hovel-post, a staff or a     prop? Do you know me, father?   GOBBO. Alack the day, I know you not, young gentleman; but I pray     you tell me, is my boy- God rest his soul!- alive or dead?   LAUNCELOT. Do you not know me, father?   GOBBO. Alack, sir, I am sand-blind; I know you not.   LAUNCELOT. Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of the     knowing me: it is a wise father that knows his own child. Well,     old man, I will tell you news of your son. Give me your blessing;     truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man\'s son     may, but in the end truth will out.   GOBBO. Pray you, sir, stand up; I am sure you are not Launcelot my     boy.   LAUNCELOT. Pray you, let\'s have no more fooling about it, but give     me your blessing; I am Launcelot, your boy that was, your son     that is, your child that shall be.     GOBBO. I cannot think you are my son.   LAUNCELOT. I know not what I shall think of that; but I am     Launcelot, the Jew\'s man, and I am sure Margery your wife is my     mother.   GOBBO. Her name is Margery, indeed. I\'ll be sworn, if thou be     Launcelot, thou art mine own flesh and blood. Lord worshipp\'d     might he be, what a beard hast thou got! Thou hast got more hair     on thy chin than Dobbin my fill-horse has on his tail.   LAUNCELOT. It should seem, then, that Dobbin\'s tail grows backward;     I am sure he had more hair of his tail than I have of my face     when I last saw him.   GOBBO. Lord, how art thou chang\'d! How dost thou and thy master     agree? I have brought him a present. How \'gree you now?   LAUNCELOT. Well, well; but, for mine own part, as I have set up my     rest to run away, so I will not rest till I have run some ground.     My master\'s a very Jew. Give him a present! Give him a halter. I     am famish\'d in his service; you may tell every finger I have with     my ribs. Father, I am glad you are come; give me your present to     one Master Bassanio, who indeed gives rare new liveries; if I     serve not him, I will run as far as God has any ground. O rare       fortune! Here comes the man. To him, father, for I am a Jew, if I     serve the Jew any longer.           Enter BASSANIO, with LEONARDO, with a FOLLOWER or two    BASSANIO. You may do so; but let it be so hasted that supper be     ready at the farthest by five of the clock. See these letters     delivered, put the liveries to making, and desire Gratiano to     come anon to my lodging.                      Exit a SERVANT   LAUNCELOT. To him, father.   GOBBO. God bless your worship!   BASSANIO. Gramercy; wouldst thou aught with me?   GOBBO. Here\'s my son, sir, a poor boy-   LAUNCELOT. Not a poor boy, sir, but the rich Jew\'s man, that would,     sir, as my father shall specify-   GOBBO. He hath a great infection, sir, as one would say, to serve-   LAUNCELOT. Indeed the short and the long is, I serve the Jew, and     have a desire, as my father shall specify-   GOBBO. His master and he, saving your worship\'s reverence, are     scarce cater-cousins-     LAUNCELOT. To be brief, the very truth is that the Jew, having done     me wrong, doth cause me, as my father, being I hope an old man,     shall frutify unto you-   GOBBO. I have here a dish of doves that I would bestow upon your     worship; and my suit is-   LAUNCELOT. In very brief, the suit is impertinent to myself, as     your worship shall know by this honest old man; and, though I say     it, though old man, yet poor man, my father.   BASSANIO. One speak for both. What would you?   LAUNCELOT. Serve you, sir.   GOBBO. That is the very defect of the matter, sir.   BASSANIO. I know thee well; thou hast obtain\'d thy suit.     Shylock thy master spoke with me this day,     And hath preferr\'d thee, if it be preferment     To leave a rich Jew\'s service to become     The follower of so poor a gentleman.   LAUNCELOT. The old proverb is very well parted between my master     Shylock and you, sir: you have the grace of God, sir, and he hath     enough.   BASSANIO. Thou speak\'st it well. Go, father, with thy son.       Take leave of thy old master, and inquire     My lodging out.  [To a SERVANT]  Give him a livery     More guarded than his fellows\'; see it done.   LAUNCELOT. Father, in. I cannot get a service, no! I have ne\'er a     tongue in my head!  [Looking on his palm]  Well; if any man in     Italy have a fairer table which doth offer to swear upon a book- I     shall have good fortune. Go to, here\'s a simple line of life;     here\'s a small trifle of wives; alas, fifteen wives is nothing;     a\'leven widows and nine maids is a simple coming-in for one man.     And then to scape drowning thrice, and to be in peril of my life     with the edge of a feather-bed-here are simple scapes. Well, if     Fortune be a woman, she\'s a good wench for this gear. Father,     come; I\'ll take my leave of the Jew in the twinkling.                                   Exeunt LAUNCELOT and OLD GOBBO   BASSANIO. I pray thee, good Leonardo, think on this.     These things being bought and orderly bestowed,     Return in haste, for I do feast to-night     My best esteem\'d acquaintance; hie thee, go.   LEONARDO. My best endeavours shall be done herein.                              Enter GRATIANO    GRATIANO. Where\'s your master?   LEONARDO. Yonder, sir, he walks.                          Exit   GRATIANO. Signior Bassanio!   BASSANIO. Gratiano!   GRATIANO. I have suit to you.   BASSANIO. You have obtain\'d it.   GRATIANO. You must not deny me: I must go with you to Belmont.   BASSANIO. Why, then you must. But hear thee, Gratiano:     Thou art too wild, too rude, and bold of voice-     Parts that become thee happily enough,     And in such eyes as ours appear not faults;     But where thou art not known, why there they show     Something too liberal. Pray thee, take pain     To allay with some cold drops of modesty     Thy skipping spirit; lest through thy wild behaviour     I be misconst\'red in the place I go to     And lose my hopes.   GRATIANO. Signior Bassanio, hear me:       If I do not put on a sober habit,     Talk with respect, and swear but now and then,     Wear prayer-books in my pocket, look demurely,     Nay more, while grace is saying hood mine eyes     Thus with my hat, and sigh, and say amen,     Use all the observance of civility     Like one well studied in a sad ostent     To please his grandam, never trust me more.   BASSANIO. Well, we shall see your bearing.   GRATIANO. Nay, but I bar to-night; you shall not gauge me     By what we do to-night.   BASSANIO. No, that were pity;     I would entreat you rather to put on     Your boldest suit of mirth, for we have friends     That purpose merriment. But fare you well;     I have some business.   GRATIANO. And I must to Lorenzo and the rest;     But we will visit you at supper-time.                 Exeunt     SCENE III. Venice. SHYLOCK\'S house  Enter JESSICA and LAUNCELOT    JESSICA. I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so.     Our house is hell; and thou, a merry devil,     Didst rob it of some taste of tediousness.     But fare thee well; there is a ducat for thee;     And, Launcelot, soon at supper shalt thou see     Lorenzo, who is thy new master\'s guest.     Give him this letter; do it secretly.     And so farewell. I would not have my father     See me in talk with thee.   LAUNCELOT. Adieu! tears exhibit my tongue. Most beautiful pagan,     most sweet Jew! If a Christian do not play the knave and get     thee, I am much deceived. But, adieu! these foolish drops do     something drown my manly spirit; adieu!   JESSICA. Farewell, good Launcelot.              Exit LAUNCELOT     Alack, what heinous sin is it in me     To be asham\'d to be my father\'s child!     But though I am a daughter to his blood,       I am not to his manners. O Lorenzo,     If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife,     Become a Christian and thy loving wife.                 Exit     SCENE IV. Venice. A street  Enter GRATIANO, LORENZO, SALERIO, and SOLANIO    LORENZO. Nay, we will slink away in suppertime,     Disguise us at my lodging, and return     All in an hour.   GRATIANO. We have not made good preparation.   SALERIO. We have not spoke us yet of torch-bearers.   SOLANIO. \'Tis vile, unless it may be quaintly ordered;     And better in my mind not undertook.   LORENZO. \'Tis now but four o\'clock; we have two hours     To furnish us.                   Enter LAUNCELOT, With a letter      Friend Launcelot, what\'s the news?   LAUNCELOT. An it shall please you to break up this, it shall seem     to signify.   LORENZO. I know the hand; in faith, \'tis a fair hand,     And whiter than the paper it writ on       Is the fair hand that writ.   GRATIANO. Love-news, in faith!   LAUNCELOT. By your leave, sir.   LORENZO. Whither goest thou?   LAUNCELOT. Marry, sir, to bid my old master, the Jew, to sup     to-night with my new master, the Christian.   LORENZO. Hold, here, take this. Tell gentle Jessica     I will not fail her; speak it privately.     Go, gentlemen,                                Exit LAUNCELOT     Will you prepare you for this masque to-night?     I am provided of a torch-bearer.   SALERIO. Ay, marry, I\'ll be gone about it straight.   SOLANIO. And so will I.   LORENZO. Meet me and Gratiano     At Gratiano\'s lodging some hour hence.   SALERIO. \'Tis good we do so.        Exeunt SALERIO and SOLANIO   GRATIANO. Was not that letter from fair Jessica?   LORENZO. I must needs tell thee all. She hath directed     How I shall take her from her father\'s house;     What gold and jewels she is furnish\'d with;       What page\'s suit she hath in readiness.     If e\'er the Jew her father come to heaven,     It will be for his gentle daughter\'s sake;     And never dare misfortune cross her foot,     Unless she do it under this excuse,     That she is issue to a faithless Jew.     Come, go with me, peruse this as thou goest;     Fair Jessica shall be my torch-bearer.                Exeunt     SCENE V. Venice. Before SHYLOCK\'S house  Enter SHYLOCK and LAUNCELOT    SHYLOCK. Well, thou shalt see; thy eyes shall be thy judge,     The difference of old Shylock and Bassanio.-     What, Jessica!- Thou shalt not gormandize     As thou hast done with me- What, Jessica!-     And sleep and snore, and rend apparel out-     Why, Jessica, I say!   LAUNCELOT. Why, Jessica!   SHYLOCK. Who bids thee call? I do not bid thee call.   LAUNCELOT. Your worship was wont to tell me I could do nothing     without bidding.                            Enter JESSICA    JESSICA. Call you? What is your will?   SHYLOCK. I am bid forth to supper, Jessica;     There are my keys. But wherefore should I go?     I am not bid for love; they flatter me;       But yet I\'ll go in hate, to feed upon     The prodigal Christian. Jessica, my girl,     Look to my house. I am right loath to go;     There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest,     For I did dream of money-bags to-night.   LAUNCELOT. I beseech you, sir, go; my young master doth expect your     reproach.   SHYLOCK. So do I his.   LAUNCELOT. And they have conspired together; I will not say you     shall see a masque, but if you do, then it was not for nothing     that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black Monday last at six o\'clock     i\' th\' morning, falling out that year on Ash Wednesday was four     year, in th\' afternoon.   SHYLOCK. What, are there masques? Hear you me, Jessica:     Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum,     And the vile squealing of the wry-neck\'d fife,     Clamber not you up to the casements then,     Nor thrust your head into the public street     To gaze on Christian fools with varnish\'d faces;     But stop my house\'s ears- I mean my casements;       Let not the sound of shallow fopp\'ry enter     My sober house. By Jacob\'s staff, I swear     I have no mind of feasting forth to-night;     But I will go. Go you before me, sirrah;     Say I will come.   LAUNCELOT. I will go before, sir. Mistress, look out at window for     all this.         There will come a Christian by         Will be worth a Jewess\' eye.                        Exit   SHYLOCK. What says that fool of Hagar\'s offspring, ha?   JESSICA. His words were \'Farewell, mistress\'; nothing else.   SHYLOCK. The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder,     Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day     More than the wild-cat; drones hive not with me,     Therefore I part with him; and part with him     To one that I would have him help to waste     His borrowed purse. Well, Jessica, go in;     Perhaps I will return immediately.     Do as I bid you, shut doors after you.     Fast bind, fast find-       A proverb never stale in thrifty mind.                  Exit   JESSICA. Farewell; and if my fortune be not crost,     I have a father, you a daughter, lost.                  Exit     SCENE VI. Venice. Before SHYLOCK\'S house  Enter the maskers, GRATIANO and SALERIO    GRATIANO. This is the pent-house under which Lorenzo     Desired us to make stand.   SALERIO. His hour is almost past.   GRATIANO. And it is marvel he out-dwells his hour,     For lovers ever run before the clock.   SALERIO. O, ten times faster Venus\' pigeons fly     To seal love\'s bonds new made than they are wont     To keep obliged faith unforfeited!   GRATIANO. That ever holds: who riseth from a feast     With that keen appetite that he sits down?     Where is the horse that doth untread again     His tedious measures with the unbated fire     That he did pace them first? All things that are     Are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.     How like a younker or a prodigal     The scarfed bark puts from her native bay,     Hugg\'d and embraced by the strumpet wind;       How like the prodigal doth she return,     With over-weather\'d ribs and ragged sails,     Lean, rent, and beggar\'d by the strumpet wind!                         Enter LORENZO    SALERIO. Here comes Lorenzo; more of this hereafter.   LORENZO. Sweet friends, your patience for my long abode!     Not I, but my affairs, have made you wait.     When you shall please to play the thieves for wives,     I\'ll watch as long for you then. Approach;     Here dwells my father Jew. Ho! who\'s within?             Enter JESSICA, above, in boy\'s clothes    JESSICA. Who are you? Tell me, for more certainty,     Albeit I\'ll swear that I do know your tongue.   LORENZO. Lorenzo, and thy love.   JESSICA. Lorenzo, certain; and my love indeed;     For who love I so much? And now who knows       But you, Lorenzo, whether I am yours?   LORENZO. Heaven and thy thoughts are witness that thou art.   JESSICA. Here, catch this casket; it is worth the pains.     I am glad \'tis night, you do not look on me,     For I am much asham\'d of my exchange;     But love is blind, and lovers cannot see     The pretty follies that themselves commit,     For, if they could, Cupid himself would blush     To see me thus transformed to a boy.   LORENZO. Descend, for you must be my torch-bearer.   JESSICA. What! must I hold a candle to my shames?     They in themselves, good sooth, are too too light.     Why, \'tis an office of discovery, love,     And I should be obscur\'d.   LORENZO. So are you, sweet,     Even in the lovely garnish of a boy.     But come at once,     For the close night doth play the runaway,     And we are stay\'d for at Bassanio\'s feast.   JESSICA. I will make fast the doors, and gild myself       With some moe ducats, and be with you straight.                                                       Exit above    GRATIANO. Now, by my hood, a gentle, and no Jew.   LORENZO. Beshrew me, but I love her heartily,     For she is wise, if I can judge of her,     And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true,     And true she is, as she hath prov\'d herself;     And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true,     Shall she be placed in my constant soul.                       Enter JESSICA, below      What, art thou come? On, gentlemen, away;     Our masquing mates by this time for us stay.                                    Exit with JESSICA and SALERIO                          Enter ANTONIO    ANTONIO. Who\'s there?     GRATIANO. Signior Antonio?   ANTONIO. Fie, fie, Gratiano, where are all the rest?     \'Tis nine o\'clock; our friends all stay for you;     No masque to-night; the wind is come about;     Bassanio presently will go aboard;     I have sent twenty out to seek for you.   GRATIANO. I am glad on\'t; I desire no more delight     Than to be under sail and gone to-night.              Exeunt     SCENE VII. Belmont. PORTIA\'s house  Flourish of cornets. Enter PORTIA, with the PRINCE OF MOROCCO, and their trains    PORTIA. Go draw aside the curtains and discover     The several caskets to this noble Prince.     Now make your choice.   PRINCE OF MOROCCO. The first, of gold, who this inscription bears:     \'Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.\'     The second, silver, which this promise carries:     \'Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.\'     This third, dull lead, with warning all as blunt:     \'Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.\'     How shall I know if I do choose the right?   PORTIA. The one of them contains my picture, Prince;     If you choose that, then I am yours withal.   PRINCE OF MOROCCO. Some god direct my judgment! Let me see;     I will survey th\' inscriptions back again.     What says this leaden casket?     \'Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.\'       Must give- for what? For lead? Hazard for lead!     This casket threatens; men that hazard all     Do it in hope of fair advantages.     A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross;     I\'ll then nor give nor hazard aught for lead.     What says the silver with her virgin hue?     \'Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.\'     As much as he deserves! Pause there, Morocco,     And weigh thy value with an even hand.     If thou beest rated by thy estimation,     Thou dost deserve enough, and yet enough     May not extend so far as to the lady;     And yet to be afeard of my deserving     Were but a weak disabling of myself.     As much as I deserve? Why, that\'s the lady!     I do in birth deserve her, and in fortunes,     In graces, and in qualities of breeding;     But more than these, in love I do deserve.     What if I stray\'d no farther, but chose here?     Let\'s see once more this saying grav\'d in gold:       \'Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.\'     Why, that\'s the lady! All the world desires her;     From the four corners of the earth they come     To kiss this shrine, this mortal-breathing saint.     The Hyrcanian deserts and the vasty wilds     Of wide Arabia are as throughfares now     For princes to come view fair Portia.     The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head     Spits in the face of heaven, is no bar     To stop the foreign spirits, but they come     As o\'er a brook to see fair Portia.     One of these three contains her heavenly picture.     Is\'t like that lead contains her? \'Twere damnation     To think so base a thought; it were too gross     To rib her cerecloth in the obscure grave.     Or shall I think in silver she\'s immur\'d,     Being ten times undervalued to tried gold?     O sinful thought! Never so rich a gem     Was set in worse than gold. They have in England     A coin that bears the figure of an angel       Stamp\'d in gold; but that\'s insculp\'d upon.     But here an angel in a golden bed     Lies all within. Deliver me the key;     Here do I choose, and thrive I as I may!   PORTIA. There, take it, Prince, and if my form lie there,     Then I am yours.                [He opens the golden casket]   PRINCE OF MOROCCO. O hell! what have we here?     A carrion Death, within whose empty eye     There is a written scroll! I\'ll read the writing.          \'All that glisters is not gold,          Often have you heard that told;          Many a man his life hath sold          But my outside to behold.          Gilded tombs do worms infold.          Had you been as wise as bold,          Young in limbs, in judgment old,          Your answer had not been inscroll\'d.          Fare you well, your suit is cold.\'       Cold indeed, and labour lost,       Then farewell, heat, and welcome, frost.       Portia, adieu! I have too griev\'d a heart     To take a tedious leave; thus losers part.                         Exit with his train. Flourish of cornets   PORTIA. A gentle riddance. Draw the curtains, go.     Let all of his complexion choose me so.               Exeunt     SCENE VIII. Venice. A street  Enter SALERIO and SOLANIO    SALERIO. Why, man, I saw Bassanio under sail;     With him is Gratiano gone along;     And in their ship I am sure Lorenzo is not.   SOLANIO. The villain Jew with outcries rais\'d the Duke,     Who went with him to search Bassanio\'s ship.   SALERIO. He came too late, the ship was under sail;     But there the Duke was given to understand     That in a gondola were seen together     Lorenzo and his amorous Jessica;     Besides, Antonio certified the Duke     They were not with Bassanio in his ship.   SOLANIO. I never heard a passion so confus\'d,     So strange, outrageous, and so variable,     As the dog Jew did utter in the streets.     \'My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!     Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats!     Justice! the law! My ducats and my daughter!       A sealed bag, two sealed bags of ducats,     Of double ducats, stol\'n from me by my daughter!     And jewels- two stones, two rich and precious stones,     Stol\'n by my daughter! Justice! Find the girl;     She hath the stones upon her and the ducats.\'   SALERIO. Why, all the boys in Venice follow him,     Crying, his stones, his daughter, and his ducats.   SOLANIO. Let good Antonio look he keep his day,     Or he shall pay for this.   SALERIO. Marry, well rememb\'red;     I reason\'d with a Frenchman yesterday,     Who told me, in the narrow seas that part     The French and English, there miscarried     A vessel of our country richly fraught.     I thought upon Antonio when he told me,     And wish\'d in silence that it were not his.   SOLANIO. You were best to tell Antonio what you hear;     Yet do not suddenly, for it may grieve him.   SALERIO. A kinder gentleman treads not the earth.     I saw Bassanio and Antonio part.       Bassanio told him he would make some speed     Of his return. He answered \'Do not so;     Slubber not business for my sake, Bassanio,     But stay the very riping of the time;     And for the Jew\'s bond which he hath of me,     Let it not enter in your mind of love;     Be merry, and employ your chiefest thoughts     To courtship, and such fair ostents of love     As shall conveniently become you there.\'     And even there, his eye being big with tears,     Turning his face, he put his hand behind him,     And with affection wondrous sensible     He wrung Bassanio\'s hand; and so they parted.   SOLANIO. I think he only loves the world for him.     I pray thee, let us go and find him out,     And quicken his embraced heaviness     With some delight or other.   SALERIO. Do we so.                                      Exeunt     SCENE IX. Belmont. PORTIA\'S house  Enter NERISSA, and a SERVITOR    NERISSA. Quick, quick, I pray thee, draw the curtain straight;     The Prince of Arragon hath ta\'en his oath,     And comes to his election presently.         Flourish of cornets. Enter the PRINCE OF ARRAGON,                     PORTIA, and their trains    PORTIA. Behold, there stand the caskets, noble Prince.     If you choose that wherein I am contain\'d,     Straight shall our nuptial rites be solemniz\'d;     But if you fail, without more speech, my lord,     You must be gone from hence immediately.   ARRAGON. I am enjoin\'d by oath to observe three things:     First, never to unfold to any one     Which casket \'twas I chose; next, if I fail     Of the right casket, never in my life     To woo a maid in way of marriage;       Lastly,     If I do fail in fortune of my choice,     Immediately to leave you and be gone.   PORTIA. To these injunctions every one doth swear     That comes to hazard for my worthless self.   ARRAGON. And so have I address\'d me. Fortune now     To my heart\'s hope! Gold, silver, and base lead.     \'Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.\'     You shall look fairer ere I give or hazard.     What says the golden chest? Ha! let me see:     \'Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.\'     What many men desire- that \'many\' may be meant     By the fool multitude, that choose by show,     Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach;     Which pries not to th\' interior, but, like the martlet,     Builds in the weather on the outward wall,     Even in the force and road of casualty.     I will not choose what many men desire,     Because I will not jump with common spirits     And rank me with the barbarous multitudes.       Why, then to thee, thou silver treasure-house!     Tell me once more what title thou dost bear.     \'Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.\'     And well said too; for who shall go about     To cozen fortune, and be honourable     Without the stamp of merit? Let none presume     To wear an undeserved dignity.     O that estates, degrees, and offices,     Were not deriv\'d corruptly, and that clear honour     Were purchas\'d by the merit of the wearer!     How many then should cover that stand bare!     How many be commanded that command!     How much low peasantry would then be gleaned     From the true seed of honour! and how much honour     Pick\'d from the chaff and ruin of the times,     To be new varnish\'d! Well, but to my choice.     \'Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.\'     I will assume desert. Give me a key for this,     And instantly unlock my fortunes here.                                     [He opens the silver casket]     PORTIA.  [Aside]  Too long a pause for that which you find there.   ARRAGON. What\'s here? The portrait of a blinking idiot     Presenting me a schedule! I will read it.     How much unlike art thou to Portia!     How much unlike my hopes and my deservings!     \'Who chooseth me shall have as much as he deserves.\'     Did I deserve no more than a fool\'s head?     Is that my prize? Are my deserts no better?   PORTIA. To offend and judge are distinct offices     And of opposed natures.   ARRAGON. What is here?  [Reads]           \'The fire seven times tried this;          Seven times tried that judgment is          That did never choose amiss.          Some there be that shadows kiss,          Such have but a shadow\'s bliss.          There be fools alive iwis          Silver\'d o\'er, and so was this.          Take what wife you will to bed,            I will ever be your head.          So be gone; you are sped.\'           Still more fool I shall appear          By the time I linger here.          With one fool\'s head I came to woo,          But I go away with two.          Sweet, adieu! I\'ll keep my oath,          Patiently to bear my wroth.         Exit with his train    PORTIA. Thus hath the candle sing\'d the moth.     O, these deliberate fools! When they do choose,     They have the wisdom by their wit to lose.   NERISSA. The ancient saying is no heresy:     Hanging and wiving goes by destiny.   PORTIA. Come, draw the curtain, Nerissa.                         Enter a SERVANT    SERVANT. Where is my lady?     PORTIA. Here; what would my lord?   SERVANT. Madam, there is alighted at your gate     A young Venetian, one that comes before     To signify th\' approaching of his lord,     From whom he bringeth sensible regreets;     To wit, besides commends and courteous breath,     Gifts of rich value. Yet I have not seen     So likely an ambassador of love.     A day in April never came so sweet     To show how costly summer was at hand     As this fore-spurrer comes before his lord.   PORTIA. No more, I pray thee; I am half afeard     Thou wilt say anon he is some kin to thee,     Thou spend\'st such high-day wit in praising him.     Come, come, Nerissa, for I long to see     Quick Cupid\'s post that comes so mannerly.   NERISSA. Bassanio, Lord Love, if thy will it be!        Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. Venice. A street  Enter SOLANIO and SALERIO    SOLANIO. Now, what news on the Rialto?   SALERIO. Why, yet it lives there uncheck\'d that Antonio hath a ship     of rich lading wreck\'d on the narrow seas; the Goodwins I think     they call the place, a very dangerous flat and fatal, where the     carcases of many a tall ship lie buried, as they say, if my     gossip Report be an honest woman of her word.   SOLANIO. I would she were as lying a gossip in that as ever knapp\'d     ginger or made her neighbours believe she wept for the death of a     third husband. But it is true, without any slips of prolixity or     crossing the plain highway of talk, that the good Antonio, the     honest Antonio- O that I had a title good enough to keep his name     company!-   SALERIO. Come, the full stop.   SOLANIO. Ha! What sayest thou? Why, the end is, he hath lost a     ship.   SALERIO. I would it might prove the end of his losses.   SOLANIO. Let me say amen betimes, lest the devil cross my prayer,       for here he comes in the likeness of a Jew.                               Enter SHYLOCK      How now, Shylock? What news among the merchants?   SHYLOCK. You knew, none so well, none so well as you, of my     daughter\'s flight.   SALERIO. That\'s certain; I, for my part, knew the tailor that made     the wings she flew withal.   SOLANIO. And Shylock, for his own part, knew the bird was flidge;     and then it is the complexion of them all to leave the dam.   SHYLOCK. She is damn\'d for it.   SALERIO. That\'s certain, if the devil may be her judge.   SHYLOCK. My own flesh and blood to rebel!   SOLANIO. Out upon it, old carrion! Rebels it at these years?   SHYLOCK. I say my daughter is my flesh and my blood.   SALERIO. There is more difference between thy flesh and hers than     between jet and ivory; more between your bloods than there is     between red wine and Rhenish. But tell us, do you hear whether     Antonio have had any loss at sea or no?     SHYLOCK. There I have another bad match: a bankrupt, a prodigal,     who dare scarce show his head on the Rialto; a beggar, that was     us\'d to come so smug upon the mart. Let him look to his bond. He     was wont to call me usurer; let him look to his bond. He was wont     to lend money for a Christian courtesy; let him look to his bond.   SALERIO. Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his     flesh. What\'s that good for?   SHYLOCK. To bait fish withal. If it will feed nothing else, it will     feed my revenge. He hath disgrac\'d me and hind\'red me half a     million; laugh\'d at my losses, mock\'d at my gains, scorned my     nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine     enemies. And what\'s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes?     Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections,     passions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons,     subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed     and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If     you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?     If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we     not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you     in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?       Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance     be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me     I will execute; and itshall go hard but I will better the     instruction.                      Enter a MAN from ANTONIO    MAN. Gentlemen, my master Antonio is at his house, and desires to     speak with you both.   SALERIO. We have been up and down to seek him.                            Enter TUBAL    SOLANIO. Here comes another of the tribe; a third cannot be     match\'d, unless the devil himself turn Jew.                                 Exeunt SOLANIO, SALERIO, and MAN   SHYLOCK. How now, Tubal, what news from Genoa? Hast thou found my     daughter?   TUBAL. I often came where I did hear of her, but cannot find her.   SHYLOCK. Why there, there, there, there! A diamond gone, cost me       two thousand ducats in Frankfort! The curse never fell upon our     nation till now; I never felt it till now. Two thousand ducats in     that, and other precious, precious jewels. I would my daughter     were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear; would she were     hears\'d at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin! No news of     them? Why, so- and I know not what\'s spent in the search. Why,     thou- loss upon loss! The thief gone with so much, and so much to     find the thief; and no satisfaction, no revenge; nor no ill luck     stirring but what lights o\' my shoulders; no sighs but o\' my     breathing; no tears but o\' my shedding!   TUBAL. Yes, other men have ill luck too: Antonio, as I heard in     Genoa-   SHYLOCK. What, what, what? Ill luck, ill luck?   TUBAL. Hath an argosy cast away coming from Tripolis.   SHYLOCK. I thank God, I thank God. Is it true, is it true?   TUBAL. I spoke with some of the sailors that escaped the wreck.   SHYLOCK. I thank thee, good Tubal. Good news, good news- ha, ha!-     heard in Genoa.   TUBAL. Your daughter spent in Genoa, as I heard, one night,     fourscore ducats.     SHYLOCK. Thou stick\'st a dagger in me- I shall never see my gold     again. Fourscore ducats at a sitting! Fourscore ducats!   TUBAL. There came divers of Antonio\'s creditors in my company to     Venice that swear he cannot choose but break.   SHYLOCK. I am very glad of it; I\'ll plague him, I\'ll torture him; I     am glad of it.   TUBAL. One of them showed me a ring that he had of your daughter     for a monkey.   SHYLOCK. Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal. It was my     turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor; I would not     have given it for a wilderness of monkeys.   TUBAL. But Antonio is certainly undone.   SHYLOCK. Nay, that\'s true; that\'s very true. Go, Tubal, fee me an     officer; bespeak him a fortnight before. I will have the heart of     him, if he forfeit; for, were he out of Venice, I can make what     merchandise I will. Go, Tubal, and meet me at our synagogue; go,     good Tubal; at our synagogue, Tubal.                  Exeunt     SCENE II. Belmont. PORTIA\'S house  Enter BASSANIO, PORTIA, GRATIANO, NERISSA, and all their trains    PORTIA. I pray you tarry; pause a day or two     Before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong,     I lose your company; therefore forbear a while.     There\'s something tells me- but it is not love-     I would not lose you; and you know yourself     Hate counsels not in such a quality.     But lest you should not understand me well-     And yet a maiden hath no tongue but thought-     I would detain you here some month or two     Before you venture for me. I could teach you     How to choose right, but then I am forsworn;     So will I never be; so may you miss me;     But if you do, you\'ll make me wish a sin,     That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes!     They have o\'erlook\'d me and divided me;     One half of me is yours, the other half yours-       Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,     And so all yours. O! these naughty times     Puts bars between the owners and their rights;     And so, though yours, not yours. Prove it so,     Let fortune go to hell for it, not I.     I speak too long, but \'tis to peize the time,     To eke it, and to draw it out in length,     To stay you from election.   BASSANIO. Let me choose;     For as I am, I live upon the rack.   PORTIA. Upon the rack, Bassanio? Then confess     What treason there is mingled with your love.   BASSANIO. None but that ugly treason of mistrust     Which makes me fear th\' enjoying of my love;     There may as well be amity and life     \'Tween snow and fire as treason and my love.   PORTIA. Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack,     Where men enforced do speak anything.   BASSANIO. Promise me life, and I\'ll confess the truth.   PORTIA. Well then, confess and live.     BASSANIO. \'Confess\' and \'love\'     Had been the very sum of my confession.     O happy torment, when my torturer     Doth teach me answers for deliverance!     But let me to my fortune and the caskets.   PORTIA. Away, then; I am lock\'d in one of them.     If you do love me, you will find me out.     Nerissa and the rest, stand all aloof;     Let music sound while he doth make his choice;     Then, if he lose, he makes a swan-like end,     Fading in music. That the comparison     May stand more proper, my eye shall be the stream     And wat\'ry death-bed for him. He may win;     And what is music then? Then music is     Even as the flourish when true subjects bow     To a new-crowned monarch; such it is     As are those dulcet sounds in break of day     That creep into the dreaming bridegroom\'s ear     And summon him to marriage. Now he goes,     With no less presence, but with much more love,       Than young Alcides when he did redeem     The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy     To the sea-monster. I stand for sacrifice;     The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives,     With bleared visages come forth to view     The issue of th\' exploit. Go, Hercules!     Live thou, I live. With much much more dismay     I view the fight than thou that mak\'st the fray.                              A SONG        the whilst BASSANIO comments on the caskets to himself                   Tell me where is fancy bred,                  Or in the heart or in the head,                  How begot, how nourished?                    Reply, reply.                  It is engend\'red in the eyes,                  With gazing fed; and fancy dies                  In the cradle where it lies.                      Let us all ring fancy\'s knell:                    I\'ll begin it- Ding, dong, bell.   ALL.           Ding, dong, bell.    BASSANIO. So may the outward shows be least themselves;     The world is still deceiv\'d with ornament.     In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt     But, being season\'d with a gracious voice,     Obscures the show of evil? In religion,     What damned error but some sober brow     Will bless it, and approve it with a text,     Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?     There is no vice so simple but assumes     Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.     How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false     As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins     The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars;     Who, inward search\'d, have livers white as milk!     And these assume but valour\'s excrement     To render them redoubted. Look on beauty       And you shall see \'tis purchas\'d by the weight,     Which therein works a miracle in nature,     Making them lightest that wear most of it;     So are those crisped snaky golden locks     Which make such wanton gambols with the wind     Upon supposed fairness often known     To be the dowry of a second head-     The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.     Thus ornament is but the guiled shore     To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf     Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word,     The seeming truth which cunning times put on     To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold,     Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee;     Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge     \'Tween man and man; but thou, thou meagre lead,     Which rather threaten\'st than dost promise aught,     Thy plainness moves me more than eloquence,     And here choose I. Joy be the consequence!   PORTIA.  [Aside]  How all the other passions fleet to air,       As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac\'d despair,     And shudd\'ring fear, and green-ey\'d jealousy!     O love, be moderate, allay thy ecstasy,     In measure rain thy joy, scant this excess!     I feel too much thy blessing. Make it less,     For fear I surfeit.   BASSANIO.  [Opening the leaden casket]  What find I here?     Fair Portia\'s counterfeit! What demi-god     Hath come so near creation? Move these eyes?     Or whether riding on the balls of mine     Seem they in motion? Here are sever\'d lips,     Parted with sugar breath; so sweet a bar     Should sunder such sweet friends. Here in her hairs     The painter plays the spider, and hath woven     A golden mesh t\' entrap the hearts of men     Faster than gnats in cobwebs. But her eyes-     How could he see to do them? Having made one,     Methinks it should have power to steal both his,     And leave itself unfurnish\'d. Yet look how far     The substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow       In underprizing it, so far this shadow     Doth limp behind the substance. Here\'s the scroll,     The continent and summary of my fortune.          \'You that choose not by the view,          Chance as fair and choose as true!          Since this fortune falls to you,          Be content and seek no new.          If you be well pleas\'d with this,          And hold your fortune for your bliss,          Turn to where your lady is          And claim her with a loving kiss.\'     A gentle scroll. Fair lady, by your leave;     I come by note, to give and to receive.     Like one of two contending in a prize,     That thinks he hath done well in people\'s eyes,     Hearing applause and universal shout,     Giddy in spirit, still gazing in a doubt     Whether those peals of praise be his or no;     So, thrice-fair lady, stand I even so,     As doubtful whether what I see be true,       Until confirm\'d, sign\'d, ratified by you.   PORTIA. You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand,     Such as I am. Though for myself alone     I would not be ambitious in my wish     To wish myself much better, yet for you     I would be trebled twenty times myself,     A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich,     That only to stand high in your account     I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,     Exceed account. But the full sum of me     Is sum of something which, to term in gross,     Is an unlesson\'d girl, unschool\'d, unpractis\'d;     Happy in this, she is not yet so old     But she may learn; happier than this,     She is not bred so dull but she can learn;     Happiest of all is that her gentle spirit     Commits itself to yours to be directed,     As from her lord, her governor, her king.     Myself and what is mine to you and yours     Is now converted. But now I was the lord       Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,     Queen o\'er myself; and even now, but now,     This house, these servants, and this same myself,     Are yours- my lord\'s. I give them with this ring,     Which when you part from, lose, or give away,     Let it presage the ruin of your love,     And be my vantage to exclaim on you.   BASSANIO. Madam, you have bereft me of all words;     Only my blood speaks to you in my veins;     And there is such confusion in my powers     As, after some oration fairly spoke     By a beloved prince, there doth appear     Among the buzzing pleased multitude,     Where every something, being blent together,     Turns to a wild of nothing, save of joy     Express\'d and not express\'d. But when this ring     Parts from this finger, then parts life from hence;     O, then be bold to say Bassanio\'s dead!   NERISSA. My lord and lady, it is now our time     That have stood by and seen our wishes prosper       To cry \'Good joy.\' Good joy, my lord and lady!   GRATIANO. My Lord Bassanio, and my gentle lady,     I wish you all the joy that you can wish,     For I am sure you can wish none from me;     And, when your honours mean to solemnize     The bargain of your faith, I do beseech you     Even at that time I may be married too.   BASSANIO. With all my heart, so thou canst get a wife.   GRATIANO. I thank your lordship, you have got me one.     My eyes, my lord, can look as swift as yours:     You saw the mistress, I beheld the maid;     You lov\'d, I lov\'d; for intermission     No more pertains to me, my lord, than you.     Your fortune stood upon the caskets there,     And so did mine too, as the matter falls;     For wooing here until I sweat again,     And swearing till my very roof was dry     With oaths of love, at last- if promise last-     I got a promise of this fair one here     To have her love, provided that your fortune       Achiev\'d her mistress.   PORTIA. Is this true, Nerissa?   NERISSA. Madam, it is, so you stand pleas\'d withal.   BASSANIO. And do you, Gratiano, mean good faith?   GRATIANO. Yes, faith, my lord.   BASSANIO. Our feast shall be much honoured in your marriage.   GRATIANO. We\'ll play with them: the first boy for a thousand     ducats.   NERISSA. What, and stake down?   GRATIANO. No; we shall ne\'er win at that sport, and stake down-     But who comes here? Lorenzo and his infidel?     What, and my old Venetian friend, Salerio!            Enter LORENZO, JESSICA, and SALERIO, a messenger                            from Venice    BASSANIO. Lorenzo and Salerio, welcome hither,     If that the youth of my new int\'rest here     Have power to bid you welcome. By your leave,     I bid my very friends and countrymen,       Sweet Portia, welcome.   PORTIA. So do I, my lord;     They are entirely welcome.   LORENZO. I thank your honour. For my part, my lord,     My purpose was not to have seen you here;     But meeting with Salerio by the way,     He did entreat me, past all saying nay,     To come with him along.   SALERIO. I did, my lord,     And I have reason for it. Signior Antonio     Commends him to you.               [Gives BASSANIO a letter]   BASSANIO. Ere I ope his letter,     I pray you tell me how my good friend doth.   SALERIO. Not sick, my lord, unless it be in mind;     Nor well, unless in mind; his letter there     Will show you his estate.        [BASSANIO opens the letter]   GRATIANO. Nerissa, cheer yond stranger; bid her welcome.     Your hand, Salerio. What\'s the news from Venice?     How doth that royal merchant, good Antonio?     I know he will be glad of our success:       We are the Jasons, we have won the fleece.   SALERIO. I would you had won the fleece that he hath lost.   PORTIA. There are some shrewd contents in yond same paper     That steals the colour from Bassanio\'s cheek:     Some dear friend dead, else nothing in the world     Could turn so much the constitution     Of any constant man. What, worse and worse!     With leave, Bassanio: I am half yourself,     And I must freely have the half of anything     That this same paper brings you.   BASSANIO. O sweet Portia,     Here are a few of the unpleasant\'st words     That ever blotted paper! Gentle lady,     When I did first impart my love to you,     I freely told you all the wealth I had     Ran in my veins- I was a gentleman;     And then I told you true. And yet, dear lady,     Rating myself at nothing, you shall see     How much I was a braggart. When I told you     My state was nothing, I should then have told you       That I was worse than nothing; for indeed     I have engag\'d myself to a dear friend,     Engag\'d my friend to his mere enemy,     To feed my means. Here is a letter, lady,     The paper as the body of my friend,     And every word in it a gaping wound     Issuing life-blood. But is it true, Salerio?     Hath all his ventures fail\'d? What, not one hit?     From Tripolis, from Mexico, and England,     From Lisbon, Barbary, and India,     And not one vessel scape the dreadful touch     Of merchant-marring rocks?   SALERIO. Not one, my lord.     Besides, it should appear that, if he had     The present money to discharge the Jew,     He would not take it. Never did I know     A creature that did bear the shape of man     So keen and greedy to confound a man.     He plies the Duke at morning and at night,     And doth impeach the freedom of the state,       If they deny him justice. Twenty merchants,     The Duke himself, and the magnificoes     Of greatest port, have all persuaded with him;     But none can drive him from the envious plea     Of forfeiture, of justice, and his bond.   JESSICA. When I was with him, I have heard him swear     To Tubal and to Chus, his countrymen,     That he would rather have Antonio\'s flesh     Than twenty times the value of the sum     That he did owe him; and I know, my lord,     If law, authority, and power, deny not,     It will go hard with poor Antonio.   PORTIA. Is it your dear friend that is thus in trouble?   BASSANIO. The dearest friend to me, the kindest man,     The best condition\'d and unwearied spirit     In doing courtesies; and one in whom     The ancient Roman honour more appears     Than any that draws breath in Italy.   PORTIA. What sum owes he the Jew?   BASSANIO. For me, three thousand ducats.     PORTIA. What! no more?     Pay him six thousand, and deface the bond;     Double six thousand, and then treble that,     Before a friend of this description     Shall lose a hair through Bassanio\'s fault.     First go with me to church and call me wife,     And then away to Venice to your friend;     For never shall you lie by Portia\'s side     With an unquiet soul. You shall have gold     To pay the petty debt twenty times over.     When it is paid, bring your true friend along.     My maid Nerissa and myself meantime     Will live as maids and widows. Come, away;     For you shall hence upon your wedding day.     Bid your friends welcome, show a merry cheer;     Since you are dear bought, I will love you dear.     But let me hear the letter of your friend.   BASSANIO.  [Reads]  \'Sweet Bassanio, my ships have all miscarried,     my creditors grow cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to the     Jew is forfeit; and since, in paying it, it is impossible I       should live, all debts are clear\'d between you and I, if I might     but see you at my death. Notwithstanding, use your pleasure; if     your love do not persuade you to come, let not my letter.\'   PORTIA. O love, dispatch all business and be gone!   BASSANIO. Since I have your good leave to go away,     I will make haste; but, till I come again,     No bed shall e\'er be guilty of my stay,     Nor rest be interposer \'twixt us twain.               Exeunt     SCENE III. Venice. A street  Enter SHYLOCK, SOLANIO, ANTONIO, and GAOLER    SHYLOCK. Gaoler, look to him. Tell not me of mercy-     This is the fool that lent out money gratis.     Gaoler, look to him.   ANTONIO. Hear me yet, good Shylock.   SHYLOCK. I\'ll have my bond; speak not against my bond.     I have sworn an oath that I will have my bond.     Thou call\'dst me dog before thou hadst a cause,     But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs;     The Duke shall grant me justice. I do wonder,     Thou naughty gaoler, that thou art so fond     To come abroad with him at his request.   ANTONIO. I pray thee hear me speak.   SHYLOCK. I\'ll have my bond. I will not hear thee speak;     I\'ll have my bond; and therefore speak no more.     I\'ll not be made a soft and dull-ey\'d fool,     To shake the head, relent, and sigh, and yield,     To Christian intercessors. Follow not;       I\'ll have no speaking; I will have my bond.             Exit   SOLANIO. It is the most impenetrable cur     That ever kept with men.   ANTONIO. Let him alone;     I\'ll follow him no more with bootless prayers.     He seeks my life; his reason well I know:     I oft deliver\'d from his forfeitures     Many that have at times made moan to me;     Therefore he hates me.   SOLANIO. I am sure the Duke     Will never grant this forfeiture to hold.   ANTONIO. The Duke cannot deny the course of law;     For the commodity that strangers have     With us in Venice, if it be denied,     Will much impeach the justice of the state,     Since that the trade and profit of the city     Consisteth of all nations. Therefore, go;     These griefs and losses have so bated me     That I shall hardly spare a pound of flesh     To-morrow to my bloody creditor.       Well, gaoler, on; pray God Bassanio come     To see me pay his debt, and then I care not.          Exeunt     SCENE IV. Belmont. PORTIA\'S house  Enter PORTIA, NERISSA, LORENZO, JESSICA, and BALTHASAR    LORENZO. Madam, although I speak it in your presence,     You have a noble and a true conceit     Of godlike amity, which appears most strongly     In bearing thus the absence of your lord.     But if you knew to whom you show this honour,     How true a gentleman you send relief,     How dear a lover of my lord your husband,     I know you would be prouder of the work     Than customary bounty can enforce you.   PORTIA. I never did repent for doing good,     Nor shall not now; for in companions     That do converse and waste the time together,     Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love,     There must be needs a like proportion     Of lineaments, of manners, and of spirit,     Which makes me think that this Antonio,     Being the bosom lover of my lord,       Must needs be like my lord. If it be so,     How little is the cost I have bestowed     In purchasing the semblance of my soul     From out the state of hellish cruelty!     This comes too near the praising of myself;     Therefore, no more of it; hear other things.     Lorenzo, I commit into your hands     The husbandry and manage of my house     Until my lord\'s return; for mine own part,     I have toward heaven breath\'d a secret vow     To live in prayer and contemplation,     Only attended by Nerissa here,     Until her husband and my lord\'s return.     There is a monastery two miles off,     And there we will abide. I do desire you     Not to deny this imposition,     The which my love and some necessity     Now lays upon you.   LORENZO. Madam, with all my heart     I shall obey you in an fair commands.     PORTIA. My people do already know my mind,     And will acknowledge you and Jessica     In place of Lord Bassanio and myself.     So fare you well till we shall meet again.   LORENZO. Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you!   JESSICA. I wish your ladyship all heart\'s content.   PORTIA. I thank you for your wish, and am well pleas\'d     To wish it back on you. Fare you well, Jessica.                                       Exeunt JESSICA and LORENZO     Now, Balthasar,     As I have ever found thee honest-true,     So let me find thee still. Take this same letter,     And use thou all th\' endeavour of a man     In speed to Padua; see thou render this     Into my cousin\'s hands, Doctor Bellario;     And look what notes and garments he doth give thee,     Bring them, I pray thee, with imagin\'d speed     Unto the traject, to the common ferry     Which trades to Venice. Waste no time in words,     But get thee gone; I shall be there before thee.     BALTHASAR. Madam, I go with all convenient speed.         Exit   PORTIA. Come on, Nerissa, I have work in hand     That you yet know not of; we\'ll see our husbands     Before they think of us.   NERISSA. Shall they see us?   PORTIA. They shall, Nerissa; but in such a habit     That they shall think we are accomplished     With that we lack. I\'ll hold thee any wager,     When we are both accoutred like young men,     I\'ll prove the prettier fellow of the two,     And wear my dagger with the braver grace,     And speak between the change of man and boy     With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps     Into a manly stride; and speak of frays     Like a fine bragging youth; and tell quaint lies,     How honourable ladies sought my love,     Which I denying, they fell sick and died-     I could not do withal. Then I\'ll repent,     And wish for all that, that I had not kill\'d them.     And twenty of these puny lies I\'ll tell,       That men shall swear I have discontinued school     About a twelvemonth. I have within my mind     A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks,     Which I will practise.   NERISSA. Why, shall we turn to men?   PORTIA. Fie, what a question\'s that,     If thou wert near a lewd interpreter!     But come, I\'ll tell thee all my whole device     When I am in my coach, which stays for us     At the park gate; and therefore haste away,     For we must measure twenty miles to-day.              Exeunt     SCENE V. Belmont. The garden  Enter LAUNCELOT and JESSICA    LAUNCELOT. Yes, truly; for, look you, the sins of the father are to     be laid upon the children; therefore, I promise you, I fear you.     I was always plain with you, and so now I speak my agitation of     the matter; therefore be o\' good cheer, for truly I think you are     damn\'d. There is but one hope in it that can do you any good, and     that is but a kind of bastard hope, neither.   JESSICA. And what hope is that, I pray thee?   LAUNCELOT. Marry, you may partly hope that your father got you not-    that you are not the Jew\'s daughter.   JESSICA. That were a kind of bastard hope indeed; so the sins of my     mother should be visited upon me.   LAUNCELOT. Truly then I fear you are damn\'d both by father and     mother; thus when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into     Charybdis, your mother; well, you are gone both ways.   JESSICA. I shall be sav\'d by my husband; he hath made me a     Christian.   LAUNCELOT. Truly, the more to blame he; we were Christians enow       before, e\'en as many as could well live one by another. This     making of Christians will raise the price of hogs; if we grow all     to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the     coals for money.                               Enter LORENZO    JESSICA. I\'ll tell my husband, Launcelot, what you say; here he     comes.   LORENZO. I shall grow jealous of you shortly, Launcelot, if you     thus get my wife into corners.   JESSICA. Nay, you need nor fear us, Lorenzo; Launcelot and I are     out; he tells me flatly there\'s no mercy for me in heaven,     because I am a Jew\'s daughter; and he says you are no good member     of the commonwealth, for in converting Jews to Christians you     raise the price of pork.   LORENZO. I shall answer that better to the commonwealth than you     can the getting up of the negro\'s belly; the Moor is with child     by you, Launcelot.   LAUNCELOT. It is much that the Moor should be more than reason; but       if she be less than an honest woman, she is indeed more than I     took her for.   LORENZO. How every fool can play upon the word! I think the best     grace of wit will shortly turn into silence, and discourse grow     commendable in none only but parrots. Go in, sirrah; bid them     prepare for dinner.   LAUNCELOT. That is done, sir; they have all stomachs.   LORENZO. Goodly Lord, what a wit-snapper are you! Then bid them     prepare dinner.   LAUNCELOT. That is done too, sir, only \'cover\' is the word.   LORENZO. Will you cover, then, sir?   LAUNCELOT. Not so, sir, neither; I know my duty.   LORENZO. Yet more quarrelling with occasion! Wilt thou show the     whole wealth of thy wit in an instant? I pray thee understand a     plain man in his plain meaning: go to thy fellows, bid them cover     the table, serve in the meat, and we will come in to dinner.   LAUNCELOT. For the table, sir, it shall be serv\'d in; for the meat,     sir, it shall be cover\'d; for your coming in to dinner, sir, why,     let it be as humours and conceits shall govern.  Exit     LORENZO. O dear discretion, how his words are suited!     The fool hath planted in his memory     An army of good words; and I do know     A many fools that stand in better place,     Garnish\'d like him, that for a tricksy word     Defy the matter. How cheer\'st thou, Jessica?     And now, good sweet, say thy opinion,     How dost thou like the Lord Bassanio\'s wife?   JESSICA. Past all expressing. It is very meet     The Lord Bassanio live an upright life,     For, having such a blessing in his lady,     He finds the joys of heaven here on earth;     And if on earth he do not merit it,     In reason he should never come to heaven.     Why, if two gods should play some heavenly match,     And on the wager lay two earthly women,     And Portia one, there must be something else     Pawn\'d with the other; for the poor rude world     Hath not her fellow.   LORENZO. Even such a husband       Hast thou of me as she is for a wife.   JESSICA. Nay, but ask my opinion too of that.   LORENZO. I will anon; first let us go to dinner.   JESSICA. Nay, let me praise you while I have a stomach.   LORENZO. No, pray thee, let it serve for table-talk;     Then howsome\'er thou speak\'st, \'mong other things     I shall digest it.   JESSICA. Well, I\'ll set you forth.                      Exeunt     ACT IV. SCENE I. Venice. The court of justice  Enter the DUKE, the MAGNIFICOES, ANTONIO, BASSANIO, GRATIANO, SALERIO, and OTHERS    DUKE OF VENICE. What, is Antonio here?   ANTONIO. Ready, so please your Grace.   DUKE OF VENICE. I am sorry for thee; thou art come to answer     A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch,     Uncapable of pity, void and empty     From any dram of mercy.   ANTONIO. I have heard     Your Grace hath ta\'en great pains to qualify     His rigorous course; but since he stands obdurate,     And that no lawful means can carry me     Out of his envy\'s reach, I do oppose     My patience to his fury, and am arm\'d     To suffer with a quietness of spirit     The very tyranny and rage of his.   DUKE OF VENICE. Go one, and call the Jew into the court.   SALERIO. He is ready at the door; he comes, my lord.                              Enter SHYLOCK    DUKE OF VENICE. Make room, and let him stand before our face.     Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too,     That thou but leadest this fashion of thy malice     To the last hour of act; and then, \'tis thought,     Thou\'lt show thy mercy and remorse, more strange     Than is thy strange apparent cruelty;     And where thou now exacts the penalty,     Which is a pound of this poor merchant\'s flesh,     Thou wilt not only loose the forfeiture,     But, touch\'d with human gentleness and love,     Forgive a moiety of the principal,     Glancing an eye of pity on his losses,     That have of late so huddled on his back-     Enow to press a royal merchant down,     And pluck commiseration of his state     From brassy bosoms and rough hearts of flint,     From stubborn Turks and Tartars, never train\'d       To offices of tender courtesy.     We all expect a gentle answer, Jew.   SHYLOCK. I have possess\'d your Grace of what I purpose,     And by our holy Sabbath have I sworn     To have the due and forfeit of my bond.     If you deny it, let the danger light     Upon your charter and your city\'s freedom.     You\'ll ask me why I rather choose to have     A weight of carrion flesh than to receive     Three thousand ducats. I\'ll not answer that,     But say it is my humour- is it answer\'d?     What if my house be troubled with a rat,     And I be pleas\'d to give ten thousand ducats     To have it ban\'d? What, are you answer\'d yet?     Some men there are love not a gaping pig;     Some that are mad if they behold a cat;     And others, when the bagpipe sings i\' th\' nose,     Cannot contain their urine; for affection,     Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood     Of what it likes or loathes. Now, for your answer:       As there is no firm reason to be rend\'red     Why he cannot abide a gaping pig;     Why he, a harmless necessary cat;     Why he, a woollen bagpipe, but of force     Must yield to such inevitable shame     As to offend, himself being offended;     So can I give no reason, nor I will not,     More than a lodg\'d hate and a certain loathing     I bear Antonio, that I follow thus     A losing suit against him. Are you answered?   BASSANIO. This is no answer, thou unfeeling man,     To excuse the current of thy cruelty.   SHYLOCK. I am not bound to please thee with my answers.   BASSANIO. Do all men kill the things they do not love?   SHYLOCK. Hates any man the thing he would not kill?   BASSANIO. Every offence is not a hate at first.   SHYLOCK. What, wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?   ANTONIO. I pray you, think you question with the Jew.     You may as well go stand upon the beach     And bid the main flood bate his usual height;       You may as well use question with the wolf,     Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb;     You may as well forbid the mountain pines     To wag their high tops and to make no noise     When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven;     You may as well do anything most hard     As seek to soften that- than which what\'s harder?-     His jewish heart. Therefore, I do beseech you,     Make no moe offers, use no farther means,     But with all brief and plain conveniency     Let me have judgment, and the Jew his will.   BASSANIO. For thy three thousand ducats here is six.   SHYLOCK. If every ducat in six thousand ducats     Were in six parts, and every part a ducat,     I would not draw them; I would have my bond.   DUKE OF VENICE. How shalt thou hope for mercy, rend\'ring none?   SHYLOCK. What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?     You have among you many a purchas\'d slave,     Which, fike your asses and your dogs and mules,     You use in abject and in slavish parts,       Because you bought them; shall I say to you     \'Let them be free, marry them to your heirs-     Why sweat they under burdens?- let their beds     Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates     Be season\'d with such viands\'? You will answer     \'The slaves are ours.\' So do I answer you:     The pound of flesh which I demand of him     Is dearly bought, \'tis mine, and I will have it.     If you deny me, fie upon your law!     There is no force in the decrees of Venice.     I stand for judgment; answer; shall I have it?   DUKE OF VENICE. Upon my power I may dismiss this court,     Unless Bellario, a learned doctor,     Whom I have sent for to determine this,     Come here to-day.   SALERIO. My lord, here stays without     A messenger with letters from the doctor,     New come from Padua.   DUKE OF VENICE. Bring us the letters; call the messenger.   BASSANIO. Good cheer, Antonio! What, man, courage yet!       The Jew shall have my flesh, blood, bones, and all,     Ere thou shalt lose for me one drop of blood.   ANTONIO. I am a tainted wether of the flock,     Meetest for death; the weakest kind of fruit     Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me.     You cannot better be employ\'d, Bassanio,     Than to live still, and write mine epitaph.             Enter NERISSA dressed like a lawyer\'s clerk    DUKE OF VENICE. Came you from Padua, from Bellario?   NERISSA. From both, my lord. Bellario greets your Grace.                                              [Presents a letter]   BASSANIO. Why dost thou whet thy knife so earnestly?   SHYLOCK. To cut the forfeiture from that bankrupt there.   GRATIANO. Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew,     Thou mak\'st thy knife keen; but no metal can,     No, not the hangman\'s axe, bear half the keenness     Of thy sharp envy. Can no prayers pierce thee?   SHYLOCK. No, none that thou hast wit enough to make.     GRATIANO. O, be thou damn\'d, inexecrable dog!     And for thy life let justice be accus\'d.     Thou almost mak\'st me waver in my faith,     To hold opinion with Pythagoras     That souls of animals infuse themselves     Into the trunks of men. Thy currish spirit     Govern\'d a wolf who, hang\'d for human slaughter,     Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,     And, whilst thou layest in thy unhallowed dam,     Infus\'d itself in thee; for thy desires     Are wolfish, bloody, starv\'d and ravenous.   SHYLOCK. Till thou canst rail the seal from off my bond,     Thou but offend\'st thy lungs to speak so loud;     Repair thy wit, good youth, or it will fall     To cureless ruin. I stand here for law.   DUKE OF VENICE. This letter from Bellario doth commend     A young and learned doctor to our court.     Where is he?   NERISSA. He attendeth here hard by     To know your answer, whether you\'ll admit him.     DUKE OF VENICE. With all my heart. Some three or four of you     Go give him courteous conduct to this place.     Meantime, the court shall hear Bellario\'s letter.   CLERK.  [Reads]  \'Your Grace shall understand that at the receipt     of your letter I am very sick; but in the instant that your     messenger came, in loving visitation was with me a young doctor     of Rome- his name is Balthazar. I acquainted him with the cause     in controversy between the Jew and Antonio the merchant; we     turn\'d o\'er many books together; he is furnished with my opinion     which, bettered with his own learning-the greatness whereof I     cannot enough commend- comes with him at my importunity to fill     up your Grace\'s request in my stead. I beseech you let his lack     of years be no impediment to let him lack a reverend estimation,     for I never knew so young a body with so old a head. I leave him     to your gracious acceptance, whose trial shall better publish his     commendation.\'        Enter PORTIA for BALTHAZAR, dressed like a Doctor of Laws    DUKE OF VENICE. YOU hear the learn\'d Bellario, what he writes;       And here, I take it, is the doctor come.     Give me your hand; come you from old Bellario?   PORTIA. I did, my lord.   DUKE OF VENICE. You are welcome; take your place.     Are you acquainted with the difference     That holds this present question in the court?   PORTIA. I am informed throughly of the cause.     Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?   DUKE OF VENICE. Antonio and old Shylock, both stand forth.   PORTIA. Is your name Shylock?   SHYLOCK. Shylock is my name.   PORTIA. Of a strange nature is the suit you follow;     Yet in such rule that the Venetian law     Cannot impugn you as you do proceed.     You stand within his danger, do you not?   ANTONIO. Ay, so he says.   PORTIA. Do you confess the bond?   ANTONIO. I do.   PORTIA. Then must the Jew be merciful.   SHYLOCK. On what compulsion must I? Tell me that.     PORTIA. The quality of mercy is not strain\'d;     It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven     Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:     It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.     \'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes     The throned monarch better than his crown;     His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,     The attribute to awe and majesty,     Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;     But mercy is above this sceptred sway,     It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,     It is an attribute to God himself;     And earthly power doth then show likest God\'s     When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,     Though justice be thy plea, consider this-     That in the course of justice none of us     Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy,     And that same prayer doth teach us all to render     The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much     To mitigate the justice of thy plea,       Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice     Must needs give sentence \'gainst the merchant there.   SHYLOCK. My deeds upon my head! I crave the law,     The penalty and forfeit of my bond.   BASSANIO. Yes; here I tender it for him in the court;     Yea, twice the sum; if that will not suffice,     I will be bound to pay it ten times o\'er     On forfeit of my hands, my head, my heart;     If this will not suffice, it must appear     That malice bears down truth. And, I beseech you,     Wrest once the law to your authority;     To do a great right do a little wrong,     And curb this cruel devil of his will.   PORTIA. It must not be; there is no power in Venice     Can alter a decree established;     \'Twill be recorded for a precedent,     And many an error, by the same example,     Will rush into the state; it cannot be.   SHYLOCK. A Daniel come to judgment! Yea, a Daniel!     O wise young judge, how I do honour thee!     PORTIA. I pray you, let me look upon the bond.   SHYLOCK. Here \'tis, most reverend Doctor; here it is.   PORTIA. Shylock, there\'s thrice thy money off\'red thee.   SHYLOCK. An oath, an oath! I have an oath in heaven.     Shall I lay perjury upon my soul?     No, not for Venice.   PORTIA. Why, this bond is forfeit;     And lawfully by this the Jew may claim     A pound of flesh, to be by him cut off     Nearest the merchant\'s heart. Be merciful.     Take thrice thy money; bid me tear the bond.   SHYLOCK. When it is paid according to the tenour.     It doth appear you are a worthy judge;     You know the law; your exposition     Hath been most sound; I charge you by the law,     Whereof you are a well-deserving pillar,     Proceed to judgment. By my soul I swear     There is no power in the tongue of man     To alter me. I stay here on my bond.   ANTONIO. Most heartily I do beseech the court       To give the judgment.   PORTIA. Why then, thus it is:     You must prepare your bosom for his knife.   SHYLOCK. O noble judge! O excellent young man!   PORTIA. For the intent and purpose of the law     Hath full relation to the penalty,     Which here appeareth due upon the bond.   SHYLOCK. \'Tis very true. O wise and upright judge,     How much more elder art thou than thy looks!   PORTIA. Therefore, lay bare your bosom.   SHYLOCK. Ay, his breast-     So says the bond; doth it not, noble judge?     \'Nearest his heart,\' those are the very words.   PORTIA. It is so. Are there balance here to weigh     The flesh?   SHYLOCK. I have them ready.   PORTIA. Have by some surgeon, Shylock, on your charge,     To stop his wounds, lest he do bleed to death.   SHYLOCK. Is it so nominated in the bond?   PORTIA. It is not so express\'d, but what of that?       \'Twere good you do so much for charity.   SHYLOCK. I cannot find it; \'tis not in the bond.   PORTIA. You, merchant, have you anything to say?   ANTONIO. But little: I am arm\'d and well prepar\'d.     Give me your hand, Bassanio; fare you well.     Grieve not that I am fall\'n to this for you,     For herein Fortune shows herself more kind     Than is her custom. It is still her use     To let the wretched man outlive his wealth,     To view with hollow eye and wrinkled brow     An age of poverty; from which ling\'ring penance     Of such misery doth she cut me off.     Commend me to your honourable wife;     Tell her the process of Antonio\'s end;     Say how I lov\'d you; speak me fair in death;     And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge     Whether Bassanio had not once a love.     Repent but you that you shall lose your friend,     And he repents not that he pays your debt;     For if the Jew do cut but deep enough,       I\'ll pay it instantly with all my heart.   BASSANIO. Antonio, I am married to a wife     Which is as dear to me as life itself;     But life itself, my wife, and all the world,     Are not with me esteem\'d above thy life;     I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all     Here to this devil, to deliver you.   PORTIA. Your wife would give you little thanks for that,     If she were by to hear you make the offer.   GRATIANO. I have a wife who I protest I love;     I would she were in heaven, so she could     Entreat some power to change this currish Jew.   NERISSA. \'Tis well you offer it behind her back;     The wish would make else an unquiet house.   SHYLOCK.  [Aside]  These be the Christian husbands! I have a     daughter-     Would any of the stock of Barrabas     Had been her husband, rather than a Christian!-     We trifle time; I pray thee pursue sentence.   PORTIA. A pound of that same merchant\'s flesh is thine.       The court awards it and the law doth give it.   SHYLOCK. Most rightful judge!   PORTIA. And you must cut this flesh from off his breast.     The law allows it and the court awards it.   SHYLOCK. Most learned judge! A sentence! Come, prepare.   PORTIA. Tarry a little; there is something else.     This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood:     The words expressly are \'a pound of flesh.\'     Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh;     But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed     One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods     Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate     Unto the state of Venice.   GRATIANO. O upright judge! Mark, Jew. O learned judge!   SHYLOCK. Is that the law?   PORTIA. Thyself shalt see the act;     For, as thou urgest justice, be assur\'d     Thou shalt have justice, more than thou desir\'st.   GRATIANO. O learned judge! Mark, Jew. A learned judge!   SHYLOCK. I take this offer then: pay the bond thrice,       And let the Christian go.   BASSANIO. Here is the money.   PORTIA. Soft!     The Jew shall have all justice. Soft! No haste.     He shall have nothing but the penalty.   GRATIANO. O Jew! an upright judge, a learned judge!   PORTIA. Therefore, prepare thee to cut off the flesh.     Shed thou no blood, nor cut thou less nor more     But just a pound of flesh; if thou tak\'st more     Or less than a just pound- be it but so much     As makes it light or heavy in the substance,     Or the division of the twentieth part     Of one poor scruple; nay, if the scale do turn     But in the estimation of a hair-     Thou diest, and all thy goods are confiscate.   GRATIANO. A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew!     Now, infidel, I have you on the hip.   PORTIA. Why doth the Jew pause? Take thy forfeiture.   SHYLOCK. Give me my principal, and let me go.   BASSANIO. I have it ready for thee; here it is.     PORTIA. He hath refus\'d it in the open court;     He shall have merely justice, and his bond.   GRATIANO. A Daniel still say I, a second Daniel!     I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.   SHYLOCK. Shall I not have barely my principal?   PORTIA. Thou shalt have nothing but the forfeiture     To be so taken at thy peril, Jew.   SHYLOCK. Why, then the devil give him good of it!     I\'ll stay no longer question.   PORTIA. Tarry, Jew.     The law hath yet another hold on you.     It is enacted in the laws of Venice,     If it be proved against an alien     That by direct or indirect attempts     He seek the life of any citizen,     The party \'gainst the which he doth contrive     Shall seize one half his goods; the other half     Comes to the privy coffer of the state;     And the offender\'s life lies in the mercy     Of the Duke only, \'gainst all other voice.       In which predicament, I say, thou stand\'st;     For it appears by manifest proceeding     That indirectly, and directly too,     Thou hast contrived against the very life     Of the defendant; and thou hast incurr\'d     The danger formerly by me rehears\'d.     Down, therefore, and beg mercy of the Duke.   GRATIANO. Beg that thou mayst have leave to hang thyself;     And yet, thy wealth being forfeit to the state,     Thou hast not left the value of a cord;     Therefore thou must be hang\'d at the state\'s charge.   DUKE OF VENICE. That thou shalt see the difference of our spirit,     I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it.     For half thy wealth, it is Antonio\'s;     The other half comes to the general state,     Which humbleness may drive unto a fine.   PORTIA. Ay, for the state; not for Antonio.   SHYLOCK. Nay, take my life and all, pardon not that.     You take my house when you do take the prop     That doth sustain my house; you take my life       When you do take the means whereby I live.   PORTIA. What mercy can you render him, Antonio?   GRATIANO. A halter gratis; nothing else, for God\'s sake!   ANTONIO. So please my lord the Duke and all the court     To quit the fine for one half of his goods;     I am content, so he will let me have     The other half in use, to render it     Upon his death unto the gentleman     That lately stole his daughter-     Two things provided more; that, for this favour,     He presently become a Christian;     The other, that he do record a gift,     Here in the court, of all he dies possess\'d     Unto his son Lorenzo and his daughter.   DUKE OF VENICE. He shall do this, or else I do recant     The pardon that I late pronounced here.   PORTIA. Art thou contented, Jew? What dost thou say?   SHYLOCK. I am content.   PORTIA. Clerk, draw a deed of gift.   SHYLOCK. I pray you, give me leave to go from hence;       I am not well; send the deed after me     And I will sign it.   DUKE OF VENICE. Get thee gone, but do it.   GRATIANO. In christ\'ning shalt thou have two god-fathers;     Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more,     To bring thee to the gallows, not to the font.                                                     Exit SHYLOCK   DUKE OF VENICE. Sir, I entreat you home with me to dinner.   PORTIA. I humbly do desire your Grace of pardon;     I must away this night toward Padua,     And it is meet I presently set forth.   DUKE OF VENICE. I am sorry that your leisure serves you not.     Antonio, gratify this gentleman,     For in my mind you are much bound to him.                              Exeunt DUKE, MAGNIFICOES, and train   BASSANIO. Most worthy gentleman, I and my friend     Have by your wisdom been this day acquitted     Of grievous penalties; in lieu whereof     Three thousand ducats, due unto the Jew,     We freely cope your courteous pains withal.     ANTONIO. And stand indebted, over and above,     In love and service to you evermore.   PORTIA. He is well paid that is well satisfied,     And I, delivering you, am satisfied,     And therein do account myself well paid.     My mind was never yet more mercenary.     I pray you, know me when we meet again;     I wish you well, and so I take my leave.   BASSANIO. Dear sir, of force I must attempt you further;     Take some remembrance of us, as a tribute,     Not as fee. Grant me two things, I pray you,     Not to deny me, and to pardon me.   PORTIA. You press me far, and therefore I will yield.     [To ANTONIO]  Give me your gloves, I\'ll wear them for your sake.     [To BASSANIO]  And, for your love, I\'ll take this ring from you.     Do not draw back your hand; I\'ll take no more,     And you in love shall not deny me this.   BASSANIO. This ring, good sir- alas, it is a trifle;     I will not shame myself to give you this.   PORTIA. I will have nothing else but only this;       And now, methinks, I have a mind to it.   BASSANIO.. There\'s more depends on this than on the value.     The dearest ring in Venice will I give you,     And find it out by proclamation;     Only for this, I pray you, pardon me.   PORTIA. I see, sir, you are liberal in offers;     You taught me first to beg, and now, methinks,     You teach me how a beggar should be answer\'d.   BASSANIO. Good sir, this ring was given me by my wife;     And, when she put it on, she made me vow     That I should neither sell, nor give, nor lose it.   PORTIA. That \'scuse serves many men to save their gifts.     And if your wife be not a mad woman,     And know how well I have deserv\'d this ring,     She would not hold out enemy for ever     For giving it to me. Well, peace be with you!                                        Exeunt PORTIA and NERISSA   ANTONIO. My Lord Bassanio, let him have the ring.     Let his deservings, and my love withal,     Be valued \'gainst your wife\'s commandment.     BASSANIO. Go, Gratiano, run and overtake him;     Give him the ring, and bring him, if thou canst,     Unto Antonio\'s house. Away, make haste.        Exit GRATIANO     Come, you and I will thither presently;     And in the morning early will we both     Fly toward Belmont. Come, Antonio.                    Exeunt     SCENE II. Venice. A street  Enter PORTIA and NERISSA    PORTIA. Inquire the Jew\'s house out, give him this deed,     And let him sign it; we\'ll away tonight,     And be a day before our husbands home.     This deed will be well welcome to Lorenzo.                            Enter GRATIANO    GRATIANO. Fair sir, you are well o\'erta\'en.     My Lord Bassanio, upon more advice,     Hath sent you here this ring, and doth entreat     Your company at dinner.   PORTIA. That cannot be.     His ring I do accept most thankfully,     And so, I pray you, tell him. Furthermore,     I pray you show my youth old Shylock\'s house.   GRATIANO. That will I do.   NERISSA. Sir, I would speak with you.       [Aside to PORTIA]  I\'ll See if I can get my husband\'s ring,     Which I did make him swear to keep for ever.   PORTIA.  [To NERISSA]  Thou Mayst, I warrant. We shall have old       swearing     That they did give the rings away to men;     But we\'ll outface them, and outswear them too.     [Aloud]  Away, make haste, thou know\'st where I will tarry.   NERISSA. Come, good sir, will you show me to this house?                                                           Exeunt     ACT V. SCENE I. Belmont. The garden before PORTIA\'S house  Enter LORENZO and JESSICA    LORENZO. The moon shines bright. In such a night as this,     When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,     And they did make no noise- in such a night,     Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls,     And sigh\'d his soul toward the Grecian tents,     Where Cressid lay that night.   JESSICA. In such a night     Did Thisby fearfully o\'ertrip the dew,     And saw the lion\'s shadow ere himself,     And ran dismayed away.   LORENZO. In such a night     Stood Dido with a willow in her hand     Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love     To come again to Carthage.   JESSICA. In such a night     Medea gathered the enchanted herbs     That did renew old AEson.  LORENZO. In such a night       Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew,     And with an unthrift love did run from Venice     As far as Belmont.   JESSICA. In such a night     Did young Lorenzo swear he lov\'d her well,     Stealing her soul with many vows of faith,     And ne\'er a true one.   LORENZO. In such a night     Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew,     Slander her love, and he forgave it her.   JESSICA. I would out-night you, did no body come;     But, hark, I hear the footing of a man.                         Enter STEPHANO    LORENZO. Who comes so fast in silence of the night?   STEPHANO. A friend.   LORENZO. A friend! What friend? Your name, I pray you, friend?   STEPHANO. Stephano is my name, and I bring word     My mistress will before the break of day       Be here at Belmont; she doth stray about     By holy crosses, where she kneels and prays     For happy wedlock hours.   LORENZO. Who comes with her?   STEPHANO. None but a holy hermit and her maid.     I pray you, is my master yet return\'d?   LORENZO. He is not, nor we have not heard from him.     But go we in, I pray thee, Jessica,     And ceremoniously let us prepare     Some welcome for the mistress of the house.                           Enter LAUNCELOT    LAUNCELOT. Sola, sola! wo ha, ho! sola, sola!   LORENZO. Who calls?   LAUNCELOT. Sola! Did you see Master Lorenzo? Master Lorenzo! Sola,     sola!   LORENZO. Leave holloaing, man. Here!   LAUNCELOT. Sola! Where, where?   LORENZO. Here!     LAUNCELOT. Tell him there\'s a post come from my master with his     horn full of good news; my master will be here ere morning.  Exit   LORENZO. Sweet soul, let\'s in, and there expect their coming.     And yet no matter- why should we go in?     My friend Stephano, signify, I pray you,     Within the house, your mistress is at hand;     And bring your music forth into the air.       Exit STEPHANO     How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!     Here will we sit and let the sounds of music     Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night     Become the touches of sweet harmony.     Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven     Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;     There\'s not the smallest orb which thou behold\'st     But in his motion like an angel sings,     Still quiring to the young-ey\'d cherubins;     Such harmony is in immortal souls,     But whilst this muddy vesture of decay     Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.                              Enter MUSICIANS      Come, ho, and wake Diana with a hymn;     With sweetest touches pierce your mistress\' ear.     And draw her home with music.                        [Music]   JESSICA. I am never merry when I hear sweet music.   LORENZO. The reason is your spirits are attentive;     For do but note a wild and wanton herd,     Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,     Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,     Which is the hot condition of their blood-     If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,     Or any air of music touch their ears,     You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,     Their savage eyes turn\'d to a modest gaze     By the sweet power of music. Therefore the poet     Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods;     Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage,     But music for the time doth change his nature.       The man that hath no music in himself,     Nor is not mov\'d with concord of sweet sounds,     Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;     The motions of his spirit are dull:as night,     And his affections dark as Erebus.     Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.                      Enter PORTIA and NERISSA    PORTIA. That light we see is burning in my hall.     How far that little candle throws his beams!     So shines a good deed in a naughty world.   NERISSA. When the moon shone, we did not see the candle.   PORTIA. So doth the greater glory dim the less:     A substitute shines brightly as a king     Until a king be by, and then his state     Empties itself, as doth an inland brook     Into the main of waters. Music! hark!   NERISSA. It is your music, madam, of the house.   PORTIA. Nothing is good, I see, without respect;       Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day.   NERISSA. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam.   PORTIA. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark     When neither is attended; and I think     ne nightingale, if she should sing by day,     When every goose is cackling, would be thought     No better a musician than the wren.     How many things by season season\'d are     To their right praise and true perfection!     Peace, ho! The moon sleeps with Endymion,     And would not be awak\'d.                      [Music ceases]   LORENZO. That is the voice,     Or I am much deceiv\'d, of Portia.   PORTIA. He knows me as the blind man knows the cuckoo,     By the bad voice.   LORENZO. Dear lady, welcome home.   PORTIA. We have been praying for our husbands\' welfare,     Which speed, we hope, the better for our words.     Are they return\'d?   LORENZO. Madam, they are not yet;       But there is come a messenger before,     To signify their coming.   PORTIA.. Go in, Nerissa;     Give order to my servants that they take     No note at all of our being absent hence;     Nor you, Lorenzo; Jessica, nor you.        [A tucket sounds]   LORENZO. Your husband is at hand; I hear his trumpet.     We are no tell-tales, madam, fear you not.   PORTIA. This night methinks is but the daylight sick;     It looks a little paler; \'tis a day     Such as the day is when the sun is hid.         Enter BASSANIO, ANTONIO, GRATIANO, and their followers    BASSANIO. We should hold day with the Antipodes,     If you would walk in absence of the sun.   PORTIA. Let me give light, but let me not be light,     For a light wife doth make a heavy husband,     And never be Bassanio so for me;     But God sort all! You are welcome home, my lord.     BASSANIO. I thank you, madam; give welcome to my friend.     This is the man, this is Antonio,     To whom I am so infinitely bound.   PORTIA. You should in all sense be much bound to him,     For, as I hear, he was much bound for you.   ANTONIO. No more than I am well acquitted of.   PORTIA. Sir, you are very welcome to our house.     It must appear in other ways than words,     Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy.   GRATIANO.  [To NERISSA]  By yonder moon I swear you do me wrong;     In faith, I gave it to the judge\'s clerk.     Would he were gelt that had it, for my part,     Since you do take it, love, so much at heart.   PORTIA. A quarrel, ho, already! What\'s the matter?   GRATIANO. About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring     That she did give me, whose posy was     For all the world like cutler\'s poetry     Upon a knife, \'Love me, and leave me not.\'   NERISSA. What talk you of the posy or the value?     You swore to me, when I did give it you,       That you would wear it till your hour of death,     And that it should lie with you in your grave;     Though not for me, yet for your vehement oaths,     You should have been respective and have kept it.     Gave it a judge\'s clerk! No, God\'s my judge,     The clerk will ne\'er wear hair on\'s face that had it.   GRATIANO. He will, an if he live to be a man.   NERISSA. Ay, if a woman live to be a man.   GRATIANO. Now by this hand I gave it to a youth,     A kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy     No higher than thyself, the judge\'s clerk;     A prating boy that begg\'d it as a fee;     I could not for my heart deny it him.   PORTIA. You were to blame, I must be plain with you,     To part so slightly with your wife\'s first gift,     A thing stuck on with oaths upon your finger     And so riveted with faith unto your flesh.     I gave my love a ring, and made him swear     Never to part with it, and here he stands;     I dare be sworn for him he would not leave it       Nor pluck it from his finger for the wealth     That the world masters. Now, in faith, Gratiano,     You give your wife too unkind a cause of grief;     An \'twere to me, I should be mad at it.   BASSANIO.  [Aside]  Why, I were best to cut my left hand off,     And swear I lost the ring defending it.   GRATIANO. My Lord Bassanio gave his ring away     Unto the judge that begg\'d it, and indeed     Deserv\'d it too; and then the boy, his clerk,     That took some pains in writing, he begg\'d mine;     And neither man nor master would take aught     But the two rings.   PORTIA. What ring gave you, my lord?     Not that, I hope, which you receiv\'d of me.   BASSANIO. If I could add a lie unto a fault,     I would deny it; but you see my finger     Hath not the ring upon it; it is gone.   PORTIA. Even so void is your false heart of truth;     By heaven, I will ne\'er come in your bed     Until I see the ring.     NERISSA. Nor I in yours     Till I again see mine.   BASSANIO. Sweet Portia,     If you did know to whom I gave the ring,     If you did know for whom I gave the ring,     And would conceive for what I gave the ring,     And how unwillingly I left the ring,     When nought would be accepted but the ring,     You would abate the strength of your displeasure.   PORTIA. If you had known the virtue of the ring,     Or half her worthiness that gave the ring,     Or your own honour to contain the ring,     You would not then have parted with the ring.     What man is there so much unreasonable,     If you had pleas\'d to have defended it     With any terms of zeal, wanted the modesty     To urge the thing held as a ceremony?     Nerissa teaches me what to believe:     I\'ll die for\'t but some woman had the ring.   BASSANIO. No, by my honour, madam, by my soul,       No woman had it, but a civil doctor,     Which did refuse three thousand ducats of me,     And begg\'d the ring; the which I did deny him,     And suffer\'d him to go displeas\'d away-     Even he that had held up the very life     Of my dear friend. What should I say, sweet lady?     I was enforc\'d to send it after him;     I was beset with shame and courtesy;     My honour would not let ingratitude     So much besmear it. Pardon me, good lady;     For by these blessed candles of the night,     Had you been there, I think you would have begg\'d     The ring of me to give the worthy doctor.   PORTIA. Let not that doctor e\'er come near my house;     Since he hath got the jewel that I loved,     And that which you did swear to keep for me,     I will become as liberal as you;     I\'ll not deny him anything I have,     No, not my body, nor my husband\'s bed.     Know him I shall, I am well sure of it.       Lie not a night from home; watch me like Argus;     If you do not, if I be left alone,     Now, by mine honour which is yet mine own,     I\'ll have that doctor for mine bedfellow.   NERISSA. And I his clerk; therefore be well advis\'d     How you do leave me to mine own protection.   GRATIANO. Well, do you so, let not me take him then;     For, if I do, I\'ll mar the young clerk\'s pen.   ANTONIO. I am th\' unhappy subject of these quarrels.   PORTIA. Sir, grieve not you; you are welcome not withstanding.   BASSANIO. Portia, forgive me this enforced wrong;     And in the hearing of these many friends     I swear to thee, even by thine own fair eyes,     Wherein I see myself-   PORTIA. Mark you but that!     In both my eyes he doubly sees himself,     In each eye one; swear by your double self,     And there\'s an oath of credit.   BASSANIO. Nay, but hear me.     Pardon this fault, and by my soul I swear       I never more will break an oath with thee.   ANTONIO. I once did lend my body for his wealth,     Which, but for him that had your husband\'s ring,     Had quite miscarried; I dare be bound again,     My soul upon the forfeit, that your lord     Will never more break faith advisedly.   PORTIA. Then you shall be his surety. Give him this,     And bid him keep it better than the other.   ANTONIO. Here, Lord Bassanio, swear to keep this ring.   BASSANIO. By heaven, it is the same I gave the doctor!   PORTIA. I had it of him. Pardon me, Bassanio,     For, by this ring, the doctor lay with me.   NERISSA. And pardon me, my gentle Gratiano,     For that same scrubbed boy, the doctor\'s clerk,     In lieu of this, last night did lie with me.   GRATIANO. Why, this is like the mending of highways     In summer, where the ways are fair enough.     What, are we cuckolds ere we have deserv\'d it?   PORTIA. Speak not so grossly. You are all amaz\'d.     Here is a letter; read it at your leisure;       It comes from Padua, from Bellario;     There you shall find that Portia was the doctor,     Nerissa there her clerk. Lorenzo here     Shall witness I set forth as soon as you,     And even but now return\'d; I have not yet     Enter\'d my house. Antonio, you are welcome;     And I have better news in store for you     Than you expect. Unseal this letter soon;     There you shall find three of your argosies     Are richly come to harbour suddenly.     You shall not know by what strange accident     I chanced on this letter.   ANTONIO. I am dumb.   BASSANIO. Were you the doctor, and I knew you not?   GRATIANO. Were you the clerk that is to make me cuckold?   NERISSA. Ay, but the clerk that never means to do it,     Unless he live until he be a man.   BASSANIO. Sweet doctor, you shall be my bedfellow;     When I am absent, then lie with my wife.   ANTONIO. Sweet lady, you have given me life and living;       For here I read for certain that my ships     Are safely come to road.   PORTIA. How now, Lorenzo!     My clerk hath some good comforts too for you.   NERISSA. Ay, and I\'ll give them him without a fee.     There do I give to you and Jessica,     From the rich Jew, a special deed of gift,     After his death, of all he dies possess\'d of.   LORENZO. Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way     Of starved people.   PORTIA. It is almost morning,     And yet I am sure you are not satisfied     Of these events at full. Let us go in,     And charge us there upon inter\'gatories,     And we will answer all things faithfully.   GRATIANO. Let it be so. The first inter\'gatory     That my Nerissa shall be sworn on is,     Whether till the next night she had rather stay,     Or go to bed now, being two hours to day.     But were the day come, I should wish it dark,       Till I were couching with the doctor\'s clerk.     Well, while I live, I\'ll fear no other thing     So sore as keeping safe Nerissa\'s ring.               Exeunt  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1601  THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR  by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae    SIR JOHN FALSTAFF   FENTON, a young gentleman   SHALLOW, a country justice   SLENDER, cousin to Shallow      Gentlemen of Windsor   FORD   PAGE   WILLIAM PAGE, a boy, son to Page   SIR HUGH EVANS, a Welsh parson   DOCTOR CAIUS, a French physician   HOST of the Garter Inn      Followers of Falstaff   BARDOLPH   PISTOL   NYM   ROBIN, page to Falstaff   SIMPLE, servant to Slender   RUGBY, servant to Doctor Caius      MISTRESS FORD   MISTRESS PAGE   MISTRESS ANNE PAGE, her daughter   MISTRESS QUICKLY, servant to Doctor Caius   SERVANTS to Page, Ford, etc.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: Windsor, and the neighbourhood   The Merry Wives of Windsor    ACT I. SCENE 1.  Windsor. Before PAGE\'S house  Enter JUSTICE SHALLOW, SLENDER, and SIR HUGH EVANS    SHALLOW. Sir Hugh, persuade me not; I will make a Star     Chamber matter of it; if he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs,     he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, esquire.   SLENDER. In the county of Gloucester, Justice of Peace, and     Coram.   SHALLOW. Ay, cousin Slender, and Custalorum.   SLENDER. Ay, and Ratolorum too; and a gentleman born,     Master Parson, who writes himself \'Armigero\' in any bill,     warrant, quittance, or obligation-\'Armigero.\'   SHALLOW. Ay, that I do; and have done any time these three     hundred years.   SLENDER. All his successors, gone before him, hath done\'t;     and all his ancestors, that come after him, may: they may     give the dozen white luces in their coat.   SHALLOW. It is an old coat.   EVANS. The dozen white louses do become an old coat well;       it agrees well, passant; it is a familiar beast to man, and     signifies love.   SHALLOW. The luce is the fresh fish; the salt fish is an old     coat.   SLENDER. I may quarter, coz.   SHALLOW. You may, by marrying.   EVANS. It is marring indeed, if he quarter it.   SHALLOW. Not a whit.   EVANS. Yes, py\'r lady! If he has a quarter of your coat, there     is but three skirts for yourself, in my simple conjectures;     but that is all one. If Sir John Falstaff have committed     disparagements unto you, I am of the church, and will be     glad to do my benevolence, to make atonements and     compremises between you.   SHALLOW. The Council shall hear it; it is a riot.   EVANS. It is not meet the Council hear a riot; there is no     fear of Got in a riot; the Council, look you, shall desire     to hear the fear of Got, and not to hear a riot; take your     vizaments in that.   SHALLOW. Ha! o\' my life, if I were young again, the sword       should end it.   EVANS. It is petter that friends is the sword and end it;     and there is also another device in my prain, which     peradventure prings goot discretions with it. There is Anne     Page, which is daughter to Master George Page, which is     pretty virginity.   SLENDER. Mistress Anne Page? She has brown hair, and     speaks small like a woman.   EVANS. It is that fery person for all the orld, as just as you     will desire; and seven hundred pounds of moneys, and     gold, and silver, is her grandsire upon his death\'s-bed-Got     deliver to a joyful resurrections!-give, when she is able to     overtake seventeen years old. It were a goot motion if we     leave our pribbles and prabbles, and desire a marriage     between Master Abraham and Mistress Anne Page.   SHALLOW. Did her grandsire leave her seven hundred pound?   EVANS. Ay, and her father is make her a petter penny.   SHALLOW. I know the young gentlewoman; she has good     gifts.   EVANS. Seven hundred pounds, and possibilities, is goot gifts.     SHALLOW. Well, let us see honest Master Page. Is Falstaff     there?   EVANS. Shall I tell you a lie? I do despise a liar as I do     despise one that is false; or as I despise one that is not     true. The knight Sir John is there; and, I beseech you, be     ruled by your well-willers. I will peat the door for Master     Page.     [Knocks]  What, hoa! Got pless your house here!   PAGE.  [Within]  Who\'s there?                              Enter PAGE    EVANS. Here is Got\'s plessing, and your friend, and Justice   Shallow; and here young Master Slender, that peradventures     shall tell you another tale, if matters grow to your     likings.   PAGE. I am glad to see your worships well. I thank you for     my venison, Master Shallow.   SHALLOW. Master Page, I am glad to see you; much good do     it your good heart! I wish\'d your venison better; it was ill       kill\'d. How doth good Mistress Page?-and I thank you     always with my heart, la! with my heart.   PAGE. Sir, I thank you.   SHALLOW. Sir, I thank you; by yea and no, I do.   PAGE. I am glad to see you, good Master Slender.   SLENDER. How does your fallow greyhound, sir? I heard say     he was outrun on Cotsall.   PAGE. It could not be judg\'d, sir.   SLENDER. You\'ll not confess, you\'ll not confess.   SHALLOW. That he will not. \'Tis your fault; \'tis your fault;     \'tis a good dog.   PAGE. A cur, sir.   SHALLOW. Sir, he\'s a good dog, and a fair dog. Can there be     more said? He is good, and fair. Is Sir John Falstaff here?   PAGE. Sir, he is within; and I would I could do a good office     between you.   EVANS. It is spoke as a Christians ought to speak.   SHALLOW. He hath wrong\'d me, Master Page.   PAGE. Sir, he doth in some sort confess it.   SHALLOW. If it be confessed, it is not redressed; is not that       so, Master Page? He hath wrong\'d me; indeed he hath; at a     word, he hath, believe me; Robert Shallow, esquire, saith     he is wronged.   PAGE. Here comes Sir John.        Enter SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, BARDOLPH, NYM, and PISTOL    FALSTAFF. Now, Master Shallow, you\'ll complain of me to     the King?   SHALLOW. Knight, you have beaten my men, kill\'d my deer,     and broke open my lodge.   FALSTAFF. But not kiss\'d your keeper\'s daughter.   SHALLOW. Tut, a pin! this shall be answer\'d.   FALSTAFF. I will answer it straight: I have done all this.     That is now answer\'d.   SHALLOW. The Council shall know this.   FALSTAFF. \'Twere better for you if it were known in counsel:     you\'ll be laugh\'d at.   EVANS. Pauca verba, Sir John; goot worts.   FALSTAFF. Good worts! good cabbage! Slender, I broke your       head; what matter have you against me?   SLENDER. Marry, sir, I have matter in my head against you;     and against your cony-catching rascals, Bardolph, Nym,     and Pistol. They carried me to the tavern, and made me     drunk, and afterwards pick\'d my pocket.   BARDOLPH. You Banbury cheese!   SLENDER. Ay, it is no matter.   PISTOL. How now, Mephostophilus!   SLENDER. Ay, it is no matter.   NYM. Slice, I say! pauca, pauca; slice! That\'s my humour.   SLENDER. Where\'s Simple, my man? Can you tell, cousin?   EVANS. Peace, I pray you. Now let us understand. There is     three umpires in this matter, as I understand: that is,     Master Page, fidelicet Master Page; and there is myself,     fidelicet myself; and the three party is, lastly and     finally, mine host of the Garter.   PAGE. We three to hear it and end it between them.   EVANS. Fery goot. I will make a prief of it in my note-book;     and we will afterwards ork upon the cause with as great     discreetly as we can.     FALSTAFF. Pistol!   PISTOL. He hears with ears.   EVANS. The tevil and his tam! What phrase is this, \'He hears     with ear\'? Why, it is affectations.   FALSTAFF. Pistol, did you pick Master Slender\'s purse?   SLENDER. Ay, by these gloves, did he-or I would I might     never come in mine own great chamber again else!-of     seven groats in mill-sixpences, and two Edward     shovel-boards that cost me two shilling and two pence apiece     of Yead Miller, by these gloves.   FALSTAFF. Is this true, Pistol?   EVANS. No, it is false, if it is a pick-purse.   PISTOL. Ha, thou mountain-foreigner! Sir John and master     mine,     I combat challenge of this latten bilbo.     Word of denial in thy labras here!     Word of denial! Froth and scum, thou liest.   SLENDER. By these gloves, then, \'twas he.   NYM. Be avis\'d, sir, and pass good humours; I will say     \'marry trap\' with you, if you run the nuthook\'s humour on       me; that is the very note of it.   SLENDER. By this hat, then, he in the red face had it; for     though I cannot remember what I did when you made me     drunk, yet I am not altogether an ass.   FALSTAFF. What say you, Scarlet and John?   BARDOLPH. Why, sir, for my part, I say the gentleman had     drunk himself out of his five sentences.   EVANS. It is his five senses; fie, what the ignorance is!   BARDOLPH. And being fap, sir, was, as they say, cashier\'d;     and so conclusions pass\'d the careers.   SLENDER. Ay, you spake in Latin then too; but \'tis no matter;     I\'ll ne\'er be drunk whilst I live again, but in honest,     civil, godly company, for this trick. If I be drunk, I\'ll be     drunk with those that have the fear of God, and not with     drunken knaves.   EVANS. So Got udge me, that is a virtuous mind.   FALSTAFF. You hear all these matters deni\'d, gentlemen; you     hear it.            Enter MISTRESS ANNE PAGE with wine; MISTRESS                  FORD and MISTRESS PAGE, following    PAGE. Nay, daughter, carry the wine in; we\'ll drink within.                                                   Exit ANNE PAGE   SLENDER. O heaven! this is Mistress Anne Page.   PAGE. How now, Mistress Ford!   FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford, by my troth, you are very well     met; by your leave, good mistress.              [Kisses her]   PAGE. Wife, bid these gentlemen welcome. Come, we have a     hot venison pasty to dinner; come, gentlemen, I hope we     shall drink down all unkindness.                       Exeunt all but SHALLOW, SLENDER, and EVANS   SLENDER. I had rather than forty shillings I had my Book of     Songs and Sonnets here.                            Enter SIMPLE      How, Simple! Where have you been? I must wait on     myself, must I? You have not the Book of Riddles about you,     have you?     SIMPLE. Book of Riddles! Why, did you not lend it to Alice     Shortcake upon Allhallowmas last, a fortnight afore     Michaelmas?   SHALLOW. Come, coz; come, coz; we stay for you. A word     with you, coz; marry, this, coz: there is, as \'twere, a     tender, a kind of tender, made afar off by Sir Hugh here. Do     you understand me?   SLENDER. Ay, sir, you shall find me reasonable; if it be so, I     shall do that that is reason.   SHALLOW. Nay, but understand me.   SLENDER. So I do, sir.   EVANS. Give ear to his motions: Master Slender, I will     description the matter to you, if you be capacity of it.   SLENDER. Nay, I will do as my cousin Shallow says; I pray     you pardon me; he\'s a justice of peace in his country,     simple though I stand here.   EVANS. But that is not the question. The question is     concerning your marriage.   SHALLOW. Ay, there\'s the point, sir.   EVANS. Marry is it; the very point of it; to Mistress Anne       Page.   SLENDER. Why, if it be so, I will marry her upon any     reasonable demands.   EVANS. But can you affection the oman? Let us command to     know that of your mouth or of your lips; for divers philosophers     hold that the lips is parcel of the mouth. Therefore,     precisely, can you carry your good will to the maid?   SHALLOW. Cousin Abraham Slender, can you love her?   SLENDER. I hope, sir, I will do as it shall become one that     would do reason.   EVANS. Nay, Got\'s lords and his ladies! you must speak possitable,     if you can carry her your desires towards her.   SHALLOW. That you must. Will you, upon good dowry,     marry her?   SLENDER. I will do a greater thing than that upon your request,     cousin, in any reason.   SHALLOW. Nay, conceive me, conceive me, sweet coz; what     I do is to pleasure you, coz. Can you love the maid?   SLENDER. I will marry her, sir, at your request; but if there     be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease       it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and     have more occasion to know one another. I hope upon     familiarity will grow more contempt. But if you say     \'marry her,\' I will marry her; that I am freely dissolved,     and dissolutely.   EVANS. It is a fery discretion answer, save the fall is in the     ord \'dissolutely\': the ort is, according to our meaning,     \'resolutely\'; his meaning is good.   SHALLOW. Ay, I think my cousin meant well.   SLENDER. Ay, or else I would I might be hang\'d, la!                         Re-enter ANNE PAGE    SHALLOW. Here comes fair Mistress Anne. Would I were     young for your sake, Mistress Anne!   ANNE. The dinner is on the table; my father desires your     worships\' company.   SHALLOW. I will wait on him, fair Mistress Anne!   EVANS. Od\'s plessed will! I will not be absence at the grace.                                         Exeunt SHALLOW and EVANS     ANNE. Will\'t please your worship to come in, sir?   SLENDER. No, I thank you, forsooth, heartily; I am very     well.   ANNE. The dinner attends you, sir.   SLENDER. I am not a-hungry, I thank you, forsooth. Go,     sirrah, for all you are my man, go wait upon my cousin   Shallow.  [Exit SIMPLE]  A justice of peace sometime may     be beholding to his friend for a man. I keep but three men     and a boy yet, till my mother be dead. But what though?     Yet I live like a poor gentleman born.   ANNE. I may not go in without your worship; they will not     sit till you come.   SLENDER. I\' faith, I\'ll eat nothing; I thank you as much as     though I did.   ANNE. I pray you, sir, walk in.   SLENDER. I had rather walk here, I thank you. I bruis\'d my     shin th\' other day with playing at sword and dagger with     a master of fence-three veneys for a dish of stew\'d prunes     -and, I with my ward defending my head, he hot my shin,     and, by my troth, I cannot abide the smell of hot meat       since. Why do your dogs bark so? Be there bears i\' th\'     town?   ANNE. I think there are, sir; I heard them talk\'d of.   SLENDER. I love the sport well; but I shall as soon quarrel at     it as any man in England. You are afraid, if you see the     bear loose, are you not?   ANNE. Ay, indeed, sir.   SLENDER. That\'s meat and drink to me now. I have seen     Sackerson loose twenty times, and have taken him by the     chain; but I warrant you, the women have so cried and     shriek\'d at it that it pass\'d; but women, indeed, cannot     abide \'em; they are very ill-favour\'d rough things.                           Re-enter PAGE    PAGE. Come, gentle Master Slender, come; we stay for you.   SLENDER. I\'ll eat nothing, I thank you, sir.   PAGE. By cock and pie, you shall not choose, sir! Come,     come.   SLENDER. Nay, pray you lead the way.     PAGE. Come on, sir.   SLENDER. Mistress Anne, yourself shall go first.   ANNE. Not I, sir; pray you keep on.   SLENDER. Truly, I will not go first; truly, la! I will not do     you that wrong.   ANNE. I pray you, sir.   SLENDER. I\'ll rather be unmannerly than troublesome. You     do yourself wrong indeed, la!                         Exeunt     SCENE 2.  Before PAGE\'S house  Enter SIR HUGH EVANS and SIMPLE    EVANS. Go your ways, and ask of Doctor Caius\' house which     is the way; and there dwells one Mistress Quickly, which     is in the manner of his nurse, or his dry nurse, or his cook,     or his laundry, his washer, and his wringer.   SIMPLE. Well, sir.   EVANS. Nay, it is petter yet. Give her this letter; for it is a     oman that altogether\'s acquaintance with Mistress Anne     Page; and the letter is to desire and require her to solicit     your master\'s desires to Mistress Anne Page. I pray you     be gone. I will make an end of my dinner; there\'s pippins     and cheese to come.                                   Exeunt     SCENE 3.  The Garter Inn  Enter FALSTAFF, HOST, BARDOLPH, NYM, PISTOL, and ROBIN    FALSTAFF. Mine host of the Garter!   HOST. What says my bully rook? Speak scholarly and     wisely.   FALSTAFF. Truly, mine host, I must turn away some of my     followers.   HOST. Discard, bully Hercules; cashier; let them wag; trot,     trot.   FALSTAFF. I sit at ten pounds a week.   HOST. Thou\'rt an emperor-Caesar, Keiser, and Pheazar. I     will entertain Bardolph; he shall draw, he shall tap; said I     well, bully Hector?   FALSTAFF. Do so, good mine host.   HOST. I have spoke; let him follow.  [To BARDOLPH]  Let me     see thee froth and lime. I am at a word; follow.   Exit HOST   FALSTAFF. Bardolph, follow him. A tapster is a good trade;     an old cloak makes a new jerkin; a wither\'d serving-man a       fresh tapster. Go; adieu.   BARDOLPH. It is a life that I have desir\'d; I will thrive.   PISTOL. O base Hungarian wight! Wilt thou the spigot     wield?                                         Exit BARDOLPH   NYM. He was gotten in drink. Is not the humour conceited?   FALSTAFF. I am glad I am so acquit of this tinder-box: his     thefts were too open; his filching was like an unskilful     singer-he kept not time.   NYM. The good humour is to steal at a minute\'s rest.   PISTOL. \'Convey\' the wise it call. \'Steal\' foh! A fico for the     phrase!   FALSTAFF. Well, sirs, I am almost out at heels.   PISTOL. Why, then, let kibes ensue.   FALSTAFF. There is no remedy; I must cony-catch; I must     shift.   PISTOL. Young ravens must have food.   FALSTAFF. Which of you know Ford of this town?   PISTOL. I ken the wight; he is of substance good.   FALSTAFF. My honest lads, I will tell you what I am about.   PISTOL. Two yards, and more.     FALSTAFF. No quips now, Pistol. Indeed, I am in the waist     two yards about; but I am now about no waste; I am about     thrift. Briefly, I do mean to make love to Ford\'s wife; I     spy entertainment in her; she discourses, she carves, she     gives the leer of invitation; I can construe the action of her     familiar style; and the hardest voice of her behaviour, to be     English\'d rightly, is \'I am Sir John Falstaff\'s.\'     PISTOL. He hath studied her well, and translated her will out     of honesty into English.   NYM. The anchor is deep; will that humour pass?   FALSTAFF. Now, the report goes she has all the rule of her     husband\'s purse; he hath a legion of angels.   PISTOL. As many devils entertain; and \'To her, boy,\' say I.   NYM. The humour rises; it is good; humour me the angels.   FALSTAFF. I have writ me here a letter to her; and here     another to Page\'s wife, who even now gave me good eyes     too, examin\'d my parts with most judicious oeillades;     sometimes the beam of her view gilded my foot, sometimes my     portly belly.   PISTOL. Then did the sun on dunghill shine.     NYM. I thank thee for that humour.   FALSTAFF. O, she did so course o\'er my exteriors with such     a greedy intention that the appetite of her eye did seem to     scorch me up like a burning-glass! Here\'s another letter to     her. She bears the purse too; she is a region in Guiana, all     gold and bounty. I will be cheaters to them both, and they     shall be exchequers to me; they shall be my East and West     Indies, and I will trade to them both. Go, bear thou this     letter to Mistress Page; and thou this to Mistress Ford. We     will thrive, lads, we will thrive.   PISTOL. Shall I Sir Pandarus of Troy become,     And by my side wear steel? Then Lucifer take all!   NYM. I will run no base humour. Here, take the     humour-letter; I will keep the haviour of reputation.   FALSTAFF.  [To ROBIN]  Hold, sirrah; bear you these letters     tightly;     Sail like my pinnace to these golden shores.     Rogues, hence, avaunt! vanish like hailstones, go;     Trudge, plod away i\' th\' hoof; seek shelter, pack!     Falstaff will learn the humour of the age;       French thrift, you rogues; myself, and skirted page.                                        Exeunt FALSTAFF and ROBIN   PISTOL. Let vultures gripe thy guts! for gourd and fullam     holds,     And high and low beguiles the rich and poor;     Tester I\'ll have in pouch when thou shalt lack,     Base Phrygian Turk!   NYM. I have operations in my head which be humours of     revenge.   PISTOL. Wilt thou revenge?   NYM. By welkin and her star!   PISTOL. With wit or steel?   NYM. With both the humours, I.     I will discuss the humour of this love to Page.   PISTOL. And I to Ford shall eke unfold     How Falstaff, varlet vile,     His dove will prove, his gold will hold,     And his soft couch defile.   NYM. My humour shall not cool; I will incense Page to deal     with poison; I will possess him with yellowness; for the       revolt of mine is dangerous. That is my true humour.   PISTOL. Thou art the Mars of malcontents; I second thee;     troop on.                                             Exeunt     SCENE 4.  DOCTOR CAIUS\'S house  Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY, SIMPLE, and RUGBY    QUICKLY. What, John Rugby! I pray thee go to the casement     and see if you can see my master, Master Doctor     Caius, coming. If he do, i\' faith, and find anybody in the     house, here will be an old abusing of God\'s patience and     the King\'s English.   RUGBY. I\'ll go watch.   QUICKLY. Go; and we\'ll have a posset for\'t soon at night, in     faith, at the latter end of a sea-coal fire.  [Exit RUGBY]  An     honest, willing, kind fellow, as ever servant shall come in     house withal; and, I warrant you, no tell-tale nor no     breed-bate; his worst fault is that he is given to prayer; he is     something peevish that way; but nobody but has his fault;     but let that pass. Peter Simple you say your name is?   SIMPLE. Ay, for fault of a better.   QUICKLY. And Master Slender\'s your master?   SIMPLE. Ay, forsooth.     QUICKLY. Does he not wear a great round beard, like a     glover\'s paring-knife?   SIMPLE. No, forsooth; he hath but a little whey face, with a     little yellow beard, a Cain-colour\'d beard.   QUICKLY. A softly-sprighted man, is he not?   SIMPLE. Ay, forsooth; but he is as tall a man of his hands as     any is between this and his head; he hath fought with a     warrener.   QUICKLY. How say you? O, I should remember him. Does     he not hold up his head, as it were, and strut in his gait?   SIMPLE. Yes, indeed, does he.   QUICKLY. Well, heaven send Anne Page no worse fortune!     Tell Master Parson Evans I will do what I can for your     master. Anne is a good girl, and I wish-                           Re-enter RUGBY    RUGBY. Out, alas! here comes my master.   QUICKLY. We shall all be shent. Run in here, good young     man; go into this closet.  [Shuts SIMPLE in the closet]  He       will not stay long. What, John Rugby! John! what, John,     I say! Go, John, go inquire for my master; I doubt he be     not well that he comes not home.  [Singing]     And down, down, adown-a, etc.                         Enter DOCTOR CAIUS    CAIUS. Vat is you sing? I do not like des toys. Pray you, go     and vetch me in my closet un boitier vert-a box, a green-a     box. Do intend vat I speak? A green-a box.   QUICKLY. Ay, forsooth, I\'ll fetch it you.  [Aside]  I am glad     he went not in himself; if he had found the young man,     he would have been horn-mad.   CAIUS. Fe, fe, fe fe! ma foi, il fait fort chaud. Je m\'en vais a     la cour-la grande affaire.   QUICKLY. Is it this, sir?   CAIUS. Oui; mette le au mon pocket: depeche, quickly. Vere     is dat knave, Rugby?   QUICKLY. What, John Rugby? John!   RUGBY. Here, sir.     CAIUS. You are John Rugby, and you are Jack Rugby.     Come, take-a your rapier, and come after my heel to the     court.   RUGBY. \'Tis ready, sir, here in the porch.     CAIUS. By my trot, I tarry too long. Od\'s me! Qu\'ai j\'oublie?     Dere is some simples in my closet dat I vill not for the     varld I shall leave behind.   QUICKLY. Ay me, he\'ll find the young man there, and be     mad!   CAIUS. O diable, diable! vat is in my closet? Villainy! larron!     [Pulling SIMPLE out]  Rugby, my rapier!   QUICKLY. Good master, be content.   CAIUS. Wherefore shall I be content-a?   QUICKLY. The young man is an honest man.   CAIUS. What shall de honest man do in my closet? Dere is     no honest man dat shall come in my closet.   QUICKLY. I beseech you, be not so phlegmatic; hear the     truth of it. He came of an errand to me from Parson Hugh.   CAIUS. Vell?   SIMPLE. Ay, forsooth, to desire her to-     QUICKLY. Peace, I pray you.   CAIUS. Peace-a your tongue. Speak-a your tale.   SIMPLE. To desire this honest gentlewoman, your maid, to     speak a good word to Mistress Anne Page for my master,     in the way of marriage.   QUICKLY. This is all, indeed, la! but I\'ll ne\'er put my finger     in the fire, and need not.   CAIUS. Sir Hugh send-a you? Rugby, baillez me some paper.     Tarry you a little-a-while.                        [Writes]   QUICKLY.  [Aside to SIMPLE]  I am glad he is so quiet; if he     had been throughly moved, you should have heard him     so loud and so melancholy. But notwithstanding, man, I\'ll     do you your master what good I can; and the very yea and     the no is, the French doctor, my master-I may call him     my master, look you, for I keep his house; and I wash,     wring, brew, bake, scour, dress meat and drink, make the     beds, and do all myself-   SIMPLE.  [Aside to QUICKLY]  \'Tis a great charge to come     under one body\'s hand.   QUICKLY.  [Aside to SIMPLE]  Are you avis\'d o\' that? You       shall find it a great charge; and to be up early and down     late; but notwithstanding-to tell you in your ear, I would     have no words of it-my master himself is in love with     Mistress Anne Page; but notwithstanding that, I know     Anne\'s mind-that\'s neither here nor there.   CAIUS. You jack\'nape; give-a this letter to Sir Hugh; by gar,     it is a shallenge; I will cut his troat in de park; and I will     teach a scurvy jack-a-nape priest to meddle or make. You     may be gone; it is not good you tarry here. By gar, I will     cut all his two stones; by gar, he shall not have a stone     to throw at his dog.                             Exit SIMPLE   QUICKLY. Alas, he speaks but for his friend.   CAIUS. It is no matter-a ver dat. Do not you tell-a me dat I     shall have Anne Page for myself? By gar, I vill kill de Jack     priest; and I have appointed mine host of de Jarteer to     measure our weapon. By gar, I will myself have Anne     Page.   QUICKLY. Sir, the maid loves you, and all shall be well. We     must give folks leave to prate. What the good-year!   CAIUS. Rugby, come to the court with me. By gar, if I have       not Anne Page, I shall turn your head out of my door.     Follow my heels, Rugby.               Exeunt CAIUS and RUGBY   QUICKLY. You shall have-An fool\'s-head of your own. No,     I know Anne\'s mind for that; never a woman in Windsor     knows more of Anne\'s mind than I do; nor can do more     than I do with her, I thank heaven.   FENTON.  [Within]  Who\'s within there? ho!   QUICKLY. Who\'s there, I trow? Come near the house, I pray     you.                            Enter FENTON    FENTON. How now, good woman, how dost thou?   QUICKLY. The better that it pleases your good worship to     ask.   FENTON. What news? How does pretty Mistress Anne?   QUICKLY. In truth, sir, and she is pretty, and honest, and     gentle; and one that is your friend, I can tell you that by     the way; I praise heaven for it.   FENTON. Shall I do any good, think\'st thou? Shall I not lose       my suit?   QUICKLY. Troth, sir, all is in His hands above; but     notwithstanding, Master Fenton, I\'ll be sworn on a book     she loves you. Have not your worship a wart above your eye?   FENTON. Yes, marry, have I; what of that?   QUICKLY. Well, thereby hangs a tale; good faith, it is such     another Nan; but, I detest, an honest maid as ever broke     bread. We had an hour\'s talk of that wart; I shall never     laugh but in that maid\'s company! But, indeed, she is     given too much to allicholy and musing; but for you-well,     go to.   FENTON. Well, I shall see her to-day. Hold, there\'s money     for thee; let me have thy voice in my behalf. If thou seest     her before me, commend me.   QUICKLY. Will I? I\' faith, that we will; and I will tell your     worship more of the wart the next time we have confidence;     and of other wooers.   FENTON. Well, farewell; I am in great haste now.   QUICKLY. Farewell to your worship.  [Exit FENTON]  Truly,     an honest gentleman; but Anne loves him not; for I know       Anne\'s mind as well as another does. Out upon \'t, what     have I forgot?                                          Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE 1.  Before PAGE\'S house  Enter MISTRESS PAGE, with a letter    MRS. PAGE. What! have I scap\'d love-letters in the holiday-time     of my beauty, and am I now a subject for them? Let     me see.                                              [Reads]     \'Ask me no reason why I love you; for though Love use     Reason for his precisian, he admits him not for his counsellor.     You are not young, no more am I; go to, then, there\'s     sympathy. You are merry, so am I; ha! ha! then there\'s     more sympathy. You love sack, and so do I; would you     desire better sympathy? Let it suffice thee, Mistress Page     at the least, if the love of soldier can suffice-that I love     thee. I will not say, Pity me: \'tis not a soldier-like phrase;     but I say, Love me. By me,     Thine own true knight,     By day or night,     Or any kind of light,     With all his might,       For thee to fight,     JOHN FALSTAFF.\'     What a Herod of Jewry is this! O wicked, wicked world!     One that is well-nigh worn to pieces with age to show     himself a young gallant! What an unweighed behaviour     hath this Flemish drunkard pick\'d-with the devil\'s name!     -out of my conversation, that he dares in this manner     assay me? Why, he hath not been thrice in my company!     What should I say to him? I was then frugal of my mirth.     Heaven forgive me! Why, I\'ll exhibit a bill in the parliament     for the putting down of men. How shall I be     reveng\'d on him? for reveng\'d I will be, as sure as his guts     are made of puddings.                         Enter MISTRESS FORD    MRS. FORD. Mistress Page! trust me, I was going to your     house.   MRS. PAGE. And, trust me, I was coming to you. You look     very ill.     MRS. FORD. Nay, I\'ll ne\'er believe that; I have to show to     the contrary.   MRS. PAGE. Faith, but you do, in my mind.   MRS. FORD. Well, I do, then; yet, I say, I could show you to     the contrary. O Mistress Page, give me some counsel.   MRS. PAGE. What\'s the matter, woman?   MRS. FORD. O woman, if it were not for one trifling respect,     I could come to such honour!   MRS. PAGE. Hang the trifle, woman; take the honour. What     is it? Dispense with trifles; what is it?   MRS. FORD. If I would but go to hell for an eternal moment     or so, I could be knighted.   MRS. PAGE. What? Thou liest. Sir Alice Ford! These knights     will hack; and so thou shouldst not alter the article of thy     gentry.   MRS. FORD. We burn daylight. Here, read, read; perceive     how I might be knighted. I shall think the worse of fat     men as long as I have an eye to make difference of men\'s     liking. And yet he would not swear; prais\'d women\'s     modesty, and gave such orderly and well-behaved reproof       to all uncomeliness that I would have sworn his disposition     would have gone to the truth of his words; but they do no     more adhere and keep place together than the Hundredth     Psalm to the tune of \'Greensleeves.\' What tempest, I trow,     threw this whale, with so many tuns of oil in his belly,     ashore at Windsor? How shall I be revenged on him? I     think the best way were to entertain him with hope, till     the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease.     Did you ever hear the like?   MRS. PAGE. Letter for letter, but that the name of Page and     Ford differs. To thy great comfort in this mystery of ill     opinions, here\'s the twin-brother of thy letter; but let thine     inherit first, for, I protest, mine never shall. I warrant he     hath a thousand of these letters, writ with blank space for     different names-sure, more!-and these are of the second     edition. He will print them, out of doubt; for he cares not     what he puts into the press when he would put us two. I     had rather be a giantess and lie under Mount Pelion. Well,     I will find you twenty lascivious turtles ere one chaste     man.     MRS. FORD. Why, this is the very same; the very hand, the     very words. What doth he think of us?   MRS. PAGE. Nay, I know not; it makes me almost ready to     wrangle with mine own honesty. I\'ll entertain myself like     one that I am not acquainted withal; for, sure, unless he     know some strain in me that I know not myself, he would     never have boarded me in this fury.   MRS. FORD. \'Boarding\' call you it? I\'ll be sure to keep him     above deck.   MRS. PAGE. So will I; if he come under my hatches, I\'ll never     to sea again. Let\'s be reveng\'d on him; let\'s appoint him a     meeting, give him a show of comfort in his suit, and lead     him on with a fine-baited delay, till he hath pawn\'d his     horses to mine host of the Garter.   MRS. FORD. Nay, I will consent to act any villainy against     him that may not sully the chariness of our honesty. O     that my husband saw this letter! It would give eternal food     to his jealousy.   MRS. PAGE. Why, look where he comes; and my good man     too; he\'s as far from jealousy as I am from giving him       cause; and that, I hope, is an unmeasurable distance.   MRS. FORD. You are the happier woman.   MRS. PAGE. Let\'s consult together against this greasy knight.     Come hither.                                   [They retire]             Enter FORD with PISTOL, and PAGE with Nym    FORD. Well, I hope it be not so.   PISTOL. Hope is a curtal dog in some affairs.     Sir John affects thy wife.   FORD. Why, sir, my wife is not young.   PISTOL. He woos both high and low, both rich and poor,     Both young and old, one with another, Ford;     He loves the gallimaufry. Ford, perpend.   FORD. Love my wife!   PISTOL. With liver burning hot. Prevent, or go thou,     Like Sir Actaeon he, with Ringwood at thy heels.     O, odious is the name!   FORD. What name, sir?   PISTOL. The horn, I say. Farewell.       Take heed, have open eye, for thieves do foot by night;     Take heed, ere summer comes, or cuckoo birds do sing.     Away, Sir Corporal Nym.     Believe it, Page; he speaks sense.               Exit PISTOL   FORD.  [Aside]  I will be patient; I will find out this.   NYM.  [To PAGE]  And this is true; I like not the humour of     lying. He hath wronged me in some humours; I should     have borne the humour\'d letter to her; but I have a sword,     and it shall bite upon my necessity. He loves your wife;     there\'s the short and the long.     My name is Corporal Nym; I speak, and I avouch;     \'Tis true. My name is Nym, and Falstaff loves your wife.     Adieu! I love not the humour of bread and cheese; and     there\'s the humour of it. Adieu.                    Exit Nym   PAGE. \'The humour of it,\' quoth \'a! Here\'s a fellow frights     English out of his wits.   FORD. I will seek out Falstaff.   PAGE. I never heard such a drawling, affecting rogue.   FORD. If I do find it-well.   PAGE. I will not believe such a Cataian though the priest o\'       th\' town commended him for a true man.   FORD. \'Twas a good sensible fellow. Well.               MISTRESS PAGE and MISTRESS FORD come forward    PAGE. How now, Meg!   MRS. PAGE. Whither go you, George? Hark you.   MRS. FORD. How now, sweet Frank, why art thou melancholy?   FORD. I melancholy! I am not melancholy. Get you home;     go.   MRS. FORD. Faith, thou hast some crotchets in thy head now.     Will you go, Mistress Page?                       Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY    MRS. PAGE. Have with you. You\'ll come to dinner, George?     [Aside to MRS. FORD]  Look who comes yonder; she shall     be our messenger to this paltry knight.   MRS. FORD.  [Aside to MRS. PAGE]  Trust me, I thought on     her; she\'ll fit it.     MRS. PAGE. You are come to see my daughter Anne?   QUICKLY. Ay, forsooth; and, I pray, how does good Mistress Anne?   MRS. PAGE. Go in with us and see; we have an hour\'s talk     with you.           Exeunt MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD, and                                                 MISTRESS QUICKLY   PAGE. How now, Master Ford!   FORD. You heard what this knave told me, did you not?   PAGE. Yes; and you heard what the other told me?   FORD. Do you think there is truth in them?   PAGE. Hang \'em, slaves! I do not think the knight would offer it;     but these that accuse him in his intent towards our     wives are a yoke of his discarded men; very rogues, now     they be out of service.   FORD. Were they his men?   PAGE. Marry, were they.   FORD. I like it never the better for that. Does he lie at the     Garter?   PAGE. Ay, marry, does he. If he should intend this voyage     toward my wife, I would turn her loose to him; and what     he gets more of her than sharp words, let it lie on my head.     FORD. I do not misdoubt my wife; but I would be loath to     turn them together. A man may be too confident. I would     have nothing lie on my head. I cannot be thus satisfied.                             Enter HOST    PAGE. Look where my ranting host of the Garter comes.     There is either liquor in his pate or money in his purse     when he looks so merrily. How now, mine host!   HOST. How now, bully rook! Thou\'rt a gentleman.  [To     SHALLOW following]  Cavaleiro Justice, I say.                           Enter SHALLOW    SHALLOW. I follow, mine host, I follow. Good even and     twenty, good Master Page! Master Page, will you go with     us? We have sport in hand.   HOST. Tell him, Cavaleiro Justice; tell him, bully rook.   SHALLOW. Sir, there is a fray to be fought between Sir Hugh     the Welsh priest and Caius the French doctor.     FORD. Good mine host o\' th\' Garter, a word with you.   HOST. What say\'st thou, my bully rook?         [They go aside]   SHALLOW.  [To PAGE] Will you go with us to behold it? My     merry host hath had the measuring of their weapons; and,     I think, hath appointed them contrary places; for, believe     me, I hear the parson is no jester. Hark, I will tell you     what our sport shall be.               [They converse apart]   HOST. Hast thou no suit against my knight, my guest-cavaleiro.   FORD. None, I protest; but I\'ll give you a pottle of burnt     sack to give me recourse to him, and tell him my name is     Brook-only for a jest.   HOST. My hand, bully; thou shalt have egress and regress-     said I well?-and thy name shall be Brook. It is a merry     knight. Will you go, Mynheers?   SHALLOW. Have with you, mine host.   PAGE. I have heard the Frenchman hath good skill in his     rapier.   SHALLOW. Tut, sir, I could have told you more. In these     times you stand on distance, your passes, stoccadoes, and     I know not what. \'Tis the heart, Master Page; \'tis here,       \'tis here. I have seen the time with my long sword I would     have made you four tall fellows skip like rats.   HOST. Here, boys, here, here! Shall we wag?   PAGE. Have with you. I had rather hear them scold than     fight.                                   Exeunt all but FORD   FORD. Though Page be a secure fool, and stands so firmly on     his wife\'s frailty, yet I cannot put off my opinion so     easily. She was in his company at Page\'s house, and what     they made there I know not. Well, I will look further into     \'t, and I have a disguise to sound Falstaff. If I find her     honest, I lose not my labour; if she be otherwise, \'tis labour     well bestowed.                                          Exit     SCENE 2.  A room in the Garter Inn  Enter FALSTAFF and PISTOL    FALSTAFF. I will not lend thee a penny.   PISTOL. I will retort the sum in equipage.   FALSTAFF. Not a penny.   PISTOL. Why, then the world\'s mine oyster. Which I with     sword will open.   FALSTAFF. Not a penny. I have been content, sir, you should     lay my countenance to pawn. I have grated upon my good     friends for three reprieves for you and your coach-fellow,     Nym; or else you had look\'d through the grate, like a     geminy of baboons. I am damn\'d in hell for swearing to     gentlemen my friends you were good soldiers and tall fellows;     and when Mistress Bridget lost the handle of her fan,     I took \'t upon mine honour thou hadst it not.   PISTOL. Didst not thou share? Hadst thou not fifteen pence?   FALSTAFF. Reason, you rogue, reason. Think\'st thou I\'ll     endanger my soul gratis? At a word, hang no more about me,       I am no gibbet for you. Go-a short knife and a throng!-     to your manor of Pickt-hatch; go. You\'ll not bear a letter     for me, you rogue! You stand upon your honour! Why,     thou unconfinable baseness, it is as much as I can do to     keep the terms of my honour precise. I, I, I myself     sometimes, leaving the fear of God on the left hand, and hiding     mine honour in my necessity, am fain to shuffle, to hedge,     and to lurch; and yet you, rogue, will ensconce your rags,     your cat-a-mountain looks, your red-lattice phrases, and     your bold-beating oaths, under the shelter of your honour!     You will not do it, you!   PISTOL. I do relent; what would thou more of man?                            Enter ROBIN    ROBIN. Sir, here\'s a woman would speak with you.   FALSTAFF. Let her approach.                       Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY      QUICKLY. Give your worship good morrow.   FALSTAFF. Good morrow, good wife.   QUICKLY. Not so, an\'t please your worship.   FALSTAFF. Good maid, then.   QUICKLY. I\'ll be sworn;     As my mother was, the first hour I was born.   FALSTAFF. I do believe the swearer. What with me?   QUICKLY. Shall I vouchsafe your worship a word or two?   FALSTAFF. Two thousand, fair woman; and I\'ll vouchsafe     thee the hearing.   QUICKLY. There is one Mistress Ford, sir-I pray, come a little     nearer this ways. I myself dwell with Master Doctor     Caius.   FALSTAFF. Well, on: Mistress Ford, you say-   QUICKLY. Your worship says very true. I pray your worship     come a little nearer this ways.   FALSTAFF. I warrant thee nobody hears-mine own people,     mine own people.   QUICKLY. Are they so? God bless them, and make them his     servants!     FALSTAFF. Well; Mistress Ford, what of her?   QUICKLY. Why, sir, she\'s a good creature. Lord, Lord, your     worship\'s a wanton! Well, heaven forgive you, and all of     us, I pray.   FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford; come, Mistress Ford-   QUICKLY. Marry, this is the short and the long of it: you     have brought her into such a canaries as \'tis wonderful.     The best courtier of them all, when the court lay at Windsor,     could never have brought her to such a canary. Yet     there has been knights, and lords, and gentlemen, with     their coaches; I warrant you, coach after coach, letter after     letter, gift after gift; smelling so sweetly, all musk, and so     rushling, I warrant you, in silk and gold; and in such alligant     terms; and in such wine and sugar of the best and the     fairest, that would have won any woman\'s heart; and I     warrant you, they could never get an eye-wink of her.     I had myself twenty angels given me this morning; but I     defy all angels, in any such sort, as they say, but in the     way of honesty; and, I warrant you, they could never get     her so much as sip on a cup with the proudest of them all;       and yet there has been earls, nay, which is more,     pensioners; but, I warrant you, all is one with her.   FALSTAFF. But what says she to me? Be brief, my good she-     Mercury.   QUICKLY. Marry, she hath receiv\'d your letter; for the     which she thanks you a thousand times; and she gives you     to notify that her husband will be absence from his house     between ten and eleven.   FALSTAFF. Ten and eleven?   QUICKLY. Ay, forsooth; and then you may come and see     the picture, she says, that you wot of. Master Ford, her     husband, will be from home. Alas, the sweet woman leads     an ill life with him! He\'s a very jealousy man; she leads a     very frampold life with him, good heart.   FALSTAFF. Ten and eleven. Woman, commend me to her; I     will not fail her.   QUICKLY. Why, you say well. But I have another messenger     to your worship. Mistress Page hath her hearty commendations     to you too; and let me tell you in your ear, she\'s as     fartuous a civil modest wife, and one, I tell you, that will       not miss you morning nor evening prayer, as any is in     Windsor, whoe\'er be the other; and she bade me tell your     worship that her husband is seldom from home, but she     hopes there will come a time. I never knew a woman so     dote upon a man: surely I think you have charms, la! Yes,     in truth.   FALSTAFF. Not I, I assure thee; setting the attraction of my     good parts aside, I have no other charms.   QUICKLY. Blessing on your heart for \'t!   FALSTAFF. But, I pray thee, tell me this: has Ford\'s wife and     Page\'s wife acquainted each other how they love me?   QUICKLY. That were a jest indeed! They have not so little     grace, I hope-that were a trick indeed! But Mistress Page     would desire you to send her your little page of all loves.     Her husband has a marvellous infection to the little page;     and truly Master Page is an honest man. Never a wife in     Windsor leads a better life than she does; do what she will,     say what she will, take all, pay all, go to bed when she     list, rise when she list, all is as she will; and truly she     deserves it; for if there be a kind woman in Windsor, she       is one. You must send her your page; no remedy.   FALSTAFF. Why, I will.   QUICKLY. Nay, but do so then; and, look you, he may come     and go between you both; and in any case have a     nay-word, that you may know one another\'s mind, and the boy     never need to understand any thing; for \'tis not good that     children should know any wickedness. Old folks, you     know, have discretion, as they say, and know the world.   FALSTAFF. Fare thee well; commend me to them both.     There\'s my purse; I am yet thy debtor. Boy, go along with     this woman.  [Exeunt QUICKLY and ROBIN]  This news     distracts me.   PISTOL.  [Aside]  This punk is one of Cupid\'s carriers;     Clap on more sails; pursue; up with your fights;     Give fire; she is my prize, or ocean whelm them all!    Exit   FALSTAFF. Say\'st thou so, old Jack; go thy ways; I\'ll make     more of thy old body than I have done. Will they yet look     after thee? Wilt thou, after the expense of so much money,     be now a gainer? Good body, I thank thee. Let them say     \'tis grossly done; so it be fairly done, no matter.                             Enter BARDOLPH    BARDOLPH. Sir John, there\'s one Master Brook below would     fain speak with you, and be acquainted with you; and hath     sent your worship a moming\'s draught of sack.   FALSTAFF. Brook is his name?   BARDOLPH. Ay, sir.   FALSTAFF. Call him in.  [Exit BARDOLPH]  Such Brooks are     welcome to me, that o\'erflows such liquor. Ah, ha! Mistress     Ford and Mistress Page, have I encompass\'d you? Go to;     via!                Re-enter BARDOLPH, with FORD disguised    FORD. Bless you, sir!   FALSTAFF. And you, sir! Would you speak with me?   FORD. I make bold to press with so little preparation upon     you.   FALSTAFF. You\'re welcome. What\'s your will? Give us leave,       drawer.                                        Exit BARDOLPH   FORD. Sir, I am a gentleman that have spent much; my name     is Brook.   FALSTAFF. Good Master Brook, I desire more acquaintance     of you.   FORD. Good Sir John, I sue for yours-not to charge you; for I     must let you understand I think myself in better plight for     a lender than you are; the which hath something     embold\'ned me to this unseason\'d intrusion; for they say, if     money go before, all ways do lie open.   FALSTAFF. Money is a good soldier, sir, and will on.   FORD. Troth, and I have a bag of money here troubles me; if     you will help to bear it, Sir John, take all, or half, for easing     me of the carriage.   FALSTAFF. Sir, I know not how I may deserve to be your     porter.   FORD. I will tell you, sir, if you will give me the hearing.   FALSTAFF. Speak, good Master Brook; I shall be glad to be     your servant.   FORD. Sir, I hear you are a scholar-I will be brief with you       -and you have been a man long known to me, though I     had never so good means as desire to make myself acquainted     with you. I shall discover a thing to you, wherein     I must very much lay open mine own imperfection; but,     good Sir John, as you have one eye upon my follies, as you     hear them unfolded, turn another into the register of your     own, that I may pass with a reproof the easier, sith you     yourself know how easy is it to be such an offender.   FALSTAFF. Very well, sir; proceed.   FORD. There is a gentlewoman in this town, her husband\'s     name is Ford.   FALSTAFF. Well, sir.   FORD. I have long lov\'d her, and, I protest to you, bestowed     much on her; followed her with a doting observance;     engross\'d opportunities to meet her; fee\'d every slight occasion     that could but niggardly give me sight of her; not     only bought many presents to give her, but have given     largely to many to know what she would have given;     briefly, I have pursu\'d her as love hath pursued me; which     hath been on the wing of all occasions. But whatsoever I       have merited, either in my mind or in my means, meed, I     am sure, I have received none, unless experience be a jewel;     that I have purchased at an infinite rate, and that hath     taught me to say this:     \'Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues;     Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.\'   FALSTAFF. Have you receiv\'d no promise of satisfaction at     her hands?   FORD. Never.   FALSTAFF. Have you importun\'d her to such a purpose?   FORD. Never.     FALSTAFF. Of what quality was your love, then?   FORD. Like a fair house built on another man\'s ground; so     that I have lost my edifice by mistaking the place where     erected it.   FALSTAFF. To what purpose have you unfolded this to me?   FORD. When I have told you that, I have told you all. Some     say that though she appear honest to me, yet in other     places she enlargeth her mirth so far that there is shrewd     construction made of her. Now, Sir John, here is the heart       of my purpose: you are a gentleman of excellent     breeding, admirable discourse, of great admittance, authentic in     your place and person, generally allow\'d for your many     war-like, courtlike, and learned preparations.   FALSTAFF. O, sir!   FORD. Believe it, for you know it. There is money; spend it,     spend it; spend more; spend all I have; only give me so     much of your time in exchange of it as to lay an amiable     siege to the honesty of this Ford\'s wife; use your art of     wooing, win her to consent to you; if any man may, you     may as soon as any.     FALSTAFF. Would it apply well to the vehemency of your     affection, that I should win what you would enjoy?     Methinks you prescribe to yourself very preposterously.   FORD. O, understand my drift. She dwells so securely on the     excellency of her honour that the folly of my soul dares     not present itself; she is too bright to be look\'d against.     Now, could I come to her with any detection in my hand,     my desires had instance and argument to commend themselves;     I could drive her then from the ward of her purity,       her reputation, her marriage vow, and a thousand other her     defences, which now are too too strongly embattl\'d against     me. What say you to\'t, Sir John?   FALSTAFF. Master Brook, I will first make bold with your     money; next, give me your hand; and last, as I am a gentleman,     you shall, if you will, enjoy Ford\'s wife.   FORD. O good sir!   FALSTAFF. I say you shall.   FORD. Want no money, Sir John; you shall want none.   FALSTAFF. Want no Mistress Ford, Master Brook; you shall     want none. I shall be with her, I may tell you, by her own     appointment; even as you came in to me her assistant, or     go-between, parted from me; I say I shall be with her between     ten and eleven; for at that time the jealous rascally     knave, her husband, will be forth. Come you to me at     night; you shall know how I speed.   FORD. I am blest in your acquaintance. Do you know Ford,     Sir?   FALSTAFF. Hang him, poor cuckoldly knave! I know him     not; yet I wrong him to call him poor; they say the       jealous wittolly knave hath masses of money; for the which     his wife seems to me well-favour\'d. I will use her as the     key of the cuckoldly rogue\'s coffer; and there\'s my harvest-home.   FORD. I would you knew Ford, sir, that you might avoid him     if you saw him.   FALSTAFF. Hang him, mechanical salt-butter rogue! I will     stare him out of his wits; I will awe him with my cudgel;     it shall hang like a meteor o\'er the cuckold\'s horns. Master     Brook, thou shalt know I will predominate over the     peasant, and thou shalt lie with his wife. Come to me soon at     night. Ford\'s a knave, and I will aggravate his style; thou,     Master Brook, shalt know him for knave and cuckold.     Come to me soon at night.                               Exit   FORD. What a damn\'d Epicurean rascal is this! My heart is     ready to crack with impatience. Who says this is improvident     jealousy? My wife hath sent to him; the hour is fix\'d;     the match is made. Would any man have thought this? See     the hell of having a false woman! My bed shall be abus\'d,     my coffers ransack\'d, my reputation gnawn at; and I shall     not only receive this villainous wrong, but stand under the       adoption of abominable terms, and by him that does me     this wrong. Terms! names! Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer,     well; Barbason, well; yet they are devils\' additions, the names     of fiends. But cuckold! Wittol! Cuckold! the devil himself     hath not such a name. Page is an ass, a secure ass; he will trust     his wife; he will not be jealous; I will rather trust a Fleming     with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my     cheese, an Irishman with my aqua-vitae bottle, or a thief to     walk my ambling gelding, than my wife with herself. Then     she plots, then she ruminates, then she devises; and what     they think in their hearts they may effect, they will break     their hearts but they will effect. God be prais\'d for my     jealousy! Eleven o\'clock the hour. I will prevent this, detect     my wife, be reveng\'d on Falstaff, and laugh at Page.     I will about it; better three hours too soon than a minute     too late. Fie, fie, fie! cuckold! cuckold! cuckold!     Exit     SCENE 3.  A field near Windsor  Enter CAIUS and RUGBY    CAIUS. Jack Rugby!   RUGBY. Sir?   CAIUS. Vat is de clock, Jack?   RUGBY. \'Tis past the hour, sir, that Sir Hugh promis\'d to     meet.   CAIUS. By gar, he has save his soul dat he is no come; he has     pray his Pible well dat he is no come; by gar, Jack Rugby,     he is dead already, if he be come.   RUGBY. He is wise, sir; he knew your worship would kill     him if he came.   CAIUS. By gar, de herring is no dead so as I vill kill him. Take     your rapier, Jack; I vill tell you how I vill kill him.   RUGBY. Alas, sir, I cannot fence!   CAIUS. Villainy, take your rapier.   RUGBY. Forbear; here\'s company.                Enter HOST, SHALLOW, SLENDER, and PAGE    HOST. Bless thee, bully doctor!   SHALLOW. Save you, Master Doctor Caius!   PAGE. Now, good Master Doctor!   SLENDER. Give you good morrow, sir.   CAIUS. Vat be all you, one, two, tree, four, come for?   HOST. To see thee fight, to see thee foin, to see thee traverse;     to see thee here, to see thee there; to see thee pass thy     punto, thy stock, thy reverse, thy distance, thy montant.     Is he dead, my Ethiopian? Is he dead, my Francisco? Ha,     bully! What says my Aesculapius? my Galen? my heart     of elder? Ha! is he dead, bully stale? Is he dead?   CAIUS. By gar, he is de coward Jack priest of de world; he is     not show his face.   HOST. Thou art a Castalion-King-Urinal. Hector of Greece,     my boy!   CAIUS. I pray you, bear witness that me have stay six or     seven, two tree hours for him, and he is no come.   SHALLOW. He is the wiser man, Master Doctor: he is a curer       of souls, and you a curer of bodies; if you should fight,     you go against the hair of your professions. Is it not true,     Master Page?   PAGE. Master Shallow, you have yourself been a great fighter,     though now a man of peace.   SHALLOW. Bodykins, Master Page, though I now be old, and     of the peace, if I see a sword out, my finger itches to make     one. Though we are justices, and doctors, and churchmen,     Master Page, we have some salt of our youth in us; we are     the sons of women, Master Page.   PAGE. \'Tis true, Master Shallow.   SHALLOW. It will be found so, Master Page. Master Doctor   CAIUS, I come to fetch you home. I am sworn of the peace;     you have show\'d yourself a wise physician, and Sir Hugh     hath shown himself a wise and patient churchman. You     must go with me, Master Doctor.   HOST. Pardon, Guest Justice. A word, Mounseur Mockwater.   CAIUS. Mock-vater! Vat is dat?   HOST. Mockwater, in our English tongue, is valour, bully.   CAIUS. By gar, then I have as much mockvater as de Englishman.       Scurvy jack-dog priest! By gar, me vill cut his ears.   HOST. He will clapper-claw thee tightly, bully.   CAIUS. Clapper-de-claw! Vat is dat?   HOST. That is, he will make thee amends.   CAIUS. By gar, me do look he shall clapper-de-claw me; for,     by gar, me vill have it.   HOST. And I will provoke him to\'t, or let him wag.   CAIUS. Me tank you for dat.   HOST. And, moreover, bully-but first:  [Aside to the others]     Master Guest, and Master Page, and eke Cavaleiro Slender,     go you through the town to Frogmore.   PAGE.  [Aside]  Sir Hugh is there, is he?   HOST.  [Aside]  He is there. See what humour he is in; and     I will bring the doctor about by the fields. Will it do well?   SHALLOW.  [Aside]  We will do it.   PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER. Adieu, good Master Doctor.                                Exeunt PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER   CAIUS. By gar, me vill kill de priest; for he speak for a jack-     an-ape to Anne Page.   HOST. Let him die. Sheathe thy impatience; throw cold water       on thy choler; go about the fields with me through Frogmore;     I will bring thee where Mistress Anne Page is, at a a     farm-house, a-feasting; and thou shalt woo her. Cried     game! Said I well?   CAIUS. By gar, me dank you vor dat; by gar, I love you; and     I shall procure-a you de good guest, de earl, de knight, de     lords, de gentlemen, my patients.   HOST. For the which I will be thy adversary toward Anne     Page. Said I well?   CAIUS. By gar, \'tis good; vell said.   HOST. Let us wag, then.   CAIUS. Come at my heels, Jack Rugby.                    Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III SCENE 1.  A field near Frogmore  Enter SIR HUGH EVANS and SIMPLE    EVANS. I pray you now, good Master Slender\'s serving-man,     and friend Simple by your name, which way have you     look\'d for Master Caius, that calls himself Doctor of     Physic?   SIMPLE. Marry, sir, the pittie-ward, the park-ward; every     way; old Windsor way, and every way but the town way.   EVANS. I most fehemently desire you you will also look that     way.   SIMPLE. I will, Sir.                                      Exit   EVANS. Pless my soul, how full of chollors I am, and trempling     of mind! I shall be glad if he have deceived me. How     melancholies I am! I will knog his urinals about his knave\'s     costard when I have goot opportunities for the ork. Pless     my soul!                                             [Sings]     To shallow rivers, to whose falls     Melodious birds sings madrigals;       There will we make our peds of roses,     And a thousand fragrant posies.     To shallow-     Mercy on me! I have a great dispositions to cry.     [Sings]     Melodious birds sing madrigals-     Whenas I sat in Pabylon-     And a thousand vagram posies.     To shallow, etc.                         Re-enter SIMPLE    SIMPLE. Yonder he is, coming this way, Sir Hugh.   EVANS. He\'s welcome.                                   [Sings]     To shallow rivers, to whose falls-     Heaven prosper the right! What weapons is he?   SIMPLE. No weapons, sir. There comes my master, Master     Shallow, and another gentleman, from Frogmore, over the     stile, this way.   EVANS. Pray you give me my gown; or else keep it in your     arms.                                     [Takes out a book]                   Enter PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER    SHALLOW. How now, Master Parson! Good morrow, good     Sir Hugh. Keep a gamester from the dice, and a good student      from his book, and it is wonderful.   SLENDER.  [Aside]  Ah, sweet Anne Page!   PAGE. Save you, good Sir Hugh!   EVANS. Pless you from his mercy sake, all of you!   SHALLOW. What, the sword and the word! Do you study     them both, Master Parson?   PAGE. And youthful still, in your doublet and hose, this raw     rheumatic day!   EVANS. There is reasons and causes for it.   PAGE. We are come to you to do a good office, Master     Parson.   EVANS. Fery well; what is it?   PAGE. Yonder is a most reverend gentleman, who, belike having     received wrong by some person, is at most odds with     his own gravity and patience that ever you saw.     SHALLOW. I have lived fourscore years and upward; I never     heard a man of his place, gravity, and learning, so wide of     his own respect.   EVANS. What is he?   PAGE. I think you know him: Master Doctor Caius, the     renowned French physician.   EVANS. Got\'s will and his passion of my heart! I had as lief     you would tell me of a mess of porridge.   PAGE. Why?   EVANS. He has no more knowledge in Hibocrates and     Galen, and he is a knave besides-a cowardly knave as you     would desires to be acquainted withal.   PAGE. I warrant you, he\'s the man should fight with him.   SLENDER.  [Aside]  O sweet Anne Page!   SHALLOW. It appears so, by his weapons. Keep them asunder;     here comes Doctor Caius.                   Enter HOST, CAIUS, and RUGBY    PAGE. Nay, good Master Parson, keep in your weapon.     SHALLOW. So do you, good Master Doctor.   HOST. Disarm them, and let them question; let them keep     their limbs whole and hack our English.   CAIUS. I pray you, let-a me speak a word with your ear.     Verefore will you not meet-a me?   EVANS.  [Aside to CAIUS]  Pray you use your patience; in     good time.   CAIUS. By gar, you are de coward, de Jack dog, John ape.   EVANS.  [Aside to CAIUS]  Pray you, let us not be     laughing-stocks to other men\'s humours; I desire you in     friendship, and I will one way or other make you amends.     [Aloud]  I will knog your urinals about your knave\'s cogscomb     for missing your meetings and appointments.   CAIUS. Diable! Jack Rugby-mine Host de Jarteer-have I     not stay for him to kill him? Have I not, at de place I did     appoint?   EVANS. As I am a Christians soul, now, look you, this is the     place appointed. I\'ll be judgment by mine host of the     Garter.   HOST. Peace, I say, Gallia and Gaul, French and Welsh,       soul-curer and body-curer.   CAIUS. Ay, dat is very good! excellent!   HOST. Peace, I say. Hear mine host of the Garter. Am I     politic? am I subtle? am I a Machiavel? Shall I lose my     doctor? No; he gives me the potions and the motions. Shall I     lose my parson, my priest, my Sir Hugh? No; he gives me     the proverbs and the noverbs. Give me thy hand, terrestrial;     so. Give me thy hand, celestial; so. Boys of art, I have     deceiv\'d you both; I have directed you to wrong places;     your hearts are mighty, your skins are whole, and let burnt     sack be the issue. Come, lay their swords to pawn. Follow     me, lads of peace; follow, follow, follow.   SHALLOW. Trust me, a mad host. Follow, gentlemen, follow.   SLENDER.  [Aside]  O sweet Anne Page!                                   Exeunt all but CAIUS and EVANS   CAIUS. Ha, do I perceive dat? Have you make-a de sot of us,     ha, ha?   EVANS. This is well; he has made us his vlouting-stog. I     desire you that we may be friends; and let us knog our prains     together to be revenge on this same scall, scurvy, cogging       companion, the host of the Garter.   CAIUS. By gar, with all my heart. He promise to bring me     where is Anne Page; by gar, he deceive me too.   EVANS. Well, I will smite his noddles. Pray you follow.                                                           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE 2.  The street in Windsor  Enter MISTRESS PAGE and ROBIN    MRS. PAGE. Nay, keep your way, little gallant; you were     wont to be a follower, but now you are a leader. Whether     had you rather lead mine eyes, or eye your master\'s heels?   ROBIN. I had rather, forsooth, go before you like a man than     follow him like a dwarf.   MRS. PAGE. O, you are a flattering boy; now I see you\'ll be a     courtier.                            Enter FORD    FORD. Well met, Mistress Page. Whither go you?   MRS. PAGE. Truly, sir, to see your wife. Is she at home?   FORD. Ay; and as idle as she may hang together, for want of     company. I think, if your husbands were dead, you two     would marry.   MRS. PAGE. Be sure of that-two other husbands.     FORD. Where had you this pretty weathercock?   MRS. PAGE. I cannot tell what the dickens his name is my     husband had him of. What do you call your knight\'s     name, sirrah?   ROBIN. Sir John Falstaff.   FORD. Sir John Falstaff!   MRS. PAGE. He, he; I can never hit on\'s name. There is such     a league between my good man and he! Is your wife at     home indeed?   FORD. Indeed she is.   MRS. PAGE. By your leave, sir. I am sick till I see her.                                       Exeunt MRS. PAGE and ROBIN   FORD. Has Page any brains? Hath he any eyes? Hath he any     thinking? Sure, they sleep; he hath no use of them. Why,     this boy will carry a letter twenty mile as easy as a cannon     will shoot pointblank twelve score. He pieces out his wife\'s     inclination; he gives her folly motion and advantage; and     now she\'s going to my wife, and Falstaff\'s boy with her. A     man may hear this show\'r sing in the wind. And Falstaff\'s     boy with her! Good plots! They are laid; and our revolted       wives share damnation together. Well; I will take him,     then torture my wife, pluck the borrowed veil of modesty     from the so seeming Mistress Page, divulge Page himself     for a secure and wilful Actaeon; and to these violent proceedings     all my neighbours shall cry aim.  [Clock strikes]     The clock gives me my cue, and my assurance bids me     search; there I shall find Falstaff. I shall be rather prais\'d     for this than mock\'d; for it is as positive as the earth is firm     that Falstaff is there. I will go.       Enter PAGE, SHALLOW, SLENDER, HOST, SIR HUGH EVANS,                               CAIUS, and RUGBY    SHALLOW, PAGE, &C. Well met, Master Ford.   FORD. Trust me, a good knot; I have good cheer at home,     and I pray you all go with me.   SHALLOW. I must excuse myself, Master Ford.   SLENDER. And so must I, sir; we have appointed to dine with     Mistress Anne, and I would not break with her for more     money than I\'ll speak of.     SHALLOW. We have linger\'d about a match between Anne     Page and my cousin Slender, and this day we shall have     our answer.   SLENDER. I hope I have your good will, father Page.   PAGE. You have, Master Slender; I stand wholly for you. But     my wife, Master Doctor, is for you altogether.   CAIUS. Ay, be-gar; and de maid is love-a me; my nursh-a     Quickly tell me so mush.   HOST. What say you to young Master Fenton? He capers,     he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks     holiday, he smells April and May; he will carry \'t, he will     carry \'t; \'tis in his buttons; he will carry \'t.   PAGE. Not by my consent, I promise you. The gentleman is     of no having: he kept company with the wild Prince and     Poins; he is of too high a region, he knows too much. No,     he shall not knit a knot in his fortunes with the finger of     my substance; if he take her, let him take her simply; the     wealth I have waits on my consent, and my consent goes     not that way.   FORD. I beseech you, heartily, some of you go home with me       to dinner: besides your cheer, you shall have sport; I will     show you a monster. Master Doctor, you shall go; so shall     you, Master Page; and you, Sir Hugh.   SHALLOW. Well, fare you well; we shall have the freer     wooing at Master Page\'s.          Exeunt SHALLOW and SLENDER   CAIUS. Go home, John Rugby; I come anon.            Exit RUGBY   HOST. Farewell, my hearts; I will to my honest knight     Falstaff, and drink canary with him.               Exit HOST   FORD.  [Aside]  I think I shall drink in pipe-wine first with     him. I\'ll make him dance. Will you go, gentles?   ALL. Have with you to see this monster.                 Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE 3.  FORD\'S house  Enter MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE    MRS. FORD. What, John! what, Robert!   MRS. PAGE. Quickly, quickly! Is the buck-basket-   MRS. FORD. I warrant. What, Robin, I say!                   Enter SERVANTS with a basket    MRS. PAGE. Come, come, come.   MRS. FORD. Here, set it down.   MRS. PAGE. Give your men the charge; we must be brief.   MRS. FORD. Marry, as I told you before, John and Robert, be     ready here hard by in the brew-house; and when I suddenly     call you, come forth, and, without any pause or     staggering, take this basket on your shoulders. That done,     trudge with it in all haste, and carry it among the whitsters     in Datchet Mead, and there empty it in the muddy ditch     close by the Thames side.     Mrs. PAGE. You will do it?   MRS. FORD. I ha\' told them over and over; they lack no     direction. Be gone, and come when you are call\'d.                                                Exeunt SERVANTS   MRS. PAGE. Here comes little Robin.                           Enter ROBIN    MRS. FORD. How now, my eyas-musket, what news with     you?   ROBIN. My Master Sir John is come in at your back-door,     Mistress Ford, and requests your company.   MRS. PAGE. You little Jack-a-Lent, have you been true to us?   ROBIN. Ay, I\'ll be sworn. My master knows not of your     being here, and hath threat\'ned to put me into everlasting     liberty, if I tell you of it; for he swears he\'ll turn me away.   MRS. PAGE. Thou \'rt a good boy; this secrecy of thine shall     be a tailor to thee, and shall make thee a new doublet and     hose. I\'ll go hide me.   MRS. FORD. Do so. Go tell thy master I am alone.  [Exit     ROBIN]  Mistress Page, remember you your cue.   MRS. PAGE. I warrant thee; if I do not act it, hiss me.                                                 Exit MRS. PAGE   MRS. FORD. Go to, then; we\'ll use this unwholesome     humidity, this gross wat\'ry pumpion; we\'ll teach him to     know turtles from jays.                        Enter FALSTAFF    FALSTAFF. Have I caught thee, my heavenly jewel?     Why, now let me die, for I have liv\'d long enough; this is     the period of my ambition. O this blessed hour!   MRS. FORD. O sweet Sir John!   FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford, I cannot cog, I cannot prate,     Mistress Ford. Now shall I sin in my wish; I would thy     husband were dead; I\'ll speak it before the best lord, I     would make thee my lady.   MRS. FORD. I your lady, Sir John? Alas, I should be a pitiful     lady.   FALSTAFF. Let the court of France show me such another. I       see how thine eye would emulate the diamond; thou hast     the right arched beauty of the brow that becomes the     ship-tire, the tire-valiant, or any tire of Venetian admittance.   MRS. FORD. A plain kerchief, Sir John; my brows become     nothing else, nor that well neither.   FALSTAFF. By the Lord, thou art a tyrant to say so; thou     wouldst make an absolute courtier, and the firm fixture of     thy foot would give an excellent motion to thy gait in a     semi-circled farthingale. I see what thou wert, if Fortune     thy foe were, not Nature, thy friend. Come, thou canst not     hide it.   MRS. FORD. Believe me, there\'s no such thing in me.   FALSTAFF. What made me love thee? Let that persuade thee     there\'s something extra-ordinary in thee. Come, I cannot     cog, and say thou art this and that, like a many of these     lisping hawthorn-buds that come like women in men\'s     apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple time; I     cannot; but I love thee, none but thee; and thou deserv\'st it.   MRS. FORD. Do not betray me, sir; I fear you love Mistress     Page.     FALSTAFF. Thou mightst as well say I love to walk by the     Counter-gate, which is as hateful to me as the reek of a     lime-kiln.   MRS. FORD. Well, heaven knows how I love you; and you     shall one day find it.   FALSTAFF. Keep in that mind; I\'ll deserve it.   MRS. FORD. Nay, I must tell you, so you do; or else I could     not be in that mind.   ROBIN.  [Within]  Mistress Ford, Mistress Ford! here\'s     Mistress Page at the door, sweating and blowing and looking     wildly, and would needs speak with you presently.   FALSTAFF. She shall not see me; I will ensconce me behind     the arras.   MRS. FORD. Pray you, do so; she\'s a very tattling woman.                                       [FALSTAFF hides himself]                 Re-enter MISTRESS PAGE and ROBIN      What\'s the matter? How now!   MRS. PAGE. O Mistress Ford, what have you done? You\'re       sham\'d, y\'are overthrown, y\'are undone for ever.   MRS. FORD. What\'s the matter, good Mistress Page?   MRS. PAGE. O well-a-day, Mistress Ford, having an honest     man to your husband, to give him such cause of suspicion!   MRS. FORD. What cause of suspicion?   MRS. PAGE. What cause of suspicion? Out upon you, how     am I mistook in you!   MRS. FORD. Why, alas, what\'s the matter?   MRS. PAGE. Your husband\'s coming hither, woman, with all     the officers in Windsor, to search for a gentleman that he     says is here now in the house, by your consent, to take an     ill advantage of his absence. You are undone.   MRS. FORD. \'Tis not so, I hope.   MRS. PAGE. Pray heaven it be not so that you have such a     man here; but \'tis most certain your husband\'s coming,     with half Windsor at his heels, to search for such a one. I     come before to tell you. If you know yourself clear, why,     I am glad of it; but if you have a friend here, convey,     convey him out. Be not amaz\'d; call all your senses to you;     defend your reputation, or bid farewell to your good life       for ever.   MRS. FORD. What shall I do? There is a gentleman, my dear     friend; and I fear not mine own shame as much as his peril.     I had rather than a thousand pound he were out of the     house.   MRS. PAGE. For shame, never stand \'you had rather\' and \'you     had rather\'! Your husband\'s here at hand; bethink you of     some conveyance; in the house you cannot hide him. O,     how have you deceiv\'d me! Look, here is a basket; if he be     of any reasonable stature, he may creep in here; and throw     foul linen upon him, as if it were going to bucking, or-it is     whiting-time-send him by your two men to Datchet     Mead.   MRS. FORD. He\'s too big to go in there. What shall I do?   FALSTAFF.  [Coming forward]  Let me see \'t, let me see \'t. O,     let me see \'t! I\'ll in, I\'ll in; follow your friend\'s counsel;     I\'ll in.   MRS. PAGE. What, Sir John Falstaff!      [Aside to FALSTAFF]     Are these your letters, knight?   FALSTAFF.  [Aside to MRS. PAGE]  I love thee and none but       thee; help me away.-Let me creep in here; I\'ll never-     [Gets into the basket; they cover him with foul linen]   MRS. PAGE. Help to cover your master, boy. Call your men,     Mistress Ford. You dissembling knight!   MRS. FORD. What, John! Robert! John!                Exit ROBIN                   Re-enter SERVANTS      Go, take up these clothes here, quickly; where\'s the     cowl-staff? Look how you drumble. Carry them to the laundress     in Datchet Mead; quickly, come.           Enter FORD, PAGE, CAIUS, and SIR HUGH EVANS    FORD. Pray you come near. If I suspect without cause, why     then make sport at me, then let me be your jest; I deserve     it. How now, whither bear you this?   SERVANT. To the laundress, forsooth.   MRS. FORD. Why, what have you to do whither they bear it?     You were best meddle with buck-washing.     FORD. Buck? I would I could wash myself of the buck!     Buck, buck, buck! ay, buck! I warrant you, buck; and of     the season too, it shall appear.  [Exeunt SERVANTS with     basket]  Gentlemen, I have dream\'d to-night; I\'ll tell you my     dream. Here, here, here be my keys; ascend my chambers,     search, seek, find out. I\'ll warrant we\'ll unkennel the fox.     Let me stop this way first.  [Locking the door]  So, now     uncape.   PAGE. Good Master Ford, be contented; you wrong yourself     too much.   FORD. True, Master Page. Up, gentlemen, you shall see sport     anon; follow me, gentlemen.                             Exit   EVANS. This is fery fantastical humours and jealousies.   CAIUS. By gar, \'tis no the fashion of France; it is not jealous     in France.   PAGE. Nay, follow him, gentlemen; see the issue of his     search.                        Exeunt EVANS, PAGE, and CAIUS   MRS. PAGE. Is there not a double excellency in this?   MRS. FORD. I know not which pleases me better, that my     husband is deceived, or Sir John.     MRS. PAGE. What a taking was he in when your husband     ask\'d who was in the basket!   MRS. FORD. I am half afraid he will have need of washing; so     throwing him into the water will do him a benefit.   MRS. PAGE. Hang him, dishonest rascal! I would all of the     same strain were in the same distress.   MRS. FORD. I think my husband hath some special suspicion     of Falstaff\'s being here, for I never saw him so gross in his     jealousy till now.   MRS. PAGE. I Will lay a plot to try that, and we will yet have     more tricks with Falstaff. His dissolute disease will scarce     obey this medicine.   MRS. FORD. Shall we send that foolish carrion, Mistress     Quickly, to him, and excuse his throwing into the water,     and give him another hope, to betray him to another     punishment?   MRS. PAGE. We will do it; let him be sent for to-morrow     eight o\'clock, to have amends.         Re-enter FORD, PAGE, CAIUS, and SIR HUGH EVANS      FORD. I cannot find him; may be the knave bragg\'d of that     he could not compass.   MRS. PAGE.  [Aside to MRS. FORD]  Heard you that?   MRS. FORD. You use me well, Master Ford, do you?   FORD. Ay, I do so.   MRS. FORD. Heaven make you better than your thoughts!   FORD. Amen.   MRS. PAGE. You do yourself mighty wrong, Master Ford.   FORD. Ay, ay; I must bear it.   EVANS. If there be any pody in the house, and in the     chambers, and in the coffers, and in the presses, heaven forgive     my sins at the day of judgment!   CAIUS. Be gar, nor I too; there is no bodies.   PAGE. Fie, fie, Master Ford, are you not asham\'d? What     spirit, what devil suggests this imagination? I would not ha\'     your distemper in this kind for the wealth of Windsor     Castle.   FORD. \'Tis my fault, Master Page; I suffer for it.   EVANS. You suffer for a pad conscience. Your wife is as       honest a omans as I will desires among five thousand, and five     hundred too.   CAIUS. By gar, I see \'tis an honest woman.   FORD. Well, I promis\'d you a dinner. Come, come, walk in     the Park. I pray you pardon me; I will hereafter make     known to you why I have done this. Come, wife, come,     Mistress Page; I pray you pardon me; pray heartly,     pardon me.   PAGE. Let\'s go in, gentlemen; but, trust me, we\'ll mock him.     I do invite you to-morrow morning to my house to breakfast;     after, we\'ll a-birding together; I have a fine hawk for     the bush. Shall it be so?   FORD. Any thing.   EVANS. If there is one, I shall make two in the company.   CAIUS. If there be one or two, I shall make-a the turd.   FORD. Pray you go, Master Page.   EVANS. I pray you now, remembrance to-morrow on the     lousy knave, mine host.   CAIUS. Dat is good; by gar, with all my heart.   EVANS. A lousy knave, to have his gibes and his mockeries!                                                             Exeunt     SCENE 4.  Before PAGE\'S house  Enter FENTON and ANNE PAGE    FENTON. I see I cannot get thy father\'s love;     Therefore no more turn me to him, sweet Nan.   ANNE. Alas, how then?   FENTON. Why, thou must be thyself.     He doth object I am too great of birth;     And that, my state being gall\'d with my expense,     I seek to heal it only by his wealth.     Besides these, other bars he lays before me,     My riots past, my wild societies;     And tells me \'tis a thing impossible     I should love thee but as a property.   ANNE.. May be he tells you true.   FENTON. No, heaven so speed me in my time to come!     Albeit I will confess thy father\'s wealth     Was the first motive that I woo\'d thee, Anne;     Yet, wooing thee, I found thee of more value       Than stamps in gold, or sums in sealed bags;     And \'tis the very riches of thyself     That now I aim at.   ANNE. Gentle Master Fenton,     Yet seek my father\'s love; still seek it, sir.     If opportunity and humblest suit     Cannot attain it, why then-hark you hither.                                            [They converse apart]          Enter SHALLOW, SLENDER, and MISTRESS QUICKLY    SHALLOW. Break their talk, Mistress Quickly; my kinsman     shall speak for himself.   SLENDER. I\'ll make a shaft or a bolt on \'t; \'slid, \'tis but     venturing.   SHALLOW. Be not dismay\'d.   SLENDER. No, she shall not dismay me. I care not for that,     but that I am afeard.   QUICKLY. Hark ye, Master Slender would speak a word     with you.     ANNE. I come to him.  [Aside]  This is my father\'s choice.     O, what a world of vile ill-favour\'d faults     Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!   QUICKLY. And how does good Master Fenton? Pray you, a     word with you.   SHALLOW. She\'s coming; to her, coz. O boy, thou hadst a     father!   SLENDER. I had a father, Mistress Anne; my uncle can tell     you good jests of him. Pray you, uncle, tell Mistress Anne     the jest how my father stole two geese out of a pen, good     uncle.   SHALLOW. Mistress Anne, my cousin loves you.   SLENDER. Ay, that I do; as well as I love any woman in     Gloucestershire.   SHALLOW. He will maintain you like a gentlewoman.   SLENDER. Ay, that I will come cut and longtail, under the     degree of a squire.   SHALLOW. He will make you a hundred and fifty pounds     jointure.   ANNE. Good Master Shallow, let him woo for himself.     SHALLOW. Marry, I thank you for it; I thank you for that     good comfort. She calls you, coz; I\'ll leave you.   ANNE. Now, Master Slender-   SLENDER. Now, good Mistress Anne-   ANNE. What is your will?   SLENDER. My Will! \'Od\'s heartlings, that\'s a pretty jest     indeed! I ne\'er made my will yet, I thank heaven; I am not     such a sickly creature, I give heaven praise.   ANNE. I mean, Master Slender, what would you with me?   SLENDER. Truly, for mine own part I would little or nothing     with you. Your father and my uncle hath made motions;     if it be my luck, so; if not, happy man be his dole! They     can tell you how things go better than I can. You may ask     your father; here he comes.              Enter PAGE and MISTRESS PAGE    PAGE. Now, Master Slender! Love him, daughter Anne-     Why, how now, what does Master Fenton here?     You wrong me, sir, thus still to haunt my house.       I told you, sir, my daughter is dispos\'d of.   FENTON. Nay, Master Page, be not impatient.   MRS. PAGE. Good Master Fenton, come not to my child.   PAGE. She is no match for you.   FENTON. Sir, will you hear me?   PAGE. No, good Master Fenton.     Come, Master Shallow; come, son Slender; in.     Knowing my mind, you wrong me, Master Fenton.                                Exeunt PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER   QUICKLY. Speak to Mistress Page.   FENTON. Good Mistress Page, for that I love your daughter     In such a righteous fashion as I do,     Perforce, against all checks, rebukes, and manners,     I must advance the colours of my love,     And not retire. Let me have your good will.   ANNE. Good mother, do not marry me to yond fool.   MRS. PAGE. I mean it not; I seek you a better husband.   QUICKLY. That\'s my master, Master Doctor.   ANNE. Alas, I had rather be set quick i\' th\' earth.     And bowl\'d to death with turnips.     MRS. PAGE. Come, trouble not yourself. Good Master     Fenton,     I will not be your friend, nor enemy;     My daughter will I question how she loves you,     And as I find her, so am I affected;     Till then, farewell, sir; she must needs go in;     Her father will be angry.   FENTON. Farewell, gentle mistress; farewell, Nan.                                        Exeunt MRS. PAGE and ANNE   QUICKLY. This is my doing now: \'Nay,\' said I \'will you cast     away your child on a fool, and a physician? Look on     Master Fenton.\' This is my doing.   FENTON. I thank thee; and I pray thee, once to-night     Give my sweet Nan this ring. There\'s for thy pains.   QUICKLY. Now Heaven send thee good fortune!  [Exit     FENTON]  A kind heart he hath; a woman would run through     fire and water for such a kind heart. But yet I would my     master had Mistress Anne; or I would Master Slender had     her; or, in sooth, I would Master Fenton had her; I will     do what I can for them all three, for so I have promis\'d,       and I\'ll be as good as my word; but speciously for Master     Fenton. Well, I must of another errand to Sir John Falstaff     from my two mistresses. What a beast am I to slack it!  Exit     SCENE 5.  The Garter Inn  Enter FALSTAFF and BARDOLPH    FALSTAFF. Bardolph, I say!   BARDOLPH. Here, sir.   FALSTAFF. Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in \'t.                                                    Exit BARDOLPH     Have I liv\'d to be carried in a basket, like a barrow of     butcher\'s offal, and to be thrown in the Thames? Well, if     I be serv\'d such another trick, I\'ll have my brains ta\'en out     and butter\'d, and give them to a dog for a new-year\'s gift.     The rogues slighted me into the river with as little remorse     as they would have drown\'d a blind bitch\'s puppies, fifteen     i\' th\' litter; and you may know by my size that I have     a kind of alacrity in sinking; if the bottom were as deep as     hell I should down. I had been drown\'d but that the shore     was shelvy and shallow-a death that I abhor; for the water     swells a man; and what a thing should I have been when     had been swell\'d! I should have been a mountain of       mummy.                    Re-enter BARDOLPH, with sack    BARDOLPH. Here\'s Mistress Quickly, sir, to speak with you   FALSTAFF. Come, let me pour in some sack to the Thames     water; for my belly\'s as cold as if I had swallow\'d     snowballs for pills to cool the reins. Call her in.   BARDOLPH. Come in, woman.                       Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY    QUICKLY. By your leave; I cry you mercy. Give your     worship good morrow.   FALSTAFF. Take away these chalices. Go, brew me a pottle     of sack finely.   BARDOLPH. With eggs, sir?   FALSTAFF. Simple of itself; I\'ll no pullet-sperm in my     brewage.  [Exit BARDOLPH]  How now!   QUICKLY. Marry, sir, I come to your worship from Mistress       Ford.   FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford! I have had ford enough; I was     thrown into the ford; I have my belly full of ford.   QUICKLY. Alas the day, good heart, that was not her fault!     She does so take on with her men; they mistook their     erection.   FALSTAFF. So did I mine, to build upon a foolish woman\'s     promise.   QUICKLY. Well, she laments, sir, for it, that it would yearn     your heart to see it. Her husband goes this morning     a-birding; she desires you once more to come to her between     eight and nine; I must carry her word quickly. She\'ll make     you amends, I warrant you.   FALSTAFF. Well, I Will visit her. Tell her so; and bid her     think what a man is. Let her consider his frailty, and then     judge of my merit.   QUICKLY. I will tell her.   FALSTAFF. Do so. Between nine and ten, say\'st thou?   QUICKLY. Eight and nine, sir.   FALSTAFF. Well, be gone; I will not miss her.     QUICKLY. Peace be with you, sir.                          Exit   FALSTAFF. I marvel I hear not of Master Brook; he sent me     word to stay within. I like his money well. O, here he     comes.                         Enter FORD disguised    FORD. Bless you, sir!   FALSTAFF. Now, Master Brook, you come to know what     hath pass\'d between me and Ford\'s wife?   FORD. That, indeed, Sir John, is my business.   FALSTAFF. Master Brook, I will not lie to you; I was at her     house the hour she appointed me.   FORD. And sped you, sir?   FALSTAFF. Very ill-favouredly, Master Brook.   FORD. How so, sir; did she change her determination?   FALSTAFF. No. Master Brook; but the peaking cornuto her     husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual \'larum of     jealousy, comes me in the instant of our, encounter, after     we had embrac\'d, kiss\'d, protested, and, as it were, spoke       the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of his     companions, thither provoked and instigated by his     distemper, and, forsooth, to search his house for his wife\'s     love.   FORD. What, while you were there?   FALSTAFF. While I was there.   FORD. And did he search for you, and could not find you?   FALSTAFF. You shall hear. As good luck would have it, comes     in one Mistress Page, gives intelligence of Ford\'s approach;     and, in her invention and Ford\'s wife\'s distraction, they     convey\'d me into a buck-basket.   FORD. A buck-basket!   FALSTAFF. By the Lord, a buck-basket! Ramm\'d me in with     foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy     napkins, that, Master Brook, there was the rankest compound     of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.   FORD. And how long lay you there?   FALSTAFF. Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have     suffer\'d to bring this woman to evil for your good. Being     thus cramm\'d in the basket, a couple of Ford\'s knaves, his       hinds, were call\'d forth by their mistress to carry me in     the name of foul clothes to Datchet Lane; they took me on     their shoulders; met the jealous knave their master in the     door; who ask\'d them once or twice what they had in their     basket. I quak\'d for fear lest the lunatic knave would have     search\'d it; but Fate, ordaining he should be a cuckold,     held his hand. Well, on went he for a search, and away     went I for foul clothes. But mark the sequel, Master     Brook-I suffered the pangs of three several deaths: first,     an intolerable fright to be detected with a jealous rotten     bell-wether; next, to be compass\'d like a good bilbo in the     circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head; and     then, to be stopp\'d in, like a strong distillation, with     stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease. Think of that     -a man of my kidney. Think of that-that am as subject to     heat as butter; a man of continual dissolution and thaw. It     was a miracle to scape suffocation. And in the height of     this bath, when I was more than half-stew\'d in grease, like     a Dutch dish, to be thrown into the Thames, and cool\'d,     glowing hot, in that surge, like a horse-shoe; think of that       -hissing hot. Think of that, Master Brook.   FORD. In good sadness, sir, I am sorry that for my sake you     have suffer\'d all this. My suit, then, is desperate;     you\'ll undertake her no more.   FALSTAFF. Master Brook, I will be thrown into Etna, as I     have been into Thames, ere I will leave her thus. Her     husband is this morning gone a-birding; I have received from     her another embassy of meeting; \'twixt eight and nine is     the hour, Master Brook.   FORD. \'Tis past eight already, sir.   FALSTAFF. Is it? I Will then address me to my appointment.     Come to me at your convenient leisure, and you shall     know how I speed; and the conclusion shall be crowned     with your enjoying her. Adieu. You shall have her, Master     Brook; Master Brook, you shall cuckold Ford.            Exit   FORD. Hum! ha! Is this a vision? Is this a dream? Do I sleep?     Master Ford, awake; awake, Master Ford. There\'s a hole     made in your best coat, Master Ford. This \'tis to be     married; this \'tis to have linen and buck-baskets! Well, I will     proclaim myself what I am; I will now take the lecher; he       is at my house. He cannot scape me; \'tis impossible he     should; he cannot creep into a halfpenny purse nor into     a pepper box. But, lest the devil that guides him should aid     him, I will search impossible places. Though what I am I     cannot avoid, yet to be what I would not shall not make     me tame. If I have horns to make one mad, let the proverb     go with me-I\'ll be horn mad.                            Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I.  Windsor. A street  Enter MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS QUICKLY, and WILLIAM    MRS. PAGE. Is he at Master Ford\'s already, think\'st thou?   QUICKLY. Sure he is by this; or will be presently; but truly     he is very courageous mad about his throwing into the     water. Mistress Ford desires you to come suddenly.   MRS. PAGE. I\'ll be with her by and by; I\'ll but bring my     young man here to school. Look where his master comes;     \'tis a playing day, I see.                       Enter SIR HUGH EVANS      How now, Sir Hugh, no school to-day?   EVANS. No; Master Slender is let the boys leave to play.   QUICKLY. Blessing of his heart!   MRS. PAGE. Sir Hugh, my husband says my son profits     nothing in the world at his book; I pray you ask him some     questions in his accidence.     EVANS. Come hither, William; hold up your head; come.   MRS. PAGE. Come on, sirrah; hold up your head; answer your     master; be not afraid.   EVANS. William, how many numbers is in nouns?   WILLIAM. Two.   QUICKLY. Truly, I thought there had been one number     more, because they say \'Od\'s nouns.\'   EVANS. Peace your tattlings. What is \'fair,\' William?   WILLIAM. Pulcher.   QUICKLY. Polecats! There are fairer things than polecats,     sure.   EVANS. You are a very simplicity oman; I pray you, peace.     What is \'lapis,\' William?   WILLIAM. A stone.   EVANS. And what is \'a stone,\' William?   WILLIAM. A pebble.   EVANS. No, it is \'lapis\'; I pray you remember in your prain.   WILLIAM. Lapis.   EVANS. That is a good William. What is he, William, that     does lend articles?     WILLIAM. Articles are borrowed of the pronoun, and be     thus declined: Singulariter, nominativo; hic, haec, hoc.   EVANS. Nominativo, hig, hag, hog; pray you, mark: genitivo,     hujus. Well, what is your accusative case?   WILLIAM. Accusativo, hinc.   EVANS. I pray you, have your remembrance, child.     Accusativo, hung, hang, hog.   QUICKLY. \'Hang-hog\' is Latin for bacon, I warrant you.   EVANS. Leave your prabbles, oman. What is the focative     case, William?   WILLIAM. O-vocativo, O.   EVANS. Remember, William: focative is caret.   QUICKLY. And that\'s a good root.   EVANS. Oman, forbear.   MRS. PAGE. Peace.   EVANS. What is your genitive case plural, William?   WILLIAM. Genitive case?   EVANS. Ay.   WILLIAM. Genitive: horum, harum, horum.   QUICKLY. Vengeance of Jenny\'s case; fie on her! Never       name her, child, if she be a whore.   EVANS. For shame, oman.   QUICKLY. YOU do ill to teach the child such words. He     teaches him to hick and to hack, which they\'ll do fast     enough of themselves; and to call \'horum\'; fie upon you!   EVANS. Oman, art thou lunatics? Hast thou no understandings     for thy cases, and the numbers of the genders? Thou     art as foolish Christian creatures as I would desires.   MRS. PAGE. Prithee hold thy peace.   EVANS. Show me now, William, some declensions of your     pronouns.   WILLIAM. Forsooth, I have forgot.   EVANS. It is qui, quae, quod; if you forget your qui\'s, your     quae\'s, and your quod\'s, you must be preeches. Go your     ways and play; go.   MRS. PAGE. He is a better scholar than I thought he was.   EVANS. He is a good sprag memory. Farewell, Mistress Page.   MRS. PAGE. Adieu, good Sir Hugh.                 Exit SIR HUGH     Get you home, boy. Come, we stay too long.            Exeunt     SCENE 2.  FORD\'S house  Enter FALSTAFF and MISTRESS FORD    FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford, your sorrow hath eaten up my     sufferance. I see you are obsequious in your love, and I     profess requital to a hair\'s breadth; not only, Mistress Ford, in     the simple office of love, but in all the accoutrement,     complement, and ceremony of it. But are you sure of your     husband now?   MRS. FORD. He\'s a-birding, sweet Sir John.   MRS. PAGE.  [Within]  What hoa, gossip Ford, what hoa!   MRS. FORD. Step into th\' chamber, Sir John.      Exit FALSTAFF                        Enter MISTRESS PAGE    MRS. PAGE. How now, sweetheart, who\'s at home besides     yourself?   MRS. FORD. Why, none but mine own people.   MRS. PAGE. Indeed?     MRS. FORD. No, certainly.  [Aside to her]  Speak louder.   MRS. PAGE. Truly, I am so glad you have nobody here.   MRS. FORD. Why?   MRS. PAGE. Why, woman, your husband is in his old lunes     again. He so takes on yonder with my husband; so rails     against all married mankind; so curses an Eve\'s daughters,     of what complexion soever; and so buffets himself on the     forehead, crying \'Peer-out, peer-out!\' that any madness I     ever yet beheld seem\'d but tameness, civility, and patience,     to this his distemper he is in now. I am glad the fat knight     is not here.   MRS. FORD. Why, does he talk of him?   MRS. PAGE. Of none but him; and swears he was carried out,     the last time he search\'d for him, in a basket; protests to     my husband he is now here; and hath drawn him and the     rest of their company from their sport, to make another     experiment of his suspicion. But I am glad the knight is not     here; now he shall see his own foolery.   MRS. FORD. How near is he, Mistress Page?   MRS. PAGE. Hard by, at street end; he will be here anon.     MRS. FORD. I am undone: the knight is here.   MRS. PAGE. Why, then, you are utterly sham\'d, and he\'s but     a dead man. What a woman are you! Away with him,     away with him; better shame than murder.   MRS. FORD. Which way should he go? How should I bestow     him? Shall I put him into the basket again?                    Re-enter FALSTAFF    FALSTAFF. No, I\'ll come no more i\' th\' basket. May I not go     out ere he come?   MRS. PAGE. Alas, three of Master Ford\'s brothers watch the     door with pistols, that none shall issue out; otherwise you     might slip away ere he came. But what make you here?   FALSTAFF. What shall I do? I\'ll creep up into the chimney.   MRS. FORD. There they always use to discharge their     birding-pieces.   MRS. PAGE. Creep into the kiln-hole.   FALSTAFF. Where is it?   MRS. FORD. He will seek there, on my word. Neither press,       coffer, chest, trunk, well, vault, but he hath an abstract for     the remembrance of such places, and goes to them by his     note. There is no hiding you in the house.   FALSTAFF. I\'ll go out then.   MRS. PAGE. If you go out in your own semblance, you die,     Sir John. Unless you go out disguis\'d.   MRS. FORD. How might we disguise him?   MRS. PAGE. Alas the day, I know not! There is no woman\'s     gown big enough for him; otherwise he might put on a     hat, a muffler, and a kerchief, and so escape.   FALSTAFF. Good hearts, devise something; any extremity     rather than a mischief.   MRS. FORD. My Maid\'s aunt, the fat woman of Brainford, has     a gown above.   MRS. PAGE. On my word, it will serve him; she\'s as big as he     is; and there\'s her thrumm\'d hat, and her muffler too. Run     up, Sir John.   MRS. FORD. Go, go, sweet Sir John. Mistress Page and I will     look some linen for your head.   MRS. PAGE. Quick, quick; we\'ll come dress you straight. Put       on the gown the while.                         Exit FALSTAFF   MRS. FORD. I would my husband would meet him in this     shape; he cannot abide the old woman of Brainford; he     swears she\'s a witch, forbade her my house, and hath     threat\'ned to beat her.   MRS. PAGE. Heaven guide him to thy husband\'s cudgel; and     the devil guide his cudgel afterwards!   MRS. FORD. But is my husband coming?   MRS. PAGE. Ay, in good sadness is he; and talks of the basket     too, howsoever he hath had intelligence.   MRS. FORD. We\'ll try that; for I\'ll appoint my men to carry     the basket again, to meet him at the door with it as they     did last time.   MRS. PAGE. Nay, but he\'ll be here presently; let\'s go dress     him like the witch of Brainford.   MRS. FORD. I\'ll first direct my men what they shall do with     the basket. Go up; I\'ll bring linen for him straight.   Exit   MRS. PAGE. Hang him, dishonest varlet! we cannot misuse     him enough.     We\'ll leave a proof, by that which we will do,       Wives may be merry and yet honest too.     We do not act that often jest and laugh;     \'Tis old but true: Still swine eats all the draff.      Exit              Re-enter MISTRESS FORD, with two SERVANTS    MRS. FORD. Go, sirs, take the basket again on your shoulders;     your master is hard at door; if he bid you set it down, obey     him; quickly, dispatch.                                 Exit   FIRST SERVANT. Come, come, take it up.   SECOND SERVANT. Pray heaven it be not full of knight again.   FIRST SERVANT. I hope not; I had lief as bear so much lead.      Enter FORD, PAGE, SHALLOW, CAIUS, and SIR HUGH EVANS    FORD. Ay, but if it prove true, Master Page, have you any     way then to unfool me again? Set down the basket, villain!     Somebody call my wife. Youth in a basket! O you panderly     rascals, there\'s a knot, a ging, a pack, a conspiracy     against me. Now shall the devil be sham\'d. What, wife, I       say! Come, come forth; behold what honest clothes you     send forth to bleaching.   PAGE. Why, this passes, Master Ford; you are not to go loose     any longer; you must be pinion\'d.   EVANS. Why, this is lunatics. This is mad as a mad dog.   SHALLOW. Indeed, Master Ford, this is not well, indeed.   FORD. So say I too, sir.                       Re-enter MISTRESS FORD      Come hither, Mistress Ford; Mistress Ford, the honest     woman, the modest wife, the virtuous creature, that hath     the jealous fool to her husband! I suspect without cause,     Mistress, do I?   MRS. FORD. Heaven be my witness, you do, if you suspect     me in any dishonesty.   FORD. Well said, brazen-face; hold it out. Come forth, sirrah.                            [Pulling clothes out of the basket]   PAGE. This passes!   MRS. FORD. Are you not asham\'d? Let the clothes alone.     FORD. I shall find you anon.   EVANS. \'Tis unreasonable. Will you take up your wife\'s     clothes? Come away.   FORD. Empty the basket, I say.   MRS. FORD. Why, man, why?   FORD. Master Page, as I am a man, there was one convey\'d     out of my house yesterday in this basket. Why may not     he be there again? In my house I am sure he is; my     intelligence is true; my jealousy is reasonable.     Pluck me out all the linen.   MRS. FORD. If you find a man there, he shall die a flea\'s     death.   PAGE. Here\'s no man.   SHALLOW. By my fidelity, this is not well, Master Ford; this     wrongs you.   EVANS. Master Ford, you must pray, and not follow the     imaginations of your own heart; this is jealousies.   FORD. Well, he\'s not here I seek for.   PAGE. No, nor nowhere else but in your brain.   FORD. Help to search my house this one time. If I find not       what I seek, show no colour for my extremity; let me for     ever be your table sport; let them say of me \'As jealous as     Ford, that search\'d a hollow walnut for his wife\'s leman.\'     Satisfy me once more; once more search with me.   MRS. FORD. What, hoa, Mistress Page! Come you and the old     woman down; my husband will come into the chamber.   FORD. Old woman? what old woman\'s that?   MRS. FORD. Why, it is my maid\'s aunt of Brainford.   FORD. A witch, a quean, an old cozening quean! Have I not     forbid her my house? She comes of errands, does she? We     are simple men; we do not know what\'s brought to pass     under the profession of fortune-telling. She works by     charms, by spells, by th\' figure, and such daub\'ry as this     is, beyond our element. We know nothing. Come down, you     witch, you hag you; come down, I say.   MRS. FORD. Nay, good sweet husband! Good gentlemen, let     him not strike the old woman.     Re-enter FALSTAFF in woman\'s clothes, and MISTRESS PAGE      MRS. PAGE. Come, Mother Prat; come. give me your hand.   FORD. I\'ll prat her.  [Beating him]  Out of my door, you     witch, you hag, you. baggage, you polecat, you ronyon!     Out, out! I\'ll conjure you, I\'ll fortune-tell you.                                                    Exit FALSTAFF   MRS. PAGE. Are you not asham\'d? I think you have kill\'d the     poor woman.   MRS. FORD. Nay, he will do it. \'Tis a goodly credit for you.   FORD. Hang her, witch!   EVANS. By yea and no, I think the oman is a witch indeed; I     like not when a oman has a great peard; I spy a great peard     under his muffler.   FORD. Will you follow, gentlemen? I beseech you follow;     see but the issue of my jealousy; if I cry out thus upon no     trail, never trust me when I open again.   PAGE. Let\'s obey his humour a little further. Come,     gentlemen.            Exeunt all but MRS. FORD and MRS. PAGE   MRS. PAGE. Trust me, he beat him most pitifully.   MRS. FORD. Nay, by th\' mass, that he did not; he beat him     most unpitifully methought.     MRS. PAGE. I\'ll have the cudgel hallow\'d and hung o\'er the     altar; it hath done meritorious service.   MRS. FORD. What think you? May we, with the warrant of     womanhood and the witness of a good conscience, pursue     him with any further revenge?   MRS. PAGE. The spirit of wantonness is sure scar\'d out of     him; if the devil have him not in fee-simple, with fine and     recovery, he will never, I think, in the way of waste,     attempt us again.   MRS. FORD. Shall we tell our husbands how we have serv\'d     him?   MRS. PAGE. Yes, by all means; if it be but to scrape the     figures out of your husband\'s brains. If they can find in their     hearts the poor unvirtuous fat knight shall be any further     afflicted, we two will still be the ministers.   MRS. FORD. I\'ll warrant they\'ll have him publicly sham\'d;     and methinks there would be no period to the jest, should     he not be publicly sham\'d.   MRS. PAGE. Come, to the forge with it then; shape it. I     would not have things cool.                           Exeunt       SCENE 3.  The Garter Inn  Enter HOST and BARDOLPH    BARDOLPH. Sir, the Germans desire to have three of your     horses; the Duke himself will be to-morrow at court, and     they are going to meet him.   HOST. What duke should that be comes so secretly? I hear     not of him in the court. Let me speak with the gentlemen;     they speak English?   BARDOLPH. Ay, sir; I\'ll call them to you.   HOST. They shall have my horses, but I\'ll make them pay;     I\'ll sauce them; they have had my house a week at     command; I have turn\'d away my other guests. They must     come off; I\'ll sauce them. Come.                      Exeunt     SCENE 4  FORD\'S house  Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD, and SIR HUGH EVANS    EVANS. \'Tis one of the best discretions of a oman as ever     did look upon.   PAGE. And did he send you both these letters at an instant?   MRS. PAGE. Within a quarter of an hour.   FORD. Pardon me, wife. Henceforth, do what thou wilt;     I rather will suspect the sun with cold     Than thee with wantonness. Now doth thy honour stand,     In him that was of late an heretic,     As firm as faith.   PAGE. \'Tis well, \'tis well; no more.     Be not as extreme in submission as in offence;     But let our plot go forward. Let our wives     Yet once again, to make us public sport,     Appoint a meeting with this old fat fellow,     Where we may take him and disgrace him for it.     FORD. There is no better way than that they spoke of.   PAGE. How? To send him word they\'ll meet him in the Park     at midnight? Fie, fie! he\'ll never come!   EVANS. You say he has been thrown in the rivers; and has     been grievously peaten as an old oman; methinks there     should be terrors in him, that he should not come;     methinks his flesh is punish\'d; he shall have no desires.   PAGE. So think I too.   MRS. FORD. Devise but how you\'ll use him when he comes,     And let us two devise to bring him thither.   MRS. PAGE. There is an old tale goes that Heme the Hunter,     Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,     Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,     Walk round about an oak, with great ragg\'d horns;     And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,     And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain     In a most hideous and dreadful manner.     You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know     The superstitious idle-headed eld     Receiv\'d, and did deliver to our age,       This tale of Heme the Hunter for a truth.   PAGE. Why yet there want not many that do fear     In deep of night to walk by this Herne\'s oak.     But what of this?   MRS. FORD. Marry, this is our device-     That Falstaff at that oak shall meet with us,     Disguis\'d, like Heme, with huge horns on his head.   PAGE. Well, let it not be doubted but he\'ll come,     And in this shape. When you have brought him thither,     What shall be done with him? What is your plot?   MRS. PAGE. That likewise have we thought upon, and     thus:     Nan Page my daughter, and my little son,     And three or four more of their growth, we\'ll dress     Like urchins, ouphes, and fairies, green and white,     With rounds of waxen tapers on their heads,     And rattles in their hands; upon a sudden,     As Falstaff, she, and I, are newly met,     Let them from forth a sawpit rush at once     With some diffused song; upon their sight       We two in great amazedness will fly.     Then let them all encircle him about,     And fairy-like, to pinch the unclean knight;     And ask him why, that hour of fairy revel,     In their so sacred paths he dares to tread     In shape profane.   MRS. FORD. And till he tell the truth,     Let the supposed fairies pinch him sound,     And burn him with their tapers.   MRS. PAGE. The truth being known,     We\'ll all present ourselves; dis-horn the spirit,     And mock him home to Windsor.   FORD. The children must     Be practis\'d well to this or they\'ll nev\'r do \'t.   EVANS. I will teach the children their behaviours; and I will     be like a jack-an-apes also, to burn the knight with my     taber.   FORD. That will be excellent. I\'ll go buy them vizards.   MRS. PAGE. My Nan shall be the Queen of all the Fairies,     Finely attired in a robe of white.     PAGE. That silk will I go buy.  [Aside]  And in that time     Shall Master Slender steal my Nan away,     And marry her at Eton.-Go, send to Falstaff straight.   FORD. Nay, I\'ll to him again, in name of Brook;     He\'ll tell me all his purpose. Sure, he\'ll come.   MRS. PAGE. Fear not you that. Go get us properties     And tricking for our fairies.   EVANS. Let us about it. It is admirable pleasures, and fery     honest knaveries.               Exeunt PAGE, FORD, and EVANS   MRS. PAGE. Go, Mistress Ford.     Send Quickly to Sir John to know his mind.                                                   Exit MRS. FORD     I\'ll to the Doctor; he hath my good will,     And none but he, to marry with Nan Page.     That Slender, though well landed, is an idiot;     And he my husband best of all affects.     The Doctor is well money\'d, and his friends     Potent at court; he, none but he, shall have her,     Though twenty thousand worthier come to crave her.      Exit     SCENE 5.  The Garter Inn  Enter HOST and SIMPLE    HOST. What wouldst thou have, boor? What, thick-skin?     Speak, breathe, discuss; brief, short, quick, snap.   SIMPLE. Marry, sir, I come to speak with Sir John Falstaff     from Master Slender.   HOST. There\'s his chamber, his house, his castle, his     standing-bed and truckle-bed; \'tis painted about with the     story of the Prodigal, fresh and new. Go, knock and can; he\'ll     speak like an Anthropophaginian unto thee. Knock, I say.   SIMPLE. There\'s an old woman, a fat woman, gone up into     his chamber; I\'ll be so bold as stay, sir, till she come down;     I come to speak with her, indeed.   HOST. Ha! a fat woman? The knight may be robb\'d. I\'ll call.     Bully knight! Bully Sir John! Speak from thy lungs     military. Art thou there? It is thine host, thine Ephesian, calls.   FALSTAFF.  [Above]  How now, mine host?   HOST. Here\'s a Bohemian-Tartar tarries the coming down of       thy fat woman. Let her descend, bully, let her descend;     my chambers are honourible. Fie, privacy, fie!                      Enter FALSTAFF    FALSTAFF. There was, mine host, an old fat woman even     now with, me; but she\'s gone.   SIMPLE. Pray you, sir, was\'t not the wise woman of     Brainford?   FALSTAFF. Ay, marry was it, mussel-shell. What would you     with her?   SIMPLE. My master, sir, my Master Slender, sent to her,     seeing her go thorough the streets, to know, sir, whether one     Nym, sir, that beguil\'d him of a chain, had the chain or no.   FALSTAFF. I spake with the old woman about it.   SIMPLE. And what says she, I pray, sir?   FALSTAFF Marry, she says that the very same man that     beguil\'d Master Slender of his chain cozen\'d him of it.   SIMPLE. I would I could have spoken with the woman     herself; I had other things to have spoken with her too,       from him.   FALSTAFF. What are they? Let us know.   HOST. Ay, come; quick.   SIMPLE. I may not conceal them, sir.   FALSTAFF. Conceal them, or thou diest.     SIMPLE.. Why, sir, they were nothing but about Mistress     Anne Page: to know if it were my master\'s fortune to     have her or no.   FALSTAFF. \'Tis, \'tis his fortune.   SIMPLE. What sir?   FALSTAFF. To have her, or no. Go; say the woman told me     so.   SIMPLE. May I be bold to say so, sir?   FALSTAFF. Ay, sir, like who more bold?   SIMPLE., I thank your worship; I shall make my master glad     with these tidings.                              Exit SIMPLE   HOST. Thou art clerkly, thou art clerkly, Sir John. Was     there a wise woman with thee?   FALSTAFF. Ay, that there was, mine host; one that hath     taught me more wit than ever I learn\'d before in my life;       and I paid nothing for it neither, but was paid for my     learning.                      Enter BARDOLPH    BARDOLPH. Out, alas, sir, cozenage, mere cozenage!   HOST. Where be my horses? Speak well of them, varletto.   BARDOLPH. Run away with the cozeners; for so soon as I     came beyond Eton, they threw me off from behind one of     them, in a slough of mire; and set spurs and away, like     three German devils, three Doctor Faustuses.   HOST. They are gone but to meet the Duke, villain; do not     say they be fled. Germans are honest men.                   Enter SIR HUGH EVANS    EVANS. Where is mine host?   HOST. What is the matter, sir?   EVANS. Have a care of your entertainments. There is a friend     of mine come to town tells me there is three       cozen-germans that has cozen\'d all the hosts of Readins,     of Maidenhead, of Colebrook, of horses and money. I tell you for     good will, look you; you are wise, and full of gibes and     vlouting-stogs, and \'tis not convenient you should be     cozened. Fare you well.                                 Exit                    Enter DOCTOR CAIUS    CAIUS. Vere is mine host de Jarteer?   HOST. Here, Master Doctor, in perplexity and doubtful     dilemma.   CAIUS. I cannot tell vat is dat; but it is tell-a me dat you     make grand preparation for a Duke de Jamany. By my     trot, dere is no duke that the court is know to come; I     tell you for good will. Adieu.                          Exit   HOST. Hue and cry, villain, go! Assist me, knight; I am     undone. Fly, run, hue and cry, villain; I am undone.                                         Exeunt HOST and BARDOLPH   FALSTAFF. I would all the world might be cozen\'d, for I have     been cozen\'d and beaten too. If it should come to the car       of the court how I have been transformed, and how my     transformation hath been wash\'d and cudgell\'d, they     would melt me out of my fat, drop by drop, and liquor     fishermen\'s boots with me; I warrant they would whip me     with their fine wits till I were as crestfall\'n as a dried pear.     I never prosper\'d since I forswore myself at primero. Well,     if my wind were but long enough to say my prayers,     would repent.                  Enter MISTRESS QUICKLY      Now! whence come you?   QUICKLY. From the two parties, forsooth.   FALSTAFF. The devil take one party and his dam the other!     And so they shall be both bestowed. I have suffer\'d more     for their sakes, more than the villainous inconstancy of     man\'s disposition is able to bear.   QUICKLY. And have not they suffer\'d? Yes, I warrant;     speciously one of them; Mistress Ford, good heart, is beaten     black and blue, that you cannot see a white spot about her.     FALSTAFF. What tell\'st thou me of black and blue? I was     beaten myself into all the colours of the rainbow; and     was like to be apprehended for the witch of Brainford. But     that my admirable dexterity of wit, my counterfeiting the     action of an old woman, deliver\'d me, the knave constable     had set me i\' th\' stocks, i\' th\' common stocks, for a witch.   QUICKLY. Sir, let me speak with you in your chamber; you     shall hear how things go, and, I warrant, to your content.     Here is a letter will say somewhat. Good hearts, what ado     here is to bring you together! Sure, one of you does not     serve heaven well, that you are so cross\'d.   FALSTAFF. Come up into my chamber.                      Exeunt     SCENE 6.  The Garter Inn  Enter FENTON and HOST    HOST. Master Fenton, talk not to me; my mind is heavy; I     will give over all.   FENTON. Yet hear me speak. Assist me in my purpose,     And, as I am a gentleman, I\'ll give the     A hundred pound in gold more than your loss.   HOST. I will hear you, Master Fenton; and I will, at the least,     keep your counsel.   FENTON. From time to time I have acquainted you     With the dear love I bear to fair Anne Page;     Who, mutually, hath answer\'d my affection,     So far forth as herself might be her chooser,     Even to my wish. I have a letter from her     Of such contents as you will wonder at;     The mirth whereof so larded with my matter     That neither, singly, can be manifested     Without the show of both. Fat Falstaff       Hath a great scene. The image of the jest     I\'ll show you here at large. Hark, good mine host:     To-night at Heme\'s oak, just \'twixt twelve and one,     Must my sweet Nan present the Fairy Queen-     The purpose why is here-in which disguise,     While other jests are something rank on foot,     Her father hath commanded her to slip     Away with Slender, and with him at Eton     Immediately to marry; she hath consented.     Now, sir,     Her mother, even strong against that match     And firm for Doctor Caius, hath appointed     That he shall likewise shuffle her away     While other sports are tasking of their minds,     And at the dean\'ry, where a priest attends,     Straight marry her. To this her mother\'s plot     She seemingly obedient likewise hath     Made promise to the doctor. Now thus it rests:     Her father means she shall be all in white;     And in that habit, when Slender sees his time       To take her by the hand and bid her go,     She shall go with him; her mother hath intended     The better to denote her to the doctor-     For they must all be mask\'d and vizarded-     That quaint in green she shall be loose enrob\'d,     With ribands pendent, flaring \'bout her head;     And when the doctor spies his vantage ripe,     To pinch her by the hand, and, on that token,     The maid hath given consent to go with him.   HOST. Which means she to deceive, father or mother?   FENTON. Both, my good host, to go along with me.     And here it rests-that you\'ll procure the vicar     To stay for me at church, \'twixt twelve and one,     And in the lawful name of marrying,     To give our hearts united ceremony.   HOST. Well, husband your device; I\'ll to the vicar.     Bring you the maid, you shall not lack a priest.   FENTON. So shall I evermore be bound to thee;     Besides, I\'ll make a present recompense.              Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE 1.  The Garter Inn  Enter FALSTAFF and MISTRESS QUICKLY    FALSTAFF. Prithee, no more prattling; go. I\'ll, hold. This is     the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers.     Away, go; they say there is divinity in odd numbers, either     in nativity, chance, or death. Away.   QUICKLY. I\'ll provide you a chain, and I\'ll do what I can to     get you a pair of horns.   FALSTAFF. Away, I say; time wears; hold up your head, and     mince.                                     Exit MRS. QUICKLY                   Enter FORD disguised      How now, Master Brook. Master Brook, the matter will     be known tonight or never. Be you in the Park about     midnight, at Herne\'s oak, and you shall see wonders.   FORD. Went you not to her yesterday, sir, as you told me     you had appointed?     FALSTAFF. I went to her, Master Brook, as you see, like a     poor old man; but I came from her, Master Brook, like a     poor old woman. That same knave Ford, her husband, hath     the finest mad devil of jealousy in him, Master Brook, that     ever govern\'d frenzy. I will tell you-he beat me grievously     in the shape of a woman; for in the shape of man, Master     Brook, I fear not Goliath with a weaver\'s beam; because     I know also life is a shuttle. I am in haste; go along with     me; I\'ll. tell you all, Master Brook. Since I pluck\'d geese,     play\'d truant, and whipp\'d top, I knew not what \'twas to     be beaten till lately. Follow me. I\'ll tell you strange things     of this knave-Ford, on whom to-night I will be revenged,     and I will deliver his wife into your hand. Follow. Strange     things in hand, Master Brook! Follow.                 Exeunt     SCENE 2.  Windsor Park  Enter PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER    PAGE. Come, come; we\'ll couch i\' th\' Castle ditch till we     see the light of our fairies. Remember, son Slender, my daughter.   SLENDER. Ay, forsooth; I have spoke with her, and we have     a nay-word how to know one another. I come to her in     white and cry \'mum\'; she cries \'budget,\' and by that we     know one another.   SHALLOW. That\'s good too; but what needs either your mum     or her budget? The white will decipher her well enough.     It hath struck ten o\'clock.   PAGE. The night is dark; light and spirits will become it well.     Heaven prosper our sport! No man means evil but the     devil, and we shall know him by his horns. Let\'s away;     follow me.                                            Exeunt     SCENE 3.  A street leading to the Park  Enter MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD, and DOCTOR CAIUS    MRS. PAGE. Master Doctor, my daughter is in green; when     you see your time, take her by the hand, away with her to     the deanery, and dispatch it quickly. Go before into the     Park; we two must go together.   CAIUS. I know vat I have to do; adieu.   MRS. PAGE. Fare you well, sir.  [Exit CAIUS]  My husband     will not rejoice so much at the abuse of Falstaff as he will     chafe at the doctor\'s marrying my daughter; but \'tis no     matter; better a little chiding than a great deal of     heartbreak.   MRS. FORD. Where is Nan now, and her troop of fairies, and     the Welsh devil, Hugh?   MRS. PAGE. They are all couch\'d in a pit hard by Heme\'s     oak, with obscur\'d lights; which, at the very instant of     Falstaff\'s and our meeting, they will at once display to the     night.   MRS. FORD. That cannot choose but amaze him.   MRS. PAGE. If he be not amaz\'d, he will be mock\'d; if he be       amaz\'d, he will every way be mock\'d.   MRS. FORD. We\'ll betray him finely.   MRS. PAGE. Against such lewdsters and their lechery,     Those that betray them do no treachery.   MRS. FORD. The hour draws on. To the oak, to the oak!                                                           Exeunt     SCENE 4.  Windsor Park  Enter SIR HUGH EVANS like a satyr, with OTHERS as fairies    EVANS. Trib, trib, fairies; come; and remember your parts.     Be pold, I pray you; follow me into the pit; and when I     give the watch-ords, do as I pid you. Come, come; trib,     trib.                                                 Exeunt     SCENE 5.  Another part of the Park  Enter FALSTAFF disguised as HERNE    FALSTAFF. The Windsor bell hath struck twelve; the minute     draws on. Now the hot-blooded gods assist me!     Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa; love set on thy     horns. O powerful love! that in some respects makes a     beast a man; in some other a man a beast. You were also,     Jupiter, a swan, for the love of Leda. O omnipotent love!     how near the god drew to the complexion of a goose! A     fault done first in the form of a beast-O Jove, a beastly     fault!-and then another fault in the semblance of a fowl-     think on\'t, Jove, a foul fault! When gods have hot backs     what shall poor men do? For me, I am here a Windsor     stag; and the fattest, I think, i\' th\' forest. Send me a cool     rut-time, Jove, or who can blame me to piss my tallow?     Who comes here? my doe?          Enter MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE      MRS. FORD. Sir John! Art thou there, my deer, my male deer.   FALSTAFF. My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain     potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Greensleeves, hail     kissing-comfits, and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest     of provocation, I will shelter me here.      [Embracing her]   MRS. FORD. Mistress Page is come with me, sweetheart.   FALSTAFF. Divide me like a brib\'d buck, each a haunch; I     will keep my sides to myself, my shoulders for the fellow     of this walk, and my horns I bequeath your husbands. Am     I a woodman, ha? Speak I like Heme the Hunter? Why,     now is Cupid a child of conscience; he makes restitution.     As I am a true spirit, welcome!           [A noise of horns]   MRS. PAGE. Alas, what noise?   MRS. FORD. Heaven forgive our sins!   FALSTAFF. What should this be?   MRS. FORD. } Away, away.   MRS. PAGE. } Away, away.                        [They run off]   FALSTAFF. I think the devil will not have me damn\'d, lest the     oil that\'s in me should set hell on fire; he would never else       cross me thus.          Enter SIR HUGH EVANS like a satyr, ANNE PAGE as       a fairy, and OTHERS as the Fairy Queen, fairies, and                Hobgoblin; all with tapers    FAIRY QUEEN. Fairies, black, grey, green, and white,     You moonshine revellers, and shades of night,     You orphan heirs of fixed destiny,     Attend your office and your quality.     Crier Hobgoblin, make the fairy oyes.   PUCK. Elves, list your names; silence, you airy toys.     Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap;     Where fires thou find\'st unrak\'d, and hearths unswept,     There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry;     Our radiant Queen hates sluts and sluttery.   FALSTAFF. They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die.     I\'ll wink and couch; no man their works must eye.                                        [Lies down upon his face]   EVANS. Where\'s Pede? Go you, and where you find a maid       That, ere she sleep, has thrice her prayers said,     Raise up the organs of her fantasy     Sleep she as sound as careless infancy;     But those as sleep and think not on their sins,     Pinch them, arms, legs, backs, shoulders, sides, and shins.   FAIRY QUEEN. About, about;     Search Windsor castle, elves, within and out;     Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room,     That it may stand till the perpetual doom     In state as wholesome as in state \'tis fit,     Worthy the owner and the owner it.     The several chairs of order look you scour     With juice of balm and every precious flower;     Each fair instalment, coat, and sev\'ral crest,     With loyal blazon, evermore be blest!     And nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing,     Like to the Garter\'s compass, in a ring;     Th\' expressure that it bears, green let it be,     More fertile-fresh than all the field to see;     And \'Honi soit qui mal y pense\' write       In em\'rald tufts, flow\'rs purple, blue and white;     Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,     Buckled below fair knighthood\'s bending knee.     Fairies use flow\'rs for their charactery.     Away, disperse; but till \'tis one o\'clock,     Our dance of custom round about the oak     Of Herne the Hunter let us not forget.   EVANS. Pray you, lock hand in hand; yourselves in order set;     And twenty glow-worms shall our lanterns be,     To guide our measure round about the tree.     But, stay. I smell a man of middle earth.   FALSTAFF. Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he     transform me to a piece of cheese!   PUCK. Vile worm, thou wast o\'erlook\'d even in thy birth.   FAIRY QUEEN. With trial-fire touch me his finger-end;     If he be chaste, the flame will back descend,     And turn him to no pain; but if he start,     It is the flesh of a corrupted heart.   PUCK. A trial, come.   EVANS. Come, will this wood take fire?                [They put the tapers to his fingers, and he starts]   FALSTAFF. Oh, oh, oh!   FAIRY QUEEN. Corrupt, corrupt, and tainted in desire!     About him, fairies; sing a scornful rhyme;     And, as you trip, still pinch him to your time.   THE SONG.     Fie on sinful fantasy!     Fie on lust and luxury!     Lust is but a bloody fire,     Kindled with unchaste desire,     Fed in heart, whose flames aspire,     As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher.     Pinch him, fairies, mutually;     Pinch him for his villainy;     Pinch him and burn him and turn him about,     Till candles and star-light and moonshine be out.          During this song they pinch FALSTAFF. DOCTOR         CAIUS comes one way, and steals away a fairy in         green; SLENDER another way, and takes off a fairy in           white; and FENTON steals away ANNE PAGE. A noise         of hunting is heard within. All the fairies run away.         FALSTAFF pulls off his buck\'s head, and rises         Enter PAGE, FORD, MISTRESS PAGE, MISTRESS FORD, and                         SIR HUGH EVANS    PAGE. Nay, do not fly; I think we have watch\'d you now.     Will none but Heme the Hunter serve your turn?   MRS. PAGE. I pray you, come, hold up the jest no higher.     Now, good Sir John, how like you Windsor wives?     See you these, husband? Do not these fair yokes     Become the forest better than the town?   FORD. Now, sir, who\'s a cuckold now? Master Brook,     Falstaff\'s a knave, a cuckoldly knave; here are his horns,     Master Brook; and, Master Brook, he hath enjoyed nothing of     Ford\'s but his buck-basket, his cudgel, and twenty pounds     of money, which must be paid to Master Brook; his horses     are arrested for it, Master Brook.   MRS. FORD. Sir John, we have had ill luck; we could never       meet. I will never take you for my love again; but I will     always count you my deer.   FALSTAFF. I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass.   FORD. Ay, and an ox too; both the proofs are extant.   FALSTAFF. And these are not fairies? I was three or four     times in the thought they were not fairies; and yet the     guiltiness of my mind, the sudden surprise of my powers,     drove the grossness of the foppery into a receiv\'d belief,     in despite of the teeth of all rhyme and reason, that they     were fairies. See now how wit may be made a Jack-a-Lent     when \'tis upon ill employment.   EVANS. Sir John Falstaff, serve Got, and leave your desires,     and fairies will not pinse you.   FORD. Well said, fairy Hugh.   EVANS. And leave you your jealousies too, I pray you.   FORD. I will never mistrust my wife again, till thou art able     to woo her in good English.   FALSTAFF. Have I laid my brain in the sun, and dried it, that     it wants matter to prevent so gross, o\'er-reaching as this?     Am I ridden with a Welsh goat too? Shall I have a cox-comb       of frieze? \'Tis time I were chok\'d with a piece of     toasted cheese.   EVANS. Seese is not good to give putter; your belly is all     putter.   FALSTAFF. \'Seese\' and \'putter\'! Have I liv\'d to stand at the     taunt of one that makes fritters of English? This is enough     to be the decay of lust and late-walking through the realm.   MRS. PAGE. Why, Sir John, do you think, though we would     have thrust virtue out of our hearts by the head and     shoulders, and have given ourselves without scruple to hell,     that ever the devil could have made you our delight?   FORD. What, a hodge-pudding? a bag of flax?   MRS. PAGE. A puff\'d man?   PAGE. Old, cold, wither\'d, and of intolerable entrails?   FORD. And one that is as slanderous as Satan?   PAGE. And as poor as Job?   FORD. And as wicked as his wife?   EVANS. And given to fornications, and to taverns, and sack,     and wine, and metheglins, and to drinkings, and swearings,     and starings, pribbles and prabbles?     FALSTAFF. Well, I am your theme; you have the start of me;     I am dejected; I am not able to answer the Welsh flannel;     ignorance itself is a plummet o\'er me; use me as you will.   FORD. Marry, sir, we\'ll bring you to Windsor, to one Master     Brook, that you have cozen\'d of money, to whom you     should have been a pander. Over and above that you have     suffer\'d, I think to repay that money will be a biting     affliction.   PAGE. Yet be cheerful, knight; thou shalt eat a posset     tonight at my house, where I will desire thee to laugh at my     wife, that now laughs at thee. Tell her Master Slender hath     married her daughter.   MRS. PAGE.  [Aside]  Doctors doubt that; if Anne Page be     my daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius\' wife.                          Enter SLENDER    SLENDER. Whoa, ho, ho, father Page!   PAGE. Son, how now! how now, son! Have you dispatch\'d\'?   SLENDER. Dispatch\'d! I\'ll make the best in Gloucestershire       know on\'t; would I were hang\'d, la, else!   PAGE. Of what, son?   SLENDER. I came yonder at Eton to marry Mistress Anne     Page, and she\'s a great lubberly boy. If it had not been i\'     th\' church, I would have swing\'d him, or he should have     swing\'d me. If I did not think it had been Anne Page,     would I might never stir!-and \'tis a postmaster\'s boy.   PAGE. Upon my life, then, you took the wrong.   SLENDER. What need you tell me that? I think so, when I     took a boy for a girl. If I had been married to him, for all     he was in woman\'s apparel, I would not have had him.   PAGE. Why, this is your own folly. Did not I tell you how     you should know my daughter by her garments?   SLENDER. I went to her in white and cried \'mum\' and she     cried \'budget\' as Anne and I had appointed; and yet it was     not Anne, but a postmaster\'s boy.   MRS. PAGE. Good George, be not angry. I knew of your     purpose; turn\'d my daughter into green; and, indeed, she     is now with the Doctor at the dean\'ry, and there married.                             Enter CAIUS    CAIUS. Vere is Mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened; I ha\'     married un garcon, a boy; un paysan, by gar, a boy; it is     not Anne Page; by gar, I am cozened.   MRS. PAGE. Why, did you take her in green?   CAIUS. Ay, be gar, and \'tis a boy; be gar, I\'ll raise all     Windsor.                                          Exit CAIUS   FORD. This is strange. Who hath got the right Anne?   PAGE. My heart misgives me; here comes Master Fenton.                    Enter FENTON and ANNE PAGE      How now, Master Fenton!   ANNE. Pardon, good father. Good my mother, pardon.   PAGE. Now, Mistress, how chance you went not with Master     Slender?   MRS. PAGE. Why went you not with Master Doctor, maid?   FENTON. You do amaze her. Hear the truth of it.     You would have married her most shamefully,       Where there was no proportion held in love.     The truth is, she and I, long since contracted,     Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us.     Th\' offence is holy that she hath committed;     And this deceit loses the name of craft,     Of disobedience, or unduteous title,     Since therein she doth evitate and shun     A thousand irreligious cursed hours,     Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.   FORD. Stand not amaz\'d; here is no remedy.     In love, the heavens themselves do guide the state;     Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate.   FALSTAFF. I am glad, though you have ta\'en a special stand     to strike at me, that your arrow hath glanc\'d.   PAGE. Well, what remedy? Fenton, heaven give thee joy!     What cannot be eschew\'d must be embrac\'d.   FALSTAFF. When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chas\'d.   MRS. PAGE. Well, I will muse no further. Master Fenton,     Heaven give you many, many merry days!     Good husband, let us every one go home,       And laugh this sport o\'er by a country fire;     Sir John and all.   FORD. Let it be so. Sir John,     To Master Brook you yet shall hold your word;     For he, to-night, shall lie with Mistress Ford.       Exeunt  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1596  A MIDSUMMER NIGHT\'S DREAM  by William Shakespeare    DRAMATIS PERSONAE    THESEUS, Duke of Athens   EGEUS, father to Hermia   LYSANDER, in love with Hermia   DEMETRIUS, in love with Hermia   PHILOSTRATE, Master of the Revels to Theseus   QUINCE, a carpenter   SNUG, a joiner   BOTTOM, a weaver   FLUTE, a bellows-mender   SNOUT, a tinker   STARVELING, a tailor    HIPPOLYTA, Queen of the Amazons, bethrothed to Theseus   HERMIA, daughter to Egeus, in love with Lysander   HELENA, in love with Demetrius    OBERON, King of the Fairies   TITANIA, Queen of the Fairies   PUCK, or ROBIN GOODFELLOW   PEASEBLOSSOM, fairy     COBWEB, fairy   MOTH, fairy   MUSTARDSEED, fairy    PROLOGUE, PYRAMUS, THISBY, WALL, MOONSHINE, LION are presented by:     QUINCE, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, STARVELING, AND SNUG    Other Fairies attending their King and Queen   Attendants on Theseus and Hippolyta     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: Athens and a wood near it   ACT I. SCENE I. Athens. The palace of THESEUS  Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, and ATTENDANTS    THESEUS. Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour     Draws on apace; four happy days bring in     Another moon; but, O, methinks, how slow     This old moon wanes! She lingers my desires,     Like to a step-dame or a dowager,     Long withering out a young man\'s revenue.   HIPPOLYTA. Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;     Four nights will quickly dream away the time;     And then the moon, like to a silver bow     New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night     Of our solemnities.   THESEUS. Go, Philostrate,     Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments;     Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth;     Turn melancholy forth to funerals;     The pale companion is not for our pomp.     Exit PHILOSTRATE     Hippolyta, I woo\'d thee with my sword,       And won thy love doing thee injuries;     But I will wed thee in another key,     With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.            Enter EGEUS, and his daughter HERMIA, LYSANDER,                            and DEMETRIUS    EGEUS. Happy be Theseus, our renowned Duke!   THESEUS. Thanks, good Egeus; what\'s the news with thee?   EGEUS. Full of vexation come I, with complaint     Against my child, my daughter Hermia.     Stand forth, Demetrius. My noble lord,     This man hath my consent to marry her.     Stand forth, Lysander. And, my gracious Duke,     This man hath bewitch\'d the bosom of my child.     Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes,     And interchang\'d love-tokens with my child;     Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,     With feigning voice, verses of feigning love,     And stol\'n the impression of her fantasy       With bracelets of thy hair, rings, gawds, conceits,     Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats- messengers     Of strong prevailment in unhardened youth;     With cunning hast thou filch\'d my daughter\'s heart;     Turn\'d her obedience, which is due to me,     To stubborn harshness. And, my gracious Duke,     Be it so she will not here before your Grace     Consent to marry with Demetrius,     I beg the ancient privilege of Athens:     As she is mine I may dispose of her;     Which shall be either to this gentleman     Or to her death, according to our law     Immediately provided in that case.   THESEUS. What say you, Hermia? Be advis\'d, fair maid.     To you your father should be as a god;     One that compos\'d your beauties; yea, and one     To whom you are but as a form in wax,     By him imprinted, and within his power     To leave the figure, or disfigure it.     Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.     HERMIA. So is Lysander.   THESEUS. In himself he is;     But, in this kind, wanting your father\'s voice,     The other must be held the worthier.   HERMIA. I would my father look\'d but with my eyes.   THESEUS. Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.   HERMIA. I do entreat your Grace to pardon me.     I know not by what power I am made bold,     Nor how it may concern my modesty     In such a presence here to plead my thoughts;     But I beseech your Grace that I may know     The worst that may befall me in this case,     If I refuse to wed Demetrius.   THESEUS. Either to die the death, or to abjure     For ever the society of men.     Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires,     Know of your youth, examine well your blood,     Whether, if you yield not to your father\'s choice,     You can endure the livery of a nun,     For aye to be shady cloister mew\'d,       To live a barren sister all your life,     Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.     Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood     To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;     But earthlier happy is the rose distill\'d     Than that which withering on the virgin thorn     Grows, lives, and dies, in single blessedness.   HERMIA. So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,     Ere I will yield my virgin patent up     Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke     My soul consents not to give sovereignty.   THESEUS. Take time to pause; and by the next new moon-     The sealing-day betwixt my love and me     For everlasting bond of fellowship-     Upon that day either prepare to die     For disobedience to your father\'s will,     Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would,     Or on Diana\'s altar to protest     For aye austerity and single life.   DEMETRIUS. Relent, sweet Hermia; and, Lysander, yield       Thy crazed title to my certain right.   LYSANDER. You have her father\'s love, Demetrius;     Let me have Hermia\'s; do you marry him.   EGEUS. Scornful Lysander, true, he hath my love;     And what is mine my love shall render him;     And she is mine; and all my right of her     I do estate unto Demetrius.   LYSANDER. I am, my lord, as well deriv\'d as he,     As well possess\'d; my love is more than his;     My fortunes every way as fairly rank\'d,     If not with vantage, as Demetrius\';     And, which is more than all these boasts can be,     I am belov\'d of beauteous Hermia.     Why should not I then prosecute my right?     Demetrius, I\'ll avouch it to his head,     Made love to Nedar\'s daughter, Helena,     And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes,     Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,     Upon this spotted and inconstant man.   THESEUS. I must confess that I have heard so much,       And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof;     But, being over-full of self-affairs,     My mind did lose it. But, Demetrius, come;     And come, Egeus; you shall go with me;     I have some private schooling for you both.     For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself     To fit your fancies to your father\'s will,     Or else the law of Athens yields you up-     Which by no means we may extenuate-     To death, or to a vow of single life.     Come, my Hippolyta; what cheer, my love?     Demetrius, and Egeus, go along;     I must employ you in some business     Against our nuptial, and confer with you     Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.   EGEUS. With duty and desire we follow you.                               Exeunt all but LYSANDER and HERMIA   LYSANDER. How now, my love! Why is your cheek so pale?     How chance the roses there do fade so fast?   HERMIA. Belike for want of rain, which I could well       Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.   LYSANDER. Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,     Could ever hear by tale or history,     The course of true love never did run smooth;     But either it was different in blood-   HERMIA. O cross! too high to be enthrall\'d to low.   LYSANDER. Or else misgraffed in respect of years-   HERMIA. O spite! too old to be engag\'d to young.   LYSANDER. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends-   HERMIA. O hell! to choose love by another\'s eyes.   LYSANDER. Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,     War, death, or sickness, did lay siege to it,     Making it momentary as a sound,     Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,     Brief as the lightning in the collied night     That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,     And ere a man hath power to say \'Behold!\'     The jaws of darkness do devour it up;     So quick bright things come to confusion.   HERMIA. If then true lovers have ever cross\'d,       It stands as an edict in destiny.     Then let us teach our trial patience,     Because it is a customary cross,     As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,     Wishes and tears, poor Fancy\'s followers.   LYSANDER. A good persuasion; therefore, hear me, Hermia.     I have a widow aunt, a dowager     Of great revenue, and she hath no child-     From Athens is her house remote seven leagues-     And she respects me as her only son.     There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;     And to that place the sharp Athenian law     Cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me then,     Steal forth thy father\'s house to-morrow night;     And in the wood, a league without the town,     Where I did meet thee once with Helena     To do observance to a morn of May,     There will I stay for thee.   HERMIA. My good Lysander!     I swear to thee by Cupid\'s strongest bow,       By his best arrow, with the golden head,     By the simplicity of Venus\' doves,     By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves,     And by that fire which burn\'d the Carthage Queen,     When the false Troyan under sail was seen,     By all the vows that ever men have broke,     In number more than ever women spoke,     In that same place thou hast appointed me,     To-morrow truly will I meet with thee.   LYSANDER. Keep promise, love. Look, here comes Helena.                           Enter HELENA    HERMIA. God speed fair Helena! Whither away?   HELENA. Call you me fair? That fair again unsay.     Demetrius loves your fair. O happy fair!     Your eyes are lode-stars and your tongue\'s sweet air     More tuneable than lark to shepherd\'s ear,     When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.     Sickness is catching; O, were favour so,       Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go!     My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,     My tongue should catch your tongue\'s sweet melody.     Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,     The rest I\'d give to be to you translated.     O, teach me how you look, and with what art     You sway the motion of Demetrius\' heart!   HERMIA. I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.   HELENA. O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!   HERMIA. I give him curses, yet he gives me love.   HELENA. O that my prayers could such affection move!   HERMIA. The more I hate, the more he follows me.   HELENA. The more I love, the more he hateth me.   HERMIA. His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.   HELENA. None, but your beauty; would that fault were mine!   HERMIA. Take comfort: he no more shall see my face;     Lysander and myself will fly this place.     Before the time I did Lysander see,     Seem\'d Athens as a paradise to me.     O, then, what graces in my love do dwell,       That he hath turn\'d a heaven unto a hell!   LYSANDER. Helen, to you our minds we will unfold:     To-morrow night, when Phoebe doth behold     Her silver visage in the wat\'ry glass,     Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,     A time that lovers\' flights doth still conceal,     Through Athens\' gates have we devis\'d to steal.   HERMIA. And in the wood where often you and I     Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie,     Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet,     There my Lysander and myself shall meet;     And thence from Athens turn away our eyes,     To seek new friends and stranger companies.     Farewell, sweet playfellow; pray thou for us,     And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius!     Keep word, Lysander; we must starve our sight     From lovers\' food till morrow deep midnight.   LYSANDER. I will, my Hermia. [Exit HERMIA] Helena, adieu;     As you on him, Demetrius dote on you.                   Exit   HELENA. How happy some o\'er other some can be!       Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.     But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;     He will not know what all but he do know.     And as he errs, doting on Hermia\'s eyes,     So I, admiring of his qualities.     Things base and vile, holding no quantity,     Love can transpose to form and dignity.     Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;     And therefore is wing\'d Cupid painted blind.     Nor hath Love\'s mind of any judgment taste;     Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste;     And therefore is Love said to be a child,     Because in choice he is so oft beguil\'d.     As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,     So the boy Love is perjur\'d everywhere;     For ere Demetrius look\'d on Hermia\'s eyne,     He hail\'d down oaths that he was only mine;     And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,     So he dissolv\'d, and show\'rs of oaths did melt.     I will go tell him of fair Hermia\'s flight;       Then to the wood will he to-morrow night     Pursue her; and for this intelligence     If I have thanks, it is a dear expense.     But herein mean I to enrich my pain,     To have his sight thither and back again.               Exit     SCENE II. Athens. QUINCE\'S house  Enter QUINCE, SNUG, BOTTOM FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING    QUINCE. Is all our company here?   BOTTOM. You were best to call them generally, man by man, according     to the scrip.   QUINCE. Here is the scroll of every man\'s name which is thought     fit, through all Athens, to play in our interlude before the Duke     and the Duchess on his wedding-day at night.   BOTTOM. First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on; then     read the names of the actors; and so grow to a point.   QUINCE. Marry, our play is \'The most Lamentable Comedy and most     Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisby.\'   BOTTOM. A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a merry. Now,     good Peter Quince, call forth your actors by the scroll. Masters,     spread yourselves.   QUINCE. Answer, as I call you. Nick Bottom, the weaver.   BOTTOM. Ready. Name what part I am for, and proceed.   QUINCE. You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.     BOTTOM. What is Pyramus? A lover, or a tyrant?   QUINCE. A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love.   BOTTOM. That will ask some tears in the true performing of it. If I     do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms; I     will condole in some measure. To the rest- yet my chief humour is     for a tyrant. I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat     in, to make all split.                   \'The raging rocks                  And shivering shocks                  Shall break the locks                    Of prison gates;                   And Phibbus\' car                  Shall shine from far,                  And make and mar                    The foolish Fates.\'      This was lofty. Now name the rest of the players. This is     Ercles\' vein, a tyrant\'s vein: a lover is more condoling.     QUINCE. Francis Flute, the bellows-mender.   FLUTE. Here, Peter Quince.   QUINCE. Flute, you must take Thisby on you.   FLUTE. What is Thisby? A wand\'ring knight?   QUINCE. It is the lady that Pyramus must love.   FLUTE. Nay, faith, let not me play a woman; I have a beard coming.   QUINCE. That\'s all one; you shall play it in a mask, and you may     speak as small as you will.   BOTTOM. An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too.     I\'ll speak in a monstrous little voice: \'Thisne, Thisne!\'     [Then speaking small] \'Ah Pyramus, my lover dear! Thy     Thisby dear, and lady dear!\'   QUINCE. No, no, you must play Pyramus; and, Flute, you Thisby.   BOTTOM. Well, proceed.   QUINCE. Robin Starveling, the tailor.   STARVELING. Here, Peter Quince.   QUINCE. Robin Starveling, you must play Thisby\'s mother.     Tom Snout, the tinker.   SNOUT. Here, Peter Quince.   QUINCE. You, Pyramus\' father; myself, Thisby\'s father; Snug, the       joiner, you, the lion\'s part. And, I hope, here is a play fitted.   SNUG. Have you the lion\'s part written? Pray you, if it be, give it     me, for I am slow of study.   QUINCE. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.   BOTTOM. Let me play the lion too. I will roar that I will do any     man\'s heart good to hear me; I will roar that I will make the     Duke say \'Let him roar again, let him roar again.\'   QUINCE. An you should do it too terribly, you would fright the     Duchess and the ladies, that they would shriek; and that were     enough to hang us all.   ALL. That would hang us, every mother\'s son.   BOTTOM. I grant you, friends, if you should fright the ladies out     of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us;     but I will aggravate my voice so, that I will roar you as gently     as any sucking dove; I will roar you an \'twere any nightingale.   QUINCE. You can play no part but Pyramus; for Pyramus is a     sweet-fac\'d man; a proper man, as one shall see in a summer\'s     day; a most lovely gentleman-like man; therefore you must needs     play Pyramus.   BOTTOM. Well, I will undertake it. What beard were I best to play       it in?   QUINCE. Why, what you will.   BOTTOM. I will discharge it in either your straw-colour beard, your     orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your     French-crown-colour beard, your perfect yellow.   QUINCE. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and then     you will play bare-fac\'d. But, masters, here are your parts; and     I am to entreat you, request you, and desire you, to con them by     to-morrow night; and meet me in the palace wood, a mile without     the town, by moonlight; there will we rehearse; for if we meet in     the city, we shall be dogg\'d with company, and our devices known.     In the meantime I will draw a bill of properties, such as our     play wants. I pray you, fail me not.   BOTTOM. We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and     courageously. Take pains; be perfect; adieu.   QUINCE. At the Duke\'s oak we meet.   BOTTOM. Enough; hold, or cut bow-strings.               Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. A wood near Athens  Enter a FAIRY at One door, and PUCK at another    PUCK. How now, spirit! whither wander you?   FAIRY.      Over hill, over dale,                 Thorough bush, thorough brier,               Over park, over pale,                 Thorough flood, thorough fire,               I do wander every where,               Swifter than the moon\'s sphere;               And I serve the Fairy Queen,               To dew her orbs upon the green.               The cowslips tall her pensioners be;               In their gold coats spots you see;               Those be rubies, fairy favours,               In those freckles live their savours.      I must go seek some dewdrops here,     And hang a pearl in every cowslip\'s ear.     Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I\'ll be gone.       Our Queen and all her elves come here anon.   PUCK. The King doth keep his revels here to-night;     Take heed the Queen come not within his sight;     For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,     Because that she as her attendant hath     A lovely boy, stolen from an Indian king.     She never had so sweet a changeling;     And jealous Oberon would have the child     Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild;     But she perforce withholds the loved boy,     Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy.     And now they never meet in grove or green,     By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen,     But they do square, that all their elves for fear     Creep into acorn cups and hide them there.   FAIRY. Either I mistake your shape and making quite,     Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite     Call\'d Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he     That frights the maidens of the villagery,     Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern,       And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,     And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,     Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?     Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,     You do their work, and they shall have good luck.     Are not you he?   PUCK. Thou speakest aright:     I am that merry wanderer of the night.     I jest to Oberon, and make him smile     When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,     Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;     And sometime lurk I in a gossip\'s bowl     In very likeness of a roasted crab,     And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,     And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.     The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,     Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;     Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,     And \'tailor\' cries, and falls into a cough;     And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,       And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear     A merrier hour was never wasted there.     But room, fairy, here comes Oberon.   FAIRY. And here my mistress. Would that he were gone!         Enter OBERON at one door, with his TRAIN, and TITANIA,                         at another, with hers    OBERON. Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.   TITANIA. What, jealous Oberon! Fairies, skip hence;     I have forsworn his bed and company.   OBERON. Tarry, rash wanton; am not I thy lord?   TITANIA. Then I must be thy lady; but I know     When thou hast stolen away from fairy land,     And in the shape of Corin sat all day,     Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love     To amorous Phillida. Why art thou here,     Come from the farthest steep of India,     But that, forsooth, the bouncing Amazon,     Your buskin\'d mistress and your warrior love,       To Theseus must be wedded, and you come     To give their bed joy and prosperity?   OBERON. How canst thou thus, for shame, Titania,     Glance at my credit with Hippolyta,     Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?     Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night     From Perigouna, whom he ravished?     And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,     With Ariadne and Antiopa?   TITANIA. These are the forgeries of jealousy;     And never, since the middle summer\'s spring,     Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,     By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,     Or in the beached margent of the sea,     To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,     But with thy brawls thou hast disturb\'d our sport.     Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,     As in revenge, have suck\'d up from the sea     Contagious fogs; which, falling in the land,     Hath every pelting river made so proud       That they have overborne their continents.     The ox hath therefore stretch\'d his yoke in vain,     The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn     Hath rotted ere his youth attain\'d a beard;     The fold stands empty in the drowned field,     And crows are fatted with the murrion flock;     The nine men\'s morris is fill\'d up with mud,     And the quaint mazes in the wanton green,     For lack of tread, are undistinguishable.     The human mortals want their winter here;     No night is now with hymn or carol blest;     Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,     Pale in her anger, washes all the air,     That rheumatic diseases do abound.     And thorough this distemperature we see     The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts     Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose;     And on old Hiems\' thin and icy crown     An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds     Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,       The childing autumn, angry winter, change     Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,     By their increase, now knows not which is which.     And this same progeny of evils comes     From our debate, from our dissension;     We are their parents and original.   OBERON. Do you amend it, then; it lies in you.     Why should Titania cross her Oberon?     I do but beg a little changeling boy     To be my henchman.   TITANIA. Set your heart at rest;     The fairy land buys not the child of me.     His mother was a vot\'ress of my order;     And, in the spiced Indian air, by night,     Full often hath she gossip\'d by my side;     And sat with me on Neptune\'s yellow sands,     Marking th\' embarked traders on the flood;     When we have laugh\'d to see the sails conceive,     And grow big-bellied with the wanton wind;     Which she, with pretty and with swimming gait       Following- her womb then rich with my young squire-     Would imitate, and sail upon the land,     To fetch me trifles, and return again,     As from a voyage, rich with merchandise.     But she, being mortal, of that boy did die;     And for her sake do I rear up her boy;     And for her sake I will not part with him.   OBERON. How long within this wood intend you stay?   TITANIA. Perchance till after Theseus\' wedding-day.     If you will patiently dance in our round,     And see our moonlight revels, go with us;     If not, shun me, and I will spare your haunts.   OBERON. Give me that boy and I will go with thee.   TITANIA. Not for thy fairy kingdom. Fairies, away.     We shall chide downright if I longer stay.                                      Exit TITANIA with her train   OBERON. Well, go thy way; thou shalt not from this grove     Till I torment thee for this injury.     My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb\'rest     Since once I sat upon a promontory,       And heard a mermaid on a dolphin\'s back     Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath     That the rude sea grew civil at her song,     And certain stars shot madly from their spheres     To hear the sea-maid\'s music.   PUCK. I remember.   OBERON. That very time I saw, but thou couldst not,     Flying between the cold moon and the earth     Cupid, all arm\'d; a certain aim he took     At a fair vestal, throned by the west,     And loos\'d his love-shaft smartly from his bow,     As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts;     But I might see young Cupid\'s fiery shaft     Quench\'d in the chaste beams of the wat\'ry moon;     And the imperial vot\'ress passed on,     In maiden meditation, fancy-free.     Yet mark\'d I where the bolt of Cupid fell.     It fell upon a little western flower,     Before milk-white, now purple with love\'s wound,     And maidens call it Love-in-idleness.       Fetch me that flow\'r, the herb I showed thee once.     The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid     Will make or man or woman madly dote     Upon the next live creature that it sees.     Fetch me this herb, and be thou here again     Ere the leviathan can swim a league.   PUCK. I\'ll put a girdle round about the earth     In forty minutes.                                  Exit PUCK   OBERON. Having once this juice,     I\'ll watch Titania when she is asleep,     And drop the liquor of it in her eyes;     The next thing then she waking looks upon,     Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or bull,     On meddling monkey, or on busy ape,     She shall pursue it with the soul of love.     And ere I take this charm from off her sight,     As I can take it with another herb,     I\'ll make her render up her page to me.     But who comes here? I am invisible;     And I will overhear their conference.                   Enter DEMETRIUS, HELENA following him    DEMETRIUS. I love thee not, therefore pursue me not.     Where is Lysander and fair Hermia?     The one I\'ll slay, the other slayeth me.     Thou told\'st me they were stol\'n unto this wood,     And here am I, and wood within this wood,     Because I cannot meet my Hermia.     Hence, get thee gone, and follow me no more.   HELENA. You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant;     But yet you draw not iron, for my heart     Is true as steel. Leave you your power to draw,     And I shall have no power to follow you.   DEMETRIUS. Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair?     Or, rather, do I not in plainest truth     Tell you I do not nor I cannot love you?   HELENA. And even for that do I love you the more.     I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,     The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.       Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,     Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,     Unworthy as I am, to follow you.     What worser place can I beg in your love,     And yet a place of high respect with me,     Than to be used as you use your dog?   DEMETRIUS. Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit;     For I am sick when I do look on thee.   HELENA. And I am sick when I look not on you.   DEMETRIUS. You do impeach your modesty too much     To leave the city and commit yourself     Into the hands of one that loves you not;     To trust the opportunity of night,     And the ill counsel of a desert place,     With the rich worth of your virginity.   HELENA. Your virtue is my privilege for that:     It is not night when I do see your face,     Therefore I think I am not in the night;     Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company,     For you, in my respect, are all the world.       Then how can it be said I am alone     When all the world is here to look on me?   DEMETRIUS. I\'ll run from thee and hide me in the brakes,     And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts.   HELENA. The wildest hath not such a heart as you.     Run when you will; the story shall be chang\'d:     Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase;     The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind     Makes speed to catch the tiger- bootless speed,     When cowardice pursues and valour flies.   DEMETRIUS. I will not stay thy questions; let me go;     Or, if thou follow me, do not believe     But I shall do thee mischief in the wood.   HELENA. Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field,     You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius!     Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex.     We cannot fight for love as men may do;     We should be woo\'d, and were not made to woo.                                                   Exit DEMETRIUS     I\'ll follow thee, and make a heaven of hell,       To die upon the hand I love so well.             Exit HELENA   OBERON. Fare thee well, nymph; ere he do leave this grove,     Thou shalt fly him, and he shall seek thy love.                              Re-enter PUCK      Hast thou the flower there? Welcome, wanderer.   PUCK. Ay, there it is.   OBERON. I pray thee give it me.     I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,     Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,     Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,     With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine;     There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,     Lull\'d in these flowers with dances and delight;     And there the snake throws her enamell\'d skin,     Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in;     And with the juice of this I\'ll streak her eyes,     And make her full of hateful fantasies.     Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove:       A sweet Athenian lady is in love     With a disdainful youth; anoint his eyes;     But do it when the next thing he espies     May be the lady. Thou shalt know the man     By the Athenian garments he hath on.     Effect it with some care, that he may prove     More fond on her than she upon her love.     And look thou meet me ere the first cock crow.   PUCK. Fear not, my lord; your servant shall do so.      Exeunt     SCENE II. Another part of the wood  Enter TITANIA, with her train    TITANIA. Come now, a roundel and a fairy song;     Then, for the third part of a minute, hence:     Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds;     Some war with rere-mice for their leathern wings,     To make my small elves coats; and some keep back     The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders     At our quaint spirits. Sing me now asleep;     Then to your offices, and let me rest.                            The FAIRIES Sing    FIRST FAIRY. You spotted snakes with double tongue,                Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;                Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong,                Come not near our fairy Queen.   CHORUS.      Philomel with melody                Sing in our sweet lullaby.                  Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby.                Never harm                Nor spell nor charm                Come our lovely lady nigh.                So good night, with lullaby.   SECOND FAIRY.  Weaving spiders, come not here;                  Hence, you long-legg\'d spinners, hence.                  Beetles black, approach not near;                  Worm nor snail do no offence.   CHORUS.      Philomel with melody, etc.       [TITANIA Sleeps]   FIRST FAIRY. Hence away; now all is well.                One aloof stand sentinel.          Exeunt FAIRIES        Enter OBERON and squeezes the flower on TITANIA\'S eyelids    OBERON. What thou seest when thou dost wake,     Do it for thy true-love take;     Love and languish for his sake.     Be it ounce, or cat, or bear,     Pard, or boar with bristled hair,       In thy eye that shall appear     When thou wak\'st, it is thy dear.     Wake when some vile thing is near.                      Exit                       Enter LYSANDER and HERMIA    LYSANDER. Fair love, you faint with wand\'ring in the wood;     And, to speak troth, I have forgot our way;     We\'ll rest us, Hermia, if you think it good,     And tarry for the comfort of the day.   HERMIA. Be it so, Lysander: find you out a bed,     For I upon this bank will rest my head.   LYSANDER. One turf shall serve as pillow for us both;     One heart, one bed, two bosoms, and one troth.   HERMIA. Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my dear,     Lie further off yet; do not lie so near.   LYSANDER. O, take the sense, sweet, of my innocence!     Love takes the meaning in love\'s conference.     I mean that my heart unto yours is knit,     So that but one heart we can make of it;       Two bosoms interchained with an oath,     So then two bosoms and a single troth.     Then by your side no bed-room me deny,     For lying so, Hermia, I do not lie.   HERMIA. Lysander riddles very prettily.     Now much beshrew my manners and my pride,     If Hermia meant to say Lysander lied!     But, gentle friend, for love and courtesy     Lie further off, in human modesty;     Such separation as may well be said     Becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid,     So far be distant; and good night, sweet friend.     Thy love ne\'er alter till thy sweet life end!   LYSANDER. Amen, amen, to that fair prayer say I;     And then end life when I end loyalty!     Here is my bed; sleep give thee all his rest!   HERMIA. With half that wish the wisher\'s eyes be press\'d!                                                     [They sleep]                            Enter PUCK      PUCK.      Through the forest have I gone,              But Athenian found I none              On whose eyes I might approve              This flower\'s force in stirring love.              Night and silence- Who is here?              Weeds of Athens he doth wear:              This is he, my master said,              Despised the Athenian maid;              And here the maiden, sleeping sound,              On the dank and dirty ground.              Pretty soul! she durst not lie              Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy.              Churl, upon thy eyes I throw              All the power this charm doth owe:              When thou wak\'st let love forbid              Sleep his seat on thy eyelid.              So awake when I am gone;              For I must now to Oberon.                      Exit                   Enter DEMETRIUS and HELENA, running    HELENA. Stay, though thou kill me, sweet Demetrius.   DEMETRIUS. I charge thee, hence, and do not haunt me thus.   HELENA. O, wilt thou darkling leave me? Do not so.   DEMETRIUS. Stay on thy peril; I alone will go.            Exit   HELENA. O, I am out of breath in this fond chase!     The more my prayer, the lesser is my grace.     Happy is Hermia, wheresoe\'er she lies,     For she hath blessed and attractive eyes.     How came her eyes so bright? Not with salt tears;     If so, my eyes are oft\'ner wash\'d than hers.     No, no, I am as ugly as a bear,     For beasts that meet me run away for fear;     Therefore no marvel though Demetrius     Do, as a monster, fly my presence thus.     What wicked and dissembling glass of mine     Made me compare with Hermia\'s sphery eyne?     But who is here? Lysander! on the ground!     Dead, or asleep? I see no blood, no wound.       Lysander, if you live, good sir, awake.   LYSANDER. [Waking] And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake.     Transparent Helena! Nature shows art,     That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart.     Where is Demetrius? O, how fit a word     Is that vile name to perish on my sword!   HELENA. Do not say so, Lysander; say not so.     What though he love your Hermia? Lord, what though?     Yet Hermia still loves you; then be content.   LYSANDER. Content with Hermia! No: I do repent     The tedious minutes I with her have spent.     Not Hermia but Helena I love:     Who will not change a raven for a dove?     The will of man is by his reason sway\'d,     And reason says you are the worthier maid.     Things growing are not ripe until their season;     So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason;     And touching now the point of human skill,     Reason becomes the marshal to my will,     And leads me to your eyes, where I o\'erlook       Love\'s stories, written in Love\'s richest book.   HELENA. Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born?     When at your hands did I deserve this scorn?     Is\'t not enough, is\'t not enough, young man,     That I did never, no, nor never can,     Deserve a sweet look from Demetrius\' eye,     But you must flout my insufficiency?     Good troth, you do me wrong, good sooth, you do,     In such disdainful manner me to woo.     But fare you well; perforce I must confess     I thought you lord of more true gentleness.     O, that a lady of one man refus\'d     Should of another therefore be abus\'d!                  Exit   LYSANDER. She sees not Hermia. Hermia, sleep thou there;     And never mayst thou come Lysander near!     For, as a surfeit of the sweetest things     The deepest loathing to the stomach brings,     Or as the heresies that men do leave     Are hated most of those they did deceive,     So thou, my surfeit and my heresy,       Of all be hated, but the most of me!     And, all my powers, address your love and might     To honour Helen, and to be her knight!                  Exit   HERMIA. [Starting] Help me, Lysander, help me; do thy best     To pluck this crawling serpent from my breast.     Ay me, for pity! What a dream was here!     Lysander, look how I do quake with fear.     Methought a serpent eat my heart away,     And you sat smiling at his cruel prey.     Lysander! What, remov\'d? Lysander! lord!     What, out of hearing gone? No sound, no word?     Alack, where are you? Speak, an if you hear;     Speak, of all loves! I swoon almost with fear.     No? Then I well perceive you are not nigh.     Either death or you I\'ll find immediately.              Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. The wood. TITANIA lying asleep  Enter QUINCE, SNUG, BOTTOM, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING    BOTTOM. Are we all met?   QUINCE. Pat, pat; and here\'s a marvellous convenient place for our     rehearsal. This green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn     brake our tiring-house; and we will do it in action, as we will     do it before the Duke.   BOTTOM. Peter Quince!   QUINCE. What sayest thou, bully Bottom?   BOTTOM. There are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisby that     will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill     himself; which the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that?   SNOUT. By\'r lakin, a parlous fear.   STARVELING. I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is     done.   BOTTOM. Not a whit; I have a device to make all well. Write me a     prologue; and let the prologue seem to say we will do no harm     with our swords, and that Pyramus is not kill\'d indeed; and for       the more better assurance, tell them that I Pyramus am not     Pyramus but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear.   QUINCE. Well, we will have such a prologue; and it shall be written     in eight and six.   BOTTOM. No, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight.   SNOUT. Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion?   STARVELING. I fear it, I promise you.   BOTTOM. Masters, you ought to consider with yourself to bring in-     God shield us!- a lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing; for     there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion living; and     we ought to look to\'t.   SNOUT. Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion.   BOTTOM. Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must be seen     through the lion\'s neck; and he himself must speak through,     saying thus, or to the same defect: \'Ladies,\' or \'Fair ladies, I     would wish you\' or \'I would request you\' or \'I would entreat you     not to fear, not to tremble. My life for yours! If you think I     come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life. No, I am no such     thing; I am a man as other men are.\' And there, indeed, let him     name his name, and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.     QUINCE. Well, it shall be so. But there is two hard things- that     is, to bring the moonlight into a chamber; for, you know, Pyramus     and Thisby meet by moonlight.   SNOUT. Doth the moon shine that night we play our play?   BOTTOM. A calendar, a calendar! Look in the almanack; find out     moonshine, find out moonshine.   QUINCE. Yes, it doth shine that night.   BOTTOM. Why, then may you leave a casement of the great chamber     window, where we play, open; and the moon may shine in at the     casement.   QUINCE. Ay; or else one must come in with a bush of thorns and a     lantern, and say he comes to disfigure or to present the person     of Moonshine. Then there is another thing: we must have a wall in     the great chamber; for Pyramus and Thisby, says the story, did     talk through the chink of a wall.   SNOUT. You can never bring in a wall. What say you, Bottom?   BOTTOM. Some man or other must present Wall; and let him have some     plaster, or some loam, or some rough-cast about him, to signify     wall; and let him hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny     shall Pyramus and Thisby whisper.     QUINCE. If that may be, then all is well. Come, sit down, every     mother\'s son, and rehearse your parts. Pyramus, you begin; when     you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake; and so every     one according to his cue.                            Enter PUCK behind    PUCK. What hempen homespuns have we swagg\'ring here,     So near the cradle of the Fairy Queen?     What, a play toward! I\'ll be an auditor;     An actor too perhaps, if I see cause.   QUINCE. Speak, Pyramus. Thisby, stand forth.   BOTTOM. Thisby, the flowers of odious savours sweet-   QUINCE. \'Odious\'- odorous!   BOTTOM. -odours savours sweet;     So hath thy breath, my dearest Thisby dear.     But hark, a voice! Stay thou but here awhile,     And by and by I will to thee appear.                    Exit   PUCK. A stranger Pyramus than e\'er played here!           Exit   FLUTE. Must I speak now?     QUINCE. Ay, marry, must you; for you must understand he goes but to     see a noise that he heard, and is to come again.   FLUTE. Most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of hue,     Of colour like the red rose on triumphant brier,     Most brisky juvenal, and eke most lovely Jew,     As true as truest horse, that would never tire,     I\'ll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny\'s tomb.   QUINCE. \'Ninus\' tomb,\' man! Why, you must not speak that yet; that     you answer to Pyramus. You speak all your part at once, cues, and     all. Pyramus enter: your cue is past; it is \'never tire.\'   FLUTE. O- As true as truest horse, that y et would never tire.              Re-enter PUCK, and BOTTOM with an ass\'s head    BOTTOM. If I were fair, Thisby, I were only thine.   QUINCE. O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted. Pray, masters! fly,     masters! Help!                                   Exeunt all but BOTTOM and PUCK   PUCK. I\'ll follow you; I\'ll lead you about a round,     Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier;       Sometime a horse I\'ll be, sometime a hound,     A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;     And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,     Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. Exit   BOTTOM. Why do they run away? This is a knavery of them to make me     afeard.                            Re-enter SNOUT    SNOUT. O Bottom, thou art chang\'d! What do I see on thee?   BOTTOM. What do you see? You see an ass-head of your own, do you?                                                       Exit SNOUT                            Re-enter QUINCE    QUINCE. Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee! Thou art translated.  Exit   BOTTOM. I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me; to     fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this place, do       what they can; I will walk up and down here, and will sing, that     they shall hear I am not afraid.                     [Sings]            The ousel cock, so black of hue,             With orange-tawny bill,           The throstle with his note so true,             The wren with little quill.    TITANIA. What angel wakes me from my flow\'ry bed?   BOTTOM. [Sings]           The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,             The plain-song cuckoo grey,           Whose note full many a man doth mark,             And dares not answer nay-     for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird?     Who would give a bird the he, though he cry \'cuckoo\' never so?   TITANIA. I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again.     Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note;     So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;     And thy fair virtue\'s force perforce doth move me,       On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee.   BOTTOM. Methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that.     And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company     together now-a-days. The more the pity that some honest     neighbours will not make them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon     occasion.   TITANIA. Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.   BOTTOM. Not so, neither; but if I had wit enough to get out of this     wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn.   TITANIA. Out of this wood do not desire to go;     Thou shalt remain here whether thou wilt or no.     I am a spirit of no common rate;     The summer still doth tend upon my state;     And I do love thee; therefore, go with me.     I\'ll give thee fairies to attend on thee;     And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,     And sing, while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;     And I will purge thy mortal grossness so     That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.     Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!           Enter PEASEBLOSSOM, COBWEB, MOTH, and MUSTARDSEED    PEASEBLOSSOM. Ready.   COBWEB. And I.   MOTH. And I.   MUSTARDSEED. And I.   ALL. Where shall we go?   TITANIA. Be kind and courteous to this gentleman;     Hop in his walks and gambol in his eyes;     Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,     With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;     The honey bags steal from the humble-bees,     And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs,     And light them at the fiery glow-worm\'s eyes,     To have my love to bed and to arise;     And pluck the wings from painted butterflies,     To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.     Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies.   PEASEBLOSSOM. Hail, mortal!     COBWEB. Hail!   MOTH. Hail!   MUSTARDSEED. Hail!   BOTTOM. I cry your worships mercy, heartily; I beseech your     worship\'s name.   COBWEB. Cobweb.   BOTTOM. I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master     Cobweb. If I cut my finger, I shall make bold with you. Your     name, honest gentleman?   PEASEBLOSSOM. Peaseblossom.   BOTTOM. I pray you, commend me to Mistress Squash, your mother, and     to Master Peascod, your father. Good Master Peaseblossom, I shall     desire you of more acquaintance too. Your name, I beseech you,     sir?   MUSTARDSEED. Mustardseed.   BOTTOM. Good Master Mustardseed, I know your patience well. That     same cowardly giant-like ox-beef hath devour\'d many a gentleman     of your house. I promise you your kindred hath made my eyes water     ere now. I desire you of more acquaintance, good Master     Mustardseed.     TITANIA. Come, wait upon him; lead him to my bower.     The moon, methinks, looks with a wat\'ry eye;     And when she weeps, weeps every little flower;     Lamenting some enforced chastity.     Tie up my love\'s tongue, bring him silently.          Exeunt     SCENE II. Another part of the wood  Enter OBERON    OBERON. I wonder if Titania be awak\'d;     Then, what it was that next came in her eye,     Which she must dote on in extremity.                            Enter PUCK      Here comes my messenger. How now, mad spirit!     What night-rule now about this haunted grove?   PUCK. My mistress with a monster is in love.     Near to her close and consecrated bower,     While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,     A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,     That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,     Were met together to rehearse a play     Intended for great Theseus\' nuptial day.     The shallowest thickskin of that barren sort,     Who Pyramus presented, in their sport     Forsook his scene and ent\'red in a brake;       When I did him at this advantage take,     An ass\'s nole I fixed on his head.     Anon his Thisby must be answered,     And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy,     As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,     Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,     Rising and cawing at the gun\'s report,     Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky,     So at his sight away his fellows fly;     And at our stamp here, o\'er and o\'er one falls;     He murder cries, and help from Athens calls.     Their sense thus weak, lost with their fears thus strong,     Made senseless things begin to do them wrong,     For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch;     Some sleeves, some hats, from yielders all things catch.     I led them on in this distracted fear,     And left sweet Pyramus translated there;     When in that moment, so it came to pass,     Titania wak\'d, and straightway lov\'d an ass.   OBERON. This falls out better than I could devise.       But hast thou yet latch\'d the Athenian\'s eyes     With the love-juice, as I did bid thee do?   PUCK. I took him sleeping- that is finish\'d too-     And the Athenian woman by his side;     That, when he wak\'d, of force she must be ey\'d.                   Enter DEMETRIUS and HERMIA    OBERON. Stand close; this is the same Athenian.   PUCK. This is the woman, but not this the man.   DEMETRIUS. O, why rebuke you him that loves you so?     Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.   HERMIA. Now I but chide, but I should use thee worse,     For thou, I fear, hast given me cause to curse.     If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep,     Being o\'er shoes in blood, plunge in the deep,     And kill me too.     The sun was not so true unto the day     As he to me. Would he have stolen away     From sleeping Hermia? I\'ll believe as soon       This whole earth may be bor\'d, and that the moon     May through the centre creep and so displease     Her brother\'s noontide with th\' Antipodes.     It cannot be but thou hast murd\'red him;     So should a murderer look- so dead, so grim.   DEMETRIUS. So should the murdered look; and so should I,     Pierc\'d through the heart with your stern cruelty;     Yet you, the murderer, look as bright, as clear,     As yonder Venus in her glimmering sphere.   HERMIA. What\'s this to my Lysander? Where is he?     Ah, good Demetrius, wilt thou give him me?   DEMETRIUS. I had rather give his carcass to my hounds.   HERMIA. Out, dog! out, cur! Thou driv\'st me past the bounds     Of maiden\'s patience. Hast thou slain him, then?     Henceforth be never numb\'red among men!     O, once tell true; tell true, even for my sake!     Durst thou have look\'d upon him being awake,     And hast thou kill\'d him sleeping? O brave touch!     Could not a worm, an adder, do so much?     An adder did it; for with doubler tongue       Than thine, thou serpent, never adder stung.   DEMETRIUS. You spend your passion on a mispris\'d mood:     I am not guilty of Lysander\'s blood;     Nor is he dead, for aught that I can tell.   HERMIA. I pray thee, tell me then that he is well.   DEMETRIUS. An if I could, what should I get therefore?   HERMIA. A privilege never to see me more.     And from thy hated presence part I so;     See me no more whether he be dead or no.                Exit   DEMETRIUS. There is no following her in this fierce vein;     Here, therefore, for a while I will remain.     So sorrow\'s heaviness doth heavier grow     For debt that bankrupt sleep doth sorrow owe;     Which now in some slight measure it will pay,     If for his tender here I make some stay.         [Lies down]   OBERON. What hast thou done? Thou hast mistaken quite,     And laid the love-juice on some true-love\'s sight.     Of thy misprision must perforce ensue     Some true love turn\'d, and not a false turn\'d true.   PUCK. Then fate o\'er-rules, that, one man holding troth,       A million fail, confounding oath on oath.   OBERON. About the wood go swifter than the wind,     And Helena of Athens look thou find;     All fancy-sick she is and pale of cheer,     With sighs of love that costs the fresh blood dear.     By some illusion see thou bring her here;     I\'ll charm his eyes against she do appear.   PUCK. I go, I go; look how I go,     Swifter than arrow from the Tartar\'s bow.               Exit   OBERON.       Flower of this purple dye,                 Hit with Cupid\'s archery,                 Sink in apple of his eye.                 When his love he doth espy,                 Let her shine as gloriously                 As the Venus of the sky.                 When thou wak\'st, if she be by,                 Beg of her for remedy.                         Re-enter PUCK      PUCK.         Captain of our fairy band,                 Helena is here at hand,                 And the youth mistook by me                 Pleading for a lover\'s fee;                 Shall we their fond pageant see?                 Lord, what fools these mortals be!   OBERON.       Stand aside. The noise they make                 Will cause Demetrius to awake.   PUCK.         Then will two at once woo one.                 That must needs be sport alone;                 And those things do best please me                 That befall prepost\'rously.                     Enter LYSANDER and HELENA    LYSANDER. Why should you think that I should woo in scorn?     Scorn and derision never come in tears.     Look when I vow, I weep; and vows so born,     In their nativity all truth appears.     How can these things in me seem scorn to you,       Bearing the badge of faith, to prove them true?   HELENA. You do advance your cunning more and more.     When truth kills truth, O devilish-holy fray!     These vows are Hermia\'s. Will you give her o\'er?     Weigh oath with oath, and you will nothing weigh:     Your vows to her and me, put in two scales,     Will even weigh; and both as light as tales.   LYSANDER. I hod no judgment when to her I swore.   HELENA. Nor none, in my mind, now you give her o\'er.   LYSANDER. Demetrius loves her, and he loves not you.   DEMETRIUS. [Awaking] O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!     To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne?     Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show     Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!     That pure congealed white, high Taurus\' snow,     Fann\'d with the eastern wind, turns to a crow     When thou hold\'st up thy hand. O, let me kiss     This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss!   HELENA. O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent     To set against me for your merriment.       If you were civil and knew courtesy,     You would not do me thus much injury.     Can you not hate me, as I know you do,     But you must join in souls to mock me too?     If you were men, as men you are in show,     You would not use a gentle lady so:     To vow, and swear, and superpraise my parts,     When I am sure you hate me with your hearts.     You both are rivals, and love Hermia;     And now both rivals, to mock Helena.     A trim exploit, a manly enterprise,     To conjure tears up in a poor maid\'s eyes     With your derision! None of noble sort     Would so offend a virgin, and extort     A poor soul\'s patience, all to make you sport.   LYSANDER. You are unkind, Demetrius; be not so;     For you love Hermia. This you know I know;     And here, with all good will, with all my heart,     In Hermia\'s love I yield you up my part;     And yours of Helena to me bequeath,       Whom I do love and will do till my death.   HELENA. Never did mockers waste more idle breath.   DEMETRIUS. Lysander, keep thy Hermia; I will none.     If e\'er I lov\'d her, all that love is gone.     My heart to her but as guest-wise sojourn\'d,     And now to Helen is it home return\'d,     There to remain.   LYSANDER. Helen, it is not so.   DEMETRIUS. Disparage not the faith thou dost not know,     Lest, to thy peril, thou aby it dear.     Look where thy love comes; yonder is thy dear.                         Enter HERMIA    HERMIA. Dark night, that from the eye his function takes,     The ear more quick of apprehension makes;     Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense,     It pays the hearing double recompense.     Thou art not by mine eye, Lysander, found;     Mine ear, I thank it, brought me to thy sound.       But why unkindly didst thou leave me so?   LYSANDER. Why should he stay whom love doth press to go?   HERMIA. What love could press Lysander from my side?   LYSANDER. Lysander\'s love, that would not let him bide-     Fair Helena, who more engilds the night     Than all yon fiery oes and eyes of light.     Why seek\'st thou me? Could not this make thee know     The hate I bare thee made me leave thee so?   HERMIA. You speak not as you think; it cannot be.   HELENA. Lo, she is one of this confederacy!     Now I perceive they have conjoin\'d all three     To fashion this false sport in spite of me.     Injurious Hermia! most ungrateful maid!     Have you conspir\'d, have you with these contriv\'d,     To bait me with this foul derision?     Is all the counsel that we two have shar\'d,     The sisters\' vows, the hours that we have spent,     When we have chid the hasty-footed time     For parting us- O, is all forgot?     All school-days\' friendship, childhood innocence?       We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,     Have with our needles created both one flower,     Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,     Both warbling of one song, both in one key;     As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,     Had been incorporate. So we grew together,     Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,     But yet an union in partition,     Two lovely berries moulded on one stern;     So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;     Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,     Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.     And will you rent our ancient love asunder,     To join with men in scorning your poor friend?     It is not friendly, \'tis not maidenly;     Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,     Though I alone do feel the injury.   HERMIA. I am amazed at your passionate words;     I scorn you not; it seems that you scorn me.   HELENA. Have you not set Lysander, as in scorn,       To follow me and praise my eyes and face?     And made your other love, Demetrius,     Who even but now did spurn me with his foot,     To call me goddess, nymph, divine, and rare,     Precious, celestial? Wherefore speaks he this     To her he hates? And wherefore doth Lysander     Deny your love, so rich within his soul,     And tender me, forsooth, affection,     But by your setting on, by your consent?     What though I be not so in grace as you,     So hung upon with love, so fortunate,     But miserable most, to love unlov\'d?     This you should pity rather than despise.   HERMIA. I understand not what you mean by this.   HELENA. Ay, do- persever, counterfeit sad looks,     Make mouths upon me when I turn my back,     Wink each at other; hold the sweet jest up;     This sport, well carried, shall be chronicled.     If you have any pity, grace, or manners,     You would not make me such an argument.       But fare ye well; \'tis partly my own fault,     Which death, or absence, soon shall remedy.   LYSANDER. Stay, gentle Helena; hear my excuse;     My love, my life, my soul, fair Helena!   HELENA. O excellent!   HERMIA. Sweet, do not scorn her so.   DEMETRIUS. If she cannot entreat, I can compel.   LYSANDER. Thou canst compel no more than she entreat;     Thy threats have no more strength than her weak prayers     Helen, I love thee, by my life I do;     I swear by that which I will lose for thee     To prove him false that says I love thee not.   DEMETRIUS. I say I love thee more than he can do.   LYSANDER. If thou say so, withdraw, and prove it too.   DEMETRIUS. Quick, come.   HERMIA. Lysander, whereto tends all this?   LYSANDER. Away, you Ethiope!   DEMETRIUS. No, no, he will     Seem to break loose- take on as you would follow,     But yet come not. You are a tame man; go!     LYSANDER. Hang off, thou cat, thou burr; vile thing, let loose,     Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent.   HERMIA. Why are you grown so rude? What change is this,     Sweet love?   LYSANDER. Thy love! Out, tawny Tartar, out!     Out, loathed med\'cine! O hated potion, hence!   HERMIA. Do you not jest?   HELENA. Yes, sooth; and so do you.   LYSANDER. Demetrius, I will keep my word with thee.   DEMETRIUS. I would I had your bond; for I perceive     A weak bond holds you; I\'ll not trust your word.   LYSANDER. What, should I hurt her, strike her, kill her dead?     Although I hate her, I\'ll not harm her so.   HERMIA. What! Can you do me greater harm than hate?     Hate me! wherefore? O me! what news, my love?     Am not I Hermia? Are not you Lysander?     I am as fair now as I was erewhile.     Since night you lov\'d me; yet since night you left me.     Why then, you left me- O, the gods forbid!-     In earnest, shall I say?     LYSANDER. Ay, by my life!     And never did desire to see thee more.     Therefore be out of hope, of question, of doubt;     Be certain, nothing truer; \'tis no jest     That I do hate thee and love Helena.   HERMIA. O me! you juggler! you cankerblossom!     You thief of love! What! Have you come by night,     And stol\'n my love\'s heart from him?   HELENA. Fine, i\' faith!     Have you no modesty, no maiden shame,     No touch of bashfulness? What! Will you tear     Impatient answers from my gentle tongue?     Fie, fie! you counterfeit, you puppet you!   HERMIA. \'Puppet!\' why so? Ay, that way goes the game.     Now I perceive that she hath made compare     Between our statures; she hath urg\'d her height;     And with her personage, her tall personage,     Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail\'d with him.     And are you grown so high in his esteem     Because I am so dwarfish and so low?       How low am I, thou painted maypole? Speak.     How low am I? I am not yet so low     But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.   HELENA. I pray you, though you mock me, gentlemen,     Let her not hurt me. I was never curst;     I have no gift at all in shrewishness;     I am a right maid for my cowardice;     Let her not strike me. You perhaps may think,     Because she is something lower than myself,     That I can match her.   HERMIA. \'Lower\' hark, again.   HELENA. Good Hermia, do not be so bitter with me.     I evermore did love you, Hermia,     Did ever keep your counsels, never wrong\'d you;     Save that, in love unto Demetrius,     I told him of your stealth unto this wood.     He followed you; for love I followed him;     But he hath chid me hence, and threat\'ned me     To strike me, spurn me, nay, to kill me too;     And now, so you will let me quiet go,       To Athens will I bear my folly back,     And follow you no further. Let me go.     You see how simple and how fond I am.   HERMIA. Why, get you gone! Who is\'t that hinders you?   HELENA. A foolish heart that I leave here behind.   HERMIA. What! with Lysander?   HELENA. With Demetrius.   LYSANDER. Be not afraid; she shall not harm thee, Helena.   DEMETRIUS. No, sir, she shall not, though you take her part.   HELENA. O, when she is angry, she is keen and shrewd;     She was a vixen when she went to school;     And, though she be but little, she is fierce.   HERMIA. \'Little\' again! Nothing but \'low\' and \'little\'!     Why will you suffer her to flout me thus?     Let me come to her.   LYSANDER. Get you gone, you dwarf;     You minimus, of hind\'ring knot-grass made;     You bead, you acorn.   DEMETRIUS. You are too officious     In her behalf that scorns your services.       Let her alone; speak not of Helena;     Take not her part; for if thou dost intend     Never so little show of love to her,     Thou shalt aby it.   LYSANDER. Now she holds me not.     Now follow, if thou dar\'st, to try whose right,     Of thine or mine, is most in Helena.   DEMETRIUS. Follow! Nay, I\'ll go with thee, cheek by jowl.                                    Exeunt LYSANDER and DEMETRIUS   HERMIA. You, mistress, all this coil is long of you.     Nay, go not back.   HELENA. I will not trust you, I;     Nor longer stay in your curst company.     Your hands than mine are quicker for a fray;     My legs are longer though, to run away.                 Exit   HERMIA. I am amaz\'d, and know not what to say.            Exit   OBERON. This is thy negligence. Still thou mistak\'st,     Or else committ\'st thy knaveries wilfully.   PUCK. Believe me, king of shadows, I mistook.     Did not you tell me I should know the man       By the Athenian garments he had on?     And so far blameless proves my enterprise     That I have \'nointed an Athenian\'s eyes;     And so far am I glad it so did sort,     As this their jangling I esteem a sport.   OBERON. Thou seest these lovers seek a place to fight.     Hie therefore, Robin, overcast the night;     The starry welkin cover thou anon     With drooping fog as black as Acheron,     And lead these testy rivals so astray     As one come not within another\'s way.     Like to Lysander sometime frame thy tongue,     Then stir Demetrius up with bitter wrong;     And sometime rail thou like Demetrius;     And from each other look thou lead them thus,     Till o\'er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep     With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep.     Then crush this herb into Lysander\'s eye;     Whose liquor hath this virtuous property,     To take from thence all error with his might       And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight.     When they next wake, all this derision     Shall seem a dream and fruitless vision;     And back to Athens shall the lovers wend     With league whose date till death shall never end.     Whiles I in this affair do thee employ,     I\'ll to my queen, and beg her Indian boy;     And then I will her charmed eye release     From monster\'s view, and all things shall be peace.   PUCK. My fairy lord, this must be done with haste,     For night\'s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast;     And yonder shines Aurora\'s harbinger,     At whose approach ghosts, wand\'ring here and there,     Troop home to churchyards. Damned spirits all     That in cross-ways and floods have burial,     Already to their wormy beds are gone,     For fear lest day should look their shames upon;     They wilfully themselves exil\'d from light,     And must for aye consort with black-brow\'d night.   OBERON. But we are spirits of another sort:       I with the Morning\'s love have oft made sport;     And, like a forester, the groves may tread     Even till the eastern gate, all fiery red,     Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,     Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.     But, notwithstanding, haste, make no delay;     We may effect this business yet ere day.         Exit OBERON   PUCK.      Up and down, up and down,              I will lead them up and down.              I am fear\'d in field and town.              Goblin, lead them up and down.     Here comes one.                        Enter LYSANDER    LYSANDER. Where art thou, proud Demetrius? Speak thou now.   PUCK. Here, villain, drawn and ready. Where art thou?   LYSANDER. I will be with thee straight.   PUCK. Follow me, then,     To plainer ground.      Exit LYSANDER as following the voice                          Enter DEMETRIUS    DEMETRIUS. Lysander, speak again.     Thou runaway, thou coward, art thou fled?     Speak! In some bush? Where dost thou hide thy head?   PUCK. Thou coward, art thou bragging to the stars,     Telling the bushes that thou look\'st for wars,     And wilt not come? Come, recreant, come, thou child;     I\'ll whip thee with a rod. He is defil\'d     That draws a sword on thee.   DEMETRIUS. Yea, art thou there?   PUCK. Follow my voice; we\'ll try no manhood here.       Exeunt                        Re-enter LYSANDER    LYSANDER. He goes before me, and still dares me on;     When I come where he calls, then he is gone.     The villain is much lighter heel\'d than I.     I followed fast, but faster he did fly,       That fallen am I in dark uneven way,     And here will rest me. [Lies down] Come, thou gentle day.     For if but once thou show me thy grey light,     I\'ll find Demetrius, and revenge this spite.        [Sleeps]                   Re-enter PUCK and DEMETRIUS    PUCK. Ho, ho, ho! Coward, why com\'st thou not?   DEMETRIUS. Abide me, if thou dar\'st; for well I wot     Thou run\'st before me, shifting every place,     And dar\'st not stand, nor look me in the face.     Where art thou now?   PUCK. Come hither; I am here.   DEMETRIUS. Nay, then, thou mock\'st me. Thou shalt buy this dear,     If ever I thy face by daylight see;     Now, go thy way. Faintness constraineth me     To measure out my length on this cold bed.     By day\'s approach look to be visited.                                           [Lies down and sleeps]                           Enter HELENA    HELENA. O weary night, O long and tedious night,     Abate thy hours! Shine comforts from the east,     That I may back to Athens by daylight,     From these that my poor company detest.     And sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow\'s eye,     Steal me awhile from mine own company.              [Sleeps]   PUCK.       Yet but three? Come one more;               Two of both kinds makes up four.               Here she comes, curst and sad.               Cupid is a knavish lad,               Thus to make poor females mad.                       Enter HERMIA    HERMIA. Never so weary, never so in woe,     Bedabbled with the dew, and torn with briers,     I can no further crawl, no further go;     My legs can keep no pace with my desires.       Here will I rest me till the break of day.     Heavens shield Lysander, if they mean a fray!                                           [Lies down and sleeps]   PUCK.          On the ground                  Sleep sound;                  I\'ll apply                  To your eye,           Gentle lover, remedy.                         [Squeezing the juice on LYSANDER\'S eyes]                  When thou wak\'st,                  Thou tak\'st                  True delight                  In the sight           Of thy former lady\'s eye;           And the country proverb known,           That every man should take his own,           In your waking shall be shown:                  Jack shall have Jill;                  Nought shall go ill;     The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.    Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. The wood. LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HELENA, and HERMIA, lying asleep  Enter TITANIA and Bottom; PEASEBLOSSOM, COBWEB, MOTH, MUSTARDSEED, and other FAIRIES attending;                       OBERON behind, unseen    TITANIA. Come, sit thee down upon this flow\'ry bed,     While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,     And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head,     And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.   BOTTOM. Where\'s Peaseblossom?   PEASEBLOSSOM. Ready.   BOTTOM. Scratch my head, Peaseblossom.     Where\'s Mounsieur Cobweb?   COBWEB. Ready.   BOTTOM. Mounsieur Cobweb; good mounsieur, get you your weapons in     your hand and kill me a red-hipp\'d humble-bee on the top of a     thistle; and, good mounsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret     yourself too much in the action, mounsieur; and, good mounsieur,     have a care the honey-bag break not; I would be loath to have you       overflown with a honey-bag, signior. Where\'s Mounsieur     Mustardseed?   MUSTARDSEED. Ready.   BOTTOM. Give me your neaf, Mounsieur Mustardseed. Pray you, leave     your curtsy, good mounsieur.   MUSTARDSEED. What\'s your will?   BOTTOM. Nothing, good mounsieur, but to help Cavalery Cobweb to     scratch. I must to the barber\'s, mounsieur; for methinks I am     marvellous hairy about the face; and I am such a tender ass, if     my hair do but tickle me I must scratch.   TITANIA. What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love?   BOTTOM. I have a reasonable good ear in music. Let\'s have the tongs     and the bones.   TITANIA. Or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat.   BOTTOM. Truly, a peck of provender; I could munch your good dry     oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay. Good     hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.   TITANIA. I have a venturous fairy that shall seek     The squirrel\'s hoard, and fetch thee new nuts.   BOTTOM. I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas. But, I       pray you, let none of your people stir me; I have an exposition     of sleep come upon me.   TITANIA. Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms.     Fairies, be gone, and be all ways away.       Exeunt FAIRIES     So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle     Gently entwist; the female ivy so     Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.     O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!         [They sleep]                           Enter PUCK    OBERON. [Advancing] Welcome, good Robin. Seest thou this sweet       sight?     Her dotage now I do begin to pity;     For, meeting her of late behind the wood,     Seeking sweet favours for this hateful fool,     I did upbraid her and fall out with her.     For she his hairy temples then had rounded     With coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers;     And that same dew which sometime on the buds       Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls     Stood now within the pretty flowerets\' eyes,     Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.     When I had at my pleasure taunted her,     And she in mild terms begg\'d my patience,     I then did ask of her her changeling child;     Which straight she gave me, and her fairy sent     To bear him to my bower in fairy land.     And now I have the boy, I will undo     This hateful imperfection of her eyes.     And, gentle Puck, take this transformed scalp     From off the head of this Athenian swain,     That he awaking when the other do     May all to Athens back again repair,     And think no more of this night\'s accidents     But as the fierce vexation of a dream.     But first I will release the Fairy Queen.                                              [Touching her eyes]            Be as thou wast wont to be;            See as thou was wont to see.              Dian\'s bud o\'er Cupid\'s flower            Hath such force and blessed power.     Now, my Titania; wake you, my sweet queen.   TITANIA. My Oberon! What visions have I seen!     Methought I was enamour\'d of an ass.   OBERON. There lies your love.   TITANIA. How came these things to pass?     O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!   OBERON. Silence awhile. Robin, take off this head.     Titania, music call; and strike more dead     Than common sleep of all these five the sense.   TITANIA. Music, ho, music, such as charmeth sleep!   PUCK. Now when thou wak\'st with thine own fool\'s eyes peep.   OBERON. Sound, music. Come, my Queen, take hands with me,                                                          [Music]     And rock the ground whereon these sleepers be.     Now thou and I are new in amity,     And will to-morrow midnight solemnly     Dance in Duke Theseus\' house triumphantly,     And bless it to all fair prosperity.       There shall the pairs of faithful lovers be     Wedded, with Theseus, an in jollity.   PUCK.       Fairy King, attend and mark;               I do hear the morning lark.   OBERON.     Then, my Queen, in silence sad,               Trip we after night\'s shade.               We the globe can compass soon,               Swifter than the wand\'ring moon.   TITANIA.    Come, my lord; and in our flight,               Tell me how it came this night               That I sleeping here was found               With these mortals on the ground.           Exeunt          To the winding of horns, enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA,                       EGEUS, and train    THESEUS. Go, one of you, find out the forester;     For now our observation is perform\'d,     And since we have the vaward of the day,     My love shall hear the music of my hounds.       Uncouple in the western valley; let them go.     Dispatch, I say, and find the forester.    Exit an ATTENDANT     We will, fair Queen, up to the mountain\'s top,     And mark the musical confusion     Of hounds and echo in conjunction.   HIPPOLYTA. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once     When in a wood of Crete they bay\'d the bear     With hounds of Sparta; never did I hear     Such gallant chiding, for, besides the groves,     The skies, the fountains, every region near     Seem\'d all one mutual cry. I never heard     So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.   THESEUS. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,     So flew\'d, so sanded; and their heads are hung     With ears that sweep away the morning dew;     Crook-knee\'d and dew-lapp\'d like Thessalian bulls;     Slow in pursuit, but match\'d in mouth like bells,     Each under each. A cry more tuneable     Was never holla\'d to, nor cheer\'d with horn,     In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly.       Judge when you hear. But, soft, what nymphs are these?   EGEUS. My lord, this is my daughter here asleep,     And this Lysander, this Demetrius is,     This Helena, old Nedar\'s Helena.     I wonder of their being here together.   THESEUS. No doubt they rose up early to observe     The rite of May; and, hearing our intent,     Came here in grace of our solemnity.     But speak, Egeus; is not this the day     That Hermia should give answer of her choice?   EGEUS. It is, my lord.   THESEUS. Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns.                            [Horns and shout within. The sleepers                                      awake and kneel to THESEUS]     Good-morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is past;     Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?   LYSANDER. Pardon, my lord.   THESEUS. I pray you all, stand up.     I know you two are rival enemies;     How comes this gentle concord in the world       That hatred is so far from jealousy     To sleep by hate, and fear no enmity?   LYSANDER. My lord, I shall reply amazedly,     Half sleep, half waking; but as yet, I swear,     I cannot truly say how I came here,     But, as I think- for truly would I speak,     And now I do bethink me, so it is-     I came with Hermia hither. Our intent     Was to be gone from Athens, where we might,     Without the peril of the Athenian law-   EGEUS. Enough, enough, my Lord; you have enough;     I beg the law, the law upon his head.     They would have stol\'n away, they would, Demetrius,     Thereby to have defeated you and me:     You of your wife, and me of my consent,     Of my consent that she should be your wife.   DEMETRIUS. My lord, fair Helen told me of their stealth,     Of this their purpose hither to this wood;     And I in fury hither followed them,     Fair Helena in fancy following me.       But, my good lord, I wot not by what power-     But by some power it is- my love to Hermia,     Melted as the snow, seems to me now     As the remembrance of an idle gaud     Which in my childhood I did dote upon;     And all the faith, the virtue of my heart,     The object and the pleasure of mine eye,     Is only Helena. To her, my lord,     Was I betroth\'d ere I saw Hermia.     But, like a sickness, did I loathe this food;     But, as in health, come to my natural taste,     Now I do wish it, love it, long for it,     And will for evermore be true to it.   THESEUS. Fair lovers, you are fortunately met;     Of this discourse we more will hear anon.     Egeus, I will overbear your will;     For in the temple, by and by, with us     These couples shall eternally be knit.     And, for the morning now is something worn,     Our purpos\'d hunting shall be set aside.       Away with us to Athens, three and three;     We\'ll hold a feast in great solemnity.     Come, Hippolyta.                      Exeunt THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, EGEUS, and train   DEMETRIUS. These things seem small and undistinguishable,     Like far-off mountains turned into clouds.   HERMIA. Methinks I see these things with parted eye,     When every thing seems double.   HELENA. So methinks;     And I have found Demetrius like a jewel,     Mine own, and not mine own.   DEMETRIUS. Are you sure     That we are awake? It seems to me     That yet we sleep, we dream. Do not you think     The Duke was here, and bid us follow him?   HERMIA. Yea, and my father.   HELENA. And Hippolyta.   LYSANDER. And he did bid us follow to the temple.   DEMETRIUS. Why, then, we are awake; let\'s follow him;     And by the way let us recount our dreams.             Exeunt     BOTTOM. [Awaking] When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer. My     next is \'Most fair Pyramus.\' Heigh-ho! Peter Quince! Flute, the     bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God\'s my life,     stol\'n hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision.     I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.     Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought     I was- there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and     methought I had, but man is but a patch\'d fool, if he will offer     to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the     ear of man hath not seen, man\'s hand is not able to taste, his     tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I     will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall     be call\'d \'Bottom\'s Dream,\' because it hath no bottom; and I will     sing it in the latter end of a play, before the Duke.     Peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at     her death.                                              Exit     SCENE II. Athens. QUINCE\'S house  Enter QUINCE, FLUTE, SNOUT, and STARVELING    QUINCE. Have you sent to Bottom\'s house? Is he come home yet?   STARVELING. He cannot be heard of. Out of doubt he is transported.   FLUTE. If he come not, then the play is marr\'d; it goes not     forward, doth it?   QUINCE. It is not possible. You have not a man in all Athens able     to discharge Pyramus but he.   FLUTE. No; he hath simply the best wit of any handicraft man in     Athens.   QUINCE. Yea, and the best person too; and he is a very paramour for     a sweet voice.   FLUTE. You must say \'paragon.\' A paramour is- God bless us!- A     thing of naught.                             Enter SNUG    SNUG. Masters, the Duke is coming from the temple; and there is two     or three lords and ladies more married. If our sport had gone       forward, we had all been made men.   FLUTE. O sweet bully Bottom! Thus hath he lost sixpence a day     during his life; he could not have scaped sixpence a day. An the     Duke had not given him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I\'ll     be hanged. He would have deserved it: sixpence a day in Pyramus,     or nothing.                             Enter BOTTOM    BOTTOM. Where are these lads? Where are these hearts?   QUINCE. Bottom! O most courageous day! O most happy hour!   BOTTOM. Masters, I am to discourse wonders; but ask me not what;     for if I tell you, I am not true Athenian. I will tell you     everything, right as it fell out.   QUINCE. Let us hear, sweet Bottom.   BOTTOM. Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is, that the     Duke hath dined. Get your apparel together; good strings to your     beards, new ribbons to your pumps; meet presently at the palace;     every man look o\'er his part; for the short and the long is, our     play is preferr\'d. In any case, let Thisby have clean linen; and       let not him that plays the lion pare his nails, for they shall     hang out for the lion\'s claws. And, most dear actors, eat no     onions nor garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath; and I do not     doubt but to hear them say it is a sweet comedy. No more words.     Away, go, away!                                       Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. Athens. The palace of THESEUS  Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, LORDS, and ATTENDANTS    HIPPOLYTA. \'Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.   THESEUS. More strange than true. I never may believe     These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.     Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,     Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend     More than cool reason ever comprehends.     The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,     Are of imagination all compact.     One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;     That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,     Sees Helen\'s beauty in a brow of Egypt.     The poet\'s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,     Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;     And as imagination bodies forth     The forms of things unknown, the poet\'s pen     Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing       A local habitation and a name.     Such tricks hath strong imagination     That, if it would but apprehend some joy,     It comprehends some bringer of that joy;     Or in the night, imagining some fear,     How easy is a bush suppos\'d a bear?   HIPPOLYTA. But all the story of the night told over,     And all their minds transfigur\'d so together,     More witnesseth than fancy\'s images,     And grows to something of great constancy,     But howsoever strange and admirable.            Enter LYSANDER, DEMETRIUS, HERMIA, and HELENA    THESEUS. Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.     Joy, gentle friends, joy and fresh days of love     Accompany your hearts!   LYSANDER. More than to us     Wait in your royal walks, your board, your bed!   THESEUS. Come now; what masques, what dances shall we have,       To wear away this long age of three hours     Between our after-supper and bed-time?     Where is our usual manager of mirth?     What revels are in hand? Is there no play     To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?     Call Philostrate.   PHILOSTRATE. Here, mighty Theseus.   THESEUS. Say, what abridgment have you for this evening?     What masque? what music? How shall we beguile     The lazy time, if not with some delight?   PHILOSTRATE. There is a brief how many sports are ripe;     Make choice of which your Highness will see first.                                                 [Giving a paper]   THESEUS. \'The battle with the Centaurs, to be sung     By an Athenian eunuch to the harp.\'     We\'ll none of that: that have I told my love,     In glory of my kinsman Hercules.     \'The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals,     Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.\'     That is an old device, and it was play\'d       When I from Thebes came last a conqueror.     \'The thrice three Muses mourning for the death     Of Learning, late deceas\'d in beggary.\'     That is some satire, keen and critical,     Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony.     \'A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus     And his love Thisby; very tragical mirth.\'     Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!     That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow.     How shall we find the concord of this discord?   PHILOSTRATE. A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,     Which is as brief as I have known a play;     But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,     Which makes it tedious; for in all the play     There is not one word apt, one player fitted.     And tragical, my noble lord, it is;     For Pyramus therein doth kill himself.     Which when I saw rehears\'d, I must confess,     Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears     The passion of loud laughter never shed.     THESEUS. What are they that do play it?   PHILOSTRATE. Hard-handed men that work in Athens here,     Which never labour\'d in their minds till now;     And now have toil\'d their unbreathed memories     With this same play against your nuptial.   THESEUS. And we will hear it.   PHILOSTRATE. No, my noble lord,     It is not for you. I have heard it over,     And it is nothing, nothing in the world;     Unless you can find sport in their intents,     Extremely stretch\'d and conn\'d with cruel pain,     To do you service.   THESEUS. I will hear that play;     For never anything can be amiss     When simpleness and duty tender it.     Go, bring them in; and take your places, ladies.                                                 Exit PHILOSTRATE   HIPPOLYTA. I love not to see wretchedness o\'er-charged,     And duty in his service perishing.   THESEUS. Why, gentle sweet, you shall see no such thing.     HIPPOLYTA. He says they can do nothing in this kind.   THESEUS. The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing.     Our sport shall be to take what they mistake;     And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect     Takes it in might, not merit.     Where I have come, great clerks have purposed     To greet me with premeditated welcomes;     Where I have seen them shiver and look pale,     Make periods in the midst of sentences,     Throttle their practis\'d accent in their fears,     And, in conclusion, dumbly have broke off,     Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet,     Out of this silence yet I pick\'d a welcome;     And in the modesty of fearful duty     I read as much as from the rattling tongue     Of saucy and audacious eloquence.     Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity     In least speak most to my capacity.                         Re-enter PHILOSTRATE      PHILOSTRATE. SO please your Grace, the Prologue is address\'d.   THESEUS. Let him approach.              [Flourish of trumpets]                   Enter QUINCE as the PROLOGUE    PROLOGUE. If we offend, it is with our good will.     That you should think, we come not to offend,     But with good will. To show our simple skill,     That is the true beginning of our end.     Consider then, we come but in despite.     We do not come, as minding to content you,     Our true intent is. All for your delight     We are not here. That you should here repent you,     The actors are at band; and, by their show,     You shall know all, that you are like to know,   THESEUS. This fellow doth not stand upon points.   LYSANDER. He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt; he knows not     the stop. A good moral, my lord: it is not enough to speak, but     to speak true.     HIPPOLYTA. Indeed he hath play\'d on this prologue like a child on a     recorder- a sound, but not in government.   THESEUS. His speech was like a tangled chain; nothing im paired,     but all disordered. Who is next?            Enter, with a trumpet before them, as in dumb show,             PYRAMUS and THISBY, WALL, MOONSHINE, and LION    PROLOGUE. Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show;     But wonder on, till truth make all things plain.     This man is Pyramus, if you would know;     This beauteous lady Thisby is certain.     This man, with lime and rough-cast, doth present     Wall, that vile Wall which did these lovers sunder;     And through Walls chink, poor souls, they are content     To whisper. At the which let no man wonder.     This man, with lanthorn, dog, and bush of thorn,     Presenteth Moonshine; for, if you will know,     By moonshine did these lovers think no scorn     To meet at Ninus\' tomb, there, there to woo.       This grisly beast, which Lion hight by name,     The trusty Thisby, coming first by night,     Did scare away, or rather did affright;     And as she fled, her mantle she did fall;     Which Lion vile with bloody mouth did stain.     Anon comes Pyramus, sweet youth and tall,     And finds his trusty Thisby\'s mantle slain;     Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade,     He bravely broach\'d his boiling bloody breast;     And Thisby, tarrying in mulberry shade,     His dagger drew, and died. For all the rest,     Let Lion, Moonshine, Wall, and lovers twain,     At large discourse while here they do remain.                                Exeunt PROLOGUE, PYRAMUS, THISBY,                                              LION, and MOONSHINE   THESEUS. I wonder if the lion be to speak.   DEMETRIUS. No wonder, my lord: one lion may, when many asses do.   WALL. In this same interlude it doth befall     That I, one Snout by name, present a wall;     And such a wall as I would have you think       That had in it a crannied hole or chink,     Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisby,     Did whisper often very secretly.     This loam, this rough-cast, and this stone, doth show     That I am that same wall; the truth is so;     And this the cranny is, right and sinister,     Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper.   THESEUS. Would you desire lime and hair to speak better?   DEMETRIUS. It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard     discourse, my lord.                         Enter PYRAMUS    THESEUS. Pyramus draws near the wall; silence.   PYRAMUS. O grim-look\'d night! O night with hue so black!     O night, which ever art when day is not!     O night, O night, alack, alack, alack,     I fear my Thisby\'s promise is forgot!     And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,     That stand\'st between her father\'s ground and mine;       Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall,     Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne.                                      [WALL holds up his fingers]     Thanks, courteous wall. Jove shield thee well for this!     But what see what see I? No Thisby do I see.     O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss,     Curs\'d he thy stones for thus deceiving me!   THESEUS. The wall, methinks, being sensible, should curse again.   PYRAMUS. No, in truth, sir, he should not. Deceiving me is Thisby\'s     cue. She is to enter now, and I am to spy her through the wall.     You shall see it will fall pat as I told you; yonder she comes.                            Enter THISBY    THISBY. O wall, full often hast thou beard my moans,     For parting my fair Pyramus and me!     My cherry lips have often kiss\'d thy stones,     Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.   PYRAMUS. I see a voice; now will I to the chink,     To spy an I can hear my Thisby\'s face.       Thisby!   THISBY. My love! thou art my love, I think.   PYRAMUS. Think what thou wilt, I am thy lover\'s grace;     And like Limander am I trusty still.   THISBY. And I like Helen, till the Fates me kill.   PYRAMUS. Not Shafalus to Procrus was so true.   THISBY. As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you.   PYRAMUS. O, kiss me through the hole of this vile wall.   THISBY. I kiss the wall\'s hole, not your lips at all.   PYRAMUS. Wilt thou at Ninny\'s tomb meet me straightway?   THISBY. Tide life, tide death, I come without delay.                                        Exeunt PYRAMUS and THISBY   WALL. Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so;     And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.           Exit WALL   THESEUS. Now is the moon used between the two neighbours.   DEMETRIUS. No remedy, my lord, when walls are so wilful to hear     without warning.   HIPPOLYTA. This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.   THESEUS. The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are     no worse, if imagination amend them.     HIPPOLYTA. It must be your imagination then, and not theirs.   THESEUS. If we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves,     they may pass for excellent men. Here come two noble beasts in, a     man and a lion.                     Enter LION and MOONSHINE    LION. You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fear     The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,     May now, perchance, both quake and tremble here,     When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar.     Then know that I as Snug the joiner am     A lion fell, nor else no lion\'s dam;     For, if I should as lion come in strife     Into this place, \'twere pity on my life.   THESEUS. A very gentle beast, and of a good conscience.   DEMETRIUS. The very best at a beast, my lord, that e\'er I saw.   LYSANDER. This lion is a very fox for his valour.   THESEUS. True; and a goose for his discretion.   DEMETRIUS. Not so, my lord; for his valour cannot carry his       discretion, and the fox carries the goose.   THESEUS. His discretion, I am sure, cannot carry his valour; for     the goose carries not the fox. It is well. Leave it to his     discretion, and let us listen to the Moon.   MOONSHINE. This lanthorn doth the horned moon present-   DEMETRIUS. He should have worn the horns on his head.   THESEUS. He is no crescent, and his horns are invisible within the     circumference.   MOONSHINE. This lanthorn doth the horned moon present;     Myself the Man i\' th\' Moon do seem to be.   THESEUS. This is the greatest error of all the rest; the man should     be put into the lantern. How is it else the man i\' th\' moon?   DEMETRIUS. He dares not come there for the candle; for, you see, it     is already in snuff.   HIPPOLYTA. I am aweary of this moon. Would he would change!   THESEUS. It appears, by his small light of discretion, that he is     in the wane; but yet, in courtesy, in all reason, we must stay     the time.   LYSANDER. Proceed, Moon.   MOON. All that I have to say is to tell you that the lanthorn is       the moon; I, the Man i\' th\' Moon; this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush;     and this dog, my dog.   DEMETRIUS. Why, all these should be in the lantern; for all these     are in the moon. But silence; here comes Thisby.                          Re-enter THISBY    THISBY. This is old Ninny\'s tomb. Where is my love?   LION. [Roaring] O-                           [THISBY runs off]   DEMETRIUS. Well roar\'d, Lion.   THESEUS. Well run, Thisby.   HIPPOLYTA. Well shone, Moon. Truly, the moon shines with a good     grace.            [The LION tears THISBY\'S Mantle, and exit]   THESEUS. Well mous\'d, Lion.                          Re-enter PYRAMUS    DEMETRIUS. And then came Pyramus.   LYSANDER. And so the lion vanish\'d.   PYRAMUS. Sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams;       I thank thee, Moon, for shining now so bright;     For, by thy gracious golden, glittering gleams,     I trust to take of truest Thisby sight.              But stay, O spite!              But mark, poor knight,            What dreadful dole is here!              Eyes, do you see?              How can it he?            O dainty duck! O dear!              Thy mantle good,              What! stain\'d with blood?            Approach, ye Furies fell.              O Fates! come, come;              Cut thread and thrum;            Quail, crush, conclude, and quell.   THESEUS. This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go     near to make a man look sad.   HIPPOLYTA. Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man.   PYRAMUS. O wherefore, Nature, didst thou lions frame?     Since lion vile hath here deflower\'d my dear;       Which is- no, no- which was the fairest dame     That liv\'d, that lov\'d, that lik\'d, that look\'d with cheer.              Come, tears, confound;              Out, sword, and wound            The pap of Pyramus;              Ay, that left pap,              Where heart doth hop.               [Stabs himself]            Thus die I, thus, thus, thus.              Now am I dead,              Now am I fled;            My soul is in the sky.              Tongue, lose thy light;              Moon, take thy flight.             [Exit MOONSHINE]            Now die, die, die, die, die.                   [Dies]   DEMETRIUS. No die, but an ace, for him; for he is but one.   LYSANDER. Less than an ace, man; for he is dead; he is nothing.   THESEUS. With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover and yet     prove an ass.   HIPPOLYTA. How chance Moonshine is gone before Thisby comes back     and finds her lover?                           Re-enter THISBY    THESEUS. She will find him by starlight. Here she comes; and her     passion ends the play.   HIPPOLYTA. Methinks she should not use a long one for such a     Pyramus; I hope she will be brief.   DEMETRIUS. A mote will turn the balance, which Pyramus, which     Thisby, is the better- he for a man, God warrant us: She for a     woman, God bless us!   LYSANDER. She hath spied him already with those sweet eyes.   DEMETRIUS. And thus she moans, videlicet:-   THISBY.      Asleep, my love?                What, dead, my dove?              O Pyramus, arise,                Speak, speak. Quite dumb?                Dead, dead? A tomb              Must cover thy sweet eyes.                These lily lips,                This cherry nose,                These yellow cowslip cheeks,                Are gone, are gone;                Lovers, make moan;              His eyes were green as leeks.                O Sisters Three,                Come, come to me,              With hands as pale as milk;                Lay them in gore,                Since you have shore              With shears his thread of silk.                Tongue, not a word.                Come, trusty sword;              Come, blade, my breast imbrue.      [Stabs herself]                And farewell, friends;                Thus Thisby ends;              Adieu, adieu, adieu.                         [Dies]   THESEUS. Moonshine and Lion are left to bury the dead.   DEMETRIUS. Ay, and Wall too.   BOTTOM. [Starting up] No, I assure you; the wall is down that     parted their fathers. Will it please you to see the Epilogue, or       to hear a Bergomask dance between two of our company?   THESEUS. No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no excuse.     Never excuse; for when the players are all dead there need none     to be blamed. Marry, if he that writ it had played Pyramus, and     hang\'d himself in Thisby\'s garter, it would have been a fine     tragedy. And so it is, truly; and very notably discharg\'d. But     come, your Bergomask; let your epilogue alone.     [A dance]     The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve.     Lovers, to bed; \'tis almost fairy time.     I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn,     As much as we this night have overwatch\'d.     This palpable-gross play hath well beguil\'d     The heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed.     A fortnight hold we this solemnity,     In nightly revels and new jollity.                    Exeunt                       Enter PUCK with a broom    PUCK.      Now the hungry lion roars,              And the wolf behowls the moon;                Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,              All with weary task fordone.              Now the wasted brands do glow,              Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud,              Puts the wretch that lies in woe              In remembrance of a shroud.              Now it is the time of night              That the graves, all gaping wide,              Every one lets forth his sprite,              In the church-way paths to glide.              And we fairies, that do run              By the triple Hecate\'s team              From the presence of the sun,              Following darkness like a dream,              Now are frolic. Not a mouse              Shall disturb this hallowed house.              I am sent with broom before,              To sweep the dust behind the door.           Enter OBERON and TITANIA, with all their train      OBERON.    Through the house give glimmering light,              By the dead and drowsy fire;              Every elf and fairy sprite              Hop as light as bird from brier;              And this ditty, after me,              Sing and dance it trippingly.   TITANIA.      First, rehearse your song by rote,                 To each word a warbling note;                 Hand in hand, with fairy grace,                 Will we sing, and bless this place.             [OBERON leading, the FAIRIES sing and dance]    OBERON.    Now, until the break of day,              Through this house each fairy stray.              To the best bride-bed will we,              Which by us shall blessed be;              And the issue there create              Ever shall be fortunate.                So shall all the couples three              Ever true in loving be;              And the blots of Nature\'s hand              Shall not in their issue stand;              Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar,              Nor mark prodigious, such as are              Despised in nativity,              Shall upon their children be.              With this field-dew consecrate,              Every fairy take his gait,              And each several chamber bless,              Through this palace, with sweet peace;              And the owner of it blest              Ever shall in safety rest.              Trip away; make no stay;              Meet me all by break of day.    Exeunt all but PUCK   PUCK.      If we shadows have offended,              Think but this, and all is mended,              That you have but slumb\'red here              While these visions did appear.                And this weak and idle theme,              No more yielding but a dream,              Gentles, do not reprehend.              If you pardon, we will mend.              And, as I am an honest Puck,              If we have unearned luck              Now to scape the serpent\'s tongue,              We will make amends ere long;              Else the Puck a liar call.              So, good night unto you all.              Give me your hands, if we be friends,              And Robin shall restore amends.                Exit  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1599   MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING   by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae    Don Pedro, Prince of Arragon.   Don John, his bastard brother.   Claudio, a young lord of Florence.   Benedick, a Young lord of Padua.   Leonato, Governor of Messina.   Antonio, an old man, his brother.   Balthasar, attendant on Don Pedro.   Borachio, follower of Don John.   Conrade, follower of Don John.   Friar Francis.   Dogberry, a Constable.   Verges, a Headborough.   A Sexton.   A Boy.    Hero, daughter to Leonato.   Beatrice, niece to Leonato.   Margaret, waiting gentlewoman attending on Hero.   Ursula, waiting gentlewoman attending on Hero.    Messengers, Watch, Attendants, etc.       <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE.--Messina.   ACT I. Scene I. An orchard before Leonato\'s house.  Enter Leonato (Governor of Messina), Hero (his Daughter), and Beatrice (his Niece), with a Messenger.    Leon. I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Arragon comes this     night to Messina.   Mess. He is very near by this. He was not three leagues off when I     left him.   Leon. How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?   Mess. But few of any sort, and none of name.   Leon. A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full     numbers. I find here that Don Pedro hath bestowed much honour on     a young Florentine called Claudio.   Mess. Much deserv\'d on his part, and equally rememb\'red by Don     Pedro. He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing     in the figure of a lamb the feats of a lion. He hath indeed     better bett\'red expectation than you must expect of me to tell     you how.   Leon. He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much glad of it.   Mess. I have already delivered him letters, and there appears much       joy in him; even so much that joy could not show itself modest     enough without a badge of bitterness.   Leon. Did he break out into tears?   Mess. In great measure.   Leon. A kind overflow of kindness. There are no faces truer than     those that are so wash\'d. How much better is it to weep at joy     than to joy at weeping!   Beat. I pray you, is Signior Mountanto return\'d from the wars or no?   Mess. I know none of that name, lady. There was none such in the     army of any sort.   Leon. What is he that you ask for, niece?   Hero. My cousin means Signior Benedick of Padua.   Mess. O, he\'s return\'d, and as pleasant as ever he was.   Beat. He set up his bills here in Messina and challeng\'d Cupid at     the flight, and my uncle\'s fool, reading the challenge,     subscrib\'d for Cupid and challeng\'d him at the burbolt. I pray     you, how many hath he kill\'d and eaten in these wars? But how     many hath he kill\'d? For indeed I promised to eat all of his     killing.   Leon. Faith, niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much; but he\'ll       be meet with you, I doubt it not.   Mess. He hath done good service, lady, in these wars.   Beat. You had musty victual, and he hath holp to eat it. He is a     very valiant trencherman; he hath an excellent stomach.   Mess. And a good soldier too, lady.   Beat. And a good soldier to a lady; but what is he to a lord?   Mess. A lord to a lord, a man to a man; stuff\'d with all honourable     virtues.   Beat. It is so indeed. He is no less than a stuff\'d man; but for     the stuffing--well, we are all mortal.   Leon. You must not, sir, mistake my niece. There is a kind of merry     war betwixt Signior Benedick and her. They never meet but there\'s     a skirmish of wit between them.   Beat. Alas, he gets nothing by that! In our last conflict four of     his five wits went halting off, and now is the whole man govern\'d     with one; so that if he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let     him bear it for a difference between himself and his horse; for     it is all the wealth that he hath left to be known a reasonable     creature. Who is his companion now? He hath every month a new     sworn brother.     Mess. Is\'t possible?   Beat. Very easily possible. He wears his faith but as the fashion     of his hat; it ever changes with the next block.   Mess. I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.   Beat. No. An he were, I would burn my study. But I pray you, who is     his companion? Is there no young squarer now that will make a     voyage with him to the devil?   Mess. He is most in the company of the right noble Claudio.   Beat. O Lord, he will hang upon him like a disease! He is sooner     caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad. God     help the noble Claudio! If he have caught the Benedick, it will     cost him a thousand pound ere \'a be cured.   Mess. I will hold friends with you, lady.   Beat. Do, good friend.   Leon. You will never run mad, niece.   Beat. No, not till a hot January.   Mess. Don Pedro is approach\'d.    Enter Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, Balthasar, and John the Bastard.      Pedro. Good Signior Leonato, are you come to meet your trouble? The     fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.   Leon. Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of your Grace;     for trouble being gone, comfort should remain; but when you depart     from me, sorrow abides and happiness takes his leave.   Pedro. You embrace your charge too willingly. I think this is your     daughter.   Leon. Her mother hath many times told me so.   Bene. Were you in doubt, sir, that you ask\'d her?   Leon. Signior Benedick, no; for then were you a child.   Pedro. You have it full, Benedick. We may guess by this what you     are, being a man. Truly the lady fathers herself. Be happy, lady;     for you are like an honourable father.   Bene. If Signior Leonato be her father, she would not have his head     on her shoulders for all Messina, as like him as she is.   Beat. I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick.     Nobody marks you.   Bene. What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?   Beat. Is it possible Disdain should die while she hath such meet     food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert       to disdain if you come in her presence.   Bene. Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of     all ladies, only you excepted; and I would I could find in my     heart that I had not a hard heart, for truly I love none.   Beat. A dear happiness to women! They would else have been troubled     with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of     your humour for that. I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow     than a man swear he loves me.   Bene. God keep your ladyship still in that mind! So some gentleman     or other shall scape a predestinate scratch\'d face.   Beat. Scratching could not make it worse an \'twere such a face as     yours were.   Bene. Well, you are a rare parrot-teacher.   Beat. A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.   Bene. I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a     continuer. But keep your way, a God\'s name! I have done.   Beat. You always end with a jade\'s trick. I know you of old.   Pedro. That is the sum of all, Leonato. Signior Claudio and Signior     Benedick, my dear friend Leonato hath invited you all. I tell him     we shall stay here at the least a month, and he heartly prays       some occasion may detain us longer. I dare swear he is no     hypocrite, but prays from his heart.   Leon. If you swear, my lord, you shall not be forsworn. [To Don     John] Let me bid you welcome, my lord. Being reconciled to the     Prince your brother, I owe you all duty.   John. I thank you. I am not of many words, but I thank you.   Leon. Please it your Grace lead on?   Pedro. Your hand, Leonato. We will go together.                             Exeunt. Manent Benedick and Claudio.   Claud. Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of Signior Leonato?   Bene. I noted her not, but I look\'d on her.   Claud. Is she not a modest young lady?   Bene. Do you question me, as an honest man should do, for my simple     true judgment? or would you have me speak after my custom, as     being a professed tyrant to their sex?   Claud. No. I pray thee speak in sober judgment.   Bene. Why, i\' faith, methinks she\'s too low for a high praise,     too brown for a fair praise, and too little for a great praise.     Only this commendation I can afford her, that were she other     than she is, she were unhandsome, and being no other but as she       is, I do not like her.   Claud. Thou thinkest I am in sport. I pray thee tell me truly how     thou lik\'st her.   Bene. Would you buy her, that you enquire after her?   Claud. Can the world buy such a jewel?   Bene. Yea, and a case to put it into. But speak you this with a sad     brow? or do you play the flouting Jack, to tell us Cupid is a     good hare-finder and Vulcan a rare carpenter? Come, in what key     shall a man take you to go in the song?   Claud. In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I look\'d on.   Bene. I can see yet without spectacles, and I see no such matter.     There\'s her cousin, an she were not possess\'d with a fury,exceeds     her as much in beauty as the first of May doth the last of     December. But I hope you have no intent to turn husband, have     you?   Claud. I would scarce trust myself, though I had sworn the     contrary, if Hero would be my wife.   Bene. Is\'t come to this? In faith, hath not the world one man but     he will wear his cap with suspicion? Shall I never see a     bachelor of threescore again? Go to, i\' faith! An thou wilt needs       thrust thy neck into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away     Sundays.                         Enter Don Pedro.      Look! Don Pedro is returned to seek you.   Pedro. What secret hath held you here, that you followed not to     Leonato\'s?   Bene. I would your Grace would constrain me to tell.   Pedro. I charge thee on thy allegiance.   Bene. You hear, Count Claudio. I can be secret as a dumb man, I     would have you think so; but, on my allegiance--mark you this-on     my allegiance! he is in love. With who? Now that is your Grace\'s     part. Mark how short his answer is: With Hero, Leonato\'s short     daughter.   Claud. If this were so, so were it utt\'red.   Bene. Like the old tale, my lord: \'It is not so, nor \'twas not so;     but indeed, God forbid it should be so!\'   Claud. If my passion change not shortly, God forbid it should be     otherwise.     Pedro. Amen, if you love her; for the lady is very well worthy.   Claud. You speak this to fetch me in, my lord.   Pedro. By my troth, I speak my thought.   Claud. And, in faith, my lord, I spoke mine.   Bene. And, by my two faiths and troths, my lord, I spoke mine.   Claud. That I love her, I feel.   Pedro. That she is worthy, I know.   Bene. That I neither feel how she should be loved, nor know how she     should be worthy, is the opinion that fire cannot melt out of me.     I will die in it at the stake.   Pedro. Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the despite of     beauty.   Claud. And never could maintain his part but in the force of his     will.   Bene. That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she brought me     up, I likewise give her most humble thanks; but that I will have     a rechate winded in my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible     baldrick, all women shall pardon me. Because I will not do them     the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust     none; and the fine is (for the which I may go the finer), I will       live a bachelor.   Pedro. I shall see thee, ere I die, look pale with love.   Bene. With anger, with sickness, or with hunger, my lord; not with     love. Prove that ever I lose more blood with love than I will get     again with drinking, pick out mine eyes with a ballad-maker\'s pen     and hang me up at the door of a brothel house for the sign of     blind Cupid.   Pedro. Well, if ever thou dost fall from this faith, thou wilt     prove a notable argument.   Bene. If I do, hang me in a bottle like a cat and shoot at me; and     he that hits me, let him be clapp\'d on the shoulder and call\'d     Adam.   Pedro. Well, as time shall try.     \'In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke.\'   Bene. The savage bull may; but if ever the sensible Benedick bear     it, pluck off the bull\'s horns and set them in my forehead, and     let me be vilely painted, and in such great letters as they write     \'Here is good horse to hire,\' let them signify under my sign     \'Here you may see Benedick the married man.\'   Claud. If this should ever happen, thou wouldst be horn-mad.     Pedro. Nay, if Cupid have not spent all his quiver in Venice, thou     wilt quake for this shortly.   Bene. I look for an earthquake too then.   Pedro. Well, you will temporize with the hours. In the meantime,     good Signior Benedick, repair to Leonato\'s, commend me to him and     tell him I will not fail him at supper; for indeed he hath made     great preparation.   Bene. I have almost matter enough in me for such an embassage; and     so I commit you--   Claud. To the tuition of God. From my house--if I had it--   Pedro. The sixth of July. Your loving friend, Benedick.   Bene. Nay, mock not, mock not. The body of your discourse is     sometime guarded with fragments, and the guards are but slightly     basted on neither. Ere you flout old ends any further, examine     your conscience. And so I leave you.                   Exit.   Claud. My liege, your Highness now may do me good.   Pedro. My love is thine to teach. Teach it but how,     And thou shalt see how apt it is to learn     Any hard lesson that may do thee good.   Claud. Hath Leonato any son, my lord?     Pedro. No child but Hero; she\'s his only heir.     Dost thou affect her, Claudio?   Claud.O my lord,     When you went onward on this ended action,     I look\'d upon her with a soldier\'s eye,     That lik\'d, but had a rougher task in hand     Than to drive liking to the name of love;     But now I am return\'d and that war-thoughts     Have left their places vacant, in their rooms     Come thronging soft and delicate desires,     All prompting me how fair young Hero is,     Saying I lik\'d her ere I went to wars.   Pedro. Thou wilt be like a lover presently     And tire the hearer with a book of words.     If thou dost love fair Hero, cherish it,     And I will break with her and with her father,     And thou shalt have her. Wast not to this end     That thou began\'st to twist so fine a story?   Claud. How sweetly you do minister to love,     That know love\'s grief by his complexion!       But lest my liking might too sudden seem,     I would have salv\'d it with a longer treatise.   Pedro. What need the bridge much broader than the flood?     The fairest grant is the necessity.     Look, what will serve is fit. \'Tis once, thou lovest,     And I will fit thee with the remedy.     I know we shall have revelling to-night.     I will assume thy part in some disguise     And tell fair Hero I am Claudio,     And in her bosom I\'ll unclasp my heart     And take her hearing prisoner with the force     And strong encounter of my amorous tale.     Then after to her father will I break,     And the conclusion is, she shall be thine.     In practice let us put it presently.                 Exeunt.     Scene II. A room in Leonato\'s house.  Enter [at one door] Leonato and [at another door, Antonio] an old man, brother to Leonato.    Leon. How now, brother? Where is my cousin your son? Hath he     provided this music?   Ant. He is very busy about it. But, brother, I can tell you strange     news that you yet dreamt not of.   Leon. Are they good?   Ant. As the event stamps them; but they have a good cover, they     show well outward. The Prince and Count Claudio, walking in a     thick-pleached alley in mine orchard, were thus much overheard by     a man of mine: the Prince discovered to Claudio that he loved my     niece your daughter and meant to acknowledge it this night in a     dance, and if he found her accordant, he meant to take the     present time by the top and instantly break with you of it.   Leon. Hath the fellow any wit that told you this?   Ant. A good sharp fellow. I will send for him, and question him     yourself.   Leon. No, no. We will hold it as a dream till it appear itself; but       I will acquaint my daughter withal, that she may be the better     prepared for an answer, if peradventure this be true. Go you and     tell her of it.                              [Exit Antonio.]           [Enter Antonio\'s Son with a Musician, and others.]      [To the Son] Cousin, you know what you have to do.     --[To the Musician] O, I cry you mercy, friend. Go you with me,     and I will use your skill.--Good cousin, have a care this busy     time.                                                Exeunt.     Scene III. Another room in Leonato\'s house.]  Enter Sir John the Bastard and Conrade, his companion.    Con. What the goodyear, my lord! Why are you thus out of measure     sad?   John. There is no measure in the occasion that breeds; therefore     the sadness is without limit.   Con. You should hear reason.   John. And when I have heard it, what blessings brings it?   Con. If not a present remedy, at least a patient sufferance.   John. I wonder that thou (being, as thou say\'st thou art, born     under Saturn) goest about to apply a moral medicine to a     mortifying mischief. I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when     I have cause, and smile at no man\'s jests; eat when I have     stomach, and wait for no man\'s leisure; sleep when I am drowsy,     and tend on no man\'s business; laugh when I am merry, and claw no     man in his humour.   Con. Yea, but you must not make the full show of this till you may     do it without controlment. You have of late stood out against     your brother, and he hath ta\'en you newly into his grace, where       it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair     weather that you make yourself. It is needful that you frame the     season for your own harvest.   John. I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace,     and it better fits my blood to be disdain\'d of all than to     fashion a carriage to rob love from any. In this, though I cannot     be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but     I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with a muzzle and     enfranchis\'d with a clog; therefore I have decreed not to sing in     my cage. If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I     would do my liking. In the meantime let me be that I am, and seek     not to alter me.   Con. Can you make no use of your discontent?   John. I make all use of it, for I use it only.                         Enter Borachio.      Who comes here? What news, Borachio?   Bora. I came yonder from a great supper. The Prince your brother is     royally entertain\'d by Leonato, and I can give you intelligence       of an intended marriage.   John. Will it serve for any model to build mischief on?     What is he for a fool that betroths himself to unquietness?   Bora. Marry, it is your brother\'s right hand.   John. Who? the most exquisite Claudio?   Bora. Even he.   John. A proper squire! And who? and who? which way looks he?   Bora. Marry, on Hero, the daughter and heir of Leonato.   John. A very forward March-chick! How came you to this?   Bora. Being entertain\'d for a perfumer, as I was smoking a musty     room, comes me the Prince and Claudio, hand in hand in sad     conference. I whipt me behind the arras and there heard it agreed     upon that the Prince should woo Hero for himself, and having     obtain\'d her, give her to Count Claudio.   John. Come, come, let us thither. This may prove food to my     displeasure. That young start-up hath all the glory of my     overthrow. If I can cross him any way, I bless myself every way.     You are both sure, and will assist me?   Con. To the death, my lord.   John. Let us to the great supper. Their cheer is the greater that       I am subdued. Would the cook were o\' my mind! Shall we go prove     what\'s to be done?   Bora. We\'ll wait upon your lordship.                                                          Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. Scene I. A hall in Leonato\'s house.  Enter Leonato, [Antonio] his Brother, Hero his Daughter, and Beatrice his Niece, and a Kinsman; [also Margaret and Ursula].    Leon. Was not Count John here at supper?   Ant. I saw him not.   Beat. How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can see him but I am     heart-burn\'d an hour after.   Hero. He is of a very melancholy disposition.   Beat. He were an excellent man that were made just in the midway     between him and Benedick. The one is too like an image and says     nothing, and the other too like my lady\'s eldest son, evermore     tattling.   Leon. Then half Signior Benedick\'s tongue in Count John\'s mouth,     and half Count John\'s melancholy in Signior Benedick\'s face--   Beat. With a good leg and a good foot, uncle, and money enough in     his purse, such a man would win any woman in the world--if \'a     could get her good will.   Leon. By my troth, niece, thou wilt never get thee a husband if     thou be so shrewd of thy tongue.     Ant. In faith, she\'s too curst.   Beat. Too curst is more than curst. I shall lessen God\'s sending     that way, for it is said, \'God sends a curst cow short horns,\'     but to a cow too curst he sends none.   Leon. So, by being too curst, God will send you no horns.   Beat. Just, if he send me no husband; for the which blessing I am     at him upon my knees every morning and evening. Lord, I could not     endure a husband with a beard on his face. I had rather lie in     the woollen!   Leon. You may light on a husband that hath no beard.   Beat. What should I do with him? dress him in my apparel and make     him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a     youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that     is more than a youth is not for me; and he that is less than a     man, I am not for him. Therefore I will even take sixpence in     earnest of the berrord and lead his apes into hell.   Leon. Well then, go you into hell?   Beat. No; but to the gate, and there will the devil meet me like an     old cuckold with horns on his head, and say \'Get you to heaven,     Beatrice, get you to heaven. Here\'s no place for you maids.\' So       deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter--for the heavens.     He shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry     as the day is long.   Ant. [to Hero] Well, niece, I trust you will be rul\'d by your     father.   Beat. Yes faith. It is my cousin\'s duty to make cursy and say,     \'Father, as it please you.\' But yet for all that, cousin, let him     be a handsome fellow, or else make another cursy, and say,     \'Father, as it please me.\'   Leon. Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.   Beat. Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would     it not grieve a woman to be overmaster\'d with a piece of valiant     dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl?     No, uncle, I\'ll none. Adam\'s sons are my brethren, and truly I     hold it a sin to match in my kinred.   Leon. Daughter, remember what I told you. If the Prince do solicit     you in that kind, you know your answer.   Beat. The fault will be in the music, cousin, if you be not wooed     in good time. If the Prince be too important, tell him there is     measure in everything, and so dance out the answer. For, hear me,       Hero: wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a     measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty like     a Scotch jig--and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly     modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes     Repentance and with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace     faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.   Leon. Cousin, you apprehend passing shrewdly.   Beat. I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight.   Leon. The revellers are ent\'ring, brother. Make good room.                                                  [Exit Antonio.]      Enter, [masked,] Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, and Balthasar.        [With them enter Antonio, also masked. After them enter]        Don John [and Borachio (without masks), who stand aside                  and look on during the dance].    Pedro. Lady, will you walk a bout with your friend?   Hero. So you walk softly and look sweetly and say nothing,     I am yours for the walk; and especially when I walk away.   Pedro. With me in your company?     Hero. I may say so when I please.   Pedro. And when please you to say so?   Hero. When I like your favour, for God defend the lute should be     like the case!   Pedro. My visor is Philemon\'s roof; within the house is Jove.   Hero. Why then, your visor should be thatch\'d.   Pedro. Speak low if you speak love.         [Takes her aside.]   Balth. Well, I would you did like me.   Marg. So would not I for your own sake, for I have many ill     qualities.   Balth. Which is one?   Marg. I say my prayers aloud.   Balth. I love you the better. The hearers may cry Amen.   Marg. God match me with a good dancer!   Balth. Amen.   Marg. And God keep him out of my sight when the dance is done!     Answer, clerk.   Balth. No more words. The clerk is answered.                                               [Takes her aside.]   Urs. I know you well enough. You are Signior Antonio.     Ant. At a word, I am not.   Urs. I know you by the waggling of your head.   Ant. To tell you true, I counterfeit him.   Urs. You could never do him so ill-well unless you were the very     man. Here\'s his dry hand up and down. You are he, you are he!   Ant. At a word, I am not.   Urs. Come, come, do you think I do not know you by your excellent     wit? Can virtue hide itself? Go to, mum you are he. Graces will     appear, and there\'s an end.              [ They step aside.]   Beat. Will you not tell me who told you so?   Bene. No, you shall pardon me.   Beat. Nor will you not tell me who you are?   Bene. Not now.   Beat. That I was disdainful, and that I had my good wit out of the     \'Hundred Merry Tales.\' Well, this was Signior Benedick that said     so.   Bene. What\'s he?   Beat. I am sure you know him well enough.   Bene. Not I, believe me.   Beat. Did he never make you laugh?     Bene. I pray you, what is he?   Beat. Why, he is the Prince\'s jester, a very dull fool. Only his     gift is in devising impossible slanders. None but libertines     delight in him; and the commendation is not in his wit, but in     his villany; for he both pleases men and angers them, and then     they laugh at him and beat him. I am sure he is in the fleet.     I would he had boarded me.   Bene. When I know the gentleman, I\'ll tell him what you say.   Beat. Do, do. He\'ll but break a comparison or two on me; which     peradventure, not marked or not laugh\'d at, strikes him into     melancholy; and then there\'s a partridge wing saved, for the fool     will eat no supper that night.                                                         [Music.]     We must follow the leaders.   Bene. In every good thing.   Beat. Nay, if they lead to any ill, I will leave them at the next     turning.         Dance. Exeunt (all but Don John, Borachio, and Claudio].   John. Sure my brother is amorous on Hero and hath withdrawn her     father to break with him about it. The ladies follow her and but       one visor remains.   Bora. And that is Claudio. I know him by his bearing.   John. Are you not Signior Benedick?   Claud. You know me well. I am he.   John. Signior, you are very near my brother in his love. He is     enamour\'d on Hero. I pray you dissuade him from her; she is no     equal for his birth. You may do the part of an honest man in it.   Claud. How know you he loves her?   John. I heard him swear his affection.   Bora. So did I too, and he swore he would marry her tonight.   John. Come, let us to the banquet.                                           Exeunt. Manet Claudio.   Claud. Thus answer I in name of Benedick     But hear these ill news with the ears of Claudio.                                                       [Unmasks.]     \'Tis certain so. The Prince wooes for himself.     Friendship is constant in all other things     Save in the office and affairs of love.     Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;     Let every eye negotiate for itself       And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch     Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.     This is an accident of hourly proof,     Which I mistrusted not. Farewell therefore Hero!                    Enter Benedick [unmasked].    Bene. Count Claudio?   Claud. Yea, the same.   Bene. Come, will you go with me?   Claud. Whither?   Bene. Even to the next willow, about your own business, County. What     fashion will you wear the garland of? about your neck, like an     usurer\'s chain? or under your arm, like a lieutenant\'s scarf? You     must wear it one way, for the Prince hath got your Hero.   Claud. I wish him joy of her.   Bene. Why, that\'s spoken like an honest drovier. So they sell     bullocks. But did you think the Prince would have served you     thus?   Claud. I pray you leave me.     Bene. Ho! now you strike like the blind man! \'Twas the boy that     stole your meat, and you\'ll beat the post.   Claud. If it will not be, I\'ll leave you.                Exit.   Bene. Alas, poor hurt fowl! now will he creep into sedges. But,     that my Lady Beatrice should know me, and not know me! The     Prince\'s fool! Ha! it may be I go under that title because I am     merry. Yea, but so I am apt to do myself wrong. I am not so     reputed. It is the base (though bitter) disposition of Beatrice     that puts the world into her person and so gives me out. Well,     I\'ll be revenged as I may.                           Enter Don Pedro.    Pedro. Now, signior, where\'s the Count? Did you see him?   Bene. Troth, my lord, I have played the part of Lady Fame, I found     him here as melancholy as a lodge in a warren. I told him, and I     think I told him true, that your Grace had got the good will of     this young lady, and I off\'red him my company to a willow tree,     either to make him a garland, as being forsaken, or to bind him     up a rod, as being worthy to be whipt.     Pedro. To be whipt? What\'s his fault?   Bene. The flat transgression of a schoolboy who, being overjoyed     with finding a bird\'s nest, shows it his companion, and he steals     it.   Pedro. Wilt thou make a trust a transgression? The transgression is     in the stealer.   Bene. Yet it had not been amiss the rod had been made, and the     garland too; for the garland he might have worn himself, and the     rod he might have bestowed on you, who, as I take it, have stol\'n     his bird\'s nest.   Pedro. I will but teach them to sing and restore them to the owner.   Bene. If their singing answer your saying, by my faith you say     honestly.   Pedro. The Lady Beatrice hath a quarrel to you. The gentleman that     danc\'d with her told her she is much wrong\'d by you.   Bene. O, she misus\'d me past the endurance of a block! An oak but     with one green leaf on it would have answered her; my very visor     began to assume life and scold with her. She told me, not     thinking I had been myself, that I was the Prince\'s jester, that     I was duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest with such       impossible conveyance upon me that I stood like a man at a mark,     with a whole army shooting at me. She speaks poniards, and every     word stabs. If her breath were as terrible as her terminations,     there were no living near her; she would infect to the North     Star. I would not marry her though she were endowed with all that     Adam had left him before he transgress\'d. She would have made     Hercules have turn\'d spit, yea, and have cleft his club to make     the fire too. Come, talk not of her. You shall find her the     infernal Ate in good apparel. I would to God some scholar would     conjure her, for certainly, while she is here, a man may live as     quiet in hell as in a sanctuary; and people sin upon purpose,     because they would go thither; so indeed all disquiet, horror,     and perturbation follows her.             Enter Claudio and Beatrice, Leonato, Hero.    Pedro. Look, here she comes.   Bene. Will your Grace command me any service to the world\'s end? I     will go on the slightest errand now to the Antipodes that you can     devise to send me on; I will fetch you a toothpicker now from the       furthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of Prester John\'s     foot; fetch you a hair off the great Cham\'s beard; do you any     embassage to the Pygmies--rather than hold three words\'     conference with this harpy. You have no employment for me?   Pedro. None, but to desire your good company.   Bene. O God, sir, here\'s a dish I love not! I cannot endure my Lady     Tongue.                                              [Exit.]   Pedro. Come, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior     Benedick.   Beat. Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile, and I gave him use for     it--a double heart for his single one. Marry, once before he won     it of me with false dice; therefore your Grace may well say I     have lost it.   Pedro. You have put him down, lady; you have put him down.   Beat. So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should prove     the mother of fools. I have brought Count Claudio, whom you sent     me to seek.   Pedro. Why, how now, Count? Wherefore are you sad?   Claud. Not sad, my lord.   Pedro. How then? sick?     Claud. Neither, my lord.   Beat. The Count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well; but     civil count--civil as an orange, and something of that jealous     complexion.   Pedro. I\' faith, lady, I think your blazon to be true; though I\'ll     be sworn, if he be so, his conceit is false. Here, Claudio, I     have wooed in thy name, and fair Hero is won. I have broke with     her father, and his good will obtained. Name the day of marriage,     and God give thee joy!   Leon. Count, take of me my daughter, and with her my fortunes. His     Grace hath made the match, and all grace say Amen to it!   Beat. Speak, Count, \'tis your cue.   Claud. Silence is the perfectest herald of joy. I were but little     happy if I could say how much. Lady, as you are mine, I am yours.     I give away myself for you and dote upon the exchange.   Beat. Speak, cousin; or, if you cannot, stop his mouth with a kiss     and let not him speak neither.   Pedro. In faith, lady, you have a merry heart.   Beat. Yea, my lord; I thank it, poor fool, it keeps on the windy     side of care. My cousin tells him in his ear that he is in her       heart.   Claud. And so she doth, cousin.   Beat. Good Lord, for alliance! Thus goes every one to the world but     I, and I am sunburnt. I may sit in a corner and cry \'Heigh-ho for     a husband!\'   Pedro. Lady Beatrice, I will get you one.   Beat. I would rather have one of your father\'s getting. Hath your     Grace ne\'er a brother like you? Your father got excellent     husbands, if a maid could come by them.   Pedro. Will you have me, lady?   Beat. No, my lord, unless I might have another for working days:     your Grace is too costly to wear every day. But I beseech your     Grace pardon me. I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.   Pedro. Your silence most offends me, and to be merry best becomes     you, for out o\' question you were born in a merry hour.   Beat. No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star     danc\'d, and under that was I born. Cousins, God give you joy!   Leon. Niece, will you look to those things I told you of?   Beat. I cry you mercy, uncle, By your Grace\'s pardon.    Exit.   Pedro. By my troth, a pleasant-spirited lady.     Leon. There\'s little of the melancholy element in her, my lord. She     is never sad but when she sleeps, and not ever sad then; for I     have heard my daughter say she hath often dreamt of unhappiness     and wak\'d herself with laughing.   Pedro. She cannot endure to hear tell of a husband.   Leon. O, by no means! She mocks all her wooers out of suit.   Pedro. She were an excellent wife for Benedick.   Leon. O Lord, my lord! if they were but a week married, they would     talk themselves mad.   Pedro. County Claudio, when mean you to go to church?   Claud. To-morrow, my lord. Time goes on crutches till love have all     his rites.   Leon. Not till Monday, my dear son, which is hence a just     sevennight; and a time too brief too, to have all things answer     my mind.   Pedro. Come, you shake the head at so long a breathing;     but I warrant thee, Claudio, the time shall not go dully by us.     I will in the interim undertake one of Hercules\' labours, which     is, to bring Signior Benedick and the Lady Beatrice into a     mountain of affection th\' one with th\' other. I would fain have       it a match, and I doubt not but to fashion it if you three will     but minister such assistance as I shall give you direction.   Leon. My lord, I am for you, though it cost me ten nights\'     watchings.   Claud. And I, my lord.   Pedro. And you too, gentle Hero?   Hero. I will do any modest office, my lord, to help my cousin to a     good husband.   Pedro. And Benedick is not the unhopefullest husband that I know.     Thus far can I praise him: he is of a noble strain, of approved     valour, and confirm\'d honesty. I will teach you how to humour     your cousin, that she shall fall in love with Benedick; and I,     [to Leonato and Claudio] with your two helps, will so practise on     Benedick that, in despite of his quick wit and his queasy     stomach, he shall fall in love with Beatrice. If we can do this,     Cupid is no longer an archer; his glory shall be ours, for we are     the only love-gods. Go in with me, and I will tell you my drift.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene II. A hall in Leonato\'s house.  Enter [Don] John and Borachio.    John. It is so. The Count Claudio shall marry the daughter of     Leonato.   Bora. Yea, my lord; but I can cross it.   John. Any bar, any cross, any impediment will be med\'cinable to me.     I am sick in displeasure to him, and whatsoever comes athwart his     affection ranges evenly with mine. How canst thou cross this     marriage?   Bora. Not honestly, my lord, but so covertly that no dishonesty     shall appear in me.   John. Show me briefly how.   Bora. I think I told your lordship, a year since, how much I am in     the favour of Margaret, the waiting gentlewoman to Hero.   John. I remember.   Bora. I can, at any unseasonable instant of the night, appoint her     to look out at her lady\'s chamber window.   John. What life is in that to be the death of this marriage?   Bora. The poison of that lies in you to temper. Go you to the       Prince your brother; spare not to tell him that he hath wronged     his honour in marrying the renowned Claudio (whose estimation do     you mightily hold up) to a contaminated stale, such a one as     Hero.   John. What proof shall I make of that?   Bora. Proof enough to misuse the Prince, to vex Claudio, to undo     Hero, and kill Leonato. Look you for any other issue?   John. Only to despite them I will endeavour anything.   Bora. Go then; find me a meet hour to draw Don Pedro and the Count     Claudio alone; tell them that you know that Hero loves me; intend     a kind of zeal both to the Prince and Claudio, as--in love of     your brother\'s honour, who hath made this match, and his friend\'s     reputation, who is thus like to be cozen\'d with the semblance of     a maid--that you have discover\'d thus. They will scarcely believe     this without trial. Offer them instances; which shall bear no     less likelihood than to see me at her chamber window, hear me     call Margaret Hero, hear Margaret term me Claudio; and bring them     to see this the very night before the intended wedding (for in     the meantime I will so fashion the matter that Hero shall be     absent) and there shall appear such seeming truth of Hero\'s       disloyalty that jealousy shall be call\'d assurance and all the     preparation overthrown.   John. Grow this to what adverse issue it can, I will put it in     practice. Be cunning in the working this, and thy fee is a     thousand ducats.   Bora. Be you constant in the accusation, and my cunning shall not     shame me.   John. I will presently go learn their day of marriage.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene III. Leonato\'s orchard.  Enter Benedick alone.    Bene. Boy!                      [Enter Boy.]    Boy. Signior?   Bene. In my chamber window lies a book. Bring it hither to me in     the orchard.   Boy. I am here already, sir.   Bene. I know that, but I would have thee hence and here again.     (Exit Boy.) I do much wonder that one man, seeing how much     another man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviours to love,     will, after he hath laugh\'d at such shallow follies in others,     become the argument of his own scorn by falling in love; and such     a man is Claudio. I have known when there was no music with him     but the drum and the fife; and now had he rather hear the tabor     and the pipe. I have known when he would have walk\'d ten mile     afoot to see a good armour; and now will he lie ten nights awake       carving the fashion of a new doublet. He was wont to speak plain     and to the purpose, like an honest man and a soldier; and now is     he turn\'d orthography; his words are a very fantastical banquet--     just so many strange dishes. May I be so converted and see with     these eyes? I cannot tell; I think not. I will not be sworn but     love may transform me to an oyster; but I\'ll take my oath on it,     till he have made an oyster of me he shall never make me such a     fool. One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am     well; another virtuous, yet I am well; but till all graces be in     one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace. Rich she shall     be, that\'s certain; wise, or I\'ll none; virtuous, or I\'ll never     cheapen her; fair, or I\'ll never look on her; mild, or come not     near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good discourse, an     excellent musician, and her hair shall be of what colour it     please God. Ha, the Prince and Monsieur Love! I will hide me in     the arbour.                                         [Hides.]                Enter Don Pedro, Leonato, Claudio.                       Music [within].      Pedro. Come, shall we hear this music?   Claud. Yea, my good lord. How still the evening is,     As hush\'d on purpose to grace harmony!   Pedro. See you where Benedick hath hid himself?   Claud. O, very well, my lord. The music ended,     We\'ll fit the kid-fox with a pennyworth.                     Enter Balthasar with Music.    Pedro. Come, Balthasar, we\'ll hear that song again.   Balth. O, good my lord, tax not so bad a voice     To slander music any more than once.   Pedro. It is the witness still of excellency     To put a strange face on his own perfection.     I pray thee sing, and let me woo no more.   Balth. Because you talk of wooing, I will sing,     Since many a wooer doth commence his suit     To her he thinks not worthy, yet he wooes,     Yet will he swear he loves.   Pedro. Nay, pray thee come;       Or if thou wilt hold longer argument,     Do it in notes.   Balth. Note this before my notes:     There\'s not a note of mine that\'s worth the noting.   Pedro. Why, these are very crotchets that he speaks!     Note notes, forsooth, and nothing!                  [Music.]   Bene. [aside] Now divine air! Now is his soul ravish\'d! Is it not     strange that sheep\'s guts should hale souls out of men\'s bodies?     Well, a horn for my money, when all\'s done.                                               [Balthasar sings.]                       The Song.          Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more!           Men were deceivers ever,         One foot in sea, and one on shore;           To one thing constant never.             Then sigh not so,             But let them go,           And be you blithe and bonny,         Converting all your sounds of woe             Into Hey nonny, nonny.          Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,           Of dumps so dull and heavy!         The fraud of men was ever so,           Since summer first was leavy.             Then sigh not so, &c.    Pedro. By my troth, a good song.   Balth. And an ill singer, my lord.   Pedro. Ha, no, no, faith! Thou sing\'st well enough for a shift.   Bene. [aside] An he had been a dog that should have howl\'d thus,     they would have hang\'d him; and I pray God his bad voice bode no     mischief. I had as live have heard the night raven, come what     plague could have come after it.   Pedro. Yea, marry. Dost thou hear, Balthasar? I pray thee get us     some excellent music; for to-morrow night we would have it at the     Lady Hero\'s chamber window.   Balth. The best I can, my lord.   Pedro. Do so. Farewell.                                   Exit Balthasar [with Musicians].     Come hither, Leonato. What was it you told me of to-day? that     your niece Beatrice was in love with Signior Benedick?   Claud. O, ay!-[Aside to Pedro] Stalk on, stalk on; the fowl sits.     --I did never think that lady would have loved any man.   Leon. No, nor I neither; but most wonderful that she should so dote     on Signior Benedick, whom she hath in all outward behaviours     seem\'d ever to abhor.   Bene. [aside] Is\'t possible? Sits the wind in that corner?   Leon. By my troth, my lord, I cannot tell what to think of it, but     that she loves him with an enraged affection. It is past the     infinite of thought.   Pedro. May be she doth but counterfeit.   Claud. Faith, like enough.   Leon. O God, counterfeit? There was never counterfeit of passion     came so near the life of passion as she discovers it.   Pedro. Why, what effects of passion shows she?   Claud. [aside] Bait the hook well! This fish will bite.   Leon. What effects, my lord? She will sit you--you heard my     daughter tell you how.     Claud. She did indeed.   Pedro. How, how, I pray you? You amaze me. I would have thought her     spirit had been invincible against all assaults of affection.   Leon. I would have sworn it had, my lord--especially against     Benedick.   Bene. [aside] I should think this a gull but that the white-bearded     fellow speaks it. Knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such     reverence.   Claud. [aside] He hath ta\'en th\' infection. Hold it up.   Pedro. Hath she made her affection known to Benedick?   Leon. No, and swears she never will. That\'s her torment.   Claud. \'Tis true indeed. So your daughter says. \'Shall I,\' says     she, \'that have so oft encount\'red him with scorn, write to him     that I love him?\'"   Leon. This says she now when she is beginning to write to him; for     she\'ll be up twenty times a night, and there will she sit in her     smock till she have writ a sheet of paper. My daughter tells us     all.   Claud. Now you talk of a sheet of paper, I remember a pretty jest     your daughter told us of.     Leon. O, when she had writ it, and was reading it over, she found     \'Benedick\' and \'Beatrice\' between the sheet?   Claud. That.   Leon. O, she tore the letter into a thousand halfpence, rail\'d at     herself that she should be so immodest to write to one that she     knew would flout her. \'I measure him,\' says she, \'by my own     spirit; for I should flout him if he writ to me. Yea, though I     love him, I should.\'   Claud. Then down upon her knees she falls, weeps, sobs, beats her     heart, tears her hair, prays, curses--\'O sweet Benedick! God give     me patience!\'   Leon. She doth indeed; my daughter says so. And the ecstasy hath so     much overborne her that my daughter is sometime afeard she will     do a desperate outrage to herself. It is very true.   Pedro. It were good that Benedick knew of it by some other, if she     will not discover it.   Claud. To what end? He would make but a sport of it and torment the     poor lady worse.   Pedro. An he should, it were an alms to hang him! She\'s an     excellent sweet lady, and (out of all suspicion) she is virtuous.     Claud. And she is exceeding wise.   Pedro. In everything but in loving Benedick.   Leon. O, my lord, wisdom and blood combating in so tender a body,     we have ten proofs to one that blood hath the victory. I am sorry     for her, as I have just cause, being her uncle and her guardian.   Pedro. I would she had bestowed this dotage on me. I would have     daff\'d all other respects and made her half myself. I pray you     tell Benedick of it and hear what \'a will say.   Leon. Were it good, think you?   Claud. Hero thinks surely she will die; for she says she will die     if he love her not, and she will die ere she make her love known,     and she will die, if he woo her, rather than she will bate one     breath of her accustomed crossness.   Pedro. She doth well. If she should make tender of her love, \'tis     very possible he\'ll scorn it; for the man (as you know all) hath     a contemptible spirit.   Claud. He is a very proper man.   Pedro. He hath indeed a good outward happiness.   Claud. Before God! and in my mind, very wise.   Pedro. He doth indeed show some sparks that are like wit.     Claud. And I take him to be valiant.   Pedro. As Hector, I assure you; and in the managing of quarrels you     may say he is wise, for either he avoids them with great     discretion, or undertakes them with a most Christianlike fear.   Leon. If he do fear God, \'a must necessarily keep peace. If he     break the peace, he ought to enter into a quarrel with fear and     trembling.   Pedro. And so will he do; for the man doth fear God, howsoever it     seems not in him by some large jests he will make. Well, I am     sorry for your niece. Shall we go seek Benedick and tell him of     her love?   Claud. Never tell him, my lord. Let her wear it out with good     counsel.   Leon. Nay, that\'s impossible; she may wear her heart out first.   Pedro. Well, we will hear further of it by your daughter. Let it     cool the while. I love Benedick well, and I could wish he would     modestly examine himself to see how much he is unworthy so good a     lady.   Leon. My lord, will you .walk? Dinner is ready.                                                [They walk away.]     Claud. If he dote on her upon this, I will never trust my     expectation.   Pedro. Let there be the same net spread for her, and that must your     daughter and her gentlewomen carry. The sport will be, when they     hold one an opinion of another\'s dotage, and no such matter.     That\'s the scene that I would see, which will be merely a dumb     show. Let us send her to call him in to dinner.                        Exeunt [Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato].                  [Benedick advances from the arbour.]    Bene. This can be no trick. The conference was sadly borne; they     have the truth of this from Hero; they seem to pity the lady.     It seems her affections have their full bent. Love me? Why, it     must be requited. I hear how I am censur\'d. They say I will bear     myself proudly if I perceive the love come from her. They say too     that she will rather die than give any sign of affection. I did     never think to marry. I must not seem proud. Happy are they that     hear their detractions and can put them to mending. They say the     lady is fair--\'tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous       --\'tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me--by     my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of     her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her. I may chance     have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me because I     have railed so long against marriage. But doth not the appetite     alters? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure     in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of     the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No, the world     must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not     think I should live till I were married.                   Enter Beatrice.      Here comes Beatrice. By this day, she\'s a fair lady! I do spy     some marks of love in her.   Beat. Against my will I am sent to bid You come in to dinner.   Bene. Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.   Beat. I took no more pains for those thanks than you take pains to     thank me. If it had been painful, I would not have come.   Bene. You take pleasure then in the message?     Beat. Yea, just so much as you may take upon a knives point, and     choke a daw withal. You have no stomach, signior. Fare you well. Exit.   Bene. Ha! \'Against my will I am sent to bid you come in to dinner.\'     There\'s a double meaning in that. \'I took no more pains for those     thanks than you took pains to thank me.\' That\'s as much as to     say, \'Any pains that I take for you is as easy as thanks.\' If I     do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I     am a Jew. I will go get her picture.                   Exit.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. Scene I. Leonato\'s orchard.  Enter Hero and two Gentlewomen, Margaret and Ursula.    Hero. Good Margaret, run thee to the parlour.     There shalt thou find my cousin Beatrice     Proposing with the Prince and Claudio.     Whisper her ear and tell her, I and Ursley     Walk in the orchard, and our whole discourse     Is all of her. Say that thou overheard\'st us;     And bid her steal into the pleached bower,     Where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun,     Forbid the sun to enter--like favourites,     Made proud by princes, that advance their pride     Against that power that bred it. There will she hide her     To listen our propose. This is thy office.     Bear thee well in it and leave us alone.   Marg. I\'ll make her come, I warrant you, presently.    [Exit.]   Hero. Now, Ursula, when Beatrice doth come,     As we do trace this alley up and down,     Our talk must only be of Benedick.       When I do name him, let it be thy part     To praise him more than ever man did merit.     My talk to thee must be how Benedick     Is sick in love with Beatrice. Of this matter     Is little Cupid\'s crafty arrow made,     That only wounds by hearsay.                     [Enter Beatrice.]      Now begin;     For look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs     Close by the ground, to hear our conference.                 [Beatrice hides in the arbour].    Urs. The pleasant\'st angling is to see the fish     Cut with her golden oars the silver stream     And greedily devour the treacherous bait.     So angle we for Beatrice, who even now     Is couched in the woodbine coverture.       Fear you not my part of the dialogue.   Hero. Then go we near her, that her ear lose nothing     Of the false sweet bait that we lay for it.                                      [They approach the arbour.]     No, truly, Ursula, she is too disdainful.     I know her spirits are as coy and wild     As haggards of the rock.   Urs. But are you sure     That Benedick loves Beatrice so entirely?   Hero. So says the Prince, and my new-trothed lord.   Urs. And did they bid you tell her of it, madam?   Hero. They did entreat me to acquaint her of it;     But I persuaded them, if they lov\'d Benedick,     To wish him wrestle with affection     And never to let Beatrice know of it.   Urs. Why did you so? Doth not the gentleman     Deserve as full, as fortunate a bed     As ever Beatrice shall couch upon?   Hero. O god of love! I know he doth deserve     As much as may be yielded to a man:       But Nature never fram\'d a woman\'s heart     Of prouder stuff than that of Beatrice.     Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,     Misprizing what they look on; and her wit     Values itself so highly that to her     All matter else seems weak. She cannot love,     Nor take no shape nor project of affection,     She is so self-endeared.   Urs. Sure I think so;     And therefore certainly it were not good     She knew his love, lest she\'ll make sport at it.   Hero. Why, you speak truth. I never yet saw man,     How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur\'d,     But she would spell him backward. If fair-fac\'d,     She would swear the gentleman should be her sister;     If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antic,     Made a foul blot; if tall, a lance ill-headed;     If low, an agate very vilely cut;     If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds;     If silent, why, a block moved with none.       So turns she every man the wrong side out     And never gives to truth and virtue that     Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.   Urs. Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable.   Hero. No, not to be so odd, and from all fashions,     As Beatrice is, cannot be commendable.     But who dare tell her so? If I should speak,     She would mock me into air; O, she would laugh me     Out of myself, press me to death with wit!     Therefore let Benedick, like cover\'d fire,     Consume away in sighs, waste inwardly.     It were a better death than die with mocks,     Which is as bad as die with tickling.   Urs. Yet tell her of it. Hear what she will say.   Hero. No; rather I will go to Benedick     And counsel him to fight against his passion.     And truly, I\'ll devise some honest slanders     To stain my cousin with. One doth not know     How much an ill word may empoison liking.   Urs. O, do not do your cousin such a wrong!       She cannot be so much without true judgment     (Having so swift and excellent a wit     As she is priz\'d to have) as to refuse     So rare a gentleman as Signior Benedick.   Hero. He is the only man of Italy,     Always excepted my dear Claudio.   Urs. I pray you be not angry with me, madam,     Speaking my fancy: Signior Benedick,     For shape, for bearing, argument, and valour,     Goes foremost in report through Italy.   Hero. Indeed he hath an excellent good name.   Urs. His excellence did earn it ere he had it.     When are you married, madam?   Hero. Why, every day to-morrow! Come, go in.     I\'ll show thee some attires, and have thy counsel     Which is the best to furnish me to-morrow.                                                [They walk away.]   Urs. She\'s lim\'d, I warrant you! We have caught her, madam.   Hero. If it prove so, then loving goes by haps;     Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.                                          Exeunt [Hero and Ursula].      [Beatrice advances from the arbour.]    Beat. What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?     Stand I condemn\'d for pride and scorn so much?     Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu!     No glory lives behind the back of such.     And, Benedick, love on; I will requite thee,     Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand.     If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee     To bind our loves up in a holy band;     For others say thou dost deserve, and I     Believe it better than reportingly.                    Exit.     Scene II. A room in Leonato\'s house.  Enter Don Pedro, Claudio, Benedick, and Leonato.    Pedro. I do but stay till your marriage be consummate, and then go     I toward Arragon.   Claud. I\'ll bring you thither, my lord, if you\'ll vouchsafe me.   Pedro. Nay, that would be as great a soil in the new gloss of your     marriage as to show a child his new coat and forbid him to wear     it. I will only be bold with Benedick for his company; for, from     the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he is all mirth.     He hath twice or thrice cut Cupid\'s bowstring, and the little     hangman dare not shoot at him. He hath a heart as sound as a     bell; and his tongue is the clapper, for what his heart thinks,     his tongue speaks.   Bene. Gallants, I am not as I have been.   Leon. So say I. Methinks you are sadder.   Claud. I hope he be in love.   Pedro. Hang him, truant! There\'s no true drop of blood in him to be     truly touch\'d with love. If he be sad, he wants money.   Bene. I have the toothache.     Pedro. Draw it.   Bene. Hang it!   Claud. You must hang it first and draw it afterwards.   Pedro. What? sigh for the toothache?   Leon. Where is but a humour or a worm.   Bene. Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.   Claud. Yet say I he is in love.   Pedro. There is no appearance of fancy in him, unless it be a fancy     that he hath to strange disguises; as to be a Dutchman to-day, a     Frenchman to-morrow; or in the shape of two countries at once, as     a German from the waist downward, all slops, and a Spaniard from     the hip upward, no doublet. Unless he have a fancy to this     foolery, as it appears he hath, he is no fool for fancy, as you     would have it appear he is.   Claud. If he be not in love with some woman, there is no believing     old signs. \'A brushes his hat o\' mornings. What should that bode?   Pedro. Hath any man seen him at the barber\'s?   Claud. No, but the barber\'s man hath been seen with him, and the      old ornament of his cheek hath already stuff\'d tennis balls.   Leon. Indeed he looks younger than he did, by the loss of a beard.     Pedro. Nay, \'a rubs himself with civet. Can you smell him out by     that?   Claud. That\'s as much as to say, the sweet youth\'s in love.   Pedro. The greatest note of it is his melancholy.   Claud. And when was he wont to wash his face?   Pedro. Yea, or to paint himself? for the which I hear what they say     of him.   Claud. Nay, but his jesting spirit, which is new-crept into a     lutestring, and now govern\'d by stops.   Pedro. Indeed that tells a heavy tale for him. Conclude, conclude,     he is in love.   Claud. Nay, but I know who loves him.   Pedro. That would I know too. I warrant, one that knows him not.   Claud. Yes, and his ill conditions; and in despite of all, dies for     him.   Pedro. She shall be buried with her face upwards.   Bene. Yet is this no charm for the toothache. Old signior, walk     aside with me. I have studied eight or nine wise words to speak     to you, which these hobby-horses must not hear.                                   [Exeunt Benedick and Leonato.]     Pedro. For my life, to break with him about Beatrice!   Claud. \'Tis even so. Hero and Margaret have by this played their     parts with Beatrice, and then the two bears will not bite one     another when they meet.                   Enter John the Bastard.    John. My lord and brother, God save you.   Pedro. Good den, brother.   John. If your leisure serv\'d, I would speak with you.   Pedro. In private?   John. If it please you. Yet Count Claudio may hear, for what I     would speak of concerns him.   Pedro. What\'s the matter?   John. [to Claudio] Means your lordship to be married tomorrow?   Pedro. You know he does.   John. I know not that, when he knows what I know.   Claud. If there be any impediment, I pray you discover it.   John. You may think I love you not. Let that appear hereafter, and     aim better at me by that I now will manifest. For my brother, I       think he holds you well and in dearness of heart hath holp to     effect your ensuing marriage--surely suit ill spent and labour     ill bestowed!   Pedro. Why, what\'s the matter?   John. I came hither to tell you, and, circumstances short\'ned (for     she has been too long a-talking of), the lady is disloyal.   Claud. Who? Hero?   John. Even she--Leonato\'s Hero, your Hero, every man\'s Hero.   Claud. Disloyal?   John. The word is too good to paint out her wickedness. I could say     she were worse; think you of a worse title, and I will fit her to     it. Wonder not till further warrant. Go but with me to-night, you     shall see her chamber window ent\'red, even the night before her     wedding day. If you love her then, to-morrow wed her. But it     would better fit your honour to change your mind.   Claud. May this be so?   Pedro. I will not think it.   John. If you dare not trust that you see, confess not that you     know. If you will follow me, I will show you enough; and when you     have seen more and heard more, proceed accordingly.     Claud. If I see anything to-night why I should not marry her     to-morrow, in the congregation where I should wed, there will I     shame her.   Pedro. And, as I wooed for thee to obtain her, I will join with     thee to disgrace her.   John. I will disparage her no farther till you are my witnesses.     Bear it coldly but till midnight, and let the issue show itself.   Pedro. O day untowardly turned!   Claud. O mischief strangely thwarting!   John. O plague right well prevented!     So will you say when you have seen the Sequel.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene III. A street.  Enter Dogberry and his compartner [Verges], with the Watch.    Dog. Are you good men and true?   Verg. Yea, or else it were pity but they should suffer salvation,     body and soul.   Dog. Nay, that were a punishment too good for them if they should     have any allegiance in them, being chosen for the Prince\'s watch.   Verg. Well, give them their charge, neighbour Dogberry.   Dog. First, who think you the most desartless man to be constable?   1. Watch. Hugh Oatcake, sir, or George Seacoal; for they can write     and read.   Dog. Come hither, neighbour Seacoal. God hath bless\'d you with a     good name. To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune, but     to write and read comes by nature.   2. Watch. Both which, Master Constable--   Dog. You have. I knew it would be your answer. Well, for your     favour, sir, why, give God thanks and make no boast of it; and     for your writing and reading, let that appear when there is no     need of such vanity. You are thought here to be the most       senseless and fit man for the constable of the watch. Therefore     bear you the lanthorn. This is your charge: you shall comprehend     all vagrom men; you are to bid any man stand, in the Prince\'s     name.   2. Watch. How if \'a will not stand?   Dog. Why then, take no note of him, but let him go, and presently     call the rest of the watch together and thank God you are rid of     a knave.   Verg. If he will not stand when he is bidden, he is none of the     Prince\'s subjects.   Dog. True, and they are to meddle with none but the Prince\'s     subjects. You shall also make no noise in the streets; for for     the watch to babble and to talk is most tolerable, and not to be     endured.   2. Watch. We will rather sleep than talk. We know what belongs to     a watch.   Dog. Why, you speak like an ancient and most quiet watchman, for I     cannot see how sleeping should offend. Only have a care that your     bills be not stol\'n. Well, you are to call at all the alehouses     and bid those that are drunk get them to bed.     2. Watch. How if they will not?   Dog. Why then, let them alone till they are sober. If they make you     not then the better answer, You may say they are not the men you     took them for.   2. Watch. Well, sir.   Dog. If you meet a thief, you may suspect him, by virtue of your     office, to be no true man; and for such kind of men, the less you     meddle or make with them, why, the more your honesty.   2. Watch. If we know him to be a thief, shall we not lay hands on     him?   Dog. Truly, by your office you may; but I think they that touch     pitch will be defil\'d. The most peaceable way for you, if you do     take a thief, is to let him show himself what he is, and steal     out of your company.   Verg. You have been always called a merciful man, partner.   Dog. Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who     hath any honesty in him.   Verg. If you hear a child cry in the night, you must call to the     nurse and bid her still it.   2. Watch. How if the nurse be asleep and will not hear us?     Dog. Why then, depart in peace and let the child wake her with     crying; for the ewe that will not hear her lamb when it baes will     never answer a calf when he bleats.   Verg. \'Tis very true.   Dog. This is the end of the charge: you, constable, are to present     the Prince\'s own person. If you meet the Prince in the night,     you may stay him.   Verg. Nay, by\'r lady, that I think \'a cannot.   Dog. Five shillings to one on\'t with any man that knows the     statutes, he may stay him! Marry, not without the Prince be     willing; for indeed the watch ought to offend no man, and it is     an offence to stay a man against his will.   Verg. By\'r lady, I think it be so.   Dog. Ha, ah, ha! Well, masters, good night. An there be any matter     of weight chances, call up me. Keep your fellows\' counsels and     your own, and good night. Come, neighbour.   2. Watch. Well, masters, we hear our charge. Let us go sit here     upon the church bench till two, and then all to bed.   Dog. One word more, honest neighbours. I pray you watch about     Signior Leonato\'s door; for the wedding being there tomorrow,       there is a great coil to-night. Adieu. Be vigitant, I beseech     you.                           Exeunt [Dogberry and Verges].                       Enter Borachio and Conrade.    Bora. What, Conrade!   2. Watch. [aside] Peace! stir not!   Bora. Conrade, I say!   Con. Here, man. I am at thy elbow.   Bora. Mass, and my elbow itch\'d! I thought there would a scab     follow.   Con. I will owe thee an answer for that; and now forward with thy     tale.   Bora. Stand thee close then under this penthouse, for it drizzles     rain, and I will, like a true drunkard, utter all to thee.   2. Watch. [aside] Some treason, masters. Yet stand close.   Bora. Therefore know I have earned of Don John a thousand ducats.   Con. Is it possible that any villany should be so dear?   Bora. Thou shouldst rather ask if it were possible any villany     should be so rich; for when rich villains have need of poor ones,       poor ones may make what price they will.   Con. I wonder at it.   Bora. That shows thou art unconfirm\'d. Thou knowest that the     fashion of a doublet, or a hat, or a cloak, is nothing to a man.   Con. Yes, it is apparel.   Bora. I mean the fashion.   Con. Yes, the fashion is the fashion.   Bora. Tush! I may as well say the fool\'s the fool. But seest thou     not what a deformed thief this fashion is?   2. Watch. [aside] I know that Deformed. \'A bas been a vile thief     this seven year; \'a goes up and down like a gentleman. I remember     his name.   Bora. Didst thou not hear somebody?   Con. No; \'twas the vane on the house.   Bora. Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this fashion is?     how giddily \'a turns about all the hot-bloods between fourteen     and five-and-thirty? sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoh\'s     soldiers in the reechy painting, sometime like god Bel\'s priests     in the old church window, sometime like the shaven Hercules in     the smirch\'d worm-eaten tapestry, where his codpiece seems as       massy as his club?   Con. All this I see; and I see that the fashion wears out more     apparel than the man. But art not thou thyself giddy with the     fashion too, that thou hast shifted out of thy tale into telling     me of the fashion?   Bora. Not so neither. But know that I have to-night wooed Margaret,     the Lady Hero\'s gentlewoman, by the name of Hero. She leans me     out at her mistress\' chamber window, bids me a thousand times     good night--I tell this tale vilely; I should first tell thee how     the Prince, Claudio and my master, planted and placed and     possessed by my master Don John, saw afar off in the orchard this     amiable encounter.   Con. And thought they Margaret was Hero?   Bora. Two of them did, the Prince and Claudio; but the devil my     master knew she was Margaret; and partly by his oaths, which     first possess\'d them, partly by the dark night, which did deceive     them, but chiefly by my villany, which did confirm any slander     that Don John had made, away went Claudio enrag\'d; swore he would     meet her, as he was appointed, next morning at the temple, and     there, before the whole congregation, shame her with what he saw       o\'ernight and send her home again without a husband.   2. Watch. We charge you in the Prince\'s name stand!   1. Watch. Call up the right Master Constable. We have here     recover\'d the most dangerous piece of lechery that ever was known     in the commonwealth.   2. Watch. And one Deformed is one of them. I know him; \'a wears a     lock.   Con. Masters, masters--   1. Watch. You\'ll be made bring Deformed forth, I warrant you.   Con. Masters--   2. Watch. Never speak, we charge you. Let us obey you to go with     us.   Bora. We are like to prove a goodly commodity, being taken up of     these men\'s bills.   Con. A commodity in question, I warrant you. Come, we\'ll obey you.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene IV. A Room in Leonato\'s house.  Enter Hero, and Margaret and Ursula.    Hero. Good Ursula, wake my cousin Beatrice and desire her to rise.   Urs. I will, lady.   Hero. And bid her come hither.   Urs. Well.                                             [Exit.]   Marg. Troth, I think your other rebato were better.   Hero. No, pray thee, good Meg, I\'ll wear this.   Marg. By my troth, \'s not so good, and I warrant your cousin will     say so.   Hero. My cousin\'s a fool, and thou art another. I\'ll wear none but     this.   Marg. I like the new tire within excellently, if the hair were a     thought browner; and your gown\'s a most rare fashion, i\' faith.     I saw the Duchess of Milan\'s gown that they praise so.   Hero. O, that exceeds, they say.   Marg. By my troth, \'s but a nightgown in respect of yours--     cloth-o\'-gold and cuts, and lac\'d with silver, set with pearls     down sleeves, side-sleeves, and skirts, round underborne with       a blush tinsel. But for a fine, quaint, graceful, and excellent     fashion, yours is worth ten on\'t.   Hero. God give me joy to wear it! for my heart is exceeding heavy.   Marg. \'Twill be heavier soon by the weight of a man.   Hero. Fie upon thee! art not ashamed?   Marg. Of what, lady? of speaking honourably? Is not marriage     honourable in a beggar? Is not your lord honourable without     marriage? I think you would have me say, \'saving your reverence,     a husband.\' An bad thinking do not wrest true speaking, I\'ll     offend nobody. Is there any harm in \'the heavier for a husband\'?     None, I think, an it be the right husband and the right wife.     Otherwise \'tis light, and not heavy. Ask my Lady Beatrice else.     Here she comes.                                 Enter Beatrice.    Hero. Good morrow, coz.   Beat. Good morrow, sweet Hero.   Hero. Why, how now? Do you speak in the sick tune?   Beat. I am out of all other tune, methinks.     Marg. Clap\'s into \'Light o\' love.\' That goes without a burden. Do     you sing it, and I\'ll dance it.   Beat. Yea, \'Light o\' love\' with your heels! then, if your husband     have stables enough, you\'ll see he shall lack no barnes.   Marg. O illegitimate construction! I scorn that with my heels.   Beat. \'Tis almost five o\'clock, cousin; \'tis time you were ready.     By my troth, I am exceeding ill. Hey-ho!   Marg. For a hawk, a horse, or a husband?   Beat. For the letter that begins them all, H.   Marg. Well, an you be not turn\'d Turk, there\'s no more sailing by     the star.   Beat. What means the fool, trow?   Marg. Nothing I; but God send every one their heart\'s desire!   Hero. These gloves the Count sent me, they are an excellent     perfume.   Beat. I am stuff\'d, cousin; I cannot smell.   Marg. A maid, and stuff\'d! There\'s goodly catching of cold.   Beat. O, God help me! God help me! How long have you profess\'d     apprehension?   Marg. Ever since you left it. Doth not my wit become me rarely?     Beat. It is not seen enough. You should wear it in your cap. By my     troth, I am sick.   Marg. Get you some of this distill\'d carduus benedictus and lay it     to your heart. It is the only thing for a qualm.   Hero. There thou prick\'st her with a thistle.   Beat. Benedictus? why benedictus? You have some moral in this     \'benedictus.\'   Marg. Moral? No, by my troth, I have no moral meaning; I meant     plain holy thistle. You may think perchance that I think you are     in love. Nay, by\'r lady, I am not such a fool to think what I     list; nor I list not to think what I can; nor indeed I cannot     think, if I would think my heart out of thinking, that you are in     love, or that you will be in love, or that you can be in love.     Yet Benedick was such another, and now is he become a man. He     swore he would never marry; and yet now in despite of his heart     he eats his meat without grudging; and how you may be converted I     know not, but methinks you look with your eyes as other women do.   Beat. What pace is this that thy tongue keeps?   Marg. Not a false gallop.                             Enter Ursula.    Urs. Madam, withdraw. The Prince, the Count, Signior Benedick, Don     John, and all the gallants of the town are come to fetch you to     church.   Hero. Help to dress me, good coz, good Meg, good Ursula.                                                        [Exeunt.]     Scene V. The hall in Leonato\'s house.  Enter Leonato and the Constable [Dogberry] and the Headborough [verges].    Leon. What would you with me, honest neighbour?   Dog. Marry, sir, I would have some confidence with you that decerns     you nearly.   Leon. Brief, I pray you; for you see it is a busy time with me.   Dog. Marry, this it is, sir.   Verg. Yes, in truth it is, sir.   Leon. What is it, my good friends?   Dog. Goodman Verges, sir, speaks a little off the matter--an old     man, sir, and his wits are not so blunt as, God help, I would     desire they were; but, in faith, honest as the skin between his     brows.   Verg. Yes, I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is an     old man and no honester than I.   Dog. Comparisons are odorous. Palabras, neighbour Verges.   Leon. Neighbours, you are tedious.   Dog. It pleases your worship to say so, but we are the poor Duke\'s       officers; but truly, for mine own part, if I were as tedious as a     king, I could find in my heart to bestow it all of your worship.   Leon. All thy tediousness on me, ah?   Dog. Yea, in \'twere a thousand pound more than \'tis; for I hear as     good exclamation on your worship as of any man in the city; and     though I be but a poor man, I am glad to hear it.   Verg. And so am I.   Leon. I would fain know what you have to say.   Verg. Marry, sir, our watch to-night, excepting your worship\'s     presence, ha\' ta\'en a couple of as arrant knaves as any in     Messina.   Dog. A good old man, sir; he will be talking. As they say, \'When     the age is in, the wit is out.\' God help us! it is a world to     see! Well said, i\' faith, neighbour Verges. Well, God\'s a good     man. An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind. An honest     soul, i\' faith, sir, by my troth he is, as ever broke bread; but     God is to be worshipp\'d; all men are not alike, alas, good     neighbour!   Leon. Indeed, neighbour, he comes too short of you.   Dog. Gifts that God gives.     Leon. I must leave you.   Dog. One word, sir. Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two     aspicious persons, and we would have them this morning examined     before your worship.   Leon. Take their examination yourself and bring it me. I am now in     great haste, as it may appear unto you.   Dog. It shall be suffigance.   Leon. Drink some wine ere you go. Fare you well.                         [Enter a Messenger.]    Mess. My lord, they stay for you to give your daughter to her     husband.   Leon. I\'ll wait upon them. I am ready.                                  [Exeunt Leonato and Messenger.]   Dog. Go, good partner, go get you to Francis Seacoal; bid him bring     his pen and inkhorn to the jail. We are now to examination these     men.   Verg. And we must do it wisely.   Dog. We will spare for no wit, I warrant you. Here\'s that shall       drive some of them to a non-come. Only get the learned writer to     set down our excommunication, and meet me at the jail.                                                        [Exeunt.]     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. Scene I. A church.  Enter Don Pedro, [John the] Bastard, Leonato, Friar [Francis], Claudio, Benedick, Hero, Beatrice, [and Attendants].    Leon. Come, Friar Francis, be brief. Only to the plain form of     marriage, and you shall recount their particular duties     afterwards.   Friar. You come hither, my lord, to marry this lady?   Claud. No.   Leon. To be married to her. Friar, you come to marry her.   Friar. Lady, you come hither to be married to this count?   Hero. I do.   Friar. If either of you know any inward impediment why you should     not be conjoined, I charge you on your souls to utter it.   Claud. Know you any, Hero?   Hero. None, my lord.   Friar. Know you any, Count?   Leon. I dare make his answer--none.   Claud. O, what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do, not     knowing what they do!     Bene. How now? interjections? Why then, some be of laughing, as,     ah, ha, he!   Claud. Stand thee by, friar. Father, by your leave:     Will you with free and unconstrained soul     Give me this maid your daughter?   Leon. As freely, son, as God did give her me.   Claud. And what have I to give you back whose worth     May counterpoise this rich and precious gift?   Pedro. Nothing, unless you render her again.   Claud. Sweet Prince, you learn me noble thankfulness.     There, Leonato, take her back again.     Give not this rotten orange to your friend.     She\'s but the sign and semblance of her honour.     Behold how like a maid she blushes here!     O, what authority and show of truth     Can cunning sin cover itself withal!     Comes not that blood as modest evidence     To witness simple virtue, Would you not swear,     All you that see her, that she were a maid     By these exterior shows? But she is none:       She knows the heat of a luxurious bed;     Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.   Leon. What do you mean, my lord?   Claud. Not to be married,     Not to knit my soul to an approved wanton.   Leon. Dear my lord, if you, in your own proof,     Have vanquish\'d the resistance of her youth     And made defeat of her virginity--   Claud. I know what you would say. If I have known her,     You will say she did embrace me as a husband,     And so extenuate the forehand sin.     No, Leonato,     I never tempted her with word too large,     But, as a brother to his sister, show\'d     Bashful sincerity and comely love.   Hero. And seem\'d I ever otherwise to you?   Claud. Out on the seeming! I will write against it.     You seem to me as Dian in her orb,     As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown;     But you are more intemperate in your blood       Than Venus, or those pamp\'red animals     That rage in savage sensuality.   Hero. Is my lord well that he doth speak so wide?   Leon. Sweet Prince, why speak not you?   Pedro. What should I speak?     I stand dishonour\'d that have gone about     To link my dear friend to a common stale.   Leon. Are these things spoken, or do I but dream?   John. Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true.   Bene. This looks not like a nuptial.   Hero. \'True!\' O God!   Claud. Leonato, stand I here?     Is this the Prince, Is this the Prince\'s brother?     Is this face Hero\'s? Are our eyes our own?   Leon. All this is so; but what of this, my lord?   Claud. Let me but move one question to your daughter,     And by that fatherly and kindly power     That you have in her, bid her answer truly.   Leon. I charge thee do so, as thou art my child.   Hero. O, God defend me! How am I beset!       What kind of catechising call you this?   Claud. To make you answer truly to your name.   Hero. Is it not Hero? Who can blot that name     With any just reproach?   Claud. Marry, that can Hero!     Hero itself can blot out Hero\'s virtue.     What man was he talk\'d with you yesternight,     Out at your window betwixt twelve and one?     Now, if you are a maid, answer to this.   Hero. I talk\'d with no man at that hour, my lord.   Pedro. Why, then are you no maiden. Leonato,     I am sorry you must hear. Upon my honour,     Myself, my brother, and this grieved Count     Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night     Talk with a ruffian at her chamber window,     Who hath indeed, most like a liberal villain,     Confess\'d the vile encounters they have had     A thousand times in secret.   John. Fie, fie! they are not to be nam\'d, my lord--     Not to be spoke of;       There is not chastity, enough in language     Without offence to utter them. Thus, pretty lady,     I am sorry for thy much misgovernment.   Claud. O Hero! what a Hero hadst thou been     If half thy outward graces had been plac\'d     About thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart!     But fare thee well, most foul, most fair! Farewell,     Thou pure impiety and impious purity!     For thee I\'ll lock up all the gates of love,     And on my eyelids shall conjecture hang,     To turn all beauty into thoughts of harm,     And never shall it more be gracious.   Leon. Hath no man\'s dagger here a point for me?                                                   [Hero swoons.]   Beat. Why, how now, cousin? Wherefore sink you down?   John. Come let us go. These things, come thus to light,     Smother her spirits up.                       [Exeunt Don Pedro, Don Juan, and Claudio.]   Bene. How doth the lady?   Beat. Dead, I think. Help, uncle!       Hero! why, Hero! Uncle! Signior Benedick! Friar!   Leon. O Fate, take not away thy heavy hand!     Death is the fairest cover for her shame     That may be wish\'d for.   Beat. How now, cousin Hero?   Friar. Have comfort, lady.   Leon. Dost thou look up?   Friar. Yea, wherefore should she not?   Leon. Wherefore? Why, doth not every earthly thing     Cry shame upon her? Could she here deny     The story that is printed in her blood?     Do not live, Hero; do not ope thine eyes;     For, did I think thou wouldst not quickly die,     Thought I thy spirits were stronger than thy shames,     Myself would on the rearward of reproaches     Strike at thy life. Griev\'d I, I had but one?     Child I for that at frugal nature\'s frame?     O, one too much by thee! Why had I one?     Why ever wast thou lovely in my eyes?     Why had I not with charitable hand       Took up a beggar\'s issue at my gates,     Who smirched thus and mir\'d with infamy,     I might have said, \'No part of it is mine;     This shame derives itself from unknown loins\'?     But mine, and mine I lov\'d, and mine I prais\'d,     And mine that I was proud on--mine so much     That I myself was to myself not mine,     Valuing of her--why, she, O, she is fall\'n     Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea     Hath drops too few to wash her clean again,     And salt too little which may season give     To her foul tainted flesh!   Bene. Sir, sir, be patient.     For my part, I am so attir\'d in wonder,     I know not what to say.   Beat. O, on my soul, my cousin is belied!   Bene. Lady, were you her bedfellow last night?   Beat. No, truly, not; although, until last night,     I have this twelvemonth been her bedfellow   Leon. Confirm\'d, confirm\'d! O, that is stronger made       Which was before barr\'d up with ribs of iron!     Would the two princes lie? and Claudio lie,     Who lov\'d her so that, speaking of her foulness,     Wash\'d it with tears? Hence from her! let her die.   Friar. Hear me a little;     For I have only been silent so long,     And given way unto this course of fortune,     By noting of the lady. I have mark\'d     A thousand blushing apparitions     To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames     In angel whiteness beat away those blushes,     And in her eye there hath appear\'d a fire     To burn the errors that these princes hold     Against her maiden truth. Call me a fool;     Trust not my reading nor my observation,     Which with experimental seal doth warrant     The tenure of my book; trust not my age,     My reverence, calling, nor divinity,     If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here     Under some biting error.     Leon. Friar, it cannot be.     Thou seest that all the grace that she hath left     Is that she will not add to her damnation     A sin of perjury: she not denies it.     Why seek\'st thou then to cover with excuse     That which appears in proper nakedness?   Friar. Lady, what man is he you are accus\'d of?   Hero. They know that do accuse me; I know none.     If I know more of any man alive     Than that which maiden modesty doth warrant,     Let all my sins lack mercy! O my father,     Prove you that any man with me convers\'d     At hours unmeet, or that I yesternight     Maintain\'d the change of words with any creature,     Refuse me, hate me, torture me to death!   Friar. There is some strange misprision in the princes.   Bene. Two of them have the very bent of honour;     And if their wisdoms be misled in this,     The practice of it lives in John the bastard,     Whose spirits toil in frame of villanies.     Leon. I know not. If they speak but truth of her,     These hands shall tear her. If they wrong her honour,     The proudest of them shall well hear of it.     Time hath not yet so dried this blood of mine,     Nor age so eat up my invention,     Nor fortune made such havoc of my means,     Nor my bad life reft me so much of friends,     But they shall find awak\'d in such a kind     Both strength of limb and policy of mind,     Ability in means, and choice of friends,     To quit me of them throughly.   Friar. Pause awhile     And let my counsel sway you in this case.     Your daughter here the princes left for dead,     Let her awhile be secretly kept in,     And publish it that she is dead indeed;     Maintain a mourning ostentation,     And on your family\'s old monument     Hang mournful epitaphs, and do all rites     That appertain unto a burial.     Leon. What shall become of this? What will this do?   Friar. Marry, this well carried shall on her behalf     Change slander to remorse. That is some good.     But not for that dream I on this strange course,     But on this travail look for greater birth.     She dying, as it must be so maintain\'d,     Upon the instant that she was accus\'d,     Shall be lamented, pitied, and excus\'d     Of every hearer; for it so falls out     That what we have we prize not to the worth     Whiles we enjoy it, but being lack\'d and lost,     Why, then we rack the value, then we find     The virtue that possession would not show us     Whiles it was ours. So will it fare with Claudio.     When he shall hear she died upon his words,     Th\' idea of her life shall sweetly creep     Into his study of imagination,     And every lovely organ of her life     Shall come apparell\'d in more precious habit,     More moving, delicate, and full of life,       Into the eye and prospect of his soul     Than when she liv\'d indeed. Then shall he mourn     (If ever love had interest in his liver)     And wish he had not so accused her--     No, though be thought his accusation true.     Let this be so, and doubt not but success     Will fashion the event in better shape     Than I can lay it down in likelihood.     But if all aim but this be levell\'d false,     The supposition of the lady\'s death     Will quench the wonder of her infamy.     And if it sort not well, you may conceal her,     As best befits her wounded reputation,     In some reclusive and religious life,     Out of all eyes, tongues, minds, and injuries.   Bene. Signior Leonato, let the friar advise you;     And though you know my inwardness and love     Is very much unto the Prince and Claudio,     Yet, by mine honour, I will deal in this     As secretly and justly as your soul       Should with your body.   Leon. Being that I flow in grief,     The smallest twine may lead me.   Friar. \'Tis well consented. Presently away;     For to strange sores strangely they strain the cure.     Come, lady, die to live. This wedding day     Perhaps is but prolong\'d. Have patience and endure.                          Exeunt [all but Benedick and Beatrice].   Bene. Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?   Beat. Yea, and I will weep a while longer.   Bene. I will not desire that.   Beat. You have no reason. I do it freely.   Bene. Surely I do believe your fair cousin is wronged.   Beat. Ah, how much might the man deserve of me that would right      her!   Bene. Is there any way to show such friendship?   Beat. A very even way, but no such friend.   Bene. May a man do it?   Beat. It is a man\'s office, but not yours.   Bene. I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that       strange?   Beat. As strange as the thing I know not. It were as possible for     me to say I loved nothing so well as you. But believe me not; and     yet I lie not. I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing. I am sorry     for my cousin.   Bene. By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me.   Beat. Do not swear, and eat it.   Bene. I will swear by it that you love me, and I will make him eat     it that says I love not you.   Beat. Will you not eat your word?   Bene. With no sauce that can be devised to it. I protest I love     thee.   Beat. Why then, God forgive me!   Bene. What offence, sweet Beatrice?   Beat. You have stayed me in a happy hour. I was about to protest I     loved you.   Bene. And do it with all thy heart.   Beat. I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to     protest.   Bene. Come, bid me do anything for thee.     Beat. Kill Claudio.   Bene. Ha! not for the wide world!   Beat. You kill me to deny it. Farewell.   Bene. Tarry, sweet Beatrice.   Beat. I am gone, though I am here. There is no love in you. Nay, I     pray you let me go.   Bene. Beatrice--   Beat. In faith, I will go.   Bene. We\'ll be friends first.   Beat. You dare easier be friends with me than fight with mine     enemy.   Bene. Is Claudio thine enemy?   Beat. Is \'a not approved in the height a villain, that hath     slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? O that I were a     man! What? bear her in hand until they come to take hands, and     then with public accusation, uncover\'d slander, unmitigated     rancour--O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the     market place.   Bene. Hear me, Beatrice!   Beat. Talk with a man out at a window!-a proper saying!     Bene. Nay but Beatrice--   Beat. Sweet Hero! she is wrong\'d, she is sland\'red, she is undone.   Bene. Beat--   Beat. Princes and Counties! Surely a princely testimony, a goodly     count, Count Comfect, a sweet gallant surely! O that I were a man     for his sake! or that I had any friend would be a man for my     sake! But manhood is melted into cursies, valour into compliment,     and men are only turn\'d into tongue, and trim ones too. He is now     as valiant as Hercules that only tells a lie,and swears it. I     cannot be a man with wishing; therefore I will die a woman with     grieving.   Bene. Tarry, good Beatrice. By this hand, I love thee.   Beat. Use it for my love some other way than swearing by it.   Bene. Think you in your soul the Count Claudio hath wrong\'d Hero?   Beat. Yea, as sure is I have a thought or a soul.   Bene. Enough, I am engag\'d, I will challenge him. I will kiss your     hand, and so I leave you. By this hand, Claudio shall render me a     dear account. As you hear of me, so think of me. Go comfort your     cousin. I must say she is dead-and so farewell.                                                        [Exeunt.]     Scene II. A prison.  Enter the Constables [Dogberry and Verges] and the Sexton, in gowns, [and the Watch, with Conrade and] Borachio.    Dog. Is our whole dissembly appear\'d?   Verg. O, a stool and a cushion for the sexton.   Sex. Which be the malefactors?   Dog. Marry, that am I and my partner.   Verg. Nay, that\'s certain. We have the exhibition to examine.   Sex. But which are the offenders that are to be examined? let them     come before Master Constable.   Dog. Yea, marry, let them come before me. What is your name,     friend?   Bor. Borachio.   Dog. Pray write down Borachio. Yours, sirrah?   Con. I am a gentleman, sir, and my name is Conrade.   Dog. Write down Master Gentleman Conrade. Masters, do you serve     God?   Both. Yea, sir, we hope.   Dog. Write down that they hope they serve God; and write God first,       for God defend but God should go before such villains! Masters,     it is proved already that you are little better than false     knaves, and it will go near to be thought so shortly. How answer     you for yourselves?   Con. Marry, sir, we say we are none.   Dog. A marvellous witty fellow, I assure you; but I will go about     with him. Come you hither, sirrah. A word in your ear. Sir, I say     to you, it is thought you are false knaves.   Bora. Sir, I say to you we are none.   Dog. Well, stand aside. Fore God, they are both in a tale.     Have you writ down that they are none?   Sex. Master Constable, you go not the way to examine. You must call     forth the watch that are their accusers.   Dog. Yea, marry, that\'s the eftest way. Let the watch come forth.     Masters, I charge you in the Prince\'s name accuse these men.   1. Watch. This man said, sir, that Don John the Prince\'s brother     was a villain.   Dog. Write down Prince John a villain. Why, this is flat perjury,     to call a prince\'s brother villain.   Bora. Master Constable--     Dog. Pray thee, fellow, peace. I do not like thy look, I promise     thee.   Sex. What heard you him say else?   2. Watch. Marry, that he had received a thousand ducats of Don John     for accusing the Lady Hero wrongfully.   Dog. Flat burglary as ever was committed.   Verg. Yea, by th\' mass, that it is.   Sex. What else, fellow?   1. Watch. And that Count Claudio did mean, upon his words, to     disgrace Hero before the whole assembly, and not marry her.   Dog. O villain! thou wilt be condemn\'d into everlasting redemption     for this.   Sex. What else?   Watchmen. This is all.   Sex. And this is more, masters, than you can deny. Prince John is     this morning secretly stol\'n away. Hero was in this manner     accus\'d, in this manner refus\'d, and upon the grief of this     suddenly died. Master Constable, let these men be bound and     brought to Leonato\'s. I will go before and show him their     examination.                                         [Exit.]     Dog. Come, let them be opinion\'d.   Verg. Let them be in the hands--   Con. Off, coxcomb!   Dog. God\'s my life, where\'s the sexton? Let him write down the     Prince\'s officer coxcomb. Come, bind them.--Thou naughty varlet!   Con. Away! you are an ass, you are an ass.   Dog. Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my     years? O that he were here to write me down an ass! But, masters,     remember that I am an ass. Though it be not written down, yet     forget not that I am an ass. No, thou villain, thou art full of     piety, as shall be prov\'d upon thee by good witness. I am a wise     fellow; and which is more, an officer; and which is more, a     householder; and which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any     is in Messina, and one that knows the law, go to! and a rich     fellow enough, go to! and a fellow that hath had losses; and one     that hath two gowns and everything handsome about him. Bring him     away. O that I had been writ down an ass!                                                          Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. Scene I. The street, near Leonato\'s house.  Enter Leonato and his brother [ Antonio].    Ant. If you go on thus, you will kill yourself,     And \'tis not wisdom thus to second grief     Against yourself.   Leon. I pray thee cease thy counsel,     Which falls into mine ears as profitless     As water in a sieve. Give not me counsel,     Nor let no comforter delight mine ear     But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine.     Bring me a father that so lov\'d his child,     Whose joy of her is overwhelm\'d like mine,     And bid him speak to me of patience.     Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine,     And let it answer every strain for strain,     As thus for thus, and such a grief for such,     In every lineament, branch, shape, and form.     If such a one will smile and stroke his beard,     Bid sorrow wag, cry \'hem\' when he should groan,       Patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune drunk     With candle-wasters--bring him yet to me,     And I of him will gather patience.     But there is no such man; for, brother, men     Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief     Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,     Their counsel turns to passion, which before     Would give preceptial medicine to rage,     Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,     Charm ache with air and agony with words.     No, no! \'Tis all men\'s office to speak patience     To those that wring under the load of sorrow,     But no man\'s virtue nor sufficiency     To be so moral when he shall endure     The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel.     My griefs cry louder than advertisement.   Ant. Therein do men from children nothing differ.   Leon. I pray thee peace. I will be flesh and blood;     For there was never yet philosopher     That could endure the toothache patiently,       However they have writ the style of gods     And made a push at chance and sufferance.   Ant. Yet bend not all the harm upon yourself.     Make those that do offend you suffer too.   Leon. There thou speak\'st reason. Nay, I will do so.     My soul doth tell me Hero is belied;     And that shall Claudio know; so shall the Prince,     And all of them that thus dishonour her.                Enter Don Pedro and Claudio.    Ant. Here comes the Prince and Claudio hastily.   Pedro. Good den, Good den.   Claud. Good day to both of you.   Leon. Hear you, my lords!   Pedro. We have some haste, Leonato.   Leon. Some haste, my lord! well, fare you well, my lord.     Are you so hasty now? Well, all is one.   Pedro. Nay, do not quarrel with us, good old man.   Ant. If he could right himself with quarrelling,       Some of us would lie low.   Claud. Who wrongs him?   Leon. Marry, thou dost wrong me, thou dissembler, thou!     Nay, never lay thy hand upon thy sword;     I fear thee not.   Claud. Mary, beshrew my hand     If it should give your age such cause of fear.     In faith, my hand meant nothing to my sword.   Leon. Tush, tush, man! never fleer and jest at me     I speak not like a dotard nor a fool,     As under privilege of age to brag     What I have done being young, or what would do,     Were I not old. Know, Claudio, to thy head,     Thou hast so wrong\'d mine innocent child and me     That I am forc\'d to lay my reverence by     And, with grey hairs and bruise of many days,     Do challenge thee to trial of a man.     I say thou hast belied mine innocent child;     Thy slander hath gone through and through her heart,     And she lied buried with her ancestors-       O, in a tomb where never scandal slept,     Save this of hers, fram\'d by thy villany!   Claud. My villany?   Leon. Thine, Claudio; thine I say.   Pedro. You say not right, old man   Leon. My lord, my lord,     I\'ll prove it on his body if he dare,     Despite his nice fence and his active practice,     His May of youth and bloom of lustihood.   Claud. Away! I will not have to do with you.   Leon. Canst thou so daff me? Thou hast kill\'d my child.     If thou kill\'st me, boy, thou shalt kill a man.     And. He shall kill two of us, and men indeed     But that\'s no matter; let him kill one first.     Win me and wear me! Let him answer me.     Come, follow me, boy,. Come, sir boy, come follow me.     Sir boy, I\'ll whip you from your foining fence!     Nay, as I am a gentleman, I will.   Leon. Brother--   Ant. Content yourself. God knows I lov\'d my niece,       And she is dead, slander\'d to death by villains,     That dare as well answer a man indeed     As I dare take a serpent by the tongue.     Boys, apes, braggarts, jacks, milksops!   Leon. Brother Anthony--   Ant. Hold you content. What, man! I know them, yea,     And what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple,     Scambling, outfacing, fashion-monging boys,     That lie and cog and flout, deprave and slander,     Go anticly, show outward hideousness,     And speak off half a dozen dang\'rous words,     How they might hurt their enemies, if they durst;     And this is all.   Leon. But, brother Anthony--   Ant. Come, \'tis no matter.     Do not you meddle; let me deal in this.   Pedro. Gentlemen both, we will not wake your patience.     My heart is sorry for your daughter\'s death;     But, on my honour, she was charg\'d with nothing     But what was true, and very full of proof.     Leon. My lord, my lord--   Pedro. I will not hear you.   Leon. No? Come, brother, away!--I will be heard.   Ant. And shall, or some of us will smart for it.                                                     Exeunt ambo.                    Enter Benedick.    Pedro. See, see! Here comes the man we went to seek.   Claud. Now, signior, what news?   Bene. Good day, my lord.   Pedro. Welcome, signior. You are almost come to part almost a fray.   Claud. We had lik\'d to have had our two noses snapp\'d off with two     old men without teeth.   Pedro. Leonato and his brother. What think\'st thou? Had we fought,     I doubt we should have been too young for them.   Bene. In a false quarrel there is no true valour. I came to seek     you both.   Claud. We have been up and down to seek thee; for we are high-proof     melancholy, and would fain have it beaten away. Wilt thou use thy       wit?   Bene. It is in my scabbard. Shall I draw it?   Pedro. Dost thou wear thy wit by thy side?   Claud. Never any did so, though very many have been beside their     wit. I will bid thee draw, as we do the minstrel--draw to     pleasure us.   Pedro. As I am an honest man, he looks pale. Art thou sick or     angry?   Claud. What, courage, man! What though care kill\'d a cat, thou hast     mettle enough in thee to kill care.   Bene. Sir, I shall meet your wit in the career an you charge it     against me. I pray you choose another subject.   Claud. Nay then, give him another staff; this last was broke cross.   Pedro. By this light, he changes more and more. I think he be angry     indeed.   Claud. If he be, he knows how to turn his girdle.   Bene. Shall I speak a word in your ear?   Claud. God bless me from a challenge!   Bene. [aside to Claudio] You are a villain. I jest not; I will make     it good how you dare, with what you dare, and when you dare. Do       me right, or I will protest your cowardice. You have kill\'d a     sweet lady, and her death shall fall heavy on you. Let me hear     from you.   Claud. Well, I will meet you, so I may have good cheer.   Pedro. What, a feast, a feast?   Claud. I\' faith, I thank him, he hath bid me to a calve\'s head and     a capon, the which if I do not carve most curiously, say my     knife\'s naught. Shall I not find a woodcock too?   Bene. Sir, your wit ambles well; it goes easily.   Pedro. I\'ll tell thee how Beatrice prais\'d thy wit the other day. I     said thou hadst a fine wit: \'True,\' said she, \'a fine little     one.\' \'No,\' said I, \'a great wit.\' \'Right,\' says she, \'a great     gross one.\' \'Nay,\' said I, \'a good wit.\' \'Just,\' said she, \'it     hurts nobody.\' \'Nay,\' said I, \'the gentleman is wise.\' \'Certain,\'     said she, a wise gentleman.\' \'Nay,\' said I, \'he hath the     tongues.\' \'That I believe\' said she, \'for he swore a thing to me     on Monday night which he forswore on Tuesday morning. There\'s a     double tongue; there\'s two tongues.\' Thus did she an hour     together transshape thy particular virtues. Yet at last she     concluded with a sigh, thou wast the proper\'st man in Italy.     Claud. For the which she wept heartily and said she cared not.   Pedro. Yea, that she did; but yet, for all that, an if she did not     hate him deadly, she would love him dearly. The old man\'s     daughter told us all.   Claud. All, all! and moreover, God saw him when he was hid in the     garden.   Pedro. But when shall we set the savage bull\'s horns on the     sensible Benedick\'s head?   Claud. Yea, and text underneath, \'Here dwells Benedick, the married     man\'?   Bene. Fare you well, boy; you know my mind. I will leave you now to     your gossiplike humour. You break jests as braggards do their     blades, which God be thanked hurt not. My lord, for your many     courtesies I thank you. I must discontinue your company. Your     brother the bastard is fled from Messina. You have among you     kill\'d a sweet and innocent lady. For my Lord Lackbeard there, he     and I shall meet; and till then peace be with him.                                                          [Exit.]   Pedro. He is in earnest.   Claud. In most profound earnest; and, I\'ll warrant you, for the       love of Beatrice.   Pedro. And hath challeng\'d thee.   Claud. Most sincerely.   Pedro. What a pretty thing man is when he goes in his doublet and     hose and leaves off his wit!    Enter Constables [Dogberry and Verges, with the Watch, leading]                       Conrade and Borachio.    Claud. He is then a giant to an ape; but then is an ape a doctor to     such a man.   Pedro. But, soft you, let me be! Pluck up, my heart, and be sad!     Did he not say my brother was fled?   Dog. Come you, sir. If justice cannot tame you, she shall ne\'er     weigh more reasons in her balance. Nay, an you be a cursing     hypocrite once, you must be look\'d to.   Pedro. How now? two of my brother\'s men bound? Borachio one.   Claud. Hearken after their offence, my lord.   Pedro. Officers, what offence have these men done?   Dog. Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they       have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and     lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified     unjust things; and to conclude, they are lying knaves.   Pedro. First, I ask thee what they have done; thirdly, I ask thee     what\'s their offence; sixth and lastly, why they are committed;     and to conclude, what you lay to their charge.   Claud. Rightly reasoned, and in his own division; and by my troth     there\'s one meaning well suited.   Pedro. Who have you offended, masters, that you are thus bound to     your answer? This learned constable is too cunning to be     understood. What\'s your offence?   Bora. Sweet Prince, let me go no farther to mine answer. Do you     hear me, and let this Count kill me. I have deceived even your     very eyes. What your wisdoms could not discover, these shallow     fools have brought to light, who in the night overheard me     confessing to this man, how Don John your brother incensed me to     slander the Lady Hero; how you were brought into the orchard and     saw me court Margaret in Hero\'s garments; how you disgrac\'d her     when you should marry her. My villany they have upon record,     which I had rather seal with my death than repeat over to my       shame. The lady is dead upon mine and my master\'s false     accusation; and briefly, I desire nothing but the reward of a     villain.   Pedro. Runs not this speech like iron through your blood?   Claud. I have drunk poison whiles he utter\'d it.   Pedro. But did my brother set thee on to this?   Bora. Yea, and paid me richly for the practice of it.   Pedro. He is compos\'d and fram\'d of treachery,     And fled he is upon this villany.   Claud. Sweet Hero, now thy image doth appear     In the rare semblance that I lov\'d it first.   Dog. Come, bring away the plaintiffs. By this time our sexton hath     reformed Signior Leonato of the matter. And, masters, do not     forget to specify, when time and place shall serve, that I am an     ass.   Verg. Here, here comes Master Signior Leonato, and the sexton too.            Enter Leonato, his brother [Antonio], and the Sexton.    Leon. Which is the villain? Let me see his eyes,       That, when I note another man like him,     I may avoid him. Which of these is he?   Bora. If you would know your wronger, look on me.   Leon. Art thou the slave that with thy breath hast kill\'d     Mine innocent child?   Bora. Yea, even I alone.   Leon. No, not so, villain! thou beliest thyself.     Here stand a pair of honourable men--     A third is fled--that had a hand in it.     I thank you princes for my daughter\'s death.     Record it with your high and worthy deeds.     \'Twas bravely done, if you bethink you of it.   Claud. I know not how to pray your patience;     Yet I must speak. Choose your revenge yourself;     Impose me to what penance your invention     Can lay upon my sin. Yet sinn\'d I not     But in mistaking.   Pedro. By my soul, nor I!     And yet, to satisfy this good old man,     I would bend under any heavy weight       That he\'ll enjoin me to.   Leon. I cannot bid you bid my daughter live-     That were impossible; but I pray you both,     Possess the people in Messina here     How innocent she died; and if your love     Can labour aught in sad invention,     Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb,     And sing it to her bones--sing it to-night.     To-morrow morning come you to my house,     And since you could not be my son-in-law,     Be yet my nephew. My brother hath a daughter,     Almost the copy of my child that\'s dead,     And she alone is heir to both of us.     Give her the right you should have giv\'n her cousin,     And so dies my revenge.   Claud. O noble sir!     Your over-kindness doth wring tears from me.     I do embrace your offer; and dispose     For henceforth of poor Claudio.   Leon. To-morrow then I will expect your coming;       To-night I take my leave. This naughty man     Shall fact to face be brought to Margaret,     Who I believe was pack\'d in all this wrong,     Hir\'d to it by your brother.   Bora. No, by my soul, she was not;     Nor knew not what she did when she spoke to me;     But always hath been just and virtuous     In anything that I do know by her.   Dog. Moreover, sir, which indeed is not under white and black, this     plaintiff here, the offender, did call me ass. I beseech you let     it be rememb\'red in his punishment. And also the watch heard them     talk of one Deformed. They say he wears a key in his ear, and a     lock hanging by it, and borrows money in God\'s name, the which he     hath us\'d so long and never paid that now men grow hard-hearted     and will lend nothing for God\'s sake. Pray you examine him upon     that point.   Leon. I thank thee for thy care and honest pains.   Dog. Your worship speaks like a most thankful and reverent youth,     and I praise God for you.   Leon. There\'s for thy pains. [Gives money.]     Dog. God save the foundation!   Leon. Go, I discharge thee of thy prisoner, and I thank thee.   Dog. I leave an arrant knave with your worship, which I beseech     your worship to correct yourself, for the example of others.     God keep your worship! I wish your worship well. God restore you     to health! I humbly give you leave to depart; and if a merry     meeting may be wish\'d, God prohibit it! Come, neighbour.                                    Exeunt [Dogberry and Verges].   Leon. Until to-morrow morning, lords, farewell.   Ant. Farewell, my lords. We look for you to-morrow.   Pedro. We will not fall.   Claud. To-night I\'ll mourn with Hero.                                  [Exeunt Don Pedro and Claudio.]   Leon. [to the Watch] Bring you these fellows on.--We\'ll talk with       Margaret,     How her acquaintance grew with this lewd fellow.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene II. Leonato\'s orchard.  Enter Benedick and Margaret [meeting].    Bene. Pray thee, sweet Mistress Margaret, deserve well at my hands     by helping me to the speech of Beatrice.   Marg. Will you then write me a sonnet in praise of my beauty?   Bene. In so high a style, Margaret, that no man living shall come     over it; for in most comely truth thou deservest it.   Marg. To have no man come over me? Why, shall I always keep below     stairs?   Bene. Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound\'s mouth--it catches.   Marg. And yours as blunt as the fencer\'s foils, which hit but hurt     not.   Bene. A most manly wit, Margaret: it will not hurt a woman.     And so I pray thee call Beatrice. I give thee the bucklers.   Marg. Give us the swords; we have bucklers of our own.   Bene. If you use them, Margaret, you must put in the pikes with a     vice, and they are dangerous weapons for maids.   Marg. Well, I will call Beatrice to you, who I think hath legs.   Bene. And therefore will come.                                                     Exit Margaret.        [Sings] The god of love,                That sits above            And knows me, and knows me,              How pitiful I deserve--      I mean in singing; but in loving Leander the good swimmer,     Troilus the first employer of panders, and a whole book full of     these quondam carpet-mongers, whose names yet run smoothly in the     even road of a blank verse--why, they were never so truly turn\'d     over and over as my poor self in love. Marry, I cannot show it in     rhyme. I have tried. I can find out no rhyme to \'lady\' but \'baby\'     --an innocent rhyme; for \'scorn,\' \'horn\'--a hard rhyme; for     \'school\', \'fool\'--a babbling rhyme: very ominous endings! No, I     was not born under a rhyming planet, nor cannot woo in festival     terms.                      Enter Beatrice.      Sweet Beatrice, wouldst thou come when I call\'d thee?     Beat. Yea, signior, and depart when you bid me.   Bene. O, stay but till then!   Beat. \'Then\' is spoken. Fare you well now. And yet, ere I go, let     me go with that I came for, which is, with knowing what hath     pass\'d between you and Claudio.   Bene. Only foul words; and thereupon I will kiss thee.   Beat. Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul     breath, and foul breath is noisome. Therefore I will depart     unkiss\'d.   Bene. Thou hast frighted the word out of his right sense, so     forcible is thy wit. But I must tell thee plainly, Claudio     undergoes my challenge; and either I must shortly hear from him     or I will subscribe him a coward. And I pray thee now tell me,     for which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?   Beat. For them all together, which maintain\'d so politic a state of     evil that they will not admit any good part to intermingle with     them. But for which of my good parts did you first suffer love     for me?   Bene. Suffer love!--a good epithet. I do suffer love indeed, for I     love thee against my will.     Beat. In spite of your heart, I think. Alas, poor heart! If you     spite it for my sake, I will spite it for yours, for I will never     love that which my friend hates.   Bene. Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.   Beat. It appears not in this confession. There\'s not one wise man     among twenty, that will praise himself.   Bene. An old, an old instance, Beatrice, that liv\'d in the time of     good neighbours. If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb     ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bell     rings and the widow weeps.   Beat. And how long is that, think you?   Bene. Question: why, an hour in clamour and a quarter in rheum.     Therefore is it most expedient for the wise, if Don Worm (his     conscience) find no impediment to the contrary, to be the trumpet     of his own virtues, as I am to myself. So much for praising     myself, who, I myself will bear witness, is praiseworthy. And now     tell me, how doth your cousin?   Beat. Very ill.   Bene. And how do you?   Beat. Very ill too.     Bene. Serve God, love me, and mend. There will I leave you too, for     here comes one in haste.                           Enter Ursula.    Urs. Madam, you must come to your uncle. Yonder\'s old coil at home.     It is proved my Lady Hero hath been falsely accus\'d, the Prince     and Claudio mightily abus\'d, and Don John is the author of all,     who is fled and gone. Will you come presently?   Beat. Will you go hear this news, signior?   Bene. I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried thy     eyes; and moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle\'s.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene III. A churchyard.  Enter Claudio, Don Pedro, and three or four with tapers, [followed by Musicians].    Claud. Is this the monument of Leonato?   Lord. It is, my lord.   Claud. [reads from a scroll]                        Epitaph.          Done to death by slanderous tongues           Was the Hero that here lies.         Death, in guerdon of her wrongs,           Gives her fame which never dies.         So the life that died with shame         Lives in death with glorious fame.      Hang thou there upon the tomb,                                           [Hangs up the scroll.]     Praising her when I am dumb.       Now, music, sound, and sing your solemn hymn.                       Song.          Pardon, goddess of the night,         Those that slew thy virgin knight;         For the which, with songs of woe,         Round about her tomb they go.         Midnight, assist our moan,         Help us to sigh and groan           Heavily, heavily,         Graves, yawn and yield your dead,         Till death be uttered           Heavily, heavily.    Claud. Now unto thy bones good night!     Yearly will I do this rite.   Pedro. Good morrow, masters. Put your torches out.     The wolves have prey\'d, and look, the gentle day,     Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about       Dapples the drowsy east with spots of grey.     Thanks to you all, and leave us. Fare you well.   Claud. Good morrow, masters. Each his several way.   Pedro. Come, let us hence and put on other weeds,     And then to Leonato\'s we will go.   Claud. And Hymen now with luckier issue speeds     Than this for whom we rend\'red up this woe.          Exeunt.     Scene IV The hall in Leonato\'s house.  Enter Leonato, Benedick, [Beatrice,] Margaret, Ursula, Antonio, Friar [Francis], Hero.    Friar. Did I not tell you she was innocent?   Leon. So are the Prince and Claudio, who accus\'d her     Upon the error that you heard debated.     But Margaret was in some fault for this,     Although against her will, as it appears     In the true course of all the question.   Ant. Well, I am glad that all things sort so well.   Bene. And so am I, being else by faith enforc\'d     To call young Claudio to a reckoning for it.   Leon. Well, daughter, and you gentlewomen all,     Withdraw into a chamber by yourselves,     And when I send for you, come hither mask\'d.                                                   Exeunt Ladies.     The Prince and Claudio promis\'d by this hour     To visit me. You know your office, brother:     You must be father to your brother\'s daughter,       And give her to young Claudio.   Ant. Which I will do with confirm\'d countenance.   Bene. Friar, I must entreat your pains, I think.   Friar. To do what, signior?   Bene. To bind me, or undo me--one of them.     Signior Leonato, truth it is, good signior,     Your niece regards me with an eye of favour.   Leon. That eye my daughter lent her. \'Tis most true.   Bene. And I do with an eye of love requite her.   Leon. The sight whereof I think you had from me,     From Claudio, and the Prince; but what\'s your will?   Bene. Your answer, sir, is enigmatical;     But, for my will, my will is, your good will     May stand with ours, this day to be conjoin\'d     In the state of honourable marriage;     In which, good friar, I shall desire your help.   Leon. My heart is with your liking.   Friar. And my help.         Enter Don Pedro and Claudio and two or three other.        Here comes the Prince and Claudio.   Pedro. Good morrow to this fair assembly.   Leon. Good morrow, Prince; good morrow, Claudio.     We here attend you. Are you yet determin\'d     To-day to marry with my brother\'s daughter?   Claud. I\'ll hold my mind, were she an Ethiope.   Leon. Call her forth, brother. Here\'s the friar ready.                                                  [Exit Antonio.]   Pedro. Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what\'s the matter     That you have such a February face,     So full of frost, of storm, and cloudiness?   Claud. I think he thinks upon the savage bull.     Tush, fear not, man! We\'ll tip thy horns with gold,     And all Europa shall rejoice at thee,     As once Europa did at lusty Jove     When he would play the noble beast in love.   Bene. Bull Jove, sir, had an amiable low,     And some such strange bull leap\'d your father\'s cow     And got a calf in that same noble feat       Much like to you, for you have just his bleat.         Enter [Leonato\'s] brother [Antonio], Hero, Beatrice,             Margaret, Ursula, [the ladies wearing masks].    Claud. For this I owe you. Here comes other reckonings.     Which is the lady I must seize upon?   Ant. This same is she, and I do give you her.   Claud. Why then, she\'s mine. Sweet, let me see your face.   Leon. No, that you shall not till you take her hand     Before this friar and swear to marry her.   Claud. Give me your hand before this holy friar.     I am your husband if you like of me.   Hero. And when I liv\'d I was your other wife;       [Unmasks.]     And when you lov\'d you were my other husband.   Claud. Another Hero!   Hero. Nothing certainer.     One Hero died defil\'d; but I do live,     And surely as I live, I am a maid.   Pedro. The former Hero! Hero that is dead!     Leon. She died, my lord, but whiles her slander liv\'d.   Friar. All this amazement can I qualify,     When, after that the holy rites are ended,     I\'ll tell you largely of fair Hero\'s death.     Meantime let wonder seem familiar,     And to the chapel let us presently.   Bene. Soft and fair, friar. Which is Beatrice?   Beat. [unmasks] I answer to that name. What is your will?   Bene. Do not you love me?   Beat. Why, no; no more than reason.   Bene. Why, then your uncle, and the Prince, and Claudio     Have been deceived; for they swore you did.   Beat. Do not you love me?   Bene. Troth, no; no more than reason.   Beat. Why, then my cousin, Margaret, and Ursula     Are much deceiv\'d; for they did swear you did.   Bene. They swore that you were almost sick for me.   Beat. They swore that you were well-nigh dead for me.   Bene. \'Tis no such matter. Then you do not love me?   Beat. No, truly, but in friendly recompense.     Leon. Come, cousin, I am sure you love the gentleman.   Claud. And I\'ll be sworn upon\'t that he loves her;     For here\'s a paper written in his hand,     A halting sonnet of his own pure brain,     Fashion\'d to Beatrice.   Hero. And here\'s another,     Writ in my cousin\'s hand, stol\'n from her pocket,     Containing her affection unto Benedick.   Bene. A miracle! Here\'s our own hands against our hearts.     Come, I will have thee; but, by this light, I take thee for pity.   Beat. I would not deny you; but, by this good day, I yield upon     great persuasion, and partly to save your life, for I was told     you were in a consumption.   Bene. Peace! I will stop your mouth.             [Kisses her.]   Beat. I\'ll tell thee what, Prince: a college of wit-crackers cannot     flout me out of my humour. Dost thou think I care for a satire or     an epigram? No. If a man will be beaten with brains, \'a shall     wear nothing handsome about him. In brief, since I do purpose to     marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say     against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said       against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.     For thy part, Claudio, I did think to have beaten thee; but in     that thou art like to be my kinsman, live unbruis\'d, and love my     cousin.   Claud. I had well hop\'d thou wouldst have denied Beatrice, that I     might have cudgell\'d thee out of thy single life, to make thee a     double-dealer, which out of question thou wilt be if my cousin do     not look exceeding narrowly to thee.   Bene. Come, come, we are friends. Let\'s have a dance ere we are     married, that we may lighten our own hearts and our wives\' heels.   Leon. We\'ll have dancing afterward.   Bene. First, of my word! Therefore play, music. Prince, thou art     sad. Get thee a wife, get thee a wife! There is no staff more     reverent than one tipp\'d with horn.                         Enter Messenger.    Mess. My lord, your brother John is ta\'en in flight,     And brought with armed men back to Messina.   Bene. Think not on him till to-morrow. I\'ll devise thee brave       punishments for him. Strike up, pipers!                                                 Dance. [Exeunt.]   THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1605   THE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO, MOOR OF VENICE  by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae    OTHELLO, the Moor, general of the Venetian forces   DESDEMONA, his wife   IAGO, ensign to Othello   EMILIA, his wife, lady-in-waiting to Desdemona   CASSIO, lieutenant to Othello   THE DUKE OF VENICE   BRABANTIO, Venetian Senator, father of Desdemona   GRATIANO, nobleman of Venice, brother of Brabantio   LODOVICO, nobleman of Venice, kinsman of Brabantio   RODERIGO, rejected suitor of Desdemona   BIANCA, mistress of Cassio   MONTANO, a Cypriot official   A Clown in service to Othello   Senators, Sailors, Messengers, Officers, Gentlemen, Musicians, and     Attendants     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: Venice and Cyprus  ACT I. SCENE I. Venice. A street.  Enter Roderigo and Iago.    RODERIGO. Tush, never tell me! I take it much unkindly     That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse     As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this.   IAGO. \'Sblood, but you will not hear me.     If ever I did dream of such a matter,     Abhor me.   RODERIGO. Thou told\'st me thou didst hold him in thy hate.   IAGO. Despise me, if I do not. Three great ones of the city,     In personal suit to make me his lieutenant,     Off-capp\'d to him; and, by the faith of man,     I know my price, I am worth no worse a place.     But he, as loving his own pride and purposes,     Evades them, with a bumbast circumstance     Horribly stuff\'d with epithets of war,     And, in conclusion,     Nonsuits my mediators; for, "Certes," says he,     "I have already chose my officer."       And what was he?     Forsooth, a great arithmetician,     One Michael Cassio, a Florentine     (A fellow almost damn\'d in a fair wife)     That never set a squadron in the field,     Nor the division of a battle knows     More than a spinster; unless the bookish theoric,     Wherein the toged consuls can propose     As masterly as he. Mere prattle without practice     Is all his soldiership. But he, sir, had the election;     And I, of whom his eyes had seen the proof     At Rhodes, at Cyprus, and on other grounds     Christian and heathen, must be belee\'d and calm\'d     By debitor and creditor. This counter-caster,     He, in good time, must his lieutenant be,     And I- God bless the mark!- his Moorship\'s ancient.   RODERIGO. By heaven, I rather would have been his hangman.   IAGO. Why, there\'s no remedy. \'Tis the curse of service,     Preferment goes by letter and affection,     And not by old gradation, where each second       Stood heir to the first. Now, sir, be judge yourself     Whether I in any just term am affined     To love the Moor.   RODERIGO.           I would not follow him then.   IAGO. O, sir, content you.     I follow him to serve my turn upon him:     We cannot all be masters, nor all masters     Cannot be truly follow\'d. You shall mark     Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave,     That doting on his own obsequious bondage     Wears out his time, much like his master\'s ass,     For nought but provender, and when he\'s old, cashier\'d.     Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are     Who, trimm\'d in forms and visages of duty,     Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,     And throwing but shows of service on their lords     Do well thrive by them; and when they have lined their coats     Do themselves homage. These fellows have some soul,     And such a one do I profess myself.     For, sir,       It is as sure as you are Roderigo,     Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago.     In following him, I follow but myself;     Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,     But seeming so, for my peculiar end.     For when my outward action doth demonstrate     The native act and figure of my heart     In complement extern, \'tis not long after     But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve     For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.   RODERIGO. What a full fortune does the thick-lips owe,     If he can carry\'t thus!   IAGO.                     Call up her father,     Rouse him, make after him, poison his delight,     Proclaim him in the streets, incense her kinsmen,     And, though he in a fertile climate dwell,     Plague him with flies. Though that his joy be joy,     Yet throw such changes of vexation on\'t     As it may lose some color.   RODERIGO. Here is her father\'s house; I\'ll call aloud.     IAGO. Do, with like timorous accent and dire yell     As when, by night and negligence, the fire     Is spied in populous cities.   RODERIGO. What, ho, Brabantio! Signior Brabantio, ho!   IAGO. Awake! What, ho, Brabantio! Thieves! Thieves! Thieves!     Look to your house, your daughter, and your bags!     Thieves! Thieves!                  Brabantio appears above, at a window.    BRABANTIO. What is the reason of this terrible summons?     What is the matter there?   RODERIGO. Signior, is all your family within?   IAGO. Are your doors lock\'d?   BRABANTIO.                   Why? Wherefore ask you this?   IAGO. \'Zounds, sir, you\'re robb\'d! For shame, put on your gown;     Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul;     Even now, now, very now, an old black ram     Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise!     Awake the snorting citizens with the bell,       Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you.     Arise, I say!   BRABANTIO. What, have you lost your wits?   RODERIGO. Most reverend signior, do you know my voice?   BRABANTIO. Not I. What are you?   RODERIGO. My name is Roderigo.   BRABANTIO.                     The worser welcome.     I have charged thee not to haunt about my doors.     In honest plainness thou hast heard me say     My daughter is not for thee; and now, in madness,     Being full of supper and distempering draughts,     Upon malicious bravery, dost thou come     To start my quiet.   RODERIGO. Sir, sir, sir-   BRABANTIO.               But thou must needs be sure     My spirit and my place have in them power     To make this bitter to thee.   RODERIGO.                      Patience, good sir.   BRABANTIO. What tell\'st thou me of robbing? This is Venice;     My house is not a grange.     RODERIGO.                   Most grave Brabantio,     In simple and pure soul I come to you.   IAGO. \'Zounds, sir, you are one of those that will not serve God,     if the devil bid you. Because we come to do you service and you     think we are ruffians, you\'ll have your daughter covered with a     Barbary horse; you\'ll have your nephews neigh to you; you\'ll have     coursers for cousins, and gennets for germans.   BRABANTIO. What profane wretch art thou?   IAGO. I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the     Moor are now making the beast with two backs.   BRABANTIO. Thou are a villain.   IAGO.                          You are- a senator.   BRABANTIO. This thou shalt answer; I know thee, Roderigo.   RODERIGO. Sir, I will answer anything. But, I beseech you,     If\'t be your pleasure and most wise consent,     As partly I find it is, that your fair daughter,     At this odd-even and dull watch o\' the night,     Transported with no worse nor better guard     But with a knave of common hire, a gondolier,     To the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor-       If this be known to you, and your allowance,     We then have done you bold and saucy wrongs;     But if you know not this, my manners tell me     We have your wrong rebuke. Do not believe     That, from the sense of all civility,     I thus would play and trifle with your reverence.     Your daughter, if you have not given her leave,     I say again, hath made a gross revolt,     Tying her duty, beauty, wit, and fortunes     In an extravagant and wheeling stranger     Of here and everywhere. Straight satisfy yourself:     If she be in her chamber or your house,     Let loose on me the justice of the state     For thus deluding you.   BRABANTIO.               Strike on the tinder, ho!     Give me a taper! Call up all my people!     This accident is not unlike my dream;     Belief of it oppresses me already.     Light, I say, light!                                  Exit above.   IAGO.                  Farewell, for I must leave you.       It seems not meet, nor wholesome to my place,     To be produced- as, if I stay, I shall-     Against the Moor; for I do know, the state,     However this may gall him with some check,     Cannot with safety cast him, for he\'s embark\'d     With such loud reason to the Cyprus wars,     Which even now stands in act, that, for their souls,     Another of his fathom they have none     To lead their business; in which regard,     Though I do hate him as I do hell pains,     Yet for necessity of present life,     I must show out a flag and sign of love,     Which is indeed but sign. That you shall surely find him,     Lead to the Sagittary the raised search,     And there will I be with him. So farewell.                  Exit.              Enter, below, Brabantio, in his nightgown, and                         Servants with torches.    BRABANTIO. It is too true an evil: gone she is,       And what\'s to come of my despised time     Is nought but bitterness. Now, Roderigo,     Where didst thou see her? O unhappy girl!     With the Moor, say\'st thou? Who would be a father!     How didst thou know \'twas she? O, she deceives me     Past thought! What said she to you? Get more tapers.     Raise all my kindred. Are they married, think you?   RODERIGO. Truly, I think they are.   BRABANTIO. O heaven! How got she out? O treason of the blood!     Fathers, from hence trust not your daughters\' minds     By what you see them act. Is there not charms     By which the property of youth and maidhood     May be abused? Have you not read, Roderigo,     Of some such thing?   RODERIGO.             Yes, sir, I have indeed.   BRABANTIO. Call up my brother. O, would you had had her!     Some one way, some another. Do you know     Where we may apprehend her and the Moor?   RODERIGO. I think I can discover him, if you please     To get good guard and go along with me.     BRABANTIO. Pray you, lead on. At every house I\'ll call;     I may command at most. Get weapons, ho!     And raise some special officers of night.     On, good Roderigo, I\'ll deserve your pains.               Exeunt.     SCENE II. Another street.  Enter Othello, Iago, and Attendants with torches.    IAGO. Though in the trade of war I have slain men,     Yet do I hold it very stuff o\' the conscience     To do no contrived murther. I lack iniquity     Sometimes to do me service. Nine or ten times     I had thought to have yerk\'d him here under the ribs.   OTHELLO. \'Tis better as it is.   IAGO.                          Nay, but he prated     And spoke such scurvy and provoking terms     Against your honor     That, with the little godliness I have,     I did full hard forbear him. But I pray you, sir,     Are you fast married? Be assured of this,     That the magnifico is much beloved,     And hath in his effect a voice potential     As double as the Duke\'s. He will divorce you,     Or put upon you what restraint and grievance     The law, with all his might to enforce it on,       Will give him cable.   OTHELLO.               Let him do his spite.     My services, which I have done the signiory,     Shall out-tongue his complaints. \'Tis yet to know-     Which, when I know that boasting is an honor,     I shall promulgate- I fetch my life and being     From men of royal siege, and my demerits     May speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune     As this that I have reach\'d. For know, Iago,     But that I love the gentle Desdemona,     I would not my unhoused free condition     Put into circumscription and confine     For the sea\'s worth. But, look! What lights come yond?   IAGO. Those are the raised father and his friends.     You were best go in.   OTHELLO.               Not I; I must be found.     My parts, my title, and my perfect soul     Shall manifest me rightly. Is it they?   IAGO. By Janus, I think no.               Enter Cassio and certain Officers with torches.    OTHELLO. The servants of the Duke? And my lieutenant?     The goodness of the night upon you, friends!     What is the news?   CASSIO.             The Duke does greet you, general,     And he requires your haste-post-haste appearance,     Even on the instant.   OTHELLO.               What is the matter, think you?   CASSIO. Something from Cyprus, as I may divine;     It is a business of some heat. The galleys     Have sent a dozen sequent messengers     This very night at one another\'s heels;     And many of the consuls, raised and met,     Are at the Duke\'s already. You have been hotly call\'d for,     When, being not at your lodging to be found,     The Senate hath sent about three several quests     To search you out.   OTHELLO.             \'Tis well I am found by you.     I will but spend a word here in the house       And go with you.                                            Exit.   CASSIO.            Ancient, what makes he here?   IAGO. Faith, he tonight hath boarded a land carack;     If it prove lawful prize, he\'s made forever.   CASSIO. I do not understand.   IAGO.                        He\'s married.   CASSIO.                                    To who?                            Re-enter Othello.    IAGO. Marry, to- Come, captain, will you go?   OTHELLO.                                     Have with you.   CASSIO. Here comes another troop to seek for you.   IAGO. It is Brabantio. General, be advised,     He comes to bad intent.           Enter Brabantio, Roderigo, and Officers with torches                              and weapons.    OTHELLO.                  Holla! Stand there!     RODERIGO. Signior, it is the Moor.   BRABANTIO.                         Down with him, thief!                                              They draw on both sides.   IAGO. You, Roderigo! Come, sir, I am for you.   OTHELLO. Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.     Good signior, you shall more command with years     Than with your weapons.   BRABANTIO. O thou foul thief, where hast thou stow\'d my daughter?     Damn\'d as thou art, thou hast enchanted her,     For I\'ll refer me to all things of sense,     If she in chains of magic were not bound,     Whether a maid so tender, fair, and happy,     So opposite to marriage that she shunn\'d     The wealthy, curled darlings of our nation,     Would ever have, to incur a general mock,     Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom     Of such a thing as thou- to fear, not to delight.     Judge me the world, if \'tis not gross in sense     That thou hast practiced on her with foul charms,     Abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals       That weaken motion. I\'ll have\'t disputed on;     \'Tis probable, and palpable to thinking.     I therefore apprehend and do attach thee     For an abuser of the world, a practicer     Of arts inhibited and out of warrant.     Lay hold upon him. If he do resist,     Subdue him at his peril.   OTHELLO.                   Hold your hands,     Both you of my inclining and the rest.     Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it     Without a prompter. Where will you that I go     To answer this your charge?   BRABANTIO.                    To prison, till fit time     Of law and course of direct session     Call thee to answer.   OTHELLO.               What if I do obey?     How may the Duke be therewith satisfied,     Whose messengers are here about my side,     Upon some present business of the state     To bring me to him?     FIRST OFFICER.        \'Tis true, most worthy signior;     The Duke\'s in council, and your noble self,     I am sure, is sent for.   BRABANTIO.                How? The Duke in council?     In this time of the night? Bring him away;     Mine\'s not an idle cause. The Duke himself,     Or any of my brothers of the state,     Cannot but feel this wrong as \'twere their own;     For if such actions may have passage free,     Bond slaves and pagans shall our statesmen be.            Exeunt.     SCENE III. A council chamber. The Duke and Senators sitting at a table; Officers attending.    DUKE. There is no composition in these news     That gives them credit.   FIRST SENATOR.            Indeed they are disproportion\'d;     My letters say a hundred and seven galleys.   DUKE. And mine, a hundred and forty.   SECOND SENATOR.                      And mine, two hundred.     But though they jump not on a just account-     As in these cases, where the aim reports,     \'Tis oft with difference- yet do they all confirm     A Turkish fleet, and bearing up to Cyprus.   DUKE. Nay, it is possible enough to judgement.     I do not so secure me in the error,     But the main article I do approve     In fearful sense.   SAILOR. [Within.] What, ho! What, ho! What, ho!   FIRST OFFICER. A messenger from the galleys.                              Enter Sailor.      DUKE.                                Now, what\'s the business?   SAILOR. The Turkish preparation makes for Rhodes,     So was I bid report here to the state     By Signior Angelo.   DUKE. How say you by this change?   FIRST SENATOR.                    This cannot be,     By no assay of reason; \'tis a pageant     To keep us in false gaze. When we consider     The importancy of Cyprus to the Turk,     And let ourselves again but understand     That as it more concerns the Turk than Rhodes,     So may he with more facile question bear it,     For that it stands not in such warlike brace,     But altogether lacks the abilities     That Rhodes is dress\'d in. If we make thought of this,     We must not think the Turk is so unskillful     To leave that latest which concerns him first,     Neglecting an attempt of ease and gain,     To wake and wage a danger profitless.   DUKE. Nay, in all confidence, he\'s not for Rhodes.     FIRST OFFICER. Here is more news.                            Enter a Messenger.    MESSENGER. The Ottomites, reverend and gracious,     Steering with due course toward the isle of Rhodes,     Have there injointed them with an after fleet.   FIRST SENATOR. Ay, so I thought. How many, as you guess?   MESSENGER. Of thirty sail; and now they do re-stem     Their backward course, bearing with frank appearance     Their purposes toward Cyprus. Signior Montano,     Your trusty and most valiant servitor,     With his free duty recommends you thus,     And prays you to believe him.   DUKE. \'Tis certain then for Cyprus.     Marcus Luccicos, is not he in town?   FIRST SENATOR. He\'s now in Florence.   DUKE. Write from us to him, post-post-haste dispatch.   FIRST SENATOR. Here comes Brabantio and the valiant Moor.           Enter Brabantio, Othello, Iago, Roderigo, and Officers.    DUKE. Valiant Othello, we must straight employ you     Against the general enemy Ottoman.     [To Brabantio.] I did not see you; welcome, gentle signior;     We lack\'d your counsel and your help tonight.   BRABANTIO. So did I yours. Good your Grace, pardon me:     Neither my place nor aught I heard of business     Hath raised me from my bed, nor doth the general care     Take hold on me; for my particular grief     Is of so flood-gate and o\'erbearing nature     That it engluts and swallows other sorrows,     And it is still itself.   DUKE.                     Why, what\'s the matter?   BRABANTIO. My daughter! O, my daughter!   ALL.                                    Dead?   BRABANTIO.                                    Ay, to me.     She is abused, stol\'n from me and corrupted     By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks;     For nature so preposterously to err,       Being not deficient, blind, or lame of sense,     Sans witchcraft could not.   DUKE. Whoe\'er he be that in this foul proceeding     Hath thus beguiled your daughter of herself     And you of her, the bloody book of law     You shall yourself read in the bitter letter     After your own sense, yea, though our proper son     Stood in your action.   BRABANTIO.              Humbly I thank your Grace.     Here is the man, this Moor, whom now, it seems,     Your special mandate for the state affairs     Hath hither brought.   ALL.                   We are very sorry for\'t.   DUKE. [To Othello.] What in your own part can you say to this?   BRABANTIO. Nothing, but this is so.   OTHELLO. Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors,     My very noble and approved good masters,     That I have ta\'en away this old man\'s daughter,     It is most true; true, I have married her;     The very head and front of my offending       Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in my speech,     And little blest with the soft phrase of peace;     For since these arms of mine had seven years\' pith,     Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used     Their dearest action in the tented field,     And little of this great world can I speak,     More than pertains to feats of broil and battle;     And therefore little shall I grace my cause     In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience,     I will a round unvarnish\'d tale deliver     Of my whole course of love: what drugs, what charms,     What conjuration, and what mighty magic-     For such proceeding I am charged withal-     I won his daughter.   BRABANTIO.            A maiden never bold,     Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion     Blush\'d at herself; and she- in spite of nature,     Of years, of country, credit, everything-     To fall in love with what she fear\'d to look on!     It is judgement maim\'d and most imperfect,       That will confess perfection so could err     Against all rules of nature, and must be driven     To find out practices of cunning hell     Why this should be. I therefore vouch again     That with some mixtures powerful o\'er the blood,     Or with some dram conjured to this effect,     He wrought upon her.   DUKE.                  To vouch this is no proof,     Without more certain and more overt test     Than these thin habits and poor likelihoods     Of modern seeming do prefer against him.   FIRST SENATOR. But, Othello, speak.     Did you by indirect and forced courses     Subdue and poison this young maid\'s affections?     Or came it by request, and such fair question     As soul to soul affordeth?   OTHELLO.                     I do beseech you,     Send for the lady to the Sagittary,     And let her speak of me before her father.     If you do find me foul in her report,       The trust, the office I do hold of you,     Not only take away, but let your sentence     Even fall upon my life.   DUKE.                     Fetch Desdemona hither.   OTHELLO. Ancient, conduct them; you best know the place.                                           Exeunt Iago and Attendants.     And till she come, as truly as to heaven     I do confess the vices of my blood,     So justly to your grave ears I\'ll present     How I did thrive in this fair lady\'s love     And she in mine.   DUKE. Say it, Othello.   OTHELLO. Her father loved me, oft invited me,     Still question\'d me the story of my life     From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,     That I have pass\'d.     I ran it through, even from my boyish days     To the very moment that he bade me tell it:     Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,     Of moving accidents by flood and field,       Of hair-breadth \'scapes i\' the imminent deadly breach,     Of being taken by the insolent foe     And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence     And portance in my travels\' history;     Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,     Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,     It was my hint to speak- such was the process-     And of the Cannibals that each other eat,     The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads     Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear     Would Desdemona seriously incline;     But still the house affairs would draw her thence,     Which ever as she could with haste dispatch,     She\'ld come again, and with a greedy ear     Devour up my discourse; which I observing,     Took once a pliant hour, and found good means     To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart     That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,     Whereof by parcels she had something heard,     But not intentively. I did consent,       And often did beguile her of her tears     When I did speak of some distressful stroke     That my youth suffer\'d. My story being done,     She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;     She swore, in faith, \'twas strange, \'twas passing strange;     \'Twas pitiful, \'twas wondrous pitiful.     She wish\'d she had not heard it, yet she wish\'d     That heaven had made her such a man; she thank\'d me,     And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,     I should but teach him how to tell my story,     And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:     She loved me for the dangers I had pass\'d,     And I loved her that she did pity them.     This only is the witchcraft I have used.     Here comes the lady; let her witness it.                  Enter Desdemona, Iago, and Attendants.    DUKE. I think this tale would win my daughter too.     Good Brabantio,       Take up this mangled matter at the best:     Men do their broken weapons rather use     Than their bare hands.   BRABANTIO.               I pray you, hear her speak.     If she confess that she was half the wooer,     Destruction on my head, if my bad blame     Light on the man! Come hither, gentle mistress.     Do you perceive in all this noble company     Where most you owe obedience?   DESDEMONA.                      My noble father,     I do perceive here a divided duty.     To you I am bound for life and education;     My life and education both do learn me     How to respect you; you are the lord of duty,     I am hitherto your daughter. But here\'s my husband,     And so much duty as my mother show\'d     To you, preferring you before her father,     So much I challenge that I may profess     Due to the Moor, my lord.   BRABANTIO.                  God be with you! I have done.       Please it your Grace, on to the state affairs;     I had rather to adopt a child than get it.     Come hither, Moor.     I here do give thee that with all my heart     Which, but thou hast already, with all my heart     I would keep from thee. For your sake, jewel,     I am glad at soul I have no other child;     For thy escape would teach me tyranny,     To hang clogs on them. I have done, my lord.   DUKE. Let me speak like yourself, and lay a sentence     Which, as a grise or step, may help these lovers     Into your favor.     When remedies are past, the griefs are ended     By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended.     To mourn a mischief that is past and gone     Is the next way to draw new mischief on.     What cannot be preserved when Fortune takes,     Patience her injury a mockery makes.     The robb\'d that smiles steals something from the thief;     He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.     BRABANTIO. So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile;     We lose it not so long as we can smile.     He bears the sentence well, that nothing bears     But the free comfort which from thence he hears;     But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow     That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow.     These sentences, to sugar or to gall,     Being strong on both sides, are equivocal.     But words are words; I never yet did hear     That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear.     I humbly beseech you, proceed to the affairs of state.   DUKE. The Turk with a most mighty preparation makes for Cyprus.     Othello, the fortitude of the place is best known to you; and     though we have there a substitute of most allowed sufficiency,     yet opinion, a sovereign mistress of effects, throws a more safer     voice on you. You must therefore be content to slubber the gloss     of your new fortunes with this more stubborn and boisterous     expedition.   OTHELLO. The tyrant custom, most grave senators,     Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war       My thrice-driven bed of down. I do agnize     A natural and prompt alacrity     I find in hardness and do undertake     These present wars against the Ottomites.     Most humbly therefore bending to your state,     I crave fit disposition for my wife,     Due reference of place and exhibition,     With such accommodation and besort     As levels with her breeding.   DUKE.                          If you please,     Be\'t at her father\'s.   BRABANTIO.              I\'ll not have it so.   OTHELLO. Nor I.   DESDEMONA.      Nor I. I would not there reside     To put my father in impatient thoughts     By being in his eye. Most gracious Duke,     To my unfolding lend your prosperous ear,     And let me find a charter in your voice     To assist my simpleness.   DUKE. What would you, Desdemona?     DESDEMONA. That I did love the Moor to live with him,     My downright violence and storm of fortunes     May trumpet to the world. My heart\'s subdued     Even to the very quality of my lord.     I saw Othello\'s visage in his mind,     And to his honors and his valiant parts     Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate.     So that, dear lords, if I be left behind,     A moth of peace, and he go to the war,     The rites for which I love him are bereft me,     And I a heavy interim shall support     By his dear absence. Let me go with him.   OTHELLO. Let her have your voices.     Vouch with me, heaven, I therefore beg it not     To please the palate of my appetite,     Nor to comply with heat- the young affects     In me defunct- and proper satisfaction;     But to be free and bounteous to her mind.     And heaven defend your good souls, that you think     I will your serious and great business scant       For she is with me. No, when light-wing\'d toys     Of feather\'d Cupid seel with wanton dullness     My speculative and officed instruments,     That my disports corrupt and taint my business,     Let housewives make a skillet of my helm,     And all indign and base adversities     Make head against my estimation!   DUKE. Be it as you shall privately determine,     Either for her stay or going. The affair cries haste,     And speed must answer\'t: you must hence tonight.   DESDEMONA. Tonight, my lord?   DUKE.                        This night.   OTHELLO.                                 With all my heart.   DUKE. At nine i\' the morning here we\'ll meet again.     Othello, leave some officer behind,     And he shall our commission bring to you,     With such things else of quality and respect     As doth import you.   OTHELLO.              So please your Grace, my ancient;     A man he is of honesty and trust.       To his conveyance I assign my wife,     With what else needful your good Grace shall think     To be sent after me.   DUKE.                  Let it be so.     Good night to everyone. [To Brabantio.] And, noble signior,     If virtue no delighted beauty lack,     Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.   FIRST SENATOR. Adieu, brave Moor, use Desdemona well.   BRABANTIO. Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see;     She has deceived her father, and may thee.                                  Exeunt Duke, Senators, and Officers.   OTHELLO. My life upon her faith! Honest Iago,     My Desdemona must I leave to thee.     I prithee, let thy wife attend on her,     And bring them after in the best advantage.     Come, Desdemona, I have but an hour     Of love, of worldly matters and direction,     To spend with thee. We must obey the time.                                         Exeunt Othello and Desdemona.   RODERIGO. Iago!     IAGO. What say\'st thou, noble heart?   RODERIGO. What will I do, thinkest thou?   IAGO. Why, go to bed and sleep.   RODERIGO. I will incontinently drown myself.   IAGO. If thou dost, I shall never love thee after.     Why, thou silly gentleman!   RODERIGO. It is silliness to live when to live is torment, and then     have we a prescription to die when death is our physician.   IAGO. O villainous! I have looked upon the world for four times     seven years, and since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and     an injury, I never found man that knew how to love himself. Ere I     would say I would drown myself for the love of a guinea hen, I     would change my humanity with a baboon.   RODERIGO. What should I do? I confess it is my shame to be so fond,     but it is not in my virtue to amend it.   IAGO. Virtue? a fig! \'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.     Our bodies are gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so     that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed     up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with     many, either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with       industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in     our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of     reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of     our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions.     But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings,     our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this, that you call love, to     be a sect or scion.   RODERIGO. It cannot be.   IAGO. It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the     will. Come, be a man! Drown thyself? Drown cats and blind     puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to     thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness; I could never     better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou     the wars; defeat thy favor with an usurped beard. I say, put     money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona should long     continue her love to the Moor- put money in thy purse- nor he his     to her. It was a violent commencement, and thou shalt see an     answerable sequestration- put but money in thy purse. These Moors     are changeable in their wills- fill thy purse with money. The     food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be to him       shortly as acerb as the coloquintida. She must change for youth;     when she is sated with his body, she will find the error of her     choice. She must have change, she must; therefore put money in     thy purse. If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate     way than drowning. Make all the money thou canst. If sanctimony     and a frail vow betwixt an erring barbarian and a supersubtle     Venetian be not too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell,     thou shalt enjoy her- therefore make money. A pox of drowning     thyself! It is clean out of the way. Seek thou rather to be     hanged in compassing thy joy than to be drowned and go without     her.   RODERIGO. Wilt thou be fast to my hopes, if I depend on the issue?   IAGO. Thou art sure of me- go, make money. I have told thee often,     and I retell thee again and again, I hate the Moor. My cause is     hearted; thine hath no less reason. Let us be conjunctive in our     revenge against him. If thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself     a pleasure, me a sport. There are many events in the womb of time     which will be delivered. Traverse, go, provide thy money. We will     have more of this tomorrow. Adieu.   RODERIGO. Where shall we meet i\' the morning?     IAGO. At my lodging.   RODERIGO. I\'ll be with thee betimes.   IAGO. Go to, farewell. Do you hear, Roderigo?   RODERIGO. What say you?   IAGO. No more of drowning, do you hear?   RODERIGO. I am changed; I\'ll go sell all my land.             Exit.   IAGO. Thus do I ever make my fool my purse;     For I mine own gain\'d knowledge should profane     If I would time expend with such a snipe     But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor,     And it is thought abroad that \'twixt my sheets     He has done my office. I know not if\'t be true,     But I for mere suspicion in that kind     Will do as if for surety. He holds me well,     The better shall my purpose work on him.     Cassio\'s a proper man. Let me see now-     To get his place, and to plume up my will     In double knavery- How, how?- Let\'s see-     After some time, to abuse Othello\'s ear     That he is too familiar with his wife.       He hath a person and a smooth dispose     To be suspected- framed to make women false.     The Moor is of a free and open nature,     That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,     And will as tenderly be led by the nose     As asses are.     I have\'t. It is engender\'d. Hell and night     Must bring this monstrous birth to the world\'s light.      Exit.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. A seaport in Cyprus. An open place near the quay.  Enter Montano and two Gentlemen.    MONTANO. What from the cape can you discern at sea?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Nothing at all. It is a high-wrought flood;     I cannot, \'twixt the heaven and the main,     Descry a sail.   MONTANO. Methinks the wind hath spoke aloud at land;     A fuller blast ne\'er shook our battlements.     If it hath ruffian\'d so upon the sea,     What ribs of oak, when mountains melt on them,     Can hold the mortise? What shall we hear of this?   SECOND GENTLEMAN. A segregation of the Turkish fleet.     For do but stand upon the foaming shore,     The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds;     The wind-shaked surge, with high and monstrous mane,     Seems to cast water on the burning bear,     And quench the guards of the ever-fixed pole.     I never did like molestation view     On the enchafed flood.     MONTANO.                 If that the Turkish fleet     Be not enshelter\'d and embay\'d, they are drown\'d;     It is impossible to bear it out.                         Enter a third Gentleman.    THIRD GENTLEMAN. News, lads! Our wars are done.     The desperate tempest hath so bang\'d the Turks,     That their designment halts. A noble ship of Venice     Hath seen a grievous wreck and sufferance     On most part of their fleet.   MONTANO. How? Is this true?   THIRD GENTLEMAN.            The ship is here put in,     A Veronesa. Michael Cassio,     Lieutenant to the warlike Moor, Othello,     Is come on shore; the Moor himself at sea,     And is in full commission here for Cyprus.   MONTANO. I am glad on\'t; \'tis a worthy governor.   THIRD GENTLEMAN. But this same Cassio, though he speak of comfort     Touching the Turkish loss, yet he looks sadly       And prays the Moor be safe; for they were parted     With foul and violent tempest.   MONTANO.                         Pray heavens he be,     For I have served him, and the man commands     Like a full soldier. Let\'s to the seaside, ho!     As well to see the vessel that\'s come in     As to throw out our eyes for brave Othello,     Even till we make the main and the aerial blue     An indistinct regard.   THIRD GENTLEMAN. Come, let\'s do so,     For every minute is expectancy     Of more arrivance.                              Enter Cassio.    CASSIO. Thanks, you the valiant of this warlike isle,     That so approve the Moor! O, let the heavens     Give him defense against the elements,     For I have lost him on a dangerous sea.   MONTANO. I she well shipp\'d?     CASSIO. His bark is stoutly timber\'d, and his pilot     Of very expert and approved allowance;     Therefore my hopes, not surfeited to death,     Stand in bold cure.                               A cry within, "A sail, a sail, a sail!"                        Enter a fourth Gentleman.                          What noise?   FOURTH GENTLEMAN. The town is empty; on the brow o\' the sea     Stand ranks of people, and they cry, "A sail!"   CASSIO. My hopes do shape him for the governor.                                                           Guns heard.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. They do discharge their shot of courtesy-     Our friends at least.   CASSIO.                 I pray you, sir, go forth,     And give us truth who \'tis that is arrived.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. I shall.                                    Exit.   MONTANO. But, good lieutenant, is your general wived?   CASSIO. Most fortunately: he hath achieved a maid       That paragons description and wild fame,     One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens,     And in the essential vesture of creation     Does tire the ingener.                        Re-enter second Gentleman.                             How now! who has put in?   SECOND GENTLEMAN. \'Tis one Iago, ancient to the general.   CASSIO. He has had most favorable and happy speed:     Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds,     The gutter\'d rocks, and congregated sands,     Traitors ensteep\'d to clog the guiltless keel,     As having sense of beauty, do omit     Their mortal natures, letting go safely by     The divine Desdemona.   MONTANO.                What is she?   CASSIO. She that I spake of, our great captain\'s captain,     Left in the conduct of the bold Iago,     Whose footing here anticipates our thoughts       A se\'nnight\'s speed. Great Jove, Othello guard,     And swell his sail with thine own powerful breath,     That he may bless this bay with his tall ship,     Make love\'s quick pants in Desdemona\'s arms,     Give renew\'d fire to our extincted spirits,     And bring all Cyprus comfort.         Enter Desdemona, Emilia Iago, Roderigo, and Attendants.                                    O, behold,     The riches of the ship is come on shore!     Ye men of Cyprus, let her have your knees.     Hall to thee, lady! And the grace of heaven,     Before, behind thee, and on every hand,     Enwheel thee round!   DESDEMONA.            I thank you, valiant Cassio.     What tidings can you tell me of my lord?   CASSIO. He is not yet arrived, nor know I aught     But that he\'s well and will be shortly here.   DESDEMONA. O, but I fear- How lost you company?     CASSIO. The great contention of the sea and skies     Parted our fellowship- But, hark! a sail.                           A cry within, "A sail, a sail!" Guns heard.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. They give their greeting to the citadel;     This likewise is a friend.   CASSIO.                      See for the news.                                                       Exit Gentleman.     Good ancient, you are welcome. [To Emilia.] Welcome, mistress.     Let it not gall your patience, good Iago,     That I extend my manners; \'tis my breeding     That gives me this bold show of courtesy.             Kisses her.   IAGO. Sir, would she give you so much of her lips     As of her tongue she oft bestows on me,     You\'ld have enough.   DESDEMONA.            Alas, she has no speech.   IAGO. In faith, too much;     I find it still when I have list to sleep.     Marry, before your ladyship I grant,     She puts her tongue a little in her heart     And chides with thinking.     EMILIA. You have little cause to say so.   IAGO. Come on, come on. You are pictures out of doors,     Bells in your parlors, wildcats in your kitchens,     Saints in your injuries, devils being offended,     Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds.   DESDEMONA. O, fie upon thee, slanderer!   IAGO. Nay, it is true, or else I am a Turk:     You rise to play, and go to bed to work.   EMILIA. You shall not write my praise.   IAGO.                                  No, let me not.   DESDEMONA. What wouldst thou write of me, if thou shouldst     praise me?   IAGO. O gentle lady, do not put me to\'t,     For I am nothing if not critical.   DESDEMONA. Come on, assay- There\'s one gone to the harbor?   IAGO. Ay, madam.   DESDEMONA. I am not merry, but I do beguile     The thing I am by seeming otherwise.     Come, how wouldst thou praise me?   IAGO. I am about it, but indeed my invention       Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frieze;     It plucks out brains and all. But my Muse labors,     And thus she is deliver\'d.     If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit,     The one\'s for use, the other useth it.   DESDEMONA. Well praised! How if she be black and witty?   IAGO. If she be black, and thereto have a wit,     She\'ll find a white that shall her blackness fit.   DESDEMONA. Worse and worse.   EMILIA. How if fair and foolish?   IAGO. She never yet was foolish that was fair,     For even her folly help\'d her to an heir.   DESDEMONA. These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i\' the     alehouse. What miserable praise hast thou for her that\'s foul and     foolish?   IAGO. There\'s none so foul and foolish thereunto,     But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do.   DESDEMONA. O heavy ignorance! Thou praisest the worst best. But what     praise couldst thou bestow on a deserving woman indeed, one that     in the authority of her merit did justly put on the vouch of very       malice itself?   IAGO. She that was ever fair and never proud,     Had tongue at will and yet was never loud,     Never lack\'d gold and yet went never gay,     Fled from her wish and yet said, "Now I may";     She that, being anger\'d, her revenge being nigh,     Bade her wrong stay and her displeasure fly;     She that in wisdom never was so frail     To change the cod\'s head for the salmon\'s tail;     She that could think and ne\'er disclose her mind,     See suitors following and not look behind;     She was a wight, if ever such wight were-   DESDEMONA. To do what?   IAGO. To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.   DESDEMONA. O most lame and impotent conclusion! Do not learn of him,     Emilia, though he be thy husband. How say you, Cassio? Is he not     a most profane and liberal counselor?   CASSIO. He speaks home, madam. You may relish him more in the     soldier than in the scholar.   IAGO. [Aside.] He takes her by the palm; ay, well said, whisper.       With as little a web as this will I ensnare as great a fly as     Cassio. Ay, smile upon her, do; I will gyve thee in thine own     courtship. You say true; \'tis so, indeed. If such tricks as these     strip you out of your lieutenantry, it had been better you had     not kissed your three fingers so oft, which now again you are     most apt to play the sir in. Very good. Well kissed! an excellent     courtesy! \'tis so, indeed. Yet again your fingers to your lips?     Would they were clyster-pipes for your sake! [Trumpet within.]     The Moor! I know his trumpet.   CASSIO. \'Tis truly so.   DESDEMONA. Let\'s meet him and receive him.   CASSIO. Lo, where he comes!                      Enter Othello and Attendants.    OTHELLO. O my fair warrior!   DESDEMONA.                  My dear Othello!   OTHELLO. It gives me wonder great as my content     To see you here before me. O my soul\'s joy!     If after every tempest come such calms,       May the winds blow till they have waken\'d death!     And let the laboring bark climb hills of seas     Olympus-high, and duck again as low     As hell\'s from heaven! If it were now to die,     \'Twere now to be most happy; for I fear     My soul hath her content so absolute     That not another comfort like to this     Succeeds in unknown fate.   DESDEMONA.                  The heavens forbid     But that our loves and comforts should increase,     Even as our days do grow!   OTHELLO.                    Amen to that, sweet powers!     I cannot speak enough of this content;     It stops me here; it is too much of joy.     And this, and this, the greatest discords be          Kisses her.     That e\'er our hearts shall make!   IAGO.                     [Aside.] O, you are well tuned now!     But I\'ll set down the pegs that make this music,     As honest as I am.   OTHELLO.             Come, let us to the castle.       News, friends: our wars are done, the Turks are drown\'d.     How does my old acquaintance of this isle?     Honey, you shall be well desired in Cyprus;     I have found great love amongst them. O my sweet,     I prattle out of fashion, and I dote     In mine own comforts. I prithee, good Iago,     Go to the bay and disembark my coffers.     Bring thou the master to the citadel;     He is a good one, and his worthiness     Does challenge much respect. Come, Desdemona,     Once more well met at Cyprus.                                     Exeunt all but Iago and Roderigo.   IAGO. Do thou meet me presently at the harbor. Come hither. If thou     be\'st valiant- as they say base men being in love have then a     nobility in their natures more than is native to them- list me.     The lieutenant tonight watches on the court of guard. First, I     must tell thee this: Desdemona is directly in love with him.   RODERIGO. With him? Why, \'tis not possible.   IAGO. Lay thy finger thus, and let thy soul be instructed. Mark me     with what violence she first loved the Moor, but for bragging and       telling her fantastical lies. And will she love him still for     prating? Let not thy discreet heart think it. Her eye must be     fed; and what delight shall she have to look on the devil? When     the blood is made dull with the act of sport, there should be,     again to inflame it and to give satiety a fresh appetite,     loveliness in favor, sympathy in years, manners, and beauties-     all which the Moor is defective in. Now, for want of these     required conveniences, her delicate tenderness will find itself     abused, begin to heave the gorge, disrelish and abhor the Moor;     very nature will instruct her in it and compel her to some second     choice. Now sir, this granted- as it is a most pregnant and     unforced position- who stands so eminently in the degree of this     fortune as Cassio does? A knave very voluble; no further     conscionable than in putting on the mere form of civil and humane     seeming, for the better compass of his salt and most hidden loose     affection? Why, none, why, none- a slipper and subtle knave, a     finder out of occasions, that has an eye can stamp and     counterfeit advantages, though true advantage never present     itself- a devilish knave! Besides, the knave is handsome, young,     and hath all those requisites in him that folly and green minds       look after- a pestilent complete knave, and the woman hath found     him already.   RODERIGO. I cannot believe that in her; she\'s full of most blest     condition.   IAGO. Blest fig\'s-end! The wine she drinks is made of grapes. If     she had been blest, she would never have loved the Moor. Blest     pudding! Didst thou not see her paddle with the palm of his hand?     Didst not mark that?   RODERIGO. Yes, that I did; but that was but courtesy.   IAGO. Lechery, by this hand; an index and obscure prologue to the     history of lust and foul thoughts. They met so near with their     lips that their breaths embraced together. Villainous thoughts,     Roderigo! When these mutualities so marshal the way, hard at hand     comes the master and main exercise, the incorporate conclusion.     Pish! But, sir, be you ruled by me. I have brought you from     Venice. Watch you tonight; for the command, I\'ll lay\'t upon you.     Cassio knows you not. I\'ll not be far from you. Do you find some     occasion to anger Cassio, either by speaking too loud, or     tainting his discipline, or from what other course you please,     which the time shall more favorably minister.     RODERIGO. Well.   IAGO. Sir, he is rash and very sudden in choler, and haply may     strike at you. Provoke him, that he may; for even out of that     will I cause these of Cyprus to mutiny, whose qualification shall     come into no true taste again but by the displanting of Cassio.     So shall you have a shorter journey to your desires by the means     I shall then have to prefer them, and the impediment most     profitably removed, without the which there were no expectation     of our prosperity.   RODERIGO. I will do this, if I can bring it to any opportunity.   IAGO. I warrant thee. Meet me by and by at the citadel. I must     fetch his necessaries ashore. Farewell.   RODERIGO. Adieu.                                              Exit.   IAGO. That Cassio loves her, I do well believe it;     That she loves him, \'tis apt and of great credit.     The Moor, howbeit that I endure him not,     Is of a constant, loving, noble nature,     And I dare think he\'ll prove to Desdemona     A most dear husband. Now, I do love her too,     Not out of absolute lust, though peradventure       I stand accountant for as great a sin,     But partly led to diet my revenge,     For that I do suspect the lusty Moor     Hath leap\'d into my seat; the thought whereof     Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards,     And nothing can or shall content my soul     Till I am even\'d with him, wife for wife.     Or failing so, yet that I put the Moor     At least into a jealousy so strong     That judgement cannot cure. Which thing to do,     If this poor trash of Venice, whom I trace     For his quick hunting, stand the putting on,     I\'ll have our Michael Cassio on the hip,     Abuse him to the Moor in the rank garb     (For I fear Cassio with my nightcap too),     Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me     For making him egregiously an ass     And practicing upon his peace and quiet     Even to madness. \'Tis here, but yet confused:     Knavery\'s plain face is never seen till used.               Exit.     SCENE II. A street.  Enter a Herald with a proclamation; people following.    HERALD. It is Othello\'s pleasure, our noble and valiant general,     that upon certain tidings now arrived, importing the mere     perdition of the Turkish fleet, every man put himself into     triumph; some to dance, some to make bonfires, each man to what     sport and revels his addiction leads him; for besides these     beneficial news, it is the celebration of his nuptial. So much     was his pleasure should be proclaimed. All offices are open, and     there is full liberty of feasting from this present hour of five     till the bell have told eleven. Heaven bless the isle of Cyprus     and our noble general Othello!                            Exeunt.     SCENE III. A hall in the castle.  Enter Othello, Desdemona, Cassio, and Attendants.    OTHELLO. Good Michael, look you to the guard tonight.     Let\'s teach ourselves that honorable stop,     Not to outsport discretion.   CASSIO. Iago hath direction what to do;     But notwithstanding with my personal eye     Will I look to\'t.   OTHELLO.            Iago is most honest.     Michael, good night. Tomorrow with your earliest     Let me have speech with you. Come, my dear love,     The purchase made, the fruits are to ensue;     That profit\'s yet to come \'tween me and you.     Good night.                            Exeunt Othello, Desdemona, and Attendants.                               Enter Iago.    CASSIO. Welcome, Iago; we must to the watch.     IAGO. Not this hour, lieutenant; \'tis not yet ten o\' the clock. Our     general cast us thus early for the love of his Desdemona; who let     us not therefore blame. He hath not yet made wanton the night     with her, and she is sport for Jove.   CASSIO. She\'s a most exquisite lady.   IAGO. And, I\'ll warrant her, full of game.   CASSIO. Indeed she\'s a most fresh and delicate creature.   IAGO. What an eye she has! Methinks it sounds a parley to     provocation.   CASSIO. An inviting eye; and yet methinks right modest.   IAGO. And when she speaks, is it not an alarum to love?   CASSIO. She is indeed perfection.   IAGO. Well, happiness to their sheets! Come, lieutenant, I have a     stope of wine, and here without are a brace of Cyprus gallants     that would fain have a measure to the health of black Othello.   CASSIO. Not tonight, good Iago. I have very poor and unhappy brains     for drinking. I could well wish courtesy would invent some other     custom of entertainment.   IAGO. O, they are our friends! But one cup; I\'ll drink for you.   CASSIO. I have drunk but one cup tonight, and that was craftily       qualified too, and behold what innovation it makes here. I am     unfortunate in the infirmity, and dare not task my weakness with     any more.   IAGO. What, man! \'Tis a night of revels, the gallants desire it.   CASSIO. Where are they?   IAGO. Here at the door; I pray you, call them in.   CASSIO. I\'ll do\'t, but it dislikes me.                        Exit.   IAGO. If I can fasten but one cup upon him,     With that which he hath drunk tonight already,     He\'ll be as full of quarrel and offense     As my young mistress\' dog. Now my sick fool Roderigo,     Whom love hath turn\'d almost the wrong side out,     To Desdemona hath tonight caroused     Potations pottle-deep; and he\'s to watch.     Three lads of Cyprus, noble swelling spirits,     That hold their honors in a wary distance,     The very elements of this warlike isle,     Have I tonight fluster\'d with flowing cups,     And they watch too. Now, \'mongst this flock of drunkards,     Am I to put our Cassio in some action       That may offend the isle. But here they come.     If consequence do but approve my dream,     My boat sails freely, both with wind and stream.             Re-enter Cassio; with him Montano and Gentlemen;                     Servants following with wine.    CASSIO. \'Fore God, they have given me a rouse already.   MONTANO. Good faith, a little one; not past a pint, as I am a     soldier.   IAGO. Some wine, ho!      [Sings.]   "And let me the canakin clink, clink;                And let me the canakin clink.                  A soldier\'s a man;                  O, man\'s life\'s but a span;                Why then let a soldier drink."      Some wine, boys!   CASSIO. \'Fore God, an excellent song.     IAGO. I learned it in England, where indeed they are most potent in     potting. Your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander-     Drink, ho!- are nothing to your English.   CASSIO. Is your Englishman so expert in his drinking?   IAGO. Why, he drinks you with facility your Dane dead drunk; he     sweats not to overthrow your Almain; he gives your Hollander a     vomit ere the next pottle can be filled.   CASSIO. To the health of our general!   MONTANO. I am for it, lieutenant, and I\'ll do you justice.   IAGO. O sweet England!      [Sings.]   "King Stephen was and-a worthy peer,                  His breeches cost him but a crown;                He held them sixpence all too dear,                  With that he call\'d the tailor lown.                 "He was a wight of high renown,                  And thou art but of low degree.                \'Tis pride that pulls the country down;                  Then take thine auld cloak about thee."        Some wine, ho!   CASSIO. Why, this is a more exquisite song than the other.   IAGO. Will you hear\'t again?   CASSIO. No, for I hold him to be unworthy of his place that does     those things. Well, God\'s above all, and there be souls must be     saved, and there be souls must not be saved.   IAGO. It\'s true, good lieutenant.   CASSIO. For mine own part- no offense to the general, nor any man     of quality- I hope to be saved.   IAGO. And so do I too, lieutenant.   CASSIO. Ay, but, by your leave, not before me; the lieutenant is to     be saved before the ancient. Let\'s have no more of this; let\'s to     our affairs. God forgive us our sins! Gentlemen, let\'s look to     our business. Do not think, gentlemen, I am drunk: this is my     ancient, this is my right hand, and this is my left. I am not     drunk now; I can stand well enough, and I speak well enough.   ALL. Excellent well.   CASSIO. Why, very well then; you must not think then that I am     drunk.                                                      Exit.     MONTANO. To the platform, masters; come, let\'s set the watch.   IAGO. You see this fellow that is gone before;     He is a soldier fit to stand by Caesar     And give direction. And do but see his vice;     \'Tis to his virtue a just equinox,     The one as long as the other. \'Tis pity of him.     I fear the trust Othello puts him in     On some odd time of his infirmity     Will shake this island.   MONTANO.                  But is he often thus?   IAGO. \'Tis evermore the prologue to his sleep.     He\'ll watch the horologe a double set,     If drink rock not his cradle.   MONTANO.                        It were well     The general were put in mind of it.     Perhaps he sees it not, or his good nature     Prizes the virtue that appears in Cassio     And looks not on his evils. Is not this true?                             Enter Roderigo.      IAGO. [Aside to him.] How now, Roderigo!     I pray you, after the lieutenant; go.              Exit Roderigo.   MONTANO. And \'tis great pity that the noble Moor     Should hazard such a place as his own second     With one of an ingraft infirmity.     It were an honest action to say     So to the Moor.   IAGO.             Not I, for this fair island.     I do love Cassio well, and would do much     To cure him of this evil- But, hark! What noise?                                           A cry within, "Help, help!"                  Re-enter Cassio, driving in Roderigo.    CASSIO. \'Zounds! You rogue! You rascal!   MONTANO. What\'s the matter, lieutenant?   CASSIO. A knave teach me my duty! But I\'ll beat the knave into a     twiggen bottle.   RODERIGO. Beat me!     CASSIO. Dost thou prate, rogue?                   Strikes Roderigo.   MONTANO. Nay, good lieutenant; I pray you, sir, hold your hand.   CASSIO. Let me go, sir, or I\'ll knock you o\'er the mazzard.   MONTANO. Come, come, you\'re drunk.   CASSIO. Drunk?                                          They fight.   IAGO. [Aside to Roderigo.] Away, I say; go out and cry a mutiny.                                                        Exit Roderigo.     Nay, good lieutenant! God\'s will, gentlemen!     Help, ho!- Lieutenant- sir- Montano- sir-     Help, masters!- Here\'s a goodly watch indeed!                                                         A bell rings.     Who\'s that that rings the bell?- Diablo, ho!     The town will rise. God\'s will, lieutenant, hold!     You will be shamed forever.                     Re-enter Othello and Attendants.    OTHELLO.                      What is the matter here?   MONTANO. \'Zounds, I bleed still; I am hurt to the death.    Faints.     OTHELLO. Hold, for your lives!   IAGO. Hold, ho! Lieutenant- sir- Montano- gentlemen-     Have you forgot all place of sense and duty?     Hold! the general speaks to you! Hold, hold, for shame!   OTHELLO. Why, how now, ho! from whence ariseth this?     Are we turn\'d Turks, and to ourselves do that     Which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?     For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl.     He that stirs next to carve for his own rage     Holds his soul light; he dies upon his motion.     Silence that dreadful bell; it frights the isle     From her propriety. What is the matter, masters?     Honest Iago, that look\'st dead with grieving,     Speak: who began this? On thy love, I charge thee.   IAGO. I do not know. Friends all but now, even now,     In quarter, and in terms like bride and groom     Devesting them for bed; and then, but now     (As if some planet had unwitted men),     Swords out, and tilting one at other\'s breast,     In opposition bloody. I cannot speak       Any beginning to this peevish odds;     And would in action glorious I had lost     Those legs that brought me to a part of it!   OTHELLO. How comes it, Michael, you are thus forgot?   CASSIO. I pray you, pardon me; I cannot speak.   OTHELLO. Worthy Montano, you were wont be civil;     The gravity and stillness of your youth     The world hath noted, and your name is great     In mouths of wisest censure. What\'s the matter,     That you unlace your reputation thus,     And spend your rich opinion for the name     Of a night-brawler? Give me answer to it.   MONTANO. Worthy Othello, I am hurt to danger.     Your officer, Iago, can inform you-     While I spare speech, which something now offends me-     Of all that I do know. Nor know I aught     By me that\'s said or done amiss this night,     Unless self-charity be sometimes a vice,     And to defend ourselves it be a sin     When violence assails us.     OTHELLO.                    Now, by heaven,     My blood begins my safer guides to rule,     And passion, having my best judgement collied,     Assays to lead the way. If I once stir,     Or do but lift this arm, the best of you     Shall sink in my rebuke. Give me to know     How this foul rout began, who set it on,     And he that is approved in this offense,     Though he had twinn\'d with me, both at a birth,     Shall lose me. What! in a town of war,     Yet wild, the people\'s hearts brimful of fear,     To manage private and domestic quarrel,     In night, and on the court and guard of safety!     \'Tis monstrous. Iago, who began\'t?   MONTANO. If partially affined, or leagued in office,     Thou dost deliver more or less than truth,     Thou art no soldier.   IAGO.                  Touch me not so near:     I had rather have this tongue cut from my mouth     Than it should do offense to Michael Cassio;       Yet, I persuade myself, to speak the truth     Shall nothing wrong him. Thus it is, general.     Montano and myself being in speech,     There comes a fellow crying out for help,     And Cassio following him with determined sword,     To execute upon him. Sir, this gentleman     Steps in to Cassio and entreats his pause.     Myself the crying fellow did pursue,     Lest by his clamor- as it so fell out-     The town might fall in fright. He, swift of foot,     Outran my purpose; and I return\'d the rather     For that I heard the clink and fall of swords,     And Cassio high in oath, which till tonight     I ne\'er might say before. When I came back-     For this was brief- I found them close together,     At blow and thrust, even as again they were     When you yourself did part them.     More of this matter cannot I report.     But men are men; the best sometimes forget.     Though Cassio did some little wrong to him,       As men in rage strike those that wish them best,     Yet surely Cassio, I believe, received     From him that fled some strange indignity,     Which patience could not pass.   OTHELLO.                         I know, Iago,     Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter,     Making it light to Cassio. Cassio, I love thee,     But never more be officer of mine.                      Re-enter Desdemona, attended.      Look, if my gentle love be not raised up!     I\'ll make thee an example.   DESDEMONA.                   What\'s the matter?   OTHELLO. All\'s well now, sweeting; come away to bed.     Sir, for your hurts, myself will be your surgeon.     Lead him off.                             Exit Montano, attended.     Iago, look with care about the town,     And silence those whom this vile brawl distracted.     Come, Desdemona, \'tis the soldiers\' life.       To have their balmy slumbers waked with strife.                                       Exeunt all but Iago and Cassio.   IAGO. What, are you hurt, lieutenant?   CASSIO. Ay, past all surgery.   IAGO. Marry, heaven forbid!   CASSIO. Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my     reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what     remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!   IAGO. As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily     wound; there is more sense in that than in reputation. Reputation     is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit and     lost without deserving. You have lost no reputation at all,     unless you repute yourself such a loser. What, man! there are     ways to recover the general again. You are but now cast in his     mood, a punishment more in policy than in malice; even so as one     would beat his offenseless dog to affright an imperious lion. Sue     to him again, and he\'s yours.   CASSIO. I will rather sue to be despised than to deceive so good a     commander with so slight, so drunken, and so indiscreet an     officer. Drunk? and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? swear?       and discourse fustian with one\'s own shadow? O thou invisible     spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call     thee devil!   IAGO. What was he that you followed with your sword?     What had he done to you?   CASSIO. I know not.   IAGO. Is\'t possible?   CASSIO. I remember a mass of things, but nothing distinctly; a     quarrel, but nothing wherefore. O God, that men should put an     enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should,     with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves     into beasts!   IAGO. Why, but you are now well enough. How came you thus      recovered?   CASSIO. It hath pleased the devil drunkenness to give place to the     devil wrath: one unperfectness shows me another, to make me     frankly despise myself.   IAGO. Come, you are too severe a moraler. As the time, the place,     and the condition of this country stands, I could heartily wish     this had not befallen; but since it is as it is, mend it for your       own good.   CASSIO. I will ask him for my place again; he shall tell me I am a     drunkard! Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would     stop them all. To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and     presently a beast! O strange! Every inordinate cup is unblest,     and the ingredient is a devil.   IAGO. Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be     well used. Exclaim no more against it. And, good lieutenant, I     think you think I love you.   CASSIO. I have well approved it, sir. I drunk!   IAGO. You or any man living may be drunk at some time, man. I\'ll     tell you what you shall do. Our general\'s wife is now the     general. I may say so in this respect, for that he hath devoted     and given up himself to the contemplation, mark, and denotement     of her parts and graces. Confess yourself freely to her;     importune her help to put you in your place again. She is of so     free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, she holds it a     vice in her goodness not to do more than she is requested. This     broken joint between you and her husband entreat her to splinter;     and, my fortunes against any lay worth naming, this crack of your       love shall grow stronger than it was before.   CASSIO. You advise me well.   IAGO. I protest, in the sincerity of love and honest kindness.   CASSIO. I think it freely; and betimes in the morning I will beseech     the virtuous Desdemona to undertake for me. I am desperate of my     fortunes if they check me here.   IAGO. You are in the right. Good night, lieutenant, I must to the     watch.   CASSIO. Good night, honest Iago.                              Exit.   IAGO. And what\'s he then that says I play the villain?     When this advice is free I give and honest,     Probal to thinking, and indeed the course     To win the Moor again? For \'tis most easy     The inclining Desdemona to subdue     In any honest suit. She\'s framed as fruitful     As the free elements. And then for her     To win the Moor, were\'t to renounce his baptism,     All seals and symbols of redeemed sin,     His soul is so enfetter\'d to her love,     That she may make, unmake, do what she list,       Even as her appetite shall play the god     With his weak function. How am I then a villain     To counsel Cassio to this parallel course,     Directly to his good? Divinity of hell!     When devils will the blackest sins put on,     They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,     As I do now. For whiles this honest fool     Plies Desdemona to repair his fortune,     And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor,     I\'ll pour this pestilence into his ear,     That she repeals him for her body\'s lust;     And by how much she strives to do him good,     She shall undo her credit with the Moor.     So will I turn her virtue into pitch,     And out of her own goodness make the net     That shall enmesh them all.                             Enter Roderigo.                                  How now, Roderigo!     RODERIGO. I do follow here in the chase, not like a hound that     hunts, but one that fills up the cry. My money is almost spent; I     have been tonight exceedingly well cudgeled; and I think the     issue will be, I shall have so much experience for my pains; and     so, with no money at all and a little more wit, return again to     Venice.   IAGO. How poor are they that have not patience!     What wound did ever heal but by degrees?     Thou know\'st we work by wit and not by witchcraft,     And wit depends on dilatory time.     Does\'t not go well? Cassio hath beaten thee,     And thou by that small hurt hast cashier\'d Cassio.     Though other things grow fair against the sun,     Yet fruits that blossom first will first be ripe.     Content thyself awhile. By the mass, \'tis morning;     Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.     Retire thee; go where thou art billeted.     Away, I say. Thou shalt know more hereafter.     Nay, get thee gone. [Exit Roderigo.] Two things are to be done:     My wife must move for Cassio to her mistress-       I\'ll set her on;     Myself the while to draw the Moor apart,     And bring him jump when he may Cassio find     Soliciting his wife. Ay, that\'s the way;     Dull not device by coldness and delay.                      Exit.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. Before the castle.  Enter Cassio and some Musicians.    CASSIO. Masters, play here, I will content your pains; Something     that\'s brief; and bid "Good morrow, general."     Music.                               Enter Clown.    CLOWN. Why, masters, have your instruments been in Naples, that     they speak i\' the nose thus?   FIRST MUSICIAN. How, sir, how?   CLOWN. Are these, I pray you, wind instruments?   FIRST MUSICIAN. Ay, marry, are they, sir.   CLOWN. O, thereby hangs a tail.   FIRST MUSICIAN. Whereby hangs a tale, sir?   CLOWN. Marry, sir, by many a wind instrument that I know. But,     masters, here\'s money for you; and the general so likes your     music, that he desires you, for love\'s sake, to make no more     noise with it.     FIRST MUSICIAN. Well, sir, we will not.   CLOWN. If you have any music that may not be heard, to\'t again;     but, as they say, to hear music the general does not greatly     care.   FIRST MUSICIAN. We have none such, sir.   CLOWN. Then put up your pipes in your bag, for I\'ll away.     Go, vanish into air, away!                      Exeunt Musicians.   CASSIO. Dost thou hear, my honest friend?   CLOWN. No, I hear not your honest friend; I hear you.   CASSIO. Prithee, keep up thy quillets. There\'s a poor piece of gold     for thee. If the gentlewoman that attends the general\'s wife be     stirring, tell her there\'s one Cassio entreats her a little favor     of speech. Wilt thou do this?   CLOWN. She is stirring, sir. If she will stir hither, I shall seem     to notify unto her.   CASSIO. Do, good my friend.                             Exit Clown.                               Enter Iago.                                In happy time, Iago.     IAGO. You have not been abed, then?   CASSIO. Why, no; the day had broke     Before we parted. I have made bold, Iago,     To send in to your wife. My suit to her     Is that she will to virtuous Desdemona     Procure me some access.   IAGO.                     I\'ll send her to you presently;     And I\'ll devise a mean to draw the Moor     Out of the way, that your converse and business     May be more free.   CASSIO. I humbly thank you for\'t. [Exit Iago.] I never knew     A Florentine more kind and honest.                              Enter Emilia.    EMILIA. Good morrow, good lieutenant. I am sorry     For your displeasure, but all will sure be well.     The general and his wife are talking of it,     And she speaks for you stoutly. The Moor replies     That he you hurt is of great fame in Cyprus       And great affinity and that in wholesome wisdom     He might not but refuse you; but he protests he loves you     And needs no other suitor but his likings     To take the safest occasion by the front     To bring you in again.   CASSIO.                  Yet, I beseech you,     If you think fit, or that it may be done,     Give me advantage of some brief discourse     With Desdemona alone.   EMILIA.                 Pray you, come in.     I will bestow you where you shall have time     To speak your bosom freely.   CASSIO.                       I am much bound to you.    Exeunt.     SCENE II. A room in the castle.  Enter Othello, Iago, and Gentlemen.    OTHELLO. These letters give, Iago, to the pilot,     And by him do my duties to the Senate.     That done, I will be walking on the works;     Repair there to me.   IAGO.                 Well, my good lord, I\'ll do\'t.   OTHELLO. This fortification, gentlemen, shall we see\'t?   GENTLEMEN. We\'ll wait upon your lordship.                   Exeunt.     SCENE III. The garden of the castle.  Enter Desdemona, Cassio, and Emilia.    DESDEMONA. Be thou assured, good Cassio, I will do     All my abilities in thy behalf.   EMILIA. Good madam, do. I warrant it grieves my husband     As if the cause were his.   DESDEMONA. O, that\'s an honest fellow. Do not doubt, Cassio,     But I will have my lord and you again     As friendly as you were.   CASSIO.                    Bounteous madam,     Whatever shall become of Michael Cassio,     He\'s never anything but your true servant.   DESDEMONA. I know\'t: I thank you. You do love my lord:     You have known him long; and be you well assured     He shall in strangeness stand no farther off     Than in a politic distance.   CASSIO.                       Ay, but, lady,     That policy may either last so long,     Or feed upon such nice and waterish diet,       Or breed itself so out of circumstances,     That I being absent and my place supplied,     My general will forget my love and service.   DESDEMONA. Do not doubt that. Before Emilia here     I give thee warrant of thy place, assure thee,     If I do vow a friendship, I\'ll perform it     To the last article. My lord shall never rest;     I\'ll watch him tame and talk him out of patience;     His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift;     I\'ll intermingle everything he does     With Cassio\'s suit. Therefore be merry, Cassio,     For thy solicitor shall rather die     Than give thy cause away.                  Enter Othello and Iago, at a distance.    EMILIA. Madam, here comes my lord.   CASSIO. Madam, I\'ll take my leave.   DESDEMONA. Nay, stay and hear me speak.   CASSIO. Madam, not now. I am very ill at ease,       Unfit for mine own purposes.   DESDEMONA. Well, do your discretion.                   Exit Cassio.   IAGO. Ha! I like not that.   OTHELLO. What dost thou say?   IAGO. Nothing, my lord; or if- I know not what.   OTHELLO. Was not that Cassio parted from my wife?   IAGO. Cassio, my lord! No, sure, I cannot think it,     That he would steal away so guilty-like,     Seeing you coming.   OTHELLO.             I do believe \'twas he.   DESDEMONA. How now, my lord!     I have been talking with a suitor here,     A man that languishes in your displeasure.   OTHELLO. Who is\'t you mean?   DESDEMONA. Why, your lieutenant, Cassio. Good my lord,     If I have any grace or power to move you,     His present reconciliation take;     For if he be not one that truly loves you,     That errs in ignorance and not in cunning,     I have no judgement in an honest face.       I prithee, call him back.   OTHELLO.                    Went he hence now?   DESDEMONA. Ay, sooth; so humbled     That he hath left part of his grief with me     To suffer with him. Good love, call him back.   OTHELLO. Not now, sweet Desdemona; some other time.   DESDEMONA. But shall\'t be shortly?   OTHELLO.                           The sooner, sweet, for you.   DESDEMONA. Shall\'t be tonight at supper?   OTHELLO.                                 No, not tonight.   DESDEMONA. Tomorrow dinner then?   OTHELLO.                         I shall not dine at home;     I meet the captains at the citadel.   DESDEMONA. Why then tomorrow night, or Tuesday morn,     On Tuesday noon, or night, on Wednesday morn.     I prithee, name the time, but let it not     Exceed three days. In faith, he\'s penitent;     And yet his trespass, in our common reason-     Save that, they say, the wars must make example     Out of their best- is not almost a fault       To incur a private check. When shall he come?     Tell me, Othello. I wonder in my soul,     What you would ask me, that I should deny,     Or stand so mammering on. What? Michael Cassio,     That came awooing with you, and so many a time     When I have spoke of you dispraisingly     Hath ta\'en your part- to have so much to do     To bring him in! Trust me, I could do much-   OTHELLO. Prithee, no more. Let him come when he will;     I will deny thee nothing.   DESDEMONA.                  Why, this is not a boon;     \'Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves,     Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm,     Or sue to you to do a peculiar profit     To your own person. Nay, when I have a suit     Wherein I mean to touch your love indeed,     It shall be full of poise and difficult weight,     And fearful to be granted.   OTHELLO.                     I will deny thee nothing,     Whereon, I do beseech thee, grant me this,       To leave me but a little to myself.   DESDEMONA. Shall I deny you? No. Farewell, my lord.   OTHELLO. Farewell, my Desdemona; I\'ll come to thee straight.   DESDEMONA. Emilia, come. Be as your fancies teach you;     Whate\'er you be, I am obedient.                                          Exeunt Desdemona and Emilia.   OTHELLO. Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul,     But I do love thee! and when I love thee not,     Chaos is come again.   IAGO. My noble lord-   OTHELLO.             What dost thou say, Iago?   IAGO. Did Michael Cassio, when you woo\'d my lady,     Know of your love?   OTHELLO. He did, from first to last. Why dost thou ask?   IAGO. But for a satisfaction of my thought;     No further harm.   OTHELLO.           Why of thy thought, Iago?   IAGO. I did not think he had been acquainted with her.   OTHELLO. O, yes, and went between us very oft.   IAGO. Indeed!     OTHELLO. Indeed? ay, indeed. Discern\'st thou aught in that?     Is he not honest?   IAGO. Honest, my lord?   OTHELLO. Honest? Ay, honest.   IAGO. My lord, for aught I know.   OTHELLO. What dost thou think?   IAGO. Think, my lord?   OTHELLO. Think, my lord? By heaven, he echoes me,     As if there were some monster in his thought     Too hideous to be shown. Thou dost mean something.     I heard thee say even now, thou like\'st not that,     When Cassio left my wife. What didst not like?     And when I told thee he was of my counsel     In my whole course of wooing, thou criedst, "Indeed!"     And didst contract and purse thy brow together,     As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain     Some horrible conceit. If thou dost love me,     Show me thy thought.   IAGO. My lord, you know I love you.   OTHELLO.                            I think thou dost;       And for I know thou\'rt full of love and honesty     And weigh\'st thy words before thou givest them breath,     Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more;     For such things in a false disloyal knave     Are tricks of custom; but in a man that\'s just     They\'re close dilations, working from the heart,     That passion cannot rule.   IAGO.                       For Michael Cassio,     I dare be sworn I think that he is honest.   OTHELLO. I think so too.   IAGO.                    Men should be what they seem;     Or those that be not, would they might seem none!   OTHELLO. Certain, men should be what they seem.   IAGO. Why then I think Cassio\'s an honest man.   OTHELLO. Nay, yet there\'s more in this.     I prithee, speak to me as to thy thinkings,     As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts     The worst of words.   IAGO.                 Good my lord, pardon me;     Though I am bound to every act of duty,       I am not bound to that all slaves are free to.     Utter my thoughts? Why, say they are vile and false;     As where\'s that palace whereinto foul things     Sometimes intrude not? Who has a breast so pure,     But some uncleanly apprehensions     Keep leets and law-days, and in session sit     With meditations lawful?   OTHELLO. Thou dost conspire against thy friend, Iago,     If thou but think\'st him wrong\'d and makest his ear     A stranger to thy thoughts.   IAGO.                         I do beseech you-     Though I perchance am vicious in my guess,     As, I confess, it is my nature\'s plague     To spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy     Shapes faults that are not- that your wisdom yet,     From one that so imperfectly conceits,     Would take no notice, nor build yourself a trouble     Out of his scattering and unsure observance.     It were not for your quiet nor your good,     Nor for my manhood, honesty, or wisdom,       To let you know my thoughts.   OTHELLO.                       What dost thou mean?   IAGO. Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,     Is the immediate jewel of their souls.     Who steals my purse steals trash; \'tis something, nothing;     \'Twas mine, \'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;     But he that filches from me my good name     Robs me of that which not enriches him     And makes me poor indeed.   OTHELLO. By heaven, I\'ll know thy thoughts.   IAGO. You cannot, if my heart were in your hand;     Nor shall not, whilst \'tis in my custody.   OTHELLO. Ha!   IAGO.        O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!     It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock     The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss     Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;     But O, what damned minutes tells he o\'er     Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!   OTHELLO. O misery!     IAGO. Poor and content is rich, and rich enough;     But riches fineless is as poor as winter     To him that ever fears he shall be poor.     Good heaven, the souls of all my tribe defend     From jealousy!   OTHELLO.         Why, why is this?     Think\'st thou I\'ld make a life of jealousy,     To follow still the changes of the moon     With fresh suspicions? No! To be once in doubt     Is once to be resolved. Exchange me for a goat     When I shall turn the business of my soul     To such exsufflicate and blown surmises,     Matching thy inference. \'Tis not to make me jealous     To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,     Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well;     Where virtue is, these are more virtuous.     Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw     The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt;     For she had eyes and chose me. No, Iago,     I\'ll see before I doubt; when I doubt, prove;       And on the proof, there is no more but this-     Away at once with love or jealousy!   IAGO. I am glad of it, for now I shall have reason     To show the love and duty that I bear you     With franker spirit. Therefore, as I am bound,     Receive it from me. I speak not yet of proof.     Look to your wife; observe her well with Cassio;     Wear your eye thus, not jealous nor secure.     I would not have your free and noble nature     Out of self-bounty be abused. Look to\'t.     I know our country disposition well;     In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks     They dare not show their husbands; their best conscience     Is not to leave\'t undone, but keep\'t unknown.   OTHELLO. Dost thou say so?   IAGO. She did deceive her father, marrying you;     And when she seem\'d to shake and fear your looks,     She loved them most.   OTHELLO.               And so she did.   IAGO.                                  Why, go to then.       She that so young could give out such a seeming,     To seel her father\'s eyes up close as oak-     He thought \'twas witchcraft- but I am much to blame;     I humbly do beseech you of your pardon     For too much loving you.   OTHELLO.                   I am bound to thee forever.   IAGO. I see this hath a little dash\'d your spirits.   OTHELLO. Not a jot, not a jot.   IAGO.                          I\'faith, I fear it has.     I hope you will consider what is spoke     Comes from my love. But I do see you\'re moved;     I am to pray you not to strain my speech     To grosser issues nor to larger reach     Than to suspicion.   OTHELLO. I will not.   IAGO.                Should you do so, my lord,     My speech should fall into such vile success     Which my thoughts aim not at. Cassio\'s my worthy friend-     My lord, I see you\'re moved.   OTHELLO.                       No, not much moved.       I do not think but Desdemona\'s honest.   IAGO. Long live she so! and long live you to think so!   OTHELLO. And yet, how nature erring from itself-   IAGO. Ay, there\'s the point, as- to be bold with you-     Not to affect many proposed matches     Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,     Whereto we see in all things nature tends-     Foh, one may smell in such a will most rank,     Foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural.     But pardon me. I do not in position     Distinctly speak of her; though I may fear,     Her will, recoiling to her better judgement,     May fall to match you with her country forms,     And happily repent.   OTHELLO.              Farewell, farewell.     If more thou dost perceive, let me know more;     Set on thy wife to observe. Leave me, Iago.   IAGO. [Going.] My lord, I take my leave.   OTHELLO. Why did I marry? This honest creature doubtless     Sees and knows more, much more, than he unfolds.     IAGO. [Returning.] My lord, I would I might entreat your honor     To scan this thing no further; leave it to time.     Though it be fit that Cassio have his place,     For sure he fills it up with great ability,     Yet, if you please to hold him off awhile,     You shall by that perceive him and his means.     Note if your lady strain his entertainment     With any strong or vehement importunity;     Much will be seen in that. In the meantime,     Let me be thought too busy in my fears-     As worthy cause I have to fear I am-     And hold her free, I do beseech your honor.   OTHELLO. Fear not my government.   IAGO. I once more take my leave.                              Exit.   OTHELLO. This fellow\'s of exceeding honesty,     And knows all qualities, with a learned spirit,     Of human dealings. If I do prove her haggard,     Though that her jesses were my dear heartstrings,     I\'ld whistle her off and let her down the wind     To prey at fortune. Haply, for I am black       And have not those soft parts of conversation     That chamberers have, or for I am declined     Into the vale of years- yet that\'s not much-     She\'s gone. I am abused, and my relief     Must be to loathe her. O curse of marriage,     That we can call these delicate creatures ours,     And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad,     And live upon the vapor of a dungeon,     Than keep a corner in the thing I love     For others\' uses. Yet, \'tis the plague of great ones:     Prerogatived are they less than the base;     \'Tis destiny unshunnable, like death.     Even then this forked plague is fated to us     When we do quicken. Desdemona comes:                      Re-enter Desdemona and Emilia.      If she be false, O, then heaven mocks itself!     I\'ll not believe\'t.   DESDEMONA.            How now, my dear Othello!       Your dinner, and the generous islanders     By you invited, do attend your presence.   OTHELLO. I am to blame.   DESDEMONA.              Why do you speak so faintly?     Are you not well?   OTHELLO. I have a pain upon my forehead here.   DESDEMONA. Faith, that\'s with watching; \'twill away again.     Let me but bind it hard, within this hour     It will be well.   OTHELLO.           Your napkin is too little;             He puts the handkerchief from him, and she drops it.     Let it alone. Come, I\'ll go in with you.   DESDEMONA. I am very sorry that you are not well.                                         Exeunt Othello and Desdemona.   EMILIA. I am glad I have found this napkin;     This was her first remembrance from the Moor.     My wayward husband hath a hundred times     Woo\'d me to steal it; but she so loves the token,     For he conjured her she should ever keep it,     That she reserves it evermore about her       To kiss and talk to. I\'ll have the work ta\'en out,     And give\'t Iago. What he will do with it     Heaven knows, not I;     I nothing but to please his fantasy.                              Re-enter Iago.    IAGO. How now, what do you here alone?   EMILIA. Do not you chide; I have a thing for you.   IAGO. A thing for me? It is a common thing-   EMILIA. Ha!   IAGO. To have a foolish wife.   EMILIA. O, is that all? What will you give me now     For that same handkerchief?   IAGO.                         What handkerchief?   EMILIA. What handkerchief?     Why, that the Moor first gave to Desdemona,     That which so often you did bid me steal.   IAGO. Hast stol\'n it from her?   EMILIA. No, faith; she let it drop by negligence,       And, to the advantage, I being here took\'t up.     Look, here it is.   IAGO.               A good wench; give it me.   EMILIA. What will you do with\'t, that you have been so earnest     To have me filch it?   IAGO. [Snatching it.] Why, what is that to you?   EMILIA. If\'t be not for some purpose of import,     Give\'t me again. Poor lady, she\'ll run mad     When she shall lack it.   IAGO. Be not acknown on\'t; I have use for it.     Go, leave me.                                        Exit Emilia.     I will in Cassio\'s lodging lose this napkin,     And let him find it. Trifles light as air     Are to the jealous confirmations strong     As proofs of holy writ; this may do something.     The Moor already changes with my poison:     Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons,     Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,     But with a little act upon the blood     Burn like the mines of sulphur. I did say so.       Look, where he comes!                            Re-enter Othello.                            Not poppy, nor mandragora,     Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,     Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep     Which thou owedst yesterday.   OTHELLO.                       Ha, ha, false to me?   IAGO. Why, how now, general! No more of that.   OTHELLO. Avaunt! be gone! Thou hast set me on the rack.     I swear \'tis better to be much abused     Than but to know\'t a little.   IAGO.                          How now, my lord?   OTHELLO. What sense had I of her stol\'n hours of lust?     I saw\'t not, thought it not, it harm\'d not me;     I slept the next night well, was free and merry;     I found not Cassio\'s kisses on her lips.     He that is robb\'d, not wanting what is stol\'n,     Let him not know\'t and he\'s not robb\'d at all.     IAGO. I am sorry to hear this.   OTHELLO. I had been happy if the general camp,     Pioners and all, had tasted her sweet body,     So I had nothing known. O, now forever     Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content!     Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars     That make ambition virtue! O, farewell,     Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,     The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,     The royal banner, and all quality,     Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!     And O you mortal engines, whose rude throats     The immortal Jove\'s dread clamors counterfeit,     Farewell! Othello\'s occupation\'s gone!   IAGO. Is\'t possible, my lord?   OTHELLO. Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore;     Be sure of it. Give me the ocular proof;     Or, by the worth of man\'s eternal soul,     Thou hadst been better have been born a dog     Than answer my waked wrath!     IAGO.                         Is\'t come to this?   OTHELLO. Make me to see\'t; or at the least so prove it,     That the probation bear no hinge nor loop     To hang a doubt on; or woe upon thy life!   IAGO. My noble lord-   OTHELLO. If thou dost slander her and torture me,     Never pray more; abandon all remorse;     On horror\'s head horrors accumulate;     Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amazed;     For nothing canst thou to damnation add     Greater than that.   IAGO.                O grace! O heaven defend me!     Are you a man? have you a soul or sense?     God be wi\' you; take mine office. O wretched fool,     That livest to make thine honesty a vice!     O monstrous world! Take note, take note, O world,     To be direct and honest is not safe.     I thank you for this profit, and from hence     I\'ll love no friend sith love breeds such offense.   OTHELLO. Nay, stay; thou shouldst be honest.     IAGO. I should be wise; for honesty\'s a fool,     And loses that it works for.   OTHELLO.                       By the world,     I think my wife be honest, and think she is not;     I think that thou art just, and think thou art not.     I\'ll have some proof. Her name, that was as fresh     As Dian\'s visage, is now begrimed and black     As mine own face. If there be cords or knives,     Poison or fire, or suffocating streams,     I\'ll not endure it. Would I were satisfied!   IAGO. I see, sir, you are eaten up with passion;     I do repent me that I put it to you.     You would be satisfied?   OTHELLO.                  Would? Nay, I will.   IAGO. And may. But, how? how satisfied, my lord?     Would you, the supervisor, grossly gape on?     Behold her topp\'d?   OTHELLO.             Death and damnation! O!   IAGO. It were a tedious difficulty, I think,     To bring them to that prospect. Damn them then,       If ever mortal eyes do see them bolster     More than their own! What then? how then?     What shall I say? Where\'s satisfaction?     It is impossible you should see this     Were they as prime as goats, as hot as monkeys,     As salt as wolves in pride, and fools as gross     As ignorance made drunk. But yet, I say,     If imputation and strong circumstances,     Which lead directly to the door of truth,     Will give you satisfaction, you may have\'t.   OTHELLO. Give me a living reason she\'s disloyal.   IAGO. I do not like the office;     But sith I am enter\'d in this cause so far,     Prick\'d to\'t by foolish honesty and love,     I will go on. I lay with Cassio lately     And, being troubled with a raging tooth,     I could not sleep.     There are a kind of men so loose of soul,     That in their sleeps will mutter their affairs;     One of this kind is Cassio.       In sleep I heard him say, "Sweet Desdemona,     Let us be wary, let us hide our loves";     And then, sir, would he gripe and wring my hand,     Cry, "O sweet creature!" and then kiss me hard,     As if he pluck\'d up kisses by the roots,     That grew upon my lips; then laid his leg     Over my thigh, and sigh\'d and kiss\'d; and then     Cried, "Cursed fate that gave thee to the Moor!"   OTHELLO. O monstrous! monstrous!   IAGO.                            Nay, this was but his dream.   OTHELLO. But this denoted a foregone conclusion.     \'Tis a shrewd doubt, though it be but a dream.   IAGO. And this may help to thicken other proofs     That do demonstrate thinly.   OTHELLO.                      I\'ll tear her all to pieces.   IAGO. Nay, but be wise; yet we see nothing done;     She may be honest yet. Tell me but this;     Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief     Spotted with strawberries in your wife\'s hand?   OTHELLO. I gave her such a one; \'twas my first gift.     IAGO. I know not that; but such a handkerchief-     I am sure it was your wife\'s- did I today     See Cassio wipe his beard with.   OTHELLO.                          If it be that-   IAGO. If it be that, or any that was hers,     It speaks against her with the other proofs.   OTHELLO. O, that the slave had forty thousand lives!     One is too poor, too weak for my revenge.     Now do I see \'tis true. Look here, Iago,     All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven.     \'Tis gone.     Arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow hell!     Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne     To tyrannous hate! Swell, bosom, with thy fraught,     For \'tis of aspics\' tongues!   IAGO.                          Yet be content.   OTHELLO. O, blood, blood, blood!   IAGO. Patience, I say; your mind perhaps may change.   OTHELLO. Never, Iago. Like to the Pontic Sea,     Whose icy current and compulsive course       Ne\'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on     To the Propontic and the Hellespont,     Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,     Shall ne\'er look back, ne\'er ebb to humble love,     Till that a capable and wide revenge     Swallow them up. Now, by yond marble heaven,     In the due reverence of a sacred vow                      Kneels.     I here engage my words.   IAGO.                     Do not rise yet.                  Kneels.     Witness, you ever-burning lights above,     You elements that clip us round about,     Witness that here Iago doth give up     The execution of his wit, hands, heart,     To wrong\'d Othello\'s service! Let him command,     And to obey shall be in me remorse,     What bloody business ever.                             They rise.   OTHELLO.                     I greet thy love,     Not with vain thanks, but with acceptance bounteous,     And will upon the instant put thee to\'t:     Within these three days let me hear thee say       That Cassio\'s not alive.   IAGO. My friend is dead, \'tis done at your request;     But let her live.   OTHELLO.            Damn her, lewd minx! O, damn her!     Come, go with me apart; I will withdraw,     To furnish me with some swift means of death     For the fair devil. Now art thou my lieutenant.   IAGO. I am your own forever.                                Exeunt.     SCENE IV. Before the castle.  Enter Desdemona, Emilia, and Clown.    DESDEMONA. Do you know, sirrah, where Lieutenant Cassio lies?   CLOWN. I dare not say he lies anywhere.   DESDEMONA. Why, man?   CLOWN. He\'s a soldier; and for one to say a soldier lies, is     stabbing.   DESDEMONA. Go to! Where lodges he?   CLOWN. To tell you where he lodges, is to tell you where I lie.   DESDEMONA. Can anything be made of this?   CLOWN. I know not where he lodges, and for me to devise a lodging,     and say he lies here or he lies there, were to lie in mine own     throat.   DESDEMONA. Can you inquire him out and be edified by report?   CLOWN. I will catechize the world for him; that is, make questions     and by them answer.   DESDEMONA. Seek him, bid him come hither. Tell him I have moved my     lord on his behalf and hope all will be well.   CLOWN. To do this is within the compass of man\'s wit, and therefore       I will attempt the doing it.                                Exit.   DESDEMONA. Where should I lose that handkerchief, Emilia?   EMILIA. I know not, madam.   DESDEMONA. Believe me, I had rather have lost my purse     Full of crusadoes; and, but my noble Moor     Is true of mind and made of no such baseness     As jealous creatures are, it were enough     To put him to ill thinking.   EMILIA.                       Is he not jealous?   DESDEMONA. Who, he? I think the sun where he was born     Drew all such humors from him.   EMILIA.                          Look, where he comes.   DESDEMONA. I will not leave him now till Cassio     Be call\'d to him.                              Enter Othello.                        How is\'t with you, my lord?   OTHELLO. Well, my good lady. [Aside.] O, hardness to dissemble!     How do you, Desdemona?     DESDEMONA.               Well, my good lord.   OTHELLO. Give me your hand. This hand is moist, my lady.   DESDEMONA. It yet has felt no age nor known no sorrow.   OTHELLO. This argues fruitfulness and liberal heart;     Hot, hot, and moist. This hand of yours requires     A sequester from liberty, fasting, and prayer,     Much castigation, exercise devout,     For here\'s a young and sweating devil here     That commonly rebels. \'Tis a good hand,     A frank one.   DESDEMONA. You may, indeed, say so;     For \'twas that hand that gave away my heart.   OTHELLO. A liberal hand. The hearts of old gave hands;     But our new heraldry is hands, not hearts.   DESDEMONA. I cannot speak of this. Come now, your promise.   OTHELLO. What promise, chuck?   DESDEMONA. I have sent to bid Cassio come speak with you.   OTHELLO. I have a salt and sorry rheum offends me;     Lend me thy handkerchief.   DESDEMONA. Here, my lord.     OTHELLO. That which I gave you.   DESDEMONA. I have it not about me.   OTHELLO. Not?   DESDEMONA. No, faith, my lord.   OTHELLO. That\'s a fault. That handkerchief     Did an Egyptian to my mother give;     She was a charmer, and could almost read     The thoughts of people. She told her, while she kept it,     \'Twould make her amiable and subdue my father     Entirely to her love, but if she lost it     Or made a gift of it, my father\'s eye     Should hold her loathed and his spirits should hunt     After new fancies. She dying gave it me,     And bid me, when my fate would have me wive,     To give it her. I did so, and take heed on\'t;     Make it a darling like your precious eye;     To lose\'t or give\'t away were such perdition     As nothing else could match.   DESDEMONA.                     Is\'t possible?   OTHELLO. \'Tis true; there\'s magic in the web of it.       A sibyl, that had number\'d in the world     The sun to course two hundred compasses,     In her prophetic fury sew\'d the work;     The worms were hallow\'d that did breed the silk,     And it was dyed in mummy which the skillful     Conserved of maiden\'s hearts.   DESDEMONA.                      Indeed! is\'t true?   OTHELLO. Most veritable; therefore look to\'t well.   DESDEMONA. Then would to God that I had never seen\'t!   OTHELLO. Ha! wherefore?   DESDEMONA. Why do you speak so startingly and rash?   OTHELLO. Is\'t lost? is\'t gone? speak, is it out o\' the way?   DESDEMONA. Heaven bless us!   OTHELLO. Say you?   DESDEMONA. It is not lost; but what an if it were?   OTHELLO. How?   DESDEMONA. I say, it is not lost.   OTHELLO. Fetch\'t, let me see it.   DESDEMONA. Why, so I can, sir, but I will not now.     This is a trick to put me from my suit.       Pray you, let Cassio be received again.   OTHELLO. Fetch me the handkerchief, my mind misgives.   DESDEMONA. Come, come,     You\'ll never meet a more sufficient man.   OTHELLO. The handkerchief!   DESDEMONA.                 I pray, talk me of Cassio.   OTHELLO. The handkerchief!   DESDEMONA.                 A man that all his time     Hath founded his good fortunes on your love,     Shared dangers with you-   OTHELLO. The handkerchief!   DESDEMONA. In sooth, you are to blame.   OTHELLO. Away!                                                Exit.   EMILIA. Is not this man jealous?   DESDEMONA. I ne\'er saw this before.     Sure there\'s some wonder in this handkerchief;     I am most unhappy in the loss of it.   EMILIA. \'Tis not a year or two shows us a man.     They are all but stomachs and we all but food;     They eat us hungerly, and when they are full       They belch us. Look you! Cassio and my husband.                          Enter Cassio and Iago.    IAGO. There is no other way; \'tis she must do\'t.     And, lo, the happiness! Go and importune her.   DESDEMONA. How now, good Cassio! What\'s the news with you?   CASSIO. Madam, my former suit: I do beseech you     That by your virtuous means I may again     Exist and be a member of his love     Whom I with all the office of my heart     Entirely honor. I would not be delay\'d.     If my offense be of such mortal kind     That nor my service past nor present sorrows     Nor purposed merit in futurity     Can ransom me into his love again,     But to know so must be my benefit;     So shall I clothe me in a forced content     And shut myself up in some other course     To Fortune\'s alms.     DESDEMONA.           Alas, thrice-gentle Cassio!     My advocation is not now in tune;     My lord is not my lord, nor should I know him     Were he in favor as in humor alter\'d.     So help me every spirit sanctified,     As I have spoken for you all my best     And stood within the blank of his displeasure     For my free speech! You must awhile be patient.     What I can do I will; and more I will     Than for myself I dare. Let that suffice you.   IAGO. Is my lord angry?   EMILIA.                 He went hence but now,     And certainly in strange unquietness.   IAGO. Can he be angry? I have seen the cannon,     When it hath blown his ranks into the air     And, like the devil, from his very arm     Puff\'d his own brother. And can he be angry?     Something of moment then. I will go meet him.     There\'s matter in\'t indeed if he be angry.   DESDEMONA. I prithee, do so.                             Exit Iago.                                  Something sure of state,     Either from Venice or some unhatch\'d practice     Made demonstrable here in Cyprus to him,     Hath puddled his clear spirit; and in such cases     Men\'s natures wrangle with inferior things,     Though great ones are their object. \'Tis even so;     For let our finger ache, and it indues     Our other healthful members even to that sense     Of pain. Nay, we must think men are not gods,     Nor of them look for such observancy     As fits the bridal. Beshrew me much, Emilia,     I was, unhandsome warrior as I am,     Arraigning his unkindness with my soul;     But now I find I had suborn\'d the witness,     And he\'s indicted falsely.   EMILIA. Pray heaven it be state matters, as you think,     And no conception nor no jealous toy     Concerning you.   DESDEMONA. Alas the day, I never gave him cause!   EMILIA. But jealous souls will not be answer\'d so;       They are not ever jealous for the cause,     But jealous for they are jealous. \'Tis a monster     Begot upon itself, born on itself.   DESDEMONA. Heaven keep that monster from Othello\'s mind!   EMILIA. Lady, amen.   DESDEMONA. I will go seek him. Cassio, walk hereabout.     If I do find him fit, I\'ll move your suit,     And seek to effect it to my uttermost.   CASSIO. I humbly thank your ladyship.                                          Exeunt Desdemona and Emilia.                              Enter Bianca.    BIANCA. Save you, friend Cassio!   CASSIO.                          What make you from home?     How is it with you, my most fair Bianca?     I\'faith, sweet love, I was coming to your house.   BIANCA. And I was going to your lodging, Cassio.     What, keep a week away? seven days and nights?     Eight score eight hours? and lovers\' absent hours,       More tedious than the dial eight score times?     O weary reckoning!   CASSIO.              Pardon me, Bianca.     I have this while with leaden thoughts been press\'d;     But I shall in a more continuate time     Strike off this score of absence. Sweet Bianca,                                   Gives her Desdemona\'s handkerchief.     Take me this work out.   BIANCA.                  O Cassio, whence came this?     This is some token from a newer friend.     To the felt absence now I feel a cause.     Is\'t come to this? Well, well.   CASSIO.                          Go to, woman!     Throw your vile guesses in the devil\'s teeth,     From whence you have them. You are jealous now     That this is from some mistress, some remembrance.     No, by my faith, Bianca.   BIANCA.                    Why, whose is it?   CASSIO. I know not, sweet. I found it in my chamber.     I like the work well. Ere it be demanded-       As like enough it will- I\'ld have it copied.     Take it, and do\'t; and leave me for this time.   BIANCA. Leave you! wherefore?   CASSIO. I do attend here on the general;     And think it no addition, nor my wish,     To have him see me woman\'d.   BIANCA.                       Why, I pray you?   CASSIO. Not that I love you not.   BIANCA.                          But that you do not love me.     I pray you, bring me on the way a little,     And say if I shall see you soon at night.   CASSIO. \'Tis but a little way that I can bring you,     For I attend here, but I\'ll see you soon.   BIANCA. \'Tis very good; I must be circumstanced.            Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. Cyprus. Before the castle.  Enter Othello and Iago.    IAGO. Will you think so?   OTHELLO.                 Think so, Iago?   IAGO.                                    What,     To kiss in private?   OTHELLO.              An unauthorized kiss.   IAGO. Or to be naked with her friend in bed     An hour or more, not meaning any harm?   OTHELLO. Naked in bed, Iago, and not mean harm!     It is hypocrisy against the devil.     They that mean virtuously and yet do so,     The devil their virtue tempts and they tempt heaven.   IAGO. So they do nothing, \'tis a venial slip.     But if I give my wife a handkerchief-   OTHELLO. What then?   IAGO. Why, then, \'tis hers, my lord, and being hers,     She may, I think, bestow\'t on any man.   OTHELLO. She is protectress of her honor too.       May she give that?   IAGO. Her honor is an essence that\'s not seen;     They have it very oft that have it not.     But for the handkerchief-   OTHELLO. By heaven, I would most gladly have forgot it.     Thou said\'st- O, it comes o\'er my memory,     As doth the raven o\'er the infected house,     Boding to all- he had my handkerchief.   IAGO. Ay, what of that?   OTHELLO.                That\'s not so good now.   IAGO.                                           What,     If I had said I had seen him do you wrong?     Or heard him say- as knaves be such abroad,     Who having, by their own importunate suit,     Or voluntary dotage of some mistress,     Convinced or supplied them, cannot choose     But they must blab-   OTHELLO.              Hath he said anything?   IAGO. He hath, my lord; but be you well assured,     No more than he\'ll unswear.     OTHELLO.                      What hath he said?   IAGO. Faith, that he did- I know not what he did.   OTHELLO. What? what?   IAGO. Lie-   OTHELLO. With her?   IAGO.              With her, on her, what you will.   OTHELLO. Lie with her! lie on her! We say lie on her, when they     belie her. Lie with her! \'Zounds, that\'s fulsome! Handkerchief-     confessions- handkerchief! To confess and be hanged for his labor-     first, to be hanged, and then to confess. I tremble at it.     Nature would not invest herself in such shadowing passion without     some instruction. It is not words that shakes me thus. Pish!     Noses, ears, and lips. Is\'t possible? Confess? Handkerchief? O     devil!                                                    Falls in a trance.   IAGO. Work on,     My medicine, work! Thus credulous fools are caught,     And many worthy and chaste dames even thus,     All guiltless, meet reproach. What, ho! My lord!     My lord, I say! Othello!                                Enter Cassio.                               How now, Cassio!   CASSIO. What\'s the matter?   IAGO. My lord is fall\'n into an epilepsy.     This is his second fit; he had one yesterday.   CASSIO. Rub him about the temples.   IAGO.                              No, forbear;     The lethargy must have his quiet course.     If not, he foams at mouth, and by and by     Breaks out to savage madness. Look, he stirs.     Do you withdraw yourself a little while,     He will recover straight. When he is gone,     I would on great occasion speak with you.            Exit Cassio.     How is it, general? Have you not hurt your head?   OTHELLO. Dost thou mock me?   IAGO.                       I mock you? No, by heaven.     Would you would bear your fortune like a man!   OTHELLO. A horned man\'s a monster and a beast.     IAGO. There\'s many a beast then in a populous city,     And many a civil monster.   OTHELLO. Did he confess it?   IAGO.                       Good sir, be a man;     Think every bearded fellow that\'s but yoked     May draw with you. There\'s millions now alive     That nightly lie in those unproper beds     Which they dare swear peculiar. Your case is better.     O, \'tis the spite of hell, the fiend\'s arch-mock,     To lip a wanton in a secure couch,     And to suppose her chaste! No, let me know,     And knowing what I am, I know what she shall be.   OTHELLO. O, thou art wise; \'tis certain.   IAGO.                                    Stand you awhile apart,     Confine yourself but in a patient list.     Whilst you were here o\'erwhelmed with your grief-     A passion most unsuiting such a man-     Cassio came hither. I shifted him away,     And laid good \'scuse upon your ecstasy;     Bade him anon return and here speak with me       The which he promised. Do but encave yourself     And mark the fleers, the gibes, and notable scorns,     That dwell in every region of his face;     For I will make him tell the tale anew,     Where, how, how oft, how long ago, and when     He hath and is again to cope your wife.     I say, but mark his gesture. Marry, patience,     Or I shall say you are all in all in spleen,     And nothing of a man.   OTHELLO.                Dost thou hear, Iago?     I will be found most cunning in my patience;     But (dost thou hear?) most bloody.   IAGO.                                That\'s not amiss;     But yet keep time in all. Will you withdraw?                                                      Othello retires.     Now will I question Cassio of Bianca,     A housewife that by selling her desires     Buys herself bread and clothes. It is a creature     That dotes on Cassio, as \'tis the strumpet\'s plague     To beguile many and be beguiled by one.       He, when he hears of her, cannot refrain     From the excess of laughter. Here he comes.                             Re-enter Cassio.      As he shall smile, Othello shall go mad;     And his unbookish jealousy must construe     Poor Cassio\'s smiles, gestures, and light behavior     Quite in the wrong. How do you now, lieutenant?   CASSIO. The worser that you give me the addition     Whose want even kills me.   IAGO. Ply Desdemona well, and you are sure on\'t.     Now, if this suit lay in Bianco\'s power,     How quickly should you speed!   CASSIO.                         Alas, poor caitiff!   OTHELLO. Look, how he laughs already!   IAGO. I never knew a woman love man so.   CASSIO. Alas, poor rogue! I think, i\'faith, she loves me.   OTHELLO. Now he denies it faintly and laughs it out.   IAGO. Do you hear, Cassio?     OTHELLO.                   Now he importunes him     To tell it o\'er. Go to; well said, well said.   IAGO. She gives it out that you shall marry her.     Do you intend it?   CASSIO. Ha, ha, ha!   OTHELLO. Do you triumph, Roman? Do you triumph?   CASSIO. I marry her! What? A customer! I prithee, bear some charity     to my wit; do not think it so unwholesome. Ha, ha, ha!   OTHELLO. So, so, so, so. They laugh that win.   IAGO. Faith, the cry goes that you shall marry her.   CASSIO. Prithee, say true.   IAGO. I am a very villain else.   OTHELLO. Have you scored me? Well.   CASSIO. This is the monkey\'s own giving out. She is persuaded I     will marry her, out of her own love and flattery, not out of my     promise.   OTHELLO. Iago beckons me; now he begins the story.   CASSIO. She was here even now; she haunts me in every place. I was     the other day talking on the sea bank with certain Venetians, and     thither comes the bauble, and, by this hand, she falls me thus       about my neck-   OTHELLO. Crying, "O dear Cassio!" as it were; his gesture imports     it.   CASSIO. So hangs and lolls and weeps upon me; so hales and pulls     me. Ha, ha, ha!   OTHELLO. Now he tells how she plucked him to my chamber. O, I see     that nose of yours, but not that dog I shall throw it to.   CASSIO. Well, I must leave her company.   IAGO. Before me! look where she comes.   CASSIO. \'Tis such another fitchew! marry, a perfumed one.                              Enter Bianca.      What do you mean by this haunting of me?   BIANCA. Let the devil and his dam haunt you! What did you mean by     that same handkerchief you gave me even now? I was a fine fool to     take it. I must take out the work? A likely piece of work that     you should find it in your chamber and not know who left it     there! This is some minx\'s token, and I must take out the work?     There, give it your hobbyhorse. Wheresoever you had it, I\'ll take       out no work on\'t.   CASSIO. How now, my sweet Bianca! how now! how now!   OTHELLO. By heaven, that should be my handkerchief!   BIANCA. An you\'ll come to supper tonight, you may; an you will not,     come when you are next prepared for.                        Exit.   IAGO. After her, after her.   CASSIO. Faith, I must; she\'ll rail i\' the street else.   IAGO. Will you sup there?   CASSIO. Faith, I intend so.   IAGO. Well, I may chance to see you, for I would very fain speak     with you.   CASSIO. Prithee, come; will you?   IAGO. Go to; say no more.                              Exit Cassio.   OTHELLO. [Advancing.] How shall I murther him, Iago?   IAGO. Did you perceive how he laughed at his vice?   OTHELLO. O Iago!   IAGO. And did you see the handkerchief?   OTHELLO. Was that mine?   IAGO. Yours, by this hand. And to see how he prizes the foolish     woman your wife! She gave it him, and he hath given it his whore.     OTHELLO. I would have him nine years akilling. A fine woman! a fair     woman! a sweet woman!   IAGO. Nay, you must forget that.   OTHELLO. Ay, let her rot, and perish, and be damned tonight, for     she shall not live. No, my heart is turned to stone; I strike it,     and it hurts my hand. O, the world hath not a sweeter creature.     She might lie by an emperor\'s side, and command him tasks.   IAGO. Nay, that\'s not your way.   OTHELLO. Hang her! I do but say what she is. So delicate with her     needle, an admirable musician. O, she will sing the savageness     out of a bear. Of so high and plenteous wit and invention-   IAGO. She\'s the worse for all this.   OTHELLO. O, a thousand, a thousand times. And then, of so gentle a     condition!   IAGO. Ay, too gentle.   OTHELLO. Nay, that\'s certain. But yet the pity of it, Iago!     O Iago, the pity of it, Iago!   IAGO. If you are so fond over her iniquity, give her patent to     offend, for, if it touch not you, it comes near nobody.   OTHELLO. I will chop her into messes. Cuckold me!     IAGO. O, \'tis foul in her.   OTHELLO. With mine officer!   IAGO. That\'s fouler.   OTHELLO. Get me some poison, Iago, this night. I\'ll not expostulate     with her, lest her body and beauty unprovide my mind again. This     night, Iago.   IAGO. Do it not with poison, strangle her in her bed, even the bed     she hath contaminated.   OTHELLO. Good, good, the justice of it pleases, very good.   IAGO. And for Cassio, let me be his undertaker. You shall hear more     by midnight.   OTHELLO. Excellent good. [A trumpet within.] What trumpet is that     same?   IAGO. Something from Venice, sure. \'Tis Lodovico     Come from the Duke. And, see your wife is with him.                Enter Lodovico, Desdemona, and Attendants.    LODOVICO. God save the worthy general!   OTHELLO.                               With all my heart, sir.     LODOVICO. The Duke and Senators of Venice greet you.                                                   Gives him a letter.   OTHELLO. I kiss the instrument of their pleasures.                                          Opens the letter, and reads.   DESDEMONA. And what\'s the news, good cousin Lodovico?   IAGO. I am very glad to see you, signior;     Welcome to Cyprus.   LODOVICO. I thank you. How does Lieutenant Cassio?   IAGO. Lives, sir.   DESDEMONA. Cousin, there\'s fall\'n between him and my lord     An unkind breech; but you shall make all well.   OTHELLO. Are you sure of that?   DESDEMONA. My lord?   OTHELLO. [Reads.] "This fail you not to do, as you will-"   LODOVICO. He did not call; he\'s busy in the paper.     Is there division \'twixt my lord and Cassio?   DESDEMONA. A most unhappy one. I would do much     To atone them, for the love I bear to Cassio.   OTHELLO. Fire and brimstone!   DESDEMONA. My lord?     OTHELLO. Are you wise?   DESDEMONA. What, is he angry?   LODOVICO.                     May be the letter moved him;     For, as I think, they do command him home,     Deputing Cassio in his government.   DESDEMONA. By my troth, I am glad on\'t.   OTHELLO.                                Indeed!   DESDEMONA.                                      My lord?   OTHELLO. I am glad to see you mad.   DESDEMONA.                         Why, sweet Othello?   OTHELLO. Devil!                                        Strikes her.   DESDEMONA. I have not deserved this.   LODOVICO. My lord, this would not be believed in Venice,     Though I should swear I saw\'t. \'Tis very much.     Make her amends; she weeps.   OTHELLO.                      O devil, devil!     If that the earth could teem with woman\'s tears,     Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.     Out of my sight!   DESDEMONA. [Going.] I will not stay to offend you.     LODOVICO. Truly, an obedient lady.     I do beseech your lordship, call her back.   OTHELLO. Mistress!   DESDEMONA. My lord?   OTHELLO. What would you with her, sir?   LODOVICO.                              Who, I, my lord?   OTHELLO. Ay, you did wish that I would make her turn.     Sir, she can turn and turn, and yet go on,     And turn again; and she can weep, sir, weep;     And she\'s obedient, as you say, obedient,     Very obedient. Proceed you in your tears.     Concerning this, sir- O well-painted passion!-     I am commanded home. Get you away;     I\'ll send for you anon. Sir, I obey the mandate,     And will return to Venice. Hence, avaunt!                                                       Exit Desdemona.     Cassio shall have my place. And, sir, tonight,     I do entreat that we may sup together.     You are welcome, sir, to Cyprus. Goats and monkeys!      Exit.     LODOVICO. Is this the noble Moor whom our full Senate     Call all in all sufficient? This the nature     Whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue     The shot of accident nor dart of chance     Could neither graze nor pierce?   IAGO.                             He is much changed.   LODOVICO. Are his wits safe? Is he not light of brain?   IAGO. He\'s that he is. I may not breathe my censure     What he might be: if what he might he is not,     I would to heaven he were!   LODOVICO.                    What, strike his wife!   IAGO. Faith, that was not so well; yet would I knew     That stroke would prove the worst!   LODOVICO.                            Is it his use?     Or did the letters work upon his blood,     And new create this fault?   IAGO.                        Alas, alas!     It is not honesty in me to speak     What I have seen and known. You shall observe him,     And his own courses will denote him so       That I may save my speech. Do but go after,     And mark how he continues.   LODOVICO. I am sorry that I am deceived in him.             Exeunt.     SCENE II. A room in the castle.  Enter Othello and Emilia.    OTHELLO. You have seen nothing, then?   EMILIA. Nor ever heard, nor ever did suspect.   OTHELLO. Yes, you have seen Cassio and she together.   EMILIA. But then I saw no harm, and then I heard     Each syllable that breath made up between them.   OTHELLO. What, did they never whisper?   EMILIA.                                Never, my lord.   OTHELLO. Nor send you out o\' the way?   EMILIA. Never.   OTHELLO. To fetch her fan, her gloves, her mask, nor nothing?   EMILIA. Never, my lord.   OTHELLO. That\'s strange.   EMILIA. I durst, my lord, to wager she is honest,     Lay down my soul at stake. If you think other,     Remove your thought; it doth abuse your bosom.     If any wretch have put this in your head,     Let heaven requite it with the serpent\'s curse!       For if she be not honest, chaste, and true,     There\'s no man happy; the purest of their wives     Is foul as slander.   OTHELLO.              Bid her come hither; go.         Exit Emilia.     She says enough; yet she\'s a simple bawd     That cannot say as much. This is a subtle whore,     A closet lock and key of villainous secrets.     And yet she\'ll kneel and pray; I have seen her do\'t.                       Enter Desdemona with Emilia.    DESDEMONA. My lord, what is your will?   OTHELLO.                               Pray, chuck, come hither.   DESDEMONA. What is your pleasure?   OTHELLO.                          Let me see your eyes;     Look in my face.   DESDEMONA.         What horrible fancy\'s this?   OTHELLO. [To Emilia.] Some of your function, mistress,     Leave procreants alone and shut the door;     Cough, or cry "hem," if anybody come.       Your mystery, your mystery; nay, dispatch.           Exit Emilia.   DESDEMONA. Upon my knees, what doth your speech import?     I understand a fury in your words,     But not the words.   OTHELLO. Why, what art thou?   DESDEMONA. Your wife, my lord, your true and loyal wife.   OTHELLO. Come, swear it, damn thyself;     Lest, being like one of heaven, the devils themselves     Should fear to seize thee. Therefore be double-damn\'d;     Swear thou art honest.   DESDEMONA.               Heaven doth truly know it.   OTHELLO. Heaven truly knows that thou art false as hell.   DESDEMONA. To whom, my lord? with whom? how am I false?   OTHELLO. O Desdemona! Away! away! away!   DESDEMONA. Alas the heavy day! Why do you weep?     Am I the motive of these tears, my lord?     If haply you my father do suspect     An instrument of this your calling back,     Lay not your blame on me. If you have lost him,     Why, I have lost him too.     OTHELLO.                    Had it pleased heaven     To try me with affliction, had they rain\'d     All kinds of sores and shames on my bare head,     Steep\'d me in poverty to the very lips,     Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes,     I should have found in some place of my soul     A drop of patience; but, alas, to make me     A fixed figure for the time of scorn     To point his slow unmoving finger at!     Yet could I bear that too, well, very well;     But there, where I have garner\'d up my heart,     Where either I must live or bear no life;     The fountain from the which my current runs,     Or else dries up; to be discarded thence!     Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads     To knot and gender in! Turn thy complexion there,     Patience, thou young and rose-lipp\'d cherubin,     Ay, there, look grim as hell!   DESDEMONA. I hope my noble lord esteems me honest.   OTHELLO. O, ay, as summer flies are in the shambles,       That quicken even with blowing. O thou weed,     Who art so lovely fair and smell\'st so sweet     That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne\'er been born!   DESDEMONA. Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?   OTHELLO. Was this fair paper, this most goodly book,     Made to write "whore" upon? What committed?     Committed? O thou public commoner!     I should make very forges of my cheeks,     That would to cinders burn up modesty,     Did I but speak thy deeds. What committed!     Heaven stops the nose at it, and the moon winks;     The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets,     Is hush\'d within the hollow mine of earth,     And will not hear it. What committed?     Impudent strumpet!   DESDEMONA.           By heaven, you do me wrong.   OTHELLO. Are not you a strumpet?   DESDEMONA.                       No, as I am a Christian.     If to preserve this vessel for my lord     From any other foul unlawful touch       Be not to be a strumpet, I am none.   OTHELLO. What, not a whore?   DESDEMONA.                  No, as I shall be saved.   OTHELLO. Is\'t possible?   DESDEMONA. O, heaven forgive us!   OTHELLO.                         I cry you mercy then;     I took you for that cunning whore of Venice     That married with Othello. [Raises his voice.] You, mistress,     That have the office opposite to Saint Peter,     And keep the gate of hell!                             Re-enter Emilia.                                 You, you, ay, you!     We have done our course; there\'s money for your pains.     I pray you, turn the key, and keep our counsel.             Exit.   EMILIA. Alas, what does this gentleman conceive?     How do you, madam? How do you, my good lady?   DESDEMONA. Faith, half asleep.   EMILIA. Good madam, what\'s the matter with my lord?     DESDEMONA. With who?   EMILIA. Why, with my lord, madam.   DESDEMONA. Who is thy lord?   EMILIA.                     He that is yours, sweet lady.   DESDEMONA. I have none. Do not talk to me, Emilia;     I cannot weep, nor answer have I none     But what should go by water. Prithee, tonight     Lay on my bed my wedding sheets. Remember,     And call thy husband hither.   EMILIA.                        Here\'s a change indeed!      Exit.   DESDEMONA. \'Tis meet I should be used so, very meet.     How have I been behaved, that he might stick     The small\'st opinion on my least misuse?                        Re-enter Emilia with Iago.    IAGO. What is your pleasure, madam? How is\'t with you?   DESDEMONA. I cannot tell. Those that do teach young babes     Do it with gentle means and easy tasks.       He might have chid me so, for in good faith,     I am a child to chiding.   IAGO.                      What\'s the matter, lady?   EMILIA. Alas, Iago, my lord hath so bewhored her,     Thrown such despite and heavy terms upon her,     As true hearts cannot bear.   DESDEMONA. Am I that name, Iago?   IAGO.                            What name, fair lady?   DESDEMONA. Such as she says my lord did say I was.   EMILIA. He call\'d her whore; a beggar in his drink     Could not have laid such terms upon his callet.   IAGO. Why did he so?   DESDEMONA. I do not know; I am sure I am none such.   IAGO. Do not weep, do not weep. Alas the day!   EMILIA. Hath she forsook so many noble matches,     Her father and her country and her friends,     To be call\'d whore? Would it not make one weep?   DESDEMONA. It is my wretched fortune.   IAGO.                                 Beshrew him for\'t!     How comes this trick upon him?     DESDEMONA.                       Nay, heaven doth know.   EMILIA. I will be hang\'d, if some eternal villain,     Some busy and insinuating rogue,     Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office,     Have not devised this slander; I\'ll be hang\'d else.   IAGO. Fie, there is no such man; it is impossible.   DESDEMONA. If any such there be, heaven pardon him!   EMILIA. A halter pardon him! And hell gnaw his bones!     Why should he call her whore? Who keeps her company?     What place? What time? What form? What likelihood?     The Moor\'s abused by some most villainous knave,     Some base notorious knave, some scurvy fellow.     O heaven, that such companions thou\'ldst unfold,     And put in every honest hand a whip     To lash the rascals naked through the world     Even from the east to the west!   IAGO.                             Speak within door.   EMILIA. O, fie upon them! Some such squire he was     That turn\'d your wit the seamy side without,     And made you to suspect me with the Moor.     IAGO. You are a fool; go to.   DESDEMONA.                   O good Iago,     What shall I do to win my lord again?     Good friend, go to him, for by this light of heaven,     I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel:     If e\'er my will did trespass \'gainst his love     Either in discourse of thought or actual deed,     Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense,     Delighted them in any other form,     Or that I do not yet, and ever did,     And ever will, though he do shake me off     To beggarly divorcement, love him dearly,     Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much,     And his unkindness may defeat my life,     But never taint my love. I cannot say "whore."     It doth abhor me now I speak the word;     To do the act that might the addition earn     Not the world\'s mass of vanity could make me.   IAGO. I pray you, be content; \'tis but his humor:     The business of the state does him offense,       And he does chide with you.   DESDEMONA. If \'twere no other-   IAGO. \'Tis but so, I warrant.                      Trumpets within.     Hark, how these instruments summon to supper!     The messengers of Venice stay the meat.     Go in, and weep not; all things shall be well.                                          Exeunt Desdemona and Emilia.                             Enter Roderigo.      How now, Roderigo!   RODERIGO. I do not find that thou dealest justly with me.   IAGO. What in the contrary?   RODERIGO. Every day thou daffest me with some device, Iago; and     rather, as it seems to me now, keepest from me all conveniency     than suppliest me with the least advantage of hope. I will indeed     no longer endure it; nor am I yet persuaded to put up in peace     what already I have foolishly suffered.   IAGO. Will you hear me, Roderigo?   RODERIGO. Faith, I have heard too much, for your words and       performances are no kin together.   IAGO. You charge me most unjustly.   RODERIGO. With nought but truth. I have wasted myself out of my     means. The jewels you have had from me to deliver to Desdemona     would half have corrupted a votarist. You have told me she hath     received them and returned me expectations and comforts of sudden     respect and acquaintance; but I find none.   IAGO. Well, go to, very well.   RODERIGO. Very well! go to! I cannot go to, man; nor \'tis not very     well. By this hand, I say \'tis very scurvy, and begin to find     myself fopped in it.   IAGO. Very well.   RODERIGO. I tell you \'tis not very well. I will make myself known     to Desdemona. If she will return me my jewels, I will give over     my suit and repent my unlawful solicitation; if not, assure     yourself I will seek satisfaction of you.   IAGO. You have said now.   RODERIGO. Ay, and said nothing but what I protest intendment of     doing.   IAGO. Why, now I see there\'s mettle in thee; and even from this       instant do build on thee a better opinion than ever before. Give     me thy hand, Roderigo. Thou hast taken against me a most just     exception; but yet, I protest, have dealt most directly in thy     affair.   RODERIGO. It hath not appeared.   IAGO. I grant indeed it hath not appeared, and your suspicion is     not without wit and judgement. But, Roderigo, if thou hast that     in thee indeed, which I have greater reason to believe now than     ever, I mean purpose, courage, and valor, this night show it; if     thou the next night following enjoy not Desdemona, take me from     this world with treachery and devise engines for my life.   RODERIGO. Well, what is it? Is it within reason and compass?   IAGO. Sir, there is especial commission come from Venice to depute     Cassio in Othello\'s place.   RODERIGO. Is that true? Why then Othello and Desdemona return again     to Venice.   IAGO. O, no; he goes into Mauritania, and takes away with him the     fair Desdemona, unless his abode be lingered here by some     accident; wherein none can be so determinate as the removing of     Cassio.     RODERIGO. How do you mean, removing of him?   IAGO. Why, by making him uncapable of Othello\'s place; knocking out     his brains.   RODERIGO. And that you would have me to do?   IAGO. Ay, if you dare do yourself a profit and a right. He sups     tonight with a harlotry, and thither will I go to him. He knows     not yet of his honorable fortune. If you will watch his going     thence, which his will fashion to fall out between twelve and     one, you may take him at your pleasure; I will be near to second     your attempt, and he shall fall between us. Come, stand not     amazed at it, but go along with me; I will show you such a     necessity in his death that you shall think yourself bound to put     it on him. It is now high supper-time, and the night grows to     waste. About it.   RODERIGO. I will hear further reason for this.   IAGO. And you shall be satisfied.                           Exeunt.     SCENE III. Another room in the castle.  Enter Othello, Lodovico, Desdemona, Emilia, and Attendants.    LODOVICO. I do beseech you, sir, trouble yourself no further.   OTHELLO. O, pardon me; \'twill do me good to walk.   LODOVICO. Madam, good night; I humbly thank your ladyship.   DESDEMONA. Your honor is most welcome.   OTHELLO.                               Will you walk, sir?     O- Desdemona-   DESDEMONA. My lord?   OTHELLO. Get you to bed on the instant; I will be returned     forthwith. Dismiss your attendant there; look it be done.   DESDEMONA. I will, my lord.                             Exeunt Othello, Lodovico, and Attendants.   EMILIA. How goes it now? He looks gentler than he did.   DESDEMONA. He says he will return incontinent.     He hath commanded me to go to bed,     And bade me to dismiss you.   EMILIA.                       Dismiss me?   DESDEMONA. It was his bidding; therefore, good Emilia,       Give me my nightly wearing, and adieu.     We must not now displease him.   EMILIA. I would you had never seen him!   DESDEMONA. So would not I. My love doth so approve him,     That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns-     Prithee, unpin me- have grace and favor in them.   EMILIA. I have laid those sheets you bade me on the bed.   DESDEMONA. All\'s one. Good faith, how foolish are our minds!     If I do die before thee, prithee shroud me     In one of those same sheets.   EMILIA.                        Come, come, you talk.   DESDEMONA. My mother had a maid call\'d Barbary;     She was in love, and he she loved proved mad     And did forsake her. She had a song of "willow";     An old thing \'twas, but it express\'d her fortune,     And she died singing it. That song tonight     Will not go from my mind; I have much to do     But to go hang my head all at one side     And sing it like poor Barbary. Prithee, dispatch.   EMILIA. Shall I go fetch your nightgown?     DESDEMONA.                               No, unpin me here.     This Lodovico is a proper man.   EMILIA. A very handsome man.   DESDEMONA. He speaks well.   EMILIA. I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to     Palestine for a touch of his nether lip.   DESDEMONA. [Sings.]          "The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,           Sing all a green willow;         Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,           Sing willow, willow, willow.         The fresh streams ran by her, and murmur\'d her moans,           Sing willow, willow, willow;         Her salt tears fell from her, and soften\'d the stones-"      Lay be these-      [Sings.]   "Sing willow, willow, willow-"        Prithee, hie thee; he\'ll come anon-     [Sings.]   "Sing all a green willow must be my garland.                Let nobody blame him; his scorn I approve-"      Nay, that\'s not next. Hark, who is\'t that knocks?   EMILIA. It\'s the wind.   DESDEMONA. [Sings.]          "I call\'d my love false love; but what said he then?           Sing willow, willow, willow.         If I court moe women, you\'ll couch with moe men-"      So get thee gone; good night. Mine eyes do itch;     Doth that bode weeping?   EMILIA.                   \'Tis neither here nor there.   DESDEMONA. I have heard it said so. O, these men, these men!     Dost thou in conscience think- tell me, Emilia-     That there be women do abuse their husbands     In such gross kind?   EMILIA.               There be some such, no question.     DESDEMONA. Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?   EMILIA. Why, would not you?   DESDEMONA.                  No, by this heavenly light!   EMILIA. Nor I neither by this heavenly light; I might do\'t as well     i\' the dark.   DESDEMONA. Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?   EMILIA. The world\'s a huge thing; it is a great price     For a small vice.   DESDEMONA.          In troth, I think thou wouldst not.   EMILIA. In troth, I think I should, and undo\'t when I had done.     Marry, I would not do such a thing for a joint-ring, nor for     measures of lawn, nor for gowns, petticoats, nor caps, nor any     petty exhibition; but, for the whole world- why, who would not     make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch? I should     venture purgatory for\'t.   DESDEMONA. Beshrew me, if I would do such a wrong     For the whole world.   EMILIA. Why, the wrong is but a wrong i\' the world; and having the     world for your labor, \'tis a wrong in your own world, and you     might quickly make it right.     DESDEMONA. I do not think there is any such woman.   EMILIA. Yes, a dozen, and as many to the vantage as would store the       world they played for.     But I do think it is their husbands\' faults     If wives do fall; say that they slack their duties     And pour our treasures into foreign laps,     Or else break out in peevish jealousies,     Throwing restraint upon us, or say they strike us,     Or scant our former having in despite,     Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace,     Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know     Their wives have sense like them; they see and smell     And have their palates both for sweet and sour,     As husbands have. What is it that they do     When they change us for others? Is it sport?     I think it is. And doth affection breed it?     I think it doth. Is\'t frailty that thus errs?     It is so too. And have not we affections,     Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?     Then let them use us well; else let them know,       The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.   DESDEMONA. Good night, good night. Heaven me such uses send,     Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend!                Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. Cyprus. A street.  Enter Iago and Roderigo:    IAGO. Here, stand behind this bulk; straight will he come.     Wear thy good rapier bare, and put it home.     Quick, quick; fear nothing; I\'ll be at thy elbow.     It makes us, or it mars us; think on that,     And fix most firm thy resolution.   RODERIGO. Be near at hand; I may miscarry in\'t.   IAGO. Here, at thy hand, be bold, and take thy stand.   Retires.   RODERIGO. I have no great devotion to the deed;     And yet he hath given me satisfying reasons.     \'Tis but a man gone. Forth, my sword; he dies.   IAGO. I have rubb\'d this young quat almost to the sense,     And he grows angry. Now, whether he kill Cassio,     Or Cassio him, or each do kill the other,     Every way makes my gain. Live Roderigo,     He calls me to a restitution large     Of gold and jewels that I bobb\'d from him,       As gifts to Desdemona;     It must not be. If Cassio do remain,     He hath a daily beauty in his life     That makes me ugly; and besides, the Moor     May unfold me to him; there stand I in much peril.     No, he must die. Be\'t so. I hear him coming.                              Enter Cassio.    RODERIGO. I know his gait; \'tis he. Villain, thou diest!                                               Makes a pass at Cassio.   CASSIO. That thrust had been mine enemy indeed,     But that my coat is better than thou know\'st;     I will make proof of thine.           Draws, and wounds Roderigo.   RODERIGO.                     O, I am slain!             Iago from behind wounds Cassio in the leg, and exit.   CASSIO. I am maim\'d forever. Help, ho! Murther! Murther!     Falls.                              Enter Othello.      OTHELLO. The voice of Cassio; Iago keeps his word.   RODERIGO. O, villain that I am!   OTHELLO.                        It is even so.   CASSIO. O, help, ho! Light! A surgeon!   OTHELLO. \'Tis he. O brave Iago, honest and just,     That hast such noble sense of thy friend\'s wrong!     Thou teachest me. Minion, your dear lies dead,     And your unblest fate hies. Strumpet, I come!     Forth of my heart those charms, thine eyes, are blotted;     Thy bed lust-stain\'d shall with lust\'s blood be spotted.      Exit.                       Enter Lodovico and Gratiano.    CASSIO. What, ho! No watch? No passage? Murther! Murther!   GRATIANO. \'Tis some mischance; the cry is very direful.   CASSIO. O, help!   LODOVICO. Hark!   RODERIGO. O wretched villain!     LODOVICO. Two or three groan; it is a heavy night.     These may be counterfeits; let\'s think\'t unsafe     To come in to the cry without more help.   RODERIGO. Nobody come? Then shall I bleed to death.   LODOVICO. Hark!                       Re-enter Iago, with a light.    GRATIANO. Here\'s one comes in his shirt, with light and weapons.   IAGO. Who\'s there? Whose noise is this that cries on murther?   LODOVICO. We do not know.   IAGO.                     Did not you hear a cry?   CASSIO. Here, here! for heaven\'s sake, help me!   IAGO.                                       What\'s the matter?   GRATIANO. This is Othello\'s ancient, as I take it.   LODOVICO. The same indeed; a very valiant fellow.   IAGO. What are you here that cry so grievously?   CASSIO. Iago? O, I am spoil\'d, undone by villains!     Give me some help.   IAGO. O me, lieutenant! What villains have done this?     CASSIO. I think that one of them is hereabout,     And cannot make away.   IAGO.                   O treacherous villains!     [To Lodovico and Gratiano.] What are you there?     Come in and give some help.   RODERIGO. O, help me here!   CASSIO. That\'s one of them.   IAGO.                       O murtherous slave! O villain!                                                       Stabs Roderigo.   RODERIGO. O damn\'d Iago! O inhuman dog!   IAGO. Kill men i\' the dark! Where be these bloody thieves?     How silent is this town! Ho! Murther! Murther!     What may you be? Are you of good or evil?   LODOVICO. As you shall prove us, praise us.   IAGO. Signior Lodovico?   LODOVICO. He, sir.   IAGO. I cry you mercy. Here\'s Cassio hurt by villains.   GRATIANO. Cassio?   IAGO. How is\'t, brother?   CASSIO. My leg is cut in two.     IAGO.                         Marry, heaven forbid!     Light, gentlemen; I\'ll bind it with my shirt.                              Enter Bianca.    BIANCA. What is the matter, ho? Who is\'t that cried?   IAGO. Who is\'t that cried?   BIANCA. O my dear Cassio, my sweet Cassio! O Cassio, Cassio,      Cassio!   IAGO. O notable strumpet! Cassio, may you suspect     Who they should be that have thus mangled you?   CASSIO. No.   GRATIANO. I am sorry to find you thus; I have been to seek you.   IAGO. Lend me a garter. So. O, for a chair,     To bear him easily hence!   BIANCA. Alas, he faints! O Cassio, Cassio, Cassio!   IAGO. Gentlemen all, I do suspect this trash     To be a party in this injury.     Patience awhile, good Cassio. Come, come;     Lend me a light. Know we this face or no?       Alas, my friend and my dear countryman     Roderigo? No- yes, sure. O heaven! Roderigo.   GRATIANO. What, of Venice?   IAGO. Even he, sir. Did you know him?   GRATIANO.                             Know him! ay.   IAGO. Signior Gratiano? I cry you gentle pardon;     These bloody accidents must excuse my manners,     That so neglected you.   GRATIANO.                I am glad to see you.   IAGO. How do you, Cassio? O, a chair, a chair!   GRATIANO. Roderigo!   IAGO. He, he, \'tis he. [A chair brought in.] O, that\'s well said:       the chair.     Some good man bear him carefully from hence;     I\'ll fetch the general\'s surgeon. [To Bianca.] For you, mistress,     Save you your labor. He that lies slain here, Cassio,     Was my dear friend; what malice was between you?   CASSIO. None in the world; nor do I know the man.   IAGO. [To Bianca.] What, look you pale? O, bear him out o\' the air.                                    Cassio and Roderigo are borne off.       Stay you, good gentlemen. Look you pale, mistress?     Do you perceive the gastness of her eye?     Nay, if you stare, we shall hear more anon.     Behold her well; I pray you, look upon her.     Do you see, gentlemen? Nay, guiltiness will speak,     Though tongues were out of use.                              Enter Emilia.    EMILIA. \'Las, what\'s the matter? What\'s the matter, husband?   IAGO. Cassio hath here been set on in the dark     By Roderigo, and fellows that are \'scaped;     He\'s almost slain, and Roderigo dead.   EMILIA. Alas, good gentleman! alas, good Cassio!   IAGO. This is the fruit of whoring. Prithee, Emilia,     Go know of Cassio where he supp\'d tonight.     What, do you shake at that?   BIANCA. He supp\'d at my house; but I therefore shake not.   IAGO. O, did he so? I charge you, go with me.   EMILIA. Fie, fie upon thee, strumpet!     BIANCA. I am no strumpet, but of life as honest     As you that thus abuse me.   EMILIA.                      As I! foh! fie upon thee!   IAGO. Kind gentlemen, let\'s go see poor Cassio dress\'d.     Come, mistress, you must tell\'s another tale.     Emilia, run you to the citadel,     And tell my lord and lady what hath happ\'d!     Will you go on? [Aside.] This is the night     That either makes me or fordoes me quite.                 Exeunt.     SCENE II. A bedchamber in the castle. Desdemona in bed asleep; a light burning.  Enter Othello.    OTHELLO. It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul.     Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!     It is the cause. Yet I\'ll not shed her blood,     Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow     And smooth as monumental alabaster.     Yet she must die, else she\'ll betray more men.     Put out the light, and then put out the light.     If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,     I can again thy former light restore,     Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,     Thou cunning\'st pattern of excelling nature,     I know not where is that Promethean heat     That can thy light relume. When I have pluck\'d the rose,     I cannot give it vital growth again,     It must needs wither; I\'ll smell it on the tree.      Kisses her.     O, balmy breath, that dost almost persuade     Justice to break her sword! One more, one more;       Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,     And love thee after. One more, and this the last;     So sweet was ne\'er so fatal. I must weep,     But they are cruel tears; this sorrow\'s heavenly,     It strikes where it doth love. She wakes.   DESDEMONA. Who\'s there? Othello?   OTHELLO.                         Ay, Desdemona.   DESDEMONA. Will you come to bed, my lord?   OTHELLO. Have you pray\'d tonight, Desdemona?   DESDEMONA. Ay, my lord.   OTHELLO. If you bethink yourself of any crime     Unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace,     Solicit for it straight.   DESDEMONA. Alas, my lord, what may you mean by that?   OTHELLO. Well, do it, and be brief; I will walk by.     I would not kill thy unprepared spirit.     No, heaven forfend! I would not kill thy soul.   DESDEMONA. Talk you of killing?   OTHELLO. Ay, I do.   DESDEMONA. Then heaven have mercy on me!     OTHELLO. Amen, with all my heart!   DESDEMONA. If you say so, I hope you will not kill me.   OTHELLO. Hum!   DESDEMONA. And yet I fear you, for you are fatal then     When your eyes roll so. Why I should fear I know not,     Since guiltiness I know not; but yet I feel I fear.   OTHELLO. Think on thy sins.   DESDEMONA.                  They are loves I bear to you.   OTHELLO. Ay, and for that thou diest.   DESDEMONA. That death\'s unnatural that kills for loving.     Alas, why gnaw you so your nether lip?     Some bloody passion shakes your very frame.     These are portents; but yet I hope, I hope,     They do not point on me.   OTHELLO.                   Peace, and be still!   DESDEMONA. I will so. What\'s the matter?   OTHELLO. That handkerchief which I so loved and gave thee     Thou gavest to Cassio.   DESDEMONA.               No, by my life and soul!     Send for the man, and ask him.     OTHELLO.                         Sweet soul, take heed,     Take heed of perjury; thou are on thy deathbed.   DESDEMONA. Ay, but not yet to die.   OTHELLO.                           Yes, presently:     Therefore confess thee freely of thy sin,     For to deny each article with oath     Cannot remove nor choke the strong conception     That I do groan withal. Thou art to die.   DESDEMONA. Then Lord have mercy on me!   OTHELLO.                               I say, amen.   DESDEMONA. And have you mercy too! I never did     Offend you in my life; never loved Cassio     But with such general warranty of heaven     As I might love. I never gave him token.   OTHELLO. By heaven, I saw my handkerchief in \'s hand.     O perjured woman! Thou dost stone my heart,     And makest me call what I intend to do     A murther, which I thought a sacrifice.     I saw the handkerchief.   DESDEMONA.                He found it then;       I never gave it him. Send for him hither;     Let him confess a truth.   OTHELLO.                   He hath confess\'d.   DESDEMONA. What, my lord?   OTHELLO. That he hath used thee.   DESDEMONA.                       How? unlawfully?   OTHELLO. Ay.   DESDEMONA. He will not say so.   OTHELLO.                       No, his mouth is stopp\'d;     Honest Iago hath ta\'en order for\'t.   DESDEMONA. O, my fear interprets! What, is he dead?   OTHELLO. Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge     Had stomach for them all.   DESDEMONA. Alas, he is betray\'d, and I undone!   OTHELLO. Out, strumpet! Weep\'st thou for him to my face?   DESDEMONA. O, banish me, my lord, but kill me not!   OTHELLO. Down, strumpet!   DESDEMONA. Kill me tomorrow; let me live tonight!   OTHELLO. Nay, if you strive-   DESDEMONA. But half an hour!     OTHELLO.                     Being done, there is no pause.   DESDEMONA. But while I say one prayer!   OTHELLO.                        It is too late.     He stifles her.   EMILIA. [Within.] My lord, my lord! What, ho! my lord, my lord!   OTHELLO. What noise is this? Not dead? not yet quite dead?     I that am cruel am yet merciful;     I would not have thee linger in thy pain.     So, so.   EMILIA. [Within.] What, ho! my lord, my lord!   OTHELLO.                                      Who\'s there?   EMILIA. [Within.] O, good my lord, I would speak a word with you!   OTHELLO. Yes, \'tis Emilia. By and by. She\'s dead.     \'Tis like she comes to speak of Cassio\'s death.     The noise was here. Ha! no more moving?     Still as the grave. Shall she come in? were\'t good?     I think she stirs again. No. What\'s best to do?     If she come in, she\'ll sure speak to my wife.     My wife! My wife! What wife? I have no wife.     O, insupportable! O heavy hour!     Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse       Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe     Should yawn at alteration.   EMILIA. [Within.] I do beseech you     That I may speak with you, O, good my lord!   OTHELLO. I had forgot thee. O, come in, Emilia.     Soft, by and by. Let me the curtains draw.     Where art thou?                                 Unlocks the door.                              Enter Emilia.                      What\'s the matter with thee now?   EMILIA. O, my good lord, yonder\'s foul murthers done!   OTHELLO. What, now?   EMILIA. But now, my lord.   OTHELLO. It is the very error of the moon;     She comes more nearer earth than she was wont     And makes men mad.   EMILIA. Cassio, my lord, hath kill\'d a young Venetian     Call\'d Roderigo.   OTHELLO.           Roderigo kill\'d?       And Cassio kill\'d?   EMILIA.              No, Cassio is not kill\'d.   OTHELLO. Not Cassio kill\'d! Then murther\'s out of tune,     And sweet revenge grows harsh.   DESDEMONA. O, falsely, falsely murther\'d!   EMILIA.                                   Alas, what cry is that?   OTHELLO. That? what?   EMILIA. Out, and alas! That was my lady\'s voice.     Help! help, ho! help! O lady, speak again!     Sweet Desdemona! O sweet mistress, speak!   DESDEMONA. A guiltless death I die.   EMILIA. O, who hath done this deed?   DESDEMONA. Nobody; I myself. Farewell;     Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell!                    Dies.   OTHELLO. Why, how should she be murther\'d?   EMILIA.                                    Alas, who knows?   OTHELLO. You heard her say herself, it was not I.   EMILIA. She said so; I must needs report the truth.   OTHELLO. She\'s like a liar gone to burning hell;     \'Twas I that kill\'d her.     EMILIA.                    O, the more angel she,     And you the blacker devil!   OTHELLO. She turn\'d to folly, and she was a whore.   EMILIA. Thou dost belie her, and thou art a devil.   OTHELLO. She was false as water.   EMILIA.                          Thou art rash as fire, to say     That she was false. O, she was heavenly true!   OTHELLO. Cassio did top her; ask thy husband else.     O, I were damn\'d beneath all depth in hell,     But that I did proceed upon just grounds     To this extremity. Thy husband knew it all.   EMILIA. My husband?   OTHELLO. Thy husband.   EMILIA. That she was false to wedlock?   OTHELLO. Ay, with Cassio. Nay, had she been true,     If heaven would make me such another world     Of one entire and perfect chrysolite,     I\'ld not have sold her for it.   EMILIA.                          My husband?   OTHELLO. Ay, \'twas he that told me first.       An honest man he is, and hates the slime     That sticks on filthy deeds.   EMILIA.                        My husband?   OTHELLO. What needs this iteration, woman? I say thy husband.   EMILIA. O mistress, villainy hath made mocks with love!     My husband say that she was false!   OTHELLO.                             He, woman;     I say thy husband. Dost understand the word?     My friend, thy husband, honest, honest Iago.   EMILIA. If he say so, may his pernicious soul     Rot half a grain a day! He lies to the heart.     She was too fond of her most filthy bargain.   OTHELLO. Ha!   EMILIA. Do thy worst;     This deed of thine is no more worthy heaven     Than thou wast worthy her.   OTHELLO.                     Peace, you were best.   EMILIA. Thou hast not half that power to do me harm     As I have to be hurt. O gull! O dolt!     As ignorant as dirt! Thou hast done a deed-       I care not for thy sword; I\'ll make thee known,     Though I lost twenty lives. Help! help, ho! help!     The Moor hath kill\'d my mistress! Murther, murther!                Enter Montano, Gratiano, Iago, and others.    MONTANO. What is the matter? How now, general?   EMILIA. O, are you come, Iago? You have done well,     That men must lay their murthers on your neck.   GRATIANO. What is the matter?   EMILIA. Disprove this villain, if thou be\'st a man.     He says thou told\'st him that his wife was false;     I know thou didst not, thou\'rt not such a villain.     Speak, for my heart is full.   IAGO. I told him what I thought, and told no more     Than what he found himself was apt and true.   EMILIA. But did you ever tell him she was false?   IAGO. I did.   EMILIA. You told a lie, an odious, damned lie;     Upon my soul, a lie, a wicked lie!       She false with Cassio? Did you say with Cassio?   IAGO. With Cassio, mistress. Go to, charm your tongue.   EMILIA. I will not charm my tongue; I am bound to speak.     My mistress here lies murther\'d in her bed-   ALL. O heavens forfend!   EMILIA. And your reports have set the murther on.   OTHELLO. Nay, stare not, masters; it is true indeed.   GRATIANO. \'Tis a strange truth.   MONTANO. O monstrous act!   EMILIA.                   Villainy, villainy, villainy!     I think upon\'t, I think, I smell\'t, O villainy!     I thought so then. I\'ll kill myself for grief.     O villainy, villainy!   IAGO. What, are you mad? I charge you, get you home.   EMILIA. Good gentlemen, let me have leave to speak;     \'Tis proper I obey him, but not now.     Perchance, Iago, I will ne\'er go home.   OTHELLO. O! O! O!                                 Falls on the bed.   EMILIA.           Nay, lay thee down and roar;     For thou hast kill\'d the sweetest innocent       That e\'er did lift up eye.   OTHELLO.            [Rises.] O, she was foul!     I scarce did know you, uncle; there lies your niece,     Whose breath indeed these hands have newly stopp\'d.     I know this act shows horrible and grim.   GRATIANO. Poor Desdemon! I am glad thy father\'s dead.     Thy match was mortal to him, and pure grief     Shore his old thread in twain; did he live now,     This sight would make him do a desperate turn,     Yea, curse his better angel from his side,     And fall to reprobation.   OTHELLO. \'Tis pitiful, but yet Iago knows     That she with Cassio hath the act of shame     A thousand times committed. Cassio confess\'d it,     And she did gratify his amorous works     With that recognizance and pledge of love     Which I first gave her. I saw it in his hand,     It was a handkerchief, an antique token     My father gave my mother.   EMILIA. O heaven! O heavenly powers!     IAGO. \'Zounds! Hold your peace.   EMILIA.                         \'Twill out, \'twill. I peace?     No, I will speak as liberal as the north;     Let heaven and men and devils, let them all,     All, all, cry shame against me, yet I\'ll speak.   IAGO. Be wise, and get you home.   EMILIA.                          I will not.                                           Iago offers to stab Emilia.   GRATIANO.                                    Fie!     Your sword upon a woman?   EMILIA. O thou dull Moor! That handkerchief thou speak\'st of     I found by fortune and did give my husband,     For often with a solemn earnestness,     More than indeed belong\'d to such a trifle,     He begg\'d of me to steal it.   IAGO.                          Villainous whore!   EMILIA. She give it Cassio? No, alas, I found it,     And I did give\'t my husband.   IAGO.                          Filth, thou liest!   EMILIA. By heaven, I do not, I do not, gentlemen.       O murtherous coxcomb! What should such a fool     Do with so good a wife?   OTHELLO.                  Are there not stones in heaven     But what serve for thunder? Precious villain!                                          He runs at Iago, but Montano                                       disarms him. Iago stabs Emilia.   GRATIANO. The woman falls; sure, he hath kill\'d his wife.   EMILIA. Ay, ay! O, lay me by my mistress\' side.          Exit Iago.   GRATIANO. He\'s gone, but his wife\'s kill\'d.   MONTANO. \'Tis a notorious villain. Take you this weapon,     Which I have here recover\'d from the Moor.     Come, guard the door without; let him not pass,     But kill him rather. I\'ll after that same villain,     For \'tis a damned slave.       Exeunt all but Othello and Emilia.   OTHELLO.                   I am not valiant neither,     But every puny whipster gets my sword.     But why should honor outlive honesty?     Let it go all.   EMILIA.          What did thy song bode, lady?     Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan,       And die in music. [Sings.] "Willow, willow, willow."     Moor, she was chaste; she loved thee, cruel Moor;     So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true;     So speaking as I think, I die, I die.                       Dies.   OTHELLO. I have another weapon in this chamber;     It is a sword of Spain, the ice-brook\'s temper-     O, here it is. Uncle, I must come forth.   GRATIANO. [Within.] If thou attempt it, it will cost thee dear.     Thou hast no weapon, and perforce must suffer.   OTHELLO. Look in upon me then, and speak with me,     Or, naked as I am, I will assault thee.                            Re-enter Gratiano.    GRATIANO. What is the matter?   OTHELLO.                      Behold, I have a weapon;     A better never did itself sustain     Upon a soldier\'s thigh. I have seen the day     That with this little arm and this good sword     I have made my way through more impediments       Than twenty times your stop. But, O vain boast!     Who can control his fate? \'Tis not so now.     Be not afraid, though you do see me weapon\'d;     Here is my journey\'s end, here is my butt     And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.     Do you go back dismay\'d? \'Tis a lost fear.     Man but a rush against Othello\'s breast,     And he retires. Where should Othello go?     Now, how dost thou look now? O ill-starr\'d wench!     Pale as thy smock! When we shall meet at compt,     This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven,     And fiends will snatch at it. Cold, cold, my girl?     Even like thy chastity. O cursed, cursed slave!     Whip me, ye devils,     From the possession of this heavenly sight!     Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur!     Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!     O Desdemon! dead, Desdemon! dead!     O! O! O!             Enter Lodovico, Montano, Cassio carried in a chair,                   and Officers with Iago, prisoner.    LODOVICO. Where is this rash and most unfortunate man?   OTHELLO. That\'s he that was Othello. Here I am.   LODOVICO. Where is that viper? Bring the villain forth.   OTHELLO. I look down towards his feet; but that\'s a fable.     If that thou be\'st a devil, I cannot kill thee.      Wounds Iago.   LODOVICO. Wrench his sword from him.   IAGO.                                I bleed, sir, but not kill\'d.   OTHELLO. I am not sorry neither. I\'ld have thee live,     For, in my sense, \'tis happiness to die.   LODOVICO. O thou Othello, that wert once so good,     Fall\'n in the practice of a damned slave,     What shall be said to thee?   OTHELLO.                      Why, anything;     An honorable murtherer, if you will,     For nought did I in hate, but all in honor.   LODOVICO. This wretch hath part confess\'d his villainy.     Did you and he consent in Cassio\'s death?     OTHELLO. Ay.   CASSIO. Dear general, I never gave you cause.   OTHELLO. I do believe it, and I ask your pardon.     Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil     Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body?   IAGO. Demand me nothing; what you know, you know.     From this time forth I never will speak word.   LODOVICO. What, not to pray?   GRATIANO.                    Torments will ope your lips.   OTHELLO. Well, thou dost best.   LODOVICO. Sir, you shall understand what hath befall\'n,     Which, as I think, you know not. Here is a letter     Found in the pocket of the slain Roderigo,     And here another. The one of them imports     The death of Cassio to be undertook     By Roderigo.   OTHELLO. O villain!   CASSIO.             Most heathenish and most gross!   LODOVICO. Now here\'s another discontented paper,     Found in his pocket too; and this, it seems,       Roderigo meant to have sent this damned villain;     But that, belike, Iago in the interim     Came in and satisfied him.   OTHELLO.                     O the pernicious caitiff!     How came you, Cassio, by that handkerchief     That was my wife\'s?   CASSIO.               I found it in my chamber;     And he himself confess\'d but even now     That there he dropp\'d it for a special purpose     Which wrought to his desire.   OTHELLO.                       O fool! fool! fool!   CASSIO. There is besides in Roderigo\'s letter,     How he upbraids Iago, that he made him     Brave me upon the watch, whereon it came     That I was cast. And even but now he spake     After long seeming dead, Iago hurt him,     Iago set him on.   LODOVICO. You must forsake this room, and go with us.     Your power and your command is taken off,     And Cassio rules in Cyprus. For this slave,       If there be any cunning cruelty     That can torment him much and hold him long,     It shall be his. You shall close prisoner rest,     Till that the nature of your fault be known     To the Venetian state. Come, bring away.   OTHELLO. Soft you; a word or two before you go.     I have done the state some service, and they know\'t.     No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,     When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,     Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,     Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak     Of one that loved not wisely but too well;     Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,     Perplex\'d in the extreme; of one whose hand,     Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away     Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,     Albeit unused to the melting mood,     Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees     Their medicinal gum. Set you down this;     And say besides, that in Aleppo once,       Where a malignant and a turban\'d Turk     Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,     I took by the throat the circumcised dog     And smote him, thus.                               Stabs himself.   LODOVICO. O bloody period!   GRATIANO.                  All that\'s spoke is marr\'d.   OTHELLO. I kiss\'d thee ere I kill\'d thee. No way but this,     Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.                                           Falls on the bed, and dies.   CASSIO. This did I fear, but thought he had no weapon;     For he was great of heart.   LODOVICO.         [To Iago.] O Spartan dog,     More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea!     Look on the tragic loading of this bed;     This is thy work. The object poisons sight;     Let it be hid. Gratiano, keep the house,     And seize upon the fortunes of the Moor,     For they succeed on you. To you, Lord Governor,     Remains the censure of this hellish villain,     The time, the place, the torture. O, enforce it!       Myself will straight aboard, and to the state     This heavy act with heavy heart relate.                   Exeunt.   THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1596   KING RICHARD THE SECOND   by William Shakespeare    DRAMATIS PERSONAE    KING RICHARD THE SECOND   JOHN OF GAUNT, Duke of Lancaster - uncle to the King   EDMUND LANGLEY, Duke of York - uncle to the King   HENRY, surnamed BOLINGBROKE, Duke of Hereford, son of     John of Gaunt, afterwards King Henry IV   DUKE OF AUMERLE, son of the Duke of York   THOMAS MOWBRAY, Duke of Norfolk   DUKE OF SURREY   EARL OF SALISBURY   EARL BERKELEY   BUSHY - favourites of King Richard   BAGOT -     "      "   "     "   GREEN -     "      "   "     "   EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND   HENRY PERCY, surnamed HOTSPUR, his son   LORD Ross                             LORD WILLOUGHBY   LORD FITZWATER                        BISHOP OF CARLISLE   ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER                  LORD MARSHAL   SIR STEPHEN SCROOP                    SIR PIERCE OF EXTON   CAPTAIN of a band of Welshmen         TWO GARDENERS      QUEEN to King Richard   DUCHESS OF YORK   DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER, widow of Thomas of Woodstock,     Duke of Gloucester   LADY attending on the Queen    Lords, Heralds, Officers, Soldiers, Keeper, Messenger,     Groom, and other Attendants     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: England and Wales   ACT I. SCENE I. London. The palace  Enter RICHARD, JOHN OF GAUNT, with other NOBLES and attendants    KING RICHARD. Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster,     Hast thou, according to thy oath and band,     Brought hither Henry Hereford, thy bold son,     Here to make good the boist\'rous late appeal,     Which then our leisure would not let us hear,     Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?   GAUNT. I have, my liege.   KING RICHARD. Tell me, moreover, hast thou sounded him     If he appeal the Duke on ancient malice,     Or worthily, as a good subject should,     On some known ground of treachery in him?   GAUNT. As near as I could sift him on that argument,     On some apparent danger seen in him     Aim\'d at your Highness-no inveterate malice.   KING RICHARD. Then call them to our presence: face to face     And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear       The accuser and the accused freely speak.     High-stomach\'d are they both and full of ire,     In rage, deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.           Enter BOLINGBROKE and MOWBRAY    BOLINGBROKE. Many years of happy days befall     My gracious sovereign, my most loving liege!   MOWBRAY. Each day still better other\'s happiness     Until the heavens, envying earth\'s good hap,     Add an immortal title to your crown!   KING RICHARD. We thank you both; yet one but flatters us,     As well appeareth by the cause you come;     Namely, to appeal each other of high treason.     Cousin of Hereford, what dost thou object     Against the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray?   BOLINGBROKE. First-heaven be the record to my speech!     In the devotion of a subject\'s love,     Tend\'ring the precious safety of my prince,     And free from other misbegotten hate,       Come I appellant to this princely presence.     Now, Thomas Mowbray, do I turn to thee,     And mark my greeting well; for what I speak     My body shall make good upon this earth,     Or my divine soul answer it in heaven-     Thou art a traitor and a miscreant,     Too good to be so, and too bad to live,     Since the more fair and crystal is the sky,     The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.     Once more, the more to aggravate the note,     With a foul traitor\'s name stuff I thy throat;     And wish-so please my sovereign-ere I move,     What my tongue speaks, my right drawn sword may prove.   MOWBRAY. Let not my cold words here accuse my zeal.     \'Tis not the trial of a woman\'s war,     The bitter clamour of two eager tongues,     Can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain;     The blood is hot that must be cool\'d for this.     Yet can I not of such tame patience boast     As to be hush\'d and nought at an to say.       First, the fair reverence of your Highness curbs me     From giving reins and spurs to my free speech;     Which else would post until it had return\'d     These terms of treason doubled down his throat.     Setting aside his high blood\'s royalty,     And let him be no kinsman to my liege,     I do defy him, and I spit at him,     Call him a slanderous coward and a villain;     Which to maintain, I would allow him odds     And meet him, were I tied to run afoot     Even to the frozen ridges of the Alps,     Or any other ground inhabitable     Where ever Englishman durst set his foot.     Meantime let this defend my loyalty-     By all my hopes, most falsely doth he lie   BOLINGBROKE. Pale trembling coward, there I throw my gage,     Disclaiming here the kindred of the King;     And lay aside my high blood\'s royalty,     Which fear, not reverence, makes thee to except.     If guilty dread have left thee so much strength       As to take up mine honour\'s pawn, then stoop.     By that and all the rites of knighthood else     Will I make good against thee, arm to arm,     What I have spoke or thou canst worst devise.   MOWBRAY. I take it up; and by that sword I swear     Which gently laid my knighthood on my shoulder     I\'ll answer thee in any fair degree     Or chivalrous design of knightly trial;     And when I mount, alive may I not light     If I be traitor or unjustly fight!   KING RICHARD. What doth our cousin lay to Mowbray\'s charge?     It must be great that can inherit us     So much as of a thought of ill in him.   BOLINGBROKE. Look what I speak, my life shall prove it true-     That Mowbray hath receiv\'d eight thousand nobles     In name of lendings for your Highness\' soldiers,     The which he hath detain\'d for lewd employments     Like a false traitor and injurious villain.     Besides, I say and will in battle prove-     Or here, or elsewhere to the furthest verge       That ever was survey\'d by English eye-     That all the treasons for these eighteen years     Complotted and contrived in this land     Fetch from false Mowbray their first head and spring.     Further I say, and further will maintain     Upon his bad life to make all this good,     That he did plot the Duke of Gloucester\'s death,     Suggest his soon-believing adversaries,     And consequently, like a traitor coward,     Sluic\'d out his innocent soul through streams of blood;     Which blood, like sacrificing Abel\'s, cries,     Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth,     To me for justice and rough chastisement;     And, by the glorious worth of my descent,     This arm shall do it, or this life be spent.   KING RICHARD. How high a pitch his resolution soars!     Thomas of Norfolk, what say\'st thou to this?   MOWBRAY. O, let my sovereign turn away his face     And bid his ears a little while be deaf,     Till I have told this slander of his blood       How God and good men hate so foul a liar.   KING RICHARD. Mowbray, impartial are our eyes and cars.     Were he my brother, nay, my kingdom\'s heir,     As he is but my father\'s brother\'s son,     Now by my sceptre\'s awe I make a vow,     Such neighbour nearness to our sacred blood     Should nothing privilege him nor partialize     The unstooping firmness of my upright soul.     He is our subject, Mowbray; so art thou:     Free speech and fearless I to thee allow.   MOWBRAY. Then, Bolingbroke, as low as to thy heart,     Through the false passage of thy throat, thou liest.     Three parts of that receipt I had for Calais     Disburs\'d I duly to his Highness\' soldiers;     The other part reserv\'d I by consent,     For that my sovereign liege was in my debt     Upon remainder of a dear account     Since last I went to France to fetch his queen:     Now swallow down that lie. For Gloucester\'s death-     I slew him not, but to my own disgrace       Neglected my sworn duty in that case.     For you, my noble Lord of Lancaster,     The honourable father to my foe,     Once did I lay an ambush for your life,     A trespass that doth vex my grieved soul;     But ere I last receiv\'d the sacrament     I did confess it, and exactly begg\'d     Your Grace\'s pardon; and I hope I had it.     This is my fault. As for the rest appeal\'d,     It issues from the rancour of a villain,     A recreant and most degenerate traitor;     Which in myself I boldly will defend,     And interchangeably hurl down my gage     Upon this overweening traitor\'s foot     To prove myself a loyal gentleman     Even in the best blood chamber\'d in his bosom.     In haste whereof, most heartily I pray     Your Highness to assign our trial day.   KING RICHARD. Wrath-kindled gentlemen, be rul\'d by me;     Let\'s purge this choler without letting blood-       This we prescribe, though no physician;     Deep malice makes too deep incision.     Forget, forgive; conclude and be agreed:     Our doctors say this is no month to bleed.     Good uncle, let this end where it begun;     We\'ll calm the Duke of Norfolk, you your son.   GAUNT. To be a make-peace shall become my age.     Throw down, my son, the Duke of Norfolk\'s gage.   KING RICHARD. And, Norfolk, throw down his.   GAUNT. When, Harry, when?     Obedience bids I should not bid again.   KING RICHARD. Norfolk, throw down; we bid.     There is no boot.   MOWBRAY. Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot;     My life thou shalt command, but not my shame:     The one my duty owes; but my fair name,     Despite of death, that lives upon my grave     To dark dishonour\'s use thou shalt not have.     I am disgrac\'d, impeach\'d, and baffl\'d here;     Pierc\'d to the soul with slander\'s venom\'d spear,       The which no balm can cure but his heart-blood     Which breath\'d this poison.   KING RICHARD. Rage must be withstood:     Give me his gage-lions make leopards tame.   MOWBRAY. Yea, but not change his spots. Take but my shame,     And I resign my gage. My dear dear lord,     The purest treasure mortal times afford     Is spotless reputation; that away,     Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.     A jewel in a ten-times barr\'d-up chest     Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.     Mine honour is my life; both grow in one;     Take honour from me, and my life is done:     Then, dear my liege, mine honour let me try;     In that I live, and for that will I die.   KING RICHARD. Cousin, throw up your gage; do you begin.   BOLINGBROKE. O, God defend my soul from such deep sin!     Shall I seem crest-fallen in my father\'s sight?     Or with pale beggar-fear impeach my height     Before this outdar\'d dastard? Ere my tongue       Shall wound my honour with such feeble wrong     Or sound so base a parle, my teeth shall tear     The slavish motive of recanting fear,     And spit it bleeding in his high disgrace,     Where shame doth harbour, even in Mowbray\'s face.                                                       Exit GAUNT   KING RICHARD. We were not born to sue, but to command;     Which since we cannot do to make you friends,     Be ready, as your lives shall answer it,     At Coventry, upon Saint Lambert\'s day.     There shall your swords and lances arbitrate     The swelling difference of your settled hate;     Since we can not atone you, we shall see     Justice design the victor\'s chivalry.     Lord Marshal, command our officers-at-arms     Be ready to direct these home alarms.                 Exeunt     SCENE 2. London. The DUKE OF LANCASTER\'S palace  Enter JOHN OF GAUNT with the DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER    GAUNT. Alas, the part I had in Woodstock\'s blood     Doth more solicit me than your exclaims     To stir against the butchers of his life!     But since correction lieth in those hands     Which made the fault that we cannot correct,     Put we our quarrel to the will of heaven;     Who, when they see the hours ripe on earth,     Will rain hot vengeance on offenders\' heads.   DUCHESS. Finds brotherhood in thee no sharper spur?     Hath love in thy old blood no living fire?     Edward\'s seven sons, whereof thyself art one,     Were as seven vials of his sacred blood,     Or seven fair branches springing from one root.     Some of those seven are dried by nature\'s course,     Some of those branches by the Destinies cut;     But Thomas, my dear lord, my life, my Gloucester,     One vial full of Edward\'s sacred blood,       One flourishing branch of his most royal root,     Is crack\'d, and all the precious liquor spilt;     Is hack\'d down, and his summer leaves all faded,     By envy\'s hand and murder\'s bloody axe.     Ah, Gaunt, his blood was thine! That bed, that womb,     That mettle, that self mould, that fashion\'d thee,     Made him a man; and though thou livest and breathest,     Yet art thou slain in him. Thou dost consent     In some large measure to thy father\'s death     In that thou seest thy wretched brother die,     Who was the model of thy father\'s life.     Call it not patience, Gaunt-it is despair;     In suff\'ring thus thy brother to be slaught\'red,     Thou showest the naked pathway to thy life,     Teaching stern murder how to butcher thee.     That which in mean men we entitle patience     Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts.     What shall I say? To safeguard thine own life     The best way is to venge my Gloucester\'s death.   GAUNT. God\'s is the quarrel; for God\'s substitute,       His deputy anointed in His sight,     Hath caus\'d his death; the which if wrongfully,     Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift     An angry arm against His minister.   DUCHESS. Where then, alas, may I complain myself?   GAUNT. To God, the widow\'s champion and defence.   DUCHESS. Why then, I will. Farewell, old Gaunt.     Thou goest to Coventry, there to behold     Our cousin Hereford and fell Mowbray fight.     O, sit my husband\'s wrongs on Hereford\'s spear,     That it may enter butcher Mowbray\'s breast!     Or, if misfortune miss the first career,     Be Mowbray\'s sins so heavy in his bosom     That they may break his foaming courser\'s back     And throw the rider headlong in the lists,     A caitiff recreant to my cousin Hereford!     Farewell, old Gaunt; thy sometimes brother\'s wife,     With her companion, Grief, must end her life.   GAUNT. Sister, farewell; I must to Coventry.     As much good stay with thee as go with me!     DUCHESS. Yet one word more- grief boundeth where it falls,     Not with the empty hollowness, but weight.     I take my leave before I have begun,     For sorrow ends not when it seemeth done.     Commend me to thy brother, Edmund York.     Lo, this is all- nay, yet depart not so;     Though this be all, do not so quickly go;     I shall remember more. Bid him- ah, what?-     With all good speed at Plashy visit me.     Alack, and what shall good old York there see     But empty lodgings and unfurnish\'d walls,     Unpeopled offices, untrodden stones?     And what hear there for welcome but my groans?     Therefore commend me; let him not come there     To seek out sorrow that dwells every where.     Desolate, desolate, will I hence and die;     The last leave of thee takes my weeping eye.          Exeunt     SCENE 3. The lists at Coventry  Enter the LORD MARSHAL and the DUKE OF AUMERLE    MARSHAL. My Lord Aumerle, is Harry Hereford arm\'d?   AUMERLE. Yea, at all points; and longs to enter in.   MARSHAL. The Duke of Norfolk, spightfully and bold,     Stays but the summons of the appelant\'s trumpet.   AUMERLE. Why then, the champions are prepar\'d, and stay     For nothing but his Majesty\'s approach.       The trumpets sound, and the KING enters with his nobles,      GAUNT, BUSHY, BAGOT, GREEN, and others. When they are set,      enter MOWBRAY, Duke of Nor folk, in arms, defendant, and      a HERALD    KING RICHARD. Marshal, demand of yonder champion     The cause of his arrival here in arms;     Ask him his name; and orderly proceed     To swear him in the justice of his cause.   MARSHAL. In God\'s name and the King\'s, say who thou art,       And why thou comest thus knightly clad in arms;     Against what man thou com\'st, and what thy quarrel.     Speak truly on thy knighthood and thy oath;     As so defend thee heaven and thy valour!   MOWBRAY. My name is Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk;     Who hither come engaged by my oath-     Which God defend a knight should violate!-     Both to defend my loyalty and truth     To God, my King, and my succeeding issue,     Against the Duke of Hereford that appeals me;     And, by the grace of God and this mine arm,     To prove him, in defending of myself,     A traitor to my God, my King, and me.     And as I truly fight, defend me heaven!     The trumpets sound. Enter BOLINGBROKE, Duke of Hereford,             appellant, in armour, and a HERALD    KING RICHARD. Marshal, ask yonder knight in arms,     Both who he is and why he cometh hither       Thus plated in habiliments of war;     And formally, according to our law,     Depose him in the justice of his cause.   MARSHAL. What is thy name? and wherefore com\'st thou hither     Before King Richard in his royal lists?     Against whom comest thou? and what\'s thy quarrel?     Speak like a true knight, so defend thee heaven!   BOLINGBROKE. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,     Am I; who ready here do stand in arms     To prove, by God\'s grace and my body\'s valour,     In lists on Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,     That he is a traitor, foul and dangerous,     To God of heaven, King Richard, and to me.     And as I truly fight, defend me heaven!   MARSHAL. On pain of death, no person be so bold     Or daring-hardy as to touch the lists,     Except the Marshal and such officers     Appointed to direct these fair designs.   BOLINGBROKE. Lord Marshal, let me kiss my sovereign\'s hand,     And bow my knee before his Majesty;       For Mowbray and myself are like two men     That vow a long and weary pilgrimage.     Then let us take a ceremonious leave     And loving farewell of our several friends.   MARSHAL. The appellant in all duty greets your Highness,     And craves to kiss your hand and take his leave.   KING RICHARD. We will descend and fold him in our arms.     Cousin of Hereford, as thy cause is right,     So be thy fortune in this royal fight!     Farewell, my blood; which if to-day thou shed,     Lament we may, but not revenge thee dead.   BOLINGBROKE. O, let no noble eye profane a tear     For me, if I be gor\'d with Mowbray\'s spear.     As confident as is the falcon\'s flight     Against a bird, do I with Mowbray fight.     My loving lord, I take my leave of you;     Of you, my noble cousin, Lord Aumerle;     Not sick, although I have to do with death,     But lusty, young, and cheerly drawing breath.     Lo, as at English feasts, so I regreet       The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet.     O thou, the earthly author of my blood,     Whose youthful spirit, in me regenerate,     Doth with a twofold vigour lift me up     To reach at victory above my head,     Add proof unto mine armour with thy prayers,     And with thy blessings steel my lance\'s point,     That it may enter Mowbray\'s waxen coat     And furbish new the name of John o\' Gaunt,     Even in the lusty haviour of his son.   GAUNT. God in thy good cause make thee prosperous!     Be swift like lightning in the execution,     And let thy blows, doubly redoubled,     Fall like amazing thunder on the casque     Of thy adverse pernicious enemy.     Rouse up thy youthful blood, be valiant, and live.   BOLINGBROKE. Mine innocence and Saint George to thrive!   MOWBRAY. However God or fortune cast my lot,     There lives or dies, true to King Richard\'s throne,     A loyal, just, and upright gentleman.       Never did captive with a freer heart     Cast off his chains of bondage, and embrace     His golden uncontroll\'d enfranchisement,     More than my dancing soul doth celebrate     This feast of battle with mine adversary.     Most mighty liege, and my companion peers,     Take from my mouth the wish of happy years.     As gentle and as jocund as to jest     Go I to fight: truth hath a quiet breast.   KING RICHARD. Farewell, my lord, securely I espy     Virtue with valour couched in thine eye.     Order the trial, Marshal, and begin.   MARSHAL. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,     Receive thy lance; and God defend the right!   BOLINGBROKE. Strong as a tower in hope, I cry amen.   MARSHAL. [To an officer] Go bear this lance to Thomas,       Duke of Norfolk.   FIRST HERALD. Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,     Stands here for God, his sovereign, and himself,     On pain to be found false and recreant,       To prove the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray,     A traitor to his God, his King, and him;     And dares him to set forward to the fight.   SECOND HERALD. Here standeth Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,     On pain to be found false and recreant,     Both to defend himself, and to approve     Henry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby,     To God, his sovereign, and to him disloyal,     Courageously and with a free desire     Attending but the signal to begin.   MARSHAL. Sound trumpets; and set forward, combatants.                                            [A charge sounded]     Stay, the King hath thrown his warder down.   KING RICHARD. Let them lay by their helmets and their spears,     And both return back to their chairs again.     Withdraw with us; and let the trumpets sound     While we return these dukes what we decree.      A long flourish, while the KING consults his Council        Draw near,     And list what with our council we have done.     For that our kingdom\'s earth should not be soil\'d     With that dear blood which it hath fostered;     And for our eyes do hate the dire aspect     Of civil wounds plough\'d up with neighbours\' sword;     And for we think the eagle-winged pride     Of sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts,     With rival-hating envy, set on you     To wake our peace, which in our country\'s cradle     Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep;     Which so rous\'d up with boist\'rous untun\'d drums,     With harsh-resounding trumpets\' dreadful bray,     And grating shock of wrathful iron arms,     Might from our quiet confines fright fair peace     And make us wade even in our kindred\'s blood-     Therefore we banish you our territories.     You, cousin Hereford, upon pain of life,     Till twice five summers have enrich\'d our fields     Shall not regreet our fair dominions,       But tread the stranger paths of banishment.   BOLINGBROKE. Your will be done. This must my comfort be-     That sun that warms you here shall shine on me,     And those his golden beams to you here lent     Shall point on me and gild my banishment.   KING RICHARD. Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom,     Which I with some unwillingness pronounce:     The sly slow hours shall not determinate     The dateless limit of thy dear exile;     The hopeless word of \'never to return\'     Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life.   MOWBRAY. A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege,     And all unlook\'d for from your Highness\' mouth.     A dearer merit, not so deep a maim     As to be cast forth in the common air,     Have I deserved at your Highness\' hands.     The language I have learnt these forty years,     My native English, now I must forgo;     And now my tongue\'s use is to me no more     Than an unstringed viol or a harp;       Or like a cunning instrument cas\'d up     Or, being open, put into his hands     That knows no touch to tune the harmony.     Within my mouth you have engaol\'d my tongue,     Doubly portcullis\'d with my teeth and lips;     And dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance     Is made my gaoler to attend on me.     I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,     Too far in years to be a pupil now.     What is thy sentence, then, but speechless death,     Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?   KING RICHARD. It boots thee not to be compassionate;     After our sentence plaining comes too late.   MOWBRAY. Then thus I turn me from my countrv\'s light,     To dwell in solemn shades of endless night.   KING RICHARD. Return again, and take an oath with thee.     Lay on our royal sword your banish\'d hands;     Swear by the duty that you owe to God,     Our part therein we banish with yourselves,     To keep the oath that we administer:       You never shall, so help you truth and God,     Embrace each other\'s love in banishment;     Nor never look upon each other\'s face;     Nor never write, regreet, nor reconcile     This louring tempest of your home-bred hate;     Nor never by advised purpose meet     To plot, contrive, or complot any ill,     \'Gainst us, our state, our subjects, or our land.   BOLINGBROKE. I swear.   MOWBRAY. And I, to keep all this.   BOLINGBROKE. Norfolk, so far as to mine enemy.     By this time, had the King permitted us,     One of our souls had wand\'red in the air,     Banish\'d this frail sepulchre of our flesh,     As now our flesh is banish\'d from this land-     Confess thy treasons ere thou fly the realm;     Since thou hast far to go, bear not along     The clogging burden of a guilty soul.   MOWBRAY. No, Bolingbroke; if ever I were traitor,     My name be blotted from the book of life,       And I from heaven banish\'d as from hence!     But what thou art, God, thou, and I, do know;     And all too soon, I fear, the King shall rue.     Farewell, my liege. Now no way can I stray:     Save back to England, an the world\'s my way.            Exit   KING RICHARD. Uncle, even in the glasses of thine eyes     I see thy grieved heart. Thy sad aspect     Hath from the number of his banish\'d years     Pluck\'d four away. [To BOLINGBROKE] Six frozen winters spent,     Return with welcome home from banishment.   BOLINGBROKE. How long a time lies in one little word!     Four lagging winters and four wanton springs     End in a word: such is the breath of Kings.   GAUNT. I thank my liege that in regard of me     He shortens four years of my son\'s exile;     But little vantage shall I reap thereby,     For ere the six years that he hath to spend     Can change their moons and bring their times about,     My oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light     Shall be extinct with age and endless night;       My inch of taper will be burnt and done,     And blindfold death not let me see my son.   KING RICHARD. Why, uncle, thou hast many years to live.   GAUNT. But not a minute, King, that thou canst give:     Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow     And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow;     Thou can\'st help time to furrow me with age,     But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage;     Thy word is current with him for my death,     But dead, thy kingdom cannot buy my breath.   KING RICHARD. Thy son is banish\'d upon good advice,     Whereto thy tongue a party-verdict gave.     Why at our justice seem\'st thou then to lour?   GAUNT. Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.     You urg\'d me as a judge; but I had rather     You would have bid me argue like a father.     O, had it been a stranger, not my child,     To smooth his fault I should have been more mild.     A partial slander sought I to avoid,     And in the sentence my own life destroy\'d.       Alas, I look\'d when some of you should say     I was too strict to make mine own away;     But you gave leave to my unwilling tongue     Against my will to do myself this wrong.   KING RICHARD. Cousin, farewell; and, uncle, bid him so.     Six years we banish him, and he shall go.                                   Flourish. Exit KING with train   AUMERLE. Cousin, farewell; what presence must not know,     From where you do remain let paper show.   MARSHAL. My lord, no leave take I, for I will ride     As far as land will let me by your side.   GAUNT. O, to what purpose dost thou hoard thy words,     That thou returnest no greeting to thy friends?   BOLINGBROKE. I have too few to take my leave of you,     When the tongue\'s office should be prodigal     To breathe the abundant dolour of the heart.   GAUNT. Thy grief is but thy absence for a time.   BOLINGBROKE. Joy absent, grief is present for that time.   GAUNT. What is six winters? They are quickly gone.   BOLINGBROKE. To men in joy; but grief makes one hour ten.     GAUNT. Call it a travel that thou tak\'st for pleasure.   BOLINGBROKE. My heart will sigh when I miscall it so,     Which finds it an enforced pilgrimage.   GAUNT. The sullen passage of thy weary steps     Esteem as foil wherein thou art to set     The precious jewel of thy home return.   BOLINGBROKE. Nay, rather, every tedious stride I make     Will but remember me what a deal of world     I wander from the jewels that I love.     Must I not serve a long apprenticehood     To foreign passages; and in the end,     Having my freedom, boast of nothing else     But that I was a journeyman to grief?   GAUNT. All places that the eye of heaven visits     Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.     Teach thy necessity to reason thus:     There is no virtue like necessity.     Think not the King did banish thee,     But thou the King. Woe doth the heavier sit     Where it perceives it is but faintly home.       Go, say I sent thee forth to purchase honour,     And not the King exil\'d thee; or suppose     Devouring pestilence hangs in our air     And thou art flying to a fresher clime.     Look what thy soul holds dear, imagine it     To lie that way thou goest, not whence thou com\'st.     Suppose the singing birds musicians,     The grass whereon thou tread\'st the presence strew\'d,     The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more     Than a delightful measure or a dance;     For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite     The man that mocks at it and sets it light.   BOLINGBROKE. O, who can hold a fire in his hand     By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?     Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite     By bare imagination of a feast?     Or wallow naked in December snow     By thinking on fantastic summer\'s heat?     O, no! the apprehension of the good     Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.       Fell sorrow\'s tooth doth never rankle more     Than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore.   GAUNT. Come, come, my son, I\'ll bring thee on thy way.     Had I thy youtli and cause, I would not stay.   BOLINGBROKE. Then, England\'s ground, farewell; sweet soil, adieu;     My mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet!     Where\'er I wander, boast of this I can:     Though banish\'d, yet a trueborn English man.          Exeunt     SCENE 4. London. The court  Enter the KING, with BAGOT and GREEN, at one door; and the DUKE OF AUMERLE at another    KING RICHARD. We did observe. Cousin Aumerle,     How far brought you high Hereford on his way?   AUMERLE. I brought high Hereford, if you call him so,     But to the next high way, and there I left him.   KING RICHARD. And say, what store of parting tears were shed?   AUMERLE. Faith, none for me; except the north-east wind,     Which then blew bitterly against our faces,     Awak\'d the sleeping rheum, and so by chance     Did grace our hollow parting with a tear.   KING RICHARD. What said our cousin when you parted with him?   AUMERLE. \'Farewell.\'     And, for my heart disdained that my tongue     Should so profane the word, that taught me craft     To counterfeit oppression of such grief     That words seem\'d buried in my sorrow\'s grave.     Marry, would the word \'farewell\' have length\'ned hours       And added years to his short banishment,     He should have had a volume of farewells;     But since it would not, he had none of me.   KING RICHARD. He is our cousin, cousin; but \'tis doubt,     When time shall call him home from banishment,     Whether our kinsman come to see his friends.     Ourself, and Bushy, Bagot here, and Green,     Observ\'d his courtship to the common people;     How he did seem to dive into their hearts     With humble and familiar courtesy;     What reverence he did throw away on slaves,     Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles     And patient underbearing of his fortune,     As \'twere to banish their affects with him.     Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;     A brace of draymen bid God speed him well     And had the tribute of his supple knee,     With \'Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends\';     As were our England in reversion his,     And he our subjects\' next degree in hope.     GREEN. Well, he is gone; and with him go these thoughts!     Now for the rebels which stand out in Ireland,     Expedient manage must be made, my liege,     Ere further leisure yicld them further means     For their advantage and your Highness\' loss.   KING RICHARD. We will ourself in person to this war;     And, for our coffers, with too great a court     And liberal largess, are grown somewhat light,     We are enforc\'d to farm our royal realm;     The revenue whereof shall furnish us     For our affairs in hand. If that come short,     Our substitutes at home shall have blank charters;     Whereto, when they shall know what men are rich,     They shall subscribe them for large sums of gold,     And send them after to supply our wants;     For we will make for Ireland presently.                       Enter BUSHY      Bushy, what news?     BUSHY. Old John of Gaunt is grievous sick, my lord,     Suddenly taken; and hath sent poste-haste     To entreat your Majesty to visit him.   KING RICHARD. Where lies he?   BUSHY. At Ely House.   KING RICHARD. Now put it, God, in the physician\'s mind     To help him to his grave immediately!     The lining of his coffers shall make coats     To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars.     Come, gentlemen, let\'s all go visit him.     Pray God we may make haste, and come too late!   ALL. Amen.                                              Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. London. Ely House  Enter JOHN OF GAUNT, sick, with the DUKE OF YORK, etc.    GAUNT. Will the King come, that I may breathe my last     In wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth?   YORK. Vex not yourself, nor strive not with your breath;     For all in vain comes counsel to his ear.   GAUNT. O, but they say the tongues of dying men     Enforce attention like deep harmony.     Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain;     For they breathe truth that breathe their words -in pain.     He that no more must say is listen\'d more     Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose;     More are men\'s ends mark\'d than their lives before.     The setting sun, and music at the close,     As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,     Writ in remembrance more than things long past.     Though Richard my life\'s counsel would not hear,     My death\'s sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.   YORK. No; it is stopp\'d with other flattering sounds,       As praises, of whose taste the wise are fond,     Lascivious metres, to whose venom sound     The open ear of youth doth always listen;     Report of fashions in proud Italy,     Whose manners still our tardy apish nation     Limps after in base imitation.     Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity-     So it be new, there\'s no respect how vile-     That is not quickly buzz\'d into his ears?     Then all too late comes counsel to be heard     Where will doth mutiny with wit\'s regard.     Direct not him whose way himself will choose.     \'Tis breath thou lack\'st, and that breath wilt thou lose.   GAUNT. Methinks I am a prophet new inspir\'d,     And thus expiring do foretell of him:     His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,     For violent fires soon burn out themselves;     Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;     He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;     With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder;       Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,     Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.     This royal throne of kings, this scept\'red isle,     This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,     This other Eden, demi-paradise,     This fortress built by Nature for herself     Against infection and the hand of war,     This happy breed of men, this little world,     This precious stone set in the silver sea,     Which serves it in the office of a wall,     Or as a moat defensive to a house,     Against the envy of less happier lands;     This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,     This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,     Fear\'d by their breed, and famous by their birth,     Renowned for their deeds as far from home,     For Christian service and true chivalry,     As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry     Of the world\'s ransom, blessed Mary\'s Son;     This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,       Dear for her reputation through the world,     Is now leas\'d out-I die pronouncing it-     Like to a tenement or pelting farm.     England, bound in with the triumphant sea,     Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege     Of wat\'ry Neptune, is now bound in with shame,     With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds;     That England, that was wont to conquer others,     Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.     Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,     How happy then were my ensuing death!      Enter KING and QUEEN, AUMERLE, BUSHY, GREEN, BAGOT,                 Ross, and WILLOUGHBY    YORK. The King is come; deal mildly with his youth,     For young hot colts being rag\'d do rage the more.   QUEEN. How fares our noble uncle Lancaster?   KING RICHARD. What comfort, man? How is\'t with aged Gaunt?   GAUNT. O, how that name befits my composition!       Old Gaunt, indeed; and gaunt in being old.     Within me grief hath kept a tedious fast;     And who abstains from meat that is not gaunt?     For sleeping England long time have I watch\'d;     Watching breeds leanness, leanness is an gaunt.     The pleasure that some fathers feed upon     Is my strict fast-I mean my children\'s looks;     And therein fasting, hast thou made me gaunt.     Gaunt am I for the grave, gaunt as a grave,     Whose hollow womb inherits nought but bones.   KING RICHARD. Can sick men play so nicely with their names?   GAUNT. No, misery makes sport to mock itself:     Since thou dost seek to kill my name in me,     I mock my name, great king, to flatter thee.   KING RICHARD. Should dying men flatter with those that live?   GAUNT. No, no; men living flatter those that die.   KING RICHARD. Thou, now a-dying, sayest thou flatterest me.   GAUNT. O, no! thou diest, though I the sicker be.   KING RICHARD. I am in health, I breathe, and see thee ill.   GAUNT. Now He that made me knows I see thee ill;       Ill in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill.     Thy death-bed is no lesser than thy land     Wherein thou liest in reputation sick;     And thou, too careless patient as thou art,     Commit\'st thy anointed body to the cure     Of those physicians that first wounded thee:     A thousand flatterers sit within thy crown,     Whose compass is no bigger than thy head;     And yet, incaged in so small a verge,     The waste is no whit lesser than thy land.     O, had thy grandsire with a prophet\'s eye     Seen how his son\'s son should destroy his sons,     From forth thy reach he would have laid thy shame,     Deposing thee before thou wert possess\'d,     Which art possess\'d now to depose thyself.     Why, cousin, wert thou regent of the world,     It were a shame to let this land by lease;     But for thy world enjoying but this land,     Is it not more than shame to shame it so?     Landlord of England art thou now, not King.       Thy state of law is bondslave to the law;     And thou-   KING RICHARD. A lunatic lean-witted fool,     Presuming on an ague\'s privilege,     Darest with thy frozen admonition     Make pale our cheek, chasing the royal blood     With fury from his native residence.     Now by my seat\'s right royal majesty,     Wert thou not brother to great Edward\'s son,     This tongue that runs so roundly in thy head     Should run thy head from thy unreverent shoulders.   GAUNT. O, Spare me not, my brother Edward\'s son,     For that I was his father Edward\'s son;     That blood already, like the pelican,     Hast thou tapp\'d out, and drunkenly carous\'d.     My brother Gloucester, plain well-meaning soul-     Whom fair befall in heaven \'mongst happy souls!-     May be a precedent and witness good     That thou respect\'st not spilling Edward\'s blood.     Join with the present sickness that I have;       And thy unkindness be like crooked age,     To crop at once a too long withered flower.     Live in thy shame, but die not shame with thee!     These words hereafter thy tormentors be!     Convey me to my bed, then to my grave.     Love they to live that love and honour have.                                Exit, borne out by his attendants   KING RICHARD. And let them die that age and sullens have;     For both hast thou, and both become the grave.   YORK. I do beseech your Majesty impute his words     To wayward sickliness and age in him.     He loves you, on my life, and holds you dear     As Harry Duke of Hereford, were he here.   KING RICHARD. Right, you say true: as Hereford\'s love, so his;     As theirs, so mine; and all be as it is.                  Enter NORTHUMBERLAND    NORTHUMBERLAND. My liege, old Gaunt commends him to your Majesty.   KING RICHARD. What says he?     NORTHUMBERLAND. Nay, nothing; all is said.     His tongue is now a stringless instrument;     Words, life, and all, old Lancaster hath spent.   YORK. Be York the next that must be bankrupt so!     Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.   KING RICHARD. The ripest fruit first falls, and so doth he;     His time is spent, our pilgrimage must be.     So much for that. Now for our Irish wars.     We must supplant those rough rug-headed kerns,     Which live like venom where no venom else     But only they have privilege to live.     And for these great affairs do ask some charge,     Towards our assistance we do seize to us     The plate, coin, revenues, and moveables,     Whereof our uncle Gaunt did stand possess\'d.   YORK. How long shall I be patient? Ah, how long     Shall tender duty make me suffer wrong?     Not Gloucester\'s death, nor Hereford\'s banishment,     Nor Gaunt\'s rebukes, nor England\'s private wrongs,     Nor the prevention of poor Bolingbroke       About his marriage, nor my own disgrace,     Have ever made me sour my patient cheek     Or bend one wrinkle on my sovereign\'s face.     I am the last of noble Edward\'s sons,     Of whom thy father, Prince of Wales, was first.     In war was never lion rag\'d more fierce,     In peace was never gentle lamb more mild,     Than was that young and princely gentleman.     His face thou hast, for even so look\'d he,     Accomplish\'d with the number of thy hours;     But when he frown\'d, it was against the French     And not against his friends. His noble hand     Did win what he did spend, and spent not that     Which his triumphant father\'s hand had won.     His hands were guilty of no kindred blood,     But bloody with the enemies of his kin.     O Richard! York is too far gone with grief,     Or else he never would compare between-   KING RICHARD. Why, uncle, what\'s the matter?   YORK. O my liege,       Pardon me, if you please; if not, I, pleas\'d     Not to be pardoned, am content withal.     Seek you to seize and gripe into your hands     The royalties and rights of banish\'d Hereford?     Is not Gaunt dead? and doth not Hereford live?     Was not Gaunt just? and is not Harry true?     Did not the one deserve to have an heir?     Is not his heir a well-deserving son?     Take Hereford\'s rights away, and take from Time     His charters and his customary rights;     Let not to-morrow then ensue to-day;     Be not thyself-for how art thou a king     But by fair sequence and succession?     Now, afore God-God forbid I say true!-     If you do wrongfully seize Hereford\'s rights,     Call in the letters patents that he hath     By his attorneys-general to sue     His livery, and deny his off\'red homage,     You pluck a thousand dangers on your head,     You lose a thousand well-disposed hearts,       And prick my tender patience to those thoughts     Which honour and allegiance cannot think.   KING RICHARD. Think what you will, we seize into our hands     His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands.   YORK. I\'ll not be by the while. My liege, farewell.     What will ensue hereof there\'s none can tell;     But by bad courses may be understood     That their events can never fall out good.              Exit   KING RICHARD. Go, Bushy, to the Earl of Wiltshire straight;     Bid him repair to us to Ely House     To see this business. To-morrow next     We will for Ireland; and \'tis time, I trow.     And we create, in absence of ourself,     Our Uncle York Lord Governor of England;     For he is just, and always lov\'d us well.     Come on, our queen; to-morrow must we part;     Be merry, for our time of stay is short.                    Flourish. Exeunt KING, QUEEN, BUSHY, AUMERLE,                                                 GREEN, and BAGOT   NORTHUMBERLAND. Well, lords, the Duke of Lancaster is dead.       Ross. And living too; for now his son is Duke.   WILLOUGHBY. Barely in title, not in revenues.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Richly in both, if justice had her right.   ROSS. My heart is great; but it must break with silence,     Ere\'t be disburdened with a liberal tongue.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Nay, speak thy mind; and let him ne\'er speak more     That speaks thy words again to do thee harm!   WILLOUGHBY. Tends that thou wouldst speak to the Duke of Hereford?     If it be so, out with it boldly, man;     Quick is mine ear to hear of good towards him.   ROSS. No good at all that I can do for him;     Unless you call it good to pity him,     Bereft and gelded of his patrimony.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Now, afore God, \'tis shame such wrongs are borne     In him, a royal prince, and many moe     Of noble blood in this declining land.     The King is not himself, but basely led     By flatterers; and what they will inform,     Merely in hate, \'gainst any of us an,     That will the King severely prosecute       \'Gainst us, our lives, our children, and our heirs.   ROSS. The commons hath he pill\'d with grievous taxes;     And quite lost their hearts; the nobles hath he find     For ancient quarrels and quite lost their hearts.   WILLOUGHBY. And daily new exactions are devis\'d,     As blanks, benevolences, and I wot not what;     But what, a God\'s name, doth become of this?   NORTHUMBERLAND. Wars hath not wasted it, for warr\'d he hath not,     But basely yielded upon compromise     That which his noble ancestors achiev\'d with blows.     More hath he spent in peace than they in wars.   ROSS. The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm.   WILLOUGHBY. The King\'s grown bankrupt like a broken man.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Reproach and dissolution hangeth over him.   ROSS. He hath not money for these Irish wars,     His burdenous taxations notwithstanding,     But by the robbing of the banish\'d Duke.   NORTHUMBERLAND. His noble kinsman-most degenerate king!     But, lords, we hear this fearful tempest sing,     Yet seek no shelter to avoid the storm;       We see the wind sit sore upon our sails,     And yet we strike not, but securely perish.   ROSS. We see the very wreck that we must suffer;     And unavoided is the danger now     For suffering so the causes of our wreck.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Not so; even through the hollow eyes of death     I spy life peering; but I dare not say     How near the tidings of our comfort is.   WILLOUGHBY. Nay, let us share thy thoughts as thou dost ours.   ROSS. Be confident to speak, Northumberland.     We three are but thyself, and, speaking so,     Thy words are but as thoughts; therefore be bold.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Then thus: I have from Le Port Blanc, a bay     In Brittany, receiv\'d intelligence     That Harry Duke of Hereford, Rainold Lord Cobham,     That late broke from the Duke of Exeter,     His brother, Archbishop late of Canterbury,     Sir Thomas Erpingham, Sir John Ramston,     Sir John Norbery, Sir Robert Waterton, and Francis Quoint-     All these, well furnish\'d by the Duke of Britaine,       With eight tall ships, three thousand men of war,     Are making hither with all due expedience,     And shortly mean to touch our northern shore.     Perhaps they had ere this, but that they stay     The first departing of the King for Ireland.     If then we shall shake off our slavish yoke,     Imp out our drooping country\'s broken wing,     Redeem from broking pawn the blemish\'d crown,     Wipe off the dust that hides our sceptre\'s gilt,     And make high majesty look like itself,     Away with me in post to Ravenspurgh;     But if you faint, as fearing to do so,     Stay and be secret, and myself will go.   ROSS. To horse, to horse! Urge doubts to them that fear.   WILLOUGHBY. Hold out my horse, and I will first be there.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE 2. Windsor Castle  Enter QUEEN, BUSHY, and BAGOT    BUSHY. Madam, your Majesty is too much sad.     You promis\'d, when you parted with the King,     To lay aside life-harming heaviness     And entertain a cheerful disposition.   QUEEN. To please the King, I did; to please myself     I cannot do it; yet I know no cause     Why I should welcome such a guest as grief,     Save bidding farewell to so sweet a guest     As my sweet Richard. Yet again methinks     Some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune\'s womb,     Is coming towards me, and my inward soul     With nothing trembles. At some thing it grieves     More than with parting from my lord the King.   BUSHY. Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,     Which shows like grief itself, but is not so;     For sorrow\'s eye, glazed with blinding tears,     Divides one thing entire to many objects,       Like perspectives which, rightly gaz\'d upon,     Show nothing but confusion-ey\'d awry,     Distinguish form. So your sweet Majesty,     Looking awry upon your lord\'s departure,     Find shapes of grief more than himself to wail;     Which, look\'d on as it is, is nought but shadows     Of what it is not. Then, thrice-gracious Queen,     More than your lord\'s departure weep not-more is not seen;     Or if it be, \'tis with false sorrow\'s eye,     Which for things true weeps things imaginary.   QUEEN. It may be so; but yet my inward soul     Persuades me it is otherwise. Howe\'er it be,     I cannot but be sad; so heavy sad     As-though, on thinking, on no thought I think-     Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink.   BUSHY. \'Tis nothing but conceit, my gracious lady.   QUEEN. \'Tis nothing less: conceit is still deriv\'d     From some forefather grief; mine is not so,     For nothing hath begot my something grief,     Or something hath the nothing that I grieve;       \'Tis in reversion that I do possess-     But what it is that is not yet known what,     I cannot name; \'tis nameless woe, I wot.                     Enter GREEN    GREEN. God save your Majesty! and well met, gentlemen.     I hope the King is not yet shipp\'d for Ireland.   QUEEN. Why hopest thou so? \'Tis better hope he is;     For his designs crave haste, his haste good hope.     Then wherefore dost thou hope he is not shipp\'d?   GREEN. That he, our hope, might have retir\'d his power     And driven into despair an enemy\'s hope     Who strongly hath set footing in this land.     The banish\'d Bolingbroke repeals himself,     And with uplifted arms is safe arriv\'d     At Ravenspurgh.   QUEEN. Now God in heaven forbid!   GREEN. Ah, madam, \'tis too true; and that is worse,     The Lord Northumberland, his son young Henry Percy,       The Lords of Ross, Beaumond, and Willoughby,     With all their powerful friends, are fled to him.   BUSHY. Why have you not proclaim\'d Northumberland     And all the rest revolted faction traitors?   GREEN. We have; whereupon the Earl of Worcester     Hath broken his staff, resign\'d his stewardship,     And all the household servants fled with him     To Bolingbroke.   QUEEN. So, Green, thou art the midwife to my woe,     And Bolingbroke my sorrow\'s dismal heir.     Now hath my soul brought forth her prodigy;     And I, a gasping new-deliver\'d mother,     Have woe to woe, sorrow to sorrow join\'d.   BUSHY. Despair not, madam.   QUEEN. Who shall hinder me?     I will despair, and be at enmity     With cozening hope-he is a flatterer,     A parasite, a keeper-back of death,     Who gently would dissolve the bands of life,     Which false hope lingers in extremity.                        Enter YORK    GREEN. Here comes the Duke of York.   QUEEN. With signs of war about his aged neck.     O, full of careful business are his looks!     Uncle, for God\'s sake, speak comfortable words.   YORK. Should I do so, I should belie my thoughts.     Comfort\'s in heaven; and we are on the earth,     Where nothing lives but crosses, cares, and grief.     Your husband, he is gone to save far off,     Whilst others come to make him lose at home.     Here am I left to underprop his land,     Who, weak with age, cannot support myself.     Now comes the sick hour that his surfeit made;     Now shall he try his friends that flatter\'d him.                     Enter a SERVINGMAN    SERVINGMAN. My lord, your son was gone before I came.     YORK. He was-why so go all which way it will!     The nobles they are fled, the commons they are cold     And will, I fear, revolt on Hereford\'s side.     Sirrah, get thee to Plashy, to my sister Gloucester;     Bid her send me presently a thousand pound.     Hold, take my ring.   SERVINGMAN. My lord, I had forgot to tell your lordship,     To-day, as I came by, I called there-     But I shall grieve you to report the rest.   YORK. What is\'t, knave?   SERVINGMAN. An hour before I came, the Duchess died.   YORK. God for his mercy! what a tide of woes     Comes rushing on this woeful land at once!     I know not what to do. I would to God,     So my untruth had not provok\'d him to it,     The King had cut off my head with my brother\'s.     What, are there no posts dispatch\'d for Ireland?     How shall we do for money for these wars?     Come, sister-cousin, I would say-pray, pardon me.     Go, fellow, get thee home, provide some carts,       And bring away the armour that is there.                                                  Exit SERVINGMAN     Gentlemen, will you go muster men?     If I know how or which way to order these affairs     Thus disorderly thrust into my hands,     Never believe me. Both are my kinsmen.     T\'one is my sovereign, whom both my oath     And duty bids defend; t\'other again     Is my kinsman, whom the King hath wrong\'d,     Whom conscience and my kindred bids to right.     Well, somewhat we must do.-Come, cousin,     I\'ll dispose of you. Gentlemen, go muster up your men     And meet me presently at Berkeley.     I should to Plashy too,     But time will not permit. All is uneven,     And everything is left at six and seven.                                            Exeunt YORK and QUEEN   BUSHY. The wind sits fair for news to go to Ireland.     But none returns. For us to levy power     Proportionable to the enemy       Is all unpossible.   GREEN. Besides, our nearness to the King in love     Is near the hate of those love not the King.   BAGOT. And that is the wavering commons; for their love     Lies in their purses; and whoso empties them,     By so much fills their hearts with deadly hate.   BUSHY. Wherein the King stands generally condemn\'d.   BAGOT. If judgment lie in them, then so do we,     Because we ever have been near the King.   GREEN. Well, I will for refuge straight to Bristow Castle.     The Earl of Wiltshire is already there.   BUSHY. Thither will I with you; for little office     Will the hateful commons perform for us,     Except Eke curs to tear us all to pieces.     Will you go along with us?   BAGOT. No; I will to Ireland to his Majesty.     Farewell. If heart\'s presages be not vain,     We three here part that ne\'er shall meet again.   BUSHY. That\'s as York thrives to beat back Bolingbroke.   GREEN. Alas, poor Duke! the task he undertakes       Is numb\'ring sands and drinking oceans dry.     Where one on his side fights, thousands will fly.     Farewell at once-for once, for all, and ever.   BUSHY. Well, we may meet again.   BAGOT. I fear me, never.                                Exeunt     SCENE 3. Gloucestershire  Enter BOLINGBROKE and NORTHUMBERLAND, forces    BOLINGBROKE. How far is it, my lord, to Berkeley now?   NORTHUMBERLAND. Believe me, noble lord,     I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire.     These high wild hills and rough uneven ways     Draws out our miles, and makes them wearisome;     And yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar,     Making the hard way sweet and delectable.     But I bethink me what a weary way     From Ravenspurgh to Cotswold will be found     In Ross and Willoughby, wanting your company,     Which, I protest, hath very much beguil\'d     The tediousness and process of my travel.     But theirs is sweet\'ned with the hope to have     The present benefit which I possess;     And hope to joy is little less in joy     Than hope enjoy\'d. By this the weary lords     Shall make their way seem short, as mine hath done       By sight of what I have, your noble company.   BOLINGBROKE. Of much less value is my company     Than your good words. But who comes here?                   Enter HARRY PERCY    NORTHUMBERLAND. It is my son, young Harry Percy,     Sent from my brother Worcester, whencesoever.     Harry, how fares your uncle?   PERCY. I had thought, my lord, to have learn\'d his health of you.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Why, is he not with the Queen?   PERCY. No, my good lord; he hath forsook the court,     Broken his staff of office, and dispers\'d     The household of the King.   NORTHUMBERLAND. What was his reason?     He was not so resolv\'d when last we spake together.   PERCY. Because your lordship was proclaimed traitor.     But he, my lord, is gone to Ravenspurgh,     To offer service to the Duke of Hereford;     And sent me over by Berkeley, to discover       What power the Duke of York had levied there;     Then with directions to repair to Ravenspurgh.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Have you forgot the Duke of Hereford, boy?   PERCY. No, my good lord; for that is not forgot     Which ne\'er I did remember; to my knowledge,     I never in my life did look on him.   NORTHUMBERLAND. Then learn to know him now; this is the Duke.   PERCY. My gracious lord, I tender you my service,     Such as it is, being tender, raw, and young;     Which elder days shall ripen, and confirm     To more approved service and desert.   BOLINGBROKE. I thank thee, gentle Percy; and be sure     I count myself in nothing else so happy     As in a soul rememb\'ring my good friends;     And as my fortune ripens with thy love,     It shall be still thy true love\'s recompense.     My heart this covenant makes, my hand thus seals it.   NORTHUMBERLAND. How far is it to Berkeley? And what stir     Keeps good old York there with his men of war?   PERCY. There stands the castle, by yon tuft of trees,       Mann\'d with three hundred men, as I have heard;     And in it are the Lords of York, Berkeley, and Seymour-     None else of name and noble estimate.                    Enter Ross and WILLOUGHBY    NORTHUMBERLAND. Here come the Lords of Ross and Willoughby,     Bloody with spurring, fiery-red with haste.   BOLINGBROKE. Welcome, my lords. I wot your love pursues     A banish\'d traitor. All my treasury     Is yet but unfelt thanks, which, more enrich\'d,     Shall be your love and labour\'s recompense.   ROSS. Your presence makes us rich, most noble lord.   WILLOUGHBY. And far surmounts our labour to attain it.   BOLINGBROKE. Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor;     Which, till my infant fortune comes to years,     Stands for my bounty. But who comes here?                       Enter BERKELEY      NORTHUMBERLAND. It is my Lord of Berkeley, as I guess.   BERKELEY. My Lord of Hereford, my message is to you.   BOLINGBROKE. My lord, my answer is-\'to Lancaster\';     And I am come to seek that name in England;     And I must find that title in your tongue     Before I make reply to aught you say.   BERKELEY. Mistake me not, my lord; \'tis not my meaning     To raze one title of your honour out.     To you, my lord, I come-what lord you will-     From the most gracious regent of this land,     The Duke of York, to know what pricks you on     To take advantage of the absent time,     And fright our native peace with self-borne arms.                   Enter YORK, attended    BOLINGBROKE. I shall not need transport my words by you;     Here comes his Grace in person. My noble uncle!                                                      [Kneels]   YORK. Show me thy humble heart, and not thy knee,       Whose duty is deceivable and false.   BOLINGBROKE. My gracious uncle!-   YORK. Tut, tut!     Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle.     I am no traitor\'s uncle; and that word \'grace\'     In an ungracious mouth is but profane.     Why have those banish\'d and forbidden legs     Dar\'d once to touch a dust of England\'s ground?     But then more \'why?\'-why have they dar\'d to march     So many miles upon her peaceful bosom,     Frighting her pale-fac\'d villages with war     And ostentation of despised arms?     Com\'st thou because the anointed King is hence?     Why, foolish boy, the King is left behind,     And in my loyal bosom lies his power.     Were I but now lord of such hot youth     As when brave Gaunt, thy father, and myself     Rescued the Black Prince, that young Mars of men,     From forth the ranks of many thousand French,     O, then how quickly should this arm of mine,       Now prisoner to the palsy, chastise the     And minister correction to thy fault!   BOLINGBROKE My gracious uncle, let me know my fault;     On what condition stands it and wherein?   YORK. Even in condition of the worst degree-     In gross rebellion and detested treason.     Thou art a banish\'d man, and here art come     Before the expiration of thy time,     In braving arms against thy sovereign.   BOLINGBROKE. As I was banish\'d, I was banish\'d Hereford;     But as I come, I come for Lancaster.     And, noble uncle, I beseech your Grace     Look on my wrongs with an indifferent eye.     You are my father, for methinks in you     I see old Gaunt alive. O, then, my father,     Will you permit that I shall stand condemn\'d     A wandering vagabond; my rights and royalties     Pluck\'d from my arms perforce, and given away     To upstart unthrifts? Wherefore was I born?     If that my cousin king be King in England,       It must be granted I am Duke of Lancaster.     You have a son, Aumerle, my noble cousin;     Had you first died, and he been thus trod down,     He should have found his uncle Gaunt a father     To rouse his wrongs and chase them to the bay.     I am denied to sue my livery here,     And yet my letters patents give me leave.     My father\'s goods are all distrain\'d and sold;     And these and all are all amiss employ\'d.     What would you have me do? I am a subject,     And I challenge law-attorneys are denied me;     And therefore personally I lay my claim     To my inheritance of free descent.   NORTHUMBERLAND. The noble Duke hath been too much abused.   ROSS. It stands your Grace upon to do him right.   WILLOUGHBY. Base men by his endowments are made great.   YORK. My lords of England, let me tell you this:     I have had feeling of my cousin\'s wrongs,     And labour\'d all I could to do him right;     But in this kind to come, in braving arms,       Be his own carver and cut out his way,     To find out right with wrong-it may not be;     And you that do abet him in this kind     Cherish rebellion, and are rebels all.   NORTHUMBERLAND. The noble Duke hath sworn his coming is     But for his own; and for the right of that     We all have strongly sworn to give him aid;     And let him never see joy that breaks that oath!   YORK. Well, well, I see the issue of these arms.     I cannot mend it, I must needs confess,     Because my power is weak and all ill left;     But if I could, by Him that gave me life,     I would attach you all and make you stoop     Unto the sovereign mercy of the King;     But since I cannot, be it known unto you     I do remain as neuter. So, fare you well;     Unless you please to enter in the castle,     And there repose you for this night.   BOLINGBROKE. An offer, uncle, that we will accept.     But we must win your Grace to go with us       To Bristow Castle, which they say is held     By Bushy, Bagot, and their complices,     The caterpillars of the commonwealth,     Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away.   YORK. It may be I will go with you; but yet I\'ll pause,     For I am loath to break our country\'s laws.     Nor friends nor foes, to me welcome you are.     Things past redress are now with me past care.        Exeunt     SCENE 4. A camp in Wales  Enter EARL OF SALISBURY and a WELSH CAPTAIN    CAPTAIN. My Lord of Salisbury, we have stay\'d ten days     And hardly kept our countrymen together,     And yet we hear no tidings from the King;     Therefore we will disperse ourselves. Farewell.   SALISBURY. Stay yet another day, thou trusty Welshman;     The King reposeth all his confidence in thee.   CAPTAIN. \'Tis thought the King is dead; we will not stay.     The bay trees in our country are all wither\'d,     And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;     The pale-fac\'d moon looks bloody on the earth,     And lean-look\'d prophets whisper fearful change;     Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap-     The one in fear to lose what they enjoy,     The other to enjoy by rage and war.     These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.     Farewell. Our countrymen are gone and fled,     As well assur\'d Richard their King is dead.             Exit     SALISBURY. Ah, Richard, with the eyes of heavy mind,     I see thy glory like a shooting star     Fall to the base earth from the firmament!     The sun sets weeping in the lowly west,     Witnessing storms to come, woe, and unrest;     Thy friends are fled, to wait upon thy foes;     And crossly to thy good all fortune goes.               Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. BOLINGBROKE\'S camp at Bristol  Enter BOLINGBROKE, YORK, NORTHUMBERLAND, PERCY, ROSS, WILLOUGHBY, BUSHY and GREEN, prisoners    BOLINGBROKE. Bring forth these men.     Bushy and Green, I will not vex your souls-     Since presently your souls must part your bodies-     With too much urging your pernicious lives,     For \'twere no charity; yet, to wash your blood     From off my hands, here in the view of men     I will unfold some causes of your deaths:     You have misled a prince, a royal king,     A happy gentleman in blood and lineaments,     By you unhappied and disfigured clean;     You have in manner with your sinful hours     Made a divorce betwixt his queen and him;     Broke the possession of a royal bed,     And stain\'d the beauty of a fair queen\'s cheeks     With tears drawn from her eyes by your foul wrongs;     Myself-a prince by fortune of my birth,       Near to the King in blood, and near in love     Till you did make him misinterpret me-     Have stoop\'d my neck under your injuries     And sigh\'d my English breath in foreign clouds,     Eating the bitter bread of banishment,     Whilst you have fed upon my signories,     Dispark\'d my parks and fell\'d my forest woods,     From my own windows torn my household coat,     Raz\'d out my imprese, leaving me no sign     Save men\'s opinions and my living blood     To show the world I am a gentleman.     This and much more, much more than twice all this,     Condemns you to the death. See them delivered over     To execution and the hand of death.   BUSHY. More welcome is the stroke of death to me     Than Bolingbroke to England. Lords, farewell.   GREEN. My comfort is that heaven will take our souls,     And plague injustice with the pains of hell.   BOLINGBROKE. My Lord Northumberland, see them dispatch\'d.            Exeunt NORTHUMBERLAND, and others, with the prisoners       Uncle, you say the Queen is at your house;     For God\'s sake, fairly let her be entreated.     Tell her I send to her my kind commends;     Take special care my greetings be delivered.   YORK. A gentleman of mine I have dispatch\'d     With letters of your love to her at large.   BOLINGBROKE. Thanks, gentle uncle. Come, lords, away,     To fight with Glendower and his complices.     Awhile to work, and after holiday.                    Exeunt     SCENE 2. The coast of Wales. A castle in view  Drums. Flourish and colours. Enter the KING, the BISHOP OF CARLISLE, AUMERLE, and soldiers    KING RICHARD. Barkloughly Castle can they this at hand?   AUMERLE. Yea, my lord. How brooks your Grace the air     After your late tossing on the breaking seas?   KING RICHARD. Needs must I like it well. I weep for joy     To stand upon my kingdom once again.     Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand,     Though rebels wound thee with their horses\' hoofs.     As a long-parted mother with her child     Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting,     So weeping-smiling greet I thee, my earth,     And do thee favours with my royal hands.     Feed not thy sovereign\'s foe, my gentle earth,     Nor with thy sweets comfort his ravenous sense;     But let thy spiders, that suck up thy venom,     And heavy-gaited toads, lie in their way,     Doing annoyance to the treacherous feet       Which with usurping steps do trample thee;     Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies;     And when they from thy bosom pluck a flower,     Guard it, I pray thee, with a lurking adder,     Whose double tongue may with a mortal touch     Throw death upon thy sovereign\'s enemies.     Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords.     This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones     Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king     Shall falter under foul rebellion\'s arms.   CARLISLE. Fear not, my lord; that Power that made you king     Hath power to keep you king in spite of all.     The means that heaven yields must be embrac\'d     And not neglected; else, if heaven would,     And we will not, heaven\'s offer we refuse,     The proffered means of succour and redress.   AUMERLE. He means, my lord, that we are too remiss;     Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security,     Grows strong and great in substance and in power.   KING RICHARD. Discomfortable cousin! know\'st thou not       That when the searching eye of heaven is hid,     Behind the globe, that lights the lower world,     Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen     In murders and in outrage boldly here;     But when from under this terrestrial ball     He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines     And darts his light through every guilty hole,     Then murders, treasons, and detested sins,     The cloak of night being pluck\'d from off their backs,     Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves?     So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke,     Who all this while hath revell\'d in the night,     Whilst we were wand\'ring with the Antipodes,     Shall see us rising in our throne, the east,     His treasons will sit blushing in his face,     Not able to endure the sight of day,     But self-affrighted tremble at his sin.     Not all the water in the rough rude sea     Can wash the balm off from an anointed king;     The breath of worldly men cannot depose       The deputy elected by the Lord.     For every man that Bolingbroke hath press\'d     To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown,     God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay     A glorious angel. Then, if angels fight,     Weak men must fall; for heaven still guards the right.                   Enter SALISBURY      Welcome, my lord. How far off lies your power?   SALISBURY. Nor near nor farther off, my gracious lord,     Than this weak arm. Discomfort guides my tongue,     And bids me speak of nothing but despair.     One day too late, I fear me, noble lord,     Hath clouded all thy happy days on earth.     O, call back yesterday, bid time return,     And thou shalt have twelve thousand fighting men!     To-day, to-day, unhappy day, too late,     O\'erthrows thy joys, friends, fortune, and thy state;     For all the Welshmen, hearing thou wert dead,       Are gone to Bolingbroke, dispers\'d, and fled.   AUMERLE. Comfort, my liege, why looks your Grace so pale?   KING RICHARD. But now the blood of twenty thousand men     Did triumph in my face, and they are fled;     And, till so much blood thither come again,     Have I not reason to look pale and dead?     All souls that will be safe, fly from my side;     For time hath set a blot upon my pride.   AUMERLE. Comfort, my liege; remember who you are.   KING RICHARD. I had forgot myself; am I not King?     Awake, thou coward majesty! thou sleepest.     Is not the King\'s name twenty thousand names?     Arm, arm, my name! a puny subject strikes     At thy great glory. Look not to the ground,     Ye favourites of a king; are we not high?     High be our thoughts. I know my uncle York     Hath power enough to serve our turn. But who comes here?                     Enter SCROOP      SCROOP. More health and happiness betide my liege     Than can my care-tun\'d tongue deliver him.   KING RICHARD. Mine ear is open and my heart prepar\'d.     The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold.     Say, is my kingdom lost? Why, \'twas my care,     And what loss is it to be rid of care?     Strives Bolingbroke to be as great as we?     Greater he shall not be; if he serve God,     We\'ll serve him too, and be his fellow so.     Revolt our subjects? That we cannot mend;     They break their faith to God as well as us.     Cry woe, destruction, ruin, and decay-     The worst is death, and death will have his day.   SCROOP. Glad am I that your Highness is so arm\'d     To bear the tidings of calamity.     Like an unseasonable stormy day     Which makes the silver rivers drown their shores,     As if the world were all dissolv\'d to tears,     So high above his limits swells the rage     Of Bolingbroke, covering your fearful land       With hard bright steel and hearts harder than steel.     White-beards have arm\'d their thin and hairless scalps     Against thy majesty; boys, with women\'s voices,     Strive to speak big, and clap their female joints     In stiff unwieldy arms against thy crown;     Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows     Of double-fatal yew against thy state;     Yea, distaff-women manage rusty bills     Against thy seat: both young and old rebel,     And all goes worse than I have power to tell.   KING RICHARD. Too well, too well thou tell\'st a tale so in.     Where is the Earl of Wiltshire? Where is Bagot?     What is become of Bushy? Where is Green?     That they have let the dangerous enemy     Measure our confines with such peaceful steps?     If we prevail, their heads shall pay for it.     I warrant they have made peace with Bolingbroke.   SCROOP. Peace have they made with him indeed, my lord.   KING RICHARD. O villains, vipers, damn\'d without redemption!     Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!       Snakes, in my heart-blood warm\'d, that sting my heart!     Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas!     Would they make peace? Terrible hell make war     Upon their spotted souls for this offence!   SCROOP. Sweet love, I see, changing his property,     Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate.     Again uncurse their souls; their peace is made     With heads, and not with hands; those whom you curse     Have felt the worst of death\'s destroying wound     And lie full low, grav\'d in the hollow ground.   AUMERLE. Is Bushy, Green, and the Earl of Wiltshire dead?   SCROOP. Ay, all of them at Bristow lost their heads.   AUMERLE. Where is the Duke my father with his power?   KING RICHARD. No matter where-of comfort no man speak.     Let\'s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;     Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes     Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.     Let\'s choose executors and talk of wills;     And yet not so-for what can we bequeath     Save our deposed bodies to the ground?       Our lands, our lives, and an, are Bolingbroke\'s.     And nothing can we can our own but death     And that small model of the barren earth     Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.     For God\'s sake let us sit upon the ground     And tell sad stories of the death of kings:     How some have been depos\'d, some slain in war,     Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos\'d,     Some poison\'d by their wives, some sleeping kill\'d,     All murder\'d-for within the hollow crown     That rounds the mortal temples of a king     Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits,     Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp;     Allowing him a breath, a little scene,     To monarchize, be fear\'d, and kill with looks;     Infusing him with self and vain conceit,     As if this flesh which walls about our life     Were brass impregnable; and, humour\'d thus,     Comes at the last, and with a little pin     Bores through his castle wall, and farewell, king!       Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood     With solemn reverence; throw away respect,     Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty;     For you have but mistook me all this while.     I live with bread like you, feel want,     Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,     How can you say to me I am a king?   CARLISLE. My lord, wise men ne\'er sit and wail their woes,     But presently prevent the ways to wail.     To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength,     Gives, in your weakness, strength unto your foe,     And so your follies fight against yourself.     Fear and be slain-no worse can come to fight;     And fight and die is death destroying death,     Where fearing dying pays death servile breath.   AUMERLE. My father hath a power; inquire of him,     And learn to make a body of a limb.   KING RICHARD. Thou chid\'st me well. Proud Bolingbroke, I come     To change blows with thee for our day of doom.     This ague fit of fear is over-blown;       An easy task it is to win our own.     Say, Scroop, where lies our uncle with his power?     Speak sweetly, man, although thy looks be sour.   SCROOP. Men judge by the complexion of the sky     The state in inclination of the day;     So may you by my dull and heavy eye,     My tongue hath but a heavier tale to say.     I play the torturer, by small and small     To lengthen out the worst that must be spoken:     Your uncle York is join\'d with Bolingbroke;     And all your northern castles yielded up,     And all your southern gentlemen in arms     Upon his party.   KING RICHARD. Thou hast said enough.       [To AUMERLE] Beshrew thee, cousin, which didst lead me forth     Of that sweet way I was in to despair!     What say you now? What comfort have we now?     By heaven, I\'ll hate him everlastingly     That bids me be of comfort any more.     Go to Flint Castle; there I\'ll pine away;       A king, woe\'s slave, shall kingly woe obey.     That power I have, discharge; and let them go     To ear the land that hath some hope to grow,     For I have none. Let no man speak again     To alter this, for counsel is but vain.   AUMERLE. My liege, one word.   KING RICHARD. He does me double wrong     That wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue.     Discharge my followers; let them hence away,     From Richard\'s night to Bolingbroke\'s fair day.       Exeunt     SCENE 3. Wales. Before Flint Castle  Enter, with drum and colours, BOLINGBROKE, YORK, NORTHUMBERLAND, and forces    BOLINGBROKE. So that by this intelligence we learn     The Welshmen are dispers\'d; and Salisbury     Is gone to meet the King, who lately landed     With some few private friends upon this coast.   NORTHUMBERLAND. The news is very fair and good, my lord.     Richard not far from hence hath hid his head.   YORK. It would beseem the Lord Northumberland     To say \'King Richard.\' Alack the heavy day     When such a sacred king should hide his head!   NORTHUMBERLAND. Your Grace mistakes; only to be brief,     Left I his title out.   YORK. The time hath been,     Would you have been so brief with him, he would     Have been so brief with you to shorten you,     For taking so the head, your whole head\'s length.   BOLINGBROKE. Mistake not, uncle, further than you should.     YORK. Take not, good cousin, further than you should,     Lest you mistake. The heavens are over our heads.   BOLINGBROKE. I know it, uncle; and oppose not myself     Against their will. But who comes here?                      Enter PERCY      Welcome, Harry. What, will not this castle yield?   PIERCY. The castle royally is mann\'d, my lord,     Against thy entrance.   BOLINGBROKE. Royally!     Why, it contains no king?   PERCY. Yes, my good lord,     It doth contain a king; King Richard lies     Within the limits of yon lime and stone;     And with him are the Lord Aumerle, Lord Salisbury,     Sir Stephen Scroop, besides a clergyman     Of holy reverence; who, I cannot learn.   NORTHUMBERLAND. O, belike it is the Bishop of Carlisle.   BOLINGBROKE. [To NORTHUMBERLAND] Noble lord,       Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle;     Through brazen trumpet send the breath of parley     Into his ruin\'d ears, and thus deliver:     Henry Bolingbroke     On both his knees doth kiss King Richard\'s hand,     And sends allegiance and true faith of heart     To his most royal person; hither come     Even at his feet to lay my arms and power,     Provided that my banishment repeal\'d     And lands restor\'d again be freely granted;     If not, I\'ll use the advantage of my power     And lay the summer\'s dust with showers of blood     Rain\'d from the wounds of slaughtered Englishmen;     The which how far off from the mind of Bolingbroke     It is such crimson tempest should bedrench     The fresh green lap of fair King Richard\'s land,     My stooping duty tenderly shall show.     Go, signify as much, while here we march     Upon the grassy carpet of this plain.            [NORTHUMBERLAND advances to the Castle, with a trumpet]       Let\'s march without the noise of threat\'ning drum,     That from this castle\'s tottered battlements     Our fair appointments may be well perus\'d.     Methinks King Richard and myself should meet     With no less terror than the elements     Of fire and water, when their thund\'ring shock     At meeting tears the cloudy cheeks of heaven.     Be he the fire, I\'ll be the yielding water;     The rage be his, whilst on the earth I rain     My waters-on the earth, and not on him.     March on, and mark King Richard how he looks.        Parle without, and answer within; then a flourish.       Enter on the walls, the KING, the BISHOP OF CARLISLE,       AUMERLE, SCROOP, and SALISBURY      See, see, King Richard doth himself appear,     As doth the blushing discontented sun     From out the fiery portal of the east,     When he perceives the envious clouds are bent       To dim his glory and to stain the track     Of his bright passage to the occident.   YORK. Yet he looks like a king. Behold, his eye,     As bright as is the eagle\'s, lightens forth     Controlling majesty. Alack, alack, for woe,     That any harm should stain so fair a show!   KING RICHARD. [To NORTHUMBERLAND] We are amaz\'d; and thus long       have we stood     To watch the fearful bending of thy knee,     Because we thought ourself thy lawful King;     And if we be, how dare thy joints forget     To pay their awful duty to our presence?     If we be not, show us the hand of God     That hath dismiss\'d us from our stewardship;     For well we know no hand of blood and bone     Can gripe the sacred handle of our sceptre,     Unless he do profane, steal, or usurp.     And though you think that all, as you have done,     Have torn their souls by turning them from us,     And we are barren and bereft of friends,       Yet know-my master, God omnipotent,     Is mustering in his clouds on our behalf     Armies of pestilence; and they shall strike     Your children yet unborn and unbegot,     That lift your vassal hands against my head     And threat the glory of my precious crown.     Tell Bolingbroke, for yon methinks he stands,     That every stride he makes upon my land     Is dangerous treason; he is come to open     The purple testament of bleeding war;     But ere the crown he looks for live in peace,     Ten thousand bloody crowns of mothers\' sons     Shall ill become the flower of England\'s face,     Change the complexion of her maid-pale peace     To scarlet indignation, and bedew     Her pastures\' grass with faithful English blood.   NORTHUMBERLAND. The King of Heaven forbid our lord the King     Should so with civil and uncivil arms     Be rush\'d upon! Thy thrice noble cousin,     Harry Bolingbroke, doth humbly kiss thy hand;       And by the honourable tomb he swears     That stands upon your royal grandsire\'s bones,     And by the royalties of both your bloods,     Currents that spring from one most gracious head,     And by the buried hand of warlike Gaunt,     And by the worth and honour of himself,     Comprising all that may be sworn or said,     His coming hither hath no further scope     Than for his lineal royalties, and to beg     Enfranchisement immediate on his knees;     Which on thy royal party granted once,     His glittering arms he will commend to rust,     His barbed steeds to stables, and his heart     To faithful service of your Majesty.     This swears he, as he is a prince, is just;     And as I am a gentleman I credit him.   KING RICHARD. Northumberland, say thus the King returns:     His noble cousin is right welcome hither;     And all the number of his fair demands     Shall be accomplish\'d without contradiction.       With all the gracious utterance thou hast     Speak to his gentle hearing kind commends.     [To AUMERLE] We do debase ourselves, cousin, do we not,     To look so poorly and to speak so fair?     Shall we call back Northumberland, and send     Defiance to the traitor, and so die?   AUMERLE. No, good my lord; let\'s fight with gentle words     Till time lend friends, and friends their helpful swords.   KING RICHARD. O God, O God! that e\'er this tongue of mine     That laid the sentence of dread banishment     On yon proud man should take it off again     With words of sooth! O that I were as great     As is my grief, or lesser than my name!     Or that I could forget what I have been!     Or not remember what I must be now!     Swell\'st thou, proud heart? I\'ll give thee scope to beat,     Since foes have scope to beat both thee and me.   AUMERLE. Northumberland comes back from Bolingbroke.   KING RICHARD. What must the King do now? Must he submit?     The King shall do it. Must he be depos\'d?       The King shall be contented. Must he lose     The name of king? A God\'s name, let it go.     I\'ll give my jewels for a set of beads,     My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,     My gay apparel for an almsman\'s gown,     My figur\'d goblets for a dish of wood,     My sceptre for a palmer\'s walking staff,     My subjects for a pair of carved saints,     And my large kingdom for a little grave,     A little little grave, an obscure grave-     Or I\'ll be buried in the king\'s high way,     Some way of common trade, where subjects\' feet     May hourly trample on their sovereign\'s head;     For on my heart they tread now whilst I live,     And buried once, why not upon my head?     Aumerle, thou weep\'st, my tender-hearted cousin!     We\'ll make foul weather with despised tears;     Our sighs and they shall lodge the summer corn     And make a dearth in this revolting land.     Or shall we play the wantons with our woes       And make some pretty match with shedding tears?     As thus: to drop them still upon one place     Till they have fretted us a pair of graves     Within the earth; and, therein laid-there lies     Two kinsmen digg\'d their graves with weeping eyes.     Would not this ill do well? Well, well, I see     I talk but idly, and you laugh at me.     Most mighty prince, my Lord Northumberland,     What says King Bolingbroke? Will his Majesty     Give Richard leave to live till Richard die?     You make a leg, and Bolingbroke says ay.   NORTHUMBERLAND. My lord, in the base court he doth attend     To speak with you; may it please you to come down?   KING RICHARD. Down, down I come, like glist\'ring Phaethon,     Wanting the manage of unruly jades.     In the base court? Base court, where kings grow base,     To come at traitors\' calls, and do them grace.     In the base court? Come down? Down, court! down, king!     For night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing.                                                Exeunt from above     BOLINGBROKE. What says his Majesty?   NORTHUMBERLAND. Sorrow and grief of heart     Makes him speak fondly, like a frantic man;     Yet he is come.            Enter the KING, and his attendants, below    BOLINGBROKE. Stand all apart,     And show fair duty to his Majesty.   [He kneels down]     My gracious lord-   KING RICHARD. Fair cousin, you debase your princely knee     To make the base earth proud with kissing it.     Me rather had my heart might feel your love     Than my unpleas\'d eye see your courtesy.     Up, cousin, up; your heart is up, I know,     [Touching his own head] Thus high at least, although your       knee be low.   BOLINGBROKE. My gracious lord, I come but for mine own.   KING RICHARD. Your own is yours, and I am yours, and all.   BOLINGBROKE. So far be mine, my most redoubted lord,       As my true service shall deserve your love.   KING RICHARD. Well you deserve. They well deserve to have     That know the strong\'st and surest way to get.     Uncle, give me your hands; nay, dry your eyes:     Tears show their love, but want their remedies.     Cousin, I am too young to be your father,     Though you are old enough to be my heir.     What you will have, I\'ll give, and willing too;     For do we must what force will have us do.     Set on towards London. Cousin, is it so?   BOLINGBROKE. Yea, my good lord.   KING RICHARD. Then I must not say no.         Flourish. Exeunt     SCENE 4. The DUKE OF YORK\'s garden  Enter the QUEEN and two LADIES    QUEEN. What sport shall we devise here in this garden     To drive away the heavy thought of care?   LADY. Madam, we\'ll play at bowls.   QUEEN. \'Twill make me think the world is full of rubs     And that my fortune runs against the bias.   LADY. Madam, we\'ll dance.   QUEEN. My legs can keep no measure in delight,     When my poor heart no measure keeps in grief;     Therefore no dancing, girl; some other sport.   LADY. Madam, we\'ll tell tales.   QUEEN. Of sorrow or of joy?   LADY. Of either, madam.   QUEEN. Of neither, girl;     For if of joy, being altogether wanting,     It doth remember me the more of sorrow;     Or if of grief, being altogether had,     It adds more sorrow to my want of joy;       For what I have I need not to repeat,     And what I want it boots not to complain.   LADY. Madam, I\'ll sing.   QUEEN. \'Tis well\' that thou hast cause;     But thou shouldst please me better wouldst thou weep.   LADY. I could weep, madam, would it do you good.   QUEEN. And I could sing, would weeping do me good,     And never borrow any tear of thee.             Enter a GARDENER and two SERVANTS      But stay, here come the gardeners.     Let\'s step into the shadow of these trees.     My wretchedness unto a row of pins,     They will talk of state, for every one doth so     Against a change: woe is forerun with woe.                                        [QUEEN and LADIES retire]   GARDENER. Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks,     Which, like unruly children, make their sire     Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight;       Give some supportance to the bending twigs.     Go thou, and Eke an executioner     Cut off the heads of too fast growing sprays     That look too lofty in our commonwealth:     All must be even in our government.     You thus employ\'d, I will go root away     The noisome weeds which without profit suck     The soil\'s fertility from wholesome flowers.   SERVANT. Why should we, in the compass of a pale,     Keep law and form and due proportion,     Showing, as in a model, our firm estate,     When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,     Is full of weeds; her fairest flowers chok\'d up,     Her fruit trees all unprun\'d, her hedges ruin\'d,     Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs     Swarming with caterpillars?   GARDENER. Hold thy peace.     He that hath suffer\'d this disorder\'d spring     Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf;     The weeds which his broad-spreading leaves did shelter,       That seem\'d in eating him to hold him up,     Are pluck\'d up root and all by Bolingbroke-     I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green.   SERVANT. What, are they dead?   GARDENER. They are; and Bolingbroke     Hath seiz\'d the wasteful King. O, what pity is it     That he had not so trimm\'d and dress\'d his land     As we this garden! We at time of year     Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees,     Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood,     With too much riches it confound itself;     Had he done so to great and growing men,     They might have Ev\'d to bear, and he to taste     Their fruits of duty. Superfluous branches     We lop away, that bearing boughs may live;     Had he done so, himself had home the crown,     Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.   SERVANT. What, think you the King shall be deposed?   GARDENER. Depress\'d he is already, and depos\'d     \'Tis doubt he will be. Letters came last night       To a dear friend of the good Duke of York\'s     That tell black tidings.   QUEEN. O, I am press\'d to death through want of speaking!                                                 [Coming forward]     Thou, old Adam\'s likeness, set to dress this garden,     How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news?     What Eve, what serpent, hath suggested the     To make a second fall of cursed man?     Why dost thou say King Richard is depos\'d?     Dar\'st thou, thou little better thing than earth,     Divine his downfall? Say, where, when, and how,     Cam\'st thou by this ill tidings? Speak, thou wretch.   GARDENER. Pardon me, madam; little joy have     To breathe this news; yet what I say is true.     King Richard, he is in the mighty hold     Of Bolingbroke. Their fortunes both are weigh\'d.     In your lord\'s scale is nothing but himself,     And some few vanities that make him light;     But in the balance of great Bolingbroke,     Besides himself, are all the English peers,       And with that odds he weighs King Richard down.     Post you to London, and you will find it so;     I speak no more than every one doth know.   QUEEN. Nimble mischance, that art so light of foot,     Doth not thy embassage belong to me,     And am I last that knows it? O, thou thinkest     To serve me last, that I may longest keep     Thy sorrow in my breast. Come, ladies, go     To meet at London London\'s King in woe.     What, was I born to this, that my sad look     Should grace the triumph of great Bolingbroke?     Gard\'ner, for telling me these news of woe,     Pray God the plants thou graft\'st may never grow!                                          Exeunt QUEEN and LADIES   GARDENER. Poor Queen, so that thy state might be no worse,     I would my skill were subject to thy curse.     Here did she fall a tear; here in this place     I\'ll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace.     Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen,     In the remembrance of a weeping queen.                Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE 1. Westminster Hall  Enter, as to the Parliament, BOLINGBROKE, AUMERLE, NORTHUMBERLAND, PERCY, FITZWATER, SURREY, the BISHOP OF CARLISLE, the ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER, and others; HERALD, OFFICERS, and BAGOT    BOLINGBROKE. Call forth Bagot.     Now, Bagot, freely speak thy mind-     What thou dost know of noble Gloucester\'s death;     Who wrought it with the King, and who perform\'d     The bloody office of his timeless end.   BAGOT. Then set before my face the Lord Aumerle.   BOLINGBROKE. Cousin, stand forth, and look upon that man.   BAGOT. My Lord Aumerle, I know your daring tongue     Scorns to unsay what once it hath deliver\'d.     In that dead time when Gloucester\'s death was plotted     I heard you say \'Is not my arm of length,     That reacheth from the restful English Court     As far as Calais, to mine uncle\'s head?\'     Amongst much other talk that very time       I heard you say that you had rather refuse     The offer of an hundred thousand crowns     Than Bolingbroke\'s return to England;     Adding withal, how blest this land would be     In this your cousin\'s death.   AUMERLE. Princes, and noble lords,     What answer shall I make to this base man?     Shall I so much dishonour my fair stars     On equal terms to give him chastisement?     Either I must, or have mine honour soil\'d     With the attainder of his slanderous lips.     There is my gage, the manual seal of death     That marks thee out for hell. I say thou liest,     And will maintain what thou hast said is false     In thy heart-blood, through being all too base     To stain the temper of my knightly sword.   BOLINGBROKE. Bagot, forbear; thou shalt not take it up.   AUMERLE. Excepting one, I would he were the best     In all this presence that hath mov\'d me so.   FITZWATER. If that thy valour stand on sympathy,       There is my gage, Aumerle, in gage to thine.     By that fair sun which shows me where thou stand\'st,     I heard thee say, and vauntingly thou spak\'st it,     That thou wert cause of noble Gloucester\'s death.     If thou deniest it twenty times, thou liest;     And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart,     Where it was forged, with my rapier\'s point.   AUMERLE. Thou dar\'st not, coward, live to see that day.   FITZWATER. Now, by my soul, I would it were this hour.   AUMERLE. Fitzwater, thou art damn\'d to hell for this.   PERCY. Aumerle, thou liest; his honour is as true     In this appeal as thou art an unjust;     And that thou art so, there I throw my gage,     To prove it on thee to the extremest point     Of mortal breathing. Seize it, if thou dar\'st.   AUMERLE. An if I do not, may my hands rot of     And never brandish more revengeful steel     Over the glittering helmet of my foe!   ANOTHER LORD. I task the earth to the like, forsworn Aumerle;     And spur thee on with fun as many lies       As may be halloa\'d in thy treacherous ear     From sun to sun. There is my honour\'s pawn;     Engage it to the trial, if thou darest.   AUMERLE. Who sets me else? By heaven, I\'ll throw at all!     I have a thousand spirits in one breast     To answer twenty thousand such as you.   SURREY. My Lord Fitzwater, I do remember well     The very time Aumerle and you did talk.   FITZWATER. \'Tis very true; you were in presence then,     And you can witness with me this is true.   SURREY. As false, by heaven, as heaven itself is true.   FITZWATER. Surrey, thou liest.   SURREY. Dishonourable boy!     That lie shall lie so heavy on my sword     That it shall render vengeance and revenge     Till thou the lie-giver and that lie do he     In earth as quiet as thy father\'s skull.     In proof whereof, there is my honour\'s pawn;     Engage it to the trial, if thou dar\'st.   FITZWATER. How fondly dost thou spur a forward horse!       If I dare eat, or drink, or breathe, or live,     I dare meet Surrey in a wilderness,     And spit upon him whilst I say he lies,     And lies, and lies. There is my bond of faith,     To tie thee to my strong correction.     As I intend to thrive in this new world,     Aumerle is guilty of my true appeal.     Besides, I heard the banish\'d Norfolk say     That thou, Aumerle, didst send two of thy men     To execute the noble Duke at Calais.   AUMERLE. Some honest Christian trust me with a gage     That Norfolk lies. Here do I throw down this,     If he may be repeal\'d to try his honour.   BOLINGBROKE. These differences shall all rest under gage     Till Norfolk be repeal\'d-repeal\'d he shall be     And, though mine enemy, restor\'d again     To all his lands and signories. When he is return\'d,     Against Aumerle we will enforce his trial.   CARLISLE. That honourable day shall never be seen.     Many a time hath banish\'d Norfolk fought       For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field,     Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross     Against black pagans, Turks, and Saracens;     And, toil\'d with works of war, retir\'d himself     To Italy; and there, at Venice, gave     His body to that pleasant country\'s earth,     And his pure soul unto his captain, Christ,     Under whose colours he had fought so long.   BOLINGBROKE. Why, Bishop, is Norfolk dead?   CARLISLE. As surely as I live, my lord.   BOLINGBROKE. Sweet peace conduct his sweet soul to the bosom     Of good old Abraham! Lords appellants,     Your differences shall all rest under gage     Till we assign you to your days of trial                   Enter YORK, attended    YORK. Great Duke of Lancaster, I come to the     From plume-pluck\'d Richard, who with willing soul     Adopts thee heir, and his high sceptre yields       To the possession of thy royal hand.     Ascend his throne, descending now from him-     And long live Henry, fourth of that name!   BOLINGBROKE. In God\'s name, I\'ll ascend the regal throne.   CARLISLE. Marry, God forbid!     Worst in this royal presence may I speak,     Yet best beseeming me to speak the truth.     Would God that any in this noble presence     Were enough noble to be upright judge     Of noble Richard! Then true noblesse would     Learn him forbearance from so foul a wrong.     What subject can give sentence on his king?     And who sits here that is not Richard\'s subject?     Thieves are not judg\'d but they are by to hear,     Although apparent guilt be seen in them;     And shall the figure of God\'s majesty,     His captain, steward, deputy elect,     Anointed, crowned, planted many years,     Be judg\'d by subject and inferior breath,     And he himself not present? O, forfend it, God,       That in a Christian climate souls refin\'d     Should show so heinous, black, obscene a deed!     I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks,     Stirr\'d up by God, thus boldly for his king.     My Lord of Hereford here, whom you call king,     Is a foul traitor to proud Hereford\'s king;     And if you crown him, let me prophesy-     The blood of English shall manure the ground,     And future ages groan for this foul act;     Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels,     And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars     Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound;     Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny,     Shall here inhabit, and this land be call\'d     The field of Golgotha and dead men\'s skulls.     O, if you raise this house against this house,     It will the woefullest division prove     That ever fell upon this cursed earth.     Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so,     Lest child, child\'s children, cry against you woe.     NORTHUMBERLAND. Well have you argued, sir; and, for your pains,     Of capital treason we arrest you here.     My Lord of Westminster, be it your charge     To keep him safely till his day of trial.     May it please you, lords, to grant the commons\' suit?   BOLINGBROKE. Fetch hither Richard, that in common view     He may surrender; so we shall proceed     Without suspicion.   YORK. I will be his conduct.                              Exit   BOLINGBROKE. Lords, you that here are under our arrest,     Procure your sureties for your days of answer.     Little are we beholding to your love,     And little look\'d for at your helping hands.        Re-enter YORK, with KING RICHARD, and OFFICERS                 bearing the regalia    KING RICHARD. Alack, why am I sent for to a king,     Before I have shook off the regal thoughts     Wherewith I reign\'d? I hardly yet have learn\'d       To insinuate, flatter, bow, and bend my knee.     Give sorrow leave awhile to tutor me     To this submission. Yet I well remember     The favours of these men. Were they not mine?     Did they not sometime cry \'All hail!\' to me?     So Judas did to Christ; but he, in twelve,     Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve thousand, none.     God save the King! Will no man say amen?     Am I both priest and clerk? Well then, amen.     God save the King! although I be not he;     And yet, amen, if heaven do think him me.     To do what service am I sent for hither?   YORK. To do that office of thine own good will     Which tired majesty did make thee offer-     The resignation of thy state and crown     To Henry Bolingbroke.   KING RICHARD. Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize the crown.     Here, cousin,     On this side my hand, and on that side thine.     Now is this golden crown like a deep well       That owes two buckets, filling one another;     The emptier ever dancing in the air,     The other down, unseen, and full of water.     That bucket down and fun of tears am I,     Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.   BOLINGBROKE. I thought you had been willing to resign.   KING RICHARD. My crown I am; but still my griefs are mine.     You may my glories and my state depose,     But not my griefs; still am I king of those.   BOLINGBROKE. Part of your cares you give me with your crown.   KING RICHARD. Your cares set up do not pluck my cares down.     My care is loss of care, by old care done;     Your care is gain of care, by new care won.     The cares I give I have, though given away;     They tend the crown, yet still with me they stay.   BOLINGBROKE. Are you contented to resign the crown?   KING RICHARD. Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be;     Therefore no no, for I resign to thee.     Now mark me how I will undo myself:     I give this heavy weight from off my head,       And this unwieldy sceptre from my hand,     The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;     With mine own tears I wash away my balm,     With mine own hands I give away my crown,     With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,     With mine own breath release all duteous oaths;     All pomp and majesty I do forswear;     My manors, rents, revenues, I forgo;     My acts, decrees, and statutes, I deny.     God pardon all oaths that are broke to me!     God keep all vows unbroke are made to thee!     Make me, that nothing have, with nothing griev\'d,     And thou with all pleas\'d, that hast an achiev\'d.     Long mayst thou live in Richard\'s seat to sit,     And soon lie Richard in an earthly pit.     God save King Henry, unking\'d Richard says,     And send him many years of sunshine days!     What more remains?   NORTHUMBERLAND. No more; but that you read     These accusations, and these grievous crimes       Committed by your person and your followers     Against the state and profit of this land;     That, by confessing them, the souls of men     May deem that you are worthily depos\'d.   KING RICHARD. Must I do so? And must I ravel out     My weav\'d-up follies? Gentle Northumberland,     If thy offences were upon record,     Would it not shame thee in so fair a troop     To read a lecture of them? If thou wouldst,     There shouldst thou find one heinous article,     Containing the deposing of a king     And cracking the strong warrant of an oath,     Mark\'d with a blot, damn\'d in the book of heaven.     Nay, all of you that stand and look upon me     Whilst that my wretchedness doth bait myself,     Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands,     Showing an outward pity-yet you Pilates     Have here deliver\'d me to my sour cross,     And water cannot wash away your sin.   NORTHUMBERLAND. My lord, dispatch; read o\'er these       articles.   KING RICHARD. Mine eyes are full of tears; I cannot see.     And yet salt water blinds them not so much     But they can see a sort of traitors here.     Nay, if I turn mine eyes upon myself,     I find myself a traitor with the rest;     For I have given here my soul\'s consent     T\'undeck the pompous body of a king;     Made glory base, and sovereignty a slave,     Proud majesty a subject, state a peasant.   NORTHUMBERLAND. My lord-   KING RICHARD. No lord of thine, thou haught insulting man,     Nor no man\'s lord; I have no name, no tide-     No, not that name was given me at the font-     But \'tis usurp\'d. Alack the heavy day,     That I have worn so many winters out,     And know not now what name to call myself!     O that I were a mockery king of snow,     Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke     To melt myself away in water drops!       Good king, great king, and yet not greatly good,     An if my word be sterling yet in England,     Let it command a mirror hither straight,     That it may show me what a face I have     Since it is bankrupt of his majesty.   BOLINGBROKE. Go some of you and fetch a looking-glass.                                                Exit an attendant   NORTHUMBERLAND. Read o\'er this paper while the glass doth come.   KING RICHARD. Fiend, thou torments me ere I come to hell.   BOLINGBROKE. Urge it no more, my Lord Northumberland.   NORTHUMBERLAND. The Commons will not, then, be satisfied.   KING RICHARD. They shall be satisfied. I\'ll read enough,     When I do see the very book indeed     Where all my sins are writ, and that\'s myself.                  Re-enter attendant with glass      Give me that glass, and therein will I read.     No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struck     So many blows upon this face of mine       And made no deeper wounds? O flatt\'ring glass,     Like to my followers in prosperity,     Thou dost beguile me! Was this face the face     That every day under his household roof     Did keep ten thousand men? Was this the face     That like the sun did make beholders wink?     Is this the face which fac\'d so many follies     That was at last out-fac\'d by Bolingbroke?     A brittle glory shineth in this face;     As brittle as the glory is the face;                         [Dashes the glass against the ground]     For there it is, crack\'d in a hundred shivers.     Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport-     How soon my sorrow hath destroy\'d my face.   BOLINGBROKE. The shadow of your sorrow hath destroy\'d     The shadow of your face.   KING RICHARD. Say that again.     The shadow of my sorrow? Ha! let\'s see.     \'Tis very true: my grief lies all within;     And these external manner of laments       Are merely shadows to the unseen grief     That swells with silence in the tortur\'d soul.     There lies the substance; and I thank thee, king,     For thy great bounty, that not only giv\'st     Me cause to wail, but teachest me the way     How to lament the cause. I\'ll beg one boon,     And then be gone and trouble you no more.     Shall I obtain it?   BOLINGBROKE. Name it, fair cousin.   KING RICHARD. Fair cousin! I am greater than a king;     For when I was a king, my flatterers     Were then but subjects; being now a subject,     I have a king here to my flatterer.     Being so great, I have no need to beg.   BOLINGBROKE. Yet ask.   KING RICHARD. And shall I have?   BOLINGBROKE. You shall.   KING RICHARD. Then give me leave to go.   BOLINGBROKE. Whither?   KING RICHARD. Whither you will, so I were from your sights.     BOLINGBROKE. Go, some of you convey him to the Tower.   KING RICHARD. O, good! Convey! Conveyers are you all,     That rise thus nimbly by a true king\'s fall.                      Exeunt KING RICHARD, some Lords and a Guard   BOLINGBROKE. On Wednesday next we solemnly set down     Our coronation. Lords, prepare yourselves.                     Exeunt all but the ABBOT OF WESTMINSTER, the                                  BISHOP OF CARLISLE, and AUMERLE   ABBOT. A woeful pageant have we here beheld.   CARLISLE. The woe\'s to come; the children yet unborn     Shall feel this day as sharp to them as thorn.   AUMERLE. You holy clergymen, is there no plot     To rid the realm of this pernicious blot?   ABBOT. My lord,     Before I freely speak my mind herein,     You shall not only take the sacrament     To bury mine intents, but also to effect     Whatever I shall happen to devise.     I see your brows are full of discontent,     Your hearts of sorrow, and your eyes of tears.       Come home with me to supper; I will lay     A plot shall show us all a merry day.                 Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE 1. London. A street leading to the Tower  Enter the QUEEN, with her attendants    QUEEN. This way the King will come; this is the way     To Julius Caesar\'s ill-erected tower,     To whose flint bosom my condemned lord     Is doom\'d a prisoner by proud Bolingbroke.     Here let us rest, if this rebellious earth     Have any resting for her true King\'s queen.              Enter KING RICHARD and Guard      But soft, but see, or rather do not see,     My fair rose wither. Yet look up, behold,     That you in pity may dissolve to dew,     And wash him fresh again with true-love tears.     Ah, thou, the model where old Troy did stand;     Thou map of honour, thou King Richard\'s tomb,     And not King Richard; thou most beauteous inn,     Why should hard-favour\'d grief be lodg\'d in thee,       When triumph is become an alehouse guest?   KING RICHARD. Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so,     To make my end too sudden. Learn, good soul,     To think our former state a happy dream;     From which awak\'d, the truth of what we are     Shows us but this: I am sworn brother, sweet,     To grim Necessity; and he and     Will keep a league till death. Hie thee to France,     And cloister thee in some religious house.     Our holy lives must win a new world\'s crown,     Which our profane hours here have thrown down.   QUEEN. What, is my Richard both in shape and mind     Transform\'d and weak\'ned? Hath Bolingbroke depos\'d     Thine intellect? Hath he been in thy heart?     The lion dying thrusteth forth his paw     And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage     To be o\'erpow\'r\'d; and wilt thou, pupil-like,     Take the correction mildly, kiss the rod,     And fawn on rage with base humility,     Which art a lion and the king of beasts?     KING RICHARD. A king of beasts, indeed! If aught but beasts,     I had been still a happy king of men.     Good sometimes queen, prepare thee hence for France.     Think I am dead, and that even here thou takest,     As from my death-bed, thy last living leave.     In winter\'s tedious nights sit by the fire     With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales     Of woeful ages long ago betid;     And ere thou bid good night, to quit their griefs     Tell thou the lamentable tale of me,     And send the hearers weeping to their beds;     For why, the senseless brands will sympathize     The heavy accent of thy moving tongue,     And in compassion weep the fire out;     And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black,     For the deposing of a rightful king.               Enter NORTHUMBERLAND attended    NORTHUMBERLAND. My lord, the mind of Bolingbroke is chang\'d;       You must to Pomfret, not unto the Tower.     And, madam, there is order ta\'en for you:     With all swift speed you must away to France.   KING RICHARD. Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal     The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne,     The time shall not be many hours of age     More than it is, ere foul sin gathering head     Shall break into corruption. Thou shalt think     Though he divide the realm and give thee half     It is too little, helping him to all;     And he shall think that thou, which knowest the way     To plant unrightful kings, wilt know again,     Being ne\'er so little urg\'d, another way     To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne.     The love of wicked men converts to fear;     That fear to hate; and hate turns one or both     To worthy danger and deserved death.   NORTHUMBERLAND. My guilt be on my head, and there an end.     Take leave, and part; for you must part forthwith.   KING RICHARD. Doubly divorc\'d! Bad men, you violate       A twofold marriage-\'twixt my crown and me,     And then betwixt me and my married wife.     Let me unkiss the oath \'twixt thee and me;     And yet not so, for with a kiss \'twas made.     Part us, Northumberland; I towards the north,     Where shivering cold and sickness pines the clime;     My wife to France, from whence set forth in pomp,     She came adorned hither like sweet May,     Sent back like Hallowmas or short\'st of day.   QUEEN. And must we be divided? Must we part?   KING RICHARD. Ay, hand from hand, my love, and heart from heart.   QUEEN. Banish us both, and send the King with me.   NORTHUMBERLAND. That were some love, but little policy.   QUEEN. Then whither he goes thither let me go.   KING RICHARD. So two, together weeping, make one woe.     Weep thou for me in France, I for thee here;     Better far off than near, be ne\'er the near.     Go, count thy way with sighs; I mine with groans.   QUEEN. So longest way shall have the longest moans.   KING RICHARD. Twice for one step I\'ll groan, the way being short,       And piece the way out with a heavy heart.     Come, come, in wooing sorrow let\'s be brief,     Since, wedding it, there is such length in grief.     One kiss shall stop our mouths, and dumbly part;     Thus give I mine, and thus take I thy heart.   QUEEN. Give me mine own again; \'twere no good part     To take on me to keep and kill thy heart.     So, now I have mine own again, be gone.     That I may strive to kill it with a groan.   KING RICHARD. We make woe wanton with this fond delay.     Once more, adieu; the rest let sorrow say.            Exeunt     SCENE 2. The DUKE OF YORK\'s palace  Enter the DUKE OF YORK and the DUCHESS    DUCHESS. My Lord, you told me you would tell the rest,     When weeping made you break the story off,     Of our two cousins\' coming into London.   YORK. Where did I leave?   DUCHESS. At that sad stop, my lord,     Where rude misgoverned hands from windows\' tops     Threw dust and rubbish on King Richard\'s head.   YORK. Then, as I said, the Duke, great Bolingbroke,     Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed     Which his aspiring rider seem\'d to know,     With slow but stately pace kept on his course,     Whilst all tongues cried \'God save thee, Bolingbroke!\'     You would have thought the very windows spake,     So many greedy looks of young and old     Through casements darted their desiring eyes     Upon his visage; and that all the walls     With painted imagery had said at once       \'Jesu preserve thee! Welcome, Bolingbroke!\'     Whilst he, from the one side to the other turning,     Bareheaded, lower than his proud steed\'s neck,     Bespake them thus, \'I thank you, countrymen.\'     And thus still doing, thus he pass\'d along.   DUCHESS. Alack, poor Richard! where rode he the whilst?   YORK. As in a theatre the eyes of men     After a well-grac\'d actor leaves the stage     Are idly bent on him that enters next,     Thinking his prattle to be tedious;     Even so, or with much more contempt, men\'s eyes     Did scowl on gentle Richard; no man cried \'God save him!\'     No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home;     But dust was thrown upon his sacred head;     Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off,     His face still combating with tears and smiles,     The badges of his grief and patience,     That had not God, for some strong purpose, steel\'d     The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted,     And barbarism itself have pitied him.       But heaven hath a hand in these events,     To whose high will we bound our calm contents.     To Bolingbroke are we sworn subjects now,     Whose state and honour I for aye allow.   DUCHESS. Here comes my son Aumerle.   YORK. Aumerle that was     But that is lost for being Richard\'s friend,     And madam, you must call him Rudand now.     I am in Parliament pledge for his truth     And lasting fealty to the new-made king.                    Enter AUMERLE    DUCHESS. Welcome, my son. Who are the violets now     That strew the green lap of the new come spring?   AUMERLE. Madam, I know not, nor I greatly care not.     God knows I had as lief be none as one.   YORK. Well, bear you well in this new spring of time,     Lest you be cropp\'d before you come to prime.     What news from Oxford? Do these justs and triumphs hold?     AUMERLE. For aught I know, my lord, they do.   YORK. You will be there, I know.   AUMERLE. If God prevent not, I purpose so.   YORK. What seal is that that without thy bosom?     Yea, look\'st thou pale? Let me see the writing.   AUMERLE. My lord, \'tis nothing.   YORK. No matter, then, who see it.     I will be satisfied; let me see the writing.   AUMERLE. I do beseech your Grace to pardon me;     It is a matter of small consequence     Which for some reasons I would not have seen.   YORK. Which for some reasons, sir, I mean to see.     I fear, I fear-   DUCHESS. What should you fear?     \'Tis nothing but some bond that he is ent\'red into     For gay apparel \'gainst the triumph-day.   YORK. Bound to himself! What doth he with a bond     That he is bound to? Wife, thou art a fool.     Boy, let me see the writing.   AUMERLE. I do beseech you, pardon me; I may not show it.     YORK. I will be satisfied; let me see it, I say.                 [He plucks it out of his bosom, and reads it]     Treason, foul treason! Villain! traitor! slave!   DUCHESS. What is the matter, my lord?   YORK. Ho! who is within there?                      Enter a servant      Saddle my horse.     God for his mercy, what treachery is here!   DUCHESS. Why, York, what is it, my lord?   YORK. Give me my boots, I say; saddle my horse.                                                     Exit servant     Now, by mine honour, by my life, my troth,     I will appeach the villain.   DUCHESS. What is the matter?   YORK. Peace, foolish woman.   DUCHESS. I will not peace. What is the matter, Aumerle?   AUMERLE. Good mother, be content; it is no more     Than my poor life must answer.     DUCHESS. Thy life answer!   YORK. Bring me my boots. I will unto the King.                His man enters with his boots    DUCHESS. Strike him, Aumerle. Poor boy, thou art amaz\'d.     Hence, villain! never more come in my sight.   YORK. Give me my boots, I say.   DUCHESS. Why, York, what wilt thou do?     Wilt thou not hide the trespass of thine own?     Have we more sons? or are we like to have?     Is not my teeming date drunk up with time?     And wilt thou pluck my fair son from mine age     And rob me of a happy mother\'s name?     Is he not like thee? Is he not thine own?   YORK. Thou fond mad woman,     Wilt thou conceal this dark conspiracy?     A dozen of them here have ta\'en the sacrament,     And interchangeably set down their hands     To kill the King at Oxford.     DUCHESS. He shall be none;     We\'ll keep him here. Then what is that to him?   YORK. Away, fond woman! were he twenty times my son     I would appeach him.   DUCHESS. Hadst thou groan\'d for him     As I have done, thou wouldst be more pitiful.     But now I know thy mind: thou dost suspect     That I have been disloyal to thy bed     And that he is a bastard, not thy son.     Sweet York, sweet husband, be not of that mind.     He is as like thee as a man may be     Not like to me, or any of my kin,     And yet I love him.   YORK. Make way, unruly woman!                             Exit   DUCHESS. After, Aumerle! Mount thee upon his horse;     Spur post, and get before him to the King,     And beg thy pardon ere he do accuse thee.     I\'ll not be long behind; though I be old,     I doubt not but to ride as fast as York;     And never will I rise up from the ground       Till Bolingbroke have pardon\'d thee. Away, be gone.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE 3. Windsor Castle  Enter BOLINGBROKE as King, PERCY, and other LORDS    BOLINGBROKE. Can no man tell me of my unthrifty son?     \'Tis full three months since I did see him last.     If any plague hang over us, \'tis he.     I would to God, my lords, he might be found.     Inquire at London, \'mongst the taverns there,     For there, they say, he daily doth frequent     With unrestrained loose companions,     Even such, they say, as stand in narrow lanes     And beat our watch and rob our passengers,     Which he, young wanton and effeminate boy,     Takes on the point of honour to support     So dissolute a crew.   PERCY. My lord, some two days since I saw the Prince,     And told him of those triumphs held at Oxford.   BOLINGBROKE. And what said the gallant?   PERCY. His answer was, he would unto the stews,     And from the common\'st creature pluck a glove       And wear it as a favour; and with that     He would unhorse the lustiest challenger.   BOLINGBROKE. As dissolute as desperate; yet through both     I see some sparks of better hope, which elder years     May happily bring forth. But who comes here?                  Enter AUMERLE amazed    AUMERLE. Where is the King?   BOLINGBROKE. What means our cousin that he stares and looks     So wildly?   AUMERLE. God save your Grace! I do beseech your Majesty,     To have some conference with your Grace alone.   BOLINGBROKE. Withdraw yourselves, and leave us here alone.                                           Exeunt PERCY and LORDS     What is the matter with our cousin now?   AUMERLE. For ever may my knees grow to the earth,                                                     [Kneels]     My tongue cleave to my roof within my mouth,     Unless a pardon ere I rise or speak.     BOLINGBROKE. Intended or committed was this fault?     If on the first, how heinous e\'er it be,     To win thy after-love I pardon thee.   AUMERLE. Then give me leave that I may turn the key,     That no man enter till my tale be done.   BOLINGBROKE. Have thy desire.             [The DUKE OF YORK knocks at the door and crieth]   YORK. [Within] My liege, beware; look to thyself;     Thou hast a traitor in thy presence there.   BOLINGBROKE. [Drawing] Villain, I\'ll make thee safe.   AUMERLE. Stay thy revengeful hand; thou hast no cause to fear.   YORK. [Within] Open the door, secure, foolhardy King.     Shall I, for love, speak treason to thy face?     Open the door, or I will break it open.                      Enter YORK    BOLINGBROKE. What is the matter, uncle? Speak;     Recover breath; tell us how near is danger,     That we may arm us to encounter it.   YORK. Peruse this writing here, and thou shalt know       The treason that my haste forbids me show.   AUMERLE. Remember, as thou read\'st, thy promise pass\'d.     I do repent me; read not my name there;     My heart is not confederate with my hand.   YORK. It was, villain, ere thy hand did set it down.     I tore it from the traitor\'s bosom, King;     Fear, and not love, begets his penitence.     Forget to pity him, lest thy pity prove     A serpent that will sting thee to the heart.   BOLINGBROKE. O heinous, strong, and bold conspiracy!     O loyal father of a treacherous son!     Thou sheer, immaculate, and silver fountain,     From whence this stream through muddy passages     Hath held his current and defil\'d himself!     Thy overflow of good converts to bad;     And thy abundant goodness shall excuse     This deadly blot in thy digressing son.   YORK. So shall my virtue be his vice\'s bawd;     And he shall spend mine honour with his shame,     As thriftless sons their scraping fathers\' gold.       Mine honour lives when his dishonour dies,     Or my sham\'d life in his dishonour lies.     Thou kill\'st me in his life; giving him breath,     The traitor lives, the true man\'s put to death.   DUCHESS. [Within] I What ho, my liege, for God\'s sake, let me in.   BOLINGBROKE. What shrill-voic\'d suppliant makes this eager cry?   DUCHESS. [Within] A woman, and thine aunt, great King; \'tis I.     Speak with me, pity me, open the door.     A beggar begs that never begg\'d before.   BOLINGBROKE. Our scene is alt\'red from a serious thing,     And now chang\'d to \'The Beggar and the King.\'     My dangerous cousin, let your mother in.     I know she is come to pray for your foul sin.   YORK. If thou do pardon whosoever pray,     More sins for this forgiveness prosper may.     This fest\'red joint cut off, the rest rest sound;     This let alone will all the rest confound.                   Enter DUCHESS      DUCHESS. O King, believe not this hard-hearted man!     Love loving not itself, none other can.   YORK. Thou frantic woman, what dost thou make here?     Shall thy old dugs once more a traitor rear?   DUCHESS. Sweet York, be patient. Hear me, gentle liege.                                                      [Kneels]   BOLINGBROKE. Rise up, good aunt.   DUCHESS. Not yet, I thee beseech.     For ever will I walk upon my knees,     And never see day that the happy sees     Till thou give joy; until thou bid me joy     By pardoning Rutland, my transgressing boy.   AUMERLE. Unto my mother\'s prayers I bend my knee.                                                      [Kneels]   YORK. Against them both, my true joints bended be.                                                      [Kneels]     Ill mayst thou thrive, if thou grant any grace!   DUCHESS. Pleads he in earnest? Look upon his face;     His eyes do drop no tears, his prayers are in jest;     His words come from his mouth, ours from our breast.       He prays but faintly and would be denied;     We pray with heart and soul, and all beside.     His weary joints would gladly rise, I know;     Our knees still kneel till to the ground they grow.     His prayers are full of false hypocrisy;     Ours of true zeal and deep integrity.     Our prayers do out-pray his; then let them have     That mercy which true prayer ought to have.   BOLINGBROKE. Good aunt, stand up.   DUCHESS. do not say \'stand up\';     Say \'pardon\' first, and afterwards \'stand up.\'     An if I were thy nurse, thy tongue to teach,     \'Pardon\' should be the first word of thy speech.     I never long\'d to hear a word till now;     Say \'pardon,\' King; let pity teach thee how.     The word is short, but not so short as sweet;     No word like \'pardon\' for kings\' mouths so meet.   YORK. Speak it in French, King, say \'pardonne moy.\'   DUCHESS. Dost thou teach pardon pardon to destroy?     Ah, my sour husband, my hard-hearted lord,       That sets the word itself against the word!     Speak \'pardon\' as \'tis current in our land;     The chopping French we do not understand.     Thine eye begins to speak, set thy tongue there;     Or in thy piteous heart plant thou thine ear,     That hearing how our plaints and prayers do pierce,     Pity may move thee \'pardon\' to rehearse.   BOLINGBROKE. Good aunt, stand up.   DUCHESS. I do not sue to stand;     Pardon is all the suit I have in hand.   BOLINGBROKE. I pardon him, as God shall pardon me.   DUCHESS. O happy vantage of a kneeling knee!     Yet am I sick for fear. Speak it again.     Twice saying \'pardon\' doth not pardon twain,     But makes one pardon strong.   BOLINGBROKE. With all my heart     I pardon him.   DUCHESS. A god on earth thou art.   BOLINGBROKE. But for our trusty brother-in-law and the Abbot,     With all the rest of that consorted crew,       Destruction straight shall dog them at the heels.     Good uncle, help to order several powers     To Oxford, or where\'er these traitors are.     They shall not live within this world, I swear,     But I will have them, if I once know where.     Uncle, farewell; and, cousin, adieu;     Your mother well hath pray\'d, and prove you true.   DUCHESS. Come, my old son; I pray God make thee new.      Exeunt     SCENE 4. Windsor Castle  Enter SIR PIERCE OF EXTON and a servant    EXTON. Didst thou not mark the King, what words he spake?     \'Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?\'     Was it not so?   SERVANT. These were his very words.   EXTON. \'Have I no friend?\' quoth he. He spake it twice     And urg\'d it twice together, did he not?   SERVANT. He did.   EXTON. And, speaking it, he wishtly look\'d on me,     As who should say \'I would thou wert the man     That would divorce this terror from my heart\';     Meaning the King at Pomfret. Come, let\'s go.     I am the King\'s friend, and will rid his foe.         Exeunt     SCENE 5. Pomfret Castle. The dungeon of the Castle  Enter KING RICHARD    KING RICHARD. I have been studying how I may compare     This prison where I live unto the world     And, for because the world is populous     And here is not a creature but myself,     I cannot do it. Yet I\'ll hammer it out.     My brain I\'ll prove the female to my soul,     My soul the father; and these two beget     A generation of still-breeding thoughts,     And these same thoughts people this little world,     In humours like the people of this world,     For no thought is contented. The better sort,     As thoughts of things divine, are intermix\'d     With scruples, and do set the word itself     Against the word,     As thus: \'Come, little ones\'; and then again,     \'It is as hard to come as for a camel     To thread the postern of a small needle\'s eye.\'       Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot     Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails     May tear a passage through the flinty ribs     Of this hard world, my ragged prison walls;     And, for they cannot, die in their own pride.     Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves     That they are not the first of fortune\'s slaves,     Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars     Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame,     That many have and others must sit there;     And in this thought they find a kind of ease,     Bearing their own misfortunes on the back     Of such as have before endur\'d the like.     Thus play I in one person many people,     And none contented. Sometimes am I king;     Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,     And so I am. Then crushing penury     Persuades me I was better when a king;     Then am I king\'d again; and by and by     Think that I am unking\'d by Bolingbroke,       And straight am nothing. But whate\'er I be,     Nor I, nor any man that but man is,     With nothing shall be pleas\'d till he be eas\'d     With being nothing.                    [The music plays]     Music do I hear?     Ha, ha! keep time. How sour sweet music is     When time is broke and no proportion kept!     So is it in the music of men\'s lives.     And here have I the daintiness of ear     To check time broke in a disorder\'d string;     But, for the concord of my state and time,     Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.     I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;     For now hath time made me his numb\'ring clock:     My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar     Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,     Whereto my finger, like a dial\'s point,     Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.     Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is     Are clamorous groans which strike upon my heart,       Which is the bell. So sighs, and tears, and groans,     Show minutes, times, and hours; but my time     Runs posting on in Bolingbroke\'s proud joy,     While I stand fooling here, his Jack of the clock.     This music mads me. Let it sound no more;     For though it have holp madmen to their wits,     In me it seems it will make wise men mad.     Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me!     For \'tis a sign of love; and love to Richard     Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.                Enter a GROOM of the stable    GROOM. Hail, royal Prince!   KING RICHARD. Thanks, noble peer!     The cheapest of us is ten groats too dear.     What art thou? and how comest thou hither,     Where no man never comes but that sad dog     That brings me food to make misfortune live?   GROOM. I was a poor groom of thy stable, King,       When thou wert king; who, travelling towards York,     With much ado at length have gotten leave     To look upon my sometimes royal master\'s face.     O, how it ern\'d my heart, when I beheld,     In London streets, that coronation-day,     When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary-     That horse that thou so often hast bestrid,     That horse that I so carefully have dress\'d!   KING RICHARD. Rode he on Barbary? Tell me, gentle friend,     How went he under him?   GROOM. So proudly as if he disdain\'d the ground.   KING RICHARD. So proud that Bolingbroke was on his back!     That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand;     This hand hath made him proud with clapping him.     Would he not stumble? would he not fall down,     Since pride must have a fall, and break the neck     Of that proud man that did usurp his back?     Forgiveness, horse! Why do I rail on thee,     Since thou, created to be aw\'d by man,     Wast born to bear? I was not made a horse;       And yet I bear a burden like an ass,     Spurr\'d, gall\'d, and tir\'d, by jauncing Bolingbroke.                Enter KEEPER with meat    KEEPER. Fellow, give place; here is no longer stay.   KING RICHARD. If thou love me, \'tis time thou wert away.   GROOM. my tongue dares not, that my heart shall say.  Exit   KEEPER. My lord, will\'t please you to fall to?   KING RICHARD. Taste of it first as thou art wont to do.   KEEPER. My lord, I dare not. Sir Pierce of Exton,     Who lately came from the King, commands the contrary.   KING RICHARD. The devil take Henry of Lancaster and thee!     Patience is stale, and I am weary of it.                                            [Beats the KEEPER]   KEEPER. Help, help, help!     The murderers, EXTON and servants, rush in, armed   KING RICHARD. How now! What means death in this rude assault?     Villain, thy own hand yields thy death\'s instrument.                            [Snatching a weapon and killing one]     Go thou and fill another room in hell.               [He kills another, then EXTON strikes him down]     That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire     That staggers thus my person. Exton, thy fierce hand     Hath with the King\'s blood stain\'d the King\'s own land.     Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high;     Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.                                                        [Dies]   EXTON. As full of valour as of royal blood.     Both have I spill\'d. O, would the deed were good!     For now the devil, that told me I did well,     Says that this deed is chronicled in hell.     This dead King to the living King I\'ll bear.     Take hence the rest, and give them burial here.       Exeunt     SCENE 6. Windsor Castle  Flourish. Enter BOLINGBROKE, the DUKE OF YORK, With other LORDS and attendants    BOLINGBROKE. Kind uncle York, the latest news we hear     Is that the rebels have consum\'d with fire     Our town of Ciceter in Gloucestershire;     But whether they be ta\'en or slain we hear not.                Enter NORTHUMBERLAND      Welcome, my lord. What is the news?   NORTHUMBERLAND. First, to thy sacred state wish I all happiness.     The next news is, I have to London sent     The heads of Salisbury, Spencer, Blunt, and Kent.     The manner of their taking may appear     At large discoursed in this paper here.   BOLINGBROKE. We thank thee, gentle Percy, for thy pains;     And to thy worth will add right worthy gains.                      Enter FITZWATER    FITZWATER. My lord, I have from Oxford sent to London     The heads of Brocas and Sir Bennet Seely;     Two of the dangerous consorted traitors     That sought at Oxford thy dire overthrow.   BOLINGBROKE. Thy pains, Fitzwater, shall not be forgot;     Right noble is thy merit, well I wot.           Enter PERCY, With the BISHOP OF CARLISLE    PERCY. The grand conspirator, Abbot of Westminster,     With clog of conscience and sour melancholy,     Hath yielded up his body to the grave;     But here is Carlisle living, to abide     Thy kingly doom, and sentence of his pride.   BOLINGBROKE. Carlisle, this is your doom:     Choose out some secret place, some reverend room,     More than thou hast, and with it joy thy life;     So as thou liv\'st in peace, die free from strife;       For though mine enemy thou hast ever been,     High sparks of honour in thee have I seen.        Enter EXTON, with attendants, hearing a coffin    EXTON. Great King, within this coffin I present     Thy buried fear. Herein all breathless lies     The mightiest of thy greatest enemies,     Richard of Bordeaux, by me hither brought.   BOLINGBROKE. Exton, I thank thee not; for thou hast wrought     A deed of slander with thy fatal hand     Upon my head and all this famous land.   EXTON. From your own mouth, my lord, did I this deed.   BOLINGBROKE. They love not poison that do poison need,     Nor do I thee. Though I did wish him dead,     I hate the murderer, love him murdered.     The guilt of conscience take thou for thy labour,     But neither my good word nor princely favour;     With Cain go wander thorough shades of night,     And never show thy head by day nor light.       Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe     That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow.     Come, mourn with me for what I do lament,     And put on sullen black incontinent.     I\'ll make a voyage to the Holy Land,     To wash this blood off from my guilty hand.     March sadly after; grace my mournings here     In weeping after this untimely bier.                  Exeunt  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1593  KING RICHARD III  by William Shakespeare   Dramatis Personae    EDWARD THE FOURTH      Sons to the King   EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES afterwards KING EDWARD V   RICHARD, DUKE OF YORK,      Brothers to the King   GEORGE, DUKE OF CLARENCE,   RICHARD, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, afterwards KING RICHARD III    A YOUNG SON OF CLARENCE (Edward, Earl of Warwick)   HENRY, EARL OF RICHMOND, afterwards KING HENRY VII   CARDINAL BOURCHIER, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY   THOMAS ROTHERHAM, ARCHBISHOP OF YORK   JOHN MORTON, BISHOP OF ELY   DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM   DUKE OF NORFOLK   EARL OF SURREY, his son   EARL RIVERS, brother to King Edward\'s Queen   MARQUIS OF DORSET and LORD GREY, her sons   EARL OF OXFORD     LORD HASTINGS   LORD LOVEL   LORD STANLEY, called also EARL OF DERBY   SIR THOMAS VAUGHAN   SIR RICHARD RATCLIFF   SIR WILLIAM CATESBY   SIR JAMES TYRREL   SIR JAMES BLOUNT   SIR WALTER HERBERT   SIR WILLIAM BRANDON   SIR ROBERT BRAKENBURY, Lieutenant of the Tower   CHRISTOPHER URSWICK, a priest   LORD MAYOR OF LONDON   SHERIFF OF WILTSHIRE   HASTINGS, a pursuivant   TRESSEL and BERKELEY, gentlemen attending on Lady Anne   ELIZABETH, Queen to King Edward IV   MARGARET, widow of King Henry VI   DUCHESS OF YORK, mother to King Edward IV   LADY ANNE, widow of Edward, Prince of Wales, son to King       Henry VI; afterwards married to the Duke of Gloucester   A YOUNG DAUGHTER OF CLARENCE (Margaret Plantagenet,     Countess of Salisbury)   Ghosts, of Richard\'s victims   Lords, Gentlemen, and Attendants; Priest, Scrivener, Page, Bishops,     Aldermen, Citizens, Soldiers, Messengers, Murderers, Keeper     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: England  King Richard the Third    ACT I. SCENE 1.  London. A street  Enter RICHARD, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, solus    GLOUCESTER. Now is the winter of our discontent     Made glorious summer by this sun of York;     And all the clouds that lour\'d upon our house     In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.     Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;     Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;     Our stern alarums chang\'d to merry meetings,     Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.     Grim-visag\'d war hath smooth\'d his wrinkled front,     And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds     To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,     He capers nimbly in a lady\'s chamber     To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.     But I-that am not shap\'d for sportive tricks,     Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass-     I-that am rudely stamp\'d, and want love\'s majesty     To strut before a wanton ambling nymph-       I-that am curtail\'d of this fair proportion,     Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,     Deform\'d, unfinish\'d, sent before my time     Into this breathing world scarce half made up,     And that so lamely and unfashionable     That dogs bark at me as I halt by them-     Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,     Have no delight to pass away the time,     Unless to spy my shadow in the sun     And descant on mine own deformity.     And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover     To entertain these fair well-spoken days,     I am determined to prove a villain     And hate the idle pleasures of these days.     Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,     By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,     To set my brother Clarence and the King     In deadly hate the one against the other;     And if King Edward be as true and just     As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,       This day should Clarence closely be mew\'d up-     About a prophecy which says that G     Of Edward\'s heirs the murderer shall be.     Dive, thoughts, down to my soul. Here Clarence comes.               Enter CLARENCE, guarded, and BRAKENBURY      Brother, good day. What means this armed guard     That waits upon your Grace?   CLARENCE. His Majesty,     Tend\'ring my person\'s safety, hath appointed     This conduct to convey me to th\' Tower.   GLOUCESTER. Upon what cause?   CLARENCE. Because my name is George.   GLOUCESTER. Alack, my lord, that fault is none of yours:     He should, for that, commit your godfathers.     O, belike his Majesty hath some intent     That you should be new-christ\'ned in the Tower.     But what\'s the matter, Clarence? May I know?   CLARENCE. Yea, Richard, when I know; for I protest       As yet I do not; but, as I can learn,     He hearkens after prophecies and dreams,     And from the cross-row plucks the letter G,     And says a wizard told him that by G     His issue disinherited should be;     And, for my name of George begins with G,     It follows in his thought that I am he.     These, as I learn, and such like toys as these     Hath mov\'d his Highness to commit me now.   GLOUCESTER. Why, this it is when men are rul\'d by women:     \'Tis not the King that sends you to the Tower;     My Lady Grey his wife, Clarence, \'tis she     That tempers him to this extremity.     Was it not she and that good man of worship,     Antony Woodville, her brother there,     That made him send Lord Hastings to the Tower,     From whence this present day he is delivered?     We are not safe, Clarence; we are not safe.   CLARENCE. By heaven, I think there is no man is secure     But the Queen\'s kindred, and night-walking heralds       That trudge betwixt the King and Mistress Shore.     Heard you not what an humble suppliant     Lord Hastings was, for her delivery?   GLOUCESTER. Humbly complaining to her deity     Got my Lord Chamberlain his liberty.     I\'ll tell you what-I think it is our way,     If we will keep in favour with the King,     To be her men and wear her livery:     The jealous o\'er-worn widow, and herself,     Since that our brother dubb\'d them gentlewomen,     Are mighty gossips in our monarchy.   BRAKENBURY. I beseech your Graces both to pardon me:     His Majesty hath straitly given in charge     That no man shall have private conference,     Of what degree soever, with your brother.   GLOUCESTER. Even so; an\'t please your worship, Brakenbury,     You may partake of any thing we say:     We speak no treason, man; we say the King     Is wise and virtuous, and his noble queen     Well struck in years, fair, and not jealous;       We say that Shore\'s wife hath a pretty foot,     A cherry lip, a bonny eye, a passing pleasing tongue;     And that the Queen\'s kindred are made gentlefolks.     How say you, sir? Can you deny all this?   BRAKENBURY. With this, my lord, myself have naught to do.   GLOUCESTER. Naught to do with Mistress Shore! I tell thee,     fellow,     He that doth naught with her, excepting one,     Were best to do it secretly alone.   BRAKENBURY. What one, my lord?   GLOUCESTER. Her husband, knave! Wouldst thou betray me?   BRAKENBURY. I do beseech your Grace to pardon me, and     withal     Forbear your conference with the noble Duke.   CLARENCE. We know thy charge, Brakenbury, and will     obey.   GLOUCESTER. We are the Queen\'s abjects and must obey.     Brother, farewell; I will unto the King;     And whatsoe\'er you will employ me in-     Were it to call King Edward\'s widow sister-       I will perform it to enfranchise you.     Meantime, this deep disgrace in brotherhood     Touches me deeper than you can imagine.   CLARENCE. I know it pleaseth neither of us well.   GLOUCESTER. Well, your imprisonment shall not be long;     I will deliver or else lie for you.     Meantime, have patience.   CLARENCE. I must perforce. Farewell.                           Exeunt CLARENCE, BRAKENBURY, and guard   GLOUCESTER. Go tread the path that thou shalt ne\'er return.     Simple, plain Clarence, I do love thee so     That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven,     If heaven will take the present at our hands.     But who comes here? The new-delivered Hastings?                         Enter LORD HASTINGS    HASTINGS. Good time of day unto my gracious lord!   GLOUCESTER. As much unto my good Lord Chamberlain!     Well are you welcome to the open air.       How hath your lordship brook\'d imprisonment?   HASTINGS. With patience, noble lord, as prisoners must;     But I shall live, my lord, to give them thanks     That were the cause of my imprisonment.   GLOUCESTER. No doubt, no doubt; and so shall Clarence too;     For they that were your enemies are his,     And have prevail\'d as much on him as you.   HASTINGS. More pity that the eagles should be mew\'d     Whiles kites and buzzards prey at liberty.   GLOUCESTER. What news abroad?   HASTINGS. No news so bad abroad as this at home:     The King is sickly, weak, and melancholy,     And his physicians fear him mightily.   GLOUCESTER. Now, by Saint John, that news is bad indeed.     O, he hath kept an evil diet long     And overmuch consum\'d his royal person!     \'Tis very grievous to be thought upon.     Where is he? In his bed?   HASTINGS. He is.   GLOUCESTER. Go you before, and I will follow you.                                                      Exit HASTINGS     He cannot live, I hope, and must not die     Till George be pack\'d with posthorse up to heaven.     I\'ll in to urge his hatred more to Clarence     With lies well steel\'d with weighty arguments;     And, if I fail not in my deep intent,     Clarence hath not another day to live;     Which done, God take King Edward to his mercy,     And leave the world for me to bustle in!     For then I\'ll marry Warwick\'s youngest daughter.     What though I kill\'d her husband and her father?     The readiest way to make the wench amends     Is to become her husband and her father;     The which will I-not all so much for love     As for another secret close intent     By marrying her which I must reach unto.     But yet I run before my horse to market.     Clarence still breathes; Edward still lives and reigns;     When they are gone, then must I count my gains.         Exit     SCENE 2.  London. Another street  Enter corpse of KING HENRY THE SIXTH, with halberds to guard it; LADY ANNE being the mourner, attended by TRESSEL and BERKELEY    ANNE. Set down, set down your honourable load-     If honour may be shrouded in a hearse;     Whilst I awhile obsequiously lament     Th\' untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster.     Poor key-cold figure of a holy king!     Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster!     Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood!     Be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost     To hear the lamentations of poor Anne,     Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughtered son,     Stabb\'d by the self-same hand that made these wounds.     Lo, in these windows that let forth thy life     I pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes.     O, cursed be the hand that made these holes!     Cursed the heart that had the heart to do it!       Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence!     More direful hap betide that hated wretch     That makes us wretched by the death of thee     Than I can wish to adders, spiders, toads,     Or any creeping venom\'d thing that lives!     If ever he have child, abortive be it,     Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,     Whose ugly and unnatural aspect     May fright the hopeful mother at the view,     And that be heir to his unhappiness!     If ever he have wife, let her be made     More miserable by the death of him     Than I am made by my young lord and thee!     Come, now towards Chertsey with your holy load,     Taken from Paul\'s to be interred there;     And still as you are weary of this weight     Rest you, whiles I lament King Henry\'s corse.                                 [The bearers take up the coffin]                        Enter GLOUCESTER      GLOUCESTER. Stay, you that bear the corse, and set it down.   ANNE. What black magician conjures up this fiend     To stop devoted charitable deeds?   GLOUCESTER. Villains, set down the corse; or, by Saint Paul,     I\'ll make a corse of him that disobeys!   FIRST GENTLEMAN. My lord, stand back, and let the coffin     pass.   GLOUCESTER. Unmannerd dog! Stand thou, when I command.     Advance thy halberd higher than my breast,     Or, by Saint Paul, I\'ll strike thee to my foot     And spurn upon thee, beggar, for thy boldness.                                [The bearers set down the coffin]   ANNE. What, do you tremble? Are you all afraid?     Alas, I blame you not, for you are mortal,     And mortal eyes cannot endure the devil.     Avaunt, thou dreadful minister of hell!     Thou hadst but power over his mortal body,     His soul thou canst not have; therefore, be gone.   GLOUCESTER. Sweet saint, for charity, be not so curst.     ANNE. Foul devil, for God\'s sake, hence and trouble us not;     For thou hast made the happy earth thy hell     Fill\'d it with cursing cries and deep exclaims.     If thou delight to view thy heinous deeds,     Behold this pattern of thy butcheries.     O, gentlemen, see, see! Dead Henry\'s wounds     Open their congeal\'d mouths and bleed afresh.     Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity,     For \'tis thy presence that exhales this blood     From cold and empty veins where no blood dwells;     Thy deeds inhuman and unnatural     Provokes this deluge most unnatural.     O God, which this blood mad\'st, revenge his death!     O earth, which this blood drink\'st, revenge his death!     Either, heav\'n, with lightning strike the murd\'rer dead;     Or, earth, gape open wide and eat him quick,     As thou dost swallow up this good king\'s blood,     Which his hell-govern\'d arm hath butchered.   GLOUCESTER. Lady, you know no rules of charity,     Which renders good for bad, blessings for curses.     ANNE. Villain, thou knowest nor law of God nor man:     No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.   GLOUCESTER. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.   ANNE. O wonderful, when devils tell the truth!   GLOUCESTER. More wonderful when angels are so angry.     Vouchsafe, divine perfection of a woman,     Of these supposed crimes to give me leave     By circumstance but to acquit myself.   ANNE. Vouchsafe, diffus\'d infection of a man,     Of these known evils but to give me leave     By circumstance to accuse thy cursed self.   GLOUCESTER. Fairer than tongue can name thee, let me have     Some patient leisure to excuse myself.   ANNE. Fouler than heart can think thee, thou canst make     No excuse current but to hang thyself.   GLOUCESTER. By such despair I should accuse myself.   ANNE. And by despairing shalt thou stand excused     For doing worthy vengeance on thyself     That didst unworthy slaughter upon others.   GLOUCESTER. Say that I slew them not?     ANNE. Then say they were not slain.     But dead they are, and, devilish slave, by thee.   GLOUCESTER. I did not kill your husband.   ANNE. Why, then he is alive.   GLOUCESTER. Nay, he is dead, and slain by Edward\'s hands.   ANNE. In thy foul throat thou liest: Queen Margaret saw     Thy murd\'rous falchion smoking in his blood;     The which thou once didst bend against her breast,     But that thy brothers beat aside the point.   GLOUCESTER. I was provoked by her sland\'rous tongue     That laid their guilt upon my guiltless shoulders.   ANNE. Thou wast provoked by thy bloody mind,     That never dream\'st on aught but butcheries.     Didst thou not kill this king?   GLOUCESTER. I grant ye.   ANNE. Dost grant me, hedgehog? Then, God grant me to     Thou mayst be damned for that wicked deed!     O, he was gentle, mild, and virtuous!   GLOUCESTER. The better for the King of Heaven, that hath     him.     ANNE. He is in heaven, where thou shalt never come.   GLOUCESTER. Let him thank me that holp to send him     thither,     For he was fitter for that place than earth.   ANNE. And thou unfit for any place but hell.   GLOUCESTER. Yes, one place else, if you will hear me name it.   ANNE. Some dungeon.   GLOUCESTER. Your bed-chamber.   ANNE. Ill rest betide the chamber where thou liest!   GLOUCESTER. So will it, madam, till I lie with you.   ANNE. I hope so.   GLOUCESTER. I know so. But, gentle Lady Anne,     To leave this keen encounter of our wits,     And fall something into a slower method-     Is not the causer of the timeless deaths     Of these Plantagenets, Henry and Edward,     As blameful as the executioner?   ANNE. Thou wast the cause and most accurs\'d effect.   GLOUCESTER. Your beauty was the cause of that effect-     Your beauty that did haunt me in my sleep       To undertake the death of all the world     So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom.   ANNE. If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide,     These nails should rend that beauty from my cheeks.   GLOUCESTER. These eyes could not endure that beauty\'s     wreck;     You should not blemish it if I stood by.     As all the world is cheered by the sun,     So I by that; it is my day, my life.   ANNE. Black night o\'ershade thy day, and death thy life!   GLOUCESTER. Curse not thyself, fair creature; thou art both.   ANNE. I would I were, to be reveng\'d on thee.   GLOUCESTER. It is a quarrel most unnatural,     To be reveng\'d on him that loveth thee.   ANNE. It is a quarrel just and reasonable,     To be reveng\'d on him that kill\'d my husband.   GLOUCESTER. He that bereft thee, lady, of thy husband     Did it to help thee to a better husband.   ANNE. His better doth not breathe upon the earth.   GLOUCESTER. He lives that loves thee better than he could.     ANNE. Name him.   GLOUCESTER. Plantagenet.   ANNE. Why, that was he.   GLOUCESTER. The self-same name, but one of better nature.   ANNE. Where is he?   GLOUCESTER. Here.  [She spits at him]  Why dost thou spit     at me?   ANNE. Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake!   GLOUCESTER. Never came poison from so sweet a place.   ANNE. Never hung poison on a fouler toad.     Out of my sight! Thou dost infect mine eyes.   GLOUCESTER. Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine.   ANNE. Would they were basilisks to strike thee dead!   GLOUCESTER. I would they were, that I might die at once;     For now they kill me with a living death.     Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears,     Sham\'d their aspects with store of childish drops-     These eyes, which never shed remorseful tear,     No, when my father York and Edward wept     To hear the piteous moan that Rutland made       When black-fac\'d Clifford shook his sword at him;     Nor when thy warlike father, like a child,     Told the sad story of my father\'s death,     And twenty times made pause to sob and weep     That all the standers-by had wet their cheeks     Like trees bedash\'d with rain-in that sad time     My manly eyes did scorn an humble tear;     And what these sorrows could not thence exhale     Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping.     I never sued to friend nor enemy;     My tongue could never learn sweet smoothing word;     But, now thy beauty is propos\'d my fee,     My proud heart sues, and prompts my tongue to speak.                                    [She looks scornfully at him]     Teach not thy lip such scorn; for it was made     For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.     If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive,     Lo here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword;     Which if thou please to hide in this true breast     And let the soul forth that adoreth thee,       I lay it naked to the deadly stroke,     And humbly beg the death upon my knee.       [He lays his breast open; she offers at it with his sword]     Nay, do not pause; for I did kill King Henry-     But \'twas thy beauty that provoked me.     Nay, now dispatch; \'twas I that stabb\'d young Edward-     But \'twas thy heavenly face that set me on.                                            [She falls the sword]     Take up the sword again, or take up me.   ANNE. Arise, dissembler; though I wish thy death,     I will not be thy executioner.   GLOUCESTER. Then bid me kill myself, and I will do it;   ANNE. I have already.   GLOUCESTER. That was in thy rage.     Speak it again, and even with the word     This hand, which for thy love did kill thy love,     Shall for thy love kill a far truer love;     To both their deaths shalt thou be accessary.   ANNE. I would I knew thy heart.   GLOUCESTER. \'Tis figur\'d in my tongue.     ANNE. I fear me both are false.   GLOUCESTER. Then never was man true.   ANNE. well put up your sword.   GLOUCESTER. Say, then, my peace is made.   ANNE. That shalt thou know hereafter.   GLOUCESTER. But shall I live in hope?   ANNE. All men, I hope, live so.   GLOUCESTER. Vouchsafe to wear this ring.   ANNE. To take is not to give.               [Puts on the ring]   GLOUCESTER. Look how my ring encompasseth thy finger,     Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart;     Wear both of them, for both of them are thine.     And if thy poor devoted servant may     But beg one favour at thy gracious hand,     Thou dost confirm his happiness for ever.   ANNE. What is it?   GLOUCESTER. That it may please you leave these sad designs     To him that hath most cause to be a mourner,     And presently repair to Crosby House;     Where-after I have solemnly interr\'d       At Chertsey monast\'ry this noble king,     And wet his grave with my repentant tears-     I will with all expedient duty see you.     For divers unknown reasons, I beseech you,     Grant me this boon.   ANNE. With all my heart; and much it joys me too     To see you are become so penitent.     Tressel and Berkeley, go along with me.   GLOUCESTER. Bid me farewell.   ANNE. \'Tis more than you deserve;     But since you teach me how to flatter you,     Imagine I have said farewell already.                              Exeunt two GENTLEMEN With LADY ANNE   GLOUCESTER. Sirs, take up the corse.   GENTLEMEN. Towards Chertsey, noble lord?   GLOUCESTER. No, to White Friars; there attend my coming.                                        Exeunt all but GLOUCESTER     Was ever woman in this humour woo\'d?     Was ever woman in this humour won?     I\'ll have her; but I will not keep her long.       What! I that kill\'d her husband and his father-     To take her in her heart\'s extremest hate,     With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes,     The bleeding witness of my hatred by;     Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me,     And I no friends to back my suit at all     But the plain devil and dissembling looks,     And yet to win her, all the world to nothing!     Ha!     Hath she forgot already that brave prince,     Edward, her lord, whom I, some three months since,     Stabb\'d in my angry mood at Tewksbury?     A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman-     Fram\'d in the prodigality of nature,     Young, valiant, wise, and no doubt right royal-     The spacious world cannot again afford;     And will she yet abase her eyes on me,     That cropp\'d the golden prime of this sweet prince     And made her widow to a woeful bed?     On me, whose all not equals Edward\'s moiety?       On me, that halts and am misshapen thus?     My dukedom to a beggarly denier,     I do mistake my person all this while.     Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot,     Myself to be a marv\'llous proper man.     I\'ll be at charges for a looking-glass,     And entertain a score or two of tailors     To study fashions to adorn my body.     Since I am crept in favour with myself,     I will maintain it with some little cost.     But first I\'ll turn yon fellow in his grave,     And then return lamenting to my love.     Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,     That I may see my shadow as I pass.                     Exit     SCENE 3.  London. The palace  Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, LORD RIVERS, and LORD GREY    RIVERS. Have patience, madam; there\'s no doubt his Majesty     Will soon recover his accustom\'d health.   GREY. In that you brook it ill, it makes him worse;     Therefore, for God\'s sake, entertain good comfort,     And cheer his Grace with quick and merry eyes.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. If he were dead, what would betide on     me?   GREY. No other harm but loss of such a lord.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. The loss of such a lord includes all     harms.   GREY. The heavens have bless\'d you with a goodly son     To be your comforter when he is gone.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, he is young; and his minority     Is put unto the trust of Richard Gloucester,     A man that loves not me, nor none of you.   RIVER. Is it concluded he shall be Protector?     QUEEN ELIZABETH. It is determin\'d, not concluded yet;     But so it must be, if the King miscarry.                       Enter BUCKINGHAM and DERBY    GREY. Here come the Lords of Buckingham and Derby.   BUCKINGHAM. Good time of day unto your royal Grace!   DERBY. God make your Majesty joyful as you have been.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. The Countess Richmond, good my Lord     of Derby,     To your good prayer will scarcely say amen.     Yet, Derby, notwithstanding she\'s your wife     And loves not me, be you, good lord, assur\'d     I hate not you for her proud arrogance.   DERBY. I do beseech you, either not believe     The envious slanders of her false accusers;     Or, if she be accus\'d on true report,     Bear with her weakness, which I think proceeds     From wayward sickness and no grounded malice.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Saw you the King to-day, my Lord of       Derby?   DERBY. But now the Duke of Buckingham and I     Are come from visiting his Majesty.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. What likelihood of his amendment,     Lords?   BUCKINGHAM. Madam, good hope; his Grace speaks     cheerfully.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. God grant him health! Did you confer     with him?   BUCKINGHAM. Ay, madam; he desires to make atonement     Between the Duke of Gloucester and your brothers,     And between them and my Lord Chamberlain;     And sent to warn them to his royal presence.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Would all were well! But that will     never be.     I fear our happiness is at the height.                Enter GLOUCESTER, HASTINGS, and DORSET    GLOUCESTER. They do me wrong, and I will not endure it.       Who is it that complains unto the King     That I, forsooth, am stern and love them not?     By holy Paul, they love his Grace but lightly     That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours.     Because I cannot flatter and look fair,     Smile in men\'s faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,     Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,     I must be held a rancorous enemy.     Cannot a plain man live and think no harm     But thus his simple truth must be abus\'d     With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?   GREY. To who in all this presence speaks your Grace?   GLOUCESTER. To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace.     When have I injur\'d thee? when done thee wrong,     Or thee, or thee, or any of your faction?     A plague upon you all! His royal Grace-     Whom God preserve better than you would wish!-     Cannot be quiet searce a breathing while     But you must trouble him with lewd complaints.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Brother of Gloucester, you mistake the       matter.     The King, on his own royal disposition     And not provok\'d by any suitor else-     Aiming, belike, at your interior hatred     That in your outward action shows itself     Against my children, brothers, and myself-     Makes him to send that he may learn the ground.   GLOUCESTER. I cannot tell; the world is grown so bad     That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.     Since every Jack became a gentleman,     There\'s many a gentle person made a Jack.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Come, come, we know your meaning,     brother Gloucester:     You envy my advancement and my friends\';     God grant we never may have need of you!   GLOUCESTER. Meantime, God grants that I have need of you.     Our brother is imprison\'d by your means,     Myself disgrac\'d, and the nobility     Held in contempt; while great promotions     Are daily given to ennoble those       That scarce some two days since were worth a noble.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. By Him that rais\'d me to this careful     height     From that contented hap which I enjoy\'d,     I never did incense his Majesty     Against the Duke of Clarence, but have been     An earnest advocate to plead for him.     My lord, you do me shameful injury     Falsely to draw me in these vile suspects.   GLOUCESTER. You may deny that you were not the mean     Of my Lord Hastings\' late imprisonment.   RIVERS. She may, my lord; for-   GLOUCESTER. She may, Lord Rivers? Why, who knows     not so?     She may do more, sir, than denying that:     She may help you to many fair preferments     And then deny her aiding hand therein,     And lay those honours on your high desert.     What may she not? She may-ay, marry, may she-   RIVERS. What, marry, may she?     GLOUCESTER. What, marry, may she? Marry with a king,     A bachelor, and a handsome stripling too.     Iwis your grandam had a worser match.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. My Lord of Gloucester, I have too long     borne     Your blunt upbraidings and your bitter scoffs.     By heaven, I will acquaint his Majesty     Of those gross taunts that oft I have endur\'d.     I had rather be a country servant-maid     Than a great queen with this condition-     To be so baited, scorn\'d, and stormed at.                  Enter old QUEEN MARGARET, behind      Small joy have I in being England\'s Queen.   QUEEN MARGARET. And less\'ned be that small, God, I     beseech Him!     Thy honour, state, and seat, is due to me.   GLOUCESTER. What! Threat you me with telling of the     King?       Tell him and spare not. Look what I have said     I will avouch\'t in presence of the King.     I dare adventure to be sent to th\' Tow\'r.     \'Tis time to speak-my pains are quite forgot.   QUEEN MARGARET. Out, devil! I do remember them to     well:     Thou kill\'dst my husband Henry in the Tower,     And Edward, my poor son, at Tewksbury.   GLOUCESTER. Ere you were queen, ay, or your husband     King,     I was a pack-horse in his great affairs,     A weeder-out of his proud adversaries,     A liberal rewarder of his friends;     To royalize his blood I spent mine own.   QUEEN MARGARET. Ay, and much better blood than his or     thine.   GLOUCESTER. In all which time you and your husband Grey     Were factious for the house of Lancaster;     And, Rivers, so were you. Was not your husband     In Margaret\'s battle at Saint Albans slain?       Let me put in your minds, if you forget,     What you have been ere this, and what you are;     Withal, what I have been, and what I am.   QUEEN MARGARET. A murd\'rous villain, and so still thou art.   GLOUCESTER. Poor Clarence did forsake his father, Warwick,     Ay, and forswore himself-which Jesu pardon!-   QUEEN MARGARET. Which God revenge!   GLOUCESTER. To fight on Edward\'s party for the crown;     And for his meed, poor lord, he is mewed up.     I would to God my heart were flint like Edward\'s,     Or Edward\'s soft and pitiful like mine.     I am too childish-foolish for this world.   QUEEN MARGARET. Hie thee to hell for shame and leave this     world,     Thou cacodemon; there thy kingdom is.   RIVERS. My Lord of Gloucester, in those busy days     Which here you urge to prove us enemies,     We follow\'d then our lord, our sovereign king.     So should we you, if you should be our king.   GLOUCESTER. If I should be! I had rather be a pedlar.       Far be it from my heart, the thought thereof!   QUEEN ELIZABETH. As little joy, my lord, as you suppose     You should enjoy were you this country\'s king,     As little joy you may suppose in me     That I enjoy, being the Queen thereof.   QUEEN MARGARET. As little joy enjoys the Queen thereof;     For I am she, and altogether joyless.     I can no longer hold me patient.                 [Advancing]     Hear me, you wrangling pirates, that fall out     In sharing that which you have pill\'d from me.     Which of you trembles not that looks on me?     If not that, I am Queen, you bow like subjects,     Yet that, by you depos\'d, you quake like rebels?     Ah, gentle villain, do not turn away!   GLOUCESTER. Foul wrinkled witch, what mak\'st thou in my     sight?   QUEEN MARGARET. But repetition of what thou hast marr\'d,     That will I make before I let thee go.   GLOUCESTER. Wert thou not banished on pain of death?   QUEEN MARGARET. I was; but I do find more pain in       banishment     Than death can yield me here by my abode.     A husband and a son thou ow\'st to me;     And thou a kingdom; all of you allegiance.     This sorrow that I have by right is yours;     And all the pleasures you usurp are mine.   GLOUCESTER. The curse my noble father laid on thee,     When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper     And with thy scorns drew\'st rivers from his eyes,     And then to dry them gav\'st the Duke a clout     Steep\'d in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland-     His curses then from bitterness of soul     Denounc\'d against thee are all fall\'n upon thee;     And God, not we, hath plagu\'d thy bloody deed.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. So just is God to right the innocent.   HASTINGS. O, \'twas the foulest deed to slay that babe,     And the most merciless that e\'er was heard of!   RIVERS. Tyrants themselves wept when it was reported.   DORSET. No man but prophesied revenge for it.   BUCKINGHAM. Northumberland, then present, wept to see it.     QUEEN MARGARET. What, were you snarling all before I came,     Ready to catch each other by the throat,     And turn you all your hatred now on me?     Did York\'s dread curse prevail so much with heaven     That Henry\'s death, my lovely Edward\'s death,     Their kingdom\'s loss, my woeful banishment,     Should all but answer for that peevish brat?     Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?     Why then, give way, dull clouds, to my quick curses!     Though not by war, by surfeit die your king,     As ours by murder, to make him a king!     Edward thy son, that now is Prince of Wales,     For Edward our son, that was Prince of Wales,     Die in his youth by like untimely violence!     Thyself a queen, for me that was a queen,     Outlive thy glory, like my wretched self!     Long mayest thou live to wail thy children\'s death,     And see another, as I see thee now,     Deck\'d in thy rights, as thou art stall\'d in mine!     Long die thy happy days before thy death;       And, after many length\'ned hours of grief,     Die neither mother, wife, nor England\'s Queen!     Rivers and Dorset, you were standers by,     And so wast thou, Lord Hastings, when my son     Was stabb\'d with bloody daggers. God, I pray him,     That none of you may live his natural age,     But by some unlook\'d accident cut off!   GLOUCESTER. Have done thy charm, thou hateful wither\'d     hag.   QUEEN MARGARET. And leave out thee? Stay, dog, for thou     shalt hear me.     If heaven have any grievous plague in store     Exceeding those that I can wish upon thee,     O, let them keep it till thy sins be ripe,     And then hurl down their indignation     On thee, the troubler of the poor world\'s peace!     The worm of conscience still be-gnaw thy soul!     Thy friends suspect for traitors while thou liv\'st,     And take deep traitors for thy dearest friends!     No sleep close up that deadly eye of thine,       Unless it be while some tormenting dream     Affrights thee with a hell of ugly devils!     Thou elvish-mark\'d, abortive, rooting hog,     Thou that wast seal\'d in thy nativity     The slave of nature and the son of hell,     Thou slander of thy heavy mother\'s womb,     Thou loathed issue of thy father\'s loins,     Thou rag of honour, thou detested-   GLOUCESTER. Margaret!   QUEEN MARGARET. Richard!   GLOUCESTER. Ha?   QUEEN MARGARET. I call thee not.   GLOUCESTER. I cry thee mercy then, for I did think     That thou hadst call\'d me all these bitter names.   QUEEN MARGARET. Why, so I did, but look\'d for no reply.     O, let me make the period to my curse!   GLOUCESTER. \'Tis done by me, and ends in-Margaret.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Thus have you breath\'d your curse     against yourself.   QUEEN MARGARET. Poor painted queen, vain flourish of my       fortune!     Why strew\'st thou sugar on that bottled spider     Whose deadly web ensnareth thee about?     Fool, fool! thou whet\'st a knife to kill thyself.     The day will come that thou shalt wish for me     To help thee curse this poisonous bunch-back\'d toad.   HASTINGS. False-boding woman, end thy frantic curse,     Lest to thy harm thou move our patience.   QUEEN MARGARET. Foul shame upon you! you have all     mov\'d mine.   RIVERS. Were you well serv\'d, you would be taught your       duty.   QUEEN MARGARET. To serve me well you all should do me     duty,     Teach me to be your queen and you my subjects.     O, serve me well, and teach yourselves that duty!   DORSET. Dispute not with her; she is lunatic.   QUEEN MARGARET. Peace, Master Marquis, you are malapert;     Your fire-new stamp of honour is scarce current.     O, that your young nobility could judge       What \'twere to lose it and be miserable!     They that stand high have many blasts to shake them,     And if they fall they dash themselves to pieces.   GLOUCESTER. Good counsel, marry; learn it, learn it, Marquis.   DORSET. It touches you, my lord, as much as me.   GLOUCESTER. Ay, and much more; but I was born so high,     Our aery buildeth in the cedar\'s top,     And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun.   QUEEN MARGARET. And turns the sun to shade-alas! alas!     Witness my son, now in the shade of death,     Whose bright out-shining beams thy cloudy wrath     Hath in eternal darkness folded up.     Your aery buildeth in our aery\'s nest.     O God that seest it, do not suffer it;     As it is won with blood, lost be it so!   BUCKINGHAM. Peace, peace, for shame, if not for charity!   QUEEN MARGARET. Urge neither charity nor shame to me.     Uncharitably with me have you dealt,     And shamefully my hopes by you are butcher\'d.     My charity is outrage, life my shame;       And in that shame still live my sorrow\'s rage!   BUCKINGHAM. Have done, have done.   QUEEN MARGARET. O princely Buckingham, I\'ll kiss thy     hand     In sign of league and amity with thee.     Now fair befall thee and thy noble house!     Thy garments are not spotted with our blood,     Nor thou within the compass of my curse.   BUCKINGHAM. Nor no one here; for curses never pass     The lips of those that breathe them in the air.   QUEEN MARGARET. I will not think but they ascend the sky     And there awake God\'s gentle-sleeping peace.     O Buckingham, take heed of yonder dog!     Look when he fawns, he bites; and when he bites,     His venom tooth will rankle to the death:     Have not to do with him, beware of him;     Sin, death, and hell, have set their marks on him,     And all their ministers attend on him.   GLOUCESTER. What doth she say, my Lord of Buckingham?   BUCKINGHAM. Nothing that I respect, my gracious lord.     QUEEN MARGARET. What, dost thou scorn me for my gentle     counsel,     And soothe the devil that I warn thee from?     O, but remember this another day,     When he shall split thy very heart with sorrow,     And say poor Margaret was a prophetess!     Live each of you the subjects to his hate,     And he to yours, and all of you to God\'s!               Exit   BUCKINGHAM. My hair doth stand an end to hear her curses.   RIVERS. And so doth mine. I muse why she\'s at liberty.   GLOUCESTER. I cannot blame her; by God\'s holy Mother,     She hath had too much wrong; and I repent     My part thereof that I have done to her.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. I never did her any to my knowledge.   GLOUCESTER. Yet you have all the vantage of her wrong.     I was too hot to do somebody good     That is too cold in thinking of it now.     Marry, as for Clarence, he is well repaid;     He is frank\'d up to fatting for his pains;     God pardon them that are the cause thereof!     RIVERS. A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion,     To pray for them that have done scathe to us!   GLOUCESTER. So do I ever-  [Aside]  being well advis\'d;     For had I curs\'d now, I had curs\'d myself.                           Enter CATESBY    CATESBY. Madam, his Majesty doth can for you,     And for your Grace, and you, my gracious lords.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Catesby, I come. Lords, will you go     with me?   RIVERS. We wait upon your Grace.                                        Exeunt all but GLOUCESTER   GLOUCESTER. I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl.     The secret mischiefs that I set abroach     I lay unto the grievous charge of others.     Clarence, who I indeed have cast in darkness,     I do beweep to many simple gulls;     Namely, to Derby, Hastings, Buckingham;     And tell them \'tis the Queen and her allies       That stir the King against the Duke my brother.     Now they believe it, and withal whet me     To be reveng\'d on Rivers, Dorset, Grey;     But then I sigh and, with a piece of Scripture,     Tell them that God bids us do good for evil.     And thus I clothe my naked villainy     With odd old ends stol\'n forth of holy writ,     And seem a saint when most I play the devil.                         Enter two MURDERERS      But, soft, here come my executioners.     How now, my hardy stout resolved mates!     Are you now going to dispatch this thing?   FIRST MURDERER. We are, my lord, and come to have the     warrant,     That we may be admitted where he is.   GLOUCESTER. Well thought upon; I have it here about me.                                              [Gives the warrant]     When you have done, repair to Crosby Place.       But, sirs, be sudden in the execution,     Withal obdurate, do not hear him plead;     For Clarence is well-spoken, and perhaps     May move your hearts to pity, if you mark him.   FIRST MURDERER. Tut, tut, my lord, we will not stand to     prate;     Talkers are no good doers. Be assur\'d     We go to use our hands and not our tongues.   GLOUCESTER. Your eyes drop millstones when fools\' eyes fall     tears.     I like you, lads; about your business straight;     Go, go, dispatch.   FIRST MURDERER. We will, my noble lord.                 Exeunt     SCENE 4.  London. The Tower  Enter CLARENCE and KEEPER    KEEPER. Why looks your Grace so heavily to-day?   CLARENCE. O, I have pass\'d a miserable night,     So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,     That, as I am a Christian faithful man,     I would not spend another such a night     Though \'twere to buy a world of happy days-     So full of dismal terror was the time!   KEEPER. What was your dream, my lord? I pray you     tell me.   CLARENCE. Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower     And was embark\'d to cross to Burgundy;     And in my company my brother Gloucester,     Who from my cabin tempted me to walk     Upon the hatches. Thence we look\'d toward England,     And cited up a thousand heavy times,     During the wars of York and Lancaster,     That had befall\'n us. As we pac\'d along       Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,     Methought that Gloucester stumbled, and in falling     Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard     Into the tumbling billows of the main.     O Lord, methought what pain it was to drown,     What dreadful noise of waters in my ears,     What sights of ugly death within my eyes!     Methoughts I saw a thousand fearful wrecks,     A thousand men that fishes gnaw\'d upon,     Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,     Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,     All scatt\'red in the bottom of the sea;     Some lay in dead men\'s skulls, and in the holes     Where eyes did once inhabit there were crept,     As \'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,     That woo\'d the slimy bottom of the deep     And mock\'d the dead bones that lay scatt\'red by.   KEEPER. Had you such leisure in the time of death     To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?   CLARENCE. Methought I had; and often did I strive       To yield the ghost, but still the envious flood     Stopp\'d in my soul and would not let it forth     To find the empty, vast, and wand\'ring air;     But smother\'d it within my panting bulk,     Who almost burst to belch it in the sea.   KEEPER. Awak\'d you not in this sore agony?   CLARENCE. No, no, my dream was lengthen\'d after life.     O, then began the tempest to my soul!     I pass\'d, methought, the melancholy flood     With that sour ferryman which poets write of,     Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.     The first that there did greet my stranger soul     Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick,     Who spake aloud \'What scourge for perjury     Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?\'     And so he vanish\'d. Then came wand\'ring by     A shadow like an angel, with bright hair     Dabbled in blood, and he shriek\'d out aloud     \'Clarence is come-false, fleeting, perjur\'d Clarence,     That stabb\'d me in the field by Tewksbury.       Seize on him, Furies, take him unto torment!\'     With that, methoughts, a legion of foul fiends     Environ\'d me, and howled in mine ears     Such hideous cries that, with the very noise,     I trembling wak\'d, and for a season after     Could not believe but that I was in hell,     Such terrible impression made my dream.   KEEPER. No marvel, lord, though it affrighted you;     I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it.   CLARENCE. Ah, Keeper, Keeper, I have done these things     That now give evidence against my soul     For Edward\'s sake, and see how he requites me!     O God! If my deep prayers cannot appease Thee,     But Thou wilt be aveng\'d on my misdeeds,     Yet execute Thy wrath in me alone;     O, spare my guiltless wife and my poor children!   KEEPER, I prithee sit by me awhile;     My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.   KEEPER. I will, my lord. God give your Grace good rest.                                                [CLARENCE sleeps]                      Enter BRAKENBURY the Lieutenant    BRAKENBURY. Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours,     Makes the night morning and the noontide night.     Princes have but their titles for their glories,     An outward honour for an inward toil;     And for unfelt imaginations     They often feel a world of restless cares,     So that between their tides and low name     There\'s nothing differs but the outward fame.                        Enter the two MURDERERS    FIRST MURDERER. Ho! who\'s here?   BRAKENBURY. What wouldst thou, fellow, and how cam\'st     thou hither?   FIRST MURDERER. I would speak with Clarence, and I came     hither on my legs.   BRAKENBURY. What, so brief?     SECOND MURDERER. \'Tis better, sir, than to be tedious. Let     him see our commission and talk no more.                                            [BRAKENBURY reads it]   BRAKENBURY. I am, in this, commanded to deliver     The noble Duke of Clarence to your hands.     I will not reason what is meant hereby,     Because I will be guiltless from the meaning.     There lies the Duke asleep; and there the keys.     I\'ll to the King and signify to him     That thus I have resign\'d to you my charge.   FIRST MURDERER. You may, sir; \'tis a point of wisdom. Fare     you well.                       Exeunt BRAKENBURY and KEEPER   SECOND MURDERER. What, shall I stab him as he sleeps?   FIRST MURDERER. No; he\'ll say \'twas done cowardly, when     he wakes.   SECOND MURDERER. Why, he shall never wake until the great     judgment-day.   FIRST MURDERER. Why, then he\'ll say we stabb\'d him     sleeping.   SECOND MURDERER. The urging of that word judgment hath       bred a kind of remorse in me.   FIRST MURDERER. What, art thou afraid?   SECOND MURDERER. Not to kill him, having a warrant; but to     be damn\'d for killing him, from the which no warrant can     defend me.   FIRST MURDERER. I thought thou hadst been resolute.   SECOND MURDERER. So I am, to let him live.   FIRST MURDERER. I\'ll back to the Duke of Gloucester and     tell him so.   SECOND MURDERER. Nay, I prithee, stay a little. I hope this     passionate humour of mine will change; it was wont to     hold me but while one tells twenty.   FIRST MURDERER. How dost thou feel thyself now?     SECOND MURDERER. Faith, some certain dregs of conscience     are yet within me.   FIRST MURDERER. Remember our reward, when the deed\'s     done.   SECOND MURDERER. Zounds, he dies; I had forgot the reward.   FIRST MURDERER. Where\'s thy conscience now?   SECOND MURDERER. O, in the Duke of Gloucester\'s purse!     FIRST MURDERER. When he opens his purse to give us our     reward, thy conscience flies out.   SECOND MURDERER. \'Tis no matter; let it go; there\'s few or     none will entertain it.   FIRST MURDERER. What if it come to thee again?   SECOND MURDERER. I\'ll not meddle with it-it makes a man     coward: a man cannot steal, but it accuseth him; a man     cannot swear, but it checks him; a man cannot lie with his     neighbour\'s wife, but it detects him. \'Tis a blushing shame-     fac\'d spirit that mutinies in a man\'s bosom; it fills a man     full of obstacles: it made me once restore a purse of gold     that-by chance I found. It beggars any man that keeps it.     It is turn\'d out of towns and cities for a dangerous thing;     and every man that means to live well endeavours to trust     to himself and live without it.   FIRST MURDERER. Zounds, \'tis even now at my elbow,     persuading me not to kill the Duke.   SECOND MURDERER. Take the devil in thy mind and believe     him not; he would insinuate with thee but to make the     sigh.     FIRST MURDERER. I am strong-fram\'d; he cannot prevail with     me.   SECOND MURDERER. Spoke like a tall man that respects thy     reputation. Come, shall we fall to work?   FIRST MURDERER. Take him on the costard with the hilts of     thy sword, and then chop him in the malmsey-butt in the     next room.   SECOND MURDERER. O excellent device! and make a sop of     him.   FIRST MURDERER. Soft! he wakes.   SECOND MURDERER. Strike!   FIRST MURDERER. No, we\'ll reason with him.   CLARENCE. Where art thou, Keeper? Give me a cup of wine.   SECOND MURDERER. You shall have wine enough, my lord,     anon.   CLARENCE. In God\'s name, what art thou?   FIRST MURDERER. A man, as you are.   CLARENCE. But not as I am, royal.   SECOND MURDERER. Nor you as we are, loyal.   CLARENCE. Thy voice is thunder, but thy looks are humble.     FIRST MURDERER. My voice is now the King\'s, my looks     mine own.   CLARENCE. How darkly and how deadly dost thou speak!     Your eyes do menace me. Why look you pale?     Who sent you hither? Wherefore do you come?   SECOND MURDERER. To, to, to-   CLARENCE. To murder me?   BOTH MURDERERS. Ay, ay.   CLARENCE. You scarcely have the hearts to tell me so,     And therefore cannot have the hearts to do it.     Wherein, my friends, have I offended you?   FIRST MURDERER. Offended us you have not, but the King.   CLARENCE. I shall be reconcil\'d to him again.   SECOND MURDERER. Never, my lord; therefore prepare to die.   CLARENCE. Are you drawn forth among a world of men     To slay the innocent? What is my offence?     Where is the evidence that doth accuse me?     What lawful quest have given their verdict up     Unto the frowning judge, or who pronounc\'d     The bitter sentence of poor Clarence\' death?       Before I be convict by course of law,     To threaten me with death is most unlawful.     I charge you, as you hope to have redemption     By Christ\'s dear blood shed for our grievous sins,     That you depart and lay no hands on me.     The deed you undertake is damnable.   FIRST MURDERER. What we will do, we do upon command.   SECOND MURDERER. And he that hath commanded is our     King.   CLARENCE. Erroneous vassals! the great King of kings     Hath in the tables of his law commanded     That thou shalt do no murder. Will you then     Spurn at his edict and fulfil a man\'s?     Take heed; for he holds vengeance in his hand     To hurl upon their heads that break his law.   SECOND MURDERER. And that same vengeance doth he hurl     on thee     For false forswearing, and for murder too;     Thou didst receive the sacrament to fight     In quarrel of the house of Lancaster.     FIRST MURDERER. And like a traitor to the name of God     Didst break that vow; and with thy treacherous blade     Unripp\'dst the bowels of thy sov\'reign\'s son.   SECOND MURDERER. Whom thou wast sworn to cherish and     defend.   FIRST MURDERER. How canst thou urge God\'s dreadful law     to us,     When thou hast broke it in such dear degree?   CLARENCE. Alas! for whose sake did I that ill deed?     For Edward, for my brother, for his sake.     He sends you not to murder me for this,     For in that sin he is as deep as I.     If God will be avenged for the deed,     O, know you yet He doth it publicly.     Take not the quarrel from His pow\'rful arm;     He needs no indirect or lawless course     To cut off those that have offended Him.   FIRST MURDERER. Who made thee then a bloody minister     When gallant-springing brave Plantagenet,     That princely novice, was struck dead by thee?     CLARENCE. My brother\'s love, the devil, and my rage.   FIRST MURDERER. Thy brother\'s love, our duty, and thy     faults,     Provoke us hither now to slaughter thee.   CLARENCE. If you do love my brother, hate not me;     I am his brother, and I love him well.     If you are hir\'d for meed, go back again,     And I will send you to my brother Gloucester,     Who shall reward you better for my life     Than Edward will for tidings of my death.   SECOND MURDERER. You are deceiv\'d: your brother Gloucester     hates you.   CLARENCE. O, no, he loves me, and he holds me dear.     Go you to him from me.   FIRST MURDERER. Ay, so we will.   CLARENCE. Tell him when that our princely father York     Bless\'d his three sons with his victorious arm     And charg\'d us from his soul to love each other,     He little thought of this divided friendship.     Bid Gloucester think of this, and he will weep.     FIRST MURDERER. Ay, millstones; as he lesson\'d us to weep.   CLARENCE. O, do not slander him, for he is kind.   FIRST MURDERER. Right, as snow in harvest. Come, you     deceive yourself:     \'Tis he that sends us to destroy you here.     CLARENCE. It cannot be; for he bewept my fortune     And hugg\'d me in his arms, and swore with sobs     That he would labour my delivery.   FIRST MURDERER. Why, so he doth, when he delivers you     From this earth\'s thraldom to the joys of heaven.   SECOND MURDERER. Make peace with God, for you must die,     my lord.   CLARENCE. Have you that holy feeling in your souls     To counsel me to make my peace with God,     And are you yet to your own souls so blind     That you will war with God by murd\'ring me?     O, sirs, consider: they that set you on     To do this deed will hate you for the deed.   SECOND MURDERER. What shall we do?   CLARENCE. Relent, and save your souls.     FIRST MURDERER. Relent! No, \'tis cowardly and womanish.   CLARENCE. Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish.     Which of you, if you were a prince\'s son,     Being pent from liberty as I am now,     If two such murderers as yourselves came to you,     Would not entreat for life?     My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks;     O, if thine eye be not a flatterer,     Come thou on my side and entreat for me-     As you would beg were you in my distress.     A begging prince what beggar pities not?   SECOND MURDERER. Look behind you, my lord.   FIRST MURDERER.  [Stabbing him]  Take that, and that. If all     this will not do,     I\'ll drown you in the malmsey-butt within.                                               Exit with the body   SECOND MURDERER. A bloody deed, and desperately     dispatch\'d!     How fain, like Pilate, would I wash my hands     Of this most grievous murder!                           Re-enter FIRST MURDERER    FIRST MURDERER-How now, what mean\'st thou that thou     help\'st me not?     By heavens, the Duke shall know how slack you have     been!   SECOND MURDERER. I would he knew that I had sav\'d his     brother!     Take thou the fee, and tell him what I say;     For I repent me that the Duke is slain.                 Exit   FIRST MURDERER. So do not I. Go, coward as thou art.     Well, I\'ll go hide the body in some hole,     Till that the Duke give order for his burial;     And when I have my meed, I will away;     For this will out, and then I must not stay.            Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE 1.  London. The palace  Flourish. Enter KING EDWARD sick, QUEEN ELIZABETH, DORSET, RIVERS, HASTINGS, BUCKINGHAM, GREY, and others    KING EDWARD. Why, so. Now have I done a good day\'s     work.     You peers, continue this united league.     I every day expect an embassage     From my Redeemer to redeem me hence;     And more at peace my soul shall part to heaven,     Since I have made my friends at peace on earth.     Hastings and Rivers, take each other\'s hand;     Dissemble not your hatred, swear your love.   RIVERS. By heaven, my soul is purg\'d from grudging hate;     And with my hand I seal my true heart\'s love.   HASTINGS. So thrive I, as I truly swear the like!   KING EDWARD. Take heed you dally not before your king;     Lest He that is the supreme King of kings     Confound your hidden falsehood and award       Either of you to be the other\'s end.   HASTINGS. So prosper I, as I swear perfect love!   RIVERS. And I, as I love Hastings with my heart!   KING EDWARD. Madam, yourself is not exempt from this;     Nor you, son Dorset; Buckingham, nor you:     You have been factious one against the other.     Wife, love Lord Hastings, let him kiss your hand;     And what you do, do it unfeignedly.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. There, Hastings; I will never more     remember     Our former hatred, so thrive I and mine!   KING EDWARD. Dorset, embrace him; Hastings, love Lord     Marquis.   DORSET. This interchange of love, I here protest,     Upon my part shall be inviolable.   HASTINGS. And so swear I.                       [They embrace]   KING EDWARD. Now, princely Buckingham, seal thou this     league     With thy embracements to my wife\'s allies,     And make me happy in your unity.     BUCKINGHAM.  [To the QUEEN]  Whenever Buckingham     doth turn his hate     Upon your Grace, but with all duteous love     Doth cherish you and yours, God punish me     With hate in those where I expect most love!     When I have most need to employ a friend     And most assured that he is a friend,     Deep, hollow, treacherous, and full of guile,     Be he unto me! This do I beg of God     When I am cold in love to you or yours.                                                   [They embrace]   KING EDWARD. A pleasing cordial, princely Buckingham,     Is this thy vow unto my sickly heart.     There wanteth now our brother Gloucester here     To make the blessed period of this peace.   BUCKINGHAM. And, in good time,     Here comes Sir Richard Ratcliff and the Duke.                        Enter GLOUCESTER, and RATCLIFF      GLOUCESTER. Good morrow to my sovereign king and     Queen;     And, princely peers, a happy time of day!   KING EDWARD. Happy, indeed, as we have spent the day.     Gloucester, we have done deeds of charity,     Made peace of enmity, fair love of hate,     Between these swelling wrong-incensed peers.   GLOUCESTER. A blessed labour, my most sovereign lord.     Among this princely heap, if any here,     By false intelligence or wrong surmise,     Hold me a foe-     If I unwittingly, or in my rage,     Have aught committed that is hardly borne     To any in this presence, I desire     To reconcile me to his friendly peace:     \'Tis death to me to be at enmity;     I hate it, and desire all good men\'s love.     First, madam, I entreat true peace of you,     Which I will purchase with my duteous service;     Of you, my noble cousin Buckingham,       If ever any grudge were lodg\'d between us;     Of you, and you, Lord Rivers, and of Dorset,     That all without desert have frown\'d on me;     Of you, Lord Woodville, and, Lord Scales, of you;     Dukes, earls, lords, gentlemen-indeed, of all.     I do not know that Englishman alive     With whom my soul is any jot at odds     More than the infant that is born to-night.     I thank my God for my humility.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. A holy day shall this be kept hereafter.     I would to God all strifes were well compounded.     My sovereign lord, I do beseech your Highness     To take our brother Clarence to your grace.   GLOUCESTER. Why, madam, have I off\'red love for this,     To be so flouted in this royal presence?     Who knows not that the gentle Duke is dead?                                                 [They all start]     You do him injury to scorn his corse.   KING EDWARD. Who knows not he is dead! Who knows     he is?     QUEEN ELIZABETH. All-seeing heaven, what a world is this!   BUCKINGHAM. Look I so pale, Lord Dorset, as the rest?   DORSET. Ay, my good lord; and no man in the presence     But his red colour hath forsook his cheeks.   KING EDWARD. Is Clarence dead? The order was revers\'d.   GLOUCESTER. But he, poor man, by your first order died,     And that a winged Mercury did bear;     Some tardy cripple bare the countermand     That came too lag to see him buried.     God grant that some, less noble and less loyal,     Nearer in bloody thoughts, an not in blood,     Deserve not worse than wretched Clarence did,     And yet go current from suspicion!                             Enter DERBY    DERBY. A boon, my sovereign, for my service done!   KING EDWARD. I prithee, peace; my soul is full of sorrow.   DERBY. I Will not rise unless your Highness hear me.   KING EDWARD. Then say at once what is it thou requests.     DERBY. The forfeit, sovereign, of my servant\'s life;     Who slew to-day a riotous gentleman     Lately attendant on the Duke of Norfolk.   KING EDWARD. Have I a tongue to doom my brother\'s death,     And shall that tongue give pardon to a slave?     My brother killed no man-his fault was thought,     And yet his punishment was bitter death.     Who sued to me for him? Who, in my wrath,     Kneel\'d at my feet, and bid me be advis\'d?     Who spoke of brotherhood? Who spoke of love?     Who told me how the poor soul did forsake     The mighty Warwick and did fight for me?     Who told me, in the field at Tewksbury     When Oxford had me down, he rescued me     And said \'Dear Brother, live, and be a king\'?     Who told me, when we both lay in the field     Frozen almost to death, how he did lap me     Even in his garments, and did give himself,     All thin and naked, to the numb cold night?     All this from my remembrance brutish wrath       Sinfully pluck\'d, and not a man of you     Had so much race to put it in my mind.     But when your carters or your waiting-vassals     Have done a drunken slaughter and defac\'d     The precious image of our dear Redeemer,     You straight are on your knees for pardon, pardon;     And I, unjustly too, must grant it you.        [DERBY rises]     But for my brother not a man would speak;     Nor I, ungracious, speak unto myself     For him, poor soul. The proudest of you all     Have been beholding to him in his life;     Yet none of you would once beg for his life.     O God, I fear thy justice will take hold     On me, and you, and mine, and yours, for this!     Come, Hastings, help me to my closet. Ah, poor Clarence!                                  Exeunt some with KING and QUEEN   GLOUCESTER. This is the fruits of rashness. Mark\'d you not     How that the guilty kindred of the Queen     Look\'d pale when they did hear of Clarence\' death?     O, they did urge it still unto the King!       God will revenge it. Come, lords, will you go     To comfort Edward with our company?   BUCKINGHAM. We wait upon your Grace.                    Exeunt     SCENE 2.  London. The palace  Enter the old DUCHESS OF YORK, with the SON and DAUGHTER of CLARENCE    SON. Good grandam, tell us, is our father dead?   DUCHESS. No, boy.   DAUGHTER. Why do you weep so oft, and beat your breast,     And cry \'O Clarence, my unhappy son!\'?   SON. Why do you look on us, and shake your head,     And call us orphans, wretches, castaways,     If that our noble father were alive?   DUCHESS. My pretty cousins, you mistake me both;     I do lament the sickness of the King,     As loath to lose him, not your father\'s death;     It were lost sorrow to wail one that\'s lost.   SON. Then you conclude, my grandam, he is dead.     The King mine uncle is to blame for it.     God will revenge it; whom I will importune     With earnest prayers all to that effect.   DAUGHTER. And so will I.     DUCHESS. Peace, children, peace! The King doth love you     well.     Incapable and shallow innocents,     You cannot guess who caus\'d your father\'s death.   SON. Grandam, we can; for my good uncle Gloucester     Told me the King, provok\'d to it by the Queen,     Devis\'d impeachments to imprison him.     And when my uncle told me so, he wept,     And pitied me, and kindly kiss\'d my cheek;     Bade me rely on him as on my father,     And he would love me dearly as a child.   DUCHESS. Ah, that deceit should steal such gentle shape,     And with a virtuous vizor hide deep vice!     He is my son; ay, and therein my shame;     Yet from my dugs he drew not this deceit.   SON. Think you my uncle did dissemble, grandam?   DUCHESS. Ay, boy.   SON. I cannot think it. Hark! what noise is this?              Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, with her hair about her                   ears; RIVERS and DORSET after her    QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, who shall hinder me to wail and     weep,     To chide my fortune, and torment myself?     I\'ll join with black despair against my soul     And to myself become an enemy.   DUCHESS. What means this scene of rude impatience?   QUEEN ELIZABETH. To make an act of tragic violence.   EDWARD, my lord, thy son, our king, is dead.     Why grow the branches when the root is gone?     Why wither not the leaves that want their sap?     If you will live, lament; if die, be brief,     That our swift-winged souls may catch the King\'s,     Or like obedient subjects follow him     To his new kingdom of ne\'er-changing night.   DUCHESS. Ah, so much interest have I in thy sorrow     As I had title in thy noble husband!     I have bewept a worthy husband\'s death,     And liv\'d with looking on his images;       But now two mirrors of his princely semblance     Are crack\'d in pieces by malignant death,     And I for comfort have but one false glass,     That grieves me when I see my shame in him.     Thou art a widow, yet thou art a mother     And hast the comfort of thy children left;     But death hath snatch\'d my husband from mine arms     And pluck\'d two crutches from my feeble hands-     Clarence and Edward. O, what cause have I-     Thine being but a moiety of my moan-     To overgo thy woes and drown thy cries?   SON. Ah, aunt, you wept not for our father\'s death!     How can we aid you with our kindred tears?   DAUGHTER. Our fatherless distress was left unmoan\'d;     Your widow-dolour likewise be unwept!   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Give me no help in lamentation;     I am not barren to bring forth complaints.     All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes     That I, being govern\'d by the watery moon,     May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world!       Ah for my husband, for my dear Lord Edward!   CHILDREN. Ah for our father, for our dear Lord Clarence!   DUCHESS. Alas for both, both mine, Edward and Clarence!   QUEEN ELIZABETH. What stay had I but Edward? and he\'s     gone.   CHILDREN. What stay had we but Clarence? and he\'s gone.   DUCHESS. What stays had I but they? and they are gone.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Was never widow had so dear a loss.   CHILDREN. Were never orphans had so dear a loss.   DUCHESS. Was never mother had so dear a loss.     Alas, I am the mother of these griefs!     Their woes are parcell\'d, mine is general.     She for an Edward weeps, and so do I:     I for a Clarence weep, so doth not she.     These babes for Clarence weep, and so do I:     I for an Edward weep, so do not they.     Alas, you three on me, threefold distress\'d,     Pour all your tears! I am your sorrow\'s nurse,     And I will pamper it with lamentation.   DORSET. Comfort, dear mother. God is much displeas\'d       That you take with unthankfulness his doing.     In common worldly things \'tis called ungrateful     With dull unwillingness to repay a debt     Which with a bounteous hand was kindly lent;     Much more to be thus opposite with heaven,     For it requires the royal debt it lent you.   RIVERS. Madam, bethink you, like a careful mother,     Of the young prince your son. Send straight for him;     Let him be crown\'d; in him your comfort lives.     Drown desperate sorrow in dead Edward\'s grave,     And plant your joys in living Edward\'s throne.                 Enter GLOUCESTER, BUCKINGHAM, DERBY,                       HASTINGS, and RATCLIFF    GLOUCESTER. Sister, have comfort. All of us have cause     To wail the dimming of our shining star;     But none can help our harms by wailing them.     Madam, my mother, I do cry you mercy;     I did not see your Grace. Humbly on my knee       I crave your blessing.   DUCHESS. God bless thee; and put meekness in thy breast,     Love, charity, obedience, and true duty!   GLOUCESTER. Amen!  [Aside]  And make me die a good old     man!     That is the butt end of a mother\'s blessing;     I marvel that her Grace did leave it out.   BUCKINGHAM. You cloudy princes and heart-sorrowing     peers,     That bear this heavy mutual load of moan,     Now cheer each other in each other\'s love.     Though we have spent our harvest of this king,     We are to reap the harvest of his son.     The broken rancour of your high-swol\'n hearts,     But lately splinter\'d, knit, and join\'d together,     Must gently be preserv\'d, cherish\'d, and kept.     Me seemeth good that, with some little train,     Forthwith from Ludlow the young prince be fet     Hither to London, to be crown\'d our King.   RIVERS. Why with some little train, my Lord of       Buckingham?   BUCKINGHAM. Marry, my lord, lest by a multitude     The new-heal\'d wound of malice should break out,     Which would be so much the more dangerous     By how much the estate is green and yet ungovern\'d;     Where every horse bears his commanding rein     And may direct his course as please himself,     As well the fear of harm as harm apparent,     In my opinion, ought to be prevented.   GLOUCESTER. I hope the King made peace with all of us;     And the compact is firm and true in me.   RIVERS. And so in me; and so, I think, in an.     Yet, since it is but green, it should be put     To no apparent likelihood of breach,     Which haply by much company might be urg\'d;     Therefore I say with noble Buckingham     That it is meet so few should fetch the Prince.   HASTINGS. And so say I.   GLOUCESTER. Then be it so; and go we to determine     Who they shall be that straight shall post to Ludlow.       Madam, and you, my sister, will you go     To give your censures in this business?                         Exeunt all but BUCKINGHAM and GLOUCESTER   BUCKINGHAM. My lord, whoever journeys to the Prince,     For God sake, let not us two stay at home;     For by the way I\'ll sort occasion,     As index to the story we late talk\'d of,     To part the Queen\'s proud kindred from the Prince.   GLOUCESTER. My other self, my counsel\'s consistory,     My oracle, my prophet, my dear cousin,     I, as a child, will go by thy direction.     Toward Ludlow then, for we\'ll not stay behind.        Exeunt     SCENE 3.  London. A street  Enter one CITIZEN at one door, and another at the other    FIRST CITIZEN. Good morrow, neighbour. Whither away so     fast?   SECOND CITIZEN. I promise you, I scarcely know myself.     Hear you the news abroad?   FIRST CITIZEN. Yes, that the King is dead.   SECOND CITIZEN. Ill news, by\'r lady; seldom comes the     better.     I fear, I fear \'twill prove a giddy world.                          Enter another CITIZEN    THIRD CITIZEN. Neighbours, God speed!   FIRST CITIZEN. Give you good morrow, sir.   THIRD CITIZEN. Doth the news hold of good King Edward\'s     death?   SECOND CITIZEN. Ay, sir, it is too true; God help the while!     THIRD CITIZEN. Then, masters, look to see a troublous     world.   FIRST CITIZEN. No, no; by God\'s good grace, his son shall     reign.   THIRD CITIZEN. Woe to that land that\'s govern\'d by a child.   SECOND CITIZEN. In him there is a hope of government,     Which, in his nonage, council under him,     And, in his full and ripened years, himself,     No doubt, shall then, and till then, govern well.   FIRST CITIZEN. So stood the state when Henry the Sixth     Was crown\'d in Paris but at nine months old.   THIRD CITIZEN. Stood the state so? No, no, good friends,     God wot;     For then this land was famously enrich\'d     With politic grave counsel; then the King     Had virtuous uncles to protect his Grace.   FIRST CITIZEN. Why, so hath this, both by his father and     mother.   THIRD CITIZEN. Better it were they all came by his father,     Or by his father there were none at all;       For emulation who shall now be nearest     Will touch us all too near, if God prevent not.     O, full of danger is the Duke of Gloucester!     And the Queen\'s sons and brothers haught and proud;     And were they to be rul\'d, and not to rule,     This sickly land might solace as before.   FIRST CITIZEN. Come, come, we fear the worst; all will be     well.   THIRD CITIZEN. When clouds are seen, wise men put on     their cloaks;     When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand;     When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?     Untimely storms make men expect a dearth.     All may be well; but, if God sort it so,     \'Tis more than we deserve or I expect.   SECOND CITIZEN. Truly, the hearts of men are fun of fear.     You cannot reason almost with a man     That looks not heavily and fun of dread.   THIRD CITIZEN. Before the days of change, still is it so;     By a divine instinct men\'s minds mistrust       Ensuing danger; as by proof we see     The water swell before a boist\'rous storm.     But leave it all to God. Whither away?   SECOND CITIZEN. Marry, we were sent for to the justices.   THIRD CITIZEN. And so was I; I\'ll bear you company.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE 4.  London. The palace  Enter the ARCHBISHOP OF YORK, the young DUKE OF YORK, QUEEN ELIZABETH, and the DUCHESS OF YORK    ARCHBISHOP. Last night, I hear, they lay at Stony Stratford,     And at Northampton they do rest to-night;     To-morrow or next day they will be here.   DUCHESS. I long with all my heart to see the Prince.     I hope he is much grown since last I saw him.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. But I hear no; they say my son of York     Has almost overta\'en him in his growth.   YORK. Ay, mother; but I would not have it so.   DUCHESS. Why, my good cousin, it is good to grow.   YORK. Grandam, one night as we did sit at supper,     My uncle Rivers talk\'d how I did grow     More than my brother. \'Ay,\' quoth my uncle Gloucester     \'Small herbs have grace: great weeds do grow apace.\'     And since, methinks, I would not grow so fast,     Because sweet flow\'rs are slow and weeds make haste.     DUCHESS. Good faith, good faith, the saying did not hold     In him that did object the same to thee.     He was the wretched\'st thing when he was young,     So long a-growing and so leisurely     That, if his rule were true, he should be gracious.   ARCHBISHOP. And so no doubt he is, my gracious madam.   DUCHESS. I hope he is; but yet let mothers doubt.   YORK. Now, by my troth, if I had been rememb\'red,     I could have given my uncle\'s Grace a flout     To touch his growth nearer than he touch\'d mine.   DUCHESS. How, my young York? I prithee let me hear it.   YORK. Marry, they say my uncle grew so fast     That he could gnaw a crust at two hours old.     \'Twas full two years ere I could get a tooth.     Grandam, this would have been a biting jest.   DUCHESS. I prithee, pretty York, who told thee this?   YORK. Grandam, his nurse.   DUCHESS. His nurse! Why she was dead ere thou wast     born.   YORK. If \'twere not she, I cannot tell who told me.     QUEEN ELIZABETH. A parlous boy! Go to, you are too     shrewd.   ARCHBISHOP. Good madam, be not angry with the child.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Pitchers have ears.                          Enter a MESSENGER    ARCHBISHOP. Here comes a messenger. What news?   MESSENGER. Such news, my lord, as grieves me to report.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. How doth the Prince?   MESSENGER. Well, madam, and in health.   DUCHESS. What is thy news?   MESSENGER. Lord Rivers and Lord Grey     Are sent to Pomfret, and with them     Sir Thomas Vaughan, prisoners.   DUCHESS. Who hath committed them?   MESSENGER. The mighty Dukes, Gloucester and Buckingham.   ARCHBISHOP. For what offence?   MESSENGER. The sum of all I can, I have disclos\'d.     Why or for what the nobles were committed       Is all unknown to me, my gracious lord.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ay me, I see the ruin of my house!     The tiger now hath seiz\'d the gentle hind;     Insulting tyranny begins to jet     Upon the innocent and aweless throne.     Welcome, destruction, blood, and massacre!     I see, as in a map, the end of all.   DUCHESS. Accursed and unquiet wrangling days,     How many of you have mine eyes beheld!     My husband lost his life to get the crown;     And often up and down my sons were toss\'d     For me to joy and weep their gain and loss;     And being seated, and domestic broils     Clean over-blown, themselves the conquerors     Make war upon themselves-brother to brother,     Blood to blood, self against self. O, preposterous     And frantic outrage, end thy damned spleen,     Or let me die, to look on death no more!   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Come, come, my boy; we will to     sanctuary.       Madam, farewell.   DUCHESS. Stay, I will go with you.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. You have no cause.   ARCHBISHOP.  [To the QUEEN]  My gracious lady, go.     And thither bear your treasure and your goods.     For my part, I\'ll resign unto your Grace     The seal I keep; and so betide to me     As well I tender you and all of yours!     Go, I\'ll conduct you to the sanctuary.                Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE 1.  London. A street  The trumpets sound. Enter the PRINCE OF WALES, GLOUCESTER, BUCKINGHAM, CATESBY, CARDINAL BOURCHIER, and others    BUCKINGHAM. Welcome, sweet Prince, to London, to your     chamber.   GLOUCESTER. Welcome, dear cousin, my thoughts\' sovereign.     The weary way hath made you melancholy.   PRINCE. No, uncle; but our crosses on the way     Have made it tedious, wearisome, and heavy.     I want more uncles here to welcome me.   GLOUCESTER. Sweet Prince, the untainted virtue of your     years     Hath not yet div\'d into the world\'s deceit;     Nor more can you distinguish of a man     Than of his outward show; which, God He knows,     Seldom or never jumpeth with the heart.     Those uncles which you want were dangerous;     Your Grace attended to their sug\'red words       But look\'d not on the poison of their hearts.     God keep you from them and from such false friends!   PRINCE. God keep me from false friends! but they were     none.   GLOUCESTER. My lord, the Mayor of London comes to greet     you.                  Enter the LORD MAYOR and his train    MAYOR. God bless your Grace with health and happy days!   PRINCE. I thank you, good my lord, and thank you all.     I thought my mother and my brother York     Would long ere this have met us on the way.     Fie, what a slug is Hastings, that he comes not     To tell us whether they will come or no!                          Enter LORD HASTINGS    BUCKINGHAM. And, in good time, here comes the sweating     Lord.     PRINCE. Welcome, my lord. What, will our mother come?   HASTINGS. On what occasion, God He knows, not I,     The Queen your mother and your brother York     Have taken sanctuary. The tender Prince     Would fain have come with me to meet your Grace,     But by his mother was perforce withheld.   BUCKINGHAM. Fie, what an indirect and peevish course     Is this of hers? Lord Cardinal, will your Grace     Persuade the Queen to send the Duke of York     Unto his princely brother presently?     If she deny, Lord Hastings, go with him     And from her jealous arms pluck him perforce.   CARDINAL. My Lord of Buckingham, if my weak oratory     Can from his mother win the Duke of York,     Anon expect him here; but if she be obdurate     To mild entreaties, God in heaven forbid     We should infringe the holy privilege     Of blessed sanctuary! Not for all this land     Would I be guilty of so deep a sin.   BUCKINGHAM. You are too senseless-obstinate, my lord,       Too ceremonious and traditional.     Weigh it but with the grossness of this age,     You break not sanctuary in seizing him.     The benefit thereof is always granted     To those whose dealings have deserv\'d the place     And those who have the wit to claim the place.     This Prince hath neither claim\'d it nor deserv\'d it,     And therefore, in mine opinion, cannot have it.     Then, taking him from thence that is not there,     You break no privilege nor charter there.     Oft have I heard of sanctuary men;     But sanctuary children never till now.   CARDINAL. My lord, you shall o\'errule my mind for once.     Come on, Lord Hastings, will you go with me?   HASTINGS. I go, my lord.   PRINCE. Good lords, make all the speedy haste you may.                                     Exeunt CARDINAL and HASTINGS     Say, uncle Gloucester, if our brother come,     Where shall we sojourn till our coronation?   GLOUCESTER. Where it seems best unto your royal self.       If I may counsel you, some day or two     Your Highness shall repose you at the Tower,     Then where you please and shall be thought most fit     For your best health and recreation.   PRINCE. I do not like the Tower, of any place.     Did Julius Caesar build that place, my lord?   BUCKINGHAM. He did, my gracious lord, begin that place,     Which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified.   PRINCE. Is it upon record, or else reported     Successively from age to age, he built it?   BUCKINGHAM. Upon record, my gracious lord.   PRINCE. But say, my lord, it were not regist\'red,     Methinks the truth should Eve from age to age,     As \'twere retail\'d to all posterity,     Even to the general all-ending day.   GLOUCESTER.  [Aside]  So wise so young, they say, do never     live long.   PRINCE. What say you, uncle?   GLOUCESTER. I say, without characters, fame lives long.     [Aside]  Thus, like the formal vice, Iniquity,       I moralize two meanings in one word.   PRINCE. That Julius Caesar was a famous man;     With what his valour did enrich his wit,     His wit set down to make his valour live.     Death makes no conquest of this conqueror;     For now he lives in fame, though not in life.     I\'ll tell you what, my cousin Buckingham-   BUCKINGHAM. What, my gracious lord?   PRINCE. An if I live until I be a man,     I\'ll win our ancient right in France again,     Or die a soldier as I liv\'d a king.   GLOUCESTER.  [Aside]  Short summers lightly have a forward     spring.                Enter HASTINGS, young YORK, and the CARDINAL    BUCKINGHAM. Now, in good time, here comes the Duke of     York.   PRINCE. Richard of York, how fares our loving brother?   YORK. Well, my dread lord; so must I can you now.     PRINCE. Ay brother, to our grief, as it is yours.     Too late he died that might have kept that title,     Which by his death hath lost much majesty.   GLOUCESTER. How fares our cousin, noble Lord of York?   YORK. I thank you, gentle uncle. O, my lord,     You said that idle weeds are fast in growth.     The Prince my brother hath outgrown me far.   GLOUCESTER. He hath, my lord.   YORK. And therefore is he idle?   GLOUCESTER. O, my fair cousin, I must not say so.   YORK. Then he is more beholding to you than I.   GLOUCESTER. He may command me as my sovereign;     But you have power in me as in a kinsman.   YORK. I pray you, uncle, give me this dagger.   GLOUCESTER. My dagger, little cousin? With all my heart!   PRINCE. A beggar, brother?   YORK. Of my kind uncle, that I know will give,     And being but a toy, which is no grief to give.   GLOUCESTER. A greater gift than that I\'ll give my cousin.   YORK. A greater gift! O, that\'s the sword to it!     GLOUCESTER. Ay, gentle cousin, were it light enough.   YORK. O, then, I see you will part but with light gifts:     In weightier things you\'ll say a beggar nay.   GLOUCESTER. It is too heavy for your Grace to wear.   YORK. I weigh it lightly, were it heavier.   GLOUCESTER. What, would you have my weapon, little     Lord?   YORK. I would, that I might thank you as you call me.   GLOUCESTER. How?   YORK. Little.   PRINCE. My Lord of York will still be cross in talk.     Uncle, your Grace knows how to bear with him.   YORK. You mean, to bear me, not to bear with me.     Uncle, my brother mocks both you and me;     Because that I am little, like an ape,     He thinks that you should bear me on your shoulders.   BUCKINGHAM. With what a sharp-provided wit he reasons!     To mitigate the scorn he gives his uncle     He prettily and aptly taunts himself.     So cunning and so young is wonderful.     GLOUCESTER. My lord, will\'t please you pass along?     Myself and my good cousin Buckingham     Will to your mother, to entreat of her     To meet you at the Tower and welcome you.   YORK. What, will you go unto the Tower, my lord?   PRINCE. My Lord Protector needs will have it so.   YORK. I shall not sleep in quiet at the Tower.   GLOUCESTER. Why, what should you fear?   YORK. Marry, my uncle Clarence\' angry ghost.     My grandam told me he was murder\'d there.   PRINCE. I fear no uncles dead.   GLOUCESTER. Nor none that live, I hope.   PRINCE. An if they live, I hope I need not fear.     But come, my lord; and with a heavy heart,     Thinking on them, go I unto the Tower.     A sennet.               Exeunt all but GLOUCESTER, BUCKINGHAM, and CATESBY   BUCKINGHAM. Think you, my lord, this little prating York     Was not incensed by his subtle mother     To taunt and scorn you thus opprobriously?     GLOUCESTER. No doubt, no doubt. O, \'tis a perilous boy;     Bold, quick, ingenious, forward, capable.     He is all the mother\'s, from the top to toe.   BUCKINGHAM. Well, let them rest. Come hither, Catesby.     Thou art sworn as deeply to effect what we intend     As closely to conceal what we impart.     Thou know\'st our reasons urg\'d upon the way.     What think\'st thou? Is it not an easy matter     To make William Lord Hastings of our mind,     For the instalment of this noble Duke     In the seat royal of this famous isle?   CATESBY. He for his father\'s sake so loves the Prince     That he will not be won to aught against him.   BUCKINGHAM. What think\'st thou then of Stanley? Will     not he?   CATESBY. He will do all in all as Hastings doth.   BUCKINGHAM. Well then, no more but this: go, gentle     Catesby,     And, as it were far off, sound thou Lord Hastings     How he doth stand affected to our purpose;       And summon him to-morrow to the Tower,     To sit about the coronation.     If thou dost find him tractable to us,     Encourage him, and tell him all our reasons;     If he be leaden, icy, cold, unwilling,     Be thou so too, and so break off the talk,     And give us notice of his inclination;     For we to-morrow hold divided councils,     Wherein thyself shalt highly be employ\'d.   GLOUCESTER. Commend me to Lord William. Tell him,     Catesby,     His ancient knot of dangerous adversaries     To-morrow are let blood at Pomfret Castle;     And bid my lord, for joy of this good news,     Give Mistress Shore one gentle kiss the more.   BUCKINGHAM. Good Catesby, go effect this business soundly.   CATESBY. My good lords both, with all the heed I can.   GLOUCESTER. Shall we hear from you, Catesby, ere we sleep?   CATESBY. You shall, my lord.   GLOUCESTER. At Crosby House, there shall you find us both.                                                       Exit CATESBY   BUCKINGHAM. Now, my lord, what shall we do if we     perceive     Lord Hastings will not yield to our complots?   GLOUCESTER. Chop off his head-something we will     determine.     And, look when I am King, claim thou of me     The earldom of Hereford and all the movables     Whereof the King my brother was possess\'d.   BUCKINGHAM. I\'ll claim that promise at your Grace\'s hand.   GLOUCESTER. And look to have it yielded with all kindness.     Come, let us sup betimes, that afterwards     We may digest our complots in some form.              Exeunt     SCENE 2.  Before LORD HASTING\'S house  Enter a MESSENGER to the door of HASTINGS    MESSENGER. My lord, my lord!                        [Knocking]   HASTINGS.  [Within]  Who knocks?   MESSENGER. One from the Lord Stanley.   HASTINGS.  [Within]  What is\'t o\'clock?   MESSENGER. Upon the stroke of four.                          Enter LORD HASTINGS    HASTINGS. Cannot my Lord Stanley sleep these tedious     nights?   MESSENGER. So it appears by that I have to say.     First, he commends him to your noble self.   HASTINGS. What then?   MESSENGER. Then certifies your lordship that this night     He dreamt the boar had razed off his helm.     Besides, he says there are two councils kept,     And that may be determin\'d at the one       Which may make you and him to rue at th\' other.     Therefore he sends to know your lordship\'s pleasure-     If you will presently take horse with him     And with all speed post with him toward the north     To shun the danger that his soul divines.   HASTINGS. Go, fellow, go, return unto thy lord;     Bid him not fear the separated council:     His honour and myself are at the one,     And at the other is my good friend Catesby;     Where nothing can proceed that toucheth us     Whereof I shall not have intelligence.     Tell him his fears are shallow, without instance;     And for his dreams, I wonder he\'s so simple     To trust the mock\'ry of unquiet slumbers.     To fly the boar before the boar pursues     Were to incense the boar to follow us     And make pursuit where he did mean no chase.     Go, bid thy master rise and come to me;     And we will both together to the Tower,     Where, he shall see, the boar will use us kindly.     MESSENGER. I\'ll go, my lord, and tell him what you say.  Exit                           Enter CATESBY    CATESBY. Many good morrows to my noble lord!   HASTINGS. Good morrow, Catesby; you are early stirring.     What news, what news, in this our tott\'ring state?   CATESBY. It is a reeling world indeed, my lord;     And I believe will never stand upright     Till Richard wear the garland of the realm.   HASTINGS. How, wear the garland! Dost thou mean the     crown?   CATESBY. Ay, my good lord.   HASTINGS. I\'ll have this crown of mine cut from my     shoulders     Before I\'ll see the crown so foul misplac\'d.     But canst thou guess that he doth aim at it?   CATESBY. Ay, on my life; and hopes to find you forward     Upon his party for the gain thereof;       And thereupon he sends you this good news,     That this same very day your enemies,     The kindred of the Queen, must die at Pomfret.   HASTINGS. Indeed, I am no mourner for that news,     Because they have been still my adversaries;     But that I\'ll give my voice on Richard\'s side     To bar my master\'s heirs in true descent,     God knows I will not do it to the death.   CATESBY. God keep your lordship in that gracious mind!   HASTINGS. But I shall laugh at this a twelve month hence,     That they which brought me in my master\'s hate,     I live to look upon their tragedy.     Well, Catesby, ere a fortnight make me older,     I\'ll send some packing that yet think not on\'t.   CATESBY. \'Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord,     When men are unprepar\'d and look not for it.   HASTINGS. O monstrous, monstrous! And so falls it out     With Rivers, Vaughan, Grey; and so \'twill do     With some men else that think themselves as safe     As thou and I, who, as thou knowest, are dear       To princely Richard and to Buckingham.   CATESBY. The Princes both make high account of you-     [Aside]  For they account his head upon the bridge.   HASTINGS. I know they do, and I have well deserv\'d it.                        Enter LORD STANLEY      Come on, come on; where is your boar-spear, man?     Fear you the boar, and go so unprovided?   STANLEY. My lord, good morrow; good morrow, Catesby.     You may jest on, but, by the holy rood,     I do not like these several councils, I.   HASTINGS. My lord, I hold my life as dear as yours,     And never in my days, I do protest,     Was it so precious to me as \'tis now.     Think you, but that I know our state secure,     I would be so triumphant as I am?   STANLEY. The lords at Pomfret, when they rode from     London,     Were jocund and suppos\'d their states were sure,       And they indeed had no cause to mistrust;     But yet you see how soon the day o\'ercast.     This sudden stab of rancour I misdoubt;     Pray God, I say, I prove a needless coward.     What, shall we toward the Tower? The day is spent.   HASTINGS. Come, come, have with you. Wot you what, my     Lord?     To-day the lords you talk\'d of are beheaded.   STANLEY. They, for their truth, might better wear their     heads     Than some that have accus\'d them wear their hats.     But come, my lord, let\'s away.                   Enter HASTINGS, a pursuivant    HASTINGS. Go on before; I\'ll talk with this good fellow.                                       Exeunt STANLEY and CATESBY     How now, Hastings! How goes the world with thee?   PURSUIVANT. The better that your lordship please to ask.   HASTINGS. I tell thee, man, \'tis better with me now       Than when thou met\'st me last where now we meet:     Then was I going prisoner to the Tower     By the suggestion of the Queen\'s allies;     But now, I tell thee-keep it to thyself-     This day those enernies are put to death,     And I in better state than e\'er I was.   PURSUIVANT. God hold it, to your honour\'s good content!   HASTINGS. Gramercy, Hastings; there, drink that for me.                                           [Throws him his purse]   PURSUIVANT. I thank your honour.                          Exit                              Enter a PRIEST    PRIEST. Well met, my lord; I am glad to see your honour.   HASTINGS. I thank thee, good Sir John, with all my heart.     I am in your debt for your last exercise;     Come the next Sabbath, and I will content you.                                         [He whispers in his ear]   PRIEST. I\'ll wait upon your lordship.                                Enter BUCKINGHAM    BUCKINGHAM. What, talking with a priest, Lord     Chamberlain!     Your friends at Pomfret, they do need the priest:     Your honour hath no shriving work in hand.   HASTINGS. Good faith, and when I met this holy man,     The men you talk of came into my mind.     What, go you toward the Tower?   BUCKINGHAM. I do, my lord, but long I cannot stay there;     I shall return before your lordship thence.   HASTINGS. Nay, like enough, for I stay dinner there.   BUCKINGHAM.  [Aside]  And supper too, although thou     knowest it not.-     Come, will you go?   HASTINGS. I\'ll wait upon your lordship.                 Exeunt     SCENE 3.  Pomfret Castle  Enter SIR RICHARD RATCLIFF, with halberds, carrying the Nobles, RIVERS, GREY, and VAUGHAN, to death    RIVERS. Sir Richard Ratcliff, let me tell thee this:     To-day shalt thou behold a subject die     For truth, for duty, and for loyalty.   GREY. God bless the Prince from all the pack of you!     A knot you are of damned blood-suckers.   VAUGHAN. You live that shall cry woe for this hereafter.   RATCLIFF. Dispatch; the limit of your lives is out.   RIVERS. O Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison,     Fatal and ominous to noble peers!     Within the guilty closure of thy walls   RICHARD the Second here was hack\'d to death;     And for more slander to thy dismal seat,     We give to thee our guiltless blood to drink.   GREY. Now Margaret\'s curse is fall\'n upon our heads,     When she exclaim\'d on Hastings, you, and I,       For standing by when Richard stabb\'d her son.   RIVERS. Then curs\'d she Richard, then curs\'d she     Buckingham,     Then curs\'d she Hastings. O, remember, God,     To hear her prayer for them, as now for us!     And for my sister, and her princely sons,     Be satisfied, dear God, with our true blood,     Which, as thou know\'st, unjustly must be spilt.   RATCLIFF. Make haste; the hour of death is expiate.   RIVERS. Come, Grey; come, Vaughan; let us here embrace.     Farewell, until we meet again in heaven.              Exeunt     SCENE 4  London. The Tower  Enter BUCKINGHAM, DERBY, HASTINGS, the BISHOP of ELY, RATCLIFF, LOVEL, with others and seat themselves at a table    HASTINGS. Now, noble peers, the cause why we are met     Is to determine of the coronation.     In God\'s name speak-when is the royal day?   BUCKINGHAM. Is all things ready for the royal time?   DERBY. It is, and wants but nomination.   BISHOP OF ELY. To-morrow then I judge a happy day.   BUCKINGHAM. Who knows the Lord Protector\'s mind     herein?     Who is most inward with the noble Duke?   BISHOP OF ELY. Your Grace, we think, should soonest know     his mind.   BUCKINGHAM. We know each other\'s faces; for our hearts,     He knows no more of mine than I of yours;     Or I of his, my lord, than you of mine.     Lord Hastings, you and he are near in love.     HASTINGS. I thank his Grace, I know he loves me well;     But for his purpose in the coronation     I have not sounded him, nor he deliver\'d     His gracious pleasure any way therein.     But you, my honourable lords, may name the time;     And in the Duke\'s behalf I\'ll give my voice,     Which, I presume, he\'ll take in gentle part.                         Enter GLOUCESTER    BISHOP OF ELY. In happy time, here comes the Duke himself.   GLOUCESTER. My noble lords and cousins an, good morrow.     I have been long a sleeper, but I trust     My absence doth neglect no great design     Which by my presence might have been concluded.   BUCKINGHAM. Had you not come upon your cue, my lord,   WILLIAM Lord Hastings had pronounc\'d your part-     I mean, your voice for crowning of the King.   GLOUCESTER. Than my Lord Hastings no man might be     bolder;       His lordship knows me well and loves me well.     My lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn     I saw good strawberries in your garden there.     I do beseech you send for some of them.   BISHOP of ELY. Marry and will, my lord, with all my heart.  Exit   GLOUCESTER. Cousin of Buckingham, a word with you.                                                [Takes him aside]     Catesby hath sounded Hastings in our business,     And finds the testy gentleman so hot     That he will lose his head ere give consent     His master\'s child, as worshipfully he terms it,     Shall lose the royalty of England\'s throne.   BUCKINGHAM. Withdraw yourself awhile; I\'ll go with you.                                 Exeunt GLOUCESTER and BUCKINGHAM   DERBY. We have not yet set down this day of triumph.     To-morrow, in my judgment, is too sudden;     For I myself am not so well provided     As else I would be, were the day prolong\'d.                        Re-enter the BISHOP OF ELY    BISHOP OF ELY. Where is my lord the Duke of Gloucester?     I have sent for these strawberries.   HASTINGS. His Grace looks cheerfully and smooth this     morning;     There\'s some conceit or other likes him well     When that he bids good morrow with such spirit.     I think there\'s never a man in Christendom     Can lesser hide his love or hate than he;     For by his face straight shall you know his heart.   DERBY. What of his heart perceive you in his face     By any livelihood he show\'d to-day?   HASTINGS. Marry, that with no man here he is offended;     For, were he, he had shown it in his looks.                 Re-enter GLOUCESTER and BUCKINGHAM    GLOUCESTER. I pray you all, tell me what they deserve     That do conspire my death with devilish plots       Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevail\'d     Upon my body with their hellish charms?   HASTINGS. The tender love I bear your Grace, my lord,     Makes me most forward in this princely presence     To doom th\' offenders, whosoe\'er they be.     I say, my lord, they have deserved death.   GLOUCESTER. Then be your eyes the witness of their evil.     Look how I am bewitch\'d; behold, mine arm     Is like a blasted sapling wither\'d up.     And this is Edward\'s wife, that monstrous witch,     Consorted with that harlot strumpet Shore,     That by their witchcraft thus have marked me.   HASTINGS. If they have done this deed, my noble lord-   GLOUCESTER. If?-thou protector of this damned strumpet,     Talk\'st thou to me of ifs? Thou art a traitor.     Off with his head! Now by Saint Paul I swear     I will not dine until I see the same.     Lovel and Ratcliff, look that it be done.     The rest that love me, rise and follow me.                     Exeunt all but HASTINGS, LOVEL, and RATCLIFF     HASTINGS. Woe, woe, for England! not a whit for me;     For I, too fond, might have prevented this.   STANLEY did dream the boar did raze our helms,     And I did scorn it and disdain to fly.     Three times to-day my foot-cloth horse did stumble,     And started when he look\'d upon the Tower,     As loath to bear me to the slaughter-house.     O, now I need the priest that spake to me!     I now repent I told the pursuivant,     As too triumphing, how mine enemies     To-day at Pomfret bloodily were butcher\'d,     And I myself secure in grace and favour.     O Margaret, Margaret, now thy heavy curse     Is lighted on poor Hastings\' wretched head!   RATCLIFF. Come, come, dispatch; the Duke would be at     dinner.     Make a short shrift; he longs to see your head.   HASTINGS. O momentary grace of mortal men,     Which we more hunt for than the grace of God!     Who builds his hope in air of your good looks       Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast,     Ready with every nod to tumble down     Into the fatal bowels of the deep.   LOVEL. Come, come, dispatch; \'tis bootless to exclaim.   HASTINGS. O bloody Richard! Miserable England!     I prophesy the fearfull\'st time to thee     That ever wretched age hath look\'d upon.     Come, lead me to the block; bear him my head.     They smile at me who shortly shall be dead.           Exeunt     SCENE 5.  London. The Tower-walls  Enter GLOUCESTER and BUCKINGHAM in rotten armour, marvellous ill-favoured    GLOUCESTER. Come, cousin, canst thou quake and change     thy colour,     Murder thy breath in middle of a word,     And then again begin, and stop again,     As if thou were distraught and mad with terror?   BUCKINGHAM. Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian;     Speak and look back, and pry on every side,     Tremble and start at wagging of a straw,     Intending deep suspicion. Ghastly looks     Are at my service, like enforced smiles;     And both are ready in their offices     At any time to grace my stratagems.     But what, is Catesby gone?   GLOUCESTER. He is; and, see, he brings the mayor along.                   Enter the LORD MAYOR and CATESBY      BUCKINGHAM. Lord Mayor-   GLOUCESTER. Look to the drawbridge there!   BUCKINGHAM. Hark! a drum.   GLOUCESTER. Catesby, o\'erlook the walls.   BUCKINGHAM. Lord Mayor, the reason we have sent-   GLOUCESTER. Look back, defend thee; here are enemies.   BUCKINGHAM. God and our innocence defend and guard us!             Enter LOVEL and RATCLIFF, with HASTINGS\' head    GLOUCESTER. Be patient; they are friends-Ratcliff and Lovel.   LOVEL. Here is the head of that ignoble traitor,     The dangerous and unsuspected Hastings.   GLOUCESTER. So dear I lov\'d the man that I must weep.     I took him for the plainest harmless creature     That breath\'d upon the earth a Christian;     Made him my book, wherein my soul recorded     The history of all her secret thoughts.     So smooth he daub\'d his vice with show of virtue       That, his apparent open guilt omitted,     I mean his conversation with Shore\'s wife-     He liv\'d from all attainder of suspects.   BUCKINGHAM. Well, well, he was the covert\'st shelt\'red     traitor     That ever liv\'d.     Would you imagine, or almost believe-     Were\'t not that by great preservation     We live to tell it-that the subtle traitor     This day had plotted, in the council-house,     To murder me and my good Lord of Gloucester.   MAYOR. Had he done so?   GLOUCESTER. What! think you we are Turks or Infidels?     Or that we would, against the form of law,     Proceed thus rashly in the villain\'s death     But that the extreme peril of the case,     The peace of England and our persons\' safety,     Enforc\'d us to this execution?   MAYOR. Now, fair befall you! He deserv\'d his death;     And your good Graces both have well proceeded       To warn false traitors from the like attempts.     I never look\'d for better at his hands     After he once fell in with Mistress Shore.   BUCKINGHAM. Yet had we not determin\'d he should die     Until your lordship came to see his end-     Which now the loving haste of these our friends,     Something against our meanings, have prevented-     Because, my lord, I would have had you heard     The traitor speak, and timorously confess     The manner and the purpose of his treasons:     That you might well have signified the same     Unto the citizens, who haply may     Misconster us in him and wail his death.   MAYOR. But, my good lord, your Grace\'s words shall serve     As well as I had seen and heard him speak;     And do not doubt, right noble Princes both,     But I\'ll acquaint our duteous citizens     With all your just proceedings in this cause.   GLOUCESTER. And to that end we wish\'d your lordship here,     T\' avoid the the the censures of the carping world.     BUCKINGHAM. Which since you come too late of our intent,     Yet witness what you hear we did intend.     And so, my good Lord Mayor, we bid farewell.                                                  Exit LORD MAYOR   GLOUCESTER. Go, after, after, cousin Buckingham.     The Mayor towards Guildhall hies him in an post.     There, at your meet\'st advantage of the time,     Infer the bastardy of Edward\'s children.     Tell them how Edward put to death a citizen     Only for saying he would make his son     Heir to the crown-meaning indeed his house,     Which by the sign thereof was termed so.     Moreover, urge his hateful luxury     And bestial appetite in change of lust,     Which stretch\'d unto their servants, daughters, wives,     Even where his raging eye or savage heart     Without control lusted to make a prey.     Nay, for a need, thus far come near my person:     Tell them, when that my mother went with child     Of that insatiate Edward, noble York       My princely father then had wars in France     And, by true computation of the time,     Found that the issue was not his begot;     Which well appeared in his lineaments,     Being nothing like the noble Duke my father.     Yet touch this sparingly, as \'twere far off;     Because, my lord, you know my mother lives.   BUCKINGHAM. Doubt not, my lord, I\'ll play the orator     As if the golden fee for which I plead     Were for myself; and so, my lord, adieu.   GLOUCESTER. If you thrive well, bring them to Baynard\'s     Castle;     Where you shall find me well accompanied     With reverend fathers and well learned bishops.   BUCKINGHAM. I go; and towards three or four o\'clock     Look for the news that the Guildhall affords.           Exit   GLOUCESTER. Go, Lovel, with all speed to Doctor Shaw.     [To CATESBY]  Go thou to Friar Penker. Bid them both     Meet me within this hour at Baynard\'s Castle.                                        Exeunt all but GLOUCESTER       Now will I go to take some privy order     To draw the brats of Clarence out of sight,     And to give order that no manner person     Have any time recourse unto the Princes.                Exit     SCENE 6.  London. A street  Enter a SCRIVENER    SCRIVENER. Here is the indictment of the good Lord Hastings;     Which in a set hand fairly is engross\'d     That it may be to-day read o\'er in Paul\'s.     And mark how well the sequel hangs together:     Eleven hours I have spent to write it over,     For yesternight by Catesby was it sent me;     The precedent was full as long a-doing;     And yet within these five hours Hastings liv\'d,     Untainted, unexamin\'d, free, at liberty.     Here\'s a good world the while! Who is so gros     That cannot see this palpable device?     Yet who\'s so bold but says he sees it not?     Bad is the world; and all will come to nought,     When such ill dealing must be seen in thought.          Exit     SCENE 7.  London. Baynard\'s Castle  Enter GLOUCESTER and BUCKINGHAM, at several doors    GLOUCESTER. How now, how now! What say the citizens?   BUCKINGHAM. Now, by the holy Mother of our Lord,     The citizens are mum, say not a word.   GLOUCESTER. Touch\'d you the bastardy of Edward\'s     children?   BUCKINGHAM. I did; with his contract with Lady Lucy,     And his contract by deputy in France;     Th\' insatiate greediness of his desire,     And his enforcement of the city wives;     His tyranny for trifles; his own bastardy,     As being got, your father then in France,     And his resemblance, being not like the Duke.     Withal I did infer your lineaments,     Being the right idea of your father,     Both in your form and nobleness of mind;     Laid open all your victories in Scotland,     Your discipline in war, wisdom in peace,       Your bounty, virtue, fair humility;     Indeed, left nothing fitting for your purpose     Untouch\'d or slightly handled in discourse.     And when mine oratory drew toward end     I bid them that did love their country\'s good     Cry \'God save Richard, England\'s royal King!\'   GLOUCESTER. And did they so?   BUCKINGHAM. No, so God help me, they spake not a word;     But, like dumb statues or breathing stones,     Star\'d each on other, and look\'d deadly pale.     Which when I saw, I reprehended them,     And ask\'d the Mayor what meant this wilfull silence.     His answer was, the people were not used     To be spoke to but by the Recorder.     Then he was urg\'d to tell my tale again.     \'Thus saith the Duke, thus hath the Duke inferr\'d\'-     But nothing spoke in warrant from himself.     When he had done, some followers of mine own     At lower end of the hall hurl\'d up their caps,     And some ten voices cried \'God save King Richard!\'       And thus I took the vantage of those few-     \'Thanks, gentle citizens and friends,\' quoth I     \'This general applause and cheerful shout     Argues your wisdoms and your love to Richard.\'     And even here brake off and came away.   GLOUCESTER. What, tongueless blocks were they? Would     they not speak?     Will not the Mayor then and his brethren come?   BUCKINGHAM. The Mayor is here at hand. Intend some fear;     Be not you spoke with but by mighty suit;     And look you get a prayer-book in your hand,     And stand between two churchmen, good my lord;     For on that ground I\'ll make a holy descant;     And be not easily won to our requests.     Play the maid\'s part: still answer nay, and take it.   GLOUCESTER. I go; and if you plead as well for them     As I can say nay to thee for myself,     No doubt we bring it to a happy issue.   BUCKINGHAM. Go, go, up to the leads; the Lord Mayor     knocks.                                      Exit GLOUCESTER               Enter the LORD MAYOR, ALDERMEN, and citizens      Welcome, my lord. I dance attendance here;     I think the Duke will not be spoke withal.                           Enter CATESBY      Now, Catesby, what says your lord to my request?   CATESBY. He doth entreat your Grace, my noble lord,     To visit him to-morrow or next day.     He is within, with two right reverend fathers,     Divinely bent to meditation;     And in no worldly suits would he be mov\'d,     To draw him from his holy exercise.   BUCKINGHAM. Return, good Catesby, to the gracious Duke;     Tell him, myself, the Mayor and Aldermen,     In deep designs, in matter of great moment,     No less importing than our general good,     Are come to have some conference with his Grace.     CATESBY. I\'ll signify so much unto him straight.          Exit   BUCKINGHAM. Ah ha, my lord, this prince is not an Edward!     He is not lolling on a lewd love-bed,     But on his knees at meditation;     Not dallying with a brace of courtezans,     But meditating with two deep divines;     Not sleeping, to engross his idle body,     But praying, to enrich his watchful soul.     Happy were England would this virtuous prince     Take on his Grace the sovereignty thereof;     But, sure, I fear we shall not win him to it.   MAYOR. Marry, God defend his Grace should say us nay!   BUCKINGHAM. I fear he will. Here Catesby comes again.                            Re-enter CATESBY      Now, Catesby, what says his Grace?   CATESBY. My lord,     He wonders to what end you have assembled     Such troops of citizens to come to him.       His Grace not being warn\'d thereof before,     He fears, my lord, you mean no good to him.   BUCKINGHAM. Sorry I am my noble cousin should     Suspect me that I mean no good to him.     By heaven, we come to him in perfect love;     And so once more return and tell his Grace.                                                     Exit CATESBY     When holy and devout religious men     Are at their beads, \'tis much to draw them thence,     So sweet is zealous contemplation.             Enter GLOUCESTER aloft, between two BISHOPS.                       CATESBY returns    MAYOR. See where his Grace stands \'tween two clergymen!   BUCKINGHAM. Two props of virtue for a Christian prince,     To stay him from the fall of vanity;     And, see, a book of prayer in his hand,     True ornaments to know a holy man.     Famous Plantagenet, most gracious Prince,       Lend favourable ear to our requests,     And pardon us the interruption     Of thy devotion and right Christian zeal.   GLOUCESTER. My lord, there needs no such apology:     I do beseech your Grace to pardon me,     Who, earnest in the service of my God,     Deferr\'d the visitation of my friends.     But, leaving this, what is your Grace\'s pleasure?   BUCKINGHAM. Even that, I hope, which pleaseth God above,     And all good men of this ungovern\'d isle.   GLOUCESTER. I do suspect I have done some offence     That seems disgracious in the city\'s eye,     And that you come to reprehend my ignorance.   BUCKINGHAM. You have, my lord. Would it might please     your Grace,     On our entreaties, to amend your fault!   GLOUCESTER. Else wherefore breathe I in a Christian land?   BUCKINGHAM. Know then, it is your fault that you resign     The supreme seat, the throne majestical,     The scept\'red office of your ancestors,       Your state of fortune and your due of birth,     The lineal glory of your royal house,     To the corruption of a blemish\'d stock;     Whiles in the mildness of your sleepy thoughts,     Which here we waken to our country\'s good,     The noble isle doth want her proper limbs;     Her face defac\'d with scars of infamy,     Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants,     And almost should\'red in the swallowing gulf     Of dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion.     Which to recure, we heartily solicit     Your gracious self to take on you the charge     And kingly government of this your land-     Not as protector, steward, substitute,     Or lowly factor for another\'s gain;     But as successively, from blood to blood,     Your right of birth, your empery, your own.     For this, consorted with the citizens,     Your very worshipful and loving friends,     And by their vehement instigation,       In this just cause come I to move your Grace.   GLOUCESTER. I cannot tell if to depart in silence     Or bitterly to speak in your reproof     Best fitteth my degree or your condition.     If not to answer, you might haply think     Tongue-tied ambition, not replying, yielded     To bear the golden yoke of sovereignty,     Which fondly you would here impose on me;     If to reprove you for this suit of yours,     So season\'d with your faithful love to me,     Then, on the other side, I check\'d my friends.     Therefore-to speak, and to avoid the first,     And then, in speaking, not to incur the last-     Definitively thus I answer you:     Your love deserves my thanks, but my desert     Unmeritable shuns your high request.     First, if all obstacles were cut away,     And that my path were even to the crown,     As the ripe revenue and due of birth,     Yet so much is my poverty of spirit,       So mighty and so many my defects,     That I would rather hide me from my greatness-     Being a bark to brook no mighty sea-     Than in my greatness covet to be hid,     And in the vapour of my glory smother\'d.     But, God be thank\'d, there is no need of me-     And much I need to help you, were there need.     The royal tree hath left us royal fruit     Which, mellow\'d by the stealing hours of time,     Will well become the seat of majesty     And make, no doubt, us happy by his reign.     On him I lay that you would lay on me-     The right and fortune of his happy stars,     Which God defend that I should wring from him.   BUCKINGHAM. My lord, this argues conscience in your     Grace;     But the respects thereof are nice and trivial,     All circumstances well considered.     You say that Edward is your brother\'s son.     So say we too, but not by Edward\'s wife;       For first was he contract to Lady Lucy-     Your mother lives a witness to his vow-     And afterward by substitute betroth\'d     To Bona, sister to the King of France.     These both put off, a poor petitioner,     A care-craz\'d mother to a many sons,     A beauty-waning and distressed widow,     Even in the afternoon of her best days,     Made prize and purchase of his wanton eye,     Seduc\'d the pitch and height of his degree     To base declension and loath\'d bigamy.     By her, in his unlawful bed, he got     This Edward, whom our manners call the Prince.     More bitterly could I expostulate,     Save that, for reverence to some alive,     I give a sparing limit to my tongue.     Then, good my lord, take to your royal self     This proffer\'d benefit of dignity;     If not to bless us and the land withal,     Yet to draw forth your noble ancestry       From the corruption of abusing times     Unto a lineal true-derived course.   MAYOR. Do, good my lord; your citizens entreat you.   BUCKINGHAM. Refuse not, mighty lord, this proffer\'d love.   CATESBY. O, make them joyful, grant their lawful suit!   GLOUCESTER. Alas, why would you heap this care on me?     I am unfit for state and majesty.     I do beseech you, take it not amiss:     I cannot nor I will not yield to you.   BUCKINGHAM. If you refuse it-as, in love and zeal,     Loath to depose the child, your brother\'s son;     As well we know your tenderness of heart     And gentle, kind, effeminate remorse,     Which we have noted in you to your kindred     And egally indeed to all estates-     Yet know, whe\'er you accept our suit or no,     Your brother\'s son shall never reign our king;     But we will plant some other in the throne     To the disgrace and downfall of your house;     And in this resolution here we leave you.       Come, citizens. Zounds, I\'ll entreat no more.   GLOUCESTER. O, do not swear, my lord of Buckingham.                           Exeunt BUCKINGHAM, MAYOR, and citizens   CATESBY. Call him again, sweet Prince, accept their suit.     If you deny them, all the land will rue it.   GLOUCESTER. Will you enforce me to a world of cares?     Call them again. I am not made of stones,     But penetrable to your kind entreaties,     Albeit against my conscience and my soul.                    Re-enter BUCKINGHAM and the rest      Cousin of Buckingham, and sage grave men,     Since you will buckle fortune on my back,     To bear her burden, whe\'er I will or no,     I must have patience to endure the load;     But if black scandal or foul-fac\'d reproach     Attend the sequel of your imposition,     Your mere enforcement shall acquittance me     From all the impure blots and stains thereof;       For God doth know, and you may partly see,     How far I am from the desire of this.   MAYOR. God bless your Grace! We see it, and will say it.   GLOUCESTER. In saying so, you shall but say the truth.   BUCKINGHAM. Then I salute you with this royal title-     Long live King Richard, England\'s worthy King!   ALL. Amen.   BUCKINGHAM. To-morrow may it please you to be crown\'d?   GLOUCESTER. Even when you please, for you will have it so.   BUCKINGHAM. To-morrow, then, we will attend your Grace;     And so, most joyfully, we take our leave.   GLOUCESTER.  [To the BISHOPS]  Come, let us to our holy     work again.     Farewell, my cousin; farewell, gentle friends.        Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE 1.  London. Before the Tower  Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH, DUCHESS of YORK, and MARQUIS of DORSET, at one door; ANNE, DUCHESS of GLOUCESTER, leading LADY MARGARET PLANTAGENET, CLARENCE\'s young daughter, at another door    DUCHESS. Who meets us here? My niece Plantagenet,     Led in the hand of her kind aunt of Gloucester?     Now, for my life, she\'s wand\'ring to the Tower,     On pure heart\'s love, to greet the tender Princes.     Daughter, well met.   ANNE. God give your Graces both     A happy and a joyful time of day!   QUEEN ELIZABETH. As much to you, good sister! Whither     away?   ANNE. No farther than the Tower; and, as I guess,     Upon the like devotion as yourselves,     To gratulate the gentle Princes there.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Kind sister, thanks; we\'ll enter       all together.                         Enter BRAKENBURY      And in good time, here the lieutenant comes.     Master Lieutenant, pray you, by your leave,     How doth the Prince, and my young son of York?   BRAKENBURY. Right well, dear madam. By your patience,     I may not suffer you to visit them.     The King hath strictly charg\'d the contrary.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. The King! Who\'s that?   BRAKENBURY. I mean the Lord Protector.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. The Lord protect him from that kingly     title!     Hath he set bounds between their love and me?     I am their mother; who shall bar me from them?   DUCHESS. I am their father\'s mother; I will see them.   ANNE. Their aunt I am in law, in love their mother.     Then bring me to their sights; I\'ll bear thy blame,     And take thy office from thee on my peril.     BRAKENBURY. No, madam, no. I may not leave it so;     I am bound by oath, and therefore pardon me.            Exit                           Enter STANLEY    STANLEY. Let me but meet you, ladies, one hour hence,     And I\'ll salute your Grace of York as mother     And reverend looker-on of two fair queens.     [To ANNE]  Come, madam, you must straight to     Westminster,     There to be crowned Richard\'s royal queen.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, cut my lace asunder     That my pent heart may have some scope to beat,     Or else I swoon with this dead-killing news!   ANNE. Despiteful tidings! O unpleasing news!   DORSET. Be of good cheer; mother, how fares your Grace?   QUEEN ELIZABETH. O Dorset, speak not to me, get thee     gone!     Death and destruction dogs thee at thy heels;     Thy mother\'s name is ominous to children.       If thou wilt outstrip death, go cross the seas,     And live with Richmond, from the reach of hell.     Go, hie thee, hie thee from this slaughter-house,     Lest thou increase the number of the dead,     And make me die the thrall of Margaret\'s curse,     Nor mother, wife, nor England\'s counted queen.   STANLEY. Full of wise care is this your counsel, madam.     Take all the swift advantage of the hours;     You shall have letters from me to my son     In your behalf, to meet you on the way.     Be not ta\'en tardy by unwise delay.   DUCHESS. O ill-dispersing wind of misery!     O my accursed womb, the bed of death!     A cockatrice hast thou hatch\'d to the world,     Whose unavoided eye is murderous.   STANLEY. Come, madam, come; I in all haste was sent.   ANNE. And I with all unwillingness will go.     O, would to God that the inclusive verge     Of golden metal that must round my brow     Were red-hot steel, to sear me to the brains!       Anointed let me be with deadly venom,     And die ere men can say \'God save the Queen!\'   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Go, go, poor soul; I envy not thy glory.     To feed my humour, wish thyself no harm.   ANNE. No, why? When he that is my husband now     Came to me, as I follow\'d Henry\'s corse;     When scarce the blood was well wash\'d from his hands     Which issued from my other angel husband,     And that dear saint which then I weeping follow\'d-     O, when, I say, I look\'d on Richard\'s face,     This was my wish: \'Be thou\' quoth I \'accurs\'d     For making me, so young, so old a widow;     And when thou wed\'st, let sorrow haunt thy bed;     And be thy wife, if any be so mad,     More miserable by the life of thee     Than thou hast made me by my dear lord\'s death.\'     Lo, ere I can repeat this curse again,     Within so small a time, my woman\'s heart     Grossly grew captive to his honey words     And prov\'d the subject of mine own soul\'s curse,       Which hitherto hath held my eyes from rest;     For never yet one hour in his bed     Did I enjoy the golden dew of sleep,     But with his timorous dreams was still awak\'d.     Besides, he hates me for my father Warwick;     And will, no doubt, shortly be rid of me.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Poor heart, adieu! I pity thy complaining.   ANNE. No more than with my soul I mourn for yours.   DORSET. Farewell, thou woeful welcomer of glory!   ANNE. Adieu, poor soul, that tak\'st thy leave of it!   DUCHESS.  [To DORSET]  Go thou to Richmond, and good     fortune guide thee!     [To ANNE]  Go thou to Richard, and good angels tend     thee!  [To QUEEN ELIZABETH]  Go thou to sanctuary, and good     thoughts possess thee!     I to my grave, where peace and rest lie with me!     Eighty odd years of sorrow have I seen,     And each hour\'s joy wreck\'d with a week of teen.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Stay, yet look back with me unto the     Tower.       Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes     Whom envy hath immur\'d within your walls,     Rough cradle for such little pretty ones.     Rude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow     For tender princes, use my babies well.     So foolish sorrows bids your stones farewell.         Exeunt     SCENE 2.  London. The palace  Sound a sennet. Enter RICHARD, in pomp, as KING; BUCKINGHAM, CATESBY, RATCLIFF, LOVEL, a PAGE, and others    KING RICHARD. Stand all apart. Cousin of Buckingham!   BUCKINGHAM. My gracious sovereign?   KING RICHARD. Give me thy hand.                            [Here he ascendeth the throne. Sound]     Thus high, by thy advice     And thy assistance, is King Richard seated.     But shall we wear these glories for a day;     Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?   BUCKINGHAM. Still live they, and for ever let them last!   KING RICHARD. Ah, Buckingham, now do I play the touch,     To try if thou be current gold indeed.     Young Edward lives-think now what I would speak.   BUCKINGHAM. Say on, my loving lord.   KING RICHARD. Why, Buckingham, I say I would be King.   BUCKINGHAM. Why, so you are, my thrice-renowned lord.     KING RICHARD. Ha! am I King? \'Tis so; but Edward lives.   BUCKINGHAM. True, noble Prince.   KING RICHARD. O bitter consequence:     That Edward still should live-true noble Prince!     Cousin, thou wast not wont to be so dull.     Shall I be plain? I wish the bastards dead.     And I would have it suddenly perform\'d.     What say\'st thou now? Speak suddenly, be brief.   BUCKINGHAM. Your Grace may do your pleasure.   KING RICHARD. Tut, tut, thou art all ice; thy kindness freezes.     Say, have I thy consent that they shall die?   BUCKINGHAM. Give me some little breath, some pause,     dear Lord,     Before I positively speak in this.     I will resolve you herein presently.                    Exit   CATESBY.  [Aside to another]  The King is angry; see, he     gnaws his lip.   KING RICHARD. I will converse with iron-witted fools                                       [Descends from the throne]     And unrespective boys; none are for me       That look into me with considerate eyes.     High-reaching Buckingham grows circumspect.     Boy!   PAGE. My lord?   KING RICHARD. Know\'st thou not any whom corrupting     gold     Will tempt unto a close exploit of death?   PAGE. I know a discontented gentleman     Whose humble means match not his haughty spirit.     Gold were as good as twenty orators,     And will, no doubt, tempt him to anything.   KING RICHARD. What is his name?   PAGE. His name, my lord, is Tyrrel.   KING RICHARD. I partly know the man. Go, call him hither,     boy.                                               Exit PAGE     The deep-revolving witty Buckingham     No more shall be the neighbour to my counsels.     Hath he so long held out with me, untir\'d,     And stops he now for breath? Well, be it so.                                Enter STANLEY      How now, Lord Stanley! What\'s the news?   STANLEY. Know, my loving lord,     The Marquis Dorset, as I hear, is fled     To Richmond, in the parts where he abides.    [Stands apart]   KING RICHARD. Come hither, Catesby. Rumour it abroad     That Anne, my wife, is very grievous sick;     I will take order for her keeping close.     Inquire me out some mean poor gentleman,     Whom I will marry straight to Clarence\' daughter-     The boy is foolish, and I fear not him.     Look how thou dream\'st! I say again, give out     That Anne, my queen, is sick and like to die.     About it; for it stands me much upon     To stop all hopes whose growth may damage me.                                                     Exit CATESBY     I must be married to my brother\'s daughter,     Or else my kingdom stands on brittle glass.     Murder her brothers, and then marry her!       Uncertain way of gain! But I am in     So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin.     Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye.                       Re-enter PAGE, with TYRREL      Is thy name Tyrrel?   TYRREL. James Tyrrel, and your most obedient subject.   KING RICHARD. Art thou, indeed?   TYRREL. Prove me, my gracious lord.   KING RICHARD. Dar\'st\'thou resolve to kill a friend of mine?   TYRREL. Please you;     But I had rather kill two enemies.   KING RICHARD. Why, then thou hast it. Two deep enemies,     Foes to my rest, and my sweet sleep\'s disturbers,     Are they that I would have thee deal upon.   TYRREL, I mean those bastards in the Tower.   TYRREL. Let me have open means to come to them,     And soon I\'ll rid you from the fear of them.   KING RICHARD. Thou sing\'st sweet music. Hark, come       hither, Tyrrel.     Go, by this token. Rise, and lend thine ear.      [Whispers]     There is no more but so: say it is done,     And I will love thee and prefer thee for it.   TYRREL. I will dispatch it straight.                      Exit                      Re-enter BUCKINGHAM      BUCKINGHAM. My lord, I have consider\'d in my mind     The late request that you did sound me in.   KING RICHARD. Well, let that rest. Dorset is fled to     Richmond.   BUCKINGHAM. I hear the news, my lord.   KING RICHARD. Stanley, he is your wife\'s son: well, look     unto it.   BUCKINGHAM. My lord, I claim the gift, my due by promise,     For which your honour and your faith is pawn\'d:     Th\' earldom of Hereford and the movables     Which you have promised I shall possess.   KING RICHARD. Stanley, look to your wife; if she convey       Letters to Richmond, you shall answer it.   BUCKINGHAM. What says your Highness to my just request?   KING RICHARD. I do remember me: Henry the Sixth     Did prophesy that Richmond should be King,     When Richmond was a little peevish boy.     A king!-perhaps-   BUCKINGHAM. My lord-   KING RICHARD. How chance the prophet could not at that     time     Have told me, I being by, that I should kill him?   BUCKINGHAM. My lord, your promise for the earldom-   KING RICHARD. Richmond! When last I was at Exeter,     The mayor in courtesy show\'d me the castle     And call\'d it Rugemount, at which name I started,     Because a bard of Ireland told me once     I should not live long after I saw Richmond.   BUCKINGHAM. My lord-   KING RICHARD. Ay, what\'s o\'clock?   BUCKINGHAM. I am thus bold to put your Grace in mind     Of what you promis\'d me.     KING RICHARD. Well, but o\'clock?   BUCKINGHAM. Upon the stroke of ten.   KING RICHARD. Well, let it strike.   BUCKINGHAM. Why let it strike?   KING RICHARD. Because that like a Jack thou keep\'st the     stroke     Betwixt thy begging and my meditation.     I am not in the giving vein to-day.   BUCKINGHAM. May it please you to resolve me in my suit.   KING RICHARD. Thou troublest me; I am not in the vein.                                        Exeunt all but Buckingham   BUCKINGHAM. And is it thus? Repays he my deep service     With such contempt? Made I him King for this?     O, let me think on Hastings, and be gone     To Brecknock while my fearful head is on!               Exit     SCENE 3.  London. The palace  Enter TYRREL    TYRREL. The tyrannous and bloody act is done,     The most arch deed of piteous massacre     That ever yet this land was guilty of.     Dighton and Forrest, who I did suborn     To do this piece of ruthless butchery,     Albeit they were flesh\'d villains, bloody dogs,     Melted with tenderness and mild compassion,     Wept like two children in their deaths\' sad story.     \'O, thus\' quoth Dighton \'lay the gentle babes\'-     \'Thus, thus,\' quoth Forrest \'girdling one another     Within their alabaster innocent arms.     Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,     And in their summer beauty kiss\'d each other.     A book of prayers on their pillow lay;     Which once,\' quoth Forrest \'almost chang\'d my mind;     But, O, the devil\'-there the villain stopp\'d;     When Dighton thus told on: \'We smothered       The most replenished sweet work of nature     That from the prime creation e\'er she framed.\'     Hence both are gone with conscience and remorse     They could not speak; and so I left them both,     To bear this tidings to the bloody King.                          Enter KING RICHARD      And here he comes. All health, my sovereign lord!   KING RICHARD. Kind Tyrrel, am I happy in thy news?   TYRREL. If to have done the thing you gave in charge     Beget your happiness, be happy then,     For it is done.   KING RICHARD. But didst thou see them dead?   TYRREL. I did, my lord.   KING RICHARD. And buried, gentle Tyrrel?   TYRREL. The chaplain of the Tower hath buried them;     But where, to say the truth, I do not know.   KING RICHARD. Come to me, Tyrrel, soon at after supper,     When thou shalt tell the process of their death.       Meantime, but think how I may do thee good     And be inheritor of thy desire.     Farewell till then.   TYRREL. I humbly take my leave.                           Exit   KING RICHARD. The son of Clarence have I pent up close;     His daughter meanly have I match\'d in marriage;     The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham\'s bosom,     And Anne my wife hath bid this world good night.     Now, for I know the Britaine Richmond aims     At young Elizabeth, my brother\'s daughter,     And by that knot looks proudly on the crown,     To her go I, a jolly thriving wooer.                             Enter RATCLIFF    RATCLIFF. My lord!   KING RICHARD. Good or bad news, that thou com\'st in so     bluntly?   RATCLIFF. Bad news, my lord: Morton is fled to Richmond;     And Buckingham, back\'d with the hardy Welshmen,       Is in the field, and still his power increaseth.   KING RICHARD. Ely with Richmond troubles me more near     Than Buckingham and his rash-levied strength.     Come, I have learn\'d that fearful commenting     Is leaden servitor to dull delay;     Delay leads impotent and snail-pac\'d beggary.     Then fiery expedition be my wing,     Jove\'s Mercury, and herald for a king!     Go, muster men. My counsel is my shield.     We must be brief when traitors brave the field.       Exeunt     SCENE 4.  London. Before the palace  Enter old QUEEN MARGARET    QUEEN MARGARET. So now prosperity begins to mellow     And drop into the rotten mouth of death.     Here in these confines slily have I lurk\'d     To watch the waning of mine enemies.     A dire induction am I witness to,     And will to France, hoping the consequence     Will prove as bitter, black, and tragical.     Withdraw thee, wretched Margaret. Who comes here?                                                        [Retires]             Enter QUEEN ELIZABETH and the DUCHESS OF YORK    QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, my poor princes! ah, my tender     babes!     My unblown flowers, new-appearing sweets!     If yet your gentle souls fly in the air     And be not fix\'d in doom perpetual,       Hover about me with your airy wings     And hear your mother\'s lamentation.   QUEEN MARGARET. Hover about her; say that right for right     Hath dimm\'d your infant morn to aged night.   DUCHESS. So many miseries have craz\'d my voice     That my woe-wearied tongue is still and mute.     Edward Plantagenet, why art thou dead?   QUEEN MARGARET. Plantagenet doth quit Plantagenet,     Edward for Edward pays a dying debt.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Wilt thou, O God, fly from such gentle     lambs     And throw them in the entrails of the wolf?     When didst thou sleep when such a deed was done?   QUEEN MARGARET. When holy Harry died, and my sweet     son.   DUCHESS. Dead life, blind sight, poor mortal living ghost,     Woe\'s scene, world\'s shame, grave\'s due by life usurp\'d,     Brief abstract and record of tedious days,     Rest thy unrest on England\'s lawful earth,    [Sitting down]     Unlawfully made drunk with innocent blood.     QUEEN ELIZABETH. Ah, that thou wouldst as soon afford a     grave     As thou canst yield a melancholy seat!     Then would I hide my bones, not rest them here.     Ah, who hath any cause to mourn but we?                                            [Sitting down by her]   QUEEN MARGARET.  [Coming forward]  If ancient sorrow be     most reverend,     Give mine the benefit of seniory,     And let my griefs frown on the upper hand.     If sorrow can admit society,        [Sitting down with them]     Tell o\'er your woes again by viewing mine.     I had an Edward, till a Richard kill\'d him;     I had a husband, till a Richard kill\'d him:     Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard kill\'d him;     Thou hadst a Richard, till a Richard kill\'d him.   DUCHESS. I had a Richard too, and thou didst kill him;     I had a Rutland too, thou holp\'st to kill him.   QUEEN MARGARET. Thou hadst a Clarence too, and Richard     kill\'d him.       From forth the kennel of thy womb hath crept     A hell-hound that doth hunt us all to death.     That dog, that had his teeth before his eyes     To worry lambs and lap their gentle blood,     That foul defacer of God\'s handiwork,     That excellent grand tyrant of the earth     That reigns in galled eyes of weeping souls,     Thy womb let loose to chase us to our graves.     O upright, just, and true-disposing God,     How do I thank thee that this carnal cur     Preys on the issue of his mother\'s body     And makes her pew-fellow with others\' moan!   DUCHESS. O Harry\'s wife, triumph not in my woes!     God witness with me, I have wept for thine.   QUEEN MARGARET. Bear with me; I am hungry for revenge,     And now I cloy me with beholding it.     Thy Edward he is dead, that kill\'d my Edward;     The other Edward dead, to quit my Edward;     Young York he is but boot, because both they     Match\'d not the high perfection of my loss.       Thy Clarence he is dead that stabb\'d my Edward;     And the beholders of this frantic play,     Th\' adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey,     Untimely smother\'d in their dusky graves.     Richard yet lives, hell\'s black intelligencer;     Only reserv\'d their factor to buy souls     And send them thither. But at hand, at hand,     Ensues his piteous and unpitied end.     Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar, saints pray,     To have him suddenly convey\'d from hence.     Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I pray,     That I may live and say \'The dog is dead.\'   QUEEN ELIZABETH. O, thou didst prophesy the time would       come     That I should wish for thee to help me curse     That bottled spider, that foul bunch-back\'d toad!   QUEEN MARGARET. I Call\'d thee then vain flourish of my       fortune;     I call\'d thee then poor shadow, painted queen,     The presentation of but what I was,       The flattering index of a direful pageant,     One heav\'d a-high to be hurl\'d down below,     A mother only mock\'d with two fair babes,     A dream of what thou wast, a garish flag     To be the aim of every dangerous shot,     A sign of dignity, a breath, a bubble,     A queen in jest, only to fill the scene.     Where is thy husband now? Where be thy brothers?     Where be thy two sons? Wherein dost thou joy?     Who sues, and kneels, and says \'God save the Queen\'?     Where be the bending peers that flattered thee?     Where be the thronging troops that followed thee?     Decline an this, and see what now thou art:     For happy wife, a most distressed widow;     For joyful mother, one that wails the name;     For one being su\'d to, one that humbly sues;     For Queen, a very caitiff crown\'d with care;     For she that scorn\'d at me, now scorn\'d of me;     For she being fear\'d of all, now fearing one;     For she commanding all, obey\'d of none.       Thus hath the course of justice whirl\'d about     And left thee but a very prey to time,     Having no more but thought of what thou wast     To torture thee the more, being what thou art.     Thou didst usurp my place, and dost thou not     Usurp the just proportion of my sorrow?     Now thy proud neck bears half my burden\'d yoke,     From which even here I slip my weary head     And leave the burden of it all on thee.     Farewell, York\'s wife, and queen of sad mischance;     These English woes shall make me smile in France.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. O thou well skill\'d in curses, stay awhile     And teach me how to curse mine enemies!   QUEEN MARGARET. Forbear to sleep the nights, and fast the       days;     Compare dead happiness with living woe;     Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were,     And he that slew them fouler than he is.     Bett\'ring thy loss makes the bad-causer worse;     Revolving this will teach thee how to curse.     QUEEN ELIZABETH. My words are dull; O, quicken them     with thine!   QUEEN MARGARET. Thy woes will make them sharp and     pierce like mine.                                       Exit   DUCHESS. Why should calamity be fun of words?   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Windy attorneys to their client woes,     Airy succeeders of intestate joys,     Poor breathing orators of miseries,     Let them have scope; though what they will impart     Help nothing else, yet do they case the heart.   DUCHESS. If so, then be not tongue-tied. Go with me,     And in the breath of bitter words let\'s smother     My damned son that thy two sweet sons smother\'d.     The trumpet sounds; be copious in exclaims.           Enter KING RICHARD and his train, marching with                      drums and trumpets    KING RICHARD. Who intercepts me in my expedition?   DUCHESS. O, she that might have intercepted thee,       By strangling thee in her accursed womb,     From all the slaughters, wretch, that thou hast done!   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Hidest thou that forehead with a golden     crown     Where\'t should be branded, if that right were right,     The slaughter of the Prince that ow\'d that crown,     And the dire death of my poor sons and brothers?     Tell me, thou villain slave, where are my children?   DUCHESS. Thou toad, thou toad, where is thy brother     Clarence?     And little Ned Plantagenet, his son?   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Where is the gentle Rivers, Vaughan,     Grey?   DUCHESS. Where is kind Hastings?   KING RICHARD. A flourish, trumpets! Strike alarum, drums!     Let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women     Rail on the Lord\'s anointed. Strike, I say!                                              [Flourish. Alarums]     Either be patient and entreat me fair,     Or with the clamorous report of war       Thus will I drown your exclamations.   DUCHESS. Art thou my son?   KING RICHARD. Ay, I thank God, my father, and yourself.   DUCHESS. Then patiently hear my impatience.   KING RICHARD. Madam, I have a touch of your condition     That cannot brook the accent of reproof.   DUCHESS. O, let me speak!   KING RICHARD. Do, then; but I\'ll not hear.   DUCHESS. I will be mild and gentle in my words.   KING RICHARD. And brief, good mother; for I am in haste.   DUCHESS. Art thou so hasty? I have stay\'d for thee,     God knows, in torment and in agony.   KING RICHARD. And came I not at last to comfort you?   DUCHESS. No, by the holy rood, thou know\'st it well     Thou cam\'st on earth to make the earth my hell.     A grievous burden was thy birth to me;     Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy;     Thy school-days frightful, desp\'rate, wild, and furious;     Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous;     Thy age confirm\'d, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody,       More mild, but yet more harmful-kind in hatred.     What comfortable hour canst thou name     That ever grac\'d me with thy company?   KING RICHARD. Faith, none but Humphrey Hour, that call\'d     your Grace     To breakfast once forth of my company.     If I be so disgracious in your eye,     Let me march on and not offend you, madam.     Strike up the drum.   DUCHESS. I prithee hear me speak.   KING RICHARD. You speak too bitterly.   DUCHESS. Hear me a word;     For I shall never speak to thee again.   KING RICHARD. So.   DUCHESS. Either thou wilt die by God\'s just ordinance     Ere from this war thou turn a conqueror;     Or I with grief and extreme age shall perish     And never more behold thy face again.     Therefore take with thee my most grievous curse,     Which in the day of battle tire thee more       Than all the complete armour that thou wear\'st!     My prayers on the adverse party fight;     And there the little souls of Edward\'s children     Whisper the spirits of thine enemies     And promise them success and victory.     Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end.     Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.        Exit   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Though far more cause, yet much less       spirit to curse     Abides in me; I say amen to her.   KING RICHARD. Stay, madam, I must talk a word with you.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. I have no moe sons of the royal blood     For thee to slaughter. For my daughters, Richard,     They shall be praying nuns, not weeping queens;     And therefore level not to hit their lives.   KING RICHARD. You have a daughter call\'d Elizabeth.     Virtuous and fair, royal and gracious.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. And must she die for this? O, let her       live,     And I\'ll corrupt her manners, stain her beauty,       Slander myself as false to Edward\'s bed,     Throw over her the veil of infamy;     So she may live unscarr\'d of bleeding slaughter,     I will confess she was not Edward\'s daughter.   KING RICHARD. Wrong not her birth; she is a royal     Princess.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. To save her life I\'ll say she is not so.   KING RICHARD. Her life is safest only in her birth.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. And only in that safety died her       brothers.   KING RICHARD. Lo, at their birth good stars were opposite.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. No, to their lives ill friends were       contrary.   KING RICHARD. All unavoided is the doom of destiny.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. True, when avoided grace makes destiny.     My babes were destin\'d to a fairer death,     If grace had bless\'d thee with a fairer life.   KING RICHARD. You speak as if that I had slain my cousins.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Cousins, indeed; and by their uncle       cozen\'d       Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life.     Whose hand soever lanc\'d their tender hearts,     Thy head, an indirectly, gave direction.     No doubt the murd\'rous knife was dull and blunt     Till it was whetted on thy stone-hard heart     To revel in the entrails of my lambs.     But that stiff use of grief makes wild grief tame,     My tongue should to thy ears not name my boys     Till that my nails were anchor\'d in thine eyes;     And I, in such a desp\'rate bay of death,     Like a poor bark, of sails and tackling reft,     Rush all to pieces on thy rocky bosom.   KING RICHARD. Madam, so thrive I in my enterprise     And dangerous success of bloody wars,     As I intend more good to you and yours     Than ever you or yours by me were harm\'d!   QUEEN ELIZABETH. What good is cover\'d with the face of       heaven,     To be discover\'d, that can do me good?   KING RICHARD. advancement of your children, gentle       lady.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Up to some scaffold, there to lose their     heads?   KING RICHARD. Unto the dignity and height of Fortune,     The high imperial type of this earth\'s glory.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Flatter my sorrow with report of it;     Tell me what state, what dignity, what honour,     Canst thou demise to any child of mine?   KING RICHARD. Even all I have-ay, and myself and all     Will I withal endow a child of thine;     So in the Lethe of thy angry soul     Thou drown the sad remembrance of those wrongs     Which thou supposest I have done to thee.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Be brief, lest that the process of thy       kindness     Last longer telling than thy kindness\' date.   KING RICHARD. Then know, that from my soul I love thy     daughter.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. My daughter\'s mother thinks it with her     soul.     KING RICHARD. What do you think?   QUEEN ELIZABETH. That thou dost love my daughter from       thy soul.     So from thy soul\'s love didst thou love her brothers,     And from my heart\'s love I do thank thee for it.   KING RICHARD. Be not so hasty to confound my meaning.     I mean that with my soul I love thy daughter     And do intend to make her Queen of England.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Well, then, who dost thou mean shall be     her king?   KING RICHARD. Even he that makes her Queen. Who else     should be?   QUEEN ELIZABETH. What, thou?   KING RICHARD. Even so. How think you of it?   QUEEN ELIZABETH. How canst thou woo her?   KING RICHARD. That would I learn of you,     As one being best acquainted with her humour.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. And wilt thou learn of me?   KING RICHARD. Madam, with all my heart.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Send to her, by the man that slew her       brothers,     A pair of bleeding hearts; thereon engrave     \'Edward\' and \'York.\' Then haply will she weep;     Therefore present to her-as sometimes Margaret     Did to thy father, steep\'d in Rutland\'s blood-     A handkerchief; which, say to her, did drain     The purple sap from her sweet brother\'s body,     And bid her wipe her weeping eyes withal.     If this inducement move her not to love,     Send her a letter of thy noble deeds;     Tell her thou mad\'st away her uncle Clarence,     Her uncle Rivers; ay, and for her sake     Mad\'st quick conveyance with her good aunt Anne.   KING RICHARD. You mock me, madam; this is not the way     To win your daughter.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. There is no other way;     Unless thou couldst put on some other shape     And not be Richard that hath done all this.   KING RICHARD. Say that I did all this for love of her.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Nay, then indeed she cannot choose but         hate thee,     Having bought love with such a bloody spoil.   KING RICHARD. Look what is done cannot be now amended.     Men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes,     Which after-hours gives leisure to repent.     If I did take the kingdom from your sons,     To make amends I\'ll give it to your daughter.     If I have kill\'d the issue of your womb,     To quicken your increase I will beget     Mine issue of your blood upon your daughter.     A grandam\'s name is little less in love     Than is the doating title of a mother;     They are as children but one step below,     Even of your metal, of your very blood;     Of all one pain, save for a night of groans     Endur\'d of her, for whom you bid like sorrow.     Your children were vexation to your youth;     But mine shall be a comfort to your age.     The loss you have is but a son being King,     And by that loss your daughter is made Queen.       I cannot make you what amends I would,     Therefore accept such kindness as I can.     Dorset your son, that with a fearful soul     Leads discontented steps in foreign soil,     This fair alliance quickly shall can home     To high promotions and great dignity.     The King, that calls your beauteous daughter wife,     Familiarly shall call thy Dorset brother;     Again shall you be mother to a king,     And all the ruins of distressful times     Repair\'d with double riches of content.     What! we have many goodly days to see.     The liquid drops of tears that you have shed     Shall come again, transform\'d to orient pearl,     Advantaging their loan with interest     Of ten times double gain of happiness.     Go, then, my mother, to thy daughter go;     Make bold her bashful years with your experience;     Prepare her ears to hear a wooer\'s tale;     Put in her tender heart th\' aspiring flame       Of golden sovereignty; acquaint the Princes     With the sweet silent hours of marriage joys.     And when this arm of mine hath chastised     The petty rebel, dull-brain\'d Buckingham,     Bound with triumphant garlands will I come,     And lead thy daughter to a conqueror\'s bed;     To whom I will retail my conquest won,     And she shall be sole victoress, Caesar\'s Caesar.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. What were I best to say? Her father\'s       brother     Would be her lord? Or shall I say her uncle?     Or he that slew her brothers and her uncles?     Under what title shall I woo for thee     That God, the law, my honour, and her love     Can make seem pleasing to her tender years?   KING RICHARD. Infer fair England\'s peace by this alliance.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Which she shall purchase with     still-lasting war.   KING RICHARD. Tell her the King, that may command,     entreats.     QUEEN ELIZABETH. That at her hands which the King\'s     King forbids.   KING RICHARD. Say she shall be a high and mighty queen.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. To wail the title, as her mother doth.   KING RICHARD. Say I will love her everlastingly.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. But how long shall that title \'ever\' last?   KING RICHARD. Sweetly in force unto her fair life\'s end.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. But how long fairly shall her sweet life     last?   KING RICHARD. As long as heaven and nature lengthens it.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. As long as hell and Richard likes of it.   KING RICHARD. Say I, her sovereign, am her subject low.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. But she, your subject, loathes such     sovereignty.   KING RICHARD. Be eloquent in my behalf to her.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. An honest tale speeds best being plainly     told.   KING RICHARD. Then plainly to her tell my loving tale.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Plain and not honest is too harsh a style.   KING RICHARD. Your reasons are too shallow and too quick.     QUEEN ELIZABETH. O, no, my reasons are too deep and       dead-     Too deep and dead, poor infants, in their graves.   KING RICHARD. Harp not on that string, madam; that is past.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Harp on it still shall I till heartstrings     break.   KING RICHARD. Now, by my George, my garter, and my     crown-   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Profan\'d, dishonour\'d, and the third     usurp\'d.   KING RICHARD. I swear-   QUEEN ELIZABETH. By nothing; for this is no oath:     Thy George, profan\'d, hath lost his lordly honour;     Thy garter, blemish\'d, pawn\'d his knightly virtue;     Thy crown, usurp\'d, disgrac\'d his kingly glory.     If something thou wouldst swear to be believ\'d,     Swear then by something that thou hast not wrong\'d.   KING RICHARD. Then, by my self-   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Thy self is self-misus\'d.   KING RICHARD. Now, by the world-     QUEEN ELIZABETH. \'Tis full of thy foul wrongs.   KING RICHARD. My father\'s death-   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Thy life hath it dishonour\'d.   KING RICHARD. Why, then, by God-   QUEEN ELIZABETH. God\'s wrong is most of all.     If thou didst fear to break an oath with Him,     The unity the King my husband made     Thou hadst not broken, nor my brothers died.     If thou hadst fear\'d to break an oath by Him,     Th\' imperial metal, circling now thy head,     Had grac\'d the tender temples of my child;     And both the Princes had been breathing here,     Which now, two tender bedfellows for dust,     Thy broken faith hath made the prey for worms.     What canst thou swear by now?   KING RICHARD. The time to come.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. That thou hast wronged in the time     o\'erpast;     For I myself have many tears to wash     Hereafter time, for time past wrong\'d by thee.       The children live whose fathers thou hast slaughter\'d,     Ungovern\'d youth, to wail it in their age;     The parents live whose children thou hast butcheed,     Old barren plants, to wail it with their age.     Swear not by time to come; for that thou hast     Misus\'d ere us\'d, by times ill-us\'d o\'erpast.   KING RICHARD. As I intend to prosper and repent,     So thrive I in my dangerous affairs     Of hostile arms! Myself myself confound!     Heaven and fortune bar me happy hours!     Day, yield me not thy light; nor, night, thy rest!     Be opposite all planets of good luck     To my proceeding!-if, with dear heart\'s love,     Immaculate devotion, holy thoughts,     I tender not thy beauteous princely daughter.     In her consists my happiness and thine;     Without her, follows to myself and thee,     Herself, the land, and many a Christian soul,     Death, desolation, ruin, and decay.     It cannot be avoided but by this;       It will not be avoided but by this.     Therefore, dear mother-I must call you so-     Be the attorney of my love to her;     Plead what I will be, not what I have been;     Not my deserts, but what I will deserve.     Urge the necessity and state of times,     And be not peevish-fond in great designs.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Shall I be tempted of the devil thus?   KING RICHARD. Ay, if the devil tempt you to do good.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Shall I forget myself to be myself?   KING RICHARD. Ay, if your self\'s remembrance wrong     yourself.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Yet thou didst kill my children.   KING RICHARD. But in your daughter\'s womb I bury them;     Where, in that nest of spicery, they will breed     Selves of themselves, to your recomforture.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. Shall I go win my daughter to thy will?   KING RICHARD. And be a happy mother by the deed.   QUEEN ELIZABETH. I go. Write to me very shortly,     And you shall understand from me her mind.     KING RICHARD. Bear her my true love\'s kiss; and so, farewell.                                Kissing her. Exit QUEEN ELIZABETH     Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman!                   Enter RATCLIFF; CATESBY following      How now! what news?   RATCLIFF. Most mighty sovereign, on the western coast     Rideth a puissant navy; to our shores     Throng many doubtful hollow-hearted friends,     Unarm\'d, and unresolv\'d to beat them back.     \'Tis thought that Richmond is their admiral;     And there they hull, expecting but the aid     Of Buckingham to welcome them ashore.   KING RICHARD. Some light-foot friend post to the Duke of     Norfolk.     Ratcliff, thyself-or Catesby; where is he?   CATESBY. Here, my good lord.   KING RICHARD. Catesby, fly to the Duke.   CATESBY. I will my lord, with all convenient haste.     KING RICHARD. Ratcliff, come hither. Post to Salisbury;     When thou com\'st thither-  [To CATESBY]  Dull,     unmindfull villain,     Why stay\'st thou here, and go\'st not to the Duke?   CATESBY. First, mighty liege, tell me your Highness\' pleasure,     What from your Grace I shall deliver to him.   KING RICHARD. O, true, good Catesby. Bid him levy straight     The greatest strength and power that he can make     And meet me suddenly at Salisbury.   CATESBY. I go.                                            Exit   RATCLIFF. What, may it please you, shall I do at Salisbury?   KING RICHARD. Why, what wouldst thou do there before I     go?   RATCLIFF. Your Highness told me I should post before.   KING RICHARD. My mind is chang\'d.                             Enter LORD STANLEY    STANLEY, what news with you?   STANLEY. None good, my liege, to please you with       the hearing;     Nor none so bad but well may be reported.   KING RICHARD. Hoyday, a riddle! neither good nor bad!     What need\'st thou run so many miles about,     When thou mayest tell thy tale the nearest way?     Once more, what news?   STANLEY. Richmond is on the seas.   KING RICHARD. There let him sink, and be the seas on him!     White-liver\'d runagate, what doth he there?   STANLEY. I know not, mighty sovereign, but by guess.   KING RICHARD. Well, as you guess?   STANLEY. Stirr\'d up by Dorset, Buckingham, and Morton,     He makes for England here to claim the crown.   KING RICHARD. Is the chair empty? Is the sword unsway\'d?     Is the King dead, the empire unpossess\'d?     What heir of York is there alive but we?     And who is England\'s King but great York\'s heir?     Then tell me what makes he upon the seas.   STANLEY. Unless for that, my liege, I cannot guess.   KING RICHARD. Unless for that he comes to be your liege,       You cannot guess wherefore the Welshman comes.     Thou wilt revolt and fly to him, I fear.   STANLEY. No, my good lord; therefore mistrust me not.   KING RICHARD. Where is thy power then, to beat him back?     Where be thy tenants and thy followers?     Are they not now upon the western shore,     Safe-conducting the rebels from their ships?   STANLEY. No, my good lord, my friends are in the north.   KING RICHARD. Cold friends to me. What do they in the     north,     When they should serve their sovereign in the west?   STANLEY. They have not been commanded, mighty King.     Pleaseth your Majesty to give me leave,     I\'ll muster up my friends and meet your Grace     Where and what time your Majesty shall please.   KING RICHARD. Ay, ay, thou wouldst be gone to join with     Richmond;     But I\'ll not trust thee.   STANLEY. Most mighty sovereign,     You have no cause to hold my friendship doubtful.       I never was nor never will be false.   KING RICHARD. Go, then, and muster men. But leave behind     Your son, George Stanley. Look your heart be firm,     Or else his head\'s assurance is but frail.   STANLEY. So deal with him as I prove true to you.         Exit                            Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. My gracious sovereign, now in Devonshire,     As I by friends am well advertised,     Sir Edward Courtney and the haughty prelate,     Bishop of Exeter, his elder brother,     With many moe confederates, are in arms.                           Enter another MESSENGER    SECOND MESSENGER. In Kent, my liege, the Guilfords are in     arms;     And every hour more competitors     Flock to the rebels, and their power grows strong.                             Enter another MESSENGER    THIRD MESSENGER. My lord, the army of great Buckingham-   KING RICHARD. Out on you, owls! Nothing but songs of     death?                                      [He strikes him]     There, take thou that till thou bring better news.   THIRD MESSENGER. The news I have to tell your Majesty     Is that by sudden floods and fall of waters     Buckingham\'s army is dispers\'d and scatter\'d;     And he himself wand\'red away alone,     No man knows whither.   KING RICHARD. I cry thee mercy.     There is my purse to cure that blow of thine.     Hath any well-advised friend proclaim\'d     Reward to him that brings the traitor in?   THIRD MESSENGER. Such proclamation hath been made,     my Lord.                        Enter another MESSENGER      FOURTH MESSENGER. Sir Thomas Lovel and Lord Marquis     Dorset,     \'Tis said, my liege, in Yorkshire are in arms.     But this good comfort bring I to your Highness-     The Britaine navy is dispers\'d by tempest.     Richmond in Dorsetshire sent out a boat     Unto the shore, to ask those on the banks     If they were his assistants, yea or no;     Who answer\'d him they came from Buckingham     Upon his party. He, mistrusting them,     Hois\'d sail, and made his course again for Britaine.   KING RICHARD. March on, march on, since we are up in     arms;     If not to fight with foreign enemies,     Yet to beat down these rebels here at home.                            Re-enter CATESBY    CATESBY. My liege, the Duke of Buckingham is taken-       That is the best news. That the Earl of Richmond     Is with a mighty power landed at Milford     Is colder tidings, yet they must be told.   KING RICHARD. Away towards Salisbury! While we reason     here     A royal battle might be won and lost.     Some one take order Buckingham be brought     To Salisbury; the rest march on with me.     Flourish.                                             Exeunt     SCENE 5.  LORD DERBY\'S house  Enter STANLEY and SIR CHRISTOPHER URSWICK    STANLEY. Sir Christopher, tell Richmond this from me:     That in the sty of the most deadly boar     My son George Stanley is frank\'d up in hold;     If I revolt, off goes young George\'s head;     The fear of that holds off my present aid.     So, get thee gone; commend me to thy lord.     Withal say that the Queen hath heartily consented     He should espouse Elizabeth her daughter.     But tell me, where is princely Richmond now?   CHRISTOPHER. At Pembroke, or at Ha\'rford west in Wales.   STANLEY. What men of name resort to him?   CHRISTOPHER. Sir Walter Herbert, a renowned soldier;   SIR Gilbert Talbot, Sir William Stanley,   OXFORD, redoubted Pembroke, Sir James Blunt,     And Rice ap Thomas, with a valiant crew;     And many other of great name and worth;     And towards London do they bend their power,       If by the way they be not fought withal.   STANLEY. Well, hie thee to thy lord; I kiss his hand;     My letter will resolve him of my mind.     Farewell.                                             Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE 1.  Salisbury. An open place  Enter the SHERIFF and guard, with BUCKINGHAM, led to execution    BUCKINGHAM. Will not King Richard let me speak with     him?   SHERIFF. No, my good lord; therefore be patient.   BUCKINGHAM. Hastings, and Edward\'s children, Grey, and     Rivers,     Holy King Henry, and thy fair son Edward,     Vaughan, and all that have miscarried     By underhand corrupted foul injustice,     If that your moody discontented souls     Do through the clouds behold this present hour,     Even for revenge mock my destruction!     This is All-Souls\' day, fellow, is it not?   SHERIFF. It is, my lord.   BUCKINGHAM. Why, then All-Souls\' day is my body\'s     doomsday.     This is the day which in King Edward\'s time       I wish\'d might fall on me when I was found     False to his children and his wife\'s allies;     This is the day wherein I wish\'d to fall     By the false faith of him whom most I trusted;     This, this All-Souls\' day to my fearful soul     Is the determin\'d respite of my wrongs;     That high All-Seer which I dallied with     Hath turn\'d my feigned prayer on my head     And given in earnest what I begg\'d in jest.     Thus doth He force the swords of wicked men     To turn their own points in their masters\' bosoms.     Thus Margaret\'s curse falls heavy on my neck.     \'When he\' quoth she \'shall split thy heart with sorrow,     Remember Margaret was a prophetess.\'     Come lead me, officers, to the block of shame;     Wrong hath but wrong, and blame the due of blame.          Exeunt     SCENE 2.  Camp near Tamworth  Enter RICHMOND, OXFORD, SIR JAMES BLUNT, SIR WALTER HERBERT, and others, with drum and colours    RICHMOND. Fellows in arms, and my most loving friends,     Bruis\'d underneath the yoke of tyranny,     Thus far into the bowels of the land     Have we march\'d on without impediment;     And here receive we from our father Stanley     Lines of fair comfort and encouragement.     The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar,     That spoil\'d your summer fields and fruitful vines,     Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough     In your embowell\'d bosoms-this foul swine     Is now even in the centre of this isle,     Near to the town of Leicester, as we learn.     From Tamworth thither is but one day\'s march.     In God\'s name cheerly on, courageous friends,     To reap the harvest of perpetual peace       By this one bloody trial of sharp war.   OXFORD. Every man\'s conscience is a thousand men,     To fight against this guilty homicide.   HERBERT. I doubt not but his friends will turn to us.   BLUNT. He hath no friends but what are friends for fear,     Which in his dearest need will fly from him.   RICHMOND. All for our vantage. Then in God\'s name march.     True hope is swift and flies with swallow\'s wings;     Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.      Exeunt     SCENE 3.  Bosworth Field  Enter KING RICHARD in arms, with NORFOLK, RATCLIFF, the EARL of SURREYS and others    KING RICHARD. Here pitch our tent, even here in Bosworth     field.     My Lord of Surrey, why look you so sad?   SURREY. My heart is ten times lighter than my looks.   KING RICHARD. My Lord of Norfolk!   NORFOLK. Here, most gracious liege.   KING RICHARD. Norfolk, we must have knocks; ha! must we     not?   NORFOLK. We must both give and take, my loving lord.   KING RICHARD. Up With my tent! Here will I lie to-night;                       [Soldiers begin to set up the KING\'S tent]     But where to-morrow? Well, all\'s one for that.     Who hath descried the number of the traitors?   NORFOLK. Six or seven thousand is their utmost power.   KING RICHARD. Why, our battalia trebles that account;     Besides, the King\'s name is a tower of strength,       Which they upon the adverse faction want.     Up with the tent! Come, noble gentlemen,     Let us survey the vantage of the ground.     Call for some men of sound direction.     Let\'s lack no discipline, make no delay;     For, lords, to-morrow is a busy day.                  Exeunt               Enter, on the other side of the field,           RICHMOND, SIR WILLIAM BRANDON, OXFORD, DORSET,               and others. Some pitch RICHMOND\'S tent    RICHMOND. The weary sun hath made a golden set,     And by the bright tract of his fiery car     Gives token of a goodly day to-morrow.     Sir William Brandon, you shall bear my standard.     Give me some ink and paper in my tent.     I\'ll draw the form and model of our battle,     Limit each leader to his several charge,     And part in just proportion our small power.     My Lord of Oxford-you, Sir William Brandon-       And you, Sir Walter Herbert-stay with me.     The Earl of Pembroke keeps his regiment;     Good Captain Blunt, bear my good night to him,     And by the second hour in the morning     Desire the Earl to see me in my tent.     Yet one thing more, good Captain, do for me-     Where is Lord Stanley quarter\'d, do you know?   BLUNT. Unless I have mista\'en his colours much-     Which well I am assur\'d I have not done-     His regiment lies half a mile at least     South from the mighty power of the King.   RICHMOND. If without peril it be possible,     Sweet Blunt, make some good means to speak with him     And give him from me this most needful note.   BLUNT. Upon my life, my lord, I\'ll undertake it;     And so, God give you quiet rest to-night!   RICHMOND. Good night, good Captain Blunt. Come,     gentlemen,     Let us consult upon to-morrow\'s business.     In to my tent; the dew is raw and cold.                                      [They withdraw into the tent]              Enter, to his-tent, KING RICHARD, NORFOLK,                        RATCLIFF, and CATESBY    KING RICHARD. What is\'t o\'clock?   CATESBY. It\'s supper-time, my lord;     It\'s nine o\'clock.   KING RICHARD. I will not sup to-night.     Give me some ink and paper.     What, is my beaver easier than it was?     And all my armour laid into my tent?   CATESBY. It is, my liege; and all things are in readiness.   KING RICHARD. Good Norfolk, hie thee to thy charge;     Use careful watch, choose trusty sentinels.   NORFOLK. I go, my lord.   KING RICHARD. Stir with the lark to-morrow, gentle Norfolk.   NORFOLK. I warrant you, my lord.                          Exit   KING RICHARD. Catesby!   CATESBY. My lord?     KING RICHARD. Send out a pursuivant-at-arms     To Stanley\'s regiment; bid him bring his power     Before sunrising, lest his son George fall     Into the blind cave of eternal night.           Exit CATESBY     Fill me a bowl of wine. Give me a watch.     Saddle white Surrey for the field to-morrow.     Look that my staves be sound, and not too heavy.     Ratcliff!   RATCLIFF. My lord?   KING RICHARD. Saw\'st thou the melancholy Lord     Northumberland?   RATCLIFF. Thomas the Earl of Surrey and himself,     Much about cock-shut time, from troop to troop     Went through the army, cheering up the soldiers.   KING RICHARD. So, I am satisfied. Give me a bowl of wine.     I have not that alacrity of spirit     Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have.     Set it down. Is ink and paper ready?   RATCLIFF. It is, my lord.   KING RICHARD. Bid my guard watch; leave me.     RATCLIFF, about the mid of night come to my tent     And help to arm me. Leave me, I say.                                    Exit RATCLIFF. RICHARD sleeps                 Enter DERBY to RICHMOND in his tent;                         LORDS attending    DERBY. Fortune and victory sit on thy helm!   RICHMOND. All comfort that the dark night can afford     Be to thy person, noble father-in-law!     Tell me, how fares our loving mother?   DERBY. I, by attorney, bless thee from thy mother,     Who prays continually for Richmond\'s good.     So much for that. The silent hours steal on,     And flaky darkness breaks within the east.     In brief, for so the season bids us be,     Prepare thy battle early in the morning,     And put thy fortune to the arbitrement     Of bloody strokes and mortal-staring war.     I, as I may-that which I would I cannot-       With best advantage will deceive the time     And aid thee in this doubtful shock of arms;     But on thy side I may not be too forward,     Lest, being seen, thy brother, tender George,     Be executed in his father\'s sight.     Farewell; the leisure and the fearful time     Cuts off the ceremonious vows of love     And ample interchange of sweet discourse     Which so-long-sund\'red friends should dwell upon.     God give us leisure for these rites of love!     Once more, adieu; be valiant, and speed well!   RICHMOND. Good lords, conduct him to his regiment.     I\'ll strive with troubled thoughts to take a nap,     Lest leaden slumber peise me down to-morrow     When I should mount with wings of victory.     Once more, good night, kind lords and gentlemen.                                          Exeunt all but RICHMOND     O Thou, whose captain I account myself,     Look on my forces with a gracious eye;     Put in their hands Thy bruising irons of wrath,       That they may crush down with a heavy fall     The usurping helmets of our adversaries!     Make us Thy ministers of chastisement,     That we may praise Thee in the victory!     To Thee I do commend my watchful soul     Ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes.     Sleeping and waking, O, defend me still!            [Sleeps]              Enter the GHOST Of YOUNG PRINCE EDWARD,                     son to HENRY THE SIXTH    GHOST.  [To RICHARD]  Let me sit heavy on thy soul     to-morrow!     Think how thou stabb\'dst me in my prime of youth     At Tewksbury; despair, therefore, and die!     [To RICHMOND]  Be cheerful, Richmond; for the wronged     souls     Of butcher\'d princes fight in thy behalf.     King Henry\'s issue, Richmond, comforts thee.                  Enter the GHOST of HENRY THE SIXTH    GHOST.  [To RICHARD]  When I was mortal, my anointed     body     By thee was punched full of deadly holes.     Think on the Tower and me. Despair, and die.     Harry the Sixth bids thee despair and die.     [To RICHMOND]  Virtuous and holy, be thou conqueror!     Harry, that prophesied thou shouldst be King,     Doth comfort thee in thy sleep. Live and flourish!                     Enter the GHOST of CLARENCE    GHOST.  [To RICHARD]  Let me sit heavy in thy soul     to-morrow! I that was wash\'d to death with fulsome wine,     Poor Clarence, by thy guile betray\'d to death!     To-morrow in the battle think on me,     And fall thy edgeless sword. Despair and die!     [To RICHMOND]  Thou offspring of the house of Lancaster,     The wronged heirs of York do pray for thee.       Good angels guard thy battle! Live and flourish!             Enter the GHOSTS of RIVERS, GREY, and VAUGHAN    GHOST OF RIVERS.  [To RICHARD]  Let me sit heavy in thy     soul to-morrow,     Rivers that died at Pomfret! Despair and die!   GHOST OF GREY.  [To RICHARD]  Think upon Grey, and let     thy soul despair!   GHOST OF VAUGHAN.  [To RICHARD]  Think upon Vaughan,     and with guilty fear     Let fall thy lance. Despair and die!   ALL.  [To RICHMOND]  Awake, and think our wrongs in     Richard\'s bosom     Will conquer him. Awake and win the day.                  Enter the GHOST of HASTINGS    GHOST.  [To RICHARD]  Bloody and guilty, guiltily awake,     And in a bloody battle end thy days!       Think on Lord Hastings. Despair and die.     [To RICHMOND]   Quiet untroubled soul, awake, awake!     Arm, fight, and conquer, for fair England\'s sake!           Enter the GHOSTS of the two young PRINCES    GHOSTS.  [To RICHARD]  Dream on thy cousins smothered in     the Tower.     Let us be lead within thy bosom, Richard,     And weigh thee down to ruin, shame, and death!     Thy nephews\' souls bid thee despair and die.     [To RICHMOND]  Sleep, Richmond, sleep in peace, and     wake in joy;     Good angels guard thee from the boar\'s annoy!     Live, and beget a happy race of kings!     Edward\'s unhappy sons do bid thee flourish.            Enter the GHOST of LADY ANNE, his wife    GHOST.  [To RICHARD]  Richard, thy wife, that wretched       Anne thy wife     That never slept a quiet hour with thee     Now fills thy sleep with perturbations.     To-morrow in the battle think on me,     And fall thy edgeless sword. Despair and die.     [To RICHMOND]  Thou quiet soul, sleep thou a quiet sleep;     Dream of success and happy victory.     Thy adversary\'s wife doth pray for thee.                     Enter the GHOST of BUCKINGHAM    GHOST.  [To RICHARD]  The first was I that help\'d thee     to the crown;     The last was I that felt thy tyranny.     O, in the battle think on Buckingham,     And die in terror of thy guiltiness!     Dream on, dream on of bloody deeds and death;     Fainting, despair; despairing, yield thy breath!     [To RICHMOND]  I died for hope ere I could lend thee aid;     But cheer thy heart and be thou not dismay\'d:       God and good angels fight on Richmond\'s side;     And Richard falls in height of all his pride.             [The GHOSTS vanish. RICHARD starts out of his dream]   KING RICHARD. Give me another horse. Bind up my wounds.     Have mercy, Jesu! Soft! I did but dream.     O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!     The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.     Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.     What do I fear? Myself? There\'s none else by.     Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.     Is there a murderer here? No-yes, I am.     Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why-     Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself!     Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good     That I myself have done unto myself?     O, no! Alas, I rather hate myself     For hateful deeds committed by myself!     I am a villain; yet I lie, I am not.     Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter.     My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,       And every tongue brings in a several tale,     And every tale condemns me for a villain.     Perjury, perjury, in the high\'st degree;     Murder, stern murder, in the dir\'st degree;     All several sins, all us\'d in each degree,     Throng to the bar, crying all \'Guilty! guilty!\'     I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;     And if I die no soul will pity me:     And wherefore should they, since that I myself     Find in myself no pity to myself?     Methought the souls of all that I had murder\'d     Came to my tent, and every one did threat     To-morrow\'s vengeance on the head of Richard.                              Enter RATCLIFF    RATCLIFF. My lord!   KING RICHARD. Zounds, who is there?   RATCLIFF. Ratcliff, my lord; \'tis I. The early village-cock     Hath twice done salutation to the morn;       Your friends are up and buckle on their armour.   KING RICHARD. O Ratcliff, I have dream\'d a fearful dream!     What think\'st thou-will our friends prove all true?   RATCLIFF. No doubt, my lord.   KING RICHARD. O Ratcliff, I fear, I fear.   RATCLIFF. Nay, good my lord, be not afraid of shadows.   KING RICHARD By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night     Have stuck more terror to the soul of Richard     Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers     Armed in proof and led by shallow Richmond.     \'Tis not yet near day. Come, go with me;     Under our tents I\'ll play the eaves-dropper,     To see if any mean to shrink from me.                 Exeunt            Enter the LORDS to RICHMOND sitting in his tent    LORDS. Good morrow, Richmond!   RICHMOND. Cry mercy, lords and watchful gentlemen,     That you have ta\'en a tardy sluggard here.   LORDS. How have you slept, my lord?     RICHMOND. The sweetest sleep and fairest-boding dreams     That ever ent\'red in a drowsy head     Have I since your departure had, my lords.     Methought their souls whose bodies Richard murder\'d     Came to my tent and cried on victory.     I promise you my soul is very jocund     In the remembrance of so fair a dream.     How far into the morning is it, lords?   LORDS. Upon the stroke of four.   RICHMOND. Why, then \'tis time to arm and give direction.                   His ORATION to his SOLDIERS      More than I have said, loving countrymen,     The leisure and enforcement of the time     Forbids to dwell upon; yet remember this:     God and our good cause fight upon our side;     The prayers of holy saints and wronged souls,     Like high-rear\'d bulwarks, stand before our faces;     Richard except, those whom we fight against       Had rather have us win than him they follow.     For what is he they follow? Truly, gentlemen,     A bloody tyrant and a homicide;     One rais\'d in blood, and one in blood establish\'d;     One that made means to come by what he hath,     And slaughtered those that were the means to help him;     A base foul stone, made precious by the foil     Of England\'s chair, where he is falsely set;     One that hath ever been God\'s enemy.     Then if you fight against God\'s enemy,     God will in justice ward you as his soldiers;     If you do sweat to put a tyrant down,     You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain;     If you do fight against your country\'s foes,     Your country\'s foes shall pay your pains the hire;     If you do fight in safeguard of your wives,     Your wives shall welcome home the conquerors;     If you do free your children from the sword,     Your children\'s children quits it in your age.     Then, in the name of God and all these rights,       Advance your standards, draw your willing swords.     For me, the ransom of my bold attempt     Shall be this cold corpse on the earth\'s cold face;     But if I thrive, the gain of my attempt     The least of you shall share his part thereof.     Sound drums and trumpets boldly and cheerfully;     God and Saint George! Richmond and victory!           Exeunt             Re-enter KING RICHARD, RATCLIFF, attendants,                          and forces    KING RICHARD. What said Northumberland as touching     Richmond?   RATCLIFF. That he was never trained up in arms.   KING RICHARD. He said the truth; and what said Surrey     then?   RATCLIFF. He smil\'d, and said \'The better for our purpose.\'   KING He was in the right; and so indeed it is.                                                  [Clock strikes]     Tell the clock there. Give me a calendar.       Who saw the sun to-day?   RATCLIFF. Not I, my lord.   KING RICHARD. Then he disdains to shine; for by the book     He should have brav\'d the east an hour ago.     A black day will it be to somebody.     Ratcliff!   RATCLIFF. My lord?   KING RICHARD. The sun will not be seen to-day;     The sky doth frown and lour upon our army.     I would these dewy tears were from the ground.     Not shine to-day! Why, what is that to me     More than to Richmond? For the selfsame heaven     That frowns on me looks sadly upon him.                         Enter NORFOLK    NORFOLK. Arm, arm, my lord; the foe vaunts in the field.   KING RICHARD. Come, bustle, bustle; caparison my horse;     Call up Lord Stanley, bid him bring his power.     I will lead forth my soldiers to the plain,       And thus my battle shall be ordered:     My foreward shall be drawn out all in length,     Consisting equally of horse and foot;     Our archers shall be placed in the midst.     John Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Earl of Surrey,     Shall have the leading of this foot and horse.     They thus directed, we will follow     In the main battle, whose puissance on either side     Shall be well winged with our chiefest horse.     This, and Saint George to boot! What think\'st thou,     Norfolk?   NORFOLK. A good direction, warlike sovereign.     This found I on my tent this morning.                                         [He sheweth him a paper]   KING RICHARD.                                          [Reads]     \'Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold,     For Dickon thy master is bought and sold.\'     A thing devised by the enemy.     Go, gentlemen, every man unto his charge.     Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls;       Conscience is but a word that cowards use,     Devis\'d at first to keep the strong in awe.     Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.     March on, join bravely, let us to it pell-mell;     If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.                        His ORATION to his ARMY      What shall I say more than I have inferr\'d?     Remember whom you are to cope withal-     A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,     A scum of Britaines, and base lackey peasants,     Whom their o\'er-cloyed country vomits forth     To desperate adventures and assur\'d destruction.     You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest;     You having lands, and bless\'d with beauteous wives,     They would restrain the one, distain the other.     And who doth lead them but a paltry fellow,     Long kept in Britaine at our mother\'s cost?     A milk-sop, one that never in his life       Felt so much cold as over shoes in snow?     Let\'s whip these stragglers o\'er the seas again;     Lash hence these over-weening rags of France,     These famish\'d beggars, weary of their lives;     Who, but for dreaming on this fond exploit,     For want of means, poor rats, had hang\'d themselves.     If we be conquered, let men conquer us,     And not these bastard Britaines, whom our fathers     Have in their own land beaten, bobb\'d, and thump\'d,     And, in record, left them the heirs of shame.     Shall these enjoy our lands? lie with our wives,     Ravish our daughters?  [Drum afar off]  Hark! I hear their     drum.     Fight, gentlemen of England! Fight, bold yeomen!     Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head!     Spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood;     Amaze the welkin with your broken staves!                          Enter a MESSENGER        What says Lord Stanley? Will he bring his power?   MESSENGER. My lord, he doth deny to come.   KING RICHARD. Off with his son George\'s head!   NORFOLK. My lord, the enemy is pass\'d the marsh.     After the battle let George Stanley die.   KING RICHARD. A thousand hearts are great within my     bosom.     Advance our standards, set upon our foes;     Our ancient word of courage, fair Saint George,     Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons!     Upon them! Victory sits on our helms.                 Exeunt     SCENE 4.  Another part of the field  Alarum; excursions. Enter NORFOLK and forces; to him CATESBY    CATESBY. Rescue, my Lord of Norfolk, rescue, rescue!     The King enacts more wonders than a man,     Daring an opposite to every danger.     His horse is slain, and all on foot he fights,     Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death.     Rescue, fair lord, or else the day is lost.                       Alarums. Enter KING RICHARD    KING RICHARD. A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!   CATESBY. Withdraw, my lord! I\'ll help you to a horse.   KING RICHARD. Slave, I have set my life upon a cast     And I Will stand the hazard of the die.     I think there be six Richmonds in the field;     Five have I slain to-day instead of him.     A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!             Exeunt       SCENE 5.  Another part of the field  Alarum. Enter RICHARD and RICHMOND; they fight; RICHARD is slain. Retreat and flourish. Enter RICHMOND, DERBY bearing the crown, with other LORDS    RICHMOND. God and your arms be prais\'d, victorious friends;     The day is ours, the bloody dog is dead.   DERBY. Courageous Richmond, well hast thou acquit thee!     Lo, here, this long-usurped royalty     From the dead temples of this bloody wretch     Have I pluck\'d off, to grace thy brows withal.     Wear it, enjoy it, and make much of it.   RICHMOND. Great God of heaven, say Amen to all!     But, teLL me is young George Stanley living.   DERBY. He is, my lord, and safe in Leicester town,     Whither, if it please you, we may now withdraw us.   RICHMOND. What men of name are slain on either side?   DERBY. John Duke of Norfolk, Walter Lord Ferrers,     Sir Robert Brakenbury, and Sir William Brandon.   RICHMOND. Inter their bodies as becomes their births.       Proclaim a pardon to the soldiers fled     That in submission will return to us.     And then, as we have ta\'en the sacrament,     We will unite the white rose and the red.     Smile heaven upon this fair conjunction,     That long have frown\'d upon their emnity!     What traitor hears me, and says not Amen?     England hath long been mad, and scarr\'d herself;     The brother blindly shed the brother\'s blood,     The father rashly slaughter\'d his own son,     The son, compell\'d, been butcher to the sire;     All this divided York and Lancaster,     Divided in their dire division,     O, now let Richmond and Elizabeth,     The true succeeders of each royal house,     By God\'s fair ordinance conjoin together!     And let their heirs, God, if thy will be so,     Enrich the time to come with smooth-fac\'d peace,     With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days!     Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord,       That would reduce these bloody days again     And make poor England weep in streams of blood!     Let them not live to taste this land\'s increase     That would with treason wound this fair land\'s peace!     Now civil wounds are stopp\'d, peace lives again-     That she may long live here, God say Amen!            Exeunt  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1595   THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET  by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae    Chorus.    Escalus, Prince of Verona.   Paris, a young Count, kinsman to the Prince.   Montague, heads of two houses at variance with each other.   Capulet, heads of two houses at variance with each other.   An old Man, of the Capulet family.   Romeo, son to Montague.   Tybalt, nephew to Lady Capulet.   Mercutio, kinsman to the Prince and friend to Romeo.   Benvolio, nephew to Montague, and friend to Romeo   Tybalt, nephew to Lady Capulet.   Friar Laurence, Franciscan.   Friar John, Franciscan.   Balthasar, servant to Romeo.   Abram, servant to Montague.   Sampson, servant to Capulet.   Gregory, servant to Capulet.   Peter, servant to Juliet\'s nurse.   An Apothecary.     Three Musicians.   An Officer.    Lady Montague, wife to Montague.   Lady Capulet, wife to Capulet.   Juliet, daughter to Capulet.   Nurse to Juliet.    Citizens of Verona; Gentlemen and Gentlewomen of both houses;     Maskers, Torchbearers, Pages, Guards, Watchmen, Servants, and     Attendants.                              SCENE.--Verona; Mantua.                            THE PROLOGUE                          Enter Chorus.    Chor. Two households, both alike in dignity,     In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,     From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,     Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.     From forth the fatal loins of these two foes     A pair of star-cross\'d lovers take their life;     Whose misadventur\'d piteous overthrows     Doth with their death bury their parents\' strife.     The fearful passage of their death-mark\'d love,     And the continuance of their parents\' rage,     Which, but their children\'s end, naught could remove,     Is now the two hours\' traffic of our stage;     The which if you with patient ears attend,     What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.                                                          [Exit.]     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT I. Scene I. Verona. A public place.  Enter Sampson and Gregory (with swords and bucklers) of the house of Capulet.    Samp. Gregory, on my word, we\'ll not carry coals.   Greg. No, for then we should be colliers.   Samp. I mean, an we be in choler, we\'ll draw.   Greg. Ay, while you live, draw your neck out of collar.   Samp. I strike quickly, being moved.   Greg. But thou art not quickly moved to strike.   Samp. A dog of the house of Montague moves me.   Greg. To move is to stir, and to be valiant is to stand.     Therefore, if thou art moved, thou runn\'st away.   Samp. A dog of that house shall move me to stand. I will take the     wall of any man or maid of Montague\'s.   Greg. That shows thee a weak slave; for the weakest goes to the     wall.   Samp. \'Tis true; and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are     ever thrust to the wall. Therefore I will push Montague\'s men     from the wall and thrust his maids to the wall.   Greg. The quarrel is between our masters and us their men.     Samp. \'Tis all one. I will show myself a tyrant. When I have fought     with the men, I will be cruel with the maids- I will cut off     their heads.   Greg. The heads of the maids?   Samp. Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads.     Take it in what sense thou wilt.   Greg. They must take it in sense that feel it.   Samp. Me they shall feel while I am able to stand; and \'tis known I     am a pretty piece of flesh.   Greg. \'Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been     poor-John. Draw thy tool! Here comes two of the house of     Montagues.             Enter two other Servingmen [Abram and Balthasar].    Samp. My naked weapon is out. Quarrel! I will back thee.   Greg. How? turn thy back and run?   Samp. Fear me not.   Greg. No, marry. I fear thee!   Samp. Let us take the law of our sides; let them begin.     Greg. I will frown as I pass by, and let them take it as they list.   Samp. Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them; which is     disgrace to them, if they bear it.   Abr. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?   Samp. I do bite my thumb, sir.   Abr. Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?   Samp. [aside to Gregory] Is the law of our side if I say ay?   Greg. [aside to Sampson] No.   Samp. No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir; but I bite my     thumb, sir.   Greg. Do you quarrel, sir?   Abr. Quarrel, sir? No, sir.   Samp. But if you do, sir, am for you. I serve as good a man as you.   Abr. No better.   Samp. Well, sir.                          Enter Benvolio.    Greg. [aside to Sampson] Say \'better.\' Here comes one of my     master\'s kinsmen.     Samp. Yes, better, sir.   Abr. You lie.   Samp. Draw, if you be men. Gregory, remember thy swashing blow.                                                      They fight.   Ben. Part, fools! [Beats down their swords.]     Put up your swords. You know not what you do.                            Enter Tybalt.    Tyb. What, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?     Turn thee Benvolio! look upon thy death.   Ben. I do but keep the peace. Put up thy sword,     Or manage it to part these men with me.   Tyb. What, drawn, and talk of peace? I hate the word     As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee.     Have at thee, coward!                            They fight.       Enter an officer, and three or four Citizens with clubs or                           partisans.      Officer. Clubs, bills, and partisans! Strike! beat them down!   Citizens. Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montagues!             Enter Old Capulet in his gown, and his Wife.    Cap. What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!   Wife. A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword?   Cap. My sword, I say! Old Montague is come     And flourishes his blade in spite of me.                   Enter Old Montague and his Wife.    Mon. Thou villain Capulet!- Hold me not, let me go.   M. Wife. Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.                  Enter Prince Escalus, with his Train.    Prince. Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace,     Profaners of this neighbour-stained steel-     Will they not hear? What, ho! you men, you beasts,       That quench the fire of your pernicious rage     With purple fountains issuing from your veins!     On pain of torture, from those bloody hands     Throw your mistempered weapons to the ground     And hear the sentence of your moved prince.     Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word     By thee, old Capulet, and Montague,     Have thrice disturb\'d the quiet of our streets     And made Verona\'s ancient citizens     Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments     To wield old partisans, in hands as old,     Cank\'red with peace, to part your cank\'red hate.     If ever you disturb our streets again,     Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.     For this time all the rest depart away.     You, Capulet, shall go along with me;     And, Montague, come you this afternoon,     To know our farther pleasure in this case,     To old Freetown, our common judgment place.     Once more, on pain of death, all men depart.                 Exeunt [all but Montague, his Wife, and Benvolio].   Mon. Who set this ancient quarrel new abroach?     Speak, nephew, were you by when it began?   Ben. Here were the servants of your adversary     And yours, close fighting ere I did approach.     I drew to part them. In the instant came     The fiery Tybalt, with his sword prepar\'d;     Which, as he breath\'d defiance to my ears,     He swung about his head and cut the winds,     Who, nothing hurt withal, hiss\'d him in scorn.     While we were interchanging thrusts and blows,     Came more and more, and fought on part and part,     Till the Prince came, who parted either part.   M. Wife. O, where is Romeo? Saw you him to-day?     Right glad I am he was not at this fray.   Ben. Madam, an hour before the worshipp\'d sun     Peer\'d forth the golden window of the East,     A troubled mind drave me to walk abroad;     Where, underneath the grove of sycamore     That westward rooteth from the city\'s side,       So early walking did I see your son.     Towards him I made; but he was ware of me     And stole into the covert of the wood.     I- measuring his affections by my own,     Which then most sought where most might not be found,     Being one too many by my weary self-     Pursu\'d my humour, not Pursuing his,     And gladly shunn\'d who gladly fled from me.   Mon. Many a morning hath he there been seen,     With tears augmenting the fresh morning\'s dew,     Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs;     But all so soon as the all-cheering sun     Should in the farthest East bean to draw     The shady curtains from Aurora\'s bed,     Away from light steals home my heavy son     And private in his chamber pens himself,     Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight     And makes himself an artificial night.     Black and portentous must this humour prove     Unless good counsel may the cause remove.     Ben. My noble uncle, do you know the cause?   Mon. I neither know it nor can learn of him   Ben. Have you importun\'d him by any means?   Mon. Both by myself and many other friend;     But he, his own affections\' counsellor,     Is to himself- I will not say how true-     But to himself so secret and so close,     So far from sounding and discovery,     As is the bud bit with an envious worm     Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air     Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.     Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow,     We would as willingly give cure as know.                         Enter Romeo.    Ben. See, where he comes. So please you step aside,     I\'ll know his grievance, or be much denied.   Mon. I would thou wert so happy by thy stay     To hear true shrift. Come, madam, let\'s away,                                        Exeunt [Montague and Wife].   Ben. Good morrow, cousin.   Rom. Is the day so young?   Ben. But new struck nine.   Rom. Ay me! sad hours seem long.     Was that my father that went hence so fast?   Ben. It was. What sadness lengthens Romeo\'s hours?   Rom. Not having that which having makes them short.   Ben. In love?   Rom. Out-   Ben. Of love?   Rom. Out of her favour where I am in love.   Ben. Alas that love, so gentle in his view,     Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!   Rom. Alas that love, whose view is muffled still,     Should without eyes see pathways to his will!     Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here?     Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.     Here\'s much to do with hate, but more with love.     Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!       O anything, of nothing first create!     O heavy lightness! serious vanity!     Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!     Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!     Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is     This love feel I, that feel no love in this.     Dost thou not laugh?   Ben. No, coz, I rather weep.   Rom. Good heart, at what?   Ben. At thy good heart\'s oppression.   Rom. Why, such is love\'s transgression.     Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast,     Which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest     With more of thine. This love that thou hast shown     Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.     Love is a smoke rais\'d with the fume of sighs;     Being purg\'d, a fire sparkling in lovers\' eyes;     Being vex\'d, a sea nourish\'d with lovers\' tears.     What is it else? A madness most discreet,     A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.       Farewell, my coz.   Ben. Soft! I will go along.     An if you leave me so, you do me wrong.   Rom. Tut! I have lost myself; I am not here:     This is not Romeo, he\'s some other where.   Ben. Tell me in sadness, who is that you love?   Rom. What, shall I groan and tell thee?   Ben. Groan? Why, no;     But sadly tell me who.   Rom. Bid a sick man in sadness make his will.     Ah, word ill urg\'d to one that is so ill!     In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman.   Ben. I aim\'d so near when I suppos\'d you lov\'d.   Rom. A right good markman! And she\'s fair I love.   Ben. A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.   Rom. Well, in that hit you miss. She\'ll not be hit     With Cupid\'s arrow. She hath Dian\'s wit,     And, in strong proof of chastity well arm\'d,     From Love\'s weak childish bow she lives unharm\'d.     She will not stay the siege of loving terms,       Nor bide th\' encounter of assailing eyes,     Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold.     O, she\'s rich in beauty; only poor     That, when she dies, with beauty dies her store.   Ben. Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste?   Rom. She hath, and in that sparing makes huge waste;     For beauty, starv\'d with her severity,     Cuts beauty off from all posterity.     She is too fair, too wise, wisely too fair,     To merit bliss by making me despair.     She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow     Do I live dead that live to tell it now.   Ben. Be rul\'d by me: forget to think of her.   Rom. O, teach me how I should forget to think!   Ben. By giving liberty unto thine eyes.     Examine other beauties.   Rom. \'Tis the way     To call hers (exquisite) in question more.     These happy masks that kiss fair ladies\' brows,     Being black puts us in mind they hide the fair.       He that is strucken blind cannot forget     The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.     Show me a mistress that is passing fair,     What doth her beauty serve but as a note     Where I may read who pass\'d that passing fair?     Farewell. Thou canst not teach me to forget.   Ben. I\'ll pay that doctrine, or else die in debt.      Exeunt.     Scene II. A Street.  Enter Capulet, County Paris, and [Servant] -the Clown.    Cap. But Montague is bound as well as I,     In penalty alike; and \'tis not hard, I think,     For men so old as we to keep the peace.   Par. Of honourable reckoning are you both,     And pity \'tis you liv\'d at odds so long.     But now, my lord, what say you to my suit?   Cap. But saying o\'er what I have said before:     My child is yet a stranger in the world,     She hath not seen the change of fourteen years;     Let two more summers wither in their pride     Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.   Par. Younger than she are happy mothers made.   Cap. And too soon marr\'d are those so early made.     The earth hath swallowed all my hopes but she;     She is the hopeful lady of my earth.     But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart;     My will to her consent is but a part.       An she agree, within her scope of choice     Lies my consent and fair according voice.     This night I hold an old accustom\'d feast,     Whereto I have invited many a guest,     Such as I love; and you among the store,     One more, most welcome, makes my number more.     At my poor house look to behold this night     Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light.     Such comfort as do lusty young men feel     When well apparell\'d April on the heel     Of limping Winter treads, even such delight     Among fresh female buds shall you this night     Inherit at my house. Hear all, all see,     And like her most whose merit most shall be;     Which, on more view of many, mine, being one,     May stand in number, though in reck\'ning none.     Come, go with me. [To Servant, giving him a paper] Go, sirrah,       trudge about     Through fair Verona; find those persons out     Whose names are written there, and to them say,       My house and welcome on their pleasure stay-                                      Exeunt [Capulet and Paris].   Serv. Find them out whose names are written here? It is written     that the shoemaker should meddle with his yard and the tailor     with his last, the fisher with his pencil and the painter with     his nets; but I am sent to find those persons whose names are     here writ, and can never find what names the writing person hath     here writ. I must to the learned. In good time!                     Enter Benvolio and Romeo.    Ben. Tut, man, one fire burns out another\'s burning;     One pain is lessoned by another\'s anguish;     Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning;     One desperate grief cures with another\'s languish.     Take thou some new infection to thy eye,     And the rank poison of the old will die.   Rom. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that.   Ben. For what, I pray thee?   Rom. For your broken shin.     Ben. Why, Romeo, art thou mad?   Rom. Not mad, but bound more than a madman is;     Shut up in Prison, kept without my food,     Whipp\'d and tormented and- God-den, good fellow.   Serv. God gi\' go-den. I pray, sir, can you read?   Rom. Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.   Serv. Perhaps you have learned it without book. But I pray, can you     read anything you see?   Rom. Ay, If I know the letters and the language.   Serv. Ye say honestly. Rest you merry!   Rom. Stay, fellow; I can read.                       He reads.        \'Signior Martino and his wife and daughters;       County Anselmo and his beauteous sisters;       The lady widow of Vitruvio;       Signior Placentio and His lovely nieces;       Mercutio and his brother Valentine;       Mine uncle Capulet, his wife, and daughters;       My fair niece Rosaline and Livia;       Signior Valentio and His cousin Tybalt;         Lucio and the lively Helena.\'      [Gives back the paper.] A fair assembly. Whither should they come?   Serv. Up.   Rom. Whither?   Serv. To supper, to our house.   Rom. Whose house?   Serv. My master\'s.   Rom. Indeed I should have ask\'d you that before.   Serv. Now I\'ll tell you without asking. My master is the great rich     Capulet; and if you be not of the house of Montagues, I pray come     and crush a cup of wine. Rest you merry!               Exit.   Ben. At this same ancient feast of Capulet\'s     Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so lov\'st;     With all the admired beauties of Verona.     Go thither, and with unattainted eye     Compare her face with some that I shall show,     And I will make thee think thy swan a crow.   Rom. When the devout religion of mine eye     Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires;       And these, who, often drown\'d, could never die,     Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!     One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun     Ne\'er saw her match since first the world begun.   Ben. Tut! you saw her fair, none else being by,     Herself pois\'d with herself in either eye;     But in that crystal scales let there be weigh\'d     Your lady\'s love against some other maid     That I will show you shining at this feast,     And she shall scant show well that now seems best.   Rom. I\'ll go along, no such sight to be shown,     But to rejoice in splendour of my own.              [Exeunt.]     Scene III. Capulet\'s house.  Enter Capulet\'s Wife, and Nurse.    Wife. Nurse, where\'s my daughter? Call her forth to me.   Nurse. Now, by my maidenhead at twelve year old,     I bade her come. What, lamb! what ladybird!     God forbid! Where\'s this girl? What, Juliet!                           Enter Juliet.    Jul. How now? Who calls?   Nurse. Your mother.   Jul. Madam, I am here.     What is your will?   Wife. This is the matter- Nurse, give leave awhile,     We must talk in secret. Nurse, come back again;     I have rememb\'red me, thou\'s hear our counsel.     Thou knowest my daughter\'s of a pretty age.   Nurse. Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.   Wife. She\'s not fourteen.     Nurse. I\'ll lay fourteen of my teeth-     And yet, to my teen be it spoken, I have but four-     She is not fourteen. How long is it now     To Lammastide?   Wife. A fortnight and odd days.   Nurse. Even or odd, of all days in the year,     Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.     Susan and she (God rest all Christian souls!)     Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God;     She was too good for me. But, as I said,     On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen;     That shall she, marry; I remember it well.     \'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;     And she was wean\'d (I never shall forget it),     Of all the days of the year, upon that day;     For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,     Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall.     My lord and you were then at Mantua.     Nay, I do bear a brain. But, as I said,     When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple       Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,     To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!     Shake, quoth the dovehouse! \'Twas no need, I trow,     To bid me trudge.     And since that time it is eleven years,     For then she could stand high-lone; nay, by th\' rood,     She could have run and waddled all about;     For even the day before, she broke her brow;     And then my husband (God be with his soul!     \'A was a merry man) took up the child.     \'Yea,\' quoth he, \'dost thou fall upon thy face?     Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;     Wilt thou not, Jule?\' and, by my holidam,     The pretty wretch left crying, and said \'Ay.\'     To see now how a jest shall come about!     I warrant, an I should live a thousand yeas,     I never should forget it. \'Wilt thou not, Jule?\' quoth he,     And, pretty fool, it stinted, and said \'Ay.\'   Wife. Enough of this. I pray thee hold thy peace.   Nurse. Yes, madam. Yet I cannot choose but laugh       To think it should leave crying and say \'Ay.\'     And yet, I warrant, it bad upon it brow     A bump as big as a young cock\'rel\'s stone;     A perilous knock; and it cried bitterly.     \'Yea,\' quoth my husband, \'fall\'st upon thy face?     Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age;     Wilt thou not, Jule?\' It stinted, and said \'Ay.\'   Jul. And stint thou too, I pray thee, nurse, say I.   Nurse. Peace, I have done. God mark thee to his grace!     Thou wast the prettiest babe that e\'er I nurs\'d.     An I might live to see thee married once, I have my wish.   Wife. Marry, that \'marry\' is the very theme     I came to talk of. Tell me, daughter Juliet,     How stands your disposition to be married?   Jul. It is an honour that I dream not of.   Nurse. An honour? Were not I thine only nurse,     I would say thou hadst suck\'d wisdom from thy teat.   Wife. Well, think of marriage now. Younger than you,     Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,     Are made already mothers. By my count,       I was your mother much upon these years     That you are now a maid. Thus then in brief:     The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.   Nurse. A man, young lady! lady, such a man     As all the world- why he\'s a man of wax.   Wife. Verona\'s summer hath not such a flower.   Nurse. Nay, he\'s a flower, in faith- a very flower.   Wife. What say you? Can you love the gentleman?     This night you shall behold him at our feast.     Read o\'er the volume of young Paris\' face,     And find delight writ there with beauty\'s pen;     Examine every married lineament,     And see how one another lends content;     And what obscur\'d in this fair volume lies     Find written in the margent of his eyes,     This precious book of love, this unbound lover,     To beautify him only lacks a cover.     The fish lives in the sea, and \'tis much pride     For fair without the fair within to hide.     That book in many\'s eyes doth share the glory,       That in gold clasps locks in the golden story;     So shall you share all that he doth possess,     By having him making yourself no less.   Nurse. No less? Nay, bigger! Women grow by men   Wife. Speak briefly, can you like of Paris\' love?   Jul. I\'ll look to like, if looking liking move;     But no more deep will I endart mine eye     Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.                          Enter Servingman.    Serv. Madam, the guests are come, supper serv\'d up, you call\'d, my     young lady ask\'d for, the nurse curs\'d in the pantry, and     everything in extremity. I must hence to wait. I beseech you     follow straight.   Wife. We follow thee.                       Exit [Servingman].     Juliet, the County stays.   Nurse. Go, girl, seek happy nights to happy days.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene IV. A street.  Enter Romeo, Mercutio, Benvolio, with five or six other Maskers; Torchbearers.    Rom. What, shall this speech be spoke for our excuse?     Or shall we on without apology?   Ben. The date is out of such prolixity.     We\'ll have no Cupid hoodwink\'d with a scarf,     Bearing a Tartar\'s painted bow of lath,     Scaring the ladies like a crowkeeper;     Nor no without-book prologue, faintly spoke     After the prompter, for our entrance;     But, let them measure us by what they will,     We\'ll measure them a measure, and be gone.   Rom. Give me a torch. I am not for this ambling.     Being but heavy, I will bear the light.   Mer. Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.   Rom. Not I, believe me. You have dancing shoes     With nimble soles; I have a soul of lead     So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.     Mer. You are a lover. Borrow Cupid\'s wings     And soar with them above a common bound.   Rom. I am too sore enpierced with his shaft     To soar with his light feathers; and so bound     I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe.     Under love\'s heavy burthen do I sink.   Mer. And, to sink in it, should you burthen love-     Too great oppression for a tender thing.   Rom. Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,     Too rude, too boist\'rous, and it pricks like thorn.   Mer. If love be rough with you, be rough with love.     Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.     Give me a case to put my visage in.     A visor for a visor! What care I     What curious eye doth quote deformities?     Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.   Ben. Come, knock and enter; and no sooner in     But every man betake him to his legs.   Rom. A torch for me! Let wantons light of heart     Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels;       For I am proverb\'d with a grandsire phrase,     I\'ll be a candle-holder and look on;     The game was ne\'er so fair, and I am done.   Mer. Tut! dun\'s the mouse, the constable\'s own word!     If thou art Dun, we\'ll draw thee from the mire     Of this sir-reverence love, wherein thou stick\'st     Up to the ears. Come, we burn daylight, ho!   Rom. Nay, that\'s not so.   Mer. I mean, sir, in delay     We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.     Take our good meaning, for our judgment sits     Five times in that ere once in our five wits.   Rom. And we mean well, in going to this masque;     But \'tis no wit to go.   Mer. Why, may one ask?   Rom. I dreamt a dream to-night.   Mer. And so did I.   Rom. Well, what was yours?   Mer. That dreamers often lie.   Rom. In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.     Mer. O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.     She is the fairies\' midwife, and she comes     In shape no bigger than an agate stone     On the forefinger of an alderman,     Drawn with a team of little atomies     Athwart men\'s noses as they lie asleep;     Her wagon spokes made of long spinners\' legs,     The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;     Her traces, of the smallest spider\'s web;     Her collars, of the moonshine\'s wat\'ry beams;     Her whip, of cricket\'s bone; the lash, of film;     Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat,     Not half so big as a round little worm     Prick\'d from the lazy finger of a maid;     Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,     Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,     Time out o\' mind the fairies\' coachmakers.     And in this state she \'gallops night by night     Through lovers\' brains, and then they dream of love;     O\'er courtiers\' knees, that dream on cursies straight;       O\'er lawyers\' fingers, who straight dream on fees;     O\'er ladies\' lips, who straight on kisses dream,     Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,     Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.     Sometime she gallops o\'er a courtier\'s nose,     And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;     And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig\'s tail     Tickling a parson\'s nose as \'a lies asleep,     Then dreams he of another benefice.     Sometimes she driveth o\'er a soldier\'s neck,     And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,     Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,     Of healths five fadom deep; and then anon     Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,     And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two     And sleeps again. This is that very Mab     That plats the manes of horses in the night     And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish, hairs,     Which once untangled much misfortune bodes     This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,       That presses them and learns them first to bear,     Making them women of good carriage.     This is she-   Rom. Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace!     Thou talk\'st of nothing.   Mer. True, I talk of dreams;     Which are the children of an idle brain,     Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;     Which is as thin of substance as the air,     And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes     Even now the frozen bosom of the North     And, being anger\'d, puffs away from thence,     Turning his face to the dew-dropping South.   Ben. This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves.     Supper is done, and we shall come too late.   Rom. I fear, too early; for my mind misgives     Some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,     Shall bitterly begin his fearful date     With this night\'s revels and expire the term     Of a despised life, clos\'d in my breast,       By some vile forfeit of untimely death.     But he that hath the steerage of my course     Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen!   Ben. Strike, drum.                            They march about the stage. [Exeunt.]     Scene V. Capulet\'s house.  Servingmen come forth with napkins.    1. Serv. Where\'s Potpan, that he helps not to take away?     He shift a trencher! he scrape a trencher!   2. Serv. When good manners shall lie all in one or two men\'s hands,     and they unwash\'d too, \'tis a foul thing.   1. Serv. Away with the join-stools, remove the court-cubbert, look     to the plate. Good thou, save me a piece of marchpane and, as     thou loves me, let the porter let in Susan Grindstone and Nell.     Anthony, and Potpan!   2. Serv. Ay, boy, ready.   1. Serv. You are look\'d for and call\'d for, ask\'d for and sought     for, in the great chamber.   3. Serv. We cannot be here and there too. Cheerly, boys!     Be brisk awhile, and the longer liver take all.      Exeunt.      Enter the Maskers, Enter, [with Servants,] Capulet, his Wife,               Juliet, Tybalt, and all the Guests                and Gentlewomen to the Maskers.      Cap. Welcome, gentlemen! Ladies that have their toes     Unplagu\'d with corns will have a bout with you.     Ah ha, my mistresses! which of you all     Will now deny to dance? She that makes dainty,     She I\'ll swear hath corns. Am I come near ye now?     Welcome, gentlemen! I have seen the day     That I have worn a visor and could tell     A whispering tale in a fair lady\'s ear,     Such as would please. \'Tis gone, \'tis gone, \'tis gone!     You are welcome, gentlemen! Come, musicians, play.     A hall, a hall! give room! and foot it, girls.                                     Music plays, and they dance.     More light, you knaves! and turn the tables up,     And quench the fire, the room is grown too hot.     Ah, sirrah, this unlook\'d-for sport comes well.     Nay, sit, nay, sit, good cousin Capulet,     For you and I are past our dancing days.     How long is\'t now since last yourself and I     Were in a mask?     2. Cap. By\'r Lady, thirty years.   Cap. What, man? \'Tis not so much, \'tis not so much!     \'Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio,     Come Pentecost as quickly as it will,     Some five-and-twenty years, and then we mask\'d.   2. Cap. \'Tis more, \'tis more! His son is elder, sir;     His son is thirty.   Cap. Will you tell me that?     His son was but a ward two years ago.   Rom. [to a Servingman] What lady\'s that, which doth enrich the hand     Of yonder knight?   Serv. I know not, sir.   Rom. O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!     It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night     Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop\'s ear-     Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!     So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows     As yonder lady o\'er her fellows shows.     The measure done, I\'ll watch her place of stand     And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.       Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!     For I ne\'er saw true beauty till this night.   Tyb. This, by his voice, should be a Montague.     Fetch me my rapier, boy. What, dares the slave     Come hither, cover\'d with an antic face,     To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?     Now, by the stock and honour of my kin,     To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.   Cap. Why, how now, kinsman? Wherefore storm you so?   Tyb. Uncle, this is a Montague, our foe;     A villain, that is hither come in spite     To scorn at our solemnity this night.   Cap. Young Romeo is it?   Tyb. \'Tis he, that villain Romeo.   Cap. Content thee, gentle coz, let him alone.     \'A bears him like a portly gentleman,     And, to say truth, Verona brags of him     To be a virtuous and well-govern\'d youth.     I would not for the wealth of all this town     Here in my house do him disparagement.       Therefore be patient, take no note of him.     It is my will; the which if thou respect,     Show a fair presence and put off these frowns,     An ill-beseeming semblance for a feast.   Tyb. It fits when such a villain is a guest.     I\'ll not endure him.   Cap. He shall be endur\'d.     What, goodman boy? I say he shall. Go to!     Am I the master here, or you? Go to!     You\'ll not endure him? God shall mend my soul!     You\'ll make a mutiny among my guests!     You will set cock-a-hoop! you\'ll be the man!   Tyb. Why, uncle, \'tis a shame.   Cap. Go to, go to!     You are a saucy boy. Is\'t so, indeed?     This trick may chance to scathe you. I know what.     You must contrary me! Marry, \'tis time.-     Well said, my hearts!- You are a princox- go!     Be quiet, or- More light, more light!- For shame!     I\'ll make you quiet; what!- Cheerly, my hearts!     Tyb. Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting     Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting.     I will withdraw; but this intrusion shall,     Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt\'rest gall.          Exit.   Rom. If I profane with my unworthiest hand     This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:     My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand     To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.   Jul. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,     Which mannerly devotion shows in this;     For saints have hands that pilgrims\' hands do touch,     And palm to palm is holy palmers\' kiss.   Rom. Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?   Jul. Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in pray\'r.   Rom. O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do!     They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.   Jul. Saints do not move, though grant for prayers\' sake.   Rom. Then move not while my prayer\'s effect I take.     Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purg\'d.  [Kisses her.]   Jul. Then have my lips the sin that they have took.     Rom. Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urg\'d!     Give me my sin again.                          [Kisses her.]   Jul. You kiss by th\' book.   Nurse. Madam, your mother craves a word with you.   Rom. What is her mother?   Nurse. Marry, bachelor,     Her mother is the lady of the house.     And a good lady, and a wise and virtuous.     I nurs\'d her daughter that you talk\'d withal.     I tell you, he that can lay hold of her     Shall have the chinks.   Rom. Is she a Capulet?     O dear account! my life is my foe\'s debt.   Ben. Away, be gone; the sport is at the best.   Rom. Ay, so I fear; the more is my unrest.   Cap. Nay, gentlemen, prepare not to be gone;     We have a trifling foolish banquet towards.     Is it e\'en so? Why then, I thank you all.     I thank you, honest gentlemen. Good night.     More torches here! [Exeunt Maskers.] Come on then, let\'s to bed.       Ah, sirrah, by my fay, it waxes late;     I\'ll to my rest.                               Exeunt [all but Juliet and Nurse].   Jul. Come hither, nurse. What is yond gentleman?   Nurse. The son and heir of old Tiberio.   Jul. What\'s he that now is going out of door?   Nurse. Marry, that, I think, be young Petruchio.   Jul. What\'s he that follows there, that would not dance?   Nurse. I know not.   Jul. Go ask his name.- If he be married,     My grave is like to be my wedding bed.   Nurse. His name is Romeo, and a Montague,     The only son of your great enemy.   Jul. My only love, sprung from my only hate!     Too early seen unknown, and known too late!     Prodigious birth of love it is to me     That I must love a loathed enemy.   Nurse. What\'s this? what\'s this?   Jul. A rhyme I learnt even now     Of one I danc\'d withal.                                        One calls within, \'Juliet.\'   Nurse. Anon, anon!     Come, let\'s away; the strangers all are gone.        Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    PROLOGUE  Enter Chorus.    Chor. Now old desire doth in his deathbed lie,     And young affection gapes to be his heir;     That fair for which love groan\'d for and would die,     With tender Juliet match\'d, is now not fair.     Now Romeo is belov\'d, and loves again,     Alike bewitched by the charm of looks;     But to his foe suppos\'d he must complain,     And she steal love\'s sweet bait from fearful hooks.     Being held a foe, he may not have access     To breathe such vows as lovers use to swear,     And she as much in love, her means much less     To meet her new beloved anywhere;     But passion lends them power, time means, to meet,     Temp\'ring extremities with extreme sweet. Exit.     ACT II. Scene I. A lane by the wall of Capulet\'s orchard.  Enter Romeo alone.    Rom. Can I go forward when my heart is here?     Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out.                      [Climbs the wall and leaps down within it.]                     Enter Benvolio with Mercutio.    Ben. Romeo! my cousin Romeo! Romeo!   Mer. He is wise,     And, on my life, hath stol\'n him home to bed.   Ben. He ran this way, and leapt this orchard wall.     Call, good Mercutio.   Mer. Nay, I\'ll conjure too.     Romeo! humours! madman! passion! lover!     Appear thou in the likeness of a sigh;     Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied!     Cry but \'Ay me!\' pronounce but \'love\' and \'dove\';     Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word,       One nickname for her purblind son and heir,     Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim     When King Cophetua lov\'d the beggar maid!     He heareth not, he stirreth not, be moveth not;     The ape is dead, and I must conjure him.     I conjure thee by Rosaline\'s bright eyes.     By her high forehead and her scarlet lip,     By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh,     And the demesnes that there adjacent lie,     That in thy likeness thou appear to us!   Ben. An if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him.   Mer. This cannot anger him. \'Twould anger him     To raise a spirit in his mistress\' circle     Of some strange nature, letting it there stand     Till she had laid it and conjur\'d it down.     That were some spite; my invocation     Is fair and honest: in his mistress\' name,     I conjure only but to raise up him.   Ben. Come, he hath hid himself among these trees     To be consorted with the humorous night.       Blind is his love and best befits the dark.   Mer. If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.     Now will he sit under a medlar tree     And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit     As maids call medlars when they laugh alone.     O, Romeo, that she were, O that she were     An open et cetera, thou a pop\'rin pear!     Romeo, good night. I\'ll to my truckle-bed;     This field-bed is too cold for me to sleep.     Come, shall we go?   Ben. Go then, for \'tis in vain     \'To seek him here that means not to be found.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene II. Capulet\'s orchard.  Enter Romeo.    Rom. He jests at scars that never felt a wound.                       Enter Juliet above at a window.      But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?     It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!     Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,     Who is already sick and pale with grief     That thou her maid art far more fair than she.     Be not her maid, since she is envious.     Her vestal livery is but sick and green,     And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off.     It is my lady; O, it is my love!     O that she knew she were!     She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?     Her eye discourses; I will answer it.     I am too bold; \'tis not to me she speaks.       Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,     Having some business, do entreat her eyes     To twinkle in their spheres till they return.     What if her eyes were there, they in her head?     The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars     As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven     Would through the airy region stream so bright     That birds would sing and think it were not night.     See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!     O that I were a glove upon that hand,     That I might touch that cheek!   Jul. Ay me!   Rom. She speaks.     O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art     As glorious to this night, being o\'er my head,     As is a winged messenger of heaven     Unto the white-upturned wond\'ring eyes     Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him     When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds     And sails upon the bosom of the air.     Jul. O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?     Deny thy father and refuse thy name!     Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,     And I\'ll no longer be a Capulet.   Rom. [aside] Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?   Jul. \'Tis but thy name that is my enemy.     Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.     What\'s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,     Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part     Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!     What\'s in a name? That which we call a rose     By any other name would smell as sweet.     So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call\'d,     Retain that dear perfection which he owes     Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;     And for that name, which is no part of thee,     Take all myself.   Rom. I take thee at thy word.     Call me but love, and I\'ll be new baptiz\'d;     Henceforth I never will be Romeo.     Jul. What man art thou that, thus bescreen\'d in night,     So stumblest on my counsel?   Rom. By a name     I know not how to tell thee who I am.     My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,     Because it is an enemy to thee.     Had I it written, I would tear the word.   Jul. My ears have yet not drunk a hundred words     Of that tongue\'s utterance, yet I know the sound.     Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?   Rom. Neither, fair saint, if either thee dislike.   Jul. How cam\'st thou hither, tell me, and wherefore?     The orchard walls are high and hard to climb,     And the place death, considering who thou art,     If any of my kinsmen find thee here.   Rom. With love\'s light wings did I o\'erperch these walls;     For stony limits cannot hold love out,     And what love can do, that dares love attempt.     Therefore thy kinsmen are no let to me.   Jul. If they do see thee, they will murther thee.     Rom. Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye     Than twenty of their swords! Look thou but sweet,     And I am proof against their enmity.   Jul. I would not for the world they saw thee here.   Rom. I have night\'s cloak to hide me from their sight;     And but thou love me, let them find me here.     My life were better ended by their hate     Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love.   Jul. By whose direction found\'st thou out this place?   Rom. By love, that first did prompt me to enquire.     He lent me counsel, and I lent him eyes.     I am no pilot; yet, wert thou as far     As that vast shore wash\'d with the farthest sea,     I would adventure for such merchandise.   Jul. Thou knowest the mask of night is on my face;     Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek     For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night.     Fain would I dwell on form- fain, fain deny     What I have spoke; but farewell compliment!     Dost thou love me, I know thou wilt say \'Ay\';       And I will take thy word. Yet, if thou swear\'st,     Thou mayst prove false. At lovers\' perjuries,     They say Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo,     If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.     Or if thou thinkest I am too quickly won,     I\'ll frown, and be perverse, and say thee nay,     So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world.     In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,     And therefore thou mayst think my haviour light;     But trust me, gentleman, I\'ll prove more true     Than those that have more cunning to be strange.     I should have been more strange, I must confess,     But that thou overheard\'st, ere I was ware,     My true-love passion. Therefore pardon me,     And not impute this yielding to light love,     Which the dark night hath so discovered.   Rom. Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear,     That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops-   Jul. O, swear not by the moon, th\' inconstant moon,     That monthly changes in her circled orb,       Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.   Rom. What shall I swear by?   Jul. Do not swear at all;     Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,     Which is the god of my idolatry,     And I\'ll believe thee.   Rom. If my heart\'s dear love-   Jul. Well, do not swear. Although I joy in thee,     I have no joy of this contract to-night.     It is too rash, too unadvis\'d, too sudden;     Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be     Ere one can say \'It lightens.\' Sweet, good night!     This bud of love, by summer\'s ripening breath,     May prove a beauteous flow\'r when next we meet.     Good night, good night! As sweet repose and rest     Come to thy heart as that within my breast!   Rom. O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?   Jul. What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?   Rom. Th\' exchange of thy love\'s faithful vow for mine.   Jul. I gave thee mine before thou didst request it;       And yet I would it were to give again.   Rom. Would\'st thou withdraw it? For what purpose, love?   Jul. But to be frank and give it thee again.     And yet I wish but for the thing I have.     My bounty is as boundless as the sea,     My love as deep; the more I give to thee,     The more I have, for both are infinite.     I hear some noise within. Dear love, adieu!                                            [Nurse] calls within.     Anon, good nurse! Sweet Montague, be true.     Stay but a little, I will come again.                [Exit.]   Rom. O blessed, blessed night! I am afeard,     Being in night, all this is but a dream,     Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.                         Enter Juliet above.    Jul. Three words, dear Romeo, and good night indeed.     If that thy bent of love be honourable,     Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow,       By one that I\'ll procure to come to thee,     Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite;     And all my fortunes at thy foot I\'ll lay     And follow thee my lord throughout the world.   Nurse. (within) Madam!   Jul. I come, anon.- But if thou meanest not well,     I do beseech thee-   Nurse. (within) Madam!   Jul. By-and-by I come.-     To cease thy suit and leave me to my grief.     To-morrow will I send.   Rom. So thrive my soul-   Jul. A thousand times good night!                        Exit.   Rom. A thousand times the worse, to want thy light!     Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books;     But love from love, towards school with heavy looks.                       Enter Juliet again, [above].    Jul. Hist! Romeo, hist! O for a falconer\'s voice       To lure this tassel-gentle back again!     Bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud;     Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies,     And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine     With repetition of my Romeo\'s name.     Romeo!   Rom. It is my soul that calls upon my name.     How silver-sweet sound lovers\' tongues by night,     Like softest music to attending ears!   Jul. Romeo!   Rom. My dear?   Jul. At what o\'clock to-morrow     Shall I send to thee?   Rom. By the hour of nine.   Jul. I will not fail. \'Tis twenty years till then.     I have forgot why I did call thee back.   Rom. Let me stand here till thou remember it.   Jul. I shall forget, to have thee still stand there,     Rememb\'ring how I love thy company.   Rom. And I\'ll still stay, to have thee still forget,       Forgetting any other home but this.   Jul. \'Tis almost morning. I would have thee gone-     And yet no farther than a wanton\'s bird,     That lets it hop a little from her hand,     Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves,     And with a silk thread plucks it back again,     So loving-jealous of his liberty.   Rom. I would I were thy bird.   Jul. Sweet, so would I.     Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.     Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,     That I shall say good night till it be morrow.                                                          [Exit.]   Rom. Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast!     Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!     Hence will I to my ghostly father\'s cell,     His help to crave and my dear hap to tell.  Exit     Scene III. Friar Laurence\'s cell.  Enter Friar, [Laurence] alone, with a basket.    Friar. The grey-ey\'d morn smiles on the frowning night,     Check\'ring the Eastern clouds with streaks of light;     And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels     From forth day\'s path and Titan\'s fiery wheels.     Non, ere the sun advance his burning eye     The day to cheer and night\'s dank dew to dry,     I must up-fill this osier cage of ours     With baleful weeds and precious-juiced flowers.     The earth that\'s nature\'s mother is her tomb.     What is her burying gave, that is her womb;     And from her womb children of divers kind     We sucking on her natural bosom find;     Many for many virtues excellent,     None but for some, and yet all different.     O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies     In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities;     For naught so vile that on the earth doth live       But to the earth some special good doth give;     Nor aught so good but, strain\'d from that fair use,     Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse.     Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,     And vice sometime\'s by action dignified.     Within the infant rind of this small flower     Poison hath residence, and medicine power;     For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;     Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart.     Two such opposed kings encamp them still     In man as well as herbs- grace and rude will;     And where the worser is predominant,     Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.                          Enter Romeo.    Rom. Good morrow, father.   Friar. Benedicite!     What early tongue so sweet saluteth me?     Young son, it argues a distempered head       So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed.     Care keeps his watch in every old man\'s eye,     And where care lodges sleep will never lie;     But where unbruised youth with unstuff\'d brain     Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.     Therefore thy earliness doth me assure     Thou art uprous\'d with some distemp\'rature;     Or if not so, then here I hit it right-     Our Romeo hath not been in bed to-night.   Rom. That last is true-the sweeter rest was mine.   Friar. God pardon sin! Wast thou with Rosaline?   Rom. With Rosaline, my ghostly father? No.     I have forgot that name, and that name\'s woe.   Friar. That\'s my good son! But where hast thou been then?   Rom. I\'ll tell thee ere thou ask it me again.     I have been feasting with mine enemy,     Where on a sudden one hath wounded me     That\'s by me wounded. Both our remedies     Within thy help and holy physic lies.     I bear no hatred, blessed man, for, lo,       My intercession likewise steads my foe.   Friar. Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift     Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.   Rom. Then plainly know my heart\'s dear love is set     On the fair daughter of rich Capulet;     As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine,     And all combin\'d, save what thou must combine     By holy marriage. When, and where, and how     We met, we woo\'d, and made exchange of vow,     I\'ll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray,     That thou consent to marry us to-day.   Friar. Holy Saint Francis! What a change is here!     Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear,     So soon forsaken? Young men\'s love then lies     Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.     Jesu Maria! What a deal of brine     Hath wash\'d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!     How much salt water thrown away in waste,     To season love, that of it doth not taste!     The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears,       Thy old groans ring yet in mine ancient ears.     Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit     Of an old tear that is not wash\'d off yet.     If e\'er thou wast thyself, and these woes thine,     Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline.     And art thou chang\'d? Pronounce this sentence then:     Women may fall when there\'s no strength in men.   Rom. Thou chid\'st me oft for loving Rosaline.   Friar. For doting, not for loving, pupil mine.   Rom. And bad\'st me bury love.   Friar. Not in a grave     To lay one in, another out to have.   Rom. I pray thee chide not. She whom I love now     Doth grace for grace and love for love allow.     The other did not so.   Friar. O, she knew well     Thy love did read by rote, that could not spell.     But come, young waverer, come go with me.     In one respect I\'ll thy assistant be;     For this alliance may so happy prove       To turn your households\' rancour to pure love.   Rom. O, let us hence! I stand on sudden haste.   Friar. Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene IV. A street.  Enter Benvolio and Mercutio.    Mer. Where the devil should this Romeo be?     Came he not home to-night?   Ben. Not to his father\'s. I spoke with his man.   Mer. Why, that same pale hard-hearted wench, that Rosaline,     Torments him so that he will sure run mad.   Ben. Tybalt, the kinsman to old Capulet,     Hath sent a letter to his father\'s house.   Mer. A challenge, on my life.   Ben. Romeo will answer it.   Mer. Any man that can write may answer a letter.   Ben. Nay, he will answer the letter\'s master, how he dares, being     dared.   Mer. Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead! stabb\'d with a white     wench\'s black eye; shot through the ear with a love song; the     very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy\'s butt-shaft;     and is he a man to encounter Tybalt?   Ben. Why, what is Tybalt?     Mer. More than Prince of Cats, I can tell you. O, he\'s the     courageous captain of compliments. He fights as you sing     pricksong-keeps time, distance, and proportion; rests me his     minim rest, one, two, and the third in your bosom! the very     butcher of a silk button, a duellist, a duellist! a gentleman of     the very first house, of the first and second cause. Ah, the     immortal passado! the punto reverse! the hay.   Ben. The what?   Mer. The pox of such antic, lisping, affecting fantasticoes- these     new tuners of accent! \'By Jesu, a very good blade! a very tall     man! a very good whore!\' Why, is not this a lamentable thing,     grandsir, that we should be thus afflicted with these strange     flies, these fashion-mongers, these pardona-mi\'s, who stand so     much on the new form that they cannot sit at ease on the old     bench? O, their bones, their bones!                                 Enter Romeo.    Ben. Here comes Romeo! here comes Romeo!   Mer. Without his roe, like a dried herring. O flesh, flesh, how art       thou fishified! Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch flowed     in. Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen wench (marry, she had a     better love to berhyme her), Dido a dowdy, Cleopatra a gypsy,     Helen and Hero hildings and harlots, This be a gray eye or so,     but not to the purpose. Signior Romeo, bon jour! There\'s a French     salutation to your French slop. You gave us the counterfeit     fairly last night.   Rom. Good morrow to you both. What counterfeit did I give you?   Mer. The slip, sir, the slip. Can you not conceive?   Rom. Pardon, good Mercutio. My business was great, and in such a     case as mine a man may strain courtesy.   Mer. That\'s as much as to say, such a case as yours constrains a     man to bow in the hams.   Rom. Meaning, to cursy.   Mer. Thou hast most kindly hit it.   Rom. A most courteous exposition.   Mer. Nay, I am the very pink of courtesy.   Rom. Pink for flower.   Mer. Right.   Rom. Why, then is my pump well-flower\'d.     Mer. Well said! Follow me this jest now till thou hast worn out thy     pump, that, when the single sole of it is worn, the jest may     remain, after the wearing, solely singular.   Rom. O single-sold jest, solely singular for the singleness!   Mer. Come between us, good Benvolio! My wits faint.   Rom. Swits and spurs, swits and spurs! or I\'ll cry a match.   Mer. Nay, if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done; for thou     hast more of the wild goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I     have in my whole five. Was I with you there for the goose?   Rom. Thou wast never with me for anything when thou wast not there     for the goose.   Mer. I will bite thee by the ear for that jest.   Rom. Nay, good goose, bite not!   Mer. Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce.   Rom. And is it not, then, well serv\'d in to a sweet goose?   Mer. O, here\'s a wit of cheveril, that stretches from an inch     narrow to an ell broad!   Rom. I stretch it out for that word \'broad,\' which, added to the     goose, proves thee far and wide a broad goose.   Mer. Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art       thou sociable, now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by     art as well as by nature. For this drivelling love is like a     great natural that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in     a hole.   Ben. Stop there, stop there!   Mer. Thou desirest me to stop in my tale against the hair.   Ben. Thou wouldst else have made thy tale large.   Mer. O, thou art deceiv\'d! I would have made it short; for I was     come to the whole depth of my tale, and meant indeed to occupy     the argument no longer.   Rom. Here\'s goodly gear!                        Enter Nurse and her Man [Peter].    Mer. A sail, a sail!   Ben. Two, two! a shirt and a smock.   Nurse. Peter!   Peter. Anon.   Nurse. My fan, Peter.   Mer. Good Peter, to hide her face; for her fan\'s the fairer face of       the two.   Nurse. God ye good morrow, gentlemen.   Mer. God ye good-den, fair gentlewoman.   Nurse. Is it good-den?   Mer. \'Tis no less, I tell ye; for the bawdy hand of the dial is now     upon the prick of noon.   Nurse. Out upon you! What a man are you!   Rom. One, gentlewoman, that God hath made for himself to mar.   Nurse. By my troth, it is well said. \'For himself to mar,\' quoth     \'a? Gentlemen, can any of you tell me where I may find the young     Romeo?   Rom. I can tell you; but young Romeo will be older when you have     found him than he was when you sought him. I am the youngest of     that name, for fault of a worse.   Nurse. You say well.   Mer. Yea, is the worst well? Very well took, i\' faith! wisely,     wisely.   Nurse. If you be he, sir, I desire some confidence with you.   Ben. She will endite him to some supper.   Mer. A bawd, a bawd, a bawd! So ho!     Rom. What hast thou found?   Mer. No hare, sir; unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie, that is     something stale and hoar ere it be spent                                      He walks by them and sings.                     An old hare hoar,                    And an old hare hoar,                 Is very good meat in Lent;                    But a hare that is hoar                    Is too much for a score                 When it hoars ere it be spent.      Romeo, will you come to your father\'s? We\'ll to dinner thither.   Rom. I will follow you.   Mer. Farewell, ancient lady. Farewell,     [sings] lady, lady, lady.                                       Exeunt Mercutio, Benvolio.   Nurse. Marry, farewell! I Pray you, Sir, what saucy merchant was     this that was so full of his ropery?   Rom. A gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear himself talk and will       speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.   Nurse. An \'a speak anything against me, I\'ll take him down, an \'a     were lustier than he is, and twenty such jacks; and if I cannot,     I\'ll find those that shall. Scurvy knave! I am none of his     flirt-gills; I am none of his skains-mates. And thou must stand     by too, and suffer every knave to use me at his pleasure!   Peter. I saw no man use you at his pleasure. If I had, my weapon     should quickly have been out, I warrant you. I dare draw as soon     as another man, if I see occasion in a good quarrel, and the law     on my side.   Nurse. Now, afore God, I am so vexed that every part about me     quivers. Scurvy knave! Pray you, sir, a word; and, as I told you,     my young lady bid me enquire you out. What she bid me say, I will     keep to myself; but first let me tell ye, if ye should lead her     into a fool\'s paradise, as they say, it were a very gross kind of     behaviour, as they say; for the gentlewoman is young; and     therefore, if you should deal double with her, truly it were an     ill thing to be off\'red to any gentlewoman, and very weak dealing.   Rom. Nurse, commend me to thy lady and mistress. I protest unto     thee-     Nurse. Good heart, and I faith I will tell her as much. Lord,     Lord! she will be a joyful woman.   Rom. What wilt thou tell her, nurse? Thou dost not mark me.   Nurse. I will tell her, sir, that you do protest, which, as I take     it, is a gentlemanlike offer.   Rom. Bid her devise     Some means to come to shrift this afternoon;     And there she shall at Friar Laurence\' cell     Be shriv\'d and married. Here is for thy pains.   Nurse. No, truly, sir; not a penny.   Rom. Go to! I say you shall.   Nurse. This afternoon, sir? Well, she shall be there.   Rom. And stay, good nurse, behind the abbey wall.     Within this hour my man shall be with thee     And bring thee cords made like a tackled stair,     Which to the high topgallant of my joy     Must be my convoy in the secret night.     Farewell. Be trusty, and I\'ll quit thy pains.     Farewell. Commend me to thy mistress.   Nurse. Now God in heaven bless thee! Hark you, sir.     Rom. What say\'st thou, my dear nurse?   Nurse. Is your man secret? Did you ne\'er hear say,     Two may keep counsel, putting one away?   Rom. I warrant thee my man\'s as true as steel.   Nurse. Well, sir, my mistress is the sweetest lady. Lord, Lord!     when \'twas a little prating thing- O, there is a nobleman in     town, one Paris, that would fain lay knife aboard; but she, good     soul, had as lieve see a toad, a very toad, as see him. I anger     her sometimes, and tell her that Paris is the properer man; but     I\'ll warrant you, when I say so, she looks as pale as any clout     in the versal world. Doth not rosemary and Romeo begin both with     a letter?   Rom. Ay, nurse; what of that? Both with an R.   Nurse. Ah, mocker! that\'s the dog\'s name. R is for the- No; I know     it begins with some other letter; and she hath the prettiest     sententious of it, of you and rosemary, that it would do you good     to hear it.   Rom. Commend me to thy lady.   Nurse. Ay, a thousand times. [Exit Romeo.] Peter!   Peter. Anon.     Nurse. Peter, take my fan, and go before, and apace.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene V. Capulet\'s orchard.  Enter Juliet.    Jul. The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse;     In half an hour she \'promis\'d to return.     Perchance she cannot meet him. That\'s not so.     O, she is lame! Love\'s heralds should be thoughts,     Which ten times faster glide than the sun\'s beams     Driving back shadows over low\'ring hills.     Therefore do nimble-pinion\'d doves draw Love,     And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.     Now is the sun upon the highmost hill     Of this day\'s journey, and from nine till twelve     Is three long hours; yet she is not come.     Had she affections and warm youthful blood,     She would be as swift in motion as a ball;     My words would bandy her to my sweet love,     And his to me,     But old folks, many feign as they were dead-     Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.                          Enter Nurse [and Peter].      O God, she comes! O honey nurse, what news?     Hast thou met with him? Send thy man away.   Nurse. Peter, stay at the gate.                                                    [Exit Peter.]   Jul. Now, good sweet nurse- O Lord, why look\'st thou sad?     Though news be sad, yet tell them merrily;     If good, thou shamest the music of sweet news     By playing it to me with so sour a face.   Nurse. I am aweary, give me leave awhile.     Fie, how my bones ache! What a jaunce have I had!   Jul. I would thou hadst my bones, and I thy news.     Nay, come, I pray thee speak. Good, good nurse, speak.   Nurse. Jesu, what haste! Can you not stay awhile?     Do you not see that I am out of breath?   Jul. How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath     To say to me that thou art out of breath?     The excuse that thou dost make in this delay       Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse.     Is thy news good or bad? Answer to that.     Say either, and I\'ll stay the circumstance.     Let me be satisfied, is\'t good or bad?   Nurse. Well, you have made a simple choice; you know not how to     choose a man. Romeo? No, not he. Though his face be better than     any man\'s, yet his leg excels all men\'s; and for a hand and a     foot, and a body, though they be not to be talk\'d on, yet they     are past compare. He is not the flower of courtesy, but, I\'ll     warrant him, as gentle as a lamb. Go thy ways, wench; serve God.     What, have you din\'d at home?   Jul. No, no. But all this did I know before.     What says he of our marriage? What of that?   Nurse. Lord, how my head aches! What a head have I!     It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces.     My back o\' t\' other side,- ah, my back, my back!     Beshrew your heart for sending me about     To catch my death with jauncing up and down!   Jul. I\' faith, I am sorry that thou art not well.     Sweet, sweet, Sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love?     Nurse. Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courteous,     and a kind, and a handsome; and, I warrant, a virtuous- Where is     your mother?   Jul. Where is my mother? Why, she is within.     Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest!     \'Your love says, like an honest gentleman,     "Where is your mother?"\'   Nurse. O God\'s Lady dear!     Are you so hot? Marry come up, I trow.     Is this the poultice for my aching bones?     Henceforward do your messages yourself.   Jul. Here\'s such a coil! Come, what says Romeo?   Nurse. Have you got leave to go to shrift to-day?   Jul. I have.   Nurse. Then hie you hence to Friar Laurence\' cell;     There stays a husband to make you a wife.     Now comes the wanton blood up in your cheeks:     They\'ll be in scarlet straight at any news.     Hie you to church; I must another way,     To fetch a ladder, by the which your love       Must climb a bird\'s nest soon when it is dark.     I am the drudge, and toil in your delight;     But you shall bear the burthen soon at night.     Go; I\'ll to dinner; hie you to the cell.   Jul. Hie to high fortune! Honest nurse, farewell.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene VI. Friar Laurence\'s cell.  Enter Friar [Laurence] and Romeo.    Friar. So smile the heavens upon this holy act     That after-hours with sorrow chide us not!   Rom. Amen, amen! But come what sorrow can,     It cannot countervail the exchange of joy     That one short minute gives me in her sight.     Do thou but close our hands with holy words,     Then love-devouring death do what he dare-     It is enough I may but call her mine.   Friar. These violent delights have violent ends     And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,     Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey     Is loathsome in his own deliciousness     And in the taste confounds the appetite.     Therefore love moderately: long love doth so;     Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.                       Enter Juliet.        Here comes the lady. O, so light a foot     Will ne\'er wear out the everlasting flint.     A lover may bestride the gossamer     That idles in the wanton summer air,     And yet not fall; so light is vanity.   Jul. Good even to my ghostly confessor.   Friar. Romeo shall thank thee, daughter, for us both.   Jul. As much to him, else is his thanks too much.   Rom. Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy     Be heap\'d like mine, and that thy skill be more     To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath     This neighbour air, and let rich music\'s tongue     Unfold the imagin\'d happiness that both     Receive in either by this dear encounter.   Jul. Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,     Brags of his substance, not of ornament.     They are but beggars that can count their worth;     But my true love is grown to such excess     cannot sum up sum of half my wealth.     Friar. Come, come with me, and we will make short work;     For, by your leaves, you shall not stay alone     Till Holy Church incorporate two in one.                                                        [Exeunt.]     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. Scene I. A public place.  Enter Mercutio, Benvolio, and Men.    Ben. I pray thee, good Mercutio, let\'s retire.     The day is hot, the Capulets abroad.     And if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl,     For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.   Mer. Thou art like one of these fellows that, when he enters the     confines of a tavern, claps me his sword upon the table and says     \'God send me no need of thee!\' and by the operation of the second     cup draws him on the drawer, when indeed there is no need.   Ben. Am I like such a fellow?   Mer. Come, come, thou art as hot a jack in thy mood as any in     Italy; and as soon moved to be moody, and as soon moody to be     moved.   Ben. And what to?   Mer. Nay, an there were two such, we should have none shortly, for     one would kill the other. Thou! why, thou wilt quarrel with a man     that hath a hair more or a hair less in his beard than thou hast.     Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other       reason but because thou hast hazel eyes. What eye but such an eye     would spy out such a quarrel? Thy head is as full of quarrels as     an egg is full of meat; and yet thy head hath been beaten as     addle as an egg for quarrelling. Thou hast quarrell\'d with a man     for coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy dog that     hath lain asleep in the sun. Didst thou not fall out with a     tailor for wearing his new doublet before Easter, with another     for tying his new shoes with an old riband? And yet thou wilt     tutor me from quarrelling!   Ben. An I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any man should buy     the fee simple of my life for an hour and a quarter.   Mer. The fee simple? O simple!                         Enter Tybalt and others.    Ben. By my head, here come the Capulets.   Mer. By my heel, I care not.   Tyb. Follow me close, for I will speak to them.     Gentlemen, good den. A word with one of you.   Mer. And but one word with one of us?       Couple it with something; make it a word and a blow.   Tyb. You shall find me apt enough to that, sir, an you will give me     occasion.   Mer. Could you not take some occasion without giving   Tyb. Mercutio, thou consortest with Romeo.   Mer. Consort? What, dost thou make us minstrels? An thou make     minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but discords. Here\'s my     fiddlestick; here\'s that shall make you dance. Zounds, consort!   Ben. We talk here in the public haunt of men.     Either withdraw unto some private place     And reason coldly of your grievances,     Or else depart. Here all eyes gaze on us.   Mer. Men\'s eyes were made to look, and let them gaze.     I will not budge for no man\'s pleasure,                          Enter Romeo.    Tyb. Well, peace be with you, sir. Here comes my man.   Mer. But I\'ll be hang\'d, sir, if he wear your livery.     Marry, go before to field, he\'ll be your follower!       Your worship in that sense may call him man.   Tyb. Romeo, the love I bear thee can afford     No better term than this: thou art a villain.   Rom. Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee     Doth much excuse the appertaining rage     To such a greeting. Villain am I none.     Therefore farewell. I see thou knowest me not.   Tyb. Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries     That thou hast done me; therefore turn and draw.   Rom. I do protest I never injur\'d thee,     But love thee better than thou canst devise     Till thou shalt know the reason of my love;     And so good Capulet, which name I tender     As dearly as mine own, be satisfied.   Mer. O calm, dishonourable, vile submission!     Alla stoccata carries it away.                      [Draws.]     Tybalt, you ratcatcher, will you walk?   Tyb. What wouldst thou have with me?   Mer. Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives. That I     mean to make bold withal, and, as you shall use me hereafter,       dry-beat the rest of the eight. Will you pluck your sword out of     his pitcher by the ears? Make haste, lest mine be about your ears     ere it be out.   Tyb. I am for you.                                    [Draws.]   Rom. Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up.   Mer. Come, sir, your passado!                                                    [They fight.]   Rom. Draw, Benvolio; beat down their weapons.     Gentlemen, for shame! forbear this outrage!     Tybalt, Mercutio, the Prince expressly hath     Forbid this bandying in Verona streets.     Hold, Tybalt! Good Mercutio!          Tybalt under Romeo\'s arm thrusts Mercutio in, and flies                                            [with his Followers].   Mer. I am hurt.     A plague o\' both your houses! I am sped.     Is he gone and hath nothing?   Ben. What, art thou hurt?   Mer. Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch. Marry, \'tis enough.     Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a surgeon.                                                       [Exit Page.]   Rom. Courage, man. The hurt cannot be much.   Mer. No, \'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door;     but \'tis enough, \'twill serve. Ask for me to-morrow, and you     shall find me a grave man. I am peppered, I warrant, for this     world. A plague o\' both your houses! Zounds, a dog, a rat, a     mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart, a rogue, a     villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic! Why the devil     came you between us? I was hurt under your arm.   Rom. I thought all for the best.   Mer. Help me into some house, Benvolio,     Or I shall faint. A plague o\' both your houses!     They have made worms\' meat of me. I have it,     And soundly too. Your houses!                                  [Exit. [supported by Benvolio].   Rom. This gentleman, the Prince\'s near ally,     My very friend, hath got this mortal hurt     In my behalf- my reputation stain\'d     With Tybalt\'s slander- Tybalt, that an hour     Hath been my kinsman. O sweet Juliet,       Thy beauty hath made me effeminate     And in my temper soft\'ned valour\'s steel                        Enter Benvolio.    Ben. O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio\'s dead!     That gallant spirit hath aspir\'d the clouds,     Which too untimely here did scorn the earth.   Rom. This day\'s black fate on moe days doth depend;     This but begins the woe others must end.                         Enter Tybalt.    Ben. Here comes the furious Tybalt back again.   Rom. Alive in triumph, and Mercutio slain?     Away to heaven respective lenity,     And fire-ey\'d fury be my conduct now!     Now, Tybalt, take the \'villain\' back again     That late thou gavest me; for Mercutio\'s soul     Is but a little way above our heads,       Staying for thine to keep him company.     Either thou or I, or both, must go with him.   Tyb. Thou, wretched boy, that didst consort him here,     Shalt with him hence.   Rom. This shall determine that.                                        They fight. Tybalt falls.   Ben. Romeo, away, be gone!     The citizens are up, and Tybalt slain.     Stand not amaz\'d. The Prince will doom thee death     If thou art taken. Hence, be gone, away!   Rom. O, I am fortune\'s fool!   Ben. Why dost thou stay?                                                      Exit Romeo.                       Enter Citizens.    Citizen. Which way ran he that kill\'d Mercutio?     Tybalt, that murtherer, which way ran he?   Ben. There lies that Tybalt.   Citizen. Up, sir, go with me.     I charge thee in the Prince\'s name obey.      Enter Prince [attended], Old Montague, Capulet, their Wives,                      and [others].    Prince. Where are the vile beginners of this fray?   Ben. O noble Prince. I can discover all     The unlucky manage of this fatal brawl.     There lies the man, slain by young Romeo,     That slew thy kinsman, brave Mercutio.   Cap. Wife. Tybalt, my cousin! O my brother\'s child!     O Prince! O husband! O, the blood is spill\'d     Of my dear kinsman! Prince, as thou art true,     For blood of ours shed blood of Montague.     O cousin, cousin!   Prince. Benvolio, who began this bloody fray?   Ben. Tybalt, here slain, whom Romeo\'s hand did stay.     Romeo, that spoke him fair, bid him bethink     How nice the quarrel was, and urg\'d withal     Your high displeasure. All this- uttered     With gentle breath, calm look, knees humbly bow\'d-       Could not take truce with the unruly spleen     Of Tybalt deaf to peace, but that he tilts     With piercing steel at bold Mercutio\'s breast;     Who, all as hot, turns deadly point to point,     And, with a martial scorn, with one hand beats     Cold death aside and with the other sends     It back to Tybalt, whose dexterity     Retorts it. Romeo he cries aloud,     \'Hold, friends! friends, part!\' and swifter than his tongue,     His agile arm beats down their fatal points,     And \'twixt them rushes; underneath whose arm     An envious thrust from Tybalt hit the life     Of stout Mercutio, and then Tybalt fled;     But by-and-by comes back to Romeo,     Who had but newly entertain\'d revenge,     And to\'t they go like lightning; for, ere I     Could draw to part them, was stout Tybalt slain;     And, as he fell, did Romeo turn and fly.     This is the truth, or let Benvolio die.   Cap. Wife. He is a kinsman to the Montague;       Affection makes him false, he speaks not true.     Some twenty of them fought in this black strife,     And all those twenty could but kill one life.     I beg for justice, which thou, Prince, must give.     Romeo slew Tybalt; Romeo must not live.   Prince. Romeo slew him; he slew Mercutio.     Who now the price of his dear blood doth owe?   Mon. Not Romeo, Prince; he was Mercutio\'s friend;     His fault concludes but what the law should end,     The life of Tybalt.   Prince. And for that offence     Immediately we do exile him hence.     I have an interest in your hate\'s proceeding,     My blood for your rude brawls doth lie a-bleeding;     But I\'ll amerce you with so strong a fine     That you shall all repent the loss of mine.     I will be deaf to pleading and excuses;     Nor tears nor prayers shall purchase out abuses.     Therefore use none. Let Romeo hence in haste,     Else, when he is found, that hour is his last.       Bear hence this body, and attend our will.     Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene II. Capulet\'s orchard.  Enter Juliet alone.    Jul. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,     Towards Phoebus\' lodging! Such a wagoner     As Phaeton would whip you to the West     And bring in cloudy night immediately.     Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,     That runaway eyes may wink, and Romeo     Leap to these arms untalk\'d of and unseen.     Lovers can see to do their amorous rites     By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,     It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,     Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,     And learn me how to lose a winning match,     Play\'d for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.     Hood my unmann\'d blood, bating in my cheeks,     With thy black mantle till strange love, grown bold,     Think true love acted simple modesty.     Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;       For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night     Whiter than new snow upon a raven\'s back.     Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-brow\'d night;     Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,     Take him and cut him out in little stars,     And he will make the face of heaven so fine     That all the world will be in love with night     And pay no worship to the garish sun.     O, I have bought the mansion of a love,     But not possess\'d it; and though I am sold,     Not yet enjoy\'d. So tedious is this day     As is the night before some festival     To an impatient child that hath new robes     And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse,                  Enter Nurse, with cords.      And she brings news; and every tongue that speaks     But Romeo\'s name speaks heavenly eloquence.     Now, nurse, what news? What hast thou there? the cords       That Romeo bid thee fetch?   Nurse. Ay, ay, the cords.                                              [Throws them down.]   Jul. Ay me! what news? Why dost thou wring thy hands   Nurse. Ah, weraday! he\'s dead, he\'s dead, he\'s dead!     We are undone, lady, we are undone!     Alack the day! he\'s gone, he\'s kill\'d, he\'s dead!   Jul. Can heaven be so envious?   Nurse. Romeo can,     Though heaven cannot. O Romeo, Romeo!     Who ever would have thought it? Romeo!   Jul. What devil art thou that dost torment me thus?     This torture should be roar\'d in dismal hell.     Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but \'I,\'     And that bare vowel \'I\' shall poison more     Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.     I am not I, if there be such an \'I\';     Or those eyes shut that make thee answer \'I.\'     If be be slain, say \'I\'; or if not, \'no.\'     Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.     Nurse. I saw the wound, I saw it with mine eyes,     (God save the mark!) here on his manly breast.     A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse;     Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaub\'d in blood,     All in gore-blood. I swounded at the sight.   Jul. O, break, my heart! poor bankrout, break at once!     To prison, eyes; ne\'er look on liberty!     Vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here,     And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier!   Nurse. O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had!     O courteous Tybalt! honest gentleman     That ever I should live to see thee dead!   Jul. What storm is this that blows so contrary?     Is Romeo slaught\'red, and is Tybalt dead?     My dear-lov\'d cousin, and my dearer lord?     Then, dreadful trumpet, sound the general doom!     For who is living, if those two are gone?   Nurse. Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished;     Romeo that kill\'d him, he is banished.   Jul. O God! Did Romeo\'s hand shed Tybalt\'s blood?     Nurse. It did, it did! alas the day, it did!   Jul. O serpent heart, hid with a flow\'ring face!     Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?     Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!     Dove-feather\'d raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!     Despised substance of divinest show!     Just opposite to what thou justly seem\'st-     A damned saint, an honourable villain!     O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell     When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend     In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?     Was ever book containing such vile matter     So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell     In such a gorgeous palace!   Nurse. There\'s no trust,     No faith, no honesty in men; all perjur\'d,     All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.     Ah, where\'s my man? Give me some aqua vitae.     These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old.     Shame come to Romeo!     Jul. Blister\'d be thy tongue     For such a wish! He was not born to shame.     Upon his brow shame is asham\'d to sit;     For \'tis a throne where honour may be crown\'d     Sole monarch of the universal earth.     O, what a beast was I to chide at him!   Nurse. Will you speak well of him that kill\'d your cousin?   Jul. Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?     Ah, poor my lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name     When I, thy three-hours wife, have mangled it?     But wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?     That villain cousin would have kill\'d my husband.     Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring!     Your tributary drops belong to woe,     Which you, mistaking, offer up to joy.     My husband lives, that Tybalt would have slain;     And Tybalt\'s dead, that would have slain my husband.     All this is comfort; wherefore weep I then?     Some word there was, worser than Tybalt\'s death,     That murd\'red me. I would forget it fain;       But O, it presses to my memory     Like damned guilty deeds to sinners\' minds!     \'Tybalt is dead, and Romeo- banished.\'     That \'banished,\' that one word \'banished,\'     Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt\'s death     Was woe enough, if it had ended there;     Or, if sour woe delights in fellowship     And needly will be rank\'d with other griefs,     Why followed not, when she said \'Tybalt\'s dead,\'     Thy father, or thy mother, nay, or both,     Which modern lamentation might have mov\'d?     But with a rearward following Tybalt\'s death,     \'Romeo is banished\'- to speak that word     Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet,     All slain, all dead. \'Romeo is banished\'-     There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,     In that word\'s death; no words can that woe sound.     Where is my father and my mother, nurse?   Nurse. Weeping and wailing over Tybalt\'s corse.     Will you go to them? I will bring you thither.     Jul. Wash they his wounds with tears? Mine shall be spent,     When theirs are dry, for Romeo\'s banishment.     Take up those cords. Poor ropes, you are beguil\'d,     Both you and I, for Romeo is exil\'d.     He made you for a highway to my bed;     But I, a maid, die maiden-widowed.     Come, cords; come, nurse. I\'ll to my wedding bed;     And death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!   Nurse. Hie to your chamber. I\'ll find Romeo     To comfort you. I wot well where he is.     Hark ye, your Romeo will be here at night.     I\'ll to him; he is hid at Laurence\' cell.   Jul. O, find him! give this ring to my true knight     And bid him come to take his last farewell.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene III. Friar Laurence\'s cell.  Enter Friar [Laurence].    Friar. Romeo, come forth; come forth, thou fearful man.     Affliction is enanmour\'d of thy parts,     And thou art wedded to calamity.                           Enter Romeo.    Rom. Father, what news? What is the Prince\'s doom     What sorrow craves acquaintance at my hand     That I yet know not?   Friar. Too familiar     Is my dear son with such sour company.     I bring thee tidings of the Prince\'s doom.   Rom. What less than doomsday is the Prince\'s doom?   Friar. A gentler judgment vanish\'d from his lips-     Not body\'s death, but body\'s banishment.   Rom. Ha, banishment? Be merciful, say \'death\';     For exile hath more terror in his look,       Much more than death. Do not say \'banishment.\'   Friar. Hence from Verona art thou banished.     Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.   Rom. There is no world without Verona walls,     But purgatory, torture, hell itself.     Hence banished is banish\'d from the world,     And world\'s exile is death. Then \'banishment\'     Is death misterm\'d. Calling death \'banishment,\'     Thou cut\'st my head off with a golden axe     And smilest upon the stroke that murders me.   Friar. O deadly sin! O rude unthankfulness!     Thy fault our law calls death; but the kind Prince,     Taking thy part, hath rush\'d aside the law,     And turn\'d that black word death to banishment.     This is dear mercy, and thou seest it not.   Rom. \'Tis torture, and not mercy. Heaven is here,     Where Juliet lives; and every cat and dog     And little mouse, every unworthy thing,     Live here in heaven and may look on her;     But Romeo may not. More validity,       More honourable state, more courtship lives     In carrion flies than Romeo. They may seize     On the white wonder of dear Juliet\'s hand     And steal immortal blessing from her lips,     Who, even in pure and vestal modesty,     Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin;     But Romeo may not- he is banished.     This may flies do, when I from this must fly;     They are free men, but I am banished.     And sayest thou yet that exile is not death?     Hadst thou no poison mix\'d, no sharp-ground knife,     No sudden mean of death, though ne\'er so mean,     But \'banished\' to kill me- \'banished\'?     O friar, the damned use that word in hell;     Howling attends it! How hast thou the heart,     Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,     A sin-absolver, and my friend profess\'d,     To mangle me with that word \'banished\'?   Friar. Thou fond mad man, hear me a little speak.   Rom. O, thou wilt speak again of banishment.     Friar. I\'ll give thee armour to keep off that word;     Adversity\'s sweet milk, philosophy,     To comfort thee, though thou art banished.   Rom. Yet \'banished\'? Hang up philosophy!     Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,     Displant a town, reverse a prince\'s doom,     It helps not, it prevails not. Talk no more.   Friar. O, then I see that madmen have no ears.   Rom. How should they, when that wise men have no eyes?   Friar. Let me dispute with thee of thy estate.   Rom. Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel.     Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love,     An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,     Doting like me, and like me banished,     Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair,     And fall upon the ground, as I do now,     Taking the measure of an unmade grave.                                                  Knock [within].   Friar. Arise; one knocks. Good Romeo, hide thyself.   Rom. Not I; unless the breath of heartsick groans,       Mist-like infold me from the search of eyes.          Knock.   Friar. Hark, how they knock! Who\'s there? Romeo, arise;     Thou wilt be taken.- Stay awhile!- Stand up;          Knock.     Run to my study.- By-and-by!- God\'s will,     What simpleness is this.- I come, I come!             Knock.     Who knocks so hard? Whence come you? What\'s your will   Nurse. [within] Let me come in, and you shall know my errand.     I come from Lady Juliet.   Friar. Welcome then.                         Enter Nurse.    Nurse. O holy friar, O, tell me, holy friar     Where is my lady\'s lord, where\'s Romeo?   Friar. There on the ground, with his own tears made drunk.   Nurse. O, he is even in my mistress\' case,     Just in her case!   Friar. O woeful sympathy!     Piteous predicament!   Nurse. Even so lies she,       Blubb\'ring and weeping, weeping and blubbering.     Stand up, stand up! Stand, an you be a man.     For Juliet\'s sake, for her sake, rise and stand!     Why should you fall into so deep an O?   Rom. (rises) Nurse-   Nurse. Ah sir! ah sir! Well, death\'s the end of all.   Rom. Spakest thou of Juliet? How is it with her?     Doth not she think me an old murtherer,     Now I have stain\'d the childhood of our joy     With blood remov\'d but little from her own?     Where is she? and how doth she! and what says     My conceal\'d lady to our cancell\'d love?   Nurse. O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps;     And now falls on her bed, and then starts up,     And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries,     And then down falls again.   Rom. As if that name,     Shot from the deadly level of a gun,     Did murther her; as that name\'s cursed hand     Murder\'d her kinsman. O, tell me, friar, tell me,       In what vile part of this anatomy     Doth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sack     The hateful mansion.                     [Draws his dagger.]   Friar. Hold thy desperate hand.     Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art;     Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote     The unreasonable fury of a beast.     Unseemly woman in a seeming man!     Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!     Thou hast amaz\'d me. By my holy order,     I thought thy disposition better temper\'d.     Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself?     And slay thy lady that in thy life lives,     By doing damned hate upon thyself?     Why railest thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth?     Since birth and heaven and earth, all three do meet     In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose.     Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit,     Which, like a usurer, abound\'st in all,     And usest none in that true use indeed       Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit.     Thy noble shape is but a form of wax     Digressing from the valour of a man;     Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,     Killing that love which thou hast vow\'d to cherish;     Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,     Misshapen in the conduct of them both,     Like powder in a skilless soldier\'s flask,     is get afire by thine own ignorance,     And thou dismemb\'red with thine own defence.     What, rouse thee, man! Thy Juliet is alive,     For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead.     There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee,     But thou slewest Tybalt. There art thou happy too.     The law, that threat\'ned death, becomes thy friend     And turns it to exile. There art thou happy.     A pack of blessings light upon thy back;     Happiness courts thee in her best array;     But, like a misbhav\'d and sullen wench,     Thou pout\'st upon thy fortune and thy love.       Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.     Go get thee to thy love, as was decreed,     Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her.     But look thou stay not till the watch be set,     For then thou canst not pass to Mantua,     Where thou shalt live till we can find a time     To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,     Beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back     With twenty hundred thousand times more joy     Than thou went\'st forth in lamentation.     Go before, nurse. Commend me to thy lady,     And bid her hasten all the house to bed,     Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto.     Romeo is coming.   Nurse. O Lord, I could have stay\'d here all the night     To hear good counsel. O, what learning is!     My lord, I\'ll tell my lady you will come.   Rom. Do so, and bid my sweet prepare to chide.   Nurse. Here is a ring she bid me give you, sir.     Hie you, make haste, for it grows very late.           Exit.     Rom. How well my comfort is reviv\'d by this!   Friar. Go hence; good night; and here stands all your state:     Either be gone before the watch be set,     Or by the break of day disguis\'d from hence.     Sojourn in Mantua. I\'ll find out your man,     And he shall signify from time to time     Every good hap to you that chances here.     Give me thy hand. \'Tis late. Farewell; good night.   Rom. But that a joy past joy calls out on me,     It were a grief so brief to part with thee.     Farewell.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene IV. Capulet\'s house  Enter Old Capulet, his Wife, and Paris.    Cap. Things have fall\'n out, sir, so unluckily     That we have had no time to move our daughter.     Look you, she lov\'d her kinsman Tybalt dearly,     And so did I. Well, we were born to die.     \'Tis very late; she\'ll not come down to-night.     I promise you, but for your company,     I would have been abed an hour ago.   Par. These times of woe afford no tune to woo.     Madam, good night. Commend me to your daughter.   Lady. I will, and know her mind early to-morrow;     To-night she\'s mew\'d up to her heaviness.   Cap. Sir Paris, I will make a desperate tender     Of my child\'s love. I think she will be rul\'d     In all respects by me; nay more, I doubt it not.     Wife, go you to her ere you go to bed;     Acquaint her here of my son Paris\' love     And bid her (mark you me?) on Wednesday next-       But, soft! what day is this?   Par. Monday, my lord.   Cap. Monday! ha, ha! Well, Wednesday is too soon.     Thursday let it be- a Thursday, tell her     She shall be married to this noble earl.     Will you be ready? Do you like this haste?     We\'ll keep no great ado- a friend or two;     For hark you, Tybalt being slain so late,     It may be thought we held him carelessly,     Being our kinsman, if we revel much.     Therefore we\'ll have some half a dozen friends,     And there an end. But what say you to Thursday?   Par. My lord, I would that Thursday were to-morrow.   Cap. Well, get you gone. A Thursday be it then.     Go you to Juliet ere you go to bed;     Prepare her, wife, against this wedding day.     Farewell, My lord.- Light to my chamber, ho!     Afore me, It is so very very late     That we may call it early by-and-by.     Good night.                                                             Exeunt     Scene V. Capulet\'s orchard.  Enter Romeo and Juliet aloft, at the Window.    Jul. Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.     It was the nightingale, and not the lark,     That pierc\'d the fearful hollow of thine ear.     Nightly she sings on yond pomegranate tree.     Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.   Rom. It was the lark, the herald of the morn;     No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks     Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East.     Night\'s candles are burnt out, and jocund day     Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.     I must be gone and live, or stay and die.   Jul. Yond light is not daylight; I know it, I.     It is some meteor that the sun exhales     To be to thee this night a torchbearer     And light thee on the way to Mantua.     Therefore stay yet; thou need\'st not to be gone.   Rom. Let me be ta\'en, let me be put to death.       I am content, so thou wilt have it so.     I\'ll say yon grey is not the morning\'s eye,     \'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia\'s brow;     Nor that is not the lark whose notes do beat     The vaulty heaven so high above our heads.     I have more care to stay than will to go.     Come, death, and welcome! Juliet wills it so.     How is\'t, my soul? Let\'s talk; it is not day.   Jul. It is, it is! Hie hence, be gone, away!     It is the lark that sings so out of tune,     Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.     Some say the lark makes sweet division;     This doth not so, for she divideth us.     Some say the lark and loathed toad chang\'d eyes;     O, now I would they had chang\'d voices too,     Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,     Hunting thee hence with hunt\'s-up to the day!     O, now be gone! More light and light it grows.   Rom. More light and light- more dark and dark our woes!                              Enter Nurse.    Nurse. Madam!   Jul. Nurse?   Nurse. Your lady mother is coming to your chamber.     The day is broke; be wary, look about.   Jul. Then, window, let day in, and let life out.                                                          [Exit.]   Rom. Farewell, farewell! One kiss, and I\'ll descend.                                                   He goeth down.   Jul. Art thou gone so, my lord, my love, my friend?     I must hear from thee every day in the hour,     For in a minute there are many days.     O, by this count I shall be much in years     Ere I again behold my Romeo!   Rom. Farewell!     I will omit no opportunity     That may convey my greetings, love, to thee.   Jul. O, think\'st thou we shall ever meet again?   Rom. I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve       For sweet discourses in our time to come.   Jul. O God, I have an ill-divining soul!     Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,     As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.     Either my eyesight fails, or thou look\'st pale.   Rom. And trust me, love, in my eye so do you.     Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu, adieu! Exit.   Jul. O Fortune, Fortune! all men call thee fickle.     If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him     That is renown\'d for faith? Be fickle, Fortune,     For then I hope thou wilt not keep him long     But send him back.   Lady. [within] Ho, daughter! are you up?   Jul. Who is\'t that calls? It is my lady mother.     Is she not down so late, or up so early?     What unaccustom\'d cause procures her hither?                         Enter Mother.      Lady. Why, how now, Juliet?   Jul. Madam, I am not well.   Lady. Evermore weeping for your cousin\'s death?     What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?     An if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live.     Therefore have done. Some grief shows much of love;     But much of grief shows still some want of wit.   Jul. Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.   Lady. So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend     Which you weep for.   Jul. Feeling so the loss,     I cannot choose but ever weep the friend.   Lady. Well, girl, thou weep\'st not so much for his death     As that the villain lives which slaughter\'d him.   Jul. What villain, madam?   Lady. That same villain Romeo.   Jul. [aside] Villain and he be many miles asunder.-     God pardon him! I do, with all my heart;     And yet no man like he doth grieve my heart.   Lady. That is because the traitor murderer lives.     Jul. Ay, madam, from the reach of these my hands.     Would none but I might venge my cousin\'s death!   Lady. We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not.     Then weep no more. I\'ll send to one in Mantua,     Where that same banish\'d runagate doth live,     Shall give him such an unaccustom\'d dram     That he shall soon keep Tybalt company;     And then I hope thou wilt be satisfied.   Jul. Indeed I never shall be satisfied     With Romeo till I behold him- dead-     Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vex\'d.     Madam, if you could find out but a man     To bear a poison, I would temper it;     That Romeo should, upon receipt thereof,     Soon sleep in quiet. O, how my heart abhors     To hear him nam\'d and cannot come to him,     To wreak the love I bore my cousin Tybalt     Upon his body that hath slaughter\'d him!   Lady. Find thou the means, and I\'ll find such a man.     But now I\'ll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.     Jul. And joy comes well in such a needy time.     What are they, I beseech your ladyship?   Lady. Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child;     One who, to put thee from thy heaviness,     Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy     That thou expects not nor I look\'d not for.   Jul. Madam, in happy time! What day is that?   Lady. Marry, my child, early next Thursday morn     The gallant, young, and noble gentleman,     The County Paris, at Saint Peter\'s Church,     Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.   Jul. Now by Saint Peter\'s Church, and Peter too,     He shall not make me there a joyful bride!     I wonder at this haste, that I must wed     Ere he that should be husband comes to woo.     I pray you tell my lord and father, madam,     I will not marry yet; and when I do, I swear     It shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate,     Rather than Paris. These are news indeed!   Lady. Here comes your father. Tell him so yourself,       And see how be will take it at your hands.                     Enter Capulet and Nurse.    Cap. When the sun sets the air doth drizzle dew,     But for the sunset of my brother\'s son     It rains downright.     How now? a conduit, girl? What, still in tears?     Evermore show\'ring? In one little body     Thou counterfeit\'st a bark, a sea, a wind:     For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,     Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is     Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs,     Who, raging with thy tears and they with them,     Without a sudden calm will overset     Thy tempest-tossed body. How now, wife?     Have you delivered to her our decree?   Lady. Ay, sir; but she will none, she gives you thanks.     I would the fool were married to her grave!   Cap. Soft! take me with you, take me with you, wife.       How? Will she none? Doth she not give us thanks?     Is she not proud? Doth she not count her blest,     Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought     So worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom?   Jul. Not proud you have, but thankful that you have.     Proud can I never be of what I hate,     But thankful even for hate that is meant love.   Cap. How, how, how, how, choplogic? What is this?     \'Proud\'- and \'I thank you\'- and \'I thank you not\'-     And yet \'not proud\'? Mistress minion you,     Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds,     But fettle your fine joints \'gainst Thursday next     To go with Paris to Saint Peter\'s Church,     Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.     Out, you green-sickness carrion I out, you baggage!     You tallow-face!   Lady. Fie, fie! what, are you mad?   Jul. Good father, I beseech you on my knees,     Hear me with patience but to speak a word.   Cap. Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch!       I tell thee what- get thee to church a Thursday     Or never after look me in the face.     Speak not, reply not, do not answer me!     My fingers itch. Wife, we scarce thought us blest     That God had lent us but this only child;     But now I see this one is one too much,     And that we have a curse in having her.     Out on her, hilding!   Nurse. God in heaven bless her!     You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.   Cap. And why, my Lady Wisdom? Hold your tongue,     Good Prudence. Smatter with your gossips, go!   Nurse. I speak no treason.   Cap. O, God-i-god-en!   Nurse. May not one speak?   Cap. Peace, you mumbling fool!     Utter your gravity o\'er a gossip\'s bowl,     For here we need it not.   Lady. You are too hot.   Cap. God\'s bread I it makes me mad. Day, night, late, early,       At home, abroad, alone, in company,     Waking or sleeping, still my care hath been     To have her match\'d; and having now provided     A gentleman of princely parentage,     Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train\'d,     Stuff\'d, as they say, with honourable parts,     Proportion\'d as one\'s thought would wish a man-     And then to have a wretched puling fool,     A whining mammet, in her fortune\'s tender,     To answer \'I\'ll not wed, I cannot love;     I am too young, I pray you pardon me\'!     But, an you will not wed, I\'ll pardon you.     Graze where you will, you shall not house with me.     Look to\'t, think on\'t; I do not use to jest.     Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise:     An you be mine, I\'ll give you to my friend;     An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets,     For, by my soul, I\'ll ne\'er acknowledge thee,     Nor what is mine shall never do thee good.     Trust to\'t. Bethink you. I\'ll not be forsworn.         Exit.     Jul. Is there no pity sitting in the clouds     That sees into the bottom of my grief?     O sweet my mother, cast me not away!     Delay this marriage for a month, a week;     Or if you do not, make the bridal bed     In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.   Lady. Talk not to me, for I\'ll not speak a word.     Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.            Exit.   Jul. O God!- O nurse, how shall this be prevented?     My husband is on earth, my faith in heaven.     How shall that faith return again to earth     Unless that husband send it me from heaven     By leaving earth? Comfort me, counsel me.     Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems     Upon so soft a subject as myself!     What say\'st thou? Hast thou not a word of joy?     Some comfort, nurse.   Nurse. Faith, here it is.     Romeo is banish\'d; and all the world to nothing     That he dares ne\'er come back to challenge you;       Or if he do, it needs must be by stealth.     Then, since the case so stands as now it doth,     I think it best you married with the County.     O, he\'s a lovely gentleman!     Romeo\'s a dishclout to him. An eagle, madam,     Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye     As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,     I think you are happy in this second match,     For it excels your first; or if it did not,     Your first is dead- or \'twere as good he were     As living here and you no use of him.   Jul. Speak\'st thou this from thy heart?   Nurse. And from my soul too; else beshrew them both.   Jul. Amen!   Nurse. What?   Jul. Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much.     Go in; and tell my lady I am gone,     Having displeas\'d my father, to Laurence\' cell,     To make confession and to be absolv\'d.   Nurse. Marry, I will; and this is wisely done.           Exit.     Jul. Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!     Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn,     Or to dispraise my lord with that same tongue     Which she hath prais\'d him with above compare     So many thousand times? Go, counsellor!     Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain.     I\'ll to the friar to know his remedy.     If all else fail, myself have power to die.            Exit.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. Scene I. Friar Laurence\'s cell.  Enter Friar, [Laurence] and County Paris.    Friar. On Thursday, sir? The time is very short.   Par. My father Capulet will have it so,     And I am nothing slow to slack his haste.   Friar. You say you do not know the lady\'s mind.     Uneven is the course; I like it not.   Par. Immoderately she weeps for Tybalt\'s death,     And therefore have I little talk\'d of love;     For Venus smiles not in a house of tears.     Now, sir, her father counts it dangerous     That she do give her sorrow so much sway,     And in his wisdom hastes our marriage     To stop the inundation of her tears,     Which, too much minded by herself alone,     May be put from her by society.     Now do you know the reason of this haste.   Friar. [aside] I would I knew not why it should be slow\'d.-     Look, sir, here comes the lady toward my cell.                        Enter Juliet.    Par. Happily met, my lady and my wife!   Jul. That may be, sir, when I may be a wife.   Par. That may be must be, love, on Thursday next.   Jul. What must be shall be.   Friar. That\'s a certain text.   Par. Come you to make confession to this father?   Jul. To answer that, I should confess to you.   Par. Do not deny to him that you love me.   Jul. I will confess to you that I love him.   Par. So will ye, I am sure, that you love me.   Jul. If I do so, it will be of more price,     Being spoke behind your back, than to your face.   Par. Poor soul, thy face is much abus\'d with tears.   Jul. The tears have got small victory by that,     For it was bad enough before their spite.   Par. Thou wrong\'st it more than tears with that report.   Jul. That is no slander, sir, which is a truth;       And what I spake, I spake it to my face.   Par. Thy face is mine, and thou hast sland\'red it.   Jul. It may be so, for it is not mine own.     Are you at leisure, holy father, now,     Or shall I come to you at evening mass   Friar. My leisure serves me, pensive daughter, now.     My lord, we must entreat the time alone.   Par. God shield I should disturb devotion!     Juliet, on Thursday early will I rouse ye.     Till then, adieu, and keep this holy kiss.             Exit.   Jul. O, shut the door! and when thou hast done so,     Come weep with me- past hope, past cure, past help!   Friar. Ah, Juliet, I already know thy grief;     It strains me past the compass of my wits.     I hear thou must, and nothing may prorogue it,     On Thursday next be married to this County.   Jul. Tell me not, friar, that thou hear\'st of this,     Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it.     If in thy wisdom thou canst give no help,     Do thou but call my resolution wise       And with this knife I\'ll help it presently.     God join\'d my heart and Romeo\'s, thou our hands;     And ere this hand, by thee to Romeo\'s seal\'d,     Shall be the label to another deed,     Or my true heart with treacherous revolt     Turn to another, this shall slay them both.     Therefore, out of thy long-experienc\'d time,     Give me some present counsel; or, behold,     \'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife     Shall play the empire, arbitrating that     Which the commission of thy years and art     Could to no issue of true honour bring.     Be not so long to speak. I long to die     If what thou speak\'st speak not of remedy.   Friar. Hold, daughter. I do spy a kind of hope,     Which craves as desperate an execution     As that is desperate which we would prevent.     If, rather than to marry County Paris     Thou hast the strength of will to slay thyself,     Then is it likely thou wilt undertake       A thing like death to chide away this shame,     That cop\'st with death himself to scape from it;     And, if thou dar\'st, I\'ll give thee remedy.   Jul. O, bid me leap, rather than marry Paris,     From off the battlements of yonder tower,     Or walk in thievish ways, or bid me lurk     Where serpents are; chain me with roaring bears,     Or shut me nightly in a charnel house,     O\'ercover\'d quite with dead men\'s rattling bones,     With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls;     Or bid me go into a new-made grave     And hide me with a dead man in his shroud-     Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble-     And I will do it without fear or doubt,     To live an unstain\'d wife to my sweet love.   Friar. Hold, then. Go home, be merry, give consent     To marry Paris. Wednesday is to-morrow.     To-morrow night look that thou lie alone;     Let not the nurse lie with thee in thy chamber.     Take thou this vial, being then in bed,       And this distilled liquor drink thou off;     When presently through all thy veins shall run     A cold and drowsy humour; for no pulse     Shall keep his native progress, but surcease;     No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest;     The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade     To paly ashes, thy eyes\' windows fall     Like death when he shuts up the day of life;     Each part, depriv\'d of supple government,     Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death;     And in this borrowed likeness of shrunk death     Thou shalt continue two-and-forty hours,     And then awake as from a pleasant sleep.     Now, when the bridegroom in the morning comes     To rouse thee from thy bed, there art thou dead.     Then, as the manner of our country is,     In thy best robes uncovered on the bier     Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault     Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.     In the mean time, against thou shalt awake,       Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift;     And hither shall he come; and he and I     Will watch thy waking, and that very night     Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua.     And this shall free thee from this present shame,     If no inconstant toy nor womanish fear     Abate thy valour in the acting it.   Jul. Give me, give me! O, tell not me of fear!   Friar. Hold! Get you gone, be strong and prosperous     In this resolve. I\'ll send a friar with speed     To Mantua, with my letters to thy lord.   Jul. Love give me strength! and strength shall help afford.     Farewell, dear father.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene II. Capulet\'s house.  Enter Father Capulet, Mother, Nurse, and Servingmen,                         two or three.    Cap. So many guests invite as here are writ.                                             [Exit a Servingman.]     Sirrah, go hire me twenty cunning cooks.   Serv. You shall have none ill, sir; for I\'ll try if they can lick     their fingers.   Cap. How canst thou try them so?   Serv. Marry, sir, \'tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own     fingers. Therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes not with     me.   Cap. Go, begone.                                                 Exit Servingman.     We shall be much unfurnish\'d for this time.     What, is my daughter gone to Friar Laurence?   Nurse. Ay, forsooth.   Cap. Well, be may chance to do some good on her.     A peevish self-will\'d harlotry it is.                            Enter Juliet.    Nurse. See where she comes from shrift with merry look.   Cap. How now, my headstrong? Where have you been gadding?   Jul. Where I have learnt me to repent the sin     Of disobedient opposition     To you and your behests, and am enjoin\'d     By holy Laurence to fall prostrate here     To beg your pardon. Pardon, I beseech you!     Henceforward I am ever rul\'d by you.   Cap. Send for the County. Go tell him of this.     I\'ll have this knot knit up to-morrow morning.   Jul. I met the youthful lord at Laurence\' cell     And gave him what becomed love I might,     Not stepping o\'er the bounds of modesty.   Cap. Why, I am glad on\'t. This is well. Stand up.     This is as\'t should be. Let me see the County.     Ay, marry, go, I say, and fetch him hither.     Now, afore God, this reverend holy friar,       All our whole city is much bound to him.   Jul. Nurse, will you go with me into my closet     To help me sort such needful ornaments     As you think fit to furnish me to-morrow?   Mother. No, not till Thursday. There is time enough.   Cap. Go, nurse, go with her. We\'ll to church to-morrow.                                         Exeunt Juliet and Nurse.   Mother. We shall be short in our provision.     \'Tis now near night.   Cap. Tush, I will stir about,     And all things shall be well, I warrant thee, wife.     Go thou to Juliet, help to deck up her.     I\'ll not to bed to-night; let me alone.     I\'ll play the housewife for this once. What, ho!     They are all forth; well, I will walk myself     To County Paris, to prepare him up     Against to-morrow. My heart is wondrous light,     Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim\'d.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene III. Juliet\'s chamber.  Enter Juliet and Nurse.    Jul. Ay, those attires are best; but, gentle nurse,     I pray thee leave me to myself to-night;     For I have need of many orisons     To move the heavens to smile upon my state,     Which, well thou knowest, is cross and full of sin.                            Enter Mother.    Mother. What, are you busy, ho? Need you my help?   Jul. No, madam; we have cull\'d such necessaries     As are behooffull for our state to-morrow.     So please you, let me now be left alone,     And let the nurse this night sit up with you;     For I am sure you have your hands full all     In this so sudden business.   Mother. Good night.     Get thee to bed, and rest; for thou hast need.                                         Exeunt [Mother and Nurse.]   Jul. Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again.     I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins     That almost freezes up the heat of life.     I\'ll call them back again to comfort me.     Nurse!- What should she do here?     My dismal scene I needs must act alone.     Come, vial.     What if this mixture do not work at all?     Shall I be married then to-morrow morning?     No, No! This shall forbid it. Lie thou there.                                              Lays down a dagger.     What if it be a poison which the friar     Subtilly hath minist\'red to have me dead,     Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour\'d     Because he married me before to Romeo?     I fear it is; and yet methinks it should not,     For he hath still been tried a holy man.     I will not entertain so bad a thought.     How if, when I am laid into the tomb,       I wake before the time that Romeo     Come to redeem me? There\'s a fearful point!     Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,     To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,     And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?     Or, if I live, is it not very like     The horrible conceit of death and night,     Together with the terror of the place-     As in a vault, an ancient receptacle     Where for this many hundred years the bones     Of all my buried ancestors are pack\'d;     Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,     Lies fest\'ring in his shroud; where, as they say,     At some hours in the night spirits resort-     Alack, alack, is it not like that I,     So early waking- what with loathsome smells,     And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,     That living mortals, hearing them, run mad-     O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,     Environed with all these hideous fears,       And madly play with my forefathers\' joints,     And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud.,     And, in this rage, with some great kinsman\'s bone     As with a club dash out my desp\'rate brains?     O, look! methinks I see my cousin\'s ghost     Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body     Upon a rapier\'s point. Stay, Tybalt, stay!     Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.          She [drinks and] falls upon her bed within the curtains.     Scene IV. Capulet\'s house.  Enter Lady of the House and Nurse.    Lady. Hold, take these keys and fetch more spices, nurse.   Nurse. They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.                         Enter Old Capulet.    Cap. Come, stir, stir, stir! The second cock hath crow\'d,     The curfew bell hath rung, \'tis three o\'clock.     Look to the bak\'d meats, good Angelica;     Spare not for cost.   Nurse. Go, you cot-quean, go,     Get you to bed! Faith, you\'ll be sick to-morrow     For this night\'s watching.   Cap. No, not a whit. What, I have watch\'d ere now     All night for lesser cause, and ne\'er been sick.   Lady. Ay, you have been a mouse-hunt in your time;     But I will watch you from such watching now.                                           Exeunt Lady and Nurse.     Cap. A jealous hood, a jealous hood!    Enter three or four [Fellows, with spits and logs and baskets.      What is there? Now, fellow,   Fellow. Things for the cook, sir; but I know not what.   Cap. Make haste, make haste. [Exit Fellow.] Sirrah, fetch drier       logs.     Call Peter; he will show thee where they are.   Fellow. I have a head, sir, that will find out logs     And never trouble Peter for the matter.   Cap. Mass, and well said; a merry whoreson, ha!     Thou shalt be loggerhead. [Exit Fellow.] Good faith, \'tis day.     The County will be here with music straight,     For so he said he would.                         Play music.     I hear him near.     Nurse! Wife! What, ho! What, nurse, I say!                                Enter Nurse.       Go waken Juliet; go and trim her up.     I\'ll go and chat with Paris. Hie, make haste,     Make haste! The bridegroom he is come already:     Make haste, I say.                                                        [Exeunt.]     Scene V. Juliet\'s chamber.  [Enter Nurse.]    Nurse. Mistress! what, mistress! Juliet! Fast, I warrant her, she.     Why, lamb! why, lady! Fie, you slug-abed!     Why, love, I say! madam! sweetheart! Why, bride!     What, not a word? You take your pennyworths now!     Sleep for a week; for the next night, I warrant,     The County Paris hath set up his rest     That you shall rest but little. God forgive me!     Marry, and amen. How sound is she asleep!     I needs must wake her. Madam, madam, madam!     Ay, let the County take you in your bed!     He\'ll fright you up, i\' faith. Will it not be?                                      [Draws aside the curtains.]     What, dress\'d, and in your clothes, and down again?     I must needs wake you. Lady! lady! lady!     Alas, alas! Help, help! My lady\'s dead!     O weraday that ever I was born!     Some aqua-vitae, ho! My lord! my lady!                               Enter Mother.    Mother. What noise is here?   Nurse. O lamentable day!   Mother. What is the matter?   Nurse. Look, look! O heavy day!   Mother. O me, O me! My child, my only life!     Revive, look up, or I will die with thee!     Help, help! Call help.                              Enter Father.    Father. For shame, bring Juliet forth; her lord is come.   Nurse. She\'s dead, deceas\'d; she\'s dead! Alack the day!   Mother. Alack the day, she\'s dead, she\'s dead, she\'s dead!   Cap. Ha! let me see her. Out alas! she\'s cold,     Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;     Life and these lips have long been separated.     Death lies on her like an untimely frost       Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.   Nurse. O lamentable day!   Mother. O woful time!   Cap. Death, that hath ta\'en her hence to make me wail,     Ties up my tongue and will not let me speak.    Enter Friar [Laurence] and the County [Paris], with Musicians.    Friar. Come, is the bride ready to go to church?   Cap. Ready to go, but never to return.     O son, the night before thy wedding day     Hath Death lain with thy wife. See, there she lies,     Flower as she was, deflowered by him.     Death is my son-in-law, Death is my heir;     My daughter he hath wedded. I will die     And leave him all. Life, living, all is Death\'s.   Par. Have I thought long to see this morning\'s face,     And doth it give me such a sight as this?   Mother. Accurs\'d, unhappy, wretched, hateful day!     Most miserable hour that e\'er time saw       In lasting labour of his pilgrimage!     But one, poor one, one poor and loving child,     But one thing to rejoice and solace in,     And cruel Death hath catch\'d it from my sight!   Nurse. O woe? O woful, woful, woful day!     Most lamentable day, most woful day     That ever ever I did yet behold!     O day! O day! O day! O hateful day!     Never was seen so black a day as this.     O woful day! O woful day!   Par. Beguil\'d, divorced, wronged, spited, slain!     Most detestable Death, by thee beguil\'d,     By cruel cruel thee quite overthrown!     O love! O life! not life, but love in death   Cap. Despis\'d, distressed, hated, martyr\'d, kill\'d!     Uncomfortable time, why cam\'st thou now     To murther, murther our solemnity?     O child! O child! my soul, and not my child!     Dead art thou, dead! alack, my child is dead,     And with my child my joys are buried!     Friar. Peace, ho, for shame! Confusion\'s cure lives not     In these confusions. Heaven and yourself     Had part in this fair maid! now heaven hath all,     And all the better is it for the maid.     Your part in her you could not keep from death,     But heaven keeps his part in eternal life.     The most you sought was her promotion,     For \'twas your heaven she should be advanc\'d;     And weep ye now, seeing she is advanc\'d     Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?     O, in this love, you love your child so ill     That you run mad, seeing that she is well.     She\'s not well married that lives married long,     But she\'s best married that dies married young.     Dry up your tears and stick your rosemary     On this fair corse, and, as the custom is,     In all her best array bear her to church;     For though fond nature bids us all lament,     Yet nature\'s tears are reason\'s merriment.   Cap. All things that we ordained festival       Turn from their office to black funeral-     Our instruments to melancholy bells,     Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast;     Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change;     Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse;     And all things change them to the contrary.   Friar. Sir, go you in; and, madam, go with him;     And go, Sir Paris. Every one prepare     To follow this fair corse unto her grave.     The heavens do low\'r upon you for some ill;     Move them no more by crossing their high will.                            Exeunt. Manent Musicians [and Nurse].   1. Mus. Faith, we may put up our pipes and be gone.   Nurse. Honest good fellows, ah, put up, put up!     For well you know this is a pitiful case.            [Exit.]   1. Mus. Ay, by my troth, the case may be amended.                           Enter Peter.    Pet. Musicians, O, musicians, \'Heart\'s ease,\' \'Heart\'s ease\'!       O, an you will have me live, play \'Heart\'s ease.\'   1. Mus. Why \'Heart\'s ease\'\',   Pet. O, musicians, because my heart itself plays \'My heart is full     of woe.\' O, play me some merry dump to comfort me.   1. Mus. Not a dump we! \'Tis no time to play now.   Pet. You will not then?   1. Mus. No.   Pet. I will then give it you soundly.   1. Mus. What will you give us?   Pet. No money, on my faith, but the gleek. I will give you the      minstrel.   1. Mus. Then will I give you the serving-creature.   Pet. Then will I lay the serving-creature\'s dagger on your pate.     I will carry no crotchets. I\'ll re you, I\'ll fa you. Do you note     me?   1. Mus. An you re us and fa us, you note us.   2. Mus. Pray you put up your dagger, and put out your wit.   Pet. Then have at you with my wit! I will dry-beat you with an iron     wit, and put up my iron dagger. Answer me like men.               \'When griping grief the heart doth wound,              And doleful dumps the mind oppress,            Then music with her silver sound\'-      Why \'silver sound\'? Why \'music with her silver sound\'?     What say you, Simon Catling?   1. Mus. Marry, sir, because silver hath a sweet sound.   Pet. Pretty! What say You, Hugh Rebeck?   2. Mus. I say \'silver sound\' because musicians sound for silver.   Pet. Pretty too! What say you, James Soundpost?   3. Mus. Faith, I know not what to say.   Pet. O, I cry you mercy! you are the singer. I will say for you. It     is \'music with her silver sound\' because musicians have no gold     for sounding.             \'Then music with her silver sound              With speedy help doth lend redress.\'         [Exit.    1. Mus. What a pestilent knave is this same?   2. Mus. Hang him, Jack! Come, we\'ll in here, tarry for the       mourners, and stay dinner.                                                          Exeunt.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. Scene I. Mantua. A street.  Enter Romeo.    Rom. If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep     My dreams presage some joyful news at hand.     My bosom\'s lord sits lightly in his throne,     And all this day an unaccustom\'d spirit     Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.     I dreamt my lady came and found me dead     (Strange dream that gives a dead man leave to think!)     And breath\'d such life with kisses in my lips     That I reviv\'d and was an emperor.     Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess\'d,     When but love\'s shadows are so rich in joy!                  Enter Romeo\'s Man Balthasar, booted.      News from Verona! How now, Balthasar?     Dost thou not bring me letters from the friar?     How doth my lady? Is my father well?       How fares my Juliet? That I ask again,     For nothing can be ill if she be well.   Man. Then she is well, and nothing can be ill.     Her body sleeps in Capel\'s monument,     And her immortal part with angels lives.     I saw her laid low in her kindred\'s vault     And presently took post to tell it you.     O, pardon me for bringing these ill news,     Since you did leave it for my office, sir.   Rom. Is it e\'en so? Then I defy you, stars!     Thou knowest my lodging. Get me ink and paper     And hire posthorses. I will hence to-night.   Man. I do beseech you, sir, have patience.     Your looks are pale and wild and do import     Some misadventure.   Rom. Tush, thou art deceiv\'d.     Leave me and do the thing I bid thee do.     Hast thou no letters to me from the friar?   Man. No, my good lord.   Rom. No matter. Get thee gone       And hire those horses. I\'ll be with thee straight.                                                Exit [Balthasar].     Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.     Let\'s see for means. O mischief, thou art swift     To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!     I do remember an apothecary,     And hereabouts \'a dwells, which late I noted     In tatt\'red weeds, with overwhelming brows,     Culling of simples. Meagre were his looks,     Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;     And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,     An alligator stuff\'d, and other skins     Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves     A beggarly account of empty boxes,     Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,     Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses     Were thinly scattered, to make up a show.     Noting this penury, to myself I said,     \'An if a man did need a poison now     Whose sale is present death in Mantua,       Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.\'     O, this same thought did but forerun my need,     And this same needy man must sell it me.     As I remember, this should be the house.     Being holiday, the beggar\'s shop is shut. What, ho! apothecary!                          Enter Apothecary.    Apoth. Who calls so loud?   Rom. Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor.     Hold, there is forty ducats. Let me have     A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear     As will disperse itself through all the veins     That the life-weary taker mall fall dead,     And that the trunk may be discharg\'d of breath     As violently as hasty powder fir\'d     Doth hurry from the fatal cannon\'s womb.   Apoth. Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua\'s law     Is death to any he that utters them.   Rom. Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness       And fearest to die? Famine is in thy cheeks,     Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,     Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back:     The world is not thy friend, nor the world\'s law;     The world affords no law to make thee rich;     Then be not poor, but break it and take this.   Apoth. My poverty but not my will consents.   Rom. I pay thy poverty and not thy will.   Apoth. Put this in any liquid thing you will     And drink it off, and if you had the strength     Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.   Rom. There is thy gold- worse poison to men\'s souls,     Doing more murther in this loathsome world,     Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.     I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none.     Farewell. Buy food and get thyself in flesh.     Come, cordial and not poison, go with me     To Juliet\'s grave; for there must I use thee.                                                          Exeunt.     Scene II. Verona. Friar Laurence\'s cell.  Enter Friar John to Friar Laurence.    John. Holy Franciscan friar, brother, ho!                        Enter Friar Laurence.    Laur. This same should be the voice of Friar John.     Welcome from Mantua. What says Romeo?     Or, if his mind be writ, give me his letter.   John. Going to find a barefoot brother out,     One of our order, to associate me     Here in this city visiting the sick,     And finding him, the searchers of the town,     Suspecting that we both were in a house     Where the infectious pestilence did reign,     Seal\'d up the doors, and would not let us forth,     So that my speed to Mantua there was stay\'d.   Laur. Who bare my letter, then, to Romeo?   John. I could not send it- here it is again-       Nor get a messenger to bring it thee,     So fearful were they of infection.   Laur. Unhappy fortune! By my brotherhood,     The letter was not nice, but full of charge,     Of dear import; and the neglecting it     May do much danger. Friar John, go hence,     Get me an iron crow and bring it straight     Unto my cell.   John. Brother, I\'ll go and bring it thee.                 Exit.   Laur. Now, must I to the monument alone.     Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake.     She will beshrew me much that Romeo     Hath had no notice of these accidents;     But I will write again to Mantua,     And keep her at my cell till Romeo come-     Poor living corse, clos\'d in a dead man\'s tomb!        Exit.     Scene III. Verona. A churchyard; in it the monument of the Capulets.  Enter Paris and his Page with flowers and [a torch].    Par. Give me thy torch, boy. Hence, and stand aloof.     Yet put it out, for I would not be seen.     Under yond yew tree lay thee all along,     Holding thine ear close to the hollow ground.     So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread     (Being loose, unfirm, with digging up of graves)     But thou shalt hear it. Whistle then to me,     As signal that thou hear\'st something approach.     Give me those flowers. Do as I bid thee, go.   Page. [aside] I am almost afraid to stand alone     Here in the churchyard; yet I will adventure.     [Retires.]   Par. Sweet flower, with flowers thy bridal bed I strew     (O woe! thy canopy is dust and stones)     Which with sweet water nightly I will dew;     Or, wanting that, with tears distill\'d by moans.     The obsequies that I for thee will keep     Nightly shall be to strew, thy grave and weep.                                                       Whistle Boy.     The boy gives warning something doth approach.     What cursed foot wanders this way to-night     To cross my obsequies and true love\'s rite?     What, with a torch? Muffle me, night, awhile.     [Retires.]         Enter Romeo, and Balthasar with a torch, a mattock,                     and a crow of iron.    Rom. Give me that mattock and the wrenching iron.     Hold, take this letter. Early in the morning     See thou deliver it to my lord and father.     Give me the light. Upon thy life I charge thee,     Whate\'er thou hearest or seest, stand all aloof     And do not interrupt me in my course.     Why I descend into this bed of death     Is partly to behold my lady\'s face,     But chiefly to take thence from her dead finger     A precious ring- a ring that I must use     In dear employment. Therefore hence, be gone.       But if thou, jealous, dost return to pry     In what I farther shall intend to do,     By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint     And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs.     The time and my intents are savage-wild,     More fierce and more inexorable far     Than empty tigers or the roaring sea.   Bal. I will be gone, sir, and not trouble you.   Rom. So shalt thou show me friendship. Take thou that.     Live, and be prosperous; and farewell, good fellow.   Bal. [aside] For all this same, I\'ll hide me hereabout.     His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt.        [Retires.]   Rom. Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death,     Gorg\'d with the dearest morsel of the earth,     Thus I enforce thy rotten jaws to open,     And in despite I\'ll cram thee with more food.                                            Romeo opens the tomb.   Par. This is that banish\'d haughty Montague     That murd\'red my love\'s cousin- with which grief     It is supposed the fair creature died-       And here is come to do some villanous shame     To the dead bodies. I will apprehend him.     Stop thy unhallowed toil, vile Montague!     Can vengeance be pursu\'d further than death?     Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee.     Obey, and go with me; for thou must die.   Rom. I must indeed; and therefore came I hither.     Good gentle youth, tempt not a desp\'rate man.     Fly hence and leave me. Think upon these gone;     Let them affright thee. I beseech thee, youth,     But not another sin upon my head     By urging me to fury. O, be gone!     By heaven, I love thee better than myself,     For I come hither arm\'d against myself.     Stay not, be gone. Live, and hereafter say     A madman\'s mercy bid thee run away.   Par. I do defy thy, conjuration     And apprehend thee for a felon here.   Rom. Wilt thou provoke me? Then have at thee, boy!                                                      They fight.     Page. O Lord, they fight! I will go call the watch.                                             [Exit. Paris falls.]   Par. O, I am slain! If thou be merciful,     Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet.                   [Dies.]   Rom. In faith, I will. Let me peruse this face.     Mercutio\'s kinsman, noble County Paris!     What said my man when my betossed soul     Did not attend him as we rode? I think     He told me Paris should have married Juliet.     Said he not so? or did I dream it so?     Or am I mad, hearing him talk of Juliet     To think it was so? O, give me thy hand,     One writ with me in sour misfortune\'s book!     I\'ll bury thee in a triumphant grave.     A grave? O, no, a lanthorn, slaught\'red youth,     For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes     This vault a feasting presence full of light.     Death, lie thou there, by a dead man interr\'d.                                          [Lays him in the tomb.]     How oft when men are at the point of death       Have they been merry! which their keepers call     A lightning before death. O, how may I     Call this a lightning? O my love! my wife!     Death, that hath suck\'d the honey of thy breath,     Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.     Thou art not conquer\'d. Beauty\'s ensign yet     Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,     And death\'s pale flag is not advanced there.     Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet?     O, what more favour can I do to thee     Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain     To sunder his that was thine enemy?     Forgive me, cousin.\' Ah, dear Juliet,     Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe     That unsubstantial Death is amorous,     And that the lean abhorred monster keeps     Thee here in dark to be his paramour?     For fear of that I still will stay with thee     And never from this palace of dim night     Depart again. Here, here will I remain       With worms that are thy chambermaids. O, here     Will I set up my everlasting rest     And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars     From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!     Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you     The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss     A dateless bargain to engrossing death!     Come, bitter conduct; come, unsavoury guide!     Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on     The dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark!     Here\'s to my love! [Drinks.] O true apothecary!     Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.          Falls.      Enter Friar [Laurence], with lanthorn, crow, and spade.    Friar. Saint Francis be my speed! how oft to-night     Have my old feet stumbled at graves! Who\'s there?   Bal. Here\'s one, a friend, and one that knows you well.   Friar. Bliss be upon you! Tell me, good my friend,     What torch is yond that vainly lends his light       To grubs and eyeless skulls? As I discern,     It burneth in the Capels\' monument.   Bal. It doth so, holy sir; and there\'s my master,     One that you love.   Friar. Who is it?   Bal. Romeo.   Friar. How long hath he been there?   Bal. Full half an hour.   Friar. Go with me to the vault.   Bal. I dare not, sir.     My master knows not but I am gone hence,     And fearfully did menace me with death     If I did stay to look on his intents.   Friar. Stay then; I\'ll go alone. Fear comes upon me.     O, much I fear some ill unthrifty thing.   Bal. As I did sleep under this yew tree here,     I dreamt my master and another fought,     And that my master slew him.   Friar. Romeo!     Alack, alack, what blood is this which stains       The stony entrance of this sepulchre?     What mean these masterless and gory swords     To lie discolour\'d by this place of peace? [Enters the tomb.]     Romeo! O, pale! Who else? What, Paris too?     And steep\'d in blood? Ah, what an unkind hour     Is guilty of this lamentable chance! The lady stirs.                                                    Juliet rises.   Jul. O comfortable friar! where is my lord?     I do remember well where I should be,     And there I am. Where is my Romeo?   Friar. I hear some noise. Lady, come from that nest     Of death, contagion, and unnatural sleep.     A greater power than we can contradict     Hath thwarted our intents. Come, come away.     Thy husband in thy bosom there lies dead;     And Paris too. Come, I\'ll dispose of thee     Among a sisterhood of holy nuns.     Stay not to question, for the watch is coming.     Come, go, good Juliet. I dare no longer stay.   Jul. Go, get thee hence, for I will not away.                                                      Exit [Friar].     What\'s here? A cup, clos\'d in my true love\'s hand?     Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.     O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop     To help me after? I will kiss thy lips.     Haply some poison yet doth hang on them     To make me die with a restorative.             [Kisses him.]     Thy lips are warm!   Chief Watch. [within] Lead, boy. Which way?     Yea, noise? Then I\'ll be brief. O happy dagger!                                       [Snatches Romeo\'s dagger.]     This is thy sheath; there rest, and let me die.                   She stabs herself and falls [on Romeo\'s body].                  Enter [Paris\'s] Boy and Watch.    Boy. This is the place. There, where the torch doth burn.   Chief Watch. \'the ground is bloody. Search about the churchyard.     Go, some of you; whoe\'er you find attach.                                      [Exeunt some of the Watch.]       Pitiful sight! here lies the County slain;     And Juliet bleeding, warm, and newly dead,     Who here hath lain this two days buried.     Go, tell the Prince; run to the Capulets;     Raise up the Montagues; some others search.                                    [Exeunt others of the Watch.]     We see the ground whereon these woes do lie,     But the true ground of all these piteous woes     We cannot without circumstance descry.       Enter [some of the Watch,] with Romeo\'s Man [Balthasar].    2. Watch. Here\'s Romeo\'s man. We found him in the churchyard.   Chief Watch. Hold him in safety till the Prince come hither.            Enter Friar [Laurence] and another Watchman.    3. Watch. Here is a friar that trembles, sighs, and weeps.     We took this mattock and this spade from him     As he was coming from this churchyard side.     Chief Watch. A great suspicion! Stay the friar too.                Enter the Prince [and Attendants].    Prince. What misadventure is so early up,     That calls our person from our morning rest?              Enter Capulet and his Wife [with others].    Cap. What should it be, that they so shriek abroad?   Wife. The people in the street cry \'Romeo,\'     Some \'Juliet,\' and some \'Paris\'; and all run,     With open outcry, toward our monument.   Prince. What fear is this which startles in our ears?   Chief Watch. Sovereign, here lies the County Paris slain;     And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before,     Warm and new kill\'d.   Prince. Search, seek, and know how this foul murder comes.   Chief Watch. Here is a friar, and slaughter\'d Romeo\'s man,     With instruments upon them fit to open       These dead men\'s tombs.   Cap. O heavens! O wife, look how our daughter bleeds!     This dagger hath mista\'en, for, lo, his house     Is empty on the back of Montague,     And it missheathed in my daughter\'s bosom!   Wife. O me! this sight of death is as a bell     That warns my old age to a sepulchre.                 Enter Montague [and others].    Prince. Come, Montague; for thou art early up     To see thy son and heir more early down.   Mon. Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night!     Grief of my son\'s exile hath stopp\'d her breath.     What further woe conspires against mine age?   Prince. Look, and thou shalt see.   Mon. O thou untaught! what manners is in this,     To press before thy father to a grave?   Prince. Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while,     Till we can clear these ambiguities       And know their spring, their head, their true descent;     And then will I be general of your woes     And lead you even to death. Meantime forbear,     And let mischance be slave to patience.     Bring forth the parties of suspicion.   Friar. I am the greatest, able to do least,     Yet most suspected, as the time and place     Doth make against me, of this direful murther;     And here I stand, both to impeach and purge     Myself condemned and myself excus\'d.   Prince. Then say it once what thou dost know in this.   Friar. I will be brief, for my short date of breath     Is not so long as is a tedious tale.     Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet;     And she, there dead, that Romeo\'s faithful wife.     I married them; and their stol\'n marriage day     Was Tybalt\'s doomsday, whose untimely death     Banish\'d the new-made bridegroom from this city;     For whom, and not for Tybalt, Juliet pin\'d.     You, to remove that siege of grief from her,       Betroth\'d and would have married her perforce     To County Paris. Then comes she to me     And with wild looks bid me devise some mean     To rid her from this second marriage,     Or in my cell there would she kill herself.     Then gave I her (so tutored by my art)     A sleeping potion; which so took effect     As I intended, for it wrought on her     The form of death. Meantime I writ to Romeo     That he should hither come as this dire night     To help to take her from her borrowed grave,     Being the time the potion\'s force should cease.     But he which bore my letter, Friar John,     Was stay\'d by accident, and yesternight     Return\'d my letter back. Then all alone     At the prefixed hour of her waking     Came I to take her from her kindred\'s vault;     Meaning to keep her closely at my cell     Till I conveniently could send to Romeo.     But when I came, some minute ere the time       Of her awaking, here untimely lay     The noble Paris and true Romeo dead.     She wakes; and I entreated her come forth     And bear this work of heaven with patience;     But then a noise did scare me from the tomb,     And she, too desperate, would not go with me,     But, as it seems, did violence on herself.     All this I know, and to the marriage     Her nurse is privy; and if aught in this     Miscarried by my fault, let my old life     Be sacrific\'d, some hour before his time,     Unto the rigour of severest law.   Prince. We still have known thee for a holy man.     Where\'s Romeo\'s man? What can he say in this?   Bal. I brought my master news of Juliet\'s death;     And then in post he came from Mantua     To this same place, to this same monument.     This letter he early bid me give his father,     And threat\'ned me with death, going in the vault,     If I departed not and left him there.     Prince. Give me the letter. I will look on it.     Where is the County\'s page that rais\'d the watch?     Sirrah, what made your master in this place?   Boy. He came with flowers to strew his lady\'s grave;     And bid me stand aloof, and so I did.     Anon comes one with light to ope the tomb;     And by-and-by my master drew on him;     And then I ran away to call the watch.   Prince. This letter doth make good the friar\'s words,     Their course of love, the tidings of her death;     And here he writes that he did buy a poison     Of a poor pothecary, and therewithal     Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.     Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montage,     See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,     That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!     And I, for winking at you, discords too,     Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punish\'d.   Cap. O brother Montague, give me thy hand.     This is my daughter\'s jointure, for no more       Can I demand.   Mon. But I can give thee more;     For I will raise her Statue in pure gold,     That whiles Verona by that name is known,     There shall no figure at such rate be set     As that of true and faithful Juliet.   Cap. As rich shall Romeo\'s by his lady\'s lie-     Poor sacrifices of our enmity!   Prince. A glooming peace this morning with it brings.     The sun for sorrow will not show his head.     Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;     Some shall be pardon\'d, and some punished;     For never was a story of more woe     Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.                                                    Exeunt omnes.  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>  1594      THE TAMING OF THE SHREW  by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae      Persons in the Induction   A LORD   CHRISTOPHER SLY, a tinker   HOSTESS   PAGE   PLAYERS   HUNTSMEN   SERVANTS    BAPTISTA MINOLA, a gentleman of Padua   VINCENTIO, a Merchant of Pisa   LUCENTIO, son to Vincentio, in love with Bianca   PETRUCHIO, a gentleman of Verona, a suitor to Katherina      Suitors to Bianca   GREMIO   HORTENSIO      Servants to Lucentio   TRANIO     BIONDELLO      Servants to Petruchio   GRUMIO   CURTIS    A PEDANT      Daughters to Baptista   KATHERINA, the shrew   BIANCA    A WIDOW    Tailor, Haberdasher, and Servants attending on Baptista and     Petruchio                               SCENE:             Padua, and PETRUCHIO\'S house in the country  SC_1                       INDUCTION. SCENE I.                   Before an alehouse on a heath                        Enter HOSTESS and SLY    SLY. I\'ll pheeze you, in faith.   HOSTESS. A pair of stocks, you rogue!   SLY. Y\'are a baggage; the Slys are no rogues. Look in the     chronicles: we came in with Richard Conqueror. Therefore, paucas     pallabris; let the world slide. Sessa!   HOSTESS. You will not pay for the glasses you have burst?   SLY. No, not a denier. Go by, Saint Jeronimy, go to thy cold bed     and warm thee.   HOSTESS. I know my remedy; I must go fetch the third-borough.  Exit   SLY. Third, or fourth, or fifth borough, I\'ll answer him by law.     I\'ll not budge an inch, boy; let him come, and kindly.                                                   [Falls asleep]         Wind horns. Enter a LORD from bunting, with his train    LORD. Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds;       Brach Merriman, the poor cur, is emboss\'d;     And couple Clowder with the deep-mouth\'d brach.     Saw\'st thou not, boy, how Silver made it good     At the hedge corner, in the coldest fault?     I would not lose the dog for twenty pound.   FIRST HUNTSMAN. Why, Belman is as good as he, my lord;     He cried upon it at the merest loss,     And twice to-day pick\'d out the dullest scent;     Trust me, I take him for the better dog.   LORD. Thou art a fool; if Echo were as fleet,     I would esteem him worth a dozen such.     But sup them well, and look unto them all;     To-morrow I intend to hunt again.   FIRST HUNTSMAN. I will, my lord.   LORD. What\'s here? One dead, or drunk?     See, doth he breathe?   SECOND HUNTSMAN. He breathes, my lord. Were he not warm\'d with ale,     This were a bed but cold to sleep so soundly.   LORD. O monstrous beast, how like a swine he lies!     Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!       Sirs, I will practise on this drunken man.     What think you, if he were convey\'d to bed,     Wrapp\'d in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers,     A most delicious banquet by his bed,     And brave attendants near him when he wakes,     Would not the beggar then forget himself?   FIRST HUNTSMAN. Believe me, lord, I think he cannot choose.   SECOND HUNTSMAN. It would seem strange unto him when he wak\'d.   LORD. Even as a flatt\'ring dream or worthless fancy.     Then take him up, and manage well the jest:     Carry him gently to my fairest chamber,     And hang it round with all my wanton pictures;     Balm his foul head in warm distilled waters,     And burn sweet wood to make the lodging sweet;     Procure me music ready when he wakes,     To make a dulcet and a heavenly sound;     And if he chance to speak, be ready straight,     And with a low submissive reverence     Say \'What is it your honour will command?\'     Let one attend him with a silver basin       Full of rose-water and bestrew\'d with flowers;     Another bear the ewer, the third a diaper,     And say \'Will\'t please your lordship cool your hands?\'     Some one be ready with a costly suit,     And ask him what apparel he will wear;     Another tell him of his hounds and horse,     And that his lady mourns at his disease;     Persuade him that he hath been lunatic,     And, when he says he is, say that he dreams,     For he is nothing but a mighty lord.     This do, and do it kindly, gentle sirs;     It will be pastime passing excellent,     If it be husbanded with modesty.   FIRST HUNTSMAN. My lord, I warrant you we will play our part     As he shall think by our true diligence     He is no less than what we say he is.   LORD. Take him up gently, and to bed with him;     And each one to his office when he wakes.                           [SLY is carried out. A trumpet sounds]     Sirrah, go see what trumpet \'tis that sounds-                                                       Exit SERVANT     Belike some noble gentleman that means,     Travelling some journey, to repose him here.                           Re-enter a SERVINGMAN      How now! who is it?   SERVANT. An\'t please your honour, players     That offer service to your lordship.   LORD. Bid them come near.                               Enter PLAYERS      Now, fellows, you are welcome.   PLAYERS. We thank your honour.   LORD. Do you intend to stay with me to-night?   PLAYER. So please your lordship to accept our duty.   LORD. With all my heart. This fellow I remember     Since once he play\'d a farmer\'s eldest son;     \'Twas where you woo\'d the gentlewoman so well.       I have forgot your name; but, sure, that part     Was aptly fitted and naturally perform\'d.   PLAYER. I think \'twas Soto that your honour means.   LORD. \'Tis very true; thou didst it excellent.     Well, you are come to me in happy time,     The rather for I have some sport in hand     Wherein your cunning can assist me much.     There is a lord will hear you play to-night;     But I am doubtful of your modesties,     Lest, over-eying of his odd behaviour,     For yet his honour never heard a play,     You break into some merry passion     And so offend him; for I tell you, sirs,     If you should smile, he grows impatient.   PLAYER. Fear not, my lord; we can contain ourselves,     Were he the veriest antic in the world.   LORD. Go, sirrah, take them to the buttery,     And give them friendly welcome every one;     Let them want nothing that my house affords.                                        Exit one with the PLAYERS       Sirrah, go you to Bartholomew my page,     And see him dress\'d in all suits like a lady;     That done, conduct him to the drunkard\'s chamber,     And call him \'madam,\' do him obeisance.     Tell him from me- as he will win my love-     He bear himself with honourable action,     Such as he hath observ\'d in noble ladies     Unto their lords, by them accomplished;     Such duty to the drunkard let him do,     With soft low tongue and lowly courtesy,     And say \'What is\'t your honour will command,     Wherein your lady and your humble wife     May show her duty and make known her love?\'     And then with kind embracements, tempting kisses,     And with declining head into his bosom,     Bid him shed tears, as being overjoyed     To see her noble lord restor\'d to health,     Who for this seven years hath esteemed him     No better than a poor and loathsome beggar.     And if the boy have not a woman\'s gift       To rain a shower of commanded tears,     An onion will do well for such a shift,     Which, in a napkin being close convey\'d,     Shall in despite enforce a watery eye.     See this dispatch\'d with all the haste thou canst;     Anon I\'ll give thee more instructions.     Exit a SERVINGMAN     I know the boy will well usurp the grace,     Voice, gait, and action, of a gentlewoman;     I long to hear him call the drunkard \'husband\';     And how my men will stay themselves from laughter     When they do homage to this simple peasant.     I\'ll in to counsel them; haply my presence     May well abate the over-merry spleen,     Which otherwise would grow into extremes.             Exeunt  SC_2                             SCENE II.                A bedchamber in the LORD\'S house      Enter aloft SLY, with ATTENDANTS; some with apparel, basin              and ewer, and other appurtenances; and LORD    SLY. For God\'s sake, a pot of small ale.   FIRST SERVANT. Will\'t please your lordship drink a cup of sack?   SECOND SERVANT. Will\'t please your honour taste of these conserves?   THIRD SERVANT. What raiment will your honour wear to-day?   SLY. I am Christophero Sly; call not me \'honour\' nor \'lordship.\' I     ne\'er drank sack in my life; and if you give me any conserves,     give me conserves of beef. Ne\'er ask me what raiment I\'ll wear,     for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than     legs, nor no more shoes than feet- nay, sometime more feet than     shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the overleather.   LORD. Heaven cease this idle humour in your honour!     O, that a mighty man of such descent,     Of such possessions, and so high esteem,     Should be infused with so foul a spirit!   SLY. What, would you make me mad? Am not I Christopher Sly, old     Sly\'s son of Burton Heath; by birth a pedlar, by education a       cardmaker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present     profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of     Wincot, if she know me not; if she say I am not fourteen pence on     the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying\'st knave in     Christendom. What! I am not bestraught.  [Taking a pot of ale]     Here\'s-   THIRD SERVANT. O, this it is that makes your lady mourn!   SECOND SERVANT. O, this is it that makes your servants droop!   LORD. Hence comes it that your kindred shuns your house,     As beaten hence by your strange lunacy.     O noble lord, bethink thee of thy birth!     Call home thy ancient thoughts from banishment,     And banish hence these abject lowly dreams.     Look how thy servants do attend on thee,     Each in his office ready at thy beck.     Wilt thou have music? Hark! Apollo plays,            [Music]     And twenty caged nightingales do sing.     Or wilt thou sleep? We\'ll have thee to a couch     Softer and sweeter than the lustful bed     On purpose trimm\'d up for Semiramis.       Say thou wilt walk: we will bestrew the ground.     Or wilt thou ride? Thy horses shall be trapp\'d,     Their harness studded all with gold and pearl.     Dost thou love hawking? Thou hast hawks will soar     Above the morning lark. Or wilt thou hunt?     Thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them     And fetch shall echoes from the hollow earth.   FIRST SERVANT. Say thou wilt course; thy greyhounds are as swift     As breathed stags; ay, fleeter than the roe.   SECOND SERVANT. Dost thou love pictures? We will fetch thee       straight     Adonis painted by a running brook,     And Cytherea all in sedges hid,     Which seem to move and wanton with her breath     Even as the waving sedges play wi\' th\' wind.   LORD. We\'ll show thee lo as she was a maid     And how she was beguiled and surpris\'d,     As lively painted as the deed was done.   THIRD SERVANT. Or Daphne roaming through a thorny wood,     Scratching her legs, that one shall swear she bleeds       And at that sight shall sad Apollo weep,     So workmanly the blood and tears are drawn.   LORD. Thou art a lord, and nothing but a lord.     Thou hast a lady far more beautiful     Than any woman in this waning age.   FIRST SERVANT. And, till the tears that she hath shed for thee     Like envious floods o\'er-run her lovely face,     She was the fairest creature in the world;     And yet she is inferior to none.   SLY. Am I a lord and have I such a lady?     Or do I dream? Or have I dream\'d till now?     I do not sleep: I see, I hear, I speak;     I smell sweet savours, and I feel soft things.     Upon my life, I am a lord indeed,     And not a tinker, nor Christopher Sly.     Well, bring our lady hither to our sight;     And once again, a pot o\' th\' smallest ale.   SECOND SERVANT. Will\'t please your Mightiness to wash your hands?     O, how we joy to see your wit restor\'d!     O, that once more you knew but what you are!       These fifteen years you have been in a dream;     Or, when you wak\'d, so wak\'d as if you slept.   SLY. These fifteen years! by my fay, a goodly nap.     But did I never speak of all that time?   FIRST SERVANT. O, yes, my lord, but very idle words;     For though you lay here in this goodly chamber,     Yet would you say ye were beaten out of door;     And rail upon the hostess of the house,     And say you would present her at the leet,     Because she brought stone jugs and no seal\'d quarts.     Sometimes you would call out for Cicely Hacket.   SLY. Ay, the woman\'s maid of the house.   THIRD SERVANT. Why, sir, you know no house nor no such maid,     Nor no such men as you have reckon\'d up,     As Stephen Sly, and old John Naps of Greece,     And Peter Turph, and Henry Pimpernell;     And twenty more such names and men as these,     Which never were, nor no man ever saw.   SLY. Now, Lord be thanked for my good amends!   ALL. Amen.               Enter the PAGE as a lady, with ATTENDANTS    SLY. I thank thee; thou shalt not lose by it.   PAGE. How fares my noble lord?   SLY. Marry, I fare well; for here is cheer enough.     Where is my wife?   PAGE. Here, noble lord; what is thy will with her?   SLY. Are you my wife, and will not call me husband?     My men should call me \'lord\'; I am your goodman.   PAGE. My husband and my lord, my lord and husband;     I am your wife in all obedience.   SLY. I know it well. What must I call her?   LORD. Madam.   SLY. Al\'ce madam, or Joan madam?   LORD. Madam, and nothing else; so lords call ladies.   SLY. Madam wife, they say that I have dream\'d     And slept above some fifteen year or more.   PAGE. Ay, and the time seems thirty unto me,     Being all this time abandon\'d from your bed.     SLY. \'Tis much. Servants, leave me and her alone.                                                  Exeunt SERVANTS     Madam, undress you, and come now to bed.   PAGE. Thrice noble lord, let me entreat of you     To pardon me yet for a night or two;     Or, if not so, until the sun be set.     For your physicians have expressly charg\'d,     In peril to incur your former malady,     That I should yet absent me from your bed.     I hope this reason stands for my excuse.   SLY. Ay, it stands so that I may hardly tarry so long. But I would     be loath to fall into my dreams again. I will therefore tarry in     despite of the flesh and the blood.                         Enter a MESSENGER    MESSENGER. Your honour\'s players, hearing your amendment,     Are come to play a pleasant comedy;     For so your doctors hold it very meet,     Seeing too much sadness hath congeal\'d your blood,       And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy.     Therefore they thought it good you hear a play     And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,     Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.   SLY. Marry, I will; let them play it. Is not a comonty a     Christmas gambold or a tumbling-trick?   PAGE. No, my good lord, it is more pleasing stuff.   SLY. What, household stuff?   PAGE. It is a kind of history.   SLY. Well, we\'ll see\'t. Come, madam wife, sit by my side and let     the world slip;-we shall ne\'er be younger.                                                  [They sit down]            A flourish of trumpets announces the play     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT I. SCENE I. Padua. A public place  Enter LUCENTIO and his man TRANIO    LUCENTIO. Tranio, since for the great desire I had     To see fair Padua, nursery of arts,     I am arriv\'d for fruitful Lombardy,     The pleasant garden of great Italy,     And by my father\'s love and leave am arm\'d     With his good will and thy good company,     My trusty servant well approv\'d in all,     Here let us breathe, and haply institute     A course of learning and ingenious studies.     Pisa, renowned for grave citizens,     Gave me my being and my father first,     A merchant of great traffic through the world,     Vincentio, come of the Bentivolii;     Vincentio\'s son, brought up in Florence,     It shall become to serve all hopes conceiv\'d,     To deck his fortune with his virtuous deeds.     And therefore, Tranio, for the time I study,       Virtue and that part of philosophy     Will I apply that treats of happiness     By virtue specially to be achiev\'d.     Tell me thy mind; for I have Pisa left     And am to Padua come as he that leaves     A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep,     And with satiety seeks to quench his thirst.   TRANIO. Mi perdonato, gentle master mine;     I am in all affected as yourself;     Glad that you thus continue your resolve     To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy.     Only, good master, while we do admire     This virtue and this moral discipline,     Let\'s be no Stoics nor no stocks, I pray,     Or so devote to Aristotle\'s checks     As Ovid be an outcast quite abjur\'d.     Balk logic with acquaintance that you have,     And practise rhetoric in your common talk;     Music and poesy use to quicken you;     The mathematics and the metaphysics,       Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you.     No profit grows where is no pleasure ta\'en;     In brief, sir, study what you most affect.   LUCENTIO. Gramercies, Tranio, well dost thou advise.     If, Biondello, thou wert come ashore,     We could at once put us in readiness,     And take a lodging fit to entertain     Such friends as time in Padua shall beget.        Enter BAPTISTA with his two daughters, KATHERINA         and BIANCA; GREMIO, a pantaloon; HORTENSIO,         suitor to BIANCA. LUCENTIO and TRANIO stand by      But stay awhile; what company is this?   TRANIO. Master, some show to welcome us to town.   BAPTISTA. Gentlemen, importune me no farther,     For how I firmly am resolv\'d you know;     That is, not to bestow my youngest daughter     Before I have a husband for the elder.     If either of you both love Katherina,       Because I know you well and love you well,     Leave shall you have to court her at your pleasure.   GREMIO. To cart her rather. She\'s too rough for me.     There, there, Hortensio, will you any wife?   KATHERINA.  [To BAPTISTA]  I pray you, sir, is it your will     To make a stale of me amongst these mates?   HORTENSIO. Mates, maid! How mean you that? No mates for you,     Unless you were of gentler, milder mould.   KATHERINA. I\' faith, sir, you shall never need to fear;     Iwis it is not halfway to her heart;     But if it were, doubt not her care should be     To comb your noddle with a three-legg\'d stool,     And paint your face, and use you like a fool.   HORTENSIO. From all such devils, good Lord deliver us!   GREMIO. And me, too, good Lord!   TRANIO. Husht, master! Here\'s some good pastime toward;     That wench is stark mad or wonderful froward.   LUCENTIO. But in the other\'s silence do I see     Maid\'s mild behaviour and sobriety.     Peace, Tranio!     TRANIO. Well said, master; mum! and gaze your fill.   BAPTISTA. Gentlemen, that I may soon make good     What I have said- Bianca, get you in;     And let it not displease thee, good Bianca,     For I will love thee ne\'er the less, my girl.   KATHERINA. A pretty peat! it is best     Put finger in the eye, an she knew why.   BIANCA. Sister, content you in my discontent.     Sir, to your pleasure humbly I subscribe;     My books and instruments shall be my company,     On them to look, and practise by myself.   LUCENTIO. Hark, Tranio, thou mayst hear Minerva speak!   HORTENSIO. Signior Baptista, will you be so strange?     Sorry am I that our good will effects     Bianca\'s grief.   GREMIO. Why will you mew her up,     Signior Baptista, for this fiend of hell,     And make her bear the penance of her tongue?   BAPTISTA. Gentlemen, content ye; I am resolv\'d.     Go in, Bianca.                                   Exit BIANCA       And for I know she taketh most delight     In music, instruments, and poetry,     Schoolmasters will I keep within my house     Fit to instruct her youth. If you, Hortensio,     Or, Signior Gremio, you, know any such,     Prefer them hither; for to cunning men     I will be very kind, and liberal     To mine own children in good bringing-up;     And so, farewell. Katherina, you may stay;     For I have more to commune with Bianca.                 Exit   KATHERINA. Why, and I trust I may go too, may I not?     What! shall I be appointed hours, as though, belike,     I knew not what to take and what to leave? Ha!          Exit   GREMIO. You may go to the devil\'s dam; your gifts are so good     here\'s none will hold you. There! Love is not so great,     Hortensio, but we may blow our nails together, and fast it fairly     out; our cake\'s dough on both sides. Farewell; yet, for the love     I bear my sweet Bianca, if I can by any means light on a fit man     to teach her that wherein she delights, I will wish him to her     father.     HORTENSIO. SO Will I, Signior Gremio; but a word, I pray. Though     the nature of our quarrel yet never brook\'d parle, know now, upon     advice, it toucheth us both- that we may yet again have access to     our fair mistress, and be happy rivals in Bianca\'s love- to     labour and effect one thing specially.   GREMIO. What\'s that, I pray?   HORTENSIO. Marry, sir, to get a husband for her sister.   GREMIO. A husband? a devil.   HORTENSIO. I say a husband.   GREMIO. I say a devil. Think\'st thou, Hortensio, though her father     be very rich, any man is so very a fool to be married to hell?   HORTENSIO. Tush, Gremio! Though it pass your patience and mine to     endure her loud alarums, why, man, there be good fellows in the     world, an a man could light on them, would take her with all     faults, and money enough.   GREMIO. I cannot tell; but I had as lief take her dowry with this     condition: to be whipp\'d at the high cross every morning.   HORTENSIO. Faith, as you say, there\'s small choice in rotten     apples. But, come; since this bar in law makes us friends, it     shall be so far forth friendly maintain\'d till by helping       Baptista\'s eldest daughter to a husband we set his youngest free     for a husband, and then have to\'t afresh. Sweet Bianca! Happy man     be his dole! He that runs fastest gets the ring. How say you,     Signior Gremio?   GREMIO. I am agreed; and would I had given him the best horse in     Padua to begin his wooing that would thoroughly woo her, wed her,     and bed her, and rid the house of her! Come on.                                      Exeunt GREMIO and HORTENSIO   TRANIO. I pray, sir, tell me, is it possible     That love should of a sudden take such hold?   LUCENTIO. O Tranio, till I found it to be true,     I never thought it possible or likely.     But see! while idly I stood looking on,     I found the effect of love in idleness;     And now in plainness do confess to thee,     That art to me as secret and as dear     As Anna to the Queen of Carthage was-     Tranio, I burn, I pine, I perish, Tranio,     If I achieve not this young modest girl.     Counsel me, Tranio, for I know thou canst;       Assist me, Tranio, for I know thou wilt.   TRANIO. Master, it is no time to chide you now;     Affection is not rated from the heart;     If love have touch\'d you, nought remains but so:     \'Redime te captum quam queas minimo.\'   LUCENTIO. Gramercies, lad. Go forward; this contents;     The rest will comfort, for thy counsel\'s sound.   TRANIO. Master, you look\'d so longly on the maid.     Perhaps you mark\'d not what\'s the pith of all.   LUCENTIO. O, yes, I saw sweet beauty in her face,     Such as the daughter of Agenor had,     That made great Jove to humble him to her hand,     When with his knees he kiss\'d the Cretan strand.   TRANIO. Saw you no more? Mark\'d you not how her sister     Began to scold and raise up such a storm     That mortal ears might hardly endure the din?   LUCENTIO. Tranio, I saw her coral lips to move,     And with her breath she did perfume the air;     Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her.   TRANIO. Nay, then \'tis time to stir him from his trance.       I pray, awake, sir. If you love the maid,     Bend thoughts and wits to achieve her. Thus it stands:     Her elder sister is so curst and shrewd     That, till the father rid his hands of her,     Master, your love must live a maid at home;     And therefore has he closely mew\'d her up,     Because she will not be annoy\'d with suitors.   LUCENTIO. Ah, Tranio, what a cruel father\'s he!     But art thou not advis\'d he took some care     To get her cunning schoolmasters to instruct her?   TRANIO. Ay, marry, am I, sir, and now \'tis plotted.   LUCENTIO. I have it, Tranio.   TRANIO. Master, for my hand,     Both our inventions meet and jump in one.   LUCENTIO. Tell me thine first.   TRANIO. You will be schoolmaster,     And undertake the teaching of the maid-     That\'s your device.   LUCENTIO. It is. May it be done?   TRANIO. Not possible; for who shall bear your part       And be in Padua here Vincentio\'s son;     Keep house and ply his book, welcome his friends,     Visit his countrymen, and banquet them?   LUCENTIO. Basta, content thee, for I have it full.     We have not yet been seen in any house,     Nor can we be distinguish\'d by our faces     For man or master. Then it follows thus:     Thou shalt be master, Tranio, in my stead,     Keep house and port and servants, as I should;     I will some other be- some Florentine,     Some Neapolitan, or meaner man of Pisa.     \'Tis hatch\'d, and shall be so. Tranio, at once     Uncase thee; take my colour\'d hat and cloak.     When Biondello comes, he waits on thee;     But I will charm him first to keep his tongue.   TRANIO. So had you need.                [They exchange habits]     In brief, sir, sith it your pleasure is,     And I am tied to be obedient-     For so your father charg\'d me at our parting:     \'Be serviceable to my son\' quoth he,       Although I think \'twas in another sense-     I am content to be Lucentio,     Because so well I love Lucentio.   LUCENTIO. Tranio, be so because Lucentio loves;     And let me be a slave t\' achieve that maid     Whose sudden sight hath thrall\'d my wounded eye.                         Enter BIONDELLO.      Here comes the rogue. Sirrah, where have you been?   BIONDELLO. Where have I been! Nay, how now! where are you?     Master, has my fellow Tranio stol\'n your clothes?     Or you stol\'n his? or both? Pray, what\'s the news?   LUCENTIO. Sirrah, come hither; \'tis no time to jest,     And therefore frame your manners to the time.     Your fellow Tranio here, to save my life,     Puts my apparel and my count\'nance on,     And I for my escape have put on his;     For in a quarrel since I came ashore     I kill\'d a man, and fear I was descried.       Wait you on him, I charge you, as becomes,     While I make way from hence to save my life.     You understand me?   BIONDELLO. I, sir? Ne\'er a whit.   LUCENTIO. And not a jot of Tranio in your mouth:     Tranio is chang\'d into Lucentio.   BIONDELLO. The better for him; would I were so too!   TRANIO. So could I, faith, boy, to have the next wish after,     That Lucentio indeed had Baptista\'s youngest daughter.     But, sirrah, not for my sake but your master\'s, I advise     You use your manners discreetly in all kind of companies.     When I am alone, why, then I am Tranio;     But in all places else your master Lucentio.   LUCENTIO. Tranio, let\'s go.     One thing more rests, that thyself execute-     To make one among these wooers. If thou ask me why-     Sufficeth, my reasons are both good and weighty.      Exeunt                   The Presenters above speak      FIRST SERVANT. My lord, you nod; you do not mind the play.   SLY. Yes, by Saint Anne do I. A good matter, surely; comes there     any more of it?   PAGE. My lord, \'tis but begun.   SLY. \'Tis a very excellent piece of work, madam lady     Would \'twere done!                        [They sit and mark]     SCENE II. Padua. Before HORTENSIO\'S house  Enter PETRUCHIO and his man GRUMIO    PETRUCHIO. Verona, for a while I take my leave,     To see my friends in Padua; but of all     My best beloved and approved friend,     Hortensio; and I trow this is his house.     Here, sirrah Grumio, knock, I say.  GRUMIO. Knock, sir! Whom should I knock?     Is there any man has rebus\'d your worship?   PETRUCHIO. Villain, I say, knock me here soundly.   GRUMIO. Knock you here, sir? Why, sir, what am I, sir, that I     should knock you here, sir?   PETRUCHIO. Villain, I say, knock me at this gate,     And rap me well, or I\'ll knock your knave\'s pate.   GRUMIO. My master is grown quarrelsome. I should knock you first,     And then I know after who comes by the worst.   PETRUCHIO. Will it not be?     Faith, sirrah, an you\'ll not knock I\'ll ring it;     I\'ll try how you can sol-fa, and sing it.                                      [He wrings him by the ears]     GRUMIO. Help, masters, help! My master is mad.   PETRUCHIO. Now knock when I bid you, sirrah villain!                          Enter HORTENSIO    HORTENSIO. How now! what\'s the matter? My old friend Grumio and my     good friend Petruchio! How do you all at Verona?   PETRUCHIO. Signior Hortensio, come you to part the fray?     \'Con tutto il cuore ben trovato\' may I say.   HORTENSIO. Alla nostra casa ben venuto,     Molto honorato signor mio Petruchio.     Rise, Grumio, rise; we will compound this quarrel.   GRUMIO. Nay, \'tis no matter, sir, what he \'leges in Latin. If this     be not a lawful cause for me to leave his service- look you, sir:     he bid me knock him and rap him soundly, sir. Well, was it fit     for a servant to use his master so; being, perhaps, for aught I     see, two and thirty, a pip out?     Whom would to God I had well knock\'d at first,     Then had not Grumio come by the worst.   PETRUCHIO. A senseless villain! Good Hortensio,       I bade the rascal knock upon your gate,     And could not get him for my heart to do it.   GRUMIO. Knock at the gate? O heavens! Spake you not these words     plain: \'Sirrah knock me here, rap me here, knock me well, and     knock me soundly\'? And come you now with \'knocking at the gate\'?   PETRUCHIO. Sirrah, be gone, or talk not, I advise you.   HORTENSIO. Petruchio, patience; I am Grumio\'s pledge;     Why, this\'s a heavy chance \'twixt him and you,     Your ancient, trusty, pleasant servant Grumio.     And tell me now, sweet friend, what happy gale     Blows you to Padua here from old Verona?   PETRUCHIO. Such wind as scatters young men through the world     To seek their fortunes farther than at home,     Where small experience grows. But in a few,     Signior Hortensio, thus it stands with me:     Antonio, my father, is deceas\'d,     And I have thrust myself into this maze,     Haply to wive and thrive as best I may;     Crowns in my purse I have, and goods at home,     And so am come abroad to see the world.     HORTENSIO. Petruchio, shall I then come roundly to thee     And wish thee to a shrewd ill-favour\'d wife?     Thou\'dst thank me but a little for my counsel,     And yet I\'ll promise thee she shall be rich,     And very rich; but th\'art too much my friend,     And I\'ll not wish thee to her.   PETRUCHIO. Signior Hortensio, \'twixt such friends as we     Few words suffice; and therefore, if thou know     One rich enough to be Petruchio\'s wife,     As wealth is burden of my wooing dance,     Be she as foul as was Florentius\' love,     As old as Sibyl, and as curst and shrewd     As Socrates\' Xanthippe or a worse-     She moves me not, or not removes, at least,     Affection\'s edge in me, were she as rough     As are the swelling Adriatic seas.     I come to wive it wealthily in Padua;     If wealthily, then happily in Padua.   GRUMIO. Nay, look you, sir, he tells you flatly what his mind is.     Why, give him gold enough and marry him to a puppet or an       aglet-baby, or an old trot with ne\'er a tooth in her head, though     she has as many diseases as two and fifty horses. Why, nothing     comes amiss, so money comes withal.   HORTENSIO. Petruchio, since we are stepp\'d thus far in,     I will continue that I broach\'d in jest.     I can, Petruchio, help thee to a wife     With wealth enough, and young and beauteous;     Brought up as best becomes a gentlewoman;     Her only fault, and that is faults enough,     Is- that she is intolerable curst,     And shrewd and froward so beyond all measure     That, were my state far worser than it is,     I would not wed her for a mine of gold.   PETRUCHIO. Hortensio, peace! thou know\'st not gold\'s effect.     Tell me her father\'s name, and \'tis enough;     For I will board her though she chide as loud     As thunder when the clouds in autumn crack.   HORTENSIO. Her father is Baptista Minola,     An affable and courteous gentleman;     Her name is Katherina Minola,       Renown\'d in Padua for her scolding tongue.   PETRUCHIO. I know her father, though I know not her;     And he knew my deceased father well.     I will not sleep, Hortensio, till I see her;     And therefore let me be thus bold with you     To give you over at this first encounter,     Unless you will accompany me thither.   GRUMIO. I pray you, sir, let him go while the humour lasts. O\' my     word, and she knew him as well as I do, she would think scolding     would do little good upon him. She may perhaps call him half a     score knaves or so. Why, that\'s nothing; and he begin once, he\'ll     rail in his rope-tricks. I\'ll tell you what, sir: an she stand     him but a little, he will throw a figure in her face, and so     disfigure her with it that she shall have no more eyes to see     withal than a cat. You know him not, sir.   HORTENSIO. Tarry, Petruchio, I must go with thee,     For in Baptista\'s keep my treasure is.     He hath the jewel of my life in hold,     His youngest daughter, beautiful Bianca;     And her withholds from me, and other more,       Suitors to her and rivals in my love;     Supposing it a thing impossible-     For those defects I have before rehears\'d-     That ever Katherina will be woo\'d.     Therefore this order hath Baptista ta\'en,     That none shall have access unto Bianca     Till Katherine the curst have got a husband.   GRUMIO. Katherine the curst!     A title for a maid of all titles the worst.   HORTENSIO. Now shall my friend Petruchio do me grace,     And offer me disguis\'d in sober robes     To old Baptista as a schoolmaster     Well seen in music, to instruct Bianca;     That so I may by this device at least     Have leave and leisure to make love to her,     And unsuspected court her by herself.          Enter GREMIO with LUCENTIO disguised as CAMBIO    GRUMIO. Here\'s no knavery! See, to beguile the old folks, how the       young folks lay their heads together! Master, master, look about     you. Who goes there, ha?   HORTENSIO. Peace, Grumio! It is the rival of my love. Petruchio,     stand by awhile.   GRUMIO. A proper stripling, and an amorous!                                               [They stand aside]   GREMIO. O, very well; I have perus\'d the note.     Hark you, sir; I\'ll have them very fairly bound-     All books of love, see that at any hand;     And see you read no other lectures to her.     You understand me- over and beside     Signior Baptista\'s liberality,     I\'ll mend it with a largess. Take your paper too,     And let me have them very well perfum\'d;     For she is sweeter than perfume itself     To whom they go to. What will you read to her?   LUCENTIO. Whate\'er I read to her, I\'ll plead for you     As for my patron, stand you so assur\'d,     As firmly as yourself were still in place;     Yea, and perhaps with more successful words       Than you, unless you were a scholar, sir.   GREMIO. O this learning, what a thing it is!   GRUMIO. O this woodcock, what an ass it is!   PETRUCHIO. Peace, sirrah!   HORTENSIO. Grumio, mum!                       [Coming forward]     God save you, Signior Gremio!   GREMIO. And you are well met, Signior Hortensio.     Trow you whither I am going? To Baptista Minola.     I promis\'d to enquire carefully     About a schoolmaster for the fair Bianca;     And by good fortune I have lighted well     On this young man; for learning and behaviour     Fit for her turn, well read in poetry     And other books- good ones, I warrant ye.   HORTENSIO. \'Tis well; and I have met a gentleman     Hath promis\'d me to help me to another,     A fine musician to instruct our mistress;     So shall I no whit be behind in duty     To fair Bianca, so beloved of me.   GREMIO. Beloved of me- and that my deeds shall prove.     GRUMIO. And that his bags shall prove.   HORTENSIO. Gremio, \'tis now no time to vent our love.     Listen to me, and if you speak me fair     I\'ll tell you news indifferent good for either.     Here is a gentleman whom by chance I met,     Upon agreement from us to his liking,     Will undertake to woo curst Katherine;     Yea, and to marry her, if her dowry please.   GREMIO. So said, so done, is well.     Hortensio, have you told him all her faults?   PETRUCHIO. I know she is an irksome brawling scold;     If that be all, masters, I hear no harm.   GREMIO. No, say\'st me so, friend? What countryman?   PETRUCHIO. Born in Verona, old Antonio\'s son.     My father dead, my fortune lives for me;     And I do hope good days and long to see.   GREMIO. O Sir, such a life with such a wife were strange!     But if you have a stomach, to\'t a God\'s name;     You shall have me assisting you in all.     But will you woo this wild-cat?     PETRUCHIO. Will I live?   GRUMIO. Will he woo her? Ay, or I\'ll hang her.   PETRUCHIO. Why came I hither but to that intent?     Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?     Have I not in my time heard lions roar?     Have I not heard the sea, puff\'d up with winds,     Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?     Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,     And heaven\'s artillery thunder in the skies?     Have I not in a pitched battle heard     Loud \'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets\' clang?     And do you tell me of a woman\'s tongue,     That gives not half so great a blow to hear     As will a chestnut in a fariner\'s fire?     Tush! tush! fear boys with bugs.   GRUMIO. For he fears none.   GREMIO. Hortensio, hark:     This gentleman is happily arriv\'d,     My mind presumes, for his own good and ours.   HORTENSIO. I promis\'d we would be contributors       And bear his charge of wooing, whatsoe\'er.   GREMIO. And so we will- provided that he win her.   GRUMIO. I would I were as sure of a good dinner.      Enter TRANIO, bravely apparelled as LUCENTIO, and BIONDELLO    TRANIO. Gentlemen, God save you! If I may be bold,     Tell me, I beseech you, which is the readiest way     To the house of Signior Baptista Minola?   BIONDELLO. He that has the two fair daughters; is\'t he you mean?   TRANIO. Even he, Biondello.   GREMIO. Hark you, sir, you mean not her to-   TRANIO. Perhaps him and her, sir; what have you to do?   PETRUCHIO. Not her that chides, sir, at any hand, I pray.   TRANIO. I love no chiders, sir. Biondello, let\'s away.   LUCENTIO.  [Aside]  Well begun, Tranio.   HORTENSIO. Sir, a word ere you go.     Are you a suitor to the maid you talk of, yea or no?   TRANIO. And if I be, sir, is it any offence?   GREMIO. No; if without more words you will get you hence.     TRANIO. Why, sir, I pray, are not the streets as free     For me as for you?   GREMIO. But so is not she.    TRANIO. For what reason, I beseech you?   GREMIO. For this reason, if you\'ll know,     That she\'s the choice love of Signior Gremio.   HORTENSIO. That she\'s the chosen of Signior Hortensio.   TRANIO. Softly, my masters! If you be gentlemen,     Do me this right- hear me with patience.     Baptista is a noble gentleman,     To whom my father is not all unknown,     And, were his daughter fairer than she is,     She may more suitors have, and me for one.     Fair Leda\'s daughter had a thousand wooers;     Then well one more may fair Bianca have;     And so she shall: Lucentio shall make one,     Though Paris came in hope to speed alone.   GREMIO. What, this gentleman will out-talk us all!   LUCENTIO. Sir, give him head; I know he\'ll prove a jade.     PETRUCHIO. Hortensio, to what end are all these words?   HORTENSIO. Sir, let me be so bold as ask you,     Did you yet ever see Baptista\'s daughter?   TRANIO. No, sir, but hear I do that he hath two:     The one as famous for a scolding tongue     As is the other for beauteous modesty.   PETRUCHIO. Sir, sir, the first\'s for me; let her go by.   GREMIO. Yea, leave that labour to great Hercules,     And let it be more than Alcides\' twelve.   PETRUCHIO. Sir, understand you this of me, in sooth:     The youngest daughter, whom you hearken for,     Her father keeps from all access of suitors,     And will not promise her to any man     Until the elder sister first be wed.     The younger then is free, and not before.   TRANIO. If it be so, sir, that you are the man     Must stead us all, and me amongst the rest;     And if you break the ice, and do this feat,     Achieve the elder, set the younger free     For our access- whose hap shall be to have her       Will not so graceless be to be ingrate.   HORTENSIO. Sir, you say well, and well you do conceive;     And since you do profess to be a suitor,     You must, as we do, gratify this gentleman,     To whom we all rest generally beholding.   TRANIO. Sir, I shall not be slack; in sign whereof,     Please ye we may contrive this afternoon,     And quaff carouses to our mistress\' health;     And do as adversaries do in law-     Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.   GRUMIO, BIONDELLO. O excellent motion! Fellows, let\'s be gone.   HORTENSIO. The motion\'s good indeed, and be it so.     Petruchio, I shall be your ben venuto.                Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT Il. SCENE I. Padua. BAPTISTA\'S house  Enter KATHERINA and BIANCA    BIANCA. Good sister, wrong me not, nor wrong yourself,     To make a bondmaid and a slave of me-     That I disdain; but for these other gawds,     Unbind my hands, I\'ll pull them off myself,     Yea, all my raiment, to my petticoat;     Or what you will command me will I do,     So well I know my duty to my elders.   KATHERINA. Of all thy suitors here I charge thee tell     Whom thou lov\'st best. See thou dissemble not.   BIANCA. Believe me, sister, of all the men alive     I never yet beheld that special face     Which I could fancy more than any other.   KATHERINA. Minion, thou liest. Is\'t not Hortensio?   BIANCA. If you affect him, sister, here I swear     I\'ll plead for you myself but you shall have him.   KATHERINA. O then, belike, you fancy riches more:     You will have Gremio to keep you fair.     BIANCA. Is it for him you do envy me so?     Nay, then you jest; and now I well perceive     You have but jested with me all this while.     I prithee, sister Kate, untie my hands.   KATHERINA. [Strikes her]  If that be jest, then an the rest was so.                              Enter BAPTISTA    BAPTISTA. Why, how now, dame! Whence grows this insolence?     Bianca, stand aside- poor girl! she weeps.                                                 [He unbinds her]     Go ply thy needle; meddle not with her.     For shame, thou hilding of a devilish spirit,     Why dost thou wrong her that did ne\'er wrong thee?     When did she cross thee with a bitter word?   KATHERINA. Her silence flouts me, and I\'ll be reveng\'d.                                             [Flies after BIANCA]   BAPTISTA. What, in my sight? Bianca, get thee in.                                                      Exit BIANCA   KATHERINA. What, will you not suffer me? Nay, now I see       She is your treasure, she must have a husband;     I must dance bare-foot on her wedding-day,     And for your love to her lead apes in hell.     Talk not to me; I will go sit and weep,     Till I can find occasion of revenge.          Exit KATHERINA   BAPTISTA. Was ever gentleman thus griev\'d as I?     But who comes here?          Enter GREMIO, with LUCENTIO in the habit of a mean man;          PETRUCHIO, with HORTENSIO as a musician; and TRANIO,     as LUCENTIO, with his boy, BIONDELLO, bearing a lute and books    GREMIO. Good morrow, neighbour Baptista.   BAPTISTA. Good morrow, neighbour Gremio.     God save you, gentlemen!   PETRUCHIO. And you, good sir! Pray, have you not a daughter     Call\'d Katherina, fair and virtuous?   BAPTISTA. I have a daughter, sir, call\'d Katherina.   GREMIO. You are too blunt; go to it orderly.   PETRUCHIO. You wrong me, Signior Gremio; give me leave.       I am a gentleman of Verona, sir,     That, hearing of her beauty and her wit,     Her affability and bashful modesty,     Her wondrous qualities and mild behaviour,     Am bold to show myself a forward guest     Within your house, to make mine eye the witness     Of that report which I so oft have heard.     And, for an entrance to my entertainment,     I do present you with a man of mine,                                           [Presenting HORTENSIO]     Cunning in music and the mathematics,     To instruct her fully in those sciences,     Whereof I know she is not ignorant.     Accept of him, or else you do me wrong-     His name is Licio, born in Mantua.   BAPTISTA. Y\'are welcome, sir, and he for your good sake;     But for my daughter Katherine, this I know,     She is not for your turn, the more my grief.   PETRUCHIO. I see you do not mean to part with her;     Or else you like not of my company.     BAPTISTA. Mistake me not; I speak but as I find.     Whence are you, sir? What may I call your name?   PETRUCHIO. Petruchio is my name, Antonio\'s son,     A man well known throughout all Italy.   BAPTISTA. I know him well; you are welcome for his sake.   GREMIO. Saving your tale, Petruchio, I pray,     Let us that are poor petitioners speak too.     Bacare! you are marvellous forward.   PETRUCHIO. O, pardon me, Signior Gremio! I would fain be doing.   GREMIO. I doubt it not, sir; but you will curse your wooing.     Neighbour, this is a gift very grateful, I am sure of it. To     express the like kindness, myself, that have been more kindly     beholding to you than any, freely give unto you this young     scholar  [Presenting LUCENTIO]  that hath been long studying at     Rheims; as cunning in Greek, Latin, and other languages, as the     other in music and mathematics. His name is Cambio. Pray accept     his service.   BAPTISTA. A thousand thanks, Signior Gremio. Welcome, good Cambio.     [To TRANIO]  But, gentle sir, methinks you walk like a stranger.     May I be so bold to know the cause of your coming?     TRANIO. Pardon me, sir, the boldness is mine own     That, being a stranger in this city here,     Do make myself a suitor to your daughter,     Unto Bianca, fair and virtuous.     Nor is your firm resolve unknown to me     In the preferment of the eldest sister.     This liberty is all that I request-     That, upon knowledge of my parentage,     I may have welcome \'mongst the rest that woo,     And free access and favour as the rest.     And toward the education of your daughters     I here bestow a simple instrument,     And this small packet of Greek and Latin books.     If you accept them, then their worth is great.   BAPTISTA. Lucentio is your name? Of whence, I pray?   TRANIO. Of Pisa, sir; son to Vincentio.   BAPTISTA. A mighty man of Pisa. By report     I know him well. You are very welcome, sir.     Take you the lute, and you the set of books;     You shall go see your pupils presently.       Holla, within!                           Enter a SERVANT      Sirrah, lead these gentlemen     To my daughters; and tell them both     These are their tutors. Bid them use them well.                  Exit SERVANT leading HORTENSIO carrying the lute                                      and LUCENTIO with the books      We will go walk a little in the orchard,     And then to dinner. You are passing welcome,     And so I pray you all to think yourselves.   PETRUCHIO. Signior Baptista, my business asketh haste,     And every day I cannot come to woo.     You knew my father well, and in him me,     Left solely heir to all his lands and goods,     Which I have bettered rather than decreas\'d.     Then tell me, if I get your daughter\'s love,       What dowry shall I have with her to wife?   BAPTISTA. After my death, the one half of my lands     And, in possession, twenty thousand crowns.   PETRUCHIO. And for that dowry, I\'ll assure her of     Her widowhood, be it that she survive me,     In all my lands and leases whatsoever.     Let specialities be therefore drawn between us,     That covenants may be kept on either hand.   BAPTISTA. Ay, when the special thing is well obtain\'d,     That is, her love; for that is all in all.   PETRUCHIO. Why, that is nothing; for I tell you, father,     I am as peremptory as she proud-minded;     And where two raging fires meet together,     They do consume the thing that feeds their fury.     Though little fire grows great with little wind,     Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all.     So I to her, and so she yields to me;     For I am rough, and woo not like a babe.   BAPTISTA. Well mayst thou woo, and happy be thy speed     But be thou arm\'d for some unhappy words.     PETRUCHIO. Ay, to the proof, as mountains are for winds,     That shake not though they blow perpetually.               Re-enter HORTENSIO, with his head broke    BAPTISTA. How now, my friend! Why dost thou look so pale?   HORTENSIO. For fear, I promise you, if I look pale.   BAPTISTA. What, will my daughter prove a good musician?   HORTENSIO. I think she\'ll sooner prove a soldier:     Iron may hold with her, but never lutes.   BAPTISTA. Why, then thou canst not break her to the lute?   HORTENSIO. Why, no; for she hath broke the lute to me.     I did but tell her she mistook her frets,     And bow\'d her hand to teach her fingering,     When, with a most impatient devilish spirit,     \'Frets, call you these?\' quoth she \'I\'ll fume with them.\'     And with that word she struck me on the head,     And through the instrument my pate made way;     And there I stood amazed for a while,     As on a pillory, looking through the lute,       While she did call me rascal fiddler     And twangling Jack, with twenty such vile terms,     As she had studied to misuse me so.   PETRUCHIO. Now, by the world, it is a lusty wench;     I love her ten times more than e\'er I did.     O, how I long to have some chat with her!   BAPTISTA. Well, go with me, and be not so discomfited;     Proceed in practice with my younger daughter;     She\'s apt to learn, and thankful for good turns.     Signior Petruchio, will you go with us,     Or shall I send my daughter Kate to you?   PETRUCHIO. I pray you do.             Exeunt all but PETRUCHIO     I\'ll attend her here,     And woo her with some spirit when she comes.     Say that she rail; why, then I\'ll tell her plain     She sings as sweetly as a nightingale.     Say that she frown; I\'ll say she looks as clear     As morning roses newly wash\'d with dew.     Say she be mute, and will not speak a word;     Then I\'ll commend her volubility,       And say she uttereth piercing eloquence.     If she do bid me pack, I\'ll give her thanks,     As though she bid me stay by her a week;     If she deny to wed, I\'ll crave the day     When I shall ask the banns, and when be married.     But here she comes; :Lnd.now, Petruchio, speak.                          Enter KATHERINA      Good morrow, Kate- for that\'s your name, I hear.   KATHERINA. Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing:     They call me Katherine that do talk of me.   PETRUCHIO. You lie, in faith, for you are call\'d plain Kate,     And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst;     But, Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom,     Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate,     For dainties are all Kates, and therefore, Kate,     Take this of me, Kate of my consolation-     Hearing thy mildness prais\'d in every town,     Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded,       Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs,     Myself am mov\'d to woo thee for my wife.   KATHERINA. Mov\'d! in good time! Let him that mov\'d you hither     Remove you hence. I knew you at the first     You were a moveable.   PETRUCHIO. Why, what\'s a moveable?   KATHERINA. A join\'d-stool.   PETRUCHIO. Thou hast hit it. Come, sit on me.   KATHERINA. Asses are made to bear, and so are you.   PETRUCHIO. Women are made to bear, and so are you.   KATHERINA. No such jade as you, if me you mean.   PETRUCHIO. Alas, good Kate, I will not burden thee!     For, knowing thee to be but young and light-   KATHERINA. Too light for such a swain as you to catch;     And yet as heavy as my weight should be.   PETRUCHIO. Should be! should- buzz!   KATHERINA. Well ta\'en, and like a buzzard.   PETRUCHIO. O, slow-wing\'d turtle, shall a buzzard take thee?   KATHERINA. Ay, for a turtle, as he takes a buzzard.   PETRUCHIO. Come, come, you wasp; i\' faith, you are too angry.     KATHERINA. If I be waspish, best beware my sting.   PETRUCHIO. My remedy is then to pluck it out.   KATHERINA. Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies.   PETRUCHIO. Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting?     In his tail.   KATHERINA. In his tongue.   PETRUCHIO. Whose tongue?   KATHERINA. Yours, if you talk of tales; and so farewell.   PETRUCHIO. What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again,     Good Kate; I am a gentleman.   KATHERINA. That I\'ll try.                    [She strikes him]   PETRUCHIO. I swear I\'ll cuff you, if you strike again.   KATHERINA. So may you lose your arms.     If you strike me, you are no gentleman;     And if no gentleman, why then no arms.   PETRUCHIO. A herald, Kate? O, put me in thy books!   KATHERINA. What is your crest- a coxcomb?   PETRUCHIO. A combless cock, so Kate will be my hen.   KATHERINA. No cock of mine: you crow too like a craven.   PETRUCHIO. Nay, come, Kate, come; you must not look so sour.     KATHERINA. It is my fashion, when I see a crab.   PETRUCHIO. Why, here\'s no crab; and therefore look not sour.   KATHERINA. There is, there is.   PETRUCHIO. Then show it me.   KATHERINA. Had I a glass I would.   PETRUCHIO. What, you mean my face?   KATHERINA. Well aim\'d of such a young one.   PETRUCHIO. Now, by Saint George, I am too young for you.   KATHERINA. Yet you are wither\'d.   PETRUCHIO. \'Tis with cares.   KATHERINA. I care not.   PETRUCHIO. Nay, hear you, Kate- in sooth, you scape not so.   KATHERINA. I chafe you, if I tarry; let me go.   PETRUCHIO. No, not a whit; I find you passing gentle.     \'Twas told me you were rough, and coy, and sullen,     And now I find report a very liar;     For thou art pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous,     But slow in speech, yet sweet as springtime flowers.     Thou canst not frown, thou canst not look askance,     Nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will,       Nor hast thou pleasure to be cross in talk;     But thou with mildness entertain\'st thy wooers;     With gentle conference, soft and affable.     Why does the world report that Kate doth limp?     O sland\'rous world! Kate like the hazel-twig     Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue     As hazel-nuts, and sweeter than the kernels.     O, let me see thee walk. Thou dost not halt.   KATHERINA. Go, fool, and whom thou keep\'st command.   PETRUCHIO. Did ever Dian so become a grove     As Kate this chamber with her princely gait?     O, be thou Dian, and let her be Kate;     And then let Kate be chaste, and Dian sportful!   KATHERINA. Where did you study all this goodly speech?   PETRUCHIO. It is extempore, from my mother wit.   KATHERINA. A witty mother! witless else her son.   PETRUCHIO. Am I not wise?   KATHERINA. Yes, keep you warm.   PETRUCHIO. Marry, so I mean, sweet Katherine, in thy bed.     And therefore, setting all this chat aside,       Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented     That you shall be my wife your dowry greed on;     And will you, nill you, I will marry you.     Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn;     For, by this light, whereby I see thy beauty,     Thy beauty that doth make me like thee well,     Thou must be married to no man but me;     For I am he am born to tame you, Kate,     And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate     Conformable as other household Kates.                 Re-enter BAPTISTA, GREMIO, and TRANIO      Here comes your father. Never make denial;     I must and will have Katherine to my wife.   BAPTISTA. Now, Signior Petruchio, how speed you with my daughter?   PETRUCHIO. How but well, sir? how but well?     It were impossible I should speed amiss.   BAPTISTA. Why, how now, daughter Katherine, in your dumps?   KATHERINA. Call you me daughter? Now I promise you       You have show\'d a tender fatherly regard     To wish me wed to one half lunatic,     A mad-cap ruffian and a swearing Jack,     That thinks with oaths to face the matter out.   PETRUCHIO. Father, \'tis thus: yourself and all the world     That talk\'d of her have talk\'d amiss of her.     If she be curst, it is for policy,     For,she\'s not froward, but modest as the dove;     She is not hot, but temperate as the morn;     For patience she will prove a second Grissel,     And Roman Lucrece for her chastity.     And, to conclude, we have \'greed so well together     That upon Sunday is the wedding-day.   KATHERINA. I\'ll see thee hang\'d on Sunday first.   GREMIO. Hark, Petruchio; she says she\'ll see thee hang\'d first.   TRANIO. Is this your speeding? Nay, then good-night our part!   PETRUCHIO. Be patient, gentlemen. I choose her for myself;     If she and I be pleas\'d, what\'s that to you?     \'Tis bargain\'d \'twixt us twain, being alone,     That she shall still be curst in company.       I tell you \'tis incredible to believe.     How much she loves me- O, the kindest Kate!     She hung about my neck, and kiss on kiss     She vied so fast, protesting oath on oath,     That in a twink she won me to her love.     O, you are novices! \'Tis a world to see,     How tame, when men and women are alone,     A meacock wretch can make the curstest shrew.     Give me thy hand, Kate; I will unto Venice,     To buy apparel \'gainst the wedding-day.     Provide the feast, father, and bid the guests;     I will be sure my Katherine shall be fine.   BAPTISTA. I know not what to say; but give me your hands.     God send you joy, Petruchio! \'Tis a match.   GREMIO, TRANIO. Amen, say we; we will be witnesses.   PETRUCHIO. Father, and wife, and gentlemen, adieu.     I will to Venice; Sunday comes apace;     We will have rings and things, and fine array;     And kiss me, Kate; we will be married a Sunday.                         Exeunt PETRUCHIO and KATHERINA severally     GREMIO. Was ever match clapp\'d up so suddenly?   BAPTISTA. Faith, gentlemen, now I play a merchant\'s part,     And venture madly on a desperate mart.   TRANIO. \'Twas a commodity lay fretting by you;     \'Twill bring you gain, or perish on the seas.   BAPTISTA. The gain I seek is quiet in the match.   GREMIO. No doubt but he hath got a quiet catch.     But now, Baptista, to your younger daughter:     Now is the day we long have looked for;     I am your neighbour, and was suitor first.   TRANIO. And I am one that love Bianca more     Than words can witness or your thoughts can guess.   GREMIO. Youngling, thou canst not love so dear as I.   TRANIO. Greybeard, thy love doth freeze.   GREMIO. But thine doth fry.     Skipper, stand back; \'tis age that nourisheth.   TRANIO. But youth in ladies\' eyes that flourisheth.   BAPTISTA. Content you, gentlemen; I will compound this strife.     \'Tis deeds must win the prize, and he of both     That can assure my daughter greatest dower       Shall have my Bianca\'s love.     Say, Signior Gremio, what can you assure her?   GREMIO. First, as you know, my house within the city     Is richly furnished with plate and gold,     Basins and ewers to lave her dainty hands;     My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry;     In ivory coffers I have stuff\'d my crowns;     In cypress chests my arras counterpoints,     Costly apparel, tents, and canopies,     Fine linen, Turkey cushions boss\'d with pearl,     Valance of Venice gold in needle-work;     Pewter and brass, and all things that belongs     To house or housekeeping. Then at my farm     I have a hundred milch-kine to the pail,     Six score fat oxen standing in my stalls,     And all things answerable to this portion.     Myself am struck in years, I must confess;     And if I die to-morrow this is hers,     If whilst I live she will be only mine.   TRANIO. That \'only\' came well in. Sir, list to me:       I am my father\'s heir and only son;     If I may have your daughter to my wife,     I\'ll leave her houses three or four as good     Within rich Pisa\'s walls as any one     Old Signior Gremio has in Padua;     Besides two thousand ducats by the year     Of fruitful land, all which shall be her jointure.     What, have I pinch\'d you, Signior Gremio?   GREMIO. Two thousand ducats by the year of land!     [Aside]  My land amounts not to so much in all.-     That she shall have, besides an argosy     That now is lying in Marseilles road.     What, have I chok\'d you with an argosy?   TRANIO. Gremio, \'tis known my father hath no less     Than three great argosies, besides two galliasses,     And twelve tight galleys. These I will assure her,     And twice as much whate\'er thou off\'rest next.   GREMIO. Nay, I have off\'red all; I have no more;     And she can have no more than all I have;     If you like me, she shall have me and mine.     TRANIO. Why, then the maid is mine from all the world     By your firm promise; Gremio is out-vied.   BAPTISTA. I must confess your offer is the best;     And let your father make her the assurance,     She is your own. Else, you must pardon me;     If you should die before him, where\'s her dower?   TRANIO. That\'s but a cavil; he is old, I young.   GREMIO. And may not young men die as well as old?   BAPTISTA. Well, gentlemen,     I am thus resolv\'d: on Sunday next you know     My daughter Katherine is to be married;     Now, on the Sunday following shall Bianca     Be bride to you, if you make this assurance;     If not, to Signior Gremio.     And so I take my leave, and thank you both.   GREMIO. Adieu, good neighbour.                   Exit BAPTISTA     Now, I fear thee not.     Sirrah young gamester, your father were a fool     To give thee all, and in his waning age     Set foot under thy table. Tut, a toy!       An old Italian fox is not so kind, my boy.              Exit   TRANIO. A vengeance on your crafty withered hide!     Yet I have fac\'d it with a card of ten.     \'Tis in my head to do my master good:     I see no reason but suppos\'d Lucentio     Must get a father, call\'d suppos\'d Vincentio;     And that\'s a wonder- fathers commonly     Do get their children; but in this case of wooing     A child shall get a sire, if I fail not of my cunning.  Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. Padua. BAPTISTA\'S house  Enter LUCENTIO as CAMBIO, HORTENSIO as LICIO, and BIANCA    LUCENTIO. Fiddler, forbear; you grow too forward, sir.     Have you so soon forgot the entertainment     Her sister Katherine welcome\'d you withal?   HORTENSIO. But, wrangling pedant, this is     The patroness of heavenly harmony.     Then give me leave to have prerogative;     And when in music we have spent an hour,     Your lecture shall have leisure for as much.   LUCENTIO. Preposterous ass, that never read so far     To know the cause why music was ordain\'d!     Was it not to refresh the mind of man     After his studies or his usual pain?     Then give me leave to read philosophy,     And while I pause serve in your harmony.   HORTENSIO. Sirrah, I will not bear these braves of thine.   BIANCA. Why, gentlemen, you do me double wrong     To strive for that which resteth in my choice.       I arn no breeching scholar in the schools,     I\'ll not be tied to hours nor \'pointed times,     But learn my lessons as I please myself.     And to cut off all strife: here sit we down;     Take you your instrument, play you the whiles!     His lecture will be done ere you have tun\'d.   HORTENSIO. You\'ll leave his lecture when I am in tune?   LUCENTIO. That will be never- tune your instrument.   BIANCA. Where left we last?   LUCENTIO. Here, madam:     \'Hic ibat Simois, hic est Sigeia tellus,     Hic steterat Priami regia celsa senis.\'   BIANCA. Construe them.   LUCENTIO. \'Hic ibat\' as I told you before- \'Simois\' I am Lucentio-     \'hic est\' son unto Vincentio of Pisa- \'Sigeia tellus\' disguised     thus to get your love- \'Hic steterat\' and that Lucentio that     comes a-wooing- \'Priami\' is my man Tranio- \'regia\' bearing my     port- \'celsa senis\' that we might beguile the old pantaloon.   HORTENSIO. Madam, my instrument\'s in tune.   BIANCA. Let\'s hear. O fie! the treble jars.     LUCENTIO. Spit in the hole, man, and tune again.   BIANCA. Now let me see if I can construe it: \'Hic ibat Simois\' I     know you not- \'hic est Sigeia tellus\' I trust you not- \'Hic     steterat Priami\' take heed he hear us not- \'regia\' presume not-    \'celsa senis\' despair not.   HORTENSIO. Madam, \'tis now in tune.   LUCENTIO. All but the bass.   HORTENSIO. The bass is right; \'tis the base knave that jars.     [Aside]  How fiery and forward our pedant is!     Now, for my life, the knave doth court my love.     Pedascule, I\'ll watch you better yet.   BIANCA. In time I may believe, yet I mistrust.   LUCENTIO. Mistrust it not- for sure, AEacides     Was Ajax, call\'d so from his grandfather.   BIANCA. I must believe my master; else, I promise you,     I should be arguing still upon that doubt;     But let it rest. Now, Licio, to you.     Good master, take it not unkindly, pray,     That I have been thus pleasant with you both.   HORTENSIO.  [To LUCENTIO]  You may go walk and give me leave         awhile;     My lessons make no music in three Parts.   LUCENTIO. Are you so formal, sir? Well, I must wait,     [Aside]  And watch withal; for, but I be deceiv\'d,     Our fine musician groweth amorous.   HORTENSIO. Madam, before you touch the instrument     To learn the order of my fingering,     I must begin with rudiments of art,     To teach you gamut in a briefer sort,     More pleasant, pithy, and effectual,     Than hath been taught by any of my trade;     And there it is in writing fairly drawn.   BIANCA. Why, I am past my gamut long ago.   HORTENSIO. Yet read the gamut of Hortensio.   BIANCA.  [Reads]          \'"Gamut" I am, the ground of all accord-          "A re" to plead Hortensio\'s passion-          "B mi" Bianca, take him for thy lord-          "C fa ut" that loves with all affection-          "D sol re" one clef, two notes have I-            "E la mi" show pity or I die.\'     Call you this gamut? Tut, I like it not!     Old fashions please me best; I am not so nice     To change true rules for odd inventions.                         Enter a SERVANT    SERVANT. Mistress, your father prays you leave your books     And help to dress your sister\'s chamber up.     You know to-morrow is the wedding-day.   BIANCA. Farewell, sweet masters, both; I must be gone.                                        Exeunt BIANCA and SERVANT   LUCENTIO. Faith, mistress, then I have no cause to stay.  Exit   HORTENSIO. But I have cause to pry into this pedant;     Methinks he looks as though he were in love.     Yet if thy thoughts, Bianca, be so humble     To cast thy wand\'ring eyes on every stale-     Seize thee that list. If once I find thee ranging,   HORTENSIO will be quit with thee by changing.             Exit     SCENE II. Padua. Before BAPTISTA\'So house  Enter BAPTISTA, GREMIO, TRANIO as LUCENTIO, KATHERINA, BIANCA, LUCENTIO as CAMBIO, and ATTENDANTS    BAPTISTA.  [To TRANIO]  Signior Lucentio, this is the \'pointed day     That Katherine and Petruchio should be married,     And yet we hear not of our son-in-law.     What will be said? What mockery will it be     To want the bridegroom when the priest attends     To speak the ceremonial rites of marriage!     What says Lucentio to this shame of ours?   KATHERINA. No shame but mine; I must, forsooth, be forc\'d     To give my hand, oppos\'d against my heart,     Unto a mad-brain rudesby, full of spleen,     Who woo\'d in haste and means to wed at leisure.     I told you, I, he was a frantic fool,     Hiding his bitter jests in blunt behaviour;     And, to be noted for a merry man,     He\'ll woo a thousand, \'point the day of marriage,     Make friends invited, and proclaim the banns;       Yet never means to wed where he hath woo\'d.     Now must the world point at poor Katherine,     And say \'Lo, there is mad Petruchio\'s wife,     If it would please him come and marry her!\'   TRANIO. Patience, good Katherine, and Baptista too.     Upon my life, Petruchio means but well,     Whatever fortune stays him from his word.     Though he be blunt, I know him passing wise;     Though he be merry, yet withal he\'s honest.   KATHERINA. Would Katherine had never seen him though!                     Exit, weeping, followed by BIANCA and others   BAPTISTA. Go, girl, I cannot blame thee now to weep,     For such an injury would vex a very saint;     Much more a shrew of thy impatient humour.                             Enter BIONDELLO      Master, master! News, and such old news as you never heard of!   BAPTISTA. Is it new and old too? How may that be?   BIONDELLO. Why, is it not news to hear of Petruchio\'s coming?     BAPTISTA. Is he come?   BIONDELLO. Why, no, sir.   BAPTISTA. What then?   BIONDELLO. He is coming.   BAPTISTA. When will he be here?   BIONDELLO. When he stands where I am and sees you there.   TRANIO. But, say, what to thine old news?   BIONDELLO. Why, Petruchio is coming- in a new hat and an old     jerkin; a pair of old breeches thrice turn\'d; a pair of boots     that have been candle-cases, one buckled, another lac\'d; an old     rusty sword ta\'en out of the town armoury, with a broken hilt,     and chapeless; with two broken points; his horse hipp\'d, with an     old motley saddle and stirrups of no kindred; besides, possess\'d     with the glanders and like to mose in the chine, troubled with     the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped     with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of the fives,     stark spoil\'d with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, sway\'d in     the back and shoulder-shotten, near-legg\'d before, and with a     half-cheek\'d bit, and a head-stall of sheep\'s leather which,     being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often       burst, and now repaired with knots; one girth six times piec\'d,     and a woman\'s crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her     name fairly set down in studs, and here and there piec\'d with     pack-thread.   BAPTISTA. Who comes with him?   BIONDELLO. O, sir, his lackey, for all the world caparison\'d like     the horse- with a linen stock on one leg and a kersey boot-hose     on the other, gart\'red with a red and blue list; an old hat, and     the humour of forty fancies prick\'d in\'t for a feather; a     monster, a very monster in apparel, and not like a Christian     footboy or a gentleman\'s lackey.   TRANIO. \'Tis some odd humour pricks him to this fashion;     Yet oftentimes lie goes but mean-apparell\'d.   BAPTISTA. I am glad he\'s come, howsoe\'er he comes.   BIONDELLO. Why, sir, he comes not.   BAPTISTA. Didst thou not say he comes?   BIONDELLO. Who? that Petruchio came?   BAPTISTA. Ay, that Petruchio came.   BIONDELLO. No, sir; I say his horse comes with him on his back.   BAPTISTA. Why, that\'s all one.     BIONDELLO. Nay, by Saint Jamy,              I hold you a penny,              A horse and a man              Is more than one,              And yet not many.                    Enter PETRUCHIO and GRUMIO    PETRUCHIO. Come, where be these gallants? Who\'s at home?   BAPTISTA. You are welcome, sir.   PETRUCHIO. And yet I come not well.   BAPTISTA. And yet you halt not.   TRANIO. Not so well apparell\'d     As I wish you were.   PETRUCHIO. Were it better, I should rush in thus.     But where is Kate? Where is my lovely bride?     How does my father? Gentles, methinks you frown;     And wherefore gaze this goodly company     As if they saw some wondrous monument,     Some comet or unusual prodigy?     BAPTISTA. Why, sir, you know this is your wedding-day.     First were we sad, fearing you would not come;     Now sadder, that you come so unprovided.     Fie, doff this habit, shame to your estate,     An eye-sore to our solemn festival!   TRANIO. And tell us what occasion of import     Hath all so long detain\'d you from your wife,     And sent you hither so unlike yourself?   PETRUCHIO. Tedious it were to tell, and harsh to hear;     Sufficeth I am come to keep my word,     Though in some part enforced to digress,     Which at more leisure I will so excuse     As you shall well be satisfied withal.     But where is Kate? I stay too long from her;     The morning wears, \'tis time we were at church.   TRANIO. See not your bride in these unreverent robes;     Go to my chamber, put on clothes of mine.   PETRUCHIO. Not I, believe me; thus I\'ll visit her.   BAPTISTA. But thus, I trust, you will not marry her.   PETRUCHIO. Good sooth, even thus; therefore ha\' done with words;       To me she\'s married, not unto my clothes.     Could I repair what she will wear in me     As I can change these poor accoutrements,     \'Twere well for Kate and better for myself.     But what a fool am I to chat with you,     When I should bid good-morrow to my bride     And seal the title with a lovely kiss!                                   Exeunt PETRUCHIO and PETRUCHIO   TRANIO. He hath some meaning in his mad attire.     We will persuade him, be it possible,     To put on better ere he go to church.   BAPTISTA. I\'ll after him and see the event of this.               Exeunt BAPTISTA, GREMIO, BIONDELLO, and ATTENDENTS   TRANIO. But to her love concerneth us to ad     Her father\'s liking; which to bring to pass,     As I before imparted to your worship,     I am to get a man- whate\'er he be     It skills not much; we\'ll fit him to our turn-     And he shall be Vincentio of Pisa,     And make assurance here in Padua       Of greater sums than I have promised.     So shall you quietly enjoy your hope     And marry sweet Bianca with consent.   LUCENTIO. Were it not that my fellow schoolmaster     Doth watch Bianca\'s steps so narrowly,     \'Twere good, methinks, to steal our marriage;     Which once perform\'d, let all the world say no,     I\'ll keep mine own despite of all the world.   TRANIO. That by degrees we mean to look into     And watch our vantage in this business;     We\'ll over-reach the greybeard, Gremio,     The narrow-prying father, Minola,     The quaint musician, amorous Licio-     All for my master\'s sake, Lucentio.                             Re-enter GREMIO      Signior Gremio, came you from the church?   GREMIO. As willingly as e\'er I came from school.   TRANIO. And is the bride and bridegroom coming home?     GREMIO. A bridegroom, say you? \'Tis a groom indeed,     A grumbling groom, and that the girl shall find.   TRANIO. Curster than she? Why, \'tis impossible.   GREMIO. Why, he\'s a devil, a devil, a very fiend.   TRANIO. Why, she\'s a devil, a devil, the devil\'s dam.   GREMIO. Tut, she\'s a lamb, a dove, a fool, to him!     I\'ll tell you, Sir Lucentio: when the priest     Should ask if Katherine should be his wife,     \'Ay, by gogs-wouns\' quoth he, and swore so loud     That, all amaz\'d, the priest let fall the book;     And as he stoop\'d again to take it up,     This mad-brain\'d bridegroom took him such a cuff     That down fell priest and book, and book and priest.     \'Now take them up,\' quoth he \'if any list.\'   TRANIO. What said the wench, when he rose again?   GREMIO. Trembled and shook, for why he stamp\'d and swore     As if the vicar meant to cozen him.     But after many ceremonies done     He calls for wine: \'A health!\' quoth he, as if     He had been abroad, carousing to his mates       After a storm; quaff\'d off the muscadel,     And threw the sops all in the sexton\'s face,     Having no other reason     But that his beard grew thin and hungerly     And seem\'d to ask him sops as he was drinking.     This done, he took the bride about the neck,     And kiss\'d her lips with such a clamorous smack     That at the parting all the church did echo.     And I, seeing this, came thence for very shame;     And after me, I know, the rout is coming.     Such a mad marriage never was before.     Hark, hark! I hear the minstrels play.         [Music plays]         Enter PETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, BIANCA, BAPTISTA, HORTENSIO,                          GRUMIO, and train    PETRUCHIO. Gentlemen and friends, I thank you for your pains.     I know you think to dine with me to-day,     And have prepar\'d great store of wedding cheer     But so it is- my haste doth call me hence,       And therefore here I mean to take my leave.   BAPTISTA. Is\'t possible you will away to-night?   PETRUCHIO. I must away to-day before night come.     Make it no wonder; if you knew my business,     You would entreat me rather go than stay.     And, honest company, I thank you all     That have beheld me give away myself     To this most patient, sweet, and virtuous wife.     Dine with my father, drink a health to me.     For I must hence; and farewell to you all.   TRANIO. Let us entreat you stay till after dinner.   PETRUCHIO. It may not be.   GREMIO. Let me entreat you.   PETRUCHIO. It cannot be.   KATHERINA. Let me entreat you.   PETRUCHIO. I am content.   KATHERINA. Are you content to stay?   PETRUCHIO. I am content you shall entreat me stay;     But yet not stay, entreat me how you can.   KATHERINA. Now, if you love me, stay.     PETRUCHIO. Grumio, my horse.   GRUMIO. Ay, sir, they be ready; the oats have eaten the horses.   KATHERINA. Nay, then,     Do what thou canst, I will not go to-day;     No, nor to-morrow, not till I please myself.     The door is open, sir; there lies your way;     You may be jogging whiles your boots are green;     For me, I\'ll not be gone till I please myself.     \'Tis like you\'ll prove a jolly surly groom     That take it on you at the first so roundly.   PETRUCHIO. O Kate, content thee; prithee be not angry.   KATHERINA. I will be angry; what hast thou to do?     Father, be quiet; he shall stay my leisure.   GREMIO. Ay, marry, sir, now it begins to work.   KATHERINA. Gentlemen, forward to the bridal dinner.     I see a woman may be made a fool     If she had not a spirit to resist.   PETRUCHIO. They shall go forward, Kate, at thy command.     Obey the bride, you that attend on her;     Go to the feast, revel and domineer,       Carouse full measure to her maidenhead;     Be mad and merry, or go hang yourselves.     But for my bonny Kate, she must with me.     Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret;     I will be master of what is mine own-     She is my goods, my chattels, she is my house,     My household stuff, my field, my barn,     My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing,     And here she stands; touch her whoever dare;     I\'ll bring mine action on the proudest he     That stops my way in Padua. Grumio,     Draw forth thy weapon; we are beset with thieves;     Rescue thy mistress, if thou be a man.     Fear not, sweet wench; they shall not touch thee, Kate;     I\'ll buckler thee against a million.                          Exeunt PETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, and GRUMIO   BAPTISTA. Nay, let them go, a couple of quiet ones.   GREMIO. Went they not quickly, I should die with laughing.   TRANIO. Of all mad matches, never was the like.   LUCENTIO. Mistress, what\'s your opinion of your sister?     BIANCA. That, being mad herself, she\'s madly mated.   GREMIO. I warrant him, Petruchio is Kated.   BAPTISTA. Neighbours and friends, though bride and bridegroom wants     For to supply the places at the table,     You know there wants no junkets at the feast.     Lucentio, you shall supply the bridegroom\'s place;     And let Bianca take her sister\'s room.   TRANIO. Shall sweet Bianca practise how to bride it?   BAPTISTA. She shall, Lucentio. Come, gentlemen, let\'s go.                                                           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. PETRUCHIO\'S country house  Enter GRUMIO    GRUMIO. Fie, fie on all tired jades, on all mad masters, and all     foul ways! Was ever man so beaten? Was ever man so ray\'d? Was     ever man so weary? I am sent before to make a fire, and they are     coming after to warm them. Now were not I a little pot and soon     hot, my very lips might freeze to my teeth, my tongue to the roof     of my mouth, my heart in my belly, ere I should come by a fire to     thaw me. But I with blowing the fire shall warm myself; for,     considering the weather, a taller man than I will take cold.     Holla, ho! Curtis!                              Enter CURTIS    CURTIS. Who is that calls so coldly?   GRUMIO. A piece of ice. If thou doubt it, thou mayst slide from my     shoulder to my heel with no greater a run but my head and my     neck. A fire, good Curtis.   CURTIS. Is my master and his wife coming, Grumio?     GRUMIO. O, ay, Curtis, ay; and therefore fire, fire; cast on no     water.   CURTIS. Is she so hot a shrew as she\'s reported?   GRUMIO. She was, good Curtis, before this frost; but thou know\'st     winter tames man, woman, and beast; for it hath tam\'d my old     master, and my new mistress, and myself, fellow Curtis.   CURTIS. Away, you three-inch fool! I am no beast.   GRUMIO. Am I but three inches? Why, thy horn is a foot, and so long     am I at the least. But wilt thou make a fire, or shall I complain     on thee to our mistress, whose hand- she being now at hand- thou     shalt soon feel, to thy cold comfort, for being slow in thy hot     office?   CURTIS. I prithee, good Grumio, tell me how goes the world?   GRUMIO. A cold world, Curtis, in every office but thine; and     therefore fire. Do thy duty, and have thy duty, for my master and     mistress are almost frozen to death.   CURTIS. There\'s fire ready; and therefore, good Grumio, the news?   GRUMIO. Why, \'Jack boy! ho, boy!\' and as much news as thou wilt.   CURTIS. Come, you are so full of cony-catching!   GRUMIO. Why, therefore, fire; for I have caught extreme cold.       Where\'s the cook? Is supper ready, the house trimm\'d, rushes     strew\'d, cobwebs swept, the serving-men in their new fustian,     their white stockings, and every officer his wedding-garment on?     Be the jacks fair within, the jills fair without, the carpets     laid, and everything in order?   CURTIS. All ready; and therefore, I pray thee, news.   GRUMIO. First know my horse is tired; my master and mistress fall\'n     out.   CURTIS. How?   GRUMIO. Out of their saddles into the dirt; and thereby hangs a     tale.   CURTIS. Let\'s ha\'t, good Grumio.   GRUMIO. Lend thine ear.   CURTIS. Here.   GRUMIO. There.                                  [Striking him]   CURTIS. This \'tis to feel a tale, not to hear a tale.   GRUMIO. And therefore \'tis call\'d a sensible tale; and this cuff     was but to knock at your car and beseech list\'ning. Now I begin:     Imprimis, we came down a foul hill, my master riding behind my     mistress-     CURTIS. Both of one horse?   GRUMIO. What\'s that to thee?   CURTIS. Why, a horse.   GRUMIO. Tell thou the tale. But hadst thou not cross\'d me, thou     shouldst have heard how her horse fell and she under her horse;     thou shouldst have heard in how miry a place, how she was     bemoil\'d, how he left her with the horse upon her, how he beat me     because her horse stumbled, how she waded through the dirt to     pluck him off me, how he swore, how she pray\'d that never pray\'d     before, how I cried, how the horses ran away, how her bridle was     burst, how I lost my crupper- with many things of worthy memory,     which now shall die in oblivion, and thou return unexperienc\'d to     thy grave.   CURTIS. By this reck\'ning he is more shrew than she.   GRUMIO. Ay, and that thou and the proudest of you all shall find     when he comes home. But what talk I of this? Call forth     Nathaniel, Joseph, Nicholas, Philip, Walter, Sugarsop, and the     rest; let their heads be sleekly comb\'d, their blue coats brush\'d     and their garters of an indifferent knit; let them curtsy with     their left legs, and not presume to touch a hair of my mastcr\'s       horse-tail till they kiss their hands. Are they all ready?   CURTIS. They are.   GRUMIO. Call them forth.   CURTIS. Do you hear, ho? You must meet my master, to countenance my     mistress.   GRUMIO. Why, she hath a face of her own.   CURTIS. Who knows not that?   GRUMIO. Thou, it seems, that calls for company to countenance her.   CURTIS. I call them forth to credit her.   GRUMIO. Why, she comes to borrow nothing of them.                       Enter four or five SERVINGMEN    NATHANIEL. Welcome home, Grumio!   PHILIP. How now, Grumio!   JOSEPH. What, Grumio!   NICHOLAS. Fellow Grumio!   NATHANIEL. How now, old lad!   GRUMIO. Welcome, you!- how now, you!- what, you!- fellow, you!- and     thus much for greeting. Now, my spruce companions, is all ready,       and all things neat?   NATHANIEL. All things is ready. How near is our master?   GRUMIO. E\'en at hand, alighted by this; and therefore be not-    Cock\'s passion, silence! I hear my master.                       Enter PETRUCHIO and KATHERINA    PETRUCHIO. Where be these knaves? What, no man at door     To hold my stirrup nor to take my horse!     Where is Nathaniel, Gregory, Philip?   ALL SERVANTS. Here, here, sir; here, sir.   PETRUCHIO. Here, sir! here, sir! here, sir! here, sir!     You logger-headed and unpolish\'d grooms!     What, no attendance? no regard? no duty?     Where is the foolish knave I sent before?   GRUMIO. Here, sir; as foolish as I was before.   PETRUCHIO. YOU peasant swain! you whoreson malt-horse drudge!     Did I not bid thee meet me in the park     And bring along these rascal knaves with thee?   GRUMIO. Nathaniel\'s coat, sir, was not fully made,       And Gabriel\'s pumps were all unpink\'d i\' th\' heel;     There was no link to colour Peter\'s hat,     And Walter\'s dagger was not come from sheathing;     There were none fine but Adam, Ralph, and Gregory;     The rest were ragged, old, and beggarly;     Yet, as they are, here are they come to meet you.   PETRUCHIO. Go, rascals, go and fetch my supper in.                                    Exeunt some of the SERVINGMEN      [Sings]  Where is the life that late I led?              Where are those-      Sit down, Kate, and welcome. Soud, soud, soud, soud!                   Re-enter SERVANTS with supper      Why, when, I say? Nay, good sweet Kate, be merry.     Off with my boots, you rogues! you villains, when?      [Sings]  It was the friar of orders grey,                As he forth walked on his way-      Out, you rogue! you pluck my foot awry;     Take that, and mend the plucking off the other.                                                    [Strikes him]     Be merry, Kate. Some water, here, what, ho!                        Enter one with water      Where\'s my spaniel Troilus? Sirrah, get you hence,     And bid my cousin Ferdinand come hither:                                                  Exit SERVINGMAN     One, Kate, that you must kiss and be acquainted with.     Where are my slippers? Shall I have some water?     Come, Kate, and wash, and welcome heartily.     You whoreson villain! will you let it fall?    [Strikes him]   KATHERINA. Patience, I pray you; \'twas a fault unwilling.   PETRUCHIO. A whoreson, beetle-headed, flap-ear\'d knave!     Come, Kate, sit down; I know you have a stomach.     Will you give thanks, sweet Kate, or else shall I?       What\'s this? Mutton?   FIRST SERVANT. Ay.   PETRUCHIO. Who brought it?   PETER. I.   PETRUCHIO. \'Tis burnt; and so is all the meat.     What dogs are these? Where is the rascal cook?     How durst you villains bring it from the dresser     And serve it thus to me that love it not?     There, take it to you, trenchers, cups, and all;                                 [Throws the meat, etc., at them]     You heedless joltheads and unmanner\'d slaves!     What, do you grumble? I\'ll be with you straight.                                                  Exeunt SERVANTS   KATHERINA. I pray you, husband, be not so disquiet;     The meat was well, if you were so contented.   PETRUCHIO. I tell thee, Kate, \'twas burnt and dried away,     And I expressly am forbid to touch it;     For it engenders choler, planteth anger;     And better \'twere that both of us did fast,     Since, of ourselves, ourselves are choleric,       Than feed it with such over-roasted flesh.     Be patient; to-morrow \'t shall be mended.     And for this night we\'ll fast for company.     Come, I will bring thee to thy bridal chamber.        Exeunt                       Re-enter SERVANTS severally    NATHANIEL. Peter, didst ever see the like?   PETER. He kills her in her own humour.                              Re-enter CURTIS    GRUMIO. Where is he?   CURTIS. In her chamber. Making a sermon of continency to her,     And rails, and swears, and rates, that she, poor soul,     Knows not which way to stand, to look, to speak.     And sits as one new risen from a dream.     Away, away! for he is coming hither.                  Exeunt                         Re-enter PETRUCHIO      PETRUCHIO. Thus have I politicly begun my reign,     And \'tis my hope to end successfully.     My falcon now is sharp and passing empty.     And till she stoop she must not be full-gorg\'d,     For then she never looks upon her lure.     Another way I have to man my haggard,     To make her come, and know her keeper\'s call,     That is, to watch her, as we watch these kites     That bate and beat, and will not be obedient.     She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat;     Last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not;     As with the meat, some undeserved fault     I\'ll find about the making of the bed;     And here I\'ll fling the pillow, there the bolster,     This way the coverlet, another way the sheets;     Ay, and amid this hurly I intend     That all is done in reverend care of her-     And, in conclusion, she shall watch all night;     And if she chance to nod I\'ll rail and brawl       And with the clamour keep her still awake.     This is a way to kill a wife with kindness,     And thus I\'ll curb her mad and headstrong humour.     He that knows better how to tame a shrew,     Now let him speak; \'tis charity to show.                Exit     SCENE II. Padua. Before BAPTISTA\'S house  Enter TRANIO as LUCENTIO, and HORTENSIO as LICIO    TRANIO. Is \'t possible, friend Licio, that Mistress Bianca     Doth fancy any other but Lucentio?     I tell you, sir, she bears me fair in hand.   HORTENSIO. Sir, to satisfy you in what I have said,     Stand by and mark the manner of his teaching.                                               [They stand aside]                 Enter BIANCA, and LUCENTIO as CAMBIO    LUCENTIO. Now, mistress, profit you in what you read?   BIANCA. What, master, read you, First resolve me that.   LUCENTIO. I read that I profess, \'The Art to Love.\'   BIANCA. And may you prove, sir, master of your art!   LUCENTIO. While you, sweet dear, prove mistress of my heart.                                                    [They retire]   HORTENSIO. Quick proceeders, marry! Now tell me, I pray,     You that durst swear that your Mistress Blanca       Lov\'d none in the world so well as Lucentio.   TRANIO. O despiteful love! unconstant womankind!     I tell thee, Licio, this is wonderful.   HORTENSIO. Mistake no more; I am not Licio.     Nor a musician as I seem to be;     But one that scorn to live in this disguise     For such a one as leaves a gentleman     And makes a god of such a cullion.     Know, sir, that I am call\'d Hortensio.   TRANIO. Signior Hortensio, I have often heard     Of your entire affection to Bianca;     And since mine eyes are witness of her lightness,     I will with you, if you be so contented,     Forswear Bianca and her love for ever.   HORTENSIO. See, how they kiss and court! Signior Lucentio,     Here is my hand, and here I firmly vow     Never to woo her more, but do forswear her,     As one unworthy all the former favours     That I have fondly flatter\'d her withal.   TRANIO. And here I take the like unfeigned oath,       Never to marry with her though she would entreat;     Fie on her! See how beastly she doth court him!   HORTENSIO. Would all the world but he had quite forsworn!     For me, that I may surely keep mine oath,     I will be married to a wealtlly widow     Ere three days pass, which hath as long lov\'d me     As I have lov\'d this proud disdainful haggard.     And so farewell, Signior Lucentio.     Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks,     Shall win my love; and so I take my leave,     In resolution as I swore before.                        Exit   TRANIO. Mistress Bianca, bless you with such grace     As \'longeth to a lover\'s blessed case!     Nay, I have ta\'en you napping, gentle love,     And have forsworn you with Hortensio.   BIANCA. Tranio, you jest; but have you both forsworn me?   TRANIO. Mistress, we have.   LUCENTIO. Then we are rid of Licio.   TRANIO. I\' faith, he\'ll have a lusty widow now,     That shall be woo\'d and wedded in a day.     BIANCA. God give him joy!   TRANIO. Ay, and he\'ll tame her.   BIANCA. He says so, Tranio.   TRANIO. Faith, he is gone unto the taming-school.   BIANCA. The taming-school! What, is there such a place?   TRANIO. Ay, mistress; and Petruchio is the master,     That teacheth tricks eleven and twenty long,     To tame a shrew and charm her chattering tongue.                         Enter BIONDELLO    BIONDELLO. O master, master, have watch\'d so long     That I am dog-weary; but at last I spied     An ancient angel coming down the hill     Will serve the turn.   TRANIO. What is he, Biondello?   BIONDELLO. Master, a mercatante or a pedant,     I know not what; but formal in apparel,     In gait and countenance surely like a father.   LUCENTIO. And what of him, Tranio?     TRANIO. If he be credulous and trust my tale,     I\'ll make him glad to seem Vincentio,     And give assurance to Baptista Minola     As if he were the right Vincentio.     Take in your love, and then let me alone.                                       Exeunt LUCENTIO and BIANCA                           Enter a PEDANT    PEDANT. God save you, sir!   TRANIO. And you, sir; you are welcome.     Travel you far on, or are you at the farthest?   PEDANT. Sir, at the farthest for a week or two;     But then up farther, and as far as Rome;     And so to Tripoli, if God lend me life.   TRANIO. What countryman, I pray?   PEDANT. Of Mantua.   TRANIO. Of Mantua, sir? Marry, God forbid,     And come to Padua, careless of your life!   PEDANT. My life, sir! How, I pray? For that goes hard.     TRANIO. \'Tis death for any one in Mantua     To come to Padua. Know you not the cause?     Your ships are stay\'d at Venice; and the Duke,     For private quarrel \'twixt your Duke and him,     Hath publish\'d and proclaim\'d it openly.     \'Tis marvel- but that you are but newly come,     You might have heard it else proclaim\'d about.   PEDANT. Alas, sir, it is worse for me than so!     For I have bills for money by exchange     From Florence, and must here deliver them.   TRANIO. Well, sir, to do you courtesy,     This will I do, and this I will advise you-     First, tell me, have you ever been at Pisa?   PEDANT. Ay, sir, in Pisa have I often been,     Pisa renowned for grave citizens.   TRANIO. Among them know you one Vincentio?   PEDANT. I know him not, but I have heard of him,     A merchant of incomparable wealth.   TRANIO. He is my father, sir; and, sooth to say,     In count\'nance somewhat doth resemble you.     BIONDELLO.  [Aside]  As much as an apple doth an oyster, and all     one.   TRANIO. To save your life in this extremity,     This favour will I do you for his sake;     And think it not the worst of all your fortunes     That you are like to Sir Vincentio.     His name and credit shall you undertake,     And in my house you shall be friendly lodg\'d;     Look that you take upon you as you should.     You understand me, sir. So shall you stay     Till you have done your business in the city.     If this be court\'sy, sir, accept of it.   PEDANT. O, sir, I do; and will repute you ever     The patron of my life and liberty.   TRANIO. Then go with me to make the matter good.     This, by the way, I let you understand:     My father is here look\'d for every day     To pass assurance of a dow\'r in marriage     \'Twixt me and one Baptista\'s daughter here.     In all these circumstances I\'ll instruct you.       Go with me to clothe you as becomes you.              Exeunt     SCENE III. PETRUCHIO\'S house  Enter KATHERINA and GRUMIO    GRUMIO. No, no, forsooth; I dare not for my life.   KATHERINA. The more my wrong, the more his spite appears.     What, did he marry me to famish me?     Beggars that come unto my father\'s door     Upon entreaty have a present alms;     If not, elsewhere they meet with charity;     But I, who never knew how to entreat,     Nor never needed that I should entreat,     Am starv\'d for meat, giddy for lack of sleep;     With oaths kept waking, and with brawling fed;     And that which spites me more than all these wants-     He does it under name of perfect love;     As who should say, if I should sleep or eat,     \'Twere deadly sickness or else present death.     I prithee go and get me some repast;     I care not what, so it be wholesome food.   GRUMIO. What say you to a neat\'s foot?     KATHERINA. \'Tis passing good; I prithee let me have it.   GRUMIO. I fear it is too choleric a meat.     How say you to a fat tripe finely broil\'d?   KATHERINA. I like it well; good Grumio, fetch it me.   GRUMIO. I cannot tell; I fear \'tis choleric.     What say you to a piece of beef and mustard?   KATHERINA. A dish that I do love to feed upon.   GRUMIO. Ay, but the mustard is too hot a little.   KATHERINA. Why then the beef, and let the mustard rest.   GRUMIO. Nay, then I will not; you shall have the mustard,     Or else you get no beef of Grumio.   KATHERINA. Then both, or one, or anything thou wilt.   GRUMIO. Why then the mustard without the beef.   KATHERINA. Go, get thee gone, thou false deluding slave,                                                      [Beats him]     That feed\'st me with the very name of meat.     Sorrow on thee and all the pack of you     That triumph thus upon my misery!     Go, get thee gone, I say.                   Enter PETRUCHIO, and HORTENSIO with meat    PETRUCHIO. How fares my Kate? What, sweeting, all amort?   HORTENSIO. Mistress, what cheer?   KATHERINA. Faith, as cold as can be.   PETRUCHIO. Pluck up thy spirits, look cheerfully upon me.     Here, love, thou seest how diligent I am,     To dress thy meat myself, and bring it thee.     I am sure, sweet Kate, this kindness merits thanks.     What, not a word? Nay, then thou lov\'st it not,     And all my pains is sorted to no proof.     Here, take away this dish.   KATHERINA. I pray you, let it stand.   PETRUCHIO. The poorest service is repaid with thanks;     And so shall mine, before you touch the meat.   KATHERINA. I thank you, sir.   HORTENSIO. Signior Petruchio, fie! you are to blame.     Come, Mistress Kate, I\'ll bear you company.   PETRUCHIO.  [Aside]  Eat it up all, Hortensio, if thou lovest me.-     Much good do it unto thy gentle heart!       Kate, eat apace. And now, my honey love,     Will we return unto thy father\'s house     And revel it as bravely as the best,     With silken coats and caps, and golden rings,     With ruffs and cuffs and farthingales and things,     With scarfs and fans and double change of brav\'ry.     With amber bracelets, beads, and all this knav\'ry.     What, hast thou din\'d? The tailor stays thy leisure,     To deck thy body with his ruffling treasure.                            Enter TAILOR      Come, tailor, let us see these ornaments;     Lay forth the gown.                          Enter HABERDASHER      What news with you, sir?   HABERDASHER. Here is the cap your worship did bespeak.   PETRUCHIO. Why, this was moulded on a porringer;       A velvet dish. Fie, fie! \'tis lewd and filthy;     Why, \'tis a cockle or a walnut-shell,     A knack, a toy, a trick, a baby\'s cap.     Away with it. Come, let me have a bigger.   KATHERINA. I\'ll have no bigger; this doth fit the time,     And gentlewomen wear such caps as these.   PETRUCHIO. When you are gentle, you shall have one too,     And not till then.   HORTENSIO.  [Aside]  That will not be in haste.   KATHERINA. Why, sir, I trust I may have leave to speak;     And speak I will. I am no child, no babe.     Your betters have endur\'d me say my mind,     And if you cannot, best you stop your ears.     My tongue will tell the anger of my heart,     Or else my heart, concealing it, will break;     And rather than it shall, I will be free     Even to the uttermost, as I please, in words.   PETRUCHIO. Why, thou say\'st true; it is a paltry cap,     A custard-coffin, a bauble, a silken pie;     I love thee well in that thou lik\'st it not.     KATHERINA. Love me or love me not, I like the cap;     And it I will have, or I will have none.    Exit HABERDASHER   PETRUCHIO. Thy gown? Why, ay. Come, tailor, let us see\'t.     O mercy, God! what masquing stuff is here?     What\'s this? A sleeve? \'Tis like a demi-cannon.     What, up and down, carv\'d like an appletart?     Here\'s snip and nip and cut and slish and slash,     Like to a censer in a barber\'s shop.     Why, what a devil\'s name, tailor, call\'st thou this?   HORTENSIO.  [Aside]  I see she\'s like to have neither cap nor gown.   TAILOR. You bid me make it orderly and well,     According to the fashion and the time.   PETRUCHIO. Marry, and did; but if you be rememb\'red,     I did not bid you mar it to the time.     Go, hop me over every kennel home,     For you shall hop without my custom, sir.     I\'ll none of it; hence! make your best of it.   KATHERINA. I never saw a better fashion\'d gown,     More quaint, more pleasing, nor more commendable;     Belike you mean to make a puppet of me.     PETRUCHIO. Why, true; he means to make a puppet of thee.   TAILOR. She says your worship means to make a puppet of her.   PETRUCHIO. O monstrous arrogance! Thou liest, thou thread, thou       thimble,     Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail,     Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket thou-     Brav\'d in mine own house with a skein of thread!     Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant;     Or I shall so bemete thee with thy yard     As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou liv\'st!     I tell thee, I, that thou hast marr\'d her gown.   TAILOR. Your worship is deceiv\'d; the gown is made     Just as my master had direction.     Grumio gave order how it should be done.   GRUMIO. I gave him no order; I gave him the stuff.   TAILOR. But how did you desire it should be made?   GRUMIO. Marry, sir, with needle and thread.   TAILOR. But did you not request to have it cut?   GRUMIO. Thou hast fac\'d many things.   TAILOR. I have.     GRUMIO. Face not me. Thou hast brav\'d many men; brave not me. I     will neither be fac\'d nor brav\'d. I say unto thee, I bid thy     master cut out the gown; but I did not bid him cut it to pieces.     Ergo, thou liest.   TAILOR. Why, here is the note of the fashion to testify.   PETRUCHIO. Read it.   GRUMIO. The note lies in\'s throat, if he say I said so.   TAILOR.  [Reads]  \'Imprimis, a loose-bodied gown\'-   GRUMIO. Master, if ever I said loose-bodied gown, sew me in the     skirts of it and beat me to death with a bottom of brown bread; I     said a gown.   PETRUCHIO. Proceed.   TAILOR.  [Reads]  \'With a small compass\'d cape\'-   GRUMIO. I confess the cape.   TAILOR.  [Reads]  \'With a trunk sleeve\'-   GRUMIO. I confess two sleeves.   TAILOR.  [Reads]  \'The sleeves curiously cut.\'   PETRUCHIO. Ay, there\'s the villainy.   GRUMIO. Error i\' th\' bill, sir; error i\' th\' bill! I commanded the     sleeves should be cut out, and sew\'d up again; and that I\'ll       prove upon thee, though thy little finger be armed in a thimble.   TAILOR. This is true that I say; an I had thee in place where, thou     shouldst know it.   GRUMIO. I am for thee straight; take thou the bill, give me thy     meteyard, and spare not me.   HORTENSIO. God-a-mercy, Grumio! Then he shall have no odds.   PETRUCHIO. Well, sir, in brief, the gown is not for me.   GRUMIO. You are i\' th\' right, sir; \'tis for my mistress.   PETRUCHIO. Go, take it up unto thy master\'s use.   GRUMIO. Villain, not for thy life! Take up my mistress\' gown for     thy master\'s use!   PETRUCHIO. Why, sir, what\'s your conceit in that?   GRUMIO. O, sir, the conceit is deeper than you think for.     Take up my mistress\' gown to his master\'s use!     O fie, fie, fie!   PETRUCHIO.  [Aside]  Hortensio, say thou wilt see the tailor paid.-     Go take it hence; be gone, and say no more.   HORTENSIO. Tailor, I\'ll pay thee for thy gown to-morrow;     Take no unkindness of his hasty words.     Away, I say; commend me to thy master.           Exit TAILOR     PETRUCHIO. Well, come, my Kate; we will unto your father\'s     Even in these honest mean habiliments;     Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor;     For \'tis the mind that makes the body rich;     And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,     So honour peereth in the meanest habit.     What, is the jay more precious than the lark     Because his feathers are more beautiful?     Or is the adder better than the eel     Because his painted skin contents the eye?     O no, good Kate; neither art thou the worse     For this poor furniture and mean array.     If thou account\'st it shame, lay it on me;     And therefore frolic; we will hence forthwith     To feast and sport us at thy father\'s house.     Go call my men, and let us straight to him;     And bring our horses unto Long-lane end;     There will we mount, and thither walk on foot.     Let\'s see; I think \'tis now some seven o\'clock,     And well we may come there by dinner-time.     KATHERINA. I dare assure you, sir, \'tis almost two,     And \'twill be supper-time ere you come there.   PETRUCHIO. It shall be seven ere I go to horse.     Look what I speak, or do, or think to do,     You are still crossing it. Sirs, let \'t alone;     I will not go to-day; and ere I do,     It shall be what o\'clock I say it is.   HORTENSIO. Why, so this gallant will command the sun.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE IV. Padua. Before BAPTISTA\'S house  Enter TRANIO as LUCENTIO, and the PEDANT dressed like VINCENTIO    TRANIO. Sir, this is the house; please it you that I call?   PEDANT. Ay, what else? And, but I be deceived,     Signior Baptista may remember me     Near twenty years ago in Genoa,     Where we were lodgers at the Pegasus.   TRANIO. \'Tis well; and hold your own, in any case,     With such austerity as longeth to a father.                         Enter BIONDELLO    PEDANT. I warrant you. But, sir, here comes your boy;     \'Twere good he were school\'d.   TRANIO. Fear you not him. Sirrah Biondello,     Now do your duty throughly, I advise you.     Imagine \'twere the right Vincentio.   BIONDELLO. Tut, fear not me.     TRANIO. But hast thou done thy errand to Baptista?   BIONDELLO. I told him that your father was at Venice,     And that you look\'d for him this day in Padua.   TRANIO. Th\'art a tall fellow; hold thee that to drink.     Here comes Baptista. Set your countenance, sir.                   Enter BAPTISTA, and LUCENTIO as CAMBIO      Signior Baptista, you are happily met.     [To To the PEDANT] Sir, this is the gentleman I told you of;     I pray you stand good father to me now;     Give me Bianca for my patrimony.   PEDANT. Soft, son!     Sir, by your leave: having come to Padua     To gather in some debts, my son Lucentio     Made me acquainted with a weighty cause     Of love between your daughter and himself;     And- for the good report I hear of you,     And for the love he beareth to your daughter,     And she to him- to stay him not too long,       I am content, in a good father\'s care,     To have him match\'d; and, if you please to like     No worse than I, upon some agreement     Me shall you find ready and willing     With one consent to have her so bestow\'d;     For curious I cannot be with you,     Signior Baptista, of whom I hear so well.   BAPTISTA. Sir, pardon me in what I have to say.     Your plainness and your shortness please me well.     Right true it is your son Lucentio here     Doth love my daughter, and she loveth him,     Or both dissemble deeply their affections;     And therefore, if you say no more than this,     That like a father you will deal with him,     And pass my daughter a sufficient dower,     The match is made, and all is done-     Your son shall have my daughter with consent.   TRANIO. I thank you, sir. Where then do you know best     We be affied, and such assurance ta\'en     As shall with either part\'s agreement stand?     BAPTISTA. Not in my house, Lucentio, for you know     Pitchers have ears, and I have many servants;     Besides, old Gremio is heark\'ning still,     And happily we might be interrupted.   TRANIO. Then at my lodging, an it like you.     There doth my father lie; and there this night     We\'ll pass the business privately and well.     Send for your daughter by your servant here;     My boy shall fetch the scrivener presently.     The worst is this, that at so slender warning     You are like to have a thin and slender pittance.   BAPTISTA. It likes me well. Cambio, hie you home,     And bid Bianca make her ready straight;     And, if you will, tell what hath happened-     Lucentio\'s father is arriv\'d in Padua,     And how she\'s like to be Lucentio\'s wife.      Exit LUCENTIO   BIONDELLO. I pray the gods she may, with all my heart.   TRANIO. Dally not with the gods, but get thee gone.                                                   Exit BIONDELLO     Signior Baptista, shall I lead the way?       Welcome! One mess is like to be your cheer;     Come, sir; we will better it in Pisa.   BAPTISTA. I follow you.                                 Exeunt              Re-enter LUCENTIO as CAMBIO, and BIONDELLO    BIONDELLO. Cambio.   LUCENTIO. What say\'st thou, Biondello?   BIONDELLO. You saw my master wink and laugh upon you?   LUCENTIO. Biondello, what of that?   BIONDELLO. Faith, nothing; but has left me here behind to expound     the meaning or moral of his signs and tokens.   LUCENTIO. I pray thee moralize them.   BIONDELLO. Then thus: Baptista is safe, talking with the deceiving     father of a deceitful son.   LUCENTIO. And what of him?   BIONDELLO. His daughter is to be brought by you to the supper.   LUCENTIO. And then?   BIONDELLO. The old priest at Saint Luke\'s church is at your command     at all hours.     LUCENTIO. And what of all this?   BIONDELLO. I cannot tell, except they are busied about a     counterfeit assurance. Take your assurance of her, cum privilegio     ad imprimendum solum; to th\' church take the priest, clerk, and     some sufficient honest witnesses.     If this be not that you look for, I have more to say,     But bid Bianca farewell for ever and a day.   LUCENTIO. Hear\'st thou, Biondello?   BIONDELLO. I cannot tarry. I knew a wench married in an afternoon     as she went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit; and so     may you, sir; and so adieu, sir. My master hath appointed me to     go to Saint Luke\'s to bid the priest be ready to come against you     come with your appendix.  Exit   LUCENTIO. I may and will, if she be so contented.     She will be pleas\'d; then wherefore should I doubt?     Hap what hap may, I\'ll roundly go about her;     It shall go hard if Cambio go without her.              Exit     SCENE V. A public road  Enter PETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, HORTENSIO, and SERVANTS    PETRUCHIO. Come on, a God\'s name; once more toward our father\'s.     Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon!   KATHERINA. The moon? The sun! It is not moonlight now.   PETRUCHIO. I say it is the moon that shines so bright.   KATHERINA. I know it is the sun that shines so bright.   PETRUCHIO. Now by my mother\'s son, and that\'s myself,     It shall be moon, or star, or what I list,     Or ere I journey to your father\'s house.     Go on and fetch our horses back again.     Evermore cross\'d and cross\'d; nothing but cross\'d!   HORTENSIO. Say as he says, or we shall never go.   KATHERINA. Forward, I pray, since we have come so far,     And be it moon, or sun, or what you please;     And if you please to call it a rush-candle,     Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.   PETRUCHIO. I say it is the moon.   KATHERINA. I know it is the moon.     PETRUCHIO. Nay, then you lie; it is the blessed sun.   KATHERINA. Then, God be bless\'d, it is the blessed sun;     But sun it is not, when you say it is not;     And the moon changes even as your mind.     What you will have it nam\'d, even that it is,     And so it shall be so for Katherine.   HORTENSIO. Petruchio, go thy ways, the field is won.   PETRUCHIO. Well, forward, forward! thus the bowl should run,     And not unluckily against the bias.     But, soft! Company is coming here.                              Enter VINCENTIO      [To VINCENTIO]  Good-morrow, gentle mistress; where away?-     Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too,     Hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman?     Such war of white and red within her cheeks!     What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty     As those two eyes become that heavenly face?     Fair lovely maid, once more good day to thee.       Sweet Kate, embrace her for her beauty\'s sake.   HORTENSIO. \'A will make the man mad, to make a woman of him.   KATHERINA. Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet,     Whither away, or where is thy abode?     Happy the parents of so fair a child;     Happier the man whom favourable stars     Allots thee for his lovely bed-fellow.   PETRUCHIO. Why, how now, Kate, I hope thou art not mad!     This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, withered,     And not a maiden, as thou sayst he is.   KATHERINA. Pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes,     That have been so bedazzled with the sun     That everything I look on seemeth green;     Now I perceive thou art a reverend father.     Pardon, I pray thee, for my mad mistaking.   PETRUCHIO. Do, good old grandsire, and withal make known     Which way thou travellest- if along with us,     We shall be joyful of thy company.   VINCENTIO. Fair sir, and you my merry mistress,     That with your strange encounter much amaz\'d me,       My name is call\'d Vincentio, my dwelling Pisa,     And bound I am to Padua, there to visit     A son of mine, which long I have not seen.   PETRUCHIO. What is his name?   VINCENTIO. Lucentio, gentle sir.   PETRUCHIO. Happily met; the happier for thy son.     And now by law, as well as reverend age,     I may entitle thee my loving father:     The sister to my wife, this gentlewoman,     Thy son by this hath married. Wonder not,     Nor be not grieved- she is of good esteem,     Her dowry wealthy, and of worthy birth;     Beside, so qualified as may beseem     The spouse of any noble gentleman.     Let me embrace with old Vincentio;     And wander we to see thy honest son,     Who will of thy arrival be full joyous.   VINCENTIO. But is this true; or is it else your pleasure,     Like pleasant travellers, to break a jest     Upon the company you overtake?     HORTENSIO. I do assure thee, father, so it is.   PETRUCHIO. Come, go along, and see the truth hereof;     For our first merriment hath made thee jealous.                                         Exeunt all but HORTENSIO   HORTENSIO. Well, Petruchio, this has put me in heart.     Have to my widow; and if she be froward,     Then hast thou taught Hortensio to be untoward.         Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. Padua. Before LUCENTIO\'S house  Enter BIONDELLO, LUCENTIO, and BIANCA; GREMIO is out before    BIONDELLO. Softly and swiftly, sir, for the priest is ready.   LUCENTIO. I fly, Biondello; but they may chance to need the at     home, therefore leave us.   BIONDELLO. Nay, faith, I\'ll see the church a your back, and then     come back to my master\'s as soon as I can.                           Exeunt LUCENTIO, BIANCA, and BIONDELLO   GREMIO. I marvel Cambio comes not all this while.             Enter PETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, VINCENTIO, GRUMIO,                           and ATTENDANTS    PETRUCHIO. Sir, here\'s the door; this is Lucentio\'s house;     My father\'s bears more toward the market-place;     Thither must I, and here I leave you, sir.   VINCENTIO. You shall not choose but drink before you go;     I think I shall command your welcome here,       And by all likelihood some cheer is toward.         [Knocks]   GREMIO. They\'re busy within; you were best knock louder.                                 [PEDANT looks out of the window]   PEDANT. What\'s he that knocks as he would beat down the gate?   VINCENTIO. Is Signior Lucentio within, sir?   PEDANT. He\'s within, sir, but not to be spoken withal.   VINCENTIO. What if a man bring him a hundred pound or two to make     merry withal?   PEDANT. Keep your hundred pounds to yourself; he shall need none so     long as I live.   PETRUCHIO. Nay, I told you your son was well beloved in Padua. Do     you hear, sir? To leave frivolous circumstances, I pray you tell     Signior Lucentio that his father is come from Pisa, and is here     at the door to speak with him.   PEDANT. Thou liest: his father is come from Padua, and here looking     out at the window.   VINCENTIO. Art thou his father?   PEDANT. Ay, sir; so his mother says, if I may believe her.   PETRUCHIO.  [To VINCENTIO]  Why, how now, gentleman!     Why, this is flat knavery to take upon you another man\'s name.     PEDANT. Lay hands on the villain; I believe \'a means to cozen     somebody in this city under my countenance.                         Re-enter BIONDELLO    BIONDELLO. I have seen them in the church together. God send \'em     good shipping! But who is here? Mine old master, Vicentio! Now we     are undone and brought to nothing.   VINCENTIO.  [Seeing BIONDELLO]  Come hither, crack-hemp.   BIONDELLO. I hope I may choose, sir.   VINCENTIO. Come hither, you rogue. What, have you forgot me?   BIONDELLO. Forgot you! No, sir. I could not forget you, for I never     saw you before in all my life.   VINCENTIO. What, you notorious villain, didst thou never see thy     master\'s father, Vincentio?   BIONDELLO. What, my old worshipful old master? Yes, marry, sir; see     where he looks out of the window.   VINCENTIO. Is\'t so, indeed?               [He beats BIONDELLO]   BIONDELLO. Help, help, help! Here\'s a madman will murder me.  Exit     PEDANT. Help, son! help, Signior Baptista!     Exit from above   PETRUCHIO. Prithee, Kate, let\'s stand aside and see the end of this     controversy.                              [They stand aside]         Re-enter PEDANT below; BAPTISTA, TRANIO, and SERVANTS    TRANIO. Sir, what are you that offer to beat my servant?   VINCENTIO. What am I, sir? Nay, what are you, sir? O immortal gods!     O fine villain! A silken doublet, a velvet hose, a scarlet cloak,     and a copatain hat! O, I am undone! I am undone! While I play the     good husband at home, my son and my servant spend all at the     university.   TRANIO. How now! what\'s the matter?   BAPTISTA. What, is the man lunatic?   TRANIO. Sir, you seem a sober ancient gentleman by your habit, but     your words show you a madman. Why, sir, what \'cerns it you if I     wear pearl and gold? I thank my good father, I am able to     maintain it.   VINCENTIO. Thy father! O villain! he is a sailmaker in Bergamo.   BAPTISTA. You mistake, sir; you mistake, sir. Pray, what do you       think is his name?   VINCENTIO. His name! As if I knew not his name! I have brought him     up ever since he was three years old, and his name is Tranio.   PEDANT. Away, away, mad ass! His name is Lucentio; and he is mine     only son, and heir to the lands of me, Signior Vicentio.   VINCENTIO. Lucentio! O, he hath murd\'red his master! Lay hold on     him, I charge you, in the Duke\'s name. O, my son, my son! Tell     me, thou villain, where is my son, Lucentio?   TRANIO. Call forth an officer.                        Enter one with an OFFICER      Carry this mad knave to the gaol. Father Baptista, I charge you     see that he be forthcoming.   VINCENTIO. Carry me to the gaol!   GREMIO. Stay, Officer; he shall not go to prison.   BAPTISTA. Talk not, Signior Gremio; I say he shall go to prison.   GREMIO. Take heed, Signior Baptista, lest you be cony-catch\'d in     this business; I dare swear this is the right Vincentio.   PEDANT. Swear if thou dar\'st.     GREMIO. Nay, I dare not swear it.   TRANIO. Then thou wert best say that I am not Lucentio.   GREMIO. Yes, I know thee to be Signior Lucentio.   BAPTISTA. Away with the dotard; to the gaol with him!   VINCENTIO. Thus strangers may be hal\'d and abus\'d. O monstrous     villain!            Re-enter BIONDELLO, with LUCENTIO and BIANCA    BIONDELLO. O, we are spoil\'d; and yonder he is! Deny him, forswear     him, or else we are all undone.          Exeunt BIONDELLO, TRANIO, and PEDANT, as fast as may be   LUCENTIO.  [Kneeling]  Pardon, sweet father.   VINCENTIO. Lives my sweet son?   BIANCA. Pardon, dear father.   BAPTISTA. How hast thou offended?     Where is Lucentio?   LUCENTIO. Here\'s Lucentio,     Right son to the right Vincentio,     That have by marriage made thy daughter mine,       While counterfeit supposes blear\'d thine eyne.   GREMIO. Here\'s packing, with a witness, to deceive us all!   VINCENTIO. Where is that damned villain, Tranio,     That fac\'d and brav\'d me in this matter so?   BAPTISTA. Why, tell me, is not this my Cambio?   BIANCA. Cambio is chang\'d into Lucentio.   LUCENTIO. Love wrought these miracles. Bianca\'s love     Made me exchange my state with Tranio,     While he did bear my countenance in the town;     And happily I have arrived at the last     Unto the wished haven of my bliss.     What Tranio did, myself enforc\'d him to;     Then pardon him, sweet father, for my sake.   VINCENTIO. I\'ll slit the villain\'s nose that would have sent me to     the gaol.   BAPTISTA.  [To LUCENTIO]  But do you hear, sir? Have you married my     daughter without asking my good will?   VINCENTIO. Fear not, Baptista; we will content you, go to; but I     will in to be revenged for this villainy.               Exit   BAPTISTA. And I to sound the depth of this knavery.       Exit     LUCENTIO. Look not pale, Bianca; thy father will not frown.                                       Exeunt LUCENTIO and BIANCA   GREMIO. My cake is dough, but I\'ll in among the rest;     Out of hope of all but my share of the feast.           Exit   KATHERINA. Husband, let\'s follow to see the end of this ado.   PETRUCHIO. First kiss me, Kate, and we will.   KATHERINA. What, in the midst of the street?   PETRUCHIO. What, art thou asham\'d of me?   KATHERINA. No, sir; God forbid; but asham\'d to kiss.   PETRUCHIO. Why, then, let\'s home again. Come, sirrah, let\'s away.   KATHERINA. Nay, I will give thee a kiss; now pray thee, love, stay.   PETRUCHIO. Is not this well? Come, my sweet Kate:     Better once than never, for never too late.           Exeunt     SCENE II. LUCENTIO\'S house  Enter BAPTISTA, VINCENTIO, GREMIO, the PEDANT, LUCENTIO, BIANCA, PETRUCHIO, KATHERINA, HORTENSIO, and WIDOW. The SERVINGMEN with TRANIO, BIONDELLO, and GRUMIO, bringing in a banquet    LUCENTIO. At last, though long, our jarring notes agree;     And time it is when raging war is done     To smile at scapes and perils overblown.     My fair Bianca, bid my father welcome,     While I with self-same kindness welcome thine.     Brother Petruchio, sister Katherina,     And thou, Hortensio, with thy loving widow,     Feast with the best, and welcome to my house.     My banquet is to close our stomachs up     After our great good cheer. Pray you, sit down;     For now we sit to chat as well as eat.            [They sit]   PETRUCHIO. Nothing but sit and sit, and eat and eat!   BAPTISTA. Padua affords this kindness, son Petruchio.   PETRUCHIO. Padua affords nothing but what is kind.     HORTENSIO. For both our sakes I would that word were true.   PETRUCHIO. Now, for my life, Hortensio fears his widow.   WIDOW. Then never trust me if I be afeard.   PETRUCHIO. YOU are very sensible, and yet you miss my sense:     I mean Hortensio is afeard of you.   WIDOW. He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.   PETRUCHIO. Roundly replied.   KATHERINA. Mistress, how mean you that?   WIDOW. Thus I conceive by him.   PETRUCHIO. Conceives by me! How likes Hortensio that?   HORTENSIO. My widow says thus she conceives her tale.   PETRUCHIO. Very well mended. Kiss him for that, good widow.   KATHERINA. \'He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.\'     I pray you tell me what you meant by that.   WIDOW. Your husband, being troubled with a shrew,     Measures my husband\'s sorrow by his woe;     And now you know my meaning.   KATHERINA. A very mean meaning.   WIDOW. Right, I mean you.   KATHERINA. And I am mean, indeed, respecting you.     PETRUCHIO. To her, Kate!   HORTENSIO. To her, widow!   PETRUCHIO. A hundred marks, my Kate does put her down.   HORTENSIO. That\'s my office.   PETRUCHIO. Spoke like an officer- ha\' to thee, lad.                                            [Drinks to HORTENSIO]   BAPTISTA. How likes Gremio these quick-witted folks?   GREMIO. Believe me, sir, they butt together well.   BIANCA. Head and butt! An hasty-witted body     Would say your head and butt were head and horn.   VINCENTIO. Ay, mistress bride, hath that awakened you?   BIANCA. Ay, but not frighted me; therefore I\'ll sleep again.   PETRUCHIO. Nay, that you shall not; since you have begun,     Have at you for a bitter jest or two.   BIANCA. Am I your bird? I mean to shift my bush,     And then pursue me as you draw your bow.     You are welcome all.                              Exeunt BIANCA, KATHERINA, and WIDOW   PETRUCHIO. She hath prevented me. Here, Signior Tranio,     This bird you aim\'d at, though you hit her not;       Therefore a health to all that shot and miss\'d.   TRANIO. O, sir, Lucentio slipp\'d me like his greyhound,     Which runs himself, and catches for his master.   PETRUCHIO. A good swift simile, but something currish.   TRANIO. \'Tis well, sir, that you hunted for yourself;     \'Tis thought your deer does hold you at a bay.   BAPTISTA. O, O, Petruchio! Tranio hits you now.   LUCENTIO. I thank thee for that gird, good Tranio.   HORTENSIO. Confess, confess; hath he not hit you here?   PETRUCHIO. \'A has a little gall\'d me, I confess;     And, as the jest did glance away from me,     \'Tis ten to one it maim\'d you two outright.   BAPTISTA. Now, in good sadness, son Petruchio,     I think thou hast the veriest shrew of all.   PETRUCHIO. Well, I say no; and therefore, for assurance,     Let\'s each one send unto his wife,     And he whose wife is most obedient,     To come at first when he doth send for her,     Shall win the wager which we will propose.   HORTENSIO. Content. What\'s the wager?     LUCENTIO. Twenty crowns.   PETRUCHIO. Twenty crowns?     I\'ll venture so much of my hawk or hound,     But twenty times so much upon my wife.   LUCENTIO. A hundred then.   HORTENSIO. Content.   PETRUCHIO. A match! \'tis done.   HORTENSIO. Who shall begin?   LUCENTIO. That will I.     Go, Biondello, bid your mistress come to me.   BIONDELLO. I go.                                          Exit   BAPTISTA. Son, I\'ll be your half Bianca comes.   LUCENTIO. I\'ll have no halves; I\'ll bear it all myself.                            Re-enter BIONDELLO      How now! what news?   BIONDELLO. Sir, my mistress sends you word     That she is busy and she cannot come.   PETRUCHIO. How! She\'s busy, and she cannot come!       Is that an answer?   GREMIO. Ay, and a kind one too.     Pray God, sir, your wife send you not a worse.   PETRUCHIO. I hope better.   HORTENSIO. Sirrah Biondello, go and entreat my wife     To come to me forthwith.                      Exit BIONDELLO   PETRUCHIO. O, ho! entreat her!     Nay, then she must needs come.   HORTENSIO. I am afraid, sir,     Do what you can, yours will not be entreated.                              Re-enter BIONDELLO      Now, where\'s my wife?   BIONDELLO. She says you have some goodly jest in hand:     She will not come; she bids you come to her.   PETRUCHIO. Worse and worse; she will not come! O vile,     Intolerable, not to be endur\'d!     Sirrah Grumio, go to your mistress;     Say I command her come to me.                    Exit GRUMIO     HORTENSIO. I know her answer.   PETRUCHIO. What?   HORTENSIO. She will not.   PETRUCHIO. The fouler fortune mine, and there an end.                               Re-enter KATHERINA    BAPTISTA. Now, by my holidame, here comes Katherina!   KATHERINA. What is your sir, that you send for me?   PETRUCHIO. Where is your sister, and Hortensio\'s wife?   KATHERINA. They sit conferring by the parlour fire.   PETRUCHIO. Go, fetch them hither; if they deny to come.     Swinge me them soundly forth unto their husbands.     Away, I say, and bring them hither straight.                                                   Exit KATHERINA   LUCENTIO. Here is a wonder, if you talk of a wonder.   HORTENSIO. And so it is. I wonder what it bodes.   PETRUCHIO. Marry, peace it bodes, and love, and quiet life,     An awful rule, and right supremacy;     And, to be short, what not that\'s sweet and happy.     BAPTISTA. Now fair befall thee, good Petruchio!     The wager thou hast won; and I will ad     Unto their losses twenty thousand crowns;     Another dowry to another daughter,     For she is chang\'d, as she had never been.   PETRUCHIO. Nay, I will win my wager better yet,     And show more sign of her obedience,     Her new-built virtue and obedience.                   Re-enter KATHERINA with BIANCA and WIDOW      See where she comes, and brings your froward wives     As prisoners to her womanly persuasion.     Katherine, that cap of yours becomes you not:     Off with that bauble, throw it underfoot.                                             [KATHERINA complies]   WIDOW. Lord, let me never have a cause to sigh     Till I be brought to such a silly pass!   BIANCA. Fie! what a foolish duty call you this?   LUCENTIO. I would your duty were as foolish too;       The wisdom of your duty, fair Bianca,     Hath cost me a hundred crowns since supper-time!   BIANCA. The more fool you for laying on my duty.   PETRUCHIO. Katherine, I charge thee, tell these headstrong women     What duty they do owe their lords and husbands.   WIDOW. Come, come, you\'re mocking; we will have no telling.   PETRUCHIO. Come on, I say; and first begin with her.   WIDOW. She shall not.   PETRUCHIO. I say she shall. And first begin with her.   KATHERINA. Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow,     And dart not scornful glances from those eyes     To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.     It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,     Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,     And in no sense is meet or amiable.     A woman mov\'d is like a fountain troubled-     Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;     And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty     Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.     Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,       Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,     And for thy maintenance commits his body     To painful labour both by sea and land,     To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,     Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;     And craves no other tribute at thy hands     But love, fair looks, and true obedience-     Too little payment for so great a debt.     Such duty as the subject owes the prince,     Even such a woman oweth to her husband;     And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,     And not obedient to his honest will,     What is she but a foul contending rebel     And graceless traitor to her loving lord?     I am asham\'d that women are so simple     To offer war where they should kneel for peace;     Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,     When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.     Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,     Unapt to toll and trouble in the world,       But that our soft conditions and our hearts     Should well agree with our external parts?     Come, come, you froward and unable worins!     My mind hath been as big as one of yours,     My heart as great, my reason haply more,     To bandy word for word and frown for frown;     But now I see our lances are but straws,     Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,     That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.     Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,     And place your hands below your husband\'s foot;     In token of which duty, if he please,     My hand is ready, may it do him ease.   PETRUCHIO. Why, there\'s a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate.   LUCENTIO. Well, go thy ways, old lad, for thou shalt ha\'t.   VINCENTIO. \'Tis a good hearing when children are toward.   LUCENTIO. But a harsh hearing when women are froward.   PETRUCHIO. Come, Kate, we\'ll to bed.     We three are married, but you two are sped.     [To LUCENTIO]  \'Twas I won the wager, though you hit the white;       And being a winner, God give you good night!                                   Exeunt PETRUCHIO and KATHERINA   HORTENSIO. Now go thy ways; thou hast tam\'d a curst shrow.   LUCENTIO. \'Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tam\'d so.                                                           Exeunt  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1612  THE TEMPEST  by William Shakespeare    DRAMATIS PERSONAE    ALONSO, King of Naples   SEBASTIAN, his brother   PROSPERO, the right Duke of Milan   ANTONIO, his brother, the usurping Duke of Milan   FERDINAND, son to the King of Naples   GONZALO, an honest old counsellor      Lords   ADRIAN   FRANCISCO   CALIBAN, a savage and deformed slave   TRINCULO, a jester   STEPHANO, a drunken butler   MASTER OF A SHIP   BOATSWAIN   MARINERS    MIRANDA, daughter to Prospero    ARIEL, an airy spirit        Spirits   IRIS   CERES   JUNO   NYMPHS   REAPERS   Other Spirits attending on Prospero     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: A ship at sea; afterwards an uninhabited island    THE TEMPEST ACT I. SCENE 1  On a ship at sea; a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard  Enter a SHIPMASTER and a BOATSWAIN    MASTER. Boatswain!   BOATSWAIN. Here, master; what cheer?   MASTER. Good! Speak to th\' mariners; fall to\'t yarely, or     we run ourselves aground; bestir, bestir.               Exit                         Enter MARINERS    BOATSWAIN. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts!     yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to th\' master\'s     whistle. Blow till thou burst thy wind, if room enough.            Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, FERDINAND                      GONZALO, and OTHERS    ALONSO. Good boatswain, have care. Where\'s the master?       Play the men.   BOATSWAIN. I pray now, keep below.   ANTONIO. Where is the master, boson?   BOATSWAIN. Do you not hear him? You mar our labour;     keep your cabins; you do assist the storm.   GONZALO. Nay, good, be patient.   BOATSWAIN. When the sea is. Hence! What cares these     roarers for the name of king? To cabin! silence! Trouble     us not.   GONZALO. Good, yet remember whom thou hast aboard.   BOATSWAIN. None that I more love than myself. You are     counsellor; if you can command these elements to     silence, and work the peace of the present, we will not     hand a rope more. Use your authority; if you cannot, give     thanks you have liv\'d so long, and make yourself ready     in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if it so     hap.-Cheerly, good hearts!-Out of our way, I say.  Exit   GONZALO. I have great comfort from this fellow. Methinks     he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is       perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging;     make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth     little advantage. If he be not born to be hang\'d, our     case is miserable.                                    Exeunt                       Re-enter BOATSWAIN    BOATSWAIN. Down with the topmast. Yare, lower, lower!     Bring her to try wi\' th\' maincourse.  [A cry within]  A     plague upon this howling! They are louder than the     weather or our office.             Re-enter SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, and GONZALO      Yet again! What do you here? Shall we give o\'er, and     drown? Have you a mind to sink?   SEBASTIAN. A pox o\' your throat, you bawling, blasphemous,     incharitable dog!   BOATSWAIN. Work you, then.   ANTONIO. Hang, cur; hang, you whoreson, insolent noisemaker;       we are less afraid to be drown\'d than thou art.   GONZALO. I\'ll warrant him for drowning, though the ship were     no stronger than a nutshell, and as leaky as an unstanched     wench.   BOATSWAIN. Lay her a-hold, a-hold; set her two courses; off     to sea again; lay her off.                      Enter MARINERS, Wet   MARINERS. All lost! to prayers, to prayers! all lost!                                                           Exeunt   BOATSWAIN. What, must our mouths be cold?   GONZALO. The King and Prince at prayers!     Let\'s assist them,     For our case is as theirs.   SEBASTIAN. I am out of patience.   ANTONIO. We are merely cheated of our lives by drunkards.     This wide-chopp\'d rascal-would thou mightst lie drowning     The washing of ten tides!   GONZALO. He\'ll be hang\'d yet,     Though every drop of water swear against it,       And gape at wid\'st to glut him.     [A confused noise within: Mercy on us!     We split, we split! Farewell, my wife and children!     Farewell, brother! We split, we split, we split!]   ANTONIO. Let\'s all sink wi\' th\' King.   SEBASTIAN. Let\'s take leave of him.                                     Exeunt ANTONIO and SEBASTIAN   GONZALO. Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for     an acre of barren ground-long heath, brown furze, any     thing. The wills above be done, but I would fain die     dry death.                                            Exeunt     SCENE 2  The Island. Before PROSPERO\'S cell  Enter PROSPERO and MIRANDA    MIRANDA. If by your art, my dearest father, you have     Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.     The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,     But that the sea, mounting to th\' welkin\'s cheek,     Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered     With those that I saw suffer! A brave vessel,     Who had no doubt some noble creature in her,     Dash\'d all to pieces! O, the cry did knock     Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perish\'d.     Had I been any god of power, I would     Have sunk the sea within the earth or ere     It should the good ship so have swallow\'d and     The fraughting souls within her.   PROSPERO. Be conected;     No more amazement; tell your piteous heart     There\'s no harm done.   MIRANDA. O, woe the day!     PROSPERO. No harm.     I have done nothing but in care of thee,     Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who     Art ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing     Of whence I am, nor that I am more better     Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,     And thy no greater father.   MIRANDA. More to know     Did never meddle with my thoughts.   PROSPERO. \'Tis time     I should inform thee farther. Lend thy hand,     And pluck my magic garment from me. So,                                           [Lays down his mantle]     Lie there my art. Wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort.     The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch\'d     The very virtue of compassion in thee,     I have with such provision in mine art     So safely ordered that there is no soul-     No, not so much perdition as an hair     Betid to any creature in the vessel       Which thou heard\'st cry, which thou saw\'st sink.     Sit down, for thou must now know farther.   MIRANDA. You have often     Begun to tell me what I am; but stopp\'d,     And left me to a bootless inquisition,     Concluding \'Stay; not yet.\'   PROSPERO. The hour\'s now come;     The very minute bids thee ope thine ear.     Obey, and be attentive. Canst thou remember     A time before we came unto this cell?     I do not think thou canst; for then thou wast not     Out three years old.   MIRANDA. Certainly, sir, I can.   PROSPERO. By what? By any other house, or person?     Of any thing the image, tell me, that     Hath kept with thy remembrance?   MIRANDA. \'Tis far off,     And rather like a dream than an assurance     That my remembrance warrants. Had I not     Four, or five, women once, that tended me?     PROSPERO. Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it     That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else     In the dark backward and abysm of time?     If thou rememb\'rest aught, ere thou cam\'st here,     How thou cam\'st here thou mayst.   MIRANDA. But that I do not.   PROSPERO. Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since,     Thy father was the Duke of Milan, and     A prince of power.   MIRANDA. Sir, are not you my father?   PROSPERO. Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and     She said thou wast my daughter; and thy father     Was Duke of Milan, and his only heir     And princess no worse issued.   MIRANDA. O, the heavens!     What foul play had we that we came from thence?     Or blessed was\'t we did?   PROSPERO. Both, both, my girl.     By foul play, as thou say\'st, were we heav\'d thence;     But blessedly holp hither.     MIRANDA. O, my heart bleeds     To think o\' th\' teen that I have turn\'d you to,     Which is from my remembrance. Please you, farther.   PROSPERO. My brother and thy uncle, call\'d Antonio-     I pray thee, mark me that a brother should     Be so perfidious. He, whom next thyself     Of all the world I lov\'d, and to him put     The manage of my state; as at that time     Through all the signories it was the first,     And Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed     In dignity, and for the liberal arts     Without a parallel, those being all my study-     The government I cast upon my brother     And to my state grew stranger, being transported     And rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle-     Dost thou attend me?   MIRANDA. Sir, most heedfully.   PROSPERO. Being once perfected how to grant suits,     How to deny them, who t\' advance, and who     To trash for over-topping, new created       The creatures that were mine, I say, or chang\'d \'em,     Or else new form\'d \'em; having both the key     Of officer and office, set all hearts i\' th\' state     To what tune pleas\'d his ear; that now he was     The ivy which had hid my princely trunk     And suck\'d my verdure out on\'t. Thou attend\'st not.   MIRANDA. O, good sir, I do!   PROSPERO. I pray thee, mark me.     I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated     To closeness and the bettering of my mind     With that which, but by being so retir\'d,     O\'er-priz\'d all popular rate, in my false brother     Awak\'d an evil nature; and my trust,     Like a good parent, did beget of him     A falsehood, in its contrary as great     As my trust was; which had indeed no limit,     A confidence sans bound. He being thus lorded,     Not only with what my revenue yielded,     But what my power might else exact, like one     Who having into truth, by telling of it,       Made such a sinner of his memory,     To credit his own lie-he did believe     He was indeed the Duke; out o\' th\' substitution,     And executing th\' outward face of royalty     With all prerogative. Hence his ambition growing-     Dost thou hear?   MIRANDA. Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.   PROSPERO. To have no screen between this part he play\'d     And him he play\'d it for, he needs will be     Absolute Milan. Me, poor man-my library     Was dukedom large enough-of temporal royalties     He thinks me now incapable; confederates,     So dry he was for sway, wi\' th\' King of Naples,     To give him annual tribute, do him homage,     Subject his coronet to his crown, and bend     The dukedom, yet unbow\'d-alas, poor Milan!-     To most ignoble stooping.   MIRANDA. O the heavens!   PROSPERO. Mark his condition, and th\' event, then tell me     If this might be a brother.     MIRANDA. I should sin     To think but nobly of my grandmother:     Good wombs have borne bad sons.   PROSPERO. Now the condition:     This King of Naples, being an enemy     To me inveterate, hearkens my brother\'s suit;     Which was, that he, in lieu o\' th\' premises,     Of homage, and I know not how much tribute,     Should presently extirpate me and mine     Out of the dukedom, and confer fair Milan     With all the honours on my brother. Whereon,     A treacherous army levied, one midnight     Fated to th\' purpose, did Antonio open     The gates of Milan; and, i\' th\' dead of darkness,     The ministers for th\' purpose hurried thence     Me and thy crying self.   MIRANDA. Alack, for pity!     I, not rememb\'ring how I cried out then,     Will cry it o\'er again; it is a hint     That wrings mine eyes to\'t.     PROSPERO. Hear a little further,     And then I\'ll bring thee to the present busines     Which now\'s upon \'s; without the which this story     Were most impertinent.   MIRANDA. Wherefore did they not     That hour destroy us?   PROSPERO. Well demanded, wench!     My tale provokes that question. Dear, they durst not,     So dear the love my people bore me; nor set     A mark so bloody on the business; but     With colours fairer painted their foul ends.     In few, they hurried us aboard a bark;     Bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepared     A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigg\'d,     Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats     Instinctively have quit it. There they hoist us,     To cry to th\' sea, that roar\'d to us; to sigh     To th\' winds, whose pity, sighing back again,     Did us but loving wrong.   MIRANDA. Alack, what trouble       Was I then to you!   PROSPERO. O, a cherubin     Thou wast that did preserve me! Thou didst smile,     Infused with a fortitude from heaven,     When I have deck\'d the sea with drops full salt,     Under my burden groan\'d; which rais\'d in me     An undergoing stomach, to bear up     Against what should ensue.   MIRANDA. How came we ashore?   PROSPERO. By Providence divine.     Some food we had and some fresh water that     A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,     Out of his charity, who being then appointed     Master of this design, did give us, with     Rich garments, linens, stuffs, and necessaries,     Which since have steaded much; so, of his gentleness,     Knowing I lov\'d my books, he furnish\'d me     From mine own library with volumes that     I prize above my dukedom.   MIRANDA. Would I might       But ever see that man!   PROSPERO. Now I arise.                    [Puts on his mantle]     Sit still, and hear the last of our sea-sorrow.     Here in this island we arriv\'d; and here     Have I, thy schoolmaster, made thee more profit     Than other princess\' can, that have more time     For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful.   MIRANDA. Heavens thank you for\'t! And now, I pray you,       sir,     For still \'tis beating in my mind, your reason     For raising this sea-storm?   PROSPERO. Know thus far forth:     By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune,     Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies     Brought to this shore; and by my prescience     I find my zenith doth depend upon     A most auspicious star, whose influence     If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes     Will ever after droop. Here cease more questions;     Thou art inclin\'d to sleep; \'tis a good dullness,       And give it way. I know thou canst not choose.                                                 [MIRANDA sleeps]     Come away, servant; come; I am ready now.     Approach, my Ariel. Come.                          Enter ARIEL    ARIEL. All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come     To answer thy best pleasure; be\'t to fly,     To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride     On the curl\'d clouds. To thy strong bidding task     Ariel and all his quality.   PROSPERO. Hast thou, spirit,     Perform\'d to point the tempest that I bade thee?   ARIEL. To every article.     I boarded the King\'s ship; now on the beak,     Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,     I flam\'d amazement. Sometime I\'d divide,     And burn in many places; on the topmast,     The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly,       Then meet and join Jove\'s lightning, the precursors     O\' th\' dreadful thunder-claps, more momentary     And sight-outrunning were not; the fire and cracks     Of sulphurous roaring the most mighty Neptune     Seem to besiege, and make his bold waves tremble,     Yea, his dread trident shake.   PROSPERO. My brave spirit!     Who was so firm, so constant, that this coil     Would not infect his reason?   ARIEL. Not a soul     But felt a fever of the mad, and play\'d     Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners     Plung\'d in the foaming brine, and quit the vessel,     Then all afire with me; the King\'s son, Ferdinand,     With hair up-staring-then like reeds, not hair-     Was the first man that leapt; cried \'Hell is empty,     And all the devils are here.\'   PROSPERO. Why, that\'s my spirit!     But was not this nigh shore?   ARIEL. Close by, my master.     PROSPERO. But are they, Ariel, safe?   ARIEL. Not a hair perish\'d;     On their sustaining garments not a blemish,     But fresher than before; and, as thou bad\'st me,     In troops I have dispers\'d them \'bout the isle.     The King\'s son have I landed by himself,     Whom I left cooling of the air with sighs     In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting,     His arms in this sad knot.   PROSPERO. Of the King\'s ship,     The mariners, say how thou hast dispos\'d,     And all the rest o\' th\' fleet?   ARIEL. Safely in harbour     Is the King\'s ship; in the deep nook, where once     Thou call\'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew     From the still-vex\'d Bermoothes, there she\'s hid;     The mariners all under hatches stowed,     Who, with a charm join\'d to their suff\'red labour,     I have left asleep; and for the rest o\' th\' fleet,     Which I dispers\'d, they all have met again,       And are upon the Mediterranean flote     Bound sadly home for Naples,     Supposing that they saw the King\'s ship wreck\'d,     And his great person perish.   PROSPERO. Ariel, thy charge     Exactly is perform\'d; but there\'s more work.     What is the time o\' th\' day?   ARIEL. Past the mid season.   PROSPERO. At least two glasses. The time \'twixt six and now     Must by us both be spent most preciously.   ARIEL. Is there more toil? Since thou dost give me pains,     Let me remember thee what thou hast promis\'d,     Which is not yet perform\'d me.   PROSPERO. How now, moody?     What is\'t thou canst demand?   ARIEL. My liberty.   PROSPERO. Before the time be out? No more!   ARIEL. I prithee,     Remember I have done thee worthy service,     Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, serv\'d       Without or grudge or grumblings. Thou didst promise     To bate me a full year.   PROSPERO. Dost thou forget     From what a torment I did free thee?   ARIEL. No.   PROSPERO. Thou dost; and think\'st it much to tread the ooze     Of the salt deep,     To run upon the sharp wind of the north,     To do me business in the veins o\' th\' earth     When it is bak\'d with frost.   ARIEL. I do not, sir.   PROSPERO. Thou liest, malignant thing. Hast thou forgot     The foul witch Sycorax, who with age and envy     Was grown into a hoop? Hast thou forgot her?   ARIEL. No, sir.   PROSPERO. Thou hast. Where was she born?     Speak; tell me.   ARIEL. Sir, in Argier.   PROSPERO. O, was she so? I must     Once in a month recount what thou hast been,       Which thou forget\'st. This damn\'d witch Sycorax,     For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible     To enter human hearing, from Argier     Thou know\'st was banish\'d; for one thing she did     They would not take her life. Is not this true?   ARIEL. Ay, sir.   PROSPERO. This blue-ey\'d hag was hither brought with child,     And here was left by th\'sailors. Thou, my slave,     As thou report\'st thyself, wast then her servant;     And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate     To act her earthy and abhorr\'d commands,     Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,     By help of her more potent ministers,     And in her most unmitigable rage,     Into a cloven pine; within which rift     Imprison\'d thou didst painfully remain     A dozen years; within which space she died,     And left thee there, where thou didst vent thy groans     As fast as mill-wheels strike. Then was this island-     Save for the son that she did litter here,       A freckl\'d whelp, hag-born-not honour\'d with     A human shape.   ARIEL. Yes, Caliban her son.   PROSPERO. Dull thing, I say so; he, that Caliban     Whom now I keep in service. Thou best know\'st     What torment I did find thee in; thy groans     Did make wolves howl, and penetrate the breasts     Of ever-angry bears; it was a torment     To lay upon the damn\'d, which Sycorax     Could not again undo. It was mine art,     When I arriv\'d and heard thee, that made gape     The pine, and let thee out.   ARIEL. I thank thee, master.   PROSPERO. If thou more murmur\'st, I will rend an oak     And peg thee in his knotty entrails, till     Thou hast howl\'d away twelve winters.   ARIEL. Pardon, master;     I will be correspondent to command,     And do my spriting gently.   PROSPERO. Do so; and after two days       I will discharge thee.   ARIEL. That\'s my noble master!     What shall I do? Say what. What shall I do?   PROSPERO. Go make thyself like a nymph o\' th\' sea; be subject     To no sight but thine and mine, invisible     To every eyeball else. Go take this shape,     And hither come in \'t. Go, hence with diligence!                                                       Exit ARIEL     Awake, dear heart, awake; thou hast slept well;     Awake.   MIRANDA. The strangeness of your story put     Heaviness in me.   PROSPERO. Shake it off. Come on,     We\'ll visit Caliban, my slave, who never     Yields us kind answer.   MIRANDA. \'Tis a villain, sir,     I do not love to look on.   PROSPERO. But as \'tis,     We cannot miss him: he does make our fire,     Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices       That profit us. What ho! slave! Caliban!     Thou earth, thou! Speak.   CALIBAN.   [ Within]  There\'s wood enough within.   PROSPERO. Come forth, I say; there\'s other business for thee.     Come, thou tortoise! when?               Re-enter ARIEL like a water-nymph      Fine apparition! My quaint Ariel,     Hark in thine ear.   ARIEL. My lord, it shall be done.                         Exit   PROSPERO. Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself     Upon thy wicked dam, come forth!                         Enter CALIBAN    CALIBAN. As wicked dew as e\'er my mother brush\'d     With raven\'s feather from unwholesome fen     Drop on you both! A south-west blow on ye     And blister you all o\'er!     PROSPERO. For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,     Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up; urchins     Shall, for that vast of night that they may work,     All exercise on thee; thou shalt be pinch\'d     As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging     Than bees that made \'em.   CALIBAN. I must eat my dinner.     This island\'s mine, by Sycorax my mother,     Which thou tak\'st from me. When thou cam\'st first,     Thou strok\'st me and made much of me, wouldst give me     Water with berries in\'t, and teach me how     To name the bigger light, and how the less,     That burn by day and night; and then I lov\'d thee,     And show\'d thee all the qualities o\' th\' isle,     The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile.     Curs\'d be I that did so! All the charms     Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!     For I am all the subjects that you have,     Which first was mine own king; and here you sty me     In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me       The rest o\' th\' island.   PROSPERO. Thou most lying slave,     Whom stripes may move, not kindness! I have us\'d thee,     Filth as thou art, with human care, and lodg\'d thee     In mine own cell, till thou didst seek to violate     The honour of my child.   CALIBAN. O ho, O ho! Would\'t had been done.     Thou didst prevent me; I had peopl\'d else     This isle with Calibans.   MIRANDA. Abhorred slave,     Which any print of goodness wilt not take,     Being capable of all ill! I pitied thee,     Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour     One thing or other. When thou didst not, savage,     Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like     A thing most brutish, I endow\'d thy purposes     With words that made them known. But thy vile race,     Though thou didst learn, had that in\'t which good natures     Could not abide to be with; therefore wast thou     Deservedly confin\'d into this rock, who hadst       Deserv\'d more than a prison.   CALIBAN. You taught me language, and my profit on\'t     Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you     For learning me your language!   PROSPERO. Hag-seed, hence!     Fetch us in fuel. And be quick, thou \'rt best,     To answer other business. Shrug\'st thou, malice?     If thou neglect\'st, or dost unwillingly     What I command, I\'ll rack thee with old cramps,     Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar,     That beasts shall tremble at thy din.   CALIBAN. No, pray thee.     [Aside]  I must obey. His art is of such pow\'r,     It would control my dam\'s god, Setebos,     And make a vassal of him.   PROSPERO. So, slave; hence!                       Exit CALIBAN           Re-enter ARIEL invisible, playing ad singing;                      FERDINAND following                              ARIEL\'S SONG.             Come unto these yellow sands,               And then take hands;             Curtsied when you have and kiss\'d,               The wild waves whist,             Foot it featly here and there,             And, sweet sprites, the burden bear.               Hark, hark!             [Burden dispersedly: Bow-wow.]               The watch dogs bark.             [Burden dispersedly: Bow-wow.]               Hark, hark! I hear             The strain of strutting chanticleer               Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.   FERDINAND. Where should this music be? I\' th\' air or th\'     earth?     It sounds no more; and sure it waits upon     Some god o\' th\' island. Sitting on a bank,     Weeping again the King my father\'s wreck,     This music crept by me upon the waters,       Allaying both their fury and my passion     With its sweet air; thence I have follow\'d it,     Or it hath drawn me rather. But \'tis gone.     No, it begins again.                     ARIEL\'S SONG          Full fathom five thy father lies;            Of his bones are coral made;          Those are pearls that were his eyes;            Nothing of him that doth fade          But doth suffer a sea-change          Into something rich and strange.          Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:            [Burden: Ding-dong.]          Hark! now I hear them-Ding-dong bell.    FERDINAND. The ditty does remember my drown\'d father.     This is no mortal business, nor no sound     That the earth owes. I hear it now above me.   PROSPERO. The fringed curtains of thine eye advance,       And say what thou seest yond.   MIRANDA. What is\'t? a spirit?     Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,     It carries a brave form. But \'tis a spirit.   PROSPERO. No, wench; it eats and sleeps and hath such senses     As we have, such. This gallant which thou seest     Was in the wreck; and but he\'s something stain\'d     With grief, that\'s beauty\'s canker, thou mightst call him     A goodly person. He hath lost his fellows,     And strays about to find \'em.   MIRANDA. I might call him     A thing divine; for nothing natural     I ever saw so noble.   PROSPERO.  [Aside]  It goes on, I see,     As my soul prompts it. Spirit, fine spirit! I\'ll free thee     Within two days for this.   FERDINAND. Most sure, the goddess     On whom these airs attend! Vouchsafe my pray\'r     May know if you remain upon this island;     And that you will some good instruction give       How I may bear me here. My prime request,     Which I do last pronounce, is, O you wonder!     If you be maid or no?   MIRANDA. No wonder, sir;     But certainly a maid.   FERDINAND. My language? Heavens!     I am the best of them that speak this speech,     Were I but where \'tis spoken.   PROSPERO. How? the best?     What wert thou, if the King of Naples heard thee?   FERDINAND. A single thing, as I am now, that wonders     To hear thee speak of Naples. He does hear me;     And that he does I weep. Myself am Naples,     Who with mine eyes, never since at ebb, beheld     The King my father wreck\'d.   MIRANDA. Alack, for mercy!   FERDINAND. Yes, faith, and all his lords, the Duke of Milan     And his brave son being twain.   PROSPERO.  [Aside]  The Duke of Milan     And his more braver daughter could control thee,       If now \'twere fit to do\'t. At the first sight     They have chang\'d eyes. Delicate Ariel,     I\'ll set thee free for this.  [To FERDINAND]  A word, good     sir;     I fear you have done yourself some wrong; a word.   MIRANDA. Why speaks my father so ungently? This     Is the third man that e\'er I saw; the first     That e\'er I sigh\'d for. Pity move my father     To be inclin\'d my way!   FERDINAND. O, if a virgin,     And your affection not gone forth, I\'ll make you     The Queen of Naples.   PROSPERO. Soft, Sir! one word more.     [Aside]  They are both in either\'s pow\'rs; but this swift     busines     I must uneasy make, lest too light winning     Make the prize light.  [To FERDINAND]  One word more; I     charge thee     That thou attend me; thou dost here usurp     The name thou ow\'st not; and hast put thyself       Upon this island as a spy, to win it     From me, the lord on\'t.   FERDINAND. No, as I am a man.   MIRANDA. There\'s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple.     If the ill spirit have so fair a house,     Good things will strive to dwell with\'t.   PROSPERO. Follow me.     Speak not you for him; he\'s a traitor. Come;     I\'ll manacle thy neck and feet together.     Sea-water shalt thou drink; thy food shall be     The fresh-brook mussels, wither\'d roots, and husks     Wherein the acorn cradled. Follow.   FERDINAND. No;     I will resist such entertainment till     Mine enemy has more power.                           [He draws, and is charmed from moving]   MIRANDA. O dear father,     Make not too rash a trial of him, for     He\'s gentle, and not fearful.   PROSPERO. What, I say,       My foot my tutor? Put thy sword up, traitor;     Who mak\'st a show but dar\'st not strike, thy conscience     Is so possess\'d with guilt. Come from thy ward;     For I can here disarm thee with this stick     And make thy weapon drop.   MIRANDA. Beseech you, father!   PROSPERO. Hence! Hang not on my garments.   MIRANDA. Sir, have pity;     I\'ll be his surety.   PROSPERO. Silence! One word more     Shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. What!     An advocate for an impostor! hush!     Thou think\'st there is no more such shapes as he,     Having seen but him and Caliban. Foolish wench!     To th\' most of men this is a Caliban,     And they to him are angels.   MIRANDA. My affections     Are then most humble; I have no ambition     To see a goodlier man.   PROSPERO. Come on; obey.       Thy nerves are in their infancy again,     And have no vigour in them.   FERDINAND. So they are;     My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up.     My father\'s loss, the weakness which I feel,     The wreck of all my friends, nor this man\'s threats     To whom I am subdu\'d, are but light to me,     Might I but through my prison once a day     Behold this maid. All corners else o\' th\' earth     Let liberty make use of; space enough     Have I in such a prison.   PROSPERO.  [Aside]  It works.  [To FERDINAND]  Come on.-     Thou hast done well, fine Ariel!  [To FERDINAND]  Follow     me.     [To ARIEL]  Hark what thou else shalt do me.   MIRANDA. Be of comfort;     My father\'s of a better nature, sir,     Than he appears by speech; this is unwonted     Which now came from him.   PROSPERO.  [To ARIEL]  Thou shalt be as free       As mountain winds; but then exactly do     All points of my command.   ARIEL. To th\' syllable.   PROSPERO.  [To FERDINAND]  Come, follow.  [To MIRANDA]     Speak not for him.                                    Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE 1  Another part of the island  Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO, ADRIAN, FRANCISCO, and OTHERS    GONZALO. Beseech you, sir, be merry; you have cause,     So have we all, of joy; for our escape     Is much beyond our loss. Our hint of woe     Is common; every day, some sailor\'s wife,     The masters of some merchant, and the merchant,     Have just our theme of woe; but for the miracle,     I mean our preservation, few in millions     Can speak like us. Then wisely, good sir, weigh     Our sorrow with our comfort.   ALONSO. Prithee, peace.   SEBASTIAN. He receives comfort like cold porridge.   ANTONIO. The visitor will not give him o\'er so.   SEBASTIAN. Look, he\'s winding up the watch of his wit; by     and by it will strike.   GONZALO. Sir-   SEBASTIAN. One-Tell.     GONZALO. When every grief is entertain\'d that\'s offer\'d,     Comes to th\' entertainer-   SEBASTIAN. A dollar.   GONZALO. Dolour comes to him, indeed; you have spoken     truer than you purpos\'d.   SEBASTIAN. You have taken it wiselier than I meant you     should.   GONZALO. Therefore, my lord-   ANTONIO. Fie, what a spendthrift is he of his tongue!   ALONSO. I prithee, spare.   GONZALO. Well, I have done; but yet-   SEBASTIAN. He will be talking.   ANTONIO. Which, of he or Adrian, for a good wager, first     begins to crow?   SEBASTIAN. The old cock.   ANTONIO. The cock\'rel.   SEBASTIAN. Done. The wager?   ANTONIO. A laughter.   SEBASTIAN. A match!   ADRIAN. Though this island seem to be desert-     ANTONIO. Ha, ha, ha!   SEBASTIAN. So, you\'re paid.   ADRIAN. Uninhabitable, and almost inaccessible-   SEBASTIAN. Yet-   ADRIAN. Yet-   ANTONIO. He could not miss\'t.   ADRIAN. It must needs be of subtle, tender, and delicate     temperance.   ANTONIO. Temperance was a delicate wench.   SEBASTIAN. Ay, and a subtle; as he most learnedly     deliver\'d.   ADRIAN. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly.   SEBASTIAN. As if it had lungs, and rotten ones.   ANTONIO. Or, as \'twere perfum\'d by a fen.   GONZALO. Here is everything advantageous to life.   ANTONIO. True; save means to live.   SEBASTIAN. Of that there\'s none, or little.   GONZALO. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green!   ANTONIO. The ground indeed is tawny.   SEBASTIAN. With an eye of green in\'t.     ANTONIO. He misses not much.   SEBASTIAN. No; he doth but mistake the truth totally.   GONZALO. But the rarity of it is, which is indeed almost     beyond credit-   SEBASTIAN. As many vouch\'d rarities are.   GONZALO. That our garments, being, as they were, drench\'d     in the sea, hold, notwithstanding, their freshness and     glosses, being rather new-dy\'d, than stain\'d with salt     water.   ANTONIO. If but one of his pockets could speak, would it     not say he lies?   SEBASTIAN. Ay, or very falsely pocket up his report.   GONZALO. Methinks our garments are now as fresh as when     we put them on first in Afric, at the marriage of the     King\'s fair daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis.   SEBASTIAN. \'Twas a sweet marriage, and we prosper well in     our return.   ADRIAN. Tunis was never grac\'d before with such a paragon     to their queen.   GONZALO. Not since widow Dido\'s time.     ANTONIO. Widow! a pox o\' that! How came that \'widow\'     in? Widow Dido!   SEBASTIAN. What if he had said \'widower Aeneas\' too?     Good Lord, how you take it!   ADRIAN. \'Widow Dido\' said you? You make me study of     that. She was of Carthage, not of Tunis.   GONZALO. This Tunis, sir, was Carthage.   ADRIAN. Carthage?   GONZALO. I assure you, Carthage.   ANTONIO. His word is more than the miraculous harp.   SEBASTIAN. He hath rais\'d the wall, and houses too.   ANTONIO. What impossible matter will he make easy next?   SEBASTIAN. I think he will carry this island home in his     pocket, and give it his son for an apple.   ANTONIO. And, sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring     forth more islands.   GONZALO. Ay.   ANTONIO. Why, in good time.   GONZALO. Sir, we were talking that our garments seem now     as fresh as when we were at Tunis at the marriage of       your daughter, who is now Queen.   ANTONIO. And the rarest that e\'er came there.   SEBASTIAN. Bate, I beseech you, widow Dido.   ANTONIO. O, widow Dido! Ay, widow Dido.   GONZALO. Is not, sir, my doublet as fresh as the first day I     wore it? I mean, in a sort.   ANTONIO. That \'sort\' was well fish\'d for.   GONZALO. When I wore it at your daughter\'s marriage?   ALONSO. You cram these words into mine ears against     The stomach of my sense. Would I had never     Married my daughter there; for, coming thence,     My son is lost; and, in my rate, she too,     Who is so far from Italy removed     I ne\'er again shall see her. O thou mine heir     Of Naples and of Milan, what strange fish     Hath made his meal on thee?   FRANCISCO. Sir, he may live;     I saw him beat the surges under him,     And ride upon their backs; he trod the water,     Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted       The surge most swoln that met him; his bold head     \'Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oared     Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke     To th\' shore, that o\'er his wave-worn basis bowed,     As stooping to relieve him. I not doubt     He came alive to land.   ALONSO. No, no, he\'s gone.   SEBASTIAN. Sir, you may thank yourself for this great loss,     That would not bless our Europe with your daughter,     But rather lose her to an African;     Where she, at least, is banish\'d from your eye,     Who hath cause to wet the grief on\'t.   ALONSO. Prithee, peace.   SEBASTIAN. You were kneel\'d to, and importun\'d otherwise     By all of us; and the fair soul herself     Weigh\'d between loathness and obedience at     Which end o\' th\' beam should bow. We have lost your son,     I fear, for ever. Milan and Naples have     Moe widows in them of this business\' making,     Than we bring men to comfort them;       The fault\'s your own.   ALONSO. So is the dear\'st o\' th\' loss.   GONZALO. My lord Sebastian,     The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness,     And time to speak it in; you rub the sore,     When you should bring the plaster.   SEBASTIAN. Very well.   ANTONIO. And most chirurgeonly.   GONZALO. It is foul weather in us all, good sir,     When you are cloudy.   SEBASTIAN. Foul weather?   ANTONIO. Very foul.   GONZALO. Had I plantation of this isle, my lord-   ANTONIO. He\'d sow \'t with nettle-seed.   SEBASTIAN. Or docks, or mallows.   GONZALO. And were the king on\'t, what would I do?   SEBASTIAN. Scape being drunk for want of wine.   GONZALO. I\' th\' commonwealth I would by contraries     Execute all things; for no kind of traffic     Would I admit; no name of magistrate;       Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,     And use of service, none; contract, succession,     Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;     No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;     No occupation; all men idle, all;     And women too, but innocent and pure;     No sovereignty-   SEBASTIAN. Yet he would be king on\'t.   ANTONIO. The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the     beginning.   GONZALO. All things in common nature should produce     Without sweat or endeavour. Treason, felony,     Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,     Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,     Of it own kind, all foison, all abundance,     To feed my innocent people.   SEBASTIAN. No marrying \'mong his subjects?   ANTONIO. None, man; all idle; whores and knaves.   GONZALO. I would with such perfection govern, sir,     T\' excel the golden age.     SEBASTIAN. Save his Majesty!   ANTONIO. Long live Gonzalo!   GONZALO. And-do you mark me, sir?   ALONSO. Prithee, no more; thou dost talk nothing to me.   GONZALO. I do well believe your Highness; and did it to     minister occasion to these gentlemen, who are of such     sensible and nimble lungs that they always use to laugh     at nothing.   ANTONIO. \'Twas you we laugh\'d at.   GONZALO. Who in this kind of merry fooling am nothing to     you; so you may continue, and laugh at nothing still.   ANTONIO. What a blow was there given!   SEBASTIAN. An it had not fall\'n flat-long.   GONZALO. You are gentlemen of brave mettle; you would     lift the moon out of her sphere, if she would continue     in it five weeks without changing.            Enter ARIEL, invisible, playing solemn music    SEBASTIAN. We would so, and then go a-bat-fowling.     ANTONIO. Nay, good my lord, be not angry.   GONZALO. No, I warrant you; I will not adventure my     discretion so weakly. Will you laugh me asleep, for I am     very heavy?   ANTONIO. Go sleep, and hear us.                    [All sleep but ALONSO, SEBASTIAN and ANTONIO]   ALONSO. What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyes     Would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts; I find     They are inclin\'d to do so.   SEBASTIAN. Please you, sir,     Do not omit the heavy offer of it:     It seldom visits sorrow; when it doth,     It is a comforter.   ANTONIO. We two, my lord,     Will guard your person while you take your rest,     And watch your safety.   ALONSO. Thank you-wondrous heavy!                                      [ALONSO sleeps. Exit ARIEL]   SEBASTIAN. What a strange drowsiness possesses them!   ANTONIO. It is the quality o\' th\' climate.     SEBASTIAN. Why     Doth it not then our eyelids sink? I find not     Myself dispos\'d to sleep.   ANTONIO. Nor I; my spirits are nimble.     They fell together all, as by consent;     They dropp\'d, as by a thunder-stroke. What might,     Worthy Sebastian? O, what might! No more!     And yet methinks I see it in thy face,     What thou shouldst be; th\' occasion speaks thee; and     My strong imagination sees a crown     Dropping upon thy head.   SEBASTIAN. What, art thou waking?   ANTONIO. Do you not hear me speak?   SEBASTIAN. I do; and surely     It is a sleepy language, and thou speak\'st     Out of thy sleep. What is it thou didst say?     This is a strange repose, to be asleep     With eyes wide open; standing, speaking, moving,     And yet so fast asleep.   ANTONIO. Noble Sebastian,       Thou let\'st thy fortune sleep-die rather; wink\'st     Whiles thou art waking.   SEBASTIAN. Thou dost snore distinctly;     There\'s meaning in thy snores.   ANTONIO. I am more serious than my custom; you     Must be so too, if heed me; which to do     Trebles thee o\'er.   SEBASTIAN. Well, I am standing water.   ANTONIO. I\'ll teach you how to flow.   SEBASTIAN. Do so: to ebb,     Hereditary sloth instructs me.   ANTONIO. O,     If you but knew how you the purpose cherish,     Whiles thus you mock it! how, in stripping it,     You more invest it! Ebbing men indeed,     Most often, do so near the bottom run     By their own fear or sloth.   SEBASTIAN. Prithee say on.     The setting of thine eye and cheek proclaim     A matter from thee; and a birth, indeed,       Which throes thee much to yield.   ANTONIO. Thus, sir:     Although this lord of weak remembrance, this     Who shall be of as little memory     When he is earth\'d, hath here almost persuaded-     For he\'s a spirit of persuasion, only     Professes to persuade-the King his son\'s alive,     \'Tis as impossible that he\'s undrown\'d     As he that sleeps here swims.   SEBASTIAN. I have no hope     That he\'s undrown\'d.   ANTONIO. O, out of that \'no hope\'     What great hope have you! No hope that way is     Another way so high a hope, that even     Ambition cannot pierce a wink beyond,     But doubt discovery there. Will you grant with me     That Ferdinand is drown\'d?   SEBASTIAN. He\'s gone.   ANTONIO. Then tell me,     Who\'s the next heir of Naples?     SEBASTIAN. Claribel.   ANTONIO. She that is Queen of Tunis; she that dwells     Ten leagues beyond man\'s life; she that from Naples     Can have no note, unless the sun were post,     The Man i\' th\' Moon\'s too slow, till newborn chins     Be rough and razorable; she that from whom     We all were sea-swallow\'d, though some cast again,     And by that destiny, to perform an act     Whereof what\'s past is prologue, what to come     In yours and my discharge.   SEBASTIAN. What stuff is this! How say you?     \'Tis true, my brother\'s daughter\'s Queen of Tunis;     So is she heir of Naples; \'twixt which regions     There is some space.   ANTONIO. A space whose ev\'ry cubit     Seems to cry out \'How shall that Claribel     Measure us back to Naples? Keep in Tunis,     And let Sebastian wake.\' Say this were death     That now hath seiz\'d them; why, they were no worse     Than now they are. There be that can rule Naples       As well as he that sleeps; lords that can prate     As amply and unnecessarily     As this Gonzalo; I myself could make     A chough of as deep chat. O, that you bore     The mind that I do! What a sleep were this     For your advancement! Do you understand me?   SEBASTIAN. Methinks I do.   ANTONIO. And how does your content     Tender your own good fortune?   SEBASTIAN. I remember     You did supplant your brother Prospero.   ANTONIO. True.     And look how well my garments sit upon me,     Much feater than before. My brother\'s servants     Were then my fellows; now they are my men.   SEBASTIAN. But, for your conscience-   ANTONIO. Ay, sir; where lies that? If \'twere a kibe,     \'Twould put me to my slipper; but I feel not     This deity in my bosom; twenty consciences     That stand \'twixt me and Milan, candied be they       And melt, ere they molest! Here lies your brother,     No better than the earth he lies upon,     If he were that which now he\'s like-that\'s dead;     Whom I with this obedient steel, three inches of it,     Can lay to bed for ever; whiles you, doing thus,     To the perpetual wink for aye might put     This ancient morsel, this Sir Prudence, who     Should not upbraid our course. For all the rest,     They\'ll take suggestion as a cat laps milk;     They\'ll tell the clock to any business that     We say befits the hour.   SEBASTIAN. Thy case, dear friend,     Shall be my precedent; as thou got\'st Milan,     I\'ll come by Naples. Draw thy sword. One stroke     Shall free thee from the tribute which thou payest;     And I the King shall love thee.   ANTONIO. Draw together;     And when I rear my hand, do you the like,     To fall it on Gonzalo.   SEBASTIAN. O, but one word.                  [They talk apart]              Re-enter ARIEL, invisible, with music and song    ARIEL. My master through his art foresees the danger     That you, his friend, are in; and sends me forth-     For else his project dies-to keep them living.                                         [Sings in GONZALO\'S ear]     While you here do snoring lie,     Open-ey\'d conspiracy     His time doth take.     If of life you keep a care,     Shake off slumber, and beware.     Awake, awake!    ANTONIO. Then let us both be sudden.   GONZALO. Now, good angels     Preserve the King!                               [They wake]   ALONSO. Why, how now?-Ho, awake!-Why are you drawn?     Wherefore this ghastly looking?   GONZALO. What\'s the matter?     SEBASTIAN. Whiles we stood here securing your repose,     Even now, we heard a hollow burst of bellowing     Like bulls, or rather lions; did\'t not wake you?     It struck mine ear most terribly.   ALONSO. I heard nothing.   ANTONIO. O, \'twas a din to fright a monster\'s ear,     To make an earthquake! Sure it was the roar     Of a whole herd of lions.   ALONSO. Heard you this, Gonzalo?   GONZALO. Upon mine honour, sir, I heard a humming,     And that a strange one too, which did awake me;     I shak\'d you, sir, and cried; as mine eyes open\'d,     I saw their weapons drawn-there was a noise,     That\'s verily. \'Tis best we stand upon our guard,     Or that we quit this place. Let\'s draw our weapons.   ALONSO. Lead off this ground; and let\'s make further     search     For my poor son.   GONZALO. Heavens keep him from these beasts!     For he is, sure, i\' th\' island.     ALONSO. Lead away.   ARIEL. Prospero my lord shall know what I have done;     So, King, go safely on to seek thy son.               Exeunt     SCENE 2  Another part of the island  Enter CALIBAN, with a burden of wood. A noise of thunder heard    CALIBAN. All the infections that the sun sucks up     From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him     By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me,     And yet I needs must curse. But they\'ll nor pinch,     Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i\' th\' mire,     Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark     Out of my way, unless he bid \'em; but     For every trifle are they set upon me;     Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me,     And after bite me; then like hedgehogs which     Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount     Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I     All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues     Do hiss me into madness.                           Enter TRINCULO        Lo, now, lo!     Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me     For bringing wood in slowly. I\'ll fall flat;     Perchance he will not mind me.   TRINCULO. Here\'s neither bush nor shrub to bear off any     weather at all, and another storm brewing; I hear it     sing i\' th\' wind. Yond same black cloud, yond huge one,     looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If     it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to     hide my head. Yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by     pailfuls. What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or     alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient and     fish-like smell; kind of not-of-the-newest Poor-John. A     strange fish! Were I in England now, as once I was, and     had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but     would give a piece of silver. There would this monster     make a man; any strange beast there makes a man; when     they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they     will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. Legg\'d like a       man, and his fins like arms! Warm, o\' my troth! I do now     let loose my opinion; hold it no longer: this is no     fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffered by     thunderbolt.  [Thunder]  Alas, the storm is come again! My     best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no     other shelter hereabout. Misery acquaints a man with     strange bed-fellows. I will here shroud till the dregs     of the storm be past.              Enter STEPHANO singing; a bottle in his hand    STEPHANO. I shall no more to sea, to sea,     Here shall I die ashore-     This is a very scurvy tune to sing at a man\'s funeral;     well, here\'s my comfort.                            [Drinks]      The master, the swabber, the boatswain, and I,     The gunner, and his mate,     Lov\'d Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery,     But none of us car\'d for Kate;       For she had a tongue with a tang,     Would cry to a sailor \'Go hang!\'     She lov\'d not the savour of tar nor of pitch,     Yet a tailor might scratch her where\'er she did itch.     Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang!      This is a scurvy tune too; but here\'s my comfort.                                                         [Drinks]   CALIBAN. Do not torment me. O!   STEPHANO. What\'s the matter? Have we devils here? Do you     put tricks upon \'s with savages and men of Ind? Ha! I     have not scap\'d drowning to be afeard now of your four     legs; for it hath been said: As proper a man as ever     went on four legs cannot make him give ground; and it     shall be said so again, while Stephano breathes at     nostrils.   CALIBAN. The spirit torments me. O!   STEPHANO. This is some monster of the isle with four legs,     who hath got, as I take it, an ague. Where the devil     should he learn our language? I will give him some       relief, if it be but for that. If I can recover him, and     keep him tame, and get to Naples with him, he\'s a     present for any emperor that ever trod on neat\'s     leather.   CALIBAN. Do not torment me, prithee; I\'ll bring my wood     home faster.   STEPHANO. He\'s in his fit now, and does not talk after the     wisest. He shall taste of my bottle; if he have never     drunk wine afore, it will go near to remove his fit. If     I can recover him, and keep him tame, I will not take     too much for him; he shall pay for him that hath him,     and that soundly.   CALIBAN. Thou dost me yet but little hurt; thou wilt anon,     I know it by thy trembling; now Prosper works upon thee.   STEPHANO. Come on your ways; open your mouth; here is     that which will give language to you, cat. Open your     mouth; this will shake your shaking, I can tell you, and     that soundly; you cannot tell who\'s your friend. Open     your chaps again.   TRINCULO. I should know that voice; it should be-but he is       drown\'d; and these are devils. O, defend me!   STEPHANO. Four legs and two voices; a most delicate monster!     His forward voice, now, is to speak well of his     friend; his backward voice is to utter foul speeches and     to detract. If all the wine in my bottle will recover     him, I will help his ague. Come-Amen! I will pour some     in thy other mouth.   TRINCULO. Stephano!   STEPHANO. Doth thy other mouth call me? Mercy, mercy!     This is a devil, and no monster; I will leave him; I     have no long spoon.   TRINCULO. Stephano! If thou beest Stephano, touch me, and     speak to me; for I am Trinculo-be not afeard-thy good     friend Trinculo.   STEPHANO. If thou beest Trinculo, come forth; I\'ll pull     the by the lesser legs; if any be Trinculo\'s legs, these     are they. Thou art very Trinculo indeed! How cam\'st thou     to be the siege of this moon-calf? Can he vent     Trinculos?   TRINCULO. I took him to be kill\'d with a thunderstroke.       But art thou not drown\'d, Stephano? I hope now thou are     not drown\'d. Is the storm overblown? I hid me under the     dead moon-calf\'s gaberdine for fear of the storm. And     art thou living, Stephano? O Stephano, two Neapolitans     scap\'d!   STEPHANO. Prithee, do not turn me about; my stomach is not     constant.   CALIBAN.  [Aside]  These be fine things, an if they be not     sprites.     That\'s a brave god, and bears celestial liquor.     I will kneel to him.   STEPHANO. How didst thou scape? How cam\'st thou hither?     Swear by this bottle how thou cam\'st hither-I escap\'d     upon a butt of sack, which the sailors heaved o\'erboard-     by this bottle, which I made of the bark of a tree, with     mine own hands, since I was cast ashore.   CALIBAN. I\'ll swear upon that bottle to be thy true     subject, for the liquor is not earthly.   STEPHANO. Here; swear then how thou escap\'dst.   TRINCULO. Swum ashore, man, like a duck; I can swim like       a duck, I\'ll be sworn.   STEPHANO.  [Passing the bottle]  Here, kiss the book. Though     thou canst swim like a duck, thou art made like a     goose.   TRINCULO. O Stephano, hast any more of this?   STEPHANO. The whole butt, man; my cellar is in a rock by     th\' seaside, where my wine is hid. How now, moon-calf!     How does thine ague?   CALIBAN. Hast thou not dropp\'d from heaven?   STEPHANO. Out o\' th\' moon, I do assure thee; I was the Man     i\' th\' Moon, when time was.   CALIBAN. I have seen thee in her, and I do adore thee. My     mistress show\'d me thee, and thy dog and thy bush.   STEPHANO. Come, swear to that; kiss the book. I will     furnish it anon with new contents. Swear.                                                 [CALIBAN drinks]   TRINCULO. By this good light, this is a very shallow     monster!     I afeard of him! A very weak monster! The Man i\' th\'     Moon! A most poor credulous monster! Well drawn,       monster, in good sooth!   CALIBAN. I\'ll show thee every fertile inch o\' th\' island;     and will kiss thy foot. I prithee be my god.   TRINCULO. By this light, a most perfidious and drunken     monster! When\'s god\'s asleep he\'ll rob his bottle.   CALIBAN. I\'ll kiss thy foot; I\'ll swear myself thy     subject.   STEPHANO. Come on, then; down, and swear.   TRINCULO. I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-     headed monster. A most scurvy monster! I could find in     my heart to beat him-   STEPHANO. Come, kiss.   TRINCULO. But that the poor monster\'s in drink. An     abominable monster!   CALIBAN. I\'ll show thee the best springs; I\'ll pluck thee     berries;     I\'ll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough.     A plague upon the tyrant that I serve!     I\'ll bear him no more sticks, but follow thee,     Thou wondrous man.     TRINCULO. A most ridiculous monster, to make a wonder of     a poor drunkard!   CALIBAN. I prithee let me bring thee where crabs grow;     And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts;     Show thee a jay\'s nest, and instruct thee how     To snare the nimble marmoset; I\'ll bring thee     To clust\'ring filberts, and sometimes I\'ll get thee     Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me?   STEPHANO. I prithee now, lead the way without any more     talking. Trinculo, the King and all our company else     being drown\'d, we will inherit here. Here, bear my bottle.     Fellow Trinculo, we\'ll fill him by and by again.   CALIBAN.  [Sings drunkenly]  Farewell, master; farewell,     farewell!   TRINCULO. A howling monster; a drunken monster!   CALIBAN. No more dams I\'ll make for fish;     Nor fetch in firing     At requiring,     Nor scrape trenchering, nor wash dish.     \'Ban \'Ban, Ca-Caliban,       Has a new master-Get a new man.     Freedom, high-day! high-day, freedom! freedom, high-     day, freedom!   STEPHANO. O brave monster! Lead the way.                Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE 1  Before PROSPERO\'S cell  Enter FERDINAND, hearing a log    FERDINAND. There be some sports are painful, and their     labour     Delight in them sets off; some kinds of baseness     Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters     Point to rich ends. This my mean task     Would be as heavy to me as odious, but     The mistress which I serve quickens what\'s dead,     And makes my labours pleasures. O, she is     Ten times more gentle than her father\'s crabbed;     And he\'s compos\'d of harshness. I must remove     Some thousands of these logs, and pile them up,     Upon a sore injunction; my sweet mistress     Weeps when she sees me work, and says such baseness     Had never like executor. I forget;     But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours,     Most busy, least when I do it.            Enter MIRANDA; and PROSPERO at a distance, unseen    MIRANDA. Alas, now; pray you,     Work not so hard; I would the lightning had     Burnt up those logs that you are enjoin\'d to pile.     Pray, set it down and rest you; when this burns,     \'Twill weep for having wearied you. My father     Is hard at study; pray, now, rest yourself;     He\'s safe for these three hours.   FERDINAND. O most dear mistress,     The sun will set before I shall discharge     What I must strive to do.   MIRANDA. If you\'ll sit down,     I\'ll bear your logs the while; pray give me that;     I\'ll carry it to the pile.   FERDINAND. No, precious creature;     I had rather crack my sinews, break my back,     Than you should such dishonour undergo,     While I sit lazy by.   MIRANDA. It would become me       As well as it does you; and I should do it     With much more ease; for my good will is to it,     And yours it is against.   PROSPERO.  [Aside]  Poor worm, thou art infected!     This visitation shows it.   MIRANDA. You look wearily.   FERDINAND. No, noble mistress; \'tis fresh morning with me     When you are by at night. I do beseech you,     Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers,     What is your name?   MIRANDA. Miranda-O my father,     I have broke your hest to say so!   FERDINAND. Admir\'d Miranda!     What\'s dearest to the world! Full many a lady     I have ey\'d with best regard; and many a time     Th\' harmony of their tongues hath into bondage     Brought my too diligent ear; for several virtues     Have I lik\'d several women, never any     With so full soul, but some defect in her     Did quarrel with the noblest grace she ow\'d,       And put it to the foil; but you, O you,     So perfect and so peerless, are created     Of every creature\'s best!   MIRANDA. I do not know     One of my sex; no woman\'s face remember,     Save, from my glass, mine own; nor have I seen     More that I may call men than you, good friend,     And my dear father. How features are abroad,     I am skilless of; but, by my modesty,     The jewel in my dower, I would not wish     Any companion in the world but you;     Nor can imagination form a shape,     Besides yourself, to like of. But I prattle     Something too wildly, and my father\'s precepts     I therein do forget.   FERDINAND. I am, in my condition,     A prince, Miranda; I do think, a king-     I would not so!-and would no more endure     This wooden slavery than to suffer     The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak:       The very instant that I saw you, did     My heart fly to your service; there resides     To make me slave to it; and for your sake     Am I this patient log-man.   MIRANDA. Do you love me?   FERDINAND. O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound,     And crown what I profess with kind event,     If I speak true! If hollowly, invert     What best is boded me to mischief! I,     Beyond all limit of what else i\' th\' world,     Do love, prize, honour you.   MIRANDA. I am a fool     To weep at what I am glad of.   PROSPERO.  [Aside]  Fair encounter     Of two most rare affections! Heavens rain grace     On that which breeds between \'em!   FERDINAND. Wherefore weep you?   MIRANDA. At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer     What I desire to give, and much less take     What I shall die to want. But this is trifling;       And all the more it seeks to hide itself,     The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning!     And prompt me, plain and holy innocence!     I am your wife, if you will marry me;     If not, I\'ll die your maid. To be your fellow     You may deny me; but I\'ll be your servant,     Whether you will or no.   FERDINAND. My mistress, dearest;     And I thus humble ever.   MIRANDA. My husband, then?   FERDINAND. Ay, with a heart as willing     As bondage e\'er of freedom. Here\'s my hand.   MIRANDA. And mine, with my heart in\'t. And now farewell     Till half an hour hence.   FERDINAND. A thousand thousand!                           Exeunt FERDINAND and MIRANDA severally   PROSPERO. So glad of this as they I cannot be,     Who are surpris\'d withal; but my rejoicing     At nothing can be more. I\'ll to my book;     For yet ere supper time must I perform       Much business appertaining.                             Exit     SCENE 2  Another part of the island  Enter CALIBAN, STEPHANO, and TRINCULO    STEPHANO. Tell not me-when the butt is out we will drink     water, not a drop before; therefore bear up, and board     \'em. Servant-monster, drink to me.   TRINCULO. Servant-monster! The folly of this island! They     say there\'s but five upon this isle: we are three of     them; if th\' other two be brain\'d like us, the state     totters.   STEPHANO. Drink, servant-monster, when I bid thee; thy     eyes are almost set in thy head.   TRINCULO. Where should they be set else? He were a brave     monster indeed, if they were set in his tail.   STEPHANO. My man-monster hath drown\'d his tongue in     sack. For my part, the sea cannot drown me; I swam, ere     I could recover the shore, five and thirty leagues, off     and on. By this light, thou shalt be my lieutenant,     monster, or my standard.   TRINCULO. Your lieutenant, if you list; he\'s no standard.     STEPHANO. We\'ll not run, Monsieur Monster.   TRINCULO. Nor go neither; but you\'ll lie like dogs, and     yet say nothing neither.   STEPHANO. Moon-calf, speak once in thy life, if thou beest     a good moon-calf.   CALIBAN. How does thy honour? Let me lick thy shoe.     I\'ll not serve him; he is not valiant.   TRINCULO. Thou liest, most ignorant monster: I am in case     to justle a constable. Why, thou debosh\'d fish, thou,     was there ever man a coward that hath drunk so much sack     as I to-day? Wilt thou tell a monstrous lie, being but     half fish and half a monster?   CALIBAN. Lo, how he mocks me! Wilt thou let him, my     lord?   TRINCULO. \'Lord\' quoth he! That a monster should be such     a natural!   CALIBAN. Lo, lo again! Bite him to death, I prithee.   STEPHANO. Trinculo, keep a good tongue in your head; if     you prove a mutineer-the next tree! The poor monster\'s     my subject, and he shall not suffer indignity.     CALIBAN. I thank my noble lord. Wilt thou be pleas\'d to     hearken once again to the suit I made to thee?   STEPHANO. Marry will I; kneel and repeat it; I will stand,     and so shall Trinculo.                       Enter ARIEL, invisible    CALIBAN. As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant,     sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the     island.   ARIEL. Thou liest.   CALIBAN. Thou liest, thou jesting monkey, thou;     I would my valiant master would destroy thee.     I do not lie.   STEPHANO. Trinculo, if you trouble him any more in\'s tale,     by this hand, I will supplant some of your teeth.   TRINCULO. Why, I said nothing.   STEPHANO. Mum, then, and no more. Proceed.   CALIBAN. I say, by sorcery he got this isle;     From me he got it. If thy greatness will       Revenge it on him-for I know thou dar\'st,     But this thing dare not-   STEPHANO. That\'s most certain.   CALIBAN. Thou shalt be lord of it, and I\'ll serve thee.   STEPHANO. How now shall this be compass\'d? Canst thou     bring me to the party?   CALIBAN. Yea, yea, my lord; I\'ll yield him thee asleep,     Where thou mayst knock a nail into his head.   ARIEL. Thou liest; thou canst not.   CALIBAN. What a pied ninny\'s this! Thou scurvy patch!     I do beseech thy greatness, give him blows,     And take his bottle from him. When that\'s gone     He shall drink nought but brine; for I\'ll not show him     Where the quick freshes are.   STEPHANO. Trinculo, run into no further danger; interrupt     the monster one word further and, by this hand, I\'ll turn     my mercy out o\' doors, and make a stock-fish of thee.   TRINCULO. Why, what did I? I did nothing. I\'ll go farther     off.   STEPHANO. Didst thou not say he lied?     ARIEL. Thou liest.   STEPHANO. Do I so? Take thou that.  [Beats him]  As you like     this, give me the lie another time.   TRINCULO. I did not give the lie. Out o\' your wits and     hearing too? A pox o\' your bottle! This can sack and     drinking do. A murrain on your monster, and the devil     take your fingers!   CALIBAN. Ha, ha, ha!   STEPHANO. Now, forward with your tale.-Prithee stand     further off.   CALIBAN. Beat him enough; after a little time, I\'ll beat     him too.   STEPHANO. Stand farther. Come, proceed.   CALIBAN. Why, as I told thee, \'tis a custom with him     I\' th\' afternoon to sleep; there thou mayst brain him,     Having first seiz\'d his books; or with a log     Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake,     Or cut his wezand with thy knife. Remember     First to possess his books; for without them     He\'s but a sot, as I am, nor hath not       One spirit to command; they all do hate him     As rootedly as I. Burn but his books.     He has brave utensils-for so he calls them-     Which, when he has a house, he\'ll deck withal.     And that most deeply to consider is     The beauty of his daughter; he himself     Calls her a nonpareil. I never saw a woman     But only Sycorax my dam and she;     But she as far surpasseth Sycorax     As great\'st does least.   STEPHANO. Is it so brave a lass?   CALIBAN. Ay, lord; she will become thy bed, I warrant,     And bring thee forth brave brood.   STEPHANO. Monster, I will kill this man; his daughter and I     will be King and Queen-save our Graces!-and Trinculo     and thyself shall be viceroys. Dost thou like the plot,     Trinculo?   TRINCULO. Excellent.   STEPHANO. Give me thy hand; I am sorry I beat thee; but     while thou liv\'st, keep a good tongue in thy head.     CALIBAN. Within this half hour will he be asleep.     Wilt thou destroy him then?   STEPHANO. Ay, on mine honour.   ARIEL. This will I tell my master.   CALIBAN. Thou mak\'st me merry; I am full of pleasure.     Let us be jocund; will you troll the catch     You taught me but while-ere?   STEPHANO. At thy request, monster, I will do reason, any     reason. Come on, Trinculo, let us sing.              [Sings]      Flout \'em and scout \'em,     And scout \'em and flout \'em;     Thought is free.    CALIBAN. That\'s not the tune.                       [ARIEL plays the tune on a tabor and pipe]   STEPHANO. What is this same?   TRINCULO. This is the tune of our catch, play\'d by the     picture of Nobody.   STEPHANO. If thou beest a man, show thyself in thy       likeness; if thou beest a devil, take\'t as thou list.   TRINCULO. O, forgive me my sins!   STEPHANO. He that dies pays all debts. I defy thee. Mercy     upon us!   CALIBAN. Art thou afeard?   STEPHANO. No, monster, not I.   CALIBAN. Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,     Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.     Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments     Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,     That, if I then had wak\'d after long sleep,     Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,     The clouds methought would open and show riches     Ready to drop upon me, that, when I wak\'d,     I cried to dream again.   STEPHANO. This will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I     shall have my music for nothing.   CALIBAN. When Prospero is destroy\'d.   STEPHANO. That shall be by and by; I remember the story.   TRINCULO. The sound is going away; let\'s follow it, and       after do our work.   STEPHANO. Lead, monster; we\'ll follow. I would I could see     this taborer; he lays it on.   TRINCULO. Wilt come? I\'ll follow, Stephano.             Exeunt     SCENE 3  Another part of the island  Enter ALONSO, SEBASTIAN, ANTONIO, GONZALO, ADRIAN, FRANCISCO, and OTHERS    GONZALO. By\'r lakin, I can go no further, sir;     My old bones ache. Here\'s a maze trod, indeed,     Through forth-rights and meanders! By your patience,     I needs must rest me.   ALONSO. Old lord, I cannot blame thee,     Who am myself attach\'d with weariness     To th\' dulling of my spirits; sit down and rest.     Even here I will put off my hope, and keep it     No longer for my flatterer; he is drown\'d     Whom thus we stray to find, and the sea mocks     Our frustrate search on land. Well, let him go.   ANTONIO.  [Aside to SEBASTIAN]  I am right glad that he\'s     so out of hope.     Do not, for one repulse, forgo the purpose     That you resolv\'d t\' effect.   SEBASTIAN.  [Aside to ANTONIO]  The next advantage       Will we take throughly.   ANTONIO.  [Aside to SEBASTIAN]  Let it be to-night;     For, now they are oppress\'d with travel, they     Will not, nor cannot, use such vigilance     As when they are fresh.   SEBASTIAN.  [Aside to ANTONIO]  I say, to-night; no more.             Solemn and strange music; and PROSPERO on the            top, invisible. Enter several strange SHAPES,            bringing in a banquet; and dance about it with            gentle actions of salutations; and inviting the            KING, etc., to eat, they depart    ALONSO. What harmony is this? My good friends, hark!   GONZALO. Marvellous sweet music!   ALONSO. Give us kind keepers, heavens! What were these?   SEBASTIAN. A living drollery. Now I will believe     That there are unicorns; that in Arabia     There is one tree, the phoenix\' throne, one phoenix     At this hour reigning-there.     ANTONIO. I\'ll believe both;     And what does else want credit, come to me,     And I\'ll be sworn \'tis true; travellers ne\'er did lie,     Though fools at home condemn \'em.   GONZALO. If in Naples     I should report this now, would they believe me?     If I should say, I saw such islanders,     For certes these are people of the island,     Who though they are of monstrous shape yet, note,     Their manners are more gentle-kind than of     Our human generation you shall find     Many, nay, almost any.   PROSPERO.  [Aside]  Honest lord,     Thou hast said well; for some of you there present     Are worse than devils.   ALONSO. I cannot too much muse     Such shapes, such gesture, and such sound, expressing,     Although they want the use of tongue, a kind     Of excellent dumb discourse.   PROSPERO.  [Aside]  Praise in departing.     FRANCISCO. They vanish\'d strangely.   SEBASTIAN. No matter, since     They have left their viands behind; for we have stomachs.     Will\'t please you taste of what is here?   ALONSO. Not I.   GONZALO. Faith, sir, you need not fear. When we were boys,     Who would believe that there were mountaineers,     Dewlapp\'d like bulls, whose throats had hanging at \'em     Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men     Whose heads stood in their breasts? which now we find     Each putter-out of five for one will bring us     Good warrant of.   ALONSO. I will stand to, and feed,     Although my last; no matter, since I feel     The best is past. Brother, my lord the Duke,     Stand to, and do as we.         Thunder and lightning. Enter ARIEL, like a harpy;        claps his wings upon the table; and, with a quaint                 device, the banquet vanishes      ARIEL. You are three men of sin, whom Destiny,     That hath to instrument this lower world     And what is in\'t, the never-surfeited sea     Hath caus\'d to belch up you; and on this island     Where man doth not inhabit-you \'mongst men     Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad;     And even with such-like valour men hang and drown     Their proper selves.                      [ALONSO, SEBASTIAN etc., draw their swords]     You fools! I and my fellows     Are ministers of Fate; the elements     Of whom your swords are temper\'d may as well     Wound the loud winds, or with bemock\'d-at stabs     Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish     One dowle that\'s in my plume; my fellow-ministers     Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt,     Your swords are now too massy for your strengths     And will not be uplifted. But remember-     For that\'s my business to you-that you three       From Milan did supplant good Prospero;     Expos\'d unto the sea, which hath requit it,     Him, and his innocent child; for which foul deed     The pow\'rs, delaying, not forgetting, have     Incens\'d the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures,     Against your peace. Thee of thy son, Alonso,     They have bereft; and do pronounce by me     Ling\'ring perdition, worse than any death     Can be at once, shall step by step attend     You and your ways; whose wraths to guard you from-     Which here, in this most desolate isle, else falls     Upon your heads-is nothing but heart\'s sorrow,     And a clear life ensuing.          He vanishes in thunder; then, to soft music, enter         the SHAPES again, and dance, with mocks and mows,                 and carrying out the table    PROSPERO. Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou     Perform\'d, my Ariel; a grace it had, devouring.       Of my instruction hast thou nothing bated     In what thou hadst to say; so, with good life     And observation strange, my meaner ministers     Their several kinds have done. My high charms work,     And these mine enemies are all knit up     In their distractions. They now are in my pow\'r;     And in these fits I leave them, while I visit     Young Ferdinand, whom they suppose is drown\'d,     And his and mine lov\'d darling.                   Exit above   GONZALO. I\' th\' name of something holy, sir, why stand you     In this strange stare?   ALONSO. O, it is monstrous, monstrous!     Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it;     The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder,     That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc\'d     The name of Prosper; it did bass my trespass.     Therefore my son i\' th\' ooze is bedded; and     I\'ll seek him deeper than e\'er plummet sounded,     And with him there lie mudded.                          Exit   SEBASTIAN. But one fiend at a time,       I\'ll fight their legions o\'er.   ANTONIO. I\'ll be thy second.      Exeunt SEBASTIAN and ANTONIO   GONZALO. All three of them are desperate; their great guilt,     Like poison given to work a great time after,     Now gins to bite the spirits. I do beseech you,     That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly,     And hinder them from what this ecstasy     May now provoke them to.   ADRIAN. Follow, I pray you.                             Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE 1  Before PROSPERO\'S cell  Enter PROSPERO, FERDINAND, and MIRANDA    PROSPERO. If I have too austerely punish\'d you,     Your compensation makes amends; for     Have given you here a third of mine own life,     Or that for which I live; who once again     I tender to thy hand. All thy vexations     Were but my trials of thy love, and thou     Hast strangely stood the test; here, afore heaven,     I ratify this my rich gift. O Ferdinand!     Do not smile at me that I boast her off,     For thou shalt find she will outstrip all praise,     And make it halt behind her.   FERDINAND. I do believe it     Against an oracle.   PROSPERO. Then, as my gift, and thine own acquisition     Wort\'hily purchas\'d, take my daughter. But     If thou dost break her virgin-knot before     All sanctimonious ceremonies may       With full and holy rite be minist\'red,     No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall     To make this contract grow; but barren hate,     Sour-ey\'d disdain, and discord, shall bestrew     The union of your bed with weeds so loathly     That you shall hate it both. Therefore take heed,     As Hymen\'s lamps shall light you.   FERDINAND. As I hope     For quiet days, fair issue, and long life,     With such love as \'tis now, the murkiest den,     The most opportune place, the strong\'st suggestion     Our worser genius can, shall never melt     Mine honour into lust, to take away     The edge of that day\'s celebration,     When I shall think or Phoebus\' steeds are founder\'d     Or Night kept chain\'d below.   PROSPERO. Fairly spoke.     Sit, then, and talk with her; she is thine own.     What, Ariel! my industrious servant, Ariel!                               Enter ARIEL    ARIEL. What would my potent master? Here I am.   PROSPERO. Thou and thy meaner fellows your last service     Did worthily perform; and I must use you     In such another trick. Go bring the rabble,     O\'er whom I give thee pow\'r, here to this place.     Incite them to quick motion; for I must     Bestow upon the eyes of this young couple     Some vanity of mine art; it is my promise,     And they expect it from me.   ARIEL. Presently?   PROSPERO. Ay, with a twink.   ARIEL. Before you can say \'come\' and \'go,\'     And breathe twice, and cry \'so, so,\'     Each one, tripping on his toe,     Will be here with mop and mow.     Do you love me, master? No?   PROSPERO. Dearly, my delicate Ariel. Do not approach     Till thou dost hear me call.     ARIEL. Well! I conceive.                                  Exit   PROSPERO. Look thou be true; do not give dalliance     Too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw     To th\' fire i\' th\' blood. Be more abstemious,     Or else good night your vow!   FERDINAND. I warrant you, sir,     The white cold virgin snow upon my heart     Abates the ardour of my liver.   PROSPERO. Well!     Now come, my Ariel, bring a corollary,     Rather than want a spirit; appear, and pertly.     No tongue! All eyes! Be silent.                 [Soft music]                           Enter IRIS    IRIS. Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas     Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and pease;     Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep,     And flat meads thatch\'d with stover, them to keep;     Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims,       Which spongy April at thy hest betrims,     To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom groves,     Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,     Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipt vineyard;     And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky hard,     Where thou thyself dost air-the Queen o\' th\' sky,     Whose wat\'ry arch and messenger am I,     Bids thee leave these; and with her sovereign grace,     Here on this grass-plot, in this very place,     To come and sport. Her peacocks fly amain.                                       [JUNO descends in her car]     Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain.                          Enter CERES    CERES. Hail, many-coloured messenger, that ne\'er     Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter;     Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flow\'rs     Diffusest honey drops, refreshing show\'rs;     And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown       My bosky acres and my unshrubb\'d down,     Rich scarf to my proud earth-why hath thy Queen     Summon\'d me hither to this short-grass\'d green?   IRIS. A contract of true love to celebrate,     And some donation freely to estate     On the blest lovers.   CERES. Tell me, heavenly bow,     If Venus or her son, as thou dost know,     Do now attend the Queen? Since they did plot     The means that dusky Dis my daughter got,     Her and her blind boy\'s scandal\'d company     I have forsworn.   IRIS. Of her society     Be not afraid. I met her Deity     Cutting the clouds towards Paphos, and her son     Dove-drawn with her. Here thought they to have done     Some wanton charm upon this man and maid,     Whose vows are that no bed-rite shall be paid     Till Hymen\'s torch be lighted; but in vain.     Mars\'s hot minion is return\'d again;       Her waspish-headed son has broke his arrows,     Swears he will shoot no more, but play with sparrows,     And be a boy right out.                       [JUNO alights]   CERES. Highest Queen of State,     Great Juno, comes; I know her by her gait.   JUNO. How does my bounteous sister? Go with me     To bless this twain, that they may prosperous be,     And honour\'d in their issue.                     [They sing]   JUNO. Honour, riches, marriage-blessing,     Long continuance, and increasing,     Hourly joys be still upon you!     Juno sings her blessings on you.   CERES. Earth\'s increase, foison plenty,     Barns and gamers never empty;     Vines with clust\'ring bunches growing,     Plants with goodly burden bowing;     Spring come to you at the farthest,     In the very end of harvest!     Scarcity and want shall shun you,     Ceres\' blessing so is on you.     FERDINAND. This is a most majestic vision, and     Harmonious charmingly. May I be bold     To think these spirits?   PROSPERO. Spirits, which by mine art     I have from their confines call\'d to enact     My present fancies.   FERDINAND. Let me live here ever;     So rare a wond\'red father and a wise     Makes this place Paradise.            [JUNO and CERES whisper, and send IRIS on employment]   PROSPERO. Sweet now, silence;     Juno and Ceres whisper seriously.     There\'s something else to do; hush, and be mute,     Or else our spell is marr\'d.   IRIS. You nymphs, call\'d Naiads, of the wind\'ring brooks,     With your sedg\'d crowns and ever harmless looks,     Leave your crisp channels, and on this green land     Answer your summons; Juno does command.     Come, temperate nymphs, and help to celebrate     A contract of true love; be not too late.                          Enter certain NYMPHS      You sun-burnt sicklemen, of August weary,     Come hither from the furrow, and be merry;     Make holiday; your rye-straw hats put on,     And these fresh nymphs encounter every one     In country footing.          Enter certain REAPERS, properly habited; they join          with the NYMPHS in a graceful dance; towards the          end whereof PROSPERO starts suddenly, and speaks,           after which, to a strange, hollow, and confused                   noise, they heavily vanish    PROSPERO.  [Aside]  I had forgot that foul conspiracy     Of the beast Caliban and his confederates     Against my life; the minute of their plot     Is almost come.  [To the SPIRITS]  Well done; avoid; no     more!     FERDINAND. This is strange; your father\'s in some passion     That works him strongly.   MIRANDA. Never till this day     Saw I him touch\'d with anger so distemper\'d.   PROSPERO. You do look, my son, in a mov\'d sort,     As if you were dismay\'d; be cheerful, sir.     Our revels now are ended. These our actors,     As I foretold you, were all spirits, and     Are melted into air, into thin air;     And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,     The cloud-capp\'d towers, the gorgeous palaces,     The solemn temples, the great globe itself,     Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,     And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,     Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff     As dreams are made on; and our little life     Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex\'d;     Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled;     Be not disturb\'d with my infirmity.     If you be pleas\'d, retire into my cell       And there repose; a turn or two I\'ll walk     To still my beating mind.   FERDINAND, MIRANDA. We wish your peace.                 Exeunt   PROSPERO. Come, with a thought. I thank thee, Ariel; come.                         Enter ARIEL    ARIEL. Thy thoughts I cleave to. What\'s thy pleasure?   PROSPERO. Spirit,     We must prepare to meet with Caliban.   ARIEL. Ay, my commander. When I presented \'Ceres.\'     I thought to have told thee of it; but I fear\'d     Lest I might anger thee.   PROSPERO. Say again, where didst thou leave these varlets?   ARIEL. I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking;     So full of valour that they smote the air     For breathing in their faces; beat the ground     For kissing of their feet; yet always bending     Towards their project. Then I beat my tabor,     At which like unback\'d colts they prick\'d their ears,       Advanc\'d their eyelids, lifted up their noses     As they smelt music; so I charm\'d their cars,     That calf-like they my lowing follow\'d through     Tooth\'d briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns,     Which ent\'red their frail shins. At last I left them     I\' th\' filthy mantled pool beyond your cell,     There dancing up to th\' chins, that the foul lake     O\'erstunk their feet.   PROSPERO. This was well done, my bird.     Thy shape invisible retain thou still.     The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither     For stale to catch these thieves.   ARIEL. I go, I go.                                        Exit   PROSPERO. A devil, a born devil, on whose nature     Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains,     Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost;     And as with age his body uglier grows,     So his mind cankers. I will plague them all,     Even to roaring.           Re-enter ARIEL, loaden with glistering apparel, &c.      Come, hang them on this line.                           [PROSPERO and ARIEL remain, invisible]           Enter CALIBAN, STEPHANO, and TRINCULO, all wet    CALIBAN. Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not     Hear a foot fall; we now are near his cell.   STEPHANO. Monster, your fairy, which you say is a harmless     fairy, has done little better than play\'d the Jack with us.   TRINCULO. Monster, I do smell all horse-piss at which my     nose is in great indignation.   STEPHANO. So is mine. Do you hear, monster? If I should     take a displeasure against you, look you-   TRINCULO. Thou wert but a lost monster.   CALIBAN. Good my lord, give me thy favour still.     Be patient, for the prize I\'ll bring thee to     Shall hoodwink this mischance; therefore speak softly.     All\'s hush\'d as midnight yet.     TRINCULO. Ay, but to lose our bottles in the pool!   STEPHANO. There is not only disgrace and dishonour in     that, monster, but an infinite loss.   TRINCULO. That\'s more to me than my wetting; yet this is     your harmless fairy, monster.   STEPHANO. I will fetch off my bottle, though I be o\'er     ears for my labour.   CALIBAN. Prithee, my king, be quiet. Seest thou here,     This is the mouth o\' th\' cell; no noise, and enter.     Do that good mischief which may make this island     Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban,     For aye thy foot-licker.   STEPHANO. Give me thy hand. I do begin to have bloody     thoughts.   TRINCULO. O King Stephano! O peer! O worthy Stephano!     Look what a wardrobe here is for thee!   CALIBAN. Let it alone, thou fool; it is but trash.   TRINCULO. O, ho, monster; we know what belongs to a     frippery. O King Stephano!   STEPHANO. Put off that gown, Trinculo; by this hand, I\'ll       have that gown.   TRINCULO. Thy Grace shall have it.   CALIBAN. The dropsy drown this fool! What do you mean     To dote thus on such luggage? Let \'t alone,     And do the murder first. If he awake,     From toe to crown he\'ll fill our skins with pinches;     Make us strange stuff.   STEPHANO. Be you quiet, monster. Mistress line, is not     this my jerkin? Now is the jerkin under the line; now,     jerkin, you are like to lose your hair, and prove a bald     jerkin.   TRINCULO. Do, do. We steal by line and level, an\'t like     your Grace.   STEPHANO. I thank thee for that jest; here\'s a garment     for\'t. Wit shall not go unrewarded while I am king of     this country. \'Steal by line and level\' is an excellent     pass of pate; there\'s another garmet for\'t.   TRINCULO. Monster, come, put some lime upon your fingers,     and away with the rest.   CALIBAN. I will have none on\'t. We shall lose our time,       And all be turn\'d to barnacles, or to apes     With foreheads villainous low.   STEPHANO. Monster, lay-to your fingers; help to bear this     away where my hogshead of wine is, or I\'ll turn you out     of my kingdom. Go to, carry this.   TRINCULO. And this.   STEPHANO. Ay, and this.            A noise of hunters beard. Enter divers SPIRITS, in              shape of dogs and hounds, bunting them about;                    PROSPERO and ARIEL setting them on    PROSPERO. Hey, Mountain, hey!   ARIEL. Silver! there it goes, Silver!   PROSPERO. Fury, Fury! There, Tyrant, there! Hark, hark!                 [CALIBAN, STEPHANO, and TRINCULO are driven out]     Go charge my goblins that they grind their joints     With dry convulsions, shorten up their sinews     With aged cramps, and more pinch-spotted make them     Than pard or cat o\' mountain.     ARIEL. Hark, they roar.   PROSPERO. Let them be hunted soundly. At this hour     Lies at my mercy all mine enemies.     Shortly shall all my labours end, and thou     Shalt have the air at freedom; for a little     Follow, and do me service.                            Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE 1  Before PROSPERO\'S cell  Enter PROSPERO in his magic robes, and ARIEL    PROSPERO. Now does my project gather to a head;     My charms crack not, my spirits obey; and time     Goes upright with his carriage. How\'s the day?   ARIEL. On the sixth hour; at which time, my lord,     You said our work should cease.   PROSPERO. I did say so,     When first I rais\'d the tempest. Say, my spirit,     How fares the King and \'s followers?   ARIEL. Confin\'d together     In the same fashion as you gave in charge;     Just as you left them; all prisoners, sir,     In the line-grove which weather-fends your cell;     They cannot budge till your release. The King,     His brother, and yours, abide all three distracted,     And the remainder mourning over them,     Brim full of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly     Him you term\'d, sir, \'the good old lord, Gonzalo\';       His tears run down his beard, like winter\'s drops     From eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works \'em     That if you now beheld them your affections     Would become tender.   PROSPERO. Dost thou think so, spirit?   ARIEL. Mine would, sir, were I human.   PROSPERO. And mine shall.     Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling     Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,     One of their kind, that relish all as sharply,     Passion as they, be kindlier mov\'d than thou art?     Though with their high wrongs I am struck to th\' quick,     Yet with my nobler reason \'gainst my fury     Do I take part; the rarer action is     In virtue than in vengeance; they being penitent,     The sole drift of my purpose doth extend     Not a frown further. Go release them, Ariel;     My charms I\'ll break, their senses I\'ll restore,     And they shall be themselves.   ARIEL. I\'ll fetch them, sir.                              Exit     PROSPERO. Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and     groves;     And ye that on the sands with printless foot     Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him     When he comes back; you demi-puppets that     By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,     Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime     Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice     To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid-     Weak masters though ye be-I have be-dimm\'d     The noontide sun, call\'d forth the mutinous winds,     And \'twixt the green sea and the azur\'d vault     Set roaring war. To the dread rattling thunder     Have I given fire, and rifted Jove\'s stout oak     With his own bolt; the strong-bas\'d promontory     Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck\'d up     The pine and cedar. Graves at my command     Have wak\'d their sleepers, op\'d, and let \'em forth,     By my so potent art. But this rough magic     I here abjure; and, when I have requir\'d       Some heavenly music-which even now I do-     To work mine end upon their senses that     This airy charm is for, I\'ll break my staff,     Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,     And deeper than did ever plummet sound     I\'ll drown my book.                            [Solem music]              Here enters ARIEL before; then ALONSO, with           frantic gesture, attended by GONZALO; SEBASTIAN            and ANTONIO in like manner, attended by ADRIAN            and FRANCISCO. They all enter the circle which           PROSPERO had made, and there stand charm\'d; which                     PROSPERO observing, speaks      A solemn air, and the best comforter     To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains,     Now useless, boil\'d within thy skull! There stand,     For you are spell-stopp\'d.     Holy Gonzalo, honourable man,     Mine eyes, ev\'n sociable to the show of thine,       Fall fellowly drops. The charm dissolves apace,     And as the morning steals upon the night,     Melting the darkness, so their rising senses     Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle     Their clearer reason. O good Gonzalo,     My true preserver, and a loyal sir     To him thou follow\'st! I will pay thy graces     Home both in word and deed. Most cruelly     Didst thou, Alonso, use me and my daughter;     Thy brother was a furtherer in the act.     Thou art pinch\'d for\'t now, Sebastian. Flesh and blood,     You, brother mine, that entertain\'d ambition,     Expell\'d remorse and nature, who, with Sebastian-     Whose inward pinches therefore are most strong-     Would here have kill\'d your king, I do forgive thee,     Unnatural though thou art. Their understanding     Begins to swell, and the approaching tide     Will shortly fill the reasonable shore     That now lies foul and muddy. Not one of them     That yet looks on me, or would know me. Ariel,       Fetch me the hat and rapier in my cell;           Exit ARIEL     I will discase me, and myself present     As I was sometime Milan. Quickly, spirit     Thou shalt ere long be free.          ARIEL, on returning, sings and helps to attire him      Where the bee sucks, there suck I;     In a cowslip\'s bell I lie;     There I couch when owls do cry.     On the bat\'s back I do fly     After summer merrily.     Merrily, merrily shall I live now     Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.    PROSPERO. Why, that\'s my dainty Ariel! I shall miss thee;     But yet thou shalt have freedom. So, so, so.     To the King\'s ship, invisible as thou art;     There shalt thou find the mariners asleep     Under the hatches; the master and the boatswain       Being awake, enforce them to this place;     And presently, I prithee.   ARIEL. I drink the air before me, and return     Or ere your pulse twice beat.                           Exit   GONZALO. All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement,     Inhabits here. Some heavenly power guide us     Out of this fearful country!   PROSPERO. Behold, Sir King,     The wronged Duke of Milan, Prospero.     For more assurance that a living prince     Does now speak to thee, I embrace thy body;     And to thee and thy company I bid     A hearty welcome.   ALONSO. Whe\'er thou be\'st he or no,     Or some enchanted trifle to abuse me,     As late I have been, I not know. Thy pulse     Beats, as of flesh and blood; and, since I saw thee,     Th\' affliction of my mind amends, with which,     I fear, a madness held me. This must crave-     An if this be at all-a most strange story.       Thy dukedom I resign, and do entreat     Thou pardon me my wrongs. But how should Prospero     Be living and be here?   PROSPERO. First, noble friend,     Let me embrace thine age, whose honour cannot     Be measur\'d or confin\'d.   GONZALO. Whether this be     Or be not, I\'ll not swear.   PROSPERO. You do yet taste     Some subtleties o\' th\' isle, that will not let you     Believe things certain. Welcome, my friends all!     [Aside to SEBASTIAN and ANTONIO]  But you, my brace of       lords, were I so minded,     I here could pluck his Highness\' frown upon you,     And justify you traitors; at this time     I will tell no tales.   SEBASTIAN.  [Aside]  The devil speaks in him.   PROSPERO. No.     For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother     Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive       Thy rankest fault-all of them; and require     My dukedom of thee, which perforce I know     Thou must restore.   ALONSO. If thou beest Prospero,     Give us particulars of thy preservation;     How thou hast met us here, whom three hours since     Were wreck\'d upon this shore; where I have lost-     How sharp the point of this remembrance is!-     My dear son Ferdinand.   PROSPERO. I am woe for\'t, sir.   ALONSO. Irreparable is the loss; and patience     Says it is past her cure.   PROSPERO. I rather think     You have not sought her help, of whose soft grace     For the like loss I have her sovereign aid,     And rest myself content.   ALONSO. You the like loss!   PROSPERO. As great to me as late; and, supportable     To make the dear loss, have I means much weaker     Than you may call to comfort you, for I       Have lost my daughter.   ALONSO. A daughter!     O heavens, that they were living both in Naples,     The King and Queen there! That they were, I wish     Myself were mudded in that oozy bed     Where my son lies. When did you lose your daughter?   PROSPERO. In this last tempest. I perceive these lords     At this encounter do so much admire     That they devour their reason, and scarce think     Their eyes do offices of truth, their words     Are natural breath; but, howsoe\'er you have     Been justled from your senses, know for certain     That I am Prospero, and that very duke     Which was thrust forth of Milan; who most strangely     Upon this shore, where you were wrecked, was landed     To be the lord on\'t. No more yet of this;     For \'tis a chronicle of day by day,     Not a relation for a breakfast, nor     Befitting this first meeting. Welcome, sir;     This cell\'s my court; here have I few attendants,       And subjects none abroad; pray you, look in.     My dukedom since you have given me again,     I will requite you with as good a thing;     At least bring forth a wonder, to content ye     As much as me my dukedom.            Here PROSPERO discovers FERDINAND and MIRANDA,                       playing at chess    MIRANDA. Sweet lord, you play me false.   FERDINAND. No, my dearest love,     I would not for the world.   MIRANDA. Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle     And I would call it fair play.   ALONSO. If this prove     A vision of the island, one dear son     Shall I twice lose.   SEBASTIAN. A most high miracle!   FERDINAND. Though the seas threaten, they are merciful;     I have curs\'d them without cause.                   [Kneels]     ALONSO. Now all the blessings     Of a glad father compass thee about!     Arise, and say how thou cam\'st here.   MIRANDA. O, wonder!     How many goodly creatures are there here!     How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world     That has such people in\'t!   PROSPERO. \'Tis new to thee.   ALONSO. What is this maid with whom thou wast at play?     Your eld\'st acquaintance cannot be three hours;     Is she the goddess that hath sever\'d us,     And brought us thus together?   FERDINAND. Sir, she is mortal;     But by immortal Providence she\'s mine.     I chose her when I could not ask my father     For his advice, nor thought I had one. She     Is daughter to this famous Duke of Milan,     Of whom so often I have heard renown     But never saw before; of whom I have     Receiv\'d a second life; and second father       This lady makes him to me.   ALONSO. I am hers.     But, O, how oddly will it sound that I     Must ask my child forgiveness!   PROSPERO. There, sir, stop;     Let us not burden our remembrances with     A heaviness that\'s gone.   GONZALO. I have inly wept,     Or should have spoke ere this. Look down, you gods,     And on this couple drop a blessed crown;     For it is you that have chalk\'d forth the way     Which brought us hither.   ALONSO. I say, Amen, Gonzalo!   GONZALO. Was Milan thrust from Milan, that his issue     Should become Kings of Naples? O, rejoice     Beyond a common joy, and set it down     With gold on lasting pillars: in one voyage     Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis;     And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife     Where he himself was lost; Prospero his dukedom       In a poor isle; and all of us ourselves     When no man was his own.   ALONSO.  [To FERDINAND and MIRANDA]  Give me your     hands.     Let grief and sorrow still embrace his heart     That doth not wish you joy.   GONZALO. Be it so. Amen!             Re-enter ARIEL, with the MASTER and BOATSWAIN                      amazedly following      O look, sir; look, sir! Here is more of us!     I prophesied, if a gallows were on land,     This fellow could not drown. Now, blasphemy,     That swear\'st grace o\'erboard, not an oath on shore?     Hast thou no mouth by land? What is the news?   BOATSWAIN. The best news is that we have safely found     Our King and company; the next, our ship-     Which but three glasses since we gave out split-     Is tight and yare, and bravely rigg\'d, as when       We first put out to sea.   ARIEL.  [Aside to PROSPERO]  Sir, all this service     Have I done since I went.   PROSPERO.  [Aside to ARIEL]  My tricksy spirit!   ALONSO. These are not natural events; they strengthen     From strange to stranger. Say, how came you hither?   BOATSWAIN. If I did think, sir, I were well awake,     I\'d strive to tell you. We were dead of sleep,     And-how, we know not-all clapp\'d under hatches;     Where, but even now, with strange and several noises     Of roaring, shrieking, howling, jingling chains,     And moe diversity of sounds, all horrible,     We were awak\'d; straightway at liberty;     Where we, in all her trim, freshly beheld     Our royal, good, and gallant ship; our master     Cap\'ring to eye her. On a trice, so please you,     Even in a dream, were we divided from them,     And were brought moping hither.   ARIEL.  [Aside to PROSPERO]  Was\'t well done?   PROSPERO.  [Aside to ARIEL]  Bravely, my diligence. Thou       shalt be free.   ALONSO. This is as strange a maze as e\'er men trod;     And there is in this business more than nature     Was ever conduct of. Some oracle     Must rectify our knowledge.   PROSPERO. Sir, my liege,     Do not infest your mind with beating on     The strangeness of this business; at pick\'d leisure,     Which shall be shortly, single I\'ll resolve you,     Which to you shall seem probable, of every     These happen\'d accidents; till when, be cheerful     And think of each thing well.  [Aside to ARIEL]  Come     hither, spirit;     Set Caliban and his companions free;     Untie the spell.  [Exit ARIEL]  How fares my gracious sir?     There are yet missing of your company     Some few odd lads that you remember not.           Re-enter ARIEL, driving in CALIBAN, STEPHANO, and      TRINCULO, in their stolen apparel   STEPHANO. Every man shift for all the rest, and let no man     take care for himself; for all is but fortune. Coragio,     bully-monster, coragio!   TRINCULO. If these be true spies which I wear in my head,     here\'s a goodly sight.   CALIBAN. O Setebos, these be brave spirits indeed!     How fine my master is! I am afraid     He will chastise me.   SEBASTIAN. Ha, ha!     What things are these, my lord Antonio?     Will money buy\'em?   ANTONIO. Very like; one of them     Is a plain fish, and no doubt marketable.   PROSPERO. Mark but the badges of these men, my lords,     Then say if they be true. This mis-shapen knave-     His mother was a witch, and one so strong     That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs,     And deal in her command without her power.     These three have robb\'d me; and this demi-devil-       For he\'s a bastard one-had plotted with them     To take my life. Two of these fellows you     Must know and own; this thing of darkness I     Acknowledge mine.   CALIBAN. I shall be pinch\'d to death.   ALONSO. Is not this Stephano, my drunken butler?   SEBASTIAN. He is drunk now; where had he wine?   ALONSO. And Trinculo is reeling ripe; where should they     Find this grand liquor that hath gilded \'em?     How cam\'st thou in this pickle?   TRINCULO. I have been in such a pickle since I saw you     last that, I fear me, will never out of my bones. I     shall not fear fly-blowing.   SEBASTIAN. Why, how now, Stephano!   STEPHANO. O, touch me not; I am not Stephano, but a     cramp.   PROSPERO. You\'d be king o\' the isle, sirrah?   STEPHANO. I should have been a sore one, then.   ALONSO.  [Pointing to CALIBAN]  This is as strange a thing     as e\'er I look\'d on.     PROSPERO. He is as disproportioned in his manners     As in his shape. Go, sirrah, to my cell;     Take with you your companions; as you look     To have my pardon, trim it handsomely.   CALIBAN. Ay, that I will; and I\'ll be wise hereafter,     And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass     Was I to take this drunkard for a god,     And worship this dull fool!   PROSPERO. Go to; away!   ALONSO. Hence, and bestow your luggage where you found it.   SEBASTIAN. Or stole it, rather.                           Exeunt CALIBAN, STEPHANO, and TRINCULO   PROSPERO. Sir, I invite your Highness and your train     To my poor cell, where you shall take your rest     For this one night; which, part of it, I\'ll waste     With such discourse as, I not doubt, shall make it     Go quick away-the story of my life,     And the particular accidents gone by     Since I came to this isle. And in the morn     I\'ll bring you to your ship, and so to Naples,       Where I have hope to see the nuptial     Of these our dear-belov\'d solemnized,     And thence retire me to my Milan, where     Every third thought shall be my grave.   ALONSO. I long     To hear the story of your life, which must     Take the ear strangely.   PROSPERO. I\'ll deliver all;     And promise you calm seas, auspicious gales,     And sail so expeditious that shall catch     Your royal fleet far off.  [Aside to ARIEL]  My Ariel,       chick,     That is thy charge. Then to the elements     Be free, and fare thou well!-Please you, draw near.                                                           Exeunt    EPILOGUE                              EPILOGUE                         Spoken by PROSPERO            Now my charms are all o\'erthrown,           And what strength I have\'s mine own,           Which is most faint. Now \'tis true,           I must be here confin\'d by you,           Or sent to Naples. Let me not,           Since I have my dukedom got,           And pardon\'d the deceiver, dwell           In this bare island by your spell;           But release me from my bands           With the help of your good hands.           Gentle breath of yours my sails           Must fill, or else my project fails,           Which was to please. Now I want           Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;           And my ending is despair           Unless I be reliev\'d by prayer,           Which pierces so that it assaults           Mercy itself, and frees all faults.           As you from crimes would pardon\'d be,             Let your indulgence set me free.  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1608  THE LIFE OF TIMON OF ATHENS  by William Shakespeare    DRAMATIS PERSONAE      TIMON of Athens      LUCIUS     LUCULLUS     SEMPRONIUS        flattering lords      VENTIDIUS, one of Timon\'s false friends     ALCIBIADES, an Athenian captain     APEMANTUS, a churlish philosopher     FLAVIUS, steward to Timon      FLAMINIUS     LUCILIUS     SERVILIUS        Timon\'s servants      CAPHIS     PHILOTUS     TITUS       HORTENSIUS        servants to Timon\'s creditors      POET     PAINTER     JEWELLER     MERCHANT     MERCER     AN OLD ATHENIAN     THREE STRANGERS     A PAGE     A FOOL      PHRYNIA     TIMANDRA        mistresses to Alcibiades      CUPID     AMAZONS       in the Masque        Lords, Senators, Officers, Soldiers, Servants, Thieves, and       Attendants     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: Athens and the neighbouring woods   ACT I. SCENE I. Athens. TIMON\'S house  Enter POET, PAINTER, JEWELLER, MERCHANT, and MERCER, at several doors    POET. Good day, sir.   PAINTER. I am glad y\'are well.   POET. I have not seen you long; how goes the world?   PAINTER. It wears, sir, as it grows.   POET. Ay, that\'s well known.     But what particular rarity? What strange,     Which manifold record not matches? See,     Magic of bounty, all these spirits thy power     Hath conjur\'d to attend! I know the merchant.   PAINTER. I know them both; th\' other\'s a jeweller.   MERCHANT. O, \'tis a worthy lord!   JEWELLER. Nay, that\'s most fix\'d.   MERCHANT. A most incomparable man; breath\'d, as it were,     To an untirable and continuate goodness.     He passes.   JEWELLER. I have a jewel here-     MERCHANT. O, pray let\'s see\'t. For the Lord Timon, sir?   JEWELLER. If he will touch the estimate. But for that-   POET. When we for recompense have prais\'d the vile,     It stains the glory in that happy verse     Which aptly sings the good.   MERCHANT. [Looking at the jewel] \'Tis a good form.   JEWELLER. And rich. Here is a water, look ye.   PAINTER. You are rapt, sir, in some work, some dedication     To the great lord.   POET. A thing slipp\'d idly from me.     Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes     From whence \'tis nourish\'d. The fire i\' th\' flint     Shows not till it be struck: our gentle flame     Provokes itself, and like the current flies     Each bound it chafes. What have you there?   PAINTER. A picture, sir. When comes your book forth?   POET. Upon the heels of my presentment, sir.     Let\'s see your piece.   PAINTER. \'Tis a good piece.   POET. So \'tis; this comes off well and excellent.     PAINTER. Indifferent.   POET. Admirable. How this grace     Speaks his own standing! What a mental power     This eye shoots forth! How big imagination     Moves in this lip! To th\' dumbness of the gesture     One might interpret.   PAINTER. It is a pretty mocking of the life.     Here is a touch; is\'t good?   POET. I will say of it     It tutors nature. Artificial strife     Lives in these touches, livelier than life.                Enter certain SENATORS, and pass over    PAINTER. How this lord is followed!   POET. The senators of Athens- happy man!   PAINTER. Look, moe!   POET. You see this confluence, this great flood of visitors.     I have in this rough work shap\'d out a man     Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug       With amplest entertainment. My free drift     Halts not particularly, but moves itself     In a wide sea of tax. No levell\'d malice     Infects one comma in the course I hold,     But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on,     Leaving no tract behind.   PAINTER. How shall I understand you?   POET. I will unbolt to you.     You see how all conditions, how all minds-     As well of glib and slipp\'ry creatures as     Of grave and austere quality, tender down     Their services to Lord Timon. His large fortune,     Upon his good and gracious nature hanging,     Subdues and properties to his love and tendance     All sorts of hearts; yea, from the glass-fac\'d flatterer     To Apemantus, that few things loves better     Than to abhor himself; even he drops down     The knee before him, and returns in peace     Most rich in Timon\'s nod.   PAINTER. I saw them speak together.     POET. Sir, I have upon a high and pleasant hill     Feign\'d Fortune to be thron\'d. The base o\' th\' mount     Is rank\'d with all deserts, all kind of natures     That labour on the bosom of this sphere     To propagate their states. Amongst them all     Whose eyes are on this sovereign lady fix\'d     One do I personate of Lord Timon\'s frame,     Whom Fortune with her ivory hand wafts to her;     Whose present grace to present slaves and servants     Translates his rivals.   PAINTER. \'Tis conceiv\'d to scope.     This throne, this Fortune, and this hill, methinks,     With one man beckon\'d from the rest below,     Bowing his head against the steepy mount     To climb his happiness, would be well express\'d     In our condition.   POET. Nay, sir, but hear me on.     All those which were his fellows but of late-     Some better than his value- on the moment     Follow his strides, his lobbies fill with tendance,       Rain sacrificial whisperings in his ear,     Make sacred even his stirrup, and through him     Drink the free air.   PAINTER. Ay, marry, what of these?   POET. When Fortune in her shift and change of mood     Spurns down her late beloved, all his dependants,     Which labour\'d after him to the mountain\'s top     Even on their knees and hands, let him slip down,     Not one accompanying his declining foot.   PAINTER. \'Tis common.     A thousand moral paintings I can show     That shall demonstrate these quick blows of Fortune\'s     More pregnantly than words. Yet you do well     To show Lord Timon that mean eyes have seen     The foot above the head.           Trumpets sound. Enter TIMON, addressing himself           courteously to every suitor, a MESSENGER from          VENTIDIUS talking with him; LUCILIUS and other                        servants following      TIMON. Imprison\'d is he, say you?   MESSENGER. Ay, my good lord. Five talents is his debt;     His means most short, his creditors most strait.     Your honourable letter he desires     To those have shut him up; which failing,     Periods his comfort.   TIMON. Noble Ventidius! Well.     I am not of that feather to shake of     My friend when he must need me. I do know him     A gentleman that well deserves a help,     Which he shall have. I\'ll pay the debt, and free him.   MESSENGER. Your lordship ever binds him.   TIMON. Commend me to him; I will send his ransom;     And being enfranchis\'d, bid him come to me.     \'Tis not enough to help the feeble up,     But to support him after. Fare you well.   MESSENGER. All happiness to your honour!                  Exit                        Enter an OLD ATHENIAN      OLD ATHENIAN. Lord Timon, hear me speak.   TIMON. Freely, good father.   OLD ATHENIAN. Thou hast a servant nam\'d Lucilius.   TIMON. I have so; what of him?   OLD ATHENIAN. Most noble Timon, call the man before thee.   TIMON. Attends he here, or no? Lucilius!   LUCILIUS. Here, at your lordship\'s service.   OLD ATHENIAN. This fellow here, Lord Timon, this thy creature,     By night frequents my house. I am a man     That from my first have been inclin\'d to thrift,     And my estate deserves an heir more rais\'d     Than one which holds a trencher.   TIMON. Well; what further?   OLD ATHENIAN. One only daughter have I, no kin else,     On whom I may confer what I have got.     The maid is fair, o\' th\' youngest for a bride,     And I have bred her at my dearest cost     In qualities of the best. This man of thine     Attempts her love; I prithee, noble lord,       Join with me to forbid him her resort;     Myself have spoke in vain.   TIMON. The man is honest.   OLD ATHENIAN. Therefore he will be, Timon.     His honesty rewards him in itself;     It must not bear my daughter.   TIMON. Does she love him?   OLD ATHENIAN. She is young and apt:     Our own precedent passions do instruct us     What levity\'s in youth.   TIMON. Love you the maid?   LUCILIUS. Ay, my good lord, and she accepts of it.   OLD ATHENIAN. If in her marriage my consent be missing,     I call the gods to witness I will choose     Mine heir from forth the beggars of the world,     And dispossess her all.   TIMON. How shall she be endow\'d,     If she be mated with an equal husband?   OLD ATHENIAN. Three talents on the present; in future, all.   TIMON. This gentleman of mine hath serv\'d me long;.       To build his fortune I will strain a little,     For \'tis a bond in men. Give him thy daughter:     What you bestow, in him I\'ll counterpoise,     And make him weigh with her.   OLD ATHENIAN. Most noble lord,     Pawn me to this your honour, she is his.   TIMON. My hand to thee; mine honour on my promise.   LUCILIUS. Humbly I thank your lordship. Never may     That state or fortune fall into my keeping     Which is not owed to you!                                 Exeunt LUCILIUS and OLD ATHENIAN   POET. [Presenting his poem] Vouchsafe my labour, and long live your     lordship!   TIMON. I thank you; you shall hear from me anon;     Go not away. What have you there, my friend?   PAINTER. A piece of painting, which I do beseech     Your lordship to accept.   TIMON. Painting is welcome.     The painting is almost the natural man;     For since dishonour traffics with man\'s nature,       He is but outside; these pencill\'d figures are     Even such as they give out. I like your work,     And you shall find I like it; wait attendance     Till you hear further from me.   PAINTER. The gods preserve ye!   TIMON. Well fare you, gentleman. Give me your hand;     We must needs dine together. Sir, your jewel     Hath suffered under praise.   JEWELLER. What, my lord! Dispraise?   TIMON. A mere satiety of commendations;     If I should pay you for\'t as \'tis extoll\'d,     It would unclew me quite.   JEWELLER. My lord, \'tis rated     As those which sell would give; but you well know     Things of like value, differing in the owners,     Are prized by their masters. Believe\'t, dear lord,     You mend the jewel by the wearing it.   TIMON. Well mock\'d.                        Enter APEMANTUS      MERCHANT. No, my good lord; he speaks the common tongue,     Which all men speak with him.   TIMON. Look who comes here; will you be chid?   JEWELLER. We\'ll bear, with your lordship.   MERCHANT. He\'ll spare none.   TIMON. Good morrow to thee, gentle Apemantus!   APEMANTUS. Till I be gentle, stay thou for thy good morrow;     When thou art Timon\'s dog, and these knaves honest.   TIMON. Why dost thou call them knaves? Thou know\'st them not.   APEMANTUS. Are they not Athenians?   TIMON. Yes.   APEMANTUS. Then I repent not.   JEWELLER. You know me, Apemantus?   APEMANTUS. Thou know\'st I do; I call\'d thee by thy name.   TIMON. Thou art proud, Apemantus.   APEMANTUS. Of nothing so much as that I am not like Timon.   TIMON. Whither art going?   APEMANTUS. To knock out an honest Athenian\'s brains.   TIMON. That\'s a deed thou\'t die for.     APEMANTUS. Right, if doing nothing be death by th\' law.   TIMON. How lik\'st thou this picture, Apemantus?   APEMANTUS. The best, for the innocence.   TIMON. Wrought he not well that painted it?   APEMANTUS. He wrought better that made the painter; and yet he\'s     but a filthy piece of work.   PAINTER. Y\'are a dog.   APEMANTUS. Thy mother\'s of my generation; what\'s she, if I be a dog?   TIMON. Wilt dine with me, Apemantus?   APEMANTUS. No; I eat not lords.   TIMON. An thou shouldst, thou\'dst anger ladies.   APEMANTUS. O, they eat lords; so they come by great bellies.   TIMON. That\'s a lascivious apprehension.   APEMANTUS. So thou apprehend\'st it take it for thy labour.   TIMON. How dost thou like this jewel, Apemantus?   APEMANTUS. Not so well as plain dealing, which will not cost a man     a doit.   TIMON. What dost thou think \'tis worth?   APEMANTUS. Not worth my thinking. How now, poet!   POET. How now, philosopher!     APEMANTUS. Thou liest.   POET. Art not one?   APEMANTUS. Yes.   POET. Then I lie not.   APEMANTUS. Art not a poet?   POET. Yes.   APEMANTUS. Then thou liest. Look in thy last work, where thou hast     feign\'d him a worthy fellow.   POET. That\'s not feign\'d- he is so.   APEMANTUS. Yes, he is worthy of thee, and to pay thee for thy     labour. He that loves to be flattered is worthy o\' th\' flatterer.     Heavens, that I were a lord!   TIMON. What wouldst do then, Apemantus?   APEMANTUS. E\'en as Apemantus does now: hate a lord with my heart.   TIMON. What, thyself?   APEMANTUS. Ay.   TIMON. Wherefore?   APEMANTUS. That I had no angry wit to be a lord.- Art not thou a     merchant?   MERCHANT. Ay, Apemantus.     APEMANTUS. Traffic confound thee, if the gods will not!   MERCHANT. If traffic do it, the gods do it.   APEMANTUS. Traffic\'s thy god, and thy god confound thee!                  Trumpet sounds. Enter a MESSENGER    TIMON. What trumpet\'s that?   MESSENGER. \'Tis Alcibiades, and some twenty horse,     All of companionship.   TIMON. Pray entertain them; give them guide to us.                                           Exeunt some attendants     You must needs dine with me. Go not you hence     Till I have thank\'d you. When dinner\'s done     Show me this piece. I am joyful of your sights.                  Enter ALCIBIADES, with the rest      Most welcome, sir!                             [They salute]   APEMANTUS. So, so, there!     Aches contract and starve your supple joints!       That there should be small love amongst these sweet knaves,     And all this courtesy! The strain of man\'s bred out     Into baboon and monkey.   ALCIBIADES. Sir, you have sav\'d my longing, and I feed     Most hungerly on your sight.   TIMON. Right welcome, sir!     Ere we depart we\'ll share a bounteous time     In different pleasures. Pray you, let us in.                                         Exeunt all but APEMANTUS                          Enter two LORDS    FIRST LORD. What time o\' day is\'t, Apemantus?   APEMANTUS. Time to be honest.   FIRST LORD. That time serves still.   APEMANTUS. The more accursed thou that still omit\'st it.   SECOND LORD. Thou art going to Lord Timon\'s feast.   APEMANTUS. Ay; to see meat fill knaves and wine heat fools.   SECOND LORD. Fare thee well, fare thee well.   APEMANTUS. Thou art a fool to bid me farewell twice.     SECOND LORD. Why, Apemantus?   APEMANTUS. Shouldst have kept one to thyself, for I mean to give     thee none.   FIRST LORD. Hang thyself.   APEMANTUS. No, I will do nothing at thy bidding; make thy requests     to thy friend.   SECOND LORD. Away, unpeaceable dog, or I\'ll spurn thee hence.   APEMANTUS. I will fly, like a dog, the heels o\' th\' ass.  Exit   FIRST LORD. He\'s opposite to humanity. Come, shall we in     And taste Lord Timon\'s bounty? He outgoes     The very heart of kindness.   SECOND LORD. He pours it out: Plutus, the god of gold,     Is but his steward; no meed but he repays     Sevenfold above itself; no gift to him     But breeds the giver a return exceeding     All use of quittance.   FIRST LORD. The noblest mind he carries     That ever govern\'d man.   SECOND LORD. Long may he live in fortunes! shall we in?   FIRST LORD. I\'ll keep you company.                      Exeunt     SCENE II. A room of state in TIMON\'S house  Hautboys playing loud music. A great banquet serv\'d in; FLAVIUS and others attending; and then enter LORD TIMON, the states, the ATHENIAN LORDS, VENTIDIUS, which TIMON redeem\'d from prison. Then comes, dropping after all, APEMANTUS, discontentedly, like himself    VENTIDIUS. Most honoured Timon,     It hath pleas\'d the gods to remember my father\'s age,     And call him to long peace.     He is gone happy, and has left me rich.     Then, as in grateful virtue I am bound     To your free heart, I do return those talents,     Doubled with thanks and service, from whose help     I deriv\'d liberty.   TIMON. O, by no means,     Honest Ventidius! You mistake my love;     I gave it freely ever; and there\'s none     Can truly say he gives, if he receives.     If our betters play at that game, we must not dare       To imitate them: faults that are rich are fair.   VENTIDIUS. A noble spirit!   TIMON. Nay, my lords, ceremony was but devis\'d at first     To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes,     Recanting goodness, sorry ere \'tis shown;     But where there is true friendship there needs none.     Pray, sit; more welcome are ye to my fortunes     Than my fortunes to me.                           [They sit]   FIRST LORD. My lord, we always have confess\'d it.   APEMANTUS. Ho, ho, confess\'d it! Hang\'d it, have you not?   TIMON. O, Apemantus, you are welcome.   APEMANTUS. No;     You shall not make me welcome.     I come to have thee thrust me out of doors.   TIMON. Fie, th\'art a churl; ye have got a humour there     Does not become a man; \'tis much to blame.     They say, my lords, Ira furor brevis est; but yond man is ever     angry. Go, let him have a table by himself; for he does neither     affect company nor is he fit for\'t indeed.   APEMANTUS. Let me stay at thine apperil, Timon.       I come to observe; I give thee warning on\'t.   TIMON. I take no heed of thee. Th\'art an Athenian, therefore     welcome. I myself would have no power; prithee let my meat make     thee silent.   APEMANTUS. I scorn thy meat; \'t\'would choke me, for I should ne\'er     flatter thee. O you gods, what a number of men eats Timon, and he     sees \'em not! It grieves me to see so many dip their meat in one     man\'s blood; and all the madness is, he cheers them up too.     I wonder men dare trust themselves with men.     Methinks they should invite them without knives:     Good for their meat and safer for their lives.     There\'s much example for\'t; the fellow that sits next him now,     parts bread with him, pledges the breath of him in a divided     draught, is the readiest man to kill him. \'T has been proved. If     I were a huge man I should fear to drink at meals.     Lest they should spy my windpipe\'s dangerous notes:     Great men should drink with harness on their throats.   TIMON. My lord, in heart! and let the health go round.   SECOND LORD. Let it flow this way, my good lord.   APEMANTUS. Flow this way! A brave fellow! He keeps his tides well.       Those healths will make thee and thy state look ill, Timon.     Here\'s that which is too weak to be a sinner, honest water, which     ne\'er left man i\' th\' mire.     This and my food are equals; there\'s no odds.\'     Feasts are too proud to give thanks to the gods.                    APEMANTUS\' Grace             Immortal gods, I crave no pelf;            I pray for no man but myself.            Grant I may never prove so fond            To trust man on his oath or bond,            Or a harlot for her weeping,            Or a dog that seems a-sleeping,            Or a keeper with my freedom,            Or my friends, if I should need \'em.            Amen. So fall to\'t.            Rich men sin, and I eat root.       [Eats and drinks]      Much good dich thy good heart, Apemantus!     TIMON. Captain Alcibiades, your heart\'s in the field now.   ALCIBIADES. My heart is ever at your service, my lord.   TIMON. You had rather be at a breakfast of enemies than dinner of     friends.   ALCIBIADES. So they were bleeding new, my lord, there\'s no meat     like \'em; I could wish my best friend at such a feast.   APEMANTUS. Would all those flatterers were thine enemies then, that     then thou mightst kill \'em, and bid me to \'em.   FIRST LORD. Might we but have that happiness, my lord, that you     would once use our hearts, whereby we might express some part of     our zeals, we should think ourselves for ever perfect.   TIMON. O, no doubt, my good friends, but the gods themselves have     provided that I shall have much help from you. How had you been     my friends else? Why have you that charitable title from     thousands, did not you chiefly belong to my heart? I have told     more of you to myself than you can with modesty speak in your own     behalf; and thus far I confirm you. O you gods, think I, what     need we have any friends if we should ne\'er have need of \'em?     They were the most needless creatures living, should we ne\'er     have use for \'em; and would most resemble sweet instruments hung       up in cases, that keep their sounds to themselves. Why, I have     often wish\'d myself poorer, that I might come nearer to you. We     are born to do benefits; and what better or properer can we call     our own than the riches of our friends? O, what a precious     comfort \'tis to have so many like brothers commanding one     another\'s fortunes! O, joy\'s e\'en made away ere\'t can be born!     Mine eyes cannot hold out water, methinks. To forget their     faults, I drink to you.   APEMANTUS. Thou weep\'st to make them drink, Timon.   SECOND LORD. Joy had the like conception in our eyes,     And at that instant like a babe sprung up.   APEMANTUS. Ho, ho! I laugh to think that babe a bastard.   THIRD LORD. I promise you, my lord, you mov\'d me much.   APEMANTUS. Much!                                [Sound tucket]   TIMON. What means that trump?                          Enter a SERVANT      How now?   SERVANT. Please you, my lord, there are certain ladies most       desirous of admittance.   TIMON. Ladies! What are their wills?   SERVANT. There comes with them a forerunner, my lord, which bears     that office to signify their pleasures.   TIMON. I pray let them be admitted.                            Enter CUPID   CUPID. Hail to thee, worthy Timon, and to all     That of his bounties taste! The five best Senses     Acknowledge thee their patron, and come freely     To gratulate thy plenteous bosom. Th\' Ear,     Taste, Touch, Smell, pleas\'d from thy table rise;     They only now come but to feast thine eyes.   TIMON. They\'re welcome all; let \'em have kind admittance.     Music, make their welcome.                        Exit CUPID   FIRST LORD. You see, my lord, how ample y\'are belov\'d.        Music. Re-enter CUPID, witb a Masque of LADIES as Amazons,           with lutes in their hands, dancing and playing      APEMANTUS. Hoy-day, what a sweep of vanity comes this way!     They dance? They are mad women.     Like madness is the glory of this life,     As this pomp shows to a little oil and root.     We make ourselves fools to disport ourselves,     And spend our flatteries to drink those men     Upon whose age we void it up again     With poisonous spite and envy.     Who lives that\'s not depraved or depraves?     Who dies that bears not one spurn to their graves     Of their friends\' gift?     I should fear those that dance before me now     Would one day stamp upon me. \'T has been done:     Men shut their doors against a setting sun.           The LORDS rise from table, with much adoring of         TIMON; and to show their loves, each single out an           Amazon, and all dance, men witb women, a lofty             strain or two to the hautboys, and cease      TIMON. You have done our pleasures much grace, fair ladies,     Set a fair fashion on our entertainment,     Which was not half so beautiful and kind;     You have added worth unto\'t and lustre,     And entertain\'d me with mine own device;     I am to thank you for\'t.   FIRST LADY. My lord, you take us even at the best.   APEMANTUS. Faith, for the worst is filthy, and would not hold     taking, I doubt me.   TIMON. Ladies, there is an idle banquet attends you;     Please you to dispose yourselves.   ALL LADIES. Most thankfully, my lord.                                          Exeunt CUPID and LADIES   TIMON. Flavius!   FLAVIUS. My lord?   TIMON. The little casket bring me hither.   FLAVIUS. Yes, my lord. [Aside] More jewels yet!     There is no crossing him in\'s humour,     Else I should tell him- well i\' faith, I should-     When all\'s spent, he\'d be cross\'d then, an he could.       \'Tis pity bounty had not eyes behind,     That man might ne\'er be wretched for his mind.          Exit   FIRST LORD. Where be our men?   SERVANT. Here, my lord, in readiness.   SECOND LORD. Our horses!                 Re-enter FLAVIUS, with the casket    TIMON. O my friends,     I have one word to say to you. Look you, my good lord,     I must entreat you honour me so much     As to advance this jewel; accept it and wear it,     Kind my lord.   FIRST LORD. I am so far already in your gifts-   ALL. So are we all.                         Enter a SERVANT    SERVANT. My lord, there are certain nobles of the Senate newly     alighted and come to visit you.     TIMON. They are fairly welcome.                   Exit SERVANT   FLAVIUS. I beseech your honour, vouchsafe me a word; it does     concern you near.   TIMON. Near! Why then, another time I\'ll hear thee. I prithee let\'s     be provided to show them entertainment.   FLAVIUS. [Aside] I scarce know how.                       Enter another SERVANT    SECOND SERVANT. May it please vour honour, Lord Lucius, out of his     free love, hath presented to you four milk-white horses, trapp\'d     in silver.   TIMON. I shall accept them fairly. Let the presents     Be worthily entertain\'d.                        Exit SERVANT                        Enter a third SERVANT      How now! What news?   THIRD SERVANT. Please you, my lord, that honourable gentleman, Lord     Lucullus, entreats your company to-morrow to hunt with him and       has sent your honour two brace of greyhounds.   TIMON. I\'ll hunt with him; and let them be receiv\'d,     Not without fair reward.                        Exit SERVANT   FLAVIUS. [Aside] What will this come to?     He commands us to provide and give great gifts,     And all out of an empty coffer;     Nor will he know his purse, or yield me this,     To show him what a beggar his heart is,     Being of no power to make his wishes good.     His promises fly so beyond his state     That what he speaks is all in debt; he owes     For ev\'ry word. He is so kind that he now     Pays interest for\'t; his land\'s put to their books.     Well, would I were gently put out of office     Before I were forc\'d out!     Happier is he that has no friend to feed     Than such that do e\'en enemies exceed.     I bleed inwardly for my lord.                           Exit   TIMON. You do yourselves much wrong;     You bate too much of your own merits.       Here, my lord, a trifle of our love.   SECOND LORD. With more than common thanks I will receive it.   THIRD LORD. O, he\'s the very soul of bounty!   TIMON. And now I remember, my lord, you gave good words the other     day of a bay courser I rode on. \'Tis yours because you lik\'d it.   THIRD LORD. O, I beseech you pardon me, my lord, in that.   TIMON. You may take my word, my lord: I know no man     Can justly praise but what he does affect.     I weigh my friend\'s affection with mine own.     I\'ll tell you true; I\'ll call to you.   ALL LORDS. O, none so welcome!   TIMON. I take all and your several visitations     So kind to heart \'tis not enough to give;     Methinks I could deal kingdoms to my friends     And ne\'er be weary. Alcibiades,     Thou art a soldier, therefore seldom rich.     It comes in charity to thee; for all thy living     Is \'mongst the dead, and all the lands thou hast     Lie in a pitch\'d field.   ALCIBIADES. Ay, defil\'d land, my lord.     FIRST LORD. We are so virtuously bound-   TIMON. And so am I to you.   SECOND LORD. So infinitely endear\'d-   TIMON. All to you. Lights, more lights!   FIRST LORD. The best of happiness, honour, and fortunes, keep with     you, Lord Timon!   TIMON. Ready for his friends.                               Exeunt all but APEMANTUS and TIMON   APEMANTUS. What a coil\'s here!     Serving of becks and jutting-out of bums!     I doubt whether their legs be worth the sums     That are given for \'em. Friendship\'s full of dregs:     Methinks false hearts should never have sound legs.     Thus honest fools lay out their wealth on curtsies.   TIMON. Now, Apemantus, if thou wert not sullen     I would be good to thee.   APEMANTUS. No, I\'ll nothing; for if I should be brib\'d too, there     would be none left to rail upon thee, and then thou wouldst sin     the faster. Thou giv\'st so long, Timon, I fear me thou wilt give     away thyself in paper shortly. What needs these feasts, pomps,       and vain-glories?   TIMON. Nay, an you begin to rail on society once, I am sworn not to     give regard to you. Farewell; and come with better music.  Exit   APEMANTUS. So. Thou wilt not hear me now: thou shalt not then. I\'ll     lock thy heaven from thee.     O that men\'s ears should be     To counsel deaf, but not to flattery!                   Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. A SENATOR\'S house  Enter A SENATOR, with papers in his hand    SENATOR. And late, five thousand. To Varro and to Isidore     He owes nine thousand; besides my former sum,     Which makes it five and twenty. Still in motion     Of raging waste? It cannot hold; it will not.     If I want gold, steal but a beggar\'s dog     And give it Timon, why, the dog coins gold.     If I would sell my horse and buy twenty moe     Better than he, why, give my horse to Timon,     Ask nothing, give it him, it foals me straight,     And able horses. No porter at his gate,     But rather one that smiles and still invites     All that pass by. It cannot hold; no reason     Can sound his state in safety. Caphis, ho!     Caphis, I say!                           Enter CAPHIS      CAPHIS. Here, sir; what is your pleasure?   SENATOR. Get on your cloak and haste you to Lord Timon;     Importune him for my moneys; be not ceas\'d     With slight denial, nor then silenc\'d when     \'Commend me to your master\' and the cap     Plays in the right hand, thus; but tell him     My uses cry to me, I must serve my turn     Out of mine own; his days and times are past,     And my reliances on his fracted dates     Have smit my credit. I love and honour him,     But must not break my back to heal his finger.     Immediate are my needs, and my relief     Must not be toss\'d and turn\'d to me in words,     But find supply immediate. Get you gone;     Put on a most importunate aspect,     A visage of demand; for I do fear,     When every feather sticks in his own wing,     Lord Timon will be left a naked gull,     Which flashes now a phoenix. Get you gone.   CAPHIS. I go, sir.     SENATOR. Take the bonds along with you,     And have the dates in compt.   CAPHIS. I will, sir.   SENATOR. Go.                                            Exeunt     SCENE II. Before TIMON\'S house  Enter FLAVIUS, TIMON\'S Steward, with many bills in his hand    FLAVIUS. No care, no stop! So senseless of expense     That he will neither know how to maintain it     Nor cease his flow of riot; takes no account     How things go from him, nor resumes no care     Of what is to continue. Never mind     Was to be so unwise to be so kind.     What shall be done? He will not hear till feel.     I must be round with him. Now he comes from hunting.     Fie, fie, fie, fie!         Enter CAPHIS, and the SERVANTS Of ISIDORE and VARRO    CAPHIS. Good even, Varro. What, you come for money?   VARRO\'S SERVANT. Is\'t not your business too?   CAPHIS. It is. And yours too, Isidore?   ISIDORE\'S SERVANT. It is so.   CAPHIS. Would we were all discharg\'d!     VARRO\'S SERVANT. I fear it.   CAPHIS. Here comes the lord.              Enter TIMON and his train, with ALCIBIADES    TIMON. So soon as dinner\'s done we\'ll forth again,     My Alcibiades.- With me? What is your will?   CAPHIS. My lord, here is a note of certain dues.   TIMON. Dues! Whence are you?   CAPHIS. Of Athens here, my lord.   TIMON. Go to my steward.   CAPHIS. Please it your lordship, he hath put me off     To the succession of new days this month.     My master is awak\'d by great occasion     To call upon his own, and humbly prays you     That with your other noble parts you\'ll suit     In giving him his right.   TIMON. Mine honest friend,     I prithee but repair to me next morning.   CAPHIS. Nay, good my lord-     TIMON. Contain thyself, good friend.   VARRO\'S SERVANT. One Varro\'s servant, my good lord-   ISIDORE\'S SERVANT. From Isidore: he humbly prays your speedy     payment-   CAPHIS. If you did know, my lord, my master\'s wants-   VARRO\'S SERVANT. \'Twas due on forfeiture, my lord, six weeks and     past.   ISIDORE\'S SERVANT. Your steward puts me off, my lord; and     I am sent expressly to your lordship.   TIMON. Give me breath.     I do beseech you, good my lords, keep on;     I\'ll wait upon you instantly.                                      Exeunt ALCIBIADES and LORDS     [To FLAVIUS] Come hither. Pray you,     How goes the world that I am thus encount\'red     With clamorous demands of date-broke bonds     And the detention of long-since-due debts,     Against my honour?   FLAVIUS. Please you, gentlemen,     The time is unagreeable to this business.       Your importunacy cease till after dinner,     That I may make his lordship understand     Wherefore you are not paid.   TIMON. Do so, my friends.     See them well entertain\'d.                              Exit   FLAVIUS. Pray draw near.                                  Exit                        Enter APEMANTUS and FOOL    CAPHIS. Stay, stay, here comes the fool with Apemantus.     Let\'s ha\' some sport with \'em.   VARRO\'S SERVANT. Hang him, he\'ll abuse us!   ISIDORE\'S SERVANT. A plague upon him, dog!   VARRO\'S SERVANT. How dost, fool?   APEMANTUS. Dost dialogue with thy shadow?   VARRO\'S SERVANT. I speak not to thee.   APEMANTUS. No, \'tis to thyself. [To the FOOL] Come away.   ISIDORE\'S SERVANT. [To VARRO\'S SERVANT] There\'s the fool hangs on     your back already.   APEMANTUS. No, thou stand\'st single; th\'art not on him yet.     CAPHIS. Where\'s the fool now?   APEMANTUS. He last ask\'d the question. Poor rogues and usurers\'     men! Bawds between gold and want!   ALL SERVANTS. What are we, Apemantus?   APEMANTUS. Asses.   ALL SERVANTS. Why?   APEMANTUS. That you ask me what you are, and do not know     yourselves. Speak to \'em, fool.   FOOL. How do you, gentlemen?   ALL SERVANTS. Gramercies, good fool. How does your mistress?   FOOL. She\'s e\'en setting on water to scald such chickens as you     are. Would we could see you at Corinth!   APEMANTUS. Good! gramercy.                             Enter PAGE    FOOL. Look you, here comes my mistress\' page.   PAGE. [To the FOOL] Why, how now, Captain? What do you in this wise     company? How dost thou, Apemantus?   APEMANTUS. Would I had a rod in my mouth, that I might answer thee       profitably!   PAGE. Prithee, Apemantus, read me the superscription of these     letters; I know not which is which.   APEMANTUS. Canst not read?   PAGE. No.   APEMANTUS. There will little learning die, then, that day thou art     hang\'d. This is to Lord Timon; this to Alcibiades. Go; thou wast     born a bastard, and thou\'t die a bawd.   PAGE. Thou wast whelp\'d a dog, and thou shalt famish dog\'s death.     Answer not: I am gone.                             Exit PAGE   APEMANTUS. E\'en so thou outrun\'st grace.     Fool, I will go with you to Lord Timon\'s.   FOOL. Will you leave me there?   APEMANTUS. If Timon stay at home. You three serve three usurers?   ALL SERVANTS. Ay; would they serv\'d us!   APEMANTUS. So would I- as good a trick as ever hangman serv\'d     thief.   FOOL. Are you three usurers\' men?   ALL SERVANTS. Ay, fool.   FOOL. I think no usurer but has a fool to his servant. My mistress       is one, and I am her fool. When men come to borrow of your     masters, they approach sadly and go away merry; but they enter my     mistress\' house merrily and go away sadly. The reason of this?   VARRO\'S SERVANT. I could render one.   APEMANTUS. Do it then, that we may account thee a whoremaster and a     knave; which notwithstanding, thou shalt be no less esteemed.   VARRO\'S SERVANT. What is a whoremaster, fool?   FOOL. A fool in good clothes, and something like thee. \'Tis a     spirit. Sometime \'t appears like a lord; sometime like a lawyer;     sometime like a philosopher, with two stones moe than\'s     artificial one. He is very often like a knight; and, generally,     in all shapes that man goes up and down in from fourscore to     thirteen, this spirit walks in.   VARRO\'S SERVANT. Thou art not altogether a fool.   FOOL. Nor thou altogether a wise man.     As much foolery as I have, so much wit thou lack\'st.   APEMANTUS. That answer might have become Apemantus.   VARRO\'S SERVANT. Aside, aside; here comes Lord Timon.                      Re-enter TIMON and FLAVIUS      APEMANTUS. Come with me, fool, come.   FOOL. I do not always follow lover, elder brother, and woman;     sometime the philosopher.                                        Exeunt APEMANTUS and FOOL   FLAVIUS. Pray you walk near; I\'ll speak with you anon.                                                  Exeunt SERVANTS   TIMON. You make me marvel wherefore ere this time     Had you not fully laid my state before me,     That I might so have rated my expense     As I had leave of means.   FLAVIUS. You would not hear me     At many leisures I propos\'d.   TIMON. Go to;     Perchance some single vantages you took     When my indisposition put you back,     And that unaptness made your minister     Thus to excuse yourself.   FLAVIUS. O my good lord,     At many times I brought in my accounts,       Laid them before you; you would throw them off     And say you found them in mine honesty.     When, for some trifling present, you have bid me     Return so much, I have shook my head and wept;     Yea, \'gainst th\' authority of manners, pray\'d you     To hold your hand more close. I did endure     Not seldom, nor no slight checks, when I have     Prompted you in the ebb of your estate     And your great flow of debts. My lov\'d lord,     Though you hear now- too late!- yet now\'s a time:     The greatest of your having lacks a half     To pay your present debts.   TIMON. Let all my land be sold.   FLAVIUS. \'Tis all engag\'d, some forfeited and gone;     And what remains will hardly stop the mouth     Of present dues. The future comes apace;     What shall defend the interim? And at length     How goes our reck\'ning?   TIMON. To Lacedaemon did my land extend.   FLAVIUS. O my good lord, the world is but a word;       Were it all yours to give it in a breath,     How quickly were it gone!   TIMON. You tell me true.   FLAVIUS. If you suspect my husbandry or falsehood,     Call me before th\' exactest auditors     And set me on the proof. So the gods bless me,     When all our offices have been oppress\'d     With riotous feeders, when our vaults have wept     With drunken spilth of wine, when every room     Hath blaz\'d with lights and bray\'d with minstrelsy,     I have retir\'d me to a wasteful cock     And set mine eyes at flow.   TIMON. Prithee no more.   FLAVIUS. \'Heavens,\' have I said \'the bounty of this lord!     How many prodigal bits have slaves and peasants     This night englutted! Who is not Lord Timon\'s?     What heart, head, sword, force, means, but is Lord Timon\'s?     Great Timon, noble, worthy, royal Timon!\'     Ah! when the means are gone that buy this praise,     The breath is gone whereof this praise is made.       Feast-won, fast-lost; one cloud of winter show\'rs,     These flies are couch\'d.   TIMON. Come, sermon me no further.     No villainous bounty yet hath pass\'d my heart;     Unwisely, not ignobly, have I given.     Why dost thou weep? Canst thou the conscience lack     To think I shall lack friends? Secure thy heart:     If I would broach the vessels of my love,     And try the argument of hearts by borrowing,     Men and men\'s fortunes could I frankly use     As I can bid thee speak.   FLAVIUS. Assurance bless your thoughts!   TIMON. And, in some sort, these wants of mine are crown\'d     That I account them blessings; for by these     Shall I try friends. You shall perceive how you     Mistake my fortunes; I am wealthy in my friends.     Within there! Flaminius! Servilius!             Enter FLAMINIUS, SERVILIUS, and another SERVANT      SERVANTS. My lord! my lord!   TIMON. I will dispatch you severally- you to Lord Lucius; to Lord     Lucullus you; I hunted with his honour to-day. You to Sempronius.     Commend me to their loves; and I am proud, say, that my occasions     have found time to use \'em toward a supply of money. Let the     request be fifty talents.   FLAMINIUS. As you have said, my lord.          Exeunt SERVANTS   FLAVIUS. [Aside] Lord Lucius and Lucullus? Humh!   TIMON. Go you, sir, to the senators,     Of whom, even to the state\'s best health, I have     Deserv\'d this hearing. Bid \'em send o\' th\' instant     A thousand talents to me.   FLAVIUS. I have been bold,     For that I knew it the most general way,     To them to use your signet and your name;     But they do shake their heads, and I am here     No richer in return.   TIMON. Is\'t true? Can\'t be?   FLAVIUS. They answer, in a joint and corporate voice,     That now they are at fall, want treasure, cannot       Do what they would, are sorry- you are honourable-     But yet they could have wish\'d- they know not-     Something hath been amiss- a noble nature     May catch a wrench- would all were well!- \'tis pity-     And so, intending other serious matters,     After distasteful looks, and these hard fractions,     With certain half-caps and cold-moving nods,     They froze me into silence.   TIMON. You gods, reward them!     Prithee, man, look cheerly. These old fellows     Have their ingratitude in them hereditary.     Their blood is cak\'d, \'tis cold, it seldom flows;     \'Tis lack of kindly warmth they are not kind;     And nature, as it grows again toward earth,     Is fashion\'d for the journey dull and heavy.     Go to Ventidius. Prithee be not sad,     Thou art true and honest; ingeniously I speak,     No blame belongs to thee. Ventidius lately     Buried his father, by whose death he\'s stepp\'d     Into a great estate. When he was poor,       Imprison\'d, and in scarcity of friends,     I clear\'d him with five talents. Greet him from me,     Bid him suppose some good necessity     Touches his friend, which craves to be rememb\'red     With those five talents. That had, give\'t these fellows     To whom \'tis instant due. Nev\'r speak or think     That Timon\'s fortunes \'mong his friends can sink.   FLAVIUS. I would I could not think it.     That thought is bounty\'s foe;     Being free itself, it thinks all others so.           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. LUCULLUS\' house  FLAMINIUS waiting to speak with LUCULLUS. Enter SERVANT to him    SERVANT. I have told my lord of you; he is coming down to you.   FLAMINIUS. I thank you, sir.                             Enter LUCULLUS    SERVANT. Here\'s my lord.   LUCULLUS. [Aside] One of Lord Timon\'s men? A gift, I warrant. Why,     this hits right; I dreamt of a silver basin and ewer to-night-     Flaminius, honest Flaminius, you are very respectively welcome,     sir. Fill me some wine. [Exit SERVANT] And how does that     honourable, complete, freehearted gentleman of Athens, thy very     bountiful good lord and master?   FLAMINIUS. His health is well, sir.   LUCULLUS. I am right glad that his health is well, sir. And what     hast thou there under thy cloak, pretty Flaminius?   FLAMINIUS. Faith, nothing but an empty box, sir, which in my lord\'s       behalf I come to entreat your honour to supply;  who, having     great and instant occasion to use fifty talents, hath sent to     your lordship to furnish him, nothing doubting your present     assistance therein.   LUCULLIUS. La, la, la, la! \'Nothing doubting\' says he? Alas, good     lord! a noble gentleman \'tis, if he would not keep so good a     house. Many a time and often I ha\' din\'d with him and told him     on\'t; and come again to supper to him of purpose to have him     spend less; and yet he would embrace no counsel, take no warning     by my coming. Every man has his fault, and honesty is his. I ha\'     told him on\'t, but I could ne\'er get him from\'t.                      Re-enter SERVANT, with wine    SERVANT. Please your lordship, here is the wine.   LUCULLUS. Flaminius, I have noted thee always wise. Here\'s to thee.   FLAMINIUS. Your lordship speaks your pleasure.   LUCULLUS. I have observed thee always for a towardly prompt spirit,     give thee thy due, and one that knows what belongs to reason, and     canst use the time well, if the time use thee well. Good parts in       thee. [To SERVANT] Get you gone, sirrah. [Exit SERVANT] Draw     nearer, honest Flaminius. Thy lord\'s a bountiful gentleman; but     thou art wise, and thou know\'st well enough, although thou com\'st     to me, that this is no time to lend money, especially upon bare     friendship without security. Here\'s three solidares for thee.     Good boy, wink at me, and say thou saw\'st me not. Fare thee well.   FLAMINIUS. Is\'t possible the world should so much differ,     And we alive that liv\'d? Fly, damned baseness,     To him that worships thee.         [Throwing the money back]   LUCULLUS. Ha! Now I see thou art a fool, and fit for thy master.  Exit   FLAMINIUS. May these add to the number that may scald thee!     Let molten coin be thy damnation,     Thou disease of a friend and not himself!     Has friendship such a faint and milky heart     It turns in less than two nights? O you gods,     I feel my master\'s passion! This slave     Unto his honour has my lord\'s meat in him;     Why should it thrive and turn to nutriment     When he is turn\'d to poison?       O, may diseases only work upon\'t!     And when he\'s sick to death, let not that part of nature     Which my lord paid for be of any power     To expel sickness, but prolong his hour!                Exit     SCENE II. A public place  Enter Lucius, with three STRANGERS    LUCIUS. Who, the Lord Timon? He is my very good friend, and an     honourable gentleman.   FIRST STRANGER. We know him for no less, though we are but     strangers to him. But I can tell you one thing, my lord, and     which I hear from common rumours: now Lord Timon\'s happy hours     are done and past, and his estate shrinks from him.   LUCIUS. Fie, no: do not believe it; he cannot want for money.   SECOND STRANGER. But believe you this, my lord, that not long ago      one of his men was with the Lord Lucullus to borrow so many     talents; nay, urg\'d extremely for\'t, and showed what necessity     belong\'d to\'t, and yet was denied.   LUCIUS. How?   SECOND STRANGER. I tell you, denied, my lord.   LUCIUS. What a strange case was that! Now, before the gods, I am     asham\'d on\'t. Denied that honourable man! There was very little     honour show\'d in\'t. For my own part, I must needs confess I have     received some small kindnesses from him, as money, plate, jewels,       and such-like trifles, nothing comparing to his; yet, had he     mistook him and sent to me, I should ne\'er have denied his     occasion so many talents.                               Enter SERVILIUS    SERVILIUS. See, by good hap, yonder\'s my lord; I have sweat to see     his honour.- My honour\'d lord!   LUCIUS. Servilius? You are kindly met, sir. Fare thee well; commend     me to thy honourable virtuous lord, my very exquisite friend.   SERVILIUS. May it please your honour, my lord hath sent-   LUCIUS. Ha! What has he sent? I am so much endeared to that lord:     he\'s ever sending. How shall I thank him, think\'st thou? And what     has he sent now?   SERVILIUS. Has only sent his present occasion now, my lord,     requesting your lordship to supply his instant use with so many     talents.   LUCIUS. I know his lordship is but merry with me;     He cannot want fifty-five hundred talents.   SERVILIUS. But in the mean time he wants less, my lord.       If his occasion were not virtuous     I should not urge it half so faithfully.   LUCIUS. Dost thou speak seriously, Servilius?   SERVILIUS. Upon my soul, \'tis true, sir.   LUCIUS. What a wicked beast was I to disfurnish myself against such     a good time, when I might ha\' shown myself honourable! How     unluckily it happ\'ned that I should purchase the day before for a     little part and undo a great deal of honour! Servilius, now     before the gods, I am not able to do- the more beast, I say! I     was sending to use Lord Timon myself, these gentlemen can     witness; but I would not for the wealth of Athens I had done\'t     now. Commend me bountifully to his good lordship, and I hope his     honour will conceive the fairest of me, because I have no power     to be kind. And tell him this from me: I count it one of my     greatest afflictions, say, that I cannot pleasure such an     honourable gentleman. Good Servilius, will you befriend me so far     as to use mine own words to him?   SERVILIUS. Yes, sir, I shall.   LUCIUS. I\'ll look you out a good turn, Servilius.                                                   Exit SERVILIUS       True, as you said, Timon is shrunk indeed;     And he that\'s once denied will hardly speed.            Exit   FIRST STRANGER. Do you observe this, Hostilius?   SECOND STRANGER. Ay, too well.   FIRST STRANGER. Why, this is the world\'s soul; and just of the same       piece     Is every flatterer\'s spirit. Who can call him his friend     That dips in the same dish? For, in my knowing,     Timon has been this lord\'s father,     And kept his credit with his purse;     Supported his estate; nay, Timon\'s money     Has paid his men their wages. He ne\'er drinks     But Timon\'s silver treads upon his lip;     And yet- O, see the monstrousness of man     When he looks out in an ungrateful shape!-     He does deny him, in respect of his,     What charitable men afford to beggars.   THIRD STRANGER. Religion groans at it.   FIRST STRANGER. For mine own part,     I never tasted Timon in my life,       Nor came any of his bounties over me     To mark me for his friend; yet I protest,     For his right noble mind, illustrious virtue,     And honourable carriage,     Had his necessity made use of me,     I would have put my wealth into donation,     And the best half should have return\'d to him,     So much I love his heart. But I perceive     Men must learn now with pity to dispense;     For policy sits above conscience.                     Exeunt     SCENE III. SEMPRONIUS\' house  Enter SEMPRONIUS and a SERVANT of TIMON\'S    SEMPRONIUS. Must he needs trouble me in\'t? Hum! \'Bove all others?     He might have tried Lord Lucius or Lucullus;     And now Ventidius is wealthy too,     Whom he redeem\'d from prison. All these     Owe their estates unto him.   SERVANT. My lord,     They have all been touch\'d and found base metal, for     They have all denied him.   SEMPRONIUS. How! Have they denied him?     Has Ventidius and Lucullus denied him?     And does he send to me? Three? Humh!     It shows but little love or judgment in him.     Must I be his last refuge? His friends, like physicians,     Thrice give him over. Must I take th\' cure upon me?     Has much disgrac\'d me in\'t; I\'m angry at him,     That might have known my place. I see no sense for\'t,     But his occasions might have woo\'d me first;       For, in my conscience, I was the first man     That e\'er received gift from him.     And does he think so backwardly of me now     That I\'ll requite it last? No;     So it may prove an argument of laughter     To th\' rest, and I \'mongst lords be thought a fool.     I\'d rather than the worth of thrice the sum     Had sent to me first, but for my mind\'s sake;     I\'d such a courage to do him good. But now return,     And with their faint reply this answer join:     Who bates mine honour shall not know my coin.           Exit   SERVANT. Excellent! Your lordship\'s a goodly villain. The devil     knew not what he did when he made man politic- he cross\'d himself     by\'t; and I cannot think but, in the end, the villainies of man     will set him clear. How fairly this lord strives to appear foul!     Takes virtuous copies to be wicked, like those that under hot     ardent zeal would set whole realms on fire.     Of such a nature is his politic love.     This was my lord\'s best hope; now all are fled,     Save only the gods. Now his friends are dead,       Doors that were ne\'er acquainted with their wards     Many a bounteous year must be employ\'d     Now to guard sure their master.     And this is all a liberal course allows:     Who cannot keep his wealth must keep his house.         Exit     SCENE IV. A hall in TIMON\'S house  Enter two Of VARRO\'S MEN, meeting LUCIUS\' SERVANT, and others, all being servants of TIMON\'s creditors, to wait for his coming out. Then enter TITUS and HORTENSIUS    FIRST VARRO\'S SERVANT. Well met; good morrow, Titus and Hortensius.   TITUS. The like to you, kind Varro.   HORTENSIUS. Lucius! What, do we meet together?   LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Ay, and I think one business does command us all;     for mine is money.   TITUS. So is theirs and ours.                            Enter PHILOTUS    LUCIUS\' SERVANT. And Sir Philotus too!   PHILOTUS. Good day at once.   LUCIUS\' SERVANT. welcome, good brother, what do you think the hour?   PHILOTUS. Labouring for nine.   LUCIUS\' SERVANT. So much?   PHILOTUS. Is not my lord seen yet?     LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Not yet.   PHILOTUS. I wonder on\'t; he was wont to shine at seven.   LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Ay, but the days are wax\'d shorter with him;     You must consider that a prodigal course     Is like the sun\'s, but not like his recoverable.     I fear     \'Tis deepest winter in Lord Timon\'s purse;     That is, one may reach deep enough and yet     Find little.   PHILOTUS. I am of your fear for that.   TITUS. I\'ll show you how t\' observe a strange event.     Your lord sends now for money.   HORTENSIUS. Most true, he does.   TITUS. And he wears jewels now of Timon\'s gift,     For which I wait for money.   HORTENSIUS. It is against my heart.   LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Mark how strange it shows     Timon in this should pay more than he owes;     And e\'en as if your lord should wear rich jewels     And send for money for \'em.     HORTENSIUS. I\'m weary of this charge, the gods can witness;     I know my lord hath spent of Timon\'s wealth,     And now ingratitude makes it worse than stealth.   FIRST VARRO\'S SERVANT. Yes, mine\'s three thousand crowns; what\'s     yours?   LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Five thousand mine.   FIRST VARRO\'S SERVANT. \'Tis much deep; and it should seem by th\'       sum     Your master\'s confidence was above mine,     Else surely his had equall\'d.                             Enter FLAMINIUS    TITUS. One of Lord Timon\'s men.   LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Flaminius! Sir, a word. Pray, is my lord ready to     come forth?   FLAMINIUS. No, indeed, he is not.   TITUS. We attend his lordship; pray signify so much.   FLAMINIUS. I need not tell him that; he knows you are to diligent.  Exit                     Enter FLAVIUS, in a cloak, muffled    LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Ha! Is not that his steward muffled so?     He goes away in a cloud. Call him, call him.   TITUS. Do you hear, sir?   SECOND VARRO\'S SERVANT. By your leave, sir.   FLAVIUS. What do ye ask of me, my friend?   TITUS. We wait for certain money here, sir.   FLAVIUS. Ay,     If money were as certain as your waiting,     \'Twere sure enough.     Why then preferr\'d you not your sums and bills     When your false masters eat of my lord\'s meat?     Then they could smile, and fawn upon his debts,     And take down th\' int\'rest into their glutt\'nous maws.     You do yourselves but wrong to stir me up;     Let me pass quietly.     Believe\'t, my lord and I have made an end:     I have no more to reckon, he to spend.     LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Ay, but this answer will not serve.   FLAVIUS. If \'twill not serve, \'tis not so base as you,     For you serve knaves.                                   Exit   FIRST VARRO\'S SERVANT. How! What does his cashier\'d worship mutter?   SECOND VARRO\'S SERVANT. No matter what; he\'s poor, and that\'s     revenge enough. Who can speak broader than he that has no house     to put his head in? Such may rail against great buildings.                            Enter SERVILIUS    TITUS. O, here\'s Servilius; now we shall know some answer.   SERVILIUS. If I might beseech you, gentlemen, to repair some other     hour, I should derive much from\'t; for take\'t of my soul, my lord     leans wondrously to discontent. His comfortable temper has     forsook him; he\'s much out of health and keeps his chamber.   LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Many do keep their chambers are not sick;     And if it be so far beyond his health,     Methinks he should the sooner pay his debts,     And make a clear way to the gods.   SERVILIUS. Good gods!     TITUS. We cannot take this for answer, sir.   FLAMINIUS. [Within] Servilius, help! My lord! my lord!             Enter TIMON, in a rage, FLAMINIUS following    TIMON. What, are my doors oppos\'d against my passage?     Have I been ever free, and must my house     Be my retentive enemy, my gaol?     The place which I have feasted, does it now,     Like all mankind, show me an iron heart?   LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Put in now, Titus.   TITUS. My lord, here is my bill.   LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Here\'s mine.   HORTENSIUS. And mine, my lord.   BOTH VARRO\'S SERVANTS. And ours, my lord.   PHILOTUS. All our bills.   TIMON. Knock me down with \'em; cleave me to the girdle.   LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Alas, my lord-   TIMON. Cut my heart in sums.   TITUS. Mine, fifty talents.     TIMON. Tell out my blood.   LUCIUS\' SERVANT. Five thousand crowns, my lord.   TIMON. Five thousand drops pays that. What yours? and yours?   FIRST VARRO\'S SERVANT. My lord-   SECOND VARRO\'S SERVANT. My lord-   TIMON. Tear me, take me, and the gods fall upon you!      Exit   HORTENSIUS. Faith, I perceive our masters may throw their caps at     their money. These debts may well be call\'d desperate ones, for a     madman owes \'em.                                      Exeunt                      Re-enter TIMON and FLAVIUS    TIMON. They have e\'en put my breath from me, the slaves.     Creditors? Devils!   FLAVIUS. My dear lord-   TIMON. What if it should be so?   FLAMINIUS. My lord-   TIMON. I\'ll have it so. My steward!   FLAVIUS. Here, my lord.   TIMON. So fitly? Go, bid all my friends again:       Lucius, Lucullus, and Sempronius- all.     I\'ll once more feast the rascals.   FLAVIUS. O my lord,     You only speak from your distracted soul;     There is not so much left to furnish out     A moderate table.   TIMON. Be it not in thy care.     Go, I charge thee, invite them all; let in the tide     Of knaves once more; my cook and I\'ll provide.        Exeunt     SCENE V. The Senate House  Enter three SENATORS at one door, ALCIBIADES meeting them, with attendants    FIRST SENATOR. My lord, you have my voice to\'t: the fault\'s bloody.     \'Tis necessary he should die:     Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.   SECOND SENATOR. Most true; the law shall bruise him.   ALCIBIADES. Honour, health, and compassion, to the Senate!   FIRST SENATOR. Now, Captain?   ALCIBIADES. I am an humble suitor to your virtues;     For pity is the virtue of the law,     And none but tyrants use it cruelly.     It pleases time and fortune to lie heavy     Upon a friend of mine, who in hot blood     Hath stepp\'d into the law, which is past depth     To those that without heed do plunge into\'t.     He is a man, setting his fate aside,     Of comely virtues;     Nor did he soil the fact with cowardice-       An honour in him which buys out his fault-     But with a noble fury and fair spirit,     Seeing his reputation touch\'d to death,     He did oppose his foe;     And with such sober and unnoted passion     He did behove his anger ere \'twas spent,     As if he had but prov\'d an argument.   FIRST SENATOR. You undergo too strict a paradox,     Striving to make an ugly deed look fair;     Your words have took such pains as if they labour\'d     To bring manslaughter into form and set     Quarrelling upon the head of valour; which, indeed,     Is valour misbegot, and came into the world     When sects and factions were newly born.     He\'s truly valiant that can wisely suffer     The worst that man can breathe,     And make his wrongs his outsides,     To wear them like his raiment, carelessly,     And ne\'er prefer his injuries to his heart,     To bring it into danger.       If wrongs be evils, and enforce us kill,     What folly \'tis to hazard life for ill!   ALCIBIADES. My lord-   FIRST SENATOR. You cannot make gross sins look clear:     To revenge is no valour, but to bear.   ALCIBIADES. My lords, then, under favour, pardon me     If I speak like a captain:     Why do fond men expose themselves to battle,     And not endure all threats? Sleep upon\'t,     And let the foes quietly cut their throats,     Without repugnancy? If there be     Such valour in the bearing, what make we     Abroad? Why, then, women are more valiant,     That stay at home, if bearing carry it;     And the ass more captain than the lion; the fellow     Loaden with irons wiser than the judge,     If wisdom be in suffering. O my lords,     As you are great, be pitifully good.     Who cannot condemn rashness in cold blood?     To kill, I grant, is sin\'s extremest gust;       But, in defence, by mercy, \'tis most just.     To be in anger is impiety;     But who is man that is not angry?     Weigh but the crime with this.   SECOND SENATOR. You breathe in vain.   ALCIBIADES. In vain! His service done     At Lacedaemon and Byzantium     Were a sufficient briber for his life.   FIRST SENATOR. What\'s that?   ALCIBIADES. Why, I say, my lords, has done fair service,     And slain in fight many of your enemies;     How full of valour did he bear himself     In the last conflict, and made plenteous wounds!   SECOND SENATOR. He has made too much plenty with \'em.     He\'s a sworn rioter; he has a sin that often     Drowns him and takes his valour prisoner.     If there were no foes, that were enough     To overcome him. In that beastly fury     He has been known to commit outrages     And cherish factions. \'Tis inferr\'d to us       His days are foul and his drink dangerous.   FIRST SENATOR. He dies.   ALCIBIADES. Hard fate! He might have died in war.     My lords, if not for any parts in him-     Though his right arm might purchase his own time,     And be in debt to none- yet, more to move you,     Take my deserts to his, and join \'em both;     And, for I know your reverend ages love     Security, I\'ll pawn my victories, all     My honours to you, upon his good returns.     If by this crime he owes the law his life,     Why, let the war receive\'t in valiant gore;     For law is strict, and war is nothing more.   FIRST SENATOR. We are for law: he dies. Urge it no more     On height of our displeasure. Friend or brother,     He forfeits his own blood that spills another.   ALCIBIADES. Must it be so? It must not be. My lords,     I do beseech you, know me.   SECOND SENATOR. How!   ALCIBIADES. Call me to your remembrances.     THIRD SENATOR. What!   ALCIBIADES. I cannot think but your age has forgot me;     It could not else be I should prove so base     To sue, and be denied such common grace.     My wounds ache at you.   FIRST SENATOR. Do you dare our anger?     \'Tis in few words, but spacious in effect:     We banish thee for ever.   ALCIBIADES. Banish me!     Banish your dotage! Banish usury     That makes the Senate ugly.   FIRST SENATOR. If after two days\' shine Athens contain thee,     Attend our weightier judgment. And, not to swell our spirit,     He shall be executed presently.              Exeunt SENATORS   ALCIBIADES. Now the gods keep you old enough that you may live     Only in bone, that none may look on you!     I\'m worse than mad; I have kept back their foes,     While they have told their money and let out     Their coin upon large interest, I myself     Rich only in large hurts. All those for this?       Is this the balsam that the usuring Senate     Pours into captains\' wounds? Banishment!     It comes not ill; I hate not to be banish\'d;     It is a cause worthy my spleen and fury,     That I may strike at Athens. I\'ll cheer up     My discontented troops, and lay for hearts.     \'Tis honour with most lands to be at odds;     Soldiers should brook as little wrongs as gods.         Exit     SCENE VI. A banqueting hall in TIMON\'S house  Music. Tables set out; servants attending. Enter divers LORDS, friends of TIMON, at several doors    FIRST LORD. The good time of day to you, sir.   SECOND LORD. I also wish it to you. I think this honourable lord     did but try us this other day.   FIRST LORD. Upon that were my thoughts tiring when we encount\'red.     I hope it is not so low with him as he made it seem in the trial     of his several friends.   SECOND LORD. It should not be, by the persuasion of his new     feasting.   FIRST LORD. I should think so. He hath sent me an earnest inviting,     which many my near occasions did urge me to put off; but he hath     conjur\'d me beyond them, and I must needs appear.   SECOND LORD. In like manner was I in debt to my importunate     business, but he would not hear my excuse. I am sorry, when he     sent to borrow of me, that my provision was out.   FIRST LORD. I am sick of that grief too, as I understand how all     things go.     SECOND LORD. Every man here\'s so. What would he have borrowed of     you?   FIRST LORD. A thousand pieces.   SECOND LORD. A thousand pieces!   FIRST LORD. What of you?   SECOND LORD. He sent to me, sir- here he comes.                     Enter TIMON and attendants    TIMON. With all my heart, gentlemen both! And how fare you?   FIRST LORD. Ever at the best, hearing well of your lordship.   SECOND LORD. The swallow follows not summer more willing than we     your lordship.   TIMON. [Aside] Nor more willingly leaves winter; such summer-birds     are men- Gentlemen, our dinner will not recompense this long     stay; feast your ears with the music awhile, if they will fare so     harshly o\' th\' trumpet\'s sound; we shall to\'t presently.   FIRST LORD. I hope it remains not unkindly with your lordship that     I return\'d you an empty messenger.   TIMON. O sir, let it not trouble you.     SECOND LORD. My noble lord-   TIMON. Ah, my good friend, what cheer?   SECOND LORD. My most honourable lord, I am e\'en sick of shame that,     when your lordship this other day sent to me, I was so     unfortunate a beggar.   TIMON. Think not on\'t, sir.   SECOND LORD. If you had sent but two hours before-   TIMON. Let it not cumber your better remembrance. [The banquet     brought in] Come, bring in all together.   SECOND LORD. All cover\'d dishes!   FIRST LORD. Royal cheer, I warrant you.   THIRD LORD. Doubt not that, if money and the season can yield it.   FIRST LORD. How do you? What\'s the news?   THIRD LORD. Alcibiades is banish\'d. Hear you of it?   FIRST AND SECOND LORDS. Alcibiades banish\'d!   THIRD LORD. \'Tis so, be sure of it.   FIRST LORD. How? how?   SECOND LORD. I pray you, upon what?   TIMON. My worthy friends, will you draw near?   THIRD LORD. I\'ll tell you more anon. Here\'s a noble feast toward.     SECOND LORD. This is the old man still.   THIRD LORD. Will\'t hold? Will\'t hold?   SECOND LORD. It does; but time will- and so-   THIRD LORD. I do conceive.   TIMON. Each man to his stool with that spur as he would to the lip     of his mistress; your diet shall be in all places alike. Make not     a city feast of it, to let the meat cool ere we can agree upon     the first place. Sit, sit. The gods require our thanks:      You great benefactors, sprinkle our society with thankfulness.     For your own gifts make yourselves prais\'d; but reserve still to     give, lest your deities be despised. Lend to each man enough,     that one need not lend to another; for were your god-heads to     borrow of men, men would forsake the gods. Make the meat be     beloved more than the man that gives it. Let no assembly of     twenty be without a score of villains. If there sit twelve women     at the table, let a dozen of them be- as they are. The rest of     your foes, O gods, the senators of Athens, together with the     common lag of people, what is amiss in them, you gods, make     suitable for destruction. For these my present friends, as they       are to me nothing, so in nothing bless them, and to nothing are     they welcome.      Uncover, dogs, and lap.        [The dishes are uncovered and                                   seen to he full of warm water]   SOME SPEAK. What does his lordship mean?   SOME OTHER. I know not.   TIMON. May you a better feast never behold,     You knot of mouth-friends! Smoke and lukewarm water     Is your perfection. This is Timon\'s last;     Who, stuck and spangled with your flatteries,     Washes it off, and sprinkles in your faces                              [Throwing the water in their faces]     Your reeking villainy. Live loath\'d and long,     Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites,     Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears,     You fools of fortune, trencher friends, time\'s flies,     Cap and knee slaves, vapours, and minute-lacks!     Of man and beast the infinite malady     Crust you quite o\'er! What, dost thou go?       Soft, take thy physic first; thou too, and thou.     Stay, I will lend thee money, borrow none.       [Throws the                             dishes at them, and drives them out]     What, all in motion? Henceforth be no feast     Whereat a villain\'s not a welcome guest.     Burn house! Sink Athens! Henceforth hated be     Of Timon man and all humanity!                          Exit                             Re-enter the LORDS    FIRST LORD. How now, my lords!   SECOND LORD. Know you the quality of Lord Timon\'s fury?   THIRD LORD. Push! Did you see my cap?   FOURTH LORD. I have lost my gown.   FIRST LORD. He\'s but a mad lord, and nought but humours sways him.     He gave me a jewel th\' other day, and now he has beat it out of     my hat. Did you see my jewel?   THIRD LORD. Did you see my cap?   SECOND LORD. Here \'tis.   FOURTH LORD. Here lies my gown.     FIRST LORD. Let\'s make no stay.   SECOND LORD. Lord Timon\'s mad.   THIRD LORD. I feel\'t upon my bones.   FOURTH LORD. One day he gives us diamonds, next day stones.                                                           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. Without the walls of Athens  Enter TIMON    TIMON. Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall     That girdles in those wolves, dive in the earth     And fence not Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent.     Obedience, fail in children! Slaves and fools,     Pluck the grave wrinkled Senate from the bench     And minister in their steads. To general filths     Convert, o\' th\' instant, green virginity.     Do\'t in your parents\' eyes. Bankrupts, hold fast;     Rather than render back, out with your knives     And cut your trusters\' throats. Bound servants, steal:     Large-handed robbers your grave masters are,     And pill by law. Maid, to thy master\'s bed:     Thy mistress is o\' th\' brothel. Son of sixteen,     Pluck the lin\'d crutch from thy old limping sire,     With it beat out his brains. Piety and fear,     Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,     Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,       Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,     Degrees, observances, customs and laws,     Decline to your confounding contraries     And let confusion live. Plagues incident to men,     Your potent and infectious fevers heap     On Athens, ripe for stroke. Thou cold sciatica,     Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt     As lamely as their manners. Lust and liberty,     Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth,     That \'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive     And drown themselves in riot. Itches, blains,     Sow all th\' Athenian bosoms, and their crop     Be general leprosy! Breath infect breath,     That their society, as their friendship, may     Be merely poison! Nothing I\'ll bear from thee     But nakedness, thou detestable town!     Take thou that too, with multiplying bans.     Timon will to the woods, where he shall find     Th\' unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.     The gods confound- hear me, you good gods all-       The Athenians both within and out that wall!     And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow     To the whole race of mankind, high and low!     Amen.                                                   Exit     SCENE II. Athens. TIMON\'s house  Enter FLAVIUS, with two or three SERVANTS    FIRST SERVANT. Hear you, Master Steward, where\'s our master?     Are we undone, cast off, nothing remaining?   FLAVIUS. Alack, my fellows, what should I say to you?     Let me be recorded by the righteous gods,     I am as poor as you.   FIRST SERVANT. Such a house broke!     So noble a master fall\'n! All gone, and not     One friend to take his fortune by the arm     And go along with him?   SECOND SERVANT. As we do turn our backs     From our companion, thrown into his grave,     So his familiars to his buried fortunes     Slink all away; leave their false vows with him,     Like empty purses pick\'d; and his poor self,     A dedicated beggar to the air,     With his disease of all-shunn\'d poverty,     Walks, like contempt, alone. More of our fellows.                         Enter other SERVANTS    FLAVIUS. All broken implements of a ruin\'d house.   THIRD SERVANT. Yet do our hearts wear Timon\'s livery;     That see I by our faces. We are fellows still,     Serving alike in sorrow. Leak\'d is our bark;     And we, poor mates, stand on the dying deck,     Hearing the surges threat. We must all part     Into this sea of air.   FLAVIUS. Good fellows all,     The latest of my wealth I\'ll share amongst you.     Wherever we shall meet, for Timon\'s sake,     Let\'s yet be fellows; let\'s shake our heads and say,     As \'twere a knell unto our master\'s fortune,     \'We have seen better days.\' Let each take some.                                              [Giving them money]     Nay, put out all your hands. Not one word more!     Thus part we rich in sorrow, parting poor.                                 [Embrace, and part several ways]       O the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us!     Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt,     Since riches point to misery and contempt?     Who would be so mock\'d with glory, or to live     But in a dream of friendship,     To have his pomp, and all what state compounds,     But only painted, like his varnish\'d friends?     Poor honest lord, brought low by his own heart,     Undone by goodness! Strange, unusual blood,     When man\'s worst sin is he does too much good!     Who then dares to be half so kind again?     For bounty, that makes gods, does still mar men.     My dearest lord- blest to be most accurst,     Rich only to be wretched- thy great fortunes     Are made thy chief afflictions. Alas, kind lord!     He\'s flung in rage from this ingrateful seat     Of monstrous friends; nor has he with him to     Supply his life, or that which can command it.     I\'ll follow and enquire him out.     I\'ll ever serve his mind with my best will;       Whilst I have gold, I\'ll be his steward still.          Exit     SCENE III. The woods near the sea-shore. Before TIMON\'S cave  Enter TIMON in the woods    TIMON. O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth     Rotten humidity; below thy sister\'s orb     Infect the air! Twinn\'d brothers of one womb-     Whose procreation, residence, and birth,     Scarce is dividant- touch them with several fortunes:     The greater scorns the lesser. Not nature,     To whom all sores lay siege, can bear great fortune     But by contempt of nature.     Raise me this beggar and deny\'t that lord:     The senator shall bear contempt hereditary,     The beggar native honour.     It is the pasture lards the rother\'s sides,     The want that makes him lean. Who dares, who dares,     In purity of manhood stand upright,     And say \'This man\'s a flatterer\'? If one be,     So are they all; for every grise of fortune     Is smooth\'d by that below. The learned pate       Ducks to the golden fool. All\'s oblique;     There\'s nothing level in our cursed natures     But direct villainy. Therefore be abhorr\'d     All feasts, societies, and throngs of men!     His semblable, yea, himself, Timon disdains.     Destruction fang mankind! Earth, yield me roots.                                                        [Digging]     Who seeks for better of thee, sauce his palate     With thy most operant poison. What is here?     Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold? No, gods,     I am no idle votarist. Roots, you clear heavens!     Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair,     Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant.     Ha, you gods! why this? What, this, you gods? Why, this     Will lug your priests and servants from your sides,     Pluck stout men\'s pillows from below their heads-     This yellow slave     Will knit and break religions, bless th\' accurs\'d,     Make the hoar leprosy ador\'d, place thieves     And give them title, knee, and approbation,       With senators on the bench. This is it     That makes the wappen\'d widow wed again-     She whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores     Would cast the gorge at this embalms and spices     To th \'April day again. Come, damn\'d earth,     Thou common whore of mankind, that puts odds     Among the rout of nations, I will make thee     Do thy right nature.                        [March afar off]     Ha! a drum? Th\'art quick,     But yet I\'ll bury thee. Thou\'t go, strong thief,     When gouty keepers of thee cannot stand.     Nay, stay thou out for earnest.          [Keeping some gold]            Enter ALCIBIADES, with drum and fife, in warlike                   manner; and PHRYNIA and TIMANDRA    ALCIBIADES. What art thou there? Speak.   TIMON. A beast, as thou art. The canker gnaw thy heart     For showing me again the eyes of man!   ALCIBIADES. What is thy name? Is man so hateful to thee       That art thyself a man?   TIMON. I am Misanthropos, and hate mankind.     For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog,     That I might love thee something.   ALCIBIADES. I know thee well;     But in thy fortunes am unlearn\'d and strange.   TIMON. I know thee too; and more than that I know thee     I not desire to know. Follow thy drum;     With man\'s blood paint the ground, gules, gules.     Religious canons, civil laws, are cruel;     Then what should war be? This fell whore of thine     Hath in her more destruction than thy sword     For all her cherubin look.   PHRYNIA. Thy lips rot off!   TIMON. I will not kiss thee; then the rot returns     To thine own lips again.   ALCIBIADES. How came the noble Timon to this change?   TIMON. As the moon does, by wanting light to give.     But then renew I could not, like the moon;     There were no suns to borrow of.     ALCIBIADES. Noble Timon,     What friendship may I do thee?   TIMON. None, but to     Maintain my opinion.   ALCIBIADES. What is it, Timon?   TIMON. Promise me friendship, but perform none. If thou wilt not     promise, the gods plague thee, for thou art man! If thou dost     perform, confound thee, for thou art a man!   ALCIBIADES. I have heard in some sort of thy miseries.   TIMON. Thou saw\'st them when I had prosperity.   ALCIBIADES. I see them now; then was a blessed time.   TIMON. As thine is now, held with a brace of harlots.   TIMANDRA. Is this th\' Athenian minion whom the world     Voic\'d so regardfully?   TIMON. Art thou Timandra?   TIMANDRA. Yes.   TIMON. Be a whore still; they love thee not that use thee.     Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust.     Make use of thy salt hours. Season the slaves     For tubs and baths; bring down rose-cheek\'d youth       To the tub-fast and the diet.   TIMANDRA. Hang thee, monster!   ALCIBIADES. Pardon him, sweet Timandra, for his wits     Are drown\'d and lost in his calamities.     I have but little gold of late, brave Timon,     The want whereof doth daily make revolt     In my penurious band. I have heard, and griev\'d,     How cursed Athens, mindless of thy worth,     Forgetting thy great deeds, when neighbour states,     But for thy sword and fortune, trod upon them-   TIMON. I prithee beat thy drum and get thee gone.   ALCIBIADES. I am thy friend, and pity thee, dear Timon.   TIMON. How dost thou pity him whom thou dost trouble?     I had rather be alone.   ALCIBIADES. Why, fare thee well;     Here is some gold for thee.   TIMON. Keep it: I cannot eat it.   ALCIBIADES. When I have laid proud Athens on a heap-   TIMON. War\'st thou \'gainst Athens?   ALCIBIADES. Ay, Timon, and have cause.     TIMON. The gods confound them all in thy conquest;     And thee after, when thou hast conquer\'d!   ALCIBIADES. Why me, Timon?   TIMON. That by killing of villains     Thou wast born to conquer my country.     Put up thy gold. Go on. Here\'s gold. Go on.     Be as a planetary plague, when Jove     Will o\'er some high-vic\'d city hang his poison     In the sick air; let not thy sword skip one.     Pity not honour\'d age for his white beard:     He is an usurer. Strike me the counterfeit matron:     It is her habit only that is honest,     Herself\'s a bawd. Let not the virgin\'s cheek     Make soft thy trenchant sword; for those milk paps     That through the window bars bore at men\'s eyes     Are not within the leaf of pity writ,     But set them down horrible traitors. Spare not the babe     Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy;     Think it a bastard whom the oracle     Hath doubtfully pronounc\'d thy throat shall cut,       And mince it sans remorse. Swear against abjects;     Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes,     Whose proof nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes,     Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding,     Shall pierce a jot. There\'s gold to pay thy soldiers.     Make large confusion; and, thy fury spent,     Confounded be thyself! Speak not, be gone.   ALCIBIADES. Hast thou gold yet? I\'ll take the gold thou givest me,     Not all thy counsel.   TIMON. Dost thou, or dost thou not, heaven\'s curse upon thee!   PHRYNIA AND TIMANDRA. Give us some gold, good Timon.     Hast thou more?   TIMON. Enough to make a whore forswear her trade,     And to make whores a bawd. Hold up, you sluts,     Your aprons mountant; you are not oathable,     Although I know you\'ll swear, terribly swear,     Into strong shudders and to heavenly agues,     Th\' immortal gods that hear you. Spare your oaths;     I\'ll trust to your conditions. Be whores still;     And he whose pious breath seeks to convert you-       Be strong in whore, allure him, burn him up;     Let your close fire predominate his smoke,     And be no turncoats. Yet may your pains six months     Be quite contrary! And thatch your poor thin roofs     With burdens of the dead- some that were hang\'d,     No matter. Wear them, betray with them. Whore still;     Paint till a horse may mire upon your face.     A pox of wrinkles!   PHRYNIA AND TIMANDRA. Well, more gold. What then?     Believe\'t that we\'ll do anything for gold.   TIMON. Consumptions sow     In hollow bones of man; strike their sharp shins,     And mar men\'s spurring. Crack the lawyer\'s voice,     That he may never more false title plead,     Nor sound his quillets shrilly. Hoar the flamen,     That scolds against the quality of flesh     And not believes himself. Down with the nose,     Down with it flat, take the bridge quite away     Of him that, his particular to foresee,     Smells from the general weal. Make curl\'d-pate ruffians bald,       And let the unscarr\'d braggarts of the war     Derive some pain from you. Plague all,     That your activity may defeat and quell     The source of all erection. There\'s more gold.     Do you damn others, and let this damn you,     And ditches grave you all!   PHRYNIA AND TIMANDRA. More counsel with more money, bounteous     Timon.   TIMON. More whore, more mischief first; I have given you earnest.   ALCIBIADES. Strike up the drum towards Athens. Farewell, Timon;     If I thrive well, I\'ll visit thee again.   TIMON. If I hope well, I\'ll never see thee more.   ALCIBIADES. I never did thee harm.   TIMON. Yes, thou spok\'st well of me.   ALCIBIADES. Call\'st thou that harm?   TIMON. Men daily find it. Get thee away, and take     Thy beagles with thee.   ALCIBIADES. We but offend him. Strike.                                 Drum beats. Exeunt all but TIMON   TIMON. That nature, being sick of man\'s unkindness,       Should yet be hungry! Common mother, thou,         [Digging]     Whose womb unmeasurable and infinite breast     Teems and feeds all; whose self-same mettle,     Whereof thy proud child, arrogant man, is puff\'d,     Engenders the black toad and adder blue,     The gilded newt and eyeless venom\'d worm,     With all th\' abhorred births below crisp heaven     Whereon Hyperion\'s quick\'ning fire doth shine-     Yield him, who all thy human sons doth hate,     From forth thy plenteous bosom, one poor root!     Ensear thy fertile and conceptious womb,     Let it no more bring out ingrateful man!     Go great with tigers, dragons, wolves, and bears;     Teem with new monsters whom thy upward face     Hath to the marbled mansion all above     Never presented!- O, a root! Dear thanks!-     Dry up thy marrows, vines, and plough-torn leas,     Whereof ingrateful man, with liquorish draughts     And morsels unctuous, greases his pure mind,     That from it all consideration slips-                            Enter APEMANTUS      More man? Plague, plague!   APEMANTUS. I was directed hither. Men report     Thou dost affect my manners and dost use them.   TIMON. \'Tis, then, because thou dost not keep a dog,     Whom I would imitate. Consumption catch thee!   APEMANTUS. This is in thee a nature but infected,     A poor unmanly melancholy sprung     From change of fortune. Why this spade, this place?     This slave-like habit and these looks of care?     Thy flatterers yet wear silk, drink wine, lie soft,     Hug their diseas\'d perfumes, and have forgot     That ever Timon was. Shame not these woods     By putting on the cunning of a carper.     Be thou a flatterer now, and seek to thrive     By that which has undone thee: hinge thy knee,     And let his very breath whom thou\'lt observe     Blow off thy cap; praise his most vicious strain,       And call it excellent. Thou wast told thus;     Thou gav\'st thine ears, like tapsters that bade welcome,     To knaves and all approachers. \'Tis most just     That thou turn rascal; hadst thou wealth again     Rascals should have\'t. Do not assume my likeness.   TIMON. Were I like thee, I\'d throw away myself.   APEMANTUS. Thou hast cast away thyself, being like thyself;     A madman so long, now a fool. What, think\'st     That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,     Will put thy shirt on warm? Will these moist trees,     That have outliv\'d the eagle, page thy heels     And skip when thou point\'st out? Will the cold brook,     Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste     To cure thy o\'ernight\'s surfeit? Call the creatures     Whose naked natures live in all the spite     Of wreakful heaven, whose bare unhoused trunks,     To the conflicting elements expos\'d,     Answer mere nature- bid them flatter thee.     O, thou shalt find-   TIMON. A fool of thee. Depart.     APEMANTUS. I love thee better now than e\'er I did.   TIMON. I hate thee worse.   APEMANTUS. Why?   TIMON. Thou flatter\'st misery.   APEMANTUS. I flatter not, but say thou art a caitiff.   TIMON. Why dost thou seek me out?   APEMANTUS. To vex thee.   TIMON. Always a villain\'s office or a fool\'s.     Dost please thyself in\'t?   APEMANTUS. Ay.   TIMON. What, a knave too?   APEMANTUS. If thou didst put this sour-cold habit on     To castigate thy pride, \'twere well; but thou     Dost it enforcedly. Thou\'dst courtier be again     Wert thou not beggar. Willing misery     Outlives incertain pomp, is crown\'d before.     The one is filling still, never complete;     The other, at high wish. Best state, contentless,     Hath a distracted and most wretched being,     Worse than the worst, content.       Thou should\'st desire to die, being miserable.   TIMON. Not by his breath that is more miserable.     Thou art a slave whom Fortune\'s tender arm     With favour never clasp\'d, but bred a dog.     Hadst thou, like us from our first swath, proceeded     The sweet degrees that this brief world affords     To such as may the passive drugs of it     Freely command, thou wouldst have plung\'d thyself     In general riot, melted down thy youth     In different beds of lust, and never learn\'d     The icy precepts of respect, but followed     The sug\'red game before thee. But myself,     Who had the world as my confectionary;     The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men     At duty, more than I could frame employment;     That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves     Do on the oak, have with one winter\'s brush     Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare     For every storm that blows- I to bear this,     That never knew but better, is some burden.       Thy nature did commence in sufferance; time     Hath made thee hard in\'t. Why shouldst thou hate men?     They never flatter\'d thee. What hast thou given?     If thou wilt curse, thy father, that poor rag,     Must be thy subject; who, in spite, put stuff     To some she-beggar and compounded thee     Poor rogue hereditary. Hence, be gone.     If thou hadst not been born the worst of men,     Thou hadst been a knave and flatterer.   APEMANTUS. Art thou proud yet?   TIMON. Ay, that I am not thee.   APEMANTUS. I, that I was     No prodigal.   TIMON. I, that I am one now.     Were all the wealth I have shut up in thee,     I\'d give thee leave to hang it. Get thee gone.     That the whole life of Athens were in this!     Thus would I eat it.                         [Eating a root]   APEMANTUS. Here! I will mend thy feast.                                              [Offering him food]     TIMON. First mend my company: take away thyself.   APEMANTUS. So I shall mend mine own by th\' lack of thine.   TIMON. \'Tis not well mended so; it is but botch\'d.     If not, I would it were.   APEMANTUS. What wouldst thou have to Athens?   TIMON. Thee thither in a whirlwind. If thou wilt,     Tell them there I have gold; look, so I have.   APEMANTUS. Here is no use for gold.   TIMON. The best and truest;     For here it sleeps and does no hired harm.   APEMANTUS. Where liest a nights, Timon?   TIMON. Under that\'s above me.     Where feed\'st thou a days, Apemantus?   APEMANTUS. Where my stomach. finds meat; or rather, where I eat it.   TIMON. Would poison were obedient, and knew my mind!   APEMANTUS. Where wouldst thou send it?   TIMON. To sauce thy dishes.   APEMANTUS. The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the     extremity of both ends. When thou wast in thy gilt and thy     perfume, they mock\'d thee for too much curiosity; in thy rags       thou know\'st none, but art despis\'d for the contrary. There\'s a     medlar for thee; eat it.   TIMON. On what I hate I feed not.   APEMANTUS. Dost hate a medlar?   TIMON. Ay, though it look like thee.   APEMANTUS. An th\' hadst hated medlars sooner, thou shouldst have     loved thyself better now. What man didst thou ever know unthrift     that was beloved after his means?   TIMON. Who, without those means thou talk\'st of, didst thou ever     know belov\'d?   APEMANTUS. Myself.   TIMON. I understand thee: thou hadst some means to keep a dog.   APEMANTUS. What things in the world canst thou nearest compare to     thy flatterers?   TIMON. Women nearest; but men, men are the things themselves. What     wouldst thou do with the world, Apemantus, if it lay in thy     power?   APEMANTUS. Give it the beasts, to be rid of the men.   TIMON. Wouldst thou have thyself fall in the confusion of men, and     remain a beast with the beasts?     APEMANTUS. Ay, Timon.   TIMON. A beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee t\' attain to!     If thou wert the lion, the fox would beguile thee; if thou wert     the lamb, the fox would eat thee; if thou wert the fox, the lion     would suspect thee, when, peradventure, thou wert accus\'d by the     ass. If thou wert the ass, thy dulness would torment thee; and     still thou liv\'dst but as a breakfast to the wolf. If thou wert     the wolf, thy greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou     shouldst hazard thy life for thy dinner. Wert thou the unicorn,     pride and wrath would confound thee, and make thine own self the     conquest of thy fury. Wert thou bear, thou wouldst be kill\'d by     the horse; wert thou a horse, thou wouldst be seiz\'d by the     leopard; wert thou a leopard, thou wert german to the lion, and     the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life. All thy safety     were remotion, and thy defence absence. What beast couldst thou     be that were not subject to a beast? And what beast art thou     already, that seest not thy loss in transformation!   APEMANTUS. If thou couldst please me with speaking to me, thou     mightst have hit upon it here. The commonwealth of Athens is     become a forest of beasts.     TIMON. How has the ass broke the wall, that thou art out of the     city?   APEMANTUS. Yonder comes a poet and a painter. The plague of company     light upon thee! I will fear to catch it, and give way. When I     know not what else to do, I\'ll see thee again.   TIMON. When there is nothing living but thee, thou shalt be     welcome. I had rather be a beggar\'s dog than Apemantus.   APEMANTUS. Thou art the cap of all the fools alive.   TIMON. Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!   APEMANTUS. A plague on thee! thou art too bad to curse.   TIMON. All villains that do stand by thee are pure.   APEMANTUS. There is no leprosy but what thou speak\'st.   TIMON. If I name thee.     I\'ll beat thee- but I should infect my hands.   APEMANTUS. I would my tongue could rot them off!   TIMON. Away, thou issue of a mangy dog!     Choler does kill me that thou art alive;     I swoon to see thee.   APEMANTUS. Would thou wouldst burst!   TIMON. Away,       Thou tedious rogue! I am sorry I shall lose     A stone by thee.                     [Throws a stone at him]   APEMANTUS. Beast!   TIMON. Slave!   APEMANTUS. Toad!   TIMON. Rogue, rogue, rogue!     I am sick of this false world, and will love nought     But even the mere necessities upon\'t.     Then, Timon, presently prepare thy grave;     Lie where the light foam of the sea may beat     Thy gravestone daily; make thine epitaph,     That death in me at others\' lives may laugh.     [Looks at the gold] O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce     \'Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler     Of Hymen\'s purest bed! thou valiant Mars!     Thou ever young, fresh, lov\'d, and delicate wooer,     Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow     That lies on Dian\'s lap! thou visible god,     That sold\'rest close impossibilities,     And mak\'st them kiss! that speak\'st with every tongue       To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!     Think thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue     Set them into confounding odds, that beasts     May have the world in empire!   APEMANTUS. Would \'twere so!     But not till I am dead. I\'ll say th\' hast gold.     Thou wilt be throng\'d to shortly.   TIMON. Throng\'d to?   APEMANTUS. Ay.   TIMON. Thy back, I prithee.   APEMANTUS. Live, and love thy misery!   TIMON. Long live so, and so die! [Exit APEMANTUS] I am quit. More     things like men? Eat, Timon, and abhor them.                         Enter the BANDITTI    FIRST BANDIT. Where should he have this gold? It is some poor     fragment, some slender ort of his remainder. The mere want of     gold and the falling-from of his friends drove him into this     melancholy.     SECOND BANDIT. It is nois\'d he hath a mass of treasure.   THIRD BANDIT. Let us make the assay upon him; if he care not for\'t,     he will supply us easily; if he covetously reserve it, how     shall\'s get it?   SECOND BANDIT. True; for he bears it not about him. \'Tis hid.   FIRST BANDIT. Is not this he?   BANDITTI. Where?   SECOND BANDIT. \'Tis his description.   THIRD BANDIT. He; I know him.   BANDITTI. Save thee, Timon!   TIMON. Now, thieves?   BANDITTI. Soldiers, not thieves.   TIMON. Both too, and women\'s sons.   BANDITTI. We are not thieves, but men that much do want.   TIMON. Your greatest want is, you want much of meat.     Why should you want? Behold, the earth hath roots;     Within this mile break forth a hundred springs;     The oaks bear mast, the briars scarlet hips;     The bounteous housewife Nature on each bush     Lays her full mess before you. Want! Why want?     FIRST BANDIT. We cannot live on grass, on berries, water,     As beasts and birds and fishes.   TIMON. Nor on the beasts themselves, the birds, and fishes;     You must eat men. Yet thanks I must you con     That you are thieves profess\'d, that you work not     In holier shapes; for there is boundless theft     In limited professions. Rascal thieves,     Here\'s gold. Go, suck the subtle blood o\' th\' grape     Till the high fever seethe your blood to froth,     And so scape hanging. Trust not the physician;     His antidotes are poison, and he slays     Moe than you rob. Take wealth and lives together;     Do villainy, do, since you protest to do\'t,     Like workmen. I\'ll example you with thievery:     The sun\'s a thief, and with his great attraction     Robs the vast sea; the moon\'s an arrant thief,     And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;     The sea\'s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves     The moon into salt tears; the earth\'s a thief,     That feeds and breeds by a composture stol\'n       From gen\'ral excrement- each thing\'s a thief.     The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power     Has uncheck\'d theft. Love not yourselves; away,     Rob one another. There\'s more gold. Cut throats;     All that you meet are thieves. To Athens go,     Break open shops; nothing can you steal     But thieves do lose it. Steal not less for this     I give you; and gold confound you howsoe\'er!     Amen.   THIRD BANDIT. Has almost charm\'d me from my profession by     persuading me to it.   FIRST BANDIT. \'Tis in the malice of mankind that he thus advises     us; not to have us thrive in our mystery.   SECOND BANDIT. I\'ll believe him as an enemy, and give over my     trade.   FIRST BANDIT. Let us first see peace in Athens. There is no time so     miserable but a man may be true.              Exeunt THIEVES                           Enter FLAVIUS, to TIMON      FLAVIUS. O you gods!     Is yond despis\'d and ruinous man my lord?     Full of decay and failing? O monument     And wonder of good deeds evilly bestow\'d!     What an alteration of honour     Has desp\'rate want made!     What viler thing upon the earth than friends,     Who can bring noblest minds to basest ends!     How rarely does it meet with this time\'s guise,     When man was wish\'d to love his enemies!     Grant I may ever love, and rather woo     Those that would mischief me than those that do!     Has caught me in his eye; I will present     My honest grief unto him, and as my lord     Still serve him with my life. My dearest master!   TIMON. Away! What art thou?   FLAVIUS. Have you forgot me, sir?   TIMON. Why dost ask that? I have forgot all men;     Then, if thou grant\'st th\'art a man, I have forgot thee.   FLAVIUS. An honest poor servant of yours.     TIMON. Then I know thee not.     I never had honest man about me, I.     All I kept were knaves, to serve in meat to villains.   FLAVIUS. The gods are witness,     Nev\'r did poor steward wear a truer grief     For his undone lord than mine eyes for you.   TIMON. What, dost thou weep? Come nearer. Then I love thee     Because thou art a woman and disclaim\'st     Flinty mankind, whose eyes do never give     But thorough lust and laughter. Pity\'s sleeping.     Strange times, that weep with laughing, not with weeping!   FLAVIUS. I beg of you to know me, good my lord,     T\' accept my grief, and whilst this poor wealth lasts     To entertain me as your steward still.   TIMON. Had I a steward     So true, so just, and now so comfortable?     It almost turns my dangerous nature mild.     Let me behold thy face. Surely, this man     Was born of woman.     Forgive my general and exceptless rashness,       You perpetual-sober gods! I do proclaim     One honest man- mistake me not, but one;     No more, I pray- and he\'s a steward.     How fain would I have hated all mankind!     And thou redeem\'st thyself. But all, save thee,     I fell with curses.     Methinks thou art more honest now than wise;     For by oppressing and betraying me     Thou mightst have sooner got another service;     For many so arrive at second masters     Upon their first lord\'s neck. But tell me true,     For I must ever doubt though ne\'er so sure,     Is not thy kindness subtle, covetous,     If not a usuring kindness, and as rich men deal gifts,     Expecting in return twenty for one?   FLAVIUS. No, my most worthy master, in whose breast     Doubt and suspect, alas, are plac\'d too late!     You should have fear\'d false times when you did feast:     Suspect still comes where an estate is least.     That which I show, heaven knows, is merely love,       Duty, and zeal, to your unmatched mind,     Care of your food and living; and believe it,     My most honour\'d lord,     For any benefit that points to me,     Either in hope or present, I\'d exchange     For this one wish, that you had power and wealth     To requite me by making rich yourself.   TIMON. Look thee, \'tis so! Thou singly honest man,     Here, take. The gods, out of my misery,     Have sent thee treasure. Go, live rich and happy,     But thus condition\'d; thou shalt build from men;     Hate all, curse all, show charity to none,     But let the famish\'d flesh slide from the bone     Ere thou relieve the beggar. Give to dogs     What thou deniest to men; let prisons swallow \'em,     Debts wither \'em to nothing. Be men like blasted woods,     And may diseases lick up their false bloods!     And so, farewell and thrive.   FLAVIUS. O, let me stay     And comfort you, my master.     TIMON. If thou hat\'st curses,     Stay not; fly whilst thou art blest and free.     Ne\'er see thou man, and let me ne\'er see thee.                                                 Exeunt severally     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. The woods. Before TIMON\'s cave  Enter POET and PAINTER    PAINTER. As I took note of the place, it cannot be far where he     abides.   POET. to be thought of him? Does the rumour hold for true that he\'s     so full of gold?   PAINTER. Certain. Alcibiades reports it; Phrynia and Timandra had     gold of him. He likewise enrich\'d poor straggling soldiers with     great quantity. \'Tis said he gave unto his steward a mighty sum.   POET. Then this breaking of his has been but a try for his friends?   PAINTER. Nothing else. You shall see him a palm in Athens again,     and flourish with the highest. Therefore \'tis not amiss we tender     our loves to him in this suppos\'d distress of his; it will show     honestly in us, and is very likely to load our purposes with what     they travail for, if it be just and true report that goes of his     having.   POET. What have you now to present unto him?   PAINTER. Nothing at this time but my visitation; only I will     promise him an excellent piece.     POET. I must serve him so too, tell him of an intent that\'s coming     toward him.   PAINTER. Good as the best. Promising is the very air o\' th\' time;     it opens the eyes of expectation. Performance is ever the duller     for his act, and but in the plainer and simpler kind of people     the deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is most     courtly and fashionable; performance is a kind of will or     testament which argues a great sickness in his judgment that     makes it.                      Enter TIMON from his cave    TIMON. [Aside] Excellent workman! Thou canst not paint a man so bad     as is thyself.   POET. I am thinking what I shall say I have provided for him. It     must be a personating of himself; a satire against the softness     of prosperity, with a discovery of the infinite flatteries that     follow youth and opulency.   TIMON. [Aside] Must thou needs stand for a villain in thine own     work? Wilt thou whip thine own faults in other men? Do so, I have       gold for thee.   POET. Nay, let\'s seek him;     Then do we sin against our own estate     When we may profit meet and come too late.   PAINTER. True;     When the day serves, before black-corner\'d night,     Find what thou want\'st by free and offer\'d light.     Come.   TIMON. [Aside] I\'ll meet you at the turn. What a god\'s gold,     That he is worshipp\'d in a baser temple     Than where swine feed!     \'Tis thou that rig\'st the bark and plough\'st the foam,     Settlest admired reverence in a slave.     To thee be worship! and thy saints for aye     Be crown\'d with plagues, that thee alone obey!     Fit I meet them.                   [Advancing from his cave]   POET. Hail, worthy Timon!   PAINTER. Our late noble master!   TIMON. Have I once liv\'d to see two honest men?   POET. Sir,       Having often of your open bounty tasted,     Hearing you were retir\'d, your friends fall\'n off,     Whose thankless natures- O abhorred spirits!-     Not all the whips of heaven are large enough-     What! to you,     Whose star-like nobleness gave life and influence     To their whole being! I am rapt, and cannot cover     The monstrous bulk of this ingratitude     With any size of words.   TIMON. Let it go naked: men may see\'t the better.     You that are honest, by being what you are,     Make them best seen and known.   PAINTER. He and myself     Have travail\'d in the great show\'r of your gifts,     And sweetly felt it.   TIMON. Ay, you are honest men.   PAINTER. We are hither come to offer you our service.   TIMON. Most honest men! Why, how shall I requite you?     Can you eat roots, and drink cold water- No?   BOTH. What we can do, we\'ll do, to do you service.     TIMON. Y\'are honest men. Y\'have heard that I have gold;     I am sure you have. Speak truth; y\'are honest men.   PAINTER. So it is said, my noble lord; but therefore     Came not my friend nor I.   TIMON. Good honest men! Thou draw\'st a counterfeit     Best in all Athens. Th\'art indeed the best;     Thou counterfeit\'st most lively.   PAINTER. So, so, my lord.   TIMON. E\'en so, sir, as I say. [To To POET] And for thy fiction,     Why, thy verse swells with stuff so fine and smooth     That thou art even natural in thine art.     But for all this, my honest-natur\'d friends,     I must needs say you have a little fault.     Marry, \'tis not monstrous in you; neither wish I     You take much pains to mend.   BOTH. Beseech your honour     To make it known to us.   TIMON. You\'ll take it ill.   BOTH. Most thankfully, my lord.   TIMON. Will you indeed?     BOTH. Doubt it not, worthy lord.   TIMON. There\'s never a one of you but trusts a knave     That mightily deceives you.   BOTH. Do we, my lord?   TIMON. Ay, and you hear him cog, see him dissemble,     Know his gross patchery, love him, feed him,     Keep in your bosom; yet remain assur\'d     That he\'s a made-up villain.   PAINTER. I know not such, my lord.   POET. Nor I.   TIMON. Look you, I love you well; I\'ll give you gold,     Rid me these villains from your companies.     Hang them or stab them, drown them in a draught,     Confound them by some course, and come to me,     I\'ll give you gold enough.   BOTH. Name them, my lord; let\'s know them.   TIMON. You that way, and you this- but two in company;     Each man apart, all single and alone,     Yet an arch-villain keeps him company.     [To the PAINTER] If, where thou art, two villians shall not be,       Come not near him. [To the POET] If thou wouldst not reside     But where one villain is, then him abandon.-     Hence, pack! there\'s gold; you came for gold, ye slaves.     [To the PAINTER] You have work for me; there\'s payment; hence!     [To the POET] You are an alchemist; make gold of that.-     Out, rascal dogs!                [Beats and drives them out]                      Enter FLAVIUS and two SENATORS    FLAVIUS. It is vain that you would speak with Timon;     For he is set so only to himself     That nothing but himself which looks like man     Is friendly with him.   FIRST SENATOR. Bring us to his cave.     It is our part and promise to th\' Athenians     To speak with Timon.   SECOND SENATOR. At all times alike     Men are not still the same; \'twas time and griefs     That fram\'d him thus. Time, with his fairer hand,     Offering the fortunes of his former days,       The former man may make him. Bring us to him,     And chance it as it may.   FLAVIUS. Here is his cave.     Peace and content be here! Lord Timon! Timon!     Look out, and speak to friends. Th\' Athenians     By two of their most reverend Senate greet thee.     Speak to them, noble Timon.                     Enter TIMON out of his cave    TIMON. Thou sun that comforts, burn. Speak and be hang\'d!     For each true word a blister, and each false     Be as a cauterizing to the root o\' th\' tongue,     Consuming it with speaking!   FIRST SENATOR. Worthy Timon-   TIMON. Of none but such as you, and you of Timon.   FIRST SENATOR. The senators of Athens greet thee, Timon.   TIMON. I thank them; and would send them back the plague,     Could I but catch it for them.   FIRST SENATOR. O, forget       What we are sorry for ourselves in thee.     The senators with one consent of love     Entreat thee back to Athens, who have thought     On special dignities, which vacant lie     For thy best use and wearing.   SECOND SENATOR. They confess     Toward thee forgetfulness too general, gross;     Which now the public body, which doth seldom     Play the recanter, feeling in itself     A lack of Timon\'s aid, hath sense withal     Of it own fail, restraining aid to Timon,     And send forth us to make their sorrowed render,     Together with a recompense more fruitful     Than their offence can weigh down by the dram;     Ay, even such heaps and sums of love and wealth     As shall to thee blot out what wrongs were theirs     And write in thee the figures of their love,     Ever to read them thine.   TIMON. You witch me in it;     Surprise me to the very brink of tears.       Lend me a fool\'s heart and a woman\'s eyes,     And I\'ll beweep these comforts, worthy senators.   FIRST SENATOR. Therefore so please thee to return with us,     And of our Athens, thine and ours, to take     The captainship, thou shalt be met with thanks,     Allow\'d with absolute power, and thy good name     Live with authority. So soon we shall drive back     Of Alcibiades th\' approaches wild,     Who, like a boar too savage, doth root up     His country\'s peace.   SECOND SENATOR. And shakes his threat\'ning sword     Against the walls of Athens.   FIRST SENATOR. Therefore, Timon-   TIMON. Well, sir, I will. Therefore I will, sir, thus:     If Alcibiades kill my countrymen,     Let Alcibiades know this of Timon,     That Timon cares not. But if he sack fair Athens,     And take our goodly aged men by th\' beards,     Giving our holy virgins to the stain     Of contumelious, beastly, mad-brain\'d war,       Then let him know- and tell him Timon speaks it     In pity of our aged and our youth-     I cannot choose but tell him that I care not,     And let him take\'t at worst; for their knives care not,     While you have throats to answer. For myself,     There\'s not a whittle in th\' unruly camp     But I do prize it at my love before     The reverend\'st throat in Athens. So I leave you     To the protection of the prosperous gods,     As thieves to keepers.   FLAVIUS. Stay not, all\'s in vain.   TIMON. Why, I was writing of my epitaph;     It will be seen to-morrow. My long sickness     Of health and living now begins to mend,     And nothing brings me all things. Go, live still;     Be Alcibiades your plague, you his,     And last so long enough!   FIRST SENATOR. We speak in vain.   TIMON. But yet I love my country, and am not     One that rejoices in the common wreck,       As common bruit doth put it.   FIRST SENATOR. That\'s well spoke.   TIMON. Commend me to my loving countrymen-   FIRST SENATOR. These words become your lips as they pass through     them.   SECOND SENATOR. And enter in our ears like great triumphers     In their applauding gates.   TIMON. Commend me to them,     And tell them that, to ease them of their griefs,     Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses,     Their pangs of love, with other incident throes     That nature\'s fragile vessel doth sustain     In life\'s uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them-     I\'ll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades\' wrath.   FIRST SENATOR. I like this well; he will return again.   TIMON. I have a tree, which grows here in my close,     That mine own use invites me to cut down,     And shortly must I fell it. Tell my friends,     Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree     From high to low throughout, that whoso please       To stop affliction, let him take his haste,     Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe,     And hang himself. I pray you do my greeting.   FLAVIUS. Trouble him no further; thus you still shall find him.   TIMON. Come not to me again; but say to Athens     Timon hath made his everlasting mansion     Upon the beached verge of the salt flood,     Who once a day with his embossed froth     The turbulent surge shall cover. Thither come,     And let my gravestone be your oracle.     Lips, let sour words go by and language end:     What is amiss, plague and infection mend!     Graves only be men\'s works and death their gain!     Sun, hide thy beams. Timon hath done his reign.                                         Exit TIMON into his cave   FIRST SENATOR. His discontents are unremovably     Coupled to nature.   SECOND SENATOR. Our hope in him is dead. Let us return     And strain what other means is left unto us     In our dear peril.     FIRST SENATOR. It requires swift foot.                  Exeunt     SCENE II. Before the walls of Athens  Enter two other SENATORS with a MESSENGER    FIRST SENATOR. Thou hast painfully discover\'d; are his files     As full as thy report?   MESSENGER. I have spoke the least.     Besides, his expedition promises     Present approach.   SECOND SENATOR. We stand much hazard if they bring not Timon.   MESSENGER. I met a courier, one mine ancient friend,     Whom, though in general part we were oppos\'d,     Yet our old love had a particular force,     And made us speak like friends. This man was riding     From Alcibiades to Timon\'s cave     With letters of entreaty, which imported     His fellowship i\' th\' cause against your city,     In part for his sake mov\'d.                 Enter the other SENATORS, from TIMON      FIRST SENATOR. Here come our brothers.   THIRD SENATOR. No talk of Timon, nothing of him expect.     The enemies\' drum is heard, and fearful scouring     Doth choke the air with dust. In, and prepare.     Ours is the fall, I fear; our foes the snare.         Exeunt     SCENE III. The TIMON\'s cave, and a rude tomb seen  Enter a SOLDIER in the woods, seeking TIMON    SOLDIER. By all description this should be the place.     Who\'s here? Speak, ho! No answer? What is this?     Timon is dead, who hath outstretch\'d his span.     Some beast rear\'d this; here does not live a man.     Dead, sure; and this his grave. What\'s on this tomb     I cannot read; the character I\'ll take with wax.     Our captain hath in every figure skill,     An ag\'d interpreter, though young in days;     Before proud Athens he\'s set down by this,     Whose fall the mark of his ambition is.                 Exit     SCENE IV. Before the walls of Athens  Trumpets sound. Enter ALCIBIADES with his powers before Athens    ALCIBIADES. Sound to this coward and lascivious town     Our terrible approach.         Sound a parley. The SENATORS appear upon the walls      Till now you have gone on and fill\'d the time     With all licentious measure, making your wills     The scope of justice; till now, myself, and such     As slept within the shadow of your power,     Have wander\'d with our travers\'d arms, and breath\'d     Our sufferance vainly. Now the time is flush,     When crouching marrow, in the bearer strong,     Cries of itself \'No more!\' Now breathless wrong     Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease,     And pursy insolence shall break his wind     With fear and horrid flight.   FIRST SENATOR. Noble and young,       When thy first griefs were but a mere conceit,     Ere thou hadst power or we had cause of fear,     We sent to thee, to give thy rages balm,     To wipe out our ingratitude with loves     Above their quantity.   SECOND SENATOR. So did we woo     Transformed Timon to our city\'s love     By humble message and by promis\'d means.     We were not all unkind, nor all deserve     The common stroke of war.   FIRST SENATOR. These walls of ours     Were not erected by their hands from whom     You have receiv\'d your griefs; nor are they such     That these great tow\'rs, trophies, and schools, should fall     For private faults in them.   SECOND SENATOR. Nor are they living     Who were the motives that you first went out;     Shame, that they wanted cunning, in excess     Hath broke their hearts. March, noble lord,     Into our city with thy banners spread.       By decimation and a tithed death-     If thy revenges hunger for that food     Which nature loathes- take thou the destin\'d tenth,     And by the hazard of the spotted die     Let die the spotted.   FIRST SENATOR. All have not offended;     For those that were, it is not square to take,     On those that are, revenge: crimes, like lands,     Are not inherited. Then, dear countryman,     Bring in thy ranks, but leave without thy rage;     Spare thy Athenian cradle, and those kin     Which, in the bluster of thy wrath, must fall     With those that have offended. Like a shepherd     Approach the fold and cull th\' infected forth,     But kill not all together.   SECOND SENATOR. What thou wilt,     Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile     Than hew to\'t with thy sword.   FIRST SENATOR. Set but thy foot     Against our rampir\'d gates and they shall ope,       So thou wilt send thy gentle heart before     To say thou\'t enter friendly.   SECOND SENATOR. Throw thy glove,     Or any token of thine honour else,     That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress     And not as our confusion, all thy powers     Shall make their harbour in our town till we     Have seal\'d thy full desire.   ALCIBIADES. Then there\'s my glove;     Descend, and open your uncharged ports.     Those enemies of Timon\'s and mine own,     Whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof,     Fall, and no more. And, to atone your fears     With my more noble meaning, not a man     Shall pass his quarter or offend the stream     Of regular justice in your city\'s bounds,     But shall be render\'d to your public laws     At heaviest answer.   BOTH. \'Tis most nobly spoken.   ALCIBIADES. Descend, and keep your words.                          [The SENATORS descend and open the gates]                   Enter a SOLDIER as a Messenger    SOLDIER. My noble General, Timon is dead;     Entomb\'d upon the very hem o\' th\' sea;     And on his grave-stone this insculpture, which     With wax I brought away, whose soft impression     Interprets for my poor ignorance.                    ALCIBIADES reads the Epitaph      \'Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft;     Seek not my name. A plague consume you wicked caitiffs left!     Here lie I, Timon, who alive all living men did hate.     Pass by, and curse thy fill; but pass, and stay not here thy       gait.\'     These well express in thee thy latter spirits.     Though thou abhorr\'dst in us our human griefs,     Scorn\'dst our brain\'s flow, and those our droplets which       From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit     Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye     On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead     Is noble Timon, of whose memory     Hereafter more. Bring me into your city,     And I will use the olive, with my sword;     Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each     Prescribe to other, as each other\'s leech.     Let our drums strike.                                 Exeunt  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1594  THE TRAGEDY OF TITUS ANDRONICUS  by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae    SATURNINUS, son to the late Emperor of Rome, afterwards Emperor   BASSIANUS, brother to Saturninus   TITUS ANDRONICUS, a noble Roman   MARCUS ANDRONICUS, Tribune of the People, and brother to Titus      Sons to Titus Andronicus:   LUCIUS   QUINTUS   MARTIUS   MUTIUS    YOUNG LUCIUS, a boy, son to Lucius   PUBLIUS, son to Marcus Andronicus      Kinsmen to Titus:   SEMPRONIUS   CAIUS   VALENTINE    AEMILIUS, a noble Roman        Sons to Tamora:   ALARBUS   DEMETRIUS   CHIRON    AARON, a Moor, beloved by Tamora   A CAPTAIN   A MESSENGER   A CLOWN    TAMORA, Queen of the Goths   LAVINIA, daughter to Titus Andronicus   A NURSE, and a black CHILD    Romans and Goths, Senators, Tribunes, Officers, Soldiers, and     Attendants     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>                              SCENE:                Rome and the neighbourhood   ACT 1. SCENE I. Rome. Before the Capitol  Flourish. Enter the TRIBUNES and SENATORS aloft; and then enter below SATURNINUS and his followers at one door, and BASSIANUS and his followers at the other, with drums and trumpets    SATURNINUS. Noble patricians, patrons of my right,     Defend the justice of my cause with arms;     And, countrymen, my loving followers,     Plead my successive title with your swords.     I am his first born son that was the last     That ware the imperial diadem of Rome;     Then let my father\'s honours live in me,     Nor wrong mine age with this indignity.   BASSIANUS. Romans, friends, followers, favourers of my right,     If ever Bassianus, Caesar\'s son,     Were gracious in the eyes of royal Rome,     Keep then this passage to the Capitol;     And suffer not dishonour to approach     The imperial seat, to virtue consecrate,       To justice, continence, and nobility;     But let desert in pure election shine;     And, Romans, fight for freedom in your choice.          Enter MARCUS ANDRONICUS aloft, with the crown    MARCUS. Princes, that strive by factions and by friends     Ambitiously for rule and empery,     Know that the people of Rome, for whom we stand     A special party, have by common voice     In election for the Roman empery     Chosen Andronicus, surnamed Pius     For many good and great deserts to Rome.     A nobler man, a braver warrior,     Lives not this day within the city walls.     He by the Senate is accited home,     From weary wars against the barbarous Goths,     That with his sons, a terror to our foes,     Hath yok\'d a nation strong, train\'d up in arms.     Ten years are spent since first he undertook       This cause of Rome, and chastised with arms     Our enemies\' pride; five times he hath return\'d     Bleeding to Rome, bearing his valiant sons     In coffins from the field; and at this day     To the monument of that Andronici     Done sacrifice of expiation,     And slain the noblest prisoner of the Goths.     And now at last, laden with honour\'s spoils,     Returns the good Andronicus to Rome,     Renowned Titus, flourishing in arms.     Let us entreat, by honour of his name     Whom worthily you would have now succeed,     And in the Capitol and Senate\'s right,     Whom you pretend to honour and adore,     That you withdraw you and abate your strength,     Dismiss your followers, and, as suitors should,     Plead your deserts in peace and humbleness.   SATURNINUS. How fair the Tribune speaks to calm my thoughts.   BASSIANUS. Marcus Andronicus, so I do affy     In thy uprightness and integrity,       And so I love and honour thee and thine,     Thy noble brother Titus and his sons,     And her to whom my thoughts are humbled all,     Gracious Lavinia, Rome\'s rich ornament,     That I will here dismiss my loving friends,     And to my fortunes and the people\'s favour     Commit my cause in balance to be weigh\'d.                                 Exeunt the soldiers of BASSIANUS   SATURNINUS. Friends, that have been thus forward in my right,     I thank you all and here dismiss you all,     And to the love and favour of my country     Commit myself, my person, and the cause.                                Exeunt the soldiers of SATURNINUS     Rome, be as just and gracious unto me     As I am confident and kind to thee.     Open the gates and let me in.   BASSIANUS. Tribunes, and me, a poor competitor.                     [Flourish. They go up into the Senate House]                        Enter a CAPTAIN      CAPTAIN. Romans, make way. The good Andronicus,     Patron of virtue, Rome\'s best champion,     Successful in the battles that he fights,     With honour and with fortune is return\'d     From where he circumscribed with his sword     And brought to yoke the enemies of Rome.          Sound drums and trumpets, and then enter MARTIUS         and MUTIUS, two of TITUS\' sons; and then two men         bearing a coffin covered with black; then LUCIUS         and QUINTUS, two other sons; then TITUS ANDRONICUS;         and then TAMORA the Queen of Goths, with her three         sons, ALARBUS, DEMETRIUS, and CHIRON, with AARON the         Moor, and others,  as many as can be. Then set down         the coffin and TITUS speaks    TITUS. Hail, Rome, victorious in thy mourning weeds!     Lo, as the bark that hath discharg\'d her fraught     Returns with precious lading to the bay       From whence at first she weigh\'d her anchorage,     Cometh Andronicus, bound with laurel boughs,     To re-salute his country with his tears,     Tears of true joy for his return to Rome.     Thou great defender of this Capitol,     Stand gracious to the rites that we intend!     Romans, of five and twenty valiant sons,     Half of the number that King Priam had,     Behold the poor remains, alive and dead!     These that survive let Rome reward with love;     These that I bring unto their latest home,     With burial amongst their ancestors.     Here Goths have given me leave to sheathe my sword.     Titus, unkind, and careless of thine own,     Why suffer\'st thou thy sons, unburied yet,     To hover on the dreadful shore of Styx?     Make way to lay them by their brethren.                                             [They open the tomb]     There greet in silence, as the dead are wont,     And sleep in peace, slain in your country\'s wars.       O sacred receptacle of my joys,     Sweet cell of virtue and nobility,     How many sons hast thou of mine in store     That thou wilt never render to me more!   LUCIUS. Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths,     That we may hew his limbs, and on a pile     Ad manes fratrum sacrifice his flesh     Before this earthy prison of their bones,     That so the shadows be not unappeas\'d,     Nor we disturb\'d with prodigies on earth.   TITUS. I give him you- the noblest that survives,     The eldest son of this distressed queen.   TAMORA. Stay, Roman brethen! Gracious conqueror,     Victorious Titus, rue the tears I shed,     A mother\'s tears in passion for her son;     And if thy sons were ever dear to thee,     O, think my son to be as dear to me!     Sufficeth not that we are brought to Rome     To beautify thy triumphs, and return     Captive to thee and to thy Roman yoke;       But must my sons be slaughtered in the streets     For valiant doings in their country\'s cause?     O, if to fight for king and commonweal     Were piety in thine, it is in these.     Andronicus, stain not thy tomb with blood.     Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods?     Draw near them then in being merciful.     Sweet mercy is nobility\'s true badge.     Thrice-noble Titus, spare my first-born son.   TITUS. Patient yourself, madam, and pardon me.     These are their brethren, whom your Goths beheld     Alive and dead; and for their brethren slain     Religiously they ask a sacrifice.     To this your son is mark\'d, and die he must     T\' appease their groaning shadows that are gone.   LUCIUS. Away with him, and make a fire straight;     And with our swords, upon a pile of wood,     Let\'s hew his limbs till they be clean consum\'d.                                 Exeunt TITUS\' SONS, with ALARBUS   TAMORA. O cruel, irreligious piety!     CHIRON. Was never Scythia half so barbarous!   DEMETRIUS. Oppose not Scythia to ambitious Rome.     Alarbus goes to rest, and we survive     To tremble under Titus\' threat\'ning look.     Then, madam, stand resolv\'d, but hope withal     The self-same gods that arm\'d the Queen of Troy     With opportunity of sharp revenge     Upon the Thracian tyrant in his tent     May favour Tamora, the Queen of Goths-     When Goths were Goths and Tamora was queen-     To quit the bloody wrongs upon her foes.              Re-enter LUCIUS, QUINTUS, MARTIUS, and    MUTIUS, the sons of ANDRONICUS, with their swords bloody    LUCIUS. See, lord and father, how we have perform\'d     Our Roman rites: Alarbus\' limbs are lopp\'d,     And entrails feed the sacrificing fire,     Whose smoke like incense doth perfume the sky.     Remaineth nought but to inter our brethren,       And with loud \'larums welcome them to Rome.   TITUS. Let it be so, and let Andronicus     Make this his latest farewell to their souls.                  [Sound trumpets and lay the coffin in the tomb]     In peace and honour rest you here, my sons;     Rome\'s readiest champions, repose you here in rest,     Secure from worldly chances and mishaps!     Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells,     Here grow no damned drugs, here are no storms,     No noise, but silence and eternal sleep.     In peace and honour rest you here, my sons!                         Enter LAVINIA    LAVINIA. In peace and honour live Lord Titus long;     My noble lord and father, live in fame!     Lo, at this tomb my tributary tears     I render for my brethren\'s obsequies;     And at thy feet I kneel, with tears of joy     Shed on this earth for thy return to Rome.       O, bless me here with thy victorious hand,     Whose fortunes Rome\'s best citizens applaud!   TITUS. Kind Rome, that hast thus lovingly reserv\'d     The cordial of mine age to glad my heart!     Lavinia, live; outlive thy father\'s days,     And fame\'s eternal date, for virtue\'s praise!            Enter, above, MARCUS ANDRONICUS and TRIBUNES;           re-enter SATURNINUS, BASSIANUS, and attendants    MARCUS. Long live Lord Titus, my beloved brother,     Gracious triumpher in the eyes of Rome!   TITUS. Thanks, gentle Tribune, noble brother Marcus.   MARCUS. And welcome, nephews, from successful wars,     You that survive and you that sleep in fame.     Fair lords, your fortunes are alike in all     That in your country\'s service drew your swords;     But safer triumph is this funeral pomp     That hath aspir\'d to Solon\'s happiness     And triumphs over chance in honour\'s bed.       Titus Andronicus, the people of Rome,     Whose friend in justice thou hast ever been,     Send thee by me, their Tribune and their trust,     This par]iament of white and spotless hue;     And name thee in election for the empire     With these our late-deceased Emperor\'s sons:     Be candidatus then, and put it on,     And help to set a head on headless Rome.   TITUS. A better head her glorious body fits     Than his that shakes for age and feebleness.     What should I don this robe and trouble you?     Be chosen with proclamations to-day,     To-morrow yield up rule, resign my life,     And set abroad new business for you all?     Rome, I have been thy soldier forty years,     And led my country\'s strength successfully,     And buried one and twenty valiant sons,     Knighted in field, slain manfully in arms,     In right and service of their noble country.     Give me a staff of honour for mine age,       But not a sceptre to control the world.     Upright he held it, lords, that held it last.   MARCUS. Titus, thou shalt obtain and ask the empery.   SATURNINUS. Proud and ambitious Tribune, canst thou tell?   TITUS. Patience, Prince Saturninus.   SATURNINUS. Romans, do me right.     Patricians, draw your swords, and sheathe them not     Till Saturninus be Rome\'s Emperor.     Andronicus, would thou were shipp\'d to hell     Rather than rob me of the people\'s hearts!   LUCIUS. Proud Saturnine, interrupter of the good     That noble-minded Titus means to thee!   TITUS. Content thee, Prince; I will restore to thee     The people\'s hearts, and wean them from themselves.   BASSIANUS. Andronicus, I do not flatter thee,     But honour thee, and will do till I die.     My faction if thou strengthen with thy friends,     I will most thankful be; and thanks to men     Of noble minds is honourable meed.   TITUS. People of Rome, and people\'s Tribunes here,       I ask your voices and your suffrages:     Will ye bestow them friendly on Andronicus?   TRIBUNES. To gratify the good Andronicus,     And gratulate his safe return to Rome,     The people will accept whom he admits.   TITUS. Tribunes, I thank you; and this suit I make,     That you create our Emperor\'s eldest son,     Lord Saturnine; whose virtues will, I hope,     Reflect on Rome as Titan\'s rays on earth,     And ripen justice in this commonweal.     Then, if you will elect by my advice,     Crown him, and say \'Long live our Emperor!\'   MARCUS. With voices and applause of every sort,     Patricians and plebeians, we create     Lord Saturninus Rome\'s great Emperor;     And say \'Long live our Emperor Saturnine!\'                            [A long flourish till they come down]   SATURNINUS. Titus Andronicus, for thy favours done     To us in our election this day     I give thee thanks in part of thy deserts,       And will with deeds requite thy gentleness;     And for an onset, Titus, to advance     Thy name and honourable family,     Lavinia will I make my emperess,     Rome\'s royal mistress, mistress of my heart,     And in the sacred Pantheon her espouse.     Tell me, Andronicus, doth this motion please thee?   TITUS. It doth, my worthy lord, and in this match     I hold me highly honoured of your Grace,     And here in sight of Rome, to Saturnine,     King and commander of our commonweal,     The wide world\'s Emperor, do I consecrate     My sword, my chariot, and my prisoners,     Presents well worthy Rome\'s imperious lord;     Receive them then, the tribute that I owe,     Mine honour\'s ensigns humbled at thy feet.   SATURNINUS. Thanks, noble Titus, father of my life.     How proud I am of thee and of thy gifts     Rome shall record; and when I do forget     The least of these unspeakable deserts,       Romans, forget your fealty to me.   TITUS.  [To TAMORA]  Now, madam, are you prisoner to an emperor;     To him that for your honour and your state     Will use you nobly and your followers.   SATURNINUS.  [Aside]  A goodly lady, trust me; of the hue     That I would choose, were I to choose anew.-     Clear up, fair Queen, that cloudy countenance;     Though chance of war hath wrought this change of cheer,     Thou com\'st not to be made a scorn in Rome-     Princely shall be thy usage every way.     Rest on my word, and let not discontent     Daunt all your hopes. Madam, he comforts you     Can make you greater than the Queen of Goths.     Lavinia, you are not displeas\'d with this?   LAVINIA. Not I, my lord, sith true nobility     Warrants these words in princely courtesy.   SATURNINUS. Thanks, sweet Lavinia. Romans, let us go.     Ransomless here we set our prisoners free.     Proclaim our honours, lords, with trump and drum.                                                       [Flourish]     BASSIANUS. Lord Titus, by your leave, this maid is mine.                                                [Seizing LAVINIA]   TITUS. How, sir! Are you in earnest then, my lord?   BASSIANUS. Ay, noble Titus, and resolv\'d withal     To do myself this reason and this right.   MARCUS. Suum cuique is our Roman justice:     This prince in justice seizeth but his own.   LUCIUS. And that he will and shall, if Lucius live.   TITUS. Traitors, avaunt! Where is the Emperor\'s guard?     Treason, my lord- Lavinia is surpris\'d!   SATURNINUS. Surpris\'d! By whom?   BASSIANUS. By him that justly may     Bear his betroth\'d from all the world away.                         Exeunt BASSIANUS and MARCUS with LAVINIA   MUTIUS. Brothers, help to convey her hence away,     And with my sword I\'ll keep this door safe.                              Exeunt LUCIUS, QUINTUS, and MARTIUS   TITUS. Follow, my lord, and I\'ll soon bring her back.   MUTIUS. My lord, you pass not here.   TITUS. What, villain boy!       Bar\'st me my way in Rome?   MUTIUS. Help, Lucius, help!             TITUS kills him. During the fray, exeunt SATURNINUS,                             TAMORA, DEMETRIUS, CHIRON, and AARON                        Re-enter Lucius    LUCIUS. My lord, you are unjust, and more than so:     In wrongful quarrel you have slain your son.   TITUS. Nor thou nor he are any sons of mine;     My sons would never so dishonour me.                   Re-enter aloft the EMPEROR       with TAMORA and her two Sons, and AARON the Moor      Traitor, restore Lavinia to the Emperor.   LUCIUS. Dead, if you will; but not to be his wife,     That is another\'s lawful promis\'d love.                 Exit   SATURNINUS. No, Titus, no; the Emperor needs her not,     Nor her, nor thee, nor any of thy stock.       I\'ll trust by leisure him that mocks me once;     Thee never, nor thy traitorous haughty sons,     Confederates all thus to dishonour me.     Was there none else in Rome to make a stale     But Saturnine? Full well, Andronicus,     Agree these deeds with that proud brag of thine     That saidst I begg\'d the empire at thy hands.   TITUS. O monstrous! What reproachful words are these?   SATURNINUS. But go thy ways; go, give that changing piece     To him that flourish\'d for her with his sword.     A valiant son-in-law thou shalt enjoy;     One fit to bandy with thy lawless sons,     To ruffle in the commonwealth of Rome.   TITUS. These words are razors to my wounded heart.   SATURNINUS. And therefore, lovely Tamora, Queen of Goths,     That, like the stately Phoebe \'mongst her nymphs,     Dost overshine the gallant\'st dames of Rome,     If thou be pleas\'d with this my sudden choice,     Behold, I choose thee, Tamora, for my bride     And will create thee Emperess of Rome.       Speak, Queen of Goths, dost thou applaud my choice?     And here I swear by all the Roman gods-     Sith priest and holy water are so near,     And tapers burn so bright, and everything     In readiness for Hymenaeus stand-     I will not re-salute the streets of Rome,     Or climb my palace, till from forth this place     I lead espous\'d my bride along with me.   TAMORA. And here in sight of heaven to Rome I swear,     If Saturnine advance the Queen of Goths,     She will a handmaid be to his desires,     A loving nurse, a mother to his youth.   SATURNINUS. Ascend, fair Queen, Pantheon. Lords, accompany     Your noble Emperor and his lovely bride,     Sent by the heavens for Prince Saturnine,     Whose wisdom hath her fortune conquered;     There shall we consummate our spousal rites.                                             Exeunt all but TITUS   TITUS. I am not bid to wait upon this bride.   TITUS, when wert thou wont to walk alone,       Dishonoured thus, and challenged of wrongs?                        Re-enter MARCUS,         and TITUS\' SONS, LUCIUS, QUINTUS, and MARTIUS    MARCUS. O Titus, see, O, see what thou hast done!     In a bad quarrel slain a virtuous son.   TITUS. No, foolish Tribune, no; no son of mine-     Nor thou, nor these, confederates in the deed     That hath dishonoured all our family;     Unworthy brother and unworthy sons!   LUCIUS. But let us give him burial, as becomes;     Give Mutius burial with our bretheren.   TITUS. Traitors, away! He rests not in this tomb.     This monument five hundred years hath stood,     Which I have sumptuously re-edified;     Here none but soldiers and Rome\'s servitors     Repose in fame; none basely slain in brawls.     Bury him where you can, he comes not here.   MARCUS. My lord, this is impiety in you.       My nephew Mutius\' deeds do plead for him;     He must be buried with his bretheren.   QUINTUS & MARTIUS. And shall, or him we will accompany.   TITUS. \'And shall!\' What villain was it spake that word?   QUINTUS. He that would vouch it in any place but here.   TITUS. What, would you bury him in my despite?   MARCUS. No, noble Titus, but entreat of thee     To pardon Mutius and to bury him.   TITUS. Marcus, even thou hast struck upon my crest,     And with these boys mine honour thou hast wounded.     My foes I do repute you every one;     So trouble me no more, but get you gone.   MARTIUS. He is not with himself; let us withdraw.   QUINTUS. Not I, till Mutius\' bones be buried.                                 [The BROTHER and the SONS kneel]   MARCUS. Brother, for in that name doth nature plead-   QUINTUS. Father, and in that name doth nature speak-   TITUS. Speak thou no more, if all the rest will speed.   MARCUS. Renowned Titus, more than half my soul-   LUCIUS. Dear father, soul and substance of us all-     MARCUS. Suffer thy brother Marcus to inter     His noble nephew here in virtue\'s nest,     That died in honour and Lavinia\'s cause.     Thou art a Roman- be not barbarous.     The Greeks upon advice did bury Ajax,     That slew himself; and wise Laertes\' son     Did graciously plead for his funerals.     Let not young Mutius, then, that was thy joy,     Be barr\'d his entrance here.   TITUS. Rise, Marcus, rise;     The dismal\'st day is this that e\'er I saw,     To be dishonoured by my sons in Rome!     Well, bury him, and bury me the next.                                    [They put MUTIUS in the tomb]   LUCIUS. There lie thy bones, sweet Mutius, with thy friends,     Till we with trophies do adorn thy tomb.   ALL.  [Kneeling]  No man shed tears for noble Mutius;     He lives in fame that died in virtue\'s cause.   MARCUS. My lord- to step out of these dreary dumps-     How comes it that the subtle Queen of Goths       Is of a sudden thus advanc\'d in Rome?   TITUS. I know not, Marcus, but I know it is-     Whether by device or no, the heavens can tell.     Is she not, then, beholding to the man     That brought her for this high good turn so far?   MARCUS. Yes, and will nobly him remunerate.             Flourish. Re-enter the EMPEROR, TAMORA         and her two SONS, with the MOOR, at one door;     at the other door, BASSIANUS and LAVINIA, with others    SATURNINUS. So, Bassianus, you have play\'d your prize:     God give you joy, sir, of your gallant bride!   BASSIANUS. And you of yours, my lord! I say no more,     Nor wish no less; and so I take my leave.   SATURNINUS. Traitor, if Rome have law or we have power,     Thou and thy faction shall repent this rape.   BASSIANUS. Rape, call you it, my lord, to seize my own,     My true betrothed love, and now my wife?     But let the laws of Rome determine all;     Meanwhile am I possess\'d of that is mine.     SATURNINUS. \'Tis good, sir. You are very short with us;     But if we live we\'ll be as sharp with you.   BASSIANUS. My lord, what I have done, as best I may,     Answer I must, and shall do with my life.     Only thus much I give your Grace to know:     By all the duties that I owe to Rome,     This noble gentleman, Lord Titus here,     Is in opinion and in honour wrong\'d,     That, in the rescue of Lavinia,     With his own hand did slay his youngest son,     In zeal to you, and highly mov\'d to wrath     To be controll\'d in that he frankly gave.     Receive him then to favour, Saturnine,     That hath express\'d himself in all his deeds     A father and a friend to thee and Rome.   TITUS. Prince Bassianus, leave to plead my deeds.     \'Tis thou and those that have dishonoured me.     Rome and the righteous heavens be my judge     How I have lov\'d and honoured Saturnine!   TAMORA. My worthy lord, if ever Tamora       Were gracious in those princely eyes of thine,     Then hear me speak indifferently for all;     And at my suit, sweet, pardon what is past.   SATURNINUS. What, madam! be dishonoured openly,     And basely put it up without revenge?   TAMORA. Not so, my lord; the gods of Rome forfend     I should be author to dishonour you!     But on mine honour dare I undertake     For good Lord Titus\' innocence in all,     Whose fury not dissembled speaks his griefs.     Then at my suit look graciously on him;     Lose not so noble a friend on vain suppose,     Nor with sour looks afflict his gentle heart.     [Aside to SATURNINUS]  My lord, be rul\'d by me,       be won at last;     Dissemble all your griefs and discontents.     You are but newly planted in your throne;     Lest, then, the people, and patricians too,     Upon a just survey take Titus\' part,     And so supplant you for ingratitude,       Which Rome reputes to be a heinous sin,     Yield at entreats, and then let me alone:     I\'ll find a day to massacre them all,     And raze their faction and their family,     The cruel father and his traitorous sons,     To whom I sued for my dear son\'s life;     And make them know what \'tis to let a queen     Kneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain.-     Come, come, sweet Emperor; come, Andronicus.     Take up this good old man, and cheer the heart     That dies in tempest of thy angry frown.   SATURNINUS. Rise, Titus, rise; my Empress hath prevail\'d.   TITUS. I thank your Majesty and her, my lord;     These words, these looks, infuse new life in me.   TAMORA. Titus, I am incorporate in Rome,     A Roman now adopted happily,     And must advise the Emperor for his good.     This day all quarrels die, Andronicus;     And let it be mine honour, good my lord,     That I have reconcil\'d your friends and you.       For you, Prince Bassianus, I have pass\'d     My word and promise to the Emperor     That you will be more mild and tractable.     And fear not, lords- and you, Lavinia.     By my advice, all humbled on your knees,     You shall ask pardon of his Majesty.   LUCIUS. We do, and vow to heaven and to his Highness     That what we did was mildly as we might,     Tend\'ring our sister\'s honour and our own.   MARCUS. That on mine honour here do I protest.   SATURNINUS. Away, and talk not; trouble us no more.   TAMORA. Nay, nay, sweet Emperor, we must all be friends.     The Tribune and his nephews kneel for grace.     I will not be denied. Sweet heart, look back.   SATURNINUS. Marcus, for thy sake, and thy brother\'s here,     And at my lovely Tamora\'s entreats,     I do remit these young men\'s heinous faults.     Stand up.     Lavinia, though you left me like a churl,     I found a friend; and sure as death I swore       I would not part a bachelor from the priest.     Come, if the Emperor\'s court can feast two brides,     You are my guest, Lavinia, and your friends.     This day shall be a love-day, Tamora.   TITUS. To-morrow, and it please your Majesty     To hunt the panther and the hart with me,     With horn and hound we\'ll give your Grace bonjour.   SATURNINUS. Be it so, Titus, and gramercy too.                                           Exeunt. Sound trumpets     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. Rome. Before the palace  Enter AARON    AARON. Now climbeth Tamora Olympus\' top,     Safe out of Fortune\'s shot, and sits aloft,     Secure of thunder\'s crack or lightning flash,     Advanc\'d above pale envy\'s threat\'ning reach.     As when the golden sun salutes the morn,     And, having gilt the ocean with his beams,     Gallops the zodiac in his glistening coach     And overlooks the highest-peering hills,     So Tamora.     Upon her wit doth earthly honour wait,     And virtue stoops and trembles at her frown.     Then, Aaron, arm thy heart and fit thy thoughts     To mount aloft with thy imperial mistress,     And mount her pitch whom thou in triumph long.     Hast prisoner held, fett\'red in amorous chains,     And faster bound to Aaron\'s charming eyes     Than is Prometheus tied to Caucasus.       Away with slavish weeds and servile thoughts!     I will be bright and shine in pearl and gold,     To wait upon this new-made emperess.     To wait, said I? To wanton with this queen,     This goddess, this Semiramis, this nymph,     This siren that will charm Rome\'s Saturnine,     And see his shipwreck and his commonweal\'s.     Hullo! what storm is this?              Enter CHIRON and DEMETRIUS, braving    DEMETRIUS. Chiron, thy years wants wit, thy wits wants edge     And manners, to intrude where I am grac\'d,     And may, for aught thou knowest, affected be.   CHIRON. Demetrius, thou dost over-ween in all;     And so in this, to bear me down with braves.     \'Tis not the difference of a year or two     Makes me less gracious or thee more fortunate:     I am as able and as fit as thou     To serve and to deserve my mistress\' grace;       And that my sword upon thee shall approve,     And plead my passions for Lavinia\'s love.   AARON.  [Aside]  Clubs, clubs! These lovers will not keep the     peace.   DEMETRIUS. Why, boy, although our mother, unadvis\'d,     Gave you a dancing rapier by your side,     Are you so desperate grown to threat your friends?     Go to; have your lath glued within your sheath     Till you know better how to handle it.   CHIRON. Meanwhile, sir, with the little skill I have,     Full well shalt thou perceive how much I dare.   DEMETRIUS. Ay, boy, grow ye so brave?              [They draw]   AARON.  [Coming forward]  Why, how now, lords!     So near the Emperor\'s palace dare ye draw     And maintain such a quarrel openly?     Full well I wot the ground of all this grudge:     I would not for a million of gold     The cause were known to them it most concerns;     Nor would your noble mother for much more     Be so dishonoured in the court of Rome.       For shame, put up.   DEMETRIUS. Not I, till I have sheath\'d     My rapier in his bosom, and withal     Thrust those reproachful speeches down his throat     That he hath breath\'d in my dishonour here.   CHIRON. For that I am prepar\'d and full resolv\'d,     Foul-spoken coward, that thund\'rest with thy tongue,     And with thy weapon nothing dar\'st perform.   AARON. Away, I say!     Now, by the gods that warlike Goths adore,     This pretty brabble will undo us all.     Why, lords, and think you not how dangerous     It is to jet upon a prince\'s right?     What, is Lavinia then become so loose,     Or Bassianus so degenerate,     That for her love such quarrels may be broach\'d     Without controlment, justice, or revenge?     Young lords, beware; an should the Empress know     This discord\'s ground, the music would not please.   CHIRON. I care not, I, knew she and all the world:       I love Lavinia more than all the world.   DEMETRIUS. Youngling, learn thou to make some meaner choice:     Lavina is thine elder brother\'s hope.   AARON. Why, are ye mad, or know ye not in Rome     How furious and impatient they be,     And cannot brook competitors in love?     I tell you, lords, you do but plot your deaths     By this device.   CHIRON. Aaron, a thousand deaths     Would I propose to achieve her whom I love.   AARON. To achieve her- how?   DEMETRIUS. Why mak\'st thou it so strange?     She is a woman, therefore may be woo\'d;     She is a woman, therefore may be won;     She is Lavinia, therefore must be lov\'d.     What, man! more water glideth by the mill     Than wots the miller of; and easy it is     Of a cut loaf to steal a shive, we know.     Though Bassianus be the Emperor\'s brother,     Better than he have worn Vulcan\'s badge.     AARON.  [Aside]  Ay, and as good as Saturninus may.   DEMETRIUS. Then why should he despair that knows to court it     With words, fair looks, and liberality?     What, hast not thou full often struck a doe,     And borne her cleanly by the keeper\'s nose?   AARON. Why, then, it seems some certain snatch or so     Would serve your turns.   CHIRON. Ay, so the turn were served.   DEMETRIUS. Aaron, thou hast hit it.   AARON. Would you had hit it too!     Then should not we be tir\'d with this ado.     Why, hark ye, hark ye! and are you such fools     To square for this? Would it offend you, then,     That both should speed?   CHIRON. Faith, not me.   DEMETRIUS. Nor me, so I were one.   AARON. For shame, be friends, and join for that you jar.     \'Tis policy and stratagem must do     That you affect; and so must you resolve     That what you cannot as you would achieve,       You must perforce accomplish as you may.     Take this of me: Lucrece was not more chaste     Than this Lavinia, Bassianus\' love.     A speedier course than ling\'ring languishment     Must we pursue, and I have found the path.     My lords, a solemn hunting is in hand;     There will the lovely Roman ladies troop;     The forest walks are wide and spacious,     And many unfrequented plots there are     Fitted by kind for rape and villainy.     Single you thither then this dainty doe,     And strike her home by force if not by words.     This way, or not at all, stand you in hope.     Come, come, our Empress, with her sacred wit     To villainy and vengeance consecrate,     Will we acquaint with all what we intend;     And she shall file our engines with advice     That will not suffer you to square yourselves,     But to your wishes\' height advance you both.     The Emperor\'s court is like the house of Fame,       The palace full of tongues, of eyes, and ears;     The woods are ruthless, dreadful, deaf, and dull.     There speak and strike, brave boys, and take your turns;     There serve your lust, shadowed from heaven\'s eye,     And revel in Lavinia\'s treasury.   CHIRON. Thy counsel, lad, smells of no cowardice.   DEMETRIUS. Sit fas aut nefas, till I find the stream     To cool this heat, a charm to calm these fits,     Per Styga, per manes vehor.                           Exeunt     SCENE II. A forest near Rome  Enter TITUS ANDRONICUS, and his three sons, LUCIUS, QUINTUS, MARTIUS, making a noise with hounds and horns; and MARCUS    TITUS. The hunt is up, the morn is bright and grey,     The fields are fragrant, and the woods are green.     Uncouple here, and let us make a bay,     And wake the Emperor and his lovely bride,     And rouse the Prince, and ring a hunter\'s peal,     That all the court may echo with the noise.     Sons, let it be your charge, as it is ours,     To attend the Emperor\'s person carefully.     I have been troubled in my sleep this night,     But dawning day new comfort hath inspir\'d.           Here a cry of hounds, and wind horns in a peal.        Then enter SATURNINUS, TAMORA, BASSIANUS LAVINIA,             CHIRON, DEMETRIUS, and their attendants       Many good morrows to your Majesty!     Madam, to you as many and as good!     I promised your Grace a hunter\'s peal.   SATURNINUS. And you have rung it lustily, my lords-     Somewhat too early for new-married ladies.   BASSIANUS. Lavinia, how say you?   LAVINIA. I say no;     I have been broad awake two hours and more.   SATURNINUS. Come on then, horse and chariots let us have,     And to our sport.  [To TAMORA]  Madam, now shall ye see     Our Roman hunting.   MARCUS. I have dogs, my lord,     Will rouse the proudest panther in the chase,     And climb the highest promontory top.   TITUS. And I have horse will follow where the game     Makes way, and run like swallows o\'er the plain.   DEMETRIUS. Chiron, we hunt not, we, with horse nor hound,     But hope to pluck a dainty doe to ground.             Exeunt     SCENE III. A lonely part of the forest  Enter AARON alone, with a bag of gold    AARON. He that had wit would think that I had none,     To bury so much gold under a tree     And never after to inherit it.     Let him that thinks of me so abjectly     Know that this gold must coin a stratagem,     Which, cunningly effected, will beget     A very excellent piece of villainy.     And so repose, sweet gold, for their unrest                                                 [Hides the gold]     That have their alms out of the Empress\' chest.                 Enter TAMORA alone, to the Moor    TAMORA. My lovely Aaron, wherefore look\'st thou sad     When everything does make a gleeful boast?     The birds chant melody on every bush;     The snakes lie rolled in the cheerful sun;       The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind     And make a chequer\'d shadow on the ground;     Under their sweet shade, Aaron, let us sit,     And while the babbling echo mocks the hounds,     Replying shrilly to the well-tun\'d horns,     As if a double hunt were heard at once,     Let us sit down and mark their yellowing noise;     And- after conflict such as was suppos\'d     The wand\'ring prince and Dido once enjoyed,     When with a happy storm they were surpris\'d,     And curtain\'d with a counsel-keeping cave-     We may, each wreathed in the other\'s arms,     Our pastimes done, possess a golden slumber,     Whiles hounds and horns and sweet melodious birds     Be unto us as is a nurse\'s song     Of lullaby to bring her babe asleep.   AARON. Madam, though Venus govern your desires,     Saturn is dominator over mine.     What signifies my deadly-standing eye,     My silence and my cloudy melancholy,       My fleece of woolly hair that now uncurls     Even as an adder when she doth unroll     To do some fatal execution?     No, madam, these are no venereal signs.     Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,     Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.     Hark, Tamora, the empress of my soul,     Which never hopes more heaven than rests in thee-     This is the day of doom for Bassianus;     His Philomel must lose her tongue to-day,     Thy sons make pillage of her chastity,     And wash their hands in Bassianus\' blood.     Seest thou this letter? Take it up, I pray thee,     And give the King this fatal-plotted scroll.     Now question me no more; we are espied.     Here comes a parcel of our hopeful booty,     Which dreads not yet their lives\' destruction.                  Enter BASSIANUS and LAVINIA      TAMORA. Ah, my sweet Moor, sweeter to me than life!   AARON. No more, great Empress: Bassianus comes.     Be cross with him; and I\'ll go fetch thy sons     To back thy quarrels, whatsoe\'er they be.               Exit   BASSIANUS. Who have we here? Rome\'s royal Emperess,     Unfurnish\'d of her well-beseeming troop?     Or is it Dian, habited like her,     Who hath abandoned her holy groves     To see the general hunting in this forest?   TAMORA. Saucy controller of my private steps!     Had I the pow\'r that some say Dian had,     Thy temples should be planted presently     With horns, as was Actaeon\'s; and the hounds     Should drive upon thy new-transformed limbs,     Unmannerly intruder as thou art!   LAVINIA. Under your patience, gentle Emperess,     \'Tis thought you have a goodly gift in horning,     And to be doubted that your Moor and you     Are singled forth to try thy experiments.     Jove shield your husband from his hounds to-day!       \'Tis pity they should take him for a stag.   BASSIANUS. Believe me, Queen, your swarth Cimmerian     Doth make your honour of his body\'s hue,     Spotted, detested, and abominable.     Why are you sequest\'red from all your train,     Dismounted from your snow-white goodly steed,     And wand\'red hither to an obscure plot,     Accompanied but with a barbarous Moor,     If foul desire had not conducted you?   LAVINIA. And, being intercepted in your sport,     Great reason that my noble lord be rated     For sauciness. I pray you let us hence,     And let her joy her raven-coloured love;     This valley fits the purpose passing well.   BASSIANUS. The King my brother shall have notice of this.   LAVINIA. Ay, for these slips have made him noted long.     Good king, to be so mightily abused!   TAMORA. Why, I have patience to endure all this.                    Enter CHIRON and DEMETRIUS      DEMETRIUS. How now, dear sovereign, and our gracious mother!     Why doth your Highness look so pale and wan?   TAMORA. Have I not reason, think you, to look pale?     These two have \'ticed me hither to this place.     A barren detested vale you see it is:     The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,     Overcome with moss and baleful mistletoe;     Here never shines the sun; here nothing breeds,     Unless the nightly owl or fatal raven.     And when they show\'d me this abhorred pit,     They told me, here, at dead time of the night,     A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,     Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,     Would make such fearful and confused cries     As any mortal body hearing it     Should straight fall mad or else die suddenly.     No sooner had they told this hellish tale     But straight they told me they would bind me here     Unto the body of a dismal yew,       And leave me to this miserable death.     And then they call\'d me foul adulteress,     Lascivious Goth, and all the bitterest terms     That ever ear did hear to such effect;     And had you not by wondrous fortune come,     This vengeance on me had they executed.     Revenge it, as you love your mother\'s life,     Or be ye not henceforth call\'d my children.   DEMETRIUS. This is a witness that I am thy son.                                                [Stabs BASSIANUS]   CHIRON. And this for me, struck home to show my strength.                                                     [Also stabs]   LAVINIA. Ay, come, Semiramis- nay, barbarous Tamora,     For no name fits thy nature but thy own!   TAMORA. Give me the poniard; you shall know, my boys,     Your mother\'s hand shall right your mother\'s wrong.   DEMETRIUS. Stay, madam, here is more belongs to her;     First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw.     This minion stood upon her chastity,     Upon her nuptial vow, her loyalty,       And with that painted hope braves your mightiness;     And shall she carry this unto her grave?   CHIRON. An if she do, I would I were an eunuch.     Drag hence her husband to some secret hole,     And make his dead trunk pillow to our lust.   TAMORA. But when ye have the honey we desire,     Let not this wasp outlive, us both to sting.   CHIRON. I warrant you, madam, we will make that sure.     Come, mistress, now perforce we will enjoy     That nice-preserved honesty of yours.   LAVINIA. O Tamora! thou bearest a woman\'s face-   TAMORA. I will not hear her speak; away with her!   LAVINIA. Sweet lords, entreat her hear me but a word.   DEMETRIUS. Listen, fair madam: let it be your glory     To see her tears; but be your heart to them     As unrelenting flint to drops of rain.   LAVINIA. When did the tiger\'s young ones teach the dam?     O, do not learn her wrath- she taught it thee;     The milk thou suck\'dst from her did turn to marble,     Even at thy teat thou hadst thy tyranny.       Yet every mother breeds not sons alike:     [To CHIRON]  Do thou entreat her show a woman\'s pity.   CHIRON. What, wouldst thou have me prove myself a bastard?   LAVINIA. \'Tis true, the raven doth not hatch a lark.     Yet have I heard- O, could I find it now!-     The lion, mov\'d with pity, did endure     To have his princely paws par\'d all away.     Some say that ravens foster forlorn children,     The whilst their own birds famish in their nests;     O, be to me, though thy hard heart say no,     Nothing so kind, but something pitiful!   TAMORA. I know not what it means; away with her!   LAVINIA. O, let me teach thee! For my father\'s sake,     That gave thee life when well he might have slain thee,     Be not obdurate, open thy deaf ears.   TAMORA. Hadst thou in person ne\'er offended me,     Even for his sake am I pitiless.     Remember, boys, I pour\'d forth tears in vain     To save your brother from the sacrifice;     But fierce Andronicus would not relent.       Therefore away with her, and use her as you will;     The worse to her the better lov\'d of me.   LAVINIA. O Tamora, be call\'d a gentle queen,     And with thine own hands kill me in this place!     For \'tis not life that I have begg\'d so long;     Poor I was slain when Bassianus died.   TAMORA. What beg\'st thou, then? Fond woman, let me go.   LAVINIA. \'Tis present death I beg; and one thing more,     That womanhood denies my tongue to tell:     O, keep me from their worse than killing lust,     And tumble me into some loathsome pit,     Where never man\'s eye may behold my body;     Do this, and be a charitable murderer.   TAMORA. So should I rob my sweet sons of their fee;     No, let them satisfy their lust on thee.   DEMETRIUS. Away! for thou hast stay\'d us here too long.   LAVINIA. No grace? no womanhood? Ah, beastly creature,     The blot and enemy to our general name!     Confusion fall-   CHIRON. Nay, then I\'ll stop your mouth. Bring thou her husband.       This is the hole where Aaron bid us hide him.                   DEMETRIUS throws the body            of BASSIANUS into the pit; then exeunt          DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, dragging off LAVINIA    TAMORA. Farewell, my sons; see that you make her sure.     Ne\'er let my heart know merry cheer indeed     Till all the Andronici be made away.     Now will I hence to seek my lovely Moor,     And let my spleenful sons this trull deflower.          Exit                    Re-enter AARON, with two              of TITUS\' sons, QUINTUS and MARTIUS    AARON. Come on, my lords, the better foot before;     Straight will I bring you to the loathsome pit     Where I espied the panther fast asleep.   QUINTUS. My sight is very dull, whate\'er it bodes.   MARTIUS. And mine, I promise you; were it not for shame,       Well could I leave our sport to sleep awhile.                                             [Falls into the pit]   QUINTUS. What, art thou fallen? What subtle hole is this,     Whose mouth is covered with rude-growing briers,     Upon whose leaves are drops of new-shed blood     As fresh as morning dew distill\'d on flowers?     A very fatal place it seems to me.     Speak, brother, hast thou hurt thee with the fall?   MARTIUS. O brother, with the dismal\'st object hurt     That ever eye with sight made heart lament!   AARON.  [Aside]  Now will I fetch the King to find them here,     That he thereby may have a likely guess     How these were they that made away his brother.         Exit   MARTIUS. Why dost not comfort me, and help me out     From this unhallow\'d and blood-stained hole?   QUINTUS. I am surprised with an uncouth fear;     A chilling sweat o\'er-runs my trembling joints;     My heart suspects more than mine eye can see.   MARTIUS. To prove thou hast a true divining heart,     Aaron and thou look down into this den,       And see a fearful sight of blood and death.   QUINTUS. Aaron is gone, and my compassionate heart     Will not permit mine eyes once to behold     The thing whereat it trembles by surmise;     O, tell me who it is, for ne\'er till now     Was I a child to fear I know not what.   MARTIUS. Lord Bassianus lies beray\'d in blood,     All on a heap, like to a slaughtered lamb,     In this detested, dark, blood-drinking pit.   QUINTUS. If it be dark, how dost thou know \'tis he?   MARTIUS. Upon his bloody finger he doth wear     A precious ring that lightens all this hole,     Which, like a taper in some monument,     Doth shine upon the dead man\'s earthy cheeks,     And shows the ragged entrails of this pit;     So pale did shine the moon on Pyramus     When he by night lay bath\'d in maiden blood.     O brother, help me with thy fainting hand-     If fear hath made thee faint, as me it hath-     Out of this fell devouring receptacle,       As hateful as Cocytus\' misty mouth.   QUINTUS. Reach me thy hand, that I may help thee out,     Or, wanting strength to do thee so much good,     I may be pluck\'d into the swallowing womb     Of this deep pit, poor Bassianus\' grave.     I have no strength to pluck thee to the brink.   MARTIUS. Nor I no strength to climb without thy help.   QUINTUS. Thy hand once more; I will not loose again,     Till thou art here aloft, or I below.     Thou canst not come to me- I come to thee.        [Falls in]              Enter the EMPEROR and AARON the Moor    SATURNINUS. Along with me! I\'ll see what hole is here,     And what he is that now is leapt into it.     Say, who art thou that lately didst descend     Into this gaping hollow of the earth?   MARTIUS. The unhappy sons of old Andronicus,     Brought hither in a most unlucky hour,     To find thy brother Bassianus dead.     SATURNINUS. My brother dead! I know thou dost but jest:     He and his lady both are at the lodge     Upon the north side of this pleasant chase;     \'Tis not an hour since I left them there.   MARTIUS. We know not where you left them all alive;     But, out alas! here have we found him dead.                     Re-enter TAMORA, with          attendants; TITUS ANDRONICUS and Lucius    TAMORA. Where is my lord the King?   SATURNINUS. Here, Tamora; though griev\'d with killing grief.   TAMORA. Where is thy brother Bassianus?   SATURNINUS. Now to the bottom dost thou search my wound;     Poor Bassianus here lies murdered.   TAMORA. Then all too late I bring this fatal writ,     The complot of this timeless tragedy;     And wonder greatly that man\'s face can fold     In pleasing smiles such murderous tyranny.                                  [She giveth SATURNINE a letter]       SATURNINUS.  [Reads]  \'An if we miss to meet him handsomely,     Sweet huntsman- Bassianus \'tis we mean-     Do thou so much as dig the grave for him.     Thou know\'st our meaning. Look for thy reward     Among the nettles at the elder-tree     Which overshades the mouth of that same pit     Where we decreed to bury Bassianus.     Do this, and purchase us thy lasting friends.\'     O Tamora! was ever heard the like?     This is the pit and this the elder-tree.     Look, sirs, if you can find the huntsman out     That should have murdered Bassianus here.   AARON. My gracious lord, here is the bag of gold.   SATURNINUS.  [To TITUS]  Two of thy whelps, fell curs of bloody       kind,     Have here bereft my brother of his life.     Sirs, drag them from the pit unto the prison;     There let them bide until we have devis\'d     Some never-heard-of torturing pain for them.   TAMORA. What, are they in this pit? O wondrous thing!       How easily murder is discovered!   TITUS. High Emperor, upon my feeble knee     I beg this boon, with tears not lightly shed,     That this fell fault of my accursed sons-     Accursed if the fault be prov\'d in them-   SATURNINUS. If it be prov\'d! You see it is apparent.     Who found this letter? Tamora, was it you?   TAMORA. Andronicus himself did take it up.   TITUS. I did, my lord, yet let me be their bail;     For, by my fathers\' reverend tomb, I vow     They shall be ready at your Highness\' will     To answer their suspicion with their lives.   SATURNINUS. Thou shalt not bail them; see thou follow me.     Some bring the murdered body, some the murderers;     Let them not speak a word- the guilt is plain;     For, by my soul, were there worse end than death,     That end upon them should be executed.   TAMORA. Andronicus, I will entreat the King.     Fear not thy sons; they shall do well enough.   TITUS. Come, Lucius, come; stay not to talk with them.     Exeunt     SCENE IV. Another part of the forest  Enter the Empress\' sons, DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, with LAVINIA, her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out, and ravish\'d    DEMETRIUS. So, now go tell, an if thy tongue can speak,     Who \'twas that cut thy tongue and ravish\'d thee.   CHIRON. Write down thy mind, bewray thy meaning so,     An if thy stumps will let thee play the scribe.   DEMETRIUS. See how with signs and tokens she can scrowl.   CHIRON. Go home, call for sweet water, wash thy hands.   DEMETRIUS. She hath no tongue to call, nor hands to wash;     And so let\'s leave her to her silent walks.   CHIRON. An \'twere my cause, I should go hang myself.   DEMETRIUS. If thou hadst hands to help thee knit the cord.                                      Exeunt DEMETRIUS and CHIRON             Wind horns. Enter MARCUS, from hunting    MARCUS. Who is this?- my niece, that flies away so fast?       Cousin, a word: where is your husband?     If I do dream, would all my wealth would wake me!     If I do wake, some planet strike me down,     That I may slumber an eternal sleep!     Speak, gentle niece. What stern ungentle hands     Hath lopp\'d, and hew\'d, and made thy body bare     Of her two branches- those sweet ornaments     Whose circling shadows kings have sought to sleep in,     And might not gain so great a happiness     As half thy love? Why dost not speak to me?     Alas, a crimson river of warm blood,     Like to a bubbling fountain stirr\'d with wind,     Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips,     Coming and going with thy honey breath.     But sure some Tereus hath deflowered thee,     And, lest thou shouldst detect him, cut thy tongue.     Ah, now thou turn\'st away thy face for shame!     And notwithstanding all this loss of blood-     As from a conduit with three issuing spouts-     Yet do thy cheeks look red as Titan\'s face       Blushing to be encount\'red with a cloud.     Shall I speak for thee? Shall I say \'tis so?     O, that I knew thy heart, and knew the beast,     That I might rail at him to ease my mind!     Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp\'d,     Doth burn the heart to cinders where it is.     Fair Philomel, why she but lost her tongue,     And in a tedious sampler sew\'d her mind;     But, lovely niece, that mean is cut from thee.     A craftier Tereus, cousin, hast thou met,     And he hath cut those pretty fingers off     That could have better sew\'d than Philomel.     O, had the monster seen those lily hands     Tremble like aspen leaves upon a lute     And make the silken strings delight to kiss them,     He would not then have touch\'d them for his life!     Or had he heard the heavenly harmony     Which that sweet tongue hath made,     He would have dropp\'d his knife, and fell asleep,     As Cerberus at the Thracian poet\'s feet.       Come, let us go, and make thy father blind,     For such a sight will blind a father\'s eye;     One hour\'s storm will drown the fragrant meads,     What will whole months of tears thy father\'s eyes?     Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee;     O, could our mourning case thy misery!                Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. Rome. A street  Enter the JUDGES, TRIBUNES, and SENATORS, with TITUS\' two sons MARTIUS and QUINTUS bound, passing on the stage to the place of execution, and TITUS going before, pleading    TITUS. Hear me, grave fathers; noble Tribunes, stay!     For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent     In dangerous wars whilst you securely slept;     For all my blood in Rome\'s great quarrel shed,     For all the frosty nights that I have watch\'d,     And for these bitter tears, which now you see     Filling the aged wrinkles in my cheeks,     Be pitiful to my condemned sons,     Whose souls are not corrupted as \'tis thought.     For two and twenty sons I never wept,     Because they died in honour\'s lofty bed.                           [ANDRONICUS lieth down, and the judges                      pass by him with the prisoners, and exeunt]     For these, Tribunes, in the dust I write       My heart\'s deep languor and my soul\'s sad tears.     Let my tears stanch the earth\'s dry appetite;     My sons\' sweet blood will make it shame and blush.     O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain     That shall distil from these two ancient urns,     Than youthful April shall with all his show\'rs.     In summer\'s drought I\'ll drop upon thee still;     In winter with warm tears I\'ll melt the snow     And keep eternal spring-time on thy face,     So thou refuse to drink my dear sons\' blood.               Enter Lucius with his weapon drawn      O reverend Tribunes! O gentle aged men!     Unbind my sons, reverse the doom of death,     And let me say, that never wept before,     My tears are now prevailing orators.   LUCIUS. O noble father, you lament in vain;     The Tribunes hear you not, no man is by,     And you recount your sorrows to a stone.     TITUS. Ah, Lucius, for thy brothers let me plead!     Grave Tribunes, once more I entreat of you.   LUCIUS. My gracious lord, no tribune hears you speak.   TITUS. Why, \'tis no matter, man: if they did hear,     They would not mark me; if they did mark,     They would not pity me; yet plead I must,     And bootless unto them.     Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones;     Who though they cannot answer my distress,     Yet in some sort they are better than the Tribunes,     For that they will not intercept my tale.     When I do weep, they humbly at my feet     Receive my tears, and seem to weep with me;     And were they but attired in grave weeds,     Rome could afford no tribunes like to these.     A stone is soft as wax: tribunes more hard than stones.     A stone is silent and offendeth not,     And tribunes with their tongues doom men to death.                                                          [Rises]     But wherefore stand\'st thou with thy weapon drawn?     LUCIUS. To rescue my two brothers from their death;     For which attempt the judges have pronounc\'d     My everlasting doom of banishment.   TITUS. O happy man! they have befriended thee.     Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive     That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers?     Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey     But me and mine; how happy art thou then     From these devourers to be banished!     But who comes with our brother Marcus here?                   Enter MARCUS with LAVINIA    MARCUS. Titus, prepare thy aged eyes to weep,     Or if not so, thy noble heart to break.     I bring consuming sorrow to thine age.   TITUS. Will it consume me? Let me see it then.   MARCUS. This was thy daughter.   TITUS. Why, Marcus, so she is.   LUCIUS. Ay me! this object kills me.     TITUS. Faint-hearted boy, arise, and look upon her.     Speak, Lavinia, what accursed hand     Hath made thee handless in thy father\'s sight?     What fool hath added water to the sea,     Or brought a fagot to bright-burning Troy?     My grief was at the height before thou cam\'st,     And now like Nilus it disdaineth bounds.     Give me a sword, I\'ll chop off my hands too,     For they have fought for Rome, and all in vain;     And they have nurs\'d this woe in feeding life;     In bootless prayer have they been held up,     And they have serv\'d me to effectless use.     Now all the service I require of them     Is that the one will help to cut the other.     \'Tis well, Lavinia, that thou hast no hands;     For hands to do Rome service is but vain.   LUCIUS. Speak, gentle sister, who hath martyr\'d thee?   MARCUS. O, that delightful engine of her thoughts     That blabb\'d them with such pleasing eloquence     Is torn from forth that pretty hollow cage,       Where like a sweet melodious bird it sung     Sweet varied notes, enchanting every ear!   LUCIUS. O, say thou for her, who hath done this deed?   MARCUS. O, thus I found her straying in the park,     Seeking to hide herself as doth the deer     That hath receiv\'d some unrecuring wound.   TITUS. It was my dear, and he that wounded her     Hath hurt me more than had he kill\'d me dead;     For now I stand as one upon a rock,     Environ\'d with a wilderness of sea,     Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave,     Expecting ever when some envious surge     Will in his brinish bowels swallow him.     This way to death my wretched sons are gone;     Here stands my other son, a banish\'d man,     And here my brother, weeping at my woes.     But that which gives my soul the greatest spurn     Is dear Lavinia, dearer than my soul.     Had I but seen thy picture in this plight,     It would have madded me; what shall I do       Now I behold thy lively body so?     Thou hast no hands to wipe away thy tears,     Nor tongue to tell me who hath martyr\'d thee;     Thy husband he is dead, and for his death     Thy brothers are condemn\'d, and dead by this.     Look, Marcus! Ah, son Lucius, look on her!     When I did name her brothers, then fresh tears     Stood on her cheeks, as doth the honey dew     Upon a gath\'red lily almost withered.   MARCUS. Perchance she weeps because they kill\'d her husband;     Perchance because she knows them innocent.   TITUS. If they did kill thy husband, then be joyful,     Because the law hath ta\'en revenge on them.     No, no, they would not do so foul a deed;     Witness the sorrow that their sister makes.     Gentle Lavinia, let me kiss thy lips,     Or make some sign how I may do thee ease.     Shall thy good uncle and thy brother Lucius     And thou and I sit round about some fountain,     Looking all downwards to behold our cheeks       How they are stain\'d, like meadows yet not dry     With miry slime left on them by a flood?     And in the fountain shall we gaze so long,     Till the fresh taste be taken from that clearness,     And made a brine-pit with our bitter tears?     Or shall we cut away our hands like thine?     Or shall we bite our tongues, and in dumb shows     Pass the remainder of our hateful days?     What shall we do? Let us that have our tongues     Plot some device of further misery     To make us wonder\'d at in time to come.   LUCIUS. Sweet father, cease your tears; for at your grief     See how my wretched sister sobs and weeps.   MARCUS. Patience, dear niece. Good Titus, dry thine eyes.   TITUS. Ah, Marcus, Marcus! Brother, well I wot     Thy napkin cannot drink a tear of mine,     For thou, poor man, hast drown\'d it with thine own.   LUCIUS. Ah, my Lavinia, I will wipe thy cheeks.   TITUS. Mark, Marcus, mark! I understand her signs.     Had she a tongue to speak, now would she say       That to her brother which I said to thee:     His napkin, with his true tears all bewet,     Can do no service on her sorrowful cheeks.     O, what a sympathy of woe is this     As far from help as Limbo is from bliss!                     Enter AARON the Moor    AARON. Titus Andronicus, my lord the Emperor     Sends thee this word, that, if thou love thy sons,     Let Marcus, Lucius, or thyself, old Titus,     Or any one of you, chop off your hand     And send it to the King: he for the same     Will send thee hither both thy sons alive,     And that shall be the ransom for their fault.   TITUS. O gracious Emperor! O gentle Aaron!     Did ever raven sing so like a lark     That gives sweet tidings of the sun\'s uprise?     With all my heart I\'ll send the Emperor my hand.     Good Aaron, wilt thou help to chop it off?     LUCIUS. Stay, father! for that noble hand of thine,     That hath thrown down so many enemies,     Shall not be sent. My hand will serve the turn,     My youth can better spare my blood than you,     And therefore mine shall save my brothers\' lives.   MARCUS. Which of your hands hath not defended Rome     And rear\'d aloft the bloody battle-axe,     Writing destruction on the enemy\'s castle?     O, none of both but are of high desert!     My hand hath been but idle; let it serve     To ransom my two nephews from their death;     Then have I kept it to a worthy end.   AARON. Nay, come, agree whose hand shall go along,     For fear they die before their pardon come.   MARCUS. My hand shall go.   LUCIUS. By heaven, it shall not go!   TITUS. Sirs, strive no more; such with\'red herbs as these     Are meet for plucking up, and therefore mine.   LUCIUS. Sweet father, if I shall be thought thy son,     Let me redeem my brothers both from death.     MARCUS. And for our father\'s sake and mother\'s care,     Now let me show a brother\'s love to thee.   TITUS. Agree between you; I will spare my hand.   LUCIUS. Then I\'ll go fetch an axe.   MARCUS. But I will use the axe.                                         Exeunt LUCIUS and MARCUS   TITUS. Come hither, Aaron, I\'ll deceive them both;     Lend me thy hand, and I will give thee mine.   AARON.  [Aside]  If that be call\'d deceit, I will be honest,     And never whilst I live deceive men so;     But I\'ll deceive you in another sort,     And that you\'ll say ere half an hour pass.                                        [He cuts off TITUS\' hand]                   Re-enter LUCIUS and MARCUS   TITUS. Now stay your strife. What shall be is dispatch\'d.     Good Aaron, give his Majesty my hand;     Tell him it was a hand that warded him     From thousand dangers; bid him bury it.     More hath it merited- that let it have.       As for my sons, say I account of them     As jewels purchas\'d at an easy price;     And yet dear too, because I bought mine own.   AARON. I go, Andronicus; and for thy hand     Look by and by to have thy sons with thee.     [Aside]  Their heads I mean. O, how this villainy     Doth fat me with the very thoughts of it!     Let fools do good, and fair men call for grace:     Aaron will have his soul black like his face.           Exit   TITUS. O, here I lift this one hand up to heaven,     And bow this feeble ruin to the earth;     If any power pities wretched tears,     To that I call!  [To LAVINIA]  What, would\'st thou kneel with me?     Do, then, dear heart; for heaven shall hear our prayers,     Or with our sighs we\'ll breathe the welkin dim     And stain the sun with fog, as sometime clouds     When they do hug him in their melting bosoms.   MARCUS. O brother, speak with possibility,     And do not break into these deep extremes.   TITUS. Is not my sorrow deep, having no bottom?       Then be my passions bottomless with them.   MARCUS. But yet let reason govern thy lament.   TITUS. If there were reason for these miseries,     Then into limits could I bind my woes.     When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o\'erflow?     If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad,     Threat\'ning the welkin with his big-swol\'n face?     And wilt thou have a reason for this coil?     I am the sea; hark how her sighs do blow.     She is the weeping welkin, I the earth;     Then must my sea be moved with her sighs;     Then must my earth with her continual tears     Become a deluge, overflow\'d and drown\'d;     For why my bowels cannot hide her woes,     But like a drunkard must I vomit them.     Then give me leave; for losers will have leave     To ease their stomachs with their bitter tongues.          Enter a MESSENGER, with two heads and a hand      MESSENGER. Worthy Andronicus, ill art thou repaid     For that good hand thou sent\'st the Emperor.     Here are the heads of thy two noble sons;     And here\'s thy hand, in scorn to thee sent back-     Thy grief their sports, thy resolution mock\'d,     That woe is me to think upon thy woes,     More than remembrance of my father\'s death.             Exit   MARCUS. Now let hot Aetna cool in Sicily,     And be my heart an ever-burning hell!     These miseries are more than may be borne.     To weep with them that weep doth ease some deal,     But sorrow flouted at is double death.   LUCIUS. Ah, that this sight should make so deep a wound,     And yet detested life not shrink thereat!     That ever death should let life bear his name,     Where life hath no more interest but to breathe!                                           [LAVINIA kisses TITUS]   MARCUS. Alas, poor heart, that kiss is comfortless     As frozen water to a starved snake.   TITUS. When will this fearful slumber have an end?     MARCUS. Now farewell, flatt\'ry; die, Andronicus.     Thou dost not slumber: see thy two sons\' heads,     Thy warlike hand, thy mangled daughter here;     Thy other banish\'d son with this dear sight     Struck pale and bloodless; and thy brother, I,     Even like a stony image, cold and numb.     Ah! now no more will I control thy griefs.     Rent off thy silver hair, thy other hand     Gnawing with thy teeth; and be this dismal sight     The closing up of our most wretched eyes.     Now is a time to storm; why art thou still?   TITUS. Ha, ha, ha!   MARCUS. Why dost thou laugh? It fits not with this hour.   TITUS. Why, I have not another tear to shed;     Besides, this sorrow is an enemy,     And would usurp upon my wat\'ry eyes     And make them blind with tributary tears.     Then which way shall I find Revenge\'s cave?     For these two heads do seem to speak to me,     And threat me I shall never come to bliss       Till all these mischiefs be return\'d again     Even in their throats that have committed them.     Come, let me see what task I have to do.     You heavy people, circle me about,     That I may turn me to each one of you     And swear unto my soul to right your wrongs.     The vow is made. Come, brother, take a head,     And in this hand the other will I bear.     And, Lavinia, thou shalt be employ\'d in this;     Bear thou my hand, sweet wench, between thy teeth.     As for thee, boy, go, get thee from my sight;     Thou art an exile, and thou must not stay.     Hie to the Goths and raise an army there;     And if ye love me, as I think you do,     Let\'s kiss and part, for we have much to do.                                            Exeunt all but Lucius   LUCIUS. Farewell, Andronicus, my noble father,     The woefull\'st man that ever liv\'d in Rome.     Farewell, proud Rome; till Lucius come again,     He leaves his pledges dearer than his life.       Farewell, Lavinia, my noble sister;     O, would thou wert as thou tofore hast been!     But now nor Lucius nor Lavinia lives     But in oblivion and hateful griefs.     If Lucius live, he will requite your wrongs     And make proud Saturnine and his emperess     Beg at the gates like Tarquin and his queen.     Now will I to the Goths, and raise a pow\'r     To be reveng\'d on Rome and Saturnine.                   Exit     SCENE II. Rome. TITUS\' house  A banquet.  Enter TITUS, MARCUS, LAVINIA, and the boy YOUNG LUCIUS    TITUS. So so, now sit; and look you eat no more     Than will preserve just so much strength in us     As will revenge these bitter woes of ours.     Marcus, unknit that sorrow-wreathen knot;     Thy niece and I, poor creatures, want our hands,     And cannot passionate our tenfold grief     With folded arms. This poor right hand of mine     Is left to tyrannize upon my breast;     Who, when my heart, all mad with misery,     Beats in this hollow prison of my flesh,     Then thus I thump it down.     [To LAVINIA]  Thou map of woe, that thus dost talk in signs!     When thy poor heart beats with outrageous beating,     Thou canst not strike it thus to make it still.     Wound it with sighing, girl, kill it with groans;     Or get some little knife between thy teeth       And just against thy heart make thou a hole,     That all the tears that thy poor eyes let fall     May run into that sink and, soaking in,     Drown the lamenting fool in sea-salt tears.   MARCUS. Fie, brother, fie! Teach her not thus to lay     Such violent hands upon her tender life.   TITUS. How now! Has sorrow made thee dote already?     Why, Marcus, no man should be mad but I.     What violent hands can she lay on her life?     Ah, wherefore dost thou urge the name of hands?     To bid Aeneas tell the tale twice o\'er     How Troy was burnt and he made miserable?     O, handle not the theme, to talk of hands,     Lest we remember still that we have none.     Fie, fie, how franticly I square my talk,     As if we should forget we had no hands,     If Marcus did not name the word of hands!     Come, let\'s fall to; and, gentle girl, eat this:     Here is no drink. Hark, Marcus, what she says-     I can interpret all her martyr\'d signs;       She says she drinks no other drink but tears,     Brew\'d with her sorrow, mesh\'d upon her cheeks.     Speechless complainer, I will learn thy thought;     In thy dumb action will I be as perfect     As begging hermits in their holy prayers.     Thou shalt not sigh, nor hold thy stumps to heaven,     Nor wink, nor nod, nor kneel, nor make a sign,     But I of these will wrest an alphabet,     And by still practice learn to know thy meaning.   BOY. Good grandsire, leave these bitter deep laments;     Make my aunt merry with some pleasing tale.   MARCUS. Alas, the tender boy, in passion mov\'d,     Doth weep to see his grandsire\'s heaviness.   TITUS. Peace, tender sapling; thou art made of tears,     And tears will quickly melt thy life away.                           [MARCUS strikes the dish with a knife]     What dost thou strike at, Marcus, with thy knife?   MARCUS. At that that I have kill\'d, my lord- a fly.   TITUS. Out on thee, murderer, thou kill\'st my heart!     Mine eyes are cloy\'d with view of tyranny;       A deed of death done on the innocent     Becomes not Titus\' brother. Get thee gone;     I see thou art not for my company.   MARCUS. Alas, my lord, I have but kill\'d a fly.   TITUS. \'But!\' How if that fly had a father and mother?     How would he hang his slender gilded wings     And buzz lamenting doings in the air!     Poor harmless fly,     That with his pretty buzzing melody     Came here to make us merry! And thou hast kill\'d him.   MARCUS. Pardon me, sir; it was a black ill-favour\'d fly,     Like to the Empress\' Moor; therefore I kill\'d him.   TITUS. O, O, O!     Then pardon me for reprehending thee,     For thou hast done a charitable deed.     Give me thy knife, I will insult on him,     Flattering myself as if it were the Moor     Come hither purposely to poison me.     There\'s for thyself, and that\'s for Tamora.     Ah, sirrah!       Yet, I think, we are not brought so low     But that between us we can kill a fly     That comes in likeness of a coal-black Moor.   MARCUS. Alas, poor man! grief has so wrought on him,     He takes false shadows for true substances.   TITUS. Come, take away. Lavinia, go with me;     I\'ll to thy closet, and go read with thee     Sad stories chanced in the times of old.     Come, boy, and go with me; thy sight is young,     And thou shalt read when mine begin to dazzle.        Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. Rome. TITUS\' garden  Enter YOUNG LUCIUS and LAVINIA running after him, and the boy flies from her with his books under his arm.  Enter TITUS and MARCUS    BOY. Help, grandsire, help! my aunt Lavinia     Follows me everywhere, I know not why.     Good uncle Marcus, see how swift she comes!     Alas, sweet aunt, I know not what you mean.   MARCUS. Stand by me, Lucius; do not fear thine aunt.   TITUS. She loves thee, boy, too well to do thee harm.   BOY. Ay, when my father was in Rome she did.   MARCUS. What means my niece Lavinia by these signs?   TITUS. Fear her not, Lucius; somewhat doth she mean.     See, Lucius, see how much she makes of thee.     Somewhither would she have thee go with her.     Ah, boy, Cornelia never with more care     Read to her sons than she hath read to thee     Sweet poetry and Tully\'s Orator.   MARCUS. Canst thou not guess wherefore she plies thee thus?     BOY. My lord, I know not, I, nor can I guess,     Unless some fit or frenzy do possess her;     For I have heard my grandsire say full oft     Extremity of griefs would make men mad;     And I have read that Hecuba of Troy     Ran mad for sorrow. That made me to fear;     Although, my lord, I know my noble aunt     Loves me as dear as e\'er my mother did,     And would not, but in fury, fright my youth;     Which made me down to throw my books, and fly-     Causeless, perhaps. But pardon me, sweet aunt;     And, madam, if my uncle Marcus go,     I will most willingly attend your ladyship.   MARCUS. Lucius, I will.           [LAVINIA turns over with her                      stumps the books which Lucius has let fall]   TITUS. How now, Lavinia! Marcus, what means this?     Some book there is that she desires to see.     Which is it, girl, of these?- Open them, boy.-     But thou art deeper read and better skill\'d;     Come and take choice of all my library,       And so beguile thy sorrow, till the heavens     Reveal the damn\'d contriver of this deed.     Why lifts she up her arms in sequence thus?   MARCUS. I think she means that there were more than one     Confederate in the fact; ay, more there was,     Or else to heaven she heaves them for revenge.   TITUS. Lucius, what book is that she tosseth so?   BOY. Grandsire, \'tis Ovid\'s Metamorphoses;     My mother gave it me.   MARCUS. For love of her that\'s gone,     Perhaps she cull\'d it from among the rest.   TITUS. Soft! So busily she turns the leaves! Help her.     What would she find? Lavinia, shall I read?     This is the tragic tale of Philomel     And treats of Tereus\' treason and his rape;     And rape, I fear, was root of thy annoy.   MARCUS. See, brother, see! Note how she quotes the leaves.   TITUS. Lavinia, wert thou thus surpris\'d, sweet girl,     Ravish\'d and wrong\'d as Philomela was,     Forc\'d in the ruthless, vast, and gloomy woods?       See, see!     Ay, such a place there is where we did hunt-     O, had we never, never hunted there!-     Pattern\'d by that the poet here describes,     By nature made for murders and for rapes.   MARCUS. O, why should nature build so foul a den,     Unless the gods delight in tragedies?   TITUS. Give signs, sweet girl, for here are none but friends,     What Roman lord it was durst do the deed.     Or slunk not Saturnine, as Tarquin erst,     That left the camp to sin in Lucrece\' bed?   MARCUS. Sit down, sweet niece; brother, sit down by me.     Apollo, Pallas, Jove, or Mercury,     Inspire me, that I may this treason find!     My lord, look here! Look here, Lavinia!                                     [He writes his name with his                        staff, and guides it with feet and mouth]     This sandy plot is plain; guide, if thou canst,     This after me. I have writ my name     Without the help of any hand at all.       Curs\'d be that heart that forc\'d us to this shift!     Write thou, good niece, and here display at last     What God will have discovered for revenge.     Heaven guide thy pen to print thy sorrows plain,     That we may know the traitors and the truth!                                [She takes the staff in her mouth                           and guides it with stumps, and writes]     O, do ye read, my lord, what she hath writ?   TITUS. \'Stuprum- Chiron- Demetrius.\'   MARCUS. What, what! the lustful sons of Tamora     Performers of this heinous bloody deed?   TITUS. Magni Dominator poli,     Tam lentus audis scelera? tam lentus vides?   MARCUS. O, calm thee, gentle lord! although I know     There is enough written upon this earth     To stir a mutiny in the mildest thoughts,     And arm the minds of infants to exclaims.     My lord, kneel down with me; Lavinia, kneel;     And kneel, sweet boy, the Roman Hector\'s hope;     And swear with me- as, with the woeful fere       And father of that chaste dishonoured dame,     Lord Junius Brutus sware for Lucrece\' rape-     That we will prosecute, by good advice,     Mortal revenge upon these traitorous Goths,     And see their blood or die with this reproach.   TITUS. \'Tis sure enough, an you knew how;     But if you hunt these bear-whelps, then beware:     The dam will wake; and if she wind ye once,     She\'s with the lion deeply still in league,     And lulls him whilst she playeth on her back,     And when he sleeps will she do what she list.     You are a young huntsman, Marcus; let alone;     And come, I will go get a leaf of brass,     And with a gad of steel will write these words,     And lay it by. The angry northern wind     Will blow these sands like Sibyl\'s leaves abroad,     And where\'s our lesson, then? Boy, what say you?   BOY. I say, my lord, that if I were a man     Their mother\'s bedchamber should not be safe     For these base bondmen to the yoke of Rome.     MARCUS. Ay, that\'s my boy! Thy father hath full oft     For his ungrateful country done the like.   BOY. And, uncle, so will I, an if I live.   TITUS. Come, go with me into mine armoury.     Lucius, I\'ll fit thee; and withal my boy     Shall carry from me to the Empress\' sons     Presents that I intend to send them both.     Come, come; thou\'lt do my message, wilt thou not?   BOY. Ay, with my dagger in their bosoms, grandsire.   TITUS. No, boy, not so; I\'ll teach thee another course.     Lavinia, come. Marcus, look to my house.     Lucius and I\'ll go brave it at the court;     Ay, marry, will we, sir! and we\'ll be waited on.                          Exeunt TITUS, LAVINIA, and YOUNG LUCIUS   MARCUS. O heavens, can you hear a good man groan     And not relent, or not compassion him?     Marcus, attend him in his ecstasy,     That hath more scars of sorrow in his heart     Than foemen\'s marks upon his batt\'red shield,     But yet so just that he will not revenge.       Revenge the heavens for old Andronicus!                 Exit     SCENE II. Rome. The palace  Enter AARON, DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, at one door; and at the other door, YOUNG LUCIUS and another with a bundle of weapons, and verses writ upon them    CHIRON. Demetrius, here\'s the son of Lucius;     He hath some message to deliver us.   AARON. Ay, some mad message from his mad grandfather.   BOY. My lords, with all the humbleness I may,     I greet your honours from Andronicus-     [Aside]  And pray the Roman gods confound you both!   DEMETRIUS. Gramercy, lovely Lucius. What\'s the news?   BOY.  [Aside]  That you are both decipher\'d, that\'s the news,     For villains mark\'d with rape.- May it please you,     My grandsire, well advis\'d, hath sent by me     The goodliest weapons of his armoury     To gratify your honourable youth,     The hope of Rome; for so he bid me say;     And so I do, and with his gifts present     Your lordships, that, whenever you have need,       You may be armed and appointed well.     And so I leave you both-  [Aside]  like bloody villains.                                Exeunt YOUNG LUCIUS and attendant   DEMETRIUS. What\'s here? A scroll, and written round about.     Let\'s see:     [Reads]  \'Integer vitae, scelerisque purus,     Non eget Mauri iaculis, nec arcu.\'   CHIRON. O, \'tis a verse in Horace, I know it well;     I read it in the grammar long ago.   AARON. Ay, just- a verse in Horace. Right, you have it.     [Aside]  Now, what a thing it is to be an ass!     Here\'s no sound jest! The old man hath found their guilt,     And sends them weapons wrapp\'d about with lines     That wound, beyond their feeling, to the quick.     But were our witty Empress well afoot,     She would applaud Andronicus\' conceit.     But let her rest in her unrest awhile-     And now, young lords, was\'t not a happy star     Led us to Rome, strangers, and more than so,     Captives, to be advanced to this height?       It did me good before the palace gate     To brave the Tribune in his brother\'s hearing.   DEMETRIUS. But me more good to see so great a lord     Basely insinuate and send us gifts.   AARON. Had he not reason, Lord Demetrius?     Did you not use his daughter very friendly?   DEMETRIUS. I would we had a thousand Roman dames     At such a bay, by turn to serve our lust.   CHIRON. A charitable wish and full of love.   AARON. Here lacks but your mother for to say amen.   CHIRON. And that would she for twenty thousand more.   DEMETRIUS. Come, let us go and pray to all the gods     For our beloved mother in her pains.   AARON.  [Aside]  Pray to the devils; the gods have given us over.                                                 [Trumpets sound]   DEMETRIUS. Why do the Emperor\'s trumpets flourish thus?   CHIRON. Belike, for joy the Emperor hath a son.   DEMETRIUS. Soft! who comes here?              Enter NURSE, with a blackamoor CHILD      NURSE. Good morrow, lords.     O, tell me, did you see Aaron the Moor?   AARON. Well, more or less, or ne\'er a whit at all,     Here Aaron is; and what with Aaron now?   NURSE. O gentle Aaron, we are all undone!     Now help, or woe betide thee evermore!   AARON. Why, what a caterwauling dost thou keep!     What dost thou wrap and fumble in thy arms?   NURSE. O, that which I would hide from heaven\'s eye:     Our Empress\' shame and stately Rome\'s disgrace!     She is delivered, lord; she is delivered.   AARON. To whom?   NURSE. I mean she is brought a-bed.   AARON. Well, God give her good rest! What hath he sent her?   NURSE. A devil.   AARON. Why, then she is the devil\'s dam;     A joyful issue.   NURSE. A joyless, dismal, black, and sorrowful issue!     Here is the babe, as loathsome as a toad       Amongst the fair-fac\'d breeders of our clime;     The Empress sends it thee, thy stamp, thy seal,     And bids thee christen it with thy dagger\'s point.   AARON. Zounds, ye whore! Is black so base a hue?     Sweet blowse, you are a beauteous blossom sure.   DEMETRIUS. Villain, what hast thou done?   AARON. That which thou canst not undo.   CHIRON. Thou hast undone our mother.   AARON. Villain, I have done thy mother.   DEMETRIUS. And therein, hellish dog, thou hast undone her.     Woe to her chance, and damn\'d her loathed choice!     Accurs\'d the offspring of so foul a fiend!   CHIRON. It shall not live.   AARON. It shall not die.   NURSE. Aaron, it must; the mother wills it so.   AARON. What, must it, nurse? Then let no man but I     Do execution on my flesh and blood.   DEMETRIUS. I\'ll broach the tadpole on my rapier\'s point.     Nurse, give it me; my sword shall soon dispatch it.   AARON. Sooner this sword shall plough thy bowels up.                        [Takes the CHILD from the NURSE, and draws]     Stay, murderous villains, will you kill your brother!     Now, by the burning tapers of the sky     That shone so brightly when this boy was got,     He dies upon my scimitar\'s sharp point     That touches this my first-born son and heir.     I tell you, younglings, not Enceladus,     With all his threat\'ning band of Typhon\'s brood,     Nor great Alcides, nor the god of war,     Shall seize this prey out of his father\'s hands.     What, what, ye sanguine, shallow-hearted boys!     Ye white-lim\'d walls! ye alehouse painted signs!     Coal-black is better than another hue     In that it scorns to bear another hue;     For all the water in the ocean     Can never turn the swan\'s black legs to white,     Although she lave them hourly in the flood.     Tell the Empress from me I am of age     To keep mine own- excuse it how she can.   DEMETRIUS. Wilt thou betray thy noble mistress thus?     AARON. My mistress is my mistress: this my self,     The vigour and the picture of my youth.     This before all the world do I prefer;     This maugre all the world will I keep safe,     Or some of you shall smoke for it in Rome.   DEMETRIUS. By this our mother is for ever sham\'d.   CHIRON. Rome will despise her for this foul escape.   NURSE. The Emperor in his rage will doom her death.   CHIRON. I blush to think upon this ignomy.   AARON. Why, there\'s the privilege your beauty bears:     Fie, treacherous hue, that will betray with blushing     The close enacts and counsels of thy heart!     Here\'s a young lad fram\'d of another leer.     Look how the black slave smiles upon the father,     As who should say \'Old lad, I am thine own.\'     He is your brother, lords, sensibly fed     Of that self-blood that first gave life to you;     And from your womb where you imprisoned were     He is enfranchised and come to light.     Nay, he is your brother by the surer side,       Although my seal be stamped in his face.   NURSE. Aaron, what shall I say unto the Empress?   DEMETRIUS. Advise thee, Aaron, what is to be done,     And we will all subscribe to thy advice.     Save thou the child, so we may all be safe.   AARON. Then sit we down and let us all consult.     My son and I will have the wind of you:     Keep there; now talk at pleasure of your safety.                                                       [They sit]   DEMETRIUS. How many women saw this child of his?   AARON. Why, so, brave lords! When we join in league     I am a lamb; but if you brave the Moor,     The chafed boar, the mountain lioness,     The ocean swells not so as Aaron storms.     But say, again, how many saw the child?   NURSE. Cornelia the midwife and myself;     And no one else but the delivered Empress.   AARON. The Emperess, the midwife, and yourself.     Two may keep counsel when the third\'s away:     Go to the Empress, tell her this I said.      [He kills her]       Weeke weeke!     So cries a pig prepared to the spit.   DEMETRIUS. What mean\'st thou, Aaron? Wherefore didst thou this?   AARON. O Lord, sir, \'tis a deed of policy.     Shall she live to betray this guilt of ours-     A long-tongu\'d babbling gossip? No, lords, no.     And now be it known to you my full intent:     Not far, one Muliteus, my countryman-     His wife but yesternight was brought to bed;     His child is like to her, fair as you are.     Go pack with him, and give the mother gold,     And tell them both the circumstance of all,     And how by this their child shall be advanc\'d,     And be received for the Emperor\'s heir     And substituted in the place of mine,     To calm this tempest whirling in the court;     And let the Emperor dandle him for his own.     Hark ye, lords. You see I have given her physic,                                          [Pointing to the NURSE]     And you must needs bestow her funeral;       The fields are near, and you are gallant grooms.     This done, see that you take no longer days,     But send the midwife presently to me.     The midwife and the nurse well made away,     Then let the ladies tattle what they please.   CHIRON. Aaron, I see thou wilt not trust the air     With secrets.   DEMETRIUS. For this care of Tamora,     Herself and hers are highly bound to thee.           Exeunt DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, bearing off the dead NURSE    AARON. Now to the Goths, as swift as swallow flies,     There to dispose this treasure in mine arms,     And secretly to greet the Empress\' friends.     Come on, you thick-lipp\'d slave, I\'ll bear you hence;     For it is you that puts us to our shifts.     I\'ll make you feed on berries and on roots,     And feed on curds and whey, and suck the goat,     And cabin in a cave, and bring you up       To be a warrior and command a camp.                                              Exit with the CHILD     SCENE III. Rome. A public place  Enter TITUS, bearing arrows with letters on the ends of them; with him MARCUS, YOUNG LUCIUS, and other gentlemen, PUBLIUS, SEMPRONIUS, and CAIUS, with bows    TITUS. Come, Marcus, come; kinsmen, this is the way.     Sir boy, let me see your archery;     Look ye draw home enough, and \'tis there straight.     Terras Astrea reliquit,     Be you rememb\'red, Marcus; she\'s gone, she\'s fled.     Sirs, take you to your tools. You, cousins, shall     Go sound the ocean and cast your nets;     Happily you may catch her in the sea;     Yet there\'s as little justice as at land.     No; Publius and Sempronius, you must do it;     \'Tis you must dig with mattock and with spade,     And pierce the inmost centre of the earth;     Then, when you come to Pluto\'s region,     I pray you deliver him this petition.     Tell him it is for justice and for aid,       And that it comes from old Andronicus,     Shaken with sorrows in ungrateful Rome.     Ah, Rome! Well, well, I made thee miserable     What time I threw the people\'s suffrages     On him that thus doth tyrannize o\'er me.     Go get you gone; and pray be careful all,     And leave you not a man-of-war unsearch\'d.     This wicked Emperor may have shipp\'d her hence;     And, kinsmen, then we may go pipe for justice.   MARCUS. O Publius, is not this a heavy case,     To see thy noble uncle thus distract?   PUBLIUS. Therefore, my lords, it highly us concerns     By day and night t\' attend him carefully,     And feed his humour kindly as we may     Till time beget some careful remedy.   MARCUS. Kinsmen, his sorrows are past remedy.     Join with the Goths, and with revengeful war     Take wreak on Rome for this ingratitude,     And vengeance on the traitor Saturnine.   TITUS. Publius, how now? How now, my masters?       What, have you met with her?   PUBLIUS. No, my good lord; but Pluto sends you word,     If you will have Revenge from hell, you shall.     Marry, for Justice, she is so employ\'d,     He thinks, with Jove in heaven, or somewhere else,     So that perforce you must needs stay a time.   TITUS. He doth me wrong to feed me with delays.     I\'ll dive into the burning lake below     And pull her out of Acheron by the heels.     Marcus, we are but shrubs, no cedars we,     No big-bon\'d men fram\'d of the Cyclops\' size;     But metal, Marcus, steel to the very back,     Yet wrung with wrongs more than our backs can bear;     And, sith there\'s no justice in earth nor hell,     We will solicit heaven, and move the gods     To send down justice for to wreak our wrongs.     Come, to this gear. You are a good archer, Marcus.                                       [He gives them the arrows]     \'Ad Jovem\' that\'s for you; here \'Ad Apollinem.\'     \'Ad Martem\' that\'s for myself.       Here, boy, \'To Pallas\'; here \'To Mercury.\'     \'To Saturn,\' Caius- not to Saturnine:     You were as good to shoot against the wind.     To it, boy. Marcus, loose when I bid.     Of my word, I have written to effect;     There\'s not a god left unsolicited.   MARCUS. Kinsmen, shoot all your shafts into the court;     We will afflict the Emperor in his pride.   TITUS. Now, masters, draw.  [They shoot]  O, well said, Lucius!     Good boy, in Virgo\'s lap! Give it Pallas.   MARCUS. My lord, I aim a mile beyond the moon;     Your letter is with Jupiter by this.   TITUS. Ha! ha!     Publius, Publius, hast thou done?     See, see, thou hast shot off one of Taurus\' horns.   MARCUS. This was the sport, my lord: when Publius shot,     The Bull, being gall\'d, gave Aries such a knock     That down fell both the Ram\'s horns in the court;     And who should find them but the Empress\' villain?     She laugh\'d, and told the Moor he should not choose       But give them to his master for a present.   TITUS. Why, there it goes! God give his lordship joy!      Enter the CLOWN, with a basket and two pigeons in it      News, news from heaven! Marcus, the post is come.     Sirrah, what tidings? Have you any letters?     Shall I have justice? What says Jupiter?   CLOWN. Ho, the gibbet-maker? He says that he hath taken them down     again, for the man must not be hang\'d till the next week.   TITUS. But what says Jupiter, I ask thee?   CLOWN. Alas, sir, I know not Jupiter; I never drank with him in all     my life.   TITUS. Why, villain, art not thou the carrier?   CLOWN. Ay, of my pigeons, sir; nothing else.   TITUS. Why, didst thou not come from heaven?   CLOWN. From heaven! Alas, sir, I never came there. God forbid I     should be so bold to press to heaven in my young days. Why, I am     going with my pigeons to the Tribunal Plebs, to take up a matter     of brawl betwixt my uncle and one of the Emperal\'s men.     MARCUS. Why, sir, that is as fit as can be to serve for your     oration; and let him deliver the pigeons to the Emperor from you.   TITUS. Tell me, can you deliver an oration to the Emperor with a     grace?   CLOWN. Nay, truly, sir, I could never say grace in all my life.   TITUS. Sirrah, come hither. Make no more ado,     But give your pigeons to the Emperor;     By me thou shalt have justice at his hands.     Hold, hold! Meanwhile here\'s money for thy charges.     Give me pen and ink. Sirrah, can you with a grace deliver up a     supplication?   CLOWN. Ay, sir.   TITUS. Then here is a supplication for you. And when you come to     him, at the first approach you must kneel; then kiss his foot;     then deliver up your pigeons; and then look for your reward. I\'ll     be at hand, sir; see you do it bravely.   CLOWN. I warrant you, sir; let me alone.   TITUS. Sirrah, hast thou a knife? Come let me see it.     Here, Marcus, fold it in the oration;     For thou hast made it like a humble suppliant.       And when thou hast given it to the Emperor,     Knock at my door, and tell me what he says.   CLOWN. God be with you, sir; I will.   TITUS. Come, Marcus, let us go. Publius, follow me.     Exeunt     SCENE IV. Rome. Before the palace  Enter the EMPEROR, and the EMPRESS and her two sons, DEMETRIUS and CHIRON; LORDS and others. The EMPEROR brings the arrows in his hand that TITUS shot at him    SATURNINUS. Why, lords, what wrongs are these! Was ever seen     An emperor in Rome thus overborne,     Troubled, confronted thus; and, for the extent     Of egal justice, us\'d in such contempt?     My lords, you know, as know the mightful gods,     However these disturbers of our peace     Buzz in the people\'s ears, there nought hath pass\'d     But even with law against the wilful sons     Of old Andronicus. And what an if     His sorrows have so overwhelm\'d his wits,     Shall we be thus afflicted in his wreaks,     His fits, his frenzy, and his bitterness?     And now he writes to heaven for his redress.     See, here\'s \'To Jove\' and this \'To Mercury\';     This \'To Apollo\'; this \'To the God of War\'-       Sweet scrolls to fly about the streets of Rome!     What\'s this but libelling against the Senate,     And blazoning our unjustice every where?     A goodly humour, is it not, my lords?     As who would say in Rome no justice were.     But if I live, his feigned ecstasies     Shall be no shelter to these outrages;     But he and his shall know that justice lives     In Saturninus\' health; whom, if she sleep,     He\'ll so awake as he in fury shall     Cut off the proud\'st conspirator that lives.   TAMORA. My gracious lord, my lovely Saturnine,     Lord of my life, commander of my thoughts,     Calm thee, and bear the faults of Titus\' age,     Th\' effects of sorrow for his valiant sons     Whose loss hath pierc\'d him deep and scarr\'d his heart;     And rather comfort his distressed plight     Than prosecute the meanest or the best     For these contempts.  [Aside]  Why, thus it shall become     High-witted Tamora to gloze with all.       But, Titus, I have touch\'d thee to the quick,     Thy life-blood out; if Aaron now be wise,     Then is all safe, the anchor in the port.                         Enter CLOWN      How now, good fellow! Wouldst thou speak with us?   CLOWN. Yes, forsooth, an your mistriship be Emperial.   TAMORA. Empress I am, but yonder sits the Emperor.   CLOWN. \'Tis he.- God and Saint Stephen give you godden. I have     brought you a letter and a couple of pigeons here.                                    [SATURNINUS reads the letter]   SATURNINUS. Go take him away, and hang him presently.   CLOWN. How much money must I have?   TAMORA. Come, sirrah, you must be hang\'d.   CLOWN. Hang\'d! by\'r lady, then I have brought up a neck to a fair     end.                                          [Exit guarded]   SATURNINUS. Despiteful and intolerable wrongs!     Shall I endure this monstrous villainy?     I know from whence this same device proceeds.       May this be borne- as if his traitorous sons     That died by law for murder of our brother     Have by my means been butchered wrongfully?     Go drag the villain hither by the hair;     Nor age nor honour shall shape privilege.     For this proud mock I\'ll be thy slaughterman,     Sly frantic wretch, that holp\'st to make me great,     In hope thyself should govern Rome and me.                     Enter NUNTIUS AEMILIUS      What news with thee, Aemilius?   AEMILIUS. Arm, my lords! Rome never had more cause.     The Goths have gathered head; and with a power     Of high resolved men, bent to the spoil,     They hither march amain, under conduct     Of Lucius, son to old Andronicus;     Who threats in course of this revenge to do     As much as ever Coriolanus did.   SATURNINUS. Is warlike Lucius general of the Goths?       These tidings nip me, and I hang the head     As flowers with frost, or grass beat down with storms.     Ay, now begins our sorrows to approach.     \'Tis he the common people love so much;     Myself hath often heard them say-     When I have walked like a private man-     That Lucius\' banishment was wrongfully,     And they have wish\'d that Lucius were their emperor.   TAMORA. Why should you fear? Is not your city strong?   SATURNINUS. Ay, but the citizens favour Lucius,     And will revolt from me to succour him.   TAMORA. King, be thy thoughts imperious like thy name!     Is the sun dimm\'d, that gnats do fly in it?     The eagle suffers little birds to sing,     And is not careful what they mean thereby,     Knowing that with the shadow of his wings     He can at pleasure stint their melody;     Even so mayest thou the giddy men of Rome.     Then cheer thy spirit; for know thou, Emperor,     I will enchant the old Andronicus       With words more sweet, and yet more dangerous,     Than baits to fish or honey-stalks to sheep,     When as the one is wounded with the bait,     The other rotted with delicious feed.   SATURNINUS. But he will not entreat his son for us.   TAMORA. If Tamora entreat him, then he will;     For I can smooth and fill his aged ears     With golden promises, that, were his heart     Almost impregnable, his old ears deaf,     Yet should both ear and heart obey my tongue.     [To AEMILIUS]  Go thou before to be our ambassador;     Say that the Emperor requests a parley     Of warlike Lucius, and appoint the meeting     Even at his father\'s house, the old Andronicus.   SATURNINUS. Aemilius, do this message honourably;     And if he stand on hostage for his safety,     Bid him demand what pledge will please him best.   AEMILIUS. Your bidding shall I do effectually.            Exit   TAMORA. Now will I to that old Andronicus,     And temper him with all the art I have,       To pluck proud Lucius from the warlike Goths.     And now, sweet Emperor, be blithe again,     And bury all thy fear in my devices.   SATURNINUS. Then go successantly, and plead to him.                                                           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. Plains near Rome  Enter LUCIUS with an army of GOTHS with drums and colours    LUCIUS. Approved warriors and my faithful friends,     I have received letters from great Rome     Which signifies what hate they bear their Emperor     And how desirous of our sight they are.     Therefore, great lords, be, as your titles witness,     Imperious and impatient of your wrongs;     And wherein Rome hath done you any scath,     Let him make treble satisfaction.   FIRST GOTH. Brave slip, sprung from the great Andronicus,     Whose name was once our terror, now our comfort,     Whose high exploits and honourable deeds     Ingrateful Rome requites with foul contempt,     Be bold in us: we\'ll follow where thou lead\'st,     Like stinging bees in hottest summer\'s day,     Led by their master to the flow\'red fields,     And be aveng\'d on cursed Tamora.     ALL THE GOTHS. And as he saith, so say we all with him.   LUCIUS. I humbly thank him, and I thank you all.     But who comes here, led by a lusty Goth?       Enter a GOTH, leading AARON with his CHILD in his arms    SECOND GOTH. Renowned Lucius, from our troops I stray\'d     To gaze upon a ruinous monastery;     And as I earnestly did fix mine eye     Upon the wasted building, suddenly     I heard a child cry underneath a wall.     I made unto the noise, when soon I heard     The crying babe controll\'d with this discourse:     \'Peace, tawny slave, half me and half thy dam!     Did not thy hue bewray whose brat thou art,     Had nature lent thee but thy mother\'s look,     Villain, thou mightst have been an emperor;     But where the bull and cow are both milk-white,     They never do beget a coal-black calf.     Peace, villain, peace!\'- even thus he rates the babe-       \'For I must bear thee to a trusty Goth,     Who, when he knows thou art the Empress\' babe,     Will hold thee dearly for thy mother\'s sake.\'     With this, my weapon drawn, I rush\'d upon him,     Surpris\'d him suddenly, and brought him hither     To use as you think needful of the man.   LUCIUS. O worthy Goth, this is the incarnate devil     That robb\'d Andronicus of his good hand;     This is the pearl that pleas\'d your Empress\' eye;     And here\'s the base fruit of her burning lust.     Say, wall-ey\'d slave, whither wouldst thou convey     This growing image of thy fiend-like face?     Why dost not speak? What, deaf? Not a word?     A halter, soldiers! Hang him on this tree,     And by his side his fruit of bastardy.   AARON. Touch not the boy, he is of royal blood.   LUCIUS. Too like the sire for ever being good.     First hang the child, that he may see it sprawl-     A sight to vex the father\'s soul withal.     Get me a ladder.                   [A ladder brought, which AARON is made to climb]   AARON. Lucius, save the child,     And bear it from me to the Emperess.     If thou do this, I\'ll show thee wondrous things     That highly may advantage thee to hear;     If thou wilt not, befall what may befall,     I\'ll speak no more but \'Vengeance rot you all!\'   LUCIUS. Say on; an if it please me which thou speak\'st,     Thy child shall live, and I will see it nourish\'d.   AARON. An if it please thee! Why, assure thee, Lucius,     \'Twill vex thy soul to hear what I shall speak;     For I must talk of murders, rapes, and massacres,     Acts of black night, abominable deeds,     Complots of mischief, treason, villainies,     Ruthful to hear, yet piteously perform\'d;     And this shall all be buried in my death,     Unless thou swear to me my child shall live.   LUCIUS. Tell on thy mind; I say thy child shall live.   AARON. Swear that he shall, and then I will begin.   LUCIUS. Who should I swear by? Thou believest no god;       That granted, how canst thou believe an oath?   AARON. What if I do not? as indeed I do not;     Yet, for I know thou art religious     And hast a thing within thee called conscience,     With twenty popish tricks and ceremonies     Which I have seen thee careful to observe,     Therefore I urge thy oath. For that I know     An idiot holds his bauble for a god,     And keeps the oath which by that god he swears,     To that I\'ll urge him. Therefore thou shalt vow     By that same god- what god soe\'er it be     That thou adorest and hast in reverence-     To save my boy, to nourish and bring him up;     Or else I will discover nought to thee.   LUCIUS. Even by my god I swear to thee I will.   AARON. First know thou, I begot him on the Empress.   LUCIUS. O most insatiate and luxurious woman!   AARON. Tut, Lucius, this was but a deed of charity     To that which thou shalt hear of me anon.     \'Twas her two sons that murdered Bassianus;       They cut thy sister\'s tongue, and ravish\'d her,     And cut her hands, and trimm\'d her as thou sawest.   LUCIUS. O detestable villain! Call\'st thou that trimming?   AARON. Why, she was wash\'d, and cut, and trimm\'d, and \'twas     Trim sport for them which had the doing of it.   LUCIUS. O barbarous beastly villains like thyself!   AARON. Indeed, I was their tutor to instruct them.     That codding spirit had they from their mother,     As sure a card as ever won the set;     That bloody mind, I think, they learn\'d of me,     As true a dog as ever fought at head.     Well, let my deeds be witness of my worth.     I train\'d thy brethren to that guileful hole     Where the dead corpse of Bassianus lay;     I wrote the letter that thy father found,     And hid the gold within that letter mention\'d,     Confederate with the Queen and her two sons;     And what not done, that thou hast cause to rue,     Wherein I had no stroke of mischief in it?     I play\'d the cheater for thy father\'s hand,       And, when I had it, drew myself apart     And almost broke my heart with extreme laughter.     I pried me through the crevice of a wall,     When, for his hand, he had his two sons\' heads;     Beheld his tears, and laugh\'d so heartily     That both mine eyes were rainy like to his;     And when I told the Empress of this sport,     She swooned almost at my pleasing tale,     And for my tidings gave me twenty kisses.   GOTH. What, canst thou say all this and never blush?   AARON. Ay, like a black dog, as the saying is.   LUCIUS. Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?   AARON. Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.     Even now I curse the day- and yet, I think,     Few come within the compass of my curse-     Wherein I did not some notorious ill;     As kill a man, or else devise his death;     Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it;     Accuse some innocent, and forswear myself;     Set deadly enmity between two friends;       Make poor men\'s cattle break their necks;     Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,     And bid the owners quench them with their tears.     Oft have I digg\'d up dead men from their graves,     And set them upright at their dear friends\' door     Even when their sorrows almost was forgot,     And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,     Have with my knife carved in Roman letters     \'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.\'     Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things     As willingly as one would kill a fly;     And nothing grieves me heartily indeed     But that I cannot do ten thousand more.   LUCIUS. Bring down the devil, for he must not die     So sweet a death as hanging presently.   AARON. If there be devils, would I were a devil,     To live and burn in everlasting fire,     So I might have your company in hell     But to torment you with my bitter tongue!   LUCIUS. Sirs, stop his mouth, and let him speak no more.                           Enter AEMILIUS    GOTH. My lord, there is a messenger from Rome     Desires to be admitted to your presence.   LUCIUS. Let him come near.     Welcome, Aemilius. What\'s the news from Rome?   AEMILIUS. Lord Lucius, and you Princes of the Goths,     The Roman Emperor greets you all by me;     And, for he understands you are in arms,     He craves a parley at your father\'s house,     Willing you to demand your hostages,     And they shall be immediately deliver\'d.   FIRST GOTH. What says our general?   LUCIUS. Aemilius, let the Emperor give his pledges     Unto my father and my uncle Marcus.     And we will come. March away.                         Exeunt     SCENE II. Rome. Before TITUS\' house  Enter TAMORA, and her two sons, DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, disguised    TAMORA. Thus, in this strange and sad habiliment,     I will encounter with Andronicus,     And say I am Revenge, sent from below     To join with him and right his heinous wrongs.     Knock at his study, where they say he keeps     To ruminate strange plots of dire revenge;     Tell him Revenge is come to join with him,     And work confusion on his enemies.           They knock and TITUS opens his study door, above    TITUS. Who doth molest my contemplation?     Is it your trick to make me ope the door,     That so my sad decrees may fly away     And all my study be to no effect?     You are deceiv\'d; for what I mean to do       See here in bloody lines I have set down;     And what is written shall be executed.   TAMORA. Titus, I am come to talk with thee.   TITUS. No, not a word. How can I grace my talk,     Wanting a hand to give it that accord?     Thou hast the odds of me; therefore no more.   TAMORA. If thou didst know me, thou wouldst talk with me.   TITUS. I am not mad, I know thee well enough:     Witness this wretched stump, witness these crimson lines;     Witness these trenches made by grief and care;     Witness the tiring day and heavy night;     Witness all sorrow that I know thee well     For our proud Empress, mighty Tamora.     Is not thy coming for my other hand?   TAMORA. Know thou, sad man, I am not Tamora:     She is thy enemy and I thy friend.     I am Revenge, sent from th\' infernal kingdom     To ease the gnawing vulture of thy mind     By working wreakful vengeance on thy foes.     Come down and welcome me to this world\'s light;       Confer with me of murder and of death;     There\'s not a hollow cave or lurking-place,     No vast obscurity or misty vale,     Where bloody murder or detested rape     Can couch for fear but I will find them out;     And in their ears tell them my dreadful name-     Revenge, which makes the foul offender quake.   TITUS. Art thou Revenge? and art thou sent to me     To be a torment to mine enemies?   TAMORA. I am; therefore come down and welcome me.   TITUS. Do me some service ere I come to thee.     Lo, by thy side where Rape and Murder stands;     Now give some surance that thou art Revenge-     Stab them, or tear them on thy chariot wheels;     And then I\'ll come and be thy waggoner     And whirl along with thee about the globes.     Provide thee two proper palfreys, black as jet,     To hale thy vengeful waggon swift away,     And find out murderers in their guilty caves;     And when thy car is loaden with their heads,       I will dismount, and by thy waggon wheel     Trot, like a servile footman, all day long,     Even from Hyperion\'s rising in the east     Until his very downfall in the sea.     And day by day I\'ll do this heavy task,     So thou destroy Rapine and Murder there.   TAMORA. These are my ministers, and come with me.   TITUS. Are they thy ministers? What are they call\'d?   TAMORA. Rape and Murder; therefore called so     \'Cause they take vengeance of such kind of men.   TITUS. Good Lord, how like the Empress\' sons they are!     And you the Empress! But we worldly men     Have miserable, mad, mistaking eyes.     O sweet Revenge, now do I come to thee;     And, if one arm\'s embracement will content thee,     I will embrace thee in it by and by.   TAMORA. This closing with him fits his lunacy.     Whate\'er I forge to feed his brain-sick humours,     Do you uphold and maintain in your speeches,     For now he firmly takes me for Revenge;       And, being credulous in this mad thought,     I\'ll make him send for Lucius his son,     And whilst I at a banquet hold him sure,     I\'ll find some cunning practice out of hand     To scatter and disperse the giddy Goths,     Or, at the least, make them his enemies.     See, here he comes, and I must ply my theme.                   Enter TITUS, below    TITUS. Long have I been forlorn, and all for thee.     Welcome, dread Fury, to my woeful house.     Rapine and Murder, you are welcome too.     How like the Empress and her sons you are!     Well are you fitted, had you but a Moor.     Could not all hell afford you such a devil?     For well I wot the Empress never wags     But in her company there is a Moor;     And, would you represent our queen aright,     It were convenient you had such a devil.       But welcome as you are. What shall we do?   TAMORA. What wouldst thou have us do, Andronicus?   DEMETRIUS. Show me a murderer, I\'ll deal with him.   CHIRON. Show me a villain that hath done a rape,     And I am sent to be reveng\'d on him.   TAMORA. Show me a thousand that hath done thee wrong,     And I will be revenged on them all.   TITUS. Look round about the wicked streets of Rome,     And when thou find\'st a man that\'s like thyself,     Good Murder, stab him; he\'s a murderer.     Go thou with him, and when it is thy hap     To find another that is like to thee,     Good Rapine, stab him; he is a ravisher.     Go thou with them; and in the Emperor\'s court     There is a queen, attended by a Moor;     Well shalt thou know her by thine own proportion,     For up and down she doth resemble thee.     I pray thee, do on them some violent death;     They have been violent to me and mine.   TAMORA. Well hast thou lesson\'d us; this shall we do.       But would it please thee, good Andronicus,     To send for Lucius, thy thrice-valiant son,     Who leads towards Rome a band of warlike Goths,     And bid him come and banquet at thy house;     When he is here, even at thy solemn feast,     I will bring in the Empress and her sons,     The Emperor himself, and all thy foes;     And at thy mercy shall they stoop and kneel,     And on them shalt thou ease thy angry heart.     What says Andronicus to this device?   TITUS. Marcus, my brother! \'Tis sad Titus calls.                    Enter MARCUS      Go, gentle Marcus, to thy nephew Lucius;     Thou shalt inquire him out among the Goths.     Bid him repair to me, and bring with him     Some of the chiefest princes of the Goths;     Bid him encamp his soldiers where they are.     Tell him the Emperor and the Empress too       Feast at my house, and he shall feast with them.     This do thou for my love; and so let him,     As he regards his aged father\'s life.   MARCUS. This will I do, and soon return again.            Exit   TAMORA. Now will I hence about thy business,     And take my ministers along with me.   TITUS. Nay, nay, let Rape and Murder stay with me,     Or else I\'ll call my brother back again,     And cleave to no revenge but Lucius.   TAMORA.  [Aside to her sons]  What say you, boys? Will you abide       with him,     Whiles I go tell my lord the Emperor     How I have govern\'d our determin\'d jest?     Yield to his humour, smooth and speak him fair,     And tarry with him till I turn again.   TITUS.  [Aside]  I knew them all, though they suppos\'d me mad,     And will o\'er reach them in their own devices,     A pair of cursed hell-hounds and their dam.   DEMETRIUS. Madam, depart at pleasure; leave us here.   TAMORA. Farewell, Andronicus, Revenge now goes       To lay a complot to betray thy foes.   TITUS. I know thou dost; and, sweet Revenge, farewell.                                                      Exit TAMORA   CHIRON. Tell us, old man, how shall we be employ\'d?   TITUS. Tut, I have work enough for you to do.     Publius, come hither, Caius, and Valentine.            Enter PUBLIUS, CAIUS, and VALENTINE    PUBLIUS. What is your will?   TITUS. Know you these two?   PUBLIUS. The Empress\' sons, I take them: Chiron, Demetrius.   TITUS. Fie, Publius, fie! thou art too much deceiv\'d.     The one is Murder, and Rape is the other\'s name;     And therefore bind them, gentle Publius-     Caius and Valentine, lay hands on them.     Oft have you heard me wish for such an hour,     And now I find it; therefore bind them sure,     And stop their mouths if they begin to cry.             Exit                          [They lay hold on CHIRON and DEMETRIUS]     CHIRON. Villains, forbear! we are the Empress\' sons.   PUBLIUS. And therefore do we what we are commanded.     Stop close their mouths, let them not speak a word.     Is he sure bound? Look that you bind them fast.                 Re-enter TITUS ANDRONICUS         with a knife, and LAVINIA, with a basin    TITUS. Come, come, Lavinia; look, thy foes are bound.     Sirs, stop their mouths, let them not speak to me;     But let them hear what fearful words I utter.     O villains, Chiron and Demetrius!     Here stands the spring whom you have stain\'d with mud;     This goodly summer with your winter mix\'d.     You kill\'d her husband; and for that vile fault     Two of her brothers were condemn\'d to death,     My hand cut off and made a merry jest;     Both her sweet hands, her tongue, and that more dear     Than hands or tongue, her spotless chastity,     Inhuman traitors, you constrain\'d and forc\'d.       What would you say, if I should let you speak?     Villains, for shame you could not beg for grace.     Hark, wretches! how I mean to martyr you.     This one hand yet is left to cut your throats,     Whiles that Lavinia \'tween her stumps doth hold     The basin that receives your guilty blood.     You know your mother means to feast with me,     And calls herself Revenge, and thinks me mad.     Hark, villains! I will grind your bones to dust,     And with your blood and it I\'ll make a paste;     And of the paste a coffin I will rear,     And make two pasties of your shameful heads;     And bid that strumpet, your unhallowed dam,     Like to the earth, swallow her own increase.     This is the feast that I have bid her to,     And this the banquet she shall surfeit on;     For worse than Philomel you us\'d my daughter,     And worse than Progne I will be reveng\'d.     And now prepare your throats. Lavinia, come,     Receive the blood; and when that they are dead,       Let me go grind their bones to powder small,     And with this hateful liquor temper it;     And in that paste let their vile heads be bak\'d.     Come, come, be every one officious     To make this banquet, which I wish may prove     More stern and bloody than the Centaurs\' feast.                                          [He cuts their throats]     So.     Now bring them in, for I will play the cook,     And see them ready against their mother comes.                                  Exeunt, bearing the dead bodies     SCENE III. The court of TITUS\' house  Enter Lucius, MARCUS, and the GOTHS, with AARON prisoner, and his CHILD in the arms of an attendant    LUCIUS. Uncle Marcus, since \'tis my father\'s mind     That I repair to Rome, I am content.     FIRST GOTH. And ours with thine, befall what fortune will.   LUCIUS. Good uncle, take you in this barbarous Moor,     This ravenous tiger, this accursed devil;     Let him receive no sust\'nance, fetter him,     Till he be brought unto the Empress\' face     For testimony of her foul proceedings.     And see the ambush of our friends be strong;     I fear the Emperor means no good to us.   AARON. Some devil whisper curses in my ear,     And prompt me that my tongue may utter forth     The venomous malice of my swelling heart!   LUCIUS. Away, inhuman dog, unhallowed slave!     Sirs, help our uncle to convey him in.                           Exeunt GOTHS with AARON. Flourish within     The trumpets show the Emperor is at hand.              Sound trumpets. Enter SATURNINUS and     TAMORA, with AEMILIUS, TRIBUNES, SENATORS, and others    SATURNINUS. What, hath the firmament more suns than one?   LUCIUS. What boots it thee to can thyself a sun?   MARCUS. Rome\'s Emperor, and nephew, break the parle;     These quarrels must be quietly debated.     The feast is ready which the careful Titus     Hath ordain\'d to an honourable end,     For peace, for love, for league, and good to Rome.     Please you, therefore, draw nigh and take your places.   SATURNINUS. Marcus, we will.                       [A table brought in. The company sit down]                 Trumpets sounding, enter TITUS          like a cook, placing the dishes, and LAVINIA    with a veil over her face; also YOUNG LUCIUS, and others      TITUS. Welcome, my lord; welcome, dread Queen;     Welcome, ye warlike Goths; welcome, Lucius;     And welcome all. Although the cheer be poor,     \'Twill fill your stomachs; please you eat of it.   SATURNINUS. Why art thou thus attir\'d, Andronicus?   TITUS. Because I would be sure to have all well     To entertain your Highness and your Empress.   TAMORA. We are beholding to you, good Andronicus.   TITUS. An if your Highness knew my heart, you were.     My lord the Emperor, resolve me this:     Was it well done of rash Virginius     To slay his daughter with his own right hand,     Because she was enforc\'d, stain\'d, and deflower\'d?   SATURNINUS. It was, Andronicus.   TITUS. Your reason, mighty lord.   SATURNINUS. Because the girl should not survive her shame,     And by her presence still renew his sorrows.   TITUS. A reason mighty, strong, and effectual;     A pattern, precedent, and lively warrant       For me, most wretched, to perform the like.     Die, die, Lavinia, and thy shame with thee;   [He kills her]     And with thy shame thy father\'s sorrow die!   SATURNINUS. What hast thou done, unnatural and unkind?   TITUS. Kill\'d her for whom my tears have made me blind.     I am as woeful as Virginius was,     And have a thousand times more cause than he     To do this outrage; and it now is done.   SATURNINUS. What, was she ravish\'d? Tell who did the deed.   TITUS. Will\'t please you eat?  Will\'t please your Highness feed?   TAMORA. Why hast thou slain thine only daughter thus?   TITUS. Not I; \'twas Chiron and Demetrius.     They ravish\'d her, and cut away her tongue;     And they, \'twas they, that did her all this wrong.   SATURNINUS. Go, fetch them hither to us presently.   TITUS. Why, there they are, both baked in this pie,     Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,     Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.     \'Tis true, \'tis true: witness my knife\'s sharp point.                                           [He stabs the EMPRESS]     SATURNINUS. Die, frantic wretch, for this accursed deed!                                                 [He stabs TITUS]   LUCIUS. Can the son\'s eye behold his father bleed?     There\'s meed for meed, death for a deadly deed.                    [He stabs SATURNINUS. A great tumult. LUCIUS,                MARCUS, and their friends go up into the balcony]   MARCUS. You sad-fac\'d men, people and sons of Rome,     By uproars sever\'d, as a flight of fowl     Scatter\'d by winds and high tempestuous gusts?     O, let me teach you how to knit again     This scattered corn into one mutual sheaf,     These broken limbs again into one body;     Lest Rome herself be bane unto herself,     And she whom mighty kingdoms curtsy to,     Like a forlorn and desperate castaway,     Do shameful execution on herself.     But if my frosty signs and chaps of age,     Grave witnesses of true experience,     Cannot induce you to attend my words,     [To Lucius]  Speak, Rome\'s dear friend, as erst our ancestor,       When with his solemn tongue he did discourse     To love-sick Dido\'s sad attending ear     The story of that baleful burning night,     When subtle Greeks surpris\'d King Priam\'s Troy.     Tell us what Sinon hath bewitch\'d our ears,     Or who hath brought the fatal engine in     That gives our Troy, our Rome, the civil wound.     My heart is not compact of flint nor steel;     Nor can I utter all our bitter grief,     But floods of tears will drown my oratory     And break my utt\'rance, even in the time     When it should move ye to attend me most,     And force you to commiseration.     Here\'s Rome\'s young Captain, let him tell the tale;     While I stand by and weep to hear him speak.   LUCIUS. Then, gracious auditory, be it known to you     That Chiron and the damn\'d Demetrius     Were they that murd\'red our Emperor\'s brother;     And they it were that ravished our sister.     For their fell faults our brothers were beheaded,       Our father\'s tears despis\'d, and basely cozen\'d     Of that true hand that fought Rome\'s quarrel out     And sent her enemies unto the grave.     Lastly, myself unkindly banished,     The gates shut on me, and turn\'d weeping out,     To beg relief among Rome\'s enemies;     Who drown\'d their enmity in my true tears,     And op\'d their arms to embrace me as a friend.     I am the turned forth, be it known to you,     That have preserv\'d her welfare in my blood     And from her bosom took the enemy\'s point,     Sheathing the steel in my advent\'rous body.     Alas! you know I am no vaunter, I;     My scars can witness, dumb although they are,     That my report is just and full of truth.     But, soft! methinks I do digress too much,     Citing my worthless praise. O, pardon me!     For when no friends are by, men praise themselves.   MARCUS. Now is my turn to speak. Behold the child.                   [Pointing to the CHILD in an attendant\'s arms]       Of this was Tamora delivered,     The issue of an irreligious Moor,     Chief architect and plotter of these woes.     The villain is alive in Titus\' house,     Damn\'d as he is, to witness this is true.     Now judge what cause had Titus to revenge     These wrongs unspeakable, past patience,     Or more than any living man could bear.     Now have you heard the truth: what say you, Romans?     Have we done aught amiss, show us wherein,     And, from the place where you behold us pleading,     The poor remainder of Andronici     Will, hand in hand, all headlong hurl ourselves,     And on the ragged stones beat forth our souls,     And make a mutual closure of our house.     Speak, Romans, speak; and if you say we shall,     Lo, hand in hand, Lucius and I will fall.   AEMILIUS. Come, come, thou reverend man of Rome,     And bring our Emperor gently in thy hand,     Lucius our Emperor; for well I know       The common voice do cry it shall be so.   ALL. Lucius, all hail, Rome\'s royal Emperor!   MARCUS. Go, go into old Titus\' sorrowful house,     And hither hale that misbelieving Moor     To be adjudg\'d some direful slaught\'ring death,     As punishment for his most wicked life.          Exeunt some               attendants. LUCIUS, MARCUS, and the others descend   ALL. Lucius, all hail, Rome\'s gracious governor!   LUCIUS. Thanks, gentle Romans! May I govern so     To heal Rome\'s harms and wipe away her woe!     But, gentle people, give me aim awhile,     For nature puts me to a heavy task.     Stand all aloof; but, uncle, draw you near     To shed obsequious tears upon this trunk.     O, take this warm kiss on thy pale cold lips.  [Kisses TITUS]     These sorrowful drops upon thy blood-stain\'d face,     The last true duties of thy noble son!   MARCUS. Tear for tear and loving kiss for kiss     Thy brother Marcus tenders on thy lips.     O, were the sum of these that I should pay       Countless and infinite, yet would I pay them!   LUCIUS. Come hither, boy; come, come, come, and learn of us     To melt in showers. Thy grandsire lov\'d thee well;     Many a time he danc\'d thee on his knee,     Sung thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow;     Many a story hath he told to thee,     And bid thee bear his pretty tales in mind     And talk of them when he was dead and gone.   MARCUS. How many thousand times hath these poor lips,     When they were living, warm\'d themselves on thine!     O, now, sweet boy, give them their latest kiss!     Bid him farewell; commit him to the grave;     Do them that kindness, and take leave of them.   BOY. O grandsire, grandsire! ev\'n with all my heart     Would I were dead, so you did live again!     O Lord, I cannot speak to him for weeping;     My tears will choke me, if I ope my mouth.              Re-enter attendants with AARON      A ROMAN. You sad Andronici, have done with woes;     Give sentence on the execrable wretch     That hath been breeder of these dire events.   LUCIUS. Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him;     There let him stand and rave and cry for food.     If any one relieves or pities him,     For the offence he dies. This is our doom.     Some stay to see him fast\'ned in the earth.   AARON. Ah, why should wrath be mute and fury dumb?     I am no baby, I, that with base prayers     I should repent the evils I have done;     Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did     Would I perform, if I might have my will.     If one good deed in all my life I did,     I do repent it from my very soul.   LUCIUS. Some loving friends convey the Emperor hence,     And give him burial in his father\'s grave.     My father and Lavinia shall forthwith     Be closed in our household\'s monument.     As for that ravenous tiger, Tamora,       No funeral rite, nor man in mourning weed,     No mournful bell shall ring her burial;     But throw her forth to beasts and birds to prey.     Her life was beastly and devoid of pity,     And being dead, let birds on her take pity.           Exeunt  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1602  THE HISTORY OF TROILUS AND CRESSIDA  by William Shakespeare   DRAMATIS PERSONAE    PRIAM, King of Troy      His sons:   HECTOR   TROILUS   PARIS   DEIPHOBUS   HELENUS    MARGARELON, a bastard son of Priam       Trojan commanders:   AENEAS   ANTENOR    CALCHAS, a Trojan priest, taking part with the Greeks   PANDARUS, uncle to Cressida   AGAMEMNON, the Greek general   MENELAUS, his brother        Greek commanders:   ACHILLES   AJAX   ULYSSES   NESTOR   DIOMEDES   PATROCLUS    THERSITES, a deformed and scurrilous Greek   ALEXANDER, servant to Cressida   SERVANT to Troilus   SERVANT to Paris   SERVANT to Diomedes    HELEN, wife to Menelaus   ANDROMACHE, wife to Hector   CASSANDRA, daughter to Priam, a prophetess   CRESSIDA, daughter to Calchas    Trojan and Greek Soldiers, and Attendants                              SCENE:              Troy and the Greek camp before it  PROLOGUE                   TROILUS AND CRESSIDA                         PROLOGUE      In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece     The princes orgillous, their high blood chaf\'d,     Have to the port of Athens sent their ships     Fraught with the ministers and instruments     Of cruel war. Sixty and nine that wore     Their crownets regal from th\' Athenian bay     Put forth toward Phrygia; and their vow is made     To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures     The ravish\'d Helen, Menelaus\' queen,     With wanton Paris sleeps-and that\'s the quarrel.     To Tenedos they come,     And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge     Their war-like fraughtage. Now on Dardan plains     The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch     Their brave pavilions: Priam\'s six-gated city,     Dardan, and Tymbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien,     And Antenorides, with massy staples     And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts,     Sperr up the sons of Troy.       Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits     On one and other side, Troyan and Greek,     Sets all on hazard-and hither am I come     A Prologue arm\'d, but not in confidence     Of author\'s pen or actor\'s voice, but suited     In like conditions as our argument,     To tell you, fair beholders, that our play     Leaps o\'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils,     Beginning in the middle; starting thence away,     To what may be digested in a play.     Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are;     Now good or bad, \'tis but the chance of war.     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT I. SCENE 1. Troy. Before PRIAM\'S palace  Enter TROILUS armed, and PANDARUS    TROILUS. Call here my varlet; I\'ll unarm again.     Why should I war without the walls of Troy     That find such cruel battle here within?     Each Troyan that is master of his heart,     Let him to field; Troilus, alas, hath none!   PANDARUS. Will this gear ne\'er be mended?   TROILUS. The Greeks are strong, and skilful to their strength,     Fierce to their skill, and to their fierceness valiant;     But I am weaker than a woman\'s tear,     Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance,     Less valiant than the virgin in the night,     And skilless as unpractis\'d infancy.   PANDARUS. Well, I have told you enough of this; for my part,     I\'ll not meddle nor make no farther. He that will have a cake     out of the wheat must needs tarry the grinding.   TROILUS. Have I not tarried?   PANDARUS. Ay, the grinding; but you must tarry the bolting.     TROILUS. Have I not tarried?   PANDARUS. Ay, the bolting; but you must tarry the leavening.   TROILUS. Still have I tarried.   PANDARUS. Ay, to the leavening; but here\'s yet in the word     \'hereafter\' the kneading, the making of the cake, the heating     of the oven, and the baking; nay, you must stay the cooling too,     or you may chance to burn your lips.   TROILUS. Patience herself, what goddess e\'er she be,     Doth lesser blench at suff\'rance than I do.     At Priam\'s royal table do I sit;     And when fair Cressid comes into my thoughts-     So, traitor, then she comes when she is thence.   PANDARUS. Well, she look\'d yesternight fairer than ever I saw her     look, or any woman else.   TROILUS. I was about to tell thee: when my heart,     As wedged with a sigh, would rive in twain,     Lest Hector or my father should perceive me,     I have, as when the sun doth light a storm,     Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile.     But sorrow that is couch\'d in seeming gladness       Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness.   PANDARUS. An her hair were not somewhat darker than Helen\'s- well,     go to- there were no more comparison between the women. But, for     my part, she is my kinswoman; I would not, as they term it,     praise her, but I would somebody had heard her talk yesterday, as     I did. I  will not dispraise your sister Cassandra\'s wit; but-   TROILUS. O Pandarus! I tell thee, Pandarus-     When I do tell thee there my hopes lie drown\'d,     Reply not in how many fathoms deep     They lie indrench\'d. I tell thee I am mad     In Cressid\'s love. Thou answer\'st \'She is fair\'-     Pourest in the open ulcer of my heart-     Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice,     Handlest in thy discourse. O, that her hand,     In whose comparison all whites are ink     Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure     The cygnet\'s down is harsh, and spirit of sense     Hard as the palm of ploughman! This thou tell\'st me,     As true thou tell\'st me, when I say I love her;     But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm,       Thou lay\'st in every gash that love hath given me     The knife that made it.   PANDARUS. I speak no more than truth.   TROILUS. Thou dost not speak so much.   PANDARUS. Faith, I\'ll not meddle in it. Let her be as she is: if     she be fair, \'tis the better for her; an she be not, she has the     mends in her own hands.   TROILUS. Good Pandarus! How now, Pandarus!   PANDARUS. I have had my labour for my travail, ill thought on of     her and ill thought on of you; gone between and between, but     small thanks for my labour.   TROILUS. What, art thou angry, Pandarus? What, with me?   PANDARUS. Because she\'s kin to me, therefore she\'s not so fair as     Helen. An she were not kin to me, she would be as fair a Friday     as Helen is on Sunday. But what care I? I care not an she were a     blackamoor; \'tis all one to me.   TROILUS. Say I she is not fair?   PANDARUS. I do not care whether you do or no. She\'s a fool to stay     behind her father. Let her to the Greeks; and so I\'ll tell her     the next time I see her. For my part, I\'ll meddle nor make no       more i\' th\' matter.   TROILUS. Pandarus!   PANDARUS. Not I.   TROILUS. Sweet Pandarus!   PANDARUS. Pray you, speak no more to me: I will leave all     as I found it, and there an end.               Exit. Sound alarum   TROILUS. Peace, you ungracious clamours! Peace, rude sounds!     Fools on both sides! Helen must needs be fair,     When with your blood you daily paint her thus.     I cannot fight upon this argument;     It is too starv\'d a subject for my sword.     But Pandarus-O gods, how do you plague me!     I cannot come to Cressid but by Pandar;     And he\'s as tetchy to be woo\'d to woo     As she is stubborn-chaste against all suit.     Tell me, Apollo, for thy Daphne\'s love,     What Cressid is, what Pandar, and what we?     Her bed is India; there she lies, a pearl;     Between our Ilium and where she resides     Let it be call\'d the wild and wand\'ring flood;       Ourself the merchant, and this sailing Pandar     Our doubtful hope, our convoy, and our bark.                  Alarum. Enter AENEAS    AENEAS. How now, Prince Troilus! Wherefore not afield?   TROILUS. Because not there. This woman\'s answer sorts,     For womanish it is to be from thence.     What news, Aeneas, from the field to-day?   AENEAS. That Paris is returned home, and hurt.   TROILUS. By whom, Aeneas?   AENEAS. Troilus, by Menelaus.   TROILUS. Let Paris bleed: \'tis but a scar to scorn;     Paris is gor\'d with Menelaus\' horn.                      [Alarum]   AENEAS. Hark what good sport is out of town to-day!   TROILUS. Better at home, if \'would I might\' were \'may.\'     But to the sport abroad. Are you bound thither?   AENEAS. In all swift haste.   TROILUS. Come, go we then together.                          Exeunt     ACT I. SCENE 2. Troy. A street  Enter CRESSIDA and her man ALEXANDER    CRESSIDA. Who were those went by?   ALEXANDER. Queen Hecuba and Helen.   CRESSIDA. And whither go they?   ALEXANDER. Up to the eastern tower,     Whose height commands as subject all the vale,     To see the battle. Hector, whose patience     Is as a virtue fix\'d, to-day was mov\'d.     He chid Andromache, and struck his armourer;     And, like as there were husbandry in war,     Before the sun rose he was harness\'d light,     And to the field goes he; where every flower     Did as a prophet weep what it foresaw     In Hector\'s wrath.   CRESSIDA. What was his cause of anger?   ALEXANDER. The noise goes, this: there is among the Greeks     A lord of Troyan blood, nephew to Hector;     They call him Ajax.     CRESSIDA. Good; and what of him?   ALEXANDER. They say he is a very man per se,     And stands alone.   CRESSIDA. So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no     legs.   ALEXANDER. This man, lady, hath robb\'d many beasts of their     particular additions: he is as valiant as a lion, churlish as the     bear, slow as the elephant-a man into whom nature hath so crowded     humours that his valour is crush\'d into folly, his folly sauced     with discretion. There is no man hath a virtue that he hath not a     glimpse of, nor any man an attaint but he carries some stain of     it; he is melancholy without cause and merry against the hair; he     hath the joints of every thing; but everything so out of joint     that he is a gouty Briareus, many hands and no use, or purblind     Argus, all eyes and no sight.   CRESSIDA. But how should this man, that makes me smile, make Hector       angry?   ALEXANDER. They say he yesterday cop\'d Hector in the battle and     struck him down, the disdain and shame whereof hath ever since     kept Hector fasting and waking.                              Enter PANDARUS    CRESSIDA. Who comes here?   ALEXANDER. Madam, your uncle Pandarus.   CRESSIDA. Hector\'s a gallant man.   ALEXANDER. As may be in the world, lady.   PANDARUS. What\'s that? What\'s that?   CRESSIDA. Good morrow, uncle Pandarus.   PANDARUS. Good morrow, cousin Cressid. What do you talk of?- Good     morrow, Alexander.-How do you, cousin? When were you at Ilium?   CRESSIDA. This morning, uncle.   PANDARUS. What were you talking of when I came? Was Hector arm\'d     and gone ere you came to Ilium? Helen was not up, was she?   CRESSIDA. Hector was gone; but Helen was not up.   PANDARUS. E\'en so. Hector was stirring early.   CRESSIDA. That were we talking of, and of his anger.   PANDARUS. Was he angry?   CRESSIDA. So he says here.   PANDARUS. True, he was so; I know the cause too; he\'ll lay about       him today, I can tell them that. And there\'s Troilus will not     come far behind him; let them take heed of Troilus, I can tell     them that too.   CRESSIDA. What, is he angry too?   PANDARUS. Who, Troilus? Troilus is the better man of the two.   CRESSIDA. O Jupiter! there\'s no comparison.   PANDARUS. What, not between Troilus and Hector? Do you know a man     if you see him?   CRESSIDA. Ay, if I ever saw him before and knew him.   PANDARUS. Well, I say Troilus is Troilus.   CRESSIDA. Then you say as I say, for I am sure he is not Hector.   PANDARUS. No, nor Hector is not Troilus in some degrees.   CRESSIDA. \'Tis just to each of them: he is himself.   PANDARUS. Himself! Alas, poor Troilus! I would he were!   CRESSIDA. So he is.   PANDARUS. Condition I had gone barefoot to India.   CRESSIDA. He is not Hector.   PANDARUS. Himself! no, he\'s not himself. Would \'a were himself!     Well, the gods are above; time must friend or end. Well, Troilus,     well! I would my heart were in her body! No, Hector is not a       better man than Troilus.   CRESSIDA. Excuse me.   PANDARUS. He is elder.   CRESSIDA. Pardon me, pardon me.   PANDARUS. Th\' other\'s not come to\'t; you shall tell me another tale     when th\' other\'s come to\'t. Hector shall not have his wit this     year.   CRESSIDA. He shall not need it if he have his own.   PANDARUS. Nor his qualities.   CRESSIDA. No matter.   PANDARUS. Nor his beauty.   CRESSIDA. \'Twould not become him: his own\'s better.   PANDARUS. YOU have no judgment, niece. Helen herself swore th\'     other day that Troilus, for a brown favour, for so \'tis, I must     confess- not brown neither-   CRESSIDA. No, but brown.   PANDARUS. Faith, to say truth, brown and not brown.   CRESSIDA. To say the truth, true and not true.   PANDARUS. She prais\'d his complexion above Paris.   CRESSIDA. Why, Paris hath colour enough.     PANDARUS. So he has.   CRESSIDA. Then Troilus should have too much. If she prais\'d him     above, his complexion is higher than his; he having colour     enough, and the other higher, is too flaming praise for a good     complexion. I had as lief Helen\'s golden tongue had commended     Troilus for a copper nose.   PANDARUS. I swear to you I think Helen loves him better than Paris.   CRESSIDA. Then she\'s a merry Greek indeed.   PANDARUS. Nay, I am sure she does. She came to him th\' other day     into the compass\'d window-and you know he has not past three or     four hairs on his chin-   CRESSIDA. Indeed a tapster\'s arithmetic may soon bring his     particulars therein to a total.   PANDARUS. Why, he is very young, and yet will he within three pound     lift as much as his brother Hector.   CRESSIDA. Is he so young a man and so old a lifter?   PANDARUS. But to prove to you that Helen loves him: she came and     puts me her white hand to his cloven chin-   CRESSIDA. Juno have mercy! How came it cloven?   PANDARUS. Why, you know, \'tis dimpled. I think his smiling becomes       him better than any man in all Phrygia.   CRESSIDA. O, he smiles valiantly!   PANDARUS. Does he not?   CRESSIDA. O yes, an \'twere a cloud in autumn!   PANDARUS. Why, go to, then! But to prove to you that Helen loves     Troilus-   CRESSIDA. Troilus will stand to the proof, if you\'ll prove it so.   PANDARUS. Troilus! Why, he esteems her no more than I esteem an     addle egg.   CRESSIDA. If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle     head, you would eat chickens i\' th\' shell.   PANDARUS. I cannot choose but laugh to think how she tickled his     chin. Indeed, she has a marvell\'s white hand, I must needs     confess.   CRESSIDA. Without the rack.   PANDARUS. And she takes upon her to spy a white hair on his chin.   CRESSIDA. Alas, poor chin! Many a wart is richer.   PANDARUS. But there was such laughing! Queen Hecuba laugh\'d that     her eyes ran o\'er.   CRESSIDA. With millstones.     PANDARUS. And Cassandra laugh\'d.   CRESSIDA. But there was a more temperate fire under the pot of her     eyes. Did her eyes run o\'er too?   PANDARUS. And Hector laugh\'d.   CRESSIDA. At what was all this laughing?   PANDARUS. Marry, at the white hair that Helen spied on Troilus\'     chin.   CRESSIDA. An\'t had been a green hair I should have laugh\'d too.   PANDARUS. They laugh\'d not so much at the hair as at his pretty     answer.   CRESSIDA. What was his answer?   PANDARUS. Quoth she \'Here\'s but two and fifty hairs on your chin,     and one of them is white.\'   CRESSIDA. This is her question.   PANDARUS. That\'s true; make no question of that. \'Two and fifty     hairs,\' quoth he \'and one white. That white hair is my father,     and all the rest are his sons.\' \'Jupiter!\' quoth she \'which of     these hairs is Paris my husband?\' \'The forked one,\' quoth he,     \'pluck\'t out and give it him.\' But there was such laughing! and     Helen so blush\'d, and Paris so chaf\'d; and all the rest so       laugh\'d that it pass\'d.   CRESSIDA. So let it now; for it has been a great while going by.   PANDARUS. Well, cousin, I told you a thing yesterday; think on\'t.   CRESSIDA. So I do.   PANDARUS. I\'ll be sworn \'tis true; he will weep you, and \'twere a     man born in April.   CRESSIDA. And I\'ll spring up in his tears, an \'twere a nettle     against May.                                    [Sound a retreat]   PANDARUS. Hark! they are coming from the field. Shall we stand up     here and see them as they pass toward Ilium? Good niece, do,     sweet niece Cressida.   CRESSIDA. At your pleasure.   PANDARUS. Here, here, here\'s an excellent place; here we may see     most bravely. I\'ll tell you them all by their names as they pass     by; but mark Troilus above the rest.                         AENEAS passes    CRESSIDA. Speak not so loud.   PANDARUS. That\'s Aeneas. Is not that a brave man? He\'s one of the       flowers of Troy, I can tell you. But mark Troilus; you shall see     anon.                         ANTENOR passes    CRESSIDA. Who\'s that?   PANDARUS. That\'s Antenor. He has a shrewd wit, I can tell you; and     he\'s a man good enough; he\'s one o\' th\' soundest judgments in     Troy, whosoever, and a proper man of person. When comes Troilus?     I\'ll show you Troilus anon. If he see me, you shall see him nod     at me.   CRESSIDA. Will he give you the nod?   PANDARUS. You shall see.   CRESSIDA. If he do, the rich shall have more.                       HECTOR passes    PANDARUS. That\'s Hector, that, that, look you, that; there\'s a     fellow! Go thy way, Hector! There\'s a brave man, niece. O brave     Hector! Look how he looks. There\'s a countenance! Is\'t not a       brave man?   CRESSIDA. O, a brave man!   PANDARUS. Is \'a not? It does a man\'s heart good. Look you what     hacks are on his helmet! Look you yonder, do you see? Look you     there. There\'s no jesting; there\'s laying on; take\'t off who     will, as they say. There be hacks.   CRESSIDA. Be those with swords?   PANDARUS. Swords! anything, he cares not; an the devil come to him,     it\'s all one. By God\'s lid, it does one\'s heart good. Yonder     comes Paris, yonder comes Paris.                         PARIS passes      Look ye yonder, niece; is\'t not a gallant man too, is\'t not? Why,     this is brave now. Who said he came hurt home to-day? He\'s not     hurt. Why, this will do Helen\'s heart good now, ha! Would I could     see Troilus now! You shall see Troilus anon.                        HELENUS passes      CRESSIDA. Who\'s that?   PANDARUS. That\'s Helenus. I marvel where Troilus is. That\'s     Helenus. I think he went not forth to-day. That\'s Helenus.   CRESSIDA. Can Helenus fight, uncle?   PANDARUS. Helenus! no. Yes, he\'ll fight indifferent well. I marvel     where Troilus is. Hark! do you not hear the people cry \'Troilus\'?     Helenus is a priest.   CRESSIDA. What sneaking fellow comes yonder?                      TROILUS passes    PANDARUS. Where? yonder? That\'s Deiphobus. \'Tis Troilus. There\'s a     man, niece. Hem! Brave Troilus, the prince of chivalry!   CRESSIDA. Peace, for shame, peace!   PANDARUS. Mark him; note him. O brave Troilus! Look well upon him,     niece; look you how his sword is bloodied, and his helm more     hack\'d than Hector\'s; and how he looks, and how he goes! O     admirable youth! he never saw three and twenty. Go thy way,     Troilus, go thy way. Had I a sister were a grace or a daughter a     goddess, he should take his choice. O admirable man! Paris? Paris       is dirt to him; and, I warrant, Helen, to change, would give an     eye to boot.   CRESSIDA. Here comes more.                   Common soldiers pass    PANDARUS. Asses, fools, dolts! chaff and bran, chaff and bran!     porridge after meat! I could live and die in the eyes of Troilus.     Ne\'er look, ne\'er look; the eagles are gone. Crows and daws,     crows and daws! I had rather be such a man as Troilus than     Agamemnon and all Greece.   CRESSIDA. There is amongst the Greeks Achilles, a better man than     Troilus.   PANDARUS. Achilles? A drayman, a porter, a very camel!   CRESSIDA. Well, well.   PANDARUS. Well, well! Why, have you any discretion? Have you any     eyes? Do you know what a man is? Is not birth, beauty, good     shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth,     liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?   CRESSIDA. Ay, a minc\'d man; and then to be bak\'d with no date in       the pie, for then the man\'s date is out.   PANDARUS. You are such a woman! A man knows not at what ward you     lie.   CRESSIDA. Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defend     my wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine honesty; my mask, to     defend my beauty; and you, to defend all these; and at all these     wards I lie at, at a thousand watches.   PANDARUS. Say one of your watches.   CRESSIDA. Nay, I\'ll watch you for that; and that\'s one of the     chiefest of them too. If I cannot ward what I would not have hit,     I can watch you for telling how I took the blow; unless it swell     past hiding, and then it\'s past watching   PANDARUS. You are such another!                     Enter TROILUS\' BOY    BOY. Sir, my lord would instantly speak with you.   PANDARUS. Where?   BOY. At your own house; there he unarms him.   PANDARUS. Good boy, tell him I come.                       Exit Boy       I doubt he be hurt. Fare ye well, good niece.   CRESSIDA. Adieu, uncle.   PANDARUS. I will be with you, niece, by and by.   CRESSIDA. To bring, uncle.   PANDARUS. Ay, a token from Troilus.   CRESSIDA. By the same token, you are a bawd.                                                         Exit PANDARUS     Words, vows, gifts, tears, and love\'s full sacrifice,     He offers in another\'s enterprise;     But more in Troilus thousand-fold I see     Than in the glass of Pandar\'s praise may be,     Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing:     Things won are done; joy\'s soul lies in the doing.     That she belov\'d knows nought that knows not this:     Men prize the thing ungain\'d more than it is.     That she was never yet that ever knew     Love got so sweet as when desire did sue;     Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:     Achievement is command; ungain\'d, beseech.     Then though my heart\'s content firm love doth bear,       Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.                 Exit     ACT I. SCENE 3. The Grecian camp. Before AGAMEMNON\'S tent  Sennet. Enter AGAMEMNON, NESTOR, ULYSSES, DIOMEDES, MENELAUS, and others    AGAMEMNON. Princes,     What grief hath set these jaundies o\'er your cheeks?     The ample proposition that hope makes     In all designs begun on earth below     Fails in the promis\'d largeness; checks and disasters     Grow in the veins of actions highest rear\'d,     As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,     Infects the sound pine, and diverts his grain     Tortive and errant from his course of growth.     Nor, princes, is it matter new to us     That we come short of our suppose so far     That after seven years\' siege yet Troy walls stand;     Sith every action that hath gone before,     Whereof we have record, trial did draw     Bias and thwart, not answering the aim,     And that unbodied figure of the thought       That gave\'t surmised shape. Why then, you princes,     Do you with cheeks abash\'d behold our works     And call them shames, which are, indeed, nought else     But the protractive trials of great Jove     To find persistive constancy in men;     The fineness of which metal is not found     In fortune\'s love? For then the bold and coward,     The wise and fool, the artist and unread,     The hard and soft, seem all affin\'d and kin.     But in the wind and tempest of her frown     Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,     Puffing at all, winnows the light away;     And what hath mass or matter by itself     Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.   NESTOR. With due observance of thy godlike seat,     Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply     Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance     Lies the true proof of men. The sea being smooth,     How many shallow bauble boats dare sail     Upon her patient breast, making their way       With those of nobler bulk!     But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage     The gentle Thetis, and anon behold     The strong-ribb\'d bark through liquid mountains cut,     Bounding between the two moist elements     Like Perseus\' horse. Where\'s then the saucy boat,     Whose weak untimber\'d sides but even now     Co-rivall\'d greatness? Either to harbour fled     Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so     Doth valour\'s show and valour\'s worth divide     In storms of fortune; for in her ray and brightness     The herd hath more annoyance by the breeze     Than by the tiger; but when the splitting wind     Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks,     And flies fled under shade-why, then the thing of courage     As rous\'d with rage, with rage doth sympathise,     And with an accent tun\'d in self-same key     Retorts to chiding fortune.   ULYSSES. Agamemnon,     Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece,       Heart of our numbers, soul and only spirit     In whom the tempers and the minds of all     Should be shut up-hear what Ulysses speaks.     Besides the applause and approbation     The which, [To AGAMEMNON] most mighty, for thy place and sway,     [To NESTOR] And, thou most reverend, for thy stretch\'d-out life,     I give to both your speeches- which were such     As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece     Should hold up high in brass; and such again     As venerable Nestor, hatch\'d in silver,     Should with a bond of air, strong as the axle-tree     On which heaven rides, knit all the Greekish ears     To his experienc\'d tongue-yet let it please both,     Thou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak.   AGAMEMNON. Speak, Prince of Ithaca; and be\'t of less expect     That matter needless, of importless burden,     Divide thy lips than we are confident,     When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws,     We shall hear music, wit, and oracle.   ULYSSES. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been down,       And the great Hector\'s sword had lack\'d a master,     But for these instances:     The specialty of rule hath been neglected;     And look how many Grecian tents do stand     Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.     When that the general is not like the hive,     To whom the foragers shall all repair,     What honey is expected? Degree being vizarded,     Th\' unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.     The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,     Observe degree, priority, and place,     Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,     Office, and custom, in all line of order;     And therefore is the glorious planet Sol     In noble eminence enthron\'d and spher\'d     Amidst the other, whose med\'cinable eye     Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,     And posts, like the commandment of a king,     Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets     In evil mixture to disorder wander,       What plagues and what portents, what mutiny,     What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,     Commotion in the winds! Frights, changes, horrors,     Divert and crack, rend and deracinate,     The unity and married calm of states     Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shak\'d,     Which is the ladder of all high designs,     The enterprise is sick! How could communities,     Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,     Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,     The primogenity and due of birth,     Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,     But by degree, stand in authentic place?     Take but degree away, untune that string,     And hark what discord follows! Each thing melts     In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters     Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,     And make a sop of all this solid globe;     Strength should be lord of imbecility,     And the rude son should strike his father dead;       Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong-     Between whose endless jar justice resides-     Should lose their names, and so should justice too.     Then everything includes itself in power,     Power into will, will into appetite;     And appetite, an universal wolf,     So doubly seconded with will and power,     Must make perforce an universal prey,     And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon,     This chaos, when degree is suffocate,     Follows the choking.     And this neglection of degree it is     That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose     It hath to climb. The general\'s disdain\'d     By him one step below, he by the next,     That next by him beneath; so ever step,     Exampl\'d by the first pace that is sick     Of his superior, grows to an envious fever     Of pale and bloodless emulation.     And \'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot,       Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,     Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.   NESTOR. Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover\'d     The fever whereof all our power is sick.   AGAMEMNON. The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses,     What is the remedy?   ULYSSES. The great Achilles, whom opinion crowns     The sinew and the forehand of our host,     Having his ear full of his airy fame,     Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent     Lies mocking our designs; with him Patroclus     Upon a lazy bed the livelong day     Breaks scurril jests;     And with ridiculous and awkward action-     Which, slanderer, he imitation calls-     He pageants us. Sometime, great Agamemnon,     Thy topless deputation he puts on;     And like a strutting player whose conceit     Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich     To hear the wooden dialogue and sound       \'Twixt his stretch\'d footing and the scaffoldage-     Such to-be-pitied and o\'er-wrested seeming     He acts thy greatness in; and when he speaks     \'Tis like a chime a-mending; with terms unsquar\'d,     Which, from the tongue of roaring Typhon dropp\'d,     Would seem hyperboles. At this fusty stuff     The large Achilles, on his press\'d bed lolling,     From his deep chest laughs out a loud applause;     Cries \'Excellent! \'tis Agamemnon just.     Now play me Nestor; hem, and stroke thy beard,     As he being drest to some oration.\'     That\'s done-as near as the extremest ends     Of parallels, as like Vulcan and his wife;     Yet god Achilles still cries \'Excellent!     \'Tis Nestor right. Now play him me, Patroclus,     Arming to answer in a night alarm.\'     And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age     Must be the scene of mirth: to cough and spit     And, with a palsy-fumbling on his gorget,     Shake in and out the rivet. And at this sport       Sir Valour dies; cries \'O, enough, Patroclus;     Or give me ribs of steel! I shall split all     In pleasure of my spleen.\' And in this fashion     All our abilities, gifts, natures, shapes,     Severals and generals of grace exact,     Achievements, plots, orders, preventions,     Excitements to the field or speech for truce,     Success or loss, what is or is not, serves     As stuff for these two to make paradoxes.   NESTOR. And in the imitation of these twain-     Who, as Ulysses says, opinion crowns     With an imperial voice-many are infect.     Ajax is grown self-will\'d and bears his head     In such a rein, in full as proud a place     As broad Achilles; keeps his tent like him;     Makes factious feasts; rails on our state of war     Bold as an oracle, and sets Thersites,     A slave whose gall coins slanders like a mint,     To match us in comparisons with dirt,     To weaken and discredit our exposure,       How rank soever rounded in with danger.   ULYSSES. They tax our policy and call it cowardice,     Count wisdom as no member of the war,     Forestall prescience, and esteem no act     But that of hand. The still and mental parts     That do contrive how many hands shall strike     When fitness calls them on, and know, by measure     Of their observant toil, the enemies\' weight-     Why, this hath not a finger\'s dignity:     They call this bed-work, mapp\'ry, closet-war;     So that the ram that batters down the wall,     For the great swinge and rudeness of his poise,     They place before his hand that made the engine,     Or those that with the fineness of their souls     By reason guide his execution.   NESTOR. Let this be granted, and Achilles\' horse     Makes many Thetis\' sons.                                 [Tucket]   AGAMEMNON. What trumpet? Look, Menelaus.   MENELAUS. From Troy.                          Enter AENEAS    AGAMEMNON. What would you fore our tent?   AENEAS. Is this great Agamemnon\'s tent, I pray you?   AGAMEMNON. Even this.   AENEAS. May one that is a herald and a prince     Do a fair message to his kingly eyes?   AGAMEMNON. With surety stronger than Achilles\' an     Fore all the Greekish heads, which with one voice     Call Agamemnon head and general.   AENEAS. Fair leave and large security. How may     A stranger to those most imperial looks     Know them from eyes of other mortals?   AGAMEMNON. How?   AENEAS. Ay;     I ask, that I might waken reverence,     And bid the cheek be ready with a blush     Modest as Morning when she coldly eyes     The youthful Phoebus.     Which is that god in office, guiding men?       Which is the high and mighty Agamemnon?   AGAMEMNON. This Troyan scorns us, or the men of Troy     Are ceremonious courtiers.   AENEAS. Courtiers as free, as debonair, unarm\'d,     As bending angels; that\'s their fame in peace.     But when they would seem soldiers, they have galls,     Good arms, strong joints, true swords; and, Jove\'s accord,     Nothing so full of heart. But peace, Aeneas,     Peace, Troyan; lay thy finger on thy lips.     The worthiness of praise distains his worth,     If that the prais\'d himself bring the praise forth;     But what the repining enemy commends,     That breath fame blows; that praise, sole pure, transcends.   AGAMEMNON. Sir, you of Troy, call you yourself Aeneas?   AENEAS. Ay, Greek, that is my name.   AGAMEMNON. What\'s your affair, I pray you?   AENEAS. Sir, pardon; \'tis for Agamemnon\'s ears.   AGAMEMNON. He hears nought privately that comes from Troy.   AENEAS. Nor I from Troy come not to whisper with him;     I bring a trumpet to awake his ear,       To set his sense on the attentive bent,     And then to speak.   AGAMEMNON. Speak frankly as the wind;     It is not Agamemnon\'s sleeping hour.     That thou shalt know, Troyan, he is awake,     He tells thee so himself.   AENEAS. Trumpet, blow loud,     Send thy brass voice through all these lazy tents;     And every Greek of mettle, let him know     What Troy means fairly shall be spoke aloud.                                                       [Sound trumpet]     We have, great Agamemnon, here in Troy     A prince called Hector-Priam is his father-     Who in this dull and long-continued truce     Is resty grown; he bade me take a trumpet     And to this purpose speak: Kings, princes, lords!     If there be one among the fair\'st of Greece     That holds his honour higher than his ease,     That seeks his praise more than he fears his peril,     That knows his valour and knows not his fear,       That loves his mistress more than in confession     With truant vows to her own lips he loves,     And dare avow her beauty and her worth     In other arms than hers-to him this challenge.     Hector, in view of Troyans and of Greeks,     Shall make it good or do his best to do it:     He hath a lady wiser, fairer, truer,     Than ever Greek did couple in his arms;     And will to-morrow with his trumpet call     Mid-way between your tents and walls of Troy     To rouse a Grecian that is true in love.     If any come, Hector shall honour him;     If none, he\'ll say in Troy, when he retires,     The Grecian dames are sunburnt and not worth     The splinter of a lance. Even so much.   AGAMEMNON. This shall be told our lovers, Lord Aeneas.     If none of them have soul in such a kind,     We left them all at home. But we are soldiers;     And may that soldier a mere recreant prove     That means not, hath not, or is not in love.       If then one is, or hath, or means to be,     That one meets Hector; if none else, I am he.   NESTOR. Tell him of Nestor, one that was a man     When Hector\'s grandsire suck\'d. He is old now;     But if there be not in our Grecian mould     One noble man that hath one spark of fire     To answer for his love, tell him from me     I\'ll hide my silver beard in a gold beaver,     And in my vantbrace put this wither\'d brawn,     And, meeting him, will tell him that my lady     Was fairer than his grandame, and as chaste     As may be in the world. His youth in flood,     I\'ll prove this truth with my three drops of blood.   AENEAS. Now heavens forfend such scarcity of youth!   ULYSSES. Amen.   AGAMEMNON. Fair Lord Aeneas, let me touch your hand;     To our pavilion shall I lead you, first.     Achilles shall have word of this intent;     So shall each lord of Greece, from tent to tent.     Yourself shall feast with us before you go,       And find the welcome of a noble foe.                                     Exeunt all but ULYSSES and NESTOR   ULYSSES. Nestor!   NESTOR. What says Ulysses?   ULYSSES. I have a young conception in my brain;     Be you my time to bring it to some shape.   NESTOR. What is\'t?   ULYSSES. This \'tis:     Blunt wedges rive hard knots. The seeded pride     That hath to this maturity blown up     In rank Achilles must or now be cropp\'d     Or, shedding, breed a nursery of like evil     To overbulk us all.   NESTOR. Well, and how?   ULYSSES. This challenge that the gallant Hector sends,     However it is spread in general name,     Relates in purpose only to Achilles.   NESTOR. True. The purpose is perspicuous even as substance     Whose grossness little characters sum up;     And, in the publication, make no strain       But that Achilles, were his brain as barren     As banks of Libya-though, Apollo knows,     \'Tis dry enough-will with great speed of judgment,     Ay, with celerity, find Hector\'s purpose     Pointing on him.   ULYSSES. And wake him to the answer, think you?   NESTOR. Why, \'tis most meet. Who may you else oppose     That can from Hector bring those honours off,     If not Achilles? Though \'t be a sportful combat,     Yet in this trial much opinion dwells;     For here the Troyans taste our dear\'st repute     With their fin\'st palate; and trust to me, Ulysses,     Our imputation shall be oddly pois\'d     In this vile action; for the success,     Although particular, shall give a scantling     Of good or bad unto the general;     And in such indexes, although small pricks     To their subsequent volumes, there is seen     The baby figure of the giant mas     Of things to come at large. It is suppos\'d       He that meets Hector issues from our choice;     And choice, being mutual act of all our souls,     Makes merit her election, and doth boil,     As \'twere from forth us all, a man distill\'d     Out of our virtues; who miscarrying,     What heart receives from hence a conquering part,     To steel a strong opinion to themselves?     Which entertain\'d, limbs are his instruments,     In no less working than are swords and bows     Directive by the limbs.   ULYSSES. Give pardon to my speech.     Therefore \'tis meet Achilles meet not Hector.     Let us, like merchants, show our foulest wares     And think perchance they\'ll sell; if not, the lustre     Of the better yet to show shall show the better,     By showing the worst first. Do not consent     That ever Hector and Achilles meet;     For both our honour and our shame in this     Are dogg\'d with two strange followers.   NESTOR. I see them not with my old eyes. What are they?     ULYSSES. What glory our Achilles shares from Hector,     Were he not proud, we all should wear with him;     But he already is too insolent;     And it were better parch in Afric sun     Than in the pride and salt scorn of his eyes,     Should he scape Hector fair. If he were foil\'d,     Why, then we do our main opinion crush     In taint of our best man. No, make a lott\'ry;     And, by device, let blockish Ajax draw     The sort to fight with Hector. Among ourselves     Give him allowance for the better man;     For that will physic the great Myrmidon,     Who broils in loud applause, and make him fall     His crest, that prouder than blue Iris bends.     If the dull brainless Ajax come safe off,     We\'ll dress him up in voices; if he fail,     Yet go we under our opinion still     That we have better men. But, hit or miss,     Our project\'s life this shape of sense assumes-     Ajax employ\'d plucks down Achilles\' plumes.     NESTOR. Now, Ulysses, I begin to relish thy advice;     And I will give a taste thereof forthwith     To Agamemnon. Go we to him straight.     Two curs shall tame each other: pride alone     Must tarre the mastiffs on, as \'twere their bone.          Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE 1. The Grecian camp  Enter Ajax and THERSITES    AJAX. Thersites!   THERSITES. Agamemnon-how if he had boils full, an over, generally?   AJAX. Thersites!   THERSITES. And those boils did run-say so. Did not the general run     then? Were not that a botchy core?   AJAX. Dog!   THERSITES. Then there would come some matter from him;     I see none now.   AJAX. Thou bitch-wolf\'s son, canst thou not hear? Feel, then.                                                         [Strikes him]   THERSITES. The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted     lord!   AJAX. Speak, then, thou whinid\'st leaven, speak. I will beat thee     into handsomeness.   THERSITES. I shall sooner rail thee into wit and holiness; but I     think thy horse will sooner con an oration than thou learn a     prayer without book. Thou canst strike, canst thou? A red murrain       o\' thy jade\'s tricks!   AJAX. Toadstool, learn me the proclamation.   THERSITES. Dost thou think I have no sense, thou strikest me thus?   AJAX. The proclamation!   THERSITES. Thou art proclaim\'d, a fool, I think.   AJAX. Do not, porpentine, do not; my fingers itch.   THERSITES. I would thou didst itch from head to foot and I had the     scratching of thee; I would make thee the loathsomest scab in     Greece. When thou art forth in the incursions, thou strikest as     slow as another.   AJAX. I say, the proclamation.   THERSITES. Thou grumblest and railest every hour on Achilles; and     thou art as full of envy at his greatness as Cerberus is at     Proserpina\'s beauty-ay, that thou bark\'st at him.   AJAX. Mistress Thersites!   THERSITES. Thou shouldst strike him.   AJAX. Cobloaf!   THERSITES. He would pun thee into shivers with his fist, as a     sailor breaks a biscuit.   AJAX. You whoreson cur!                               [Strikes him]     THERSITES. Do, do.   AJAX. Thou stool for a witch!   THERSITES. Ay, do, do; thou sodden-witted lord! Thou hast no more     brain than I have in mine elbows; an assinico may tutor thee. You     scurvy valiant ass! Thou art here but to thrash Troyans, and thou     art bought and sold among those of any wit like a barbarian     slave. If thou use to beat me, I will begin at thy heel and tell     what thou art by inches, thou thing of no bowels, thou!   AJAX. You dog!   THERSITES. You scurvy lord!   AJAX. You cur!                                        [Strikes him]   THERSITES. Mars his idiot! Do, rudeness; do, camel; do, do.                   Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS    ACHILLES. Why, how now, Ajax! Wherefore do you thus?     How now, Thersites! What\'s the matter, man?   THERSITES. You see him there, do you?   ACHILLES. Ay; what\'s the matter?   THERSITES. Nay, look upon him.     ACHILLES. So I do. What\'s the matter?   THERSITES. Nay, but regard him well.   ACHILLES. Well! why, so I do.   THERSITES. But yet you look not well upon him; for who some ever     you take him to be, he is Ajax.   ACHILLES. I know that, fool.   THERSITES. Ay, but that fool knows not himself.   AJAX. Therefore I beat thee.   THERSITES. Lo, lo, lo, lo, what modicums of wit he utters! His     evasions have ears thus long. I have bobb\'d his brain more than     he has beat my bones. I will buy nine sparrows for a penny, and     his pia mater is not worth the ninth part of a sparrow. This     lord, Achilles, Ajax-who wears his wit in his belly and his guts     in his head-I\'ll tell you what I say of him.   ACHILLES. What?   THERSITES. I say this Ajax-             [AJAX offers to strike him]   ACHILLES. Nay, good Ajax.   THERSITES. Has not so much wit-   ACHILLES. Nay, I must hold you.   THERSITES. As will stop the eye of Helen\'s needle, for whom he       comes to fight.   ACHILLES. Peace, fool.   THERSITES. I would have peace and quietness, but the fool will not-     he there; that he; look you there.   AJAX. O thou damned cur! I shall-   ACHILLES. Will you set your wit to a fool\'s?   THERSITES. No, I warrant you, the fool\'s will shame it.   PATROCLUS. Good words, Thersites.   ACHILLES. What\'s the quarrel?   AJAX. I bade the vile owl go learn me the tenour of the     proclamation, and he rails upon me.   THERSITES. I serve thee not.   AJAX. Well, go to, go to.   THERSITES. I serve here voluntary.   ACHILLES. Your last service was suff\'rance; \'twas not voluntary. No     man is beaten voluntary. Ajax was here the voluntary, and you as     under an impress.   THERSITES. E\'en so; a great deal of your wit too lies in your     sinews, or else there be liars. Hector shall have a great catch     an he knock out either of your brains: \'a were as good crack a       fusty nut with no kernel.   ACHILLES. What, with me too, Thersites?   THERSITES. There\'s Ulysses and old Nestor-whose wit was mouldy ere     your grandsires had nails on their toes-yoke you like draught     oxen, and make you plough up the wars.   ACHILLES. What, what?   THERSITES. Yes, good sooth. To Achilles, to Ajax, to-   AJAX. I shall cut out your tongue.   THERSITES. \'Tis no matter; I shall speak as much as thou     afterwards.   PATROCLUS. No more words, Thersites; peace!   THERSITES. I will hold my peace when Achilles\' brach bids me, shall     I?   ACHILLES. There\'s for you, Patroclus.   THERSITES. I will see you hang\'d like clotpoles ere I come any more     to your tents. I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave     the faction of fools.                                        Exit   PATROCLUS. A good riddance.   ACHILLES. Marry, this, sir, is proclaim\'d through all our host,     That Hector, by the fifth hour of the sun,       Will with a trumpet \'twixt our tents and Troy,     To-morrow morning, call some knight to arms     That hath a stomach; and such a one that dare     Maintain I know not what; \'tis trash. Farewell.   AJAX. Farewell. Who shall answer him?   ACHILLES. I know not; \'tis put to lott\'ry. Otherwise. He knew his     man.   AJAX. O, meaning you! I will go learn more of it.            Exeunt     ACT II. SCENE 2. Troy. PRIAM\'S palace  Enter PRIAM, HECTOR, TROILUS, PARIS, and HELENUS    PRIAM. After so many hours, lives, speeches, spent,     Thus once again says Nestor from the Greeks:     \'Deliver Helen, and all damage else-     As honour, loss of time, travail, expense,     Wounds, friends, and what else dear that is consum\'d     In hot digestion of this cormorant war-     Shall be struck off.\' Hector, what say you to\'t?   HECTOR. Though no man lesser fears the Greeks than I,     As far as toucheth my particular,     Yet, dread Priam,     There is no lady of more softer bowels,     More spongy to suck in the sense of fear,     More ready to cry out \'Who knows what follows?\'     Than Hector is. The wound of peace is surety,     Surety secure; but modest doubt is call\'d     The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches     To th\' bottom of the worst. Let Helen go.       Since the first sword was drawn about this question,     Every tithe soul \'mongst many thousand dismes     Hath been as dear as Helen-I mean, of ours.     If we have lost so many tenths of ours     To guard a thing not ours, nor worth to us,     Had it our name, the value of one ten,     What merit\'s in that reason which denies     The yielding of her up?   TROILUS. Fie, fie, my brother!     Weigh you the worth and honour of a king,     So great as our dread father\'s, in a scale     Of common ounces? Will you with counters sum     The past-proportion of his infinite,     And buckle in a waist most fathomless     With spans and inches so diminutive     As fears and reasons? Fie, for godly shame!   HELENUS. No marvel though you bite so sharp at reasons,     You are so empty of them. Should not our father     Bear the great sway of his affairs with reasons,     Because your speech hath none that tells him so?     TROILUS. You are for dreams and slumbers, brother priest;     You fur your gloves with reason. Here are your reasons:     You know an enemy intends you harm;     You know a sword employ\'d is perilous,     And reason flies the object of all harm.     Who marvels, then, when Helenus beholds     A Grecian and his sword, if he do set     The very wings of reason to his heels     And fly like chidden Mercury from Jove,     Or like a star disorb\'d? Nay, if we talk of reason,     Let\'s shut our gates and sleep. Manhood and honour     Should have hare hearts, would they but fat their thoughts     With this cramm\'d reason. Reason and respect     Make livers pale and lustihood deject.   HECTOR. Brother, she is not worth what she doth, cost     The keeping.   TROILUS. What\'s aught but as \'tis valued?   HECTOR. But value dwells not in particular will:     It holds his estimate and dignity     As well wherein \'tis precious of itself       As in the prizer. \'Tis mad idolatry     To make the service greater than the god-I     And the will dotes that is attributive     To what infectiously itself affects,     Without some image of th\' affected merit.   TROILUS. I take to-day a wife, and my election     Is led on in the conduct of my will;     My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears,     Two traded pilots \'twixt the dangerous shores     Of will and judgment: how may I avoid,     Although my will distaste what it elected,     The wife I chose? There can be no evasion     To blench from this and to stand firm by honour.     We turn not back the silks upon the merchant     When we have soil\'d them; nor the remainder viands     We do not throw in unrespective sieve,     Because we now are full. It was thought meet     Paris should do some vengeance on the Greeks;     Your breath with full consent benied his sails;     The seas and winds, old wranglers, took a truce,       And did him service. He touch\'d the ports desir\'d;     And for an old aunt whom the Greeks held captive     He brought a Grecian queen, whose youth and freshness     Wrinkles Apollo\'s, and makes stale the morning.     Why keep we her? The Grecians keep our aunt.     Is she worth keeping? Why, she is a pearl     Whose price hath launch\'d above a thousand ships,     And turn\'d crown\'d kings to merchants.     If you\'ll avouch \'twas wisdom Paris went-     As you must needs, for you all cried \'Go, go\'-     If you\'ll confess he brought home worthy prize-     As you must needs, for you all clapp\'d your hands,     And cried \'Inestimable!\' -why do you now     The issue of your proper wisdoms rate,     And do a deed that never fortune did-     Beggar the estimation which you priz\'d     Richer than sea and land? O theft most base,     That we have stol\'n what we do fear to keep!     But thieves unworthy of a thing so stol\'n     That in their country did them that disgrace       We fear to warrant in our native place!   CASSANDRA. [Within] Cry, Troyans, cry.   PRIAM. What noise, what shriek is this?   TROILUS. \'Tis our mad sister; I do know her voice.   CASSANDRA. [Within] Cry, Troyans.   HECTOR. It is Cassandra.                    Enter CASSANDRA, raving    CASSANDRA. Cry, Troyans, cry. Lend me ten thousand eyes,     And I will fill them with prophetic tears.   HECTOR. Peace, sister, peace.   CASSANDRA. Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled eld,     Soft infancy, that nothing canst but cry,     Add to my clamours. Let us pay betimes     A moiety of that mass of moan to come.     Cry, Troyans, cry. Practise your eyes with tears.     Troy must not be, nor goodly Ilion stand;     Our firebrand brother, Paris, burns us all.     Cry, Troyans, cry, A Helen and a woe!       Cry, cry. Troy burns, or else let Helen go.                  Exit   HECTOR. Now, youthful Troilus, do not these high strains     Of divination in our sister work     Some touches of remorse, or is your blood     So madly hot that no discourse of reason,     Nor fear of bad success in a bad cause,     Can qualify the same?   TROILUS. Why, brother Hector,     We may not think the justness of each act     Such and no other than event doth form it;     Nor once deject the courage of our minds     Because Cassandra\'s mad. Her brain-sick raptures     Cannot distaste the goodness of a quarrel     Which hath our several honours all engag\'d     To make it gracious. For my private part,     I am no more touch\'d than all Priam\'s sons;     And Jove forbid there should be done amongst us     Such things as might offend the weakest spleen     To fight for and maintain.   PARIS. Else might the world convince of levity       As well my undertakings as your counsels;     But I attest the gods, your full consent     Gave wings to my propension, and cut of     All fears attending on so dire a project.     For what, alas, can these my single arms?     What propugnation is in one man\'s valour     To stand the push and enmity of those     This quarrel would excite? Yet, I protest,     Were I alone to pass the difficulties,     And had as ample power as I have will,     Paris should ne\'er retract what he hath done     Nor faint in the pursuit.   PRIAM. Paris, you speak     Like one besotted on your sweet delights.     You have the honey still, but these the gall;     So to be valiant is no praise at all.   PARIS. Sir, I propose not merely to myself     The pleasures such a beauty brings with it;     But I would have the soil of her fair rape     Wip\'d off in honourable keeping her.       What treason were it to the ransack\'d queen,     Disgrace to your great worths, and shame to me,     Now to deliver her possession up     On terms of base compulsion! Can it be     That so degenerate a strain as this     Should once set footing in your generous bosoms?     There\'s not the meanest spirit on our party     Without a heart to dare or sword to draw     When Helen is defended; nor none so noble     Whose life were ill bestow\'d or death unfam\'d     Where Helen is the subject. Then, I say,     Well may we fight for her whom we know well     The world\'s large spaces cannot parallel.   HECTOR. Paris and Troilus, you have both said well;     And on the cause and question now in hand     Have gloz\'d, but superficially; not much     Unlike young men, whom Aristode thought     Unfit to hear moral philosophy.     The reasons you allege do more conduce     To the hot passion of distemp\'red blood       Than to make up a free determination     \'Twixt right and wrong; for pleasure and revenge     Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice     Of any true decision. Nature craves     All dues be rend\'red to their owners. Now,     What nearer debt in all humanity     Than wife is to the husband? If this law     Of nature be corrupted through affection;     And that great minds, of partial indulgence     To their benumbed wills, resist the same;     There is a law in each well-order\'d nation     To curb those raging appetites that are     Most disobedient and refractory.     If Helen, then, be wife to Sparta\'s king-     As it is known she is-these moral laws     Of nature and of nations speak aloud     To have her back return\'d. Thus to persist     In doing wrong extenuates not wrong,     But makes it much more heavy. Hector\'s opinion     Is this, in way of truth. Yet, ne\'er the less,       My spritely brethren, I propend to you     In resolution to keep Helen still;     For \'tis a cause that hath no mean dependence     Upon our joint and several dignities.   TROILUS. Why, there you touch\'d the life of our design.     Were it not glory that we more affected     Than the performance of our heaving spleens,     I would not wish a drop of Troyan blood     Spent more in her defence. But, worthy Hector,     She is a theme of honour and renown,     A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds,     Whose present courage may beat down our foes,     And fame in time to come canonize us;     For I presume brave Hector would not lose     So rich advantage of a promis\'d glory     As smiles upon the forehead of this action     For the wide world\'s revenue.   HECTOR. I am yours,     You valiant offspring of great Priamus.     I have a roisting challenge sent amongst       The dull and factious nobles of the Greeks     Will strike amazement to their drowsy spirits.     I was advertis\'d their great general slept,     Whilst emulation in the army crept.     This, I presume, will wake him.                            Exeunt     ACT II. SCENE 3. The Grecian camp. Before the tent of ACHILLES  Enter THERSITES, solus    THERSITES. How now, Thersites! What, lost in the labyrinth of thy     fury? Shall the elephant Ajax carry it thus? He beats me, and I     rail at him. O worthy satisfaction! Would it were otherwise: that     I could beat him, whilst he rail\'d at me! \'Sfoot, I\'ll learn to     conjure and raise devils, but I\'ll see some issue of my spiteful     execrations. Then there\'s Achilles, a rare engineer! If Troy be     not taken till these two undermine it, the walls will stand till     they fall of themselves. O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus,     forget that thou art Jove, the king of gods, and, Mercury, lose     all the serpentine craft of thy caduceus, if ye take not that     little little less-than-little wit from them that they have!     which short-arm\'d ignorance itself knows is so abundant scarce,     it will not in circumvention deliver a fly from a spider without     drawing their massy irons and cutting the web. After this, the     vengeance on the whole camp! or, rather, the Neapolitan     bone-ache! for that, methinks, is the curse depending on those     that war for a placket. I have said my prayers; and devil Envy       say \'Amen.\' What ho! my Lord Achilles!                        Enter PATROCLUS    PATROCLUS. Who\'s there? Thersites! Good Thersites, come in and     rail.   THERSITES. If I could \'a rememb\'red a gilt counterfeit, thou     wouldst not have slipp\'d out of my contemplation; but it is no     matter; thyself upon thyself! The common curse of mankind, folly     and ignorance, be thine in great revenue! Heaven bless thee from     a tutor, and discipline come not near thee! Let thy blood be thy     direction till thy death. Then if she that lays thee out says     thou art a fair corse, I\'ll be sworn and sworn upon\'t she never     shrouded any but lazars. Amen. Where\'s Achilles?   PATROCLUS. What, art thou devout? Wast thou in prayer?   THERSITES. Ay, the heavens hear me!   PATROCLUS. Amen.                        Enter ACHILLES      ACHILLES. Who\'s there?   PATROCLUS. Thersites, my lord.   ACHILLES. Where, where? O, where? Art thou come? Why, my cheese, my     digestion, why hast thou not served thyself in to my table so     many meals? Come, what\'s Agamemnon?   THERSITES. Thy commander, Achilles. Then tell me, Patroclus, what\'s     Achilles?   PATROCLUS. Thy lord, Thersites. Then tell me, I pray thee, what\'s     Thersites?   THERSITES. Thy knower, Patroclus. Then tell me, Patroclus, what art     thou?   PATROCLUS. Thou must tell that knowest.   ACHILLES. O, tell, tell,   THERSITES. I\'ll decline the whole question. Agamemnon commands     Achilles; Achilles is my lord; I am Patroclus\' knower; and     Patroclus is a fool.   PATROCLUS. You rascal!   THERSITES. Peace, fool! I have not done.   ACHILLES. He is a privileg\'d man. Proceed, Thersites.   THERSITES. Agamemnon is a fool; Achilles is a fool; Thersites is a       fool; and, as aforesaid, Patroclus is a fool.   ACHILLES. Derive this; come.   THERSITES. Agamemnon is a fool to offer to command Achilles;     Achilles is a fool to be commanded of Agamemnon; Thersites is a     fool to serve such a fool; and this Patroclus is a fool positive.   PATROCLUS. Why am I a fool?   THERSITES. Make that demand of the Creator. It suffices me thou     art. Look you, who comes here?   ACHILLES. Come, Patroclus, I\'ll speak with nobody. Come in with me,     Thersites.                                                   Exit   THERSITES. Here is such patchery, such juggling, and such knavery.     All the argument is a whore and a cuckold-a good quarrel to draw     emulous factions and bleed to death upon. Now the dry serpigo on     the subject, and war and lechery confound all!               Exit           Enter AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, NESTOR, DIOMEDES,                    AJAX, and CALCHAS    AGAMEMNON. Where is Achilles?   PATROCLUS. Within his tent; but ill-dispos\'d, my lord.     AGAMEMNON. Let it be known to him that we are here.     He shent our messengers; and we lay by     Our appertainings, visiting of him.     Let him be told so; lest, perchance, he think     We dare not move the question of our place     Or know not what we are.   PATROCLUS. I shall say so to him.                              Exit   ULYSSES. We saw him at the opening of his tent.     He is not sick.   AJAX. Yes, lion-sick, sick of proud heart. You may call it     melancholy, if you will favour the man; but, by my head, \'tis     pride. But why, why? Let him show us a cause. A word, my lord.                                               [Takes AGAMEMNON aside]   NESTOR. What moves Ajax thus to bay at him?   ULYSSES. Achilles hath inveigled his fool from him.   NESTOR.Who, Thersites?   ULYSSES. He.   NESTOR. Then will Ajax lack matter, if he have lost his argument   ULYSSES. No; you see he is his argument that has his argument-     Achilles.     NESTOR. All the better; their fraction is more our wish than their     faction. But it was a strong composure a fool could disunite!   ULYSSES. The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.                      Re-enter PATROCLUS      Here comes Patroclus.   NESTOR. No Achilles with him.   ULYSSES. The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy; his legs     are legs for necessity, not for flexure.   PATROCLUS. Achilles bids me say he is much sorry     If any thing more than your sport and pleasure     Did move your greatness and this noble state     To call upon him; he hopes it is no other     But for your health and your digestion sake,     An after-dinner\'s breath.   AGAMEMNON. Hear you, Patroclus.     We are too well acquainted with these answers;     But his evasion, wing\'d thus swift with scorn,     Cannot outfly our apprehensions.       Much attribute he hath, and much the reason     Why we ascribe it to him. Yet all his virtues,     Not virtuously on his own part beheld,     Do in our eyes begin to lose their gloss;     Yea, like fair fruit in an unwholesome dish,     Are like to rot untasted. Go and tell him     We come to speak with him; and you shall not sin     If you do say we think him over-proud     And under-honest, in self-assumption greater     Than in the note of judgment; and worthier than himself     Here tend the savage strangeness he puts on,     Disguise the holy strength of their command,     And underwrite in an observing kind     His humorous predominance; yea, watch     His pettish lunes, his ebbs, his flows, as if     The passage and whole carriage of this action     Rode on his tide. Go tell him this, and ad     That if he overhold his price so much     We\'ll none of him, but let him, like an engine     Not portable, lie under this report:       Bring action hither; this cannot go to war.     A stirring dwarf we do allowance give     Before a sleeping giant. Tell him so.   PATROCLUS. I shall, and bring his answer presently.            Exit   AGAMEMNON. In second voice we\'ll not be satisfied;     We come to speak with him. Ulysses, enter you.                                                          Exit ULYSSES   AJAX. What is he more than another?   AGAMEMNON. No more than what he thinks he is.   AJAX. Is he so much? Do you not think he thinks himself a better     man than I am?   AGAMEMNON. No question.   AJAX. Will you subscribe his thought and say he is?   AGAMEMNON. No, noble Ajax; you are as strong, as valiant, as wise,     no less noble, much more gentle, and altogether more tractable.   AJAX. Why should a man be proud? How doth pride grow? I know not     what pride is.   AGAMEMNON. Your mind is the clearer, Ajax, and your virtues the     fairer. He that is proud eats up himself. Pride is his own glass,     his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and whatever praises itself       but in the deed devours the deed in the praise.                        Re-enter ULYSSES    AJAX. I do hate a proud man as I do hate the engend\'ring of toads.   NESTOR. [Aside] And yet he loves himself: is\'t not strange?   ULYSSES. Achilles will not to the field to-morrow.   AGAMEMNON. What\'s his excuse?   ULYSSES. He doth rely on none;     But carries on the stream of his dispose,     Without observance or respect of any,     In will peculiar and in self-admission.   AGAMEMNON. Why will he not, upon our fair request,     Untent his person and share the air with us?   ULYSSES. Things small as nothing, for request\'s sake only,     He makes important; possess\'d he is with greatness,     And speaks not to himself but with a pride     That quarrels at self-breath. Imagin\'d worth     Holds in his blood such swol\'n and hot discourse     That \'twixt his mental and his active parts       Kingdom\'d Achilles in commotion rages,     And batters down himself. What should I say?     He is so plaguy proud that the death tokens of it     Cry \'No recovery.\'   AGAMEMNON. Let Ajax go to him.     Dear lord, go you and greet him in his tent.     \'Tis said he holds you well; and will be led     At your request a little from himself.   ULYSSES. O Agamemnon, let it not be so!     We\'ll consecrate the steps that Ajax makes     When they go from Achilles. Shall the proud lord     That bastes his arrogance with his own seam     And never suffers matter of the world     Enter his thoughts, save such as doth revolve     And ruminate himself-shall he be worshipp\'d     Of that we hold an idol more than he?     No, this thrice-worthy and right valiant lord     Shall not so stale his palm, nobly acquir\'d,     Nor, by my will, assubjugate his merit,     As amply titled as Achilles is,       By going to Achilles.     That were to enlard his fat-already pride,     And add more coals to Cancer when he burns     With entertaining great Hyperion.     This lord go to him! Jupiter forbid,     And say in thunder \'Achilles go to him.\'   NESTOR. [Aside] O, this is well! He rubs the vein of him.   DIOMEDES. [Aside] And how his silence drinks up this applause!   AJAX. If I go to him, with my armed fist I\'ll pash him o\'er the     face.   AGAMEMNON. O, no, you shall not go.   AJAX. An \'a be proud with me I\'ll pheeze his pride.     Let me go to him.   ULYSSES. Not for the worth that hangs upon our quarrel.   AJAX. A paltry, insolent fellow!   NESTOR. [Aside] How he describes himself!   AJAX. Can he not be sociable?   ULYSSES. [Aside] The raven chides blackness.   AJAX. I\'ll let his humours blood.   AGAMEMNON. [Aside] He will be the physician that should be the       patient.   AJAX. An all men were a my mind-   ULYSSES. [Aside] Wit would be out of fashion.   AJAX. \'A should not bear it so, \'a should eat\'s words first.     Shall pride carry it?   NESTOR. [Aside] An \'twould, you\'d carry half.   ULYSSES. [Aside] \'A would have ten shares.   AJAX. I will knead him, I\'ll make him supple.   NESTOR. [Aside] He\'s not yet through warm. Force him with praises;     pour in, pour in; his ambition is dry.   ULYSSES. [To AGAMEMNON] My lord, you feed too much on this dislike.   NESTOR. Our noble general, do not do so.   DIOMEDES. You must prepare to fight without Achilles.   ULYSSES. Why \'tis this naming of him does him harm.     Here is a man-but \'tis before his face;     I will be silent.   NESTOR. Wherefore should you so?     He is not emulous, as Achilles is.   ULYSSES. Know the whole world, he is as valiant.   AJAX. A whoreson dog, that shall palter with us thus!       Would he were a Troyan!   NESTOR. What a vice were it in Ajax now-   ULYSSES. If he were proud.   DIOMEDES. Or covetous of praise.   ULYSSES. Ay, or surly borne.   DIOMEDES. Or strange, or self-affected.   ULYSSES. Thank the heavens, lord, thou art of sweet composure     Praise him that gat thee, she that gave thee suck;     Fam\'d be thy tutor, and thy parts of nature     Thrice-fam\'d beyond, beyond all erudition;     But he that disciplin\'d thine arms to fight-     Let Mars divide eternity in twain     And give him half; and, for thy vigour,     Bull-bearing Milo his addition yield     To sinewy Ajax. I will not praise thy wisdom,     Which, like a bourn, a pale, a shore, confines     Thy spacious and dilated parts. Here\'s Nestor,     Instructed by the antiquary times-     He must, he is, he cannot but be wise;     But pardon, father Nestor, were your days       As green as Ajax\' and your brain so temper\'d,     You should not have the eminence of him,     But be as Ajax.   AJAX. Shall I call you father?   NESTOR. Ay, my good son.   DIOMEDES. Be rul\'d by him, Lord Ajax.   ULYSSES. There is no tarrying here; the hart Achilles     Keeps thicket. Please it our great general     To call together all his state of war;     Fresh kings are come to Troy. To-morrow     We must with all our main of power stand fast;     And here\'s a lord-come knights from east to west     And cull their flower, Ajax shall cope the best.   AGAMEMNON. Go we to council. Let Achilles sleep.     Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep.     Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE 1. Troy. PRIAM\'S palace  Music sounds within. Enter PANDARUS and a SERVANT    PANDARUS. Friend, you-pray you, a word. Do you not follow the young     Lord Paris?   SERVANT. Ay, sir, when he goes before me.   PANDARUS. You depend upon him, I mean?   SERVANT. Sir, I do depend upon the lord.   PANDARUS. You depend upon a notable gentleman; I must needs praise     him.   SERVANT. The lord be praised!   PANDARUS. You know me, do you not?   SERVANT. Faith, sir, superficially.   PANDARUS. Friend, know me better: I am the Lord Pandarus.   SERVANT. I hope I shall know your honour better.   PANDARUS. I do desire it.   SERVANT. You are in the state of grace.   PANDARUS. Grace! Not so, friend; honour and lordship are my titles.     What music is this?   SERVANT. I do but partly know, sir; it is music in parts.     PANDARUS. Know you the musicians?   SERVANT. Wholly, sir.   PANDARUS. Who play they to?   SERVANT. To the hearers, sir.   PANDARUS. At whose pleasure, friend?   SERVANT. At mine, sir, and theirs that love music.   PANDARUS. Command, I mean, friend.   SERVANT. Who shall I command, sir?   PANDARUS. Friend, we understand not one another: I am to courtly,     and thou art too cunning. At whose request do these men play?   SERVANT. That\'s to\'t, indeed, sir. Marry, sir, at the request of     Paris my lord, who is there in person; with him the mortal Venus,     the heart-blood of beauty, love\'s invisible soul-   PANDARUS. Who, my cousin, Cressida?   SERVANT. No, sir, Helen. Could not you find out that by her     attributes?   PANDARUS. It should seem, fellow, that thou hast not seen the Lady     Cressida. I come to speak with Paris from the Prince Troilus; I     will make a complimental assault upon him, for my business     seethes.     SERVANT. Sodden business! There\'s a stew\'d phrase indeed!                Enter PARIS and HELEN, attended    PANDARUS. Fair be to you, my lord, and to all this fair company!     Fair desires, in all fair measure, fairly guide them- especially     to you, fair queen! Fair thoughts be your fair pillow.   HELEN. Dear lord, you are full of fair words.   PANDARUS. You speak your fair pleasure, sweet queen. Fair prince,     here is good broken music.   PARIS. You have broke it, cousin; and by my life, you shall make it     whole again; you shall piece it out with a piece of your     performance.   HELEN. He is full of harmony.   PANDARUS. Truly, lady, no.   HELEN. O, sir-   PANDARUS. Rude, in sooth; in good sooth, very rude.   PARIS. Well said, my lord. Well, you say so in fits.   PANDARUS. I have business to my lord, dear queen. My lord, will you     vouchsafe me a word?     HELEN. Nay, this shall not hedge us out. We\'ll hear you sing,     certainly-   PANDARUS. Well sweet queen, you are pleasant with me. But, marry,     thus, my lord: my dear lord and most esteemed friend, your     brother Troilus-   HELEN. My Lord Pandarus, honey-sweet lord-   PANDARUS. Go to, sweet queen, go to-commends himself most     affectionately to you-   HELEN. You shall not bob us out of our melody. If you do, our     melancholy upon your head!   PANDARUS. Sweet queen, sweet queen; that\'s a sweet queen, i\' faith.   HELEN. And to make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence.   PANDARUS. Nay, that shall not serve your turn; that shall it not,     in truth, la. Nay, I care not for such words; no, no. -And, my     lord, he desires you that, if the King call for him at supper,     you will make his excuse.   HELEN. My Lord Pandarus!   PANDARUS. What says my sweet queen, my very very sweet queen?   PARIS. What exploit\'s in hand? Where sups he to-night?   HELEN. Nay, but, my lord-     PANDARUS. What says my sweet queen?-My cousin will fall out with     you.   HELEN. You must not know where he sups.   PARIS. I\'ll lay my life, with my disposer Cressida.   PANDARUS. No, no, no such matter; you are wide. Come, your disposer     is sick.   PARIS. Well, I\'ll make\'s excuse.   PANDARUS. Ay, good my lord. Why should you say Cressida?     No, your poor disposer\'s sick.   PARIS. I spy.   PANDARUS. You spy! What do you spy?-Come, give me an instrument.     Now, sweet queen.   HELEN. Why, this is kindly done.   PANDARUS. My niece is horribly in love with a thing you have, sweet     queen.   HELEN. She shall have it, my lord, if it be not my Lord Paris.   PANDARUS. He! No, she\'ll none of him; they two are twain.   HELEN. Falling in, after falling out, may make them three.   PANDARUS. Come, come. I\'ll hear no more of this; I\'ll sing you a     song now.     HELEN. Ay, ay, prithee now. By my troth, sweet lord, thou hast a     fine forehead.   PANDARUS. Ay, you may, you may.   HELEN. Let thy song be love. This love will undo us all. O Cupid,     Cupid, Cupid!   PANDARUS. Love! Ay, that it shall, i\' faith.   PARIS. Ay, good now, love, love, nothing but love.   PANDARUS. In good troth, it begins so.                      [Sings]      Love, love, nothing but love, still love, still more!            For, oh, love\'s bow            Shoots buck and doe;            The shaft confounds            Not that it wounds,     But tickles still the sore.     These lovers cry, O ho, they die!        Yet that which seems the wound to kill     Doth turn O ho! to ha! ha! he!        So dying love lives still.     O ho! a while, but ha! ha! ha!       O ho! groans out for ha! ha! ha!-hey ho!    HELEN. In love, i\' faith, to the very tip of the nose.   PARIS. He eats nothing but doves, love; and that breeds hot blood,     and hot blood begets hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot     deeds, and hot deeds is love.   PANDARUS. Is this the generation of love: hot blood, hot thoughts,     and hot deeds? Why, they are vipers. Is love a generation of     vipers? Sweet lord, who\'s a-field today?   PARIS. Hector, Deiphobus, Helenus, Antenor, and all the gallantry     of Troy. I would fain have arm\'d to-day, but my Nell would not     have it so. How chance my brother Troilus went not?   HELEN. He hangs the lip at something. You know all, Lord Pandarus.   PANDARUS. Not I, honey-sweet queen. I long to hear how they spend     to-day. You\'ll remember your brother\'s excuse?   PARIS. To a hair.   PANDARUS. Farewell, sweet queen.   HELEN. Commend me to your niece.   PANDARUS. I will, sweet queen.                Exit. Sound a retreat   PARIS. They\'re come from the field. Let us to Priam\'s hall       To greet the warriors. Sweet Helen, I must woo you     To help unarm our Hector. His stubborn buckles,     With these your white enchanting fingers touch\'d,     Shall more obey than to the edge of steel     Or force of Greekish sinews; you shall do more     Than all the island kings-disarm great Hector.   HELEN. \'Twill make us proud to be his servant, Paris;     Yea, what he shall receive of us in duty     Gives us more palm in beauty than we have,     Yea, overshines ourself.   PARIS. Sweet, above thought I love thee.                     Exeunt     ACT III. SCENE 2. Troy. PANDARUS\' orchard  Enter PANDARUS and TROILUS\' BOY, meeting    PANDARUS. How now! Where\'s thy master? At my cousin Cressida\'s?   BOY. No, sir; he stays for you to conduct him thither.                        Enter TROILUS    PANDARUS. O, here he comes. How now, how now!   TROILUS. Sirrah, walk off.                                 Exit Boy   PANDARUS. Have you seen my cousin?   TROILUS. No, Pandarus. I stalk about her door     Like a strange soul upon the Stygian banks     Staying for waftage. O, be thou my Charon,     And give me swift transportance to these fields     Where I may wallow in the lily beds     Propos\'d for the deserver! O gentle Pandar,     From Cupid\'s shoulder pluck his painted wings,     And fly with me to Cressid!   PANDARUS. Walk here i\' th\' orchard, I\'ll bring her straight.         Exit   TROILUS. I am giddy; expectation whirls me round.     Th\' imaginary relish is so sweet     That it enchants my sense; what will it be     When that the wat\'ry palate tastes indeed     Love\'s thrice-repured nectar? Death, I fear me;     Swooning destruction; or some joy too fine,     Too subtle-potent, tun\'d too sharp in sweetness,     For the capacity of my ruder powers.     I fear it much; and I do fear besides     That I shall lose distinction in my joys;     As doth a battle, when they charge on heaps     The enemy flying.                       Re-enter PANDARUS    PANDARUS. She\'s making her ready, she\'ll come straight; you must be     witty now. She does so blush, and fetches her wind so short, as     if she were fray\'d with a sprite. I\'ll fetch her. It is the     prettiest villain; she fetches her breath as short as a new-ta\'en       sparrow.                                                     Exit   TROILUS. Even such a passion doth embrace my bosom.     My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse,     And all my powers do their bestowing lose,     Like vassalage at unawares encount\'ring     The eye of majesty.                Re-enter PANDARUS With CRESSIDA    PANDARUS. Come, come, what need you blush? Shame\'s a baby.-Here she     is now; swear the oaths now to her that you have sworn to me.-     What, are you gone again? You must be watch\'d ere you be made     tame, must you? Come your ways, come your ways; an you draw     backward, we\'ll put you i\' th\' fills.-Why do you not speak to     her?-Come, draw this curtain and let\'s see your picture.     Alas the day, how loath you are to offend daylight! An \'twere     dark, you\'d close sooner. So, so; rub on, and kiss the mistress     How now, a kiss in fee-farm! Build there, carpenter; the air is     sweet. Nay, you shall fight your hearts out ere I part you. The     falcon as the tercel, for all the ducks i\' th\' river. Go to, go       to.   TROILUS. You have bereft me of all words, lady.   PANDARUS. Words pay no debts, give her deeds; but she\'ll bereave     you o\' th\' deeds too, if she call your activity in question.     What, billing again? Here\'s \'In witness whereof the parties     interchangeably.\' Come in, come in; I\'ll go get a fire.       Exit   CRESSIDA. Will you walk in, my lord?   TROILUS. O Cressid, how often have I wish\'d me thus!   CRESSIDA. Wish\'d, my lord! The gods grant-O my lord!   TROILUS. What should they grant? What makes this pretty abruption?     What too curious dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain of our     love?   CRESSIDA. More dregs than water, if my fears have eyes.   TROILUS. Fears make devils of cherubims; they never see truly.   CRESSIDA. Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing     than blind reason stumbling without fear. To fear the worst oft     cures the worse.   TROILUS. O, let my lady apprehend no fear! In all Cupid\'s pageant     there is presented no monster.     CRESSIDA. Nor nothing monstrous neither?   TROILUS. Nothing, but our undertakings when we vow to weep seas,     live in fire, cat rocks, tame tigers; thinking it harder for our     mistress to devise imposition enough than for us to undergo any     difficulty imposed. This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that     the will is infinite, and the execution confin\'d; that the desire     is boundless, and the act a slave to limit.   CRESSIDA. They say all lovers swear more performance than they are     able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform; vowing     more than the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the     tenth part of one. They that have the voice of lions and the act     of hares, are they not monsters?   TROILUS. Are there such? Such are not we. Praise us as we are     tasted, allow us as we prove; our head shall go bare till merit     crown it. No perfection in reversion shall have a praise in     present. We will not name desert before his birth; and, being     born, his addition shall be humble. Few words to fair faith:     Troilus shall be such to Cressid as what envy can say worst shall     be a mock for his truth; and what truth can speak truest not     truer than Troilus.     CRESSIDA. Will you walk in, my lord?                      Re-enter PANDARUS    PANDARUS. What, blushing still? Have you not done talking yet?   CRESSIDA. Well, uncle, what folly I commit, I dedicate to you.   PANDARUS. I thank you for that; if my lord get a boy of you, you\'ll     give him me. Be true to my lord; if he flinch, chide me for it.   TROILUS. You know now your hostages: your uncle\'s word and my firm     faith.   PANDARUS. Nay, I\'ll give my word for her too: our kindred, though     they be long ere they are wooed, they are constant being won;     they are burs, I can tell you; they\'ll stick where they are     thrown.   CRESSIDA. Boldness comes to me now and brings me heart.     Prince Troilus, I have lov\'d you night and day     For many weary months.   TROILUS. Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?   CRESSIDA. Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord,     With the first glance that ever-pardon me.       If I confess much, you will play the tyrant.     I love you now; but till now not so much     But I might master it. In faith, I lie;     My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown     Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!     Why have I blabb\'d? Who shall be true to us,     When we are so unsecret to ourselves?     But, though I lov\'d you well, I woo\'d you not;     And yet, good faith, I wish\'d myself a man,     Or that we women had men\'s privilege     Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue,     For in this rapture I shall surely speak     The thing I shall repent. See, see, your silence,     Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws     My very soul of counsel. Stop my mouth.   TROILUS. And shall, albeit sweet music issues thence.   PANDARUS. Pretty, i\' faith.   CRESSIDA. My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me;     \'Twas not my purpose thus to beg a kiss.     I am asham\'d. O heavens! what have I done?       For this time will I take my leave, my lord.   TROILUS. Your leave, sweet Cressid!   PANDARUS. Leave! An you take leave till to-morrow morning-   CRESSIDA. Pray you, content you.   TROILUS. What offends you, lady?   CRESSIDA. Sir, mine own company.   TROILUS. You cannot shun yourself.   CRESSIDA. Let me go and try.     I have a kind of self resides with you;     But an unkind self, that itself will leave     To be another\'s fool. I would be gone.     Where is my wit? I know not what I speak.   TROILUS. Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely.   CRESSIDA. Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love;     And fell so roundly to a large confession     To angle for your thoughts; but you are wise-     Or else you love not; for to be wise and love     Exceeds man\'s might; that dwells with gods above.   TROILUS. O that I thought it could be in a woman-     As, if it can, I will presume in you-       To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love;     To keep her constancy in plight and youth,     Outliving beauty\'s outward, with a mind     That doth renew swifter than blood decays!     Or that persuasion could but thus convince me     That my integrity and truth to you     Might be affronted with the match and weight     Of such a winnowed purity in love.     How were I then uplifted! but, alas,     I am as true as truth\'s simplicity,     And simpler than the infancy of truth.   CRESSIDA. In that I\'ll war with you.   TROILUS. O virtuous fight,     When right with right wars who shall be most right!     True swains in love shall in the world to come     Approve their truth by Troilus, when their rhymes,     Full of protest, of oath, and big compare,     Want similes, truth tir\'d with iteration-     As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,     As sun to day, as turtle to her mate,       As iron to adamant, as earth to th\' centre-     Yet, after all comparisons of truth,     As truth\'s authentic author to be cited,     \'As true as Troilus\' shall crown up the verse     And sanctify the numbers.   CRESSIDA. Prophet may you be!     If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,     When time is old and hath forgot itself,     When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,     And blind oblivion swallow\'d cities up,     And mighty states characterless are grated     To dusty nothing-yet let memory     From false to false, among false maids in love,     Upbraid my falsehood when th\' have said \'As false     As air, as water, wind, or sandy earth,     As fox to lamb, or wolf to heifer\'s calf,     Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son\'-     Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood,     \'As false as Cressid.\'   PANDARUS. Go to, a bargain made; seal it, seal it; I\'ll be the       witness. Here I hold your hand; here my cousin\'s. If ever you     prove false one to another, since I have taken such pains to     bring you together, let all pitiful goers- between be call\'d to     the world\'s end after my name-call them all Pandars; let all     constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all     brokers between Pandars. Say \'Amen.\'   TROILUS. Amen.   CRESSIDA. Amen.   PANDARUS. Amen. Whereupon I will show you a chamber     and a bed; which bed, because it shall not speak of your     pretty encounters, press it to death. Away!     And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here,     Bed, chamber, pander, to provide this gear!                Exeunt     ACT III. SCENE 3. The Greek camp  Flourish. Enter AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES, DIOMEDES, NESTOR, AJAX, MENELAUS, and CALCHAS    CALCHAS. Now, Princes, for the service I have done,     Th\' advantage of the time prompts me aloud     To call for recompense. Appear it to your mind     That, through the sight I bear in things to come,     I have abandon\'d Troy, left my possession,     Incurr\'d a traitor\'s name, expos\'d myself     From certain and possess\'d conveniences     To doubtful fortunes, sequest\'ring from me all     That time, acquaintance, custom, and condition,     Made tame and most familiar to my nature;     And here, to do you service, am become     As new into the world, strange, unacquainted-     I do beseech you, as in way of taste,     To give me now a little benefit     Out of those many regist\'red in promise,     Which you say live to come in my behalf.     AGAMEMNON. What wouldst thou of us, Troyan? Make demand.   CALCHAS. You have a Troyan prisoner call\'d Antenor,     Yesterday took; Troy holds him very dear.     Oft have you-often have you thanks therefore-     Desir\'d my Cressid in right great exchange,     Whom Troy hath still denied; but this Antenor,     I know, is such a wrest in their affairs     That their negotiations all must slack     Wanting his manage; and they will almost     Give us a prince of blood, a son of Priam,     In change of him. Let him be sent, great Princes,     And he shall buy my daughter; and her presence     Shall quite strike off all service I have done     In most accepted pain.   AGAMEMNON. Let Diomedes bear him,     And bring us Cressid hither. Calchas shall have     What he requests of us. Good Diomed,     Furnish you fairly for this interchange;     Withal, bring word if Hector will to-morrow     Be answer\'d in his challenge. Ajax is ready.     DIOMEDES. This shall I undertake; and \'tis a burden     Which I am proud to bear.                                           Exeunt DIOMEDES and CALCHAS             ACHILLES and PATROCLUS stand in their tent    ULYSSES. Achilles stands i\' th\' entrance of his tent.     Please it our general pass strangely by him,     As if he were forgot; and, Princes all,     Lay negligent and loose regard upon him.     I will come last. \'Tis like he\'ll question me     Why such unplausive eyes are bent, why turn\'d on him?     If so, I have derision med\'cinable     To use between your strangeness and his pride,     Which his own will shall have desire to drink.     It may do good. Pride hath no other glass     To show itself but pride; for supple knees     Feed arrogance and are the proud man\'s fees.   AGAMEMNON. We\'ll execute your purpose, and put on     A form of strangeness as we pass along.       So do each lord; and either greet him not,     Or else disdainfully, which shall shake him more     Than if not look\'d on. I will lead the way.   ACHILLES. What comes the general to speak with me?     You know my mind. I\'ll fight no more \'gainst Troy.   AGAMEMNON. What says Achilles? Would he aught with us?   NESTOR. Would you, my lord, aught with the general?   ACHILLES. No.   NESTOR. Nothing, my lord.   AGAMEMNON. The better.                                           Exeunt AGAMEMNON and NESTOR   ACHILLES. Good day, good day.   MENELAUS. How do you? How do you?                              Exit   ACHILLES. What, does the cuckold scorn me?   AJAX. How now, Patroclus?   ACHILLES. Good morrow, Ajax.   AJAX. Ha?   ACHILLES. Good morrow.   AJAX. Ay, and good next day too.                               Exit   ACHILLES. What mean these fellows? Know they not Achilles?     PATROCLUS. They pass by strangely. They were us\'d to bend,     To send their smiles before them to Achilles,     To come as humbly as they us\'d to creep     To holy altars.   ACHILLES. What, am I poor of late?     \'Tis certain, greatness, once fall\'n out with fortune,     Must fall out with men too. What the declin\'d is,     He shall as soon read in the eyes of others     As feel in his own fall; for men, like butterflies,     Show not their mealy wings but to the summer;     And not a man for being simply man     Hath any honour, but honour for those honours     That are without him, as place, riches, and favour,     Prizes of accident, as oft as merit;     Which when they fall, as being slippery standers,     The love that lean\'d on them as slippery too,     Doth one pluck down another, and together     Die in the fall. But \'tis not so with me:     Fortune and I are friends; I do enjoy     At ample point all that I did possess       Save these men\'s looks; who do, methinks, find out     Something not worth in me such rich beholding     As they have often given. Here is Ulysses.     I\'ll interrupt his reading.     How now, Ulysses!   ULYSSES. Now, great Thetis\' son!   ACHILLES. What are you reading?   ULYSSES. A strange fellow here     Writes me that man-how dearly ever parted,     How much in having, or without or in-     Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,     Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection;     As when his virtues shining upon others     Heat them, and they retort that heat again     To the first giver.   ACHILLES. This is not strange, Ulysses.     The beauty that is borne here in the face     The bearer knows not, but commends itself     To others\' eyes; nor doth the eye itself-     That most pure spirit of sense-behold itself,       Not going from itself; but eye to eye opposed     Salutes each other with each other\'s form;     For speculation turns not to itself     Till it hath travell\'d, and is mirror\'d there     Where it may see itself. This is not strange at all.   ULYSSES. I do not strain at the position-     It is familiar-but at the author\'s drift;     Who, in his circumstance, expressly proves     That no man is the lord of anything,     Though in and of him there be much consisting,     Till he communicate his parts to others;     Nor doth he of himself know them for aught     Till he behold them formed in th\' applause     Where th\' are extended; who, like an arch, reverb\'rate     The voice again; or, like a gate of steel     Fronting the sun, receives and renders back     His figure and his heat. I was much rapt in this;     And apprehended here immediately     Th\' unknown Ajax. Heavens, what a man is there!     A very horse that has he knows not what!       Nature, what things there are     Most abject in regard and dear in use!     What things again most dear in the esteem     And poor in worth! Now shall we see to-morrow-     An act that very chance doth throw upon him-     Ajax renown\'d. O heavens, what some men do,     While some men leave to do!     How some men creep in skittish Fortune\'s-hall,     Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!     How one man eats into another\'s pride,     While pride is fasting in his wantonness!     To see these Grecian lords!-why, even already     They clap the lubber Ajax on the shoulder,     As if his foot were on brave Hector\'s breast,     And great Troy shrinking.   ACHILLES. I do believe it; for they pass\'d by me     As misers do by beggars-neither gave to me     Good word nor look. What, are my deeds forgot?   ULYSSES. Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,     Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,       A great-siz\'d monster of ingratitudes.     Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour\'d     As fast as they are made, forgot as soon     As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,     Keeps honour bright. To have done is to hang     Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail     In monumental mock\'ry. Take the instant way;     For honour travels in a strait so narrow -     Where one but goes abreast. Keep then the path,     For emulation hath a thousand sons     That one by one pursue; if you give way,     Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,     Like to an ent\'red tide they all rush by     And leave you hindmost;     Or, like a gallant horse fall\'n in first rank,     Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,     O\'er-run and trampled on. Then what they do in present,     Though less than yours in past, must o\'ertop yours;     For Time is like a fashionable host,     That slightly shakes his parting guest by th\' hand;       And with his arms out-stretch\'d, as he would fly,     Grasps in the corner. The welcome ever smiles,     And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek     Remuneration for the thing it was;     For beauty, wit,     High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,     Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all     To envious and calumniating Time.     One touch of nature makes the whole world kin-     That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,     Though they are made and moulded of things past,     And give to dust that is a little gilt     More laud than gilt o\'er-dusted.     The present eye praises the present object.     Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,     That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax,     Since things in motion sooner catch the eye     Than what stirs not. The cry went once on thee,     And still it might, and yet it may again,     If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive       And case thy reputation in thy tent,     Whose glorious deeds but in these fields of late     Made emulous missions \'mongst the gods themselves,     And drave great Mars to faction.   ACHILLES. Of this my privacy     I have strong reasons.   ULYSSES. But \'gainst your privacy     The reasons are more potent and heroical.     \'Tis known, Achilles, that you are in love     With one of Priam\'s daughters.   ACHILLES. Ha! known!   ULYSSES. Is that a wonder?     The providence that\'s in a watchful state     Knows almost every grain of Plutus\' gold;     Finds bottom in th\' uncomprehensive deeps;     Keeps place with thought, and almost, like the gods,     Do thoughts unveil in their dumb cradles.     There is a mystery-with whom relation     Durst never meddle-in the soul of state,     Which hath an operation more divine       Than breath or pen can give expressure to.     All the commerce that you have had with Troy     As perfectly is ours as yours, my lord;     And better would it fit Achilles much     To throw down Hector than Polyxena.     But it must grieve young Pyrrhus now at home,     When fame shall in our island sound her trump,     And all the Greekish girls shall tripping sing     \'Great Hector\'s sister did Achilles win;     But our great Ajax bravely beat down him.\'     Farewell, my lord. I as your lover speak.     The fool slides o\'er the ice that you should break.          Exit   PATROCLUS. To this effect, Achilles, have I mov\'d you.     A woman impudent and mannish grown     Is not more loath\'d than an effeminate man     In time of action. I stand condemn\'d for this;     They think my little stomach to the war     And your great love to me restrains you thus.     Sweet, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid     Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,       And, like a dew-drop from the lion\'s mane,     Be shook to airy air.   ACHILLES. Shall Ajax fight with Hector?   PATROCLUS. Ay, and perhaps receive much honour by him.   ACHILLES. I see my reputation is at stake;     My fame is shrewdly gor\'d.   PATROCLUS. O, then, beware:     Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves;     Omission to do what is necessary     Seals a commission to a blank of danger;     And danger, like an ague, subtly taints     Even then when they sit idly in the sun.   ACHILLES. Go call Thersites hither, sweet Patroclus.     I\'ll send the fool to Ajax, and desire him     T\' invite the Troyan lords, after the combat,     To see us here unarm\'d. I have a woman\'s longing,     An appetite that I am sick withal,     To see great Hector in his weeds of peace;     To talk with him, and to behold his visage,     Even to my full of view.                         Enter THERSITES      A labour sav\'d!   THERSITES. A wonder!   ACHILLES. What?   THERSITES. Ajax goes up and down the field asking for himself.   ACHILLES. How so?   THERSITES. He must fight singly to-morrow with Hector, and is so     prophetically proud of an heroical cudgelling that he raves in     saying nothing.   ACHILLES. How can that be?   THERSITES. Why, \'a stalks up and down like a peacock-a stride and a     stand; ruminaies like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her     brain to set down her reckoning, bites his lip with a politic     regard, as who should say \'There were wit in this head, an     \'twould out\'; and so there is; but it lies as coldly in him as     fire in a flint, which will not show without knocking. The man\'s     undone for ever; for if Hector break not his neck i\' th\' combat,     he\'ll break\'t himself in vainglory. He knows not me. I said \'Good       morrow, Ajax\'; and he replies \'Thanks, Agamemnon.\' What think you     of this man that takes me for the general? He\'s grown a very land     fish, languageless, a monster. A plague of opinion! A man may     wear it on both sides, like leather jerkin.   ACHILLES. Thou must be my ambassador to him, Thersites.   THERSITES. Who, I? Why, he\'ll answer nobody; he professes not     answering. Speaking is for beggars: he wears his tongue in\'s     arms. I will put on his presence. Let Patroclus make his demands     to me, you shall see the pageant of Ajax.   ACHILLES. To him, Patroclus. Tell him I humbly desire the valiant     Ajax to invite the most valorous Hector to come unarm\'d to my     tent; and to procure safe conduct for his person of the     magnanimous and most illustrious six-or-seven-times-honour\'d     Captain General of the Grecian army, et cetera, Agamemnon. Do     this.   PATROCLUS. Jove bless great Ajax!   THERSITES. Hum!   PATROCLUS. I come from the worthy Achilles-   THERSITES. Ha!   PATROCLUS. Who most humbly desires you to invite Hector to his       tent-   THERSITES. Hum!   PATROCLUS. And to procure safe conduct from Agamemnon.   THERSITES. Agamemnon!   PATROCLUS. Ay, my lord.   THERSITES. Ha!   PATROCLUS. What you say to\'t?   THERSITES. God buy you, with all my heart.   PATROCLUS. Your answer, sir.   THERSITES. If to-morrow be a fair day, by eleven of the clock it     will go one way or other. Howsoever, he shall pay for me ere he     has me.   PATROCLUS. Your answer, sir.   THERSITES. Fare ye well, with all my heart.   ACHILLES. Why, but he is not in this tune, is he?   THERSITES. No, but he\'s out a tune thus. What music will be in him     when Hector has knock\'d out his brains I know not; but, I am sure,     none; unless the fiddler Apollo get his sinews to make catlings     on.   ACHILLES. Come, thou shalt bear a letter to him straight.     THERSITES. Let me carry another to his horse; for that\'s the more     capable creature.   ACHILLES. My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr\'d;     And I myself see not the bottom of it.                                         Exeunt ACHILLES and PATROCLUS   THERSITES. Would the fountain of your mind were clear again, that I     might water an ass at it. I had rather be a tick in a sheep than     such a valiant ignorance.                                    Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE 1. Troy. A street  Enter, at one side, AENEAS, and servant with a torch; at another, PARIS, DEIPHOBUS, ANTENOR, DIOMEDES the Grecian, and others, with torches    PARIS. See, ho! Who is that there?   DEIPHOBUS. It is the Lord Aeneas.   AENEAS. Is the Prince there in person?     Had I so good occasion to lie long     As you, Prince Paris, nothing but heavenly business     Should rob my bed-mate of my company.   DIOMEDES. That\'s my mind too. Good morrow, Lord Aeneas.   PARIS. A valiant Greek, Aeneas -take his hand:     Witness the process of your speech, wherein     You told how Diomed, a whole week by days,     Did haunt you in the field.   AENEAS. Health to you, valiant sir,     During all question of the gentle truce;     But when I meet you arm\'d, as black defiance     As heart can think or courage execute.     DIOMEDES. The one and other Diomed embraces.     Our bloods are now in calm; and so long health!     But when contention and occasion meet,     By Jove, I\'ll play the hunter for thy life     With all my force, pursuit, and policy.   AENEAS. And thou shalt hunt a lion, that will fly     With his face backward. In humane gentleness,     Welcome to Troy! now, by Anchises\' life,     Welcome indeed! By Venus\' hand I swear     No man alive can love in such a sort     The thing he means to kill, more excellently.   DIOMEDES. We sympathise. Jove let Aeneas live,     If to my sword his fate be not the glory,     A thousand complete courses of the sun!     But in mine emulous honour let him die     With every joint a wound, and that to-morrow!   AENEAS. We know each other well.   DIOMEDES.We do; and long to know each other worse.   PARIS. This is the most despiteful\'st gentle greeting     The noblest hateful love, that e\'er I heard of.       What business, lord, so early?   AENEAS. I was sent for to the King; but why, I know not.   PARIS. His purpose meets you: \'twas to bring this Greek     To Calchas\' house, and there to render him,     For the enfreed Antenor, the fair Cressid.     Let\'s have your company; or, if you please,     Haste there before us. I constantly believe-     Or rather call my thought a certain knowledge-     My brother Troilus lodges there to-night.     Rouse him and give him note of our approach,     With the whole quality wherefore; I fear     We shall be much unwelcome.   AENEAS. That I assure you:     Troilus had rather Troy were borne to Greece     Than Cressid borne from Troy.   PARIS. There is no help;     The bitter disposition of the time     Will have it so. On, lord; we\'ll follow you.   AENEAS. Good morrow, all.                         Exit with servant   PARIS. And tell me, noble Diomed-faith, tell me true,       Even in the soul of sound good-fellowship-     Who in your thoughts deserves fair Helen best,     Myself or Menelaus?   DIOMEDES. Both alike:     He merits well to have her that doth seek her,     Not making any scruple of her soilure,     With such a hell of pain and world of charge;     And you as well to keep her that defend her,     Not palating the taste of her dishonour,     With such a costly loss of wealth and friends.     He like a puling cuckold would drink up     The lees and dregs of a flat tamed piece;     You, like a lecher, out of whorish loins     Are pleas\'d to breed out your inheritors.     Both merits pois\'d, each weighs nor less nor more;     But he as he, the heavier for a whore.   PARIS. You are too bitter to your country-woman.   DIOMEDES. She\'s bitter to her country. Hear me, Paris:     For every false drop in her bawdy veins     A Grecian\'s life hath sunk; for every scruple       Of her contaminated carrion weight     A Troyan hath been slain; since she could speak,     She hath not given so many good words breath     As for her Greeks and Troyans suff\'red death.   PARIS. Fair Diomed, you do as chapmen do,     Dispraise the thing that you desire to buy;     But we in silence hold this virtue well:     We\'ll not commend what we intend to sell.     Here lies our way.                                         Exeunt     ACT IV. SCENE 2. Troy. The court of PANDARUS\' house  Enter TROILUS and CRESSIDA    TROILUS. Dear, trouble not yourself; the morn is cold.   CRESSIDA. Then, sweet my lord, I\'ll call mine uncle down;     He shall unbolt the gates.   TROILUS. Trouble him not;     To bed, to bed! Sleep kill those pretty eyes,     And give as soft attachment to thy senses     As infants\' empty of all thought!   CRESSIDA. Good morrow, then.   TROILUS. I prithee now, to bed.   CRESSIDA. Are you aweary of me?   TROILUS. O Cressida! but that the busy day,     Wak\'d by the lark, hath rous\'d the ribald crows,     And dreaming night will hide our joys no longer,     I would not from thee.   CRESSIDA. Night hath been too brief.   TROILUS. Beshrew the witch! with venomous wights she stays     As tediously as hell, but flies the grasps of love       With wings more momentary-swift than thought.     You will catch cold, and curse me.   CRESSIDA. Prithee tarry.     You men will never tarry.     O foolish Cressid! I might have still held off,     And then you would have tarried. Hark! there\'s one up.   PANDARUS. [Within] What\'s all the doors open here?   TROILUS. It is your uncle.                       Enter PANDARUS    CRESSIDA. A pestilence on him! Now will he be mocking.     I shall have such a life!   PANDARUS. How now, how now! How go maidenheads?     Here, you maid! Where\'s my cousin Cressid?   CRESSIDA. Go hang yourself, you naughty mocking uncle.     You bring me to do, and then you flout me too.   PANDARUS. To do what? to do what? Let her say what.     What have I brought you to do?   CRESSIDA. Come, come, beshrew your heart! You\'ll ne\'er be good,       Nor suffer others.   PANDARUS. Ha, ha! Alas, poor wretch! a poor capocchia! hast not     slept to-night? Would he not, a naughty man, let it sleep? A     bugbear take him!   CRESSIDA. Did not I tell you? Would he were knock\'d i\' th\' head!                                                          [One knocks]     Who\'s that at door? Good uncle, go and see.     My lord, come you again into my chamber.     You smile and mock me, as if I meant naughtily.   TROILUS. Ha! ha!   CRESSIDA. Come, you are deceiv\'d, I think of no such thing.    [Knock]     How earnestly they knock! Pray you come in:     I would not for half Troy have you seen here.                                           Exeunt TROILUS and CRESSIDA   PANDARUS. Who\'s there? What\'s the matter? Will you beat down the     door? How now? What\'s the matter?                            Enter AENEAS     AENEAS. Good morrow, lord, good morrow.   PANDARUS. Who\'s there? My lord Aeneas? By my troth,     I knew you not. What news with you so early?   AENEAS. Is not Prince Troilus here?   PANDARUS. Here! What should he do here?   AENEAS. Come, he is here, my lord; do not deny him.     It doth import him much to speak with me.   PANDARUS. Is he here, say you? It\'s more than I know, I\'ll be     sworn. For my own part, I came in late. What should he do here?   AENEAS. Who!-nay, then. Come, come, you\'ll do him wrong ere you are     ware; you\'ll be so true to him to be false to him. Do not you     know of him, but yet go fetch him hither; go.                         Re-enter TROILUS    TROILUS. How now! What\'s the matter?   AENEAS. My lord, I scarce have leisure to salute you,     My matter is so rash. There is at hand     Paris your brother, and Deiphobus,     The Grecian Diomed, and our Antenor       Deliver\'d to us; and for him forthwith,     Ere the first sacrifice, within this hour,     We must give up to Diomedes\' hand     The Lady Cressida.   TROILUS. Is it so concluded?   AENEAS. By Priam, and the general state of Troy.     They are at hand and ready to effect it.   TROILUS. How my achievements mock me!     I will go meet them; and, my lord Aeneas,     We met by chance; you did not find me here.   AENEAS. Good, good, my lord, the secrets of neighbour Pandar     Have not more gift in taciturnity.                                             Exeunt TROILUS and AENEAS   PANDARUS. Is\'t possible? No sooner got but lost? The devil take     Antenor! The young prince will go mad. A plague upon Antenor! I     would they had broke\'s neck.                       Re-enter CRESSIDA    CRESSIDA. How now! What\'s the matter? Who was here?     PANDARUS. Ah, ah!   CRESSIDA. Why sigh you so profoundly? Where\'s my lord? Gone? Tell     me, sweet uncle, what\'s the matter?   PANDARUS. Would I were as deep under the earth as I am above!   CRESSIDA. O the gods! What\'s the matter?   PANDARUS. Pray thee, get thee in. Would thou hadst ne\'er been born!     I knew thou wouldst be his death! O, poor gentleman! A plague     upon Antenor!   CRESSIDA. Good uncle, I beseech you, on my knees I beseech you,     what\'s the matter?   PANDARUS. Thou must be gone, wench, thou must be gone; thou art     chang\'d for Antenor; thou must to thy father, and be gone from     Troilus. \'Twill be his death; \'twill be his bane; he cannot bear     it.   CRESSIDA. O you immortal gods! I will not go.   PANDARUS. Thou must.   CRESSIDA. I will not, uncle. I have forgot my father;     I know no touch of consanguinity,     No kin, no love, no blood, no soul so near me     As the sweet Troilus. O you gods divine,       Make Cressid\'s name the very crown of falsehood,     If ever she leave Troilus! Time, force, and death,     Do to this body what extremes you can,     But the strong base and building of my love     Is as the very centre of the earth,     Drawing all things to it. I\'ll go in and weep-   PANDARUS. Do, do.   CRESSIDA. Tear my bright hair, and scratch my praised cheeks,     Crack my clear voice with sobs and break my heart,     With sounding \'Troilus.\' I will not go from Troy.     Exeunt     ACT IV. SCENE 3. Troy. A street before PANDARUS\' house  Enter PARIS, TROILUS, AENEAS, DEIPHOBUS, ANTENOR, and DIOMEDES    PARIS. It is great morning; and the hour prefix\'d     For her delivery to this valiant Greek     Comes fast upon. Good my brother Troilus,     Tell you the lady what she is to do     And haste her to the purpose.   TROILUS. Walk into her house.     I\'ll bring her to the Grecian presently;     And to his hand when I deliver her,     Think it an altar, and thy brother Troilus     A priest, there off\'ring to it his own heart.                Exit   PARIS. I know what \'tis to love,     And would, as I shall pity, I could help!     Please you walk in, my lords.                              Exeunt     ACT IV. SCENE 4. Troy. PANDARUS\' house  Enter PANDARUS and CRESSIDA    PANDARUS. Be moderate, be moderate.   CRESSIDA. Why tell you me of moderation?     The grief is fine, full, perfect, that I taste,     And violenteth in a sense as strong     As that which causeth it. How can I moderate it?     If I could temporize with my affections     Or brew it to a weak and colder palate,     The like allayment could I give my grief.     My love admits no qualifying dross;     No more my grief, in such a precious loss.                      Enter TROILUS    PANDARUS. Here, here, here he comes. Ah, sweet ducks!   CRESSIDA. O Troilus! Troilus! [Embracing him]   PANDARUS. What a pair of spectacles is here! Let me embrace too. \'O     heart,\' as the goodly saying is,             O heart, heavy heart,        Why sigh\'st thou without breaking?     where he answers again        Because thou canst not ease thy smart        By friendship nor by speaking.     There was never a truer rhyme. Let us cast away nothing, for we     may live to have need of such a verse. We see it, we see it. How     now, lambs!   TROILUS. Cressid, I love thee in so strain\'d a purity     That the bless\'d gods, as angry with my fancy,     More bright in zeal than the devotion which     Cold lips blow to their deities, take thee from me.   CRESSIDA. Have the gods envy?   PANDARUS. Ay, ay, ay; \'tis too plain a case.   CRESSIDA. And is it true that I must go from Troy?   TROILUS. A hateful truth.   CRESSIDA. What, and from Troilus too?   TROILUS. From Troy and Troilus.   CRESSIDA. Is\'t possible?   TROILUS. And suddenly; where injury of chance       Puts back leave-taking, justles roughly by     All time of pause, rudely beguiles our lips     Of all rejoindure, forcibly prevents     Our lock\'d embrasures, strangles our dear vows     Even in the birth of our own labouring breath.     We two, that with so many thousand sighs     Did buy each other, must poorly sell ourselves     With the rude brevity and discharge of one.     Injurious time now with a robber\'s haste     Crams his rich thievery up, he knows not how.     As many farewells as be stars in heaven,     With distinct breath and consign\'d kisses to them,     He fumbles up into a loose adieu,     And scants us with a single famish\'d kiss,     Distasted with the salt of broken tears.   AENEAS. [Within] My lord, is the lady ready?   TROILUS. Hark! you are call\'d. Some say the Genius so     Cries \'Come\' to him that instantly must die.     Bid them have patience; she shall come anon.   PANDARUS. Where are my tears? Rain, to lay this wind, or my heart       will be blown up by th\' root?                                Exit   CRESSIDA. I must then to the Grecians?   TROILUS. No remedy.   CRESSIDA. A woeful Cressid \'mongst the merry Greeks!     When shall we see again?   TROILUS. Hear me, my love. Be thou but true of heart-   CRESSIDA. I true! how now! What wicked deem is this?   TROILUS. Nay, we must use expostulation kindly,     For it is parting from us.     I speak not \'Be thou true\' as fearing thee,     For I will throw my glove to Death himself     That there\'s no maculation in thy heart;     But \'Be thou true\' say I to fashion in     My sequent protestation: be thou true,     And I will see thee.   CRESSIDA. O, you shall be expos\'d, my lord, to dangers     As infinite as imminent! But I\'ll be true.   TROILUS. And I\'ll grow friend with danger. Wear this sleeve.   CRESSIDA. And you this glove. When shall I see you?   TROILUS. I will corrupt the Grecian sentinels       To give thee nightly visitation.     But yet be true.   CRESSIDA. O heavens! \'Be true\' again!   TROILUS. Hear why I speak it, love.     The Grecian youths are full of quality;     They\'re loving, well compos\'d with gifts of nature,     And flowing o\'er with arts and exercise.     How novelties may move, and parts with person,     Alas, a kind of godly jealousy,     Which I beseech you call a virtuous sin,     Makes me afeard.   CRESSIDA. O heavens! you love me not.   TROILUS. Die I a villain, then!     In this I do not call your faith in question     So mainly as my merit. I cannot sing,     Nor heel the high lavolt, nor sweeten talk,     Nor play at subtle games-fair virtues all,     To which the Grecians are most prompt and pregnant;     But I can tell that in each grace of these     There lurks a still and dumb-discoursive devil       That tempts most cunningly. But be not tempted.   CRESSIDA. Do you think I will?   TROILUS. No.     But something may be done that we will not;     And sometimes we are devils to ourselves,     When we will tempt the frailty of our powers,     Presuming on their changeful potency.   AENEAS. [Within] Nay, good my lord!   TROILUS. Come, kiss; and let us part.   PARIS. [Within] Brother Troilus!   TROILUS. Good brother, come you hither;     And bring Aeneas and the Grecian with you.   CRESSIDA. My lord, will you be true?   TROILUS. Who, I? Alas, it is my vice, my fault!     Whiles others fish with craft for great opinion,     I with great truth catch mere simplicity;     Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns,     With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare.        Enter AENEAS, PARIS, ANTENOR, DEIPHOBUS, and DIOMEDES        Fear not my truth: the moral of my wit     Is \'plain and true\'; there\'s all the reach of it.     Welcome, Sir Diomed! Here is the lady     Which for Antenor we deliver you;     At the port, lord, I\'ll give her to thy hand,     And by the way possess thee what she is.     Entreat her fair; and, by my soul, fair Greek,     If e\'er thou stand at mercy of my sword,     Name Cressid, and thy life shall be as safe     As Priam is in Ilion.   DIOMEDES. Fair Lady Cressid,     So please you, save the thanks this prince expects.     The lustre in your eye, heaven in your cheek,     Pleads your fair usage; and to Diomed     You shall be mistress, and command him wholly.   TROILUS. Grecian, thou dost not use me courteously     To shame the zeal of my petition to the     In praising her. I tell thee, lord of Greece,     She is as far high-soaring o\'er thy praises       As thou unworthy to be call\'d her servant.     I charge thee use her well, even for my charge;     For, by the dreadful Pluto, if thou dost not,     Though the great bulk Achilles be thy guard,     I\'ll cut thy throat.   DIOMEDES. O, be not mov\'d, Prince Troilus.     Let me be privileg\'d by my place and message     To be a speaker free: when I am hence     I\'ll answer to my lust. And know you, lord,     I\'ll nothing do on charge: to her own worth     She shall be priz\'d. But that you say \'Be\'t so,\'     I speak it in my spirit and honour, \'No.\'   TROILUS. Come, to the port. I\'ll tell thee, Diomed,     This brave shall oft make thee to hide thy head.     Lady, give me your hand; and, as we walk,     To our own selves bend we our needful talk.                                Exeunt TROILUS, CRESSIDA, and DIOMEDES                                                       [Sound trumpet]   PARIS. Hark! Hector\'s trumpet.   AENEAS. How have we spent this morning!       The Prince must think me tardy and remiss,     That swore to ride before him to the field.   PARIS. \'Tis Troilus\' fault. Come, come to field with him.   DEIPHOBUS. Let us make ready straight.   AENEAS. Yea, with a bridegroom\'s fresh alacrity     Let us address to tend on Hector\'s heels.     The glory of our Troy doth this day lie     On his fair worth and single chivalry.                     Exeunt     ACT IV. SCENE 5. The Grecian camp. Lists set out  Enter AJAX, armed; AGAMEMNON, ACHILLES, PATROCLUS, MENELAUS, ULYSSES, NESTOR, and others    AGAMEMNON. Here art thou in appointment fresh and fair,     Anticipating time with starting courage.     Give with thy trumpet a loud note to Troy,     Thou dreadful Ajax, that the appalled air     May pierce the head of the great combatant,     And hale him hither.   AJAX. Thou, trumpet, there\'s my purse.     Now crack thy lungs and split thy brazen pipe;     Blow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheek     Out-swell the colic of puff Aquilon\'d.     Come, stretch thy chest, and let thy eyes spout blood:     Thou blowest for Hector.                         [Trumpet sounds]   ULYSSES. No trumpet answers.   ACHILLES. \'Tis but early days.                  Enter DIOMEDES, with CRESSIDA      AGAMEMNON. Is not yond Diomed, with Calchas\' daughter?   ULYSSES. \'Tis he, I ken the manner of his gait:     He rises on the toe. That spirit of his     In aspiration lifts him from the earth.   AGAMEMNON. Is this the lady Cressid?   DIOMEDES. Even she.   AGAMEMNON. Most dearly welcome to the Greeks, sweet lady.   NESTOR. Our general doth salute you with a kiss.   ULYSSES. Yet is the kindness but particular;     \'Twere better she were kiss\'d in general.   NESTOR. And very courtly counsel: I\'ll begin.     So much for Nestor.   ACHILLES. I\'ll take that winter from your lips, fair lady.     Achilles bids you welcome.   MENELAUS. I had good argument for kissing once.   PATROCLUS. But that\'s no argument for kissing now;     For thus popp\'d Paris in his hardiment,     And parted thus you and your argument.   ULYSSES. O deadly gall, and theme of all our scorns!       For which we lose our heads to gild his horns.   PATROCLUS. The first was Menelaus\' kiss; this, mine-                                                    [Kisses her again]     Patroclus kisses you.   MENELAUS. O, this is trim!   PATROCLUS. Paris and I kiss evermore for him.   MENELAUS. I\'ll have my kiss, sir. Lady, by your leave.   CRESSIDA. In kissing, do you render or receive?   PATROCLUS. Both take and give.   CRESSIDA. I\'ll make my match to live,     The kiss you take is better than you give;     Therefore no kiss.   MENELAUS. I\'ll give you boot; I\'ll give you three for one.   CRESSIDA. You are an odd man; give even or give none.   MENELAUS. An odd man, lady? Every man is odd.   CRESSIDA. No, Paris is not; for you know \'tis true     That you are odd, and he is even with you.   MENELAUS. You fillip me o\' th\' head.   CRESSIDA. No, I\'ll be sworn.   ULYSSES. It were no match, your nail against his horn.       May I, sweet lady, beg a kiss of you?   CRESSIDA. You may.   ULYSSES. I do desire it.   CRESSIDA. Why, beg then.   ULYSSES. Why then, for Venus\' sake give me a kiss     When Helen is a maid again, and his.   CRESSIDA. I am your debtor; claim it when \'tis due.   ULYSSES. Never\'s my day, and then a kiss of you.   DIOMEDES. Lady, a word. I\'ll bring you to your father.                                                    Exit with CRESSIDA   NESTOR. A woman of quick sense.   ULYSSES. Fie, fie upon her!     There\'s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,     Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out     At every joint and motive of her body.     O these encounters so glib of tongue     That give a coasting welcome ere it comes,     And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts     To every ticklish reader! Set them down     For sluttish spoils of opportunity,       And daughters of the game.                       [Trumpet within]   ALL. The Troyans\' trumpet.          Enter HECTOR, armed; AENEAS, TROILUS, PARIS, HELENUS,                  and other Trojans, with attendants    AGAMEMNON. Yonder comes the troop.   AENEAS. Hail, all the state of Greece! What shall be done     To him that victory commands? Or do you purpose     A victor shall be known? Will you the knights     Shall to the edge of all extremity     Pursue each other, or shall they be divided     By any voice or order of the field?     Hector bade ask.   AGAMEMNON. Which way would Hector have it?   AENEAS. He cares not; he\'ll obey conditions.   ACHILLES. \'Tis done like Hector; but securely done,     A little proudly, and great deal misprizing     The knight oppos\'d.   AENEAS. If not Achilles, sir,       What is your name?   ACHILLES. If not Achilles, nothing.   AENEAS. Therefore Achilles. But whate\'er, know this:     In the extremity of great and little     Valour and pride excel themselves in Hector;     The one almost as infinite as all,     The other blank as nothing. Weigh him well,     And that which looks like pride is courtesy.     This Ajax is half made of Hector\'s blood;     In love whereof half Hector stays at home;     Half heart, half hand, half Hector comes to seek     This blended knight, half Troyan and half Greek.   ACHILLES. A maiden battle then? O, I perceive you!                     Re-enter DIOMEDES    AGAMEMNON. Here is Sir Diomed. Go, gentle knight,     Stand by our Ajax. As you and Lord ]Eneas     Consent upon the order of their fight,     So be it; either to the uttermost,       Or else a breath. The combatants being kin     Half stints their strife before their strokes begin.                                     [AJAX and HECTOR enter the lists]   ULYSSES. They are oppos\'d already.   AGAMEMNON. What Troyan is that same that looks so heavy?   ULYSSES. The youngest son of Priam, a true knight;     Not yet mature, yet matchless; firm of word;     Speaking in deeds and deedless in his tongue;     Not soon provok\'d, nor being provok\'d soon calm\'d;     His heart and hand both open and both free;     For what he has he gives, what thinks he shows,     Yet gives he not till judgment guide his bounty,     Nor dignifies an impair thought with breath;     Manly as Hector, but more dangerous;     For Hector in his blaze of wrath subscribes     To tender objects, but he in heat of action     Is more vindicative than jealous love.     They call him Troilus, and on him erect     A second hope as fairly built as Hector.     Thus says Aeneas, one that knows the youth       Even to his inches, and, with private soul,     Did in great Ilion thus translate him to me.                                       [Alarum. HECTOR and AJAX fight]   AGAMEMNON. They are in action.   NESTOR. Now, Ajax, hold thine own!   TROILUS. Hector, thou sleep\'st;     Awake thee.   AGAMEMNON. His blows are well dispos\'d. There, Ajax!                                                      [Trumpets cease]   DIOMEDES. You must no more.   AENEAS. Princes, enough, so please you.   AJAX. I am not warm yet; let us fight again.   DIOMEDES. As Hector pleases.   HECTOR. Why, then will I no more.     Thou art, great lord, my father\'s sister\'s son,     A cousin-german to great Priam\'s seed;     The obligation of our blood forbids     A gory emulation \'twixt us twain:     Were thy commixtion Greek and Troyan so     That thou could\'st say \'This hand is Grecian all,       And this is Troyan; the sinews of this leg     All Greek, and this all Troy; my mother\'s blood     Runs on the dexter cheek, and this sinister     Bounds in my father\'s\'; by Jove multipotent,     Thou shouldst not bear from me a Greekish member     Wherein my sword had not impressure made     Of our rank feud; but the just gods gainsay     That any drop thou borrow\'dst from thy mother,     My sacred aunt, should by my mortal sword     Be drained! Let me embrace thee, Ajax.     By him that thunders, thou hast lusty arms;     Hector would have them fall upon him thus.     Cousin, all honour to thee!   AJAX. I thank thee, Hector.     Thou art too gentle and too free a man.     I came to kill thee, cousin, and bear hence     A great addition earned in thy death.   HECTOR. Not Neoptolemus so mirable,     On whose bright crest Fame with her loud\'st Oyes     Cries \'This is he\' could promise to himself       A thought of added honour torn from Hector.   AENEAS. There is expectance here from both the sides     What further you will do.   HECTOR. We\'ll answer it:     The issue is embracement. Ajax, farewell.   AJAX. If I might in entreaties find success,     As seld I have the chance, I would desire     My famous cousin to our Grecian tents.   DIOMEDES. \'Tis Agamemnon\'s wish; and great Achilles     Doth long to see unarm\'d the valiant Hector.   HECTOR. Aeneas, call my brother Troilus to me,     And signify this loving interview     To the expecters of our Troyan part;     Desire them home. Give me thy hand, my cousin;     I will go eat with thee, and see your knights.          AGAMEMNON and the rest of the Greeks come forward    AJAX. Great Agamemnon comes to meet us here.   HECTOR. The worthiest of them tell me name by name;       But for Achilles, my own searching eyes     Shall find him by his large and portly size.   AGAMEMNON.Worthy all arms! as welcome as to one     That would be rid of such an enemy.     But that\'s no welcome. Understand more clear,     What\'s past and what\'s to come is strew\'d with husks     And formless ruin of oblivion;     But in this extant moment, faith and troth,     Strain\'d purely from all hollow bias-drawing,     Bids thee with most divine integrity,     From heart of very heart, great Hector, welcome.   HECTOR. I thank thee, most imperious Agamemnon.   AGAMEMNON. [To Troilus] My well-fam\'d lord of Troy, no less to you.   MENELAUS. Let me confirm my princely brother\'s greeting.     You brace of warlike brothers, welcome hither.   HECTOR. Who must we answer?   AENEAS. The noble Menelaus.   HECTOR. O you, my lord? By Mars his gauntlet, thanks!     Mock not that I affect the untraded oath;     Your quondam wife swears still by Venus\' glove.       She\'s well, but bade me not commend her to you.   MENELAUS. Name her not now, sir; she\'s a deadly theme.   HECTOR. O, pardon; I offend.   NESTOR. I have, thou gallant Troyan, seen thee oft,     Labouring for destiny, make cruel way     Through ranks of Greekish youth; and I have seen thee,     As hot as Perseus, spur thy Phrygian steed,     Despising many forfeits and subduements,     When thou hast hung thy advanced sword i\' th\' air,     Not letting it decline on the declined;     That I have said to some my standers-by     \'Lo, Jupiter is yonder, dealing life!\'     And I have seen thee pause and take thy breath,     When that a ring of Greeks have hemm\'d thee in,     Like an Olympian wrestling. This have I seen;     But this thy countenance, still lock\'d in steel,     I never saw till now. I knew thy grandsire,     And once fought with him. He was a soldier good,     But, by great Mars, the captain of us all,     Never like thee. O, let an old man embrace thee;       And, worthy warrior, welcome to our tents.   AENEAS. \'Tis the old Nestor.   HECTOR. Let me embrace thee, good old chronicle,     That hast so long walk\'d hand in hand with time.     Most reverend Nestor, I am glad to clasp thee.   NESTOR. I would my arms could match thee in contention     As they contend with thee in courtesy.   HECTOR. I would they could.   NESTOR. Ha!     By this white beard, I\'d fight with thee to-morrow.     Well, welcome, welcome! I have seen the time.   ULYSSES. I wonder now how yonder city stands,     When we have here her base and pillar by us.   HECTOR. I know your favour, Lord Ulysses, well.     Ah, sir, there\'s many a Greek and Troyan dead,     Since first I saw yourself and Diomed     In Ilion on your Greekish embassy.   ULYSSES. Sir, I foretold you then what would ensue.     My prophecy is but half his journey yet;     For yonder walls, that pertly front your town,       Yond towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds,     Must kiss their own feet.   HECTOR. I must not believe you.     There they stand yet; and modestly I think     The fall of every Phrygian stone will cost     A drop of Grecian blood. The end crowns all;     And that old common arbitrator, Time,     Will one day end it.   ULYSSES. So to him we leave it.     Most gentle and most valiant Hector, welcome.     After the General, I beseech you next     To feast with me and see me at my tent.   ACHILLES. I shall forestall thee, Lord Ulysses, thou!     Now, Hector, I have fed mine eyes on thee;     I have with exact view perus\'d thee, Hector,     And quoted joint by joint.   HECTOR. Is this Achilles?   ACHILLES. I am Achilles.   HECTOR. Stand fair, I pray thee; let me look on thee.   ACHILLES. Behold thy fill.     HECTOR. Nay, I have done already.   ACHILLES. Thou art too brief. I will the second time,     As I would buy thee, view thee limb by limb.   HECTOR. O, like a book of sport thou\'lt read me o\'er;     But there\'s more in me than thou understand\'st.     Why dost thou so oppress me with thine eye?   ACHILLES. Tell me, you heavens, in which part of his body     Shall I destroy him? Whether there, or there, or there?     That I may give the local wound a name,     And make distinct the very breach whereout     Hector\'s great spirit flew. Answer me, heavens.   HECTOR. It would discredit the blest gods, proud man,     To answer such a question. Stand again.     Think\'st thou to catch my life so pleasantly     As to prenominate in nice conjecture     Where thou wilt hit me dead?   ACHILLES. I tell thee yea.   HECTOR. Wert thou an oracle to tell me so,     I\'d not believe thee. Henceforth guard thee well;     For I\'ll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there;       But, by the forge that stithied Mars his helm,     I\'ll kill thee everywhere, yea, o\'er and o\'er.     You wisest Grecians, pardon me this brag.     His insolence draws folly from my lips;     But I\'ll endeavour deeds to match these words,     Or may I never-   AJAX. Do not chafe thee, cousin;     And you, Achilles, let these threats alone     Till accident or purpose bring you to\'t.     You may have every day enough of Hector,     If you have stomach. The general state, I fear,     Can scarce entreat you to be odd with him.   HECTOR. I pray you let us see you in the field;     We have had pelting wars since you refus\'d     The Grecians\' cause.   ACHILLES. Dost thou entreat me, Hector?     To-morrow do I meet thee, fell as death;     To-night all friends.   HECTOR. Thy hand upon that match.   AGAMEMNON. First, all you peers of Greece, go to my tent;       There in the full convive we; afterwards,     As Hector\'s leisure and your bounties shall     Concur together, severally entreat him.     Beat loud the tambourines, let the trumpets blow,     That this great soldier may his welcome know.                                    Exeunt all but TROILUS and ULYSSES   TROILUS. My Lord Ulysses, tell me, I beseech you,     In what place of the field doth Calchas keep?   ULYSSES. At Menelaus\' tent, most princely Troilus.     There Diomed doth feast with him to-night,     Who neither looks upon the heaven nor earth,     But gives all gaze and bent of amorous view     On the fair Cressid.   TROILUS. Shall I, sweet lord, be bound to you so much,     After we part from Agamemnon\'s tent,     To bring me thither?   ULYSSES. You shall command me, sir.     As gentle tell me of what honour was     This Cressida in Troy? Had she no lover there     That wails her absence?     TROILUS. O, sir, to such as boasting show their scars     A mock is due. Will you walk on, my lord?     She was belov\'d, she lov\'d; she is, and doth;     But still sweet love is food for fortune\'s tooth.          Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE 1. The Grecian camp. Before the tent of ACHILLES  Enter ACHILLES and PATROCLUS    ACHILLES. I\'ll heat his blood with Greekish wine to-night,     Which with my scimitar I\'ll cool to-morrow.     Patroclus, let us feast him to the height.   PATROCLUS. Here comes Thersites.                     Enter THERSITES    ACHILLES. How now, thou core of envy!     Thou crusty batch of nature, what\'s the news?   THERSITES. Why, thou picture of what thou seemest, and idol of     idiot worshippers, here\'s a letter for thee.   ACHILLES. From whence, fragment?   THERSITES. Why, thou full dish of fool, from Troy.   PATROCLUS. Who keeps the tent now?   THERSITES. The surgeon\'s box or the patient\'s wound.   PATROCLUS. Well said, Adversity! and what needs these tricks?   THERSITES. Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk; thou       art said to be Achilles\' male varlet.   PATROCLUS. Male varlet, you rogue! What\'s that?   THERSITES. Why, his masculine whore. Now, the rotten diseases of     the south, the guts-griping ruptures, catarrhs, loads o\' gravel     in the back, lethargies, cold palsies, raw eyes, dirt-rotten     livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of imposthume, sciaticas,     limekilns i\' th\' palm, incurable bone-ache, and the rivelled fee-     simple of the tetter, take and take again such preposterous     discoveries!   PATROCLUS. Why, thou damnable box of envy, thou, what meanest thou     to curse thus?   THERSITES. Do I curse thee?   PATROCLUS. Why, no, you ruinous butt; you whoreson     indistinguishable cur, no.   THERSITES. No! Why art thou, then, exasperate, thou idle immaterial     skein of sleid silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye,     thou tassel of a prodigal\'s purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is     pest\'red with such water-flies-diminutives of nature!   PATROCLUS. Out, gall!   THERSITES. Finch egg!     ACHILLES. My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite     From my great purpose in to-morrow\'s battle.     Here is a letter from Queen Hecuba,     A token from her daughter, my fair love,     Both taxing me and gaging me to keep     An oath that I have sworn. I will not break it.     Fall Greeks; fail fame; honour or go or stay;     My major vow lies here, this I\'ll obey.     Come, come, Thersites, help to trim my tent;     This night in banqueting must all be spent.     Away, Patroclus!                              Exit with PATROCLUS   THERSITES. With too much blood and too little brain these two may     run mad; but, if with too much brain and to little blood they do,     I\'ll be a curer of madmen. Here\'s Agamemnon, an honest fellow     enough, and one that loves quails, but he has not so much brain     as ear-wax; and the goodly transformation of Jupiter there, his     brother, the bull, the primitive statue and oblique memorial of     cuckolds, a thrifty shoeing-horn in a chain, hanging at his     brother\'s leg-to what form but that he is, should wit larded with     malice, and malice forced with wit, turn him to? To an ass, were       nothing: he is both ass and ox. To an ox, were nothing: he is both     ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a     lizard, an owl, a put-tock, or a herring without a roe, I would     not care; but to be Menelaus, I would conspire against destiny.     Ask me not what I would be, if I were not Thersites; for I care     not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not Menelaus. Hey-day!     sprites and fires!           Enter HECTOR, TROILUS, AJAX, AGAMEMNON, ULYSSES,             NESTOR, MENELAUS, and DIOMEDES, with lights    AGAMEMNON. We go wrong, we go wrong.   AJAX. No, yonder \'tis;     There, where we see the lights.   HECTOR. I trouble you.   AJAX. No, not a whit.                      Re-enter ACHILLES    ULYSSES. Here comes himself to guide you.     ACHILLES. Welcome, brave Hector; welcome, Princes all.   AGAMEMNON. So now, fair Prince of Troy, I bid good night;     Ajax commands the guard to tend on you.   HECTOR. Thanks, and good night to the Greeks\' general.   MENELAUS. Good night, my lord.   HECTOR. Good night, sweet Lord Menelaus.   THERSITES. Sweet draught! \'Sweet\' quoth \'a?     Sweet sink, sweet sewer!   ACHILLES. Good night and welcome, both at once, to those     That go or tarry.   AGAMEMNON. Good night.                                         Exeunt AGAMEMNON and MENELAUS   ACHILLES. Old Nestor tarries; and you too, Diomed,     Keep Hector company an hour or two.   DIOMEDES. I cannot, lord; I have important business,     The tide whereof is now. Good night, great Hector.   HECTOR. Give me your hand.   ULYSSES. [Aside to TROILUS] Follow his torch; he goes to     Calchas\' tent; I\'ll keep you company.   TROILUS. Sweet sir, you honour me.     HECTOR. And so, good night.                          Exit DIOMEDES; ULYSSES and TROILUS following   ACHILLES. Come, come, enter my tent.                                              Exeunt all but THERSITES   THERSITES. That same Diomed\'s a false-hearted rogue, a most unjust     knave; I will no more trust him when he leers than I will a     serpent when he hisses. He will spend his mouth and promise, like     Brabbler the hound; but when he performs, astronomers foretell     it: it is prodigious, there will come some change; the sun     borrows of the moon when Diomed keeps his word. I will rather     leave to see Hector than not to dog him. They say he keeps a     Troyan drab, and uses the traitor Calchas\' tent. I\'ll after.     Nothing but lechery! All incontinent varlets!                Exit     ACT V. SCENE 2. The Grecian camp. Before CALCHAS\' tent  Enter DIOMEDES    DIOMEDES. What, are you up here, ho? Speak.   CALCHAS. [Within] Who calls?   DIOMEDES. Diomed. Calchas, I think. Where\'s your daughter?   CALCHAS. [Within] She comes to you.        Enter TROILUS and ULYSSES, at a distance; after them                         THERSITES    ULYSSES. Stand where the torch may not discover us.                       Enter CRESSIDA    TROILUS. Cressid comes forth to him.   DIOMEDES. How now, my charge!   CRESSIDA. Now, my sweet guardian! Hark, a word with you. [Whispers]   TROILUS. Yea, so familiar!     ULYSSES. She will sing any man at first sight.   THERSITES. And any man may sing her, if he can take her cliff;     she\'s noted.   DIOMEDES. Will you remember?   CRESSIDA. Remember? Yes.   DIOMEDES. Nay, but do, then;     And let your mind be coupled with your words.   TROILUS. What shall she remember?   ULYSSES. List!   CRESSIDA. Sweet honey Greek, tempt me no more to folly.   THERSITES. Roguery!   DIOMEDES. Nay, then-   CRESSIDA. I\'ll tell you what-   DIOMEDES. Fo, fo! come, tell a pin; you are a forsworn-   CRESSIDA. In faith, I cannot. What would you have me do?   THERSITES. A juggling trick, to be secretly open.   DIOMEDES. What did you swear you would bestow on me?   CRESSIDA. I prithee, do not hold me to mine oath;     Bid me do anything but that, sweet Greek.   DIOMEDES. Good night.     TROILUS. Hold, patience!   ULYSSES. How now, Troyan!   CRESSIDA. Diomed!   DIOMEDES. No, no, good night; I\'ll be your fool no more.   TROILUS. Thy better must.   CRESSIDA. Hark! a word in your ear.   TROILUS. O plague and madness!   ULYSSES. You are moved, Prince; let us depart, I pray,     Lest your displeasure should enlarge itself     To wrathful terms. This place is dangerous;     The time right deadly; I beseech you, go.   TROILUS. Behold, I pray you.   ULYSSES. Nay, good my lord, go off;     You flow to great distraction; come, my lord.   TROILUS. I prithee stay.   ULYSSES. You have not patience; come.   TROILUS. I pray you, stay; by hell and all hell\'s torments,     I will not speak a word.   DIOMEDES. And so, good night.   CRESSIDA. Nay, but you part in anger.     TROILUS. Doth that grieve thee? O withered truth!   ULYSSES. How now, my lord?   TROILUS. By Jove, I will be patient.   CRESSIDA. Guardian! Why, Greek!   DIOMEDES. Fo, fo! adieu! you palter.   CRESSIDA. In faith, I do not. Come hither once again.   ULYSSES. You shake, my lord, at something; will you go?     You will break out.   TROILUS. She strokes his cheek.   ULYSSES. Come, come.   TROILUS. Nay, stay; by Jove, I will not speak a word:     There is between my will and all offences     A guard of patience. Stay a little while.   THERSITES. How the devil luxury, with his fat rump and potato     finger, tickles these together! Fry, lechery, fry!   DIOMEDES. But will you, then?   CRESSIDA. In faith, I will, lo; never trust me else.   DIOMEDES. Give me some token for the surety of it.   CRESSIDA. I\'ll fetch you one.                                  Exit   ULYSSES. You have sworn patience.     TROILUS. Fear me not, my lord;     I will not be myself, nor have cognition     Of what I feel. I am all patience.                      Re-enter CRESSIDA    THERSITES. Now the pledge; now, now, now!   CRESSIDA. Here, Diomed, keep this sleeve.   TROILUS. O beauty! where is thy faith?   ULYSSES. My lord!   TROILUS. I will be patient; outwardly I will.   CRESSIDA. You look upon that sleeve; behold it well.     He lov\'d me-O false wench!-Give\'t me again.   DIOMEDES. Whose was\'t?   CRESSIDA. It is no matter, now I ha\'t again.     I will not meet with you to-morrow night.     I prithee, Diomed, visit me no more.   THERSITES. Now she sharpens. Well said, whetstone.   DIOMEDES. I shall have it.   CRESSIDA. What, this?     DIOMEDES. Ay, that.   CRESSIDA. O all you gods! O pretty, pretty pledge!     Thy master now lies thinking on his bed     Of thee and me, and sighs, and takes my glove,     And gives memorial dainty kisses to it,     As I kiss thee. Nay, do not snatch it from me;     He that takes that doth take my heart withal.   DIOMEDES. I had your heart before; this follows it.   TROILUS. I did swear patience.   CRESSIDA. You shall not have it, Diomed; faith, you shall not;     I\'ll give you something else.   DIOMEDES. I will have this. Whose was it?   CRESSIDA. It is no matter.   DIOMEDES. Come, tell me whose it was.   CRESSIDA. \'Twas one\'s that lov\'d me better than you will.     But, now you have it, take it.   DIOMEDES. Whose was it?   CRESSIDA. By all Diana\'s waiting women yond,     And by herself, I will not tell you whose.   DIOMEDES. To-morrow will I wear it on my helm,       And grieve his spirit that dares not challenge it.   TROILUS. Wert thou the devil and wor\'st it on thy horn,     It should be challeng\'d.   CRESSIDA. Well, well, \'tis done, \'tis past; and yet it is not;     I will not keep my word.   DIOMEDES. Why, then farewell;     Thou never shalt mock Diomed again.   CRESSIDA. You shall not go. One cannot speak a word     But it straight starts you.   DIOMEDES. I do not like this fooling.   THERSITES. Nor I, by Pluto; but that that likes not you     Pleases me best.   DIOMEDES. What, shall I come? The hour-   CRESSIDA. Ay, come-O Jove! Do come. I shall be plagu\'d.   DIOMEDES. Farewell till then.   CRESSIDA. Good night. I prithee come.                 Exit DIOMEDES     Troilus, farewell! One eye yet looks on thee;     But with my heart the other eye doth see.     Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find,     The error of our eye directs our mind.       What error leads must err; O, then conclude,     Minds sway\'d by eyes are full of turpitude.                  Exit   THERSITES. A proof of strength she could not publish more,     Unless she said \'My mind is now turn\'d whore.\'   ULYSSES. All\'s done, my lord.   TROILUS. It is.   ULYSSES. Why stay we, then?   TROILUS. To make a recordation to my soul     Of every syllable that here was spoke.     But if I tell how these two did coact,     Shall I not lie in publishing a truth?     Sith yet there is a credence in my heart,     An esperance so obstinately strong,     That doth invert th\' attest of eyes and ears;     As if those organs had deceptious functions     Created only to calumniate.     Was Cressid here?   ULYSSES. I cannot conjure, Troyan.   TROILUS. She was not, sure.   ULYSSES. Most sure she was.     TROILUS. Why, my negation hath no taste of madness.   ULYSSES. Nor mine, my lord. Cressid was here but now.   TROILUS. Let it not be believ\'d for womanhood.     Think, we had mothers; do not give advantage     To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme,     For depravation, to square the general sex     By Cressid\'s rule. Rather think this not Cressid.   ULYSSES. What hath she done, Prince, that can soil our mothers?   TROILUS. Nothing at all, unless that this were she.   THERSITES. Will \'a swagger himself out on\'s own eyes?   TROILUS. This she? No; this is Diomed\'s Cressida.     If beauty have a soul, this is not she;     If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies,     If sanctimony be the god\'s delight,     If there be rule in unity itself,     This was not she. O madness of discourse,     That cause sets up with and against itself!     Bifold authority! where reason can revolt     Without perdition, and loss assume all reason     Without revolt: this is, and is not, Cressid.       Within my soul there doth conduce a fight     Of this strange nature, that a thing inseparate     Divides more wider than the sky and earth;     And yet the spacious breadth of this division     Admits no orifex for a point as subtle     As Ariachne\'s broken woof to enter.     Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto\'s gates:     Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven.     Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself:     The bonds of heaven are slipp\'d, dissolv\'d, and loos\'d;     And with another knot, five-finger-tied,     The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,     The fragments, scraps, the bits, and greasy relics     Of her o\'er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.   ULYSSES. May worthy Troilus be half-attach\'d     With that which here his passion doth express?   TROILUS. Ay, Greek; and that shall be divulged well     In characters as red as Mars his heart     Inflam\'d with Venus. Never did young man fancy     With so eternal and so fix\'d a soul.       Hark, Greek: as much as I do Cressid love,     So much by weight hate I her Diomed.     That sleeve is mine that he\'ll bear on his helm;     Were it a casque compos\'d by Vulcan\'s skill     My sword should bite it. Not the dreadful spout     Which shipmen do the hurricano call,     Constring\'d in mass by the almighty sun,     Shall dizzy with more clamour Neptune\'s ear     In his descent than shall my prompted sword     Falling on Diomed.   THERSITES. He\'ll tickle it for his concupy.   TROILUS. O Cressid! O false Cressid! false, false, false!     Let all untruths stand by thy stained name,     And they\'ll seem glorious.   ULYSSES. O, contain yourself;     Your passion draws ears hither.                         Enter AENEAS    AENEAS. I have been seeking you this hour, my lord.       Hector, by this, is arming him in Troy;     Ajax, your guard, stays to conduct you home.   TROILUS. Have with you, Prince. My courteous lord, adieu.     Fairwell, revolted fair!-and, Diomed,     Stand fast and wear a castle on thy head.   ULYSSES. I\'ll bring you to the gates.   TROILUS. Accept distracted thanks.              Exeunt TROILUS, AENEAS. and ULYSSES    THERSITES. Would I could meet that rogue Diomed! I would croak like     a raven; I would bode, I would bode. Patroclus will give me     anything for the intelligence of this whore; the parrot will not     do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab. Lechery,     lechery! Still wars and lechery! Nothing else holds fashion. A     burning devil take them!                                     Exit     ACT V. SCENE 3. Troy. Before PRIAM\'S palace  Enter HECTOR and ANDROMACHE    ANDROMACHE. When was my lord so much ungently temper\'d     To stop his ears against admonishment?     Unarm, unarm, and do not fight to-day.   HECTOR. You train me to offend you; get you in.     By all the everlasting gods, I\'ll go.   ANDROMACHE. My dreams will, sure, prove ominous to the day.   HECTOR. No more, I say.                      Enter CASSANDRA    CASSANDRA. Where is my brother Hector?   ANDROMACHE. Here, sister, arm\'d, and bloody in intent.     Consort with me in loud and dear petition,     Pursue we him on knees; for I have dreamt     Of bloody turbulence, and this whole night     Hath nothing been but shapes and forms of slaughter.   CASSANDRA. O, \'tis true!     HECTOR. Ho! bid my trumpet sound.   CASSANDRA. No notes of sally, for the heavens, sweet brother!   HECTOR. Be gone, I say. The gods have heard me swear.   CASSANDRA. The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows;     They are polluted off\'rings, more abhorr\'d     Than spotted livers in the sacrifice.   ANDROMACHE. O, be persuaded! Do not count it holy     To hurt by being just. It is as lawful,     For we would give much, to use violent thefts     And rob in the behalf of charity.   CASSANDRA. It is the purpose that makes strong the vow;     But vows to every purpose must not hold.     Unarm, sweet Hector.   HECTOR. Hold you still, I say.     Mine honour keeps the weather of my fate.     Life every man holds dear; but the dear man     Holds honour far more precious dear than life.                        Enter TROILUS        How now, young man! Mean\'st thou to fight to-day?   ANDROMACHE. Cassandra, call my father to persuade.                                                        Exit CASSANDRA   HECTOR. No, faith, young Troilus; doff thy harness, youth;     I am to-day i\' th\' vein of chivalry.     Let grow thy sinews till their knots be strong,     And tempt not yet the brushes of the war.     Unarm thee, go; and doubt thou not, brave boy,     I\'ll stand to-day for thee and me and Troy.   TROILUS. Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you     Which better fits a lion than a man.   HECTOR. What vice is that, good Troilus?     Chide me for it.   TROILUS. When many times the captive Grecian falls,     Even in the fan and wind of your fair sword,     You bid them rise and live.   HECTOR. O, \'tis fair play!   TROILUS. Fool\'s play, by heaven, Hector.   HECTOR. How now! how now!   TROILUS. For th\' love of all the gods,       Let\'s leave the hermit Pity with our mother;     And when we have our armours buckled on,     The venom\'d vengeance ride upon our swords,     Spur them to ruthful work, rein them from ruth!   HECTOR. Fie, savage, fie!   TROILUS. Hector, then \'tis wars.   HECTOR. Troilus, I would not have you fight to-day.   TROILUS. Who should withhold me?     Not fate, obedience, nor the hand of Mars     Beck\'ning with fiery truncheon my retire;     Not Priamus and Hecuba on knees,     Their eyes o\'ergalled with recourse of tears;     Nor you, my brother, with your true sword drawn,     Oppos\'d to hinder me, should stop my way,     But by my ruin.                Re-enter CASSANDRA, with PRIAM    CASSANDRA. Lay hold upon him, Priam, hold him fast;     He is thy crutch; now if thou lose thy stay,       Thou on him leaning, and all Troy on thee,     Fall all together.   PRIAM. Come, Hector, come, go back.     Thy wife hath dreamt; thy mother hath had visions;     Cassandra doth foresee; and I myself     Am like a prophet suddenly enrapt     To tell thee that this day is ominous.     Therefore, come back.   HECTOR. Aeneas is a-field;     And I do stand engag\'d to many Greeks,     Even in the faith of valour, to appear     This morning to them.   PRIAM. Ay, but thou shalt not go.   HECTOR. I must not break my faith.     You know me dutiful; therefore, dear sir,     Let me not shame respect; but give me leave     To take that course by your consent and voice     Which you do here forbid me, royal Priam.   CASSANDRA. O Priam, yield not to him!   ANDROMACHE. Do not, dear father.     HECTOR. Andromache, I am offended with you.     Upon the love you bear me, get you in.                                                       Exit ANDROMACHE   TROILUS. This foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl     Makes all these bodements.   CASSANDRA. O, farewell, dear Hector!     Look how thou diest. Look how thy eye turns pale.     Look how thy wounds do bleed at many vents.     Hark how Troy roars; how Hecuba cries out;     How poor Andromache shrills her dolours forth;     Behold distraction, frenzy, and amazement,     Like witless antics, one another meet,     And all cry, Hector! Hector\'s dead! O Hector!   TROILUS. Away, away!   CASSANDRA. Farewell!-yet, soft! Hector, I take my leave.     Thou dost thyself and all our Troy deceive.                  Exit   HECTOR. You are amaz\'d, my liege, at her exclaim.     Go in, and cheer the town; we\'ll forth, and fight,     Do deeds worth praise and tell you them at night.   PRIAM. Farewell. The gods with safety stand about thee!                              Exeunt severally PRIAM and HECTOR. Alarums   TROILUS. They are at it, hark! Proud Diomed, believe,     I come to lose my arm or win my sleeve.                       Enter PANDARUS    PANDARUS. Do you hear, my lord? Do you hear?   TROILUS. What now?   PANDARUS. Here\'s a letter come from yond poor girl.   TROILUS. Let me read.   PANDARUS. A whoreson tisick, a whoreson rascally tisick so troubles     me, and the foolish fortune of this girl, and what one thing,     what another, that I shall leave you one o\' th\'s days; and I have     a rheum in mine eyes too, and such an ache in my bones that     unless a man were curs\'d I cannot tell what to think on\'t. What     says she there?   TROILUS. Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart;     Th\' effect doth operate another way.                                                  [Tearing the letter]     Go, wind, to wind, there turn and change together.       My love with words and errors still she feeds,     But edifies another with her deeds.              Exeunt severally     ACT V. SCENE 4. The plain between Troy and the Grecian camp  Enter THERSITES. Excursions    THERSITES. Now they are clapper-clawing one another; I\'ll go look     on. That dissembling abominable varlet, Diomed, has got that same     scurvy doting foolish young knave\'s sleeve of Troy there in his     helm. I would fain see them meet, that that same young Troyan ass     that loves the whore there might send that Greekish whoremasterly     villain with the sleeve back to the dissembling luxurious drab of     a sleeve-less errand. A th\' t\'other side, the policy of those     crafty swearing rascals-that stale old mouse-eaten dry cheese,     Nestor, and that same dog-fox, Ulysses -is not prov\'d worth a     blackberry. They set me up, in policy, that mongrel cur, Ajax,     against that dog of as bad a kind, Achilles; and now is the cur,     Ajax prouder than the cur Achilles, and will not arm to-day;     whereupon the Grecians begin to proclaim barbarism, and policy     grows into an ill opinion.               Enter DIOMEDES, TROILUS following        Soft! here comes sleeve, and t\'other.   TROILUS. Fly not; for shouldst thou take the river Styx     I would swim after.   DIOMEDES. Thou dost miscall retire.     I do not fly; but advantageous care     Withdrew me from the odds of multitude.     Have at thee.   THERSITES. Hold thy whore, Grecian; now for thy whore,     Troyan-now the sleeve, now the sleeve!                                  Exeunt TROILUS and DIOMEDES fighting                          Enter HECTOR    HECTOR. What art thou, Greek? Art thou for Hector\'s match?     Art thou of blood and honour?   THERSITES. No, no-I am a rascal; a scurvy railing knave; a very     filthy rogue.   HECTOR. I do believe thee. Live.                               Exit   THERSITES. God-a-mercy, that thou wilt believe me; but a plague     break thy neck for frighting me! What\'s become of the wenching       rogues? I think they have swallowed one another. I would laugh at     that miracle. Yet, in a sort, lechery eats itself. I\'ll seek     them.                                                        Exit     ACT V. SCENE 5. Another part of the plain  Enter DIOMEDES and A SERVANT    DIOMEDES. Go, go, my servant, take thou Troilus\' horse;     Present the fair steed to my lady Cressid.     Fellow, commend my service to her beauty;     Tell her I have chastis\'d the amorous Troyan,     And am her knight by proof.   SERVANT. I go, my lord.                                        Exit                         Enter AGAMEMNON    AGAMEMNON. Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamus     Hath beat down enon; bastard Margarelon     Hath Doreus prisoner,     And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam,     Upon the pashed corses of the kings     Epistrophus and Cedius. Polixenes is slain;     Amphimacus and Thoas deadly hurt;     Patroclus ta\'en, or slain; and Palamedes       Sore hurt and bruis\'d. The dreadful Sagittary     Appals our numbers. Haste we, Diomed,     To reinforcement, or we perish all.                          Enter NESTOR    NESTOR. Go, bear Patroclus\' body to Achilles,     And bid the snail-pac\'d Ajax arm for shame.     There is a thousand Hectors in the field;     Now here he fights on Galathe his horse,     And there lacks work; anon he\'s there afoot,     And there they fly or die, like scaled sculls     Before the belching whale; then is he yonder,     And there the strawy Greeks, ripe for his edge,     Fall down before him like the mower\'s swath.     Here, there, and everywhere, he leaves and takes;     Dexterity so obeying appetite     That what he will he does, and does so much     That proof is call\'d impossibility.                           Enter ULYSSES    ULYSSES. O, courage, courage, courage, Princes! Great     Achilles Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance.     Patroclus\' wounds have rous\'d his drowsy blood,     Together with his mangled Myrmidons,     That noseless, handless, hack\'d and chipp\'d, come to     him, Crying on Hector. Ajax hath lost a friend     And foams at mouth, and he is arm\'d and at it,     Roaring for Troilus; who hath done to-day     Mad and fantastic execution,     Engaging and redeeming of himself     With such a careless force and forceless care     As if that luck, in very spite of cunning,     Bade him win all.                          Enter AJAX    AJAX. Troilus! thou coward Troilus!                            Exit   DIOMEDES. Ay, there, there.     NESTOR. So, so, we draw together.                              Exit                       Enter ACHILLES    ACHILLES. Where is this Hector?     Come, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face;     Know what it is to meet Achilles angry.     Hector! where\'s Hector? I will none but Hector.            Exeunt     ACT V. SCENE 6. Another part of the plain  Enter AJAX    AJAX. Troilus, thou coward Troilus, show thy head.                       Enter DIOMEDES    DIOMEDES. Troilus, I say! Where\'s Troilus?   AJAX. What wouldst thou?   DIOMEDES. I would correct him.   AJAX. Were I the general, thou shouldst have my office     Ere that correction. Troilus, I say! What, Troilus!                        Enter TROILUS    TROILUS. O traitor Diomed! Turn thy false face, thou traitor,     And pay thy life thou owest me for my horse.   DIOMEDES. Ha! art thou there?   AJAX. I\'ll fight with him alone. Stand, Diomed.   DIOMEDES. He is my prize. I will not look upon.     TROILUS. Come, both, you cogging Greeks; have at you                                                       Exeunt fighting                        Enter HECTOR    HECTOR. Yea, Troilus? O, well fought, my youngest brother!                       Enter ACHILLES    ACHILLES. Now do I see thee, ha! Have at thee, Hector!   HECTOR. Pause, if thou wilt.   ACHILLES. I do disdain thy courtesy, proud Troyan.     Be happy that my arms are out of use;     My rest and negligence befriends thee now,     But thou anon shalt hear of me again;     Till when, go seek thy fortune.                              Exit   HECTOR. Fare thee well.     I would have been much more a fresher man,     Had I expected thee.                         Re-enter TROILUS      How now, my brother!   TROILUS. Ajax hath ta\'en Aeneas. Shall it be?     No, by the flame of yonder glorious heaven,     He shall not carry him; I\'ll be ta\'en too,     Or bring him off. Fate, hear me what I say:     I reck not though thou end my life to-day.                   Exit                      Enter one in armour    HECTOR. Stand, stand, thou Greek; thou art a goodly mark.     No? wilt thou not? I like thy armour well;     I\'ll frush it and unlock the rivets all     But I\'ll be master of it. Wilt thou not, beast, abide?     Why then, fly on; I\'ll hunt thee for thy hide.             Exeunt     ACT V. SCENE 7. Another part of the plain  Enter ACHILLES, with Myrmidons    ACHILLES. Come here about me, you my Myrmidons;     Mark what I say. Attend me where I wheel;     Strike not a stroke, but keep yourselves in breath;     And when I have the bloody Hector found,     Empale him with your weapons round about;     In fellest manner execute your arms.     Follow me, sirs, and my proceedings eye.     It is decreed Hector the great must die.                   Exeunt        Enter MENELAUS and PARIS, fighting; then THERSITES    THERSITES. The cuckold and the cuckold-maker are at it. Now, bull!     now, dog! \'Loo, Paris, \'loo! now my double-horn\'d Spartan! \'loo,     Paris, \'loo! The bull has the game. Ware horns, ho!                                             Exeunt PARIS and MENELAUS                        Enter MARGARELON      MARGARELON. Turn, slave, and fight.   THERSITES. What art thou?   MARGARELON. A bastard son of Priam\'s.   THERSITES. I am a bastard too; I love bastards. I am a bastard     begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valour, in     everything illegitimate. One bear will not bite another, and     wherefore should one bastard? Take heed, the quarrel\'s most     ominous to us: if the son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts     judgment. Farewell, bastard.       Exit   MARGARELON. The devil take thee, coward!                       Exit     ACT V. SCENE 8. Another part of the plain  Enter HECTOR    HECTOR. Most putrified core so fair without,     Thy goodly armour thus hath cost thy life.     Now is my day\'s work done; I\'ll take good breath:     Rest, sword; thou hast thy fill of blood and death!  [Disarms]                Enter ACHILLES and his Myrmidons    ACHILLES. Look, Hector, how the sun begins to set;     How ugly night comes breathing at his heels;     Even with the vail and dark\'ning of the sun,     To close the day up, Hector\'s life is done.   HECTOR. I am unarm\'d; forego this vantage, Greek.   ACHILLES. Strike, fellows, strike; this is the man I seek.                                                        [HECTOR falls]     So, Ilion, fall thou next! Come, Troy, sink down;     Here lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone.       On, Myrmidons, and cry you an amain     \'Achilles hath the mighty Hector slain.\'                                                   [A retreat sounded]     Hark! a retire upon our Grecian part.   MYRMIDON. The Troyan trumpets sound the like, my lord.   ACHILLES. The dragon wing of night o\'erspreads the earth     And, stickler-like, the armies separates.     My half-supp\'d sword, that frankly would have fed,     Pleas\'d with this dainty bait, thus goes to bed.                                                  [Sheathes his sword]     Come, tie his body to my horse\'s tail;     Along the field I will the Troyan trail.                   Exeunt     ACT V. SCENE 9. Another part of the plain  Sound retreat. Shout. Enter AGAMEMNON, AJAX, MENELAUS, NESTOR, DIOMEDES, and the rest, marching    AGAMEMNON. Hark! hark! what shout is this?   NESTOR. Peace, drums!   SOLDIERS. [Within] Achilles! Achilles! Hector\'s slain. Achilles!   DIOMEDES. The bruit is Hector\'s slain, and by Achilles.   AJAX. If it be so, yet bragless let it be;     Great Hector was as good a man as he.   AGAMEMNON. March patiently along. Let one be sent     To pray Achilles see us at our tent.     If in his death the gods have us befriended;     Great Troy is ours, and our sharp wars are ended.     Exeunt     ACT V. SCENE 10. Another part of the plain  Enter AENEAS, PARIS, ANTENOR, and DEIPHOBUS    AENEAS. Stand, ho! yet are we masters of the field.     Never go home; here starve we out the night.                           Enter TROILUS    TROILUS. Hector is slain.   ALL. Hector! The gods forbid!   TROILUS. He\'s dead, and at the murderer\'s horse\'s tail,     In beastly sort, dragg\'d through the shameful field.     Frown on, you heavens, effect your rage with speed.     Sit, gods, upon your thrones, and smile at Troy.     I say at once let your brief plagues be mercy,     And linger not our sure destructions on.   AENEAS. My lord, you do discomfort all the host.   TROILUS. You understand me not that tell me so.     I do not speak of flight, of fear of death,     But dare all imminence that gods and men       Address their dangers in. Hector is gone.     Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba?     Let him that will a screech-owl aye be call\'d     Go in to Troy, and say there \'Hector\'s dead.\'     There is a word will Priam turn to stone;     Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives,     Cold statues of the youth; and, in a word,     Scare Troy out of itself. But, march away;     Hector is dead; there is no more to say.     Stay yet. You vile abominable tents,     Thus proudly pight upon our Phrygian plains,     Let Titan rise as early as he dare,     I\'ll through and through you. And, thou great-siz\'d coward,     No space of earth shall sunder our two hates;     I\'ll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still,     That mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy\'s thoughts.     Strike a free march to Troy. With comfort go;     Hope of revenge shall hide our inward woe.                          Enter PANDARUS      PANDARUS. But hear you, hear you!   TROILUS. Hence, broker-lackey. Ignominy and shame     Pursue thy life and live aye with thy name!                                               Exeunt all but PANDARUS   PANDARUS. A goodly medicine for my aching bones! world! world! thus     is the poor agent despis\'d! traitors and bawds, how earnestly are     you set a work, and how ill requited! Why should our endeavour be     so lov\'d, and the performance so loathed? What verse for it? What     instance for it? Let me see-            Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing           Till he hath lost his honey and his sting;           And being once subdu\'d in armed trail,           Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail.      Good traders in the flesh, set this in your painted     cloths. As many as be here of pander\'s hall,     Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar\'s fall;     Or, if you cannot weep, yet give some groans,       Though not for me, yet for your aching bones.     Brethren and sisters of the hold-door trade,     Some two months hence my will shall here be made.     It should be now, but that my fear is this,     Some galled goose of Winchester would hiss.     Till then I\'ll sweat and seek about for eases,     And at that time bequeath you my diseases.                   Exit  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1602   TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL  by William Shakespeare    DRAMATIS PERSONAE    ORSINO, Duke of Illyria   SEBASTIAN, brother of Viola   ANTONIO, a sea captain, friend of Sebastian   A SEA CAPTAIN, friend of Viola   VALENTINE, gentleman attending on the Duke   CURIO, gentleman attending on the Duke   SIR TOBY BELCH, uncle of Olivia   SIR ANDREW AGUECHEEK   MALVOLIO, steward to Olivia   FABIAN, servant to Olivia   FESTE, a clown, servant to Olivia    OLIVIA, a rich countess   VIOLA, sister of Sebastian   MARIA, Olivia\'s waiting woman    Lords, Priests, Sailors, Officers, Musicians, and Attendants     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE: A city in Illyria; and the sea-coast near it    ACT I. SCENE I. The DUKE\'S palace  Enter ORSINO, Duke of Illyria, CURIO, and other LORDS; MUSICIANS attending    DUKE. If music be the food of love, play on,     Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,     The appetite may sicken and so die.     That strain again! It had a dying fall;     O, it came o\'er my ear like the sweet sound     That breathes upon a bank of violets,     Stealing and giving odour! Enough, no more;     \'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.     O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!     That, notwithstanding thy capacity     Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,     Of what validity and pitch soe\'er,     But falls into abatement and low price     Even in a minute. So full of shapes is fancy,     That it alone is high fantastical.   CURIO. Will you go hunt, my lord?     DUKE. What, Curio?   CURIO. The hart.   DUKE. Why, so I do, the noblest that I have.     O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,     Methought she purg\'d the air of pestilence!     That instant was I turn\'d into a hart,     And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,     E\'er since pursue me.                       Enter VALENTINE      How now! what news from her?   VALENTINE. So please my lord, I might not be admitted,     But from her handmaid do return this answer:     The element itself, till seven years\' heat,     Shall not behold her face at ample view;     But like a cloistress she will veiled walk,     And water once a day her chamber round     With eye-offending brine; all this to season     A brother\'s dead love, which she would keep fresh       And lasting in her sad remembrance.   DUKE. O, she that hath a heart of that fine frame     To pay this debt of love but to a brother,     How will she love when the rich golden shaft     Hath kill\'d the flock of all affections else     That live in her; when liver, brain, and heart,     These sovereign thrones, are all supplied and fill\'d,     Her sweet perfections, with one self king!     Away before me to sweet beds of flow\'rs:     Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bow\'rs.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE II. The sea-coast  Enter VIOLA, a CAPTAIN, and SAILORS    VIOLA. What country, friends, is this?   CAPTAIN. This is Illyria, lady.   VIOLA. And what should I do in Illyria?     My brother he is in Elysium.     Perchance he is not drown\'d- what think you, sailors?   CAPTAIN. It is perchance that you yourself were saved.   VIOLA. O my poor brother! and so perchance may he be.   CAPTAIN. True, madam, and, to comfort you with chance,     Assure yourself, after our ship did split,     When you, and those poor number saved with you,     Hung on our driving boat, I saw your brother,     Most provident in peril, bind himself-     Courage and hope both teaching him the practice-     To a strong mast that liv\'d upon the sea;     Where, like Arion on the dolphin\'s back,     I saw him hold acquaintance with the waves     So long as I could see.     VIOLA. For saying so, there\'s gold.     Mine own escape unfoldeth to my hope,     Whereto thy speech serves for authority,     The like of him. Know\'st thou this country?   CAPTAIN. Ay, madam, well; for I was bred and born     Not three hours\' travel from this very place.   VIOLA. Who governs here?   CAPTAIN. A noble duke, in nature as in name.   VIOLA. What is his name?   CAPTAIN. Orsino.   VIOLA. Orsino! I have heard my father name him.     He was a bachelor then.   CAPTAIN. And so is now, or was so very late;     For but a month ago I went from hence,     And then \'twas fresh in murmur- as, you know,     What great ones do the less will prattle of-     That he did seek the love of fair Olivia.   VIOLA. What\'s she?   CAPTAIN. A virtuous maid, the daughter of a count     That died some twelvemonth since, then leaving her       In the protection of his son, her brother,     Who shortly also died; for whose dear love,     They say, she hath abjur\'d the company     And sight of men.   VIOLA. O that I serv\'d that lady,     And might not be delivered to the world,     Till I had made mine own occasion mellow,     What my estate is!   CAPTAIN. That were hard to compass,     Because she will admit no kind of suit-     No, not the Duke\'s.   VIOLA. There is a fair behaviour in thee, Captain;     And though that nature with a beauteous wall     Doth oft close in pollution, yet of thee     I will believe thou hast a mind that suits     With this thy fair and outward character.     I prithee, and I\'ll pay thee bounteously,     Conceal me what I am, and be my aid     For such disguise as haply shall become     The form of my intent. I\'ll serve this duke:       Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him;     It may be worth thy pains, for I can sing     And speak to him in many sorts of music,     That will allow me very worth his service.     What else may hap to time I will commit;     Only shape thou silence to my wit.   CAPTAIN. Be you his eunuch and your mute I\'ll be;     When my tongue blabs, then let mine eyes not see.   VIOLA. I thank thee. Lead me on.                        Exeunt     SCENE III. OLIVIA\'S house  Enter SIR TOBY BELCH and MARIA    SIR TOBY. What a plague means my niece to take the death of her     brother thus? I am sure care\'s an enemy to life.   MARIA. By my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier o\' nights;     your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours.   SIR TOBY. Why, let her except before excepted.   MARIA. Ay, but you must confine yourself within the modest limits     of order.   SIR TOBY. Confine! I\'ll confine myself no finer than I am. These     clothes are good enough to drink in, and so be these boots too;     an they be not, let them hang themselves in their own straps.   MARIA. That quaffing and drinking will undo you; I heard my lady     talk of it yesterday, and of a foolish knight that you brought in     one night here to be her wooer.   SIR TOBY. Who? Sir Andrew Aguecheek?   MARIA. Ay, he.   SIR TOBY. He\'s as tall a man as any\'s in Illyria.   MARIA. What\'s that to th\' purpose?     SIR TOBY. Why, he has three thousand ducats a year.   MARIA. Ay, but he\'ll have but a year in all these ducats; he\'s a     very fool and a prodigal.   SIR TOBY. Fie that you\'ll say so! He plays o\' th\' viol-de-gamboys,     and speaks three or four languages word for word without book,     and hath all the good gifts of nature.   MARIA. He hath indeed, almost natural; for, besides that he\'s a     fool, he\'s a great quarreller; and but that he hath the gift of a     coward to allay the gust he hath in quarrelling, \'tis thought     among the prudent he would quickly have the gift of a grave.   SIR TOBY. By this hand, they are scoundrels and subtractors that     say so of him. Who are they?   MARIA. They that add, moreover, he\'s drunk nightly in your company.   SIR TOBY. With drinking healths to my niece; I\'ll drink to her as     long as there is a passage in my throat and drink in Illyria.     He\'s a coward and a coystrill that will not drink to my niece     till his brains turn o\' th\' toe like a parish-top. What, wench!     Castiliano vulgo! for here comes Sir Andrew Agueface.                      Enter SIR ANDREW AGUECHEEK      AGUECHEEK. Sir Toby Belch! How now, Sir Toby Belch!   SIR TOBY. Sweet Sir Andrew!   AGUECHEEK. Bless you, fair shrew.   MARIA. And you too, sir.   SIR TOBY. Accost, Sir Andrew, accost.   AGUECHEEK. What\'s that?   SIR TOBY. My niece\'s chambermaid.   AGUECHEEK. Good Mistress Accost, I desire better acquaintance.   MARIA. My name is Mary, sir.   AGUECHEEK. Good Mistress Mary Accost-   SIR Toby. You mistake, knight. \'Accost\' is front her, board her,     woo her, assail her.   AGUECHEEK. By my troth, I would not undertake her in this company.     Is that the meaning of \'accost\'?   MARIA. Fare you well, gentlemen.   SIR TOBY. An thou let part so, Sir Andrew, would thou mightst never     draw sword again!   AGUECHEEK. An you part so, mistress, I would I might never draw     sword again. Fair lady, do you think you have fools in hand?     MARIA. Sir, I have not you by th\' hand.   AGUECHEEK. Marry, but you shall have; and here\'s my hand.   MARIA. Now, sir, thought is free. I pray you, bring your hand to     th\' buttry-bar and let it drink.   AGUECHEEK. Wherefore, sweetheart? What\'s your metaphor?   MARIA. It\'s dry, sir.   AGUECHEEK. Why, I think so; I am not such an ass but I can keep my     hand dry. But what\'s your jest?   MARIA. A dry jest, sir.   AGUECHEEK. Are you full of them?   MARIA. Ay, sir, I have them at my fingers\' ends; marry, now I let     go your hand, I am barren.                        Exit MARIA   SIR TOBY. O knight, thou lack\'st a cup of canary! When did I see     thee so put down?   AGUECHEEK. Never in your life, I think; unless you see canary put     me down. Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian     or an ordinary man has; but I am great eater of beef, and I     believe that does harm to my wit.   SIR TOBY. No question.   AGUECHEEK. An I thought that, I\'d forswear it. I\'ll ride home       to-morrow, Sir Toby.   SIR TOBY. Pourquoi, my dear knight?   AGUECHEEK. What is \'pourquoi\'- do or not do? I would I had bestowed     that time in the tongues that I have in fencing, dancing, and     bear-baiting. Oh, had I but followed the arts!   SIR TOBY. Then hadst thou had an excellent head of hair.   AGUECHEEK. Why, would that have mended my hair?   SIR TOBY. Past question; for thou seest it will not curl by nature.   AGUECHEEK. But it becomes me well enough, does\'t not?   SIR TOBY. Excellent; it hangs like flax on a distaff, and I hope to     see a huswife take thee between her legs and spin it off.   AGUECHEEK. Faith, I\'ll home to-morrow, Sir Toby. Your niece will     not be seen, or if she be, it\'s four to one she\'ll none of me;     the Count himself here hard by woos her.   SIR TOBY. She\'ll none o\' th\' Count; she\'ll not match above her     degree, neither in estate, years, nor wit; I have heard her     swear\'t. Tut, there\'s life in\'t, man.   AGUECHEEK. I\'ll stay a month longer. I am a fellow o\' th\' strangest     mind i\' th\' world; I delight in masques and revels sometimes     altogether.     SIR TOBY. Art thou good at these kickshawses, knight?   AGUECHEEK. As any man in Illyria, whatsoever he be, under the     degree of my betters; and yet I will not compare with an old man.   SIR TOBY. What is thy excellence in a galliard, knight?   AGUECHEEK. Faith, I can cut a caper.   SIR TOBY. And I can cut the mutton to\'t.   AGUECHEEK. And I think I have the back-trick simply as strong as     any man in Illyria.   SIR TOBY. Wherefore are these things hid? Wherefore have these     gifts a curtain before \'em? Are they like to take dust, like     Mistress Mall\'s picture? Why dost thou not go to church in a     galliard and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a     jig; I would not so much as make water but in a sink-a-pace. What     dost thou mean? Is it a world to hide virtues in? I did think, by     the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was form\'d under the     star of a galliard.   AGUECHEEK. Ay, \'tis strong, and it does indifferent well in     flame-colour\'d stock. Shall we set about some revels?   SIR TOBY. What shall we do else? Were we not born under Taurus?   AGUECHEEK. Taurus? That\'s sides and heart.     SIR TOBY. No, sir; it is legs and thighs. Let me see the caper. Ha,     higher! Ha, ha, excellent!                            Exeunt     SCENE IV. The DUKE\'S palace  Enter VALENTINE, and VIOLA in man\'s attire    VALENTINE. If the Duke continue these favours towards you, Cesario,     you are like to be much advanc\'d; he hath known you but three     days, and already you are no stranger.   VIOLA. You either fear his humour or my negligence, that you call     in question the continuance of his love. Is he inconstant, sir,     in his favours?   VALENTINE. No, believe me.                    Enter DUKE, CURIO, and ATTENDANTS    VIOLA. I thank you. Here comes the Count.   DUKE. Who saw Cesario, ho?   VIOLA. On your attendance, my lord, here.   DUKE. Stand you awhile aloof. Cesario,     Thou know\'st no less but all; I have unclasp\'d     To thee the book even of my secret soul.     Therefore, good youth, address thy gait unto her;       Be not denied access, stand at her doors,     And tell them there thy fixed foot shall grow     Till thou have audience.   VIOLA. Sure, my noble lord,     If she be so abandon\'d to her sorrow     As it is spoke, she never will admit me.   DUKE. Be clamorous and leap all civil bounds,     Rather than make unprofited return.   VIOLA. Say I do speak with her, my lord, what then?   DUKE. O, then unfold the passion of my love,     Surprise her with discourse of my dear faith!     It shall become thee well to act my woes:     She will attend it better in thy youth     Than in a nuncio\'s of more grave aspect.   VIOLA. I think not so, my lord.   DUKE. Dear lad, believe it,     For they shall yet belie thy happy years     That say thou art a man: Diana\'s lip     Is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe     Is as the maiden\'s organ, shrill and sound,       And all is semblative a woman\'s part.     I know thy constellation is right apt     For this affair. Some four or five attend him-     All, if you will, for I myself am best     When least in company. Prosper well in this,     And thou shalt live as freely as thy lord     To call his fortunes thine.   VIOLA. I\'ll do my best     To woo your lady. [Aside] Yet, a barful strife!     Whoe\'er I woo, myself would be his wife.     SCENE V. OLIVIA\'S house  Enter MARIA and CLOWN    MARIA. Nay, either tell me where thou hast been, or I will not open     my lips so wide as a bristle may enter in way of thy excuse; my     lady will hang thee for thy absence.   CLOWN. Let her hang me. He that is well hang\'d in this world needs     to fear no colours.   MARIA. Make that good.   CLOWN. He shall see none to fear.   MARIA. A good lenten answer. I can tell thee where that saying was     born, of \'I fear no colours.\'   CLOWN. Where, good Mistress Mary?   MARIA. In the wars; and that may you be bold to say in your     foolery.   CLOWN. Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are     fools, let them use their talents.   MARIA. Yet you will be hang\'d for being so long absent; or to be     turn\'d away- is not that as good as a hanging to you?   CLOWN. Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage; and for turning       away, let summer bear it out.   MARIA. You are resolute, then?   CLOWN. Not so, neither; but I am resolv\'d on two points.   MARIA. That if one break, the other will hold; or if both break,     your gaskins fall.   CLOWN. Apt, in good faith, very apt! Well, go thy way; if Sir Toby     would leave drinking, thou wert as witty a piece of Eve\'s flesh     as any in Illyria.   MARIA. Peace, you rogue, no more o\' that. Here comes my lady. Make     your excuse wisely, you were best.                      Exit                       Enter OLIVIA and MALVOLIO    CLOWN. Wit, an\'t be thy will, put me into good fooling! Those wits     that think they have thee do very oft prove fools; and I that am     sure I lack thee may pass for a wise man. For what says     Quinapalus? \'Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.\' God bless     thee, lady!   OLIVIA. Take the fool away.   CLOWN. Do you not hear, fellows? Take away the lady.     OLIVIA. Go to, y\'are a dry fool; I\'ll no more of you. Besides, you     grow dishonest.   CLOWN. Two faults, madonna, that drink and good counsel will amend;     for give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry. Bid the     dishonest man mend himself: if he mend, he is no longer     dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him. Anything     that\'s mended is but patch\'d; virtue that transgresses is but     patch\'d with sin, and sin that amends is but patch\'d with virtue.     If that this simple syllogism will serve, so; if it will not,     what remedy? As there is no true cuckold but calamity, so     beauty\'s a flower. The lady bade take away the fool; therefore, I     say again, take her away.   OLIVIA. Sir, I bade them take away you.   CLOWN. Misprision in the highest degree! Lady, \'Cucullus non facit     monachum\'; that\'s as much to say as I wear not motley in my     brain. Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.   OLIVIA. Can you do it?   CLOWN. Dexteriously, good madonna.   OLIVIA. Make your proof.   CLOWN. I must catechize you for it, madonna.       Good my mouse of virtue, answer me.   OLIVIA. Well, sir, for want of other idleness, I\'ll bide your     proof.   CLOWN. Good madonna, why mourn\'st thou?   OLIVIA. Good fool, for my brother\'s death.   CLOWN. I think his soul is in hell, madonna.   OLIVIA. I know his soul is in heaven, fool.   CLOWN. The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother\'s soul     being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.   OLIVIA. What think you of this fool, Malvolio? Doth he not mend?   MALVOLIO. Yes, and shall do, till the pangs of death shake him.     Infirmity, that decays the wise, doth ever make the better fool.   CLOWN. God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity, for the better     increasing your folly! Sir Toby will be sworn that I am no fox;     but he will not pass his word for twopence that you are no fool.   OLIVIA. How say you to that, Malvolio?   MALVOLIO. I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren     rascal; I saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool     that has no more brain than a stone. Look you now, he\'s out of     his guard already; unless you laugh and minister occasion to him,       he is gagg\'d. I protest I take these wise men that crow so at     these set kind of fools no better than the fools\' zanies.   OLIVIA. O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a     distemper\'d appetite. To be generous, guiltless, and of free     disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem     cannon bullets. There is no slander in an allow\'d fool, though he     do nothing but rail; nor no railing in known discreet man, though     he do nothing but reprove.   CLOWN. Now Mercury endue thee with leasing, for thou speak\'st well     of fools!                               Re-enter MARIA    MARIA. Madam, there is at the gate a young gentleman much desires     to speak with you.   OLIVIA. From the Count Orsino, is it?   MARIA. I know not, madam; \'tis a fair young man, and well attended.   OLIVIA. Who of my people hold him in delay?   MARIA. Sir Toby, madam, your kinsman.   OLIVIA. Fetch him off, I pray you; he speaks nothing but madman.       Fie on him! [Exit MARIA] Go you, Malvolio: if it be a suit from     the Count, I am sick, or not at home- what you will to dismiss     it. [Exit MALVOLIO] Now you see, sir, how your fooling grows old,     and people dislike it.   CLOWN. Thou hast spoke for us, madonna, as if thy eldest son should     be a fool; whose skull Jove cram with brains! For- here he comes-     one of thy kin has a most weak pia mater.                           Enter SIR TOBY    OLIVIA. By mine honour, half drunk! What is he at the gate, cousin?   SIR TOBY. A gentleman.   OLIVIA. A gentleman! What gentleman?   SIR TOBY. \'Tis a gentleman here. [Hiccups] A plague o\' these     pickle-herring! How now, sot!   CLOWN. Good Sir Toby!   OLIVIA. Cousin, cousin, how have you come so early by this     lethargy?   SIR TOBY. Lechery! I defy lechery. There\'s one at the gate.   OLIVIA. Ay, marry; what is he?     SIR TOBY. Let him be the devil an he will, I care not; give me     faith, say I. Well, it\'s all one.                       Exit   OLIVIA. What\'s a drunken man like, fool?   CLOWN. Like a drown\'d man, a fool, and a madman: one draught above     heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns     him.   OLIVIA. Go thou and seek the crowner, and let him sit o\' my coz;     for he\'s in the third degree of drink, he\'s drown\'d; go look     after him.   CLOWN. He is but mad yet, madonna, and the fool shall look to the     madman.                                                 Exit                             Re-enter MALVOLIO    MALVOLIO. Madam, yond young fellow swears he will speak with you. I     told him you were sick; he takes on him to understand so much,      and therefore comes to speak with you. I told him you were     asleep; he seems to have a foreknowledge of that too, and     therefore comes to speak with you. What is to be said to him,     lady? He\'s fortified against any denial.     OLIVIA. Tell him he shall not speak with me.   MALVOLIO. Has been told so; and he says he\'ll stand at your door     like a sheriff\'s post, and be the supporter to a bench, but he\'ll     speak with you.   OLIVIA. What kind o\' man is he?   MALVOLIO. Why, of mankind.   OLIVIA. What manner of man?   MALVOLIO. Of very ill manner; he\'ll speak with you, will you or no.   OLIVIA. Of what personage and years is he?   MALVOLIO. Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy;     as a squash is before \'tis a peascod, or a codling when \'tis     almost an apple; \'tis with him in standing water, between boy and     man. He is very well-favour\'d, and he speaks very shrewishly; one     would think his mother\'s milk were scarce out of him.   OLIVIA. Let him approach. Call in my gentlewoman.   MALVOLIO. Gentlewoman, my lady calls.                     Exit                            Re-enter MARIA    OLIVIA. Give me my veil; come, throw it o\'er my face;       We\'ll once more hear Orsino\'s embassy.                               Enter VIOLA    VIOLA. The honourable lady of the house, which is she?   OLIVIA. Speak to me; I shall answer for her. Your will?   VIOLA. Most radiant, exquisite, and unmatchable beauty- I pray you     tell me if this be the lady of the house, for I never saw her. I     would be loath to cast away my speech; for, besides that it is     excellently well penn\'d, I have taken great pains to con it. Good     beauties, let me sustain no scorn; I am very comptible, even to     the least sinister usage.   OLIVIA. Whence came you, sir?   VIOLA. I can say little more than I have studied, and that     question\'s out of my part. Good gentle one, give me modest     assurance if you be the lady of the house, that I may proceed in     my speech.   OLIVIA. Are you a comedian?   VIOLA. No, my profound heart; and yet, by the very fangs of malice     I swear, I am not that I play. Are you the lady of the house?     OLIVIA. If I do not usurp myself, I am.   VIOLA. Most certain, if you are she, you do usurp yourself; for     what is yours to bestow is not yours to reserve. But this is from     my commission. I will on with my speech in your praise, and then     show you the heart of my message.   OLIVIA. Come to what is important in\'t. I forgive you the praise.   VIOLA. Alas, I took great pains to study it, and \'tis poetical.   OLIVIA. It is the more like to be feigned; I pray you keep it in. I     heard you were saucy at my gates, and allow\'d your approach     rather to wonder at you than to hear you. If you be not mad, be     gone; if you have reason, be brief; \'tis not that time of moon     with me to make one in so skipping dialogue.   MARIA. Will you hoist sail, sir? Here lies your way.   VIOLA. No, good swabber, I am to hull here a little longer.     Some mollification for your giant, sweet lady.   OLIVIA. Tell me your mind.   VIOLA. I am a messenger.   OLIVIA. Sure, you have some hideous matter to deliver, when the     courtesy of it is so fearful. Speak your office.   VIOLA. It alone concerns your ear. I bring no overture of war, no       taxation of homage: I hold the olive in my hand; my words are as     full of peace as matter.   OLIVIA. Yet you began rudely. What are you? What would you?   VIOLA. The rudeness that hath appear\'d in me have I learn\'d from my     entertainment. What I am and what I would are as secret as     maidenhead- to your cars, divinity; to any other\'s, profanation.   OLIVIA. Give us the place alone; we will hear this divinity.     [Exeunt MARIA and ATTENDANTS] Now, sir, what is your text?   VIOLA. Most sweet lady-   OLIVIA. A comfortable doctrine, and much may be said of it.     Where lies your text?   VIOLA. In Orsino\'s bosom.   OLIVIA. In his bosom! In what chapter of his bosom?   VIOLA. To answer by the method: in the first of his heart.   OLIVIA. O, I have read it; it is heresy. Have you no more to say?   VIOLA. Good madam, let me see your face.   OLIVIA. Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my     face? You are now out of your text; but we will draw the curtain     and show you the picture. [Unveiling] Look you, sir, such a one I     was this present. Is\'t not well done?     VIOLA. Excellently done, if God did all.   OLIVIA. \'Tis in grain, sir; \'twill endure wind and weather.   VIOLA. \'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white     Nature\'s own sweet and cunning hand laid on.     Lady, you are the cruell\'st she alive,     If you will lead these graces to the grave,     And leave the world no copy.   OLIVIA. O, sir, I will not be so hard-hearted; I will give out     divers schedules of my beauty. It shall be inventoried, and every     particle and utensil labell\'d to my will: as- item, two lips     indifferent red; item, two grey eyes with lids to them; item, one     neck, one chin, and so forth. Were you sent hither to praise me?   VIOLA. I see you what you are: you are too proud;     But, if you were the devil, you are fair.     My lord and master loves you- O, such love     Could be but recompens\'d though you were crown\'d     The nonpareil of beauty!   OLIVIA. How does he love me?   VIOLA. With adorations, fertile tears,     With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.     OLIVIA. Your lord does know my mind; I cannot love him.     Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,     Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;     In voices well divulg\'d, free, learn\'d, and valiant,     And in dimension and the shape of nature     A gracious person; but yet I cannot love him.     He might have took his answer long ago.   VIOLA. If I did love you in my master\'s flame,     With such a suff\'ring, such a deadly life,     In your denial I would find no sense;     I would not understand it.   OLIVIA. Why, what would you?   VIOLA. Make me a willow cabin at your gate,     And call upon my soul within the house;     Write loyal cantons of contemned love     And sing them loud even in the dead of night;     Halloo your name to the reverberate hals,     And make the babbling gossip of the air     Cry out \'Olivia!\' O, you should not rest     Between the elements of air and earth       But you should pity me!   OLIVIA. You might do much.     What is your parentage?   VIOLA. Above my fortunes, yet my state is well:     I am a gentleman.   OLIVIA. Get you to your lord.     I cannot love him; let him send no more-     Unless perchance you come to me again     To tell me how he takes it. Fare you well.     I thank you for your pains; spend this for me.   VIOLA. I am no fee\'d post, lady; keep your purse;     My master, not myself, lacks recompense.     Love make his heart of flint that you shall love;     And let your fervour, like my master\'s, be     Plac\'d in contempt! Farewell, fair cruelty.             Exit   OLIVIA. \'What is your parentage?\'     \'Above my fortunes, yet my state is well:     I am a gentleman.\' I\'ll be sworn thou art;     Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit,     Do give thee five-fold blazon. Not too fast! Soft, soft!       Unless the master were the man. How now!     Even so quickly may one catch the plague?     Methinks I feel this youth\'s perfections     With an invisible and subtle stealth     To creep in at mine eyes. Well, let it be.     What ho, Malvolio!                          Re-enter MALVOLIO    MALVOLIO. Here, madam, at your service.   OLIVIA. Run after that same peevish messenger,     The County\'s man. He left this ring behind him,     Would I or not. Tell him I\'ll none of it.     Desire him not to flatter with his lord,     Nor hold him up with hopes; I am not for him.     If that the youth will come this way to-morrow,     I\'ll give him reasons for\'t. Hie thee, Malvolio.   MALVOLIO. Madam, I will.                                  Exit   OLIVIA. I do I know not what, and fear to find     Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind.       Fate, show thy force: ourselves we do not owe;     What is decreed must be; and be this so!                Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. The sea-coast  Enter ANTONIO and SEBASTIAN    ANTONIO. Will you stay no longer; nor will you not that I go with     you?   SEBASTIAN. By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me; the     malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours; therefore I     shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It     were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you.   ANTONIO. Let me know of you whither you are bound.   SEBASTIAN. No, sooth, sir; my determinate voyage is mere     extravagancy. But I perceive in you so excellent a touch of     modesty that you will not extort from me what I am willing to     keep in; therefore it charges me in manners the rather to express     myself. You must know of me then, Antonio, my name is Sebastian,     which I call\'d Roderigo; my father was that Sebastian of     Messaline whom I know you have heard of. He left behind him     myself and a sister, both born in an hour; if the heavens had     been pleas\'d, would we had so ended! But you, sir, alter\'d that;     for some hour before you took me from the breach of the sea was       my sister drown\'d.   ANTONIO. Alas the day!   SEBASTIAN. A lady, sir, though it was said she much resembled me,     was yet of many accounted beautiful; but though I could not with     such estimable wonder overfar believe that, yet thus far I will     boldly publish her: she bore mind that envy could not but call     fair. She is drown\'d already, sir, with salt water, though I seem     to drown her remembrance again with more.   ANTONIO. Pardon me, sir, your bad entertainment.   SEBASTIAN. O good Antonio, forgive me your trouble.   ANTONIO. If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your     servant.   SEBASTIAN. If you will not undo what you have done- that is, kill     him whom you have recover\'d-desire it not. Fare ye well at once;     my bosom is full of kindness, and I am yet so near the manners of     my mother that, upon the least occasion more, mine eyes will tell     tales of me. I am bound to the Count Orsino\'s court. Farewell.  Exit   ANTONIO. The gentleness of all the gods go with thee!     I have many cnemies in Orsino\'s court,       Else would I very shortly see thee there.     But come what may, I do adore thee so     That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.            Exit     SCENE II. A street  Enter VIOLA and MALVOLIO at several doors    MALVOLIO. Were you not ev\'n now with the Countess Olivia?   VIOLA. Even now, sir; on a moderate pace I have since arriv\'d but     hither.   MALVOLIO. She returns this ring to you, sir; you might have saved     me my pains, to have taken it away yourself. She adds, moreover,     that you should put your lord into a desperate assurance she will     none of him. And one thing more: that you be never so hardy to     come again in his affairs, unless it be to report your lord\'s     taking of this. Receive it so.   VIOLA. She took the ring of me; I\'ll none of it.   MALVOLIO. Come, sir, you peevishly threw it to her; and her will is     it should be so return\'d. If it be worth stooping for, there it     lies in your eye; if not, be it his that finds it.  Exit   VIOLA. I left no ring with her; what means this lady?     Fortune forbid my outside have not charm\'d her!     She made good view of me; indeed, so much       That methought her eyes had lost her tongue,     For she did speak in starts distractedly.     She loves me, sure: the cunning of her passion     Invites me in this churlish messenger.     None of my lord\'s ring! Why, he sent her none.     I am the man. If it be so- as \'tis-     Poor lady, she were better love a dream.     Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness     Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.     How easy is it for the proper-false     In women\'s waxen hearts to set their forms!     Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we!     For such as we are made of, such we be.     How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly,     And I, poor monster, fond as much on him;     And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.     What will become of this? As I am man,     My state is desperate for my master\'s love;     As I am woman- now alas the day!-     What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe!       O Time, thou must untangle this, not I;     It is too hard a knot for me t\' untie!                  Exit     SCENE III. OLIVIA\'S house  Enter SIR TOBY and SIR ANDREW    SIR TOBY. Approach, Sir Andrew. Not to be abed after midnight is to     be up betimes; and \'diluculo surgere\' thou know\'st-   AGUECHEEK. Nay, by my troth, I know not; but I know to be up late     is to be up late.   SIR TOBY. A false conclusion! I hate it as an unfill\'d can. To be     up after midnight and to go to bed then is early; so that to go     to bed after midnight is to go to bed betimes. Does not our lives     consist of the four elements?   AGUECHEEK. Faith, so they say; but I think it rather consists of     eating and drinking.   SIR TOBY. Th\'art a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink.     Marian, I say! a stoup of wine.                            Enter CLOWN    AGUECHEEK. Here comes the fool, i\' faith.   CLOWN. How now, my hearts! Did you never see the picture of \'we       three\'?   SIR TOBY. Welcome, ass. Now let\'s have a catch.   AGUECHEEK. By my troth, the fool has an excellent breast. I had     rather than forty shillings I had such a leg, and so sweet a     breath to sing, as the fool has. In sooth, thou wast in very     gracious fooling last night, when thou spok\'st of Pigrogromitus,     of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of Queubus; \'twas very     good, i\' faith. I sent thee sixpence for thy leman; hadst it?   CLOWN. I did impeticos thy gratillity; for Malvolio\'s nose is no     whipstock. My lady has a white hand, and the Myrmidons are no     bottle-ale houses.   AGUECHEEK. Excellent! Why, this is the best fooling, when all is     done. Now, a song.   SIR TOBY. Come on, there is sixpence for you. Let\'s have a song.   AGUECHEEK. There\'s a testril of me too; if one knight give a- CLOWN. Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?   SIR TOBY. A love-song, a love-song.   AGUECHEEK. Ay, ay; I care not for good life.                           CLOWN sings             O mistress mine, where are you roaming?          O, stay and hear; your true love\'s coming,            That can sing both high and low.            Trip no further, pretty sweeting;            Journeys end in lovers meeting,            Every wise man\'s son doth know.    AGUECHEEK. Excellent good, i\' faith!   SIR TOBY. Good, good!                           CLOWN sings             What is love? \'Tis not hereafter;            Present mirth hath present laughter;              What\'s to come is still unsure.            In delay there lies no plenty,            Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty;              Youth\'s a stuff will not endure.    AGUECHEEK. A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight.     SIR TOBY. A contagious breath.   AGUECHEEK. Very sweet and contagious, i\' faith.   SIR TOBY. To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion. But shall     we make the welkin dance indeed? Shall we rouse the night-owl in     a catch that will draw three souls out of one weaver? Shall we do     that?   AGUECHEEK. An you love me, let\'s do\'t. I am dog at a catch.   CLOWN. By\'r lady, sir, and some dogs will catch well.   AGUECHEEK. Most certain. Let our catch be \'Thou knave.\'   CLOWN. \'Hold thy peace, thou knave\' knight? I shall be constrain\'d     in\'t to call thee knave, knight.   AGUECHEEK. \'Tis not the first time I have constrained one to call     me knave. Begin, fool: it begins \'Hold thy peace.\'   CLOWN. I shall never begin if I hold my peace.   AGUECHEEK. Good, i\' faith! Come, begin.           [Catch sung]                           Enter MARIA    MARIA. What a caterwauling do you keep here! If my lady have not     call\'d up her steward Malvolio, and bid him turn you out of       doors, never trust me.   SIR TOBY. My lady\'s a Cataian, we are politicians, Malvolio\'s a     Peg-a-Ramsey, and                                    [Sings]                   Three merry men be we.     Am not I consanguineous? Am I not of her blood? Tilly-vally,     lady.                                                [Sings]               There dwelt a man in Babylon,               Lady, lady.   CLOWN. Beshrew me, the knight\'s in admirable fooling.   AGUECHEEK. Ay, he does well enough if he be dispos\'d, and so do I     too; he does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.   SIR TOBY. [Sings] O\' the twelfth day of December-   MARIA. For the love o\' God, peace!                         Enter MALVOLIO    MALVOLIO. My masters, are you mad? Or what are you? Have you no     wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this     time of night? Do ye make an ale-house of my lady\'s house, that     ye squeak out your coziers\' catches without any mitigation or       remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor     time, in you?   SIR TOBY. We did keep time, sir, in our catches. Sneck up!   MALVOLIO. Sir Toby, I must be round with you. My lady bade me tell     you that, though she harbours you as her kins-man, she\'s nothing     allied to your disorders. If you can separate yourself and your     misdemeanours, you are welcome to the house; if not, and it would     please you to take leave of her, she is very willing to bid you     farewell.   SIR TOBY. [Sings] Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone.   MARIA. Nay, good Sir Toby.   CLOWN. [Sings] His eyes do show his days are almost done.   MALVOLIO. Is\'t even so?   SIR TOBY. [Sings] But I will never die.           [Falls down]   CLOWN. [Sings] Sir Toby, there you lie.   MALVOLIO. This is much credit to you.   SIR TOBY. [Sings] Shall I bid him go?   CLOWN. [Sings] What an if you do?   SIR TOBY. [Sings] Shall I bid him go, and spare not?   CLOWN. [Sings] O, no, no, no, no, you dare not.     SIR TOBY. [Rising] Out o\' tune, sir! Ye lie. Art any more than a     steward? Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall     be no more cakes and ale?   CLOWN. Yes, by Saint Anne; and ginger shall be hot i\' th\' mouth     too.  SIR TOBY. Th\' art i\' th\' right. Go, sir, rub your chain with crumbs.     A stoup of wine, Maria!   MALVOLIO. Mistress Mary, if you priz\'d my lady\'s favour at anything     more than contempt, you would not give means for this uncivil     rule; she shall know of it, by this hand.  Exit   MARIA. Go shake your ears.   AGUECHEEK. \'Twere as good a deed as to drink when a man\'s ahungry,     to challenge him the field, and then to break promise with him     and make a fool of him.   SIR TOBY. Do\'t, knight. I\'ll write thee a challenge; or I\'ll     deliver thy indignation to him by word of mouth.   MARIA. Sweet Sir Toby, be patient for to-night; since the youth of     the Count\'s was to-day with my lady, she is much out of quiet.     For Monsieur Malvolio, let me alone with him; if I do not gull     him into a nayword, and make him a common recreation, do not       think I have wit enough to lie straight in my bed. I know I can     do it.   SIR TOBY. Possess us, possess us; tell us something of him.   MARIA. Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of Puritan.   AGUECHEEK. O, if I thought that, I\'d beat him like a dog.   SIR TOBY. What, for being a Puritan? Thy exquisite reason, dear     knight?   AGUECHEEK. I have no exquisite reason for\'t, but I have reason good     enough.   MARIA. The devil a Puritan that he is, or anything constantly but a     time-pleaser; an affection\'d ass that cons state without book and      utters it by great swarths; the best persuaded of himself, so     cramm\'d, as he thinks, with excellencies that it is his grounds     of faith that all that look on him love him; and on that vice in     him will my revenge find notable cause to work.   SIR TOBY. What wilt thou do?   MARIA. I will drop in his way some obscure epistles of love;     wherein, by the colour of his beard, the shape of his leg, the     manner of his gait, the expressure of his eye, forehead, and     complexion, he shall find himself most feelingly personated. I       can write very like my lady, your niece; on forgotten matter we     can hardly make distinction of our hands.   SIR TOBY. Excellent! I smell a device.   AGUECHEEK. I have\'t in my nose too.   SIR TOBY. He shall think, by the letters that thou wilt drop, that     they come from my niece, and that she\'s in love with him.   MARIA. My purpose is, indeed, a horse of that colour.   AGUECHEEK. And your horse now would make him an ass.   MARIA. Ass, I doubt not.   AGUECHEEK. O, \'twill be admirable!   MARIA. Sport royal, I warrant you. I know my physic will work with     him. I will plant you two, and let the fool make a third, where     he shall find the letter; observe his construction of it. For     this night, to bed, and dream on the event. Farewell.  Exit   SIR TOBY. Good night, Penthesilea.   AGUECHEEK. Before me, she\'s a good wench.   SIR TOBY. She\'s a beagle true-bred, and one that adores me.     What o\' that?   AGUECHEEK. I was ador\'d once too.     SIR TOBY. Let\'s to bed, knight. Thou hadst need send for more     money.   AGUECHEEK. If I cannot recover your niece, I am a foul way out.   SIR TOBY. Send for money, knight; if thou hast her not i\' th\' end,     call me Cut.   AGUECHEEK. If I do not, never trust me; take it how you will.   SIR TOBY. Come, come, I\'ll go burn some sack; \'tis too late to go     to bed now. Come, knight; come, knight.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE IV. The DUKE\'S palace  Enter DUKE, VIOLA, CURIO, and OTHERS    DUKE. Give me some music. Now, good morrow, friends.     Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song,     That old and antique song we heard last night;     Methought it did relieve my passion much,     More than light airs and recollected terms     Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times.     Come, but one verse.   CURIO. He is not here, so please your lordship, that should sing     it.   DUKE. Who was it?   CURIO. Feste, the jester, my lord; a fool that the Lady Olivia\'s     father took much delight in. He is about the house.   DUKE. Seek him out, and play the tune the while.                                        Exit CURIO. [Music plays]     Come hither, boy. If ever thou shalt love,     In the sweet pangs of it remember me;     For such as I am all true lovers are,       Unstaid and skittish in all motions else     Save in the constant image of the creature     That is belov\'d. How dost thou like this tune?   VIOLA. It gives a very echo to the seat     Where Love is thron\'d.   DUKE. Thou dost speak masterly.     My life upon\'t, young though thou art, thine eye     Hath stay\'d upon some favour that it loves;     Hath it not, boy?   VIOLA. A little, by your favour.   DUKE. What kind of woman is\'t?   VIOLA. Of your complexion.   DUKE. She is not worth thee, then. What years, i\' faith?   VIOLA. About your years, my lord.   DUKE. Too old, by heaven! Let still the woman take     An elder than herself; so wears she to him,     So sways she level in her husband\'s heart.     For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,     Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,     More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won,       Than women\'s are.   VIOLA. I think it well, my lord.   DUKE. Then let thy love be younger than thyself,     Or thy affection cannot hold the bent;     For women are as roses, whose fair flow\'r     Being once display\'d doth fall that very hour.   VIOLA. And so they are; alas, that they are so!     To die, even when they to perfection grow!                    Re-enter CURIO and CLOWN    DUKE. O, fellow, come, the song we had last night.     Mark it, Cesario; it is old and plain;     The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,     And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,     Do use to chant it; it is silly sooth,     And dallies with the innocence of love,     Like the old age.   CLOWN. Are you ready, sir?   DUKE. Ay; prithee, sing.                               [Music]                         FESTE\'S SONG              Come away, come away, death;           And in sad cypress let me be laid;             Fly away, fly away, breath,           I am slain by a fair cruel maid.           My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,                  O, prepare it!           My part of death no one so true                  Did share it.              Not a flower, not a flower sweet,           On my black coffin let there be strown;             Not a friend, not a friend greet           My poor corpse where my bones shall be thrown;           A thousand thousand to save,                  Lay me, O, where           Sad true lover never find my grave,                  To weep there!      DUKE. There\'s for thy pains.   CLOWN. No pains, sir; I take pleasure in singing, sir.   DUKE. I\'ll pay thy pleasure, then.   CLOWN. Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid one time or another.   DUKE. Give me now leave to leave thee.   CLOWN. Now the melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy     doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal. I     would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business     might be everything, and their intent everywhere: for that\'s it     that always makes a good voyage of nothing. Farewell.                                                       Exit CLOWN   DUKE. Let all the rest give place.                                      Exeunt CURIO and ATTENDANTS     Once more, Cesario,     Get thee to yond same sovereign cruelty.     Tell her my love, more noble than the world,     Prizes not quantity of dirty lands;     The parts that fortune hath bestow\'d upon her,     Tell her I hold as giddily as Fortune;       But \'tis that miracle and queen of gems     That Nature pranks her in attracts my soul.   VIOLA. But if she cannot love you, sir?   DUKE. I cannot be so answer\'d.   VIOLA. Sooth, but you must.     Say that some lady, as perhaps there is,     Hath for your love as great a pang of heart     As you have for Olivia. You cannot love her;     You tell her so. Must she not then be answer\'d?   DUKE. There is no woman\'s sides     Can bide the beating of so strong a passion     As love doth give my heart; no woman\'s heart     So big to hold so much; they lack retention.     Alas, their love may be call\'d appetite-     No motion of the liver, but the palate-     That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt;     But mine is all as hungry as the sea,     And can digest as much. Make no compare     Between that love a woman can bear me     And that I owe Olivia.     VIOLA. Ay, but I know-   DUKE. What dost thou know?   VIOLA. Too well what love women to men may owe.     In faith, they are as true of heart as we.     My father had a daughter lov\'d a man,     As it might be perhaps, were I a woman,     I should your lordship.   DUKE. And what\'s her history?   VIOLA. A blank, my lord. She never told her love,     But let concealment, like a worm i\' th\' bud,     Feed on her damask cheek. She pin\'d in thought;     And with a green and yellow melancholy     She sat like Patience on a monument,     Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?     We men may say more, swear more, but indeed     Our shows are more than will; for still we prove     Much in our vows, but little in our love.   DUKE. But died thy sister of her love, my boy?   VIOLA. I am all the daughters of my father\'s house,     And all the brothers too- and yet I know not.       Sir, shall I to this lady?   DUKE. Ay, that\'s the theme.     To her in haste. Give her this jewel; say     My love can give no place, bide no denay.             Exeunt     SCENE V. OLIVIA\'S garden  Enter SIR TOBY, SIR ANDREW, and FABIAN    SIR TOBY. Come thy ways, Signior Fabian.   FABIAN. Nay, I\'ll come; if I lose a scruple of this sport let me be     boil\'d to death with melancholy.   SIR TOBY. Wouldst thou not be glad to have the niggardly rascally     sheep-biter come by some notable shame?   FABIAN. I would exult, man; you know he brought me out o\' favour     with my lady about a bear-baiting here.   SIR TOBY. To anger him we\'ll have the bear again; and we will fool     him black and blue- shall we not, Sir Andrew?   AGUECHEEK. And we do not, it is pity of our lives.                         Enter MARIA    SIR TOBY. Here comes the little villain.     How now, my metal of India!   MARIA. Get ye all three into the box-tree. Malvolio\'s coming down     this walk. He has been yonder i\' the sun practising behaviour to       his own shadow this half hour. Observe him, for the love of     mockery, for I know this letter will make a contemplative idiot     of him. Close, in the name of jesting! [As the men hide she drops     a letter] Lie thou there; for here comes the trout that must be     caught with tickling.  Exit                        Enter MALVOLIO    MALVOLIO. \'Tis but fortune; all is fortune. Maria once told me she     did affect me; and I have heard herself come thus near, that,     should she fancy, it should be one of my complexion. Besides, she     uses me with a more exalted respect than any one else that     follows her. What should I think on\'t?   SIR TOBY. Here\'s an overweening rogue!   FABIAN. O, peace! Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him;     how he jets under his advanc\'d plumes!   AGUECHEEK. \'Slight, I could so beat the rogue-   SIR TOBY. Peace, I say.   MALVOLIO. To be Count Malvolio!     SIR TOBY. Ah, rogue!   AGUECHEEK. Pistol him, pistol him.   SIR TOBY. Peace, peace!   MALVOLIO. There is example for\'t: the Lady of the Strachy married     the yeoman of the wardrobe.   AGUECHEEK. Fie on him, Jezebel!   FABIAN. O, peace! Now he\'s deeply in; look how imagination blows     him.   MALVOLIO. Having been three months married to her, sitting in my     state-   SIR TOBY. O, for a stone-bow to hit him in the eye!   MALVOLIO. Calling my officers about me, in my branch\'d velvet gown,     having come from a day-bed- where I have left Olivia sleeping-   SIR TOBY. Fire and brimstone!   FABIAN. O, peace, peace!   MALVOLIO. And then to have the humour of state; and after a demure     travel of regard, telling them I know my place as I would they     should do theirs, to ask for my kinsman Toby-   SIR TOBY. Bolts and shackles!   FABIAN. O, peace, peace, peace! Now, now.     MALVOLIO. Seven of my people, with an obedient start, make out for     him. I frown the while, and perchance wind up my watch, or play     with my- some rich jewel. Toby approaches; curtsies there to me-   SIR TOBY. Shall this fellow live?   FABIAN. Though our silence be drawn from us with cars, yet peace.   MALVOLIO. I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile    with an austere regard of control-   SIR TOBY. And does not Toby take you a blow o\' the lips then?   MALVOLIO. Saying \'Cousin Toby, my fortunes having cast me on your     niece give me this prerogative of speech\'-   SIR TOBY. What, what?   MALVOLIO. \'You must amend your drunkenness\'-   SIR TOBY. Out, scab!   FABIAN. Nay, patience, or we break the sinews of our plot.   MALVOLIO. \'Besides, you waste the treasure of your time with a     foolish knight\'-   AGUECHEEK. That\'s me, I warrant you.   MALVOLIO. \'One Sir Andrew.\'   AGUECHEEK. I knew \'twas I; for many do call me fool.   MALVOLIO. What employment have we here?                                             [Taking up the letter]   FABIAN. Now is the woodcock near the gin.   SIR TOBY. O, peace! And the spirit of humours intimate reading     aloud to him!   MALVOLIO. By my life, this is my lady\'s hand: these be her very     C\'s, her U\'s, and her T\'s; and thus makes she her great P\'s. It     is, in contempt of question, her hand.   AGUECHEEK. Her C\'s, her U\'s, and her T\'s. Why that?   MALVOLIO. [Reads] \'To the unknown belov\'d, this, and my good     wishes.\' Her very phrases! By your leave, wax. Soft! And the     impressure her Lucrece with which she uses to seal; \'tis my lady.     To whom should this be?   FABIAN. This wins him, liver and all.   MALVOLIO. [Reads]                      Jove knows I love,                       But who?                     Lips, do not move;                     No man must know.\'        \'No man must know.\' What follows? The numbers alter\'d!     \'No man must know.\' If this should be thee, Malvolio?   SIR TOBY. Marry, hang thee, brock!   MALVOLIO. [Reads]               \'I may command where I adore;                But silence, like a Lucrece knife,              With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore;                M. O. A. I. doth sway my life.\'    FABIAN. A fustian riddle!   SIR TOBY. Excellent wench, say I.   MALVOLIO. \'M. O. A. I. doth sway my life.\'     Nay, but first let me see, let me see, let me see.   FABIAN. What dish o\' poison has she dress\'d him!   SIR TOBY. And with what wing the staniel checks at it!   MALVOLIO. \'I may command where I adore.\' Why, she may command me: I     serve her; she is my lady. Why, this is evident to any formal     capacity; there is no obstruction in this. And the end- what     should that alphabetical position portend? If I could make that       resemble something in me. Softly! M. O. A. I.-   SIR TOBY. O, ay, make up that! He is now at a cold scent.   FABIAN. Sowter will cry upon\'t for all this, though it be as rank     as a fox.   MALVOLIO. M- Malvolio; M- why, that begins my name.   FABIAN. Did not I say he would work it out?     The cur is excellent at faults.   MALVOLIO. M- But then there is no consonancy in the sequel; that     suffers under probation: A should follow, but O does.   FABIAN. And O shall end, I hope.   SIR TOBY. Ay, or I\'ll cudgel him, and make him cry \'O!\'   MALVOLIO. And then I comes behind.   FABIAN. Ay, an you had any eye behind you, you might see more     detraction at your heels than fortunes before you.   MALVOLIO. M. O. A. I. This simulation is not as the former; and     yet, to crush this a little, it would bow to me, for every one of     these letters are in my name. Soft! here follows prose.                                                          [Reads]       \'If this fall into thy hand, revolve. In my stars I am above     thee; but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some       achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon \'em. Thy     Fates open their hands; let thy blood and spirit embrace them;     and, to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy     humble slough and appear fresh. Be opposite with a kinsman, surly     with servants; let thy tongue tang arguments of state; put     thyself into the trick of singularity. She thus advises thee that     sighs for thee. Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and     wish\'d to see thee ever cross-garter\'d. I say, remember, Go to,     thou art made, if thou desir\'st to be so; if not, let me see thee     a steward still, the fellow of servants, and not worthy to touch     Fortune\'s fingers. Farewell. She that would alter services with     thee,                                          THE FORTUNATE-UNHAPPY.\'      Daylight and champain discovers not more. This is open. I will be     proud, I will read politic authors, I will baffle Sir Toby, I     will wash off gross acquaintance, I will be point-devise the very     man. I do not now fool myself to let imagination jade me; for     every reason excites to this, that my lady loves me. She did     commend my yellow stockings of late, she did praise my leg being       cross-garter\'d; and in this she manifests herself to my love, and     with a kind of injunction drives me to these habits of her     liking. I thank my stars I am happy. I will be strange, stout, in     yellow stockings, and cross-garter\'d, even with the swiftness of     putting on. Jove and my stars be praised! Here is yet a     postscript.      [Reads] \'Thou canst not choose but know who I am. If thou     entertain\'st my love, let it appear in thy smiling; thy smiles     become thee well. Therefore in my presence still smile, dear my     sweet, I prithee.\'      Jove, I thank thee. I will smile; I will do everything that thou     wilt have me.                                           Exit   FABIAN. I will not give my part of this sport for a pension of     thousands to be paid from the Sophy.   SIR TOBY. I could marry this wench for this device.   AGUECHEEK. So could I too.   SIR TOBY. And ask no other dowry with her but such another jest.                              Enter MARIA    AGUECHEEK. Nor I neither.   FABIAN. Here comes my noble gull-catcher.   SIR TOBY. Wilt thou set thy foot o\' my neck?   AGUECHEEK. Or o\' mine either?   SIR TOBY. Shall I play my freedom at tray-trip, and become thy     bond-slave?   AGUECHEEK. I\' faith, or I either?   SIR TOBY. Why, thou hast put him in such a dream that when the     image of it leaves him he must run mad.   MARIA. Nay, but say true; does it work upon him?   SIR TOBY. Like aqua-vita! with a midwife.   AIARIA. If you will then see the fruits of the sport, mark his     first approach before my lady. He will come to her in yellow     stockings, and \'tis a colour she abhors, and cross-garter\'d, a     fashion she detests; and he will smile upon her, which will now     be so unsuitable to her disposition, being addicted to a     melancholy as she is, that it cannot but turn him into a notable     contempt. If you will see it, follow me.     SIR TOBY. To the gates of Tartar, thou most excellent devil of wit!   AGUECHEEK. I\'ll make one too.                           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. OLIVIA\'S garden  Enter VIOLA, and CLOWN with a tabor    VIOLA. Save thee, friend, and thy music!     Dost thou live by thy tabor?   CLOWN. No, sir, I live by the church.   VIOLA. Art thou a churchman?   CLOWN. No such matter, sir: I do live by the church; for I do live     at my house, and my house doth stand by the church.   VIOLA. So thou mayst say the king lies by a beggar, if a beggar     dwell near him; or the church stands by thy tabor, if thy tabor     stand by the church.   CLOWN. You have said, sir. To see this age! A sentence is but a     chev\'ril glove to a good wit. How quickly the wrong side may be     turn\'d outward!   VIOLA. Nay, that\'s certain; they that dally nicely with words may     quickly make them wanton.   CLOWN. I would, therefore, my sister had had name, sir.   VIOLA. Why, man?   CLOWN. Why, sir, her name\'s a word; and to dally with that word       might make my sister wanton. But indeed words are very rascals     since bonds disgrac\'d them.   VIOLA. Thy reason, man?   CLOWN. Troth, sir, I can yield you none without words, and words     are grown so false I am loath to prove reason with them.   VIOLA. I warrant thou art a merry fellow and car\'st for nothing.   CLOWN. Not so, sir; I do care for something; but in my conscience,     sir, I do not care for you. If that be to care for nothing, sir,     I would it would make you invisible.   VIOLA. Art not thou the Lady Olivia\'s fool?   CLOWN. No, indeed, sir; the Lady Olivia has no folly; she will keep     no fool, sir, till she be married; and fools are as like husbands     as pilchers are to herrings- the husband\'s the bigger. I am     indeed not her fool, but her corrupter of words.   VIOLA. I saw thee late at the Count Orsino\'s.   CLOWN. Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun- it     shines everywhere. I would be sorry, sir, but the fool should be     as oft with your master as with my mistress: think I saw your     wisdom there.   VIOLA. Nay, an thou pass upon me, I\'ll no more with thee.       Hold, there\'s expenses for thee.             [Giving a coin]   CLOWN. Now Jove, in his next commodity of hair, send the a beard!   VIOLA. By my troth, I\'ll tell thee, I am almost sick for one;     [Aside] though I would not have it grow on my chin.- Is thy lady     within?   CLOWN. Would not a pair of these have bred, sir?   VIOLA. Yes, being kept together and put to use.   CLOWN. I would play Lord Pandarus of Phrygia, sir, to bring a     Cressida to this Troilus.   VIOLA. I understand you, sir; \'tis well begg\'d.                                            [Giving another coin]   CLOWN. The matter, I hope, is not great, sir, begging but a beggar:     Cressida was a beggar. My lady is within, sir. I will construe to     them whence you come; who you are and what you would are out of     my welkin- I might say \'element\' but the word is overworn.                                                       Exit CLOWN   VIOLA. This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;     And to do that well craves a kind of wit.     He must observe their mood on whom he jests,     The quality of persons, and the time;       And, like the haggard, check at every feather     That comes before his eye. This is a practice     As full of labour as a wise man\'s art;     For folly that he wisely shows is fit;     But wise men, folly-fall\'n, quite taint their wit.                  Enter SIR TOBY and SIR ANDREW    SIR TOBY. Save you, gentleman!   VIOLA. And you, sir.   AGUECHEEK. Dieu vous garde, monsieur.   VIOLA. Et vous aussi; votre serviteur.   AGUECHEEK. I hope, sir, you are; and I am yours.   SIR TOBY. Will you encounter the house? My niece is desirous you     should enter, if your trade be to her.   VIOLA. I am bound to your niece, sir; I mean, she is the list of my     voyage.   SIR TOBY. Taste your legs, sir; put them to motion.   VIOLA. My legs do better understand me, sir, than I understand what     you mean by bidding me taste my legs.     SIR TOBY. I mean, to go, sir, to enter.   VIOLA. I will answer you with gait and entrance. But we are     prevented.                    Enter OLIVIA and MARIA      Most excellent accomplish\'d lady, the heavens rain odours on you!   AGUECHEEK. That youth\'s a rare courtier- \'Rain odours\' well!   VIOLA. My matter hath no voice, lady, but to your own most pregnant     and vouchsafed car.   AGUECHEEK. \'Odours,\' \'pregnant,\' and \'vouchsafed\'- I\'ll get \'em all     three all ready.   OLIVIA. Let the garden door be shut, and leave me to my hearing.     [Exeunt all but OLIVIA and VIOLA] Give me your hand, sir.   VIOLA. My duty, madam, and most humble service.   OLIVIA. What is your name?   VIOLA. Cesario is your servant\'s name, fair Princess.   OLIVIA. My servant, sir! \'Twas never merry world     Since lowly feigning was call\'d compliment.     Y\'are servant to the Count Orsino, youth.     VIOLA. And he is yours, and his must needs be yours:     Your servant\'s servant is your servant, madam.   OLIVIA. For him, I think not on him; for his thoughts,     Would they were blanks rather than fill\'d with me!   VIOLA. Madam, I come to whet your gentle thoughts     On his behalf.   OLIVIA. O, by your leave, I pray you:     I bade you never speak again of him;     But, would you undertake another suit,     I had rather hear you to solicit that     Than music from the spheres.   VIOLA. Dear lady-   OLIVIA. Give me leave, beseech you. I did send,     After the last enchantment you did here,     A ring in chase of you; so did I abuse     Myself, my servant, and, I fear me, you.     Under your hard construction must I sit,     To force that on you in a shameful cunning     Which you knew none of yours. What might you think?     Have you not set mine honour at the stake,       And baited it with all th\' unmuzzled thoughts     That tyrannous heart can think? To one of your receiving     Enough is shown: a cypress, not a bosom,     Hides my heart. So, let me hear you speak.   VIOLA. I Pity YOU.   OLIVIA. That\'s a degree to love.   VIOLA. No, not a grize; for \'tis a vulgar proof     That very oft we pity enemies.   OLIVIA. Why, then, methinks \'tis time to smile again.     O world, how apt the poor are to be proud!     If one should be a prey, how much the better     To fall before the lion than the wolf!       [Clock strikes]     The clock upbraids me with the waste of time.     Be not afraid, good youth; I will not have you;     And yet, when wit and youth is come to harvest,     Your wife is like to reap a proper man.     There lies your way, due west.   VIOLA. Then westward-ho!     Grace and good disposition attend your ladyship!     You\'ll nothing, madam, to my lord by me?     OLIVIA. Stay.     I prithee tell me what thou think\'st of me.   VIOLA. That you do think you are not what you are.   OLIVIA. If I think so, I think the same of you.   VIOLA. Then think you right: I am not what I am.   OLIVIA. I would you were as I would have you be!   VIOLA. Would it be better, madam, than I am?     I wish it might, for now I am your fool.   OLIVIA. O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful     In the contempt and anger of his lip!     A murd\'rous guilt shows not itself more soon     Than love that would seem hid: love\'s night is noon.     Cesario, by the roses of the spring,     By maidhood, honour, truth, and every thing,     I love thee so that, maugre all thy pride,     Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide.     Do not extort thy reasons from this clause,     For that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause;     But rather reason thus with reason fetter:     Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.     VIOLA. By innocence I swear, and by my youth,     I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth,     And that no woman has; nor never none     Shall mistress be of it, save I alone.     And so adieu, good madam; never more     Will I my master\'s tears to you deplore.   OLIVIA. Yet come again; for thou perhaps mayst move     That heart which now abhors to like his love.         Exeunt     SCENE II. OLIVIA\'S house  Enter SIR TOBY, SIR ANDREW and FABIAN    AGUECHEEK. No, faith, I\'ll not stay a jot longer.   SIR TOBY. Thy reason, dear venom, give thy reason.   FABIAN. You must needs yield your reason, Sir Andrew.   AGUECHEEK. Marry, I saw your niece do more favours to the Count\'s     servingman than ever she bestow\'d upon me; I saw\'t i\' th\'     orchard.   SIR TOBY. Did she see thee the while, old boy? Tell me that.   AGUECHEEK. As plain as I see you now.   FABIAN. This was a great argument of love in her toward you.   AGUECHEEK. \'Slight! will you make an ass o\' me?   FABIAN. I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judgment     and reason.   SIR TOBY. And they have been grand-jurymen since before Noah was a     sailor.   FABIAN. She did show favour to the youth in your sight only to     exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in     your heart and brimstone in your liver. You should then have       accosted her; and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the     mint, you should have bang\'d the youth into dumbness. This was     look\'d for at your hand, and this was baulk\'d. The double gilt of     this opportunity you let time wash off, and you are now sail\'d     into the north of my lady\'s opinion; where you will hang like an     icicle on Dutchman\'s beard, unless you do redeem it by some     laudable attempt either of valour or policy.   AGUECHEEK. An\'t be any way, it must be with valour, for policy I     hate; I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician.   SIR TOBY. Why, then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of     valour. Challenge me the Count\'s youth to fight with him; hurt     him in eleven places. My niece shall take note of it; and assure     thyself there is no love-broker in the world can more prevail in     man\'s commendation with woman than report of valour.   FABIAN. There is no way but this, Sir Andrew.   AGUECHEEK. Will either of you bear me a challenge to him?   SIR TOBY. Go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief; it is     no matter how witty, so it be eloquent and full of invention.     Taunt him with the license of ink; if thou thou\'st him some     thrice, it shall not be amiss; and as many lies as will lie in       thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the     bed of Ware in England, set \'em down; go about it. Let there be     gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no     matter. About it.   AGUECHEEK. Where shall I find you?   SIR TOBY. We\'ll call thee at the cubiculo. Go.                                                  Exit SIR ANDREW   FABIAN. This is a dear manakin to you, Sir Toby.   SIR TOBY. I have been dear to him, lad- some two thousand strong,     or so.   FABIAN. We shall have a rare letter from him; but you\'ll not     deliver\'t?   SIR TOBY. Never trust me then; and by all means stir on the youth     to an answer. I think oxen and wainropes cannot hale them     together. For Andrew, if he were open\'d and you find so much     blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I\'ll eat the     rest of th\' anatomy.   FABIAN. And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no great     presage of cruelty.                             Enter MARIA    SIR TOBY. Look where the youngest wren of nine comes.   MARIA. If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into     stitches, follow me. Yond gull Malvolio is turned heathen, a very     renegado; for there is no Christian that means to be saved by     believing rightly can ever believe such impossible passages of     grossness. He\'s in yellow stockings.   SIR TOBY. And cross-garter\'d?   MARIA. Most villainously; like a pedant that keeps a school i\' th\'     church. I have dogg\'d him like his murderer. He does obey every     point of the letter that I dropp\'d to betray him. He does smile     his face into more lines than is in the new map with the     augmentation of the Indies. You have not seen such a thing as     \'tis; I  can hardly forbear hurling things at him. I know my lady     will strike him; if she do, he\'ll smile and take\'t for a great     favour.   SIR TOBY. Come, bring us, bring us where he is.         Exeunt     SCENE III. A street  Enter SEBASTIAN and ANTONIO    SEBASTIAN. I would not by my will have troubled you;     But since you make your pleasure of your pains,     I will no further chide you.   ANTONIO. I could not stay behind you: my desire,     More sharp than filed steel, did spur me forth;     And not all love to see you- though so much     As might have drawn one to a longer voyage-     But jealousy what might befall your travel,     Being skilless in these parts; which to a stranger,     Unguided and unfriended, often prove     Rough and unhospitable. My willing love,     The rather by these arguments of fear,     Set forth in your pursuit.   SEBASTIAN. My kind Antonio,     I can no other answer make but thanks,     And thanks, and ever thanks; and oft good turns     Are shuffl\'d off with such uncurrent pay;       But were my worth as is my conscience firm,     You should find better dealing. What\'s to do?     Shall we go see the reliques of this town?   ANTONIO. To-morrow, sir; best first go see your lodging.   SEBASTIAN. I am not weary, and \'tis long to night;     I pray you, let us satisfy our eyes     With the memorials and the things of fame     That do renown this city.   ANTONIO. Would you\'d pardon me.     I do not without danger walk these streets:     Once in a sea-fight \'gainst the Count his galleys     I did some service; of such note, indeed,     That, were I ta\'en here, it would scarce be answer\'d.   SEBASTIAN. Belike you slew great number of his people.   ANTONIO.Th\' offence is not of such a bloody nature;     Albeit the quality of the time and quarrel     Might well have given us bloody argument.     It might have since been answer\'d in repaying     What we took from them; which, for traffic\'s sake,     Most of our city did. Only myself stood out;       For which, if I be lapsed in this place,     I shall pay dear.   SEBASTIAN. Do not then walk too open.   ANTONIO. It doth not fit me. Hold, sir, here\'s my purse;     In the south suburbs, at the Elephant,     Is best to lodge. I will bespeak our diet,     Whiles you beguile the time and feed your knowledge     With viewing of the town; there shall you have me.   SEBASTIAN. Why I your purse?   ANTONIO. Haply your eye shall light upon some toy     You have desire to purchase; and your store,     I think, is not for idle markets, sir.   SEBASTIAN. I\'ll be your purse-bearer, and leave you for     An hour.   ANTONIO. To th\' Elephant.   SEBASTIAN. I do remember.                               Exeunt     SCENE IV. OLIVIA\'S garden  Enter OLIVIA and MARIA    OLIVIA. I have sent after him; he says he\'ll come.     How shall I feast him? What bestow of him?     For youth is bought more oft than begg\'d or borrow\'d.     I speak too loud.     Where\'s Malvolio? He is sad and civil,     And suits well for a servant with my fortunes.     Where is Malvolio?   MARIA. He\'s coming, madam; but in very strange manner.     He is sure possess\'d, madam.   OLIVIA. Why, what\'s the matter? Does he rave?   MARIA. No, madam, he does nothing but smile. Your ladyship were     best to have some guard about you if he come; for sure the man is     tainted in\'s wits.   OLIVIA. Go call him hither.                         Exit MARIA     I am as mad as he,     If sad and merry madness equal be.                   Re-enter MARIA with MALVOLIO      How now, Malvolio!   MALVOLIO. Sweet lady, ho, ho.   OLIVIA. Smil\'st thou?     I sent for thee upon a sad occasion.   MALVOLIO. Sad, lady? I could be sad. This does make some     obstruction in the blood, this cross-gartering; but what of that?     If it please the eye of one, it is with me as the very true     sonnet is: \'Please one and please all.\'   OLIVIA. Why, how dost thou, man? What is the matter with thee?   MALVOLIO. Not black in my mind, though yellow in my legs.     It did come to his hands, and commands shall be executed.     I think we do know the sweet Roman hand.   OLIVIA. Wilt thou go to bed, Malvolio?   MALVOLIO. To bed? Ay, sweetheart, and I\'ll come to thee.   OLIVIA. God comfort thee! Why dost thou smile so, and kiss thy hand     so oft?   MARIA. How do you, Malvolio?   MALVOLIO. At your request? Yes, nightingales answer daws!     MARIA. Why appear you with this ridiculous boldness before my lady?   MALVOLIO. \'Be not afraid of greatness.\' \'Twas well writ.   OLIVIA. What mean\'st thou by that, Malvolio?   AIALVOLIO. \'Some are born great,\'-   OLIVIA. Ha?   MALVOLIO. \'Some achieve greatness,\'-   OLIVIA. What say\'st thou?   MALVOLIO. \'And some have greatness thrust upon them.\'   OLIVIA. Heaven restore thee!   MALVOLIO. \'Remember who commended thy yellow stockings,\'-   OLIVIA. \'Thy yellow stockings?\'   MALVOLIO. \'And wish\'d to see thee cross-garterd.\'   OLIVIA. \'Cross-garter\'d?\'   MALVOLIO. \'Go to, thou an made, if thou desir\'st to be so\';-   OLIVIA. Am I made?   MALVOLIO. \'If not, let me see thee a servant still.\'   OLIVIA. Why, this is very midsummer madness.                       Enter SERVANT      SERVANT. Madam, the young gentleman of the Count Orsino\'s is     return\'d; I could hardly entreat him back; he attends your     ladyship\'s pleasure.   OLIVIA. I\'ll come to him. [Exit SERVANT] Good Maria, let this     fellow be look\'d to. Where\'s my cousin Toby? Let some of my     people have a special care of him; I would not have him miscarry     for the half of my dowry.                                          Exeunt OLIVIA and MARIA   MALVOLIO. O, ho! do you come near me now? No worse man than Sir     Toby to look to me! This concurs directly with the letter: she     sends him on purpose, that I may appear stubborn to him; for she     incites me to that in the letter. \'Cast thy humble slough,\' says     she. \'Be opposite with kinsman, surly with servants; let thy     tongue tang with arguments of state; put thyself into the trick     of singularity\' and consequently sets down the manner how, as: a     sad face, a reverend carriage, a slow tongue, in the habit of     some sir of note, and so forth. I have lim\'d her; but it is     Jove\'s doing, and Jove make me thankful! And when she went away     now- \'Let this fellow be look\'d to.\' \'Fellow,\' not \'Malvolio\' nor     after my degree, but \'fellow.\' Why, everything adheres together,       that no dram of a scruple, no scruple of a scruple, no obstacle,     no incredulous or unsafe circumstance- What can be said? Nothing     that can be can come between me and the full prospect of my     hopes. Well, Jove, not I, is the doer of this, and he is to be     thanked.               Re-enter MARIA, with SIR TOBY and FABIAN    SIR TOBY. Which way is he, in the name of sanctity? If all the     devils of hell be drawn in little, and Legion himself possess\'d     him, yet I\'ll speak to him.   FABIAN. Here he is, here he is. How is\'t with you, sir?   SIR TOBY. How is\'t with you, man?   MALVOLIO. Go off; I discard you. Let me enjoy my private; go off.   MARIA. Lo, how hollow the fiend speaks within him! Did not I tell     you? Sir Toby, my lady prays you to have a care of him.   MALVOLIO. Ah, ha! does she so?   SIR TOBY. Go to, go to; peace, peace; we must deal gently with him.     Let me alone. How do you, Malvolio? How is\'t with you? What, man,     defy the devil; consider, he\'s an enemy to mankind.     MALVOLIO. Do you know what you say?   MARIA. La you, an you speak ill of the devil, how he takes it at     heart! Pray God he be not bewitched.   FABIAN. Carry his water to th\' wise woman.   MARIA. Marry, and it shall be done to-morrow morning, if I live. My     lady would not lose him for more than I\'ll say.   MALVOLIO. How now, mistress!   MARIA. O Lord!   SIR TOBY. Prithee hold thy peace; this is not the way. Do you not     see you move him? Let me alone with him.   FABIAN. No way but gentleness- gently, gently. The fiend is rough,     and will not be roughly us\'d.   SIR TOBY. Why, how now, my bawcock!     How dost thou, chuck?   MALVOLIO. Sir!   SIR TOBY. Ay, Biddy, come with me. What, man, \'tis not for gravity     to play at cherrypit with Satan. Hang him, foul collier!   MARIA. Get him to say his prayers, good Sir Toby, get him to pray.   MALVOLIO. My prayers, minx!   MARIA. No, I warrant you, he will not hear of godliness.     MALVOLIO. Go, hang yourselves all! You are idle shallow things; I     am not of your element; you shall know more hereafter.  Exit   SIR TOBY. Is\'t possible?   FABIAN. If this were play\'d upon a stage now, I could condemn it as     an improbable fiction.   SIR TOBY. His very genius hath taken the infection of the device,     man.   MARIA. Nay, pursue him now, lest the device take air and taint.   FABIAN. Why, we shall make him mad indeed.   MARIA. The house will be the quieter.   SIR TOBY. Come, we\'ll have him in a dark room and bound. My niece     is already in the belief that he\'s mad. We may carry it thus, for     our pleasure and his penance, till our very pastime, tired out of     breath, prompt us to have mercy on him; at which time we will     bring the device to the bar and crown thee for a finder of     madmen. But see, but see.                       Enter SIR ANDREW      FABIAN. More matter for a May morning.   AGUECHEEK. Here\'s the challenge; read it. I warrant there\'s vinegar     and pepper in\'t.   FABIAN. Is\'t so saucy?   AGUECHEEK. Ay, is\'t, I warrant him; do but read.   SIR TOBY. Give me. [Reads] \'Youth, whatsoever thou art, thou art     but a scurvy fellow.\'   FABIAN. Good and valiant.   SIR TOBY. [Reads] \'Wonder not, nor admire not in thy mind, why I do     call thee so, for I will show thee no reason for\'t.\'   FABIAN. A good note; that keeps you from the blow of the law.   SIR TOBY. [Reads] \'Thou com\'st to the Lady Olivia, and in my sight     she uses thee kindly; but thou liest in thy throat; that is not     the matter I challenge thee for.\'   FABIAN. Very brief, and to exceeding good sense- less.   SIR TOBY. [Reads] \'I will waylay thee going home; where if it be     thy chance to kill me\'-   FABIAN. Good.   SIR TOBY. \'Thou kill\'st me like a rogue and a villain.\'   FABIAN. Still you keep o\' th\' windy side of the law. Good!     SIR TOBY. [Reads] \'Fare thee well; and God have mercy upon one of     our souls! He may have mercy upon mine; but my hope is better,     and so look to thyself. Thy friend, as thou usest him, and thy     sworn enemy,                                               ANDREW AGUECHEEK.\'      If this letter move him not, his legs cannot. I\'ll give\'t him.   MARIA. You may have very fit occasion for\'t; he is now in some     commerce with my lady, and will by and by depart.   SIR TOBY. Go, Sir Andrew; scout me for him at the corner of the     orchard, like a bum-baily; so soon as ever thou seest him, draw;     and as thou draw\'st, swear horrible; for it comes to pass oft     that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twang\'d     off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would     have earn\'d him. Away.   AGUECHEEK. Nay, let me alone for swearing.                Exit   SIR TOBY. Now will not I deliver his letter; for the behaviour of     the young gentleman gives him out to be of good capacity and     breeding; his employment between his lord and my niece confirms     no less. Therefore this letter, being so excellently ignorant,       will breed no terror in the youth: he will find it comes from a     clodpole. But, sir, I will deliver his challenge by word of     mouth, set upon Aguecheek notable report of valour, and drive the     gentleman- as know his youth will aptly receive it- into a most     hideous opinion of his rage, skill, fury, and impetuosity. This     will so fright them both that they will kill one another by the     look, like cockatrices.                  Re-enter OLIVIA. With VIOLA    FABIAN. Here he comes with your niece; give them way till he take     leave, and presently after him.   SIR TOBY. I will meditate the while upon some horrid message for a     challenge.                               Exeunt SIR TOBY, FABIAN, and MARIA   OLIVIA. I have said too much unto a heart of stone,     And laid mine honour too unchary out;     There\'s something in me that reproves my fault;     But such a headstrong potent fault it is     That it but mocks reproof.     VIOLA. With the same haviour that your passion bears     Goes on my master\'s griefs.   OLIVIA. Here, wear this jewel for me; \'tis my picture.     Refuse it not; it hath no tongue to vex you.     And I beseech you come again to-morrow.     What shall you ask of me that I\'ll deny,     That honour sav\'d may upon asking give?   VIOLA. Nothing but this- your true love for my master.   OLIVIA. How with mine honour may I give him that     Which I have given to you?   VIOLA. I will acquit you.   OLIVIA. Well, come again to-morrow. Fare thee well;     A fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell.           Exit                Re-enter SIR TOBY and SIR FABIAN    SIR TOBY. Gentleman, God save thee.   VIOLA. And you, sir.   SIR TOBY. That defence thou hast, betake thee tot. Of what nature     the wrongs are thou hast done him, I know not; but thy       intercepter, full of despite, bloody as the hunter, attends     thee at the orchard end. Dismount thy tuck, be yare in thy     preparation, for thy assailant is quick, skilful, and deadly.   VIOLA. You mistake, sir; I am sure no man hath any quarrel to me;     my remembrance is very free and clear from any image of offence     done to any man.   SIR TOBY. You\'ll find it otherwise, I assure you; therefore, if you     hold your life at any price, betake you to your guard; for your     opposite hath in him what youth, strength, skill, and wrath, can     furnish man withal.   VIOLA. I pray you, sir, what is he?   SIR TOBY. He is knight, dubb\'d with unhatch\'d rapier and on carpet     consideration; but he is a devil in private brawl. Souls and     bodies hath he divorc\'d three; and his incensement at this moment     is so implacable that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of     death and sepulchre. Hob-nob is his word- give\'t or take\'t.   VIOLA. I will return again into the house and desire some conduct     of the lady. I am no fighter. I have heard of some kind of men     that put quarrels purposely on others to taste their valour;     belike this is a man of that quirk.     SIR TOBY. Sir, no; his indignation derives itself out of a very     competent injury; therefore, get you on and give him his desire.     Back you shall not to the house, unless you undertake that with     me which with as much safety you might answer him; therefore on,     or strip your sword stark naked; for meddle you must, that\'s     certain, or forswear to wear iron about you.   VIOLA. This is as uncivil as strange. I beseech you do me this     courteous office as to know of the knight what my offence to him     is: it is something of my negligence, nothing of my purpose.   SIR TOBY. I Will do so. Signior Fabian, stay you by this gentleman     till my return.                                Exit SIR TOBY   VIOLA. Pray you, sir, do you know of this matter?   FABIAN. I know the knight is incens\'d against you, even to a mortal     arbitrement; but nothing of the circumstance more.   VIOLA. I beseech you, what manner of man is he?   FABIAN. Nothing of that wonderful promise, to read him by his form,     as you are like to find him in the proof of his valour. He is     indeed, sir, the most skilful, bloody, and fatal opposite that     you could possibly have found in any part of Illyria. Will you     walk towards him? I will make your peace with him if I can.     VIOLA. I shall be much bound to you for\'t. I am one that would     rather go with sir priest than sir knight. I care not who knows     so much of my mettle.                                 Exeunt                  Re-enter SIR TOBY With SIR ANDREW    SIR TOBY. Why, man, he\'s a very devil; I have not seen such a     firago. I had a pass with him, rapier, scabbard, and all, and he     gives me the stuck in with such a mortal motion that it is     inevitable; and on the answer, he pays you as surely as your feet     hit the ground they step on. They say he has been fencer to the     Sophy.   AGUECHEEK. Pox on\'t, I\'ll not meddle with him.   SIR TOBY. Ay, but he will not now be pacified; Fabian can scarce     hold him yonder.   AGUECHEEK. Plague on\'t; an I thought he had been valiant, and so     cunning in fence, I\'d have seen him damn\'d ere I\'d have     challeng\'d him. Let him let the matter slip, and I\'ll give him     my horse, grey Capilet.   SIR TOBY. I\'ll make the motion. Stand here, make a good show on\'t;       this shall end without the perdition of souls. [Aside] Marry,     I\'ll ride your horse as well as I ride you.                Re-enter FABIAN and VIOLA      [To FABIAN] I have his horse to take up the quarrel; I have     persuaded him the youth\'s a devil.   FABIAN. [To SIR TOBY] He is as horribly conceited of him; and pants    and looks pale, as if a bear were at his heels.   SIR TOBY. [To VIOLA] There\'s no remedy, sir: he will fight with you     for\'s oath sake. Marry, he hath better bethought him of his     quarrel, and he finds that now scarce to be worth talking of.     Therefore draw for the supportance of his vow; he protests he     will not hurt you.   VIOLA. [Aside] Pray God defend me! A little thing would make me     tell them how much I lack of a man.   FABIAN. Give ground if you see him furious.   SIR TOBY. Come, Sir Andrew, there\'s no remedy; the gentleman will,     for his honour\'s sake, have one bout with you; he cannot by the     duello avoid it; but he has promis\'d me, as he is a gentleman and       a soldier, he will not hurt you. Come on; to\'t.   AGUECHEEK. Pray God he keep his oath!                [They draw]                        Enter ANTONIO    VIOLA. I do assure you \'tis against my will.   ANTONIO. Put up your sword. If this young gentleman     Have done offence, I take the fault on me:     If you offend him, I for him defy you.   SIR TOBY. You, sir! Why, what are you?   ANTONIO. One, sir, that for his love dares yet do more     Than you have heard him brag to you he will.   SIR TOBY. Nay, if you be an undertaker, I am for you.                                                      [They draw]                           Enter OFFICERS    FABIAN. O good Sir Toby, hold! Here come the officers.   SIR TOBY. [To ANTONIO] I\'ll be with you anon.   VIOLA. Pray, sir, put your sword up, if you please.     AGUECHEEK. Marry, will I, sir; and for that I promis\'d you, I\'ll be     as good as my word. He will bear you easily and reins well.   FIRST OFFICER. This is the man; do thy office.   SECOND OFFICER. Antonio, I arrest thee at the suit     Of Count Orsino.   ANTONIO. You do mistake me, sir.   FIRST OFFICER. No, sir, no jot; I know your favour well,     Though now you have no sea-cap on your head.     Take him away; he knows I know him well.   ANTONIO. I Must obey. [To VIOLA] This comes with seeking you;     But there\'s no remedy; I shall answer it.     What will you do, now my necessity     Makes me to ask you for my purse? It grieves me     Much more for what I cannot do for you     Than what befalls myself. You stand amaz\'d;     But be of comfort.   SECOND OFFICER. Come, sir, away.   ANTONIO. I must entreat of you some of that money.   VIOLA. What money, sir?     For the fair kindness you have show\'d me here,       And part being prompted by your present trouble,     Out of my lean and low ability     I\'ll lend you something. My having is not much;     I\'ll make division of my present with you;     Hold, there\'s half my coffer.   ANTONIO. Will you deny me now?     Is\'t possible that my deserts to you     Can lack persuasion? Do not tempt my misery,     Lest that it make me so unsound a man     As to upbraid you with those kindnesses     That I have done for you.   VIOLA. I know of none,     Nor know I you by voice or any feature.     I hate ingratitude more in a man     Than lying, vainness, babbling drunkenness,     Or any taint of vice whose strong corruption     Inhabits our frail blood.   ANTONIO. O heavens themselves!   SECOND OFFICER. Come, sir, I pray you go.   ANTONIO. Let me speak a little. This youth that you see here       I snatch\'d one half out of the jaws of death,     Reliev\'d him with such sanctity of love,     And to his image, which methought did promise     Most venerable worth, did I devotion.   FIRST OFFICER. What\'s that to us? The time goes by; away.   ANTONIO. But, O, how vile an idol proves this god!     Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame.     In nature there\'s no blemish but the mind:     None can be call\'d deform\'d but the unkind.     Virtue is beauty; but the beauteous evil     Are empty trunks, o\'erflourish\'d by the devil.   FIRST OFFICER. The man grows mad. Away with him.     Come, come, sir.   ANTONIO. Lead me on.                        Exit with OFFICERS   VIOLA. Methinks his words do from such passion fly     That he believes himself; so do not I.     Prove true, imagination, O, prove true,     That I, dear brother, be now ta\'en for you!   SIR TOBY. Come hither, knight; come hither, Fabian; we\'ll whisper     o\'er a couplet or two of most sage saws.     VIOLA. He nam\'d Sebastian. I my brother know     Yet living in my glass; even such and so     In favour was my brother; and he went     Still in this fashion, colour, ornament,     For him I imitate. O, if it prove,     Tempests are kind, and salt waves fresh in love!        Exit   SIR TOBY. A very dishonest paltry boy, and more a coward than a     hare. His dishonesty appears in leaving his friend here in     necessity and denying him; and for his cowardship, ask Fabian.   FABIAN. A coward, a most devout coward, religious in it.   AGUECHEEK. \'Slid, I\'ll after him again and beat him.   SIR TOBY. Do; cuff him soundly, but never draw thy sword.   AGUECHEEK. And I do not-                                  Exit   FABIAN. Come, let\'s see the event.   SIR TOBY. I dare lay any money \'twill be nothing yet.                                                           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. Before OLIVIA\'S house  Enter SEBASTIAN and CLOWN    CLOWN. Will you make me believe that I am not sent for you?   SEBASTIAN. Go to, go to, thou art a foolish fellow; let me be clear     of thee.   CLOWN. Well held out, i\' faith! No, I do not know you; nor I am not     sent to you by my lady, to bid you come speak with her; nor your     name is not Master Cesario; nor this is not my nose neither.     Nothing that is so is so.   SEBASTIAN. I prithee vent thy folly somewhere else.     Thou know\'st not me.   CLOWN. Vent my folly! He has heard that word of some great man, and     now applies it to a fool. Vent my folly! I am afraid this great     lubber, the world, will prove a cockney. I prithee now, ungird     thy strangeness, and tell me what I shall vent to my lady. Shall     I vent to her that thou art coming?   SEBASTIAN. I prithee, foolish Greek, depart from me;     There\'s money for thee; if you tarry longer     I shall give worse payment.     CLOWN. By my troth, thou hast an open hand. These wise men that     give fools money get themselves a good report after fourteen     years\' purchase.               Enter SIR ANDREW, SIR TOBY, and FABIAN    AGUECHEEK. Now, sir, have I met you again?     [Striking SEBASTIAN] There\'s for you.   SEBASTIAN. Why, there\'s for thee, and there, and there.     Are all the people mad?   SIR TOBY. Hold, sir, or I\'ll throw your dagger o\'er the house.                                              [Holding SEBASTIAN]   CLOWN. This will I tell my lady straight. I would not be in some of     your coats for two-pence.                               Exit   SIR TOBY. Come on, sir; hold.   AGUECHEEK. Nay, let him alone. I\'ll go another way to work with     him; I\'ll have an action of battery against him, if there be any     law in Illyria; though I struck him first, yet it\'s no matter for     that.   SEBASTIAN. Let go thy hand.     SIR TOBY. Come, sir, I will not let you go. Come, my young soldier,     put up your iron; you are well flesh\'d. Come on.   SEBASTIAN. I will be free from thee. What wouldst thou now?     If thou dar\'st tempt me further, draw thy sword.     [Draws]   SIR TOBY. What, what? Nay, then I must have an ounce or two of this     malapert blood from you. [Draws]                          Enter OLIVIA    OLIVIA. Hold, Toby; on thy life, I charge thee hold.   SIR TOBY. Madam!   OLIVIA. Will it be ever thus? Ungracious wretch,     Fit for the mountains and the barbarous caves,     Where manners ne\'er were preach\'d! Out of my sight!     Be not offended, dear Cesario-     Rudesby, be gone!                          Exeunt SIR TOBY, SIR ANDREW, and FABIAN     I prithee, gentle friend,     Let thy fair wisdom, not thy passion, sway     In this uncivil and unjust extent       Against thy peace. Go with me to my house,     And hear thou there how many fruitless pranks     This ruffian hath botch\'d up, that thou thereby     Mayst smile at this. Thou shalt not choose but go;     Do not deny. Beshrew his soul for me!     He started one poor heart of mine in thee.   SEBASTIAN. What relish is in this? How runs the stream?     Or I am mad, or else this is a dream.     Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep;     If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!   OLIVIA. Nay, come, I prithee. Would thou\'dst be rul\'d by me!   SEBASTIAN. Madam, I will.   OLIVIA. O, say so, and so be!                           Exeunt     SCENE II. OLIVIA\'S house  Enter MARIA and CLOWN    MARIA. Nay, I prithee, put on this gown and this beard; make him     believe thou art Sir Topas the curate; do it quickly. I\'ll call     Sir Toby the whilst.                                    Exit   CLOWN. Well, I\'ll put it on, and I will dissemble myself in\'t; and     I would I were the first that ever dissembled in such a gown. I     am not tall enough to become the function well nor lean enough to     be thought a good student; but to be said an honest man and a     good housekeeper goes as fairly as to say a careful man and a     great scholar. The competitors enter.                   Enter SIR TOBY and MARIA    SIR TOBY. Jove bless thee, Master Parson.   CLOWN. Bonos dies, Sir Toby; for as the old hermit of Prague, that     never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to niece of King     Gorboduc \'That that is is\'; so I, being Master Parson, am Master     Parson; for what is \'that\' but that, and \'is\' but is?     SIR TOBY. To him, Sir Topas.   CLOWN. What ho, I say! Peace in this prison!   SIR TOBY. The knave counterfeits well; a good knave.   MALVOLIO. [Within] Who calls there?   CLOWN. Sir Topas the curate, who comes to visit Malvolio the     lunatic.   MALVOLIO. Sir Topas, Sir Topas, good Sir Topas, go to my lady.   CLOWN. Out, hyperbolical fiend! How vexest thou this man!     Talkest thou nothing but of ladies?   SIR TOBY. Well said, Master Parson.   MALVOLIO. Sir Topas, never was man thus wronged. Good Sir Topas, do     not think I am mad; they have laid me here in hideous darkness.   CLOWN. Fie, thou dishonest Satan! I call thee by the most modest     terms, for I am one of those gentle ones that will use the devil     himself with courtesy. Say\'st thou that house is dark?   MALVOLIO. As hell, Sir Topas.   CLOWN. Why, it hath bay windows transparent as barricadoes, and the     clerestories toward the south north are as lustrous as ebony; and     yet complainest thou of obstruction?   MALVOLIO. I am not mad, Sir Topas. I say to you this house is dark.     CLOWN. Madman, thou errest. I say there is no darkness but     ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in     their fog.   MALVOLIO. I say this house is as dark as ignorance, though     ignorance were as dark as hell; and I say there was never man     thus abus\'d. I am no more mad than you are; make the trial of it     in any constant question.   CLOWN. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl?   MALVOLIO. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.   CLOWN. What think\'st thou of his opinion?   MALVOLIO. I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his     opinion.   CLOWN. Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness: thou shalt    hold th\' opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits; and     fear to kill a woodcock, lest thou dispossess the soul of thy     grandam. Fare thee well.   MALVOLIO. Sir Topas, Sir Topas!   SIR TOBY. My most exquisite Sir Topas!   CLOWN. Nay, I am for all waters.   MARIA. Thou mightst have done this without thy beard and gown: he       sees thee not.   SIR TOBY. To him in thine own voice, and bring me word how thou     find\'st him. I would we were well rid of this knavery. If he may     be conveniently deliver\'d, I would he were; for I am now so far     in offence with my niece that I cannot pursue with any safety     this sport to the upshot. Come by and by to my chamber.                                                  Exit with MARIA   CLOWN. [Sings] Hey, Robin, jolly Robin,     Tell me how thy lady does.   MALVOLIO. Fool!   CLOWN. [Sings] My lady is unkind, perdy.   MALVOLIO. Fool!   CLOWN. [Sings] Alas, why is she so?   MALVOLIO. Fool I say!   CLOWN. [Sings] She loves another- Who calls, ha?   MALVOLIO. Good fool, as ever thou wilt deserve well at my hand,     help me to a candle, and pen, ink, and paper; as I am a     gentleman, I will live to be thankful to thee for\'t.   CLOWN. Master Malvolio?   MALVOLIO. Ay, good fool.     CLOWN. Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?   MALVOLIO. Fool, there was never man so notoriously abus\'d;     I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art.   CLOWN. But as well? Then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in     your wits than a fool.   MALVOLIO. They have here propertied me; keep me in darkness, send     ministers to me, asses, and do all they can to face me out of my     wits.   CLOWN. Advise you what. you say: the minister is here.     [Speaking as SIR TOPAS] Malvolio, thy wits the heavens restore!     Endeavour thyself to sleep, and leave thy vain bibble-babble.   MALVOLIO. Sir Topas!   CLOWN. Maintain no words with him, good fellow.- Who, I, sir? Not     I, sir. God buy you, good Sir Topas.- Marry, amen.- I will sir, I     will.   MALVOLIO. Fool, fool, fool, I say!   CLOWN. Alas, sir, be patient. What say you, sir? I am shent for     speaking to you.   MALVOLIO. Good fool, help me to some light and some paper.     I tell thee I am as well in my wits as any man in Illyria.     CLOWN. Well-a-day that you were, sir!   MALVOLIO. By this hand, I am. Good fool, some ink, paper, and     light; and convey what I will set down to my lady. It shall     advantage thee more than ever the bearing of letter did.   CLOWN. I will help you to\'t. But tell me true, are you not mad     indeed, or do you but counterfeit?   MALVOLIO. Believe me, I am not; I tell thee true.   CLOWN. Nay, I\'ll ne\'er believe a madman till I see his brains.     I will fetch you light and paper and ink.   MALVOLIO. Fool, I\'ll requite it in the highest degree; I prithe be     gone.   CLOWN. [Singing]                    I am gone, sir,                    And anon, sir,                  I\'ll be with you again,                    In a trice,                    Like to the old Vice,                  Your need to sustain;                   Who with dagger of lath,                    In his rage and his wrath,                    Cries, Ah, ha! to the devil,                  Like a mad lad,                  Pare thy nails, dad.                    Adieu, goodman devil.                    Exit     SCENE III. OLIVIA\'S garden  Enter SEBASTIAN    SEBASTIAN. This is the air; that is the glorious sun;     This pearl she gave me, I do feel\'t and see\'t;     And though \'tis wonder that enwraps me thus,     Yet \'tis not madness. Where\'s Antonio, then?     I could not find him at the Elephant;     Yet there he was; and there I found this credit,     That he did range the town to seek me out.     His counsel now might do me golden service;     For though my soul disputes well with my sense     That this may be some error, but no madness,     Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune     So far exceed all instance, all discourse,     That I am ready to distrust mine eyes     And wrangle with my reason, that persuades me     To any other trust but that I am mad,     Or else the lady\'s mad; yet if \'twere so,     She could not sway her house, command her followers,       Take and give back affairs and their dispatch     With such a smooth, discreet, and stable bearing,     As I perceive she does. There\'s something in\'t     That is deceivable. But here the lady comes.                  Enter OLIVIA and PRIEST    OLIVIA. Blame not this haste of mine. If you mean well,     Now go with me and with this holy man     Into the chantry by; there, before him     And underneath that consecrated roof,     Plight me the fun assurance of your faith,     That my most jealous and too doubtful soul     May live at peace. He shall conceal it     Whiles you are willing it shall come to note,     What time we will our celebration keep     According to my birth. What do you say?   SEBASTIAN. I\'ll follow this good man, and go with you;     And, having sworn truth, ever will be true.   OLIVIA. Then lead the way, good father; and heavens so shine       That they may fairly note this act of mine!           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. Before OLIVIA\'s house  Enter CLOWN and FABIAN    FABIAN. Now, as thou lov\'st me, let me see his letter.   CLOWN. Good Master Fabian, grant me another request.   FABIAN. Anything.   CLOWN. Do not desire to see this letter.   FABIAN. This is to give a dog, and in recompense desire my dog     again.               Enter DUKE, VIOLA, CURIO, and LORDS    DUKE. Belong you to the Lady Olivia, friends?   CLOWN. Ay, sir, we are some of her trappings.   DUKE. I know thee well. How dost thou, my good fellow?   CLOWN. Truly, sir, the better for my foes and the worse for my     friends.   DUKE. Just the contrary: the better for thy friends.   CLOWN. No, sir, the worse.   DUKE. How can that be?     CLOWN. Marry, sir, they praise me and make an ass of me. Now my     foes tell me plainly I am an ass; so that by my foes, sir, I     profit in the knowledge of myself, and by my friends I am abused;     so that, conclusions to be as kisses, if your four negatives make     your two affirmatives, why then, the worse for my friends, and     the better for my foes.   DUKE. Why, this is excellent.   CLOWN. By my troth, sir, no; though it please you to be one of my     friends.   DUKE. Thou shalt not be the worse for me. There\'s gold.   CLOWN. But that it would be double-dealing, sir, I would you could     make it another.   DUKE. O, you give me ill counsel.   CLOWN. Put your grace in your pocket, sir, for this once, and let     your flesh and blood obey it.   DUKE. Well, I will be so much a sinner to be a double-dealer.     There\'s another.   CLOWN. Primo, secundo, tertio, is a good play; and the old saying     is \'The third pays for all.\' The triplex, sir, is a good tripping     measure; or the bells of Saint Bennet, sir, may put you in mind-       one, two, three.   DUKE. You can fool no more money out of me at this throw; if you     will let your lady know I am here to speak with her, and bring     her along with you, it may awake my bounty further.   CLOWN. Marry, sir, lullaby to your bounty till I come again. I go,     sir; but I would not have you to think that my desire of having     is the sin of covetousness. But, as you say, sir, let your bounty     take a nap; I will awake it anon.                       Exit                   Enter ANTONIO and OFFICERS    VIOLA. Here comes the man, sir, that did rescue me.   DUKE. That face of his I do remember well;     Yet when I saw it last it was besmear\'d     As black as Vulcan in the smoke of war.     A baubling vessel was he captain of,     For shallow draught and bulk unprizable,     With which such scathful grapple did he make     With the most noble bottom of our fleet     That very envy and the tongue of los       Cried fame and honour on him. What\'s the matter?   FIRST OFFICER. Orsino, this is that Antonio     That took the Phoenix and her fraught from Candy;     And this is he that did the Tiger board     When your young nephew Titus lost his leg.     Here in the streets, desperate of shame and state,     In private brabble did we apprehend him.   VIOLA. He did me kindness, sir; drew on my side;     But in conclusion put strange speech upon me.     I know not what \'twas but distraction.   DUKE. Notable pirate, thou salt-water thief!     What foolish boldness brought thee to their mercies     Whom thou, in terms so bloody and so dear,     Hast made thine enemies?   ANTONIO. Orsino, noble sir,     Be pleas\'d that I shake off these names you give me:     Antonio never yet was thief or pirate,     Though I confess, on base and ground enough,     Orsino\'s enemy. A witchcraft drew me hither:     That most ingrateful boy there by your side       From the rude sea\'s enrag\'d and foamy mouth     Did I redeem; a wreck past hope he was.     His life I gave him, and did thereto ad     My love without retention or restraint,     All his in dedication; for his sake,     Did I expose myself, pure for his love,     Into the danger of this adverse town;     Drew to defend him when he was beset;     Where being apprehended, his false cunning,     Not meaning to partake with me in danger,     Taught him to face me out of his acquaintance,     And grew a twenty years removed thing     While one would wink; denied me mine own purse,     Which I had recommended to his use     Not half an hour before.   VIOLA. How can this be?   DUKE. When came he to this town?   ANTONIO. To-day, my lord; and for three months before,     No int\'rim, not a minute\'s vacancy,     Both day and night did we keep company.                  Enter OLIVIA and ATTENDANTS    DUKE. Here comes the Countess; now heaven walks on earth.     But for thee, fellow- fellow, thy words are madness.     Three months this youth hath tended upon me-     But more of that anon. Take him aside.   OLIVIA. What would my lord, but that he may not have,     Wherein Olivia may seem serviceable?     Cesario, you do not keep promise with me.   VIOLA. Madam?   DUKE. Gracious Olivia-   OLIVIA. What do you say, Cesario? Good my lord-   VIOLA. My lord would speak; my duty hushes me.   OLIVIA. If it be aught to the old tune, my lord,     It is as fat and fulsome to mine ear     As howling after music.   DUKE. Still so cruel?   OLIVIA. Still so constant, lord.   DUKE. What, to perverseness? You uncivil lady,       To whose ingrate and unauspicious altars     My soul the faithfull\'st off\'rings hath breath\'d out     That e\'er devotion tender\'d! What shall I do?   OLIVIA. Even what it please my lord, that shall become him.   DUKE. Why should I not, had I the heart to do it,     Like to the Egyptian thief at point of death,     Kill what I love?- a savage jealousy     That sometime savours nobly. But hear me this:     Since you to non-regardance cast my faith,     And that I partly know the instrument     That screws me from my true place in your favour,     Live you the marble-breasted tyrant still;     But this your minion, whom I know you love,     And whom, by heaven I swear, I tender dearly,     Him will I tear out of that cruel eye     Where he sits crowned in his master\'s spite.     Come, boy, with me; my thoughts are ripe in mischief:     I\'ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love     To spite a raven\'s heart within a dove.   VIOLA. And I, most jocund, apt, and willingly,       To do you rest, a thousand deaths would die.   OLIVIA. Where goes Cesario?   VIOLA. After him I love     More than I love these eyes, more than my life,     More, by all mores, than e\'er I shall love wife.     If I do feign, you witnesses above     Punish my life for tainting of my love!   OLIVIA. Ay me, detested! How am I beguil\'d!   VIOLA. Who does beguile you? Who does do you wrong?   OLIVIA. Hast thou forgot thyself? Is it so long?     Call forth the holy father.                Exit an ATTENDANT   DUKE. Come, away!   OLIVIA. Whither, my lord? Cesario, husband, stay.   DUKE. Husband?   OLIVIA. Ay, husband; can he that deny?   DUKE. Her husband, sirrah?   VIOLA. No, my lord, not I.   OLIVIA. Alas, it is the baseness of thy fear     That makes thee strangle thy propriety.     Fear not, Cesario, take thy fortunes up;       Be that thou know\'st thou art, and then thou art     As great as that thou fear\'st.                     Enter PRIEST      O, welcome, father!     Father, I charge thee, by thy reverence,     Here to unfold- though lately we intended     To keep in darkness what occasion now     Reveals before \'tis ripe- what thou dost know     Hath newly pass\'d between this youth and me.   PRIEST. A contract of eternal bond of love,     Confirm\'d by mutual joinder of your hands,     Attested by the holy close of lips,     Strength\'ned by interchangement of your rings;     And all the ceremony of this compact     Seal\'d in my function, by my testimony;     Since when, my watch hath told me, toward my grave,     I have travell\'d but two hours.   DUKE. O thou dissembling cub! What wilt thou be,       When time hath sow\'d a grizzle on thy case?     Or will not else thy craft so quickly grow     That thine own trip shall be thine overthrow?     Farewell, and take her; but direct thy feet     Where thou and I henceforth may never meet.   VIOLA. My lord, I do protest-   OLIVIA. O, do not swear!     Hold little faith, though thou has too much fear.                    Enter SIR ANDREW    AGUECHEEK. For the love of God, a surgeon!     Send one presently to Sir Toby.   OLIVIA. What\'s the matter?   AGUECHEEK. Has broke my head across, and has given Sir Toby a     bloody coxcomb too. For the love of God, your help! I had rather     than forty pound I were at home.   OLIVIA. Who has done this, Sir Andrew?   AGUECHEEK. The Count\'s gentleman, one Cesario. We took him for a     coward, but he\'s the very devil incardinate.     DUKE. My gentleman, Cesario?   AGUECHEEK. Od\'s lifelings, here he is! You broke my head for     nothing; and that that did, I was set on to do\'t by Sir Toby.   VIOLA. Why do you speak to me? I never hurt you.     You drew your sword upon me without cause;     But I bespake you fair and hurt you not.                  Enter SIR TOBY and CLOWN    AGUECHEEK. If a bloody coxcomb be a hurt, you have hurt me; I think     you set nothing by a bloody coxcomb. Here comes Sir Toby halting;     you shall hear more; but if he had not been in drink, he would     have tickl\'d you othergates than he did.   DUKE. How now, gentleman? How is\'t with you?   SIR TOBY. That\'s all one; has hurt me, and there\'s th\' end on\'t.     Sot, didst see Dick Surgeon, sot?   CLOWN. O, he\'s drunk, Sir Toby, an hour agone; his eyes were set at     eight i\' th\' morning.   SIR TOBY. Then he\'s a rogue and a passy measures pavin. I hate a     drunken rogue.     OLIVIA. Away with him. Who hath made this havoc with them?   AGUECHEEK. I\'ll help you, Sir Toby, because we\'ll be dress\'d     together.   SIR TOBY. Will you help- an ass-head and a coxcomb and a knave, a     thin fac\'d knave, a gull?   OLIVIA. Get him to bed, and let his hurt be look\'d to.                   Exeunt CLOWN, FABIAN, SIR TOBY, and SIR ANDREW                        Enter SEBASTIAN    SEBASTIAN. I am sorry, madam, I have hurt your kinsman;     But, had it been the brother of my blood,     I must have done no less with wit and safety.     You throw a strange regard upon me, and by that     I do perceive it hath offended you.     Pardon me, sweet one, even for the vows     We made each other but so late ago.   DUKE. One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons!     A natural perspective, that is and is not.   SEBASTIAN. Antonio, O my dear Antonio!       How have the hours rack\'d and tortur\'d me     Since I have lost thee!   ANTONIO. Sebastian are you?   SEBASTIAN. Fear\'st thou that, Antonio?   ANTONIO. How have you made division of yourself?     An apple cleft in two is not more twin     Than these two creatures. Which is Sebastian?   OLIVIA. Most wonderful!   SEBASTIAN. Do I stand there? I never had a brother;     Nor can there be that deity in my nature     Of here and everywhere. I had a sister     Whom the blind waves and surges have devour\'d.     Of charity, what kin are you to me?     What countryman, what name, what parentage?   VIOLA. Of Messaline; Sebastian was my father.     Such a Sebastian was my brother too;     So went he suited to his watery tomb;     If spirits can assume both form and suit,     You come to fright us.   SEBASTIAN. A spirit I am indeed,       But am in that dimension grossly clad     Which from the womb I did participate.     Were you a woman, as the rest goes even,     I should my tears let fall upon your cheek,     And say \'Thrice welcome, drowned Viola!\'   VIOLA. My father had a mole upon his brow.   SEBASTIAN. And so had mine.   VIOLA. And died that day when Viola from her birth     Had numb\'red thirteen years.   SEBASTIAN. O, that record is lively in my soul!     He finished indeed his mortal act     That day that made my sister thirteen years.   VIOLA. If nothing lets to make us happy both     But this my masculine usurp\'d attire,     Do not embrace me till each circumstance     Of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump     That I am Viola; which to confirm,     I\'ll bring you to a captain in this town,     Where lie my maiden weeds; by whose gentle help     I was preserv\'d to serve this noble Count.       All the occurrence of my fortune since     Hath been between this lady and this lord.   SEBASTIAN. [To OLIVIA] So Comes it, lady, you have been mistook;     But nature to her bias drew in that.     You would have been contracted to a maid;     Nor are you therein, by my life, deceiv\'d;     You are betroth\'d both to a maid and man.   DUKE. Be not amaz\'d; right noble is his blood.     If this be so, as yet the glass seems true,     I shall have share in this most happy wreck.     [To VIOLA] Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times     Thou never shouldst love woman like to me.   VIOLA. And all those sayings will I overswear;     And all those swearings keep as true in soul     As doth that orbed continent the fire     That severs day from night.   DUKE. Give me thy hand;     And let me see thee in thy woman\'s weeds.   VIOLA. The captain that did bring me first on shore     Hath my maid\'s garments. He, upon some action,       Is now in durance, at Malvolio\'s suit,     A gentleman and follower of my lady\'s.   OLIVIA. He shall enlarge him. Fetch Malvolio hither;     And yet, alas, now I remember me,     They say, poor gentleman, he\'s much distract.          Re-enter CLOWN, with a letter, and FABIAN      A most extracting frenzy of mine own     From my remembrance clearly banish\'d his.     How does he, sirrah?   CLOWN. Truly, madam, he holds Belzebub at the stave\'s end as well     as a man in his case may do. Has here writ a letter to you; I     should have given \'t you to-day morning, but as a madman\'s     epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much when they are     deliver\'d.   OLIVIA. Open\'t, and read it.   CLOWN. Look then to be well edified when the fool delivers the     madman. [Reads madly ] \'By the Lord, madam-\'   OLIVIA. How now! Art thou mad?     CLOWN. No, madam, I do but read madness. An your ladyship will have     it as it ought to be, you must allow vox.   OLIVIA. Prithee read i\' thy right wits.   CLOWN. So I do, madonna; but to read his right wits is to read     thus; therefore perpend, my Princess, and give ear.   OLIVIA. [To FABIAN] Read it you, sirrah.   FABIAN. [Reads] \'By the Lord, madam, you wrong me, and the world     shall know it. Though you have put me into darkness and given     your drunken cousin rule over me, yet have I the benefit of my     senses as well as your ladyship. I have your own letter that     induced me to the semblance I put on, with the which I doubt not     but to do myself much right or you much shame. Think of me as you     please. I leave my duty a little unthought of, and speak out of     my injury.                                         THE MADLY-US\'D MALVOLIO\'    OLIVIA. Did he write this?   CLOWN. Ay, Madam.   DUKE. This savours not much of distraction.   OLIVIA. See him deliver\'d, Fabian; bring him hither.                                                        Exit FABIAN     My lord, so please you, these things further thought on,     To think me as well a sister as a wife,     One day shall crown th\' alliance on\'t, so please you,     Here at my house, and at my proper cost.   DUKE. Madam, I am most apt t\' embrace your offer.     [To VIOLA] Your master quits you; and, for your service done       him,     So much against the mettle of your sex,     So far beneath your soft and tender breeding,     And since you call\'d me master for so long,     Here is my hand; you shall from this time be     You master\'s mistress.   OLIVIA. A sister! You are she.                  Re-enter FABIAN, with MALVOLIO    DUKE. Is this the madman?   OLIVIA. Ay, my lord, this same.     How now, Malvolio!     MALVOLIO. Madam, you have done me wrong,     Notorious wrong.   OLIVIA. Have I, Malvolio? No.   MALVOLIO. Lady, you have. Pray you peruse that letter.     You must not now deny it is your hand;     Write from it if you can, in hand or phrase;     Or say \'tis not your seal, not your invention;     You can say none of this. Well, grant it then,     And tell me, in the modesty of honour,     Why you have given me such clear lights of favour,     Bade me come smiling and cross-garter\'d to you,     To put on yellow stockings, and to frown     Upon Sir Toby and the lighter people;     And, acting this in an obedient hope,     Why have you suffer\'d me to be imprison\'d,     Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,     And made the most notorious geck and gul     That e\'er invention play\'d on? Tell me why.   OLIVIA. Alas, Malvolio, this is not my writing,     Though, I confess, much like the character;       But out of question \'tis Maria\'s hand.     And now I do bethink me, it was she     First told me thou wast mad; then cam\'st in smiling,     And in such forms which here were presuppos\'d     Upon thee in the letter. Prithee, be content;     This practice hath most shrewdly pass\'d upon thee,     But, when we know the grounds and authors of it,     Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge     Of thine own cause.   FABIAN. Good madam, hear me speak,     And let no quarrel nor no brawl to come     Taint the condition of this present hour,     Which I have wond\'red at. In hope it shall not,     Most freely I confess myself and Toby     Set this device against Malvolio here,     Upon some stubborn and uncourteous parts     We had conceiv\'d against him. Maria writ     The letter, at Sir Toby\'s great importance,     In recompense whereof he hath married her.     How with a sportful malice it was follow\'d       May rather pluck on laughter than revenge,     If that the injuries be justly weigh\'d     That have on both sides pass\'d.   OLIVIA. Alas, poor fool, how have they baffl\'d thee!   CLOWN. Why, \'Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some     have greatness thrown upon them.\' I was one, sir, in this     interlude- one Sir Topas, sir; but that\'s all one. \'By the Lord,     fool, I am not mad!\' But do you remember- \'Madam, why laugh you     at such a barren rascal? An you smile not, he\'s gagg\'d\'? And thus     the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.   MALVOLIO. I\'ll be reveng\'d on the whole pack of you.  Exit   OLIVIA. He hath been most notoriously abus\'d.   DUKE. Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace;     He hath not told us of the captain yet.     When that is known, and golden time convents,     A solemn combination shall be made     Of our dear souls. Meantime, sweet sister,     We will not part from hence. Cesario, come;     For so you shall be while you are a man;       But when in other habits you are seen,     Orsino\'s mistress, and his fancy\'s queen.                                         Exeunt all but the CLOWN                          CLOWN sings             When that I was and a little tiny boy,              With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,            A foolish thing was but a toy,              For the rain it raineth every day.             But when I came to man\'s estate,              With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,            \'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,              For the rain it raineth every day.             But when I came, alas! to wive,              With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,            By swaggering could I never thrive,              For the rain it raineth every day.               But when I came unto my beds,              With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,            With toss-pots still had drunken heads,              For the rain it raineth every day.             A great while ago the world begun,              With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,            But that\'s all one, our play is done,            And we\'ll strive to please you every day.  Exit  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    1595  THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA  by William Shakespeare    DRAMATIS PERSONAE    DUKE OF MILAN, father to Silvia   VALENTINE, one of the two gentlemen   PROTEUS,    "  "   "   "     "   ANTONIO, father to Proteus   THURIO, a foolish rival to Valentine   EGLAMOUR, agent for Silvia in her escape   SPEED, a clownish servant to Valentine   LAUNCE, the like to Proteus   PANTHINO, servant to Antonio   HOST, where Julia lodges in Milan   OUTLAWS, with Valentine    JULIA, a lady of Verona, beloved of Proteus   SILVIA, the Duke\'s daughter, beloved of Valentine   LUCETTA, waiting-woman to Julia    SERVANTS   MUSICIANS     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    SCENE:   Verona; Milan; the frontiers of Mantua   ACT I. SCENE I. Verona. An open place  Enter VALENTINE and PROTEUS    VALENTINE. Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus:     Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.     Were\'t not affection chains thy tender days     To the sweet glances of thy honour\'d love,     I rather would entreat thy company     To see the wonders of the world abroad,     Than, living dully sluggardiz\'d at home,     Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.     But since thou lov\'st, love still, and thrive therein,     Even as I would, when I to love begin.   PROTEUS. Wilt thou be gone? Sweet Valentine, adieu!     Think on thy Proteus, when thou haply seest     Some rare noteworthy object in thy travel.     Wish me partaker in thy happiness     When thou dost meet good hap; and in thy danger,     If ever danger do environ thee,     Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers,       For I will be thy headsman, Valentine.   VALENTINE. And on a love-book pray for my success?   PROTEUS. Upon some book I love I\'ll pray for thee.   VALENTINE. That\'s on some shallow story of deep love:     How young Leander cross\'d the Hellespont.   PROTEUS. That\'s a deep story of a deeper love;     For he was more than over shoes in love.   VALENTINE. \'Tis true; for you are over boots in love,     And yet you never swum the Hellespont.   PROTEUS. Over the boots! Nay, give me not the boots.   VALENTINE. No, I will not, for it boots thee not.   PROTEUS. What?   VALENTINE. To be in love- where scorn is bought with groans,     Coy looks with heart-sore sighs, one fading moment\'s mirth     With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights;     If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain;     If lost, why then a grievous labour won;     However, but a folly bought with wit,     Or else a wit by folly vanquished.   PROTEUS. So, by your circumstance, you call me fool.     VALENTINE. So, by your circumstance, I fear you\'ll prove.   PROTEUS. \'Tis love you cavil at; I am not Love.   VALENTINE. Love is your master, for he masters you;     And he that is so yoked by a fool,     Methinks, should not be chronicled for wise.   PROTEUS. Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud     The eating canker dwells, so eating love     Inhabits in the finest wits of all.   VALENTINE. And writers say, as the most forward bud     Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,     Even so by love the young and tender wit     Is turn\'d to folly, blasting in the bud,     Losing his verdure even in the prime,     And all the fair effects of future hopes.     But wherefore waste I time to counsel the     That art a votary to fond desire?     Once more adieu. My father at the road     Expects my coming, there to see me shipp\'d.   PROTEUS. And thither will I bring thee, Valentine.   VALENTINE. Sweet Proteus, no; now let us take our leave.       To Milan let me hear from thee by letters     Of thy success in love, and what news else     Betideth here in absence of thy friend;     And I likewise will visit thee with mine.   PROTEUS. All happiness bechance to thee in Milan!   VALENTINE. As much to you at home; and so farewell!                                                   Exit VALENTINE   PROTEUS. He after honour hunts, I after love;     He leaves his friends to dignify them more:     I leave myself, my friends, and all for love.     Thou, Julia, thou hast metamorphis\'d me,     Made me neglect my studies, lose my time,     War with good counsel, set the world at nought;     Made wit with musing weak, heart sick with thought.                           Enter SPEED    SPEED. Sir Proteus, save you! Saw you my master?   PROTEUS. But now he parted hence to embark for Milan.   SPEED. Twenty to one then he is shipp\'d already,       And I have play\'d the sheep in losing him.   PROTEUS. Indeed a sheep doth very often stray,     An if the shepherd be awhile away.   SPEED. You conclude that my master is a shepherd then, and     I a sheep?   PROTEUS. I do.   SPEED. Why then, my horns are his horns, whether I wake or sleep.   PROTEUS. A silly answer, and fitting well a sheep.   SPEED. This proves me still a sheep.   PROTEUS. True; and thy master a shepherd.   SPEED. Nay, that I can deny by a circumstance.   PROTEUS. It shall go hard but I\'ll prove it by another.   SPEED. The shepherd seeks the sheep, and not the sheep the     shepherd; but I seek my master, and my master seeks not me;     therefore, I am no sheep.   PROTEUS. The sheep for fodder follow the shepherd; the shepherd for     food follows not the sheep: thou for wages followest thy master;     thy master for wages follows not thee. Therefore, thou art a     sheep.   SPEED. Such another proof will make me cry \'baa.\'     PROTEUS. But dost thou hear? Gav\'st thou my letter to Julia?   SPEED. Ay, sir; I, a lost mutton, gave your letter to her, a lac\'d     mutton; and she, a lac\'d mutton, gave me, a lost mutton, nothing     for my labour.   PROTEUS. Here\'s too small a pasture for such store of muttons.   SPEED. If the ground be overcharg\'d, you were best stick her.   PROTEUS. Nay, in that you are astray: \'twere best pound you.   SPEED. Nay, sir, less than a pound shall serve me for carrying your     letter.   PROTEUS. You mistake; I mean the pound- a pinfold.   SPEED. From a pound to a pin? Fold it over and over,     \'Tis threefold too little for carrying a letter to your lover.   PROTEUS. But what said she?   SPEED.  [Nodding]  Ay.   PROTEUS. Nod- ay. Why, that\'s \'noddy.\'   SPEED. You mistook, sir; I say she did nod; and you ask me if she     did nod; and I say \'Ay.\'   PROTEUS. And that set together is \'noddy.\'   SPEED. Now you have taken the pains to set it together, take it for     your pains.     PROTEUS. No, no; you shall have it for bearing the letter.   SPEED. Well, I perceive I must be fain to bear with you.   PROTEUS. Why, sir, how do you bear with me?   SPEED. Marry, sir, the letter, very orderly; having nothing but the     word \'noddy\' for my pains.   PROTEUS. Beshrew me, but you have a quick wit.   SPEED. And yet it cannot overtake your slow purse.   PROTEUS. Come, come, open the matter; in brief, what said she?   SPEED. Open your purse, that the money and the matter may be both     at once delivered.   PROTEUS. Well, sir, here is for your pains. What said she?   SPEED. Truly, sir, I think you\'ll hardly win her.   PROTEUS. Why, couldst thou perceive so much from her?   SPEED. Sir, I could perceive nothing at all from her; no, not so     much as a ducat for delivering your letter; and being so hard to     me that brought your mind, I fear she\'ll prove as hard to you in     telling your mind. Give her no token but stones, for she\'s as     hard as steel.   PROTEUS. What said she? Nothing?   SPEED. No, not so much as \'Take this for thy pains.\' To testify       your bounty, I thank you, you have testern\'d me; in requital     whereof, henceforth carry your letters yourself; and so, sir,     I\'ll commend you to my master.   PROTEUS. Go, go, be gone, to save your ship from wreck,     Which cannot perish, having thee aboard,     Being destin\'d to a drier death on shore.         Exit SPEED     I must go send some better messenger.     I fear my Julia would not deign my lines,     Receiving them from such a worthless post.              Exit     SCENE II. Verona. The garden Of JULIA\'S house  Enter JULIA and LUCETTA    JULIA. But say, Lucetta, now we are alone,     Wouldst thou then counsel me to fall in love?   LUCETTA. Ay, madam; so you stumble not unheedfully.   JULIA. Of all the fair resort of gentlemen     That every day with parle encounter me,     In thy opinion which is worthiest love?   LUCETTA. Please you, repeat their names; I\'ll show my mind     According to my shallow simple skill.   JULIA. What think\'st thou of the fair Sir Eglamour?   LUCETTA. As of a knight well-spoken, neat, and fine;     But, were I you, he never should be mine.   JULIA. What think\'st thou of the rich Mercatio?   LUCETTA. Well of his wealth; but of himself, so so.   JULIA. What think\'st thou of the gentle Proteus?   LUCETTA. Lord, Lord! to see what folly reigns in us!   JULIA. How now! what means this passion at his name?   LUCETTA. Pardon, dear madam; \'tis a passing shame       That I, unworthy body as I am,     Should censure thus on lovely gentlemen.   JULIA. Why not on Proteus, as of all the rest?   LUCETTA. Then thus: of many good I think him best.   JULIA. Your reason?   LUCETTA. I have no other but a woman\'s reason:     I think him so, because I think him so.   JULIA. And wouldst thou have me cast my love on him?   LUCETTA. Ay, if you thought your love not cast away.   JULIA. Why, he, of all the rest, hath never mov\'d me.   LUCETTA. Yet he, of all the rest, I think, best loves ye.   JULIA. His little speaking shows his love but small.   LUCETTA. Fire that\'s closest kept burns most of all.   JULIA. They do not love that do not show their love.   LUCETTA. O, they love least that let men know their love.   JULIA. I would I knew his mind.   LUCETTA. Peruse this paper, madam.   JULIA. \'To Julia\'- Say, from whom?   LUCETTA. That the contents will show.   JULIA. Say, say, who gave it thee?     LUCETTA. Sir Valentine\'s page; and sent, I think, from Proteus.     He would have given it you; but I, being in the way,     Did in your name receive it; pardon the fault, I pray.   JULIA. Now, by my modesty, a goodly broker!     Dare you presume to harbour wanton lines?     To whisper and conspire against my youth?     Now, trust me, \'tis an office of great worth,     And you an officer fit for the place.     There, take the paper; see it be return\'d;     Or else return no more into my sight.   LUCETTA. To plead for love deserves more fee than hate.   JULIA. Will ye be gone?   LUCETTA. That you may ruminate.                           Exit   JULIA. And yet, I would I had o\'erlook\'d the letter.     It were a shame to call her back again,     And pray her to a fault for which I chid her.     What fool is she, that knows I am a maid     And would not force the letter to my view!     Since maids, in modesty, say \'No\' to that     Which they would have the profferer construe \'Ay.\'       Fie, fie, how wayward is this foolish love,     That like a testy babe will scratch the nurse,     And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod!     How churlishly I chid Lucetta hence,     When willingly I would have had her here!     How angerly I taught my brow to frown,     When inward joy enforc\'d my heart to smile!     My penance is to call Lucetta back     And ask remission for my folly past.     What ho! Lucetta!                       Re-enter LUCETTA    LUCETTA. What would your ladyship?   JULIA. Is\'t near dinner time?   LUCETTA. I would it were,     That you might kill your stomach on your meat     And not upon your maid.   JULIA. What is\'t that you took up so gingerly?   LUCETTA. Nothing.     JULIA. Why didst thou stoop then?   LUCETTA. To take a paper up that I let fall.   JULIA. And is that paper nothing?   LUCETTA. Nothing concerning me.   JULIA. Then let it lie for those that it concerns.   LUCETTA. Madam, it will not lie where it concerns,     Unless it have a false interpreter.   JULIA. Some love of yours hath writ to you in rhyme.   LUCETTA. That I might sing it, madam, to a tune.     Give me a note; your ladyship can set.   JULIA. As little by such toys as may be possible.     Best sing it to the tune of \'Light o\' Love.\'   LUCETTA. It is too heavy for so light a tune.   JULIA. Heavy! belike it hath some burden then.   LUCETTA. Ay; and melodious were it, would you sing it.   JULIA. And why not you?   LUCETTA. I cannot reach so high.   JULIA. Let\'s see your song.     [LUCETTA withholds the letter]     How now, minion!   LUCETTA. Keep tune there still, so you will sing it out.       And yet methinks I do not like this tune.   JULIA. You do not!   LUCETTA. No, madam; \'tis too sharp.   JULIA. You, minion, are too saucy.   LUCETTA. Nay, now you are too flat     And mar the concord with too harsh a descant;     There wanteth but a mean to fill your song.   JULIA. The mean is drown\'d with your unruly bass.   LUCETTA. Indeed, I bid the base for Proteus.   JULIA. This babble shall not henceforth trouble me.     Here is a coil with protestation!         [Tears the letter]     Go, get you gone; and let the papers lie.     You would be fing\'ring them, to anger me.   LUCETTA. She makes it strange; but she would be best pleas\'d     To be so ang\'red with another letter.                   Exit   JULIA. Nay, would I were so ang\'red with the same!     O hateful hands, to tear such loving words!     Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey     And kill the bees that yield it with your stings!     I\'ll kiss each several paper for amends.       Look, here is writ \'kind Julia.\' Unkind Julia,     As in revenge of thy ingratitude,     I throw thy name against the bruising stones,     Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain.     And here is writ \'love-wounded Proteus.\'     Poor wounded name! my bosom,,as a bed,     Shall lodge thee till thy wound be throughly heal\'d;     And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss.     But twice or thrice was \'Proteus\' written down.     Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away     Till I have found each letter in the letter-     Except mine own name; that some whirlwind bear     Unto a ragged, fearful, hanging rock,     And throw it thence into the raging sea.     Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ:     \'Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus,     To the sweet Julia.\' That I\'ll tear away;     And yet I will not, sith so prettily     He couples it to his complaining names.     Thus will I fold them one upon another;       Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will.                          Re-enter LUCETTA    LUCETTA. Madam,     Dinner is ready, and your father stays.   JULIA. Well, let us go.   LUCETTA. What, shall these papers lie like tell-tales here?   JULIA. If you respect them, best to take them up.   LUCETTA. Nay, I was taken up for laying them down;     Yet here they shall not lie for catching cold.   JULIA. I see you have a month\'s mind to them.   LUCETTA. Ay, madam, you may say what sights you see;     I see things too, although you judge I wink.   JULIA. Come, come; will\'t please you go?                Exeunt     SCENE III. Verona. ANTONIO\'S house  Enter ANTONIO and PANTHINO    ANTONIO. Tell me, Panthino, what sad talk was that     Wherewith my brother held you in the cloister?   PANTHINO. \'Twas of his nephew Proteus, your son.   ANTONIO. Why, what of him?   PANTHINO. He wond\'red that your lordship     Would suffer him to spend his youth at home,     While other men, of slender reputation,     Put forth their sons to seek preferment out:     Some to the wars, to try their fortune there;     Some to discover islands far away;     Some to the studious universities.     For any, or for all these exercises,     He said that Proteus, your son, was meet;     And did request me to importune you     To let him spend his time no more at home,     Which would be great impeachment to his age,     In having known no travel in his youth.     ANTONIO. Nor need\'st thou much importune me to that     Whereon this month I have been hammering.     I have consider\'d well his loss of time,     And how he cannot be a perfect man,     Not being tried and tutor\'d in the world:     Experience is by industry achiev\'d,     And perfected by the swift course of time.     Then tell me whither were I best to send him.   PANTHINO. I think your lordship is not ignorant     How his companion, youthful Valentine,     Attends the Emperor in his royal court.   ANTONIO. I know it well.   PANTHINO. \'Twere good, I think, your lordship sent him thither:     There shall he practise tilts and tournaments,     Hear sweet discourse, converse with noblemen,     And be in eye of every exercise     Worthy his youth and nobleness of birth.   ANTONIO. I like thy counsel; well hast thou advis\'d;     And that thou mayst perceive how well I like it,     The execution of it shall make known:       Even with the speediest expedition     I will dispatch him to the Emperor\'s court.   PANTHINO. To-morrow, may it please you, Don Alphonso     With other gentlemen of good esteem     Are journeying to salute the Emperor,     And to commend their service to his will.   ANTONIO. Good company; with them shall Proteus go.                          Enter PROTEUS      And- in good time!- now will we break with him.   PROTEUS. Sweet love! sweet lines! sweet life!     Here is her hand, the agent of her heart;     Here is her oath for love, her honour\'s pawn.     O that our fathers would applaud our loves,     To seal our happiness with their consents!     O heavenly Julia!   ANTONIO. How now! What letter are you reading there?   PROTEUS. May\'t please your lordship, \'tis a word or two     Of commendations sent from Valentine,       Deliver\'d by a friend that came from him.   ANTONIO. Lend me the letter; let me see what news.   PROTEUS. There is no news, my lord; but that he writes     How happily he lives, how well-belov\'d     And daily graced by the Emperor;     Wishing me with him, partner of his fortune.   ANTONIO. And how stand you affected to his wish?   PROTEUS. As one relying on your lordship\'s will,     And not depending on his friendly wish.   ANTONIO. My will is something sorted with his wish.     Muse not that I thus suddenly proceed;     For what I will, I will, and there an end.     I am resolv\'d that thou shalt spend some time     With Valentinus in the Emperor\'s court;     What maintenance he from his friends receives,     Like exhibition thou shalt have from me.     To-morrow be in readiness to go-     Excuse it not, for I am peremptory.   PROTEUS. My lord, I cannot be so soon provided;     Please you, deliberate a day or two.     ANTONIO. Look what thou want\'st shall be sent after thee.     No more of stay; to-morrow thou must go.     Come on, Panthino; you shall be employ\'d     To hasten on his expedition.                                      Exeunt ANTONIO and PANTHINO   PROTEUS. Thus have I shunn\'d the fire for fear of burning,     And drench\'d me in the sea, where I am drown\'d.     I fear\'d to show my father Julia\'s letter,     Lest he should take exceptions to my love;     And with the vantage of mine own excuse     Hath he excepted most against my love.     O, how this spring of love resembleth     The uncertain glory of an April day,     Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,     And by an by a cloud takes all away!                         Re-enter PANTHINO    PANTHINO. Sir Proteus, your father calls for you;     He is in haste; therefore, I pray you, go.     PROTEUS. Why, this it is: my heart accords thereto;     And yet a thousand times it answers \'No.\'             Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. Milan. The DUKE\'S palace  Enter VALENTINE and SPEED    SPEED. Sir, your glove.   VALENTINE. Not mine: my gloves are on.   SPEED. Why, then, this may be yours; for this is but one.   VALENTINE. Ha! let me see; ay, give it me, it\'s mine;     Sweet ornament that decks a thing divine!     Ah, Silvia! Silvia!   SPEED.  [Calling]  Madam Silvia! Madam Silvia!   VALENTINE. How now, sirrah?   SPEED. She is not within hearing, sir.   VALENTINE. Why, sir, who bade you call her?   SPEED. Your worship, sir; or else I mistook.   VALENTINE. Well, you\'ll still be too forward.   SPEED. And yet I was last chidden for being too slow.   VALENTINE. Go to, sir; tell me, do you know Madam Silvia?   SPEED. She that your worship loves?   VALENTINE. Why, how know you that I am in love?   SPEED. Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learn\'d, like       Sir Proteus, to wreath your arms like a malcontent; to relish a     love-song, like a robin redbreast; to walk alone, like one that     had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his     A B C; to weep, like a young wench that had buried her grandam;     to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch, like one that fears     robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were     wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walk\'d, to     walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently     after dinner; when you look\'d sadly, it was for want of money.     And now you are metamorphis\'d with a mistress, that, when I look     on you, I can hardly think you my master.   VALENTINE. Are all these things perceiv\'d in me?   SPEED. They are all perceiv\'d without ye.   VALENTINE. Without me? They cannot.   SPEED. Without you! Nay, that\'s certain; for, without you were so     simple, none else would; but you are so without these follies     that these follies are within you, and shine through you like the     water in an urinal, that not an eye that sees you but is a     physician to comment on your malady.   VALENTINE. But tell me, dost thou know my lady Silvia?     SPEED. She that you gaze on so, as she sits at supper?   VALENTINE. Hast thou observ\'d that? Even she, I mean.   SPEED. Why, sir, I know her not.   VALENTINE. Dost thou know her by my gazing on her, and yet know\'st     her not?   SPEED. Is she not hard-favour\'d, sir?   VALENTINE. Not so fair, boy, as well-favour\'d.   SPEED. Sir, I know that well enough.   VALENTINE. What dost thou know?   SPEED. That she is not so fair as, of you, well-favour\'d.   VALENTINE. I mean that her beauty is exquisite, but her favour     infinite.   SPEED. That\'s because the one is painted, and the other out of all     count.   VALENTINE. How painted? and how out of count?   SPEED. Marry, sir, so painted, to make her fair, that no man counts     of her beauty.   VALENTINE. How esteem\'st thou me? I account of her beauty.   SPEED. You never saw her since she was deform\'d.   VALENTINE. How long hath she been deform\'d?     SPEED. Ever since you lov\'d her.   VALENTINE. I have lov\'d her ever since I saw her, and still     I see her beautiful.   SPEED. If you love her, you cannot see her.   VALENTINE. Why?   SPEED. Because Love is blind. O that you had mine eyes; or your own     eyes had the lights they were wont to have when you chid at Sir     Proteus for going ungarter\'d!   VALENTINE. What should I see then?   SPEED. Your own present folly and her passing deformity; for he,     being in love, could not see to garter his hose; and you, being     in love, cannot see to put on your hose.   VALENTINE. Belike, boy, then you are in love; for last morning you     could not see to wipe my shoes.   SPEED. True, sir; I was in love with my bed. I thank you, you     swing\'d me for my love, which makes me the bolder to chide you     for yours.   VALENTINE. In conclusion, I stand affected to her.   SPEED. I would you were set, so your affection would cease.   VALENTINE. Last night she enjoin\'d me to write some lines to one       she loves.   SPEED. And have you?   VALENTINE. I have.   SPEED. Are they not lamely writ?   VALENTINE. No, boy, but as well as I can do them.                             Enter SILVIA      Peace! here she comes.   SPEED.  [Aside]  O excellent motion! O exceeding puppet!     Now will he interpret to her.   VALENTINE. Madam and mistress, a thousand good morrows.   SPEED.  [Aside]  O, give ye good ev\'n!     Here\'s a million of manners.   SILVIA. Sir Valentine and servant, to you two thousand.   SPEED.  [Aside]  He should give her interest, and she gives it him.   VALENTINE. As you enjoin\'d me, I have writ your letter     Unto the secret nameless friend of yours;     Which I was much unwilling to proceed in,     But for my duty to your ladyship.     SILVIA. I thank you, gentle servant. \'Tis very clerkly done.   VALENTINE. Now trust me, madam, it came hardly off;     For, being ignorant to whom it goes,     I writ at random, very doubtfully.   SILVIA. Perchance you think too much of so much pains?   VALENTINE. No, madam; so it stead you, I will write,     Please you command, a thousand times as much;     And yet-   SILVIA. A pretty period! Well, I guess the sequel;     And yet I will not name it- and yet I care not.     And yet take this again- and yet I thank you-     Meaning henceforth to trouble you no more.   SPEED.  [Aside]  And yet you will; and yet another\' yet.\'   VALENTINE. What means your ladyship? Do you not like it?   SILVIA. Yes, yes; the lines are very quaintly writ;     But, since unwillingly, take them again.     Nay, take them.                      [Gives hack the letter]   VALENTINE. Madam, they are for you.   SILVIA. Ay, ay, you writ them, sir, at my request;     But I will none of them; they are for you:       I would have had them writ more movingly.   VALENTINE. Please you, I\'ll write your ladyship another.   SILVIA. And when it\'s writ, for my sake read it over;     And if it please you, so; if not, why, so.   VALENTINE. If it please me, madam, what then?   SILVIA. Why, if it please you, take it for your labour.     And so good morrow, servant.                     Exit SILVIA   SPEED. O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible,     As a nose on a man\'s face, or a weathercock on a steeple!     My master sues to her; and she hath taught her suitor,     He being her pupil, to become her tutor.     O excellent device! Was there ever heard a better,     That my master, being scribe, to himself should write the letter?   VALENTINE. How now, sir! What are you reasoning with yourself?   SPEED. Nay, I was rhyming: \'tis you that have the reason.   VALENTINE. To do what?   SPEED. To be a spokesman from Madam Silvia?   VALENTINE. To whom?   SPEED. To yourself; why, she woos you by a figure.   VALENTINE. What figure?     SPEED. By a letter, I should say.   VALENTINE. Why, she hath not writ to me.   SPEED. What need she, when she hath made you write to yourself?     Why, do you not perceive the jest?   VALENTINE. No, believe me.   SPEED. No believing you indeed, sir. But did you perceive her     earnest?   VALENTINE. She gave me none except an angry word.   SPEED. Why, she hath given you a letter.   VALENTINE. That\'s the letter I writ to her friend.   SPEED. And that letter hath she deliver\'d, and there an end.   VALENTINE. I would it were no worse.   SPEED. I\'ll warrant you \'tis as well.     \'For often have you writ to her; and she, in modesty,     Or else for want of idle time, could not again reply;     Or fearing else some messenger that might her mind discover,     Herself hath taught her love himself to write unto her lover.\'     All this I speak in print, for in print I found it. Why muse you,     sir? \'Tis dinner time.   VALENTINE. I have din\'d.     SPEED. Ay, but hearken, sir; though the chameleon Love can feed on     the air, I am one that am nourish\'d by my victuals, and would     fain have meat. O, be not like your mistress! Be moved, be moved.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE II. Verona. JULIA\'S house  Enter PROTEUS and JULIA    PROTEUS. Have patience, gentle Julia.   JULIA. I must, where is no remedy.   PROTEUS. When possibly I can, I will return.   JULIA. If you turn not, you will return the sooner.     Keep this remembrance for thy Julia\'s sake.                                                  [Giving a ring]   PROTEUS. Why, then, we\'ll make exchange. Here, take you this.   JULIA. And seal the bargain with a holy kiss.   PROTEUS. Here is my hand for my true constancy;     And when that hour o\'erslips me in the day     Wherein I sigh not, Julia, for thy sake,     The next ensuing hour some foul mischance     Torment me for my love\'s forgetfulness!     My father stays my coming; answer not;     The tide is now- nay, not thy tide of tears:     That tide will stay me longer than I should.     Julia, farewell!                                  Exit JULIA       What, gone without a word?     Ay, so true love should do: it cannot speak;     For truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.                            Enter PANTHINO    PANTHINO. Sir Proteus, you are stay\'d for.   PROTEUS. Go; I come, I come.     Alas! this parting strikes poor lovers dumb.          Exeunt     SCENE III. Verona. A street  Enter LAUNCE, leading a dog    LAUNCE. Nay, \'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping; all the     kind of the Launces have this very fault. I have receiv\'d my     proportion, like the Prodigious Son, and am going with Sir     Proteus to the Imperial\'s court. I think Crab my dog be the     sourest-natured dog that lives: my mother weeping, my father     wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her     hands, and all our house in a great perplexity; yet did not this     cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebble     stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog. A Jew would have     wept to have seen our parting; why, my grandam having no eyes,     look you, wept herself blind at my parting. Nay, I\'ll show you     the manner of it. This shoe is my father; no, this left shoe is     my father; no, no, left shoe is my mother; nay, that cannot be so     neither; yes, it is so, it is so, it hath the worser sole. This     shoe with the hole in it is my mother, and this my father. A     vengeance on \'t! There \'tis. Now, sir, this staff is my sister,     for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a wand;       this hat is Nan our maid; I am the dog; no, the dog is himself,     and I am the dog- O, the dog is me, and I am myself; ay, so, so.     Now come I to my father: \'Father, your blessing.\' Now should not     the shoe speak a word for weeping; now should I kiss my father;     well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother. O that she could     speak now like a wood woman! Well, I kiss her- why there \'tis;     here\'s my mother\'s breath up and down. Now come I to my sister;     mark the moan she makes. Now the dog all this while sheds not a     tear, nor speaks a word; but see how I lay the dust with my     tears.                              Enter PANTHINO    PANTHINO. Launce, away, away, aboard! Thy master is shipp\'d, and     thou art to post after with oars. What\'s the matter? Why weep\'st     thou, man? Away, ass! You\'ll lose the tide if you tarry any     longer.   LAUNCE. It is no matter if the tied were lost; for it is the     unkindest tied that ever any man tied.   PANTHINO. What\'s the unkindest tide?     LAUNCE. Why, he that\'s tied here, Crab, my dog.   PANTHINO. Tut, man, I mean thou\'lt lose the flood, and, in losing     the flood, lose thy voyage, and, in losing thy voyage, lose thy     master, and, in losing thy master, lose thy service, and, in     losing thy service- Why dost thou stop my mouth?   LAUNCE. For fear thou shouldst lose thy tongue.   PANTHINO. Where should I lose my tongue?   LAUNCE. In thy tale.   PANTHINO. In thy tail!   LAUNCE. Lose the tide, and the voyage, and the master, and the     service, and the tied! Why, man, if the river were dry, I am able     to fill it with my tears; if the wind were down, I could drive     the boat with my sighs.   PANTHINO. Come, come away, man; I was sent to call thee.   LAUNCE. Sir, call me what thou dar\'st.   PANTHINO. Will thou go?   LAUNCE. Well, I will go.                                Exeunt     SCENE IV. Milan. The DUKE\'S palace  Enter SILVIA, VALENTINE, THURIO, and SPEED    SILVIA. Servant!   VALENTINE. Mistress?   SPEED. Master, Sir Thurio frowns on you.   VALENTINE. Ay, boy, it\'s for love.   SPEED. Not of you.   VALENTINE. Of my mistress, then.   SPEED. \'Twere good you knock\'d him.                       Exit   SILVIA. Servant, you are sad.   VALENTINE. Indeed, madam, I seem so.   THURIO. Seem you that you are not?   VALENTINE. Haply I do.   THURIO. So do counterfeits.   VALENTINE. So do you.   THURIO. What seem I that I am not?   VALENTINE. Wise.   THURIO. What instance of the contrary?   VALENTINE. Your folly.     THURIO. And how quote you my folly?   VALENTINE. I quote it in your jerkin.   THURIO. My jerkin is a doublet.   VALENTINE. Well, then, I\'ll double your folly.   THURIO. How?   SILVIA. What, angry, Sir Thurio! Do you change colour?   VALENTINE. Give him leave, madam; he is a kind of chameleon.   THURIO. That hath more mind to feed on your blood than live in your     air.   VALENTINE. You have said, sir.   THURIO. Ay, sir, and done too, for this time.   VALENTINE. I know it well, sir; you always end ere you begin.   SILVIA. A fine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly shot off.   VALENTINE. \'Tis indeed, madam; we thank the giver.   SILVIA. Who is that, servant?   VALENTINE. Yourself, sweet lady; for you gave the fire. Sir Thurio     borrows his wit from your ladyship\'s looks, and spends what he     borrows kindly in your company.   THURIO. Sir, if you spend word for word with me, I shall make your     wit bankrupt.     VALENTINE. I know it well, sir; you have an exchequer of words,     and, I think, no other treasure to give your followers; for it     appears by their bare liveries that they live by your bare words.                               Enter DUKE    SILVIA. No more, gentlemen, no more. Here comes my father.   DUKE. Now, daughter Silvia, you are hard beset.     Sir Valentine, your father is in good health.     What say you to a letter from your friends     Of much good news?   VALENTINE. My lord, I will be thankful     To any happy messenger from thence.   DUKE. Know ye Don Antonio, your countryman?   VALENTINE. Ay, my good lord, I know the gentleman     To be of worth and worthy estimation,     And not without desert so well reputed.   DUKE. Hath he not a son?   VALENTINE. Ay, my good lord; a son that well deserves     The honour and regard of such a father.     DUKE. You know him well?   VALENTINE. I knew him as myself; for from our infancy     We have convers\'d and spent our hours together;     And though myself have been an idle truant,     Omitting the sweet benefit of time     To clothe mine age with angel-like perfection,     Yet hath Sir Proteus, for that\'s his name,     Made use and fair advantage of his days:     His years but young, but his experience old;     His head unmellowed, but his judgment ripe;     And, in a word, for far behind his worth     Comes all the praises that I now bestow,     He is complete in feature and in mind,     With all good grace to grace a gentleman.   DUKE. Beshrew me, sir, but if he make this good,     He is as worthy for an empress\' love     As meet to be an emperor\'s counsellor.     Well, sir, this gentleman is come to me     With commendation from great potentates,     And here he means to spend his time awhile.       I think \'tis no unwelcome news to you.   VALENTINE. Should I have wish\'d a thing, it had been he.   DUKE. Welcome him, then, according to his worth-     Silvia, I speak to you, and you, Sir Thurio;     For Valentine, I need not cite him to it.     I will send him hither to you presently.           Exit DUKE   VALENTINE. This is the gentleman I told your ladyship     Had come along with me but that his mistresss     Did hold his eyes lock\'d in her crystal looks.   SILVIA. Belike that now she hath enfranchis\'d them     Upon some other pawn for fealty.   VALENTINE. Nay, sure, I think she holds them prisoners still.   SILVIA. Nay, then, he should be blind; and, being blind,     How could he see his way to seek out you?   VALENTINE. Why, lady, Love hath twenty pair of eyes.   THURIO. They say that Love hath not an eye at all.   VALENTINE. To see such lovers, Thurio, as yourself;     Upon a homely object Love can wink.              Exit THURIO                           Enter PROTEUS      SILVIA. Have done, have done; here comes the gentleman.   VALENTINE. Welcome, dear Proteus! Mistress, I beseech you     Confirm his welcome with some special favour.   SILVIA. His worth is warrant for his welcome hither,     If this be he you oft have wish\'d to hear from.   VALENTINE. Mistress, it is; sweet lady, entertain him     To be my fellow-servant to your ladyship.   SILVIA. Too low a mistress for so high a servant.   PROTEUS. Not so, sweet lady; but too mean a servant     To have a look of such a worthy mistress.   VALENTINE. Leave off discourse of disability;     Sweet lady, entertain him for your servant.   PROTEUS. My duty will I boast of, nothing else.   SILVIA. And duty never yet did want his meed.     Servant, you are welcome to a worthless mistress.   PROTEUS. I\'ll die on him that says so but yourself.   SILVIA. That you are welcome?   PROTEUS. That you are worthless.                              Re-enter THURIO    THURIO. Madam, my lord your father would speak with you.   SILVIA. I wait upon his pleasure. Come, Sir Thurio,     Go with me. Once more, new servant, welcome.     I\'ll leave you to confer of home affairs;     When you have done we look to hear from you.   PROTEUS. We\'ll both attend upon your ladyship.                                         Exeunt SILVIA and THURIO   VALENTINE. Now, tell me, how do all from whence you came?   PROTEUS. Your friends are well, and have them much commended.   VALENTINE. And how do yours?   PROTEUS. I left them all in health.   VALENTINE. How does your lady, and how thrives your love?   PROTEUS. My tales of love were wont to weary you;     I know you joy not in a love-discourse.   VALENTINE. Ay, Proteus, but that life is alter\'d now;     I have done penance for contemning Love,     Whose high imperious thoughts have punish\'d me     With bitter fasts, with penitential groans,       With nightly tears, and daily heart-sore sighs;     For, in revenge of my contempt of love,     Love hath chas\'d sleep from my enthralled eyes     And made them watchers of mine own heart\'s sorrow.     O gentle Proteus, Love\'s a mighty lord,     And hath so humbled me as I confess     There is no woe to his correction,     Nor to his service no such joy on earth.     Now no discourse, except it be of love;     Now can I break my fast, dine, sup, and sleep,     Upon the very naked name of love.   PROTEUS. Enough; I read your fortune in your eye.     Was this the idol that you worship so?   VALENTINE. Even she; and is she not a heavenly saint?   PROTEUS. No; but she is an earthly paragon.   VALENTINE. Call her divine.   PROTEUS. I will not flatter her.   VALENTINE. O, flatter me; for love delights in praises!   PROTEUS. When I was sick you gave me bitter pills,     And I must minister the like to you.     VALENTINE. Then speak the truth by her; if not divine,     Yet let her be a principality,     Sovereign to all the creatures on the earth.   PROTEUS. Except my mistress.   VALENTINE. Sweet, except not any;     Except thou wilt except against my love.   PROTEUS. Have I not reason to prefer mine own?   VALENTINE. And I will help thee to prefer her too:     She shall be dignified with this high honour-     To bear my lady\'s train, lest the base earth     Should from her vesture chance to steal a kiss     And, of so great a favour growing proud,     Disdain to root the summer-swelling flow\'r     And make rough winter everlastingly.   PROTEUS. Why, Valentine, what braggardism is this?   VALENTINE. Pardon me, Proteus; all I can is nothing     To her, whose worth makes other worthies nothing;     She is alone.   PROTEUS. Then let her alone.   VALENTINE. Not for the world! Why, man, she is mine own;       And I as rich in having such a jewel     As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,     The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.     Forgive me that I do not dream on thee,     Because thou seest me dote upon my love.     My foolish rival, that her father likes     Only for his possessions are so huge,     Is gone with her along; and I must after,     For love, thou know\'st, is full of jealousy.   PROTEUS. But she loves you?   VALENTINE. Ay, and we are betroth\'d; nay more, our marriage-hour,     With all the cunning manner of our flight,     Determin\'d of- how I must climb her window,     The ladder made of cords, and all the means     Plotted and \'greed on for my happiness.     Good Proteus, go with me to my chamber,     In these affairs to aid me with thy counsel.   PROTEUS. Go on before; I shall enquire you forth;     I must unto the road to disembark     Some necessaries that I needs must use;       And then I\'ll presently attend you.   VALENTINE. Will you make haste?   PROTEUS. I will.                                Exit VALENTINE     Even as one heat another heat expels     Or as one nail by strength drives out another,     So the remembrance of my former love     Is by a newer object quite forgotten.     Is it my mind, or Valentinus\' praise,     Her true perfection, or my false transgression,     That makes me reasonless to reason thus?     She is fair; and so is Julia that I love-     That I did love, for now my love is thaw\'d;     Which like a waxen image \'gainst a fire     Bears no impression of the thing it was.     Methinks my zeal to Valentine is cold,     And that I love him not as I was wont.     O! but I love his lady too too much,     And that\'s the reason I love him so little.     How shall I dote on her with more advice     That thus without advice begin to love her!       \'Tis but her picture I have yet beheld,     And that hath dazzled my reason\'s light;     But when I look on her perfections,     There is no reason but I shall be blind.     If I can check my erring love, I will;     If not, to compass her I\'ll use my skill.               Exit     SCENE V. Milan. A street  Enter SPEED and LAUNCE severally    SPEED. Launce! by mine honesty, welcome to Padua.   LAUNCE. Forswear not thyself, sweet youth, for I am not welcome. I     reckon this always, that a man is never undone till he be hang\'d,     nor never welcome to a place till some certain shot be paid, and     the hostess say \'Welcome!\'   SPEED. Come on, you madcap; I\'ll to the alehouse with you     presently; where, for one shot of five pence, thou shalt have     five thousand welcomes. But, sirrah, how did thy master part with     Madam Julia?   LAUNCE. Marry, after they clos\'d in earnest, they parted very     fairly in jest.   SPEED. But shall she marry him?   LAUNCE. No.   SPEED. How then? Shall he marry her?   LAUNCE. No, neither.   SPEED. What, are they broken?   LAUNCE. No, they are both as whole as a fish.     SPEED. Why then, how stands the matter with them?   LAUNCE. Marry, thus: when it stands well with him, it stands well     with her.   SPEED. What an ass art thou! I understand thee not.   LAUNCE. What a block art thou that thou canst not! My staff     understands me.   SPEED. What thou say\'st?   LAUNCE. Ay, and what I do too; look thee, I\'ll but lean, and my     staff understands me.   SPEED. It stands under thee, indeed.   LAUNCE. Why, stand-under and under-stand is all one.   SPEED. But tell me true, will\'t be a match?   LAUNCE. Ask my dog. If he say ay, it will; if he say no, it will;     if he shake his tail and say nothing, it will.   SPEED. The conclusion is, then, that it will.   LAUNCE. Thou shalt never get such a secret from me but by a     parable.   SPEED. \'Tis well that I get it so. But, Launce, how say\'st thou     that my master is become a notable lover?   LAUNCE. I never knew him otherwise.     SPEED. Than how?   LAUNCE. A notable lubber, as thou reportest him to be.   SPEED. Why, thou whoreson ass, thou mistak\'st me.   LAUNCE. Why, fool, I meant not thee, I meant thy master.   SPEED. I tell thee my master is become a hot lover.   LAUNCE. Why, I tell thee I care not though he burn himself in love.     If thou wilt, go with me to the alehouse; if not, thou art an     Hebrew, a Jew, and not worth the name of a Christian.   SPEED. Why?   LAUNCE. Because thou hast not so much charity in thee as to go to     the ale with a Christian. Wilt thou go?   SPEED. At thy service.                                  Exeunt     SCENE VI. Milan. The DUKE\'s palace  Enter PROTEUS    PROTEUS. To leave my Julia, shall I be forsworn;     To love fair Silvia, shall I be forsworn;     To wrong my friend, I shall be much forsworn;     And ev\'n that pow\'r which gave me first my oath     Provokes me to this threefold perjury:     Love bade me swear, and Love bids me forswear.     O sweet-suggesting Love, if thou hast sinn\'d,     Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it!     At first I did adore a twinkling star,     But now I worship a celestial sun.     Unheedful vows may heedfully be broken;     And he wants wit that wants resolved will     To learn his wit t\' exchange the bad for better.     Fie, fie, unreverend tongue, to call her bad     Whose sovereignty so oft thou hast preferr\'d     With twenty thousand soul-confirming oaths!     I cannot leave to love, and yet I do;       But there I leave to love where I should love.     Julia I lose, and Valentine I lose;     If I keep them, I needs must lose myself;     If I lose them, thus find I by their loss:     For Valentine, myself; for Julia, Silvia.     I to myself am dearer than a friend;     For love is still most precious in itself;     And Silvia- witness heaven, that made her fair!-     Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope.     I will forget that Julia is alive,     Rememb\'ring that my love to her is dead;     And Valentine I\'ll hold an enemy,     Aiming at Silvia as a sweeter friend.     I cannot now prove constant to myself     Without some treachery us\'d to Valentine.     This night he meaneth with a corded ladder     To climb celestial Silvia\'s chamber window,     Myself in counsel, his competitor.     Now presently I\'ll give her father notice     Of their disguising and pretended flight,       Who, all enrag\'d, will banish Valentine,     For Thurio, he intends, shall wed his daughter;     But, Valentine being gone, I\'ll quickly cross     By some sly trick blunt Thurio\'s dull proceeding.     Love, lend me wings to make my purpose swift,     As thou hast lent me wit to plot this drift.            Exit     SCENE VII. Verona. JULIA\'S house  Enter JULIA and LUCETTA    JULIA. Counsel, Lucetta; gentle girl, assist me;     And, ev\'n in kind love, I do conjure thee,     Who art the table wherein all my thoughts     Are visibly character\'d and engrav\'d,     To lesson me and tell me some good mean     How, with my honour, I may undertake     A journey to my loving Proteus.   LUCETTA. Alas, the way is wearisome and long!   JULIA. A true-devoted pilgrim is not weary     To measure kingdoms with his feeble steps;     Much less shall she that hath Love\'s wings to fly,     And when the flight is made to one so dear,     Of such divine perfection, as Sir Proteus.   LUCETTA. Better forbear till Proteus make return.   JULIA. O, know\'st thou not his looks are my soul\'s food?     Pity the dearth that I have pined in     By longing for that food so long a time.       Didst thou but know the inly touch of love.     Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow     As seek to quench the fire of love with words.   LUCETTA. I do not seek to quench your love\'s hot fire,     But qualify the fire\'s extreme rage,     Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason.   JULIA. The more thou dam\'st it up, the more it burns.     The current that with gentle murmur glides,     Thou know\'st, being stopp\'d, impatiently doth rage;     But when his fair course is not hindered,     He makes sweet music with th\' enamell\'d stones,     Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge     He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;     And so by many winding nooks he strays,     With willing sport, to the wild ocean.     Then let me go, and hinder not my course.     I\'ll be as patient as a gentle stream,     And make a pastime of each weary step,     Till the last step have brought me to my love;     And there I\'ll rest as, after much turmoil,       A blessed soul doth in Elysium.   LUCETTA. But in what habit will you go along?   JULIA. Not like a woman, for I would prevent     The loose encounters of lascivious men;     Gentle Lucetta, fit me with such weeds     As may beseem some well-reputed page.   LUCETTA. Why then, your ladyship must cut your hair.   JULIA. No, girl; I\'ll knit it up in silken strings     With twenty odd-conceited true-love knots-     To be fantastic may become a youth     Of greater time than I shall show to be.   LUCETTA. What fashion, madam, shall I make your breeches?   JULIA. That fits as well as \'Tell me, good my lord,     What compass will you wear your farthingale.\'     Why ev\'n what fashion thou best likes, Lucetta.   LUCETTA. You must needs have them with a codpiece, madam.   JULIA. Out, out, Lucetta, that will be ill-favour\'d.   LUCETTA. A round hose, madam, now\'s not worth a pin,     Unless you have a codpiece to stick pins on.   JULIA. Lucetta, as thou lov\'st me, let me have       What thou think\'st meet, and is most mannerly.     But tell me, wench, how will the world repute me     For undertaking so unstaid a journey?     I fear me it will make me scandaliz\'d.   LUCETTA. If you think so, then stay at home and go not.   JULIA. Nay, that I will not.   LUCETTA. Then never dream on infamy, but go.     If Proteus like your journey when you come,     No matter who\'s displeas\'d when you are gone.     I fear me he will scarce be pleas\'d withal.   JULIA. That is the least, Lucetta, of my fear:     A thousand oaths, an ocean of his tears,     And instances of infinite of love,     Warrant me welcome to my Proteus.   LUCETTA. All these are servants to deceitful men.   JULIA. Base men that use them to so base effect!     But truer stars did govern Proteus\' birth;     His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles,     His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate,     His tears pure messengers sent from his heart,       His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.   LUCETTA. Pray heav\'n he prove so when you come to him.   JULIA. Now, as thou lov\'st me, do him not that wrong     To bear a hard opinion of his truth;     Only deserve my love by loving him.     And presently go with me to my chamber,     To take a note of what I stand in need of     To furnish me upon my longing journey.     All that is mine I leave at thy dispose,     My goods, my lands, my reputation;     Only, in lieu thereof, dispatch me hence.     Come, answer not, but to it presently;     I am impatient of my tarriance.                       Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. Milan. The DUKE\'S palace  Enter DUKE, THURIO, and PROTEUS    DUKE. Sir Thurio, give us leave, I pray, awhile;     We have some secrets to confer about.            Exit THURIO     Now tell me, Proteus, what\'s your will with me?   PROTEUS. My gracious lord, that which I would discover     The law of friendship bids me to conceal;     But, when I call to mind your gracious favours     Done to me, undeserving as I am,     My duty pricks me on to utter that     Which else no worldly good should draw from me.     Know, worthy prince, Sir Valentine, my friend,     This night intends to steal away your daughter;     Myself am one made privy to the plot.     I know you have determin\'d to bestow her     On Thurio, whom your gentle daughter hates;     And should she thus be stol\'n away from you,     It would be much vexation to your age.     Thus, for my duty\'s sake, I rather chose       To cross my friend in his intended drift     Than, by concealing it, heap on your head     A pack of sorrows which would press you down,     Being unprevented, to your timeless grave.   DUKE. Proteus, I thank thee for thine honest care,     Which to requite, command me while I live.     This love of theirs myself have often seen,     Haply when they have judg\'d me fast asleep,     And oftentimes have purpos\'d to forbid     Sir Valentine her company and my court;     But, fearing lest my jealous aim might err     And so, unworthily, disgrace the man,     A rashness that I ever yet have shunn\'d,     I gave him gentle looks, thereby to find     That which thyself hast now disclos\'d to me.     And, that thou mayst perceive my fear of this,     Knowing that tender youth is soon suggested,     I nightly lodge her in an upper tow\'r,     The key whereof myself have ever kept;     And thence she cannot be convey\'d away.     PROTEUS. Know, noble lord, they have devis\'d a mean     How he her chamber window will ascend     And with a corded ladder fetch her down;     For which the youthful lover now is gone,     And this way comes he with it presently;     Where, if it please you, you may intercept him.     But, good my lord, do it so cunningly     That my discovery be not aimed at;     For love of you, not hate unto my friend,     Hath made me publisher of this pretence.   DUKE. Upon mine honour, he shall never know     That I had any light from thee of this.   PROTEUS. Adieu, my lord; Sir Valentine is coming.         Exit                          Enter VALENTINE    DUKE. Sir Valentine, whither away so fast?   VALENTINE. Please it your Grace, there is a messenger     That stays to bear my letters to my friends,     And I am going to deliver them.     DUKE. Be they of much import?   VALENTINE. The tenour of them doth but signify     My health and happy being at your court.   DUKE. Nay then, no matter; stay with me awhile;     I am to break with thee of some affairs     That touch me near, wherein thou must be secret.     \'Tis not unknown to thee that I have sought     To match my friend Sir Thurio to my daughter.   VALENTINE. I know it well, my lord; and, sure, the match     Were rich and honourable; besides, the gentleman     Is full of virtue, bounty, worth, and qualities     Beseeming such a wife as your fair daughter.     Cannot your grace win her to fancy him?   DUKE. No, trust me; she is peevish, sullen, froward,     Proud, disobedient, stubborn, lacking duty;     Neither regarding that she is my child     Nor fearing me as if I were her father;     And, may I say to thee, this pride of hers,     Upon advice, hath drawn my love from her;     And, where I thought the remnant of mine age       Should have been cherish\'d by her childlike duty,     I now am full resolv\'d to take a wife     And turn her out to who will take her in.     Then let her beauty be her wedding-dow\'r;     For me and my possessions she esteems not.   VALENTINE. What would your Grace have me to do in this?   DUKE. There is a lady, in Verona here,     Whom I affect; but she is nice, and coy,     And nought esteems my aged eloquence.     Now, therefore, would I have thee to my tutor-     For long agone I have forgot to court;     Besides, the fashion of the time is chang\'d-     How and which way I may bestow myself     To be regarded in her sun-bright eye.   VALENTINE. Win her with gifts, if she respect not words:     Dumb jewels often in their silent kind     More than quick words do move a woman\'s mind.   DUKE. But she did scorn a present that I sent her.   VALENTINE. A woman sometime scorns what best contents her.     Send her another; never give her o\'er,       For scorn at first makes after-love the more.     If she do frown, \'tis not in hate of you,     But rather to beget more love in you;     If she do chide, \'tis not to have you gone,     For why, the fools are mad if left alone.     Take no repulse, whatever she doth say;     For \'Get you gone\' she doth not mean \'Away!\'     Flatter and praise, commend, extol their graces;     Though ne\'er so black, say they have angels\' faces.     That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man,     If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.   DUKE. But she I mean is promis\'d by her friends     Unto a youthful gentleman of worth;     And kept severely from resort of men,     That no man hath access by day to her.   VALENTINE. Why then I would resort to her by night.   DUKE. Ay, but the doors be lock\'d and keys kept safe,     That no man hath recourse to her by night.   VALENTINE. What lets but one may enter at her window?   DUKE. Her chamber is aloft, far from the ground,       And built so shelving that one cannot climb it     Without apparent hazard of his life.   VALENTINE. Why then a ladder, quaintly made of cords,     To cast up with a pair of anchoring hooks,     Would serve to scale another Hero\'s tow\'r,     So bold Leander would adventure it.   DUKE. Now, as thou art a gentleman of blood,     Advise me where I may have such a ladder.   VALENTINE. When would you use it? Pray, sir, tell me that.   DUKE. This very night; for Love is like a child,     That longs for everything that he can come by.   VALENTINE. By seven o\'clock I\'ll get you such a ladder.   DUKE. But, hark thee; I will go to her alone;     How shall I best convey the ladder thither?   VALENTINE. It will be light, my lord, that you may bear it     Under a cloak that is of any length.   DUKE. A cloak as long as thine will serve the turn?   VALENTINE. Ay, my good lord.   DUKE. Then let me see thy cloak.     I\'ll get me one of such another length.     VALENTINE. Why, any cloak will serve the turn, my lord.   DUKE. How shall I fashion me to wear a cloak?     I pray thee, let me feel thy cloak upon me.     What letter is this same? What\'s here? \'To Silvia\'!     And here an engine fit for my proceeding!     I\'ll be so bold to break the seal for once.          [Reads]       \'My thoughts do harbour with my Silvia nightly,         And slaves they are to me, that send them flying.       O, could their master come and go as lightly,         Himself would lodge where, senseless, they are lying!       My herald thoughts in thy pure bosom rest them,         While I, their king, that thither them importune,       Do curse the grace that with such grace hath blest them,         Because myself do want my servants\' fortune.       I curse myself, for they are sent by me,         That they should harbour where their lord should be.\'     What\'s here?       \'Silvia, this night I will enfranchise thee.\'     \'Tis so; and here\'s the ladder for the purpose.     Why, Phaethon- for thou art Merops\' son-       Wilt thou aspire to guide the heavenly car,     And with thy daring folly burn the world?     Wilt thou reach stars because they shine on thee?     Go, base intruder, over-weening slave,     Bestow thy fawning smiles on equal mates;     And think my patience, more than thy desert,     Is privilege for thy departure hence.     Thank me for this more than for all the favours     Which, all too much, I have bestow\'d on thee.     But if thou linger in my territories     Longer than swiftest expedition     Will give thee time to leave our royal court,     By heaven! my wrath shall far exceed the love     I ever bore my daughter or thyself.     Be gone; I will not hear thy vain excuse,     But, as thou lov\'st thy life, make speed from hence.    Exit   VALENTINE. And why not death rather than living torment?     To die is to be banish\'d from myself,     And Silvia is myself; banish\'d from her     Is self from self, a deadly banishment.       What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?     What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?     Unless it be to think that she is by,     And feed upon the shadow of perfection.     Except I be by Silvia in the night,     There is no music in the nightingale;     Unless I look on Silvia in the day,     There is no day for me to look upon.     She is my essence, and I leave to be     If I be not by her fair influence     Foster\'d, illumin\'d, cherish\'d, kept alive.     I fly not death, to fly his deadly doom:     Tarry I here, I but attend on death;     But fly I hence, I fly away from life.                        Enter PROTEUS and LAUNCE    PROTEUS. Run, boy, run, run, seek him out.   LAUNCE. So-ho, so-ho!   PROTEUS. What seest thou?     LAUNCE. Him we go to find: there\'s not a hair on \'s head but \'tis a     Valentine.   PROTEUS. Valentine?   VALENTINE. No.   PROTEUS. Who then? his spirit?   VALENTINE. Neither.   PROTEUS. What then?   VALENTINE. Nothing.   LAUNCE. Can nothing speak? Master, shall I strike?   PROTEUS. Who wouldst thou strike?   LAUNCE. Nothing.   PROTEUS. Villain, forbear.   LAUNCE. Why, sir, I\'ll strike nothing. I pray you-   PROTEUS. Sirrah, I say, forbear. Friend Valentine, a word.   VALENTINE. My ears are stopp\'d and cannot hear good news,     So much of bad already hath possess\'d them.   PROTEUS. Then in dumb silence will I bury mine,     For they are harsh, untuneable, and bad.   VALENTINE. Is Silvia dead?   PROTEUS. No, Valentine.     VALENTINE. No Valentine, indeed, for sacred Silvia.     Hath she forsworn me?   PROTEUS. No, Valentine.   VALENTINE. No Valentine, if Silvia have forsworn me.     What is your news?   LAUNCE. Sir, there is a proclamation that you are vanished.   PROTEUS. That thou art banished- O, that\'s the news!-     From hence, from Silvia, and from me thy friend.   VALENTINE. O, I have fed upon this woe already,     And now excess of it will make me surfeit.     Doth Silvia know that I am banished?   PROTEUS. Ay, ay; and she hath offered to the doom-     Which, unrevers\'d, stands in effectual force-     A sea of melting pearl, which some call tears;     Those at her father\'s churlish feet she tender\'d;     With them, upon her knees, her humble self,     Wringing her hands, whose whiteness so became them     As if but now they waxed pale for woe.     But neither bended knees, pure hands held up,     Sad sighs, deep groans, nor silver-shedding tears,       Could penetrate her uncompassionate sire-     But Valentine, if he be ta\'en, must die.     Besides, her intercession chaf\'d him so,     When she for thy repeal was suppliant,     That to close prison he commanded her,     With many bitter threats of biding there.   VALENTINE. No more; unless the next word that thou speak\'st     Have some malignant power upon my life:     If so, I pray thee breathe it in mine ear,     As ending anthem of my endless dolour.   PROTEUS. Cease to lament for that thou canst not help,     And study help for that which thou lament\'st.     Time is the nurse and breeder of all good.     Here if thou stay thou canst not see thy love;     Besides, thy staying will abridge thy life.     Hope is a lover\'s staff; walk hence with that,     And manage it against despairing thoughts.     Thy letters may be here, though thou art hence,     Which, being writ to me, shall be deliver\'d     Even in the milk-white bosom of thy love.       The time now serves not to expostulate.     Come, I\'ll convey thee through the city gate;     And, ere I part with thee, confer at large     Of all that may concern thy love affairs.     As thou lov\'st Silvia, though not for thyself,     Regard thy danger, and along with me.   VALENTINE. I pray thee, Launce, an if thou seest my boy,     Bid him make haste and meet me at the Northgate.   PROTEUS. Go, sirrah, find him out. Come, Valentine.   VALENTINE. O my dear Silvia! Hapless Valentine!                                     Exeunt VALENTINE and PROTEUS   LAUNCE. I am but a fool, look you, and yet I have the wit to think     my master is a kind of a knave; but that\'s all one if he be but     one knave. He lives not now that knows me to be in love; yet I am     in love; but a team of horse shall not pluck that from me; nor     who \'tis I love; and yet \'tis a woman; but what woman I will not     tell myself; and yet \'tis a milkmaid; yet \'tis not a maid, for     she hath had gossips; yet \'tis a maid, for she is her master\'s     maid and serves for wages. She hath more qualities than a     water-spaniel- which is much in a bare Christian. Here is the       cate-log  [Pulling out a paper]  of her condition. \'Inprimis: She     can fetch and carry.\' Why, a horse can do no more; nay, a horse     cannot fetch, but only carry; therefore is she better than a     jade. \'Item: She can milk.\' Look you, a sweet virtue in a maid     with clean hands.                               Enter SPEED    SPEED. How now, Signior Launce! What news with your mastership?   LAUNCE. With my master\'s ship? Why, it is at sea.   SPEED. Well, your old vice still: mistake the word. What news,     then, in your paper?   LAUNCE. The black\'st news that ever thou heard\'st.   SPEED. Why, man? how black?   LAUNCE. Why, as black as ink.   SPEED. Let me read them.   LAUNCE. Fie on thee, jolt-head; thou canst not read.   SPEED. Thou liest; I can.   LAUNCE. I will try thee. Tell me this: Who begot thee?   SPEED. Marry, the son of my grandfather.     LAUNCE. O illiterate loiterer. It was the son of thy grandmother.     This proves that thou canst not read.   SPEED. Come, fool, come; try me in thy paper.   LAUNCE.  [Handing over the paper]  There; and Saint Nicholas be thy     speed.   SPEED.  [Reads]  \'Inprimis: She can milk.\'   LAUNCE. Ay, that she can.   SPEED. \'Item: She brews good ale.\'   LAUNCE. And thereof comes the proverb: Blessing of your heart, you     brew good ale.   SPEED. \'Item: She can sew.\'   LAUNCE. That\'s as much as to say \'Can she so?\'   SPEED. \'Item: She can knit.\'   LAUNCE. What need a man care for a stock with a wench, when she can     knit him a stock.   SPEED. \'Item: She can wash and scour.\'   LAUNCE. A special virtue; for then she need not be wash\'d and     scour\'d.   SPEED. \'Item: She can spin.\'   LAUNCE. Then may I set the world on wheels, when she can spin for       her living.   SPEED. \'Item: She hath many nameless virtues.\'   LAUNCE. That\'s as much as to say \'bastard virtues\'; that indeed     know not their fathers, and therefore have no names.   SPEED. \'Here follow her vices.\'   LAUNCE. Close at the heels of her virtues.   SPEED. \'Item: She is not to be kiss\'d fasting, in respect of her     breath.\'   LAUNCE. Well, that fault may be mended with a breakfast.     Read on.   SPEED. \'Item: She hath a sweet mouth.\'   LAUNCE. That makes amends for her sour breath.   SPEED. \'Item: She doth talk in her sleep.\'   LAUNCE. It\'s no matter for that, so she sleep not in her talk.   SPEED. \'Item: She is slow in words.\'   LAUNCE. O villain, that set this down among her vices! To be slow     in words is a woman\'s only virtue. I pray thee, out with\'t; and     place it for her chief virtue.   SPEED. \'Item: She is proud.\'   LAUNCE. Out with that too; it was Eve\'s legacy, and cannot be ta\'en       from her.   SPEED. \'Item: She hath no teeth.\'   LAUNCE. I care not for that neither, because I love crusts.   SPEED. \'Item: She is curst.\'   LAUNCE. Well, the best is, she hath no teeth to bite.   SPEED. \'Item: She will often praise her liquor.\'   LAUNCE. If her liquor be good, she shall; if she will not, I will;     for good things should be praised.   SPEED. \'Item: She is too liberal.\'   LAUNCE. Of her tongue she cannot, for that\'s writ down she is slow     of; of her purse she shall not, for that I\'ll keep shut. Now of     another thing she may, and that cannot I help. Well, proceed.   SPEED. \'Item: She hath more hair than wit, and more faults     than hairs, and more wealth than faults.\'   LAUNCE. Stop there; I\'ll have her; she was mine, and not mine,     twice or thrice in that last article. Rehearse that once more.   SPEED. \'Item: She hath more hair than wit\'-   LAUNCE. More hair than wit. It may be; I\'ll prove it: the cover of     the salt hides the salt, and therefore it is more than the salt;     the hair that covers the wit is more than the wit, for the       greater hides the less. What\'s next?   SPEED. \'And more faults than hairs\'-   LAUNCE. That\'s monstrous. O that that were out!   SPEED. \'And more wealth than faults.\'   LAUNCE. Why, that word makes the faults gracious. Well, I\'ll have     her; an if it be a match, as nothing is impossible-   SPEED. What then?   LAUNCE. Why, then will I tell thee- that thy master stays for thee     at the Northgate.   SPEED. For me?   LAUNCE. For thee! ay, who art thou? He hath stay\'d for a better man     than thee.   SPEED. And must I go to him?   LAUNCE. Thou must run to him, for thou hast stay\'d so long that     going will scarce serve the turn.   SPEED. Why didst not tell me sooner? Pox of your love letters!  Exit   LAUNCE. Now will he be swing\'d for reading my letter. An unmannerly     slave that will thrust himself into secrets! I\'ll after, to     rejoice in the boy\'s correction.                        Exit     SCENE II. Milan. The DUKE\'S palace  Enter DUKE and THURIO    DUKE. Sir Thurio, fear not but that she will love you     Now Valentine is banish\'d from her sight.   THURIO. Since his exile she hath despis\'d me most,     Forsworn my company and rail\'d at me,     That I am desperate of obtaining her.   DUKE. This weak impress of love is as a figure     Trenched in ice, which with an hour\'s heat     Dissolves to water and doth lose his form.     A little time will melt her frozen thoughts,     And worthless Valentine shall be forgot.                            Enter PROTEUS      How now, Sir Proteus! Is your countryman,     According to our proclamation, gone?   PROTEUS. Gone, my good lord.   DUKE. My daughter takes his going grievously.     PROTEUS. A little time, my lord, will kill that grief.   DUKE. So I believe; but Thurio thinks not so.     Proteus, the good conceit I hold of thee-     For thou hast shown some sign of good desert-     Makes me the better to confer with thee.   PROTEUS. Longer than I prove loyal to your Grace     Let me not live to look upon your Grace.   DUKE. Thou know\'st how willingly I would effect     The match between Sir Thurio and my daughter.   PROTEUS. I do, my lord.   DUKE. And also, I think, thou art not ignorant     How she opposes her against my will.   PROTEUS. She did, my lord, when Valentine was here.   DUKE. Ay, and perversely she persevers so.     What might we do to make the girl forget     The love of Valentine, and love Sir Thurio?   PROTEUS. The best way is to slander Valentine     With falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent-     Three things that women highly hold in hate.   DUKE. Ay, but she\'ll think that it is spoke in hate.     PROTEUS. Ay, if his enemy deliver it;     Therefore it must with circumstance be spoken     By one whom she esteemeth as his friend.   DUKE. Then you must undertake to slander him.   PROTEUS. And that, my lord, I shall be loath to do:     \'Tis an ill office for a gentleman,     Especially against his very friend.   DUKE. Where your good word cannot advantage him,     Your slander never can endamage him;     Therefore the office is indifferent,     Being entreated to it by your friend.   PROTEUS. You have prevail\'d, my lord; if I can do it     By aught that I can speak in his dispraise,     She shall not long continue love to him.     But say this weed her love from Valentine,     It follows not that she will love Sir Thurio.   THURIO. Therefore, as you unwind her love from him,     Lest it should ravel and be good to none,     You must provide to bottom it on me;     Which must be done by praising me as much       As you in worth dispraise Sir Valentine.   DUKE. And, Proteus, we dare trust you in this kind,     Because we know, on Valentine\'s report,     You are already Love\'s firm votary     And cannot soon revolt and change your mind.     Upon this warrant shall you have access     Where you with Silvia may confer at large-     For she is lumpish, heavy, melancholy,     And, for your friend\'s sake, will be glad of you-     Where you may temper her by your persuasion     To hate young Valentine and love my friend.   PROTEUS. As much as I can do I will effect.     But you, Sir Thurio, are not sharp enough;     You must lay lime to tangle her desires     By wailful sonnets, whose composed rhymes     Should be full-fraught with serviceable vows.   DUKE. Ay,     Much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.   PROTEUS. Say that upon the altar of her beauty     You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart;       Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears     Moist it again, and frame some feeling line     That may discover such integrity;     For Orpheus\' lute was strung with poets\' sinews,     Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,     Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans     Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.     After your dire-lamenting elegies,     Visit by night your lady\'s chamber window     With some sweet consort; to their instruments     Tune a deploring dump- the night\'s dead silence     Will well become such sweet-complaining grievance.     This, or else nothing, will inherit her.   DUKE. This discipline shows thou hast been in love.   THURIO. And thy advice this night I\'ll put in practice;     Therefore, sweet Proteus, my direction-giver,     Let us into the city presently     To sort some gentlemen well skill\'d in music.     I have a sonnet that will serve the turn     To give the onset to thy good advice.     DUKE. About it, gentlemen!   PROTEUS. We\'ll wait upon your Grace till after supper,     And afterward determine our proceedings.   DUKE. Even now about it! I will pardon you.             Exeunt     ACT_4|SC_1 <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I. The frontiers of Mantua. A forest  Enter certain OUTLAWS    FIRST OUTLAW. Fellows, stand fast; I see a passenger.   SECOND OUTLAW. If there be ten, shrink not, but down with \'em.                    Enter VALENTINE and SPEED    THIRD OUTLAW. Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about ye;     If not, we\'ll make you sit, and rifle you.   SPEED. Sir, we are undone; these are the villains     That all the travellers do fear so much.   VALENTINE. My friends-   FIRST OUTLAW. That\'s not so, sir; we are your enemies.   SECOND OUTLAW. Peace! we\'ll hear him.   THIRD OUTLAW. Ay, by my beard, will we; for he is a proper man.   VALENTINE. Then know that I have little wealth to lose;     A man I am cross\'d with adversity;     My riches are these poor habiliments,     Of which if you should here disfurnish me,       You take the sum and substance that I have.   SECOND OUTLAW. Whither travel you?   VALENTINE. To Verona.   FIRST OUTLAW. Whence came you?   VALENTINE. From Milan.   THIRD OUTLAW. Have you long sojourn\'d there?   VALENTINE. Some sixteen months, and longer might have stay\'d,     If crooked fortune had not thwarted me.   FIRST OUTLAW. What, were you banish\'d thence?   VALENTINE. I was.   SECOND OUTLAW. For what offence?   VALENTINE. For that which now torments me to rehearse:     I kill\'d a man, whose death I much repent;     But yet I slew him manfully in fight,     Without false vantage or base treachery.   FIRST OUTLAW. Why, ne\'er repent it, if it were done so.     But were you banish\'d for so small a fault?   VALENTINE. I was, and held me glad of such a doom.   SECOND OUTLAW. Have you the tongues?   VALENTINE. My youthful travel therein made me happy,       Or else I often had been miserable.   THIRD OUTLAW. By the bare scalp of Robin Hood\'s fat friar,     This fellow were a king for our wild faction!   FIRST OUTLAW. We\'ll have him. Sirs, a word.   SPEED. Master, be one of them; it\'s an honourable kind of thievery.   VALENTINE. Peace, villain!   SECOND OUTLAW. Tell us this: have you anything to take to?   VALENTINE. Nothing but my fortune.   THIRD OUTLAW. Know, then, that some of us are gentlemen,     Such as the fury of ungovern\'d youth     Thrust from the company of awful men;     Myself was from Verona banished     For practising to steal away a lady,     An heir, and near allied unto the Duke.   SECOND OUTLAW. And I from Mantua, for a gentleman     Who, in my mood, I stabb\'d unto the heart.   FIRST OUTLAW. And I for such-like petty crimes as these.     But to the purpose- for we cite our faults     That they may hold excus\'d our lawless lives;     And, partly, seeing you are beautified       With goodly shape, and by your own report     A linguist, and a man of such perfection     As we do in our quality much want-   SECOND OUTLAW. Indeed, because you are a banish\'d man,     Therefore, above the rest, we parley to you.     Are you content to be our general-     To make a virtue of necessity,     And live as we do in this wilderness?   THIRD OUTLAW. What say\'st thou? Wilt thou be of our consort?     Say \'ay\' and be the captain of us all.     We\'ll do thee homage, and be rul\'d by thee,     Love thee as our commander and our king.   FIRST OUTLAW. But if thou scorn our courtesy thou diest.   SECOND OUTLAW. Thou shalt not live to brag what we have offer\'d.   VALENTINE. I take your offer, and will live with you,     Provided that you do no outrages     On silly women or poor passengers.   THIRD OUTLAW. No, we detest such vile base practices.     Come, go with us; we\'ll bring thee to our crews,     And show thee all the treasure we have got;       Which, with ourselves, all rest at thy dispose.       Exeunt     SCENE II. Milan. Outside the DUKE\'S palace, under SILVIA\'S window  Enter PROTEUS    PROTEUS. Already have I been false to Valentine,     And now I must be as unjust to Thurio.     Under the colour of commending him     I have access my own love to prefer;     But Silvia is too fair, too true, too holy,     To be corrupted with my worthless gifts.     When I protest true loyalty to her,     She twits me with my falsehood to my friend;     When to her beauty I commend my vows,     She bids me think how I have been forsworn     In breaking faith with Julia whom I lov\'d;     And notwithstanding all her sudden quips,     The least whereof would quell a lover\'s hope,     Yet, spaniel-like, the more she spurns my love     The more it grows and fawneth on her still.                   Enter THURIO and MUSICIANS        But here comes Thurio. Now must we to her window,     And give some evening music to her ear.   THURIO. How now, Sir Proteus, are you crept before us?   PROTEUS. Ay, gentle Thurio; for you know that love     Will creep in service where it cannot go.   THURIO. Ay, but I hope, sir, that you love not here.   PROTEUS. Sir, but I do; or else I would be hence.   THURIO. Who? Silvia?   PROTEUS. Ay, Silvia- for your sake.   THURIO. I thank you for your own. Now, gentlemen,     Let\'s tune, and to it lustily awhile.      Enter at a distance, HOST, and JULIA in boy\'s clothes    HOST. Now, my young guest, methinks you\'re allycholly; I pray you,     why is it?   JULIA. Marry, mine host, because I cannot be merry.   HOST. Come, we\'ll have you merry; I\'ll bring you where you shall     hear music, and see the gentleman that you ask\'d for.     JULIA. But shall I hear him speak?   HOST. Ay, that you shall.                        [Music plays]   JULIA. That will be music.   HOST. Hark, hark!   JULIA. Is he among these?   HOST. Ay; but peace! let\'s hear \'em.                     SONG          Who is Silvia? What is she,            That all our swains commend her?          Holy, fair, and wise is she;            The heaven such grace did lend her,          That she might admired be.           Is she kind as she is fair?            For beauty lives with kindness.          Love doth to her eyes repair,            To help him of his blindness;          And, being help\'d, inhabits there.             Then to Silvia let us sing            That Silvia is excelling;          She excels each mortal thing            Upon the dull earth dwelling.          \'To her let us garlands bring.    HOST. How now, are you sadder than you were before?     How do you, man? The music likes you not.   JULIA. You mistake; the musician likes me not.   HOST. Why, my pretty youth?   JULIA. He plays false, father.   HOST. How, out of tune on the strings?   JULIA. Not so; but yet so false that he grieves my very     heart-strings.   HOST. You have a quick ear.   JULIA. Ay, I would I were deaf; it makes me have a slow heart.   HOST. I perceive you delight not in music.   JULIA. Not a whit, when it jars so.   HOST. Hark, what fine change is in the music!   JULIA. Ay, that change is the spite.     HOST. You would have them always play but one thing?   JULIA. I would always have one play but one thing.     But, Host, doth this Sir Proteus, that we talk on,     Often resort unto this gentlewoman?   HOST. I tell you what Launce, his man, told me: he lov\'d her out of     all nick.   JULIA. Where is Launce?   HOST. Gone to seek his dog, which to-morrow, by his master\'s     command, he must carry for a present to his lady.   JULIA. Peace, stand aside; the company parts.   PROTEUS. Sir Thurio, fear not you; I will so plead     That you shall say my cunning drift excels.   THURIO. Where meet we?   PROTEUS. At Saint Gregory\'s well.   THURIO. Farewell.                  Exeunt THURIO and MUSICIANS                    Enter SILVIA above, at her window    PROTEUS. Madam, good ev\'n to your ladyship.   SILVIA. I thank you for your music, gentlemen.       Who is that that spake?   PROTEUS. One, lady, if you knew his pure heart\'s truth,     You would quickly learn to know him by his voice.   SILVIA. Sir Proteus, as I take it.   PROTEUS. Sir Proteus, gentle lady, and your servant.   SILVIA. What\'s your will?   PROTEUS. That I may compass yours.   SILVIA. You have your wish; my will is even this,     That presently you hie you home to bed.     Thou subtle, perjur\'d, false, disloyal man,     Think\'st thou I am so shallow, so conceitless,     To be seduced by thy flattery     That hast deceiv\'d so many with thy vows?     Return, return, and make thy love amends.     For me, by this pale queen of night I swear,     I am so far from granting thy request     That I despise thee for thy wrongful suit,     And by and by intend to chide myself     Even for this time I spend in talking to thee.   PROTEUS. I grant, sweet love, that I did love a lady;       But she is dead.   JULIA.  [Aside]  \'Twere false, if I should speak it;     For I am sure she is not buried.   SILVIA. Say that she be; yet Valentine, thy friend,     Survives, to whom, thyself art witness,     I am betroth\'d; and art thou not asham\'d     To wrong him with thy importunacy?   PROTEUS. I likewise hear that Valentine is dead.   SILVIA. And so suppose am I; for in his grave     Assure thyself my love is buried.   PROTEUS. Sweet lady, let me rake it from the earth.   SILVIA. Go to thy lady\'s grave, and call hers thence;     Or, at the least, in hers sepulchre thine.   JULIA.  [Aside]  He heard not that.   PROTEUS. Madam, if your heart be so obdurate,     Vouchsafe me yet your picture for my love,     The picture that is hanging in your chamber;     To that I\'ll speak, to that I\'ll sigh and weep;     For, since the substance of your perfect self     Is else devoted, I am but a shadow;       And to your shadow will I make true love.   JULIA.  [Aside]  If \'twere a substance, you would, sure, deceive it     And make it but a shadow, as I am.   SILVIA. I am very loath to be your idol, sir;     But since your falsehood shall become you well     To worship shadows and adore false shapes,     Send to me in the morning, and I\'ll send it;     And so, good rest.   PROTEUS. As wretches have o\'ernight     That wait for execution in the morn.                                        Exeunt PROTEUS and SILVIA   JULIA. Host, will you go?   HOST. By my halidom, I was fast asleep.   JULIA. Pray you, where lies Sir Proteus?   HOST. Marry, at my house. Trust me, I think \'tis almost day.   JULIA. Not so; but it hath been the longest night     That e\'er I watch\'d, and the most heaviest.           Exeunt     SCENE III. Under SILVIA\'S window  Enter EGLAMOUR    EGLAMOUR. This is the hour that Madam Silvia     Entreated me to call and know her mind;     There\'s some great matter she\'d employ me in.     Madam, madam!               Enter SILVIA above, at her window    SILVIA. Who calls?   EGLAMOUR. Your servant and your friend;     One that attends your ladyship\'s command.   SILVIA. Sir Eglamour, a thousand times good morrow!   EGLAMOUR. As many, worthy lady, to yourself!     According to your ladyship\'s impose,     I am thus early come to know what service     It is your pleasure to command me in.   SILVIA. O Eglamour, thou art a gentleman-     Think not I flatter, for I swear I do not-       Valiant, wise, remorseful, well accomplish\'d.     Thou art not ignorant what dear good will     I bear unto the banish\'d Valentine;     Nor how my father would enforce me marry     Vain Thurio, whom my very soul abhors.     Thyself hast lov\'d; and I have heard thee say     No grief did ever come so near thy heart     As when thy lady and thy true love died,     Upon whose grave thou vow\'dst pure chastity.     Sir Eglamour, I would to Valentine,     To Mantua, where I hear he makes abode;     And, for the ways are dangerous to pass,     I do desire thy worthy company,     Upon whose faith and honour I repose.     Urge not my father\'s anger, Eglamour,     But think upon my grief, a lady\'s grief,     And on the justice of my flying hence     To keep me from a most unholy match,     Which heaven and fortune still rewards with plagues.     I do desire thee, even from a heart       As full of sorrows as the sea of sands,     To bear me company and go with me;     If not, to hide what I have said to thee,     That I may venture to depart alone.   EGLAMOUR. Madam, I pity much your grievances;     Which since I know they virtuously are plac\'d,     I give consent to go along with you,     Recking as little what betideth me     As much I wish all good befortune you.     When will you go?   SILVIA. This evening coming.   EGLAMOUR. Where shall I meet you?   SILVIA. At Friar Patrick\'s cell,     Where I intend holy confession.   EGLAMOUR. I will not fail your ladyship. Good morrow, gentle lady.   SILVIA. Good morrow, kind Sir Eglamour.                 Exeunt     SCENE IV. Under SILVIA\'S Window  Enter LAUNCE with his dog    LAUNCE. When a man\'s servant shall play the cur with him, look you,     it goes hard- one that I brought up of a puppy; one that I sav\'d     from drowning, when three or four of his blind brothers and     sisters went to it. I have taught him, even as one would say     precisely \'Thus I would teach a dog.\' I was sent to deliver him     as a present to Mistress Silvia from my master; and I came no     sooner into the dining-chamber, but he steps me to her trencher     and steals her capon\'s leg. O, \'tis a foul thing when a cur     cannot keep himself in all companies! I would have, as one should     say, one that takes upon him to be a dog indeed, to be, as it     were, a dog at all things. If I had not had more wit than he, to     take a fault upon me that he did, I think verily he had been     hang\'d for\'t; sure as I live, he had suffer\'d for\'t. You shall     judge. He thrusts me himself into the company of three or four     gentleman-like dogs under the Duke\'s table; he had not been     there, bless the mark, a pissing while but all the chamber smelt     him. \'Out with the dog\' says one; \'What cur is that?\' says       another; \'Whip him out\' says the third; \'Hang him up\' says the     Duke. I, having been acquainted with the smell before, knew it     was Crab, and goes me to the fellow that whips the dogs.     \'Friend,\' quoth I \'you mean to whip the dog.\' \'Ay, marry do I\'     quoth he. \'You do him the more wrong,\' quoth I; "twas I did the     thing you wot of.\' He makes me no more ado, but whips me out of     the chamber. How many masters would do this for his servant? Nay,     I\'ll be sworn, I have sat in the stock for puddings he hath     stol\'n, otherwise he had been executed; I have stood on the     pillory for geese he hath kill\'d, otherwise he had suffer\'d     for\'t. Thou think\'st not of this now. Nay, I remember the trick     you serv\'d me when I took my leave of Madam Silvia. Did not I bid     thee still mark me and do as I do? When didst thou see me heave     up my leg and make water against a gentlewoman\'s farthingale?     Didst thou ever see me do such a trick?                 Enter PROTEUS, and JULIA in boy\'s clothes    PROTEUS. Sebastian is thy name? I like thee well,     And will employ thee in some service presently.     JULIA. In what you please; I\'ll do what I can.   PROTEUS..I hope thou wilt.  [To LAUNCE]  How now, you whoreson       peasant!     Where have you been these two days loitering?   LAUNCE. Marry, sir, I carried Mistress Silvia the dog you bade me.   PROTEUS. And what says she to my little jewel?   LAUNCE. Marry, she says your dog was a cur, and tells you currish     thanks is good enough for such a present.   PROTEUS. But she receiv\'d my dog?   LAUNCE. No, indeed, did she not; here have I brought him back     again.   PROTEUS. What, didst thou offer her this from me?   LAUNCE. Ay, sir; the other squirrel was stol\'n from me by the     hangman\'s boys in the market-place; and then I offer\'d her mine     own, who is a dog as big as ten of yours, and therefore the gift     the greater.   PROTEUS. Go, get thee hence and find my dog again,     Or ne\'er return again into my sight.     Away, I say. Stayest thou to vex me here?        Exit LAUNCE     A slave that still an end turns me to shame!       Sebastian, I have entertained thee     Partly that I have need of such a youth     That can with some discretion do my business,     For \'tis no trusting to yond foolish lout,     But chiefly for thy face and thy behaviour,     Which, if my augury deceive me not,     Witness good bringing up, fortune, and truth;     Therefore, know thou, for this I entertain thee.     Go presently, and take this ring with thee,     Deliver it to Madam Silvia-     She lov\'d me well deliver\'d it to me.   JULIA. It seems you lov\'d not her, to leave her token.     She is dead, belike?   PROTEUS. Not so; I think she lives.   JULIA. Alas!   PROTEUS. Why dost thou cry \'Alas\'?   JULIA. I cannot choose     But pity her.   PROTEUS. Wherefore shouldst thou pity her?   JULIA. Because methinks that she lov\'d you as well       As you do love your lady Silvia.     She dreams on him that has forgot her love:     You dote on her that cares not for your love.     \'Tis pity love should be so contrary;     And thinking on it makes me cry \'Alas!\'   PROTEUS. Well, give her that ring, and therewithal     This letter. That\'s her chamber. Tell my lady     I claim the promise for her heavenly picture.     Your message done, hie home unto my chamber,     Where thou shalt find me sad and solitary.      Exit PROTEUS   JULIA. How many women would do such a message?     Alas, poor Proteus, thou hast entertain\'d     A fox to be the shepherd of thy lambs.     Alas, poor fool, why do I pity him     That with his very heart despiseth me?     Because he loves her, he despiseth me;     Because I love him, I must pity him.     This ring I gave him, when he parted from me,     To bind him to remember my good will;     And now am I, unhappy messenger,       To plead for that which I would not obtain,     To carry that which I would have refus\'d,     To praise his faith, which I would have disprais\'d.     I am my master\'s true confirmed love,     But cannot be true servant to my master     Unless I prove false traitor to myself.     Yet will I woo for him, but yet so coldly     As, heaven it knows, I would not have him speed.                       Enter SILVIA, attended      Gentlewoman, good day! I pray you be my mean     To bring me where to speak with Madam Silvia.   SILVIA. What would you with her, if that I be she?   JULIA. If you be she, I do entreat your patience     To hear me speak the message I am sent on.   SILVIA. From whom?   JULIA. From my master, Sir Proteus, madam.   SILVIA. O, he sends you for a picture?   JULIA. Ay, madam.     SILVIA. Ursula, bring my picture there.     Go, give your master this. Tell him from me,     One Julia, that his changing thoughts forget,     Would better fit his chamber than this shadow.   JULIA. Madam, please you peruse this letter.     Pardon me, madam; I have unadvis\'d     Deliver\'d you a paper that I should not.     This is the letter to your ladyship.   SILVIA. I pray thee let me look on that again.   JULIA. It may not be; good madam, pardon me.   SILVIA. There, hold!     I will not look upon your master\'s lines.     I know they are stuff\'d with protestations,     And full of new-found oaths, which he wul break     As easily as I do tear his paper.   JULIA. Madam, he sends your ladyship this ring.   SILVIA. The more shame for him that he sends it me;     For I have heard him say a thousand times     His Julia gave it him at his departure.     Though his false finger have profan\'d the ring,       Mine shall not do his Julia so much wrong.   JULIA. She thanks you.   SILVIA. What say\'st thou?   JULIA. I thank you, madam, that you tender her.     Poor gentlewoman, my master wrongs her much.   SILVIA. Dost thou know her?   JULIA. Almost as well as I do know myself.     To think upon her woes, I do protest     That I have wept a hundred several times.   SILVIA. Belike she thinks that Proteus hath forsook her.   JULIA. I think she doth, and that\'s her cause of sorrow.   SILVIA. Is she not passing fair?   JULIA. She hath been fairer, madam, than she is.     When she did think my master lov\'d her well,     She, in my judgment, was as fair as you;     But since she did neglect her looking-glass     And threw her sun-expelling mask away,     The air hath starv\'d the roses in her cheeks     And pinch\'d the lily-tincture of her face,     That now she is become as black as I.     SILVIA. How tall was she?   JULIA. About my stature; for at Pentecost,     When all our pageants of delight were play\'d,     Our youth got me to play the woman\'s part,     And I was trimm\'d in Madam Julia\'s gown;     Which served me as fit, by all men\'s judgments,     As if the garment had been made for me;     Therefore I know she is about my height.     And at that time I made her weep a good,     For I did play a lamentable part.     Madam, \'twas Ariadne passioning     For Theseus\' perjury and unjust flight;     Which I so lively acted with my tears     That my poor mistress, moved therewithal,     Wept bitterly; and would I might be dead     If I in thought felt not her very sorrow.   SILVIA. She is beholding to thee, gentle youth.     Alas, poor lady, desolate and left!     I weep myself, to think upon thy words.     Here, youth, there is my purse; I give thee this       For thy sweet mistress\' sake, because thou lov\'st her.     Farewell.                        Exit SILVIA with ATTENDANTS   JULIA. And she shall thank you for\'t, if e\'er you know her.     A virtuous gentlewoman, mild and beautiful!     I hope my master\'s suit will be but cold,     Since she respects my mistress\' love so much.     Alas, how love can trifle with itself!     Here is her picture; let me see. I think,     If I had such a tire, this face of mine     Were full as lovely as is this of hers;     And yet the painter flatter\'d her a little,     Unless I flatter with myself too much.     Her hair is auburn, mine is perfect yellow;     If that be all the difference in his love,     I\'ll get me such a colour\'d periwig.     Her eyes are grey as glass, and so are mine;     Ay, but her forehead\'s low, and mine\'s as high.     What should it be that he respects in her     But I can make respective in myself,     If this fond Love were not a blinded god?       Come, shadow, come, and take this shadow up,     For \'tis thy rival. O thou senseless form,     Thou shalt be worshipp\'d, kiss\'d, lov\'d, and ador\'d!     And were there sense in his idolatry     My substance should be statue in thy stead.     I\'ll use thee kindly for thy mistress\' sake,     That us\'d me so; or else, by Jove I vow,     I should have scratch\'d out your unseeing eyes,     To make my master out of love with thee.                Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. Milan. An abbey  Enter EGLAMOUR    EGLAMOUR. The sun begins to gild the western sky,     And now it is about the very hour     That Silvia at Friar Patrick\'s cell should meet me.     She will not fail, for lovers break not hours     Unless it be to come before their time,     So much they spur their expedition.                           Enter SILVIA      See where she comes. Lady, a happy evening!   SILVIA. Amen, amen! Go on, good Eglamour,     Out at the postern by the abbey wall;     I fear I am attended by some spies.   EGLAMOUR. Fear not. The forest is not three leagues off;     If we recover that, we are sure enough.               Exeunt     SCENE II. Milan. The DUKE\'S palace  Enter THURIO, PROTEUS, and JULIA as SEBASTIAN    THURIO. Sir Proteus, what says Silvia to my suit?   PROTEUS. O, sir, I find her milder than she was;     And yet she takes exceptions at your person.   THURIO. What, that my leg is too long?   PROTEUS. No; that it is too little.   THURIO. I\'ll wear a boot to make it somewhat rounder.   JULIA.  [Aside]  But love will not be spurr\'d to what it loathes.   THURIO. What says she to my face?   PROTEUS. She says it is a fair one.   THURIO. Nay, then, the wanton lies; my face is black.   PROTEUS. But pearls are fair; and the old saying is:     Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies\' eyes.   JULIA.  [Aside]  \'Tis true, such pearls as put out ladies\' eyes;     For I had rather wink than look on them.   THURIO. How likes she my discourse?   PROTEUS. Ill, when you talk of war.   THURIO. But well when I discourse of love and peace?     JULIA.  [Aside]  But better, indeed, when you hold your peace.   THURIO. What says she to my valour?   PROTEUS. O, sir, she makes no doubt of that.   JULIA.  [Aside]  She needs not, when she knows it cowardice.   THURIO. What says she to my birth?   PROTEUS. That you are well deriv\'d.   JULIA.  [Aside]  True; from a gentleman to a fool.   THURIO. Considers she my possessions?   PROTEUS. O, ay; and pities them.   THURIO. Wherefore?   JULIA.  [Aside]  That such an ass should owe them.   PROTEUS. That they are out by lease.   JULIA. Here comes the Duke.                            Enter DUKE    DUKE. How now, Sir Proteus! how now, Thurio!     Which of you saw Sir Eglamour of late?   THURIO. Not I.   PROTEUS. Nor I.     DUKE. Saw you my daughter?   PROTEUS. Neither.   DUKE. Why then,     She\'s fled unto that peasant Valentine;     And Eglamour is in her company.     \'Tis true; for Friar Lawrence met them both     As he in penance wander\'d through the forest;     Him he knew well, and guess\'d that it was she,     But, being mask\'d, he was not sure of it;     Besides, she did intend confession     At Patrick\'s cell this even; and there she was not.     These likelihoods confirm her flight from hence;     Therefore, I pray you, stand not to discourse,     But mount you presently, and meet with me     Upon the rising of the mountain foot     That leads toward Mantua, whither they are fled.     Dispatch, sweet gentlemen, and follow me.               Exit   THURIO. Why, this it is to be a peevish girl     That flies her fortune when it follows her.     I\'ll after, more to be reveng\'d on Eglamour       Than for the love of reckless Silvia.                   Exit   PROTEUS. And I will follow, more for Silvia\'s love     Than hate of Eglamour, that goes with her.              Exit   JULIA. And I will follow, more to cross that love     Than hate for Silvia, that is gone for love.            Exit     SCENE III. The frontiers of Mantua. The forest  Enter OUTLAWS with SILVA    FIRST OUTLAW. Come, come.     Be patient; we must bring you to our captain.   SILVIA. A thousand more mischances than this one     Have learn\'d me how to brook this patiently.   SECOND OUTLAW. Come, bring her away.   FIRST OUTLAW. Where is the gentleman that was with her?   SECOND OUTLAW. Being nimble-footed, he hath outrun us,     But Moyses and Valerius follow him.     Go thou with her to the west end of the wood;     There is our captain; we\'ll follow him that\'s fled.     The thicket is beset; he cannot \'scape.   FIRST OUTLAW. Come, I must bring you to our captain\'s cave;     Fear not; he bears an honourable mind,     And will not use a woman lawlessly.   SILVIA. O Valentine, this I endure for thee!            Exeunt     SCENE IV. Another part of the forest  Enter VALENTINE    VALENTINE. How use doth breed a habit in a man!     This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,     I better brook than flourishing peopled towns.     Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,     And to the nightingale\'s complaining notes     Tune my distresses and record my woes.     O thou that dost inhabit in my breast,     Leave not the mansion so long tenantless,     Lest, growing ruinous, the building fall     And leave no memory of what it was!     Repair me with thy presence, Silvia:     Thou gentle nymph, cherish thy forlorn swain.     What halloing and what stir is this to-day?     These are my mates, that make their wills their law,     Have some unhappy passenger in chase.     They love me well; yet I have much to do     To keep them from uncivil outrages.       Withdraw thee, Valentine. Who\'s this comes here?                                                    [Steps aside]            Enter PROTEUS, SILVIA, and JULIA as Sebastian    PROTEUS. Madam, this service I have done for you,     Though you respect not aught your servant doth,     To hazard life, and rescue you from him     That would have forc\'d your honour and your love.     Vouchsafe me, for my meed, but one fair look;     A smaller boon than this I cannot beg,     And less than this, I am sure, you cannot give.   VALENTINE.  [Aside]  How like a dream is this I see and hear!     Love, lend me patience to forbear awhile.   SILVIA. O miserable, unhappy that I am!   PROTEUS. Unhappy were you, madam, ere I came;     But by my coming I have made you happy.   SILVIA. By thy approach thou mak\'st me most unhappy.   JULIA.  [Aside]  And me, when he approacheth to your presence.   SILVIA. Had I been seized by a hungry lion,       I would have been a breakfast to the beast     Rather than have false Proteus rescue me.     O, heaven be judge how I love Valentine,     Whose life\'s as tender to me as my soul!     And full as much, for more there cannot be,     I do detest false, perjur\'d Proteus.     Therefore be gone; solicit me no more.   PROTEUS. What dangerous action, stood it next to death,     Would I not undergo for one calm look?     O, \'tis the curse in love, and still approv\'d,     When women cannot love where they\'re belov\'d!   SILVIA. When Proteus cannot love where he\'s belov\'d!     Read over Julia\'s heart, thy first best love,     For whose dear sake thou didst then rend thy faith     Into a thousand oaths; and all those oaths     Descended into perjury, to love me.     Thou hast no faith left now, unless thou\'dst two,     And that\'s far worse than none; better have none     Than plural faith, which is too much by one.     Thou counterfeit to thy true friend!     PROTEUS. In love,     Who respects friend?   SILVIA. All men but Proteus.   PROTEUS. Nay, if the gentle spirit of moving words     Can no way change you to a milder form,     I\'ll woo you like a soldier, at arms\' end,     And love you \'gainst the nature of love- force ye.   SILVIA. O heaven!   PROTEUS. I\'ll force thee yield to my desire.   VALENTINE. Ruffian! let go that rude uncivil touch;     Thou friend of an ill fashion!   PROTEUS. Valentine!   VALENTINE. Thou common friend, that\'s without faith or love-     For such is a friend now; treacherous man,     Thou hast beguil\'d my hopes; nought but mine eye     Could have persuaded me. Now I dare not say     I have one friend alive: thou wouldst disprove me.     Who should be trusted, when one\'s own right hand     Is perjured to the bosom? Proteus,     I am sorry I must never trust thee more,       But count the world a stranger for thy sake.     The private wound is deepest. O time most accurst!     \'Mongst all foes that a friend should be the worst!   PROTEUS. My shame and guilt confounds me.     Forgive me, Valentine; if hearty sorrow     Be a sufficient ransom for offence,     I tender \'t here; I do as truly suffer     As e\'er I did commit.   VALENTINE. Then I am paid;     And once again I do receive thee honest.     Who by repentance is not satisfied     Is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleas\'d;     By penitence th\' Eternal\'s wrath\'s appeas\'d.     And, that my love may appear plain and free,     All that was mine in Silvia I give thee.   JULIA. O me unhappy!                                  [Swoons]   PROTEUS. Look to the boy.   VALENTINE. Why, boy! why, wag! how now!     What\'s the matter? Look up; speak.   JULIA. O good sir, my master charg\'d me to deliver a ring to Madam       Silvia, which, out of my neglect, was never done.   PROTEUS. Where is that ring, boy?   JULIA. Here \'tis; this is it.   PROTEUS. How! let me see. Why, this is the ring I gave to Julia.   JULIA. O, cry you mercy, sir, I have mistook;     This is the ring you sent to Silvia.   PROTEUS. But how cam\'st thou by this ring?     At my depart I gave this unto Julia.   JULIA. And Julia herself did give it me;     And Julia herself have brought it hither.   PROTEUS. How! Julia!   JULIA. Behold her that gave aim to all thy oaths,     And entertain\'d \'em deeply in her heart.     How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root!     O Proteus, let this habit make thee blush!     Be thou asham\'d that I have took upon me     Such an immodest raiment- if shame live     In a disguise of love.     It is the lesser blot, modesty finds,     Women to change their shapes than men their minds.     PROTEUS. Than men their minds! \'tis true. O heaven, were man     But constant, he were perfect! That one error     Fills him with faults; makes him run through all th\' sins:     Inconstancy falls off ere it begins.     What is in Silvia\'s face but I may spy     More fresh in Julia\'s with a constant eye?   VALENTINE. Come, come, a hand from either.     Let me be blest to make this happy close;     \'Twere pity two such friends should be long foes.   PROTEUS. Bear witness, heaven, I have my wish for ever.   JULIA. And I mine.                  Enter OUTLAWS, with DUKE and THURIO    OUTLAW. A prize, a prize, a prize!   VALENTINE. Forbear, forbear, I say; it is my lord the Duke.     Your Grace is welcome to a man disgrac\'d,     Banished Valentine.   DUKE. Sir Valentine!   THURIO. Yonder is Silvia; and Silvia\'s mine.     VALENTINE. Thurio, give back, or else embrace thy death;     Come not within the measure of my wrath;     Do not name Silvia thine; if once again,     Verona shall not hold thee. Here she stands     Take but possession of her with a touch-     I dare thee but to breathe upon my love.   THURIO. Sir Valentine, I care not for her, I;     I hold him but a fool that will endanger     His body for a girl that loves him not.     I claim her not, and therefore she is thine.   DUKE. The more degenerate and base art thou     To make such means for her as thou hast done     And leave her on such slight conditions.     Now, by the honour of my ancestry,     I do applaud thy spirit, Valentine,     And think thee worthy of an empress\' love.     Know then, I here forget all former griefs,     Cancel all grudge, repeal thee home again,     Plead a new state in thy unrivall\'d merit,     To which I thus subscribe: Sir Valentine,       Thou art a gentleman, and well deriv\'d;     Take thou thy Silvia, for thou hast deserv\'d her.   VALENTINE. I thank your Grace; the gift hath made me happy.     I now beseech you, for your daughter\'s sake,     To grant one boon that I shall ask of you.   DUKE. I grant it for thine own, whate\'er it be.   VALENTINE. These banish\'d men, that I have kept withal,     Are men endu\'d with worthy qualities;     Forgive them what they have committed here,     And let them be recall\'d from their exile:     They are reformed, civil, full of good,     And fit for great employment, worthy lord.   DUKE. Thou hast prevail\'d; I pardon them, and thee;     Dispose of them as thou know\'st their deserts.     Come, let us go; we will include all jars     With triumphs, mirth, and rare solemnity.   VALENTINE. And, as we walk along, I dare be bold     With our discourse to make your Grace to smile.     What think you of this page, my lord?   DUKE. I think the boy hath grace in him; he blushes.     VALENTINE. I warrant you, my lord- more grace than boy.   DUKE. What mean you by that saying?   VALENTINE. Please you, I\'ll tell you as we pass along,     That you will wonder what hath fortuned.     Come, Proteus, \'tis your penance but to hear     The story of your loves discovered.     That done, our day of marriage shall be yours;     One feast, one house, one mutual happiness!     Exeunt  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1611  THE WINTER\'S TALE  by William Shakespeare    Dramatis Personae    LEONTES, King of Sicilia   MAMILLIUS, his son, the young Prince of Sicilia   CAMILLO,    lord of Sicilia   ANTIGONUS,    "   "     "   CLEOMENES,    "   "     "   DION,         "   "     "   POLIXENES, King of Bohemia   FLORIZEL, his son, Prince of Bohemia   ARCHIDAMUS, a lord of Bohemia   OLD SHEPHERD, reputed father of Perdita   CLOWN, his son   AUTOLYCUS, a rogue   A MARINER   A GAOLER   TIME, as Chorus    HERMIONE, Queen to Leontes   PERDITA, daughter to Leontes and Hermione   PAULINA, wife to Antigonus   EMILIA, a lady attending on the Queen     MOPSA,   shepherdess   DORCAS,        "    Other Lords, Gentlemen, Ladies, Officers, Servants, Shepherds,     Shepherdesses                                SCENE:                        Sicilia and Bohemia     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT I. SCENE I. Sicilia. The palace of LEONTES  Enter CAMILLO and ARCHIDAMUS    ARCHIDAMUS. If you shall chance, Camillo, to visit Bohemia, on the     like occasion whereon my services are now on foot, you shall see,     as I have said, great difference betwixt our Bohemia and your     Sicilia.   CAMILLO. I think this coming summer the King of Sicilia means to     pay Bohemia the visitation which he justly owes him.   ARCHIDAMUS. Wherein our entertainment shall shame us we will be     justified in our loves; for indeed-   CAMILLO. Beseech you-   ARCHIDAMUS. Verily, I speak it in the freedom of my knowledge: we     cannot with such magnificence, in so rare- I know not what to     say. We will give you sleepy drinks, that your senses,     unintelligent of our insufficience, may, though they cannot     praise us, as little accuse us.   CAMILLO. You pay a great deal too dear for what\'s given freely.   ARCHIDAMUS. Believe me, I speak as my understanding instructs me     and as mine honesty puts it to utterance.     CAMILLO. Sicilia cannot show himself overkind to Bohemia. They were     train\'d together in their childhoods; and there rooted betwixt     them then such an affection which cannot choose but branch now.     Since their more mature dignities and royal necessities made     separation of their society, their encounters, though not     personal, have been royally attorneyed with interchange of gifts,     letters, loving embassies; that they have seem\'d to be together,     though absent; shook hands, as over a vast; and embrac\'d as it     were from the ends of opposed winds. The heavens continue their     loves!   ARCHIDAMUS. I think there is not in the world either malice or     matter to alter it. You have an unspeakable comfort of your young     Prince Mamillius; it is a gentleman of the greatest promise that     ever came into my note.   CAMILLO. I very well agree with you in the hopes of him. It is a     gallant child; one that indeed physics the subject, makes old     hearts fresh; they that went on crutches ere he was born desire     yet their life to see him a man.   ARCHIDAMUS. Would they else be content to die?   CAMILLO. Yes; if there were no other excuse why they should desire       to live.   ARCHIDAMUS. If the King had no son, they would desire to live on     crutches till he had one.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE II. Sicilia. The palace of LEONTES  Enter LEONTES, POLIXENES, HERMIONE, MAMILLIUS, CAMILLO, and ATTENDANTS    POLIXENES. Nine changes of the wat\'ry star hath been     The shepherd\'s note since we have left our throne     Without a burden. Time as long again     Would be fill\'d up, my brother, with our thanks;     And yet we should for perpetuity     Go hence in debt. And therefore, like a cipher,     Yet standing in rich place, I multiply     With one \'We thank you\' many thousands moe     That go before it.   LEONTES. Stay your thanks a while,     And pay them when you part.   POLIXENES. Sir, that\'s to-morrow.     I am question\'d by my fears of what may chance     Or breed upon our absence, that may blow     No sneaping winds at home, to make us say     \'This is put forth too truly.\' Besides, I have stay\'d       To tire your royalty.   LEONTES. We are tougher, brother,     Than you can put us to\'t.   POLIXENES. No longer stay.   LEONTES. One sev\'night longer.   POLIXENES. Very sooth, to-morrow.   LEONTES. We\'ll part the time between\'s then; and in that     I\'ll no gainsaying.   POLIXENES. Press me not, beseech you, so.     There is no tongue that moves, none, none i\' th\' world,     So soon as yours could win me. So it should now,     Were there necessity in your request, although     \'Twere needful I denied it. My affairs     Do even drag me homeward; which to hinder     Were in your love a whip to me; my stay     To you a charge and trouble. To save both,     Farewell, our brother.   LEONTES. Tongue-tied, our Queen? Speak you.   HERMIONE. I had thought, sir, to have held my peace until     You had drawn oaths from him not to stay. You, sir,       Charge him too coldly. Tell him you are sure     All in Bohemia\'s well- this satisfaction     The by-gone day proclaim\'d. Say this to him,     He\'s beat from his best ward.   LEONTES. Well said, Hermione.   HERMIONE. To tell he longs to see his son were strong;     But let him say so then, and let him go;     But let him swear so, and he shall not stay;     We\'ll thwack him hence with distaffs.     [To POLIXENES]  Yet of your royal presence I\'ll     adventure the borrow of a week. When at Bohemia     You take my lord, I\'ll give him my commission     To let him there a month behind the gest     Prefix\'d for\'s parting.- Yet, good deed, Leontes,     I love thee not a jar o\' th\' clock behind     What lady she her lord.- You\'ll stay?   POLIXENES. No, madam.   HERMIONE. Nay, but you will?   POLIXENES. I may not, verily.   HERMIONE. Verily!       You put me off with limber vows; but I,     Though you would seek t\' unsphere the stars with oaths,     Should yet say \'Sir, no going.\' Verily,     You shall not go; a lady\'s \'verily\' is     As potent as a lord\'s. Will go yet?     Force me to keep you as a prisoner,     Not like a guest; so you shall pay your fees     When you depart, and save your thanks. How say you?     My prisoner or my guest? By your dread \'verily,\'     One of them you shall be.   POLIXENES. Your guest, then, madam:     To be your prisoner should import offending;     Which is for me less easy to commit     Than you to punish.   HERMIONE. Not your gaoler then,     But your kind. hostess. Come, I\'ll question you     Of my lord\'s tricks and yours when you were boys.     You were pretty lordings then!   POLIXENES. We were, fair Queen,     Two lads that thought there was no more behind       But such a day to-morrow as to-day,     And to be boy eternal.   HERMIONE. Was not my lord     The verier wag o\' th\' two?   POLIXENES. We were as twinn\'d lambs that did frisk i\' th\' sun     And bleat the one at th\' other. What we chang\'d     Was innocence for innocence; we knew not     The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream\'d     That any did. Had we pursu\'d that life,     And our weak spirits ne\'er been higher rear\'d     With stronger blood, we should have answer\'d heaven     Boldly \'Not guilty,\' the imposition clear\'d     Hereditary ours.   HERMIONE. By this we gather     You have tripp\'d since.   POLIXENES. O my most sacred lady,     Temptations have since then been born to \'s, for     In those unfledg\'d days was my wife a girl;     Your precious self had then not cross\'d the eyes     Of my young playfellow.     HERMIONE. Grace to boot!     Of this make no conclusion, lest you say     Your queen and I are devils. Yet, go on;     Th\' offences we have made you do we\'ll answer,     If you first sinn\'d with us, and that with us     You did continue fault, and that you slipp\'d not     With any but with us.   LEONTES. Is he won yet?   HERMIONE. He\'ll stay, my lord.   LEONTES. At my request he would not.     Hermione, my dearest, thou never spok\'st     To better purpose.   HERMIONE. Never?   LEONTES. Never but once.   HERMIONE. What! Have I twice said well? When was\'t before?     I prithee tell me; cram\'s with praise, and make\'s     As fat as tame things. One good deed dying tongueless     Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that.     Our praises are our wages; you may ride\'s     With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere       With spur we heat an acre. But to th\' goal:     My last good deed was to entreat his stay;     What was my first? It has an elder sister,     Or I mistake you. O, would her name were Grace!     But once before I spoke to th\' purpose- When?     Nay, let me have\'t; I long.   LEONTES. Why, that was when     Three crabbed months had sour\'d themselves to death,     Ere I could make thee open thy white hand     And clap thyself my love; then didst thou utter     \'I am yours for ever.\'   HERMIONE. \'Tis Grace indeed.     Why, lo you now, I have spoke to th\' purpose twice:     The one for ever earn\'d a royal husband;     Th\' other for some while a friend.                                   [Giving her hand to POLIXENES]   LEONTES.  [Aside]  Too hot, too hot!     To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods.     I have tremor cordis on me; my heart dances,     But not for joy, not joy. This entertainment       May a free face put on; derive a liberty     From heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom,     And well become the agent. \'T may, I grant;     But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers,     As now they are, and making practis\'d smiles     As in a looking-glass; and then to sigh, as \'twere     The mort o\' th\' deer. O, that is entertainment     My bosom likes not, nor my brows! Mamillius,     Art thou my boy?   MAMILLIUS. Ay, my good lord.   LEONTES. I\' fecks!     Why, that\'s my bawcock. What! hast smutch\'d thy nose?     They say it is a copy out of mine. Come, Captain,     We must be neat- not neat, but cleanly, Captain.     And yet the steer, the heifer, and the calf,     Are all call\'d neat.- Still virginalling     Upon his palm?- How now, you wanton calf,     Art thou my calf?   MAMILLIUS. Yes, if you will, my lord.   LEONTES. Thou want\'st a rough pash and the shoots that I have,       To be full like me; yet they say we are     Almost as like as eggs. Women say so,     That will say anything. But were they false     As o\'er-dy\'d blacks, as wind, as waters- false     As dice are to be wish\'d by one that fixes     No bourn \'twixt his and mine; yet were it true     To say this boy were like me. Come, sir page,     Look on me with your welkin eye. Sweet villain!     Most dear\'st! my collop! Can thy dam?- may\'t be?     Affection! thy intention stabs the centre.     Thou dost make possible things not so held,     Communicat\'st with dreams- how can this be?-     With what\'s unreal thou coactive art,     And fellow\'st nothing. Then \'tis very credent     Thou mayst co-join with something; and thou dost-     And that beyond commission; and I find it,     And that to the infection of my brains     And hard\'ning of my brows.   POLIXENES. What means Sicilia?   HERMIONE. He something seems unsettled.     POLIXENES. How, my lord!     What cheer? How is\'t with you, best brother?   HERMIONE. You look     As if you held a brow of much distraction.     Are you mov\'d, my lord?   LEONTES. No, in good earnest.     How sometimes nature will betray its folly,     Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime     To harder bosoms! Looking on the lines     Of my boy\'s face, methoughts I did recoil     Twenty-three years; and saw myself unbreech\'d,     In my green velvet coat; my dagger muzzl\'d,     Lest it should bite its master and so prove,     As ornaments oft do, too dangerous.     How like, methought, I then was to this kernel,     This squash, this gentleman. Mine honest friend,     Will you take eggs for money?   MAMILLIUS. No, my lord, I\'ll fight.   LEONTES. You will? Why, happy man be\'s dole! My brother,     Are you so fond of your young prince as we       Do seem to be of ours?   POLIXENES. If at home, sir,     He\'s all my exercise, my mirth, my matter;     Now my sworn friend, and then mine enemy;     My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all.     He makes a July\'s day short as December,     And with his varying childness cures in me     Thoughts that would thick my blood.   LEONTES. So stands this squire     Offic\'d with me. We two will walk, my lord,     And leave you to your graver steps. Hermione,     How thou lov\'st us show in our brother\'s welcome;     Let what is dear in Sicily be cheap;     Next to thyself and my young rover, he\'s     Apparent to my heart.   HERMIONE. If you would seek us,     We are yours i\' th\' garden. Shall\'s attend you there?   LEONTES. To your own bents dispose you; you\'ll be found,     Be you beneath the sky.  [Aside]  I am angling now,     Though you perceive me not how I give line.       Go to, go to!     How she holds up the neb, the bill to him!     And arms her with the boldness of a wife     To her allowing husband!                        Exeunt POLIXENES, HERMIONE, and ATTENDANTS      Gone already!     Inch-thick, knee-deep, o\'er head and ears a fork\'d one!     Go, play, boy, play; thy mother plays, and I     Play too; but so disgrac\'d a part, whose issue     Will hiss me to my grave. Contempt and clamour     Will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play. There have been,     Or I am much deceiv\'d, cuckolds ere now;     And many a man there is, even at this present,     Now while I speak this, holds his wife by th\' arm     That little thinks she has been sluic\'d in\'s absence,     And his pond fish\'d by his next neighbour, by     Sir Smile, his neighbour. Nay, there\'s comfort in\'t,     Whiles other men have gates and those gates open\'d,       As mine, against their will. Should all despair     That hath revolted wives, the tenth of mankind     Would hang themselves. Physic for\'t there\'s none;     It is a bawdy planet, that will strike     Where \'tis predominant; and \'tis pow\'rfull, think it,     From east, west, north, and south. Be it concluded,     No barricado for a belly. Know\'t,     It will let in and out the enemy     With bag and baggage. Many thousand on\'s     Have the disease, and feel\'t not. How now, boy!   MAMILLIUS. I am like you, they say.   LEONTES. Why, that\'s some comfort.     What! Camillo there?   CAMILLO. Ay, my good lord.   LEONTES. Go play, Mamillius; thou\'rt an honest man.                                                   Exit MAMILLIUS     Camillo, this great sir will yet stay longer.   CAMILLO. You had much ado to make his anchor hold;     When you cast out, it still came home.   LEONTES. Didst note it?     CAMILLO. He would not stay at your petitions; made     His business more material.   LEONTES. Didst perceive it?     [Aside]  They\'re here with me already; whisp\'ring, rounding,     \'Sicilia is a so-forth.\' \'Tis far gone     When I shall gust it last.- How came\'t, Camillo,     That he did stay?   CAMILLO. At the good Queen\'s entreaty.   LEONTES. \'At the Queen\'s\' be\'t. \'Good\' should be pertinent;     But so it is, it is not. Was this taken     By any understanding pate but thine?     For thy conceit is soaking, will draw in     More than the common blocks. Not noted, is\'t,     But of the finer natures, by some severals     Of head-piece extraordinary? Lower messes     Perchance are to this business purblind? Say.   CAMILLO. Business, my lord? I think most understand     Bohemia stays here longer.   LEONTES. Ha?   CAMILLO. Stays here longer.     LEONTES. Ay, but why?   CAMILLO. To satisfy your Highness, and the entreaties     Of our most gracious mistress.   LEONTES. Satisfy     Th\' entreaties of your mistress! Satisfy!     Let that suffice. I have trusted thee, Camillo,     With all the nearest things to my heart, as well     My chamber-councils, wherein, priest-like, thou     Hast cleans\'d my bosom- I from thee departed     Thy penitent reform\'d; but we have been     Deceiv\'d in thy integrity, deceiv\'d     In that which seems so.   CAMILLO. Be it forbid, my lord!   LEONTES. To bide upon\'t: thou art not honest; or,     If thou inclin\'st that way, thou art a coward,     Which hoxes honesty behind, restraining     From course requir\'d; or else thou must be counted     A servant grafted in my serious trust,     And therein negligent; or else a fool     That seest a game play\'d home, the rich stake drawn,       And tak\'st it all for jest.   CAMILLO. My gracious lord,     I may be negligent, foolish, and fearful:     In every one of these no man is free     But that his negligence, his folly, fear,     Among the infinite doings of the world,     Sometime puts forth. In your affairs, my lord,     If ever I were wilfull-negligent,     It was my folly; if industriously     I play\'d the fool, it was my negligence,     Not weighing well the end; if ever fearful     To do a thing where I the issue doubted,     Whereof the execution did cry out     Against the non-performance, \'twas a fear     Which oft infects the wisest. These, my lord,     Are such allow\'d infirmities that honesty     Is never free of. But, beseech your Grace,     Be plainer with me; let me know my trespass     By its own visage; if I then deny it,     \'Tis none of mine.     LEONTES. Ha\' not you seen, Camillo-     But that\'s past doubt; you have, or your eye-glass     Is thicker than a cuckold\'s horn- or heard-     For to a vision so apparent rumour     Cannot be mute- or thought- for cogitation     Resides not in that man that does not think-     My wife is slippery? If thou wilt confess-     Or else be impudently negative,     To have nor eyes nor ears nor thought- then say     My wife\'s a hobby-horse, deserves a name     As rank as any flax-wench that puts to     Before her troth-plight. Say\'t and justify\'t.   CAMILLO. I would not be a stander-by to hear     My sovereign mistress clouded so, without     My present vengeance taken. Shrew my heart!     You never spoke what did become you less     Than this; which to reiterate were sin     As deep as that, though true.   LEONTES. Is whispering nothing?     Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses?       Kissing with inside lip? Stopping the career     Of laughter with a sigh?- a note infallible     Of breaking honesty. Horsing foot on foot?     Skulking in corners? Wishing clocks more swift;     Hours, minutes; noon, midnight? And all eyes     Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,     That would unseen be wicked- is this nothing?     Why, then the world and all that\'s in\'t is nothing;     The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing;     My is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings,     If this be nothing.   CAMILLO. Good my lord, be cur\'d     Of this diseas\'d opinion, and betimes;     For \'tis most dangerous.   LEONTES. Say it be, \'tis true.   CAMILLO. No, no, my lord.   LEONTES. It is; you lie, you lie.     I say thou liest, Camillo, and I hate thee;     Pronounce thee a gross lout, a mindless slave,     Or else a hovering temporizer that       Canst with thine eyes at once see good and evil,     Inclining to them both. Were my wife\'s liver     Infected as her life, she would not live     The running of one glass.   CAMILLO. Who does her?   LEONTES. Why, he that wears her like her medal, hanging     About his neck, Bohemia; who- if I     Had servants true about me that bare eyes     To see alike mine honour as their profits,     Their own particular thrifts, they would do that     Which should undo more doing. Ay, and thou,     His cupbearer- whom I from meaner form     Have bench\'d and rear\'d to worship; who mayst see,     Plainly as heaven sees earth and earth sees heaven,     How I am gall\'d- mightst bespice a cup     To give mine enemy a lasting wink;     Which draught to me were cordial.   CAMILLO. Sir, my lord,     I could do this; and that with no rash potion,     But with a ling\'ring dram that should not work       Maliciously like poison. But I cannot     Believe this crack to be in my dread mistress,     So sovereignly being honourable.     I have lov\'d thee-   LEONTES. Make that thy question, and go rot!     Dost think I am so muddy, so unsettled,     To appoint myself in this vexation; sully     The purity and whiteness of my sheets-     Which to preserve is sleep, which being spotted     Is goads, thorns, nettles, tails of wasps;     Give scandal to the blood o\' th\' Prince, my son-     Who I do think is mine, and love as mine-     Without ripe moving to \'t? Would I do this?     Could man so blench?   CAMILLO. I must believe you, sir.     I do; and will fetch off Bohemia for\'t;     Provided that, when he\'s remov\'d, your Highness     Will take again your queen as yours at first,     Even for your son\'s sake; and thereby for sealing     The injury of tongues in courts and kingdoms       Known and allied to yours.   LEONTES. Thou dost advise me     Even so as I mine own course have set down.     I\'ll give no blemish to her honour, none.   CAMILLO. My lord,     Go then; and with a countenance as clear     As friendship wears at feasts, keep with Bohemia     And with your queen. I am his cupbearer;     If from me he have wholesome beverage,     Account me not your servant.   LEONTES. This is all:     Do\'t, and thou hast the one half of my heart;     Do\'t not, thou split\'st thine own.   CAMILLO. I\'ll do\'t, my lord.   LEONTES. I will seem friendly, as thou hast advis\'d me.   Exit   CAMILLO. O miserable lady! But, for me,     What case stand I in? I must be the poisoner     Of good Polixenes; and my ground to do\'t     Is the obedience to a master; one     Who, in rebellion with himself, will have       All that are his so too. To do this deed,     Promotion follows. If I could find example     Of thousands that had struck anointed kings     And flourish\'d after, I\'d not do\'t; but since     Nor brass, nor stone, nor parchment, bears not one,     Let villainy itself forswear\'t. I must     Forsake the court. To do\'t, or no, is certain     To me a break-neck. Happy star reign now!     Here comes Bohemia.                       Enter POLIXENES    POLIXENES. This is strange. Methinks     My favour here begins to warp. Not speak?     Good day, Camillo.   CAMILLO. Hail, most royal sir!   POLIXENES. What is the news i\' th\' court?   CAMILLO. None rare, my lord.   POLIXENES. The King hath on him such a countenance     As he had lost some province, and a region       Lov\'d as he loves himself; even now I met him     With customary compliment, when he,     Wafting his eyes to th\' contrary and falling     A lip of much contempt, speeds from me;     So leaves me to consider what is breeding     That changes thus his manners.   CAMILLO. I dare not know, my lord.   POLIXENES. How, dare not! Do not. Do you know, and dare not     Be intelligent to me? \'Tis thereabouts;     For, to yourself, what you do know, you must,     And cannot say you dare not. Good Camillo,     Your chang\'d complexions are to me a mirror     Which shows me mine chang\'d too; for I must be     A party in this alteration, finding     Myself thus alter\'d with\'t.   CAMILLO. There is a sickness     Which puts some of us in distemper; but     I cannot name the disease; and it is caught     Of you that yet are well.   POLIXENES. How! caught of me?       Make me not sighted like the basilisk;     I have look\'d on thousands who have sped the better     By my regard, but kill\'d none so. Camillo-     As you are certainly a gentleman; thereto     Clerk-like experienc\'d, which no less adorns     Our gentry than our parents\' noble names,     In whose success we are gentle- I beseech you,     If you know aught which does behove my knowledge     Thereof to be inform\'d, imprison\'t not     In ignorant concealment.   CAMILLO. I may not answer.   POLIXENES. A sickness caught of me, and yet I well?     I must be answer\'d. Dost thou hear, Camillo?     I conjure thee, by all the parts of man     Which honour does acknowledge, whereof the least     Is not this suit of mine, that thou declare     What incidency thou dost guess of harm     Is creeping toward me; how far off, how near;     Which way to be prevented, if to be;     If not, how best to bear it.     CAMILLO. Sir, I will tell you;     Since I am charg\'d in honour, and by him     That I think honourable. Therefore mark my counsel,     Which must be ev\'n as swiftly followed as     I mean to utter it, or both yourself and me     Cry lost, and so goodnight.   POLIXENES. On, good Camillo.   CAMILLO. I am appointed him to murder you.   POLIXENES. By whom, Camillo?   CAMILLO. By the King.   POLIXENES. For what?   CAMILLO. He thinks, nay, with all confidence he swears,     As he had seen \'t or been an instrument     To vice you to\'t, that you have touch\'d his queen     Forbiddenly.   POLIXENES. O, then my best blood turn     To an infected jelly, and my name     Be yok\'d with his that did betray the Best!     Turn then my freshest reputation to     A savour that may strike the dullest nostril       Where I arrive, and my approach be shunn\'d,     Nay, hated too, worse than the great\'st infection     That e\'er was heard or read!   CAMILLO. Swear his thought over     By each particular star in heaven and     By all their influences, you may as well     Forbid the sea for to obey the moon     As or by oath remove or counsel shake     The fabric of his folly, whose foundation     Is pil\'d upon his faith and will continue     The standing of his body.   POLIXENES. How should this grow?   CAMILLO. I know not; but I am sure \'tis safer to     Avoid what\'s grown than question how \'tis born.     If therefore you dare trust my honesty,     That lies enclosed in this trunk which you     Shall bear along impawn\'d, away to-night.     Your followers I will whisper to the business;     And will, by twos and threes, at several posterns,     Clear them o\' th\' city. For myself, I\'ll put       My fortunes to your service, which are here     By this discovery lost. Be not uncertain,     For, by the honour of my parents, I     Have utt\'red truth; which if you seek to prove,     I dare not stand by; nor shall you be safer     Than one condemn\'d by the King\'s own mouth, thereon     His execution sworn.   POLIXENES. I do believe thee:     I saw his heart in\'s face. Give me thy hand;     Be pilot to me, and thy places shall     Still neighbour mine. My ships are ready, and     My people did expect my hence departure     Two days ago. This jealousy     Is for a precious creature; as she\'s rare,     Must it be great; and, as his person\'s mighty,     Must it be violent; and as he does conceive     He is dishonour\'d by a man which ever     Profess\'d to him, why, his revenges must     In that be made more bitter. Fear o\'ershades me.     Good expedition be my friend, and comfort       The gracious Queen, part of this theme, but nothing     Of his ill-ta\'en suspicion! Come, Camillo;     I will respect thee as a father, if     Thou bear\'st my life off hence. Let us avoid.   CAMILLO. It is in mine authority to command     The keys of all the posterns. Please your Highness     To take the urgent hour. Come, sir, away.             Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT II. SCENE I. Sicilia. The palace of LEONTES  Enter HERMIONE, MAMILLIUS, and LADIES    HERMIONE. Take the boy to you; he so troubles me,     \'Tis past enduring.   FIRST LADY. Come, my gracious lord,     Shall I be your playfellow?   MAMILLIUS. No, I\'ll none of you.   FIRST LADY. Why, my sweet lord?   MAMILLIUS. You\'ll kiss me hard, and speak to me as if     I were a baby still. I love you better.   SECOND LADY. And why so, my lord?   MAMILLIUS. Not for because     Your brows are blacker; yet black brows, they say,     Become some women best; so that there be not     Too much hair there, but in a semicircle     Or a half-moon made with a pen.   SECOND LADY. Who taught\'t this?   MAMILLIUS. I learn\'d it out of women\'s faces. Pray now,     What colour are your eyebrows?     FIRST LADY. Blue, my lord.   MAMILLIUS. Nay, that\'s a mock. I have seen a lady\'s nose     That has been blue, but not her eyebrows.   FIRST LADY. Hark ye:     The Queen your mother rounds apace. We shall     Present our services to a fine new prince     One of these days; and then you\'d wanton with us,     If we would have you.   SECOND LADY. She is spread of late     Into a goodly bulk. Good time encounter her!   HERMIONE. What wisdom stirs amongst you? Come, sir, now     I am for you again. Pray you sit by us,     And tell\'s a tale.   MAMILLIUS. Merry or sad shall\'t be?   HERMIONE. As merry as you will.   MAMILLIUS. A sad tale\'s best for winter. I have one     Of sprites and goblins.   HERMIONE. Let\'s have that, good sir.     Come on, sit down; come on, and do your best     To fright me with your sprites; you\'re pow\'rfull at it.     MAMILLIUS. There was a man-   HERMIONE. Nay, come, sit down; then on.   MAMILLIUS. Dwelt by a churchyard- I will tell it softly;     Yond crickets shall not hear it.   HERMIONE. Come on then,     And give\'t me in mine ear.               Enter LEONTES, ANTIGONUS, LORDS, and OTHERS    LEONTES. he met there? his train? Camillo with him?   FIRST LORD. Behind the tuft of pines I met them; never     Saw I men scour so on their way. I ey\'d them     Even to their ships.   LEONTES. How blest am I     In my just censure, in my true opinion!     Alack, for lesser knowledge! How accurs\'d     In being so blest! There may be in the cup     A spider steep\'d, and one may drink, depart,     And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge     Is not infected; but if one present       Th\' abhorr\'d ingredient to his eye, make known     How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,     With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider.     Camillo was his help in this, his pander.     There is a plot against my life, my crown;     All\'s true that is mistrusted. That false villain     Whom I employ\'d was pre-employ\'d by him;     He has discover\'d my design, and I     Remain a pinch\'d thing; yea, a very trick     For them to play at will. How came the posterns     So easily open?   FIRST LORD. By his great authority;     Which often hath no less prevail\'d than so     On your command.   LEONTES. I know\'t too well.     Give me the boy. I am glad you did not nurse him;     Though he does bear some signs of me, yet you     Have too much blood in him.   HERMIONE. What is this? Sport?   LEONTES. Bear the boy hence; he shall not come about her;       Away with him; and let her sport herself                                           [MAMILLIUS is led out]     With that she\'s big with- for \'tis Polixenes     Has made thee swell thus.   HERMIONE. But I\'d say he had not,     And I\'ll be sworn you would believe my saying,     Howe\'er you lean to th\' nayward.   LEONTES. You, my lords,     Look on her, mark her well; be but about     To say \'She is a goodly lady\' and     The justice of your hearts will thereto ad     \'Tis pity she\'s not honest- honourable.\'     Praise her but for this her without-door form,     Which on my faith deserves high speech, and straight     The shrug, the hum or ha, these petty brands     That calumny doth use- O, I am out!-     That mercy does, for calumny will sear     Virtue itself- these shrugs, these hum\'s and ha\'s,     When you have said she\'s goodly, come between,     Ere you can say she\'s honest. But be\'t known,       From him that has most cause to grieve it should be,     She\'s an adultress.   HERMIONE. Should a villain say so,     The most replenish\'d villain in the world,     He were as much more villain: you, my lord,     Do but mistake.   LEONTES. You have mistook, my lady,     Polixenes for Leontes. O thou thing!     Which I\'ll not call a creature of thy place,     Lest barbarism, making me the precedent,     Should a like language use to all degrees     And mannerly distinguishment leave out     Betwixt the prince and beggar. I have said     She\'s an adultress; I have said with whom.     More, she\'s a traitor; and Camillo is     A federary with her, and one that knows     What she should shame to know herself     But with her most vile principal- that she\'s     A bed-swerver, even as bad as those     That vulgars give bold\'st titles; ay, and privy       To this their late escape.   HERMIONE. No, by my life,     Privy to none of this. How will this grieve you,     When you shall come to clearer knowledge, that     You thus have publish\'d me! Gentle my lord,     You scarce can right me throughly then to say     You did mistake.   LEONTES. No; if I mistake     In those foundations which I build upon,     The centre is not big enough to bear     A school-boy\'s top. Away with her to prison.     He who shall speak for her is afar off guilty     But that he speaks.   HERMIONE. There\'s some ill planet reigns.     I must be patient till the heavens look     With an aspect more favourable. Good my lords,     I am not prone to weeping, as our sex     Commonly are- the want of which vain dew     Perchance shall dry your pities- but I have     That honourable grief lodg\'d here which burns       Worse than tears drown. Beseech you all, my lords,     With thoughts so qualified as your charities     Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so     The King\'s will be perform\'d!   LEONTES.  [To the GUARD]  Shall I be heard?   HERMIONE. Who is\'t that goes with me? Beseech your highness     My women may be with me, for you see     My plight requires it. Do not weep, good fools;     There is no cause; when you shall know your mistress     Has deserv\'d prison, then abound in tears     As I come out: this action I now go on     Is for my better grace. Adieu, my lord.     I never wish\'d to see you sorry; now     I trust I shall. My women, come; you have leave.   LEONTES. Go, do our bidding; hence!                             Exeunt HERMIONE, guarded, and LADIES   FIRST LORD. Beseech your Highness, call the Queen again.   ANTIGONUS. Be certain what you do, sir, lest your justice     Prove violence, in the which three great ones suffer,     Yourself, your queen, your son.     FIRST LORD. For her, my lord,     I dare my life lay down- and will do\'t, sir,     Please you t\' accept it- that the Queen is spotless     I\' th\' eyes of heaven and to you- I mean     In this which you accuse her.   ANTIGONUS. If it prove     She\'s otherwise, I\'ll keep my stables where     I lodge my wife; I\'ll go in couples with her;     Than when I feel and see her no farther trust her;     For every inch of woman in the world,     Ay, every dram of woman\'s flesh is false,     If she be.   LEONTES. Hold your peaces.   FIRST LORD. Good my lord-   ANTIGONUS. It is for you we speak, not for ourselves.     You are abus\'d, and by some putter-on     That will be damn\'d for\'t. Would I knew the villain!     I would land-damn him. Be she honour-flaw\'d-     I have three daughters: the eldest is eleven;     The second and the third, nine and some five;       If this prove true, they\'ll pay for \'t. By mine honour,     I\'ll geld \'em all; fourteen they shall not see     To bring false generations. They are co-heirs;     And I had rather glib myself than they     Should not produce fair issue.   LEONTES. Cease; no more.     You smell this business with a sense as cold     As is a dead man\'s nose; but I do see\'t and feel\'t     As you feel doing thus; and see withal     The instruments that feel.   ANTIGONUS. If it be so,     We need no grave to bury honesty;     There\'s not a grain of it the face to sweeten     Of the whole dungy earth.   LEONTES. What! Lack I credit?   FIRST LORD. I had rather you did lack than I, my lord,     Upon this ground; and more it would content me     To have her honour true than your suspicion,     Be blam\'d for\'t how you might.   LEONTES. Why, what need we       Commune with you of this, but rather follow     Our forceful instigation? Our prerogative     Calls not your counsels; but our natural goodness     Imparts this; which, if you- or stupified     Or seeming so in skill- cannot or will not     Relish a truth like us, inform yourselves     We need no more of your advice. The matter,     The loss, the gain, the ord\'ring on\'t, is all     Properly ours.   ANTIGONUS. And I wish, my liege,     You had only in your silent judgment tried it,     Without more overture.   LEONTES. How could that be?     Either thou art most ignorant by age,     Or thou wert born a fool. Camillo\'s flight,     Added to their familiarity-     Which was as gross as ever touch\'d conjecture,     That lack\'d sight only, nought for approbation     But only seeing, all other circumstances     Made up to th\' deed- doth push on this proceeding.       Yet, for a greater confirmation-     For, in an act of this importance, \'twere     Most piteous to be wild- I have dispatch\'d in post     To sacred Delphos, to Apollo\'s temple,     Cleomenes and Dion, whom you know     Of stuff\'d sufficiency. Now, from the oracle     They will bring all, whose spiritual counsel had,     Shall stop or spur me. Have I done well?   FIRST LORD. Well done, my lord.   LEONTES. Though I am satisfied, and need no more     Than what I know, yet shall the oracle     Give rest to th\' minds of others such as he     Whose ignorant credulity will not     Come up to th\' truth. So have we thought it good     From our free person she should be confin\'d,     Lest that the treachery of the two fled hence     Be left her to perform. Come, follow us;     We are to speak in public; for this business     Will raise us all.   ANTIGONUS.  [Aside]  To laughter, as I take it,       If the good truth were known.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE II. Sicilia. A prison  Enter PAULINA, a GENTLEMAN, and ATTENDANTS    PAULINA. The keeper of the prison- call to him;     Let him have knowledge who I am.              Exit GENTLEMAN     Good lady!     No court in Europe is too good for thee;     What dost thou then in prison?                   Re-enter GENTLEMAN with the GAOLER      Now, good sir,     You know me, do you not?   GAOLER. For a worthy lady,     And one who much I honour.   PAULINA. Pray you, then,     Conduct me to the Queen.   GAOLER. I may not, madam;     To the contrary I have express commandment.   PAULINA. Here\'s ado, to lock up honesty and honour from       Th\' access of gentle visitors! Is\'t lawful, pray you,     To see her women- any of them? Emilia?   GAOLER. So please you, madam,     To put apart these your attendants,     Shall bring Emilia forth.   PAULINA. I pray now, call her.     Withdraw yourselves.                       Exeunt ATTENDANTS   GAOLER. And, madam,     I must be present at your conference.   PAULINA. Well, be\'t so, prithee.                   Exit GAOLER     Here\'s such ado to make no stain a stain     As passes colouring.                   Re-enter GAOLER, with EMILIA      Dear gentlewoman,     How fares our gracious lady?   EMILIA. As well as one so great and so forlorn     May hold together. On her frights and griefs,     Which never tender lady hath borne greater,       She is, something before her time, deliver\'d.   PAULINA. A boy?   EMILIA. A daughter, and a goodly babe,     Lusty, and like to live. The Queen receives     Much comfort in\'t; says \'My poor prisoner,     I am as innocent as you.\'   PAULINA. I dare be sworn.     These dangerous unsafe lunes i\' th\' King, beshrew them!     He must be told on\'t, and he shall. The office     Becomes a woman best; I\'ll take\'t upon me;     If I prove honey-mouth\'d, let my tongue blister,     And never to my red-look\'d anger be     The trumpet any more. Pray you, Emilia,     Commend my best obedience to the Queen;     If she dares trust me with her little babe,     I\'ll show\'t the King, and undertake to be     Her advocate to th\' loud\'st. We do not know     How he may soften at the sight o\' th\' child:     The silence often of pure innocence     Persuades when speaking fails.     EMILIA. Most worthy madam,     Your honour and your goodness is so evident     That your free undertaking cannot miss     A thriving issue; there is no lady living     So meet for this great errand. Please your ladyship     To visit the next room, I\'ll presently     Acquaint the Queen of your most noble offer     Who but to-day hammer\'d of this design,     But durst not tempt a minister of honour,     Lest she should be denied.   PAULINA. Tell her, Emilia,     I\'ll use that tongue I have; if wit flow from\'t     As boldness from my bosom, let\'t not be doubted     I shall do good.   EMILIA. Now be you blest for it!     I\'ll to the Queen. Please you come something nearer.   GAOLER. Madam, if\'t please the Queen to send the babe,     I know not what I shall incur to pass it,     Having no warrant.   PAULINA. You need not fear it, sir.       This child was prisoner to the womb, and is     By law and process of great Nature thence     Freed and enfranchis\'d- not a party to     The anger of the King, nor guilty of,     If any be, the trespass of the Queen.   GAOLER. I do believe it.   PAULINA. Do not you fear. Upon mine honour, I     Will stand betwixt you and danger.                    Exeunt     SCENE III. Sicilia. The palace of LEONTES  Enter LEONTES, ANTIGONUS, LORDS, and SERVANTS    LEONTES. Nor night nor day no rest! It is but weakness     To bear the matter thus- mere weakness. If     The cause were not in being- part o\' th\' cause,     She, th\' adultress; for the harlot king     Is quite beyond mine arm, out of the blank     And level of my brain, plot-proof; but she     I can hook to me- say that she were gone,     Given to the fire, a moiety of my rest     Might come to me again. Who\'s there?   FIRST SERVANT. My lord?   LEONTES. How does the boy?   FIRST SERVANT. He took good rest to-night;     \'Tis hop\'d his sickness is discharg\'d.   LEONTES. To see his nobleness!     Conceiving the dishonour of his mother,     He straight declin\'d, droop\'d, took it deeply,     Fasten\'d and fix\'d the shame on\'t in himself,       Threw off his spirit, his appetite, his sleep,     And downright languish\'d. Leave me solely. Go,     See how he fares.  [Exit SERVANT]  Fie, fie! no thought of him!     The very thought of my revenges that way     Recoil upon me- in himself too mighty,     And in his parties, his alliance. Let him be,     Until a time may serve; for present vengeance,     Take it on her. Camillo and Polixenes     Laugh at me, make their pastime at my sorrow.     They should not laugh if I could reach them; nor     Shall she, within my pow\'r.                   Enter PAULINA, with a CHILD    FIRST LORD. You must not enter.   PAULINA. Nay, rather, good my lords, be second to me.     Fear you his tyrannous passion more, alas,     Than the Queen\'s life? A gracious innocent soul,     More free than he is jealous.   ANTIGONUS. That\'s enough.     SECOND SERVANT. Madam, he hath not slept to-night; commanded     None should come at him.   PAULINA. Not so hot, good sir;     I come to bring him sleep. \'Tis such as you,     That creep like shadows by him, and do sigh     At each his needless heavings- such as you     Nourish the cause of his awaking: I     Do come with words as medicinal as true,     Honest as either, to purge him of that humour     That presses him from sleep.   LEONTES. What noise there, ho?   PAULINA. No noise, my lord; but needful conference     About some gossips for your Highness.   LEONTES. How!     Away with that audacious lady! Antigonus,     I charg\'d thee that she should not come about me;     I knew she would.   ANTIGONUS. I told her so, my lord,     On your displeasure\'s peril, and on mine,     She should not visit you.     LEONTES. What, canst not rule her?   PAULINA. From all dishonesty he can: in this,     Unless he take the course that you have done-     Commit me for committing honour- trust it,     He shall not rule me.   ANTIGONUS. La you now, you hear!     When she will take the rein, I let her run;     But she\'ll not stumble.   PAULINA. Good my liege, I come-     And I beseech you hear me, who professes     Myself your loyal servant, your physician,     Your most obedient counsellor; yet that dares     Less appear so, in comforting your evils,     Than such as most seem yours- I say I come     From your good Queen.   LEONTES. Good Queen!   PAULINA. Good Queen, my lord, good Queen- I say good Queen;     And would by combat make her good, so were I     A man, the worst about you.   LEONTES. Force her hence.     PAULINA. Let him that makes but trifles of his eyes     First hand me. On mine own accord I\'ll off;     But first I\'ll do my errand. The good Queen,     For she is good, hath brought you forth a daughter;     Here \'tis; commends it to your blessing.                                          [Laying down the child]   LEONTES. Out!     A mankind witch! Hence with her, out o\' door!     A most intelligencing bawd!   PAULINA. Not so.     I am as ignorant in that as you     In so entitling me; and no less honest     Than you are mad; which is enough, I\'ll warrant,     As this world goes, to pass for honest.   LEONTES. Traitors!     Will you not push her out? Give her the bastard.     [To ANTIGONUS]  Thou dotard, thou art woman-tir\'d, unroosted     By thy Dame Partlet here. Take up the bastard;     Take\'t up, I say; give\'t to thy crone.   PAULINA. For ever       Unvenerable be thy hands, if thou     Tak\'st up the Princess by that forced baseness     Which he has put upon\'t!   LEONTES. He dreads his wife.   PAULINA. So I would you did; then \'twere past all doubt     You\'d call your children yours.   LEONTES. A nest of traitors!   ANTIGONUS. I am none, by this good light.   PAULINA. Nor I; nor any     But one that\'s here; and that\'s himself; for he     The sacred honour of himself, his Queen\'s,     His hopeful son\'s, his babe\'s, betrays to slander,     Whose sting is sharper than the sword\'s; and will not-     For, as the case now stands, it is a curse     He cannot be compell\'d to \'t- once remove     The root of his opinion, which is rotten     As ever oak or stone was sound.   LEONTES. A callat     Of boundless tongue, who late hath beat her husband,     And now baits me! This brat is none of mine;       It is the issue of Polixenes.     Hence with it, and together with the dam     Commit them to the fire.   PAULINA. It is yours.     And, might we lay th\' old proverb to your charge,     So like you \'tis the worse. Behold, my lords,     Although the print be little, the whole matter     And copy of the father- eye, nose, lip,     The trick of\'s frown, his forehead; nay, the valley,     The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek; his smiles;     The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger.     And thou, good goddess Nature, which hast made it     So like to him that got it, if thou hast     The ordering of the mind too, \'mongst all colours     No yellow in\'t, lest she suspect, as he does,     Her children not her husband\'s!   LEONTES. A gross hag!     And, lozel, thou art worthy to be hang\'d     That wilt not stay her tongue.   ANTIGONUS. Hang all the husbands       That cannot do that feat, you\'ll leave yourself     Hardly one subject.   LEONTES. Once more, take her hence.   PAULINA. A most unworthy and unnatural lord     Can do no more.   LEONTES. I\'ll ha\' thee burnt.   PAULINA. I care not.     It is an heretic that makes the fire,     Not she which burns in\'t. I\'ll not call you tyrant     But this most cruel usage of your Queen-     Not able to produce more accusation     Than your own weak-hing\'d fancy- something savours     Of tyranny, and will ignoble make you,     Yea, scandalous to the world.   LEONTES. On your allegiance,     Out of the chamber with her! Were I a tyrant,     Where were her life? She durst not call me so,     If she did know me one. Away with her!   PAULINA. I pray you, do not push me; I\'ll be gone.     Look to your babe, my lord; \'tis yours. Jove send her       A better guiding spirit! What needs these hands?     You that are thus so tender o\'er his follies     Will never do him good, not one of you.     So, so. Farewell; we are gone.                          Exit   LEONTES. Thou, traitor, hast set on thy wife to this.     My child! Away with\'t. Even thou, that hast     A heart so tender o\'er it, take it hence,     And see it instantly consum\'d with fire;     Even thou, and none but thou. Take it up straight.     Within this hour bring me word \'tis done,     And by good testimony, or I\'ll seize thy life,     With that thou else call\'st thine. If thou refuse,     And wilt encounter with my wrath, say so;     The bastard brains with these my proper hands     Shall I dash out. Go, take it to the fire;     For thou set\'st on thy wife.   ANTIGONUS. I did not, sir.     These lords, my noble fellows, if they please,     Can clear me in\'t.   LORDS. We can. My royal liege,       He is not guilty of her coming hither.   LEONTES. You\'re liars all.   FIRST LORD. Beseech your Highness, give us better credit.     We have always truly serv\'d you; and beseech     So to esteem of us; and on our knees we beg,     As recompense of our dear services     Past and to come, that you do change this purpose,     Which being so horrible, so bloody, must     Lead on to some foul issue. We all kneel.   LEONTES. I am a feather for each wind that blows.     Shall I live on to see this bastard kneel     And call me father? Better burn it now     Than curse it then. But be it; let it live.     It shall not neither.  [To ANTIGONUS]  You, Sir, come you hither.     You that have been so tenderly officious     With Lady Margery, your midwife there,     To save this bastard\'s life- for \'tis a bastard,     So sure as this beard\'s grey- what will you adventure     To save this brat\'s life?   ANTIGONUS. Anything, my lord,       That my ability may undergo,     And nobleness impose. At least, thus much:     I\'ll pawn the little blood which I have left     To save the innocent- anything possible.   LEONTES. It shall be possible. Swear by this sword     Thou wilt perform my bidding.   ANTIGONUS. I will, my lord.   LEONTES. Mark, and perform it- seest thou? For the fail     Of any point in\'t shall not only be     Death to thyself, but to thy lewd-tongu\'d wife,     Whom for this time we pardon. We enjoin thee,     As thou art liegeman to us, that thou carry     This female bastard hence; and that thou bear it     To some remote and desert place, quite out     Of our dominions; and that there thou leave it,     Without more mercy, to it own protection     And favour of the climate. As by strange fortune     It came to us, I do in justice charge thee,     On thy soul\'s peril and thy body\'s torture,     That thou commend it strangely to some place       Where chance may nurse or end it. Take it up.   ANTIGONUS. I swear to do this, though a present death     Had been more merciful. Come on, poor babe.     Some powerful spirit instruct the kites and ravens     To be thy nurses! Wolves and bears, they say,     Casting their savageness aside, have done     Like offices of pity. Sir, be prosperous     In more than this deed does require! And blessing     Against this cruelty fight on thy side,     Poor thing, condemn\'d to loss!           Exit with the child   LEONTES. No, I\'ll not rear     Another\'s issue.                           Enter a SERVANT    SERVANT. Please your Highness, posts     From those you sent to th\' oracle are come     An hour since. Cleomenes and Dion,     Being well arriv\'d from Delphos, are both landed,     Hasting to th\' court.     FIRST LORD. So please you, sir, their speed     Hath been beyond account.   LEONTES. Twenty-three days     They have been absent; \'tis good speed; foretells     The great Apollo suddenly will have     The truth of this appear. Prepare you, lords;     Summon a session, that we may arraign     Our most disloyal lady; for, as she hath     Been publicly accus\'d, so shall she have     A just and open trial. While she lives,     My heart will be a burden to me. Leave me;     And think upon my bidding.                            Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT III. SCENE I. Sicilia. On the road to the Capital  Enter CLEOMENES and DION    CLEOMENES. The climate\'s delicate, the air most sweet,     Fertile the isle, the temple much surpassing     The common praise it bears.   DION. I shall report,     For most it caught me, the celestial habits-     Methinks I so should term them- and the reverence     Of the grave wearers. O, the sacrifice!     How ceremonious, solemn, and unearthly,     It was i\' th\' off\'ring!   CLEOMENES. But of all, the burst     And the ear-deaf\'ning voice o\' th\' oracle,     Kin to Jove\'s thunder, so surpris\'d my sense     That I was nothing.   DION. If th\' event o\' th\' journey     Prove as successful to the Queen- O, be\'t so!-     As it hath been to us rare, pleasant, speedy,     The time is worth the use on\'t.     CLEOMENES. Great Apollo     Turn all to th\' best! These proclamations,     So forcing faults upon Hermione,     I little like.   DION. The violent carriage of it     Will clear or end the business. When the oracle-     Thus by Apollo\'s great divine seal\'d up-     Shall the contents discover, something rare     Even then will rush to knowledge. Go; fresh horses.     And gracious be the issue!                            Exeunt     SCENE II. Sicilia. A court of justice  Enter LEONTES, LORDS, and OFFICERS    LEONTES. This sessions, to our great grief we pronounce,     Even pushes \'gainst our heart- the party tried,     The daughter of a king, our wife, and one     Of us too much belov\'d. Let us be clear\'d     Of being tyrannous, since we so openly     Proceed in justice, which shall have due course,     Even to the guilt or the purgation.     Produce the prisoner.   OFFICER. It is his Highness\' pleasure that the Queen     Appear in person here in court.           Enter HERMIONE, as to her trial, PAULINA, and LADIES      Silence!   LEONTES. Read the indictment.   OFFICER.  [Reads]  \'Hermione, Queen to the worthy Leontes, King of     Sicilia, thou art here accused and arraigned of high treason, in       committing adultery with Polixenes, King of Bohemia; and     conspiring with Camillo to take away the life of our sovereign     lord the King, thy royal husband: the pretence whereof being by     circumstances partly laid open, thou, Hermione, contrary to the     faith and allegiance of true subject, didst counsel and aid them,     for their better safety, to fly away by night.\'   HERMIONE. Since what I am to say must be but that     Which contradicts my accusation, and     The testimony on my part no other     But what comes from myself, it shall scarce boot me     To say \'Not guilty.\' Mine integrity     Being counted falsehood shall, as I express it,     Be so receiv\'d. But thus- if pow\'rs divine     Behold our human actions, as they do,     I doubt not then but innocence shall make     False accusation blush, and tyranny     Tremble at patience. You, my lord, best know-     Who least will seem to do so- my past life     Hath been as continent, as chaste, as true,     As I am now unhappy; which is more       Than history can pattern, though devis\'d     And play\'d to take spectators; for behold me-     A fellow of the royal bed, which owe     A moiety of the throne, a great king\'s daughter,     The mother to a hopeful prince- here standing     To prate and talk for life and honour fore     Who please to come and hear. For life, I prize it     As I weigh grief, which I would spare; for honour,     \'Tis a derivative from me to mine,     And only that I stand for. I appeal     To your own conscience, sir, before Polixenes     Came to your court, how I was in your grace,     How merited to be so; since he came,     With what encounter so uncurrent I     Have strain\'d t\' appear thus; if one jot beyond     The bound of honour, or in act or will     That way inclining, hard\'ned be the hearts     Of all that hear me, and my near\'st of kin     Cry fie upon my grave!   LEONTES. I ne\'er heard yet       That any of these bolder vices wanted     Less impudence to gainsay what they did     Than to perform it first.   HERMIONE. That\'s true enough;     Though \'tis a saying, sir, not due to me.   LEONTES. You will not own it.   HERMIONE. More than mistress of     Which comes to me in name of fault, I must not     At all acknowledge. For Polixenes,     With whom I am accus\'d, I do confess     I lov\'d him as in honour he requir\'d;     With such a kind of love as might become     A lady like me; with a love even such,     So and no other, as yourself commanded;     Which not to have done, I think had been in me     Both disobedience and ingratitude     To you and toward your friend; whose love had spoke,     Ever since it could speak, from an infant, freely,     That it was yours. Now for conspiracy:     I know not how it tastes, though it be dish\'d       For me to try how; all I know of it     Is that Camillo was an honest man;     And why he left your court, the gods themselves,     Wotting no more than I, are ignorant.   LEONTES. You knew of his departure, as you know     What you have underta\'en to do in\'s absence.   HERMIONE. Sir,     You speak a language that I understand not.     My life stands in the level of your dreams,     Which I\'ll lay down.   LEONTES. Your actions are my dreams.     You had a bastard by Polixenes,     And I but dream\'d it. As you were past all shame-     Those of your fact are so- so past all truth;     Which to deny concerns more than avails; for as     Thy brat hath been cast out, like to itself,     No father owning it- which is indeed     More criminal in thee than it- so thou     Shalt feel our justice; in whose easiest passage     Look for no less than death.     HERMIONE. Sir, spare your threats.     The bug which you would fright me with I seek.     To me can life be no commodity.     The crown and comfort of my life, your favour,     I do give lost, for I do feel it gone,     But know not how it went; my second joy     And first fruits of my body, from his presence     I am barr\'d, like one infectious; my third comfort,     Starr\'d most unluckily, is from my breast-     The innocent milk in it most innocent mouth-     Hal\'d out to murder; myself on every post     Proclaim\'d a strumpet; with immodest hatred     The child-bed privilege denied, which \'longs     To women of all fashion; lastly, hurried     Here to this place, i\' th\' open air, before     I have got strength of limit. Now, my liege,     Tell me what blessings I have here alive     That I should fear to die. Therefore proceed.     But yet hear this- mistake me not: no life,     I prize it not a straw, but for mine honour       Which I would free- if I shall be condemn\'d     Upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else     But what your jealousies awake, I tell you     \'Tis rigour, and not law. Your honours all,     I do refer me to the oracle:     Apollo be my judge!   FIRST LORD. This your request     Is altogether just. Therefore, bring forth,     And in Apollo\'s name, his oracle.                                          Exeunt certain OFFICERS   HERMIONE. The Emperor of Russia was my father;     O that he were alive, and here beholding     His daughter\'s trial! that he did but see     The flatness of my misery; yet with eyes     Of pity, not revenge!             Re-enter OFFICERS, with CLEOMENES and DION    OFFICER. You here shall swear upon this sword of justice     That you, Cleomenes and Dion, have       Been both at Delphos, and from thence have brought     This seal\'d-up oracle, by the hand deliver\'d     Of great Apollo\'s priest; and that since then     You have not dar\'d to break the holy seal     Nor read the secrets in\'t.   CLEOMENES, DION. All this we swear.   LEONTES. Break up the seals and read.   OFFICER.  [Reads]  \'Hermione is chaste; Polixenes blameless;     Camillo a true subject; Leontes a jealous tyrant; his innocent     babe truly begotten; and the King shall live without an heir, if     that which is lost be not found.\'   LORDS. Now blessed be the great Apollo!   HERMIONE. Praised!   LEONTES. Hast thou read truth?   OFFICER. Ay, my lord; even so     As it is here set down.   LEONTES. There is no truth at all i\' th\' oracle.     The sessions shall proceed. This is mere falsehood.                          Enter a SERVANT      SERVANT. My lord the King, the King!   LEONTES. What is the business?   SERVANT. O sir, I shall be hated to report it:     The Prince your son, with mere conceit and fear     Of the Queen\'s speed, is gone.   LEONTES. How! Gone?   SERVANT. Is dead.   LEONTES. Apollo\'s angry; and the heavens themselves     Do strike at my injustice.                 [HERMIONE swoons]     How now, there!   PAULINA. This news is mortal to the Queen. Look down     And see what death is doing.   LEONTES. Take her hence.     Her heart is but o\'ercharg\'d; she will recover.     I have too much believ\'d mine own suspicion.     Beseech you tenderly apply to her     Some remedies for life.                          Exeunt PAULINA and LADIES with HERMIONE     Apollo, pardon       My great profaneness \'gainst thine oracle.     I\'ll reconcile me to Polixenes,     New woo my queen, recall the good Camillo-     Whom I proclaim a man of truth, of mercy.     For, being transported by my jealousies     To bloody thoughts and to revenge, I chose     Camillo for the minister to poison     My friend Polixenes; which had been done     But that the good mind of Camillo tardied     My swift command, though I with death and with     Reward did threaten and encourage him,     Not doing it and being done. He, most humane     And fill\'d with honour, to my kingly guest     Unclasp\'d my practice, quit his fortunes here,     Which you knew great, and to the certain hazard     Of all incertainties himself commended,     No richer than his honour. How he glisters     Thorough my rust! And how his piety     Does my deeds make the blacker!                          Re-enter PAULINA    PAULINA. Woe the while!     O, cut my lace, lest my heart, cracking it,     Break too!   FIRST LORD. What fit is this, good lady?   PAULINA. What studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?     What wheels, racks, fires? what flaying, boiling     In leads or oils? What old or newer torture     Must I receive, whose every word deserves     To taste of thy most worst? Thy tyranny     Together working with thy jealousies,     Fancies too weak for boys, too green and idle     For girls of nine- O, think what they have done,     And then run mad indeed, stark mad; for all     Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it.     That thou betray\'dst Polixenes, \'twas nothing;     That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant,     And damnable ingrateful. Nor was\'t much     Thou wouldst have poison\'d good Camillo\'s honour,       To have him kill a king- poor trespasses,     More monstrous standing by; whereof I reckon     The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter     To be or none or little, though a devil     Would have shed water out of fire ere done\'t;     Nor is\'t directly laid to thee, the death     Of the young Prince, whose honourable thoughts-     Thoughts high for one so tender- cleft the heart     That could conceive a gross and foolish sire     Blemish\'d his gracious dam. This is not, no,     Laid to thy answer; but the last- O lords,     When I have said, cry \'Woe!\'- the Queen, the Queen,     The sweet\'st, dear\'st creature\'s dead; and vengeance     For\'t not dropp\'d down yet.   FIRST LORD. The higher pow\'rs forbid!   PAULINA. I say she\'s dead; I\'ll swear\'t. If word nor oath     Prevail not, go and see. If you can bring     Tincture or lustre in her lip, her eye,     Heat outwardly or breath within, I\'ll serve you     As I would do the gods. But, O thou tyrant!       Do not repent these things, for they are heavier     Than all thy woes can stir; therefore betake thee     To nothing but despair. A thousand knees     Ten thousand years together, naked, fasting,     Upon a barren mountain, and still winter     In storm perpetual, could not move the gods     To look that way thou wert.   LEONTES. Go on, go on.     Thou canst not speak too much; I have deserv\'d     All tongues to talk their bitt\'rest.   FIRST LORD. Say no more;     Howe\'er the business goes, you have made fault     I\' th\' boldness of your speech.   PAULINA. I am sorry for\'t.     All faults I make, when I shall come to know them.     I do repent. Alas, I have show\'d too much     The rashness of a woman! He is touch\'d     To th\' noble heart. What\'s gone and what\'s past help     Should be past grief. Do not receive affliction     At my petition; I beseech you, rather       Let me be punish\'d that have minded you     Of what you should forget. Now, good my liege,     Sir, royal sir, forgive a foolish woman.     The love I bore your queen- lo, fool again!     I\'ll speak of her no more, nor of your children;     I\'ll not remember you of my own lord,     Who is lost too. Take your patience to you,     And I\'ll say nothing.   LEONTES. Thou didst speak but well     When most the truth; which I receive much better     Than to be pitied of thee. Prithee, bring me     To the dead bodies of my queen and son.     One grave shall be for both. Upon them shall     The causes of their death appear, unto     Our shame perpetual. Once a day I\'ll visit     The chapel where they lie; and tears shed there     Shall be my recreation. So long as nature     Will bear up with this exercise, so long     I daily vow to use it. Come, and lead me     To these sorrows.                                     Exeunt     SCENE III. Bohemia. The sea-coast  Enter ANTIGONUS with the CHILD, and a MARINER    ANTIGONUS. Thou art perfect then our ship hath touch\'d upon     The deserts of Bohemia?   MARINER. Ay, my lord, and fear     We have landed in ill time; the skies look grimly     And threaten present blusters. In my conscience,     The heavens with that we have in hand are angry     And frown upon \'s.   ANTIGONUS. Their sacred wills be done! Go, get aboard;     Look to thy bark. I\'ll not be long before     I call upon thee.   MARINER. Make your best haste; and go not     Too far i\' th\' land; \'tis like to be loud weather;     Besides, this place is famous for the creatures     Of prey that keep upon\'t.   ANTIGONUS. Go thou away;     I\'ll follow instantly.   MARINER. I am glad at heart       To be so rid o\' th\' business.                           Exit   ANTIGONUS. Come, poor babe.     I have heard, but not believ\'d, the spirits o\' th\' dead     May walk again. If such thing be, thy mother     Appear\'d to me last night; for ne\'er was dream     So like a waking. To me comes a creature,     Sometimes her head on one side some another-     I never saw a vessel of like sorrow,     So fill\'d and so becoming; in pure white robes,     Like very sanctity, she did approach     My cabin where I lay; thrice bow\'d before me;     And, gasping to begin some speech, her eyes     Became two spouts; the fury spent, anon     Did this break from her: \'Good Antigonus,     Since fate, against thy better disposition,     Hath made thy person for the thrower-out     Of my poor babe, according to thine oath,     Places remote enough are in Bohemia,     There weep, and leave it crying; and, for the babe     Is counted lost for ever, Perdita       I prithee call\'t. For this ungentle business,     Put on thee by my lord, thou ne\'er shalt see     Thy wife Paulina more.\' so, with shrieks,     She melted into air. Affrighted much,     I did in time collect myself, and thought     This was so and no slumber. Dreams are toys;     Yet, for this once, yea, superstitiously,     I will be squar\'d by this. I do believe     Hermione hath suffer\'d death, and that     Apollo would, this being indeed the issue     Of King Polixenes, it should here be laid,     Either for life or death, upon the earth     Of its right father. Blossom, speed thee well!                                          [Laying down the child]     There lie, and there thy character; there these                                           [Laying down a bundle]     Which may, if fortune please, both breed thee, pretty,     And still rest thine. The storm begins. Poor wretch,     That for thy mother\'s fault art thus expos\'d     To loss and what may follow! Weep I cannot,       But my heart bleeds; and most accurs\'d am I     To be by oath enjoin\'d to this. Farewell!     The day frowns more and more. Thou\'rt like to have     A lullaby too rough; I never saw     The heavens so dim by day.  [Noise of hunt within]  A savage       clamour!     Well may I get aboard! This is the chase;     I am gone for ever.                  Exit, pursued by a bear                        Enter an old SHEPHERD    SHEPHERD. I would there were no age between ten and three and     twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is     nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging     the ancientry, stealing, fighting-  [Horns]  Hark you now! Would     any but these boil\'d brains of nineteen and two and twenty hunt     this weather? They have scar\'d away two of my best sheep, which I     fear the wolf will sooner find than the master. If any where I     have them, \'tis by the sea-side, browsing of ivy. Good luck, an\'t     be thy will! What have we here?  [Taking up the child]  Mercy       on\'s, a barne! A very pretty barne. A boy or a child, I wonder? A     pretty one; a very pretty one- sure, some scape. Though I am not     bookish, yet I can read waiting-gentlewoman in the scape. This     has been some stair-work, some trunk-work, some behind-door-work;     they were warmer that got this than the poor thing is here. I\'ll     take it up for pity; yet I\'ll tarry till my son come; he halloo\'d     but even now. Whoa-ho-hoa!                            Enter CLOWN    CLOWN. Hilloa, loa!   SHEPHERD. What, art so near? If thou\'lt see a thing to talk on when     thou art dead and rotten, come hither. What ail\'st thou, man?   CLOWN. I have seen two such sights, by sea and by land! But I am     not to say it is a sea, for it is now the sky; betwixt the     firmament and it you cannot thrust a bodkin\'s point.   SHEPHERD. Why, boy, how is it?   CLOWN. I would you did but see how it chafes, how it rages, how it     takes up the shore! But that\'s not to the point. O, the most     piteous cry of the poor souls! Sometimes to see \'em, and not to       see \'em; now the ship boring the moon with her mainmast, and anon     swallowed with yeast and froth, as you\'d thrust a cork into a     hogshead. And then for the land service- to see how the bear tore     out his shoulder-bone; how he cried to me for help, and said his     name was Antigonus, a nobleman! But to make an end of the ship-     to see how the sea flap-dragon\'d it; but first, how the poor     souls roared, and the sea mock\'d them; and how the poor gentleman     roared, and the bear mock\'d him, both roaring louder than the sea     or weather.   SHEPHERD. Name of mercy, when was this, boy?   CLOWN. Now, now; I have not wink\'d since I saw these sights; the     men are not yet cold under water, nor the bear half din\'d on the     gentleman; he\'s at it now.   SHEPHERD. Would I had been by to have help\'d the old man!   CLOWN. I would you had been by the ship-side, to have help\'d her;     there your charity would have lack\'d footing.   SHEPHERD. Heavy matters, heavy matters! But look thee here, boy.     Now bless thyself; thou met\'st with things dying, I with things     new-born. Here\'s a sight for thee; look thee, a bearing-cloth for     a squire\'s child! Look thee here; take up, take up, boy; open\'t.       So, let\'s see- it was told me I should be rich by the fairies.     This is some changeling. Open\'t. What\'s within, boy?   CLOWN. You\'re a made old man; if the sins of your youth are     forgiven you, you\'re well to live. Gold! all gold!   SHEPHERD. This is fairy gold, boy, and \'twill prove so. Up with\'t,     keep it close. Home, home, the next way! We are lucky, boy; and     to be so still requires nothing but secrecy. Let my sheep go.     Come, good boy, the next way home.   CLOWN. Go you the next way with your findings. I\'ll go see if the     bear be gone from the gentleman, and how much he hath eaten. They     are never curst but when they are hungry. If there be any of him     left, I\'ll bury it.   SHEPHERD. That\'s a good deed. If thou mayest discern by that which     is left of him what he is, fetch me to th\' sight of him.   CLOWN. Marry, will I; and you shall help to put him i\' th\' ground.   SHEPHERD. \'Tis a lucky day, boy; and we\'ll do good deeds on\'t.                                                           Exeunt     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT IV. SCENE I.  Enter TIME, the CHORUS    TIME. I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror     Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error,     Now take upon me, in the name of Time,     To use my wings. Impute it not a crime     To me or my swift passage that I slide     O\'er sixteen years, and leave the growth untried     Of that wide gap, since it is in my pow\'r     To o\'erthrow law, and in one self-born hour     To plant and o\'erwhelm custom. Let me pass     The same I am, ere ancient\'st order was     Or what is now receiv\'d. I witness to     The times that brought them in; so shall I do     To th\' freshest things now reigning, and make stale     The glistering of this present, as my tale     Now seems to it. Your patience this allowing,     I turn my glass, and give my scene such growing     As you had slept between. Leontes leaving-     Th\' effects of his fond jealousies so grieving       That he shuts up himself- imagine me,     Gentle spectators, that I now may be     In fair Bohemia; and remember well     I mention\'d a son o\' th\' King\'s, which Florizel     I now name to you; and with speed so pace     To speak of Perdita, now grown in grace     Equal with wond\'ring. What of her ensues     I list not prophesy; but let Time\'s news     Be known when \'tis brought forth. A shepherd\'s daughter,     And what to her adheres, which follows after,     Is th\' argument of Time. Of this allow,     If ever you have spent time worse ere now;     If never, yet that Time himself doth say     He wishes earnestly you never may.                      Exit     SCENE II. Bohemia. The palace of POLIXENES  Enter POLIXENES and CAMILLO    POLIXENES. I pray thee, good Camillo, be no more importunate: \'tis     a sickness denying thee anything; a death to grant this.   CAMILLO. It is fifteen years since I saw my country; though I have     for the most part been aired abroad, I desire to lay my bones     there. Besides, the penitent King, my master, hath sent for me;     to whose feeling sorrows I might be some allay, or I o\'erween to     think so, which is another spur to my departure.   POLIXENES. As thou lov\'st me, Camillo, wipe not out the rest of thy     services by leaving me now. The need I have of thee thine own     goodness hath made. Better not to have had thee than thus to want     thee; thou, having made me businesses which none without thee can     sufficiently manage, must either stay to execute them thyself, or     take away with thee the very services thou hast done; which if I     have not enough considered- as too much I cannot- to be more     thankful to thee shall be my study; and my profit therein the     heaping friendships. Of that fatal country Sicilia, prithee,     speak no more; whose very naming punishes me with the remembrance       of that penitent, as thou call\'st him, and reconciled king, my     brother; whose loss of his most precious queen and children are     even now to be afresh lamented. Say to me, when saw\'st thou the     Prince Florizel, my son? Kings are no less unhappy, their issue     not being gracious, than they are in losing them when they have     approved their virtues.   CAMILLO. Sir, it is three days since I saw the Prince. What his     happier affairs may be are to me unknown; but I have missingly     noted he is of late much retired from court, and is less frequent     to his princely exercises than formerly he hath appeared.   POLIXENES. I have considered so much, Camillo, and with some care,     so far that I have eyes under my service which look upon his     removedness; from whom I have this intelligence, that he is     seldom from the house of a most homely shepherd- a man, they say,     that from very nothing, and beyond the imagination of his     neighbours, is grown into an unspeakable estate.   CAMILLO. I have heard, sir, of such a man, who hath a daughter of     most rare note. The report of her is extended more than can be     thought to begin from such a cottage.   POLIXENES. That\'s likewise part of my intelligence; but, I fear, the       angle that plucks our son thither. Thou shalt accompany us to the     place; where we will, not appearing what we are, have some     question with the shepherd; from whose simplicity I think it not     uneasy to get the cause of my son\'s resort thither. Prithee be my     present partner in this business, and lay aside the thoughts of     Sicilia.   CAMILLO. I willingly obey your command.   POLIXENES. My best Camillo! We must disguise ourselves.                                                           Exeunt     SCENE III. Bohemia. A road near the SHEPHERD\'S cottage  Enter AUTOLYCUS, singing        When daffodils begin to peer,         With heigh! the doxy over the dale,       Why, then comes in the sweet o\' the year,         For the red blood reigns in the winter\'s pale.        The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,         With heigh! the sweet birds, O, how they sing!       Doth set my pugging tooth on edge,         For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.        The lark, that tirra-lirra chants,         With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay,       Are summer songs for me and my aunts,         While we lie tumbling in the hay.      I have serv\'d Prince Florizel, and in my time wore three-pile;     but now I am out of service.          But shall I go mourn for that, my dear?         The pale moon shines by night;       And when I wander here and there,         I then do most go right.        If tinkers may have leave to live,         And bear the sow-skin budget,       Then my account I well may give         And in the stocks avouch it.      My traffic is sheets; when the kite builds, look to lesser linen.     My father nam\'d me Autolycus; who, being, I as am, litter\'d under     Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. With     die and drab I purchas\'d this caparison; and my revenue is the     silly-cheat. Gallows and knock are too powerful on the highway;     beating and hanging are terrors to me; for the life to come, I     sleep out the thought of it. A prize! a prize!                              Enter CLOWN      CLOWN. Let me see: every \'leven wether tods; every tod yields pound     and odd shilling; fifteen hundred shorn, what comes the wool to?   AUTOLYCUS.  [Aside]  If the springe hold, the cock\'s mine.   CLOWN. I cannot do \'t without counters. Let me see: what am I to     buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pound of sugar, five     pound of currants, rice- what will this sister of mine do with     rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she     lays it on. She hath made me four and twenty nosegays for the     shearers- three-man song-men all, and very good ones; but they     are most of them means and bases; but one Puritan amongst them,     and he sings psalms to hornpipes. I must have saffron to colour     the warden pies; mace; dates- none, that\'s out of my note;     nutmegs, seven; race or two of ginger, but that I may beg; four     pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o\' th\' sun.   AUTOLYCUS.  [Grovelling on the ground]  O that ever I was born!   CLOWN. I\' th\' name of me!   AUTOLYCUS. O, help me, help me! Pluck but off these rags; and then,     death, death!   CLOWN. Alack, poor soul! thou hast need of more rags to lay on       thee, rather than have these off.   AUTOLYCUS. O sir, the loathsomeness of them offend me more than the     stripes I have received, which are mighty ones and millions.   CLOWN. Alas, poor man! a million of beating may come to a great     matter.   AUTOLYCUS. I am robb\'d, sir, and beaten; my money and apparel ta\'en     from me, and these detestable things put upon me.   CLOWN. What, by a horseman or a footman?   AUTOLYCUS. A footman, sweet sir, a footman.   CLOWN. Indeed, he should be a footman, by the garments he has left     with thee; if this be a horseman\'s coat, it hath seen very hot     service. Lend me thy hand, I\'ll help thee. Come, lend me thy     hand.                                       [Helping him up]   AUTOLYCUS. O, good sir, tenderly, O!   CLOWN. Alas, poor soul!   AUTOLYCUS. O, good sir, softly, good sir; I fear, sir, my shoulder     blade is out.   CLOWN. How now! Canst stand?   AUTOLYCUS. Softly, dear sir  [Picks his pocket];  good sir, softly.     You ha\' done me a charitable office.     CLOWN. Dost lack any money? I have a little money for thee.   AUTOLYCUS. No, good sweet sir; no, I beseech you, sir. I have a     kinsman not past three quarters of a mile hence, unto whom I was     going; I shall there have money or anything I want. Offer me no     money, I pray you; that kills my heart.   CLOWN. What manner of fellow was he that robb\'d you?   AUTOLYCUS. A fellow, sir, that I have known to go about with     troll-my-dames; I knew him once a servant of the Prince. I cannot     tell, good sir, for which of his virtues it was, but he was     certainly whipt out of the court.   CLOWN. His vices, you would say; there\'s no virtue whipt out of the     court. They cherish it to make it stay there; and yet it will no     more but abide.   AUTOLYCUS. Vices, I would say, sir. I know this man well; he hath     been since an ape-bearer; then a process-server, a bailiff; then     he compass\'d a motion of the Prodigal Son, and married a tinker\'s     wife within a mile where my land and living lies; and, having     flown over many knavish professions, he settled only in rogue.     Some call him Autolycus.   CLOWN. Out upon him! prig, for my life, prig! He haunts wakes,       fairs, and bear-baitings.   AUTOLYCUS. Very true, sir; he, sir, he; that\'s the rogue that put     me into this apparel.   CLOWN. Not a more cowardly rogue in all Bohemia; if you had but     look\'d big and spit at him, he\'d have run.   AUTOLYCUS. I must confess to you, sir, I am no fighter; I am false     of heart that way, and that he knew, I warrant him.   CLOWN. How do you now?   AUTOLYCUS. Sweet sir, much better than I was; I can stand and walk.     I will even take my leave of you and pace softly towards my     kinsman\'s.   CLOWN. Shall I bring thee on the way?   AUTOLYCUS. No, good-fac\'d sir; no, sweet sir.   CLOWN. Then fare thee well. I must go buy spices for our     sheep-shearing.   AUTOLYCUS. Prosper you, sweet sir!                  Exit CLOWN     Your purse is not hot enough to purchase your spice. I\'ll be with     you at your sheep-shearing too. If I make not this cheat bring     out another, and the shearers prove sheep, let me be unroll\'d,     and my name put in the book of virtue!                                                            [Sings]             Jog on, jog on, the footpath way,               And merrily hent the stile-a;             A merry heart goes all the day,               Your sad tires in a mile-a.                   Exit     SCENE IV. Bohemia. The SHEPHERD\'S cottage  Enter FLORIZEL and PERDITA    FLORIZEL. These your unusual weeds to each part of you     Do give a life- no shepherdess, but Flora     Peering in April\'s front. This your sheep-shearing     Is as a meeting of the petty gods,     And you the Queen on\'t.   PERDITA. Sir, my gracious lord,     To chide at your extremes it not becomes me-     O, pardon that I name them! Your high self,     The gracious mark o\' th\' land, you have obscur\'d     With a swain\'s wearing; and me, poor lowly maid,     Most goddess-like prank\'d up. But that our feasts     In every mess have folly, and the feeders     Digest it with a custom, I should blush     To see you so attir\'d; swoon, I think,     To show myself a glass.   FLORIZEL. I bless the time     When my good falcon made her flight across       Thy father\'s ground.   PERDITA. Now Jove afford you cause!     To me the difference forges dread; your greatness     Hath not been us\'d to fear. Even now I tremble     To think your father, by some accident,     Should pass this way, as you did. O, the Fates!     How would he look to see his work, so noble,     Vilely bound up? What would he say? Or how     Should I, in these my borrowed flaunts, behold     The sternness of his presence?   FLORIZEL. Apprehend     Nothing but jollity. The gods themselves,     Humbling their deities to love, have taken     The shapes of beasts upon them: Jupiter     Became a bull and bellow\'d; the green Neptune     A ram and bleated; and the fire-rob\'d god,     Golden Apollo, a poor humble swain,     As I seem now. Their transformations     Were never for a piece of beauty rarer,     Nor in a way so chaste, since my desires       Run not before mine honour, nor my lusts     Burn hotter than my faith.   PERDITA. O, but, sir,     Your resolution cannot hold when \'tis     Oppos\'d, as it must be, by th\' pow\'r of the King.     One of these two must be necessities,     Which then will speak, that you must change this purpose,     Or I my life.   FLORIZEL. Thou dearest Perdita,     With these forc\'d thoughts, I prithee, darken not     The mirth o\' th\' feast. Or I\'ll be thine, my fair,     Or not my father\'s; for I cannot be     Mine own, nor anything to any, if     I be not thine. To this I am most constant,     Though destiny say no. Be merry, gentle;     Strangle such thoughts as these with any thing     That you behold the while. Your guests are coming.     Lift up your countenance, as it were the day     Of celebration of that nuptial which     We two have sworn shall come.     PERDITA. O Lady Fortune,     Stand you auspicious!   FLORIZEL. See, your guests approach.     Address yourself to entertain them sprightly,     And let\'s be red with mirth.          Enter SHEPHERD, with POLIXENES and CAMILLO, disguised;                  CLOWN, MOPSA, DORCAS, with OTHERS    SHEPHERD. Fie, daughter! When my old wife liv\'d, upon     This day she was both pantler, butler, cook;     Both dame and servant; welcom\'d all; serv\'d all;     Would sing her song and dance her turn; now here     At upper end o\' th\' table, now i\' th\' middle;     On his shoulder, and his; her face o\' fire     With labour, and the thing she took to quench it     She would to each one sip. You are retired,     As if you were a feasted one, and not     The hostess of the meeting. Pray you bid     These unknown friends to\'s welcome, for it is       A way to make us better friends, more known.     Come, quench your blushes, and present yourself     That which you are, Mistress o\' th\' Feast. Come on,     And bid us welcome to your sheep-shearing,     As your good flock shall prosper.   PERDITA.  [To POLIXENES]  Sir, welcome.     It is my father\'s will I should take on me     The hostess-ship o\' th\' day.  [To CAMILLO]     You\'re welcome, sir.     Give me those flow\'rs there, Dorcas. Reverend sirs,     For you there\'s rosemary and rue; these keep     Seeming and savour all the winter long.     Grace and remembrance be to you both!     And welcome to our shearing.   POLIXENES. Shepherdess-     A fair one are you- well you fit our ages     With flow\'rs of winter.   PERDITA. Sir, the year growing ancient,     Not yet on summer\'s death nor on the birth     Of trembling winter, the fairest flow\'rs o\' th\' season       Are our carnations and streak\'d gillyvors,     Which some call nature\'s bastards. Of that kind     Our rustic garden\'s barren; and I care not     To get slips of them.   POLIXENES. Wherefore, gentle maiden,     Do you neglect them?   PERDITA. For I have heard it said     There is an art which in their piedness shares     With great creating nature.   POLIXENES. Say there be;     Yet nature is made better by no mean     But nature makes that mean; so over that art     Which you say adds to nature, is an art     That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry     A gentler scion to the wildest stock,     And make conceive a bark of baser kind     By bud of nobler race. This is an art     Which does mend nature- change it rather; but     The art itself is nature.   PERDITA. So it is.     POLIXENES. Then make your garden rich in gillyvors,     And do not call them bastards.   PERDITA. I\'ll not put     The dibble in earth to set one slip of them;     No more than were I painted I would wish     This youth should say \'twere well, and only therefore     Desire to breed by me. Here\'s flow\'rs for you:     Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram;     The marigold, that goes to bed wi\' th\' sun,     And with him rises weeping; these are flow\'rs     Of middle summer, and I think they are given     To men of middle age. Y\'are very welcome.   CAMILLO. I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,     And only live by gazing.   PERDITA. Out, alas!     You\'d be so lean that blasts of January     Would blow you through and through. Now, my fair\'st friend,     I would I had some flow\'rs o\' th\' spring that might     Become your time of day- and yours, and yours,     That wear upon your virgin branches yet       Your maidenheads growing. O Proserpina,     From the flowers now that, frighted, thou let\'st fall     From Dis\'s waggon!- daffodils,     That come before the swallow dares, and take     The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim     But sweeter than the lids of Juno\'s eyes     Or Cytherea\'s breath; pale primroses,     That die unmarried ere they can behold     Bright Phoebus in his strength- a malady     Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and     The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,     The flow\'r-de-luce being one. O, these I lack     To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend     To strew him o\'er and o\'er!   FLORIZEL. What, like a corse?   PERDITA. No; like a bank for love to lie and play on;     Not like a corse; or if- not to be buried,     But quick, and in mine arms. Come, take your flow\'rs.     Methinks I play as I have seen them do     In Whitsun pastorals. Sure, this robe of mine       Does change my disposition.   FLORIZEL. What you do     Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,     I\'d have you do it ever. When you sing,     I\'d have you buy and sell so; so give alms;     Pray so; and, for the ord\'ring your affairs,     To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you     A wave o\' th\' sea, that you might ever do     Nothing but that; move still, still so,     And own no other function. Each your doing,     So singular in each particular,     Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds,     That all your acts are queens.   PERDITA. O Doricles,     Your praises are too large. But that your youth,     And the true blood which peeps fairly through\'t,     Do plainly give you out an unstain\'d shepherd,     With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles,     You woo\'d me the false way.   FLORIZEL. I think you have       As little skill to fear as I have purpose     To put you to\'t. But, come; our dance, I pray.     Your hand, my Perdita; so turtles pair     That never mean to part.   PERDITA. I\'ll swear for \'em.   POLIXENES. This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever     Ran on the green-sward; nothing she does or seems     But smacks of something greater than herself,     Too noble for this place.   CAMILLO. He tells her something     That makes her blood look out. Good sooth, she is     The queen of curds and cream.   CLOWN. Come on, strike up.   DORCAS. Mopsa must be your mistress; marry, garlic,     To mend her kissing with!   MOPSA. Now, in good time!   CLOWN. Not a word, a word; we stand upon our manners.     Come, strike up.                                     [Music]            Here a dance Of SHEPHERDS and SHEPHERDESSES      POLIXENES. Pray, good shepherd, what fair swain is this     Which dances with your daughter?   SHEPHERD. They call him Doricles, and boasts himself     To have a worthy feeding; but I have it     Upon his own report, and I believe it:     He looks like sooth. He says he loves my daughter;     I think so too; for never gaz\'d the moon     Upon the water as he\'ll stand and read,     As \'twere my daughter\'s eyes; and, to be plain,     I think there is not half a kiss to choose     Who loves another best.   POLIXENES. She dances featly.   SHEPHERD. So she does any thing; though I report it     That should be silent. If young Doricles     Do light upon her, she shall bring him that     Which he not dreams of.                        Enter a SERVANT      SERVANT. O master, if you did but hear the pedlar at the door, you     would never dance again after a tabor and pipe; no, the bagpipe     could not move you. He sings several tunes faster than you\'ll     tell money; he utters them as he had eaten ballads, and all men\'s     ears grew to his tunes.   CLOWN. He could never come better; he shall come in. I love a     ballad but even too well, if it be doleful matter merrily set     down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.   SERVANT. He hath songs for man or woman of all sizes; no milliner     can so fit his customers with gloves. He has the prettiest     love-songs for maids; so without bawdry, which is strange; with     such delicate burdens of dildos and fadings, \'jump her and thump     her\'; and where some stretch-mouth\'d rascal would, as it were,     mean mischief, and break a foul gap into the matter, he makes the     maid to answer \'Whoop, do me no harm, good man\'- puts him off,     slights him, with \'Whoop, do me no harm, good man.\'   POLIXENES. This is a brave fellow.   CLOWN. Believe me, thou talkest of an admirable conceited fellow.     Has he any unbraided wares?   SERVANT. He hath ribbons of all the colours i\' th\' rainbow; points,       more than all the lawyers in Bohemia can learnedly handle, though     they come to him by th\' gross; inkles, caddisses, cambrics,     lawns. Why he sings \'em over as they were gods or goddesses; you     would think a smock were she-angel, he so chants to the     sleeve-hand and the work about the square on\'t.   CLOWN. Prithee bring him in; and let him approach singing.   PERDITA. Forewarn him that he use no scurrilous words in\'s tunes.                                                     Exit SERVANT   CLOWN. You have of these pedlars that have more in them than you\'d     think, sister.   PERDITA. Ay, good brother, or go about to think.                     Enter AUTOLYCUS, Singing             Lawn as white as driven snow;            Cypress black as e\'er was crow;            Gloves as sweet as damask roses;            Masks for faces and for noses;            Bugle bracelet, necklace amber,            Perfume for a lady\'s chamber;              Golden quoifs and stomachers,            For my lads to give their dears;            Pins and poking-sticks of steel-            What maids lack from head to heel.            Come, buy of me, come; come buy, come buy;            Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry.            Come, buy.    CLOWN. If I were not in love with Mopsa, thou shouldst take no     money of me; but being enthrall\'d as I am, it will also be the     bondage of certain ribbons and gloves.   MOPSA. I was promis\'d them against the feast; but they come not too     late now.   DORCAS. He hath promis\'d you more than that, or there be liars.   MOPSA. He hath paid you all he promis\'d you. May be he has paid you     more, which will shame you to give him again.   CLOWN. Is there no manners left among maids? Will they wear their     plackets where they should bear their faces? Is there not     milking-time, when you are going to bed, or kiln-hole, to whistle     off these secrets, but you must be tittle-tattling before all our       guests? \'Tis well they are whisp\'ring. Clammer your tongues, and     not a word more.   MOPSA. I have done. Come, you promis\'d me a tawdry-lace, and a pair     of sweet gloves.   CLOWN. Have I not told thee how I was cozen\'d by the way, and lost     all my money?   AUTOLYCUS. And indeed, sir, there are cozeners abroad; therefore it     behoves men to be wary.   CLOWN. Fear not thou, man; thou shalt lose nothing here.   AUTOLYCUS. I hope so, sir; for I have about me many parcels of     charge.   CLOWN. What hast here? Ballads?   MOPSA. Pray now, buy some. I love a ballad in print a-life, for     then we are sure they are true.   AUTOLYCUS. Here\'s one to a very doleful tune: how a usurer\'s wife     was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, and how she     long\'d to eat adders\' heads and toads carbonado\'d.   MOPSA. Is it true, think you?   AUTOLYCUS. Very true, and but a month old.   DORCAS. Bless me from marrying a usurer!     AUTOLYCUS. Here\'s the midwife\'s name to\'t, one Mistress Taleporter,     and five or six honest wives that were present. Why should I     carry lies abroad?   MOPSA. Pray you now, buy it.   CLOWN. Come on, lay it by; and let\'s first see moe ballads; we\'ll     buy the other things anon.   AUTOLYCUS. Here\'s another ballad, of a fish that appeared upon the     coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom     above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of     maids. It was thought she was a woman, and was turn\'d into a cold     fish for she would not exchange flesh with one that lov\'d her.     The ballad is very pitiful, and as true.   DORCAS. Is it true too, think you?   AUTOLYCUS. Five justices\' hands at it; and witnesses more than my     pack will hold.   CLOWN. Lay it by too. Another.   AUTOLYCUS. This is a merry ballad, but a very pretty one.   MOPSA. Let\'s have some merry ones.   AUTOLYCUS. Why, this is a passing merry one, and goes to the tune     of \'Two maids wooing a man.\' There\'s scarce a maid westward but       she sings it; \'tis in request, I can tell you.   MOPSA. can both sing it. If thou\'lt bear a part, thou shalt hear;     \'tis in three parts.   DORCAS. We had the tune on\'t a month ago.   AUTOLYCUS. I can bear my part; you must know \'tis my occupation.     Have at it with you.                          SONG    AUTOLYCUS. Get you hence, for I must go              Where it fits not you to know.   DORCAS.    Whither?   MOPSA.       O, whither?   DORCAS.        Whither?   MOPSA.     It becomes thy oath full well              Thou to me thy secrets tell.   DORCAS.    Me too! Let me go thither   MOPSA.     Or thou goest to th\' grange or mill.   DORCAS.    If to either, thou dost ill.   AUTOLYCUS. Neither.     DORCAS.    What, neither?   AUTOLYCUS. Neither.   DORCAS.    Thou hast sworn my love to be.   MOPSA.     Thou hast sworn it more to me.              Then whither goest? Say, whither?    CLOWN. We\'ll have this song out anon by ourselves; my father and     the gentlemen are in sad talk, and we\'ll not trouble them. Come,     bring away thy pack after me. Wenches, I\'ll buy for you both.     Pedlar, let\'s have the first choice. Follow me, girls.                                       Exit with DORCAS and MOPSA   AUTOLYCUS. And you shall pay well for \'em.                                          Exit AUTOLYCUS, Singing               Will you buy any tape,              Or lace for your cape,            My dainty duck, my dear-a?              Any silk, any thread,              Any toys for your head,            Of the new\'st and fin\'st, fin\'st wear-a?                Come to the pedlar;              Money\'s a meddler            That doth utter all men\'s ware-a.                     Re-enter SERVANT    SERVANT. Master, there is three carters, three shepherds, three     neat-herds, three swineherds, that have made themselves all men     of hair; they call themselves Saltiers, and they have dance which     the wenches say is a gallimaufry of gambols, because they are not     in\'t; but they themselves are o\' th\' mind, if it be not too rough     for some that know little but bowling, it will please     plentifully.   SHEPHERD. Away! We\'ll none on\'t; here has been too much homely     foolery already. I know, sir, we weary you.   POLIXENES. You weary those that refresh us. Pray, let\'s see these     four threes of herdsmen.   SERVANT. One three of them, by their own report, sir, hath danc\'d     before the King; and not the worst of the three but jumps twelve     foot and a half by th\' squier.     SHEPHERD. Leave your prating; since these good men are pleas\'d, let     them come in; but quickly now.   SERVANT. Why, they stay at door, sir.                     Exit                      Here a dance of twelve SATYRS    POLIXENES.  [To SHEPHERD]  O, father, you\'ll know more of that       hereafter.     [To CAMILLO]  Is it not too far gone? \'Tis time to part them.     He\'s simple and tells much.  [To FLORIZEL]  How now, fair       shepherd!     Your heart is full of something that does take     Your mind from feasting. Sooth, when I was young     And handed love as you do, I was wont     To load my she with knacks; I would have ransack\'d     The pedlar\'s silken treasury and have pour\'d it     To her acceptance: you have let him go     And nothing marted with him. If your lass     Interpretation should abuse and call this     Your lack of love or bounty, you were straited       For a reply, at least if you make a care     Of happy holding her.   FLORIZEL. Old sir, I know     She prizes not such trifles as these are.     The gifts she looks from me are pack\'d and lock\'d     Up in my heart, which I have given already,     But not deliver\'d. O, hear me breathe my life     Before this ancient sir, whom, it should seem,     Hath sometime lov\'d. I take thy hand- this hand,     As soft as dove\'s down and as white as it,     Or Ethiopian\'s tooth, or the fann\'d snow that\'s bolted     By th\' northern blasts twice o\'er.   POLIXENES. What follows this?     How prettily the young swain seems to wash     The hand was fair before! I have put you out.     But to your protestation; let me hear     What you profess.   FLORIZEL. Do, and be witness to\'t.   POLIXENES. And this my neighbour too?   FLORIZEL. And he, and more       Than he, and men- the earth, the heavens, and all:     That, were I crown\'d the most imperial monarch,     Thereof most worthy, were I the fairest youth     That ever made eye swerve, had force and knowledge     More than was ever man\'s, I would not prize them     Without her love; for her employ them all;     Commend them and condemn them to her service     Or to their own perdition.   POLIXENES. Fairly offer\'d.   CAMILLO. This shows a sound affection.   SHEPHERD. But, my daughter,     Say you the like to him?   PERDITA. I cannot speak     So well, nothing so well; no, nor mean better.     By th\' pattern of mine own thoughts I cut out     The purity of his.   SHEPHERD. Take hands, a bargain!     And, friends unknown, you shall bear witness to\'t:     I give my daughter to him, and will make     Her portion equal his.     FLORIZEL. O, that must be     I\' th\' virtue of your daughter. One being dead,     I shall have more than you can dream of yet;     Enough then for your wonder. But come on,     Contract us fore these witnesses.   SHEPHERD. Come, your hand;     And, daughter, yours.   POLIXENES. Soft, swain, awhile, beseech you;     Have you a father?   FLORIZEL. I have, but what of him?   POLIXENES. Knows he of this?   FLORIZEL. He neither does nor shall.   POLIXENES. Methinks a father     Is at the nuptial of his son a guest     That best becomes the table. Pray you, once more,     Is not your father grown incapable     Of reasonable affairs? Is he not stupid     With age and alt\'ring rheums? Can he speak, hear,     Know man from man, dispute his own estate?     Lies he not bed-rid, and again does nothing       But what he did being childish?   FLORIZEL. No, good sir;     He has his health, and ampler strength indeed     Than most have of his age.   POLIXENES. By my white beard,     You offer him, if this be so, a wrong     Something unfilial. Reason my son     Should choose himself a wife; but as good reason     The father- all whose joy is nothing else     But fair posterity- should hold some counsel     In such a business.   FLORIZEL. I yield all this;     But, for some other reasons, my grave sir,     Which \'tis not fit you know, I not acquaint     My father of this business.   POLIXENES. Let him know\'t.   FLORIZEL. He shall not.   POLIXENES. Prithee let him.   FLORIZEL. No, he must not.   SHEPHERD. Let him, my son; he shall not need to grieve       At knowing of thy choice.   FLORIZEL. Come, come, he must not.     Mark our contract.   POLIXENES.  [Discovering himself]  Mark your divorce, young sir,     Whom son I dare not call; thou art too base     To be acknowledg\'d- thou a sceptre\'s heir,     That thus affects a sheep-hook! Thou, old traitor,     I am sorry that by hanging thee I can but     Shorten thy life one week. And thou, fresh piece     Of excellent witchcraft, who of force must know     The royal fool thou cop\'st with-   SHEPHERD. O, my heart!   POLIXENES. I\'ll have thy beauty scratch\'d with briers and made     More homely than thy state. For thee, fond boy,     If I may ever know thou dost but sigh     That thou no more shalt see this knack- as never     I mean thou shalt- we\'ll bar thee from succession;     Not hold thee of our blood, no, not our kin,     Farre than Deucalion off. Mark thou my words.     Follow us to the court. Thou churl, for this time,       Though full of our displeasure, yet we free thee     From the dead blow of it. And you, enchantment,     Worthy enough a herdsman- yea, him too     That makes himself, but for our honour therein,     Unworthy thee- if ever henceforth thou     These rural latches to his entrance open,     Or hoop his body more with thy embraces,     I will devise a death as cruel for thee     As thou art tender to\'t.                                Exit   PERDITA. Even here undone!     I was not much afeard; for once or twice     I was about to speak and tell him plainly     The self-same sun that shines upon his court     Hides not his visage from our cottage, but     Looks on alike.  [To FLORIZEL]  Will\'t please you, sir, be gone?     I told you what would come of this. Beseech you,     Of your own state take care. This dream of mine-     Being now awake, I\'ll queen it no inch farther,     But milk my ewes and weep.   CAMILLO. Why, how now, father!       Speak ere thou diest.   SHEPHERD. I cannot speak nor think,     Nor dare to know that which I know.  [To FLORIZEL]  O sir,     You have undone a man of fourscore-three     That thought to fill his grave in quiet, yea,     To die upon the bed my father died,     To lie close by his honest bones; but now     Some hangman must put on my shroud and lay me     Where no priest shovels in dust. [To PERDITA] O cursed wretch,     That knew\'st this was the Prince, and wouldst adventure     To mingle faith with him!- Undone, undone!     If I might die within this hour, I have liv\'d     To die when I desire.                                   Exit   FLORIZEL. Why look you so upon me?     I am but sorry, not afeard; delay\'d,     But nothing alt\'red. What I was, I am:     More straining on for plucking back; not following     My leash unwillingly.   CAMILLO. Gracious, my lord,     You know your father\'s temper. At this time       He will allow no speech- which I do guess     You do not purpose to him- and as hardly     Will he endure your sight as yet, I fear;     Then, till the fury of his Highness settle,     Come not before him.   FLORIZEL. I not purpose it.     I think Camillo?   CAMILLO. Even he, my lord.   PERDITA. How often have I told you \'twould be thus!     How often said my dignity would last     But till \'twere known!   FLORIZEL. It cannot fail but by     The violation of my faith; and then     Let nature crush the sides o\' th\' earth together     And mar the seeds within! Lift up thy looks.     From my succession wipe me, father; I     Am heir to my affection.   CAMILLO. Be advis\'d.   FLORIZEL. I am- and by my fancy; if my reason     Will thereto be obedient, I have reason;       If not, my senses, better pleas\'d with madness,     Do bid it welcome.   CAMILLO. This is desperate, sir.   FLORIZEL. So call it; but it does fulfil my vow:     I needs must think it honesty. Camillo,     Not for Bohemia, nor the pomp that may     Be thereat glean\'d, for all the sun sees or     The close earth wombs, or the profound seas hides     In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath     To this my fair belov\'d. Therefore, I pray you,     As you have ever been my father\'s honour\'d friend,     When he shall miss me- as, in faith, I mean not     To see him any more- cast your good counsels     Upon his passion. Let myself and Fortune     Tug for the time to come. This you may know,     And so deliver: I am put to sea     With her who here I cannot hold on shore.     And most opportune to her need I have     A vessel rides fast by, but not prepar\'d     For this design. What course I mean to hold       Shall nothing benefit your knowledge, nor     Concern me the reporting.   CAMILLO. O my lord,     I would your spirit were easier for advice.     Or stronger for your need.   FLORIZEL. Hark, Perdita.                     [Takes her aside]     [To CAMILLO]  I\'ll hear you by and by.   CAMILLO. He\'s irremovable,     Resolv\'d for flight. Now were I happy if     His going I could frame to serve my turn,     Save him from danger, do him love and honour,     Purchase the sight again of dear Sicilia     And that unhappy king, my master, whom     I so much thirst to see.   FLORIZEL. Now, good Camillo,     I am so fraught with curious business that     I leave out ceremony.   CAMILLO. Sir, I think     You have heard of my poor services i\' th\' love     That I have borne your father?     FLORIZEL. Very nobly     Have you deserv\'d. It is my father\'s music     To speak your deeds; not little of his care     To have them recompens\'d as thought on.   CAMILLO. Well, my lord,     If you may please to think I love the King,     And through him what\'s nearest to him, which is     Your gracious self, embrace but my direction.     If your more ponderous and settled project     May suffer alteration, on mine honour,     I\'ll point you where you shall have such receiving     As shall become your Highness; where you may     Enjoy your mistress, from the whom, I see,     There\'s no disjunction to be made but by,     As heavens forfend! your ruin- marry her;     And with my best endeavours in your absence     Your discontenting father strive to qualify,     And bring him up to liking.   FLORIZEL. How, Camillo,     May this, almost a miracle, be done?       That I may call thee something more than man,     And after that trust to thee.   CAMILLO. Have you thought on     A place whereto you\'ll go?   FLORIZEL. Not any yet;     But as th\' unthought-on accident is guilty     To what we wildly do, so we profess     Ourselves to be the slaves of chance and flies     Of every wind that blows.   CAMILLO. Then list to me.     This follows, if you will not change your purpose     But undergo this flight: make for Sicilia,     And there present yourself and your fair princess-     For so, I see, she must be- fore Leontes.     She shall be habited as it becomes     The partner of your bed. Methinks I see     Leontes opening his free arms and weeping     His welcomes forth; asks thee there \'Son, forgiveness!\'     As \'twere i\' th\' father\'s person; kisses the hands     Of your fresh princess; o\'er and o\'er divides him       \'Twixt his unkindness and his kindness- th\' one     He chides to hell, and bids the other grow     Faster than thought or time.   FLORIZEL. Worthy Camillo,     What colour for my visitation shall I     Hold up before him?   CAMILLO. Sent by the King your father     To greet him and to give him comforts. Sir,     The manner of your bearing towards him, with     What you as from your father shall deliver,     Things known betwixt us three, I\'ll write you down;     The which shall point you forth at every sitting     What you must say, that he shall not perceive     But that you have your father\'s bosom there     And speak his very heart.   FLORIZEL. I am bound to you.     There is some sap in this.   CAMILLO. A course more promising     Than a wild dedication of yourselves     To unpath\'d waters, undream\'d shores, most certain       To miseries enough; no hope to help you,     But as you shake off one to take another;     Nothing so certain as your anchors, who     Do their best office if they can but stay you     Where you\'ll be loath to be. Besides, you know     Prosperity\'s the very bond of love,     Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together     Affliction alters.   PERDITA. One of these is true:     I think affliction may subdue the cheek,     But not take in the mind.   CAMILLO. Yea, say you so?     There shall not at your father\'s house these seven years     Be born another such.   FLORIZEL. My good Camillo,     She is as forward of her breeding as     She is i\' th\' rear o\' our birth.   CAMILLO. I cannot say \'tis pity     She lacks instructions, for she seems a mistress     To most that teach.     PERDITA. Your pardon, sir; for this     I\'ll blush you thanks.   FLORIZEL. My prettiest Perdita!     But, O, the thorns we stand upon! Camillo-     Preserver of my father, now of me;     The medicine of our house- how shall we do?     We are not furnish\'d like Bohemia\'s son;     Nor shall appear in Sicilia.   CAMILLO. My lord,     Fear none of this. I think you know my fortunes     Do all lie there. It shall be so my care     To have you royally appointed as if     The scene you play were mine. For instance, sir,     That you may know you shall not want- one word.                                                [They talk aside]                       Re-enter AUTOLYCUS    AUTOLYCUS. Ha, ha! what a fool Honesty is! and Trust, his sworn     brother, a very simple gentleman! I have sold all my trumpery;       not a counterfeit stone, not a ribbon, glass, pomander, brooch,     table-book, ballad, knife, tape, glove, shoe-tie, bracelet,     horn-ring, to keep my pack from fasting. They throng who should     buy first, as if my trinkets had been hallowed and brought a     benediction to the buyer; by which means I saw whose purse was     best in picture; and what I saw, to my good use I rememb\'red. My     clown, who wants but something to be a reasonable man, grew so in     love with the wenches\' song that he would not stir his pettitoes     till he had both tune and words, which so drew the rest of the     herd to me that all their other senses stuck in ears. You might     have pinch\'d a placket, it was senseless; \'twas nothing to geld a     codpiece of a purse; I would have fil\'d keys off that hung in     chains. No hearing, no feeling, but my sir\'s song, and admiring     the nothing of it. So that in this time of lethargy I pick\'d and     cut most of their festival purses; and had not the old man come     in with whoobub against his daughter and the King\'s son and     scar\'d my choughs from the chaff, I had not left a purse alive in     the whole army.                CAMILLO, FLORIZEL, and PERDITA come forward      CAMILLO. Nay, but my letters, by this means being there     So soon as you arrive, shall clear that doubt.   FLORIZEL. And those that you\'ll procure from King Leontes?   CAMILLO. Shall satisfy your father.   PERDITA. Happy be you!     All that you speak shows fair.   CAMILLO.  [seeing AUTOLYCUS]  Who have we here?     We\'ll make an instrument of this; omit     Nothing may give us aid.   AUTOLYCUS.  [Aside]  If they have overheard me now- why, hanging.   CAMILLO. How now, good fellow! Why shak\'st thou so?     Fear not, man; here\'s no harm intended to thee.   AUTOLYCUS. I am a poor fellow, sir.   CAMILLO. Why, be so still; here\'s nobody will steal that from thee.     Yet for the outside of thy poverty we must make an exchange;     therefore discase thee instantly- thou must think there\'s a     necessity in\'t- and change garments with this gentleman. Though     the pennyworth on his side be the worst, yet hold thee, there\'s     some boot.  [Giving money]     AUTOLYCUS. I am a poor fellow, sir.  [Aside]  I know ye well     enough.   CAMILLO. Nay, prithee dispatch. The gentleman is half flay\'d     already.   AUTOLYCUS. Are you in camest, sir?  [Aside]  I smell the trick     on\'t.   FLORIZEL. Dispatch, I prithee.   AUTOLYCUS. Indeed, I have had earnest; but I cannot with conscience     take it.   CAMILLO. Unbuckle, unbuckle.               FLORIZEL and AUTOLYCUS exchange garments      Fortunate mistress- let my prophecy     Come home to ye!- you must retire yourself     Into some covert; take your sweetheart\'s hat     And pluck it o\'er your brows, muffle your face,     Dismantle you, and, as you can, disliken     The truth of your own seeming, that you may-     For I do fear eyes over- to shipboard       Get undescried.   PERDITA. I see the play so lies     That I must bear a part.   CAMILLO. No remedy.     Have you done there?   FLORIZEL. Should I now meet my father,     He would not call me son.   CAMILLO. Nay, you shall have no hat.                                           [Giving it to PERDITA]     Come, lady, come. Farewell, my friend.   AUTOLYCUS. Adieu, sir.   FLORIZEL. O Perdita, what have we twain forgot!     Pray you a word.                       [They converse apart]   CAMILLO.  [Aside]  What I do next shall be to tell the King     Of this escape, and whither they are bound;     Wherein my hope is I shall so prevail     To force him after; in whose company     I shall re-view Sicilia, for whose sight     I have a woman\'s longing.   FLORIZEL. Fortune speed us!       Thus we set on, Camillo, to th\' sea-side.   CAMILLO. The swifter speed the better.                            Exeunt FLORIZEL, PERDITA, and CAMILLO   AUTOLYCUS. I understand the business, I hear it. To have an open     ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, is necessary for a     cut-purse; a good nose is requisite also, to smell out work for     th\' other senses. I see this is the time that the unjust man doth     thrive. What an exchange had this been without boot! What a boot     is here with this exchange! Sure, the gods do this year connive     at us, and we may do anything extempore. The Prince himself is     about a piece of iniquity- stealing away from his father with his     clog at his heels. If I thought it were a piece of honesty to     acquaint the King withal, I would not do\'t. I hold it the more     knavery to conceal it; and therein am I constant to my     profession.                     Re-enter CLOWN and SHEPHERD      Aside, aside- here is more matter for a hot brain. Every lane\'s     end, every shop, church, session, hanging, yields a careful man       work.   CLOWN. See, see; what a man you are now! There is no other way but     to tell the King she\'s a changeling and none of your flesh and     blood.   SHEPHERD. Nay, but hear me.   CLOWN. Nay- but hear me.   SHEPHERD. Go to, then.   CLOWN. She being none of your flesh and blood, your flesh and blood     has not offended the King; and so your flesh and blood is not to     be punish\'d by him. Show those things you found about her, those     secret things- all but what she has with her. This being done,     let the law go whistle; I warrant you.   SHEPHERD. I will tell the King all, every word- yea, and his son\'s     pranks too; who, I may say, is no honest man, neither to his     father nor to me, to go about to make me the King\'s     brother-in-law.   CLOWN. Indeed, brother-in-law was the farthest off you could have     been to him; and then your blood had been the dearer by I know     how much an ounce.   AUTOLYCUS.  [Aside]  Very wisely, puppies!     SHEPHERD. Well, let us to the King. There is that in this fardel     will make him scratch his beard.   AUTOLYCUS.  [Aside]  I know not what impediment this complaint may     be to the flight of my master.   CLOWN. Pray heartily he be at palace.   AUTOLYCUS.  [Aside]  Though I am not naturally honest, I am so     sometimes by chance. Let me pocket up my pedlar\'s excrement.     [Takes off his false beard]  How now, rustics! Whither are you     bound?   SHEPHERD. To th\' palace, an it like your worship.   AUTOLYCUS. Your affairs there, what, with whom, the condition of     that fardel, the place of your dwelling, your names, your ages,     of what having, breeding, and anything that is fitting to be     known- discover.   CLOWN. We are but plain fellows, sir.   AUTOLYCUS. A lie: you are rough and hairy. Let me have no lying; it     becomes none but tradesmen, and they often give us soldiers the     lie; but we pay them for it with stamped coin, not stabbing     steel; therefore they do not give us the lie.   CLOWN. Your worship had like to have given us one, if you had not       taken yourself with the manner.   SHEPHERD. Are you a courtier, an\'t like you, sir?   AUTOLYCUS. Whether it like me or no, I am a courtier. Seest thou     not the air of the court in these enfoldings? Hath not my gait in     it the measure of the court? Receives not thy nose court-odour     from me? Reflect I not on thy baseness court-contempt? Think\'st     thou, for that I insinuate, that toaze from thee thy business, I     am therefore no courtier? I am courtier cap-a-pe, and one that     will either push on or pluck back thy business there; whereupon I     command the to open thy affair.   SHEPHERD. My business, sir, is to the King.   AUTOLYCUS. What advocate hast thou to him?   SHEPHERD. I know not, an\'t like you.   CLOWN. Advocate\'s the court-word for a pheasant; say you have none.   SHEPHERD. None, sir; I have no pheasant, cock nor hen.   AUTOLYCUS. How blessed are we that are not simple men!     Yet nature might have made me as these are,     Therefore I will not disdain.   CLOWN. This cannot be but a great courtier.   SHEPHERD. His garments are rich, but he wears them not handsomely.     CLOWN. He seems to be the more noble in being fantastical.     A great man, I\'ll warrant; I know by the picking on\'s teeth.   AUTOLYCUS. The fardel there? What\'s i\' th\' fardel? Wherefore that     box?   SHEPHERD. Sir, there lies such secrets in this fardel and box which     none must know but the King; and which he shall know within this     hour, if I may come to th\' speech of him.   AUTOLYCUS. Age, thou hast lost thy labour.   SHEPHERD. Why, Sir?   AUTOLYCUS. The King is not at the palace; he is gone aboard a new     ship to purge melancholy and air himself; for, if thou be\'st     capable of things serious, thou must know the King is full of     grief.   SHEPHERD. So \'tis said, sir- about his son, that should have     married a shepherd\'s daughter.   AUTOLYCUS. If that shepherd be not in hand-fast, let him fly; the     curses he shall have, the tortures he shall feel, will break the     back of man, the heart of monster.   CLOWN. Think you so, sir?   AUTOLYCUS. Not he alone shall suffer what wit can make heavy and       vengeance bitter; but those that are germane to him, though     remov\'d fifty times, shall all come under the hangman- which,     though it be great pity, yet it is necessary. An old     sheep-whistling rogue, a ram-tender, to offer to have his     daughter come into grace! Some say he shall be ston\'d; but that     death is too soft for him, say I. Draw our throne into a     sheep-cote!- all deaths are too few, the sharpest too easy.   CLOWN. Has the old man e\'er a son, sir, do you hear, an\'t like you,     sir?   AUTOLYCUS. He has a son- who shall be flay\'d alive; then \'nointed     over with honey, set on the head of a wasp\'s nest; then stand     till he be three quarters and a dram dead; then recover\'d again     with aqua-vitae or some other hot infusion; then, raw as he is,     and in the hottest day prognostication proclaims, shall he be set     against a brick wall, the sun looking with a southward eye upon     him, where he is to behold him with flies blown to death. But     what talk we of these traitorly rascals, whose miseries are to be     smil\'d at, their offences being so capital? Tell me, for you seem     to be honest plain men, what you have to the King. Being     something gently consider\'d, I\'ll bring you where he is aboard,       tender your persons to his presence, whisper him in your behalfs;     and if it be in man besides the King to effect your suits, here     is man shall do it.   CLOWN. He seems to be of great authority. Close with him, give him     gold; and though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft led     by the nose with gold. Show the inside of your purse to the     outside of his hand, and no more ado. Remember- ston\'d and flay\'d     alive.   SHEPHERD. An\'t please you, sir, to undertake the business for us,     here is that gold I have. I\'ll make it as much more, and leave     this young man in pawn till I bring it you.   AUTOLYCUS. After I have done what I promised?   SHEPHERD. Ay, sir.   AUTOLYCUS. Well, give me the moiety. Are you a party in this     business?   CLOWN. In some sort, sir; but though my case be a pitiful one, I     hope I shall not be flay\'d out of it.   AUTOLYCUS. O, that\'s the case of the shepherd\'s son! Hang him,     he\'ll be made an example.   CLOWN. Comfort, good comfort! We must to the King and show our       strange sights. He must know \'tis none of your daughter nor my     sister; we are gone else. Sir, I will give you as much as this     old man does, when the business is performed; and remain, as he     says, your pawn till it be brought you.   AUTOLYCUS. I will trust you. Walk before toward the sea-side; go on     the right-hand; I will but look upon the hedge, and follow you.   CLOWN. We are blest in this man, as I may say, even blest.   SHEPHERD. Let\'s before, as he bids us. He was provided to do us     good.                              Exeunt SHEPHERD and CLOWN   AUTOLYCUS. If I had a mind to be honest, I see Fortune would not     suffer me: she drops booties in my mouth. I am courted now with a     double occasion- gold, and a means to do the Prince my master     good; which who knows how that may turn back to my advancement? I     will bring these two moles, these blind ones, aboard him. If he     think it fit to shore them again, and that the complaint they     have to the King concerns him nothing, let him call me rogue for     being so far officious; for I am proof against that title, and     what shame else belongs to\'t. To him will I present them. There     may be matter in it.                                    Exit     <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    ACT V. SCENE I. Sicilia. The palace of LEONTES  Enter LEONTES, CLEOMENES, DION, PAULINA, and OTHERS    CLEOMENES. Sir, you have done enough, and have perform\'d     A saint-like sorrow. No fault could you make     Which you have not redeem\'d; indeed, paid down     More penitence than done trespass. At the last,     Do as the heavens have done: forget your evil;     With them forgive yourself.   LEONTES. Whilst I remember     Her and her virtues, I cannot forget     My blemishes in them, and so still think of     The wrong I did myself; which was so much     That heirless it hath made my kingdom, and     Destroy\'d the sweet\'st companion that e\'er man     Bred his hopes out of.   PAULINA. True, too true, my lord.     If, one by one, you wedded all the world,     Or from the all that are took something good     To make a perfect woman, she you kill\'d       Would be unparallel\'d.   LEONTES. I think so. Kill\'d!     She I kill\'d! I did so; but thou strik\'st me     Sorely, to say I did. It is as bitter     Upon thy tongue as in my thought. Now, good now,     Say so but seldom.   CLEOMENES. Not at all, good lady.     You might have spoken a thousand things that would     Have done the time more benefit, and grac\'d     Your kindness better.   PAULINA. You are one of those     Would have him wed again.   DION. If you would not so,     You pity not the state, nor the remembrance     Of his most sovereign name; consider little     What dangers, by his Highness\' fail of issue,     May drop upon his kingdom and devour     Incertain lookers-on. What were more holy     Than to rejoice the former queen is well?     What holier than, for royalty\'s repair,       For present comfort, and for future good,     To bless the bed of majesty again     With a sweet fellow to\'t?   PAULINA. There is none worthy,     Respecting her that\'s gone. Besides, the gods     Will have fulfill\'d their secret purposes;     For has not the divine Apollo said,     Is\'t not the tenour of his oracle,     That King Leontes shall not have an heir     Till his lost child be found? Which that it shall,     Is all as monstrous to our human reason     As my Antigonus to break his grave     And come again to me; who, on my life,     Did perish with the infant. \'Tis your counsel     My lord should to the heavens be contrary,     Oppose against their wills.  [To LEONTES]  Care not for issue;     The crown will find an heir. Great Alexander     Left his to th\' worthiest; so his successor     Was like to be the best.   LEONTES. Good Paulina,       Who hast the memory of Hermione,     I know, in honour, O that ever I     Had squar\'d me to thy counsel! Then, even now,     I might have look\'d upon my queen\'s full eyes,     Have taken treasure from her lips-   PAULINA. And left them     More rich for what they yielded.   LEONTES. Thou speak\'st truth.     No more such wives; therefore, no wife. One worse,     And better us\'d, would make her sainted spirit     Again possess her corpse, and on this stage,     Where we offend her now, appear soul-vex\'d,     And begin \'Why to me\'-   PAULINA. Had she such power,     She had just cause.   LEONTES. She had; and would incense me     To murder her I married.   PAULINA. I should so.     Were I the ghost that walk\'d, I\'d bid you mark     Her eye, and tell me for what dull part in\'t       You chose her; then I\'d shriek, that even your ears     Should rift to hear me; and the words that follow\'d     Should be \'Remember mine.\'   LEONTES. Stars, stars,     And all eyes else dead coals! Fear thou no wife;     I\'ll have no wife, Paulina.   PAULINA. Will you swear     Never to marry but by my free leave?   LEONTES. Never, Paulina; so be blest my spirit!   PAULINA. Then, good my lords, bear witness to his oath.   CLEOMENES. You tempt him over-much.   PAULINA. Unless another,     As like Hermione as is her picture,     Affront his eye.   CLEOMENES. Good madam-   PAULINA. I have done.     Yet, if my lord will marry- if you will, sir,     No remedy but you will- give me the office     To choose you a queen. She shall not be so young     As was your former; but she shall be such       As, walk\'d your first queen\'s ghost, it should take joy     To see her in your arms.   LEONTES. My true Paulina,     We shall not marry till thou bid\'st us.   PAULINA. That     Shall be when your first queen\'s again in breath;     Never till then.                         Enter a GENTLEMAN    GENTLEMAN. One that gives out himself Prince Florizel,     Son of Polixenes, with his princess- she     The fairest I have yet beheld- desires access     To your high presence.   LEONTES. What with him? He comes not     Like to his father\'s greatness. His approach,     So out of circumstance and sudden, tells us     \'Tis not a visitation fram\'d, but forc\'d     By need and accident. What train?   GENTLEMAN. But few,       And those but mean.   LEONTES. His princess, say you, with him?   GENTLEMAN. Ay; the most peerless piece of earth, I think,     That e\'er the sun shone bright on.   PAULINA. O Hermione,     As every present time doth boast itself     Above a better gone, so must thy grave     Give way to what\'s seen now! Sir, you yourself     Have said and writ so, but your writing now     Is colder than that theme: \'She had not been,     Nor was not to be equall\'d.\' Thus your verse     Flow\'d with her beauty once; \'tis shrewdly ebb\'d,     To say you have seen a better.   GENTLEMAN. Pardon, madam.     The one I have almost forgot- your pardon;     The other, when she has obtain\'d your eye,     Will have your tongue too. This is a creature,     Would she begin a sect, might quench the zeal     Of all professors else, make proselytes     Of who she but bid follow.     PAULINA. How! not women?   GENTLEMAN. Women will love her that she is a woman     More worth than any man; men, that she is     The rarest of all women.   LEONTES. Go, Cleomenes;     Yourself, assisted with your honour\'d friends,     Bring them to our embracement.                        Exeunt     Still, \'tis strange     He thus should steal upon us.   PAULINA. Had our prince,     Jewel of children, seen this hour, he had pair\'d     Well with this lord; there was not full a month     Between their births.   LEONTES. Prithee no more; cease. Thou know\'st     He dies to me again when talk\'d of. Sure,     When I shall see this gentleman, thy speeches     Will bring me to consider that which may     Unfurnish me of reason.           Re-enter CLEOMENES, with FLORIZEL, PERDITA, and                               ATTENDANTS      They are come.     Your mother was most true to wedlock, Prince;     For she did print your royal father off,     Conceiving you. Were I but twenty-one,     Your father\'s image is so hit in you     His very air, that I should call you brother,     As I did him, and speak of something wildly     By us perform\'d before. Most dearly welcome!     And your fair princess- goddess! O, alas!     I lost a couple that \'twixt heaven and earth     Might thus have stood begetting wonder as     You, gracious couple, do. And then I lost-     All mine own folly- the society,     Amity too, of your brave father, whom,     Though bearing misery, I desire my life     Once more to look on him.   FLORIZEL. By his command     Have I here touch\'d Sicilia, and from him       Give you all greetings that a king, at friend,     Can send his brother; and, but infirmity,     Which waits upon worn times, hath something seiz\'d     His wish\'d ability, he had himself     The lands and waters \'twixt your throne and his     Measur\'d, to look upon you; whom he loves,     He bade me say so, more than all the sceptres     And those that bear them living.   LEONTES. O my brother-     Good gentleman!- the wrongs I have done thee stir     Afresh within me; and these thy offices,     So rarely kind, are as interpreters     Of my behind-hand slackness! Welcome hither,     As is the spring to th\' earth. And hath he too     Expos\'d this paragon to th\' fearful usage,     At least ungentle, of the dreadful Neptune,     To greet a man not worth her pains, much less     Th\' adventure of her person?   FLORIZEL. Good, my lord,     She came from Libya.     LEONTES. Where the warlike Smalus,     That noble honour\'d lord, is fear\'d and lov\'d?   FLORIZEL. Most royal sir, from thence; from him whose daughter     His tears proclaim\'d his, parting with her; thence,     A prosperous south-wind friendly, we have cross\'d,     To execute the charge my father gave me     For visiting your Highness. My best train     I have from your Sicilian shores dismiss\'d;     Who for Bohemia bend, to signify     Not only my success in Libya, sir,     But my arrival and my wife\'s in safety     Here where we are.   LEONTES. The blessed gods     Purge all infection from our air whilst you     Do climate here! You have a holy father,     A graceful gentleman, against whose person,     So sacred as it is, I have done sin,     For which the heavens, taking angry note,     Have left me issueless; and your father\'s blest,     As he from heaven merits it, with you,       Worthy his goodness. What might I have been,     Might I a son and daughter now have look\'d on,     Such goodly things as you!                        Enter a LORD    LORD. Most noble sir,     That which I shall report will bear no credit,     Were not the proof so nigh. Please you, great sir,     Bohemia greets you from himself by me;     Desires you to attach his son, who has-     His dignity and duty both cast off-     Fled from his father, from his hopes, and with     A shepherd\'s daughter.   LEONTES. Where\'s Bohemia? Speak.   LORD. Here in your city; I now came from him.     I speak amazedly; and it becomes     My marvel and my message. To your court     Whiles he was hast\'ning- in the chase, it seems,     Of this fair couple- meets he on the way       The father of this seeming lady and     Her brother, having both their country quitted     With this young prince.   FLORIZEL. Camillo has betray\'d me;     Whose honour and whose honesty till now     Endur\'d all weathers.   LORD. Lay\'t so to his charge;     He\'s with the King your father.   LEONTES. Who? Camillo?   LORD. Camillo, sir; I spake with him; who now     Has these poor men in question. Never saw I     Wretches so quake. They kneel, they kiss the earth;     Forswear themselves as often as they speak.     Bohemia stops his ears, and threatens them     With divers deaths in death.   PERDITA. O my poor father!     The heaven sets spies upon us, will not have     Our contract celebrated.   LEONTES. You are married?   FLORIZEL. We are not, sir, nor are we like to be;       The stars, I see, will kiss the valleys first.     The odds for high and low\'s alike.   LEONTES. My lord,     Is this the daughter of a king?   FLORIZEL. She is,     When once she is my wife.   LEONTES. That \'once,\' I see by your good father\'s speed,     Will come on very slowly. I am sorry,     Most sorry, you have broken from his liking     Where you were tied in duty; and as sorry     Your choice is not so rich in worth as beauty,     That you might well enjoy her.   FLORIZEL. Dear, look up.     Though Fortune, visible an enemy,     Should chase us with my father, pow\'r no jot     Hath she to change our loves. Beseech you, sir,     Remember since you ow\'d no more to time     Than I do now. With thought of such affections,     Step forth mine advocate; at your request     My father will grant precious things as trifles.     LEONTES. Would he do so, I\'d beg your precious mistress,     Which he counts but a trifle.   PAULINA. Sir, my liege,     Your eye hath too much youth in\'t. Not a month     Fore your queen died, she was more worth such gazes     Than what you look on now.   LEONTES. I thought of her     Even in these looks I made.  [To FLORIZEL]  But your petition     Is yet unanswer\'d. I will to your father.     Your honour not o\'erthrown by your desires,     I am friend to them and you. Upon which errand     I now go toward him; therefore, follow me,     And mark what way I make. Come, good my lord.         Exeunt     SCENE II. Sicilia. Before the palace of LEONTES  Enter AUTOLYCUS and a GENTLEMAN    AUTOLYCUS. Beseech you, sir, were you present at this relation?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. I was by at the opening of the fardel, heard the     old shepherd deliver the manner how he found it; whereupon, after     a little amazedness, we were all commanded out of the chamber;     only this, methought I heard the shepherd say he found the child.   AUTOLYCUS. I would most gladly know the issue of it.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. I make a broken delivery of the business; but the     changes I perceived in the King and Camillo were very notes of     admiration. They seem\'d almost, with staring on one another, to     tear the cases of their eyes; there was speech in their dumbness,     language in their very gesture; they look\'d as they had heard of     a world ransom\'d, or one destroyed. A notable passion of wonder     appeared in them; but the wisest beholder that knew no more but     seeing could not say if th\' importance were joy or sorrow- but in     the extremity of the one it must needs be.                      Enter another GENTLEMAN        Here comes a gentleman that happily knows more. The news, Rogero?   SECOND GENTLEMAN. Nothing but bonfires. The oracle is fulfill\'d:     the King\'s daughter is found. Such a deal of wonder is broken out     within this hour that ballad-makers cannot be able to express it.                      Enter another GENTLEMAN      Here comes the Lady Paulina\'s steward; he can deliver you more.     How goes it now, sir? This news, which is call\'d true, is so like     an old tale that the verity of it is in strong suspicion. Has the     King found his heir?   THIRD GENTLEMAN. Most true, if ever truth were pregnant by     circumstance. That which you hear you\'ll swear you see, there is     such unity in the proofs. The mantle of Queen Hermione\'s; her     jewel about the neck of it; the letters of Antigonus found with     it, which they know to be his character; the majesty of the     creature in resemblance of the mother; the affection of nobleness     which nature shows above her breeding; and many other evidences-     proclaim her with all certainty to be the King\'s daughter. Did       you see the meeting of the two kings?   SECOND GENTLEMAN. No.   THIRD GENTLEMAN. Then you have lost a sight which was to be seen,     cannot be spoken of. There might you have beheld one joy crown     another, so and in such manner that it seem\'d sorrow wept to take     leave of them; for their joy waded in tears. There was casting up     of eyes, holding up of hands, with countenance of such     distraction that they were to be known by garment, not by favour.     Our king, being ready to leap out of himself for joy of his found     daughter, as if that joy were now become a loss, cries \'O, thy     mother, thy mother!\' then asks Bohemia forgiveness; then embraces     his son-in-law; then again worries he his daughter with clipping     her. Now he thanks the old shepherd, which stands by like a     weather-bitten conduit of many kings\' reigns. I never heard of     such another encounter, which lames report to follow it and     undoes description to do it.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. What, pray you, became of Antigonus, that carried     hence the child?   THIRD GENTLEMAN. Like an old tale still, which will have matter to     rehearse, though credit be asleep and not an ear open: he was       torn to pieces with a bear. This avouches the shepherd\'s son, who     has not only his innocence, which seems much, to justify him, but     a handkerchief and rings of his that Paulina knows.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. What became of his bark and his followers?   THIRD GENTLEMAN. Wreck\'d the same instant of their master\'s death,     and in the view of the shepherd; so that all the instruments     which aided to expose the child were even then lost when it was     found. But, O, the noble combat that \'twixt joy and sorrow was     fought in Paulina! She had one eye declin\'d for the loss of her     husband, another elevated that the oracle was fulfill\'d. She     lifted the Princess from the earth, and so locks her in embracing     as if she would pin her to her heart, that she might no more be     in danger of losing.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. The dignity of this act was worth the audience of     kings and princes; for by such was it acted.   THIRD GENTLEMAN. One of the prettiest touches of all, and that     which angl\'d for mine eyes- caught the water, though not the     fish- was, when at the relation of the Queen\'s death, with the     manner how she came to\'t bravely confess\'d and lamented by the     King, how attentivenes wounded his daughter; till, from one sign       of dolour to another, she did with an \'Alas!\'- I would fain say-     bleed tears; for I am sure my heart wept blood. Who was most     marble there changed colour; some swooned, all sorrowed. If all     the world could have seen\'t, the woe had been universal.   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Are they returned to the court?   THIRD GENTLEMAN. No. The Princess hearing of her mother\'s statue,     which is in the keeping of Paulina- a piece many years in doing     and now newly perform\'d by that rare Italian master, Julio     Romano, who, had he himself eternity and could put breath into     his work, would beguile nature of her custom, so perfectly he is     her ape. He so near to Hermione hath done Hermione that they say     one would speak to her and stand in hope of answer- thither with     all greediness of affection are they gone, and there they intend     to sup.   SECOND GENTLEMAN. I thought she had some great matter there in     hand; for she hath privately twice or thrice a day, ever since     the death of Hermione, visited that removed house. Shall we     thither, and with our company piece the rejoicing?   FIRST GENTLEMAN. Who would be thence that has the benefit of     access? Every wink of an eye some new grace will be born. Our       absence makes us unthrifty to our knowledge. Let\'s along.                                                 Exeunt GENTLEMEN   AUTOLYCUS. Now, had I not the dash of my former life in me, would     preferment drop on my head. I brought the old man and his son     aboard the Prince; told him I heard them talk of a fardel and I     know not what; but he at that time over-fond of the shepherd\'s     daughter- so he then took her to be- who began to be much     sea-sick, and himself little better, extremity of weather     continuing, this mystery remained undiscover\'d. But \'tis all one     to me; for had I been the finder-out of this secret, it would not     have relish\'d among my other discredits.                      Enter SHEPHERD and CLOWN      Here come those I have done good to against my will, and already     appearing in the blossoms of their fortune.   SHEPHERD. Come, boy; I am past moe children, but thy sons and     daughters will be all gentlemen born.   CLOWN. You are well met, sir. You denied to fight with me this     other day, because I was no gentleman born. See you these       clothes? Say you see them not and think me still no gentleman     born. You were best say these robes are not gentlemen born. Give     me the lie, do; and try whether I am not now a gentleman born.   AUTOLYCUS. I know you are now, sir, a gentleman born.   CLOWN. Ay, and have been so any time these four hours.   SHEPHERD. And so have I, boy.   CLOWN. So you have; but I was a gentleman born before my father;     for the King\'s son took me by the hand and call\'d me brother; and     then the two kings call\'d my father brother; and then the Prince,     my brother, and the Princess, my sister, call\'d my father father.     And so we wept; and there was the first gentleman-like tears that     ever we shed.   SHEPHERD. We may live, son, to shed many more.   CLOWN. Ay; or else \'twere hard luck, being in so preposterous     estate as we are.   AUTOLYCUS. I humbly beseech you, sir, to pardon me all the faults I     have committed to your worship, and to give me your good report     to the Prince my master.   SHEPHERD. Prithee, son, do; for we must be gentle, now we are     gentlemen.     CLOWN. Thou wilt amend thy life?   AUTOLYCUS. Ay, an it like your good worship.   CLOWN. Give me thy hand. I will swear to the Prince thou art as     honest a true fellow as any is in Bohemia.   SHEPHERD. You may say it, but not swear it.   CLOWN. Not swear it, now I am a gentleman? Let boors and franklins     say it: I\'ll swear it.   SHEPHERD. How if it be false, son?   CLOWN. If it be ne\'er so false, a true gentleman may swear it in     the behalf of his friend. And I\'ll swear to the Prince thou art a     tall fellow of thy hands and that thou wilt not be drunk; but I     know thou art no tall fellow of thy hands and that thou wilt be     drunk. But I\'ll swear it; and I would thou wouldst be a tall     fellow of thy hands.   AUTOLYCUS. I will prove so, sir, to my power.   CLOWN. Ay, by any means, prove a tall fellow. If I do not wonder     how thou dar\'st venture to be drunk not being a tall fellow,     trust me not. Hark! the kings and the princes, our kindred, are     going to see the Queen\'s picture. Come, follow us; we\'ll be thy     good masters.                                         Exeunt     SCENE III. Sicilia. A chapel in PAULINA\'s house  Enter LEONTES, POLIXENES, FLORIZEL, PERDITA, CAMILLO, PAULINA, LORDS and ATTENDANTS    LEONTES. O grave and good Paulina, the great comfort     That I have had of thee!   PAULINA. What, sovereign sir,     I did not well, I meant well. All my services     You have paid home; but that you have vouchsaf\'d,     With your crown\'d brother and these your contracted     Heirs of your kingdoms, my poor house to visit,     It is a surplus of your grace, which never     My life may last to answer.   LEONTES. O Paulina,     We honour you with trouble; but we came     To see the statue of our queen. Your gallery     Have we pass\'d through, not without much content     In many singularities; but we saw not     That which my daughter came to look upon,     The statue of her mother.     PAULINA. As she liv\'d peerless,     So her dead likeness, I do well believe,     Excels whatever yet you look\'d upon     Or hand of man hath done; therefore I keep it     Lonely, apart. But here it is. Prepare     To see the life as lively mock\'d as ever     Still sleep mock\'d death. Behold; and say \'tis well.                 [PAULINA draws a curtain, and discovers HERMIONE                                          standing like a statue]     I like your silence; it the more shows off     Your wonder; but yet speak. First, you, my liege.     Comes it not something near?   LEONTES. Her natural posture!     Chide me, dear stone, that I may say indeed     Thou art Hermione; or rather, thou art she     In thy not chiding; for she was as tender     As infancy and grace. But yet, Paulina,     Hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing     So aged as this seems.   POLIXENES. O, not by much!     PAULINA. So much the more our carver\'s excellence,     Which lets go by some sixteen years and makes her     As she liv\'d now.   LEONTES. As now she might have done,     So much to my good comfort as it is     Now piercing to my soul. O, thus she stood,     Even with such life of majesty- warm life,     As now it coldly stands- when first I woo\'d her!     I am asham\'d. Does not the stone rebuke me     For being more stone than it? O royal piece,     There\'s magic in thy majesty, which has     My evils conjur\'d to remembrance, and     From thy admiring daughter took the spirits,     Standing like stone with thee!   PERDITA. And give me leave,     And do not say \'tis superstition that     I kneel, and then implore her blessing. Lady,     Dear queen, that ended when I but began,     Give me that hand of yours to kiss.   PAULINA. O, patience!       The statue is but newly fix\'d, the colour\'s     Not dry.   CAMILLO. My lord, your sorrow was too sore laid on,     Which sixteen winters cannot blow away,     So many summers dry. Scarce any joy     Did ever so long live; no sorrow     But kill\'d itself much sooner.   POLIXENES. Dear my brother,     Let him that was the cause of this have pow\'r     To take off so much grief from you as he     Will piece up in himself.   PAULINA. Indeed, my lord,     If I had thought the sight of my poor image     Would thus have wrought you- for the stone is mine-     I\'d not have show\'d it.   LEONTES. Do not draw the curtain.   PAULINA. No longer shall you gaze on\'t, lest your fancy     May think anon it moves.   LEONTES. Let be, let be.     Would I were dead, but that methinks already-       What was he that did make it? See, my lord,     Would you not deem it breath\'d, and that those veins     Did verily bear blood?   POLIXENES. Masterly done!     The very life seems warm upon her lip.   LEONTES. The fixture of her eye has motion in\'t,     As we are mock\'d with art.   PAULINA. I\'ll draw the curtain.     My lord\'s almost so far transported that     He\'ll think anon it lives.   LEONTES. O sweet Paulina,     Make me to think so twenty years together!     No settled senses of the world can match     The pleasure of that madness. Let \'t alone.   PAULINA. I am sorry, sir, I have thus far stirr\'d you; but     I could afflict you farther.   LEONTES. Do, Paulina;     For this affliction has a taste as sweet     As any cordial comfort. Still, methinks,     There is an air comes from her. What fine chisel       Could ever yet cut breath? Let no man mock me,     For I will kiss her.   PAULINA. Good my lord, forbear.     The ruddiness upon her lip is wet;     You\'ll mar it if you kiss it; stain your own     With oily painting. Shall I draw the curtain?   LEONTES. No, not these twenty years.   PERDITA. So long could I     Stand by, a looker-on.   PAULINA. Either forbear,     Quit presently the chapel, or resolve you     For more amazement. If you can behold it,     I\'ll make the statue move indeed, descend,     And take you by the hand, but then you\'ll think-     Which I protest against- I am assisted     By wicked powers.   LEONTES. What you can make her do     I am content to look on; what to speak     I am content to hear; for \'tis as easy     To make her speak as move.     PAULINA. It is requir\'d     You do awake your faith. Then all stand still;     Or those that think it is unlawful business     I am about, let them depart.   LEONTES. Proceed.     No foot shall stir.   PAULINA. Music, awake her: strike.                     [Music]     \'Tis time; descend; be stone no more; approach;     Strike all that look upon with marvel. Come;     I\'ll fill your grave up. Stir; nay, come away.     Bequeath to death your numbness, for from him     Dear life redeems you. You perceive she stirs.                          [HERMIONE comes down from the pedestal]     Start not; her actions shall be holy as     You hear my spell is lawful. Do not shun her     Until you see her die again; for then     You kill her double. Nay, present your hand.     When she was young you woo\'d her; now in age     Is she become the suitor?   LEONTES. O, she\'s warm!       If this be magic, let it be an art     Lawful as eating.   POLIXENES. She embraces him.   CAMILLO. She hangs about his neck.     If she pertain to life, let her speak too.   POLIXENES. Ay, and make it manifest where she has liv\'d,     Or how stol\'n from the dead.   PAULINA. That she is living,     Were it but told you, should be hooted at     Like an old tale; but it appears she lives     Though yet she speak not. Mark a little while.     Please you to interpose, fair madam. Kneel,     And pray your mother\'s blessing. Turn, good lady;     Our Perdita is found.   HERMIONE. You gods, look down,     And from your sacred vials pour your graces     Upon my daughter\'s head! Tell me, mine own,     Where hast thou been preserv\'d? Where liv\'d? How found     Thy father\'s court? For thou shalt hear that I,     Knowing by Paulina that the oracle       Gave hope thou wast in being, have preserv\'d     Myself to see the issue.   PAULINA. There\'s time enough for that,     Lest they desire upon this push to trouble     Your joys with like relation. Go together,     You precious winners all; your exultation     Partake to every one. I, an old turtle,     Will wing me to some wither\'d bough, and there     My mate, that\'s never to be found again,     Lament till I am lost.   LEONTES. O peace, Paulina!     Thou shouldst a husband take by my consent,     As I by thine a wife. This is a match,     And made between\'s by vows. Thou hast found mine;     But how, is to be question\'d; for I saw her,     As I thought, dead; and have, in vain, said many     A prayer upon her grave. I\'ll not seek far-     For him, I partly know his mind- to find thee     An honourable husband. Come, Camillo,     And take her by the hand whose worth and honesty       Is richly noted, and here justified     By us, a pair of kings. Let\'s from this place.     What! look upon my brother. Both your pardons,     That e\'er I put between your holy looks     My ill suspicion. This your son-in-law,     And son unto the King, whom heavens directing,     Is troth-plight to your daughter. Good Paulina,     Lead us from hence where we may leisurely     Each one demand and answer to his part     Perform\'d in this wide gap of time since first     We were dissever\'d. Hastily lead away.                Exeunt  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>      1609  A LOVER\'S COMPLAINT  by William Shakespeare      From off a hill whose concave womb reworded   A plaintful story from a sist\'ring vale,   My spirits t\'attend this double voice accorded,   And down I laid to list the sad-tuned tale,   Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,   Tearing of papers, breaking rings atwain,   Storming her world with sorrow\'s wind and rain.    Upon her head a platted hive of straw,   Which fortified her visage from the sun,   Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw   The carcase of a beauty spent and done.   Time had not scythed all that youth begun,   Nor youth all quit, but spite of heaven\'s fell rage   Some beauty peeped through lattice of seared age.    Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,   Which on it had conceited characters,   Laund\'ring the silken figures in the brine   That seasoned woe had pelleted in tears,   And often reading what contents it bears;     As often shrieking undistinguished woe,   In clamours of all size, both high and low.    Sometimes her levelled eyes their carriage ride,   As they did batt\'ry to the spheres intend;   Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied   To th\' orbed earth; sometimes they do extend   Their view right on; anon their gazes lend   To every place at once, and nowhere fixed,   The mind and sight distractedly commixed.    Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plat,   Proclaimed in her a careless hand of pride;   For some, untucked, descended her sheaved hat,   Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside;   Some in her threaden fillet still did bide,   And, true to bondage, would not break from thence,   Though slackly braided in loose negligence.    A thousand favours from a maund she drew     Of amber, crystal, and of beaded jet,   Which one by one she in a river threw,   Upon whose weeping margent she was set;   Like usury applying wet to wet,   Or monarchs\' hands that lets not bounty fall   Where want cries some, but where excess begs all.    Of folded schedules had she many a one,   Which she perused, sighed, tore, and gave the flood;   Cracked many a ring of posied gold and bone,   Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;   Found yet moe letters sadly penned in blood,   With sleided silk feat and affectedly   Enswathed and sealed to curious secrecy.    These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes,   And often kissed, and often \'gan to tear;   Cried, \'O false blood, thou register of lies,   What unapproved witness dost thou bear!   Ink would have seemed more black and damned here!     This said, in top of rage the lines she rents,   Big discontents so breaking their contents.    A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh,   Sometime a blusterer that the ruffle knew   Of court, of city, and had let go by   The swiftest hours observed as they flew,   Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew;   And, privileged by age, desires to know   In brief the grounds and motives of her woe.    So slides he down upon his grained bat,   And comely distant sits he by her side;   When he again desires her, being sat,   Her grievance with his hearing to divide.   If that from him there may be aught applied   Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,   \'Tis promised in the charity of age.    \'Father,\' she says, \'though in me you behold     The injury of many a blasting hour,   Let it not tell your judgement I am old:   Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power.   I might as yet have been a spreading flower,   Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied   Love to myself, and to no love beside.    \'But woe is me! too early I attended   A youthful suit- it was to gain my grace-   O, one by nature\'s outwards so commended   That maidens\' eyes stuck over all his face.   Love lacked a dwelling and made him her place;   And when in his fair parts she did abide,   She was new lodged and newly deified.    \'His browny locks did hang in crooked curls;   And every light occasion of the wind   Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls.   What\'s sweet to do, to do will aptly find:   Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind;     For on his visage was in little drawn   What largeness thinks in Paradise was sawn.    \'Small show of man was yet upon his chin;   His phoenix down began but to appear,   Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin,   Whose bare out-bragged the web it seemed to wear:   Yet showed his visage by that cost more dear;   And nice affections wavering stood in doubt   If best were as it was, or best without.    \'His qualities were beauteous as his form,   For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;   Yet if men moved him, was he such a storm   As oft \'twixt May and April is to see,   When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.   His rudeness so with his authorized youth   Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.    \'Well could he ride, and often men would say,     "That horse his mettle from his rider takes:   Proud of subjection, noble by the sway,   What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop he makes!"   And controversy hence a question takes   Whether the horse by him became his deed,   Or he his manage by th\' well-doing steed.    \'But quickly on this side the verdict went:   His real habitude gave life and grace   To appertainings and to ornament,   Accomplished in himself, not in his case,   All aids, themselves made fairer by their place,   Came for additions; yet their purposed trim   Pierced not his grace, but were all graced by him.    \'So on the tip of his subduing tongue   All kind of arguments and question deep,   All replication prompt, and reason strong,   For his advantage still did wake and sleep.   To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,     He had the dialect and different skill,   Catching all passions in his craft of will,    \'That he did in the general bosom reign   Of young, of old, and sexes both enchanted,   To dwell with him in thoughts, or to remain   In personal duty, following where he haunted.   Consents bewitched, ere he desire, have granted,   And dialogued for him what he would say,   Asked their own wills, and made their wills obey.    \'Many there were that did his picture get,   To serve their eyes, and in it put their mind;   Like fools that in th\' imagination set   The goodly objects which abroad they find   Of lands and mansions, theirs in thought assigned;   And labouring in moe pleasures to bestow them   Than the true gouty landlord which doth owe them.    \'So many have, that never touched his hand,     Sweetly supposed them mistress of his heart.   My woeful self, that did in freedom stand,   And was my own fee-simple, not in part,   What with his art in youth, and youth in art,   Threw my affections in his charmed power   Reserved the stalk and gave him all my flower.    \'Yet did I not, as some my equals did,   Demand of him, nor being desired yielded;   Finding myself in honour so forbid,   With safest distance I mine honour shielded.   Experience for me many bulwarks builded   Of proofs new-bleeding, which remained the foil   Of this false jewel, and his amorous spoil.    \'But ah, who ever shunned by precedent   The destined ill she must herself assay?   Or forced examples, \'gainst her own content,   To put the by-past perils in her way?   Counsel may stop awhile what will not stay;     For when we rage, advice is often seen   By blunting us to make our wills more keen.    \'Nor gives it satisfaction to our blood   That we must curb it upon others\' proof,   To be forbod the sweets that seems so good   For fear of harms that preach in our behoof.   O appetite, from judgement stand aloof!   The one a palate hath that needs will taste,   Though Reason weep, and cry it is thy last.    \'For further I could say this man\'s untrue,   And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling;   Heard where his plants in others\' orchards grew;   Saw how deceits were gilded in his smiling;   Knew vows were ever brokers to defiling;   Thought characters and words merely but art,   And bastards of his foul adulterate heart.    \'And long upon these terms I held my city,     Till thus he \'gan besiege me: "Gentle maid,   Have of my suffering youth some feeling pity,   And be not of my holy vows afraid.   That\'s to ye sworn to none was ever said;   For feasts of love I have been called unto,   Till now did ne\'er invite nor never woo.    \'"All my offences that abroad you see   Are errors of the blood, none of the mind;   Love made them not; with acture they may be,   Where neither party is nor true nor kind.   They sought their shame that so their shame did find;   And so much less of shame in me remains   By how much of me their reproach contains.    \'"Among the many that mine eyes have seen,   Not one whose flame my heart so much as warmed,   Or my affection put to th\' smallest teen,   Or any of my leisures ever charmed.   Harm have I done to them, but ne\'er was harmed;     Kept hearts in liveries, but mine own was free,   And reigned commanding in his monarchy.    \'"Look here what tributes wounded fancies sent me,   Of paled pearls and rubies red as blood;   Figuring that they their passions likewise lent me   Of grief and blushes, aptly understood   In bloodless white and the encrimsoned mood-   Effects of terror and dear modesty,   Encamped in hearts, but fighting outwardly.    \'"And, lo, behold these talents of their hair,   With twisted metal amorously empleached,   I have receiv\'d from many a several fair,   Their kind acceptance weepingly beseeched,   With the annexions of fair gems enriched,   And deep-brained sonnets that did amplify   Each stone\'s dear nature, worth, and quality.    \'"The diamond? why, \'twas beautiful and hard,     Whereto his invised properties did tend;   The deep-green em\'rald, in whose fresh regard   Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend;   The heaven-hued sapphire and the opal blend   With objects manifold; each several stone,   With wit well blazoned, smiled, or made some moan.    \'"Lo, all these trophies of affections hot,   Of pensived and subdued desires the tender,   Nature hath charged me that I hoard them not,   But yield them up where I myself must render-   That is, to you, my origin and ender;   For these, of force, must your oblations be,   Since I their altar, you enpatron me.    \'"O then advance of yours that phraseless hand   Whose white weighs down the airy scale of praise;   Take all these similes to your own command,   Hallowed with sighs that burning lungs did raise;   What me your minister for you obeys     Works under you; and to your audit comes   Their distract parcels in combined sums.    \'"Lo, this device was sent me from a nun,   Or sister sanctified, of holiest note,   Which late her noble suit in court did shun,   Whose rarest havings made the blossoms dote;   For she was sought by spirits of richest coat,   But kept cold distance, and did thence remove   To spend her living in eternal love.    \'"But, O my sweet, what labour is\'t to leave   The thing we have not, mast\'ring what not strives,   Playing the place which did no form receive,   Playing patient sports in unconstrained gyves!   She that her fame so to herself contrives,   The scars of battle scapeth by the flight,   And makes her absence valiant, not her might.    \'"O pardon me in that my boast is true!     The accident which brought me to her eye   Upon the moment did her force subdue,   And now she would the caged cloister fly.   Religious love put out religion\'s eye.   Not to be tempted, would she be immured,   And now to tempt all liberty procured.    \'"How mighty then you are, O hear me tell!   The broken bosoms that to me belong   Have emptied all their fountains in my well,   And mine I pour your ocean all among.   I strong o\'er them, and you o\'er me being strong,   Must for your victory us all congest,   As compound love to physic your cold breast.    \'"My parts had pow\'r to charm a sacred nun,   Who, disciplined, ay, dieted in grace,   Believed her eyes when they t\'assail begun,   All vows and consecrations giving place,   O most potential love, vow, bond, nor space,     In thee hath neither sting, knot, nor confine,   For thou art all, and all things else are thine.    \'"When thou impressest, what are precepts worth   Of stale example? When thou wilt inflame,   How coldly those impediments stand forth,   Of wealth, of filial fear, law, kindred, fame!   Love\'s arms are peace, \'gainst rule, \'gainst sense, \'gainst shame.   And sweetens, in the suff\'ring pangs it bears,   The aloes of all forces, shocks and fears.    \'"Now all these hearts that do on mine depend,   Feeling it break, with bleeding groans they pine,   And supplicant their sighs to your extend,   To leave the batt\'ry that you make \'gainst mine,   Lending soft audience to my sweet design,   And credent soul to that strong-bonded oath,   That shall prefer and undertake my troth."    \'This said, his wat\'ry eyes he did dismount,     Whose sights till then were levelled on my face;   Each cheek a river running from a fount   With brinish current downward flowed apace.   O, how the channel to the stream gave grace!   Who glazed with crystal gate the glowing roses   That flame through water which their hue encloses.    \'O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies   In the small orb of one particular tear!   But with the inundation of the eyes   What rocky heart to water will not wear?   What breast so cold that is not warmed here?   O cleft effect! cold modesty, hot wrath,   Both fire from hence and chill extincture hath.    \'For lo, his passion, but an art of craft,   Even there resolved my reason into tears;   There my white stole of chastity I daffed,   Shook off my sober guards and civil fears;   Appear to him as he to me appears,     All melting; though our drops this diff\'rence bore:   His poisoned me, and mine did him restore.    \'In him a plenitude of subtle matter,   Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives,   Of burning blushes or of weeping water,   Or swooning paleness; and he takes and leaves,   In either\'s aptness, as it best deceives,   To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes,   Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows;    \'That not a heart which in his level came   Could scape the hail of his all-hurting aim,   Showing fair nature is both kind and tame;   And, veiled in them, did win whom he would maim.   Against the thing he sought he would exclaim;   When he most burned in heart-wished luxury,   He preached pure maid and praised cold chastity.    \'Thus merely with the garment of a Grace     The naked and concealed fiend he covered,   That th\' unexperient gave the tempter place,   Which, like a cherubin, above them hovered.   Who, young and simple, would not be so lovered?   Ay me, I fell, and yet do question make   What I should do again for such a sake.    \'O, that infected moisture of his eye,   O, that false fire which in his cheek so glowed,   O, that forced thunder from his heart did fly,   O, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestowed,   O, all that borrowed motion, seeming owed,   Would yet again betray the fore-betrayed,   And new pervert a reconciled maid.\'  THE END    <<THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IS COPYRIGHT 1990-1993 BY WORLD LIBRARY, INC., AND IS PROVIDED BY PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT OF ILLINOIS BENEDICTINE COLLEGE WITH PERMISSION.  ELECTRONIC AND MACHINE READABLE COPIES MAY BE DISTRIBUTED SO LONG AS SUCH COPIES (1) ARE FOR YOUR OR OTHERS PERSONAL USE ONLY, AND (2) ARE NOT DISTRIBUTED OR USED COMMERCIALLY.  PROHIBITED COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION INCLUDES BY ANY SERVICE THAT CHARGES FOR DOWNLOAD TIME OR FOR MEMBERSHIP.>>    End of this Etext of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare    '

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 'loving': 1000,
 ...}

13008

13009

27956

50

50

Model: "sequential"
_________________________________________________________________
Layer (type)                 Output Shape              Param #   
=================================================================
embedding (Embedding)        (None, 50, 50)            650450    
_________________________________________________________________
lstm (LSTM)                  (None, 50, 100)           60400     
_________________________________________________________________
lstm_1 (LSTM)                (None, 100)               80400     
_________________________________________________________________
dense (Dense)                (None, 100)               10100     
_________________________________________________________________
dense_1 (Dense)              (None, 13009)             1313909   
=================================================================
Total params: 2,115,259
Trainable params: 2,115,259
Non-trainable params: 0
_________________________________________________________________

Epoch 1/100
782/782 [==============================] - 49s 62ms/step - loss: 6.8672 - accuracy: 0.0311
Epoch 2/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 6.5260 - accuracy: 0.0428
Epoch 3/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 6.3185 - accuracy: 0.0588
Epoch 4/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 6.1269 - accuracy: 0.0736
Epoch 5/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 5.9857 - accuracy: 0.0832
Epoch 6/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 5.8650 - accuracy: 0.0926
Epoch 7/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 5.7685 - accuracy: 0.0984
Epoch 8/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 5.6726 - accuracy: 0.1032
Epoch 9/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 5.5834 - accuracy: 0.1072
Epoch 10/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 5.4977 - accuracy: 0.1098
Epoch 11/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 5.4121 - accuracy: 0.1128
Epoch 12/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 5.3272 - accuracy: 0.1154
Epoch 13/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 5.2425 - accuracy: 0.1178
Epoch 14/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 5.2393 - accuracy: 0.1161
Epoch 15/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 5.1621 - accuracy: 0.1184
Epoch 16/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 5.1009 - accuracy: 0.1210
Epoch 17/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 5.0153 - accuracy: 0.1246
Epoch 18/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 4.9604 - accuracy: 0.1273
Epoch 19/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 4.8969 - accuracy: 0.1314
Epoch 20/100
782/782 [==============================] - 48s 61ms/step - loss: 4.8367 - accuracy: 0.1352
Epoch 21/100
782/782 [==============================] - 48s 61ms/step - loss: 4.8167 - accuracy: 0.1369
Epoch 22/100
782/782 [==============================] - 48s 61ms/step - loss: 4.7370 - accuracy: 0.1433
Epoch 23/100
782/782 [==============================] - 48s 61ms/step - loss: 4.6585 - accuracy: 0.1494
Epoch 24/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.6065 - accuracy: 0.1543
Epoch 25/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.5548 - accuracy: 0.1590
Epoch 26/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.5286 - accuracy: 0.1627
Epoch 27/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.5397 - accuracy: 0.1611
Epoch 28/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.4679 - accuracy: 0.1680
Epoch 29/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.4129 - accuracy: 0.1736
Epoch 30/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.3691 - accuracy: 0.1782
Epoch 31/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.3391 - accuracy: 0.1812
Epoch 32/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.3075 - accuracy: 0.1855
Epoch 33/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.2688 - accuracy: 0.1899
Epoch 34/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.2260 - accuracy: 0.1937
Epoch 35/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.1813 - accuracy: 0.1990
Epoch 36/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.1462 - accuracy: 0.2031
Epoch 37/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 4.1168 - accuracy: 0.2060
Epoch 38/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.0897 - accuracy: 0.2093
Epoch 39/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 4.0558 - accuracy: 0.2133
Epoch 40/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.0301 - accuracy: 0.2168
Epoch 41/100
782/782 [==============================] - 48s 61ms/step - loss: 4.0128 - accuracy: 0.2193
Epoch 42/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 3.9735 - accuracy: 0.2235
Epoch 43/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 3.9734 - accuracy: 0.2247
Epoch 44/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 3.9489 - accuracy: 0.2283
Epoch 45/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.9501 - accuracy: 0.2281
Epoch 46/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.0685 - accuracy: 0.2158
Epoch 47/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 4.0099 - accuracy: 0.2199
Epoch 48/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.0319 - accuracy: 0.2179
Epoch 49/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 4.0740 - accuracy: 0.2135
Epoch 50/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 4.0312 - accuracy: 0.2161
Epoch 51/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.9126 - accuracy: 0.2314
Epoch 52/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 3.8652 - accuracy: 0.2380
Epoch 53/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.8497 - accuracy: 0.2396
Epoch 54/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 3.9296 - accuracy: 0.2303
Epoch 55/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.9449 - accuracy: 0.2265
Epoch 56/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.8690 - accuracy: 0.2369
Epoch 57/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.8415 - accuracy: 0.2400
Epoch 58/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.8222 - accuracy: 0.2425
Epoch 59/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.7697 - accuracy: 0.2487
Epoch 60/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 3.7458 - accuracy: 0.2525
Epoch 61/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 3.7071 - accuracy: 0.2580
Epoch 62/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.6699 - accuracy: 0.2627
Epoch 63/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.6375 - accuracy: 0.2675
Epoch 64/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.6152 - accuracy: 0.2704
Epoch 65/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.5857 - accuracy: 0.2750
Epoch 66/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.5608 - accuracy: 0.2783
Epoch 67/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.5247 - accuracy: 0.2834
Epoch 68/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.4987 - accuracy: 0.2873
Epoch 69/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.5008 - accuracy: 0.2876
Epoch 70/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.4706 - accuracy: 0.2914
Epoch 71/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.4572 - accuracy: 0.2931
Epoch 72/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.6017 - accuracy: 0.2751
Epoch 73/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.6146 - accuracy: 0.2731
Epoch 74/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 3.5477 - accuracy: 0.2826
Epoch 75/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.5143 - accuracy: 0.2860
Epoch 76/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.4865 - accuracy: 0.2901
Epoch 77/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.4595 - accuracy: 0.2933
Epoch 78/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.4592 - accuracy: 0.2933
Epoch 79/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.4208 - accuracy: 0.2992
Epoch 80/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.3905 - accuracy: 0.3026
Epoch 81/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.3637 - accuracy: 0.3072
Epoch 82/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.3359 - accuracy: 0.3113
Epoch 83/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.3125 - accuracy: 0.3150
Epoch 84/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.2892 - accuracy: 0.3182
Epoch 85/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.2621 - accuracy: 0.3213
Epoch 86/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.2408 - accuracy: 0.3245
Epoch 87/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 61ms/step - loss: 3.2186 - accuracy: 0.3290
Epoch 88/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.1936 - accuracy: 0.3326
Epoch 89/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.1729 - accuracy: 0.3358
Epoch 90/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.1463 - accuracy: 0.3401
Epoch 91/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.1237 - accuracy: 0.3431
Epoch 92/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.1057 - accuracy: 0.3462
Epoch 93/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.0818 - accuracy: 0.3494
Epoch 94/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.0653 - accuracy: 0.3521
Epoch 95/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.0356 - accuracy: 0.3574
Epoch 96/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 3.0137 - accuracy: 0.3610
Epoch 97/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 2.9927 - accuracy: 0.3628
Epoch 98/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 2.9701 - accuracy: 0.3672
Epoch 99/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 2.9555 - accuracy: 0.3699
Epoch 100/100
782/782 [==============================] - 47s 60ms/step - loss: 2.9342 - accuracy: 0.3737





<tensorflow.python.keras.callbacks.History at 0x7fc9715e5048>

'home of love if i have ranged like him that travels i return again just to the time not with the time exchanged so that my self bring water for my stain never believe though in my nature reigned all frailties that besiege all kinds of blood that it could so'

'preposterously be stained to leave to choose a brace of'